Class_IP,.Rl.3.6^ 
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 m". 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
The Best English Essays 
 
EDITED BT 
 
 SHERWIN CODY 
 
 A Selection from the World's 
 Greatest Short Stories. 
 i8mo. $i.oo net. 
 
 A Selection from the Best En- 
 glish Essays. i8mo. ^i.oonet. 
 
 In Preparation 
 
 The World's Greatest Ora- 
 tions. i8mo. $i.oo net. 
 

 A SELECTION 
 FROM THE BEST 
 ENGLISH ESSAYS 
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY 
 OF ENGLISH PROSE STYLE 
 
 CHOSEN AND ARRANGED WITH 
 HISTORICAL & CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS 
 
 By SHERWIN CODY 
 
 EDITOR or " THE WORLd's GREATEST SHORT STORIES," AND AUTHOR 
 OF '<THE ART OF WRITING AND SPEAKING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE" 
 
 i 
 
 ^kCJMPCLimiW 1 1 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 % 
 
 CHICAGO . A. C. McCLURG 
 ^ COMPANY . MCMIII 
 
THE LIBRARY OF 
 CONGRESS. 
 
 Two Copies Receiver' 
 
 Cvfy«i'r^^ Entry 
 
 (tLk'^% O^ XXo. Nc 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright 
 
 By a. C. McClurg & Co 
 
 A.D. 1903 
 
 C4 
 
 Published May 23, 1903 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRfcSS • JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON * CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 
n On 
 
 .I- 
 
 TO 
 JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, Ph.D., 
 
 Professor of Rhetoric at Amherst College 
 
Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 Preface xi 
 
 General Introduction — The English Essay and 
 English Prose Style : 
 
 I. Historical Review xvii 
 
 II. Style, or the Artistic Element in Prose . xxv 
 
 III. The Possibilities of Prose xxxii 
 
 I. Bacon : Master of Condensation .... 3 
 
 Of Studies (version of 1597) . . . . 5 
 
 Of Studies (version of 1625) . . . . 6 
 
 Of Truth 8 
 
 Of Friendship 11 
 
 II. Swift : the Greatest English Satirist ... 23 
 
 A Tale of a Tub 26 
 
 The Bookseller's Dedication to the Right 
 
 Honourable John Lord Somers . . 26 
 The Epistle Dedicatory to His Royal 
 
 Highness Prince Posterity .... 31 
 
 Preface 38 
 
 The Three Brothers and their Coats 
 
 [Sect. II] 39 
 
Vlll 
 
 Contents 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Addison : First of the Humorists , , 
 Sir Roger De Coverley in the Country 
 
 Sir Roger at Home . . . 
 
 Sir Roger and Will Wimble . 
 
 Sir Roger at Church . . . 
 The Man of the Town . . . 
 The Fan Exercise .... 
 
 Lamb : Greatest of the Humorists 
 Letter to Coleridge .... 
 A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 
 Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist 
 Poor Relations 
 
 «Im- 
 
 Page 
 
 55 
 57 
 57 
 62 
 
 65 
 69 
 
 72 
 
 79 
 82 
 84 
 
 94 
 103 
 
 De Quincey : Inventor of Modern 
 passioned Prose " .... 
 The English Mail Coach . . , 
 Sect. I — The Glory of Motion 
 
 Going down with Victory 
 
 Sect. II— The Vision of Sudden Death 
 
 Sect. Ill — Dream- Fugue : Founded 
 
 on the Preceding Theme of Sudden 
 
 Death 154 
 
 Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow 
 {Suspiria de Profundis) 165 
 
 "5 
 118 
 120 
 126 
 131 
 
 VI. Carlyle : the Latter- Day Prophet 
 Characteristics 
 
 177 
 
 180 
 
 VII. Emerson : the Lecturer 237 
 
 Self- Reliance 240 
 
Contents ix 
 
 Page 
 
 VIII. Macaulay: the Rhetorician 277 
 
 The Puritans (Essay on Milton) . . . 278 
 Boswell's " Life of Johnson " . ... 284 
 The Perfect Historian (Essay on His- 
 tory) 321 
 
 IX. Ruskin: the Impassioned Critic . . . . 329 
 
 Sea-Painting (Modern Painters, Vol. I.) . 333 
 The Virtues of Architecture (Stones of 
 
 Venice, Vol. II.) 347 
 
 The Crown of Wild Olive (Introduction 
 
 or Preface) 360 
 
 X. Matthew Arnold : the Intellectual Critic 3 79 
 
 Sweetness and Light (Culture and Anarchy) 382 
 
PREFACE 
 
 A PREFACE is an invention to enable an 
 author to argue with his critics without 
 disturbing the general reader, who is 
 expected to skip the preface. The remarks in this 
 preface are addressed to a very small number of 
 persons; but they are the persons whose voices 
 are most likely to be heard, while the multitude 
 (if by any chance this volume should have a 
 multitude) of common readers will remain pro- 
 foundly quiet. 
 
 I wish to answer several questions which I as 
 a critic have put to myself as an editor of essays : 
 Are selections a cheap substitute for complete 
 works? or are they better than complete works? 
 or should they not be attempted at all? 
 
 My answer as an editor to that threefold ques- 
 tion is, that for the common reader, whose time 
 is limited, the complete works of an author are 
 almost useless because of their bulk and the time 
 necessary to get through them. As a result, com- 
 plete works are put on library shelves, there to 
 remain unread. Any man who can help his fel- 
 lows to read more successfully is a public bene- 
 
xii Preface 
 
 factor. If an editor can separate the work which 
 the common reader will care to read from that 
 which he will not care to read, so that with the 
 limited time at the reader's disposal and limited 
 mental energy remaining after the drudgery of 
 life has had its share, some parts of a great author 
 will actually get read, that editor is performing 
 a public service by selection, and a service that no 
 man can perform in any other possible way. 
 
 Now how can this selection be made so that it 
 will have the desired effect ? 
 
 Many competent judges have asserted that 
 " selections are a snare and a delusion." I know 
 very well what they mean, and agree with them. 
 They refer to the scrappy "specimens" of authors' 
 libraries that make no other pretension than to be 
 cheap substitutes for vastly larger collections of 
 complete works. It kills a literary work to muti- 
 late it. But selection of complete portions even 
 of longer works need not be mutilation. 
 
 We have no special difficulty in selecting novels, 
 since each novel constitutes a volume, and we can 
 buy and read the volume we wish. It is not 
 necessary to place Dickens's complete works along 
 five feet of our library shelves in order to get 
 " David Copperfield." A short story or an essay, 
 however, cannot conveniently or economically be 
 printed in a separate volume. Yet it is just as 
 separate and distinct a work of literary art as a 
 novel is. Each essay and each short story ought 
 to stand on its own feet, and be judged quite by 
 
Preface xili 
 
 itself, just as each poem or oration ought to be 
 judged. No greater service can be performed for^ 
 such a short masterpiece than taking it away from 
 its fellows and setting it by itself. It is like re-' 
 moving a shapely maple from the heart of the 
 forest, where it is surrounded on all sides by great 
 pines that overshadow it, and planting it beside 
 the town pump, where every passerby may look 
 up with admiration at its beautiful proportions 
 and feel gratitude in his heart for the friendly 
 shade. This is very different from chopping that 
 tree up into fence-posts and using them to form 
 an ugly barrier around, let us say, a moss-covered 
 tombstone. 
 
 The only unity that can usually be found con- 
 necting several essays is the style of the author; 
 but that forms a practical reason for placing 
 several distinct and complete works of art, such 
 as complete ^ essays are, side by side in one vol- 
 ume. In the present undertaking, the ideal would 
 be to print the work chosen from each author in 
 a separate volume. Each has been treated with 
 his own separate introduction, so that this could 
 easily be done if it were mechanically desirable. 
 For the sake of economy and convenience to the 
 
 1 It is to be noted that the division of their work made by 
 authors is not the only sign of completeness. Macaulay's descrip- 
 tion of the Puritans in the Essay on Milton is complete in itself, 
 and so is the study of sea-painting selected from Ruskin's " Modern 
 Painters" for this volume, though the brief description of Turner's 
 " Slave Ship " at the end would be but a fragment, since it is not 
 intelligible except as an illustration of Ruskin's argument. 
 
xiv Preface 
 
 reader, all are printed in one volume, but in such 
 a way that the reader is invited to read and con- 
 sider only one author at a time in precisely the 
 same way that he would if he had a set of ten or 
 a dozen little volumes on his library shelves, one 
 of which he would take down and read to-day 
 and another to-morrow. Each group contains 
 all that any person should think of trying to 
 digest at one time. If more were to be swallowed 
 it would result in mental dyspepsia. 
 
 One more question remains for brief consider- 
 ation. The critic in me asks the editor, Why 
 do you undertake to write on " prose style," after 
 De Quincey and Pater and all the ten thousand 
 others? and how will it help to promote a public 
 habit of reading essays? 
 
 I reply that I have not undertaken a discussion 
 of style for the purpose of exploiting any special 
 critical or philosophic ideas, but only for a purely 
 practical object. I believe that no man thinks well 
 unless he can express himself well, and that it is 
 the duty of every man and woman of intelligence 
 and culture to set systematically about acquiring 
 a greater command of expression through his 
 native language. Self-expression is a simple 
 means of testing one's thoughts, even if the ex- 
 pression goes no farther than one's own closet. 
 But conversation and written letters afford an 
 invaluable means of testing one's ideas by the 
 ideas of others, if one has command of the me- 
 dium of expression. Command of that medium. 
 
Preface xv 
 
 and the habit and practice of using it, I hold to be 
 indispensable to any adequate culture. 
 
 Now essays have two especial uses : They give 
 a certain intellectual pleasure that is denied to the 
 novel or drama, with their rapid movement and 
 their appeal to the universal emotions of the hu- 
 man heart, and that is likewise denied to the poem, 
 with its lofty atmosphere and highly artificial 
 structure, so far removed from the plain level of 
 everyday prose (best typified in the prose essay). 
 The other special use of the masterpieces of the 
 great essayists is in affording to every one models 
 of style, or ways of using words, exactly suited to 
 everyday conversation and business and social 
 letter-writing. Therefore w^hile we are reading 
 essays for the intellectual pleasure that they give, 
 we ought at the same time to be studying the 
 method of each writer in using words, with a 
 practical eye to our own needs in the direction of 
 a better command of words. No one who would 
 take any intellectual pleasure in reading essays 
 ought to ignore the other element of style.'^ 
 
 '' Self-Reliance," by Emerson, is used by special 
 arrangement with and permission of Houghton, 
 Mifilin & Co., the authorized publishers of Emer- 
 son's works. 
 
 1 Another reason for the study of " style" in connection with 
 essays will be found in the General Introduction, 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE ENGLISH ESSAY AND ENGLISH PROSE 
 STYLE 
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 IT is interesting to note the form impressed 
 upon nearly every species of writing by the 
 original mode of publication — a form re- 
 tained in greater or less degree long after the 
 merely mechanical method of publication had 
 been wholly changed. Thus epic poetry was 
 originally the chanted narrative of the wandering 
 minstrel, telling of heroic deeds and strange 
 adventures more or less historic. The lyric poem 
 was originally a song — of love or some other 
 intense emotion too shy to show its undraped 
 form in any other atmosphere than the rosy twi- 
 light of the song. The modern short story was 
 first told by travellers in taverns, and to this day 
 it is not uncommon to find a little tavern vulgarity 
 hanging about it. The first modern novel ( Rich- 
 ardson's ''Pamela") was a series of letters. 
 Dickens and Thackeray were first published in 
 shilling parts, and that method of publication so 
 fixed uporr the modern novel its characteristic 
 
xviii General Introduction 
 
 of length}^ formlessness that even to this day 
 the defect is being thrown off with the utmost 
 difficulty. 
 
 In early times, in Greece for example, prose had 
 two methods of publication, namely, through the 
 mouth of the orator in places of political debate, 
 and through the mouth of the philosophic lecturer 
 in his academic grove, where he talked with his 
 pupils in a sort of conversational monologue (ex- 
 emplified in the writings of Plato). As this latter 
 kind of prose could not be indulged in by many, it 
 received little or no attention rhetorically. Aris- 
 totle's treatise on rhetoric was devoted wholly to 
 the art of public speaking. 
 
 So it came about that everything that was not 
 an oration or a lecture was expressed only in 
 poetry. That narrowing of the field of prose 
 due to the original form of publication has per- 
 sisted in the minds of many even to this day, and 
 scholars and wTiters on rhetoric have taken little 
 notice of the new-fangled forms of prose that 
 began to come into use only so short a time ago 
 as two hundred years. Our textbooks on rhetoric 
 are still based on Aristotle, and Plato is held up 
 as the only model of a perfect prose style for all 
 occasions except those of public speaking. 
 — -The beginning of modern English prose as a 
 fine art may be conveniently dated from the King 
 James translation of the Bible. It is a curious 
 thing that a translation should give us new forms 
 of prose style, and that we should so constantly 
 
General Introduction xix 
 
 refer to the English Bible rather than simply to 
 the Bible as originally written. The fact is that 
 the most literary portions of the Bible were orig- 
 inally written as poetry ; but when the translators 
 had to turn this Hebrew poetry into English they 
 of course found it impossible to make the transla- 
 tion take the form of English verse, and were 
 confronted with the task of discovering a worthy 
 expression in prose. The success of Hebrew 
 poetry in English prose was so apparent, and 
 came with such universal force into the education 
 of every English-speaking man and woman, that 
 English prose was exalted to a position that mere 
 prose never could have held in Greece or Rome. 
 It would not be difficult to trace all our modern 
 " prose poetry " and ^' impassioned prose " to 
 such masterpieces as " The Book of Job," " The 
 Psalms," '' Ecclesiastes," " Song of Solomon," 
 etc. 
 
 Even simple prose found a new form in the 
 translation of the New Testament. Christ w^as 
 not a lecturer or monologue talker, like Socrates.^ 
 He merely " conversed " with his disciples. In 
 the New Testament for the first time we find 
 ordinary conversation raised to the level of per- 
 manent literature. The addition to the possibil- 
 ities of prose was one of the utmost importance, 
 
 1 The reader in looking over the dialogues of Plato will soon 
 perceive that the lay characters are mere figures of straw set up 
 for rhetorical purposes. Moreover, Socrates talked of philosophic 
 ideas, while Christ appeared more as the friend offering sympathy, 
 consolation, and advice. 
 
XX General Introduction 
 
 and the New Testament formed the training 
 school for all our most delightful conversational 
 essayists from Addison to Lamb. 
 
 In addition to the oratorical and disquisitional 
 (or lecture) styles handed down to us by the 
 ancients, and the prose poetry and conversational 
 styles given us by the Old and New Testaments, 
 ^English literature had already received in embryo 
 the story-telling style of the traveller in the inn 
 as it had been caught and fixed in literature by 
 Boccaccio in the " Decameron." The *' Decam- 
 eron " was soon reinforced by the " Arabian 
 Nights," which had come into existence about the 
 same time as the " Decameron," though unknown 
 to the English. 
 
 We may now trace in the English prose essay 
 (with side glances at English prose fiction) the 
 unfolding and development of these five elemen- 
 tary prose types. 
 
 The first great English essayist, Bacon, was 
 probably not so much influenced by the Bible as 
 were all who followed him. He developed the 
 conversational style in the essay in an original 
 way from classic models, though the result was 
 for secular purposes not unlike that for loftier 
 purposes, which came from the sayings of Christ 
 recorded in the Gospels. Bacon was an admir- 
 able conversationist, and he developed his powers 
 in that line, and especially as a wit after the 
 Elizabethan manner, by a systematic study of 
 "apophthegms" (as he called them). Restocked 
 
General Introduction xxi 
 
 himself with wit in advance, so to speak, by keep- 
 ing voluminous notebooks, in which he jotted 
 down every clever sentence that occurred to him, 
 so that on some suitable occasion he might intro- 
 duce it in conversation. He also picked up and 
 recorded the epigrammatic or witty sayings of 
 others. Realizing that some of these notes of 
 his were excellent of their kind, he published 
 them in the first edition of his *' Essays." In 
 later editions the simple notes were developed 
 into more consecutive and perfectly rounded 
 compositions. 
 
 Of course there was nothing particularly new 
 in the mere form of these epigrammatic and 
 highly condensed sentences, for imder the name 
 " proverbs " and " epigrams V they had been 
 known since the beginning of literature; but the 
 accident which led Bacon to shape a group of such 
 condensed sayings into a rounded essay gave a 
 new form to written and published prose, the 
 modern development of which we see in Carlyle, 
 and especially in Emerson. " 
 
 Perhaps the first prose writer to show the full 
 effect of the style of the English Old Testament 
 was Milton. He caught at the very beginning 
 and turned most effectively to his uses that pe- 
 culiar prose cadence which takes the place of 
 metre in poetry. He also gave his writings the 
 imaginative quality of the Old Testament prose 
 poetry. As Milton's prose was employed for the 
 most part in controversial literature, however, it 
 
xxii General Introduction 
 
 is as a poet that he will be remembered in literary 
 history. 
 
 Almost at the same time another writer gave 
 us a practical application of the style of the New 
 Testament. This was Bunyan in " The Pilgrim's 
 Progress." In his " parables " Christ had made 
 a somev/hat new application of the old '' fable." 
 Bunyan's book was an enlarged parable. His 
 style had all the simplicity of everyday conver- 
 sation, and he showed clearly how a plain story 
 told in so simple a style might be elevated by the 
 moral significance, and by this almost alone, to 
 the rank of the classics. 
 
 The most simple written expression of con- 
 versation, however, is found in friendly letters. 
 When paper became cheap enough so that letters 
 could easily be written, this style had a natural 
 and spontaneous development. Steele was the 
 first to suggest the idea of printed letters filled 
 with town gossip. His " Tatler," " Spectator," 
 and " Guardian " were little more than daily let- 
 ters in which the gossip and conversation of the 
 wags and wits at the coffee-houses were com- 
 municated to a much larger circle of friends. 
 Addison, who had been brought up on the English 
 Bible, was quick to see the value of this method 
 of literary composition, and in the " Spectator " 
 he added to the mere secular town gossip of Steele 
 something of the moral style of the New Tes- 
 tament. C So it was that conversational letter- 
 writing became a literary form of the English 
 
General Introduction xxiii 
 
 language. Here was the beginning of the essay 
 in its most popular form. Johnson and Gk)ld- 
 smith followed in the steps of Steele and Addi- 
 son; and finally in Charles Lamb the humorous 
 letter-like essay reached its zenith of perfection." 
 
 Almost at the same time that Steele and Addi- 
 son were giving us the " Spectator," another form 
 of essay was added to English literature by Swift. 
 
 Though Swift seems to us one of the most 
 unclerical and morally repulsive men among the 
 great writers of English literature, still I believe 
 that a careful study of his work will show that 
 he was the literary type par excellence of the 
 preacher of his day. That was the day of 
 ''hell-fire, thunder-and-lightning" sermons. The 
 preachers got their cue from the prophets of the 
 Old Testament. As soon as the Bible was trans- 
 lated they seized upon the denunciations of the 
 old Hebrew preachers as furnishing exactly the 
 literary form they were in need of, and bran- 
 dished their new-found weapons with almost 
 demoniac glee. They were intensely in earnest, 
 and were fighting the devil upon his own ground. 
 The warfare was prodigious, and it is not strange 
 that the amenities of peace were often brushed 
 ruthlessly aside. As General Sherman said, 
 " War is hell " — war upon the devil as well as 
 human combat. In this ferocious moral attack 
 upon the sins of the world Dean Swift was easily 
 the greatest giant of them all. Morose and ill- 
 natured as he w^as, he meant well, even in his 
 
xxiv General Introduction 
 
 " Modest Proposal " for eating children. His 
 satirical arrows never missed, and they were shot 
 with almost superhuman strength. If the devil 
 was at that time leading his forces in person, how 
 he must have wished that the great Dean were 
 upon his side! 
 
 We may see the influence of Swift in Carlyle, 
 and also in the later work of Ruskin ("Fors 
 Clavigera"). But in his field of devilish satire. 
 Swift stands supreme in English literature, and 
 perhaps in any literature. 
 
 The letter-writing style as used by Richardson 
 in " Pamela " and '' Clarissa Harlowe " became 
 incorporated in the English novel ; and in Thack- 
 eray we see the good-humored and humorous 
 preaching of Addison perfectly assimilated and 
 adapted to the requirements of the novelist. In- 
 deed in recalling Bunyan, Swift (in ''Gulliver"), 
 Goldsmith, and Thackeray, we realize what a debt 
 the novel owes to the essay. 
 
 One more element remains to be considered, 
 and that is the lyrical form and use of prose. De 
 Ouincey in his '' Confessions of an English 
 Opium-Eater," and even more in " The English 
 Mail Coach " and " Suspiria de Profundis " 
 (which were in the nature of a sequel to the ''Con- 
 fessions"), was the first to show the peculiar 
 lyrical powers of prose in modern essay writing,^* 
 though in " Ecclesiastes " and other parts of the 
 Old Testament we have as thorough-going "prose 
 poetry " as ever De Quincey gave us. But De 
 
General Introduction xxv 
 
 Quincey was far outdone in this field by one who 
 followed him, namely, Ruskin, in whose hands 
 lyrical prose has reached its extreme development 
 In the novel, too, it was immensely exploited by 
 Dickens. 
 
 The latest development of the English prose 
 essay is a return to the Greek of Plato, and no 
 better representative of this rejuvenescence of the 
 classic spirit could be found than Matthew Ar- 
 nold. But these Hellenic moderns have also been 
 largely influenced by the French style of such men 
 as Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, and Daudet, to men- 
 tion three out of a multitude. 
 
 In the following section we shall endeavor to 
 see what prose style may be in view of all that has 
 gone before. 
 
 II 
 
 STYLE, OR THE ARTISTIC ELEMENT IN PROSE 
 
 Before proceeding with a general considera- 
 tion of prose style, let us pause to note an ob- 
 jection that the reader may possibly raise at 
 this point. Why, he will ask, should you give 
 so much space to " style " in introducing the 
 " Best English Essays " ? Is not the matter of 
 far more importance in a literary composition 
 than the manner f ^ 
 
 1 De Quincey says of England: "In no country upon earth, 
 were it possible to carry such an axiom into practical effect, is it 
 
xxvi General Introduction 
 
 Yes, matter is always supreme over manner as 
 far as greatness in literature is concerned; but 
 it happens that in the essay especially, " the style 
 is the man/' As De Quincey, quoting from 
 Wordsworth, expresses it, style is not the dress 
 of thought, but the incarnation. Though the soul 
 of a beautiful woman is infinitely above her body, 
 we creatures of sense would entirely lose the soul 
 were we to take away the body. Hence we must 
 study the body if we would discover the soul. 
 
 The mission of the prose essay is much like the 
 mission of woman's beauty — it is to diffuse an 
 atmosphere and give us pleasure in such varied 
 and minute ways that we are at a loss to analyze 
 or assign a reason. In short, an essay should be 
 criticised as a work of art, not as a collection of 
 moral or scientific truths ; and in so far as prose 
 ceases to be a simple vehicle for facts and state- 
 ments of truth, and comes to depend for its suc- 
 cess on the feeling of pleasure it produces or the 
 sense of beauty it conveys, it is said to possess 
 " style." 
 
 We understand perfectly how painting as a fine 
 art differs from house painting or sign painting, 
 and how sculpture differs from stone-hewing. 
 We also understand how poetry is a fine art akin 
 both to music and to painting, and even how the 
 magic of oratorical eloquence ranks spoken prose 
 
 a more determinate tendency of the national mind to value the 
 7natter of a book not only as paramount to the 7nanner^ but even 
 as distinct from it and as capable of a distinct insulation." 
 
General Introduction xxvii 
 
 at times with the other arts. But we find it very 
 difficult to distinguish between prose the common 
 drudge of everyday life, and that development of 
 prose which makes it a fine art. For want of a 
 better term, the word " style " has been coming 
 into use to designate and characterize that prose 
 which is an art. Both the words " prose " and 
 *' style " are unfortunate in this connection, for 
 the reason that both have other uses and mean- 
 ings. We speak of that which is dull as '^ prosy," 
 and in the common usage " style " refers espe- 
 cially to fashions in dress, and next to that to the 
 mere manner of doing a thing, as when we say, 
 *' That 's his style." It is a serious misfortune 
 that when we speak of " prose " we must think 
 inevitably of that which is dull and commonplace, 
 and when we speak of style that we must think 
 of the " styles " that are put on and put off, or of 
 idiosyncrasy of manner, of which no man has 
 a right to boast. 
 
 In studying the essay from the point of view 
 of style, we mean simply that we are studying 
 it as a work of fine art, but with one limitation, 
 and that is, that while art usually takes into view 
 conception and structure as w^ell as execution or 
 texture, style applies only to artistic texture. The 
 truth is, the essay does not have artistic structure 
 in the sense that the short story or the novel or 
 the oration or the poem does, but only literary 
 artistic texture, or style. (On this latter point 
 we have only to recall the discursive and digres- 
 
xxviii General Introduction 
 
 sive manner of all the great essayists, from 
 Addison to De Ouincey.) 
 
 But even when we do catch the meaning of 
 style as referring to artistic texture of language, 
 we seem to misconceive it, as when we speak of 
 wishing to acquire **a style," or to master "style," 
 as if there were but one style. This error is en- 
 forced apparently by one master of style, namely, 
 Flaubert, of whom one of his critics says : " Pos- 
 sessed of an absolute belief that there exists but 
 one way to express one thing, one word to call 
 it by, one adjective to qualify, one verb to animate 
 it, he gave himself to superhuman labor for the 
 discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that 
 verb, that epithet. In this way, he believed in 
 some mysterious harmony of expression, and 
 when a true word seemed to him to lack euphony, 
 still went on seeking another, with invincible 
 patience, certain that he had not yet got hold of 
 the unique word." ^ 
 
 Only in a very narrow sense was Flaubert 
 right. The truth is, there is an infinite number 
 of ways of expressing any and every conception 
 -— in short, as many different ways as there are 
 persons to express it. Laboring under the false 
 impression that there is but one style, or, at any 
 rate, but one style for any given person, the stu- 
 dent in search of style will select some one master 
 whom he looks on as *' a master of style " — to- 
 day it is most likely to be Pater or Flaubert or 
 
 1 Quoted by Pater in his essay on '* Style." 
 
General Introduction xxix 
 
 Matthew Arnold — and will confine himself to 
 expressing himself as his master does. 
 
 In this volume the editor offers ten masters of 
 style, each an acknowledged artist in his way, 
 each, as a rule, utterly different from every other. 
 Many of these writers commanded more than one 
 style ; but we see each only in that style in which 
 he was supreme, the style which was especially 
 characteristic of him. To the general reader these 
 ten different types will be exceedingly useful as 
 standards for comparison, and will make his criti- 
 cism and judgment of any style in future more 
 definite and assured; for not only ought we to 
 enjoy works of art intuitively and instinctively, 
 but critically. It is only by the introduction of 
 the critical standard that we can hope to minimize 
 merely personal preference and make possible the 
 quick recognition of any worthy work of literary 
 art that may come along in current literature. 
 
 For the student of literary style who wishes 
 himself to write, these ten types will represent ten 
 different ways in which any particular thought 
 may possibly be expressed. Without question, 
 Flaubert was right in saying that there is one way 
 better than all others for expressing any given 
 conception. Each class of ideas has its best lit- 
 erary form, and if we read these ten groups of 
 essays through, we shall see at once that each 
 type is so successful, so truly masterful, because 
 it is the one type best suited to the particular 
 class of ideas with which the writer deals. If 
 
XXX General Introduction 
 
 one is going to write only of one particular class 
 of ideas, one will need only one type of style; 
 but as no other writer will be precisely like 
 Addison or Ruskin or Matthew Arnold, and may 
 have ideas -that would have delighted Bacon or 
 Carlyle or De Quincey, and may even have ideas 
 representing all ten of our typical writers which 
 he will wish to express in ten consecutive sen- 
 tences, or even in ten consecutive phrases, or ten 
 consecutive words, so he will need all ten styles 
 to express those ten ideas in the only perfect way. 
 
 But suppose one fancies that one's ideas are 
 most appropriately expressed in the style of De 
 Quincey's impassioned prose or in Macaulay's 
 rhetoric, and so confines his study to those two 
 masters ; what will be the fatal result ? Why, he 
 will elongate his mind in one direction until he 
 becomes a monstrosity, and his style will be a 
 mere literary curiosity. Nothing is more dan- 
 gerous than the imitation of one writer, nothing 
 more safe than the imitation of many. 
 
 We have spoken of those who wish to read with 
 critical intelligence, and those who wish to write 
 with artistic skill, as if they were separate and 
 distinct classes. In a small degree they are; but 
 for the most part they are one and the same. 
 Every intelligent person ought to read literature 
 with a well-developed critical taste: nearly every 
 one will admit that ; but many will say that only 
 the few who are to become professional writers 
 will wish to spend any time in acquiring personal 
 
General Introduction xxxi 
 
 and actual skill. This is an error, however ; every 
 person who will have any desire to read with 
 critical intelligence will have occasion to employ 
 artistic expression in two common ways, namely, 
 in conversation and in letter-writing. In our 
 historical review we have noticed how several of 
 the essay styles originated in conversation and in 
 letter-writing. Conversely, the masterly essays 
 that resulted from these sources will be the best 
 models for successful conversation and successful 
 letter-writing, and therefore should be studied 
 imitatively as well as critically. Nay, more, the 
 critical perception works most quickly and cer- 
 tainly when the imitative faculty is called into 
 activity. In other words, the quickest and surest 
 way to master Lamb's style critically is to try to 
 write like Lamb yourself, and to keep at your 
 imitative efforts till you acquire some sort of 
 skill. 
 
 In conclusion, I may say that there is nothing 
 magical about the choice of ten types here pre- 
 sented. Possibly ten other types equally good 
 might have been found, at least if oratory and 
 fiction could have been laid under contribution. 
 In oratory and fiction, however, we come upon 
 argumentative and dramatic structure, which is 
 quite a different thing from style, and might 
 conceivably interfere seriously with the study of 
 it. The essay, like conversation and letters, has 
 no structure. It is, as has previously been said, 
 a pure representative of style as artistic literary 
 
xxxii General Introduction 
 
 texture, and so for the ordinary student the essay 
 furnishes the simplest and most natural models 
 of style. 
 
 Nor is there anything magical in the historical 
 system and analytic arrangement here offered 
 merely for their practical utility to the student. 
 Every great writer is a type in himself. His style 
 is sui generis, and his roots run out in a thousand 
 directions. But in studying an author, we shall 
 gain most for ourselves by limiting our examina- 
 tion to one point of view ; and our study of differ- 
 ent types of style must have a sharp limit. The 
 chief thing is that the types we select should be 
 as different as possible. When we have gotten 
 clearly no more than three different views of the 
 possibilities of prose style, we are pretty well pre- 
 pared to go on and differentiate thereafter for 
 ourselves. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE POSSIBILITIES OF PROSE 
 
 If I should say that I believe that in the next 
 century prose will supersede verse in all forms of 
 creative writing except songs that may be set to 
 music, or purely lyrical poetry, some might con- 
 sider me a wild prophet. More unprejudiced 
 observers would probably agree with me. Not 
 a few critics have intimated that Wordsworth 
 would have done better to have chosen the prose 
 
General Introduction xxxiii 
 
 form for most of his compositions. Though if 
 Browning had written prose it would possibly 
 have been what might be dubbed " Meredithian," 
 probably few will not admit that George Meredith 
 was wise in devoting himself as largely as he did 
 to the prose form of composition. I have always 
 thought that if Byron had written his descriptive 
 poems in prose they would be more widely read 
 to-day than they are. It is also interesting to note 
 that Byron has been especially popular on the 
 continent of Europe, where, presumably, his work 
 is best known in prose translations similar to our 
 prose translations of the poetry of the Bible. We 
 have one prose writer, namely, Ruskin, who by 
 the admission of all his critics has very distinctly 
 the characteristics of a poet. Shelley or Keats 
 was not more passionate and unrestrained in en- 
 thusiasm than Ruskin. Yet Ruskin wrote prose. 
 To be sure, Mr. W. C. Brownell tells us Ruskin 
 is a sorry case, that his style lacks form and his 
 matter lacks substance; that he was entirely out 
 of his sphere in writing art criticisms; and that 
 in the days when nothing but literary asbestos 
 survives the fires of Time, there will be exceed- 
 ingly little of Ruskin remaining. Mr. Brownell 
 implies that Ruskin' s mistake was in not writing 
 in verse, a literary form that might have saved 
 him by imposing on him some restraint. He 
 points out lack of restraint as the vital defect 
 of all so-called " prose poetry." Prose, he says, 
 ought to be sane, and he seems to think that it is 
 
xxxiv General Introduction 
 
 quite impossible that it should be sane unless it 
 restricts itself to scrupulous exactness of phrase. 
 The salvation of poetry is in the restriction im- 
 posed by its form when the author completely 
 abandons himself to his emotion. 
 
 Now the case of Ruskin is interesting for the 
 reason that in Ruskin' s early writings we find the 
 extreme development of lyrical prose. If we ad- 
 mit that Ruskin succeeded in his " prose poetry," 
 it will be hard to point out anything which prose 
 cannot do. 
 
 Some have hinted that Ruskin learned his 
 method of using prose from Hooker. Though 
 he may have got from Hooker the hint that 
 started him in this direction, Ruskin learned his 
 art from the Bible. His writings contain no more 
 passionate prose poetry than we may read in 
 " Ecclesiastes," for example. Old Testament 
 prose poetry has been passed over because it was 
 originally poetry pure and simple, and we may 
 suppose that the translators would have given it 
 the verse form in English had they been able. 
 But could they have done any better than they 
 did do? Evidently Ruskin thought they couldn't. 
 He was brought up on the Bible. His biographer, 
 Frederic Harrison, cites one short passage con- 
 taining sixty allusions to the Bible. In studying 
 Ruskin's prose we are inevitably driven back to 
 his model, the Bible. 
 
 Now the interesting thing about the Bible is 
 that its prose (if not its original poetry) was the 
 
General Introduction xxxv 
 
 work of aged scholars, in whom the unrestrained 
 and fierce ardors of the young Ruskin, when he 
 wrote "Modern Painters" (twenty- four), were 
 wholly lacking. They chose the words they did 
 in much the same way that Flaubert chose his 
 words, because they were eminently suitable, 
 better than any other words they could find after 
 exhaustive search, and words on which a body of 
 men agreed. So far as my reading extends, no 
 one has ever criticised the prose poetry of the 
 Bible, not even Mr. Brownell. 
 
 We need not press this matter of the lyrical 
 any farther. It is but a small matter even in 
 poetry. We could sacrifice it entirely and still 
 say that if " Paradise Lost," " The Excursion," 
 " Childe Harold " or " Don Juan," or " The Ring 
 and the Book " were to be written to-day, they 
 v/ould probably be written in prose. Such is the 
 change in public sentiment that has come about in 
 fifty years! The public seems to have lost the 
 art of reading verse, and if the great narrative 
 poems of the past are to be saved, they must be 
 translated into prose. Apparently the public has 
 waked up to the fact that prose is just as capable 
 of expressing high thoughts, and that it is infi- 
 nitely easier to read. While Ruskin's contem- 
 porary verse-poets are being read less and less 
 every year, till we can fancy that at last only their 
 short lyrics will survive, Ruskin, the prose poet, 
 not only got himself extensively read in his own 
 day, but continues to be read side by side with 
 
xxxvi General Introduction 
 
 the popular novelists, in spite of the fact that he 
 had all the faults of those verse-poet contempo- 
 raries. The fact is, the public no longer reads 
 verse poetry, and it is not easy to conceive that 
 any poet could by any possibility arise who could 
 repeat the great popular successes of Scott's, 
 Byron's, or Moore's long poems. 
 
 Let us leave argument and turn to the practical 
 side of the question. 
 
 We are confronted with the fact that everybody 
 writes prose, and it is hard to see any sharp line 
 of demarcation between the prose we find in news- 
 papers, let us say, and that which we might find 
 in a prose poem. Everybody writes prose, and if 
 everybody were allowed to wander into the fields 
 in which Mr. Ruskin has operated, we should 
 probably find ourselves in Bedlam. Even to 
 recommend the study and cultivation of this ex- 
 treme sort of prose might seem opening the door 
 to morbidity, to all that lack of sanity to which 
 Mr. Brownell so justly objects. There is no 
 question that Ruskin's imitators have made most 
 wretched work of it. Nothing could be more 
 nauseating than their so-called " prose poetry," 
 whereas the minor poet is eminently harmless. 
 
 The fact is, while any one can write prose, the 
 complete mastery of it is so difficult that it is 
 wholly beyond the powers of any one man, unless 
 he were to have the mental capacity of a Shake- 
 speare. The range of language as an art is infi- 
 nitely beyond that of any other art medium. It is 
 
General Introduction xxxvii 
 
 the only art that can be said to be strictly universal. 
 For example, painting as an art ranges from house 
 painting to the painting of an " Angelus." Even 
 house painting belongs to the art, for in the choice 
 of colors, the laying on of the paint, etc., there is 
 ample room for skill and taste. So in the art of 
 using words, we range from common conversa- 
 tion and letter-writing to the prose poetry of the 
 Bible, The difference is, that whereas not one 
 man in a thousand is even a house painter, only 
 a small per cent of the entire population do not 
 have occasion to engage in entertaining conver- 
 sation or effective letter-writing. Even though 
 the number of those that sing and play the piano 
 is large, it is trifling beside the number of word- 
 artists. And as the number of word-artists is 
 relatively so vast at the bottom, at the top it is 
 correspondingly small. No painter, no musician, 
 stands pre-eminently alone in his art as Shake- 
 speare does in his : and great as Shakespeare 
 was, we can see how even he might have done 
 better. 
 
 Now what shall be the criterion of success that 
 can be stated universally for all the possible prac- 
 titioners of the art of language? Why, simply 
 this : he who conveys his meaning in zvords is 
 successful. If our word-artist has but a single 
 idea, and can express it in a single word, he may 
 not be great, but he is successful. So far as he 
 goes he is perfect. Shakespeare himself could 
 do no better. The ideal of literary art, then, is 
 
xxxviii General Introduction 
 
 simply, wholly, to convey meaning, and the more 
 simply it can be done the better. If three thou- 
 sand words will convey one's meaning, three 
 thousand words completely mastered and effec- 
 tively used will be sufficient for entire success. 
 In this sense complete success as a literary artist 
 is quite within the range of every one, and it 
 would be hard to find an excuse for lack of such 
 success. 
 
 But now we come to those who have, or think 
 they have, something special to say, and to those 
 ambitious aspirants who wish to make writing a 
 passport to fame or money. Let us dispose of 
 the latter first. There is undoubtedly a field for 
 the professional writer in journalism and the com- 
 pilation of books. But there is a potentially large 
 class of persons who think : " Now I have n't any- 
 thing in particular to say, and I see no special use 
 that my writings will have after I produce them. 
 But my friends Mary Jones and John Jenks 
 have made fortunes out of books, and I can't see 
 that they have any more ideas than I have. Why 
 should n't I enter the lists and do as well as any 
 of them? " It was this class which De Quincey 
 had in mind when he wrote : '' Authors have 
 always been a dangerous class for any lan- 
 guage. Amongst the myriads who are prompted 
 to authorship by the coarse love of reputation, 
 or by the nobler craving for sympathy, there will 
 always be thousands seeking distinction through 
 novelties of diction. Hopeless of any audience 
 
General Introduction xxxix 
 
 through any weight of matter, they will turn for 
 their last resource to such tricks of innovation 
 as they can bring to bear upon language. What 
 care they for purity or simplicity of diction, if at 
 any cost of either they can win special attention 
 to themselves?" To argue with writers of this 
 class or about them is useless. All we can do is 
 to try to raise the popular standard and instruct 
 the popular taste so that their false efforts will 
 find no encouragement at all, and they will be 
 forced by sheer starvation to turn to the more 
 useful duties of housekeeping or road-making 
 or boot-blacking — all eminently useful employ- 
 ments, for which possibly they may be fitted. 
 
 Now let us consider for a moment that other 
 class, which is no doubt relatively very large; 
 the class of those who have ideas which they 
 would express, which it is essential to their health 
 and happiness that they should express, whether 
 in conversation, letters, or the printed page — in 
 short, the ^' mute inglorious Miltons " of Gray's 
 Elegy. To these, expression is a sort of necessity, 
 and we cannot but believe that all honest, sincere 
 expression will also prove useful somewhere, to 
 somebody beside the expresser. To these the 
 inherited stock of common words and everyday 
 methods of using them are insufficient. The ideas 
 do not get through the words w^hich would convey 
 them. 
 
 This is the point at which prose begins to be 
 a fine art. The power of words as mechanical 
 
xl General Introduction 
 
 symbols for ideas is exhausted. We must con- 
 sider new ways of using these words. The most 
 obvious first step is comparison, and we have 
 figures of speech. We find the field we have en- 
 tered a very large one, and proceed from simple 
 direct comparison in the simile, through the 
 metaphor or implied comparison, to antithetic 
 comparison and contrast. We discover that 
 words are suggestive, and proceed to make large 
 use of what Mr. Barrett Wendell would call 
 *' connotation." 
 
 But shortly we stumble upon a new difficulty. 
 If we are going to use expression for anything 
 more than self-relief, we must have an interested 
 audience or a body of readers. The average man 
 quickly tires of listening. We must work a charm 
 upon him and hold him, or all our expression goes 
 for naught, and proves practically to be no ex- 
 pression at all. We are face to face with the 
 problem of " economy of attention," so well dis- 
 cussed by Herbert Spencer in his '' Essay on 
 Style." 
 
 We may hold the attention of our hearer or 
 reader in two ways, — one negatively, by not giv- 
 ing him any more of one thing than his mind will 
 absorb without weariness ; the other by the posi- 
 tive charm of harmonious vibration, that univer- 
 sal principle of life showing itself in the soothing 
 effect of the monotonous breaking of waves on 
 the seashore and also in the positive charm of 
 music. If we are to make progress, we must see 
 
General Introduction xli 
 
 to it that our language has variety, so as not to 
 weary, and music, so as actually to charm. 
 
 Verse gets its musical quality in part by the 
 beat of successive feet in the metre, and by the 
 measured recurrence of rhymes, caesuras, etc. 
 But prose substitutes a much freer wave form, 
 namely, cadence. Ruskin was a master of ca- 
 dence. Says Mr. Brownell, " The cadence of 
 Gibbon, of De Quincey, even of Jeremy Taylor, 
 is a simple affair beside Ruskin's, which, in com- 
 parison, possesses an infinite variety of notes and 
 chords." Cadence is wholly a matter of the ear. 
 Without an ear for fine harmony it inevitably 
 runs into disagreeable sing-song, or fails alto- 
 gether. The prose writer uses it so long as it 
 serves its purpose, and the moment he does not 
 need it, he drops it. The unfortunate thing about 
 verse is that the regular beat stays by a man 
 whether he wants it or not, and if it does not come 
 naturally on suggestion of his ear, he feels obliged 
 to force it even when the result is totally destruc- 
 tive of harmony. Ruskin in his use of cadence 
 has precisely the same fault, for it becomes a man- 
 nerism with him, and finally wearies the reader 
 past all endurance. This excess we realize as a 
 fault in Ruskin. It is equally an inherent fault 
 in all verse forms. 
 
 And now we may consider the element of re- 
 straint. Verse affords mechanical restraint in 
 that it requires a prodigious effort to express a 
 high and noble idea effectively in words which 
 
xlii General Introduction 
 
 will serve the mechanical requirements of metre, 
 rhyme, etc., to say nothing of poetic dignity and 
 the iron laws of the custom of the ages. The 
 writer has to weigh well every syllable, and the 
 continued and repeated polishing that is forced 
 upon him goes a long way to take the insanity out 
 of his emotional expression. Prose has no such 
 mechanical restraints, and hence some critics 
 would have us believe that it is not so well suited 
 to the sane expression of passionate ideas. In 
 other words, their cry is, '^ Tie the maniacs down 
 with straps ! " 
 
 The penalty that the prose writer suffers when 
 he fails in his self-restraint is merely ineffective- 
 ness. He is like a free man working freely in a 
 free country, as compared with the poet, who is 
 more or less confined and liable to a lashing from 
 his master's whip if he goes wrong. Or to drop 
 the figure, poetry offers the advantage of a me- 
 chanical restraint, while prose must depend upon 
 the writer's own restraint of his feelings by his 
 free-will. Self-mastery is an indispensable pre- 
 requisite to writing passionate prose. The case 
 of the poet is precisely the opposite, and being a 
 lunatic is no special bar to the writing of poetry. 
 
 It will not be difficult to discover that writing 
 the highest forms of prose is exceedingly more 
 difficult than writing poetry of a corresponding 
 grade. Poor prose is far more quickly detected 
 by the average man than poor poetry. Matthew 
 Arnold has somewhere suggested that good 
 
General Introduction xliii 
 
 poetry can be produced only by a more or less 
 barbarous age.^ It is the natural exalted lan- 
 guage of all rude peoples. As civilization ad- 
 vances, its power seems to be refined av^ay. Some 
 have suspected that the race deteriorates as it 
 becomes more civilized, simply for the reason that 
 it can no longer produce the poetry of its infancy. 
 A better view is to believe that as a man in 
 his civil relations advances from a condition of 
 slavery to one of freedom and liberty, where his 
 own moral sense becomes his real master, the 
 controlling force of his life, so literature advances 
 from the period when poetry flourishes above prose 
 because the self-restraint and self-mastery of the 
 writer cannot be depended upon and mechanical 
 restraint is necessarily employed, to the nobler 
 freedom of prose developed as a fine art and 
 depending for its effect and usefulness upon the 
 self-mastery and artistic masfery of the writer; 
 in other words, upon his eminent sanity fitting 
 him for the just exercise of the unlimited powers 
 of prose. 
 
 1 It is also to be observed that poetry is most often written 
 successfully by young men (Keats, Shelley, Byron), while prose is 
 seldom written successfully till age and experience have ripened 
 the mind {^vide Thackeray, Lamb, George Eliot, and many 
 others). 
 
BACON 
 
A SELECTION 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 BEST ENGLISH ESSAYS 
 
 BACON : 
 MASTER OF CONDENSATION 
 
 OF all English prose writers, Bacon is the 
 most condensed. His successive sen- 
 tences approach the condensation of the 
 proverb and the aphorism. In the essay '' Of 
 Studies " there are half a dozen sentences any 
 one of which a modern writer might take as a 
 text and expand into a good-sized volurne. More- 
 over, it is very interesting to note how he attains 
 this unusual condensation, namely, in the simplest 
 ■ way that condensation can be attained. He does 
 no more than state a simple truth in the most 
 direct and simple language imaginable. A child 
 may do that; but the difference between a child 
 and Bacon is that Bacon's simple truth has such 
 profound and far-reaching applications. When a 
 man has spent a lifetime in investigation of a 
 subject, so that it is as familiar to him as his 
 A B C's, nothing could be easier or simpler for 
 him than to put his finger on the central point, 
 the heart of the whole subject. If he displays 
 
4 Best English Essays 
 
 any peculiar literary skill, it is chiefly in refrain- 
 ing from doing anything beside putting his finger 
 on the point of interest in his subject. The pro- 
 fundity of Bacon's knowledge, the accuracy and 
 comprehensiveness of his thought, are the essen- 
 tial things in his essays. Little as he suspected 
 it when he wrote them, these essays afford us a 
 key to the conclusions regarding life of one of 
 the profoundest thinkers, one of the keenest 
 observers, and one of the most learned men the 
 world has ever produced. 
 
 As Bacon is our first essayist, the history of his 
 essays is interesting. As a brilliant conversa- 
 tionist he was in the habit of jotting down in his 
 notebook any terse or suggestive saying he heard, 
 or any particularly good sentence that occurred to 
 him in the ordinary rounds of his life and studies. 
 In 1597 he published a dozen groups of these 
 notes. They formed only a few pages in a book 
 that contained other matter. Nearly every sen- 
 tence was marked with the sign of the paragraph, 
 showing that Bacon presented them merely as a 
 collection of epigrammatic sentences. By far the 
 best of these ten original essays was the one called 
 " Of Studies." The book as a whole, however, 
 was popular, and in 161 2 a new edition was pub- 
 lished, in which nearly all the original essays 
 were enlarged and the disjointed notes were more 
 closely welded together. Many essays were 
 added. In 1625 the final edition, as we now have 
 it, appeared, and the collections of notes had 
 
Bacon 5 
 
 grown into something more nearly resembling 
 the modern essay, while the numerous additions 
 were written connectedly and at greater length. 
 
 That the student may observe this process of 
 development for himself, we present first the 
 original form of the essay " Of Studies '' very 
 nearly as it appeared in 1597, and then the same 
 essay as we find it in the edition of 1625. This 
 is followed by two essays, " Of Truth " and 
 " Of Friendship," which were first presented in 
 the edition of 1625. The latter is the most elab- 
 orate and connected, and it will be very interest- 
 ing to compare this essay with Emerson's essay 
 on " Friendship." Emerson was the same sort 
 of writer that Bacon was, but he wrote in an age 
 when people read too hurriedly and too exten- 
 sively to permit the classic brevity of Bacon to 
 have its just effect. 
 
 OF STUDIES 
 (Version of 1597)^ 
 
 STUDIES serve for pastimes, for ornaments and 
 for abilities. Their chief use for pastime is in 
 privatenes and retiring; for omamente is in dis- 
 course, and for abilitie is in judgement. For expert 
 men can execute, but learned men are fittest to 
 judge or censure. 
 
 1 In this essay the original spelling is retained. 
 
6 Best English Essays 
 
 IfTo spend too much time in them is slouth, to use 
 them too much for ornament is affectation : to make 
 judgement wholly by their rules, is the humour of 
 a Scholler. IfThey perfect Nature, and are perfected 
 by experience. IFCraftie men contemne ^ them, simple 
 men admire them, wise men use them : For they 
 teach not their owne use, but that ^ is a wisedome 
 without them : and above them wonne by obser- 
 vation. IFReade not to contradict, nor to believe, but 
 to waigh and consider. ITSome bookes are to bee 
 tasted, others to bee swallowed, and some few to bee 
 chewed and digested: That is, some bookes are to 
 be read only in partes ; others to be read, but cur- 
 sorily, and some few to be read wholly and with 
 diligence and attention. ^Reading maketh a full 
 man, conference a readye man, and writing an 
 exacte man. And therefore if a man write little, 
 he had neede have a great memorie, if he conferre 
 little, he had neede have a present wit, and if he 
 reade little, hee had neede have much cunning, to 
 seeme to know that he doth not. ^Histories make 
 men wise. Poets wittie: the Mathematickes subtle, 
 naturall Phylosophie deepe: Morall grave, Logicke 
 and Rhetoricke able to contend. 
 
 (Version of 1625)^ 
 
 STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for 
 ability. Their chief use for delight is in pri- 
 vateness and retiring ; for ornament is in discourse ; 
 
 ^ Misprinted in first edition " continue." 
 2 The meaning calls for "there." 
 
 8 In this and the following essays, the spelling has been 
 modernized. 
 
Bacon 7 
 
 and for ability is in the judgment and disposition 
 of business. For expert men can execute, and per- 
 haps judge of particulars, one by one; but the 
 general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of 
 affairs, come best from those that are learned. To 
 spend too much time in studies is sloth, to use 
 them too much for ornament is affectation, to 
 make judgment only by their rules is the humour 
 of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected 
 by experience. For natural abilities are like natu- 
 ral plants, that need pruning by study ; and studies 
 themselves do give forth directions too much at 
 large, except they be bounded in by experience. 
 Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire 
 them, and wise men use them; for they teach not 
 their own use, but that ^ is a wisdom without them 
 and above them, won by observation. 
 
 Read not to contradict and confute, nor to be- 
 lieve and take for granted, nor to find talk and 
 discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books 
 are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some 
 few to be chewed and digested : that is, some 
 books are to be read only in parts; others to be 
 read, but not curiously; and some few to be read 
 wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some 
 books also may be read by deputy, and extracts 
 made of them by others; but that would be only 
 in the less important arguments and the meaner 
 sort of books; else distilled books are like com- 
 mon distilled waters, flashy ^ things. Reading 
 maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and 
 writing an exact man. And therefore if a man 
 write little, he had need have a great memory; if 
 
 1 "There" — see preceding page. ^ insipid. 
 
8 Best English Essays 
 
 he confer little, he had need have a present wit; 
 and if he read little, he had need have much cun- 
 ning to seem to know that he doth not. 
 
 Histories make men wise, poets witty, the math- 
 ematics subtile, natural philosophy deep, moral 
 grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend. " Abe- 
 unt studia in mores." ^ Nay, there is no stond ^ 
 or impediment in the wit but may be wrought 
 out by fit studies, like as diseases of the body may 
 have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for 
 the stone and . reins, shooting for the lungs and 
 breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for 
 the head, and the like. So if a man's wit be wan- 
 dering, let him study the mathematics ; for in dem- 
 onstrations, if his wit be called away never so 
 little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt 
 to distinguish or find differences, let him study the 
 schoolmen, for they are cymini sectores.^ If he be 
 not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one 
 thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study 
 the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind 
 may have a special receipt. 
 
 OF TRUTH 
 
 "TTT'HAT is truth?" said jesting Pilate; and 
 
 VV would not stay for an answer. Certain 
 
 there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a 
 
 1 Bacon elsewhere paraphrases this : " Studies have an influence 
 and operation upon the manners of those that are conversant in 
 them." 
 
 2 Stand. Explained by the next word. 
 ^ Splitters of cumin-seeds. 
 
Bacon 9 
 
 bondage to fix a belief ; affecting ^ free-will in 
 thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sect 
 of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there re- 
 main certain discoursing wits which are of the same 
 veins, though there be not so much blood in them as 
 was in those of the ancients. But it is not only 
 the difficulty and labour which men take in finding 
 out of truth; nor again, that when it is found it 
 imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring 
 lies in favour: but a natural though corrupt love 
 of the lie itself. One of the later school of the 
 Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand 
 to think what should be in it that men should love 
 lies : where neither they make for pleasure, as with 
 poets ; nor for advantage, as with the merchant ; 
 but for the He's sake. But I cannot tell : this same 
 truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not 
 show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs 
 of the world half so stately and daintily as candle- 
 lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of 
 a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not 
 rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that 
 showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie 
 doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, 
 that if there were taken out of men's minds vain 
 opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imag- 
 inations as one would, and the like, but it would 
 leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken 
 things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and 
 unpleasing to themselves? One of the Fathers, in 
 great severity, called poesy viniim dcemonum,^ be- 
 cause it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but 
 with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that 
 ^ Aiming at. ^ The wine of demons. 
 
lo Best English Essays 
 
 passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh 
 in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt; such as 
 we spake of before. But howsoever these things 
 are thus in men's depraved judgments and affec- 
 tions, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, 
 teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the 
 love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of 
 truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief 
 of truth, which is the enjoying of it — is the sov- 
 ereign good of human nature. The first creature 
 of God, in the works of the days, was the light 
 of the sense; the last was the light of reason; 
 and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumina- 
 tion of his Spirit. First he breathed light upon 
 the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed 
 light into the face of man; and still he breatheth 
 and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. 
 The poet that beautified the sect that was other- 
 wise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well : 
 " It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to 
 see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand 
 in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and 
 the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is 
 comparable to the standing upon the vantage 
 ground of truth " (a hill not to be commanded, 
 and where the air is always clear and serene) 
 " and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, 
 and tempests, in the vale below : " so always, that 
 this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling 
 or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth to 
 have a man's mind move in charity, rest in provi- 
 dence, and turn upon the poles of truth. 
 
 To pass from theological and philosophical truth 
 to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowl- 
 
Bacon ii 
 
 edged, even by those that practise it not, that 
 clear and round dealing is the honour of man's 
 nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy 
 in coin of gold and silver: which may make the 
 metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For 
 these winding and crooked courses are the goings 
 of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, 
 and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth 
 so cover a man with shame as to be found false 
 and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith 
 prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word 
 of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an 
 odious charge: saith he, "If it be well weighed, 
 to say that a man lieth is as much as to say that 
 he is brave towards God and a coward towards 
 men." For a lie faces God, and shrinks from 
 man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and 
 breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly ex- 
 pressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call 
 the judgments of God upon the generations of 
 men : it being foretold that when Christ cometh 
 " He shall not find faith upon the earth." 
 
 OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 IT had been hard for him that spake it to have put 
 more truth and untruth together in few words 
 than in that speech, " Whosoever is delighted in 
 solitude is either a wild beast or a god." For it 
 is most true that a natural and secret hatred and 
 aversation towards society in any man hath some- 
 what of the savage beast; but it is most untrue 
 that it should have any character at all of the divine 
 
12 Best English Essays 
 
 nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in 
 solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester 
 a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is 
 found to have been falsely and feignedly in some 
 of the heathen, as Epimenides the Candian, Nyma 
 the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and ApoUo- 
 nius of Tyana ; and truly and really in divers of the 
 ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. 
 But little do men perceive what solitude is, and 
 how far it extendeth ; for a crowd is not company, 
 and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk 
 but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. 
 The Latin adage meeteth with it a little, " Magna 
 civitas, magna solitudo " ; ^ because in a great town 
 friends are scattered, so that there is not that fel- 
 lowship, for the most part, which is in less neigh- 
 bourhoods. But we may go further, and affirm 
 most truly that it is a mere ^ and miserable solitude 
 to want true friends, without which the world is 
 but a wilderness. And even in this sense also of 
 solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and 
 affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the 
 beast, and not from humanity. 
 
 A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and 
 discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, 
 which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. 
 We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations 
 are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not 
 much otherwise in the mind ; you may take sarza ^ 
 to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of 
 sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain, but 
 no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to 
 
 1 A great town is a great solitude. 
 
 2 Utter. ' Sarsaparilla. 
 
Bacon 13 
 
 whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, 
 suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the 
 heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or 
 confession. 
 
 It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate 
 great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of 
 friendship whereof we speak; so great as they pur- 
 chase it many times at the hazard of their own 
 safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of 
 the distance of their fortune from that of their sub- 
 jects and servants, cannot gather this fruit except, 
 to make themselves capable thereof, they raise 
 some persons to be, as it were, companions and 
 almost equals to themselves, which many times 
 sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages 
 give unto such persons the name of favourites or 
 privadoes, as if it were matter of grace or conver- 
 sation ; but the Roman name attaineth the true 
 use and cause thereof, naming them " participes 
 curarum," ^ for it is that which tieth the knot. 
 And we see plainly that this hath been done, not 
 by weak and passionate princes only, but by the 
 wisest and most politic that ever reigned ; who have 
 oftentimes joined to themselves some of their ser- 
 vants, whom both themselves have called friends, 
 and allowed others likewise to call them in the 
 same manner, using the word which is received 
 between private men. 
 
 L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised 
 Pompey, after surnamed the Great, to that height 
 that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla's over- 
 match. For when he had carried the consulship 
 for a friend of his against the pursuit of Sylla, and 
 
 1 Partners in cares. 
 
14 Best English Essays 
 
 that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to 
 speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and 
 in effect bade him be quiet, '' for that more men 
 adored the sun rising than the sun setting." With 
 Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that 
 interest, as he set him down in his testament for 
 heir in remainder after his nephew. And this was 
 the man that had power with him to draw him 
 forth to his death. For when Caesar would have 
 discharged the senate, in regard of some ill pre- 
 sages, and especially a dream of Calpurnia, this man 
 lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, tell- 
 ing him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate 
 till his wife had dreamt a better dream. And 
 it seemeth his favour was so great as Antonius, 
 in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of 
 Cicero's Philippics, calleth him " venefica," witch, 
 as if he had enchanted Caesar. Augustus raised 
 Agrippa, though of mean birth, to that height 
 as, when he consulted with Maecenas about the 
 marriage of his daughter Julia, Maecenas took 
 the liberty to tell him, " That he must either marry 
 his daughter to Agrippa or take away his life; 
 there was no third way, he had made him so 
 great." With Tiberius Caesar, Sejanus had as- 
 cended to that height as they two were termed and 
 reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter 
 to him saith : '' Haec pro amicitia nostra non oc- 
 cultavi " ; ^ and the whole senate dedicated an 
 altar to friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of 
 the great dearness of friendship between them two. 
 The like or more was between Septimius Severus 
 
 1 On account of our friendship I have not kept these things 
 back. 
 
Bacon 
 
 15 
 
 and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to 
 marry the daughter of Plautianus, and would often 
 maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to his son ; 
 and did write also in a letter to the senate by these 
 words : ** I love the man so well as I wish he may 
 over-live me." Now, if these princes had been as 
 a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have 
 thought that this had proceeded of an abundant 
 goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of 
 such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme 
 lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth 
 most plainly that they found their own felicity, 
 though as great as ever happened to mortal men, 
 but as a half-piece, except they mought have a 
 friend to make it entire. And yet, which is more, 
 they were princes which had wives, sons, nephews; 
 and yet all these could not supply the comfort of 
 friendship. 
 
 It is not to be forgotten what Commineus ob- 
 serveth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy ; 
 namely, that he would communicate his secrets 
 with none, and least of all those secrets which 
 troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and 
 saith that towards his latter time '' that close- 
 ness did impair, and a little perish his under- 
 standing." Surely Commineus mought have made 
 the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, 
 of his second master, Louis XL, whose closeness 
 was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythag- 
 oras is dark but true : " Cor ne edito," eat not 
 the heart. Certainly, if a man would give it a 
 hard phrase, those that want friends to open them- 
 selves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. 
 But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I 
 
1 6 Best English Essays 
 
 will conclude this first-fruit of friendship), which 
 is, that this communicating of a man's self to his 
 friend works two contrary effects : for it redoubleth 
 joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is 
 no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but 
 he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth 
 his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. 
 So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man's 
 mind, of like virtue as the alchemists used to 
 attribute to their stone for man's body, that it 
 worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good 
 and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying 
 in aid of alchemists, there is a manifest image of 
 this in the ordinary course of nature. For in 
 bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any 
 natural action, and, on the other side, weakeneth 
 and dulleth any violent impression: and even so 
 is it of minds. 
 
 The second fruit of friendship is healthful and 
 sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for 
 the affections. For friendship maketh indeed a 
 fair day in the affections from storm and tempests ; 
 but it maketh daylight in the understanding out 
 of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither 
 is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, 
 which a man receiveth from his friend ; but before 
 you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath 
 his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits 
 and understanding do clarify and break up in the 
 communicating and discoursing with another: he 
 tosseth his thoughts more easily, he marshalleth 
 them more orderly, he seeth how they look when 
 they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth 
 wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's 
 
Bacon 17 
 
 discourse than by a day's meditation. It was 
 well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, 
 " That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and 
 put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in 
 figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in 
 packs." Neither is this second fruit of friend- 
 ship, in opening the understanding, restrained 
 only to such friends as are able to give a man 
 counsel ; they indeed are best, but even without 
 that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his 
 own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as 
 against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, 
 a man were better relate himself to a statua or 
 picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in 
 smother. 
 
 Add now, to make this second fruit of friend- 
 ship complete, that other point which lieth more 
 open, and falleth within vulgar observation : which 
 is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith 
 well in one of his enigmas, " Dry light is ever 
 the best." And certain it is, that the light that 
 a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier 
 and purer than that which cometh from his own 
 understanding and judgment, which is ever infused 
 and drenched in his affections and customs. So 
 as there is as much difference between the counsel 
 that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, 
 as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a 
 flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a 
 man's self; and there is no such remedy against 
 flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. 
 Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning man- 
 ners, the other concerning business. For the 
 first, the best preservative to keep the mind in 
 
1 8 Best Englisli Essays 
 
 health Is the faithful admonition of a friend. The 
 calling of a man's self to a strict account is a 
 medicine sometime too piercing and corrosive. 
 Reading good books of morality is a little flat and 
 dead. Observing our faults in others is sometimes 
 unproper for our case. But the best receipt (best, 
 I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition 
 of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what 
 gross errors and extreme absurdities many, espe- 
 cially of the greater sort, do commit for want of 
 a friend to tell them of them ; to the great damage 
 both of their fame and fortune. For, as St. James 
 saith, they are as men " that look sometimes into 
 a glass, and presently forget their own shape and 
 favour." As for business, a man may think if he 
 will that two eyes see no more than one; or that 
 a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; 
 or that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath 
 said over the four-and- twenty letters; or that a 
 musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as 
 upon a rest; and such other fond and high imag- 
 inations, to think himself all in all. But when all 
 is done, the help of good counsel is that which 
 setteth business straight. And if any man think 
 that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces ; 
 asking counsel in one business of one man, and 
 in another business of another man; it is well 
 (that is to say, better perhaps than if he asked none 
 at all ) ; but he runneth two dangers : one, that 
 he shall not be faithfully counselled ; — for it is a 
 rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire 
 friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall 
 be bowed and crooked to some ends which he hath 
 that giveth it ; — the other, that he shall have counsel 
 
Bacon 19 
 
 given, hurtful and unsafe, though with good mean- 
 ing, and mixed partly of mischief and partly of 
 remedy; even as if you would call a physician 
 that is thought good for the cure of the disease 
 you complain of, but is unacquainted with your 
 body, and therefore may put you in way for a 
 present cure, but overthroweth your health in 
 some other kind, and so cure the disease and kill 
 the patient. But a friend that is wholly acquainted 
 with a man's estate will beware by furthering any 
 present business how he dasheth upon other in- 
 convenience. And, therefore, rest not upon scat- 
 tered counsels ; they will rather distract and mislead 
 than settle and direct. 
 
 After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace 
 in the affections, and support of the judgment) 
 foUoweth the last fruit, which is like the pomegran- 
 ate, full of many kernels : I mean aid, and bearing 
 a part in all actions and occasions. Here, the 
 best way to represent to life the manifold use of 
 friendship, is to cast and see how many things 
 there are which a man cannot do himself; and 
 then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of 
 the ancients to say, " That a friend is another 
 himself " ; for that a friend is far more than him- 
 self. Men have their time, and die many times in 
 desire of some things which they principally take 
 to heart, — the bestowing of a child, the finishing of 
 a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend, 
 he may rest almost secure that the care of those 
 things will continue after him. So that a man hath, 
 as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a 
 body, and that body is confined to a place; but 
 where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were, 
 
20 Best English Essays 
 
 granted to him and his deputy, for he may exercise 
 them by his friend. How many things are there 
 which a man cannot, with any face or comeHness, 
 say or do himself! A man can scarce allege his 
 own merits with modesty, much less extol them ; 
 a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or 
 beg; and a number of the like. But all these 
 things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are 
 blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's per- 
 son hath many proper^ relations which he cannot 
 put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a 
 father ; to his wife but as a husband ; to his enemy 
 but upon terms ; whereas a friend may speak as 
 the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the 
 person. But to enumerate these things were end- 
 less. I have given the rule where a man cannot 
 fitly play his own part : if he have not a friend, he 
 may quit the stage. 
 
 1 Personal, peculiar. 
 
II 
 
 SWIFT 
 
SWIFT: 
 THE GREATEST ENGLISH SATIRIST 
 
 IN his lecture on Swift, Thackeray gives us 
 a masterly picture of the famous Dean of 
 St. Patrick's, but tells us he was a very bad 
 man. Certainly there is nothing very agreeable 
 about Swift, and though we have already de- 
 scribed him as in a way the typical preacher of 
 his day, he is not such a man as we should like 
 to have occupy the pulpit of the church we go 
 to. For all that, we are forced to admit that in 
 his writings it is the element of truth that has 
 preserved them. " Gulliver's Travels " is read 
 to-day, and will continue to be read by the 
 average man long after every one of Swift's 
 contemporaries has been relegated to the literary 
 attic. Possibly he will be read as a mere story 
 teller, by children who suspect him of ferocity 
 as little as they suspect the pussy-cat in the 
 corner. Still, it is very remarkable that the 
 most pungent satire in the language and one of 
 the most simple and fascinating stories can exist 
 together in the same literary composition. The 
 
24 Best English Essays 
 
 only way to account for it is to suppose that Swift 
 told the simple truth without in any way disfig- 
 uring it by his moroseness of temper. 
 
