TABLE TALK: 
 
 ESSAYS ON MEN AND MANNERS. 
 
TABLE TALK 
 
 ESSAYS ON MEN AND MANNERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT, 
 
 AUTHOR 07 LECTURES " ON THE ENGLISH POETS," " ON THE ENGLISH COMIC WRITERS," 
 
 "ON THE LITERATURE OF THE A&E OF ELIZABETH/' 
 
 "CHARACTERS OF shakespear's PLAYS," 
 
 ETC., ETC., ETC. 
 
 A NEW EDITION. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT. 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 1878. 
 
LOAN STACK 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS* 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 on the pleasure of painting 
 
 on the past and future . 
 
 on genius and common sense 
 
 on the character of cobbett . 
 
 on people with one idea . 
 
 on the ignorance of the learned 
 
 on the indian jugglers 
 
 on living to one's self 
 
 on thought and action 
 
 on will making .... 
 
 on certain inconsistencies in sir joshua 
 reynolds's discourses . 
 
 on paradox and common-place . 
 
 on vulgarity and affectation . 
 
 on a landscape of nicolas poussin 
 
 on milton's sonnets . 
 
 J 
 25 
 38 
 
 65 
 78 
 93 
 103 
 121 
 136 
 153 
 
 166 
 199 
 214 
 232 
 240 
 
 808 
 
VI 
 
 Contents. 
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY 
 
 ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 
 
 ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS 
 
 ON CRITICISM 
 
 ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 
 
 ON FAMILIAR STYLE 
 
 ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER 
 
 WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 
 
 ON CORPORATE BODIES . 
 
 WHETHER ACTORS OUGHT TO SIT IN THE BOXES 
 
 ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL 
 SUPERIORITY .... 
 
 ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 
 
 ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL . 
 
 ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 
 
 PAOB 
 
 249 
 
 26l 
 284 
 297 
 316 
 338 
 346 
 356 
 369 
 384 
 
 394 
 408 
 428 
 448 
 45S 
 
TABLE-TALK 
 
 OR 
 
 ORIGINAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 " There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters 
 know." In writing, you have to contend with the world ; 
 in painting, you have only to carry on a friendly strife 
 with Nature. You sit down to your task, and are happy. 
 From the moment that you take up the pencil, and look 
 Nature in the face, you are at peace with your own heart. 
 No angry passions rise to disturb the silent progress of 
 the work, to shake the hand, or dim the brow : no 
 irritable humours are set afloat : you have no absurd 
 opinions to combat, no point to strain, no adversary to 
 crush, no fool to annoy — you are actuated by fear or 
 favour to no man. There is " no juggling here," no 
 sophistry, no intrigue, no tampering with the evidence, 
 no attempt to make black white, or white black : but you 
 resign yourself into the hands of a greater power, that of 
 Nature, with the simplicity of a child, and the devotion 
 of an enthusiast — " study with joy her manner, and with 
 rapture taste her style." The mind is calm, and full at 
 the same time. The hand and eye are equally employed 
 In tracing the commonest object, a plant or the stump of 
 a tree, you learn something every moment. You perceive 
 unexpected differences, and discover likenesses where you 
 looked for no such thing. You try to set down what you 
 see — find out your error, and correct it. You need not 
 
 '51, » 
 
2 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 play tricks, or purposely mistake : with all your pains, 
 you are still far short of the mark. Patience grows out of 
 the endless pursuit, and turns it into a luxury. A streak 
 in a flower, a wrinkle in a leaf, a tinge in a cloud, a stain 
 in an old wall or ruin grey, are seized with avidity as the 
 spolia opima of this sort of mental warfare, and furnish 
 out labour for another half-day. The hours pass away 
 untold, without chagrin, and without weariness ; nor 
 would you ever wish to pass them otherwise. Innocence 
 is joined with industry, pleasure with business ; and the 
 mind is satisfied, though it is not engaged in thinking or 
 in doing any mischief. 1 
 
 I have not much pleasure in writing these Essays, or 
 
 1 There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing 
 illustration of this doctrine, and is as follows : — 
 
 " About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It is 
 very agreeably situated on the side of a hill : from one of the paths 
 which leads out of the village, you have a view of the whole country ; 
 and there is a good old woman who sells wine, coffee, and tea there : 
 but better than all this are two lime-trees before the church, which 
 spread their branches over a little green, surrounded by barns and 
 cottages. I have seen few places more retired and peaceful. T send 
 for a chair and table from the old woman's, and there I drink my 
 coffee and read Homer. It was by accident that I discovered this 
 place one fine afternoon : all was perfect stillness ; everybody was in 
 the fields, except a little boy about four years old, who was sitting; 
 on the ground, and holding between his knees a child of about six 
 months ; he pressed it to his bosom with his little arms, which made 
 a sort of great chair for it ; and notwithstanding the vivacity which 
 sparkled in his eyes, he sat perfectly still. Quite delighted with 
 the scene, I sat down on a plough opposite, and had great pleasure 
 in drawing this little picture of brotherly tenderness. I added a 
 bit of the hedge, the barn-door, and some broken cart-wheels, with- 
 out any order, just as they happened to lie ; and in about an hour I 
 found I had made a drawing of great expression and very correct 
 design, without having put in anything of my own. This confirmed 
 me in the resolution I had made before, only to copy Nature for the 
 future. Nature is inexhaustible, and alone forms the greatest masters. 
 Say what you will of rules, they alter the true features, and the- 
 natural expression." — Page 15. 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting. 3 
 
 in reading them afterwards ; though I own I now and 
 then meet with a phrase that I like, or a thought that 
 strikes me as a true one. But after I begin them, I am 
 only anxious to get to the end of them, which I am not 
 sure I shall do, for I seldom see my way a page or even 
 a sentence beforehand ; and when I have as by a miracle 
 escaped, I trouble myself little more about them. I 
 sometimes have to write them twice over: then it is 
 necessary to read the proof, to prevent mistakes by the 
 printer ; so that by the time they appear in a tangible 
 shape, and one can con them over with a conscious, side- 
 long glance to the public approbation, they have lost their 
 gloss and relish, and become " more tedious than a twice- 
 told tale." For a person to read his own works over with 
 any great delight, he ought first to forget that he ever 
 wrote them. Familiarity naturally breeds contempt. It 
 is, in fact, like poring fondly over a piece of blank paper : 
 from repetition, the words convey no distinct meaning to 
 the mind — are mere idle sounds, except that our vanity 
 claims an interest and property in them. I have more 
 satisfaction in my own thoughts than in dictating them 
 to others : words are necessary to explain the impression 
 of certain things upon me to the reader, but they rather 
 weaken and draw a veil over than strengthen it to myself. 
 However I might say with the poet, " My mind to me a 
 kingdom is," 1 yet I have little ambition " to set a throne 
 or chair of state in the understandings of other men." 
 The ideas we cherish most exist best in a kind of shadowy 
 abstraction, 
 
 " Pure in the last recesses of the mind," 
 
 and derive neither force nor interest from being exposed 
 to public view. They are old familiar acquaintance, and 
 any change in them, arising from the adventitious orna- 
 
 1 A very popular ballad and ballad-tune. It is referred to in a 
 tract printed in 1618. The ballad itself is inserted in Mendez's 
 Collection of Poems, 1767. — Ed, 
 
