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TABLE-TALK:

ORIGINAL ESSAYS

ON

MEN AND MANNERS.

BT

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

THIRD EDITION.

VOL. I.

LONDON: C. TEMPLKMAN,
6 GREAT PORTLAND STREET.

PR

v.l

LONDON:

Printed by Reynell and Weight,

tittle pultenky street.

TO LEIGH HUNT,

WHOM THE AUTHOR ALIKE ADMIRED AND ESTEEMED ;

THE "ROCHESTER WITHOUT THE VICE, THE

MODERN SURREY,"

WHOM HE CELEBRATES IN ONE OP THESE E8SAY8,

THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED,

WITH HEREDITARY ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM,

BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The present Volume contains, in addition to
matter published in the former editions of ' Table
Talk,' an Essay, now for the first time printed, and
another now for the first time collected. The former,
the F.ssay ' On Travelling Abroad,' I found amongst
other manuscripts of my father's, most of them
iniTolyfAe co/>,y whence* Table Talk 'and other works
of his were printed, and I at first concluded that
this also had been used. A diligent search, however'
not merely through all the collected volumes of his
works, but through all the various publications to
which he contributed, regularly or occasionally, in
which search I have been aided by the keen eye of
my friend Mr Raymond Yates, whose earnest de-
votion to the author has rendered this and other
cooperation, for which I stand indebted to him, truly
a labour of love, I have no hesitation in announcing
the Essay in question to be entirely new. It is, to
say the truth, somewhat fragmentary, and would,

VI ADVERTISEMENT.

doubtless, have undergone revision and correction at
the author's hands, had he, happily, lived to publish
it himself; but as it is, I have no doubt it will be
received by his friends and the public with much
interest. The Essay ' On the Spirit of Contro-
versy ' is taken from the London Weekly Review.
Volume II of ' Table Talk ' will appear shortly
after Christmas.

William Hazlitt.

Middle Temple, Nov. 1845.

The volumes of Hazlitt's Works already published
in this series are : —

1. Characters of Siiakspe are's Plats.

2. Sketches and Essays.

3. Lectures on the Literature of the Age oe Elizabeth.

4. Lectures on the Comic Writers.

5. Lectures on the English Poets.

6. The Round Table.

7. Criticisms on Art. First Series.
8. Second Series.

CONTENTS

THE FIRST VOLUME.

Essay I.— On the Past and Future
^ Essay II. — On Genius and Common Sense
say III. — The same Subject continued
Essay IV. — On People with one Idea .
Essay V. — On the Ignorance of the Learned
Essay VI. — The Indian Jugglers .
Essay VII.— On Liring to One's-self .
Essay VIIL— On Thought and Action .
Essay IX.— On Will-making .
Essay X. — On Paradox and Common-place
Essay XL— On Vulgarity and Affectation
Essay XII.— The Fight
Essay XIII — On Travelling Abroad .
Essay XIV.— On the Spirit of Controversy
Essay XV.— On the Want of Money
^Essay XVI.— On Milton's Sonnets
l Essay XVIL — On going a Journey

1

20

43

61

82

98

124

146

171

188

211

236

266

289

300

330

343

ESSAY I.

Off 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

B

"Z ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

ground for that mighty difference in the value
wftich mankind generally set upon the past and
future, as if the one was everything, and the
other nothing, of no consequence 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 bond fide, undeniable considera-
tion in the estimate of human life, as the future
can possibly be. To say that the past is of no
importance, unworthy of a moment's regard,
because it has gone by, and is no longer any-
thing, is an argument 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 existence, 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) : * but I cannot compre-
hend how this distinction between that which

* 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 main-
tain their footing without falling over on either side.

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE. 3

has a downright and sensible, and that which
has only :i remote :iik: airy existence, can be
applied to establish the preference of the future
over the past ; for both are in this point of view
tonally ideal, absolutely nothing, except as they
are conceived of by the mind's eye, and are thus
rendered present to the thoughts nnd 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 iay so
much stress, may never come to pass at all, that
K 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 arc 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,
then, the past also has no real existence; the
actual sensation and the interest belonging to it
are both Hod ; but it has had a real existence,

4 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE

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 insig-
nificant 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 1 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
Jine poet (who is himself among my earliest and
not least painful recollections —

ON THE PAST AND FIT! Ki:. 0

M What though the ndkOMI which was once so bright
Be now for ever vani.sh'd from my sight,
Xhmgh in»thin^ can hrin^ liack the liour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flowV" —

yet urn 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 so smiling " —

for it is the past that gives me most delight and
most assurance of reality. What to me consti-
tutes the great charm of the Confessions of
Rousseau is their turning so much upon this
feeling. He seems to gather up the past mo-
ments of his being 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 — " Aujourd'hui,
jour de Pdques Fleuries, il y a prechement et'n-
quante ans de ma premiere connaissance avec
madame de Warens," what a yearning of the soul
is implied in that short sentence ! Was all thathid
happened to him, all that he had thought and felt in
that sad interval of time, to be accounted nothing .'

6 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

Was thatlong, dim, faded retrospect of yearshappy
or miserable, a blank that was not to make his
eyes fail and his heart faint with in 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 see ; 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 de 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 recal 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 disappointment, 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 thoughts of other years, I
can look down with patient anguish at the cheer-
less desolation which I feel within! Without

ON Til! PAST AND PUTURB. 7

that fact- pale as the primrose with hyacinthine
locks, for ever shunning and for ever haunting
me, mocking mv waking thoughts as in a dream,
without that smile whit h my heart could never
turn to scorn, without those eyes, dark with their
o\mi lustre, Mill bent on mine, and drawing the
soul into tlnir 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?
Urn wave; wave on, ye woods of Tuderly, 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,
l>i iurhtor solemn, and of unfading interest What
is it in fact that we recur to oftenest ? What sub-
jects do we think or talk of most? Not the ig-
norant future, but the well-stored past Othello,
the Moor of Venice, amused himself and his
hearers at the house of Signor Brabantio by
u running through the story of his life, e'en from
his boyish days;" and oft "beguiled them of
their tears, when he did speak of some disastrous

8 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

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 six thousand ! All that strikes the
imagination or excites any interest in the mighty
scene is what has been ! *

Neither in itself then, nor as a subject of
general contemplation, has the future any ad-
vantage 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 en-

* A treatise on the Millennium is dull ; but who was
ever weary of reading the fables of the Golden Age ? On
my once observing I should like to have been Claude, a
person said, " he should not, for that then by this time it
would have been all over with him." As if it could pos-
sibly 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 TBI PAST AND FUTURE. 9

grosses it entirely 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
lost, and eagerly anticipate those which are to
come: we dwell with satisfaction on the evils
from which we have escaped (posthtec meminuse
juvabit) — 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 our-
selves infinite gratification. What has happened
to us we think of no consequence : what is to
happen to us, of the greatest. Why so? Simply
licc:iuse 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 be-
stowed upon anything add to our interest in it,
and because the habitual and earnest pursuit of
any end redoubles the ardour of our expecta-
tions, 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 past : but the insisting
on and exaggerating the importance of the future

10 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

is of the utmost use in aiding our resolutions,
and stimulating our exertions. If the future were
no more amenable to our wills than the past ; if
our precautions, our sanguine schemes, our
hopes and fears were as of 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 on 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 in-
different to both ; that is, we should consider
each as they affected the thoughts and imagina-
tion with certain sentiments of approbation or
regret, but without the importunity of action,
the irritation 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

ON THE PAST ANIJ FUTURE. 1 1

other has passed wholly out of the sphere of
action into the region of

** Calm contemplation and majestic pains."*

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 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 i9 so remote or so independent
of the will as to set aside the necessity of im-
mediate 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 some-
thing 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

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

12 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

tolerably resigned, and generally 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 delightful and real as that of the other.
The season of hope has an end ; but the remem-
brance of it is left. The past still lives in the
memory of those who have leisure to look back
upon the way that they have trod, and can from
it "catch glimpses that may make them less
forlorn." The turbulence of action, and un-
easiness of desire, must point to the future : it is
only in the quiet innocence of shepherds, in the
simplicity of pastoral ages, that a tomb was
found with this inscription — " I also was an
Arcadian !"

Though I by no means think that our habitual
attachment to life is 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 peu de chose est la vie ku-
maine — is an exclamation in the mouths of mo-

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE. \'-l

ralists and philosophers,' to which I cannot
agree. It is little, it is short, it is not worth

taringi tfw« take \\w last hour, and leave out
all that has pone before, which has been one
way of looking at the subject. Such calculators
set in to say that life is nothing when it is over,
ami that may in their sense be true. If the old
rulr I u- spin- finem — were to be made abso-
lute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate
till the day of his death, there are few among
us whose existence would, upon those condi-
tions, be much to be envied. But this is not a
fair view of the case. A man's life is his whole
life, not the last glimmering snuff of the candle;
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 is
grown old, or never lived because he is now
dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey
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
lift 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

14 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

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 transition 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, baflling
the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide
from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in
its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and
we say it is nothing ! It is a speck in our
fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough
to hold its striking groups, its endless subjects !
It is light as vanity, and yet if all its weary mo-
ments, if all its head and heart aches were com-
pressed into one, what fortitude would not be
overwhelmed with the blow! What a huge
heap, a "huge, dumb heap," of wishes, thoughts,
feelings, 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 reading, for
instance ! How many such days are there in a
year, how many years in a long life, still occu-
pied 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,

ON THE PAST AND FUTUHi:. 1 ">

iiml cm iv moment conscious of "the high
(ltMVour or the gild MOOCH}" for the mind
I only on that which keeps it employ. .1,
ami is wound up to a certain pitch of pleu-
surahle excitement or lively solicitude, by the
iu crssity of its own nature. The division of the
map of life into its component parts is beauti-
fully made by King Henry VI :

"Oh God! mcthinks it were a happy life
'In U- n<> better than a homely swain,
To sit upon a hill as I do now,

irve 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.
Bow many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the timet;
So many hours must I tend ray flock,
So many hours must 1 take my rest,
So many hours must I contemplate,
So many hours must I sport myself;

i! any days my ewes have been with young,
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yi an,
S> many months ere I shall shear the ■
So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and yean
Past orer 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 employment at the

16 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

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 between the laughing inno-
cence 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,
of a criminal. A knowledge of the world takes
away the freedom 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 alike, because the mind is
not clogged and pre-occupied with other objects.
Our pleasures and our pains then 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

. 05 THE PAST AND FUTtMir.. 17

rouml tin' heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle
it. It growl rigid ami callous; and instead of the
softness and elasticity of childhood, is full of
proud flesh and obstinate tumours. The violence
iiinl ;>' rversity 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
(leHial-le nor practicable. Thus life passes away
in the format irritation of pursuit and the cer-
tainty of disappointment. By degrees nothing
but this morbid state of feeling satisfies us : and
all common pleasures and cheap amusements are
sacrificed to the demon of ambition, 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 insupport-
able than the pangs which we endure. We are
suspended between tormenting desires, and the
horrors of ennui. The impulse of the will, like
the wheels of a carriage going down hill, be-
comes 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 distress-
ing, however ruinous, haunts us by a sort of
fascination through life.

Not only is this principle of excessive irrita-

c

18 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

bility 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 accomplish-
ment. 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 intellectual
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 the head in spite of them,
and will not let them rest. Mechanics and la-
bouring 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

OK THB PAST AND FUTURE. 19

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, 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 for-
ward 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; and to succeed in
life, we lose the ends of being !

ESSAY II.

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 everything. 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 ac-
quired 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 num-
ber of things on the mind, which impression is
true and well-founded, though you may not Le
able to analyse or account for it in the several

ON OENIUB AND COMMON SENSE. 21

particulars. In a gesture you use, in a look
you see, in a tone you hear, you judge of the
«'X|>rrssion, propriety, and meaning from habit,
not from reason or rules ; that is to say, from
innumerable instances of like gestures, looks,
and tones, in innumerable 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 na-
ture) do not operate in a given manner till they
are classified and reduced to rules, or is not the
rule itself grounded upon the truth and cer-
tainty 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 lawgiver and
judge. He must be a poor creature indeed
whose practical convictions do not in almost all
aues outrun his deliberate understanding, or
who docs not feel and know much more than he
can give a reason for. — Hence the distinction
between eloquence and wisdom, between in-

22 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

genuity and common sense. A man may be
dextrous 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 ques-
tion, 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 fhe 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, conclu-
sive to the purpose. He says :

" I observe, as a fundamental ground common

ON OENIUfl AND COMMON SENSE. 23

to all tlir Arts with which we have any concern
in this Discourse, that they address themselves
only to two faculties of the mind, its imagina-
tion 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 imagina-
tion, must be false and delusive. For though
it may appear bold to say it, the imagination 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, be-
cause the end is not obtained ; the effect itself
being the test, and 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 de-
duction, but goes at once, by what appears a
kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A man
endowed with this faculty feels and acknow-
ledges 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

24 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

very many and very intricate considerations 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 pro-
cess of time are forgotten, the right impression
still remains fixed in his mind.

" This impression is the result of the accu-
mulated 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 compre-
hend but a partial view of the subject ; and our
conduct in life, as well as in the arts, is, or ought
to be, 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 deliberation 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), " that our first thoughts, that is, the
effect which anything 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 con-
sideration of those animated thoughts which

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 25

proceed, not perhaps from caprice or rashness
(as he may afterwards concelf), 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 arc 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 common-place
invention.

" This is sometimes the effect of what I mean
to caution you against ; that is to say, an un-
founded distrust of the imagination and feeling,
in favour of narrow, partial, confined, argu-
mentative theories, and of principles that seem
to apply to the design in hand ; without con-
sidering 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 ultimately determine everything;
at this minute it is required to inform us when
that very reason is to give way to feeling." —
Discourse XIII.

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 Windham, in one

26 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

of his Speeches, has clenched it into an 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 expe-
rience 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 illustra-
tions of it as occur to me.

One of the persons who had rendered them-
selves obnoxious to Government, and been in-
cluded 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 beau-
tiful 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 dal-
liance 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 un-

OK GENIUS AND COMMON 6BN8H. 27

easy 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 ho was no longer at a less 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 feel.
ings 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-dis-
tinguished profile that had glided by his window
was linked unconsciously and mysteriously, but
inseparably, the impression of the trains that
htd 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 the executioner near him, without
knowing it till the tremor and disorder of his
nerves gave information to his reasoning facul-
ties that all was not well within. That is, the
same state of mind was recalled by one circum-
stance in the series of association that had been

28 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

produced by the whole set of circumstances at
the time, though the 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.* 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

* Sentiment has the same source as that here pointed
out. Thus, the Ranz des Vaches, which has such an
effect on the minds of the Swiss peasantry, When its well-
known sound is heard, does not merely recal to them the
idea of their country, but has associated with it a thou-
sand nameless ideas, numberless touches of private affec-
tion, 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 !

ON OENIU8 AND COMMON SENSE. 29

pretends to account for the different cases of
the association of ideas. But it docs not follow
that the dumb and silent pleading of the former
(though sometimes, nay, often mistaken) is less
tin. than that of its babbling interpreter, or
that we arc never to trust its dictates with-
out consulting the express authority of reason.
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 men-
tioned, the sudden impression on 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
alb t, or perhaps have been soon forgot. — By
the law of association, as laid down by physiolo-
gists, any impression in a series can recal any
Other impression in that series without going
through the whole in order : so that the mind
drops the intermediate links, and passes on ra-
pidly and by stealth to the more striking effects
of pleasure or pain which have naturally taken
the strongest hold of it. By doing this habi-
tually and skilfully with respect to the various
impressions and circumstances with which our
experience makes us acquainted, it forms a

30 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

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 ! 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 with-
out a foundation. — The criticism exercised by
reason then on common sense may be as severe
as it pleases, but it must be as patient as it is
severe. Hasty, dogmatical, self-satisfied reason
is worse than idle fancy, 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 feel-
ing, if the involuntary prejudice sets in strong in

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SBNSB. 31

favour of it, if, in spite of all we can do, there
is a lurking suspicion on the side of our first
impressions, we must try again, and helieve 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 omitted,
but of which we have only a vague apprehen-
sion, 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 confounded 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 insisting that we are to cherish
our prejudices, "because they are prejudices:"
for if they are all well-founded, there is no occa-
sion to inquire into their origin or use ; and he

32 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

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 maggot 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 judge of 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,
and 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 continue to hold at the peril of life,
limb, property, and character, with as little war-
rant 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

ON GENIUS AND COMMON 8ENSH. 33

policy. Yet " there's the rub that makes absur-
dity of so long life ;" and, at the same time, ^ives
the sceptical philosophers 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 extra-
vagances of mere reason. If we talk of common
sense, we are twitted with vulgar prejudice, and
Rtked bow we distinguish the one from tbe 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
servile chain, or committing ail sorts of
Satiinr.dian licences, the moment it feels itself
lived from it. It 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 infatu-
ated policy of one or both governments to keep
their subjects always at variance. If a few cen-
turies ago all Europe believed in the infallibility
of the Pope, this was not an opinion derived
from the proper exercise or erroneous direction
of die common sense of the people : common

D

34 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

sense had nothing to do with it — they believed
whatever their priests told them. England at
present is divided into Whigs and Tories, Church-
men and Dissenters : both parties have numbers
on their side ; but common sense and party
spirit are two different things. Sects and here-
sies are upheld partly by sympathy, and partly
by the love of contradiction : if there was no-
body 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 watch-word, 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 shel-
ter, if they are sick, miserable, scorned, op-
pressed, and if each feeling it in himself, they
all say so with one voice and with 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 teaching them to think rightly on indif-
ferent matters, where they will listen with pa-
tience in order to be amused, and where they do

OK GENIUS AND COMMON •■.MSB.

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 m one case (with
the necessary modifications) to others. A cer-
tain 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 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 circum-
stances. In the admirable profile of Oliver

Cromwell after , the drooping eye-lids,

as if drawing a veil over the fixed, penetrating
glance, the nostrils somewhat distended, and
lips compressed so as nardly 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 de-
cipher 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 circumstance, apparently of

36 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

no value, shall alter the whole interpretation to
be put upon an expression or action ; and it shall
alter it thus powerfully because in proportion 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
effect 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 agonis-
ing for utterance. The minute, the trifling and
insipid, is that which is little in itself, in its
causes and its consequences : the subtle and re-
fined 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 gradation is as it were
the scale to another, where the broad arch of
heaven is piled up of endlessly intermediate gold
and azure tints, and where an infinite number of
minute, scarce noticed particulars blend and

UN OBNID8 AND COMMON SENSE. 37

iii.lt into universal harmony. The subtlety in
Shakspere, of which there is an immense deal
everywhere scattered up and down, is always
the instrument of passion, the vehicle of cha-
racter. The action of a man pulling his bat
over his forehead is indifferent enough in itself,
ami, generally speaking, may mean anything or
nothing: but in the circumstances in which
Macduff is placed, it is neither insignificant nor
((jiiivocal.

"What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows," &c.

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

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 cir-
cumstances may convey a totally different ex-
pression. 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 eye-lids or fixed eye- brows,
as we see it in Titian's pictures, it will denote
calm contemplation or piercing sagacity, with-

38 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

out 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 langour and weakness
of the eye-lids gives the amorous turn to the ex-
pression. 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 and in-
dividual. 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 differ-
ent degrees and circumstances, without foresee-
ing 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 ab-
surdity 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 Nicolas Poussin, which I
once heard admired for the skill and discrimina-
tion 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

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 39

regular mould in this sort of way. I once heard
a person remark of another — " Ho has an eye
like a vicious horse." This was a fair anni<
We all, I helieve, 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
nit exactly what that look is? It was the same
at -ate observer that said of a self-sufficient prat-
ing music-master — " He talks on all subjects at
light" — which expressed the man at once by m
allusion to his profession. The coincidence was
indeed perfect. Nothing 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 harpsi-
chord 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, lurk-
ing in his mind, was immediately called out by
the strength of his impression of the character.
The feeling of character, and the felicity of in-
vention in explaining it, were nearly allied to
each other. The first was so wrought up and
running over, that the transition to the last wa»

40 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

easy and unavoidable. 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 phan-
toms 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 under-
stand the subject, it is easy to translate from one
language into another. Raphael, in muffling up
the figure of Elymas the Sorcerer in his gar-
ments, 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 insinuates itself into all nooks and
corners of the mind. Invention (of the best kind)
1 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

ON OBNIUS AND COMMON 8EN8B. 41

striking coincidences of colour in well-composed
pictures, as in a straggling weed in the fore-
ground streaked with hlue 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 in-
truded, or done by rule (for then it would pre-
sently become affected and ridiculous), but the
eye being imbued with a certain colour, repeats
and varies it from a natural sense of harmony, 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, &c, and the being consequently sen-
sible to their slightest indications or movements
in others. One of the most remarkable instances
of this sort of faculty is the following story,
told of Lord Shaftesbury, the grandfather of the
author of the Characteristics. He had been to
dine with Lady Clarendon and 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 mar-
ried 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

42 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

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 nr.

TUB 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 situation-,
which must be done best according to the hold
which the feeling itself has taken of the mind.*
In new and unknown combinations, the im-
pression 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 in-
stance of Rousseau : but in general the strength
and consistency of the imagination will be in

* I do not here speak of the figurative or fanciful
exercise of the imagination, which consist in finding out
Mine striking object or image to illustrate another.

44 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

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. Shakspere
(almost alone) seems to have been a man of
genius, 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 predi-
lections ; and was rather *f 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 see-
ing every object from the exact point of view
in which others would see it. He was the Pro-
teus of human intellect. Genius in ordinary is

ON OBNIUS AND COMMON 8EN9B. 45

a more <>h-t imite and less versatile thing. It is
sufficiently exclusive and self-willed, quaint and
peculiar. It does some one thing hy virtue of
doing nothing else : it excels in some one pur-
suit hy being hlind to all excellence but its own.
It is just the reverse of the chameleon ; for it
does not horrow, but lend its colours 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
Imd 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 exist-
ence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition,
of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain
it. Rembrandt's conquests were not over the
ideal, but the real. He did not contrive a new

46 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

story or character, but we nearly owe to him a
fifth part of painting, the knowledge of chiaro-
scuro— 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 recon-
ciled the greatest obscurity and the greatest
brilliancy into perfect harmony ; and he there-
fore 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 conge-
niality 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. Ori-
ginality 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 extraor-
dinary 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 " darkness that
may be felt," a " palpable obscure ;" his lights
are lumps of liquid splendour ! There is some-
thing more in this than can be accounted for

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 47

from design or accident: Rembrandt was not a
man made up of two or three rules and direc-
tions for acquiring genius.

I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory
a character of Mr Wordsworth, though he, too,
likf Rembrandt, has a faculty of making some-
thing 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 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 " 6elf-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

48 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

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 in-
ternal 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 friend-
ship, 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 days ; 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

OR OEMUS AND COMMON 0BN8B. 49

has wound about it ; and to him, as ho himself
beautifully says,

" The meanest flWr that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

It h Ihil power of habitual sentiment, or of
transferring the interest of our conscious exist-
ence ti> whatever gently solicits attention, and
fa I link in the chain of association, without
rousing our passions or hurting our pride, that
is the striking feature in Mr Wordsworth's
mind and poetry. Others have felt and shown
this power before, as Withers, Burns, &c, 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,
I 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.* There is no one in whom I have been
more disappointed than in the writer here spoken

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

50 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

of, nor with whom I am more disposed on cer-
tain 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 through his works, has traced Ra-
phael through a number of figures which he has
borrowed from Masaccio 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 Rembrandt's Three Trees
than in all Claude Lorraine's landscapes ? I do
not know how that may be : but it was enough

ON GENIUS AND COMMON 8EN9B. 51

for Claude to have been a perfect landscape
painter.

Capacity is not the same thing as genius.
Capacity may be described to relate to the quan-
tity of knowledge, however acquired; genius
to its quality and the mode of acquiring it.
Capacity is a power over given ideas or com-
binations 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 n tt'iitive 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 und 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 before it, quicker or
slower, witli more or less comprehension 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 determinate

52 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

and fixed : there is no royal or poetical road to
check-mate 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 mul-
tiplied 90 figures by 90 instead of 9, it would
have been equally useless toil and trouble.*
He is a man of capacity who possesses consider-
able intellectual riches : he is a man of genius
who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is
the seeing nature differently from others, and
yet as it is in itself. It is not singularity or

* The only good thing I ever heard come of this man's
singular faculty of memory was the following. A gen-
tleman was mentioning Ms having heen sent up to
London from the place where he lived to see Garrick act.
When he went back into the country, he 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 7,956 words." We all
laughed at this, but a person in one corner of the room,
holding one hand to his forehead, and seeming mighty
delighted, called out, " Ay, indeed ? And pray, was he
found to be correct ? " This was the supererogation of
literal matter-of-fact curiosity. Jedediah Buxton'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 dulness could no farther go !"

ON GBNIP8 AND COMMON SBXSB. 53

affectation, but the discovery of new ami valu-
able 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-
sightedness 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 pene-
trate 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 which he is best fitted by his par-
ticular genius, that is to say, by some quality of
mind into which the quality of the object 6inks
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 witb
which it has taken possession of the mind of
the student. The imagination gives out what it
has first absorbed by congeniality of tempera-
ment, what it has attracted and moulded into
itself by elective affinity, as the loadstone draws

54 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE

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 Gold-
smith 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 manage-
ment, 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 sub-
ject, 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

ON OENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 58

twenty years of my life ;* that I had no par-
ticular knowledge of the subject in question, ami
no head for arrangement; and that the utmost
I could do in such a case would be, when a
systematic and scientific article 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 obser-
vation or sources of feeling. It is in vain to
object to this last style that it is disjointed, dis-

* Sir Joshua Reynolds being asked how long it had
taken him to do a certain picture, made answer, " Ail
my life."

56 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

proportioned, 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, inter-
mediate, 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 affec-
tation. 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 excellence, may think himself
very well off. It would not be fair to complain
of the style of an Encyclopedia as dull, as want-
ing volatile salt ; nor of the style of an Essay
because it is too light and sparkling, because it
is not a caput mortunm. So it is rather an odd
objection to a work that 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

OX OEXIT78 AND COMMON SENSE. 57

censure mi^ht indeed seem like adroit flattery,
if it were not passed on an author whom any
objection is sufficient to render unpopular and
riiliculous. 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 per-
fect writer. In fine, we do not banish light
French wines from our tables, or refuse
sparkling Champagne because it has not the
body of Old Port. Besides, I do not know
that dulness is strength, or that an observa-
tion is slight, because it is striking. Medio-
crity, insipidity, want of character, is the great
fault. Mediocribu* esse poetis non Dii, non
homines, non concessSre columnte. 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 pro-
duces the most exquisite models of art, but an
intense sympathy with some one beauty or dis-
tinguishing 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 instru-
ments fitted to perform certain kinds of labour,
there are certain minds so framed as to produce
certain chefs-d'autrre in art and literature, which
is surely the best use they can be put to. If a

58 OX GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

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 all 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 must stand or fall by, and his
being able to do a hundred other things merely
as well as anybody else, would not alter the sen-
tence or add to his respectability ; on the con-
trary, his being able to do so many other things
well would probably interfere with and incumber
him in the execution of the only thing that others
cannot do as well as he, and so far be a draw-
back and a disadvantage. More people, in fact,
fail from a multiplicity of talents and pretensions
than from an absolute poverty of resources.
I have given instances of this elsewhere. Per-
haps Shakspere'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
might 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 conse-
quence attained to the perfection of tragic com-

m 0EN108 AND COMMON SENSE. 59

position, this was better than writing comedies
as well as Moliere and tragedies as well as
( r. Iiillon. Yet I count those persons fools who
think it :i pity Hogarth did not succeed better
in serious subjects. The division of labour is an
excellent principle in taste as well as in me-
chanics. 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 hi- t'inility of production. 'Venice Preserved'
is sufficient for Otway's fame. I hate all those
nonsensical stories about Lope de Vega and his
v riting 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 excellence
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 the rest of the world, and in
everything else to be 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;

60 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

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, &c. ? 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 im-
pertinence 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 !

E99AY IV.

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE TDEA.

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

There is Major Cartwright: he has but one idea
or subject of discourse, Parliamentary Reform.
Parliamentary Reform is (as far as I know)
I v< tv good tiling, a very good idea, and a very
good subject to talk about ; but why should it
be tlie oid y one .' To hear the worthy and gallant
Major resume his favourite topic, is like law-
fulness, 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 ot
packthread in the hart -ister's hands, he turns and
twists it all ways, and cannot proceed a step

62 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.

without it. Some school-boys cannot read but
in their own book : and the man of one idea
cannot converse out of his own subject. Con-
versation it is not ; but a sort of recital of the
preamble of a bill, or a collection of grave argu-
ments for a man's being of opinion with himself.
It would be well if there was anything of cha-
racter, 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 hearing him go through the fifth chap-
ter of the Book of Judges eveiy time you meet,
or like the story of the Cosmogony in the Vicar
of Wakefield. 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 them-
selves. 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

ON PF.OPLF. WITH <>>] IDEA. M

absurd, and is troublesome by a romantic effort
of generosity. You cannot say to bim, " All
1 1 1 i ~i may be interesting to you, but I have no
concern in it:" you cannot put liim oil' in that
way. He retorts the Latin adage upon you —
Xi/nl liumaiii a ///<■ ii/ii ninn puto. He has got
possession of a subject which is of universal and
paramount interest (not " a fee-grief, due to some
single hreast ") and on that plea may hold you
by the button as long as he chooses. His delight is
to harangue you on what nowise regards himself:
how then can you refuse to listen to what as little
amuses you 1 Time and tide wait for no man.
The business of the state admits of no delay.
The question of Universal Suffrage and Annual
Parliaments 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; plea-
sure 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 pending — a determination which
gives its persevering advocate a fair prospect of
expatiating on it to its dying day. As Cicero
says of study, it follows him into the country, if

64 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.

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, 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 mentioning 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 nee:-
lects 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 sun, 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 3

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 incum-
brance of wit, thought, or study; you live upon
it as a settled income ; and others might as well

Off PEOPLB WITH ONE IDEA. G5

think to eject you out of a capital freehold house
iinil 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 ; ami every man's
common-place is his stronghold, from whieh he
looks out and smiles at the dust and heat of con-
troversy, raised hy a numher of frivolous and
vexatious questions — " Rings the world with th.
vain stir! " A cure for this and that and every
Other eri] would he a Parliamentary Reform; and
so we return in a perpetual circle to the 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 vou give up

F

66 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.

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 intermit-
tent. 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 dis-
covery, 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, ge-
nerally 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. Dr Lamb, one of this
self-denying class, who adds to the primitive
simplicity of this sort of food the recommenda-
tion 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 from some people, to be asked every
time you meet, whether you have quite left off
drinking wine, and to be complimented or con-

ON PEOPLE WITH OHK IDRA.

doled with on your looks according as
answer in the negative or affirmative. Aber-
n.tliy thinks his pill ;m infallible cure for all dis-
orders. Once complaining to my physician, Dr
OKphant, that I thought his mode of treatment
liuil not answered, he assured me it was the best
in the world, — " and as a proof of it," says he,
" I have had one gentleman, a patimt with your
disorder, under the same regimen for the last
sixteen wars! "--I have known persons whose
minds were entirely taken ftp at all times and on
all occasions with such questions as the Aboli-
tion of the Slave Trade, the Restoration of the
Jews, or the progress of Uuitariauisin. I my-
self at one period took a pretty strong torn
to inveighing against the doctrine of Divine
Right, and am not yet cured of my prejudice on
that suhject. How many projectors have gone
mad in good earnest from incessantly harping
on one idea, the discover)' 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 suhject that occupied them,
was gradually taking place, and overturning the
fabric of the understanding by wrenching it ail
on one side. Alderman Wood has, I should

68 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.

