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SKETCHES AND ESSAYS; 
 
 AND 
 
 WINTERSLOW 
 
 (ESSAYS WRITTEN THERE). 
 
SKETCHES AND ESSAYS; 
 
 AND 
 
 WINTEESLOW 
 
 (ESSAYS WRITTEN 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HA 
 
 A NEW EDITION, 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 LONDON; 
 BELL & DALDY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 1872. 
 

 n 
 
 m 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The Papers contained in the following pages were first 
 collected by the Author's son, in two volumes, in the years 
 1839* and 1850f respectively. They are now reproduced 
 without any alteration. I have introduced occasional 
 notes, where they seemed to be necessary, and the names 
 of persons, indicated only by initials in the former 
 editions, have been printed in full. 
 
 W. C. H. 
 
 Kensington, September 1, 1872. 
 
 * Sketches and Essays, By William Hazlitt. Now first Collected 
 by his Son, 1839. A Second Edition called Men and Manners, Essays 
 by William Hazlitt, appeared in 1852. 
 
 t Winterslow ; Essays and Characters written Tliere. By William 
 Hazlitt. Collected by his Son, 1850. 
 
ADVEETISEMENT TO THE EDITION 
 
 OF 1839. 
 
 The volume which the Editor has here the gratification 
 of presenting to the public, consists of Essays contributed 
 by their author to various periodicals. None of them 
 have hitherto been published in a collective form, and it 
 is confidently anticipated that they will be received as an 
 acceptable Companion to Table Talk and the Plain 
 Speaker. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 1. SKETCHES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ox Beading New Books . 
 
 1 
 
 On Cant and Hypocrisy .... 
 
 18 
 
 Merry England ..... 
 
 . 32 
 
 On a Sun-Dial . . . 
 
 47 
 
 On Prejudice ..... 
 
 . 58 
 
 Self-Loye and Benevolence. (A Dialogue) . 
 
 73 
 
 On Disagreeable People .... 
 
 . 107 
 
 On Knowledge op the World 
 
 123 
 
 On Fashion . . . . • 
 
 . 142 
 
 On Nicknames ...... 
 
 149 
 
 On Taste ...... 
 
 . 158 
 
 Why the Heroes op Romances are Insipid . 
 
 178 
 
 On the Conversation op Lords 
 
 . 190 
 
 The Letter-Bell ..... 
 
 209 
 
 Envy ...... 
 
 . 215 
 
 On the Spirit of Partisanship 
 
 222 
 
 Footmen ...... 
 
 . 236 
 
 A Chapter on Editors .... 
 
 244 
 
 2. WINTERSLOW. 
 
 
 My First Acquaintance with Poets 
 
 . 255 
 
 Of Persons one would wish to have seen . 
 
 278 
 
 On Party Spirit ..... 
 
 . 294 
 
 On the Feeling op Immortality in Youth . 
 
 299 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 PAG* 
 
 On Public Opinion ..... 807 
 
 On Personal Identity .... 320 
 
 Mind and Motive . . . . . .335 
 
 On Means and Ends ..... 350 
 
 Matter and Manner . . . . .330 
 
 On Consistency of Opinion .... 367 
 
 Peoject for a New Theory of Civil and Criminal 
 
 Legislation ..... \ 383 
 
 On the Character of Burke. . . . 408 
 
 On the Character of Fox .... 426 
 
 On the Character of Mr. Pitt . . . 438 
 
 On the Character of Lord Chatham . . . 444 
 
 Belief, whether Voluntary ? 449 
 
 A Farewell to Essay-writing- . . . .458 
 
SKETCHES AND ESSAYS 
 
 On Beading New Boohs. 
 
 " And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a 
 rout about?" — Sterne. 
 
 I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater 
 part of the world for reading New Books. If the public 
 had read all those that have gone before, I can conceive 
 how they should not wish to read the same work twice 
 over ; but when I consider the countless volumes that lie 
 unopened, unregarded, unread, and unthought-of, I cannot 
 enter into the pathetic complaints that I hear made that 
 Sir Walter writes no more — that the press is idle — that 
 Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read a book before, it 
 is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was 
 printed yesterday or three hundred years ago. If it be 
 urged that it has no modern, passing incidents, and is out 
 of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much the newer ; 
 it is farther removed from other works that I have lately 
 read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life and makes 
 so much more addition to my knowledge. But many 
 people would as soon think of putting on old armour as of 
 taking up a book not published within the last month, or 
 year at the utmost. There is a fashion in reading as well 
 as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One would 
 
 1 See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1867, ii, 154.— Ed. 
 
 B 
 
2 On Pleading New Books. 
 
 imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being 
 old ; l that they have a pleasure in being read for the first 
 time ; that they open their leaves more cordially ; that the 
 spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit of novelty ; 
 and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put them on 
 the shelf. This conceit seems to be followed up in 
 practice. What is it to me that another — that hundreds 
 or thousands have in all ages read a work ? Is it on this 
 account the less likely to give me pleasure, because it has 
 delighted so many others ? Or can I taste this pleasure by 
 proxy ? Or am I in any degree the wiser for their 
 knowledge ? Yet this might appear to be the inference. 
 Their having read the work may be said to act upon us by 
 sympathy, and the knowledge which so many other persons 
 have of its contents deadens our curiosity and interest 
 altogether. We set aside the subject as one on which 
 others have made up their minds for us (as if we really 
 could have ideas in their heads), and are quite on the alert 
 for the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which 
 we shall be the first to read, criticise, and pass an opinion 
 on. Oh, delightful ! To cut open the leaves, to inhale 
 the fragrance of the scarcely dry paper, to examine the 
 type to see who is the printer (which is some clue to the 
 value that is set upon the work), to launch out into regions 
 of thought and invention never trod till now, and to ex- 
 plore characters that never met a human eye before — this 
 is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party, or a few 
 hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when the 
 work is critical and full of expectation, would venture 
 to dine out, or to face a coterie of blue-stockings 
 in the evening, without having gone through this or- 
 deal, or at least without hastily turning over a few of the 
 first pages, while dressing, to be able to say that the be- 
 
 ] " Laws are not like women, the worse for being o.d." — The Duke 
 of Buckingham's Speech in the House of Lords, in Charles the 
 Second s time. 
 
On Reading New Boohs. 3 
 
 ginning does not promise much, or to tell the name of the 
 heroine ? 
 
 A new work is something in our power : we mount the 
 bench, and sit in judgment on it ; we can damn or recom- 
 mend it to others at pleasure, can decry or extol it to the 
 skies, and can give an answer to those who have not yet 
 read it and expect an account of it ; and thus show our 
 shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the 
 world have had time to form an opinion. If we cannot 
 write ourselves, we become, by busying ourselves about it, 
 a kind of accessories after the fact. Though not the parent 
 of the bantling that " has just come into this breathing 
 world, scarce half made up," without the aid of criticism 
 and puffing, yet we are the gossips and foster-nurses on 
 the occasion, with all the mysterious significance and self- 
 importance of the tribe. If we wait, we must take our 
 report from others ; if we make haste, we may dictate 
 ours to them. It is not a race, then, for priority of 
 information, but for precedence in tattling and dog- 
 matising. The work last out is the first that people talk 
 and inquire about. It is the subject on the tapis — the 
 cause that is pending. It is the last candidate for success 
 (other claims have been disposed of), and appeals for this 
 success to us, and us alone. Our predecessors can have 
 nothing to say to this question, however they may have 
 anticipated us on others ; future ages, in all probability, 
 will not trouble their heads about it ; we are the panel. 
 How hard, then, not to avail ourselves of our immediate 
 privilege to give sentence of life or death — to seem in 
 ignorance of what every one else is full of — to be behind- 
 hand with the polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of 
 mankind — to be at a loss and dumb -founded, when all 
 around us are in their glory, and figuring away, on no 
 other ground than that of having read a work that we have 
 not ! Books that are to be written hereafter cannot be 
 criticised by us ; those that were written formerly have 
 
4 On Beading New Boohs. 
 
 been criticised long ago : but a new book is the property, 
 the prey of ephemeral criticism, which it darts tri- 
 umphantly upon ; there is a raw thin air of ignorance and 
 uncertainty about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion ; 
 and curiosity, impertinence, and vanity, rush eagerly into 
 the vacuum. A new book is the fair field for petulance 
 and coxcombry to gather laurels in — the butt set up for 
 roving opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then, that the 
 circulating libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and 
 their grand-daughters, when a new novel is announced ? 
 That Mail-Coach copies of the Edinburgh Beview are or 
 were coveted ? That the Manuscript of the Waverley 
 Bomances is sent abroad in time for the French, German, 
 or even Italian translation to appear on the same day as 
 the original work, so that the longing Continental public 
 may not be kept waiting an instant longer than their 
 fellow-readers in the English metropolis which would be, 
 as tantilising and insupportable as a little girl being kept 
 without her new frock, when her sister's is just come home 
 and is the talk and admiration of every one in the house ? 
 To be sure, there is something in the taste of the times ; 
 a modern work is expressly adapted to modern readers. It 
 appeals to our direct experience, and to well-known sub- 
 jects ; it is part and parcel of the world around us, and is 
 drawn from the same sources as our daily thoughts. 
 There is, therefore, so far, a natural or habitual sympathy 
 between us and the literature of the day, though this is a 
 different consideration from the mere circumstance of no- 
 velty. An author now alive has a right to calculate upon 
 the living public : he cannot count upon the dead, nor 
 look forward with much confidence to those that are unborn. 
 Neither, however, is it true that we are eager to read all 
 new books alike : we turn from them with a certain feeling 
 of distaste and distrust, unless they are recommended to us 
 by some peculiar feature or obvious distinction. Only 
 young ladies from the boarding-school, or milliners' girls 
 
On Beading New Books. 5 
 
 read all the new novels that come out. It must be spoken 
 of or against ; the writer's name must be well known or a 
 great secret ; it must be a, topic of discourse and a mark 
 for criticism — that is, it must be likely to bring us into 
 notice in some way — or we take no notice of it. There is 
 a mutual and tacit understanding on tnis head. We can 
 no more read all the new books that appear, than we can 
 read all the old ones that have disappeared from time to 
 time. A question may be started here/ 1 and pursued as far 
 as needful, whether, if an old and worm-eaten Manuscript 
 were discovered at the present moment, it would be sought 
 after with the same avidity as a new and hot-pressed poem, 
 or other popular work ? Not generally, certainly, though 
 by a few with perhaps greater zeal. For it would not 
 affect present interests, or amuse present fancies, or touch 
 on present manners, or fall in with the public egotism in 
 any way : it would be the work either of some obscure 
 author — in which case it would want the principle of 
 excitement ; or of some illustrious name, whose style and 
 manner would be already familiar to those most versed in 
 the subject, and his fame established — so that, as a matter 
 of comment and controversy, it would only go to account 
 on the old score : there would be no room for learned 
 feuds and heart-burnings. Was there not a Manuscript of 
 Cicero's talked of as having been discovered about a year 
 ago ? But we have heard no more of it. There have 
 been several other cases, more or less in point, in our time 
 or near it. A Noble Duke (which may serve to show at 
 least the interest taken in books not for being new) some 
 time ago gave 2, 260Z. for a copy of the first edition of 
 the Decameron: but did he read it? 1 It has been a 
 fashion also of late for noble and wealthy persons to go to 
 
 1 It was the Duke of Marlborough, the grandfather of the present 
 Duke, when Marquis of Blandford, who bought this volume against 
 Lord Spencer at the Eoxburghe sale, in 1812. At the White Knights 
 sale, in IS 19, however, Lord Spencer had the satisfaction of securing 
 the book for less than 1000Z.— Ed. 
 
6 On Reading New Books. 
 
 a considerable expense in ordering reprints of the old 
 Chronicles and black-letter works. Does not this rather 
 prove that the books did not circulate very rapidly or 
 extensively, or such extraordinary patronage and liberality 
 would not have been necessary ? Mr Thomas Taylor, at 
 the instance, I believe, of the old Duke of Norfolk, printed 
 fifty copies in quarto of a translation of the works of Plato 
 and Aristotle. He did not choose that a larger im- 
 pression should be struck off, lest these authors should get 
 into the hands of the vulgar. There was no danger of a 
 run in that way. I tried to read some of the Dialogues 
 in the translation of Plato, but, I confess, could make 
 nothing of it : " the logic was so different from ours ! " 1 
 
 1 An expression borrowed from a voluble German scholar, who 
 gave this as an excuse for not translating the ' Critique of Pure 
 Reason ' into English. He might as well have said seriously, that 
 the Rule of Three in German was different from ours. [See Memoirs 
 of William Hazlitt, i, 35.] Mr. Taylor (the Platonist, as he was called) 
 was a singular instance of a person in our time believing in the 
 heathen mythology. He had a very beautiful wife. An impudent 
 Frenchman, who came over to London, and lodged in the same hoi?se, 
 made love to her, by pretending to worship her as Yenus, and so 
 thought to turn the tables on our philosopher. I once spent an 
 evening with this gentleman at George Dyer's chambers, in Clifford's 
 Inn, where there was no exclusion of persons or opinions. I re- 
 member he showed with some triumph two of his fingers, which 
 had been bent so that he had lost the use of them, in copying out 
 the manuscripts of Proems and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand. 
 Such are the trophies of human pride ! It would be well if our 
 deep studies often produced no other crookedness and deformity ! 
 I endeavoured (but in vain) to learn something from the heathen 
 philosopher as to Plato's doctrine of abstract ideas being the 
 foundation of particular ones, which I suspect has more truth in it 
 than we moderns are willing to admit. Another friend of mine 
 [Leigh Hunt] once breakfasted with Mr. Dyer (the most amiable 
 and absent of hosts), when there was no butter, no knife to cut the 
 loaf with, and the tea-pot was without a spout. My friend, after a 
 few immaterial ceremonies, adjourned to Peele's coffee-house, close 
 by, where he regaled himself on buttered toast, coffee, and the 
 newspaper of the day (a newspaper possessed some interest when 
 
On Betiding New Books. 7 
 
 A startling experiment was made on this sort of retro- 
 spective curiosity, in the case of Ireland's celebrated 
 Shakspeare forgery. The public there certainly man- 
 fested no backwardness nor lukewarmness : the enthusism 
 was equal to the folly. But then the spirit exhibited on 
 this occasion was partly critical and polemical, and it is a 
 problem whether an actual and undoubted play of Shaks- 
 peare's would have excited the same ferment ; and, on the 
 other hand, Shakspeare is an essential modern. People 
 read and go to see his real plays, as well as his pretended 
 ones. The fuss made about Ossian is another test to refer 
 to. It was its being the supposed revival of an old work 
 (known only by scattered fragments or lingering tradition) 
 which gave it its chief interest, though there was also a 
 good deal of mystery and quackery concerned along with 
 the din and stir of national jealousy and pretension. Who 
 reads Ossian now ? It is one of the reproaches brought 
 against Buonaparte that he was fond of it when young. 
 I cannot for myself see the objection. There is no doubt 
 an antiquarian spirit always at work, and opposed to the 
 spirit of novelty-hunting; but, though opposed, it is 
 scarcely a match for it in a general and popular point of 
 view. It is not long ago that I happened to be suggesting 
 a new translation of Don Quixote to an enterprising book- 
 seller ; and his answer was — " We want new Don 
 Quixotes." I believe I deprived the same active-minded 
 person of a night's rest, by telling him there was the 
 beginning of another novel by Goldsmith in existence 
 
 we were young) ; and the only interruption to his satisfaction was 
 the fear that his host might suddenly enter, and be shocked at his 
 imperfect hospitality. He would probably forget the circumstance 
 altogether. I am afraid that this veteran of the old school has not 
 received many proofs of the archaism of the prevailing taste; and 
 that the corrections in his History of the University of Cambridge 
 have cost him more than the public will ever repay him for. [This 
 anecdote is worked up with capital effect in Hunt's Men, Women, 
 and Books, 1846. It is the story of Jack Abbott's breakfast.] 
 
8 On Reading New Books. 
 
 This, if it could be procured, would satisfy both tastes for 
 the new and the old at once. I fear it is but a fragment, 
 and that we must wait till a new Goldsmith appears. We 
 may observe of late a strong craving after ' Memoirs,' and 
 8 Lives of the Dead. 5 l But these, it may be remarked, 
 savour so much of the real and familiar, that the persons 
 described differ from us only in being dead, which is a 
 reflection to our advantage : or, if remote and romantic in 
 their interest and adventures, they require to be bolstered 
 up in some measure by the embellishments of modern 
 style and criticism. The accounts of Petrarch and Laura, 
 of Abelard and Eloise, have a lusciousness and warmth in 
 the subject which contrast quaintly and pointedly with the 
 coldness of the grave ; and, after all, we prefer Pope's 
 Eloise and Abelard, with the modern dress and flourishes, 
 to the sublime and affecting simplicity of the original 
 Letters. 
 
 In some very just and agreeable reflections on the story 
 of Abelard and Eloise, in a late number of a contem- 
 porary publication, there is a quotation of some lines 
 from Lucan, which Eloise is said to have repeated in 
 broken accents as she was advancing to the altar to 
 receive the veil : 
 
 " O maxime conjux ! - 
 O thalamis indigne meis ! Hoc juris habebat 
 In tantum fortuna caput ? Cur impia nupsi, 
 Si miserum factura fui ? Nunc accipe paenas, 
 Sed quas sponte luam." 2 
 
 This speech, quoted by another person, on such an 
 occasion, might seem cold and pedantic ; but from the 
 mouth of the passionate and unaffected Eloise it cannot 
 bear that interpretation. What sounding lines ! What a 
 
 1 I presume Landor's Imaginary Conversations is the work in- 
 tended. There are also Letters from the dead to the living, and 
 Fenelon's Dialogues of the Dead. — Ed. 
 
 2 Pharsalia, lib. 8. 
 
On Reading Neiv Boohs. 9 
 
 pomp, and yet what a familiar boldness in their applica- 
 tion — " proud as when blue Iris bends!" The reading 
 this account brought forcibly to mind what has struck me 
 often before — the unreasonableness of the complaint we 
 constantly hear of the ignorance and barbarism of former 
 ages, and the folly of restricting all refinement and 
 literary elegance to our own. We are, indeed, indebted 
 to the ages that have gone before us, and could not well 
 do without them. But in all ages there will be found 
 still others that have gone before with nearly equal lustre 
 and advantage, though, by distance and the intervention 
 of multiplied excellence, this lustre may be dimned or 
 forgotten. Had it then no existence? We might, with 
 the same reason, suppose that the horizon is the last 
 boundary and verge of the round earth. Still, as we 
 advance, it recedes from us ; and so time from its store- 
 house pours out an endless succession of the productions 
 of art and genius ; and the farther we explore the 
 obscurity, other trophies and other land-marks rise up. 
 It is only our ignorance that fixes a limit — as the mist 
 gathered round the mountain's brow makes us fancy we 
 are treading the edge of the universe ! Here was Eloise 
 living at a period when monkish indolence and super- 
 stition were at their height — in one of those that are 
 emphatically called the dark ages ; and yet, as she is led 
 to the altar to make her last fatal vow, expressing her 
 feelings in language quite natural to her, but from which 
 the most accomplished and heroic of our modern females 
 would shrink back with pretty and affected wonder and 
 affright. The glowing and impetuous lines which she 
 murmured, as she passed on, with spontaneous and rising 
 enthusiasm, were engraven on her heart, familiar to her 
 as her daily thoughts ; her mind must have been full of 
 them to overflowing, and at the same time enriched with 
 other stores and sources of knowledge equally elegant and 
 impressive ; and we persist, notwithstanding this and a 
 
10 On Beading New Books. 
 
 thousand similar circumstances, in indulging our surprise 
 how people could exist, and see, and feel, in those days, 
 without having access to our opportunities and acquire- 
 ments, and how Shakspeare wrote long after, in a 
 harbarons age ! The mystery in this case is of our own 
 making. We are struck with astonishment at finding 
 a fine moral sentiment or a noble image nervously 
 expressed in an author of the age of Queen Elizabeth ; 
 not considering that, independently of nature and feeling, 
 which are the same in all periods, the writers of that day, 
 who were generally men of education and learning, had 
 such models before them as the one that has been just 
 referred to — were thoroughly acquainted with those mas- 
 ters of classic thought and language, compared with 
 whom, in all that relates to the artificial graces of com- 
 position, the most studied of the moderns are little better 
 than Goths and Vandals. It is true, we have lost sight 
 of, and neglected the former, because the latter have, in a 
 great degree, superseded them, as the elevations nearest to 
 us intercept those farthest off; but our not availing 
 ourselves of this vantage ground is no reason why our 
 forefathers should not (who had not our superfluity of 
 choice), and most assuredly they did study and cherish 
 the precious fragments of antiquity, collected together in 
 their time, " like sunken wreck and sumless treasuries ; " l 
 and while they did this, we need be at no loss to account 
 for any examples of grace, of force, or dignity in their 
 writings, if these must always be traced back to a pre- 
 vious source. One age cannot understand how another 
 could subsist without its lights, as one country thinks 
 every other must be poor for want of its physical produc- 
 tions. This is a narrow and superficial view of the 
 subject : we should by all means rise above it. I am not 
 for devoting the whole of our time to the study of the 
 classics, or of any other set of writers, to the exclusion and 
 1 Henry V., i, 2 [Dyce's edit. 1868, iv, 429]. 
 
On Beading New Boohs. 11 
 
 neglect of nature ; but I think we should turn our thoughts 
 enough that way to convince us of the existence of genius 
 and learning before our time, and to cure us of an over- 
 weening conceit of ourselves, and of a contemptuous opinion 
 of the world at large. Every civilised age and country 
 (and of these there is not one, but a hundred) has its litera- 
 ture, its arts, its comforts, large and ample, though we 
 may know nothing of them ; nor is it (except for our own 
 sakes) important that we should. 
 
 Books have been so multiplied in our days (like the 
 Vanity Fair of knowledge), and we have made such 
 progress beyond ourselves in some points, that it seems at 
 first glance as if we had monopolised every possible 
 advantage, and the rest of the world must be left destitute 
 and in darkness. This is the cockneyism (with leave be it 
 spoken) of the nineteenth century. There is a tone of 
 smartness and piquancy in modern writing, to which 
 former examples may, in one sense, appear flat and 
 pedantic. Our allusions are more pointed and personal : 
 the ancients are, in this respect, formal and prosaic 
 personages. Some one, not long ago, in this vulgar, 
 shallow spirit of criticism (which sees everything from its 
 own point of view), said that the tragedies of Sophocles 
 and 2Eschylus were about as good as the pieces brought 
 out at Sadler's Wells or the Adelphi Theatre. An oration 
 of Demosthenes is thought dry and meagre, because it is 
 not "full of wise saws and modern instances:" one of 
 Cicero's is objected to as flimsy and extravagant, for the 
 same reason. There is a style in one age which does not 
 fall in with the taste of the public in another, as it 
 requires greater effeminacy and softness, greater severity 
 or simplicity, greater force or refinement. Guido was 
 more admired than Eaphael in his day, because the man- 
 ners were grown softer without the strength : Sir Peter 
 Lely was thought in his to have eclipsed Vandyke — an 
 opinion that no one holds at present : Holbein's faces 
 
 
12 On Beading New Books. 
 
 must be allowed to be very different from Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence's — yet the one was the favourite painter of 
 Henry VIIL, as the other is of George IV. What should 
 we say in our time to the euphuism of the age of Elizabeth, 
 when style was made a riddle and the court talked in 
 conundrums ? This, as a novelty and a trial of the wits, 
 might take for a while : afterwards, it could only seem 
 absurd. We must always make some allowance for a 
 change of style, which those who are accustomed to read 
 none but works written within the last twenty years 
 neither can nor will make. When a whole generation 
 read, they will read none but contemporary productions. 
 The taste for literature becomes superficial, as it becomes 
 universal, and is spread over a larger space. When ten 
 thousand boarding-school girls, who have learnt to play 
 on the piano, are brought out in the same season, Eossini 
 will be preferred to Mozart, as the last new composer. I 
 remember a very genteel young couple in the boxes of 
 Drury Lane being very much scandalised some years ago 
 at the phrase in A New Way to Pay Old Debts — tc an 
 insolent piece of paper" — applied to the contents of a 
 letter ; it wanted the modern lightness and indifference. 
 Let an old book be ever so good, it treats (generally 
 speaking) of topics that are stale, in a style that has 
 grown " somewhat musty;" of manners that are exploded, 
 probably by the very ridicule thus cast upon them; of 
 persons that no longer figure on the stage ; and of interests 
 that have long since given place to others in the infinite 
 fluctuations of human affairs. Longinus complains of the 
 want of interest in the Odyssey, because it does not, like 
 the Biad, treat of war. The very complaint we make 
 against the latter is that it treats of nothing else ; or that, 
 as Fuseli expresses it, everything is seen " through the 
 blaze of war." Books of devotion are no longer read 
 (if we read Irving's Orations, it is merely that we may go 
 as a lounge to see the man) : even attacks on religion are 
 
On Beading New Boohs. 13 
 
 out of date and insipid. Voltaire's jests and the Jew's 
 Letters in answer (equal in wit, and more than equal in 
 learning), repose quietly on the shelf together. We want 
 something in England about Eent and the Poor-La ws, 
 and something in France about the Charter — or Lord 
 Byron. With the attempts, however, to revive super- 
 stition and intolerance, a spirit of opposition has been 
 excited, and Pascal's Provincial Letters have been once 
 more enlisted into the service. In France you meet with 
 no one who can read the New Eloise ; the Princess of 
 Cleves is not even mentioned in these degenerate days. 
 Is it not provoking with us to see the Beggars' Opera cut 
 down to two acts, because some of the allusions are too 
 broad, and others not understood ? And in America this 
 sterling satire is hooted off the stage, because, fortunately, 
 they have no such state of manners as it describes before 
 their eyes; and because, unfortunately, they have no 
 conception of anything but what they see. America is 
 singularly and awkwardly situated in this respect. It is 
 a new country with an old language ; and while every- 
 thing about them is of a day's growth, they are constantly 
 applying to us to know what to think of it, and taking 
 their opinions from our books and newspapers with a 
 strange mixture of servility and of the spirit of contra- 
 diction. They are an independent state in politics : in 
 literature they are still a colony from us — not out of their 
 leading strings, and strangely puzzled how to determine 
 between the Edinburgh and Quarterly Beviews. We have 
 naturalised some of their writers, who had formed them- 
 selves upon us. This is at once a compliment to them 
 and to ourselves. Amidst the scramble and lottery for 
 fame in the present day, besides puffing, which may be 
 regarded as the hot-bed of reputation, another mode has 
 been attempted by transplanting it ; and writers who are 
 set down as drivellers at home, shoot up great authors on 
 the other side of the water; pack up their all — a title- 
 
 
14 On Beading New Boohs. 
 
 page and sufficient impudence ; and a work, of which the 
 flocci-nauci-niliili-pili-fication, in Shenstone's phrase, is well 
 known to every competent judge, is placarded into emi- 
 nence, and "names in the forehead of the morning sky'' 
 on the walls of Paris or St. Petersburgh. I dare not 
 mention the instances, but so it is. Some reputations 
 last only while the possessors live, from which one might 
 suppose that they gave themselves a character for genius : 
 others are cried up by their gossiping acquaintances, as 
 long as they give dinners, and make their houses places 
 of polite resort ; and, in general, in our time, a book may 
 be considered to have passed the ordeal that is mentioned 
 at all three months after it is printed. Immortality is 
 not even a dream — a boy's conceit ; and posthumous fame 
 is no more regarded by the author than by his bookseller. 
 This idle, dissipated turn seems to be a set-off to, or 
 the obvious reaction of, the exclusive admiration of the 
 ancients, which was formerly the fashion : as if the sun of 
 human intellect rose and set at Kome and Athens, and the 
 mind of man had never exerted itself to any purpose since. 
 The ignorant, as well as the adept, were charmed only 
 with what was obsolete and far-fetched, wrapped up in 
 technical terms and in a learned tongue. Those who 
 spoke and wrote a language which hardly any one at 
 present even understood, must of course be wiser than we. 
 Time, that brings so many reputations to decay, had 
 embalmed others and rendered them sacred. From an 
 implicit faith and over-strained homage paid to antiquity, 
 we of the modern school have taken too strong a bias to 
 what is new ; and divide all wisdom and worth between 
 ourselves and posterity — not a very formidable rival to 
 our self-love, as we attribute all its advantages to our- 
 selves, though we pretend to owe little or nothing to our 
 predecessors. About the time of the French Eevolution, 
 it was agreed that the world had hitherto been in its 
 dotage or its infancy ; and that Mr. Godwin, Condorcet, 
 
On Beading New Boohs. 15 
 
 and others were to begin a new race of men — a new epoch 
 in society. Everything up to that period was to be set 
 aside as puerile or barbarous ; or, if there were any traces 
 of thought and manliness now and then discoverable, they 
 were to be regarded with wonder as prodigies — as irregu- 
 lar and fitful starts in that long sleep of reason and night 
 of philosophy. In this liberal spirit Mr. Godwin composed 
 an Essay to prove that, till the publication of TJie Inquiry 
 concerning Political Justice, 1 no one knew how to write a 
 word of common grammar, or a style that was not utterly 
 uncouth, incongruous, and feeble. Addison, Swift, and 
 Junius were included in this censure. The English 
 language itself might be supposed to owe its stability and 
 consistency, its roundness and polish, to the whirling 
 motion of the French Kevolution. Those who had gone 
 before us were, like our grandfathers and grandmothers, 
 decrepit, superannuated people, blind and dull; poor 
 creatures, like flies in winter, without pith or marrow in 
 them. The past was barren of interest — had neither 
 thought nor object worthy to arrest our attention ; and 
 the future would be equally a senseless void, except as 
 we projected ourselves and our theories into it. There 
 is nothing I hate more than I do this exclusive, upstart 
 spirit. 
 
 * By Heavens, I'd rather be 
 A pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
 So might I, standing on some pleasant lea, 
 Catch glimpses that might make me less forlorn, 
 Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea. 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 2 
 
 Neither do I see the good of it even in a personal and 
 interested point of view. By despising all that has pre- 
 ceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves. Where 
 
 1 An Inquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on 
 General Virtue and Happiness. London, 1793, 2 vols. 4to. — Ed. 
 
 2 Wordsworth's Sonnets. 
 
16 On Beading New Boohs. 
 
 there is no established scale nor rooted faith in excellence, 
 all superiority — our own as well as that of others — soon 
 comes to the ground. By applying the wrong end of the 
 magnifying glass to all objects indiscriminately, the most 
 respectable dwindle into insignificance, and the best are 
 confounded with the worst. Learning, no longer sup- 
 ported by opinion, or genius by fame, is cast into the 
 mire, and " trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multi- 
 tude." I would rather endure the most blind and bigoted 
 respect for great and illustrious names, than that pitiful, 
 grovelling humour which has no pride in intellectual 
 excellence, and no pleasure but in decrying those who 
 have given proofs of it, and reducing them to its own 
 level. If, with the diffusion of knowledge, we do not 
 gain an enlargement and elevation of views, where is the 
 benefit ? If, by tearing asunder names from things, we 
 do not leave even the name or shadow of excellence, it is 
 better to let them remain as they were ; for it is better to 
 have something to admire than nothing — names, if not 
 things — the shadow, if not the substance — the tinsel, if 
 not the gold. All can now read and write equally ; and, 
 it is therefore presumed, equally well. Anything short 
 of this sweeping conclusion is an invidious distinction ; 
 and those who claim it for themselves or others are exclu- 
 sionists in letters. Every one at least can call names — 
 can invent a falsehood, or repeat a story against those who 
 have galled their pragmatical pretensions by really adding 
 to the stock of general amusement or instruction. Every 
 one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt : nine out of 
 ten have the inclination. It is curious that, in an age 
 when the most universally-admitted claim to public dis- 
 tinction is literary merit, the attaining this distinction is 
 almost a sure title to public contempt and obloquy. 1 They 
 cry you up, because you are unknown, and do not excite % 
 
 1 Is not this partly owing to the disappointment of the public at 
 finding any defect in their idol ? 
 
 
On Beading Neic Books. 17 
 
 their jealousy ; and run you down, when they have thus 
 distinguished you, out of envy and spleen at the very idol 
 they have set up. A public favourite is " kept like an 
 apple in the jaw of an ape — first mouthed to be afterwards 
 swallowed. When they need what you have gleaned, it 
 is but squeezing you, and sponge you shall be dry again. " 
 At first they think only of the pleasure or advantage they 
 receive : but, on reflection, they are mortified at the supe- 
 riority implied in this involuntary concession, and are 
 determined to be even with you the very first opportunity. 
 What is the prevailing spirit of modern literature ? To 
 defame men of letters. What are the publications that 
 succeed ? Those that pretend to teach the public that the 
 persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up 
 to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves, 
 or a set of vagabonds, miscreants that should be hunted 
 out of society. 1 Hence men of letters, losing their self- 
 
 1 An old friend of mine [the Eev. Joseph Fawcett] when he read 
 the abuse and Billingsgate poured out in certain Tory publications, 
 used to congratulate himself upon it as a favourable sign of the 
 times, and of the progressive improvement of our manners. Where 
 we now called names, we formerly burnt each other at a stake ; and 
 all the malice of the heart flew to the tongue and vented itself in 
 scolding, instead of crusades and auto da fes — the nobler revenge 
 of our ancestors for a difference of opinion. An author [Leigh 
 Hunt, in the Examiner'] now libels a prince ; and, if he takes the 
 law of him, or throws him into gaol, it is looked upon as a harsh 
 and ungentlemanly proceeding. He, therefore, gets a dirty secre- 
 tary to employ a dirty bookseller, to hire a set of dirty scribblers, 
 to pelt him with dirt and cover him with blackguard epithets [this is 
 probably levelled at Croker] till he is hardly in a condition to walk the 
 streets. This is hard measure, no doubt, and base ingratitude on the 
 part of the public, according to the imaginary dignity and natural 
 precedence which authors take of kings ; but the latter are men, and 
 will have their revenge where they can get it. They have no longer 
 their old summary appeal — their will may still be good — to the dun- 
 geon and the dagger. Those who " speak evil of dignities " may, 
 therefore, think themselves well off in being merely sent to Coventry; 
 and, besides, if they have pluck, they can make a Parthian retreat, 
 
 
 
18 On Cant and Hypocrisy. 
 
 respect, become government tools, and prostitute their 
 talents to the most infamous purposes, or turn dandy 
 scribblers, and set up for gentlemen authors in their own 
 defence. I like the Order of the Jesuits better than this ; 
 they made themselves respected by the laity, kept their 
 own secret, and did not prey on one another. Eesume 
 then, oh ! Learning, thy robe pontifical ; clothe thyself 
 in pride and purple ; join the sacred to the profane ; wield 
 both worlds; instead of twopenny trash and mechanics' 
 magazines, issue bulls and decretals ; say not, w^ there be 
 light, but darkness visible ; draw a bandage over the eyes 
 of the ignorant and unlettered ; hang the terrors of super- 
 stition and despotism over them ; — and for thy pains they 
 will bless thee ; children will pull off their caps as thou 
 dost pass ; women will courtesy ; the old will wipe their 
 beards ; and thou wilt rule once more over the base serving 
 people, clowns, and nobles, with a rod of iron ! 
 
 Florence, May, 1825. 
 
 On Cant and Hypocrisy. 
 
 " If to do were as easy as to teach others what were good to be 
 done, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' 
 palaces." 
 
 Mr. Addison, it is said, was fond of tippling ; and Cur 11, 
 it is added, when he called on him in the morning, used 
 to ask as a particular favour for a glass of Canary, by way 
 of ingratiating himself, and that the other might have a 
 pretence to join him and finish the bottle. He fell a 
 martyr to this habit, and yet (some persons more nice 
 
 than wise exclaim) he desired that the young Earl of 
 
 •• S ^ 
 
 and shoot' poisoned arrows behind them. The good people of 
 Florence lift up their hands when they are shown the caricatures 
 in the Queens Matrimonial Ladder [by William Hone], and ask 
 if they are really a likeness of the King? 
 
 ; 
 
On Cant and Hypocrisy. 19 
 
 Warwick might attend him on his death-bed, " to see how 
 a Christian could die !" I see no inconsistency nor hy- 
 pocrisy in this. A man may be a good Christian, a sound 
 believer, and a sincere lover of virtue, and have, notwith- 
 standing, one or more failings. If he had recommended 
 it to others to get drunk, then I should have said he was 
 a hypocrite, and that his pretended veneration for the 
 Christian religion was a mere cloak put on to suit the 
 purposes of fashion or convenience. His doing what it 
 condemned was no proof of any such thing : " The spirit 
 was willing, but the flesh was weak." He is a hypocrite 
 who professes what he does not believe ; not he who does 
 not practise all he wishes or approves. It might on the 
 same ground be argued, that a man is a hypocrite who 
 admires Eaphael or Shakspeare, because he cannot paint 
 like the one, or write like the other. If any one really 
 despised what he affected outwardly to admire, this would 
 be hypocrisy. If he affected to admire it a great deal 
 more than he really did, this would be cant. Sincerity 
 has to do with the connexion between our words and 
 thoughts, and not between our belief and actions. The 
 last constantly belie the strongest convictions and resolu- 
 tions in the best of men ; it is only the base and dishonest 
 who give themselves credit with their tongue, for senti- 
 ments and opinions which in their hearts they disown. 
 
 I do not therefore think that the old theological maxim 
 — " The greater the sinner, the greater the saint " — is so 
 utterly unfounded. There is some mixture of truth in it. 
 For as long as man is composed of two parts, body and soul, 
 and while these are allowed to pull different ways, I see 
 no reason why, in proportion to the length the one goes, 
 the opposition or reaction of the other should not be more 
 violent. It is certain, for example, that no one makes 
 such good resolutions as the sot and the gambler in their 
 moments of repentance, or can be more impressed with 
 the horrors of their situation ; — should this disposition, 
 
20 On Cant and Hijpocrisy. 
 
 instead of a transient, idle pang, by chance become lasting, 
 who can be supposed to feel the beauty of temperance and 
 economy more, or to look back with greater gratitude to 
 their escape from the trammels of vice and passion ? 
 Would the ingenious and elegant author of the Spectator 
 feel less regard for the Scriptures, because they denounced 
 in pointed terms the infirmity that ci most easily beset 
 him," that was the torment of his life, and the cause of 
 his death? Such reasoning would be true, if man was a 
 simple animal or a logical machine, and all his faculties 
 and impulses were in strict unison ; instead of which they 
 are eternally at variance, and no one hates or takes part 
 against himself more heartily or heroically than does the 
 same individual. Does he not pass sentence on his own 
 conduct ? Is not his conscience both judge and accuser ? 
 What else is the meaning of all our resolutions against 
 ourselves, as well as of our exhortations to others ? Video 
 meliora proboque, deteriora sequor, is not the language of 
 hyprocrisy, but of human nature. 
 
 The hyprocrisy of priests has been a butt for ridicule 
 in all ages ; but I am not sure that there has not been 
 more wit than philosophy in it. A priest, it is true, is 
 obliged to affect a greater degree of sanctity than ordinary 
 men, and probably more than he possesses ; and this is so 
 far, I am willing to allow, hypocrisy and solemn grimace. 
 But I cannot admit, that though he may exaggerate or 
 even make an ostentatious display of religion and virtue 
 through habit and spiritual pride, that this is a proof he 
 has not these sentiments in his heart, or that his whole 
 behaviour is the mere acting of a part. His character, his 
 motives, are not altogether pure and sincere : are they 
 therefore all false and hollow? No such thing. It is 
 -^r\trary to all our observation and experience so to inter- 
 net it. We all wear some disguise — make some professions 
 — use some artifice to set ourselves off as being better 
 than we are ; and yet it is not denied that we have some 
 
On Cant and Htjpoerisy. 21 
 
 good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, 
 though we ma j endeavour to keep some others that we 
 think less to our credit as much as possible in the back- 
 ground : — why then should we not extend the same 
 favourable construction ta monks and priests, who may 
 be sometimes caught tripping as well as other men — with 
 less excuse, no doubt ; but if it is also with greater 
 remorse of conscience, which probably often happens, their 
 pretensions are not all downright, barefaced imposture. 
 Their sincerity, compared with that of other men, can only 
 be judged of by the proportion between the degree of 
 virtue they profess, and that which they practise, or at 
 least carefully seek to realise. To conceive it otherwise 
 is to insist that characters must be all perfect or all vicious 
 — neither of which suppositions is even possible. If a 
 clergyman is notoriously a drunkard, a debauchee, a 
 glutton, or a scoffer, then for him to lay claim at the 
 same time to extraordinary inspirations of faith or grace, 
 is both scandalous and ridiculous. The scene between 
 the Abbot and the poor brother in the Duenna, is an 
 admirable exposure of this double-faced dealing. But 
 because a parson has a relish for the good things of this 
 life, or what is commonly called a liquorish tooth in his head 
 (beyond what he would have it supposed by others, or even 
 by himself), that he has therefore no fear or belief of the 
 next, I hold for a crude and vulgar prejudice. If a poor 
 half-starved parish priest pays his court to an olla podrida, 
 or a venison pasty, with uncommon gusto, shall we say 
 that he has no other sentiments in offering his devotions 
 to a crucifix, or in counting his beads ? I see no more 
 ground for such an inference, than for affirming that 
 Handel was not in earnest when he -sat down to compose 
 a Symphony, because he had at the same time perhaps a 
 bottle of cordials in his cupboard ; or that Raphael was 
 not entitled to the epithet of divine, because he was 
 attached to the Fornarina. Everything has its turn in 
 
22 On Cant and 'Hypocrisy. 
 
 this chequered scene of things, unless we prevent it from 
 taking its turn by over-rigid conditions, or drive men to 
 despair or the most callous effrontery, by erecting a 
 standard of perfection, to which no one can conform in 
 reality. Thomson, in his Castle of Indolence (a subject on 
 which his pen ran riot), has indulged in rather a free 
 description of " a little round, fat, oily man of God, 
 who — 
 
 " Shone all glistening with ungodly dew, 
 If a tight damsel chanced to trippen by ; 
 YVhich when observed, he shrunk into his mew, 
 And straight would recollect his piety anew." J 
 
 Now, was the piety in this case the less real, because it 
 had been forgotten for a moment ? Or even if this 
 motive should not prove the strongest in the end, would 
 this therefore show that it was none, which is necessary 
 to the argument here combated, or to make out our little 
 plump priest a very knave? A priest may be honest, 
 and yet err; as a woman may be modest, and yet half- 
 inclined to be a rake. So the virtue of prudes may be 
 suspected, though not their sincerity. The strength of 
 their passions may make them more conscious of their 
 weakness, and more cautious of exposing themselves ; but 
 not more to blind others than as a guard upon themselves. 
 Again, suppose a clergyman hazards a jest upon sacred 
 subjects, does it follow that he does not believe a word of 
 the matter ? Put the case that any one else, encouraged 
 by his example, takes up the banter or levity, and see 
 what effect it will have upon the reverend divine. He 
 will turn round like a serpent trod upon, with all the 
 vehemence and asperity of the mpst bigoted orthodoxy. 
 Is this dictatorial and exclusive spirit then put on merely 
 as a mask and to browbeat others ? No ; but he thinks 
 he is privileged to trifle with the subject safely himself, 
 from the store of evidence he has in reserve, and from the 
 1 Canto I., et. 69, edit. 1841. 
 
On Cant and Hypocrisy. 23 
 
 nature of his functions ; but he is afraid of serious con- 
 sequences being drawn from what others might say, or 
 from his seeming to countenance it ; and the moment the 
 Church is in danger, or his own faith brought in question, 
 his attachment to each becomes as visible as his hatred 
 to those who dare to impugn either the one or the other. 
 A woman's attachment to her husband is n*ot to be suspec- 
 ted, if she will allow no one to abuse him but herself. It 
 has been remarked, that with the spread of liberal opinions, 
 or a more general scepticism on articles of faith, the 
 clergy and religious persons in general have become more 
 squeamish and jealous of any objections to their favourite 
 doctrines : but this is what must follow in the natural 
 course of things — the resistance being always in proportion 
 to the danger ; and arguments and books that were 
 formerly allowed to pass unheeded, because it was supposed 
 impossible they could do any mischief, are now denounced 
 or prohibited with the most zealous vigilance, from a 
 knowledge of the contagious nature of their influence and 
 contents. So in morals, it is obvious that the greatest 
 nicety of expression and allusion must be observed, where 
 the manners are the most corrupt, and the imagination 
 most easily excited, not out of mere affectation, but as a 
 dictate of common sense and decency. 
 
 One of the finest remarks that has been made in modern 
 times, is that of Lord Shaftesbury, that there is no such 
 thing as a perfect Theist, or an absolute Atheist ; that 
 whatever may be the general conviction entertained on 
 the subject, the evidence is not and cannot be at all times 
 equally present to the mind ; that even if it were, we are 
 not in the same humour to receive it : a fit of the gout, a 
 shower of rain shakes our best-established conclusions ; 
 and according to circumstances and the frame of mind we 
 are in, our belief varies from the most sanguine enthusiasm 
 to lukewarm indifference, or the most gloomy despair 
 There is a point of conceivable faith which might prevent 
 
24 On Cant and Hypocrisy. 
 
 any lapse from virtue, and reconcile all contrarieties 
 between theory and practice ; but this is not to be looked 
 for in the ordinary course of nature, and is reserved for 
 the abodes of the blest. Here, " upon this bank and shoal 
 of time," the utmost we can hope to attain is, a strong 
 habitual belief in the excellence of virtue, or the dispen- 
 sations of Providence ; and the conflict of the passions, 
 and their occasional mastery over us, far from disproving 
 or destroying this general, rational conviction, often 
 fling us back more forcibly upon it, and like other in- 
 fidelities and misunderstandings, produce all the alternate 
 remorse and raptures of repentance and reconciliation. 
 
 It has been frequently remarked that the most obstinate 
 heretic or confirmed sceptic, witnessing the service of the 
 Eoman Catholic church, the elevation of the host amidst 
 the sounds of music, the pomp of ceremonies, the embellish- 
 ments of art, feels himself spell-bound ; and is almost 
 persuaded to become a renegado to his reason or his 
 religion. Even in hearing a vespers chanted on the stage, 
 or in reading an account of a torch-light procession in a 
 romance, a superstitious awe creeps over the frame, and 
 we are momentarily charmed out of ourselves. When 
 such is the obvious and involuntary influence of circum- 
 stances on the imagination, shall we say that a monkish 
 recluse surrounded from his childhood by all this pomp, 
 a stranger to any other faith, who has breathed no other 
 atmosphere, and all whose meditations are bent on this one 
 subject both by interest and habit and duty, is to be set 
 down as a rank and heartless mountebank in the professions 
 he makes of belief in it, because his thoughts may some- 
 times wander to forbidden subjects, or his feet stumble on 
 forbidden ground ? Or shall not the deep shadows of the 
 woods in Vallombrosa enhance the solemnity of this 
 feeling, or the icy horrors of the Grand Chartreux add to 
 its elevation and its purity ? To argue otherwise is to 
 misdeem of human nature, and to Limit its capacities for 
 
On Cant and Hypocrisy. 25 
 
 good or evil by some narrow-minded standard of our own. 
 Man is neither a God nor a brute ; but there is a prosaic 
 and a poetical side to everything concerning him, and it 
 is as impossible absolutely and for a constancy to exclude 
 either one or the other from the mind, as to make him 
 live without air or food. The ideal, the empire of thought 
 and aspiration after truth and good, is inseparable from 
 the nature of an intellectual being — what right have we 
 then to catch at every strife which in the mortified pro- 
 fessors of religion the spirit wages with the flesh as grossly 
 vicious ? or at every doubt, the bare suggestion of which 
 fills them with consternation and despair, as a proof of 
 the most glaring hypocrisy ? The grossnesses of religion 
 and its stickling for mere forms as its essence, have given 
 a handle, and a just one, to its impugners. At the feast 
 of Eamadan (says Voltaire) the Mussulmans wash and 
 pray five times a day, and then fall to cutting one 
 another's throats again with the greatest deliberation and 
 good-will. The two things, I grant, are sufficiently at 
 variance ; but they are, I contend, equally sincere in both. 
 The Mahometans are savages, but they are not the less 
 true believers— they hate their enemies as heartily as 
 they revere the Koran. This, instead of showing the 
 fallacy of the ideal principle, shows its universality and 
 indestructible essence. Let a man be as bad as he will, 
 as little refined as possible, and indulge whatever hurtful 
 jmssions or gross vices he thinks proper, these cannot 
 occupy the whole of his time; and in the intervals 
 between one scroundrel action and another he may and 
 must have better thoughts, and may have recourse to those 
 of religion (true or false) among the number, without in 
 this being guilty of hypocrisy or of making a jest of what 
 is considered as sacred. This, I take it, is the whole 
 secret of Methodism, which is a sort of modern vent 
 for the ebullitions of the spirit through the gaps of 
 unrighteousness. 
 
26 On Cant and Hypocrisy. 
 
 We often see that a person condemns in another the 
 very thing he is guilty cf himself. Is this hypocrisy? 
 It may, or it may not. If he really feels none of the 
 disgust and abhorrence he expresses, this is quackery and 
 impudence. But if he really expresses what he feels (and 
 he easily may, for it is the abstract idea he contemplates 
 in the case of another, and the immediate temptation to 
 which he yields in his own, so that he probably is not 
 even conscious of the identity or connexion between the 
 two), then this is not hypocrisy, but want of strength and 
 keeping in the moral sense. All morality consists in 
 squaring our actions and sentiments to our ideas of what 
 is fit and proper: and it is the incessant struggle and 
 alternate triumph of the two principles, the ideal and the 
 physical, that keeps up this " mighty coil and pudder " 
 about vice and virtue, and is one great source of all the 
 good and evil in the world. The mind of man is like a 
 clock that is always running down, and requires to be as 
 constantly wound up. The ideal principle is the master- 
 key that winds it up, and without which it would come to 
 a stand: the sensual and selfish feelings are the dead 
 weights that pull it down to the gross and grovelling. 
 Till the intellectual faculty is destroyed (so that the mind 
 sees nothing beyond itself, or the present moment), it is 
 impossible to have all brutal depravity ; till the material 
 and physical are done away with (so that it shall con- 
 template everything from a purely spiritual and disinter- 
 ested point of view), it is impossible to have all virtue. 
 There must be a mixture of the two, as long as man is 
 compounded of opposite materials, a contradiction and an 
 eternal competition for the mastery. I by no means 
 think a single bad action condemns a man, for he 
 probably condemns it as much as you do; nor a single 
 bad habit, for he is probably trying all his life to get rid 
 of it. A man is only thoroughly profligate when he has 
 lost the sense of right and wrong ; or a thorough hypo- 
 
On Cant and Kypocrity. 27 
 
 crite, when lie has not even the wish to be what he 
 appears. The greatest offence against virtue is to speak 
 ill of it. To recommend certain things is worse than to 
 practise them. There may be an excuse for the last in 
 the frailty of passion ; but the former can arise from 
 nothing but an utter depravity of disposition. Any one 
 may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love and 
 aspiration after virtue : but he who maintains vice in 
 theory, has not even the conception or capacity for virtue 
 in his mind. Men err : fiends only make a mock at 
 goodness. 
 
 We sometimes deceive ourselves, and think worse of 
 human nature than it deserves, in consequence of judging 
 of character from names, and classes, and modes of life. 
 No one is simply and absolutely any one thing, though he 
 may be branded with it as a name. Some persons have 
 expected to see his crimes written in the face of a mur- 
 derer, and have been disappointed because they did not, as 
 if this impeached the distinction between virtue and vice- 
 Not at all. The circumstance only showed that the man 
 was other things, and had other feelings besides those of 
 a murderer. If he had nothing else — if he had fed on 
 nothing else — if he had dreamt of nothing else but 
 schemes of murder, his features would have expressed 
 nothing else : but this perfection in vice is not to be 
 expected from the contradictory and mixed nature of our 
 motives. Humanity is to be met with in a den of 
 robbers ; nay, modesty in a brothel. Even among the 
 most abandoned of the other sex, there is not unfrequently 
 found to exist (contrary to all that is generally supposed) 
 one strong and individual attachment, which remains 
 unshaken to the last. Virtue may be said to steal, like a 
 guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy ; it 
 clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven 
 quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart. 
 Again, there is a heroism in crime, as well as in virtue. 
 
28 On Cant and Hypocrisy. 
 
 Vice and infamy have also their altars and their religion. 
 This makes nothing in their favour, but is a proof of the 
 heroical disinterestedness of man's nature, and that what- 
 ever he does, he must fling a dash of romance and 
 sublimity into it ; just as some grave biographer has said 
 of Shakspeare, that " even when he killed a calf, he made 
 a speech and did it in a great style." 
 
 It is then impossible to get rid of this original distinc- 
 tion and contradictory bias, and to reduce everything to 
 the system of French levity and Epicurean indifference. 
 Wherever there is a capacity of conceiving of things as 
 different from what they are, there must be a principle of 
 taste and selection — a disposition to . make them better, 
 and a power to make them worse. Ask a Parisian 
 milliner if she does not think one bonnet more becoming 
 than another — a Parisian dancing master if French grace 
 is not better than English awkwardness — a French cook if 
 all sauces are alike — a French blacklegs if all throws are 
 equal on the dice ? It is curious that the French nation 
 restrict rigid rules and fixed principles to cookery and the 
 drama, and maintain that the great drama of human life 
 is entirely a matter of caprice and fancy. No one will 
 assert that Eaphael's histories, that Claude's landscapes 
 are not better than a daub : but if the expression in one 
 of Eaphael's faces is better than the most mean and 
 vulgar, how resist the consequence that the feeling so 
 expressed is better also? It does not appear to me that 
 all faces or all actions are alike. If goodness were only 
 a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. 
 There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear 
 gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at 
 friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will — the 
 very names of these despised qualities are better than 
 anything else that could be substituted for them, and 
 embalm even the most envenomed satire against them. 
 It is no small consideration that the mind is capable 
 
 
 1 
 
On Cant and Hypocrisy. 29 
 
 even of feigning such things. So I would contend against 
 that reasoning which would have it thought that if 
 religion is not true, there is no difference between 
 mankind and the beasts that perish ■ — I should say, that 
 this distinction is equally proved, if religion is supposed 
 to be a mere fabrication of the human mind ; the capa- 
 city to conceive it makes the difference. The idea alone 
 of an over-ruling Providence, or of a future state, is as 
 much a distinctive mark of a superiority of nature, as the 
 invention of the mathematics, which are true — or of 
 poetry, which is a fable. Whatever the truth or falsehood 
 of our speculations, the power to make them is peculiar to 
 ourselves. 
 
 The contrariety and warfare of different faculties and 
 dispositions within us has not only given birth to the 
 Manichean and Gnostic heresies, and to other super- 
 stitions of the East, but will account for many of the 
 mummeries and dogmas both of Popery and Calvinism — 
 confession, absolution, justification by faith, &c. ; which, 
 in the hopelessness of attaining perfection, and our 
 dissatisfaction with ourselves for falling short of it, are 
 all substitutes for actual virtue, and an attempt to throw 
 the burthen of a task, to which we are unequal or only 
 half disposed, on the merits of others, or on outward 
 forms, ceremonies, and professions of faith. Hence the 
 crowd of 
 
 kl Eremites and friars, 
 "White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery." 
 
 If we do not conform to the law, we at least acknow- 
 ledge the jurisdiction of the court. A person does 
 wrong ; he is sorry for it ; and as he still feels himself 
 liable to error, he is desirous to make atonement as well 
 as he can, by ablutions, by tithes, by penance, by sacri- 
 fices, or other voluntary demonstrations of obedience, 
 which are in his power, though his passions are not, and 
 
30 On Cant and Hypocrisy. 
 
 which prove that his will is not refractory, and that his 
 understanding is right towards God. The stricter tenets 
 of Calvinism, which allow of no medium between grace 
 and reprobation, and doom man to eternal punishment for 
 every breach of the moral law, as an equal offence against 
 infinite truth and justice, proceed (like the paradoxical 
 doctrine of the Stoics) from taking a half-view of this 
 subject, and considering man as amenable only to the 
 dictates of his understanding and his conscience, and not 
 excusable from the temptations and frailty of human 
 ignorance and passion. The mixing up of religion and 
 morality together, or the making us accountable for 
 every word, thought, or action, under no less a responsi- 
 bility than our everlasting future welfare or misery, has 
 also added incalculably to the difficulties of self-know- 
 ledge, has superinduced a violent and spurious state of 
 feeling, and made it almost impossible to distinguish the 
 boundaries between the true and false, in judging of 
 human conduct and motives. A religious man is afraid 
 of looking into the state of his soul, lest at the same time 
 he should reveal it to Heaven ; and tries to persuade 
 himself that by shutting his eyes to his true character 
 and feelings, they will remain a profound secret both here 
 and hereafter. This is a strong engine and irresistible 
 inducement to self-deception ; and the more zealous any 
 one is in his convictions of the truth of religion, the more 
 we may suspect the sincerity of his pretensions to piety 
 and morality. 
 
 Thus, though I think there is very little downright 
 hypocrisy in the world, I do think there is a great deal of 
 cant — " cant religious, cant political, cant literary," &c, 
 as Lord Byron said. Though few peojDle have the face 
 to set up for the very thing they in their hearts despise, 
 we almost all want to be thought better than we are, and 
 affect a greater admiration or abhorrence of certain things 
 than we really feel. Indeed, some degree of affectation is 
 
On Cant and Hypocrisy. 31 
 
 as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body ; we 
 must overact our part in some measure, in order to 
 produce any effect at all. There was formerly the two 
 hours' sermon, the long-winded grace, the nasal drawl, the 
 uplifted hands and eyes ; all which though accompanied 
 with some corresponding emotion, expressed more than 
 was really felt, and were in fact intended to make up for 
 the conscious deficiency. As our interest in anything 
 wears out with time and habit, we exaggerate the outward 
 symptoms of zeal as mechanical helps to devotion, dwell 
 the longer on our words as they are less felt, and hence 
 the very origin of the term, cant. The cant of senti- 
 mentality has succeeded to that of religion. There is a 
 cant of humanity, of patriotism and loyalty — not that 
 people do not feel these emotions, but they make too great 
 sl fuss about them, and drawl out the expression of them 
 till they tire themselves and others. There is a cant 
 about Shakspeare. There is a cant about Political 
 Economy just now. In short, there is and must be a cant 
 about everything that excites a considerable degree of 
 attention and interest, and that people would be thought 
 to know and care rather more about them than they 
 actually do. Cant is the voluntary overcharging or 
 prolongation of a real sentiment ; hypocrisy is the setting 
 up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no 
 wish for. There are people who are made up of cant, 
 that is, of mawkish affectation and sensibility ; but who 
 have not sincerity enough to be hypocrites, that is, have 
 not hearty dislike or contempt enough for anything, to 
 give the lie to their puling professions of admiration and 
 esteem for it. 
 
32 Merry England. 
 
 Merry England. 
 
 " St. George for merry England !" 
 
 This old-fashioned epithet might be supposed to have been 
 bestowed ironically, or on the old principle —TJt lucus a 
 non lucendo. Yet there is something in the sound that 
 hits the fancy, and a sort of truth beyond appearances. 1 
 To be sure, it is from a dull, homely ground that the 
 gleams of mirth and jollity break out ; but the streaks of 
 light that tinge the evening sky are not the less striking 
 on that account. The beams of the morning-sun shining 
 on the lonely glades, or through the idle branches of the 
 tangled forest, the leisure, the freedom, " the pleasure of 
 going and coming without knowing where," the troops of 
 wild deer, the sports of the chase, and other rustic gambols, 
 were sufficient to justify the w r ell-known appellation of 
 " Merry Sherwood," and in like manner, we may apply the 
 phrase to Merry England. The smile is not the less 
 sincere because it does not always play upon the cheek ; 
 and the jest is not the less welcome, nor the laugh less 
 hearty, because they happen to be a relief from care or 
 leaden-eyed melancholy. The instances are the more 
 precious as they are rare ; and we look forward to them 
 with the greater goodwill, or back upon them with the 
 greater gratitude, as we drain the last drop in the cup 
 with particular relish. If not always gay or in good 
 spirits, we are glad when any occasion draws us out of 
 our natural gloom, and disposed to make the most of it. 
 We may say with Silence in the play, <; I have been merry 
 once ere now " — and this once was to serve him all his 
 life ; for he was a person of wonderful silence and gravity, 
 though " he chirped over his cups," and announced with 
 characteristic glee that " there were pippins and cheese to 
 
 1 Merry, in its earlier acceptation, signified nothing more than 
 cheerful. — Ed. 
 
Merry England. 33 
 
 come." Silence was in this sense a merry man, that is, he 
 would be merry if he could, and a very great economy of 
 wit, like very slender fare, was a banquet to him, from the 
 simplicity of his taste and habits. " Continents," says 
 Hobbes, " have most of what they contain " — and in this 
 view it may be contended that the English are the merriest 
 people in the world, since they only show it on high-days 
 and holidays. They are then like a school-boy let loose 
 from school, or like a dog that has slipped his collar. 
 They are not gay like the French, who are one eternal 
 smile of self-complacency, tortured into affectation, or spun 
 out into languid indifference, nor are they voluptuous and 
 immersed in sensual indolence, like the Italians ; but they 
 have that sort of intermittent, fitful, irregular gaiety, which 
 is neither worn out by habit, nor deadened by passion, but 
 is sought with avidity as it takes the mind by surprise, is 
 startled by a sense of oddity and incongruity, indulges its 
 wayward humours or lively impulses, with perfect freedom 
 and lightness of heart, and seizes occasion by the forelock, 
 that it may return to serious business with more cheerful- 
 ness, and have something to beguile the hours of thought 
 or sadness. I do not see how there can be high spirits 
 without low ones ; and everything has its price according 
 to circumstances. Perhaps we have to pay a heavier tax 
 on pleasure, than some others : what skills it, so long as 
 our good spirits and good hearts enable us to bear it ? 
 
 " They" (the English), says Froissart, "amused them- 
 selves sadly after the fashion of their country" — Us se 
 rejouissoient tristement 1 selon la coutume de leur pays. They 
 have indeed a way of their own. Their mirth is a relaxa- 
 tion from gravity, a challenge to dull care to be gone ; 
 and one is not always clear at first, whether the appeal is 
 successful. The cloud may still hang on the brow ; the 
 ice may not thaw at once. To help them out in their new 
 
 1 It may be doubted, however, whether both the English word sad 
 and the French word triste signify heze more than sober, grave. — En. 
 
 D 
 
34 Merry England. 
 
 character is an act of charity. Anything short of hanging 
 or drowning is something to begin with. They do not 
 enter into their amusements the less doggedly because 
 they may plague others. They like a thing the better for 
 hitting them a rap on the knuckles, for making their blood 
 tingle. They do not dance or sing, but they make good 
 cheer — " eat, drink, and are merry." No people are 
 fonder of field-sports, Christmas gambols, or practical 
 jests. Blindnian's-buff, hunt-the-slipper, hot-cockles, and 
 snap-dragon, are all approved English games, full of 
 laughable surprises and " hair-breadth 'scapes/' and serve 
 to amuse the winter fire-side after the roast-beef and plum- 
 |3udding, the spiced ale and roasted crab, thrown (hissing- 
 hot) into the foaming tankard. Punch (not the liquor, but 
 the puppet) is not, I fear, of English origin ; but there is 
 no place I take it, where he finds himself more at home or 
 meets a more joyous welcome, where he collects greater 
 crowds at the corners of streets, where he opens the eyes 
 or distends the cheeks wider, or where the bangs and blows, 
 the uncouth gestures, ridiculous anger, and screaming 
 voice of the chief performer excite more boundless merri- 
 ment or louder bursts of laughter among all ranks and 
 sorts of people. An English theatre is the very throne of 
 pantomime ; nor do I believe that the gallery and boxes of 
 Drury Lane or Covent Garden filled on the proper occa- 
 sion with holiday folks (big or little) yield the palm for 
 undisguised, tumultuous, inextinguishable laughter to any 
 spot in Europe. I do not speak of the refinement of the 
 mirth (this is no fastidious speculation) but of its cor- 
 diality, on the return of these long looked-for and licensed 
 periods ; and I may add here, by way of illustration, that 
 the English common people are a sort of grown children, 
 spoiled and sulky perhaps, but full of glee and merriment, 
 when their attention is drawn off by some sudden and 
 striking object. The May-pole is almost gone out of 
 fashion among us : but May-day, besides its flowering 
 
Merry England. 35 
 
 hawthorns and its pearly dews, has still its boasted exhi- 
 bition of painted chimney-sweepers and their Jack-o'-the- 
 Green, whose tawdry finery, bedizened faces, unwonted 
 gestures, and short-lived pleasures call forth good- 
 humoured smiles and looks of sympathy in the spectators. 
 There is no place where trap-ball, fives, prison-base, foot- 
 ball, quoits, bowls are better understood or more success- 
 fully practised ; and the very names of a cricket bat and 
 ball make English fingers tingle. What happy days 
 must " Long Robinson " have passed in getting ready his 
 wickets and mending his bats, who, when two of the 
 fingers of his right hand were struck off by the violence of 
 a ball, had a screw fastened to it to hold the bat, and with 
 the other hand still sent the ball thundering against the 
 boards that bounded Old Lord's cricket- ground ! What 
 delightful hours must have been his in looking forward to 
 the matches that were to come, in recounting the feats he 
 had performed in those that were past ! I have myself 
 whiled away whole mornings in seeing him strike the 
 ball (like a countryman mowing with a scythe) to the 
 farthest extremity of the smooth, level, sun-burnt ground ; 
 and with long, awkward strides count the notches that 
 made victory sure ! Then again, cudgel-playing, quarter- 
 staff, bull and badger-baiting, cock-fighting are almost the 
 peculiar diversions of this island, and often objected to us 
 as barbarous and cruel ; horse-racing is the delight and 
 the ruin of numbers ; and the noble science of boxing is 
 all our own. Foreigners can scarcely understand how we 
 can squeeze pleasure out of this pastime ; the luxury of 
 hard blows given or received ; the joy of the ring ; the 
 perseverance of the combatants. 1 The English also excel, 
 
 1 " The gentle and free passage of arms at Ashby " was, we are 
 told, so called by the chroniclers of the time, on account of the feats 
 of horsemanship and the quantity of knightly blood that was shed. 
 This last circumstance was perhaps necessary to qualify it with 
 the epithet of " gentle," in the opinion of some of these historians. 
 
30 Merry England. 
 
 or are not excelled in wiring a hare, in stalking a deer, in 
 shooting, fishing, and hunting. England to this day 
 boasts her Eobin Hood and his merry men, that stout 
 archer and outlaw and patron-saint of the sporting-calen- 
 dar. What a cheerful sound is that of the hunters, 
 issuing from the autumnal wood and sweeping over hill 
 
 and dale! 
 
 — ' ' A cry more tuneable 
 Was never halloo'd to by hound or horn." 
 
 What sparkling richness in the scarlet coats of the riders, 
 what a glittering confusion in the pack, what spirit in the 
 horses, what eagerness in the followers on foot, as they 
 disperse over the plain, or force their way over hedge and 
 ditch ! Surely, the coloured prints and pictures of these, 
 hung up in gentlemen's halls and village alehouses, how- 
 
 I think the reason why the English are the bravest nation on earth 
 is, that the thought of blood or a delight in cruelty is not the chief 
 excitement with th^m. Where it is, there is necessarily a reaction ; 
 for though it may add to our eagerness and savage ferocity in 
 inflicting wounds, it does not enable us to endure them with greater 
 patience. The English are led to the attack or sustain it equally 
 well, because they fight as they box, not out of malice, but to show 
 pluck and manhood. Fair play and old England for ever ! This 
 is the only bravery that will stand the test. There is the same 
 determination and spirit shown in resistance as in attack ; but not 
 the same pleasure in getting a cut with a sabre as in giving one. 
 There is, therefore, always a certain degree of effeminacy mixed up 
 with any approach to cruelty, since both have their source in the 
 same principle, viz., an over -valuing of pain, (a) This was the 
 reason the French (having the best cause and the best general in 
 the world; ran away at Waterloo, because they were inflamed, 
 furious, drunk with the blood of their enemies, but when it came to 
 their turn, wanting the same stimulus, they were panic-struck, and 
 their hearts and their senses failed them all at once. 
 
 (a) Vanity is the same half-witted principle, compared with 
 pride. It leaves men in the lurch when it is most needed; is 
 mortified at being reduced to stand on the defensive, and relin- 
 -w'hos the field to its more surly antagonist. 
 
 
Merry England. 37 
 
 ever humble, as works of art, have more life and health 
 and spirit in them, and mark the pith and nerve of the 
 national character more creditably than the mawkish, 
 sentimental, affected designs of Theseus and Pirithous, 
 and iEneas and Dido, pasted on foreign salons a manger, 
 and the interior of country-houses. If our tastes are not 
 epic, nor our pretensions lofty, they are simple and our 
 own ; and we may possibly enjoy our native rural sports 
 and the rude remembrances of them, with the truer relish 
 on this account, that they are suited to us and we to them. 
 The English nation, too, are naturally " brothers of the 
 angle." This pursuit implies just that mixture of 
 patience and pastime, of vacancy and thoughtfulness, of 
 idleness and business, of pleasure and of pain, which is 
 suited to the genius of an Englishman, and as I suspect, 
 of no one else in the same degree. He is eminently 
 gifted to stand in the situation assigned by Dr. Johnson to 
 the angler, " at one end of a rod with a worm at the 
 other." I should suppose no other language than ours 
 can show such a book as an often-mentioned one, Walton's 
 Complete Angler — so full of naivete, of unaffected sprightli- 
 ness, of busy trifling, of dainty songs, of refreshing brooks, 
 of shady arbours, of happy thoughts and of the herb 
 called Heart's Ease ! Some persons can see neither the 
 wit nor wisdom of this genuine volume, as if a book as 
 well as a man might not have a personal character belong- 
 ing to it, amiable, venerable from the spirit of joy and 
 thorough goodness it manifests, independently of acute 
 remarks or scientific discoveries ; others object to the 
 cruelty of Walton's theory and practice of trout-fishing — 
 for my part, I should as soon charge an infant with cruelty 
 for killing a fly, and 1 feel the same sort of pleasure in 
 reading his book as I should have done in the company of 
 this happy, child-like old man, watching his ruddy cheek, 
 his laughing eye, the kindness of his heart, and the dex- 
 terity of his hand in seizing his finny prey ! It must be 
 
38 Merry England. 
 
 confessed, there is often an odd sort of materiality in 
 English sports and recreations. I have known several 
 persons, whose existence consisted wholly in manual 
 exercises, and all whose enjoyments lay at their finger- 
 ends. Their greatest happiness was in cutting a stick, in 
 mending a cabbage-net, in digging a hole in the ground, in 
 hitting a mark, turning a lathe, or in something else of 
 the same kind, at which they had a certain knack. Well 
 is it when we can amuse ourselves with such trifles and 
 without injury to others ! This class of character, which 
 the Spectator has immortalised in the person of Will 
 Wimble, is still common among younger brothers and 
 retired gentlemen of small incomes in town or country. 
 London is half suburbs. The suburbs of Paris are a 
 desert, and you see nothing but crazy wind-mills, stone- 
 walls, and a few straggling visitants, in spots where in 
 England you would find a thousand villas, a thousand ter- 
 races, crowned with their own delights, or be stunned with 
 the noise of bowling-greens and tea-gardens, or stifled with 
 the fumes of tobacco mingling with fragrant shrubs, or the 
 clouds of dust raised by half the population of the metro- 
 polis panting and toiling in search of a mouthful of fresh 
 air. The Parisian is, perhaps, as well (or better) contented 
 with himself wherever he is, stewed in his shop or his 
 garret ; the Londoner is miserable in these circumstances, 
 and glad to escape from them. 1 Let no one object to the 
 gloomy appearance of a London Sunday, compared with a 
 Parisian one. It is a part of our politics and our religion : 
 we would not have James the First's Book of Sports. 2 
 thrust down our throats : and besides, it is a part of our 
 character to do one thing at a time, and not to be dancing 
 
 1 The English are fond of change of scene ; the French of change 
 of posture ; the Italians like to sit still, an<l do nothing. 
 
 2 The King's Maiesties Declaration to his Subjects concerning law- 
 full Sports io be used, published by James I. in 1618, and reissued 
 by his son in 1633. — En. 
 
Merry England. 39 
 
 a jig and on our knees in the same breath. It is true the 
 Englishman spends his Sunday evening at the ale-house — 
 
 " And e'en on Sunday 
 
 He drinks with Kir ton Jean till Monday " — 
 
 but he only unbends and waxes mellow by degrees, and 
 sits soaking till he can neither sit, stand, nor go : it is his 
 vice, and a beastly one it is, but not a proof of any in- 
 herent distaste to mirth or good fellowship. Neither ban 
 foreigners throw the carnival in our teeth with any effect : 
 those who have seen it (at Florence, for example), will 
 say that it is duller than any thing in England. Our 
 Bartholomew-Fair is Queen Mab herself to it ! What can 
 be duller than a parcel of masks moving about the streets 
 and looking as grave and monotonous as possible from day 
 to day, and with the same lifeless formality in their limbs 
 and gestures as in their features? One might as well 
 expect variety and spirit in a procession of wax-work 
 figures. We must be hard run indeed, when we have 
 recourse to a pasteboard proxy to set off our mirth : a 
 mask may be a very good cover for licentiousness (though 
 of that I saw no signs), but it is a very bad exponent of 
 wit and humour. I should suppose there is more drollery 
 and unction, in the caricatures in Fore's shop-window, 
 than in all the masks in Italy, without exception. 1 
 
 The humour of English writing and description has 
 often been wondered at ; and it flows from the same source 
 
 1 Bells are peculiar to England. They jangle them in Italy 
 during the carnival as boys do with us at Shrovetide ; but they 
 have no notion of ringing them. The sound of village bells never 
 cheers you in travelling, nor have you the lute or cittern in their 
 stead. The expression of " Merry Bells " is a favourite, and not one 
 of the least appropriate in our language : 
 
 " For him the merry bells had rung, I ween, 
 If in this nook of quiet bells had ever been." 
 
 Castle of Indolence. 1 
 
 1 Canto i., st. 62. 
 
40 Merry England. 
 
 as tire merry traits of our character. A degree of bar- 
 barism and rusticity seems necessary to the perfection of 
 humour. The droll and laughable depend on peculiarity 
 and incongruity of character. But with the progress of 
 refinement, the peculiarities of individuals and of classes 
 wear out or lose their sharp, abrupt edges ; nay, a certain 
 slowness and dulness of understanding is required to be 
 struck with odd and unaccountable appearances, for which 
 a greater facility of apprehension can sooner assign an 
 explanation that breaks the force of the seeming absurdity, 
 and to which a wider scope of imagination is more easily 
 reconciled. Clowns and country people are more amused, 
 are more disposed to laugh and make sport of the dress of 
 strangers, because from their ignorance the surprise is 
 greater, and they cannot conceive anything to be natural 
 or proper to which they are unused. Without a given 
 portion of hardness and repulsiveness of feeling the ludi- 
 crous cannot well exist. Wonder and curiosity, the attri- 
 butes of inexperience, enter greatly into its composition. 
 Now it appears to me that the English are (or were) just 
 at that mean point between intelligence and obtuseness, 
 which must produce the most abundant and happiest crop 
 of humour. Absurdity and singularity glide over the 
 French mind without jarring or jostling with it ; or they 
 evaporate in levity : with the Italians they are lost in 
 indolence or pleasure. The ludicrous takes hold of the 
 English imagination, and clings to it with all its ramifica- 
 tions. We resent any difference or peculiarity of appear- 
 ance at first, and yet, having not much malice at our hearts, 
 we are glad to turn it into a jest — we are liable to be 
 offended, and as willing to be pleased — struck with oddity 
 from not knowing what to make of it, we wonder and 
 burst out a laughing at the eccentricity of others, while we 
 follow our own bent from wilfulness or simplicity, and 
 thus afford them, in our turn, matter for the indulgence of 
 the comic vein. It is possible that a greater refinement 
 
Merry England. 41 
 
 of manners may give birth to finer distinctions of satire 
 and a nicer tact for the ridiculous : but our insular 
 situation and character are, I should say, most likely to 
 foster, as they have in fact fostered, the greatest quantity 
 of natural and striking humour, in spite of our plodding 
 tenaciousness, and want both of gaiety and quickness of 
 perception. A set of raw recruits with their awkward 
 movements and unbending joints are laughable enough ; 
 but they cease to be so, when they have once been drilled 
 into discipline and uniformity So it is with nations that 
 lose their angular points and grotesque qualities with educa- 
 tion and intercourse : but it is in a mixed state of manners 
 that comic humour chiefly flourishes, for, in order that the 
 drollery may not be lost, we must have spectators of the 
 passing scene who are able to appreciate and embody its 
 most remarkable features — wits as well as butts for ridicule. 
 I shall mention two names in this department, which may 
 serve to redeem the national character from absolute duU 
 ness and solemn pretence — Fielding and Hogarth. These 
 were thorough specimens of true English humour; yet 
 both were grave men. In reality, too high a pitch of 
 animal spirits runs away with the imagination, instead of 
 helping it to reach the goal ; is inclined to take the jest 
 for granted when it ought to work it out with patient and 
 marked touches, and it ends in vapid flippancy and imper- 
 tinence. Among our neighbours on the Continent, Moliere 
 and Eabelais carried the freedom of wit and humour to an 
 almost incredible height ; but they rather belonged to the 
 old French school, and even approach and exceed the 
 English licence and extravagance of conception. I do not 
 consider Congreve's wit (though he belongs to us) as 
 coming under the article here spoken of; for his genius 
 is anything but merry. Lord Byron was in the habit of 
 railing at the spirit of our good old comedy, and of abusing 
 Shakspeare's Clowns and Fools, which he said the refine- 
 ment of the French and Italian stage would not endure, 
 
42 Merry England. , 
 
 and which only our grossness and puerile taste could 
 tolerate. In this I agree with him ; and it is pat to my 
 purpose. I. flatter myself that we are almost the only 
 people who understand and relish nonsense. We are not 
 " merry and wise," but indulge our mirth to excess and 
 folly. When we trifle, we trifle in good earnest ; and 
 having once relaxed our hold of the helm, drift idly down 
 the stream, and, delighted with the change, are tossed 
 about " by every little breath " of whim or caprice, 
 
 " That under Heaven is blown." 
 
 All we then want is to proclaim a truce with reason, and 
 to be pleased with as little expense of thought or preten- 
 sion to wisdom as possible. This licensed fooling is 
 carried to its very utmost length in Shakspeare, and in 
 some other of our elder dramatists, without, perhaps, 
 sufficient warrant or the same excuse. Nothing can justify 
 this extreme relaxation but extreme tension. Shakspeare's 
 trifling does indeed tread upon the very borders of vacancy : 
 his meaning often hangs by the very slenderest threads. 
 For this he might be blamed if it did not take away our 
 breath to follow his eagle flights, or if he did not at other 
 times make the cordage of our hearts crack. After our 
 heads ache with thinking, it is fair to play the fool. The 
 clowns were as proper an appendage to the gravity of our 
 antique literature, as fools and dwarfs were to the stately 
 dignity of courts and noble houses in former days. Of all 
 people, they have the best right to claim a total exemption 
 from rules and rigid formality, who, when they have any- 
 thing of importance to do, set about it with the greatest 
 earnestness and perseverance, and are generally grave and 
 sober to a proverb. 1 Swift, who wrote more idle or non- 
 sense verses than any man, was the severest of moralists ; 
 and his feelings and observations morbidly acute. Did 
 
 1 The strict formality of French serious writing is resorted to as 
 a foil to the natural levity of their character. 
 
Merry England. 43 
 
 not Lord Byron himself follow up his Childe Harold with 
 his Don Juan? — not that I insist on what he did as an 
 illustration of the English character. He was one of the 
 English Nobility, not one of the English people ; and his 
 occasional ease and familiarity were in my mind equally 
 constrained and affected, whether in relation to the pre- 
 tensions of his rank or the efforts of his genius. 
 
 They ask you in France, how you pass your time in 
 England without amusements ; and can with difficulty 
 believe that there are theatres in London, still less that 
 they are larger and handsomer than those in Paris. That 
 we should have comic actors, " they own surprises them." 
 They judge of the English character in the lump as one 
 great jolter-head, containing all the stupidity of the 
 country, as the large ball at the top of the Dispensary in 
 Warwick-lane, from its resemblance to a gilded pill, has 
 been made to represent the whole pharmacopoeia and pro- 
 fessional quackery of the kingdom. They have no more 
 notion, for instance, how we should have such an actor as 
 Liston on our stage, than if we were to tell them we have 
 parts performed by a sea-otter ; nor, if they were to see 
 him, would they be much the wiser, or know what to think 
 of his unaccountable twitches of countenance or nonde- 
 script gestures, of his teeth chattering in his head, his eyes 
 that seem dropping from their sockets, his nose that is 
 tickled by a jest as by a feather, and shining with self- 
 complacency as if oiled, his ignorant conceit, his gaping 
 stupor, his lumpish vivacity in Lubin Log or Tony Lumpkin ; 
 for as our rivals do not wind up the machine to such a 
 determined intensity of purpose, neither have they any 
 idea of its running down to such degrees of imbecility and 
 folly, or coming to an absolute stand-still and lack of 
 meaning, nor can they enter into or be amused with the 
 contrast. No people ever laugh heartily who can give a 
 reason for their doing so: and I believe the English in 
 general are not yet in this predicament. They are not 
 
44 Merry England. 
 
 metaphysical, but very much in a state of nature ; and 
 this is one main ground why I give them credit for being 
 merry, notwithstanding appearances. Their mirth is not 
 the mirth of vice or desperation, but of innocence arid a 
 native wildness. They do not cavil or boggle at niceties, 
 or merely come to the edge of a joke, but break their necks 
 over it with a wanton " Here goes," where others make a 
 pirouette and stand upon decorum. The French cannot 
 however, be persuaded of the excellence of our comic stage, 
 nor of the store we set by it. When they ask what amuse- 
 ments we have, it is plain they can never have heard of 
 Mrs. Jordan, nor King, nor Bannister, nor Suett, nor 
 Munden, nor Lewis, nor little Simmons, nor Dodd, and 
 Parsons, and Emery, and Miss Pope, and Miss Farren, 
 and all those who even in my time have gladdened a 
 nation and " made life's business like a summer's dream." 
 Can I think of them, and of their names that glittered in 
 the play-bills when I was young, exciting all the flutter of 
 hope and expectation of seeing them in their favourite 
 parts of Nell, or Little Pickle, or Touchstone, or Sir Peter 
 Teazle, or Lenitive in the i Prize/ or Lingo, or Crabtree, or 
 Nipperkin, or old Domton, or Banger, or the Copper Cap- 
 tain, or Lord Sands, or Filch, or Moses, or Sir Andrew 
 Aguecheek, or Acres, or Elbow, or Hodge, or Flora, or the 
 Duenna, or Lady Teazle, or Lady Grace, or of the gaiety 
 that sparkled in all eyes, and the delight that overflowed 
 all hearts, as they glanced before us in these parts, 
 
 " Throwing a gaudy shadow upon life v — 
 
 and not feel my heart yearn within me, or couple the 
 thoughts of England and the spleen together ? Our 
 cloud has at least its rainbow tints; ours is not one long, 
 polar night of cold and dulness, but we have the gleaming 
 lights of fancy to amuse us, the household fires of truth 
 and genius to warm us. We can go to a play and see 
 Liston ; or stay at home and read Roderick Random ; or 
 
Merry England. 45 
 
 have Hogarth's prints of Marriage a la Mode hanging 
 round our room. Tut ! " there's livers" even in England, 
 as well as "out of it." We are not quite the forlorn hope 
 of humanity, the last of nations. The French look at us 
 across the Channel, and seeing nothing but water and a 
 cloudy mist, think that this is England. If they have 
 any farther idea of us, it is of George III. and our Jack 
 tars, the House of Lords and House of Commons ; and 
 this is no great addition to us. To go beyond this, 
 to talk of arts and elegances as having taken up their 
 abode here, or to say that Mrs. Abington was equal to 
 Mademoiselle Mars, and that we at one time got up the 
 School for Scandal, as they do the Misanthrope, is to per- 
 suade them that Iceland is a pleasant winter-retreat, or to 
 recommend the whale-fishery as a classical amusement. 
 The French are the cockneys of Europe, and have no idea 
 how anyone can exist out of Paris, or be alive without 
 incessant grimace and jabber. Yet what imports it ? 
 What! though the joyous train I have just enumerated 
 were, perhaps, never heard of in the precincts of the 
 Palais-Eoyal, is it not enough that they gave pleasure 
 where they were, to those who saw and heard them? 
 Must our laugh, to be sincere, have its echo on the other 
 side of the water ? Had not the French their favourites 
 and their enjoyments at the time, that we knew nothing 
 of? Why then should we not have ours (and boast of 
 them too) without their leave? A monopoly of self- 
 conceit is not a monopoly of all other advantages. The 
 English, when they go abroad, do not take away the 
 prejudice against them by their looks. We seem duller 
 and sadder than we are. As I write this, 1 I am sitting in 
 the open air in a beautiful valley, near Yevey : Clarens is 
 on my left, the Dent de Jamant is behind me, the rocks 
 of Meillerie opposite : under my feet is a green bank, 
 
 1 The article was written, apparently, at Vevey in the summer 
 of 1825. See Memoirs of William Razlitt, 1867, chap. xv. — Ed. 
 
46 Merry England. 
 
 enamelled with white and purple flowers, in which a dew 
 drop here and there still glitters with pearly light — 
 
 " And gaudy butterflies flutter around." 
 
 Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir 
 within me, I conjure up the cheerful passages of my life, 
 and a crowd of happy images appear before me. No 
 one would see it in my looks— my eyes grow dull and 
 fixed, and I seem rooted to the spot, as all this phan- 
 tasmagoria passes in review before me, glancing a reflex 
 lustre on the face of the world and nature. But the 
 traces of pleasure, in my case, sink into an absorbent 
 ground of thoughtful melancholy, and require to be 
 brought out by time and circumstances, or (as the critics 
 tell you) by the varnish of style ! 
 
 The comfort, on which the English lay so much stress, 
 is of the same character, and arises from the same source 
 as their mirth. Both exist by contrast and a sort of 
 contradiction. The English are certainly the most un- 
 comfortable of all people in themselves, and therefore it 
 is that they stand in need of every kind of comfort and 
 accommodation. The least thing puts them out of their 
 way, and therefore everything must be in its place. They 
 are mightily offended at disagreeable tastes and smells, 
 and therefore they exact the utmost neatness and nicety. 
 They are sensible of heat and cold, and therefore they 
 cannot exist, unless everything is snug and warm, or else 
 open and airy, where they are. They must have " all 
 appliances and means to boot." They are afraid of inter- 
 ruption and intrusion, and therefore they shut themselves 
 up in in-door enjoyments and by their own firesides. It 
 is not that they require luxuries (for that implies a high 
 degree of epicurean indulgence and gratification), but they 
 cannot do without their comforts ; that is, whatever tends 
 to supply their physical wants, and ward off physical 
 pain and annoyance. As they have not a fund of animal 
 
On a Sun-dial. 47 
 
 spirits and enjoyments in themselves, they cling to external 
 objects for support, and derive solid satisfaction from the 
 ideas of order, cleanliness, plenty, property, and domestic 
 quiet, as they seek for diversion from odd accidents and 
 grotesque surprises, and have the highest possible relish 
 not of voluptuous softness, but of hard knocks and dry 
 blows, as one means of ascertaining their personal identity. 
 
 On a Sun-dial. 1 
 
 " To carve out dials quaintly, point by point." 
 
 Shakspeare. 2 
 
 Horas non numero nisi serenas — is the motto of a sun- 
 dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in 
 the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all 
 conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count only 
 the hours that are serene." What a bland and care- 
 dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on 
 the dial-plate as the sky lours, and time presents only a 
 blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, 
 and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a 
 fine lesson is conveyed to the mind — to take no note of 
 time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and 
 neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright 
 and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of 
 things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, 
 unheeded or forgotten ! How different from the common 
 art of self-tormenting ! For myself, as I rode along the 
 Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy 
 waves, my sensations were far from comfortable ; but the 
 reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in 
 an instant restored me to myself; and still, whenever I 
 think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into 
 the region of pure and blissful abstraction. I cannot 
 
 1 Written in Italy, in 1825.— Ed. 
 
 2 Henry VI., part 3, ii, 5. [Dyce's edit. 1868, v. 265.] 
 
48 On a Sun-dial. 
 
 help fancying it to be a legend of Popish superstition. 
 Some monk of the dark ages must have invented and 
 bequeathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens and 
 watching the silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in 
 the sun or his flowers scented the balmy air, felt a mild 
 languor pervade his senses, and having little to do or to 
 care for, determined (in imitation of his sun-dial) to efface 
 that little from his thoughts or draw a veil over it, 
 making of his life one long dream of quiet ! Horas non 
 numero nisi serenas — he might repeat, when the heavens 
 were overcast and the gathering storm scattered the 
 falling leaves, and turn to his books and wrap himself 
 in his golden studies ! Out of some such mood of mind, 
 indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speak- 
 ing volumes) must have originated. 
 
 Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun- 
 dial is perhaps the most apposite and striking, if not the 
 most convenient or comprehensive. It does not obtrude 
 its observations, though it " morals on the time," and, by 
 its stationary character, forms a contrast to the most 
 fleeting of all essences. It stands sub dio — under the 
 marble air, and there is some connexion between the 
 image of infinity and eternity. I should also like to 
 have a sun-flower growing near it with bees fluttering 
 round. 1 It should be of iron to denote duration, and 
 have a dull, leaden look. I hate a sun-dial made of wood, 
 which is rather calculated to show the variations of the 
 seasons, than the progress of time, slow, silent, imper- 
 ceptible, chequered with light and shade. If our hours 
 were all serene, we might probably take almost as little 
 note of them, as the dial does of those that are clouded. ■ 
 It is the shadow thrown across, that gives us warning of 
 their flight. Otherwise, our impressions would take the 
 
 1 Is this a verbal fallacy ? Or in the close, retired, sheltered 
 scene which I have imagined to myself, is not the sun-flower a 
 natural accompaniment of the suLi-dial ? 
 
 

 On a Sun-dial. 49 
 
 same undistinguishable hue ; we should scarce be con- 
 scious of our existence. Those who have had none of the 
 cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been 
 obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the 
 next to vary the prospect before them. Most of the 
 methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, 
 been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, 
 finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some 
 pains to see how they got rid of it. The hour-glass is, I 
 suspect, an older invention ; and it is certainly the most 
 defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed an 
 unapt emblem of the minute, countless portions of our 
 existence ; and the manner in which they gradually slide 
 through the hollow glass and diminish in number till not 
 a single one is left, also illustrates the way in which our 
 years slip from us by stealth : but as a mechanical 
 invention, it is rather a hindrance than a help, for it 
 requires to have the time, of which it pretends to count 
 the precious moments, taken up in attention to itself, and 
 in seeing that when one end of the glass is empty, we 
 turn it round, in order that it may go on again, or else 
 all our labour is lost, and we must wait for some other 
 mode of ascertaining the time before we can recover our 
 reckoning and proceed as before. The philosopher in his 
 cell, the cottager at her spinning-wheel must, however, 
 find an invaluable acquisition in this "companion of the 
 lonely hour," as it has been called, 1 which not only serves 
 to tell how the time goes, but to fill up its vacancies. 
 What a treasure must not the little box seem to hold, as 
 if it were a sacred deposit of the very grains and fleeting 
 sands of life ! What a business, in lieu of other more im- 
 portant avocations, to see it out to the last sand, and then 
 to renew the process again on the instant, that there may 
 
 1 " Once more, companion of the lonely hour, 
 I'll turn thee up again." 
 BloomfieloVs Poems— The Widow to her Hour-glass. 
 
 E 
 
50 On a Sun-dial. 
 
 not be the least flaw or error in the account ! What a 
 strong sense must be brought home to the mind of the 
 value and irrecoverable nature of the time that is fled ; 
 what a thrilling, incessant consciousness of the slippery 
 tenure by which we hold what remains of it ! Our very 
 existence must seem crumbling to atoms, and running 
 down (without a miraculous reprieve) to the last fragment. 
 " Dust to dust and ashes to ashes " is a text that might be 
 fairly inscribed on an hour-glass: it is ordinarily asso- 
 ciated with the scythe of Time and a Death's-head, as a 
 memento mori ; and has, no doubt, furnished many a tacit 
 hint to the apprehensive and visionary enthusiast in 
 favour of a resurrection to another life ! 
 
 The French give a different turn to things, less sombre 
 and less edifying. A common and also a very pleasing 
 ornament to a clock, in Paris, is a figure of Time seated 
 in a boat which Cupid is rowing along, with the motto, 
 & Amour fait passer le Temps — which the wits again have 
 travestied into Le Temps fait passer IS Amour. All this 
 is ingenious and well ; but it wants sentiment. I like 
 a people who have something that they love and something 
 that they hate, and with whom everything is not alike a 
 matter of indifference or pour passer le temps. The French 
 attach no i nportance to anything, except for the moment ; 
 they are only thinking how they shall get rid of one 
 sensation for another ; all their ideas are in transitu. 
 Everything is detached, nothing is accumulated. It 
 would be a million of years before a Frenchman would 
 think of the Horas non numero nisi serenas. Its im- 
 passioned repose and ideal voluptuousness are as far from 
 their breasts as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare — 
 " How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! " * 
 They never arrive at the classical — or the romantic. They 
 blow the bubbles of vanity, fashion, and pleasure ; but 
 they do not expand their perceptions into refinement, or 
 1 Merchant of Venice, v, 1. [Dyce's edit. 1868, ii, 409.] 
 
On a Sun-dial '. 51 
 
 strengthen them into solidity. Where there is nothing 
 fine in the groundwork of the imagination, nothing fine 
 in? the superstructure can be produced. They are light, 
 airy, fanciful (to give them their due) — but when they 
 attempt to be serious (beyond mere good sense) they are 
 either dull or extravagant. When the volatile salt has 
 flown off, nothing but a caput mortuum remains. They 
 have infinite crotchets and caprices with their clocks and 
 watches, w r hich seem made for anything but to tell the 
 hour — gold repeaters, watches with metal covers, clocks 
 with hands to count the seconds. There is no escaping 
 from quackery and impertinence, even in our attempts to 
 calculate the w T aste of time. The years gallop fast enough 
 for me, without remarking every moment as it flies ; and 
 further, I must say I dislike a watch, (whether of French 
 or English manufacture) that comes to me like a footpad 
 with its face muffled, and does not present its clear, open 
 aspect like a friend, and point with its finger to the time 
 of day. All this opening and shutting of dull, heavy 
 cases (under pretence that the glass-lid is liable to be 
 broken, or lets in the dust or air and obstructs the 
 movements of the watch), is not to husband time, but 
 to give trouble. It is mere pomposity and self-im- 
 portance, like consulting a mysterious oracle that one 
 carries about with one in one's pocket, instead of asking 
 a common question of an acquaintance or companion. 
 There are two clocks which strike the hour in the room 
 where I am. This I do not like. In the first place, I 
 do not want to be reminded twice how the time goes 
 (it is like the second tap of a saucy servant at your door 
 when perhaps you have no wish to get up) : in the next 
 place, it is starting a difference of opinion on the subject, 
 and I am averse to every appearance of wrangling and 
 disputation, Time moves on the same, whatever disparity 
 there may be in our mode of keeping count of it, like 
 true fame in spite of the cavils and contradictions of 
 
52 On a Sun-dial. 
 
 the critics. I am no friend to repeating watches. The 
 only pleasant association I have with them is the account 
 given by Eousseau of some French lady, who sat up 
 reading the New Eloise when it first came out, and 
 ordering her maid to sound the repeater, found it was 
 too late to go to bed, and continued reading on till 
 morning. Yet how different is the interest excited by 
 this story from the account which Eousseau somewhere 
 else gives of his sitting up with his father reading 
 romances, when a boy, till they were startled by the 
 swallows twittering in their nests at daybreak, and the 
 father cried out, half angry and ashamed—" Allons, mon 
 fils ; je mis plus enfant que toi ! " In general, I have 
 heard repeating-watches sounded in stage-coaches at 
 night, when some fellow-traveller suddenly awaking and 
 wondering what was the hour, another has very de- 
 liberately taken out his watch, and pressing the spring, 
 it has counted out the time ; each petty stroke acting like 
 a sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of the 
 dreary hours I had already passed, and of the more dreary 
 ones I had to wait till morning. 
 
 The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over 
 watches and other dumb reckoners of time is, that for 
 the most part they strike the hour — that they are as it 
 were the mouth-pieces of time ; that they not only point 
 it to the eye, but impress it on the ear ; that they " lend 
 it both an understanding and a tongue." Time thus 
 speaks to us in an audible and warning voice. Objects 
 of sight are easily distinguished by the sense, and suggest 
 useful reflections to the mind ; sounds, from their inter- 
 mittent nature, and perhaps other causes, appeal more 
 to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. But to 
 do this, they must be unexpected and involuntary — there 
 must be no trick in the case— they should not be squeezed 
 out with a finger and a thumb ; there should be nothing 
 optional, personal in their occurrence ; they should be 
 
On a Sun-dial, 53 
 
 xike stern, inflexible monitors, that nothing can prevent 
 from discharging their duty. Surely, if there is any- 
 thing with which we should not mix up our vanity and 
 self-consequence, it is with Time, the most independent 
 of all things. All the sublimity, all the superstition that 
 hang upon this palpable mode of announcing its flight, 
 are chiefly attached to this circumstance. Time would 
 lose its abstracted character, if we kept it like a curiosity 
 or a jack-in-a-box : its prophetic warnings would have 
 no effect, if it obviously spoke only at our prompting 
 like a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that tells the 
 coming, dreaded hour — the castle bell, that "with it? 
 brazen throat and iron tongue, sounds one unto the 
 drowsy ear of night " — the curfew, " swinging slow with 
 sullen roar " o'er wizard stream or fountain, are like a 
 voice from other worlds, big with unknown events. The 
 last sound, which is still kept up as an old custom in 
 many parts of England, is a great favourite with me. 3 
 used to hear it when a boy. It tells a tale of other times 
 The days that are past, the generations that are gone, 
 the tangled forest glades and hamlets brown of my native 
 country, the woodsman's art, the Norman warrior armed 
 for the battle or in his festive hall, the conqueror's iron 
 rule and peasant's lamp extinguished, all start up at the 
 clamorous peal, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. 
 I confess, nothing at present interests me but what ha? 
 been — the recollection of the impressions of my early 
 life, or events long past, of which only the dim traces 
 remain in a mouldering ruin or half-obsolete custom. 
 That things should be that are now no more, creates in my 
 mind the most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot solve 
 the mystery of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it. 
 The years, the generations to come, are nothing to me. 
 We care no more about the world in the year 2300 than 
 we do about one«of the planets. We might as well make 
 a voyage to the moon as think of stealing a march upon 
 
51 On a Sun-dial. 
 
 Time with impunity. De non apparentibus et non ex- 
 istentibus eadem est ratio. Those who are to come after 
 us and push us from the stage seem like upstarts and 
 pretenders, that may be said to exist in vacuo, we know 
 not upon what, except as they are blown up with vanity 
 and self-conceit by their patrons among the moderns. 
 But the ancients are true and bond fide people, to whom 
 we are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and 
 in whom, seen by the mellow light of history, we feel our 
 own existence doubled and our pride consoled, as we 
 ruminate on the vestiges of the past. The public in 
 general, however, do not carry this speculative indifference 
 about the future to what is to happen to themselves, or 
 to the part they are to act in the busy scene. For my 
 own part, I do ; and the only wish I can form, or that 
 ever prompts the passing sigh, would be to live some of 
 my years over again — they would be those in which I 
 enjoyed and suffered most ! 
 
 The ticking of a clock in the night has nothing very 
 interesting nor very alarming in it, though superstition 
 has magnified it into an omen. In a state of vigilance or 
 debility, it preys upon the spirits like the persecution of 
 a teazing, pertinacious insect ; and haunting the imagina- 
 tion after it has ceased in reality, is converted into the 
 death-watch. Tirae is rendered vast by contemplating 
 its minute portions thus repeatedly and painfully urged 
 upon its attention, as the ocean in its immensity is 
 composed of water-drops. A clock striking with a clear 
 and silver sound is a great relief in such circumstances, 
 breaks the spell, and resembles a sylph-like and friendly 
 spirit in the room. Foreigners with all tbeir tricks and 
 contrivances upon clocks and time-pieces, are strangers 
 to the sound of village- bells, though perhaps a people 
 that can dance may dispense with them. They impart 
 a pensive, wayward pleasure to the mind, and are a kind 
 of chronology of happy events, often serious in the 
 
On a Sun-dial. 55 
 
 retrospect — births, marriages, and so forth. Coleridge 
 calls them " the poor man's only music." A village-spire 
 in England peeping from its cluster of trees, is always 
 associated in imagination with this cheerful accompani- 
 ment, and may be expected to pour its joyous tidings on 
 the gale. In Catholic countries, you are stunned with 
 the everlasting tolling of bells to prayers or for the dead. 
 In the Apennines, and other wild and mountainous 
 districts of Italy, the little chapel-bell with its simple 
 tinkling sound has a romantic and charming effect. The 
 monks in former times appear to have taken a pride in 
 the construction of bells as well as churches ; and some 
 of those of the great cathedrals abroad (as at Cologne and 
 Rouen) may be fairly said to be hoarse with counting the 
 flight of ages. The chimes in Holland are a nuisance. 
 They dance in the hours and the quarters. They leave 
 no respite to the imagination. Before one set has done 
 ringing in your ears, another begins. You do not know 
 whether the hours move or stand still, go backwards or 
 forwards, so fantastical and perplexing are their accom- 
 paniments. Time is a more staid personage, and not so 
 full of gambols. It puts you in mind of a tune with 
 variations, or of an embroidered dress. Surely, nothing 
 is more simple than time. His march is straightforward ; 
 but we should have leisure allowed us to look back upon 
 the distance we have come, and not be counting his steps 
 every moment. Time in Holland is a foolish old fellow 
 with all the antics of a youth, who " goes to church in 
 a coranto, and lights his pipe in a cinque-pace." The 
 chimes with us, on the contrary, as they come in every 
 three or four hours, are like stages in the journey of the 
 day. They give a fillip to the lazy, creeping hours, and 
 relieve the lassitude of country-places. At noon, their 
 desultory, trivial song is diffused through the hamlet with 
 the odour of rashers of bacon ; at the close of day they 
 send the toil-worn sleepers to their beds. Their dis- 
 
56 On a Sun-dial. 
 
 continuance would be a great loss to the thinking or 
 unthinking public. Mr. Wordsworth has painted their 
 effect on the mind when he makes his friend Matthew, in 
 a fit of inspired dotage, 
 
 " Sing those witty rhymes 
 About the crazy old church-clock 
 And the bewilder'd chimes." 
 