 In his literary style. Swift belongs to the same 
 classic school as Bacon. Like Bacon, he states 
 simple truths in the plainest and simplest manner ; 
 but while Bacon selected profound truths. Swift, 
 actuated by the mad bitterness of his temper, was 
 always putting his finger with unerring accuracy 
 on the weak points of human nature. He tells 
 his simple story in his smooth and simple way, 
 with no ornament, no exaggeration. No reader 
 can question, much less deny, a single syllable; 
 but when he looks up and catches the old fellow's 
 malicious eye, his very flesh creeps under the 
 stinging satire of the truth that the Dean states 
 so suavely and so accurately. The Dean is bitter 
 and malicious as no other man ever was; but 
 he is strictly truthful; and since he is truthful 
 we cannot believe that he has ever done human 
 nature any harm. 
 
 To be sure. Swift might have applied the puri- 
 fying caustic with heartfelt love instead of ma- 
 licious glee. The " Modest Proposal " for eating 
 children is so repulsive, so sickeningly ferocious, 
 that we prefer to pass it by even though it is one 
 of the most remarkable pieces of literature of its 
 kind. Compare with it the same kind of satire 
 on the same subject, inspired by the same bitter- 
 ness of heart, that we find in the following para- 
 graph from Ruskin's "Fors Clavigera," a propos 
 
Swift 25 
 
 of the English gentleman's delight in killing 
 things for sport: — 
 
 " Of course, all this is natural to a sporting 
 people who have learned to like the smell of gun- 
 powder, sulphur, and gas tar better than that of 
 violets and thyme. But, putting baby-poisoning, 
 pigeon-shooting, and rabbit-shooting to-day in com- 
 parison with the pleasures of the German Madonna 
 and her simple company, and of Chaucer and his 
 carolling company : and seeing that the present ef- 
 fect of peace upon earth, and well-pleasing in men, 
 is that every nation now spends most of its income 
 in machinery for shooting the best and the bravest 
 men just when they were likely to have become of 
 some use to their fathers and mothers, I put it to 
 you, my friends all, — calling you so, I suppose for 
 the last time, unless you are disposed for friendship 
 with Herod instead of Barabbas, — whether it would 
 not be more kind and less expensive to make the 
 machinery a little smaller, and adapt it to spare 
 opium now, and expenses of maintenance and edu- 
 cation afterwards (beside no end of diplomacy), 
 by taking our sport in shooting babies instead of 
 rabbits?" 
 
 There is no doubt, however, that Swift's pitch- 
 fork has pricked more skins than Ruskin's subtle 
 needle-point. / 
 
 Swift's best satirical essay is undoubtedly his 
 first, " A Tale of a Tub." In its digression and 
 variety of topics it is a typical essay, and its 
 amusing little tale has a very deep political sig- 
 nificance; for Peter [St. Peter] is merely Swift's 
 
26 Best English Essays 
 
 name for the Roman CathoHc Church, Martin 
 [Luther] for the Episcopal or EngHsh Church, 
 and Jack [Calvin] for the Presbyterian or Non- 
 conformist Church. The satire on booksellers in 
 the *' Bookseller's Dedication " and the satire on 
 current authors in the dedication to " Prince 
 Posterity " have nearly as much point to-day as 
 when they were written. Altogether these three 
 or four selections, complete in themselves, give 
 also a very good impression of " A Tale of a 
 Tub " as a whole. 
 
 A TALE OF A TUB 
 The Bookseller's Dedication 
 
 TO 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN LORD SOMERS 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 THO' the author has written a large Dedication, 
 yet that being addressed to a prince, whom I 
 am never likely to have the honour of being known 
 to ; a person besides, as far as I can observe, not at 
 all regarded, or thought on by any of our present 
 writers; and being wholly free from that slavery 
 which booksellers usually lie under, to the caprices 
 of authors ; I think it a wise piece of presumption 
 to inscribe these papers to your Lordship, and to 
 implore your Lordship's protection of them. God 
 and your Lordship know their faults and their 
 
Swift 27 
 
 merits; for, as to my own particular, I am alto- 
 gether a stranger to the matter ; and though every- 
 body else should be equally ignorant, I do not fear 
 the sale of the book, at all the worse, upon that 
 score. Your Lordship's name on the front in capital 
 letters will at any time get off one edition : neither 
 would I desire any other help to grow an alderman, 
 than a patent for the sole privilege of dedicating to 
 your Lordship. 
 
 I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your 
 Lordship a list of your own virtues, and, at the same 
 time, be very unwilling to offend your modesty ; but 
 chiefly, I should celebrate your liberality towards 
 men of great parts and small fortunes, and give you 
 broad hints that I mean myself. And I was just 
 going on, in the usual method, to peruse a hundred 
 or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract to 
 be applied to your Lordship ; but I was diverted by 
 a certain accident. For, upon the covers of these 
 papers, I casually observed written in large letters 
 the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO ; 
 which, for aught I knew, might contain some im- 
 portant meaning. But it unluckily fell out, that 
 none of the authors I employ understood Latin; 
 (though I have them often in pay to translate out of 
 that language;) I was therefore compelled to have 
 recourse to the curate of our parish, who englished 
 it thus. Let it be given to the worthiest: and his 
 comment was, that the author meant his work should 
 be dedicated to the sublimest genius of the age for 
 wit, learning, judgment, eloquence, and wisdom. 
 I called at a poet's chamber (who works for my 
 shop) in an alley hard by, showed him the transla- 
 tion, and desired his opinion, who it was that the 
 
28 Best English Essays 
 
 author could mean: he told me, after some con- 
 sideration, that vanity was a thing he abhorred ; but, 
 by the description, he thought himself to be the per- 
 son aimed at ; and, at the same time, he very kindly 
 offered his own assistance gratis towards penning 
 a dedication to himself. I desired him, however, to 
 give a second guess. Why, then, said he, it must 
 be I, or my Lord Somers. From thence I went to 
 several other wits of my acquaintance, with no small 
 hazard and weariness to my person, from a prodi- 
 gious number of dark, winding stairs ; but found 
 them all in the same story, both of your Lordship 
 and themselves. Now, your Lordship is to under- 
 stand, that this proceeding was not of my own in- 
 vention ; for I have somewhere heard it is a maxim, 
 that those to whom everybody allows the second 
 place, have an undoubted title to the first. 
 
 This infallibly convinced me, that your Lord- 
 ship was the person intended by the author. But, 
 being very unacquainted in the style and form of 
 dedications, I employed those wits aforesaid to 
 furnish me with hints and materials, towards a 
 panegyric upon your Lordship's virtues. 
 
 In two days they brought me ten sheets of paper, 
 filled up on every side. They swore to me, that they 
 had ransacked whatever could be found in the char- 
 acters of Socrates, Aristides, Epaminondas, Cato, 
 Tully, Atticus, and other hard names, which I can- 
 not now recollect. However, I have reason to be- 
 Heve, they imposed upon my ignorance; because, 
 when I came to read over their collections, there 
 was not a syllable there, but what I and everybody 
 else knew as well as themselves : Therefore I griev- 
 ously suspect a cheat; and that these authors of 
 
Swift 29 
 
 mine stole and transcribed every word, from the 
 universal report of mankind. So that I look upon 
 myself as fifty shillings out of pocket, to no manner 
 of purpose. 
 
 If, by altering the title, I could make the same 
 materials serve for another Dedication, (as my bet- 
 ters have done, ) it would help to make up my loss ; 
 but I have made several persons dip here and there 
 in those papers, and before they read three lines, 
 they have all assured me plainly, that they can- 
 not possibly be applied to any person besides your 
 Lordship. 
 
 I expected, indeed, to have heard of your Lord- 
 ship's bravery at the head of an army; of your 
 undaunted courage in mounting a breach, or scaling 
 a wall; or, to have had your pedigree traced in a 
 lineal descent from the house of Austria; or, of 
 your wonderful talent at dress and dancing; or, 
 your profound knowledge in algebra, metaphysics, 
 and the oriental tongues. But to ply the world with 
 an old beaten story of your wit, and eloquence, and 
 learning, and wisdom, and justice, and politeness, 
 and candor, and evenness of temper in all scenes of 
 life; of that great discernment in discovering, and 
 readiness in favouring deserving men; with forty 
 other common topics ; I confer, I have neither con- 
 science nor countenance to do it. Because there 
 is no virtue, either of a public or private life, which 
 some circumstances of your own have not often pro- 
 duced upon the stage of the world ; and those few, 
 which, for want of occasions to exert them, might 
 otherwise have passed unseen, or unobserved, by 
 your friends, your enemies have at length brought 
 to light. 
 
30 Best English Essays 
 
 'T is true, I should be very loth, the bright ex- 
 ample of your Lordship's virtues should be lost to 
 after-ages, both for their sake and your own; but 
 chiefly because they will be so very necessary to 
 adorn the history of a late reign; ^ and that is an- 
 other reason why I would forbear to make a recital 
 of them here ; because I have been told by wise men, 
 that, as Dedications have run for some years past, 
 a good historian will not be apt to have recourse 
 thither in search of characters. 
 
 There is one point, wherein I think we dedicators 
 would do well to change our measures; I mean, 
 instead of running on so far upon the praise of our 
 patrons' liberality, to spend a word or two in admir- 
 ing their patience, I can put no greater compliment 
 on your Lordship's, than by giving you so ample an 
 occasion to exercise it at present. — Though per- 
 haps I shall not be apt to reckon much merit to your 
 Lordship upon that score, who having been for- 
 merly used to tedious harangues, and sometimes to 
 as little purpose, will be the readier to pardon this ; 
 especially, when it is offered by one, who is with all 
 respect and veneration, 
 My Lord, 
 
 Your Lordship's most obedient, 
 
 And most faithful servant. 
 
 The Bookseller.^ 
 
 1 King William's. 
 
 2 The bookseller in whose person Swift writes this dedication 
 was John Nutt. 
 
Swift 3 1 
 
 The Epistle Dedicatory 
 
 TO 
 
 HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE POSTERITY^ 
 Sir, 
 
 I HERE present Your Highness with the fruits 
 of a very few leisure hours, stolen from the 
 short intervals of a world of business and of an em- 
 ployment quite alien from such amusements as this ; 
 the poor production of that refuse of time, which 
 has lain heavy upon my hands, during a long pro- 
 rogation of parliament, a great dearth of foreign 
 news, and a tedious fit of rainy weather ; for which, 
 and other reasons, it cannot choose extremely to 
 deserve such a patronage as that of Your Highness, 
 whose numberless virtues, in so few years, make the 
 world look upon you as the future example to all 
 princes ; for although Your Highness is hardly got 
 clear of infancy, yet has the universal learned world 
 already resolved upon appealing to your future dic- 
 tates, with the lowest and most resigned submission ; 
 fate having decreed you sole arbiter of the produc- 
 tions of human wit, in this polite and most accom- 
 plished age. Methinks, the number of appellants 
 were enough to shock and startle any judge, of a 
 genius less unlimited than yours: but, in order to 
 prevent such glorious trials, the person (it seems) 
 to whose care the education of Your Highness is 
 
 ^ It is the usual style of decried writers to appeal to Posterity, 
 who is here represented as a prince in his nonage, and Time as 
 his governor; and the author begins in a way very frequent with 
 him, by personating other writers, who sometimes offer such 
 reasons and excuses for publishing their works, as they ought 
 chiefly to conceal and be ashamed of. 
 
32 Best English Essays 
 
 committed/ has resolved (as I am told) to keep you 
 in almost a universal ignorance of our studies, 
 which it is your inherent birth-right to inspect. 
 
 It is amazing to me, that this person should have 
 assurance, in the face of the sun, to go about per- 
 suading Your Highness, that our age is almost 
 wholly illiterate, and has hardly produced one writer 
 upon any subject. I know very well, that when 
 Your Highness shall come to riper years, and have 
 gone through the learning of antiquity, you will be 
 too curious, to neglect inquiring into the authors of 
 the very age before you : and to think that this inso- 
 lent, in the account he is preparing for your view, 
 designs to reduce them to a number so insignificant 
 as I am ashamed to mention ; it moves my zeal and 
 my spleen for the honour and interest of our vast 
 flourishing body, as well as of myself, for whom, I 
 know by long experience, he has professed, and still 
 continues, a peculiar malice. 
 
 'T is not unlikely, that, when Your Highness will 
 one day peruse what I am now writing, you may be 
 ready to expostulate with your governor, upon the 
 credit of what I here affirm, and command him to 
 show you some of our productions. To which he 
 will answer, (for I am well informed of his designs,) 
 by asking Your Highness, where they are? and 
 what is become of them? and pretend it a demon- 
 stration that there never were any, because they are 
 not then to be found. Not to be found ! Who has 
 mislaid them ? Are they sunk in the abyss of things ? 
 'T is certain, that in their own nature, they were 
 light enough to swim upon the surface for all eter- 
 nity. Therefore the fault is in him, who tied weights 
 
 1 Time, allegorically described as the tutor of Posterity. 
 
Swift ^2 
 
 so heavy to their heels, as to depress them to the 
 centre. Is their very essence destroyed? Who has 
 annihilated them? But, that it may no longer be a 
 doubt with Your Highness, who is to be the author 
 of this universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that 
 large and terrible scythe which your governor af- 
 fects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to 
 remark the length and strength, the sharpness and 
 hardness, of his nails and teeth : consider his bane- 
 ful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter, 
 infectious and corrupting : and then reflect, whether 
 it be possible, for any mortal ink and paper of this 
 generation, to make a suitable resistance. O ! that 
 Your Highness would one day resolve to disarm 
 this usurping maitre du palais ^ of his furious en- 
 gines, and bring your empire hors de page.^ 
 
 It were endless to recount the several methods of 
 tyranny and destruction, which your governor is 
 pleased to practise upon this occasion. His inveter- 
 ate malice is such to the writings of our age, that of 
 several thousands produced yearly from this re- 
 nowned city, before the next revolution of the sun, 
 there is not one to be heard of: Unhappy infants! 
 many of them barbarously destroyed, before they 
 have so much as learnt their mother tongue to beg 
 for pity. Some he stifles in their cradles ; others 
 he frights into convulsions, whereof they suddenly 
 die ; some he flays alive ; others he tears limb from 
 limb. Great numbers are offered to Moloch; and 
 
 1 Comptroller. The kingdom of France had a race of kings, 
 which they call les roisfaineaiis (from their doing nothing), who lived 
 lazily in their apartments, while the kingdom was administered by 
 the " mayor of the palace," till Charles Martel, the last mayor, put 
 his master to death, and took the kingdom into his own hand. 
 
 2 Out of guardianship. 
 
 3 
 
34 Best English Essays 
 
 the rest, tainted by his breath, die of a languishing 
 consumption. 
 
 But the concern I have most at heart, is for our 
 corporation of poets ; from whom I am preparing 
 a petition to Your Highness, to be subscribed with 
 the names of one hundred and thirty-six of the first 
 rate; but whose immortal productions are never 
 likely to reach your eyes, though each of them is 
 now an humble and earnest appellant for the laurel, 
 and has large comely volumes ready to show, for a 
 support to his pretensions. The never-dying works 
 of these illustrious persons, your governor, sir, has 
 devoted to unavoidable death; and Your Highness 
 is to be made believe, that our age has never arrived 
 at the honour to produce one single poet. 
 
 We confess Immortality to be a great and power- 
 ful goddess; but in vain we offer up to her our 
 devotions and our sacrifices, if Your Highness's 
 governor, who has usurped the priesthood, must, by 
 an unparalleled ambition and avarice, wholly inter- 
 cept and devour them. 
 
 To afiirm that our age is altogether unlearned, 
 and devoid of writers in any kind, seems to be an 
 assertion so bold and so false, that I have been some 
 time thinking, the contrary may almost be proved 
 by uncontrollable demonstration. 'T is true, indeed, 
 that although their numbers be vast, and their pro- 
 ductions numerous in proportion, yet are they hur- 
 ried so hastily off the scene, that they escape our 
 memory, and elude our sight. When I first thought 
 of this address, I had prepared a copious Hst of 
 titles to present Your Highness, as an undisputed 
 argument for what I affirm. The originals were 
 posted fresh upon all gates and corners of streets; 
 
Swift ^^ 
 
 but, returning in a very few hours to take a review, 
 they were all torn down, and fresh ones in their 
 places. I inquired after them among readers and 
 booksellers ; but I inquired in vain ; the memorial 
 of them was lost among men; their place was no 
 more to be found; and I was laughed to scorn for 
 a clown and a pedant, without all taste and refine- 
 ment, little versed in the course of present affairs, 
 and that knew nothing of what had passed in the 
 best companies of court and town. So that I can 
 only avow in general to Your Highness, that we do 
 abound in learning and wit; but to fix upon par- 
 ticulars, is a task too slippery for my slender abil- 
 ities. If I should venture in a windy day to affirm 
 to Your Highness, that there is a large cloud near 
 the horizon, in the form of a bear; another in the 
 zenith, with the head of an ass ; a third to the west- 
 ward, with claws like a dragon ; and Your High- 
 ness should in a few minutes think fit to examine 
 the truth, it is certain they would all be changed in 
 figure and position : new ones would arise, and all 
 we could agree upon would be, that clouds there 
 were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the zoog- 
 raphy and topography of them. 
 
 But your governor perhaps may still insist, and 
 put the question, — What is then become of those 
 immense bales of paper, which must needs have 
 been employed in such numbers of books? Can 
 these also be wholly annihilate, and so of a sud- 
 den, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of 
 so invidious an objection? Books, like men their 
 authors, have no more than one way of coming into 
 the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of 
 it, and return no more. 
 
^6 Best English Essays 
 
 I profess to Your Highness, in the integrity of 
 my heart, that what I am going to say is Uterally 
 true this minute I am writing: what revolutions 
 may happen before it shall be ready for your pe- 
 rusal, I can by no means warrant: however, I beg 
 you to accept it as a specimen of our learning, our 
 politeness, and our wit. I do therefore affirm, upon 
 the word of a sincere man, that there is now actually 
 in being a certain poet, called John Dryden, whose 
 translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large 
 folio, well bound, and, if diligent search were made, 
 for aught I know, is yet to be seen. There is an- 
 other, called Nahum Tate, who is ready to make 
 oath, that he has caused many reams of verse to be 
 published, whereof both himself and his bookseller, 
 (if lawfully required,) can still produce authentic 
 copies, and therefore wonders why the world is 
 pleased to make such a secret of it. There is a third, 
 known by the name of Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast 
 comprehension, an universal genius, and most pro- 
 found learning.. There are also one Mr. Rymer, 
 and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There 
 is a person styled Dr. B — tl-y, who has written near 
 a thousand pages of immense erudition, giving a 
 full and true account of a certain squabble, of won- 
 derful importance, between himself and a book- 
 seller: He is a writer of infinite wit and humour; 
 no man rallies with a better grace, and in more 
 sprightly turns. Farther, I avow to Your Highness, 
 that with these eyes I have beheld the person of 
 William W-tt-n, B.D., who has written a good 
 sizeable volume against a friend of your governor,^ 
 
 1 Sir William Temple, whose praise of Phalaris's Epistles 
 brought on him Bentley's criticisms, which appeared in the 
 
Swift 37 
 
 ( from whom, alas ! he must therefore look for little 
 favour,) in a most gentlemanly style, adorned with 
 the utmost politeness and civility ; replete with dis- 
 coveries equally valuable for their novelty and use; 
 and embellished with traits of wit, so poignant and 
 so apposite, that he is a worthy yokemate to his 
 fore-mentioned friend. 
 
 Why should I go upon farther particulars, which 
 might fill a volume with the just eulogies of my 
 contemporary brethren ? I shall bequeath this piece 
 of justice to a larger work, wherein I intend to 
 write a character of the present set of wits in our 
 nation: their persons I shall describe particularly 
 and at length, their genius and understandings in 
 miniature. 
 
 In the meantime, I do here make bold to present 
 Your Highness with a faithful abstract, drawn from 
 the universal body of all arts and sciences, intended 
 wholly for your service and construction. Nor do I 
 doubt in the least, but Your Highness will peruse it 
 as carefully, and make as considerable improve- 
 ments, as other young princes have already done, 
 by the many volumes of late years written for a help 
 to their studies.^ 
 
 That Your Highness may advance in wisdom and 
 virtue, as well as years, and at last outshine all your 
 royal ancestors, shall be the daily prayer of, 
 Sir, 
 
 Your Highnesses, 
 
 Most devoted, 6^c. 
 
 Decemb. 1697. 
 
 second edition of Wotton's " Reflections on Ancient and Modern 
 Learning," 
 
 1 There were innumerable books printed for the use of the 
 Dauphin of France. 
 
38 Best English Essays 
 
 Preface 
 
 THE wits of the present age being so very 
 numerous and penetrating, it seems the 
 grandees of the Church and State begin to fall 
 under horrible apprehensions lest these gentlemen, 
 during intervals of a long peace, should find leisure 
 to pick holes in the weak sides of Religion and Gov- 
 ernment. To prevent which, there has been much 
 thought employed of late upon certain projects for 
 taking off the force and edge of those formidable 
 inquirers from canvassing and reasoning upon such 
 delicate points. They have at length fixed upon one, 
 which will require some time as well as cost to per- 
 fect. Meanwhile, the danger hourly increasing, by 
 new levies of wits, all appointed (as there is reason 
 to fear) with pen, ink, and paper, which may, at an 
 hour's warning, be drawn out into pamphlets and 
 other offensive weapons ready for immediate exe- 
 cution ; it was judged of absolute necessity that 
 some present expedient be thought on, till the main 
 design can be brought to maturity. To this end at 
 a grand committee some days ago, this important 
 discovery was made by a certain curious and refined 
 observer: that seamen have a custom, when they 
 meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub, by way 
 of amusement, to divert him from laying violent 
 hands upon the ship. This parable was immediately 
 mythologized ; the whale was interpreted to be 
 Hobbes's " Leviathan," which tosses and plays with 
 all schemes of religion and government, whereof a 
 great many are hollow and dry, and empty, and 
 
Swift 39 
 
 noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation. This is 
 the Leviathan from whence the terrible wits of our 
 age are said to borrow their weapons. The ship in 
 danger is easily understood to be its old antitype the 
 commonwealth. But how to analyze the tub was a 
 matter of difficulty; when, after long inquiry and 
 debate, the literal meaning was preserved, and it 
 was decreed that, in order to prevent these Levia- 
 thans from tossing and sporting with the common- 
 wealth (which of itself is too apt to fluctuate), they 
 should be diverted from that game by a Tale of a 
 Tub. And my genius being conceived to lie not 
 unhappily that way, I had the honour done me to be 
 engaged in the performance. 
 
 The Three Brothers and their Coats 
 [Sect. II.] 
 
 ONCE upon a time, there was a man who had 
 three sons by one wife, and all at a birth, 
 neither could the midwife tell certainly, which 
 was the eldest. Their father died while they were 
 young; and upon his deathbed, calling the lads to 
 him, spoke thus : 
 
 '' Sons ; because I have purchased no estate, nor 
 was born to any, I have long considered of some 
 good legacies to bequeath you; and at last, with 
 much care, as well as expense, have provided each of 
 you (here they are) a new coat. Now, you are to 
 understand, that these coats have two virtues con- 
 tained in them ; one is, that with good wearing, they 
 will last you fresh and sound as long as you live : the 
 
40 Best English Essays 
 
 other is, that they will grow in the same proportion 
 with your bodies, lengthening and widening of them- 
 selves, so as to be always fit. Here; let me see 
 them on you before I die. So; very well; pray, 
 children, wear them clean, and brush them often. 
 You will find in my wilF (here it is) full instructions 
 in -every particular concerning the wearing and 
 management of your coats ; wherein you must be 
 very exact, to avoid the penalties I have appointed 
 for every transgression or neglect, upon which your 
 future fortunes will entirely depend. I have also 
 commanded in my will, that you should live to- 
 gether in one house like brethren and friends, for 
 then you will be sure to thrive, and not otherwise." 
 
 Here the story says, this good father died, and the 
 three sons went all together to seek their fortunes. 
 
 I shall not trouble you with recounting what ad- 
 ventures they met for the first seven years ; ^ any 
 farther than by taking notice, that they carefully 
 observed their father's will, and kept their coats in 
 very good order: that they travelled through sev- 
 eral countries, encountered a reasonable quantity of 
 giants, and slew certain dragons. 
 
 Being now arrived at the proper age for produc- 
 ing themselves, they came up to town, and fell in 
 love with the ladies, but especially three, who about 
 that time were in chief reputation; the Duchess 
 d'Argent, Madame de Grands Titres, and the 
 Countess d'Orgueil.^ On their first appearance, 
 our three adventurers met with a very bad recep- 
 tion ; and soon with great sagacity guessing out the 
 reason, they quickly began to improve in the good 
 
 1 The New Testament. 2 The first seven centuries. 
 
 8 Covetousness, ambition, and pride. 
 
Swift 41 
 
 qualities of the town : they writ, and raUied, and 
 rhymed, and sung, and said, and said nothing : they 
 drank, and fought, and slept, and swore, and took 
 snuff: they went to new plays on the first night, 
 haunted the chocolate houses, beat the watch : they 
 bilked hackney-coachmen, ran in debt with shop- 
 keepers: they killed bailiffs, kicked fiddlers down 
 stairs, eat at Locket's,^ loitered at Will's:^ they 
 talked of the drawing-room, and never came there : 
 dined with lords they never saw: whispered a 
 duchess, and spoke never a word : exposed the 
 scrawls of their laundress for billetdoux of quality : 
 came ever just from court, and were never seen in 
 it: attended the Levee sub dio: got a list of peers 
 by heart in one company, and with great familiarity 
 retailed them in another. Above all, they con- 
 stantly attended those Committees of Senators, who 
 are silent in the House, and loud in the coffee-house ; 
 where they nightly adjourn to chew the cud of poli- 
 tics, and are encompassed with a ring of disciples, 
 who lie in wait to catch up their droppings. The 
 three brothers had acquired forty other qualifica- 
 tions of the like stamp, too tedious to recount, and 
 by consequence, were justly reckoned the most ac- 
 complished persons in the town : but all would not 
 suffice, and the ladies aforesaid continued still in- 
 flexible. To clear up which difficulty I must, with 
 the reader's good leave and patience, have recourse 
 to some points of weight, which the authors of that 
 age have not sufficiently illustrated. 
 
 For, about this time it happened a sect arose, 
 
 1 A noted tavern. 
 
 2 Will's coffee-house, the great emporium of libels and scan- 
 dals : it acquired the sobriquet of " The Wits' Coffee-House." 
 
42 Best English Essays 
 
 whose tenets obtained and spread very far, especially 
 in the grand monde, and among everybody of good 
 fashion. They worshipped a sort of idol/ who, as 
 their doctrine delivered, did daily create men by a 
 kind of manufactory operation. This idol they 
 placed in the highest parts of the house, on an altar 
 erected about three foot : he was shown in the pos- 
 ture of a Persian emperor, sitting on a superficies, 
 with his legs interwoven under him. This god had 
 a goose for his ensign: whence it is that some 
 learned men pretend to deduce his original from 
 Jupiter Capitolinus. At his left hand, beneath the 
 altar. Hell seemed to open, and catch at the animals 
 the idol was creating; to prevent which, certain of 
 his priests hourly flung in pieces of the uninformed 
 mass, or substance, and sometimes whole limbs al- 
 ready enlivened, which that horrid gulf insatiably 
 swallowed, terrible to behold. The goose was also 
 held a subaltern divinity or deus minorum gentium, 
 before whose shrine was sacrificed that creature, 
 whose hourly food is human gore, and who is in so 
 great renown abroad, for being the delight and 
 favourite of the Egyptian Cercopithecus.^ Millions 
 of these animals were cruelly slaughtered every 
 day, to appease the hunger of that consuming deity. 
 The chief idol was also worshipped as the inventor 
 of the yard and needle; whether as the god of 
 seamen, or on account of certain other mystical 
 attributes, has not been sufficiently cleared. 
 
 The worshippers of this deity had also a system 
 of their belief, which seemed to turn upon the fol- 
 
 1 By this idol is meant a tailor. 
 
 ^ The ^Egyptians worshipped a monkey, which animal is 
 very fond of eating lice, styled here creatures that feed on human 
 gore. 
 
Swift 43 
 
 lowing fundamentals. They held the universe to be 
 a large suit of clothes, which invests everything: 
 that the earth is invested by the air; the air is in- 
 vested by the stars ; and the stars are invested by 
 the primum mobile. Look on this globe of earth, 
 you will find it to be a very complete and fashion- 
 able dress. What is that which some call land, but 
 a fine coat faced with green? or the sea, but a 
 waistcoat of water-tabby? Proceed to the particu- 
 lar works of the creation, you will find how curi- 
 ous journeyman Nature has been, to trim up the 
 vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a periwig 
 adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet 
 of white satin is worn by the birch. To conclude 
 from all, what is man himself but a micro-coat,^ or 
 rather a complete suit of clothes with all its trim- 
 mings? As to his body, there can be no dispute: 
 but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you 
 will find them all contribute in their order towards 
 furnishing out an exact dress : to instance no more ; 
 is not religion a cloak ; honesty a pair of shoes 
 worn out in the dirt ; self-love a surtout ; vanity a 
 shirt; and conscience a pair of breeches? 
 
 These postulata being admitted, it will follow in 
 due course of reasoning, that those beings, which 
 the world calls improperly suits of clothes, are in 
 reality the most refined species of animals ; or, to 
 proceed higher, that they are rational creatures, or 
 men. For, is it not manifest, that they live, and 
 move, and talk, and perform all other offices of 
 human life? Are not beauty, and wit, and mien, 
 and breeding, their inseparable proprieties? In 
 
 1 Alluding to the word microcosm, or a little world, as man 
 has been called by philosophers. 
 
44 Best English Essays 
 
 short, we see nothing but them, hear nothing but 
 them. Is it not they who walk the streets, fill up 
 parliament-, coffee-, play-houses ? 'T is true, in- 
 deed, that these animals, which are vulgarly called 
 suits of clothes, or dresses, do, according to certain 
 compositions, receive different appellations. If one 
 of them be trimmed up with a gold chain, and a red 
 gown, and a white rod, and a great horse, it is called 
 a Lord-Mayor : if certain ermines and furs be 
 placed in a certain position, we style them a Judge ; 
 and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin 
 we entitle a Bishop. 
 
 Others of these professors, though agreeing in 
 the main system, were yet more refined upon certain 
 branches of it ; and held, that man was an animal 
 compounded of two dresses, the natural and celestial 
 suit, which were the body and the soul: that the 
 soul was the outward, and the body the inward 
 clothing; that the latter was ex traduce; but the 
 former of daily creation and circumfusion ; this last 
 they proved by scripture, because in them we live, 
 and move, and have our being; as Hkewise by phi- 
 losophy, because they are all in all, and all in every 
 part. Besides, said they, separate these two, and 
 you will find the body to be only a senseless un- 
 savoury carcase. By all which it is manifest, that 
 the outward dress must needs be the soul. 
 
 To this system of religion, were tagged several 
 subaltern doctrines, which were entertained with 
 great vogue; as particularly, the faculties of the 
 mind were deduced by the learned among them in 
 this manner; embroidery, was sheer wit; gold 
 fringe, was agreeable conversation; gold lace, was 
 repartee; a huge long periwig, was humour; and 
 
Swift 
 
 45 
 
 a coat full of powder, was very good raillery: all 
 which required abundance of finesse and delicatesse 
 to manage with advantage, as well as a strict observ- 
 ance after times and fashions. 
 
 I have, with much pains and reading, collected 
 out of ancient authors, this short summary of a body 
 of philosophy and divinity, which seems to have 
 been composed by a vein and race of thinking, very 
 different from any other systems either ancient or 
 modern. And it was not merely to entertain or sat- 
 isfy the reader's curiosity, but rather to give him 
 light into several circumstances of the following 
 story; that knowing the state of dispositions and 
 opinions in an age so remote, he may better compre- 
 hend those great events, which were the issue of 
 them. I advise therefore the courteous reader to 
 peruse with a world of application, again and again, 
 whatever I have written upon this matter. And 
 leaving these broken ends, I carefully gather up the 
 chief thread of my story and proceed. 
 
 These opinions, therefore, were so universal, as 
 well as the practices of them, among the refined 
 part of court and town, that our three brother- 
 adventurers, as their circumstances then stood, were 
 strangely at a loss. For, on the one side, the three 
 ladies they addressed themselves to, (whom we have 
 named already,) were at the very top of the fashion, 
 and abhorred all that were below it but the breadth 
 of a hair. On the other side, their father's will was 
 very precise, and it was the main precept in it, with 
 the greatest penalties annexed, not to add to, or 
 diminish from their coats one thread, without a 
 positive command in the will. Now, the coats their 
 father had left them were, 't is true, of very good 
 
46 Best English Essays 
 
 cloth, and, besides, so neatly sewn, you would swear 
 they were all of a piece ; but, at the same time, very 
 plain, and with little or no ornament: and it hap- 
 pened, that before they were a month in town, great 
 shoulder-knots came up : straight all the world was 
 shoulder-knots ; no approaching the ladies' ruelles 
 without the quota of shoulder-knots. That fellow, 
 cries one, has no soul ; where is his shoulder-knot ? 
 Our three brethren soon discovered their want by 
 sad experience, meeting in their walks with forty 
 mortifications and indignities. If they went to the 
 play-house, the door-keeper showed them into the 
 twelve-penny gallery. If they called a boat, says a 
 waterman, I am first sculler. If they stepped to 
 the Rose to take a bottle, the drawer would cry, 
 Friend, we sell no ale. If they went to visit a lady, 
 a footman met them at the door, with. Pray send 
 up your message. In this unhappy case, they went 
 immediately to consult their father's will, read it 
 over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot. 
 What should they do? What temper should they 
 find? Obedience was absolutely necessary, and yet 
 shoulder-knots appeared extremely requisite. After 
 much thought, one of the brothers, who happened 
 to be more book-learned than the other two, said, 
 he had found an expedient. 'T is true, said he, there 
 is nothing here in this will, totidem verbis,^ making 
 mention of shoulder-knots: but I dare conjecture, 
 we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis.^ 
 This distinction was immediately approved by all; 
 and so they fell again to examine the will. But 
 their evil star had so directed the matter, that the 
 first syllable was not to be found in the whole writ- 
 
 1 In so many words. ^ in so many syllables. 
 
Swift 47 
 
 ing. Upon which disappointment, he, who found 
 the former evasion, took heart, and said, " Brothers, 
 there are yet hopes ; for though we cannot find them 
 totidem verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage 
 we shall make them out, tertio modo,^ or totidem 
 Uteris." ^ This discovery was also highly com- 
 mended, upon which they fell once more to the 
 scrutiny, and picked out S,H,0,U,L,D,E,R; when 
 the same planet, enemy to their repose, had won- 
 derfully contrived, that a K was not to be found. 
 Here was a weighty difficulty ! But the distinguish- 
 ing brother, (for whom we shall hereafter find a 
 name,) now his hand was in, proved by a very good 
 argument, that K was a modern, illegitimate letter, 
 unknown to the learned ages, nor anywhere to be 
 found in ancient manuscripts. " 'T is true," said 
 he, " Calendse hath in Q.V.C.^ been sometimes writ 
 with a K, but erroneously ; for, in the best copies, 
 it ever spelt with a C. And, by consequence, it 
 was a gross mistake in our language to spell ' knot ' 
 with a K ; " but that from henceforward, he would 
 take care it should be writ with a C. Upon this all 
 farther difficulty vanished ; shoulder-knots were 
 made clearly out to be jure paterno: ^ and our three 
 gentlemen swaggered vsdth as large and as flaunting 
 ones as the best. 
 
 But, as human happiness is of a very short dura- 
 tion, so in those days were human fashions, upon 
 which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots had their 
 time, and we must now imagine them in their de- 
 
 1 By the third method. 
 
 2 In so many letters. 
 
 ^ Quibusdam veteribus codicibus ; /. e. some ancient manu- 
 scripts. 
 
 * According to the Father's will. 
 
48 Best English Essays 
 
 dine; for a certain lord came just from Paris, 
 with fifty yards of gold lace upon his coat, exactly 
 trimmed after the court fashion of that month. In 
 two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars 
 of gold lace: whoever durst peep abroad without 
 his complement of gold lace, was ill received among 
 the women. What should our three knights do 
 in this momentous affair? They had sufficiently 
 strained a point already in the affair of shoulder- 
 knots. Upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared 
 there but altum silenthmi} That of the shoulder- 
 knots was a loose, flying, circumstantial point; but 
 this of gold lace seemed too considerable an alter- 
 ation without better warrant. It did aliquo modo 
 essentice adhcerere,^ and therefore required a posi- 
 tive precept. But about this time it fell out, that 
 the learned brother aforesaid had read *' Aristotelis 
 Dialectica," and especially that wonderful piece de 
 Interpretatione, which has the faculty of teaching 
 its readers to find out a meaning in everything but 
 itself, like commentators on the Revelations, who 
 proceed prophets without understanding a syllable 
 of the text. " Brothers," said he, '* you are to be 
 informed, that of wills duo sunt genera,^ nuncupa- 
 tory * and scriptory ; that in the scriptory will here 
 before us, there is no precept or mention about gold 
 lace, conceditur: ^ but, si idem airirmetxir de mtncu- 
 patorio, negatur.^ For, brothers, if you remember, 
 
 1 Profound silence. 
 
 2 Belong in a way to the essentials. 
 8 There are two kinds. 
 
 4 By this is meant tradition, allowed by the Roman Catholics 
 to have equal authority with the scripture. 
 
 ^ It is conceded. 
 
 6 If the same be affirmed about the nuncupatory, the opposite 
 is true. 
 
Swift 49 
 
 we heard a fellow say, when we were boys, that he 
 heard my father's man say, that he heard my father 
 say, that he would advise his sons to get gold lace 
 on their coats, as soon as ever they could procure 
 money to buy it," " That is very true," cries the 
 other ; " I remember it perfectly well," said the 
 third. And so without more ado got the largest 
 gold lace in the parish, and walked about as fine 
 as lords. 
 
 A while after there came up all in fashion a pretty 
 sort of flame-coloured satin for linings; and the 
 mercer brought a pattern of it immediately to our 
 three gentlemen : " An please your worships," said 
 
 he, " my Lord C and Sir J. W. had linings out 
 
 of this very piece last night; it takes wonderfully, 
 and I shall not have a remnant left enough to make 
 my wife a pin-cushion, by to-morrow morning at 
 ten o'clock." Upon this, they fell again to rummage 
 the will, because the present case also required a 
 positive precept, the lining being held by orthodox 
 writers to be of the essence of the coat. After long 
 search, they could fix upon nothing to the matter in 
 hand, except a short advice of their father's in the 
 will, to take care of fire, and put out their candles 
 before they went to sleep.-^ This, though a good 
 deal for the purpose, and helping very far towards 
 self-conviction, yet not seeming wholly of force to es- 
 tablish a command ; and being resolved to avoid far- 
 ther scruple, as well as future occasion for scandal, 
 says he that was the scholar, " I remember to have 
 read in wills of a codicil annexed, which is indeed 
 a part of the will, and what it contains hath equal 
 
 1 That is, to take care of hell ; and, in order to do that, to 
 subdue and extinguish their lusts. 
 
 4 
 
50 Best English Essays 
 
 authority with the rest. Now, I have been consid- 
 ering of this same will here before us, and I cannot 
 reckon it to be complete for want of such a codicil : 
 I will therefore fasten one in its proper place very 
 dexterously : I have had it by me some time ; it was 
 written by a dog-keeper of my grandfather's.^ and 
 talks a great deal, (as good luck would have it,) 
 of this very flame-coloured satin." The project was 
 immediately approved by the other two; an old 
 parchment scroll was tagged on according to art, in 
 the form of a codicil annexed, and the satin bought 
 and worn. 
 
 Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the 
 corporation of fringe-makers, acted his part in a 
 new comedy, all covered with silver fringe, and, 
 according to the laudable custom, gave rise to that 
 fashion. Upon which the brothers, consulting their 
 father's will, to their great astonishment found these 
 words ; '* Iteniy I charge and command my said 
 three sons to wear no»sort of silver fringe upon or 
 about their said coats," etc., with a penalty, in case 
 of disobedience, too long here to insert. However, 
 after some pause, the brother so often mentioned 
 for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms, 
 had found in a certain author, which he said should 
 be nameless, that the same word, which, in the will, 
 is called fringe, does also signify a broom-stick, and 
 doubtless ought to have the same interpretation in 
 this paragraph. This another of the brothers dis- 
 liked, because of that epithet silver, which could not, 
 he humbly conceived, in propriety of speech, be 
 reasonably applied to a broom-stick; but it was 
 
 1 This refers to that part of the Apocrypha where mention is 
 made of Tobit and his dog. 
 
Swift 5 1 
 
 replied upon him, that his epithet was understood in 
 a mythological and allegorical sense. However, he 
 objected again, why their father should forbid them 
 to wear a broom-stick on their coats, a caution that 
 seemed unnatural and impertinent; upon which he 
 was taken up short, as one who spoke irreverently 
 of a mystery, which doubtless was very useful and 
 significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried 
 into, or nicely reasoned upon. And, in short, their 
 father's authority being now considerably sunk, this 
 expedient was allowed to serve as a lawful dispen- 
 sation for wearing their full proportion of silver 
 fringe. 
 
 A while after was revived an old fashion, long 
 antiquated, of embroidery with Indian figures of 
 men, women, and children. Here they remembered 
 but too well how their father had always abhorred 
 this fashion; that he made several paragraphs on 
 purpose, importing his utter detestation of it, and 
 bestowing his everlasting curse to his sons, when- 
 ever they should wear it. For all this, in a few days 
 they appeared higher in the fashion than anybody 
 else in the town. But they solved the matter by say- 
 ing, that these figures were not at all the same with 
 those that were formerly worn, and were meant in 
 the will. Besides, they did not wear them iii the 
 sense as forbidden by their father; but as they 
 were a commendable custom, and of great use to 
 the public. That these rigorous clauses in the will 
 did therefore require some allowance, and a fa- 
 vourable interpretation, and ought to be understood 
 cum grano salis,'^ 
 
 But fashions perpetually altering in that age, the 
 
 1 With a grain of salt. 
 
52 Best English Essays 
 
 scholastic brother grew weary of searching farther 
 evasions, and solving everlasting contradictions. 
 Resolved, therefore, at all hazards, to comply with 
 the modes of the world, they concerted matters to- 
 gether, and agreed unanimously to lock up their 
 father's will in a strong box, brought out of Greece 
 or Italy, (I have forgot which,) and trouble them- 
 selves no farther to examine it, but only refer to its 
 authority whenever they thought fit. In conse- 
 quence whereof, a while after it grew a general 
 mode to wear an infinite number of points, most of 
 them tagged with silver: upon which, the scholar 
 pronounced ex cathedra, that points were absolutely 
 jure paterno, as they might very well remember. 
 'T is true, indeed, the fashion prescribed somewhat 
 more than were directly named in the will; how- 
 ever, that they, as heirs-general of their father, had 
 power to make and add certain clauses for public 
 emolument, though not deducible, totidem verbis, 
 from the letter of the will, or else multa absurda 
 seqiierentiir} This was understood for canonical, 
 and therefore, on the following Sunday, they came 
 to church all covered with points. 
 
 1 Many absurdities would follow. 
 
Ill 
 
 ADDISON 
 
ADDISON: 
 FIRST OF THE HUMORISTS 
 
 THE English essay as represented by 
 Bacon and Swift was based on purely 
 classic models, as far as its literary style 
 is concerned, and if it had not been for the advent 
 of Steele and Addison there might never have 
 been such a thing as the distinctive English essay. 
 Though it is hardly safe to call anything original, 
 we may be permitted, perhaps, to consider the 
 style of writing represented in the " Spectator " 
 as a peculiarly English development. Of course 
 there was Montaigne; but Addison would have 
 been what he is even if Montaigne had never 
 existed. 
 
 It seems hard for Richard Steele that while he 
 is the acknowledged inventor of the gossipy paper 
 about town humors, his friend Addison has got- 
 ten all the glory. The fact is, in itself the style 
 of Steele is more fascinating than Addison's even 
 to us to-day, and if essays were to be selected for 
 their style alone, some of Steele's would have to 
 be included. But you may search the " Tatler," 
 the " Spectator," and the " Guardian " from end 
 to end, and every paper whose subject seems to 
 
56 Best English Essays 
 
 make it worth preserving as part of a permanent 
 literature turns out to be Addison's. Steele was 
 a good journalist, and as a retailer of current 
 gossip he was excellent ; but it was Addison who 
 raised his gossip to the plane of universal interest. 
 
 We have already pointed out the fact that the 
 " Spectator " was in reality a sort of printed let- 
 ter, received every morning by the people of the 
 town and read with their other letters. Its sub- 
 ject was naturally the little things of life, the 
 humors of life, and its charm lay in its humor. 
 It is characteristically English, and no other style 
 has had such a widespread influence on English 
 writers. Johnson and Goldsmith adopted it; 
 Johnson not quite successfully. Goldsmith with 
 surpassing success in his novel '' The Vicar of 
 Wakefield." Charles Lamb was a lineal literary 
 descendant of Addison, and as far as his style 
 is concerned, so was Thackeray. Without ques- 
 tion Lamb and Thackeray both surpassed their 
 original. 
 
 Because of the debt that so many great writers 
 owe to Addison, he has been extravagantly 
 praised by them, and the echo of their mighty 
 words is still reverberating. In his " Primer of 
 English Literature," so eminent a critic as Stop- 
 ford Brooke, after justly describing Addison's 
 " fine and tender " humor, declares of his style 
 that " in its varied cadence and subtle ease it has 
 never been surpassed." " This," says Matthew 
 Arnold, '' seems to me to be going a little too 
 
Addison 57 
 
 far. One could not say more of Plato's. What- 
 ever his services to his time, Addison is for us 
 now a writer whose range and force of thought 
 are not considerable enough to make him in- 
 teresting; and his style cannot equal in varied 
 cadence and subtle ease the style of a man 
 like Plato/^DCcause without range and force of 
 thought air resources of style, whether in cadence 
 or in subtlety, are not and cannot be brought 
 out." /Arnold might also have pointed to the two 
 English writers who have surpassed Addison on 
 his own ground. The hero of the " Spectator" 
 is of interest to us because he is the iirst of the 
 humorists, and because his essays, lacking the 
 subtlety of later writers, are simpler models for 
 our study. Franklin found in them excellent 
 exercises for the beginner in composition, and to 
 this day none better have been found. 
 
 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY IN THE 
 COUNTRY 
 
 Sir Roger at Home 
 
 HAVING often received an invitation from my 
 friend Sir Roger de Coverley to pass away a 
 month with him in the country, I last week accom- 
 panied him thither, and am settled with him for 
 some time at his country-house, where I intend to 
 form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir 
 Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humour. 
 
58 Best English Essays 
 
 lets me rise and go to bed when I please; dine at 
 his own table, or in my chamber, as I think fit ; sit 
 still, and say nothing, without bidding me be merry. 
 When the gentlemen of the country come to see 
 him, he only shows me at a distance. As I have 
 been walking in his fields, I have observed them 
 stealing a sight of me over an hedge, and have 
 heard the knight desiring them not to let me see 
 them, for that I hated to be stared at. 
 
 I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, 
 because it consists of sober and staid persons ; for 
 as the knight is the best master in the world, he 
 seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved 
 by all about him, his servants never care for leaving 
 him: by this means his domestics are all in years, 
 and grown old with their master. You would take 
 his valet de chambre for his brother; his butler is 
 gray-headed ; his groom is one of the gravest men 
 that I have ever seen ; and his coachman has the 
 looks of a privy-councillor. You see the goodness 
 of the master even in the old house-dog; and in a 
 gray pad, that is kept in the stable with great care 
 and tenderness out of regard to his past services, 
 though he has been useless for several years. 
 
 I could not but observe with a great deal of pleas- 
 ure, the joy that appeared in the countenances of 
 these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at 
 his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain 
 from tears at the sight of their old master; every 
 one of them pressed forward to do something for 
 him, and seemed discouraged if they were not em- 
 ployed. At the same time the good old knight, with 
 a mixture of the father and the master of the family, 
 tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with 
 
Addison 
 
 59 
 
 several kind questions relating to themselves. This 
 humanity and good-nature engages everybody to 
 him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, 
 all his family are in good humour, and none so much 
 as the person whom he diverts himself with : on the 
 contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of 
 old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a 
 secret concern in the looks of all his servants. 
 
 My worthy friend has put me under the particular 
 care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, 
 as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonder- 
 fully desirous of pleasing me, because they have 
 often heard their master talk of me as of his par- 
 ticular friend. 
 
 My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting 
 himself in the woods or the fields, is a very vener- 
 able man, who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived 
 at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty 
 years. This gentleman is a person of good sense, 
 and some learning, of a very regular life, and oblig- 
 ing conversation : he heartily loves Sir Roger, and 
 knows that he is very much in the old knight's es- 
 teem; so that he lives in the family rather as a 
 relation than a dependant. 
 
 I have observed in several of my papers, that my 
 friend Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is 
 something of an humourist ; and that his virtues, as 
 well as imperfections, are, as it were, tinged by a 
 certain extravagance, which makes them particu- 
 larly his, and distinguishes them from those of other 
 men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very 
 innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation 
 highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same 
 degree of sense and virtue would appear in their 
 
6o Best English Essays 
 
 common and ordinary colours. As I was walking 
 with him last night, he asked me how I liked the 
 good man whom I have just now mentioned; and, 
 without staying for my answer, told me, that he 
 was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at 
 his own table ; for which reason, he desired a par- 
 ticular friend of his at the University, to find him 
 out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much 
 learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable 
 temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a 
 little of backgammon. My friend (says Sir Roger) 
 found me out this gentleman, who, besides the en- 
 dowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good 
 scholar, though he does not show it. I have given 
 him the parsonage of the parish; and because I 
 know his value, have settled upon him a good an- 
 nuity for life. If he outlives me, he shall find that 
 he was higher in my esteem than perhaps he thinks 
 he is. He has now been with me thirty years ; and, 
 though he does not know I have taken notice of it, 
 has never in all that time asked anything of me for 
 himself, though he is every day soliciting me for 
 something in behalf of one or other of my tenants, 
 his parishioners. There has not been a lawsuit in 
 the parish since he has lived among them: if any 
 dispute arises, they apply themselves to him for the 
 decision ; if they do not acquiesce in his judgment, 
 which I think never happened above once, or twice 
 at most, they appeal to me. At his first settling with 
 me, I made him a present of all the good sermons 
 which have been printed in English, and only begged 
 of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one 
 of them in the pulpit. Accordingly, he has digested 
 them into such a series, that they follow one another 
 
Addison 6i 
 
 naturally, and make a continued system of practical 
 divinity. 
 
 As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the 
 gentleman we were talking of came up to us ; and 
 upon the knight's asking him who preached to- 
 morrow (for it was Saturday night), told us, the 
 Bishop of St. Asaph in the morning, and Dr. South 
 in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of 
 preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a 
 great deal of pleasure. Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop 
 Saunderson, Doctor Barrow, Doctor Calamy, with 
 several living authors who have published dis- 
 courses of practical divinity. I no sooner saw this 
 venerable man in the pulpit, but I very much ap- 
 proved of my friend's insisting upon the qualifica- 
 tions of a good aspect and a clear voice ; for I was 
 so charmed with the gracefulness of his figure and 
 delivery, as well as the discourses he pronounced, 
 that I think I never passed any time more to my 
 satisfaction. A sermon repeated after this manner, 
 is Hke the composition of a poet in the mouth of a 
 graceful actor. 
 
 I could heartily wish that more of our country 
 clergy would follow this example, and, instead of 
 wasting their spirits in laborious compositions of 
 their own, would endeavour after a handsome elo- 
 cution, and all those other talents that are proper to 
 enforce what has been penned by greater masters. 
 This would not only be more easy to themselves, 
 but more edifying to the people. 
 
62 Best English Essays 
 
 Sir Roger and Will Wimble 
 
 AS I was yesterday morning walking with Sir 
 Roger before his house, a country fellow 
 brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr. 
 William Wimble had caught that very morning; 
 and that he presented it with his service to him, and 
 intended to come and dine with him. At the same 
 time he delivered a letter, which my friend read to 
 me as soon as the messenger left him. 
 
 " Sir Roger, — I desire you to accept of a Jack, 
 which is the best I have caught this season. I in- 
 tend to come and stay with you a week, and see 
 how the Perch bite in the Black river. I observed 
 with some concern, the last time I saw you upon the 
 Bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it : 
 I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last 
 week which I hope will serve you all the time you 
 are in the country. I have not been out of the saddle 
 for six days last past, having been at Eaton with 
 Sir John's eldest son. He takes to his learning 
 hugely. 
 
 " I am. Sir, your humble Servant, 
 
 " Will Wimble." 
 
 This extraordinary letter, and message that ac- 
 companied it, made me very curious to know the 
 character and quality of the gentleman who sent 
 them ; which I found to be as follows. Will 
 Wimble is younger brother to a baronet, and de- 
 scended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He 
 is now between forty and fifty; but being bred to 
 
Addison 6^ 
 
 no business, and born to no estate, he generally lives 
 with his elder brother as superintendent of his 
 game. He hunts a pack of dogs better than any 
 man in the country, and is very famous for finding 
 out a hare. He is extremely well versed in all the 
 little handicrafts of an idle man : he makes a May- 
 fly to a miracle; and furnishes the whole country 
 with angle-rods. As he is a good-natured, officious 
 fellow, and very much esteemed upon account of 
 his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, 
 and keeps up a good correspondence among all the 
 gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip root in 
 his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a 
 puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps 
 in the opposite sides of the county. Will is a par- 
 ticular favourite of all the young heirs, whom he 
 frequently obliges with a net that he has weaved, or 
 a setting-dog that he has made himself ; he now and 
 then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting 
 to their mothers or sisters ; and raises a great deal 
 of mirth among them, by inquiring, as often as he 
 meets them, " how they wear ? " These gentleman- 
 like manufactures, and obliging little humours, make 
 Will the darling of the country. 
 
 Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him, 
 when he saw him make up to us with two or three 
 hazel-twigs in his hand, that he had cut in Sir 
 Roger's woods, as he came through them in his way 
 to the house. I was very much pleased to observe 
 on one side the hearty and sincere welcome with 
 which Sir Roger received him, and on the other, 
 the secret joy which his guest discovered at sight of 
 the good old knight. After the first salutes were 
 over, Will desired Sir Roger to lend him one of his 
 
64 Best English Essays 
 
 servants to carry a set of shuttlecocks, he had with 
 him in a little box, to a lady that lived about a mile 
 off, to whom it seems he had promised such a pres- 
 ent for above this half-year. Sir Roger's back was 
 no sooner turned, but honest Will began to tell me 
 of a large cock pheasant that he had sprung in one 
 of the neighbouring woods, with two or three other 
 adventures of the same nature. Odd and uncom- 
 mon characters are the game that I look for, and 
 most delight in ; for which reason I was as much 
 pleased with the novelty of the person that talked to 
 me, as he could be for his life with the springing of 
 a pheasant, and therefore listened to him with more 
 than ordinary attention. 
 
 In the midst of his discourse the bell rung to din- 
 ner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of 
 had the pleasure of seeing the huge Jack, he had 
 caught, served up for the first dish in a most sump- 
 tuous manner. Upon our sitting down to it, he 
 gave us a long account how he had hooked it, played 
 with it, foiled it, and at length drew it out upon the 
 bank, with several other particulars, that lasted all 
 the first course. A dish of wild fowl, that came 
 afterwards, furnished conversation for the rest of 
 the dinner, which concluded with a late invention of 
 Will's for improving the quail-pipe. 
 
 Upon withdrawing into my room after dinner, 
 I was secretly touched with compassion towards the 
 honest gentleman that had dined with us ; and could 
 not but consider, with a great deal of concern, how 
 so good an heart, and such busy hands, were wholly 
 employed in trifles ; that so much humanity should 
 be so Httle beneficial to others, and so much industry 
 so little advantageous to himself. The same temper 
 
Addison 65 
 
 of mind, and application to affairs, might have 
 recommended him to the pubHc esteem, and have 
 raised his fortune in another station of Hfe. What 
 good to his country, or himself, might not a trader 
 or merchant have done with such useful, though 
 ordinary, qualifications ? 
 
 Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger 
 brother of a great family, who had rather see their 
 children starve like gentlemen, than thrive in a 
 trade or profession that is beneath their quality. 
 This humour fills several parts of Europe with pride 
 and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading 
 nation, like ours, that the younger sons, though 
 incapable of any liberal art or profession, may be 
 placed in such a way of life, as may perhaps enable 
 them to vie with the best of their family: accord- 
 ingly, we find several citizens that were launched 
 mto the world with narrow fortunes, rising by an 
 honest industry to greater estates than those of their 
 elder brothers. It is not improbable but Will was 
 formerly tried at divinity, law, or physic; and that 
 finding his genius did not lie that way, his parents 
 gave him up at length to his own inventions. But 
 certainly, however improper he might have been 
 for studies of a higher nature, he was perfectly well 
 turned for the occupations of trade and commerce. 
 
 Sir Roger at Church '. 
 
 I AM always very well pleased with a country 
 Sunday ; and think, if keeping holy the seventh 
 day were only a human institution, it would be the 
 best method that could have been thought of for the 
 
66 Best English Essays 
 
 polishing and civilising of mankind. It is certain 
 the country-people would soon degenerate into a 
 kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such 
 frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole 
 village meet together with their best faces, and in 
 their cleanHest habits, to converse with one another 
 upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained 
 to them, and join together in adoration of the 
 Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of 
 the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their 
 minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both 
 the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable 
 forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to 
 give them a figure in the eye of the village. A 
 country-fellow distinguishes himself as much in the 
 churchyard as a citizen does upon the Change, the 
 whole parish-politics being generally discussed in 
 that place either after sermon or before the bell 
 rings. 
 
 My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman, 
 has beautified the inside of his church with several 
 texts of his own choosing; he has likewise given 
 a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed in the com- 
 munion-table at his own expense. He has often 
 told me, that at his coming to his estate he found his 
 parishioners very irregular; and that in order to 
 make them kneel and join in the responses, he gave 
 every one of them a hassock and a Common-Prayer 
 Book; and at the same time employed an itinerant 
 singing-master, who goes about the country for that 
 purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes of the 
 psalms ; tipon which they now very much value 
 themselves, and indeed out-do most of the country 
 churches that I have ever heard. 
 
Addison 67 
 
 As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congrega- 
 tion, he keeps them in very good order, and will 
 suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for if 
 by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at 
 sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and 
 looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nod- 
 ding, either wakes them himself, or sends his ser- 
 vant to them. Several other of the old knight's 
 particularities break out upon these occasions; 
 sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the 
 singing-psalms, half a minute after the rest of the 
 congregation have done with it; sometimes, when 
 he is pleased with the matter of his devotion, he 
 pronounces Amen three or four times to the same 
 prayer; and sometimes stands up when everybody 
 else is upon their knees, to count the congregation, 
 or see if any of his tenants are missing. 
 
 I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my 
 old friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to 
 one John Matthews to mind what he was about, and 
 not disturb the congregation. This John Matthews, 
 it seems, is remarkable for being an idle fellow, and 
 at that time was kicking his heels for his diversion. 
 This authority of the knight, though exerted in that 
 odd manner which accompanies him in all circum- 
 stances of life, has a very good effect upon the 
 parish, who are not polite enough to see anything 
 ridiculous in his behaviour ; besides that the general 
 good sense and worthiness of his character, make 
 his friends observe these little singularities as foils 
 that rather set off than blemish his good qualities. 
 
 As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody pre- 
 sumes to stir till Sir Roger is gone out of the church. 
 The knight walks down from his seat in the chan- 
 
68 Best English Essays 
 
 eel between a double row of his tenants, that stand 
 bowing to him on each side; and every now and 
 then he inquires how such an one's wife, or mother, 
 or son, or father do, whom he does not see at 
 church ; which is understood as a secret reprimand 
 to the person that is absent. 
 
 The chaplain has often told me, that upon a cate- 
 chising-day, when Sir Roger has been pleased with 
 a boy that answers well, he has ordered a Bible to 
 be given him next day for his encouragement ; and 
 sometimes accompanies it with a flitch of bacon to 
 his mother. Sir Roger has likewise added five 
 pounds a year to the clerk's place ; and that he may 
 encourage the young fellows to make themselves 
 perfect in the church-service, has promised, upon 
 the death of the present incumbent, who is very old, 
 to bestow it according to merit. 
 
 The fair understanding between Sir Roger and 
 his chaplain, and their mutual concurrence in doing 
 good, is the more remarkable, because the very next 
 village is famous for the differences and conten- 
 tions that rise between the parson and the squire, 
 who live in a perpetual state of war. The parson 
 is always at the squire, and the squire, to be re- 
 venged on the parson, never comes to church. The 
 squire has made all his tenants atheists and tithe- 
 stealers ; while the parson instructs them every 
 Sunday in the dignity of his order, and insinuates 
 to them, almost in every sermon, that he is a better 
 man than his patron. In short, matters are come to 
 such an extremity, that the squire has not said his 
 prayers either in public or private this half year; 
 and that the parson threatens him, if he does not 
 mend his manners, to pray for him in the face of 
 the whole congregation. 
 
Addison 69 
 
 Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the 
 country, are very fatal to the ordinary people; who 
 are so used to be dazzled with riches, that they pay 
 as much deference to the understanding of a man 
 of an estate, as of a man of learning; and are very 
 hardly brought to regard any truth, how important 
 soever it may be, that is preached to them, when 
 they know there are several men of five hundred a 
 year who do not beheve it. 
 
 THE MAN OF THE TOWN 
 
 MY friend Will Honeycomb values himself very 
 much upon what he calls the knowledge of 
 mankind, which has cost him many disasters in his 
 youth; for Will reckons every misfortune that he 
 has met with among the women, and every ren- 
 counter among the men, as parts of his education, 
 and fancies he should never have been the man he 
 is, had not he broke windows, knocked down con- 
 stables, and disturbed honest people with his mid- 
 night serenades, when he was a young fellow. The 
 engaging in adventures of this nature Will calls the 
 studying of mankind ; and terms this knowledge of 
 the town, the knowledge of the world. Will in- 
 genuously confesses, that for half his life his head 
 ached every morning with reading of men over- 
 night; and at present comforts himself under cer- 
 tain pains which he endures from time to time, that 
 without them he could not have been acquainted 
 with the gallantries of the age. This Will looks 
 upon as the learning of a gentleman, and regards 
 all other kinds of science as the accomplishments 
 
yo Best English Essays 
 
 of one whom he calls a scholar, a bookish man, or 
 a philosopher. 
 
 For these reasons Will shines in mixed company, 
 where he has the discretion not to go out of his 
 depth, and has often a certain way of making his 
 real ignorance appear a seeming one. Our club, 
 however, has frequently caught him tripping, at 
 which times they never spare him. For as Will 
 often insults us with the knowledge of the town, 
 we sometimes take our revenge upon him by our 
 knowledge of books. 
 
 He was last week producing two or three letters 
 which he writ in his youth to a coquette lady. The 
 raillery of them was natural, and well enough for a 
 mere man of the town ; but, very unluckily, several 
 of the words were wrong spelt. Will laughed this 
 off at first as well as he could, but finding himself 
 pushed on all sides, and especially by the templar, 
 he told us, with a little passion, that he never Hked 
 pedantry in spelling, and that he spelt like a gentle- 
 man, and not like a scholar: upon this Will had 
 recourse to his old topic of showing the narrow- 
 spiritedness, the pride, and ignorance of pedants; 
 which he carried so far, that upon my retiring to 
 my lodgings, I could not forbear throwing together 
 such reflections as occurred to me upon that subject. 
 
 A man who has been brought up among books, 
 and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indiffer- 
 ent companion, and what we call a pedant. But, 
 methinks, we should enlarge the title, and give it 
 every one that does not know how to think out of 
 his profession, and particular way of life. 
 
 What is a greater pedant than a mere man of the 
 town ? Bar him the play-houses, a catalogue of the 
 
Addison 71 
 
 reigning beauties, and an account of a few fashion- 
 able distempers that have befallen him, and you 
 strike him dumb. How many a pretty gentleman's 
 knowledge lies all within the verge of the court? 
 He will tell you the names of the principal favour- 
 ites, repeat the shrewd sayings of a man of quality, 
 whisper an intrigue that is not yet blown upon by 
 common fame ; or, if the sphere of his observations 
 is a little larger than ordinary, will perhaps enter 
 into all the incidents, turns, and revolutions in a 
 game of ombre. When he has gone thus far, he has 
 shown you the whole circle of his accomplishments, 
 his parts are drained, and he is disabled from any 
 further conversation. What are these but rank 
 pedants ? and yet these are the men who value them- 
 selves most on their exemption from the pedantry 
 of colleges. 
 
 I might here mention the military pedant, who 
 always talks in a camp, and is storming towns, 
 making lodgments and fighting battles from one end 
 of the year to the other. Everything he speaks 
 smells of gunpowder ; if you take away his artillery 
 from him, he has not a word to say for himself. I 
 might likewise mention the law pedant, that is per- 
 petually putting cases, repeating the transactions 
 of Westminster Hall, wrangling with you upon the 
 most indifferent circumstances of life, and not to 
 be convinced of the distance of a place, or of the 
 most trivial point in conversation, but by dint of 
 argument. The state pedant is wrapped up in news, 
 and lost in politics. If you mention either of the 
 kings of Spain or Poland, he talks very notably; 
 but if you go out of the gazette you drop him. In 
 short, a mere courtier, a mere soldier, a mere 
 
y2 Best English Essays 
 
 scholar, a mere anything, is an insipid pedantic 
 character, and equally ridiculous. 
 
 Of all the species of pedants, which I have men- 
 tioned, the book pedant is much the most support- 
 able; he has at least an exercised understanding, 
 and a head which is full though confused, so that a 
 man who converses with him may often receive 
 from him hints of things that are worth knowing, 
 and what he may possibly turn to his own advan- 
 tage, though they are of little use to the owner. 
 The worst kind of pedants among learned men, are 
 such as are naturally endowed with a very small 
 share of common sense, and have read a great 
 number of books without taste or distinction. 
 . The truth of it is, learning, like travelling, and all 
 other methods of improvement, as it finishes good 
 sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times 
 more insufferable, by supplying variety of matter 
 to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity 
 of abounding in absurdities. 
 
 THE FAN EXERCISE 
 
 I DO not know whether to call the following 
 letter a satire upon coquettes, or a representa- 
 tion of their several fantastical accompHshments, or 
 what other title to give it ; but as it is I shall com- 
 municate it to the public. It will sufficiently explain 
 its own intentions, so that I shall give it my reader 
 at length, without either preface or postscript. 
 
 " Mr. Spectator, — Women are armed with 
 fans as men with swords, and sometimes do more 
 
Addison 
 
 73 
 
 execution with them. To the end, therefore, that 
 ladies may be entire mistresses of the weapon which 
 they bear, I have erected an Academy for the train- 
 ing up of young women in the Exercise of the Fan, 
 according to the most fashionable airs and motions 
 that are now practised at court. The ladies who 
 carry fans under me are drawn up twice a day in 
 my great hall, where they are instructed in the use 
 of their arms, and exercised by the following words 
 of command: 
 
 Handle your Fans, 
 Unftcrl your Faiis, 
 Discharge your Fans^ 
 Ground your Faiis, 
 Recover your Fans, 
 Flutter your Fans. 
 
 By the right observation of these few plain words 
 of command, a woman of a tolerable genius who 
 will apply herself diligently to her exercise for the 
 space of one half year, shall be ah^le to give her 
 fan all the graces that can possibly enter into that 
 little modish machine. 
 
 " But to the end that my readers may form to 
 themselves a right notion of this exercise, I beg 
 leave to explain it to them in all its parts. When 
 my female regiment is drawn up in array, with 
 every one her weapon in her hand, upon my giving 
 the word to Handle their Fans, each of them shakes 
 her fan at me with a smile, then gives her right- 
 hand "woman a tap upon the shoulder, then presses 
 her lips with the extremity of her fan, then lets her 
 arms fall in an easy motion, and stands in readiness 
 to receive the next word of command. All this is 
 done with a close fan, and is generally learned in 
 the first week. 
 
74 Best English Essays 
 
 " The next motion is that of Unfurling the Fan, 
 in which are comprehended several little flirts and 
 vibrations, as also gradual and deliberate openings, 
 with many voluntary fallings asunder in the fan 
 itself, that are seldom learned under a month's prac- 
 tice. This part of the exercise pleases the specta- 
 tors more than any other, as it discovers on a sudden 
 an infinite number of Cupids, garlands, altars, birds, 
 beasts, rainbows, and the like agreeable figures, that 
 display themselves to view, whilst every one in the 
 regiment holds a picture in her hand. 
 