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 the Kantean philosophy. There is Worg-
man, 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
pike-staff. 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

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 69

the Kant. an philosophy with great impunity : if
lie opened his lips on any other, he might be
(bond out. A French lady, win) had married an
Kn^lishman who 6aid little, excused liim by
•tying "lie is always thinking of Locke
ami Newton." This is one way of passing
muster by following 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 selling, 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 Essay." This work, a comely, capacious
quarto on the most abstruse metaphysics, had
occupied his sole thoughts for several years, and
heconeliided 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 origi-
nal and most ingenious work, nearly as incom-
prehensible 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 repu-
tation by putting them in a popular dress. Oh !
how little do they know, who have never done

70 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.

anything but repeat after others by rote, the
pangs, the labour, the yearnings, and misgivings
of mind it costs, to get 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 de-
claimers, 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 Hindostan.
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

OW pkoi-m: will! mNB IDEA. 71

t Ii« •:inl alluded to in conversation, but not
being well versed in such mattors, bi did not
know Whether tin v were to be found in Learned
authors or not. He took a journey to the capital
of the lYiiiiisuhion purpose, ami bosgbj Locke,

Raid, Stewart, end Berkeley, whom heconsulted

with eager curiosity wlien he got home, hut did
not timl what he looked for. He sot to work
himself; ami in a few weeks sketched out a
rough draught of his thought! and observations
on hatuhoo paper. The eagerness of his new pur-
suit, together with the dSaaaaai of the climate,
proved too much for his constitution, and he was
fatbed ID retain to this country. He put his
metaphysics, his bamboo manuscript, into the
boat with him, ami as he floated down the
Ganges, said to himself, " If I live, this
will live; if I die, it will not be heard of."
What is fame to this feeling ? The babbling of
an idiot ! 1 1 * - 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 him-
self, 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

72 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.

sees the thing in its proper light, and says so.
But I have heard of no other instance. There
are, notwithstanding, ideas in this work, neg-
lected 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, &c.) 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 lin-
gers far behind it. But truth is better than
opinion, I maintain it ; and as to the two stereo-
typed and unsold editions of the ' Ess'ay on Con-
sciousness,' I say, Honi soit qui mal y pense*/ —
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

» Quarto poetry, as well as quarto metaphysics, does
not always sell. Going one day into a shop in Pater-
noster 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 ? "

ON PEOPLE WITH ONR IDEA. 73

one idea, which is most frequently of a man's
•elf! A celebrated lyrical writer happened to

drop into a .small party where th.y had just got
tin* riOTel of ' Rob Roy,' by the author of ' Wa-
ve! -ley.' 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 compla-
cency, 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 it 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.*

Mr Owen is a man remarkable for one idea:

* These fantastic poets are like a foolish ringer at
riyinoutli whom Northcote tells the story of. He was
proud of his ringing, and the boys who made a jest of
nis foible used to get him in the belfry, and ask him,
'* Well now, John, how many good ringers are there in
rivnu.utli ?" — "Two," he would say, without any he-
sitation. ■• A v, in. Led! and who are they ?"— * Wliy,

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 Lancelot ! The story is of ringers : it
will do for any rain, shallow, self-satisfied egotist of
theru alL

74 ON' PEOPLE WITH 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 perfection in the latter place as at the for-
mer. He acquires a wonderful velocity and
impenetrability in his undaunted transit. Re-
sistance to him is vain, while the whirling mo-
tion 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 wood-
cuts 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 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 ob-
serves, u 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 ge-

OK PEOIMI Mill ONE IDRA. 75

nerally Adopted, he has provi«l««l effectually for
both : that he baa been long of opinion that the
mind depends altogether on the pbyiical or-
ganization, ;md where the latter i^ ne^leeted or
disordered, the former mist tangoUb and want
its ilne rigour: that exercise is therefore a part
of his system, with (nil liberty to develop every
faulty 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
Real restraint, he trusted he had already an-
swered, for where the powers of mind ami body
were freely exercised and brought out, surely
liberty must be allowed to exist in the highest
degree ; and as to the second, the monotony
which would l» produced by a regular and ge-
neral plan of co-operation, he conceived he had
proved in his • New View,' and ' Addresses to
the Higher Classes,' that the co-operation he
had recommended was necessarily conducive to
the most extensive improvement 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 ex-
pert and sweeping orator takes up his hat and
walks down stairs after reading his lecture of
truisms like a play-bill or an apothecary's ad-
vertisement : and should you stop him at the
door to say, by way of putting in a word in

76 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA

common, that Mr Southey seems somewhat fa-
vourable to his plan in his late ' Letter to Mr
William Smith,' he looks at you with a smile of
pity at the futility of all opposition and the idle-
ness of all encouragement. People who thus
swell out some vapid scheme of their own into
undue importance, seem to me to labour under
water in the head — to exhibit a huge hydroce-
phalus ! They may be very worthy people for
all that, but they are bad companions and very
indifferent reasoners. Tom Moore says of some
one somewhere, " 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 ex-
change," 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 respiring the same
confined atmosphere, but to vary the scene, and
get a little relief and fresh air out of doors.

ON PEOPLE WITH OWE IDEA. 77

Do all we can to shake it off, there is always
enough pedantry, egotism, and self-conceit left
farting behind i we need not seal ourselves up
hermetically in these precious qualities ; so as
to think of nothing but our own wnmlerlul dis-
coveries, and hear nothing hut the sound of our
own voice. Scholars, like princes, may learn
something by being imeognUo, 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
tin ir reputation about with them as the snail
does its shell, and sit under its canopy, like the
Ia.lv in the lobster. I cannot understand this
at all. What is the use of a man's always re-
volving round his own little circle? He must,
one should think, he 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 same predicament. Why must a man be
for ever mouthing out his own poetry, compar-
ing himself with Milton, passage by passage,
ami weighing every line in a balance of post-
humous fame which he holds in his own
bands? It argues a want of imagination as
well as of common sense. Has he no ideas but
what he has put into verse; or none in common

78 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.

with his hearers ? Why should he think it the
only scholar- like thing, the only " virtue ex-
tant," to see the merit of his writings, and
that " men 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.
Everything 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 seems 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 fore-ground, as if the
proverb held here — "Out of sight out of mind."
Does he, for instance, 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

Olf PEOPLE WITI1 ONE IDEA. 79

Moody in tho ' Country dirl,' look up the fa-
culties of his admirer- in ignorance of all other
fine things, painting, music, the antique, lest
they should play truant to him? Methinks

such ;i proi ding 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 lias an undoubted superiority in
any respect, he will not be uneasy because every
one he meets is not in the secret, nor staggered
hv the report of rival excellence. One" of the
first mathematicians and classical scholars of
the day was mentioning it as a compliment to
iiim-elt that a cousin of his, a girl from school,
had said of him — " You know Martin Burney
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 — "I wonder I
never heard you speak upon this subject before,
which you seem to have studied a good deal."
I answered, u Why, we were not reduced to

that, that I know of!"

There are persons who, without being charge-
able 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 thousand subjects in

80 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.

mere gaiety of heart, their delight still flows
from one idea, namely, themselves. Open the
book in what page you will, there is a frontis-
piece 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 pit-
tance 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 describ-
ing the charms of the country, they give no ac-
count 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
back-grounds with their own portraits in an
engaging attitude in front. They are not observ-
ing or enjoying the scene, but doing the honours
as masters of the ceremonies to nature, and ar-
biters of elegance to all humanity. If they tell
a love-tale of enamoured princesses, it is plain

. ON PEOPLE WITH ONB IDBA. 81

tiny fancy tlii-msclvcs the hero of the piece. If
tin v discuss poetry, tin ir encomiums htill ton
on something genial and unsophisticated, mean-
ing their own style : if they enter into politics,
it is understood that a hint from them to tli.
|">tt ntates 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 ob-
ject— they are, in fact, in love with themselves;
and, like lovers, should be left to keep their own
company.

ESSAY V.

Olf THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.

" For the more languages a man can speak,
His talent has but sprung the greater leak :
And, for the industry he has spent upon't,
Must full as much some other way discount.
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac,
Do, like their letters, set men's reason back,
And turn their wits that strive to understand it
(Like those that write the characters) left-handed.
Yet he that is but able to express
Ho sense at all in several languages,

, Will pass for learneder than he that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own."

BUTLEK.

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

ON THE IGNORANCE OP TUB LEARNED. 83

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 me-
chanically suggested to him by passing his eyes
over certain legible characters; shrinks from
the fatigue of thought, which, for want of prac-
tice, becomes insupportable to him ; and sits
down contented with an endless wearisome suc-
cession of words and half-formed images, which
fill the void of the mind, and continually efface
one another. Learning is, in too many cases,
but a foil to common sense; a substitute for
true knowledge. 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 np
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 round-about
descriptions, are blows that stagger him ; their
variety distracts, their rapidity exhausts him ;
and he turns from the bustle, the noise, 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 re-

84 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.

duce to fixed principles), 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 " en-
feebles 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 closes on vacancy, and the book

ON THE IGNORANCE OP THE LEARNED. 85

.Irons from the feeble hand ! I would rather

bl ■ wood-cutter, or the meanest hind, that
all day ••<u1;:ts in the eye of Phoebus, and at
night sleeps in Klysium," than wear out my life
so, 'twixl dreaming and awake. The learned

author differ! from the learned student in this,
that the one transcribes what the other reads.

The learned are mere literary drudges. If you
set them upon original composition, their heads
turn; they don't know where they are. The
indefatigable readers of books are like the ever-
lasting copiers of pictures, who, when they at-
tempt to do anything of their own, find they
want an eye quick enough, a hand steady
enough, and eolowi bright enough, to trace the
living forms of nature.

Any one who has passed through the regular
gradations of a classical education, and is not
made a fool by it, may consider himself as hav-
ing had a very narrow escape. It is an old re-
mark, that hoys 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

86 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.

geography, arithmetic, &c, 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 at-
tention, will make the most forward school-boy.
The jargon containing the definitions of the
parts of speech, the rules for casting up an ac-
count, 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 suf-
ficient 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, will 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 eager-
ness 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

ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED. 87

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 oftencr a want of
interest, of a sufficient motive to fix the atten-
tion, 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
nun of the greatest genius have not been most
distinguished for their acquirements at school or
at the university.

" Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever."

Gray and Collins were among the instances
of this wayward disposition. Such persons do
not think so highly of the advantages, nor can
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 mediocrity of talent,
with a certain slenderness of moral constitution,
is the soil that produces the most brilliant speci-
mens of successful prize-essayists and Greek
epigrammatists. It should not be forgotten,
that the least respectable character among mo-
dern politicians was the cleverest boy at Eton.

88 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.

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 business 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 observa-
tion, that is of the least practical utility, and
least liable to be brought to the test of expe-
rience, and that, having been handed down
through the greatest number of intermediate
stages, is the most full of uncertainty, difficul-
ties, 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 casts 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.

ON TUB IONORANCB OF TUB LEARNED. 89

I!. «:inii.if tell whether an object is black or
while, round or square, and yet be is a professed
master of the laws of optics, and the rules of
perspective. He knows as much of what he
talks shoot, as a blind niaii 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
himstli out for an infallible judge on all those
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
euivetlv. A person of this class, the second
k 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

Porson. He was an exception that confirmed
the general rule, — a man who, by uniting talents
and knowledge with learning, made the distinc-
tion bet wen 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

90 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.

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 au-
thorities, with quotations quoted from quota-
tions, while he locks up his senses, his under-
standing, 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
his 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 corregiescity of Corregio, the learning of
Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the
Caracci, or the grand contour of Michael An-
gelo," — 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

ON THE IONORANCB Or THE LEARNED. 91

if they li:nl never been, a mere dead letter, a
l.vr-wonl ; mid no wonder : for he neither sees
nor understands their prototypes in nature. A
print of Rubens's Watering- place, or Claude's
Km hunted Castle, may he hanging on the walls
of his rooms for months without his once per-
ceiving them ; and if you point them out to
him, he will turn away from them. The lan-
MMM of nature, or of art (which is another
nature), is one that he docs 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

92 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.

either is worth the trouble, he leaves to the
critics. Does he understand " the act and prac-
tique part of life " better than " the theoricpae V*
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 agricul-
ture, 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 shoot-
ing, 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 ac-
count of them to an Encyclopaedia. He has
not the use of his hands or of his feet ; he can
neither run, nor walk, nor swim; and he con-
siders 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 and practice, with powers originally
fitted, and a turn of mind particularly devoted
to them. It does not require more than this to
enable the learned candidate to arrive, by pain-
ful 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

OH THB IONORANCB OP THE LEARNED. 93

understand, is confined to a very small com paw:
to their daily affairs and cxperieiiee ; to what
they hive an ojjjm ut unity to know, and motives
to study or practise. The rest is affectation
and imposture. Th«- common people have the
use of their limbs; for they live hy 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 eloquenco to express their passions, and
wit at will to express their contempt and pro-
voke laughter. Their natural use of speech is
not bung up in monumental mockery, in an ob-
solete language; nor is their sense of what is
ludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions
to express it, buried in collections of Ana». You
v\ill hear more good things on the outside of a
stage-coach from London to Oxford, than if
vou. were to pass a twelvemonth with the under-
graduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous
university : and more home truths are to be
leant from Uliqiilg to a noisy debate in an ale-
house, than from attending to a formal one in the
1 lou^e of Commons. An elderly country gentle-
woman will often know more of character and be
abb- to illustrate it by more amusing anecdotes
taken from the history of what has been said,
<! >iu , 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

94 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.

learning which consists in an acquaintance with
all the novels and satirical poems published in
the same period. People in towns, indeed, are
wofully deficient in a knowledge 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 learning. The labourers in this vine-
yard seem as if it was their object to confound
all common sense, and the distinctions of good
and evil, by means of traditional maxims, and

OK THE IOWORANCB OF THB LEARNED. 95

pre-conceivcd notions, taken upon trust, and
increasing in absurdity, with increase of age*
They pile hypothesis on hypothesis, mountain
Ugh, till it is iin|K)ssible 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 inter-
fere with their prejudices, or convince them
of their absurdity. It might be supposed that
the height of human wisdom consisted in main-
taining 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 understand-
ings of their followers, as the will of Heaven,
clothed with all the terrors and sanctions of
religion. How little has the human under-
otanding been direcled to find out the true and
useful ! How 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
or a Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or Bishop Wa-
terland, or Prideaux' Connections, or Beausobre,
or Calmet, or St Augustine, or Puffendorf, or
Vattel, or from the more literal but equally

96 ON THE IGNORANCE OP THE LEARNED.

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 oracles 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 im-
pression on the mind, and, therefore, more 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, and elo-
quence together, they generally contrive to go-
vern their husbands. Their style, when they
write to their friends (not for the booksellers) is
better than that of most authors. — Uneducated

OK TlIE IGNORANCE OP THE LEARNED. 07

people have most exuberance of invention, and
tlif neatest freedom from prejudice. Shak-
spcrc's was evidently an uneducated mind, both
in the freshness of liis imagination, and in the
variety of Ins views ; as Milton's was scholastic,
in the texture both of his thoughts and feelings.
Shakspere 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 force of human genius, we should read
Shakspere. If we wish to see the insignificance
of human learning, we may study his commen-
tators.

ESSAY VI.

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

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 some-
thing next to miraculous ? 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 incessant,
over-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

THB INDIAN JUGGLERS. i>9

breathle^. Yet il costs nothing to the per-
former, :my more than if it were a mere me-
chanical deception with which he had nothing
to do hut to watch and laugh at the astonish-
ment of the spectators. A single error of a
hair's-hreadth, of the smallest conceivahle por-
tion of time, would be fatal : the precision of
the movements must be like a mathematical
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 them revolve round him at certain inter-
vals, 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 back 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 difliculty, and
beauty triumphing over skill. It seems as if
the difliculty once mastered naturally resolved

100 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

itself into ease and grace, and as if to be over-
come at all, it must be overcome without an
effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of
pliancy or self-possession 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 ba-
lancing 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 experi-
ment is over ; they are not accompanied 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 of a speech in
Parliament, 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 good
opinion of myself: but the seeing the Indian
Jugglers doe» It makes me ashamed of my-

THK INDIAN Jl.OOI.EHS. 101

self. I nsk what is there that I can do at
well as this ? Nothing. What have I been
doing all my lite? Have 1 bam idle, or

hau- I nothing to show lor all my labour
pains? Or have I passed my linn- in pouring
words like water into empty -icves, rolling a
stone up a hill and then down again, trying to
prove an argument in the teeth of facts,
looking for causes in the dark, and not finding
them ? Is there no one thing in which I can
challenge competition, that I can bring as an
instance of exact perfection, in which others
cannot find a fiaw ? The utmost I can pretend
to is to write a description of what this fellow
can do. 1 can write a book : so can many
others who have not even learned to spell.
W hat abortions are these Essays ! What 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. I 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 dis-
course clear and unentangled. I have also time
on my hands to correct my opinions, and polish
inv periods : but the one I cannot, and the other
I will not do. I am fond of arguing : yet, with
a good deal of pains and practice it is often as

102 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

much as I can do to beat my man ; though he
may be a very indifferent hand. A common
fencer would disarm his adversary in the twink-
ling of an eye, unless he were a professor like
himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes pro-
duce 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.*

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 dissatisfied. It is a great many
years since I saw Richer, the famous rope-
dancer, perform at Sadler's Wells. He was

* The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr Wolcot) first dis-
covered 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 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 master-
piece. The stranger looked at it, and the young artist,
after waiting for some time without 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.

TITE INDIAN JIOGLBM. 103

matchless in his art, ami added to liis extra-
ordinary skill exquisite ease, and itnaffi
natural grace. I was at that time employed in
copying a half-length picture of Sir Joshua
Reynolds's; and it put mc out of conceit with
it. How ill this part was made out in th»,
drawing ! How heavy, how slovenly this other
was painted ! I could not help saying to my-
self, "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 tight-rope ? 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 per-
fection. To account for this in some degree, I
might observe that mechanical dexterity is con-
fined 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 suc-
ceeding in a given undertaking. — In mechanical
efforts, you improve 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 tiling or not do it. If a man

104 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

is put to aim at a mark with a bow and arrow,
he must hit it or miss it, that's certain. He
cannot 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 pal-
pable; 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 Goldsmith's peda-
gogue.—

" 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 preju-
dice. 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.

M

Till: INDIAN JUOOLEI1S. 105

The tact of style is more ambiguous than that of
doable-edged instruments. If the Juggler were

told that bj Bjnging himself under the wheels
of the .Jaggcrnaut, when the idol ImOM forth on

a gaudy day, lie would immediately be trans-
ported into Paradise, lie mighl believe it, and
nobody could disprove it. So the Brahmins
may say what they please on that subject, may
build up dogmas and my-teries without end,
and not l>e detected : but their ingenious coun-
tryman cannot persuade the frequenters of the
Olympic Theatre that lie performs a number of
astonishing teals without actually giving proofs
of what he says.— There is then in this sort of
manual dexterity, first a gradual aptitude ac-
quired to a given exertion of muscular power,
from constant repetition, ;md in the next place,
an exact knowledge how much is still wanting
and necessary to be supplied. The obvious test
is to increase the effort or nicety of the opera-
tion, and still to find it come true. The muscles
ply instinctively to the dictates of habit. Cer-
tain movements and impressions of the hand and
eye, having been repeated together an infinite
number of times, are unconsciously but una-
voidably 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 certainty ; so that the mere intention
of the will acts mathematically, like touching

106 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

the spring of a machine, and you come with
Locksley in ' Ivanhoe/ in shooting at a mark,
" to allow for the wind."

Farther, what is meant by perfection in me-
chanical exercises is the performing certain feats
to a uniform nicety, that is, in fact, under-
taking 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 per-
fection ; but he cannot keep up five at the same
instant, and would fail every time he attempted
it. That is, the mechanical performer under-
takes to emulate himself, not to equal another.*
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 ;

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

THE INDIAN JUOOLKRS. 107

for, btMpflB how it will, there have beer, more
people in the world who could dance on a rope
like the one tli;m who could paint like Mr
Joshua. The latter was but a bungler in his
profession to the other, it is true; but then In-
had a harder task-master to obey, whose will
was more wayward and obscure, and whose in-
structions it was more difficult to practise.
You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or
rope-dancer with a comfortable prospect of suc-
cess, if they are but sound of wind and limb :
but you cannot do the same tliinir in painting.
The odds are a million to one. You may make

indeed as many H s and H s, as

you put into that sort of machine, but not one
Reynolds amongst them all, with his grace, his
grandeur, las blandness of gusto " in tones and
gestures hit," unless you could make the man
over again. To snatch this grace beyond the
iv;uh 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 rules or study. It is suggested by feel-
ing, not by laborious microscopic inspection : in

108 TEE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

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

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

The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and
sublime part of art is the seeing nature through
.the medium of sentiment and passion, as each

Till: INDIAN JUGGLERS. 1 < ><>

object is a symbol of the affections and a link
in the clmin of our endless being. Hut the un-
ravelling this mysterious web of thought and
feeling is alone in the M ft, namely, in

the power of that trembling sensibility which is
awake t<> every change and every moderation
of its ever-varying impressions, that,

■ Thrill's in each nerve, nnd Uvea 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
cxp< rinients, as is the case in mechanical per-
formances. The mechanical excellence of the
J)uteh painters in colouring and handling is
that whieh conns the nearest in fine art to the
perfection of certain manual exhibitions 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 ;-yc 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 flag 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 imagi-

110 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

nary 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.

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 perseverance, such as making puns,
making epigrams, making extempore verses,
mimicking the company, mimicking a style, &c.
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 thou-
sand a year, would have been the most accom-
plished gentleman 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

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. Ill

It |>i( i|ii( t or flu lead at the piano, and have
set and sung his own verses — nvg<e canoree —
with tenderness and spirit; a Rochester with-
out the vice, a modern Surrey ! As it is, all
tin se capabilities of excellence stand in his way.
lie 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 any-
thing that depends on application 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 any-
thing well, whether it is worth doing or not: a
great man is one who can do 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
question.

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 £11 up a certain idea in the public

112 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

mind. I have no other notion of greatness than
this two-fold definition, great results springing
from great inherent energy. The great in
visible oojects has relation to that which ex-
tends 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 life-time. 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 ambition. 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 ex-
pressed 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 no-

THE INDIAN JCOOLBBS. 113

thing for the character of greatness. To throw
;i barley-corn through the eye of a needle, to
multiply niiit' figures 1>\ nine in the memory,
argues, infinite dexterity of body and capacity
of mind, but nothing comes of either. There
is a surprising power at work, but the effects
IJi not proportionate, or such as take hold of
the imagination. To impress the idea of power
on others, they must be made in some way to feel
it. It must be communicated to their under-
standings in the shape of an increase of know-
ledge, 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
nritlur a slight nor a voluntary gift. A mathe-
matician who solves a profound problem, a poet
who creates an image of Ixauty in the mind that
was not there before, imparts knowledge and
power to others, in winch his greatness and his
fame consists, and on which it reposes. Jedcdiah
Bn\ton will be forgotten; but Napier's bones
will live. Lawgivers, philosophers, founders of
religion, conquerors 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 our-
-cl\(S, Shakspere, Newton, Bacon, Milton,
Cromwell, were great men ; for they showed
great power by acts and thoughts, which have

114 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

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
1 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 great-
ness for her sake. A man at the top of his pro-
fession 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 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
carcase of a whale with the same greatness of
gusto that Michael Angelo would have hewn a
block of marble. Lord Nelson was a great

Till. INDIAN JUOOLERS. 118

naval commander; but for myself, I have not
much opinion of a sea-faring life. Sir Humphry
Davy is u great chemist, hut I am not sure that
lit; is a great man. I am not a hit the \vi> r tor
any of his discoveries, and I never met with any
one that was. But it is in the nature of great-
ness to propagate an idea of itself, as wave
impels wave, circle without circle. It is a con-
tradiction 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 ob-
served that certain sectaries and polemical writers
have no higher compliment to pay their most
shining lights than to say that " Such a one was
a considerable 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, ;md 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

116 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

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 sym-
pathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks
into itself. The one might have become a
Wolsey; the other was only fit to become a
Mendicant Friar — or there might have been
court reasons for making him a bishop. The
French have to me a character of littleness in
all about them; but they have produced three
great men that belong to every country, Mo-
Here, 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 I 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 ear-
nest : but as it is pat to our purpose, and falls
in with my own way of considering such sub-
jects, 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

Tin: ism w JDOOUnf. 1 1?

Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer
behind him. It may be said, thai tlnre are
things of more importance than striking ■ bill
■mintt a wall — there are things indeed which
make more noise and do as little good, such as
making war and peace, making speeches ami
answering them, making verses and blotting
them; making money and throwing it away.
But the game of fives is what no one despiges
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
-kirts.' But this remark would not have ap-
plied to the fives-player. He who takes to
playing at fives is twice young. He feels
neither the past nor the future 'in the instant.'
Debts, taxes, 'domestic treason, foreign 1< w,
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 presence of mind
complete. He could do what he pleased, and
be always knew exactly what to do. He saw
the whole game, and played it ; took instant
advantage of his adversary's weakness, and re-
covered balls, as if by a miracle and from

118 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

sudden thought, that every one gave for lost.
He had equal power and skill, quickness, and
judgment. He could either outwit his anta-
gonist hy finesse, or beat him by main strength.
Sometimes, when he seemed preparing to send
the ball 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 fagging 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 waver-
ing like Mr Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short

THE INDIAN JTOOLEIW. 11!)

of the mark like Mr Brougham's speeches, nor
l id< of it like Mr Canning's wit, nor foul like
tli.- ' Quarterly,' not let balls like the ' Edin-
burgh Renew.' Cobbett and Junius together
would have made a Cavanagh. He was the
best vp-hill player in the world ; even when
\\\> 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 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 him 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. Ca-
vanagh 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

120 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an
afternoon's pleasure. A person accosted him,
and asked him if he would 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 con-
tested. ' There/ said the unconscious fives-
player, *■ there was a stroke that Cavanagh could
not take : I never played better in my life, and
yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it
is.' However, they played on, Cavanagh win-
ning every game, and the by-standers 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 ! have I been breaking
my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh ?* re-
fused 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 Copenhagen house for wagers and
dinners. The wall against which they play is
the same that supports the kitchen chimney,
and when the wall resounded louder than usual

Till. IMH \\ .11 (JOLERS. UN

the cooks exclaimed, 'Those are the Iii-liiiian's
kill-.' ami thr joint- t r«-iu 1»1«« I on the spit! —
(joldsmith consoled himself that there fM
places where he too was admired : and Cava-
nngh w;is the admiration of all the fiw-eonrt-.
where he ever played. Mr Powell, when he
pl;i\.d mutches in the Court in St MartinV
-ti.it. used to fill his gallery at half-a-crown ;i
hcail, with amateurs and admirers of talent in
what. m t <li •partmetit it is shown, lie could
not have shown himself in any ground in Eng-
land, lint he would have heen immediately sur-
rounded with iu(|iii>itive gazers, trying to find
out in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill
lay, ;i- politicians wdndST to see the halanee «»f
Ihirupi suspended in Lord Castlereagh's face,
and admire the trophies of the British Navy
lurking under Mr Croker's hanging hrow. Now
Cavanagh was as good-looking a man as tin
Nohle Lord, and much hetter looking than the
Right Hon. Secretary. He had a clear, open
countenance, and did not look sideways or down.
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
iit this day, \n ho cannot mention his name with-
out admiration, as the hest fives-player that per-
haps ever lived (the greatest excellence of which
tin y have any notion) — and the noisy shout of

122 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

the ring happily stood him in stead of the un-
heard voice of postei'ity ! — The only person who
seems to have excelled as much in another way
as Cavanagh did in his, was the late John Da-
vies, 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 are the grada-
tions 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 tbe
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 remem-
bering ! — Cavanagh died from the bursting of
a blood-vessel, which prevented him from play-
ing for the last two or three years. This, he

llll INDIAN JUOOLER9. \'2-i

was often heard to say, he thought hard upon
him. He was fast recovering, however, when
In was suddenly carried off, to the regret of all
who knew him. As Mr Peel made it a quali-
fication of the present Speaker, Mr Manners
Sutton, that he was an excellent moral cha-
racter, so Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Ca-
tholic, 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 JaceL" "

ESSAY VII.

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF.

" Eemote, 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 at-
tempt 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 trouble-
some 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

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

. ON I.IVIM. TO | Ml 1*11 M\ \-~'>

misty moon-li^ht air tec the woods that wave
<>viT tin' lop of Wintcislow,

■• While I!i a\'n's rliancil-vault is blind with b1> •

my mind takes its Bight through too long a
series of years, supported only by the patience
Of thought 8»d secret yearnings after truth ami
good, for me to be at a loss to understand tin-
feeling 1 intend to write about; but I do not
know that this will mahle me to convey it more
agreeably to the reader.

Lady G., in a letter to Miss Harriet Byron,
assures her that " her hrother Sir Charles lived
to himself:" and Lady L. soon after (for Rich-
ardson was ii.uT tired of a good thing) repeats
the same observation; to which Miss Hymn
frt (juently returns in her answers to both nftefl
— * For you know Sir Charles lives to himself,"
till at length it passes into a proverb among the
t an i 'onv-pondents. This is not, however, an
example of what 1 understand by living to one's-
self, for Sir Charles Grandison was indeed always
drinking 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 egoti>t
M pomible : Richardson's great fevourite was as
much of one as possible. Some satirical critic
blS reprc-eut.'d him in Klysium u bowing over
the faded hand of Lady Grandison " (Miss Byron

126 ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF.

that was) — he ought to have been represented
bowing over his own hand, for he never admired
any one but himself, and was the god of his
own idolatry. Neither do I 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 con-
sidered 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 thoughtful, 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 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

ON LIVINQ TO ONE's-SELF. 127

to mar it. He sees enough in the universe to
interest liitn without putting himself forward to
try what he can do to fix the eyes of tin uni-
■BOn liim. Vain the attempt ! 1 1< i ■< .•■ -
tlie elouds, he looks at the stars, lie watehe>
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 discourse*
the freezing hours away, or melts down hours
to minutes in pleasing thought. All this while
he is taken up with other things, forgetting
him-elf. He relishes an author's style, without
thinking of turning author. He is fond of look-
ing at a print from an old picture in the room,
without teasing himself to copy it He does
not fret him-elf to death with trying to be what
In 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 on one, the least of nature's works ;
< >iie 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

128 ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF.

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 con-
tented with himself and 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 briers and thorns, vexation and disappoint-
ment. 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 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 remember laughing
heartily at the celebrated experimentalist Nichol-
son, 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 end-
ing, still beginning," and had no occasion to

ON LIVING to onk'b-self. 129

write ;i < riiiciMii wlnii I bad 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 inc.
If I was dull, it pave 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. 1 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 relations to the
stati ■. no duty to perform, no ties to bind me to
others: 1 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,
miu rally barters repose for repeated disappoint-
ments and vain regrets. His time, thoughts,
and feelings are no longer at his own disposal.
From that in-tant 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 ; from a candid, undesigning, undis-
guised simplicity of character, his views become
jaundiced, 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 under-

K

130 ON LIVING TO ONE's-SELF.

standing, and his heart to the resplendent 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 contempla-
tion, but in the feverish sense of his own up-
start self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is
become a 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 repe-
tition 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.
Goldsmith (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 pee-
vishly : — " There are places where I also am
admired." He could not give the craving ap-
petite 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

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SI ].)]

ii<" mortifications of tin hare attempt to
emerge train obscurity; numberless the faJhlffBl,
ami gfffllef and more gftlling .--till tlit \ i«i — i-
tudes and tormenting arcompuniments .

"Whoso top to tlinil)

Is certain fulling, or so slippery, that
Dm fear's as bud as falling."

" Would to God," exclaimed Oliver Cromwell,
win ii be was at any time thwarted by the Par-
liament, " tliat I had remained by my wood-
side to tend a Hock of sheep, rather than lia\<
been thrust on mob I government as tlii- ! "
When Buonaparte got into his carriage to pro-
ceed on lii^ Russian expedition, carelessly twirl-
ing his glove, and "wg* "g the air, " Malbrook
sYn va t'en guerre," he did not think of the
tumble lie has got since, the shock of which no
one could have stood but himself. We see end
bene chit llv of the favourites of Fortune and the
.Mu-c, of great generals, of first-rate actors, of
celebrated poets. These are at the head; \\e
arc etmok with the glittering eminence on which
they stand, and long to set out on the mum
tempting career: — not thinking how many dis-
contented half-pay lieutenants are in vain seek-
ing promotion all their lives, and obliged to put
up with " the insolence of office, and the spuria
which patient merit of the unworthy tak- -: '
how many half-starved strolling players are
doomed to penury and tattered robes in country-

132 ON LIVING TO ONE's-SELF,

places, dreaming to the last of a London engage-
ment ; 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 hap-
less 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 profession,
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 appear-
ance of a new actor : " a mouse that takes up
its lodfnn<r in a cat's ear " * has a mansion of
peace to him : he dreads every hint of an objec-

* Webster's ' Duchess of Malfy.'