 The tolling of the bell for deaths and executions is a 
 fearful summons, though, as it announces, not the advance 
 of time but the approach of fate, it happily makes no part 
 of our subject. Otherwise, the "sound of the bell" for 
 Macheath's execution in the Beggars' Opera, or for that 
 of the Conspirators in Venice Preserved, with the roll of 
 the drum at a soldier's funeral, and a digression to that of 
 my Uncle Toby, as it is so finely described by Sterne, 
 would furnish ample topics to descant upon. If I were a 
 moralist, I might disapprove the ringing in the new and 
 ringing out the old year. 
 
 " Why dance ye, mortals, o'er the grave of Time ?" 
 
 St. Paul's bell tolls only for the death of our English 
 kings, or a distinguished personage or two, with long 
 intervals between. 1 
 
 Those who have no artificial means of ascertaining the 
 progress of time, are in general the most acute in dis- 
 cerning its immediate signs, and are most retentive of 
 individual dates. The mechanical aids to knowledge are 
 not sharpeners of the wits. The understanding of a savage 
 is a kind of natural almanac, and more true in its prognos- 
 tication of the future. In his mind's eye he sees what 
 has happened or what is likely to happen to him, " as in a 
 map the voyager his course." Those who read the 
 times and seasons in the aspect of the heavens and the 
 
 1 Rousseau has admirably described the effect of bells on the 
 imagination in a passage in the Confess ions, beginning " Le son des 
 cloches rrCa toujours singulierement ajfecte" &c. 
 
On a Sun-dial. 57 
 
 configuration of the stars, who count by moons and know 
 when the sun rises and sets, are by no means ignorant of 
 their own affairs or of the common concatenation of events. 
 People in such situations have not their faculties distrac- 
 ted by any multiplicity of inquiries beyond what befalls 
 themselves, and the outward appearances that mark the 
 change. There is, therefore, a simplicity and clearness in 
 the knowledge they possess, which often puzzles the more 
 learned. I am sometimes surprised at a shepherd-boy by 
 the road-side, who sees nothing but the earth and sky, 
 asking me the time of day — he ought to know so much 
 better than any one how far the sun is above the horizon. 
 I suppose he wants to ask a question of a passenger, or to 
 see if he has a watch. Robinson Crusoe lost his reckon- 
 ing in the monotony of his life and that bewildering dream 
 of solitude, and was fain to have recourse to the notches 
 in a piece of wood. What a diary was his ! And how 
 time must have spread its circuit round him, vast and 
 pathless as the ocean ! 
 
 For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other 
 mode of keeping time in my possession, nor ever wish to 
 learn how time goes. It is a sign I have had little to do, 
 few avocations, few engagements. When I am in a town, 
 I can hear the clock; and when I am in the country, I 
 can listen to the silence. What I like best is to lie whole 
 mornings on a sunny bank on Salisbury Plain, without any 
 object before me, neither knowing nor caring how time 
 passes, and thus " with light-winged toys of feathered 
 Idleness " to melt down hours to moments. Perhaps some 
 such thoughts as I have here set down float before me like 
 motes before my half-shut eyes, or some vivid image of 
 the past by forcible contrast rushes by me — " Diana and 
 her fawn, and all the glories of the antique world ; " then 
 I start away to prevent the iron from entering my soul, 
 and let fall some tears into that stream of time which 
 separates me farther and farther from all I once loved ! 
 
58 On Prejudice. 
 
 At length I rouse myself from my reverie, and home to 
 dinner, proud of killing time with thought, nay even 
 without thinking. Somewhat of this idle humour I inherit 
 from my father, though he had not the same freedom from 
 ennui, for he was not a metaphysician ; and there were 
 stops and vacant intervals in his being which he did not 
 know how to fill up. He used in these cases, and as an 
 obvious resource, carefully to wind up his watch at night, 
 and " with lack-lustre eye " more than once in the course 
 of the day look to see what o'clock it was. Yet he had 
 nothing else in his character in common with the elder 
 Mr. Shandy. Were I to attempt a sketch of him, for my 
 own or the reader's satisfaction, it would be after the 
 
 following manner But now I recollect I have done 
 
 something of the kind once before, 1 and were I to resume 
 the subject here, some bat or owl of a critic, with specta- 
 cled gravity, might swear I had stolen the whole of this 
 Essay from myself — or (what is worse) from him ! So I 
 had better let it go as it is. 
 
 ... 
 
 On Prejudice. 
 
 Prejudice, in its ordinary and literal sense, is 'prejudging 
 any question without having sufficiently examined it, and 
 adhering to our opinion upon it through ignorance, malice, 
 or perversity, in spite of every evidence to the contrary. 
 The little that we know has a strong alloy of misgiving 
 and uncertainty in it; the mass of things of which we 
 have no means of judging, but of which we form a blind 
 and confident opinion, as if we were thoroughly acquainted 
 with them, is monstrous. Prejudice is the child of ignor- 
 ance : for as our actual knowledge falls short of our desire 
 to know, or curiosity and interest in the world about us, 
 
 1 In the Liberal, 1823; but see Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 
 1867, i, SSetseq.— Ed. 
 
 
On Prejudice. 59 
 
 so must we be tempted to decide upon a greater number of 
 things at a venture ;. and having no check from reason or 
 inquiry, we shall grow more obstinate and bigoted in our 
 conclusions, according as we have been rash and presump- 
 tuous. The absence of proof, instead of suspending our 
 judgment, only gives us an opportunity of making things 
 out according to our wishes and fancies ; mere ignorance 
 is a blank canvas, on which we lay what colours we 
 please, and paint objects black or white, as angels or 
 devils, magnify or diminish them at our option ; and in 
 the vacuum either of facts or arguments, the weight of pre- 
 judice and passion falls with double force, and bears down 
 everything before it. If we enlarge the circle of our pre- 
 vious knowledge ever so little, we may meet with some- 
 thing to create doubt and difficulty ; but as long as we 
 remain confined to the cell of our native ignorance, while 
 we know nothing beyond the routine of sense and custom, 
 we shall refer everything to that standard, or make it out 
 as we would have it to be, like spoiled children who have 
 never been from home, and expect to find nothing in the 
 world that does not accord with their wishes and notions. 
 It is evident that the fewer things we know, the more 
 ready we shall be to pronounce upon and condemn, what 
 is new and strange us ; that is, the less capable we shall 
 be of varying our conceptions, and the more prone to mis- 
 take a part for the whole. What we do not understand 
 the meaning of, must necessarily appear to us ridiculous 
 and contemptible ; and we do not stop to inquire, till we 
 have been taught by repeated experiments and warnings 
 of our own fallibility, whether the absurdity is in our- 
 selves, or in the object of our dislike and scorn. The 
 most ignorant people are rude and insolent, as the most 
 barbarous are cruel and ferocious. All our knowledge at 
 first lying in a narrow compass (crowded by local and 
 physical causes) whatever does not conform to this shocks 
 us as out of reason and nature. The less we look abroad, 
 
60 On Prejudice. 
 
 the more our ideas are introverted, and our habitual 
 impressions, from being made up of a few particulars 
 always repeated, grow together into a kind of concrete sub- 
 stance, which will not bear taking to pieces, and where the 
 smallest deviation destroys the whole feeling. Thus, the 
 difference of colour in a black man was thought to forfeit 
 his title to belong to the species, till books of voyages and 
 travels, and old Fuller's quaint expression of " God's image 
 carved in ebony," have brought the two ideas into a forced 
 union, and men of colour are no longer to be libelled with 
 impunity. The word republic has a harsh and incongruous 
 sound to ears bred under a constitutional monarchy ; and 
 we strove hard for many years to overturn the French 
 republic, merely because we could not reconcile it to our- 
 selves that such a thing should exist at all, notwithstand- 
 ing the examples of Holland, Switzerland, and many others. 
 This term has hardly yet performed quarantine : to the 
 loyal and patriotic it has an ugly taint in it, and is 
 scarcely fit to be mentioned in good company. If, how- 
 ever, we are weaned by degrees from our prejudices against 
 certain words that shock opinion, this is not the case with 
 all : those that offend good manners grow more offensive 
 with the progress of refinement and civilization, so that 
 no writer now dares venture upon expressions that unwit- 
 tingly disfigure the pages of our elder writers, and in this 
 respect, instead of becoming callous or indifferent, we 
 appear to become more fastidious every day. There is 
 then a real grossness which does not depend on familiarity 
 or custom. This account of the concrete nature of pre- 
 judice, or of the manner in which our ideas by habit and 
 the dearth of general information coalesce together into 
 one indissoluble form, will show (what otherwise seems 
 unaccountable) how such violent antipathies and ani- 
 mosities have been occasioned by the most ridiculous or 
 trifling differences of opinion, or outward symbols of it ; 
 for by constant custom, and the want of reflection, the 
 
On Prejudice. 61 
 
 most insignificant of these was as inseparably bound 
 up with the main principle as the most important, and 
 to give up any part was to give up the whole essence 
 and vital interests of religion, morals, and government. 
 Hence we see all sects and parties mutually insist 
 on their own technical distinctions as the essentials 
 and fundamentals of religion and politics, and, for the 
 slightest variation in any of these, unceremoniously attack 
 their opponents as atheists and blasphemers, traitors and 
 incendiaries. 
 
 In fact, these minor points are laid hold of in preference, 
 as being more obvious and tangible, and as leaving more 
 room for the exercise of prejudice and passion. Another 
 thing that makes our prejudices rancorous and inveterate 
 is, that as they are taken up without reason, they seem to 
 be self-evident ; and we thence conclude, that they not 
 only are so to ourselves, but must be so to others, so that 
 their differing from us is wilful, hypocritical, and mali- 
 cious. The Inquisition never pretended to punish its 
 victims for being heretics or infidels, but for avowing 
 opinions which with their eyes open they knew to be false. 
 That is, the whole of the Catholic faith, " that one entire 
 and perfect chrysolite," appeared to them so completely 
 without flaw and blameless, that they could not conceive 
 how any one else could imagine it to be otherwise, except 
 from stubborness and contumacy, and would rather admit 
 (to avoid so improbable a suggestion) that men went to 
 the stake for an opinion, not which they held, but counter- 
 feited, and were content to be burnt alive for the pleasure 
 of playing the hypocrite. Nor is it wonderful that there 
 should be so much repugnance to admit the existence of a 
 serious doubt in matters of such vital and eternal interest, 
 and on which the whole fabric of the church hinged, since 
 the first doubt that was expressed on any single point drew 
 all the rest after it ; and the first person who started a con- 
 scientious scruple, and claimed the trial by reason, threw 
 
62 On Prejudice, 
 
 down, as if by a magic spell, the strongholds of bigotry 
 and superstition, and transferred the determination of the 
 issue from the blind tribunal of prejudice and implicit 
 faith to a totally different ground, the fair and open field 
 of argument and inquiry. On this ground a single 
 champion is a match for thousands. The decision of the 
 majority is not here enough : unanimity is absolutely 
 necessary to infallibility; for the only secure plea on 
 which such a preposterous pretension could be set up, is 
 by taking it for granted that there can be no possible 
 doubt entertained upon the subject, and by diverting men's 
 minds from ever asking themselves the question of the 
 truth of certain dogmas and mysteries, any more than 
 whether two and two make four. Prejudice, in short, is 
 egotism : we see a part, and substitute it for the whole ; a 
 thing strikes us casually and by halves, and we would 
 have the universe stand proxy for our decision, in order 
 to rivet it more firmly in our own belief; however 
 insufficient or sinister the grounds of our opinions, we 
 would persuade ourselves that they arise out of the 
 strongest conviction, and are entitled to unqualified appro- 
 bation ; slaves of our own prejudices, caprice, ignorance, 
 we would be lords of the understandings and reason of 
 others ; and (strange infatuation !) taking up an opinion 
 solely from our own narrow and partial point of view, 
 without consulting the feelings of others, or the reason of 
 things, we are still uneasy if all the world do not come 
 into our way of thinking. 
 
 The most dangerous enemies to established opinions 
 are those who, by always defending them, call attention to 
 their weak sides. The priests and politicians, in former 
 times, were therefore wise in preventing the first ap- 
 proaches of innovation and inquiry ; in preserving in- 
 violate the smallest link in the adamantine chain with 
 which they had bound the souls and bodies of men ; in 
 closing up every avenue or pore through which a doubt 
 
On Prejudice. 63 
 
 could creep in, for they knew that through the slightest 
 crevice floods of irreligion and heresy would rush like a 
 tide. Hence the constant alarm at free discussion and 
 inquiry : hence the clamour against innovation and reform : 
 hence our dread and detestation of those who differ with 
 us in opinion, for this at once puts us on the necessity of 
 defending ourselves, or of owning ourselves weak or in the 
 wrong, if we cannot ; and converts that which was before 
 a bed of roses, while we slept undisturbed upon it, into a 
 cushion of thorns ; and hence our natural tenaciousness of 
 those points which are most vulnerable, and of which we 
 have no proof to offer ; for as reason fails us, we are more 
 annoyed by the objections, and require to be soothed and 
 supported by the concurrence of others. Bigotry and 
 intolerance, which pass as synonymous, are, if rightly con- 
 sidered, a contradiction in terms ; for if, in drawing up the 
 articles of our creed, we are blindly bigoted to our 
 impressions and views, utterly disregarding all others, 
 why should we afterwards be so haunted and disturbed by 
 the last, as to wish to exterminate every difference of 
 sentiment with fire and sword ? The difficulty is only 
 solved by considering that unequal compound, the human 
 mind, alternately swayed by individual bi asses and abstract 
 pretensions, and where reason so often panders to, or is 
 made the puppet of the will. To show at once the danger 
 and extent of prejudice, it may be sufficient to observe 
 that all our convictions, however arrived at, and whether 
 founded on strict demonstration or the merest delusion, 
 are crusted over with the same varnish of confidence and 
 conceit, and afford the same firm footing both to our 
 theories and practice ; or if there be any difference, we are 
 in general " most ignorant of what we are most assured,'* 
 the strength of will and impatience of contradiction making 
 up for the want of evidence. Mr. Burke says that we 
 ought to " cherish our prejudices, because they are pre- 
 judices ;" but this view of the case will satisfy the demands 
 
64 On Prejudice. 
 
 of neither party, for prejudice is never easy unless it can 
 pass itself off for reason, or abstract undeniable truth ; and 
 again, in the eye of reason, if all prejudices are to be 
 equally regarded as such, then the prejudices of others are 
 right, and ours must in their turn be wrong. The great 
 stumbling block to candour and liberality is the difficulty 
 of being fully possessed of the excellence of any opinion 
 or pursuits of our own, without proportionally condemning 
 whatever is opposed to it, nor can we admit the possibility 
 that when our side of the shield is black, the other should 
 be white. The largest part of our judgments is prompted 
 by habit and passion ; but because habit is like a second 
 nature, and we necessarily approve what passion suggests, 
 we will have it that they are founded entirely on reason 
 and nature, and that all the world must be of the same 
 opinion, unless they wilfully shut their eyes to the truth. 
 Animals are free from prejudice, because they have no 
 notion or care about anything beyond themselves, and 
 have no wish to generalise or talk big on what does not 
 concern them : man alone falls into absurdity and error 
 by setting up a claim to superior wisdom and virtue, and 
 to be a dictator and lawgiver to all around him, and on all 
 things that he has the remotest conception of. If mere 
 prejudice were dumb as well as deaf and blind, it would 
 not so much signify ; but as it is, each sect, age, country, 
 profession, individual, is ready to prove that they are 
 exclusively in the right, and to go together by the ears 
 for it. 6< Kings the earth with the vain stir." It is the 
 trick for each party to raise an outcry against prejudice; 
 as by -this they natter themselves, and would have it 
 supposed by others, that they are perfectly free from it, 
 and have all the reason on their own side. It is easy 
 indeed to call names, or to separate the word prejudice 
 from the word reason ; but not so easy to separate the 
 two things. Eeason seems a very positive and palpable 
 thing to those who have no notion of it, but as expressing 
 
dn Prejudice. 65 
 
 their own views and feelings ; as prejudice is evidently a 
 very gross and shocking absurdity (that no one can fall 
 into who wishes to avoid it), as long as we continue to 
 apply this term to the prejudices of other people. To 
 suppose that we cannot make a mistake is the very way to 
 run headlong into it ; for if the distinction were so broad 
 and glaring as our self-conceit and dogmatism lead us to 
 imagine it is, we could never, but by design, mistake truth 
 for falsehood. Those, however, who think they can make 
 a clear stage of it, and frame a set of opinions on all sub- 
 jects by an appeal to reason alone, and without the smallest 
 intermixture of custom, imagination or passion, know just 
 as little of themselves as they do of human nature. The 
 best way to prevent our running into the wildest excesses 
 of prejudice and the most dangerous aberrations from 
 reason, is, not to represent the two things as having a 
 great gulf between them, which it is inrpossible to pass 
 without a violent effort, but to show that we are constantly 
 (even when we think ourselves most secure) treading on 
 the brink of a precipice ; that custom, passion, imagination, 
 insinuate themselves into and influence almost every judg- 
 ment we pass or sentiment we indulge, and are a necessary 
 help (as well as hindrance) to the human understand- 
 ing ; and that to attempt to refer every question to abstract 
 truth and precise definition, without allowing for the frailty 
 of prejudice, which is the unavoidable consequence of the 
 frailty and imperfection of reason, would be to unravel the 
 whole web and texture of human understanding and society. 
 Such daring anatomists of morals and philosophy think 
 that the whole beauty of the mind consists in the skeleton ; 
 cut away, without remorse, all sentiment, fancy, taste, as 
 superfluous excrescences ; and in their own eager, unfeel- 
 ing pursuit of scientific truth and elementary principles, 
 they " murder to dissect." 
 
 It is a mistake, however, to suppose that all prejudices 
 are false, though it is not an easy matter to distinguish 
 
 F 
 
66 On Prejudice, 
 
 between true and false prejudice. Prejudice is properly 
 
 an opinion or feeling, not for which there is no reason, 
 
 but of which we cannot render a satisfactory account on 
 
 the spot. It is no't always possible to assign a " reason 
 
 for the faith that is in us," not even if we take time and 
 
 summon up all our strength ; but it does not therefore 
 
 follow that our faith is hollow and unfounded. A false 
 
 impression may be denned to be an effect without a cause, 
 
 or without any adequate one ; but the effect may remain 
 
 and be true, though the cause is concealed or forgotten. 
 
 The grounds of our opinions and tastes may be deep, and 
 
 be scattered over a large surface ; they may be various, 
 
 remote and complicated ; but the result will be sound and 
 
 true, if they have existed at all, though we may not be 
 
 able to analyse them into classes, or to recall the particular 
 
 time, place, and circumstances of each individual case or 
 
 branch of the evidence. The materials of thought and 
 
 feeling, the body of facts and experience, are infinite, are 
 
 constantly going on around us, and acting to produce an 
 
 impression of good or evil, of assent or dissent to certain 
 
 inferences ; but to require that we should be prepared to 
 
 retain the whole of this mass of experience in our memory, 
 
 to resolve it into its component parts, and be able to quote 
 
 chapter and verse for every conclusion we unavoidably 
 
 draw from it, or else to discard the whole together as 
 
 unworthy the attention of a rational being, is to betray an 
 
 utter ignorance both of the limits and the several uses of 
 
 the human capacity. The feeling of the truth of anything, 
 
 or the soundness of the judgment formed upon it from 
 
 repeated, actual impressions, is one thing ; the power of 
 
 vindicating and enforcing it, by distinctly appealing to or 
 
 explaining those impressions, is another. The most fluent 
 
 talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the 
 
 justest thinkers. 
 
 To deny that we can, in a certain sense, know and be 
 justified in believing anything of which we cannot give 
 
On Prejudice. 67 
 
 the complete demonstration, or the exact why and how, 
 would only be to deny that the clown, the mechanic (and 
 not even the greatest philosopher), can know the com- 
 monest thing ; for in this new and dogmatical process of 
 reasoning, the greatest philosopher can trace nothing above, 
 nor proceed a single step without taking something for 
 granted; 1 and it is well if he does not take more things 
 for granted than the most vulgar and illiterate, and what 
 he knows a great deal less about. A common mechanic 
 can tell how to work an engine better than the mathema- 
 tician who invented it. A peasant is able to foretell rain 
 from the appearance of the clouds, because (time out of 
 mind) he has seen that appearance followed by that con- 
 sequence ; and shall a pedant catechise him out of a 
 conviction which he has found true in innumerable in- 
 stances, because he does not understand the composition 
 of the elements, or cannot put his notions into a logical 
 shape ? There may also be some collateral circumstance 
 (as the time of day), as well as the appearance of the 
 clouds, which he may forget to state in accounting for his 
 prediction ; though, as it has been a part of his familiar 
 experience, it has naturally guided him in forming it, 
 whether he was aware of it or not. This comes under the 
 head of the well-known principle of the association of ideas ; 
 by which certain impressions, from frequent recurrence, 
 coalesce and act in unison truly and mechanically — that 
 is, without our being conscious of anything but the general 
 and settled result. On this principle it has been well 
 
 1 Berkeley, in his Minute Philosopher, attacks Dr. Halley, who 
 had objected to faith and mysteries in religion, on this score ; and 
 contends that the mathematician, no less than the theologian, is 
 obliged to presume on certain postulates, or to resort, before he 
 could establish a single theorem, to a formal definition of those 
 undeflnable and hypothetical existences, points, lines, and surfaces ; 
 and, according to the ingenious and learned Bishop of Cloyne, 
 solids would fare no better than superfieials in this war of words and 
 captious contradiction. 
 
68 On Prejudice. 
 
 said, that " there is nothing so true as habit ;" but it is 
 also blind : we feel and can produce a given effect from 
 numberless repetitions of the same cause ; but we neither 
 inquire into the cause, nor advert to the mode. In learn- 
 ing any art or exercise, we are obliged to take lessons, to 
 watch others, to proceed step by step, to attend to the 
 details and means employed ; but when we are masters of 
 it, we take all this for granted, and do it without labour 
 and without thought, by a kind of habitual instinct — that 
 is, by the trains of our ideas and volitions having been 
 directed uniformly, and at last flowing of themselves into 
 the proper channel. 
 
 We never do anything well till we cease to think about 
 the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so 
 difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly 
 or idiomatically. They do not succeed in this from 
 knowledge or reflection, but from inveterate custom, 
 which is a cord that cannot be loosed. In fact, in all 
 that we do, feel, or think, there is a leaven of prejudice 
 fmore or less extensive), viz. something implied, of which 
 we do not know or have forgotten the grounds. 
 
 If I am required to prove the possibility, or demon- 
 strate the mode of whatever I do before I attempt it, I 
 can neither speak, walk, nor see ; nor have the use . of my 
 hands senses, or common understanding. I do not know 
 what muscles I use in walking, nor what organs I employ 
 in speech : those who do, cannot speak or walk better on 
 that account ; nor can they tell how these organs and 
 muscles themselves act. Can I not discover that one 
 object is near, and another at a distance, from the eye 
 alone, or from continual impressions of sense and custom 
 concurring to make the distinction, without going through 
 a course of perspective and optics ? — or am I not to be 
 allowed an opinion on the subject, or to act upon it, 
 without being accused of being a very prejudiced and 
 obstinate person? An artist knows that, to imitate an 
 
On Prejudice. 69- 
 
 object in the horizon, he must use less colour ; and the 
 naturalist knows that this effect is produced by the inter- 
 vention of a greater quantity of air : but a country fellow, 
 who knows nothing of either circumstance, must not only 
 be ignorant but a blockhead, if he could be persuaded that 
 a hill ten miles off was close before him, only because he 
 could not state the grounds of his opinion scientifically. 
 Not only must we (if restricted to reason and philosophy) 
 distrust the notices of sense, but we must also dismiss all 
 that mass of knowledge and perception which falls under 
 the head of common sense and natural feeling, which is 
 made up of the strong and urgent, but undefined impres- 
 sions of things upon us, and lies between the two extremes 
 of absolute proof and the grossest ignorance. Many of 
 these pass for instinctive principles and innate ideas ; but 
 there is nothing in them " more than natural." 
 
 Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not 
 be able to find my way across the room ; nor know how to 
 conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in 
 any relation of life. Keason may play the critic, and 
 correct certain errors afterwards ; but if we were to wait 
 for its formal and absolute decisions in the shifting and 
 multifarious combinations of human affairs, the world 
 would stand still. Even men of science, after they have 
 gone over the proofs a number of times, abridge the 
 process, and jump at a conclusion : is it therefore false, 
 because they have always found it to be true? Science 
 after a certain time becomes presumption ; and learning 
 reposes in ignorance. It has been observed, that women 
 have more tact and insight into character than men, that 
 they find out a pedant, a pretender, a blockhead, sooner. 
 The explanation is, that they trust more to the first 
 impressions and natural indications of things, without 
 troubling themselves with a learned theory of them ; 
 whereas men, affecting greater gravity, and thinking 
 themselves bound to justify their c*inions 3 are afraid to 
 
70 On Prejudice. 
 
 form any judgment at all, without the formality of proofs 
 and definitions, and blunt the edge of their understand- 
 ings, lest they should commit some mistake. They stay 
 for facts, till it is too late to pronounce on the characters. 
 Women are naturally physiognomists, and men phrenolo- 
 gists. The first judge by sensations ; the last by rules. 
 Prejudice is so far then an involuntary and stubborn 
 association of ideas, of which we cannot assign the distinct 
 grounds and origin; and the answer to the question, 
 " How do we know whether the prejudice is true or false ?" 
 depends chiefly on that other, whether the first connection 
 between our ideas has been real or imaginary. This 
 again resolves into the inquiry — Whether the subject in 
 dispute falls under the province of our own experience, 
 feeling, and observation, or is referable to the head of 
 authority, tradition, and fanciful conjecture? Our prac- 
 tical conclusions are in this respect generally right ; our 
 speculative opinions are just as likely to be wrong. What 
 we derive from our personal acquaintance with things 
 (however narrow in its scope or imperfectly digested), is, 
 for the most part, built on a solid foundation— that of 
 Nature ; it is in trusting to others (who give themselves 
 out for guides and doctors) that we are all abroad, and at 
 the mercy of quackery, impudence, and imposture. Any 
 impression, however absurd, or however we may have 
 imbibed it, by being repeated and indulged in, becomes an 
 article of implicit and incorrigible belief. The point to 
 consider is, how we have first taken it up, whether from 
 ourselves or the arbitrary dictation of others. " Thus 
 shall we try the doctrines, whether they be of nature or 
 of man." 
 
 So far then from the charge lying against vulgar and 
 illiterate prejudice as the bane of truth and common sense, 
 the argument turns the other way; for the greatest, the 
 most solemn, and mischievous absurdities that mankind 
 have been the dupes of. they have imbibed from the 
 
On Prejudice. 71 
 
 dogmatism and vanity or hypocrisy of the self-styled wise 
 and learned, who have imposed profitable fictions upon 
 them for self-evident truths, and contrived to enlarge 
 their power with their pretensions to knowledge. Every 
 boor sees that the sun shines above his head ; that " the 
 moon is made of green cheese," is a fable that has been 
 taught him. Defoe says, that there were a hundred 
 thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready to fight 
 to the death against popery, without knowing whether 
 popery was a man or a horse. This, then, was a preju- 
 dice that they did not fill up of their own heads. All the 
 great points that men have founded a claim to superiority, 
 wisdom, and illumination upon, that they have embroiled 
 the world with, and made matters of the last importance, 
 are what one age and country differ diametrically with 
 each other about, have been successively and justly 
 exploded, and have been the levers of opinion and the 
 grounds of contention, precisely because, as their ex- 
 pounders and believers are equally in the dark about 
 them, they rest wholly on the fluctuations of will and 
 passion, and as they can neither be proved nor disproved, 
 admit of the fiercest opposition or the most bigoted faith. 
 In what " comes home to the business and bosoms of 
 men," there is less of this uncertainty and presumption ; 
 and there, in the little world of our own knowledge and 
 experience, we can hardly do better than attend to the 
 " still, small voice " of our own hearts and feelings, 
 instead of being browbeat by the effrontery, or puzzled 
 by the sneers and cavils of pedants and sophists, of 
 whatever school or description. 
 
 If I take a prejudice against a person from his face, I 
 shall very probably be in the right ; if I take a prejudice 
 against a person from hearsay, I shall quite as probably 
 be in the wrong. We have a prejudice in favour of 
 certain books, but it is hardly without knowledge, if we 
 have read them with delight over and over again. Fame 
 
72 On Prejudice. 
 
 itself is a prejudice, though a fine one. Natural affection 
 is a prejudice : for though we have cause to love our 
 nearest connections better than others, we have no reason 
 to think them better than others. The error here is, 
 when that which is properly a dictate of the heart passes 
 out of its sphere, and becomes an overweening decision of 
 the understanding. So in like manner of the love of 
 country; and there is a prejudice in favour of virtue, 
 genius, liberty, which (though it w r ere possible) it would 
 be a pity to destroy. The passions, such as avarice, 
 ambition, love, &c, are prejudices, that is amply ex- 
 aggerated views of certain objects, made up of habit v and 
 imagination beyond their real value ; but if we ask what 
 is the real value of any object, independently of its 
 connection with the power of habit, or its affording 
 natural scope for the imagination, we shall perhaps be 
 puzzled for an answer. To reduce things to the scale of 
 abstract reason would be to annihilate our interest in 
 them, instead of raising our affections to a higher 
 standard; and by striving to make man rational, we 
 should leave him merely brutish. 
 
 Animals are without prejudice : they are not led away 
 by authority or custom, but it is because they are gross, 
 and incapable of being taught. It is, however, a mistake 
 to imagine that only the vulgar and ignorant, who can 
 give no account of their opinions, are the slaves of 
 bigotry and prejudice ; the noisiest declaimers, the most 
 subtle casuists, and most irrefragable doctors, are as far 
 •removed from the character of true philosophers, while 
 they strain and pervert all their powers to prove some 
 unintelligible dogma, instilled into their minds by early 
 education, interest, or self-importance ; and if we say the 
 peasant or artisan is a Mahometan because he is born in 
 Turkey, or a papist because he is born in Italy, the mufti 
 at Constantinople or the cardinal at Borne is so, for no 
 better reason, in the midst of all his pride and learning. 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 73 
 
 Mr. Hobbes used to say, that if lie had read as much as 
 others, he should have been a^s ignorant as they. 
 
 After all, most of our opinions are a mixture of reason 
 and prejudice, experience and authority. We can only 
 judge for ourselves in what concerns ourselves, and in 
 things about us : and even there we must trust con- 
 tinually to established opinion and current report ; in 
 higher and more abstruse points we must pin our faith 
 still more on others. If we believe only what we know at 
 first hand, without trusting to authority at all, we shall 
 disbelieve a great many things that really exist ; and the 
 suspicious coxcomb is as void of judgment as the cre- 
 dulous fool. My htf.Mtual conviction of the existence of 
 such a place as Eome is not strengthened by my having 
 seen it ; it might be almost said to be obscured and 
 weakened, as the reality falls short of the imagination. I 
 walk along the streets without fearing that the houses 
 will fall on my head, though I have not examined their 
 foundation ; and I believe firmly in the Newtonian 
 system, though I have never read the Principia. In the 
 former case, I argue that if the houses were inclined to 
 fall they would not wait for me ; and in the latter, I 
 acquiesce in what all who have studied the subject, and 
 are capable of understanding it, agree in, having no reason 
 to suspect the contrary. That the earth turns round is 
 agreeable to my understanding, though it shocks my 
 sense, which is however too weak to grapple with so vast 
 a question. 
 
 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 A DIALOGUE. 1 
 
 A. For my part, I think Helvetius has made it clear 
 that self-love is at the bottom of all our actions, even 
 
 1 I clo not think that any exact account has been given of the 
 history and date of this paper. But it seems probable that it was? 
 
74 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 of those which are apparently he most generous and 
 disinterested. 
 
 B. I do not know what yon mean by saying that 
 Helvetins has made this clear, nor what you mean by self- 
 love. 
 
 A. Why, was not he the fm t who explained to the 
 world that in gratifying others, we gratify ourselves ; that 
 though the result may be different, the motive is really 
 the same, and a selfish one ; and that if we had not more 
 pleasure in performing what are called friendly or vir- 
 tuous actions than the contrary, they would never enter 
 our thoughts? 
 
 B. Certainly he is no more entitled to this discovery 
 (if it be one) than you are. Hobbes and Mandeville long 
 before him asserted the same thing in the most explicit 
 and unequivocal manner ; 1 and Butler, in the Notes and 
 Preface to his Sermons, had also long before answered it 
 in the most satisfactory way. 
 
 A. Ay, indeed ! pray how so ? 
 
 B. By giving the common-sense answer to the question 
 which I have just asked of you. 
 
 A. And what is that ? I do not exactly comprehend. 
 
 B. Why, that self-love means, both in common and 
 philosophical speech, the love of self. 
 
 like the two preceding, written in Italy in 1825, and represents a 
 conversation between the author (A ?), Landor (B ?), and Captain 
 Medwin {Captain C?). Compare the paper on Self-love in the 
 Literary Remains, 1836, ii. — Ed. 
 
 1 "II a manque' au plus grand philosophe qu'aient eu les 
 Francais, de vivre dans quelque solitude des Alpes, dans quelque 
 sejour eloigne', et de lancer dela son livre dans Paris sans y venir 
 jamais lui-meme. Rousseau avait trop de sensibilite et trop peu de 
 raison, Buffo n trop d'hypocrisie a son jardin des plantes, Voltaire 
 trop d'enfantillage dans la tete, pour pouvoir juger le principe 
 d'Helvetius."— De V Amour, torn. 2, p. 230. 
 
 My friend Mr. Beyle here lays too much stress on a borrowed 
 verbal fallacy. 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 75 
 
 A. To be sure, there needs no ghost to tell us that. 
 
 B. And yet, simple as it is, both you and many great 
 philosophers seem to have overlooked it. 
 
 A. You are pleased to be obscure— unriddle for the 
 sake of the vulgar. 
 
 B. Well then, Bishop Butler's statement in the volume 
 I have mentioned 
 
 A. May I ask, is it the author of the Analogy you 
 speak of? 
 
 B. The same, but an entirely different and much more 
 valuable work. His position is, that the arguments of 
 the opposite party go to prove that in all our motives 
 and actions it is the individual indeed who loves or is 
 interested in something, but not in the smallest degree 
 (which yet seems necessary to make out the full import of 
 the compound " sound significant," self-love) that that 
 something is himself. By self-love is surely implied not 
 only that it is I who feel a certain passion, desire, good- 
 will, and so forth, but that I feel this good-will towards 
 myself — in other words, that I am both the person feeling 
 the attachment, and the object of it. In short, the con- 
 troversy between self-love and benevolence relates not to 
 the person who loves, but to the person beloved— other- 
 wise, it is fiat and puerile nonsense. There must always 
 be some one to feel the love, that's certain, or else there 
 could be no love of one thing or another — so far there can 
 be no question that it is a given individual who feels, 
 thinks, and acts, in all possible cases of feeling, thinking, 
 and acting — " there needs," according to your own 
 allusion, " no ghost come from the grave to tell us that " 
 — but whether the said individual in so doing always 
 thinks of feels for, and acts with a view to himself, that is 
 a very important question, and the only real one at issue ; 
 and the very statement of \\hich, in a distinct and intelli- 
 gible form, gives at once the proper and inevitable answer 
 to it. Self-love, to mean anything, must have a double 
 
76 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 meaning, that is, must not merely signify love, but love 
 defined and directed in a particular manner, having self 
 for its object, reflecting and reacting upon self; but it is 
 downright and intolerable trifling to persist that the love 
 or concern which we feel for another still has self for its 
 object, because it is we who feel it. The same sort of 
 quibbling would lead to the conclusion that when I am 
 thinking of any other person, I am notwithstanding 
 thinking of myself, because it is I who have his image in 
 my mind. 
 
 A. I cannot, I confess, see the connection. 
 
 B. I wish you would point out the distinction. Or let 
 me ask you — Suppose you were to observe me looking 
 frequently and earnestly at myself in the glass, would you 
 not be inclined to laugh, and say that this was vanity? 
 
 A. I might be half-tempted to do so. 
 
 B. Well; and if you were to find me admiring a fine 
 picture, or speaking in terms of high praise of the person 
 or qualities of another, would you not set it down equally 
 to an excess of coxcombry and self-conceit ? 
 
 A. How, in the name of common sense, should I do so? 
 
 B. Nay, how should you do otherwise upon your own 
 principles ? For if sympathy with another is to be 
 construed into self-love because it is I who feel it, surely, 
 by the same rule, my admiration and praise of another 
 must be resolved into self-praise and self-admiration, and 
 I am the whole time delighted with myself, to wit, with 
 my own thoughts and feelings, while I pretend to be 
 delighted with another. Another's limbs are as much 
 mine, who contemplate them, as his feelings. 
 
 A. Now, my good friend, you go too far : I can't think 
 you serious. 
 
 B. Do I not tell you that I have a most grave Bishop 
 (equal to a whole Bench) on my side ? 
 
 A. What! is this illustration of the looking-glass and pic- 
 ture his ? I thought it was in your own far-fetched manner. 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 11 
 
 B. And why far-fetched ? 
 
 A. Because nobody can think of calling the praise of 
 another self-conceit — the words have a different meaning 
 in the language. 
 
 B. Nobody has thought of confounding them hitherto, 
 and yet they sound to me as like as selfishness and 
 generosity. If our vanity can be brought to admire others 
 disinterestedly, I do not see but our good-nature may be 
 taught to serve them as disinterestedly. Grant me but 
 this, that self-love signifies not simply, "I love," but 
 requires to have this further addition, "I love myself," 
 understood in order to make sense or grammar of it ; and 
 I defy you to make one or the other of Helvetius's theory, 
 if you will needs have it to be his. If, as Fielding says, 
 all our passions are selfish merely because they are ours, 
 then in hating another we must be said to hate ourselves, 
 just as wisely as in loving another, we are said to be 
 actuated by self-love. I have no patience with such 
 foolery. I respect that fine old sturdy fellow Hobbes, or 
 even the acute, pertinacious sophistry of Mandeville; but 
 I do not like the flimsy, self-satisfied repetition of an 
 absurdity, which with its originality has lost all its 
 piquancy. 
 
 B. You have, I know, very little patience with others 
 who differ from you, nor are you a very literal reporter of 
 the arguments of those who happen to be on your side of 
 the question. You were about to tell me the substance of 
 Butler's answer to Helvetius's theory, if we can let the 
 anachronism pass ; and I have as yet only heard certain 
 quaint and verbal distinctions of your own. I must still 
 think that the most disinterested actions proceed from a 
 selfish motive. A man feels distress at the sight of a 
 beggar, and he parts with his money to remove this 
 uneasiness. If he did not feel this distress in his own 
 mind, he would take no steps to relieve the other's wants. 
 
 B. And pray, does he feel this distress in his own 
 
78 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 ave 
 
 mind out of love to himself, or solely that he may hav 
 the pleasure of getting rid of it? The first move in the 
 game of mutual obligation is evidently a social, not a 
 selfish impulse ; and I might rest the dispute here and 
 insist upon going no farther till 'this step is got over, but 
 it is not necessary. I have already told you the substance 
 of Butler's answer to this commonplace and plausible 
 objection. He says, in his fine broad, manly and yet 
 unpretending mode of stating a question, that a living 
 being may be supposed to be actuated either by mere 
 sensations, having no reference to any one else, or else 
 that having an idea and foresight of the consequences to 
 others, he is influenced by and interested in those con- 
 sequences only in so far as they have a distinct connection 
 with his own ultimate good, in both which cases, seeing 
 that the motives and actions have both their origin and 
 end in self, they may and must be properly denominated 
 selfish. But where the motive is neither physically nor 
 morally selfish, that is, where the impulse to act is 
 neither excited by a physical sensation nor by a reflection 
 on the consequence to accrue to the individual, it must 
 be hard to say in what sense it can be called so, except in 
 that sense already exploded, namely, that which would 
 infer that an impulse of any kind is selfish merely 
 because it acts upon some one, or that before we can 
 entertain disinterested sympathy with another, we must 
 feel no sympathy at all. Benevolence, generosity, com- 
 passion, friendship, &c, imply, says the Bishop, that we 
 take an immediate and unfeigned interest in the welfare 
 of others ; that their pleasures give us pleasure ; that 
 their pains give us pain, barely to know of them, and from 
 no thought about ourselves. But no ! retort the advocates 
 of self-love, this is not enough : before any person can 
 pretend to the title of benevolent, generous, and so on, he 
 must prove, that so far from taking the deepest and most 
 heartfelt interest in the happiness of others, he has no 
 
 
Self-love and Benevolence, 79 
 
 feeling on the subject, that he is perfectly indifferent to 
 their weal or woe ; and then taking infinite pains and 
 making unaccountable sacrifices for their good without 
 caring one farthing about them, he might pass for herioc 
 and disinterested. But if he lets it appear he has the 
 smallest good-will towards them, and acts upon it, he then 
 becomes a merely selfish agent ; so that to establish a 
 character for generosity, compassion, humanity, &c, in 
 any of his actions, he must first plainly prove that he 
 never felt the slightest twinge of any of these passions 
 thrilling in his bosom. This, according to my author, is 
 requiring men to act not from charitable motives, but 
 from no motives at all. Such reasoning has not an 
 appearance of philosophy, but rather of drivelling weak- 
 ness or of tacit irony. For my part, I can conceive of no 
 higher strain of generosity than that which justly and 
 truly says, Nihil humani a me cdienum puto — but, according 
 to your modern French friends and my old English ones, 
 there is no difference between this and the most sordid 
 selfishness ; for the instant a man takes an interest in 
 another's welfare, he makes it his own, and all the merit 
 and disinterestedness is gone. " Greater love than this 
 hath no man, that he should give his life for his friend." 
 It must be rather a fanciful sort of self-love that at any 
 time sacrifices its own acknowledged and obvious interests 
 for the sake of another. 
 
 A. Not in the least. The expression you have just 
 used explains the whole mystery, and I think you must 
 allow this yourself. The moment I sympathise with 
 another, I do in strictness make his interest my own. 
 The two things on this supposition become inseparable, 
 and my gratification is identified with his advantage. 
 Every one, in short, consults his particular taste and 
 inclination, whatever may be its bias, or acts from the 
 strongest motive. Eegulus, as Helvetius has so ably 
 demonstrated, would not have returned to Carthage, but 
 
80 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 that the idea of dishonour gave him more uneasiness than 
 the apprehension of a violent death. 
 
 B. That is, had he not preferred the honour of his 
 country to his own interest. Surely, when self-love by 
 all accounts takes so very wide a range and embraces 
 entirely new objects, of a character so utterly opposed 
 to its general circumscribed and paltry routine of action, 
 it would be as well to designate it by some new and 
 appropriate appellation, unless it were meant, by the 
 intervention of the old and ambiguous term, to confound 
 the important practical distinction which subsists between 
 the puny circle of a man's physical sensations and private 
 interests and the whole world of virtue and honour, and 
 thus to bring back the last gradually and disingenuously 
 within the verge of the former. Things without names 
 are unapt to take root in the human mind : we are prone 
 to reduce nature to the dimensions of language. If a 
 feeling of a refined and romantic character is expressed 
 by a gross and vulgar name, our habitual associations will 
 be sure to degrade the first to the level of the last, instead 
 of conforming to a forced and technical definition. But 
 I beg to deny, not only that the objects in this case are 
 the same, but that the principle is similar. 
 
 A. Do you then seriously pretend that the end of 
 sympathy is not to get rid of the momentary uneasiness 
 occasioned by the distress of another ? 
 
 B. And has that uneasiness, I again ask, its source 
 in self-love? If self-love were the only principle of 
 action, we ought to receive no uneasiness from the pains 
 of others, we ought to be wholly exempt from any such 
 weakness : or the least that can be required to give the 
 smallest shadow of excuse to this exclusive theory is, 
 that the instant the pain was communicated by our 
 foolish, indiscreet sympathy, we should think of nothing 
 but getting rid of it as fast as possible, by fair means 
 or foul, as a mechanical instinct. If the pain of sympathy, 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 81 
 
 as soon as it arose, was decompounded from the objects 
 which gave it birth, and acted upon the brain or nerves 
 solely as a detached, desultory feeling, or abstracted sense 
 of uneasiness, from which the mind shrunk with its 
 natural aversion to pain, then I would allow that the 
 impulse in this case, having no reference to the good 
 of another, and seeking only to remove a present incon- 
 venience from the individual, would still be properly 
 self-love : but no such process of abstraction takes place. 
 The feeling of compassion as it first enters the mind, 
 so it continues to act upon it in conjunction with the 
 idea of what another suffers ; refers every wish it forms, 
 or every effort it makes, to the removal of pain from a 
 fellow-creature, and is only satisfied when it believes this 
 end to be accomplished. It is not a blind, physical re- 
 pugnance to pain, as affecting ourselves, but a rational or 
 intelligible conception of it as existing out of ourselves, 
 that prompts and sustains our exertions in behalf of 
 humanity. Nor can it be otherwise, while man is the 
 creature of imagination and reason, and has faculties that 
 implicate him (whether he will or not) in the pleasures 
 and pains of others, and bind up his fate with theirs. 
 Why, then, when an action or feeling is neither in its 
 commencement nor progress, nor ultimate objects, dictated 
 by or subject to the control of self-love, bestow the name 
 where everything but the name is wanting ? 
 
 A. I must give you fair warning, that in this last tirade 
 you have more than once gone beyond my comprehension. 
 Your distinctions are too fine-drawn, and there is a want 
 of relief in the expression. Are you not getting back 
 to what you describe as your first manner ? Your present 
 style is more amusing. See if you cannot throw a few 
 high lights into that last argument ! 
 
 B. Tin peu plus a VAnglaise — anything to oblige ! I 
 say, then, it appears to me strange that self-love should 
 be asserted by any impartial reasoner (not the dupe of a 
 
 G 
 
82 Self -love and Benevolence. 
 
 play upon words), to be absolute and undisputed master 
 of tbe human mind, when compassion or uneasiness on 
 account of others enters it without leave and in spite 
 of this principle. What ! to be instantly expelled by it 
 without mercy, so that it may still assert its pre-eminence? 
 No ; but to linger there, to hold consultation with another 
 principle, Imagination, which owes no allegiance to self- 
 interest, and to march out only under condition and 
 guarantee that the welfare of another is first provided for 
 without any special clause in its own favour. This is 
 much as if you were to say and swear, that though the 
 bailiff and his man have taken possession of your house, 
 you are still the rightful owner of it. 
 
 A. And so I am. 
 
 B. Why, then, not turn out such unwelcome intruders 
 without standing upon ceremony ? 
 
 A. You were too vague and abstracted before : now 
 you are growing too figurative. Always in extremes. 
 
 B. Give me leave for a moment, as you will not let nle 
 spin mere metaphysical cobwebs. 
 
 A. I am patient. 
 
 B. Suppose that by sudden transformation your body 
 were so contrived that it could feel the actual sensations 
 of another body, as if your nerves had an immediate and 
 physical communication ; that you were assailed by a 
 number of objects you saw and knew nothing of before, 
 and felt desires and appetites springing up in your bosom 
 for which you could not at all account — would you not 
 say that this addition of another body made a material 
 alteration in your former situation ; that it called for 
 a new set of precautions and instincts to provide for 
 its wants and wishes? or would you persist in it that 
 you were just where you were, that no change had taken 
 place in your being and interests, and that your new body 
 was in fact your old one, for no other reason than because 
 it was yours ? To my thinking the case would be quite 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 83 
 
 altered by the supererogation of such a new sympathetic 
 body, and I should be for dividing my care and time 
 pretty equally between them. 
 
 Captain G. You mean that in that case you would have 
 taken in partners to the concern, as well as No. I. ? 
 
 B. Yes ; and my concern for No. II. would be some- 
 thing very distinct from, and quite independent of, my 
 original and hitherto exclusive concern for No. I. 
 
 A. How very gross and vulgar ! (whispering to D , 
 
 and then turning to me, added) — but why suppose an 
 impossibility? I hate all such incongruous and far- 
 fetched illustrations. 
 
 B. And yet this very miracle takes place every day in 
 the human mind and heart, and you and your sophists 
 would persuade us that it is nothing, and would slur over 
 its existence by a shallow misnomer. Do I not by 
 imaginary sympathy acquire a new interest (out of myself) 
 in others, as much as I should on the former supposition 
 by physical contact or animal magnetism? and am I 
 not compelled by this new law of my nature (neither 
 included in physical sensation nor a deliberate regard 
 to my own individual welfare) to consult the feelings and 
 wishes of the new social body of which I am become 
 a member, often to the prejudice of my own ? The 
 parallel seems to me exact, and I think the inference from 
 it unavoidable. I do not postpone a benevolent or 
 friendly purpose to my own personal convenience or 
 make it bend to it — 
 
 "Letting I dare not wait upon I would, 
 Like the poor cat f the adage." 
 
 The will is amenable, not to our immediate sensibility, 
 but to reason and imagination, which point out and 
 enforce a line of duty very different from that prescribed 
 by self-love. The operation of sympathy or social feeling, 
 though it has its seat certainly in the mind of the in- 
 
84 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 dividual, is neither for his immediate behalf nor to his 
 remote benefit, but is constantly a diversion from both, 
 and therefore, I contend, is not in any sense selfish. 
 The movements in my breast as much originate in, and 
 are regulated by, the idea of what another feels, as if they 
 were governed by a chord placed there vibrating to 
 another's pain. If these movements were mechanical, 
 they would be considered as directed to the good of 
 another* it is odd, that because my bosom takes part 
 and beats in unison with them, they should become of 
 a less generous character. In the passions of hatred, 
 resentment, sullenness, or even in low spirits, we volun- 
 tarily go through a great deal of pain, because such is our 
 'pleasure ; or strictly, because certain objects have taken 
 hold of our imagination, and we cannot, or will not, get 
 rid of the impression : why should good-nature and 
 generosity be the only feelings in which we will not allow 
 a little forgetfulness of ourselves ? Once more. If self- 
 love, or each individual's sensibility, sympathy, what you 
 will, were like an animalcule, sensitive, quick, shrinking 
 instantly from whatever gave it pain, seeking instinctively 
 whatever gave it pleasure, and having no other obligation 
 or law of its existence,, then I should be most ready to 
 acknowledge that this principle was in its nature, end, 
 and origin, selfish, slippery, treacherous, inert, inoperative 
 but as an instrument of some immediate stimulus, in- 
 capable of generous sacrifice or painful exertion, and 
 deserving a name and title accordingly, leading one to 
 bestow upon it its proper attributes. But the very reverse 
 of all this happens. The mind is tenacious of remote 
 purposes, indifferent to immediate feelings, which cannot 
 consist with the nature of a rational and voluntary agent. 
 Instead of the animalcule swimming in pleasure and 
 gliding from pain, the principle of self-love is incessantly 
 to the imagination or sense of duty what the fly is to the 
 spider — that fixes its stings into it, involves it in its web, 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 85 
 
 sucks its blood, and preys upon its vitals! Does the 
 spider do all this to please the fly ? Just as much as 
 Eegulus returned to Carthage, and was rolled down a hill 
 in a barrel with iron spikes in it to please himself ! The 
 imagination or understanding is no less the enemy of our 
 pleasure than of our interest. It will not let us be at ease 
 till we have accomplished certain objects with which we 
 have ourselves no concern but as melancholy truths. 
 
 A. But the spider you have so quaintly conjured 
 up is a different animal from the fly. The imagination 
 on which you lay so much stress is a part of one's-self. 
 
 B. I grant it : and for that very reason, self-love, or a 
 principle tending exclusively to our own immediate 
 gratification or future advantage, neither is nor can be the 
 sole spring of action id the human mind. 
 
 A. I cannot see that at all. 
 
 D. Nay, I think he has made it out better than usual. 
 
 B. Imagination is another name for an interest in things 
 out of ourselves, which must naturally run counter to our 
 own. Self-love, for so fine and smooth-spoken a gentleman, 
 leads his friends into odd scrapes. The situation of Ee- 
 gulus in a barrel with iron spikes in it was not a very easy 
 one : but, say the advocates of refined self-love, their points 
 were a succession of agreeable punctures in his sides, 
 compared with the stings of dishonour, But what bound 
 him to this dreadful alternative ? Not self-love. When 
 the pursuit of honour becomes troublesome, " throw honour 
 to the dogs — I'll none of it ! " This seems the true 
 Epicurean solution. Philosophical self-love seems neither 
 a voluptuary nor an effeminate coward, but a cynic, and 
 even a martyr ; so that I am afraid he will hardly dare show 
 his face at Yery's, and that, with this knowledge of his 
 character, even the countenance of the Count Destutt de 
 Tracy will not procure his admission to the saloons. 
 
 A. The Count Destutt de Tracy, did you say ? Who is 
 he ? I never heard of him. 
 
86 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 B. He is the author of the celebrated Ideologic, which 
 Buonaparte denounced to the Chamber of Peers as the cause 
 of his disasters in Eussia. He is equally hated by the 
 Bourbons ; and, what is more extraordinary still, he is 
 patronised by Ferdinand VII. , who settled a pension of 
 two hundred crowns a year on the translator of his works. 
 He speaks of Condillac as having " created the science of 
 Ideology," and holds Helvetius for a true philosopher. 
 
 A. Which you do not ! I think it a pity you should 
 affect singularity of opinion in such matters, when you 
 have all the most sensible and best-informed judges against 
 you. 
 
 B. I am sorry for it too ; but I am afraid I can hardly 
 expect you with me, till I have all Europe on my side, of 
 which I see no chance while the Englishman, with his 
 notions. of solid beef and pudding, holds fast by his sub- 
 stantial identity, and the Frenchman, with his lighter food 
 and air, mistakes every shadowy impulse for himself. 
 
 _D. You deny, I think, that personal identity, in the 
 qualified way in which you think proper to admit it, is any 
 ground for the doctrine of self-interest ? 
 
 B. Yes, in an exclusive and absolute sense, I do un- 
 doubtedly, that is, in the sense in which it is affirmed by 
 metaphysicians, and ordinarily believed in. 
 
 D. Could you not go over the ground briefly, without 
 entering into technicalities ? 
 
 B. Not easily ; but stop me when I entangle myself in 
 difficulties. A person fancies, or feels habitually, that he 
 has a positive, substantial interest in his own welfare 
 (generally speaking), just as much as he has in any actual 
 sensation that he feels, because he is always and necessarily 
 the same self. What is his interest at one time is there- 
 fore equally Ms interest at all other times. This is taken 
 for granted as a self-evident proposition. Say he does not 
 feel a particular benefit or injury at this present moment, 
 yet it is he who is to feel it, which comes to the same 
 
 ■u 
 
Self -Jove and Benevolence. 87 
 
 thing. Where there is this continued identity of person, 
 there must also be a correspondent identity of interest. I 
 have an abstract, unavoidable interest in whatever can be- 
 fall myself, which I can have or feel in no other person 
 living, because I am always, under every possible circum- 
 stance, the self-same individual, and not any other indi- 
 vidual, whatsoever. In short, this word self (so closely do 
 a number of associations cling round it and cement it 
 together) is supposed to represent as it were a given con- 
 crete substance, as much one thing as anything in nature 
 can possibly be, and the centre or substratum in which the 
 different impressions and ramifications of my being meet 
 and are indissolutely knit together. 
 
 A. And you propose, then, seriously to take " this one 
 entire and perfect chrysolite," this self, this " precious 
 jewel of the soul," this rock on which mankind have built 
 their faith for ages, and at one blow shatter it to pieces 
 with the sledge-hammer, or displace it from its hold in 
 the imagination with the wrenching-irons of metaphysics ? 
 
 B. I am willing to use my best endeavours for that 
 purpose. 
 
 D. You really ought ; for you have the prejudices of 
 the whole world against you. 
 
 B. I grant the prejudices are formidable ; and I should 
 despair, did I not think my reasons even stronger. 
 Besides, without altering the opinions of the whole world, 
 I might be contented with the suffrages of one or two in- 
 telligent people. 
 
 D. Nay, you will prevail by flattery, if not by argu- 
 ment. 
 
 A. That is something newer than all the rest. 
 
 B. " Plain truth," dear A , " needs no flowers of 
 
 speech." 
 
 D. Let me rightly understand you. Do you mean to 
 say that I am not C. D. and that you are not W. B., or that 
 we shall not both of us remain so to the end of the chapter, 
 
88 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 without a possibility of ever changing places with each 
 other ? 
 
 B. I am afraid, if yon go to that, there is very little 
 chance that 
 
 u I shall be ever mistaken for you" 
 
 But with all this precise individuality and inviolable 
 identity that you speak of, let me ask, Are you not a 
 little changed (less so, it is true, than most people) from 
 what you were twenty years ago ? Or do you expect to 
 appear the same that you are now twenty years hence ? 
 
 _D. " ~No more of that if thou lovest me." We know what 
 we are, but we know not what we shall be. 
 
 B. A truce, then; but be assured that, whenever you 
 happen to fling up your part, there will be no other person 
 found to attempt it after you. 
 
 D. Pray, favour us with your paradox, without further 
 preface. 
 
 B. I will try then to match my paradox against your 
 prejudice, which, as it is armed all in proof, to make my 
 impression on it I must, I suppose, take aim at the rivets ; 
 and if I can hit them, if I do not (round and smooth as it 
 is) cut it into three pieces, and show that two parts in three 
 are substance and the third and principal part shadow, 
 never believe me again. Your real self ends exactly where 
 your pretended self-interest begins ; and in calculating 
 upon this principle as a solid, permanent, absolute, self- 
 evident truth, you are mocked with a name. 
 
 1). How so ? I hear, but do not see. 
 
 B. You must allow that this identical, indivisible, 
 ostensible self is at any rate distinguishable into three 
 parts — the past, the present, and future ? 
 
 1), I see no harm in that. 
 
 B. It is nearly all I ask. Well, then, I admit that you 
 have a peculiar, emphatic, incommunicable and exclusive 
 interest or fellow feeling in the two first of these selves ; 
 but I deny resolutely and unequivocally that you have any 
 
 . 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 89 
 
 such natural, absolute, unavoidable, and mechanical 
 interest in the last self, or in your future being, the in- 
 terest you take in it being necessarily the offspring of 
 understanding and imagination (aided by habit and 
 circumstances), like that which you take in the welfare of 
 others, and yet this last interest is the only one that is 
 ever the object of rational and voluntary pursuit, or that 
 ever comes into competition with the interests of others. 
 
 D. I am still to seek for the connecting clue. 
 
 B. I am almost ashamed to ask for your attention to a 
 statement so very plain that it seems to border on a truism. 
 I have an interest of a peculiar and limited nature in my 
 present self, inasmuch as I feel my actual sensations not 
 simply in a degree, but in a way and by means of faculties 
 which afford me not the smallest intimation of the sensations 
 of others. I cannot possibly feel the sensations of any one 
 else, nor consequently take the slightest interest in them 
 as such. I have no nerves communicating with another's 
 brain, and transmitting to me either the glow of pleasure 
 or the agony of pain which he may feel at the present 
 moment by means of his senses. So far, therefore, namely, 
 so far as my present self or immediate sensations are con- 
 cerned, I am cut off from all sympathy with others. I 
 stand alone in the world, a perfectly insulated individual, 
 necessarily and in the most unqualified sense indifferent to 
 all that passes around me, and that does not in the first 
 instance affect myself, for otherwise I neither have nor can 
 have the remotest consciousness of it as a matter of organic 
 sensation, any more than the mole has of light or the deaf 
 adder of sounds. 
 
 D. Spoken like an oracle. 
 
 B. Again, I have a similar peculiar, mechanical, and 
 untransferable interest in my past self, because I remember, 
 and can dwell upon my past sensations (even after 
 the objects are removed) also in a way and by means 
 of faculties which do not give me the smallest insight 
 
90 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 into or sympathy with the past feelings of others. 
 I may conjecture and fancy what those feelings have been ; 
 and so I do. But I have no memory or continued con- 
 sciousness of what either of good or evil may have found 
 a place in their bosoms, no secret spring that, being 
 touched, vibrates to the hopes and wishes that are no 
 more, unlocks the chambers of the past with the same 
 assurance of reality, or identifies my feelings with theirs 
 in the same intimate manner as with those which I have 
 already felt in my own person. Here again, then, there is a 
 real, undoubted, original and positive foundation for the 
 notion of self to rest upon ; for in relation to my former 
 self and past feelings, I do possess a faculty which 
 serves to unite me more especially to my own being, and 
 at the same time draws a distinct and impassable line 
 around that being, separating it from every other. A 
 door of communication stands always open between my 
 present consciousness and my past feelings, which is 
 locked and barred by the hand of Nature and the con- 
 stitution of the human understanding against the intrusion 
 of any straggling impressions from the minds of others. 
 I can only see into their real history darkly and by 
 reflection. To sympathise with their joys or sorrows, and 
 place myself in their situation either now or formerly, 
 I must proceed by guess work, and borrow the use of the 
 common faculty of imagination. I am ready to acknow- 
 ledge, then, that in what regards the past as well as the 
 present, there is a strict metaphysical distinction between 
 myself and others, and that my personal identity so far, 
 or in the close, continued, inseparable connection between 
 my past and present impressions, is firmly and irrevocably 
 established. 
 
 D. You go on swimmingly. So far all is sufficiently 
 clear. 
 
 B. But now comes the rub : for beyond that point I 
 deny that the doctrine of personal identity or self-interest 
 
 
Self love and Benevolence. 91 
 
 (as a consequence from it) has any foundation to rest 
 upon but a confusion of names and ideas. It has none in 
 the nature of things or of the human mind. For I have 
 no faculty by which I can project myself into the future, 
 or hold the same sort of palpable, tangible, immediate, 
 and exclusive communication with my future feelings in 
 the same manner as I am made to feel the present 
 moment by means of the senses, or the past moment by 
 means of memory. If I have any such faculty, expressly 
 set apart for the purpose, name it. If I have no such 
 faculty, I can have no such interest. In order that I 
 may possess a proper personal identity so as to live, 
 breathe, and feel along the whole line of my existence in 
 the same intense and intimate mode, it is absolutely 
 necessary to have some general medium or faculty by 
 which my successive impressions are blended and amalga- 
 mated together, and to maintain and support this extra- 
 ordinary interest. But so far from there being any 
 foundation for this merging and incorporating of my 
 future in my present self, there is no link of connection, 
 no sympathy, no reaction, no mutual consciousness between 
 them, nor even a possibility of anything of the kind, in a 
 mechanical and personal sense. Up to the present point, 
 the spot on which we stand, the doctrine of personal 
 identity holds good ; hitherto the proud and exclusive 
 pretensions of self come, but no farther. The rest is air, 
 is nothing, is a name, or but the common ground of reason 
 and humanity. If I wish to pass beyond this point and 
 look into my own future lot, or anticipate my future weal 
 or woe before it has had an existence, I can do so by 
 means of the same faculties by which I enter into and 
 identify myself with the welfare, the being, and interests 
 of others, but only by these. As I have already said, I 
 have no particular organ or faculty of self-interest, in 
 that case made and provided. I have no sensation of 
 what is to happen to myself in future, no presentiment of 
 
92 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 it, no instinctive sympathy with it, nor consequently any 
 abstract and unavoidable self-interest in it. Now mark : 
 it is only in regard to my past and present being, that a 
 broad and insurmountable barrier is placed between my- 
 self and others ; as to future objects there is no absolute 
 and fundamental distinction whatever. But it is only 
 these last that are the objects of any rational or practical 
 interest. The idea of self properly attaches to objects 
 of sense or memory, but these can never be the objects of 
 action or of voluntary pursuit, which must, by the 
 supposition, have an eye to future events. But with res- 
 pect to these the chain of self interest is dissolved and 
 falls in pieces by the very necessity of our nature, and 
 our obligations to self as a blind; mechanical, unsociable 
 principle are lost in the general law which binds us to 
 the pursuit of good as it comes within our reach and 
 knowledge. 
 
 A, A most lame and impotent conclusion, I must say. 
 Do you mean to affirm 'that you have really the same 
 interest in another's welfare that you have in your own ? 
 
 B. I do not wish to assert anything without proof. 
 Will you tell me, if you have this particular interest in 
 yourself, what faculty is, it that gives it you — to what 
 conjuration and mighty magic it is owing — or whether it 
 is merely the name of self that is to be considered as a 
 proof of all the absurdities and impossibilities that can be 
 drawn from it ? 
 
 A. I do not see that you have hitherto pointed out 
 any. 
 
 B. What ! not the impossiblity that you should be 
 another being, with whom you have not a particle of fellow- 
 feeling ? 
 
 A. Another being ! Yes, I know it is always impossible 
 for me to be another being. 
 
 B. Ay, or yourself either, without such a fellow-feeling, 
 for it is that which constitutes self. If not, explain to me 
 
 
Self -love and Benevolence. 93 
 
 what you mean by self. But it is more convenient for 
 you to let that magical sound lie involved in the obscurity 
 of prejudice and language. You will please to take notice 
 that it is not 1 who commence these hairbreadth distinc- 
 tions and special pleading. I take the old ground of 
 common sense and natural feeling, and maintain that though 
 in a popular, practical sense mankind are strongly swayed 
 by self-interest, yet in the same ordinary sense they are 
 also governed by motives of good-nature, compassion, 
 friendship, virtue, honour, &c. Now all this is denied by 
 your modern metaphysicians, who w T ould reduce every- 
 thing to abstract self-interest, and exclude every other 
 mixed motive or social tie in a strict philosophical sense. 
 They would drive me from my ground by scholastic sub- 
 tleties and newfangled phrases ; am I to blame, then, if 
 I take them at their word, and try to foil them at their 
 own weapons ? Either stick to the unpretending jog-trot 
 notions on the subject, or if you are determined to refine 
 in analysing words and arguments, do not be angry if I 
 follow the example set me, or even go a little farther to 
 arrive at the truth. Shall we proceed on this under- 
 standing. 
 
 A. As you please. 
 
 B. We have got so far, then (if I mistake not, and if 
 there is not some flaw in the argument which I am 
 unable to detect), that the past and present (which alone 
 can appeal to our selfish faculties) are not the objects of 
 action, and that the future (which can alone be the 
 object of practical pursuit) has no particular claim or 
 hold upon self. All action, all passion, all morality and 
 self-interest, is prospective. 
 
 A. You have not made that point quite clear. What, 
 then, is meant by a present interest, by the gratification of 
 the present moment, as opposed to a future one ? 
 
 B. Nothing, in a strict sense ; or rather, in common 
 speech, you mean a near one, the interest of the next 
 
94 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 moment, the next hour, the next day, the next year, as it 
 happens. 
 
 A. What ! would you have me believe that I snatch my 
 hand out of the flame of a candle from a calculation of 
 future consequences? 
 
 D. {laughing.) A. had better not meddle with that 
 question. B. is in his element there. It is his old and 
 favourite illustration. 
 
 B. Do you not snatch your hand out of the fire to pro- 
 cure ease from pain ? 
 
 A. No doubt, I do. 
 
 B. And is not this case subsequent to the act, and the 
 act itself to the feeling of pain, which caused it ? 
 
 A. It may be so ; but the interval is so slight that we 
 are not sensible of it. 
 
 B. Nature is nicer in her distinctions than we. Thus 
 you could not lift the food to your mouth, but upon the 
 same principle. The viands are indeed tempting, but if it 
 were the sight or smell of these alone that attracted you, 
 you would remain satisfied with them. But you use means 
 to en(Js, neither of which exist till you employ or produce 
 them, and which would never exist if the understanding 
 which foresees them did not run on before the actual 
 objects and purvey to appetite. If you say it is habit, it 
 is partly so ; but that habit would never have been formed 
 were it not for the connection between cause and effect, 
 which always takes place in the order of time, or of what 
 Hume calls antecedents and consequents. 
 
 A. I confess I think this a mighty microscopic way of 
 looking at the subject. 
 
 B. Yet you object equally to more vague and sweeping 
 generalities. Let me, however, endeavour to draw the 
 knot a little tighter, as it has a considerable weight to 
 bear — no less, in my opinion, than the whole world of 
 moral sentiments. All voluntary action must relate to the 
 future : but the future can only exist or influence the mind 
 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 95 
 
 as an object of imagination and forethought ; therefore the 
 motive to voluntary action, to all that we seek or shun, 
 must be in all cases ideal and problematical. The thing 
 itself which is an object of pursuit can never co-exist with 
 the motives which make it an object of pursuit. No one 
 will say that the past can be an object either of prevention 
 or pursuit- It may be a subject of involuntary regrets, or 
 may give rise to the starts and flaws of passion ; but we 
 cannot set about seriously recalling or altering it. Neither 
 can that which at present exists, or is an object of sensa- 
 tion, be at the same time an object of action or of volition, 
 since if it is, no volition or exertion of mine can for the 
 instant make it to be other than it is. I can make it cease 
 to be, indeed, but this relates to the future, to the supposed 
 non-existence of the object, and not to its actual impression 
 on me. For a thing to be icilled, it must necessarily not 
 be. Over my past and present impressions my will has no 
 control : they are placed, according to the poet, beyond 
 the reach of fate, much more of human meaus. In order 
 that I may take an effectual and consistent interest in 
 anything, that it may be an object of hope or fear, of 
 desire or dread, it must be a thing still to come, a thing 
 still in doubt, depending on circumstances and the means 
 used to bring about or avert it. It is my will that deter- 
 mines its existence or the contrary (otherwise there would 
 be no use in troubling one's-self about it) ; it does not 
 itself lay its peremptory, inexorable mandates on my will. 
 For it is as yet (and must be in order to be the rational 
 object of a moment's deliberation) a non-entity, a possibility 
 merely, and it is plain that nothing can be the cause of 
 nothing. That which is not, cannot act, much less can it 
 act mechanically, physically, ail-powerfully. So far is it 
 from being true that a real and practical interest in any- 
 thing are convertible terms, that a practical interest can 
 never by any possible chance be a real one, that is, excited 
 by the presence of a real object or by mechanical sympathy. 
 
96 Self -love and Benevolence. 
 
 I cannot assuredly be induced by a present object to take 
 means to make it exist — it can be no more than present 
 to me — or if it is past, it is too late to think of recovering 
 the occasion or preventing it now. But the future, the 
 future is all our own; or rather it belongs equally to 
 others. The world of action, then, of business or pleasure, 
 of self-love or benevolence, is not made up of solid mate- 
 rials, moved by downright, solid springs ; it is essentially 
 a void, an unreal mockery, both in regard to ourselves 
 and others, except as it is filled up, animated, and set in 
 motion by human thoughts and purposes. The ingredients 
 of passion, action, and properly of interest are never posi- 
 tive, palpable matter s-of -fact, concrete existences, but 
 symbolical representations of events lodged in the bosom 
 of futurity, and teaching us, by timely anticipation and 
 watchful zeal, to build up the fabric of our own or others' 
 future weal. 
 
 A. Do we not sometimes plot their woe with at least 
 equal good- will ? 
 
 J5. Not much oftener than we are accessory to our own. 
 
 A. I must say that savours more to me of an antithesis 
 than of an answer. 
 
 B. For once, be it so. 
 
 A. But surely there is a difference between a real and 
 an imaginary interest ? A history is not a romance. 
 
 JB. Yes ; but in this sense the feelings and interests of 
 others are in the end as real, as such matters of fact as 
 mine or yours can be. The history of the world is not a 
 romance, though you and I have had only a small share in 
 it. You would turn everything into autobiography. The 
 interests of others are no more chimerical, visionary, fan- 
 tastic, than my own, being founded in truth, and both are 
 brought home to my bosom in the same way by force of 
 imagination and sympathy. 
 
 D. But in addition to all this sympathy that you make 
 such a rout about, it is I who am to feel a real, downright 
 
 
Self -love and Benevolence. 97 
 
 interest in my own future good, and I shall feel no sucb 
 interest in another person's. Does not this make a wide, 
 nay a total difference in the case ? Am I to have no more 
 affection for my own flesh and blood than for another's ? 
 
 B. This would indeed make an entire difference in the 
 case, if your interest in your own good were founded in 
 your affection for yourself, and not your affection for your- 
 self in your attachment to your own good. If you were 
 attached to your own good merely because it was yours, I 
 do not see why you should not be equally attached to your 
 own ill — both are equally yours ! Your own person or 
 that of others would, I take it, be alike indifferent to you, 
 but for the degree of sympathy you have with the feelings 
 of either. Take away the sense or apprehension of 
 pleasure or pain, and you would care no more about 
 yourself than you do about the hair of your head or the 
 paring of your nails, the parting with which gives you no 
 sensible uneasiness at the time or on after-reflection 
 
 D. But up to the present moment you allow that I have 
 a particular interest in my proper self. Where, then, am 
 I to stop, or how draw the line between my real and my 
 imaginary identity ? 
 
 B. The line is drawn for you by the nature of things. 
 Or if the difference between reality and imagination is so 
 small that you cannot perceive it, it only shows the 
 strength of the latter. Certain it is that we can no more 
 anticipate our future being than we can change places 
 with another individual, except in an ideal and figurative 
 sense. But it is just as impossible that I should have an 
 actual sensation of and interest in my future feelings as 
 that I should have an actual sensation of and interest in 
 what another feels at the present instant. An essential 
 and irreconcileable difference in our primary faculties 
 forbids it. The future, were it the next moment, were it 
 an object nearest and dearest to our hearts, is a dull blank, 
 opaque, impervious to sense as an object close to the eye 
 
 H 
 
98 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 of the blind, did not the ray of reason and reflection en- 
 lighten it. We can never say to its fleeting, painted 
 essence, " Come, let me clutch thee !" it is a thing of air, 
 a phantom that flies before us, and we follow it, and witfi 
 respect to all but our past and present sensations, which 
 are no longer anything to action, we totter on the brink of 
 nothing. That self which we project before us into it, 
 that we make our proxy or representative, and empower to 
 embody, and transmit back to us all our real, substantial 
 interests before they have had an existence, except in our 
 imaginations, is but a shadow of ourselves, a bundle of 
 habits, passions, and prejudices, a body that falls in pieces 
 at the touch of reason or the approach of inquiry. It is 
 true, we do build up such an imaginary self, and a pro- 
 portionable interest in it ; we clothe it with the associa- 
 tions of the past and present, we disguise it in the drapery 
 of language, we add to it the strength of passion and the 
 warmth of affection, till we at length come to class our 
 whole existence under one head, and fancy our future 
 history a solid, permanent, and actual continuation of our 
 immediate being; but all this only proves the force of 
 imagination and habit to build up such a structure on a 
 merely partial foundation, and does not alter the true 
 nature and distinction of things. On the same foundation 
 are built up nearly as high natural affection, friendship, 
 the love of country, of religion, &c. But of this presently. 
 What shows that the doctrine of self-interest, however 
 high it may rear its head, or however impregnable it may 
 seem to attack, is a mere contradiction, 
 
 " In terms a fallacy, in fact a fiction," 
 
 is this siugle consideration, that we never know what is to 
 happen to us beforehand — no, not even for a moment — and 
 that we cannot so much as tell whether we shall be alive 
 a year, a month, or a day hence. We have no presenti- 
 ment of what awaits us, making us feel the future in the 
 instant. Indeed such an insight into futurity would be 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 99 
 
 inconsistent with itself, or we must become mere passive 
 instruments in the hands of fate. A house may fall on 
 my head as I go from this, I may be crushed to pieces by 
 a carriage running over me, or I may receive a piece of 
 news that is death to my hopes, before another four-and- 
 twenty hours are passed over, and yet I feel nothing of 
 the blow that is thus to stagger and stun me. I laugh 
 and am well. I have no warning given me either of the 
 course or the consequence (in truth, if I had, I should, 
 if possible, avoid it). This continued self-interest that 
 watches over all my concerns alike, past, present, and 
 future, and concentrates them all in one powerful and 
 invariable principle of action, is useless here, leaves me 
 at a loss at my greatest need, is torpid, silent, dead, and I 
 have no more consciousness of what so nearly affects me, 
 and no more care about it (till I find out my danger by 
 other and natural means), than if no such thing were ever 
 to happen, or were to happen to the Man in the Moon. It 
 has been said that 
 
 " Coming events cast their shadows before ;" 
 but this beautiful line is not verified in the ordinary prose 
 of life. That it is not, is a staggering consideration for 
 your fine practical, instinctive, abstracted, comprehensive, 
 uniform principle of self-interest. Don't you think so, 
 D ? 
 
 _D. I shall not answer you. Am I to give up my exist- 
 ence for an idle sophism ? You heap riddle upon riddle ; 
 but I am mystery-proof. I still feel my personal identity 
 as I do the chair I sit on, though I am enveloped in a 
 cloud of smoke and words. Let me have your answer 
 to a plain question. — Suppose I were actually to see a 
 coach coming along, and I was in danger of being run 
 over, what I want to know, is, should I not try to save 
 myself sooner than any other person ? 
 
 B. No, you would first try to save a sister, if she were 
 with you. 
 
 LOfC 
 
100 Self -love and Benevolence. 
 
 A. Surely that would be a very curious instance of self, 
 though I do not deny it. 
 
 B. I do not think so. I believe there is hardly any 
 one who does not prefer some one to themselves. For 
 example, let us look into Waverley. 
 
 A. Ay, that is the way that you take your ideas of 
 philosophy, from novels and romances, as if they were 
 sound evidence. 
 
 B. If my conclusions are as true to nature as my pre- 
 mises, I shall be satisfied. Here is the passage I was 
 going to quote : " I was only ganging to say, my lord," 
 said Evan, in what he meant to be an insinuating manner, 
 " that if your excellent honour and the honourable court 
 would let Yich Ian Yohr go free just this once, and let 
 him gae back to France and not trouble King George's 
 government again, that any six o' the very best of his clan 
 will be willing to be justified in his stead ; and if you'll 
 just let me gae down to Glennaquoich, I'll fetch them up 
 to ye myself to head or hang, and you may begin with me 
 the very first man." 1 
 
 A. But such instances as this are the effect of habit and 
 strong prejudice. We can hardly argue from so barbarous 
 a state of society. 
 
 B. Excuse me there. I contend that our preference of 
 ourselves is just as much the effect of habit, and very fre- 
 quently a more unaccountable and unreasonable one than 
 any other. 
 
 A. I should like to hear how you can possibly make 
 that out. 
 
 B. If you will not condemn me before you hear what I 
 
 have to say, I will try. You allow that D , in the 
 
 case we have been talking of, would perhaps run a little 
 risk for you or me ; but if it were a perfect stranger, he 
 would get out of the way as fast as his legs would carry 
 him, and leave the stranger to shift for himself. 
 
 1 Waverley, vol. iii, p. 201. 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 101 
 
 A. Yes ; and does not that overturn your whole 
 theory ? 
 
 B. It would if my theory were as devoid of common 
 sense as you are pleased to suppose ; that is, if because I 
 deny an original and absolute distinction in nature (where 
 there is no such thing), it followed that I must deny that 
 circumstances, intimacy, habit, knowledge, or a variety of 
 incidental causes could have any influence on our affections 
 and actions. My inference is just the contrary. For 
 
 would you not say that D cared little about the 
 
 stranger, for this plain reason, that he knew nothing about 
 him? 
 
 A. No doubt. 
 
 B. And he would care rather more about you and me, 
 because he knows more about us ? 
 
 A. Why yes, it would seem so. 
 
 B. And he would care still more about a sister (accord- 
 ing to the same supposition), because he would be still 
 better acquainted with her, and had been more constantly 
 with her ? 
 
 A. I will not deny it. 
 
 B. And it is on the same principle (generally speaking) 
 that a man cares most of all about himself, because he 
 knows more about himself than about anybody else, that 
 he is more in the secret of his own most intimate thoughts 
 and feelings, and more in the habit of providing for his 
 own wants and wishes, which he can anticipate with 
 greater liveliness and certainty than those of others, from 
 being more nearly " made and moulded of things past.'' 
 The poetical fiction is rendered easier, and assisted by my 
 acquaintance with myself, just as it is by the ties of kindred 
 or habits of friendly intercourse. There is no farther 
 approach made to the doctrines of self-love ,and personal 
 identity. 
 
 D. E , here is B trying to persuade me I am 
 
 not myself. 
 
102 Self love and Benevolence. 
 
 E. Sometimes you are not. 
 
 D. But he says that I never am. Or is it only that I 
 am not to be so ? 
 
 B. Nay, I hope " thou art to continue, thou naughty 
 
 varlet "— 
 
 " Here and hereafter, if the last may be ?" 
 
 You have been yourself (nobody like you) for the last 
 forty years of your life : you would not prematurely stuff 
 the next twenty into the account, till you have had them 
 fairly out? 
 
 D. Not for the world, I have too great an affection for 
 them. 
 
 B. Yet I think you would have less if you did not 
 look forward to pass them among old books, old friends, 
 old haunts. If you were cut off from all these, you would 
 be less anxious about what was left of yourself. 
 
 _D. I would rather be the Wandering Jew than not be at 
 all. 
 
 B. Or you would not be the person I always took you 
 for. 
 
 D. Does not this willingness to be the Wandering Jew, 
 rather than nobody, seem to indicate that there is an 
 abstract attachment to self, to the bare idea of existence, 
 independently of circumstances or habit. 
 
 B. It must be a very loose and straggling one. You 
 mix up some of your old recollections and favourite notions 
 with your self-elect, and indulge them in your new charac- 
 ter, or you would trouble yourself very little about it. If 
 you do not come in in some shape or other, it is merely 
 saying that you would be sorry if the Wandering Jew were 
 to disappear from the earth, however strictly he may have 
 hitherto maintained his incognito. 
 
 D. There is something in that; and as well as I re- 
 member, there is a curious but exceedingly mystical illus- 
 tration of this point in an original Essay of yours which I 
 have read and spoken to you about. 
 

 8elf4ove and Benevolence. 103 
 
 B. I believe there is ; but A is tired of making 
 
 objections, and I of answering them to no purpose. 
 
 • D. I have the book in the closet, and if you like, we 
 will turn to the place. It is after that burst of enthusi- 
 astic recollection (the only one in the book) that Southey 
 said at the time was something between the manner of 
 Milton's prose- works and Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 JB. Ah ! I as little thought then that I should ever be 
 set down as a florid prose- writer, as that he would become 
 poet-laureate ! 
 
 J. L. here took the volume from his brother, and read 
 the following passage from it. 
 
 "I do not think I should illustrate the foregoing 
 reasoning so well by anything I could add on the subject, 
 as by relating the manner in which it first struck me. 
 There are moments in the life of a solitary thinker which 
 are to him what the evening of some great victory is to 
 the conqueror and hero — milder triumphs, long remem- 
 bered with truer and deeper delight. And though the 
 shouts of multitudes do not hail his success — though gay 
 trophies, though the sounds of music, the glittering of 
 armour, and the neighing of steeds do not mingle with his 
 joy, yet shall he not want monuments and witnesses of his 
 glory — the deep forest, the willowy brook, the gathering 
 clouds of winter, or the silent gloom of his own chamber, 
 'faithful remembrancers of his high endeavour, and his 
 glad success,' that, as time passes by him with unreturn- 
 ing wing, still awaken the consciousness of a spirit 
 patient, indefatigable in the search of truth, and the hope 
 of surviving in the thoughts and minds of other men. I 
 remember I had been reading a speech which Mirabaud 
 (the author of the System of Nature) has put into the 
 mouth of a supposed Atheist at the Last Judgment ; and 
 was afterwards led on by some means or other to consider 
 the question, whether it could properly be said to be an 
 
104 Self-love mid Benevolence, 
 
 act of virtue in any one to sacrifice his own final happiness 
 to that of any other person or number of persons, if it 
 were possible for the one ever to be made the price of the 
 other ? Suppose it were my own case — that it were in my 
 power to save twenty other persons by voluntarily consent- 
 ing to suffer for them : Why should I not do a generous 
 thing, and never trouble myself about what might be the 
 consequence to myself the Lord knows when ? 
 
 " The reason why a man should prefer his own future 
 welfare to that of others is, that he has a necessary, absolute 
 interest in the one, which he cannot have in the other — 
 and this, again, is a consequence of his being always the 
 same individual, of his continued identity with himself. 
 The difference, I thought, was this, that however insensible 
 I may be to my own interest at any future period, yet 
 when the time comes I shall feel differently about it. I 
 shall then judge of it from the actual impression of the 
 object, that is, truly and certainly ; and as I shall still be 
 conscious of my past feelings, and shall bitterly regret 
 my own folly and insensibility, I ought, as a rational 
 agent, to be determined now by what I shall then wish I 
 had done, when I shall feel the consequences of my actions 
 most deeply and sensibly. It is this continued conscious- 
 ness of my own feelings which gives me an immediate 
 interest in whatever relates to my future welfare, and 
 makes me at all times accountable to myself for my own 
 conduct. As, therefore, this consciousness will be renewed 
 in me after death, if I exist again at all — But stop — as I 
 must be conscious of my past feelings to be myself, and 
 as this conscious being will be myself, how if that con- 
 sciousness should be transferred to some other being? 
 How am I to know that I am not imposed upon by a false 
 claim of identity? But that is ridiculous, because you 
 will have no other self than that which arises from this 
 very consciousness. Why, then, this self may be multiplied 
 in as many different beings as the Deity may think propei 
 
Self-love and Benevolence. 105 
 
 to endue with the same consciousness ; which, if it can be 
 renewed at will in any one instance, may clearly be so in 
 a hundred others. Am I to regard all these as equally 
 myself ? Am I equally interested in the fate of all ? Or 
 if I must iix upon some one of them in particular as my 
 representative and other self, how am I to be determined 
 in my choice? Here, then, I saw an end put to my 
 speculations about absolute self-interest and personal 
 identity. I saw plainly that the consciousness of my own 
 feelings, which is made the foundation of my continued 
 interest in them, could not extend to what had never 
 been, and might never be ; that my identity with myself 
 must be confined to the connection between my past 
 and present being ; that with respect to my future feelings 
 or interests, they could have no communication with, or 
 influence over, my present feelings and interests, merely 
 because they were future ; that I shall be hereafter affected 
 by the recollection of my past feelings and action ; and 
 my remorse be equally heightened by reflecting on my 
 past folly and late-earned wisdom, whether I am really the 
 same being, or have only the same consciousness renewed 
 in me ; but that to suppose that this remorse can react in 
 the reverse order on my present feelings, or give me an 
 immediate interest in my future feelings, before they exist, 
 is an express contradiction in terms. It can only affect 
 me as an imaginary idea, or an idea of truth. But so may 
 the interests of others ; and the question proposed was, 
 whether I have not some real, necessary, absolute interest 
 in whatever relates to my future being, in consequence of 
 my immediate connection with myself— independently of the 
 general impression which all positive ideas have on my 
 mind. How, then, can this pretended unity of conscious- 
 ness which it only reflected from the past — which makes 
 me so little acquainted with the future that I cannot even 
 tell for a moment how long it will be continued, whether 
 it will be entirely interrupted by or renewed in me after 
 
106 Self-love and Benevolence. 
 
 death, and which might be multiplied in I don't know how 
 many different beings, and prolonged by complicated 
 sufferings, without my being any the wiser for it, — how, I 
 say, can a principle of this sort identify my present with 
 my future interests, and make me as much a participator 
 in what does not at all affect me as if it were actually im- 
 pressed on my senses ? It is plain, as this conscious being 
 may be decompounded, entirely destroyed, renewed again, 
 or multiplied in a great number of beings, and as, which- 
 ever of these takes place, it cannot produce the least 
 alteration in my present being — that what I am does not 
 depend on what I am to be, and that there is no communi- 
 cation between my future interests, and the motives by 
 which my present conduct must be governed. This can 
 no more be influenced by what may be my future feelings 
 with respect to it, than it will then be possible for me to 
 alter my past conduct by wishing that I had acted diffe- 
 rently. I cannot, therefore, have a principle of active 
 self-interest arising out of the immediate connection 
 between my present and future self, for no such connection 
 exists, or is possible. I am what I am in spite of the future. 
 My feelings, actions, and interests, must be determined by 
 causes already existing and acting, and are absolutely 
 independent of the future. Where there is not an inter- 
 community of feelings, there can be no identity of interests. 
 My personal interest in anything must refer either to the 
 interest excited by the actual impression of the object, 
 which cannot be felt before it exists, and can last no longer 
 than while the impression lasts ; or it may refer to the 
 particular manner in which I am mechanically affected 
 by the idea of my own impressions in the absence of the 
 object. I can, therefore, have no proper personal interest 
 in my future impressions, since neither my ideas of future 
 objects, nor my feelings with respect to them, can be 
 excited either directly or indirectly by themselves, or by 
 any ideas or feelings accompanying them, without a com- 
 
On Disagreeable People. 107 
 
 plete transposition of the order in which causes and effects 
 follow one another in nature. The only reason for my 
 preferring my future interest to that of others, must arise 
 from my anticipating it with greater warmth of present 
 imagination. It is this greater liveliness and force with 
 which I can enter into my future feelings, that in a manner 
 identifies them with my present being ; and this notion of 
 identity being once formed, the mind makes use of it to 
 strengthen its habitual propensity, by giving to personal 
 motives a reality and absolute truth which they can never 
 have. Hence it has been inferred that my real, substan- 
 tial interest in anything must be derived in some indirect 
 manner from the impression of the object itself, as if that 
 could have any sort of communication with my present 
 feelings, or excite any interest in my mind but by means 
 of the imagination, which is naturally affected in a certain 
 manner by the prospect of future good or evil." 1 
 
 J. L. 2 " This is the strangest tale that e'er I heard." 
 (7. L. " It is the strangest fellow, brother John !" 3 
 
 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are 
 disagreeable to others. I do not here mean to speak of 
 persons who offend intentionally, or are obnoxious to 
 dislike from some palpable defect of mind or body, 
 ugliness, pride, ill -humour, &c. ; but of those who are 
 disagreeable in spite of themselves, and, as it might 
 appear, with almost every qualification to recommend 
 
 1 Principles of Human Action, 2nd edit., p. 70. 
 
 2 So in the original, on a folio leaf in my possession. In the 
 edition of 1839, J. L. and C. L. are altered to /. D. and C. D. Lamb 
 and his brother are evidently the persons intended. But the quota- 
 tion is, of course, only borrowed from Henry VI. part 1. v, 4. — Ed. 
 
 3 In the reprint of Sketches and Essays, 1852, this article is 
 omitted.— Ed. 
 
108 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 them to others. This want of success is owing chiefly 
 to something in what is called their manner; and this 
 again has its foundation in a certain cross-grained and 
 unsociable state of feeling on their part, which influences 
 us, perhaps, without our distinctly adverting to it. The 
 mind is a finer instrument than we sometimes suppose it, 
 and is not only swayed by overt acts and tangible proofs, 
 but has an instinctive feeling of the air of truth. We 
 find many individuals in whose company we pass our 
 time, and have no particular fault to find with their 
 understandings or character, and yet we are never 
 thoroughly satisfied with them : the reason will turn out 
 to be, upon examination, that they are never thoroughly 
 satisfied with themselves, but uneasy and out of sorts all 
 the time ; and this makes us uneasy with them, without 
 our reflecting on, or being able to discover the cause. 
 
 Thus, for instance, we meet with persons who do us a 
 number of kindnesses, who show us every mark of respect 
 and good-will, who are friendly and serviceable — and yet 
 we do not feel grateful to them, after all. We reproach 
 ourselves with this as caprice or insensibility, and try to 
 get the better of it ; but there is something in their way 
 of doing things that prevents us from feeling cordial or 
 sincerely obliged to them. We think them very worthy 
 people, and would be glad of an opportunity to do them a 
 good turn if it were in our power ; but we cannot get 
 beyond this : the utmost we can do is to save appearances, 
 and not come to an open rupture with them. The truth 
 is, in all such cases, we do not sympathise (as we ought) 
 with them, because they do not sympathise (as they ought) 
 with us. They have done what they did from a sense of 
 duty in a cold dry manner, or from a meddlesome busy- 
 body humour ; or to show their superiority over us, or to 
 patronise our infirmity ; or they have dropped some hint 
 by the way, or blundered upon some topic they should 
 not, and have shown, by one means or other, that they 
 
On Disagreeable People. 109 
 
 were occupied with anything but the pleasure they were 
 affording us, or a delicate attention to our feelings. Such 
 persons may be styled friendly grievances. They are 
 commonly people of low spirits and disappointed views, 
 who see the discouraging side of human life, and, with the 
 best intentions in the world, contrive to make everything 
 they have to do with uncomfortable. They are alive to 
 your distress, and take pains to remove it ; but they have 
 no satisfaction in the gaiety and ease they have communi- 
 cated, and are on the look-out for some new occasion of 
 signalising their zeal ; nor are they backward to insinuate 
 that you will soon have need of their assistance, to guard 
 you against running into fresh difficulties, or to extricate 
 you from them. From large benevolence of soul and 
 " discourse of reason, looking before and after," they are 
 continually reminding you of something that has gone 
 wrong in time past, or that may do so in that which is to 
 come, and are surprised that their awkward hints, sly 
 inuendos, blunt questions, and solemn features do not 
 excite all the complacency and mutual good understanding 
 in you which it is intended that they should. When they 
 make themselves miserable on your account, it is hard 
 that you will not lend them your countenance and 
 support. This deplorable humour of theirs does not hit 
 any one else. They are useful, but not agreeable people ; 
 they may assist you in your affairs, but they depress and 
 tyrannise over your feelings. When they have made you 
 happy, they will not let you be so — have no enjoyment of 
 the good they have done — will on no account part with 
 their melancholy and desponding tone — and, by their 
 mawkish insensibility and doleful grimaces, throw a damp 
 over the triumph they are called upon to celebrate. 
 They would keep you in hot water, that they may help 
 you out of it. They will nurse you in a fit of sickness 
 (congenial sufferers!) — arbitrate a law- suit for you, and 
 embroil you deeper — procure you a loan of money ;— but 
 
110 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 all the while they are only delighted with rubbing the 
 sore place, and casting the colour of your mental or other 
 disorders. "The whole need not a physician;" and, 
 being once placed at ease and comfort, they have no 
 farther use for you as subjects for their singular bene- 
 ficence, and you are not sorry to be quit of their tiresome 
 interference. The old proverb, A friend in need is a 
 friend indeed, is not verified in them. The class of 
 persons here spoken of are the very reverse of summer- 
 friends, who court you in prosperity, flatter your vanity, 
 are the humble servants of your follies, never see or 
 allude to anything wrong, minister to your gaiety, smooth 
 over every difficulty, and, with the slightest approach of 
 misfortune or of anything unpleasant, take French 
 leave — 
 
 " As when, in prime of June, a burnisk'd fly, 
 Sprung from the meads, o'er which he sweeps along, 
 Cheer'd by the breathing bloom and vital sky, 
 Tunes up, amid these airy halls, his song, 
 Soothing at first the gay reposing throng ; 
 And oft he sips their bowl, or, nearly drown'd, 
 He thence recovering drives their beds among, 
 And scares their tender sleep with trump profound ; 
 Then out again he flies, to wing his mazy round/ ' l 
 
 However we may despise such triflers, yet we regret them 
 more than those well-meaning friends on whom a dull 
 melancholy vapour hangs, that drags them and every one 
 about them to the ground. 
 
 Again, there are those who might be very agreeable 
 people, if they had but spirit to be so ; but there is a 
 narrow, unaspiring, under-bred tone in all they say or do. 
 They have great sense and information — abound in a 
 knowledge of character — have a fund of anecdote — are 
 unexceptionable in manners and appearance — and yet we 
 cannot make up our minds to like them : we are not glad 
 to see them, nor sorry when they go away. Our fami- 
 
 1 Thomson's Castle of Indolence, Canto i, st. 64, edit. 1841. 
 
 
On Disagreeable People. Ill 
 
 liari ty with them, however great, wants the principle of 
 cement, which is a certain appearance of frank cordiality 
 and social enjoyment. They have no pleasure in the 
 subjects of their own thoughts, and therefore can commu- 
 nicate none to others. There is a dry, husky, grating 
 manner — a pettiness of detail — a tenaciousness of par- 
 ticulars, however trifling or unpleasant — a disposition to 
 cavil — an aversion to enlarged and liberal views of 
 things — in short, a hard, painful, unbending matter-of- 
 fadnsss, from which the spirit and effect are banished, and 
 the letter only is attended to, which makes it impossible 
 to sympathise with their discourse. To make conversa- 
 tion interesting or agreeable, there is required either the 
 habitual tone of good company, which gives a favourable 
 colouring to everything — or the warmth and enthusiasm 
 of genius, which, though it may occasionally offend or be 
 thrown off its guard, makes amends by its rapturous 
 flights, and flings a glancing light upon all things. The 
 literal and dogged style of conversation resembles that of 
 a French picture, or its mechanical fidelity is like 
 evidence given in a court of justice, or a police report. 
 
 From the literal to the plain-spoken, the transition is 
 easy. The most efficient weapon of offence is truth. 
 Those who deal in dry and repulsive matters- of-fact, tire 
 out their friends; those who blurt out hard and home 
 truths, make themselves mortal enemies wherever they 
 come. There are your blunt, honest creatures, who omit 
 no opportunity of letting you know their minds, and are 
 sure to tell you ail the ill, and conceal all the good they 
 hear of you. They would not flatter you for the world, 
 and to caution you against the malice of others, they 
 think the province of a friend. This is not candour, but 
 impudence; and yet they think it odd you are not 
 charmed with their unreserved communicativeness of 
 disposition. Gossips and tale-beaiers, on the contrary, 
 who supply the tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood, flatter 
 
1 1 2 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 you to your face, and laugh at you behind your back, are 
 welcome and agreeable guests in all companies. Though 
 you know it will be your turn next, yet for the sake of 
 the immediate gratification, you are contented to pay your 
 share of the public tax upon character, and are better 
 pleased with the falsehoods that never reach your ears, 
 than with the truths that others (less complaisant and 
 more sincere) utter to your face — so short-sighted and 
 willing to be imposed upon is our self-love ! There is a 
 man, who has the air of not being convinced without an 
 argument : you avoid him as if he were a lion in your 
 path. There is another, who asks you fifty questions as 
 to the commonest things you advance : you would sooner 
 pardon a fellow who held a pistol to your breast and 
 demanded your money. No one regards a turnpike- 
 keeper, or a custom-house officer, with a friendly eye : he 
 who stops you in an excursion of fancy, or ransacks the 
 articles of your belief obstinately and churlishly, to 
 distinguish the spurious from the genuine, is still more 
 your foe. These inquisitors and cross-examiners upon 
 system make ten enemies for every controversy in which 
 they engage. The world dread nothing so much as being 
 convinced of their errors. In doing them this piece of 
 service, you make war equally on their prejudices, their 
 interests, their pride, and indolence. You not only set up 
 for a superiority of understanding over them, which they 
 hate, but you deprive them of their ordinary grounds of 
 action, their topics of discourse, of their confidence in 
 themselves, and those to whom they have been accustomed 
 to look up for instruction and advice. It is making 
 children of them. You unhinge all their established 
 opinions and trains of thought ; and after leaving them in 
 this listless, vacant, unsettled state — dissatisfied with their 
 own notions and shocked at yours — you expect them to 
 court and be delighted with your company, because, 
 forsooth, you have only expressed your sincere and con- 
 
On Disagreeable People. 113 
 
 scientious convictions. Mankind are not deceived by 
 professions, unless they choose. They think that this 
 pill of true doctrine, however it may be gilded over, is 
 fall of gall and bitterness to them ; and, again, it is a 
 maxim of which the vulgar are firmly persuaded, that 
 plain-speaking (as it is called), nine parts in ten, is spleen 
 and self-opinion ; and the other part, perhaps, honesty. 
 Those who will not abate an inch in argument, and are 
 always seeking to recover the wind of you, are, in the eye 
 of the world, disagreeable, unconscionable people, who 
 ought to be sent to Coventry, or left to wrangle by them- 
 selves. No persons, however, are more averse to con- 
 tradiction than these same dogmatists. What shows our 
 susceptibility on this point is, that there is no flattery so 
 adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent. Any one, 
 however mean his capacity or ill- qualified to judge, who 
 gives way to all our sentiments, and never seems to think 
 but as we do, is indeed an alter idem — another self; and 
 we admit him without scruple into our entire confidence, 
 " yea, into our heart of hearts." 
 
 It is the same in books. Those which, under the 
 disguise of plain-speaking, vent paradoxes, and set their 
 faces against the " common-sense " of mankind, are neither 
 " the volumes 
 
 " that enrich the shops, 
 
 That jfass with approbation through the land ;" 
 
 nor, I fear, can it be added — 
 
 " That bring their authors an immoital fame." 
 