4 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 merits of style or dress, is little to their advantage. 
 After I have once written on a subject, it goes out of my 
 mind : my feelings about it have been melted down into 
 words, and them 1 forget. I have, as it were, discharged 
 my memory of its old. habitual reckoning, and rubbed out 
 the score of real sentiment. For the future, it exists only 
 for the sake of others. — But I cannot say, from my own 
 experience, that the same process takes place in trans- 
 ferring our ideas to canvas ; they gain more than they 
 lose in the mechanical transformation. One is never 
 tired of painting, because you have to set down not what 
 you knew already, but what you have just discovered. 
 In the former case, you translate feelings into words ; in 
 the latter, names into things. There is a continual 
 creation out of nothing going on. With every stroke of 
 the brush, a new field of inquiry is laid open; new 
 difficulties arise, and new triumphs are prepared over 
 them. By comparing the imitation with the original, 
 you see what you have done, and how much you have 
 still to do. The test of the senses is severer than that 
 of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of our 
 self-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you 
 determine to paint up to yourself, if you cannot come up 
 to nature. Every object becomes lustrous from the light 
 thrown back upon it by the mirror of art : and by the aid 
 of the pencil we may be said to touch and handle the 
 objects of sight. The air-drawn visions that hover on 
 the verge of existence have a bodily presence given them 
 on the canvas : the form of beauty is changed into a 
 substance : the dream and the glory of the universe is 
 made " palpable to feeling as to sight." — And see ! a 
 rainbow starts from the canvas, with all its humid train 
 of glory, as if it were drawn from its cloudy arch in 
 heaven. The spangled landscape glitters with drops of 
 dew after the shower. The " fleecy fools " show their coats 
 in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds pipe 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting. 5 
 
 tlieir farewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this 
 bright vision made from a dead dull blank, like a bubble 
 reflecting the mighty fabric of the universe ? Who would 
 think this miracle of Kubens' pencil possible to be per- 
 formed? Who, having seen it, would not spend his life 
 to do the like? See how the rich fallows, the bare 
 stubble-field, the scanty harvest-home, drag in Eembrandt's 
 landscapes ! How often have I looked at them and 
 nature, and tried to do the same, till the very " light 
 thickened," and there was an earthiness in the feeling of 
 the air ! There is no end of the refinements of art and 
 nature in this respect. One may look at the misty 
 glimmering horizon till the eye dazzles and the imagina- 
 tion is lost, in hopes to transfer the whole interminable 
 expanse at one blow upon the canvas. Wilson said, he 
 used to try to paint the effect of the motes dancing in the 
 setting sun. At another time, a friend coming into his 
 painting- room when he was sitting on the ground in a 
 melancholy posture, observed that his picture looked like 
 a landscape after a shower : he started up with the greatest 
 delight, and said, " That is the effect I intended to pro- 
 duce, but thought I had failed." Wilson was neglected ; 
 and, by degrees, neglected his art to apply himself to 
 brandy. His hand became unsteady, so that it was only 
 by repeated attempts that he could reach the place, or pro- 
 duce the effect he aimed at ; and when he had done a little 
 to a picture, he would say to any acquaintance who chanced 
 to drop in, " I have painted enough for one day : come, let 
 us go somewhere." It was not so Claude left his pictures, 
 or his studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go in search of 
 other enjoyments, or ceased to gaze upon the glittering 
 sunny vales and distant hills ; and while his eye drank in 
 the clear sparkling hues and lovely forms of nature, his hand 
 stamped them on the lucid canvas to last there for ever ! 
 One of the most delightful parts of my life w T as one fine . 
 summer, when I used to walk out of an evening to catch 
 
6 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 the last light of the sun, gemming the green slopes or 
 russet lawns, and gilding tower or tree, while the blue sky 
 gradually turning to purple and gold, or skirted with dusky 
 grey, hung its broad marble pavement over all, as we see 
 it in the great master of Italian landscape. But to come 
 to a more particular explanation of the subject : — 
 
 The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman 
 with the upper part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and 
 I certainly laboured [at] it with great perseverance. 1 It 
 took me numberless sittings to do it. I have it by me still, 
 and sometimes look at it with surprise, to think how much 
 pains were thrown away to little purpose, — yet not alto- 
 gether in vain if it taught me to see good in everything, 
 and to know that there is nothing vulgar in nature seen 
 with the eye of science or of true art. Kefinement creates 
 beauty everywhere : it is the grossness of the spectator 
 that discovers nothing but grossness in the object. Be 
 this as it may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art 
 was long, I thought that life was so too at that moment. 
 I got in the general effect the first day ; and pleased and 
 surprised enough I was at my success. The rest was a 
 work of time — of weeks and months (if need were), of 
 patient toil and careful finishing. I had seen an old head 
 by Eembrandt at Burleigh House, and if I could produce 
 a head at all like Eembrandt in a year, in my lifetime, it 
 would be glory and felicity and wealth and fame enough 
 for me ! The head I had seen at Burleigh was an exact 
 and wonderful fac-simile of nature, and I resolved to make . 
 mine (as nearly as I could) an exact fac-simile of nature. 
 I did not then, nor do I now believe, with Sir Joshua, 
 that the perfection of art consists in giving general ap- 
 pearances without individual details, but in giving general 
 appearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had 
 
 1 This person the writer met with in the vicinity of Manchester, 
 in 1 803 (I believe) : the picture is still in my possession ; but it tag 
 Buffered much from megilp. — Ed, 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting. 7 
 
 done my work the first day. But I saw something more 
 in nature than general effect, and I thought it worth my 
 while to give it in the picture. There was a gorgeous 
 effect of light and shade : but there was a delicacy as well 
 as depth in the chiaro scuro which I was bound to follow 
 into all its dim and scarce perceptible variety of tone and 
 shadow. Then 1 had to make the transition from a strong 
 light to as dark a shade, preserving the masses, but 
 gradually softening off the intermediate parts. It was so 
 in nature ; the difficulty was to make it so in the copy. 
 1 tried, and failed again and again ; I strove harder, and 
 succeeded as I thought. The wrinkles in Eembrandt 
 were not hard lines, but broken and irregular. I saw 
 the same appearance in nature, and strained every nerve 
 to give it. If I could hit off this edgy appearance, and 
 insert the reflected light in the furrows of old age in half 
 a morning, I did not think I had lost a day. Beneath 
 the shrivelled yellow parchment look of the skin, there 
 was here and there a streak of the blood-colour tinging 
 the face ; this I made a point of conveying, and did not 
 cease to compafe what I saw with what I did (with jealous 
 lynx-eyed watchfulness) till I succeeded to the best of my 
 ability and judgment. How many revisions were there ! 
 How many attempts to catch an expression which I had 
 seen the day before ! How often did we try to get the 
 old position, and wait for the return of the same light I 
 There was a puckering up of the lips, a cautious introver- 
 sion of the eye under the shadow of the bonnet, indicative 
 of the feebleness and suspicion of old age, which at last we 
 managed, after many trials and some quarrels, to a tolerable 
 nicety. The picture was never finished, and I might have 
 gone on with it to the present hour.* I used to set it 
 on the ground when my day's work was done, and saw 
 
 1 It is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish 
 (the perishable vehicle of the English school), like an envelope cf 
 goldbeaters' skin, so as to be hardly visible. 
 