ON LIVINO TO ONE'S-SELP. I 88

lion, :ui(l least of ;ill can forgive praise mingled
with censure : to doubt is to insult, to discrimi-
nate i- tO degrades he dare hardly look into a
criticism unices some one has tasted it tor him,
to |M that there is no offence in it : it" he docs
not draw crowded houses every night, he can
neither eat nor sleep ; or it" all these terrible
inflictions are removed, and he can "eat hi<
in.al in peace," he then becomes surfeited with
applause, and dissatisfied with his profession :
he wants to he something else, to he distin-
guished as an author, a collector, a classical
scholar, a man of sense and information, and
weighs even word he utters, and halt' retract*
it lx 'tore he utters it, lest, if he were to make
the smallest slip of the tongue, it should

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, Lethbridge, hare a taate ! "

A little Wilson in an obscure corner escaped the
man of virtil, and was carried off by a Bristol
picture dealer for three guineas, while the

134 ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF.

muddled copies of the owner of the mansion
(with the frames) fetched ten, twenty, thirty,
forty pounds a piece. A friend of mine found
a very fine Canaletti in a state of strange dis-
figurement, 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 infa-
tuation ! Yet this candidate for the honours of
the pencil might probably have made a jovial
fox-hunter or respectable justice of the peace, if
he could have only 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 busi-
ness 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.

ON LIVINO TO ONE's-BELF. HI

A young couple, every way amiable and
ring, were to have been married, and

I benefit-play was bespoke by the officers
of* tin' regiment quartered there, to det'r:i\
the expense of a license and of the wedding,
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' ail of the pit, boxes, and gallery,
to cure for ever the love of the ideal, and the
deefae Id 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 seeurity
have we when we trust our happiness in the
hands of others ! Most of the friends I have
Men have turned out the bitterest enemies, or
eold, uncomfortable acquaintance. Old com-
panions 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 well to repeat such lines
as these in the play of Mirandola' —

136 ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF.

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

but however beautiful the description, defend
me from meeting with 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 himself —

" Like life and death in disproportion met."

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

on u\i\(i to oneW.i : . 1 -57

" Fur either
II. never shall find out fit mate, hut such
As some mllfbrUUM hrings him or mistake
Or whom he " islu s most shall seldom gain
Through her poiTBHWMM, hut shall see her gain'd
By a far worse ; or Ifflhl luu-, withheld
Hy parents ; or his happiest ehoiee too late
Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-hound
To a fell adversary, his hate and shame ;
Winch infinite calamity shall cause
To human life, and household peace confound."

If love at first sight were mutual, or to be con-
ciliated l>y kind offices; if the fondest affection
were not so often repaid and chilled by indif-
ference 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 tie- true
aspirations after excellence, instead of its gaudy
signs and outward trappings; then, indeed, I
might be of opinion that it is better to live to
others than one's-self : but as the case stands, I
incline to the negative side of the question.* —

• Shcnstonc 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 U' prefixed to his works) into his own
thoughts and indolent musings ; Shcnstonc affected pri-

138 ON LIVING TO ONE's-SELF.

" I have not loved the world, nor the world me ;

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

To its idolatries a patient knee —

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

In worship of an echo ; in the crowd

They could not deem me one of such ; I stood

Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud

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

Had I not filed my mind which thus itself subdued.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me —

But let us part fair foes ; I do believe,

Though I have found them not, that there may be

Words which are things— hopes which will not deceive,

And virtues which are merciful nor weave

Snares for the failing : I would also deem

O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve ;

That two, or one, are almost what they seem —

That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."

Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour mis-
anthropy : but woe betide the ignoble prose-
writer who should thus dare to compare notes
with the world, or tax it roundly with impos-
ture.

If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the
public, as Ben Jonson did at the audience in
the prologues to his plays, I think I should do

vacy, 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.

u\ J.I VI NO TO ONE's-8ELF. \W

it in good set Unas, nearly as follows. There
is not a more mean, Itapid, dastardly, pitiful,
selfish, spiteful, i nvi.nis, ungrateful animal than
ihr Public. It is the glgltWl Of cowards, for
it i- afraid of itself. From its unw ieldly, over-
urowii dimensions, it dreads the lca-t opposition
t.» it, ami shakes like isinglass at the touch of a
finger. It starts at its own shadow, like the man
in the Hart/ mountains, and tremhles at the men-
tion of it- <>\vn 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 behind-hand 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 u 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 siir-
inises, «>r secret whispers. What is said by one
is heard bv all; the supposition that a thing is
known to all the world makes all the world be-
lieve it, and the hollow rejwtition 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

140 ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF.

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 pup-
pets at work, the nature of the machinery, and
yet if any one has the art or power to get the ma-
nagement of it, he shall keep possession of the
public ear by virtue of a cant-phrase or nick-
name; and, by dint of effrontery and perse-
verance, make all the world believe 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 prejudices by mechanical sym-
pathy, 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 aggre-
gate 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 pusilla-
nimous and cowardly, because it is weak. It
knows itself to be a great dunce, and that it has

ON LIVING TO ONE's-SEI.I . Ill

no opinions lmt upon suggestion. Yet it is un-
willing 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 p;irties, each of which will allow neither
eo i union 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
IIesse\ told me that they had sold nearly two
editions of the Characters of Shakespear's Plays
in about three months, but that after the Quar-
terly Review of the book came out, they never
sold another copy. The public, enlightened as
the\ are, must have known the meaning of that
attack as well as those who made it. It was not
ignorance, then, but cowardice that led them to
give up their own opinion. A crew of mis-
chievous critics at Edinburgh having fixed
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
eoekneyism. Oh brave public! This epithet
proved too much for one of the writers in ques-
tion, and stuck like a barbed arrow in his heart.
Poor Keats ! What was sport to the town was

142 ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF.

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,
«very tale-bearer is implicitly believed. Every
little low paltry creature that gaped and won-
dered only because others did so, is glad to find
you (as he thinks) on a level with himself, and that
an author is not, after all, a being of another
order. Public admiration is forced, and goes
against the grain. Public obloquy is cordial
and sincere : every individual feels his own
importance in it. They give you up bound

. ON IIMNU TO ONE's-SELP. 143

band tad fcot into the power of your accusers.
l\> :itt. mpt to defend yourself is ii Ugh crime
itnd iiiis.li-uii auour, a contempt of court, an
rxtivnic pine of impertinence. Or if you
prove every charge unfounded, they never
think of retracting their error, or making you
amend-.. It would be a compromise of their
dignity ; they consider themselves as the party
injured, and resent your innocence as an im-
putation on their judgment. The celebrated
Bubb Doddington, when out of favour at court,
>aid u he would not justify before his sovereign:
it was for Majesty to be displeased, and for bin
to believe himself in the wrong!" The public
an not quite so modest. People already
begin to talk of the Scotch Novels as over-
rated. How then can common authors be sup-
posed to keep their heads long above water ?
As a general rule, all those who live by the
public starve, and are made a bye-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. ^\ lun
a man is dead, they put money in his coffin,
erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate

144 ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF.

the anniversary of his birth-day 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 Boling-
broke's ' Reflections on Exile,' in which he de-
scribes in glowing colours the resources which
a man may 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. What-
ever is best is safest ; lies out of the reach of
human power ; can neither be given nor taken
away. Such is this great and beautiful work of
nature, the world. Such is the mind of man,
which contemplates and admires the world

ON LIVINO T<> <>\l — III. 145

whrtvol' it makes the noblest part. These are
inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in
i>n. we shall enjoy the other. Let us march
therefore intrepidly \\ herever we are led by the
course of human accidents. Wherever they
lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by
thnii, we shall not find ourselves absolutely
Strang i ~. We shall feel the same revolution of
seasons, and the same sun and moon* 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 ; from whence we may not
discover an object still more stupendous, that
army of fixed stars hung up in the immense
space of the universe, innumerable 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, imports me
little what ground I tread upon."

• "Flut. of Banishment Re compares those who
cannot live out of tlioir own country, to the simple people
who fancied the moon of Athens was a finer moon than
that of Corinth.

Labcntcm lalo qua ducitis annum.

Viuu. Georgic."

ESSAY VIII.

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

Those persons who are much accustomed to
abstract contemplation are generally unfitted
for active pursuits, and vice versd. 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 in-
tend 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

ON THOUOHT AND ACTION. 1 17

a walk, In li. sitated at the bottom of the stairs
whieh way to go — proposed different direction*,
to Charing cross, to St Paul's, — found some
objection to them all, and at last turned back
tor want of a casting motive to incline the scale.
Tucker gives this as an instance of professional
imli vision, or of that temper of mind wliicli
having been long used to weigh the reasons for
things with scrupulous exactness, could not
• ome to any conclusion at all on the spur of the
occasion, or without some grave distinction to
justify its choice. Louvet, in his Narrative,
tells us, that when several of the Brissotin party
uiii- collected at the house of Barbaroux (1
tli ink 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
promptness and vigour of the practical ! It is
on such unequal terms that the refined and ro-
mantic speculators on possible good and evil
contend with their strong-nerved, remorseless
adversaries, and we see the result. Reasonere
in general are undecided, wavering, and scepti-

148 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

cal, or yield at last to the weakest motive, as
most congenial to their feeble habit of soul.*

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 succeed. Their affairs con-
duct 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 principle 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 neigh-
bours. 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 subject, it will most
probably be the ruin of him. He will turn
theoretical or experimental farmer, and no more

* When Buonaparte left the Chamber of Deputies to
go and fight his last fatal battle, he advised them not to
be debating the forms of Constitutions when the enemy
was at their gates. Benjamin Constant thought other-
wise. He wanted to play a game at cats-cradle between
the B^publicans and Koyalists, and lost his match. He
did not care, so that he hampered a more efficient man
than himself.

ON fHOQOHT kl D U NOV. I 0

need be said. Mr Cobbett, \\ ln> i- ;i sufficiently
-linwd ami practical man, with an eye also to
the main chance, had got some notions in his
head (from Tull's Husbandry) about the method
of sowing turnips, to which ho would have
Mtfrifioed not only his estate at Botley, but his
native county of Hampshire itself, sooner than
give up an inch of his argument. "Tut! will
\.»u baulk a man in his humour?" There-
fore, that a man may not be ruined l»\ Ids hu-
mours, he should be too dull and phlegmatic to
have any ; he must have " no figures nor no fan-
tasies 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 experi-
ence and ability of all mankind. Even where a
man is right in a particular notion, he will be
apt to over-rate 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 ap-
proved and successful methods of cultivation
now in use, it would have been a death-blow

150 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

to his credit and fortune. So that though the
experiments and improvements of private indi-
viduals from time to time gradually go to enrich
the public stock of information and reform the
general practice, they are mostly the ruin of the
person who makes them, because he takes a part
of the whole, and lays more stress upon the sin-
gle point in which he has found others in the
wrong, than on all the rest in which they are
substantially and prescriptively in the right.
The great requisite, it should appear then, for
the prosperous management of ordinary business,
is the want of imagination, or of any ideas but
those of custom and interest on the narrowest
scale : — and as the affairs of the world are ne-
cessarily carried on by the common run of its
inhabitants, it seems a wise dispensation of Pro-
vidence 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 commercial and agricultural
interests of this great (and once flourishing)
countiy ? I would not be understood as saying
that there is not what may be called a genius for
business, an extraordinary capacity for affairs,
quickness and comprehension united, an insight
into character, an acquaintance with a number
of particular circumstances, a variety of expe-
dients, a tact for finding out what will do : I

ON THOUOHT AND ACTION. 151

grant all this (in Liverpool and Manchester they
would persuade you that your merchant and
manutiutiiK r is your only gentleman and scho-
lar)— hut still, making every allowance for the
difference between the liberal trader and the
sm 'aking shopkeeper, I doubt whether the most
surprising success is to be accounted for from
any such unusual attainments, 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 Fortune. A plotting head fre-
quently 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,
ami 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 pro-
moting your own interest, and a plodding per-
severing industry in making the most of the
advantages you have already obtained, are the
most effectual as well as safest ingredients in
the composition of the mercantile character.
The world is a book in which the Chapter of

152 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

Accidents is none of the least considerable ; or it
is a machine that must be left, in a great mea-
sure, to turn itself. The most that a worldly-
minded man can do is, to stand at the receipt
of custom, and be constantly on the look-out
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 over-
griping usurious disposition as they could have
been by the most thoughtless extravagance. —
We hear a great outcry about the want of judg-
ment 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 un-
derstanding is out of the question. The pro-
found judgment which soberer people pique
themselves upon is in truth a want of passion
and imagination. Give them an interest in any
thing, a sudden fancy, a bait for their favourite
foible, and who so besotted 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

■ >\ I ih.i ,,p I' AND ACTION. \~>'-i

heard people of a sanguine temperament re-
proached with bitting according to their wishes,
m-tcad <>t' their Opinion who should win: anil 1
lia\r m,ii those who reproached them do the
same thing the instant tlnir own vanity
or prejudices were concerned. The most me-
chanical people, once thrown off their balance,
arc the most extravagant and fantastical. What
passion i> then' 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 attention out of his own
sphere, or giving him an interest except in those
things which lie can realize and bring home
to himself in the most undoubted shape? To
the man of business all the world is a fable but
tin Stock- Exchange: to the money-getter no-
thing has a real existence that he cannot con-
vert into a tangible feeling, that he does not
recognize as property, that he cannot " measure
with a two-foot rule or count upon ten fingers."
The want of thought, of imagination, drives the

154 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

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 quantity of thought implied in it, any more
than it would be to condemn a life of contempla-
tion for being inactive ? 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 un-
derstanding, 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 cha-
racter.

Quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia vertit,

Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.

There are more ways than one in which the
various faculties of the mind may unfold them-

ON THOUOHT AND ACTION. 1m

selves. Neither uonl>, nor ideas reducible to
words, constitute tin- utmost limit of human
capiicitv. Man is not a merely talking nor a
merely reasoning animal. Let u-' then take liim
as he is, instead of " curtailing him of nature's
fair proportions" to suit our previous notions.
Doubtless, there are great characters both in
active and contemplative life. There have been
n 1 as well as sages, legislators and founders
of religion, historians and able statesmen and
generals, inventors of useful arts and instru-
ments, and explorers of undiscovered countries,
as well as writers and readers of l>ooks. It will
not do to set all these aside under any fasti-
dious 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 re-
lation to it. If, as some one proposed, we were
to institute an inquiry, " Which was the greatest
man, Milton or Cromwell, Buonaparte or Ru-
bens ? " — we should have all the authors and
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

156 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

full impression of more than one style of excel-
lence 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 fa-
vourite but by running down his supposed rival ;
and for the gorgeous hues of Rubens, the lofty
conceptions of Milton, the deep policy and cau-
tious daring of Cromwell, or the dazzling ex-
ploits and fatal ambition of the modern chief-
tain, the poet is transformed into a pedant, the
artist sinks into a mechanic, the politician turns
out no better than a knave, and the hero is ex-
alted 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 ques-
tion, 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

o\ Him ,.11 I AND ACTK'N. 1-V7

the achievements of personal prowess or in-
■taaoai of fortunate enterprise too much, it
cannot be denied that those who have t<> weign
.mi :iikI diepenee the meed of fame in hooks,
have been too much disposed, by a natural bias,
to confine all merit and talent to the pro-
ductions of the pen, or at least to those works
which, being artificial or abstract representations
of thinn, are transmitted to posterity, and cried
up as models in their kind. This, though un-
avoidable, is hardly just. Actions pass away
ami are forgotten, or are only discernible in
their efleots: conquerors, statesmen, and kings
live but by their names stamped on the page of
history. Hume says rightly that more people
think ■boat Virgil and Homer (and that con-
tinually) 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 m»re
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

158 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

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 burning in-
cense 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 dis-
puted more about the texts of Aristotle than of the
battle of Arbela, perhaps Alexander's generals
in his life-time 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 in-
tellect only is immortal, and bequeathed unim-
paired to posterity. Words are the only things
that last for ever.

If however the empire of words and general
knowledge 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

ON Tll"l '.111 VNH \< NOV. 1.7J

plough or n threshing machine, requires, one
would think, as much skill ami judgment as to
talk about or write a description of it wh<n
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 com-
posing his Commentaries? Or was the Retreat
of the Ten Thousand under Xcnophon, or his
work of that name, the most consummate per-
formance ? 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 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
tin in to account, to foresee a long, obscure, and
complicated train of events, of chances and open-
ings of success, to unwind the web of others'
policy, and weave your own out of it, to judge

160 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

of the effects of things not in the abstract but
with reference to all their bearings, ramifica-
tions and 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 venal 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 perma-
nence 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

• ON I1K.I (,IIT AN l» ACTtOIf. Mil

of experience. Great thoughts reduced to prac-
tice Income great acts. Again, great acts grow
i. nt <>f great occasions, and great occasions spring
from great principles, working changes in so-
. 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; that the
Long-headed calculation of causes and conse-
quences irises from the energy of the first cause,

which M the « ill, letting other- in motion and pre-
pared to anticipate the results; that its sagacity
is activity delighting in meeting difficulties and
adventures more than half way, and its u i-doin
courage not to shrink from danger, hut to re-
doable its efforts with opposition. Its humanit\ .
if it has much, is magnanimity to spare the van-
quished, exulting in power hut not prone to mis-
chief, with good sense enough to be aware of
the instability <>f fortune, and with some regard
to reputation. What may serve as a criterion to
try this question hy is the following considera-
tion, that we sometimes find as remarkable a
deficiency of the speculative faculty, coupled
with great strength of will and consequent
-uecess in active life, as we do a want of volun-
tary power and total incapacity for busino-.
frequently joined to the highest mental qualifi-
cations. In some cases it will happen that "to
be wise, is to he obstinate." If you are deaf

M

162 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

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 pre-
judice 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 resolu-
tion. Charles Fox had an animated, intelligent
eye, and brilliant, elastic forehead (with a nose
indicating fine taste), but the lower features
were weak, unsettled, fluctuating, and without
purchase — it was in them the Whigs were de-
feated. 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 Castlereagh 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

ON THOUOHT AND ACTION. 103

of a face (not well filled up in tin- ■ •xpres-ion,
which is relaxed ami dormant) with a tine per-
son ami milliner. On the strength of these he
ha/.anls 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 can-
not parry on his shield — is " all tranquillity 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
hod\ -, whether he whet -dies 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 woidd rather be Lord
Castlereagh, as far as a sense of power is con-
cerned (principle is out of the question), than
mkIi a man a- Mr Canning, who is a mere fluent
sophist, and never knows the limits of discre-
tion, or the effect which will be produced by
what he says, except as far as florid common-
places may be depended on. Buonaparte is re-
1 by Mr Coleridge to the class of active
rather than of intellectual characters : and Cow-
lev has left an invidious but splendid eulogy on
Oliver Cromwell, which sets out on much the
same principle. " What," he says, " can be

164 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

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 de-
struction of one of the most ancient and most
solidly -founded monarchies upon the earth?
That he should have the power or 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 over-run
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 asrain with the breath of his mouth ; to be
humbly and daily petitioned that he would please

oi 1 1 1 o i a 1 1 1 an kcrroir. l < *>•">

to be hired, ;it tin- rate of two million- a year, to
be tlic master of those who had hired him I.
to be their servant ; to have the OlMffcM and \Wm
of three kingdoms as much at his disposal, as
was the little inheritance of his father, and to I..
as noble and liberal in the spending of them ;
and lastly, (tor there is no end of all the par-
ticidar of his glory) to bequeath all thi> with
one word to his posterity; to die with peace at
home, and triumph abroad; to be buried anions
kiin.;-, ami with more than PBgoJ 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
| narrow] for his conquests, 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 dispatches 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 mo-
dern times of the heroic and literary diameter
which was common among the ancients. Juliu»
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,
iEschylus, and Socrates were distinguished for

166 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

their military prowess among their contempo-
raries, though now only remembered for what
they did in poetry and philosophy. Cicero and
Demosthenes, the two greatest orators of an-
tiquity, appear to have been cowards : nor
does Horace seem to give a very favourable
picture of his martial achievements. 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 Frehch
literature, to whom Moliere is reading a comedy
in the presence of the celebrated Ninon de
l'Enclos. D'Alembert, one of the first mathe-
maticians 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 old Monk —

ON THOUOHT AND ACTION. 1 * iT

I mm every work he challenged essoin

Pat <oiiw inflation's sake"

Perhaps the superior importance attached to the
institutions of religion, as well as the more ab-
stracted and visionary nature of its objects, has
ltd (as a general result) to a wider separation
hetwet ii thought and action in modern times. —
Auiliition 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 l>e lord of them that riches have,
Than riches have myself, and be their servile slave."

The incentive to auiliition is the love of power ;
the spur to avarice is either the fear of poverty,
or a 6trong desire of self-indulgence. The
amassers of fortunes seem divided into two oppo-
site classes, lean, periurious-looking mortals, or
jolly fellows who are determined to get posses-
sion 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 rever-
sion 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

168 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

sleekness of their aspects and the goodly rotun-
dity 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
majority of warm men in the city are
good, jolly fellows. Look at Sir William Cur-
tis: 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 wit
jobs and contracts ; 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 enjoy the good the gods pro-
vide us, is to deserve it. Nature meant him for
a knight, alderman, and city member ; and For-
tune laughed to see the goodly person and pros-
pects of the man !* — I am not, from certain

* 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, realizes
it, dissipates all obstacles, and removes all scruples. The

ON THOUGHT AM) ACTION. Ili'.t

.;irlv prejudice-, much glTeO to admire the

oftent;tiioiis marki of wealth (tin
( noagfa to admire them without me) — but I
confess there is something in the look of the old
liaiikin^-hoiises in Lombard street, the posterns
• d with mud, tin; doors opening sullenly

disappointed lover may complain as much as he pleases;
he was himself to Maine. He was a half-witted, wialty-
u-nsliii fellow. His love aright be as great as he makes
it mit i hut it was not his ruling passion. His ft ar, liis
pride, lii.-. vanity was greater. Let any one's wliole soul
be steejKHl in this passion, let him think and care for
nothing else* let nothing divert, cool, or intiiniilate him,
K t tin- idmi feeling become an actual one and take pos-
session of his whole fatuities, looks, and manner, let the
w.luptuous hopes ami wishes govern his actions in
the presenee 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 "
iu such a case. I could always get to see a fine collec-
tion of pietiiii s myself. The fact is, I was set upon it.
Neither the surliness of porters, nor the impertinence of
foot iiu n, rould keep me back. I had a portrait of Titian
in my eye, and nothing could put me out in my determi-
nation. It' that had not (as it were) been looking on me
all the time I was battling my way, I should have been
irritated or disconcerted, and gone away. But my
liking to tlu- 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 an-
swer. It 1 had wanted a place under government, or a
writirship to India, I could have got it from the same
importunity, and on the same terms.

170 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

and silently, the absence of all pretence, the
darkness and the gloom within, the gleaming of
lamps in the day-time,

" Like a faint shadow of uncertain light,"

that almost realises the poetical conception of the
cave of Mammon in Spenser, where dust and
cobwebs concealed 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 accumulated his
immense wealth has always to me something
romantic in it, from the same force of contrast.
He was a little shopkeeper, and out of his savings
bought Bibles, and purchased seamen's tickets
in Queen Anne's wars, by which he made a for-
tune 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 IX.

ON WILL -MA KINO.

Few things show the human character in a
more ridiculous 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 farmer 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 sub-
ject of making their last will and testament, and
think that when everything is ready signed and
sealed, there is nothing farther left to delay their
departure. I have heard of an instance of one
person who, having a feeling of this kind on his

172 ON WILL-MAKING.

mind, and being teazed 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
morning, and found himself as well as ever he
was.* 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

* 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 moveables 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 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 car-
ried 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.

ow wii.i.-m \i 173

upbnkUngi of friends and relatives that sur-
rounded liim, bfl summoned resolution to hold
out his feeble hand which was guided by others
to trace his name, and he tell hack — a corpse !
If there is any pressing reason for it, that is, if
any particular person would be relieved from a
Mate of harassing uncertainty, or materially
benefited by their nuking ■ 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, pro-
bably till it is too late : or where this is sure to
make the greatest number of blank faces, con-
trive to give their friends the slip, without signi-
fying their final determination in their favour.
Where some unfortunate individual has been
kept long in suspense, who has been perhaps
-ought 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 dis-
cover whether the person dying thus intestate
ever hud any intention of the sort, or why he re-
linqnitbed it. This it is to bespeak the thoughts
ami in 1:11; inations of others for victims after we are
dead, as well as their persons and expectations for
hangers-on while we are living. A celebrated
booty of the middle of the last century, towards
its close sought out a female relative, the friend
and eoinpanion of her youth, who had lived

174 ON WILL-MAKING.

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 care-worn face of her
friend ? Or was it to display the decay of her
charms and recal 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 herself to those who remem-
bered or had of$en heard what she was — her
skin like shrivelled alabaster, her emaciated
features chiseled 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 any thing (as was indeed expected, and
all things considered, not without reason) nobody
knows — for she never breathed a syllable on the

ON Will -M \KlSO. 175

•abject herself, and died without a will. The
looomplithed coquette of twenty, who had pam-
|icii(l hopes only to kill them, who hud kindled
rapture with ;i look and extinguished it with ii
l>n;itli, could find no better employment at
seventy than to revive the fond recollections and
raise up thi drooping hopes of her kinswoman
only to let them full — to rise no more. Such is
the delight we have in trifling with and tanta-
lising the feelings of others by the exquisite
refinements, the studied sleights of love or
frit ndship.

Where a property is actually bequeathed, sup-
posing the circumstances of the case and the
usages of society to leave a practical discretion
t<> the testator, it is most frequently in such
portions as can be of the least service. Where
thflffl is much alreudy, much il given; where
much is wanted, little or nothing. Poverty
invites a sort of pity, a miserable dole of assist-
ance; necessity neglect and scorn; wealth ut-
tracts 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 col-
lect money into large heaps in their life-time :
tli. v like to leave it in large heaps alter 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

176 ON WILL-MAKING.

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 them-
selves ; 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 intel-
ligible 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

(IN \\ I! l.-M \KIMi. 177

idea, ;i pliant. mi, ;i prejudice, that mu-t be kept

tip lomeirhere (no matter where) ii" it -till play*
before and haunts their imagination while they
• or understanding left — to cling to
their darling fojliee.

There was a remarkable instance of this ten*
dency to th§ Atop, tliis desire to cultivate an
abstract pus-ion for wealth, in a will of one of
the Thellusons 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 accu-
mulate at compound interest in such a way and
so -long, that it would at lust mount up in value
to the purchase-money of a whole county. The
interest accruing from the funded property or
the rent of the lauds at certain periods was to
be employed to purchase other estate-, other
parks and maimo in the neighbourhood or far-
ther oil', 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 bevond vista, till the imagination was stag-
gered, and the mind exhausted. Now here was
a scheme for the accumulation of wealth, and
for laying the foundation of family-aggrandise-
ment purely imaginary, romantic — one might
almost >ay disinterested. The vagueness, the
magnitude, the remoteness of the object, the

178 ON WILL-MAKING.

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 construct an
aqueduct, to endow an 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.* Yet to enable himself to put this
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 speculative 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

* The law of primogeniture has its origin in the prin-
ciple here stated, the desire of perpetuating some one
palpable and prominent proof of wealth and power.

ON WILL-MAKINO. 17U

to treat thOM who devoted themselves to the
pursuit of fame, to obloquy and persecution tor
the sake Of t ruth and liberty, or who -aerified
their livei tor their country in a just cause, as
visionaries and enthusiasts, who did not under-
stand what w as properly due to their own inte-
rest 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, N tnneh as of imagination, custom, pas-
sion, 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 propes*
Wty (not out of spite or cunning, but us a g
itous exercise of invention), that from a child
no one could ever believe a syllable he attend
Prom the want of any dependence to be placed
on him, he became the jest and bye-word of the
school where lie 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 tor his passage, went on ship-
board, and employed the few remaining days he
had to live in making and executing his will;
in which he bequeathed large estates indifferent
peril »>f Bnglandj money in the funds, rich
jewels, rings, and all kinds of valuables, to his
old friends and acquaintance, who not knowing

180 ON WILL-MAKIiYG.

how far the force of nature could go, were no
for some time convinced that all this fairy wealth
had never had an existence anywhere but in the
idle coinage of his brain whose whims and pro-
jects were no more ! The extreme keeping 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 importance 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 Volpone,
showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, and
the different ways of fobbing him off with ex-
cuses and assurances of not being forgotten.
Yet it is hardly right, after all, to encourage
this kind of pitiful, bare-faced intercourse, with-
out meaning to pay for it ; as the coquette has

OH WII.I.-M \l.

DO right to jilt the lovers she has trill. d with.
Flattery and submission are marketable com-
modities like any other, have their price, ami
ought scarcely to he ohtained under false pre-
tences. If we see through ami «1«<|h-<? the

wretched creature th:it :itteiii])ts to impose on
our credulity, we can at any time dispense with
hi- 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 disap-
pointments are as unjust as they are cruel, and
are marked with circumstances of indignity, in
proportion to the worth of the object. The
inspecting, the taking it for granted that your
name i- down in the will, is sufficient provoca-
tion to have it struck out: the hinting at an
obligation, the consciousness of it on the part
of the testator, will make hint determined to
avoid the formal acknowledgment of it, at any
expense. The disinheriting of relations is mostly
tor 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 it
able ground to go upon ; and we are obstinate
in adhering to our resolution, as it was sudden
and rash, and doubly bent on asserting our
authority in what we have least right to inter-

182 ON WILL-MAKING.

fere 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 our-
selves that we cannot forgive. In the will of
Nicholas Gimcrack, the virtuoso recorded in
the Tatler, 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 Gimcrack, 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.* We often successfully

* 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

o\ Ull.l.-M \KINO. 1>;*

trv in this way to pre 'I"' finishing stroke to
our pictures, hunt; up our wcuknessis in per-

W" ill and Testament 1» pu ath my worldly Good*

:lllil Chattels in Manner ftAowiSg :
Imprimis, To my dear Will-,

One B(n of Butterflies,

One Drawer of Shells,

A tVmulc Skeleton.

A dried Coekatriotb

Item, To my Daughter FUtiJhttk,

My Receipt for numil »lllU dead Caterpillars.
As also my I 're pa rations of Winter May- Dew, and
Kintnii) Pickle.
Item, To my little Daughter Fanwj,
Three Ci .:g».

And upon the Birth of her first Child, if she marries
with her Mother*i Coneentj

The Rett <>t';i llimiiiiiiiir-Hird.
Item, T> my eldest Brother, us an Acknowledgement for
the Ijinds he has vested in my Son Charles, I
bequeath
My last Year's Collection of Grasshoppers.
Item, To his Daughter Susanna, being his only Child, I
bequeath my
EmiHnh 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 Homed Scorcbms,

The Skin of a Battle-Snake, and

The Mummy of an EjBJptMM King,
I make DO farther Provision for him in this my Will.

My el. lest Boa John having spoken disrespectfully of

184 ON WILL-MAKING.

petuity, and embalm our mistakes in the me-
mories 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 com-
mands imposed upon survivors, by which they
were to carry into effect the sullen and revenge-
ful purposes of unprincipled men, after they
had breathed their last : but we meet with con-
tinual 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 prover-
bial. Hence we see the number of legacies
and fortunes left, on condition that the legatee

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, Butterflies, Caterpillars, Grasshoppers,
and Vermin, not above specified: As also all my Mon-
sters, 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." — Tatlek, Vol. IV. No. 216.

UN \\ ll.l.-M AKIN... 1*.">

shall take the name and style of the testator,
by which device we provide for tin- eontnuh*

ance of the sounds that formed our names, and
endow them with an estate, that they may be
repeated with proper respect. 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 Ce-
cilia ! What delicate perplexities she was thrown
into by this improvident provision; and frith
what minute, endless, intricate distresses lias the

fair eathoreee 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
, 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, undivided pot>
session of it. The name was changed the other
day to George street as a more genteel appel-
lation, 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
ilineher from what he took in his head, ile
was no common-place man in his line. He was

186 ON WILL-MAKING.

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 Camel-
ford had his remains buried under an ash-tree
that grew on one of the mountains in Switzer-
land ; and Sir Francis Bourgeois had a little
mausoleum built for him in the college at Dul-
wich, where he once spent a pleasant, jovial
day with the master and wardens.* It is, no
doubt, proper to attend, except for strong
reasons to the contrary, to these sort of re-
quests; for by breaking 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

* 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 !
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 !