 They excite a clamour and opposition at first, and are in 
 general soon consigned to oblivion. Even if the opinions 
 are in the end adopted, the authors gain little by it, and 
 their names remain in their original obloquy ; for the 
 public will own no obligations to such ungracious bene- 
 factors. In like manner, there are many books written 
 in a very delightful vein, though with little in them, and 
 
 I 
 
114 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 that are accordingly popular. Their principle is to 
 please, and not to offend ; and they succeed in both 
 objects. We are contented with the deference shown to 
 our feelings for the time, and grant a truce both to wit 
 and wisdom. The " courteous reader " and the good- 
 natured author are well matched in this instance, and 
 find their account in mutual tenderness and forbearance 
 to each other's infirmities. I am not sure that Walton's 
 Angler is not a book of this last description — 
 
 " That dallies with the innocence of thought, 
 Like the old time." 
 
 Hobbes and Mandeville are in the opposite extreme, and 
 have met with a correspondent fate. The Taller and 
 Spectator are in the golden mean, carry instruction as far 
 as it can go without shocking, and give the most exquisite 
 pleasure without one particle of pain. " Desire to please, 
 and you will infallibly please" is a maxim equally ap- 
 plicable to the study or the drawing-room. Thus, also, 
 we see actors of very small pretensions, and who have 
 scarce any other merit than that of being on good terms 
 with themselves, and in high good humour with their 
 parts (though they hardly understand a word of them), 
 who are universal favourites with the audience. Others, 
 who are masters of their art, and in whom no slip or flaw 
 can be detected, you have no pleasure in seeing, from 
 something dry, repulsive, and unconciliating in their 
 manner ; and you almost hate the very mention of their 
 .names, as an unavailing appeal to your candid decision 
 in their favour, and as taxing you with injustice for 
 refusing it. 
 
 We may observe persons who seem to take a peculiar 
 delight in the disagreeable. They catch all sorts of 
 uncouth tones and gestures, the manners and dialect of 
 clowns and hoydens, and aim at vulgarity as desperately 
 as others ape gentility. [This is what is often understood 
 by a love of low life.] They say the most unwarrantable 
 
 
On Disagreeable People. 115 
 
 things, without meaning or feeling what they say. What 
 startles or shocks other people, is to them a sport — an 
 amusing excitement — a fillip to their constitutions ; and 
 from the bluntness of their perceptions, and a certain 
 wilfulness of spirit, not being able to enter into the refined 
 and agreeable, they make a merit of despising everything 
 of the kind. Masculine women, for example, are those 
 who, not being distinguished by the charms and delicacy 
 of the sex, affect a superiority over it by throwing aside 
 all decorum. We also find another class, who continually 
 do and say what they ought not, and what they do not 
 intend, and who are governed almost entirely by an 
 instinct of absurdity. Owing to a perversity of imagi- 
 nation or irritability of nerve, the idea that a thing is 
 improper acts as a provocation to it : the fear of com- 
 mitting a blunder is so strong, that in their agitation 
 they bolt out whatever is uppermost in their minds, before 
 they are aware of the consequence. The dread of some- 
 thing wrong haunts and rivets their attention to it ; and 
 an uneasy, morbid apprehensiveness of temper takes away 
 their self-possession, and hurries them into the very 
 mistakes they are most anxious to avoid. 
 
 If we look about us, and ask who are the agreeable 
 and disagreeable people in the world, we shall see that 
 it does not so much depend on their virtues or vices — 
 their understanding or stupidity — as on the degree of 
 pleasure or pain they seem to feel in ordinary social 
 intercourse. What signify all the good qualities any one 
 possesses, if he is none the better for them himself ? If 
 the cause is so delightful, the effect ought to be so too. 
 We enjoy a friend's society only in proportion as he is 
 satisfied with ours. Even wit, however it may startle, 
 is only agreeable as it is sheathed in good-humour. 
 There are a kind of intellectual stammerers, who are de- 
 livered of their good things with pain and effort ; and 
 consequently what costs them such evident uneasiness 
 
316 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 does not impart unmixed delight to the bystanders. 
 There are those, on the contrary, whose sallies cost them 
 nothing — who abound in a flow of pleasantry and good- 
 humour ; and who float down the stream with them care- 
 lessly and triumphantly — ■ 
 
 " "Wit at the helm, and Pleasure at the prow." 
 
 Perhaps it may be said of English wit in general, that it 
 top much resembles pointed lead : after all, there is some- 
 thing heavy and dull in it ! The race of small wits are 
 not the least agreeable people in the world. They have 
 their little joke to themselves, enjoy it, and do not set up 
 any preposterous pretensions to thwart the current of our 
 self-love. Toad-eating is accounted a thriving profession ; 
 and a butt, according to the Spectator, is a highly useful 
 member of society— as one who takes whatever is said of 
 him in good part, and as necessary to conduct off the 
 spleen and superfluous petulance of the company. Op- 
 posed to these are the swaggering bullies — the licensed 
 wits — the free-thinkers — the loud talkers, who, in the 
 jockey phrase, have lost tlieir mouths, and cannot be reined 
 in by any regard to decency or common-sense. The more 
 obnoxious the subject, the more are they charmed with 
 it, converting their want of feeling into a proof of 
 superiority to vulgar prejudice and squeamish affectation. 
 But there is an unseemly exposure, of the mind, as well as 
 of the body. There are some objects that shock the 
 sense, and cannot with propriety be mentioned : there are 
 naked truths that offend the mind, and ought to be kept 
 out of sight as much as possible. For human nature 
 cannot bear to be too hardly pressed upon. One of these 
 cynical truisms, when brought forward to the world, may 
 be forgiven as a slip of the pen : a succession of them, 
 denoting a deliberate purpose and malice prepense, must 
 ruin any writer. Lord Byron had got into an irregular 
 course of these a little before his death — seemed desirous, 
 
On Disagreeable People. 117 
 
 in imitation of Mr. Shelley, to run the gauntlet of public 
 obloquy — and, at the same time, wishing to screen 
 himself from the censure he defied, dedicated his Gain 
 to 'Sir Walter Scott — a pretty godfather to such a 
 bantling ! 
 
 Some persons are of so teazing and fidgetty a turn of 
 mind, that they do not give you a moment's rest. Every- 
 thing goes wrong with them. They complain of a head- 
 ache or the weather. They take up a book, and lay it 
 down again — venture an opinion, and retract it before 
 they have half done — offer to serve you, and prevent some 
 one else from doing it. If you dine with them at a 
 tavern, in order to be more at your ease, the fish is too 
 little done — the sauce is not the right one ; they ask for 
 a sort of wine which they think is not to be had, or if 
 it is 5 after some trouble, procured, do not touch ifc ; they 
 give the waiter fifty contradictory orders, and are restless 
 and sit on thorns the whole of dinner-time. All this is 
 owing to a want of robust health, and of a strong spirit 
 of enjoyment: it is a fastidious habit of mind, produced 
 by a valetudinary habit of body : they are out of sorts 
 with everything, and of course their ill-humour and 
 captiousness communicates itself to you, who are as little 
 delighted with them as they are with other things. 
 Another sort of people, equally objectionable with this 
 helpless class, who are disconcerted by a shower of rain 
 or stopped by an insect's wing, are those who, in the 
 opposite spirit, will have everything their own way, and 
 carry all before them— who cannot brook the slightest 
 shadow of opposition — who are always in the heat of 
 an argument — who knit their brows and clench their 
 teeth in some speculative discussion, as if they were 
 engaged in a personal quarrel — and who, though suc- 
 cessful over almost every competitor, seem still to resent 
 the very offer of resistance to their supposed authority, 
 and are as angry as if they had sustained some pre 
 
118 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 meditated injury. There is an impatience of temper 
 and an intolerance of opinion in this that conciliates 
 neither our affection nor esteem. To such persons 
 nothing appears of any moment but the indulgence of a 
 domineering intellectual superiority to the disregard and 
 discomfiture of their own and every body else's comfort. 
 Mounted on an abstract proposition, they trample on 
 every courtesy and decency of behaviour ; and though, 
 perhaps, they do not intend the gross personalities they 
 are guilty of, yet they cannot be acquitted of a want of 
 due consideration for others, and of an intolerable egotism 
 in the support of truth and justice. You may hear one 
 of these Quixotic declaimers pleading the cause of hu- 
 manity in a voice of thunder, or expatiating on the beauty 
 of a Gluido with features distorted with rage and scorn. 
 This is not a very amiable or edifying spectacle, 
 
 There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are 
 they ? Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want 
 of understanding or good-nature, of entertaining or useful 
 qualities, that you complain of: on the contrary, they 
 have probably many points of attraction ; but they have 
 one that neutralises all these — they care nothing about 
 you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you 
 think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach ; 
 and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they 
 can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, 
 nor indifference, nor absence of mind ; but they are intent 
 solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of 
 the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in 
 society as in a solitude ; and, however their brain works, 
 their pulse beats neither faster nor slower for the common 
 accidents of life. There is, therefore, something cold 
 and repulsive in the air that is about them — like that of 
 marble. In a word, they are modern philosophers; and 
 the modern philosopher is what the pedant was of old — 
 a being who lives in a world of his own, and has no 
 
On Disagreeable People. 119 
 
 correspondence with this. It is not that such persons 
 have not done you services — you acknowledge it ; it is 
 not that they have said severe things of you — you submit 
 to it as a necessary evil : but it is the cool manner in 
 which the whole is done that annoys you — the speculating 
 upon you, as if you were nobody — the regarding you, 
 with a view to an experiment in cor pore vili — the principle 
 of dissection — the determination to spare no blemishes — 
 to cut you down to your real standard ; — in short, the 
 utter absence of the partiality of friendship, the blind 
 enthusiasm of affection, or the delicacy of common 
 decency, that whether they ' 4 hew you as a carcase fit 
 for hounds, or carve you as a dish fit for the gods," the 
 operation on your feelings and your sense of obligation 
 is just the same ; and, whether they are demons or angels 
 in themselves, you wish them equally at the devil ! 
 
 Other persons of worth and sense give way to mere 
 violence of temperament (with which the understanding 
 has nothing to do) — are burnt up with a perpetual fury 
 — repel and throw you to a distance by their restless, 
 whirling motion — so that you dare not go near them, or 
 feel as uneasy in their company as if you stood on the 
 edge of a volcano. They have their tempora mollia fandi ; 
 but then what a stir may you not expect the next moment ! 
 Nothing is less inviting or less comfortable than this state 
 of uncertainty and apprehension. Then they are those 
 who never approach you without the most alarming advice 
 or information, telling you that you are in a dying way, 
 or that your affairs are on the point of ruin, by way of 
 disburthening their consciences ; and others, who give you 
 to understand much the same thing as a good joke, out 
 of sheer impertinence, constitutional vivacity, and want 
 of something to say. All these, it must be confessed, are 
 disagreeable people ; and you repay their over-anxiety or 
 total forgetfulness of you, by a determination to cut them 
 as speedily as possible. We meet with instances of persons 
 
120 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 who overpower you by a sort of boisterous mirth, and rude 
 animal spirits, with whose ordinary state of excitement it 
 is as impossible to keep up as with that of any one really 
 intoxicated ; and with others who seem scarce alive — who 
 take no pleasure or interest in anything — who are born to 
 exemplify the maxim, 
 
 " Not to admire is all the art I know 
 To make men happy, or to keep them so," — 
 
 and whose mawkish insensibility or sullen scorn are 
 equally annoying. In general, all people brought up in 
 remote country places, where life is crude and harsh — all 
 sectaries — all partisans of a losing cause, are discontented 
 and disagreeable. Commend me above all to the West- 
 minster School of Eeform, whose blood runs as cold in 
 their veins as the torpedo's, and whose touch jars like it. 
 Catholics are, upon the whole, more amiable than 
 Protestants — foreigners than English people. Among 
 ourselves, the Scotch, as a nation, are particulary disagree- 
 able. They hate every appearance of comfort themselves, 
 and refuse it to others. Their climate, their religion, 
 and their habits are equally averse to pleasure. Their 
 manners are either distinguished by a fawning sycophancy 
 (to gain their own ends, and conceal their natural defects), 
 that makes one sick ; or by a morose, unbending callous- 
 ness, that makes one shudder. I had forgot to mention 
 two other descriptions of persons who fall under the scope 
 of this essay : — those who take up a subject, and run on 
 with it interminably, without knowing whether their 
 hearers care one word about it, or in the least minding 
 what reception their oratory meets with — these are 
 pretty generally voted bores (mostly German ones) ; — 
 and others, who may be designated as practical paradox- 
 mongers — who discard the " milk of human kindness," 
 and an attention to common observances, from all their 
 actions, as effeminate and puling — who wear an out-of-the 
 
On Disagreeable People. 121 
 
 way hat as a mark of superior understanding, and carry 
 home a handkerchief full of mushrooms in the top of it 
 as an original discovery — who give you craw-fish for 
 supper instead of lobsters ; seek their company in 
 a garret, and over a gin-bottle, to avoid the imputation of 
 affecting genteel society ; and discard their friends after a 
 term of years, and warn others against them, as being 
 honest fellows, which is thought a vulgar prejudice. This 
 is carrying the harsh and repulsive even beyond the 
 disagreeable — to the hateful. Such persons are generally 
 people of commonplace understandings, obtuse feelings, 
 and inordinate vanity. They are formidable if they get 
 you in their power— otherwise, they are only to be laughed 
 at. 
 
 There are a vast number who are disagreeable from 
 meanness of spirit, downright insolence, from slovenliness 
 of dress or disgusting tricks, from folly or ignorance ; but 
 these causes are positive moral or physical defects, and I 
 only meant to speak of that repulsiveness of manners which 
 arises from want of tact and sympathy with others. So 
 far of friendship : a word, if I durst, of love. Gallantry 
 to women (the sure road to their favour) is nothing but 
 the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and 
 wishes — a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence 
 in yourself, as being able to contribute towards it. The 
 slightest indifference with regard to them, or distrust of 
 yourself, are equally fatal. The amiable is the voluptuous 
 in looks, manner, or words. No face that exhibits this 
 kind of expression — whether lively or serious, obvious or 
 suppressed, will be thought ugly — no address, awkward 
 — no lover who approaches every women he meets as his 
 mistress, will be unsuccessful. Diffidence and awkward- 
 ness are the two antidotes to love. 
 
 To please universally, we must be pleased with our- 
 selves and others. There should be a tinge of the coxcomb, 
 an oil of self-complacency, an anticipation of success — 
 
122 On Disagreeable People. 
 
 there should be no gloom, no moroseness, no shyness — 
 in short, there should be very little of the Englishman, 
 and a good deal of the Frenchman. But though, I believe, 
 this is the receipt, we are none the nearer making use of 
 it. It is impossible for those who are naturally disagree- 
 able ever to become otherwise. This is some consolation, 
 as it may save a world of useless pains and anxiety. 
 " Desire to please, and you will infallibly please" is a true 
 maxim ; but it does not follow that it is in the power of 
 all to practise it. A vain man, who thinks he is 
 endeavouring to please, is only endeavouring to shine, 
 and is still farther from the mark. An irritable man, 
 who puts a check upon himself, only grows dull, and 
 loses spirit to be anything. Good temper and a happy 
 turn of mind (which are the indispensable requisites) can 
 no more be commanded than good health or good looks ; 
 and though the plain and sickly need not distort their 
 features, and may abstain from excess, this is all they can 
 do. The utmost a disagreeable person can do is to hope, 
 by care and study, to become less disagreeable than he is, 
 and to pass unnoticed in society. With this negative 
 character he should be contented, and may build his fame 
 and happiness on other things. 
 
 I will conclude with a description of men who neither 
 please nor aspire to please anybody, and who can come 
 in nowhere so properly as at the fag-end of an essay : — I 
 mean that class of discontented but amusing persons, who 
 are infatuated with their own ill success, and reduced to 
 despair by a lucky turn in their favour. While all goes 
 well, they are like fish out of water. They have no 
 reliance on or sympathy with their good fortune, and 
 look upon it as a momentary delusion. Let a doubt be 
 thrown on the question, and they begin to be full of lively 
 apprehensions again : let all their hopes vanish, and they 
 feel themselves on firm ground once more. From want of 
 spirit, or from habit, their imaginations cannot rise above 
 
On Knoidedge of the World. 123 
 
 the low ground of humility — cannot reflect the gay, flaunt- 
 ing tints of the fancy — flag and droop into despondency 
 — and can neither indulge the expectation, nor employ the 
 means of success. Even when it is within their reach, 
 they dare not lay hands upon it ; and shrink from unlooked 
 for bursts of prosperity, as something of which they are 
 both ashamed and unworthy. The class of croakers 
 here spoken of are less delighted with other people's 
 misfortunes than with their own. Their neighbours may 
 have some pretensions — they have none. Querulous com- 
 plaints and anticipations of discomfort are the food on 
 which they live ; and they at last acquire a passion for 
 that which is the favourite theme of their thoughts, and 
 can no more do without it than without the pinch of snuff 
 with which they season their conversation, and enliven 
 the pauses of their daily prognostics. 
 
 On Knoidedge of the World. 
 
 "Who shall go about to cozen fortune, or wear the badge of 
 honour without the stamp of merit ?" 
 
 A knowledge of the world is generally supposed to be 
 the fruit of experience and observation, or of a various, 
 practical acquaintance with men and things. On the 
 contrary, it appears to me to be a kind of instinct, arising 
 out of a peculiar construction and turn of mind. Some 
 persons display this knowledge at their first outset in 
 life : others, with all their opportunities and dear-bought 
 lessons, never acquire it to the end of their career. In 
 fact, a knowledge of the world only means a knowledge 
 of our own interest ; it is nothing but a species of selfish- 
 ness or ramification of the law of self-preservation. There 
 may be said to be two classes of people in the world, 
 which remain for ever distinct : those who consider things 
 in the abstract, or with a reference to truth, and those 
 who consider them only with a reference to themselves, or 
 
124 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 to the main chance. The first, whatever may be their 
 acquirements or discoveries, wander through life in a sort 
 of absence of mind, or comparative state of sleep-walking : 
 the last, though their attention is riveted to a single 
 point of view, are always on the alert, know perfectly 
 well what they are about, and calculate with the greatest 
 nicety the effect which their words or actions will have 
 on others. They do not trouble themselves about the 
 arguments on any subject ; they know the opinion enter- 
 tained on it, and that is enough for them to regulate 
 themselves by ; the rest they regard as quite Utopian, and 
 foreign to the purpose. " Subtle as the fox for prey, like 
 warlike as the wolf for what they eat," they leave mere 
 speculative points to those who, from some unaccountable 
 bias or caprice, take an interest in what does not personally 
 concern them, and make good the old saying, that " the 
 children of the world are wiser in their generation than 
 the children of the light !" 
 
 The man of the world is to the man of science very 
 much what the chamelion is to the armadillo : the one 
 takes its hue from every surrounding object, and is un- 
 distinguishable from them ; the other is shut up in a 
 formal crust of knowledge, and clad in an armour of 
 proof, from which the shaft of ridicule or the edge of 
 disappointment falls equally pointless. It is no un- 
 common case to see a person come into a room, which ho 
 enters awkwardly enough, and has nothing in his dress or 
 appearance to recommend him, but after the first em- 
 barrassments are over, sits down, takes his share in the 
 conversation, in which he acquits himself creditably, 
 shows sense, reading, and shrewdness, expresses himself 
 with point, articulates distinctly, when he blunders on 
 some topic which he might see is disagreeable, but per- 
 sists in it the more as he finds others shrink from it; 
 mentions a book of which you have not heard, and 
 perhaps do not wish to hear, and he therefore thinks 
 
On Knowledge of the World. 125 
 
 himself bound to favour you with the contents ; gets into 
 an argument with one, proses on with another on a 
 subject in which his hearer has no interest; and when he 
 
 goes away, people remark, " What a pity that Mr. 
 
 has not more knowledge of the world, and has so little 
 skill in adapting himself to the tone and manners of 
 society!" But will time and habit cure him of this 
 defect? Never. He wants a certain tact, he has not a 
 voluntary power over his ideas, but is like a person 
 reading out of a book, or who can only pour out the 
 budget of knowledge with which his brain is crammed in 
 all places and companies alike. If you attempt to divert 
 his attention from the general subject to the persons he is 
 addressing, you puzzle and stop him quite. He is a mere 
 conversing automaton. He has not the sense of personality 
 — the faculty of perceiving the effect (as well as the 
 grounds) of his opinions : and how then should failure 
 or mortification give ii him? It must be a painful re- 
 flection, and he must be glad to turn from it ; or. after 
 a few reluctant and unsuccessful efforts to correct his 
 errors, he will try to forget or harden himself in them. 
 Finding that he makes so slow and imperceptible a 
 progress in amending his faults, he will take his swing 
 in the opposite direction, will triumph and revel in his 
 supposed excellences, will launch out into the wide, 
 untrammelled field of abstract speculation, and silence 
 envious sneers and petty cavils by force of argument and 
 dint of importunity. You will find him the same cha- 
 racter at sixty that he was at thirty ; or, should time 
 soften down some of his asj)erities, and tire him of his 
 absurdities as he has tired others, nothing will transform 
 him into a man of the world, and he will die in a garret, 
 or a paltry second-floor, from not having been able to 
 acquire the art " to see himself as others see him," or to 
 dress his opinions, looks, and actions in the smiles and 
 approbation of the world. On the other hand, take a 
 
126 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 youth from the same town (perhaps a school-fellow, and 
 the dunce of the neighbourhood) ; he has " no figures, nor 
 no fantasies which busy thought draws in the brain of 
 men," no preconceived notions by which he must square 
 his conduct or his conversation, no dogma to maintain in 
 the teeth of opposition, no Shibboleth to which he must 
 force others to subscribe ; the progress of science or the 
 good of his fellow-creatures are things about which he 
 has not the remotest conception, or the smallest particle 
 of anxiety — 
 
 u His soul proud science never taught to stray 
 Far as the solar walk, or milky way ;" 
 
 all that he sees or attends to is the immediate path before 
 him, or what can encourage or lend him a helping hand 
 through it ; his mind is a complete blank, on which the 
 world may write its maxims and customs in what cha- 
 racters it pleases ; he has only to study its humours, 
 flatter its prejudices, and take advantage of its foibles ; 
 while walking the streets he is not taken up with solving 
 an abstruse problem, but with considering his own ap- 
 pearance and that of others ; instead of contradicting a 
 patron, assents to all he hears ; and in every proposition 
 that comes before him asks himself only what he can get 
 by it, and whether it will make him friends or enemies : 
 such a one is said to possess great penetration and know- 
 ledge of the world, understands his place in society, gets 
 on in it, rises from the counter to the counting-house, 
 from the dependant to be a partner, amasses a fortune, 
 gains in size and respectability as his affairs prosper, has 
 his town and country house, and ends with buying up 
 half the estates in his native county ! 
 
 The great secret of a knowledge of the world, then, 
 consists in a subserviency to the will of others, and the 
 primary motive to this attention is a mechanical and 
 watchful perception of our own interest. It is not an art 
 that requires a long course of study, the difficulty is in 
 
On Knowledge of the World. 127 
 
 putting one's-self apprentice to it. It does not surely 
 imply any very laborious or profound inquiry into the 
 distinctions of truth or falsehood to be able to assent to 
 whatever one hears ; nor any great refinement of moral 
 feeling to approve of whatever has custom, power, or 
 interest on its side. The only question is, " Who is 
 willing to do so?" — and the answer is, those who have 
 no other faculties or pretensions, either to stand in the 
 way of, or to assist their progress through life. Those 
 are slow to wear the livery of the world who have any 
 independent resources of their own. It is not that the 
 philosopher, or the man of genius, does not see and know 
 all this, that he is not constantly and forcibly reminded 
 of it by his own failure or the success of others, but he 
 cannot stoop to practise it. He has a different scale of 
 excellence and mould of ambition, which have nothing in 
 common with current maxims and time-serving calcula- 
 tions. He is a moral and intellectual egotist, not a mere 
 worldly-minded one. In youth, he has sanguine hopes 
 and brilliant dreams, which he cannot sacrifice for sordid 
 realities — as he advances farther in life, habit and pride 
 forbid his turning back. He cannot bring himself to 
 give up his best-grounded convictions to a blockhead, or 
 his conscientious principles to a knave, though he might 
 make his fortune by so doing. The rule holds good here, 
 as well as in another sense — " What shall it profit a man 
 if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?" If 
 his convictions and principles had been less strong, they 
 would have yielded long ago to the suggestions of his 
 interest, and he would have relapsed into the man of the 
 world, or rather he would never have had the temptation 
 or capacity to be anything else. One thing that keeps 
 men honest, as well as that confirms them knaves, is their 
 incapacity to do any better for themselves than nature 
 has done for them. One person can with difficulty speak 
 the truth, as another lies with a very ill grace. After 
 
128 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 repeated awkward attempts to change characters, they 
 each very properly fall back into their old jog-trot path, 
 as best suited to their genius and habits. 
 
 There are individuals who make themselves and every 
 one else uncomfortable by trying to be agreeable, and 
 who are only to be endured in their natural characters of 
 blunt, plain-spoken people. Many a man would have 
 turned rogue if he had known how. Non ex qiwtibet 
 ligno fit Mercurius. The modest man cannot be impudent 
 if he w r ould. The man of sense cannot play the fool to 
 advantage. It is not the mere resolution to act a part 
 that will enable us to do it, without a natural genius and 
 fitness for it. Some men are born to be valets, as others 
 are to be courtiers. There is the climbing genus in man 
 as well as in plants. It is sometimes made a wonder how 
 men of " no mark or likelihood " frequently rise to court- 
 preferment, and make their way against all competition. 
 That is the very reason. They present no tangible point ; 
 they offend no feeling of self-importance. They are a 
 perfect unresisting medium of patronage and favour. 
 They aspire through servility ; they repose in insigni- 
 ficance. A man of talent or pretension in the same 
 circumstances would be kicked out in a week. A look 
 that implied a doubt, a hint that suggested a difference of 
 opinion, would be fatal. It is of no use, in parleying 
 with absolute power, to dissemble, to suppress : there 
 must be no feelings or opinions to dissemble or suppress. 
 The artifice of the dependant is not a match for the 
 jealousy of the patron : " The soul must be subdued to 
 the very quality of its lord." Where all is annihilated in 
 the presence of the Sovereign, is it astonishing that 
 nothings should succeed? Ciphers are as necessary in 
 courts as eunuchs in seraglios. 
 
 I do not think Mr. Cobbett would succeed in an in- 
 terview with the Prince [Eegent]. Bub Doddington said, 
 " He would not justify before his Sovereign, even where 
 
On Knowledge of the World. 129 
 
 his own character was at stake. I am afraid we could 
 hardly reckon upon the same forbearance in Mr. Cobbett 
 where his country's welfare was at stake, and where he 
 had an opportunity of vindicating it. He might have 
 a great deal of reason on his side ; but he might forget, 
 or seem to forget, that as the King is above the law, 
 he is also above reason. Eeason is but a suppliant at 
 the foot of thrones, and waits for their approval or rebuke. 
 Solus populi suprema lex — may be a truism anywhere else. 
 If reason dares to approach them at all, it must be in 
 the shape of deference and humility, not of headstrong 
 importunity and self-will. Instead of breathless awe, of 
 mild intreaty, of humble remonstrance, it is Mr. Cobbett 
 who, upon very slight encouragement, would give the 
 law, and the Monarch who must kiss the rod. The 
 reformer would be too full of his own opinion to allow an 
 option even to Majesty, and the affair would have the 
 same ending as that of the old ballad — 
 
 " Then the Queen, overhearing what Betty did say, 
 Would send Mr. Roper to take her away." 
 
 As I have brought Mr. Cobbett in here by the neck 
 and shoulders, I may add, that I do not think he belongs 
 properly to the class, either of philosophical speculators, 
 or men of the world. He is a political humorist. He is 
 too much taken up with himself either to attend to right 
 reason or to judge correctly of what passes around him. 
 He mistakes strength of purpose and passion, not only 
 for truth, but for success. Because he can give fifty good 
 reasons for a thing, he thinks it not only ought to be, but 
 must be. Because he is swayed so entirely by his wishes 
 and humours, he believes others will be ready to give up 
 their prejudices, interests, and resentments to oblige him. 
 He persuades himself that he is the fittest person to repre- 
 sent Westminster in parliament, and he considers this 
 point (once proved) tantamount to his return. He knows 
 no more of the disposition or sentiments of the people of 
 
 K 
 
130 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 Westminster than of the inhabitants of the moon (except 
 from what he himself chooses to say or write of them), 
 and it is this want of sympathy which, as much as any- 
 thing, prevents his being chosen. The exclusive force 
 and bigotry of his opinions deprives them of half their 
 influence and effect, by allowing no toleration to others, 
 and consequently setting them against him. 
 
 Mr. Cobbett seemed disappointed, at one time, at not 
 succeeding in the character of a legacy-hunter. Why, a 
 person, to succeed in this character, ought to be a mere 
 skin or bag to hold money, a place to deposit it in, a 
 shadow, a deputy, a trustee who keeps it for the original 
 owner — so that the transfer is barely nominal, and who, if 
 the donor were to return from the other world, would 
 modestly yield it up — one who has no personal identity of 
 his own, no will to encroach upon or dispose of it, other- 
 wise than his patron would wish after his death — not a 
 hairbrained egotist, a dashing adventurer, to squander, 
 hector, and flourish away with it in wild schemes and 
 ruinous experiments, every one of them at variance with 
 the opinions of the testator, in new methods of turnip- 
 hoeing ; in speculations in madder — this would be to tear 
 his soul from his body twice over — 
 
 " His patron's ghost from Limbo lake the while 
 Sees this which more damnation doth upon him pile !" 
 
 Mr. Cobbett complained, that in his last interview with 
 Baron Maseres, that gentleman was in his dotage, and 
 that his reverend legatee sat at the bottom of the table, 
 cutting a poor figure, and not contradicting a word the 
 Baron said. No doubt, as he has put this in print in the 
 exuberance of his dissatisfaction, he let both gentlemen see 
 pretty plainly what he thought of them, and fancied that 
 this expression of his contempt, as it gratified him, was 
 the way to ensure the good will of the one to make over 
 his whole estate, or the good word of the other to let him 
 go snacks. This is a new way of being quits with one's 
 
On Knowledge of the World. 131 
 
 benefactors, and an egregious quid pro quo. If Baron 
 Maseres had left Mr. Cobbett 200,000/. it must have been 
 not to write his epitaph, or visit him in his last moments ! 
 A gossiping chambermaid who only smiles and assents 
 when her mistress wishes to talk, or an ignorant country- 
 clown who stands with his hat off when he has a favour to 
 ask of the squire (and if he is wise, at all other times), 
 knows more of the matter. A knowledge of mankind is 
 little more than Sir Pertinax's instinct of bowing, or of 
 " never standing upright in the presence of a great man," 
 or of that great blockhead, the world. It is not a percep- 
 tion of truth, but a sense of power, and an instant deter- 
 mination of the will to submit to it. It is, therefore, less 
 an intellectual acquirement than a natural disposition. It 
 is on this account that I think both cunning and wisdom 
 are a sort of original endowments, or attain maturity much 
 earlier than is supposed, from their being moral qualities, 
 and having their seat in the heart rather than the head. 
 The difference depends on the manner of seeing things. 
 The one is a selfish, the other is a disinterested view of 
 nature. The one is the clear open look of integrity, the 
 other is a contracted and blear-eyed obliquity of mental 
 vision. If any one has but the courage and honesty to 
 look at an object as it is in itself, or divested of prejudice, 
 fear, and favour, he will be sure to see it pretty right ; as 
 he who regards it through the refractions of opinion and 
 fashion, will be sure to see it distorted and falsified, 
 however the error may redound to his own advantage. 
 Certainly, he who makes the universe tributary to his 
 convenience, and subjects all his impressions of what is 
 right or wrong, true or false, black or white, round or 
 square, to the standard and maxims of the world, who 
 never utters a proposition but he fancies a patron close at 
 his elbow who overhears him, who is even afraid, in pri- 
 vate, to suffer an honest conviction to rise in his mind, 
 lest it should mount to his lips, get wind, and ruin his 
 
132 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 prospects in life, ought to gain something in exchange for 
 the restraint and force put upon his thoughts and faculties : 
 on the contrary, he who is confined by no such petty arid 
 debasing trammels, whose comprehension of mind is " in 
 large heart enclosed," finds his inquiries and his views 
 expand in a degree commensurate with the universe around 
 him ; makes truth welcome wherever he meets her, and 
 receives her cordial embrace in return. To see things 
 divested of passion and interest, is to see them with the 
 eye of history and philosophy. It is easy to judge right, 
 or at least to come to a mutual understanding in matters 
 of history, and abstract morality. Why, then, is it so 
 difficult to arrive at the same calm certainty in actual 
 life ? Because the passions and interests are concerned, 
 and it requires so much more candour, love of truth, and 
 independence of spirit to encounter " the world and its 
 dread laugh," to throw aside every sinister consideration, 
 and grapple with the plain merits of the case.* To be 
 wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and 
 strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the 
 truth. Perhaps the courage may be also owing to the 
 strength ; but both go together, and are natural, and not 
 acquired. Do we not see in fables the force of the moral 
 principle in detecting the truth? The only effect of fables 
 is, by making inanimate or irrational things actors in the 
 scene, to remove the case completely from our own sphere, 
 to take our self-love off its guard, to simplify the question ; 
 and yet the result of this obvious appeal is allowed to be 
 universal and irresistible. Is not this another example 
 that '• the heart of man is deceitful above all things ;" or, 
 that it is less our incapacity to distinguish what is right r 
 than our secret determination to adhere to what is wrong, 
 that prevents our discriminating one from the other? It 
 is not that great and useful truths are not manifest and 
 discernible in themselves ; but little, dirty objects get 
 between them and us, and from being near and gross, 
 
On Knowledge of the World. 133 
 
 hide the lofty and distant. The first business of the 
 patriot and the philanthropist is to overleap this barrier, 
 to rise out of this material dross. Indignation, contempt 
 of the base and grovelling, makes the philosopher no less 
 than the poet ; and it is the power of looking beyond self 
 that enables each to inculcate moral truth and nobleness 
 of sentiment, the one by general precepts, the other by 
 individual example. 
 
 I have no quarrel with men of the world, mere much- 
 worms ; every one after his fashion, " as the flesh and 
 fortune shall serve ;" but I confess I have a little distaste 
 to those who, having set out as loud and vaunting enthusi- 
 asts, have turned aside to " tread the primrose path of 
 dalliance," and to revile those who did not choose to 
 follow so edifying an example. The candid brow and 
 elastic spring of youth may be exchanged for the wrinkles 
 and crookedness of age ; but at least we should retain 
 something of the erectness and openness of our first un- 
 biassed thoughts. I cannot understand how any degree 
 of egotism can dispense with the consciousness of personal 
 identity. As we advance farther in life, we are naturally 
 inclined to revert in imagination to its commencement ; 
 but what can those dwell upon there who find only feelings 
 that they despise, and opinions that they have abjured ? 
 
 " If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from 
 thee :" but the operation is a painful one, and the body 
 remains after it only a mutilated fragment. Generally, 
 those who are cut off from this resource in former recol- 
 lections, make up for it (as well as they can) by an exag- 
 gerated and anxious fondness for their late-espoused con- 
 victions — a thing unsightly and indecent. Why does he 1 
 who at one time despises " the little Chapel Bell," after- 
 wards write " the Book of the Church ?" The one is not 
 an atonement for the other ; each shows only a juvenile 
 or a superannuated precocity of judgment. It is uniting 
 
 1 Southev. — Ed. 
 
134 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 Camille-Desmoulins and Camille-Jourdan, (Jourdan of 
 the Chimes) in one character. I should like, not out of 
 malice, but from curiosity, to see Mr. Southey re-write the 
 beautiful poem on "his own miniature-picture, when he 
 was two years old," and see what he would substitute for 
 the lines — 
 
 u And it was thought 
 
 That thou shouldst tread preferment's flowery path, 
 
 Young Eobert !" 
 
 There must here, I think, be hiatus in manuscriptis : 
 the verse must halt a little ! The laureate and his friends 
 say that they are still labouring in the same design as 
 ever, correcting the outlines and filling up the unfinished 
 sketch of their early opinions. They seem rather to have 
 quite blotted them out, and to have taken a fresh canvas 
 to begin another, and no less extravagant caricature. 
 Or their new and old theories remind one of those heads 
 in picture-dealers' shops, where one half of the face is 
 thoroughly cleaned and repaired, and the other left 
 covered with stains and dirt, to show the necessity of the 
 picture-scourer's art : the transition offends the sight. 
 
 It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as 
 they grow older, any more than they grow stronger or 
 healthier or honester. They may, in one sense, imbibe 
 a greater portion of worldly wisdom, and have their 
 romantic flights tamed to the level of every day's practice 
 and experience ; but perhaps it would be better if some of 
 the extravagance and enthusiasm of youth could be infused 
 into the latter, instead of being absorbed (perforce) in 
 that sink of pride, envy, selfishness, ignorance, conceit, 
 prejudice, and hypocrisy. One thing is certain, that this 
 is the present course of events, and that if the individual 
 grows wiser as he gains experience, the world does not, 
 and that the tardy penitent who is treading back his steps, 
 may meet the world advancing as he is retreating, and 
 adopting more and more of the genuine impulses and 
 
On Knowledge of the World. 135 
 
 disinterested views of youth into its creed. It is, indeed, 
 only by conforming to some such original and unsophis- 
 ticated standard, that it can acquire either soundness or 
 consistency. The appeal is a fair one, from the bad 
 habits of society to the unprejudiced aspirations and 
 impressions of human nature. 
 
 It seems, in truth, a hard case to have all the world 
 against us, and to require uncommon fortitude (not to say 
 presumption) to stand out single against such a host. 
 The bare suggestion must " give us pause," and has no 
 doubt overturned many an honest conviction. The opinion 
 of the world (as it pompously entitles itself), if it means 
 anything more than a set of local and party prejudices, 
 with which only our interest, not truth, is concerned, is a 
 shadow, a bugbear, and a contradiction in terms. Saving 
 all the world against us, is a phrase without a meaning ; 
 for in those points in which all the world agree, no one 
 differs from the world. If all the world were of the same 
 way of thinking, and always kept in the same mind, it 
 would certainly be a little staggering to have them against 
 you. But however widely and angrily they may differ 
 from you, they differ quite as much from one another, and 
 even from themselves. What is gospel at one moment, is 
 heresy the next: different countries and climates have 
 different notions of things. When you are put on your 
 trial, therefore, for impugning the public opinion, you 
 may always subpoena this great body against itself. For 
 example, I have been twitted for somewhere calling Tom 
 Paine a great writer, and no doubt his reputation at 
 present "does somewhat smack:" yet in 1792 he was so 
 great, or so popular an author, and so much read and 
 admired by numbers who would not now mention his 
 name, that the Government was obliged to suspend the 
 Constitution, and to go to war to counteract the effects of 
 his popularity. His extreme popularity was then the 
 cause (by a common and vulgar reaction) of his extreme 
 
136 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 obnoxiousness. If the opinion of the world, then, con- 
 tradicts itself, why may not I contradict it, or choose at 
 what time, and to what extent I will agree with it? I 
 have been accused of abusing dissenters, and saying that 
 sectaries, in general, are dry and suspicious ; and I 
 believe that all the world will say the same thing except 
 themselves. I have said that the church people are proud 
 and overbearing, which has given them umbrage, though 
 in this I have all the sectaries on my side. I have 
 laughed at the Methodists, 1 and for this I have been 
 accused of glancing at religion : yet who but a Methodist 
 does not laugh at the Methodists as well as myself? But 
 I also laugh at those who laugh at them. I have pointed 
 out by turns the weak sides and foibles of different sects 
 and parties, and they themselves maintain that they 
 respectively are perfect and infallible : and this is what is 
 called having all the world against me. I have inveighed 
 all my life against the insolence of the Tories, and for 
 this I have the authority both of Whigs and Eadicals ; 
 but then I have occasionally spoken against the indecision 
 of the Whigs, and the extravagance of the Eadicals, and 
 thus have brought all three on my back, though two out 
 of the three regularly agree with all I say of the third 
 party. Poets do not approve of what I have said of their 
 turning prose-writers ; nor do the politicians approve of 
 my tolerating the fooleries of the fanciful tribe at all : so 
 they make common cause to damn me between them. 
 People never excuse the drawback from themselves, nor 
 the concessions to an adversary : such is the justice and 
 candour of mankind ! Mr. Wordsworth is not satisfied 
 with the praise I have heaped upon himself, 2 and still 
 less, that 1 have allowed Mr. Moore to be a poet at all. 3 
 
 1 See more particularly a paper in the Bound Table, edit. 1817, 
 i, 1G3, On the Causes of Methodism. — Ed. 
 
 2 In the Lectures on the English Poets, 1818, and the Spirit of the 
 Age, 1825.— Ed. 3 Spirit of the Age, 1825.— Ed. 
 
On Knowledge of the World. 137 
 
 I do not think I have ever set my face against the 
 popular idols of the day ; I have been among the 
 foremost in crying up Mrs. Siddons, Kean, Sir Walter 
 Scott, Madame Pasta, and others ; and as to the great 
 names of former times, my admiration has been lavish, 
 and sometimes almost mawkish. I have dissented, it is 
 true, in one or two instances ; but that only shows that I 
 judge for myself, not that I make a point of contradicting 
 the general taste. I have been more to blame in trying 
 to push certain Illustrious Obscure into notice : — they 
 have not forgiven the obligation, nor the world the tacit 
 reproach. As to my personalities, they might quite as 
 well be termed impersonalities. I am so intent on the 
 abstract proposition and its elucidation, that I regard 
 everything else of very subordinate consequence : my 
 friends, 1 conceive, will not refuse to contribute to so 
 laudable an undertaking, and my enemies must ! I have 
 found fault with the French, I have found fault with the 
 English; and pray, do they not find great, mutual, and 
 just fault with one another ? It may seem a great piece 
 of arrogance in any one, to set up his individual and 
 private judgment against that of ten millions of people; 
 but cross the channel, and you will have thirty millions 
 on your side. Even should the thirty millions come over 
 to the opinions of the ten (a thing that may happen to- 
 morrow), still one need not despair. I remember my old 
 friend Peter Finnerty laughing very heartily at something 
 I had written about the Scotch, but it was followed up by 
 a sketch of the Irish, on which he closed the book, looked 
 grave, and said he disapproved entirely of all national 
 reflections. Thus you have all the world on your side, 
 except the party concerned. What any set of people 
 think or say of themselves is hardly a rule for others : 
 yet, if you do not attach yourself to some one set of 
 people and principles, and stick to them through thick 
 and thin, instead of giving your opinion fairly and fully 
 
138 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 all round, you must expect to have all the world against 
 you, for no other reason than because you express sin- 
 cerely, and for their good, not only what they say of 
 others, but what is said of themselves, which they would 
 fain keep a profound secret, and prevent the divulging of 
 under the severest pains and penalties, When I told 
 Jeffrey that I had composed a work in which I had "in 
 some sort handled" about a score of leading characters, 
 he said, " Then you will have one man against you, and 
 the remaining nineteen for you ! ' 1 I have not found it 
 so. In fact, these persons would agree pretty nearly to 
 all that I say, and allow that, in nineteen points out of 
 twenty, I am right ; but the twentieth, that relates to 
 some imperfection of their own, weighs down all the rest, 
 and produces an unanimous verdict against the author. 
 There is but one thing in which the world agree, a certain 
 bigoted blindness, and conventional hypocrisy, without 
 which, according to Mandeville (that is, if they really 
 spoke what they thought and knew of one another), they 
 would fall to cutting each other's throats immediately. 
 
 We find the same contrariety and fluctuation of opinion 
 in different ages, as well as countries and classes. For 
 about a thousand years, during "the high and palmy 
 state " of the Eomish hierarchy, it was agreed (nemine 
 contradicente) that two and two made five : afterwards, for 
 above a century, there was great battling and controversy 
 to prove that they made four and a half; then, for a 
 century more, it was thought a great stride taken to come 
 down to four and a quarter ; and, perhaps, in another 
 century or two, it will be discovered for a wonder that two 
 and two actually make four ! It is said, that this slow 
 advance and perpetual interposition of impediments is 
 a salutary check to the rashness of innovation, and to 
 hazardous experiments. At least, it is a very effectual one, 
 
 1 The Spirit of the Age, or Contemporary Portraits. London, 1825, 
 8vo. Frequently reprinted. — Ed. 
 
On Knowledge of the World. 139 
 
 amounting almost to a prohibition. One age is employed 
 in building up an absurdity, and the next exhausts all its 
 wit and learning, zeal and fury, in battering it down, so 
 that at the end of two generations you come to the point 
 where you set out, and have to begin again. These heats 
 and disputes about external points of faith may be things 
 of no consequence, since under all the variations of form 
 or doctrine the essentials of practice remain the same. It 
 does not seem so ; at any rate, the non-essentials appear 
 to excite all the interest, and " keep this dreadful pudder 
 o'er our heads ; " and when the dogma is once stripped of 
 mystery and intolerance, and reduced to common sense, no 
 one appears to take any furthur notice of it. 
 
 The appeal, then, to the authority of the world, chiefly 
 resolves itself into the old proverb, that " when you are at 
 Eome you must do as those at Eome do ; " that is, it is a 
 shifting circle of local prejudices and gratuitous assump- 
 tions, a successful conformity to which is best insured by 
 a negation of all other qualities that might interfere with 
 it : solid reason and virtue are out of the question. But 
 it may be insisted, that there are qualities of a more prac- 
 tical order that may greatly contribute to and facilitate our 
 advancement in life, such as presence of mind, convivial 
 talents, insight into character, thorough acquaintance with 
 the profounder principles and secret springs of society, and 
 so forth : I do not deny that all this may be of advantage 
 in extraordinary cases, and often abridge difficulties, but I 
 do not think that it is either necessary or generally useful. 
 For instance, habitual caution and reserve is a surer 
 resource than presence of mind, or quick-witted readiness 
 of expedient, which, though it gets men out of scrapes, as 
 often leads them into them by begetting a false confidence. 
 Persons of agreeable and lively talents often find to their 
 cost that one indiscretion procures them more enemies 
 then ten agreeable sallies do friends. A too great penetra- 
 tion into character is less desirable than a certain power 
 
140 On Knowledge of the World. 
 
 of hoodwinking ourselves to their defects, unless the 
 former is accompanied with a profound hypocrisy, which 
 is also liable to detection and discomfiture : and as to 
 general maxims and principles of worldly knowledge, I 
 conceive that an instinctive sympathy with them is much 
 more profitable than their incautious discovery and formal 
 announcement. Thus the politic rule, " When a great 
 wheel goes up a hill, cling fast to it ; when a great wheel 
 runs down a hill, let go your hold of it, 5 ' may be useful as 
 a hint or warning to the shyness of fidelity of an English- 
 man ; a North- Briton feels its truth instinctively, and acts 
 upon it unconsciously. When it is observed in the History 
 of a Foundling} that "Mr. Alworthy had done so many 
 charitable actions that he had made enemies of the whole 
 parish," the sarcasm is the dictate of a generous indigna- 
 tion at ingratitude rather than a covert apology for selfish 
 niggardliness. Misanthropic reflections have their source 
 in philanthropic sentiments ; the real despiser of the world 
 keeps up appearances with it, and is at pains to varnish 
 over its vices and follies, even to himself, lest his secret 
 should be betrayed, and do him an injury. Those who see 
 completely into the world begin to play tricks with it, and 
 over-reach themselves by being too knowing : it is even 
 possible to out-cant it, and get laughed at that way. Field- 
 ing knew something of the world, yet he did not make a 
 fortune. Sir Walter Scott has twice made a fortune by 
 descriptions of nature and character, and has twice lost it 
 by the fondness for speculative gains. Wherever there is 
 a strong faculty for anything, the exercise of that faculty 
 becomes its own end and reward, and produces an in- 
 difference or inattention to other things ; so that the best 
 security for success in the world is an incapacity for 
 success in any other way. A bookseller, to succeed in his 
 business, should have no knowledge of books, except as 
 marketable commodities : the instant he has a taste, an 
 1 Fielding's Tom Jones. — Ed. 
 
 
On Knoivledge of the World. 141 
 
 opinion of his own on the subject, he may consider himself 
 as a ruined man. In like manner, a picture-dealer should 
 know nothing of pictures but the catalogue price, the cant 
 of the day. The moment he has a feeling for the art, he 
 will be tenacious of it : a Guido, a Salvator " will be the 
 fatal Cleopatra for which he will lose all he is worth, and 
 be content to lose it." Should a general, then, know 
 nothing of war, a physician of medicine ? No : because 
 this is an art and not a trick, and the one has to contend 
 with nature, and the other with an enemy, and not to 
 pamper or cajole the follies of the world. It requires also 
 great talents to overturn the world; not to push one's 
 fortune in it : to rule the state like Cromwell or Buona- 
 parte ; not, to rise in it like Castlereagh or Croker. Yet, 
 even in times of crisis and convulsion, he who outrages the 
 feeling of the moment and echoes the wildest extravagance, 
 succeeds ; as, in times of peace and tranquillity, he does so 
 who acquiesces most tamely in the ordinary routine of 
 things. This may serve to point out another error, common 
 to men of the world, who sometimes, giving themselves 
 credit for more virtue than they possess, declare very 
 candidly that if they had to begin life over again, they 
 would have been great rogues. The answer to this is, that 
 then they would have been hanged. No : the way to get 
 on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither 
 better nor worse than your neighbours, neither to be a 
 " reformer nor a house-breaker," neither to advance before 
 the age nor lag behind it, but to be as like it as possible, 
 to reflect its image and superscription at every turn, and 
 then you will be its darling and its delight, and it will 
 dandle you and fondle you, and make much of you, as a 
 monkey doats upon its young ! The knowledge of vice — 
 that is, of statutable vice — is not the knowledge of the 
 world ; otherwise, a Bow-street runner and the keeper of a 
 house of ill fame would be the most knowing characters, and 
 would soon rise above their professions, . 
 July, 1827. 
 
142 On Fashion. 
 
 On Fashion. 1 
 
 " Born of nothing, begot of nothing." 
 
 *" His garment neither was of silk nor say, 
 But painted plumes in goodly order dight, 
 Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array, 
 Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight : 
 As those same plumes, so seemed he vain and light, 
 That of his gait might easily appear ; 
 For still he fared as dancing in delight, 
 And in his hands a windy fan did bear, 
 That in the idle air he moved still here and there." 
 
 Fashion is an odd jumble of contradictions, of sympathies 
 and antipathies. It exists only by its being participated 
 among a certain number of persons, and its essence is 
 destroyed by being communicated to a greater number. 
 It is a continual struggle between "the great vulgar and 
 the small " to get the start of, or keep up with each other 
 in the race of appearances, by an adoption on the part of 
 the one of such external and fantastic symbols as strike 
 the attention and excite the envy or admiration of the be- 
 holder, and which are no sooner made known and exposed 
 to public view for this purpose, than they are successfully 
 copied by the multitude, the slavish herd of imitators, who 
 do not wish to be behindhand with their betters in outward 
 show and pretensions, and then sink without any further 
 notice into disrepute and contempt. Thus fashion lives 
 only in a perpetual round of giddy innovation and restless 
 vanity. To be old-fashioned is the greatest crime a coat 
 or a hat can be guilty of. To look like nobody else is a 
 sufficiently mortifying reflection ; to be in danger of being 
 mistaken for one of the rabble is worse. Fashion con- 
 stantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, 
 singularity and vulgarity. It is the perpetual setting up 
 
 1 Written in 1818.— Ed. 
 
On Fashion. 143 
 
 and then disowning a certain standard of taste, elegance, 
 and refinement, which has no other foundation or authority 
 than that it is the prevailing distraction of the moment, 
 which was yesterday ridiculous from its being new, and 
 to-morrow will be odious from its being common. It is 
 one of the most slight and insignificant of all things. It 
 cannot be lasting, for it depends on the constant change 
 and shifting of its own harlequin disguises ; it cannot be 
 sterling, for, if it were, it could not depend on the breath 
 of caprice ; it *must be superficial, to produce its immediate 
 effect on the gaping crowd ; and frivolous, to admit of its 
 being assumed at pleasure, by the numbers of those who 
 affect, by being in the fashion, to be distinguished from 
 the rest of the world. It is not anything in itself, nor the 
 sign of anything but the folly and vanity of those who 
 rely upon it as their greatest pride and ornament. It 
 takes the firmest hold of weak, flimsy, and narrow minds, 
 of those whose emptiness conceives of nothing excellent 
 but what is thought so by others, and whose self-conceit 
 makes them willing to confine the opinion of all excellence 
 to themselves and those like them. That which is true or 
 beautiful in itself, is not the less so for standing alone. 
 That which is good for anything, is the better for being 
 more widely diffused. But fashion is the abortive issue of 
 vain ostentation and exclusive egotism : it is haughty, 
 trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, 
 precise and fantastical, all in a breath — tied to no rule, 
 and bound to conform to every whim of the minute. 
 
 " The fashion of an hour marks the wearer." It is a 
 sublimated essence of levity, caprice, vanity, extravagance, 
 idleness, and selfishness. It thinks of nothing but not 
 being contaminated by vulgar use, and winds and doubles 
 like a hare, and betakes itself to the most paltry shifts to 
 avoid being overtaken by the common hunt that are 
 always in full chase after it. It contrives to keep up its 
 fastidious pretensions, not by the difficulty of the attain- 
 
144 On Fashion. 
 
 ment, but by the rapidity and evanescent nature of the 
 changes. It is a sort of conventional badge, or under- 
 stood passport into select circles, which must still be 
 varying (like the water-mark in bank-notes) not to be 
 counterfeited by those without the pale of fashionable 
 society; for to make the test of admission to all the 
 privileges of that refined and volatile atmosphere depend 
 on any real merit or extraordinary accomplishment, would 
 exclude too many of the pert, the dull, the ignorant, too 
 many shallow, upstart, and self-admiring pretenders, to 
 enable the few that passed muster to keep one another in 
 anv tolerable countenance. If it were the fashion, for 
 instance, to be distinguished for virtue, it would be 
 difficult to set or follow the example ; but then this would 
 confine the pretension to a small number (not the most 
 fashionable part of the community), and would carry a 
 very singular air with it ; or if excellence in any art or 
 science were made the standard of fashion, this would also 
 effectually prevent vulgar imitation, but then it would 
 equally prevent fashionable impertinence. There would 
 be an obscure circle of vertu as well as virtue, drawn 
 within the established circle of fashion, a little province 
 of a mighty empire — the example of honesty would spread 
 slowly, and learning would still have to boast of a 
 respectable minority. But of what use would such un- 
 courtly and out-of-the-way accomplishments be to the 
 great and noble, the rich and fair, without any of the 
 eclat, the noise and nonsense which belong to that which 
 is followed and admired by all the world alike ? The 
 real and solid will never do for the current coin, the 
 common wear and tear of foppery and fashion. It must 
 be the meretricious, the showy, the outwardly fine, and 
 intrinsically worthless — that which lies within the reach 
 of the most indolent affectation, that which can be put on 
 or off at the suggestion of the most wilful caprice, and for 
 which, through all its fluctuations, no mortal reason can 
 
On Fashion. 145 
 
 be given, but that it is the newest absurdity in vogue ! 
 The shape of a head-dress, whether flat or piled (curl on 
 curl) several stories high by the help of pins and 
 pomatum, the size of a pair of paste buckles, the quantity 
 of gold lace on an embroidered waistcoat, the mode of 
 taking a pinch of snuff, or of pulling out a pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, the lisping and affected pronunciation of certain 
 words, the saying Mem for Madam, Lord Foppington's * 
 Tarn and 'Pawn honour, with a regular set of visiting 
 phrases and insipid sentiments ready sorted for the day, 
 were what formerly distinguished the mob of fine gentle- 
 men and ladies from the mob of their inferiors. These 
 marks and appendages of gentility had their day, and 
 were then discarded for others equally peremptory and 
 unequivocal. But in all this chopping and changing, it 
 is generally one folly that drives out another; one trifle 
 that by its specific levity acquires a momentary and 
 surprising ascendancy over the last. There is no striking 
 deformity of appearance or behaviour that has not been 
 made " the outward and visible sign of an inward and 
 invisible grace." Factitious imperfections are laid hold 
 of to hide real defects. Paint, patches, and powder were 
 at one time synonymous with health, cleanliness, and 
 beauty. Obscenity, irreligion, swearing, drinking, gaming, 
 effeminacy in the one sex and Amazon airs in the other, 
 anything, is the fashion while it lasts. In the reign of 
 Charles II., the profession and practice of every species 
 of extravagance and debauchery were looked upon as the 
 indispensable marks of an accomplished cavalier. Since 
 that period the court has reformed, and has had rather a 
 rustic air. Our belles formerly overloaded themselves 
 with dress, of late years they have affected to go almost 
 naked — " and are, when unadorned, adorned the most." 
 The women having left off stays, the men have taken to 
 wear them, if we are to believe the authentic Memoirs 
 
 1 The character so called in Vanbrugh's play of TJie Relapse. — En. 
 
 L 
 
146 On Fashion. 
 
 of the Fudge Family. 1 The Niobe head is at present 
 buried in the poke bonnet, and the French milliners and 
 marchandes des modes have proved themselves an over- 
 match for the Greek sculptors, in matters of taste and 
 costume. 
 
 A very striking change has, however, taken place in 
 dress of late years, and some progress has been made in 
 taste and elegance, from the very circumstance, that as 
 fashion has extended its empire in that direction, it has 
 lost its power. While fashion in dress included what was 
 costly, it was confined to the wealthier classes ; even 
 this was an encroachment on the privileges of rank and 
 birth, which for a long time were the only things that 
 commanded or pretended to command respect, and we 
 find Shakspeare complaining that " the City bears the 
 cost of princes on unworthy shoulders ;" but when the 
 appearing in the top of the mode no longer depended on 
 the power of purchasing certain expensive articles of 
 dress, or in the right of wearing them, the rest was so 
 obvious and easy, that any one who chose might cut as 
 coxcombical a figure as the best. It became a matter of 
 mere affectation on the one side, and gradually ceased to 
 be made a matter of aristocratic assumption on the other. 
 "In the grand carnival of this our age," among other 
 changes, this is not the least remarkable, that the 
 monstrous pretensions to distinctions in dress have 
 dwindled away by tacit consent, and the simplest and 
 most graceful have been in the same request with all 
 classes. In this respect, as well as some others, " the age 
 is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so 
 near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe ;" 2 a lord is 
 hardly to be distinguished in the street from an attorney's 
 
 1 By Thomas Moore. The Fudge Family in Paris, 1818, was 
 followed up by T)ie Fudges in England ; but the former is here 
 referred to. — Ed. 
 
 2 Hamlet, y, 1. [Dyce's edit. 1868, vii 196.] 
 
On Fashion. 147 
 
 clerk ; and a plume of feathers is no longer mistaken for 
 the highest distinction in the land ! The ideas of natural 
 equality and the Manchester steam-engines together, 
 have, like a double battery, levelled the high towers and 
 artificial structures of fashion in dress, and a white muslin 
 gown is now the common costume of the mistress and 
 the maid, instead of the one wearing, as heretofore, rich 
 silks and satins, and the other coarse linsey-wolsey. It 
 would be ridiculous (on a similar principle) for the 
 courtier to take the wall of the citizen, having no longer 
 a sword by his side to maintain his right of precedence ; 
 and, from the stricter notions that have prevailed of a 
 man's personal merit and identity, a cane dangling from 
 his wrist is the greatest extension of his figure that can 
 be allowed to the modern petit-maitre. 
 
 What shows the worthlessness of mere fashion is, to see 
 how easily this vain and boasted distinction is assumed, 
 when the restraint of decency or circumstances is once 
 removed, by the most uninformed and commonest of the 
 people. I know an undertaker that is the greatest prig 
 in the streets of London, and an Aldermanbury haber- 
 dasher that has the most military strut of any lounger in 
 Bond-street or St. James's. We may, at any time, raise 
 a regiment of fops from the same number of fools, who 
 have vanity enough to be intoxicated with the smartness 
 of their appearance, and not sense enough to be ashamed 
 of themselves. Every one remembers the story in 
 Peregrine Pichle, of the strolling gipsy that he picked up 
 in spite, had well scoured, and introduced her into genteel 
 company, where she met with great applause, till she got 
 into a passion by seeing a fine lady cheat at cards, rapped 
 out a volley of oaths, and let nature get the better of art. 
 Dress is the great secret of address. Clothes and con- 
 fidence will set anybody up in the trade of modish 
 accomplishment. Look at the two classes of well-dressed 
 females whom we see at the play-house in the boxes. 
 
148 On Fashion. 
 
 Both are equally dressed in the height of the fashion, 
 both are rouged, and wear their neck and arms bare — both 
 have the same conscious, haughty, theatrical air — the 
 same toss of the head — the same stoop in the shoulders, 
 with all the pride that arises from a systematic disdain of 
 formal prudery — the same pretence and jargon of fashion- 
 able conversation — the same mimicry of tones and phrases 
 — the same " lisping, and ambling, and painting, and 
 nicknaming of God's creatures ;" the s?„me everything 
 but real propriety of behaviour and real refinement of 
 sentiment. In all the externals they are as like as the 
 reflection in the looking-glass. The only difference 
 between the woman of fashion and the woman of pleasure 
 is, that the one is what the other only seems to be ; and 
 yet the victims of dissipation, who thus rival and almost 
 outshine women of the first quality in all the blaze, and 
 pride, and glitter of show and fashion, are, in general, no 
 better than a set of raw, uneducated, inexperienced 
 country girls, or awkward, coarse-fisted servant-maids, 
 who require no other apprenticeship or qualification to be 
 on a level with persons of the highest distinction in 
 society, in all the brilliancy and elegance of outward 
 appearance, than that they have forfeited its common 
 privileges, and every title to its respect. The truth is, 
 that real virtue, beauty, or understanding, are the same, 
 whether "in a high or low degree;" and the airs and 
 graces of pretended superiority over these which the 
 highest classes give themselves, from mere frivolous and 
 external accomplishments, are easily imitated, with pro- 
 voking success, by the lowest, whenever they dare. 
 
On Nicknames. 149 
 
 On Nicknames. 1 
 
 "Hse nugse in seria ducimt." 
 
 This is a more important subject than it seems at first 
 sight. It is as serious in its results as it is contemptible 
 in the means by which these results are brought about. 
 Nicknames, for the most part, govern the world. The 
 history of politics, of religion, of literature, of morals, and 
 of private life, is too often little less than the history of 
 nicknames. What are one-half the convulsions of the 
 civilised world — the frequent overthrow of states and 
 kingdoms — the shock and hostile encounters of mighty 
 continents — the battles by sea and land — the intestine 
 commotions — the feuds of the Yitelli and Orsini, of the 
 Guelphs and Ghibellines — the civil wars in England and 
 the League in France — the jealousies and heart-burnings 
 of cabinets and councils — the uncharitable proscriptions 
 of creeds and sects, Turk, Jew, Pagan, Papist and Puritan, 
 Quaker, and Methodist — the persecutions and massacres 
 — the burnings, tortures, imprisonments, and lingering 
 deaths, inflicted for a different profession of faith — but so 
 many illustrations of the power of this principle ? Foxe's 
 Book of Martyrs, and Neale's History of the Puritans, are 
 comments on the same text. The fires in Smithfield were 
 fanned by nicknames, and a nickname set its seal on the 
 unopened dungeons of the Holy Inquisition. Nicknames 
 are the talismans and spells that collect and set in motion 
 all the combustible part of men's passions and prejudices, 
 which have hitherto played so much more successful a 
 game, and done their work so much more effectually than 
 reason, in all the grand concerns and petty details of 
 human life, and do not yet seem tired of the task assigned 
 1 Written in 1818. 
 
150 On Nicknames. 
 
 them. Nicknames are the convenient, portable tools by 
 which they simplify the process of mischief, and get 
 through their job with the least time and trouble. These 
 worthless, unmeaning, irritating, envemoned words of re- 
 proach are the established signs by which the different 
 compartments of society are ticketed, labelled, and marked 
 out for each other's hatred and contempt. They are to be 
 had, ready cut and dry, of all sorts and sizes, wholesale 
 and retail, for foreign exportation or for home consump- 
 tion, and for all occasions in life. " The priest calls the 
 lawyer a cheat, the lawyer beknaves the divine." The 
 Frenchman hates the Englishman because he is an English- 
 man; and the Englishman hates the Frenchman for as 
 good a reason. The Whig hates the Tory, and the Tory 
 the Whig. The Dissenter hates the Church-of-England- 
 man, and the Church-of-England-man hates the Dissenter, 
 as if they were of a different species, because they have a 
 different designation. The Mussulman calls the worshipper 
 of the Cross " Christian dog," spits in his face, and kicks 
 him from the pavement, by virtue of a nickname ; and the 
 Christian retorts the indignity upon the Infidel and the 
 Jew by the same infallible rule of right. In France they 
 damn Shakspeare in the lump, by calling him a barbare ; 
 and we talk of Bacine's verbiage with inexpressible contempt 
 and self-complacency. Among ourselves, an anti-Jacobin 
 critic denounces a Jacobin poet and his frie*nds, at a ven- 
 ture, " as infidels and fugitives, who have left their wives 
 destitute, and their children fatherless" — whether they 
 have wives and children or not. The unenlightened savage 
 makes a meal of his enemy's flesh, after reproaching him 
 with the name of his tribe, because he is differently 
 tattooed ; and the literary cannibal cuts up the character 
 of his opponent by the help of a nickname. The jest of 
 all this is, that a party nickname is always a relative term, 
 and has its countersign, which has just the same force and 
 meaning, so that both must be perfectly ridiculous and 
 
On Nicknames. 151 
 
 insignificant. A Whig implies a Tory ; there must be 
 " Malcontents " as well as " Malignants ;" Jacobins and 
 anti- Jacobins ; English and French. These sorts of noms- 
 de-guerre derive all their force from their contraries. Take 
 away the meaning of the one, and you take the sting out 
 of the other. They could not exist but upon the strength 
 of mutual and irreconcileable antipathies ; there must be 
 no love lost between them. What is there in the names 
 themselves to give them a preference over each other? 
 " Sound them, they do become the mouth as well ; weigh 
 them, they are as heavy ; conjure with them, one will 
 raise a spirit as soon as the other." If there were not 
 fools and madmen who hated both, there could not be fools 
 and madmen bigoted to either. I have heard an eminent 
 character boast that he had done more to produce the late 
 war by nicknaming Buonaparte " the Corsican," than all 
 the state papers and documents on the subject put together. 
 And yet Mr. Southey asks triumphantly, " Is it to be 
 supposed that it is England, our England, to whom that 
 war was owing ? " As if, in a dispute between two 
 countries, the conclusive argument, which lies in the 
 pronoun our belonged only to one of them. I like Shaks- 
 peare's version of the matter better : — 
 
 " Hath Britain all the sun that shines ? Day, night, 
 Are they not but in Britain ? F the world's volume 
 Our Britain seems as of it, but not in 't ; 
 In a great pool a swan's nest, prithee, think 
 There's livers out of Britain." J 
 
 In all national disputes, it is common to appeal to the 
 numbers on your side as decisive on the point. If every- 
 body in England thought the late war right, everybody in 
 France thought it wrong. There were ten millions on one 
 side of the question (or rather of the water), and thirty 
 millions on the other side — that's all. I remember some 
 one arguing, in justification of our Ministers interfering 
 1 Cymbeline, iii, 4. [Dyce's edit. 1868, vii, 683.] 
 
1 52 On Nicknames. 
 
 without occasion, " That governments would not go to war 
 for nothing ;" to which I answered : " Then they could 
 not go to war at all ; for, at that rate, neither of them 
 could be in the wrong, and yet both of them must be in 
 the right, which was absurd." The only meaning of these 
 vulgar nicknames and party distinctions, where they are 
 urged most violently and confidently, is that others differ 
 from you in some particular or other (whether it be opinion, 
 dress, clime, or complexion), which you highly disapprove 
 of, forgetting that, by the same rule, they have the very 
 same right to be offended at you because you differ from 
 them. Those who have reason on their side do not make 
 the most obstinate and grevious appeals to prejudice and 
 abusive language. I know but of one exception to this 
 general rule, and that is where the things that excite 
 disgust are of such a kind that they cannot well be gone 
 into without offence to decency and good manners ; but it 
 is equally certain in this case, that those who are most 
 shocked at the things are not those who are most forward 
 to apply the names. A person will not be fond of repeating 
 a charge, or adverting to a subject, that inflicts a wound 
 on his own feelings, even for the sake of wounding the 
 feelings of another. A man should be very sure that he 
 himself is not what he has always in his mouth. The 
 greatest prudes have been often accounted the greatest 
 hypocrites, and a satirist is at best but a suspicious 
 character. The loudest and most unblushing invectives 
 against vice and debauchery will as often proceed from a 
 desire to inflame and pamper the passions of the writer, 
 by raking into a nauseous subject, as from a wish to excite 
 virtuous indignation against it in the public mind, or to 
 reform the individual. To familiarise the mind to gross 
 ideas is not the way to increase your own or the general 
 repugnance to them. But to return to the subject of nick- 
 names. 
 
 The use of this figure of speech is, that it excites a 
 
On Nicknames. 153 
 
 strong idea without requiring any proof. It is a short- 
 hand, compendious mode of getting at a conclusion, and 
 never troubling yourself or anybody else with the for- 
 malities of reasoning or the dictates of common sense. It 
 is superior to all evidence, for it does not rest upon any, 
 and operates with the greatest force and certainty in pro- 
 portion to the utter want of probability. Belief is only a 
 stray impression, and the malignity or extravagance of the 
 accusation passes for a proof of the crime. " Brevity is 
 the soul of wit ;" and of all eloquence a nickname is the 
 most concise, of all arguments the most unanswerable. It 
 gives carte-blanche to the imagination, throws the reins on 
 the neck of the passions, and suspends the use of the 
 understanding altogether. It does not stand upon cere- 
 mony, on the nice distinctions of right and wrong. It 
 does not wait the slow processes of reason, or stop to 
 unravel the wit of sophistry. It takes everything for 
 granted that serves for nourishment for the spleen. It 
 is instantaneous in its operations. There is nothing to 
 interpose between the effect and it. It is passion without 
 proof, and action without thought — " the unbought grace 
 of life, the cheap defence of nations.'* It does not, as Mr. 
 Burke expresses it, "leave the will puzzled, undecided, 
 and sceptical in the moment of action." It is a word and 
 a blow. The " No Popery" cry, raised a little while ago 
 let loose all the lurking spite and prejudice which had 
 lain rankling in the proper receptacles for them for above 
 a century, without any knowledge of the past history of 
 the country which had given rise to them, or any reference 
 to their connection with present circumstances ; for the 
 knowledge of the one would have prevented the possi- 
 bility of their application to the other. Facts present a 
 tangible and definite idea to the mind, a train of causes 
 and consequences, accounting for each other, and leading 
 to a positive conclusion — but no farther. But a nickname 
 is tied down to no such limited service ; it is a disposable 
 
154 On Nicknames. 
 
 force, that is almost always perverted to mischief. It 
 clothes itself with all the terrors of uncertain abstraction, 
 and there is no end of the abuse to which it is liable but 
 the cunning of those who employ, or the credulity of 
 those who are gulled by it. It is a reserve of the igno- 
 rance, bigotry, and intolerance of weak and vulgar minds, 
 brought up where reason fails, and always ready, at a 
 moment's warning, to be applied to any, the most absurd 
 purposes. If you bring specific charges against a man, 
 you thereby enable him to meet and repel them, if he 
 thinks it worth his while ; but a nickname baffles reply, 
 by the very vagueness of the inferences from it, and gives 
 increased activity to the confused, dim, and imperfect 
 notions of dislike connected with it, from their having no 
 settled ground to rest upon. The mind naturally irritates 
 itself against an unknown object of fear or jealousy, and 
 makes up for the blindness of its zeal by an excess of it. 
 We are eager to indulge our hasty feelings to the utmost, 
 lest, by stopping to examine, we should find that there is 
 no excuse for them. The very consciousness of the in- 
 justice we may be doing another makes us only the more 
 loud and bitter in our invectives against him. We keep 
 down the admonitions of returning reason, by calling up 
 a double portion of gratuitous and vulgar spite. The will 
 may be said to act with most force in vacuo ; the passions 
 are the most ungovernable when they are blindfolded. 
 That malignity is always the most implacable which is 
 accompanied with a sense of weakness, because it is never 
 satisfied of its own success or safety. A nickname carries 
 the weight of the pride, the indolence, the cowardice, the 
 ignorance, and the ill-nature of mankind on its side. It 
 acts by mechanical sympathy on the nerves of society. 
 Any one who is without character himself may make 
 himself master of the reputation of another by the applica- 
 tion of a nickname, as, if you do not mind soiling your 
 fingers, you may always throw dirt on another. No 
 
On Nicknames. 155 
 
 matter how undeserved the imputation, it will stick ; for, 
 though it is sport to the bystanders to see you bespattered, 
 they will not stop to see you wipe out the stains. You 
 are not heard in your own defence ; it has no effect, it 
 does not tell, excites no sensation, or it is only felt as a 
 disappointment of their triumph over you. Their passions 
 and prejudices are inflamed by the charge, " As rage with 
 rage doth sympathise ;" by vindicating yourself, you 
 merely bring them back to common-sense, which is a very 
 sober, mawkish state. Give a dog an ill name and Jiang him, 
 is a proverb. " A nickname is the heaviest stone that the 
 devil can throw at a man." It is a bugbear to the imagina- 
 tion, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts 
 our apprehensions. Let a nickname be industriously 
 applied to our dearest friend, and let us know that it 
 is ever so false and malicious, yet it will answer its end ; 
 it connects the person's name and idea with an ugly 
 association, you think of them with pain together, or it 
 requires an effort of indignation or magnanimity on your 
 part to disconnect them ; it becomes an uneasy subject, a 
 sore point, and you will sooner desert your friend, or join 
 in the conspiracy against him, than be constantly forced to 
 repel charges without truth or meaning, and have your 
 penetration or character called in question by a rascal. 
 Nay, such is the unaccountable construction of language 
 and of the human mind, that the affixing the most innocent 
 or praiseworthy appellation to any individual, or set of 
 individuals, as a nickname, has all the effect of the most 
 opprobrious epithets. Thus the cant name, " the Talents," 
 was successfully applied as a stigma to the Whigs at one 
 time ; it held them up to ridicule, and made them ob- 
 noxious to public feeling, though it was notorious to 
 -everybody that the Whig leaders were "the Talents," and 
 that their adversaries nicknamed them so from real hatred 
 and pretended derision. Call a man short by his Christian 
 name, as Tom or Dick such-a-one, or by his profession 
 
156 On Nicknames. 
 
 (however respectable), as Canning pelted a noble lord with 
 his left-off title of Doctor, and you undo him for ever, if 
 he has a reputation to lose. ' Such is the tenaciousness of 
 spite and ill-nature, or the jealousy of public opinion, even 
 this will be peg enough to hang doubtful inuendos, weighty 
 dilemmas upon, " With so small a web as this will I 
 catch so great a fly as Cassio." The public do not like 
 to see their favourites treated with impertinent familiarity ; 
 it lowers the tone of admiration very speedily. It implies 
 that some one stands in no great awe of their idol, and he 
 perhaps may know as much about the matter as they do. 
 It seems as if a man whose name, with some contemptuous 
 abbreviation, is always dinned in the public ear, was dis- 
 tinguished for nothing else. By repeating a man's name 
 in this manner you may soon make him sick of it, and of 
 his life too. Children do not like to be called out of their 
 names : it is questioning their personal identity. There 
 are political writers who have fairly worried their readers 
 into conviction by abuse and nicknames. People surrender 
 their judgments to escape the persecution of their style, 
 and the disgust and indignation which their incessant 
 violence and vulgarity excite, at last make you hate those 
 who are the objects of it. Causa causce causa causati. 
 They make people sick of a subject by making them sick 
 of their arguments. 
 
 A parrot may be taught to call names; and if the 
 person who keeps the parrot has a spite to his neighbours, 
 he may give them a great deal of annoyance without much 
 wit, either in the employer or the puppet. The in- 
 significance of the instrument has nothing to do with the 
 efficacy of the means. Hotspur would have had "a 
 starling taught to speak nothing but Mortimer," in the 
 ears of his enemy. Nature, it is said, has given arms to 
 all creatures the most proper to defend themselves, and 
 annoy others : to the lowest she has given the use of 
 nicknames. 
 
On Nicknames. 157 
 
 There are some droll instances of the effect of proper 
 names combined with circumstances. A young student 
 had come up to London from Cambridge, and went in the 
 evening and planted himself in the pit of the playhouse. 
 He had not been seated long, when in one of the front 
 boxes near him he discovered one of his college tutors, 
 with whom he felt an immediate and strong desire to 
 claim acquaintance, and accordingly he called out, in a 
 low and respectful voice, "Dr. Topping!" The appeal 
 was, however, ineffectual. He then repeated in a louder 
 tone, but still in an under key, so as not to excite the 
 attention of any one but his friend, "Dr. Topping!" 
 The Doctor took no notice. He then grew more im- 
 patient, and repeated " Dr. Topping, Dr. Topping !" two 
 or three times pretty loud, to see whether the Doctor did 
 not or would not hear him. Still the Doctor remained 
 immovable. The joke began at length to get round, and 
 one or two persons, as he continued his invocation of the 
 Doctor's name, joined in with him ; these were reinforced 
 by others calling out, "Dr. Topping, Dr. Topping!" on 
 all sides, so that he could no longer avoid perceiving 
 it, and at length the whole pit rose and roared, 
 "Dr. Topping!" with loud and repeated cries, and the 
 Doctor was forced to retire precipitately, frightened at the 
 sound of his own name. 
 
 The calling people by their Christian or surname is a 
 proof of affection, as well as of hatred. They are gene- 
 rally the best of good fellows with whom their friends 
 take this sort of liberty. Diminutives are titles of endear- 
 ment. Dr. Johnson's calling Goldsmith " Goldy " did 
 equal honour to both. It showed the regard he had for 
 him. This familiarity may perhaps imply a certain want 
 of formal respect ; but formal respect is not neccessary to, 
 if it is consistent with, cordial friendship. Titles of 
 honour are the reverse of nicknames : they convey the 
 idea of respect, as the others do of contempt, but they 
 
158 On Taste. 
 
 equally mean little or nothing. Junius's motto, Stat 
 nominis 'umbra, is a very significant one; it might be 
 extended farther. A striking instance of the force of 
 names, standing by themselves, is in the respect felt 
 towards Michael Angelo in this country. We know 
 nothing of him but his name. It is an abstraction of 
 fame and greatness. Our admiration of him supports 
 itself, and our idea of his superiority seems self-evident, 
 because it is attached to his name only. 
 
 On Taste} 
 
 Taste is nothing but sensibility to the different degrees 
 and kinds of excellence in the works of Art or Nature. 
 This definition will perhaps be disputed ; for I am aware 
 the general practice is to make it consist in a disposition 
 to find fault. 
 
 A French man or woman will in general conclude their 
 account of Voltaire's denunciation of Shakspeare and 
 Milton as barbarians, on the score of certain technical 
 improprieties, with assuring you that " he (Voltaire) had 
 a great deal of taste." It is their phrase, II avait beaucoup 
 de gout. To which the proper answer is, that this may 
 be, but that he did not show it in this case ; as the 
 overlooking great and countless beauties, and being taken 
 up only with petty or accidental blemishes, shows as 
 little strength or understanding as it does refinement or 
 elevation of taste. The French author, indeed, allows of 
 Shakspeare, that " he had found a few pearls on his 
 enormous dunghill." But there is neither truth nor 
 proportion in this sentence, for his works are (to say the 
 
 least) — 
 
 " Eich with praise 
 As is the ooze and bottom of the sea 
 With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries." 2 
 
 Written in 1819. 2 Henry Y. t i, 2, edit. 1868, iv, 429. 
 
On Taste. 159 
 
 Genius is the power of producing excellence : taste is 
 the power of perceiving the excellence thus produced in 
 its several sorts and degrees, with all their force, refine- 
 ment, distinctions, and connections. In other words, 
 taste (as it relates to the productions of art) is strictly the 
 power of being properly affected by works of genius. It 
 is the proportioning admiration to power, pleasure to 
 beauty ; it is entire sympathy with the finest impulses of 
 the imagination, not antipathy, not indifference to them. 
 The eye of taste may be said to reflect the impressions of 
 real genius, as the even mirror reflects the objects of 
 Nature in all their clearness and lustre, instead of dis- 
 torting or diminishing them ; 
 
 " Or, like a gate of steel, 
 Fronting the sun, receives and renders back 
 His figure and his heat." 
 
 To take a pride and pleasure in nothing but defects 
 (and these perhaps of the most paltry, obvious, and 
 mechanical kind) — in the disappointment and tarnishing 
 of our faith in substantial excellence, in the proofs of 
 weakness, not of power (and this where there are endless 
 subjects to feed the mind with wonder and increased 
 delight through years of patient thought and fond remem- 
 brance), is not a sign of uncommon refinement, but of 
 unaccountable perversion of taste. So, in the case of 
 Voltaire's hypercriticisms on Milton and Shakspeare, the 
 most common-place and prejudiced admirer of these 
 authors knows, as well as Voltaire can tell him, that it is 
 a fault to make a sea-port (we will say) in Bohemia, or to 
 introduce artillery and gunpowder in the war in heaven. 
 This is common to Voltaire, and the merest English 
 reader : there is nothing in it either way. But what he 
 differs from us in, and, as it is supposed, greatly to his 
 advantage, and to our infinite shame and mortification, is, 
 that this is all that he perceives, or will hear of in Milton 
 or Shakspeare, and that he either knows, or pretends to 
 
160 On Taste. 
 
 know, nothing of that prodigal waste, or studied accu- 
 mulation of grandeur, truth, and beauty, which are to be 
 found in each of these authors. Now, I cannot think 
 that, to be dull and insensible to so great and such various 
 excellence — to have no feeling in unison with it, no latent 
 suspicion of the treasures hid beneath our feet, and which 
 we trample upon with ignorant scorn — to be cut off, as by 
 a judicial blindness, from that universe of thought and 
 imagination that shifts its wondrous pageant before us — 
 to turn aside from the throng and splendour of airy 
 shapes that fancy weaves for our dazzled sight, and to 
 strut and vapour over a little pettifogging blunder in 
 geography or chronology, which a school-boy or village 
 pedagogue would be ashamed to insist upon, is any proof 
 of the utmost perfection of taste, but the contrary. At 
 this rate, it makes no difference whether Shakspeare 
 wrote his works or not, or whether the critic, who " damns 
 him into everlasting redemption " for a single slip of the 
 pen, ever read them ; he is absolved from all knowledge, 
 taste, or feeling, of the different excellences, and inimit- 
 able creations of the poet's pen — from any sympathy 
 with the wanderings and the fate of Imogen, the beauty 
 and tenderness of Ophelia, the thoughtful abstraction of 
 Hamlet ; his soliloquy on life may never have given him a 
 moment's pause, or touched his breast with one solitary 
 reflection ; the Witches in Macbeth may " lay their choppy 
 fingers upon their skinny lips" without making any 
 alteration in his pulse, and Lear's heart may break in 
 vain for him ; he may hear no strange noises in Prosperous 
 island, and the moonlight that sleeps on beds of flowers, 
 where fairies couch in the Midsummer NigMs Dream, may 
 never once have steeped his senses in repose. Nor will it 
 avail Milton to " have built high towers in heaven," nor 
 to have brought down heaven upon earth, nor that he 
 has made Satan rear his giant form before us, " Majestic 
 though in ruin," or decked the bridal bed of Eve with 
 
On Taste, 161 
 
 beauty, or clothed her with innocence, " likest heaven," 
 as she ministered to Adam and his Angel-guest. Our 
 critic knows nothing of all this, of beauty or sublimity, of 
 thought or passion, breathed in sweet or solemn sounds, 
 with all the magic of verse " in tones and numbers fit ; " 
 he lays his finger on the map, and shows you that there is 
 no sea-port for Shakspeare's weather-beaten travellers to 
 land at in Bohemia, and takes out a list of mechanical 
 inventions, and proves that gunpowder was not known till 
 long after Milton's " Battle of the Angels ; " and concludes, 
 that every one who, after these profound and important 
 discoveries, finds anything to admire in these two writers, 
 is a person without taste, or any pretensions to it. By 
 the same rule, a thorough-bred critic might prove that 
 Homer was no poet, and the Odyssey a vulgar per- 
 formance, because Ulysses makes a pun on the name of 
 Noman ; or some other disciple of the same literal school 
 might easily set aside the whole merit of Eacine's Athalie, 
 or Moliere's JEcole des Femmes, and pronounce these 
 chef-a" oeuvres of art barbarous and gothic, because the 
 characters in the first address one another (absurdly 
 enough) as Monsieur and Madame, and because the latter 
 is written in rhyme, contrary to all classical precedent. 
 These little false measures of criticism may be misapplied, 
 and retorted without end, and require to be eked out by 
 national antipathy or political prejudice to give them 
 currency and weight. Thus it was in war time that the 
 author of the Friend ventured to lump all the French 
 tragedies together as a smart collection of -epigrams, and 
 that the author of the Excursion, a poem, being portion 1 of 
 
 1 Why is the word portion here used, as if it were a portion of 
 Scripture ? 
 
 " Those strains that once did sweet in Zioa glide, 
 He wales a portion with judicious care." 
 
 Cottar's Saturday Night. 
 Now, Mr, "Wordsworth's poems, though not profane ; yet neither 
 
 M 
 
162 On Taste. 
 
 a larger poem, to be named the Recluse, made bold to call 
 Voltaire a dull prose-writer with impunity. Such pitiful 
 quackery is a cheap way of setting up for exclusive taste 
 and wisdom, by pretending to despise what is most 
 generally admired, as if nothing could come up to or 
 satisfy that ideal standard of excellence, of which the 
 person bears about the select pattern in his own mind. 
 Cb Not to admire anything " is as bad a test of wisdom as it 
 is a rule for happiness. We sometimes meet with indi- 
 viduals who have formed their whole character on this 
 maxim, and who ridiculously affect a decided and dog- 
 matical tone of superiority over others, from an uncommon 
 degree both of natural and artificial stupidity. They are 
 blind to painting — deaf to music— indifferent to poetry ; 
 and they triumph in the catalogue of their defects as the 
 fault of these arts, because they have not sense enough to 
 perceive their own want of perception. To treat any art 
 or science with contempt, is only to prove your own 
 incapacity and want of taste for it : to say that what has 
 been done best in any kind is good for nothing, is to say 
 that the utmost exertion of human ability is not equal to 
 the lowest, for the productions of the lowest are worth 
 something, except by comparison with what is better. 
 When we hear persons exclaiming that the pictures at the 
 Marquis of Stafford's 1 or Mr. Angerstein's, or those at 
 the British Gallery, are a heap of trash, we might tell 
 them that they betray in this a want, not of taste only, 
 
 are they sacred, to deserve this solemn style, though some of his 
 admirers have gone so far as to compare them, for primitive, patri- 
 archal simplicity, to the historical parts of the Bible. Much has 
 been said of the merits and defects of this large poem, which is 
 " portion of a larger ;" perhaps Horace's rule has been a double bar 
 to its success — Non satis est pulchva poemata es.se, dulcia sunto. The 
 features of this author's muse want sweetness of expression as well 
 as regularity of outline. 
 
 1 Now transferred to Bridsrewater House. — Ed. 
 
On Taste. 163 
 
 but of common-sense, fox that these collections contain 
 some of the finest specimens of the greatest masters, and 
 that that must be excellent in the productions of human 
 art, beyond which human genius, in any age or country, 
 has not been able to go.. Ask these very fastidious critics 
 what it is that they do like, and you will soon find, from 
 tracing out the objects of their secret admiration, that 
 their pretended disdain of first-rate excellence is owning 
 either to ignorance of the last refinements of works of 
 genius, or envy at the general admiration which they 
 have called forth. I have known a furious philippic 
 against the faults of shining talents and established 
 reputation subside into complacent admiration of dull 
 mediocrity, that neither tasked the kindred sensibility of 
 its admirers beyond its natural inertness, nor touched his 
 self-love with a consciousness of inferiority ; and that, by 
 never attempting original beauties, and never failing, gave 
 no opportunity to intellectual ingratitude to be plausibly 
 revenged for the pleasure or instruction it had reluctantly 
 received. So there are judges who cannot abide Mr. Kean, 
 and think Mr. Young an incomparable actor, for no other 
 leason than because he never shocks them with an idea 
 which they had not before. The only excuse for the over- 
 delicacy and supercilious indifference here described, is 
 when it arises from an intimate acquaintance with, and 
 intense admiration of, other and higher degrees of per- 
 fection and genius. A person whose mind has been 
 worked up to a lofty pitch of enthusiasm in this way 
 cannot, perhaps, condescend to notice, or be much de- 
 lighted with inferior beauties ; but, then, neither will he 
 dwell upon, and be preposterously offended with, slight 
 faults. So that the ultimate and only conclusive proof of 
 taste is, even here, not indifference but enthusiasm ; and 
 before a critic can give himself airs of superiority for 
 what he despises, he must first lay himself open to 
 reprisals, by telling us what he admires. There we may 
 
164 On Taste. 
 
 fairly join issue with him. Without this indispensable 
 condition of all true taste, absolute stupidity must be 
 more than on a par with the most exquisite refinement ; 
 and the most formidable Drawcansir of all would be the 
 most impenetrable blockhead. Thus, if we know that 
 Voltaire's contempt of Shakspeare arose from his idolatry 
 of Racine, this may excuse him in a national point of 
 view ; but he has no longer any advantage over us ; 
 and we must console ourselves as well as we can for 
 Mr. Wordsworth's not allowing us to laugh at the wit of 
 Voltaire, by laughing now and then at the only author 
 whom he is known to understand and admire ! * 
 
 Instead of making a disposition to find fault a proof of 
 taste, I would reverse the rule, and estimate every one's 
 pretensions to taste by the degree of their sensibility to 
 the highest and most various excellence. An indifference 
 to less degrees of excellence is only excusable as it arises 
 from a knowledge and admiration of higher ones ; and a 
 readiness in the detection of faults should pass for refine- 
 ment only as it is owing to a quick sense and impatient 
 love of beauties. In a word, fine taste consists in sym- 
 pathy, not in antipathy ; and the rejection of what is bad 
 is only to be accounted a virtue when it implies a pre- 
 ference of and attachment to what is better. 
 
 There is a certain point which may be considered as 
 the highest point of perfection at which the human 
 faculties can arrive in the conception and execution of 
 certain things ; to be able to reach this point in reality is 
 the greatest proof of genius and power ; and I imagine 
 that the greatest proof of taste is given in being able to 
 appreciate it when done. For instance, I have heard 
 
 1 A French teacher, in reading Titus and Berenice with an 
 English pupil, used to exclaim, in raptures, at the best passages, 
 " What have you in Shakespeare equal to this ?" This showed that 
 he had a taste for Kacine, and a power of appreciating his beauties, 
 though he might want an equal taste for Shakspeare. 
 
On Taste. 165 
 
 (and I can believe) that Madame Catalani's manner of 
 singing Hope told a flattering tale was the perfection of 
 singing ; and I cannot conceive that it would have been 
 the perfection of taste to have thought nothing at all of 
 it. There was, I understand, a sort of fluttering of the 
 voice and a breathless palpitation of the heart (like the 
 ruffling of the feathers of the robin-redbreast), which 
 completely gave back all the uneasy and thrilling volup- 
 tuousness of the sentiment ; and I contend that the person 
 on whom not a particle of this expression was lost (or 
 would have been lost, if it had been even finer), into whom 
 the tones of sweetness or tenderness sink deeper and 
 deeper as they approach the farthest verge of ecstacy or 
 agony, he who has an ear attuned to the trembling har- 
 mony, and a heart " pierceable" by pleasure's finest point, 
 is the best judge of music — not he who remains insensible 
 to the matter himself, or, if you point it out to him, asks, 
 " What of it ? " I fancied that I had a triumph, some time 
 ago, over a critic and connoisseur in music, who thought 
 little of the minuet in Don Giovanni ; but the same person 
 redeemed his pretensions to musical taste, in my opinion, 
 by saying of some passage in Mozart, " This is a soliloquy 
 equal to any in Hamlet" In hearing the accompaniment 
 in the Messiah, of angels' voices to the shepherds keeping 
 watch at night, who has the most taste and delicacy— he 
 who listens in silent rapture to the silver sounds, as they 
 rise in sweetness and soften into distance, drawing the 
 soul from earth to heaven, and making it partake of the 
 music of the spheres— or he who remains deaf to the 
 summons, and remarks that it is an allegorical conceit ? 
 Which would Handel have been most pleased with, the 
 man who was seen standing at the performance of the 
 Coronation Anthem in Westminster Abbey, with his face 
 bathed in tears, and mingling "the drops which sacred 
 joy had engendered " with that ocean of circling sound, or 
 with him who sat with frigid, critical aspect, his heart 
 
166 On Taste. 
 
 untouched and his looks unaltered as the statues on the 
 wall ? * Again, if any one, in looking at Bembrandt's 
 picture of Jacob's Dream, should not be struck with the 
 solemn awe that surrounds it, and with the dazzling flights 
 of angels' wings, like steps of golden light, emanations of 
 flame or spirit hovering between earth and sky, and should 
 observe very wisely that Jacob was thrown in one corner 
 of the picture like a bundle of clothes, without power, 
 form, or motion, and should think this a defect, I should 
 say that such a critic might possess great knowledge of 
 the mechanical part of painting, but not an atom of feeling 
 or imagination. Or who is it that, looking at the pro- 
 ductions of Eaphael or Titian, is the person of true taste, 
 he who finds what there is, or he who finds what there is 
 not, in each ? Not he who picks a petty, vulgar quarrel 
 with the colouring of Eaphael, or the drawing of Titian, 
 is the true critic and judicious spectator, but he who 
 broods over the expression of the one till it takes pos- 
 session of his soul, and who dwells on the tones and hues 
 of the other till his eye is saturated with truth and beauty ; 
 for by this means he moulds his mind to the study and 
 reception of what is most perfect in form and colour, 
 instead of letting it remain empty, " swejjt and garnished," 
 or rather a dull blank, with " knowledge at each entrance 
 quite shut out." He who cavils- at the want of drawing 
 in Titian is not the most sensible to it in Eaphael ; in- 
 
 1 It is a fashion among the scientific, or pedantic part of the 
 musical world, to decry Miss Stephens's singing as feeble and 
 insipid. This it is to take things by their contraries. Her ex- 
 cellence does not lie iu force or contrast, but in sweetness and sim- 
 plicity. To give only one instance. Any person who does not feel 
 the beauty of her singing the lines in Artaxerxes, " What was my 
 pride is now my shame," &c, in which the notes seem to fall from 
 her lips like languid drops from the bending flower, and her voice 
 flutters and dies away with the expiring conflict of passion in her 
 bosom, may console himself with the possession of other faculties, 
 but assuredly he has no ear for music. 
 
On Taste. 167 
 
 stead of that lie only insists on the latter's want of colour- 
 ing. He who is offended at Eaphael's hardness and 
 monotony is not delighted with the soft, rich pencilling of 
 Titian ; he only takes care to find fault with him for 
 wanting that which, if he possessed it in the highest 
 degree, he would not admire or understand. And this is 
 easy to be accounted for. First, such a critic has been 
 told what to do, and follows his instructions ; secondly, to 
 perceive the height of any excellence, it is necessary to 
 have the most exquisite sense of that kind of excellence 
 through all its gradations : to perceive the want of any 
 excellence, it is merely necessary to have a negative or 
 abstract notion of the thing, or perhaps only of the name ; 
 or, in other words, any, the most crude and mechanical 
 idea of a given quality is a measure of positive deficiency, 
 whereas none but the most refined idea of the same quality 
 can be a standard of superlative merit. To distinguish 
 the finest characteristics of Titian or Eaphael — to go 
 along with them in their imitation of nature, is to be so 
 far like them — to be occupied only with that in which 
 they fell short of others, instead of that in which they 
 soared above them, shows a vulgar, narrow capacity, in- 
 sensible to anything beyond mediocrity, and an ambition 
 still more grovelling. To be dazzled by admiration of 
 the greatest excellence, and of the highest works of genius, 
 is natural to the best capacities and the best natures; 
 envy and dulness are most apt to detect minute blemishes 
 and unavoidable inequalities, as we see the spots in the 
 sun by having its rays blunted by mist or smoke. It may 
 be asked, then, whether mere extravagance and enthusiasm 
 are proofs of taste ? And I answer, no ; where they are 
 without reason and knowledge. Mere sensibility is not 
 true taste, but sensibility to real excellence is. To admire 
 and be wrapt up in what is trifling or absurd, is a proof 
 of nothing but ignorance or affectation : on the contrary, 
 he who admires most what is most worthy of admiration 
 
168 On Taste. 
 
 (let his raptures or his eagerness to express them be what 
 they may), shows himself neither extravagant nor unwise. 
 When Mr. Wordsworth once said that he could read the 
 description of Satan in Milton — 
 
 " Nor seem'd 
 Less than arch-angel ruin'd, and the excess 
 Of glory obscur'd " — 
 
 till he felt a certain faintness come over his mind from a 
 sense of beauty and grandeur, I saw no extravagance in 
 this, but the utmost truth of feeling. When the same 
 author, or his friend Mr. Southey, says, that the Excursion 
 is better worth preserving than the Paradise Lost, this 
 appears to me a great piece of impertinence, or an un- 
 warrantable stretch of friendship. 
 
 The highest taste is shown in habitual sensibility to 
 the greatest beauties ; the most general taste is shown in 
 a perception of the greatest variety of excellence. Many 
 people admire Milton, and as many admire Pope, while 
 there are but few who have any relish for both. 
 Almost all the disputes on this subject arise, not so much 
 from false as from confined taste. We suppose that only 
 one thing can have merit ; and that, if we allow it to 
 anything else, we deprive the favourite object of our 
 critical faith of the honours due to it. We are generally 
 right in what we approve ourselves, for liking proceeds 
 from a certain conformity of objects to the taste ; as we 
 are generally wrong in condemning what others admire, 
 for our dislike mostly proceeds from a want of taste for 
 what pleases them. Our being totally senseless to what 
 excites extreme delight in those who have as good a right 
 to judge as we have, in all human probability, implies a 
 defect of faculty in us rather than a limitation in the 
 resources of nature or art. Those who are pleased with 
 the fewest things, know the least ; as those who are 
 pleased with everything, know nothing. Shakspeare 
 makes Mrs. Quickly say of Falstaff, by a pleasant blunder, 
 
' On Taste. 169 
 
 that "A' could never abide carnation." 1 So there are 
 persons who cannot like Claude, because he is not 
 Salvator Eosa ; some who cannot endure Eembrandt, and 
 others who would not cross the street to see a Vandyke ; 
 one reader does not like the neatness of Junius, and 
 another objects to the extravagance of Burke ; and they 
 are all right, if they expect to find in others what is only 
 to be found in their favourite author or artist, but equally 
 wrong if they mean to say that each of those they would 
 condemn by a narrow and arbitrary standard of taste, has 
 not a peculiar and transcendent merit of his own. The 
 question is not whether you like a certain excellence (it is 
 your own fault if you do not), but whether another pos- 
 sessed it in a very eminent degree. If he did not, who is 
 there that possessed it in a greater — that ranks above him 
 in that particular ? Those who are accounted the best, 
 are the best in their line. When we say that Eembrandt 
 was a master of chiaroscuro, for instance, we do not say 
 that he joined to this the symmetry of the Greek statues, 
 but we mean that we must go to him for the perfection of 
 chiaroscuro, and that a Greek statue has not chiaroscuro. 
 If any one objects to Junius's Letters, that they are a 
 tissue of epigrams, we answer, be it so ; it is for that very 
 reason that we admire them. Again, should any one find 
 fault with Mr. Burke's writings as a collection of rhap- 
 sodies, the proper answer always would be, " Who is there 
 that has written finer rhapsodies ? " I know an admirer 
 of Don Quixote who can see no merit in Gil Bias, and an 
 admirer of Gil Bias who could never get through Don 
 Quixote. I myself have great pleasure in reading both 
 these works, and in that respect think I have an advantage 
 over both these critics. It always struck me as a singular 
 proof of good taste, good sense, and liberal thinking, in 
 an old friend, 2 who had Paine's Bights of Manendi Burke's 
 
 1 Henry V., ii, 3. 
 
 2 The Eev. Joseph Fawcett; see Memoirs, J 867, i. 81, and ii. 
 291.— Ed. 
 
170 On Taste. 
 
 Reflections on the French Revolution bound up in one 
 volume, and who said, that, both together, they made a 
 very good book. To agree with the greatest number of 
 sound judges is to be in the right, and sound judges are 
 persons of natural sensibility and acquired knowledge. 1 
 On the other hand, it must be owned, there are critics 
 whose praise is a libel, and whose recommendation of any 
 work is enough to condemn it. Men of the greatest 
 genius are not always persons of the most liberal and 
 unprejudiced taste. They have a strong bias to certain 
 qualities themselves, are for reducing others to their own 
 standard, and lie less open to the general impressions of 
 things. This exclusive preference of their own peculiar 
 excellences to those of others, in writers whose merits 
 have not been sufficiently understood or acknowledged by 
 their contemporaries, chiefly because they were not com- 
 monplace, may sometimes be seen mounting up to a 
 degree of bigotry and intolerance, little short of insanity. 
 There are some critics I have known who never allow an 
 author any merit till all the world " cry out upon him," 
 and others who never allow another any merit that any 
 one can discover but themselves. If there are con- 
 noisseurs who spend their lives and waste their breath in 
 extolling sublime passages in obscure writers, and lovers 
 who choose their mistresses for their ugly faces, this is 
 not taste but affectation. What is popular is not neces- 
 sarily vulgar ; and that which we try to rescue from fatal 
 obscurity, had in general much better remain where it is. 
 Taste relates to that which, either in the objects of 
 nature, or the imitation of them or the Fine Arts in general 
 is calculated to give pleasure. Now, to know what is cal- 
 culated to give pleasure, the way is to enquire what does 
 
 1 I apprehend that natural is of more importance than acquired 
 sensibility. Thus, any one, without having been at an opera, may 
 judge of opera dancing, only from having seen (with judicious eyes) 
 a stag bound across a lawn, or a tree wave its branches in the air. 
 In all, the general principles of motion are the same. 
 