8 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 revealed to me with swimming eyes the birth of new hopes, 
 and of a new world of objects. The painter thus learns 
 to look at nature with different eyes. He before saw her 
 44 as in a glass darkly, but now face to face." He under- 
 stands the texture and meaning of the visible universe, 
 and " sees into the life of things," not by the help of 
 mechanical instruments, but of the improved exercise of 
 his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with nature. The 
 meanest thing is not lost upon him, for he looks at it with 
 an eye to itself, not merely to his own vanity or interest, 
 or the opinion of the world. Even where there is neither 
 beauty nor use — if that ever were — still there is truth, and 
 a sufficient source of gratification in the indulgence of 
 curiosity and activity of mind. The humblest painter is 
 a true scholar ; and the best of scholars — the scholar of 
 nature. For myself, and for the real comfort and satis- 
 faction of the thing, I had rather have been Jan Steen, or 
 Gerard Dow, than the greatest casuist or philologer that 
 ever lived. The painter does not view things in clouds or 
 " mist, the common gloss of theologians," but applies the 
 same standard of truth and disinterested spirit of inquiry, 
 that influence his daily practice, to other subjects. He 
 perceives form, he distinguishes character. He reads men 
 and books with an intuitive eye. He is a critic as well as 
 a connoisseur. The conclusions he draws are clear and 
 convincing, because they are taken from the things them- 
 selves. He is not a fanatic, a dupe, or a slave ; for the 
 habit of seeing for himself also disposes him to judge for 
 himself. The most sensible men I know (taken as a class) 
 are painters ; that is, they are the most lively observers of 
 what passes in the world about them, and the closest 
 observers of what passes in their own minds. From their 
 profession they in general mix more with the world than 
 authors ; and if they have not the same fund of acquired 
 knowledge, are obliged to rely more on individual sagacity. 
 I might mention the names of Opie, Fuseli, Northcote, aa 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting. 9 
 
 persons distinguished for striking description and ac- 
 quaintance with the subtle traits of character. 1 Painters 
 in ordinary society, or in obscure situations where their 
 value is not known, and they are treated with neglect and 
 indifference, have sometimes a forward self-sufficiency of 
 manner ; but this is not so much their fault as that of 
 others. Perhaps their want of regular education may also 
 be in fault in such cases. Eichardson, who is very 
 tenacious of the respect in which the profession ought to 
 be held, tells a story of Michael Angelo, that after a 
 quarrel between him and Pope Julius II., " upon account 
 of a slight the artist conceived the pontiff had put upon 
 him, Michael Angelo was introduced by a bishop, who, 
 thinking to serve the artist by it, made it an argument 
 that the Pope should be reconciled to him, because men of 
 his profession were commonly ignorant, and of no conse- 
 quence otherwise; his holiness, enraged at the bishop, 
 struck him with his staff, and told him, it was he that was 
 the blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not 
 offend : the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and 
 Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction, accompanied 
 with presents. This bishop had fallen into the vulgar 
 error, and was rebuked accordingly." 
 
 Besides the exercise of the mind, painting exercises the 
 body. It is a mechanical as well as a liberal art. To do 
 anything, to dig a hole in the ground, to plant a cabbage, 
 to hit a mark, to move a shuttle, to work a pattern, — in a 
 word, to attempt to produce any effect, and to succeed, has 
 something in it that gratifies the love of power, and carries 
 off the restless activity of the mind of man. Indolence is 
 
 1 Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes for the 
 consequences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed to 
 ascertain pretty accurately the grounds on which they act, before 
 they commit themselves on the event, are often men of remarkably 
 quick and sound judgments. Artists in like manner must know 
 tolerably well what they are about, before they can bring the result 
 of their observations to the test of ocular demonstration. 
 
10 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 a delightful but distressing state ; we must be doing some- 
 thing to be happy. Action is no less necessary than 
 thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame ; 
 and painting combines them both incessantly. i The hand 
 furnishes a practical test of the correctness of the eye ; 
 and the eye thus admonished, imposes fresh tasks of skill 
 and industry upon the hand. Every stroke tells, as the 
 verifying of a new truth ; and every new observation, 
 the instant it is made, passes into an act and emanation of 
 the will. Every step is nearer what we wish, and yet 
 there is always more to do. In spite of the facility, the 
 fluttering grace, the evanescent hues, that play round the 
 pencil of Eubens and Vandyke, however I may admire, I 
 do not envy them this power so much as I do the slow, 
 patient, laborious execution of Correggio, Leonardo da 
 Yinci, and Andrea del Sarto, where every touch appears 
 conscious of its charge, emulous of truth, and where the 
 painful artist has so distinctly wrought, 
 
 " That you might almost say his picture thought !" 
 In the one case, the colours seem breathed on the can- 
 vas as if by magic, the work and the wonder of a moment ; 
 in the other, they seem inlaid in the body of the work, 
 and as if it took the artist years of unremitting labour, 
 and of delightful never-ending progress to perfection. 2 
 Who would wish ever to come to the close of such works, 
 — not to dwell on them, to return to them, to be wedded 
 to them to the last ? Eubens, with his florid, rapid style, 
 complained that when he had just learned his art, he 
 should be forced to die. Leonardo, in the slow advances 
 of his, had lived long enough ! 
 
 Painting is not, like writing, what is properly under- 
 i The famous Schiller used to say, that he found the great happi- 
 ness of life, after all, to consist in the discharge of some mechanical 
 duty. 
 
 2 The rich impasting of Titian and Giorgione combines something 
 of the advantages of both these styles, the felicity of the one with 
 the carefulness of the other, and is perhaps to be preferred to either, 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting. 1 1 
 
 stood by a sedentary employment. It requires not indeed 
 a strong, but a continued and steady exertion of muscular 
 power. The precision and delicacy of the manual opera- 
 tion, makes up for the want of vehemence, — as to balance 
 himself for any time in the same position the rope-dancer 
 must strain every nerve. Painting for a whole morning 
 gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner as old 
 Abraham Tucker 1 acquired for his by riding over Banstead 
 Downs. It is related of Sir Joshua Eeynolds, that u he 
 took no other exercise than what he used in his painting- 
 room," — the writer means, in walking backwards and for- 
 wards to look at his picture ; but the act of painting itself, 
 of laying on the colours in the proper place, and proper 
 quantity, was a much harder exercise than this alternate 
 receding from and returning to the picture. This last 
 would be rather a relaxation and relief than an effort. It 
 is not to be wondered at, that an artist like Sir Joshua, 
 who delighted so much in the sensual and practical part 
 of his art, should have found himself at a considerable loss 
 when the decay .of his sight precluded him, for the last 
 year or two of his life, from the following up of his pro- 
 fession, — " the source," according to his own remark, " of 
 thirty years' uninterrupted enjoyment and prosperity to 
 him." It is only those who never think at all, or else 
 who have accustomed themselves to brood incessantly on 
 abstract ideas, that never feel ennui. 
 
 To give one instance more, and then I will have done 
 with this rambling discourse. One of my first attempts 
 w r as a picture of my father, who was then in a green old 
 age, 2 with strong-marked features, and scarred with the 
 
 1 Author of the Light of Nature Pursued and Vocal Sounds, both 
 published under the nom de plume of Edward Search. He was a 
 man of fortune, and resided at Betch worth Castle, Surrey, the ancient 
 seat of the Browne family. — Er>. 
 
 2 This portrait was taken in 1804; the Rev. W. Hazlitt was then 
 sixty-eight, and in charge of the Unitarian congregation at Wem, in 
 Shropsh ire. — Ed. 
 