ON WII.I.-M AKIN... 189

iit:tim-cii|)t work, rakes a confession of tin ir
faith in the virtue of the sex — all, the last
drivelling of their egotism and impertinence.
Oae might suppose that if anything could, the
approach ami eoiileinplation of death niiu'ht
hriiiLT men to a sense of reason and self-know-
ledge. On the contrary, it seems only to de-
prive tin-in of tin- little wit they had, and t<>
make them even more the sport of their wilful-
ness 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 cling to their prejudices. They
make a desperate attempt to escape from re-
flection by taking hold of any whim or fancy
Ihtt (10--1- their minds, or by throwing them-
selves 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 prescriptive 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 some-
thing in common, does not mix cordially with
friendship, but is inseparable from near relation-
ship. We owe a return in kind, where we feel

188 ON WILL-MAKING.

no obligation for a favour ; and consign our
possessions to our next of kin as mechanically
as we lean our heads on the pillow, and go out
of the world in the same state of stupid amaze-
ment that we came into it ! . . . . Ccetera desunt.

ESSAY \

M IAHADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

I itwr been sometimes accused of a fondness
tor paradoses, but I cannot in my own mind

plead truiltv to the charge. I do not indeed
*wear 1»\ ;m opinion, because it is old : but neither
do I fall in love with every extravagance at first
sight, because it is new. I eoneeive that a thing
ma\ have ban repeated a thousand times, with-
out being a bit more reasonable than it was tin-
tir-i tinii' : and I also conceive that an argument
or an observation may be very just, though it
m;i\ to happen that it was never stated b.
lint I do not take it tor granted that every pre-
judice is ill-founded ; nor that every paradox is
self-evident, merely because it contradicts the
vulgar opinion. Sheridan once said of some
i in lug acute, sarcastic way, that " it con-
iiiiu 'd 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
n. u ." This appear! to me to express the whole

190 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

sense of the question. I do not see much use
in dwelling on a common-place, however fashion-
able or well-established : nor am I very ambi-
tious of starting the most specious novelty, unless
I imagine I have reason on my side. Origi-
nality implies 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 con-
tradict other people, without having any real
opinion of one's own upon the matter. Mr
Burke was an original, though an extravagant
writer ; Mr Windham was a regular manufac-
turer 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 nu-
merous 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, " putting in this 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 inquiry is neither
blinded by example nor dazzled by sudden
flashes of light. Nature is always the same, the
store-house of lasting truth, and teeming with

"\ PARADOX AND COMMON- 1' I . \< I. I'.M

Inexhaustible variety ; ami he who look*, at her
with stiadv and well- practised eyes, will find
enough to employ all his sagacity, whether it
ha- or lias not been seen by others before him.
Strange U it may seem, to learn what any object
is, the true philosopher looks at the object it-elf,
instead of turning to others to know what they
think or say or have heard of it, or instead of
consulting the dictates of his vanity, petulance,
and ingenuity, 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 pas-
sions, of obstinacy against levity, of bigotry
against self-conceit, of notorious abuses again-t.
rash innovations, of dull, plodding, old-fashioned
■tnpidity against new-fangled folly, of worldly
interest against headstrong egotism, of the incor-
rigible prejudices of the old and the unmanage-
able humours of the young; while truth lii I in
the middle, and is overlooked by both parties.
Or as Luther complained long ago, " human
reason is like a drunken man on horseback:
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 restraint and showing an
heroic disregard of consequences, an impatient

192 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

and unsettled turn of mind, the want of sudden
and strong excitement, of some new play- thing
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 traditions,
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, everlastingly repeated : the
others pique themselves on a jargon of their
own, a Babylonish dialect, crude, unconcocted,
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 opin-
ion of to-day supersedes that of yesterday : that
of to-morrow supersedes by anticipation this of
to-day. The wisdom of the ancients, the doc-

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE. 193

trims of thf learned, the laws of nations, the
common >< ntiments of morality, are to them like
;i bundle of old almanacs. As the modem poli-
tician always asks for this day's paper, the
modern sciolist always inquire* utter the latest
paradox. With him instinct \§ a dotard, nature
a channeling) and common sense a discarded
live-word. As with the man of the world, what
everybody says must be true, the citizen of the
world has a quite different notion of the matter.
With the one the majority, "the powers that
l>e," have always been in the right in all ages
and places, though they have been cutting one
another's throats ami turning the 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 " timc-hal-
1 " institutions; and under this cant phrase
can bring himself to tolerate any knavery, or any
folly, the Inquisition, Holy Oil, the Right Divine,
and so on ; 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 abating 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

194 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

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 thriving 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
conclusion. " 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 mag-
got in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech,
which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He is
sanguine-complexioned, and shrill-voiced. As
is often observable in the case of religious enthu-
siasts, there is a slenderness of constitutional
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 —

PARADOX AM) COMMON-PLACE. 195

• An. I in its li.|iii,l t« \tur-- morttil wound
00 mow than can the llni.t :iir."

The shock of accident, the weight of authority
make no impression on hi* opinions, which ra>
tiir like :i li-uthi t, or rise from the encounter
unhurt, through their own buoyancy. He is
clogged by no dull system of realities, no earth-
bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothing
that belongs to the mighty trunk ;md hard husk
of 'nature und habit, but is drawn up by irresisti-
ble 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
«>t worn-out, threadbare experience to serve as
ballast to his mind ; it is all volatile intellectual
salt of tartar, that refuses to combine its eva-
neeocnt, inflammable essence with anything solid
or anything la-ting. Bubbles are to him the
only realities: — touch them, and they vanish.
Curiosity i- the only proper category of hi-
mind, and though a man in knowledge, he is a
child in feeling. Hence he puts everything into
I metaphysical crucible to judge of it himself and
exhibit it to others as a subject of interesting
experiment, without first making it over to the
onical ot his common sense or trying it on his
heart. This faculty of speculating at random on
all (piestions may in its overgrown and unin-
formed state do much mischief without intend-

196 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

ing 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 consequences. He
strives to overturn all established creeds and
systems : but this is in him an effect of con-
stitution. 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 subjects, but it is less because he
is gratified with the rankness of the taint, than
captivated with the intellectual phosphoric light
they emit. It would seem 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
philosophy ; 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 appre-

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLAi I

honsions <»t' liis readers. Persons of this class,
in-trad of consolidating useful and acknow-
ledged truths, and thus advancing the cause of
science ami virtue, are never easy but in raising
doubtful and disagreeable questions, which
bring the former into disgrace and discredit.
Tin y 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 pre-
cipice the instant they reach the promised
Pisgah. They think it nothing to hang up a
beacon to guide or warn, if they do not at the
>ame 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
node of popularity: they would either force it
by harsh methods, or seduce it by intoxicating
potions. Egotism, petulance, licentiousness,
levity of principle (whatever be the source) is
a bad thing in any one, and most of all, in a
philosophical reformer. Their humanity, their
wisdom is always " at 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 impracti-

198 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

cable, as it is a doubt whether it is at all
desirable. Just after the final failure, the com-
pletion of the last act of the French Revolution,
when the legitimate wits were crying out, " 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 Boroughmongers.
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. " While you are talking of
marrying, I am thinking of hanging," says
Captain Macheath. Of all people the most tor-
menting 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, government,
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

ON I'.\H\IM.\ \M> < UMMON-I'I.ACB. 199

I r of pructical im | >n >\ «nn 1 1 1 tli;m tli»v do in

tliut of imaginary and nnatttinablf perfection.

Besides, all this untoward heat tad pNOOi
often argues rottenness and a fulling oil'. I
If remember several instances of this sort
dt unrestrained licence of opinion and violent
, An MM 'nee of sentiment in the first period of
the l'nucli Revolution. K\t femes meet: and
the most furious anarchists have since become
tlie most barefaced apostates. Among the fore-
most of these I might mention the pi
|iuet-laureate and some of his fi u nds. The
prose-writers on that side of the epie-tion. Mr
(iodwin, Mr Ibntham, &c. have not turned
round in this extraordinary manner: they seem
to have felt their ground (however mistaken
in some points) and have in general aili
to their lirst principles. But poets have suck
seethi/i;/ brains, that they are disposed to
meddle with everything, and mar all. They
make had philosophers and worse politicL

• •• As for polities, I think poets are tories by nature,
supjiosini: them to l>e l>v nature ]>oets. The love of an
Individual penon or family that lias worn a crown for
many successions, is an inclination greatly adapted to
the fanciful trilv. On the other hand, mathematician.*,
abstract reasoncrs, of no manner of attachment to per-
sons, at least to the visible part of them, hut prodigiously
devoted to the ideas of virtue, liUrty, and so forth, are
generally wkiyt. It happens agreeably enough to this

200 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

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 superstitious prejudices, and
make idols or bug-bears of whatever they please,
caring as little for history or particular facts as
for general reasoning. They are dangerous
leaders and treacherous followers. Their inor-
dinate vanity runs them into all sorts of extrava-
gances ; and their habitual effeminacy gets
them out of them at any price. Always pam-
pering 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 ro-
mantic in their servility than their independence,
and equally importunate candidates for fame or

maxim, that the whigs are friends to that wise, plodding,
unpoetical people, the Dutch."— Shenstone's Letters,
1746, p. 105.

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE. 201

infamy, tlit • v require only to be distinguished,
ami are not scrupulous as to the means of dis-
tinction. Jacobins or anti-Jacobins— outrage-
ous advocates for anarchy and licentiousness,
or flaming apostles of political persecution —
always 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 ad-
vancing age. None so ready as they to carry
even paradox to its most revolting and ridicu-
louf excess — none so sure to caricature, in their
own pereone, every feature of the prevailing
philosophy ! In their days of blissful innovation,

ind I, the philosophers crept at their heels like

hounds, while they darted on their distant
quarry like hawks; stooping always to the
lowest game; eagerly snufHng up the most
tainted and rankest scents; feeding their vanity
w - it li a notion of the strength of their digestion
of poisons, and most ostentatiously avowing
whatever would most effectually startle the pre-
judices of others.* Preposterously seeking for

• To give the modern reader un pttit aperfu of the tone
ef literary conversation about five or six and twenty
years ago, I remember being present in a large party
composed of men, women, and children, in which two
persons of remarkable candour and ingenuity were la-
lnmring (as hard as if they had been paid for it) to prove
that all prayer was a mode of dictating to the Almighty,

'202 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

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 became
disgusted with their own pursuits, and that in
consequence of the violence of the change, the

and an arrogant assumption of superiority. A gentle-
man present said, with great simplicity and naXvete, 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 ! ' " 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 gentleman'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 faulchion, trampling on
prejudices 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, confu-
sion worse confounded," with places and pensions and
the Quarterly Review dangling from their pockets, and
shouting, "Deliverance 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 !

ON PARADOX AND COM MoN-l'I.ACB. 203

most inveterate prejudices and uncharitable
sentiments have rushed in to rill up the \<»id
produced by the previous annihilation of Com-
mon sense, wisdom, and humanity!

I have so far been a little hard on poets and
reformers. Lest I should be thought to have
taken a |>;irtirulur spite to them, I will try to
make them the am nilc htniorable by turning to
a passage in the writings of one who u* ither is
nor ever pretended to be a poet or a reformer,
but the antithesis of both, an accomplished man
of the wbr)d, a courtier, and a wit, and who has
endeavoured to move the previous question on
all schemes of faiieiful improvement, and all
plans of praetieal reform, by the following de-
claration. It is in itself a finished common-
/ilaii ; and may serve as a test whether that scut
of sinooili, \erhul reasoning which passes current
because it excites M one idea in tiie 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 flourish ;*
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

• Trojafuit.

204 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

capable of bestowing ; and I am not prepared to
sacrifice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of
experience, of centuries of struggles, and of more
than one century of liberty, as perfect as ever
blessed any country upon the earth, for visionary
schemes of ideal perfectibility, for doubtful ex-
periments even of possible improvement." — Mr
Canning 's Speech at the Liverpool Dinner, given
in celebration of his Re-election, March 18, 1820.
Fourth Edition, revised and corrected.

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 ex-
travagant and unmitigated strain of paradoxical
reasoning, with which I have already found so
much fault.

The passage then which the gentleman here
throws down as an effectual bar to all change,
to all innovation, 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

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE. 206

which we have lost. Mini (they repeat it in our
ears, line upon line, precept upon precept) in
ihnjl to turn lii> hack upon the future, and hig
(in m 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-
e;nt of MipiT-tition and prejudice, never stirring
hainl or foot but as he is pulled by the wires and
strings of the state- conjurors, the legitimate ma-
nagers and proprietors of tbe show. His powers
of will, ot thought, and action are to be para-
lysed in him, and he is to be told and to believe
that whatever is, must be. Perhaps Mr Can-
ning will say that men were to make experi-
ments, and to resolve upon struggles formerly,
but that now they are to surrender their under-
HMdings and their rights into his ke< ping.
But at what period of the world was the system
of political wisdom stereotyped, like Mr Cob-
bett's ' Gold against Paper,' so as to admit of
no farther alterations or improvements, or cor-
rection of errors of the press? When did the
experience of mankind become stationary or
retrograde, so that we must act from the obso-
lete inferences of past periods, not from the
living impulse of existing circumstances, and the
consolidated force of the knowledge and reflec-

206 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

tion of ages up to the present instant, naturally
projecting us forward into the future, and not
driving us back upon the past ? Did Mr Can-
ning 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 ourselves, ordine
retrogrado, we call ancient?" The latest pe-
riods 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 fluttering 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 no
discoveries, 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 pre-
sented (he tells us in this very speech) as great

ON PAHADOX AM.

I <ontra-t in tin- state of ili<- country as any two
periede of its histor) the moil opposite or most
remote. Well then, arc our experience and our
atraggles at an end ? No, he says, "the crisis

i- at hand for every man to tako part for, Of

agaJhal the inatttntinni of the Britiafa Monareln ."

His purt is taken: "but of this be sure, to
iln aught good will never be bis task!" He
will ^uard carefully against all possible improve-
ments, and maintain all possible abuses sucivd,
impassive, immortal. He will not give up die
fruit of centuries of experience, of struggles,
ami of one century at least of liberty, since the
■! at ion of 1688, for any doubtful experi-
ments whatever. We are arrived at the end of
our experience, our struggles, and our liberty — ■
ami are to anebor through time and eternity in
the harbour of passive obedience and non-r
anee. We (the people of England) will tell
Mr Canning frankly what we think of bis
magnanimous and ulterior resolution. It is our
own ; and it has been the resolution of man-
kind in all ages of the world. No people, no
age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom,
or tin; enjoyment of present blessings, for vision-
ary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the know-
ledge of tbe past, the actual inHietion of the
present, that has produced all changes, all inno-
vations, and all improvements — not (as is pre-
tended) the chimerical anticipation of possible

208 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

advantages, 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 op-
pressions of the feudal system that produced its
abolition after centuries of sufferings and of
struggles. It was the experience of the caprice
and tyranny off 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 incor-
rigible attachment of the same Stuarts to Popery
and Slavery, with their many acts of cruelty,
treachery, and bigotry, that produced the Revo-
lution, and set the House of Brunswick on the
Throne. It was the conviction of the incurable
nature of the abuse, increasing with time and
patience, and overcoming the obstinate attach-
ment 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, licentiousness,

OK PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

and innumerable oppressions of the old (iov< la-
ment in France that produced the French Revo-
lution. It was the experience of the deb rmina-
tion of the British Ministry to harass, in-ult,
and plunder them, that produced the Revolution
of the I'nited Stales. Away then with this
mi-erablo cant against fanciful theories, and
appeal to acknowledged experience! Men never
act against their prejudices hut from the nmr
of their feelings, the necessity of their situations
— their theories are adapted to their practical
convictions and their varying circumstance.
Nature has ordered it so, and Mr Canniii'_r, by
shewing olf his rhetorical paces, by his ''arab-
Umx and lisping and nicknaming God's ere a-
tares," e;innot invert that order, efface tin- 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 l>v that opinion, or maintain itself in
opposition 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

P

210 ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE.

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 Re-
form, 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 prejudices, 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 its destruction. If, however, an example
of the futility of all his projects and all his rea-
sonings 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 Monarchy,
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 XI.

ON VULOARITY AND AFFECTATION.

Ii \\ subjects are more nearly allied than these
two — vulgarity and affectation. It may be Hid
of them truly that " thin partitions do their
bounds divide." There cannot be a surer proof
of a l«>u origin or of an innate meanness of
disposition, than to be always talking and think-
ing of being genteel. One must feel a strong
tendency to that which one is always trying 10
avoid: whenever we pretend, on all occasions
a mighty contempt for anything, it is a pretty
clear sign that we feel ourselves very nearly un
a level with it. Of the two classes of people, I
hardly know which is to be regarded with nio-t
distaste, the vulgar aping the genteel, or the
genteel constantly sneering at and endeavouring
to distinguish themselves from the vulgar. These
two MM 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

212 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

opposition to each other ; jostle in their preten-
sions 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 ob-
ject 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 really is, is
still worse. Most of the characters in Miss
Burney's novels, the Branghtons, the Smiths,
the Dubsters, the Cecilias, the Delvilles, &c.
are well met in this respecff, 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 prin-
cipal 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 every-

OS VI I.<i.\IllT\ \M. V! I l.( TATION. 213

thing by Dame, fashion, opinion; and I
iVuiii t In- rnii-cious absence of Mtl qualities or
sincere satisfaction in itself, it builds its super-
cilious and fantastic conceit on the wretchedness
and wants of othrrs. Violent antipathies are
always suspicious, and betray a secret utiiuity.
The difference between the " Great Vulgar and
the Small" is mostly in outward circumstances.
The coxcomb criticises the dress <>f the clown, as
the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the
illiterate, or the prude is shocked at the back-
sliding of her frail acquaintance. Those who
have the fewwl resources in themselves, na-
turally seek the food of their self-love elsewhere.
The most ignorant people find most to laugh at
in Grangers: scandal and satire prevail mo-t in
count ry- places ; and a propensity to ridicule
the slightest or most palpable deviation
from what we happen to approve, ceases with
the progress of common sense and decency.*

I f an 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 <;m
possibly make it ; and after having rendered them im-
moveable 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 a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much
time at his toilet, and laid on with equal care and at-
tention his yellow and red okcr on particular parts of
his forehead or checks, as he judges most becoming ;

214 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

True worth does not exult in the faults and
deficiencies of others ; as true refinement turns
away from grossness and deformity, instead
of being tempted to indulge in an unmanly
triumph over it. Raphael would not faint away
at the daubing of a sign-post, 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 coming in contact with that
which is coarse and homely. It reposes on
itself, and is equally free from spleen and affec-
tation. 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 involun-
tary 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 courtesy (such
as Jeannie 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 expression of her
extreme good opinion of herself and contempt

whoever of these two despises the other for this attention
to the fashion of his country, whichever first feels him-
self provoked to laugh, is the barbarian." — Sir Joshua
Reynolds's Discourses.

■ON Vri.OAKITY AND AFFECTATION. 1 1 B

for the untutored rustic, she would herself the
next day he 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
chattel -with her (upon equal terms) about caps
ami 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 Ht
like hand and glove. It is like mistress, like
■aid. 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
kmsi to ride in a coach and 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 furniture and fine houses : both apply
the terms, shocking and disagreeable, to the same
tilings 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

216 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

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 the 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 distinguished, or is
necessary to his enjoying this idle and imposing
parade of his person ? Is he delighted with the
state-coach and gilded pannels? 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 White-
chapel, 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 marshal'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 de-
spised attendant on it. A wax-work figure

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 217

would answer the same purpose: a Lord Mayor
of I .i>i M Ion bus as much tinsel to be proud of.
I would rath, r have a king do something that
no one else lias 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 benign, 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 admiration of the baubles, the outward
>yml>ols of pomp and power, the sound and
show, w hieh are the habitual delight and mighty
prerogative of kings. The stupidest slave wor-
ships the gaudiest tyrant. The same gross mo-
tives 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 intellectual refinement might seek in
vain for higher proofs of internal worth and
inherent majesty in the object of its idolatry,

218 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

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 re-
duced 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 * 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 because other people are pre-
vented 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 hyper-
critics. He finds fault with me and calls my
taste vulgar, because I go to Sadler's Wells
("a place he has heard of" — O Lord, Sir!)
— because I notice the Miss Dennetts, " great
favourites with the Whitechapel orders " — praise
Miss Valancy, " a bouncing Columbine at

* This name was originally spelt Braughton in the
manuscript, and was altered to Branghton by a mistake
of the printer. Branghton, 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 !"

on \ I I.UARITY AND AFFECTATION. 219

Ashley's and them there places, as his barber
inform- him," (bas he no way of establishing
hiin-.lt in his own pood opinion but by tri-
Binphin<4 over his barber's bud English?) — and
finally, because I recognise the existence of the
Cobourg and the Surrey theatres, at the names
of which he cries " Faugh!" with great ngnifi-
cance, as if he had some personal disgust at
them, and yet he would be supposed never to
have tntcrcd them. It is not his cue as a well-
bred critic. Cest beau fa. Now this appears
to me a very crude, unmeaning, indiscriminate,
whole-ale, and vulgar way of thinking. It is
prejudging things in the lump, by names, and
places, and clusses, instead of judging of them
by what they are in themselves,- by their real
qualities and shades of 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
assumption of superiority. It is exceeding im-
pertinence. It is rank coxcombry — it is nothing
in the world else. To condemn because the
multitude admire is as essentially vulirar as to
admire because they admire. There is no exer-
cise 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 re-

220 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

versing the sentence of the Whitechapel orders ?
Or how can it affect my opinion of the merits of
an actor at the Cobourg or the Surrey theatres,
that these theatres are in or out of the Bills of
Mortality ? This is an easy, short-hand way of
judging, as gross as it 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 dis-
cernment 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 de-
lighted 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

ON \ IT.OARITY AND AFFKCTATlov JJ 1

nagc to the vulgar reader, knows as much
of tli<- matter us he does. In a word, the answer
to all this in the first instance, is to say what
vulgarity i». NOw it- essence, I imagine, con-
sists in taking manners, actions, words, opinions,
on trust from other-, without examining one's
own feelings or ■rfighjng the merits of the case.
It i> coarseness or shallowness of taste, arising
from want of individual refinement, together
with the confidence and presumption inspired
l>y 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 affect a gesture, an
opinion, a phrase, because it is the rage with a
large number of persons, or to hold it in abhor-
ivnce because another set of persons, very little,
if at all, better informed, cry it down to di>tin-
<jui>li 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, igno-
rance is not vulgarity, awkwardness is not vul-
garity : 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 com-
pany we keep. Caliban is coarse enough, but

222 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

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
untutored 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 affectation 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

Qfl \l UiAHITY AND AFFECTATION. 223

High itreet, Edinburgh. We want a eame for
this hist character. An opinion it rnjgar that

i> st,u<«l in the rank breath of the rahhle : nor
is it a bit purer or more refined for baring
passed through the well-cleansed teeth of a
whole court. The inherent vulgarity i9 in
baring no other feeling on any subject than the
erode, blind, headlong, gregarious notion ac-
quired by sympathy with the mixed multitude
or with a fastidious minority, who are just as
in-i ii-ihli' 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 $ermim pecus imitatu-
rum — the herd of pretenders to what they do
not feci and to what is not naturul 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 refine-
ment. K< tin. in. nt will in all classes be the
exception, not the rule ; and the exception may
fall out in one class as well as another. A king
is but an hereditary title. A nobleman is only
one of the House of Peers. To be a knight or
alderman is confessedly a vulgar thing. The
king the other day made Sir Walter Scott a
baronet, but not all the power of the three

224 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

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 vul-
garity.

There is a well-dressed and an ill-dressed
mob, both which I hate. Odi profanum vvlgus,
et arceo. The vapid affectation of the one is to
me even more intolerable than the gross inso-
lence 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 feel-
ings, however coarse and misguided, which is
something : the others consult only appearances,

vni.OAKITY AND AFF ROTATION. 226

which arc nothing, either as a test of happiness
or virtue. Hogarth in his prints has trimmed
the balance of pretension between the downright
blackguard and the wirduant fine gentleman

unanswerably. It does not appear in hi* moral
demonstrations (whatever it maj do in the
tcel letter-writing: of Lord Chesterfield, or the
chivalrous rhapsodies of Burke) that vice, by
losing all its grOWneM, loses halt' its evil. It
lieeniiu - more contemptible, not less disgusting.
What is there in common, for instance, between
his beaux and belles, his rakes and his coquet*,
and the men and women, the true heroic and
ideal characters in Raphael? But his peoph- of
fashion and quality are just upon a par with the
low, the selfish, the unidml characters in the
contrasted view of human life, and are i
the very same characters, only changing places.
If the lower ranks are actuated by envy and
iincharitaldeness towards the upper, the latter
have scarcely any feelings hut of pride,
tempt, and aversion to the lower. If the poor
would pull down the rich to gal nt their
things, the rich would tread down the poor as in
a vine-press, and squeeze the last shilling out of
their pockets, and the la-t drop of blood out
of their veins. If the headstrong self-will and
unruly turbulence of a common ale-house are
shocking, what shall we say to the studied in-
sincerity, the insipid want of common sense, the

226 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

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 sup-
pressed, stifled, hermetically sealed, under the
smooth, cold, glittering varnish of pretended
refinement and conventional politeness. The
one may be corrected by being better informed ;
the other is incorrigible, wilful, heartless de-
pravity. 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
provoked. 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

M VULOARITV AND AFFECTATION. 227

tin ; the insidious policy of the other striken
like a pestilence, and is more fatal and inevita-
ble. The slow jwison of despotism is «
than the convulsive struggles of anarchy. uOf
all evils," says Hume, " anarchy is the shortest
lived." The <me may " l>reak out like a wild
overthrow;" but tin* other, from its secret, sacred
stand, operates unseen, and undermines the hap-
piness 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 dread-
ful to hear the noise and uproar of an infuriated
multitude stung hy the sense of wrong, ami
maddened by sympathy : it is more appalling to
think of the 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 out-
rage is to be apprehended from the one, even
iniquity is deliberately sanctioned by the other,
without regard to justice or decency. Tin
word of a king, "Go thou and do likev
makes the stoutest heart dumb: truth and
honesty shrink before it,* If there are watch-

* A lady of quality, in allusion to the gallantries of a
reigotag Prince, Mug told, "I suppose it will b« your
turn next," said, "No, I hope not, for you know it is
impossible to refuse!"

228 ONVULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

words for the rabble, have not the polite and
fashionable their hackneyed phrases, their ful-
some, unmeaning jargon as well? Both are to
me anathema !

To return to the first question, as it regards
individual 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 Eastward Hoe, written by
Ben Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in con-
junction. This play is supposed to have given
rise to Hogarth's series of prints of the Idle and
Industrious Apprentice; and there is something
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 meanness, the internal worthless-
ness and external pretence, the rustic ignorance
and fine lady-like airs, the intoxication of novelty
and infatuation of pride, appear like a dream or
romance, rather than anything in real life. Cin-
derella and her glass slipper are common-place
to it. She is not, like Millimant (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 lady-
ship, 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

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 229

exceed her raptures in the contemplation of both
of the dilemma. It is not familiarity >»ut
novelty, that weds her to the court. She rises
into the air of gentility from the ground of a
city life, ami flutters about there with all the
(fantastic delight of a butterfly that has just
changed it- caterpillar state. The sound of My
Lady intoxicates her with delight, make- \i> i
giddy, and almost turns her bruin. On the bare
strength of it she is ready to turn her father and
mother out of doors, and treats her brother and
lister with infinite disdain and judicial hardm —
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 pas-
toral innocence of manners —

" A ml 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

230 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

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

* " Girtred. 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, sis-
ter 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 impa-
tiency and disgraceful 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.

Gir. 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 buflin gown with
the tuf-tafitty cap and the velvet lace ! 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 gro-
gram 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 pip-
kins, 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.

Gir. Bow -bell ! 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 though thou art not likely

ON VULOARITY AND AFFECTATION. 231

to brinur it licr. Hm is quite above thinking
of a -( nlrmt'iit, jointure, or pin-money. Sin-

to be a lady as I am, yet surely thou art a creature of
God's making, and may'st peradwntnrc !<• saved as soon
as I — does he como ? And ever and anon she douhled in her

son,/.

Mil Now, lady's my comfort, what a profane ape's
here !

Enter Sir Petronel Flasii, Mr Touchstone, and Mrs

Touchstone. •

Gir. Is my knight come ? O the lord, my band !
Sister do my checks look well ? Give me a little box o'
tin- car that I may seem to blush. Now, now ! so,
tin re, tin re ! here he is ! O my dearest delight ! Lord,
lord ! ami how docs my knight ?

touchstone. Fie, with more modesty.

Gir. Modesty, why, I am no citizen now. Modesty !
am I not to be married ? You're best to keep me mo-
lest, now I am to be a lady.

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

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

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

Gir. 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 I know
where he had money to pay the gentlemen usher and
heralds tluir tecs. Ave. that he is a knight : and so
might you have been too, if you had been aught else but

232 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

takes the will for the deed all through the piece,
and is so besotted with this ignorant, vulgar

an ass, as well as some of your neighbours. An' I thought
you would not ha' been knighted, as I am an honest
woman, 1 would ha' dubbed you myself. I praise God,
I have wherewithal. But as for you, daughter

Gir. 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.

Gir. 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.

Gir. Body o' truth, citizens, 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 1.

[This dotage on sound and show seemed characteristic
of that age (see New Way to Pay Old Debts, $r.) — as if
in the grossness of sense, and the absence of all intellec-
tual 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

ON VtUiMiITY AND AFFECTATION. 233

notion of r;mk and title, us a real thing that can-
not he counterfeited, that -die i> the dupe of h< r
own fine stratagems, and marries a gull, a dolt,
■ broken adventurer for an accomplished and
luave gentleman. Her meanness is equal to bet
folly and her pride (and nothing can be greater),

more extravagant demonstrations of luxury and artificial

refinement. I

• • • • " Girtred. Good lord, that there are no
fairies now-a-days, Syn.

Sywl-ii- Why, madam?

Gir. To do miracles, and bring ladies money. Sure,
if \\( lay in a cleanly house, they would haunt it, Synne I
I'll try. I'll sweep the chamber soon at nijjht, and set a
disli of water o' the hearth. A fairy may come and
bring a pear) 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 V 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 !

Syn. They are pretty waking dreamt, these.

Gir. Or may not some old usurer be drunk overnight
with a bag of money, and lease it l>ehind him on a stall ?
. hI's sake, Syn, lets rise to-morrow by break of
day, aud see. I protest, la, if I had as much money as
an alderman I would scatter some on *t r 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.

234 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.

yet she holds out on the strength of her original
pretensions for a long time, and plays the upstart
with decent and imposing consistency. Indeed
her infatuation and caprices are akin to the
flighty perversity of a disordered imagination ;
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 Deckar's group of coquets 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 !

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-edu-

ON VULOARITY AND AFFECTATION. 235

ration supplies the place of the old-fashioned
ii of kitchen persecution and eloquence.
A \\t ll-bred woman now seldom goes into the
kit* lien to look after the servants: — formerly
what was called a good manager, an exemplary
mistress of a family, did nothing hut 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
hti 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, &c. are no longer held for
current. A woman from this habit, which at
last became an unconrpierable 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 neces-
sity of talking of it in the next company she
goes into, prevent her — and the benefit to all
parties is incalculable !

ESSAY XII.

THE FIGHT.

' The fight, the fight ' s the thing,

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

Where there's a mill, there's a way. — I said so to
myself, as I walked down Chancery lane, about
half-past six o'clock on Monday the 10th of
December, to inquire at Jack Randall's where
the fight the next day was to be ; and I found
the proverb nothing " musty " in the present
instance. I was determined to see this fight,
come what would, and see it I did, in great
style. It was my first fight, yet it more than
answered my expectations. Ladies ! it is to you
I dedicate this description ; nor let it seem out
of character for the fair to notice the exploits of
the brave. Courage and modesty are the old
English virtues ; and may they never look cold
and askance on one another ! Think, ye fairest
of the fair, loveliest of the lovely kind, ye prac-
tises of soft enchantment, how many more ye

i hi: in i iit. SA~

kill with poboaed h;iits than ever fell in du-
ring; ;iiid listen with suhdued uir and without
shuddering, ti> 11 tale tragic only in appearance,
ami nored to the Fancy !