On Taste. 171 
 
 give pleasure : so that taste is, after all, much more a matter 
 of fact and less of theory than might be imagined. We 
 may hence determine another point, viz. — whether there is 
 any universal or exclusive standard of taste, since this is 
 to inquire, in other words, whether there is any one thing 
 that pleases all the world alike, or whether there is only 
 one thing that pleases anybody, both which questions carry 
 their own answers with them. Still it does not follow, 
 because there is no dogmatic or bigoted standard of taste, 
 like a formula of faith, which whoever does not believe 
 without doubt he shall be dammed everlastingly, that there 
 is no standard of taste whatever, that is to say, that 
 certain things are not more apt to please than others, that 
 some do not please more generally, that there are not 
 others that give most pleasure to those who have studied 
 the subject, that one nation is most susceptible of a par- 
 ticular kind of beauty, and another of another, according 
 to their characters, &c. It would be a difficult attempt to 
 force all these into one general rule or system, and yet 
 equally so to deny that they are absolutely capricious, and 
 without any foundation or principle whatever. There are, 
 doubtless, books for children that we discard as we grow 
 up ; yet, what are the majority of mankind, or even 
 readers, but grown children ? If put to the vote of ail the 
 milliners' girls in London, Old Mortality, or even Heart oj 
 Mid-Lothian, would not carry the day (or, at least, not 
 very triumpantly) over a common Minerva-press novel ; 
 and I will hazard another opinion, that no women ever 
 liked Burke. Mr. Pratt, on the contrary, said that he had 
 to " boast of many learned and beautiful suffrages." 1 
 It is not, then, solely from the greatest number of voices, 
 but from the opinion of the greatest number of well- 
 informed minds, that we can establish, if not an absolute 
 standard, at least a comparative scale, of taste. Certainly, 
 
 1 In answer to a criticism by Mr. Godwin on his poem called 
 Sympathy. 
 
172 On Taste. 
 
 it can hardly be doubted that the greater the number of 
 persons of strong natural sensibility or love for any art, 
 and who have paid the closest attention to it, who agree 
 in their admiration of any work of art, the higher do its 
 pretensions rise to classical taste and intrinsic beauty. In 
 this way, as the opinion of a thousand good judges may 
 outweigh that of nearly all the rest of the world, so there 
 may be one individual among them whose opinion may 
 outweigh that of the other nine hundred and ninety-nine ; 
 that is, one of a still stronger and more refined perception 
 of beauty than all the rest, and to whose opinion that of 
 the others and of the world at large would approximate and 
 be conformed, as their taste or perception of what was 
 pleasing became stronger and more confirmed by exercise 
 and proper objects to call it forth. Thus, if we were still 
 to insist on an universal standard of taste, it must be that, 
 not which does, but which would please universally, sup- 
 posing all men to have paid an equal attention to any 
 subject and to have an equal relish for it, which can only 
 be guessed at by the imperfect and yet more than casual 
 agreement among those who have done so from choice and 
 feeling. Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for 
 receiving pleasure from works of imagination, &c. It is 
 time, however, to apply this rule. There is, for instance, 
 a much greater number of habitual readers and play-goers 
 in France, who are devoted admirers of Racine or Moliere 
 than there are in England of Shakspeare : does Shak- 
 speare's fame rest, then, on a less broad and solid founda- 
 tion than that of either of the others ? I think not, 
 supposing that the class of judges to whom Shakspeare's 
 excellences appeal are a higher, more independent, and 
 more original court of criticism, and that their suffrages 
 are quite as unanimous (though not so numerous) in the 
 one case as in the other. A simile or a sentiment is not 
 the worse in common opinion for being somewhat super- 
 ficial and hackneyed, but it is the worse in poetry. The 
 

 On Taste. 173 
 
 perfection of commonplace is that which would unite the 
 greatest number of suffrages, if there were not a tribunal 
 above commonplace. For instance, in Shakspeare's de- 
 scription of flowers, primroses are mentioned — 
 
 " That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty :" x 
 
 Now, I do not know that this expression is translatable 
 into French, or intelligible to the common reader of either 
 nation, but raise the scale of fancy, passion, and observa- 
 tion of nature to a certain point, and I will be bold to say- 
 that there will be no scruple entertained whether this 
 single metaphor does not contain more poetry of the kind 
 than is to be found in all Eacine. As no Frenchman 
 could write it, so I believe no Frenchman can understand 
 it. We cannot take this insensibility on their part as a 
 mark of our superiority, for we have plenty of persons 
 among ourselves in the same predicament, but not the 
 wisest or most refined, and to these the appeal is fair from 
 the many — " and fit audience find, though few." So I 
 think it requires a higher degree of taste to judge of 
 Titian's portraits than Eaphael's scripture pieces : not 
 that I think more highly of the former than the latter, but 
 the world and connoisseurs in general think there is no 
 comparison (from the dignity of the subject), whereas I 
 think it difficult to decide which are the finest. Here 
 again we have a commonplace, a preconception, the 
 moulds of the judgment preoccupied by certain assump- 
 tions of degrees and classes of excellence, instead of 
 judging from the true and genuine impressions of things. 
 Men of genius, or those who can produce excellence would 
 be the best judges of it — poets of poetry, painters of 
 painting, &c. — but that persons of original and strong 
 pow r ers of mind are too much disposed to refer everything 
 to their own peculiar bias, and are comparatively indif- 
 
 1 Winter's Tale, iv. 3, edit. 1868, iii. 4C9. 
 
174 On Taste. 
 
 ferent to merely passive impressions. On the other hand, 
 it is wholly wrong to oppose taste to genius, for genius in 
 works of art is nothing but the power of producing what is 
 beautiful (which, however, implies the intimate sense of it), 
 though this is something very different from mere negative 
 or formal beauties, which have as little to do with taste as 
 genius. 
 
 I have, in a former essay, ascertained one principal of 
 taste or excellence in the arts of imitation, where it was 
 shown that objects of sense are not as it were simple and 
 self-evident propositions, but admit of endless analysis and 
 the most subtle investigation. We do not see nature with 
 our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. 
 To suppose that we see the whole of any object, merely by 
 looking at it, is a vulgar error : we fancy that we do, 
 because we are, of course, conscious of no more than we see 
 in it, but this circle of our knowledge enlarges with further 
 acquaintance and study, and we then perceive that what 
 we perhaps barely distinguished in the gross, or regarded 
 as a dull blank, is full of beauty, meaning, and curious 
 details. He sees most of nature who understands its 
 language best, or connects one thing with the greatest 
 number of other things. Expression is the key to the 
 human countenance, and unfolds a thousand imperceptible 
 distinctions. How, then, should every one be a judge ot 
 pictures, when so few are of faces ? A merely ignorant 
 spectator, walking through a gallery of pictures, no more 
 distinguishes the finest than your dog would, if he was to 
 accompany you. Do not even the most experienced dis- 
 pute on the preference, and shall the most ignorant decide ? 
 A vulgar connoisseur would even prefer a Denner to a 
 Titian, because there is more of merely curious and specific 
 detail. We may hence account for another circumstance, 
 why things please in the imitation which do not in reality. 
 If we saw the whole of anything, or if the object in nature 
 were merely one thing, this could not be the case. But 
 
On Taste. 175 
 
 the fact is, that in the imitation, or in the scientific study 
 of any object, we come to an analysis of the details or some 
 other abstract view of the subject which we had overlooked 
 in a cursory examination, and these may be beautiful or 
 curious, though the object in the gross is disgusting, or 
 connected with disagreeable or uninteresting associations. 
 Thus, in a picture of still life, as a shell or a marble 
 chimney-piece, the stains or the gradations of colour may 
 be delicate, and subjects for a new and careful imitation, 
 though the tout ensemble has not, like a living face, the 
 highest beauty of intelligence and expression. Here lie 
 and here return the true effects and triumphs of art. It is 
 not in making the eye a microscope, but in making it the 
 interpreter and organ of all that can touch the soul and 
 the affections, that the perfection of fine art is shown. 
 Taste, then, does not place in the first rank of merit what 
 merely proves difficulty or gratifies curiosity, unless it is 
 combined with excellence and sentiment, or the pleasures of 
 imagination and the moral sense. In this case the 
 pleasure is more than doubled, where not only the imitation 
 but the thing imitated, is fine in itself. Hence the pre- 
 ference given to Italian over Dutch pictures. 
 
 In respect to the imitation of nature, I would further 
 observe that I think Sir Joshua Eeynolds was wrong in 
 making the grandeur of the design depend on the omission 
 of the details, or the want of finishing. This seems also 
 to proceed on the supposition that there cannot be two 
 views of nature, but that the details are opposed to and 
 inconsistent with an attention to general effect. Now this 
 is evidently false, since the two things are undoubtedly 
 combined by nature. For instance, the grandeur of design 
 or character in the arch of an eyebrow is not injured or 
 destroyed in reality by the hair-lines of which it is com- 
 posed. Nor is the general form or outline of the eyebrow 
 altered in the imitation, whether you make it one rude 
 mass or descend into the minutiae of the parts, which are 
 
176 On Taste. 
 
 arranged in such a manner as to produce the arched form 
 and give the particular expression. So the general form of 
 a nose, say an aquiline one, is not affected, whether I paint 
 a wart which may happen to be on it or not, and so of the 
 outline and proportions of the whole face. That is, general 
 effect is consistent with individual details, and though these 
 are not necessary to it, yet they often assist it, and always 
 confirm the sense of verisimilitude. The most finished 
 paintings, it is true, are not the grandest in effect ; but 
 neither is it true that the greatest daubs are the most 
 sublime in character and composition. The best painters 
 have combined an eye to the whole with careful finishing, 
 and as there is a medium in all things, so the rule here 
 seems to be not to go on ad infinitum with the details, but 
 to stop when the time and labour necessary seem, in the 
 judgment of the artist, to exceed the benefit produced. 
 
 Beauty does not consist in a medium, but in gradation 
 or harmony. It has been the fashion of late to pretend to 
 refer everything to association of ideas (and it is difficult 
 to answer this appeal, since association, by its nature, 
 mixes up with everything), but as Hartley has himself 
 observed, who carried this principle to the utmost extent, 
 and might be supposed -to understand its limits, association 
 implies something to be associated, and if there is a 
 pleasing association, there must be first something natu- 
 rally pleasing from which the secondary satisfaction is 
 reflected, or to which it is conjoined. The chirping of 
 a sparrow is as much a rural and domestic sound as the 
 notes of the robin or the thrush, but it does not serve as a 
 point to link other interests to because it wants beauty in 
 itself ; and, on the other hand, the song of the nightingale 
 draws more attention to itself as a piece of music, and 
 conveys less sentiment than the simple note of the 
 cuckoo, which, from its solitary singularity, acts as the 
 warning voice of time. Those who deny that there is a 
 
On Taste. 177 
 
 gradation, might as well affirm that sudden and abrupt 
 transitions do not make our impressions more distinct as 
 that they do not make them more harsh and violent. 
 Beauty consists in gradation of colours or symmetry of 
 form (conformity) : strength or sublimity arises from the 
 sense of power, and is aided by contrast. The ludicrous 
 is the incoherent, arising, not from a conflicting power, 
 but from weakness or the inability of any habitual 
 impulse to sustain itself. The ideal is not confined to 
 creation, but takes place in imitation, where a thing is 
 subjected to one view, as all the parts of a face to the 
 same expression. Invention is only feigning according to 
 nature, or with a certain proportion between causes and 
 effects. Poetry is infusing the same spirit into a number 
 of things, or bathing them all, as it were, in the same 
 overflowing sense of delight (making the language also 
 soft and musical), as the same torch kindles a number of 
 lamps. I think invention is chiefly confined to poetry 
 and words or ideas, and has little place in painting or 
 concrete imagery, where the want of truth, or of the actual 
 object, soon spoils the effect and force of the representa- 
 tion. Indeed, I think all genius is, in a great measure, 
 national and local, arising out of times and circumstances, 
 and being sustained at its full height by these alone, and 
 that originality is not a deviation from, but a recurrence 
 to nature. Eules and models destroy genius and art ; and 
 the excess of the artificial in the end cures itself, for it in 
 time becomes so uniform and vapid as to be altogether 
 contemptible, and to seek perforce some other outlet or 
 purchase for the mind to take hold of. 
 
 The metaphysical theory above premised will account 
 not only for the difficulty of imitating nature, but for the 
 excellence of various masters, and the diversity and 
 popularity of different styles. If the truth of sense and 
 nature were one, there could be but one mode of repre- 
 senting it, more or less correct. But nature contains an 
 
 N 
 
178 Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 
 
 infinite variety of parts, with their relations and significa- 
 tions, and different artists take these, and all together do 
 not give the whole. Thus Titian coloured, Raphael 
 designed, Eubens gave the florid hue and motions, Rem- 
 brandt chiaroscuro, &c. ; but none of these reached perfec- 
 tion in their several departments, much less with reference 
 to the whole circumference of art. It is ridiculous to 
 suppose there is but one standard or one style. One artist 
 looks at objects with as different an eye from another, as 
 he does from the mathematician. It is erroneous to tie 
 down individual genius to ideal models. Each person 
 should do that, not which is best in itself, even supposing 
 this could be known, but that which he can do best, 
 which he will find out if left to himself. Spenser could 
 not have written Paradise Lost, nor Milton the Faerie 
 Queene. Those who aim at faultless regularity will only 
 produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection 
 except by stealth, and unknown to themselves. Did 
 Correggio know what he had done when he had painted 
 the " St. Jerome" — or Rembrandt when he made the 
 sketch of " Jacob's Dream ? " Oh, no ! Those who are 
 conscious of their powers never do anything. 
 
 Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 
 
 Because it is taken for granted that they must be amiable 
 and interesting, in the first instance, which, like other 
 things that are taken for granted, is but indifferently, or 
 indeed cannot be, made out at all in the sequel. To put 
 it to the proof, to give illustrations of it, would be to 
 throw a doubt upon the question. They have only to 
 show themselves to ensure conquest. Indeed, the repu- 
 tation of their victories goes before them, and is a pledge 
 of their success before they even appear. They are, or 
 are supposed to be, so amiable, so handsome, so accom- 
 
 
Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 179 
 
 plished, so captivating, that all hearts bow before them, 
 and all the women are in love with them without knowing 
 why or wherefore, except that it is understood that they 
 are to be so. All obstacles vanish without a finger lifted 
 or a word spoken, and the effect is produced without a 
 blow being struck. When there is this imaginary charm 
 at work, everything they could do or say must weaken 
 the impression, like arguments brought in favour of a 
 self-evident truth : they very wisely say or do little or 
 nothing, rely on their names and the author's good word, 
 look, smile, and are adored ; but to all but the heroines of 
 romance and their confidantes, are exceedingly unin- 
 teresting and commonplace personages, either great cox- 
 combs or wonderfully insipid. When a lover is able to 
 look unutterable things which produce the desired effect, 
 what occasion for him to exert his eloquence or make an 
 impassioned speech, in order to bring about a revolution 
 in his favour, which is already accomplished by other less 
 doubtful means ? When the impression at first sight is 
 complete and irresistible, why throw away any farther 
 thoughts or words to make it more so ? This were " to 
 gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to smooth the ice, to 
 throw a perfume on the violet, or add another hue unto 
 the rainbow, or seek with taper-light the beauteous eye of 
 Heaven to garnish," which has been pronounced to be 
 " wasteful and superfluous excess." Authors and novel- 
 writers therefore reserve for their second-rate and less 
 prominent characters, the artillery of words, the arts of 
 persuasion, and all the unavailing battery of hopeless 
 attentions and fine sentiment, which are of no use to the 
 more accomplished gallant, who makes his triumphant 
 approaches by stolen glances and breathing sighs, and 
 whose appearance alone supersedes the disclosure of all 
 his other implied perfections and an importunate display 
 of a long list of titles to the favour of the fair, which, as 
 they are not insisted on, it would be vain and unbecoming 
 
180 Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 
 
 to produce to the gaze of the world, or for the edification 
 of the curious reader. It is quite enough if the lady is 
 satisfied with her choice, and if (as generally happens 
 both as a cause and consequence in such cases) the gentle- 
 man is satisfied with himself. If he indeed seemed to 
 entertain a doubt upon the subject, the spell of his fasci- 
 nation would be broken, and the author would be obliged 
 to derogate from the beau ideal of his character, and make 
 him do something to deserve the good opinion that might 
 be entertained of him, and to which he himself had not 
 led the way by boundless self-complacency and the 
 conscious assurance of infallible success. 
 
 Another circumstance that keeps our novel heroes in 
 the background is, that if there was any doubt of their 
 success, or they were obliged to employ the ordinary and 
 vulgar means to establish their superiority over every one 
 else, they would be no longer those ik faultless monsters" 
 which it is understood that they must be to fill their part 
 in the drama. The discarded or despairing, not the 
 favoured lovers, are unavoidably the most interesting 
 persons in the story. In fact, the principals are already 
 disposed of in the first page ; they are destined for each 
 other by an unaccountable and uncontrollable sympathy : 
 the ceremony is in a manner over, and they are already 
 married people, with all the lawful attributes and indif- 
 ference belonging to the character. To produce an 
 interest, there must be mixed motives, alternate hope and 
 fear, difficulties to struggle with, sacrifices to make ; but 
 the true hero of romance is too fine a gentleman to be 
 subjected to this rude ordeal or mortifying exposure, 
 which devolves upon some much more unworthy and 
 unpretending personage. The beauty of the outline must 
 not be disturbed by the painful conflicts of passion or the 
 strong contrast of light and shade. The taste of the 
 heroic cannot swerve for a moment from the object of its 
 previous choice, who must never be placed in disdvan- 
 
 
Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 181 
 
 tageous circumstances. The top characters occupy a 
 certain prescriptive rank in the world of romance, by the 
 rules of etiquette and laws of this sort of fictitious com- 
 position, reign like princes, and have only to do nothing 
 to forfeit their privileges or compromise their supposed 
 dignity. 
 
 The heroes of the old romances, the Grand Cyruses, 
 the Artamenes, and Oroondates, are in this respect better 
 than the moderns. They had their steel helmet and 
 plume of feathers, the glittering spear and shield, the 
 barbed steed, and the spread banner, and had knightly 
 service to perform in joust and tournament, in the field of 
 battle or the deep forest, besides the duty which they 
 owed to their "mistress' eyebrow," and the favours they 
 received at her hands. They were comparatively pic- 
 turesque and adventurous personages, and men of action 
 in the tented field, and lost all title to the smile of beauty 
 if they did not deserve it by feats of prowess, and by the 
 valour of their arms. However insipid they might be as 
 accepted lovers, in their set speeches and improgressive 
 languishments by which they paid their court to their 
 hearts' idols, the " fairest of the fair," yet in their cha- 
 racter of warriors and heroes, they were men of mettle, 
 and had something in them. They did not merely sigh 
 and smile and kneel in the presence of their mistresses — 
 they had to unhorse their adversaries in combat, to storm 
 castles, to vanquish giants, and lead armies. So far, so 
 well. In the good old times of chivalry and romance, 
 favour was won and maintained by the bold achievements 
 and fair fame of the chosen knight, which keeps up a 
 show of suspense and dramatic interest, instead of depend- 
 ing, as in more effeminate times, on taste, sympathy, and 
 a refinement of sentiment and manners, of the delicacy of 
 which it is impossible to convey any idea by words or 
 actions. Even in the pompous and affected courtship of 
 the romances of the seventeenth century (now, alas! 
 
182 Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 
 
 exploded) tlie interviews between the lovers are so rare 
 and guarded, their union, though agreed upon and in- 
 evitable, is so remote, the smile with which the lady- 
 regards her sworn champion, though as steady as that of 
 one of the fixed stars, is like them so cold, as to give a 
 tone of passion and interest to their enamoured flights as 
 though they were affected by the chances and changes of 
 sublunary affairs. I confess I have read some of these 
 fabulous folios formerly with no small degree of delight 
 and breathless anxiety, particularly that of Cassandra; 
 and would willingly indeed go over it again to catch even 
 a faint, a momentary glimpse of the pleasure with which 
 I used at one period to peruse its prolix descriptions and 
 high-flown sentiments. Not only the Palmerins of Eng- 
 land and Amadises of Gaul, who made their way to their 
 mistresses' hearts by slaying giants and taming dragons, 
 but the heroes of the French romances of intrigue and 
 gallantry which succeeded those of necromancy and chi- 
 valry, and where the adventurers for the prize have to 
 break through the fences of morality and scruples of 
 conscience instead of stone-walls and enchantments dire, 
 are to be excepted from the censure of downright insipid- 
 ity, which attaches to those ordinary drawing-room heroes, 
 who are installed in the good graces of their divinities by 
 a look, and keep their places there by the force of still 
 life ! It is Gray who cries out, " Be mine to read eternal 
 new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon ! " I could say 
 the same of those of Madame La Fayette and the Duke de 
 la Eochefoucault. The Princess of Cleves is a most charm- 
 ing work of this kind ; and the Due de Nemours is a great 
 favourite with me. He is perhaps the most brilliant 
 personage that ever entered upon the tapis of a drawing- 
 room, or trifled at a lady's toilette. 
 
 I prefer him, I own, vastly to Eichardson's Sir Charles 
 Grandison, whom I look upon as the prince of coxcombs ; 
 and so much the more impertinent as he is a moral one. 
 
Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 183 
 
 His character appears to me " ugly all over with affec- 
 tation." There is not a single thing that Sir Charles 
 Grandison does or says all through the book from liking 
 to any person or object but himself, and with a view to 
 answer to a certain standard of perfection for which he 
 pragmatically sets up. He is always thinking of himself, 
 and trying to show that he is the wisest, happiest, and 
 most virtuous person in the whole world. He is (or 
 would be thought) a code of Christian ethics — a com- 
 pilation and abstract of all gentlemanly accomplishments. 
 There is nothing, I conceive, that excites so little sym- 
 pathy as this inordinate egotism ; or so much disgust as 
 this everlasting self-complacency. Yet his self-admiration, 
 brought forward on every occasion as the incentive to 
 every action and reflected from all around him, is the 
 burden and pivot of the story. " Is not the man Sir 
 Charles Grandison?" is what he and all the other 
 persons concerned are continually repeating to themselves. 
 His preference of the little, insignificant, selfish, affected, 
 puritanical Miss Byron, who is remarkable for nothing 
 but her conceit of herself and her lover, to the noble 
 Clementina, must for ever stamp him for the poltroon and 
 blockhead that he was. What a contrast between these 
 two females — the one, the favourite heroine, settling her 
 idle punctilios and the choice of her ribbons for the 
 wedding-day with equal interest, the other, self-devoted, 
 broken-hearted, generous, disinterested, pouring out her 
 whole soul in the fervent expressions and dying struggles 
 of an unfortunate and hopeless affection ! It was im- 
 possible indeed for the genius of the author (strive all 
 he could) to put the prettiness and coquettish scruples 
 of the bride elect upon a par with the eloquent despair 
 and impassioned sentiments of her majestic but unsuc- 
 cessful rival. Nothing can show more clearly that the 
 height of good fortune, and of that conventional fault- 
 lessness which is supposed to secure it, is incompatible 
 
184 Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 
 
 with any great degree of interest. Lady Clementina 
 should have been married to Sir Charles to surfeit her 
 of a coxcomb — Miss Byron to Lovelace to plague her 
 with a rake ! Have we not sometimes seen such matches ? 
 A slashing critic of my acquaintance once observed, that 
 Ci Kichardson would be surprised in the next world to 
 find Lovelace in Heaven and Grandison in Hell ! " 
 Without going this orthodox length, I must say there 
 is something in Lovelace's vices more attractive than in 
 the other's best virtues. Clarissa's attachment seems as 
 natural as Clementina's is romantic. There is a regality 
 about Lovelace's manner, and he appears clothed in a 
 panoply of wit, gaiety, spirit, and enterprise, that is 
 criticism-proof. If he had not possessed these dazzling 
 qualities, nothing could have made us forgive for an 
 instant his treatment of the spotless Clarissa ; but indeed 
 they might be said to be mutually attracted to and ex- 
 tinguished in each other's dazzling lustre ! When we 
 think of Lovelace and his luckless exploits, we can hardly 
 be persuaded at this time of day that he wore a wig. 
 Yet that he did so is evident ; for Miss Howe, when she 
 gave him that spirited box on the ear, struck the powder 
 out of it ! Mr. B. in Pamela has all the insipidity that 
 arises from patronising beauty and condescending to 
 virtue. Pamela herself is delightfully made out : but she 
 labours under considerable disadvantages, and is far from 
 a regular heroine. 
 
 Sterne (thank God !) has neither hero nor heroine, and 
 he does very well without them. 
 
 Many people find fault with Fielding's Tom Jones as 
 gross and immoral. For my part, I have doubts of his 
 being so very handsome, from the author's always talking 
 about his beauty, and I suspect he was a clown, from 
 being constantly assured he was so very genteel. Other- 
 wise, I think Jones acquits himself very well both in his 
 actions and speeches, as a lover and as a trencher-man, 
 

 Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 185 
 
 whenever he is called upon. Some persons, from their 
 antipathy to that headlong impulse, of which Jones was 
 the slave, and to that morality of good-nature which in 
 him is made a foil to principle, have gone so far as to 
 prefer Blifil as the prettier felloio of the two. I certainly 
 cannot subscribe to this opinion, which perhaps was never 
 meant to have followers, and has nothing but its singu- 
 larity to recommend it. Joseph Andrews is a hero of 
 the shoulder-knot : it would be hard to canvass his 
 pretensions too severely, especially considering what a 
 patron he has in Parson Adams. That one character 
 would cut up into a hundred fine gentlemen and novel 
 heroes! Booth is another of the good-natured tribe, a 
 fine man, a very fine man ! But there is a want of spirit 
 to animate the well-meaning mass. He hardly deserved 
 to have the hashed mutton kept waiting for him. The 
 author has redeemed himself in Amelia ; but a heroine 
 with a broken nose, and who was a married woman besides, 
 must be rendered truly interesting and amiable to make 
 u,p for superficial objections. The character of the 
 Nobleman in this novel is not insipid. If Fielding 
 could have made virtue as admirable as he could make 
 vice detestable, he would have been a greater master even 
 than he was. I do not understand what those critics 
 mean who say he got all his characters out of ale-houses. 
 It is true he did some of them. 
 
 Smollett's heroes are neither one thing nor the other ; 
 neither very refined nor very insipid. Wilson in 
 Humphrey Clinker comes the nearest to the beau ideal of 
 this character, the favourite of the novel-reading and 
 boarding-school girl. Narcissa and Emilia Gauntlet are 
 very charming girls ; and Monimia in Count FatJiom is 
 a fine monumental beauty. But perhaps he must be 
 allowed to be most at home in Winifred Jenkins ! 
 
 The women have taken this matter up in our own time : 
 let us see what they have made of it. Mrs. Badcliffe's 
 
186 Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 
 
 heroes and lovers are perfect in their kind ; nobody can 
 find any fault with them, for nobody knows anything 
 about them. They are described as very handsome, and 
 quite unmeaning and inoffensive. 
 
 14 Her heroes have no character at all." 
 
 Theodore, Valancourt, — what delightful names ! and 
 there is nothing else to distinguish them by. Perhaps, 
 however, this indefiniteness is an advantage. We add 
 expression to the inanimate outline, and fill up the blank 
 with all that is amiable, interesting, and romantic. A 
 long ride without a word spoken, a meeting that comes to 
 nothing, a parting look, a moonlight scene, or evening 
 skies that paint their sentiments for them better than the 
 lovers can do for themselves, farewells too full of anguish, 
 deliverances too big with joy to admit of words, suppressed 
 sighs, faint smiles, the freshness of the morning, pale 
 melancholy, the clash of swords, the clank of chains that 
 make the fair one's heart sink within her, these are the 
 chief means by which the admired authoress of the 
 Romance of tlie Forest and the Mysteries of Udolpho keep's 
 alive an ambiguous interest in the bosom of her fastidious 
 readers, and elevates the lover into the hero of the fable. 
 Unintelligible distinctions, impossible attempts, a delicacy 
 that shrinks from the most trifling objection, and an 
 enthusiasm that rushes on its fate, such are the charming 
 and teazing contradictions that form the flimsy texture 
 of a modern romance ! If the lover in such critical cases 
 was anything but a lover, he would cease to be the most 
 amiable of all characters in the abstract and by way of 
 excellence, and would be a traitor to the cause ; to give 
 reasons or to descend to particulars, is to doubt the omni- 
 potence of love and shake the empire of credulous fancy ; 
 a sounding name, a graceful form, are all that is necessary 
 to suspend the whole train of tears, sighs, and the softest 
 emotions upon ; the ethereal nature of the passion requires 
 
Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 187 
 
 ethereal food to sustain it; and our youthful hero, in 
 order to be perfectly interesting, must be drawn as 
 perfectly insipid ! 
 
 I cannot, however, apply this charge to Mrs. Inchbald's 
 heroes or heroines. However finely drawn, they are an 
 essence of sentiment. Their words are composed of the 
 warmest breath, their tears scald, their sighs stifle. Her 
 characters seem moulded of a softer clay, the work of 
 fairest hands. Miss Milner is enchanting. Doriforth 
 indeed is severe, and has a very stately opinion of himself, 
 but he has spirit and passion. Lord Norwynne is the 
 most unpleasant and obdurate. He seduces by his 
 situation and kills by indifference, as is natural in such 
 cases But still through all these the fascination of the 
 writer's personal feelings never quits you. On the other 
 hand, Miss Burney's (Madame D'Arblay's) forte is ridi- 
 cule, or an exquisite tact for minute absurdities ; when she 
 aims at being fine, she only becomes affected. No one 
 had ever much less of the romantic. Lord Orville is a 
 condescending suit of clothes; yet, certainly, the sense 
 which Evelina has of the honour done her is very prettily 
 managed. Sir Clement Willoughby is a much gayer and 
 more animated person, though his wit outruns his dis- 
 cretion. Young Delville is the hero of punctilio — a 
 perfect diplomatist in the art of love-making — and draws 
 his parallels and sits down as deliberately before the 
 citadel of his mistress' heart, as a cautious general lays 
 siege to an impregnable fortress. Cecilia is not behind- 
 hand with him in the game of studied cross -purposes and 
 affected delays, and is almost the veriest and most pro- 
 voking trifler on record. Miss Edge worth, I believe, 
 has no heroes. Her trenchant pen cuts away all extrava- 
 gance and idle pretence, and leaves nothing but common 
 sense, prudence, and propriety behind it, wherever it 
 comes. 
 
 I do not apprehend that the heroes of the author of 
 
188 Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 
 
 Waverley form any very striking exception to the common 
 rule. They conform to their designation and follow the 
 general law of their being. They are, for the most part, 
 very equivocal and undecided personages, who ^receive 
 their governing impulse from accident, or are puppets in 
 the hands of their mistresses, such as Ivanhoe, Frank 
 Osbaldistone, Henry Morton, &c. I do not say that any 
 of these are absolutely insipid, but they have in them- 
 selves no leading or master-traits, and they are worked 
 out of very listless and inert materials, into a degree of 
 force and prominence, solely by the genius of the author. 
 Instead of acting, they are acted upon, and keep in the 
 back-ground and in a neutral posture, till they are 
 absolutely forced to come forward, and it is then with a 
 very amiable reservation of modest scruples. Does it not 
 seem almost, or generally speaking, as if a character, to 
 be put in this responsible situation of candidate for the 
 highest favour of the public at large, or of the fair in 
 particular, who is to conciliate all suffrages and con- 
 centrate all interests, must really have nothing in him to 
 please or give offence, that he must be left a negative, 
 feeble character, without untractable or uncompromising 
 points, and with a few slight recommendations and obvious 
 good qualities, which every one may be supposed to im- 
 prove upon and fill up according to his or her inclination 
 or fancy and the model of perfection previously existing 
 in the mind ? It is a privilege claimed, no doubt, by the 
 fair reader to make out the object of her admiration and 
 interest according to her own choice ; and the same 
 privilege, if not openly claimed, may be covertly exercised 
 by others. We are all fond of our own creations ; and if 
 the author does little to his chief character, and allows us 
 to have a considerable hand in it, it may not suffer in our 
 opinion from this circumstance. In fact, the hero of the 
 work is not so properly the chief object in it, as a sort of 
 blank left open to the imagination, or a lay-figure on 
 
Wluj the Heroes of Romances are Insipid. 189 
 
 which the reader disposes whatever drapery he pleases ! 
 Of all Sir Walter's male characters the most dashing and 
 spirited is the Sultan Saladin. But he is not meant for a 
 hero, nor fated to be a lover. He is a collateral and in- 
 cidental performer in the scene. His movements therefore 
 remain free, and he is master of his own resplendent 
 energies, which produce so much the more daring and 
 felicitous an effect. So far from being intended to please 
 all tastes, or the most squeamish, he is not meant for any 
 taste. He has no pretensions, and stands upon the sole 
 ground of bis own heroic acts and sayings. The author 
 has none of tbe timidity or mawkishness arising from a 
 fear of not coming up to his own professions, or to the 
 expectations excited in the reader's mind. Any striking 
 trait, any interesting exploit, is more than was bargained 
 for — is heaped measure, running over. There is no idle, 
 nervous apprehension of falling short of perfection, 
 arresting the hand or diverting the mind from truth and 
 nature. If the Pagan is not represented as a monster and 
 barbarian, all the rest is a god-send. Accordingly all is 
 spontaneous, bold, and original in this beautiful and 
 glowing design, which is as magnificent as it is magnani- 
 mous. — Lest I should forget it, I will mention, while I 
 am on the subject of Scotch novels, that Mackenzie's 
 Man of Feeling is not without interest, but it is an interest 
 brought out in a very singular and unprecedented way. 
 He not merely says or does nothing to deserve the appro- 
 bation of the goddess of his idolatry, but, from extreme 
 shyness and sensitiveness, instead of presuming on his 
 merits, gets out of her way, and only declares his passion 
 on his death-bed. Poor Harley ! — Mr. Godwin's Falk- 
 land is a very high and heroic character : he, however, is 
 not a love-hero ; and the only part in which an eposide of 
 this kind is introduced, is of the most trite and mawkish 
 description. The case is different in St. Leon. The 
 author's resuscitated hero there quaffs joy, love, and im- 
 
190 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 mortality with a considerable gusto, and with appropriate 
 manifestations of triumph. 
 
 As to the heroes of the philosophical school of romance, 
 such as G-oethe's Werter, &c., they are evidently out of 
 the pale of this reasoning. Instead of being common- 
 place and insipid, they are one violent and startling para- 
 dox from beginning to end. They run a-tilt at all 
 established usages and prejudices, and overset all the 
 existing order of society. There is plenty of interest 
 here ; and, instead of complaining of a calm, we are borne 
 along by a hurricane of passion and eloquence, certainly 
 without anything of " temperance that may give it 
 smoothness." Schiller's Moor, Kotzebue's heroes, and all 
 the other German prodigies are of this stamp. 
 
 Shakspeare's lovers and Boccaccio's I like much : they 
 seem to me full of tenderness and manly spirit, and free 
 from insipidity and cant. Otway's Jaffier is, however, the 
 true woman's man — full of passion and effeminacy, a 
 mixture of strength and weakness. Perhaps what I have 
 said above may suggest the true reason and apology for 
 Milton's having unwittingly made Satan the hero of 
 Paradise Lost. He suffers infinite losses, and makes the 
 most desperate efforts to recover or avenge them ; and it 
 is the struggle with fate and the privation of happiness 
 that sharpens our desires, or enhances our sympathy with 
 good or evil. We have little interest in unalterable 
 felicity, nor can we join with heart and soul in the endless ■ 
 symphonies and exalting hallelujahs of the spirits of the 
 blest. The remorse of a fallen spirit, or " tears such as 
 angels shed," touch us more nearly. 
 
 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 "An infinite deal of nothing." — Shakespeare. 
 
 The conversation of lords is very different from that of 
 authors. Mounted on horseback, they stick at nothing 
 
On the Conversation of Lords. 191 
 
 in the chase, and clear every obstacle with flying leaps, 
 while we poor devils have no chance of keeping up with 
 them with our clouten shoes and long hunting-poles. 
 They have all the benefit of education, society, confidence ; 
 they read books, purchase pictures, breed horses, learn to 
 ride, dance, and fence, look after their estates, travel 
 abroad : authors have none of these advantages, or inlets 
 of knowledge, to assist them, except one, reading; and 
 this is still more impoverished and clouded by the painful 
 exercise of their own thoughts. The knowledge of the great 
 has a character of wealth and property in it, like the 
 stores of the rich merchant or manufacturer, who lays his 
 hands on all within his reach : the understanding of the 
 student is like the workshop of the mechanic, who has 
 nothing but what he himself creates. How difficult is the 
 production, how small the display in the one case com- 
 pared to the other! Most of Correggio's designs are 
 contained in one small room at Parma : how different from 
 the extent and variety of some hereditary and princely 
 collections ! 
 
 The human mind has a trick (probably a very natural 
 and consoling one) of striking a balance between the 
 favours of wisdom and of fortune, and of making a gra- 
 tuitous and convenient foil to another. Whether this is 
 owing to envy or to a love of justice, I will not say ; but 
 whichever it is owing to, I must own I do not think it 
 well founded. A scholar is without money : therefore (to 
 make the odds even) we argue (not very wisely) that a 
 rich man must be without ideas. This does not follow : 
 " the wish is father to that thought ;" and the thought is 
 a spurious one. We might as well pretend, that because 
 a man has the advantage of us in height, he is not strong 
 or in good health ; or because a woman is handsome, she 
 is not at the same time young, accomplished and well- 
 bred. Our fastidious self-love or our rustic prejudices 
 may revolt at the accumulation of advantages in others ; 
 
192 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 but we must learn to submit to the mortifying truth, 
 which every day's experience points out, with what grace 
 we may. There were those who grudged to Lord Byron 
 the name of a poet because he was of noble birth ; as he 
 himself could not endure the praises bestowed upon 
 AVordsworth, whom he considered as a clown. He 
 carried this weakness so far, that he even seemed to regard 
 it as a piece of presumption in Shakspeare to be preferred 
 before him as a dramatic author, and contended that 
 Milton's writing an epic poem and the Answer to Salmasius 
 was entirely owing to vanity — so little did he relish the 
 superiority of the old blind school-master. So it is that 
 one party would arrogate every advantage to themselves, 
 while those on the other side would detract from all in 
 their rivals that they do not themselves possess. Some 
 will not have the statue painted : others can see no beauty 
 in the clay-model. 
 
 The man of rank and fortune, besides his chance for the 
 common or (now and then) an uncommon share of wit and 
 understanding, has it in his power to avail himself of 
 everything that is to be taught of art and science ; he has 
 tutors and valets at his beck ; he may master the dead 
 languages, he must acquire the modern ones ; he moves in 
 the highest circles, and may descend to the lowest ; the 
 paths of pleasure, of ambition, of knowledge, are open to 
 him ; he may devote himself to a particular study, or skim 
 the cream of all ; he may read books or men or things, as 
 he finds most convenient or agreeable ; he is not forced to 
 confine his attention to some one dry, uninteresting pur- 
 suit ; he has a single hobby, or half a dozen ; he is not 
 distracted by care, by poverty and want of leisure ; he has 
 every opportunity and facility afforded him for acquiring 
 various accomplishments of body or mind, and every en- 
 couragement, from confidence and success, for making an 
 imposing display of them % , he may laugh with the gay, 
 jest with the witty, argue with the wise ; he has been in 
 

 On the Conversation of Lords. 193 
 
 courts, in colleges, and camps, is familiar with playhouses 
 and taverns, with the riding-house and the dissecting-room, 
 has been present at or taken part in the debates of both 
 Houses of Parliament, was in the 0. P. row, and is deep 
 in the Fancy, understands the broadsword exercise, is a 
 connoisseur in regimentals, plays the whole game at whist, 
 is a tolerable proficient at backgammon, drives four-in- 
 hand, skates, rows, swims, shoots ; knows the different 
 sorts of same and modes of agriculture in the different 
 counties of England, the manufactures and commerce of 
 the different towns, the politics of Europe, the campaigns 
 in Spain, has the Gazette, the newspapers, and reviews at 
 his fingers' ends, has visited the finest scenes of Nature 
 and beheld the choicest works of Art, and is in society 
 where he is continually hearing or talking of all these 
 things ; and yet we are surprised to find that a person so 
 circumstanced and qualified has any ideas to communicate 
 or words to express himself, and is not, as by patent and 
 prescription he was bound to be, a mere well-dressed fop 
 of fashion or a booby lord ! It would be less remarkable 
 if a poor author, who has none of this giddy range and 
 scope of information, who pores over the page till it fades 
 from his sight, and refines upon his style till the words 
 stick in his throat, should be dull as a beetle and mute as 
 a fish, instead of spontaneously pouring out a volume of 
 wit and wisdom on every subject that can be started. 
 
 An author lives out of the world, or mixes chiefly with 
 those of his own class ; which renders him pedantic and 
 pragmatical, or gives him a reserved, hesitating, and inter- 
 dieted manner. A lord or gentleman-commoner goes into 
 the world, and this imparts that fluency, spirit, and fresh- 
 ness to his conversation, which arises from the circulation of 
 ideas and from the greater animation and excitement of un- 
 restrained intercourse. An author's tongue is tied for want 
 of somebody to speak to : his ideas rust and become obscured, 
 from not being brought out in company and exposed to 
 
 o 
 
194 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 the gaze of instant admiration. A lord has always some 
 one at hand on whom he can " bestow his tediousness," 
 and grows voluble, copious, inexhaustible in consequence : 
 his wit is polished, and the flowers of his oratory expanded 
 by his smiling commerce with the world, like the figures 
 in tapestry, that after being thrust into a corner and folded 
 up in closets, are displayed on festival and gala days. 
 Again, the man of fashion and fortune reduces many of 
 those arts and mysteries to practice, of which the scholar 
 gains all his knowledge from books and vague description. 
 Will not the rules of architecture find a readier reception 
 and sink deeper into the mind of the proprietor of a noble 
 mansion, or of him who means to build one, than of the 
 half-starved occupier of a garret ? Will not the political 
 economist's insight into Mr. Bicardo's doctrine of Eent, or 
 Mr. Malthus's theory of Population, be vastly quickened 
 by the circumstance of his possessing a large landed estate 
 and having to pay enormous poor-rates ? And, in general, 
 is it not self-evident that a man's knowledge of the true 
 interests of the country will be enlarged just in proportion 
 to the stake he has in it ? A person may have read 
 accounts of different cities and the customs of different 
 nations : but will this give him the same accurate idea of 
 the situation of celebrated places, of the aspect and 
 manners of the inhabitants, or the same lively impulse 
 and ardour and fund of striking particulars in expatiating 
 upon them, as if he had run over half the countries of 
 Europe, for no other purpose than to satisfy his own 
 curiosity, and excite that of others on his return ? I 
 many years ago looked into the Duke of Newcastle's 1 
 Treatise on Horsemanship ; all I remember of it is some 
 quaint cuts of the Duke and his riding-master introduced 
 to illustrate the lessons. Had I myself possessed a stud 
 of Arabian coursers, with grooms and a master of the 
 
 1 William, Duke of Newcastle, husband of the poetical Duchess. 
 —Ed. 
 
On the Conversation of Lords. 195 
 
 horse to assist me in reducing these precepts to practice, 
 they would have made a stronger impression on my mind ; 
 and what interested myself from vanity or habit, I could 
 have made interesting to others. I am sure I could have 
 learnt to ride the Great Horse, and do twenty other things, 
 in the time I have employed in endeavouring to make 
 something out of nothing, or in conning the same problem 
 fifty times over, as monks count over their beads ! I have 
 occasionally in my life bought a few prints, and hung 
 them up in my room with great satisfaction ; but is it to 
 be supposed possible, from this casual circumstance, that 
 I should compete in taste or in the knowledge of vertu 
 with a peer of the realm, who has in his possession the 
 costly designs, or a wealthy commoner, who has spent 
 half his fortune in learning to distinguish copies from 
 originals? "A question not to be asked!" Nor is it 
 likely that the having dipped into the Memoirs of Count 
 Grammont, or of Lady Vane in Peregrine Pickle, should 
 enable any one to sustain a conversation on subjects of 
 love and gallantry with the same ease, grace, brilliancy, 
 and spirit as the having been engaged in a hundred adven- 
 tures of one's own, or heard the scandal and tittle-tattle of 
 fashionable life for the last thirty years canvassed a 
 hundred times. Books may be manufactured from other 
 books by some dull, mechanical process : it is conversa- 
 tion and the access to the best society that alone fit us for 
 society ; or " the act and practique part of life must be 
 the mistress to our theorique," before we can hope to shine 
 in mixed company, or bend our previous knowledge to 
 ordinary and familiar uses out of that plaster-cast mould 
 which is as brittle as it is formal ! 
 
 There is another thing which tends to produce the same 
 effect, viz., that lords and gentlemen seldom trouble them- 
 selves about the knotty and uninviting parts of a subject : 
 they leave it to ' ; the dregs of earth " to drain the cup or 
 find the bottom. They are attracted by the frothy and 
 
196 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 sparkling. If a question puzzles them, or is not likely to 
 amuse others, they leave it to its fate, or to those whose 
 business it is to contend with difficulty, and to pursue truth 
 for its own sake. They string together as many available 
 off -hand topics as they can procure for love or money ; 
 and, aided by a good person or address, sport them with 
 very considerable effect at the next rout or party they go 
 to. They do not bore you with pedantry, or tease you 
 with sophistry. Their conversation is not made up of moot- 
 points or choke-pears. They do not willingly forego " the 
 feast of reason or the flow of soul " to grub up some 
 solitary truth or dig for hidden treasure. They are 
 amateurs, not professors ; the patrons, not the drudges of 
 knowledge. An author loses half his life, and stultifies 
 his faculties, in hopes to find out something which perhaps 
 neither he nor any one else can ever find out. For this 
 he neglects half a hundred acquirements, half a hundred 
 accomplishments. Aut Ccesar aid nihil. He is proud of the 
 discovery or of the fond pursuit of one truth — a lord is vain 
 of a thousand ostentatious commonplaces. If the latter 
 ever devotes himself to some crabbed study, or sets about 
 finding out the longitude, he is then to be looked upon 
 as a humorist if he fails — a genious if he succeeds — and 
 no longer belongs to the class I have been speaking of. 
 
 Perhaps a multiplicity of attainments and pursuits is 
 not very favourable to their selectness ; as a local and 
 personal acquaintance with objects of imagination takes 
 away from, instead of adding to, their romantic interest. 
 Familiarity is said to breed contempt ; or at any rate, 
 the being brought into contact with places, persons, or 
 things that we have hitherto only heard or read of, 
 removes a certain aerial, delicious veil of refinement from 
 them, and strikes at that ideal abstraction which is the 
 charm and boast of a life conversant chiefly with books. 
 The huddling a number of tastes and studies together 
 tends to degrade and vulgarise each, and to give a crude, 
 
On the Conversation of Lords. 197 
 
 uneoncocted, dissipated turn to the mind. Instead of 
 stuffing it full of gross, palpable, immediate objects of 
 excitement, a wiser plan would be to leave something in 
 reserve, something hovering in airy space to draw our 
 attention out of ourselves, to excite hope, curiosity, 
 wonder, and never to satisfy it. The great art is not 
 to throw a glare of light upon all objects, or to lay the 
 whole extended landscape bare at one view ; but so 
 to manage as to see the more amiable side of things, 
 and through the narrow vistas and loop-holes of retreat — 
 
 " Catch glimpses that may make us less forlorn." 
 
 I hate to annihilate air and distance by the perpetual 
 use of an opera-glass, to run everything into foreground, 
 and to interpose no medium between the thought and the 
 object. The breath of words stirs and plays idly with 
 the gossamer web of fancy ; the touch of things destroys 
 it. I have seen a good deal of authors ; and I believe 
 that they (as well as I) would quite as lieve I had not. 
 Places I have seen, too, that did not answer my ex- 
 pectation. Pictures, (that is, some few of them) are the 
 only things that are the better for our having studied 
 them " face to face, not in a glass darkly," and that in 
 themselves surpass any description we can give, or any 
 notion we can form of them. But I do not think 
 seriously, after all, that those who possess are the best 
 judges of them. They become furniture, property in 
 their hands. The purchasers look to the price they will 
 fetch, or turn to that which they have cost. They 
 consider not beauty or expression, but the workmanship, 
 the date, the pedigree, the school — something that will 
 figure in the description in a catalogue or in a puff in a 
 newspaper. They are blinded by silly admiration of 
 whatever belongs to themselves, and warped so as to eye 
 " with jealous leer malign " all that is not theirs. Taste 
 is melted down in the crucible of avarice and vanity, and 
 
198 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 leaves a wretched caput mortuum of pedantry and conceit. 
 As to books, they " best can feel them who have read 
 them most," and who rely on them for their only support 
 and their only chance of distinction. They most keenly 
 relish the graces of style who have in vain tried to make 
 them their own : they alone understand the value of a 
 thought who have gone through the trouble of thinking. 
 The privation of other advantages is not a clear loss, 
 if it is counterbalanced by a proportionable concentration 
 and unity of interest in what is left. The love of letters 
 is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling 
 passion is the love of fame. A member of the Eoxburghe 
 Club has a certain work (let it be the Decameron of 
 Boccaccio) splendidly bound, and in the old quarto edition, 
 we will say. In this not only his literary taste is 
 gratified, but the pride of property, the love of external 
 elegance and decoration. The poor student has only a 
 paltry and somewhat worn copy of the same work (or 
 perhaps only a translation) which he picked up at a stall, 
 standing out of a shower of rain. What then ! has not 
 the Noble Virtuoso doubly the advantage, and a much 
 higher pleasure in the perusal of the work? No; for 
 these are vulgar and mechanical helps to the true en- 
 joyment of letters. From all this mock-display and idle 
 parade of binding and arms and dates, his unthought-of 
 rival is precluded, and sees only the talismanic words, 
 feels only the spirit of the author, and in that author 
 reads " with sparkling eyes " 
 
 " His title to a mansion in the skies." 
 
 Oh ! divine air of learning, fanned by the undying breath 
 of genius, still let me taste thee, free from all adventitious 
 admixtures, 
 
 " Pure in the last recesses of the soul !" 
 
 We are far, at present, from the style of Swift's Polite 
 Conversation. The fashionable tone has quite changed in 
 
On the Conversation of Lords. 199 
 
 this respect, and almost gone into the opposite extreme. 
 At that period the polite world seems to have been nearly 
 at a stand, in a state of intellectual abeyance ; or, in the 
 interval between the disuse of chivalrous exercises and 
 the introduction of modern philosophy, not to have known 
 how to pass its time, and to have sunk into the most 
 commonplace formality and unmeaning apathy. But lo ! 
 at a signal given, or rather prompted by that most 
 powerful of all calls, the want of something to do, all 
 rush into the lists, having armed themselves anew with 
 the shining panoply of science and of letters, with an 
 eagerness, a perseverance, a dexterity, and a success, that 
 are truly astonishing. The higher classes have of late 
 taken the lead almost as much in arts as they formerly 
 did in arms, when the last was the only prescribed mode 
 of distinguishing themselves from the rabble, whom they 
 treated as serfs and churls. The prevailing cue at present 
 is to regard mere authors (who are not also of gentle 
 blood) as dull, illiterate, poor creatures, a sort of pre- 
 tenders to taste and elegance, and adventurers in intellect. 
 The true adepts in black-letter are knights of the shire : 
 the sworn patentees of Parnassus are Peers of the Eealm. 
 Not to pass for a literary quack, you must procure a 
 diploma from the College of Heralds. A dandy conceals 
 a bibliomanist : our belles are bluestockings. The Press 
 is so entirely monopolised by beauty, birth, or importance 
 in the State, 1 that an author by profession resigns the 
 field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of 
 modesty or pride ; is fain to keep out of sight — 
 
 " Or write by stealth, and blush to find it fame !" 
 
 Lord Byron used to boast that he could bring forward 
 
 1 This was written when the mania for fashionable novels by 
 Noble Authors was at its height. — Ed. of Sketches and Essays, 1839. 
 See the criticism on Disraeli's Vivian Grey by the author, in the 
 Examiner for 1827, under the title of the Dandy School. 
 
200 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 a dozen young men of fashion who would beat all the 
 regular authors at their several weapons of wit or 
 argument ; and though I demur to the truth of the 
 assertion, yet there is no saying till the thing is tried. 
 Young gentlemen make very pretty sparrers, but are not 
 the "ugliest customers" when they take off the gloves. 
 Lord Byron himself was in his capacity of author an out- 
 and-outer ; but then it was at the expense of other things, 
 for he could not talk except in short sentences and 
 sarcastic allusions, he had no ready resources ; all his 
 ideas moulded themselves into stanzas, and all his ardour 
 was carried off in rhyme. The channel of his pen was 
 worn deep by habit and power ; the current of his 
 thoughts flowed strong in it, and nothing remained to 
 supply the neighbouring flats and shallows of miscel- 
 laneous conversation, but a few sprinklings of wit or 
 gushes of spleen. An intense purpose concentrated and 
 gave a determined direction to his energies, that " held 
 on their way, unslacked of motion." The track of his 
 genius was like a volcanic eruption, a torrent of burning 
 lava, full of heat and splendour and headlong fury, that 
 left all dry, cold, hard, and barren behind it ! To say 
 nothing of a host of female authors, a bright galaxy above 
 our heads, there is no young lady of fashion in the present 
 day, scarce a boarding-school girl, that is not mistress of 
 as many branches of knowledge as would set up half a 
 dozen literary hacks. In lieu of the sampler and the 
 plain-stitch of our grandmothers, they have so many hours 
 for French, so many for Italian, so many for English 
 grammar and composition, so many for geography and 
 the use of the globes, so many for history, so many for 
 botany, so many for painting, music, dancing, riding, &c. 
 One almost wonders how so many studies are crammed 
 into the twenty-four hours ; or how such fair and delicate 
 creatures can master them without spoiling the smoothness 
 of their brows, the sweetness of their tempers, or the 
 
On the Conversation of Lords. 201 
 
 graceful simplicity of their manners. A girl learns 
 French (not # only to read, but to speak it) in a few 
 months, while a boy is as many years in learning to 
 construe Latin. Why so ? Chiefly because the one is 
 treated as a bagatelle or agreeable relaxation ; the other as 
 a serious task or necessary evil. Education, a very few 
 years back, was looked upon as a hardship, and enforced 
 by menaces and blows, instead of being carried on (as 
 now) as an amusement and under the garb of pleasure, 
 and with the allurements of self-love. It is found that 
 the products of the mind flourish better and shoot up 
 more quickly in the sunshine of good-humour and in the 
 air of freedom, than under the frowns of sullenness, or 
 the shackles of authority. " The labour we delight in 
 physics pain." The idlest people are not those who have 
 most leisure-time to dispose of as they choose : take away 
 the feeling of compulsion, and you supply a motive for 
 application, by converting a toil into a pleasure. This 
 makes nearly all the difference between the hardest 
 drudgery and the most delightful exercise — not the 
 degree of exertion, but the motive and the accompanying 
 sensation. Learning does not gain proselytes by the 
 austerity or awfulness of its looks. By representing 
 things as so difficult, and as exacting such dreadful 
 sacrifices, and to be acquired under such severe penalties, 
 we not only deter the student from the attempt, but lay 
 a dead- weight upon the imagination, and destroy that 
 cheerfulness and alacrity of spirit which is the spring of 
 thought and action. But to return. An author by 
 profession reads a few works that he intends to criticise 
 and cut up "for a consideration;" a blue-stocking by 
 profession reads all that come out to pass the time or 
 satisfy her curiosity. The author has something to say 
 about Fielding, Eichardson, or even the Scotch novels ; 
 but he is soon distanced by the fair critic, or overwhelmed 
 with the contents of whole Circulating Libraries poured 
 
202 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 out upon his head without stint or intermission. He 
 reads for an object, and to live ; she for the sake of 
 reading, or to talk. Be this as it may, the idle reader at 
 present reads twenty-times as many books as the learned 
 one. The former skims the surface of knowledge, and 
 carries away the striking points and a variety of amusing 
 detail, while the latter reserves himself for great occasions, 
 or perhaps does nothing under the pretence of having so 
 much to do. 
 
 "From every work he challenges essoin, 
 For contemplation's sake." 
 
 The literati of Europe threaten at present to become the 
 Monks of letters, and from having taken up learning as a 
 profession, to live on the reputation of it. As gentlemen 
 have turned authors, authors seem inclined to turn gentle- 
 men ; and enjoying the otium cum dignitate, to be much too 
 refined and abstracted to condescend to the subordinate or 
 mechanical parts of knowledge. They are too wise in 
 general to be acquainted with anything in particular; 
 and remain in a proud and listless ignorance of all that 
 is within the reach of the vulgar. They are not, as of old, 
 walking libraries or Encyclopaedias, but rather certain 
 faculties of the mind personified. They scorn the material 
 and instrumental branches of inquiry, the husk and bran, 
 and affect only the fine flour of literature — they are only 
 to be called in to give the last polish to style, the last 
 refinement to thought. They leave it to their drudges, 
 the Reading Public, to accumulate the facts, to arrange 
 the evidence, to make out the data, and like great painters 
 whose pupils have got in the ground-work and the estab- 
 lished proportions of a picture, come forward to go over 
 the last thin glazing of the colours, or throw in the finer 
 touches of expression. On my excusing myself to North- 
 cote for some blunder in history, by saying, " I really had 
 not time to read," — he said, " No, but you have time to 
 write !" And once a celebrated critic taking me to task 
 
On the Conversation of Lords. 203 
 
 as to the subject of my pursuits, and receiving regularly 
 the same answer to his queries, that I knew nothing of 
 chemistry, nothing of astronomy, of botany, of law, of 
 politics, &c, at last exclaimed, somewhat impatiently, 
 "What the devil is it, then, you do know ?" I laughed, 
 and was not very much disconcerted at the reproof, as it 
 was just. 
 
 Modern men of letters may be divided into three classes ; 
 the mere scholar or hook-worm, all whose knowledge is 
 taken from books, and who may be passed by as an obso- 
 lete character, little inquired after — the literary hack or 
 coffee-house politician, who gets his information mostly 
 from hearsay, and who makes some noise indeed, but the 
 echo of it does not reach beyond his own club or circle — and 
 the man of real or of pretended genius, who aims to draw 
 upon his own resources of thought or feeling, and to throw 
 a new light upon nature and books. This last personage 
 (if he acts up to his supposed character) has too much to 
 do to lend himself to a variety of pursuits, or to lay him- 
 self out to please in all companies. He has a task in hand, 
 a vow to perform ; and he cannot be diverted from it by 
 incidental or collateral objects. All the time that he does 
 not devote to this paramount duty, he should have to 
 himself, to repose, to lie fallow, to gather strength and 
 recruit himself. A boxer is led into the lists that he may 
 not waste a particle of vigour needlessly ; and a leader in 
 Parliament, on the day that he is expected to get up a 
 grand attack or defence, is not to be pestered with the 
 ordinary news of the day. So an author (who is, or would 
 be thought original) has no time for spare accomplishments 
 or ornamental studies. All that he intermeddles with must 
 be marshalled to bear upon his purpose. He must be 
 acquainted with books and the thoughts of others, but 
 only so far as to assist him on his way, and " to take pro- 
 gression from them." He starts from the point where they 
 left off. All that does not aid him in his new career goes 
 
204 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 for nothing, is thrown out of the account, or is a useless 
 and splendid incumbrance. Most of his time he passes 
 in brooding over some wayward hint or suggestion of a 
 thought, nor is he bound to give any explanation of what 
 he does with the rest. He tries to melt down truth into 
 essences — to express some fine train of feeling, to solve 
 some difficult problem, to start what is new, or to perfect 
 what is old ; in a word, not to do what others can do (which 
 in the division of mental labour he holds to be unneces- 
 sary), but to do what they all with their joint efforts can- 
 not do. For this he is in no hurry, and must have the 
 disposal of his leisure and the choice of his subject. The 
 public can wait. He deems with a living poet, who is an 
 example of his own doctrine — 
 
 " That there are powers 
 
 Which of themselves our minds impress ; 
 That we can feed this mind of ours 
 In a wise passiveness." 
 
 Or I have sometimes thought that the dalliance of the 
 mind with Fancy or with Truth might be described almost 
 in the words of Andrew Marvell's address " To his Coy 
 Mistress :" 
 
 " Had we but world enough and time, 
 This toying, lady,' were no crime ; 
 We would sit down, and think which way 
 To walk and pass our love's long day. 
 Thou by the Indian Ganges' side 
 Shouldst rubies rind : I by the tide 
 Of Humber would complain. I would 
 Love you ten ye'ars before the flood ; 
 And you should, if you please, refuse 
 Till the conversion of the Jews. 
 My contemplative love should grow 
 Vaster than empires, and more slow. 
 An hundred j: ars should go to praise 
 Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze ; 
 Two hundred to adore each breast, 
 But tiiirtv thousand to the rest ; 
 
On the Conversation of Lords. 205 
 
 An age at least to every part, 
 
 And the last age should show your heart : 
 
 For, lady, you deserve this state ; 
 
 Nor would I love at lower rate !" 
 
 The aspiring poet or prose-writer undertakes to do a cer- 
 tain thing ; and if he succeeds, it is enough. While he is 
 intent upon that or asleep, others may amuse themselves 
 how they can with any topic that happens to be afloat, and 
 all the eloquence they are masters of, so that they do not 
 disturb the champion of truth, or the proclaim er of beauty 
 to the world. The Conversation of Lords, on the contrary, 
 is to this like a newspaper to a book — the latter treats well 
 or ill of one subject, and leads to a conclusion on one 
 point ; the other is made up of all sorts of things jumbled 
 together, debates in parliament, law reports, plays, operas, 
 concerts, routs, levees, fashions, auctions, the last fight, 
 foreign news, deaths, marriages, and crim.-cous., bank- 
 ruptcies, and quack medicines ; and a large allowance is 
 frequently to be made, besides the natural confusion of the 
 subjects, for cross-readings in the speaker's mind I 1 Or, to 
 take another illustration, fashionable conversation has 
 
 1 As when a person asks you " whether you do not find a strong 
 resemblance between Bubens's pictures and Quarles's poetry ?" — 
 which is owing to the critic's having lately been at Antwerp and 
 bought an edition of Quarles's ' Emblems. 7 Odd combinations must 
 take place where a number of ideas are brought together, with only 
 a thin, hasty partition between them, and without a sufficient 
 quantity of judgment to discriminate. An Englishman, of some 
 apparent consequence, passing by the St. Peter Martyr of Titian at 
 Venice, observed, " It was a copy of the same subject by Domeni- 
 chino at Bologna." This betrayed an absolute ignorance both of 
 Titian and of Domenichino, and of the whole world of art ; yet, 
 unless I had also seen the St. Peter at Bologna, this connoisseur 
 would have had the advantage of me, two to one, and might have 
 disputed the precedence of the two pictures with me, but that 
 chronology would have come to my aid. Thus persons who travel 
 from place to place, and roam from subject to subject, make up by 
 the extent and discursiveness of their knowledge for the want of 
 truth and refinement in their conception of the objects of it. 
 
200 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 something theatrical or melo-dramatic in it ; it is got up 
 for immediate effect, it is calculated to make a great dis- 
 play, there is a profusion of paint, scenery, and dresses, 
 the music is loud, there are banquets and processions, you 
 have the dancers from the Opera, the horses from Astley's, 
 and the elephant from Exeter 'Change, the stage is all life, 
 bustle, noise, and glare, the audience brilliant and de- 
 lighted, and the whole goes off in a blaze of phosphorus ; 
 but the dialogue is poor, the story improbable, the critics 
 shake their heads in the pit, and the next day the piece is 
 damned ! 
 
 In short, a man of rank and fortune takes the adven- 
 titious and ornamental part of letters, the obvious, the 
 popular, the fashionable, that serves to amuse at the time, 
 or minister to the cravings of vanity, without laying a very 
 heavy tax on his own understanding, or the patience of his 
 hearers. He furnishes his mind as he does his house, with 
 what is showy, striking, and of the newest pattern : he 
 mounts his hobby as he does his horse, which is brought to 
 his door for an airing, and which (should it prove restive 
 or sluggish) he turns away for another ; or, like a child at a 
 fair, gets into a round-about of knowledge, till his head be- 
 comes giddy, runs from sight to sight, from booth to booth, 
 and, like the child, goes home loaded with trinkets, gew- 
 gaws and rattles. He does not pore and pine over an idea 
 (like some poor hypochondriac) till it becomes impractic- 
 able, unsociable, incommunicable, absorbed in mysticism, 
 and lost in minuteness : he is not upon oath never to utter 
 anything but oracles, but rattles away in a fine careless, 
 hair-brained, dashing manner, hit or miss, and succeeds 
 the better for it. Nor does he prose over the same stale 
 round of politics and the state of the nation (w T ith the 
 coffee-house politician), but launches out with freedom and 
 gaiety into whatever has attraction and interest in it, 
 " runs the great circle, and is still at home." He is 
 inquisitive, garrulous, credulous, sanguine, florid — neither 
 
 

 On the Conversation of Lords. 207 
 
 pedantic nor vulgar. Neither is he intolerant, exclusive, 
 bigoted to one set of opinions or one class of individuals. 
 He clothes an abstract theory with illustrations from his 
 own experience and observation, hates what is dry and 
 dull, and throws in an air of high health, buoyant spirits, 
 fortune and splendid connections to give animation and 
 vividness to what perhaps might otherwise want it. He 
 selects what is palpable without being gross or trivial, 
 lends it colour from the flush of success, and elevation 
 from the distinctions of rank. He runs on and never stops 
 for an answer, rather dictating to others than endeavour- 
 ing to ascertain their opinions, solving his own questions, 
 improving upon their hints, and bearing down or pre- 
 cluding opposition by a good-natured loquacity or stately 
 dogmatism. All this is perhaps more edifying as a subject 
 of speculation than delightful in itself. Shakspeare says, 
 " A man's mind is parcel of his fortunes" — and I think 
 the inference will be borne out in the present case. I 
 should guess that in the prevailing tone of fashionable 
 society or aristocratic literature would be found all that 
 variety, splendour, facility, and startling effect which cor- 
 responds with external wealth, magnificence of appearance, 
 and a command of opportunity ; while there would be 
 wanting whatever depends chiefly on intensity of pursuit, 
 on depth of feeling, and on simplicity and independence 
 of mind joined with straitened fortune. Prosperity is a 
 great teacher ; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers 
 the mind ; privation trains and strengthens it. Accord- 
 ingly, we find but one really great name (Bacon) in this 
 rank of English society, where superiority is taken for 
 granted, and reflected from outward circumstances. The 
 rest are in the second class. Lord Bolingbroke, whom 
 Pope idolised (and it pains me that all his idols are not 
 mine), was a boastful, empty mouther ! I never knew till 
 the other day, that Lord Bolingbroke was the model on 
 which Mr. Pitt formed himself. He was his Magnus 
 
208 On the Conversation of Lords. 
 
 Apollo; and no wonder. The late Minister used to 
 lament it as the great desideratum of English literature, 
 that there was no record anywhere existing of his speeches 
 as they were spoken, and declared that he would give any 
 price for one of them, reported as speeches were reported 
 in the newspapers in our time. Being asked which he 
 thought the best of his written productions, he would 
 answer, raising his eyebrows and deepening the tones of 
 his voice to a sonorous bass — "Why, undoubtedly, Sir, 
 the Letter to Sir William Wyndkam is the most masterly of 
 all his writings, and the first composition for wit and 
 eloquence in the English language ;" — and then he would 
 give his reasons at great length and con amore, and say 
 that Junius had formed himself entirely upon it. Lord 
 Bolingbroke had. it seems, a house next door to one 
 belonging to Lord Chatham at Walham Green ; and as 
 the gardens joined, they could hear Lord Bolingbroke 
 walking out with the company that came to see him in his 
 retirement, and elaborately declaiming politics to the old 
 lords and statesmen that were with him, and philosophy 
 to the younger ones. Pitt learned this story from his 
 father when a boy. This account, interesting in itself, 
 was to me the more interesting and extraordinary, as it 
 had always appeared to me that Mr. Pitt was quite an 
 original, sui generis — 
 
 " As if a man were author of himself, 
 And own'd no other kin ;" 
 
 that so far from having a model or idol that he looked up 
 to and grounded himself upon, he had neither admiration 
 nor consciousness of anything existing out of himself, and 
 that he lived solely in the sound of his own voice and 
 revolved in the circle of his own hollow and artificial 
 periods. I have it from the same authority that he thought 
 Cobbett the best writer and Home Tooke the cleverest 
 man of the day. His hatred of Wyndham was excessive 
 
 
The Letter -Bell 209 
 
 and mutual. Perhaps it may be said that Lord Chatham 
 was a first-rate man in his way, and I incline to think it 
 but he was a self-made man, bred in a camp, not in a court, 
 and his rank was owing to his talents. 1 
 
 The Letter-Bell 
 
 Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and short- 
 ness of human life, when, if we examine its smallest 
 details, they present a world by themselves. The most 
 trifling objects, retraced with the eye of memory, assume 
 the vividness, the delicacy, and importance of insects 
 seen through a magnifying glass. There is no end of 
 the brilliancy or the variety. The habitual feeling 
 of the love of life may be compared to " one entire and 
 perfect chrysolite," which, if analysed, breaks into a thou- 
 sand shining fragments. Ask the sum-total of the value 
 of human life, and we are puzzled with the length of the 
 account, and the multiplicity of items in it : take any one 
 of them apart, and it is wonderful what matter for reflec- 
 tion will be found in it ! As I write this, the Letter-Bell 
 passes ; it has a lively, pleasant sound with it, and not 
 only fills the street with its importunate clamour, but 
 rings clear through the length of many half- forgotten 
 years. It strikes upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it 
 wakes me from the dream of time, it flings me back upon 
 my first entrance into life, the period of rdy first coming 
 up to town, when all around was strange, uncertain, ad- 
 
 1 There are few things more contemptible than the conversation 
 of mere men of the town. It is made up of the technicalities and 
 cant of all professions, without the spirit or knowledge of any. It is 
 flashy and vapid, or is like the rinsings of different liquors at a 
 night-cellar instead of a bottle of fiue old port. It is without body 
 or clearness, and a heap of affectation. In fact, I am very much of 
 the opinion of that old Scotch gentleman who owned that " he 
 preferred the dullest book he had ever read to the most brilliant 
 conversation it had ever fallen to his lot to hear !" 
 
 P 
 
210 Tlie Letter-Bell 
 
 
 verse — a hubbub of confused noises, a chaos of shifting 
 objects — and when this sound alone, startling me with the 
 recollection of a letter I had to send to the friends I had 
 lately left, brought me as it were to myself, made me feel 
 that I had links still connecting me with the universe, and 
 gave me hope and patience to persevere. At that loud- 
 tinkling, interrupted sound, the long line of blue hills 
 near the place where I was brought up waves in the hori- 
 zon, 1 a golden sunset hovers over them, the dwarf-oaks 
 rustle their red leaves in the evening-breeze, and the road 
 from Wem to Shrewsbury, by which I first set-out on 
 my journey through life, stares me in the face as plain, 
 but, from time and change, not less visionary and mys- 
 terious than the pictures in the Pilgrims Progress. Or 
 if the Letter-Bell does not lead me a dance into the 
 country, it fixes me in the thick of my town recollections, 
 I know not how long ago. It was a kind of alarm to break 
 off from my work when there happened to be company to 
 dinner or when I was going to the play. That was going 
 to the play, indeed, when I went twice a year, and had not 
 been more than half a dozen times in my Hfe. Even the 
 idea that any one else in the house was going, was a sort 
 of reflected enjoyment, and conjured up a lively anticipa- 
 tion of the scene. I remember a Miss D , a maiden 
 
 lady from Wales (who in her youth was to have been 
 married to an earl), tantalised me greatly in this way, by 
 talking all day of going to see Mrs. Siddons' " airs and 
 graces" at night in some favourite part; and when the 
 Letter-Bell announced that the time was approaching, and 
 its last receding sound lingered on the ear, or was lost in 
 silence, how anxious and uneasy I became, lest she and 
 her companion should not be in time to get good places — 
 lest the curtain should draw up before they arrived — and 
 lest I should lose one line or look in the intelligent report 
 which I should hear the next morning ! The punctuating 
 1 Compare Memoirs, i. 32-3. — Ed. 
 
The Letter-Bell 211 
 
 of time at that early period — every thing that gives it an 
 articulate voice — seems of the utmost consequence ; for 
 we do not know what scenes in the ideal world may run 
 out of them : a world of interest may hang upon every 
 instant, and we can hardly sustain the weight of future 
 years which are contained in embryo in the most minute 
 and inconsiderable passing events. How often have I put 
 off writing a letter till it was too late ! How often have I 
 had to run after the postman with it — now missing, now 
 recovering the sound of his bell — breathless, angry with 
 myself— then hearing the welcome sound come full round 
 a corner — and seeing the scarlet costume which set all my 
 fears and self-reproaches at rest ! I do not recollect having 
 ever repented giving a letter to the postman or wishing to 
 retrieve it after he had once deposited it in his bag. What 
 I have once set my hand to, I take the consequences of, 
 and have been always pretty much of the same humour in 
 this respect. I am not like the person who, having sent 
 off a letter to his mistress, who resided a hundred and 
 twenty miles in the country, and disapproving, on second 
 thoughts, of some expressions contained in it, took a post- 
 chaise and four to- follow and intercept it the next morn- 
 ing. At other times, I have sat and watched the decaying 
 embers in a little back painting-room (just as the wintry 
 day declined), and brooded over the half-finished copy of 
 a Kembrandt, or a landscape by Yangoyen, placing it 
 where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the fire ; 
 while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my 
 thoughts to the world without, and reminded me that I had 
 a task to perform in it. As to that landscape, methinks I 
 see it now — 
 
 '* The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale, 
 The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail." 
 
 There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built 
 cottage beside it : how delighted I was when I had made % 
 the tremulous, undulating reflection in the water, and saw 
 
212 The Letter-Bell 
 
 the dull canvas become a lucid mirror of the commonest 
 features .of nature ! Certainly, painting gives one a strong 
 interest in nature and humanity (it is not the dandy-school 
 of morals or sentiment) — 
 
 ■' While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony and the deep power of joy, 
 "We see into the life of things." 
 
 Perhaps there is no part of a painter's life (if we must 
 tell " the secrets of the prison-house ") in which he has 
 more enjoyment of himself and his art, than that in 
 which, after his work is over, and with furtive, sidelong 
 glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing 
 his brushes and cleaning his pallet for the day. After- 
 wards, when he gets a servant in livery to do this for him, 
 he may have other and more ostensible sources of satisfac- 
 tion — greater splendour, wealth, or fame ; but he will not 
 be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such a hold 
 on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest 
 drudgery to others — too humble to despise aught that had 
 to do with the object of his glory and his pride, with that 
 on which all his projects of ambition or pleasure were 
 founded. " Entire affection scorneth nicer hands." When 
 the professor is above this mechanical part of his business, 
 it may have become a stalking-horse to other worldly 
 schemes, but is no longer his hobby-horse and the delight 
 of his inmost thoughts. 
 
 I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my 
 occupation, while the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner- 
 bell) summoned me to the fraternal board, where youth 
 
 and hope 
 
 " Made good digestion wait on appetite 
 And health on both ;" 
 
 or oftener I put it off till after dinner, that I might loiter 
 longer and with more luxurious indolence over it, and 
 connect it with the thoughts of my next day's labours. 
 The dustman's-bell, with its heavy monotonous noise, 
 

 The Letter- Bell 213 
 
 and the brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin-bell, have some- 
 thing in them, but not much. They will bear dilating upon 
 with the utmost licence of inventive prose. All things 
 are not alike conductors to the imagination. A learned 
 Scotch professor found fault with an ingenious friend 
 and arch-critic for cultivating a rookery on his grounds : 
 the professor declared " he would as soon think of encourag- 
 ing a froggery." This was barbarous as it was senseless. 
 Strange, that a country that has produced the Scotch Novels 
 and Gertrude of Wyoming should want sentiment ! 
 
 The postman's double knock at the door the next morn- 
 ing is " more germain to the matter." How that knock 
 often goes to the heart ! We distinguish to a nicety 
 the arrival of the Twopenny or the General Post. The 
 summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bringing 
 news from a greater distance, and as, the longer it has 
 been delayed, fraught with a deeper interest. We catch 
 the sound of what is to be paid — eightpence, ninepence, 
 a shilling — and our hopes generally rise with the postage. 
 How we are provoked at the delay in getting change — 
 at the servant who does not hear the door ! Then if the 
 postman passes, and we do not hear the expected knock, 
 what a pang is there ! It is like the silence of death — of 
 hope ! We think he does it on purpose, and enjoys all 
 the misery of our suspense. I have sometimes walked 
 out to see the Mail- Coach pass, by which I had sent 
 a letter, or to meet it when I expected one. I never 
 see a Mail-Coach, for this reason, but I look at it as the 
 bearer of glad tidings — the messenger of fate. I have 
 reason to say so. The finest sight in the metropolis is that 
 of the Mail- Coaches setting off from Piccadilly. The 
 horses paw the ground, and are impatient to be gone, as if 
 conscious of the precious burden they convey. There is a 
 peculiar secrecy and despatch, significant and full of 
 meaning, in all the proceedings concerning them. Even 
 the outside passengers have an erect and supercilious air, 
 
214 The Letter-Bell 
 
 . s if proof against the accidents of the journey. In fact, 
 it seems indifferent whether they are to encounter the 
 summer's heat or winter's cold, since they are borne on 
 through the air in a winged chariot. The Mail- Carts 
 drive up ; the transfer of packages is made ; and, at a 
 signal given, they start off, bearing the irrevocable scrolls 
 that give wings to thought, and that bind or sever hearts 
 for ever. How we hate the Putney and Brentford stages 
 that draw up in a line after they are gone ! Some persons 
 think the sublimest object in nature is a ship launched 
 on the bosom of the ocean ; but give me, for my private 
 satisfaction, the Mail-Coaches that pour down Piccadilly 
 of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way 
 before them to the Land's-End ! 
 
 In Cowper's time, Mail-Coaches were hardly set up ; 
 but he has beautifully described the coming-in of the 
 Post-Boy: — 
 
 " Hark ! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge, 
 That with its wearisome but needful length 
 Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon 
 Sees her un wrinkled face reflected bright : 
 He comes, the herald of a noisy world, 
 With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks ; 
 News from all nations lumbering at his back. 
 True to his charge, the close-packed load behind. 
 Yet careless what he brings, his one concern 
 Is to conduct it to the destined inn ; 
 And having dropped the expected bag, pass on. 
 He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch ! 
 Cold and yet cheerful ; messenger of grief 
 Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some ; 
 To him indifferent whether grief or joy. 
 Houses in ashes and the fall of stocks, 
 Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet 
 AVith tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks 
 Fast as the periods from his fluent quill, 
 Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains 
 Or nymphs responsive, equally affect 
 His horse and him, unconscious of them all." 
 
Envy. 215 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding this, and so many other passages 
 that seem like the very marrow of our being. Lord Byron 
 denies that Cowper was a poet! — The Mail- Coach is an 
 improvement on the Post-Boy ; but I fear it will hardly 
 bear so poetical a description. The picturesque and 
 dramatic do not keep pace with the useful and mechanical. 
 The telegraphs that lately communicated the intelligence 
 of the new revolution to all France within a few hours, 
 are a wonderful contrivance; but they are less striking 
 and appalling than the beacon-fires (mentioned by iEschy- 
 lus), which, lighted from hill top to hill top, announced 
 the taking of Troy, and the return of Agamemnon. 
 
 Envy} 
 
 Envy is the grudging or receiving pain from any accom- 
 plishment or advantage possessed by another. It is one 
 of the most tormenting and odious of the passions, inas- 
 much as it does not consist in the enjoyment or pursuit 
 of any good to ourselves, but in the hatred and jealousy of 
 the good fortune of others, and the debarring and de- 
 frauding them of their due and what is of no use to us, on 
 the dog in the manger principle ; and it is at the same time 
 as mean as it is revolting, as being accompanied with a 
 sense of weakness, and a desire to conceal and tamper 
 with the truth and its own convictions, out of paltry 
 spite and vanity. It is, however, but an excess or ex- 
 crescence of the other passions (such as pride or avarice), 
 or of a wish to monopolise all the good things of life to 
 ourselves, which makes us impatient and dissatisfied at 
 seeing any one else in possession of that to which we 
 think we have the only fair title. Envy is the deformed 
 and distorted offspring of egotism ; and when we reflect on 
 
 1 Another and different paper on this subject will be found in 
 The Plain Speaker, 1826 [edit. 1870, pp. 132-47].— Ed. 
 
216 Envy. 
 
 the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, 
 we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of 
 the child. Such is the absorbing and exorbitant quality 
 of our self-love, that it represents us as of infinitely mere 
 importance in our own eyes than the whole universe put 
 together, and would sacrifice the claims and interest of all 
 the world beside to the least of its caprices or extrava- 
 gances : need we be surprised, then, that this little, 
 upstart, overweening self, that would trample on the globe 
 itself, and then weep for new ones to conquer, should be 
 uneasy, mad, mortified, eaten up with chagrin and melan- 
 choly, and hardly able to bear its own existence, at seeing 
 a simple competitor among the crowd cross its path, jostle 
 its pretensions, and stagger its opinion of its exclusive 
 right to admiration and superiority? This it is that 
 constitutes the offence, that gives the shock, that inflicts 
 the wound, that some poor creature (as we would fain 
 suppose) whom we had before overlooked and entirely 
 disregarded as not worth our notice, should of a sudden 
 enter the lists and challenge comparison with us. The 
 presumption is excessive ; and so is our thirst of revenge. 
 From the moment, however, that the eye fixes on another 
 as the object of envy, we cannot take it off ; for our pride 
 and self-conceit magnify that which obstructs our success 
 and lessens our self-importance into a monster; we see 
 nothing else, we hear of nothing else, we dream of nothing 
 else ; it haunts us and takes possession of our whole souls ; 
 and as we are engrossed by it ourselves, so we fancy that 
 all the rest of the world are equally taken up with our 
 petty annoyances and disappointed pride. Hence the 
 " jealous leer malign " of envy, which, not daring to look 
 that which provokes it in the face, cannot yet keep its 
 eyes from it, and gloats over and becomes as it w r ere 
 enamoured of the very object of its loathing and deadly 
 hate. We pay off the score which our littleness and 
 vanity has been running up, by ample and gratuitous 
 
Envy. 217 
 
 concessions to the first person that gives a check to our 
 swelling self-complacency, and forces us to drag him into 
 an unwilling comparison with ourselves. It is no matter 
 who the person is, or what his pretensions — if they are a 
 counterpoise to our ow^n, we think them of more con- 
 sequence than anything else in the world. This often 
 gives rise to laughable results. We see the jealousies 
 among servants, hackney-coachmen, cobblers in a stall : 
 we are amused with the rival advertisements of quacks 
 and stage-coach proprietors, and smile to read the sig- 
 nificant intimation on some shop window, u No connection 
 with next door;" but the same folly runs through the 
 whole of life ; each person thinks that he who stands in 
 his way or outstrips him in a particular pursuit, is the 
 most enviable, and at the same time the most hateful 
 character in the world. Nothing can show the absurdity 
 of the passion of envy in a more striking point of view 
 than the number of rival claims which it entirely over- 
 looks, while it would arrogate all excellence to itself. 
 The loftiness of our ambition and the narrowness of our 
 views are equal, and, indeed, both depend upon the same 
 cause. The player envies only the player, the poet envies 
 only the poet, because each confines his idea of excellence 
 to his own profession and pursuit, and thinks, if he could 
 but remove some one particular competitor out of his w r ay, 
 he should have a clear stage to himself, and be a " Phoenix 
 gazed by all :" as if, though we crushed one rival, another 
 would not start up ; or as if there were not a thousand 
 other claims, a thousand other modes of excellence and 
 praiseworthy acquirements, to divide the palm and defeat 
 his idle pretension to the sole and unqualified admiration 
 of mankind. Professors of every class see merit only in 
 their owm line ; yet they would blight and destroy that 
 little hit of excellence which alone they acknowledge to 
 exist, except as it centres in themselves. Speak in praise 
 of an actor to another actor, and he turns aw T ay with 
 
218 Envy. 
 
 impatience and disgust : speak disparagingly of the first 
 as an actor in general, and the latter eagerly takes up the 
 quarrel as his own : thus the esprit de corps only conies in 
 as an appendage to our self-love. It is, perhaps, well 
 that we are so blind to merit out of our immediate sphere, 
 for it might only prove an additional eye-sore, increase the 
 obliquity of our mental vision, multiply our antipathies, 
 or end in total indifference and despair. There is nothing 
 so bad as a cynical apathy and contempt for every art and 
 science from a superficial smattering and general ac- 
 quaintance with them all. The merest pedantry and the 
 most tormenting jealousy and heart-burning of envy are 
 better than this. Those who are masters of different 
 advantages and accomplishments are seldom the more 
 satisfied with them : they still aim at something else 
 (however contemptible) which they have not or cannot do. 
 So Pope says of Wharton — 
 
 " Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke, 
 The club must hail him master of the joke. 
 Shall parts so various aim at nothing new ? 
 He'll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too." 
 
 The world, indeed, are pretty even with these constel- 
 lations of splendid and superfluous qualities in their 
 fastidious estimate of their own pretensions, for (if pos- 
 sible) they never give any individual credit for more than 
 one leading attainment, if that. If a man is an artist, his 
 being a fine musician adds nothing to his fame. When 
 the public strain a point to own one claim, it is on con- 
 dition that the fortunate candidate waves every other. 
 The mind is prepared with a plausible antithesis in such 
 cases against the formidable encroachment of vanity : one 
 qualification is regularly made a foil to another. We 
 allow no one to be two things at a time : it quite unsettles 
 our notion of personal identity. If we allow T a man wit, 
 it is part of the bargain that he wants judgment : if style, 
 
Envy. 219 
 
 lie wants matter. Rich, but a fool or miser : a beauty, 
 but vain, and no better than she should be; — so runs the 
 bond. " But " is the favourite monosyllable of envy and 
 self-love. Raphael could draw and Titian could colour : 
 we shall never get beyond these points while the world 
 stands ; the human understanding is not cast in a mould 
 to receive double proofs of entire superiority to itself. It 
 is folly to expect it. If a further claim be set up, we call 
 in question the solidity of the first, incline to retract it, 
 and suspect that the whole is a juggle and a piece of 
 impudence, as we threaten a common beggar with the 
 stocks for following us to ask a second alms. This is, in 
 fact, one source of the prevalence and deep root which 
 envy has in the human mind : we are incredulous as to 
 the truth and justice of the demands which are so often 
 made upon our pity or our admiration ; but let the distress 
 or the merit be established beyond all controversy, and we 
 open our hearts and purses on the spot, and sometimes 
 run into the contrary extreme when charity or admiration 
 becomes the fashion. No one envies the Author of 
 Waverley, because all admire him, and are sensible that 
 admire him as they will, they can never admire him 
 enough. We do not envy the sun for shining when we 
 feel the warmth and see the light. When some persons 
 start an injudicious parallel between Sir Walter and 
 Shakspeare, we then may grow jealous and uneasy, because 
 this interferes with our older and more firmly-rooted 
 conviction of genius, and one which has stood a surer and 
 severer test. Envy has, then, some connection with a 
 sense of justice — it is a defence against imposture and 
 quackery. Though we do not willingly give up the secret 
 and silent consciousness of our own worth to vapouring 
 and false pretences, we do homage to the true candidate 
 for fame when he appears, and even exult and take a pride 
 in our capacity to appreciate the highest desert. This is 
 one reason why we do not envy the dead — less because 
 
220 Envy. 
 
 they are removed out of our way 5 than because all doubt 
 and diversity of opinion is dismissed from the question of 
 their title to veneration and respect. Our tongue, having 
 a licence, grows wanton in their praise. We do not envy 
 or stint our admiration of Eubens, because the mists of 
 uncertainty or prejudice are withdrawn by the hand of 
 time from the splendour of his works. Fame is to genius 
 
 " Like a gate of steel, 
 
 Fronting the sun, receives and renders back 
 His figure and his heat." 
 
 We give full and unbounded scope to our impressions 
 when they are confirmed by successive generations, as we 
 form our opinions coldly and slowly while we are afraid 
 our judgment may be reversed by posterity. We trust 
 the testimony of ages, for it is true ; we are no longer in 
 pain lest we should be deceived by varnish and tinsel, and 
 feel assured that the praise and the work are both sterling. 
 In contemporary reputation, the greater and more tran- 
 scendent the merit, the less is the envy attending it, which 
 shows that this passion is not, after all, a mere barefaced 
 hatred and detraction from acknowledged excellence. 
 Mrs. biddons was nofc an object of envy ; her unrivalled 
 powers defied competition or gainsayers. If Kean had a 
 party against him, it was composed of those who could 
 not or w^ould not see his merits through his defects ; and, 
 in like manner, John Kemble's elevation to the tragic 
 throne was not carried by loud and tumultuous acclama- 
 tion, because the stately height which he attained was the 
 gradual result of labour and study, and his style of acting 
 did not flash with the inspiration of the god. We are 
 backward to bestow a heaped measure of praise whenever 
 there is any inaptitude or incongruity that acts to damp 
 or throw a stumbling-block in the way of our enthusiasm. 
 Hence the jealousy and dislike shown towards upstart 
 wealth, as we cannot in our imaginations reconcile the 
 
 

 
 Envy. 221 
 
 former poverty of the possessors with their present mag- 
 nificence — we despise fortune-hunters in ambition as well 
 as in love — and hence, no doubt, one strong ground of 
 hereditary right. We acquiesce more readily in an 
 assumption of superiority that in the first place implies 
 no merit (which is a great relief to the baser sort), and in 
 the second, that baffles opposition by seeming a thing 
 inevitable, taken for granted, and transmitted in the 
 common course of nature. In contested elections, where 
 the precedence is understood to be awarded to rank and 
 title, there is observed to be less acrimony and obstinacy 
 than when it is supposed to depend on individual merit 
 and fitness for the office ; no one willingly allows 
 another more ability or honesty than himself, but he can- 
 not deny that another may be better born. Learning, 
 again, is more freely admitted than genius, because it is 
 of a more positive quality, and is felt to be less essentially 
 a part of a man's self ; and with regard to the grosser and 
 more invidious distinction of wealth, it may be difficult to 
 substitute any finer test of respectability for it, since it is 
 hard to fathom the depth of a man's understanding, but 
 the length of his purse is soon known ; and besides there 
 is a little collusion in the case. 
 
 " The learned pate ducks to the golden fool." 
 
 We bow to a patron who gives us a good dinner and his 
 countenance for our pains, and interest bribes and lulls 
 envy asleep. The most painful kind of envy is the envy 
 towards inferiors ; for we cannot bear to think that a 
 person (in other respects utterly insignificant) should have 
 or seem to have an advantage over us in anything we have 
 set our hearts upon, and it strikes at the very root of 
 our self-love to be foiled by those we despise. There 
 is some dignity in a contest with power and acknow- 
 ledged reputation ; but a triumph over the sordid and the 
 mean is itself a mortification, while a defeat is intolerable. 
 
222 On the Spirit of Partisanship. 
 
 On the Spirit of Partisanship. 1 
 
 I have in my time known few thorough partisans, at 
 least on my own side of the question. I conceive, 
 however, that the honestest and strongest-minded men 
 have been so. In general, interest, fear, vanity, the love 
 of contradiction, even a scrupulous regard to truth and 
 justice, come to divert them from the popular cause. It 
 is a character that requires very opposite and almost 
 incompatible qualities — reason and prejudice, a passionate 
 attachment founded on an abstract idea. He who can 
 take up a speculative question, and pursue it with the 
 same zeal and unshaken constancy that he does his im- 
 mediate interests or private animosities — he who is as 
 faithful to his principles as he is to himself, is the true 
 partisan. I do not here speak of the bigot, or the 
 mercenary or cowardly tool of a party. There are plenty 
 of this description of persons (a considerable majority of 
 the inhabitants of every country) — who are " ever strong 
 upon the stronger side," staunch, thorough-paced sticklers 
 for their passions and prejudices, and who stand by their 
 party as long as their party can stand by them. I speak 
 of those who espouse a cause from liberal motives and 
 with liberal views, and of the obstacles that are so often 
 found to relax their perseverance or impair their zeal. 
 These may, I think, be reduced chiefly to the heads of 
 obligations to friends, of vanity, or the desire of the lead 
 and distinction, to an over-squeamish delicacy in regard 
 to appearances, to fickleness of purpose, or to natural 
 timidity and weakness of nerve. 
 
 There is nothing more contemptible than party-spirit 
 in one point of view; and yet it seems inseparable in 
 practice from public principle. You cannot support 
 1 Written in 1820. 
 
On the Spirit of Partisanship. 223 
 
 measures unless you support men ; you cannot carry any 
 point or maintain any system without acting in concert 
 with others. In theory, it is all very well. We may 
 refine in our distinctions, and elevate our language to 
 what point we please. But in carrying the most sounding 
 words and stateliest propositions into effect, we must make 
 use of the instrumentality of men ; and some of the alloy 
 and imperfection of the means may insinuate itself into 
 the end. If we do not go all lengths with those who are 
 embarked with us in the same views ; if we are not 
 hearty in the defence of their interests and motives ; if 
 we are not fully in their confidence and they in ours ; 
 if we do not ingraft on the stock of public virtue the 
 charities and sentiments of private affection and esteem ; 
 if the bustle and anxiety and irritation of the state-affairs 
 do not kindle into the glow of friendship, as well as 
 patriotism ; if we look distant, suspicious, lukewarm at 
 one another ; if we criticise, carp at, pry into the conduct 
 of our party with watchful, jealous eyes ; it is to be feared 
 we shall play the game into the enemy's hands, and not 
 co-operate together for the common good with all the 
 steadiness and cordiality that might be wished. On the 
 other hand, if we lend ourselves to the foibles and 
 weaknesses of our friends ; if we suffer ourselves to be 
 implicated in their intrigues, their scrambles and bar- 
 gainings for place and power ; if we flatter their mistakes, 
 and not only screen them from the eyes of others, but are 
 blind to them ourselves ; if we compromise a great 
 principle in the softness of a womanish friendship ; if we 
 entangle ourselves in needless family ties ; if we sell 
 ourselves to the vices of a patron, or become the mouth- 
 piece and echo of a coterie ; we shall be in that case slaves 
 of a faction, not servants of the public, nor shall we long 
 have a spark of the old Eoman or the old English virtue 
 left. Good-nature, conviviality, hospitality, habits of 
 acquaintance and regard, favours received or conferred, 
 
224 On the Spirit of Partisanship . 
 
 spirit and eloquence to defend a friend when pressed hard 
 upon, courtesy and good-breeding, are one thing — 
 patriotism, firmness of principle, are another. The true 
 patriot knows when to make each of these in turn give 
 way to or control the other, in furtherance of the common 
 good, just as the accomplished courtier makes all other 
 interests, friendships, cabals, resentments, reconciliations, 
 subservient to his attachment to the person of the king. 
 He has the welfare of his country, the cause of mankind 
 at heart, and makes that the scale in which all other 
 motives are weighed as in a balance. With this inward 
 prompter he knows when to speak and when to hold his 
 tongue, when to temporise, and when to throw away the 
 scabbard, when to make men of service to principles, and 
 when to make principles the sole condition of popularity 
 — nearly as well as if he had a title or a pension de- 
 pending in reversion on his success : for it is true that 
 " in their generation the children of this world are wiser 
 than the children of light." In my opinion, Charles Fox 
 had too much of what we mean by " the milk of human 
 kindness "to be a practical statesman, particularly in 
 critical times, and with a cause of infinite magnitude at 
 stake. He was too easy a friend, and too generous an 
 enemy. He was willing to think better of those with 
 whom he acted, or to whom he was opposed, than they 
 deserved. He was the creature of temperament and 
 sympathy, and suffered his feelings to be played upon, 
 and to get the better of his principles, which were not 
 of the most rigid kind — not " stuff o' the conscience." 
 With all the power of the crown, and all the strongholds 
 of prejudice and venality opposed to him, " instead of a 
 softness coming over the heart of a man," he should (in 
 such a situation) have " turned to the stroke his ada- 
 mantine scales that feared no discipline of human hands," 
 and made it a struggle ad internecionem on the one side, 
 as it was on the other. There was no place for 
 
 . 
 

 On the Spirit of Partisanship. 225 
 
 moderation, much less for huckstering and trimming. 
 Mr. Burke saw the thing right enough. It was a question 
 about a principle — about the existence or extinction of 
 human rights in the abstract. He was on the side of 
 legitimate slavery ; Mr. Fox on that of natural liberty. 
 That was no reason he should be less bold or jealous 
 in her defence, because he had everything to contend 
 against. But he made too many coalitions, too many com- 
 promises with flattery, with friendship (to say nothing 
 of the baits of power), not to falter and be defeated at 
 last in the noble stand he had made for the principles of 
 freedom. 
 
 Another sort are as much too captious and precise, as 
 these are lax and cullible in their notions of political 
 warfare. Their fault is an overweening egotism, as that 
 of the former was too great a facility of temper. They 
 will have everything their own way to the minutest tittle, 
 or they cannot think of giving it their sanction and 
 support. The cause must come to them, they will not 
 go to the cause. They stand upon their punctilio. They 
 have a character at stake, which is dearer to them than 
 the whole world. They have an idea of perfect truth 
 and beauty in their own minds, the contemplation of 
 which is a never-failing source of delight and consolation 
 to them, 
 
 u Though sun and moon were in the flat sea sunk " 
 
 and which they will not soil by mixing it up with the 
 infirmities of any cause or any party. They will not, 
 " to do a great right, do a little wrong." They will let 
 the lofty pillar inscribed to human liberty fall to the 
 ground sooner than extend a finger to save it, on account 
 of the dust and cobwebs that cling to it. It is not this 
 great and mighty object they are thinking of all the 
 time, but their own fantastic reputation and puny pre- 
 tensions. While the world is tumbling about our ears, 
 
 Q 
 
226 On the Spirit of Partisanship. 
 
 and the last hold of liberty, the ark containing our birth- 
 right, the only possible barrier against bare-faced tyranny, 
 is tottering — instead of setting the engines and the 
 mortal instruments at work to prop it, and fighting in 
 the trenches to the last drop, they are washing their 
 hands of all imaginary imperfections, and looking in 
 the glass of their own vanity, with an air of heightened 
 self-complacency. Alas ! they do not foresee the fatal 
 consequences ; they have an eye only to themselves. 
 While all the power, the prejudice, and ignorance of 
 mankind are drawn up in deadly array against the 
 advance of truth and justice, they owe it to themselves, 
 forsooth I to state the naked merits of the question (heat 
 and passion apart), and pick out all the faults of which 
 their own party has been guilty, to fling as a make-weight 
 into the adversary's scale of unmeasured abuse and ex- 
 ecration. They will not take their ready stand by the 
 side of him who was " the very arm and burgonet of man," 
 and like a demi- Atlas, could alone prop a declining world, 
 because for themselves they have some objections to the 
 individual instrument, and they think principles more 
 important than persons. No, they think persons of more 
 consequence than principles, and themselves most of all. 
 They injure the principle through the person most able 
 to protect it. They betray the cause by not defending 
 it as it is attacked, tooth and nail, might and main, 
 without exception and without remorse. When every- 
 thing is at stake, dear and valuable to man, as man ; when 
 there is but the one dreadful alternative of entire loss, or 
 final recovery of truth and freedom, it is no time to stand 
 upon trifles and moot-points ; the great object is to be 
 secured first, and at all hazards. 
 
 But there is a third thing in their minds, a fanciful 
 something which they prefer to both contending parties. 
 It may be so ; but neither they nor we can get it. We 
 must have one of the two things imposed upon us, not 
 
 I 
 
On the Spirit of Partisanship. 227 
 
 by choice but by bard necessity. " Our bane and antidote 
 are both before us ; " and if we do anything to neglect 
 the one, we justly incur the heavy, intolerable, unredeemed 
 penalty of the other. If our pride is stung, if we have 
 received a blow or the lie in our own persons, we know 
 well enough what to do : our blood is up, we have an 
 actual feeling and object to satisfy ; and we are not to be 
 diverted from our purpose by sophistry or mere words. 
 The quarrel is personal to ourselves ; and we feel the 
 whole stress of it, rousing every faculty and straining 
 every nerve. But if the quarrel is general to mankind ; 
 if it is one in which the rights, freedom, hopes, and 
 happiness of the whole world are embarked ; if we see 
 the dignity of our common nature prostrate, trampled 
 upon and mangled before the brute image of power, this 
 gives us little concern ; our reason may disapprove, but 
 our passions, our prejudices, are not touched ; and there- 
 fore our reason, our humanity, our abstract love of right 
 (not " screwed to the sticking-place " by some paltry 
 interest of our own) are easily satisfied with any hollow 
 professions of good- will, or put off with vague excuses, or 
 staggered with open defiance. We are here, where a 
 principle only is in danger, at leisure to calculate con- 
 sequences, prudently for ourselves, or favourably for 
 others : were it a point of honour (we think the honour 
 of human nature is not our honour, that its disgrace is 
 not our disgrace — we are not the rabble !) we should 
 throw consideration and compassion to the clogs, and 
 cry — " Away to heaven respective lenity, and fire-eyed 
 fury be my conduct now !" But charity is cold. We are 
 the dupes of the flatteries of our opponents, because we 
 are indifferent to our own object : we stand in awe of 
 their threats, because in the absence of passion we are 
 tender of our persons. They beat us in courage and in 
 intellect, because we have nothing but the common good 
 to sharpen our faculties or goad our will ; they have no 
 
228 On the Spirit of Partisanship. 
 
 less an alternative in view than to be uncontrolled masters 
 of mankind, or to be hurled from high — 
 
 " To grinning scorn a sacrifice, 
 And endless infamy !" 
 