12 On the Pleasure of Painting!. 
 
 small-pox. I drew it out with a broad light crossing the 
 face, looking down, with spectacles on, reading. The 
 book was Shaftesbury's Characteristics, in a fine old 
 binding, with Gribelin's etchings. My father would as 
 lieve it had been any other book ; but for him to read was 
 to be content, was "riches fineless." The sketch pro- 
 mised well ; and I set to work to finish it, determined to 
 spare no time nor pains. My father was willing to sit as 
 long as I pleased ; for there is a natural desire in the 
 mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be the object 
 of continued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied ; 
 and besides his satisfaction in the picture, he had some 
 nride in the artist, though he would .rather I should have 
 written a sermon than painted like Rembrandt or like 
 Eaphael. Those winter days, with the gleams of sunshine 
 coming through the chapel-windows, and cheered by the 
 notes of the robin-redbreast in our garden (that " ever in 
 the haunch of winter sings"), — as my afternoon's work 
 drew to a close, — were among the happiest of my life. 
 When I gave the effect I intended to any part of the 
 picture for which I had prepared my colours ; when I 
 imitated the roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of 
 the pencil ; when I hit the clear pearly tone of a vein ; 
 when I gave the ruddy complexion of health, the blood 
 circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the 
 face, I thought my fortune made ; or rather it was already 
 more than made, in my fancying that I might one day be 
 able to say with Correggio, " I also am a painter /" It 
 was an idle thought, a boy's conceit ; but it did not make 
 me less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my 
 work in the chair to look at it through the long evenings ; 
 and many a time did I return to take leave of it before I 
 could go to bed at night. I remember sending it with a 
 throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up 
 there by the side of one of tho Honourable Mr. Skefling- 
 ton (now Sir George). There was nothing in common 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting. 13 
 
 between them, but that they were the portraits of two 
 very good-natured men. I think, but am not sure, that I 
 finished this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same 
 day that the news of the battle of Austerlitz came; I 
 walked out in the afternoon, and, as I returned, saw the 
 evening star set over a poor man's cottage with other 
 thoughts and feelings than I shall ever have again. Oh 
 for the revolution of the great Platonic year, that those 
 times might come over again ! I could sleep out the three 
 hundred and sixty-five thousand intervening years very 
 contentedly ! — The picture is left : the table, the chair, 
 the window where I learned to construe Livy, the chapel 
 where my father preached, remain where they were ; but 
 he himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, 
 and charity ! l 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 TJw same subject continued. 
 
 The painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has a 
 new and exquisite source of pleasure opened to him in the 
 study and contemplation of works of art 
 
 " Whate'er Lorraine light touch'd with soft'ning hue, 
 Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew." 
 
 He turns aside to view a country gentleman's seat with 
 eager looks, thinking it may contain some of the rich 
 products of art. There is an air round Lord Eadnor's 
 park, for there hang the two Claudes, the Morning and 
 Evening of the Eoman Empire — round Wilton House, for 
 there is Vandyke's picture of the Pembroke family — 
 round Blenheim, for there is his picture of the Duke of 
 Buckingham's children, and the most magnificent collec- 
 tion of Kubenses in the world — at Knowsley, for there is 
 
 1 He died at Crediton, near Exeter, July 16, 1820, an. set. 81 
 See Memoirs of W. H., i. 259, et scq.—Ev. 
 
14 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 Rembrandt's Hand-writing on the Wall — and at Burleigh; 
 for there are some of Guido's angelic heads. The young 
 artist makes a pilgrimage to each of these places, eyes 
 them wistfully at a distance, "bosomed high in tufted 
 trees," and feels an interest in them of which the owner 
 is scarce conscious: he enters the well-swept walks and 
 echoing archways, passes the threshold, is led through 
 wainscoted rooms, is shown the furniture, the rich hang- 
 ings, the tapestry, the massy services of plate — and, at 
 last, is ushered into the room where his treasure is, the 
 idol of his vows — some speaking face or bright landscape ! 
 It is stamped on his brain, and lives there thenceforward, 
 a tally for nature, and a test of art. He furnishes out the 
 chambers of the mind from the spoils of time, picks and 
 chooses which shall have the best places — nearest his 
 heart. He goes away richer than he came, richer than 
 the possessor ; and thinks that he may one day return, 
 when he perhaps shall have done something like them, or 
 even from failure shall have learned to admire truth and 
 genius more. 
 
 My first initiation in the mysteries of the art was at 
 the Orleans Gallery : it was there I formed my taste, such 
 as it is ; so that I am irreclaimably of the old school in 
 painting. I was staggered when I saw the works there 
 collected, and locked at them with wondering and with 
 longing eyes. A mist passed away from my sight : the 
 scales fell off. A new sense came upon me, a new heaven 
 and a new earth stood before me. I saw the soul speaking 
 in the face — " hands that the rod of empire had swayed " 
 in mighty ages past — "a forked mountain or blue pro- 
 montory," 
 
 " with trees upon 't 
 
 That nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air." 
 
 Old Time had unlocked his treasures, and Fame stood 
 portress at the door. We had all heard of the names of 
 Titian, Eaphael, Guido, Domenichino, the Caracci — but 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting. 15 
 
 to see them face to face, to be in the same room with their 
 deathless productions, was like breaking some mighty 
 spell — was almost an effect of necromancy ! From that 
 time I lived in a world of pictures. Battles, sieges, 
 speeches in parliament seemed mere idle noise and fury, 
 " signifying nothing," compared with those mighty works 
 and dreaded names that spoke to me in the eternal silence 
 of thought. This was the more remarkable, as it was but a 
 short time before that I was not only totally ignorant of, 
 but insensible to the beauties of art. As an instance, I re- 
 member that one afternoon I was reading The Provoked Hus- 
 band with the highest relish, with a green woody landscape 
 of Kuysdael or Hobbima just before me, at which I looked 
 off the book now and then, and wondered what there could 
 be in that sort of work to satisfy or delight the mind — at 
 the same time asking myself, as a speculative question, 
 whether I should ever feel an interest in it like what I 
 took in reading Yanbrugh and Cibber ? 
 
 I had made some progress in painting when I went to 
 the Louvre to study, 1 and I never did anything after- 
 wards. I never shall forget conning over the Catalogue 
 which a friend lent me just before I set out. The 
 pictures, the names of the painters, seemed to relish in 
 the mouth. There was one of Titian's Mistress at her 
 toilette. Even the colours with which the painter had 
 adorned her hair were not more golden, more amiable to 
 sight, than those which played round and tantalised my 
 fancy ere I saw the picture. There were two portraits by 
 the same hand — " A young Nobleman with a glove " — 
 Another, "a companion to it" — I read the description 
 over and over with fond expectancy, and filled up the 
 imaginary outline with whatever I could conceive of grace, 
 and dignity, and an antique gusto — all but equal to the 
 original. There was the Transfiguration too. With 
 
 1 In 1802. See the author's letters from the Louvre in Mem. of 
 W. H., 1867, i., 85, ei seq.—BD. 
 
16 On (he Pleasure of P aiming. 
 
 what awe I saw it in my mind's eye, and was over- 
 shadowed with the spirit of the artist ! Not to have been 
 disappointed with these works afterwards, was the highest 
 compliment I can pay to their transcendent merits. 
 Indeed, it was from seeing other works of the same great 
 masters that I had formed a vague, but no disparaging 
 idea of these. The first day I got there, I was kept for 
 some time in the French Exhibition-room, and thought I 
 should not be able to get a sight of the old masters. I 
 just caught a peep at them through the door (vile 
 hindrance !) like looking out of purgatory into paradise — ■ 
 from Poussin's noble mellow-looking landscapes to where 
 Eubens hung out his gaudy banner, and down the glimmer- 
 ing vista to the rich jewels of Titian and the Italian 
 school. At last, by much importunity, I was admitted, 
 and lost not an instant in making use of my new 
 privilege. — It was un beau jour to me. I marched 
 delighted through a quarter of a mile of the proudest 
 efforts of the mind of man, a whole creation of genius, a 
 universe of art! I ran the gauntlet of all the schools 
 from the bottom to the top ; and in the end got admitted 
 into the inner room, where they had been repairing some 
 of their greatest works. Here the Transfiguration, the 
 St. Peter Martyr, and the St. Jerome of Domenichino 
 stood on the floor, as if they had bent their knees, like 
 camels stooping, to unlade their riches to the spectator. 
 On one side, on an easel, stood Hippolito de Medici (a 
 portrait by Titian), with a boar-spear in his hand, looking 
 through those he saw, till you turned away from the keen 
 glance ; and thrown together in heaps were landscapes 
 of the same hand, green pastoral hills and vales, and 
 shepherds piping to their mild mistresses underneath 
 the flowering shade. Eeader, "if thou hast not seen 
 the Louvre, thou art damned!" — for thou hast not seen 
 the choicest remains of the works of art ; or thou hast 
 not seen all these together, with their mutually reflected 
 
On the Pleasure of Fainting. 17 
 
 glories. I say nothing of the statues; for I know but 
 little of sculpture, and never liked any till I saw the 
 Elgin Marbles. . . Here, for four months together, I 
 strolled and studied, and daily heard the warning sound — 
 " Quatres heures passees, il faut fermer, Citoyens " — (Ah ! 
 why did they ever change their style ?) muttered in coarse 
 provincial French ; and brought away with me some loose 
 draughts and fragments, which I have been forced to part 
 with, like drops of life-blood, for " hard money." How 
 often, thou tenantless mansion of godlike magnificence — 
 how often has my heart since gone a pilgrimage to thee ! 
 