 " Upon m.y giving the word to Discharge their 
 Fans, they give one general crack, that may be 
 heard at a. considerable distance when the wind sits 
 fair. This is one of the most difficult parts of the 
 exercise ; but I have several ladies with me, who at 
 their first entrance could not give a pop loud enough 
 to be heard at the further end of a room, who can 
 now Discharge a Fan in such a manner, that it shall 
 make a report like a pocket-pistol. I have likewise 
 taken care (in order to hinder young women from 
 letting off their fans in wrong places or unsuitable 
 occasions) to show upon what subject the crack of 
 a fan may come in properly. I have likewise in- 
 vented a fan, with which a girl of sixteen, by the 
 help of a little wind which is enclosed about one of 
 the largest sticks, can make as loud a crack as a 
 woman of fifty with an ordinary fan. 
 
 " When the fans are thus discharged, the word 
 of command in course is to Ground their Fans. 
 This teaches a lady to quit her fan gracefully when 
 she throws it aside, in order to take up a pack of 
 cards, adjust a curl of hair, replace a fallen pin, or 
 apply herself to any other matter of importance. 
 
Addison 75 
 
 This part of the exercise, as it only consists in tossing 
 a fan with an air upon a long table (which stands 
 by for that purpose) may be learnt in two days' 
 time as well as in a twelvemonth. 
 
 " When my female regiment is thus disarmed, I 
 generally let them walk about the room for some 
 time; when on a sudden (like ladies that look upon 
 their watches after a long visit) they all of them 
 hasten to their arms, catch them up in a hurry, and 
 place themselves in their proper stations upon my 
 calling out Recover your Fans. This part of the 
 exercise is not difficult, provided a woman applies 
 her thoughts to it. 
 
 '' The Fluttering of the Fan is the last, and, in- 
 deed, the master-piece of the whole exercise; but 
 if a lady does not misspend her time, she may make 
 herself mistress of it in three months. I generally 
 lay aside the dog-days and the hot time of the sum- 
 mer for the teaching of this part of the exercise ; for 
 as soon as ever I pronounce Flutter your Fans, the 
 place is filled with so many zephyrs and gentle 
 breezes as are very refreshing in that season of the 
 year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of 
 a tender constitution in any other. 
 
 " There is an infinite variety of motions to be 
 made use of in the Flutter of a Fan : there is the 
 angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, 
 the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amor- 
 ous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any 
 emotion in the mind which does not produce a 
 suitable agitation in the fan ; insomuch, that if I 
 only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very 
 well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. I have 
 seen a fan so very angry, that it would have been 
 
76 Best English Essays 
 
 dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to 
 have come within the wind of it ; and at other times 
 so very languishing, that I have been glad for the 
 lady's sake the lover was at a sufficient distance 
 from it. I need not add, that a fan is either a prude 
 or coquette, according to the nature of the person 
 who bears it. To conclude my letter, I must ac- 
 quaint you, that I have from my own observations 
 compiled a little treatise for the use of my scholars, 
 entitled. The Passions of the Fan; which I will 
 communicate to you, if you think it may be of use 
 to the public. I shall have a general review on 
 Thursday next ; to which you shall be very welcome 
 if you will honour it with your presence. 
 
 " I am," etc. 
 
 " P. S. I teach young gentlemen the whole art of 
 gallanting a fan. 
 
 '' N. B. I have several little plain fans made for 
 this use, to avoid expense." 
 
IV 
 
 LAMB 
 
LAMB: 
 
 GREATEST OF THE HUMORISTS 
 
 IN spite of De Quincey's declaration that 
 Lamb never could become popular, that his 
 literary excellencies were too fine and ex- 
 quisite for that, Lamb has proved to be the most 
 popular essayist who ever wrote the English lan- 
 guage. Though the sum total of his good work 
 is very small, his position is as secure as that of 
 any writer since Shakespeare. 
 
 Though Lamb may be compared to Addison 
 at his best; to Goldsmith, who had much of the 
 same overflowing love in his character and is 
 all but as fondly loved as Lamb himself; to 
 Thackeray, who always was a man of love and 
 the humor of love, still Charles Lamb stands 
 unique, unimitated and inimitable. 
 
 The only way in which we can understand 
 Lamb is in the light of his personal history. His 
 father was all his life a servant in the family of a 
 Mr. Salt, a barrister. As a reward for faithful 
 services on the part of the father, Charles Lamb 
 the son was sent to the famous London school of 
 Christ's Hospital, where he came into contact 
 with Coleridge. From Christ's Hospital Coler- 
 
8o Best English Essays 
 
 idge went to Oxford, and Lamb to be a clerk in 
 the South Sea House. Later he was transferred 
 to the India House, from the directors of which 
 corporation he drew a salary until he died, a 
 period of nearly forty years. 
 
 Soon after he entered the India House, when 
 Lamb was twenty-one, his sister Mary, ten years 
 his senior, in a passing fit of insanity, killed her 
 mother with a table knife. Soon after, their 
 father died. Charles was attached to a young 
 lady whom he hoped to marry; but he gave up 
 his prospect in this direction, and devoted his 
 entire life to his sister. She was confined in an 
 asylum for a time, but soon recovered her sanity 
 and was released upon her brother's making him- 
 self personally responsible for her. Her attacks 
 of insanity returned many times ; but she herself 
 could feel them coming, and we read of their 
 going hand in hand across the fields to Hoxton 
 (the asylum). Charles himself was confined in 
 an asylum for six weeks. 
 
 As an antidote to the blues, and an offset to the 
 deathlike cloud always hanging over him. Lamb 
 gathered many friends about him, and engaged 
 in regular correspondence with some of the best 
 known literary characters of his day. As his 
 clerical duties did not begin until ten o'clock, and 
 ended at four, he had considerable leisure to 
 study and cultivate his friends. He wrote some 
 verses that were published in a volume with 
 Coleridge's, and composed two dramatic pieces, 
 
Lamb 8 1 
 
 which were unsuccessful. With his sister he re- 
 wrote some of Shakespeare's plays in the form 
 of tales for children, and that book alone of his 
 earlier efforts has become popular. He did some 
 editing when he was about thirty-three, after 
 which he lapsed into literary silence for twelve 
 years. Finally, at the age of forty-five, just five 
 years before he was to retire from the India 
 House on a pension, he contributed to the "Lon- 
 don Magazine," then just rehabilitated, a paper 
 on " The South Sea House," signing it " Elia," 
 — the name of an Italian fellow-clerk of those 
 days of twenty-five years before. The success 
 of this paper brought forth the best of the other 
 '' Essays of Elia " within a period of three years. 
 They were in effect Lamb's letters to his friends 
 elaborated into permanent literary form; and 
 Lamb's collected " Letters " must stand on every 
 bookshelf, side by side with '' Elia." 
 
 Lamb's essays and letters are elaborate play, 
 the foolery that best dispels the blue-devils with 
 which all humanity is more or less afflicted. 
 What he himself had found effective through a 
 period of twenty-five years he kindly offers to us. 
 The tragedy behind it all, in full view of which 
 the essays were written, makes their foolishness 
 sublime. If Lamb, by the recipe which he offers, 
 could make his life successful and happy under 
 the trying conditions which were forced upon 
 him and which would certainly have wrecked a 
 less truly noble character, what excuse have we 
 
82 Best English Essays 
 
 for being sad and lugubrious when the sun is 
 clouded ? 
 
 Probably the reason why no one has succeeded 
 in imitating Lamb's style successfully is that no 
 one else has been found to bear what he bore for 
 forty years and remain so light, so sweet, so 
 gentle, and so good. 
 
 LETTER TO COLERIDGE 
 
 March 9, 1822. 
 
 DEAR C, — It gives me great satisfaction to 
 hear that the pig turned out so well/ — they 
 are interesting creatures at a certain age; what a 
 pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of 
 rank bacon ! You had all some of the crackling — 
 and brain sauce; did you remember to rub it with 
 butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the 
 crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly, with no 
 (Edipean avulsion ? Was the crackling the colour of 
 the ripe pomegranate? Had you no cursed com- 
 plement of boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt 
 the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh maiden 
 teeth in it ? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the 
 remotest guess what part Owen could play in the 
 business. I never knew him give anything away in 
 my life. He would not begin with strangers. I 
 suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me ; but at 
 the unlucky juncture of time being absent, the pres- 
 ent somehow went round to Highgate. To confess 
 
 1 Some one had sent Coleridge a pig, and the gift was errone- 
 ously credited to Lamb. 
 
Lamb S^ 
 
 an honest truth, a pig is one of those things I could 
 never think of sending away. Teals, widgeons, 
 snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks, geese, — your tame 
 villatic things, — Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, 
 sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss 
 cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I 
 impart as freely unto my friends as to myself. They 
 are but self-extended ; but pardon me if I stop some- 
 where. Where the fine feeling of benevolence 
 giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity, there 
 my friends (or any good man) may command me; 
 but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest 
 to myself. Nay, I should think it an affront, an 
 undervaluing done to Nature, who bestowed such 
 a boon upon me, if in a churlish mood I parted with 
 the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs I ever 
 felt of remorse was when a child. My kind old 
 aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a 
 sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way 
 home through the Borough, I met a venerable old 
 man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts, — a look- 
 beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the cox- 
 combry of taught-charity, I gave away the cake to 
 him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an 
 Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old 
 aunt's kindness crossed me, — the sum it was to 
 her; the pleasure she had a right to expect that I 
 — not the old impostor — should take in eating her 
 cake; the cursed ingratitude by which, under the 
 colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her 
 cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to 
 heart so grievously that I think I never suffered the 
 like; and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling 
 hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. 
 
84 Best English Essays 
 
 The cake has long been masticated, consigned to 
 dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper. 
 
 But when Providence, who is better to us all than 
 our aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my temp- 
 tation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act towards 
 it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose. 
 
 Yours (short of pig) to command in everything, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
 
 MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which 
 my friend M. was obliging enough to read 
 and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand 
 ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from 
 the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to 
 this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by 
 their great Confucius in the second chapter of his 
 Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind 
 of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the 
 Cooks' Ploliday. The manuscript goes on to say, 
 that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I 
 take to be the elder brother) was accidentally dis- 
 covered in the manner follovv^ing. The swine-herd, 
 Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, 
 as his m.anner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left 
 his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a 
 great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with 
 fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some 
 sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling 
 quickly, spread the conflagration over every part 
 of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. 
 Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian 
 
Lamb 85 
 
 make-shift of a building, you may think it), what 
 was of much more importance, a fine Utter of new- 
 farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, per- 
 ished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all 
 over the East, from the remotest periods that we 
 read of. Bp-bo was in the utmost consternation, as 
 you may think, not so much for the sake of the tene- 
 ment, which his father and he could easily build up 
 again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an 
 hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. 
 While he was thinking what he should say to his 
 father, and wringing his hands over the smoking 
 remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an 
 odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which 
 he had before experienced. What could it proceed 
 from ? — not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt 
 that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the 
 first accident of the kind which had occurred through 
 the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. 
 Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, 
 weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the 
 same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not 
 what to think. He next stooped down to feel the 
 pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt 
 his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his 
 booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs 
 of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, 
 and for the first time in his life (in the world's life 
 indeed, for before him no man had known it) he 
 tasted — crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at 
 the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he 
 licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at 
 length broke into his slow understanding, that it 
 was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so 
 
86 Best English Essays 
 
 delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new- 
 born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls 
 of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was 
 cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, 
 when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, 
 armed with retributory cudg'el, and finding how 
 affairs 'stood, began to rain blows upon the young 
 rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which 
 Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been 
 flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced 
 in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous 
 to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote 
 quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not 
 beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an 
 end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of 
 his situation, something like the following dialogue 
 ensued. 
 
 " You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
 devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt 
 me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and 
 be hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, and 
 I know not what — what have you got there, I 
 say?" 
 
 ** O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste 
 how nice the burnt pig eats." 
 
 The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed 
 his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should 
 beget a son that should eat burnt pig. 
 
 Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened 
 since morning, soon raked out another pig, and 
 fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by 
 main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, 
 " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — 
 O Lord!" — with such-like barbarous ejaculations, 
 cramming all the while as if he would choke. 
 
Lamb 87 
 
 Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
 abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
 put his son to death for an unnatural young mon- 
 ster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it 
 had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to 
 them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, 
 make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, 
 proved not altogether displeasing to him. In con- 
 clusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), 
 both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and 
 never left off till they had despatched all that re- 
 mained of the litter. 
 
 Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret 
 escape, for the neighbours would certainly have 
 stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, 
 who could think of improving upon the good meat 
 which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange 
 stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's 
 cottage was burnt down now more frequently than 
 ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. 
 Some would break out in broad day, others in the 
 night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure 
 was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti 
 himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of 
 chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent 
 to him than ever. At length they were watched, 
 the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son 
 summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an in- 
 considerable assize town. Evidence was given, the 
 obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict 
 about to be pronounced, w^hen the foreman of the 
 jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which 
 the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the 
 box. He handled it, and they all handled it; and 
 
88 Best English Essays 
 
 burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had 
 done before them, and nature prompting to each of 
 them the same remedy, against the face of all the 
 facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever 
 given, — to the surprise of the whole court, towns- 
 folk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without 
 leaving the box, or any manner of consultation what- 
 ever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not 
 Guilty. 
 
 The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at 
 the manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the 
 court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all 
 the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a 
 few days his lordship's town-house was observed to 
 be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was 
 nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel 
 and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. 
 The insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. 
 People built slighter and slighter every day, until it 
 was feared that the very science of architecture 
 would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus 
 this custom of firing houses continued, till in process 
 of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our 
 Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, 
 or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked 
 (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of 
 consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first 
 began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the 
 string or spit came in a century or two later, I 
 forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, 
 concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and 
 seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way 
 among mankind 
 
 Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
 
Lamb 89 
 
 above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy 
 pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting 
 houses on fire (especially in these days) could be 
 assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pre- 
 text and excuse might be found in roast pig. 
 
 Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis,^ 
 I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
 obsoniorum.^ 
 
 I speak not of your grown porkers — things be- 
 tween pig and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a 
 young and tender suckling — under a moon old — 
 guiltless as yet of the sty — with no original speck 
 of the amor immunditicE ,^ the hereditary failing of 
 the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not 
 broken, but something between a childish treble and 
 a grumble — the mild forerunner or prculiidium of 
 a grunt. 
 
 He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
 ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a 
 sacrifice of the exterior tegument! 
 
 There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to 
 that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over- 
 roasted, crackling, as it is well called — the very 
 teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at 
 this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resist- 
 ance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it 
 not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up 
 to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped 
 in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first inno- 
 cence — the cream and quintessence of the child- 
 pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a kind 
 of animal manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it 
 
 1 Edible world. 2 Chief of viands. 
 
 * Love of uncleanness. 
 
90 Best English Essays 
 
 must be so) so blended and running into each other, 
 that both together make but one ambrosian result or 
 common substance. 
 
 Behold him while he is " doing " — it seemeth 
 rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, 
 that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth 
 round the string! Now he is just done. To see the 
 extreme sensibility of that tender age! he hath 
 wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shoot- 
 ing stars. — 
 
 See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek 
 he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent 
 grow up to the grossness and indocility which too 
 often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one 
 he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an ob- 
 stinate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all 
 manner of filthy conversation — from these sins he 
 is happily snatched away — 
 
 Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
 Death came with timely care — 
 
 his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, 
 while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — 
 no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he 
 hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the 
 judicious epicure — and for such a tomb might be 
 content to die. 
 
 He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. 
 She is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, 
 if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a 
 tender-conscienced person would do well to pause 
 — too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and 
 excoriateth the Hps that approach her — Hke lovers' 
 kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on 
 
Lamb 9 1 
 
 pain from the fierceness and insanity of her reUsh 
 — but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not 
 with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might 
 barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. 
 
 Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less pro- 
 vocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the 
 criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong 
 man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth 
 not his mild juices. 
 
 Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle 
 of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and 
 not to be unravelled without hazard, he is — good 
 throughout. No part of him is better or worse than 
 another. He helpeth, as far as his little means 
 extend, all around. He is the least envious of ban- 
 quets. He is all neighbours' fare. 
 
 I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly 
 impart a share of the good things of this life which 
 fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a 
 friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my 
 friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satis- 
 factions, as in mine own. *' Presents," I often say, 
 " endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, 
 snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic 
 fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, 
 I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to 
 taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. 
 But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, 
 like Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon 
 pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of 
 all good flavours to extra-domiciliate, or send out of 
 the house slightingly (under pretext of friendship, 
 or I know not what) a blessing so particularly 
 adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual 
 palate. — It argues an insensibility. 
 
92 Best English Essays 
 
 I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at 
 school. My good old aunt, who never parted from 
 me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet- 
 meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dis- 
 missed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, 
 fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was 
 over London Bridge) a gray-headed old beggar sa- 
 luted me (I have no doubt, at this time of day, that 
 he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console 
 him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the 
 very coxcombry of charity, school-boy like, I made 
 him a present of — the whole cake! I walked on 
 a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with 
 a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but, before I 
 had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings 
 returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how un- 
 grateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give 
 her good gift away to a stranger that I had never 
 seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught 
 I knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt 
 would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and 
 not another — would eat her nice cake — and what 
 should I say to her the next time I saw her — how 
 naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — 
 and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my 
 recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had 
 taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she 
 sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would 
 feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at 
 last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms- 
 giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and 
 above all I wished never to see the face again of 
 that insidious, good-for-nothinsT, old gray impostor. 
 
 Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 
 
Lamb 93 
 
 ficing these tender victims. We read of pigS whipt 
 to death with something of a shock, as we hear of 
 any other obsolete custom. The age of discipHne 
 is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a 
 philosophical light merely) what effect this process 
 might have tovx^ards intenerating and dulcifying a 
 substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh 
 of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet 
 we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhu- 
 manity, how we censure the wisdom of the prac- 
 tice. It might impart a gusto. — 
 
 I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the 
 young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and 
 maintained with much learning and pleasantry on 
 both sides, " Whether, supposing that the flavour of 
 a pig who obtained his death by whipping {per 
 flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure 
 upon the palate of a man more intense than any 
 possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is 
 man justified in using that method of putting the 
 animal to death ? " I forget the decision. 
 
 His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a 
 few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and 
 brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear 
 Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. 
 Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep 
 them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of 
 the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, 
 or make them stronger than they are — but con- 
 sider, he is a weakling — a flower. 
 
94 Best English Essays 
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 " A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour 
 Xjl. of the game." This was the celebrated zvish 
 of old Sarah Battle (now with God), who, next to 
 her devotions, loved a good game of whist. She 
 was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half- 
 and-half players, who have no objection to take a 
 hand, if you want one to make up a rubber; who 
 affirm that they have no pleasure in winning; that 
 they like to win one game and lose another; that 
 they can while away an hour very agreeably at a 
 card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or 
 no; and will desire an adversary, who has slipped 
 a wrong card, to take it up and play another. These 
 insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One 
 of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may 
 be said that they do not play at cards, but only play 
 at playing at them. 
 
 Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She de- 
 tested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and 
 would not, save upon a striking emergency, will- 
 ingly seat herself at the same table with them. 
 She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined 
 enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions. She 
 hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever 
 passed it over in her adversary without exacting 
 the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight: 
 cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her 
 cards) "like a dancer." She sat bolt upright; and 
 neither showed you her cards, nor desired to see 
 yours. All people have their blind side — their 
 
Lamb 95 
 
 superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, under 
 the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit. 
 
 I never in my Hfe — and I knew Sarah Battle 
 many of the best years of it — saw her take out her 
 snuff-box when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a 
 candle in the middle of a game ; or ring for a ser- 
 vant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced, 
 or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during 
 its process. As she emphatically observed, cards 
 were cards ; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in 
 her fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs 
 of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had 
 been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand; and 
 who, in his excess of candour, declared, that he 
 thought there was no harm in unbending the mind 
 now and then, after serious studies, in recreations 
 of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble 
 occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, 
 considered in that light. It was her business, her 
 duty, the thing she came into the world to do, — 
 and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards — 
 over a book. 
 
 Pope was her favourite author : his " Rape of the 
 Lock " her favourite work. She once did me the fa- 
 vour to play over with me (with the cards) his cele- 
 brated game of Ombre in that poem ; and to explain 
 to me how far it agreed with, and in what points it 
 would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illus- 
 trations were apposite and poignant; and I had the 
 pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr. 
 Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to be 
 inserted among his ingenious notes upon that 
 author. 
 
 Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first 
 
96 Best English Essays 
 
 love; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. 
 The former, she said, was showy and specious, and 
 likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and 
 quick shifting of partners — a thing which the con- 
 stancy of whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and 
 regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she justly 
 observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where 
 his crown and garter give him no proper power 
 above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy 
 vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing 
 alone; above all, the overpowering attractions of 
 a Sans Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of which 
 there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, 
 in the contingencies of whist ; — all these, she would 
 say, make quadrille a game of captivation to the 
 young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider 
 game : that was her word. It was a long meal ; not 
 like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two 
 rubbers might co-extend in duration with an even- 
 ing. They gave time to form rooted friendships, 
 to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the 
 chance-started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating 
 alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, 
 she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral 
 embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by 
 Machiavel : perpetually changing postures and con- 
 nexions ; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to- 
 morrow ; kissing and scratching in a breath ; — but 
 the wars of whist were comparable to the long, 
 steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great 
 French and English nations. 
 
 A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired 
 in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in 
 it, Hke the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. 
 
Lamb 97 
 
 No Hushes — that most irrational of all pleas that 
 a reasonable being can set up : — that any one should 
 claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same 
 mark and colour, without reference to the playing of 
 the game, or the individual worth or pretensions 
 of the cards themselves ! She held this to be a sole- 
 cism; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration 
 is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and 
 looked deeper than the colours of things. — Suits 
 were soldiers, she would say, and must have an 
 uniformity of array to distinguish them : but what 
 should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim 
 a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, 
 that never were to be marshalled — never to take 
 the field ? — She even wished that whist were more 
 simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would have 
 stripped it of some appendages, which, in the state 
 of human frailty, may be venially, and even com- 
 mendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the 
 deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why 
 not one suit always trumps? — Why two colours, 
 when the mark of the suit would have sufficiently 
 distinguished them without it? 
 
 *' But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably re- 
 freshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of 
 pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully 
 appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, 
 where the music and the paintings draw in many 
 to worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensual- 
 izing would have kept out. — You yourself have a 
 pretty collection of paintings — but confess to me, 
 whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, 
 among those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul 
 Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom 
 
 7 
 
98 Best English Essays 
 
 glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable 
 to that you have it in your power to experience 
 most evenings over a well-arranged assortment 
 of the court-cards? — the pretty antic habits, like 
 heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assuring 
 scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables — 
 the * hoary majesty of spades ' — Pam in all his 
 glory ! — 
 
 " All these might be dispensed with ; and with 
 their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the 
 game might go on very well, pictureless. But the 
 beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. 
 Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they 
 must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a 
 dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on, 
 instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to na- 
 ture's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants 
 to play their gallant jousts and turneys in ! — Ex- 
 change those delicately-turned ivory markers — ■ 
 (work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their sym- 
 bol, — or as profanely slighting their true appli- 
 cation as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that 
 turned out those little shrines for the goddess) — 
 exchange them for little bits of leather (our ances- 
 tors' money), or chalk and a slate! " — 
 
 The old lady, with a smile, confessed the sound- 
 ness of my logic ; and to her approbation of my ar- 
 guments on her favourite topic that evening, I have 
 always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a 
 curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna 
 marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter 
 Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated), 
 brought with him from Florence : — this, and a 
 trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her 
 death. 
 
Lamb 99 
 
 The former bequest (which I do not least value), 
 I have kept with religious care ; though she herself, 
 to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with 
 cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I 
 have heard her say, — disputing with her uncle, who 
 was very partial to it. She could never heartily 
 bring her mouth to pronounce "Go " — or " That 's 
 a go." She called it an ungrammatical game. The 
 pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit 
 a rubber (a five-dollar stake) because she would 
 not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which 
 would have given it her, but which she must have 
 claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring " tzvo 
 for his heels." There is something extremely gen- 
 teel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a 
 gentlewoman born. 
 
 Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 
 persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of 
 the terms — such as pique — repique — the capot 
 
 — they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But 
 games for two, or even three, she never greatly 
 cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She 
 would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends are 
 gain, with glory. But cards are war, in disguise of 
 a sport : when single adversaries encounter, the ends 
 proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too 
 close a fight; with spectators, it is not much bet- 
 tered. No looker-on can be interested, except for 
 a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money ; he cares 
 not for your luck sympathetically, or for your play. 
 
 — Three are still worse; a mere naked war of 
 every man against every man, as in cribbage, with- 
 out league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and 
 contradictory interests, a succession of heartless 
 
 LofC. 
 
lOO Best English Essays 
 
 leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of 
 them,- as in tradrille. — But in square games (she 
 meant whist), all that is possible to be attained in 
 card-playing is accompHshed. There are the in- 
 centives of profit with honour, common to every 
 species — though the latter can be but very imper- 
 fectly enjoyed in those other games, where the 
 spectator is only feebly a participator. But the 
 parties in whist are spectators and principals too. 
 They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is 
 not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and 
 an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or in- 
 terests beyond its sphere. You glory in some sur- 
 prising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold 
 
 — or even an interested — bystander witnesses it, 
 but because your partner sympathizes in the contin- 
 gency. You win for two. You triumph for two. 
 Two are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which 
 divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles 
 (by taking off the invidiousness) your glories. 
 Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to 
 one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is 
 weakened by multiplying the channels. War be- 
 comes a civil game. By such reasonings as these 
 the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite 
 pastime. 
 
 No inducement could ever prevail upon her to 
 play at any game, where chance entered into the 
 composition, for nothing. Chance, she would argue 
 
 — and here again, admire the subtlety of her con- 
 clusion ; — chance is nothing, but where something 
 else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be 
 glory. What rational cause of exultation could it 
 give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times 
 
Lamb loi 
 
 together by himself? or before spectators, where 
 no stake was depending ? — Make a lottery of a 
 hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate 
 number — and what possible principle of our nature, 
 except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain 
 that number as many times successively without 
 a prize? Therefore she disliked the mixture of 
 chance in backgammon, where it was not played for 
 money. She called it foolish, and those people 
 idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such 
 circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little 
 to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere 
 system of over-reaching. Played for glory, they 
 were a mere setting of one man's wit — his 
 memory, or combination-faculty rather — against 
 another's ; like a mock-engagement at a review, 
 bloodless and profitless. She could not conceive a 
 game wanting the sprightly infusion of chance, the 
 handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people 
 playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist 
 was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with 
 insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut 
 similitudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery of 
 the board, she would argue, (and I think in this 
 case justly) were entirely misplaced and senseless. 
 Those hard-head contests can in no instance ally 
 with the fancy. They reject form and colour. A 
 pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the 
 proper arena for such combatants. 
 
 To those puny objectors against cards, as nur- 
 turing the bad passions, she would retort, that man 
 is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to 
 get the better in something or other : — that this 
 passion can scarcely be more safely expended than 
 
102 Best English Essays 
 
 upon a game at cards : that cards are a temporary 
 illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but 
 play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle 
 shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we 
 are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is 
 crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream- 
 fighting; much ado, great battling, and little blood- 
 shed; mighty means for disproportioned ends: 
 quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, 
 than many of those more serious games of life, 
 v/hich men play without esteeming them to be such. 
 
 With great deference to the old lady's judgment 
 in these matters, I think I have experienced some 
 moments in my life, when playing at cards for noth- 
 ing has even been agreeable. When I am in sick- 
 ness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for 
 the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with 
 my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 
 
 I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but 
 with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, — when you 
 are subdued and humble, — you are glad to put up 
 with an inferior spring of action. 
 
 There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, 
 as sick zuhist. 
 
 I grant it is not the highest style of man — 
 I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives 
 not, alas ! to whom I should apologise. 
 
 At such times, those terms which my old friend 
 objected to, come in as something admissible. — I 
 love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean 
 nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. 
 Those shadows of winning amuse me. 
 
 That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I 
 capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish 
 
Lamb 1 03 
 
 I am?) — I wished it might have lasted for ever, 
 though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though 
 it was a mere shade of play : I would be content 
 to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin 
 should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the 
 gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was 
 doomed to apply after the game was over : and, as 
 I do not much relish appHances, there it should ever 
 bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing. 
 
 ^ POOR RELATIONS 
 
 A POOR relation — is the most irrelevant 
 thing in nature, — a piece of impertinent 
 correspondency, — an odious approximation, — 
 a haunting conscience, — a preposterous shadow, 
 lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity, 
 
 — an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpetually 
 recurring mortification, — a drain on your purse, 
 
 — a more intolerable dun upon your pride, — a 
 drawback upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, 
 
 — a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutch- 
 eon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's head 
 at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai 
 in your gate, — a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in 
 your path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly in 
 your ointment, — a mote in your eye, — a triumph 
 to your enemy, — an apology to your friends, — the 
 one thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the 
 ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 
 
 He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth 
 you " That is Mr. ." A rap, between famil- 
 
I04 Best English Essays 
 
 iarity and respect; that demands, and at the same 
 time seems to despair of, entertainment. He en- 
 tereth smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out 
 his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it back 
 again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time — 
 when the table is full. He offereth to go away, 
 seeing you have company — but is induced to stay. 
 He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children 
 are accommodated at a side-table. He never cometh 
 upon open days, when your wife says, with some 
 
 complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop 
 
 in to-day." He remembereth birth-days — and pro- 
 fesseth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. 
 He declareth against fish, the turbot being small — 
 yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, 
 against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port 
 — yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder 
 glass of claret, if a strang-er press it upon him. He 
 is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being 
 too obs;equious, or not civil enough, to him. The 
 guests think *' they have seen him before." Every 
 one speculateth upon his condition ; and the most 
 part take him to be a — tide-waiter. He calleth you 
 by your Christian name, to imply that his other is 
 the same with your own. He is too familiar by 
 half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half 
 the familiarity, he might pass for a casual depend- 
 ent ; with more boldness, he would be in no danger 
 of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for 
 a friend; yet taketh on him more state than befits 
 a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, 
 inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — yet 't is odds, 
 from his garb and demeanour, that your guests take 
 him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist 
 
Lamb 105 
 
 table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and — re- 
 sents being left out. When the company break up, 
 he proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the ser- 
 vant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and will 
 thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anec- 
 dote — of the family. He knew it when it was not 
 quite so flourishing as " he is blest in seeing it now." 
 He reviveth past situations, to institute what he 
 calleth — favourable comparisons. With a reflecting 
 sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of 
 your furniture : and insults you with a special com- 
 mendation of your window-curtains. He is of 
 opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape ; but, 
 after all, there was something more comfortable 
 about the old tea-kettle — which you must remem- 
 ber. He dare say you must find a great convenience 
 in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to 
 your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had 
 your arms done on vellum yet; and did not know, 
 till lately, that such-and-such had been the crest of 
 the family. His memory is unseasonable ; his com- 
 pliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay per- 
 tinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss 
 his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible, 
 and feel fairly rid of two nuisances. 
 
 There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is 
 — a female Poor Relation. You may do something 
 with the other; you may pass him off tolerably 
 well ; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. 
 " He is an old humorist," you may say, '' and affects 
 to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than 
 folks would take them to be. You are fond of 
 having a Character at your table, and truly he is 
 one." But in the indications of female poverty 
 
io6 Best English Essays 
 
 there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below 
 herself from caprice. The truth must out without 
 
 shuffling. *' She is plainly related to the L 's ; 
 
 or what does she at their house ? " She is, in all 
 probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of 
 ten, at least, this is the case. — Her garb is some- 
 thing between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the 
 former evidently predominates. She is most pro- 
 vokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to 
 her inferiority. He may require to be repressed 
 sometimes — aliquando sufflaminandiis erat — but 
 there is no raising her. You send her soup at din- 
 ner, and she begs to be helped — after the gentle- 
 men. Mr. requests the honour of taking wine 
 
 with her ; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, 
 and chooses the former — because he does. She 
 calls the servant Sir; and insists on not troubling 
 him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronises 
 her. The children's governess takes upon her to 
 conrect her, when she has mistaken the piano for a 
 harpsichord. 
 
 Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable 
 instance of the disadvantages to which this chimer- 
 ical notion of affinity constituting a claim to ac- 
 quaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. 
 A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and 
 a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually 
 crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman, 
 who persists in calling him *' her son Dick." But 
 she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his 
 indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant 
 surface, under which it had been her seeming busi- 
 ness and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, 
 besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an 
 
Lamb 107 
 
 Amlet In real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, 
 
 sank indeed. Poor W was of my own standing 
 
 at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of promise. 
 If he had a blemish, it was too much pride ; but its 
 quality was inoffensive; it was not of that sort 
 which hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors 
 at a distance ; it only sought to ward off deroga- 
 tion from itself. It was the principle of self-respect 
 carried as far as it could go, without infringing 
 upon that respect, which he would have every one 
 else equally maintain for himself. He would have 
 you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a 
 quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather 
 older boys, and our tallness made us more obnox- 
 ious to observation in the blue clothes, because I 
 would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the 
 town with him to elude notice, when we have been 
 out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneer- 
 ing and prying metropolis. W went, sore with 
 
 these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and 
 sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy 
 of a humble introduction, wrought in him a passion- 
 ate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion 
 from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than 
 his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. 
 He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under 
 which Latimer must have walked erect, and in 
 which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted 
 in a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the 
 depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, 
 the poor student shrunk from observation. He 
 found shelter among books, which insult not ; and 
 studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances. 
 He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for 
 
io8 Best English Essays 
 
 looking out beyond his domains. The healing in- 
 fluence of studious pursuits was upon him to soothe 
 and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man, 
 when the waywardness of his fate broke out against 
 him with a second and worse malignity. The father 
 of W had hitherto exercised the humble pro- 
 fession of house-painter, at N , near Oxford. 
 
 A supposed interest with some of the heads of col- 
 leges had now induced him to take up his abode in 
 that city, with the hope of being employed upon 
 some public works which were talked of. From that 
 moment I read in the countenance of the young man 
 the determination which at length tore him from 
 academical pursuits for ever. To a person unac- 
 quainted with our universities, the distance between 
 the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called 
 — the trading part of the latter especially — is car- 
 ried to an excess that would appear harsh and in- 
 credible. The temperament of W 's father was 
 
 diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W 
 
 was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with 
 his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and 
 scraping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the 
 semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and 
 opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose 
 chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he 
 was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. 
 
 Such a state of things could not last. W must 
 
 change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He 
 chose the former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who 
 strains the point of the filial duties as high as they 
 can bear, censure the dereliction ; he cannot esti- 
 mate the struggle. I stood with W , the last 
 
 afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his 
 
Lamb 109 
 
 paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading 
 from the High Street to the back of col- 
 lege, where W kept his rooms. He seemed 
 
 thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally 
 him — finding him in a better mood — upon a rep- 
 resentation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old 
 man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had 
 caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over 
 his really handsome shop, either as a token of pros- 
 perity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W 
 
 looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew his 
 mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his father's 
 table, the next morning, announced that he had 
 accepted a commission in a regiment about to em- 
 bark for Portugal. He was among the first who 
 perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. 
 
 I do not know how, upon a subject which I began 
 with treating half seriously, I should have fallen 
 upon a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme 
 of poor relationship is replete with so much matter 
 for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is 
 difficult to keep the account distinct without blend- 
 ing. The earliest impressions which I received on 
 this matter are certainly not attended with anything 
 painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At 
 my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be 
 found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an 
 aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet 
 comely appearance. His deportment was of the 
 essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I 
 was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little 
 inclination to have done so — for my cue was to 
 admire in silence. A particular elbow-chair was 
 appropriated to him, which was in no case to be 
 
no Best English Essays 
 
 violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which 
 appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the 
 days of his coming. I used to think him a prodi- 
 giously rich man. All I could make out of him was, 
 that he and my father had been schoolfellows, a 
 world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the 
 Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all 
 the money was coined — and I thought he was the 
 owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower 
 twined themselves about his presence. He seemed 
 above human infirmities and passions. A sort of 
 melancholy grandeur invested him. From some 
 inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about 
 in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — a stately 
 being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often 
 have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, 
 in spite of an habitual general respect which we all 
 in common manifested towards him, would venture 
 now and then to stand up against him in some argu- 
 ment touching their youthful days. The houses of 
 the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of 
 my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill 
 and in the valley. This marked distinction formed 
 an obvious division between the boys who lived 
 above (however brought together in a common 
 school) and the boys whose paternal residence was 
 on the plain ; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code 
 of these )^oung Grotiuses. My father had been a 
 leading Mountaineer; and would still maintain the 
 general superiority in skill and hardihood of the 
 Above Boys (his own faction) over the Belozv Boys 
 (so were they called), of which party his contem- 
 porary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were 
 the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon 
 
Lamb i i i 
 
 which the old gentleman was ever brought out — 
 and bad blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the 
 recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostili- 
 ties. But my father, who scorned to insist upon 
 advantages, generally contrived to turn the conver- 
 sation upon some adroit by-commendation of the 
 old Minster; in the general preference of which, 
 before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller 
 on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a 
 conciliating level, and lay down their less important 
 differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman 
 really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the 
 thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will never 
 come here again." He had been pressed to take 
 another plate of the viand, which I have already 
 mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his 
 visits. He had refused with a resistance amounting 
 to rigor, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who 
 had something of this, in common with my cousin 
 Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility 
 out of season — uttered the following memorable 
 application — " Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, 
 for you do not get pudding every day." The old 
 gentleman said nothing at the time — but he took 
 occasion in the course of the evening, when some 
 argument had intervened between them, to utter 
 with an emphasis which chilled the company, and 
 which chills me now as I write it — " Woman, you 
 are superannuated ! " John Billet did not survive 
 long, after the digesting of this affront ; but he 
 survived long enough to assure me that peace was 
 actually restored! and if I remember aright, an- 
 other pudding was discreetly substituted in the place 
 of that which had occasioned the offence. He died 
 
112 Best English Essays 
 
 at the Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held, 
 what he accounted, a comfortable independence; 
 and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a 
 penny, which were found in his escritoir after his 
 decease, left the world, blessing God that he had 
 enough to bury him, and that he had never been 
 obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was — 
 a Poor Relation. 
 
V 
 
 DE Q^UINCEY 
 
DE QUINCEY: 
 
 INVENTOR OP^ MODERN "IMPAS- 
 SIONED PROSE" 
 
 PICTURE to yourself a shy little man, with 
 bright, roving eyes, thin features, and 
 many of the physical characteristics of 
 the scholar; give this man a luxuriant imagina- 
 tion, and a nervous organization that seems to 
 require such a stimulant as opium in excessive 
 quantities, make him a v\^riter, — and you have 
 De Quincey. In every sense of the v^ord he 
 v^as a thorough scholar, as v^itness the Latin and 
 Greek quotations scattered through his writings 
 and seeming an inevitable and natural part of his 
 thinking; a brilliant conversationist, as we may 
 gather from the sparkling humor and sly wit that 
 make their way into nearly all his work; and, 
 strangely enough, at the same time a dreamer, 
 though in De Quincey we find dreams associated 
 with scholarly accuracy and a remarkable power 
 of subtle analysis. Like Lewis Carroll, he had all 
 the shyness of the scholar. He therefore takes 
 refuge in the anonymity of essay-writing, where 
 he may indulge his brilliant conversational power 
 with the utmost freedom. De Quincey' s essays 
 are therefore delightfully conversational, though 
 they are the product of the solitary imagination. 
 
ii6 Best English Essays 
 
 As De Quincey through a somewhat long Hfe 
 gained his Hving by his pen, his collected works 
 are extremely miscellaneous in character. He 
 was an excellent critic, a sympathetic biographical 
 writer, a successful producer of such amusing 
 literary curiosities as his essay '' On Murder Con- 
 sidered as a Fine Art." But his first success, and 
 the work by which he is best known, is his *' Con- 
 fessions of an English Opium-Eater," in which, 
 in his description of his opium dreams, he gives 
 us the first examples of what he calls " impas- 
 sioned prose." Possibly the words " highly im- 
 aginative prose " would describe it better. It was 
 distinctly prose and not poetry, since the writer 
 never cuts loose entirely from ground facts; but 
 it exhibits capabilities of prose that had never 
 before been suspected. This " impassioned 
 prose " De Quincey seemed always to consider 
 his most valuable contribution to literature, and 
 later in life he continued the '' Confessions " in 
 a sort of sequel on which he expended his most 
 loving care. The plan of this sequel was never 
 fully carried out ; but we have the " Suspiria de 
 Profundis" and ''The English Mail Coach"; 
 the former of which contains the finest specimen 
 of all his work, according to Professor Masson 
 ("Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow"), the 
 latter his most extreme example of lyrical prose, 
 namely, the " Dream-Fugue " forming Part III. 
 In this De Quincey attempts nothing less than the 
 reproduction of the effect of solemn and lofty 
 
De Quincey 117 
 
 music by mere imaginative description; and in 
 that attempt many critics think that De Quincey 
 was not wholly successful; but it is interesting 
 to note how Richard Wagner, against prolonged 
 critical hostility, carried to success in actual music 
 the imaginative method De Quincey here uses in 
 language description. 
 
 While the " Dream- Fugue " may be considered 
 a pure opium dream, still we should lose the point 
 and meaning of it if we failed to note how every 
 lyrical image in this part of the composition cor- 
 responds to a prose fact in the first and second 
 parts. The logical relationship is perfect, and is 
 elaborated with the utmost thought and care. 
 Success is attained by self-restraint ; it is freedom 
 through self-mastery and obedience to the ever- 
 lasting laws of thought and emotion and uni- 
 versal truth. This is lyrical writing that attains 
 its success in mature life, not in youth as lyrical 
 poetry does, and not only genius but time is 
 required for its perfection. 
 
 De Quincey's ordinary style, seen to admirable 
 advantage in the first parts of *' The English 
 Mail Coach," is graceful and sinuous in the ex- 
 treme, winding in and out through a complicated 
 labyrinth, yet without ever losing the clue of the 
 thought, or becoming for a moment obscure, or 
 being betrayed into the slightest awkwardness; 
 and when we come to the " Dream-Fugue " we 
 think of the musician passionately devoted to his 
 musical art who steals into the organ loft Vvdien he 
 
ii8 Best English Essays 
 
 knows that but one or two chance devotees are 
 hstening in the empty cathedral, and pours forth 
 his most triumphant chords. " Levana and Our 
 Ladies of Sorrow " is in a more subdued and 
 subtle key, more delicately artistic, more perfect ; 
 yet we could hardly understand it on a first read- 
 ing were we not prepared for it by the more 
 obvious '' Mail Coach." 
 
 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 
 
 IN the Preface to the volume of his collected 
 works containing '' The English Mail Coach," 
 De Ouincey gave a brief explanation of his design. 
 After summarizing the facts given at length in the 
 second section, entitled " The Vision of Sudden 
 Death," he goes on as follows : ** But a movement 
 of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from the dread- 
 ful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, 
 raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very 
 soon into a rolling succession of di*eams. The actual 
 scene, as looked down upon from the box of the 
 mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous 
 and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled 
 dream is circumstantially reported in Section the 
 Third, entitled ' Dream-Fugue on the Theme of 
 Sudden Death.' " 
 
 The first section — *' The Glory of Motion " — 
 was a general discursive essay on the English mail 
 coach and the pleasures and observations incident 
 to riding upon the top of it. It formed nearly half 
 of the whole work. Of this De Quincey says : 
 
De Quincey 119 
 
 *' What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail, 
 — the scenical strife of action and passion, of 
 anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them 
 moving in ghostly silence, — this duel between life 
 and death narrowing itself to a point of such ex- 
 quisite evanescence as the collision neared: all 
 these elements of the scene blended, under the law 
 of association, with the previous and permanent 
 features of distinction investing the mail itself; 
 which features at that time lay — first, in velocity 
 unprecedented; secondly, in the power and beauty 
 of the horses ; thirdly, in the official connection 
 with the government of a great nation; and, 
 fourthly, in the function, almost a consecrated func- 
 tion, of publishing and diffusing through the land 
 the great political events, and especially the great 
 battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. 
 These honorary distinctions are all described cir- 
 cumstantially in the first or introductory section — 
 * The Glory of Motion.' The three first were dis- 
 tinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth 
 and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with 
 Napoleon ; and this it was which most naturally 
 introduced Waterloo into the dream. ... So far 
 as I know, every element in the shifting movements 
 of the Dream derived itself either primarily from 
 the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary 
 features associated with the mail. For example, the 
 cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic com- 
 bination of features which grouped themselves 
 together at the point of collision — namely, an 
 arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards 
 long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty 
 trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's 
 
I20 Best English Essays 
 
 horn, again — a humble instrument in itself — was 
 yet glorified as the organ of publication for so many- 
 great national events. And the incident of the 
 Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas- 
 relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble 
 lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, 
 was doubtless secretly suggested by my own imper- 
 fect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow 
 a warning blast. But the Dream knows best ; and 
 the Dream, I say again, is the responsible party." 
 In addition to the items mentioned by De Quincey 
 as especially influencing his Dream, two specific 
 instances of observations described in " The Glory 
 of Motion " are worked into the Dream, and are 
 here reprinted complete. 
 
 Section I — The Glory of Motion 
 
 How else, for example, than as a constant 
 watcher for the dawn, and for the London mail 
 that in summer months entered about daybreak 
 amongst the lawny thickets of Marlborough forest, 
 couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath road, have 
 become the glorified inmate of my dreams? Yet 
 Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and 
 person that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld, 
 merited the station which even now, from a distance 
 of forty years, she holds in my dreams ; yes, though 
 by links of natural association she brings along with 
 her a troop of dreadful creatures, fabulous and not 
 fabulous, that are more abominable to the heart 
 than Fanny and the dawn are delightful. 
 
De Quincey 121 
 
 Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, 
 lived at a mile's distance from that road, but came 
 so continually to meet the mail that I on my fre- 
 quent transits rarely missed her, and naturally con- 
 nected her image with the great thoroughfare where 
 only I had ever seen her. Why she came so punctu- 
 ally I do not exactly know ; but I believe with some 
 burden of commissions, to be executed in Bath, 
 which had gathered to her own residence as a cen- 
 tral rendezvous for converging them. The mail- 
 coachman who drove the Bath mail and wore the 
 royal livery happened to be Fanny's grandfather. 
 A good man he was, that loved his beautiful grand- 
 daughter, and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over 
 her deportment in any case where young Oxford 
 might happen to be concerned. Did my vanity 
 then suggest that I myself, individually, could fall 
 within the line of his terrors? Certainly not, as 
 regarded any physical pretensions that I could 
 plead; for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her 
 own neighbourhood once told me) counted in her 
 train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, 
 if not open aspirants to her favour ; and probably not 
 one of the whole brigade but excelled myself in per- 
 sonal advantages: Ulysses even, with the unfair 
 advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have 
 undertaken that amount of suitors. So the danger 
 might have seemed slight — only that woman is 
 universally aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities 
 of heart that she is so. Now, the aristocratic dis- 
 tinctions in my favour might easily with Miss 
 Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. 
 Did I then make love to Fanny ? Why, yes ; about 
 as much love as one could make whilst the mail was 
 
122 Best English Essays 
 
 changing horses — a process which, ten years later, 
 did not occupy above eighty seconds ; but then, — 
 viz. about Waterloo — it occupied five times eighty. 
 Now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample 
 enough for whispering into a young woman's ear a 
 great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis) 
 some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, 
 therefore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too 
 often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with 
 the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would 
 he have watched me had I meditated any evil whis- 
 pers to Fanny ! She, it is my belief, would have 
 protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. 
 But he, as the result showed, could not have inter- 
 cepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet, 
 why not ? Was he not active ? Was he not bloom- 
 ing? Blooming he was as Fanny herself. 
 
 "Say, all our praises why should lords " 
 
 Stop, that 's not the line. 
 
 " Say, all our roses why should girls engross ? " 
 
 The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face 
 deeper even than his granddaughter's — his being 
 drawn from the ale-cask, Fanny's from the foun- 
 tains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming 
 face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly 
 in which he too much resembled a crocodile. This 
 lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. 
 The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to 
 the absurd length of his back ; but in our grandpapa 
 it arose rather from the absurd breadth of his back, 
 combined, possibly, with some growing stiffness in 
 
De Quincey 123 
 
 his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity of his 
 I planted a human advantage for tendering my 
 homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his hon- 
 ourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us 
 his mighty Jovian back (what a field for displaying 
 to mankind his royal scarlet!), whilst inspecting 
 professionally the buckles, the straps, and the silvery 
 turrets of his harness, than I raised Miss Fanny's 
 hand to my lips, and, by the mixed tenderness and 
 respectfulness of my manner, caused her easily to 
 understand how happy it would make me to rank 
 upon her list as No. 10 or 12 : in which case a few 
 casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, they 
 hanged liberally in those days) might have pro- 
 moted me speedily to the top of the tree ; as, on the 
 other hand, with how much loyalty of submission 
 I acquiesced by anticipation in her award, supposing 
 that she should plant me in the very rearward of 
 her favor, as No. 199 -f- 1. Most truly I loved this 
 beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had it not been 
 for the Bath mail, timing all courtships by post- 
 office allowance, heaven only knows what might 
 have come of it. People talk of being over head 
 and ears in love ; now, the mail was the cause that 
 I sank only over ears in love, — which, you know, 
 still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole con- 
 duct of the affair. 
 
 Ah, reader! when I look back upon those days, 
 it seems to me that all things change — all things 
 perish. " Perish the roses and the palms of kings " : 
 perish even the crowns and trophies of Waterloo: 
 thunder and lightning are not the thunder and 
 lightning v/hich I remember. Roses are degenerat- 
 ing. The Fannies of our island — though this I say 
 
124 -^^st English Essays 
 
 with reluctance — are not visibly improving; and 
 the Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Croc- 
 odiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton 
 tells me that the crocodile does not change, — that 
 a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for 
 riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. 
 That may be; but the reason is that the crocodile 
 does not live fast — he is a slow coach. I believe it 
 is generally understood among naturalists that the 
 crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression 
 that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. Now, as 
 the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over 
 Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular mis- 
 take that prevailed through innumerable genera- 
 tions on the Nile. The crocodile made the ridiculous 
 blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for 
 his own eating. Man, taking a different view of the 
 subject, naturally met that mistake by another: he 
 viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to wor- 
 ship, but always to run away from. And this 
 continued till Mr. Waterton changed the relations 
 between the animals. The mode of escaping from 
 the reptile he showed to be not by running away, but 
 by leaping on its back booted and spurred. The 
 two animals had misunderstood each other. The use 
 of the crocodile has now been cleared up — viz. to be 
 ridden; and the final cause of man is that he may 
 improve the health of the crocodile by riding him 
 a-foxhunting before breakfast. And it is pretty 
 certain that any crocodile who has been regularly 
 hunted through the season, and is master of the 
 weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now as 
 well as ever he w^ould have done in the infancy of 
 the pyramids. 
 
De Quincey 125 
 
 If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all 
 things else undeniably do: even the shadow of the 
 pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in 
 vision of Fanny and the Bath road makes me too 
 pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the dark- 
 ness, if I happen to call back the image of Fanny, 
 up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty years a rose 
 in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in 
 June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. One 
 after the other, like the antiphonies in the choral 
 service, rise Fanny and the rose in June, then 
 back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then come 
 both together, as in a chorus — roses and Fannies, 
 Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blossoms 
 in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in 
 a royal livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen 
 capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand 
 from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we 
 upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculp- 
 tured with the hours, that mingle with the heavens 
 and the heavenly host. Then all at once we are 
 arrived at Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely 
 households of the roe-deer ; the deer and their 
 fawns retire into the dewy thickets ; the thickets are 
 rich with roses; once again the roses call up the 
 sweet countenance of Fanny ; and she, being the 
 granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful 
 host of semi-legendary animals — griffins, dragons, 
 basilisks, sphinxes — till at length the whole vision 
 of fighting images crowds into one towering ar- 
 morial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities 
 and human loveliness that have perished, but quar- 
 tered heraldically with unutterable and demoniac 
 natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest. 
 
126 Best English Essays 
 
 one fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing, 
 in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, 
 where is sculptured the eternal writing which pro- 
 claims the frailty of earth and her children. 
 
 GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY 
 
 But the grandest chapter of our experience within 
 the whole mail-coach service was on those occasions 
 when we went down from London with the news 
 of victory. . . . The night before us is a night of 
 victory; and, behold! to the ordinary display what 
 a heart-shaking addition ! — horses, men, carriages, 
 all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves 
 and ribbons. . . . One heart, one pride, one glory, 
 connects every man by the transcendent bond of his 
 national blood. The spectators, who are numerous 
 beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these 
 fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. . . . Horses ! 
 can these be horses, that bound off with the action 
 and gestures of leopards ? What stir ! — what sea- 
 like ferment ! — what a thundering of wheels ! — 
 what trampling of hoofs ! — what a sounding of 
 trumpets ! — what farewell cheers — what redou- 
 bling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting 
 the name of the particular mail — " Liverpool for 
 ever!" — with the name of the particular vic- 
 tory — *' Badajoz for ever ! " or " Salamanca for 
 ever!" 
 
 The people they met were variously affected. 
 Some thought only of the joy of victory ; some were 
 overwhelmed with sadness to think what ill fate 
 might have overtaken their own sons and brothers 
 in the ranks. 
 
De Quincey 127 
 
 Every joy, however, even rapturous joy — such is 
 the sad law of earth — may carry with it grief, or 
 fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet, 
 we see approaching us another private carriage, 
 nearly repeating the circumstances of the former 
 case. Here, also, the glasses are all down; here, 
 also, is an elderly lady seated ; but the two daughters 
 are missing ; for the single young person sitting by 
 the lady's side seems to be an attendant — so I judge 
 from her dress, and her air of respectful reserve. 
 The lady is in mourning; and her countenance 
 expresses sorrow. At first she does not look up; 
 so that I believe she is not aware of our approach, 
 until she hears the measured beating of our horses' 
 hoofs. Then she raises her eyes to settle them pain- 
 fully on our triumphal equipage. Our decorations 
 explain the case to her at once; but she beholds 
 them with apparent anxiety, or even with terror. 
 Some time before this, I, finding it difficult to hit 
 a flying mark when embarrassed by the coachman's 
 person and reins intervening, had given to the guard 
 a '' Courier " evening paper, containing the gazette, 
 for the next carriage that might pass. Accordingly 
 he tossed it in, so folded that the huge capitals ex- 
 pressing some such legend as glorious victory 
 might catch the eye at once. To see the paper, how- 
 ever, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of 
 triumph, explained everything; and, if the guard 
 were right in thinking the lady to have received it 
 with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful 
 that she had suffered some deep personal affliction 
 in connection with this Spanish war. 
 
 Here, now, was the case of one who, having for- 
 merly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be dis- 
 
128 Best English Essays 
 
 tressing herself with anticipations of another similar 
 suffering. That same night, and hardly three hours 
 later, occurred the reverse case. A poor woman, 
 who too probably would find herself, in a day or two, 
 to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the 
 battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exul- 
 tation so unmeasured in the news and its details as 
 gave to her the appearance which amongst Celtic 
 Highlanders is called fey.^ This was at some little 
 town where we changed horses an hour or two after 
 midnight. Some fair or wake had kept the people 
 up out of their beds, and had occasioned a partial 
 illumination of the stalls and booths, presenting an 
 unusual but very impressive effect. We saw many 
 lights moving about as we drew near ; and perhaps 
 the most striking scene on the whole route was our 
 reception at this place. The flashing of torches and 
 the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically, 
 Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses; the 
 fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumina- 
 tion falling upon our flowers and glittering laurels ; 
 whilst all around ourselves, that formed a centre of 
 light, the darkness gathered on the rear and flanks 
 in massy blackness : these optical splendors, to- 
 gether with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, 
 composed a picture at once scenical and affecting, 
 theatrical and holy. As we stayed for three or four 
 minutes, I alighted; and immediately from a dis- 
 mantled stall in the street, where no doubt she had 
 been presiding through the earlier part of the night, 
 advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The sight 
 of my newspaper it was that had drawn her atten- 
 tion upon myself. The victory which we were 
 1 Fey, fated, doomed to die. 
 
De Quincey 129 
 
 carrying down to the provinces on this occasion was 
 the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for its 
 results, such was the virtual treachery of the Span- 
 ish general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever- 
 memorable heroism. I told her the main outline of 
 the battle. The agitation of her enthusiasm had 
 been so conspicuous when listening, and when first 
 applying for information, that I could not but ask 
 her if she had not some relative in the Peninsular 
 army. Oh, yes; her only son was there. In what 
 regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. 
 My heart sank within me as she made that answer. 
 This sublime regiment, which an Englishman should 
 never mention without raising his hat to their 
 memory, had made the most memorable and effec- 
 tive charge recorded in military annals. They 
 leaped their horses — over a trench where they 
 could; into it, and with the result of death or mu- 
 tilation, when they could not. What proportion 
 cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those w^ho 
 did closed up and went down upon the enemy with 
 such divinity of fervour (I use the word divinity by 
 design : the inspiration of God must have prompted 
 this movement to those whom even then He was 
 calling to His presence) that two results followed. 
 As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I 
 believe, originally three hundred and fifty strong, 
 paralysed a French column six thousand strong, 
 then ascended the hill, and fixed the gaze of the 
 whole French army. As regarded themselves, the 
 23d were supposed at first to have been barely not 
 annihilated ; but eventually, I believe, about one in 
 four survived. And this, then, was the regiment — 
 a regiment already for some hours glorified and 
 
 9 
 
130 Best English Essays 
 
 hallowed to the ear of all London, as lying stretched, 
 by a large majority, upon one bloody aceldama — 
 in which the young trooper served whose mother 
 was now talking in a spirit of such joyous enthusi- 
 asm. Did I tell her the truth ? Had I the heart to 
 break up her dreams? No. To-morrow, said I to 
 myself — to-morrow, or the next day, will publish 
 the worst. For one night more wherefore should 
 she not sleep in peace ? After to-morrow the chances 
 are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. 
 This brief respite, then, let her owe to my gift and 
 my forbearance. But, if I told her not of the bloody 
 price that had been paid, not therefore was I silent 
 on the contributions from her son's regiment to that 
 day's service and glory. I showed her not the fu- 
 neral banners under which the noble regiment was 
 sleeping. I lifted not the overshadowing laurels 
 from the bloody trench in which horse and rider 
 lay mangled together. But I told her how these 
 dear children of England, officers and privates, had 
 leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as 
 hunters to the morning's chase. I told her how they 
 rode their horses into the mists of death, — saying 
 to myself, but not saying to her, '' and laid down 
 their young lives for thee, O mother England! as 
 willingly — poured out their noble blood as cheer- 
 fully — as ever, after a long day's sport, when in- 
 fants, they had rested their wearied heads upon their 
 mother's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms." 
 Strange it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no 
 fears for her son's safety, even after this knowledge 
 that the 23d Dragoons had been memorably en- 
 gaged; but so much was she enraptured by the 
 knowledge that his regiment, and therefore that he, 
 
De Quincey 131 
 
 had rendered conspicuous service in the dreadful 
 conflict — a service which had actually made them, 
 within the last twelve hours, the foremost topic of 
 conversation in London — so absolutely was fear 
 swallowed up in joy — that, in the mere simplicity 
 of her fervent nature, the poor woman threw her 
 arms round my^neck, as she thought of her son, and 
 gave to me the kiss which secretly was meant for 
 him. 
 
 Section II — The Vision of Sudden Death 
 
 What is to be taken as the predominant opinion 
 of man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden 
 DEATH ? It is remarkable that, in different condi- 
 tions of society, sudden death has been variously 
 regarded as the consummation of an earthly career 
 most fervently to be desired, or, again, as that con- 
 summation which is with most horror to be depre- 
 cated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner-party 
 {coena), on the very evening before his assassina- 
 tion, when the minutes of his earthly career were 
 numbered, being asked what death, in his judgment, 
 might be pronounced the most eligible, replied 
 " That which should be most sudden." On the other 
 hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, 
 when breathing forth supplications, as if in some 
 representative character, for the whole human race 
 prostrate before God, places such a death in the very 
 van of horrors : " From lightning and tempest ; 
 from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle 
 and murder, and from sudden death — Good Lord, 
 deliver us.'' Sudden death is here made to crown 
 the climax in a grand ascent of calamities ; it is 
 
132 Best English Essays 
 
 ranked among the last of curses; and yet by the 
 noblest of Romans it was ranked as the first of 
 blessings. In that difference most readers will see 
 little more than the essential difference between 
 Christianity and Paganism. But this, on consider- 
 ation, I doubt. The Christian Church may be right 
 in its estimate of sudden death; and it is a natural 
 feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm 
 one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that 
 which seems most reconcilable with meditation, with 
 penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of 
 farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to 
 me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest 
 petition of the English Litany, unless under a 
 special construction of the word " sudden." It 
 seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to 
 human infirmity than exacted from human piety. 
 It is not so much a doctrine built upon the eternities 
 of the Christian system as a plausible opinion built 
 upon special varieties of physical temperament. Let 
 that, however, be as it may, two remarks suggest 
 themselves as prudent restraints upon a doctrine 
 which else may wander, and has wandered, into an 
 uncharitable superstition. The first is this: that 
 many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of 
 a sudden death from the disposition to lay a false 
 stress upon words or acts simply because by an acci- 
 dent they have become :final words or acts. If a 
 man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when 
 he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely 
 regarded with peculiar horror ; as though the in- 
 toxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. 
 But that is unphilosophic. The man was, or he was 
 not, habitually a drunkard. If not, if his intoxi- 
 
De Quincey 133 
 
 cation were a solitary accident, there can be no 
 reason for allowing special emphasis to this act 
 simply because through misfortune it became his 
 final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no 
 accident, but one of his habitual transgressions, will 
 it be the more habitual or the more a transgression 
 because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has 
 caused this habitual transgression to be also a final 
 one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly 
 to foresee his own sudden death, there would have 
 been a new feature in his act of intemperance — a 
 feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one 
 that, having known himself drawing near to the 
 presence of God, should have suited his demeanour 
 to an expectation so awful. But this is no part of 
 the case supposed. And the only new element in 
 the man's act is not any element of special immor- 
 ality, but simply of special misfortune. 
 
 The other remark has reference to the meaning of 
 the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the 
 Christian Church do not differ in the way supposed, 
 — that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine 
 as between Pagan and Christian views of the moral 
 temper appropriate to death; but perhaps they are 
 contemplatirg dififerent cases. Both contemplate a 
 violent death, a BiaOavaroq — death that is yStato?, 
 or, in other words, death that is brought about, not 
 by internal and spontaneous change, but by active 
 force having its origin from without.^ In this mean- 
 ing the two authorities agree. Thus far they are in 
 harmony. But the difference is that the Roman by 
 the word " sudden " means unlingering, whereas 
 
 1 Biaios, Greek for " forcible " or " violent " : hence Biathana- 
 tos, violent death. 
 
134 Best English Essays 
 
 the Christian Litany by " sudden death " means a 
 death zvithottt wai'ning, consequently without any 
 available summons to religious preparation. The 
 poor mutineer who kneels down to gather into his 
 heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying 
 comrades dies by a most sudden death in Caesar's 
 sense; one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly 
 not one) groan, and all is over. But, in the sense 
 of the Litany, the mutineer's death is far from sud- 
 den : his offence originally, his imprisonment, his 
 trial, the interval between his sentence and its 
 execution, having all furnished him with separate 
 warnings of his fate — having all summoned him 
 to meet it with solemn preparation. 
 
 Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we 
 comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a 
 holy Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor 
 departing children that God would vouchsafe to 
 them the last great privilege and distinction possible 
 on a death-bed, viz. the opportunity of untroubled 
 preparation for facing this mighty trial. Sudden 
 death, as a mere variety in the modes of dying where 
 death in some shape is inevitable, proposes a ques- 
 tion of choice which, equally in the Roman and 
 the Christian sense, will be variously answered ac- 
 cording to each man's variety of temperament. 
 Meantime, one aspect of sudden death there is, one 
 modification, upon which no doubt can arise, that of 
 all martyrdoms it is the most agitating — viz. where 
 it surprises a man under circumstances which offer 
 (or which seem to offer) some hurrying, flying, 
 inappreciably minute chance of evading it. Sudden 
 as the danger which it affronts must be any effort 
 by which such an evasion can be accomplished. 
 
De Quincey 135 
 
 Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying 
 in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be 
 vain, — even that anguish is liable to a hideous ex- 
 asperation in one particular case: viz. where the 
 appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self- 
 preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of 
 some other life besides your own, accidentally 
 thrown upon your protection. To fail, to collapse 
 in a service merely your own, might seem compara- 
 tively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. 
 But to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly 
 thrown into your hands the final interests of another, 
 — a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates 
 of life and death : this, to a man of apprehensive 
 conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious 
 criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. 
 You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly 
 to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any 
 even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your 
 energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. 
 You had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort, 
 and that effort might have been unavailing; but to 
 have risen to the level of such an effort would have 
 rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying 
 as a traitor to your final and farewell duty. 
 
 The situation here contemplated exposes a dread- 
 ful ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human 
 nature. It is not that men generally are summoned 
 to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in 
 shadowy outline, such a trial is moving subterrane- 
 ously in perhaps all men's natures. Upon the secret 
 mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, 
 perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so fa- 
 miliar to childhood, of meeting a lion, and, through 
 
136 Best English Essays 
 
 languishing prostration in hope and the energies of 
 hope, that constant sequel of lying down before the 
 lion, publishes the secret frailty of human nature — 
 reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself — records 
 its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us es- 
 capes that dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful 
 doom of man, that dream repeats for every one of 
 us, through every generation, the original tempta- 
 tion in Eden. Every one of us, in this dream, has a 
 bait offered to the infirm places of his own individ- 
 ual will ; once again a snare is presented for tempt- 
 ing him into captivity to a luxury of ruin; once 
 again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the man falls by 
 his own choice; again, by infinite iteration, the 
 ancient earth groans to Heaven, through her secret 
 caves, over the weakness of her child. '' Nature, 
 from her seat, sighing through all her works," again 
 " gives signs of woe that all is lost " ; and again the 
 counter-sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens 
 for the endless rebellion against God. It is not 
 without probability that in the world of dreams 
 every one of us ratifies for himself the original 
 transgression. In dreams, perhaps under some 
 secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to 
 the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the 
 memory as soon as all is finished, each several child 
 of our mysterious race completes for himself the 
 treason of the aboriginal fall. 
 
 The incident, so memorable in itself by its features 
 of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the 
 eye, which furnished the text for this reverie upon 
 Sudden Death, occurred to myself in the dead of 
 night, as a solitary spectator, when seated on the 
 
De Quincey 137 
 
 box of the Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the 
 second or third summer after Waterloo. I find it 
 necessary to relate the circumstances, because they 
 are such as could not have occurred unless under a 
 singular combination of accidents. In those days, 
 the oblique and lateral communications with many 
 rural post-offices were so arranged, either through 
 necessity or through defect of system, as to make 
 it requisite for the main north-western mail {i. e. 
 the dozmi mail) on reaching Manchester to halt for 
 a number of hours ; how many, I do not remember ; 
 six or seven, I think ; but the result was that, in the 
 ordinary course, the mail recommenced its journey 
 northwards about midnight. Wearied with the long 
 detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked out about 
 eleven o'clock at night for the sake of fresh air; 
 meaning to fall in with the mail and resume my seat 
 at the post-office. The night, however, being yet 
 dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets 
 being at that hour empty, so as to offer no oppor- 
 tunities for asking the road, I lost my way, and did 
 not reach the post-office until it was considerably 
 past midnight; but, to my great relief (as it was 
 important for me to be in Westmorland by the morn- 
 ing), I saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, 
 blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my 
 chance was not yet lost. Past the time it was ; but, 
 by some rare accident, the mail was not even yet 
 ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box, 
 where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the 
 Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there in imitation 
 of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting 
 on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off 
 the ground the whole human race, and notifying to 
 
138 Best English Essays 
 
 the Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best 
 compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket-hand- 
 kerchief once and for ever upon that virgin soil: 
 thenceforward claiming the jus dominii to the top 
 of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of 
 driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it; 
 so that all people found after this warning either 
 aloft in upper chambers of the atmosphere, or grop- 
 ing in subterraneous shafts, or squatting auda- 
 ciously on the surface of the soil, will be treated as 
 trespassers — kicked, that is to say, or decapitated, 
 as circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful 
 servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief. 
 In the present case, it is probable that my cloak 
 might not have been respected, and the jus gentium 
 might have been cruelly violated in my person — 
 for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, 
 gas being a great ally of morality ; but it so hap- 
 pened that on this night there was no other outside 
 passenger; and thus the crime, which else was but 
 too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. 
 
 Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity 
 of laudanum, having already travelled two hundred 
 and fifty miles — viz. from a point seventy miles 
 beyond London. In the taking of laudanum there 
 was nothing extraordinary. But by accident it drew 
 upon me the special attention of my assessor on the 
 box, the coachman. And in that also there was 
 nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with 
 great delight, it drew my own attention to the fact 
 that this coachman was a monster in point of bulk, 
 and that he had but one eye. In fact, he had been 
 foretold by Virgil as 
 " Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." 
 
De Quincey 139 
 
 He answered to the conditions in every one of the 
 items: — i, a monster he was; 2, dreadful; 3, 
 shapeless ; 4, huge ; 5, who had lost an eye. But 
 why should that delight me? Had he been one of 
 the Calendars in the " Arabian Nights," and had 
 paid down his eye as the price of his criminal curi- 
 osity, what right had I to exult in his misfortune ? I 
 did not exult ; I delighted in no man's punishment, 
 though it were even merited. But these personal 
 distinctions (Nos. i, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an in- 
 stant an old friend of mine whom I had known in 
 the south for some years as the most masterly of 
 mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe 
 that could (if any could) have driven six-in-hand 
 full gallop over Al Sir at — that dreadful bridge of 
 Mahomet, with no side battlements, and of extra 
 room not enough for a razor's edge — leading right 
 across the bottomless gulf. Under this eminent man, 
 whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops Diphrelates 
 (Cyclops the Charioteer), I, and others known to 
 me, studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, 
 a word too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, 
 though I paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that 
 I did not stand high in his esteem. It showed his 
 dogged honesty (though, observe, not his discern- 
 ment) that he could not see my merits. Let us 
 excuse his absurdity in this particular by remem- 
 bering his want of an eye. Doubtless that made him 
 blind to my merits. In the art of conversation, 
 however, he admitted that I had the whip-hand of 
 him. On this present occasion great joy was at our 
 meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here ? Had 
 the medical men recommended northern air, or how ? 
 I collected, from such explanations as he volun- 
 
140 Best English Essays 
 
 teered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit- 
 at-law now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably 
 he had got himself transferred to this station for the 
 purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits 
 an instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. 
 
 Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we 
 have now waited long enough. Oh, this procras- 
 tinating mail, and this procrastinating post-ofhce! 
 Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me? 
 Some people have called me procrastinating. Yet 
 you are witness, reader, that I was here kept waiting 
 for the post-office. Will the post-office lay its hand 
 on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert 
 that ever it waited for me? What are they about? 
 The guard tells me that there is a large extra 
 accumulation of foreign mails this night, owing to 
 irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, in 
 the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at 
 all by steam. For an extra hour, it seems, the post- 
 office has been engaged in threshing out the pure 
 wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnow- 
 ing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate 
 towns. But at last all is finished. Sound your 
 horn, guard ! Manchester, good-bye ! we 've lost 
 an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office : 
 which, however, though I do not mean to part with 
 a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which 
 really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an 
 advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for 
 this lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, and 
 to recover it (if we can) at the rate of one mile 
 extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven 
 miles an hour; and for the moment I detect no 
 changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops. 
 
De Quincey 141 
 
 From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually 
 (though not in law) is the capital of Westmor- 
 land, there were at this time seven stages of eleven 
 miles each. The first five of these, counting from 
 Manchester, terminate in Lancaster ; which is there- 
 fore fifty-five miles north of Manchester, and the 
 same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first 
 three stages terminate in Preston (called, by way 
 of distinction from other towns of that name. Proud 
 Preston) ; at which place it is that the separate 
 roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the 
 north become confluent.^ Within these first three 
 stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termi- 
 nation of our night's adventure. During the first 
 stage, I found out that Cyclops was mortal : he 
 was liable to the shocking affection of sleep — a 
 thing which previously I had never suspected. If 
 a man indulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all 
 the skill in atirigation of Apollo himself, with the 
 horses of Aurora to execute his notions, avails him 
 nothing, " Oh, Cyclops ! " I exclaimed, " thou art 
 mortal. My friend, thou snorest." Through the 
 first eleven miles, however, this infirmity — which 
 I grieve to say that he shared with the whole Pagan 
 Pantheon — betrayed itself only by brief snatches. 
 On waking up, he made an apology for himself 
 which, instead of mending matters, laid open a 
 
 "^ '■' CovfiuenV : — Suppose a capital Y (the Pythagorean 
 letter): Lancaster is at the foot of this letter; Liverpool at 
 the top of the right branch; Manchester at the top of the left ; 
 Proud Preston at the centre, where the two branches unite. It 
 is thirty-three miles along either of the two branches; it is 
 twenty-two miles along the stem — viz. from Preston in the 
 middle to Lancaster at the root. There 's a lesson in geography 
 for the reader ! (De Quincey's note.) 
 
142 Best English Essays 
 
 gloomy vista of coming disasters. The summer 
 assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at 
 Lancaster : in consequence of which for three nights 
 and three days he had not lain down in a bed. 
 During the day he was waiting for his own sum- 
 mons as a witness on the trial in which he was 
 interested, or else, lest he should be missing at the 
 critical moment, was drinking with the other wit- 
 nesses under the pastoral surveillance of the attor- 
 neys. During the night, or that part of it which at 
 sea would form the middle watch, he was driving. 
 This explanation certainly accounted for his drow- 
 siness, but in a way which made it much more 
 alarming; since now, after several days' resistance 
 to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving 
 way. Throughout the second stage he grew more 
 and more drowsy. In the second mile of the third 
 stage he surrendered himself finally and without 
 a struggle to his perilous temptation. All his past 
 resistance had but deepened the weight of this final 
 oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested 
 upon him ; and, to consummate the case, our worthy 
 guard, after singing " Love amongst the Roses " for 
 perhaps thirty times, without invitation and without 
 applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself 
 to slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coach- 
 man's, but deep enough for mischief. And thus 
 at last, about ten miles from Preston, it came about 
 that I found myself left in charge of his Majesty's 
 London and Glasgow mail, then running at the 
 least twelve miles an hour. 
 
 What made this negligence less criminal than 
 else it must have been thought was the condition 
 of the roads at night during the assizes. At that 
 
De Quincey 143 
 
 time, all the law business of populous Liverpool, 
 and also of populous Manchester, with its vast 
 cincture of populous rural districts, was called up 
 by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lan- 
 caster. To break up this old traditional usage 
 required, i, a conflict with powerful established 
 interests, 2, a large system of new arrangements, 
 and 3, a new parliamentary statute. But as yet 
 this change was merely in contemplation. As things 
 were at present, twice in the year so vast a body 
 of business rolled northwards from the southern 
 quarter of the county that for a fortnight at least 
 it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in 
 its despatch. The consequence of this was that 
 every horse available for such a service, along the 
 whole line of road, was exhausted in carrying down 
 the multitudes of people who were parties to the 
 different suits. By sunset, therefore, it usually 
 happened that, through utter exhaustion amongst 
 men and horses, the road sank into profound silence. 
 Except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county 
 of York from a contested election, no such silence 
 succeeding to no such fiery uproar was ever wit- 
 nessed in England. 
 
 On this occasion the usual silence and solitude 
 prevailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel 
 was to be heard. And, to strengthen this false 
 luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it hap- 
 pened also that the night was one of pecuHar solem- 
 nity and peace. For my own part, though slightly 
 alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far yielded 
 to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into 
 a profound reverie. The month was August ; in the 
 middle of which lay my own birthday — a festival 
 
144 -^^s^ English Essays 
 
 to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and 
 often sigh-born thoughts. The county was my own 
 native county — upon which, in its southern section, 
 more than upon any equal area known to man past 
 or present, had descended the original curse of 
 labor in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies 
 only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines, 
 but working through the fiery will. Upon no equal 
 space of earth was, or ever had been, the same 
 energy of human power put forth daily. At this 
 particular season also of the assizes, that dread- 
 ful hurricane of flight and pursuit, as it might 
 have seemed to a stranger, which swept to and 
 from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county 
 up and down, and regularly subsiding back into 
 silence about sunset, could not fail (when united 
 with this permanent distinction of Lancashire as 
 the very metropolis and citadel of labor) to point 
 the thoughts pathetically upon that counter-vision 
 of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, 
 towards which, as to their secret haven, the pro- 
 founder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude 
 continually travelling. Obliquely upon our left we 
 were nearing the sea ; which also must, under the 
 present circumstances, be repeating the general state 
 of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the 
 light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal 
 lull. Moonlight and the first timid tremblings of the 
 dawn were by this time blending; and the blend- 
 ings were brought into a still more exquisite state 
 of unity by a slight silvery mist, motionless and 
 dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with 
 a veil of equable transparency. Except the feet 
 of our own horses, — which, running on a sandy 
 
De Quincey 145 
 
 margin of the road, made but little disturbance, — 
 there was no sound abroad. In the clouds and on 
 the earth prevailed the same majestic peace; and, 
 in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has 
 done for the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which 
 are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe in 
 no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. What- 
 ever we may swear with our false feigning lips, 
 in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must 
 for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total 
 gulf between earth and the central heavens. Still, 
 in the confidence of children that tread without fear 
 every chamber in their father's house, and to whom 
 no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which 
 sometimes is revealed for * an hour upon nights 
 like this, ascend with easy steps from the sorrow- 
 stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals of 
 God. 
 
 Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awak- 
 ened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on 
 the distant road. It stole upon the air for a mo- 
 ment; I listened in awe; but then it died away. 
 Once roused, however, I could not but observe 
 with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. 
 Ten years' experience had made my eye learned 
 in the valuing of motion ; and I saw that we were 
 now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to 
 no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is 
 that I am miserably and shamefully deficient in that 
 quality as regards action. The palsy of doubt and 
 distraction hangs like some guilty weight of dark 
 unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when 
 the signal is flying for action. But, on the other 
 hand, this accursed gift I have, as regards thought, 
 
146 Best English Essays 
 
 that in the first step towards the possibiHty of a 
 misfortune I see its total evolution ; in the radix 
 of the series I see too certainly and too instantly 
 its entire expansion; in the first syllable of the 
 dreadful sentence I read already the last. It was 
 not that I feared for ourselves. Us our bulk and 
 impetus charmed against peril in any collision. And 
 I had ridden through too many hundreds of perils 
 that were frightful to approach, that were matter 
 of laughter to look back upon, the first face of 
 which was horror, the parting face a jest — for any 
 anxiety to rest upon our interests. The mail was 
 not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could 
 betray me who trusted to its protection. But any 
 carriage that we could meet would be frail and light 
 in comparison of ourselves. And I remarked this 
 ominous accident of our situation, — we were on 
 the wrong side of the road. But then, it may be 
 said, the other party, if other there was, might also 
 be on the wrong side ; and two wrongs might make 
 a right. That was not likely. The same motive 
 which had drawn us to the right-hand side of the 
 road — viz. the luxury of the soft beaten sand as 
 contrasted with the paved centre — would prove 
 attractive to others. The two adverse carriages 
 would therefore, to a certainty, be travelling on the 
 same side; and from this side, as not being ours 
 in law, the crossing over to the other would, of 
 course, be looked for from us. Our lamps, still 
 lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on 
 our part. And every creature that met us would 
 rely upon us for quartering. All this, and if the 
 separate links of the anticipation had been a thou- 
 sand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by 
 
De Quincey 147 
 
 effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid 
 simultaneous intuition. 
 
 Under this steady though rapid anticipation of 
 the evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what 
 a sullen mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, was 
 that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off 
 sound of a wheel was heard ! A whisper it was — 
 a whisper from, perhaps, four miles oft" — secretly 
 announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the 
 less inevitable; that, being known, was not there- 
 fore healed. What could be done — who was it that 
 could do it — to check the storm-flight of these 
 maniacal horses? Could I not seize the reins from 
 the grasp of the slumbering coachman? You, 
 reader, think that it would have been in your power 
 to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of 
 yourself. But, from the way in which the coach- 
 man's hand was viced between his upper and lower 
 thigh, this was impossible. Easy was it ? See, then, 
 that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has 
 kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries. 
 Unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash 
 his mouth with water. Easy was it? Unhorse me, 
 then, that imperial rider; knock me those marble 
 feet from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne. 
 
 The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now 
 too clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what 
 could it be ? Was it industry in a taxed cart ? Was 
 it youthful gaiety in a gig? Was it sorrow that 
 loitered, or joy that raced? For as yet the snatches 
 of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to 
 decipher the character of the motion. Whoever 
 were the travellers, something must be done to warn 
 them. Upon the other party rests the active respon- 
 
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 sibility, but upon us — and, woe is me ! that us was 
 reduced to my frail opium-shattered self — rests the 
 responsibility of warning. Yet, how should this be 
 accomplished? Might I not sound the guard's 
 horn ? Already, on the first thought, I was making 
 my way over the roof to the guard's seat. But this, 
 from the accident which I have mentioned, of the 
 foreign mails being piled upon the roof, was a diffi- 
 cult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by 
 nearly three hundred miles of outside travelling. 
 And, fortunately, before I had lost much time in the 
 attempt, our frantic horses swept round an angle of 
 the road which opened upon us that final stage 
 where the collision must be accomplished and the 
 catastrophe sealed. All was apparently finished. 
 The court was sitting; the case was heard; the 
 judge had finished ; and only the verdict was yet 
 in arrear. 
 
 Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six 
 hundred yards, perhaps, in length ; and the um- 
 brageous trees, which rose in a regular line from 
 either side, meeting high overhead, gave to it the 
 character of a cathedral aisle. These trees lent a 
 deeper solemnity to the early light; but there was 
 still light enough to perceive, at the further end of 
 this Gothic aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were 
 seated a young man, and by his side a young lady. 
 Ah, young sir! what are you about? If it is requi- 
 site that you should whisper your communications 
 to this young lady — though really I see nobody, at 
 an hour and on a road so solitary, likely to overhear 
 you — it is therefore requisite that you should carry 
 your lips forward to hers? The little carriage is 
 creeping on at one mile an hour; and the parties 
 
De Quincey 149 
 
 within it, being- thus tenderly engaged, are naturally 
 bending down their heads. Between them and eter- 
 nity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute 
 and a half. Oh, heavens ! what is it that I shall do ? 
 Speaking or acting, what help can I offer ? Strange 
 it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem 
 laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the 
 " Iliad " to prompt the sole resource that remained. 
 Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout 
 of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to 
 shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No : 
 but then I needed not the shout that should alarm 
 all x\sia militant; such a shout would suffice as 
 might carry terror into the hearts of two thought- 
 less young people and one gig-horse. I shouted — 
 and the young man heard me not. A second time 
 I shouted — and now he heard me, for now he raised 
 his head. 
 
 Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could 
 be done ; more on my part was not possible. Mine 
 had been the first step ; the second was for the 
 young man ; the third was for God. If, said I, this 
 stranger is a brave man, and if indeed he loves the 
 young girl at his side — or, loving her not, if he 
 feels the obligation, pressing- upon every man 
 worthy to be called a man, of doing his utmost for 
 a woman confided to his protection — he will at least 
 make some eft'ort to save her. If that fails, he will 
 not perish the more, or by a death more cruel, for 
 having made it ; and he will die as a brave man 
 should, with his face to the danger, and with his 
 arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save. 
 But, if he makes no effort, — shrinking without a 
 struggle from his duty, — he himself will not the 
 
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 less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroonery. 
 He will die no less : and why not ? Wherefore 
 should we grieve that there is one craven less in the 
 world? No; let him perish, without a pitying 
 thought of ours wasted upon him ; and, in that case, 
 all our grief will be reserved for the fate of the 
 helpless girl who now, upon the least shadow of 
 failure in him, must by the fiercest of translations 
 — must without time for a prayer — must within 
 seventy seconds — stand before the judgment-seat 
 of God. 
 
 But craven he was not : sudden had been the call 
 upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. 
 He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that 
 was coming down: already its gloomy shadow 
 darkened above him ; and already he was measuring 
 his strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a vulgar 
 thing does courage seem when we see nations buy- 
 ing it and selling it for a shilling a-day : ah ! what 
 a sublime thing does courage seem when some fear- 
 ful summons on the great deeps of life carries a 
 man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the 
 giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis from which 
 lie two courses, and a voice says to him audibly, 
 " One way lies hope ; take the other, and mourn 
 for ever ! " How grand a triumph if, even then, 
 amidst the raving of all around him, and the frenzy 
 of the danger, the man is able to confront his situ- 
 ation — is able to retire for a moment into solitude 
 with God, and to seek his counsel from Him! 
 
 For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the 
 stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, 
 as if to search and value every element in the con- 
 flict before him. For five seconds more of his 
 
De Quincey 151 
 
 seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on 
 some great purpose. For five more, perhaps, he sat 
 with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, 
 under some extremity of doubt, for light that should 
 guide him to the better choice. Then suddenly he 
 rose ; stood upright ; and, by a powerful strain upon 
 the reins, raising his horse's fore-feet from the 
 ground, he slewed him round on the pivot of his 
 hind-legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a 
 position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far 
 his condition was not improved; except as a first 
 step had been taken towards the possibility of a 
 second. If no more were done, nothing was done; 
 for the little carriage still occupied the very centre 
 of our path, though in an altered direction. Yet 
 even now it may not be too late: fifteen of the 
 seventy seconds may still be unexhausted ; and one 
 almighty bound may avail to clear the ground. 
 Hurry, then, hurry ! for the flying moments — they 
 hurry. Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave young man! 
 for the cruel hoofs of our horses — they also hurry ! 
 Fast are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of 
 our horses. But fear not for him, if human energy 
 can suflice ; faithful was he that drove to his terrific 
 duty ; faithful was the horse to his command. One 
 blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the 
 stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if 
 in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile crea- 
 ture's fore-feet upon the crown or arching centre of 
 the road. The larger half of the little equipage had 
 then cleared our over-towering shadow: that was 
 evident even to my own agitated sight. But it 
 mattered little that one wreck should float off in 
 safety if upon the wreck that perished were em- 
 
152 Best English Essays 
 
 barked the human freightage.- The rear part of the 
 carriage — was that certainly beyond the Hne of 
 absolute ruin ? What power could answer the ques- 
 tion ? Glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel, 
 which of these had speed enough to sweep between 
 the question and the answer, and divide the one 
 from the other? Light does not tread upon the 
 steps of light more indivisibly than did our all- 
 conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the 
 gig. That must the young man have felt too plainly. 
 His back was now turned to us ; not by sight could 
 he any longer communicate with the peril; but, by 
 the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had his 
 ear been instructed that all was finished as regarded 
 any effort of his. Already in resignation he had 
 rested from his struggle; and perhaps in his heart 
 he was whispering, " Father, which art in heaven, 
 do Thou finish above what I on earth have at- 
 tempted." Faster than ever mill-race we ran past 
 them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving of hurri- 
 canes that must have sounded in their young ears 
 at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment 
 the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with 
 the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near 
 leader, we had struck the off- wheel of the little gig ; 
 which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far 
 advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near- 
 wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage, 
 resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze 
 upon the ruins we might have caused. From, my 
 elevated station I looked down, and looked back 
 upon the scene ; which in a moment told its own 
 tale, and wrote all its records on my heart for ever. 
 Here was the map of the passion that now had 
 
De Quincey 153 
 
 finished. The horse was planted immovably, with 
 his fore-feet upon the paved crest of the central 
 road. He of the whole party might be supposed 
 untouched by the passion of death. The little cany 
 carriage — partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion 
 of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from 
 the thundering blow we had given to it — as if it 
 sympathized with human horror, was all alive with 
 tremblings and shiverings. The young man trem- 
 bled not, nor shivered. He sat like a rock. But his 
 was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by 
 horror. As yet he dared not to look round ; for 
 he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him 
 it could no longer be done. And as yet he knew not 
 for certain if their safety were accomplished. But 
 
 the lady 
 
 But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spec- 
 tacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and 
 sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her 
 arms wildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary 
 object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, despair- 
 ing? Figure to yourself, reader, the elements of 
 the case; suffer me to recall before your mind the 
 circumstances of that unparalleled situation. From 
 the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer 
 night — from the pathetic blending of this sweet 
 moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight — from the manly 
 tenderness of this flattering, whispering, murmuring 
 love — suddenly as from the woods and fields — 
 suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening 
 in revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawn- 
 ing at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing 
 of cataracts, Death the crowned phantom, with all 
 the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his 
 voice. 
 
154 ^Gst English Essays 
 
 The moments were numbered ; the strife was 
 finished ; the vision was closed. In the twinkling 
 of an eye, our flying horses had carried us to the 
 termination of the umbrageous aisle; at the right 
 angles we wheeled into our former direction; the 
 turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes 
 in an instant, and swept it into my dreams for ever. 
 
 Section III — Dream-Fugue : 
 
 FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN 
 DEATH 
 
 " Whence the sound 
 Of instruments, that made melodious chime, 
 Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 
 Their stops and chords was seen ; liis volant touch 
 Instinct through all proportions, low and high. 
 Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue." 
 
 Par. Lost, Bk. XI. 
 
 Tiimultiiosissimamente 
 
 Passion of sudden death! that once in youth I 
 read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted 
 signs ! ^ — rapture of panic taking the shape (which 
 amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman 
 bursting her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic 
 form bending forward from the ruins of her grave 
 with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped 
 adoring hands — waiting, watching, trembling, pray- 
 
 1 ^'Averted signs": — I read the course and changes of the 
 lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures ; but 
 it must be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never 
 once catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imper- 
 fectly. (De Quincey's note.) 
 
De Quincey 155 
 
 ing for the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever ! 
 Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on 
 the brink of almighty abysses ! — vision that didst 
 start back, that didst reel away, like a shrivelling 
 scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on 
 the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief of horror, 
 wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing 
 so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that 
 still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon 
 the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of 
 music too passionate, heard once, and heard no 
 more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling chords 
 come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, 
 and after forty years have lost no element of horror ? 
 
 Lo, it is summer — almighty summer! The 
 everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown 
 open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant 
 as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful 
 vision and I myself are floating — she upon a fairy 
 pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker. Both 
 of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within 
 the domain of our common country, within that 
 ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of 
 ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a hunt- 
 ress through winter and summer, from the rising to 
 the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral 
 beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon 
 the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved ! 
 And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers : 
 young women how lovely, young men how noble. 
 
156 Best English Essays 
 
 that were dancing together, and slowly drifting 
 towards 11s amidst music and incense, amidst blos- 
 soms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from 
 vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes 
 of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears 
 us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears 
 beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, 
 as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the 
 carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — 
 all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, 
 meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin to our 
 friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? 
 Was our shadow the shadow of death? I looked 
 over the bow for an answer, and, behold! the pin- 
 nace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers 
 were found no more; the glory of the vintage was 
 dust; and the forests with their beauty were left 
 without a witness upon the seas. '' But where," 
 and I turned to our crew — " where are the lovely 
 women that danced beneath the awning of flowers 
 and clustering corymbi? Whither have fled the 
 noble young men that danced with them? " An- 
 swer there was none. But suddenly the man at the 
 mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, 
 cried out, '' Sail on the weather beam ! Down she 
 comes upon us : in seventy seconds she also will 
 founder." 
 
 II 
 
 I looked to the weather side, and the summer had 
 departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with 
 gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, 
 which grouped themselves into arches and long 
 cathedral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery 
 
De Quincey 157 
 
 pace of a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a frigate 
 right athwart our course. '' Are they mad ? " some 
 voice exclaimed from our deck. " Do they woo 
 their ruin ? " But in a moment, as she was close 
 upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local 
 vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off 
 she forged without a shock. As she ran past us, 
 high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the 
 pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice to 
 receive her, towering surges of foam ran after her, 
 the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away 
 she was borne into desert spaces of the sea : whilst 
 still by sight I followed her, as she ran before the 
 howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by 
 maddening billows ; still I saw her, as at the mo- 
 ment when she ran past us, standing amongst the 
 shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before 
 the wind. There she stood, with hair dishevelled, 
 one hand clutched amongst the tackling — rising, 
 sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying; there for 
 leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals 
 one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the 
 pursuing waves and the raving of the storm ; until 
 at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter 
 and mockery, all was hidden for ever in driving 
 showers; and afterwards, but when I know not, 
 nor how. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable dis- 
 tance, wailing over the dead that die before the 
 dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to 
 some familiar shore. The morning twilight even 
 then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations 
 
158 Best English Essays 
 
 which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a gar- 
 land of white roses about her head for some great 
 festival, running along the solitary strand in ex- 
 tremity of haste. Her running was the running of 
 panic ; and often she looked back as to some dread- 
 ful enemy in the rear. But, when I leaped ashore, 
 and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in 
 front, alas ! from me she fled as from another peril, 
 and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay 
 ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a promon- 
 tory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant 
 I also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacher- 
 ous sands gathering above her head. Already her 
 person was buried ; only the fair young head and 
 the diadem of white roses around it were still visible 
 to the pitying heavens ; and, last of all, was visible 
 one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight 
 this fair young head, as it was sinking down to 
 darkness — saw this marble arm, as it rose above 
 her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, falter- 
 ing, rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving 
 hand stretched out from the clouds — saw this mar- 
 ble arm uttering her dying hope, and then utter- 
 ing her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the 
 arm — these all had sunk ; at last over these also 
 the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial 
 of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my 
 own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the 
 desert seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a 
 requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over 
 her blighted dawn. 
 
 I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have 
 ever given to the memory of those that died before 
 the dawn, and by the treachery of earth, our mother. 
 
De Quincey 159 
 
 But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed 
 by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from 
 some great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along 
 the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the moun- 
 tains. *' Hush ! " I said, as I bent my ear earth- 
 wards to listen — *' hush ! — this either is the very 
 anarchy of strife, or else " — and then I listened 
 more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my 
 head — " or else, oh, heavens ! it is victory that is 
 final, victory that swallows up all strife." 
 
 IV 
 
 Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land 
 and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon 
 a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned with 
 laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brood- 
 ing over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds 
 that were weaving restlessly about ourselves as a 
 centre : we heard them, but saw them not. Tidings 
 had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that 
 measured itself against centuries ; too full of pathos 
 they were, too full of joy, to utter themselves by 
 other language than by tears, by restless anthems, 
 and " Te Deums " reverberated from the choirs and 
 orchestras of earth. These tidings we that sat upon 
 the laurelled car had it for our privilege to publish 
 amongst all nations. And already, by signs audible 
 through the darkness, by snortings and tramplings, 
 our angry horses, that knew no fear of fleshly 
 weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore 
 was it that we delayed? We waited for a secret 
 word, that should bear witness to the hope of na- 
 tions as now accomplished for ever. At midnight 
 
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 the secret word arrived ; which word was — Wat- 
 erloo and Recovered Christendom! The dreadful 
 word shone by its own light; before us it went; 
 high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a 
 golden light over the paths which we traversed. 
 Every city, at the presence of the secret word, threw 
 open its gates. The rivers were conscious as we 
 . crossed. All the forests, as we ran along their mar- 
 gins, shivered in homage to the secret word. And 
 the darkness comprehended it. 
 
 Two hours after midnight we approached a 
 mighty Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, 
 were closed. But, when the dreadful word that 
 rode before us reached them with its golden light, 
 silently they moved back upon their hinges ; and at 
 a flying gallop our equipage entered the grand aisle 
 of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at 
 every altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the 
 right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying 
 or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the 
 secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we 
 might have run in the cathedral, and as yet no 
 strength of morning light had reached us, when 
 before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and 
 choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, every station 
 of advantage amongst the traceries, was crested by 
 white-robed choristers that sang deliverance; that 
 wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept ; 
 but at intervals that sang together to the generations, 
 saying, 
 
 ** Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue," 
 
 and receiving answers from afar, 
 
 " Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." 
 
De Quincey i6i 
 
 And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong 
 pace was neither pause nor slackening. 
 
 Thus as we ran like torrents — thus as we swept 
 with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo of the 
 cathedral graves — suddenly we became aware of 
 a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon — 
 a city of sepulchres, built within the saintly cathe- 
 dral for the warrior dead that rested from their 
 feuds on earth. Of purple granite was the necropo- 
 lis; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple 
 stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. 
 In the second minute it trembled through many 
 changes, growing into terraces and towers of won- 
 drous altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third 
 minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we were 
 entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi rose on every 
 side, having towers and turrets that, upon the limits 
 of the central aisle, strode forward with haughty 
 intrusion, that ran back with mighty shadows into 
 answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed 
 many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of 
 battle-fields; battles from forgotten ages, battles 
 from yesterday ; battle-fields that, long since, nature 
 had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet 
 oblivion of flowers ; battle-fields that were yet angry 
 and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, 
 there did we run ; where the towers curved, there 
 did tve curve. With the flight of swallows our 
 horses swept round every angle. Like rivers in 
 flood wheeling round headlands, like hurricanes that 
 ride into the secrets of forests, faster than ever 
 light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying 
 equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior 
 instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us — 
 
i62 Best English Essays 
 
 dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept 
 in God from Creci to Trafalgar. And now had we 
 reached the last sarcophagus, now were we abreast 
 of the last bas-relief, already had we recovered the 
 arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, when 
 coming up this aisle to meet us we beheld afar off a 
 female child, that rode in a carriage as frail as 
 flowers. The mists which went before her hid the 
 fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells 
 and tropic flowers with which she played — but 
 could not hide the lovely smiles by which she ut- 
 tered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the 
 cherubim that looked down upon her from the 
 mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to face she was 
 meeting us ; face to face she rode, as if danger there 
 were none. '' Oh, baby ! " I exclaimed, " shalt thou 
 be the ransom for Waterloo? Must we, that carry 
 tidings of great joy to every people, be messengers 
 of ruin to thee ! " In horror I rose at the thought ; 
 but then also, in horror at the thought, rose one that 
 was sculptured on a bas-relief — a Dying Trum- 
 peter. Solemnly from the field of battle he rose to 
 his feet ; and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried 
 it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips — sounding 
 once, and yet once again ; proclamation that, in thy 
 ears, oh, baby ! spoke from the battlements of death. 
 Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and 
 aboriginal silence. The choir had ceased to sing. 
 The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our 
 harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the 
 graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been 
 unlocked tmto life. By horror we, that were so full 
 of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery fore- 
 legs rising in mid-air to their everlasting gallop. 
 
De Quincey 163 
 
 were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the 
 trumpet sounded ; the seals were taken off all pulses ; 
 life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels 
 again; again the choir burst forth in sunny gran- 
 deur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness ; 
 again the thunderings of our horses carried tempta- 
 tion into the graves. One cry burst from our lips, 
 as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it 
 empty before us. — " Whither has the infant fled ? 
 — is the young child caught up to God ? " Lo ! afar 
 off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to 
 the clouds ; and on a level with their summits, at 
 height insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest 
 alabaster. On its eastern face was trembling a 
 crimson glory. A glory was it from the reddening 
 dawn that now streamed through the windows? 
 Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs 
 painted on the windows? Was it from the bloody 
 bas-reliefs of earth? There, suddenly, within that 
 crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's 
 head, and then of a woman's figure. The child it 
 was — grown up to woman's height. CHnging to 
 the horns of the altar, voiceless she stood — sinking, 
 rising, raving, despairing ; and behind the volume of 
 incense that, night and day, streamed upwards from 
 the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the 
 shadow of that dreadful being who should have bap- 
 tised her with the baptism of death. But by her side 
 was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with 
 wings ; that wept and pleaded for her; that prayed 
 when she could not; that fought with Heaven by 
 tears for her deliverance ; which also, as he raised his 
 immortal countenance from his wings, I saw, by the 
 glory in his eye, that from Heaven he had won at last. 
 
164 Best English Essays 
 
 Then was completed the passion of the mighty 
 fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet 
 had but muttered at intervals — gleaming amongst 
 clouds and surges of incense — threw up, as from 
 fountains unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering 
 music. Choir and anti-choir were filling fast with 
 unknown voices. Thou also. Dying Trumpeter, 
 with thy love that was victorious, and thy anguish 
 that was finishing, didst enter the tumult ; trumpet 
 and echo — farewell love, and farewell anguish — 
 rang through the dreadful sanctus. Oh, darkness 
 of the grave ! that from the crimson altar and from 
 the fiery font wert visited and searched by the efful- 
 gence in the angel's eye — were these indeed thy 
 children? Pomps of life, that, from the burials of 
 centuries, rose again to the voice of perfect joy, did 
 ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death? Lo! 
 as I looked back for seventy leagues through the 
 mighty cathedral, I saw the quick and the dead that 
 sang together to God, together that sang to the 
 generations of man. All the hosts of jubilation, like 
 armies that ride in pursuit, moved with one step. 
 Us, that, with laurelled heads, were passing from 
 the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment, 
 they wrapped us round with thunders greater than 
 our own. As brothers we moved together; to the 
 dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled; render- 
 ing thanks to God in the highest — that, having hid 
 His face through one generation behind thick clouds 
 of War, once again was ascending, from the Campo 
 Santo of Waterloo was ascending, in the visions 
 
De Quincey 165 
 
 of Peace; rendering thanks for thee, young girl! 
 whom having overshadowed with His ineffable 
 passion of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered 
 thy angel to turn aside His arm, and even in thee, 
 sister unknown ! shown to me for a moment only to 
 be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify His 
 goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phan- 
 toms of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of 
 the golden dawn, with the secret word riding before 
 thee, with the armies of the grave behind thee, — 
 seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing; a 
 thousand times in the worlds of sleep have seen thee 
 followed by God's angel through storms, through 
 desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands, 
 through dreams and the dreadful revelations that 
 are in dreams; only that at the last, with one sling 
 of His victorious arm. He might snatch thee back 
 from ruin, and might emblazon in thy deliverance 
 the endless resurrections of His love! 
 
 LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 
 (Suspiria de Profimdis) 
 
 OFTENTIMES at Oxford I saw Levana in my 
 dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. 
 Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to 
 have leisure for very much scholarship, you will 
 not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was 
 the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born 
 infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness, — 
 typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs 
 to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers 
 
1 66 Best English Essays 
 
 invisible which even in Pagan worlds sometimes 
 descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, 
 just as the infant tasted for the first time the at- 
 mosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the 
 ground. That might bear different interpretations. 
 But immediately, lest so grand a creature should 
 grovel there for more than one instant, either the 
 paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or 
 some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised 
 it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this 
 world, and presented its forehead to the stars, say- 
 ing, perhaps, in his heart, " Behold what is greater 
 than yourselves ! " This symbolic act. represented 
 the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, 
 who never revealed her face (except to me in 
 dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her 
 name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian 
 verb) levare, to raise aloft. 
 
 This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it 
 has arisen that some people have understood by 
 Levana the tutelary power that controls the educa- 
 tion of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at 
 his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation 
 for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to 
 suffer the real degradation attaching to the non- 
 development of his powers. She therefore watches 
 over human education. Now, the word educo, with 
 the penultimate short, was derived (by a process 
 often exemplified in the crystallisation of lan- 
 guages) from the word educo, with the penultimate 
 long. Whatsoever educes, or develops, educates. 
 By the education of Levana, therefore, is meant, — 
 not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books 
 and grammars, but by that mighty system of central 
 
De Quincey 167 
 
 forces hidden in the deep bosom of human life, 
 which by passion, by strife, by temptation, by the 
 energies of resistance, works for ever upon children, 
 — resting not day or night, any more than the 
 mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose 
 moments, like restless spokes, are glimmering for 
 ever as they revolve. 
 
 If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana 
 works, how profoundly must she reverence the 
 agencies of grief ! But you, reader, think that chil- 
 dren generally are not liable to grief such as mine. 
 There are two senses in the word generally, — the 
 sense of Euclid, where it means universally (or in 
 the whole extent of the genus), and a foolish sense 
 of this world, where it means usually. Now, I am 
 far from saying that children universally are capable 
 of grief like mine. But there are more than you 
 ever heard of who die of grief in this island of ours. 
 I will tell you a common case. The rules of Eton 
 require that a boy on the foundation should be there 
 twelve years : he is superannuated at eighteen ; con- 
 sequently he must come at six. Children torn away 
 from mothers and sisters at that age not unfre- 
 quently die. I speak of what I know. The com- 
 plaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; but 
 that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has 
 killed more than ever have been counted amongst 
 its martyrs. 
 
 Therefore it is that Levana often communes with 
 the powers that shake man's heart; therefore it is 
 that she dotes upon grief. '' These ladies," said I 
 softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom 
 Levana was conversing, " these are the Sorrows ; 
 and they are three in number: as the Graces are 
 
1 68 Best English Essays 
 
 three, who dress man's Ufe with beauty ; the Parcce 
 are three, who weave the dark arras of man's Hfe 
 in their mysterious loom always with colours sad in 
 part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and 
 black ; the Furies are three, who visit with retribu- 
 tions called from the other side of the grave offences 
 that walk upon this ; and once even the Muses were 
 but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, 
 to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. 
 These are the Sorrows ; all three of whom I know." 
 The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said, 
 " one of whom I know, and the others too surely I 
 shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, I 
 saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of 
 my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful 
 Sisters. 
 
 These Sisters — by what name shall we call them ? 
 If I say simply *' The Sorrows," there will be a 
 chance of mistaking the term ; it might be under- 
 stood of individual sorrow, — separate cases of sor- 
 row, — whereas I want a term expressing the mighty 
 abstractions that incarnate themselves in all individ- 
 ual sufferings of man's heart, and I wish to have 
 these abstractions presented as impersonations, — 
 that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and 
 with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them, 
 therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrozv. 
 
 I know them thoroughly, and have walked in all 
 their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mys- 
 terious household ; and their paths are wide apart ; 
 but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw 
 often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about 
 myself. Do they talk, then ? O no ! Mighty phan- 
 toms like these disdain the infirmities of language. 
 
De Quincey 169 
 
 They may utter voices through the organs of man 
 when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst 
 themselves is no voice nor sound ; eternal silence 
 reigns in their kingdoms. They spoke not as they 
 talked with Levana ; they whispered not ; they sang 
 not ; though oftentimes methought they might have 
 sung: for I upon earth had heard their mysteries 
 oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dul- 
 cimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they 
 are, they utter their pleasure not by sounds that 
 perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in 
 heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret 
 rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and hiero- 
 glyphics written on the tablets of the brain. They 
 wheeled in mazes; / spelled the steps. They tele- 
 graphed from afar; / read the signals. They con- 
 spired together; and on the mirrors of darkness 
 my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols ; 
 mine are the words. 
 
 What is it the Sisters are? What is it that they 
 do ? Let me describe their form and their presence, 
 if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline, or 
 presence it were that for ever advanced to the front 
 or for ever receded amongst shades. 
 
 The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 
 marum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night 
 and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. 
 She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of 
 lamentation, — Rachel weeping for her children, 
 and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood 
 in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword 
 swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet 
 were stiffened for ever which, heard at times as 
 they trotted along floors overhead, woke pulses of 
 
lyo Best English Essays 
 
 love in household hearts that were not unmarked in 
 heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and 
 sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, 
 oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a 
 diadem round her head. And I knew by childish 
 memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, 
 when she heard the sobbing of litanies, or the thun- 
 dering of organs, and when she beheld the muster- 
 ing of summer clouds. This Sister, the elder, it is, 
 that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, 
 which open every cottage and every palace. She, 
 to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the bedside 
 of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly 
 I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, 
 with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations 
 of play and village mirth, to travel all day long on 
 dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did 
 God send her a great reward. In the spring time 
 of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was bud- 
 ding. He recalled her to himself. But her bhnd 
 father mourns for ever over her: still he dreams at 
 midnight that the little guiding hand is locked 
 within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness 
 that is now within a second and a deeper darkness. 
 This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting all 
 this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the 
 Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less 
 pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and 
 left behind her a darkness not less profound. By 
 the power of the keys it is that Our Lady of Tears 
 glides, a ghostly intruder, into the chambers of 
 sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, 
 from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. 
 And her, because she is the first-born of her house, 
 
De Quincey 171 
 
 and has the widest empire, let us honour with the 
 title of " Madonna." 
 
 The second Sister is called Mater Suspirioriim, 
 Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, 
 nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no 
 diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, 
 would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could 
 read their story ; they would be found filled with 
 perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten 
 delirium. But she raises not her eyes ; her head, on 
 which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for ever, for 
 ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She 
 groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. 
 Her sister. Madonna, is oftentimes stormy and 
 frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and 
 demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of 
 Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of 
 rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. 
 Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. 
 Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper 
 she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter 
 she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are 
 desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when 
 the sun has gone down to his rest. This Sister is 
 the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bonds- 
 man to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys ; of the 
 Enghsh criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from 
 the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England ; 
 of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes for ever 
 upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the 
 altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, 
 on which altar no oblations can now be availing, 
 whether towards pardon that he might implore, or 
 towards reparation that he might attempt. Every 
 
172 Best English Essays 
 
 slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun 
 with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to 
 the earth, our general mother, but for him a step- 
 mother, as he points with the other hand to the 
 Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed 
 and sequestered; every woman sitting in dark- 
 ness, without love to shelter her head, or hope to 
 illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born in- 
 stincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affec- 
 tions, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, 
 having been stifled by social necessities, now burn 
 sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the 
 ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning 
 May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will 
 judge ; every captive in every dungeon ; all that are 
 betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by tra- 
 ditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace: 
 all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also 
 carries a key ; but she needs it little. For her king- 
 dom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the 
 houseless vagrants of every clime. Yet in the very 
 highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own ; 
 and even in glorious England there are some that, 
 to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the 
 reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark 
 upon their foreheads. 
 
 But the third Sister, who is also the young- 
 est ! Hush! whisper whilst we talk of her! 
 
 Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should 
 live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. 
 Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost 
 beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and 
 her eyes, rising so high, might be hidden by dis- 
 tance. But, being what they are, they cannot be 
 
De Quincey 173 
 
 hidden : through the treble veil of crape which she 
 wears the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests 
 not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or 
 noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be 
 read from the very ground. She is the defier of 
 God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the 
 suggestress of suicides. Deep He the roots of her 
 power ; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For 
 she can approach only those in whom a profound 
 nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; 
 in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks 
 under conspiracies of tempest from without and 
 tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncer- 
 tain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. 
 Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. 
 But this youngest Sister moves with incalculable 
 motions, bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She 
 carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst 
 men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted 
 to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum, 
 — our Lady of Darkness. 
 
 These were the Semnai Theai or Sublime God- 
 desses, these were the Eiimeitides or Gracious Ladies 
 (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation), 
 of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke 
 by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she 
 beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs; and what she 
 spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in 
 dreams) no man reads, was this : — 
 
 " Lo ! here is he whom in childhood I dedicated 
 to my altars. This is he that once I made my dar- 
 ling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled ; and from 
 heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. 
 Through me did he become idolatrous ; and through 
 
174 ^sst English Essays 
 
 me it was, by languishing desires, that he wor- 
 shipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. 
 Holy was the grave to him ; lovely was its darkness ; 
 saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I 
 have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs ! 
 Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him 
 for our dreadful sister. And thou," — turning to 
 the Mater Tenebrarum, she said, — " wicked sister, 
 that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from 
 hen See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. 
 Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near 
 him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope; 
 wither the relenting of love ; scorch the fountains of 
 tears ; curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall 
 he be accomplished in the furnace ; so shall he see 
 the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are 
 abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So 
 shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, 
 fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. 
 And so shall our commission be accompHshed which 
 from God we had, — to plague his heart until we 
 had unfolded the capacities of his spirit." 
 
VI 
 
 CARLYLE 
 
CARLYLE : 
 
 THE LATTER-DAY PROPHET 
 
 WE have observed the immense influence 
 of the conversational, familiar-letter 
 style on modern essay writing; but 
 while it has given us some of our most delight- 
 ful literature, it is by no means the only influ- 
 ence we must reckon with. The influence of 
 the pulpit has been enormous and important. In 
 Swift we saw one form of preaching, — a preach- 
 ing almost wholly destructive and devoid of per- 
 sonal inspiration. In Carlyle we find an original 
 " prophet," after the manner of the prophets of 
 the Old Testament. As he is an original prophet 
 he is of course debarred from a church that is 
 trammelled by the conventions of time; and 
 among a people whose mission in the world is 
 not religious in the sense that the mission of the 
 old Hebrews was religious, our' prophet need not 
 be a distinctively religious man. He is a true 
 prophet none the less. Such was Carlyle. 
 
 Like other prophets, he must compel men. He 
 does not win them by gentle persuasion. Rather 
 he threatens. He forces attention by his singu- 
 larity. He assumes authority, and as the mouth- 
 
 12 
 
178 Best English Essays 
 
 piece of a Greater than himself, he speaks like 
 a sort of tyrant, in enigmas which men must un- 
 ravel for themselves, and which they do unravel 
 in fear and trembling. 
 
 For ordinary purposes, Carlyle's style is as bad 
 as it can be. His only excuse for capitalizing 
 many of the words he does is his desire to make 
 words seem to mean more than ordinarily they 
 do mean. His words seem to come with the 
 utmost difficulty, and indeed we read that writing 
 with him was a constant pain. He appears con- 
 stantly to violate his own theory as expressed 
 in " Characteristics " that Art should be uncon- 
 scious, for in his writing he is often too painfully 
 conscious. 
 
 We can understand Carlyle's style only when 
 we consider its object. He was a preacher, and it 
 was his mission to compel the attention of men 
 to thoughts and duties he knew they would be 
 very loath to give heed to. Oddity, mystery, ab- 
 ruptness, a dictatorial tone under such conditions 
 are not only justifiable, but necessary. They con- 
 stitute the best art. So long as they are not a 
 mere affectation, but are the sign and symbol of 
 a great utterance and a high duty, they are but the 
 means of gaining the attention- without which the 
 whole communication of thought would have 
 proved fruitless. 
 
 Carlyle's gospel found expression first of all 
 in his " Sartor Resartus," which professed to be 
 a "philosophy of clothes." This book was written 
 
Carlyle 179 
 
 in his most difficult style. In it his peculiar 
 modes of expression reach their extreme, and it 
 is not surprising that he found difficulty in get- 
 ting a publisher. He went to London in quest of 
 one, and not succeeding, he wrote his essay 
 " Characteristics," which was accepted at once 
 by " Fraser's Magazine," and published without 
 alteration, becoming immediately popular, while 
 " Sartor Resartus " waited long for its publisher 
 and still longer for its audience. In '' Charac- 
 teristics " Carlyle had expressed in simple and 
 natural form, with restraint and little conscious- 
 ness of effort, the heart of the philosophy which 
 is to be found in " Sartor Resartus." If we 
 have time for a book, and a book to be read line 
 by line and accepted as a gospel, " Sartor Re- 
 sartus" will well repay our effort to master it. 
 But if, like the average reader, we have time for 
 but a single essay, the comparatively slight un- 
 conventionality of " Characteristics " will afford 
 all the stimulus that we shall need to rouse us 
 to the full importance of the message the author 
 has to convey. As a model of style, too, it is far 
 safer for study and imitation than any other 
 great thing Carlyle ever wrote. 
 
i8o Best English Essays 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS ^ 
 
 [1831] 
 
 THE healthy know not of their health, but only 
 the sick: this is the Physician's Aphorism; 
 and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. 
 We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, 
 political, poetical, than in merely corporeal thera- 
 peutics ; that wherever, or in what shape soever, 
 powers of the sort which can be named vital are at 
 work, herein lies the test of their working right or 
 working wrong. 
 
 In the Body, for example, as all doctors are 
 agreed, the first condition of complete health is, that 
 each organ perform its function unconsciously, un- 
 heeded; let but any organ announce its separate 
 existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure, 
 not for pain, then already has one of those un- 
 fortunate " false centres of sensibility " established 
 itself, already is derangement there. The perfection 
 of bodily well-being is, that the collective bodily 
 activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover, 
 not in themselves, but in the action they accomplish. 
 If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his system is in high 
 
 1 Edinburgh Review, No. ioS. — i. An Essay on the Origin 
 and Prospects of Man. By Thomas Hope. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 
 1831. 
 
 2. PhilosopJiische Vorlestingen, insbesondere iiber Philosophie der 
 Sprache nnd des Wortes. Geschrieben und vorgetragen zu Dresden 
 im December^ 1828, und in den ersten Tagen des yanuars, 1829 
 (Philosophical Lectures, especially on the Philosophy of Lan- 
 guage and the Gift of Speech. Written and delivered at Dresden 
 in December, 1828, and the early days of January, 1829). By 
 Friedrich von Schlegel. 8vo. Vienna, 1S30. 
 
Carlyle i8i 
 
 order, Dietetic Philosophy may indeed take credit; 
 but the true Peptician was that Countryman who 
 answered that, '' for his part, he had no system." 
 (In fact, unity, agreement is always silent, or soft- 
 voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims it- 
 self.) So long as the several elements of Life, all 
 fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like 
 harmonious tuned strings, it is a melody and unison ; 
 Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in 
 celestial music and diapason, — which also, like that 
 other music of the spheres, even because it is pe- 
 rennial and complete, without interruption and with- 
 out imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. 
 Thus too, in some languages, is the state of health 
 well denoted by a term expressing unity ; when we 
 feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that we are 
 whole. 
 
 Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently 
 blessed with that felicity of *' having no system " ; 
 nevertheless, most of us, looking back on young 
 years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial trans- 
 lucency and elasticity and perfect freedom ; the 
 body had not yet become the prison-house of the 
 soul, but was its vehicle and implement, like a crea- 
 ture of the thought, and altogether pliant to its 
 bidding. We knew not that we had limbs, we only 
 lifted, hurled and leapt ; through eye and ear, and 
 all avenues of sense, came clear unimpeded tidings 
 from without, and from within issued clear victo- 
 rious force; we stood as in the centre of Nature, 
 giving and receiving, in harmony with it all ; unlike 
 Virgil's Husbandmen, " too happy because we did 
 not know our blessedness." In those days, health 
 and sickness were foreign traditions that did not 
 
1 82 Best English Essays 
 
 concern us; our whole being was as yet One, the 
 whole man like an incorporated Will. Such, were 
 Rest or ever-successful Labour the human lot, might 
 our Hfe continue to be: a pure, perpetual, unre- 
 garded music; a beam of perfect white light, 
 rendering all things visible, but itself unseen, even 
 because it was of that perfect whiteness, and no 
 irregular obstruction had yet broken it into colours. 
 The beginning of Inquiry is Disease : all Science, if 
 we consider well, as it must have originated in the 
 feeling of something being wrong, so it is and con- 
 tinues to be but Division, Dismemberment, and 
 partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as was of old 
 written, the Tree of Knowledge springs from a root 
 of evil, and bears fruits of good and evil. Had 
 Adam remained in Paradise, there had been no 
 Anatomy and no Metaphysics. 
 
 But, alas, as the Philosopher declares, *' Life itself 
 is a disease ; a working incited by suffering " ; 
 action from passion ! The memory of that first state 
 of Freedom and paradisaic Unconsciousness has 
 faded away into an ideal poetic dream. We stand 
 here too conscious of many things : with Knowl- 
 edge, the symptom of Derangement, we must even 
 do our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few 
 instances, and at rare intervals, the diapason of a 
 heavenly melody; oftenest the fierce jar of disrup- 
 tions and convulsions, which, do what we will, there 
 is no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still the 
 wish of Nature on our behalf; in all vital action, 
 her manifest purpose and effort is, that we should 
 be unconscious of it, and, like the peptic Country- 
 man, never know that we " have a system." For, 
 indeed, vital action everywhere is emphatically a 
 
Carlyle 1 83 
 
 means, not an end ; Life is not given us for the mere 
 sake of Living, but always with an ulterior external 
 Aim : neither is it on the process, on the means, but 
 rather on the result, that Nature, in any of her 
 doings, is wont to intrust us with insight and voli- 
 tion. Boundless as is the domain of man, it is but 
 a small fractional proportion of it that he rules with 
 Consciousness and by Forethought: what he can 
 contrive, nay what he can altogether know and com- 
 prehend, is essentially the mechanical, small; the 
 great is ever, in one sense or other, the vital; it is 
 essentially the mysterious, and only the surface of it 
 can be understood. But Nature, it might seem, 
 strives, like a kind mother, to hide from us even this, 
 that she is a mystery : she will have us rest on her 
 beautiful and awful bosom as if it were our secure 
 home; on the bottomless boundless Deep, whereon 
 all human things fearfully and wonderfully swim, 
 she will have us walk and build, as if the film which 
 supported us there (which any scratch of a bare 
 bodkin will rend asunder, any sputter of a pistol- 
 shot instantaneously burn up) were no film, but a 
 solid rock-foundation. For ever in the neighbour- 
 hood of an inevitable Death, man can forget that he 
 is born to die ; of his Life, which, strictly meditated, 
 contains in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can 
 conceive lightly, as of a simple implement where- 
 with to do day-labour and earn wages. So cunningly 
 does Nature, the mother of all highest Art, which 
 only apes her from afar, " body forth the Finite 
 from the Infinite " ; and guide man safe on his 
 wondrous path, not more by endowing him with 
 vision, than, at the right place, with blindness! 
 Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work, 
 
184 Best English Essays 
 
 Life, lies a basis of Darkness, which she benig- 
 nantly conceals; in Life too, the roots and inward 
 circulations which stretch down fearfully to the 
 regions of Death and Night, shall not hint of their 
 existence, and only the fair stem with its leaves and 
 flowers, shone on by the fair sun, shall disclose itself, 
 and joyfully grow. 
 
 However, without venturing into the abstruse, or 
 too eagerly asking Why and How, in things where 
 our answer must needs prove, in great part, an echo 
 of the question, let us be content to remark farther, 
 in the merely historical way, how that Aphorism of 
 the bodily Physician holds good in quite other de- 
 partments. Of the Soul, with her activities, we shall 
 find it no less true than of the Body : nay, cry the 
 Spiritualists, is not that very division of the unity, 
 Man, into a dualism of Soul and Body, itself the 
 symptom of disease; as, perhaps, your frightful 
 theory of Materialism, of his being but a Body, and 
 therefore, at least, on • more a unity, may be the 
 paroxysm which was critical, and the beginning of 
 cure! But omitting this, we observe, with confi- 
 dence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it 
 as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, 
 is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; 
 that here as before the sign of health is Uncon- 
 sciousness. In our inward, as in our outward world, 
 what is mechanical lies open to us : not what is 
 dynamical and has vitality. Of our Thinking, we 
 might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we 
 shape into articulate Thoughts ; — underneath the 
 region of argument and conscious discourse, lies 
 the region of meditation ; here, in its quiet mys- 
 terious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; 
 
Carlyle 185 
 
 here, if aught is to be created, and not merely man- 
 ufactured and communicated, must the work go on. 
 Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial ; Creation is 
 great, and cannot be understood. Thus if the De- 
 bater and Demonstrator, whom we may rank as the 
 lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has done, 
 and how he did it, the Artist, whom we rank as the 
 highest, knows not ; must speak of Inspiration, and 
 in one or the other dialect, call his work the gift of 
 a divinity. 
 
 But on the whole, " genius is ever a secret to 
 itself " ; of this old truth we have, on all sides, daily 
 evidence. The Shakespeare takes no airs for writ- 
 ing " Hamlet " and the " Tempest," understands 
 not that it is anything surprising: Milton, again, is 
 more conscious of his faculty, which accordingly 
 is an inferior one. On the other hand, what cack- 
 ling and strutting must we not often hear and see, 
 when, in some shape of academical prolusion, maiden 
 speech, review article, this or the other well-fledged 
 goose has produced its goose-egg, of quite measur- 
 able value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and 
 wonders why all mortals do not wonder ! 
 
 Foolish enough, too, was the College Tutor's 
 surprise at Walter Shandy : how, though unread in 
 Aristotle, he could nevertheless argue; and not 
 knowing the name of any dialectic tool, handled 
 them all to perfection. Is it the skilfulest anatomist 
 that cuts the best figure at Sadler's Wells? or does 
 the boxer hit better for knowing that he has a 
 Hex or longiis and a flexor hrevis? But indeed, as 
 in the higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the 
 Speaker and Inquirer, the true force is? an uncon- 
 scious one. The healthy Understanding, we should 
 
1 86 Best English Essays 
 
 say, is not the Logical, argumentative, but the In- 
 tuitive ; for the end of Understanding is not to prove 
 and find reasons, but to know and beUeve. Of logic, 
 and its limits, and uses and abuses, there were much 
 to be said and examined ; one fact, however, which 
 chiefly concerns us here, has long been familiar: 
 that the man of logic and the man of insight; the 
 Reasoner and the Discoverer, or even Knower, are 
 quite separable, — indeed, for most part, quite sep- 
 arate characters. In practical matters, for example, 
 has it not become almost proverbial that the man of 
 logic cannot prosper? This is he whom business- 
 people call Systematic and Theoriser and Word- 
 monger; his vital intellectual force lies dormant or 
 extinct, his whole force is mechanical, conscious: 
 of such a one it is foreseen that, when once con- 
 fronted with the infinite complexities of the real 
 world, his little compact theorem of the world will 
 be found wanting ; that unless he can throw it over- 
 board and become a new creature, he will necessarily 
 founder. Nay, in mere Speculation itself, the most 
 ineffectual of all characters, generally speaking, is 
 your dialectic man-at-arms ; were he armed cap-a-pie 
 in syllogistic mail of proof, and perfect master of 
 logic-fence, how little does it avail him! Consider 
 the old Schoolmen, and their pilgrimage towards 
 Truth: the faithfulest endeavour, incessant unwea- 
 ried motion, often great natural vigour; only no 
 progress : nothing but antic feats of one limb poised 
 against the other ; there they balanced, somersetted, 
 and made postures; at best gyrated swiftly, with 
 some pleasure, Hke Spinning Dervishes, and ended 
 where they began. So is it, so will it always be, 
 with all System-makers and builders of logical card- 
 
Carlyle 187 
 
 castles; of which class a certain remnant must, in 
 every age, as they do in our own, survive and build. 
 Logic is good, but it is not the best. The Irref- 
 ragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his 
 corollaries, dilemmas and other cunning logical dia- 
 grams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful 
 horoscope, and speak reasonable things ; neverthe- 
 less your stolen jewel, which you wanted him to find 
 you, is not forthcoming. Often by some winged 
 word, winged as the thunderbolt is, of a Luther, a 
 Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see the difficulty split 
 asunder, and its secret laid bare; while the Irref- 
 ragable, with all his logical tools, hews at it, and 
 hovers round it, and finds it on all hands too hard 
 for him. 
 
 Again, in the difference between Oratory and 
 Rhetoric, as indeed everywhere in that superiority 
 of what is called the Natural over the Artificial, we 
 find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades 
 and carries all with him, he knows not how; the 
 Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have per- 
 suaded and carried all with him : the one is in a 
 state of healthy unconsciousness, as if he *' had no 
 system " ; the other, in virtue of regimen and die- 
 tetic punctuality, feels at best that " his system is in 
 high order." So stands it, in short, with all the 
 forms of Intellect, whether as directed to the finding 
 of truth, or to the fit imparting thereof ; to Poetry, 
 to Eloquence, to depth of Insight, which is the basis 
 of both these ; always the characteristic of right 
 performance is a certain spontaneity, an uncon- 
 sciousness ; " the healthy know not of their health, 
 but only the sick." So that the old precept of the 
 critic, as crabbed as it looked to his ambitious dis- 
 
1 88 Best English Essays 
 
 ciple, might contain in it a most fundamental truth, 
 applicable to us all, and in much else than Liter- 
 ature: ''Whenever you have written any sentence 
 that looks particularly excellent, be sure to blot it 
 out." In like manner, under milder phraseology, 
 and with a meaning purposely much wider, a living 
 Thinker has taught us : " Of the Wrong we are 
 always conscious, of the Right never." 
 
 But if such is the law with regard to Speculation 
 and the Intellectual power of man, much more is it 
 with regard to Conduct, and the power, manifested 
 chiefly therein, which we name Moral. '' Let not 
 thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth " : 
 whisper not to thy own heart. How worthy is this 
 action ! — for then it is already becoming worthless. 
 The good man is he who zuorks continually in well- 
 doing; to whom well-doing is as his natural exist- 
 ence, awakening no astonishment, requiring no 
 commentary; but there, like a thing of course, and 
 as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on 
 the other hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease, 
 be it or be it not the sign of cure. An unhealthy 
 Virtue is one that consumes itself to leanness in 
 repenting and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates 
 itself into dropsical boastfulness and vainglory: 
 either way, there is a self-seeking; an unprofitable 
 looking behind us to measure the way we have 
 made : whereas the sole concern is to walk continu- 
 ally forward, and make more way. If in any sphere 
 of man's Hfe, then in the Moral sphere, as the inmost 
 and most vital of all, it is good that there be whole- 
 ness ; that there be unconsciousness, which is the 
 evidence of this. Let the free, reasonable Will, 
 which dwells in us, as in our Holy of Holies, be 
 
Carlyle 189 
 
 indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its 
 right and its effort : the perfect obedience will be the 
 silent one. Such perhaps were the sense of that 
 maxim, enunciating, as is usual, but the half of 
 a truth : To say that we have a clear conscience, is 
 to utter a solecism ; had we never sinned, we should 
 have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, 
 neither would victory be celebrated by songs of 
 triumph. 
 
 This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible state 
 of being ; yet ever the goal towards which our actual 
 state of being strives ; which it is the more perfect 
 the nearer it can approach. Nor, in our actual 
 world, where Labour must often prove ineffectual, 
 and thus in all senses Light alternate with Darkness, 
 and the nature of an ideal Morality be much modi- 
 fied, is the case, thus far, materially different. It is 
 a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speak- 
 ing, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a 
 little stock to cultivate acquaintance with. Above 
 all, the public acknowledgment of such acquaint- 
 ance, indicating that it has reached quite an intimate 
 footing, bodes ill. Already, to the popular judg- 
 ment, he who talks much about Virtue in the ab- 
 stract, begins to be suspect ; it is shrewdly guessed 
 that where there is great preaching, there will be 
 little almsgiving. Or again, on a wider scale, we 
 can remark that ages of Heroism are not ages of 
 Moral Philosophy; Virtue, when it can be philoso- 
 phised of, has become aware of itself, is sickly and 
 beginning to decline. A spontaneous habitual all- 
 pervading spirit of Chivalrous Valour shrinks to- 
 gether, and perks itself up into shrivelled Points of 
 Honour; humane Courtesy and Nobleness of mind 
 
190 Best English Essays 
 
 dwindle into punctilious Politeness, '* avoiding 
 meats " ; '* paying tithe of mint and anise, neglect- 
 ing the weightier matters of the law." Goodness, 
 which was a rule to itself, must now appeal to Pre- 
 cept, and seek strength from Sanctions ; the Free- 
 will no longer reigns unquestioned and by divine 
 right, but like a mere earthly sovereign, by expe- 
 diency, by Rewards and Punishments: or rather, 
 let us say, the Freewill, so far as may be, has abdi- 
 cated and withdrawn into the dark, and a spectral 
 nightmare of a necessity usurps its throne ; for now 
 that mysterious Self-impulse of the whole man, 
 heaven-inspired, and in all senses partaking of the 
 Infinite, being captiously questioned in a finite dia- 
 lect, and answering, as it needs must, by silence, — 
 is conceived as non-extant, and only the outward 
 Mechanism of it remains acknowledged: of VoH- 
 tion, except as the synonym of Desire, we hear 
 nothing ; of ** Motives," without any Mover, more 
 than enough. 
 
 So too, when the generous Affections have be- 
 come wellnigh paralytic, we have the reign of Sen- 
 timentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at 
 any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high 
 feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, 
 love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness and all manner 
 of godlike magnanimity, — are everywhere insisted 
 on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing, 
 in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim 
 " Benevolence " to all the four winds, and have 
 Truth engraved on their watch-seals : unhappily 
 with little or no effect. Were the limbs in right 
 walking order, why so much demonstrating of 
 motion ? The barrenest of all mortals is the Senti- 
 
Carlyle 191 
 
 mentalist. Granting even that he were sincere, and 
 did not wilfully deceive us, or without first deceiv- 
 ing himself, what good is in him? Does he not lie 
 there as a perpetual lesson of despair, and type of 
 bedrid valetudinarian impotence? His is emphat- 
 ically a Virtue that has become, through every fibre, 
 conscious of itself; it is all sick, and feels as if 
 it were made of glass, and durst not touch or be 
 touched; in the shape of work, it can do nothing; 
 at the utmost, by incessant nursing and caudling, 
 keep itself alive. As the last stage of all, when 
 Virtue, properly so called, has ceased to be practised, 
 and become extinct, and a mere remembrance, we 
 have the era of Sophists, descanting of its existence, 
 proving it, denying it, mechanically " accounting " 
 for it; — as dissectors and demonstrators cannot 
 operate till once the body be dead. 
 
 Thus is true Moral genius, like true Intellectual, 
 which indeed is but a lower phasis thereof, " ever a 
 secret to itself." The healthy moral nature loves 
 Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it : 
 the unhealthy makes love to it, and would fain get 
 to live in it; or, finding such courtship fruitless, 
 turns round, and not without contempt abandons it. 
 These curious relations of the Voluntary and Con- 
 scious to the Involuntary and Unconscious, and the 
 small proportion which, in all departments of our 
 life, the former bears to the latter, — might lead 
 us into deep questions of Psychology and Physi- 
 ology : such, however, belong not to our present 
 object. Enough, if the fact itself become apparent, 
 that Nature so meant it with us; that in this wise 
 we are made. We m.ay now say, that view man's 
 individual Existence under what aspect we will, 
 
192 Best English Essays 
 
 under the highest spiritual, as under the merely- 
 animal aspect, everywhere the grand vital energy, 
 while in its sound state, is an unseen unconscious 
 one ; or, in the words of our old Aphorism, " the 
 healthy know not of their health, but only the sick." 
 