I was going down Chancery lane, thinking to
.Jack Randall's where the fight was to be,
when looking through the glass-door of the Hole
in the Wall, I heard a gentleman asking the
same question at Mrs Randall, as the author of
4 Waverley ' would express it. Now Mrs Ran-
dall stood answering the gentleman's question,
with all the authenticity of the lady of the Cham-
pion of the Light Weights. Thinks I, I'll wait
till this person comes out, and learn from him
bow it is. For to say a truth, I was not fond of
going into this house of call for heroes and phi-
losophers, ever since the owner of it (for Jack
is no gentleman) threatened once upon a time to
kick DM out of doors for wanting a mutton-chop
at his lio-j>ital>le hoard, when the conqueror in
thirteen kittles was more full of blue ruin than
of good manners. I was the more mortified at
this repulse, inasmuch as I had heard Mr James
Bimpkns, hooior in the Strand, one day when
the character of the Hole in the Wall was
brought in question, observe — "The bouse is a
very good bouse, and the company quite gen-
teel: I have been there myself!" Remember-
ing this unkind treatment of mine host, to which
mine hostess was also a party, and not wi>hing

238 THE FIGHT.

to put her in unquiet thoughts at a time jubilant
like the present, I waited at the door, when,
who should issue forth but my friend Joe P — ■ — s,
and, seeing him turn suddenly up Chancery lane
with that quick jerk and impatient stride which
distinguish a lover of the Fancy, I said, " I '11
be hanged if that fellow is not going to the fight,
and is on his way to get me to go with him."
So it proved in effect, and we agreed to adjourn
to my lodgings to discuss measures with that
cordiality which makes old friends like new, and
new friends like old, on great occasions. We
are cold to others only when we are dull in our-
selves, and have neither thoughts nor feelings to
impart to them. Give a man a topic in his
head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he
will be glad to share it with the first person he
meets. Joe and I, though we seldom meet,
were an alter idem on this memorable occasion,
and "had not an idea that we did not candidly
impart ; and " so carelessly did we fleet the
time," that I wish no better, when there is
another fight, than to have him for a companion
on my journey down, and to return with my
friend Jack Pigott, talking of what was to
happen or of what did happen, with a noble
subject always at hand, and liberty to digress to
others whenever they offered. Indeed, on my
repeating the lines from Spenser in an involun-
tary fit of enthusiasm,

tin: iii.iit. 280

•• What more felicity can t'.ill to creature,
Than to enjoy dtUghl ■ "ith liUrty } "

my last-named ingenious friend stopj>ed me by
laying that this, translated into the vulgate,
meant " Going to see ajight."

Joe and I could not settle about the
method of going down. He said there was a
caravan, he understood, to start from Tom Bel-
cher's at two, which would go there right out
and back again the next day. Now I never
travel all night, and said I should get a cast to
Newbury by one of the mails. Joe swore the
tiling was impossible, and I could only answer
thut I had made up my mind to it. In short,
he seemed to me to waver, said he only came to
lee if I was going, had letters to write, a cause
coming on the day after, and faintly said at
parting (for I was bent on setting out that mo-
ment)— " Well, we meet at Philippi ?" I made
the best of my way to Piccadilly. The mail
coach stand was bare. "They are all gone," said
I — "this is always the way with me — in the
instant I lose the future — if I had not stayed to
pour out that last cup of tea, I should have been
just in time ;" — and cursing my folly and ill-luck
together, without inquiring at the coach-office
whether the mails were gone or not, I walked
on in despite, and to punish my own dilatori-
ness and want of determination. At any rate, I
would not turn back: I might get to Hounslow,

240 THE FIGHT.

or perhaps farther, to be on my road the next
morning. I passed Hyde park corner (my Ru-
bicon), and trusted to fortune. Suddenly I
heard the clattering of a Brentford stage, and
the fight rushed full upon my fancy. I argued
(not unwisely) that even a Brentford coachman
was better company than my own thoughts (such
as they were just then), and at his invitation
mounted the box with him. I immediately
stated my case to him — namely, my quarrel
with myself for missing the Bath or Bristol
mail, and my determination to get on in conse-
quence as well as I could, without any dis-
paragement or insulting comparison between
longer or shorter stages. It is a maxim with
me that stage-coaches, and consequently stage-
coachmen, are respectable in proportion to the
distance they have to travel : so I said nothing
on that subject to my Brentford friend. Any
incipient tendency to an abstract proposition, or
(as he might have construed it) to a personal re-
flection of this kind, was however nipped in the
bud ; for I had no sooner declared indignantly
that I had missed the mails, than he flatly
denied that they were gone along, and lo ! at
the instant three of them drove by in rapid, pro-
voking, orderly succession, as if they would de-
vour the ground before them. Here again I
seemed in the contradictory situation of the man
in Dryden who exclaims,

" I follow Fate, which does too hard pursue ! "

I UK IKillT. JH

II' I Ii:k1 Mopped t«» inquire ;it the White Horse
Cellar, which would not have taken me a
minute, I ihould now have heen driving doWB
the Mad in all the dignified unconcern and ideal
ction of mechanical conveyance. The
Hath mail 1 had set my mind upon, and I had
missed it, as I miss everything else, hy my
own ahsurdity, in putting the will fur the deed,
and aiming at end- without employing means.
"Sir," said he of the Brentford, " the Bath
mail will be Up presently, my brother-in-law
drives it, and I will engage to stop him if there
is a place empty." I almost douhted my good
ireiiius; hut, sure enough, up it drove like
lightning, and stopped directly at the call of the
Hreiitford .Jehu. I would not have believed thi>
pos-ible, hut the brother-in-law of a mail-coach
driver is himself no mean man. I was trans-
fenvd without loss of time from the top el one
coach to that of the other, desired the truant to
pay my fare to the BrOMtford eoaelmian tor me
as I had no change, was accommodated with
a great coat, put up my umbrella to keep oft* a
drizzling mi>t, and we hegan to cut through the
air like an arrow. The mile-stones disappeared
one after another, the rain kept off; Tom Turtle*
the trainer sat before me on the coach-lio\,
with whom I exchanged civilities as a gentle-

• John Thurtcll, to wit

242 THE FIGHT.

man going to the fight ; the passion that had
transported me an hour before was subdued to
pensive regret and conjectural musing on the
next day's battle ; I was promised a place inside
at Reading, and upon the whole, I thought
myself a lucky fellow. Such is the force of
imagination ! On the outside of any other
coach on the 10th of December, with a Scotch
mist drizzling through the cloudy moonlight air,
I should have been cold, comfortless, impatient,
and, no doubt, wet through ; but seated on the
Royal mail, I felt warm and comfortable, the air
did me good, the ride did me good, I was
pleased with the progress we had made, and con-
fident that all would go well through the journey.
When I got inside at Reading, I found Turtle
and a stout valetudinarian, whose costume be-
spoke him one of the Fancy, and who had
risen from a three months' sick bed to get into
the mail to see the fight. They were intimate,
and we fell into a lively discourse. My friend
the trainer was confined in his topics to fight-
ing dogs and men, to bears and badgers ;
beyond this he was " quite chap-fallen," had
not a word to throw at a dog, or indeed very
wisely fell asleep, when any other game was
started. The whole art of training (I, however,
learnt from him) consists in two things, exercise
and abstinence, abstinence and exercise, repeated
alternately and without end. A yolk of an egg

THE FIGI1I 818

with u spoonful of rum in it 19 the first thing in
a morning, and then a walk of six miles till
breakfast This meal consists of a plentiful
supply of tea and toast and beef-steaks. Then
another six or seven miles till dinner-time, and
another supply of solid beef or mutton with
n pint of porter, and perhaps, at the utmost, a
couple of glasses of sherry. Martin trains on
wan r. but this increases his infirmity on another
very dangerous side. The Gas-man takes now
and then a chirping glass (under the rose) to
console him, during a six weeks' probation, for
the absence of Mrs Hickman — an agreeable
woman, with (I understand) a pretty fortune of
two hundred pounds. How matter presses on
me ! What stubborn things are facts ! How
inexhaustible is nature and art! " It is well,"
as I once heard Mr Richmond observe, " to see
a variety." He was speaking of cock-fighting
as an edifying spectacle. I cannot deny but
that one learns more of what is (1 do not say of
what ought to be) in this desultory mode of
practical study, than from reading the same
book twice over, even though it should be a
moral treatise. Where was I ? I was sitting at
dinner with the candidate for the honours of the
ring, " where good digestion waits on appetite,
and health on both." Then follows an hour of
social chat and native glee; and afterward-, to
another breathing over heathy hill or dale.

244 THE FIGHT.

Back to supper, and then to bed, and up by six
again — Our hero

" Follows so the ever-running sun,
With profitable ardour " —

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

The invalid in the Bath mail soared a
pitch above the trainer, and did not sleep
so sound, because he had " more figures and
more fantasies." We talked the hours away
merrily. He had faith in surgery, for he had
three ribs set right, that had been broken in a
ty,rn-up at Belcher's, but thought physicians old
women, for they had no antidote in their cata-
logue for brandy. An indigestion is an excel-
lent common-place for two people that never
met before. By way of ingratiating myself, I
told him the story of my doctor, who, on my
earnestly representing to him that I thought his
regimen had done me harm, assured me that the
whole pharmacopeia contained nothing compara-
ble to the prescription he had given me ; and,
as a proof of its undoubted efficacy, said, that
" he had had one gentleman with my complaint
under his hands for the last fifteen years. This

THE PIOIIT. MB

anecdote mnde my companion shake the rough
sides of his three great coats with boisterous
laughter; and Turtle, starting out of lii> -l<. >p,
swore he knew how the fight would go, for h<;
had had a dream about it. Sure enough tin-
rascal told us how the three first rounds went
off, but " his dream," like others, " denoted a
foregone conclusion." He knew his men. The
moon now rose in silver state, and I ventured,
with some hesitation, to point out this object of
placid beauty, with the blue serene beyond , u,
the man of science, to which his ear he " seriously
inclined," the more as it gave promise (Tun beau
jour for the morrow, and showed the riiiLr
undrenched by envious showers, arrayed in
sunny smiles. Just then, all going on well, I
thought on my friend Joe, whom I had left
behind, and said innocently, " There was a biock-
head of a fellow I left in town, who said Umn
was no possibility of getting down by the
mail, and talked of going by a caravan from
Belcher's at two in the morning, alter In hail
written some letters." " Why," said he of the
lapels, " I should not wonder if that was the
very person we saw running about like mad
from one coach-door to another, and asking if
any one had seen a friend of his, a gentleman
going to the fight, whom he had missed stupidly
enough by staying to write a note." " Pray,
Sir," said my fellow-traveller, " had he a plaid-

■

246 THE FIGHT.

cloak on?" "Why, no," said I, "not at the
time I left him, but he very well might after-
wards, for he offered to lend me one." The
plaid-cloak and the letter decided the thing.
Joe, sure enough, was in the Bristol mail, which
preceded us by about fifty yards. This was
droll enough. We had now but a few miles to
our place of destination, and the first thing I did
on alighting at Newbury, both coaches stopping
at the same time, was to call out, " Pray is
there a gentleman in that mail of the name of
P — s ? " " No," said Joe, borrowing something
of the vein of Gilpin, " for I have just got out."
" Well ! " says he, " this is lucky ; but you
don't know how vexed I was to miss you ; for,"
added he, lowering his voice, " do you know
when I left you I went to Belcher's to ask
about the caravan, and Mrs Belcher said very
obligingly, she couldn't tell about that, but
there were two gentlemen who had taken places
by the mail and were gone on in a landau, and
she could frank us. It's a pity I didn't meet
with you; we could then have got down for
nothing. But mum's the word." It's the devil
for any one to tell me a secret, for it is sure to
come out in print. I do not care so much to
gratify a friend, but the public ear is too great a
temptation to me.

Our present business was to get beds and
supper at an inn; but this was no easy task.

Till: IT..IIT.

The public-houses wore full, and where \<>u saw
a light at a private house, and people poking
their heads out of the casement to see wlm
going on, they instantly put them in and shut
the window, the moment von seemed advancing
with a suspicious overture for accommodation.
( )ur guard and coachman thundered away at
the outer gate of the Crown for some time with-
out effect — such was the greater noise within ;
and when the doors were unharred, and v.
admittance, we found a party assembled in the
kitchen round a good hospitable fire, some
sleeping, others drinking, others talking on poli-
nd on t lie fight. A tall English yeoman
(something like Matthews in the face, and quite
as great a wag) —

** A lusty man to ben an abbot able," —

was making such a prodigious noise about rent
and taxes, and the price of corn now and
formerly, that he had prevented Bf from being
heard at the gate. The Hist thing I heard him
say was to a shuffling fellow who wanted to be
off a bet for a shilling glass of brandy and ■
— "Confound it, man, don't he insipid ! " Thinks
I, that is a good phrase. It was a good omen.
Be kepi it up so all night, nor flinched with the
approaoh of morning. He was a fine fellow,
with xiise, wit, and spirit, a hearty body and a
joyous mind, free-spoken, frank, convivial— one

248 THE FIGHT.

of that true English breed that went with
Harry the Fifth to the siege of Harfleur —
" standing like greyhounds in the slips," &c.
We ordered tea and eggs (beds were soon found
to be out of the question), and this fellow's con-
versation was sauce piguante. It did one's heart
good to see him brandish his oaken towel and
to hear him talk. He made mince-meat of a
drunken, stupid, red-faced, quarrelsome, frowsy
farmer, whose nose " he moralized into a thou-
sand similes," making it out a firebrand like
Bardolph's. " I'll tell you what, my friend,"
says he, " the landlady has only to keep you
here to save fire and candle. If one was to touch
your nose, it would go off like a piece of char-
coal." At this the other only grinned like an
idiot, the sole variety in his purple face being
his little peering grey eyes and yellow teeth ;
called for another glass, swore he would not
stand it; and after many attempts to provoke
his humorous antagonist to single combat, which
the other turned off (after working him up to a
ludicrous pitch of choler) with great adroitness,
he fell quietly asleep with a glass of liquor in
his hand, which he could not lift to his head.
His laughing persecutor made a speech over him,
and turning to the opposite side of the room,
where they were all sleeping in the midst of this
" loud and furious fun," said, " There's a scene,
by G — d, for Hogarth to paint. I think he and

Till" rionT. -J lit

Sliukspcre were our two best men at copying
lit . ' This confirmed me in my good opinion
of 'him. Hogarth, Shakspere, and Nature, were
ju-t enough for him (indeed for any man) to
know. I said, "You read Cobbett, don't you ?
At 1< :i-t," says I, "you talk just as well as he
writes." He seemed to doubt this. But I said,
" Wc have an hour to spare : if you'll get pen,
ink. and paper, and keep on talking, I'll write
down what you say; and if it doesn't make a
capital ' Political Register,' I'll forfeit my head.
You have kept me alive to-night, however.
I don't know what I should have done without
you." He did not dislike this view of the thing,
nor ray asking if he was not about the size of
•Jem Belcher; and told me soon afterward>, in
the confidence of friendship, that " the circum-
stance which had given him nearly the greatest
concern in his life, was Cribb's beating Jem
after he had lost his eye by racket-playing."
— The morning dawns ; that dim but yet clear
light appears, which weighs like solid bars -of
metal on the sleepless eyelids ; the guests dropped
down from their chambers one by one — but it
was too late to think of going to bed now (the
clock was on the stroke of seven), we had nothing
for it but to find a barber's (the pole that
glittered in the morning sun lighted us to his
shop), and then a nine miles' march to Hunger-
ford. The day was fine, the sky was blue, the

250 THE FIGHT.

mists were retiring from the marshy ground, the
path was tolerably dry, the sitting-up all night
had not done us much harm — at least the cause
was good ; we talked of this and that with
amicable difference, roving and sipping of many
subjects, but still invariably we returned to the
fight. At length, a mile to the left of Hunger-
ford, on a gentle eminence, we saw the ring
surrounded by covered carts, gigs, and car-
riages, of which hundreds had passed us on
the road ; Joe gave a youthful shout, and we
hastened down a narrow lane to the scene of
action.

Reader, have you ever seen a fight ? If not,
you have a pleasure to come, at least if it is a
fight like that between the Gas-man and Bill
Neate. The crowd was very great when we
arrived on the spot ; open carriages were coming
up, with streamers flying and music playing,
and the country-people were pouring in over
hedge and ditch in all directions, to see their
hero beat or be beaten. The odds were still on
Gas, but only about five to four. Gully had
been down to tiy Neate, and had backed him
considerably, which was a damper to the san-
guine confidence of the adverse party. About
200,000Z. were pending. Gas says, he has
lost 3,000/., which were promised him by differ-
ent gentlemen if he had won. He had presumed
too much on himself, which had made others

tiii: noiiT. 251

presume "ii him. 'I'll i- spirited ami formidable
\ < » 1 1 1 1 u ti How seems to have taken for his motto,
theoltl maxim, that "there are three things neces-
sary to success iti lite — Impudence ! Impudence I
lmpudtnce / " It is so in matters of opinion, hut
not in the Fancy, which is the most practical
of all thing*, though even here confidence is
half the battle, hut only halt. Our friend had
vapoured ami nraggered too much, as if he
wanted to grin and bally his adversary out of
tin fight " Alas! the Bristol man was not so
lamed ! " — " This is the grave-digger " (would
Tom Hickman exclaim in the moments of in-
toxication from gin and success, showing his
tremendous right hand), "this will send many
of them to their long homes; I haven't done
with them y.t ! " Why should he — though he
had licked four of the best men within the hour
— why should he threaten to inflict dishonour-
able chastisement on my old master Richmond,
a veteran going off the stage, and who has borne
his sable honours meekly .' Magnanimity, my
dear Tom, and bravery, should be inseparable.
Or why should he go up to his antagonist, the
first time he ever saw him at the Fives Court,
and measuring him from head to foot with a
glance of contempt, as Achilles surveyed Hec-
tor, say to him, " What, are you Bill Neate ?
I'll knock more blood out of that great carcase
of thine, this day fortnight, than you ever

252 THE FIGHT.

knock'd out of a bullock's ! " It was not manly,
— 'twas not fighter-like. If he was sure of the
victory (as he was not), the less said about it
the better. Modesty should accompany the
Fancy as its shadow. The best men were
always the best behaved. Jem Belcher, the
Game Chicken (before whom the Gas-man
could not have lived) were civil, silent men.
So is Cribb; so is Tom Belcher, the most
elegant of sparrers, and not a man for every one
to take by the nose. I enlarged on this topic in
the mail (while Turtle was asleep), and said
very wisely (as I thought) that impertinence
was a part of no profession. A boxer was
bound to beat his man, but not to thrust his fist,
either actually or by implication, in every one's
face. Even a highwayman, in the way of trade,
may blow out your brains, but if he uses foul
language at the same time, I should say he was
no gentleman. A boxer, I would infer, need
not be a blackguard or a coxcomb, more than
another. Perhaps I press this point too much
on a fallen man — Mr Thomas Hickman has by
this time learnt that first of all lessons, " That
man was made to mourn." He has lost nothing
by the late fight but his presumption ; and that
every man may do as well without! By an
over display of this quality, however, the public
had been prejudiced against him, and the know-
ing ones were taken in. Few but those who had

nil. in, in'. -J.VJ

bet on him wish, ,1 Gas to win. With my own
prepossexsions on the subject, the result of the
11th of December appeared to me as fine a
piece of poetical justice as I had ever witnessed.
The difference of weight between the two com-
batants (14 stone to 12) was nothing to the
sporting men. Great, heavy, clumsy, long-
armed Bill Neate kicked the beam in the scale
of the Gas-man's vanity. The amateurs were
frightened it his big words, and thought they
would make up for the difference of six feet and
five feet nine. Truly, the Fancy are not men
of illumination. They judge of what has beta,
and cannot conceive of anything that is to be.
The Gas-man had won hitherto; therefore he
must beat a man half as big again as himself —
and that to a certainty. Besides, there are as
many feuds, factions, prejudices, pedantic notions
in the Fancy as in the state or in the schools.
Mr Gully is almost the only cool, sensible man
among them, who exercises an unbiassed dis-
cretion, and is not a slave to his passion i in
these matters. But enough of reflections, and
to our tale. The day, as I have said, was fine
for a December morning. The grass was wet,
and the grouud miry, and ploughed up with
multitudinous feet, except that, within the ring
itself, there was a spot of virgin-green, closed in
and unprofaned by vulgar tread, that shone
with dazzling brightness in the mid-day sun.

254 THE FIGHT.

For it was now noon, and we had an hour to
wait. This is the trying time. It is then the
heart sickens, as you think what the two cham-
pions are about, and how short a time will
determine their fate. After the first blow is
struck, there is no opportunity for nervous ap-
prehensions; you are swallowed up in the
immediate interest of the scene — but

" Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream."

I found it so as I felt the sun's rays clinging to
my back, and saw the white wintry clouds sink
below the verge of the horizon. " So," I
thought, "my fairest hopes have faded from
my sight ! — so will the Gas-man's glory, or that
of his adversary, vanish in an hour." The
swells were parading in their white box-coats,
the outer ring was cleared with some bruises on
the heads and shins of the rustic assembly (for
the cockneys had been distanced by the sixty-six
miles) ; the time drew near ; I had got a good
stand; a bustle, a buzz, ran through the crowd;
and from the opposite side entered Neate, be-
tween his second and bottle-holder. He rolled
along, swathed in his loose great coat, his knock-
knees bending under his huge bulk ; and, with a
modest, cheerful air, threw his hat into the ring.
He then just looked round, and begun quietly to
undress ; when from the other side there was a

THK lli.IIT. M

similar rush and an opening made, and tli.
man mum forward with a conscious air <
ticipated triumph, too much like the cock-of-
the-walk. He strutted about more than became
a hero, sucked oranget with a supercilious air,
and threw away the skin with a toss of his head,
and went up and looked at Neate, which w
act of supererogation. The only sensible thing
he did was, as he strode away from the modern
Ajax, to fling out his arms, as if he wanted to
try whether they would do their work that day.
My this time they had stripped, and presented
a strong contrast in appearance. If Neat
like Ajax, "with Atlantean shoulders, fit to
bear" the pugilistic reputation of all Bristol,
Hickman might be compared to Diomed, light,
vigorous, elastic, and his back glistened in the
sun, as he moved about, like a panther'-; hide.
There was now a dead pause — attention was
awe-struck. Who at that moment, big with a
great event, did not draw his breath short — did
not feel his heart throb ? All was ready. They
tossed up for the sun, and the Gas-man won.
They were led up to the scratch — shook hands,
and went at it.

In the first round every one thought it was
all over. After making play a short time, the
Gas-man flew at his adversary like a tiirer,
struck five blows in as many seconds, three tir-t,
and then following him as he staggered back. t\\ «>

256 THE FIGHT.

more, right and left, and down he fell, a mighty-
ruin. There was a shout, and I said, " There is
no standing this." Neate seemed like a lifeless
lump of flesh and bone, round which the Gas-
man's blows played with the rapidity of elec-
tricity or lightning, and you imagined he would
only be lifted up to be knocked down again.
It was as if Hickman held a sword or a fire in
that right hand of his, and directed it against
an unarmed body. They met again, and Neate
seemed, not cowed, but particularly cautious.
I saw his teeth clenched together and his brows
knit close against the sun. He held out both
his arms at full length straight before him, like
two sledge hammers, and raised his left an inch
or two higher. The Gas-man could not get over
this guard — they struck mutually and fell, but
without advantage on either side. It was the
same in the next round ; but the balance of
power was thus restored — the fate of the battle
was suspended. No one could tell how it would
end. This was the only moment in which
opinion was divided ; for, in the next, the
Gas-man aiming a mortal blow at his adver-
sary's neck, with his right hand, and failing
from the length he had to reach, the other
returned it with his left at full swing, planted a
tremendous blow on his cheek-bone and eyebrow,
and made a red ruin of that side of his face.
The Gas-man went down, and there was another

nil: th.ht.

shout — a roar of triumph as the waves of for-
tune rolled tumultuously from side to side. This
was a settler. Iliekmun got up, and M grinned
horrihle a ghastly smile," yet he was evidently
dashed in his opinion of himself; it was the first
time he had ever hern so punished ; all one side
of his face was perfect scarlet, and his right eye
was closed in dingy Uacknc-s as he advanced to
the fight, less confident, hut still determined.
After one or two round-, not receiving another
such remembrancer, he rallied and went at it
with his former impetuosity. But in vain.
His strength had been weakened, — his blows
could not tell at such a distance, — he was obliged
to fling himself at his adversary, and could not
strike trom his feet; and almost as regularly as
he tlew at him with his right hand, Neate w;
the ldow, or drew back out of its reach, and
felled him with the return of his left. There
was little cautious sparring — no half-hits — no
tapping and trifling, none of the pctit-maitr
of the art — they were almost all knock-down
Idows: — the fight was a good stand-up fight.
The wonder was the half-minute time. If there
had been a minute or more allowed between
each round, it would have been intelligible how
they should by degrees recover strength and
resolution ; but to see two men smashed to the
ground, smeared with gore, stunned, sens
the breath beaten out of their bodies ; and then,

s

258 THE FIGHT.

before you recover from the shock, to see them
rise up with new strength and courage, stand
ready to inflict or receive mortal offence, and
rush upon each other " like two clouds over the
Caspian" — this is the most astonishing thing of
all : — this is the high and heroic state of man !
From this time forward the event became more
certain every round; and about the twelfth it
seemed as if it must have been over. Hickman
generally stood with his back to me ; but in the
scuffle, he had changed positions, and Neate
just then made a tremendous lunge at him, and
hit him full in the face. It was doubtful whether
he would fall backwards or forwards ; he hung
suspended for a minute or two, and then fell
back, throwing his hands in the air, and with
his face lifted up to the sky. I never saw any-
thing more terrific than his aspect just before he
fell. All traces of life, of natural expression,
were gone from him. His face was like a
human skull, a death's head spouting blood.
The eyes were filled with blood, the nose
streamed with blood, the mouth gaped blood.
He was not like an actual man, but like a pre-
ternatural, spectral appearance, or like one of
the figures in Dante's Inferno. Yet he fought
on after this for several rounds, still striking the
first desperate blow, and Neate standing on the
defensive, and using the same cautious guard to
the last, as if he had still all his work to do ;

Tin. FIGHT. 80S

mid it was not till the Gas-man was so stunn- id
in the seventeenth <»r eighteenth round, that his
senses forsook him, and he could not come to
time, that the battle was declared over.* Ye
who despise the Fancy, do something to show
as much pluck, or as much self-possession as
this, before you assume a superiority which you
have never given a single proof of by any one
action in the whole course of your lives ! — When
the Gas-man came to himself, the first words fl-
uttered were, " Where am I i What is the mat-
ter?" "Nothing is the matter, Tom, — you have
lost the battle, but you are the bravest man
alive." And Jackson whispered to him, " I am
collecting a purse for you, Tom." — Vain sounds,
and unheard at that moment ! Neate instantly
went up and shook him cordially by the hand,
and seeing some old acquaintance, began to
flourish with his fists, calling out, "Ah! you
always said I couldn't fight — What do you
think now .'" But all in good humour, and
without any appearance of arrogance; only it
was evident Bill Neate was pleased that he had

• Scroggins said of the Gas-man, that he thought lie
was a man of that courage, tiiat if his hands were cut
otV. be would still fight on with the stumps— like that <>t
Widdrington,—

" In doleful dumps,

Who, when his legs were smitten off,
Still fought upon his stumps."

260 THE FIGHT.

won the fight. When it was over, I asked
Cribb if he did not think it was a good one ?
He said, " Pretty well ! " The carrier-pigeons
now mounted into the air, and one of them flew
with the news of her husband's victory to the
bosom of Mrs Neate. Alas, for Mrs Hickman !
Mais au revoir, as Sir Fopling Flutter says.

I went down with Joe P s ; I returned with

Jack Pigott, whom I met on the ground. Toms
is a rattle-brain ; Pigott is a sentimentalist.
Now, under favour, I am a sentimentalist too —
therefore I say nothing, but that the interest
of the excursion did not flag as I came back.
Pigott and I marched along the causeway lead-
ing from Hungerford to Newbury, now ob-
serving the effect of a brilliant sun on the
tawny meads or moss-coloured cottages, now
exulting in the fight, now digressing to some
topic of general and elegant literature. My
friend was dressed in character for the oc-
casion, or like one of the Fancy ; that is, with a
double portion of great coats, clogs, and over-
hauls : and just as we had agreed with a
couple of country-lads to carry his superfluous
wearing-apparel to the next town, we were
overtaken by a return post-chaise, into which
I got, Pigott preferring a seat on the bar.
There were two strangers already in the chaise,
and on their observing they supposed I had
been to the fight, I said I had, and concluded

THE Flcil! I . -''il

they had done the same. They ippfw -I, how.
I little -hy and sore on the subject; and
it was not till after several hints dropped, and
question- put, that it turned out that they
liu<l Dined it. One of these friends had un-
dertaken to drive the other there in his gig:
thrv had set out, to make sure work, the day
before at three in the afternoon. The own. 1
of the one-horse vehicle scorned to ask his
way, and drove right on to Bagshot, instead
of turning off at Hounslow : there they stopped
all night, and set off the next day across the
country to Reading, from whence they took
coach, and got down within a mile or two of
Hungerford, just half an hour after the fight
was over. This might be safely set down as
one of the miseries of human life. We parted
with these two gentlemen who had been to
see the fight, but had returned as they went.
;tt Wolhnmpton, where we were promised beds
(an irresistible temptation, for Pigott had passed
flic preceding night at Hungerford as we had
done at Newbury), and we turned into an old
bow-windowed parlour with a carpet and a
snug fire ; and after devouring a quantity of
tea, toast, and eggs, sat down to consider, during
MB hour of philosophic leisure, what we should
have for supper. In the midst of an Epicurean
deliberation between a roasted fowl and mutton
chops with mashed potatoes, we were inter-

262 THE FIGHT.

rupted by an inroad of Goths and Vandals—
O procul este profani — not real flash-men, but
interlopers, noisy pretenders, butchers from
Tothill-fields, brokers from Whitechapel, who
called immediately for pipes and tobacco, hop-
ing it would not be disagreeable to the gen-
tlemen, and began to insist that it was a cross.
Pigott withdrew from the smoke and noise
into another room, and left me to dispute the
point with them for a couple of hours sans in-
termission by the dial. The next morning we
rose refreshed j and on observing that Jack had
a pocket volume in his hand, in which he read
in the intervals of our discourse, I inquired what
it was, and learned to my particular satisfaction
that it was a volume of the * New Eloise.' La-
dies, after this, will you contend that a love for
the Fancy is incompatible with the cultivation of
sentiment ? — We jogged on as before, my friend
setting me up in a genteel drab great coat and
green silk handkerchief (which I must say be-
came me exceedingly), and after stretching our
legs for a few miles, and seeing Jack Randall,
Ned Turner, and Scroggins, pass on the top of
one of the Bath coaches, we engaged with the
driver of the second to take us to London for the
usual fee. I got inside, and found three other
passengers. One of them was an old gentleman
with an aquiline nose, powdered hair, and a pig-
tail, and who looked as if he had played many a

THE Finn I. SOB

rubber at the Bath rooms. I said to myself, be
is very like Mr Windham ; I wish he would
enter into conversation, that I might hear what
fine observations would come from those finely-
turned It 'attires. However, nothing passed, till,
stopping to dine at Reading, some inquiry was
made by the company about the light, nd I
gave (as the reader may believe) an eloquent
ami animated description of it. When we got
into the coach again, the old gentleman, after a
graceful exordium, said, he had, when a boy,
been to a fight between the famous Broughton
and George Stevenson, who was called the
FifjhtitKj Coachman, in the year 1770, with
the late Mr Windham. This beginning flat-
tered the spirit of prophecy with me, and
riveted mv attention. He went on — "George
Stevenson was coachman to a friend of my
father's. He was an old man when I saw him
some years afterwards. He took hold of hi-
own arm and said, ' there was muscle here
once, but now it is no more than this young
gentleman's.' He added, 'well, no matter; I
have been here long, I am willing to go hence,
and I hope I have done no more harm than
another man.' Once," said my unknown com-
panion, " I asked him if he had ever beat
Broughton ? He said Yes ; that he had fought
with him three times, and the last time he fairly
beat him, though the world did not allow it.