 It has been made a question, whether the artist, or the 
 mere man of taste and natural sensibility, receives most 
 pleasure from the contemplation of works of art ; and I 
 think this question might be answered by another as a 
 sort of experimentum crucis, namely, whether any one out 
 of that " number numberless " of mere gentlemen and 
 amateurs, who visited Paris at the period here spoken of, 
 felt as much interest, as much pride or pleasure in this 
 display of the most striking monuments of art as the 
 humblest student would ? The first entrance into the 
 Louvre would be only one of the events of his journey, 
 not an event in his life, remembered ever after with 
 thankfulness and regret. He would explore it with the 
 same unmeaning curiosity and idle wonder as he would 
 the Eegalia in the Tower, or the Botanic Garden in the 
 Tuileries, but not with the fond enthusiasm of an artist. 
 How should he ? His is " casual fruition, joyless, un- 
 endeared." But the painter is wedded to his art — the 
 mistress, queen, and idol of his soul. He has embarked 
 his all in it, fame, time, fortune, peace of mind — his hopes 
 in youth, his consolation in age : and shall he not feel a 
 more intense interest in whatever relates to it than the 
 mere indolent trifler ? Natural sensibility alone, without 
 the entire application of the mind to that one object, will 
 not enable the possessor to sympathise with all the 
 
18 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 degrees of beauty and power in the conceptions of s 
 Titian or a Correggio ; but it is he only who does this, who 
 follows theni into all their force and matchless grace, that 
 does or can feel their full value. Knowledge is pleasure 
 as well as power. No one but the artist who has studied 
 nature and contended with the difficulties of art, can be 
 aware of the beauties, or [bej intoxicated with a passion for 
 painting. No one who has not devoted his life and soul 
 to the pursuit of art can feel the same exultation in its 
 brightest ornaments and loftiest triumphs which an artist 
 does. Where the treasure is, there the heart is also. It 
 is now seventeen years since I was studying in the Louvre 
 (and I have long since given up all thoughts of the art as 
 a profession), but long after I returned, and even still, I 
 sometimes dream of being there again — of asking for the 
 old pictures — and not finding them, or finding them 
 changed or faded from what they were, I cry myself awake ! 
 What gentleman-amateur ever does this at such a distance 
 of time, — that is, ever received pleasure or took interest 
 enough in them to produce so lasting an impression ? 
 
 But it is said that if a person had the same natural 
 taste, and the same acquired knowledge as an artist, with- 
 out the petty interests and technical notions, he would 
 derive a purer pleasure from seeing a fine portrait, a fine 
 landscape, and so on. This however is not so much 
 begging the question as asking an impossibility : he 
 cannot have the same insight into the end without having 
 studied the means ; nor the same love of art without the 
 same habitual and exclusive attachment to it. Painters 
 are, no doubt, often actuated by jealousy, partiality, and a 
 sordid attention to that only which they find useful to 
 themselves in painting. Wilson has been seen poring 
 over the texture of a Dutch cabinet-picture, so that he 
 could not see the picture itself. But this is the perver- 
 sion and pedantry of the profession, not its true or 
 genuine spirit. If Wilson had never looked at anything 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting, 19 
 
 but megilps and handling, lie never would have put the 
 soul of life and manners into his pictures, as he has done. 
 Another objection is, that the instrumental parts of the 
 art, the means, the first rudiments, paints, oils, and 
 brushes, are painful and disgusting ; and that the con- 
 sciousness of the difficulty and anxiety with which per- 
 fection has been attained must take away from the 
 pleasure of the finest performance. This, however, is 
 only an additional proof of the greater pleasure derived 
 by the artist from his profession ; for these things which 
 are said to interfere with and destroy the common interest 
 in works of art do not disturb him ; he never once thinks 
 of them, he is absorbed in the pursuit of a higher object ; 
 he is intent, not on the means, but the end ; he is taken 
 up, not with the difficulties, but with the triumph over 
 them. As in the case of the anatomist, who overlooks 
 many things in the eagerness of his search after abstract 
 truth ; or the alchemist who, while he is raking into his 
 soot and furnaces, lives in a golden dream ; a lesser gives 
 way to a greater object. But it is pretended that the 
 painter may be supposed to submit to the unpleasant part 
 of the process only for the sake of the fame or profit in 
 view. So far is this from being a true state of the case, 
 that I will venture to say, in the instance of a friend of 
 mine who has lately succeeded in an important under- 
 taking in his art, that not all the fame he has acquired, 
 not all the money he has received from thousands of 
 admiring spectators, not all the newspaper puffs, — nor 
 even the praise of the Edinburgh Eeview, — not all these, 
 put together, ever gave him at any time the same genuine, 
 undoubted satisfaction as any one half-hour employed in 
 the ardent and propitious pursuit of his art — in finishing 
 to his heart's content a foot, a hand, or even a piece of 
 drapery. What is the state of mind of an artist while he 
 is at work? He is then in the act of realising the 
 highest idea he can form of beauty or grandeur : he con* 
 
20 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 ceives, he embodies that which he understands and loves 
 best : that is, he is in full and perfect possession of that 
 which is to him the source of the highest happiness and 
 intellectual excitement which he can enjoy. 
 
 In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will 
 mention a circumstance which fell under my knowledge 
 the other day. A friend ? had bought a print of Titian's 
 Mistress, the same to which I have alluded above. He 
 was anxious to show it me on this account. I told him 
 it was a spirited engraving, but it had not the look of 
 the original. I believe he thought this fastidious, till I 
 offered to show him a rough sketch of it, which I had by 
 me. Having seen this, he said he perceived exactly what 
 I meant, and could not bear to look at the print after- 
 wards. He had good sense enough to see the difference 
 in the individual instance ; but a person better acquainted 
 with Titian's manner and with art in general — that is, of 
 a more cultivated and refined taste — would know that it 
 was a bad print, without having any immediate model to 
 compare it with. H« would perceive with a glance of the 
 eye, with a sort of instinctive feeling, that it was hard, 
 and without that bland, expansive, and nameless expres- 
 sion which always distinguished Titian's most famous 
 works. Any one who is accustomed to a head in a picture 
 can never reconcile himself to a print from it : but to the 
 ignorant they are both the same. To a vulgar eye there 
 is no difference between a Guido and a daub — between a 
 penny print, or the vilest scrawl, and the most finished 
 performance. In other words, all that excellence which 
 lies between these two extremes, — all, at least, that marks 
 the excess above mediocrity, — all that constitutes true 
 beauty, harmony, refinement, grandeur, is lost upon the 
 common observer. But it is from this point that the 
 delight, the glowing raptures of the true adept commence. 
 &n uninformed spectator may like an ordinary drawing 
 1 Kiydon, I beliove. — Ed. 
 