 To understand man, however, we must look be- 
 yond the individual man and his actions or interests, 
 and view him in combination with his fellows. It 
 is in Society that man first feels what he is ; first 
 becomes what he can be. In Society an altogether 
 new set of spiritual activities are evolved in him, 
 and the old immeasurably quickened and strength- 
 ened. Society is the genial element wherein his 
 nature first lives and grows ; the solitary man were 
 but a small portion of himself, and must continue 
 for ever folded in, stimted and only half alive. 
 *' Already," says a deep Thinker, with more mean- 
 ing than will disclose itself at once, *' my opinion, 
 my conviction, gains infinitely in strength and sure- 
 ness, the moment a second mind has adopted it." 
 Such, even in its simplest form, is association ; so 
 wondrous the communion of soul with soul as di- 
 rected to the mere act of Knowing ! In other higher 
 acts, the wonder is still more manifest ; as in that 
 portion of our being which we name the Moral : 
 for properly, indeed, all communion is of a moral 
 sort, whereof such intellectual communion (in the 
 act of knowing) is itself an example. But with 
 regard to Morals strictly so called, it is in Society, 
 we might almost say, that Morality begins ; here at 
 least it takes an altogether new form, and on every 
 side, as in living growth, expands itself. The 
 Duties of Man to himself, to what is Highest in 
 
Carlyle 1 93 
 
 himself, make but the First Table of the Law: to 
 the First Table is now superadded a Second, with the 
 Duties of Man to his Neighbour; whereby also 
 the significance of the First now assumes its true 
 importance. Man has joined himself with man; 
 soul acts and reacts on soul; a mystic miraculous 
 unfathomable Union establishes itself; Life, in all 
 its elements, has become intensated, consecrated. 
 The lightning-spark of Thought, generated, or say 
 rather heaven-kindled, in the solitary mind, awakens 
 its express likeness in another mind, in a thousand 
 other minds, and all blaze up together in combined 
 fire ; reverberated from mind to mind, fed also with 
 fresh fuel in each, it acquires incalculable new light 
 as Thought, incalculable new heat as converted into 
 Action. By and by, a common store of Thought 
 can accumulate, and be transmitted as an ever- 
 lasting possession : Literature, whether as preserved 
 in the memory of Bards, in Runes and Hieroglyphs 
 engraved on stone, or in Books of written or printed 
 paper, comes into existence, and begins to play its 
 wondrous part. Polities are formed ; the weak sub- 
 mitting to the strong ; with a willing loyalty, giving 
 obedience that he may receive guidance : or say 
 rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant sub- 
 mitting to the wise ; for so it is in all even the rudest 
 communities, man never yields himself wholly to 
 brute Force, but always to moral Greatness ; thus 
 the universal title of respect, from the Oriental 
 Sheik, from the Sachem of the Red Indians, down 
 to our English Sir, implies only that he whom we 
 mean to honour is our senior. Last, as the crown 
 and all-supporting keystone of the fabric, Religion 
 arises. The devout meditation of the isolated man, 
 
 13 
 
194 Best English Essays 
 
 which flitted through his soul, like a transient tone 
 of Love and Awe from unknown lands, acquires 
 certainty, continuance, when it is shared-in by his 
 brother men. '' Where two or three are gathered 
 together " in the name of the Highest, then first 
 does the Highest, as it is written, *' appear among 
 them to bless them " ; then first does an Altar and 
 act of united Worship open a way from Earth to 
 Heaven; whereon, were it but a simple Jacob's- 
 ladder, the heavenly Messengers will travel, with 
 glad tidings and unspeakable gifts for men. Such 
 is Society, the vital articulation of many individ- 
 uals into a new collective individual : greatly the 
 most important of man's attainments on this earth; 
 that in which, and by virtue of which, all his other 
 attainments and attempts find their arena, and have 
 their value. Considered well, Society is the stand- 
 ing wonder of our existence; a true region of the 
 Supernatural ; as it were, a second all-embracing 
 Life, wherein our first individual Life becomes 
 doubly and trebly alive, and whatever of Infinitude 
 was in us bodies itself forth, and becomes visible 
 and active. 
 
 To figure Society as endowed with life is scarcely 
 a metaphor; but rather the statement of a fact by 
 such imperfect methods as language affords. Look 
 at it closely, that mystic Union, Nature's highest 
 work with man, wherein man's volition plays an 
 indispensable yet so subordinate a part, and the 
 small Mechanical grows so mysteriously and indis- 
 solubly out of the infinite Dynamical, like Body out 
 of Spirit, — is truly enough vital, what we can call 
 vital, and bears the distinguishing character of life. 
 In the same style also, we can say that Society has 
 
Carlyle 195 
 
 its period of sickness and vigour, of youth, man- 
 hood, decrepitude, dissolution and new birth; in 
 one or other of which stages we may, in all times, 
 and all places where men inhabit, discern it ; and 
 do ourselves, in this time and place, whether as 
 cooperating or as contending, as healthy members 
 or as diseased ones, to our joy and sorrow, form 
 part of it. The question. What is the actual condi- 
 tion of Society ? has in these days unhappily become 
 important enough. No one of us is unconcerned in 
 that question ; but for the majority of thinking men 
 a true answer to it, such is the state of matters, 
 appears almost as the one thing needful. Mean- 
 while, as the true answer, that is to say, the complete 
 and fundamental answer and settlement, often as it 
 has been demanded, is nowhere forthcoming, and 
 indeed by its nature is impossible, any honest ap- 
 proximation towards such is not without value. 
 The feeblest light, or even so much as a more pre- 
 cise recognition of the darkness, which is the first 
 step to attainment of light, will be welcome. 
 
 This once understood, let it not seem idle if we 
 remark that here too our old Aphorism holds ; that 
 again in the Body Politic, as in the animal body, 
 the sign of right performance is Unconsciousness. 
 Such indeed is virtually the meaning of that phrase, 
 ** artificial state of society," as contrasted with the 
 natural state, and indicating something so inferior 
 to it. For, in all vital things, men distinguish an 
 Artificial and a Natural ; founding on some dim 
 perception or sentiment of the very truth we here 
 insist on : the artificial is the conscious, mechanical ; 
 the natural is the unconscious, dynamical. Thus, 
 as we have an artificial Poetry, and prize only the 
 
196 Best English Essays 
 
 natural ; so likewise we have an artificial Morality, 
 an artificial Wisdom, an artificial Society. The 
 artificial Society is precisely one that knows its 
 own structure, its own internal functions; not in 
 watching, not in knowing which, but in working 
 outwardly to the fulfilment of its aim, does the well- 
 being of a Society consist. Every Society, every 
 Polity, has a spiritual principle ; is the embodiment, 
 tentative and more or less complete, of an Idea: 
 all its tendencies of endeavour, specialties of custom, 
 its laws, politics and whole procedure (as the glance 
 of some Montesquieu, across innumerable super- 
 ficial entanglements, can partly decipher), are pre- 
 scribed by an Idea, and flow naturally from it, as 
 movements from the living source of motion. This 
 Idea, be it of devotion to a man or class of men, to 
 a creed, to an institution, or even, as in more ancient 
 times, to a piece of land, is ever a true Loyalty ; 
 has in it something of a religious, paramount, quite 
 infinite character; it is properly the Soul of the 
 State, its Life; mysterious as other forms of Life, 
 and Hke these working secretly, and in a depth 
 beyond that of consciousness. 
 
 Accordingly, it is not in the vigorous ages of 
 a Roman Republic that Treatises of the Common- 
 wealth are written : while the Decii are rushing with 
 devoted bodies on the enemies of Rome, what need 
 of preaching Patriotism ? The virtue of Patriotism 
 has already sunk from its pristine all-transcendent 
 condition, before it has received a name. So long 
 as the Commonwealth continues rightly athletic, 
 it cares not to dabble in anatomy. Why teach 
 obedience to the Sovereign; why so much as ad- 
 mire it, or separately recognise it, while a divine 
 
Carlyle 197 
 
 idea of Obedience perennially inspires all men? 
 Loyalty, like Patriotism, of which it is a form, was 
 not praised till it had begun to decline; the Preux 
 Chevaliers first became rightly admirable, when 
 '' dying for their king " had ceased to be a habit 
 with chevaliers. For if the mystic significance of 
 the State, let this be what it may, dwells vitally in 
 every heart, encircles every life as with a second 
 higher life, how should it stand self-questioning? 
 It must rush outward, and express itself by works. 
 Besides, if perfect, it is there as by necessity, and 
 does not excite inquiry : it is also by nature infinite, 
 has no limits ; therefore can be circumscribed by no 
 conditions and definitions ; cannot be reasoned of ; 
 except musically, or in the language of Poetry, 
 cannot yet so much as be spoken of. 
 
 In those days, Society was what we name healthy, 
 sound at heart. Not indeed without suffering 
 enough ; not without perplexities, difficulty on every 
 side : for such is the appointment of man ; his 
 highest and sole blessedness is, that he toil, and 
 know what to toil at : not in ease, but in united vic- 
 torious labour, which is at once evil and the victory 
 over evil, does his Freedom lie. Nay often, looking 
 no deeper than such superficial perplexities of the 
 early Time, historians have taught us that it was 
 all one mass of contradiction and disease; and in 
 the antique Republic or feudal Monarchy have seen 
 only the confused chaotic quarry, not the robust 
 labourer, or the stately edifice he was building of it. 
 
 If Society, in such ages, had its difficulty, it had 
 also its strength; if sorrowful masses of rubbish 
 so encumbered it, the tough sinews to hurl them 
 aside, with indomitable heart, were not wanting. 
 
198 Best English Essays 
 
 Society went along without complaint; did not 
 stop to scrutinise itself, to say, How well I perform ! 
 or, Alas, how ill! Men did not yet feel themselves 
 to be " the envy of surrounding nations " ; and were 
 enviable on that very account. Society was what 
 we can call whole, in both senses of the word. The 
 individual man was in himself a whole, or com- 
 plete union; and could combine with his fellows 
 as the living member of a greater whole. For all 
 men, through their life, were animated by one great 
 Idea; thus all efforts pointed one way, everywhere 
 there was zvholeness. Opinion and Action had not 
 yet become disunited; but the former could still 
 produce the latter, or attempt to produce it ; as the 
 stamp does its impression while the wax is not 
 hardened. Thought and the voice of thought were 
 also a unison ; thus, instead of Speculation, we had 
 Poetry; Literature, in its rude utterance, was as 
 yet a heroic Song, perhaps too a devotional Anthem. 
 Religion was everywhere; Philosophy lay hid 
 under it, peaceably included in it. Herein, as in 
 the life-centre of all, lay the true health and one- 
 ness. Only at a later era must Religion split itself 
 into Philosophies ; and thereby, the vital union of 
 Thought being lost, disunion and mutual collision 
 in all provinces of Speech and Action more and 
 more prevail. For if the Poet, or Priest, or by 
 whatever title the inspired thinker may be named, 
 is the sign of vigour and well-being ; so likewise is 
 the Logician, or uninspired thinker, the sign of 
 disease, probably of decrepitude and decay. Thus, 
 not to mention other instances, one of them much 
 nearer-hand, — so soon as Prophecy among the 
 Hebrews had ceased, then did the reign of Argu- 
 
Carlyle 199 
 
 mentation begin ; and the ancient Theocracy, in its 
 Sadduceeisms and Phariseeisms, and vain jangling 
 of sects and doctors, give token that the soul of it 
 had fled, and that the body itself, by natural dis- 
 solution, " with the old forces still at work, but 
 working in reverse order," was on the road to final 
 disappearance. 
 
 We might pursue this question into innumerable 
 other ramifications ; and everywhere, under new 
 shapes, find the same truth, which we here so im- 
 perfectly enunciate, disclosed; that throughout the 
 whole world of man, in all manifestations and per- 
 formances of his nature, outward and inward, per- 
 sonal and social, the Perfect, the Great is a mystery 
 to itself, knows not itself; whatsoever does know 
 itself is already little, and more or less imperfect. 
 Or otherwise, we may say, Unconsciousness belongs 
 to pure unmixed life; Consciousness to a diseased 
 mixture and conflict of life and death : Uncon- 
 sciousness is the sign of creation ; Consciousness, 
 at best, that of manufacture. So deep, in this exist- 
 ence of ours, is the significance of Mystery. Well 
 might the Ancients make Silence a god ; for it is 
 the element of all godhood, infinitude, or transcen- 
 dental greatness; at once the source and the ocean 
 wherein all such begins and ends. In the same 
 sense, too, have Poets sung ' Hymns to the Night " ; 
 as if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day 
 were but a small motley-coloured veil spread tran- 
 siently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did 
 but deform and hide from us its purely transparent 
 eternal deeps. So likewise have they spoken and 
 sung as if Silence were the grand epitome and com- 
 
*2oo Best English Essays 
 
 plete sum-total of all Harmony; and Death, what 
 mortals call Death, properly the beginning of Life. 
 Under such figures, since except in figures there is 
 no speaking of the Invisible, have men endeavoured 
 to express a great Truth ; — a Truth, in our Times, 
 as nearly as is perhaps possible, forgotten by the 
 most; which nevertheless continues forever true, 
 forever all-important, and will one day, under new 
 figures, be again brought home to the bosoms of all. 
 But indeed, in a far lower sense, the rudest mind 
 has still some intimation of the greatness there is 
 in Mystery. If Silence was made a god of by 
 the Ancients, he still continues a government-clerk 
 among us Moderns. To all quacks, moreover, of 
 what sort soever, the effect of Mystery is well 
 known: here and there some Cagliostro, even in 
 latter days, turns it to notable account: the block- 
 head also, who is ambitious, and has no talent, finds 
 sometimes in " the talent of silence," a kind of sue- 
 cedaneum. Or again, looking on the opposite side 
 of the matter, do we not see, in the common under- 
 standing of mankind, a certain distrust, a certain 
 contempt of what is altogether self-conscious and 
 mechanical ? As nothing that is wholly seen through 
 has other than a trivial character ; so anything pro- 
 fessing to be great, and yet wholly to see through 
 itself, is already known to be false, and a failure. 
 The evil repute your " theoretical men " stand in, 
 the acknowledged inefficiency of " paper consti- 
 tutions," and all that class of objects, are instances 
 of this. Experience often repeated, and perhaps 
 a certain instinct of something far deeper that lies 
 under such experiences, has taught men so much. 
 They know beforehand, that the loud is generally 
 
Carlyle 201 
 
 the insignificant, the empty. Whatsoever can pro- 
 claim itself from the house-tops may be fit for the 
 hawker, and for those multitudes that must needs 
 buy of him; but for any deeper use, might as 
 well continue unproclaimed. Observe too, how the 
 converse of the proposition holds; how the insig- 
 nificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and, after 
 the manner of a drum, is loud even because of its 
 emptiness. The uses of some Patent Dinner Cale- 
 factor can be bruited abroad over the whole world 
 in the course of the first winter ; those of the Print- 
 ing Press are not so well seen into for the first three 
 centuries : the passing of the Select- Vestries Bill 
 raises more noise and hopeful expectancy among 
 mankind than did the promulgation of the Christian 
 Religion. Again, and again, we say, the great, the 
 creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself ; only 
 the small, the barren and transient is otherwise. 
 
 If we now, with a practical medical view, exam- 
 ine, by this same test of Unconsciousness, the Con- 
 dition of our own Era, and of man's Life therein, 
 the diagnosis we arrive at is nowise of a flattering 
 sort. The state of Society in our days is, of all 
 possible states, the least an unconscious one: this 
 is specially the Era when all manner of Inquiries 
 into what was once the unfelt, involuntary sphere 
 of man's existence, find their place, and, as it were, 
 occupy the whole domain of thought. What, for 
 example, is all this that we hear, for the last gen- 
 eration or two, about the Improvement of the Age, 
 the Spirit of the Age, Destruction of Prejudice, 
 Progress of the Species, and the March of Intellect, 
 but an unhealthy state of self-sentience, self-survey ; 
 
ao^ Best English Essays 
 
 the precursor and prognostic of still worse health? 
 That Intellect do march, if possible at double-quick 
 time, is very desirable; nevertheless, why should 
 she turn round at every stride, and cry: See you 
 what a stride I have taken! Such a marching of 
 Intellect is distinctly of the spavined kind ; what the 
 Jockeys call " all action and no go." Or at best, if 
 we examine well, it is the marching of that gouty 
 Patient, whom his Doctors had clapt on a metal floor 
 artificially heated to the searing point, so that he was 
 obliged to march, and did march with a vengeance 
 — nowhither. Intellect did not awaken for the first 
 time yesterday; but has been under way from 
 Noah's Flood downwards : greatly her best prog- 
 ress, moreover, was in the old times, when she said 
 nothing about it. In those same " dark ages," Intel- 
 lect (metaphorically as well as literally) could in- 
 vent glass, which now she has enough ado to grind 
 into spectacles. Intellect built not only Churches, 
 but a Church, the Church, based on this firm Earth, 
 yet reaching up, and leading up, as high as Heaven ; 
 and now it is all she can do to keep its doors bolted, 
 that there be no tearing of the Surplices, no robbery 
 of the Alms-box. She built a Senate-house likewise, 
 glorious in its kind; and now it costs her a well- 
 nigh mortal effort to sweep it clear of vermin, and 
 get the roof made rain-tight. 
 
 But the truth is, with Intellect, as with most other 
 things, we are now passing from that first or boast- 
 ful stage of Self-sentience into the second or painful 
 one : out of these often-asseverated declarations that 
 " our system is in high order," we come now, by 
 natural sequence, to the melancholy conviction that 
 it is altogether the reverse. Thus, for instance, 
 
Carlyle 203 
 
 in the matter of Government, the period of the 
 ^' Invaluable Constitution " has to be followed by a 
 Reform Bill ; to laudatory De Lolmes succeed ob- 
 jurgatory Benthams. At any rate, what Treatises 
 on the Social Contract, on the Elective Franchise, 
 the Rights of Man, the Rights of Property, Codi- 
 fications, Institutions, Constitutions, have we not, 
 for long years, groaned under! Or again, with 
 a wider survey, consider those Essays on Man, 
 Thoughts on Man, Inquiries concerning Man ; not 
 to mention Evidences of the Christian Faith, 
 Theories of Poetry, Considerations on the Origin 
 of Evil, which during the last century have accumu- 
 lated on us to a frightful extent. Never since the 
 beginning of Time was there, that we hear or read 
 of, so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole 
 relations to the Universe and to our fellow-man 
 have become an Inquiry, a Doubt; nothing will 
 go on of its own accord, and do its function quietly ; 
 but all things must be probed into, the whole work- 
 ing of man's world be anatomically studied. Alas, 
 anatomically studied, that it may be medically aided ! 
 Till at length indeed, we have come to such a pass, 
 that except in this same medicine, with its artifices 
 and appliances, few can so much as imagine any 
 strength or hope to remain for us. The whole Life 
 of Society must now be carried on by drugs : doctor 
 after doctor appears with his nostrum, of Cooper- 
 ative Societies, Universal Suffrage, Cottage-and- 
 cow systems. Repression of Population, Vote by 
 Ballot. To such height has the dyspepsia of Society 
 reached; as indeed the constant grinding internal 
 pain, or from time to time the mad spasmodic throes, 
 of all Society do otherwise too mournfully indicate. 
 
204 Best English Essays 
 
 Far be it from us to attribute, as some unwise 
 persons do, the disease itself to this unhappy sen- 
 sation that there is a disease! The Encyclopedists 
 did not produce the troubles of France; but the 
 troubles of France produced the Encyclopedists, 
 and much else. The Self-consciousness is the symp- 
 tom merely ; nay, it is also the attempt towards cure. 
 We record the fact, without special censure; not 
 wondering that Society should feel itself, and in all 
 ways complain of aches and twinges, for it has 
 suffered enough. Napoleon was but a Job's-com- 
 forter, when he told his wounded Staff-officer, twice 
 unhorsed by cannon-balls, and with half his limbs 
 blown to pieces : " Vous vous ecoutez trop ! " 
 
 On the outward, as it were Physical diseases of 
 Society, it were beside our purpose to insist here. 
 These are diseases which he who runs may read; 
 and sorrow over, with or without hope. Wealth 
 has accumulated itself into masses ; and Poverty, 
 also in accumulation enough, lies impassably sep- 
 arated from it; opposed, uncommunicating, like 
 forces in positive and negative poles. The gods 
 of this lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, 
 less happy than Epicurus's gods, but as indolent, 
 as impotent; while the boundless living chaos of 
 Ignorance and Hunger welters terrific, in its dark 
 fury, under their feet. How much among us might 
 be likened to a whited sepulchre; outwardly all 
 pomp and strength ; but inwardly full of horror and 
 despair and dead-men's bones! Iron highways, 
 with their wains fire-winged, are uniting all ends of 
 the firm Land; quays and moles, with their innu- 
 merable stately fleets, tame the Ocean into our pliant 
 bearer of burdens ; Labour's thousand arms, of sinew 
 
Carlyle 205 
 
 and of metal, all-conquering everywhere, from the 
 tops of the mountain down to the depths of the mine 
 and the caverns of the sea, ply unweariedly for the 
 service of man : yet man remains unserved. He has 
 subdued this Planet, his habitation and inheritance ; 
 yet reaps no profit from the victory. 
 
 Sad to look upon : in the highest stage of civili- 
 sation, nine tenths of mankind have to struggle in 
 the lowest battle of savage or even animal man, the 
 battle against Famine. Countries are rich, pros- 
 perous in all manner of increase, beyond example: 
 but the Men of those countries are poor, needier 
 than ever of all sustenance outward and inward ; 
 of Belief, of Knowledge, of Money, of Food. The 
 rule. Sic vos non vohis, never altogether to be got 
 rid of in men's Industry, now presses with such 
 incubus weight, that Industry must shake it off, or 
 utterly be strangled under it; and, alas, can as 
 yet but gasp and rave, and aimlessly struggle, like 
 one in the final deliration. Thus Change, or the 
 inevitable approach of Change, is manifest every- 
 where. In one Country we have seen lava-torrents 
 of fever-frenzy envelop all things ; Government 
 succeed Government, like the phantasms of a dying 
 brain. In another Country, we can even now see, 
 in maddest alternation, the Peasant governed by such 
 guidance as this : To labour earnestly one month in 
 raising wheat, and the next month labour earnestly 
 in burning it. So that Society, were it not by nature 
 immortal, and its death ever a new-birth, might 
 appear, as it does in the eyes of some, to be sick to 
 dissolution, and even now writhing in its last agony. 
 Sick enough we must admit it to be, with disease 
 enough, a whole nosology of diseases ; wherein he 
 
2o6 Best English Essays 
 
 perhaps is happiest that is not called to prescribe 
 as physician ; — wherein, however, one small piece 
 of policy, that of summoning the Wisest in the 
 Commonwealth, by the sole method yet known or 
 thought of, to come together and with their whole 
 soul consult for it, might, but for late tedious ex- 
 periences, have seemed unquestionable enough. 
 
 But leaving this, let us rather look within, into 
 the Spiritual condition of Society, and see what 
 aspects and prospects offer themselves there. For 
 after all, it is there properly that the secret and 
 origin of the whole is to be sought: the Physical 
 derangements of Society are but the image and 
 impress of its Spiritual; while the heart continues 
 sound, all other sickness is superficial, and tem- 
 porary. False Action is the fruit of false Specu- 
 lation; let the spirit of Society be free and strong, 
 that is to say, let true Principles inspire the members 
 of Society, then neither can disorders accumulate 
 in its Practice; each disorder will be promptly, 
 faithfully inquired into, and remedied as it arises. 
 But alas, with us the Spiritual condition of Soci- 
 ety is no less sickly than the Physical. Examine 
 man's internal world, in any of its social relations 
 and performances, here too all seems diseased self- 
 consciousness, collision and mutually-destructive 
 struggle. Nothing acts from within outwards in 
 undivided healthy force; everything lies impotent, 
 lamed, its force turned inwards, and painfully 
 *' listens to itself." 
 
 To begin with our highest Spiritual function, 
 with Religion, we might ask. Whither has Religion 
 now fled? Of Churches and their establishments 
 we here say nothing; nor of the unhappy domains 
 
Carlyle 207 
 
 of Unbelief, and how innumerable men, blinded 
 in their minds, have grown to " live without God 
 in the world " ; but, taking the fairest side of the 
 matter, we ask, What is the nature of that same 
 Religion, which still lingers in the hearts of the 
 few who are called, and call themselves, specially 
 the Religious? Is it a healthy religion, vital, un- 
 conscious of itself; that shines forth spontaneously 
 in doing of the Work, or even in preaching of the 
 Word? Unhappily, no. Instead of heroic martyr 
 Conduct, and inspired and soul-inspiring Eloquence, 
 whereby Religion itself were brought home to our 
 living bosoms, to live and reign there, we have 
 ** Discourses on the Evidences," endeavouring, with 
 smallest result, to make it probable that such a 
 thing as Religion exists. The most enthusiastic 
 Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, but keep 
 describing how it should and might be preached: 
 to awaken the sacred fire of faith, as by a sacred 
 contagion, is not their endeavour; but, at most, to 
 describe how Faith shows and acts, and scientifically 
 distinguish true Faith from false. Religion, like 
 all else, is conscious of itself, hstens to itself; it be- 
 comes less and less creative, vital; more and more 
 mechanical. Considered as a whole, the Christian 
 Religion of late ages has been continually dissi- 
 pating itself into Metaphysics; and threatens now 
 to disappear, as some rivers do, in deserts of barren 
 sand. 
 
 Of Literature, and its deep-seated, wide-spread 
 maladies, why speak ? Literature is but a branch of 
 Religion, and always participates in its character: 
 however, in our time, it is the only branch that still 
 shows any greenness ; and, as some think, must one 
 
2o8 Best English Essays 
 
 day become the main stem. Now, apart from the 
 subterranean and tartarean regions of Literature; 
 — leaving out of view the frightful, scandalous 
 statistics of Puffing, the mystery of Slander, False- 
 hood, Hatred and other convulsion-work of rabid 
 Imbecility, and all that has rendered Literature on 
 that side a perfect " Babylon the mother of Abomi- 
 nations," in very deed making the world '' drunk " 
 with the wine of her iniquity ; — forgetting all 
 this, let us look only to the regions of the upper 
 air; to such Literature as can be said to have some 
 attempt towards truth in it, some tone of music, 
 and if it be not poetical, to hold of the poetical. 
 Among other characteristics, is not this manifest 
 enough: that it knows itself? Spontaneous de- 
 votedness to the object, being wholly possessed 
 by the object, what we can call Inspiration, has 
 well-nigh ceased to appear in Literature. Which 
 melodious Singer forgets that he is singing melo- 
 diously? We have not the love of greatness, but 
 the love of the love of greatness. Hence infinite 
 Affectations, Distractions; in every case inevitable 
 Error. Consider, for one example, this peculiarity 
 of Modern Literature, the sin that has been named 
 View-hunting. In our elder writers, there are no 
 paintings of scenery for its own sake ; no euphuistic 
 gallantries with Nature, but a constant heartlove for 
 her, a constant dwelling in communion with her. 
 View-hunting, with so much else that is of kin to 
 it, first came decisively into action through the 
 ** Sorrows o^ Werter " ; which wonderful Perform- 
 ance, indeed, may in many senses be regarded as the 
 progenitor of all that has since become popular in 
 Literature; whereof, in so far as concerns spirit 
 
Carlyle 209 
 
 and tendency, it still offers the most instructive 
 image; for nowhere, except in its own country, 
 above all in the mind of its illustrious Author, has 
 it yet fallen wholly obsolete. Scarcely ever, till 
 that late epoch, did any worshipper of Nature 
 become entirely aware that he was worshipping, 
 much to his own credit; and think of saying to 
 himself: Come, let us make a description! Intol- 
 erable enough : when every puny whipster plucks 
 out his pencil, and insists on painting you a scene; 
 so that the instant you discern such a thing as 
 " wavy outline," " mirror of the lake," " stem head- 
 land," or the like, in any Book, you tremulously 
 hasten on; and scarcely the Author of Waverley 
 himself can tempt you not to skip. 
 
 Nay, is not the diseased self-conscious state of 
 Literature disclosed in this one fact, which lies so 
 near us here, the prevalence of Reviewing ! Sterne's 
 wish for a reader " that would give-up the reins of 
 his imagination into his author's hands, and be 
 pleased he knew not why, and cared not wherefore," 
 might lead him a long journey now. Indeed, for 
 our best class of readers, the chief pleasure, a very 
 stinted one, is this same knowing of the Why; 
 which many a Kames and Bossu has been, ineffect- 
 ually enough, endeavouring to teach us : till at last 
 these also have laid down their trade; and now 
 your Reviewer is a mere taster; who tastes, and 
 says, by the evidence of such palate, such tongue, 
 as he has got. It is good. It is bad. Was it thus 
 that the French carried out certain inferior creatures 
 on their Algerine Expedition, to taste the wells for 
 them, and try whether they were poisoned? Far 
 be it from us to disparage our own craft, whereby 
 
 14 
 
2IO Best English Essays 
 
 we have our living! Only v^e must note these 
 things: that Reviewing spreads with strange 
 vigour; that such a man as Byron reckons the Re- 
 viewer and the Poet equal ; that at the last Leipzig 
 Fair, there was advertised a Review of Reviews. 
 By and by it will be found that all Literature has 
 become one boundless self-devouring Review ; and, 
 as in London routs, we have to do nothing, but only 
 to see others do nothing. — Thus does Literature 
 also, like a sick thing, superabundantly " listen to 
 itself.^' 
 
 No less is this unhealthy symptom manifest, if 
 we cast a glance on our Philosophy, on the character 
 of our speculative Thinking. Nay already, as above 
 hinted, the mere existence and necessity of a Phi- 
 losophy is an evil. Man is sent hither not to ques- 
 tion, but to work : " the end of man," it was long 
 ago written, " is an Action, not a Thought." In 
 the perfect state, all Thought were but the picture 
 and inspiring symbol of Action ; Philosophy, except 
 as Poetry and Religion, would have no being. And 
 yet how, in this imperfect state, can it be avoided, 
 can it be dispensed with? Man stands as in the 
 centre of Nature; his fraction of Time encircled 
 by Eternity, his handbreadth of Space encircled by 
 Infinitude: how shall he forbear asking himself, 
 What am I; and Whence; and Whither? How 
 too, except in slight partial hints, in kind assever- 
 ations and assurances, such as a mother quiets her 
 fretfully inquisitive child with, shall he get answer 
 to such inquiries? 
 
 The disease of Metaphysics, accordingly, is a 
 perennial one. In all ages, those questions of Death 
 and Immortality, Origin of Evil, Freedom and 
 
Carlyle 211 
 
 Necessity, must, under new forms, anew make their 
 appearance; ever, from time to time, must the 
 attempt to shape for ourselves some Theorem of 
 the Universe be repeated. And ever unsuccessfully : 
 for what Theorem of the Infinite can the Finite 
 render complete? We, the whole species of Man- 
 kind, and our whole existence and history, are but 
 a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the All; 
 yet in that ocean; indissoluble portion thereof; 
 partaking of its infinite tendencies : borne this way 
 and that by its deep-swelling tides, and grand ocean 
 currents ; — of which what faintest chance is there 
 that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascer- 
 tain the goings and comings? A region of Doubt, 
 therefore, hovers for ever in the background; in 
 Action alone can we have certainty. Nay properly 
 Doubt is the indispensable inexhaustible material 
 whereon Action works, which Action has to fashion 
 into Certainty and Reality ; only on a canvas of 
 Darkness, such is man's way of being, could the 
 many-colored picture of our Life paint itself and 
 shine. 
 
 Thus if our eldest system of Metaphysics is as 
 old as the " Book of Genesis," our latest is that of 
 Mr. Thomas Hope, published only within the cur- 
 rent year. It is a chronic malady that of Meta- 
 physics, as we said, and perpetually recurs on us. 
 At the utmost, there is a better and a worse in it; 
 a stage of convalescence, and a stage of relapse with 
 new sickness : these for ever succeed each other, 
 as is the nature of all Life-movement here below. 
 The first, or convalescent stage, we might also name 
 that of Dogmatical or Constructive Metaphysics; 
 when the mind constructively endeavours to scheme 
 
212 Best English Essays 
 
 out and assert for itself an actual Theorem of the 
 Universe, and therewith for a time rests satisfied. 
 The second or sick stage might be called that of 
 Skeptical or Inquisitory Metaphysics; when the 
 mind having widened its sphere of vision, the exist- 
 ing Theorem of the Universe no longer answers the 
 phenomena, no longer yields contentment ; but must 
 be torn in pieces, and certainty anew sought for 
 in the endless realms of denial. All Theologies and 
 sacred Cosmogonies belong, in some measure, to the 
 first class ; in all Pyrrhonism, from Pyrrho down to 
 Hume and the innumerable disciples of Hume, we 
 have instances enough of the second. In the former, 
 so far as it affords satisfaction, a temporary anodyne 
 to doubt, an arena for wholesome action, there may 
 be much good; indeed in this case, it holds rather 
 of Poetry than of Metaphysics, might be called 
 Inspiration rather than Speculation. The latter is 
 Metaphysics proper ; a pure, unmixed, though from 
 time to time a necessary evil. 
 
 For truly, if we look into it, there is no more 
 fruitless endeavour than this same, which the Meta- 
 physician proper toils in: to educe Conviction out 
 of Negation. How, by merely testing and rejecting 
 v^hat is not, shall we ever attain knowledge of what 
 is ? Metaphysical Speculation, as it begins in No or 
 Nothingness, so it must needs end in Nothingness; 
 circulates and must circulate in endless vortices; 
 creating, swallowing — itself. Our being is made 
 up of Light and Darkness, the Light resting on the 
 Darkness, and balancing it; everywhere there is 
 Dualism, Equipoise; a perpetual Contradiction 
 dwells in us : " where shall I place myself to escape 
 from my own shadow?" Consider it well, Meta- 
 
Carlyle , 213 
 
 physics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the 
 mind ; to environ and shut in, or as we say, compre- 
 hend the mind. Hopeless struggle, for the wisest, 
 as for the foolishest! What strength of sinew, or 
 athletic skill, will enable the stoutest athlete to fold 
 his own body in his arms, and, by lifting, lift up 
 himself f The Irish Saint swam the Channel, 
 " carrying his head in his teeth " ; but the feat has 
 never been imitated. 
 
 That this is the age of Metaphysics, in the proper, 
 or sceptical Inquisitory sense; that there was a 
 necessity for its being such an age, we regard 
 as our indubitable misfortune. From many causes, 
 the arena of free Activity has long been narrow- 
 ing, that of sceptical Inquiry becoming more and 
 more universal, more and more perplexing. The 
 Thought conducts not to the Deed; but in bound- 
 less chaos, self-devouring, engenders monstrosi- 
 ties, phantasms, fire-breathing chimeras. Profitable 
 Speculation were this : What is to be done ; and 
 How is it to be done ? But with us not so much as 
 the What can be got sight of. For some gener- 
 ations, all Philosophy has been a painful, captious, 
 hostile question towards everything in the Heaven 
 above, and in the Earth beneath: Why art thou 
 there? Till at length it has come to pass that the 
 worth and authenticity of all things seems dubitable 
 or deniable : our best effort must be unproductively 
 spent not in working, but in ascertaining our mere 
 Whereabout, and so much as whether we are to 
 work at all. Doubt, which, as was said, ever hangs 
 in the background of our world, has now become 
 our middleground and foreground; whereon, for 
 the time, no fair Life-picture can be painted, but 
 
214 ^^st English Essays 
 
 only the dark air-canvas itself flow round us, be- 
 wildering and benighting-. 
 
 Nevertheless, doubt as we will, man is actually 
 Here ; not to ask questions, but to do work : in this 
 time, as in all times, it must be the heaviest evil 
 for him, if his faculty of Action lie dormant, and 
 only that of sceptical Inquiry exert itself. Accord- 
 ingly, whoever looks abroad upon the world, com- 
 paring the Past with the Present, may find that the 
 practical condition of man in these days is one of 
 the saddest; burdened with miseries which are in 
 a considerable degree pecuHar. In no time was 
 man's life what he calls a happy one ; in no time can 
 it be so. A perpetual dream there has been of 
 Paradises, and some luxurious Lubberland, where 
 the brooks should run wine, and the trees bend with 
 ready-baked viands; but it was a dream merely; 
 an impossible dream. Suffering, contradiction, 
 error, have their quite perennial, and even indis- 
 pensable abode in this Earth. Is not labour the in- 
 heritance of man ? And what labour for the present 
 is joyous, and not grievous? Labour, effort, is the 
 very interruption of that ease, which man foolishly 
 enough fancies to be his happiness ; and yet without 
 labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as con- 
 ceivable. Thus Evil, what we call Evil, must ever 
 exist while man exists : Evil, in the widest sense 
 we can give it, is precisely the dark, disordered ma- 
 terial out of which man's Freewill has to create an 
 edifice of order and Good. Ever must Pain urge us 
 to Labour ; and only in free Effort can any blessed- 
 ness be imagined for us. 
 
 But if man has, in all ages, had enough to en- 
 counter, there has, in most civilised ages, been an 
 
Carlyle 215 
 
 inward force vouchsafed him, whereby the pressure 
 of things outward might be withstood. Obstruction 
 abounded; but Faith also was not wanting. It is 
 by Faith that man removes mountains : while he 
 had Faith, his limbs might be wearied with toiling, 
 his back galled with bearing; but the heart within 
 him was peaceable and resolved. In the thickest 
 gloom there burnt a lamp to guide him. If he 
 struggled and suffered, he felt that it even should 
 be so; knew for what he was suffering and strug- 
 gling. Faith gave him an inward Willingness ; a 
 world of Strength wherewith to front a world of 
 Difficulty. The true wretchedness lies here: that 
 the Difficulty remain and the Strength be lost ; that 
 Pain cannot relieve itself in free Effort; that we 
 have the Labour, and want the Willingness. Faith 
 Strengthens us, enlightens us, for all endeavours and 
 endurances; with Faith we can do all, and dare 
 all, and life itself has a thousand times been joy- 
 fully given away. But the sum of man's misery is 
 even this, that he feel himself crushed under the 
 Juggernaut wheels, and know that Juggernaut is 
 no divinity, but a dead mechanical idol. 
 
 Now this is specially the misery which has fallen 
 on man in our Era. Belief, Faith has wellnigh 
 vanished from the world. The youth on awaken- 
 ing in this wondrous Universe no longer finds a 
 competent theory of its wonders. Time was, when 
 if he asked himself. What is man. What are the 
 duties of man? the answer stood ready written for 
 him. But now the ancient " ground-plan of the 
 All " belies itself when brought into contact with 
 reality; Mother Church has, to the most, become 
 a superannuated Step-mother, whose lessons go 
 
2i6 Best English Essays 
 
 disregarded; or are spurned at, and scornfully 
 gainsaid. For young Valour and thirst of Action no 
 ideal Chivalry invites to heroism, prescribes what 
 is heroic: the old ideal of Manhood has grown 
 obsolete, and the new is still invisible to us, and 
 we grope after it in darkness, one clutching this 
 phantom, another that ; Werterism, Byronism, even 
 Brummelism, each has its day. For Contemplation 
 and love of Wisdom, no Cloister now opens its 
 religious shades; the Thinker must, in all senses, 
 wander homeless, too often aimless, looking up 
 to a Heaven which is dead for him, round to an 
 Earth which is deaf. Action, in those old days, 
 was easy, was voluntary, for the divine worth of 
 human things lay acknowledged; Speculation was 
 wholesome, for it ranged itself as the handmaid of 
 Action; what could not so range itself died out 
 by its natural death, by neglect. Loyalty still hal- 
 lowed obedience, and made rule noble; there was 
 still something to be loyal to: the Godlike stood 
 embodied under many a symbol in men's interests 
 and business; the Finite shadowed forth the In- 
 finite; Eternity looked through Time. The Life 
 of man was encompassed and overcanopied by a 
 glory of Heaven, even as his dwelling-place by 
 the azure vault. 
 
 How changed in these new days! Truly may it 
 be said, the Divinity has withdrawn from the Earth ; 
 or veils himself in that wide-wasting Whirlwind 
 of a departing Era, wherein the fewest can discern 
 his goings. Not Godhead, but an iron, ignoble 
 circle of Necessity embraces all things ; binds the 
 youth of these times into a sluggish thrall, or else 
 exasperates him into a rebel. Heroic Action is 
 
Carlyle 217 
 
 paralysed; for what worth now remains unques- 
 tionable with him? At the fervid period when his 
 whole nature cries aloud for Action, there is nothing 
 sacred under whose banner he can act; the course 
 and kind and conditions of free Action are all but 
 undiscoverable. Doubt storms-in on him through 
 every avenue; inquiries of the deepest, painfulest 
 sort must be engaged with; and the invincible 
 energy of young years waste itself in sceptical, 
 suicidal cavillings ; in passionate " questionings of 
 Destiny," whereto no answer will be returned. 
 
 For men, in whom the old perennial principle of 
 Hunger (be it Hunger of the poor Day-drudge who 
 stills it with eighteenpence a-day, or of the am- 
 bitious Placehunter who can nowise still it with so 
 little) suffices to fill-up existence, the case is bad; 
 but not the worst. These men have an aim, such 
 as it is; and can steer towards it, with chagrin 
 enough truly; yet, as their hands are kept full, 
 without desperation. Unhappier are they to whom 
 a higher instinct has been given ; who struggle 
 to be persons, not machine's ; to whom the Universe 
 is not a warehouse, or at best a fancy-bazaar, but 
 a mystic temple and hall of doom. For such men 
 there lie properly two courses open. The lower, 
 yet still an estimable class, take up with worn- 
 out Symbols of the Godlike; keep trimming and 
 trucking between these and Hypocrisy, purblindly 
 enough, miserably enough. A numerous interme- 
 diate class end in Denial; and form a theory that 
 there is no theory; that nothing is certain in the 
 world, except this fact of Pleasure being pleasant; 
 so they try to realise what trifling modicum of 
 Pleasure they can come at, and to live contented 
 
21 8 Best English Essays 
 
 therewith, winking hard. Of these we speak not 
 here ; but only of the second nobler class, who also 
 have dared to say No, and cannot yet say Yea; 
 but feel that in the No they dwell as in a Golgotha, 
 where life enters not, where peace is not appointed 
 them. 
 
 Hard, for most part, is the fate of such men ; the 
 harder the nobler they are. In dim forecastings, 
 wrestles within them the " Divine Idea of the 
 World," yet will nowhere visibly reveal itself. They 
 have to realise a Worship for themselves, or live 
 unworshipping. The Godlike has vanished from 
 the world; and they, by the strong cry of their 
 soul's agony, like true wonder-workers, must again 
 evoke its presence. This miracle is their appointed 
 task; which they must accomplish, or die wretch- 
 edly: this miracle has been accomplished by such; 
 but not in our land ; our land yet knows not of it. 
 Behold a Byron, in melodious tones, " cursing his 
 day " : he mistakes earthborn passionate Desire for 
 heaven-inspired Freewill; without heavenly load- 
 star, rushes madly into the dance of meteoric lights 
 that hover on the mad Mahlstrom ; and goes down 
 among its eddies. Hear a Shelley filling the earth 
 with inarticulate wail : like the infinite, inarticulate 
 grief and weeping of forsaken infants. A noble 
 Friedrich Schlegel, stupefied in that fearful loneli- 
 ness, as of a silenced battle-field, flies back to 
 Catholicism; as a child might to its slain mother's 
 bosom, and cling there. In lower regions, how 
 many a poor Hazlitt must wander on God's verdant 
 earth, like the Unblest on burning deserts ; passion- 
 ately dig wells, and draw up only the dry quicksand ; 
 believe that he is seeking Truth, yet only wrestle 
 
Carlyle 219 
 
 among endless Sophisms, doing- desperate battle as 
 with spectre-hosts ; and die and make no sign ! 
 
 To the better order of such minds any mad joy 
 of Denial has long since ceased : the problem is not 
 now to deny, but to ascertain and perform. Once 
 in destroying the False, there was a certain inspi- 
 ration ; but now the genius of Destruction has done 
 its work, there is now nothing more to destroy. 
 The doom of the Old has long been pronounced, and 
 irrevocable; the Old has passed away: but, alas, 
 the New appears not in its stead; the Time is still 
 in pangs of travail with the New. Man has walked 
 by the light of conflagrations, and amid the sound of 
 falling cities ; and now there is darkness, and long 
 watching till it be morning. The voice even of the 
 faithful can but exclaim : ** As yet struggles the 
 twelfth hour of the Night: birds of darkness are 
 on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead walk, the 
 living dream. — Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt 
 cause the day to dawn ! " ^ 
 
 Such being the condition, temporal and spiritual, 
 of the world at our Epoch, can we wonder that the 
 world " listens to itself," and struggles and writhes, 
 everywhere externally and internally, like a thing 
 in pain? Nay, is not even this unhealthy action of 
 the world's Organisation, if the symptom of uni- 
 versal disease, yet also the symptom and sole means 
 of restoration and cure? The effort of Nature, 
 exerting her medicative force to cast out foreign 
 impediments, and once more become One, become 
 whole? In Practice, still more in Opinion, which 
 is the precursor and prototype of Practice, there 
 must needs be collision, convulsion; much has to 
 
 1 Jean Paul's " Hesperus" (Vorrede). 
 
220 Best English Essays 
 
 be ground away. Thought must needs be Doubt 
 and Inquiry, before it can again be Affirmation and 
 Sacred Precept. Innumerable " Philosophies of 
 Man," contending in boundless hubbub, must anni- 
 hilate each other, before an inspired Poesy and 
 Faith for Man can fashion itself together. 
 
 From this stunning hubbub, a true Babel-like 
 confusion of tongues, we have here selected two 
 Voices; less as objects of praise or condemnation, 
 than as signs how far the confusion has reached, 
 what prospect there is of its abating. Friedrich 
 Schlegel's '' Lectures " delivered at Dresden, and 
 Mr. Hope's " Essay " published in London, are 
 the latest utterances of European Speculation: far 
 asunder in external place, they stand at a still wider 
 distance in inward purport; are, indeed, so oppo- 
 site and yet so cognate that they may, in many 
 senses, represent the two Extremes of our whole 
 modern system of Thought ; and be said to include 
 between them all the Metaphysical Philosophies, so 
 often alluded to here, which, of late times, from 
 France, Germany, England, have agitated and al- 
 most overwhelmed us. Both in regard to matter 
 and to form, the relation of these two Works is 
 significant enough. 
 
 Speaking first of their cognate qualities, let us 
 remark, not without emotion, one quite extraneous 
 point of agreement; the fact that the Writers of 
 both have departed from this world ; they have 
 now finished their search, and had all doubts re- 
 solved : while we listen to the voice, the tongue 
 that uttered it has gone silent for ever. But the 
 fundamental, all-pervading similarity lies in this 
 
Carlyle 221 
 
 circumstance, well worthy of being noted, that both 
 these Philosophies are of the Dogmatic or Con- 
 structive sort : each in its way is a kind of Genesis ; 
 an endeavour to bring the Phenomena of man's 
 Universe once more under some theoretic Scheme: 
 in both there is a decided principle of unity; they 
 strive after a result which shall be positive; their 
 aim is not to question, but to establish. This, es- 
 pecially if we consider with what comprehensive 
 concentrated force it is here exhibited, forms a new 
 feature in such works. 
 
 Under all other aspects, there is the most irrecon- 
 cilable opposition ; a staring contrariety, such as 
 might provoke contrasts, were there far fewer points 
 of comparison. If Schlegel's Work is the apothe- 
 osis of Spiritualism ; Hope's again is the apotheosis 
 of Materialism : in the one, all Matter is evaporated 
 into a Phenomenon, and terrestrial Life itself, with 
 its whole doings and showings, held out as a Dis- 
 turbance {Zerrilttung) produced by the Zeitgeist 
 (Spirit of Time) ; in the other, Matter is distilled 
 and sublimated into some semblance of Divinity: 
 the one regards Space and Time as mere forms 
 of man's mind, and without external existence or 
 reality; the other supposes Space and Time to be 
 " incessantly created," and rayed-in upon us Hke 
 a sort of *' gravitation." Such is their difference in 
 respect of purport: no less striking is it in respect 
 of manner, talent, success and all outward char- 
 acteristics. Thus, if in Schlegel we have to admire 
 the power of Words, in Hope we stand astonished, 
 it might almost be said, at the want of an articulate 
 Language. To Schlegel his Philosophic Speech is 
 obedient, dextrous, exact, like a promptly minis- 
 
222 Best English Essays 
 
 tering genius ; his names are so clear, so precise 
 and vivid, that they almost (sometimes altogether) 
 become things for him : with Hope there is no 
 Philosophical Speech ; but a painful, confused stam- 
 mering, and struggling after such ; or the tongue, 
 as in doatish forgetfulness, maunders, low, long- 
 winded, and speaks not the word intended, but 
 another; so that here the scarcely intelligible, in 
 these endless convolutions, becomes the wholly un- 
 readable ; and often we could ask, as that mad pupil 
 did of his tutor in Philosophy, '' But whether is 
 Virtue a fluid, then, or a gas?" If the fact, that 
 Schlegel, in the city of Dresden, could find audience 
 for such high discourse, may excite our envy; this 
 other fact, that a person of strong powers, skilled in 
 EngHsh Thought and master of its Dialect, could 
 write the '' Origin and Prospects of Man," may 
 painfully remind us of the reproach, that England 
 has now no language for Meditation ; that England, 
 the most calculative, is the least meditative, of all 
 civilised countries. 
 
 It is not our purpose to offer any criticism of 
 Schlegel's Book; in such limits as were possible 
 here, we should despair of communicating even the 
 faintest image of its significance. To the mass of 
 readers, indeed, both among the Germans them- 
 selves, and still more elsewhere, it nowise addresses 
 itself, and may lie for ever sealed. We point it out 
 as a remarkable document of the Time and of the 
 Man ; can recommend it, moreover, to all earnest 
 Thinkers, as a work deserving their best regard; 
 a work full of deep meditation, wherein the infinite 
 mystery of Life, if not represented, is decisively 
 recognised. Of Schlegel himself, and his character, 
 
Carlyle 223 
 
 and spiritual history, we can profess no thorough 
 or final understanding ; yet enough to make us view 
 him with admiration and pity, nowise with harsh 
 contemptuous censure; and must say, with clearest 
 persuasion, that the outcry of his being *' a rene- 
 gade," and so forth, is but like other such outcries, 
 a judgment where there was neither jury, nor evi- 
 dence, nor judge. The candid reader, in this Book 
 itself, to say nothing of all the rest, will find traces 
 of a high, far-seeing, earnest spirit, to whom " Aus- 
 trian Pensions," and the Kaiser's crown, and Austria 
 altogether, were but a light matter to the finding 
 and vitally appropriating of Truth. Let us respect 
 the sacred mystery of a Person; rush not irrev- 
 erently into man's Holy of Holies! Were the lost 
 little one, as we said already, found '' sucking its 
 dead mother, on the field of carnage," could it be 
 other than a spectacle for tears ? A solemn mourn- 
 ful feeling comes over us when we see this last 
 Work of Friedrich Schlegel, the unwearied seeker, 
 end abruptly in the middle; and, as if he had not 
 yet found, as if emblematically of much, end with 
 an '' Aher — " with a ** But — " ! This was the 
 last word that came from the Pen of Friedrich 
 Schlegel: about eleven at night he wrote it down, 
 and there paused sick ; at one in the morning, 
 Time for him had merged itself in Eternity; he 
 was, as we say, no more. ' 
 
 Still less can we attempt any criticism of Mr. 
 Hope's new " Book of Genesis." Indeed, under any 
 circumstances, criticism of it were now impossible. 
 Such an utterance could only be responded to in 
 peals of laughter; and laughter sounds hollow and 
 hideous through the vaults of the dead. Of this 
 
224 Best English Essays 
 
 monstrous Anomaly, where all sciences are heaped 
 and huddled together, and the principles of all are, 
 with a childlike innocence, plied hither and thither, 
 or wholly abolished in case of need; where the 
 First Cause is figured as a huge Circle, with nothing 
 to do but radiate '' gravitation " towards its centre ; 
 and so construct a Universe, wherein all, from the 
 lowest cucumber with its coolness, up to the highest 
 seraph with his love, were but " gravitation," direct 
 or reflex, " in more or less central globes," — what 
 can we say, except, with sorrow and shame, that 
 it could have originated nowhere save in England? 
 It is a general agglomerate of all facts, notions, 
 whims and observations, as they lie in the brain of 
 an English gentleman ; as an English gentleman, of 
 unusual thinking power, is led to fashion them, in 
 his schools and in his world : all these thrown into 
 the crucible, and if not fused, yet soldered or conglu- 
 tinated with boundless patience; and now tumbled 
 out here, heterogeneous, amorphous, unspeakable, a 
 world's wonder. Most melancholy must we name 
 the whole business ; full of long-continued thought, 
 earnestness, loftiness of mind; not without glances 
 into the Deepest, a constant fearless endeavour after 
 truth; and with all this nothing accomplished, but 
 the perhaps absurdest Book written in our century 
 by a thinking man. A shameful Abortion; which, 
 however, need not now be smothered or mangled, 
 for it is already dead; only, in our love and sor- 
 rowing reverence for the writer of " Anastasius," 
 and the heroic seeker of Light, though not bringer 
 thereof, let it be buried and forgotten. 
 
 For ourselves, the loud discord which jars in 
 these two Works, in innumerable works of the like 
 
Carlyle 225 
 
 import, and generally in all the Thought and Action 
 of this period, does not any longer utterly confuse 
 us. Unhappy who, in such a time, felt not, at all 
 conjunctures, ineradicably in his heart the knowl- 
 edge that a God made this Universe, and a Demon 
 not! And shall Evil always prosper, then? Out 
 of all Evil comes Good ; and no Good that is pos- 
 sible but shall one day be real. Deep and sad as 
 is our feeling that we stand yet in the bodeful 
 Night ; equally deep, indestructible is our assurance 
 that the Morning also will not fail. Nay already, 
 as we look round, streaks of a dayspring are in the 
 east; it is dawning; when the time shall be ful- 
 filled, it will be day. The progress of man towards 
 higher and nobler developments of whatever is 
 highest and noblest in him, lies not only prophesied 
 to Faith, but now written to the eye of Observation, 
 so that he who runs may read. 
 
 One great step of progress, for example, we 
 should say, in actual circumstances, was this same; 
 the clear ascertainment that we are in progress. 
 About the grand Course of Providence, and his 
 final Purposes with us, we can know nothing, or 
 almost nothing: man begins in darkness, ends in 
 darkness ; mystery is everywhere around us and 
 in us, under our feet, among our hands. Never- 
 theless so much has become evident to every one, 
 that this wondrous Mankind is advancing some- 
 whither; that at least all human things are, have 
 been and for ever will be, in Movement and Change ; 
 — as, indeed, for beings that exist in Time, by 
 virtue of Time, and are made of Time, might have 
 been long since understood. In some provinces, it 
 is true, as in Experimental Science, this discovery is 
 
 IS 
 
226 Best English Essays 
 
 an old bne; but in most others it belongs wholly 
 to these latter days. How often, in former ages, 
 by eternal Creeds, eternal Forms of Government 
 and the like, has it been attempted, fiercely enough, 
 and with destructive violence, to chain the Future 
 under the Past; and say to the Providence, whose 
 ways with man are mysterious, and through the 
 great deep: Hitherto shalt thou come, but no 
 farther ! A wholly insane attempt ; and for man 
 himself, could it prosper, the frightfulest of all 
 enchantments, a very Life-in-Death. Man's task 
 here below, the destiny of every individual man, 
 is to be in turns Apprentice and Workman ; or say 
 rather. Scholar, Teacher, Discoverer: by nature he 
 has a strength for learning, for imitating; but also 
 a strength for acting, for knowing on his own 
 account. Are we not in a world seen to be Infinite ; 
 the relations lying closest together modified by those 
 latest discovered and lying farthest asunder ? Could 
 you ever spell-bind man into a Scholar merely, so 
 that he had nothing to discover, to correct; could 
 you ever establish a Theory of the Universe that 
 were entire, unimprovable, and which needed only 
 to be got by heart; man then were spiritually 
 defunct, the Species we now name Man had ceased 
 to exist. But the gods, kinder to us than we are 
 to ourselves, have forbidden such suicidal acts. As 
 Phlogiston is displaced by Oxygen, and the Epi- 
 cycles of Ptolemy by the Ellipses of Kepler; so 
 does Paganism give place to Catholicism, Tyranny 
 to Monarchy, and Feudalism to Representative Gov- 
 ernment, — where also the process does not stop. 
 Perfection of Practice, like completeness of Opinion, 
 is always approaching, never arrived; Truth, in 
 
Carlyle 227 
 
 the words of Schiller, immer wird, nie ist; never is, 
 always is a-being. 
 
 Sad, truly, were our condition did we know 
 but this, that Change is universal and inevitable. 
 Launched into a dark shoreless sea of Pyrrhonism, 
 what would remain for us but to sail aimless, hope- 
 less; or make madly merry, while the devouring 
 Death had not yet engulfed us ? As indeed, we have 
 seen many, and still see many do. Nevertheless so 
 stands it not. The venerator of the Past (and to 
 what pure heart is the Past, in that " moonlight of 
 memory," other than sad and holy?) sorrows not 
 over its departure, as one utterly bereaved. The 
 true Past departs not, nothing that was worthy in 
 the Past departs; no Truth or Goodness realised 
 by man ever dies, or can die; but is all still here, 
 and, recognised or not, lives and works through 
 endless changes. If all things, to speak in the Ger- 
 man dialect, are discerned by us, and exist for us, 
 in an element of Time, and therefore of Mortality 
 and Mutability ; yet Time itself reposes on Eternity : 
 the truly Great and Transcendental has its basis 
 and substance in Eternity; stands revealed to us 
 as Eternity in a vesture of Time. Thus in all 
 Poetry, Worship, Art, Society, as one form passes 
 into another, nothing is lost: it is but the super- 
 ficial, as it were the body only, that grows obsolete 
 and dies ; under the mortal body lies a soid which 
 is immortal; which anew incarnates itself in fairer 
 revelation ; and the Present is the living sum-total 
 of the whole Past. 
 
 In Change, therefore, there is nothing terrible, 
 nothing supernatural: on the contrary, it lies in 
 the very essence of our lot and Hfe in this world. 
 
2 28 Best English Essays 
 
 To-day is not yesterday : we ourselves change ; how 
 can our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to 
 be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, 
 indeed, is painful ; yet ever needful ; and if Mem- 
 ory have its force and worth, so also has Hope. 
 Nay, if we look well to it, what is all Derangement, 
 and necessity of great Change, in itself such an 
 evil, but the product simply of increased resources 
 which the old methods can no longer administer; 
 of new wealth which the old coffers will no longer 
 contain? What is it, for example, that in our own 
 day bursts asunder the bonds of ancient Political 
 Systems, and perplexes all Europe with the fear of 
 Change, but even this: the increase of social re- 
 sources, which the old social methods will no longer 
 sufficiently administer? The new omnipotence of 
 the Steam-engine is hewing asunder quite other 
 mountains than the physical. Have not our eco- 
 nomical distresses, those barnyard Conflagrations 
 themselves, the frightfulest madness of our mad 
 epoch, their rise also in what is a real increase: 
 increase of Men; of human Force; properly, in 
 such a Planet as ours, the most precious of all in- 
 creases? It is true again, the ancient methods of 
 administration will no longer suffice. Must the 
 indomitable millions, full of old Saxon energy and 
 fire, lie cooped-up in this Western nook, choking 
 one another, as in a Blackhole of Calcutta, while a 
 whole fertile untenanted Earth, desolate for want 
 of the ploughshare, cries : Come and till me, come 
 and reap me ? If the ancient Captains can no longer 
 yield guidance, new must be sought after: for the 
 difficulty lies not in nature, but in artifice ; the Euro- 
 pean Calcutta-Blackhole has no walls but air ones 
 
Carlyle 229 
 
 and paper ones. — So, too, Scepticism itself, with 
 its innumerable mischiefs, what is it but the sour 
 fruit of a most blessed increase, that of Knowledge ; 
 a fruit too that will not always continue sourf 
 
 In fact, much as we have said and mourned about 
 the unproductive prevalence of Metaphysics, it was 
 not without some insight into the use that lies in 
 them. Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary 
 evil, is the forerunner of much good. The fever of 
 Scepticism must needs burn itself out, and burn out 
 thereby the Impurities that caused it ; then again 
 will there be clearness, health. The principle of life, 
 which now struggles painfully, in the outer, thin 
 and barren domain of the Conscious or Mechan- 
 ical, may then withdraw into its inner sanctua- 
 ries, its abysses of mystery and miracle; withdraw 
 deeper than ever into that domain of the Uncon- 
 scious, by nature infinite and inexhaustible ; and cre- 
 atively work there. From that mystic region, and 
 from that alone, all wonders, all Poesies, and Re- 
 ligions, and Social Systems have proceeded: the 
 like wonders, and greater and higher, lie slumbering 
 there; and, brooded on by the spirit of the waters, 
 will evolve themselves, and rise like exhalations 
 from the Deep. 
 
 Of our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may 
 not this already be said, that if they have produced 
 no Affirmation, they have destroyed much Nega- 
 tion ? It is a disease expelling a disease : the fire of 
 Doubt, as above hinted, consuming away the Doubt- 
 ful ; that so the Certain come to light, and again lie 
 visible on the surface. English or French Meta- 
 physics, in reference to this last stage of the specu- 
 lative process, are not what we allude to here; but 
 
230 Best English Essays 
 
 only the Metaphysics of the Germans. In France 
 or England, since the days of Diderot and Hume, 
 though all thought has been of a sceptico-meta- 
 physical texture, so far as there was any Thought, 
 we have seen no Metaphysics ; but only more or less 
 ineffectual questionings whether such could be. In 
 the Pyrrhonism of Hume and the Materialism of 
 Diderot, Logic had, as it were, overshot itself, over- 
 set itself. Now, though the athlete, to use our old 
 figure, cannot, by much lifting, lift up his own 
 body, he may shift it out of a laming posture, and 
 get to stand in a free' one. Such a service have 
 German Metaphysics done for man's mind. The 
 second sickness of Speculation has abolished both 
 itself and the first. Friedrich Schlegel complains 
 much of the fruitlessness, the tumult and transiency 
 of German as of all Metaphysics ; and with reason. 
 Yet in that wide-spreading, deep-whirling vortex 
 of Kantism, so soon metamorphosed into Fichteism, 
 Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and Cousinism, 
 perhaps finally evaporated, is not this issue visible 
 enough, That Pyrrhonism and Materialism, them- 
 selves necessary phenomena in European culture, 
 have disappeared; and a Faith in Religion has 
 again become possible and inevitable for the scien- 
 tific mind; and the word Fr^Mhinker no longer 
 means the Denier or Caviller, but the Believer, or 
 the Ready to believe? Nay, in the higher Litera- 
 ture of Germany, there already lies, for him that 
 can read it, the beginning of a new revelation of the 
 GodHke; as yet unrecognised by the mass of the 
 world; but waiting there for recognition, and sure 
 to find it when the fit hour comes. This age also 
 is not wholly without its Prophets. 
 
Carlyle 23 1 
 
 Again, under another aspect, if Utilitarianism, or 
 Radicalism, or the Mechanical Philosophy, or by 
 whatever name it is called, has still its long task to 
 do ; nevertheless we can now see through it and be- 
 yond it : in the better heads, even among us English* 
 it has become obsolete ; as in other countries, it has 
 been, in such heads, for some forty or even fifty 
 years. What sound mind among the French, for 
 example, now fancies that men can be governed by 
 " Constitutions " ; by the never so cunning mechan- 
 ising of Self-interests, and all conceivable adjust- 
 ments of checking and balancing ; in a word, by the 
 best possible solution of this quite insoluble and im- 
 possible problem, Given a world of Knaves, to pro- 
 duce an Honesty from their united action? Were 
 not experiments enough of this kind tried before all 
 Europe, and found wanting, when, in that dooms- 
 day of France, the infinite gulf of human Passion 
 shivered asunder the thin rinds of Habit ; and burst 
 forth all-devouring, as in seas of Nether Fire? 
 Which cunningly-devised *' Constitution," consti- 
 tutional, republican, democratic, sansculottic, could 
 bind that raging chasm together? Were they not 
 all burnt up, like paper as they were, in its molten 
 eddies; and still the fire-sea raged fiercer than 
 before? It is not by Mechanism, but by Religion; 
 not by Self-interest, but by Loyalty, that men are 
 governed or governable. 
 
 Remarkable it is, truly, how everywhere the 
 eternal fact begins again to be recognised, that there 
 is a Godlike in human affairs; that God not only 
 made us and beholds us, but is in us and around us ; 
 that the Age of Miraclesj as it ever was, now is. 
 Such recognition we discern on all hands and in all 
 
232 Best English Essays 
 
 countries: in each country after its own fashion. 
 In France, among the younger nobler minds, 
 strangely enough; where, in their loud contention 
 with the Actual and Conscious, the Ideal or Uncon- 
 scious is, for the time, without exponent; where 
 Religion means not the parent of Polity, as of all 
 that is highest, but Polity itself; and this and the 
 other earnest man has not been wanting, who could 
 audibly whisper to himself : " Go to, I will make a 
 religion.'* In England still more strangely; as in 
 all things, worthy England will have its way: by 
 the shrieking of hysterical women, casting out of 
 devils, and other " gifts of the Holy Ghost." Well 
 might Jean Paul say, in this his twelfth hour of the 
 Night, " the living dream " ; well might he say, 
 *' the dead walk." Meanwhile let us rejoice rather 
 that so much has been seen into, were it through 
 never so diffracting media, and never so madly dis- 
 torted; that in all dialects, though but half-articu- 
 lately, this high Gospel begins to be preached : Man 
 is still Man. The genius of Mechanism, as was 
 once before predicted, will not always sit like a 
 choking incubus on our soul; but at length, when 
 by a new magic Word the old spell is broken, be- 
 come our slave, and as familiar-spirit do all our 
 bidding. " We are near awakening when we dream 
 that we dream." 
 
 He that has an eye and a heart can even now say : 
 Why should I falter? Light has come into the 
 world; to such as love Light, so as Light must be 
 loved, with a boundless all-doing, all-enduring love. 
 For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the mystery 
 of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is a mystery 
 which, through all ages, we shall only read here a, 
 
Carlyle 233 
 
 line of, there another Hne of. Do we not already 
 know that the name of the Infinite is Good, is God ? 
 Here on Earth we are as Soldiers, fighting in a 
 foreign land; that understand not the plan of the 
 campaign, and have no need to understand it ; see- 
 ing well what is at our hand to be done. Let us do 
 it like Soldiers; with submission, with courage, 
 with a heroic joy. '' Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
 to do, do it with all thy might." Behind us, behind 
 each one of us, lie Six Thousand Years of human 
 effort, human conquest: before us is the boundless 
 Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered 
 Continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have 
 to conquer, to create ; and from the bosom of Eter- 
 nity there shine for us celestial guiding stars. 
 
 " My inheritance how wide and fair ! 
 Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I 'm heir." 
 
VII 
 EMERSON 
 
EMERSON: 
 THE LECTURER 
 
 IF Carlyle was the prophet who spoke in 
 words which compelled attention, and Ma- 
 caulay was the orator who won attention 
 by his eloquence, Emerson was the lecturer who 
 gained and held the attention of those who 
 chanced to read him by the simple interest of what 
 he had to say. While he was devoted to the phi- 
 losophy which he tried to illustrate, deeply de- 
 voted, still he did not conceive it to be a gospel 
 which he was to preach at all hazards, and his 
 motives were too impersonal to make him in- 
 clined to use the persuasive arts of the orator. 
 He was a seer who realized that he saw more 
 deeply into the essential truths of life than his 
 fellows, and he wished as far as he could to enable 
 all men to see as he saw. Still he had such con- 
 fidence in the power of truth, and especially of the 
 truth he had to state, that he was never inclined 
 to force or press his point. He merely offered 
 what he had, and those who cared might take it. 
 Emerson called himself a Transcendentalist. 
 He had in reality come to perceive the essential 
 points of the philosophy of Kant, Comte, Hegel, 
 
238 Best English Essays 
 
 and their fellows, which taught in effect that man, 
 matter, and God are not three separate entities, 
 but merely manifestations of one and the same 
 substance. Hence both man and matter are seen 
 to be divine in substance, the words ''human" and 
 "material" merely indicating limitation. There- 
 fore the laws of nature are also the laws of God, 
 and in our own hearts we have a bit of the divine 
 which we may study at first hand if we will. 
 Emerson knew that to state this philosophy baldly 
 would make it mean nothing in the ordinary 
 man's mental economy; so he proceeded to give 
 it as practically applied to the various simple 
 problems of life. The reader's intuition would 
 show him the truth of each application ; and when 
 he has applied the general principle in a few hun- 
 dred or thousand special instances and illustra- 
 tions, he becomes unconsciously imbued with the 
 general principle itself, though he may not be 
 able to state it in general terms, or even under- 
 stand that he is possessed of anything he has not 
 always had. 
 
 Once possessed of the philosophic key, the 
 lecturer himself easily perceives each particular 
 application; but making it clear to the reader is 
 a serious problem. A plain statement will not do, 
 for there is no language in which the funda- 
 mental ideas can be expressed which the ordinary 
 reader will comprehend. The mere philosopher 
 proceeds to create a technical language of his 
 own; the lecturer for a popular audience can- 
 
Emerson 239 
 
 not do that, but must make himself understood 
 through images and combinations of common 
 notions. A language of figures and parables 
 must be created instead of a technical one. The 
 problem is at once the simplest and the most diffi- 
 cult which the creative writer has to face. 
 
 As Emerson's object is to give his reader the 
 general point of view, with all its revelations, and 
 as he sets out to do this by a succession of con- 
 crete illustrations, one illustration may be as 
 effective as another, and we get the whole of the 
 Emersonian philosophy in every paragraph, al- 
 most in every sentence. Each sentence or each 
 paragraph is essentially complete in itself, and we 
 may begin reading at any point and continue to 
 any point, yet cover our subject completely as 
 far as we go. The essay on " Self-Reliance " has 
 been selected because the general subject is so 
 practical and so personal; and when Emerson 
 felt that he was making himself useful to his 
 hearers he was at his best. 
 