 They do not celebrate the triumphs of their enemies as 
 their own : it is with them a more feeling disputation. 
 They never give an inch of ground that they can keep ; 
 they keep all that they can get ; they make no concessions 
 that can redound to their own discredit ; they assume all 
 that makes for them ; if they pause it is to gain time ; 
 if they offer terms it is to break them : they keep no faith 
 with enemies : if you relax in your exertions, they per- 
 severe the more : if you make new efforts, they redouble 
 theirs. While they give no quarter, you stand upon mere 
 ceremony. While they are cutting your throat, or putting 
 the gag in your mouth, you talk of nothing but liberality, 
 freedom of inquiry, and douce humanite. Their object is to 
 destroy you, your object is to spare them — to treat them 
 according to your own fancied dignity. They have sense 
 and spirit enough to take all advantages that will further 
 their cause : you have pedantry and pusillanimity enough 
 to undertake the defence of yours, in order to defeat it. 
 It is the difference between the efficient and the in- 
 efficient ; and this again resolves itself into the difference 
 between a speculative proposition and a practical interest. 
 One thing that makes tyrants bold is, that they have 
 the power to justify their wrong. They lay their hands 
 upon the sword, and ask who will dispute their commands. 
 The friends of humanity and justice have not in general 
 this ark of confidence to recur to, and can only appeal to 
 reason and propriety. They oppose power on the plea of 
 right and conscience; and shall they, in pursuance of 
 their claims, violate in the smallest tittle what is due to 
 truth and justice ? So that the one have no law but their 
 wills, and the absolute extent of their authority, in attain- 
 
On the Spirit of Partisanship. 229 
 
 ing or securing their ends, because they make no preten 
 sions to scrupulous delicacy : the others are cooped and 
 cabined in by all sorts of nice investigations in philosophy, 
 and misgivings of the moral sense ; that is, are deprived 
 or curtailed of the means of succeeding in their ends, 
 because those ends are not bare-faced violence and wrong. 
 It might as well be said that a man has a right to knock 
 me on the head on the highway, and that I am only to 
 use mildness and persuasion in return, as best suited to 
 the justice of my cause ; as that I am not to retaliate 
 and make reprisals on the common enemies of mankind 
 in their own style and mode of execution. Is not a man 
 to defend his liberty, or the liberties of his fellow men, 
 as strenuously and remorselessly as he would his life or 
 his purse ? Men are Quakers in political principle, Turks 
 and Jews in private conscience. 
 
 The whole is an error arising from confounding the 
 distinction between theory and practice, between the still- 
 life of letters and the tug and onset of contending factions. 
 I might recommend to our political mediators the advice 
 which Henry V. addressed to his soldiers on a critical 
 occasion : — 
 
 " In peace there's nothing so becomes a man 
 As modest stillness and humility ; 
 But when the blast of war blows in our ears. 
 Then imitate the action of the tiger ; 
 Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, 
 Disguise fair nature with hard-fa vour'd rage ; 
 Then lend the eye a terrible aspect ; 
 Let it pry through the portage of the head, 
 Like the brass-cannon : let the brow o'erwhelm it 
 As fearfully as doth a galled rock 
 O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, 
 Swill' d with the wild and wasteful ocean : 
 Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide ; 
 Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 
 To his full height." 1 
 
 Henry F., iii. 1 [edit, ut supra]. 
 
230 On the Spirit of Partisanship. 
 
 So, in speculation refine as much as you please, in- 
 tellectually and morally speaking, and you may do it with 
 advantage. Reason is then the instrument you use, and 
 you cannot raise the standard of perfection you fix upon 
 and propose to others too high, or proceed with too much 
 candour and moderation in the advancement of truth : but 
 in practice you have not your choice of ends or means. 
 You have two things to decide between, the extreme, pro- 
 oably, of an evil and a considerable good ; and if you will 
 not make your mind up to take the best of the two with 
 all its disadvantages and drawbacks, you must be con- 
 tented to take the worst : for as you cannot alter the state 
 of the conflicting parties who are carrying their point by 
 force, or dictate what is best by a word speaking ; so by 
 finding fault with the attainable good, and throwing cold 
 water on it, you add fuel to your enemy's courage and 
 assist his success. " Those who are not for us are against 
 us." You create a diversion in his favour, by distracting 
 and enervating men's minds, as much as by questioning 
 the general's orders, or drawing off a strong detachment 
 in the heat of a battle. Political is like military warfare. 
 There are but two sides ; and after you have once chosen 
 your party, it will not do to stand in the midway, and say 
 you like neither. There is no other to like, in the eye of 
 common sense, or in the practical and inevitable result of 
 the thing. As active partisans, we must take up with the 
 best we can get in the circumstances, and defend it with 
 all our might against a worse cause (which will prevail, 
 if this does not), instead of " letting our frail thoughts 
 dally with faint surmise;" or, while dreaming of an ideal 
 perfection, we shall find ourselves surprised into the train, 
 and gracing the triumph, of the common enemy. It is 
 sufficient if our objects and principles are sound and dis- 
 interested. If we were engaged in a friendly contest, 
 where integrity and fair dealing were the order of the day, 
 our means might be as unimpeachable as our ends ; but in 
 
On the Spirit of Partisanship. 231 
 
 a struggle with the passions, interests, and prejudices of 
 men, right reason, pure intention, are hardly competent 
 to carry us through : we want another stimulus. The 
 vices may be opposed to each other sometimes with 
 advantage and propriety. A little of the alloy of human 
 frailty may be allowed to lend its aid to the service oi 
 humanity; and if we have only so much obstinacy or 
 insensibility as enables us to persevere in the path of 
 public duty with more determination and effect, both our 
 motives and conduct will be above the ordinary standard 
 of political morality. To suppose that we can do much 
 more than this, or that we can set up our individual 
 opinion of what is best in itself, or of the best means of 
 attaining it, and be listened to by the world at large, is 
 egregiously to overrate their docility or our own powers 
 of persuasion. 
 
 It is the same want of a centripetal force, of a ruling 
 passion, of a moral instinct of union and co-operation for 
 a general purpose, that makes men fly off into knots and 
 factions, and each set up for the leader of a party himself. 
 Where there is a strong feeling of interest at work, it 
 reconciles and combines the most discordant materials, 
 and fits them to their place in the social machine. But 
 in the conduct and support of the public good, we see 
 "nothing but vanity, chaotic vanity." There is no for- 
 bearance, no self-denial, no magnanimity of proceeding. 
 Every one is seeking his own aggrandisement, or to sup- 
 plant his neighbour, instead of advancing the popular 
 cause. It is because they have no real regard for it but 
 as it serves as a stalking horse to their ambition, restless 
 inquietude, or love of cabal. They abuse and vilify their 
 own party, just as they do the ministers. 
 
 " Each lolls his tongue out at the other, 
 And shakes his empty noddle at his brother." 
 
 John Bull does not aim so maliciously, or hit so hard at 
 
232 On the Spirit of Partisanship. 
 
 Whigs and Eeformers, as Cobbett. The reason is, that a 
 very large proportion of these Marplots and regenerators 
 of the world are actuated by no love of their species or 
 zeal for a general question, but by envy, malice, and all 
 uncharitableness. They are discontented with themselves 
 and with everything about them. They object to, they 
 dissent from every measure. Nothing pleases their fasti- 
 dious tastes. For want of something to exercise their 
 ill-humour and troublesome ofnciousness upon, they abuse 
 the government : when they are baulked or tired of this 
 they fall foul of one another. The slightest slip or 
 difference of opinion is never forgiven, but gives birth 
 to a deadly feud. Touch but their petty self-importance, 
 and out comes a flaming denunciation of their own cabal, 
 and all they know about the individuals composing it. 
 This is not patriotism but spleen — a want of something to 
 do and to talk about — of sense, honesty, and feeling. To 
 wreak their spite on an individual, they will ruin the 
 cause, and serve up the friend and idol of the people 
 sliced and carbonadoed, a delicious mortal to the other 
 side. There is a strange want of keeping in this. They 
 are true neither to themselves nor to their principles. 
 The Eeformers are in general, it must be confessed, an 
 ill-conditioned set ; and they should be told of this in- 
 firmity that most easily besets them. When they find 
 their gall and bitterness overflowing on the very persons 
 who take the lead, and deservedly take the lead, in their 
 affairs, for some slight flaw or misunderstanding, they 
 should be taught to hold their tongues, or be drummed out 
 of the regiment as spies and informers. 
 
 Trimming, and want of spirit to declare the honest 
 truth, arise in part from the same source. When a man 
 is not thoroughly convinced of an opinion, or where he 
 does not feel a deep interest in it, he does not like to 
 make himself obnoxious by avowing it ; is willing to 
 make all the allowance he can for difference of sentiment, 
 
On the Spirit of Partisanship. 233 
 
 and consults his own safety by retiring from a sinking 
 cause. This is the very time when the genuine partisan, 
 who has a rooted attachment to a principle, and feels it 
 as a part of himself, finds himself most called upon to 
 come forward in its support. His anxiety for truth and 
 justice leaves him in no fear for himself, and the sin- 
 cerity of his motives makes him regardless of censure or 
 obloquy. His profession of hearty devotion to freedom 
 was not an ebullition called forth by the sunshine of 
 prosperity, a lure for popularity and public favour ; and 
 when these desert it, he still maintains his post with his 
 integrity. There is a natural timidity of mind, also, 
 which can never go the whole length of any opinion, but 
 is always interlarding its qualified assent with unmeaning 
 huts and ifs ; as there is a levity and discursiveness of 
 imagination which cannot settle finally in any belief, 
 and requires a succession of glancing views, topics, and 
 opposite conclusions, to satisfy its appetite for intel- 
 lectual variety. I have known persons leave the cause 
 of independence and freedom, not because they found it 
 unprofitable, but because they found it flat and stale for 
 want of novelty. At the same time, interest is a great 
 stimulator ; and perhaps the success of their early prin- 
 ciples might have reconciled them to their embarrassing 
 monotony. Few persons have strength and simplicity of 
 mind (without some additional inducement) to be always 
 harping on the same string, or to put up with the 
 legitimate variety to be found in an abstract principle, 
 applicable to all emergencies. They like changeable 
 silks better than lasting homespun. A sensible man once 
 
 mentioned to me his having called on that morning, 
 
 who entertained with him a tirade against the Bourbons 
 for two hours ; but he said he did not at all feel con- 
 vinced that he might not have been writing ultra-royalist 
 
 paragraphs for the , just, before he came, in their 
 
 favour, and only shifted his side of the argument, as a 
 
234 On the Spirit of Partisanship. 
 
 man who is tired of lying too long on one side of his body 
 is glad to turn to the other. There was much shrewd- 
 ness, and equal probability in this conjecture. 
 
 I think the spirit of partisanship is of use in a point of 
 view that has not been distinctly adverted to. It serves 
 as a conductor to carry off our antipathies and ill-blood in 
 a quarter and a manner that is least hurtful to the general 
 weal. A thorough partisan is a good hater ; but he hates 
 only one side of a question, and that the outside. His 
 bigotry throws human nature into strong light and shade ; 
 he has his sympathies as well as his antipathies ; it is not 
 all black or a dull drab-colour. He does not generalise 
 in his contempt or disgust, or proceed from individuals to 
 universals. He lays the faults and vices of mankind to 
 the account of sects and parties, creeds and classes. Man 
 in himself is a good sort of animal. It is the being a 
 Tory or a Whig (as it may happen) that makes a man a 
 knave or fool ; but then we hardly look upon him as of 
 the same species with ourselves. Kings are not arbitrary, 
 nor priests hypocritical, because they are men, but because 
 they are kings and priests. We form certain nominal 
 abstractions of these classes, which the more we dislike 
 them the less natural do they seem, and leave the general 
 character of the species untouched, or act as a foil to it. 
 There is nothing that is a greater damper to party spirit 
 than to suggest that the errors and enormities of both 
 sides arise from certain inherent dispositions common to 
 the species. It shocks the liberal and enlightened among 
 us, to suppose that under any circumstances they could 
 become bigots, tools, persecutors. They wipe their hands 
 clean of all such aspersions. There is a great gulf of 
 prejudice and passion placed between us and our oppo- 
 nents ; and this is interpreted into a natural barrier and 
 separation of sentiment and feeling. " Our withers are 
 unwrung." Burke represented modern revolutionists to 
 himself under the equivocal similitude of " green-eyed, 
 

 On the Spirit of Partisanship 235 
 
 spring-nailed, velvet-pawed philosophers, whether going 
 on two legs or on four ; " and thus removed to a distance 
 from his own person all the ill attributes with which he 
 had complimented the thorough-bred metaphysician. By 
 comparing the plausible qualities of a minister of state to 
 the sleekness of the panther, I myself seem to have no 
 more affinity with that whole genus, than with the 
 whiskers and claws of that formidable and spirited 
 animal. Bishop Taylor used to reprimand his rising 
 pride by saying, at the sight of a reprobate, " There goes 
 my wicked self :" we do not apply the same method 
 politically, and say, " There goes my Tory or my Jacobin 
 self." We suppose the two things incompatible. The 
 Calvinist damns the Arminian, the Protestant the Papist, 
 &c, but it is not for a difference of nature, but an oppo- 
 sition of opinion. The spirit of partisanship is not a 
 spirit of our misanthropy. But for the vices and errors 
 of example and institution, mankind are (on this principle) 
 only a little lower than the angels ; it is false doctrine 
 and absurd prejudices that make demons of them. The 
 only original sin is differing in opinion with us : of that 
 they are curable like any occasional disorder, and the 
 man comes out, from beneath the husk of his party 
 and prejudices, pure and immaculate. Make proselytes of 
 them, let them come over to our way of thinking, and they 
 are a different race of beings quite. This is to be effected 
 by the force of argument and the progress of knowledge. 
 It is well, it is perfectly well. We cast the slough of our 
 vices with the shibboleth of our party ; a real Eeform in 
 Parliament would banish all knavery and folly from the 
 land. It is not the same wretched little mischievous 
 animal, man, that is alike under all denominations and all 
 systems, and in whom different situations and notions only 
 bring out different inherent, incorrigible vices and pro- 
 pensities ; but the professions and the theory being 
 changed for the one which we think the only true and 
 
236 Footmen. 
 
 infallible one, the whole world, by the mere removal of 
 our arbitrary prejudices and modes of thinking, would 
 become as sincere, as benevolent, as independent, and as 
 worthy peojfte as we are ! To hate and proscribe half the 
 species under various pretexts and nicknames, seems, 
 therefore, the only way to entertain a good opinion of 
 ourselves and mankind in general. 
 
 Footmen. 
 
 Footmen are no part of Christianity ; but they are a very 
 necessary appendage to our happy Constitution in Church 
 and State. What would the bishop's mitre be without 
 these grave supporters to his dignity ? Even the plain 
 presbyter does not dispense with his decent serving-man 
 to stand behind his chair and load his duly emptied plate 
 with beef and pudding, at which the genius of Ude turns 
 jjale. What would become of the coronet-coach filled 
 with elegant and languid forms, if it were not for the 
 triple row of powdered, laced, and liveried footmen, 
 clustering, fluttering, and lounging behind it ? What an 
 idea do we not conceive of the fashionable belle, who is 
 making the most of her time and tumbling over silks and 
 satins within at Howell and James's, or at the Bazaar in 
 Soho-square, from the tall lacquey in blue and silver with 
 gold-headed cane, cocked-hat, white thread stockings and 
 large calves to his legs, who stands as her representative 
 without! The sleek shopman appears at the door, at 
 an understood signal the livery-servant starts from his 
 position, the coach-door flies open, the steps are let down, 
 the young lady enters the carriage as young ladies are 
 taught to step into carriages, the footman closes the door, 
 mounts behind, and the glossy vehicle rolls off, bearing 
 its lovely burden and her gaudy attendant from the gaze 
 of the gaping crowd ! Is there not a spell in beauty, a 
 
Footmen. 237 
 
 charm in rank and fashion, that one would almost wish to 
 be this fellow — to obey its nod, to watch its looks, to 
 breathe but by its permission, and to live but for its use, 
 its scorn, or pride ? 
 
 Footmen are in general looked upon as a sort of super- 
 numeraries in society — they have no place assigned them 
 in any Encyclopaedia — they do not come under any of the 
 heads in Mr. Mill's Elements, or Mr. Macculloch's Principles 
 of Political Economy ; and they nowhere have had im- 
 partial justice done them, except in Lady Booby's love for 
 one of that order. But if not " the Corinthian capitals of 
 polished society," they are " a graceful ornament to the 
 civil order." Lords and ladies could not do without them. 
 Nothing exists in this world but by contrast. A foil is 
 necessary to make the plainest truths self-evident. It is 
 the very insignificance, the nonentity, as it were, of the 
 gentlemen of the cloth, that constitutes their importance, 
 and makes them an indispensable feature in the social sys- 
 tem, by setting off the pretensions of their superiors to the 
 best advantage. What would be the good of having a will 
 of our own, if we had not others about us who are deprived 
 of all will of their own, and who wear a badge to say, " I 
 serve ? " How can we show that we are the lords of the 
 creation but by reducing others to the condition of 
 machines, who never move but at the beck of our caprices ? 
 Is not the plain suit of the master wonderfully relieved by 
 the borrowed trappings and mock- finery of his servant? 
 You see that man on horseback who keeps at some distance 
 behind another, who follows him as his shadow, turns 
 as he turns, and as he passes or speaks to him, lifts his 
 hand to his hat and observes the most profound attention 
 — what is the difference between these two men ? The 
 one is as well mounted, as well fed, is younger and 
 seemingly in better health than the other ; but between 
 these two there are perhaps seven or eight classes of society 
 each of whom is dependent on and trembles at the frown 
 
238 Footmen. 
 
 of the other — it is a nobleman and his lacquey. Let air 
 one take a stroll towards the West-end of the town, Scuth 
 Audley or Upper Grosvenor-streets ; it is then he will feel 
 himself first entering into the beau ideal of civilised life, 
 a society composed entirely of lords and footmen ! Deliver 
 me from the filth and cellars of St. Giles's, from the shops 
 of Holborn and the Strand, from all that appertains to 
 middle and to low life ; and commend me to the streets 
 with the straw at the doors and hatchments over head to 
 tell ns of those who are just born or who are just dead, 
 and with groups of footmen lounging on the steps and in- 
 sulting the passengers — it is then I feel the true dignity 
 and imaginary pretensions of human nature realised ! 
 There is here none of the squalidness of poverty, none of 
 the hardships of daily labour, none of the anxiety and 
 petty artifice of trade ; life's business is changed into a 
 romance, a summer's dream, and nothing painful, disgus- 
 ting, or vulgar intrudes. All is on a liberal and handsome 
 scale. The true ends and benefits of society are here 
 enjoyed and bountifully lavished, and all the trouble and 
 misery banished, and not even allowed so much as to exist 
 in thought. Those who would find the real Utopia, should 
 look for it somewhere about Park-lane or May-fair. It is 
 there only any feasible approach to equality is made — for 
 it is like master like man. Here, as I look down Cnrzon- 
 street, or catch a glimpse of the taper spire of South 
 Audley Chapel, or the family arms on the gate of Chester- 
 field House, the vista of years opens to me. and I recall the 
 period of the triumph of Mr. Burke's Reflections on the 
 French Revolution, and the overthrow of Tlie Rights of Man ! 
 You do not, indeed, penetrate to the interior of the mansion 
 where sits the stately possessor, luxurious and refined ; 
 but you draw your inference from the lazy, pampered, 
 motley crew poured forth from his portals. This mealy- 
 3oated, moth-like, butterfly generation, seem to have no 
 earthly business but to enjoy themselves. Their green 
 
Footmen. 239 
 
 liveries accord with the budding leaves and spreading 
 branches of the trees in Hyde Park — they seem " like 
 brothers of the groves " — their red faces and powdered 
 heads harmonise with the blossoms of the neighbouring 
 almond-trees, that shoot their sprays over old-fashioned 
 brick walls, They come forth like grasshoppers in June, 
 as numerous and as noisy. They bask in the sun and 
 laugh in your face. Not only does the master enjoy an 
 uninterrupted leisure and tranquillity — those in his 
 employment have nothing to do. He wants drones, not 
 drudges, about him, to share his superfluity, and give a 
 haughty pledge of his exemption from care. They grow 
 sleek and wanton, saucy and supple. From being in- 
 dependent of the world, they acquire the look of gentle- 
 men s gentlemen. There is a cast of the aristocracy, with a 
 slight shade of distinction. The saying, " Tell me your 
 company, and I'll tell you your manners," may be ap- 
 plied cum grano salts to the servants in great families. 
 Mr. Northcote knew an old butler who had lived with 
 a nobleman so long, and had learnt to imitate his walk, 
 look, and way of speaking, so exactly that it was next to 
 impossible to tell them apart. See the porter in the 
 great leather chair in the hall — how big, and burly, and 
 self-important he looks ; while my Lord's gentleman (the 
 politician of the family) is reading the second edition of 
 The Courier (once more in request) at the side window, 
 and the footman is romping, or taking tea with the maids 
 in the kitchen below. A match-girl meanwhile plies her 
 shrill trade at the railing ; or a gipsy- woman passes with 
 her rustic wares through the street, avoiding the closet 
 haunts of the city. What a pleasant farce is that of High 
 Life Below Stairs ! What a careless life do the domestics 
 of the great lead ! For, not to speak of the reflected self- 
 importance of their masters and mistresses, and the con- 
 tempt with which they look down on the herd of mankind, 
 they have only to eat and drink their fill, talk the scandal 
 
240 Footmen. 
 
 of the neighbourhood, laugh at the follies, or assist the 
 intrigues of their betters, till they themselves fall in love, 
 marry, set up a public-house (the only thing they are fit 
 for), and without habits of industry, resources in them- 
 selves, or self-respect, and drawing fruitless comparisons 
 with the past, are, of all people, the most miserable! 
 Service is no inheritance ; and when it fails, there is not a 
 more helpless, or more worthless set of devils in the world. 
 
 Mr. C used to say he should like to be a footman to 
 
 some elderly lady of quality, to carry her prayer-book to 
 church, and place her hassock right for her. There can be 
 no doubt that this would have been better, and quite as 
 useful as the life he has led, dancing attendance on Pre- 
 judice, but flirting with Paradox in such a way as to cut 
 himself out of the old lady's will. For my part, if I had 
 to choose, I should prefer the service of a young mistress, 
 and might share the fate of the footmen recorded in heroic 
 verse by Lady Wortley Montagu. Certainly it can be no 
 hard duty, though a sort of forlorn hope, to have to follow 
 three sisters, or youthful friends (resembling the three 
 Graces), at a slow pace, and with grave demeanour, from 
 Cumberland-gate to Kensington-gardens — to be there shut 
 out, a privation enhancing the privilege, and making the 
 sense of distant, respectful, idolatrous admiration more 
 intense — and then, after a brief interval lost in idle chat, 
 or idler reverie, to have to follow them back again, ob- 
 serving, not observed, to keep within call, to watch every 
 gesture, to see the breeze play with the light tresses or 
 lift the morning robe aside, to catch the half-suppressed 
 laugh, and hear the low murmur of indistinct words and 
 wishes, like the music of the spheres. An amateur foot- 
 man would seem a more rational occupation than that of 
 an amateur author, or an amateur artist. An insurmount- 
 able barrier, if it excludes passion, does not banish senti- 
 ment, but draws an atmosphere of superstitious, trembling 
 apprehension round the object of so much attention and 
 
Footmen. 241 
 
 respect ; nothing makes women seem so much like angels 
 as always to see, never to converse with them ; and those 
 whom he has to dangle a cane after, must, to a lacquey of 
 any spirit, appear worthy to wield sceptres. 
 
 But of all situations of this kind, the most enviable is 
 that of a lady's maid in a family travelling abroad. In the 
 obt'iseness of foreigners to the nice gradations of English 
 refinement and manners, the maid has not seldom a chance 
 of being taken for the mistress — a circumstance never to 
 be forgot ! See our Abigail mounted in the dickey with 
 John, snug and comfortable — setting out on the grand tour 
 as fast as four horses can carry her, whirled over the " vine- 
 covered hills and gay regions of France," crossing the Alps 
 and Apennines in breathless terror and wonder — fright- 
 ened at a precipice, laughing at her escape — coming to the 
 inn, going into the kitchen to see what is to be had — not 
 speaking a word of the language, except what she picks up 
 " as pigeons pick up peas :" — the bill paid, the passport 
 vise, the horses put to, and en route again — seeing every- 
 thing, and understanding nothing, in a full tide of health, 
 fresh air, and animal spirits, and without one qualm of 
 taste or sentiment, and arriving at Florence, the city of 
 palaces, with its amphitheatre of hills and olives, without 
 •suspecting that such persons as Boccaccio, Dante, or 
 Galileo, had ever lived there, while her young mistress is 
 puzzled with the varieties of the Tuscan dialect, is dis- 
 appointed in the Arno, and cannot tell what to make of the 
 statue of David by Michael Angelo, in the Great Square. 
 The difference is, that the young lady, on her return, has 
 something to think of ; but the maid absolutely forgets 
 everything, and is only giddy and out of breath, as if she 
 had been up in a balloon. 
 
 " No more : where ignorance is bliss, 
 'Tis folly to be wise !" 
 
 English servants abroad, notwithstanding the comforts 
 
 R 
 
242 Footmen. 
 
 they enjoy, and though travelling as it were en famille, 
 must be struck with the ease and familiar footing on which 
 foreigners live with their domestics, compared with the 
 distance and reserve with which they themselves are treat- 
 ed. The bonne sits down in the room, or walks abreast 
 with you in the street ; and the valet, who waits behind his 
 master's chair at table, gives Monsieur his advice or opinion 
 without being asked for it. We need not wonder at this 
 familiarity and freedom, when we consider that those who 
 allowed it could (formerly, at least, when the custom began) 
 send those who transgressed but in the smallest degree to 
 the Bastille or the galleys at their pleasure. The licence 
 was attended with perfect impunity. With us the law 
 leaves less to discretion ; and by interposing a real in- 
 dependence (and plea of right) between the servant and 
 master, does away with the appearance of it on the surface 
 of manners. The insolence and tyranny of the Aristocracy 
 fell more on the tradespeople and mechanics than on their 
 domestics, who were attached to them by a semblance of 
 feudal ties. Thus, an upstart lady of quality (an imitator 
 of the old school) would not deign to speak to a milliner 
 while fitting on her dress, but gave her orders to her 
 waiting-women to tell her what to do. Can we wonder at 
 twenty reigns of terror to efface such a feeling ? 
 
 I have alluded to the inclination in servants in great 
 .houses to ape the manners of their superiors, and to their 
 sometimes succeeding. What facilitates the metamor- 
 phosis is, that the Great, in their character of courtiers, 
 are a sort of footmen in their turn. There is the same 
 crouching to interest and authority in either case, with 
 the same surrender or absence of personal dignity— the 
 same submission to the trammels of outward form, with 
 the same suppression of inward impulses — the same de- 
 grading finery, the same pretended deference in the eye of 
 the world, and the same lurking contempt from being 
 admitted behind the scenes, the same heartlessness, and 
 
Footmen. 243 
 
 the same eye-service — in a word, they are alike puppets 
 governed by motives not their own, machines made of 
 * coarser or finer materials. It is not, therefore, surprising, 
 if the most finished courtier of the day cannot, by a 
 vulgar eye, be distinguished from a gentleman's servant. 
 M. de Bausset, in his amusing and excellent Memoirs, 
 makes it an argument of the legitimacy of Napoleon's 
 authority, that from denying it, it would follow that his 
 lords of the bed-chamber were valets, and he himself 
 (as prefect of the palace) no better than head cook. The 
 inference is logical enough. According to the author's 
 view, there was no other difference between the retainers 
 of the court and the kitchen than the rank of the master ! 
 I remember hearing it said that " all men were equal 
 but footmen." But of all footmen the lowest class is 
 literary footmen. These consist of persons who, without a 
 single grain of knowledge, taste, or feeling, put on the 
 livery of learning, mimic its phrases by rote, and are 
 retained in its service by dint of quackery and assurance 
 alone. As they have none of the. essence, they have all 
 the externals of men of gravity and wisdom. They walk 
 with a peculiar strut, thrust themselves into the acquaint- 
 ance of persons they hear talked of, get introduced into 
 the clubs, are seen reading books they do not understand 
 at the Museum and public libraries, dine (if they can) 
 with lords or officers of the Guards, abuse any party as 
 low to show what fine gentlemen they are, and the next 
 week join the same party to raise their own credit and 
 gain a little consequence, give themselves out as wits, 
 critics, and philosophers (and as they have never done 
 anything, no man can contradict them), and have a great 
 knack of turning editors, and not paying their con- 
 tributors. If you get five pounds from one of them, he 
 never forgives it. With the proceeds thus appropriated, 
 the book- worm graduates a dandy, hires expensive apart- 
 ments, sports a tandem, and it is'inferred that he must be 
 
244 A Chapter on Editors. 
 
 a great author who can support such an appearance with 
 his pen, and a great genius who can conduct so many- 
 learned works while his time is devoted to the gay, the 
 fair, and the rich. This introduces him to new editor- 
 ships, to new and more select friendships, and to more 
 irequent and importunate demands from debts and duns. 
 At length the bubble bursts and disappears, and you hear 
 no more of our classical adventurer, except from the 
 invectives and self-reproaches of his dupes. Such a 
 candidate for literary honours bears the same relation to 
 the man of letters that the valet, with his second-hand 
 finery and servile airs, does to his master. 
 
 A Chapter on Editors. 
 
 Editors are a " sort of tittle-tattle" — difficult to deal with, 
 dangerous to discuss. They in general partake of the 
 usual infirmity of human nature, and of persons placed in 
 high and honorary situations. Like other individuals 
 raised to authority, they are chosen to fill a certain post 
 for qualities useful or ornamental to the reading public ; 
 but they soon fancy that the situation has been invented 
 for their own honour and profit, and sink the use in the 
 abuse. Kings are not the only servants of the public who 
 imagine that they are the state. Editors are but men, and 
 easily " lay the flattering unction to their souls'' that they 
 are the Magazine, the Newspaper, or the Eeview they 
 conduct. They have got a little power in their hands, 
 and they wish to employ that power (as all power is 
 employed) to increase the sense of self-importance ; they 
 borrow a certain dignity from their situation as arbiters 
 and judges of taste and elegance, and they are determined 
 to keep it to the detriment of their employers and of 
 every one else. They are dreadfully afraid there should 
 be anything behind the Editor's chair, greater than the 
 
A Chapter on Editors. 245 
 
 Editor's chair. That is a scandal to be prevented at all 
 risks. The publication they are entrusted with for the 
 amusement and edification of the town, they convert, in 
 theory and practice, into a stalking horse of their own 
 vanity, whims, and prejudices. They cannot write a 
 whole work themselves, but they take care that the whole 
 is such as they might have written : it is to have the 
 Editor's mark, like the broad K, on every page, or the 
 N. N. at the Tuileries ; it is to bear the same image and 
 superscription — every line is to be upon oath : nothing is 
 to be differently conceived or better expressed than the 
 Editor could have done it. The whole begins in vanity, 
 and ends too often in dulness and insipidity. 
 
 It is utterly impossible to persuade an Editor that lie is 
 nobody. As Mr. Home Tooke said, on his trial for a 
 libel before Lord Kenyon, " There are two parties in this 
 cause — myself and the jury ; the judge and the crier of 
 the court attend in their respective places :" so, in every 
 periodical miscellany, there are two essential parties — the 
 writers and the public ; the Editor and the printer's devil 
 are merely the mechanical instruments to bring them 
 together. There is a secret consciousness of this on the 
 part of the Conductor of the Literary Diligence, that his 
 place is one for show and form rather than use ; and as he 
 cannot maintain his pretended superiority by what he 
 does himself, he thinks to arrive at the same end by 
 hindering others from doing their best. The " dog-in-the- 
 manger" principle comes into full play. If an article 
 has nothing to recommend it, is one of no mark or likeli- 
 hood, it goes in ; there is no offence in it. If it is likely 
 to strike, to draw attention, to make a noise, then every 
 syllable is scanned, every objection is weighed : if grave, 
 it is too grave; if witty, it is too witty. One way or 
 other, it might be better ; and while this nice point is 
 pending, it gives place, as a matter of course, to some- 
 thing that there is no question about. 
 
246 A Chapter on Editors. 
 
 The responsibility, the delicacy, the nervous appre- 
 hension of the Editor, naturally increase with the probable 
 effect and popularity of the contributions on which he 
 has to pass judgment ; and the nearer an effusion ap- 
 proaches to perfection, the more fatal is a single flaw, or 
 its falling short of that superhuman standard by a hair's- 
 breadth difference, to its final reception. If people are 
 likely to ask, "Who wrote a certain paper in the last 
 
 number of ?" the Editor is bound, as a point of 
 
 honour, to baulk that impertinent curiosity on the part of 
 the public. He would have it understood that all the 
 articles are equally good, and may be equally his own. 
 If he inserts a paper of more than the allowed average 
 merit, his next care is to spoil by revising it. The sting, 
 with the honey, is sure to be left out. If there is any- 
 thing that pleased you in the writing, you look in vain 
 for it in the proof. What might electrify the reader, 
 startles the Editor. With a paternal regard for the 
 interests of the public, he takes care that their tastes 
 should not be pampered, and their expectations raised too 
 high, by a succession of fine passages, of which it is 
 impossible to continue a supply. He interposes between 
 the town and their vicious appetite for. the piquant and 
 high-seasoned, as we forbid children to indulge in sweet- 
 meats. The trite and superficial are always to be had to 
 order, and present a beautiful uniformity of appearance. 
 There is no unexpected relief, no unwelcome inequality 
 ol style, to disorder the nerves, or perplex the under- 
 standing : the reader may read, and smile, and sleep, 
 without meeting a single idea to break his repose. 
 
 Some Editors, moreover, have a way of altering the 
 first paragraph : they have then exercised their privileges, 
 and let you alone for the rest of the chapter. This is like 
 paying " a pepper- corn rent," or making one's bow on 
 entering a room : it is being let off cheap. Others add a 
 pointless conclusion of their own : it is like signing their 
 
A Chapter on Editors. 247 
 
 names to the article. Some have a passion for sticking in 
 the word however at every opportunity, in order to impede 
 the march of the style ; and others are contented and take 
 great pains (with Lindley Murray's Grammar lying open 
 before them) to alter "if it is" into "if it be." An 
 Editor abhors an ellipsis. If you fling your thoughts 
 into continued passages, they set to work to cut them up 
 into short paragraphs : if you make frequent breaks, they 
 turn the tables on you that way, and throw the whole 
 composition into masses. Anything to preserve the form 
 and appearance of power, to make the work their own by 
 mental stratagem, to stamp it by some fiction of criticism 
 with their personal identity, to enable them to run away 
 with the credit, and look upon themselves as the master- 
 spirits of the work and of the age ! If there is any point 
 they do not understand, they are sure to meddle with it, 
 and mar the sense ; for it piques their self-love, and they 
 think they are bound ex-officio to know better than the 
 writer. Thus they substitute (at a venture, and merely 
 for the sake of altering) one epithet for another, when 
 perhaps the same word has occurred just before, and 
 produces a cruel tautology, never considering the trouble 
 you have taken to compare the context and vary the 
 phraseology. 
 
 Editors have no misplaced confidence in the powers of 
 their contributors: they think by the supposition tiiy 
 must be in the right from a single supercilious glance — 
 and you in the wrong, after poring over a subject for a 
 month. There are Editors who, if you insert the name of 
 a popular actor, strike it out, and, in virtue of their 
 authority, insert a favourite of their own — as a dexterous 
 attorney substitutes the name of a friend in a will. Some 
 Editors will let you praise nobody ; others will let you 
 blame nobody. The first excites their jealousy of con- 
 temporary merit : the last excites their fears, and they do 
 not like to make enemies. Some insist upon giving no 
 
248 A Chapter on Editors. 
 
 opinion at all, and observe an unarmed neutrality as to all 
 parties and persons : it is no wonder the world think 
 very little of them in return. Some Editors stand upon 
 their characters for this; others for that. Some pique 
 themselves upon being genteel and well-dressed ; others 
 on being moral and immaculate, and do not perceive that 
 the public never trouble their heads about the matter. I 
 knew one Editor who openly discarded all regard to 
 character and decency, and who throve by the dissolution 
 of partnership, if indeed the articles were ever drawn up. 
 Some Editors drink tea with a set of blue-stockings and 
 literary ladies : not a whisper, not a breath that might 
 blow away those fine cobwebs of the brain — 
 
 " More subtle web Arachne cannot spin ; 
 Nor those fine threads which oft we woven see 
 Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee !" 
 
 Others dine with Lords and Academicians — for God's 
 sake, take care what you say ! Would you strip the 
 Editor's mantel-piece of the cards of invitation that adorn 
 it to select parties for the next six months ? An Editor 
 takes a turn in St. James's-street, and is congratulated by 
 the successive literary or political groups on all he does 
 not write ; and when the mistake is found out, the true 
 Simon Pure is dismissed. We have heard that it was 
 well said by the proprietor of a leading journal, that he 
 would take good care never to write a line in his own 
 paper, as he had conflicting interests enough to manage, 
 without adding literary jealousies to the number. On the 
 other hand, a very good-natured and warm-hearted indi- 
 vidual declared, "he would never have another man of 
 talents for an Editor " (the Editor, in this case, is to the 
 proprietor as the author to the Editor), " for he was tired 
 of having their good things thrust in his teeth." Some 
 Editors are scrubs, mere drudges, newspaper-puffs ; others 
 are bullies or quacks ; others are nothing at all — they 
 

 A Chapter on Editors. 249 
 
 have the name, and receive a salary for it ! A literary 
 sinecure is at once lucrative and highly respectable. At 
 Lord's Ground there are some old hands that are famous 
 for " blocking out and staying in :" it would seem that some 
 of our literary veterans had taken a lesson from their 
 youthful exercises at Harrow or Eton. 
 
 All this is bad enough ; but the worst is, that Editors, 
 besides their own failings, have friends who aggravate and 
 take advantage of them. These self-styled friends are the 
 nightshade and hemlock clinging to the work, preventing 
 its growth and circulation, and dropping a slumberous 
 poison from its jaundiced leaves. They form a cordon, 
 an opaque mass round the Editor, and persuade him that 
 they are the support, the prop, and pillar of his reputation. 
 They get between him and the public, and shut out the 
 light, and set aside common-sense. They pretend anxiety 
 for the interest of some established organ of opinion, 
 while all they want is to make it the organ of their dogmas, 
 prejudices, or party. They want to be the Magazine or 
 the Eeview — to wield that power covertly, to warp that 
 influence to their own purposes. If they cannot do this, 
 they care not if it sinks or swims. They prejudge every 
 question — fly-blow every writer who is not of their own 
 set. A friend of theirs has three articles in the last 
 
 number of ; they strain every nerve and make 
 
 pressing instances to throw a slur on a popular contribu- 
 tion by another hand, in order that he may write a fourth 
 in the next number. The short articles which are read by 
 the vulgar, are cut down to make room for the long ones, 
 which are read by nobody but the writers and their friends. 
 If an opinion is expressed contrary to the shibboleth of 
 the party, it is represented as an outrage on decency and 
 public opinion, when in truth the public are delighted 
 with the candour and boldness displayed. They would 
 convert the most valuable and spirited journal into a dull 
 pamphleteer, stuffed with their own lucubrations on certain 
 
250 A Chapter on Editors, 
 
 heavy topics. The self-importance of these people is in 
 proportion to their insignificance; and what they cannot 
 do by an appeal to argument or sonnd policy, they effect 
 by importunity and insinuation. They keep the Editor in 
 continual alarm as to what will be said of him by the 
 public, when in fact the public will think (in nine cases 
 out of ten) just what he tells them. 
 
 These people create much of the mischief. An Editor 
 should have no friends— his only prompter should be the 
 number of copies of the work that sell. It is superfluous 
 to strike off a large impression of a work for those few 
 squeamish persons who prefer lead to tinsel. Principle 
 and good manners are barriers that are, in our estimate, 
 inviolable : the rest is open to popular suffrage, and is not 
 to be prejudged by a coterie with closed doors. Another 
 difficulty lies here. An Editor should, in one sense, be a 
 respectable man — a distinguished character ; otherwise he 
 cannot lend his name and sanction to the work. But 
 " here's the rub " — that one so graced and gifted can 
 neither have his time nor his thoughts to himself. He 
 who dines out loses his free agency. He may improve in 
 politeness, he falls off in the pith and pungency of his 
 style. A poem is dedicated to the son of the Muses : 
 can the critic do otherwise than praise it? A tragedy is 
 brought out by a noble friend and patron: the severe 
 rules of the drama must yield in some measure to the 
 
 amenities of private life. On the contrary, Mr. is 
 
 a garretteer — a person that nobody knows ; his work has 
 nothing but the contents to recommend it ; it sinks into ob- 
 scurity, or addresses itself to the canaille. An Editor, 
 then, should be an abstraction — a being in the clouds— a 
 
 mind without a body — reason without passion. But 
 
 where find such a one ? 
 
WINTERSLOW : 
 
 ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 WRITTEN THERE. 
 
[ 253 ] 
 
 PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1850. 
 
 Winterslow is a village of Wiltshire, between Salisbury 
 and Andover, where my father, during a considerable 
 portion of his life, spent several months of each year, 
 latterly, at an ancient inn on the Great Western Eoad, 
 called Winterslow Hut. One of his chief attractions 
 hither were the noble woods of Tytherleigh or Tudorleigh. 
 round Norman Court, the seat of Mr. Baring Wall, M.P., 
 whose proffered kindness to my father, on a critical 
 occasion, was thoroughly appreciated by the very sensi- 
 tiveness which declined its acceptance, and will always be 
 gratefully remembered by myself. Another feature was 
 Clarendon Wood — whence the noble family of Clarendon 
 derived their title — famous besides for the Constitutions 
 signed in the palace which once rose proudly amongst its 
 stately trees, but of which scarce a vestige remains. In 
 another direction, within easy distance, gloams Stone- 
 henge, visited by my father, less perhaps for its historical 
 associations than for its appeal to the imagination, the 
 upright stones seeming in the dim twilight, or in the 
 drizzling mist, almost continuous in the locality, so 
 many spectre-Druids, moaning over the past, and over 
 their brethren prostrate about them. At no great dis- 
 tance, in another direction, are the fine pictures of Lord 
 Radnor, and somewhat further, those of Wilton House. 
 But the chief happiness was the thorough quiet of the 
 place, the sole interruption of which was the passage, to 
 and fro, of the London mails. The Hut stands in a 
 
254 Preface to the Edition of 1850. 
 
 valley, equidistant about a mile from two tolerably high 
 hills, at the summit of which, on their approach either 
 way, the guards used to blow forth their admonition to 
 the hostler. The sound, coming through the clear, pure 
 air, was another agreeable feature in the day, reminis- 
 centiary of the great city that my father so loved and so 
 loathed. In olden times, when we lived in the village 
 itself — a mile up the hill opposite — behind the Hut, 
 Salisbury Plain stretches away mile after mile of open 
 space — -the reminiscence of the metropolis would be, from 
 time to time, furnished in the pleasantest of ways by the 
 presence of some London friends; among these, dearly 
 loved and honoured there, as everywhere else, Charles and 
 Mary Lamb paid us frequent visits, rambling about all 
 the time, thorough Londoners in a thoroughly country 
 place, delighted and wondering and wondered at. For 
 such reasons, and for the other reason, which I mention 
 incidentally, that Winterslow is my own native place, I 
 have given its name to this collection of " Essays and 
 Characters written there;" as, indeed, practically were 
 very many of his works, for it was there that most of his 
 thinking was done. 
 
 William Hazlitt. 
 Chelsea, Jan. 1850. 
 
255 ] 
 
 ESSAY I. 1 
 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 My father was a Dissenting Minister, at Wem, in Shrop- 
 shire; and in the year 1798 (the figures that compose the 
 date are to me like the " dreaded name of Demogorgon") 
 Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Eowe 
 in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congregation there. 
 He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before 
 he was to preach ; and Mr. Eowe, who himself went down 
 to the coach, in a state of anxiety and expectation, to look 
 for the arrival of his successor, could find no one at all 
 answering the description but a round-faced man, in a 
 short black coat (like a shooting jacket) which hardly 
 seemed to have been made for him, but who seemed to be 
 talking at a great rate to his fellow passengers. Mr. 
 Eowe had scarce returned to give an account of his 
 disappointment when the round-faced man in black en- 
 tered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject by begin- 
 ning to talk. He did not cease while he stayed ; nor has 
 he since, that I know of. He held the good town of 
 Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he 
 remained there, " fluttering the proud Salopians, like an 
 eagle in a dove-cote;" and the Welch mountains that 
 skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree 
 to have heard no such mystic sounds since the days of 
 
 " High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay." 
 
 As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I 
 eyed their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, or 
 
 1 First printed as a sketch in the Examiner newspaper in 1817, 
 and republished, without alteration, in Political Essays, 1819. In its 
 present form it originally appeared in the first volume of the 
 Liberal : Verse and Prose from the South, 1823. It is reprinted in 
 the Literary Remains, 1830. — En. 
 
256 My First Acquaintance ivith Poets. 
 
 the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the 
 road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a Syren's song ; I 
 was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep ; but I 
 had no notion then that I should ever be able to express 
 my admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint- 
 allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, 
 like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles of the road. 
 I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a 
 worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless ; but 
 now, bursting the deadly bands that " bound them, 
 
 u With Styx nine times round them " 
 
 my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their 
 plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul 
 has indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, 
 with longings infinite and unsatisfied ; my heart, shut up 
 in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor 
 will it ever find, a heart to speak to ; but that my under- 
 standing also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at 
 length found a language to express itself, I owe to 
 Coleridge. But this is not to my purpose. 
 
 My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in 
 the habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Kowe, and with 
 Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on), 
 according to the custom of Dissenting Ministers in each 
 other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is thus 
 established, by which the flame of civil and religious 
 liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering 
 fire unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of 
 iEschylus, placed at different stations, that waited for ten 
 long years to announce with their blazing pyramids the 
 destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over 
 and see my father, according to the courtesy of the coun- 
 try, as Mr. Kowe's probable successor ; but in the mean- 
 time, I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his 
 arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into a 
 
My First Acquaintance with Poets. 257 
 
 Unitarian pulpit to preach the gospel, was a romance in 
 these degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive 
 spirit of Christianity, which was not to be resisted. 
 
 It was in January of 1798, that I rose one morning 
 before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this 
 celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have 
 to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, 
 raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. B y 
 a des impressions que ni le terns ni les cir Constances peuvent 
 effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le donx terns 
 de ma jeunesse ne pent renaitre pour moi, ni s effacer 
 jamais dans ma memoir e. When I got there, the organ 
 was playing the 100th Psalm, and when it was done, 
 Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, " And he went 
 up into the mountain to pray, himself, alone." As he 
 gave out this text, his voice " rose like a steam of rich 
 distilled perfumes," and when he came to the two last 
 words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it 
 seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had 
 echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that 
 prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the 
 universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, " of 
 one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, 
 and whose food was locusts and wild honey/'" The 
 preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle 
 dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and 
 war ; upon church and state — not their alliance but their 
 separation — on the spirit of the world and the spirit of 
 Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one 
 another. He talked of those who had " inscribed the 
 cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore." 
 He made a poetical and pastoral excursion — and to show 
 the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between 
 the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team afield, or sitting 
 under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, " as though he 
 should never be old," and the same poor country lad, 
 
258 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an 
 alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his 
 hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long 
 cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome finery of 
 the profession of blood : 
 
 " Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung." 
 
 And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I 
 had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philo- 
 sophy had met together. Truth and Genius had embraced, 
 under the eye and with the sanction of Eeligion. This 
 was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satis- 
 fied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan 
 through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an 
 emblem of the good cause ; and the cold dank drops of 
 dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had 
 something genial and refreshing in them ; for there was a 
 spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned every- 
 thing into good. The face of nature had not then the 
 brand of Jus Divinum on it : 
 
 " Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe." 
 
 On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker 
 came. I was called down into the room where he was, 
 and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He received me very 
 graciously, and I listened for a long time without uttering 
 a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 
 " For those two hours," he afterwards was pleased to say, 
 " he was conversing with William Hazlitt's forehead I" 
 His appearance was different from what I had anticipated 
 from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim 
 light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in 
 his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted 
 with the small-pox. His complexion was at that time 
 clear, and even bright — 
 
 " As are the childien of von azure sheen." 
 
My First Acquaintance with Poets. 259 
 
 His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, 
 with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling be- 
 neath them, like a sea with darkened lustre. " A certain 
 tender bloom his face o'erspread," a purple tinge as we 
 see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish 
 portrait-painters, Murillo and Valasquez. His mouth was 
 gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent ; his chin good-humoured 
 and round ; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index 
 of the will, was small, feeble, nothing — like what he has 
 done. It might seem that the genius of his face as from, 
 a height surveyed and projected him (with sufficient 
 capacity and huge aspiration) into the world unknown 
 of thought and imagination, with nothing to support or 
 guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched 
 his adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, 
 without oars or compass. So, at least, I comment on it 
 after the event. Coleridge, in his person, was rather 
 above the common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like 
 Lord Hamlet, " somewhat fat and pursy." His hair (now, 
 alas ! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and 
 fell in smooth masses over his forehead. This long pen- 
 dulous hair is peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds 
 tend heavenward ; and is traditionally inseparable (though 
 of a different colour) from the pictures of Christ. It ought 
 to belong, as a character, to all who preach Christ crucified, 
 and Coleridge was at that time one of those ! 
 
 It was curious to observe the contrast between him and 
 my father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then de- 
 clining into the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish 
 lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and sent to the 
 University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam 
 Smith) to prepare him for his future destination. It was 
 his mother's proudest wish to see her son a Dissenting 
 Minister. So, if we look back to past generations (as far 
 as eye can reach), we see the same hopes, fears, wishes, 
 followed by the same disappointments* throbbing in the 
 
260 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 human heart ; and so we may see them (if we look forward) 
 rising up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, 
 in the human breast ! After being tossed about from con- 
 gregation to congregation in the heats of the Unitarian 
 controversy, and squabbles about the American war, he 
 had been relegated to an obscure village, where he was to 
 spend the last thirty years of his life, far from the only 
 converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of 
 Scripture, and the cause of civil and religious liberty. 
 Here he passed his days, repining, but resigned, in the 
 study of the Bible, and the perusal of the Commentators 
 — huge folios, not easily got through, one of which would 
 outlast a winter ! Why did he pore on these from morn 
 to night (with the exception of a walk in the fields or a 
 turn in the garden to gather broccoli-plants or kidney 
 beans of his own rearing, with no small degree of pride 
 and pleasure) ? Here were "no figures nor no fantasies" — 
 neither poetry nor philosophy — nothing to dazzle, nothing 
 to excite modern curiosity ; but to his lack-lustre eyes 
 there appeared within the pages of the ponderous, un- 
 wieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH 
 in Hebrew capitals : pressed down by the weight of the 
 style, worn to the last fading thinness of the understanding, 
 there were glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal 
 wanderings, with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and 
 processions of camels at the distance of three thousand 
 years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the 
 number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses 
 on the law and the prophets ; there were discussions (dull 
 enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! 
 there were outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's 
 Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple ; questions as 
 to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of all 
 things ; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of 
 the globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it 
 turned over ; and though the soul might slumber with an 
 
My First Acquaintance with Poets. 261 
 
 hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, 
 yet it was in a slumber ill-exchanged for all the sharpened 
 realities of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's life 
 was comparatively a dream ; but it was a dream of infinity 
 and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to 
 come! 
 
 No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the 
 host and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of 
 nondescript ; yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian 
 cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been 
 more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. 
 Indeed, his thoughts had wings : and as the silken sounds 
 rustled round our little wainscoted parlour, my father 
 threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white 
 hairs mixing with its sanguine hue ; and a smile of de- 
 light beamed across his rugged, cordial face, to think that 
 Truth had found a new ally in Fancy! 1 Besides, 
 Coleridge seemed to take considerable notice of me, and 
 that of itself was enough. He talked very familiarly, but 
 agreeably, and glanced over a variety of subjects. At 
 dinner-time he grew more animated, and dilated in a very 
 edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. 
 The last, he said, he considered (on my father's speaking 
 of his Vindicice Gallicce as a capital performance) as a clever, 
 scholastic man — a master of the topics — or, as the ready 
 warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly where to lay 
 his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were not 
 his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in 
 
 1 My father was one of those who mistook his talent, after all. 
 He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to 
 his Sermons. The last were forced and dry ; the first came naturally 
 from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, 
 indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled. [The Sermons 
 of the Rev. William Hazlitt were printed by subscription in 1808, 
 2 vols. 8vo. He published other tracts and discourses. A letter of 
 hi3, contributed to the Monthly Repository in July, 1808, will be 
 found reprinted in the Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1867, i, 267-9 ] 
 
262 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 style or matter. Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh 
 a mere logician. Burke was an orator (almost a poet ) who 
 reasoned in figures, because he had an eye for nature : 
 Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who 
 had only an eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured 
 to say that I had always entertained a great opinion of 
 Burke, and that (as far as I could find) the speaking of 
 him with contempt might be made the test of a vulgar, 
 democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever 
 made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and 
 striking one. I remember the leg of Welsh mutton and 
 the turnips on the table that day had the finest flavour 
 imaginable. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and Tom 
 Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke highly) had 
 expressed a very indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. 
 Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them — "He strides 
 on so far before you, that he dwindles in the distance ! " 
 Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried on an 
 argument with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious 
 success ; Coleridge told him — " If there had been a man 
 of genius in the room he would have settled the question 
 in fLYe minutes." He asked me if I had ever seen Mary 
 Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few moments, 
 and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's objections 
 to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. 
 He replied, that " this was only one instance of the ascen- 
 dency which people of imagination exercised over those of 
 mere intellect." He did not rate Godwin very high 1 (this 
 was caprice or prejudice, real or affected), but he had a 
 great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's powers of conversation ; 
 none at all of her talent for book-making. We talked a 
 
 1 He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempt- 
 ing io establish the future immortality of man, "without" (as he 
 said) '• knowing what Death was or what Life was'' — and the tone 
 in which he pronounced these two words seemed to convey a com- 
 plete image of both. 
 
My First Acquaintance ivith Poets. 263 
 
 little about Holcroft. He had been asked if be was not 
 much struck with him, and he said, he thought himself in 
 more danger of being struck by him. I complained that 
 he would not let me get on at all, for he required a defi- 
 nition of every the commonest word, exclaiming, " "What 
 do you mean by a sensation, Sir ? What do you mean by 
 an idea?" This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing the 
 road to truth ; it was setting up a turnpike-gate at every 
 step we took. I forget a great number of things, many 
 more than I remember ; but the day passed off pleasantly, 
 and the next morning Mr. Coleridge was to return to 
 Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, I found 
 that he had just received a letter from his friend, T. Wedg- 
 wood, making him an offer of 150Z. a year if he chose to 
 waive his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to 
 the study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to 
 make up his mind to close with this proposal in the act of 
 tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional damp 
 on his departure. It took the w T ay ward enthusiast quite 
 from us to cast him into Deva's winding vales, or by the 
 shores of old romance. Instead of living at ten miles' 
 distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting congregation 
 at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Kill of 
 Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. 
 Alas ! I knew not the way thither, and felt very little 
 gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's bounty. I was presently 
 relieved from this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge, asking 
 for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write something 
 on a bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating 
 step, and giving me the precious document, said that that 
 was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire ; 
 and that he should be glad to see me there in a few weeks' 
 time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet me. 
 I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile 
 is to be found in Cassandra), when he sees a thunderbolt 
 fall close at his feet. I stammered out my acknowledg- 
 
264 My First Acquaintance ivith Poets 
 
 ments and acceptance of this offer (I thought Mr. Wedg- 
 wood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I could ; and this 
 mighty business being settled, the poet preacher took 
 leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It 
 was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he talked 
 the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is described as 
 
 going 
 
 " Sounding on his way." 
 
 So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, 
 in passing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to 
 float in air, to slide on ice. He told me in confidence 
 (going along) that he should have preached two sermons 
 before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury, one on 
 Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, showing 
 that he could not administer either, which would have 
 effectually disqualified him for the object in view. I 
 observed that he continually crossed me on the way by 
 shifting from one side of the footpath to the other. This 
 struck me as an odd movement ; but I did not at that time 
 connect it with any instability of purpose or involuntary 
 change of principle, as I have done since. He seemed 
 unable to keep on in a straight line. He spoke slightingly 
 of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he said was stolen 
 from an objection started in one of South' s sermons — 
 Credat Judceus Appella /) I was not very much pleased at 
 this account of Hume, for I had just been reading, with 
 infinite relish, that completest of all metaphysical clioke- 
 pears, his Treatise on Human Nature, to which the Essays 
 in point of scholastic subtilty and close reasoning, are 
 mere elegant trifling, light summer reading. Coleridge 
 even denied the excellence of Hume's general style, which 
 I think betrayed a want of taste or candour. He however 
 made me amends by the manner in which he spoke of 
 Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his Essay on Vision 
 as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it un- 
 doubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson 
 
My First Acquaintance with Poets. 265 
 
 for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this 
 author's Theory of Matter and Spirit, and saying, " Thus 
 I confute him, Sir." Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't 
 know how he brought about the connection) between 
 Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was 
 an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than 
 which no two things could be more distinct. The one 
 was a shop -boy's quality, the other the characteristic of a 
 philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a true 
 philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a 
 genuine reader of nature and his own mind. He did not 
 speak of his Analogy, but of his Sermons at the Bolls' 
 Chapel, of which I had never heard. Coleridge somehow 
 always contrived to prefer the unknown to the known. In 
 this instance he was right. The Analogy is a tissue of 
 sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special- pleading ; 
 the Sermons (with the preface to them) are in a fine vein 
 of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observa- 
 tion of human nature, without pedantry and without bias. 
 I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was 
 sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made a 
 discovery on the same subject (the Natural disinterested- 
 ness of the Human Mind) 1 — and I tried to explain my view 
 of it to Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, 
 but I did not succeed in making myself understood. I 
 sat down to the task shortly afterwards for the twentieth 
 time, got new pens and paper, determined to make clear 
 work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton 
 style of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half-way 
 down the second page ; and, after trying in vain to pump 
 up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or 
 observations, from that gulf of abstraction in which I 
 had plunged myself for four or five years preceding, gave 
 up the attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of help- 
 
 1 The Essay on the Principles of Human Action, begun about this 
 time, but not completed and published till 1805. — Ed. 
 
266 My First Acquaintance ivith Poets. 
 
 less despondency on the blank, unfinished paper. I can 
 write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then ? 
 Oh no ! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not 
 being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and 
 flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to 
 what I then was ! Why can we not revive past times as 
 we can revisit old places ? If I had the quaint Muse of 
 Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to 
 the Boad between Wem and Shrewsbury, and immortalise 
 every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I 
 would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that 
 Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, 
 as he passed ! I remember but one other topic of discourse 
 in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness 
 and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, 
 thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that 
 " the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy 
 being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace 
 to the national character." We parted at the six-mile 
 stone ; and I returned homeward, pensive, but much 
 pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person 
 whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me. 
 " Kind and affable to me had been his condescension, and 
 should be honoured ever with suitable regard." He was 
 the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered to 
 that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of his powers 
 of conversation and was not disappointed. In fact, I never 
 met with anything at all like them, either before or since. 
 I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated 
 of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentle- 
 men, an evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, 
 when he made the whole material universe look like a 
 transparency of fine words ; and another story (which I 
 believe he has somewhere told himself) of his being 
 asked to a party at Birmingham, of his smoking 
 tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, 
 
 
My First Acquaintance tvith Poets. 267 
 
 where the company found, him to their no small sur- 
 prise, which was increased to wonder when he started 
 up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked about him, 
 and launched into a three-hours' description of the third 
 heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different from 
 Mr. Southey's Vision of Judgment, and also from that 
 other Vision of Judgment, which Mr. Murray, the Secretary 
 of the Bridge- street Junta, took into his especial keeping. 
 
 On my way back I had a sound in my ears — it was the 
 voice of Fancy ; I had a light before me — it was the face 
 of Poetry. The one still lingers there, the other has not 
 quitted my side ! Coleridge, in truth, met me half-way on 
 the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won 
 over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasur- 
 able sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During 
 those months the chill breath of winter gave me a welcom- 
 ing ; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The 
 golden sunsets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on 
 my way to new hopes and prospects. I was to visit Cole- 
 ridge in the spring. This circumstance was never absent 
 from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I 
 wrote to him at the time proposed, and received an answer 
 postponing my intended visit for a week or two, but very 
 cordially urging me to complete my promise then. This 
 delay did not damp, but rather increased my ardour. In 
 the meantime, I went to Llangollen Yale, by way of in- 
 itiating myself in the mysteries of natural scenery ; and I 
 must say I was enchanted with it. I had been reading 
 Coleridge's description of England in his fine Ode on the 
 Departing Year, and I applied it, con amore, to the objects 
 before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the 
 cradle of a new existence : in the river that winds through 
 it, my spirit was baptized in the waters of Helicon ! 
 
 I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey 
 with unworn heart, and untired feet. My way lay through 
 Worcester and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought 
 
268 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 of Tom Jones and the adventure of the muff. I remember 
 getting completely wet through one day, and stopping at 
 an inn (I think it was at Tewkesbury) where I sat up all 
 night to read Paul and Virginia. Sweet were the showers 
 in early youth that drenched my body, and sweet the 
 drops of pity that fell upon' the books I read ! I recollect 
 a remark of Coleridge's upon this very book that nothing 
 could show the gross indelicacy of French manners and 
 the entire corruption of their imagination more strongly 
 than the behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, 
 who turns away from a person on board the sinking vessel, 
 that offers to save her life, because he has thrown off his 
 clothes to assist him in swimming. Was this a time to 
 think of such a circumstance ? I once hinted to Words- 
 worth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, 
 that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his Poems on 
 the Naming of Places from the local inscriptions of the 
 same kind in Paul and Virginia. He did not own the 
 obligation, and stated some distinction without a difference 
 in defence of his claim to originality. Any, the slighest 
 variation, would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind ; 
 for whatever he added or altered would inevitably be 
 worth all that any one else had done, and contain the 
 marrow of the sentiment. I was still two days before the 
 time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken care to set out 
 early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridgewater ; 
 and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its 
 muddy river, returned to the inn and read Camilla. So 
 have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at 
 pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on 
 what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing 
 to make me happy ; but wanting that have wanted 
 everything ! 
 
 I arrived, and was well received. The country about 
 Nether Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the 
 sea-shore. I saw it but the other day, after an interval 
 
My First Acquaintance with Poets, 269 
 
 of twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. How was 
 the map of my life spread out before me, as the map of 
 the country lay at my feet ! In the afternoon, Coleridge 
 took me over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family mansion 
 of the St. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived. It was then 
 in the possession of a friend of the poet's, who gave him 
 the free use of it. Somehow, that period (the time just 
 after the French Eevolution) was not a time when nothing 
 was given for nothing. The mind opened and a softness 
 might be perceived coming over the heart of individuals, 
 beneath " the scales that fence" our self-interest. Words- 
 worth himself was from home, but his sister kept house, 
 and set before us a frugal repast ; and we had free access 
 to her brother's poems, the Lyrical Ballads, 1 which were 
 still in manuscript, or in the form of Sybilline Leaves. I 
 dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with 
 the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room 
 with blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced 
 family portraits of the age of George I. and II., and from 
 the wooded declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked 
 my window, at the dawn of day, could 
 
 " hear the loud stag speak." 
 
 In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I 
 felt it so) our imagination has a body to it. We are in a 
 state between sleeping and waking, and have indistinct 
 but glorious glimpses of strange shapes, and there is always 
 something to come better than what we see. As in our 
 dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and reality 
 to the coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are 
 clothed, and fed, and pampered with our good spirits ; we 
 breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight of 
 future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, and 
 we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As 
 
 1 The Ballads were not published till this year. Wordsworth, 
 however, was known as the author of Descriptive Sketches, 1793, and 
 the Evening Walk, 1793. — Ed. 
 
270 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of 
 hope. We are no longer wrapped in lamUs-wool, lulled 
 in Elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit 
 evaporates, the sense palls; and nothing is left but the 
 phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what has been ! 
 
 That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we 
 strolled out into the park, and seating ourselves on the 
 trunk of an old ash-tree that stretched along the ground, 
 Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous and musical voice, 
 the ballad of Betty Foy. I was not critically or scepti- 
 cally inclined. 1 saw touches of truth and nature, and 
 took the rest for granted. But in the Thorn, the Mad 
 Mother, and the Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman, I felt 
 that deeper power and pathos which have been since 
 acknowledged, 
 
 " In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite," 
 
 as the characteristics of this author ; and the sense of a 
 new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It 
 had to me something of the effect that arises from the 
 turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath 
 of Spring : 
 
 *' While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed." 
 
 Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, 
 and his voice sounded high 
 
 " Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
 Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 
 
 as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or 
 waterfall, gleaming in the summer moonlight ! He 
 lamented that Wordsworth was not prone enough to 
 believe in the traditional superstitions of the place, and 
 that there was a something corporeal, a matter-of-fact-ness, 
 a clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his 
 poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a spirit that 
 descended to him through the air ; it sprung out of the 
 
My First Acquaintance with Poets. 271 
 
 ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green 
 spray, on which the goldfinch sang. He said, however (if 
 I remember right), that this objection must be confined to 
 his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a 
 grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul 
 seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to 
 discover truth by intuition, rather than by deduction. 
 The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at 
 Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He 
 answered in some degree to his friend's description of 
 him, but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was 
 quaintly dressed (according to the costume of that uncon- 
 strained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped 
 pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in 
 his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell. There was a 
 severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a 
 fire in his eye (as if he saw something in objects more 
 than the outward appearance), an intense, high, narrow 
 forehead, a Eoman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong 
 purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to 
 laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with 
 the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face. 
 Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits ; but he was 
 teased into making it regular and heavy : Hay don's 
 head of him, introduced into the Entrance of Christ 
 into Jerusalem, is the most like his drooping weight of 
 thought and expression. He sat down and talked very 
 naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear, gushing 
 accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a 
 strong tincture of the northern burr, like the crust on 
 wine. He instantly began to make havoc of the half of a 
 Cheshire cheese on the table, and said, triumphantly, that 
 " his marriage with experience had not been so productive 
 as Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good 
 things of this life." He had been to see the Castle 
 Spectre by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it 
 
272 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 very well, He said u it fitted tlie taste of the audience 
 like a glove." This ad captandum merit was however by 
 no means a recommendation of it, according to the severe 
 principles of the new school, which reject rather than 
 court popular effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the 
 low, latticed window, said, " How beautifully the sun sets 
 on that yellow bank ! " I thought within myself, " With 
 what eyes these poets see nature ! " and ever after, when I 
 saw the sun-set stream upon the objects facing it, con- 
 ceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Words- 
 worth for having made one for me ! We went over to 
 All-Foxden again the day following, and Wordsworth 
 read us the story of Peter Bell in the open air ; and the 
 comment upon it by his face and voice was very different 
 from that of some later critics ! Whatever might be 
 thought of the poem, " his face was as a book where men 
 might read strange matters," and he announced the fate of 
 his hero in prophetic tones. There is a chaunt in the 
 recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts 
 as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. 
 Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making habitual 
 use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge's man- 
 ner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's 
 more equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be 
 termed more dramatic, the other more lyrical. Coleridge 
 has told me that he himself liked to compose in walking 
 over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling 
 branches of a copse-wood; whereas Wordsworth always 
 wrote (if he could) walking up and down a straight 
 gravel walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his 
 verse met with no collateral interruption. Eeturning that 
 same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with 
 Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different 
 notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither 
 of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and 
 intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey 
 

 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 273 
 
 and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the after- 
 noons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark 
 by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine 
 elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming round us, 
 while we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among other 
 things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol 
 Channel, as far as Linton. We set off together on foot, 
 Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a 
 native of Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted 
 to Coleridge's discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in 
 swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan. He " followed 
 in the chase like a dog who hunts, not like one that made 
 up the cry." He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and 
 corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a 
 drag in his walk like a drover, which he assisted by a 
 hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side of 
 Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that 
 he might not lose a syllable or sound that fell from 
 Coleridge's lips. He told me his private opinion, that 
 Coleridge was a wonderful man. He scarcely opened his 
 lips, much less offered an opinion the whole way : yet of 
 the three, had I to choose during that journey, I would be 
 John Chester. He afterwards followed Coleridge into 
 Germany, where the Kantean philosophers were puzzled 
 how to bring him under any of their categories. When 
 he sat down at table with his idol, John's felicitv was 
 complete ; Sir Walter Scott's, or Mr. Blackwood's, when 
 they sat down at the same table with the King, was not 
 more so. We passed Dunster on our right, a small town 
 between the brow of a hill and the sea. I remember 
 eyeing it wistfully as it lay below us : contrasted with the 
 woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as 
 embrowned and ideal as any landscape I have seen since, of 
 Gaspar Poussin's or Domenichino's. We had a long day's 
 march (our feet kept time to the echoes of Coleridge's 
 tongue) through Minehead and by the Blue Anchor, 
 
 T 
 
274 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near 
 midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a 
 lodgment. We, however, knocked the people of the house 
 up at last, and we were repaid for our apprehensions and 
 fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. 
 The view in coming along had been splendid. We 
 walked for miles and miles on dark brown heaths over- 
 looking the Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and 
 at times descended into little sheltered valleys close by 
 the sea-side, with a smuggler's face scowling by us, and 
 then had to ascend conical hills with a path winding up 
 through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven 
 crown, from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's 
 notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very edge of the 
 horizon, and within the red-orbed disk of the setting sun, 
 like his own spectre-ship in the Ancient Mariner. At 
 Linton the character of the sea-coast becomes more 
 marked and rugged. There is a place called the Valley 
 of Boclcs (I suspect this was only the poetical name for 
 it), bedded among precipices overhanging the sea, with 
 rocky caverns beneath, into which the waves dash, and 
 where the sea-gull for ever wheels its screaming flight. 
 On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse, as 
 if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind these 
 is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like the 
 Giant's Causeway. A thunder-storm came on while we 
 were at the inn, and Coleridge was running out bare- 
 headed to enjoy the commotion of the elements in the 
 Valley of Boclcs, but as if in spite, the clouds only 
 muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing 
 drops. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were 
 to have made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which 
 was to have been in the manner of, but far superior to, 
 the Death of Abel, but they had relinquished the design. 
 In the morning of the second day, we breakfasted luxu- 
 riously in an old-fashioned parlour on tea, toast, eggs, 
 

 
 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 275 
 
 and honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives from which 
 it had been taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild 
 flowers that had produced it. On this occasion Coleridge 
 spoke of Virgil's Georgics, but not well. I do not think 
 he had much feeling for the classical or elegant. 1 It was 
 in this room that we found a little worn-out copy of the 
 Seasons, lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge ex- 
 claimed, " That is true fame !" He said Thomson was a 
 great poet, rather than a good one; his style was as 
 meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of 
 Cowper as the best modern poet. He said the Lyrical 
 Ballads were an experiment about to be tried by him and 
 Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would endure 
 poetry written in a more natural and simple style than 
 had hitherto been attempted ; totally discarding the arti- 
 fices of poetical diction, and making use only of such 
 words as had probably been common in the most ordinary 
 language since the days of Henry II. Some comparison 
 was introduced between Shakspeare and Milton. He said 
 u he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakspeare appeared 
 to him a mere stripling in the art ; he was as tall and as 
 strong, with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he 
 never appeared to have come to man's estate ; or if he 
 had, he would not have been a man, but a monster." He 
 spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of 
 Pope. He did not like the versification of the latter. 
 He observed that " the ears of these couplet- writers might 
 be charged with having short memories, that could not 
 retain the harmony of whole passages." He thought 
 
 1 He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Baphael, and at this 
 time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account 
 at present of the Cartoons at Pisa by Buffamalco and others ; of one 
 in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, 
 and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, 
 while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. 
 He w T ould, of course, understand so broad and fine a moral as this at 
 any time. 
 
276 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 little of Junius as a writer ; he had a dislike of Dr. John- 
 son ; and a much higher opinion of Burke as an orator 
 and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He, however, thought 
 him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to some 
 of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. 
 He liked Eichardson, but not Fielding ; nor could I get 
 nim to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams. 1 In short, 
 he was profound and discriminating with respect to those 
 authors whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment 
 fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his 
 antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the " ribbed 
 sea sands," in such talk as this a whole morning, and, I 
 recollect, met with a curious seaweed, of which John 
 Chester told us the country name! A fisherman gave 
 Coleridge an account of a boy that had been drowned the 
 day before, and that they had tried to save him at the risk 
 of their own lives. He said " he did not know how it was 
 that they ventured, but, Sir, we have a nature towards one 
 another." This expression, Coleridge remarked to me, 
 was a fine illustration of that theory of disinterested- 
 ness which I (in common with Butler) had adopted. I 
 broached to him an argument of mine to prove that 
 likeness was not mere association of ideas. I said that 
 the mark in the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not 
 because it was part of a former impression of a man's foot 
 (for it was quite new), but because it was like the shape of 
 a man's foot. He assented to the justness of this dis- 
 tinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, for 
 the benefit of the curious) and John Chester listened ; not 
 from any interest in the subject, but because he was 
 astonished that I should be able to suggest anything to 
 Coleridge that he did not already know. We returned on 
 the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent 
 cottage-smoke curling up the valleys where, a few 
 
 1 By William Godwin. Things as they are, or the Adventures 
 of Caleb WiUiams. London, 1794, 12mo, 3 vols. — Ed. 
 
My First Acquaintance with Poets. 277 
 
 evenings before, we had seen the lights gleaming through 
 the dark. 
 
 In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set ou , I 
 on my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday 
 morning, and he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of 
 Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared anything for 
 the occasion ? He said he had not even thought of the 
 text, but should as soon as we parted. I did not go to 
 hear him — this was a fault — but we met in the evening at 
 Bridge water. The next day we had a long day's walk to 
 Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side on the 
 road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when 
 Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines of his 
 tragedy of Remorse ; which I must say became his mouth 
 and that occasion better than they, some years after, did 
 Mr. Elliston's and the Drury-lane boards — 
 
 " Oh memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
 And give those scenes thine everlasting life." 
 
 I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which 
 period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest, in 
 Germany ; and his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike 
 his setting out. It was not till some time after that I 
 knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always 
 appears to me (as I first saw him) with a commonplace 
 book under his arm, and the first with a bon-mot in his 
 mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with Holcroft 
 and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which 
 was the best — Man as lie teas, or man as lie is to be. " Give 
 me," says Lamb, " man as he is not to be." This saying- 
 was the beginning of a friendship between us, which I 
 believe still continues. Enough of this for the present. 
 
 " But there is matter for another rhyme, 
 And I to this may add a second tale." 
 
278 Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 
 
 ESSAY' II. 
 
 Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 1 
 
 u Come like shadows — so depart." 
 
 Lamb it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well 
 as the defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. 
 As, however, he would undertake neither, I suppose I 
 must do both, 2 a task for which he would have been much 
 fitter, no less from the temerity than the felicity of his 
 pen — 
 
 u Never so sure our rapture to create 
 As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate." 
 
 Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a common- 
 place piece of business of it ; but I should be loth the 
 idea was entirely lost, and besides I may avail my- 
 self of some hints of his in the progress of it. I am 
 sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of 
 other people than expounder of my own. I pursue the 
 one too far into paradox or mysticism ; the others I am 
 not bound to follow farther than I like, or than seems fair 
 and reasonable. 
 
 On the question being started, Ayrton said, " 1 suppose 
 the two first persons you would choose to see would be 
 the two greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac 
 Kewton and Mr. Locke?" In this Ayrton, as usual, 
 reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing 
 at the expression of Lamb's face, in which inijjatience was 
 restrained by courtesy. " Yes, the greatest names," he 
 stammered out hastily, " but they were not persons — not 
 
 1 Printed in the Literary Remains, 1836. — Ed. The paper was 
 written about 1820, but the event which it purports to describe 
 occurred many years before. 
 
 2 A Defence of Guy Faux, icith some Observations on Heroism, 
 appeared in the Examiner for 1821 ; but see Memoirs of William 
 HazlitL 1867. i. 316-17.— Ed. 
 
Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 279 
 
 persons. " — " Not persons?" said Ayrton, looking wise and 
 foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be 
 premature. " That is," rejoined Lamb, " not characters, 
 you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you 
 mean the Essay on the Human Understanding, and the 
 Principia, which we have to this day. Beyond their 
 contents there is nothing personally interesting in the 
 men. But what we want to see any one bodily for, is 
 when there is something peculiar, striking in the 
 individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, 
 and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and 
 Newton were very like Kneller's portraits of them. But 
 who could paint Shakspeare ?" — " Ay," retorted Ayrton, 
 " there it is ; then I suppose you would prefer seeing him 
 and Milton instead ?" — " No," said Lamb, " neither. I 
 have seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on book- 
 stalls, in frontispieces and on mantel-pieces, that I am 
 quite tired of the everlasting repetition : and as to Milton's 
 face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do 
 not like ; it is too starched and puritanical ; and I should 
 be afraid of losing some of the manna of his poetry in the 
 leaven of his countenance and the precisian's band and 
 gown." — " I shall guess no more," said Ayrton. " Who is 
 it, then, you would like to see ' in his habit as he lived/ 
 if you had your choice of the whole range of English 
 literature ?" Lamb then named Sir Thomas Browne and 
 Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the 
 two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to 
 encounter on the floor of his apartment in their night- 
 gown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting 
 with them. At this Ayrton laughed outright, and con- 
 ceived Lamb was jesting with him ; but as no one followed 
 his example, he thought there might be something in it, 
 and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical 
 suspense. Lamb then (as well as I can remember a 
 conversation that passed twenty years ago — how time 
 
280 Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 
 
 slips !) went on as follows. " The reason why I pitch 
 upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, 
 and they themselves the most mysterious of personages. 
 They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark 
 hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them 
 the meaning of what no mortal but themselves, I should 
 suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson : I have no 
 curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him; he and 
 Bos well together have pretty well let me into the secret 
 of what passed through his mind. He and other writers 
 like him are sufficiently explicit : my friends whose repose 
 I should be tempted to disturb (were it in my power), are 
 implicit, inextricable, inscrutable. 
 
 " When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose com- 
 position the Urn-burial, I seem to myself to look into a 
 deep abyss, at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich 
 treasure ; or it is like a stately labyrinth of doubt and 
 withering speculation, and I would invoke the spirit of 
 the author to lead me through it. Besides, who would 
 not be curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having 
 himself been twice married, wished that mankind were 
 propagated like trees ! As to Fulke Greville, he is like 
 nothing but one of his own ' Prologues spoken by the 
 ghost of an old king of Ormus,' a truly formidable and 
 inviting personage : his style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, 
 a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie ; and for 
 the unravelling a passage or two, I would stand the brunt 
 of an encounter with so portentous a commentator !" — I 
 am afraid, in that case," said Ayrton, " that if the mystery 
 were once cleared up, the merit might be lost ;" and 
 turning to me, whispered a friendly apprehension, that 
 while Lamb continued to admire these old crabbed 
 authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr. 
 Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with 
 a very interesting countenance, whose history was singular, 
 and whose meaning was often quite as uncomeatable, without 
 

 
 Of Persons one would ivish to have seen. 281 
 
 a personal citation from the dead, as that of any of his 
 contemporaries. The volume was produced ; and while 
 some one was expatiating on the exquisite simplicity and 
 beauty of the portrait prefixed to the old edition, Ayrton 
 got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming " What have we 
 here ?" read the following : 
 
 " Here lies a She-Sun and a He-Moon there — 
 She gives the best light to his sphear, 
 Or each is both, and all, and so 
 They unto one another nothing owe." ■ 
 
 There was no resisting this, till Lamb, seizing the 
 volume, turned to the beautiful Lines to his Mistress, 2 dis- 
 suading her from accompanying him abroad, and read them 
 with suffused features and a faltering tongue : 
 
 " By onr first strange and fatal interview, 
 By all desires which thereof did ensue, 
 By onr long starving hopes, by that remorse 
 Which my words' masculine perswasive force 
 Begot in thee, and by the memory 
 Of hurts, which spies and rivals threatned me, 
 I calmely beg. But by thy father's wrath, 
 By all paines which want and divorcement hath, 
 I conjure thee ; and all the oathes which I 
 And thou have sworne to seale joynt constancy 
 Here I unsweare, and overswear them thus — 
 Thou shalt not love by wayes so dangerous. 
 Temper, O fair love! love's impetuous rage, 
 Be my true mistris still, not my faign'd Page ; 
 I'll goe, and, by thy kinde leave, leave behinde 
 Thee ! onely worthy to nurse in my minde. 
 Thirst to come backe ; O, if thou die before, 
 My soule, from other lands to thee shall soare. 
 Thy (else almighty) beautie cannot move 
 Bage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love. 
 Nor tame wild Boreas' harshnesse ; thou hast reade 
 How roughly bee in peeces shivered 
 
 1 Epithalamion on Frederick, Count Palatina of the Bhyne and 
 the Lady Elizabeth. 
 
 2 Foolishly put among Funeral Elegies, forgetting the sense of 
 Elegy. Davies's Nosce Teipsiim is so called. 
 
282 Of Persons one icould wish to have seen. 
 
 Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd. 
 Fall ill or good, 'tis inadnesse to have prov'd 
 Dangers unurg'd : Feed on this flattery, 
 That absent lovers one in th' other be. 
 Dissemble nothing, not a boy ; nor change 
 Thy bodie's habite. nor minde ; be not strange 
 To thyeselfe onely. All will spie in thy face 
 A blushing, womanly, discovering grace. 
 Kichly-cloath'd apes are call'd apes, and as soone 
 Eclips'd as bright, we call the moone the moon. 
 Men of France, changeable camelions, 
 Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions, 
 Love's fuellers, and the lightest company 
 Of players, which upon the world's stage be, 
 "Will quickly know thee . . [seven lines left out]. 
 O stay here ! for for thee 
 England is onely a worthy gallerie, 
 To walke in expectation ; till from thence 
 Our greatest King call thee to his presence. 
 When I am gone, dreame me some happinesse, 
 Nor let thy lookes our long-hid love confesse, 
 Nor praise, nor dispraise me ; nor blesse, nor curse 
 Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse 
 With midnight's star tings, crying out, Oh, oh, 
 Nurse, oh, my love is slaine, I saw him goe 
 O'er the white Alpes alone ; I saw him, I, aye, 
 Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die. 
 Au^ure me better chance, except dread Jove 
 Thinke it enough for me to have had thy love." 
 
 Some one then inquired of Lamb if we could not see 
 from the window the Temple walk in which Chaucer used 
 to take his exercise ; and on his name being put to the 
 vote, I was pleased to find that there was a general 
 sensation in his favour in all but Ayr ton, who said some- 
 thing about the ruggedness of the metre, and even objected 
 to the quaintness of the orthography. I was vexed at this 
 superficial gloss, pertinaciously reducing everything to its 
 own trite level, and asked "if he did not think it would 
 be worth while to scan the eye that had first greeted the 
 
li 
 
 Of Persons one ivould ivish to have seen. 283 
 
 literature; to see the head round which the visions of 
 fancy must have played like gleams of inspiration or a 
 sudden glory ; to watch those lips that " lisped in 
 numbers, for the numbers came " — as by a miracle, or as 
 if the dumb should speak ? Nor was it alone that he had 
 been the first to tune his native tongue (however imper- 
 fectly to modern ears) ; but he was himself a noble, 
 manly character, standing before his age and striving to 
 advance it ; a pleasant humourist withal, who has not 
 only handed down to us the living manners of his time, 
 but had, no doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, 
 and would make as hearty a companion as mine Host of 
 the Tabard. His interview with Petrarch is fraught with 
 interest. Yet I would rather have seen Chaucer in 
 company with the author of the Decameron, and have heard 
 them exchange their best stories together — the Squire's 
 Tale against the Story of the Falcon, the Wife of Bath's 
 Prologue against the Adventures of Friar Albert. How 
 fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning then 
 wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the 
 world, and by the courtesies of genius! Surely, the 
 thoughts and feelings which passed through the minds of 
 these great revivers of learning, these Cadmuses who 
 sowed the teeth of letters, must have stamped an ex- 
 pression on their features as different from the moderns 
 as their books, and well worth the perusal. Dante," I 
 continued, "is as interesting a person as his own Ugolino, 
 one whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly devour 
 in order to penetrate his spirit, and the only one of the 
 Italian poets I should care much to see. There is a fine 
 portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's ; light, 
 Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same 
 artist's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only 
 likeness of the kind that has the effect of conversing with 
 'the mighty dead;' and this is truly spectral, ghastly, 
 necromantic." Lamb put it to me if I should like to see 
 
284 Of Persons one ivould tvish to have seen. 
 
 Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered, without 
 hesitation, " No ; for that his beauties were ideal, vision- 
 ary, not palpable or personal, and therefore connected 
 with less curiosity about the man. His poetry was the 
 essence of romance, a very halo round the bright orb of 
 fancy ; and the bringing in the individual might dissolve 
 the charm. No tones of voice could come up to the 
 mellifluous cadence of his verse ; no form but of a winged 
 angel could vie with the airy shapes he has described. 
 He was (to my apprehension) rather a ' creature of the 
 element, that lived in the rainbow and played in the 
 plighted clouds,' than an ordinary mortal. Or if he did 
 appear, I should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one 
 of his own pageants, and that he should pass by unques- 
 tioned like a dream or sound — 
 
 ' That was Arion crown'd : 
 
 So went he playing on the wat'ry plain.' " 
 
 Captain Burney muttered something about Columbus, 
 and Martin Burney hinted at the Wandering Jew; but 
 the last was set aside as spurious, and the first made over 
 to the New World. 
 
 " I should like," said Mrs. Beynolds, " to have seen 
 Pope talk with Patty Blount ; and I have seen Goldsmith." 
 Every one turned round to look at Mrs. Eeynolds, as if 
 by so doing they could get a sight at Goldsmith. 
 
 " Where," asked a harsh, croaking voice, "was Dr. 
 Johnson in the years 1745-6 ? He did not write anything 
 that we know of, nor is there any account of him in 
 Boswell during those two years. Was he in Scotland 
 with the Pretender? He seems to have passed through 
 the scenes in the Highlands in company with Boswell, 
 many years after, * with lack-lustre eye,' yet as if they 
 were familiar to him, or associated in his mind with 
 interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an 
 additional reason for my liking him ; and I would give 
 something to have seen him seated in the tent with the 
 
 
Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 285 
 
 youthful Majesty of Britain, and penning the Proclama- 
 tion to all true subjects and adherents of the legitimate 
 Government." 
 
 " I thought," said Ayrton, turning short round upon 
 Lamb, " that you of the Lake School did not like Pope ? " 
 — " Not like Pope ! My dear sir, you must be under a 
 mistake — I can read him over and over for ever!" — 
 " Why, certainly, the Essay on Man must be allowed to 
 be a masterpiece." — " It may be so, but I seldom look into 
 it." — " Oh ! then it's his Satires you admire?" — " No, not 
 his Satires, but his friendly Epistles and his compliments." 
 — " Compliments ! I did not know he ever made any." — 
 " The finest," said Lamb, " that were ever paid by the wit 
 of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life — nay, 
 is an immortality. There is that superb one to Lord 
 Cornbury : 
 
 ' Despise low joys, low gains ; 
 Disdain whatever Oornbury disdains ; 
 Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.' 
 
 Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous 
 praise ? And then that noble apotheosis of his friend 
 Lord Mansfield (however little deserved), when, speaking 
 of the Ho'ise of Lords, he adds : 
 
 ' Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh, 
 (More silent far) where kings and poets lie; 
 Where Murray (long enough his country's pride) 
 Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde ." 
 
 And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses 
 Lord Bolingbroke : 
 
 1 Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine, 
 Oh ! all-accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine V 
 
 Or turn," continued Lamb, with a slight hectic on his 
 cheek and his eye glistening, " to his list of early friends : 
 
 
 ' But why then publish ? Granville the polite, 
 And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ; 
 
286 Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 
 
 Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise, 
 And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays : 
 The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
 Ev'n mitred Kochester would nod the head ; 
 And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
 Received with open arms one poet more. 
 Happy my studies, if by these approved ! 
 Happier their author, if by these beloved ! 
 From these the world will judge of men and books, 
 Not from the Burnet s, Oldmixons, and Cooks.' " 
 
 Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the 
 book, he said, "Do yon think I would not wish to have 
 been friends with such a man as this ? " 
 
 "What say you to Dryden?"— "He rather made a 
 show of himself, and courted popularity in that lowest 
 temple of fame, a coffee-shop, so as in some measure to 
 vulgarise one's idea of him. Pope, on the contrary, 
 reached the very beau ideal of what a poet's life should be ; 
 and his fame while living seemed to be an emanation 
 from that which was to circle his name after death. He 
 was so far enviable (and one would feel proud to have 
 witnessed the rare spectacle in him) that he was almost 
 the only poet and man of genius who met with his reward 
 on this side of the tomb, who realised in friends, fortune, 
 the esteem of the world, the most sanguine hopes of a 
 youthful ambition, and who found that sort of patronage 
 from the great during his lifetime which they would be 
 thought anxious to bestow upon him after his death. 
 Eead Gay's verses to him on his supposed return from 
 Greece, after his translation of Homer was finished, and 
 say if you would not gladly join the bright procession that 
 welcomed him home, or see it once more land at Whitehall 
 stairs." — " Still," said Mrs. Eeynolds, " I would rather 
 have seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in 
 a coronet-coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu !" 
 
 Erasmus Phillips, who was deep in a game of piquet at 
 the other end of the room, whispered to Martin Burney to 
 
Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 287 
 
 ask if Junius would not be a fit person to invoke from the 
 dead. "Yes," said Lamb, "provided he would agree to 
 lay aside his mask." 
 
 We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding 
 
 7 o 
 
 was mentioned as a candidate ; only one, however, seconded 
 the proposition. " Bichardson ?" — "By all means, but 
 only to look at him through the glass door of his back 
 shop, hard at work upon one of his novels (the most 
 extraordinary contrast that ever was presented between an 
 author and his works) ; not to let him come behind his 
 counter, lest he should want you to turn customer, or to 
 go upstairs with him, lest he should offer to read the first 
 manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison, which was originally 
 written in eight-and-twenty volumes octavo, or get out the 
 letters of his female correspondents, to prove that Joseph 
 Andrews was low." 
 
 There was but one statesman in the whole of English 
 history that any one expressed the least desire to see — 
 Oliver Cromwell, with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face, 
 and wily policy; and one enthusiast, John Bunyan, the 
 immortal author of the Pilgrim's Progress. It seemed 
 that if he came into the room, dreams would follow him, 
 
 »and that each person would nod under his golden cloud, 
 " nigh-sphered in heaven," a canopy as strange and stately 
 as any in Homer. 
 
 Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was 
 received with the greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed 
 by Barron Field. He presently superseded both Hogarth 
 and Handel, who had been talked of, but then it was on 
 condition that he should act in tragedy and comedy, in 
 the play and the farce, Lear and Wild air and Abel 
 
 IDrugger. What a sight for sore eyes that would be ! Who 
 would not part with a year's income at least, almost with 
 a year of his natural life, to be present at it ? Besides, as 
 he could not act alone, and recitations are unsatisfactory 
 
288 Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 
 
 tongued Barry, and Quin, and Shuter and Weston, and 
 Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have heard my 
 father speak as so great a favourite when he was young ! 
 This would indeed be a revival of the dead, the restoring 
 of art ; and so much the more desirable, as such is the 
 lurking scepticism mingled with our overstrained admira- 
 tion of past excellence, that though we have the speeches 
 of Burke, the portraits of Eeynolds, the writings of Gold- 
 smith, and the conversation of Johnson, to show what 
 people could do at that period, and to confirm the uni- 
 versal testimony to the merits of Garrick ; yet, as it was 
 before our time, we have our misgivings, as if he was 
 probably, after all, little better than a Bartlemy-fair actor, 
 dressed out to play Macbeth in a scarlet coat and laced 
 cocked-hat. For one, I should like to have seen and 
 heard with my own eyes and ears. Certainly, by all 
 accounts, if any one was ever moved by the true his- 
 trionic cestus, it was Garrick. When he followed the 
 Ghost in Hamlet, he did not drop the sword, as most 
 actors do, behind the scenes, but kept the point raised the 
 whole way round, so fully was he possessed with the idea, 
 or so anxious not to lose sight of his part for a moment. 
 
 Once at a splendid dinner-party at Lord 's, they 
 
 suddenly missed Garrick, and could not imagine what was 
 become of him, till they were drawn to the window by the 
 convulsive screams and peals of laughter of a young 
 negro boy, who was rolling on the ground in an ecstasy of 
 delight to see Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the 
 court-yard, with his coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a 
 seeming flutter of feathered rage and pride. Of our party 
 only two persons present had seen the British Koscius ; 
 and they seemed as willing as the rest to renew their 
 acquaintance with their old favourite. 
 
 We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of 
 this fanciful speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who 
 declared it was a shame to make all this rout about a 
 
 
Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 289 
 
 mere player and farce-writer, to the neglect and exclusion 
 of the fine old dramatists, the contemporaries and rivals 
 of Shakspeare. Lamb said he had anticipated this objec- 
 tion when he had named the author of Mustaplia and 
 Alaliam ; and, out of caprice, insisted upon keeping him to 
 represent the set, in preference to the wild, hair-brained 
 enthusiast, Kit Marlowe; to the sexton of St. Ann's, 
 Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death's- 
 heads ; to Decker, who was but a garrulous proser ; to 
 the voluminious Heywood ; and even to Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, whom we might offend by complimenting the 
 wrong author on their joint productions. Lord Brooke, 
 on the contrary, stood quite by himself, or, in Cowley's 
 words, was " a vast species alone." Some one hinted at 
 the circumstance of his being a lord, which rather startled 
 Lamb, but he said a gliost would perhaps dispense with 
 strict etiquette, on being regularly addressed by his title. 
 Ben Jonson divided our suffrages pretty equally. Some 
 were afraid he would begin to traduce Shakspeare, who 
 was not present to defend himself. " If he grows dis- 
 agreeable," it was whispered aloud, " there is Godwin can 
 match him." At length, his romantic visit to Drummond 
 of Hawthornden was mentioned, and turned the scale in 
 his favour. 
 
 Lamb inquired if there was any one that was hanged 
 that I would choose to mention ? And I answered, Eugene 
 Aram. The name of the " Admirable Crichton " was 
 suddenly started as a splendid example of icaste talents, so 
 different from the generality of his countrymen. This 
 choice was mightily approved by a North-Briton present, 
 who declared himself descended from that prodigy of 
 learning and accomplishment, and said he had family plate 
 in his possession as vouchers for the fact, with the initials 
 A. C. — Admirable Chricton ! Hunt laughed, or rather 
 roared, as heartily at this as I should think he has done 
 for many years. 
 
 u 
 
290 Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 
 
 The last named Mitre-courtier 1 then wished to know 
 whether there were any metaphysicians to whom one 
 might be tempted to apply the wizard spell ? I replied, 
 there were only six in modern times deserving the name 
 — Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz ; 
 and perhaps Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts man. 2 
 As to the French, who talked fluently of having created 
 this science, there was not a tittle in any of their writings 
 that was not to be found literally in the authors I had 
 mentioned. [Home Tooke, who might have a claim to 
 come in under the head of Grammar, was still living.] 
 None of these names seemed to excite much interest, and 
 I did not plead for the re-appearance of those who might 
 be thought best fitted by the abstracted nature of their 
 studies for the present spiritual and disembodied state, 
 and who, even while on this living stage, were nearly 
 divested of common flesh and blood. As Ayrton, with an 
 uneasy, fidgetty face, was about to put some question about 
 Mr. Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was prevented by 
 
 Martin Burney, who observed, " If J was here, he 
 
 would undoubtedly be for having up those profound and 
 redoubted socialists, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus." 
 I said this might be fair enough in him who had read, or 
 fancied he had read, the original works, but I did not see 
 how we could have any right to call up these authors to 
 give an account of themselves in person, till we had looked 
 into their writings. 
 
 1 Lamb at this time occupied chambers in Mitre-court, Temple. 
 
 2 Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should 
 come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation 
 together. This great and celebrated man in some of Lis works 
 recommends it to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of a 
 morning, and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So he some- 
 times enriched the dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine 
 aromatic spirit of his genius. His Essays and his Advancement of 
 Learning are works of vast depth and scope of observation. The 
 last, though it contains no positive discoveries, is a noble chart 
 of the human intellect, and a guide to all future inquirers. 
 

 Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 291 
 
 By this time it should seem that some rumour of our 
 whimsical deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed 
 the irritable genus in their shadowy abodes, for we received 
 messages from several candidates that we had just been 
 thinking of. Gray declined our invitation, though he had 
 not yet been asked : Gay offered to come, and bring in his 
 hand the Duchess of Bolton, the original Polly : Steele 
 and Addison left their cards as Captain Sentry 1 and Sir 
 Koger de Coverley : Swift came in and sat down without 
 speaking a word, and quitted the room as abruptly : Otway 
 and Chatterton were seen lingering on the opposite side 
 of the Styx, but could not muster enough between them to 
 pay Charon his fare : Thomson fell asleep in the boat, 
 and was rowed back again ; and Burns sent a low fellow, 
 one John Barleycorn, an old companion of his, who had 
 conducted him to the other world, to say that he had 
 during his lifetime been drawn out of his retirement as a 
 show, only to be made an exciseman of, and that he would 
 rather remain where he was. He desired, however, to 
 shake hands by his representative — the hand, thus held 
 out, was in a burning fever, and shook prodigiously. 
 
 The room was hung round with several portraits of 
 eminent painters. While we were debating whether we 
 should demand speech with these masters of mute elo- 
 quence, whose features were so familiar to us, it seemed 
 that all at once they glided from their frames, and seated 
 themselves at some little distance from us. There was 
 Leonardo, with his majestic beard and watchful eye, having 
 a bust of Archimedes before him ; next him was Eaphael's 
 graceful head turned round to the Fornarina ; and on his 
 other side was Lucretia Borgia, with calm, golden locks ; 
 Michael Angelo had placed the model of St. Peter's on 
 the table before him ; Correggio had an angel at his side ; 
 Titian was seated with his mistress between himself and 
 Giorgione ; Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora, 
 
 1 A member of the Spectator Club. —Ed. 
 
292 Of Persons one ivould wish to have seen. 
 
 . 
 
 who took a dice-box from him ; Claude held a mirror in 
 his hand ; Eubens patted a beautiful panther (led in by a 
 satyr) on the head ; Vandyke appeared as his own Paris, 
 and Eembrandt was hid under firs, gold chains, and jewels, 
 which Sir Joshua eyed closely, holding his hand so as to 
 shade his forehead. Not a word was spoken; and as we 
 rose to do them homage, they still presented the same 
 surface to the view. Not being hond-fide representations 
 of living people, we got rid of the splendid apparitions by 
 signs and dumb show. As soon as they had melted into 
 thin air, there was a loud noise at the outer door, and we 
 found it was Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio, who had 
 been raised from the dead by their earnest desire to see 
 their illustrious successors — 
 
 " Whose names on earth 
 In Fame's eternal records live for aye !" 
 
 Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after 
 them, and mournfully withdrew. " Egad !" said Lamb, 
 "these are the very fellows I should like to have had 
 some talk with, to know how they could see to paint when 
 all was dark around them." 
 
 " But shall we have nothing to say," interrogated 
 
 G. J , "to the Legend of Good Women 1 "— " Name, 
 
 name, Mr. J ," cried Hunt in a boisterous tone of 
 
 friendly exultation, " name as many as you please, without 
 
 reserve or fear of molestation!" J was perplexed 
 
 between so many amiable recollections, that the name of 
 the lady of his choice expired in a pensive whiff of his 
 pipe ; and Lamb impatiently declared for the Duchess of 
 Newcastle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner mentioned, 
 than she carried the day from the Duchess. We were the 
 less solicitous on this subject of filling up the posthumous 
 lists of Good Women, as there was already one in the 
 room as good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, 
 us the best of them could be for their lives ! "I should 
 
Of Persons one would ivish to have seen. 293 
 
 like vastly to have seen Ninon de l'Enclos," said that 
 incomparable person ; and this immediately put us in 
 mind that we had neglected to pay honour due to our 
 friends on the other side of the Channel : Voltaire, the 
 patriarch of levity, and Eousseau, the father of sentiment ; 
 Montaigne and Babelais (great in wisdom and in wit) ; 
 Moliere and that illustrious group that are collected 
 round him (in the print of that subject) to hear him read 
 his comedy of the Tartuffe at the house of Ninon ; Eacine, 
 La Fontaine, Eochefoucalt, St. Evremont, &c. 
 
 " There is one person," said a shrill, querulous voice, 
 " I would rather see than all these — Don Quixote !" 
 