On the Pleasure of Painting, 21 
 
 better than the ablest connoisseur ; but for that very 
 reason he cannot like the highest specimens of art so 
 well. The refinements not only of execution but of truth 
 and nature are inaccessible to unpractised eyes. The 
 exquisite gradations in a sky of Claude's are not perceived 
 by such persons, and consequently the harmony cannot 
 be felt. Where there is no conscious apprehension, 
 there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at the first 
 sights of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and 
 novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in 
 them are the growth of taste and knowledge. " I would 
 not wish to have your eyes," said a good-natured man to 
 a critic, who was finding fault with a picture in which 
 the other saw no blemish. Why so ? The idea which 
 prevented him from admiring this inferior production was 
 a higher idea of truth and beauty which was ever present 
 with him, and a continual source of pleasing and lofty 
 contemplations. It may be different in a taste for outward 
 luxuries and the privations of mere sense ; but the idea 
 of perfection, which acts as an intellectual foil, is always 
 an addition, a support, and a proud consolation ! 
 
 Eichardson, in his Essays, 1 which ought to be better 
 known, has left some striking examples of the felicity and 
 infelicity of artists, both as it relates to their external 
 fortune and to the practice of their art. In speaking of 
 the knowledge of hands, he exclaims : " When one is con- 
 sidering a picture or a drawing, one at the same time 
 thinks this was done by him 8 who had many extraor- 
 dinary endowments of body and mind, but was withal 
 very capricious ; who was honoured in life and death, 
 expiring in the arms of one of the greatest princes of that 
 age, Francis I., King of France, who loved him as a 
 friend. Another is of him 3 who lived a long and happy 
 life, beloved of Charles V. emperor ; and many others 
 
 1 Works on Painting, &c, by John Eichardson, 1722. — Ed. 
 
 2 Leonardo da Vinci. 3 Titian. 
 
22 On the Pleasure of Painting, 
 
 of the first princes of Europe. When one has another in 
 hand, we think this was done by one ■ who so excelled 
 in three arts as that any of them in that degree had 
 rendered him worthy of immortality ; and one moreover 
 that durst contend with his sovereign (one of the haughtiest 
 popes that ever was) upon a slight offered to him, and 
 extricated himself with honour. Another is the work of 
 him 2 who, without any one exterior advantage but mere 
 strength of genius, had the most sublime imaginations, 
 and executed them accordingly, yet lived and died ob- 
 scurely. Another we shall consider as the work of him 3 
 who restored Painting when it had almost sunk ; of him 
 whom art made honourable, but who, neglecting and 
 despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride, was 
 treated suitably to the figure he gave himself, not his 
 intrinsic worth ; which, [he] not having philosophy enough 
 to bear it, broke his heart. Another is done by one 4 who 
 (on the contrary) was a fine gentleman and lived in great 
 magnificence, and was much honoured by his own and 
 foreign princes ; who was a courtier, a statesman, and a 
 painter ; and so much all these, that when he acted in 
 either character, that seemed to be his business, and the 
 others his diversion. I say when one thus reflects, 
 besides the pleasure arising from the beauties and ex- 
 cellences of the work, the fine ideas it gives us of natural 
 things, the noble way of thinking it may suggest to us, 
 an additional pleasure results from the above considera- 
 tions. But, oh ! the pleasure, when a connoisseur and 
 lover of art has before him a picture or drawing, of which 
 he can say this is the hand, these are the thoughts of 
 him 5 who was one of the politest, best-natured gentle- 
 men that ever was ; and beloved and assisted by the 
 greatest wits and the greatest men then in Kome : of him 
 who lived in great fame, honour, and magnificence, and 
 
 1 Michael Angelo. 2 Correggio. • Armibal Caracci. 
 
 4 Rubens. 6 Raffaelle. 
 
On the Pleasurj of Painting. 23 
 
 died extremely lamented ; and missed a Cardinal's hat 
 only by dying a few months too soon ; but was particularly 
 esteemed and favoured by two Popes, the only ones who 
 filled the chair of St. Peter in his time, and as great men 
 as ever sat there since that apostle, if at least he ever did : 
 one, in short, who could have been a Leonardo, a Michael 
 Angelo, a Titian, a Correggio, a Parmegiano, an Annibal, 
 a Eubens, or any other whom he pleased, but none of 
 them could ever have been a Baffaelle." ? 
 
 The same writer speaks feelingly of the change in the 
 style of different artists from their change of fortune, and 
 as the circumstances are little known I will quote the 
 passage relating to two of them : — 
 
 " Guido Eeni, from a prince-like affluence of fortune 
 (the just reward of his angelic works), fell to a condition 
 like that of a hired servant to one who supplied him with 
 money for what he did at a fixed rate ; and that by his 
 being bewitched with a passion for gaming, whereby he 
 lost vast sums of money ; and even what he got in this 
 his state of servitude by day, he commonly lost at night : 
 nor could he ever be cured of this cursed madness. 
 Those of his works, therefore, which he did in this un- 
 happy part of his life may easily be conceived to be in a 
 different style to what he did before, which in some 
 things, that is, in the airs of his heads (in the gracious 
 kind) had a delicacy in them peculiar to himself, and 
 almost more than human. But I must not multiply in- 
 stances. Parmegiano is one that alone takes in all the 
 several kinds of variation, and all the degrees of goodness, 
 from the lowest of the indifferent up to the sublime. I 
 can produce evident proofs of this in so easy a gradation, 
 that one cannot deny but that he that did this might do 
 that, and very probably did so ; and thus one may ascend 
 and descend, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, whose 
 foot was upon the earth, but its top reached to Heaven. 
 1 Page 251. 
 
24 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 u And this great man had his unlucky circumstance ; 
 he became mad after the philosopher's stone, and did but 
 very little in painting or drawing afterwards. Judge 
 w T hat that was, and whether there was not an alteration of 
 style from what he had done, before this devil possessed 
 him. His creditors endeavoured to exorcise him, and did 
 him some good, for he set himself to work again in his 
 own way ; but if a drawing I have of a Lucretia be that 
 he made for his last picture, as it probably is (Yasari says 
 that was the subject of it) it is an evident proof of his 
 decay ; it is good indeed, but it wants much of the delicacy 
 which is commonly seen in his works ; and so I always 
 thought before I knew or imagined it to be done in this 
 his ebb of genius." ' 
 
 We have had two artists of our own country whose fate 
 has been as singular as it was hard : Gandy was a portrait- 
 painter in the beginning of the last century, whose heads 
 were said to have come near to Kembrandt's, and he was 
 the undoubted prototype of Sir Joshua Eeynolds's style. 
 Yet his name has scarcely been heard of ; and his reputa- 
 tion, like his works, never extended beyond his own 
 county. What did he think of himself and of a fame so 
 bounded ? Did he ever dream he was indeed an artist ? 
 Or how did this feeling in him differ from the vulgar con- 
 ceit of the lowest pretender? The best known of his 
 works is a portrait of an alderman of Exeter, in some 
 public building in that city. 
 
 Poor Dan. Stringer ! Forty years ago he had the finest 
 hand and the clearest eye of any artist of his time, and 
 produced heads and drawings that would not have dis- 
 graced a brighter period in the art. But he fell a martyr 
 (like Burns) to the society of country gentlemen, and then 
 of those whom they would consider as more his equate . I 
 saw him many years ago when he treated the masterly 
 sketches he had by him (one in particular of the group of 
 1 Page 153. 
 
On the Past and Future. 25 
 
 citizens in Shakespear " swallowing the tailor's news ") as 
 " bastards of his genius, not his children ;" and seemed tc 
 have given up all thoughts of his art. Whether he is 
 since dead, I cannot say ; the world do not so much as 
 know that he ever lived ! 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 On the Past and Future. 
 