 Emerson uses very short sentences that seem 
 more or less abrupt. This is due apparently to 
 his habit of thought and his desire to express 
 himself in the simplest possible way. Certainly 
 he makes no such rhetorical use of the short sen- 
 tence as the later " epigrammatic writers " ; e. g., 
 Stephen Crane in " The Red Badge of Courage." 
 
240 Best English Essays 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 " Ne te qusesiveris extra." 
 
 " Man is his own star ; and the soul that can 
 Render an honest and a perfect man, 
 Commands all light, all influence, all fate ; 
 Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." 
 Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's " Honest Man's Fortunes" 
 
 Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
 Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat ; 
 Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
 Power and speed be hands and feet. 
 
 I READ the other day some verses written by an 
 eminent painter which were original and not 
 conventional. The soul always hears an admonition 
 in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The 
 sentiment they instil is of more value than any 
 thought they may contain. To believe your own 
 thought, to believe that what is true for you in your 
 private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. 
 Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the 
 universal sense ; for the inmost in due time becomes 
 the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered 
 back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 
 Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the 
 highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Mil- 
 ton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, 
 and spoke not what men but what they thought. 
 A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam 
 of light which flashes across his mind from within, 
 more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and 
 
Emerson 241 
 
 sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, 
 because it is his. In every work of genius we 
 recognize our own rejected thoughts : they come 
 back to us with a certain aHenated majesty. Great 
 works of art have no more affecting lesson for us 
 than this. They teach us to abide by our spon- 
 taneous impression with good-humored inflexibiHty 
 then most when the whole cry of voices is on the 
 other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say 
 with masterly good sense precisely what we have 
 thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced 
 to take with shame our own opinion from another. 
 There is a time in every man's education when 
 he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; 
 that imitation is suicide ; that he must take himself 
 for better, for worse, as his portion; that though 
 the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of 
 nourishing corn can come to him but through his 
 toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given 
 to him to till. The power which resides in him is 
 new in nature, and none but he knows what that 
 is which he can do, nor does he know until he has 
 tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one 
 fact, makes much impression on him, and another 
 none. This sculpture in the memory is not with- 
 out pre-established harmony. The eye was placed 
 where one ray should fall, that it might testify of 
 that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, 
 and are ashamed of that divine idea which each 
 of us represents. It may be safely trusted as pro- 
 portionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully 
 imparted, but God will not have his work made 
 manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay 
 When he has put his heart into his work and done 
 
 16 
 
242 Best English Essays 
 
 his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, 
 shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which 
 does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts 
 him ; no muse befriends ; no invention, no hope. 
 
 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron 
 string. Accept the place the divine providence has 
 found for you, the society of your contemporaries, 
 the connection of events. Great men have always 
 done so, and confided themselves childlike to the 
 genius of their age, betraying their perception that 
 the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, 
 working through their hands, predominating in all 
 their being. And we are now men, and must accept 
 in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; 
 and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, 
 not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, 
 redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty 
 eifort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. 
 
 What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, 
 in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even 
 brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust 
 of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed 
 the strength and means opposed to our purpose, 
 these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye 
 is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their 
 faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to no- 
 body : all conform to it, so that one babe commonly 
 makes four or five out of the adults who prattle 
 and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty 
 and manhood no less with its own piquancy and 
 charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its 
 claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. 
 Do not think the youth has no force, because he 
 cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next 
 
Emerson 243 
 
 room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. 
 It seems he knows how to speak to his contem- 
 poraries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how 
 to make us seniors very unnecessary. 
 
 The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, 
 and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say 
 aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of 
 human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the 
 pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, 
 looking out from his corner on such people and facts 
 as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their 
 merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, 
 bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He 
 cumbers himself never about consequences, about 
 interests ; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. 
 You must court him : he does not court you. But 
 the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his 
 consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or 
 spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched 
 by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose 
 affections must now enter into his account. There 
 is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again 
 into his neutrality ! Who can thus avoid all pledges, 
 and having observed, observe again from the same 
 imaffected, unbiassed, unbribable, unaffrighted inno- 
 cence, must always be formidable. He would utter 
 opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen 
 to be not private, but necessary, would sink like 
 darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. 
 
 These are the voices which we hear in solitude, 
 but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into 
 the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy 
 against the manhood of every one of its members. 
 Society is a joint-stock company, in which the mem- 
 
244 ^^st English Essays 
 
 bers agree, for the better securing of his bread to 
 each shareholder, to surrender the Hberty and cul- 
 ture of the eater. The virtue in most request is 
 conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves 
 not realities and creators, but names and customs. 
 
 Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. 
 He who would gather immortal palms must not be 
 hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore 
 if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the 
 integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to your- 
 self, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I 
 remember an answer which when quite young I was 
 prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was 
 wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines 
 of the church. On my saying. What have I to do 
 with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly 
 from within ? my friend suggested : " But these 
 impulses may be from below, not from above." I 
 replied : " They do not seem to me to be such ; but 
 if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the 
 Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of 
 my nature. Good and bad are but names very 
 readily transferable to that or this; the only right 
 is what is after my constitution, the only wrong 
 what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the 
 presence of all opposition, as if everything were titu- 
 lar and ephemeral but him. I am ashamed to think 
 how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to 
 large societies and dead institutions. Every decent 
 and well-spoken individual affects and sways me 
 more than is right. I ought to go upright and 
 vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If 
 malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, 
 shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this 
 
Emerson 245 
 
 bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with 
 his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not 
 say to him : ** Go love thy infant ; love thy wood- 
 chopper : be good-natured and modest : have that 
 grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable 
 ambition with this incredible tenderness for black 
 folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite 
 at home." Rough and graceless would be such 
 greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation 
 of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, 
 
 — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be 
 preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of 
 love when that pules and whines. I shun father 
 and mother and wife and brother, when my genius 
 calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door- 
 post. Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than 
 whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in ex- 
 planation. Expect me not to show cause why I 
 seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do 
 not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obli- 
 gation to put all poor men in good situations. Are 
 they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philan- 
 thropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the 
 cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me 
 and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of 
 persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought 
 and sold ; for them I will go to prison, if need be ; 
 but your miscellaneous popular charities ; the edu- 
 cation at college of fools ; the building of meeting- 
 houses to the vain end to which many now stand; 
 alms to sots ; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies ; 
 
 — though I confess with shame I sometimes suc- 
 cumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which 
 by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold. 
 
246 Best English Essays 
 
 Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the 
 exception than the rule. There is the man and his 
 virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as 
 some piece of courage or charity, much as they 
 would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appear- 
 ance on parade. Their works are done as an apol- 
 ogy or extenuation of their living in the world, — 
 as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their 
 virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but 
 to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. 
 I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so 
 it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glit- 
 tering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and 
 sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask 
 primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse 
 this appeal from the man to his actions. I know 
 that for myself it makes no difference whether I do 
 or forbear those actions which are reckoned excel- 
 lent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where 
 I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts 
 may be, I actually am, and do not need for my 
 own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any 
 secondary testimony. 
 
 What I must do is all that concerns me, not what 
 the people think. This rule, equally arduous in 
 actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the 
 whole distinction between greatness and meanness. 
 It is the harder, because you will always find those 
 who think they know what is your duty better than 
 you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the 
 world's opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after 
 our own ; but the great man is he who in the midst 
 of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the in- 
 dependence of solitude. 
 
Emerson 247 
 
 The objection to conforming to usages that have 
 become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. 
 It loses your time and bhtrs the impression of your 
 character. If you maintain a dead church, contrib- 
 ute to a dead Bible society, vote with a great party 
 either for the government or against it, spread your 
 table like base housekeepers, — under all these 
 screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man 
 you are. And, of course, so much force is with- 
 drawn from your proper life. But do your work, 
 and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall 
 reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a 
 blind-man's-buff is this game of conformity. If I 
 know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear 
 a preacher announce for his text and topic the ex- 
 pediency of one of the institutions of his church. 
 Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he 
 say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know 
 that, with all this ostentation of examining the 
 grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? 
 Do I not' know that he is pledged to himself not to 
 look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a 
 man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained 
 attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest 
 affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes 
 with one or another handkerchief, and attached 
 themselves to some one of these communities of 
 opinion. This conformity makes them not false in 
 a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in 
 all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. 
 Their two is not the real two, their four not the real 
 four ; so that every word they say chagrins us, and 
 we know not where to begin to set them right. 
 Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the 
 
248 Best English Essays 
 
 prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. 
 We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and 
 acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. 
 There is a mortifying experience in particular, 
 which does not fail to wreak itself also in the gen- 
 eral history ; I mean " the foolish face of praise," 
 the forced smile which we put on in company where 
 we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation 
 which does not interest us. The muscles, not spon- 
 taneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wil- 
 fulness, grow tight about the outline of the face 
 with the most disagreeable sensation. 
 
 For non-conformity the world whips you with 
 its displeasure. And therefore a man must know 
 how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look 
 askance on him in the public street or in the friend's 
 parlor. If this aversation had its origin in con- 
 tempt and resistance like his own, he might well go 
 home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces 
 of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep 
 cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and 
 a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the 
 multitude more formidable than that of the senate 
 and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man 
 who knows the world to brook the rage of the culti- 
 vated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, 
 for they are timid as being very vulnerable them- 
 selves. But when to their feminine rage the indig- 
 nation of the people is added, when the ignorant and 
 the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute 
 force that lies at the bottom of society is made to 
 growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity 
 and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no 
 concernment. 
 
Emerson 249 
 
 The other terror that scares us from self-trust is 
 our consistency; a reverence for our past act or 
 word, because the eyes of others have no other data 
 for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we 
 are loath to disappoint them. 
 
 But why should you keep your head over your 
 shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your 
 memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have 
 stated in this or that public place? Suppose you 
 should contradict yourself; what then? It seems 
 to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory 
 alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to 
 bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed 
 present, and live ever in a new day. In your meta- 
 physics you have denied personality to the Deity: 
 yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield 
 to them heart and life, though they should clothe 
 God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as 
 Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 
 
 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little ^ 
 minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers 
 and divines. With consistency a great soul has 
 simply nothing to do. He may as well concern him- 
 self with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you 
 think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what 
 to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it 
 contradict everything you said to-day. — " Ah, so 
 you shall be sure to be misunderstood ? " — Is it so , 
 bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was 
 misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, 
 and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every 
 pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great 
 is to be misunderstood. 
 
 I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the 
 
250 Best English Essays 
 
 sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his 
 being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh 
 are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor 
 does it matter how you gauge and try him. A char- 
 acter is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza ; — 
 read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells 
 the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-Hfe 
 which God allows me, let me record day by day my 
 honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, 
 I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though 
 I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell 
 of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The 
 swallow over my window should interweave that 
 thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web 
 also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches 
 above our wills. Men imagine that they communi- 
 cate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and 
 do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every 
 moment. 
 
 There will be an agreement in whatever variety 
 of actions, so they be each honest and natural in 
 their hour. For of one will, the actions will be 
 harmonious, however unlike they seem. These 
 varieties are lost sight of at a Httle distance, at a 
 little height of thought. One tendency unites them 
 all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line 
 of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient 
 distance, and it straightens itself to the average 
 tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, 
 and will explain your other genuine actions. Your 
 conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what 
 you have already done singly will justify you now. 
 Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm 
 enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must 
 
Emerson 251 
 
 have done so much right before as to defend me 
 now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn 
 appearances, and you always may. The force of 
 character is cumulative. All the foregone days of 
 virtue work their health into this. What makes 
 the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, 
 which so fills the imagination? The consciousness 
 of a train of great days and victories behind. They 
 shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is 
 attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is 
 it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and 
 dignity into Washington's port, and America into 
 Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it 
 is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We 
 worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We 
 love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap 
 for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self- 
 derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedi- 
 gree, even if shown in a young person. 
 
 I hope in these days we have heard the last of con- 
 formity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted 
 and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong 
 for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan 
 fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A 
 great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not 
 wish to please him ; I wish that he should wish to 
 please me. I will stand here for humanity, and 
 though I would make it kind, I would make it true. 
 Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity 
 and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in 
 the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact 
 which is the upshot of all history, that there is a 
 great responsible Thinker and Actor working wher- 
 ever a man works ; that a true man belongs to no 
 
252 Best English Essays 
 
 other time or place, but is the centre of things. 
 Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and 
 all men, and all events. Ordinarily, everybody in 
 society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some 
 other person. Character, reality, reminds you of 
 nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. 
 The man must be so much, that he must make all 
 circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a 
 cause, a country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces 
 and numbers and time fully to accomplish his de- 
 sign ; — and posterity seems to follow his steps as 
 a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for 
 ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is 
 born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to 
 his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and 
 the possible of man. An institution is the length- 
 ened shadow of one man; as Monachism, of the 
 Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; 
 Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abo- 
 lition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called " the 
 height of Rome " ; and all history resolves itself 
 very easily into the biography of a few stout and 
 earnest persons. 
 
 Let a man then know his worth, and keep things 
 under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk 
 up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, 
 or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. 
 But the man in the street, finding no worth in him- 
 self which corresponds to the force which built a 
 tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when 
 he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a 
 costly book has an alien and forbidding air, much 
 like a gay equipagre, and seems to say like that, 
 "Who are you, sir?" Yet they all are his suitors 
 
Emerson 253 
 
 for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they 
 will come out and take possession. The picture 
 waits for my verdict : it is not to command me, but 
 I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular 
 fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in 
 the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and 
 dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his wak- 
 ing, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the 
 duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its 
 popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the 
 state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but 
 now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and 
 finds himself a true prince. 
 
 Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In 
 history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom 
 and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocab- 
 ulary than private John and Edward in a small 
 house and common day's work; but the things of 
 life are the same to both ; the sum total of both are 
 the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and 
 Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were 
 virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a 
 stake depends on your private act to-day, as fol- 
 lowed their public and renowned steps. When pri- 
 vate men shall act with original views, the lustre 
 will be transferred from the actions of kings to those 
 of gentlemen. 
 
 The world has been instructed by its kings, who 
 have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been 
 taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence 
 that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty 
 with which men have everywhere suffered the king, 
 the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among 
 them by a law of his own, make his own scale of 
 
254 , B^st English Essays 
 
 men and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits 
 not with money but with honor, and represent the 
 law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which 
 they obscurely signified their consciousness of their 
 own right and comeliness, the right of every man. 
 
 The magnetism which all original action exerts 
 is explained when we inquire the reason of self- 
 trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aborig- 
 inal Self, on which a universal reliance may be 
 grounded? What is the nature and power of that 
 science-baffling star, without parallax, without cal- 
 culable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even 
 into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark 
 of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to 
 that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, 
 and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. 
 We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst 
 all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, 
 the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all 
 things find their common origin. For, the sense 
 of being which in calm hours rises, we know not 
 how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from 
 space, from light, from time, from man, but one 
 with them, and proceeds obviously from the same 
 source whence their life and being also proceed. We 
 first share the life by which things exist, and after- 
 wards see them as appearances in nature, and forget 
 that we have shared their cause. Here is the foun- 
 tain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs 
 of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and 
 which cannot be denied without impiety and athe- 
 ism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, 
 which makes us receivers of its truth and organs 
 of its activity. When we discern justice, when we 
 
Emerson 2^^ 
 
 discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow 
 a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this 
 comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all 
 philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence 
 is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates 
 between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his in- 
 voluntary perceptions, and knows that to his invol- 
 untary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may 
 err in the expression of them, but he knows that 
 these things are so, like day and night, not to be dis- 
 puted. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but 
 roving ; — the idlest revery, the faintest native emo- 
 tion, command my curiosity and respect. Thought- 
 less people contradict as readily the statements of 
 perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more 
 readily; for, they do not distinguish between per- 
 ception and notion. They fancy that I choose to 
 see this or that thing. But perception is not whim- 
 sical, it is fatal. If I see a trait, my children will 
 see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, 
 — although it may chance that no one has seen it 
 before me. For my perception of it is as much a 
 fact as the sun. 
 
 The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so 
 pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. 
 It must be that when God speaketh he should com- 
 municate, not one thing, but all things ; should fill 
 the world with his voice ; should scatter forth light, 
 nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present 
 thought; and new date and new create the whole. 
 Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine 
 wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, 
 texts, temples, fall; it lives now, and absorbs past 
 and future into the present hour. All things are 
 
2^6 Best English Essays 
 
 made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as 
 another. All things are dissolved to their centre by 
 their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and 
 particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man 
 claims to know and speak of God, and carries you 
 backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered 
 nation in another country, in another world, believe 
 him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is 
 its fulness and completion? Is the parent better 
 than the child into whom he has cast his ripened 
 being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? 
 The centuries are conspirators against the sanity 
 and authority of the soul. Time and space are but 
 physiological colors which the eye makes, but the 
 soul is light ; where it is, is day ; where it was, is 
 night; and history is an impertinence and an in- 
 jury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue 
 or parable of my being and becoming. 
 
 Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer 
 upright ; he dares not say, " I think," " I am," but 
 quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before 
 the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses 
 under my window make no reference to former 
 roses or to better ones ; they are for what they are ; 
 they exist with God to-day. There is no time to 
 them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in 
 every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud 
 has burst, its whole Hfe acts; in the full-blown 
 flower there is no more ; in the leafless root there is 
 no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, 
 in all moments alike. But man postpones or remem- 
 bers ; he does not live in the present, but with 
 reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the 
 riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to fore- 
 
i^merson 257 
 
 see the future. He cannot be happy and strong until 
 he too lives with nature in the present, above time. 
 
 This should be plain enough. Yet see what 
 strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, 
 unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what 
 David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always 
 set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. 
 We are like children who repeat by rote the sen- 
 tences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow 
 older, of the men of talents and character they 
 chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact 
 words they spoke ; afterwards, when they come into 
 the point of view which those had who uttered these 
 sayings, they understand them, and are willing to 
 let the words go; for, at any time, they can use 
 words as good when occasion comes. If we live 
 truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong 
 man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. 
 When we have new perception, we shall gladly dis- 
 burden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old 
 rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice 
 shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the 
 rustle of the corn. 
 
 And now at last the highest truth on this subject 
 remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all 
 that we say is the far-off remembering of the intu- 
 ition. That thought, by what I can now nearest 
 approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, 
 when you have life in yourself, it is not by any 
 known or accustomed way; you shall not discern 
 the footprints of any other; you shall not see the 
 face of man ; you shall not hear any name ; the way, 
 the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and 
 new. It shall exclude example and experience. 
 
 17 
 
258 Best English' Essays 
 
 You take the way from man, not to man. All per- 
 sons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. 
 Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is some- 
 what low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there 
 is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly 
 joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity 
 and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence 
 of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing 
 that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the 
 Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of 
 time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This 
 which I think and feel underlay every former state 
 of life and circumstances, as it does underHe my 
 present, and what is called life, and what is called 
 death. 
 
 Life only avails, not the having lived. Power 
 ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the 
 .moment of transition from a past to a new state, in 
 the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. 
 This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; 
 for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches 
 to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds 
 the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas 
 equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self- 
 reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there 
 will be power not confident but agent. To talk of 
 reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak 
 rather of that which relies, because it works and is. 
 Who has more obedience than I masters me, though 
 he should not raise his finger. Round him I must 
 revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it 
 rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do 
 not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or 
 a company of men, plastic and permeable to prin- 
 
Emerson 259 
 
 ciples, by the law of nature must overpower and ride 
 all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are 
 not. 
 
 This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly 
 reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of 
 all into the ever-blessed One. Self-existence is the 
 attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes > 
 the measure of good by the degree in which it enters 
 into all lower forms. All things real are so by 
 so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, hus- 
 bandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal 
 weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as 
 examples of its presence and impure action. I see 
 the same law working in nature for conservation 
 and growth. Power is in nature the essential meas- 
 ure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in 
 her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis 
 and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the 
 bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, 
 the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, 
 are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and there- 
 fore self-relying soul. 
 
 Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let us sit 
 at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish 
 the intruding rabble of men and books and institu- 
 tions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid 
 the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for 
 God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, 
 and our docility to our own law demonstrate the 
 poverty of nature and fortune beside our native 
 riches. 
 
 But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in 
 awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at 
 home, to put itself in communication with the inter- 
 
26o Best English Essays 
 
 nal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water 
 of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I 
 like the silent church before the service begins, 
 better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, 
 how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with 
 a precinct or sanctuary ! So let us always sit. Why 
 should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, 
 or father, or child, because they sit around our 
 hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All 
 men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for 
 that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to 
 the extent of being ashamed of it. But the isolation 
 must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must 
 be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be 
 in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. 
 Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all 
 knock at once at thy closet door, and say, " Come 
 out unto us." But keep thy state; come not into 
 their confusion. The power men possess to annoy 
 me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can 
 come near me but through my act. " What we love 
 that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of 
 the love." 
 
 If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obe- 
 dience and faith, let us at least resist our tempta- 
 tions ; let us enter into the state of war, and wake 
 Thor and Woden, courage and constancy in our 
 Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth 
 times by speaking the truth. Check this lying 
 hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to 
 the expectation of these deceived and deceiving 
 people with whom we converse. Say to them, O 
 father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I 
 have lived with you after appearances hitherto. 
 
Emerson 261 
 
 Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto 
 you that henceforward I obey no law less than the 
 eternal law. I will have no covenants but proxim- 
 ities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to 
 support my family, to be the chaste husband of one 
 wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new 
 and unprecedented way. I appeal from your cus- 
 toms. I must be myself. I cannot break myself 
 any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for 
 what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, 
 I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will 
 not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that 
 what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before 
 the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the 
 heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; 
 if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by 
 hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not 
 in the same truth with me, cleave to your compan- 
 ions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, 
 but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and 
 mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt 
 in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to- 
 day? You will soon love what is dictated by your 
 nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, 
 it will bring us out safe at last. But so you may 
 give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my 
 liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Be- 
 sides, all persons have their moments of reason, when 
 they look out into the region of absolute truth ; then 
 will they justify me, and do the same thing. 
 
 The populace think that your rejection of popular 
 standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere 
 antinomianism ; and the bold sensualist will use the 
 name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law 
 
262 Best English Essays 
 
 of consciousness abides. There are two confes- 
 sionals, in one or the other of which we must be 
 shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by 
 clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. 
 Consider whether you have satisfied your relations 
 to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and 
 dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But 
 I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve 
 me to myself. I have my own stern claims and 
 perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many 
 offices that are called duties. But if I can dis- 
 charge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the 
 popular code. If any one imagines that this law is 
 lax, let him keep its commandment one day. 
 
 And truly it demands something godlike in him 
 who has cast off the common motives of humanity, 
 and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. 
 High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, 
 that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, 
 law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to 
 him as strong as iron necessity is to others ! 
 
 If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
 called by distinction society, he will see the need of 
 these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to 
 be drawn out, and we are become timorous, despond- 
 ing whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of 
 fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. 
 Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We 
 want men and women who shall renovate life and 
 our social state, but we see that most natures are 
 insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an 
 ambition out of all proportion to their practical 
 force, and do lean and beg day and night continu- 
 ally. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our 
 
Emerson 263 
 
 occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have 
 not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are 
 parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, 
 where strength is born. 
 
 If our young men miscarry in their first enter- 
 prises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant 
 fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius 
 studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed 
 in an office within one year afterwards in the cities 
 or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his 
 friends and to himself that he is right in being 
 disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his 
 life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Ver- 
 mont, who in turn tries all the professions, who 
 teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, 
 edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a town- 
 ship, and so forth, in successive years, and always, 
 like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of 
 these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, 
 and feels no shame in not " studying a profession," 
 for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. 
 He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. 
 Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell 
 men they are not leaning willows, but can and must 
 detach themselves ; that with the exercise of self- 
 trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the 
 word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nation^ 
 that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and 
 that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the 
 laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the 
 window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere 
 him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of 
 man to splendor, and make his name dear to all 
 history. 
 
0.6^ Best English Essays 
 
 It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must 
 work a revolution in all the offices and relations of 
 men ; in their religion ; in their education ; in their 
 pursuits; their modes of living; their association; 
 in their property; in their speculative views. 
 
 I. In what prayers do men allow themselves! 
 That which they call a holy* office is not so much 
 as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks 
 for some foreign addition to come through some 
 foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of 
 natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and 
 miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular com- 
 modity, — anything less than all good, — is vicious. 
 Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from 
 the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a 
 beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God 
 pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a 
 means to effect a private end is meanness and 
 theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature 
 and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one 
 with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer 
 in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling 
 in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower 
 kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers 
 heard throughout nature though for cheap ends. 
 Caratach, in Fletcher's '* Bonduca," when admon- 
 ished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, 
 replies, — - 
 
 " His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 
 Our valors are our best gods." 
 
 Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. 
 Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is 
 infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can 
 
Emerson 265 
 
 thereby help the sufferer: if not, attend your own 
 work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. 
 Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them 
 who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for com- 
 pany, instead of imparting to them truth and health 
 in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in 
 communication with their own reason. The secret 
 of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore 
 to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him 
 all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, 
 all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our 
 love goes out to him and embraces him, because he 
 did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically 
 caress and celebrate him, because he held on his 
 way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods 
 love him because men hated him. '' To the per- 
 severing mortal," said Zoroaster, " the blessed 
 Immortals are swift." 
 
 As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are 
 their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say 
 with those foolish Israelites, " Let not God speak to 
 us lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, 
 and we will obey." Everywhere I am hindered of 
 meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his 
 own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his 
 brother's or his brother's brother's God. Every new 
 mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of 
 uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, 
 a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its 
 classification on other men, and lo! a new system. 
 In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so 
 to the number of the objects it touches and brings 
 within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But 
 chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, 
 
266 Best English Essays 
 
 which are also classifications of some powerful mind 
 acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's 
 relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quak- 
 erism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same 
 delight in subordinating everything to the new ter- 
 minology, as a girl who has just learned botany 
 in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. 
 It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find 
 his intellectual power has grown by the study of 
 his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, 
 the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and 
 not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the 
 walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote 
 horizon with the walls of the universe; the lumi- 
 naries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch 
 their master built. They cannot imagine how you 
 aliens have any right to see, — how you can see ; 
 *' it must be somehow that you stole the light from 
 us." They do not yet perceive, that light, unsyste- 
 matic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even 
 into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their 
 own. If they are honest and do well, presently their 
 neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will 
 crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the im- 
 mortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, 
 million-colored, will beam over the universe as on 
 the first morning. 
 
 2. It is for want of self-culture that the super- 
 stition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, 
 Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Ameri- 
 cans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece 
 venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast 
 where they were, like an axis of the earth. In 
 manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The 
 
Emerson 267 
 
 soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, 
 and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion, 
 call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he 
 is at home still, and shall make men sensible by 
 the expression of his countenance, that he goes the 
 missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities 
 and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper 
 or a valet. 
 
 I have no churlish objection to the circumnavi- 
 gation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of 
 study, and benevolence, so that the man is first 
 domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope 
 of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He 
 who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat 
 which he does not carry, travels away from himself, 
 and grows old even in youth among old things. 
 In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind' have 
 become old and dilapidated as they. He carries 
 ruins to ruins. 
 
 Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys 
 discover to us the indifference of places. At home 
 I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxi- 
 cated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack 
 my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, 
 and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me 
 is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, 
 that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. 
 I affect to be intoxicated with sights and sugges- 
 tions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes 
 with me wherever I go. 
 
 3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a 
 deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual 
 action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system 
 of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel 
 
268 Best English Essays 
 
 when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We 
 imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of 
 the mind ? Our houses are built with foreign taste ; 
 our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; 
 our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and 
 follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created 
 the arts wherever they have flourished. It was 
 in his own mind that the artist sought his model. 
 It was an application of his own thought to the 
 thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. 
 And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic 
 model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, 
 and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, 
 and if the American artist will study with hope and 
 love the precise thing to be done by him, considering 
 the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants 
 of the people, the habit and form of the govern- 
 ment, he will create a house in which all these will 
 find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will 
 be satisfied also. 
 
 Insist on yourself ; never imitate. Your own gift 
 you can present every moment with the cumulative 
 force of a whole fife's cultivation; but of the 
 adopted talent of another, you have only an ex- 
 temporaneous, half possession. That which each 
 can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No 
 man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person 
 has exhibited it. Where is the master who could 
 have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master 
 who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, 
 or Bacon, or Newton ? Every great man is a unique. 
 The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he 
 could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made 
 by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is 
 
Emerson 269 
 
 assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare 
 too much. There is at this moment for you an 
 utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal 
 chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or 
 the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all 
 these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all elo- 
 quent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat 
 itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs 
 say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch 
 of voice ; for the ear and the tongue are two organs 
 of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble re- 
 gions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt 
 reproduce the Foreworld again. 
 
 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look 
 abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume 
 themselves on the improvement of society, and no 
 man improves. 
 
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
 side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual 
 changes ; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Chris- 
 tianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change 
 is not amelioration. For everything that is given, 
 something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and 
 loses old instincts. What a contrast between the 
 well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with 
 a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his 
 pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, whose prop- 
 erty is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided 
 twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But com- 
 pare the health of the two men, and you shall see 
 that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. 
 If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with 
 a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall 
 unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft 
 
270 Best English Essays 
 
 pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to 
 his grave. 
 
 The civiUzed man has built a coach, but has lost 
 
 (■ the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, 
 but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a 
 fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell 
 the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac 
 he has, and so being sure of the information when 
 he wants it, the man in the street does not know 
 a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe, 
 the equinox he knows as little ; and the whole bright 
 calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. 
 His note-books impair his memory; his Hbraries 
 overload his wit ; the insurance office increases the 
 number of accidents; and it may be a question 
 whether machinery does not encumber; whether 
 we have not lost by refinement some energy, by 
 a Christianity intrenched in establishments and 
 forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic 
 was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the 
 Christian ? 
 
 There is no more deviation in the moral standard 
 than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater 
 men are now than ever were. A singular equality 
 may be observed between the great men of the first 
 and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, 
 religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century 
 
 '^ avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, 
 three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time 
 is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anax- 
 agoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave 
 no class. He who is really of their class will not be 
 called by their name, but will be his own man, and, 
 in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and in- 
 
Emerson 271 
 
 ventions of each period are only its costume, and 
 do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved 
 machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and 
 Behring accompHshed so much in their fishing- 
 boats, as to astonish Parry and Frankhn, v^hose 
 equipment exhausted the resources of science and 
 art. GaHleo, with an opera-glass, discovered a 
 more splendid series of celestial phenomena than 
 any one since. Columbus found the New World 
 in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the period- 
 ical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, 
 which were introduced with loud laudation a few 
 years or centuries before. The great genius returns 5 
 to essential man. We reckoned the improvements 
 of the art of war among the triumphs of science, 
 and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, 
 which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and 
 disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held 
 it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, 
 " without abolishing our arms, magazines, commis- 
 saries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Ro- 
 man custom, the soldier should receive his supply 
 of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread 
 himself." 
 
 Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but 
 the water of which it is composed does not. The 
 same particle does not rise from the valley to the 
 ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons 
 who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and 
 their experience with them. 
 
 And so the reliance on Property, including the 
 reliance on governments which protect it, is the 
 want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from 
 themselves and at things so long, that they have 
 
272 Best English Essays 
 
 come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil in- 
 stitutions as guards of property, and they deprecate 
 assaults on these, because they feel them to be 
 assaults on property. They measure their esteem 
 of each other by what each has, and not by what 
 each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of 
 his property, out of new respect for his nature. 
 Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it 
 is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, 
 or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it 
 does not belong to him, has no root in him, and 
 merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber 
 takes it away. But that which a man is does always 
 by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is 
 living property, which does not wait the beck of 
 rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or 
 bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever 
 the man breathes. " Thy lot or portion of life," said 
 the Caliph Ali, " is seeking after thee ; therefore be 
 at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on 
 these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect 
 for numbers. The political parties meet in numer- 
 ous conventions ; the greater the concourse, and 
 with each new uproar of announcement, — The 
 delegation from Essex ! The Democrats from New 
 Hampshire ! The Whigs of Maine ! — the young 
 patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new 
 thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the 
 reformers summon conventions, and vote and re- 
 solve in multitude. Not so, O friends, will the God 
 deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method 
 precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off 
 all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see 
 him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by 
 
Emerson 273 
 
 every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better 
 than a town ? Ask nothing of men, and in the end- 
 less mutation, thou only firm column must presently 
 appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He 
 who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak 
 because he has looked for good out of him and 
 elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself 
 unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
 himself, stands in the erect position, commands his 
 limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands 
 on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on 
 his head. 
 
 So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gam- 
 ble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel 
 rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, 
 and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of 
 God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast 
 chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter 
 out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, 
 a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the 
 return of your absent friend, or some other favor- 
 able event, raises your spirits, and you think good 
 days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. 
 Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing 
 can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 
 
 18 
 
VIII 
 MACAULAY 
 
MACAULAY: 
 
 THE RHETORICIAN 
 
 IT has been the fashion in these later days to 
 depreciate Macaulay. " A mere rhetori- 
 cian " has become almost a cant word in 
 connection w^% him. Yet in his day he had a 
 more decided and obvious influence on the style 
 of young men of all conditions than any other 
 writer of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Macaulay' s style is the style of the orator 
 adapted to the purposes of the essay writer. He 
 is above all clear and simple. His ideas are 
 neither many nor profound, but they are impor- 
 tant of their kind. His special merit is that he 
 illustrates his thought with all the arts of elo- 
 quence. His special rhetorical weapon is antith- 
 esis and the balanced-sentence structure. This 
 has a simple cadence that readily catches and 
 charms the ear. There is in it not only cadence, 
 but movement, vivacity, and inspiration. We see 
 how the hearer may be swept onward to almost 
 any conclusion by the logical succession of the 
 thoughts coupled with the sweep of the orator's 
 magnetism. The art of eloquence is a fine one, 
 and one well worth cultivating. It was the art 
 made so famous by the speakers in the Athenian 
 
278 Best English Essays 
 
 agora, and it is to that art wholly that Aristotle's 
 treatise on rhetoric is devoted. 
 
 Macaulay's methods of adapting the peculiar 
 gifts of the public speaker to written prose are 
 simple. First, the ideas are arranged in logical 
 order, one leading up to and preparing the way 
 for the next, so that the most cursory reader can- 
 not fail to perceive the connection, and he who 
 runs may read. Then all facts and conclusions 
 are stated vividly by means of sf \rp contrasts, 
 and each important point is repeated in many dif- 
 ferent ways until the reader has been forced by 
 the mere reading of the words to take sufficient 
 time to let it sink into his mind. The art of pro- 
 portioning the time and attention to be given to 
 each essential point is one which the orator under- 
 stands in perfection, but which the writer who is 
 not constantly thinking of his audience usually 
 fails to master. It is nevertheless one of the most 
 important acquirements for every writer who 
 wishes to be effective. In this especially Macau- 
 lay is our most useful model. 
 
 THE PURITANS 
 (Essay on Milton) 
 
 WE would speak first of the Puritans, the most 
 remarkable body of men, perhaps, which 
 the world has ever produced. The odious and ridic- 
 ulous parts of their character lie on the surface. He 
 
Macaulay 279 
 
 that runs may read them; nor have there been 
 wanting attentive and maHcious observers to point 
 them out. For many years after the Restoration, 
 they were the theme of unmeasured invective and 
 derision. They were exposed to the utmost Hcen- 
 tiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time 
 when the press and the stage were most Hcentious. 
 They were not men of letters ; they were, as a body, 
 unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and 
 the public would not take them under its protection. 
 They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, 
 to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. 
 The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour 
 aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their 
 long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural 
 phrases which they introduced on every occasion, 
 their contempt of human learning, their detestation 
 of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the 
 laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone 
 that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And 
 he who approaches this subject should carefully 
 guard against the influence of that potent ridicule 
 which has already misled so many excellent writers. 
 
 " Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
 Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
 Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
 Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." 
 
 Those who roused the people to resistance, who 
 directed their measures through a long series of 
 eventful years, who formed, out of the most un- 
 promising materials, the finest army that Europe 
 had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, 
 and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of 
 
28o Best English Essays 
 
 domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of 
 England terrible to every nation on the face of the 
 earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their ab- 
 surdities were mere external badges, like the signs 
 of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret 
 that these badges were not more attractive. We 
 regret that a body to whose courage and talents 
 mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not 
 the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the 
 adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good- 
 breeding for which the court of Charles the Second 
 was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, 
 we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the 
 specious caskets which contain only the Death's 
 head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden 
 chest which conceals the treasure. 
 
 The Puritans were men whose minds had derived 
 a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of 
 superior beings and eternal interests. Not content 
 with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling 
 Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to 
 the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing 
 was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too 
 minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, 
 was with them the great end of existence. They 
 rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage 
 which other sects substituted for the pure worship 
 of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses 
 of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they as- 
 pired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and 
 to commune with him face to face. Hence origi- 
 nated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. 
 The difference between the greatest and the meanest 
 of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with 
 
Macaulay 281 
 
 the boundless interval which separated the whole 
 race from him on whom their own eyes were con- 
 stantly fixed. They recognised no title to supe- 
 riority but his favour ; and, confident of that favour, 
 they despised all the accomplishments and all the 
 dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted 
 with the works of philosophers and poets, they were 
 deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names 
 were not found in the registers of heralds, they were 
 recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were 
 not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, 
 legions of ministering angels had charge over them. 
 Their palaces were houses not made with hands ; 
 their diadems crowns of glory which should never 
 fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles 
 and priests, they looked down with contempt: for 
 they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious 
 treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, 
 nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests 
 by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very 
 meanest of them was a being to whose fate a myste- 
 rious and terrible importance belonged, on whose 
 slightest action the spirits of light and darkness 
 looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, 
 before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a 
 felicity which should continue when heaven and 
 earth should have passed away. Events which 
 short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, 
 had been ordained on his account. For his sake 
 empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For 
 his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by 
 the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the 
 prophet. He had been wrested by no common 
 deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He 
 
a82 Best English Essays 
 
 had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, 
 by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him 
 that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had 
 been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature 
 had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. 
 Thus the Puritan was made up of two different 
 men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, grati- 
 tude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, 
 sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before 
 his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his 
 king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with 
 convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half- 
 maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He 
 heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers 
 of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, 
 or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. 
 Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the 
 sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he 
 cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid 
 his face from him. But when he took his seat in 
 the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tem- 
 pestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible 
 trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the 
 godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing 
 from them but their groans and their whining 
 hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little 
 reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall 
 of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics 
 brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of 
 judgment and an immutability of purpose which 
 some writers have thought inconsistent with their 
 religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary 
 effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one 
 subject made them tranquil on every other. One 
 
Macaulay 283 
 
 overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity 
 and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its 
 terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their 
 smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sor- 
 rows, but not for the things of this world. Enthu- 
 siasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their 
 minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and 
 raised them above the influence of danger and of 
 corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pur- 
 sue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. 
 They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's 
 iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and tramp- 
 ling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, 
 but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, 
 insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not 
 to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood 
 by any barrier. 
 
 Such we believe to have been the character of the 
 Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their man- 
 ners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic 
 habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their 
 minds was often injured by straining after things 
 too high for mortal reach : and we know that, in 
 spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell 
 into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance 
 and extravagant austerity, that they had their an- 
 chorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their 
 De Montforts, their Dominies and their Escobars. 
 Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consider- 
 ation, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, 
 a wise, an honest, and an useful body. 
 
 ^ Macaulay's criticisms of Croker's editorial work are omitted, 
 but notliing else. 
 
284 Best English Essays 
 
 BOSWELL'S "LIFE OF JOHNSON'' 
 
 THE " Life of Johnson " is assuredly a great, 
 a very great work. Homer is not more 
 decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is 
 not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demos- 
 thenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, 
 than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has 
 no second. He has distanced all his competitors 
 so decidedly that it is not worth while to place 
 them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere. 
 
 We are not sure that there is in the whole history 
 of the human intellect so strange a phsenomenon as 
 this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived 
 have written biography. Boswell was one of the 
 smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them 
 all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his 
 own account or to the united testimony of all who 
 knew him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intel- 
 lect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had 
 missed his only chance of immortality by not having 
 been alive when the "Dunciad" was written. Beau- 
 clerk used his name as a proverbial expression for 
 a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the whole of 
 that brilliant society which has owed to him the 
 greater part of its fame. He was always laying 
 himself at the feet of some eminent man, and beg- 
 ging to be spit upon and trampled upon. He was 
 always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then 
 " binding it as a crown unto him," not merely in 
 metaphor, but literally. He exhibited himself, at 
 the Shakespeare Jubilee, to all the crowd which 
 filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard round his 
 hat bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In 
 
Macaulay 285 
 
 his '* Tour," he proclaimed to all the world that at 
 Edinburgh he was known by the appellation of 
 Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent, shallow 
 and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family 
 pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of 
 a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, 
 an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of 
 London, so curious to know every body who was 
 talked about, that, Tory and high Churchman as 
 he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for 
 an introduction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most 
 childish distinctions, that when he had been to 
 court, he drove to the office where his book was 
 printing without changing his clothes, and sum- 
 moned all the printer's devils to admire his new 
 ruffles and sword ; such was this man, and such he 
 was content and proud to be. Everything which 
 another man would have hidden, everything the 
 publication of which would have made another man 
 hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous 
 exultation to his weak and diseased mind. What 
 silly things he said, what bitter retorts he provoked, 
 how at one place he was troubled with evil pre- 
 sentiments which came to nothing, how at another 
 place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read 
 the prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that had 
 bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and 
 came away maudlin, how he added five hundred 
 pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because 
 she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he 
 was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the 
 sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a 
 child, how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one even- 
 ing and how much his merriment annoyed the 
 ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of 
 
286 Best English Essays 
 
 Argyle and with what stately contempt she put down 
 his impertinence, how Colonel Macleod sneered to 
 his face at his impudent obtrusiveness, how his 
 father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and 
 fretted at his fooleries; all these things he pro- 
 claimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects 
 for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices 
 of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his 
 hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, 
 he displayed with a cool self-complacency, a perfect 
 unconsciousness that he was making a fool of him- 
 self, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in 
 the whole history of mankind. He has used many 
 people ill; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill 
 as himself. 
 
 That such a man should have written one of the 
 best books in the world is strange enough. But 
 this is not all. Many persons who have conducted 
 themselves foolishly in active life, and whose con- 
 versation has indicated no superior powers of mind, 
 have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very 
 justly described by one of his contemporaries as 
 an inspired idiot, and by another as a being 
 
 " Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." 
 
 La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His 
 blunders would not come in amiss among the stories 
 of Hierocles. But these men attained literary emi- 
 nence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained 
 it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been 
 a great fool, he would never have been a great 
 writer. Without all the qualities which made him 
 the jest and the torment of those among whom he 
 lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, 
 the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to 
 
Macaulay 287 
 
 all reproof, he never could have produced so ex- 
 cellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servi- 
 tude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity 
 and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion 
 who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hos- 
 pitality by the basest violation of confidence, a man 
 without delicacy, without shame, without sense 
 enough to know when he was hurting the feelings 
 of others or when he was exposing himself to 
 derision ; and because he was all this, he has, in 
 an important department of literature, immeasur- 
 ably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, 
 Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson. 
 
 Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to 
 eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. 
 There is not in all his books a single remark of 
 his own on literature, politics, religion, or society, 
 which is not either commonplace or absurd. His 
 dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave- 
 trade, and on the entailing of landed estates, may 
 serve as examples. To say that these passages are 
 sophistical would be to pay them an extravagant 
 compHment. They have no pretence to argument, 
 or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable 
 observations made by himself in the course of con- 
 versation. Of those observations we do not remem- 
 ber one which is above the intellectual capacity of 
 a boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his own 
 letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or 
 twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those 
 things which are generally considered as making 
 a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He 
 had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive 
 memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of 
 
288 Best English Essays 
 
 sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have 
 sufficed to make him conspicuous ; but because 
 he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they 
 have made him immortal. 
 
 Those parts of his book which, considered ab- 
 stractedly, are most utterly worthless, are delightful 
 when we read them as illustrations of the character 
 of the writer. Bad in themselves, they are good 
 dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice Shallow, 
 the clipped Enghsh of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced 
 consonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell 
 is the most candid. Other men who have pretended 
 to lay open their own hearts, Rousseau, for ex- 
 ample, and Lord Byron, have evidently written with 
 a constant view to effect, and are to be then most 
 distrusted when they seem to be most sincere. 
 There is scarcely any man who would not rather 
 accuse himself of great crimes and of dark and 
 tempestuous passions than proclaim all his little 
 vanities and wild fancies. It would be easier to 
 find a person who would avow actions like those of 
 C^sar Borgia or Danton, than one who would 
 publish a day dream like those of Alnaschar and 
 Malvolio. Those weaknesses which most men keep 
 covered up in the most secret places of the mind, 
 not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship or of 
 love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell 
 paraded before all the world. He was perfectly 
 frank, because the weakness of his understanding 
 and the tumult of his spirits prevented him from 
 knowing when he made himself ridiculous. His 
 book resembles nothing so much as the conver- 
 sation of the inmates of the Palace of Truth. 
 
 His fame is great ; and it will, we have no doubt, 
 
Macaulay 289 
 
 be lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and 
 indeed marvellously resembles infamy. We remem- 
 ber no other case in which the world has made so 
 great a distinction between a book and its author. 
 In general, the book and the author are considered 
 as one.- To admire the book is to admire the author. 
 The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the 
 only exception, to this rule. His work is universally 
 allowed to be interesting, instructive, eminently 
 original: yet it has brought him nothing but con- 
 tempt. All the world reads it, all the world delights 
 in it: yet we do not remember ever to have read 
 or ever to have heard any expression of respect 
 and admiration for the man to whom we owe so 
 much instruction and amusement. While edition 
 after edition of his book was coming forth, his son, 
 as Mr. Croker tells us, was ashamed of it, and 
 hated to hear it mentioned. This feeling was natu- 
 ral and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw that in 
 proportion to the celebrity of the work, was the 
 degradation of the author. The very editors of 
 this unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten 
 their allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists who 
 took arms by the authority of the king against his 
 person, have attacked the writer while doing hom- 
 age to the writings. Mr. Croker, for example, has 
 published two thousand five hundred notes on the 
 life of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever mentions the 
 biographer whose performance he has taken such 
 pains to illustrate, without some expression of 
 contempt. 
 
 An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not. 
 Yet the malignity of the most malignant satirist 
 could scarcely cut deeper than his thoughtless lo- 
 
 19 
 
^go Best English Essays 
 
 quacity. Having himself no sensibility to derision 
 and contempt, he took it for granted that all others 
 were equally callous. He was not ashamed to 
 exhibit himself to the whole world as a common 
 spy, a common tattler, a humble companion without 
 the excuse of poverty, and to tell a hundred stories 
 of his own pertness and folly, and of the insults 
 which his pertness and folly brought upon him. 
 It was natural that he should show little discretion 
 in cases in which the feelings or the honour of 
 others might be concerned. No man, surely, ever 
 published such stories respecting persons whom he 
 professed to love and revere. He would infallibly 
 have made his hero as contemptible as he has made 
 himself, had not his hero really possessed some 
 moral and intellectual qualities of a very high order. 
 The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordi- 
 nary man is that his character, instead of being 
 degraded, has, on the whole, been decidedly raised 
 by a work in which all his vices and weaknesses 
 are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were 
 exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick. 
 
 Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his 
 fame and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, 
 is better known to us than any other man in history. 
 Every thing about him, his coat, his wig, his figure, 
 his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his roll- 
 ing walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which 
 too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his 
 insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with 
 plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick 
 of touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious 
 practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, 
 his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations, 
 
Macaulay 291 
 
 his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his 
 puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, 
 his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, 
 his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates, 
 old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat 
 Hodge and the negro Frank, all are as famil- 
 iar to us as the objects by which we have been 
 surrounded from childhood. But we have no 
 minute information respecting those years of John- 
 son's life during which his character and his man- 
 ners became immutably fixed. We know him, not 
 as he was known to the men of his own generation, 
 but as he was known to men whose father he might 
 have been. That celebrated club of which he was 
 the most distinguished member contained few per- 
 sons who could remember a time when his fame 
 was not fully established and his habits completely 
 formed. He had made himself a name in literature 
 while Reynolds and the Wartons were still boys. 
 He was about twenty years older than Burke, Gold- 
 smith, and Gerard Hamilton, about thirty years 
 older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton, and 
 about forty years older than Lord Stowell, Sir 
 William Jones, and Windham. Boswell and Mrs. 
 Thrale, the two writers from whom we derive most 
 of our knowledge respecting him, never saw him 
 till long after he was fifty years old, till most of 
 his great works had become classical, and till the 
 pension bestowed on him by the Crown had placed 
 him above poverty. Of those eminent men who 
 were his most intimate associates towards the close 
 of his life, the only one, as far as we remember, 
 who knew him during the first ten or twelve years 
 of his residence in the capital, was David Garrick; 
 
292 Best English Essays 
 
 and it does not appear that, during those years, 
 David Garrick saw much of his fellow-townsman. 
 
 Johnson came up to London precisely at the time 
 when the condition of a man of letters was most 
 miserable and degraded. It was a dark night be- 
 tween two sunny days. The age of patronage had 
 passed away. The age of general curiosity and 
 intelligence had not arrived. The number of 
 readers is at present so great that a popular author 
 may subsist in comfort and opulence on the profits 
 of his works. In the reigns of William the Third, 
 of Anne, and of George the First, even such men 
 as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have been 
 able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their 
 writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand 
 for literature was, at the close of the seventeenth 
 and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 more than made up by artificial encouragement, by 
 a vast system of bounties and premiums. There 
 was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of 
 literary merit were so splendid, at which men who 
 could write well found such easy admittance into 
 the most distinguished society, and to the highest 
 honours of the state. The chiefs of both the great 
 parties into which the kingdom was divided patron- 
 ised literature with emulous munificence. Con- 
 greve, when he had scarcely attained his majority, 
 was rewarded for his first comedy with places which 
 made him independent for life. Smith, though his 
 Hippolytus and Phaedra failed, would have been 
 consoled with three hundred a year but for his own 
 folly. Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but also 
 land-surveyor of the customs in the port of London, 
 clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and sec- 
 
Macaulay 293 
 
 retary of the Presentations to the Lord Chancellor. 
 Hughes was secretary to the Commissions of the 
 Peace. Ambrose Philips was judge of the Preroga- 
 tive Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of 
 Appeals and of the Board of Trade. Newton was 
 Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior were em- 
 ployed in embassies of high dignity and importance. 
 Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk 
 mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and- 
 twenty. It was to a poem on the " Death of Charles 
 the Second," and to the " City and Country Mouse," 
 that Montague owed his introduction into public life, 
 his earldom, his garter, and his Auditorship of the 
 Exchequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable preju- 
 dice of the queen, would have been a bishop. Ox- 
 ford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through 
 the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when 
 that ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele 
 was a commissioner of stamps and a member of Par- 
 liament. Arthur Mainwaring was a commissioner 
 of the customs, and auditor of the imprest. Tickell 
 was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. 
 Addison was secretary of state. 
 
 This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, 
 as it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, almost the 
 only noble versifier in the court of Charles the 
 Second who possessed talents for composition which 
 were independent of the aid of a coronet.* Mon- 
 tague owed his elevation to the favour of Dorset, 
 and imitated through the whole course of his life 
 the liberality to which he was himself so greatly 
 indebted. The Tory leaders, Harley and Boling- 
 broke in particular, vied with the chiefs of the Whig 
 party in zeal for the encouragement of letters. But 
 
294 ^^st English Essays 
 
 soon after the accession of the house of Hanover 
 a change took place. The supreme power passed 
 to a man who cared little for poetry or eloquence. 
 The importance of the House of Commons was con- 
 stantly on the increase. The government was under 
 the necessity of bartering for Parliamentary support 
 much of that patronage which had been employed in 
 fostering literary merit; and Walpole was by no 
 means inclined to divert any part of the fund of cor- 
 ruption to purposes which he considered as idle. 
 He had eminent talents for government and for 
 debate. But he had paid little attention to books, 
 and felt little respect for authors. One of the coarse 
 jokes of his friend, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, 
 was far more pleasing to him than Thomson's 
 " Seasons " or Richardson's " Pamela." He had ob- 
 served that some of the distinguished writers whom 
 the favour of Halifax had turned into statesmen had 
 been mere incumbrances to their party, dawdlers in 
 office, and mutes in Parliament. During the whole 
 course of his administration, therefore, he scarcely 
 befriended a single man of genius. The best writers 
 of the age gave all their support to the opposition, 
 and contributed to excite that discontent which, 
 after plunging the nation into a foolish and unjust 
 war, overthrew the minister to make room for men 
 less able and equally immoral. The opposition 
 could reward its eulogists with little more than 
 promises and caresses. St. James's would give 
 nothing: Leicester house had nothing to give. 
 
 Thus, at the time when Johnson commenced his 
 literary career, a writer had little to hope from the 
 patronage of powerful individuals. The patronage 
 of the public did not yet furnish the means of com- 
 
Macau lay 295 
 
 fortable subsistence. The prices paid by booksellers 
 to authors were so low that a man of considerable 
 talents and unremitting industry could do little 
 more than provide for the day which was passing 
 over him. The lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. 
 The thin and withered ears had devoured the good 
 ears. The season of rich harvests was over, and the 
 period of famine had begun. All that is squalid and 
 miserable might now be summed up in the word 
 Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like 
 a scarecrow, familiar with compters and spunging- 
 houses, and perfectly qualified to decide on the com- 
 parative merits of the Common Side in the King's 
 Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. 
 Even the poorest pitied him ; and they well might 
 pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, 
 their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense 
 of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four 
 pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out 
 of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of 
 a ditcher, to be hunted by bailififs from one haunt 
 of beggary and pestilence to another, from Grub 
 Street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's 
 Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's church, to 
 sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a 
 glass-house in December, to die in an hospital and 
 to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more 
 than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years 
 earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of 
 the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in 
 Parliament, and would have been entrusted with 
 embassies to the High Allies ; who, if he had lived 
 in our time, would have found encouragement 
 scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in 
 Paternoster Row. 
 
296 Best English Essays 
 
 As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so 
 every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The 
 literary character, assuredly, has always had its 
 share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. 
 To these faults were now superadded the faults 
 which are commonly found in men whose livelihood 
 is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to 
 the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the 
 gambler and of the beggar were blended with those 
 of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery 
 of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the 
 blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a 
 manner that it was almost certain to be abused. 
 After months of starvation and despair, a full third 
 night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket 
 of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. 
 He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images 
 of which his mind had been haunted while he was 
 sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at 
 the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns 
 soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. 
 Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a 
 crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-laced 
 hats and waistcoats ; sometimes lying in bed because 
 their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper 
 cravats because their linen was in pawn ; sometimes 
 drinking Champagne and Tokay with Betty Care- 
 less ; sometimes standing at the window of an 
 eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the 
 scent of what they could not afford to taste; they 
 knew luxury ; they knew beggary ; but they never 
 knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. 
 They looked on a regular and frugal life with the 
 same aversion which an old gipsy or a Mohawk 
 
Macaulay 297 
 
 hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the 
 restraints and securities of civilised communities. 
 They were as untamable, as much wedded to their 
 desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could no 
 more be broken in to the offices of social man than 
 the unicorn could be trained to serve and abide by 
 the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of 
 a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered 
 to their necessities. To assist them was impossible ; 
 and the most benevolent of mankind at length be- 
 came weary of giving relief which was dissipated 
 with the wildest profusion as soon as it had been 
 received. If a sum was bestowed on the wretched 
 adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, might 
 have supplied him for six months, it was instantly 
 spent in strange freaks of sensuality, and, before 
 forty-eight hours had elapsed, the poet was again 
 pestering all his acquaintance for twopence to get 
 a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cook-shop. 
 If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, 
 those houses were forthwith turned into bagnios 
 and taverns. All order was destroyed ; all business 
 was suspended. The most good-natured host began 
 to repent of his eagerness to serve a man of genius 
 in distress when he heard his guest roaring for fresh 
 punch at five o'clock in the morning. 
 
 A few eminent writers were more fortunate. 
 Pope had been raised above poverty by the active 
 patronage which, in his youth, both the great politi- 
 cal parties had extended to his " Homer." Young 
 had received the only pension ever bestowed, to the 
 best of our recollection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as 
 the reward of mere literary merit. One or two of 
 the many poets who attached themselves to the oppo- 
 
^98 Best English Essays 
 
 sition, Thomson in particular and Mallet, obtained, 
 after much severe suffering, the means of subsist- 
 ence from their political friends. Richardson, hke 
 a man of sense, kept his shop; and his shop kept 
 him, which his novels, admirable as they are, would 
 scarcely have done. But nothing could be more 
 deplorable than the state even of the ablest men, 
 who at that time depended for subsistence on their 
 writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and Thomson, 
 were certainly four of the most distinguished per- 
 sons that England produced during the eighteenth 
 century. It is well known that they were all four 
 arrested for debt. 
 
 Into calamities and difficulties such as these John- 
 son plunged in his twenty-eighth year. From that 
 time, till he was three or four and fifty, we 'have 
 little information respecting him; little, we mean, 
 compared with the full and accurate information 
 which we possess respecting his proceedings and 
 habits towards the close of his life. He emerged at 
 length from cock-lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into 
 the society of the polished and the opulent. His 
 fame was established. A pension sufficient for his 
 wants had been conferred on him : and he came 
 forth to astonish a generation with which he had 
 almost as little in common as with Frenchmen or 
 Spaniards. 
 
 In his early years he had occasionally seen the 
 great ; but he had seen them as a beggar. He now 
 came among them as a companion. The demand 
 for amusement and instruction had, during the 
 course of twenty years, been gradually increasing. 
 The price of literary labour had risen; and those 
 rising men of letters with whom Johnson was hence- 
 
Macaulay 299 
 
 forth to associate, were for the most part persons 
 widely different from those who had walked about 
 with him all night in the streets for want of a lodg- 
 ing*. Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, Gray, Mason, 
 Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, Sir William Jones, 
 Goldsmith, and Churchill, were the most distin- 
 guished writers of what may be called the second 
 generation of the Johnsonian age. Of these men 
 Churchill was the only one in whom we can trace 
 the stronger lineaments of that character which, 
 when Johnson first came up to London, was com- 
 mon among authors. Of the rest, scarcely any had 
 felt the pressure of severe poverty. Almost all had 
 been early admitted into the most respectable society 
 on an equal footing. They were men of quite a 
 different species from the dependents of Curll and 
 Osborne. 
 
 Johnson came among them the solitary specimen 
 of a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race 
 of Grub Street hacks ; the last of that generation of 
 authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute 
 manners had furnished inexhaustible matter to the 
 satirical genius of Pope. From nature he had re- 
 ceived an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, 
 and an irritable temper. The manner in which the 
 earlier years of his manhood had been passed had 
 given to his demeanour, and even to his moral char- 
 acter, some peculiarities appalling to the civilised 
 beings who were the companions of his old age. 
 The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenli- 
 ness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, 
 interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his 
 strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, 
 his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant 
 
300 Best English Essays 
 
 rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners 
 in society, made him, in the opinion of those with 
 whom he lived during the last twenty years of his 
 life, a complete original. An original he was, un- 
 doubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed 
 full information concerning those who shared his 
 early hardships, we should probably find that what 
 we call his singularities of manner were, for the 
 most part, failings which he had in common with 
 the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham 
 Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen 
 at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show 
 his ragged clothes. He ate as it was natural that a 
 man should eat, who, during a great part of his life, 
 had passed the morning in doubt whether he should 
 have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early 
 life had accustomed him to bear privation with for- 
 titude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. 
 He could fast ; but, when he did not fast, he tore 
 his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swell- 
 ing on his forehead, and the perspiration running 
 down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine. But 
 when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large 
 tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms 
 of that same moral disease which raged with such 
 deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. 
 The roughness and violence which he showed in 
 society were to be expected from a man whose tem- 
 per, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the 
 bitterest calamities, by the want of meat, of fire, and 
 of clothes, by the importunity of creditors, by the 
 insolence of booksellers, by the derision of fools, 
 by the insincerity of patrons, by that bread which 
 is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are 
 
Macaulay 301 
 
 the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope 
 which makes the heart sick. Through all these 
 things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had 
 struggled manfully up to eminence and command. 
 It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, 
 he should be "eo immitior, quia toleraverat," that, 
 though his heart was undoubtedly generous and 
 humane, his demeanour in society should be harsh 
 and despotic. For severe distress he had sympathy, 
 and not only sympathy, but munificent relief. But 
 for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon 
 a delicate mind he had no pity ; for it was a kind of 
 suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He 
 would carry home on his shoulders a sick and starv- 
 ing girl from the streets. He turned his house into 
 a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old crea- 
 tures who could find no other asylum ; nor could 
 all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his 
 benevolence. But the pangs of wounded vanity 
 seemed to him ridiculous ; and he scarcely felt suffi- 
 cient compassion even for the pangs of wounded 
 affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp 
 misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations ; 
 and he seemed to think that every body ought to be 
 as much hardened to those vexations as himself. He 
 was angry with Boswell for complaining of a head- 
 ache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the 
 dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These 
 were, in his phrase, " foppish lamentations," which 
 people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so 
 full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because 
 the " Good-natured Man " had failed, inspired him 
 with no pity. Though his own health was not good, 
 he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuni- 
 
302 Best English Essays 
 
 ary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely 
 to beggary, moved him very little. People whose 
 hearts had been softened by prosperity might weep, 
 he said, for such events; but all that could be ex- 
 pected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was 
 not much moved even by the spectacle of Lady 
 Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of 
 her lord. Such grief he considered as a luxury re- 
 served for the idle and the wealthy. A washer- 
 woman, left a widow with nine small children, 
 would not have sobbed herself to death. 
 
 A person who troubled himself so little about 
 small or sentimental grievances was not likely to 
 be very attentive to the feelings of others in the 
 ordinary intercourse of society. He could not under- 
 stand how a sarcasm or a reprimand could make any 
 man really unhappy. *' My dear doctor," said he 
 to Goldsmith, " what harm does it do to a man to 
 call him Holof ernes ? " " Pooh, ma'am," he ex- 
 claimed to Mrs. Carter, " who is the worse for 
 being talked of uncharitably ? " Politeness has been 
 well defined as benevolence in small things. John- 
 son was impolite, not because he wanted benevo- 
 lence, but because small things appeared smaller 
 to him than to people who had never known what 
 it was to live for fourpence halfpenny a day. 
 
 The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was 
 the union of great powers with low prejudices. If 
 we judged of him by the best parts of his mind, we 
 should place him almost as high as he was placed 
 by the idolatry of Boswell ; if by the worst parts of 
 his mind, we should place him even below Boswell 
 himself. Where he was not under the influence of 
 some strange scruple, or some domineering passion. 
 
Macaulay 303 
 
 which prevented him from boldly and fairly inves- 
 tigating a subject, he was a wary and acute reasoner, 
 a Httle too much inclined to scepticism, and a little 
 too fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be 
 imposed upon by fallacies in argument, or by ex- 
 aggerated statements of fact. But if, while he was 
 beating down sophisms and exposing false testi- 
 mony, some childish prejudices, such as would ex- 
 cite laughter in a well-managed nursery, came across 
 him, he was smitten as if by enchantment. His 
 mind dwindled away under the spell from gigantic 
 elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who had 
 lately been admiring its amplitude and its force 
 were now as much astonished at its strange narrow- 
 ness and feebleness as the fisherman in the Arabian 
 tale, when he saw the Genie, whose stature had 
 overshadowed the whole sea-coast, and whose might 
 seamed equal to a contest with armies, contract him- 
 self to the dimensions of his small prison, and He 
 there the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon. 
 
 Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme 
 severity the evidence for all stories which were 
 merely odd. But when they were not only odd but 
 miraculous, his severity relaxed. He began to be 
 credulous precisely at the point where the most 
 credulous people begin to be sceptical. It is curious 
 to observe, both in his writings and in his conver- 
 sation, the contrast between the disdainful manner 
 in which he rejects unauthenticated anecdotes, even 
 when they are consistent with the general laws of 
 nature, and the respectful manner in which he men- 
 tions the wildest stories relating to the invisible 
 world. A man who told him of a water-spout, or 
 a meteoric stone, generally had the lie direct given 
 
304 Best English Essays 
 
 him for his pains. A man who told him of a pre- 
 diction or a dream wonderfully accomplished was 
 sure of a courteous hearing. " Johnson," observed 
 Hogarth, *' like King David, says in his haste that 
 all men are Hars." " His incredulity," says Mrs. 
 Thrale, *' amounted almost to disease." She tells 
 us how he browbeat a gentleman who gave him an 
 account of a hurricane in the West Indies, and a 
 poor quaker who related some strange circumstance 
 about the red-hot balls fired at the siege of Gibraltar. 
 " It is not so. It cannot be true. Don't tell that 
 story again. You cannot think how poor a figure 
 you make in telling it." He once said, half jest- 
 ingly, we suppose, that for six months he refused 
 to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and 
 that he still believed the extent of the calamity to 
 be greatly exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave 
 face how old Mr. Cave of St. John's Gate saw a 
 ghost, and how this ghost was something of a 
 shadowy being. He went himself on a ghost-hunt 
 to Cock Lane, and was angry with John Wesley for 
 not following up another scent of the same kind 
 with proper spirit and perseverance. He rejects 
 the Celtic genealogies and poems without the least 
 hesitation ; yet he declares himself willing to believe 
 the stories of the second sight. If he had examined 
 the claims of the Highland seers with half the 
 severity with which he sifted the evidence for the 
 genuineness of Fingal, he would, we suspect, have 
 come away from Scotland with a mind fully made 
 up. In his " Lives of the Poets " we find that he is 
 unwilling to give credit to the accounts of Lord 
 Roscommon's early proficiency in his studies: but 
 he tells with great solemnity an absurd romance 
 
Macaulay 305 
 
 about some intelligence preternaturally impressed 
 on the mind of that nobleman. He avows himself 
 to be in great doubt about the truth of the story, 
 and ends by warning his readers not wholly to slight 
 such impressions. 
 
 Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are 
 worthy of a liberal and enlarged mind. He could 
 discern clearly enough the folly and meanness of all 
 bigotry except his own. When he spoke of the 
 scruples of the Puritans, he spoke like a person who 
 had really obtained an insight into the divine philos- 
 ophy of the New Testament, and who considered 
 Christianity as a noble scheme of government, tend- 
 ing to promote the happiness and to elevate the 
 moral nature of man. The horror which the sec- 
 taries felt for cards, Christmas ale, plum-porridge, 
 mince-pies, and dancing bears, excited his contempt. 
 To the arguments urged by some very worthy people 
 against showy dress he replied with admirable 
 sense and spirit, " Let us not be found, when our 
 Master calls us, stripping the lace off our waist- 
 coats, but the spirit of contention from our souls 
 and tongues. Alas ! sir, a man who cannot get to 
 heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither 
 the sooner in a gray one." Yet he was himself under 
 the tyranny of scruples as unreasonable as those of 
 Hudibras or Ralpho, and carried his zeal for cere- 
 monies and for ecclesiastical dignities to lengths al- 
 together inconsistent with reason or with Christian 
 charity. He has gravely noted down in his diary 
 that he once committed the sin of drinking coffee on 
 Good Friday. In Scotland, he thought it his duty 
 to pass several months without joining in public 
 worship, solely because the ministers of the kirk 
 
^66 Best English Essays 
 
 had not been ordained by bishops. His mode of 
 estimating the piety of his neighbours was some- 
 what singular. " Campbell," said he, " is a good 
 man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in 
 the inside of a church for many years : but he never 
 passes a church without pulling off his hat; this 
 shows he has good principles." Spain and Sicily 
 must surely contain many pious robbers and well- 
 principled assassins. Johnson could easily see that 
 a roundhead who named all his children after 
 Solomon's singers, and talked in the House of 
 Commons about seeking the Lord, might be an un- 
 principled villain, whose religious mummeries only 
 aggravated his guilt. But a man who took off his 
 hat when he passed a church episcopally consecrated 
 must be a good man, a pious man, a man of good 
 principles. Johnson could easily see that those per- 
 sons who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as 
 sinful, deemed most ignobly of the attributes of 
 God and of the ends of revelation. But with what 
 a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed 
 any man who had blamed him for celebrating the 
 redemption of mankind with sugarless tea and but- 
 terless buns ! 
 