264 THE FIGHT.

' I'll tell you how it was, master. When the
seconds lifted us up in the last round, we were
so exhausted that neither of us could stand, and
we fell upon one another, and as Master
Broughton fell uppermost, the mob gave it in
his favour, and he was said to have won the
battle. But the fact was, that as his second
(John Cuthbert) lifted him up, he said to him,
" I'll fight no more, I've had enough ;" which,'
says Stevenson, 'you know gave me the vic-
tory. And to prove to you that this was the
case, when John Cuthbert was on his death-bed,
and they asked him if there was anything on his
mind which he wished to confess, he answered,
" Yes, that there was one thing he wished to set
right, for that certainly Master Stevenson won
that last fight with Master Broughton ; for he
whispered him as he lifted him up in the last
round of all, that he had had enough." ' " This,"
said the Bath gentleman, " was a bit of human
nature f* and I have written this account of the
fight on purpose that it might not be lost to the
world. He also stated as a proof of the candour
of mind in this class of men, that Stevenson
acknowledged that Broughton could have beat
him in his best day ; but that he (Broughton)
was getting old in their last rencounter. When
we stopped in Piccadilly, I wanted to ask the
gentleman some questions about the late Mr
Windham, but had not courage. I got out,

nii: rnnn. -J(i-">

n- 1! my coat and green silk handkerchief
to l'igott (loth to part with these ornaments
of life), ami walked home in high spirits.

P. 3. Joe called upon me the next day, to
ask me if I did not think the fight was a com-
plete thing ? I said I thought it was. I hope
he will relish my account of it.

ESSAY XIII.

ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

"Ha! here's some of us are sophisticated!"— Leak.

I am one of those who do not think that much
is to be gained in point either of temper or
understanding by travelling abroad. Give me
the true, sturdy, unimpaired John Bull feeling
that keeps fast hold of the good things it fancies
in its exclusive possession, nor ever relaxes in
its contempt for foreign fashions and frivolities.
What is the use of keeping up an everlasting
see-saw in the imagination, between small beer
and vin ordinaire, between long and short waists,
between English gravity and French levity ?
The home-brewed, the home-baked, the home-
spun, "filthy Dowlas," for me! What, in
short, do we gain by the contrary method of
fidgety, vexatious comparison, but jealousy of
the advantages of others, and dissatisfaction
with our own position ? Why are the French

• ON TRAVELLING* ABROAD. Ml

-i) daligfatad with themselves? They never quit
Pan-. Why do tin v talk so fast? French is
tin (iiiiciit language of Europe. Man was
made to stay at home— (why else have there
been so many millions horn who were never
meant to stir from it?) — to vegetate, to be rooted
to the earth, to cling to his prejudices and
luxuriate in his follies. At present, we are like
a set of exotics, and fine, sickly plants, tossed
ami flirted about from shore to shore — not like
our native oaks, sturdy, vigorous, gnarled,
grow tag to the soil — but " now a wood is come
to Dunsinane " — and clouds of English hover
on the steam-boat and darken every strand.
Why, the sun shone just the same, and this earth
of ours rolled round, and the peasant toiled "in
the eye of Phoebus, and all night slept in
Elysium " —

"Next day after dawn,
Did rise and help Hyperion to his hone ;
And follow'd so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour to his grave" —

long before this sailing of steam-boats and
stalling of diligences, this cracking of whips
and rattling of wheels, this exposing our own
folly and learning other people's vices, was
heard of. We now only seem to exist where we
IN not, — to be always hurrying on to what is
before us, or looking back to what is behind us,
never to be fixed to any spot or to settle to any

268 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

employment. We dart to and fro, like the
dragon-fly, on the surface of the map, in search
of our insect, glittering prey, and exhibit a picture
of impatience, insignificance, and irritability.
Formerly an English country squire was like the
genius of the woods, enclosed in the heart of
one of his own oak trees : in the present day, he
resembles rather a moody spirit, wandering from
one land to another in search of rest, and find-
ing none. Enough, enough ! Return, ye Ab-
sentees— Mr Macculloch will not prevent you !
Break up, ye Travellers' Club, nor longer be-
stride the world, with one foot of the compasses
stuck in Pall Mall, and the other in Palmyra.
Your country can dispense with your omni-
presence.

Dr Johnson remarked long ago how little
addition was made to the conversation of sensible
men by foreign travel. Pedants and petits-
maitres, indeed, are always taken up with what
they think nobody knows but themselves. It
has been proposed as a problem to ascertain
whether the slightest trace could be discovered
of any impression whatever made on French
art by the works of the Italian and other great
painters during the sixteen or seventeen years
that these remained among them : — it is true,
the having the Greek statues in their possession,
served to confirm and encourage them in all
their faults. They smiled to see the resemblance

ON TRAVKI.LINO ABROAD. JU'J

between a marble statue and their own style of
painting ; anil thought thai "if 'twere painted
'twould be twice as fine." Antique syrnm. -try
and elegance only wanted a modern French air
added to it, to be perfect. Thus we turn away
ftom the lessons afforded to our vanity and want
of taste, and only attend to what flatters the
original disease or superficial bias of our minds.
We Icon nothing from others, for we see no-
thing in then but through the medium of our
self-love. Not a particle of advance is made,
even in boasted candour and liberality ; for we
continue with all that candour and liberality to
turn the think, of their virtues, and to circum-
vent their good qualities by some insidious con-
cession or crafty qualifications, in such a manner
as to turn them into an indirect compliment to
ourselves. If we praise them, it is with a men-
tal reservation, and we are studying all the time
liou hy the aid of a But or an If we may retract
the lukewarm donation. Liberality begins and
ends at home. It is not a neighbourly accom-
plishment. Or its professions are verbal,
strained, affected, without vital heat or efficacy
in them. We make a great gulp to swallow
down our prejudices, resolve to be magnanimous,
and say: come, let us acknowledge the plain
truth ; the French do not all get drunk, nor do
they all rob or murder people for their money.
We do not think one bit the better of them for

270 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

this triple certificate of merit, and absolution
from moral turpitude, but of ourselves for our
condescension in giving it them. We are twist-
ing the thing about somehow, in some secret
corner of our heart, to prove that all these nega-
tive recommendations manifest a want of spirit,
of manly nerve, are effeminate and sneaking,
the virtues of women. Like the patriotic judge in
the time of Queen Elizabeth, who accounted for
the comparative honesty of the Scotch in the
same way, we say that the French do not rob
as the English do, " because they have not such
good hearts."* As to our drunkenness, as far
as this practice still sticks to us as a national
reproach, the truth is that, with the lover in the
play, " We would not change that fault (great
it is) for their best virtue." All our acknow-
ledgments on this head are essentially insincere,
lip-deep, and, at bottom, so many tacit and side-
long compliments to ourselves. The egotism of
a whole people is proof both against conviction
and shame. It is not so if we can discover any
opening, any loop-hole for fault-finding. We
are then keen enough on the scent, and " stand
like greyhounds on the slip, eager to start
away." " Oh ! most small fault, how ugly in
another dost thou show \" If a servant leaves
a door open at night, her defence that there is no

* Meaning, stout or bold ones.

• UN Til VVI.I I.INQ ABROAD. J? 1

danger Ittndl her or her nation in no stead —
wi- arc furious ut the oardeMMM of French
i mote, lad forget the implied reproof to our-
that we come from a place where such
carelessness might he fatal. What monstrous
injustice ! We turn the matter over in our
minds and twist it into this solution, that the
■aperiot leeultjr is owing not to any greater
goodness in the national character, but to the
greater -.verity and arbitrariness of the police;
a mighty relief to our feelings, which were be-
ginning to be hurt at there being no chance of
our having our throats cut while we slept, even
though the doors were left open. "But tin ■
look at our liberty!" charming liberty of being
knocked on the head, or of knocking others on
the head and being hanged for it. The English
claim a chartered right to be blackguards, and
this is all they care for. ' But if a French mar-
quis filches a table-spoon, or pockets a reckoning,
then joy to the English ! The jubilee is great !
We are satisfied that the French are a despi-
cable, worthless nation, and the English "all
honourable men." One argues that the titled
offender ought to have been pumped upon,
while another traces it to the corruption of the
old privileged orders in France, among whom
every meanness and profligacy could be practised
with impunity, and consequently all sense of
honour and propriety was lost. If things axe

272 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

dirty, there is a great outcry ; but if they are
nice, it is so much the worse. What nonsense !
What refinements ! What effeminacy ! We do
not like another man's house for being finer
than our own; nor a country neither. It is
an insult on our ordinary ideas. The country
squires and neighbouring dames went away,
grumbling and sulky, from the finery of Font-
hill Abbey, and no doubt talked a great deal
about real comfort when they got home. The
French people ask: if everything is so dis-
agreeable to us abroad, why do we come ? or,
having come, why do we stay ? And the plea
seems unanswerable. I get into a great many
scrapes by maintaining that the mutton is good
in Paris — a paradox for which I deserve to be
stuck in the Quarterly Review, or turned out of
the Edinburgh. A girl in the diligence coming
along was very angry the first day, because the
dinner was bad ; there was not a thing she could
eat, she was sorry she had ever come to such a
place, she would go back again immediately, &c.
The next day the dinner was admirable; this
made her more angry than ever: so many
things, she did not know which to choose ; she
hated such a quantity thrown away, and she
would eat nothing out of spite and vexation that
her former predictions did not continue to be
made good. We can forgive anything sooner
than a real superiority over us. We would

ON TKAVKM.INQ ABROAD.

thankfully, joy fully put up with any inoonveni-
. annoyancei, abomination*, while from

borne, to g<> back with a thorough conviction of
our taking the lead of all the rest of the world in
tlir arts ami comforts of life. An acquaintance
of mine is settled in a French boarding house.
What scenes we have, what chucklings, in going
over the messes and the manners of the place.
How we exult in the soup-jiittu/if. How we
triumph over the buvillr, as tough ami tasteless
as a bullet. If a singlr tiling had been good
at dinner, it would ruin us for the evening.
Not a knife will cut, — and what a thing to set
down a single duck before six people, who
seem all ready to fall upon it and tear it in
pieces. What meanness! Why don't they get
a good substantial joint of meat, in whieh
there would be cut and come again? If they
had common sense, they would; but what can
be expected of such people? The want of
deeency and propriety is another never-failing
and delightful topic. They don't care a bit
what they say or do before company ! That
master of the house is a true Frenchman !
When carving, he flourishes his knife about in
sueh a manner as to endanger those who are
near him; and stops in the middle of his work
with the wing of a fowl suspended on the
point ot his fork, to spout a speech out of some
play. Dinner is no sooner over than, watching

T

274 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

his opportunities, he collects all the bottles and
glasses on the table, beer, wine, porter, empties
them into his own, heaps his plate with the rem-
nants of bones, gravy, vegetables, melted butter,
and sops them up with a large piece of bread,
clears his plate of everything as if a dog had
licked it, dips his bread in some other dish
that had escaped him, and finishes off by pick-
ing his teeth with his fork. Having thus satis-
fied his principal wants, he amuses himself
during the dessert by putting salt in the Gover-
ness's fruit, and giving a pinch of snuff to a
cat which is seated in his lap, with a string of
beads round its neck. And this, say we, is your
exquisite French refinement! These are the
people who are a century a-head of the English
in civilization. And is it not worth while to
pay a hundred and sixty francs a-month and
be starved, poisoned, talked, bit to death,
to arrive at so consolatory a reflection ? It
may be said that this is a vulgar Frenchman,
in a low rank of life : I answer that there is no
such character in any rank of life in London —
who spouts Shakespear one moment, the next
picks his teeth with his fork, and then with the
same fork helps you to a potato. There are
four charges that I would bring seriously against
the French, and which they themselves are not
prepared to expect : — 1. the want of politeness;
2. the want of imagination j.$. the want of

<>\ TIC V\ l.l.l.ls.. ABROAD. -J7-'>

lihentlitv } and 4. the want of graee. All tlii>

btiag c.nt i:ti \ 10 iii-t ippoartnoei Bad m i

opinion, may seem to require proof", uiitl it may
bftva it thus : — First, as to want of politeness:
tin French ure deficient in it lor this reason,
that tin v have no sense of pain, no nervous (or,
it" you will, morhid) sensibility, and consequently
can have little delicacy. They aim at the agree-
able, I grant, and succeed, but they have no
idea of the disagreeable, and therefore take no
pains to avoid giving offence. A Frenchman
coughs in your fuce, and spits on the floor. He
HUM up against you in the street, not to affront
you, for he very politely begs your pardon, but
because he thinks of nothing but himself, and
never anticipates the shock he may give you.
Pot myself, English-like, as one whom disagree-
able contingencies meet half-way and follow
after, if I see a person coming at the end of a
street, I am not easy till I have taken my own
side of the pavement, lest it should be thought
possible I do not mean to take it. I contradict
another bluntly and argue tenaciously, which
a Frenchman would not do ; on the other
hand, a French traveller will thrust his body
out of a coach window, if there is anything
he wishes to see, and keep all the air from
you, as if the carriage were his own property,
because he has a pleasure in looking out, and
has no idea that you have any objection to
being stitied. On the MUM principle he takes

276 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

his dog into the coach with him, — not having
the shadow of a conception how either he or
his dog can be offensive to the most delicate
constitutions.

French politeness consists in officiousness
and complaisance; they are quick in seeing
what will please, and ready to oblige when the
way is pointed out to them ; they do not idly
torment themselves, nor knowingly persist in
giving pain to others. They incline to make the
best of things ; are easy-tempered, conciliating,
affable ; have no stubbornness nor haughty re-
serve; nor do they gnaw their hearts out like
the English, and vent their accumulated ill-
humours upon their neighbours. A proof of
the natural sociability of the French has been
deduced from this circumstance, that they can-
not exist as new settlers in a wilderness,
where they have no one to talk to but them-
selves. A Frenchman's ideas rise so fast to the
surface, that unless they can communicate them
readily, they strike inward and produce a most
uncomfortable kind of melancholy. Flattery
and compliments are one great ingredient in the
French school of politeness. You are most
secure on the side of their vanity, for this
faculty is tolerably alert in them, and they are
less apt to wound that of others from being a
little sore themselves. And yet it is not so ; for
their own opinion of themselves is so difficult to
be staggered, that they do not very well believe

ON TUAVIIIIM, ABROAD.

you can lie unitized or put out of countenane. l.v
trifling mortifications. Secondly, as to imagi-
nation ; they arc lamentably at a loss in this
respect. The French, as a nation, have no idea
of anything but what is French. They are too
well pleased with themselves to be at the trouble
of going out of themselves. This is one reason
Of their dislike of drunkenness. It puts them
quite beside themselves, and disturbs that natural
intoxication and flow of animal spirits in w hich
they delight to contemplate their own image as
in a glass. A drunken man is no lorn.
Frenchman. The consciousness of himself and
others is gone. I wonder what a Frenchman-
dreams are made of.' There is no trace of them
in his poetry — nought is there but idtes mites.
A proof of their inherent want of imagination is,
that when they had got the Apollo Belvedere
into their possession, they declared it was " to
remain there for ever ! " They did not conceive
a change in the affairs of the world pos>ihl< — the
present moment, the present object, is with them
the whole of time, the whole universe,
you have no money in your pocket when they
call with a bill, they are in utter despair, and
think you can never have any — if you brim; out
a bag of crowns, they will go away with part of
their demand, or even without any, as well *ati—
fied as if you had paid the whole. They have
no notion how the Russians could burn ;!

278 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

Paris is with them the whole of the world ; and
they conceive of those who live out of it as
breathing an atmosphere of barbarism. They
have some respect for the English, as having
beat them — which they take to be owing to
some superiority in our Jack Tars, and that
Paris is not a sea-port. When David was look-
ing round at some chefs-d'oeuvre in the Louvre,
he said : " We thought these pictures fine once."
He looked for the traces of his own style in
them, and saw little of that. All that has an
appearance of imagination or invention in the
French is plagiarism, a mere falsetto, and deck-
ing themselves out in borrowed plumes. So
they engraft their grand style in historical
painting on the Greek statues, their tragedies on
the Greek drama, and they stole their philoso-
phy and their Revolution from us. They make
a caricature and burlesque of what they thus
copy at second-hand. Buonaparte says of the
Romans, " that they had an instinct of whatever
was great, and deserved to be the conquerors of
the world." When he wanted to make the
French a great people, he proposed to bring all
the works of art, all the records of learning, and
lastly, the Pope, to Paris. Why thrust great-
ness upon a people, to whom it is not natural ?
Or convert a great capital into a pawnbroker's
shop ? A people who have original pretensions
of their own, should leave it to others to vouch

ON TRAVELLINO AHROAD. 899

for tlirm. Thirdly. The French "want grace,
who never wanted wit." Grace is not composed
<>f angles. A Frenchwoman walks as if she had
tender feet. She does not, in tact, walk, but
fidget and shuffle along, like a Fantoccini figure
on a hoard. I have heard Mr Northcote de-
Miilie Marie Antoinette as gliding across an
ante-room where he stood to see her coming,
with bar l:it«_r<* hoop sideways, as if she was
home on a cloud. This was no doubt the per-
fection of the thing, but the ordinary practice is
deficient. I deny that a wriggle, however quick
or light, or erect, is grace. At the same time
I allow that the Englishwomen in Paris (even
those of quality) look like country people in
London. Yet the Frenchwomen look well in
London. The Frenchwomen have too sudden a
jerk in their movements, and keep their muscles
too tight and too incessantly at work, while the
English seem as if their bodies were a burden to
them, and only move their joints to get forward ;
they have no elasticity or firmness. There are
faults on both tides. Any one may caricature
the common French walk by twisting, and trip-
pting, and ambling on tip-toe: but real grace is
not to be caricatured. If I want to know what
real grace is, I ask myself how the Venus de
Medicis would move from her pedestal ? Not

like a Frenchwoman, but like . < I

is made of carved lines, of continuous, undulating

280 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

movements ; but with the French all is discon-
tinuous, pointed, angular. They are light and
airy, it is true, and borne along by their good
spirits, with apparent ease and confidence in
themselves, which is perhaps better than our
lumpish, clodhopping, slouching gait. We are
in all respects a contradiction to each other ;
but it does not follow that either is perfect.
Fourthly. The French are full of tracasserie, of
cheating ; it is they who are a thorough " nation
of shop-keepers." Their mean ways must arise
from habitual poverty ; their barefaced distrust
of you from an extreme want of honour and
integrity among themselves. They try to bow
and laugh it off at first, but the first opportunity
they have, they cheat you ; and when they can
no longer make a dupe of you, they insult you.
All their bon-hommie and complaisance are abuse,
and as soon as their interest is no longer con-
cerned, they are rude or polite, as they think they
can get most by it.

A French gentleman, travelling in company
with an English party, gets a cup of coffee at a
little shop for three halfpence, and laughs at
you for paying two francs for a bad breakfast
at the inn ; and they are so shabby to the con-
ductors and drivers, that these things are at
present regulated by the police. They demand
payment for your board and lodging beforehand,
which shows either a grasping disposition or a

ON TRAVELLING ABROAD. '2*1

u;mt <>t cnntiil. hit. Besides, you cannot depend
on them for a moment. A n-.il.-.- iiicon>eqiien-
tiality seems to run, as it were, mechanically,
through all they da They appear naturally
ill -iron- of escaping from obligations of every
kind. If they cut a throat, it is that of some
relation, from being ennuyc with a repetition of
the hum ideal — toujour* perdrLr. If you have
made a bargain with them, and some one comes
and offen tin in a franc more, they take it and
laugh at you, or pretend not to have understood
you. If they can impose on you once, they
think it an achievement, and consider the loss of
your custom nothing. This would be looking
too far forward ; therefore they can never be a
commercial people; for commerce has a long
memory and long hands. To return to our own
good folks. Really, it is not wonderful that
they meet with such an accueil abroad, that
they are surrounded and stared at and made a
prize of, like some outlandish beast cast upon
hostile shores. Instead of having arrived in the
usual conveyances, they seem to have been thrown
out of a balloon — dropped from the clouds, they
are so bewildered, and stupified, and jammed
altogether, without any variety of character or
appearance. There is no perceptible difference
between the lord and the commoner, the lady
and the maid. A pert French soubrette laughs
at them all alike. Travelling, like death, levels

282 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

all distinctions. The toe of the citizen treads on
the courtier, and galls his kibe. We are all
hail-fellow well-met. The difference is not
worth the counting. It is as if one great per-
sonification of John Bull had been suspended
over the Continent, and been dashed to the
ground in a thousand fragments, all stunned
and stupifled alike. The national character is
fastened to our backs like a pedler's pack. It
is in vain for any one to think of holding up his
head, of straightening his back, of quickening
his step, or unloosening his tongue — we are still
outdone in all these particulars by the French,
who appear an impertinent antithesis to us ; and
we turn back to join the awkward squad of our
countrymen, and make common cause with
them. What signify our poor individual pre-
tensions, if we see a whole nation superior to
us and determined to mortify us ? No one
pretends to be any better than his neighbours ;
or if he does step forward to distinguish himself
with a vapid air of assurance, is soon put back.
Like a clown in company who forgets all his
jokes, one would suppose there had been no
such thing as wit in England, because a French
barber is unacquainted with it; we veil our
proud pretensions before the genius of French
grimace — in pure sheepishness and mauvaise
ho?ite, we give up Fielding and Congreve, as
dull Englishmen or raw pretenders ; Prior's

ON TRAVKLMNO ABROAD. '2<i

Chloe is ii dowdy fiction, and Waller's Sacha-
rissa a mistake. But, on the other hand, we
have a corps de reserve to retire to in our wisdom
and «»ur philosophy', in our Newton and our
Looks (Shakespear we are shy of bringing for-
u;ml), in our trade and commerce, our courage,
our religion, our government, and every one
struts a hero, a great merchant, and a sage.
Then all our men are honest, and all our women
virtuous, and not like the French men, who are
all rogues, and the French women, who are all
no better thnn they should be. We persuade
ourselves that we are just the reverse of all that
we despise or hate in others. We mix up our
t i)il»les and our virtues, our heroism and our
dulness, our wisdom and our gravity, in the
sain." dish, and like people out at sea in a boat
in the last extremity, every one fancies himself
entitled to an equal share in the common lot.
One Englishman is as good as another. Can
anything be more unfriendly than this state
of exacerbation of our personal and national
prejudices, in which everything is transposed
and confounded in the mere spirit of contradic-
tion, to the knowledge either of ourselves or of
others. We feel at a loss abroad, or like fish
out of water, because nobody takes much notice
of or knows anything about us. But is it not the
same in going into any country town in Eng-
land ? Does a deputation wail upon us from

284 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

the principal inhabitants when we arrive at Bir-
mingham or Lichfield ? An Englishman has
so far more honour out of his own country, and
is, as Cowley expresses it, a species by himself,
and entitled to some distinction as a novelty or
nondescript. But in the one case we do not
care about the people in a provincial town taking
notice of us, because we know they are no better
than we : in a foreign country we are not sure
of this, and then their indifference becomes con-
nected with a feeling of insignificance on our part.
In London we have common topics and common
amusements, as inhabitants of the same great
city, and the esprit de cockagne in some measure
qualifies and carries off petty chagrins and indi-
vidual slights. What adds to the feeling of dis-
sipation, littleness, and vulgarity in Paris, is
that you are taken up only with the present,
passing object — the shops, the houses, the dirt,
the finery, the walks, the people, the dogs, the
monkeys : in London you have certain associa-
tions with the past, and the metropolis grows
and emerges out of its original obscurity in the
mind's eye. The sprightly author of the Indi-
cator will point to you the house in York street
where Milton lived, and in passing through the
fruit- stalls of Covent garden, his countenance
gladdens with recollections of the favourite
haunts of Steele and Addison. In Paris his
only delight was in hunting about the book-

ON TRAVELLING ABROAD. M

stall — though I think he was wrong in not
Mting tin; Louvre. The house in the Rue de
Chuntereine where Buonaparte Alighted after
the buttle of Marengo is hardly known. It is
the order of the day anion*; them to efface the
memory of their short-lived greatness.

The present objeotj torn out of its place i n the
older of events, does not satisfy the minds of an
Englishman. We have not faith, we have not
interest in it. This is the reason of the sense of
littleness, of fretfulness and disgust, whenever
we are thrown into a crowd, particularly at a
«li-t;mce from home. Yet why must we be in
the secret in the Cabinet Council of events?
Are they not to go on without us ? Is nothing
to be looked at without our fiat ? Is no book
to be printed without our imprimatur ? Cannot
a French milliner sit in a shop gracefully with-
out taking our leave? Oh ! it is wretched, this
importunate humour of making ourselves the
pivot on which the whole world turns round.
How do they go on in our absence ? We find
them just the same when we return. The
English are not the sun that shines on France.
How did they manage before we were born, in
the times of Mademoiselle de la Valliere and
Madame de Pompadour? Were they to wait to
know our pleasure before they gave their answers
to Louis XlVand Louis XV? One would think,
It first, raiding and reflection would cure this

286 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

teasing egotism ; and yet, by giving us a kind
of factitious interest and omnipresence in such
cases, it mixes up with everything again, and
confirms our original self-importance, as if we
had a right to be consulted and to give our
opinion on what passes in review before us.
Nature is incorrigible — there is no crevice so
small or intricate, at which our self-love will
not continue to creep in. Expella furcd, ultro
recurret.

The only way to visit Paris is to go abroad
with all the ignorance, wonder, and disposition
to admire everything with which Sir Francis
Wronghead and his family came up to London,
not to spit our spite at everything, and be deter-
mined to condemn in the lump, like Matthew
Bramble. The half-way plan of questioning,
and criticising, and accounting for everything, is
intolerable.

Come then away from all this cabal and
impertinence, and let us cross the Alps. Pic-
tures, Italian cities, mountains, defy this petty
personality and painful jealousy. They are
abstractions of the mind. In Italy, you leave
yourself behind, and travel through a romance,
in a dream of the distant and the past. Who
in crossing Mount Cenis thinks of Tottenham
court road ? Who in the Galleries of Rome or
Florence is jealous of native art ? Who in the
Forum looks back to the House of Commons ?

ON Til \\ T.I.MMl AIIUOII). J>7

Who in the streets of Turin or 1'errara does not
Bad IhiiimU' ut home — in the home of early
imagination, in the palaces and porticos of his
youth's thoughts? Here the whole impression
ttDl for itself, and has no pitiful drawback of
cowardly comparison. What is there in Eng-
land like Rome ? We may have read of it in
hooks, or had glimpses of it in our dreams, but
these are a part of ourselves, and we have
no jealousy on that head. Here nothing that
can be connected with upstart pretensions or
personal competition, or the fashion of the
hour; all speaks of the past, of glory departed,
of the races that are gone, and between whom
ami us death and fame have placed a proud
barrier. The cities of Italy are the cities of the
dead — from their worn battlements the faces
ot nigged warriors still look out. Sometimes
here, as I am sitting by the fire and gaze upon
the dying embers, the ruddy lights and nodding
fragments shape themselves into an Italian
landscape, and Radicofani rises in the distance,
receding into the light of setting suns, that seem
bidding the world farewell for ever from their
splendour, their gorgeousness, and the gloom
around it ! Or Perugia opens its cloistered gates,
and you look down upon the world below, and
Koligno and Spoleto stretch out their shining
walls and dark groves behind you I You
seem walking in the shadow of the valley of

288 ON TRAVELLING ABROAD.

life ; and ideal palaces, groves, and cities (real-
ized to the bodily sense), everywhere rise up
before you. You scale the heavens, or you
descend into the tomb ; but you are always taken
out of yourselves and lifted above this earth. A
purple light hovers in the air in Italy, as in
Homer's Elysian fields. In Switzerland, the
magnitude of the objects, as well as the quiet
and retirement of the vallies, annihilate all per-
sonal pretensions, all the " vain pomp and glory
of the world ! " If you fall from the top of one
of those crags, you will break your neck,
whether you are Frenchman or Englishman.
In all other places I am a citizen of the world :
but in France I never forget I am an English-
man. One is never less at home than when at
home. It is well to be a citizen of the world,
to fall in with the ways and feelings of others,
and make one's self at home wherever one
comes ; or it is still better to live in an ideal
world superior to the ordinary one ; so to carry
calm peace and self-possession in one's own
breast, that no accident of time or place, irrita-
tion or distress, ever can assail us, except for a
moment ; and to make the best of all our comings
and goings, crossings and returns, good or bad
roads, as only passages of that after all short
journey which conducts us to our native dust
and final home !

ESSAY XIV.

OX THE SPIRIT OF CONTROVERSY.

The spirit of controversy has often been ar-
raigned as the source of much bitterness and
vexation, as productive of " envy, hatred, ma-
lice, and all uncharitableness," and the charge,
no doubt, is too well founded. But it is said to
bfl <ni ill irirul which blows nobody good; and
there are few evils in life that have not some
qualifying circumstance attending them. It is
one of the worst consequences of this very spirit
of controversy that it has led men to regard
things too much in a single and exaggerated
point of view. Truth is not one thing, but has
many aspects and many shades of difference ; it
is neither all black, nor all white ; sees some-
thing wrong on its own side, something right
in others; makes concessions to an adversary,
allowances for human frailty, and is nearer akin
to charity than the dealers in controversy or die

290 ON THE SPIRIT

declaimers against it are apt to imagine. The
bigot and partisan (influenced by the very spirit
he finds fault with) sees nothing in the endless
disputes which have tormented and occupied
men's thoughts but an abuse of learning and a
waste of time; the philosopher may still find
an excuse for so bad and idle a practice. One
frequent objection made to the incessant wrang-
ling and collision of sects and parties is, What
does it all come to ? And the answer is, What
would they have done without it? The plea-
sure of the chase, or the benefit derived from it,
is not to be estimated by the value of the game
after it is caught, so much as by the difficulty of
starting it, and the exercise afforded to the body,
and the excitement of the animal spirits in hunt-
ing it down ; and so it is in the exercises of the
mind and the pursuit of truth, which are chiefly
valuable (perhaps) less for their results when
discovered, than for their affording continual
scope and employment to the mind in its endea-
vours to reach the fancied goal, without its
being ever (or but seldom) able to attain it.