 I have naturally but little imagination, and am not of 
 a very sanguine turn of mind. I have some desire to 
 enjoy the present good, and some fondness for the past ; 
 but I am not at all given to building castles in the air, 
 nor to look forward with much confidence or hope to the 
 brilliant illusions held out by the future. Hence I have 
 perhaps been led to form a theory, which is very contrary 
 to the common notions and feelings on the subject, and 
 which I will here try to explain as well as I can. — When 
 Sterne in the Sentimental Journey told the French Minis- 
 ter, that if the French people had a fault, it was that they 
 were too serious, the latter replied that if that was his 
 opinion, he must defend it with all his might, for he would 
 have all the world against him ; so I shall have enough to 
 do to get well through the present argument. 
 
 I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for 
 that mighty difference in the value which mankind generally 
 set upon the past and future, as if the one was everything, 
 and the other nothing — of no consequence whatever. On 
 the other hand, I conceive that the past is as real and 
 substantial a part of our being, that it is as much a bond 
 fide, undeniable consideration in the estimate of human 
 life, as the future can possibly be. To say that the past 
 is of no importance, unworthy of a moment's regard, 
 because it has gone by, and is no longer anything, is an 
 argument that cannot be held to any purpose ; for if the 
 
26 On the Fast and Future. 
 
 past lias ceased to be, and is therefore to be accounted 
 nothing in the scale of good or evil, the future is yet to 
 come, and has never been anything. Should any one 
 choose to assert that the present only is of any value in a 
 strict and positive sense, because that alone has a real 
 existence, that we should seize the instant good, and give 
 all else to the winds, I can understand what he means 
 (though perhaps he does not himself) ; x but I cannot 
 comprehend how this distinction between that which has 
 a downright and sensible, and that which has only a 
 remote and airy existence, can be applied to establish the 
 preference of the future over the past ; for both are in this 
 point of view equally ideal, absolutely nothing, except as 
 they are conceived of by the mind's eye, and are thus 
 rendered present to the thoughts and feelings. Nay, the 
 one is even more imaginary, a more fantastic creature of 
 the brain than the other, and the interest we take in it 
 more shadowy and gratuitous ; for the future, on which 
 we lay so much stress, may never come to pass at all, that 
 is, may never be embodied into actual existence in the 
 whole course of events, whereas the past has certainly 
 existed once, has received the stamp of truth, and left an 
 image of itself behind. It is so far then placed beyond 
 the possibility of doubt, or as the poet has it, 
 
 " Those joys are lodg'd beyond the reach of fate/' 
 
 It is not, however, attempted to be denied that though the 
 future is nothing at present, and has no immediate interest 
 while we are speaking, yet it is of the utmost consequence 
 in itself, and of the utmost interest to the individual, 
 because it loill have a real existence, and we have an idea 
 
 1 If we take away from the present the moment that is just gone 
 by and the moment that is next to come, how much of it will be 
 left for this plain, practical theory to rest upon ? Their solid basis 
 of sense and reality will reduce itself to a pin's point, a hair line, on 
 which our moral balance-masters will have some difficulty to main- 
 tain their footing without falling over on either side. 
 
On the Past and Future. 27 
 
 of it as existing in time to come. Well, then, the past 
 also has no real existence ; the actual sensation and the 
 interest belonging to it are both fled ; but it has had a real 
 existence, and we can still call up a vivid recollection of 
 it as having once been ; and therefore, by parity of 
 reasoning, it is not a thing perfectly insignificant in itself, 
 nor wholly indifferent to the mind, whether it ever was or 
 not. Oh, no ! Far from it ! Let us not rashly quit our 
 hold upon the past, when perhaps there may be little else 
 left to bind us to existence. Is it nothing to have been, 
 and to have been happy or miserable ? Or is it a matter 
 of no moment to think whether I have been one or the 
 other ? Do I delude myself, do I build upon a shadow or 
 a dream, do I dress up in the gaudy garb of idleness and 
 folly a pure fiction, with nothing answering to it in the 
 universe of things and the records of truth, when I look 
 back with fond delight or with tender regret to that which 
 was at one time to me my all, when I revive the glowing 
 image of some bright reality, 
 
 " The thoughts of which can never from my heart T 
 
 Do I then muse on nothing, do I bend my eyes on nothing, 
 when I turn back in fancy to " those suns and skies so 
 pure " that lighted up my early path ? Is it to think of 
 nothing, to set an idle value upon nothing, to think of all 
 that has happened to me, and of all that can ever interest 
 me ? Or, to use the language of a fine poet (who is 
 himself among my earliest and not least painful recollec- 
 tions) — 
 
 " What though the radiance which was once so bright 
 Be now for ever vanished from my sight, 
 Though nothing can bring back the hour 
 Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r " — 
 
 yet am I mocked with a lie, when I venture to think of 
 it ? Or do I not drink in and breathe again the ah* of 
 heavenly truth, when I but ''retrace its footsteps, and 
 
28 On the Past and Future. 
 
 its skirts far off adore ?" I cannot say with the same 
 poet — . 
 
 " And see how dark the backward stream, 
 A little moment past so smiling " — 
 
 for it is the past that gives me most delight and most 
 assurance of reality. What to me constitutes the great 
 charm of the Confessions of Bousseau is their turning so 
 much upon this feeling. He seems to gather up the past 
 moments of his being like drops of honey-dew to distil a 
 precious liquor from them ; his alternate pleasures and 
 pains are the bead-roll that he tells over, and piously wor- 
 ships ; he makes a rosary of the flowers of hope and fancy 
 that strewed his earliest years. When he begins the last 
 of the Eeveries of a Solitary Walker, tC U y a aujourd'hui, 
 jour des Pdques Fleuris, cinquante ans depuis que fai 
 premier vu Madame Warens" what a yearning of the soul 
 is implied in that short sentence ! Was all that had hap* 
 pened to him, all that he had thought and felt in that sad 
 interval of time, to be accounted nothing ? Was that 
 long, dim, faded retrospect of years happy or miserable — 
 a blank that was not to make his eyes fail and his heart 
 faint within him in trying to grasp all that had once filled 
 it and that had since vanished, because it was not a pro- 
 spect into futurity ? Was he wrong in finding more to 
 interest him in it than in the next fifty years — which he 
 did not live to see ; or if he had, what then ? Would 
 they have been worth thinking of, compared with the 
 times of his youth, of his first meeting with Madame 
 Warens, with those times which he has traced with such 
 truth and pure delight " in our heart's tables ?" When 
 " all the life of life was flown," was he not to live the first 
 and best part of it over again, and once more be all that 
 he then was? — Ye woods that crown the clear lone brow 
 of Norman Court, 1 why do I revisit ye so oft, and feel a 
 
 1 Near Salisbury, the seat of the Windhams, afterwards of Baring 
 Wall, Esq., M.P. It now belongs, I believe, to the Barings. — Ed. 
 