 " Come, come !" said Hunt ; " I thought we should haVe 
 no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. Lamb ? 
 Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names 
 as Alexander, Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis 
 Khan?" — " Excuse me," said Lamb; " on the subject of 
 characters in active life, plotters and disturbers of the 
 world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I beg leave to 
 reserve." — " No, no ! come, out with your worthies !" — 
 " What do you think of Guy Fawkes and Judas Iscariot ?" 
 Hunt turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but 
 cordial and full of smothered glee. " Your most exquisite 
 reason !" was echoed on all sides ; and Ayrton thought 
 that Lamb had now fairly entangled himself. "Why I 
 cannot but think," retorted he of the wistful countenance, 
 " that Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering annual scarecrow 
 of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give 
 something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, sur- 
 rounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, 
 and expecting the moment that was to transport him to 
 Paradise for his heroic self-devotion ; but if I say any 
 more, there is that fellow Godwin will make something of 
 it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I 
 would fain see the face of him who, having dipped his 
 hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, could after- 
 
294 On Party Spirit. 
 
 wards betray him. I have no conception of such a thing ; 
 nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's 
 very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it." — " You 
 have said enough, Mr. Lamb, to justify your choice." 
 " Oh ! ever right, Menenius — ever right !" 
 tC There is only one ether person I can ever think of 
 after this," continued Lamb ; but without mentioning a 
 name that once put on a semblance of -mortality. " If 
 Shakspeare was to come into the room, we should all rise 
 up to meet him ; but if that person was to come into it, 
 we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his 
 garment !" 
 
 As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the 
 turn the conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The 
 morning broke with that dim, dubious light by which 
 Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint 
 their earliest works; and we parted to meet again and 
 renew similar topics at night, the next night, and the 
 night after that, till that night overspread Europe which 
 saw no dawn. The same event, in truth, broke up our 
 little Congress that broke up the great one. But that 
 was to meet again : our deliberations have never been 
 resumed. 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 On Party Spirit. 
 
 Party spirit is one of the profoundnesses of Satan, or, in 
 modern language, one of the dexterous equivoques and 
 contrivances of our self-love, to prove that we, and those 
 who agree with us, combine all that is excellent and 
 praiseworthy in our own persons (as in a ring-fence), 
 and that all the vices and deformity of human nature 
 take refuge with those who differ from us. It is extending 
 and fortifying the principle of the amour-propre, by calling 
 
On Party Spirit, 295 
 
 to its aid the espirit de corps, and screening and surround- 
 ing our favourite propensities and obstinate caprices in 
 the hollow squares or dense phalanxes of sects and parties. 
 This is a happy mode of pampering our self-complacency, 
 and persuading ourselves that we, and those that side with 
 us, are " the salt of the earth ;" of giving vent to the 
 morbid humours of our pride, envy, hatred, malice, and all 
 uncharitableness, those natural secretions of the human 
 heart, under the pretext of self-defence, the public safety, 
 or a voice from heaven, as it may happen ; and of heaping 
 every excellence into one scale, and throwing all the 
 obloquy and contempt into the other, in virtue of a nick- 
 name, a watchword of party, a badge, the colour of a ribbon, 
 the cut of a dress. We thus desolate the globe, or tear a 
 country in pieces, to show that we are the only people fit 
 to live in it; and fancy ourselves angels, while we are 
 playing the devil. In this manner the Huron devours the 
 Iroquois, because he is an Iroquois ; and the Iroquois the 
 Huron, for a similar reason : neither suspects that he does 
 it because he himself is a savage, and no better than a wild 
 beast ; and is convinced in his own breast that the dif- 
 ference of man and tribe makes a total difference in the 
 case. The Papist persecutes the Protestant, the Protest- 
 ant persecutes the Papist in his turn ; and each fancies 
 that he has a plenary right to do so, while he keeps in 
 view only the offensive epithet which " cuts the common 
 link of brotherhood between them." The Church of 
 England ill-treated the Dissenters, and the Dissenters, 
 when they had the opportunity, did not spare the Church 
 of England. The Whig calls the Tory a knave, the Tory 
 compliments the Whig with the same title, and each thinks 
 the abuse sticks to the party-name, and has nothing to do 
 with himself or the generic name of man. On the contrary, 
 it cuts both ways ; but while the Whigs say " The Troy 
 is a knave, because he is a Tory," this is as much as to 
 say, " I cannot be a knave, because I am a Whig ;" and by 
 
296 On Party Spirit. 
 
 * 
 exaggerating the profligacy of his opponent, he imagines 
 he is laying the sure foundation, and raising the lofty 
 superstructure, of his own praises. But if he says, which 
 is the truth, " The Tory is not a rascal, because he is a 
 Tory, but because human nature in power, and with the 
 temptation, is a rascal," then this would imply that the 
 seeds of depravity are sown in his own bosom, and might 
 shoot out into full growth and luxuriance if he got into 
 place, and this he does not wish to develop till he does 
 get into place. 
 
 We may be intolerant even in advocating the cause of 
 toleration, and so bent on making proselytes to free- 
 thinking as to allow no one to think freely but ourselves. 
 The most boundless liberality in appearance may amount 
 in reality to the most monstrous ostracism of opinion — not 
 condemning this or that tenet, or standing up for this or 
 that sect or party, but in a supercilious superiority to all 
 sects and parties alike, and proscribing in one sweeping 
 clause, all arts, sciences, opinions, and pursuits but our 
 own. Till the time of Locke and Toland a general 
 toleration was never dreamt of : it was thought right on 
 all hands to punish and discountenance heretics and 
 schismatics, but each party alternately claimed to be true 
 Christians and Orthodox believers. Daniel De Foe, who 
 spent his whole life, and wasted his strength, in asserting 
 the right of the Dissenters to a Toleration (and got nothing 
 for his pains but the pillory), was scandalised at the pro- 
 posal of the general principle, and was equally strenuous 
 in excluding Quakers, Anabaptists, Socinians, Sceptics, and 
 all who did not agree in the essentials of Christianity — 
 that is, who did not agree with him — from the benefit of 
 such an indulgence to tender consciences. We wonder at 
 the cruelties formerly practised upon the Jews : is there 
 anything wonderful in it ? They were at that time the 
 only people to make a butt and a bugbear of, to set up as 
 a mark of indignity, and as a foil to our self-love, for the 
 
On Party Spirit. 297 
 
 fercB natures principle that is within us, and always craving 
 its prey to run down, to worry and make sport of at dis- 
 cretion, and without mercy — the unvarying uniformity 
 and implicit faith of the Catholic Church had imposed 
 silence, and put a curb on our jarring dissensions, heart- 
 burnings, and ill-blood, so that we had no pretence for 
 quarrelling among ourselves for the glory of God or the 
 salvation of men : — a Joed anus Bkuno, an Atheist or 
 sorcerer, once in a way, would hardly suffice to stay the 
 stomach of our theological rancour ; we therefore fell with 
 might and main upon the Jews as a forlorn hope in this 
 dearth of objects of spite or zeal ; or when the whole 
 of Europe was reconciled to the bosom of holy Mother 
 Church, went to the Holy Land in search of a difference 
 of opinion, and a ground of mortal offence : but no sooner 
 was there a division of the Christian World, than Papist, 
 fell on Protestants or Schismatics, and Schismatics upon 
 one another, with the same loving fury as they had before 
 fallen upon Turks and Jews. The disposition is always 
 there, like a muzzled mastiff ; the pretext only is wanting ; 
 and this is furnished by a name, which, as soon as it is 
 affixed to different sects or parties, gives us a licence, we 
 think, to let loose upon them all our malevolence, domi- 
 neering humour, love of power, and wanton mischief, as 
 if they were of different species. The sentiment of the 
 pious English Bishop was good, who, on seeing a criminal 
 led to execution, exclaimed, " There goes my wicked 
 self!" 
 
 If we look at common patriotism, it will furnish an 
 illustration of party spirit. One would think by an 
 Englishman's hatred of the French, and his readiness to 
 die fighting with and for his countrymen, that all the 
 nation were united as one man, in heart and hand — and so 
 they are in war-time and as an exercise of their loyalty 
 and courage : but let the crisis be over, and they cool 
 wonderfully; begin to feel the distinctions of English, 
 
298 On Party Spirit 
 
 Irish, and Scotch ; fall out among themselves upon some 
 minor distinction ; the same hand that was eager to shed 
 the blood of a Frenchman, will not give a crust of bread 
 or a cup of cold w T ater to a fellow countryman in distress ; 
 and the heroes who defended the " wooden walls of old 
 England" are left to expose their wounds and crippled 
 limbs to gain a pittance from the passengers, or to perish 
 of hunger, cold, and neglect, in our highways. Such is 
 the effect of our boasted nationality : it is active, fierce 
 in doing mischief; dormantly lukewarm in doing good. 
 We may also see why the greatest stress is laid on trifles 
 in religion, and why the most violent animosities arise out 
 of the smallest differences, either in this or in politics. 
 
 In the first place, it would never do to establish our 
 superiority over others by the acquisition of greater 
 virtues, or by discarding our vices ; but it is charming to 
 do this by merely repeating a different formula of prayer, 
 turning to the east instead of the west. He should fight 
 boldly for such a distinction, who is persuaded it will 
 furnish him a passport to the other world, and entitle him 
 to look down on the rest of his fellows as given over to 
 perdition. Secondly, we often hate those most with whom 
 we have only a slight shade of difference, whether in 
 politics or religion ; because as the whole is a contest for 
 precedence and infallibility, we find it more difficult to 
 draw the line of distinction where so many points are 
 conceded, and are staggered in our conviction by the 
 arguments of those whom we cannot despise as totally and 
 incorrigibly in the wrong. The High Church party in 
 Queen Anne's time were disposed to sacrifice the Low 
 Church and Dissenters to the Papists, because they were 
 more galled by their arguments and disconcerted with 
 their pretensions. In private life the reverse of the 
 foregoing holds good : that is, trades and professions 
 present a direct contrast to sects and parties. A con- 
 formity in sentiment strengthens our party and opinion § 
 
On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth. 299 
 
 but those who have a similarity of pursuit, are rivals in 
 interest ; and hence the old maxim, that two of a trade can 
 never agree. 
 1830. 
 
 ESSAY IY. 
 
 On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth. 
 
 No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying 
 of my brother's, 1 and a fine one. There is a feeling of 
 Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. 
 To be young is to be as one of the Immortals. One half 
 of time indeed is spent — the other half remains in store 
 for us with all its countless treasures, for there is no line 
 drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes. We 
 make the coming age our own — 
 
 " The vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us." 
 
 Death, old age, are words without a meaning, a dream, a 
 fiction, with which we have nothing to do. Others may 
 have undergone, or may still undergo them — we " bear a 
 charmed life," which laughs to scorn all such idle fancies. 
 As, in setting out on a delightful journey, we strain our 
 eager sight forward, 
 
 " Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail," 
 
 and see no end to prospect after prospect, new objects 
 presenting themselves as we advance, so in the outset of 
 life we see no end to our desires nor to the opportunities 
 of gratifying them. We have as yet found no obstacle, 
 no disposition to flag, and it seems that we can go on so 
 for ever. We look round in a new world, full of life anc 
 motion, and ceaseless progress, and feel in ourselves all 
 the vigour and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not 
 1 John Hazlitt, the miniature painter. — Ed. 
 
300 On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth. 
 
 foresee from any present signs how we shall be left behind 
 in the race, decline into old age, and drop into the grave. 
 It is the simplicity and, as it were, abstractedness of our 
 feelings in youth that (so to speak) identifies us with 
 nature and (our experience being weak and our passions 
 strong) makes us fancy ourselves immortal like it. Our 
 short-lived connection with being, we fondly flatter our- 
 selves, is an indissoluble and lasting union. As infants 
 smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our desires, 
 and hushed into fancied security by the roar of the uni- 
 verse around us — we quaff the cup of life with eager thirst 
 without draining it, and joy and hope seem ever mantling 
 to the brim — objects press around us, filling the mind 
 with their magnitude and with the throng of desires that 
 wait upon them, so that there is no room for the thoughts 
 of death. We are too much dazzled by the gorgeousness 
 and novelty of the bright waking dream about us to dis- 
 cern the dim shadow lingering for us in the distance. 
 Nor would the hold that life has taken of us permit us to 
 detach our thoughts that way, even if we could. We are 
 too much absorbed in present objects and pursuits. 
 While the spirit of youth remains unimpaired, ere "the 
 wine of life is drunk," we are like people intoxicated or in 
 a fever, who are hurried away by th.Q violence of their 
 own sensations : it is only as present objects begin to pall 
 upon the sense, as we have been disappointed in our 
 favourite pursuits, cut off from our closest ties, that we by 
 degrees become weaned from the world, that passion 
 loosens its hold upon futurity, and that we begin to 
 contemplate as in a glass darkly the possibility of parting 
 with it for good. Till then, the example of others has no 
 effect upon us. Casualties we avoid ; the slow approaches 
 of age we play at hide and seek with. Like the foolish fat 
 scullion in Sterne, who hears that Master Bobby is dead, 
 our only reflection is, " So am not I !" The idea of death, 
 instead of staggering our confidence, only seems to 
 
 I 
 
On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth. 301 
 
 strengthen and enhance our sense of the possession and 
 enjoyment of life. Others may fall around us like leaves, 
 or be mowed down by the scythe of Time like grass : these 
 are but metaphors to the unreflecting, buoyant ears and 
 overweening presumption of youth. It is not till we see 
 the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy withering around us, 
 that we give up the flattering delusions that before led us 
 on, and that the emptiness and dreariness of the prospect 
 before us reconciles us hypothetically to the silence of the 
 grave. 
 
 Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are 
 most mysterious. No wonder when it is first granted to 
 us, that our gratitude, our admiration, and our delight 
 should prevent us from reflecting on our own nothingness, 
 or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and 
 strongest impressions are borrowed from the mighty scene 
 that is opened to us, and we unconsciously transfer its 
 durability as well as its splendour to ourselves. So newly 
 found, we cannot think of parting with it yet, or at least 
 put off that consideration sine die. Like a rustic at a fair, 
 we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought 
 of going home, or that it will soon be night. We know 
 our existence only by ourselves, and confound our know- 
 ledge with the objects of it. We and Nature are therefore 
 one. Otherwise the illusion, the " feast of reason and the 
 flow of soul," to which we are invited, is a mockery and a 
 cruel insult. We do not go from a play till the last act 
 is ended, and the lights are about to be extinguished. 
 But the fairy face of Nature still shines on : shall we be 
 called away before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce 
 had a glimpse of what is going on? Like children, our 
 step-mother Nature holds us up to see the raree-show of 
 the universe, and then, as if we were a burden to her to 
 support, lets us fall down again. Yet what brave sub- 
 lunary things does not this pageant present, like a ball or 
 fete of the universe ! 
 
302 On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth. 
 
 To see the golden sun, the azure sky, the out- stretched 
 ocean ; to walk upon the green earth, and be lord of a 
 thousand creatures ; to look down yawning precipices or 
 over distant sunny vales; to see the world spread out 
 under one's feet on a map ; to bring the stars near ; to 
 view the smallest insects through a microscope; to read 
 history, and consider the revolutions of empire and the 
 successions of generations ; to hear of the glory of Tyre, 
 of Sidon, of Babylon, and of Susa, and to say all these 
 were before me and are now nothing ; to say I exist in 
 such a point of time, and in such a point of space ; to be a 
 spectator and a part of its ever-moving scene ; to witness 
 the change of season, of spring and autumn, of winter and 
 summer ; to feel hot and cold, pleasure and pain, beauty 
 and deformity, right and wrong; to be sensible to the 
 accidents of nature ; to consider the mighty world of eye 
 and ear; to listen to the stock-dove's notes amid the 
 forest deep ; to journey over moor and mountain ; to 
 hear the midnight sainted choir ; to visit lighted halls, or 
 the cathedral's gloom, or sit in crowded theatres and see 
 life itself mocked ; to study the works of art and refine the 
 sense of beauty to agony ; to worship fame, and to dream 
 of immortality ; to look upon the Vatican, and to read 
 Shakspeare ; to gather up the wisdom of the ancients, and 
 to pry into the future ; to listen to the trump of war, the 
 shout of victory ; to question history as to the movements 
 of the human heart ; to seek for truth ; to plead the cause 
 of humanity ; to overlook the world as if time and nature 
 poured their treasures at our feet — to be and to do all this, 
 and then in a moment to be nothing— to have it all snatched 
 from us as by a juggler's trick, or a phantasmagoria ! There 
 is something in this transition from all to nothing that 
 shocks us and damps the enthusiasm of youth new flushed 
 with hope and pleasure, and we cast the comfortless 
 thought as far from us as we can. In the first enjoyment 
 of the estate of life we discard the fear of debts and duns, 
 
On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth 303 
 
 and never think of the final payment of our great debt to 
 Nature. Art we know is long ; life, we flatter ourselves, 
 should be so too. We see no end of the difficulties and 
 delays we have to encounter : perfection is slow of attain- 
 ment, and we must have time to accomplish it in. The 
 fame of the great names we look up to is immortal : and 
 shall not we who contemplate it imbibe a portion of 
 ethereal fire, the divince jparticula aurce, which nothing can 
 extinguish ? A wrinkle in Eembrandt or in Nature takes 
 whole days to resolve itself into its component parts, its 
 softenings and its sharpnesses; we refine upon our 
 perfections, and unfold the intricacies of nature. What a 
 prospect for the future ! What a task have we not begun ! 
 And shall we be arrested in the middle of it ? We do not 
 count our time thus employed lost, or our pains thrown 
 away ; we do not flag or grow tired, but gain new vigour 
 at our endless task. Shall Time, then, grudge us to finish 
 what we have begun, and have formed a compact with 
 Nature to do ? Why not fill up the blank that is left us in 
 this manner ? I have looked for hours at a Eembrandt 
 without being conscious of the flight of time, but with 
 ever new wonder and delight, have thought that not only 
 my own but another existence I could pass in the same 
 manner. This rarefied, refined existence seemed to have 
 no end, nor stint, nor principle of decay in it. The print 
 would remain long after I who looked on it had become 
 the prey of worms. The thing seems in itself out of all 
 reason : health, strength, appetite are opposed to the idea 
 of death, and we are not ready to credit it till we have 
 found our illusions vanished, and our hopes grown cold. 
 Objects in youth, from novelty, &c, are stamped upon 
 the brain with such force and integrity that one thinks 
 nothing can remove or obliterate them. They are riveted 
 there, and appear to us as an element of our nature. It must 
 be a mere violence that destroys them, not a natural decay. 
 In the very strength of this persuasion we seem to enjoy an 
 
304 On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, 
 
 age by anticipation. We melt down years into a single 
 moment of intense sympathy, and by anticipating the 
 fruits defy the ravages of time. If, then, a single moment 
 of our lives is worth years, shall we set any limits to 
 its total value and extent ? Again, does it not happen 
 that so secure do we think ourselves of an indefinite 
 period of existence, that at times, when left to ourselves, 
 and impatient of novelty, we feel annoyed at what seems 
 to us the slow and creeping progress of time, and argue 
 that if it always moves at this tedious snail's pace it will 
 never come to an end ? How ready are we to sacrifice any 
 space of time which separates us from a favourite object, 
 little thinking that before long we shall find it move too 
 fast. 
 
 For my part, I started in life with the French Eevo- 
 lution, and I have lived, alas ! to see the end of it. But I 
 did not foresee this result. My sun arose with the first 
 lawn of liberty, and I did not think how soon both must 
 set. The new impulse to ardour given to men's minds 
 imparted a congenial warmth and glow to mine ; we were 
 strong to run a race together, and I little dreamed that 
 Long before mine was set, the sun of liberty would turn to 
 olood, or set once more in the night of despotism. Since 
 then, I confess, I have no longer felt myself young, for 
 with that my hopes fell. 
 
 I have since turned my thoughts to gathering up some 
 of the fragments of my early recollections, and putting 
 fchem into a form to which I might occasionally revert. 
 The future was barred to my progress, and I turned for 
 consolation and encouragement to the past. It is thus 
 that, while we find our personal and substantial identity 
 vanishing from us, we strive to gain a reflected and 
 vicarious one in our thoughts : we do not like to perish 
 wholly, and wish to bequeath our names, at least, to pos- 
 terity. As long as we can make our cherished thoughts 
 and nearest interests live in the minds of others, we do 
 
On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, 305 
 
 not appear to have retired altogether from the stage. We 
 still occupy the breasts of others, and exert an influence 
 and power over them, and it is only our bodies that are 
 reduced to dust and powder. Our favourite speculations 
 still find encouragement, and we make as great a figure in 
 the eye of the world, or perhaps a greater, than in our life- 
 time. The demands of our self-love are thus satisfied, 
 and these are the most imperious and unremitting. 
 Besides, if by our intellectual superiority we survive 
 ourselves in this world, by our virtues and faith we may 
 attain an interest in another, and a higher state of being, 
 and may thus be recipients at the same time of men and 
 of angels. 
 
 M E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, 
 E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires." 
 
 As we grow old, our sense of the value of time becomes 
 vivid. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any. consequence. 
 We can never cease wondering that that which has ever 
 been should cease to be. We find many things remain the 
 same : why then should there be change in us. This 
 adds a convulsive grasp of whatever is, a sense of a falla- 
 cious hollowness in all we see. Instead of the full, pulpy 
 feeling of youth tasting existence and every object in it, 
 all is flat and vapid, — a whited sepulchre, fair without 
 but full of ravening and all uncleanness within. The 
 world is a witch that puts us off with false shows and 
 appearances. The simplicity of youth, the confiding 
 expectation, the boundless raptures, are gone : we only 
 think of getting out of it as well as we can, and without 
 any great mischance or annoyance. The flush of illusion, 
 even the complacent retrospect of past joys and hopes, is 
 over : if we can slip out of life without indignity, can 
 escape with little bodily infirmity, and frame our minds 
 to the calm and respectable composure of still-life before 
 we return to physical nothingness, it is as much as we can 
 
 x 
 
306 On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth. 
 
 expect. We do not die wholly at our deaths : we have 
 mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after 
 faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attach- 
 ment disappear : we are torn from ourselves while living, 
 year after year sees us no longer the same, and death only 
 consigns the last fragment of what we were to the grave. 
 That we should wear out by slow stages, and dwindle at 
 last into nothing, is not wonderful, when even in our 
 prime our strongest impressions leave little trace but for 
 the moment, and we are the creatures of petty circumstance. 
 How little effect is made on us in our best days by the 
 books we have read, the scenes we have witnessed, the 
 sensations we have gone through! Think only of the 
 feelings we experience in reading a fine romance (one of 
 Sir Walter's, for instance) ; what beauty, what sublimity, 
 what interest, what heart-rending emotions ! You would 
 suppose the feelings you then experienced would last for 
 ever, or subdue the mind to their own harmony and tone : 
 while we are reading it seems as if nothing could ever 
 put us out of our way, or trouble us : — the first splash of 
 mud that we get on entering the street, the first twopence 
 we are cheated out of, the feeling vanishes clean out of 
 our minds, and we become the prey of petty and annoying 
 circumstance. The mind soars to the lofty : it is at home 
 in the grovelling, the disagreeable, and the little. And 
 yet we wonder that age should be feeble and querulous, 
 — that the freshness of youth should fade away. Both 
 worlds would hardly satisfy the extravagance of our 
 desires and of our presumption. 
 

 On Public Opinion. 307 
 
 ESSAY Y. 
 
 On Public Opinion. 
 
 " Scared at the sound itself has made." 
 
 Once asking a friend why he did not bring forward an 
 explanation of a circumstance, in which his conduct had 
 been called in question, he said, " His friends were 
 satisfied on the subject, and he cared very little about the 
 opinion of the world." I made answer that I did not 
 consider this a good ground to rest his defence upon, for 
 that a man's friends seldom thought better of him than 
 the world did. I see no reason to alter this opinion. 
 Our friends, indeed, are more apt than a mere stranger to 
 join in with, or be silent under any imputation thrown out 
 against us, because they are apprehensive they may be in- 
 directly implicated in it, and they are bound to betray us 
 to save their own credit. To judge of our jealousy, our 
 sensibility, our high notions of responsibility, on this 
 score, only consider if a single individual lets fall a 
 solitary remark implying a doubt of the wit, the sense, 
 the courage of a friend — how it staggers us — how it 
 makes us shake with fear — how it makes us call up all 
 our eloquence and airs of self-consequence in his defence, 
 lest our partiality should be supposed to have blinded our 
 perceptions, and we should be regarded as the dupes of a 
 mistaken admiration. We already begin to meditate an 
 escape from a losing cause, and try to find out some other 
 fault in the character under discussion, to show that we 
 are not behind-hand (if the truth must be spoken) in 
 sagacity, and a sense of the ridiculous. If, then, this is 
 the case with the first flaw, the first doubt, the first speck 
 that dims the sun of friendship, so that we are ready to 
 turn our backs on our sworn attachments and well-known 
 
o 
 
 OS On Piiblic Opinion. 
 
 professions the instant we have not all the world with us, 
 what must it be when we have all the world against us ; 
 when our friend, instead of a single stain, is covered with 
 mud from head to foot ; how shall we expect our feeble 
 voices not to be drowned in the general clamour ? how 
 shall we dare to oppose our partial and mis-timed suf- 
 frages to the just indignation of the public? Or if it 
 should not amount to this, how shall we answer the silence 
 and contempt with which his name is received. How 
 shall we animate the great mass of indifference or distrust 
 with our private enthusiasm ? how defeat the involuntary- 
 smile, or the suppressed sneer, with the burst of generous 
 feeling and the glow of honest conviction ? It is a thing 
 not to be thought of. unless we would enter into a crusade 
 against prejudice and malignity, devote ourselves as 
 martyrs to friendship, raise a controversy in every 
 company we go into, quarrel with every person we meet, 
 and after making ourselves and every one else uncom- 
 fortable, leave off, not by clearing our friend's reputation, 
 but by involving our own pretensions to decency and 
 common sense. People will not fail to observe that a 
 man may have his reasons for his faults or vices ; but that 
 for another to volunteer a defence of them, is without 
 excuse. It is, in fact, an attempt to deprive them of the 
 great and only benefit they derive from the supposed 
 errors of their neighbours and contemporaries — the 
 pleasure of backbiting and railing at them, w 7 hich they 
 call seeing justice done. It is not a single breath of 
 rumour or opinion ; but the whole atmosi>here is infected 
 with a sort of aguish taint of anger and suspicion, that 
 relaxes the nerves of fidelity, and makes our most san- 
 guine resolutions sicken and turn pale ; and he who is 
 proof against it, must either be armed with a love of truth, 
 or a contempt for mankind, which places him out of the 
 reach of ordinary rules and calculations. For myself, I 
 do not shrink from defending a cause or a friend under a 
 
On Public Opinion. 309 
 
 cloud ; though in neither case will cheap or common efforts 
 suffice. But, in the first, you merely stand up for your 
 own judgment and principles against fashion and prejudice, 
 and thus assume a sort of manly and heroic attitude of 
 defiance : in the last (which makes it a matter of greater 
 nicety and nervous sensibility), you sneak behind another 
 to throw your gauntlet at the whole world, and it requires 
 a double stock of stoical firmness not to be laughed out of 
 your boasted zeal and independence as a romantic and 
 amiable weakness} 
 
 There is nothing in which all the world agree but in 
 running down some obnoxious individual. It may be 
 supposed that this is not for nothing, and that they have 
 good reasons for what they do. On the contrary, I will 
 undertake to say, that so far from there being invariably 
 just grounds for such an universal outcry, the universality 
 of the outcry is often the only ground of the opinion ; and 
 that it is purposely raised upon this principle, that all 
 other proof or evidence against the person meant to be run 
 down is wanting. Nay, further, it may happen, that while 
 the clamour is at the loudest ; while you hear it from all 
 quarters ; while it blows a perfect hurricane ; while " the 
 world rings with the vain stir " — not one of those who are 
 most eager in hearing and echoing knows what it is about, 
 or is not fully persuaded that the charge is equally false, 
 malicious, and absurd. It is like the wind, that " no man 
 knoweth whence it cometh, or whither it goeth." It is vox 
 et prceterea nihil. What, then, is it that gives it its confident 
 circulation and its irresistible force ? It is the loudness of 
 the organ with which it is pronounced, the stentorian lungs 
 
 1 The only friends whom we defend with zeal and obstinacy are 
 our relations. They seem part of ourselves. For our other friends 
 we are only answerable, so long as we countenance them ; and 
 therefore cut the connection as soon as possible. But who ever 
 willingly gave up the good dispositions of a child, or the honour of 
 a parent ? 
 
310 On Public Opinion. 
 
 of the multitude ; the number of voices that take it up and 
 repeat it, because others have done so ; the rapid flight and 
 the impalpable nature of common fame, that makes it a 
 desperate undertaking for any individual to inquire into or 
 arrest the mischief that, in the deafening buzz or loosened 
 roar of laughter or indignation, renders it impossible for 
 the still small voice of reason to be heard, and leaves no 
 other course to honesty or prudence than to fall flat on the 
 face before it, as before the pestilential blast of the desert, 
 and wait till it has passed over. Thus every one joins in 
 asserting, propagating, and in outwardly approving what 
 every one, in his private and unbiassed judgment, believes 
 and knows to be scandalous and untrue. For every one in 
 such circumstances keeps his own opinion to himself, and 
 only attends to or acts upon that which he conceives to be 
 the opinion of every one but himself. So that public 
 opinion is not seldom a farce, equal to any acted upon the 
 stage. Not only is it spurious and hollow in the way that 
 Mr. Locke points out, by one man's taking up at second 
 hand the opinion of another, but worse than this, one man 
 takes up what he believes another ivill think, and which 
 the latter professes only because he believes it held by the 
 first ! All, therefore, that is necessary to control public 
 opinion, is to gain possession of some organ loud and lofty 
 enough to make yourself heard, that has power and interest 
 on its side ; and then, no sooner do you blow a blast in 
 this trump of ill-fame, like the horn hung up on an old 
 castle-wall, than you are answered, echoed, and accredited 
 on all sides : the gates are thrown open to receive you, 
 and you are admitted into the very heart of the fortress 
 of public opinion, and can assail from the ramparts with 
 every engine of abuse, and with privileged impunity, all 
 those who may come forward to vindicate the truth, or to 
 rescue their good name from the unprincipled keeping of 
 authority, servility, sophistry, and venal falsehood ! The 
 only thing wanted is to give an alarm — to excite a panic 
 
On Public Opinion. 311 
 
 in the public mind of being left in the lurch, and the rabble 
 (whether in the ranks of literature or war) will throw away 
 their arms, and surrender at discretion to any bully or 
 impostor who, for a consideration, shall choose to try the 
 experiment upon them ! 
 
 What I have here described is the effect even upon 
 the candid and well-disposed : what must it be to the 
 malicious and idle, who are eager to believe all the ill they 
 can hear of every one ; or to the prejudiced and interested, 
 who are determined to credit all the ill they hear against 
 those who are not of their own side ? To these last it is 
 only requisite to be understood that the butt of ridicule or 
 slander is of an opposite party, and they presently give 
 you carte blanche to say what you please of him. Do they 
 know that it is true ? No ; but they believe what all the 
 world says, till they have evidence to the contrary. Do 
 you prove that it is false ? They dare say, that if not 
 that something worse remains behind ; and they retain 
 the same opinion as before, for the honour of their party. 
 They hire some one to pelt you with mud, and then affect 
 to avoid you in the street as a dirty fellow. They are told 
 that you have a hump on your back, and then wonder at 
 your assurance or want of complaisance in walking into a 
 room where they are, without it. Instead of apologising 
 for the mistake, and, from finding one aspersion false, 
 doubting all the rest, they are only the more confirmed in 
 the remainder from being deprived of one handle against 
 you, and resent their disappointment, instead of being 
 ashamed of their credulity. People talk of the bigotry of 
 the Catholics, and treat with contempt the absurd claim of 
 the Popes to infallibility — I think with little right to do 
 so. Walk into a church in Paris, you are struck with a 
 number of idle forms and ceremonies, the chanting of the 
 service in Latin, the shifting of the surplices, the sprink- 
 ling of holy water, the painted windows " casting a dim 
 religious light," the wax tapers, the pealing organ : the 
 
312 On Public Opinion. 
 
 common people seem attentive and devout, and to put 
 entire faith in all this — Why? Because they imagine 
 others to do so ; they see and hear certain signs and sup- 
 posed evidences of it, and it amuses and fills up the void 
 of the mind, the love of the mysterious and wonderful, to 
 lend their assent to it. They have assuredly, in general, 
 no better reason — all our Protestant divines will tell you 
 so. Well, step out of the church of St. Roche, and drop 
 into an English reading-room hard by : what are you the 
 better ? You see a dozen or score of your countrymen 
 with their faces fixed, and their eyes glued to a newspaper, 
 a magazine, a review — reading, swallowing, profoundly 
 ruminating on the lie, the cant, the sophism of the day ! 
 Why ? It saves them the trouble o{ thinking ; it gratifies 
 their ill-humour, and keeps off ennui ! Does a gleam of 
 doubt, an air of ridicule, or a glance of impatience pass 
 across their features at the shallow and monstrous things 
 they find ? No, it is all passive faith and dull security ; 
 they cannot take their eyes from the page, they cannot live 
 without it. They believe in their adopted oracle (you see 
 it in their faces) as implicitly as in Sir John Barleycorn, 
 as in a sirloin of beef, as in quarter-day — as they hope 
 to receive their rents, or to see Old England again ! Are 
 not the Popes, the Fathers, the Councils, as good as their 
 oracles and champions ? They know the paper before 
 them to be a hoax, but do they believe in the ribaldry, the 
 calumny, the less on that account ? They believe the 
 more in it, because it is got up solely and expressly to 
 serve a cause that needs such support — and they swear by 
 whatever is devoted to this object. 
 
 The greater the profligacy, the effrontery, the servility, 
 the greater the faith. Strange ! That the British public, 
 whether at home or abroad, should shake their heads 
 at the Lady of Loretto, and repose deliciously on Mr. 
 Theodore Hook. It may well be thought that the 
 enlightened part of the British public, persons of family 
 
On Public Opinion. 313 
 
 and fortunes, who have had a college education, and 
 received the benefit of foreign travel, see through the 
 quackery, which they encourage for a political purpose, 
 without being themselves the dupes of it. This scarcely 
 mends the matter. Suppose an individual, of whom it has 
 been repeatedly asserted that he has warts on his nose, 
 were to enter the reading-room aforesaid, is there a single 
 red-faced country squire who would not be surprised at 
 not finding this story true, would not persuade himself fiye 
 minutes after that he could not have seen correctly, or that 
 some art had been used to conceal the defects, or would be 
 led to doubt, from this instance, the general candour and 
 veracity of his oracle ? He wxuld disbelieve his own senses 
 rather. Seeing is believing, it is said : lying is believing 
 I say. We do not even see with our own eyes, but must 
 " wink and shut our apprehension up," that we may be 
 able to agree to the report of others, as a piece of good 
 manners and a point of established etiquette. Besides, the 
 supposed deformity answered his wishes ; the abuse fed 
 fat the ancient grudge he owed some presumptuous scrib- 
 bler, for not agreeing in a number of points with his betters ; 
 it gave him a personal advantage over a man he did not 
 like — and who will give up what tends to strengthen his 
 aversion for another? To Tory prejudice, dire as it 
 is — to English imagination, morbid as it is, a nickname, 
 a ludicrous epithet, a malignant falsehood, when it has 
 been once propagated and taken to the bosom as a welcome 
 consolation, becomes a precious property, a vested right; 
 and people would as soon give up a sinecure, or a share in 
 a close borough, as this sort of plenary indulgence to 
 speak and think with contempt of those who would abolish 
 the one, or throw open the other. Party-spirit is the best 
 reason in the world for personal antipathy and vulgar 
 abuse. 
 
 " But, do you not think, Sir " (some dialectician may 
 ask), " that belief is involuntary, and that we judge in all 
 
314 On Public Opinion. 
 
 cases according to the precise degree of evidence and the 
 positive facts before us ? " x 
 
 No, Sir. 
 
 " You believe, then, in the doctrine of philosophical free- 
 will?" 
 
 Indeed, Sir, I do not. 
 
 " How then, Sir, am I to understand so unaccountable a 
 diversity of opinion from the most approved writers on the 
 philosophy of the human mind ? " 
 
 May I ask, my dear Sir, did you ever read Mr. Words- 
 worth's poem of Michael ? 
 
 " I cannot charge my memory with the fact." 
 
 Well, Sir, this Michael is an old shepherd, who has a 
 son who goes to sea, and who turns out a great reprobate, 
 by all the accounts received of him. Before he went, how- 
 ever, the father took the boy with him into a mountain-glen, 
 and made him lay the first stone of a sheep-fold, which 
 was to be a covenant and a remembrance between them if 
 anything ill happened. For years after, the old man used 
 to go and work at the sheep-fold — 
 
 " Anions: the rocks 
 He went, and still look'd up upon the sun, 
 And listen'd to the wind," 
 
 and sat by the half-finished work, expecting the lad's re- 
 turn, or hoping to hear some better tidings of him. Was 
 this hope founded on reason — or was it not owing to the 
 strength of affection, which in spite of everything could 
 not relinquish its hold of a favourite object, indeed the 
 only one that bound it to existence ? 
 
 Not being able to make my dialectician answer kindly 
 to interrogatories, I must get on without him. In 
 matters of absolute demonstration and speculative in- 
 differences, I grant, that belief is involuntary, and the 
 
 1 See a paper in the Literary Remains, 1836, i. 81 et. seq., where 
 this point is argued in greater detail. — Ed. 
 
On Public Opinion. 315 
 
 proof not to be resisted ; but then, in such matters, there 
 is no difference of opinion, or the difference is adjusted 
 amicably and rationally. Hobbes is of opinion, that if 
 their passions or interests could be implicated in the 
 question, men would deny stoutly that the three angles of 
 a right-angled triangle are equal to two right ones : and 
 the disputes in religion look something like it. I only 
 contend, however, that in all cases not of this peremptory 
 and determinate cast, and where disputes commonly arise, 
 inclination, habit, and example have a powerful share in 
 throwing in the casting-weight to our opinions ; and that 
 he who is only tolerably free from these, and not their 
 regular dupe or slave, is indeed " a man of ten thousand." 
 Take, for instance, the example of a Catholic clergyman 
 in a Popish country : it will generally be found that he 
 lives and dies in the faith in which he was brought up, as 
 the Protestant clergyman does in his — shall we say that 
 the necessity of gaining a livelihood, or the prospect of 
 preferment, that the early bias given to his mind by 
 education and study, the pride of victory, the shame of 
 defeat, the example and encouragement of all about him, 
 the respect and love of his flock, the flattering notice of 
 the great, have no effect in giving consistency to his 
 opinions and carrying them through to the last? Yet, 
 who will suppose that in either case this apparent uni- 
 formity is mere hypocrisy, or that the intellects of the 
 two classes of divines are naturally adapted to the 
 arguments in favour of the two religions they have 
 occasion to profess ? No ; but the understanding takes 
 a tincture from outward impulses and circumstances, and 
 is led to dwell on those suggestions which favour, and to 
 blind itself to the objections which impugn, the side to 
 which it previously and morally inclines. Again, even 
 in those who oppose established opinions, and form the 
 little, firm, formidable phalanx of dissent, have not early 
 instruction, spiritual pride, the love of contradiction, a 
 
316 On Public Opinion. 
 
 resistance to usurped authority, as much to do with 
 keeping up the war of sects and schisms as the abstract 
 loye of truth or conviction of the understanding ? Does 
 not persecution fan the flame in such fiery tempers, and 
 does it not expire, or grow lukewarm, with indulgence 
 and neglect? I have a sneaking kindness for a Popish 
 priest in this country ; and to a Catholic peer I would 
 willingly bow in passing. "What are national antipathies, 
 individual attachments, but so many expressions of the 
 moral principle in forming our opinions? All our 
 opinions become grounds on which we act, and build our 
 expectations of good or ill ; and this good or ill mixed up 
 with them is soon changed into the ruling principle which 
 modifies or violently supersedes the original cool deter- 
 mination of the reason and senses. The will, when it 
 once gets a footing, turns the sober judgment out of doors. 
 If we form an attachment to any one, are we not slow in 
 giving it up ? Or, if our suspicions are once excited, are 
 we not equally rash and violent in beKeving the worst ? 
 Othello characterises himself as one 
 
 u That loved not wisely, but too well ; 
 
 Of one not easily jealous — but, being wrought, 
 Perplex' d in the extreme." 1 
 
 And this answers to the movements and irregularities of 
 passion and opinion which take place in human nature. 
 If we wish a thing we are disposed to believe it : if we 
 have been accustomed to believe it, we are the more 
 obstinate in defending it on that account : if all the world 
 differ from us in any question of moment, we are ashamed 
 to own it ; or are hurried by peevishness and irritation 
 into extravagance and paradox. The weight of example 
 presses upon us (whether we feel it or not) like the law of 
 gravitation. He who sustains his opinion by the strength 
 of conviction and evidence alone, unmoved by ridicule, 
 neglect, obloquy, or privation, shows no less resolution 
 1 Othello, v. 2 [edit. 1868, vii. 469]. 
 

 On Public Opinion. 317 
 
 tlian the Hindoo who makes and keeps a vow to hold his 
 right arm in the air till it grows rigid and callous. 
 
 To have all the world against us is trying to a man's 
 temper and philosophy. It unhinges even our opinion of 
 our own motives and intentions. It is like striking the 
 actual world from under our feet : the void that is left, 
 the death-like pause, the chilling suspense, is fearful. 
 The growth of an opinion is like the growth of a limb ; 
 it receives its actual support and nourishment from the 
 general body of the opinions, feelings, and practice of the 
 world ; without that, it soon withers, festers, and becomes 
 useless. To what purpose write a good book, if it is sure 
 to be pronounced a bad one, even before it is read ? If 
 our thoughts are to be blown stifling back upon ourselves, 
 why utter them at all ? It is only exposing what we love 
 most to contumely and insult, and thus depriving ourselves 
 of our own relish and satisfaction in them. Language is 
 only made to communicate our sentiments, and if we can 
 find no one to receive them, we are reduced to the silence 
 of dumbness, we live but in the solitude of a dungeon. 
 If we do not vindicate our opinions, we seem poor creatures 
 who have no right to them; if we speak out, we are 
 involved in continual brawls and controversy. If we 
 contemn what others admire, we make ourselves odious; 
 if we admire what they despise, we are equally ridiculous. 
 We have not the applause of the world nor the support of 
 a party ; we can neither enjoy the freedom of social 
 intercourse, nor the calm of privacy. With our respect 
 for others, we lose confidence in ourselves : everything 
 seems to be a subject of litigation — to want proof or 
 confirmation ; we doubt, by degrees, whether we stand on 
 our head or our heels — whether we know our right hand 
 from our left. If I am assured that I never wrote a 
 sentence of common English in my life, how can I know 
 that this is not the case ? If I am told at one time that 
 my writings are as heavy as lead, and at another, that 
 
318 On Public Opinion. 
 
 they are more light and flimsy than the gossamer — what 
 resource have I but to choose between the two ? I could 
 say, if this were the place, what those writings are. — 
 u Make it the place, and never stand upon punctilio !" 
 
 They are not, then, so properly the works of an author 
 by profession, as the thoughts of a metaphysician ex- 
 pressed by a painter. They are subtle and difficult 
 problems translated into hieroglyphics. I thought for 
 several years on the hardest subjects, on Fate, Free Will, 
 Foreknowledge absolute, without ever making use of words 
 or images at all, and that has made them come in such 
 throngs and confused heaps when I burst from that void 
 of abstraction. In proportion to the tenuity to which my 
 ideas had been drawn, and my abstinence from ornament 
 and sensible objects, was the tenaciousness with which 
 actual circumstances and picturesque imagery laid hold of 
 my mind, when I turned my attention to them, or had to 
 look round for illustrations. Till I began to paint, or 
 till I became acquainted with the author of The Ancient 
 Mariner, I could neither write nor speak. He encouraged 
 me to write a book, which I did according to the original 
 bent of my mind, making it as dry and meagre as I 
 could, so that it fell still-born from the press, and none 
 of those who abuse me for a shallow catch-penny writer 
 have so much as heard of it. Yet, let me say, that work 
 contains an important metaphysical discovery, supported 
 by a continuous and severe train of reasoning, nearly as 
 subtle and original as anything in Hume or Berkeley. I 
 am not accustomed to speak of myself in this manner, 
 but impudence may provoke modesty to justify itself. 
 Finding this method did not answer, I desj)aired for a 
 time; but some trifle I wrote in the Morning Chronicle 1 
 meeting the approbation of the editor 2 and the town, I 
 
 1 Probably the Illustrations of Vetus in 1813, written in answer 
 to the Times. They are reprinted in Political Essays, 1819. — Ed. 
 
 2 Mr. James Perry. — Ed. 
 
 
On Public Opinion. 319 
 
 resolved to turn over a new leaf — to take the public at its 
 word, to muster all the tropes and figures I could lay 
 hands on, and, though I am a plain man, never to appear 
 abroad but in an embroidered dress. Still, old habits will 
 prevail; and I hardly ever set about a paragraph or a 
 criticism, but there was an undercurrent of thought, or 
 some generic distinction on which the whole turned. 
 Having got my clue, I had no difficulty in stringing pearls 
 upon it ; and the more recondite the point, the more I 
 laboured to bring it out and set it off by a variety of 
 ornaments and allusions. This puzzled the scribes whose 
 business it was to crush me. They could not see the 
 meaning : they would not see the colouring, for it hurt 
 their eyes. One cried out, it was dull ; another, that it 
 was too fine by half : my friends took up this last alter- 
 native as the most favourable ; and since then it has been 
 agreed that I am a florid writer, somewhat flighty and 
 paradoxical. Yet, when I wished to unburthen my mind 
 in the Edinburgh by an article on English metaphysics, 
 the editor, who echoes this florid charge, said he preferred 
 what I wrote for effect, and was afraid of its being thought 
 heavy ! I have accounted for the flowers ; the paradoxes 
 may be accounted for in the same way. All abstract 
 reasoning is in extremes, or only takes up one view of 
 a question, or what is called the principle of the thing ; 
 and if you want to give this popularity and effect, you are 
 in danger of running into extravagance and hyperbole. I 
 have had to bring out some obscure distinction, or to 
 combat some strong prejudice, and in doing this with all 
 my might, may have often overshot the mark. It was 
 easy to correct the excess of truth afterwards. I have 
 been accused of inconsistency, for writing an essay, for 
 instance, on the Advantages of Pedantry, 1 and another on 
 the Ignorance of the Learned? as if ignorance had not its 
 
 1 The essay On Pedantry occurs in the Bound Table, 1817, i, 27.— Ed 
 
 2 Printed in Table Talk, 1821 [edit. 1870, p. 93 et seq].— Ed. 
 
320 On Personal Identity. 
 
 comforts as well as knowledge. The personalities I have 
 fallen into have never been gratuitous. If I have sacri- 
 ficed my friends, it has always been to a theory. I have 
 been found fault with for repeating myself, and for a 
 narrow range of ideas. To a want of general reading, I 
 plead guilty, and am sorry for it ; but perhaps if I had 
 read more, I might have thought less. As to my barren- 
 ness of invention, I have at least glanced over a number 
 of subjects — painting, poetry, prose, plays, politics, par- 
 liamentary speakers, metaphysical lore, books, men, and 
 things. There is some point, some fancy, some feeling, 
 some taste, shown in treating of these. Which of my 
 conclusions has been reversed? Is it what I said ten 
 years ago of the Bourbons which raised the war-whoop 
 against me ? Surely all the world are of that opinion 
 now. I have, then, given proofs of some talent, and of 
 more honesty : if there is haste or want of method, there 
 is no commonplace, nor a line that licks the dust ; and if 
 I do not appear to more advantage, I at least appear such 
 as I am. If the Editor of the Atlas will do me the favour 
 to look over my Essay on the Principles of Human Action, 
 will dip into any essay I ever wrote, and will take a 
 sponge and clear the dust from the face of my Old Woman, 
 I hope he will, upon second thoughts, acquit me of an 
 absolute dearth of resources and want of versatility in the 
 direction of my studies. 
 1828. 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 On Personal Identity. 
 " Ha ! here's three of us are sophisticated." — Lear. 
 
 " If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes ! " said 
 the Macedonian hero ; and the cynic might have retorted 
 the compliment upon the prince by saying, that, " were he 
 
On Personal Identity, 321 
 
 not Diogenes, he would be Alexander!" This is the 
 universal exception, the invariable reservation that our 
 self-love makes, the utmost point at which our admiration 
 or envy ever arrives — to wish, if we were not ourselves, to 
 be some other individual. No one ever wishes to be 
 another, instead of himself. "We may feel a desire to 
 change places with others — to have one man's fortune — 
 another's health or strength — his wit or learning, or 
 accomplishments of various kinds — 
 
 " Wishing to be like one more rick in hope, 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, 
 Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope ;" 
 
 but we would still be ourselves, to possess and enjoy all 
 these, or we would not give a doit for them. But, on this 
 supposition, what in truth should we be the better for 
 them ? It is not we, but another, that would reap the 
 benefit ; and what do we care about that other ? In that 
 case, the present owner might as well continue to enjoy 
 them. We should not be gainers by the change. If the 
 meanest beggar who crouches at a palace gate, and looks 
 up with awe and suppliant fear to the proud inmate as he 
 passes, could be put in possession of all the finery, the 
 pomp, the luxury, and wealth that he sees and envies, on 
 the sole condition of getting rid, together with his rags 
 and misery, of all recollection that there ever was such a 
 wretch as himself, he would reject the proffered boon 
 with scorn. He might be glad to change situations ; but 
 he would insist on keeping his own thoughts, to compare 
 notes, and point the transition by the force of contrast. 
 He would not, on any account, forego his self-congratu- 
 lation on the unexpected accession of good fortune, and 
 his escape from past suffering. All that excites his 
 cupidity, his envy, his repining or despair, is the alter- 
 native of some great good to himself; and if, in order to 
 attain that object, he is to part with his own existence to 
 
 Y 
 
322 On Personal Identity, 
 
 take that of another, he can feel no farther interest in it. 
 This is the language both of passion and reason. 
 
 Here lies "the rub that makes calamity of so long 
 life :" for it is not barely the apprehension of the ills that 
 "in that sleep of death may come," but also our ignorance 
 and indifference to the promised good, that produces our 
 repugnance and backwardness to quit the present scene. 
 No man, if he had his choice, would be the angel Gabriel 
 to-morrow! What is the angel Gabriel to him but a 
 splendid vision ? He might as well have an ambition to 
 be turned into a bright cloud, or a particular star. The 
 interpretation of which is, he can have no sympathy with 
 the angel Gabriel. Before he can be transformed into so 
 bright and ethereal an essence, he must necessarily " put 
 off this mortal coil " — be divested of all his old habits, 
 j>assions, thoughts, and feelings — to be endowed with 
 other attributes, lofty and beatific, of which he has no 
 notion; and, therefore, he would rather remain a little 
 longer in this mansion of clay, which, with all its flaws, 
 inconveniences, and perplexities, contains all that he has 
 any real knowledge of, or any affection for. When, 
 indeed, he is about to quit it in spite of himself, and has 
 no other chance left to escape the darkness of the tomb, he 
 may then have no objection (making a virtue of necessity) 
 to put on angel's wings, to have radiant locks, to wear a 
 wreath of amaranth, and thus to masquerade it in the 
 skies. 
 
 It is an instance of the truthful beauty of the ancient 
 mythology, that the various transmutations it recounts are 
 never voluntary, or of favourable omen, but are interposed 
 as a timely release to those who, driven on by fate, and 
 urged to the last extremity of fear or anguish, are turned 
 into a flower, a plant, an animal, a star, a precious stone, 
 or into some object that may inspire pity or mitigate our 
 regret for their misfortunes. Narcissus was transformed 
 into a flower; Daphne into a laurel; Arethusa into a 
 
On Personal Identity. 323 
 
 fountain (by the favour of the gods) — but not till no other 
 remedy was left for their despair. It is a sort of smiling 
 cheat upon death, and graceful compromise with annihi- 
 lation. It is better to exist by proxy, in some softened 
 type and soothing allegory, than not at all — to breathe in 
 a flower or shine in a constellation, than to be utterly 
 forgot ; but no one would change his natural condition (if 
 he could help it) for that of a bird, an insect, a beast, or 
 a fish, however delightful their mode of existence, or 
 however enviable he might deem their lot compared to his 
 own. Their thoughts are not our thoughts — their happi- 
 ness is not our happiness ; nor can we enter into it, except 
 with a passing smile of approbation, or as a refinement of 
 fancy. As the poet sings : 
 
 <; What more felicity can fall to creature 
 
 Than to enjoy delight with liberty, 
 And to be lord of all the works of nature ? 
 
 To reign in the air from earth to highest sky ; 
 To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature ; 
 
 To taste whatever thing doth please the eye ? — 
 Who rests not pleased with such happiness, 
 Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness !" 
 
 This is gorgeous description and fine declamation : yet 
 who would be found to act upon it, even in the forming of 
 a wish ; or would not rather be the thrall of wretchedness, 
 than launch out (by the aid of some magic spell) into all 
 the delights of such a butterfly state of existence? The 
 French (if any people can) may be said to enjoy this airy, 
 heedless gaiety and unalloyed exuberance of satisfaction : 
 yet what Englishman would deliberately change with 
 them ? We would sooner be miserable after our own 
 fashion than happy after theirs. It is not happiness, 
 then, in the abstract, which we seek, that can be addressed 
 
 as 
 
 " That something still that prompts th' eternal sigh, 
 For which we wish, to live or dare to die," 
 
 but a happiness suited to our tastes and faculties — that 
 
324 On Personal Identity. 
 
 • 
 
 has become a part of ourselves, by habit and enjoyment — ■ 
 that is endeared to us by a thousand recollections, priva- 
 tions, and sufferings. No one, then, would willingly 
 change his country or his kind for the most plausible 
 pretences held out to him. The most humiliating punish- 
 ment inflicted in ancient fable is the change of sex : not 
 that it was any degradation in itself — but that it must 
 occasion a total derangement of the moral economy and 
 confusion of the sense of personal propriety. The thing 
 is said to have happened au sens contraire, in our time. 
 The story is to be met with in " very choice Italian ; " and 
 
 Lord D tells it in very plain English ! 
 
 We may often find ourselves envying the possessions of 
 others, and sometimes inadvertently indulging a wish to 
 change places with them altogether; but our self-love 
 soon discover some excuse to be off the bargain we were 
 ready to strike, and retracts "vows made in haste, as 
 violent and void." We might make up our minds to the 
 alteration in every other particular ; but, when it comes 
 to the point, there is sure to be some trait or feature of 
 character in the object of our admiration to which we 
 cannot reconcile ourselves — some favourite quality or 
 darling foible of our own. with which we can by no means 
 resolve to part. The more enviable the situation of 
 another, the more entirely to our taste, the more reluctant 
 we are to leave any part of ourselves behind that would 
 be so fully capable of appreciating all the exquisiteness of 
 its new situation, or not to enter into the possession of 
 such an imaginary reversion of good fortune with all our 
 previous inclinations and sentiments. The outward cir- 
 cumstances were fine : they only wanted a soul to enjoy 
 them, and that soul is ours (as the costly ring wants the 
 peerless jewel to perfect and set it off). The humble 
 prayer and petition to sneak into visionary felicity by 
 personal adoption, or the surrender of our own personal 
 pretentions, always ends in a daring project of usurpation, 
 
On Personal Identity. 325 
 
 and a determination to expel the actual proprietor, and 
 supply his place so much more worthily with our own 
 identity — not bating a single jot of it. Thus, in passing 
 through a fine collection of pictures, who has not envied 
 the privilege of visiting it every day, and wished to be the 
 owner ? But the rising sigh is soon checked, and " the 
 native hue of emulation is sicklied o'er with the pale cast 
 of thought," when we come to ask ourselves, not merely 
 whether the owner has any taste at all for these splendid 
 works, and does not look upon them as so much expensive 
 furniture, like his chairs and tables — but whether he has 
 the same precise (and only true) taste that we have — 
 whether he has the very same favourites that we have — 
 whether he may not be so blind as to prefer a Vandyke to 
 a Titian, a Euysdael to a Claude ; nay, whether he may 
 not have other pursuits and avocations that draw off his 
 attention from the sole objects of our idolatry, and which 
 seem to us mere impertinences and waste of time? In 
 that case, we at once lose all patience, and exclaim 
 indignantly, " Give us back our taste, and keep your 
 pictures!" It is not we who should envy them the 
 possession of the treasure, but they who should envy us 
 the true and exclusive enjoyment of it. A similar train 
 of feeling seems to have dictated Warton's spirited Sonnet 
 on visiting Wilton House : 
 
 " From Pembroke's princely dome, where mimic art 
 Decks with a magic hand the dazzling bowers, 
 Its living hues where the warm pencil ponrs, 
 And breathing forms from the rude marble start, 
 How to life's humbler scene can I depart ? 
 My breast all glowing from those gorgeous towers, 
 In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours ? 
 Vain the complaint ! For fancy can impart 
 (To fate superior and to fortune's power) 
 Whate'er adorns the stately storied-hall : 
 She, mid the dungeon's solitary gloom, 
 Can dress the Graces in their attic -pall-, 
 
326 On Personal Identity. 
 
 Bid the green landscape's vernal beauty bloom ; 
 And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall.' 
 
 One sometimes passes by a gentleman's park, an old 
 family-seat, with its moss-grown, ruinous paling, its 
 " glades mild-opening to the genial day," or embrowned 
 with forest-trees. Here one would be glad to spend one's 
 life, " shut up in measureless content," and to grow old 
 beneath ancestral oaks, instead of gaining a precarious, 
 irksome, and despised livelihood, by indulging romantic 
 sentiments, and writing disjointed descriptions of them. 
 The thought has scarcely risen to the lips, when we learn 
 that the owner of so blissful a seclusion is a thorough- 
 bred fox-hunter, a preserver of the game, a brawling 
 electioneerer, a Tory member of parliament, a "No- 
 Popery" man! — "I'd sooner be a dog, and bay the moon!" 
 Who would be Sir Thomas Lethbridge for his title and 
 estate? asks one man. But would not almost any one 
 wish to be Sir Francis Burdett, the man of the people, 
 the idol of the electors of Westminster ? says another. I 
 can only answer for myself. Eespectable and honest as 
 he is, there is something in his white boots, and white 
 breeches, and white coat, and white hair, and white hat, 
 and red face, that I cannot, by any effort of candour, 
 
 confound my personal identity with! If Mr. can 
 
 prevail on Sir Francis to exchange, let him do so by all 
 means. Perhaps they might contrive to club a soul 
 between them ! Could I have had my will, I should have 
 been born a lord : but one would not be a booby lord 
 neither. I am haunted by an odd fancy of driving down 
 the Great North Eoad in a chaise and four, about fifty 
 years ago, and coming to the inn at Ferry-bridge with 
 outriders, white favours, and a coronet on the panels ; 
 and then, too, I choose my companion in the coach. 
 Really there is a witchcraft in all this that makes it 
 necessary to turn away from it, lest, in the conflict 
 between imagination and impossibility, I should grow 
 
 
On Personal Identity. 327 
 
 feverish and light-headed! But, on the other hand, if 
 one was a born lord, should one have the same idea (that 
 every one else has) of a peeress in her own right ? Is not 
 distance, giddy elevation, mysterious awe, an impassable 
 gulf, necessary to form this idea in the mind, that fine 
 ligament of "ethereal braid, sky- woven," that lets down 
 heaven upon earth, fair as enchantment, soft as Berenice's 
 hair, bright and garlanded like Ariadne's crown ; and is 
 it not better to have had this idea all through life — to 
 have caught but glimpses of it, to have known it but in a 
 dream — than to have been born a lord ten times over, 
 with twenty pampered menials at one's beck, and twenty 
 descents to boast of ? It is the envy of certain privileges, 
 the sharp privations we have undergone, the cutting 
 neglect we have met with from the want of birth or title, 
 that gives its zest to the distinction : the thing itself may 
 be indifferent or contemptible enough. It is the becoming 
 a lord that is to be desired ; but he who becomes a lord in 
 reality may be an upstart — a mere pretender, without the 
 sterling essence ; so that all that is of any worth in this 
 supposed transition is purely imaginary and impossible. 1 
 Kings are so accustomed to look down on all the rest of 
 the world, that they consider the condition of mortality 
 as vile and intolerable, if stripped of royal state, and cry 
 out in the bitterness of their despair, " Give me a crown, 
 or a tomb !" It should seem from this as if all mankind 
 would change with the first crowned head that could 
 propose the alternative, or that it would be only the 
 presumption of the supposition, or a sense of their own 
 un worthiness, that would deter them. Perhaps there is 
 
 1 When Lord Byron was cut by the great, on account of his 
 quarrel with his wife, he stood leaning on a marble slab at the 
 entrance of a room, while troops of duchesses and countesses passed 
 out. One little, pert, red-haired girl staid a few paces behind the 
 rest ; and, as she passed him, said with a nod, " Aye, you should 
 have married me, and then all this wouldn't have happened to 
 you !" 
 
328 On Personal Identity. 
 
 not a single throne that, if it was to be filled by this sort 
 of voluntary metempsychosis, would not remain empty. 
 Many would, no doubt, be glad to " monarchise, be feared, 
 and kill with looks" in their own persons and after their 
 own fashion : but who would be the double of those 
 shadows of a shade— those " tenth transmitters of a foolish 
 face" — Charles X. and Ferdinand VII.? If monarchs 
 have little sympathy with mankind, mankind have even 
 less with monarchs. They are merely to us a sort of 
 state-puppets, or royal wax-work, which we may gaze at 
 with superstitious wonder, but have no wish to become ; 
 and he who should meditate such a change must not only 
 feel by anticipation an utter contempt for the slough of 
 humanity which he is prepared to cast, but must feel an 
 absolute void and want of attraction in those lofty and 
 incomprehensible sentiments which are to supply its 
 place. With respect to actual royalty, the spell is in 
 a great measure broken. But, among ancient monarchs, 
 there is no one, I think, who envies Darius or Xerxes. 
 One has a different feeling with respect to Alexander or 
 Pyrrhus ; but this is because they were great men as well 
 as great kings, and the soul is up in arms at the mention 
 of their names as at the sound of a trumpet. But as to 
 all the rest — those " in the catalogue who go for kings" — 
 the praying, eating, drinking, dressing monarchs of the 
 earth, in time past or present — one would as soon think of 
 wishing to personate the Golden Calf, or to turn out with 
 Nebuchadnezzar to graze, as to be transformed into one of 
 that " swinish multitude." There is no point of affinity. 
 The extrinsic circumstances are imposing ; but, within, 
 there is nothing but morbid humours and proud flesh I 
 Some persons might vote for Charlemagne ; and there are 
 others who would have no objection to be the modern 
 Charlemagne, with all he inflicted and suffered, even after 
 the necromantic field of Waterloo, and the bloody wreath 
 on the vacant brow of the conqueror, and that fell jailer, 
 
On Personal Identity. 329 
 
 set over him by a craven foe, that " glared round his soul, 
 and mocked his closing eyelids ! " 
 
 It has been remarked, that could we at pleasure change 
 our situation in life, more persons would be found anxious 
 to descend than to ascend in the scale of society. One 
 reason may be, that we have it more in our power to 
 do so; and this encourages the thought, and makes it 
 familiar to us. A second is, that we naturally wish to 
 throw off the cares of state, of fortune or business, that 
 oppress us, and to seek repose before we find it in the 
 grave. A third reason is, that, as we descend to common 
 life, the pleasures are simple, natural, such as all can 
 enter into, and therefore excite a general interest, and 
 combine all suffrages. Of the different occupations of 
 life, none is beheld with a more pleasing emotion, or less 
 aversion to a change for our own, than that of a shepherd 
 tending his flock : the pastoral ages have been the envy 
 and the theme of all succeeding ones ; and a beggar with 
 his crutch is more closely allied than the monarch and 
 his crown to the associations of mirth and heart' s-ease. 
 On the other hand, it must be admitted that our pride is 
 too apt to prefer grandeur to happiness ; and that our 
 passions make us envy great vices oftener than great 
 virtues. 
 
 The world show their sense in nothing more than in a 
 distrust and aversion to those changes of situation which 
 only tend to make the successful candidates ridiculous, 
 and which do not carry along with them a mind adequate 
 to the circumstances. The common people, in this 
 respect, are more shrewd and judicious than their supe- 
 riors, from feeling their own awkwardness and incapacity, 
 and often decline, with an instinctive modesty, the 
 troublesome honours intended for them. They do not 
 overlook their original defects so readily as others over- 
 look their acquired advantages. It is not wonderful, there- 
 fore, that opera-singers and dancers refuse or only con- 
 
330 On Personal Identity. 
 
 descend as it were, to accept lords, though the latter are 
 to often fascinated by them. The fair performer knows 
 (better than her unsuspecting admirer) how little con- 
 nection there is between the dazzling figure she makes on 
 the stage and that which she may make in private life, 
 and is in no hurry to convert " the drawing-room into a 
 Green-room." The nobleman (supposing him not to be 
 very wise) is astonished at the miraculous powers of art in 
 
 " The fair, the chaste, the inexpressive she ;" 
 
 and thinks such a paragon must easily conform to the 
 routine of manners and society which every trifling woman 
 of quality of his acquaintance, from sixteen to sixty, goes 
 through without effort. This is a hasty or a wilful con- 
 clusion. Things of habit only come by habit, and inspira- 
 tion here avails nothing. A man of fortune who marries 
 an actress for her fine performance of tragedy, has been 
 well compared to the person who bought Punch. The 
 lady is not unfrequently aware of the inconsequentiality, 
 and unwilling to be put on the shelf, and hid in the 
 nursery of some musty country mansion. Servant girls, 
 of any sense and spirit, treat their masters (who make 
 serious love to them) with suitable contempt. What is it 
 but a proposal to drag an unmeaning trollop at his heels 
 through life, to her own annoyance and the ridicule of all 
 his friends? No woman, I suspect, ever forgave a man 
 who raised her from a low condition in life (it is a per- 
 petual obligation and reproach) ; though I believe, men 
 often feel the most disinterested regard for women under 
 such circumstances. Sancho Panza discovered no less 
 folly in his eagerness to enter upon his new government, 
 than wisdom in quitting it as fast as possible. Why will 
 Mr. Cobbett persist in getting into Parliament? He 
 would find himself no longer the same man. What 
 member of Parliament, I should like to know, could write 
 his Begister ? As a popular partisan, he may (for aught 
 
On Personal Identity. 331 
 
 I can say) be a match for the whole Honourable House ; 
 but, by obtaining a seat in St. Stephen's Chapel, he would 
 only be equal to a 576th part of it. It was surely a 
 puerile ambition in Mr. Addington to succeed Mr. Pitt as 
 prime minister. The situation was only a foil to his 
 imbecility. Gipsies have a fine faculty of evasion ; catch 
 them who can in the same place or story twice! Take 
 them ; teach them the comforts of civilisation ; confine 
 them in warm rooms, with thick carpets and down beds ; 
 and they will fly out of the window — like the bird, 
 described by Chaucer, out of its golden cage. I maintain 
 that there is no common language or medium of under- 
 standing between people of education and without it — 
 between those who judge of things from books or from 
 their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over 
 learning ; for it can make an appeal to you from what you 
 know ; but you cannot react upon it through that which 
 it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power. 
 This is what foiled Buonaparte in Spain and Eussia. 
 The people can only be gained over by informing them, 
 though they may be enslaved by fraud or force. " What 
 is it, then, he does like ? " — " Good victuals and drink ! " 
 As if you had these not too ; but because he has them not, 
 he thinks of nothing else, and laughs at you and your 
 refinements, supposing you live upon air. To those who 
 are deprived of every other advantage, even nature is a 
 book sealed, I have made this capital mistake all my life, 
 in imagining that those objects which lay open to all, and 
 excised an interest merely from the idea of them, spoke a 
 common language to all ; and that nature was a kind of 
 universal home, where all ages, sexes, classes meet. Not 
 so. The vital air, the sky, the woods, the streams — all 
 these go for nothing, except with a favoured few. The 
 poor are taken up with their bodily wants — the rich, with 
 external acquisitions : the one, with the sense of property 
 — the other, of its privation. Both have the same distaste 
 
332 On Personal Identity. 
 
 for sentiment. The genteel are the slaves of appearances 
 — the vulgar, of necessity ; and neither has the smallest 
 regard to worth, refinement, generosity. All savages are 
 irreclaimable. I can understand the Irish character 
 better than the Scotch. I hate the formal crust of cir- 
 cumstances and the mechanism of society. I have been 
 recommended, indeed, to settle down into some respectable 
 profession for life : 
 
 44 Ah ! why so soon the blossom tear ?" 
 
 I am " in no haste to be venerable ! " 
 
 In thinking of those one might wish to have been, many 
 people will exclaim, " Surely, you would like to have 
 been Shakspeare ? " Would Garrick have consented to 
 the change ? No, nor should he ; for the applause which 
 he received, and on which he lived, was more adapted to 
 his genius and taste. If Garrick had agreed to be Shak- 
 speare, he would have made it a previous condition that 
 he was to be a better player. He would have insisted 
 on taking some higher part than Polonius or the Grave- 
 digger. Ben Jonson and his companions at the Mermaid 
 would not have known their old friend Will in his new 
 disguise. The modern Koscius would have scouted the 
 halting player. He would have shrunk from the parts of 
 the inspired poet. If others are unlike us, we feel it as a 
 presumption and an impertinence to usurp their place ; if 
 they are like us, it seems a work of supererogation. We 
 are not to be cozened out of our existence for nothing. It 
 has been ingeniously urged, as an objection to having 
 been Milton, that " then we should not have had the 
 pleasure of reading Paradise Lost." Perhaps I should 
 incline to draw lots with Pope, but that he was deformed, 
 and did not sufficiently relish Milton and Shakspeare. 
 As it is, we can enjoy his verses and theirs too. Why, 
 having these, need we ever be dissatisfied with ourselves ? 
 Goldsmith is a person whom I considerably affect not with- 
 
 l 
 
On Personal Identity. 333 
 
 standing his blunders and his misfortunes. The author 
 of the Vicar of Wakefield, and of Retaliation, is one whose 
 temper must have had something eminently amiable, 
 delightful, gay, and happy in it. T 
 
 " A certain tender bloom his fame o'erspreads." 
 
 But then I could never make up my mind to his preferring 
 Kowe and Dryden to the worthies of the Elizabethan age ; 
 nor could I, in like manner, forgive Sir Joshua — whom I 
 number among those whose existence was marked with a 
 white stone, and on whose tomb might be inscribed " Thrice 
 Fortunate ! " — his treating Nicholas Poussin with contempt. 
 Differences in matters of taste and opinion are points of 
 honour—" stuff o' the conscience " — stumbling-blocks not 
 to be got over. Others, we easily grant, may have more 
 wit, learning, imagination, riches, strength, beauty, which 
 we should be glad to borrow of them ; but that they have 
 sounder or better views of things, or that we should act 
 wisely in changing in this respect, is what we can by no 
 means persuade ourselves. We may not be the lucky 
 possessors of what is best or most desirable; but our 
 notion of what is best and most desirable we will give up 
 to no man by choice or compulsion ; and unless others 
 (the greatest wits or brightest geniuses) can come into our 
 way of thinking, we must humbly beg leave to remain as 
 we are. A Calvinistic preacher would not relinquish 
 a single point of faith to be the Pope of Eome ; nor 
 would a strict Unitarian acknowledge the mystery of 
 the Holy Trinity to have painted Eaphael's Assembly 
 of the Just. In the range of ideal excellence, we are 
 distracted by variety and repelled by differences : the 
 imagination is fickle and fastidious, and requires a 
 combination of all possible qualifications, which never 
 met. Habit alone is blind and tenacious of the most 
 homely advantages ; and after running the tempting 
 round of nature, fame and fortune we wrap ourselves 
 
334 On Personal Identity. 
 
 up in our familiar recollections and huinble pretensions — 
 as the lark, after long fluttering on sunny wing, sinks into 
 its lowly bed ! 
 
 We can have no very importunate craving, nor very great 
 confidence, in wishing to change characters, except with 
 those wrivh whom we are intimately acquainted by their 
 works ; and having these by us (which is all we know or 
 covet in them), what would we have more? We can 
 have no more of a cat than her shin ; nor of an author than 
 his brains. By becoming Shakspeare in reality we cut 
 ourselves out of reading Milton, Pope, Dryden, and a 
 thousand more — all of whom we have in our possession, 
 enjoy, and are, by turns, in the best part of them, their 
 thoughts, without any metamorphosis or miracle at all. 
 What a microcosm is ours! What a Proteus is the 
 human mind ! All that we know, think of, or can admire, 
 in a manner becomes ourselves. We are not (the meanest 
 of us) a volume, but a whole library ! In this calculation 
 of problematical contingencies, the lapse of time makes no 
 difference. One would as soon have been Eaphael as any 
 modern artist. Twenty, thirty, or forty years of elegant 
 enjoyment and lofty feeling were as great a luxury in the 
 fifteenth as in the nineteenth century. But Eaphael did 
 not live to see Claude, nor Titian Bembrandt. Those 
 who found arts and sciences are not witnesses of their 
 accumulated results and benefits ; nor, in general, do they 
 reap the meed of praise which is their due. We who come 
 after in some " laggard age," have more enjoyment of their 
 fame than they had. Who would have missed the sight 
 of the Louvre in all its glory to have been one of those 
 whose works enriched it ? Would it not have been giving 
 a certain good for an uncertain advantage ? No : I am as 
 sure (if it is not presumption to say so) of what passed 
 through Baphael's mind as of what passes through my 
 own ; and I know the difference between seeing (though 
 even that is a rare privilege) and producing such per- 
 

 Mind and Motive. 335 
 
 fection. At one time I was so devoted to Kenibranclt, 
 that I think if the Prince of Darkness had made me the 
 offer in some rash mood, I should have been tempted to 
 close with it, and should have become (in happy hour, 
 and in downright earnest) the great master of light and 
 shade ! 
 
 I have run myself out of my materials for this Essay, 
 and want a well-turned sentence or two to conclude with ; 
 like Benvenuto Cellini, who complains that, with all the 
 brass, tin, iron, and lead he could muster in the house, 
 his statue of Perseus was left imperfect, with a dent in 
 the heel of it. Once more, then — I believe there is one 
 character that all the world would like to change with — 
 which is that of a favoured rival. Even hatred gives way 
 to envy. We would be anything — a toad in a dungeon — 
 to live upon her smile, which is our all of earthly hope 
 and happiness ; nor can we, in our infatuation, conceive 
 that there is any 'difference of feeling on the subject, or 
 that the pressure of her hand is not in itself divine, 
 making those to whom such bliss is deigned like the 
 Immortal Gods! 
 
 1828. 
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 
 Mind and Motive. 
 
 " The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn." 
 
 "Anthony Codrus Urceus, a most learned aud unfor- 
 tunate Italian, born 1446, was a striking instance " (says 
 his biographer) " of the miseries men bring upon them- 
 selves by setting their affections unreasonably on trifles. 
 This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in 
 the palace. His room was so very dark, that he was 
 forced to use a candle in the day time; and one day, 
 going abroad without putting it out, his library was set on 
 
336 Mind and Motive. 
 
 fire, and some papers which he had prepared for the press 
 were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill 
 news, he was affected even to madness. He ran furiously 
 to the palace, and, stopping at the door of his apartment, 
 he cried aloud, ' Christ Jesus ! what mighty crime have I 
 committed ? whom of your followers have I ever injured, 
 that you thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?' 
 Then turning himself to an image of the Virgin Mary 
 near at hand, ' Virgin' (says he) c hear what I have to say, 
 for I speak in earnest, and with a composed spirit. If I 
 shall happen to address you in my dying moments, I 
 humbly entreat you not to hear me, nor receive me into 
 heaven, for I am determined to spend all eternity in hell.' 
 Those who heard these blasphemous expressions endea- 
 voured to comfort him, but all to no purpose; for the 
 society of mankind being no longer supportable to him, 
 he left the city, and retired, like a savage, to the deep 
 solitude of a wood. Some say that he was murdered 
 there by ruffians ; others that he died at Bologna, in 1500, 
 after much contrition and penitence." 
 
 Almost every one may here read the history of his own 
 life. There is scarcely a moment in which we are not in 
 some degree guilty of the same kind of absurdity, which 
 was here carried to such. a singular excess. We waste our 
 regrets on what cannot be recalled, or fix our desires on 
 what we know cannot be attained. Every hour is the 
 slave of the last ; and we are seldom* masters either of 
 our thoughts or of our actions. We are the creatures of 
 imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or 
 self-interest. Eousseau, in his Emilius, proposed to 
 educate a perfectly reasonable man, who was to have 
 passions and affections like other men, but with an ab- 
 solute control over them. He was to love and to be wise. 
 This is a contradiction in terms. Even in the common 
 transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed 
 by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of 
 

 
 Mind and Motive. 337 
 
 a tea-cup puts us out of temper for the day ; and a quarrel 
 that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only 
 with our lives. 
 
 " Friends now fast sworn, 
 Ona dissension of a doit, break out 
 To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes, 
 Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep. 
 To take the one the other, by some chance, 
 Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends, 
 And interjoin their issues." 
 
 We are little better than humoured children to the last, 
 and play a mischievous game at cross purposes with our 
 own happiness and that of others. 
 
 We have given the above story as a striking contradic- 
 tion to the prevailing doctrine of modern systems of 
 morals and metaphysics, that man is purely a sensual and 
 selfish animal, governed solely by a regard either to his 
 immediate gratification or future interest. This doctrine 
 we mean to oppose with all our might, whenever we meet 
 with it. We are, however, less disposed to quarrel with 
 it, as it is opposed to reason and philosophy, than as it 
 interferes with common sense and observation. If the 
 absurdity in question had been confined to the schools, 
 we should not have gone out of our way to meddle with 
 it : but it has gone abroad in the world, has crept into 
 ladies' boudoirs, is entered in the commonplace book of 
 beaux, is in the mouth of the learned and ignorant, and 
 forms a part of popular opinion. It is perpetually applied 
 as a false measure to the characters and conduct of men 
 in the common affairs of the world, and it is therefore our 
 business to rectify it, if we can. In fact, whoever sets out 
 on the idea of reducing all our motives and actions to a 
 simple principle, must either take a very narrow and 
 superficial view of human nature, or make a very perverse 
 use of his understanding in reasoning on what he sees. 
 The frame of our minds, like that of his body, is exceed- 
 
 z 
 
338 Mind and Motive. 
 
 ingly complicated. Besides mere sensibility to pleasure 
 and pain, there are other original independent principles, 
 necessarily interwoven with the nature of man as an active 
 and intelligent being, and which, blended together in 
 different proportions, give their form and colour to our 
 lives. Without some other essential faculties, such as 
 will, imagination, &c, to give effect and direction to our 
 physical sensibility, this faculty could be of no possible 
 use or influence ; and with those other faculties joined to 
 it, this pretended instinct of self-love will be subject to be 
 everlastingly modified and controlled by those faculties, 
 both in what regards our own good and that of others ; 
 that is, must itself become in a great measure dependent 
 on the very instruments it uses. The two most predomi- 
 nant principles in the mind, besides sensibility and self- 
 interest, are imagination and self-will, or (in general) the 
 love of strong excitement, both in thought and action. To 
 these sources may be traced the various passions, pursuits, 
 habits, affections, follies and caprices, virtues and vices 
 of mankind. We shall confine ourselves, in the present 
 article, to give some account of the influence exercised by 
 the imagination over the feelings. To an intellectual 
 being, it cannot be altogether arbitrary what ideas it 
 shall have, whether pleasurable or painful. Our ideas 
 do not originate in our love of pleasure, and they cannot, 
 therefore, depend absolutely upon it. They have another 
 principle. If the imagination were " the servile slave " 
 of our self-love, if our ideas were emanations of our 
 sensitive nature, encouraged if agreeable, and excluded 
 the instant they became otherwise, or encroached on the 
 former principle, then there might be a tolerable pretence 
 for the epicurean philosophy which is here spoken of. 
 But for any such entire and mechanical subserviency of 
 the operations of the one principle to the dictates of the 
 other, there is not the slightest foundation in reality. 
 The attention which the mind gives to its ideas is not 
 
Mind and Motive. 339 
 
 always owing to the gratification derived from them, but 
 to the strength and truth of the impressions them- 
 selves, i. e., to their involuntary pow T er over the 
 mind. This observation will account for a very general 
 principle in the mind, which cannot, we conceive, be 
 satisfactorily explained in any other way, we mean tlie 
 power of fascination. Every one has heard the story 
 of the girl who, being left alone by her companions, in 
 order to frighten her, in a room with a dead body, 
 at first attempted to get out, and shrieked violently 
 for assistance, but finding herself shut in, ran and 
 embraced the corpse, and was found senseless in its arms. 
 
 It is said that in such cases there is a desperate effort 
 made to get rid of the dread by converting it into the 
 reality. There may be some truth in this account, but we 
 do not think it contains the whole truth. The event pro- 
 duced in the present instance does not bear out the con- 
 clusion. The progress of the passion does not seem to have 
 been that of diminishing or removing the terror by coming 
 in contact with the object, but of carrying this terror to its 
 height from an intense and irresistible impulse overcoming 
 every other feeling. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that few persons can stand 
 safely on the edge of a precipice, or walk along the par- 
 apet wail of a house, without being in danger of throw- 
 ing themselves down ; not, we presume, from a principle 
 of self-preservation ; but in consequence of a strong idea 
 having taken possession of the mind from which it cannot 
 well escape, which absorbs every other consideration, and 
 confounds and overrules all self-regards. The impulse 
 cannot in this case be resolved into a desire to remove the 
 uneasiness of fear, for the only danger arises from the 
 fear. We have been told by a person not at all given to 
 exaggeration, that he once felt a strong propensity to 
 throw himself into a cauldron of boiling lead, into which 
 he was looking. These are what Shakspeare calls " the 
 
340 Mind and Motive. 
 
 toys of desperation." People sometimes marry, and even 
 fall in love on this principle — that is, through mere appre- 
 hension, or what is called a fatality. In like manner, we 
 find instances of persons who are, as it were, naturally 
 delighted with whatever is disagreeable — who catch all 
 sorts of unbecoming tones and gestures — who always say 
 what they should not, and what they do not mean to say — 
 in whom intemperance of imagination and incontinence of 
 tongue are a disease, and who are governed by an almost 
 infallible instinct of absurdity. 
 
 The love of imitation has the same general source. We 
 dispute for ever about Hogarth, and the question can never 
 be decided according to the common ideas on the subject of 
 taste. His pictures appeal to the love of truth, not to the 
 sense of beauty : but the one is as much an essential 
 principle of our nature as the other. They fill up the 
 void of the mind ; they present an everlasting succession 
 and variety of ideas. There is a fine observation some- 
 where made by Aristotle, that the mind has a natural 
 appetite of curiosity or desire to know ; and most of that 
 knowledge which comes in by the eye, for this presents 
 us with the greatest variety of differences. Hogarth is 
 relished only by persons of a certain strength of mind 
 and penetration into character ; for the subjects in them- 
 selves are not pleasing, and this objection is only redeemed 
 by the exercise and activity which they give to the under- 
 standing. The great difference between what is meant 
 by a severe and an effeminate taste or style, depends on 
 the distinction here made. 
 
 Our teasing ourselves to recollect the names of places 
 or persons we have forgotten, the love of riddles and of 
 abstruse philosophy, are all illustrations of the same 
 general principle of curiosity, or the love of intellectual 
 excitement. Again, our impatience to be delivered of a 
 secret that we know ; the necessity which lovers have for 
 confidants, auricular confession, and the declarations so 
 
Mind and Motive. 341 
 
 commonly made by criminals of their guilt, are effects of 
 the involuntary power exerted by the imagination over the 
 feelings. Nothing can be more untrue, than that the 
 whole course of our ideas, passions, and pursuits, is 
 regulated by a regard to self-interest. Our attachment 
 to certain objects is much oftener in proportion to the 
 strength of the impression they make on us, to their 
 power of riveting and fixing the attention, than to the 
 gratification we derive from them. We are, perhaps, 
 more apt to dwell upon circumstances that excite disgust 
 and shock our feelings, than on those of an agreeable 
 nature. This, at least, is the case where this disposition 
 is particularly strong, as in people of nervous feelings 
 and morbid habits of thinking. Thus the mind is often 
 haunted with painful images and recollections, from the 
 hold they have taken of the imagination. We cannot 
 shake them off, though we strive to do it : nay, we even 
 court their company ; we will not part with them out of 
 our presence ; we strain our aching sight after them ; we 
 anxiously recall every feature, and contemplate them in all 
 their aggravated colours. There are a thousand passions 
 and fancies that thwart our purposes and disturb our 
 repose. Grief and fear are almost as welcome inmates of 
 the breast as hope or joy, and more obstinately cherished. 
 We return to the objects which have excited them, we 
 brood over them, they become almost inseparable from 
 the mind, necessary to it ; they assimilate all objects to 
 the gloom of our own thoughts, and make the will a party 
 against itself. This is one chief source of most of the 
 passions that prey like vultures on the heart, and embitter 
 human life. We hear moralists and divines perpetually 
 exclaiming, with mingled indignation and surprise, at the 
 folly of mankind in obstinately persisting in these tor- 
 menting and violent passions, such as envy, revenge, 
 sullenness, despair, &c. This is to them a mystery ; and 
 it will always remain an inexplicable one, while the love 
 
342 Mind and Motive. 
 
 of happiness is considered as the only spring of human 
 conduct and desires. 1 
 
 The love of power or action is another independent 
 principle of the human mind, in the different degrees in 
 which it exists, and which are not by any means in exact 
 proportion to its physical sensibility. It seems evidently 
 absurd to suppose that sensibility to pleasure or pain is 
 the only principle of action. It is almost too obvious to 
 remark, that sensibility alone, without an active principle 
 in the mind, could never produce action. The soul might 
 lie dissolved in pleasure, or be agonised with woe ; but 
 the impulses of feeling, in order to excite passion, desire, 
 or will, must be first communicated to some other faculty. 
 There must be a principle, a fund of activity somewhere, 
 by and through which our sensibility operates ; and that 
 this active principle owes all its force, its precise degree 
 of direction, to the sensitive faculty, is neither self-evident 
 nor true. Strength of will is not always nor generally in 
 proportion to strength of feeling. There are different 
 degrees of activity, as of sensibility, in the mind ; and our 
 passions, characters, and pursuits, often depend no less 
 upon the one than on the other. We continually make a 
 distinction in common discourse between sensibility and 
 irritability between passion and feeling, between the nerv6S 
 and muscles ; and we find that the most voluptuous 
 people are in general the most indolent. Every one who 
 has looked closely into human nature must have observed 
 persons who are naturally and habitually restless in the 
 extreme, but without any extraordinary susceptibility to 
 
 1 As a contrast to the story at the beginning of this article, it 
 will be not amiss to mention that of Sir Isaac Newton, on a some- 
 what similar occasion. He had prepared some papers for the press 
 with great care and study, but happening to leave a lighted candle 
 on the table with them, his dog Diamond overturned the candle, 
 and the labour of several years was destroyed. This great man, on 
 seeing what was done, only shook his head, and said with a smile, 
 " Ah, Diamond, you don't know what mischief you have done !'' 
 
Mind and Motive. 343 
 
 pleasure or pain, always making or finding excuses to do 
 something — whose actions constantly outrun the occasion, 
 and who are eager in the pursuit of the greatest trifles — 
 whose impatience of the smallest repose keeps them 
 always employed about nothing — and whose whole lives are 
 a continued work of supererogation. There are others, 
 again, who seem born to act from a spirit of contradiction 
 only, that is, who are ready to act not only without a 
 reason, but against it — who are ever at cross-purposes 
 with themselves and others — who are not satisfied unless 
 they are doing two opposite things at a time — who 
 contradict what you say, and if you assent to them, 
 contradict what they have said — who regularly leave the 
 pursuit in which they are successful to engage in some 
 other in which they have no chance of success — who 
 make a point of encountering difficulties and aiming at 
 impossibilities, that there may be no end of theii ex- 
 haustless task : while there is a third class whose vis 
 inertim scarcely any motives can overcome — who are 
 devoured by their feelings, and the slaves of their passions, 
 but who can take no pains and use no means to gratify 
 them — who, if roused to action by any unforseen accident, 
 require a continued stimulus to urge them on — who 
 fluctuate between desire and want of resolution — whoso 
 brightest projects burst like a bubble as soon as formed— 
 who yield to every obstacle — who almost sink under the 
 weight of the atmosphere — who cannot brush aside a 
 cobweb in their path, and are stopped by an insect's wing. 
 Indolence is want of will — the absence or defect of the 
 active principle — a repugnance to motion ; and whoever 
 has been much tormented with this passion, must, we are 
 sure, have felt that the inclination to indulge it is some- 
 thing very distinct from the love of pleasure or actual 
 enjoyment. Ambition is the reverse of indolence, and is 
 the love of power or action in great things. Avarice, also, 
 as it relates to the acquisition of riches, is, in a great 
 
344 Mind and Motive. 
 
 measure, an active and enterprising feeling ; nor does the 
 hoarding of wealth, after it is acquired, seem to have 
 much connection with the love of pleasure. What is called 
 niggardliness, very often, we are convinced from particular 
 instances that we have known, arises less from a selfish 
 principle than from a love of contrivance — from the study 
 of economy as an art, for want of a better — from 
 a pride in making the most of a little, and in not 
 exceeding a certain expense previously determined upon ; 
 all which is wilfulness, and is perfectly consistent, as it is 
 frequently found united, with the utmost lavish expendi- 
 ture and the utmost disregard for money on other occasions. 
 A miser may, in general, be looked upon as a particular 
 species of virtuoso. The constant desire in the rich to 
 leave wealth in large masses, by aggrandising some branch 
 of their families, or sometimes in such a manner as to 
 accumulate for centuries, shows that the imagination has a 
 considerable share in this passion. Intemperance, de- 
 bauchery, gluttony, and other vices of that kind, may be 
 attributed to an excess of sensuality or gross sensibility ; 
 though, even here, we think it evident that habits of 
 intoxication are produced quite as much by the strength 
 as by the agreeableness of the excitement ; and with 
 respect to some other vicious habits, curiosity makes 
 many more votaries than inclination. The love of truth, 
 when it predominates, produces inquisitive characters, the 
 whole tribe of gossips, tale-bearers, harmless busy- 
 bodies, your blunt honest creatures, who never conceal 
 what they think and who are the more sure to tell it 
 you the less you want to hear it — and now and then a 
 philosopher. 
 
 Our passions in general are to be traced more imme- 
 diately to the active part of our nature, to the love of 
 power, or to strength of will. Such are all those which 
 arise out of the difficulty of accomplishment, which 
 become more intense from the efforts made to attain the 
 
Mind and Motive. 345 
 
 object, and which derive their strength from opposition. 
 Mr. Hobbes says well on this subject : 
 
 "But for an utmost end, in which the ancient philo- 
 sophers placed felicity, and disputed much concerning the 
 way thereto, there is no such thing in this world, nor way 
 to it, more than to Utopia ; for while we live, we have 
 desires, and desire presupposeth a further end. Seeing 
 all delight is appetite, and desire of something further, 
 there can be no contentment but in proceeding, and 
 therefore we are not to marvel, when we see that as men 
 attain to more riches, honour, or other power, so their 
 appetite continually groweth more and more ; and when 
 they are come to the utmost degree of some kind of power 
 they pursue some other, as long as in any kind they think 
 themselves behind any other. Of those, therefore, that 
 have attained the highest degree of honour and riches, 
 some have affected mastery in some art, as Nero in music 
 and poetry, Commodus in the art of a gladiator; and such 
 as affect not some such thing, must find diversion and 
 recreation of their thoughts in the contention either of 
 play or business, and men justly complain as of a great 
 grief that they know not what to do. Felicity, there- 
 fore, by which we mean continual delight, consists not in 
 having prospered, but in prospering." 
 
 This account of human nature, true as it is, would be a 
 mere romance, if physical sensibility were the only faculty 
 essential to man, that is, if we were the slaves of voluptuous 
 indolence. But our desires are kindled by their own heat, 
 the will is urged on by a restless impulse, and without 
 action, enjoyment becomes insipid. The passions of men 
 are not in proportion only to their sensibility, or to the 
 desirableness of the object, but to the violence and 
 irritability of their tempers, and the obstacles to their 
 success. Thus an object to which we were almost indif- 
 ferent while we thought it in our power, often excites the 
 most ardent pursuit or the most painful regret, as soon as 
 
346 Mind and Motive. 
 
 it is placed out of our reach. How eloquently is the con- 
 tradiction between our desires and our success described in 
 Don Quixote, where it is said of the lover, that " he courted 
 a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert !" 
 
 The necessity of action to the mind, and the keen edge 
 it gives to our desires, is shown in the different value we 
 set on past and future objects. It is commonly, and we 
 might almost say universally, supposed, that there is an 
 essential difference in the two cases. In this instance, 
 however, the strength of our passions has converted an 
 evident absurdity into one of the most inveterate prejudices 
 of the human mind. That the future is really or in itself 
 of more consequence than the past, is what we can neither 
 assent to nor even conceive. It is true, the past has 
 ceased to be, and is no longer anything, except to the 
 mind ; but the future is still to come, and has an existence 
 in the mind only. The one is at an end, the other has 
 not even had a beginning ; both are purely ideal : so that 
 this argument would prove that the present only is of any 
 real value, and that both past and future objects are 
 equally indifferent, alike nothing. Indeed, the future is, 
 if possible, more imaginary than the past ; for the past 
 may in some sense be said to exist in its consequences ; it 
 acts still ; it is present to us in its effects ; the mouldering 
 ruins and broken fragments still remain; but of the future 
 there is no trace. What a blank does the history of the 
 world for the next six thousand years present to the mind, 
 compared with that of the last ? All that strikes the 
 imagination, or excites any interest in the mighty scene is 
 'what lias been. Neither in reality, then, nor as a subject 
 of general contemplation, has the future any advantage 
 over the past ; but with respect to our own passions and 
 pursuits it has. We regret the pleasures we have enjoyed, 
 and eagerly anticipate those which are to come ; we dwell 
 with satisfaction on the evils from which we have escaped, 
 and dread future pain. The good that is past is like 
 
Mind and Motive. 347 
 
 money that is spent, which is of no use, and about which 
 we give no further concern. The good we expect is like 
 a store yet untouched, in the enjoyment of which we 
 promise ourselves infinite gratification. What has hap- 
 pened to us we think of no consequence — what is to hap- 
 pen to us, of the greatest. Why so ? Because the one is 
 in our power, and the other not ; because the efforts of the 
 will to bring an object to pass or to avert it, strengthen 
 our attachment to or our aversion from that object ; 
 because the habitual pursuit of any purpose redoubles the 
 ardour of our pursuit, and converts the speculative and 
 indolent interest we should otherwise take in it into real 
 passion. Our regrets, anxiety, and wishes, are thrown 
 away upon the past, but we encourage our disposition to 
 exaggerate the importance of the future, as of the utmost 
 use in aiding our resolutions and stimulating our exertions. 
 
 It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach 
 more or less importance to past and future events, according 
 as they are more or 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, are regardless of the past, for it 
 does not contribute to their views : those who have nothing 
 to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the 
 past as in the future. The contemplation of the one is as 
 delightful and real as of the other. The season of hope 
 comes to an end, but the remembrance of it is left. The 
 past still lives in the memory of those who have leisure to 
 look back upon the way that they have trod, and can from it 
 " catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn." The 
 turbulence of action and uneasiness of desire must dwell 
 upon the future ; it is only amidst the innoceuce of shep- 
 herds, in the simplicity of the pastoral ages, that a tomb was 
 found with this inscription — " I also was an Arcadian ! " 
 
 We feel that some apology is necessary for having thus 
 plunged our readers all at once into the middle of meta- 
 physics. If it should be asked what use such studies are 
 

 348 Mind and Motive. 
 
 of, we might answer with Hume, perhaps of none, except 
 that there are certain persons who find more entertainment in 
 them than in any other. An account of this matter, with 
 which we were amused ourselves, and which may therefore 
 amuse others, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical 
 allegory, which begins in this manner : 
 
 " In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, 
 lived a monkey, who, before his last step of transmigration, 
 had occupied a human tenement. He had been a Bramin, 
 skilful in theology, and in all abstruse learning. He was 
 wont to hold in admiration the ways of nature, and de- 
 lighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was 
 enrobed ; but in pursuing the footsteps of .philosophy, he 
 wandered too far from the abode of the social Virtues. In 
 order to pursue his studies, he had retired to a cave on the 
 bauks of the Jumna. There he forgot society, and neglected 
 ablution ; and therefore his soul was degraded to a con- 
 dition below humanity. So inveterate were the habits 
 which he had contracted in his human state, that his spirit 
 was still influenced by his passion for abstruse study. He 
 sojourned in this wood from youth to age, regardless of 
 everything, save cocoa-nuts and metaphysics." For our own 
 part, we should be content to pass our time much in the 
 same manner as this learned savage, if we could only find 
 a substitute for his cocoa-nuts ! We do not, however, wish 
 to recommend the same pursuit to others, noi to dissuade 
 them from it. It has its pleasures and its pains — its 
 successes and its disappointments. It is neither quite so 
 sublime nor quite so uninteresting as it is sometimes 
 represented. The worst is, that much thought on difficult 
 subjects tends, after a certain time, to destroy the natural 
 gaiety and dancing of the spirits ; it deadens the elastic 
 force of the mind, weighs upon the heart, and makes us 
 insensible to the common enjoyments and pursuits of life. 
 
 " Sithence no fairy lights, no quick'ning ray, 
 Nor stir of pulse, nor objects to entice 
 
Mind and Motive. 349 
 
 Abroad the spirits ; but the cloyster'd heart 
 Sits squat at home, like pagod in a niche 
 Obscure." 
 
 Metaphysical reasoning is also one branch of the tree of 
 the knowledge of good and evil. The study of man, how- 
 ever, does, perhaps, less harm than a knowledge of the 
 world, though it must be owned that the practical know- 
 ledge of vice and misery makes a stronger impression on 
 the mind, when it has imbibed a habit of abstract reason- 
 ing. Evil thus becomes embodied in a general principle, 
 and shows its harpy form in all things. It is a fatal, 
 inevitable necessity hanging over us. It follows us 
 wherever we go : if we fly into the uttermost parts of the 
 earth, it is there : whether we turn to the right or the left, 
 we cannot escape from it. This, it is true, is the disease of 
 philosophy ; but it is one to which it is liable in minds of 
 a certain cast, after the first ardour of expectation has been 
 disabused by experience, and the finer feelings have 
 received an irrecoverable shock from the jarring of the 
 world. 
 
 Happy are they who live in the dream of their own 
 existence, and see all things in the light of their own 
 minds ; who walk by faith and hope ; to whom the guiding 
 star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom 
 the spirit of the world has not entered ! They have not 
 been " hurt by the archers," nor has the iron entered their 
 souls. They live in the midst of arrows and of death, un- 
 conscious of harm. The evil things come not nigh them. 
 The shafts of ridicule pass unheeded by, and malice loses 
 its sting. The example of vice does not rankle in their 
 breasts, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impres- 
 sions fall off from them like drops of water. The yoke of 
 life is to them light and supportable. The world has no 
 hold on them. They are in it, not of it ; and a dream anci 
 a glory is ever around them ! 
 
 1815. 
 
350 On Means and Ends. 
 
 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 On Means and Ends. 
 