 Nobody spoke more contemptuously of the cant 
 of patriotism. Nobody saw more clearly the error 
 of those who regarded liberty, not as a means, but 
 as an end, and who proposed to themselves, as the 
 object of their pursuit, the prosperity of the state 
 as distinct from the prosperity of the individuals 
 who compose the state. His calm and settled 
 opinion seems to have been that forms of govern- 
 ment have little or no influence on the happiness of 
 society. This opinion, erroneous as it is, ought at 
 
Macaulay 307 
 
 least to have preserved him from all Intemperance 
 on political questions. It did not, however, pre- 
 serve him from the lowest, fiercest, and most absurd 
 extravagances of party spirit, from rants which, in 
 every thing but the diction, resembled those of 
 Squire Western. He was, as a politician, half ice 
 and half fire. On the side of his intellect he was a 
 mere Pococurante, far too apathetic about public 
 affairs, far too sceptical as to the good or evil tend- 
 ency of any form of polity. His passions, on the 
 contrary, were violent even to slaying against all 
 who leaned to Whiggish principles. The well- 
 known lines which he inserted in Goldsmith's 
 ** Traveller " express what seems to have been his 
 deliberate judgment: 
 
 " How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
 That part which kings or laws can cause or cure 1 " 
 
 He had previously put expressions very similar into 
 the mouth of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast 
 these passages with the torrents of raving abuse 
 which he poured forth against the Long Parliament 
 and the American Congress. In one of the conver- 
 sations reported by Boswell this inconsistency dis- 
 plays itself in the most ludicrous manner. 
 
 " Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, '' suggested 
 that luxury corrupts a people, and destroys the spirit 
 of Hberty. Johnson : ' Sir, that is all visionary. 
 I would not give half a guinea to live under one 
 form of government rather than another. It is of 
 no moment to the happiness of an individual. Sir, 
 the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a 
 private man. What Frenchman is prevented pass- 
 
3o8 Best English Essays 
 
 ing his life as he pleases ? ' Sir Adam : * But, sir, 
 in the British constitution it is surely of importance 
 to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to preserve 
 a balance against the crown.' Johnson : ' Sir, I 
 perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish 
 jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown 
 has not power enough.' " 
 
 One of the old philosophers. Lord Bacon tells us, 
 used to say that life and death were just the same to 
 him. " Why then," said an objector, " do you not 
 kill yourself ? " The philosopher answered, '' Be- 
 cause it is just the same." If the difference between 
 two forms of government be not worth half a 
 guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be 
 viler than Toryism, or how the crown can have too 
 little power. If the happiness of individuals is not 
 afifected by political abuses, zeal for liberty is doubt- 
 less ridiculous. But zeal for monarchy must be 
 equally so. No person could have been more quick- 
 sighted than Johnson to such a contradiction as 
 this in the logic of an antagonist. 
 
 The judgments which Johnson passed on books 
 were, in his own time, regarded with superstitious 
 veneration, and, in our time, are generally treated 
 with indiscriminate contempt. They are the judg- 
 ments of a strong but enslaved understanding. The 
 mind of the critic was hedged round by an unin- 
 terrupted fence of prejudices and superstitions. 
 Within his narrow limits, he displayed a vigour and 
 an activity which ought to have enabled him to clear 
 the barrier that confined him. 
 
 How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his 
 premises so ably, should assume his premises so 
 foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human 
 
Macau lay 309 
 
 nature. The same inconsistency may be observed 
 in the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those writers 
 show so much acuteness and force of mind in argu- 
 ing on their wretched data, that a modern reader 
 is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such 
 minds came by such data. Not a flaw in the super- 
 structure of the theory which they are rearing es- 
 capes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the 
 obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is the 
 same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal argu- 
 ments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with 
 the happiest analogies and the most refined distinc- 
 tions. The principles of their arbitrary science being 
 once admitted, the statute-book and the reports 
 being once assumed as the foundations of reason- 
 ing, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters 
 of logic. But if a question arises as to the postu- 
 lates on which their whole system rests, if they are 
 called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims 
 of that system which they have passed their lives 
 in studying, these very men often talk the language 
 of savages or of children. Those who have listened 
 to a man of this class in his own court, and who 
 have witnessed the skill with which he analyses and 
 digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a 
 crowd of precedents which at first sight seem con- 
 tradictory, scarcely know him again when, a few 
 hours later, they hear him speaking on the other 
 side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legis- 
 lator. They can scarcely believe that the paltry 
 quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of 
 coughing, and which do not impose on the plainest 
 country gentleman, can proceed from the same 
 sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their 
 
3IO Best English Essays 
 
 admiration under the same roof, and on the same 
 day. 
 
 Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, 
 not like a legislator. He never examined founda- 
 tions where a point was already ruled. His whole 
 code of criticism rested on pure assumption, for 
 which he sometimes quoted a precedent or an 
 authority, but rarely troubled himself to give a 
 reason drawn from the nature of things. He took 
 it for granted that the kind of poetry which flour- 
 ished in his own time, which he had been accus- 
 tomed to hear praised from his childhood, and which 
 he had himself written with success, was the best 
 kind of poetry. In his biographical work he has 
 repeatedly laid it down as an undeniable proposi- 
 tion that during the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century, and the earher part of the eighteenth, Eng- 
 lish poetry had been in a constant progress of im- 
 provement. Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope, 
 had been, according to him, the great reformers. 
 He judged of all works of the imagination by the 
 standard established among his own contemporaries. 
 Though he allowed Homer to have been a greater 
 man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the 
 " ^neid " a greater poem than the " IHad." Indeed 
 he well might have thought so; for he preferred 
 Pope's " Iliad " to Homer's. He pronounced that, 
 after Hoole's translation of " Tasso," Fairfax's 
 would hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit 
 in our fine old English ballads, and always spoke 
 with the most provoking contempt of Percy's fond- 
 ness for them. Of the great original works of 
 imagination which appeared during his time, Rich- 
 ardson's novels alone excited his admiration. He 
 
Macaulay 3 1 1 
 
 could see little or no merit in " Tom Jones/* in 
 " Gulliver's Travels," or in " Tristram Shandy." To 
 Thomson's *' Castle of Indolence " he vouchsafed 
 only a line of cold commendation, of commendation 
 much colder than what he has bestowed on the 
 " Creation " of that portentous bore, Sir. Richard 
 Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren ras- 
 cal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt 
 which he felt for the trash of Macpherson was in- 
 deed just; but it was, we suspect, just by chance. 
 He despised the "Fingal" for the very reason which 
 led many men of genius to admire it. He despised 
 it, not because it was essentially commonplace, but 
 because it had a superficial air of originality. 
 
 He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of com- 
 positions fashioned on his own principles. But 
 when a deeper philosophy was required, when he 
 undertook to pronounce judgment on the works of 
 those great minds which ^' yield homage only to 
 eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He 
 criticised " Pope's Epitaphs " excellently. But his 
 observations on Shakespeare's plays and Milton's 
 poems seem to us for the most part as wretched as 
 if they had been written by Rymer himself, whom 
 we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived. 
 
 Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects 
 can be compared only to that strange nervous feel- 
 ing which made him uneasy if he had not touched 
 every post between the Mitre tavern and his own 
 lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs to 
 English epitaphs is an instance. An English epi- 
 taph, he said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared 
 that he would not pollute the walls of Westminster 
 Abbey with an English epitaph on Goldsmith, 
 
312 Best English Essays 
 
 What reason there can be for celebrating a British 
 writer in Latin, which there was not for covering 
 the Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscrip- 
 tions, or for commemorating the deeds of the heroes 
 of Thermopylae in Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are 
 utterly unable to imagine. 
 
 On men and manners, at least on the men and 
 manners of a particular place and a particular age, 
 Johnson had certainly looked with a most observant 
 and discriminating eye. His remarks on the edu- 
 cation of children, on marriage, on the economy of 
 families, on the rules of society, are always striking, 
 and generally sound. In his writings, indeed, the 
 knowledge of life which he possessed in an eminent 
 degree is very imperfectly exhibited. Like those 
 unfortunate chiefs of the middle ages who were 
 suffocated by their own chain-mail and cloth of 
 gold, his maxims perish under that load of words 
 which was designed for their defence and their 
 ornament. But it is clear from the remains of his 
 conversation, that he had more of that homely 
 wisdom which nothing but experience and observa- 
 tion can give than any writer since the time of Swift. 
 If he had been content to write as he talked, he 
 might have left books on the practical art of living 
 superior to the *' Directions to Servants." 
 
 Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks 
 on literature, indicate a mind at least as remarkable 
 for narrowness as for strength. He was no master 
 of the great science of human nature. He had 
 studied, not the genus man, but the species Lon- 
 doner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly conversant 
 with all the forms of life and all the shades of moral 
 and intellectual character which were to be seen 
 
Macaulay 313 
 
 from Islington to the Thames, and from Hyde- 
 Park corner to Mile-end green. But his philosophy- 
 stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life 
 of England he knew nothing; and he took it for 
 granted that every body who lived in the country 
 was either stupid or miserable. " Country gentle- 
 men," said he, ** must be unhappy ; for they have 
 not enough to keep their lives in motion " ; as if all 
 those peculiar habits and associations which made 
 Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in 
 the world to himself had been essential parts of 
 human nature. Of remote countries and past times 
 he talked with wild and ignorant presumption. 
 " The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he 
 said to Mrs. Thrale, " were a people of brutes, a 
 barbarous people." In conversation with Sir Adam 
 Ferguson he used similar language. " The boasted 
 Athenians," he said, ** were barbarians. The mass 
 of every people must be barbarous where there is 
 no printing." The fact was this: he saw that a 
 Londoner who could not read was a very stupid 
 and brutal fellow : he saw that great refinement of 
 taste and activity of intellect were rarely found in 
 a Londoner who had not read much; and, because 
 it was by means of books that people acquired al- 
 most all their knowledge in the society with which 
 he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the 
 strongest and clearest evidence, that the human 
 mind can be cultivated by means of books alone. 
 An Athenian citizen might possess very few vol- 
 umes ; and the largest library to which he had access 
 might be much less valuable than Johnson's book- 
 case in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass 
 every morning in conversation with Socrates, and 
 
314 Best English Essays 
 
 might hear Pericles speak four or five times every 
 month. He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aris- 
 tophanes : he walked amid the friezes of Phidias 
 and the paintings of Zeuxis : he knew by heart the 
 choruses of ^schylus : he heard the rhapsodist at the 
 corner of the street reciting the "Shield of Achilles" 
 or the " Death of Argus " : he was a legislator, con- 
 versant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and 
 war: he was a soldier, trained under a liberal and 
 generous discipline: he was a judge compelled 
 every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. 
 These things were in themselves an education, an 
 education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form 
 exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness 
 to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to 
 the expression, and politeness to the manners. All 
 this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not 
 improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's 
 opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who 
 made his mark, much such a person as black Frank 
 before he went to school, and far inferior to a 
 parish clerk or a printer's devil. 
 
 Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried 
 to a ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for 
 foreigners. He pronounced the French to be a very 
 silly people, much behind us, stupid, ignorant crea- 
 tures. And this judgment he formed after having 
 been at Paris about a month, during which he would 
 not talk French, for fear of giving the natives an ad- 
 vantage over him in conversation. He pronounced 
 them, also, to be an indelicate people, because a 
 French footman touched the sugar with his fingers. 
 That ingenious and amusing traveller, M. Simond, 
 has defended his countrymen very successfully 
 
Macaulay 315 
 
 against Johnson's accusation, and has pointed out 
 some English practices which, to an impartial spec- 
 tator, would seem at least as inconsistent with 
 physical cleanliness and social decorum as those 
 which Johnson so bitterly reprehended. To the 
 sage, as Boswell loves to call him, it never occurred 
 to doubt that there must be something eternally and 
 immutably good in the usages to which he had been 
 accustomed. In fact, Johnson's remarks on society 
 beyond the bills of mortality, are generally of much 
 the same kind with those of honest Tom Dawson, 
 the English footman in Dr. Moore's " Zeluco." 
 ** Suppose the king of France has no sons, but only 
 a daughter, then, when the king dies, this here 
 daughter, according to that there law, cannot be 
 made queen, but the next near relative, provided he 
 is a man, is made king, and not the last king's 
 daughter, which, to be sure, is very unjust. The 
 French footguards are dressed in blue, and all the 
 marching regiments in white, which has a very fool- 
 ish appearance for soldiers; and as for blue regi- 
 mentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the 
 artillery." 
 
 Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him 
 to a state of society completely new to him ; and a 
 salutary suspicion of his own deficiencies seems on 
 that occasion to have crossed his mind for the first 
 time. He confessed, in the last paragraph of his 
 " Journey," that his thoughts on national manners 
 were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of 
 one who had passed his time almost wholly in cities. 
 This feeling, however, soon passed away. It is re- 
 markable that to the last he entertained a fixed con- 
 tempt for all those modes of life and those studies 
 
3i6 Best English Essays 
 
 which tend to emancipate the mind from the preju- 
 dices of a particular age or a particular nation. Of 
 foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce 
 and boisterous contempt of ignorance. '' What does 
 a man learn by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better 
 for travelling? What did Lord Charlemont learn 
 in his travels, except that there was a snake in one 
 of the pyramids of Egypt ? " History was, in his 
 opinion, to use the fine expression of Lord Plunkett, 
 an old almanack : historians could, as he conceived, 
 claim no higher dignity than that of almanack- 
 makers; and his favourite historians were those 
 who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no higher dignity. 
 He always spoke with contempt of Robertson. 
 Hume he would not even read. He affronted one 
 of his friends for talking to him about Catiline's 
 conspiracy, and declared that he never desired to 
 hear of the Punic war again as long as he lived. 
 
 Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect 
 our own interests, considered in itself, is no better 
 worth knowing than another fact. The fact that 
 there is a snake in a pyramid, or the fact that Han- 
 nibal crossed the Alps, are in themselves as un- 
 profitable to us as the fact that there is a green blind 
 in a particular house in Threadneedle Street, or the 
 fact that a Mr. Smith comes into the city every 
 morning on the top of one of the Blackwall stages. 
 But it is certain that those who will not crack the 
 shell of history will never get at the kernel. John- 
 son, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel 
 worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. 
 The real use of travelling to distant countries and 
 of studying the annals of past times is to preserve 
 men from the contraction of mind which those can 
 
Macaulay 317 
 
 hardly escape whose whole communion is with one 
 generation and one neighbourhood, who arrive at 
 conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently 
 copious, and who therefore constantly confound 
 exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential 
 properties. In short, the real use of travelling and 
 of studying history is to keep men from being what 
 Tom Dawson was in fiction, and Samuel Johnson in 
 reality. 
 
 Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, ap- 
 pears far greater in Boswell's books than in his 
 own. His conversation appears to have been quite 
 equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to 
 them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his 
 wit and his sense in forcible and natural expres- 
 sions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to 
 write for the public, his style became systematically 
 vicious. All his books are written in a learned lan- 
 guage, in a language which nobody hears from his 
 mother or his nurse, in a language in which nobody 
 ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love, in 
 a language in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear 
 that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in 
 which he wrote. The expressions which came first 
 to his tongue were simple, energetic, and pictur- 
 esque. When he wrote for publication, he did his 
 sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His 
 letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the 
 original of that work of which the " Journey to the 
 Hebrides " is the translation ; and it is amusing to 
 compare the two versions. " When we were taken 
 up stairs," says he in one of his letters, " a dirty 
 fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us 
 was to lie." This incident is recorded in the " Jour- 
 
3i8 Best English Essays 
 
 ney " as follows : " Out of one of the beds on which 
 we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a 
 man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Some- 
 times Johnson translated aloud. " The Rehearsal," 
 he said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to keep 
 it sweet " ; then, after a pause, " it has not vitality 
 enough to preserve it from putrefaction." 
 
 Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even 
 agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is 
 natural. Few readers, for example, would be will- 
 ing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of 
 Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy 
 on the mannerist, which has been adopted on prin- 
 ciple, and which can be sustained only by constant 
 effort, is always offensive. And such is the man- 
 nerism of Johnson. 
 
 The characteristic faults of his style are so 
 familiar to all our readers, and have been so often 
 burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point 
 them out. It is well known that he made less use 
 than any other eminent writer of those strong plain 
 words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which 
 the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language; 
 and that he felt a vicious partiality for terms which, 
 long after our own speech had been fixed, were 
 borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which, 
 therefore, even when lawfully naturalised, must be 
 considered as born ahens, not entitled to rank with 
 the king's English. His constant practice of pad- 
 ding out a sentence with useless epithets, till it 
 became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite, his anti- 
 thetical forms of expression, constantly employed 
 even where there is no opposition in the ideas ex- 
 pressed, his big words wasted on little things, his 
 
Macaulay 319 
 
 harsh inversions, so widely different from those 
 graceful and easy inversions which give variety, 
 spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great 
 old writers, all these peculiarities have been imitated 
 by his admirers and parodied by his assailants, till 
 the public has become sick of the subject. 
 
 Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very 
 justly, " If you were to write a fable about little 
 fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk 
 like whales." No man surely ever had so little 
 talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he 
 wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy- 
 hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or 
 a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous 
 and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy 
 Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him 
 under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea 
 talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor 
 of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her recep- 
 tion at the country-house of her relations, in such 
 terms as these : " I was surprised, after the civilities 
 of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure 
 and tranquillity which a rural life always promises, 
 and, if well conducted, might always afford, a con- 
 fused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of 
 diligence, by which every face was clouded, and 
 every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla in- 
 forms us, that she " had not passed the earlier part 
 of life without the flattery of courtship, and the joys 
 of triumph; but had danced the round of gaiety 
 amidst the murmurs of envy and the gratulations 
 of applause, had been attended from pleasure to 
 pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the vain, 
 and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequious- 
 
320 Best English Essays 
 
 ness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity 
 of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not 
 wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader 
 may well cry out, with honest Sir Hugh Evans, 
 ** I like not when a 'oman has a great peard : I 
 spy a great peard under her muffler." ^ 
 
 We had something more to say. But our article 
 is already too long; and we must close it. We 
 would fain part in good humour from the hero, from 
 the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill 
 as he has performed his task, has at least this claim 
 to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read 
 Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club- 
 room is before us, and the table on which stands 
 the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. 
 There are assembled those heads which live for ever 
 on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spec- 
 tacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton, 
 the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming 
 smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box and 
 Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the 
 foreground is that strange figure which is as famil- 
 iar to us as the figures of those among whom we 
 have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge 
 massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the 
 brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey 
 wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the 
 nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the 
 eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; 
 we see the heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ; 
 and then comes the " Why, sir ! " and the *' What 
 
 1 It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close 
 resemblance to a passage in the "Rambler" (No. 20). The re- 
 semblance may possibly be the effect of unconscious plagiarism. 
 
Macaulay 321 
 
 then, sir ? " and the " No, sir ! " and the " You don't 
 see your way through the question, sir ! " 
 
 What a singular destiny has been that of this 
 remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age 
 as a classic, and in ours as a companion. To re- 
 ceive from his contemporaries that full homage 
 which men of genius have in general received only 
 from posterity! To be more intimately known to 
 posterity than other men are known to their con- 
 temporaries ! That kind of fame which is commonly 
 the most transient is, in his case, the most durable. 
 The reputation of those writings, which he prob- 
 ably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; 
 while those peculiarities of manner and that care- 
 less table-talk the memory of which, he probably 
 thought, would die with him, are likely to be re- 
 membered as long as the English language is spoken 
 in any quarter of the globe. 
 
 THE PERFECT HISTORIAN 
 (Essay on History) 
 
 THE perfect historian is he in whose work the 
 character and spirit of an age is exhibited in 
 miniature. He relates no facts, he attributes no ex- 
 pression to his characters, which is not authenticated 
 by sufficient testimony. But, by judicious selection, 
 rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those 
 attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In 
 his narrative a due subordination is observed : some 
 transactions are prominent ; others retire. But the 
 scale on which he represents them is increased or 
 
 21 
 
322 Best English Essays 
 
 diminished, not according to the dignity of the per- 
 sons concerned in them, but according to the degree 
 in which they elucidate the condition of society and 
 the nature of man. He shows us the court, the 
 camp, and the senate. But he shows us also the 
 nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity 
 of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant 
 for his notice which is not too insignificant to illus- 
 trate the operation of laws, of religion, and of 
 education, and to mark the progress of the human 
 mind. Men will not merely be described, but will 
 be made intimately known to us. The changes of 
 manners will be indicated, not merely by a few 
 general phrases or a few extracts from statistical 
 documents, but by appropriate images presented 
 in every line. 
 
 If a man, such as we are supposing, should write 
 the history of England, he would assuredly not omit 
 the battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions, 
 the ministerial changes. But with these he would in- 
 tersperse the details which are the charm of historical 
 romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful 
 painted window, which was made by an apprentice 
 out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected 
 by his master. It is so far superior to every other 
 in the church, that, according to the tradition, the 
 vanquished artist killed himself from mortification. 
 Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used 
 those fragments of truth which historians have 
 scornfully thrown behind them in a manner which 
 may well excite their envy. He has constructed out 
 of their gleanings works which, even considered as 
 histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. But 
 a truly great historian would reclaim those mate- 
 
Macaulay 323 
 
 rials which the novelist has appropriated. The his- 
 tory of the government, and the history of the people, 
 would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they 
 can be exhibited justly, in inseparable conjunction 
 and intermixture. We should not then have to 
 look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in 
 Clarendon, and for their phraseology in " Old Mor- 
 tality " ; for one half of King James in Hume, and 
 for the other half in the " Fortunes of Nigel." 
 
 The early part of our imaginary history would 
 be rich with colouring from romance, ballad, and 
 chronicle. We should find ourselves in the company 
 of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pil- 
 grims such as those who rode with Chaucer from 
 the Tabard. Society would be shown from the 
 highest to the lowest, — from the royal cloth of 
 state to the den of the outlaw; from the throne 
 of the legate, to the chimney corner where the 
 begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, 
 crusaders, — the stately monastery, with the good 
 cheer in its refectory and the high-mass in its 
 chapel, — the manor-house, with its hunting and 
 ' hawking, — the tournament, with the heralds and 
 ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold, — would 
 give truth and life to the representation. We should 
 perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the impor- 
 tance of the privileged burgher, and the fierce and 
 haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of 
 the degraded villain. The revival of letters would 
 not merely be described in a few magnificent periods. 
 We should discern, in innumerable particulars, the 
 fermentation of mind, the eager appetite for knowl- 
 edge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the 
 fifteenth century. In the Reformation we should 
 
324 Best English Essays 
 
 see, not merely a schism which changed the ecclesi- 
 astical constitution of England and the mutual re- 
 lations of the European powers, but a moral war 
 which raged in every family, which set the father 
 against the son, and the son against the father, 
 the mother against the daughter, and the daughter 
 against the mother. Henry would be painted with 
 the skill of Tacitus. We should have the change 
 of his character from his profuse and joyous youth 
 to his savage and imperious old age. We should 
 perceive the gradual progress of selfish and tyran- 
 nical passions in a mind not naturally insensible 
 or ungenerous; and to the last we should detect 
 some remains of that open and noble temper which 
 endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, strug- 
 gling with the hardness of despotism and the irrita- 
 bility of disease. We should see Elizabeth in all 
 her weakness and in all her strength, surrounded by 
 the handsome favourites whom she never trusted, 
 and the wise old statesman whom she never dis- 
 missed, uniting in herself the most contradictory 
 qualities of both her parents, — the coquetry, the 
 caprice, the petty malice of Anne, — the haughty 
 and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no hesi- 
 tation in saying that a great artist might produce 
 a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as 
 striking as that in the novel of " Kenilworth,'' 
 without employing a single trait not authenticated 
 by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should 
 see arts cultivated, wealth accumulated, the con- 
 veniences of life improved. We should see the 
 keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread in- 
 security around them, gradually giving place to the 
 halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat, 
 
Macaulay ^^S 
 
 and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should 
 see towns extended, deserts cultivated, and hamlets 
 of fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal 
 of the peasant improved, and his hut more com- 
 modiously furnished. We should see those opinions 
 and feelings which produced the great struggle 
 against the house of Stuart slowly growing up in 
 the bosom of private families, before they mani- 
 fested themselves in parliamentary debates. Then 
 would come the civil war. Those skirmishes on 
 which Clarendon dwells so minutely would be told, 
 as Thucydides would have told them, with perspic- 
 uous conciseness. They were merely connecting 
 links. But the great characteristics of the age, the 
 loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, 
 the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, 
 drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the 
 royal cause, — the austerity of the Presbyterian 
 Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the inde- 
 pendent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, 
 the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the 
 affected accent, the absurd names and phrases 
 which marked the Puritans, — the valour, the policy, 
 the public spirit which lurked beneath these un- 
 graceful disguises, — the dreams of the raving Fifth- 
 monarchy-man, the dreams, scarcely less wild, of 
 the philosophic republican, — all these would enter 
 into the representation, and render it at once more 
 exact and more striking. 
 
 The instruction derived from history thus written 
 would be of a vivid and practical character. It 
 would be received by the imagination as well as 
 by the reason. It would be not merely traced on 
 the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too. 
 
326 Best English Essays 
 
 would be learned, which can be learned in no other 
 manner. As the history of states is generally writ- 
 ten, the greatest and most momentous revolutions 
 seem to come upon them like supernatural inflic- 
 tions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that 
 such revolutions are almost always the consequences 
 of moral changes, which have gradually passed on 
 the mass of the community, and which ordinarily 
 proceed far before their progress is indicated by 
 any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the 
 domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely 
 necessary to the prognosis of political events. A 
 narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as 
 a medical treatise which should pass by all the 
 symptoms attendant on the early stage of a disease 
 and mention only what occurs when the patient is 
 beyond the reach of remedies. 
 
 A historian, such as we have been attempting to 
 describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy. 
 In his mind, powers scarcely compatible with each 
 other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. 
 We shall sooner see another Shakespeare or another 
 Homer. The highest excellence to which any single 
 faculty can be brought would be less surprising 
 than such a happy and delicate combination of quali- 
 ties. Yet the contemplation of imaginary models 
 is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the 
 mind. It cannot indeed produce perfection ; but it 
 produces improvement, and nourishes that generous 
 and liberal fastidiousness which is not inconsistent 
 with the strongest sensibility to merit, and which, 
 while it exalts our conceptions of the art, does not 
 render us unjust to the artist. 
 
IX 
 RUSKIN 
 
RUSKIN: 
 THE IMPASSIONED CRITIC 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD once spoke of 
 poetry as " a criticism of life." He 
 might better have called it a personal 
 interpretation of life. In the sense that Mr. 
 Arnold used the word criticism, the writings of 
 all the great essay writers have been essentially 
 criticisms of life.-^ Bacon's was an analytic criti- 
 cism, Swift's a satirical criticism, Lamb's a loving 
 criticism, and so on..,. But all these writers chose 
 for the most part subjects which they could only 
 illustrate, or which they might use as a vehicle 
 for conveying their own personality or their view 
 of life to the reader. When the subject itself is 
 the centre of the writer's interest, and he seriously 
 wishes to analyze or illustrate it, he becomes a 
 critic in the modern technical sense of the word.^ 
 Ruskin was from beginning to end essentially 
 a critic. He first undertook in his " Modern 
 Painters " to illustrate and analyze certain phases 
 of modern painting."^ To accomplish his object 
 fully he must present by description the things of 
 which he wishes to speak, or he must present by 
 means of descriptions certain objects which he 
 
330 Best English Essays 
 
 wishes to use for purposes of illustration. It was 
 the vividness of these incidental descriptions that 
 first attracted attention to Ruskin's style and gave 
 him the name " prose poet." To create " prose 
 poems," however, was farthest from his own 
 thought, and we should fail to understand these 
 *' purple patches " {purpureus pannus, in the lan- 
 guage of Horace), such, for example, as the de- 
 scription of Turner's " Slave Ship " at the end of 
 the chapter on " Sea-painting," should we sepa- 
 rate them from their practical use of incidental 
 illustration. Ruskin wrote these highly colored 
 bits almost unconsciously,^ we must believe, and 
 simply for the reason that he was passionately 
 interested in his subject. Being a man of pas- 
 sionate devotion, he wrote with passion. Had he 
 been a mere seer of pictures, he would have been 
 a poet ; but as he was a thinker, and his mind had 
 an analytic turn, he became a true critic, though 
 none the less passionate because he wrote criti- 
 cism instead of poetry. 
 
 Ruskin began as a young man with art criti- 
 cism and the criticism of architecture. His real 
 interest was in nature and the effect of art on 
 human nature. His study of the whole problem 
 of the action of art on humanity and humanity 
 on art led him at last to look into the conditions 
 which made human beings blind to art. As was 
 always the case with him, he entered upon this 
 
 1 We find the same picturesque language in his note-books, 
 intended merely for his own personal reference. 
 
Ruskin 331 
 
 investigation with passionate interest. It led him 
 into poHtical economy, of which he knew Httle 
 historically or philosophically; but he plunged 
 with his usual passionate interest into the gen- 
 eral subject of human relations and especially the 
 condition of the masses. In this work he met 
 many rebuffs and much discouragement. At last 
 in the guise of a series of fortnightly letters to 
 workingmen he wrote his series " Fors Clavi- 
 gera," in which he appears as the satirical though 
 sympathetic critic of all phases of human rela- 
 tionship. Through these three different kinds of 
 writing we see the passionate element changing, 
 but never disappearing. First it shows itself as 
 highly colored description, then as daring and 
 fearless philosophy, at last as the bitterness of 
 satire. 
 
 Ruskin had the gift of a silvery eloquence above 
 any other writer of the nineteenth century. His 
 mastery of the musical element of language is 
 equal in prose to that of Tennyson in poetry ; but 
 whereas Tennyson's gifts were partly acquired, 
 or at any rate assiduously cultivated, Ruskin' s 
 gifts in this direction were largely natural, or 
 v/ere developed unconsciously by his enthusiasm 
 in his subject. United with this musical mastery 
 is a fine sense of logical relationship. The two 
 qualities together make such a simple story as 
 " The King of the Golden River " an almost 
 perfect specimen of natural prose style. As a 
 model of style, however, it is so simple and so 
 
2^2 Best English Essays 
 
 nearly perfect that its qualities can hardly be 
 perceived by the ordinary mind, which feels the 
 pleasing effect, but fails to analyze the manner. 
 To produce such an effect is, of course, the height 
 of literary art. 
 
 While Ruskin owes the quality of his prose 
 largely to his passionate nature, it is that nature 
 that led him into so many extravagances and 
 excesses. One of these extravagances we may 
 see in the conclusion of " The Virtues of Archi- 
 tecture." ^ We understand what Ruskin meant; 
 but his statement as it stands is obviously dis- 
 torted and, from the common point of view, un- 
 true. It illustrates the difficulties of writing 
 perfect prose till one's own nature has been per- 
 fectly subjected to the experience that comes with 
 years and the self-mastery of a healthy mind. 
 
 1 " I shall endeavour so to lead the reader forward from the 
 foundation upwards, as that he may find out for himself the best 
 way of doing everything, and having so discovered it, never forget 
 it. I shall give him stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and 
 trowels, and the ground, and then ask him to build ; only help- 
 ing him, as I can, if I find him puzzled. And when he has built 
 his house or church, I shall ask him to ornament it, and leave it to 
 him to choose the ornaments as I did to find out the construction : 
 I shall use no influence with him whatever, except to counteract 
 previous prejudices, and leave him as far as may be, free. And 
 when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his forms of 
 decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his confidence in 
 what he has done, I shall assure him that no one in the world 
 could, so far, have done better, and require him to condemn, as 
 futile or fallacious, whatever has no resemblance to his own 
 performances." 
 
Ruskin 333 
 
 SEA-PAINTING 
 (Modern Painters, Vol. I.) 
 
 AS the right rendering of the Alps depends on 
 power of drawing snow, so the right painting 
 of the sea must depend, at least in all coast scenery, 
 in no small measure on the power of drawing foam. 
 Yet there are two conditions of foam of invariable 
 occurrence on breaking waves, of which I have 
 never seen the slightest record attempted; first the 
 thick creamy curdling overlapping massy form 
 which remains for a moment only after the fall of 
 the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running 
 up the beach ; and secondly, the thin white coating 
 into which this subsides, which opens into oval gaps 
 and clefts, marbling the waves over their whole 
 surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore 
 by long dragging streams of white. 
 
 It is evident that the difficulty of expressing either 
 of these two conditions must be immense. The 
 lapping and curdling form is difficult enough to 
 catch even when the lines of its undulation alone 
 are considered ; but the lips, so to speak, which He 
 along these lines, are full, projecting, and marked 
 by beautiful light and shade; each has its high 
 light, a gradation into shadow of indescribable 
 delicacy, a bright reflected light and a dark cast 
 shadow ; to draw all this requires labour, and care, 
 and firmness of work, which, as I imagine, must 
 always, however skilfully bestowed, destroy all im- 
 pression of wildness, accidentalism, and evanes- 
 cence, and so kill the sea. Again, the openings in 
 
334 ^^st English Essays 
 
 the thin subsided foam in their irregular modifica- 
 tions of circular and oval shapes dragged hither 
 and thither, would be hard enough to draw even if 
 they could be seen on a flat surface; instead of 
 which, every one of the openings is seen in undula- 
 tion on a tossing surface, broken up over small 
 surges and ripples, and so thrown into perspectives 
 of the most hopeless intricacy. Now it is not easy 
 to express the lie of a pattern with oval openings on 
 the folds of drapery. I do not know that any one 
 under the mark of Veronese or Titian could even 
 do this as it ought to be done, yet in drapery much 
 stiffness and error may be overlooked; not so in 
 sea, — the slightest inaccuracy, the slightest want 
 of flow and freedom in the line, is attacked by the 
 eye in a moment of high treason, and I believe 
 success to be impossible. 
 
 Yet there is not a wave or any violently agitated 
 sea on which both these forms do not appear, — the 
 latter especially, after some time of storm, extends 
 over their whole surfaces ; the reader sees, there- 
 fore, why I said that sea could only be painted by 
 means of more or less dexterous conventionalisms, 
 since two of its most enduring phenomena cannot 
 be represented at all. 
 
 Again, as respects the form of breakers on an 
 even shore, there is difficulty of no less formidable 
 kind. There is in them an irreconcilable mixture 
 of fury and formalism. Their hollow surface is 
 marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill- 
 weir, and graduated by reflected and transmitted 
 lights of the most wonderful intricacy, its curve 
 being at the same time necessarily of mathematical 
 purity and precision; yet at the top of this curve, 
 
Rusldn ;}2S 
 
 when it nods over, there is a sudden laxity and 
 giving way, the water swings and jumps along the 
 ridge like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from 
 part to part as it does through a serpent's body. 
 Then the wind is at work on the extreme edge, and 
 instead of letting it fling itself off naturally, it sup- 
 ports it, and drives it back, or scrapes it off, and car- 
 ries it bodily away ; so that the spray at the top is 
 in a continual transition between forms projected by 
 their own weight, and forms blown and carried off 
 with their weight overcome; then at last, when it 
 has come down, who shall say what shape that may 
 be called, which shape has none of the great crash 
 where it touches the beach. 
 
 I think it is that last crash which is the great task- 
 master. Nobody can do anything with it. I have 
 seen Copley Fielding come very close to the jerk 
 and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very 
 successfully, and without any look of its having 
 been in papers, down nearly to the beach, but the 
 final fall has no thunder in it. Turner has tried 
 hard for it once or twice, but it will not do. The 
 moment is given in the Sidon of the Bible Illustra- 
 tions, and more elaborately in a painting of Bam- 
 borough ; in both these cases there is little foam at 
 the bottom, and the fallen breaker looks like a wall, 
 yet grand always; and in the latter picture very 
 beautifully assisted in expression by the tossing of 
 a piece of cable, which some figures are dragging 
 ashore, and which the breaker flings into the air 
 as it falls. Perhaps the most successful rendering 
 of the forms was in the Hero and Leander, but 
 there the drawing was rendered easier by the 
 powerful effect of light which disguised the foam. 
 
^^6 Best English Essays 
 
 It is not, however, from the shore that Turner 
 usually studies his sea. Seen from the land, the curl 
 of the breakers, even in nature, is somewhat uni- 
 form and monotonous; the size of the waves out 
 at sea is uncomprehended, and those nearer the 
 eye seem to succeed and resemble each other, to 
 move slowly to the beach, and to break in the same 
 lines and forms. 
 
 Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we 
 receive a totally different impression. Every wave 
 around us appears vast — every one different from 
 all the rest — and the breakers present, now that 
 we see them with their backs towards us, the grand, 
 extended, and varied lines of long curvature, which 
 are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power. 
 Recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the 
 mad, perpetual, changeful, undirected motion, not 
 of wave after wave, as it appears from the shore, 
 but of the very same water rising and falling. Of 
 waves that successively approach and break, each 
 appears to the mind a separate individual, whose 
 part being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded 
 by another ; and there is nothing in this to impress 
 us with the idea of restlessness, any more than in 
 any successive and continuous functions of life and 
 death. But it is when we perceive that it is no 
 succession of wave, but the same water constantly 
 rising, and crashing, and recoiling, and rolling in 
 again in new forms and with fresh fury, that we 
 perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity 
 of its unwearied rage. The sensation of power is 
 also trebled ; for not only is the vastness of appar- 
 ent size much increased, but the whole action is 
 different; it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily 
 
Ruskin 337 
 
 forward until it tumbles heavily, prostrated upon 
 the beach, but a sweeping exertion of tremendous 
 and living strength, which does not now appear to 
 fall, but to hurst upon the shore; which never 
 perishes, but recoils and recovers. 
 
 Aiming at these grand characters of the Sea, 
 Turner almost always places the spectator, not on 
 the shore, but twenty or thirty yards from it, beyond 
 the first range of the breakers, as in the Land's End, 
 Fowey, Dunbar, and Laugharne. The latter has 
 been well engraved, and may be taken as a standard 
 of the expression of fitfulness and power. The 
 grand division of the whole space of the sea by a 
 few dark continuous furrows of tremendous swell, 
 (the breaking of one of which alone has strewed 
 the rocks in front with ruin), furnishes us with 
 an estimate of space and strength, which at once 
 reduces the men upon the shore to insects ; and yet 
 through this terrific simplicity there is indicated a 
 fitfulness and fury in the tossing of the individual 
 lines, which give to the whole sea a wild, unwearied, 
 reckless incoherency, like that of an enraged multi- 
 tude, whose masses act together in frenzy, while 
 not one individual feels as another. Especial atten- 
 tion is to be directed to the flatness of all the lines, 
 for the same principle holds in sea which we have 
 seen in mountains. All the size and sublimity of 
 nature are given not by the height, but by the 
 breadth of her masses : and Turner, by following 
 her in her sweeping lines, while he does not lose 
 the elevation of its surges, adds in a tenfold degree 
 to their power: farther, observe the peculiar ex- 
 pression of weight which there is in Turner's waves, 
 precisely of the same kind which we saw in his 
 
 22 
 
;^;^S Best English Essays 
 
 waterfall. We have not a cutting, springing, elastic 
 line — no jumping or leaping in the waves : that 
 is the characteristic of Chelsea Reach or Hampstead 
 Ponds in a storm. But the surges roll and plunge 
 with such prostration and hurling of their mass 
 against the shore, that we feel the rocks are shaking 
 under them ; and, to add yet more to this impres- 
 sion, observe how little, comparatively, they are 
 broken by the wind; above the floating wood, and 
 along the shore, we have indication of a line of torn 
 spray ; but it is a mere fringe along the ridge of 
 the surge — no interference with its gigantic body. 
 The wind has no power over its tremendous unity 
 of force and weight. Finally, observe how, on the 
 rocks on the left, the violence and swiftness of the 
 rising wave are indicated by precisely the same lines 
 which we saw were indicative of fury in the torrent. 
 The water on these rocks is the body of the wave 
 which has just broken, rushing up over them ; and 
 in doing so, like the torrent, it does not break, nor 
 foam, nor part upon the rock, but accommodates 
 itself to every one of its swells and hollows, with 
 undulating lines, whose grace and variety might 
 alone serve us for a day's study ; and it is only 
 where two streams of this rushing water meet in 
 the hollow of the rock, that their force is shown by 
 the vertical bound of the spray. 
 
 In the distance of this grand picture, there are 
 two waves which entirely depart from the principle 
 observed by all the rest, and spring high into the 
 air. They have a message for us which it is im- 
 portant that we should understand. Their leap is 
 not a preparation for breaking, neither is it caused 
 by their meeting with a rock» It is caused by their 
 
Ruskin 339 
 
 encounter with the recoil of the preceding wave. 
 When a large surge, in the act of breaking, just 
 as it curls over, is hurled against the face either 
 of a wall or of a vertical rock, the sound of the blow 
 is not a crash nor a roar ; it is a report as loud as, 
 and in every respect similar to, that of a great gun, 
 and the wave is dashed back from the rock with 
 force scarcely diminished, but reversed in direction, 
 — it now recedes from the shore, and at the instant 
 that it encounters the following breaker, the result 
 is the vertical bound of both which is here rendered 
 by Turner. Such a recoiling wave will proceed 
 out to sea through ten or twelve ranges of following 
 breakers, before it is overpowered. The effect of 
 the encounter is more completely and palpably given 
 in the Quilleboeuf, in the Rivers of France. It is 
 peculiarly instructive here, as informing us of the 
 nature of the coast, and the force of the waves, 
 far more clearly than any spray about the rocks 
 themselves could have done. But the effect of the 
 blow at the shore itself is given in the Land's End, 
 and vignette to Lycidas. Under favourable cir- 
 cumstances, with an advancing tide under a heavy 
 gale, where the breakers feel the shore underneath 
 them a moment before they touch the rock, so as 
 to nod over when they strike, the effect is nearly 
 incredible except to an eye-witness. I have seen 
 the whole body of the wave rise in one white, ver- 
 tical, broad fountain, eighty feet above the sea, half 
 of it beaten so fine as to be borne away by the wind, 
 the rest turning in the air when exhausted, and 
 falling back with a weight and crash like that of an 
 enormous waterfall. This is given most completely 
 in the Lycidas, and the blow of a less violent wave 
 
340 Best English Essays 
 
 among broken rocks, not meeting it with an abso- 
 lute wall, along the shore of the Land's End. This 
 last picture is a study of sea whose whole organi- 
 sation has been broken up by constant recoils from 
 a rocky coast. The Laugharne gives the surge and 
 weight of the ocean in a gale, on a comparatively 
 level shore ; but the Land's End, the entire disorder 
 of the surges when every one of them, divided and 
 entangled among promontories as it rolls in, and 
 beaten back part by part from walls of rock on this 
 side and that side, recoils like the defeated division 
 of a great army, throwing all behind it into disor- 
 der, breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical 
 ridges, which in their turn, yet more totally shat- 
 tered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless confu- 
 sion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes one 
 dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected 
 rage, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an 
 anarchy of enormous power, subdivided into myriads 
 of waves, of which every one is not, be it remem- 
 bered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a 
 vast one, actuated by internal power, and giving in 
 every direction the mighty undulation of impetuous 
 line which gHdes over the rocks and writhes in the 
 wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other 
 with the form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lam- 
 bent fire. And throughout the rendering of all this, 
 there is not one false curve given, not one which 
 is not the perfect expression of visible motion ; and 
 the forms of the infinite sea are drawn throughout 
 with that utmost mastery of art which, through the 
 deepest study of every line makes every line appear 
 the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in 
 itself a subject and a picture different from all else 
 
Ruskin 341 
 
 around. Of the colour of this magnificent sea I 
 have before spoken; it is a solemn green grey, 
 (with its foam seen dimly through the darkness of 
 twilight,) modulated with the fulness, changeful- 
 ness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody. 
 
 The greater number of Turner's paintings of open 
 sea belong to a somewhat earlier period than these 
 drawings ; nor, generally speaking, are they of 
 equal value. It appears to me that the artist had at 
 that time either less knowledge of, or less delight 
 in, the characteristics of deep water than of coast 
 sea, and that, in consequence, he suffered himself 
 to be influenced by some of the qualities of the 
 Dutch sea-painters. In particular, he borrowed 
 from them the habit of casting a dark shadow on 
 the near waves, so as to bring out a stream of light 
 behind ; and though he did this in a more legitimate 
 way than they, that is to say, expressing the light 
 by touches on the foam, and indicating the shadow 
 as cast on foamy surface, still the habit has induced 
 much feebleness and conventionality in the pictures 
 of the period. His drawing of the waves was also 
 somewhat petty and divided, small forms covered 
 with white flat spray, a condition which I doubt not 
 the artist has seen on some of the shallow Dutch 
 seas, but which I have never met with myself, and 
 of the rendering of which therefore I cannot speak. 
 Yet even in these, which I think among the poorest 
 works of the painter, the expressions of breeze, 
 motion, and light, are very marvellous ; and it is 
 instructive to compare them either with the life- 
 less works of the Dutch themselves, or with any 
 modern imitations of them, as for instance with 
 the seas of Callcott, where all the light is white 
 
342 Best English Essays 
 
 and all the shadows grey, where no distinction is 
 made between water and form, or between real and 
 reflective shadow, and which are generally with- 
 out evidence of the artists having ever seen the 
 sea. 
 
 Some pictures, however, belonging to this period 
 of Turner are free from the Dutch infection, and 
 show the real power of the artist. A very important 
 one is in the possession of Lord Francis Egerton, 
 somewhat heavy in its forms, but remarkable for 
 the grandeur of distance obtained at the horizon; 
 a much smaller, but more powerful example is the 
 Port Ruysdael in the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq., 
 with which I know of no work at all comparable 
 for the expression of the white, wild, cold, comfort- 
 less waves of northern sea, even though the sea is 
 almost subordinate to the awful rolling clouds. 
 Both these pictures are very grey. The Pas de 
 Calais has more colour, and shows more art than 
 either, yet is less impressive. Recently, two marines 
 of the same subdued colour have appeared (1843) 
 among his more radiant works. One, Ostend, some- 
 what forced and affected, but the other, also called 
 Port Ruysdael, is among the most perfect sea pic- 
 tures he has produced, and especially remarkable 
 as being painted without one marked opposition 
 either of colour or of shade, all quiet and simple 
 even to an extreme, so that the picture was exceed- 
 ingly unattractive at first sight. The shadow of the 
 pier-head on the near waves is marked solely by 
 touches indicative of reflected light, and so myste- 
 riously that when the picture is seen near, it is quite 
 untraceable, and comes into existence as the specta- 
 tor retires. It is thus of peculiar truth and value; 
 
Ruskin 34J 
 
 and instructive as a contrast to the dark shadows of 
 his earlier time. 
 
 Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the 
 effect on the sea of a powerful gale continued with- 
 out intermission for three or four days and nights, 
 and to those who have not, I believe it must be unim- 
 aginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, 
 but from the complete annihilation of the limit 
 between sea and air. The water from its prolonged 
 agitation is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, 
 but into masses of accumulated yeast,^ which hang 
 
 1 The " yesty waves " of Shakespeare have made the likeness 
 familiar, and probably most readers take the expression as merely 
 equivalent to "foamy"; but Shakespeare knew better. Sea- 
 foam does not, under ordinary circumstances, last a moment after 
 it is formed, but disappears, as above described, in a mere white 
 film. But the foam of a prolonged tempest is altogether differ- 
 ent; it is "whipped " foam, — thick, permanent, and, in a foul or 
 discoloured sea, very ugly, especially in the way it hangs about the 
 tops of the waves, and gathers into clotted concretions before 
 the driving wind. The sea looks truly working or fermenting. 
 The following passage from Fenimore Cooper is an interesting 
 confirmation of the rest of the above description, which may be 
 depended upon as entirely free from exaggeration: — "For the 
 first time I now witnessed a tempest at sea. Gales, and pretty 
 hard ones, I had often seen, but the force of the wind on this 
 occasion as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of wind, as the 
 force of these had exceeded that of a whole-sail breeze. The sea 
 seemed crushed ; the pressure of the swooping atmosphere, as 
 the currents of the air went howling over the surface of the 
 ocean, fairly preventing' them from rising; or where a mound of 
 water did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as 
 the axe dubs inequalities from the log. "When the day returned, 
 a species of lurid, sombre light was diffused over the watery 
 waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship. 
 Even the sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of 
 the adjacent coast, none reappearing with the dawn. The air 
 was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the eye could 
 
344 ^^st English Essays 
 
 in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and where 
 one curls over to break, form a festoon like a 
 drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the 
 wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writh- 
 ing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air 
 white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a 
 foot or two long each; the surges themselves are 
 full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making 
 them white all through, as the water is under a great 
 cataract ; and their masses, being thus half water 
 and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind when- 
 ever they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, 
 which chokes and strangles like actual water. Add 
 to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its 
 moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught 
 by it as described above, and covers its surface not 
 merely with the smoke of finely divided water, but 
 with boiling mist ; imagine also the low rain-clouds 
 brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have 
 often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and 
 fragments from wave to wave ; and finally, conceive 
 the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, 
 velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in 
 precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of 
 ascent, through all this chaos ; and you will under- 
 stand that there is indeed no distinction left between 
 the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any 
 landmark or natural evidence of position is left; 
 that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, 
 and that you can see no farther in any direction than 
 you could see through a cataract. Suppose the 
 
 penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a mile." — 
 Miles Wallingford, Half a mile is an over-estimate in coast. 
 (Ruskin's note.) 
 
Ruskin 345 
 
 effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show 
 this annihilation to itself, and you have the sea pic- 
 ture of the Academy, 1842 — the snow-storm, one 
 of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, 
 and light that has ever been put on canvas, even by 
 Turner. Of course it was not understood; his 
 finest works never are ; but there was some apology 
 for the public's not comprehending this, for few 
 people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea 
 at such a time, and when they have, cannot face it. 
 To hold by a mast or a rock, and watch it is a pro- 
 longed endurance of drowning which few people 
 have courage to go through. To those who have, 
 it is one of the noblest lessons of nature. 
 
 But, I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever 
 painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted 
 by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief Academy 
 picture of the exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on 
 the Atlantic after prolonged storm ; but the storm is 
 partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain- 
 clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves 
 in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of 
 sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges 
 of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, 
 broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting 
 of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture 
 of the storm. Between these two ridges, the fire of 
 the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dye- 
 ing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense 
 and lurid splendour which burns like gold and 
 bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley, 
 the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is 
 restlessly divided, Hft themselves in dark, indefinite, 
 fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly 
 
34^ Best English Essays 
 
 shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They 
 do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in 
 wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under 
 strength of the swell compels or permits them; 
 leaving between them treacherous spaces of level 
 and whirling water, now lighted with green and 
 lamp-Hke fire, now flashing back the gold of the 
 declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with 
 the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, 
 which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scar- 
 let, and give to the reckless waves the added motion 
 of their own fiery flying. Purple and blue, the lurid 
 shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the 
 mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, 
 advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty ^ 
 ship as it labours amidst the lightning of the sea, 
 its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, 
 girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which 
 signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming 
 flood with the sunlight, — and cast far along the 
 desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines 
 the multitudinous sea. 
 
 I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's im- 
 mortality upon any single work, I should choose 
 this. Its daring conception — ideal in the highest 
 sense of the word — is based on the purest truth, 
 and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge 
 of a life; its colour is absolutely perfect, not one 
 false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so mod- 
 ulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect 
 composition ; its drawing as accurate as fearless ; 
 the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion ; its 
 
 1 She is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near 
 sea is encumbered with corpses. (Ruskin's note.) 
 
Ruskin 347 
 
 tones as true as they are wonderful ; ^ and the whole 
 picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects 
 and impressions — (completing thus the perfect 
 system of all truth, which we have shown to be 
 formed by Turner's works) — the power, majesty, 
 and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable Sea. 
 
 THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE 
 (Stones of Venice, Vol. 11.) 
 
 WE address ourselves first to the task of de- 
 termining some law of right which we may 
 apply to the architecture of all the world and of all 
 time ; and by help of which, and judgment accord- 
 ing to which, we may easily pronounce whether a 
 building is good or noble, as, by applying a plumb- 
 line, whether it be perpendicular. 
 
 1 There is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part, 
 but not so united with the rest of the picture, in the storm scene 
 illustrative of the "Antiquary," — a sunset light on polished sea. 
 I ought to have particularly mentioned the sea in the Lowestoffe, 
 as a piece of the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm, 
 altogether in grey, which should be especially contrasted, as a 
 piece of colour, with the greys of Vandevelde. And the sea in the 
 Great Yarmouth should have been noticed for its expression of 
 water in violent agitation, seen in enormous extent from a great 
 elevation. There is almost every form of sea in it, — rolling 
 waves dashing on the pier — successive breakers rolling to the 
 shore — a vast horizon of multitudinous waves — and winding 
 canals of calm water along the sands, bringing fragments of 
 bright sky down into their yellow waste. There is hardly one of 
 the views of the Southern Coast which does not give some new 
 condition or circumstance of sea. (Raskin's note.) 
 
348 Best English Essays 
 
 The first question will of course be, What are the 
 possible Virtues of architecture? 
 
 In the main, we require from buildings, as from 
 men, two kinds of goodness : first, the doing their 
 practical duty well : then that they be graceful 
 and pleasing in doing it ; which last is itself another 
 form of duty. 
 
 Then the practical duty divides itself into two 
 branches, — acting and talking : — acting, as to 
 defend us from weather or violence ; talking, as the 
 duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and 
 express feelings ; or of churches, temples, public 
 edifices, treated as books of history, to tell such 
 history clearly and forcibly. 
 
 We have thus, altogether, three great branches 
 of architectural virtue, and we require of any 
 building, — 
 
 1. That it act well, and do the things it was 
 intended to do in the best way. 
 
 2. That it speak well, and say the things it was 
 intended to say in the best words. 
 
 3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, 
 whatever it has to do or say. 
 
 Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is 
 evident that we can establish no general laws. First, 
 because it is not a virtue required in all buildings ; 
 there are some which are only for covert or defence, 
 and from which we ask no conversation. Secondly, 
 because there are countless methods of expression, 
 some conventional, some natural : each conventional 
 mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be 
 no subject of general laws. Every natural mode is 
 instinctively employed and instinctively understood, 
 wherever there is true feeling; and this instinct is 
 
Ruskin 349 
 
 above law. The choice of conventional methods 
 depends on circumstances out of calculation, and 
 that of natural methods on sensations out of con- 
 trol ; so that we can only say that the choice is right, 
 when we feel that the means are effective; and we 
 cannot always say that it is wrong when they are 
 not so. 
 
 A building which recorded the Bible history by 
 means of a series of sculptural pictures, would be 
 perfectly useless to a person unacquainted with the 
 Bible beforehand; on the other hand, the text of 
 the Old and New Testaments might be written on 
 its walls, and yet the building be a very inconven- 
 ient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been 
 adorned with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, 
 again, the power of exciting emotion must vary or 
 vanish, as the spectator becomes thoughtless or cold ; 
 and the building may be often blamed for what is 
 the fault of its critic, or endowed with a charm 
 which is of its spectator's creation. It is not, there- 
 fore, possible to make expressional character any 
 fair criterion of excellence in buildings, until we can 
 fully place ourselves in the position of those to 
 whom their expression was originally addressed, 
 and until we are certain that we understand every 
 symbol, and are capable of being touched by every 
 association which its builders employed as letters 
 of their language. I shall continually endeavour 
 to put the reader into such sympathetic temper, 
 when I ask for his judgment of a building; and 
 in every work I may bring before him I shall point 
 out, as far as I am able, whatever is peculiar in its 
 expression ; nay, I must even depend on such pe- 
 cuHarities for much of my best evidence respecting 
 
350 Best English Essays 
 
 the character of the builders. But I cannot legalise 
 the judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon it 
 if it be refused. I can neither force the reader to 
 feel this architectural rhetoric, nor compel him to 
 confess that the rhetoric is powerful, if it have pro- 
 duced no impression on his own mind. 
 
 I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for 
 incidental notice only. But their other two virtues 
 are proper subjects of law, — their performance of 
 their common and necessary work, and their con- 
 formity with universal and divine canons of love- 
 liness : respecting these there can be no doubt, no 
 ambiguity. I would have the reader discern them, 
 so quickly that, as he passes along a street, he 
 may, by a glance of the eye distinguish the noble 
 from the ignoble work. He can do this, if he permit 
 free play to his natural instincts ; and all that I have 
 to do for him is to remove from those instincts the 
 artificial restraints which prevent their action, and 
 to encourage them to an unaffected and unbiassed 
 choice between right and wrong. 
 
 We have, then, two qualities of buildings for sub- 
 jects of separate inquiry: their action, and aspect, 
 and the sources of virtue in both ; that is to say. 
 Strength and Beauty, both of these being less ad- 
 mired in themselves, than as testifying the intelli- 
 gence or imagination of the builder. 
 
 For we have a worthier way of looking at human 
 than at divine architecture : much of the value both 
 of construction and decoration, in the edifices of 
 men, depends upon our being led by the thing pro- 
 duced or adorned, to some contemplation of the 
 powers of mind concerned in its creation or adorn- 
 ment. We are not so led by divine work, but are 
 
Ruskin 351 
 
 content to rest in the contemplation of the thing 
 created. I wish the reader to note this especially: 
 we take pleasure, or should take pleasure, in archi- 
 tectural construction altogether as the manifestation 
 of an admirable human intelligence ; it is not the 
 strength, not the size, not the finish of the work 
 which we are to venerate : rocks are always stronger, 
 mountains always larger, all natural objects more 
 finished ; but it is the intelligence and resolution of 
 man in overcoming physical difficulty which are to 
 be the source of our pleasure and subject of our 
 praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is 
 less the actual loveliness of the thing produced, 
 than the choice and invention concerned in the pro- 
 duction, which are to delight us ; the love and the 
 thoughts of the workman more than his work : his 
 work must always be imperfect, but his thoughts 
 and affections may be true and deep. 
 
 This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must 
 insist upon at somewhat greater length, for I would 
 fain do away with some of the ungrateful coldness 
 which we show towards the good builders of old 
 time. In no art is there closer connection between 
 our delight in the work, and our admiration of the 
 workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet we 
 rarely ask for a builder's name. The patron at 
 whose cost, the monk through whose dreaming, the 
 foundation was laid, we remember occasionally; 
 never the man who verily did the work. Did the 
 reader ever hear of William of Sens as having had 
 anything to do with Canterbury Cathedral? or of 
 Pietro Basegio as in anywise connected with the 
 Ducal Palace of Venice ? There is much ingratitude 
 and injustice in this; and therefore I desire my 
 
2^2 Best English Essays 
 
 reader to observe carefully how much of his pleasure 
 in building is derived, or should be derived, from 
 admiration of the intellect of men whose names he 
 knows not. 
 
 The two virtues of architecture which we can 
 justly weigh, are, we said, its strength or good 
 construction, and its beauty or good decoration. 
 Consider first, therefore, what you mean when you 
 say a building is well constructed or well built; 
 3^ou do not merely mean that it answers its purpose, 
 — this is much, and many modern buildings fail of 
 this much ; but if it be verily well built, it must 
 answer this purpose in the simplest way, and with 
 no over-expenditure of means. We require of a 
 light-house, for instance, that it shall stand firm and 
 carry a Hght; if it do not this, assuredly it has 
 been ill built ; but it may do it to the end of time, 
 and yet not be well built. It may have hundreds 
 of tons of stone in it more than were needed, and 
 have cost thousands of pounds more than it ought. 
 To pronounce it well or ill built, we must know the 
 utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best 
 arrangements of stone for encountering them, and 
 the quickest ways of effecting such arrangements : 
 then only, so far as such arrangements have been 
 chosen, and such methods used, is it well built. 
 Then the knowledge of all difficulties to be met, 
 and of all means of meeting them, and the quick 
 and true fancy or invention of the modes of apply- 
 ing the means to the end, are what we have to 
 admire in the builder, even as he is seen through 
 this first or inferior part of his work. Mental 
 power, observe : not muscular nor mechanical, nor 
 technical, nor empirical, — pure, precious, majestic, 
 
Ruskin 353 
 
 massy intellect; not to be had at vulgar price, 
 nor received without thanks, and without asking 
 from whom. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, we are present at the build- 
 ing of a bridge: the bricklayers or masons have 
 had their centring erected for them, and that cen- 
 tring was put together by a carpenter, who had the 
 line of its curve traced for him by the architect: 
 the masons are dexterously handling and fitting 
 their bricks, or, by the help of machinery, care- 
 fully adjusting stones which are numbered for their 
 places. There is probably in their quickness of eye 
 and readiness of hand something admirable; but 
 this is not what I ask the reader to admire: not 
 the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything 
 that he can presently see and understand, but the 
 choice of the curve, and the shaping of the num- 
 bered stones, and the appointment of that number; 
 there were many things to be known and thought 
 upon before these were decided. The man who 
 chose the curve and numbered the stones, had to 
 know the times and tides of the river, and the 
 strength of its floods, and the height and flow of 
 them, and the soil of the banks, and the endurance 
 of it, and the weight of the stones he had to build 
 with, and the kind of traffic that day by day would be 
 carried on over his bridge, — all this specially, and 
 all the great general laws of force and weight, 
 and their working; and in the choice of the curve 
 and numbering of stones are expressed not only 
 his knowledge of these, but such ingenuity and 
 firmness as he had, in applying special means to 
 overcome the special difficulties about his bridge. 
 There is no saying how much wit, how much depth 
 
 23 
 
354 S^st English Essays 
 
 of thought, how much fancy, presence of mind, 
 courage, and fixed resolution there may have gone 
 to the placing of a single stone of it. This is 
 what we have to admire, — this grand power and 
 heart of man in the thing; not his technical or 
 empirical way of holding the trowel and laying 
 mortar. 
 
 Now there is in everything properly called art 
 this concernment of the intellect, even in the prov- 
 ince of the art which seems merely practical. For 
 observe : in this bridge-building I suppose no ref er^ 
 ence to architectural principles; all that I suppose 
 we want is to get safely over the river; the man 
 who has taken us over is still a mere bridge-builder, 
 — a builder, not an architect: he may be a rough, 
 artless, feelingless man, incapable of doing any one 
 truly fine thing all his days. I shall call upon you 
 to despise him presently in a sort, but not as if he 
 were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a great 
 man, infinite in memory, indefatigable in labour, 
 exhaustless in expedient, unsurpassable in quickness 
 of thought. Take good heed you understand him 
 before you despise him. 
 
 But why is he to be in anywise despised? By 
 no means despise him, unless he happen to be with- 
 out a soul, or at least to show no signs of it ; which 
 possibly he may not in merely carrying you across 
 the river. He may be merely what Mr. Carlyle 
 rightly calls a human beaver after all; and there 
 may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater 
 than a complication of animal faculties, an intricate 
 bestiality, — nest or hive building in its highest de- 
 velopment. You need something more than this, 
 or the man is despicable; you need that virtue of 
 
Ruskin 355 
 
 building" through which he may show his affections 
 and delights ; you need its beauty or decoration. 
 
 Not that, in reality, one division of the man is 
 more human than another. Theologists fall into 
 this error very fatally and continually; and a man 
 from whom I have learned much. Lord Lindsay, 
 has hurt his noble book by it, speaking as if the 
 Spirit of the man only were immortal, and were 
 opposed to his intellect, and the latter to the senses ; 
 whereas all the divisions of humanity are noble or 
 brutal, immortal or mortal, according to the degree 
 of their sanctification : and there is no part of the 
 man which is not immortal and divine when it is 
 once given to God, and no part of him which is not 
 mortal by the second death, and brutal before the 
 first, when it is withdrawn from God. For to what 
 shall we trust for our distinction from the beasts 
 that perish? To our higher intellect? — yet are 
 we not bidden to be wise as the serpent, and to 
 consider the ways of the ant ? — or to our affections ? 
 nay; these are more shared by the lower animals 
 than our intelligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave 
 of his beloved, and leaves it, — a dog had stayed. 
 Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason, 
 nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation 
 of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings 
 of the brain of it, — but in the dedication of them 
 all to Him who will raise them up at the last day. 
 
 It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections, 
 which man leaves upon his work, are indeed more 
 ennobling than the signs of his intelligence; but 
 it is the balance of both whose expression we need, 
 and the signs of the government of them all by 
 Conscience; and Discretion, the daughter of Con- 
 
356 Best English Essays 
 
 science. So, then, the intelligent part of man being 
 eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure 
 of his work, his affectionate part is to be shown 
 in its decoration ; and, that decoration may be in- 
 deed lovely, two things are needed: first, that the 
 affections be vivid, and honestly shown; secondly, 
 that they be fixed on the right things. 
 
 You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements 
 in wrong order. Logically I have; practically I 
 have not: for it is necessary first to teach men 
 to speak out, and say what they like, truly; and, 
 in the second place, to teach them which of their 
 likings are ill set, and which justly. If a man 
 is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if he will 
 not tell you what he likes, you can make nothing 
 of him. Only get him to feel quickly and to speak 
 plainly, and you may set him right. And the fact 
 is, that the great evil of all recent architectural 
 effort has not been that men liked wrong things: 
 but that they either cared nothing about any, or 
 pretended to like what they did not. Do you sup- 
 pose that any modern architect likes what he builds, 
 or enjoys it? Not in the least. He builds it be- 
 cause he has been told that such and such things 
 are fine, and that he should like them. He pretends 
 to like them, and gives them a false relish of vanity. 
 Do you seriously imagine, reader, that any living 
 soul in London likes triglyphs ? ^ — or gets any 
 hearty enjoyment out of pediments P^ You are 
 
 1 Triglyph. Literally, " Three Cut." The awkward upright 
 ornament with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be 
 seen everywhere at the tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and 
 modern. (Ruskin's note.) 
 
 2 Pediment. The triangular space above Greek porticos. 
 (Ruskin's note.) 
 
Ruskin 357 
 
 much mistaken. Greeks did : English people never 
 did, — never will. Do you fancy that the archi- 
 tect of old Burlington Mews, in Regent Street, had 
 any particular satisfaction in putting the blank tri- 
 angle over the archway, instead of a useful garret 
 window? By no manner of means. He had been 
 told it was right to do so, and thought he should 
 be admired for doing it. Very few faults of archi- 
 tecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are 
 almost always hypocrisies. 
 
 So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the 
 decoration is that it should indicate strong liking, 
 and that honestly. It matters not so much what the 
 thing is, as that the builder should really love it 
 and enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of 
 Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorns ; so he has 
 covered his porch with hawthorn, — it is a perfect 
 Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you 
 would try to gather it forthwith, but for fear of 
 being pricked. The old Lombard architects liked 
 hunting; so they covered their work with horses 
 and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two yards 
 long. The base Renaissance architects of Venice 
 liked masquing and fiddling; so they covered their 
 work with comic masks and musical instruments. 
 Even that was better than our English way of 
 liking nothing, and professing to like triglyphs. 
 
 But the second requirement in decoration, is a 
 sign of our liking the right thing. And the right 
 thing to be liked is God's work, which he made 
 for our delight and contentment in this world. And 
 all noble ornamentation is the expression of man's 
 delight in God's work. 
 
 So, then, these are the two virtues of building: 
 
358 Best English Essays 
 
 first, the signs of man's own good work; secondly, 
 the expression of man's delight in better work than 
 his own. And these are the two virtues of which 
 I desire my reader to be able quickly to judge, at 
 least in some measure; to have a definite opinion 
 up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point he 
 cannot form one. When the science of the building 
 is great, great science is of course required to com- 
 prehend it : and, therefore, of difficult bridges, and 
 light-houses, and harbour walls, and river dykes, 
 and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly 
 ' formed. But of common buildings, built in common 
 circumstances, it is very possible for every man, 
 or woman, or child, to form judgment both rational 
 and rapid. Their necessary, or even possible, fea- 
 tures are but few ; the laws of their construction are 
 as simple as they are interesting. The labour of 
 a few hours is enough to render the reader master 
 of their main points ; and from that moment he 
 will find in himself a power of judgment which can 
 neither be escaped nor deceived, and discover sub- 
 jects of interest where everything before had ap- 
 peared barren. For though the laws are few and 
 simple, the modes of obedience to them are not so. 
 Every building presents its own requirements and 
 difficulties; and every good building has peculiar 
 appliances or contrivances to meet them. Under- 
 stand the laws of structure, and you will feel the 
 special difficulty in every new building which you 
 approach; and you will know also, or feel instinc- 
 tively, whether it has been wisely met or other- 
 wise. And an enormous number of buildings, and 
 of styles of buildings, you will be able to cast 
 aside at once, as at variance with these constant 
 
Ruskin 359 
 
 laws of structure, and therefore unnatural an4 
 monstrous. 
 
 Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to 
 consult your own natural choice and liking. There 
 is a right and wrong in it; but you will assuredly 
 like the right if you suffer your natural instinct 
 to lead you. Half the evil in this world comes from 
 people not knowing what they do like, not deliber- 
 ately setting themselves to find out what they really 
 enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for 
 instance : they don't know that, — they rather think 
 they like keeping it ; and they do keep it under this 
 false impression, often to their great discomfort. 
 Everybody likes to do good ; but not one in a 
 hundred finds this out. Multitudes think they like 
 to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing 
 evil since God made the world. 
 
 So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs 
 some little care to try experiments upon yourself: 
 it needs deliberate question and upright answer. 
 But there is no difficulty to be overcome, no abstruse 
 reasoning to be gone into ; only a little watchfulness 
 needed, and thoughtfulness, and so much honesty 
 as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all 
 men, that you enjoy things, though great authori- 
 ties say you should not. 
 
 This looks somewhat like pride; but it is true 
 humility, a trust that you have been so created as to 
 enjoy what is fitting for you, and a willingness to 
 be pleased, as it was intended you should be. It 
 is the child's spirit, which we are then most happy 
 when we most recover; only wiser than children 
 in that we are ready to think it subject of thankful- 
 ness that we can still be pleased with a fair colour or 
 
360 Best English Essays 
 
 a dancing light. And, above all, do not try to make 
 all these pleasures reasonable, nor to connect the 
 delight which you take in ornament with that which 
 you take in construction or usefulness. They have 
 no connection; and every effort that you make to 
 reason from one to the other will blunt your sense 
 of beauty, or confuse it with sensations altogether 
 inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and 
 the world was filled with things which you will 
 enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by 
 them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot 
 turn to other account than mere delight. Remem- 
 ber that the most beautiful things in the world are 
 the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; 
 at least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand 
 writes better than a peacock's would, and the peas- 
 ants of Vevay, whose fields in spring-time are as 
 white with liHes as the Dent du Midi is with its 
 snow, told me the hay was none the better for them.* 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 (Introduction or Preface.) 
 
 TWENTY years ago, there was no lovelier piece 
 of lowland scenery in South England, nor 
 any more pathetic in the world, by its expression of 
 sweet human character and life, than that immedi- 
 ately bordering on the sources of the Wandle, and 
 including the lower moors of Addington, and the 
 villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their 
 pools and streams. No clearer or diviner waters ever 
 
 1 For concluding paragraph of original, see note foot of 
 page 332. 
 
Ruskin 361 
 
 sung with constant lips of the hand which " giveth 
 rain from heaven " ; no pastures ever lightened in 
 spring-time with more passionate blossoming; no 
 sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer- 
 by with their pride of peaceful gladness — fain- 
 hidden — yet full-confessed. The place remains, or, 
 until a few months ago, remained, nearly unchanged 
 in its larger features; but, with deliberate mind I 
 say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in its 
 inner tragic meaning — not in Pisan Maremma — 
 not by Campagna tomb — not by the sand-isles of 
 the Torcellan shore — as the slow stealing of aspects 
 of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the deli- 
 cate sweetness of that English scene: nor is any 
 blasphemy or impiety — any frantic saying or god- 
 less thought more appalling to me, using the best 
 power of judgment I have to discern its sense and 
 scope, than the insolent defilings of those springs by 
 the human herds that drink of them. Just where 
 the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure, 
 like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, 
 cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, 
 through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which 
 it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like 
 the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there 
 with white grenouillette ; just in the very rush and 
 murmur of the first spreading currents, the human 
 wretches of the place cast their street and house 
 foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken 
 shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; 
 they having neither energy to cart it away, nor 
 decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus 
 shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it 
 will float and melt, far away, in all places where 
 
^62 Best English Essays 
 
 God meant those waters to bring joy and health. 
 And, in a little pool, behind some houses further 
 in the village, where another spring rises, the shat- 
 tered stones of the well, and of the little fretted 
 channel which was long ago built and traced for 
 it by gentler hands, lie scattered, each from each, 
 under a ragged bank of mortar, and scoria; and 
 bricklayers' refuse, on one side, which the clean 
 water nevertheless chastises to purity; but it can- 
 not conquer the dead earth beyond; and there, 
 circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant 
 edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black 
 slime, the accumulation of indolent years. Half a 
 dozen men, with one day's work, could cleanse those 
 pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and 
 make every breath of summer air above them rich 
 with cool balm; and every glittering wave me- 
 dicinal, as if it ran, troubled of angels, from the 
 porch of Bethesda. But that day's work is never 
 given, nor will be; nor will any joy be possible to 
 heart of man, for evermore, about those wells of 
 English waters. 
 
 When I last left them, I walked up slowly through 
 the back streets of Croydon, from the old church to 
 the hospital; and, just on the left, before coming 
 up to the crossing of the High Street, there was 
 a new public-house built. And the front of it was 
 built in so wise manner, that a recess of two feet 
 was left below its front windows, between them and 
 the street-pavement — a recess too narrow for any 
 possible use (for even if it had been occupied by a 
 seat, as in old time it might have been, everybody 
 walking along the street would have fallen over the 
 legs of the reposing wayfarers). But, by way of 
 
Ruskin ^^^ 
 
 making this two feet depth of freehold land more 
 expressive of the dignity of an establishment for the 
 sale of spirituous liquors, it was fenced from the 
 pavement by an imposing iron railing, having four 
 or five spear-heads to the yard of it, and six feet 
 high; containing as much iron and iron-work, in- 
 deed, as could well be put into the space; and by 
 this stately arrangement, the little piece of dead 
 ground within, between wall and street, became 
 a protective receptacle of refuse; cigar-ends, and 
 oyster-shells, and the like, such as an open-handed 
 English street-populace habitually scatters from its 
 presence, and was thus left, unsweepable by any 
 ordinary methods. Now the iron bars which, use- 
 lessly (or in great degree worse than uselessly), 
 inclosed this bit of ground, and made it pestilent, 
 represented a quantity of work which would have 
 cleansed the Carshalton pools three times over — 
 of work, partly cramped and deadly, in the mine; 
 partly fierce ^ and exhaustive, at the furnace ; partly 
 
 1 "A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near 
 Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as 
 the * keeper * of a blast-furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John 
 Gardner, aged eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty seven. 
 The furnace contained four tons of molten iron, and an equal 
 amount of cinders, and ought to have been run out at 7.30 p.m. 
 But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and drinking, neg- 
 lected their duty, and, in the meantime, the iron rose in the 
 furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was contained. 
 Just as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the 
 furnace, the water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down 
 its front and let loose on them the molten metal, which instan- 
 taneously consumed Gardner. Snape, terribly burnt, and mad 
 with pain, leaped into the canal and then ran home and fell dead 
 on the threshold. Swift survived to reach the hospital, where he 
 died too." (Ruskin's note.) 
 
364 Best English Essays 
 
 foolish and sedentary, of ill-taught students making 
 bad designs: work from the beginning to the last 
 fruits of it, and in all the branches of it, venomous, 
 deathful, and miserable. Now, how did it come to 
 pass that this work was done instead of the other; 
 that the strength and Hfe of the English operative 
 were spent in defiling ground, instead of redeeming 
 it; and in producing an entirely (in that place) 
 valueless piece of metal, which can neither be eaten 
 nor breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air, and 
 pure water? 
 
 There is but one reason for it, and at present a 
 conclusive one — that the capitalist can charge per- 
 centage on the work in the one case, and cannot in 
 the other. If, having certain funds for supporting 
 labour at my disposal, I pay men merely to keep my 
 ground in order, my money is, in that function, 
 spent once for all; but if I pay them to dig iron 
 out of my ground, and work it, and sell it, I can 
 charge rent for the ground, and percentage both on 
 the manufacture and the sale, and make my capital 
 profitable in these three by-ways. The greater part 
 of the profitable investment of capital, in the present 
 day, is in operations of this kind, in which the pub- 
 lic is persuaded to buy something of no use to it, 
 on production, or sale, of which, the capitalist may 
 charge percentage; the said public remaining all 
 the while under the persuasion that the percentages 
 thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, they 
 are merely filchings out of partially light pockets, 
 to swell heavy ones. 
 
 Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron railing, 
 to make himself more conspicuous to drunkards. 
 The public-house-keeper on the other side of the 
 
Ruskin 365 
 
 way presently buys another railing, to out-rail him 
 with. Both are, as to their relative attractiveness to 
 customers of taste, just where they were before; 
 but they have lost the price of the railings; which 
 they must either themselves finally lose, or make 
 their aforesaid customers of taste pay, by raising 
 the price of their beer, or adulterating it. Either 
 the publicans, or their customers, are thus poorer 
 by precisely what the capitalist has gained ; and the 
 value of the work itself, meantime, has been lost to 
 the nation ; the iron bars in that form and place 
 being wholly useless. It is this mode of taxation 
 of the poor by the rich which is referred to else- 
 where, in comparing the modern acquisitive power 
 of capital with that of the lance and sword; 
 the only difference being that the levy of black- 
 mail in old times was by force, and is now by 
 cozening. The old rider and reiver frankly quar- 
 tered himself on the publican for the night; the 
 modern one merely makes his lance into an iron 
 spike, and persuades his host to buy it. One comes 
 as an open robber, the other as a cheating peddler; 
 but the result, to the injured person's pocket, is 
 absolutely the same. Of course many useful indus- 
 tries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones ; 
 and in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, 
 there is a certain direct good. It is far better to 
 spend four thousand pounds in making a good gun, 
 and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in idle- 
 ness. Only do not let it be called " political econ- 
 omy." There is also a confused notion in the minds 
 of many persons, that the gathering of the property 
 of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ulti- 
 mate harm; since, in whosesoever hands it may be, 
 
266 Best English Essays 
 
 it must be spent at last, and thus, they think, return 
 to the poor again. This fallacy has been again and 
 again exposed; but grant the plea true, and the 
 same apology may, of course, be made for black- 
 mail, or any other form of robbery. It might be 
 (though practically it never is) as advantageous 
 for the nation that the robber should have the 
 spending of the money he extorts, as that the per- 
 son robbed should have spent it. But this is no 
 excuse for the theft. If I were to put a turnpike 
 on the road where it passes my own gate, and en- 
 deavour to exact a shilling from every passenger, 
 the public would soon do away with my gate, 
 without listening to any plea on my part that " it 
 was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I 
 should spend their shillings, as that they themselves 
 should." But if, instead of out-facing them with a 
 turnpike I can only persuade them to come in and 
 buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing, 
 out of my ground, I may rob them to the same 
 extent and be, moreover, thanked as a public bene- 
 factor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. And 
 this main question for the poor of England — for 
 the poor of all countries — is wholly omitted in 
 every common treatise on the subject of wealth. 
 Even by the labourers themselves, the operation of 
 capital is regarded only in its effect on their imme- 
 diate interests ; never in the far more terrific power 
 of its appointment of the kind and the object of 
 labour. It matters little, ultimately, how much a 
 labourer is paid for making anything; but it mat- 
 ters fearfully what the thing is which he is com- 
 pelled to make. If his labour is so ordered as to 
 produce food, and fresh air, and fresh water, no 
 
Ruskin 367 
 
 matter that his wages are low — the food and fresh 
 air and water will be at last there; and he will 
 at last get them. But if he is paid to destroy 
 food and fresh air, or to produce iron bars in- 
 stead of them — the food and air will finally not 
 be there, and he will not get them, to his great 
 and final inconvenience. So that, conclusively, in 
 political as in household economy, the great ques- 
 tion is, not so much what money you have in 
 your 'pocket, as what you will biiy with it, and do 
 with it. 
 
 I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged 
 in work of investigation must be, to hear my state- 
 ments laughed at for years, before they are exam- 
 ined or believed ; and 1 am generally content to wait 
 the public's time. But it has not been without dis- 
 pleased surprise that I have found myself totally 
 unable, as yet, by aUy repetition, or illustration, to 
 force this plain thought into my readers' heads — 
 that the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in 
 substance, not in ciphers ; and that the real good of 
 all work, and of all commerce, depends on the final 
 worth of the thing you make, or get by it. This is 
 a practical enough statement, one would think : but 
 the English public has been so possessed by its 
 modern school of economists with the notion that 
 Business is always good, whether it be busy in mis- 
 chief or in benefit ; and that buying and selling are 
 always salutary, whatever the intrinsic worth of 
 what you buy or sell — that it seems impossible to 
 gain so much as a patient hearing for any inquiry 
 respecting the substantial result of our eager modern 
 labours. I have never felt more checked by the 
 sense of this impossibility than in arranging the 
 
368 Best English Essays 
 
 heads of the following three lectures,^ which, 
 though delivered at considerable intervals of time, 
 and in different places, were not prepared without 
 reference to each other. Their connection would, 
 however, have been made far more distinct, if I 
 had not been prevented, by what I feel to be another 
 great difficulty in addressing English audiences, 
 from enforcing, with any decision, the common, and 
 to me the most important, part of their subjects. I 
 chiefly desired (as I have just said) to question my 
 hearers — operatives, merchants, and soldiers, as 
 to the ultimate meaning of the business they had in 
 hand ; and to know from them what they expected 
 or intended their manufacture to come to, their sell- 
 ing to come to, and their killing to come to. That 
 appeared the first point needing determination before 
 I could speak to them with any real utility or effect. 
 **You craftsmen — salesmen — swordsmen — do but 
 tell me clearly what you want, then, if I can say 
 anything to help you, I will; and if not, I will 
 account to you as I best may for my inability." But 
 in order to put this question into any terms, one 
 had first of all to face the difficulty just spoken of 
 — to me for the present insuperable — the difficulty 
 of knowing whether to address one's audience as 
 believing, or not believing, in any other world than 
 this. For if you address any average modern 
 English company as believing in an Eternal life, 
 and endeavour to draw any conclusions, from this 
 assumed belief, as to their present business, they 
 will forthwith tell you that what you say is very 
 beautiful, but it is not practical. If, on the contrary, 
 
 1 The titles are " Work," " Traffic," " War," not reprinted in 
 this volume. 
 
Ruskin ^6^ 
 
 you frankly address them as unbelievers in Eternal 
 life, and try to draw any consequences from that 
 unbelief — they immediately hold you for an ac- 
 cursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet 
 at you. And the more I thought over what I had 
 got to say, the less I found I could say it, without 
 some reference to this intangible or intractable part 
 of the subject. It made all the difference, in assert- 
 ing any principle of war, whether one assumed that 
 a discharge of artillery would merely knead down a 
 certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as in 
 a brick field; or whether, out of every separately 
 Christian-named portion of the ruinous heap, there 
 went out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of 
 battle, some astonished condition of soul, unwillingly 
 released. It made all the difference, in speaking 
 of the possible range of commerce, whether one 
 assumed that all bargains related only to visible 
 property- — or whether property, for the present 
 invisible, but nevertheless real, was elsewhere pur- 
 chasable on other terms. It made all the difference 
 in addressing a body of men subject to considerable 
 hardship, and having to find some way out of it — 
 whether one could confidently say to them, " My 
 friends — you have only to die, and all will be 
 right " ; or whether one had any secret misgiving 
 that such advice was more blessed to him that gave, 
 than to him that took it. And therefore the delib- 
 erate reader will find throughout these lectures, a 
 hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing 
 short of conclusions which he will feel I would fain 
 have come to; hesitation which arises wholly from 
 this uncertainty of my hearers' temper. For I do 
 not now speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the 
 
 24 
 
2^0 Best English Essays 
 
 time of first forward youth, in any proselyting tem- 
 per, as desiring to persuade any one of what, in such 
 matters, I thought myself; but, whomsoever I 
 venture to address, I take for the time his creed as 
 I find it, and endeavour to push it into such vital 
 fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with 
 a great part of the existing English people, that they 
 are in possession of a book which tells them, straight 
 from the lips of God all they ought to do, and need 
 to know. I have read that book, with as much care 
 as most of them, for some forty years; and am 
 thankful that, on those who trust it, I can press its 
 pleadings. My endeavour has been uniformly to 
 make them trust it more deeply than they do ; trust 
 it, not in their own favourite verses only, but in the 
 sum of all ; trust it not as a fetich or talisman, which 
 they are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as 
 a Captain's order, to be heard and obeyed at their 
 peril. I was always encouraged by supposing my 
 hearers to hold such belief. To these, if to any, 
 I once had hope of addressing, with acceptance, 
 words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and the 
 futility of avarice; from these, if from any, I once 
 expected ratification of a political economy which 
 asserted that the life was more than the meat, and 
 the body than raiment; and these, it once seemed 
 to me, I might ask, without accusation of fanaticism, 
 not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the be- 
 stowal of their heart's treasure, to separate them- 
 selves from the crowd of whom it is written, " After 
 all these things do the Gentiles seek." 
 
 It cannot, however, be assumed, with any sem- 
 blance of reason, that a general audience is now 
 wholly, or even in majority, composed of these reli- 
 
Ruskin 371 
 
 gious persons. A large portion must always consist 
 of men who admit no such creed ; or who, at least, 
 are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. And as, 
 with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for 
 honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief in 
 life — with the so-called Infidel, I desired to plead 
 for an honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief 
 in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must 
 either hereafter live, or hereafter die; fate may be 
 bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either 
 expectation ; but never in hesitation between un- 
 grasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually 
 believe in immortality, so far as to avoid prepara- 
 tion for death ; and in mortality, so far as to avoid 
 preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a 
 wise man will at least hold himself prepared for one 
 or other of two events, of which one or other is 
 inevitable ; and will have all things in order, for his 
 sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening. 
 
 Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judg- 
 ment, if he determine to put them in order, as for 
 sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable 
 state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an un- 
 usual one. I know few Christians so convinced of 
 the splendour of the rooms in their Father's house, 
 as to be happier when their friends are called to 
 those mansions, than they would have been if the 
 Queen had sent for them to live at court: nor has 
 the Church's most ardent " desire to depart, and be 
 with Christ," ever cured it of the singular habit of 
 putting on mourning for every person summoned 
 to such departure. On the contrary, a brave belief 
 in death has been assuredly held by many not 
 ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity 
 
37^ Best English Essays 
 
 in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a 
 belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, 
 or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, 
 to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wast- 
 ing the space of it which may be granted him ; nor 
 does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest, 
 to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunk- 
 enness to-day. To teach that there is no device in 
 the grave, may indeed make the deviceless person 
 more contented in his dulness ; but it will make the 
 deviser only more earnest in devising ; nor is human 
 conduct likely, in every case, to be purer under the 
 conviction that all its evil may in a moment be par- 
 doned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment re- 
 deemed; and that the sigh of repentance, which 
 purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into 
 a felicity which forgets its pain — than it may be 
 under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, 
 more probable, apprehension, that " what a man 
 soweth that shall he also reap " — or others reap — 
 when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no 
 more in darkness, but lies down therein. 
 
 But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitter- 
 ness of soul, or the offence given by the conduct 
 of those who claim higher hope, may have rendered 
 this painful creed the only possible one, there is an 
 appeal to be made, more secure in its ground than 
 any which can be addressed to happier persons. 
 I would fain, if I might offencelessly, have spoken 
 to them as if none others heard; and have said 
 thus : Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be 
 deaf for ever. For these others, at your right hand 
 and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite 
 existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, 
 
Ruskin 373 
 
 and all their faults forgiven ; for these, who, stained 
 and blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have 
 but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of 
 death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove 
 that is covered with silver, and her feathers like 
 gold; for these, indeed, it may be permissible to 
 waste their numbered moments, through faith in a 
 future of innumerable hours ; to these, in their 
 weakness, it may be conceded that they should 
 tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of 
 righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one 
 day, will be remembered no more. In them, it may 
 be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, 
 over whom they know their Master is watching; 
 and to leave those to perish temporarily who cannot 
 perish eternally. But, for you, there is no such 
 hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate, 
 which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to 
 be all their inheritance ; you may crush them, before 
 the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you — 
 their breath, which fails for lack of food, once 
 expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against 
 you a word of accusing — they and you, as you 
 think, shall lie down together in the dust, and the 
 worms cover you — and for them there shall be no 
 consolation, and on you no vengeance — only the 
 question murmured above your grave : " Who shall 
 repay him what he hath done ? " Is it therefore 
 easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for 
 which there is no remedy ? Will you take, wantonly, 
 this little all of his life from your poor brother, and 
 make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will 
 you be readier to the injustice which can never be 
 redressed; and niggardly of mercy which you can 
 
374 ^^^^ English Essays 
 
 bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse 
 for ever? I think better of you, even of the most 
 selfish, than that you would do this, well understood. 
 And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question 
 becomes not less grave, in these curt limits. If your 
 life were but a fever fit — the madness of a night, 
 whose follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn, 
 it might matter little how you fretted away the 
 sickly hours — what toys you snatched at, or let fall 
 — what visions you followed wistfully with the 
 deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. Is the earth only 
 an hospital ? Play, if you care to play, on the floor 
 of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what 
 crowns please you ; gather the dust of it for treasure, 
 and die rich in that, clutching at the black motes in 
 the air with your dying hands — and yet, it may 
 be well with you. But if this life be no dream, 
 and the world no hospital; if all the peace and 
 power and joy you can ever win, must be won now ; 
 and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never — 
 will you still, throughout the puny totality of your 
 life, weary yourselves in the fire of vanity? If there 
 is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none 
 you might presently take? was this grass of the 
 earth made green for your shroud only, not for your 
 bed? and can you never lie down upon it, but only 
 under it? The heathen, to whose creed you have 
 returned, thought not so. They knew that life 
 brought its contest, but they expected from it also 
 the crown of all contest. No proud one ! no jewelled 
 circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of 
 the unmerited throne, only some few leaves of wild 
 olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years 
 of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought ; 
 
Ruskin 375 
 
 but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god 
 could give them. Seeking a greater than this, they 
 had known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, 
 not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found 
 for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. 
 The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you — 
 the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with 
 no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with 
 soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, 
 mixed with gray leaf and thorn-set stem; no fas- 
 tening of diadem for you but with such sharp em- 
 broidery ! But this, such as it is, you may win while 
 yet you live; type of grey honour and sweet rest. 
 Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed 
 trust and requited love, and the sight of the peace 
 of others, and the ministry to their pain; — these 
 and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters 
 and flowers of the earth beneath ; and mysteries and 
 presences, innumerable, of living things, — these may 
 yet be here your riches; untormenting and divine: 
 serviceable for the life that now is ; nor, it may be, 
 without promise of that which is to come. 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD: 
 THE INTELLECTUAL CRITIC 
 
 WE have defined a critic as a writer whose 
 chief interest is in his subject. He 
 devotes himself to discovering and 
 presenting the truth about that subject. If he is 
 an impassioned critic like Ruskin, his writing is 
 highly colored by his own personality. Let the 
 element of passion be subjected to reason, and we 
 have the true intellectual critic, whose motto is, 
 Truth for Truth's sake, as well as, Truth for the 
 sake of humanity. 
 
 Matthew Arnold was perhaps the creator of 
 pure, intellectual criticism in modern prose. 
 Starting in life as a poet whose work as far as he 
 went was comparable with Tennyson's, at thirty 
 he became a school inspector, lecturer, and liter- 
 ary critic. As a critic of the literary value of 
 other men's work, both in poetry and prose, but 
 especially in poetry, he is the first of English 
 writers, ranking with the French critics of whom 
 Sainte-Beuve is the type. Like them, he went 
 back to Greek models. Indeed, he led the revival 
 in English of the style of writing and the method 
 of thinking of which Plato is the great exemplar. 
 
380 Best English Essays 
 
 And now let us ask, What is the Greek critical 
 style? 
 
 I Matthew Arnold himself has differentiated the 
 Hellenic and the Hebraic by saying that the 
 Hellenic represents ideas, the Hebraic moral emo- 
 tions. The one devotes itself to making truth 
 prevail, the other to making goodness prevail. 
 Moreover, to the Greek " Beauty is Truth, Truth 
 Beauty," as Keats, the typical modern Grecian 
 in poetry, has told us. Likewise, Truth and 
 Beauty are Simplicity. The Greek artists de- 
 pended on the natural lines of the human body 
 for their notions of the beautiful in art, leaving 
 to barbarous nations intricate design and gor- 
 geous coloring. 
 
 ^, Matthew Arnold's style is severely simple and 
 direct. He defines his terms with the utmost 
 accuracy and care. He tries to remove from his 
 mind all prejudice for or against. Before taking 
 sides against a subject, he is careful to understand 
 all that can be said in behalf of it. In his literary 
 criticisms he comes as near telling us the truth 
 about an author as perhaps any writer ever can. 
 And then he passes on and tries to tell us the 
 truth about ourselves, especially with regard to 
 the element of simple beauty and perfection in 
 our lives. This is the culture he would have us 
 make to prevail.- 
 
 Undoubtedly the essay by which Matthew 
 Arnold is best known is that on " Sweetness 
 and Light," which forms a chapter in his book 
 
Matthew Arnold 381 
 
 " Culture and Anarchy." It was written at 
 the point of his transition from purely literary 
 criticism to his theological discussions such as 
 " St. Paul and Protestantism." Its subject is 
 almost identical with that of Ruskin in the intro- 
 duction to " The Crown of Wild Olive," and 
 the student of style will find great interest in 
 comparing and contrasting the two methods of 
 treatment. 
 
 Though passion in Matthew Arnold is always 
 subjected to reason, still passion exists in his 
 nature just as truly as in Ruskin. Passion is 
 the motive force that drives on man's interest, 
 and without it no man could devote his life to 
 a great cause with any success. Ruskin's pas- 
 sion, often prevailing over his reason, leads him 
 into many absurdities of statement, and even 
 into points of view essentially false. Matthew 
 Arnold's passion never allowed him to distort 
 his statements, or swerve from what he saw as 
 truth and accuracy. It did, however, drive him 
 into many barren and unprofitable subjects, such, 
 for example, as the later theological discussions 
 into which he was led by the same motives that 
 caused him to write " Culture and Anarchy." 
 
 A later representative of the Greek spirit and 
 literary style is Walter Pater. His writings are 
 more polished, more severely simple, more purely 
 classic than Matthew Arnold's; but he never 
 rose to the range of subject and breadth of view 
 that we find in the older writer, and, after all that 
 
38^ Scst English Essays 
 
 may be said in behalf of style and purity, great 
 men are to be measured by the greatness of their 
 ideas. 
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 
 (Culture and Anarchy) 
 
 THE disparagers of culture make its motive 
 curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its 
 motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture 
 which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering 
 of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten 
 by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued 
 either out of sheer vanity and ignorance or else as 
 an engine of social and class distinction, separating 
 its holder, like a badge or title, from other people 
 who have not got it. No serious man would call 
 this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at 
 all. To find the real ground for the very different 
 estimate which serious people will set upon culture, 
 we must find some motive for culture in the terms 
 of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a 
 motive the word curiosity gives us. 
 
 I have before now pointed out that we English 
 do not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good 
 sense as well as in a bad sense. With us the word 
 is always used in a somewhat disapproving sense. 
 A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things 
 of the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he 
 speaks of curiosity, but with us the word always 
 conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying 
 activity. In the " Quarterly Review," some little 
 time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French 
 
Matthew Arnold 383 
 
 critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate esti- 
 mate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy 
 consisted chiefly in this : that in our English way it 
 left out of sight the double sense really involved 
 in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to 
 stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said 
 that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by 
 curiosity, and omitting either to perceive that M. 
 Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with 
 him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and 
 not blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really 
 to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. 
 For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters 
 which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is 
 certainly a curiosity — a desire after the things of 
 the mind simply for their own sakes and for the 
 pleasure of seeing them as they are — which is, in 
 an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, 
 and the very desire to see things as they are implies 
 a balance and regulation of mind which is not often 
 attained without fruitful effort, and which is the 
 very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of 
 mind which is what we mean to blame when we 
 blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : " The first 
 motive which ought to impel us to study is the 
 desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and 
 to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent." 
 This is the true ground to assign for the genuine 
 scientific passion, however manifested, and for cul- 
 ture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and 
 it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term 
 curiosity stand to describe it. 
 
 But there is of culture another view, in which not 
 solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see 
 
384 Best English Essays 
 
 things as they are, natural and proper in an intelli- 
 gent being, appears as the ground of it. There is 
 a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the 
 impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the 
 desire for removing human error, clearing human 
 confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble 
 aspiration to leave the world better and happier than 
 we found it, — motives eminently such as are called 
 social, — come in as part of the grounds of culture, 
 and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then 
 properly described not as having its origin in curi- 
 osity, but as having its origin in the love of perfec- 
 tion; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the 
 force, not merely or primarily of the scientific pas- 
 sion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and 
 social passion for doing good. As, in the first view 
 of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's 
 words : " To render an intelligent being yet more 
 intelligent ! " so, in the second view of it, there is 
 no better motto which it can have than these words 
 of Bishop Wilson : " To make reason and the will 
 of God prevail ! '* 
 
 Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt 
 to be overhasty in determining what reason and the 
 will of God say, because its turn is for acting rather 
 than thinking and it wants to be beginning to act; 
 and whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, 
 which proceed frorn its own state of development 
 and share in all the imperfections and immaturities 
 of this, for a basis of action ; what distinguishes 
 culture is, that it is possessed by the scientific 
 passion as well as by the passion of doing good; 
 that it demands worthy notions of reason and the 
 will of God, and does not readily suffer its own 
 
Matthew Arnold 385 
 
 crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them. 
 And knowing that no action or institution can be 
 salutary and stable which is not based on reason 
 and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and 
 instituting, even with the great aim of diminishing 
 human error and misery ever before its thoughts, 
 but that it can remember that acting and instituting 
 are of little use, unless we know how and what we 
 ought to act and to institute. 
 
 This culture is more interesting and more far- 
 reaching than that other, which is founded solely 
 on the scientific passion for knowing. But it needs 
 times of faith and ardour, times when the intellec- 
 tual horizon is opening and widening all round 
 us, to flourish in. And is not the close and bounded 
 intellectual horizon within which we have long lived 
 and moved now lifting up, and are not new lights 
 finding free passage to shine in upon us? For a 
 long time there was no passage for them to make 
 their way in upon us, and then it was of no use 
 to think of adapting the world's action to them. 
 Where was the hope of making reason and the will 
 of God prevail among people who had a routine 
 which they had christened reason and the will of 
 God, in which they were inextricably bound, and 
 beyond which they had no power of looking? But 
 now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine, 
 — social, political, religious, — has wonderfully 
 yielded ; the iron force of exclusion of all which is 
 new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, 
 not that people should obstinately refuse to allow 
 anything but their old routine to pass for reason 
 and the will of God, but either that they should 
 allow some novelty or other to pass for these too 
 
 2S 
 
386 Best English Essays 
 
 easily, or else that they should underrate the im- 
 portance of them altogether, and think it enough to 
 follow action for its own sake, without troubling 
 themselves to make reason and the will of God pre- 
 vail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture 
 to be of service, culture which believes in making 
 reason and the will of God prevail, believes in per- 
 fection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and 
 is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible exclusion 
 of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its 
 ideas, simply because they are new. 
 
 The moment this view of culture is seized, the 
 moment it is regarded not solely as the endeavour 
 to see things as they are, to draw towards a knowl- 
 edge of the universal order which seems to be in- 
 tended and aimed at in the world, and which it is 
 a man's happiness to go along with or his misery 
 to go counter to, — to learn, in short, the will of 
 God, — the moment, I say, culture is considered 
 not merely as the endeavour to see and learn this, 
 but as the endeavour, also, to make it prevail, the 
 moral, social, and beneficent character of culture 
 becomes manifest. The mere endeavour to see and 
 learn the truth for our own personal satisfaction 
 is indeed a commencement for making it prevail, 
 a preparing the way for this, which always serves 
 this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame 
 absolutely in itself and not only in its caricature and 
 degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with 
 blame, and disparaged with the dubious title of 
 curiosity, because in comparison with this wider 
 endeavour of such great and plain utility it looks 
 selfish, petty, and unprofitable. 
 
 And religion, the greatest and most important of 
 
Matthew Arnold 387 
 
 the efforts by which the human race has manifested 
 its impulse to perfect itself, — religion, that voice of 
 the deepest human experience, — does not only 
 enjoin and sanction the aim which is the great aim 
 of culture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain 
 what perfection is and to make it prevail ; but also, 
 in determining generally in what human perfection 
 consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical 
 with that which culture — culture seeking the deter- 
 mination of this question through all the voices of 
 human experience which have been heard upon it, 
 of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well 
 as of religion, in order to give a greater fulness and 
 certainty to its solution — likewise reaches. Re- 
 ligion says: The kingdom of God is within you; 
 and culture, in like manner, places human perfection 
 in an internal condition, in the growth and pre- 
 dominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished 
 from our animality. It places it in the ever-increas- 
 ing efficacy and in the general harmonious expan- 
 sion of those gifts of thought and feeling, which 
 make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of 
 human nature. As I have said on a former occa- 
 sion : " It is in making endless additions to itself, 
 in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless 
 growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the 
 human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, 
 culture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true 
 value of culture." Not a having and a resting, but 
 a growing and a becoming, is the character of per- 
 fection as culture conceives it; and here, too, it 
 coincides with religion. 
 
 And because men are all members of one great 
 whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature 
 
388 Best English Essays 
 
 will not allow one member to be indifferent to the 
 rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the 
 rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea 
 of perfection which culture forms, must be a general 
 expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is 
 not possible while the individual remains isolated. 
 The individual is required, under pain of being 
 stunted and enfeebled in his own development if 
 he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his 
 march towards perfection, to be continually doing 
 all he can to enlarge and increase the volume of 
 the human stream sweeping thitherward. And here, 
 once more, culture lays on us the same obligation 
 as religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson has ad- 
 mirably put it, that " to promote the kingdom of 
 God is to increase and hasten one's own happiness." 
 
 But, finally, perfection — as culture from a 
 thorough disinterested study of human nature and 
 human experience learns to conceive it — is a har- 
 monious expansion of all the powers which make 
 the beauty and worth of human nature, and is not 
 consistent with the over-development of any one 
 power at the expense of the rest. Here culture goes 
 beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived 
 by us. 
 
 If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of 
 harmonious perfection, general perfection, and per- 
 fection which consists in becoming something rather 
 than in having something, in an inward condition 
 of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of 
 circumstances, — it is clear that culture, instead of 
 being the frivolous and useless thing which Mr. 
 Bright, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and many other 
 Liberals are apt to call it, has a very important 
 
Matthew Arnold 389 
 
 function to fulfil for mankind. And this function 
 is particularly important in our modern world, of 
 which the whole civilisation is, to a much greater 
 degree than the civilisation of Greece and Rome, 
 mechanical and external, and tends constantly to 
 become more so. But above all in our own country 
 has culture a weighty part to perform, because here 
 that mechanical character, which civilisation tends 
 to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent 
 degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfec- 
 tion, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this 
 country with some powerful tendency which thwarts 
 them and sets them at defiance. The idea of per- 
 fection as an inward condition of the mind and 
 spirit is at variance with the mechanical and mate- 
 rial civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as 
 I have said, so much in esteem as with us. The 
 idea of perfection as a general expansion of the 
 human family is at variance with our strong indivi- 
 dualism, our hatred of all Hmits to the unrestrained 
 swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of 
 " every man for himself." Above all, the idea of 
 perfection as a harmonious expansion of human 
 nature is at variance with our want of flexibility, 
 with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side 
 of a thing, with our intense energetic absorption in 
 the particular pursuit we happen to be following. 
 So culture has a rough task to achieve in this 
 country. Its preachers have, and are likely long to 
 have, a hard time of it, and they will much oftener 
 be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant 
 or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and bene- 
 factors. That, however, will not prevent their 
 doing in the end good service if they persevere. 
 
390 Best English Essays 
 
 And, meanwhile, the mode of action they have to 
 pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight 
 against, ought to be made quite clear for every one 
 to see, who may be willing to look at the matter 
 attentively and dispassionately. 
 
 Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting 
 danger; often in machinery most absurdly dispro- 
 portioned to the end which this machinery, if it is 
 to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in 
 machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. 
 What is freedom but machinery? what is popula- 
 tion but machinery? what is coal but machinery? 
 what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth 
 but machinery? what are, even, religious organisa- 
 tions but machinery? Now almost every voice in 
 England is accustomed to speak of these things as 
 if they were precious ends in themselves, and there- 
 fore had some of the characters of perfection indis- 
 putably joined to them. I have before now noticed 
 Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for proving the 
 greatness and happiness of England as she is, and 
 for quite stopping the mouths of all gainsayers. 
 Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating this 
 argument of his, so I do not know why I should be 
 weary of noticing it. " May not every man in 
 England say what he likes ? " — Mr. Roebuck per- 
 petually asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, 
 and when every man may say what he likes, our 
 aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspira- 
 tions of culture, which is the study of perfection, 
 are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they 
 may say what they like, is worth saying, — has 
 good in it, and more good than bad. In the same 
 way the "Times," replying to some foreign stric- 
 
Matthew Arnold 391 
 
 tures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the 
 English abroad, urges that the EngHsh ideal is that 
 every one should be free to do and to look just as 
 he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to 
 make what each raw person may like the rule by 
 which he fashions himself ; but to draw ever nearer 
 to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, 
 and becoming, and to get the raw person to like 
 that. 
 
 And in the same way with respect to railroads 
 and coal. Every one must have observed the 
 strange language current during the late discussions 
 as to the possible failures of our supplies of coal. 
 Our coal, thousands of people were saying, is the 
 real basis of our national greatness ; if our coal 
 runs short, there is an end of the greatness of 
 England. But what is greatness? — culture makes 
 us ask. Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy 
 to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the 
 outward proof of possessing greatness is that we 
 excite love, interest, and admiration. If England 
 were swallowed up by the sea to-morrow, which of 
 the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite 
 the love, interest, and admiration of mankind, — 
 would most, therefore, show the evidences of hav- 
 ing possessed greatness, — the England of the last 
 twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time 
 of splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and 
 our industrial operations depending on coal, were 
 very little developed ? Well, then, what an unsound 
 habit of mind it must be which makes us talk of 
 things like coal or iron as constituting the greatness 
 of England, and how salutary a friend is culture, 
 bent on seeing things as they are, and thus dissipat- 
 
392 Best English Essays 
 
 ing delusions of this kind and fixing standards of 
 perfection that are real! 
 
 Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious 
 works for material advantage are directed, — the 
 commonest of commonplaces tells us how men are 
 always apt to regard wealth as a precious end in 
 itself; and certainly they have never been so apt 
 thus to regard it as they are in England at the 
 present time. Never did people believe anything 
 more firmly than nine Englishmen out of ten at the 
 present day believe that our greatness and welfare 
 are proved by our being so very rich. Now, the 
 use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its 
 spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth 
 as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter 
 of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, 
 but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it 
 were not for this purging effect wrought upon our 
 minds by culture, the whole world, the future as 
 well as the present, would inevitably belong to the 
 Philistines. The people who believe most that our 
 greatness and welfare are proved by our being very 
 rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to 
 becoming rich, are just the very people whom we 
 call Philistines. Culture says : " Consider these 
 people, then, their way of life, their habits, their 
 manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them 
 attentively; observe the literature they read, the 
 things which give them pleasure, the words which 
 come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which 
 make the furniture of their minds; would any 
 Amount of wealth be worth having with the condi- 
 tion that one was to become just like these people 
 by having it ? " And thus culture begets a dissat- 
 
Matthew Arnold 393 
 
 isfaction which is of the highest possible value in 
 stemming the common tide of men's thoughts in a 
 wealthy and industrial community, and which saves 
 the future, as one may hope, from being vulgarised, 
 even if it cannot save the present. 
 
 Population, again, and bodily health and vigour, 
 are things which are nowhere treated in such an un- 
 intelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in Eng- 
 land. Both are really machinery; yet how many 
 people all around us do We see rest in them and fail 
 to look beyond them ! Why, one has heard people, 
 fresh from reading certain articles of the " Times " 
 on the Registrar-General's returns of marriages and 
 births in this country, who would talk of our large 
 English families in quite a solemn strain, as if they 
 had something in itself beautiful, elevating, and 
 meritorious in them; as if the British Philistine 
 would have only to present himself before the Great 
 Judge with his twelve children, in order to be 
 received among the sheep as a matter of right ! 
 
 But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are 
 not to be classed with wealth and population as mere 
 machinery; they have a more real and essential 
 value. True ; but only as they are more intimately 
 connected with a perfect spiritual condition than 
 wealth or population are. The moment we disjoin 
 them from the idea of a perfect spiritual condition, 
 and pursue them, as we do pursue them, for their 
 own sake and as ends in themselves, our worship of 
 them becomes as mere worship of machinery, as our 
 worship of wealth or population, and as unintelli- 
 gent and vulgarising a worship as that is. Every 
 one with anything like an adequate idea of human 
 perfection has distinctly marked this subordination 
 
394 ^^st English Essays 
 
 to higher and spiritual ends of the cultivation of 
 bodily vigour and activity. " Bodily exercise profit- 
 eth little ; but godliness is profitable unto all things," 
 says the author of the Epistle to Timothy. And the 
 utilitarian Franklin says just as expHcitly: — *' Eat 
 and drink such an exact quantity as suits the consti- 
 tution of thy body, in reference to the services of 
 the mind." But the point of view of culture, keep- 
 ing the mark of human perfection simply and 
 broadly in view, and not assigning to this perfec- 
 tion, as religion or utilitarianism assigns to it, a 
 special and limited character, this point of view, I 
 say, of culture is best given by these words of 
 Epictetus : — "It is a sign of d<^via/' says he, — 
 that is, of a nature not finely tempered, — " to give 
 yourselves up to things which relate to the body; 
 to make, for instance, a great fuss about exercise, 
 a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about drink- 
 ing, a great fuss about walking, a great fuss about 
 riding. All these things ought to be done merely 
 by the way : the formation of the spirit and charac- 
 ter must be our real concern." This is admirable; 
 and, indeed, the Greek word €v</)via, a finely tem- 
 pered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection 
 as culture brings us to conceive it: a harmonious 
 perfection, a perfection in which the characters of 
 beauty and intelligence are both present, which 
 unites " the two noblest of things," — as Swift, who 
 of one of the two, at any rate, had himself all too 
 little, most happily calls them in his " Battle of the 
 Books," — " the two noblest of things, sweetness 
 and light." The €v<^v7i? is the man who tends 
 towards sweetness and light ; the af^vij?, on the 
 other hand, is our Philistine. The immense spir- 
 
Matthew Arnold 395 
 
 itual significance of the Greeks is due to their having 
 been inspired with this central and happy idea of 
 the essential character of human perfection ; and 
 Mr. Bright's misconception of culture, as a smatter- 
 ing of Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all, from 
 this wonderful significance of the Greeks having 
 affected the very machinery of our education, and 
 is in itself a kind of homage to it. 
 
 In thus making sweetness and light to be charac- 
 ters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with 
 poetry, follows one law with poetry. Far more than 
 on our freedom, our population, and our indus- 
 trialism, many amongst us rely upon our religious 
 organisations to save us. I have called religion a 
 yet more important manifestation of human nature 
 than poetry, because it has worked on a broader 
 scale for perfection, and with greater masses of 
 men. But the idea of beauty and of a human nature 
 perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of 
 poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has 
 not yet had the success that the idea of conquering 
 the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human 
 nature perfect on the moral side, — which is the 
 dominant idea of religion, — has been enabled to 
 have ; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious 
 idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern 
 the other. 
 
 The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which 
 religion and poetry are one, in which the idea of 
 beauty and of a human nature perfect on all sides 
 adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and 
 works in the strength of that, is on this account of 
 such surpassing interest and instructiveness for us, 
 though it was, — as, having regard to the human 
 
396 Best English Essays 
 
 race in general, and, indeed, having regard to the 
 Greeks themselves, we must own, — a premature 
 attempt, an attempt which for success needed the 
 moral and religious fibre in humanity to be more 
 braced and developed than it had yet been. But 
 Greece did not err in having the idea of beauty, har- 
 mony, and complete human perfection, so present 
 and paramount. It is impossible to have this idea 
 too present and paramount; only, the moral fibre 
 must be braced^ too. And we, because we have 
 braced the moral fibre, are not on that account in 
 the right way, if at the same time the idea of beauty, 
 harmony, and complete human perfection, is want- 
 ing or misapprehended amongst us ; and evidently 
 it is wanting or misapprehended at present. And 
 when we rely as we do on our religious organisa- 
 tions, which in themselves do not and cannot give 
 us this idea, and think we have done enough if we 
 make them spread and prevail, then, I say, we fall 
 into our common fault of overvaluing machinery. 
 
 Nothing is more common than for people to con- 
 found the inward peace and satisfaction which fol- 
 lows the subduing of the obvious faults of our 
 animality with what I may call absolute inward 
 peace and satisfaction, — the peace and satisfaction 
 which are reached as we draw near to complete spir- 
 itual perfection, and not merely to moral perfection, 
 or rather to relative moral perfection. No people in 
 the world have done more and struggled more to 
 attain this relative moral perfection than our Eng- 
 lish race has. For no people in the world has the 
 command to resist the devil, to overcome the wicked 
 one, in the nearest and most obvious sense of those 
 words, had such a pressing force and reality. And 
 
Matthew Arnold 397 
 
 we have had our reward, not only in the great 
 worldly prosperity which our obedience to this com- 
 mand has brought us, but also, and far more, in 
 great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me 
 few things are more pathetic than to see people, on 
 the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction 
 which their rudimentary efforts towards perfection 
 have brought them, employ, concerning their in- 
 complete perfection and the religious organisations 
 within which they have found it, language which 
 properly applies only to complete perfection, and is 
 a far-off echo of the human soul's prophecy of it. 
 Religion itself, I need hardly say, supplies them in 
 abundance with this grand language. And very 
 freely do they use it; yet it is really the severest 
 possible criticism of such an incomplete perfection 
 as alone we have yet reached through our religious 
 organisations. 
 
 The impulse of the English race towards moral 
 development and self-conquest has nowhere so 
 powerfully manifested itself as in Puritanism. No- 
 where has Puritanism found so adequate an ex^ 
 pression as in the religious organisation of the 
 Independents. The modern Independents have a 
 newspaper, the " Nonconformist," written with 
 great sincerity and ability. The motto, the stan- 
 dard, the profession of faith which this organ of 
 theirs carries aloft, is : *' The Dissidence of Dissent 
 and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." 
 There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of com- 
 plete harmonious human perfection ! One need 
 not go to culture and poetry to find language to 
 judge it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection, 
 supplies language to judge it, language, too, which 
 
398 Best English Essays 
 
 is in our mouths every day. " Finally, be of one 
 mind, united in feeling," says St. Peter. There is 
 an ideal which judges the Puritan ideal : " The 
 Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the 
 Protestant religion ! " And religious organisations 
 like this are what people believe in, rest in, would 
 give their lives for! Such, I say, is the wonderful 
 virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of hav- 
 ing conquered even the plain faults of our animality, 
 that the religious organisation which has helped us 
 to do it can seem to us something precious, salutary, 
 and to be propagated, even when it wears such a 
 brand of imperfection on its forehead as this. And 
 men have got such a habit of giving to the language 
 of religion a special application, of making it a 
 mere jargon, that for the condemnation which re- 
 ligion itself passes on the shortcomings of their 
 religious organisations they have no ear; they are 
 sure to cheat themselves and to explain this con- 
 demnation away. They can only be reached by the 
 criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a lan- 
 guage not to be sophisticated, and resolutely testing 
 these organisations by the ideal of a human perfec- 
 tion complete on all sides, applies to them. 
 
 But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, 
 are again and again failing, and failing conspicu- 
 ously, in the necessary first stage to a harmonious 
 perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious 
 faults of our animaHty, which it is the glory of 
 these religious organisations to have helped us to 
 subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have 
 often been without the virtues as well as the faults 
 of the Puritan ; it has been one of their dangers 
 that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they too 
 
Matthew Arnold 399 
 
 much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will 
 not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's ex- 
 pense. They have often failed in morality, and 
 morality is indispensable. And they have been pun- 
 ished for their failure, as the Puritan has been 
 rewarded for his performance. They have been 
 punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of 
 beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature 
 complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of 
 perfection still; just as the Puritan's ideal of per- 
 fection remains narrow and inadequate, although 
 for what he did well he has been richly rewarded. 
 Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfec- 
 tion are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves 
 Shakespeare or Virgil — souls in whom sweetness 
 and light, and all that in human nature is most 
 humane, were eminent — accompanying them on 
 their voyage, and think what intolerable company 
 Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them! 
 In the same way let us judge the religious organ- 
 isations which we see all around us. Do not let 
 us deny the good and the happiness which they 
 have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see 
 clearly that their idea of human perfection is nar- 
 row and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of 
 Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 
 religion will never bring humanity to its true goal. 
 As I said with regard to wealth : Let us look at 
 the life of those who live in and for it, — so I say 
 with regard to the religious organisations. Look at 
 the life imaged in such a newspaper as the " Non- 
 conformist," — a life of jealousy of the Establish- 
 ment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels. 
 
400 Best English Essays 
 
 sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of a 
 human life completing itself on all sides, and as- 
 piring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and 
 perfection ! 
 
 Another newspaper, representing, like the " Non- 
 conformist," one of the religious organisations of 
 this country, was a short time ago giving an account 
 of the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and of 
 all the vice and hideousness which was to be seen 
 in that crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly 
 round upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how 
 he proposed to cure all this vice and hideousness 
 without religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask 
 the asker this question : And how do you propose 
 to cure it with such a religion as yours? How is 
 the ideal of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so 
 incomplete, so narrow, so far removed from a true 
 and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is the 
 ^ life of your religious organisation as you yourself 
 reflect it, to conquer and transform all this vice 
 and hideousness? Indeed, the strongest plea for 
 the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the 
 clearest proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea 
 of perfection held by the religious organisations, 
 — expressing, as I have said, the most widespread 
 effort which the human race has yet made after 
 perfection, — is to be found in the state of our life 
 and society with these in possession of it, and hav- 
 ing been in possession of it I know not how many 
 hundred years. We are all of us included in some 
 religious organisation or other ; we all call ourselves, 
 in the sublime and aspiring language of religion 
 which I have before noticed, children of God, 
 Children of God ;^-^ it is an immense pretension! 
 
Matthew Arnold 401 
 
 — and how are we to justify it? By the works 
 which we do, and the words which we speak. And 
 the work which we collective children of God do, 
 our grand centre of life, our city which we have 
 builded for us to dwell in, is London! London, 
 with its unutterable external hideousness, and with 
 its internal canker of publice egestas, privatim 
 opulcntia,^ — to use the words which Sallust puts 
 into Cato's mouth about Rome, — unequalled in 
 the world! The word, again, which we children 
 of God speak, the voice which most hits our col- 
 lective thought, the newspaper with the largest 
 circulation in England, nay, with the largest circu- 
 lation in the whole world, is the "Daily Telegraph" ! 
 I say that when our religious organisations — which 
 I admit to express the most considerable effort after 
 perfection that our race has yet made — land us in 
 no better result than this, it is high time to examine 
 carefully their idea of perfection, to see whether it 
 does not leave out of account sides and forces of 
 human nature which we might turn to great use; 
 whether it would not be more operative if it were 
 more complete. And I say that the English reliance 
 on our religious organisations and on their ideas of 
 human perfection just as they stand, is like our 
 reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on 
 population, on coal, on wealth, — mere belief in ma- 
 chinery, and unfruitful ; and that it is wholesomely 
 counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as 
 they are, and on drawing the human race onwards 
 to a more complete, a harmonious perfection. 
 
 Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of 
 perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the 
 
 1 Poverty for the commonwealth, riches for the individual. 
 26 
 
402 Best English Essays 
 
 will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by 
 its attitude towards all this machinery, even while 
 it insists that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the 
 mischief men do themselves by their blind belief in 
 some machinery or other, — whether it is wealth 
 and industrialism, or whether it is the cultivation 
 of bodily strength and activity, or whether it is a 
 political organisation, — or whether it is a religious 
 organisation, — oppose with might and main the 
 tendency to this or that political and religious or- 
 ganisation, or to games and athletic exercises, or 
 to wealth and industrialism, and try violently to 
 stop it. But the flexibility which sweetness and 
 light give, and which is one of the rewards of cul- 
 ture pursued in good faith, enables a man to see 
 that a tendency may be necessary, and even, as a 
 preparation for something in the future, salutary, 
 and yet that the generations or individuals who obey 
 this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short 
 of the hope of perfection by following it ; and that its 
 mischiefs are to be criticised, lest it should take too 
 firm a hold and last after it has served its purpose. 
 Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at 
 Paris, — and others have pointed out the same 
 thing, — how necessary is the present great move- 
 ment towards wealth and industrialism, in order 
 to lay broad foundations of material well-being for 
 the society of the future. The worst of these justi- 
 fications is, that they are generally addressed to the 
 very people engaged, body and soul, in the move- 
 ment in question ; at all events, that they are always 
 seized with the greatest avidity by these people, and 
 taken by them as quite justifying their life; and 
 that thus they tend to harden them in their sins. 
 
Matthew Arnold 403 
 
 Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement 
 towards fortune-making and exaggerated industrial- 
 ism, readily allows that the future may derive bene- 
 fit from it; but insists, at the same time, that the 
 passing generations of industrialists — forming, for 
 the most part, the stout main body of Philistinism 
 — are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the result 
 of all the games and sports which occupy the pass- 
 ing generation of boys and young men may be the 
 establishment of a better and sounder physical type 
 for the future to work with. Culture does not set 
 itself against the games and sports ; it congratulates 
 the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its 
 improved physical basis ; but it points out that our 
 passing generation of boys and young men is, mean- 
 time, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary 
 to develop the moral fibre of the English race. Non- 
 conformity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domi- 
 nation over men's minds and to prepare the way 
 for freedom of thought in the distant future; still, 
 culture points out that the harmonious perfection of 
 generations of Puritans and Nonconformists have 
 been, in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech 
 may be necessary for the society of the future, but 
 the young lions of the " Daily Telegraph " in the 
 meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every man in 
 his country's government may be necessary for the 
 society of the future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and 
 Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed. 
 
 Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ; 
 and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isola- 
 tion, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet 
 we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and 
 sweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed to 
 
404 Best English Essays 
 
 seize one truth, — the truth that beauty and sweet- 
 ness are essential characters of a complete human 
 perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in the 
 faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that 
 this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our 
 sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been 
 at the bottom of our attachment to so many beaten 
 causes, of our opposition to so many triumphant 
 movements. And the sentiment is true, and has 
 never been wholly defeated, and has shown its power 
 even in its defeat. We have not won our political 
 battles, we have not carried our main points, we 
 have not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have 
 not marched victoriously with the modern world; 
 but we have told silently upon the mind of the coun- 
 try, we have prepared currents of feeling which sap 
 our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we 
 have kept up our own communications with the 
 future. Look at the course of the great movement 
 which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years 
 ago! It was directed, as any one who reads Dr. 
 Newman's " Apology " may see, against what in 
 one word may be called *' Liberalism." Liberalism 
 prevailed; it was the appointed force to do the 
 work of the hour; it was necessary, it was inevit- 
 able that it should prevail. The Oxford movement 
 was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on 
 every shore: — 
 
 Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? ^ 
 
 But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw 
 it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement ? It 
 
 1 Interpreted by the preceding clause. Literally, " What 
 region in the world is not full of our labor " ? 
 
Matthew Arnold 405 
 
 was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for 
 the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 
 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the 
 social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, 
 and the making of large industrial fortunes ; in the 
 religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the 
 Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not 
 say that other and more intelligent forces than this 
 were not opposed to the Oxford movement: but 
 this was the force which really beat it; this was 
 the force which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting 
 with; this was the force which till only the other 
 day seemed to be the paramount force in this coun- 
 try, and to be in possession of the future; this was 
 the force whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe with 
 such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule he 
 was so horror-struck to see threatened. And where 
 is this great force of Philistinism now ? It is thrust 
 into the second rank, it is become a power of yester- 
 day, it has lost the future. A new power has sud- 
 denly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet 
 to judge fully, but which is certainly a wholly dif- 
 ferent force from middle-class liberalism; different 
 in its cardinal points of belief, different in its tend- 
 encies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither 
 the legislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the 
 local self-government of middle-class vestries, nor 
 the unrestricted competition of middle-class indus- 
 trialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class Dissent 
 and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant re- 
 ligion. I am not now praising this new force, or 
 saying that its own ideals are better; all I say is, 
 that they are wholly different. And who will esti- 
 mate how much the currents of feeling created by 
 
4o6 Best English Essays 
 
 Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire for 
 beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep 
 aversion it manifested to the hardness and vul- 
 garity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light 
 it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions 
 of middle-class Protestantism, — who will estimate 
 how much all these contributed to swell the tide of 
 secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground 
 under self-confident liberalism of the last thirty 
 years, and has prepared the way for its sudden 
 collapse and supersession? It is in this manner 
 that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweet- 
 ness conquers, and in this manner long may it con- 
 tinue to conquer! 
 
 In this manner it works to the same end as cul- 
 ture, and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. 
 I have said that the new and more democratic force 
 which is now superseding our old middle-class lib- 
 eralism cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its 
 main tendencies still to form. We hear promises 
 of its giving us administrative reform, law reform, 
 reform of education, and I know not what; but 
 those promises come rather from its advocates, 
 wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify 
 it for superseding middle-class Hberalism, than from 
 clear tendencies which it has itself yet developed. 
 But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned 
 friends against whom culture may with advantage 
 continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human per- 
 fection; that this is an inward spiritual activity, 
 having for its characters increased szveetness, in- 
 creased light, increased life, increased sympathy. 
 Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the 
 world of middle-class liberalism and the world of 
 
Matthew Arnold 407 
 
 democracy, but who brings most of his ideas from 
 the world of middle-class liberalism in which he 
 was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith in 
 machinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen 
 are so prone, and which has been the bane of 
 middle-class liberalism. He complains with a sor- 
 rowful indignation of people who " appear to have 
 no proper estimate of the value of the franchise " ; 
 he leads his disciples to believe — what the English- 
 man is always too ready to believe — that the hav- 
 ing a vote, like the having a large family, or a large 
 business, or large muscles, has in itself some edify- 
 ing and perfecting effect upon human nature. Or 
 else he cries out to the democracy, — " the men," 
 as he calls them, " upon whose shoulders the great- 
 ness of England rests," — he cries out to them : 
 " See what you have done ! I look over this coun- 
 try and see the cities you have built, the railroads 
 you have made, the manufactures you have pro- 
 duced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the 
 greatest mercantile navy the world has ever seen ! 
 I see that you have converted by your labours what 
 was once a wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful 
 garden; I know that you have created this wealth, 
 and are a nation whose name is a word of power 
 throughout all the world." Why, this is just the 
 very style of laudation with which Mr. Roebuck 
 or Mr. Lowe debauches the minds of the middle 
 classes, and makes such Philistines of them. It is 
 the same fashion of teaching a man to value him- 
 self not on what he is, not on his progress in sweet- 
 ness and light, but on the number of the railroads 
 he has constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle 
 he has built. Only the middle classes are told they 
 
4o8 Best English Essays 
 
 have done it all with their energy, self-reliance, and 
 capital, and the democracy are told they have done 
 it all with their hands and sinews. But teaching 
 the democracy to put its trust in achievements of 
 this kind is merely training them to be Philistines 
 to take the place of the Philistines whom they are 
 superseding; and they too, like the middle class, 
 will be encouraged to sit down at the banquet of 
 the future without having on a wedding garment, 
 and nothing excellent can then come from them. 
 Those who know their besetting faults, those who 
 have watched them and listened to them, or those 
 who will read the instructive account recently given 
 of them by one of themselves, the '' Journeyman 
 Engineer," will agree that the idea which culture 
 sets before us of perfection — an increased spiritual 
 activity, having for its characters increased sweet- 
 ness, increased light, increased life, increased sym- 
 pathy — is an idea which the new democracy needs 
 far more than the idea of the blessedness of the 
 franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own indus- 
 trial performances. 
 
 Other well-meaning friends of this new power 
 are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class 
 Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally allur- 
 ing to the feet of democracy, though in this country 
 they are novel and untried ways. I may call them 
 the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with 
 the past, abstract systems of renovation applied 
 wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and 
 white for elaborating down to the very smallest 
 details a rational society for the future, — these 
 are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison 
 and other disciples of Comte — one of them, Mr. 
 
i Matthew Arnold 409 
 
 Congreve, is an old friend of mine, and I am glad 
 to have an opportunity of publicly expressing my 
 respect for his talents and character — are among 
 the friends of democracy who are for leading it in 
 paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very 
 hostile to culture, and from a natural enough mo- 
 tive ; for culture is the eternal opponent of the two 
 things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism, 
 — its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract 
 system. Culture is always assigning to system- 
 makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of 
 human destiny than their friends like. A current 
 in people's minds sets towards new ideas; people 
 are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of Phil- 
 istine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other; and 
 some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the 
 real merit of having early and strongly felt and 
 helped the new current, but who brings plenty of 
 narrowness and mistakes of his own into his feel- 
 ing and help of it, is credited with being the 
 author of the whole current, the fit person to be 
 entrusted with its regulation and to guide the hu- 
 man race. 
 
 The excellent German historian of the mythology 
 of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome 
 under the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the 
 god of light, healing, and reconciliation, will have 
 us observe that it was not so much the Tarquins 
 who brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, 
 as a current in the mind of the Roman people 
 which set powerfully at that time towards a new 
 worship of this kind, and away from the old run 
 of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar 
 way, culture directs our attention to the natural 
 
4IO Best English Essays 
 
 current there is in human affairs, and to its con- 
 tinual working, and will not let us rivet our faith 
 upon any one man and his doings. It makes us 
 see not only his good side, but also how much in 
 him was of necessity limited and transient; nay, 
 it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased 
 freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing. 
 
 I remember, when I was under the influence of a 
 mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the 
 mind of a man who was the very incarnation of 
 sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, 
 it seems to me, whom America has yet produced, — 
 Benjamin Franklin, — I remember the relief with 
 which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's 
 imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a pro- 
 ject of his for a new version of the Book of Job, 
 to replace the old version, the style of which, says 
 Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less agree- 
 able. " I give," he continues, *' a few verses, which 
 may serve as a sample of the kind of version I 
 would recommend." We all recollect the famous 
 verse in our translation : " Then Satan answered the 
 Lord and said : ' Doth Job fear God for nought ? ' " 
 Franklin makes this: *' Does your Majesty imagine 
 that Job's good conduct is the effect of mere per- 
 sonal attachment and affection ? " I well remember 
 how, when first I read that, I drew a deep breath 
 of relief, and said to myself : " After all, there is a 
 stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's victorious 
 good sense ! " So, after hearing Bentham cried 
 loudly up as the renovator of modern society, and 
 Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the rulers 
 of our future, I open the '' Deontology." There I 
 read : " While Xenophon was writing his history 
 
Matthew Arnold 411 
 
 and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato 
 were talking nonsense under pretence of talking 
 wisdom and morality. This morality of theirs con- 
 sisted in words ; this wisdom of theirs was the de- 
 nial of matters known to every man's experience." 
 From the moment of reading that, I am delivered 
 from the bondage of Bentham! the fanaticism of 
 his adherents can touch me no longer. I feel the 
 inadequacy of his mind and ideas for supplying the 
 rule of human society, for perfection. 
 
 Culture tends always thus to deal with the men 
 of a system, of disciples, of a school; with men 
 like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. 
 However much it may find to admire in these per- 
 sonages, or in some of them, it nevertheless remem- 
 bers the text : '' Be not ye called Rabbi ! " and it 
 soon passes on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism 
 loves a Rabbi ; it does not want to pass on from its 
 Rabbi in pursuit of a future and still unreached per- 
 fection; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand 
 for perfection, that they may with the more author- 
 ity recast the world ; and for Jacobinism, therefore, 
 culture — eternally passing onwards and seeking — 
 is an impertinence and an offence. But culture, just 
 because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to 
 impose on us a man with limitations and errors of 
 his own along with the true ideas of which he is 
 the organ, really does the world and Jacobinism 
 itself a service. 
 
 So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the 
 past and of those whom it makes liable for the 
 sins of the past, cannot away with the inexhausti- 
 ble indulgence proper to culture, the consideration 
 of circumstances, the severe judgment of actions 
 
412 Best English Essays 
 
 joined to the merciful judgment of persons. " The 
 man of culture is in politics," cries Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison, *'one of the poorest mortals alive!" Mr. 
 Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, and 
 he complains that the man of culture stops him with 
 a " turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, 
 and indecision in action." Of what use is culture, 
 he asks, except for '' a critic of new books or a pro- 
 fessor of belles-lettres "f Why, it is of use because, 
 in presence of the fierce exasperation which breathes, 
 or rather, I may say, hisses through the whole pro- 
 duction in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that 
 question, it reminds us that the perfection of hu- 
 man nature is sweetness and light. It is of use 
 because, like religion, — that other effort after per- 
 fection, — it testifies that, where bitter envying 
 and strife are, there is confusion and every evil 
 work. 
 
 The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of 
 sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness 
 and light, works to make reason and the will of 
 God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who 
 works for hatred, works only for confusion. Cul- 
 ture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; 
 culture has one great passion, the passion for sweet- 
 ness and light. It has one even yet greater ! — the 
 passion for making them prevail It is not satisfied 
 till we all come to a perfect man ; it knows that the 
 sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect 
 until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity 
 are touched with sweetness and light. If I have 
 not shrunk from saying that we must work for 
 sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from 
 saying that we must have a broad basis, must have 
 
Matthew Arnold 413 
 
 sweetness and light for as many as possible. Again 
 and again I have insisted how those are the happy 
 moments of humanity, how those are the marking 
 epochs of a people's life, how those are the flower- 
 ing times for literature and art and all the creative 
 power of genius, when there is a national glow of 
 life and thought, when the whole of society is in 
 the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible 
 to beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real 
 thought and real beauty; real sweetness and real 
 light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, 
 as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and 
 adapted in the way they think proper for the actual 
 condition of the masses. The ordinary popular lit- 
 erature is an example of this way of working on 
 the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctri- 
 nate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments 
 constituting the creed of their own profession or 
 party. Our religious and political organisations 
 give an example of this way of working on the 
 masses. I condemn neither way ; but culture works 
 differently. It does not try to teach down to the 
 level of inferior classes ; it does not try to win them 
 for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made 
 judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away 
 with classes ; to make the best that has been thought 
 and known in the world current everywhere; to 
 make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness 
 and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses 
 them itself, freely, — nourished, and not bound by 
 them. 
 
 This is the social idea; and the men of culture 
 are the true apostles of equality. The great men of 
 culture are those who have had a passion for diffus- 
 
414 Bsst English Essays 
 
 ing, for making- prevail, for carrying from one end 
 of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best 
 ideas of their time; who have laboured to divest 
 knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, 
 abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanise it, 
 to make it efficient outside the clique of the culti- 
 vated and learned, yet still remaining the best 
 knowledge and thought of the time, and a true 
 source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a 
 man was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of 
 all his imperfections ; and thence the boundless emo- 
 tion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such 
 were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end 
 of the last century; and their services to Germany 
 were in this way inestimably precious. Generations 
 will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, 
 and works far more perfect than the works of Less- 
 ing and Herder will be produced in Germany; and 
 yet the names of these two men will fill a German 
 with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names 
 of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And 
 why ? Because they humanised knowledge ; because 
 they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; 
 because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweet- 
 ness and light, to make reason and the will of God 
 prevail. With Saint Augustine they said : " Let us 
 not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy 
 knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the 
 firmament, the division of light from darkness; let 
 the children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, 
 make their light shine upon the earth, mark the divi- 
 sion of night and day, and announce the revolution 
 of the times; for the old order is passed, and the 
 new arises; the night is spent, the day is come 
 
Matthew Arnold 415 
 
 forth; and thou shalt crown the year with thy 
 blessing, when thou shalt send forth labourers into 
 thy harvest sown by other hands than theirs ; when 
 thou shalt send forth new labourers to new seed- 
 times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet/' 
 
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