Regard the end, is an ancient saying and a
good one, if it does not mean that we are to
forget the beginning and the middle. By insist-
ing on the ultimate value of things when all is
over, we may acquire the character of grave
men, but not of wise ones. Passe pour cela.
If we would set up such a sort of fixed and

ntovr.Hs\. 20]

final standard of moral truth and worth, we had
better try to construct life over again, so as to
make it a punctum statu, and not a thintr in
progress; for as it is, every end, before it ota
be realized, implies a previous imagination, a
Him interest in, and an active pursuit of, it-elf,
all which are integral and vital parts of human
existence ; and it is a tagging of the question to
-ay that an end is only of value in itself, and not
as it draws out the living resources, and sati-fi<<
the original capacities of human nature. When
the play is over, the curtain drops, and we see
nothing but a green cloth; but before this there
have been five acts of brilliant scenery and
high-wrought declamation, which, if we come
to plain matter-of-fact history, are still some-
thing. According to the contrary theory, no-
thing is real but a blank. This flatters the
paradoxical pride of man, whose motto is, nil <</•
none. Look at that pile of school divinity.
Behold where the demon of controversy lies
buried ! The huge tomes are mouldy and
worm-eaten: — did their contents the less eat
into the brain, or corrode the heart, or stir the
thoughts, or till up the void of lassitude and
ennui in the minds of those who wrote then .'
Though now laid aside and forgotten, if they
had not once had a host of readers, they would
never have been written, and their hard ami
solid bulk asked the eager tooth of curiosity and

292 ON THE SPIRIT

zeal to pierce through it. We laugh to see
their ponderous dullness weighed in scales and
sold for waste paper. We should not laugh too
soon. On the smallest difference of faith or prac-
tice discussed in them, the fate of kingdoms
hung suspended; and not merely this (which
was a trifle), but Heaven and Hell trembled in the
balance, according to the full persuasion of our
pious forefathers. Many a stream of blood
flowed in the field, on the scaffold, from these
tangled briars and thorns of controversy : many
a man marched to the stake to bear testimony to
the most frivolous and incomprehensible of their
dogmas. This was an untoward consequence ;
but if it was an evil to be burnt at a stake, it
was well and becoming to have an opinion
(whether right or wrong) for which a man was
willing to be burnt at a stake. Read Baxter's
Controversial Works: consider the flames of
zeal, the tongues of fire, the heights of faith,
the depths of subtlety, which they unfold as in a
darkly illuminated scroll: and then ask how
much we are gainers by an utter contempt and
indifference to all this? We wonder at the
numberless volumes of sermons that have been
written, preached, and printed, on the Arian
and Socinian controversies ; on Calvinism and
Arminianism, on surplices and stoles, on infant
or adult baptism, on image-worship and the
defacing of images ; and we forget that it em-

OP CONTROVERSY. £KJ

|ilov««l the preacher till the week to prepare his
million (!><• the subject what it would) for the
Lord's day, with infinite collating of texts,
authorities, and arguments; that his flock were
no less edified by listening to it than he in
framing it, and how many David Deans came
away convinced that they had been listening to
the " root of the matter." Sec that group, col-
lected after service-time and poring over the
gravestones in the churchyard, from whence, to
the eyes of faith, a light issues that points to the
skies! See them disperse; and, as they take
different paths homeward while the evening!
closes in, still discoursing of the true doctrine,
and the glad tidings they have heard, how
"their hearts burn within them by the way!"
Then, again, we should set down, among other
items in the account, how the schoolboy is put
to it to remember the text, and how the lazy
servant wench starts up to find herself asleep in
church-time ! Such is the march of human
life ; and we who fancy ourselves above it arc
only so much the more taken up with follies of
our own. We look down, in this age of reason,
on those controverted points and nominal dis-
tinctions which formerly kept up such a "coil
and pudder" in the world, as idle and ridiculous
because we are not parties to them ; but it' ir was
the egotism of our predecessors that magnified
them beyond all rational bounds, it is no less

294 ON THE SPIRIT

egotism in us who undervalue their opinions
and pursuits because they are not ours ; though,
indeed, to leave egotism out of human nature, is
to " leave the part of Hamlet out of the play of
Hamlet." Or what are we the better with our
utilitarian controversies, Mr Taylor's discourses
(delivered, in canonicals) against the evidences of
the Christian religion, or the changes of Minis-
try and disagreements between the Duke of
Wellington and the Duke of Newcastle ?

" Strange that such difference should be
'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee ! "

But the prevalence of religious controversy is
reproached with fomenting spiritual pride and
intolerance, and sowing heart-burnings, jea-
lousies and fears, " like a thick scurf o'er life ;"
yet, had it not been for this, we should have
been tearing one another to pieces like savages
for fragments of raw flesh, or quarrelling with a
herd of swine for a windfall of acorns under an
oak-tree. The world has never yet done, and
will never be able to do, without some apple of
discord — some bone of contention — any more
than courts of law can do without pleadings, or
doctors without the sick. When a thing ceases
to be a subject of controversy it ceases to be a
subject of interest. Why need we regret the
various hardships and persecutions for con-
science' sake, when men only cling closer to

OP CONTROVERSY. M

tlnir opinions in consequence? They loved their
religion in proportion as they paid dear for it.
Nothing could keep the Dissenters from going
to a conventicle while it was declared an unlaw-
ful assembly, and was the high road to a prison
or the plantations; — take away tests and laitj
and make the road open and easy, and the sect
dwindles gradually into insignificance. A thing
is supposed to be worth nothing that costs no-
thing. Besides, there is always pretty nearly
the same quantity of malice afloat in the world ;
though with the change of time ami manners it
may become a finer poison, ami kill by more
unseen ways. When the sword has done its
worst, slander, l whose edge is sharper than
the sword,' steps in to keep the blood from stag-
nating. Instead of slow fires and paper caps
fastened round the heads of the victims, we
arrive at the same end by the politer way of
nicknames and anonymous criticism. Blach-
rvooaTs Magazine is the modern version of Fox's
Book of Martyrs. Discard religion and politics
(the two grand topics of controversy), and peo-
ple would hate each other as cordially, and tor-
ment each other as effectually, about the prefe-
rence to be given to Mozart or Rossini, to Pasta
or Malibran. We indeed fix upon the most
excellent things, as God, our country, and our
King, to account for the excess of our zeal ; but
this depends much less upon the goodness of

296 ON THE SPIRIT

our cause than on the strength of our passions,
and our overflowing gall and rooted antipathy
to whatever stands in the way of our conceit and
obstinacy. We set up an idol (as we set up a
mark to shoot at) for others to bow down to, on
peril of our utmost displeasure, let the value of
it be what it may ;

" Of whatsoe'er descent his godhead be,
Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,
In his defence his servants are as bold,
As if he had been made of beaten gold."

It is however but fair to add, in extenuation
of the evils of controversy, that if the points at
issue had been quite clear, or the advantage all
on one side, they would not have been so liable
to be contested. We condemn controversy,
because we would have matters all our own
way, and think that ours is the only side
that has a title to be heard. We imagine that
there is but one view of a subject that is right ;
and that all the rest being plainly and wilfully
wrong, it is a shocking waste of speech, and a
dreadful proof of prejudice and party spirit, to
have a word to say in their defence. But this
is want of liberality and comprehension of mind.
For in general we dispute either about things
respecting which we are a good deal in the dark,
and where both parties are very possibly in the
wrong, and may be left to find out their mutual
error ; or about those points where there is au

OP CONTROVERSY. HI

opposition <>f interests and passions, and where
it would be by no means safe to cut short the
debate l»_\ making one party judges for the other.
Tliev must therefore bo left to fight it out as
well as they can ; and, between the extremes of
folly and violence, to strike a balance of com-
mon sense and even-handed justice. Every
sect or party will, of course, run into extrava-
gance and partiality ; but the probability is that
there is some ground of argument, some appear-
ance of right, to justify the grossest bigotry and
intolerance. The fury of the combatants is
excited because there is something to be said on
the other side of the question. If men were as
infallible as they suppose themselves, they would
not dispute. If every novelty were well founded,
truth might be discovered by a receipt; but as
antiquity does not always turn out an old
woman, this accounts for the vis inertia of the
mind in so often pausing and setting its face
against innovation. Authority has some advan-
tages to recommend it as well as reason, or it
would long ago have been scouted. Aristocracy
and democracy, monarchy and republicanism,
are not all pure good or pure evil, though the
abettors or antagonists of each think so, and
that all the mischief arises from others enter-
taining any doubt about the question, and in-
sisting on carrying their absurd theories into
practice. The French and English arc grossly

298 ON THE SPIRIT

prejudiced against each other ; but still the
interests of each are better taken care of under
this exaggerated notion than if that vast mass of
rights and pretensions which each is struggling
for were left to the tender mercies and ruthless
candour of the other side. " Every man for
himself and God for us all " is a rule that will
apply here. Controversy, therefore, is a neces-
sary evil or good (call it which you will) till all
differences of opinion or interest are reconciled,
and absolute certainty or perfect indifference
alike takes away the possibility or the tempta-
tion to litigation and quarrels. We need be
under no immediate alarm of coming to such a
conclusion. There is always room for doubt,
food for contention. While we are engrossed
with one controversy, indeed, we think every-
thing else is clear ; but as soon as one point is
settled, we begin to cavil and start objections to
that which had before been taken for gospel.
The reformers thought only of opposing the
Church of Rome, and never once anticipated
the schisms and animosities which arose among
Protestants ; the Dissenters, in carrying their
point against the Church of England, did not
dream of that crop of infidelity and scepticism
which, to their great terror and scandal, sprung
up in the following age, from their claim of free
inquiry and private judgment. The non-essen-
tials of religion first came into dispute ; then the

OF CON'THOVF.llSY. 9Q0

osentials. Our own opinion, we fancy, is
founded on ;i rock ; the rest we regard an stubble.
Hut no sooner is one outwork of established
faith or practice demolished, than another i> left
■ defenceless mark for the enemy, and the
engines of wit and Mphistry immediately begin
to batter it. Thus we proceed step by step, till,
passing through the several gradations of vanity
and paradox, we come to doubt whether we
stand on our head or our heels, alternately deny
the existence of spirit and matter, maintain that
white is black, or black white, call evil good,
and good evil, and defy any one to prove the
contrary. As faith is the prop and cement that
upholds society, by opposing fixed principles as
I harrier against the inroads of passion, so
reason is the menstruum which dissolves it, ly
leaving nothing sufficiently firm or unquestioned
in our opinions to withstand the current and bias
of inclination. Hence the decay and ruin of
states — their barbarism, sloth, and ignorance —
ami so we commence the circle again of build-
ing up all that is possible to conceive out of a
rude chaos, and the obscure shadowings of
things, and then pulling down all we have built
up till not a trace of it is left. Such is the
effect of the ebb and flow and restless agitation
of the human mind.

ESSAY XV.

ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

It is hard to be without money. To get on
without it is like travelling in a foreign country
without a passport — you are stopped, suspected,
and made ridiculous at every turn, besides being
subjected to the most serious inconveniences.
The want of money I here allude to is not alto-
gether that which arises from absolute poverty
— for where there is a downright absence of the
common necessaries of life, this must be reme-
died by incessant hard labour, and the least we
can receive in return is a supply of our daily
wants — but that uncertain, casual, precarious
mode of existence, in which the temptation to
spend remains after the means are exhausted,
the want of money joined with the hope and
possibility of getting it, the intermediate state
of difficulty and suspense between the last
guinea and the next that we may have the

ON THE WANT OF MONBT. 301

good luck to encounter. This gap, this unwel-
come interval constantly recurring, however
shabbily got over, is really lull of many anxie-
■ItgiTingt, mortifications, meannesses, and
deplorable embarrassments of every description.
I may attempt (this Essay is not a fanciful spe-
culation) to enlarge upon a few of them.

It is hard to go without one's dinner through
sheer distress, but harder still to go without
one's breakfast. Upon the strength of that first
and aboriginal meal, one may muster courage to
face the difficulties before one, and to dare the
worst : but to be roused out of one's warm bed,
and perhaps a profound oblivion of can?, with
golden dreams (for poverty does not prevent
golden dreams), and told there is nothing for
breakfast, is cold comfort, for which one's half-
strung nerves are not prepared, and throws a
damp upon the prospects of the day. It is a
bad beginning. A man without a breakfast is a
poor creature, unfit to go in search of one, to
meet flic frown of the world, or to borrow a
shilling of a friend. He may beg at the corner
of a street — nothing is too mean for the tone of
his feelings — robbing on the highway is out of
the question, as requiring too much courage,
and some opinion of a man's self. It. is, indeed,
as old Fuller, or some worthy of that age, ex-
presses it, " the heaviest stone which melancholy
can throw at a man," to learn, the first thing

302 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

after he rises in the morning, or even to be
dunned with it in bed, that there is no loaf, tea,
or butter, in the house, and that the baker, the
grocer, and butterman have refused to give any
further credit. This is taking one sadly at a
disadvantage. It is striking at one's spirit and
resolution in their very source — the stomach —
it is attacking one on the side of hunger and
mortification at once ; it is casting one into the
very mire of humility and Slough of Despond.
The worst is, to know what face to put upon
the matter, what excuse to make to the ser-
vants, what answer to send to the tradespeople ;
whether to laugh it off, or be grave, or angry,
or indifferent ; in short, to know how to parry
off an evil which you cannot help. What a
luxury, what a God's-send in such a dilemma,
to find a half-crown which had slipped through a
hole in the lining of your waistcoat, a crumpled
bank-note in your breeches pocket, or a guinea
clinking in the bottom of your trunk, which had
been thoughtlessly left there out of a former
heap ! Vain hope ! Unfounded illusion ! The
experienced in such matters know better, and
laugh in their sleeves at so improbable a sug-
gestion. Not a corner, not a cranny, not a
pocket, not a drawer has been left unrummaged,
or has not been subjected over and over again to
more than the strictness of a custom-house scru-
tiny. Not the slightest rustle of a piece of bank-

. ON Tin: WANT OF MONEY. '-MM

|t;i|ni, not tin' gentlest pressure of a piece of
hard metal, but would have given notice of its
biding-place with electrical rapidity, long before,
in such circumstances. All the variety of pecu-
niar; resources which form a legal tender in the
(in rent coin of the realm, are assuredly drained,
e\hau-ted to the last farthing before this time.
But is there nothing in the house that one can
turn to account? Is there not an old family
watch, or piece of plate, or a ring, or some
worthless trinket that one could part with? no-
thing belonging to one's-self or a friend, that
one could raise the wind upon, till something
better turns up? At this moment an old-clothes
man passes, and his deep, harsh tones sound like
a premeditated insult on one's distress, and
banish the thought of applying for his assist-
ance, as one's eye glances furtively at an old hat
or a great coat, hung up behind a closet-door.
Humiliating contemplations! Miserable uncer-
tainty! One hesitates, and the opportunity is
gone by ; for without one's breakfast, one has
not the resolution to do anything ! — The late Mr
Sheridan was often reduced to this unpleasant
predicament. Possibly he had little appetite for
breakfast himself; but the servants complained
bitterly on this head, and said that Mrs Sheri-
dan was sometimes kept waiting for a couple of
hours, while they had to hunt through the neigh-
bourhood, and beat up for coffee, eggs, and

304 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

French rolls. The same perplexity in this in-
stance appears to have extended to the providing
for the dinner ; for so sharp-set were they, that
to cut short a debate with a butcher's apprentice
about leaving a leg of mutton without the
money, the cook clapped it into the pot: the
butcher's boy, probably used to such encounters,
with equal coolness took it out again, and
marched off with it in his tray in triumph. It
required a man to be the author of ' The School
for Scandal,' to run the gauntlet of such dis-
agreeable occurrences every hour of the day.*

* Taylor, of the Opera House, used to say of Sheri-
dan, that he could not pull off his hat to him in the
street without its costing him fifty pounds ; and if he
stopped to speak to him it was a hundred. No one could
be a stronger instance than he was of what is called liv-
ing from hand to mouth. He was always in want of money,
though he received vast sums which he must have dis-
bursed ; and yet nobody can tell what became of them,
for he paid nobody. He spent his wife's fortune (sixteen
hundred pounds) in a six weeks' jaunt to Bath, and re-
turned to town as poor as a rat. Whenever he and his
son were invited out into the country, they always went
in two post chaises and four ; he in one, and his son Tom
following in another. This is the secret of those who
live in a round of extravagance, and are at the same time
always in debt and difficulty— they throw away all the
ready money they get upon any new-fangled whim or
project that comes in their way, and never think of
paying off old scores, which of course accumulate to a
dreadful amount. " Such gain the cap of him who makes

ON Till w w I (H :}D."»

Tlic goino without a dinner ia another of the
tqiaerieeof wanting money, though one can bear

tlicin tine \v[ keeps his book uncrossed." Mm ridau

panted to I Sheridan a very handsome

dress down into tin' country, and went to I'.arlier and

Niinn's to order it, Maying be must have it by nab ■
day, lutt promising they siioul<l baft ready money. Mrs

1 1 think it was) made answer Unit the time was
.short, hut that ready money was a very charming thimr.
and tliat he iboaki have it. Accordingly, at tlie time
ap|«>inted she brought the dress, which came to flve-and-
twenty aaillllli. and it was sent in to Mr Sheridan, who

sent out a Mr Urn (one of his jackals) to say he

admired it exceedingly, and that lie was sure Mrs Sheri-
dan would M delighted with it, hut he was sorry to have
nothing under a hundred ]>ound hank note in the house.
She saiil she had come provided tor such an accident,
and could give change for a hundred, two hundred, or
five hundred pond note, it* it were necessary, driiiim
then went hack to his principal tor tart her instructions ;
who made an excuse that he had no stamped receipt by
him lor this, Mrs H. said she was also provided ; she
had brought one in her BOOkat At each BaaM|
could hear them laughing heartily in the next rOOBS, at
the idea of having met with their match for once ; and
•uly after, Sheridan came out in high good humour,
and paid her the amount of her hill, in ten, five, and one
pound notes. Once when a creditor brought him a hill
tor payment, which had often DOtO presented In-fore, and
the man complained of its toiled and tattered state, and
saiil he was quite ashamed to see it, " I'll tell you what
I'd advise \..u to do with it, my friend, " said Sheridan.
"take it home, and write it upon parc/miml '" He once
mounted a horse which a horse dealer was showing off

X

306 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

up against this calamity better than the
former, which really " blights the tender blos-

near a coffee-house at the bottom of St James's street,
rode it to Tattersall's and sold it, and walked quietly
hack to the spot from which he set out. The owner was
furious, swore he would be the death of him ; and, in a
quarter of an hour afterwards they were seen sitting to-
gether over a bottle of wine in the coffee-house, the
horse-jockey with the tears running down his face at
Sheridan's jokes, and almost ready to hug him as an
honest fellow. Sheridan's house and lobby were beset
with duns every morning, who were told that Mr Sheri-
dan was not yet up, and shown into the several rooms on
each side of the entrance. As soon as he had break-
fasted he asked, " Are those doors all shut, John ? " and,
being assured they were, marched out very deliberately
between them, to the astonishment of his self-invited
guests, who soon found the bird was flown. I have
heard one of his old city friends declare, that such was
the effect of his frank, cordial manner, and insinuating
eloquence, that he was always afraid to go to ask him
for a debt of long-standing, lest he should borrow twice
as much. A play had been put off one night, or a fa-
vourite actor did not appear, and the audience demanded
to have their money back again : but when they came
to the door they were told by the checktakers there was
none for them, for that Mr Sheridan had been in the
meantime, and had carried off all the money in the till.
He used often to get the old cobbler who kept a stall
under the ruins of Drury Lane to broil a beef- steak for
him, and take their dinner together. On the night that
Drury Lane was burnt down, Sheridan was in the House
of Commons, making a speech, though he could hardly
stand without leaning his hands on the table, and it was

I III WANT op MONEY.
80m ntnl promise of the iluy." With one good

meal, one may I * * > 1 « 1 a parley with banger ;m<l

with some dithVulty he was forced away, urging the plea,
"What rignlfled the ooooami of ■ private individual,
oonrpared to the good of the ■tata?" When begot to

I i ,;n-.i. ■'.'.. be wiit into tin' Plana Qodfta aooaa, to

steady himself « itli another bottle, ami then strolled out
to the end of (lie I'iazza to look at tin- progress of the
fin. Ban ho was accosted by Cbarl. - I\( mblc and Faw-
r.tt. win. fonipliiiH ntcd bin on the calmness with which
lie seemed to regard so irreat a lu.vs. lie declined thi«.
. and said — "(iciitlenicn, there are but three things
in human lite that in my opinion OTght to disturb a wise
man's patienee. The first of these is bodily pain, and
that (wfcaftSTBC the ancient stoics may have said to the
contrary) is too much for any man to bear without
flinching i this I have felt severely, and I know it to be
the case. The second is the loss of a friend whom you
have dearly lo\ed ; that, uitit 1«iik n. is | great evil; this
I bait also felt, and 1 know it to be too much for any
man's fortitude. And the third is the eonseiotisness of
having done an unjust action. That, gentlemen, is a
great evil, :i very great evil, too inueh for any man to
endure the reflection of; but that" (laying his hand
upon his heart), "but that, thank (}od, 1 have MM
felt :" 1 ban bean told that these were nearly the very
words, except that he appealed to the mena conscia recti
rafj emphatically three or four times over, by an c
lent authority, Mr Mathews the player, who was on the
spot at tlie time, — a gentleman whom the public admire
dlv, but with whose real talents and nice discri-
mination of character his friends only are acquainted.
Sheridan's reply to the watchman who had picked him
up in the street, and who wanted to know who he was,

308 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

moralize upon temperance. One has time to
turn one's-self and look about one — to "screw
one's courage to the sticking- place," to graduate
the scale of disappointment, and stave off appe-
tite till supper-time. You gain time, and time
in this weathercock world is everything. You
may dine at two, or at six, or seven — as most
convenient. You may in the meanwhile receive
an invitation to dinner, or some one (not know-
ing how you are circumstanced) may send you
a present of a haunch of venison or a brace of
pheasants from the country, or a distant relation
may die and leave you a legacy, or a patron
may call and overwhelm you with his smiles
and bounty,

" As kind as kings upon their coronation-day ;"

or there is no saying what may happen. One
may wait for dinner — breakfast admits of no
delay, of no interval interposed between that and
our first waking thoughts.* Besides, there are
shifts and devices, shabby and mortifying
enough, but still available in case of need. How
many expedients are there in this great city,

"lam Mr Wilberforce ! " — is well known, and shows
that, however frequently he might be at a loss for money,
he never wanted wit !

* In Scotland, it seems, the draught of ale or whisky
with which you commence the day, is emphatically
called, " taking your morning"

ON TIIK WANT OK KOI 808

tiOM "«it of mind and times without numb, r,

rted to by the dilapidated and thrifty ipeoav

, to get through tlii- «;ran<l difficulty with-
out alter failure I Out; m:ty « I i v • ■ into a cellar,
ami dine on boiled beef and eariotsfor tenpcnce,

wuii the kniv< > and fork- chained to the table,

and jostled by greasy elbows that seem tO make
micIi a precaotioa not unnecessary (hunger ii
proof against indignity!) — or one may contrive
to part with a superHuous article of weiring
apparel, ami cany home a mutton chop and cook
it in a garret; or one may drop in at a fii.n.r<
at the dinner-hour, and be asked to stay or not;
or one may walk out and take a turn in the
Park, about the time, and return home to tea,
so as at least to avoid the sting of the evil — the
appearance of not baying dined. You then
have the laugh on your side, having deceived
flic gossips, and can submit to the want of a
sumptuous repeat without murmuring, having
saved your pride, and made a virtue of necessity.
I say all this may be done by a man without a
family (for what business has a man without
money with one?) — See Enylish Mult lam and
Scotch Macculloch — and it is only my intention
here to bring forward such instances of the want
of money as are tolerable both in theory and
practice. I once lived on coffee (as an experi-
ment) for a fortnight together, while I was
finishing the copy of a half-length portrait of a

310 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

Manchester manufacturer, who died worth a
plum. I rather slurred over the coat, which
was a reddish brown, " of formal cut," to receive
my five guineas, with which I went to market
myself, and dined on sausages and mashed pota-
toes, and while they were getting ready, and I
could hear them hissing in the pan, read a volume
of ' Gil Bias,' containing the account of the fair
Aurora. This was in the days of my youth.
Gentle reader, do not smile ! Neither Monsieur
de Very, nor Louis XVIII, over an oyster-pate,
nor Apicius himself, ever understood the mean-
ing of the word luxury better than I did at that
moment ! If the want of money has its draw-
backs and disadvantages, it is not without its
contrasts and counterbalancing effects, for which
I fear nothing else can make us amends. Ame-
lia's hashed mutton is immortal; and there is
something amusing, though carried to excess
and caricature (which is very unusual with the
author) in the contrivance of old Caleb, in 'The
Bride of Lammermuir,' for raising the wind at
breakfast, dinner, and supper time. I recollect
a ludicrous instance of a disappointment in a
dinner which happened to a person of my ac-
quaintance some years ago. He was not only
poor but a very poor creature, as will be ima-
gined. His wife had laid by fourpence (their
whole remaining stock) to pay for the baking of
a shoulder of mutton and potatoes, which they

«.\ Till w \NT OP MOMS. 811

had in the house, mill on her return home from
MOM errand, she found he hail ex ponded it in
pwofciang ■ hi m r string for a guitar. On this
occasion a witty friend quoted the lines from
Milton : —

- And ever against eating cares,
\\ mp DM i" nA Lydian airs !"

Defoe, in lii-i ' Life of Colonel Jack,' gives a
striking picture of his young beggarly hero
sitting with his companion for the first time
in his life at a threepenny ordinary, and the
delight erith which \m relMied the hot smoking
soup, and the airs with which he called about
him — "and every time," he says, "we called
for bread, or beer, or whatever it might be, the
w;iitrr an^urivil, 'coming, gentlemen, coming;'
and tins delighted me more than all the rest ! "
It \v;i- about tlii-; time, as the -ame pithy author
expresses it, " the Colonel took upon him to
wear a shirt ! " Nothing can be finer than the
whole of the belling eonvrveil in the commence-
ment of tin- novel ahout wealth and finery, from
the immediate contrast of privation and poverty.
( >ne would think it a labour, like the Tower of
Babel, to build up a beau and a fine gentleman
about town. The little vagabond's admiration
oi the old man at the banking-house, who sits
surrounded by heaps of gold as if it were a
dream or poetic vision, and his own eager
anxious visits, day by day, to the hoard he had

312 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

deposited in the hollow tree, are in the very-
foremost style of truth and nature. See the
same intense feeling expressed in Luke's address
to his riches, in the f City Madam,' and in the
extraordinary raptures of the ' Spanish Rogue '
in contemplating and hugging his ingots of pure
gold and Spanish pieces of eight : to which Mr
Lamb has referred in excuse for the rhapso-
dies of some of our elder poets on this subject,
which to our present more refined and tamer
apprehensions sound like blasphemy.* In earlier
times, before the diffusion of luxury, of know-
ledge, and other sources of enjoyment had be-
come common, and acted as a diversion to the
cravings of avarice, the passionate admiration,
the idolatry, the hunger and thirst of wealth and
all its precious symbols, was a kind of madness
or hallucination, and Mammon was truly wor-
shipped as a god !

It is among the miseries of the want of money,
not to be able to pay your reckoning at an
inn — or, if you have just enough to do that,
to have nothing left for the waiter; — to be
stopped at a turnpike gate, and forced to turn
back ; — not to venture to call a hackney-coach
in a shower of rain — (when you have only one
shilling left yourself, it is a bore to have it taken

* Shylock's lamentation over the loss of " his daughter
and his ducats," is another case in point.

ON THE WANT OP HONEY. 'MX

out q| v.. in- pocket by a friend, who comes into
your house eating peaches in ;i hot »uinuier's-
il;iy, .-mil deriring you to pay for the couch in
which he vi-its you); — not to be able to pur-
ekeee ■ loiifi-v-tirkrt, by whkh you might make
your h»i tun.', ami gel out of all your difficulties;
or to find a letter lying for you at a country
post-office, and not to have money in your
pocket to free it, and be obliged to return fox it
the next dav. The letter so unseasonably with-
held may be supposed to contain money, and in
this ease there is a foretaste, a sort of actual
possession taken thfOBgh the thin folds of the
pipes ami the wax, which in some measure in-
demnifies us for the delay : the bank-note, the
post-bill seems to smile upon us, and shake
bendl through its prison bars; — or it may be a
love-letter, and then the tantalization is at its
height: i<> be deprived in this manner of the
only consolation that can make us amends for
the want of money, by this very want— to turn y
you see the name — to try to get a peep it the
hand-writing — to touch the seal, and yet not
dare to break it open — is provoking indeed — the
climax of amorous and gentlemanly distress.
Players are sometimes reduced to great ex-
tremity, by the seizure of their scenes and
i (what is called) the proiterty of the
theatre, which hinders them from acting ; as
authors are prevented from finishing a work,

314 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

for want of money to buy the books necessary to
be consulted on some material point or circum-
stance in the progress of it. There is a set of
poor devils, who live upon a printed prospectus
of a work that never will be written, for which
they solicit your name and half-a-crown. De-
cayed actresses take an annual benefit at one of
the theatres ; there are patriots who live upon
periodical subscriptions, and critics who go
about the country lecturing on poetry. I con-
fess I envy none of these ; but there are persons
who, provided they can live, care not how they
live — who are fond of display, even when it
implies exposure; who court notoriety under
every shape, and embrace the public with de-
monstrations of wantonness. There are genteel
beggars, who send up a well-penned epistle
requesting the loan of a shilling. Your snug
bachelors and retired old maids pretend they
can distinguish the knock of one of these at
their door. I scarce know which I dislike the
most — the patronage that affects to bring prema-
ture genius into notice, or that extends its piece-
meal, formal charity towards it in its- decline.
I hate your Literary Funds, and Funds for De-
cayed Artists — they are corporations for the
encouragement of meanness, pretence, and inso-
lence. Of all people, I cannot tell how it is,
but players appear to me the best able to do
without money. They are a privileged class.

ON Till: WANT MP mom v. M~>

[f not exempt from tin- common calls of neces-
litj tod business, they are enabled •• by their so
potent art" t«> low aboft them. As they make
imaginary ills their own, real ones become
imaginary, -it liur'"t upon them, ami arc thrown
oft' with comparatively little trouble. Their lift-
is theatrical — its various accidents are the shift -
INJ scenes of a play — rags ami finery, tear- and
laughter, a mock-dinner or a real one, a crown
of jewels or of straw, are to them MBIfj
same. I am sorry I cannot carry on this
reasoning to actors who are past their prime.
The gilding of their profession is then worn oil',
and shows the false metal beneath ; vanity anil
hope (the props of their existence) have hail
their day; their former gaiety and cat

as a foil to their pre-ent discouragements |
and want and infirmities press upon them at
onee. •• We know what we are," as Ophelia
says, " but we know nor what we shall be." A
workhouse seems the last resort of poverty and
distress — a parish-pauper is another name for all
that is mean and to be deprecated in human ex-
istence. But that name is but an abstraction,
an average term— " within that lowest deep, a
lower deep may open to receive us." I heard
not long ago of a poor man, who had been for
many \ears a re-pectable tradesman in London,
and who was compelled to take shelter in one of
those receptacles of age and i retehedness, and

316 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

who said he could be contented with it — he had
his regular meals, a nook in the chimney, and a
coat to his back — but he was forced to lie three
in a bed, and one of the three was out of his
mind and crazy, and his great delight was, when
the others fell asleep, to tweak their noses, and
flourish his night-cap over their heads, so that
they were obliged to lie awake, and hold him
down between them. One should be quite mad
to bear this. To what a point of insignificance
may not human life dwindle ! To what fine,
agonizing threads will it not cling ! Yet this
man had been a lover in his youth, in a humble
way, and still begins his letters to an old maid
(his former flame), who sometimes comforts him
by listening to his complaints, and treating
him to a dish of weak tea, " Mr deab Miss
Nancy!"

Another of the greatest miseries of a want
of money, is the tap of a dun at your door, or
the previous silence when you expect it — the
uneasy sense of shame at the approach of your
tormentor ; the wish to meet and yet to shun
the encounter ; the disposition to bully, yet the
fear of irritating ; the real and the sham excuses ;
the submission to impertinence ; the assurances
of a speedy supply; the disingenuousness you
practise on him and on yourself; the degrada-
tion in the eyes of others and your own. Oh !
it is wretched to have to confront a just and oft-

ON Till 1 \NT OF MONEY. 317

lid ili'iiiiiml, and to be without the means
t>> satisfy it ; to deceive the confidence that has
he. 'ii placed in you ; to forfeit your credit ; to
lie placed at the power of another, to he indebted
to hu lenity; to stand convicted of having played
tin- knt,T6 or the fool] and to have no way left
to escape! contempt but by incurring pity. The
suddenly meeting a creditor on turning the
corner of a street, whom you have been trying
to avoid for months, and had persuaded you
were several hundred miles off, discomposes the
features and shatters ihe nerves for some time.
It ii also a serious annoyance to be unable to
repay a loan to a friend, who is in want of it —
nor is it very pleasant to be so hard run, as to be
induced to request a repayment. It is difficult
to decide the preference between debts of honour
and legal demands; both are bad enough, and
almost a fair excuse for driving any one into
the hands of money-lenders — to whom an
application, if successful, is accompanied with a
MQM of being in the vulture's gripe — a reflection
akin to that of tbOM "ho formerly sold theiii-
■ertei to the devil — or, if unsuccessful, is ren-
dered doubly galling by the smooth, civil leer
of cool contempt with which you are dismissed,
a^ if they had escaped from your clutches — not
you from theirs. If anything can be added
to the mortification and distress arising from
straitened circumstances, it is when vanity comes

318 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

in to barb the dart of poverty — when you have
a picture on which you had calculated, rejected
from an exhibition, or a manuscript returned on
your hands, or a tragedy damned, at the very
instant when your cash and credit are at the
lowest ebb. This forlorn and helpless feeling
has reached its acme in the prison-scene in
Hogarth's ' Rake's Progress,' where his un-
fortunate hero has just dropped the Manager's
letter from his hands, with the laconic answer
written in it : — " Your play has been read, and
won't do."* To feel poverty is bad ; but to feel
it with the additional sense of our incapacity to
shake it off, and that we have not merit enough
to retrieve our circumstances — and, instead of
being held up to admiration, are exposed to
persecution and insult — is the last stage of
human infirmity. We have heard it remarked,
that the most pathetic story in the world is
that of Smollett's fine gentleman and lady in
gaol, who have been roughly handled by the
mob for some paltry attempt at raising the
wind, and she exclaims in extenuation of the
pitiful figure he cuts, " Ah ! he was a fine
fellow once ! "

It is justly remarked by the poet, that poverty

* It is provoking enough, and makes one look like a
fool, to receive a printed notice of a blank in the last
lottery, with a postscript hoping for your future favours.