 It is impossible to have things clone without doing them. 
 This seems a truism ; and yet what is more common than 
 to suppose that we shall find things done, merely by 
 wishing it ? To put the will for the deed is as usual in 
 practice as it is contrary to common sense. There is, in 
 fact, no absurdity, no contradiction, of which the will is 
 not capable. This is, I think, more remarkable in the 
 English than in any other people, in whom (to judge by 
 what I discover in myself ) the will bears great and 
 disproportioned sway. We will a thing : we contemplate 
 the end intensely, and think it done, neglecting the neces- 
 sary means to accomplish it. The strong tendency of the 
 mind towards it, the internal effort it makes to give being 
 to the object of its idolatry, seems an adequate cause to 
 produce the effect, and in a manner identified with it. 
 This is more particularly the case in what relates to the 
 fine arts, and will account for some phenomena of the 
 national character. The English school is distinguished 
 by what are called ebauches, rude, violent attempts at effect, 
 and a total inattention fo the details or delicacy of finishing. 
 Now this, I think, proceeds, not exactly from grossness of 
 perception, but from the wilfulness of our character ; our 
 desire to have things our own way, without any trouble or 
 distraction of purpose. An object strikes us : we see and 
 feel the whole effect. We wish to produce a likeness of it ; 
 but we want to transfer this impression to the canvas as it 
 is conveyed to us, simultaneously and intuitively, that is, 
 to stamp it there at a blow, or otherwise we turn away with 
 impatience and disgust, as if the means were an obstacle 
 to the end, and every attention to the mechanical part of 
 art were a deviation from our original purpose. We thus 
 

 On Means and Ends. 351 
 
 degenerate, after repeated failures, into a slovenly style of 
 art; and that which was at first an undisciplined and 
 irregular impulse becomes a habit, and then a theory. It 
 seems strange that the love of the end should produce 
 aversion to the means — but so it is ; neither is it altogether 
 unnatural. That which we are struck with, which we are 
 enamoured of, is the general appearance and result ; and 
 it would certainly be most desirable to produce the effect 
 in the same manner by a mere word or wish, if it were 
 possible, without entering into any mechanical drudgery 
 or minuteness of detail or dexterity of execution, which 
 though they are essential and component parts of the work 
 do not enter into our thoughts, and form no part of our 
 contemplation. We may find it necessary, on a cool 
 calculation to go through and learn these, but in so doing 
 we only submit to necessity, and they are still a diversion 
 to and a suspension of our purpose for the time, at least 
 unless practice gives that facility which almost identifies 
 the two together, or makes the process an unconscious one. 
 The end thus devours up the means, or our eagerness for 
 the one, where it is strong and unchecked, is in proportion 
 to our impatience of the other. We view an object at a 
 distance that excites an inclination to visit it, which we do 
 after many tedious steps and intricate ways ; but if we 
 could fly, we should never walk. The mind, however, has 
 wings, though the body has not, and it is this that produces 
 the contradiction in question. The first and strongest 
 impulse of the mind is to produce any work at once and by 
 the most energetic means ; but as this cannot always be 
 done, we should not neglect other more mechanical ones, 
 but that delusions of passion overrule the convictions of 
 the understanding, and what we strongly wish we fancy 
 to be possible and true. We are full of the effect we in- 
 tend to produce, and imagine we have produced it, in spite 
 of the evidence of our senses, and the suggestions of our 
 friends. In fact, after a number of fruitless efforts and 
 
352 On Means and Ends. 
 
 violent throes to produce an effect which wo passionately 
 long for, it seems an injustice not to have produced it ; if 
 we have not commanded success, we have done more, we 
 have deserved it ; we have copied nature or Titian in the 
 spirit in which they ought to be copied, and we see them 
 before us in our mind's eye ; there is the look, the expres- 
 sion, the something or other which we chiefly aim at, and 
 thus we persist and make fifty excuses to deceive ourselves 
 and confirm our errors ; or if the light breaks upon us 
 through all the disguises of sophistry and self-love, it is 
 so painful that we shut our eyes to it; the greater the 
 mortification the more violent the effort to throw it off; 
 and thus we stick to our determination, and end where we 
 began. What makes me think that this is the process of 
 our minds, and not merely rusticity or want of appre- 
 hension, is, that you will see an English artist admiring 
 and thrown into raptures by the tucker of Titian's mistress, 
 made up of an infinite number of little folds, but if he 
 attempts to copy it, he proceeds to omit all these details, 
 and dash it off by a single smear of his brush. This is 
 not ignorance, or even laziness, but what is called jump- 
 ing at a conclusion. It is, in a word, an overweening 
 purpose. He sees the details, the varieties, and their 
 effects, and he admires them ; but he sees them with a glance 
 of his eye, and as a wilful man must have his way, he 
 would reproduce them by a single dash of the pencil. 
 The mixing his colours, the putting in and out, the giv- 
 ing his attention to a minute break, or softening in the 
 particular lights and shades, is a mechanical and everlasting 
 operation, very different from the delight he feels in con- 
 templating the effect of all this when properly and finely 
 done. Such details are foreign to his refined taste, and 
 some doubts arise in his mind in the midst of his gratitude 
 and his raptures, as to how Titian could resolve upon 
 the drudgery of going through them, and whether it was 
 not done by extreme facility of hand, and a sort of trick, 
 
On Means and Ends. 353 
 
 abridging the mechanical labour. No one wrote or talked 
 more enthusiastically about Titian's harmony of colouring 
 than the late Mr. Barry, yet his own colouring was dead 
 and dry ; and if he had copied a Titian, he would have 
 make it a mere splash, leaving out all that caused his 
 wonder or admiration, after his English, or rather Irish 
 fashion. We not only grudge the labour of beginning, but 
 we give up, for the same reason, when we are near touch- 
 ing the goal of success ; and to save a few last touches, 
 leave a work unfinished, and an object unattained. The 
 immediate process, the daily gradual improvement, the 
 completion of parts giving us no pleasure, we strain at the 
 whole result ; we wish to have it done, and in our anxiety 
 to have it off our hands, say it will do, and lose the benefit 
 of all our labour by grudging a little pains, and not com- 
 manding a little patience. In a day or two, suppose a 
 copy of a fine Titian would be as complete as we could 
 make it : the prospect of this so enchants us that we skip 
 the intermediate days, see no great use in going on with it, 
 fancy that we may spoil it, and in order to have the job 
 done, take it home with us, when w r e immediately see our 
 error, and spend the rest of our lives in repenting that we 
 did not finish it properly at the time. We see the whole 
 nature of a picture at once ; we only do a part : Hinc 
 illce lachrymce. A French artist, on the contrary, has none 
 of this uneasy, anxious feeling ; of this desire to grasp the 
 whole of his subject, and anticipate his good fortune at a 
 blow ; of this massing and concentrating principle. He 
 takes the thing more easily and rationally. Suppose he 
 undertakes to copy a picture, he looks at it and copies it 
 bit by bit. He does not set off headlong without knowing 
 where he is going, or plunge into all sorts of difficulties 
 and absurdities, from impatience to begin and thinking that 
 " no sooner said than done ;" but takes time to consider, 
 lays his plans, gets in his outline and his distances, and 
 lays a foundation before he attempts a superstructure 
 
 2 A 
 
354 On Means and Ends. 
 
 which lie may have to pull to pieces again. He looks 
 before he leaps, which is contrary to the true blindfold 
 English principle ; and I should think that we had in- 
 vented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of 
 the neglect of it. He does not make the picture all black 
 or all white, because one part of it is so, and because he 
 cannot alter an idea he has once got into his head, and 
 must always run into extremes, but varies from green to 
 red, from orange tawney to yellow, from grey to brown, 
 according as they vary in the original : he sees no incon- 
 sistency or forfeiture of a principle in this, but a great 
 deal of right reason, and indeed an absolute necessity, if he 
 wishes to succeed in what he is about. This is the last 
 thing an Englishman thinks of : he only wants to have his 
 own way, though it ends in defeat and ruin : he sets about 
 a thing which he had little prospect of accomplishing, and 
 if he finds he can do it, gives it over and leaves the matter 
 short of success, which is too agreeable an idea for him to 
 indulge in. The French artist proceeds bit by bit. He 
 takes one part, a hand, a piece of drapery, a part of the 
 back-ground, and finishes it carefully ; then another, and 
 so on to the end. He does not, from a childish impatience, 
 when he is near the conclusion, destroy the effect of the 
 whole by leaving soma one part eminently defective, nor 
 fly from what he is about to something else that catches 
 his eye, neglecting the one and spoiling the other. He is 
 constrained by mastery, by the mastery of common sense 
 and pleasurable feeling. He is in no hurry to finish, for 
 he has a satisfaction in the work, and touches and retouches, 
 perhaps a single head, day after day and week after week, 
 without repining, uneasiness, or apparent progress. The 
 very lightness and indifference of his feelings renders him 
 patient and laborious : an Englishman, whatever he is 
 about or undertakes is as if he was carrying a heavy load 
 that oppresses both his body and mind, and which he is 
 anxious to throw down. A Frenchman's hopes or fears 
 
 : 
 
On Means and Ends. 355 
 
 are not excited to that pitch of intolerable agony that com- 
 pels him, in mere compassion to himself to bring the 
 question to a speedy issue, even to the loss of his object ; 
 he is calm, easy, and indifferent, and can take his time and 
 make the most of his advantages with impunity. Pleased 
 with himself, he is pleased with whatever occupies his 
 attention nearly alike. It is the same to him whether he 
 paints an angel or a joint-stool ; it is the same to him 
 whether it is landscape or history ; it is he who paints it, 
 that is sufficient. Nothing puts him out of conceit with 
 his work, for nothing puts him out of conceit with himself. 
 This self-complacency produces admirable patience and 
 docility in certain particulars, besides charity and tolera- 
 tion towards others. I remember a ludicrous instance of 
 this deliberate process, in a young French artist who was 
 copying the Titian s Mistress, in the Louvre, some 
 twenty years ago. x After getting it in chalk-lines, one 
 would think he would have been attracted to the face, that 
 heaven of beauty which makes a sunshine in the shady 
 place, or to some part of the poetry of the picture ; instead 
 of which he began to finish a square he had marked out 
 in the right-hand corner of the picture. He set to work 
 like a cabinet-maker or an engraver, and seemed to have 
 no sympathy with the soul of the picture. Indeed, to a 
 Frenchman there is no distinction between the great and 
 little, the pleasurable and the painful ; the utmost he 
 arrives at a conception of is the indifferent and the light. 
 Another young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven 
 weeks (I think it was) daily employed in making a black- 
 lead pencil drawing of a small Leonardo ; he sat cross- 
 legged on a rail to do it, kept his hat on, rose up, went to 
 the fire to warm himself, talked constantly of the excellence 
 of the different masters — Titian for colour, Raphael for 
 expression, Poussin for composition — all being alike to 
 him, provided there was a word to express it, for all he 
 1 When the author was studying at the Louvre in 1802. — En, 
 
356 On Means and Ends. 
 
 thought about was his own harangue; and, having con- 
 sulted some friend on his progress, he returned to 
 ' perfectionate,' as he called it, his copy. This would 
 drive an Englishman mad or stupid. The perseverance 
 and the indifference, the labour without impulse, the 
 attention to the parts in succession, and disregard of the 
 whole together, are to him absolutely inconceivable. A 
 Frenchman only exists in his present sensations, and pro- 
 vided he is left free to these as they arise, he cares about 
 nothing farther, looking neither backward nor forward. 
 With all this affectation and artifice, there is on this 
 account a kind of simplicity and nature about them, after 
 all. They lend themselves to the impression before them 
 with good humour and good will, making it neither better 
 nor worse than it is. The English overdo or underdo 
 everything, and are either drunk or in despair. I do not 
 speak of all Frenchmen or of ail Englishmen, but of the 
 most characteristic specimens of each class. The extreme 
 slowness and methodical regularity of the French has 
 arisen out of this indifference, and even frivolity (their 
 usually-supposed natural character), for owing to it their 
 laborious minuteness costs them nothing ; they have no 
 strong impulses or ardent longings that urge them to the 
 violation of rules, or hurry them away with a subject and 
 with the interest belonging to it. Everything is matter 
 of calculation, and measured beforehand, in order to assist 
 their fluttering and their feebleness. When they get be- 
 yond the literal and the formal, and attempt the impressive 
 and the grand, as in David's and Girardot's pictures, defend 
 us from sublimity heaped on insipidity and petit ^maitreism ! 
 You see a Frenchman in the Louvre copying the finest 
 pictures, standing on one leg, with his hat on; or after 
 copying a Raphael, thinking David much finer, more truly 
 one of themselves, more a combination of the Greek 
 sculptor and the French posture-master. Even if a French 
 artist fails, he is not disconcerted; there is something 
 
On Means and Ends. 357 
 
 else he excels in : if he cannot paint, he can dance ! If au 
 Englishman, save the mark ! fails in anything, he thinks 
 he can do nothing ; enraged at the mention of his ability 
 to do anything else, and at any consolation offered to him, 
 he banishes all other thought but of his disappointment, 
 and discarding hope from his breast, neither eats nor sleeps 
 (it is well if he does not cut his throat), will not attend to 
 any other thing in which he before took an interest and 
 pride, and is in despair till he recovers his good opinion 
 of himself in the point in which he has been disgraced, 
 though, from his very anxiety and disorder of mind, he is 
 incapacitated from applying to the only means of doing so, 
 as much as if he were drunk with liquor, instead of with 
 pride and passion. The character I have here drawn of 
 an Englishman I am clear about, for it is the character of 
 myself, and, I am sorry to add, no exaggerated one. As 
 my object is to paint the varieties of human nature, and as 
 I can have it best from myself, I will confess a weakness. 
 I lately tried to copy a Titian (after many years' want of 
 practice), in order to give a friend in England some idea of 
 the picture. I floundered on for several days, but failed, 
 as might be expected. My sky became overcast. Every 
 thing seemed of the colour of the paint I used. Nature 
 was one great daub. I had no feeling left but a sense of 
 want of power, and of an abortive struggle to do what I 
 could not do. I was ashamed of being seen to look at the 
 picture with admiration, as if I had no right to do so. I 
 was ashamed even to have written or spoken about the 
 picture or about art at all : it seemed a piece of pre- 
 sumption or affectation in me, whose whole notions and 
 refinements on the subject ended in an inexcusable daub. 
 Why did I think of attempting such a thing heedlessly, of 
 exposing my presumption and incapacity? It was blot- 
 ting from my memory, covering with a dark veil, all that I 
 remembered of those pictures formerly, my hopes when 
 young, my regrets since ; it was wresting from me one of 
 
358 On Means and Ends. 
 
 the consolations of my life and of my declining years. I 
 was even afraid to walk out by the barrier of Neuilly, or 
 to recall to memory that I had ever seen the picture ; all 
 was turned to bitterness and gall : to feel anything but a 
 sense of my own helplessness and absurdity seemed a 
 want of sincerity, a mockery and a piece of injustice. 
 The only comfort I had was in the excess of pain I felt ; 
 this was at least some distinction : I was not insensible on 
 that side. No Frenchman, I thought, would regret the not 
 copying a Titian so much as I did, or so far show the same 
 value for it. Besides, I had copied this identical picture 
 very well formerly. If ever I got out of this scrape, I 
 had received a lesson, at least, not to run the same risk of 
 gratuitous vexation again, or even to attempt what was un- 
 certain and unnecessary. 
 
 It is the same in love and in literature. A man makes 
 love without thinking of the chances of success, his own 
 disabilities, or the character of his mistress; that is, 
 without connecting means with ends, and consulting only 
 his own will and passion. The author sets about writing 
 history, with the full intention of rendering all documents, 
 dates, and facts secondary to his own opinion and will. 
 In business it is not altogether the same ; for interest 
 acts obviously as a counterpoise to caprice and will, and 
 is the moving principle ; nor is it so in war, for then the 
 spirit of contradiction does everything, and an English- 
 man will go to the devil rather than give up to any odds. 
 Courage is pure will without regard to consequences, and 
 this the English have in perfection. Again, poetry is our 
 element, for the essence of poetry is will and passion. 
 The French poetry is detail and verbiage. I have thus 
 shown why the English fail, as a people, in the Fine Arts, 
 namely, because with them the end absorbs the means. I 
 have mentioned Barry as an individual instance. No man 
 spoke or wrote with more gusto about painting, and yet no 
 one painted with less. His pictures were dry and coarse, 
 

 On Means and Ends. 359 
 
 and wanted all that his description of those of others 
 contained. For instance, he speaks of the dull, dead, 
 v/atery look in the Medusa's head of Leonardo, which 
 conveys a perfect idea of it : if he had copied it, you 
 would never have suspected anything of the kind. Again, 
 he has, I believe, somewhere spoken of the uneasy effect 
 of the tucker of the Titian s Mistress, bursting with the 
 full treasures it contains. What a daub he would have 
 made of it ! He is like a person admiring the grace of a 
 fine rope-dancer ; placed on the rope himself his head 
 turns, and he falls : or like a man admiring fine horse- 
 manship ; set him upon a horse, and he tumbles over on 
 the other side. Why was this ? His mind was essentially 
 ardent and discursive, not sensitive or observing; and 
 though the immediate object acted as a stimulus to his 
 imagination, it was only as it does to a poet's, that is, as a 
 link in the chain of association, as suggesting other strong 
 feelings and ideas, and not for its intrinsic beauty or 
 hidden details. He had not the painter's eye though he 
 had the painter's knowledge. There is as great a differ- 
 ence in this respect as between the telescope and micro- 
 scope. People in general see objects only to distinguish 
 them in practice and by name ; to know that a hat is a 
 hat, that a chair is not a table, that John is not William ; 
 and there are painters (particularly of history) in England 
 who look no farther. They cannot finish anything, or 
 go over a head twice ; the first view is all they would 
 arrive at ; nor can they reduce their impressions to their 
 component parts without losing the spirit. The effect of 
 this is grossness and want of force; for in reality the 
 component parts cannot be separated from the whole. 
 Such people have no pleasure in the exercise of their art 
 as such : it is all to astonish or to get money that they 
 follow it ; or if they are thrown out of it, they regret it 
 only as a bankrupt does a business which was a livelihood 
 to him. Barry did not live, like Titian, in the taste of 
 
360 Matter and Manner. 
 
 colours ; they were not a pabulum to his sense ; lie did 
 not hold green, blue, red, and yellow as the precious 
 darlings of his eye. They did not therefore sink into his 
 mind, or nourish and enrich it with the sense of beauty, 
 though he knew enough of them to furnish hints and 
 topics of discourse. If he had had the most beautiful 
 object in nature before him in his painting-room in the 
 Adelphi, he would have neglected it, after a moment's 
 burst of admiration, to talk of his last composition, or to 
 scrawl some new and vast design. Art was nothing to 
 him, or if anything, merely a stalking-horse to his 
 ambition and display of intellectual power in general ; and 
 therefore he neglected it to daub huge allegories, or cabal 
 with the Academy, where the violence of his will or the 
 extent of his views found ample scope. As a painter he 
 was valuable merely as a draughtsman, in that part of the 
 art which may be reduced to lines and precepts, or positive 
 measurement. There is neither colour, nor expression, 
 nor delicacy, nor beauty, in his works. 
 1827. 
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 Matter and Manner. 
 
 Nothing can frequently be more striking than the 
 difference of style or manner, where the matter remains 
 the same, as in paraphrases and translations. The most 
 remarkable example which occurs to us is in the begin- 
 ning of the Flower and Leaf, by Chaucer, 1 and in the 
 modernisation of the same passage by Dryden. We shall 
 give an extract from both, that the reader may judge for 
 himself. The original runs thus : 
 
 " And I that all this pleasaunt sight ay sie, 
 Thought sodainly I felte so sweet an aire 
 
 1 Morris's edit, of Chancer. The extract has now been given 
 

 Matter and Manner. 361 
 
 Con of the eglentere, that certainely 
 There is no heart, I deme, in such dispaire, 
 Ne with no thoughtes fro ward and contraire 
 So overlaid, but it shoulde soone have bote, 
 If it had ones felt this savour sote. 
 
 And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, 
 
 I was of ware the fairest niedler tree, 
 
 That ever yet in all my life I sie, 
 
 As full of blossomes as it mighte be; 
 
 Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile 
 
 Fro bough to bough ; and, as him list, gan eete 
 
 Of buddes here and there and floures sweete. 
 
 And to the herber side tlier was joyninge 
 This faire tree, of wtiich I have you told; 
 And at the last the brid began to singe, 
 When he had eaten what he eate wolde, 
 So passing sweetly, that by manifolde, 
 It was more pleasaunt than I coude devise. 
 And when his song was ended in this wise, 
 
 The nightingale with so mery a note 
 
 Answered him, that all the woode rong 
 
 So sodainly, that, as it were a sote. 
 
 I stood astonied ; so was I with the song 
 
 Thorow ravished, that till late and longe, 
 
 Ne wist I in what place I was, ne where; 
 
 And ay, me thoughts, she song even by mine ere. 
 
 Wherefore about I waited busily, 
 On every side, if that I her mighte see; 
 And, at the last, I gan full well aspie 
 Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree, 
 On the further side, even right by me, 
 That gave so passing a delicious smell, 
 According to the eglentere full well. 
 
 Whereof I hadde so inly great pleasure, 
 That, as me thought, I surely ravished was 
 Into Paradice, where as my desire 
 Was for to be, and no ferther to passe 
 
 from that source. The Flower and Leaf is now believed not to be 
 Chaucer's. — Ed. 
 
862 Matter and Manner. 
 
 As for that day; and on the sote grasse 
 I sat me downe; for, as for mine entent, 
 The birddes song was more convenient. 
 
 And more pleas aunt to me by many fold, 
 Than meat or drinke, or any other thing. 
 Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold, 
 The wholesome savours eke so comforting, 
 That, as I demede, sith the beginning 
 Of Unlike world was never seene or than 
 So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man. 
 
 And as I sat, the birddes barkening thus, 
 Me thoughte that I hearde voices sodainly, 
 The most sweetest and most delicious 
 That ever any wight, I trow truly, 
 Heard in here life; for sothe the armony 
 And sweet accord was in so good musike, 
 That the voices to angels most was like." 
 
 In this passage the poet has let loose the very soul of 
 pleasure. There is a spirit of enjoyment in it, of which 
 there seems no end. It is the intense delight which 
 accompanies the description of every object, the fund of 
 natural sensibility it displays, which constitutes its whole 
 essence and beauty. Now this is shown chiefly in the 
 manner in which the different objects are anticipated, and 
 the eager welcome which is given to them ; in his re- 
 peating and varying the circumstances with a restless 
 delight ; in his quitting the subject for a moment, and 
 then returning to it again, as if he could never have his 
 fill of enjoyment. There is little of this in Dryden's 
 paraphrase. The same ideas are introduced, but not in 
 the same manner, nor with the same spirit. The imagi- 
 nation of the poet is not borne along with the tide of 
 pleasure — the verse is not poured out, like the natural 
 strains it describes, from pure delight, but according to 
 rule and measure. Instead of being absorbed in his 
 subject, he is dissatisfied with it, tries to give an air of 
 dignity to it by factitious ornaments, to amuse the reader 
 
Matter and Manner. 363 
 
 by ingenious allusions, and divert his attention from the 
 progress of the story by the artifices of the style : 
 
 " The painted birds, companions of the spring, 
 Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing. 
 Both eyes and ears receiv'd a like delight, 
 Enchanting music, and a charming sight. 
 On Philomel I fix'd my whole desire ; 
 And listen'd for the queen of all the quire ; 
 Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing; 
 And wanted yet an omen to the spring. 
 
 Thus as I mus'd I cast aside my eye, 
 And saw a medlar-tree was planted nigh. 
 The spreading branches made a goodly show, 
 And full of opening blooms was every bough: 
 A goldfinch there I saw with gawdy pride 
 Of painted plumes, that hopp'd from side to side, 
 Still pecking as she pass'd; and still she drew 
 The sweets from every flower and suck'd the dew : 
 Suffic'd at length, she warbled in her throat, 
 And tun'd her voice to many a merry note, 
 But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear, 
 Yet such as sooth' d my soul, and pleas'd my ear. 
 
 Her short performance was no sooner tried, 
 When she I sought, the nightingale, replied : 
 So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung, 
 That the grove echoed, and the valleys rung: 
 And I so ravish'd with her heavenly note, 
 I stood entranced, and had no room for thought. 
 But all o'erpower'd with ectasy of bliss, 
 Was in a pleasing dream of paradise ; 
 At length I wak'd, and looking round the bower, 
 SearchM every tree* and pry'd on every flower, 
 If any where by chance I might espy 
 The rural poet of the melody : 
 For still methought she sung not far away: 
 At last I found her on a laurel spray. 
 Close by my side she sat, and fair in sight, 
 Full in a line, against her opposite ; 
 Where stood with eglantine the laurel twin'd; 
 And both their native sweets were well conjoin'd. 
 
 On the green bank I sat, and listen'd long; 
 (Sitting was more convenient for the song;) 
 
364 Matter and Manner. 
 
 Nor till her lay was ended could I move, 
 But wish'd to dwell for ever in the grove. 
 Only methought the time too swiftly pass'd, 
 And every note I fear'd would be the last. 
 My sight, and smell and hearing were employ'd, 
 And all three senses in full gust enjoy'd. 
 And what alone did all the rest surpass 
 The sweet possession of the fairy place ; 
 Single, and conscious to myself alone 
 Of pleasures to the excluded world unknown: 
 Pleasures which no where else were to be found, 
 And all Elysium in a spot of ground. 
 
 Thus while I sat intent to see and hear, 
 And drew perfumes of more than vital air, 
 All suddenly I heard the approaching sound 
 Of vocal music on the enchanted ground: 
 A host of saints it seeni'd, so full the quire ; 
 As if the bless'd above did all conspire 
 To join their voices, and neglect the lyre." 
 
 Compared with Chaucer, Dry den and the rest of that 
 school were merely verbal poets. They had a great deal of 
 wit, sense, and fancy ; they only wanted truth and depth 
 of feeling. But I shall have to say more on this subject, 
 when I come to consider the old question which I have 
 got marked down in my list, whether Pope was a Poet. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield's character of the Duke of Marl- 
 borough is a good illustration of his general theory. 
 He says, " Of all the men I ever knew in my life (and I 
 knew him extremely well) the late Duke of Marlborough 
 possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say 
 engrossed them ; for I will venture (contrary to the 
 custom of profound historians, who always assign deep 
 causes for great events) to ascribe the better half of the 
 Duke of Marlborough's greatness and riches to those 
 graces. He was eminently illiterate : wrote bad English, 
 and spelt it worse. He had no share of what is commonly 
 called parts ; that is, no brightness, nothing shining in his 
 genius. He had, most undoubtedly, an excellent good 
 plain understanding, with sound judgment. But these 
 
 
Matter and Manner. 365 
 
 alone would probably have raised him but something 
 higher than they found him, which was page to King 
 James II. 's Queen. There the graces protected and 
 promoted him ; for while he was Ensign of the Guards, 
 the Duchess of Cleveland, then favourite mistress of 
 Charles II., struck by these very graces, gave him five 
 thousand pounds ; with which he immediately bought an 
 annuity of Hve hundred pounds a year, which was the 
 foundation of his subsequent fortune. His figure was 
 beautiful, but his manner was irresistible by either man or 
 woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that 
 he was enabled during all his wars to connect the various 
 and jarring powers of the grand alliance, and to carry 
 them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding 
 their private and separate views, jealousies, and wrong- 
 headedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was 
 often obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory 
 ones) he as constantly prevailed, and brought them into 
 his measures." 
 
 Grace in women has often more effect than beauty. 
 We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an 
 habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on 
 its own sensations, and derives pleasure from all around 
 it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. 
 There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, 
 " in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their 
 face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a 
 secret sympathy towards them. Their minds are a shrine 
 where pleasure reposes. Their smile diffuses a sensation 
 like the breath of spring. Petrarch's description of Laura 
 answers exactly to this character, which is indeed the 
 Italian character. Titian's pictures are full of it ; they 
 seem sustained by sentiment, or as if the persons whom 
 he painted sat to music. There is one in the Louvre (or 
 there was) which had the most of this expression I ever 
 remember. It did not look downward; "it looked 
 
366 Matter and Manner, 
 
 forward beyond this world." It was a look that never 
 passed away, but remained unalterable as the deep senti- 
 ment which gave birth to it. It is the same constitutional 
 character (together with infinite activity of mind) which 
 has enabled the greatest man in modern history to bear 
 his reverses of fortune with gay magnanimity, and to 
 submit to the loss of the empire of the world with as 
 little discomposure as if he had been playing a game at 
 chess. 
 
 After all, I would not be understood to say that manner 
 is everything. 1 Nor would I put Euclid or Sir Isaac 
 Newton on a level with the first petit-maitre we might 
 
 1 Sheer impudence answers almost the same purpose. " Those 
 impenetrable whiskers have confronted flames." Many persons, by 
 looking big and talking loud, make their way through the world 
 without any one good quality. I have here said nothing of mere per- 
 sonal qualifications, which are another set-off against sterling merit. 
 Fielding was of opinion that " the more solid pretensions of virtue 
 and understanding vanish before perfect beauty.' , " A certain lady 
 of a manor " (says Don Quixote in defence of his attachment to 
 Dulcinea, which, however, was quite of the Platonic kind), " had 
 cast the eyes of affection on a certain squ-t, brawny lay brother of a 
 neighbouring monastery, to whom she was lavish of her favours. 
 The head of the order remonstrated with her on this preference 
 shown to one whom he represented as a very low, ignorant fellow, 
 and set forth the superior pretensions of himself, and his more 
 learned brethren. The lady having heard him to an end, made 
 answer : All that you have said may be very true ; but know that 
 in those points which I admire, Brother Chrysostom is as great a 
 philosopher, nay greater, than Aristotle himself!" So the Wife of 
 Bath : 
 
 To chirche was myn housbond brought on morwe 
 
 With neighebors that for him made sorwe, 
 
 And Jankyn oure clerk was oon of tho. 
 
 As help me God, whan that I saugh him go 
 
 After the beere, methought he had a paire 
 
 Of legges and of feet so clene and. faire, 
 
 That al myn hert I yaf unto his hold. 
 
 * ; All which, though we most potently believe, yet we hold it not 
 honesty to have it thus set down." 
 
 
On Consistency of Opinion. 367 
 
 happen to meet. I consider JEsop's Fables to Lave been 
 a greater work of genius than Fontaine's translation of 
 them; though I am not sure that I should not prefer 
 Fontaine, for his style only, to Gay, who has shown a 
 great deal of original invention. The elegant manners of 
 people of fashion have been objected to me, to show the 
 frivolity of external accomplishments, and the facility 
 with which they are acquired. As to the last point, I 
 demur. There are no class of people who lead so 
 laborious a life, or who take more pains to cultivate their 
 minds as well as persons, than people of fashion, A 
 young lady of quality who has to devote so many hours 
 a day to music, so many to dancing, so many to drawing 
 so many to French, Italian, &c, certainly does not pass 
 her time in idleness : and these accomplishments are 
 afterwards called into action by every kind of external or 
 mental stimulus, by the excitements of pleasure, vanity, 
 and interest. A Ministerial or Opposition Lord goes 
 through more drudgery than half a dozen literary hacks ; 
 nor does a reviewer by profession read half the same 
 number of publications as a modern fine lady is obliged 
 to labour through. I confess, however, I am not a 
 competent judge of the degree of elegance or refinement 
 implied in the general tone of fashionable manners. The 
 successful experiment made by Peregrine Pickle, in intro- 
 ducing his strolling mistress into genteel company, does 
 not redound greatly to their credit. 
 1815. 
 
 ESSAY X, 
 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 " Servetur ad imu.m 
 
 Qualis ab inceptu processerit, et sibi constet." 
 
 Many people boast of being masters in their own house. 
 I pretend to be master of my own mind. I should be 
 
368 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 sorry to have an ejectment served upon me for any 
 notions I may choose to entertain there. Within that 
 little circle I would fain be an absolute monarch. I do 
 not profess the spirit of martyrdom ; I have no ambition 
 to march to the stake, or up to a masked battery, in 
 defence of an hypothesis : I do not court the rack : I do 
 not wish to be flayed alive for affirming that two and two 
 make four, or any other intricate proposition : I am shy 
 of bodily pains and penalties, which some are fond of — 
 imprisonment, fine, banishment, confiscation of goods : but 
 if I do not prefer the independence of my mind to that of 
 my body, I at least prefer it to everything else. I would 
 avoid the arm of power, as I would escape from the fangs 
 of a wild beast : but as to the opinion of the world, I see 
 nothing formidable in it. "It is the eye of childhood 
 that fears a painted devil." I am not to be browbeat or 
 wheedled out of any of my settled convictions. Opinion 
 to opinion, I will face any man. Prejudice, fashion, the 
 cant of the moment, go for nothing ; and as for the reason 
 of the thing, it can only be supposed to rest with me or 
 another, in proportion to the pains we have taken to 
 ascertain it. Where the pursuit of truth has been the 
 habitual study of any man's life, the love of truth will be 
 his ruling passion. " Where the treasure is, there the 
 heart is also." Every one is most tenacious of that to 
 which he owes his distinction from others. Kings love 
 power, misers gold, women flattery, poets reputation — and 
 philosophers truth, when they can find it. They are 
 right in cherishing the only privilege they inherit. If 
 " to be wise were to be obstinate," I might set up for as 
 great a philosopher as the best of them ; for some of my 
 conclusions are as fixed and as incorrigible to prool as 
 need be. I am attached to them in consequence of the 
 pains, and anxiety, and the waste of time they have cost 
 me. In fact, I should not well know what to do without 
 them at this time of day ; nor how to get others to supply 
 
 
On Consistency of Opinion. 369 
 
 their place. I would quarrel with the best friend I have 
 sooner than acknowledge the absolute right of the Bour- 
 bons. I see Mr. Northcote seldomer than I did, because 
 I cannot agree with him about the Catalogue Baisonne. 1 
 I remember once saying to this gentleman, a great while 
 ago, that I did not seem to have altered any of my ideas 
 since I was sixteen years old. "Why then," said he, 
 " you are no wiser now than you were then !" I might 
 make the same confession, and the same retort would 
 apply still. Coleridge used to tell me, that this pertina- 
 city was owing to a want of sympathy with others. What 
 he calls sympathising with others is their admiring him ; 
 and it must be admitted that he varies his battery pretty 
 often, in order to accommodate himself to this sort of 
 mutual understanding. But I do not agree in what he 
 says of me. On the other hand, I think that it is my 
 sympathising beforehand with the different views and 
 feelings that may be entertained on a subject, that pre- 
 vents me retracting my judgment, and flinging myself 
 into the contrary extreme afterwards. If you proscribe 
 all opinion opposite to your own, and impertinently ex- 
 clude all the evidence that does not make for you, it stares 
 you in the face with double force when it breaks in 
 unexpectedly upon you, or if at any subsequent period 
 it happens to suit your interest or convenience to listen 
 to objections which vanity or prudence had hitherto 
 overlooked. But if you are aware from the first sugges- 
 tion of a subject, either by subtlety, or tact, or close 
 attention, of the full force of what others possibly feel 
 and think of it, you are not exposed to the same vacillation 
 of opinion. The number of grains and scruples, of doubts 
 and difficulties, thrown into the scale while the balance is 
 yet undecided, add to the weight and steadiness of the 
 determination. He who anticipates his opponent's argu- 
 ments, confirms while he corrects his own reasonings. 
 1 See Memoirs, i, 211. — Ed. 
 
 2 B 
 
370 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 When a question has been carefully examined in all its 
 bearings, and a principle is once established, it is not 
 liable to be overthrown by any new facts which have been 
 arbitrarily and petulantly set aside, nor by every wind of 
 idle doctrine rushing into the interstices of a hollow 
 speculation, shattering it in pieces, and leaving it a 
 mockery and a bye-word ; like those tall, gawky, staring, 
 pyramidal erections which are seen scattered over dif- 
 ferent parts of the country, and are called the Follies of 
 different gentlemen ! A man may be confident in main- 
 taining a side, as he has been cautious in choosing it. If 
 after making up his mind strongly in one way, to the best 
 of his capacity and judgment, he feels himself inclined to 
 a very violent revulsion of sentiment, he may generally 
 rest assured that the change is in himself and his motives, 
 not in the reason of things. 
 
 I cannot say that, from my own experience, I have 
 found that the persons most remarkable for sudden and 
 violent changes of principle have been cast in the softest 
 or most susceptible mould. All their notions have been 
 exclusive, bigoted, and intolerant. Their want of con- 
 sistency and moderation has been in exact proportion to 
 their want of candour and comprehensiveness of mind. 
 Instead of being the creatures of sympathy, open to con- 
 viction, unwilling to give offence by the smallest difference 
 of sentiment, they have (for the most part) been made up 
 of mere antipathies — a very repulsive sort of personages — 
 at odds with themselves, and with everybody else. The 
 slenderness of their pretensions to philosophical inquiry 
 has been accompanied with the most presumptuous dog- 
 matism. They have been persons of that narrowness of 
 view and headstrong self-sufficiency of purpose, that they 
 could see only one side of a question at a time, and 
 whichever they pleased. There is a story somewhere in 
 Don Quixote, of two champions coming to a shield hung 
 up against a tree with an inscription written on each side 
 
On Consistency of Opinion. 371 
 
 of it. Each of them maintained, that the words were 
 what was written on the side next him, and never dreamt, 
 till the fray was over, that they might be different on the 
 opposite side of the shield. It would have been a little 
 more extraordinary if the combatants had changed sides 
 in the heat of the scuffle, and stoutly denied that there 
 were any such words on the opposite side as they had 
 before been bent on sacrificing their lives to prove were 
 the only ones it contained. Yet such is the very situation 
 of some of our modern polemics. They have been of all 
 sides of the question, and yet they cannot conceive how 
 an honest man can be of any but one — that which they 
 hold at present. It seems that they are afraid to look 
 their old opinions in the face, lest they should be fasci- 
 nated by them once more. They banish all doubts of 
 their own sincerity by inveighing against the motives of 
 their antagonists. There is no salvation out of the pale of 
 their strange inconsistency. They reduce common sense 
 and probity to the straitest possible limits — the breasts of 
 themselves and their patrons. They are like people out at 
 sea on a very narrow plank, who try to push everybody else 
 off. Is it that they have so little faith in the course to 
 which they have become such staunch converts, as to 
 suppose that, should they allow a grain of sense to their 
 old allies and new antagonists, they will have more than 
 they ? Is it that they have so little consciousness of their 
 own disinterestedness, that they feel, if they allow a 
 particle of honesty to those who now differ with them, 
 they will have more than they? Those opinions must 
 needs be of a very fragile texture which will not stand the 
 shock of the least acknowledged opposition, and which 
 lay claim to respectability by stigmatising all who do not 
 hold them as " sots, and knaves, and cowards." There is 
 a want of well-balanced feeling in every such instance of 
 extravagant versatility ; a something crude, unripe, and 
 harsh, that does not hit a judicious palate, but sets the 
 
372 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 teeth on edge to think of. " I had rather hear my 
 mother's cat mew, or a wheel grate on the axletree, than 
 one of these same metre-ballad-mongers " chaunt his in- 
 condite, retrograde lays, without rhyme and without reason 
 The principles and professions change : the man re- 
 mains the same. There is the same spirit at the bottom 
 of all this pragmatical fickleness and virulence, whether it 
 runs into one extreme or another : to wit, a confinement 
 of view, a jealousy of others, an impatience of contra- 
 diction, a want of liberality in construing the motives of 
 others, either from monkish pedantry, or a conceited 
 overweening reference of everything to our own fancies 
 and feelings. There is something to be said, indeed, for 
 the nature of the political machinery, for the whirling 
 motion of the revolutionary wheel which has of late 
 wrenched men's understandings almost asunder, and 
 "amazed the very faculties of eyes and ears;" but still 
 this is hardly a sufficient reason, why the adept in the old 
 as well as the new school should take such a prodigious 
 latitude himself, while at the same time he makes so little 
 allowance for others. His whole creed need not be 
 turned topsy-turvy, from the top to the bottom, even in 
 times like these. He need not, in the rage of party spirit, 
 discard the proper attributes of humanity, the common 
 dictates of reason. He need not outrage every former 
 feeling, nor trample on every customary decency, in his 
 zeal for reform, or in his greater zeal against it. If his 
 mind, like his body, has undergone a total change of 
 essence, and purged off the taint of all its early opinions, 
 he need not carry about with him, or be haunted in the 
 persons of others with, the phantoms of his altered prin- 
 ciples to loathe and execrate them. He need not (as it 
 were) pass an act of attainder on all his thoughts, hopes, 
 wishes, from youth upwards, to offer them at the shrine of 
 .-rtitured servility: he need not become one vile antithesis, 
 a living and ignominious satire on himself. 
 
 i 
 
On Consistency of Opinion. 373 
 
 A gentleman went to live, some years ago, in a remote 
 part of the country, and as lie did not wish to affect 
 singularity, he used to have two candles on his table of an 
 evening. A romantic acquaintance of his in the neigh- 
 bourhood, smit with the love of simplicity and equality, 
 used to come in, and without ceremony snuff one of them 
 out, saying, it was a shame to indulge in such extrava- 
 gance, while many poor cottagers had not even a rush- 
 light to see to do their evening's work by. This might 
 be about the year 1802, and was passed over as among the 
 ordinary occurrences of the day. In 1816 (oh! fearful 
 lapse of time, pregnant with strange mutability), the same 
 enthusiastic lover of economy, and hater of luxury, asked 
 his thoughtless friend to dine with him in company with 
 a certain lord, and to lend him his man servant to wait at 
 table ; and just before they were sitting down to dinner, 
 he heard him say to the servant in a sonorous whisper — 
 " and be sure you don't forget to have six candles on the 
 table!" Extremes meet. The event here was as true to 
 itself as the oscillation of the pendulum. My informant, 
 who understands moral equations, had looked for this 
 reaction, and noted it down as characteristic. The im- 
 pertinence in the first instance was the cue to the 
 ostentatious servility in the second. The one was the 
 fulfilment of the other, like the type and anti-type of a 
 prophecy. No — the keeping of the character at the end 
 of fourteen years was as unique as the keeping of the 
 thought to the end of the fourteen lines of a sonnet! 
 Would it sound strange if I were to whisper it in the 
 reader's ear, that it was the same person who was thus 
 anxious to see six candles on the table to receive a lord, 
 who once (in ages past) said to me, that "he saw nothing 
 to admire in the eloquence of such men as Mansfield and 
 Chatham ; and what did it all end in, but their being 
 made lords ? " It is better to be a lord than a lacquey 
 to a lord ! So we see that the swelling pride and pre- 
 
374 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 posterous self-opinion which exalts itself above the 
 
 mightiest, looking down upon and braving the boasted 
 
 pretensions of the highest rank and the most brilliant 
 
 talents as nothing, compared with its own conscious 
 
 powers and silent unmoved self-respect, grovels and licks 
 
 the dust before titled wealth, like a lacquered slave, the 
 
 moment it can get wages and a livery ! Would Milton or 
 
 Marvel have done this ? 
 
 Mr. Coleridge, indeed, sets down this outragous want of 
 
 keeping to an excess of sympathy, and there is, after all, 
 
 some truth in his suggestion. There is a craving after 
 
 the approbation and concurrence of others natural to the 
 
 mind of man. It is difficult to sustain the weight of an 
 
 opinion singly for any length of way. The intellect 
 
 languishes without cordial encouragement and support. 
 
 It exhausts both strength and patience to be always 
 
 striving against the stream. Contra audentior ito is the 
 
 motto but of few. Public opinion is always pressing upon 
 
 the mind, and, like the air we breathe, acts unseen, unfelt. 
 
 It supplies the living current of our thoughts, and infects 
 
 without our knowledge. It taints the blood, and is taken 
 
 into the smallest pores. The most sanguine constitutions 
 
 are, perhaps, the most exposed to its influence. But 
 
 public opinion has its source in power, in popular pre- 
 
 judice, and is not always in accord with right reason, or a 
 
 high and abstracted imagination. Which path to follow 
 
 where the two roads part ? The heroic and romantic 
 
 resolution prevails at first in high and heroic tempers. 
 
 Tbey think to scale the heights of truth and virtue at 
 
 once with him " whose genius had angelic wings, and fed 
 
 on manna," — but after a time find themselves baffled, 
 
 toiling on in an uphill road, without friends, in a cold 
 
 neighbourhood, without aid or prospect of success. The 
 
 poet 
 
 u Like a worm goes by the way." 
 
 He hears murmurs loud or suppressed, meets blank looks 
 
On Consistency of Opinion. 375 
 
 or scowling faces, is exposed to the pelting of the pitiless 
 press, and is stunned by the shout of the mob, that gather 
 round him to see what sort of a creature a poet and a 
 philosopher is. What is there to make him proof against 
 all this? A strength of understanding steeled against 
 temptation, and a dear love of truth that smiles opinion to 
 scorn. These he perhaps has not. A lord passes in his 
 coach. Might he not get up, and ride out of the reach of 
 the rabble-rout? He is invited to stop dinner. If he 
 stays he might insinuate some wholesome truths. He 
 drinks in rank poison — flattery ! He recites some verses 
 to the ladies, who smile delicious praise, and thank him 
 through their tears. The master of the house suggests a 
 happy allusion in the turn of an expression, " There's 
 sympathy." This is better than the company he lately 
 left. Pictures, statues meet his raptured eye. Our 
 Ulysses finds himself in the gardens of Alcinous: our 
 truant is fairly caught. He wanders through enchanted 
 ground. Groves, classic groves, nod unto him, and he 
 hears " ancestral voices " hailing him as brother bard ! 
 He sleeps, dreams, and wakes cured of his thriftless pre- 
 judices and morose philanthropy. He likes this courtly 
 and popular sympathy better. " He looks up with awe to 
 kings ; with honour to nobility ; with reverence to magis- 
 trates," &c. He no longer breathes the air of heaven and 
 his own thoughts, but is steeped in that of palaces and 
 courts, and finds it agree better with his constitutional 
 temperament. Oh! how sympathy alters a man from 
 what he was ! 
 
 " I've heard of hearts unkind, 
 Kind deeds with cold returning ; 
 Alas ! the gratitude of man 
 Has often er set me mourning." 
 
 A spirit of contradiction, a wish to monopolise all wisdom, 
 will not account for uniform consistency, for it is sure to 
 defeat and turn against itself. It is " everything by turns, 
 
376 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 and nothing long." It is warped and crooked. It cannot 
 bear the least opposition, and sooner than acquiesce in 
 what others approve it will change sides in a day. It is 
 offended at every resistance to its captious, domineering 
 humour, and will quarrel for straws with its best friends. 
 A person under the guidance of this demon, if every 
 whimsy or occult discovery of his own is not received with 
 acclamation by one party, will wreak his spite by 
 deserting to the other, and carry all his talent for dis- 
 putation with him, sharpened by rage and disaj)pointment. 
 A man, to be steady in a cause, should be more attached 
 to the truth than to the acquiescence of his fellow 
 citizens. 
 
 I can hardly consider Mr. Coleridge a deserter from 
 the cause he first espoused, unless one could tell what 
 cause he ever heartily espoused, or what party he ever 
 belonged to, in downright earnest. He has not been 
 inconsistent with himself at different times, but at all 
 times. He is a sophist, a casuist, a rhetorician, what you 
 please, and might have argued or declaimed to the end of 
 his breath on one side of a question or another, but he 
 never was a pragmatical fellow. He lived in a round of 
 contradictions, and never came to a settled point. His 
 fancy gave the cue to his judgment, and his vanity set his 
 invention afloat in whatever direction he could find most 
 scope for it, or most sympathy, that is, admiration. His 
 Life and Opinidns might naturally receive the title 
 of one of Hume's Essays — A Sceptical Solution of Scep- 
 tical Doubts. To be sure, his Watchman and his 
 Friend breathe a somewhat different tone on subjects of 
 a particular description, both of them apparently pretty 
 high-raised, but whoever will be at the pains to examine 
 them closely, will find them to be voluntaries, fugues, 
 solemn capriccios, not set compositions with any malice 
 prepense in them, or much practical meaning. 1 believe 
 some of his friends, who were indebted to him for the 
 
 
On Consistency of Opinion. 377 
 
 suggestion of plausible reasons for conformity, and an 
 opening to a more qualified view of the letter of their 
 paradoxical principles, have lately disgusted him by the 
 virulence and extravagance to which they have carried 
 hints, of which he never suspected that they would make 
 the least possible use. But if Mr. Coleridge is satisfied 
 with the wandering Moods of his Mind, perhaps this is no 
 reason that others may not reap the solid benefit. He 
 himself is like the idle sea-weed on the ocean, tossed from 
 shore to shore: they are like barnacles fastened to the 
 vessel of state, rotting its goodly timbers ! 
 
 There are some persons who are of too fastidious a turn of 
 mind to like anything long, or to assent twice to the same 
 
 opinion. always sets himself to prop the falling 
 
 cause, to nurse the ricketty bantling. He takes the part 
 which he thinks in most need of his support, not so much 
 out of magnanimity, as to prevent too great a degree of 
 presumption or self-complacency on the triumphant side. 
 " Though truth be truth, yet he contrives to throw such 
 changes of vexation on it as it may lose some colour." I 
 have been delighted to hear him expatiate with the most 
 natural and affecting simplicity on a favourite passage or 
 picture, and all the while afraid of agreeing with him, lest 
 he should instantly turn round and unsay all that he had 
 said, for fear of my going away with too good an opinion 
 of my own taste, or too great an admiration of my idol — 
 and his own. I dare not ask his opinion twice, if J have 
 got a favourable sentence once, lest he should belie his 
 own sentiments to stagger mine. I have heard him talk 
 divinely (like one inspired) of Boccaccio, and the story of 
 the Pot of Basil, describing " how it grew, and it grew, 
 and it grew," till you saw it spread its tender leaves in 
 the light of his eye, and wave in the tremulous sound of 
 his voice ; and yet if you asked him about it another time, 
 he would, perhaps, affect to think little of it, or to have 
 forgotten the circumstance. His enthusiasm is fickle and 
 
378 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 treacherous. The instant he finds it shared in common, 
 he backs out of it. His enmity is equally refined, but 
 hardly so unsocial. His exquisitely-turned invectives 
 display all the beauty of scorn, and impart elegance to 
 vulgarity. He sometimes finds out minute excellences, and 
 cries up one thing to put you out of conceit with another. 
 If you want him to praise Sir Joshua con amove, in his 
 best manner, you should begin with saying something 
 about Titian — if you seem an idoliser of Sir Joshua, he 
 will immediately turn off the discourse, gliding like the 
 serpent before Eve, wary and beautiful, to the graces of 
 Sir Peter Lely, or ask if you saw a Vandyke the other day, 
 which he does not think Sir Joshua could stand near. 
 But find fault with the Lake Poets, and mention some 
 pretended patron of rising genius, and you need not fear 
 but he will join in with you and go all lengths that you 
 can wish him. You may calculate upon him there. 
 " Pride elevates, and joy brightens his face." And, indeed, 
 so eloquent is he, and so beautiful in his eloquence, that 
 I myself, with all my freedom from gall and bitterness, 
 could listen to him untired, and without knowing how the 
 the time went, losing and neglecting many a meal and 
 hour, 
 
 — " From morn to noon, 
 
 From noon to dewy eve, a summer's day." 
 
 When I cease to hear him quite, other tongues, turned 
 to what accents they may of praise or blame, would sound 
 dull, ungrateful, out of tune, and harsh, in the com- 
 parison. 
 
 An overstrained enthusiasm produces a capriciousness 
 in taste, as well as too much indifference. A person who 
 sets no bounds to his admiration takes a surfeit of his 
 favourites. He over- does the thing. He gets sick of his 
 own everlasting praises, and affected ruptures. His pre- 
 ferences are a great deal too violent to last. He wears 
 out an author in a week, that might last him a year, or his 
 
On Consistency of Opinion. 379 
 
 life, by the eagerness with which he devours him. Every 
 such favourite is in his turn the greatest writer in the 
 world. Compared with the lord of the ascendent for the 
 time being, Shakspeare is commonplace, and Milton a 
 pedant, a little insipid or so. Some of these prodigies 
 require to be dragged out of their lurking-places, and 
 cried up to the top of the compass; their traits are 
 subtle, and must be violently obtruded on the sight. But 
 the effort of exaggerated praise, though it may stagger 
 others, tires the maker, and we hear of them no more after 
 awhile. Others take their turns, are swallowed whole, 
 undigested, ravenously, and disappear in the same manner. 
 Good authors share the fate of bad, and a library in a few 
 years is nearly dismantled. It is a pity thus to outlive 
 our admiration, and exhaust our relish of what is excellent. 
 Actors and actresses are disposed of in the same conclusive 
 peremptory way : some of them are talked of for months, 
 nay, years ; then it is almost an offence to mention them. 
 Friends, acquaintance, go the same road : are now asked 
 to come six days in the week, then warned against coming 
 the seventh. The smallest faults are soon magnified in 
 those we think too highly of: but where shall we find 
 perfection ? If we will put up with nothing short of that, 
 we shall have neither pictures, books, nor friends left — 
 we shall have nothing but our own absurdities to keep 
 company with ! "In all things a regular and moderate 
 indulgence is the best security for a lasting enjoyment." 
 
 There are numbers who judge by the event, and change 
 with fortune. They extol the hero of the day, and join 
 the prevailing clamour, whatever it is ; so that the fluc- 
 tuating state of public opinion regulates their feverish, 
 restless enthusiasm, like a thermometer. They blow hot 
 or cold, according as the wind sets favourably or otherwise. 
 With such people the only infallible test of merit is 
 success ; and no arguments are true that have not a large 
 or powerful majority on their side. They go by appear- 
 
380 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 ances. Their vanity, not the truth, is their ruling object. 
 They are not the last to quit a falling cause, and they are 
 the first to hail the rising sun. Their minds want 
 sincerity, modesty, and keeping. With them — 
 
 " To have done is to hang 
 
 Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 
 In monumental mockery." 
 
 They still, " with one consent, praise new-born gauds," 
 and Fame, as they construe it, is 
 
 " Like a fashionable host, 
 
 That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand; 
 And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, 
 Grasps the in comer. Welcome ever smiles, 
 And Farewell goes out sighing." 
 
 Such servile flatterers made an idol of Buonaparte while 
 fortune smiled upon him, but when it left him, they 
 removed him from his pedestal in the cabinet of their 
 vanity, as we take down the picture of a relation that has 
 died without naming us in his will. The opinion of such 
 triflers is worth nothing ; it is merely an echo. We do 
 not want to be told the event of a question, but the rights 
 of it. Truth is in their theory nothing but Ci noise and 
 inexplicable dumb show." They are the heralds, out- 
 riders, and trumpeters in the procession of fame ; are 
 more loud and boisterous than the rest, and give them- 
 selves great airs, as the avowed patrons and admirers of 
 genius and merit. As there are many who change their 
 sentiments with circumstances (as they decided lawsuits 
 in Eabelais with the dice), so there are others who change 
 them with their acquaintance. " Tell me your company, and 
 I'll tell you your opinions," might be said to many a man 
 who piques himself on a select and superior view of things, 
 distinct from the vulgar. Individuals of this class are 
 quick and versatile, but they are not beforehand with 
 opinion. They catch it, when it is pointed out to them, 
 
On Consistency of Opinion. 381 
 
 and take it at the rebound, instead of giving the first 
 impulse. Their minds are a light, luxuriant soil, into 
 which thoughts are easily transplanted, and shoot up with 
 uncommon sprightliness and vigour. They wear the 
 dress of other people's minds very gracefully and un- 
 consciously. They tell you your own opinion, or very 
 gravely repeat an observation you have made to them 
 about half a year afterwards. They let you into the 
 delicacies and luxuries of Spenser with great disinter- 
 estedness, in return for your having introduced that author 
 to their notice. They prefer West to Eaphael, Stothard 
 to Eubens, till they are told better. Still they are acute 
 in the main, and good judges in their way. By trying 
 to improve their tastes, and reform their notions accord- 
 ing to an ideal standard, they perhaps spoil and muddle 
 their native faculties, rather than do them any good. 
 Their first manner is their best, because it is the most 
 natural. It is well not to go out of ourselves, and to be 
 contented to take up with what we are, for better for 
 worse. We can neither beg, borrow, nor steal character- 
 istic excellences. Some views and modes of thinking 
 suit certain minds, as certain colours suit certain com- 
 plexions. We may part with very shining and very 
 useful qualities, without getting better ones to supply 
 them. Mocking is catching, only in regard to defects. 
 Mimicry is always dangerous. 
 
 It is not necessary to change our road in order to 
 advance on our journey. We should cultivate the spot 
 of ground we possess to the utmost of our power, though 
 it may be circumscribed and comparatively barren. A 
 rolling stone gathers no moss. People may collect all the 
 wisdom they will ever attain, quite as well by staying at 
 home as by travelling abroad. There is no use in shifting 
 from place to place, from side to side, or from subject to 
 subject. You have always to begin again, and never finish 
 any course of study or observation. By adhering to the 
 
382 On Consistency of Opinion. 
 
 same principles you do not become stationary. You 
 enlarge, correct, and consolidate your reasonings, without 
 contradicting and shuffling about in your conclusions. 
 If truth consisted in hasty assumptions and petulant con- 
 tradictions, there might be some ground for this whiffling 
 and violent inconsistency. But the face of truth, like that 
 of nature, is different and the same. The first outline of 
 an opinion, and the general tone of thinking, may be sound 
 and correct, though we may spend any quantity of time 
 and pains in working up and uniting the parts at sub- 
 sequent sittings. If we have misconceived the character 
 of the countenance altogether at first, no alterations will 
 bring it right afterwards. Those who mistake white for 
 black in the first instance, may as well mistake black for 
 white when they reverse their canvas. I do not see what 
 security they can have in their present opinions, who 
 build their pretensions to wisdom on the total folly, rash- 
 ness, and extravagance (to say no worse) of their former 
 ones. The perspective may change with years and ex- 
 perience : we may see certain things nearer, and others 
 more remote ; but the great masses and landmarks will 
 remain, though thrown into shadow and tinged by the 
 intervening atmosphere : so the laws of the understanding, 
 the truth of nature, will remain, and cannot be thrown 
 into utter confusion and perplexity by our blunders or 
 caprice, like the objects in Hogarth's Bides of Perspec- 
 tive, where everything is turned upside down, or thrust 
 out of its well-known place. I cannot understand how 
 our political Harlequins feel after all their summersaults 
 and metamorphoses. They can hardly, I should think, 
 look at themselves in the glass, or walk across the room 
 without stumbling. This at least would be the case if 
 they had the least reflection or self-knowledge. But they 
 judge from pique and vanity solely. There should be a 
 certain decorum in life, as in a picture, without which it is 
 neither useful nor agreeable. If my opinions are not 
 
Project for a New Theory. 383 
 
 right, at any rate they are the best I have been able to 
 form, and better than any others I could take up at random, 
 or out of perversity, now. Contrary opiuions vitiate one 
 another, and destroy the simplicity and clearness of the 
 mind : nothing is good that has not a beginning, a middle, 
 and an end ; and I would wish my thoughts to be 
 
 " Linked each to each by natural piety." 
 1821. 
 
 ESSAY XI. 
 
 Project for a New Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation. 
 
 Whex I was about fourteen (as long ago as the year 
 1792), in consequence of a dispute, one day after coming 
 out of meeting, between my father and an old lady of the 
 congregation, respecting the repeal of the Corporation and 
 Test Acts and the limits of religious toleration, I set 
 about forming in my head (the first time I ever attempted 
 to think) the following system of political rights and 
 general jurisprudence. 
 
 It was this circumstance that decided the fate of my 
 future life ; oi rather, I would say it was from an original 
 bias or craving to be satisfied of the reason of things, that 
 I seized hold of this accidental opportunity to indulge in 
 its uneasy and unconscious determination. Mr. Currie, 
 my old tutor at Hackney, may still have the rough 
 draught of this speculation, which I gave him with tears 
 in my eyes, and which he good-naturedly accepted in lieu 
 of the customary themes, and as a proof that I was no idler, 
 but that my inability to produce a line on the ordinary- 
 school topics arose from my being involved in more diffi- 
 cult and abstuse matters. He must smile at the so oft- 
 repeated charge against me of florid flippancy and tinsel. 
 If from those briars I have since plucked roses, what 
 labour has it not cost me ? The Test and Corporation 
 Acts were repealed the other day. How would my father 
 
384 Project for a New Theory of 
 
 have rejoiced if this had happened in his time, and in con- 
 cert with his old friends Dr. Price, Dr. Priestly, and 
 others ! but now that there is no one to care about it, they 
 give as a boon to indifference what they so long refused to 
 justice, and thus ascribed by some to the liberality of the 
 age ! Spirit of contradiction ! when wilt thou cease to 
 rule over sublunary affairs, as the moon governs the tides ? 
 Not till the unexpected stroke of a comet throws up a 
 new breed of men and animals from the bowels of the 
 earth ; nor then neither, since it is included in the very 
 idea of all life, power, and motion. For and against are 
 inseparable terms. But not to wander any farther from 
 the point — 
 
 I began with trying to define what a right meant ; and 
 this I settled with myself was not simply that which is 
 good or useful in itself, but that which is thought so by 
 the individual, and which has the sanction of his will as 
 such. 1. Because the determining what is good in itself 
 is an endless question. 2. Because one person's having a 
 right to any good, and another being made the judge of it, 
 leaves him without any security for its being exercised to 
 his advantage, whereas self-love is a natural guarantee for 
 our self-interest. 3. A thing being willed is the most 
 absolute moral reason for its existence : that a thing is 
 good in itself is no reason whatever why it should exist, 
 till the will clothes it with a power to act as a motive ; 
 and there is certainly nothing to prevent this will from 
 taking effect (no law or admitted plea above it) but another 
 will opposed to it, and which forms a right on the same 
 principle. A good is only so far a right, inasmuch as it 
 virtually determines the will ; for a right meant that which 
 contains within itself, and as respects the bosom in which 
 it is lodged, a cogent and unanswerable reason why it 
 should exist. Suppose I have a violent aversion to one 
 thing and as strong an attachment to something else, and 
 that there is no other being in the world but myself, shall 
 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 385 
 
 I not have a self-evident right, full title, liberty, to pursue 
 the one and avoid the other ? That is to say, in other 
 words, there can be no authority to interpose between the 
 strong natural tendency of the will and its desired effect, 
 but the will of another. It may be replied that reason, 
 that affection, may interpose between the will and the act ; 
 but there are motives that influence the conduct by first 
 altering the will; and the point at issue is, that these 
 being away, what other principle or lever is there always 
 left to appeal to, before we come to blows ? Now, such a 
 principle is to be found in self-interest ; and such a barrier 
 against the violent will is erected by the limits which this 
 principle necessarily sets to itself in the claims of different 
 individuals. Thus, then, a right is not that which is 
 right in itself, or best for the whole, or even for the 
 individual, but that which is good in his own eyes, and 
 according to his own will ; and to which, among a number 
 of equally selfish and self-willed beings, he can lay claim, 
 allowing the same latitude and allowance to others. Poli- 
 tical justice is that which assigns the limits of these 
 individual rights in society, or it is the adjustment of 
 force against force, of will against will, to prevent worse 
 consequences. In the savage state there is nothing but an 
 appeal to brute force, or the right of the strongest; 
 Politics lays down a rule to curb and measure out the 
 wills of individuals in equal portions ; Morals has a 
 higher standard still, and ought never to appeal to force 
 in any case whatever. Hence I always found something 
 wanting in Mr. Godwin's Enquiry concerning Political 
 Justice (which I read soon after with great avidity, and 
 hoped, from its title and its vast reputation, to get entire 
 satisfaction from it), for he makes no distinction between 
 political justice, which implies an appeal to force, and 
 moral justice, which implies only an appeal to reason. It 
 is surely a distinct question, what you can persuade people 
 to do by argument and fair discussion, and what you may 
 
 2 c 
 
386 Project for a New Theory of 
 
 lawfully compel them to do, when reason and remonstrance 
 fail. But in Mr. Godwin's system the " omnipotence of 
 reason " supersedes the use of law and government, merges 
 the imperfection of the means in the grandeur of the end, 
 and leaves but one class of ideas or motives, the highest 
 and the least attainable possible. So promises and oaths 
 are said to be of no more value than common breath ; nor 
 would they, if every word we uttered was infalKble and 
 oracular, as if delivered from a Tripod. Bii . this is 
 pragmatical, and putting an imaginary for a reai state of 
 things. Again, right and duties, according to Mr. Godwin, 
 are reciprocal. I could not comprehend this without an 
 arbitrary definition that took away the meaning. In my 
 sense, a man might have a right, a discriminating power, 
 to do something, which others could not deprive him of, 
 without a manifest infraction of certain rules laid down 
 for the peace and order of society, but which it might be 
 his duty to waive upon good reasons shown ; rights are 
 seconded by force, duties are things of choice. This is the 
 import of the words in common speech : why then pass 
 over this distinction in a work confessedly rhetorical as 
 well as logical, that is, which laid an equal stress on sound 
 and sense ? Eight, therefore, has a personal or selfish 
 reference, as it is founded on the law which determines a 
 man's actions in regard to his own being and well-being ; 
 and political justice is that which assigns the limits of 
 these individual rights on their compatibility or incom- 
 patibility with each other in society. Eight, in a word, 
 is the duty which each man owes to himself ; or it is that 
 portion of the general good of which (as being principally 
 interested) he is made the special judge, and which is put 
 under his immediate keeping. 
 
 The next question I asked myself was, what is law and 
 the real and necessary ground of civil government ? The 
 answer to this is found in the former statement. Law is 
 something to abridge, or, more properly speaking, to ascer- 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 387 
 
 tain, the bounds of the original right, and to coerce the 
 will of individuals in the community. Whence, then, has 
 the community such a right ? It can only arise in self- 
 defence, or from the necessity of maintaining the equal 
 rights of every one, and of opposing force to force in case 
 of any violent and unwarrantable infringement of them. 
 Society consists of a given number of individuals ; and the 
 aggregate right of government is only the consequence of 
 these inherent rights, balancing and neutralising one 
 another. How those who deny natural rights get at any 
 sort of right, divine or human, I am at a loss to discover ; 
 for whatever exists in combination, exists beforehand in an 
 elementary state. The world is composed of atoms, and 
 a machine cannot be made without materials. First, then, 
 it follows that law or government is not the mere creature 
 of a social compact, since each person has a certain right 
 which he is bound to defend against another without 
 asking that other's leave, or else the right would always 
 be at the mercy of whoever chose to invade it. There 
 would be a right to do wrong, but none to resist it. Thus 
 I have a natural right to defend my life against a murderer, 
 without any mutual compact between us ; hence society 
 has an aggregate right of the same kind, and to make a 
 law to that effect, forbidding and punishing murder. If 
 there be no such immediate value and attachment to life 
 felt by the individual, and a consequent justifiable de- 
 termination to defend it, then the formal pretension of 
 society to vindicate a right, which, according to this 
 reasoning, has no existence in itself, must be founded on 
 air, on a word, or a lawyer's ipse dixit. Secondly, society, 
 or government, as such, has no right to trench upon the 
 liberty or rights of the individuals its members, except as 
 these last are, as it were, forfeited by interfering with and 
 destroying one another, like opposite mechanical forces or 
 quantities in arithmetic. Put the basis that each man's 
 will is a sovereign law to itself: this can only hold in 
 
338 Project for a New Theory of 
 
 society as long as he does not meddle with others ; but 
 as long as he does not do this, the first principle retains 
 its force, for there is no other principle to impeach or 
 overrule it. The will of society is not a sufficient plea ; 
 since this is, or ought to be, made up of the wills or rights 
 of the individuals composing it, which by the supposition 
 remain entire, and consequently without power to act. 
 The good of society is not a sufficient plea, for individuals 
 are only bound (on compulsion) not to do it harm, or to 
 be barely just : benevolence and virtue are voluntary 
 qualities. For instance, if two persons are obliged to do 
 all that is possible for the good of both, this must either 
 be settled voluntarily between them, and then it is friend< 
 ship, and not force ; or if this is not the case, it is plain 
 that one must be the slave, and lie at the caprice and 
 mercy of the other : it will be one will forcibly regulating 
 two bodies. But if each is left master of his own person 
 and actions, with only the implied proviso of not encroach- 
 ing on those of the other, then both may continue free and 
 independent, and contented in their several spheres. One 
 individual has no right to interfere with the employment 
 of my muscular powers, or to put violence on my person, 
 to force me to contribute to the most laudable undertaking 
 if I do not approve of it, any more than I have to force 
 him to assist me in the direct contrary : if one has not, 
 ten have not, nor a million, any such arbitrary right over 
 me. What one can be made to do for a million is very 
 trifling : what a million may do by being left free in all 
 that merely concerns themselves, and not subject to the 
 perpetual caprice and insolence of authority, and pretext 
 of the public good, is a very different calculation. By 
 giving up the principle of political independence, it is not 
 the million that will govern the one, but the one that will 
 in time give law to the million. There are some things 
 that cannot be free in natural society, and against which 
 there is a natural law ; for instance, no one can be allowed 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 389 
 
 to knock out another's brains or to fetter his limbs with 
 impunity. And government is bound to prevent the same 
 violations of liberty and justice. The question is, whether 
 it would not be possible for a government to exist, and for 
 a system of laws to be framed, that confined itself to the 
 punishment of such offences, and left all the rest (except 
 the suppression of force by force; optional or matter of 
 mutual compact. What are a man's natural rights ? Those, 
 the infringement of which cannot on any supposition go 
 unpunished : by leaving all but cases of necessity to 
 choice and reason, much would be perhaps gained, and 
 nothing lost. 
 
 Corollary 1. It results from the foregoing statement, 
 that there is nothing naturally to restrain or oppose the 
 will of one man, but the will of another meeting it. Thus, 
 in a desert island, it is evident that my will and rights 
 would be absolute and unlimited, and I might say with 
 Eobinson Crusoe, "I am monarch of all I survey." 
 
 Corollary 2. It is coming into society that circum- 
 scribes my will and rights, by establishing equal and 
 mutual rights, instead of the original uncircumscribed 
 ones. They are still " founded as the rock," though not 
 so broad and general as the casing air, for the only thing 
 that limits them is the solidity of another right, no better 
 than my own, and, like stones in a building, or a mosaic 
 pavement, each remains not the less firmly riveted to its 
 place, though it cannot encroach upon the next to it. I 
 do not belong to the state, nor am I a nonentity in it, but 
 I am one part of it, and independent in it, for that very 
 reason that every one in it is independent of me. Equality, 
 instead of being destroyed by society, results from and is 
 improved by it ; for in politics, as in physics, the action 
 and reaction are the same : the right of resistance on their 
 part implies the right of self-defence on mine. In a 
 theatre, each person has a right to his own seat, by the 
 supposition that he has no right to intrude into any one 
 
390 Project for a New Theory of 
 
 else's. They are convertible propositions. Away, then, 
 with the notion that liberty and equality are inconsistent. 
 But here is the artifice : by merging the rights and inde- 
 pendence of the individual in the fictitious order of society, 
 those rights become arbitrary, capricious, equivocal, 
 removable at the pleasure of the state or ruling power ; 
 there is nothing substantial or durable implied in them : 
 if each has no positive claim, naturally, those of all taken 
 together can mount up to nothing ; right and justice are 
 mere blanks to be filled up with arbitrary will, and the 
 people have thenceforward no defence against the govern- 
 ment. On the other hand, suppose these rights to be not 
 empty names or artificial arrangements, but original and 
 inherent like solid atoms, then it is not in the power of 
 government to annihilate one of them, whatever may be 
 the confusion arising from their struggle for mastery, or 
 before they can settle into order and harmony. Mr. 
 Burke talks of the reflections and refractions of the rays 
 of light as altering their primary essence and direction. 
 But if there were no original rays of light, there could be 
 neither refraction, nor reflections. Why, then, does he try 
 by cloudy sophistry to blot the sun out of heaven ? One 
 body impinges against and impedes another in the fall, 
 but it could not do this, but for the principle of gravity. 
 The author of the Sublime and Beautiful would have a 
 single atom outweigh the great globe itself ; or an empty 
 title, a bloated privilege, or a grievous wrong overturn the 
 entire mass of truth and justice. The question between 
 the author and his opponents appears to be simply this : 
 whether politics, or the general good, is an affair of reason 
 or imagination ! and this seems decided by another con- 
 sideration, viz., that Imagination is the judge of individual 
 things, and Reason of generals. Hence the great importance 
 of the principle of universal suffrage ; for if the vote and 
 choice of a single individual goes for nothing, so, by parity 
 of reasoning, may that of all the rest of the community : but 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 391 
 
 if the choice of every man in the community is held sacred, 
 then what must be the weight and value of the whole. 
 
 Many persons object that by this means property is not 
 represented, and so, to avoid that, they would have nothing 
 but property represented, at the same time that they pretend 
 that if the elective franchise were thrown open to the poor, 
 they would be wholly at the command of the rich, to the 
 prejudice and exclusion of the middle and independent 
 classes of society. Property always has a natural influence 
 and authority: it is only people without property that 
 have no natural protection, and require every artificial and 
 legal one.. Those that have much, shall have none; and 
 those that have little, shall have less. This proverb is no 
 less true in public than in public life. The better orders 
 (as they are called, and who, in virtue of this title, would 
 assume a monopoly in the direction of state affairs) are 
 merely and in plain English those who are better ojf than 
 others ; and as they get the wished-for monopoly into 
 their hands, others will uniformly be worse off, and will 
 sink lower and lower in the scale ; so that it is essentially 
 requisite to extend the elective franchise in order to 
 counteract the excess of the great and increasing goodness 
 of the better orders to themselves. I see no reason to 
 suppose that in any case popular feeling (if free course 
 were given to it) would bear down public opinion. 
 Literature is at present pretty nearly on the footing of 
 universal suffrage, yet the public defer sufficiently to the 
 critics ; and when no party bias interferes, and the govern- 
 ment do not make a point of running a writer down, the 
 verdict is tolerably fair and just. I do not say that the 
 result might not be equally satisfactory, when literature 
 was patronised more immediately by the great ; but then 
 lords and ladies had no interest in praising a bad piece 
 and condemning a good one. If they could have laid a 
 tax on the town for not going to it, they would have run a 
 bad play forty nights together, or the whole year round, 
 
392 Project for a New Theory of 
 
 without scruple. As things stand, the worse the law, the 
 better for the lawmakers : it takes everything from others 
 to give to them. It is common to insist on universal 
 suffrage and the ballot together. But if the first were 
 allowed, the second would be unnecessary. The ballot 
 is only useful as a screen from arbitrary power. There is 
 nothing manly or independent to recommend it. 
 
 Corollary 3. If I was out at sea in a boat with &jure 
 divino monarch, and he wanted to throw me overboard, I 
 would not let him. No gentleman would ask such a thing, 
 no freeman would submit, to it. Has he, then, a right to 
 dispose of the lives and liberties of thirty millions of 
 men ? Or have they more right than I have to resist his 
 demands ? They have thirty millions of times that right, 
 if they had a particle of the same spirit that I have. It 
 is not the individual, then, whom in this case I fear (to 
 me "there's no divinity doth hedge a king"), but thirty 
 millions of his subjects that call me to account in his 
 name, and who are of a most approved and indisputable 
 loyalty, and who have both the right and power. The 
 power rests with the multitude, but let them beware how 
 the exercise of it turns against their own rights ! It is 
 not the idol but the worshippers that are to be dreaded, 
 and who, by degrading one of their fellows, render them- 
 selves liable to be branded with the same indignities. 
 
 Corollary 4. No one can be born a slave ; for my 
 limbs are my own, and the power and the will to use them 
 are anterior to all laws, and independent of the control of 
 every other person. No one acquires a right over another 
 but that other acquires some reciprocal right over him ; 
 therefore the relation of master and slave is a contra- 
 diction in political logic. Hence, also, it follows that 
 combinations among labourers for the rise of wages are 
 always just and lawful, as much as those among master 
 manufacturers to keep them down. A man's labour is his 
 own, at least as much as another's goods ; and he may 
 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 393 
 
 starve if lie pleases, but he may refuse to work except on 
 his own terms. The right of property is reducible to 
 this simple principle, that one man has not a right to the 
 produce of another's labour, but each man has a right to 
 the benefit of his own exertions and the use of his natural 
 and inalienable powers, unless for a supposed equivalent 
 and by mutual consent. Personal liberty and property 
 therefore rest upon the same foundation. I am glad to 
 see that Mr. Macculloch, in his Essay on Wages, admits 
 the right of combination among journeymen and others. 
 I laboured this point hard, and, I think, satisfactorily, a 
 good while ago, in my Beply to Mr. Malthus. " Throw 
 your bread upon the waters, and after many days you 
 shall find it again." 
 
 There are four things that a man may especially 
 call his own, 1. His person. 2. His actions. 3. His 
 property 4. His opinions. Let us see how each of these 
 claims unavoidably circumscribes and modifies those of 
 others, on the principle of abstract equity and necessity 
 and independence above laid down. 
 
 First, as to the Eights of Persons. My intention is 
 to show that the right of society to make laws to coerce 
 the will of others, is founded on the necessity of repelling 
 the wanton encroachment of that will on their rights ; 
 that is, strictly on the right of self-defence or resistance 
 to aggression. Society comes forward and says, " Let us 
 alone, and we will let you alone, otherwise we must see 
 which is strongest;" its object is not to patronise or 
 advise individuals for their good, and against their will, 
 but to protect itself: meddling with others forcibly on 
 any other plea or for any other purpose is impertinence. 
 But equal rights destroy one another ; nor can there be a 
 right to impossible or impracticable things. Let A, B, 
 C, H, &c, be different component parts of any society, 
 each claiming to be the centre and master of a certain 
 sphere of activity and self-determination : as long as each 
 
394 Project for a Netv Theory of 
 
 keeps within his own line of demarcation there is no 
 harm done, nor any penalty incurred — it is only the 
 superfluous and overbearing will of particular persons that 
 must be restrained or lopped off by the axe of the law. 
 Let A be the culprit : B, C, D, &c., or the rest of the 
 community, are plaintiffs against A, and wish to prevent 
 his taking any unfair or unwarranted advantage over 
 them. They set up no pretence to dictate or domineer 
 over him, but merely to hinder his dictating to and 
 domineering over them ; and in this, having both might 
 and right on their side, they have no difficulty in putting 
 it in execution. Every man's independence and discre- 
 tionary power over what peculiarly and exclusively 
 concerns himself, is his castle (whether round, square, or, 
 according to Mr. Owen's new map of improvements, in 
 the form of a parallelogram). As long as he keeps 
 within this, he is safe — society has no hold of him: 
 it is when he quits it to attack his neighbours that they 
 resort to reprisals, and make short work of the interloper. 
 It is, however, time to endeavour to point out in what this 
 natural division of right, and separate advantage consists. 
 In the first place, A, B, C, D have the common and 
 natural rights of persons, in so far that none of these 
 has a right to offer violence to, or cause bodily pain or 
 injury to any of the others. Sophists laugh at natural 
 rights : they might as well deny that we have natural 
 persons; for while the last distinction holds true and 
 good by the constitution of things, certain consequences 
 must and will follow from it — " while this machine is to 
 us Hamlet," &c. For instance, I should like to know 
 whether Mr. Burke, with his Sublime and Beautiful 
 fancies, would deny that each person has a particular 
 body and senses belonging to him, so that he feels a pecu- 
 liar and natural interest in whatever affects these more 
 than another can, and whether such a peculiar and 
 paramount interest does not imply a direct and unavoid- 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation, 395 
 
 able right in maintaining this circle of individuality 
 inviolate. To argue otherwise is to assert that indiffer- 
 ence, or that which does not feel either the good or the 
 ill, is as capable a judge and zealous a discriminator of 
 right and wrong as that which does. The right, then, 
 is coeval and co-extended with the interest, not a product 
 of convention, but inseparable from the order of the 
 universe ; the doctrine itself is natural and solid ; it is 
 the contrary fallacy that is made of air and words. 
 Mr. Burke, in such a question, was like a man out at sea 
 in a haze, and could never tell the difference between 
 land and clouds. If another break my arm by violence, 
 this will not certainly give him additional health or 
 strength ; if he stun me by a blow or inflict torture on my 
 limbs, it is I who feel the pain, and not he; and it is 
 hard if I, who am the sufferer, am not allowed to be the 
 judge. That another should pretend to deprive me of it, 
 or pretend to judge for me, and set up his will against 
 mine, in what concerns this portion of my existence — 
 where I have all at stake and he nothing — is not merely 
 injustice, but impudence. The circle of personal security 
 and right, then, is not an imaginary and arbitrary line 
 fixed by law and the will of the prince, or the scaly finger 
 of Mr. Hobbes's Leviathan, but is real and inherent in the 
 nature of things, and itself the foundation of law and 
 justice. " Hands off is fair play " — according to the old 
 adage. One, therefore, has not a right to lay violent hands 
 on another, or to infringe on the sphere of his personal 
 identity ; one must not run foul of another, or he is 
 liable to be repelled and punished for the offence. If you 
 meet an Englishman suddenly in the street, he will run 
 up against you sooner than get out of your way, which 
 last he thinks a compromise of his dignity and a relin- 
 quishment of his purpose, though he expects »you to get 
 out of his. A Frenchman in the same circumstances will 
 come up close to you, and try to walk over you, as if there 
 
396 Project for a New Theory of 
 
 was no one in his way ; but if yon take no notice of him, 
 he will step on one side, and make you a low bow. The 
 one is a fellow of stubborn will, the other a petit maitre. 
 An Englishman at a play mounts upon a bench, and 
 refuses to get down at the request of another, who 
 threatens to call him to account the next day. " Yes," is 
 the answer of the first, "if your master will let you!" 
 His abuse of liberty, he thinks, is justified by the other's 
 want of it. All an Englishman's ideas are modifications 
 of his will ; which shows, in one way, that right is founded 
 on will, since the English are at once the freest and most 
 wilful of all people. If you meet another on the ridge of 
 a precipice, are you to throw each other down ? Certainly 
 not. You are to pass as well as you can. " Give and 
 take," is the rule of natural right, where the right is not 
 all on one side and cannot be claimed entire. Equal 
 weights and scales produce a balance, as much as where 
 the scales are empty : so it does not follow (as our 
 votaries of absolute power would insinuate) that one man's 
 right is nothing because another's is something. But 
 suppose there is not time to pass, and one or other must 
 perish, in the case just mentioned, then each must do the 
 best for himself that he can, and the instinct of self- 
 preservation prevails over everything else. In the streets 
 of London, the passengers take the right hand of one 
 another and the wall alternately ; he who should not 
 conform to this rule would be guilty of a breach of the 
 peace. But if a house were falling, or a mad ox driven 
 furiously by, the rule would be, of course, suspended, 
 because the case would be out of the ordinary. Yet I 
 think I can conceive, and have even known, persons 
 capable of carrying the point of gallantry in political 
 right to such a pitch as to refuse to take a precedence 
 which did not belong to them in the most perilous cir- 
 cumstances, just as a soldier may waive a right to quit 
 his post, and takes his turn in battle. The actual col- 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 397 
 
 lision or case of personal assault and battery, is, then, 
 clearly prohibited, inasmuch as each person's body is 
 clearly denned : but how if A use other means of annoy- 
 ance against B, such as a sword or poison, or resort to 
 what causes other painful sensations besides tangible 
 ones, for instance, certain disagreeable sounds and smells ? 
 Or, if these are included as a violation of personal rights, 
 then how draw the line between them and the employing 
 certain offensive words and gestures or uttering opinions 
 which I disapprove ? This is a puzzler for the dogmatic 
 school ; but they solve the whole difficulty by an assump- 
 tion of utility, which is as much as to tell a person that 
 the way to any place to which he asks a direction is "to 
 follow his nose." We want to know by given marks and 
 rules what is best and useful ; and they assure us very 
 wisely, that this is infallibly and clearly determined by 
 what is best and useful. Let us try something else. It 
 seems no less necessary to erect certain little fortalices, 
 with palisades and outworks about them, for Eight to 
 establish and maintain itself in, than as landmarks to 
 . guide us across the wide waste of Utility. If a person 
 runs a sword through me, or administers poison, or 
 procures it to be administered, the effect, the pain, disease 
 or death is the same, and I have the same right to prevent 
 it, on the principle that I am the sufferer ; that the injury 
 is offered to me, and he is no gainer by it, except for 
 mere malice or caprice, and I therefore remain master 
 and judge of my own remedy, as in the former case ; 
 the principle and definition of right being to secure to 
 each individual the determination and protection of that 
 portion of sensation in which he has the greatest, if 
 not a sole interest, and, as it were, identity with it. 
 Again, as to what are called nuisances, to wit offensive 
 smells, sounds, &c, it is more difficult to determine 
 on the ground that one mans meat is another mans 
 poison. I remember a case occurred in the neighbour- 
 
398 Project for a New Theory oj 
 
 hood where I was, and at the time I was trying my best at 
 this question, which puzzled me a good deal. A rector of 
 a little town in Shropshire, who was at variance with all his 
 parishioners, had conceived a particular spite to a lawyer 
 w r ho lived next door to him, and as a means of annoying 
 him, used to get together all sorts of rubbish, weeds, 
 and unsavoury materials, and set them on fire, so that the 
 smoke should blow over into his neighbour's garden; 
 whenever the wind set in that direction, he said, as a 
 signal to his gardener, " It's a fine Wicksteed wind to-day ;" 
 and the operation commenced. Was this an action of 
 assault and battery, or not? I think it was, for this 
 reason, that the offence was unequivocal, and that the only 
 motive for the proceeding was the giving this offence. 
 The assailant would not like to be served so himself. 
 Mr. Bentham would say, the malice of the motive was a 
 set-off to the injury. I shall leave that prima philosopliia 
 consideration out of the question. A man who knocks out 
 another's brains with a bludgeon may say it pleases him 
 to do so ; but will it please him to have the compliment 
 returned ? If he still persists, in spite of this punishment, 
 there is no preventing him ; but if not, then it is a proof 
 that he thinks the pleasure less than the pain to himself, 
 and consequently to another in the scales of justice. The 
 lex talionis is an excellent test. Suppose a third person 
 (the physician of the place) had said, " It is a fine Eger- 
 ton wind to-day," our rector would have been non-plussed ; 
 for he would have found that, as he suffered all the hard- 
 ship, he had the right to complain of and to resist an 
 action of another, the consequences of which affected 
 principally himself. Now mark : if he had himself had 
 any advantage to derive from the action, which he could 
 not obtain in any other way, then he would feel that his 
 neighbour also had the same plea and right to follow his 
 own course (still this might be a doubtful point) ; but in 
 the other case it would be sheer malice and wanton inter- 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 399 
 
 ference; that is, not the exercise of a right, but the 
 invasion of another's comfort and independence. Has 
 a person, then, a right to play on the horn or on a flute, 
 on the same staircase ? I say, yes ; because it is for his 
 own improvement and pleasure, and not to annoy another ; 
 and because, accordingly, every one in his own case would 
 wish to reserve this or a similar privilege to himself. I 
 do not think a person has a right to beat a drum under 
 one's window, because this is altogether disagreeable, 
 and if there is an extraordinary motive for it. then it is 
 fit that the person should be put to some little incon- 
 venience in removing his sphere of liberty of action to a 
 reasonable distance. A tallow-chandler's shop or a steam- 
 engine is a nuisance in a town, and ought to be removed 
 into the suburbs ; but they are to be tolerated where they 
 are least inconvenient, because they are necessary some- 
 where, and there is no remedying the inconvenience. The 
 right to protest against and to prohibit them rests with the 
 suffering party ; but because this point of the greatest in- 
 terest is less clear in some cases than in others, it does not 
 follow that there is no right or principle of justice in the 
 case. 3. As to matters of contempt and the expression of 
 opinion, I think these do not fall under the head of force, 
 and are not, on that ground, subjects of coercion and law. 
 For example, if a person inflicts a sensation upon me by 
 material means, whether tangible or otherwise, I cannot 
 help that sensation ; I am so far the slave of that other, 
 and have no means of resisting him but by force, which I 
 would define to be material agency. But if another 
 proposes an opinion to me, I am not bound to be of this 
 opinion ; my judgment and will is left free, and therefore 
 I have no right to resort to force to recover a liberty 
 which I have not lost. If I do this to prevent that other 
 from pressing that opinion, it is I who invade his liberty, 
 without warrant, because without necessity. It may be 
 urged that material agency, or force, is used in the adop- 
 
- 400 Project for a New Theory of 
 
 tion of sounds or letters of the alphabet, which I cannot 
 help seeing or hearing. But the injury is not here, but 
 in the moral and artificial inference, which I am at 
 liberty to admit or reject, according to the evidence. 
 There is no force but argument in the case, and it is 
 reason, not the will of another, that gives the law. 
 Further, the opinion expressed, generally concerns not 
 one individual, but the general interest ; and of that my 
 approbation or disapprobation is not a commensurate or 
 the sole judge. I am judge of my own interests, because 
 it is my affair, and no one's else ; but by the same rule, 
 I am not judge, nor have I a veto on that which appeals to 
 all the world, merely because I have a prejudice or fancy 
 against it. But suppose another expresses by signs or 
 words a contempt for me ? Answer. I do not know that 
 he is bound to have a respect for me. Opinion is free ; 
 for if I wish him to have that respect, then he must be 
 left free to judge for himself, and consequently to arrive 
 at and to express the contrary opinion, or otherwise the 
 verdict and testimony I aim at could not be obtained ; 
 just as players must consent to be hissed, if they expect 
 to be applauded. Opinion cannot be forced, for it is not 
 grounded on force, but on evidence and reason, and there- 
 fore these last are the proper instruments to control that 
 opinion, and to make it favourable to what we wish, or 
 hostile to what we disapprove. In what relates to action, 
 the will of another is force, or the determining power : in 
 what relates to opinion, the mere will or ipse dixit of 
 another is of no avail but as it gains over other opinions 
 to its side, and therefore neither needs nor admits of force 
 as a counteracting means to be used against it. But in 
 the case of calumny or indecency : 1. I would say that 
 it is the suppression of truth that gives falsehood its 
 worst edge. What transpires (however maliciously or 
 secretly) in spite of the law, is taken for gospel, and as it 
 is impossible to prevent calumny, so it is impossible to 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 401 
 
 counteract it on the present system, or while every attempt 
 to answer it is attributed to the people's not daring to 
 speak the truth. If any single fact or accident peeps out, 
 the whole character, having this legal screen before it, is 
 supposed to be of a piece ; and the world, defrauded of 
 the means of coming to their own conclusion, naturally 
 infer the worst. Hence the saying, that reputation once 
 gone never returns. If, however, we grant the general 
 licence or liberty of the press, in a scheme where publicity 
 is the great object, it seems a manifest contre-sens that the 
 author should be the only thing screened or kept a secret : 
 either, therefore, an anonymous libeller would be heard 
 with contempt, or if he signed his name thus — , or thus 
 
 , it would be equivalent to being branded publicly 
 
 as a calumniator, or marked with the T. F. (travail force) 
 or the broad E. (rogue) on his back. These are thought 
 sufficient punishments, and yet they rest on opinion with- 
 out stripes or labour. As to indecency, in proportion as 
 it is flagrant is the shock and resentment against it ; and 
 as vanity is the source of indecency, so the universal dis- 
 countenance and shame is its most effectual antidote. If 
 it is public, it produces immediate reprisals from public 
 opinion which no brow can stand ; and if secret, it had 
 better be left so. No one can then say it is obtruded on 
 him ; and if he will go in search of it, it seems odd he 
 should call upon the law to frustrate the object of his 
 pursuit. Further, at the worst, society has its remedy in 
 its own hands whenever its moral sense is outraged, that is, 
 it may send to Coventry, or excommunicate like the church 
 of old; for though it may have no right to prosecute, 
 it is not bound to protect or patronise, unless by voluntary 
 consent of all parties concerned. Secondly, as to rights 
 of action, or personal liberty. These have no limit but 
 the rights of persons or property aforesaid, or to be here- 
 after named. They are the channels in which the others 
 run without injury and without impediment, as a river 
 
 2 D 
 
402 Project for a New Theory of 
 
 within its banks. Every one has a right to use his 
 natural powers in. the way most agreeable to himself, 
 and which he deems most conducive to his own advantage, 
 provided he does not interfere with the corresponding 
 rights and liberties of others. He has no right to coerce 
 them by a decision of his individual will, and as long as 
 he abstains from this he has no right to be coerced by 
 an expression of the aggregate will, that is, by law. 
 The law is he emanation of the aggregate will, and this 
 will receives its warrant to act only from the forcible 
 pressure from without, and its indispensable resistance to 
 it. Let us see how this will operate to the pruning and 
 curtailment of law. The rage of legislation is the first 
 vice of society ; it ends by limiting it to as few things as 
 possible. 1. There can, according to the principle here 
 imperfectly sketched, be no laws for the enforcement of 
 morals ; because morals have to do with the will and 
 affections, and the law only puts a restraint on these. 
 Every one is politically constituted the judge of what is 
 best for himself; it is only when he encroaches on others 
 that he can be called to account. He has no right to say 
 to others, You shall do as I do : how then should they 
 have a right to say to him, You shall do as we do ? Mere 
 numbers do not convoy the right, for the law addresses 
 not one, but the. whole community. For example, there 
 cannot rightly be a law to set a man in the stocks for 
 getting drunk. It injures his health, you say. That is 
 his concern, and not mine. But it is detrimental to his 
 affairs : if so, he suffers most by it. But it is ruinous to 
 his wife and family : he is their natural and legal 
 guardian. But they are thrown upon the parish : the 
 parish need not take the burden upon itself, unless it 
 chooses or has agreed to do so. If a man is not kind to 
 or fond of his wife I see no law to make him. If he beats 
 her, or threatens her life, she as clearly has a right to call 
 in the aid of a constable or justice of peace. I do not see, 
 
 i 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 403 
 
 in like manner, how there can be law against gambling 
 (against cheating there may), nor against usury. A man 
 gives twenty, forty, a hundred per cent, with his eyes open, 
 but would he do it if strong necessity did not impel him '? 
 Certainly no man would give double if he could get the 
 same advantage for half. There are circumstances in 
 which a rope to save me from drowning, or a draught of 
 water, would be worth all I have. In like manner, 
 lotteries are fair things; for the loss is inconsiderable, 
 and the advantage may be incalculable. I do not believe 
 the poor put into them, but the reduced rich, the shabby- 
 genteel. Players were formerly prohibited as a nuisance, 
 and fortune-tellers still are liable to the Vagrant Act, 
 which the parson of the parish duly enforces, in his zeal 
 to prevent cheating and imposture, while he himself has 
 his two livings, and carries off a tenth of the produce of 
 the soil. Eape is an offence clearly punishable by law ; 
 but I would not say that simple incontinence is so. I 
 will give one more example, which, though quaint, may 
 explain the distinction I aim at. A man may commit 
 suicide if he pleases, without being responsible to any 
 one. He may quit the world as he would quit the country 
 where he was born. But if any person were to fling 
 himself from the gallery into the pit of a playhouse, so 
 as to endanger the lives of others, if he did not succeed 
 in killing himself, he would render himself liable to 
 punishment for the attempt, if it were to be supposed 
 that a person so desperately situated would care about 
 consequences. Duelling is lawful on the same principle, 
 where every precaution is taken to show that the act is 
 voluntary and fair on both sides. I might give other 
 instances, but these will suffice. 2. There should be a 
 perfect toleration in matters of religion. In what relates 
 to the salvation of a man's soul, he is infinitely more 
 concerned than I can be; and to pretend to dictate to 
 him in this particular is an infinite piece of impertinence 
 
404 Project for a Neiv Tlieory of 
 
 and presumption. But if a man has no religion at all ? 
 That does not hinder me from having any. If he stood 
 at the church door and would not let me enter, I should 
 have a right to push him aside ; but if he lets me pass by 
 without interruption, I have no right to turn back and 
 drag him in after me. He might as well force me to have 
 no religion as I force him to have one, or burn me at a 
 stake for believing what he does not. Opinion, " like the 
 wild goose, flies unclaimed of any man :" heaven is like 
 " the marble air, accessible to all ;" and therefore there is 
 no occasion to trip up one another's heels on the road, or 
 to erect a turnpike gate to collect large sums from the 
 passengers. How have I a right to make another pay for 
 the saving of my soul, or to assist me in damning his ? 
 There should be no secular interference in sacred things ; 
 no laws to suppress or establish any church or sect in 
 religion, no religious persecutions, tests, or disqualifica- 
 tions ; the different sects should be left to inveigle and 
 hate each other as much as they please ; but without the 
 love of exclusive domination and spiritual power there 
 would be little temptation to bigotry and intolerance. 
 
 3. As to the Eights of Property. It is of no use a 
 man's being left to enjoy security, or to exercise his 
 freedom of action, unless he has a right to appropriate 
 certain other things necessary to his comfort and subsist- 
 ence to his own use. In a state of nature, or rather of 
 solitary independence, he has a right to all he can lay his 
 hands on : what then limits this right ? Its being incon- 
 sistent with the same right in others. This strikes a 
 mathematical or logical balance between two extreme and 
 equal pretensions. As there is not a natural and indis- 
 soluble connection between the individual and his pro- 
 perty, or those outward objects of which he may have 
 need (they being detached, unlimited, and transferable), 
 as there is between the individual and his person, either 
 as an organ of sensation or action, it is necessary, in order 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 405 
 
 to prevent endless debate and quarrels, to fix upon some 
 other criterion or common ground of preference. Animals, 
 or savages, have no idea of any other right than that of 
 the strongest, and seize on all they can get by force, 
 without any regard to justice or an equal claim. 1. One 
 mode of settling the point is to divide the spoil. That is 
 allowing an equal advantage to both. Thus boys, when 
 they unexpectedly find anything, are accustomed to cry 
 "Halves!" But this is liable to other difficulties, and 
 applies only to the case of joint finding. 2. Priority of 
 possession is a fair way of deciding the right of property ; 
 first, on the mere principle of a lottery, or the old saying, 
 "First come, first served;" secondly, because the expect- 
 ation having been excited, and the will more set upon it, 
 this constitutes a powerful reason for not violently forcing 
 it to let go its hold. The greater strength of volition is, 
 we have seen, one foundation of right ; for supposing a 
 person to be absolutely indifferent to anything, he coulcl 
 properly set up no claim to it. 3. Labour, or the having 
 produced a thing or fitted it for use by previous exertion, 
 gives this right, chiefly, indeed, for moral and final causes ; 
 because if one enjoyed what another had produced, there 
 would be nothing but idleness and rapacity ; but also in 
 the sense we are inquiring into, because on a merely 
 selfish ground the labour undergone, or the time lost, 
 is entitled to an equivalent, cceteris manentibus. 4. If 
 another, voluntarily, or for a consideration, resigns to me 
 his right in anything, it to all intents and purposes 
 becomes mine. This accounts not only for gifts, the 
 transfer of property by bargains, &c, but for legacies, 
 and the transmission of property in families or otherwise. 
 It is hard to make a law to circumscribe this right cf 
 disposing of what we have as we please ; yet the boasted 
 law of primogeniture, which is professedly the bulwark 
 and guardian of property, is in direct violation of this 
 principle. 5, and lastly. Where a thing is common, and 
 
406 Project for a Neiv Theory of 
 
 there is enough for all, and no one contributes to it, as 
 air or water, there can be no property in it. The prox- 
 imity to a herring-fishery, or the having been the first to 
 establish a particular traffic in such commodities, may 
 perhaps give this right by aggravating our will, as having 
 a nearer or longer power over them ; but the rule is the 
 other way. It is on the same principle that poaching is a 
 kind of honest thieving, for that which costs no trouble 
 and is confined to no limits seems to belong to no one 
 exclusively (why else do poachers or country people 
 seize on this kind of property with the least reluctance, 
 but that it is the least like stealing ?) ; and as the game 
 laws and the tenaciousness of the rights to that which has 
 least the character of property, as most a point of honour, 
 produced a revolution in one country, so they are not 
 unlikely to produce it in another. The object and prin- 
 ciple of the laws of property, then, is this : 1. To supply 
 individuals and the community with what they need. 2. 
 To secure an equal share to each individual, other cir- 
 cumstances being the same. 3. To keep the peace and 
 promote industry and plenty, by proportioning each man's 
 share to his own exertions, or to the good- will and dis- 
 cretion of others. The intention, then, being that no 
 individual should rob another, or be starved but by his 
 refusing to work (the earth and its produce being the 
 natural estate of the community, subject to these regula- 
 tions of individual right and public welfare), the question 
 is, whether any individual can have a right to rob or 
 starve the whole community : or if the necessary dis- 
 cretion left in the application of the principle has led to a 
 state of things subversive of the principle itself, and 
 destructive to the welfare and existence of the state, 
 whether the end being defeated, the law does not fall to 
 the ground, or require either a powerful corrective or a 
 total reconstruction. The end is superior to the means, 
 and the use of a thing does not justify its abuse. If a 
 
Civil and Criminal Legislation. 407 
 
 clock is quite out of order and always goes wrong, it is 
 no argument to say it was set right at first and on true 
 mechanical principles, and therefore it must go on as it 
 has done, according to all the rules of art ; on the 
 contrary, it is taken to pieces, repaired, and the whole 
 restored to the original state, or, if this is impossible, a 
 new one is made. So society, when out of order, which 
 it is whenever the interests of the many are regularly and 
 outrageously sacrificed to those of the few, must be 
 repaired, and either a reform or a revolution cleanse its 
 corruptions and renew its elasticity. People talk of the 
 poor laws as a grievance. Either they or a national 
 bankruptcy, or a revolution, are necessary. The labour- 
 ing population have not doubled in the last forty years ; 
 there are still no more than are necessary to do the work 
 in husbandry, &c, that is indispensably required ; but the 
 wages of a labouring man are no higher than they were 
 forty years ago, and the price of food and necessaries is at 
 least double what it was then, owing to taxes, grants, 
 monopolies, and immense fortunes gathered during the 
 war by the richer or more prosperous classes, who have not 
 ceased to propagate in the geometrical ratio, though the poor 
 have not done it, and the maintaining of whose younger 
 and increasing branches in becoming splendour and affluence 
 presses with double w r eight on the poor and labouring 
 classes. The greater part of a community ought not to be 
 paupers or starving ; and when a government by obstinacy 
 and madness has reduced them to that state, it must either 
 take wise and effectual measures to relieve them from it, 
 or pay the forfeit of its own wickedness and folly. 
 
 It seems, then, that a system of just and useful laws 
 may be constructed nearly, if not wholly, on the principle 
 of the right of self-defence, or the security for person, 
 liberty, and property. There are exceptions, such, for 
 instance, as in the case of children, idiots, and insane 
 persons. These common- sense dictates for a general 
 principle can only hold good where the general conditions 
 
408 On the Character of Burke. 
 
 are complied with. There are also mixed cases, partaking 
 of civil and moral justice. Is a man bound to support 
 his children ? Not in strict political right ; but he may 
 be compelled to forego all the benefits of civil society, if 
 he does not fulfil an engagement which, according to the 
 feelings and principles of that society, he has undertaken. 
 So in respect to marriage. It is a voluntary contract, 
 and the violation of it is punishable on the same plea of 
 sympathy and custom. Government is not necessarily 
 founded on common consent, but on the right which 
 society has to defend itself against all aggression. But am I 
 bound to pay or support the government for defending the 
 society against any violence or injustice ? No : but then 
 they may withdraw the protection of the law from me if 
 I refuse, and it is on this ground that the contributions 
 of each individual to the maintenance of the state are de- 
 manded. Laws are, or ought to be, founded on the supposed 
 infraction of individual rights. If these rights, and the 
 best means of maintaining them, are always clear, and there 
 could be no injustice or abuse of power on the part of the 
 government, every government might be its own lawgiver : 
 but as neither of these is the case, it is necessary to recur 
 to the general voice for settling the boundaries of right 
 and wrong, and even more for preventing the government, 
 under pretence of the general peace and safety, from sub- 
 jecting the whole liberties, rights, and resources of the 
 community to its own advantage and sole will. 
 1828. 
 
 ESSAY XII. 
 
 On the Character of Burke} 
 
 There is no single speech of Mr. Burke which can con- 
 vey a satisfactory idea of his powers of mind : to do him 
 
 1 Compare Tlie Eloquence of the British Senate^ 1807, ii, 206-17, 
 where this paper was originally printed. — Ed. 
 
On the Character of Burke. 409 
 
 justice, it would be necessary to quote all his works ; the 
 only specimen of Burke is, all that lie wrote. With respect 
 to most other speakers, a specimen is generally enough, or 
 more than enough. When you are acquainted with their 
 manner, and see what proficiency they have made in the 
 mechanical exercise of their profession, with what facility 
 they can borrow a simile, or round a period, how dexter- 
 ously they can argue, and object, and rejoin, you are 
 satisfied; there is no other difference in their speeches 
 than what arises from the difference of the subjects. But 
 this was not the case with Burke. He brought his 
 subjects along with him; he drew his materials from 
 himself. The only limits which circumscribed his va- 
 riety were the stores of his own mind. His stock of ideas 
 did not consist of a few meagre facts, meagrely stated, of 
 half a dozen commonplaces tortured into a thousand 
 different ways; but his mine of wealth was a profound 
 understanding, inexhaustible as the human heart, and 
 various as the sources of human nature. He therefore 
 enriched every subject to which he applied himself, and 
 new subjects were only the occasions of calling forth fresh 
 powers of mind which had not been before exerted. It 
 would therefore be in vain to look for the proof of his 
 powers in any one of his speeches or writings : they all 
 contain some additional proof of power. In speaking of 
 Burke, then, I shall speak of the whole compass and 
 circuit of his mind — not of that small part or section of 
 him which I have been able to give : to do otherwise 
 would be like the story of the man who put the brick in 
 his pocket, thinking to show it as the model of a house. 
 I have been able to manage pretty well with respect to all 
 my other speakers, and curtailed them down without 
 remorse. It was easy to reduce them within certain 
 limits, to fx their spirit, and condense their variety ; 
 by having a certain quantity given, you might infer all 
 the rest ; it was only the same thing over again. But 
 
410 On the Character of BurJce. 
 
 who can bind Proteus, or confine the roving flight of 
 genius ? 
 
 Burke's writings are better than his speeches, and 
 indeed his speeches are writings. But he seemed to 
 feel himself more at ease, to have a fuller possession of 
 his faculties in addressing the public, than in addressing 
 the House of Commons. Burke was raised into public 
 life ; and he seems to have been prouder of this new 
 dignity than became so great a man. For this reason, 
 most of his speeches have a sort of parliamentary preamble 
 to them : he seems fond of coquetting with the House of 
 Commons, and is perpetually calling the Speaker out to 
 dance a minuet with him before he begins. There is also 
 something like an attempt to stimulate the superficial 
 dulness of his hearers by exciting their surprise, by 
 running into extravagance : and he sometimes demeans 
 himself by condescending to what may be considered as 
 bordering too much upon buffoonery, for the amusement 
 of the company. Those lines of Milton were admirably 
 applied to him by some one — " The elephant to make 
 them sport wreathed his proboscis lithe." The truth 
 is, that he was out of his place in the House of Com- 
 mons ; he was eminently qualified to shine as a man of 
 genius, as the instructor of mankind, as the brightest 
 luminary of his age ; but he had nothing in common 
 with that motley crew of knights, citizens, and burgesses. 
 He could not be said to be " native and endued unto that 
 element." He was above it ; and never appeared like 
 himself, but when, forgetful of the idle clamours of party, 
 and of the little views of little men, he applied to 
 his country and the enlightened judgment of mankind. 
 
 I am not going to make an idle panegyric on Burke (he 
 has no need of it) ; but I cannot help looking upon him as 
 the chief boast and ornament of the English House of 
 Commons. What has been said of him is, I think, strictly 
 true, that " he was the most eloquent man of his time : 
 
On the Character of Burke. 411 
 
 his wisdom was greater than his eloquence." The only 
 public man that in my opinion can be put in any compe- 
 tition with him, is Lord Chatham ; and he moved in a 
 sphere so very remote, that it is almost impossible to 
 compare them. But though it would perhaps be difficult 
 to determine which of them excelled most in his particular 
 way, there is nothing in the world more easy than to 
 point out in what their peculiar excellences consisted. They 
 were in every respect the reverse of each other. Chatham's 
 eloquence was popular ; his wisdom was altogether plain 
 and practical. Burke's eloquence was that of the poet ; of 
 the man of high and unbounded fancy : his wisdom was 
 profound and contemplative. Chatham's eloquence was 
 calculated to make men act: Burke's was calculated to 
 make them think. Chatham could have roused the fury of 
 a multitude, and wielded their physical energy as he 
 pleased : Burke's eloquence carried conviction into the 
 mind of the retired and lonely student, opened the re- 
 cesses of the human breast, and lighted up the face of 
 nature around him. Chatham supplied his hearers with 
 motives to immediate action : Burke furnished them with 
 reasons for action which might have little effect upon 
 them at the time, but for which they would be the wiser 
 and better all their lives after. In research, in originality 
 in variety of knowledge, in richness of invention, in depth 
 and comprehension of mind, Burke had as much the 
 advantage of Lord Chatham as he was excelled by him in 
 plain common sense, in strong feeling, in steadiness of 
 purpose, in vehemence, in warmth, in enthusiasm, and 
 energy of mind. Burke was the man of genius, of fine 
 sense, and subtle reasoning ; Chatham was a man of clear 
 understanding, of strong sense, and violent passions. 
 Burke's mind was satisfied with speculation : Chatham's 
 was essentially active ; it could not resj without an object. 
 The power which governed Burke's mind was his Imagi- 
 nation ; that which gave its impetus to Chatham was Will. 
 
412 On the Character of Burke. 
 
 The one was almost the creature of pure intellect, the 
 other of physical temperament. 
 
 There are two very different ends which a man of genius 
 may propose to himself, either in writing or speaking, and 
 which will accordingly give birth to very different styles. 
 He can have but one of these two objects ; either to enrich 
 or strengthen the mind ; either to furnish us with new 
 ideas, to lead the mind into new trains of thought, to 
 which it was before unused, and which it was incapable of 
 striking out for itself ; or else to collect and embody what 
 we already knew, to rivet our old impressions more deeply ; 
 to make w r hat was before plain still plainer, and to give to 
 that which was familiar all the effect of novelty. In the 
 one case we receive an accession to the stock of our ideas ; 
 in the other, an additional degree of life and energy is 
 infused into them : our thoughts continue to flow in the 
 same channels, but their pulse is quickened and invi- 
 gorated. I do not know how to distinguish these differ- 
 ent styles better than by calling them severally the 
 inventive and refined, or the impressive and vigorous 
 styles. It is only the subject-matter of eloquence, how- 
 ever, which is allowed to be remote or obscure. The 
 things themselves may be subtle and recondite, but they 
 must be dragged out of their obscurity and brought 
 struggling to the light ; they must be rendered plain and 
 palpable (as far as it is in the wit of man to do so), or 
 they are no longer eloquence. That which by its natural 
 impenetrability, and in spite of every effort, remains dark 
 and difficult, which is impervious to every ray, on which 
 the imagination can shed no lustre, which can be clothed 
 with no beauty, is not a subject for the orator or poet. At 
 the same time it cannot be expected that abstract truths or 
 profound observations should ever be placed in the same 
 strong and dazzling points of view as natural objects and 
 mere matters of fact. It is enough if they receive a reflex 
 and borrowed lustre, like that which cheers the first dawn 
 
On the Character of Burke. 413 
 
 of morning, where the effect of surprise and novelty gilds 
 every object, and the joy of beholding another world 
 gradually emerging out of the gloom of night, " a new 
 creation rescued from his reign," fills the mind with a 
 sober rapture. Philosophical eloquence is in writing what 
 chiaroscuro is in painting ; he would be a fool who should 
 object that the colours in the shaded part of a picture 
 were not so bright as those on the opposite side ; the eye 
 of the connoisseur receives an equal delight from both, 
 balancing the want of brilliancy and effect with the greater 
 delicacy of the tints, and difficulty of the execution. In 
 judging of Burke, therefore, we are to consider, first, the 
 style of eloquence which he adopted, and, secondly, the 
 effects which he produced with it. If he did not produce 
 the same effects on vulgar minds as some others have done, 
 it was not for want of power, but from the turn and 
 direction of his mind. 1 It was because his subjects, his 
 ideas, his arguments, were less vulgar. The question is 
 not whether he brought certain truths equally home to us, 
 but how much nearer he brought them than they were 
 before. In my opinion, he united the two extremes of 
 refinement and strength in a higher degree than any other 
 writer whatever. 
 
 The subtlety of his mind was undoubtedly that which 
 rendered Burke a less popular writer and speaker than he 
 otherwise would have been. It weakened the impression 
 of his observations upon others, but I cannot admit that it 
 weakened the observations themselves ; that it took any- 
 thing from their real weight or solidity. Coarse minds 
 think all that is subtle, futile : that because it is not gross 
 and obvious and palpable to the senses, it is therefore 
 light and frivolous, and of no importance in the real 
 affairs of life ; thus making their own confined under- 
 standings the measure of truth, and supposing that what- 
 
 1 For instance, he produced less effect on the mob that compose 
 the English House of Commons, than Chatham or Fox, or even Pitt. 
 
414 On the Character of Burke. 
 
 ever they do not distinctly perceive, is nothing. Seneca, 
 who was not one of the vulgar, also says, that subtle 
 truths are those which have the least substance in them, 
 and consequently approach nearest to nonentity. But for 
 my own part I cannot help thinking that the most impor- 
 tant truths must be the most refined and subtle ; for that 
 very reason, that they must comprehend a great number 
 of particulars, and instead of referring to any distinct or 
 positive fact, must point out the combined effects of an 
 extensive chain of causes, operating gradually, remotely, 
 and collectively, and therefore imperceptibly. General 
 principles are not the less true or important because from 
 their nature they elude immediate observation ; they are 
 like the air, which is not the less necessary because we 
 neither see nor feel it, or like that secret influence which 
 binds the world together, and holds the planets in their 
 orbits. The very same persons who are the most forward 
 to laugh at all systematic reasoning as idle and impertinent, 
 you will the next moment hear exclaiming bitterly against 
 the baleful effects of new-fangled systems of philosophy, 
 or gravely descanting on the immense importance of 
 instilling sound principles of morality into the mind. It 
 would not be a bold conjecture, but an obvious truism, to 
 say, that all the great changes which have been brought 
 about in the mortal world, either for the better or worse, 
 have been introduced, not by the bare statement of facts, 
 which are things already known, and which must always 
 operate nearly in the same mannner, but by the develop- 
 ment of certain opinions and abstract principles of 
 reasoning on life and manners, on the origin of society 
 and man's nature in general, which being obscure and un- 
 certain, vary from time to time, and produce correspond- 
 ing changes/ in the human mind. They are the wholesome 
 clew and rain, or the mildew and pestilence that silently 
 destroy. To this principle of generalisation all wise law- 
 givers, and the systems of philosophers, owe their influence. 
 
On the Character of Burke. 415 
 
 It lias always been with me a test of the sense and can- 
 dour of any one belonging to the opposite party, whether 
 he allowed Burke to be a great man. Of all the persons 
 of this description that I have ever known, I never met 
 with above one or two who would make this concession ; 
 whether it was that party feelings ran too high to admit of 
 any real candour, or whether it was owing to an essential 
 vulgarity in their habits of thinking, they all seemed to be 
 of opinion that he was a wild enthusiast, or a hollow 
 sophist, who was to be answered by bits of facts, by smart 
 logic, by shrewd questions, and idle songs. They looked 
 upon him as a man of disordered intellects, because he 
 reasoned in a style to which they had not been used, and 
 which confounded their dim perceptions. If you said that 
 though you differed with him in sentiment, yet you 
 thought him an admirable reasoner, and a close observer 
 of human nature, you were answered with a loud laugh, 
 and some hackneyed quotation. " Alas ! Leviathan was 
 not so tamed ! " They did not know whom they had to 
 contend with. The corner-stone, which the builders 
 rejected, became the head-corner, though to the Jews a 
 stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness ; for, indeed, 
 I cannot discover 'that he was much better understood by 
 those of his own party, if we may judge from the little 
 affinity there is between his mode of reasoning and theirs. 
 The simple clue to all his reasonings on politics is, I 
 think, as follows. He did not agree with some writers 
 that that mode of government is necessarily the best which 
 is the cheapest. He saw in the construction of society 
 other principles at work, and other capacities of fulfilling 
 the desires, and perfecting the nature of man, besides those 
 of securing the equal enjoyment of the means of animal 
 life, and doing this at as little expense as possible. He 
 thought that the wants and happiness of men were not to 
 be provided for, as we provide for those of a herd of cattle, 
 merely by attending to their physical necessities. He 
 
 
416 On the Character of Burke. 
 
 thought more nobly of his fellows. He knew that man 
 had affections and passions and powers of imagination, as 
 well as hunger and thirst, and the sense of heat and cold 
 He took his idea of political society from the pattern of 
 private life, wishing, as he himself expresses it, to in- 
 corporate the domestic charities with the orders of the 
 state, and to blend them together. He strove to establish 
 an analogy between the compact that binds together the 
 community at large, and that which binds together the 
 several families that compose it. He knew that the rules 
 that form the basis of private morality are not founded in 
 reason, that is, in the abstract properties of those things 
 which are the subjects of them, but in the nature of man, 
 and his capacity of being affected by certain things from 
 habit, from imagination, and sentiment, as well as from 
 reason. 
 
 Thus, the reason why a man ought to be attached to his 
 wife and children is not, surely, that they are better than 
 others (for in this case every one else ought to be of the 
 same opinion), but because he must be chiefly interested in 
 those things which are nearest to him, and with which he 
 is best acquainted, since his understanding cannot reach 
 equally to everything ; because he must be most attached 
 to those objects which he has known the longest, and 
 which by their situation have actually affected him the 
 most, not those which in themselves are the most affecting 
 whether they have ever made any impression on him or 
 no ; that is, because he is by his nature the creature of 
 habit and feeling, and because it is reasonable that he 
 should act in conformity to his nature. Burke was so far 
 right in saying that it is no objection to an institution 
 that it is founded in prejudice, but the contrary, if that 
 prejudice is natural and right ; that is, if it arises from 
 those circumstances which are properly subjects of feeling 
 and association, not from any defect or perversion of the 
 understanding in those things which fall strictly under its 
 
On the Character of Burke. "ill 
 
 jurisdiction. On this profound maxim he took his stand. 
 Thus he contended, that the prejudice in favour of nobility 
 was natural and proper, and fit to be encouraged by the 
 positive institutions of society : not on account of the real 
 or personal merit of the individuals, but because such an 
 institution has a tendency to enlarge and raise the mind, 
 to keep alive the memory of past greatness, to connect the 
 different ages of the world together, to carry back the 
 imagination over a long tract of time, and feed it with the 
 contemplation of remote events : because it is natural to , 
 think highly of that which inspires us with high thoughts, 
 which has been connected for many generations with 
 splendour, and affluence, and dignity, and power, and 
 privilege. He also conceived, that by transferring the 
 respect from the person to the thing, and thus rendering 
 it steady and permanent, the mind would be habitually 
 formed to sentiments of deference, attachment, and fealty, 
 to whatever else demanded its respect : that it would be 
 led to fix its view on what was elevated and lofty, and be 
 weaned from that low and narrow jealousy which never 
 willingly or heartily admits of any superiority in others, 
 and is glad of every opportunity to bring down all excel- 
 lence to a level with its own miserable standard. Nobility 
 did not, therefore, exist to the prejudice of the other 
 orders of the state, but by, and for them. The inequality 
 of the different orders of society did not destroy the unity 
 and harmony of the whole. The health and well-being of 
 the moral world was to be promoted by the same means as 
 the beauty of the natural world ; by contrast, by change, 
 by light and shade, by variety of parts, by order and 
 proportion. To think of reducing all mankind to the 
 same insipid level, seemed to him the same absurdity as to 
 destroy the inequalities of surface in a country, for the 
 benefit of agriculture and commerce. In short, he believed 
 that the interests of men in society should be consulted, 
 and their several stations and employments assigned, with 
 
418 On the Character of Burke. 
 
 a view to their nature, not as physical, but as moral beings, 
 so as to nourish their hopes, to lift their imagination, to 
 enliven their fancy, to rouse their activity, to strengthen 
 their virtue, and to furnish the greatest number of objects 
 of pursuit and means of enjoyment to beings constituted as 
 man is, consistently with the order and stability of the 
 whole. 
 
 The same reasoning might be extended farther. I do not 
 say that his arguments are conclusive : but they are pro- 
 found and true, as far as they go. There may be dis- 
 advantages and abuses necessarily interwoven with his 
 scheme, or opposite advantages of infinitely greater value, 
 to be derived from another order of things and state of 
 society. This, however, does not invalidate either the 
 truth or importance of Burke's reasoning ; since the advan- 
 tages he points out as connected with the mixed form of 
 government are really and necessarily inherent in it : 
 since they are compatible, in the same degree, with no 
 other ; since the principle itself on which he rests his 
 argument (whatever we may think of the application) is 
 of the utmost weight and moment; and since, on which- 
 ever side the truth lies, it is impossible to make a fair 
 decision without having the opposite side of the question 
 clearly and fully stated to us. This Buike has done in a 
 masterly manner. He presents to you one view or face of 
 society. Let him who thinks he can, give the reverse side 
 with equal force, beauty, and clearness. It is said, I know, 
 that truth is one; but to this I cannot subscribe, for it 
 appears to me that truth is many. There are as many 
 truths as there are things and causes of action and con- 
 tradictory principles at work in society. In making up 
 the account of good and evil, indeed, the final result must 
 be one way or the other ; but the particulars on which 
 that result depends are infinite and various. 
 
 It will be seen from what 1 have said, that I am very 
 far from agreeing with those who think that Burke was a 
 

 On the Character of Burlce. 419 
 
 man without understanding, and a merely florid writer. 
 There are two causes which have given rise to this 
 calumny ; namely, that narrowness of mind which leads 
 men to suppose that the truth lies entirely on the side of 
 their own opinions, and that whatever does not make for 
 them is absurd and irrational ; secondly, a trick we have 
 of confounding reason with judgment, and supposing that 
 it is merely the province of the understanding to pronounce 
 sentence, and not to give evidence, or argue the case ; in 
 short, that it is a passive, not an active faculty. Thus 
 there are persons who never run into any extravagance, 
 because they are so buttressed up with the opinions of 
 others on all sides, that they cannot lean much to one side 
 or the other ; they are so little moved with any kind of 
 reasoning, that they remain at an equal distance from 
 every extreme, and are never very far from the truth, 
 because the slowness of their faculties will not suffer 
 them to make much progress in error. These are persons 
 of great judgment. The scales of the mind are pretty 
 sure to remain even, when there is nothing in them. In 
 this sense of the word, Burke must be allowed to have 
 wanted judgment, by all those who think that he was 
 wrong in his conclusions. The accusation of want of 
 judgment, in fact, only means that you yourself are of a 
 different opinion. But if in arriving at one error he dis- 
 covered a hundred truths, I should consider myself a 
 hundred times more indebted to him than if, stumbling on 
 that which I consider as the right side of the question, he 
 had committed a hundred absurdities in striving to esta- 
 blish his point. I speak of him now merely as an author, 
 or as far as I and other readers are concerned with him ; 
 at the same time, I should not differ from any one who 
 may be disposed to contend that the consequences of his 
 writings as instruments of political power have been tre- 
 mendous, fatal, such as no exertion of wit or knowledge 
 or genius can ever counteract or atone for. 
 
420 On the Character of Burke. 
 
 Burke also gave a hold to his antagonists by mixing up 
 sentiment and imagery with his reasoning ; so that being 
 unused to such a sight in the region of politics, they were 
 deceived, and could not discern the fruit from the flowers. 
 Gravity is the cloak of wisdom; and those who have 
 nothing else think it an insult to affect the one without 
 the other, because it destroys the only foundation on 
 which their pretensions are built. The easiest part of 
 reason is dulness ; the generality of the world are there- 
 fore concerned in discouraging any example of unnecessary 
 brilliancy that might tend to show that the two things 
 do not always go together. Burke in some measure 
 dissolved the spell. It was discovered, that his gold was 
 not the less valuable for being wrought into elegant 
 shapes, and richly embossed with curious figures; that 
 the solidity of a building is not destroyed by adding to it 
 beauty and ornament ; and that the strength of a man's 
 understanding is not always to be estimated in exact 
 proportion to his want of imagination. His understanding 
 was not the less real, because it was not the only faculty 
 he possessed. He justified the description of the poet— 
 
 " How charming is divine philosophy ! 
 Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose, 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute !" 
 
 Those who object to this union of grace and beauty with 
 reason, are in fact weak-sighted people, who cannot dis- 
 tinguish the noble and majestic form of Truth from that 
 of her sister Folly, if they are dressed both alike ! But 
 there is always a difference even in the adventitious orna- 
 ments they wear, which is sufficient to distinguish them. 
 Burke was so far from being a gaudy or flowery writer, 
 that he was one of the severest writers we have. His 
 words are the most like things; his style is the most 
 strictly suited to the subject. He unites every extreme - 
 and every variety of composition* the lowest and the 
 
 
On the Character of Burke. 421 
 
 meanest words and descriptions with the highest. He 
 exults in the display of power, in showing the extent, the 
 force, and intensity of his ideas; he is led on by the mere 
 impulse and vehemence of his fancy, not by the affectation 
 of dazzling his readers by gaudy conceits or pompous 
 images. He was completely carried away by his subject. 
 He had no other object but to produce the strongest 
 impression on his reader, by giving the truest, the most 
 characteristic, the fullest, and most forcible description of 
 things, trusting to the power of his own mind to mould 
 them into grace and beauty. He did not produce a 
 splendid effect by setting fire to the light vapours that 
 float in the regions of fancy, as the chemists make fine 
 colours with phosphorus, but by the eagerness of his 
 blows struck fire from the flint, and melted the hardest 
 substances in the furnace of his imagination. The wheels 
 of his imagination did not catch fire from the rottenness 
 of the materials, but from the rapidity of their motion. 
 One would suppose, to hear people talk of Burke, that his 
 style was such as would have suited the Lady's Magazine; 
 soft, smooth, showy, tender, insipid, full of fine words, 
 without any meaning. The essence of the gaudy or 
 glittering style consists in producing a momentary effect 
 by fine words and images brought together, without order 
 or connection. Burke most frequently produced an effect 
 by the remoteness and novelty of his combinations, by the 
 force of contrast, by the striking manner in which the 
 most opposite and unpromising materials were harmo- 
 niously blended together ; not by laying his hands on all 
 the fine things he could think of, but by bringing together 
 those things which he knew would blaze out into glorious 
 light by their collision. The florid style is a mixture of 
 affectation and commonplace. Burke's was an union of 
 un tameable vigour and originality. 
 
 Burke was not a verbose writer. If he sometimes 
 multiplies words, it is not for want of ideas, but because 
 
422 On the Character of Burke. 
 
 there are no words that fully express his ideas, and he 
 tries to do it as well as he can by different ones. He had 
 nothing of the set or formal style, the measured cadence, 
 and stately phraseology of Johnson, and most of our 
 modern writers. This style, which is what we understand 
 by the artificial, is all in one key. It selects a certain set 
 of words to represent all ideas whatever, as the most 
 dignified and elegant, and excludes all others as low and 
 vulgar. The words are not fitted to the things, but the 
 things to the words. Everything is seen through a false 
 medium. It is putting a mask on the face of nature, 
 which may indeed hide some specks and blemishes, but 
 takes away all beauty, delicacy, and variety. It destroys 
 all dignity or elevation, because nothing can be raised 
 where all is on a level, and completely destroys all force, 
 expression, truth, and character, by arbitrarily confound- 
 ing the differences of things, and reducing everything to 
 the same insipid standard. To suppose that this stiff 
 uniformity can add anything to real grace or dignity, is 
 like supposing that the human body, in order to be 
 perfectly graceful, should never deviate from its upright 
 posture. Another mischief of this method is, that it 
 confounds all ranks in literature. Where there is no 
 room for variety, no discrimination, no nicety to be shown 
 in matching the idea with its proper word, there can be 
 no room for taste or elegance. A man must easily learn 
 the art of writing, when every sentence is to be cast in 
 the same mould : where he is only allowed the use of one 
 word he cannot choose wrong, nor will he be in much 
 danger of making himself ridiculous by affectation or false 
 glitter, when, whatever subject he treats of, he must treat 
 of it in the same way. This indeed is to wear golden f 
 chains for the sake of ornament. 
 
 Burke was altogether free from the pedantry which I 
 have here endeavoured to expose. His style was as 
 original, as expressive, as rich and varied, as it was 
 

 On the Character of Burke, 423 
 
 possible ; his combinations were as exquisite, as playful, 
 as happy, as unexpected, as bold and daring, as his fancy. 
 If anything, he ran into the opposite extreme of too great 
 an inequality, if truth and nature could ever be carried to 
 an extreme. 
 
 Those who are best acquainted with the writings and 
 speeches of Burke will not think the praise I have here 
 bestowed on them exaggerated. Some proof will be 
 found of this in the following extracts. But the full 
 proof must be sought in his works at large, and par- 
 ticularly in the Thoughts on the Discontents ; in his Reflec- 
 tions on the French Revolution ; in his Letter to the Duke of 
 Bedford; and in the Regicide Peace. The two last of 
 these are perhaps the most remarkable of all his writings, 
 from the contrast they afford to each other. The one is 
 the most delightful exhibition of wild and brilliant fancy 
 that is to be found in English prose, but it is too much 
 like a beautiful picture painted upon gauze ; it wants 
 something to support it : the other is without ornament, 
 but it has all the solidity, the weight, the gravity of a 
 judicial record. It seems to have been written with a 
 certain constraint upon himself, and to show those who 
 said he could not reason, that his arguments might be 
 stripped of their ornaments without losing anything of 
 their force. It is certainly, of all his works, that in 
 which he has shown most power of logical deduction, and 
 the only one in which he has made any important use of 
 facts. In general he certainly paid little attention to 
 them : they were the playthings of his mind. He saw 
 them as he pleased, not as they were ; with the eye of the 
 philosopher or the poet, regarding them only in their 
 general principle, or as they might serve to decorate his 
 subject. This is the natural consequence of much imagi- 
 nation : things that are probable are elevated into the 
 rank of realities. To those who can reason on the 
 essences of things, or who can invent according to nature, 
 
424 On the Character of Burke. 
 
 the experimental proof is of little value. This was the 
 case with Burke. In the present instance, however, he 
 seems to have forced his mind into the service of facts ; 
 and he succeeded completely. His comparison between 
 our connection with France or Algiers, and his account of 
 the conduct of the war, are as clear, as convincing, as 
 forcible examples of this kind of reasoning, as are any- 
 where to be met with. Indeed I do not think there is 
 anything in Fox (whose mind was purely historical), or in 
 Chatham (who attended to feelings more than facts), that 
 will bear a comparison with them. 
 
 Burke has been compared to Cicero — I do not know for 
 what reason. Their excellences are as different, and 
 indeed as opposite, as they can well be. Burke had not 
 the polished elegance, the glossy neatness, the artful 
 regularity, the exquisite modulation of Cicero : he had a 
 thousand times more richness and originality of mind, 
 more strength and pomp of diction. 
 
 It has been well observed, that the ancients had no 
 word that properly expresses what we mean by the word 
 genius. They perhaps had not the thing. Their minds 
 appear to have been too exact, too retentive, too minute 
 and subtle, too sensible to the external differences of 
 things, too passive under their impressions, to admit of 
 those bold and rapid combinations, those lofty flights of 
 fancy, which, glancing from heaven to earth, unite the 
 most opposite extremes, and draw the happiest illus- 
 trations frcm things the most remote. Their ideas were 
 kept too confined and distinct by the material form or 
 vehicle in which they were conveyed, to unite cordially 
 together, or be melted down in the imagination. Their 
 metaphors are taken from things of the same class, not 
 from things of different classes ; the general analogy, 
 not the individual feeling, directs them in their choice. 
 Hence, as Dr. Johnson observed, their similes are either 
 repetitions of the same idea, or so obvious and general as 
 
On the -Character of Burke. 425 
 
 not to lend any additional force to it ; as when a huntress 
 is compared to Diana, or a warrior rushing into battle to 
 a lion rushing on his prey. Their forte was exquisite art 
 and perfect imitation. Witness their statues and other 
 things of the same kind. But they had not that high and 
 enthusiastic fancy which some of our own writers have 
 shown. For the proof of this, let any one compare 
 Milton and Shakspeare with Homer and Sophocles, or 
 Burke with Cicero. 
 
 It may be asked whether Burke was a poet. He was so 
 only in the general vividness of his fancy, and in richness 
 of invention. There may be poetical passages in his 
 works, but I certainly think that his writings in general 
 are quite distinct from poetry; and that for the reason 
 before given, namely, that the subject-matter of them is 
 not poetical. The finest part of them are illustrations or 
 personifications of dry abstract ideas; 1 and the union 
 between the idea and the illustration is not of that perfect 
 and pleasing kind as to constitute poetry, or indeed to be 
 admissible, but for the effect intended to be produced by 
 it ; that is, by every means in our power to give animation 
 and attraction to subjects in themselves barren of orna- 
 ment, but which at the same time are pregnant with the 
 most important consequences, and in which the under- 
 standing and the passions are equally interested. 
 
 I have heard it remarked by a person, to whose opinion 
 I would sooner submit than to a general council of critics, 
 that the sound of Burke's prose is not musical; that it 
 wants cadence ; and that instead of being so lavish of his 
 imagery as is generally supposed, he seemed to him to be 
 rather parsimonious in the use of it, always expanding 
 and making the most of his ideas. This may be true if 
 we compare him with some of our poets, or perhaps with 
 some of our early prose writers, but not if we compare 
 
 1 As in the comparison of the British Constitution to the " proud 
 keep of Windsor," &c., the most splendid passage in his works. 
 
426 On the Character of Fox. 
 
 him with any of our political writers or parliaments 
 speakers. There are some very fine things of Lord 
 Bolingbroke's on the same subjects, but not equal to 
 Burke's. As for Junius, he is at the head of his class ; 
 but that class is not the highest. He has been said to 
 have more dignity than Burke. Yes — if the stalk of a 
 giant is less dignified than the strut of a petit-maitre. I 
 do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Junius, but 
 grandeur is not the character of his composition; and 
 if it is not to be found in Burke, it is to be found 
 nowhere. 
 
 . 
 
 essay xin. 
 
 On the Character of Fox. 1 
 I shall begin with observing generally, that Mr. Fox 
 excelled all his contemporaries in the extent of his know- 
 ledge, in the clearness and distinctness of his views, in 
 quickness of apprehension, in plain practical common 
 sense, in the full, strong, and absolute possession of his 
 subject. A measure was no sooner proposed than he 
 seemed to have an instantaneous and intuitive perception 
 of its various bearings and consequences ; of the manner 
 in which it would operate on the different classes of society, 
 on commerce or agriculture, on our domestic or foreign 
 policy; of the difficulties attending its execution; in a 
 word, of all its practical results, and the comparative 
 advantages to be gained either by adopting or rejecting it. 
 He was intimately acquainted with the interests of the 
 different parts of the community, with the minute and 
 complicated details of political economy, with our external 
 relations, with the views, the resources, and the maxims 
 of other states. He was master of all those facts and cir- 
 cumstances which it was necessary to know in order to 
 1 Keprinted from the Eloquence of the British Senate, 1807, ii, 
 466-74.— Ed. 
 
On the Character of Fox. 427 
 
 judge fairly and determine wisely ; and lie knew them not 
 loosely or lightly, but in number, weight, and measure. 
 He had also stored his memory by reading and general 
 study, and improved his understanding by the lamp of 
 history. He was well acquainted with the opinions and 
 sentiments of the best authors, with the maxims of the 
 most profound politicians, with the causes of the rise and 
 fall of states, with the general passions of men, with the 
 characters of different nations, and the laws and con- 
 stitution of his own country. He was a man of large, 
 capacious, powerful, and highly cultivated intellect. No 
 man could know more than he knew ; no man's knowledge 
 could be more sound, more plain and useful ; no man's 
 knowledge could lie in more connected and tangible 
 masses ; no man could be more perfectly master of his ideas 
 could reason upon them more closely, or decide upon 
 them more impartially. His mind was full, even to over- 
 flowing. He was so habitually conversant with the most 
 intricate and comprehensive trains of thought, or such was 
 the natural vigour and exuberance of his mind, that he 
 seemed to re call them without any effort. His ideas 
 quarrelled for utterance. So far from ever being at a 
 loss for them, he was obliged rather to repress and rein 
 them in, lest they should overwhelm and confound, instead 
 of informing the understandings of his hearers. 
 
 If to this we add the ardour and natural impetuosity of 
 his mind, his quick sensibility, his eagerness in the defence 
 of truth, and his impatience of everything that looked like 
 trick or artifice or affectation, we shall be able in some 
 measure to account for the character of his eloquence. 
 His thoughts came crowding in too fast for the slow and 
 mechanical process of speech. What he saw in an instant, 
 he could only express imperfectly, word by word, and sen- 
 tence after sentence. He would, if he could, " have bared 
 his swelling heart," and laid open at once the rich treasures 
 of knowledge with which his bosom was fraught. It is no 
 
428 On the Character of Fox. 
 
 wonder that this difference between the rapidity of his 
 feelings, and the formal round-about method of com- 
 municating them, should produce some disorder in his 
 frame ; that the throng of his ideas should try to overleap 
 the narrow boundaries which confined them, and tumul- 
 tuously break down their prison-doors, instead of waiting 
 to be let out one by one, and following patiently at due 
 intervals and with mock diginity, like poor dependents, 
 in the train of words ; that he should express himself in 
 hurried sentences, in involuntary exclamations, by ve- 
 hement gestures, by sudden starts and bursts of passion. 
 Everything showed the agitation of his mind. His tongue 
 faltered, his voice became a] most suffocated, and his face 
 was bathed in tears. He was lost in the magnitude of his 
 subject. He reeled and staggered under the load of feel- 
 ing which oppressed him. He rolled like the sea beaten 
 by a tempest. Whoever, having the feelings of a man, 
 compared him at these times with his boasted rival 
 — his stiff, straight, upright figure, his gradual contortions, 
 turning round as if moved by a pivot, his solemn pauses, 
 his deep tones, " whose sound reverbed their own hollo w- 
 ness," must have said, This is a man ; that is an automaton. 
 If Fox had needed grace, he would have had it ; but it was 
 not the character of his mind, nor would it have suited 
 with the style of his eloquence. It was Pitt's object to 
 smooth over the abruptness and intricacies of his argument 
 by the gracefulness of his manner, and to fix the attention 
 of his hearers on the pomp and sound of his words. Lord 
 Chatham, again, strove to command others ; he did not try 
 to convince them, but to overpower their understandings 
 by the greater strength and vehemence of his own ; to awe 
 them by a sense of personal superiority : and he therefore 
 was obliged to assume a lofty and dignified manner. It 
 was to him they bowed, not to truth ; and whatever related 
 to himself, must therefore have a tendency to inspire 
 respect and admiration. Indeed, he would never have at- 
 
On the Character of Fox. 429 
 
 tempted to gain that ascendant over men's minds that he 
 did, if either his mind or body had been different from 
 what they were ; if his temper had not urged him to con- 
 trol and command others, or if his personal advantages 
 had not enabled him to secure that kind of authority 
 which he coveted. But it would have been ridiculous in 
 Fox to have affected either the smooth plausibility, the 
 stately gravity of the one, or the proud domineering, 
 imposing dignity of the other ; or even if he could have 
 succeeded, it would only have injured the effect of his 
 speeches. 1 What he had to rely on was the strength, the 
 solidity of his ideas, his complete and thorough knowledge 
 of his subject. It was his business therefore to fix the 
 attention of his hearers, not on himself, but on his subject ; 
 to rivet it there, to hurry it on from words to things : — 
 the only circumstance of which they required to be con- 
 vinced with respect to himself, was the sincerity of his 
 opinions ; and this would be best done by the earnestness 
 of his manner, by giving a loose to his feelings, and by 
 showing the most perfect forgetfulness of himself, and of 
 what others thought of him. The moment a man shows 
 you either by affected words or looks or gestures, that he 
 is thinking of himself, and you, that he is trying either to 
 please or terrify you into compliance, there is an end at 
 once to that kind of eloquence which owes its effect to the 
 force of truth, and to your confidence in the sincerity of 
 the speaker. It was, however, to the confidence inspired 
 by the earnestness and simplicity of his manner, that 
 
 1 There is an admirable, judicious, and truly useful remark in 
 the preface to Spenser (not by Dr. Johnson, for he left Spenser out 
 of his poets, but by one Upton), that the question was not whether 
 a better poem might not have been written on a different plan, but 
 whether Spenser would have written a better one on a different 
 plan. I wish to apply this to Fox's ungainly manner. I do not 
 mean to say, that his manner was the best possible (for that would 
 be to say that he was the greatest man conceivable), but that it 
 was the best for hiin. 
 
430 On the Character of Fox. 
 
 Mr. Fox was indebted for more than half the effect of his 
 speeches. Some others might possess nearly as much in- 
 formation, as exact a knowledge of the situation and 
 interests of the country ; but they wanted that zeal, that 
 animation, that enthusiasm, that deep sense of the im- 
 portance of the subject, which removes all doubt or 
 suspicion from the minds of the hearers, and communicates 
 its own warmth to every breast. We* may convince by 
 argument alone ; but it is by the interest we discover in 
 the success of our reasonings, that we persuade others to 
 feel and act with us. There are two circumstances which 
 Fox's speeches and Lord Chatham's had in common : they 
 are alike distinguished by a kind of plain downright 
 common sense, and by the vehemence of their manner. 
 But still there is a great difference between them, in both 
 these respects. Fox in his opinions was governed by facts — 
 Chatham was more influenced by the feelings of others 
 respecting those facts. Fox endeavoured to find out what 
 the consequences of any measure would be ; Chatham at- 
 tended more to what people would think of it. Fox 
 appealed to the practical reason of mankind ; Chatham to 
 popular prejudice. The one repelled the encroachments 
 of power by supplying his hearers with arguments against 
 it; the other by rousing their passions and arming their 
 resentment against those who would rob them of their birth- 
 right. Their vehemence and impetuosity arose also from 
 very different feelings. In Chatham it was pride, passion, 
 self-will, impatience of control, a determination to have 
 his own way, to carry everything before him ; in Fox it 
 was pure, good nature, a sincere love of truth, an ardent 
 attachment to what he conceived to be right ; an anxious 
 concern for the welfare and liberties of mankind. Or if 
 we suppose that ambition had taken a strong hold of both 
 their minds, yet their ambition was of a very different 
 kind : in the one it was the love of power, in the other it 
 was the love of fame. Nothing can be more opposite than 
 
 

 On the Character of Fox. 431 
 
 these two principles, both in their origin and tendency. 
 The one originates in a selfish, haughty, domineering 
 spirit ; the other in a social and generous sensibility, 
 desirous of the love and esteem of others, and anxiously 
 bent upon gaining merited applause. The one grasps at 
 immediate power by any means within its reach ; the other 
 if it does not square its actions by the rules of virtue, at 
 least refers them to a standard which comes the nearest to 
 it — the disinterested applause of our country, and the 
 enlightened judgment of posterity. The love of fame is 
 consistent with the steadiest attachment to principle, and 
 indeed strengthens and supports it ; whereas the love of 
 power, where this is the ruling passion, requires the 
 sacrifice of principle, at every turn, and is inconsistent 
 even with the shadow of it. I do not mean to say that 
 Fox had no love of power, or Chatham no love of fame 
 (this would be reversing all we know of human nature), 
 but .that the one principle predominated in the one, and 
 the other in the other. My reader will do me great 
 injustice if he supposes that in attempting to describe 
 the characters of different speakers by contrasting their 
 general qualities, I mean anything beyond the more or 
 less : but it is necessary to describe those qualities simply 
 and in the abstract, in order to make the distinction 
 intelligible Chatham resented any attack made upon the 
 cause of liberty, of which he was the avowed champion, 
 as an indignity offered to himself. Fox felt it as a stain 
 upon the honour of his country, and as an injury to the 
 rights of his fellow citizens. The one was swayed by his 
 own passions and purposes, with very little regard to the 
 consequences ; the sensibility of the other was roused, and 
 his passions kindled into a generous flame, by a real 
 interest in whatever related to the welfare of mankind 
 and by an intense and earnest contemplation of the con- 
 sequences of the measures he opposed. It was this union 
 of the zeal of the patriot with the enlightened knowledge 
 
432 On the Character of Fox. 
 
 of the statesman, that gave to the eloquence of Fox its 
 more than mortal energy ; that warmed, expanded, pene- 
 trated every bosom. He relied on the force of truth and 
 nature alone ; the refinements of philosophy, the pomp and 
 pageantry of the imagination were forgotten, or seemed 
 light and frivolous ; the fate of nations, the welfare of 
 millions, hung suspended as he spoke ; a torrent of manly 
 eloquence poured from his heart, bore down everything in 
 its course, and surprised into a momentary sense of human 
 feeling the breathing corpses, the wire-moved puppets, the 
 stuffed figures, the flexible machinery, the " deaf and 
 dumb things " of a court. 
 
 I find (I do not know how the reader feels) that it is 
 difficult to write a character of Fox without running into 
 insipidity or extravagance. And the reason of this is, 
 there are no splendid contrasts, no striking irregularities, 
 no curious distinctions to work upon; no "jutting frieze, 
 buttress, nor coigne of 'vantage," for the imagination to 
 take hold of. It was a plain marble slab, inscribed in 
 plain legible characters, without either hieroglyphics or 
 carving. There was the same directness and manly sim- 
 plicity in everything that he did. The whole of his charac- 
 ter may indeed be summed up in two words — strength 
 and simplicity. Fox was in the class of common men, but 
 he was the first in that class. Though it is easy to describe 
 the differences of things, nothing is more difficult than 
 to describe their degrees or quantities. In what I am 
 going to say, I hope I shall not be suspected of a design 
 to under-rate his powers of mind, when in fact I am only 
 trying to ascertain their nature and direction. The degree 
 and extent to which he possessed them can only be known 
 by reading, or indeed by having heard his speeches. 
 
 His mind, as I have already said, was, I conceive, 
 purely historical ; and having said this, I have I believe 
 said all. But perhaps it will be necessary to explain a 
 little farther what I mean. I mean, then, that his 
 
On the Character of Fox. 433 
 
 memory was in an extraordinary degree tenacious of facts ; 
 that they were crowded together in his mind without the 
 least perplexity or confusion ; that there was no chain of 
 consequences too vast for his powers of comprehension ; 
 that the different parts and ramifications of his subject 
 were never so involved and intricate but that they were 
 easily disentangled in the clear prism of his understand- 
 ing. The basis of his wisdom was experience : he not 
 only knew what had happened, but by an exact knowledge 
 of the real state of things, ho could always tell what in 
 the common course of events would happen in future. 
 The force of his mind was exerted on facts : as long as he 
 could lean directly upon these, as long as he had the 
 actual objects to refer to, to steady himself by, he could 
 analyse, he could combine, he could compare and reason 
 upon them, with the utmost exactness ; but he could not 
 reason out of them. He was what is understood by a 
 matter-of-fact reasoner. He was better acquainted with 
 the concrete masses of things, their substantial forms and 
 practical connections, than with their abstract nature or 
 general definitions. He was a man of extensive informa- 
 tion, of sound knowledge, and clear understanding, rather 
 than the acute observer or profound thinker. He was the 
 man of business, the accomplished statesman, rather than 
 the philosopher. His reasonings were, generally speaking, 
 calculations of certain positive results, which, the data 
 being given, must follow as matters of course, rather than 
 unexpected and remote truths drawn from a deep insight 
 into human nature, and the subtle application of general 
 principles to particular cases. They consisted chiefly 
 in the detail and combination of a vast number of items 
 in an account, worked by the known rules of political 
 arithmetic ; not in the discovery of bold, comprehensive, 
 and original theorems in the science. They were rather 
 acts of memory, of continued attention, of a power of 
 bringing all his ideas to bear at once upon a single point, 
 
 2 F 
 
434 On the Character of Fox. 
 
 than of reason or invention. He was the attentive ob- 
 server who watches the various effects and successive 
 movements of a machine already constructed, and can tell 
 how to manage it while it goes on as it has always done ; 
 but who knows little or nothing of the principles on which 
 it is constructed, nor how to set it right, if it becomes 
 disordered, except by the most common and obvious ex- 
 pedients. Burke was to Fox what the geometrician is 
 to the mechanic. Much has been said of the " prophetic 
 mind " of Mr. Fox. The same epithet has been applied 
 to Mr. Burke, till it has become proverbial. It has, I 
 think, been applied without much reason to either. Fox 
 wanted the scientific part. Burke wanted the practical. 
 Fox had too little imagination, Burke had too much : that 
 is, he was careless of facts, and was led away by his 
 passions to look at one side of a question only. He had 
 not that fine sensibility to outward impressions, that nice 
 tact of circumstances, which is necessary to the consummate 
 politician. Indeed, his wisdom was more that of the 
 legislator than of the active statesman. They both tried 
 their strength in the Ulysses' bow of politicians, the 
 French Eevolution : and they were both foiled. Fox 
 indeed foretold the success of the French in combating 
 with foreign powers. But this was no more than what 
 every friend of the liberty of France foresaw or fore- 
 told as well as he. All those on the same side of the 
 question were inspired with the same sagacity on the 
 subject. Burke, on the other hand, seems to have been 
 beforehand with the public in foreboding the internal 
 disorders that would attend the Eevolution, and its 
 ultimate failure ; but then it is at least a question 
 whether he did not make good his own predictions : and 
 certainly he saw into the causes and connection of events 
 much more clearly after they had happened than before. 
 He was however undoubtedly a profound commentator on 
 that apocalyptical chapter in the history of human nature, 
 
On the Character of Fox. 435 
 
 which I do not think Fox was. Whether led to it by the 
 events or not, he saw thoroughly into the principles that 
 operated to produce them ; and he pointed them out to 
 others in a manner which could not be mistaken. I can 
 conceive of Burke, as the genius of the storm, perched over 
 Paris, the centre and focus of anarchy (so he would have 
 us believe), hovering " with mighty wings outspread over 
 the abyss, and rendering it pregnant," watching the 
 passions of men gradually unfolding themselves in new 
 situations, penetrating those hidden motives which hurried 
 them from one extreme into another, arranging and ana- 
 lysing the principles that alternately pervaded the vast 
 chaotic mass, and extracting the elements of order and 
 the cement of social life from the decomposition of all 
 society ; while Charles Fox in the meantime dogged the 
 heels of the allies (all the while calling out to them to 
 stop) with his sutler's bag, his muster roll, and army 
 estimates at his back. He said, You have only fifty 
 thousand troops, the enemy have a hundred thousand : 
 this place is dismantled, it can make no resistance : your 
 troops were beaten last year, they must therefore be dis- 
 heartened this. This is excellent sense and sound reason- 
 ing, but I do not see what it has to do with philosophy. 
 But why was it necessary that Fox should be a philoso- 
 pher ? Why, in the first place, Burke was a philosopher, 
 and Fox, to keep up with him, must be so too. In the 
 second place, it was necessary in order that his indiscreet 
 admirers, who have no idea of greatness but as it consists 
 in certain names and pompous titles, might be able to talk 
 big about their patron. It is a bad compliment we pay to 
 our idol when we endeavour to make him out something 
 different from himself; it shows that we are not satisfied 
 with what he is. 1 have heard it said that he had as 
 much imagination as Burke. To this extravagant asser- 
 tion I shall make what I conceive to be a very cautious 
 and moderate answer : that Burke was as superior to Fox 
 
436 On the Character of Fox, 
 
 in this respect as Fox perhaps was to the first person you 
 would meet in the street. There is, in fact, hardly an 
 instance of imagination to be met with in any of his 
 speeches ; what there is, is of the rhetorical kind. I may, 
 however, be wrong. He might excel as much in profound 
 thought, and richness of fancy, as he did in other things ; 
 though I cannot perceive it. However, when any one 
 publishes a book called The Beauties of Fox, containing 
 the original reflections, brilliant passages, lofty metaphors, 
 &c, to be found in his speeches, without the detail or con- 
 nexion, I shall be very ready to give the point up. 
 
 In logic Fox was inferior to Pitt — indeed, in all the 
 formalities of eloquence, in which the latter excelled as 
 much as he was deficient in the soul of substance. When 
 I say that Pitt was superior to Fox in logic, I mean that 
 he excelled him in the formal division of the subject, in 
 always keeping it in view, as far as he chose ; in being 
 able to detect any deviation from it in others ; in the 
 management of his general topics ; in being aware of the 
 mood and figure in which the argument must move, with 
 all its nonessentials, dilemmas, and alternatives ; in never 
 committing himself, nor ever suffering his antagonist to 
 occupy an inch of the plainest ground, but under cover of 
 a syllogism. He had more of " the dazzling fence of 
 argument," as it has been called. He was, in short, better 
 at his weapon. But then, unfortunately, it was only a 
 dagger of lath that the wind could turn aside ; whereas Fox 
 wore a good trusty blade, of solid metal, and real execution. 
 
 I shall not trouble myself to inquire whether Fox was 
 a man of strict virtue and principle ; or in other words, 
 how far he was one of those who screw themselves up to 
 a certain pitch of ideal perfection, who, as it were, set 
 themselves in the stocks of morality, and make mouths at 
 their own situation. He was not one of that tribe, and 
 shall not be tried by their self-denying ordinances. But 
 he was endowed with one of the most excellent natures 
 
On the Character of Fox. 437 
 
 that ever fell to the lot of any of God's creatures. It has 
 been said, that " an honest man's the noblest work of 
 God." There is indeed a purity, a rectitude, an integrity 
 of heart, a freedom from every selfish bias, and sinister 
 motive, a manly simplicity and noble disinterestedness of 
 feeling, which is in my opinion to be preferred before 
 every other gift of nature or art. There is a greatness of 
 soul that is superior to all the brilliancy of the under- 
 standing. This strength of moral character, which is not 
 only a more valuable but a rarer quality than strength of 
 understanding (as we are oftener led astray by the 
 narrowness of our feelings, than want of knowledge), Fox 
 possessed in the highest degree. He was superior to 
 every kind of jealousy, of suspicion, of malevolence ; to 
 every narrow and sordid motive. He was perfectly above 
 every species of duplicity, of low art and cunning. He 
 judged of everything in the downright sincerity of his 
 nature, without being able to impose upon himself by any 
 hollow disguise, or to lend his support to anything unfair 
 or dishonourable. He had an innate love of truth, of 
 justice, of probity, of whatever was generous or liberal. 
 Neither his education, nor his connections, nor his situa- 
 tion in life, nor the low intrigues and virulence of party, 
 could ever alter the simplicity of his taste, nor the candid 
 openness of his nature. There was an elastic force about 
 his heart, a freshness of social feeling, a warm glowing 
 humanity, which remained unimpaired to the last. He 
 was by nature a gentleman. By this I mean that he felt 
 a certain deference and respect for the person of every 
 man ; he had an unaffected frankness and benignity in his 
 behaviour to others, the utmost liberality in judging of 
 their conduct and motives. A refined humanity consti- 
 tutes the character of a gentleman. He was the true 
 friend of his country, as far as it is possible for a 
 statesman to be so. But his love of his country did not 
 consist in his hatred of the rest of mankind. I shall 
 
438 On the Character of Mr. Pitt. 
 
 conclude this account by repeating what Burke said oi 
 him at a time when his testimony was of the most value. 
 " To his great and masterly understanding he joined the 
 utmost possible degree of moderation : he was of the most 
 artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition ; disin- 
 terested in the extreme ; of a temper mild and placable, 
 even to a fault ; and without one drop of gall in his con- 
 stitution." 
 
 ESSAY XIV. 
 
 On the Character of Mr. Pitt} 
 
 The character of Mr. Pitt was, perhaps, one of the most 
 singular that ever existed. With few talents, and fewer 
 virtues, he acquired and preserved in one of the most 
 trying situations, and in spite of all opposition, the 
 highest reputation for the possession of every moral 
 excellence, and as having carried the attainments of 
 eloquence and wisdom as far as human abilities could 
 go. This he did (strange as it appears) by a negation 
 (together with the common virtues) of the common vices 
 of human nature, and by the complete negation of every 
 other talent that might interfere with the only one which 
 he possessed in a supreme degree, and which indeed may 
 be made to include the appearance of all others — an artful 
 use of words, and a certain dexterity of logical arrange- 
 ment. In these alone his power consisted ; and the 
 defect of all other qualities which usually constitute 
 greatness, contributed to the more complete success of 
 these. Having no strong feelings, no distinct perceptions, 
 his mind having no link as it were, to connect it with 
 the world of external nature, every subject presented 
 
 1 Originally printed as part of a pamphlet entitled Free Thoughts 
 on Public Affairs. 1806, and republished in the Eloquence of the 
 British Senate, 1807, ii. 494, et seq. — Ed. 
 
 
On the Character of Mr. Pitt. 439 
 
 to him nothing more than a tabula rasa, on which he was 
 at liberty to lay whatever colouring of language he 
 pleased ; having no general principles, no comprehensive 
 views of things, no moral habits of thinking, no system of 
 action, there was nothing to hinder him from pursuing 
 any particular purpose, by any means that offered ; having 
 never any plan, he could not be convicted of inconsistency, 
 and his own pride and obstinacy were the only rules of 
 his conduct. Having no insight into human nature, 
 no sympathy with the passions of men, or apprehension 
 of their real designs, he seemed perfectly insensible 
 to the consequences of things, and would believe nothing 
 till it actually happened. The fog and haze in which he 
 saw everything communicated itself to others; and the 
 total indistinctness and uncertainty of his own ideas 
 tended to confound the perceptions of his hearers more 
 effectually than the most ingenious misrepresentation 
 could have done. Indeed, in defending his conduct 
 he never seemed to consider himself as at all responsible 
 for the success of his measures, or to suppose that future 
 events were in our own power ; but that as the best-laid 
 schemes might fail, and there was no providing against all 
 possible contingencies, this was a sufficient excuse for our 
 plunging at once into any dangerous or absurd enterprise, 
 without the least regard to consequences. His reserved 
 logic confined itself solely to the possible and the im- 
 possible ; and he appeared to regard the probable and 
 improbable, the only foundation of moral prudence or 
 political wisdom, as beneath the notice of a profound 
 statesman ; as if the pride of the human intellect were 
 concerned in never entrusting itself with subjects, where 
 it may be compelled to acknowledge its weakness. 1 From 
 
 1 One instance may serve as an example for all the rest : — AVhen 
 Mr. Fox last summer (1805) predicted the failure of the new con- 
 federacy against France, from a consideration of the circumstances 
 and relative situation of both parties, that is, from an exact know 
 
440 On the Character of Mr. Pitt. 
 
 his manner of reasoning, lie seemed not to have believed 
 that the truth of his statements depended on the reality of 
 the facts, but that the things depended on the order in 
 which he arranged them in words : you would not suppose 
 him to be agitating a serious question which had real 
 grounds to go upon, but to be declaiming upon an 
 imaginary thesis, proposed as an exercise in the schools. 
 He never set himself to examine the force of the objections 
 that were brought against his measures, or attempted 
 to establish these upon clear, solid grounds of his own ; 
 but constantly contented himself with first gravely stating 
 the logical form, or dilemma, to which the question reduced 
 itself, and then, after having declared his opinion, pro- 
 ceeded to amuse his hearers by a series of rhetorical 
 commonplaces, connected together in grave, sonorous, and 
 elaborately constructed periods, without ever showing 
 
 ledge of the actual state of things, Mr. Pitt contented himself with 
 answering — and, as in the blindness of his infatuation, he seemed 
 to think quite satisfactorily — " That he could not assent to the 
 honourable gentleman's reasoning, for that it went to this, that we 
 were never to attempt to mend the situation of cur affairs, because 
 in so doing we might possibly make them worse." No ; it was not 
 on account of this abstract possibility in human affairs, or because 
 we were not absolutely sure of succeeding (for that any child might 
 know), but because it was in the highest degree probable, or 
 morally certain, that the scheme would fail, and leave us in a worse 
 situation than we were before, that Mr. Fox disapproved of the 
 attempt. There is in this a degree of weakness and imbecility, a 
 defect of understanding bordering on idiotism, a fundamental 
 ignorance of the first principles of human reason and prudence, 
 that in a great minister is utterly astonishing, and almost incredible. 
 Nothing coujd ever drive him out of his dull forms, and naked 
 generalities ; which, as they are susceptible neither of degree nor 
 variation, are therefore equally applicable to every emergency that 
 can happen: and in the most critical aspect of affairs, he saw 
 nothing but the same flimsy web of remote possibilities and meta- 
 physical uncertainty. In his mind the wholesome pulp < f practical 
 wisdom and salutary advice was immediately converted into the dry 
 chaff and husks of a miserable logic. 
 
On the Character of Mr. Pitt 441 
 
 their real application to the subject in dispute. Thus, if 
 any member of the Opposition disapproved of any measure, 
 and enforced his objections by pointing out the many evils 
 with which it was fraught, or the difficulties attending its 
 execution, his only answer was, " That it was true there 
 might be inconveniences attending the measure proposed, 
 but we were to remember, that every expedient that could 
 be devised might be said to be nothing more than a choice 
 of difficulties, and that all that human prudence could do 
 was to consider on which side the advantages lay ; that for 
 his part, he conceived that the present measure was 
 attended with more advantages and fewer disadvantages 
 than any other that could be adopted ; that if we were 
 diverted from our object by every appearance of difficulty, 
 the wheels of goverment would be clogged by endless 
 delays and imaginary grievances ; that most of the objec- 
 tions made to the measure appeared to him to be trivial, 
 others of them unfounded and improbable ; or that if a 
 scheme free from all these objections could be proposed, it 
 might after all prove inefficient ; while, in the meantime, 
 a material object remained unprovided for, or the oppor- 
 tunity of action was lost." This mode of reasoning is 
 admirably described by Hobbes, in speaking of the writings 
 of some of the Schoolmen, of whom he says, that " They 
 had learned the trick of imposing what they list upon their 
 readers, and declining the force of true reason by verbal 
 forks : that is, distinctions which signify nothing/ but 
 serve only to astonish the multitude of ignorant men." 
 That what I have here stated comprehends the whole 
 force of his mind, which consisted solely in this evasive 
 dexterity and perplexing formality, assisted by a copious- 
 ness of words and commonplace topics, will, I think, be 
 evident in any one who carefully looks over his speeches, 
 undazzled by the reputation or personal influence of the 
 speaker. It will be in vain to look in them for any of 
 the common proofs of human genius or wisdom. He has 
 
442 On the Character of Mr. Pitt. 
 
 not left behind him a single memorable saying — not one 
 profound maxim — one solid observation — one forcible 
 description — one beautiful thought — one humorous picture 
 — one affecting sentiment. 1 He has made no addition 
 whatever to the stock of human knowledge. He did not 
 possess any one of those faculties which contribute to the 
 instruction and delight of mankind— depth of under- 
 standing, imagination, sensibility, wit, vivacity, clear and 
 solid judgment. But it may be asked, If these qualities 
 are not to be found in him, where are we to look for them ? 
 And I may be required to point out instances of them. 
 I shall answer, then, that he had none of the profound 
 legislative wisdom, piercing sagacity, or rich, impetuous, 
 high-wrought imagination of Burke ; the manly eloquence, 
 strong sense, exact knowledge, vehemence, and natural 
 simplicity of Fox : the ease, brilliancy, and acuteness 
 of Sheridan. It is not merely that he had not all these 
 qualities in the degree that they were severally possessed 
 by his rivals, but he had not any of them in any striking 
 degree. His reasoning is a techinal arrangement of un- 
 meaning commonplaces ; his eloquence merely rhetorical ; 
 his style monotonous and artificial. If he could pretend to 
 any one excellence in an eminent degree, it was to taste 
 in composition. There is certainly nothing low, nothing 
 puerile, nothing far-fetched or abrupt in his speeches ; 
 there is a kind of faultless regularity pervading them 
 throughout ; but in the confined, mechanical, passive mode 
 of eloquence which he adopted, it seemed rather more 
 
 1 I do remember one passage which has some meaning in it. At 
 the time of the Kegency Bill, speaking of the proposal to take the 
 King's servants from him, he says, " What must that great per- 
 sonage feel when he waked from the trance of his faculties, and 
 asked for his attendants, if he were told that his subjects had taken 
 advantage of his momentary absence of mind, and stripped him of 
 the symbols of his personal elevation." There is some grandeur in 
 this. His admirers should have it inscribed in letters of gold ; for 
 they will not find another instance of the same kind. 
 
 
On the Character of Mr. Pitt. 443 
 
 difficult to commit errors than to avoid them. A man 
 who is determined never to move out of the beaten road, 
 cannot lose his way. However, habit, joined to the pecu- 
 liar mechanical memory which he possessed, carried this 
 correctness to a degree which, in an extemporaneous 
 speaker, was almost miraculous ; he perhaps hardly ever 
 uttered a sentence that was not perfectly regular and 
 connected. In this respect he not only had the advantage 
 over his own contemporaries, but perhaps no one that 
 ever lived equalled him in this singular faculty. But for 
 this, he would always have passed for a common man ; 
 and to this the constant sameness, and, if I may so say, 
 vulgarity of his ideas, must have contributed not a little, 
 as there was nothing to distract his mind from this one 
 object of his unintermitted attention ; and as even in his 
 choice of words he never aimed at anything more than a 
 certain general propriety, and stately uniformity of style. 
 His talents were exactly fitted for the situation in which 
 he was placed ; w T here it was his business, not to overcome 
 others, but to avoid being overcome. He was able to 
 baffle opposition, not from strength or firmness, but from 
 the evasive ambiguity and impalpable nature of his resist- 
 ance, which gave no hold to the rude grasp of his op- 
 ponents : no force could bind the loose phantom, and his 
 mind (though " not matchless, and his pride humbled by 
 such rebuke"), soon rose from defeat unhurt, 
 
 " And in its liquid texture mortal wound 
 Eeceiv'd no more than can the fluid air." 1 
 
 1 I will only add, that it is the property of true genius to force 
 the admiration even of enemies. No one was ever hated or envied 
 for his powers of mind, if others were convinced of their real ex- 
 cellence. The jealousy and uneasiness produced in the mind by 
 the display of superior talents almost always arises from a suspicion 
 that there is some trick or deception in the case, and that we are 
 imposed on by an appearance of what is not really there. True 
 warmth and vigour communicate warmth and vigour; and we are 
 no longer inclined to dispute the inspiration of the oracle, when we 
 
444 On the Character of Lord Chatham. 
 
 ESSAY XV. 
 
 On the Character of Lord Chatham. 1 
 
 Lord Chatham's genius burnt brightest at the last. 
 The spark of liberty, which had lain concealed and 
 dormant, buried under the dirt and rubbish of state 
 intrigue and vulgar faction, now met with congenial 
 matter, and kindled up " a flame of sacred vehemence " 
 in his breast. It burst forth with a fury and a splendour 
 that might have awed the world, and made kings tremble. 
 He spoke as a man should speak, because he felt as a man 
 should feel, in such circumstances. He came forward as 
 the advocate of liberty, as the defender of the rights of his 
 fellow-citizens, as the enemy of tyranny, as the friend of 
 his country, and of mankind. He did not stand up to 
 make a vain display of his talents, but to discharge a 
 duty, to maintain that cause which lay nearest to his 
 heart, to preserve the ark of the British constitution from 
 every sacrilegious touch, as the high-priest of his calling, 
 with a pious zeal. The feelings and the rights of 
 Englishmen were enshrined in his heart ; and with their 
 united force braced every nerve, possessed every faculty, 
 and communicated warmth and vital energy to every part 
 of his being. The whole man moved under this impulse. 
 He felt the cause of liberty as his own. He resented 
 every injury done to her as an injury to himself, and 
 
 feel the " presens Divus " in our own bosoms. But when, without 
 gaining any new light or heat, we only find our ideas thrown into 
 perplexity and confusion by an art that we cannot comprehend, this 
 is a kind of superiority which must always be painful, and can 
 never be cordially admitted. For this reason the extraordinary 
 talents of Mr. Pitt were always viewed, except by those of his own 
 party, with a sort of jealousy, and grudgingly acknowledged; while 
 those of his rivals were admitted by all parties in the most unre- 
 served manner, and carried by acclamation. 
 
 1 The Eloquence of the British Senate, 1807, ii. 4-7.— Ed. 
 
On the Character of Lord Chatham. 445 
 
 every attempt to defend it a,s an insult upon his under- 
 standing. He did not stay to dispute about words, about 
 nice distinctions, about trifling forms. He laughed at the 
 little attempts of little retailers of logic to entangle him 
 in senseless argument. He did not come there as to a 
 debating club, or law court, to start questions and hunt 
 them down ; to wind and unwind the web of sophistry ; to 
 pick out the threads, and untie every knot with scrupulous 
 exactness; to bandy logic with every pretender to a 
 paradox ; to examine, to sift evidence ; to dissect a doubt 
 and halve a scruple ; to weigh folly and knavery in scales 
 together, and see on which side the balance prepon- 
 derated ; to prove that liberty, truth, virtue, and justice 
 were good things, or that slavery and corruption were bad 
 things. He did not try to prove those truths which did 
 not require any proof, but to make others feel them with 
 the same force that he did ; and to tear off the flimsy 
 disguises with which the sycophants of power attempted 
 to cover them. The business of an orator is not to con- 
 vince, but persuade ; not to inform, but to rouse the mind ; 
 to build upon the habitual prejudices of mankind (for 
 xeason of itself will do nothing), and to add feeling to pre- 
 judice, and action to feeling. There is nothing new or 
 curious or profound in Lord Chatham's speeches. All is 
 obvious and common ; there is nothing but what we 
 already knew, or might have found out for ourselves. 
 We see nothing but the familiar everyday face of nature. 
 We are always in broad daylight. But then there is the 
 same difference between our own conceptions of things and 
 his representation of them, as there is between the same 
 objects seen on a dull cloudy day or in the blaze of 
 sunshine. His common sense has the effect of inspiratioD. 
 He electrifies his hearers, not by the novelty of his ideas, 
 but by their force and intensity. He has the same ideas 
 as other men, but he has them in a thousand times greater 
 clearness and strength and vividness. Perhaps there if 
 
446 On the Character of Lord Chatham. 
 
 no man so poorly furnished with thoughts and feelings 
 but that if he could recollect all that he knew, and had 
 all his ideas at perfect command, he would be able to 
 confound the puny arts of the most dexterous sophist that 
 pretended to make a dupe of his understanding. But in 
 the mind of Chatham, the great substantial truths of 
 common sense, the leading maxims of the Constitution, 
 the real interests and general feelings of mankind were 
 in a manner embodied. He comprehended the whole of 
 his subject at a single glance — everything was firmly 
 riveted to its place ; there was no feebleness, no forget- 
 fulness, no pause, no distraction ; the ardour of his mind 
 overcame every obstacle, and he crushed the objections of 
 his adversaries as we crush an insect under our feet. His 
 imagination was of the same character with his under- 
 standing, and was under the same guidance. Whenever 
 he gave way to it, it " flew an eagle flight, forth and right 
 on ;" but it did not become enamoured of its own emotion, 
 wantoning in giddy circles, or " sailing with supreme 
 dominion through the azure deep of air." It never forgot 
 its errand, but went straight forward, like an arrow to its 
 mark, with an unerring aim. It was his servant, not his 
 master. 
 
 To be a great orator does not require the highest 
 faculties of the human mind, but it requires the highest 
 exertion of the common faculties of our nature. He has 
 no occasion to dive into the depths of science, or to soar 
 aloft on angels' wings. He keeps upon the surface, he 
 stands firm upon the ground, but his form is majestic, and 
 his eye sees far and near : he moves among his fellows, 
 but he moves among them as a giant among common 
 men. He has no need to read the heavens, to unfold the 
 system of the universe, or create new worlds for the 
 delighted fancy to dwell in ; it is enough that he see 
 things as they are ; that he knows and feels and re- 
 members the common circumstances and daily transactions 
 
On the Character of Lord Chatham. 447 
 
 that are passing in the world around him. He is not raised 
 above others by being superior to the common interests, 
 prejudices, and passions of mankind, but by feeling them 
 in a more intense degree than they do. Force, then, 
 is the sole characteristic excellence of an orator; it is 
 almost the only one that can be of any service to him. 
 Kefinement, depth, elevation, delicacy, originality, inge- 
 nuity, invention, are not wanted; he must appeal to the 
 sympathies of human nature, and whatever is not founded 
 in these, is foreign to his purpose. He does not create, he 
 can only imitate or echo back the public sentiment. His 
 object is to call up the feelings of the human breast ; but 
 he cannot call up what is not already there. The first 
 duty of an orator is to be understood by every one ; but 
 it is evident that what all can understand, is not in itself 
 difficult of comprehension. He cannot add anything to 
 the materials afforded him by the knowledge and expe- 
 rience of others. 
 
 Lord Chatham, in his speeches, was neither philosopher 
 nor poet. As to the latter, the difference between poetry 
 and eloquence I take to be this : that the object of the 
 one is to delight the imagination, that of the other to 
 impel the will. The one ought to enrich and feed the 
 mind itself with tenderness and beauty, the other fur- 
 nishes it with motives of action. The one seeks to give 
 immediate pleasure, to make the mind dwell with rapture 
 on its own workings — it is to itself " both end and use :" 
 the other endeavours to call up such images as will 
 produce the strongest effect upon the mind, and makes use 
 of the passions only as instruments to attain a particular 
 purpose. The poet lulls and soothes the mind into a 
 forgetfulness of itself, and " laps it in Elysium : " the 
 orator strives to awaken it to a sense of its real interests, 
 and to make it feel the necessity of taking the most effec- 
 tual means for securing them. The one dwells in an 
 ideal world; the other is only conversant with realities. 
 
448 On the Character of Lord Chatham. 
 
 Hence poetry must be more ornamented, must be richer 
 and fuller and more delicate, because it is at liberty to 
 select whatever images are naturally most beautiful, and 
 likely to give most pleasure ; whereas the orator is 
 confined to particular facts, which he may adorn as well 
 as he can, and make the most of, but which he cannot 
 strain beyond a certain point without running into 
 extravagance and affectation, and losing his end. How- 
 ever, from the very nature of the case, the orator is 
 allowed a greater latitude, and is compelled to make use 
 of harsher and more abrupt combinations in the decora- 
 tion of his subject ; for his art is an attempt to reconcile 
 beauty and deformity together : on the contrary, the 
 materials of poetry, which are chosen at pleasure, are in 
 themselves beautiful, and naturally combine with whatever 
 else is beautiful. Grace and harmony are therefore 
 essential to poetry, because they naturally arise out of the 
 subject ; but whatever adds to the effect, whatever tends 
 to strengthen the idea or give energy to the mind, is of the 
 nature of eloquence. The orator is only concerned to 
 give a tone of masculine firmness to the will, to brace the 
 sinews and muscles of the mind ; not to delight our 
 nervous sensibilities, or soften the mind into voluptuous 
 indolence. The flowery and sentimental style is of all 
 others the most intolerable in a speaker. — I shall only add 
 on this subject, that modesty, impartiality, and candour, 
 are not the virtues of a public speaker. He must be 
 confident, inflexible, uncontrollable, overcoming all oppo- 
 sition by his ardour and impetuosity. We do not command 
 others by sympathy with them, but by power, by passion, 
 by will. Calm inquiry, sober truth, and speculative 
 indifference will never carry any point. The passions 
 are contagious ; and we cannot contend against opposite 
 passions with nothing but naked reason. Concessions to 
 an enemy are clear loss ; he will take advantage of them, 
 but make us none in return. He will magnify the weak 
 
Belief, whether Voluntary ? 449 
 
 sides of our argument, but will be blind to whatever 
 makes against himself. The multitude will always be 
 inclined to side with that party whose passions are the 
 most inflamed, and whose prejudices are the most in- 
 veterate. Passion should therefore never be sacrificed 
 to punctilio. It should indeed be governed by pru- 
 dence, but it shou]d itself govern and lend its impulse 
 and direction to abstract reason. Fox was a reasoner 
 Lord Chatham was an orator. Burke was both a reasoner 
 and a poet ; and was therefore still farther removed from 
 that conformity with the vulgar notions and mechanical 
 feelings of mankind, which will always be necessary to 
 give a man the chief sway in a popular assembly. 
 
 ESSAY XYI. 
 
 Belief whether Voluntary? 1 
 
 u Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought." 
 
 It is an axiom in modern philosophy (among many other 
 false ones) that belief is absolutely involuntary, since we 
 draw our inferences from the premises laid before us, and 
 cannot possibly receive any other impression of things 
 than that which they naturally make upon us. This 
 theory, that the understanding is purely passive in the 
 reception of truth, and that our convictions are not in the 
 power of our will, was probably first invented or insisted 
 upon as a screen against religious persecution, and as an 
 answer to those who imputed bad motives to all who 
 differed from the established faith, and thought they 
 could reform heresy and impiety by the application of fire 
 and the sword. No doubt, that is not the way: for the 
 will in that case irritates itself and grows refractory 
 against the doctrines thus absurdly forced upon it ; and as 
 it has been said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed 
 1 First printed in the Literary Remains, 1836. — Ed. 
 
 2 G 
 
450 Belief, whether Voluntary? 
 
 of the Church. But though force and terror may not be 
 always the surest way to make converts, it does not follow 
 that there may not be other means of influencing our 
 opinions, besides the naked and abstract evidence for 
 any proposition : the sun melts the resolution which the 
 storm could not shake. In such points as, whether an 
 object is black or white or whether two and two make 
 four, 1 we may not be able to believe as we please or to 
 deny the evidence of our reason and senses : but in those 
 points on which mankind differ, or where we can be at all 
 in suspense as to which side we shall take, the truth is not 
 quite so plain or palpable ; it admits of a variety of views 
 and shades of colouring, and it should appear that we can 
 dwell upon whichever of these we choose, and heighten or 
 soften the circumstances adduced in proof, according as 
 passion and inclination throw their casting- weight into the 
 scale. Let any one, for instance, have been brought up in 
 an opinion, let him have remained in it all his life, let him 
 have attached all his notions of respectability, of the 
 approbation of his fellow-citizens or his own self-esteem 
 to it, let him then first hear it called in question, and 
 a strong and unforeseen objection stated to it, will not 
 this startle and shock him as if he had seen a spectre, 
 and will he not struggle to resist the arguments that 
 would unsettle his habitual convictions, as he would resit 
 the divorcing of soul and body ? Will he come to the con- 
 sideration of the question impartially, indifferently, and 
 without any wrong bias, or give the painful and revolting 
 truth the same cordial welcome as the long-cherished and 
 favourite prejudice ? To say that the truth or falsehood of 
 a proposition is the only circumstance that gains it admit- 
 tance into the mind, independently of the pleasure or pain 
 it affords us, is itself an assertion made in pure caprice or 
 desperation. A person may have a profession or employ- 
 
 1 Hobbes is of opinion that men would deny this, if they had any 
 interest in doing so. 
 
Belief, whether Voluntary ? • 451 
 
 merit connected with a certain belief, it may be the means 
 of livelihood to him, and the changing it may require 
 considerable sacrifices, or may leave him almost without 
 resource (to say nothing of mortified pride) — this will 
 not mend the matter. The evidence against his former 
 opinion may be so strong (or may appear so to him) that 
 he may be obliged to give it up. but not without a pang 
 and after having tried every artifice and strained every 
 nerve to give the utmost weight to the arguments favouring 
 his own side, and to make light of and throw those against 
 him into the background. And nine times in ten this 
 bias of the will and tampering with the proofs will prevail. 
 It is only with very vigorous or very candid minds that 
 the understanding exercises its just and boasted pre- 
 rogative, and induces its votaries to relinquish a profitable 
 delusion and embrace the dowerless truth. Even then 
 they have the sober and discreet part of the world, all 
 the bons peres de famille, who look principally to the main 
 chance, against them, and they are regarded as little better 
 than lunatics or profligates to fling up a good salary and a 
 provision for themselves and families for the sake of that 
 foolish thing, a Conscience ! With the herd, belief on 
 all abstract and disputed topics is voluntary, that is, 
 is determined by considerations of personal ease and 
 convenience, in the teeth of logical analysis and demon- 
 stration, which are set aside as mere waste of words. 
 In short, generally speaking, people stick to an opinion 
 that they have long supported and that supports them. 
 How else shall we account for the regular order and 
 progression of society : for the maintenance of certain 
 opinions in particular professions and classes of men, 
 as we keep water in cisterns, till in fact they stagnate and 
 corrupt : and that the world and every individual in it is 
 not " blown about with every wind of doctrine " and whis- 
 per of uncertainty ? There is some more solid ballast 
 required to keep things in their established order than the 
 
452 Belief, whether Voluntary ? 
 
 restless fluctuation of opinion and " infinite agitation 
 of wit." We find that people in Protestant countries 
 continue Protestants, and in Catholic countries Papists. 
 This, it may be answered, is owing to the ignorance of the 
 great mass of them ; but in their faith less bigoted, because 
 it is not founded on a regular investigation of the proofs, 
 and is merely an obstinate determination to believe what 
 they have been told and accustomed to believe ? Or is it 
 not the same with the doctors of the church and its most 
 learned champions, who read the same texts, turn over the 
 same authorities, and discuss the same knotty points 
 through their whole lives, only to~ arrive at opposite 
 conclusions ? How few are shaken in their opinions, 
 or have the grace to confess it ? Shall we then suppose 
 them all impostors, and that they keep up the farce of a 
 system, of which they do not believe a syllable ? Far 
 from it : there may be individual instances, but the 
 generality are not only sincere but bigots. Those who 
 are unbelievers and hypocrites scarcely know it them- 
 selves, or if a man is not quite a knave, what pains will he 
 not take to make a fool of his reason, that his opinions 
 may tally with his professions ? Is there then a Papist and 
 a Protestant understanding — one prepared to receive the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation and the other to reject it ? 
 No such thing : but in either case the ground of reason is 
 pre-occupied by passion, habit, example — the scales are 
 falsified. Nothing can therefore be more inconsequential 
 than to bring the authority of great names in favour 
 of opinions long established and universally received. 
 Cicero's being a Pagan was no proof in support of the 
 Heathen mythology, but simply of his being born at Eome 
 before the Christian era ; though his lurking scepticism 
 on the subject ahd sneers at the augurs told against it, 
 for this was an acknowledgment drawn from him in 
 spite of a prevailing prejudice. Sir Isaac Newton and 
 Napier of Murchiston both wrote on the Apocalypse ; but 
 
Belief, whether Voluntary? 453 
 
 this is neither a ground for a speedy anticipation of the 
 Millennium, nor does it invalidate the doctrine of the 
 gravitation of the planets or the theory of logarithms. 
 One party would borrow the sanction of these great names 
 in support of their wildest and most mystical opinions ; 
 others would arraign them of folly and weakness for 
 having attended to such subjects at all. Neither inference 
 is just. It is a simple question of chronology, or of the 
 time when these celebrated mathematicians lived, and 
 of the studies and pursuits which were then chiefly in 
 vogue. The wisest man is the slave of opinion, except on 
 one or two points on which he strikes out a light for 
 himself and holds a torch to the rest of the world. But we 
 are disposed to make it out that all opinions are the result 
 of reason, because they profess to be so ; and when they 
 are tight, that is, when they agree with ours, that there 
 can be . no alloy of human frailty or perversity in them ; 
 the very strength of our prejudice making it pass for pure 
 reason, and leading us to attribute any deviation from it 
 to bad faith or some unaccountable singularity or infatua- 
 tion. Alas, poor human nature / Opinion is for the most. 
 part only a battle, in which we take part and defend che 
 side we have adopted, in the one case or the other, with a 
 view to share the honour of the spoil. Few will stand up 
 for a losing cause, or have the fortitude to adhere to 
 a proscribed opinion ; and when they do, it is not always 
 from superior strength of understanding or a disinterested 
 love of truth, but from obstinacy and sullenness of temper. 
 To affirm that we do not cultivate an acquaintance with 
 truth as she presents herself to us in a more or less pleasing 
 shape, or is shabbily attired or well-dressed, is as much as 
 to say that we do not shut our eyes to the light when it 
 dazzles us, or withdraw our hands from the fire when 
 it scorches us. 
 
 " Masterless passion sways us to the mood 
 Of what it likes or loathes." 
 
454 Belief, whether Voluntary ? 
 
 Are we not averse to believe bad news relating to ourselves 
 — forward enough if it relates to others ? If something is 
 said reflecting on the character of an intimate friend or 
 near relative, how unwilling we are to lend an ear to it, 
 how we catch at every excuse or palliating circumstance, 
 and hold out against the clearest proof, while we instantly 
 believe any idle report against an enemy, magnify the 
 commonest trifles into crimes, and torture the evidence 
 against him to our heart's content ! Do not we change 
 our opinion of the same person, and make him out to be 
 hlack or white according to the terms we happen to be on ? 
 If we have a favourite author, do we not exaggerate his 
 beauties and pass over his defects, and vice versa f The 
 human mind plays the interested advocate much oftener 
 than the upright and inflexible judge, in the colouring and 
 relief it gives to the facts brought before it. We believe 
 things not more because they are true or probable, than 
 because we desire, or (if the imagination once takes that 
 turn) because we dread them. u Fear has more devils 
 than vast hell can hold/ 5 The sanguine always hope, the 
 gloomy always despond, from temperament and not from 
 forethought. Do we not disguise the plainest facts from 
 ourselves if they are disagreeable ? Do we not flatter 
 ourselves with impossibilities ? What girl does not look 
 in the glass to persuade herself she is handsome ? What 
 woman ever believes herself old, or does not hate to be 
 called so : though she knows the exact year and day of her 
 age, the more she tries to keep up the appearance of youth 
 to herself and others ? What lover would ever acknow- 
 ledge a flaw in the character of his mistress, or would not 
 construe her turning her back on him into a proof of 
 attachment ? The story of January and May is pat to our 
 purpose ; for the credulity of mankind as to what touches 
 our inclinations has been proverbial in all ages : yet we 
 are told that the mind is passive in making up these wilful 
 accounts and is guided by nothing but the pros and cons of 
 
Belief, whether Voluntary f 455 
 
 evidence. Even in action and where we may determine by 
 proper precaution the event of things, instead of being 
 compelled to shut our eyes to what we cannot help, we 
 still are the dupes of the feeling of the moment, and prefer 
 amusing ourselves with fair appearances to securing more 
 solid benefits by a sacrifice of Imagination and stubborn 
 Will to Truth. The blindness of passion to the most 
 obvious and well-known consequences is deplorable. 
 There seems to be a particular fatality in this respect. 
 Because a thing is in our power till we have committed 
 ourselves, we appear to dally, to trifle with, to make light 
 of it, and to think it will still be in our power after we 
 have committed ourselves. Strange perversion of the 
 reasoning faculties, which is little short of madness, and 
 which yet is one of the constant and practical sophisms of 
 human life ! It is ' as if one should say — I am in no 
 danger from a tremendous machine unless I touch such a 
 spring and therefore I will approach it, I will play with 
 the danger, I will laugh at it, and at last in pure sport 
 and wantonness of heart, from my sense of previous 
 security, I will touch it — and there's an end. While the 
 thing remains in contemplation, we may be said to stand 
 safe and smiling on the brink : as soon as we proceed to 
 action we are drawn into the vortex of passion and hurried 
 to our destruction. A person taken up with some one 
 purpose or passion is intent only upon that : he drives 
 out the thought of everything but its gratification : in the 
 pursuit of that he is blind to consequences : his first 
 object being attained, they all at once, and as if by magic, 
 rush upon his mind. The engine recoils, he is caught in 
 his own snare. A servant girl, for some pique, or for 
 an angry word, determines to poison her mistress. She 
 knows beforehand (just as well as she does afterwards) 
 that it is at least a hundred chances to one she will be 
 hanged if she succeeds, yet this has no more effect upon 
 her than if she had never heard of any such matter. The 
 
456 Belief, whether Voluntary ? 
 
 only idea that occupies her mind and hardens it against 
 every other, is that of the affront she has received, and the 
 desire of revenge : she broods over it ; she meditates the 
 mode, she is haunted with her scheme night and day : it 
 works like poison ; it grows into a madness, and she can 
 have no peace till it is accomplished and off Iter mind ; but 
 the moment this is the case, and her passion is assuaged, 
 fear takes place of hatred, the slightest suspicion alarms 
 her with the certainty of her fate, from which she before 
 wilfully averted her thoughts ; she runs wildly from the 
 officers before they know anything of the matter ; the 
 gallows stares her in the face, and if none else accuses her, 
 so full is she of her danger and her guilt, that she probably 
 betrays herself. She at first would see no consequences 
 to result from her crime but the getting rid of a present 
 uneasiness ; she now sees the very worst The whole 
 seems to depend on the turn given to the imagination, on 
 our immediate disposition to attend to this or that view of 
 the subject, the evil or the good As long as our in- 
 tention is unknown to the world, before it breaks out into 
 action, it seems to be deposited in our own bosoms, to be a 
 mere feverish dream, and to be left with all its conse- 
 quences under our imaginary control : but no sooner is it 
 realised and known to others, than it appears to have 
 escaped from our reach, we fancy the whole world are up 
 in arms against us, and vengeance is ready to pursue and 
 overtake us. So in the pursuit of pleasure, we see only 
 that side of the question which we approve; the dis- 
 agreeable consequences (which may take place) make no 
 part of our intention or concern, or of the wayward exer- 
 cise of our will : if they should happen we cannot help it ; 
 they form an ugly and unwished-for contrast to our 
 favourite speculation : we turn our thoughts another way, 
 repeating the adage Quod sic mihi ostendis incredtdus odi. 
 It is a good remark in Vivian Grey that a bankrupt walks 
 the streets the day before his name is in the Gazette 
 
Belief whether Voluntary f 457 
 
 with the same erect and confident brow as ever, and only 
 feels the mortification of his situation after it becomes 
 known to others. Such is the force of sympathy, and its 
 power to take off the edge of internal conviction! As 
 long as we can impose upon the world, we can impose 
 upon ourselves, and trust to the flattering appearances, 
 though we know them to be false. We put off the evil 
 day as long as we can, make a jest of it as the certainty 
 becomes more painful, and refuse to acknowledge the 
 secret to ourselves till it can no longer be kept from all 
 the world. In short, we believe just as little or as much 
 as we please of those things in which our will can be sup- 
 posed to interfere ; and it is only by setting aside our own 
 interests and inclinations on more general questions that 
 we stand any chance of arriving at a fair and rational 
 judgment. Those who have the largest hearts have the 
 soundest understandings ; and he is the truest philosopher 
 who can forget himself. This is the reason why philo- 
 sophers are often said to be mad, for thinking only of the 
 abstract truth and of none of its worldly adjuncts — it 
 seems like an absence of mind, or as if the devil had got 
 into them ! If belief were not in some degree voluntary, 
 or were grounded entirely on strict evidence and absolute 
 proof, every one would be a martyr to his opinions, and we 
 should have no power of evading or glossing over those 
 matter-of-fact conclusions for which positive vouchers 
 could be produced, however painful these conclusions 
 might be to our own feelings, or offensive to the prejudices 
 of others. 
 
458 A Farewell to Essay~ivriting. 
 
 ESSAY XVII. 
 
 A Farewell to Essay-writing. 1 
 
 " This life is best, if quiet life is best.'' 
 
 Food, warmth, sleep, and a book ; these are all I at present 
 ask — the ultima TJiule of my wandering desires. Do you 
 not then wish for 
 
 " A friend in your retreat, 
 Whom you may whisper, solitude is sweet T* 
 
 Expected, well enough : — gone, still better. Such attrac- 
 tions are strengthened by distance. Nor a mistress ? 
 " Beautiful mask ! I know thee ! " When I can judge 
 of the heart from the face, of the thoughts from the lips, 
 I may again trust myself. Instead of these give me the 
 robin red-breast, pecking the crumbs at the door, or 
 warbling on the leafless spray, the same glancing form 
 that has followed me wherever I have been, and " done 
 its spiriting gently ;" or the rich notes of the thrush that 
 startle the ear of winter, and seem to have drunk up the 
 full draught of joy from the very sense of contrast. To 
 these I adhere, and am faithful, for they are true to me ; 
 and, dear in themselves, are dearer for the sake of what is 
 departed, leading me back (by the hand) to that dreaming 
 world, in the innocence of which they sat and made sweet 
 music, waking the promise of future years, and answered 
 by the eager throbbings of my own breast. But now 
 li the credulous hope of mutual minds is o'er," and I turn 
 back from the world that has deceived me, to nature that 
 lent it a false beauty, and that keeps up the illusion of 
 the past. As I quaff my libations of tea in a morning, I 
 love to watch the clouds sailing from the west, and fancy 
 that " the spring comes slowly up this way." In this 
 
 1 Written at Winterslow, Feb. 20, 1828. See Memoirs, ii. 220, 
 et seq. — Ed. 
 
 
A Farewell to Essay writing. 459 
 
 hope, while im fields are dank and ways are mire," I follow 
 the same direction to a neighbouring wood, where, having 
 gained the dry, level greensward, I can see . my way for a 
 mile before me, closed in on each side by copse-wood, and 
 ending in a point of light more or less brilliant, as the 
 day is bright or cloudy. What a walk is this to me ! 
 I have no need of book or companion — the days, the hours, 
 the thoughts of my youth are at my side, and blend with 
 the air that fans my cheek. Here I can saunter for hours, 
 bending my eye forward, stopping and turning to look 
 back, thinking to strike off into some less trodden path, 
 yet hesitating to quit the one I am in, afraid to snap the 
 brittle threads of memory. I remark the shining trunks 
 and slender branches of the birch trees, waving in the 
 idle breeze ; or a pheasant springs up on whirring wing ; 
 or I recall the spot where I once found a wood-pigeon at 
 the foot of a tree, weltering in its gore, and think how 
 many seasons have flown since "it left its little life in 
 air." Dates, names, faces come back — to what purpose ? 
 Or why think of them now ? Or rather why not think of 
 them oftener? We walk through life, as through a 
 narrow path, with a thin curtain drawn around it ; behind 
 are ranged rich portraits, airy harps are strung — yet we 
 will not stretch forth our hands and lift aside the veil, 
 to catch glimpses of the one, or sweep the chords of the 
 other. As in a theatre, when the old-fashioned green 
 curtain drew up, groups of figures, fantastic dresses, 
 laughing faces, rich banquets, stately columns, gleaming 
 vistas appeared beyond ; so we have only at any time to 
 " peep through the blanket of the past," to possess our- 
 selves at once of all that has regaled our senses, that is 
 stored up in our memory, that has struck our fancy, that 
 has pierced our hearts : — yet to all this we are indifferent, 
 insensible, and seem intent only on the present vexation, 
 the future disappointment. If there is a Titian hanging 
 up in the room with me, I scarcely regard it : how then 
 
460 A Fareivell to Essay-writing. 
 
 should I be expected to strain the mental eye so far, or to 
 throw down, by the magic spells of the will, the stone- 
 walls that enclose it in the Louvre? There is one head 
 ; there of which I have often thought, when looking at it, 
 •that nothing should ever disturb me again, and I would 
 become the character it represents — such perfect calmness 
 and self-possession reigns in it ! Why do I not hang an 
 image of this in some dusky corner of my brain, and turn 
 an eye upon it ever and anon, as I have need of some 
 such talisman to calm my troubled thoughts? The 
 attempt is fruitless, if not natural; or, like that of the 
 French, to hang garlands on the grave, and to conjure 
 back the dead by miniature pictures of them while living ! 
 It is only some actual coincidence or local association that 
 tends, without violence, to " open all the cells where 
 memory slept." I can easily, by stooping over the long- 
 sprent grass and clay cold clod, recall the tufts of 'prim- 
 roses, or purple hyacinths, that formerly grew on the 
 same spot, and cover the bushes with leaves and singing- 
 birds, as they were eighteen summers ago ; or prolonging 
 my walk and hearing the sighing gale rustle through a 
 tall, straight wood at the end of it, can fancy that I dis- 
 tinguish the cry of hounds, and the fatal group issuing 
 from it, as in the tale of Theodore and Honoria. A 
 moaning gust of wind aids the belief ; I look once more to 
 see whether the trees before me answer to the idea of the 
 horror-stricken grove, and an air-built city towers over 
 their grey tops. 
 
 " Of all the cities in Eomanian lands, 
 The chief and most renown'd .Ravenna stand;?.*' 1 
 
 I return home resolved to read the entire poem through, 
 and, after dinner, drawing my chair to the fire, and 
 holding a small print close to my eyes, launch into the 
 full tide of Dryden's couplets (a stream of sound), com- 
 paring his didactic and descriptive pomp with the simple 
 1 Dryden's Theodore and Honoria, princip. 
 
A Farewell to Essay-Vjriting. 461 
 
 pathos and picturesque truth of Boccacio's story, and 
 tasting with a pleasure, which none but an habitual reader 
 can feel, some quaint examples of pronunciation in this 
 accomplished versifier. 
 
 " "Which when Honoria view'd, 
 The fresh impulse her former fright renew'd." l 
 " And made th' insult, which in his grief appears, 
 The means to mourn thee with my pious tears." 2 
 
 These trifling instances of the wavering and unsettled 
 state of the language give double effect to the firm and 
 stately march of the verse, and make me dwell with a sort 
 of tender interest on the difficulties and doubts of an 
 earlier period of literature. They pronounced words then 
 in a manner which we should laugh at now; and they 
 wrote verse in a manner which we can do anything but 
 laugh at. The pride of a new acquisition seems to give 
 fresh confidence to it; to impel the rolling syllables 
 through the moulds provided for them, and to overflow 
 the envious bounds of rhyme into time-honoured triplets. 
 
 What sometimes surprises me in looking back to the 
 past, is, with the exception already stated, to find myself 
 so little changed in the time. The same images and 
 trains of thought stick by me : I have the same tastes, 
 likings, sentiments, and wishes that I had then. One 
 great ground of confidence and support has, indeed, been 
 struck from under my feet; but I have made it up to 
 myself by proportionable pertinacity of opinion. The 
 success of the great cause, to which I had vowed myself, 
 was to me more than all the world : I had a strength in 
 its strength, a resource which I knew not of, till it failed 
 me for the second time. 
 
 " Fall'n was Glenartny's stately tree ! 
 Oh ! ne'er to see Lord Konald more !" 
 
 1 Dryden's Theodore and Honoria, princip. 
 2 Dryden's Sigismonda and Guiscardo. 
 
462 A Farewell to Essay-ivriting. 
 
 It was not till I saw the axe laid to the root, that I 
 found the full extent of what I had to lose and suffer. 
 But my conviction of the right was only established by 
 the triumph of the wrong ; and my earliest hopes will be 
 my last regrets. One source of this unbendingness (which 
 some may call obstinacy), is that, though living much 
 alone, I have never worshipped the Echo. I see plainly 
 enough that black is not white, that the grass is green, 
 that kings are not their subjects ; and, in such self-evident 
 cases, do not think it necessary to collate my opinions 
 with the received prejudices. In subtler questions, and 
 matters that admit of doubt, as I do not impose my opinion 
 on others without a reason, so I will not give up mine to 
 them without a better reason ; and a person calling me 
 names, or giving himself airs of authority, does not con- 
 vince me of his having taken more pains to find out the 
 truth than I have, but the contrary. Mr. Gifford once 
 said, that " while I was sitting over my gin and tobacco- 
 pipes, I fancied myself a Leibnitz." He did not so much 
 as know that I had ever read a metaphysical book: — was I 
 therefore, out of complaisance or deference to him, to 
 forget whether I had or not ? Leigh Hunt is puzzled to 
 reconcile the shyness of my pretensions with the invete- 
 racy and sturdiness of my principles. I should have 
 thought they were nearly the same thing. Both from 
 disposition and habit, I can assume nothing in word, look, 
 or manner. I cannot steal a march upon public opinion 
 in any way. My standing upright, speaking loud, entering 
 a room gracefully, proves nothing; therefore I neglect 
 these ordinary means of recommending myself to the good 
 graces and admiration of strangers (and, as it appears, 
 even of philosophers and friends). Why? Because I 
 have other resources, or, at least, am absorbed in other 
 studies and pursuits. Suppose this absorption to be 
 extreme, and even morbid— that I have brooded over an 
 idea till it has become a kind of substance in my brain, 
 
A Farewell to Essay-writing. 463 
 
 that I have reasons for a thing which I have found out 
 with much labour and pains, and to which I can scarcely 
 do justice without the utmost violence of exertion (and 
 that only to a few persons) — is this a reason for my 
 playing off my out-of-the-way notions in all companies, 
 wearing a prim and self-complacent air, as if I were " the 
 admired of all observers?" or is it not rather an argument, 
 (together with a want of animal spirits,) why I should 
 retire into myself, and perhaps acquire a nervous and 
 uneasy look, from a consciousness of the disproportion 
 between the interest and conviction I feel on certain 
 subjects, and my ability to communicate what weighs upon 
 my own mind to others ? If my ideas, which I do not 
 avouch, but suppose, lie below the surface, why am I to 
 be always attempting to dazzle superficial people with 
 them, or smiling, djlighted, at my own want of success? 
 
 In matters of taste and feeling, one proof that my 
 conclusions have not been quite shallow or hasty, is the 
 circumstance of their having been lasting. I have the 
 same favourite books, pictures, passages that I ever had : 
 I may therefore presume that they will last me my life — 
 nay, I may indulge a hope that my thoughts will survive 
 me. This continuity of impression is the only thing on 
 which I pride myself. Even Lamb, whose relish of 
 certain things is as keen and earnest as possible, takes a 
 surfeit of admiration, and I should be afraid to ask about 
 his select authors or particular friends, after a lapse of ten 
 years. As to myself, any one knows w T here to have me. 
 What I have once made up my mind to, I abide by to the 
 end of the chapter. One cause of my independence of 
 opinion is, I believe, the liberty I give to others, or the 
 very diffidence and distrust of making converts. I should 
 be an excellent man on a jury. I might say little, but 
 should starve "the other eleven obstinate fellows" out. 
 1 remember Mr. Godwin writing to Mr. Wordsworth, that 
 "his tragedy of Antonio could net fail of success/' It 
 
464 A Farewell to Essay-writing. 
 
 was damned past all redemption. I said to Mr. Words- 
 worth that I thought this a natural consequence; for how 
 could any one have a dramatic turn of mind who judged 
 entirely of others from himself? Mr. Godwin might be 
 convinced of the excellence of his work ; but how could he 
 know that others would be convinced of it, unless by 
 supposing that they were as wise as himself, and as 
 infallible critics of dramatic poetry — so many Aristotles 
 sitting in judgment on Euripides ! This shows why pride 
 is connected witn shyness and reserve ; for the really 
 proud have not so high an opinion of the generality as to 
 suppose that they can understand them, or that there is 
 any common measure between them. So Dryden exclaims 
 of his opponents with bitter disdain — 
 
 " Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive." 
 
 I have not sought to make partisans, still less did I dream 
 of making enemies ; and have therefore kept my opinions 
 myself, whether they were currently adopted or not. To 
 get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go 
 over to theirs ; and it is necessary to follow, in order to 
 lead. At the time I lived here formerly, I had no sus- 
 picion that I should ever become a voluminous writer, 
 yet I had just the same confidence in my feelings before 
 I had ventured to air them in public as I have now. 
 Neither the outcry for or against moves me a jot : I 
 do not say that the one is not more agreeable than the 
 other. 
 
 Not far from the spot where I write, I first read 
 Chaucer's Flower and Leaf and was charmed with that 
 young beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening with 
 ever-fresh delight to the repeated song of the nightingale 
 close by her — the impression of the scene, the vernal 
 landscape, the cool of the morning, the gushing notes of 
 the songstress, 
 
 "And ayen mtthought she sung close bv mine ear " 
 
 . 
 
A Farewell to Essay-writing. 465 
 
 is as vivid as if it had been of yesterday ; and nothing can 
 persuade me that that is not a fine poem. I do not find 
 this impression conveyed in Dryden's version, and there- 
 fore nothing can persuade me that that is as fine. I used 
 to walk out at this time with Mr. and Miss Lamb 1 of an 
 evening, to look at the Claude Lorraine skies over our 
 heads melting from azure into purple and gold, and to 
 gather mushrooms, that sprung up at our feet, to throw 
 into our hashed mutton at supper. I was at that time an 
 enthusiastic admirer of Claude, and could dwell for ever 
 on one or two of the finest prints from him hung round 
 my little room ; the fleecy flocks, the bending trees, the 
 winding streams, the groves, the nodding temples, the air- 
 wove hills, and distant sunny vales ; and tried to translate 
 them into their lovely living hues. People then told 
 me that Wilson was much superior to Claude: I did 
 not believe them. Their pictures have since been seen 
 together at the British Institution, and all the world have 
 come into my opinion. I have not, on that account, given 
 it up. I will not compare our hashed mutton with 
 Amelia's ; but it put us in mind of it, and led to a 
 discussion, sharply seasoned and well sustained, till mid- 
 night, the result of which appeared some years after in the 
 Edinburgh Review. Have I a better opinion of those 
 criticisms on that account, or should I therefore maintain 
 them with greater vehemence and tenaciousness ? Oh no : 
 Both rather with less, now that they are before the public, 
 and it is for them to make their election. 
 
 It is in looking back to such scenes that I draw my best 
 consolation for the future. Later impressions come and 
 go, and serve to fill up the intervals ; but these are my 
 standing resource, my true classics. If I have had few 
 real pleasures or advantages, my ideas, from their sinewy 
 texture, have bt^.n to me in the nature of realities ; and if 
 I should not be able to add to the stock, I can live by 
 
 1 Eeferring to the yea/1809. See Memoirs, i. 172-4. — Ed. 
 
 2 H 
 
466 A Farewell to Essay-writing. 
 
 husbanding the interest. As to my speculations, there is 
 little to admire in them but my admiration of others ; and 
 whether they have an echo in time to come or not, I have 
 learned to set a grateful value on the past, and am content 
 to wind up the account of what is personal only to myself 
 and the immediate circle of objects in which I have 
 moved, with an act of easy oblivion, 
 
 " And curtain-close such scene from every future view." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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