ON THE WANT OP MOM ft 311)

litis im greater inconvenience attached to it than

that of making men ridiculous. It not onh hai

this disadvantage with respect to ourselves, hut
it often shows us others in a very contemptible
point of view. People are not lotted In mi>-
fortune, but by the reception they meet with
in it. When we do not want assistance, every
one is reedy to obtrude it on us, as if it were
advice. If we do, they shun us instantly. Tin v
;mtiei|iatc the incWMOd ileinaud on their -vm-
pttfay or hounty, end escape from it as from a
falling huti-e. It is a mistake, however, that
we court the society of the rich and prosperous,
merely with a view to what we can gjBfl from
them. We do so, because there is something in
externa] rank and splendour that gratifies ;nnl
imposes on the imagination; just as we prefer
the company of those wjio are in good health
and spirits to that of the sickly and hypochon-
driacal, or as we would rather converse with a
heautiful woman than with :m ugly one. I never
knew but one man who would lend his money
freely and fearlessly in spite of circumstances
(if you were likely to pay him, he grew peevish,
and would pick a quarrel with you). I can only
account for this from a certain sanguine buoy-
ancy and munificence of spirit, not deterred by
distant consequences, or damped by untoward
■ppeviuoee. I have been told by those who
shared of the same bounty, that it was not owing

320 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

to generosity, but ostentation — if so, he kept his
ostentation a secret from me, for I never received
a hint or a look from which I could infer that I
was not the lender, and he the person obliged.
Neither was I expected to keep in the back-
ground or play an under part. On the contrary,
I was encouraged to do my best ; my dormant
faculties roused, the ease of my circumstances
was on condition of the freedom and indepen-
dence of my mind, my lucky hits were ap-
plauded, and I was paid to shine. I am not
ashamed of such patronage as this, nor do I
regret any circumstance relating to it but its
termination. People endure existence even in
Paris : the rows of chairs on the Boulevards
are gay with smiles and dress: the saloons
are brilliant; at the theatre there is Made-
moiselle Mars — What is all this to me ? After
a certain period, we live only in the past. Give
me back one single evening at Boxhill, after a
stroll in the deep-empurpled woods, before
Bonaparte was yet beaten, " with wine of attic
taste," when wit, beauty, friendship presided at
the board ! But no ! Neither the time nor
friends that are fled can be recalled ! — Poverty
is the test of sincerity, the touchstone of civility.
Even abroad, they treat you scurvily if your
remittances do not arrive regularly, and though
you have hitherto lived like a Milord Anglais.
The want of money loses us friends not worth

ON THB WANT OP MONET. Ml

the keeping mistresses who arc naturally jilts
or coquets ; it ruts us out <>t society, t<> which
dress and equipage are the only introduction;
ami deprives us of a number of luxuries and
■Awntlgei of which the only good is, that they
can only belong to the possessors of a large for-
tune. Many people are wretched because they
li;ive not money to buy a fine horse, or to hire a
fine house, or to keep a carriage, or to purchase
a diamond necklace, or to go to a race-bull, or to
give their servants new liveries. I cannot my-
self enter into all this. If I can live to think,
and tit ink to live, I am satisfied. Some want to
possess pictures, others to collect libraries. All
I wish is, sometimes, to see the one and read the
other. Gray was mortified because he had not
a hundred pounds to bid for a curious library;
and the Duchess of has immortalized her-
self by her liberality on that occasion, and l>\
the handsome compliment she addressed to the
poet, that "if it afforded him any MtMbetion,
six had been more than paid, by her pleasure in
reading the ' Elegy in a Country Churchyard." "
laterally and truly, one cannot get on well in
the world without money. To be in want of it
is to pass through life with little credit or plea-
sure ; it is to live out of the world, or to be des-
pised if you come into it ; it is not to be sent for
to court, or asked out to dinner, or noticed in
the street ; it is not to have your opinion con-

Y

322 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

suited or else rejected with contempt, to have
your acquirements carped at and doubted, your
good things disparaged, and at last to lose the
wit and the spirit to say them ; it is to be scru-
tinized by strangers, and neglected by friends ;
it is to be a thrall to circumstances, an exile in
one's own country ; to forego leisure, freedom,
ease of body and mind, to be dependent on the
good-will and caprice of others, or earn a pre-
carious and irksome livelihood by some laborious
employment ; it is to be compelled to stand be-
hind a counter, or to sit at a desk in some public
office, or to marry your landlady, or not the
person you would wish; or to go out to the
East or West Indies, or to get a situation as
judge abroad, and return home with a liver-com-
plaint ; or to be a law- stationer, or a scrivener or
scavenger, or newspaper reporter; or to read
law and sit in court without a brief; or to be
deprived of the use of your fingers by transcrib-
ing Greek manuscripts, or to be a seal-engraver
and pore yourself blind ; or to go upon the stage,
or try some of the Fine Arts; with all your
pains, anxiety, and hopes, most probably to fail,
or, if you succeed, after the exertions of years,
and undergoing constant distress of mind and
fortune, to be assailed on every side with envy,
backbiting, and falsehood, or to be a favourite
with the public for awhile, and then thrown into
the back-ground — or a gaol, by the fickleness

ON THE WANT OF MONEY. W-i

of taste and some new favourite; to be full of
ftitliiisiu.Mii unci extravagance in youth, of cha-
grin and disappointment in after-life ; to be
jostled by the rubble because you do not ride in
\our coach, or avoided by those who know your
worth and shrink from it as a claim on their
respect or their purse; to be a burden to your
relations, or unable to do anything for them;
to !>c ashamed to venture into crowds; to have
cold comtoit at home; to lose by decrees your
confidence and any talent you might possess;
to grow crabbed, morose, and querulous, dis-
satisfied with every one, but most so with your-
self; and plagued out of your life to look about
for a place to die in, and quit the world without
any one's asking after your will. The wiseacres
will possibly, however, crowd round your coffin,
and raise a monument at a considerable expense,
and after a lapse of time, to commemorate your
genial and your misfortum i !

The only reason why I am disposed to envy
the professions of the church or army is, that
men can afford to be poor in them without being
subjected to insult. A girl with a handsome
fortune in a country town may marry a poor
lieutenant without degrading herself. An officer
i- always a gentleman; a clergyman is some-
thing more. Echard's book ' On the Contempt
of tin' Clergy ' is unfounded. It is surely suffi-
cient for any set of individuals, raised above

324 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

actual want, that their characters are not merely
respectable, but sacred. Poverty, when it is
voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an
heroical aspect. What are the begging friars ?
Have they not put their base feet upon the necks
of princes ? Money as a luxury is valuable only
as a passport to respect. It is one instrument
of power. Where there are other admitted and
ostensible claims to this, it becomes superfluous,
and the neglect of it is even admired and
looked up to as a mark of superiority over
it. Even a strolling beggar is a popular cha-
racter, who makes an open profession of his
craft and calling, and who is neither worth a
doit nor in want of one. The Scotch are pro-
verbially poor and proud : we know they can
remedy their poverty when they set about
it. No one is sorry for them. The French
emigrants were formerly peculiarly situated in
England. The priests were obnoxious to the
common people on account of their religion ;
both they and the nobles, for their politics.
Their poverty and dirt subjected them to
many rebuffs; but their privations being vo-
luntarily incurred, and also borne with the
characteristic patience and good-humour of the
nation, screened them from contempt. I little
thought, when I used to meet them walking
out in the summer' s-evenings at Somers1 Town,
in their long great coats, their beards covered

ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

with snail', and their eves gloaming with min-
'4l.1l hope ami regret in the rays of the setting
-mi, ami rtgtrdtd them with pity bordering on
respect, as the last filmy vestage of the MMJM
rn/ime, as shadows of loyalty ami siiper>iition
still flitting about the earth and shortly to dis-
appear from it for ever, that they would one
day return over the hleeding corpse of their
country, and sit like harpies, a polluted triumph,
over the tomb of human liberty ! To be a lord,
a papist, and poor, is perhaps to some tempera-
ments a consummation devoutly to be wished.
There is all the subdued splendour of external
rank, the pride of self-opinion, irritated and
goaded on by petty privations and vulvar ob-
loquy to a degree of morbid acuteness. Private
and public annoyances must perpetually remind
him of what he is, of what his ancestors were
(a circumstance which might otherwise be for-
gotten) ; must narrow the circle of conscious
dignity more and more, and the sense of per-
sonal worth and pretension must be exalted by
habit and contrast into a refined abstraction —
u pure in the last recesses of the mind " — un-
mixed with, or unalloyed by u baser matter!" —
It was an hypothesis of the late Mr Thomas
Wedgewood, that there is a principle of com-
pensation in the human mind which equalizes
all situations, and by which the absence of any-
thing only gives us a more intense and intimate

326 ON THE WANT OF MONET.

perception of the reality ; that insult adds to
pride, that pain looks forward to ease with de-
light, that hunger already enjoys the unsavoury
morsel that is to save it from perishing; that
want is surrounded with imaginary riches, like
the poor poet in Hogarth, who has a map of the
mines of Peru hanging on his garret walls ; in
short, that " we can hold a fire in our hand by
thinking on the frosty Caucasus" — but this
hypothesis, though ingenious and to a certain
point true, is to be admitted only in a limited
and qualified sense.

There are two classes of people that I have
observed who are not so distinct as might be
imagined — those who cannot keep their own
money in their hands, and those who cannot
keep their hands from other people's. The first
are always in want of money, though they do
not know what they do with it. They muddle
it away, without method or object, and without
having anything to show for it. They have
not, for instance, a fine house, but they hire two
houses at a time ; they have not a hot-house in
their garden, but a shrubbery within doors ;
they do not gamble, but they purchase a library,
and dispose of it when they move house. A
princely benefactor provides them with lodgings,
where, for a time, you are sure to find them at
home : and they furnish them in a handsome
style for those who are to come after them.

ON THE WANT OP MONEY. '.V21

With nil this sieve-like economy, they can only
afford a lei; <>!' mutton and a single bottle of
wiim , ami are glad to get a lift in a common
stage; whereas with 1 little management and
the same tli.shurseiiinits, tiny might entertail ■
round of company and drive a smart tilbury.
But they set no value upon money, and throw
it away on any object or in any manuer that
first presents itself, merely to have it off their
hands, so that you wonder what has become of
it. The second class above spoken of not only
make away with what belongs to themselves,
but you cannot keep anything you have from
their rapacious grasp. If you refuse to lend
them what you want, tiny insist that you must:
if you let them have anything to take charge of
for a time (a print or a bust) they swear that
you ha\e given it them, and that they have too
great a regard for the donor ever to part with
it. You express surprise at their having run so
largely in debt; but where is the singularity
while others continue to lend ? And how is
this to be helped, when the manner of these
sturdy beggars amounts to dragooning you out
of your money, and they will not go away with-
out your purse, any more than if they came
with a pistol in their hand ? If a person has no
delicacy, he has you in his power, for you ne-
cessarily feel some towards him ; and since he

328 ON THE WANT OF MONEY.

will take no denial, you must comply with his
peremptory demands, or send for a constable,
which out of respect for his character you will
not do. These persons are also poor — light
come, light go — and the bubble bursts at last.
Yet if they had employed the same time and
pains in any laudable art or study that they have
in raising a surreptitious livelihood, they would
have been respectable, if not rich. It is their
facility in borrowing money that has ruined
them. No one will set heartily to work, who
has the face to enter a strange house, ask the
master of it for a considerable loan, on some
plausible and pompous pretext, and walk off
with it in his pocket. You might as well sus-
pect a highwayman of addicting himself to hard
study in the intervals of his profession.

There is only one other class of persons I can
think of, in connexion with the subject of this
Essay — those who are always in want of money
from the want of spirit to make use of it. Such
persons are perhaps more to be pitied than all
the rest. They live in want, in the midst of
plenty — dare not touch what belongs to them,
are afraid to say that their soul is their own,
have their wealth locked up from them by fear
and meanness as effectually as by bolts and bars,
scarcely allow themselves a coat to their backs
or a morsel to eat, are in dread of coming to

ON THE WANT OF MONKT. HI

the parish nil their lives, ami arc not sorry when
t!i.\ .li,', to think thai they shall no longer he
an expense to themselves — according to the <>hl
epigrun :

" Here lies Father Clanres,
Who died tu save charges ! "

ESSAY XVI.
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 " to the height of his great argument;"
but in the other he has shown that he could

on milton's sonnets. M

condescend to men of low estate, and aAer the
lightning end die thunder-holt of his pen, lets

fall some drops of natural pity over hapless

infirmity, mingling -trains with the nightin-
gale'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 achieve-
ments, loves, and friendships, and a noble ex-
hortation 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 nnd pathetical. — I do not know
Indeed but they may be said to be almost the
first effusions of this sort of natural and per-
sonal sentiment in the language. Drummond's
onghl 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. Hut Milton's Sonnets are truly
his own in allusion, thought, and versification.
Those of Sir Philip Sydney, who was a great
transgressor in this way, turn sufficiently on
himself and his own adventures; but they are
elaborate!} 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

332 on milton's sonnets.

than I 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, I with these did play."

I am not aware of any writer of Sonnets
worth mentioning 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 a
mode of composition that depends entirely on

ON MILTON*8 SONNi 'Y-V-l

expression; and this the French and artificial
sty U; gladly dispenses with, as it lays no parti -
rnl;ir stress on anything — except vague, general
eominou-plaees. Warton's Sonnets arc undoubt-
edly e\i|iiisite, both in style and matter: they
MM |t.ietie;il ;ind philosophical effusions of very
delightful sentiment ; l>ut the thoughts, though
fine and deeply felt, are not, like Milton's sub-
jects, identified eoinpletely 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
Miation, u Ob Virtue, I thought thee a sub-
stance, but I find thee a shadow," was not con-
sidered as a compliment, but as a bitter sarcasm.
The beauty of Milton's Sonnets is their sin-
eerity, 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 1 1. There is no Sonnet of Mr Words-
worth's corresponding to that of " the poet
blind and bold," On the late Massacre in I
mont. It would be no niggard praise to Mr
WonUworth to grant that he was either half the
man or half the poet that Milton was. He has
not his bigS and various imagination, nor his
deep and fixed principle. Milton did not wor-

334 on milton's sonnets.

ship the rising sun, nor turn his back on a
losing and fallen cause.

" Such recantation had no charms for him ! "

Mr Southey has thought proper to put the
author of Paradise Lost into his late Heaven,
on the understood condition that he is " no
longer to kings and to hierarchs hostile." In
his life-time, he gave no sign of such an altera-
tion ; 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 !

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 ad-
miration 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

ON MILTON'S SONNET8. ;^;>

th. .hairs of the great There are others who
cun so little bear to be left for any length <»t time
Ml of the grand carnival and masquerade of
pride and folly, that they will gafaj admittance to
it at the expense of their characters as well as of
I change of dress. Milton was not one of these.
Be had too much of the ideal faculty in his
composition, a lofty contemplative principle,
and consciousness of inward power and worth,
to be tempted by such idle baits. We have
plenty of chaunting and chiming in among some
modern writers with the triumphs oyer their own
views and principles ; but none of a patient re-
signation to defeat, sustaining and nourishing
itself with the thought <>t' the justice of their
cause, and with firm-fixed rectitude. I do not
pretend to defend the tone of Milton's political
writings (which tu borrowed from the style
of controversial divinity) or to say that he was
right in the part he took : — I say that he was
i '(insistent in it, and did not convict himself of
error : he was consistent in it in spite of danger
and obloquy, " on 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 sub-
mitted to the change of times with pious forti-
tude, building his consolations on the resources
of his own mind and the recollection of the

336 on milton's sonnets.

past, instead of endeavouring to make himself
a retreat for the time to come. As an instance
of this, we may take one of the best and most
admired of these Sonnets, that addressed to
Cyriac Skinner, on his own blindness.

" Cyriac, this three years' day, these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of hlemish or of spot,
Bereft of light their seeing have forgot,
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun or moon or star 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
Eight onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ?
The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overply'd
In liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe talks from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain

mask,
Content though blind, had I no better guide." ■

Nothing can exceed the mild, subdued tone
of this Sonnet, nor 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 per-
sonal appearance ; a feeling to which his singu-
lar beauty at an earlier age might be supposed
naturally enough to lead. — Of the political or

on milton's sonnets.

( what may bi callt"!) his State- Sonnets, those to
Cromwell, to Fairfax, ami to the younger Vane,
arc full <>l exalted praise ami dignified advice.
They are neither familiar nor servile The writer
kllOWl what is due l.i power and to fame. He
feels the true, unassumed equality of ^n-atne-s.
He pays the lull trihute of admiration for Eretf
acts achieved, and siij^ests heeoinin^ occasion
to deserve bighflf prai-e. That to Cromwell ii
a proof how completely our poet maintained the
ereCtnotS of his understanding and spirit in his
intercourse with men in power. If h moo |
compliment as a poet miodit pay to a conqueror
ami head of the state, without the possibility of
self-degradation.

" Cromwell, our chief of nun. who throuijli u cloud.
Not nt war only, but detractions ruile,
Guided bv bith and nutrJhhm fortitude.
To peace ntul truth tliy glorioai wuy hast plouirh'd.

And on the neck of crowned fortune proud
Hast rear'd God's trophies and his work pan
While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,

And lumbar field resound.-, thy praises loud.

And Worcester's laun.it math. Vet much remains

To conquer still ; peace bath her victories

No less renown'd than war : new foes arise

Threatening to bind our sonK with secular chains ;

Help us I conscience from the paw

( >f hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw."

The most spirited ami impassioned of them
all, and the most inspired with a sort i<\' pro-

z

ON MILTON S SONNETS.

phetic fury, is the one entitled, On the late Mas-
sacre in Piedmont.

" Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold ;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
Forget 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
Jm 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

on miuon's Bomran

,'ly ; thousand! :it iiis bidding speed,
Ami |»nt o'er iimi and ocean without i
who only stand and a

Those to Mr 1 1 - ur\ I.awes on his Mrs, ami t<,

Mr Lawrence, can never l>e enough admired.
They breathe the very soul of orotic and friend*
ship. Both have a tender, thoughtful m

iiml for tin ir ligfatDBHj with I certain melan-
choly Complaining intermixed, illicit he stolen
from the harp of .Kolus. The last is the picture

of a day spent in social retirement and elegant

relaxation from severer studies We sit with
the poet at table, and hear his familiar sentiments
from his own lips afterwards.

•• lawniKv, ,it" virtuous latin r virtuous son,
Now that the fields are .lank ami ways are mire.

Where shall we nmethnei meet, tad by the tin-
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
1'niMi the hard season gaining f Time will run
OB smoother, till Fav.uiius re-inspire
The t'm/iii earth, and clothe in fresh uttire
The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun.
What mat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
( >f Attic taste, with wine, whence we ■ ay rise
To hear the lute well-touch'.l. or artful voice
W.irhle immortal mites and Tuscan air ?
He u ho of these delight! can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise."

In the last, On his deems, d Wife, the alhiM.ni

to Alriwtii i- beautiful, and ihowi how the poet's

mind raised and refined his thoughts by exqutr
classical conceptions, and how these again

340 on milton's sonnets.

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 cha-
racter.

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

There could not have been a greater mistake
or a more unjust piece of criticism than to sup-
pose that Milton only shone on great subjects ;
and that on ordinary occasions and in familiar
life his mind was unwieldy, averse to the culti-
vation of grace and elegance, and unsuscep-
tible of harmless pleasures. The whole tenour
of his smaller compositions contradicts 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

on milton's sonnets. Ml

Douatus ami others are not more remarkable for
tlif display of a scholastic enthusiasm, than for
that of the must amiable dispositions. They
IM " seven* in youthful virtue unreprovi d."
There ll a pasSBgS in his prose-works (the

Treatise <>n Education) aiiiofa efcowe, I think,

his extreme openness and proncness to pleasing
outward impressions in a ■*wHng point of view.
" Hut to return to our own institute," he says,
" besides these constant exercises at home, th-
another opportunity of gaining experience to be
won from pleasure itself abroad. /// those amafi
seasons of the year, when the air is calm and
pseeaSHJ, it were an injury and suUcnness ayoinst
nature not to tjo out and see her riches, anil par-
take in her rejoici/uj 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 quar-
ters of the land," &c. Many other passages
might he (|iioted, in which the poet breaks
through the groundwork of prose, as it were, by
natural fecundity and a genial, unrestrained
sense of delight. To suppose that a poet is not
easily accessible to pleasure, or that he docs not
take an interest in individual objects and feeling-,
is to suppose that he is no poet ; and proceeds
on the false theory, which has been so often ap-
plied to poetry and the Fine Arts, that the whole
is not made up of the particulars. If our author,

342 on milton's sonnets.

according to Dr Johnson's account of him, could
only have treated epic, high-sounding subjects,
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 cele-
brated the event in one more undying strain !

ESSAY XVII.

ON QOINO A JOUHMl .

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

•• The fields his study, nature was his book."

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking
ut llu same time. When I am in the country,
I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not
for critieising hedge-rows and black cattle. I
go out of town in order to forget the town and
all that is in it. There are those who for this
purpose go to watering-places, and carry the
metropolis with them. 1 like more elbow-room,
and fewer incumbrances. I like solitude, when

344 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude ;
nor do I ask for

" a friend in my retreat,

Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet."

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

" May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd,"

that I absent myself from the town for awhile,
without feeling at a loss the moment I am left
by myself. Instead of a friend in a post-chaise
or in a tilbury, to exchange good tilings with,
and vary the same stale topics over again, for once
let me have a truce with impertinence. Give
me the clear blue sky over my head, and the
green turf beneath my feet, a winding road
before me, and a three hours' march to dinner —
and then to thinking ! It is hard if I cannot
start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh,
I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the point
of yonder rolling cloud I plunge into my past
being, and revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian

ON OOINQ A JOURNEY. Hi

plunges headlong info the wave that wafts him
to In- 1 1 ; 1 1 i v « ■ shore. Then loug-torgottrn things,
like "sunken wrack and sumless treasuries,"
hurst upon my eager nght, and I begin to feel,
think, iiml !><• myself again. Instead of an awk-
ward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull
common-places, mine is that undisturbed rilttMM
of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.
No one likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, argu-
ment, and analysis better than I do; but I some-
times had rather be without them. "Leave,
oh, leave me to my repose !" I have just now
other business in band, which would M6U idle
to you, but is with me "very stuff of the con-
science." Is not this wild rose sweet w ithout a
comment ? Does not this daisy leap to my
heart set in its coat of emerald ! Vet if I were
to explain to you the circumstance that has so
endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had
I not better then keep it to myself, and let it
serve me to brood over, from here to yonder
craggy point, and from thence onward to the
far-distant horizon ? I should be but bad com-
pany all that way, and therefore prefer being
alone. I have heard it said that you may, when
the moody tit comes on, walk or ride on by
yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this
looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of
others, and you are thinking all the time that
you ought to rejoin your party. "Out upon

346 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

such half-faced fellowship," say I. I like to be
either entirely to myself, or entirely at the dis-
posal 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 English-
man ought to do only one thing at a time." So
I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melan-
choly musing and lively conversation by fits and
starts. u 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 conti-
nual 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 na-
ture without being perpetually put to the trouble
of translating it for the benefit of others. I am
for the 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
anatomize 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 briers and thorns of controversy. For
once I like to have it all my own way ; and this

ON OOINO A jouk :U7

is impossible unless you are alone, or in such
OomplMj ;is I do not covet. I have no objection
in MTSM ■ ] >• >i ti r with any one for twentj miles

of measured road, f>ut not tor pleasure. If you
r» -m:i rk ili< Menl of a bean-field crossing the
road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell.
It you point to a di-taut object, perhaps he is
short-sighted, and has to take out his glass to
look at it. There is a feeling in the air, I 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 DO sympathy, but itn uneasy
craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pur-
sue- yon on the way, and in the end probably pro-
duces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel with my-
self, and take all my own conclusions for granted
till I find it necessary to defend them against
objections. It is not merely that you may not
be of accord on the objects and circumstances that
present themselves before you — these may recal
I number of objects, and lead to associations
too delicate and refined to be possibly commu-
nicated 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 ex-
travagance 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

348 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

answered) is a task to which few are competent.
We must "give it an understanding, but no
tongue." My old friend Coleridge, however,
could do both. He could go on inthe 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.
They had "that fine madness in them which
our first poets had ; " and if they could have
been caught by some rare instrument, 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 stream, 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 woodbine, caves and dells ;
Choose where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes to make many a ring
For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies ;
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep

ON OOINO A JOURN) 849

I lead of old Latum*, u h, n she stoops each nk'ht.
Gilding tlit- mount. on with her brother's li^'lit.
To kim Iht sweetest.*

Faith m i Sum hi miess.

Had I words and images at command like
these, I would attempt to wake the thoughts
thai lie slumbering on golden ridges in the eve-
ning clouds : but at the -i^lit of nature my
fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes, m fa
leaves, like Howcrs at sunset. I can make
nothing out at the spot; I must liave time to
Oolleol myself.

In general a good thing spoils out-of-door
protpects: it should he reserved for Table-talk.

I. ami) is for this reason, I take it, the worst
company in the world out of doors ; because he
is the l» -t within. I grant there is one subject
on which it is pleasant to talk on a journ. v ;
and that is, what one shall have for supper
when we gel to our inn at night. The open
air improves this sort of conversation or friendly
altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite.
. mile of the road heightens the flavour, of
the viands we expect at the end of it. How

tine it il to enter some old town, walled and
tnrreted, just at the approach of night-fall, or to
come to some straggling village, with the lights
streaming through the surrounding gloom; and
then tiler inquiring *'"' '1"' best entertainment
that the place atlonU, to " take one's ease at

350 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

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. What a delicate speculation it is,
after drinking whole goblets of tea,

" The cups that cheer, but not inebriate,"

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 upon 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 —
Procvl, O 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 inte-
grity 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

ON OOIXO A JOUM ''■•"> •

MO lr\ U) -vmpathi-,- with him, ami he
breaks no sipiarrs. I associate nothing with my
travelling companion hut present objects ami
passing events. In his ignorance of me and my
affairs, I in a manner forget myself. Hut a
friend remindl one of other things, rips 1 1 1 » old
grievances, and destroys the attraction of the
scene. He comes in ungraciously between us
and our imaginary character. Something is
dropped in the course of conversation that gives
■ hint of your proflf JOB and pursuits; or from
having some one with you that knows the lew
sublime portions of your history, it seems that
other people do. Yon are no longer a citizen
of the world : but your " unhoused free con-
dition is put into circumscription and confine. "
The incognito of an inn is one of its striking
privileges — "lord of one's-self, uncumber'd
with a name." Oh ! it is great to shake oft* the
trammels of the world and of public opinion —
to lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting
personal identify in tlie elements of nature, and
become the creature of the moment, clear of all

to hold to the universe oidy by a dish of
sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score
of the evening — and no longer seeking for ap-
plause and meeting with contempt, to be known
by no other title than the Gent Union in the
parlour! One may take one's choice of all
characters in this romantic state of uncertainty

352 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

as to one's real pretensions, and become inde-
finitely respectable and negatively right-wor-
sbipful. 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
Westall's drawings, which I compared triumph-
antly (for a theory that I had, not for the ad-
mired artist) with the figure of a girl who had
ferried me over the Severn, standing up in the
boat between me and the twilight — at other
times I might mention, luxuriating in books,
with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remem-
ber sitting up half the night to read Paul and
Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridge-
water, after being drenched in the rain all day;

001*0 A JOURNBY. 3/>3

and at the same place I got through two

volumes of Madame IV Aridity's Camilla. If
was on the 10th of April, 171)8, 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 first caught
a glimpse from the bright! of the Jura of the
Pays de Vaud, and which I had brought with me
as I Itoimr konche to crown the cvriiing with. It
was my birth-day, and I had for the first time
come from a place in the neighbourhood to rial
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 Dm babbling over its stony bed in the
midst of them. The valley at this time " glit-
tered 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 be-
sides the prospect which opened beneath my
feet, another also opened to my inward sight, a
heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters

2 A

354 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

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, and returns not."

Still I would return some time or other to this
enchanted 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 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 ima-
gination 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-for-
gotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind

ON GOING A JODllNl

revives again ; '"" m t"«»r'_n t those thai we hare

just left. It seems that we can think hut of MM
place at a time. The canvas of the faney i- hut
<»t a otrtain extent, and if we paint one set of
objeoti 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
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 Fopling Flutter, "all
is a desert." All that part of the map that we
do not see before us is a blank. The world in
our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nut-
shell. It is not one prospect expanded into
another, county joined to county, kingdom to
kingdom, lands to seas, making an image volu-
minous and vast; — the mind can form no blgi 1
idea of space than the eye can take in at a single
glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a
ealeulation of arithmetic. For instance, what is
the true signification of that immense mass of

356 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

territory and population, known by the name of
China, to us? An inch of paste-board 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 measure the
universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the
texture of our own being only piece-meal. In
this way, however, we remember an infinity of
things and places. The mind is like a mecha-
nical instrument that plays a great variety of
tunes, but it must play them in succession. One
idea recals another, but it at the same time ex-
cludes all others. In trying to renew old
recollections, 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
anticipation of the actual impression : we re-
member circumstances, 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, aque-
ducts, pictures, in company with a friend or a
party, but rather the contrary, for the former

ON OOINO A JOURNEY. Iff

reason reversed. They are intelligible matters,
and will hear talking about. The sentiment
hrrv is not tacit, but communicable and overt.
Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stone-
henge will bear a discussion antiquarian, pit tu-
imquu. 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 question is what we shall meet with
by the way. " The mind is its own place ;" nor
an pa anxious to arrive at the end of our jour-
ney. I can myself do the honours indifferently
well to works of art and curiosity. I once took
a party to Oxford with no mean eclat — showed
them that seat of the Muses at a distance,

•' With glistering spire* and pinnacles adora'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 superseded the powdered
Cicerone that attended us, and that pointed in
vain with his wand to common-place beauties
in matchless pictures. — As another exception
to the above reasoning, I should not feel con-
fident in venturing on a journey in a foreign
country without a companion. I should want
at intervals to hear the sound of my own lan-
guage. There is an involuntary antipathy in
the mind of an Englishman to foreign maimers

358 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

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 coun-
trymen : 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 contem-
plation. 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 sup-
port.— 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 peo-
pled 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 lan-
guage, for that of all the great schools of painting
was open to me. The whole is vanished like

ON OOINO A Ji'l KM \ . '.Vt\)

a shade. Pictures, heroes, irlnrv, freedom, all
ur«' llril : nothing remains hut tin- BovbOQI and
tin- l'lvnrh people! — There is undoubtedly a
MMatiou in travelling Into foreign parts that i-

to he had nowhere else: hut it is more pleasing
at the time than lusting. It is too remote from
our habitual assoeiations to be a common topic
of discourse or reference, and, like a dream or
•Bother state of existence, does not piece into
our daily modes of life. It is an animated but
a momentary hallucination. It demands an
effort to exchange our actual for our idi-al
identity ; and to feel tlie pulse of our old trans-
portl revive vi i v keenly, we must "jump" all our
at comforts and connexions. Our roman-
ce and itinerant character is not to be domesti-
cated. Dr Johnson remarked how little foreign
travel added to the facilities of conversation
in those who h;nl been abroad. In fact, the
time we have ipeot 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 envi-
able individual, 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,

" ( >ut of my country and myself I go."

Taon who wish to forget painful thoughts, do

360 ON GOING A JOURNEY.

well to absent themselves for a while from the
ties and objects that recal 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 ! —

END OF VOL. I.

Printed by Reynell and Weight, Little i'ulteney street, Haymarket.

UUI>

Hazlitt, William
4772 Table-talk 3d ed.

T3
1845

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