On the Past and Future. 29 
 
 soothing consciousness of your presence, but that youi 
 high tops waving in the wind recal to me the hours and 
 years that are for ever fled ; that ye renew in ceaseless 
 murmurs the story of long-cherished hopes and bitter dis- 
 appointment ; that in your solitudes and tangled wilds I 
 can wander and lose myself as I wander on and am lost 
 in the solitude of my own heart ; and that as your rustling 
 branches give the loud blast to the waste below — borne on 
 the thoughts of other years, I can look down with patient 
 anguish at the cheerless desolation which I feel within ! 
 Without that face pale as the primrose with hyacinthine 
 locks, for ever shunning and for ever haunting me, mock- 
 ing my waking thoughts as in a dream ; without that smile 
 which my heart could never turn to scorn ; without those 
 eyes dark with their own lustre, still bent on mine, and 
 drawing the soul into their liquid mazes like a sea of 
 love ; without that name trembling in fancy's ear ; without 
 that form gliding before me like Oread or Dryad in fabled 
 groves, what should I do ? how pass away the listless 
 leaden-footed hours ? Then wave, wave on, ye woods of 
 Tuderley, and lift your high tops in the air ; my sighs 
 and vows uttered by your mystic voice breathe into me 
 my former being, and enable me to bear the thing I am ! 
 — The objects that we have known in better days are the 
 main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and 
 give us strength to await our future lot. The future is 
 like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from 
 our view ; the past is alive and stirring with objects, 
 bright or solemn, and of unfading interest. What is it in 
 fact that we recur to oftenest ? What subjects do we 
 think or talk of ? Not the ignorant future, but the well- 
 stored past. Othello, the Moor of Venice, amused himself 
 and his hearers at the house of Signor Brabantio by 
 u running through the story of his life even from his 
 boyish days ;" and oft " beguiled them of their tears, 
 when he did speak of some disastrous stroke which his 
 
30 On the Past and Future. 
 
 youth suffered." This plan of ingratiating himself would 
 not have answered if the past had been, like the contents 
 of an old almanac, of no use but to be thrown aside and 
 forgotten. What a blank, for instance, does the history of 
 the world for the next six thousand years present to the 
 mind, compared with that of the last ! All that strikes 
 the imagination or excites any interest in the mighty 
 scene is what has been! 1 
 
 Neither in itself, then, nor as a subject of general con- 
 templation, has the future any advantage over the past. 
 But with respect to our grosser passions and pursuits it 
 has. As far as regards the appeal to the understanding 
 or the imagination, the past is just as good, as real, of as 
 much intrinsic and ostensible value as the future ; but 
 there is another principle in the human mind, the principle 
 of action or will ; and of this the past has no hold, the 
 future engrosses it entirely to itself. It is this strong 
 lever of the affections that gives so powerful a bias to our 
 sentiments on this subject, and violently transposes the 
 natural order of our associations. We regret the pleasures 
 we have lost, and eagerly anticipate those which are to 
 come : we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which 
 we have escaped (Posihazc meminisse iuvabif) — and dread 
 future pain. The good that is past is in this sense like 
 money that is spent, which is of no further use, and about 
 which we give ourselves little concern. The good we 
 expect is like a store yet untouched, and in the enjoyment 
 of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What 
 
 1 A treatise on the Millennium is dull; but who was ever weary 
 of reading the fables of the Golden Age ? On my once observing I 
 should like to have been Claude, a person said, •' they should not, 
 for that then by this time it would have been all over with them." 
 As if it could possibly signify when we live (save and excepting the 
 present minute), or as if the value of human life decreased or in- 
 creased with successive centuries. At that rate, we had better have 
 our life still to come at some future period, and so postpone our ex- 
 istence century after century ad infinitum. 
 
On the Past and Future. 31 
 
 has happened to us we think of no consequence : what is 
 to happen to us, of the greatest. Why so? Simply be- 
 cause the one is still in our power, and the other not — 
 because the efforts of the will to bring any object to pass 
 or to prevent it strengthen our attachment or aversion to 
 that object — because the pains and attention bestowed 
 upon anything add to our interest in it — and because the 
 habitual and earnest pursuit of any end redoubles the 
 ardour of our expectations, and converts the speculative 
 and indolent satisfaction we might otherwise feel in it into 
 real passion. Our regrets, anxiety, and wishes are thrown 
 away upon the past : but the insisting on the importance 
 of the future is of the utmost use in aiding our resolutions, 
 and stimulating our exertions. If the future were no 
 more amenable to our wills than the past; if our pre- 
 cautions, our sanguine schemes, our hopes and fears were 
 of as little avail in the one case as the other ; if we could 
 neither soften our minds to pleasure, nor steel our fortitude 
 to the resistance of pain beforehand ; if all objects drifted 
 along by us like straws or pieces of wood in a river, the 
 will being purely passive, and as little able to avert the 
 future as to arrest the past, we should in that case be 
 equally indifferent to both ; that is, we should consider 
 each as they affected the thoughts and imagination with 
 certain sentiments of approbation or regret, but without 
 the importunity of action, the irritation of the will, throw- 
 ing the whole weight of passion and prejudice into one 
 scale, and leaving the other quite empty. While the 
 blow is coming, we prepare to meet it, we think to ward 
 off or break its force, we arm ourselves with patience to 
 endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate ourselves with 
 fifty needless alarms about it ; but when the blow is struck, 
 the pang is over, the struggle is no longer necessary, and 
 we cease to harass or torment ourselves about it more 
 than we can help. It is not that the one belongs to the 
 future and the other to time past; but that the one is 
 
32 On the rast and Future. 
 
 a subject of action, of uneasy apprehension, of strong 
 passion, and that the other has passed wholly out of the 
 sphere of action into the region of 
 
 " Calm contemplation and majestic pains." * 
 
 It would not give a man more concern to know that he 
 should be put to the rack a year hence, than to recollect that 
 he had been put to it a year ago, but that he hopes to avoid 
 the one, whereas he must sit down patiently under the 
 consciousness of the other. In this hope he wears himself 
 out in vain struggles with fate, and puts himself to the 
 rack of his imagination every day he has to live in the 
 meanwhile. When the event is so remote or so in- 
 dependent of the will as to set aside the necessity of im- 
 mediate action, or to baffle all attempts to defeat it, it 
 gives us little more disturbance or emotion than if it had 
 already taken place, or were something to happen in 
 another state of being, or to an indifferent person. 
 Criminals are observed to grow more anxious as their 
 trial approaches ; but after their sentence is passed, they 
 become tolerably resigned, and generally sleep sound the 
 night before its execution. 
 
 It in some measure confirms this theory, that men 
 attach more or less importance to past and future events, 
 according as they are more or less engaged in action and 
 the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune to 
 make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, think little of 
 the past, for it does not contribute greatly to their views : 
 those who have nothing to do but to think, take nearly 
 the same interest in the past as in the future. The con- 
 
 1 In like manner, though we know that an event must have 
 taken place at a distance, long before we can hear the result, yet aa 
 long as we remain in ignorance of it, we irritate ourselves about it, 
 and suffer all the agonies of suspense, as if it was still to come ; but 
 as soon as our uncertainty is removed, our fretful impatience 
 vanishes, we resign ourselves to fate, and make up our minds U 
 what has happened as well as we can. 
 
On the Past and Future. 33 
 
 templation of the one is as delightful and real as that of 
 the other. The season of hope has an end; but the 
 remembrance of it is left. The past still lives in tho 
 memory of those who have leisure to look back upon 
 the way that they have trod, and can from it "catch 
 glimpses that may make them less forlorn." The tur- 
 bulence of action, and uneasiness of desire, must point 
 to the future : it is only in the quiet innocence of 
 shepherds, in the simplicity of pastoral ages, that a 
 tomb was found with this inscription — " i also was an 
 
 AKCADIAN I? 
 
 Though I by no means think that our habitual attach- 
 ment to life is in exact proportion to the value of the gift, 
 yet I am not one of those splenetic persons who affect to 
 think it of no value at all. Que 'peu de chose est la vie 
 humaine, is an exclamation in the mouths of moralists 
 and philosophers, to which I cannot agree. It is little, it 
 is short, it is not worth having, if we take the last hour, 
 and leave out all that has gone before, which has been one 
 way of looking at the subject. Such calculators seem to 
 say that life is nothing when it is over, and that may in 
 their sense be true. If the old rule — Bespicefinem — were 
 to be made absolute, and no one could be pronounced 
 fortunate till the day of his death, there are few among 
 us whose existence would, upon those conditions, be much 
 to be envied. But this is not a fair view of the case. A 
 man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff 
 of the candle ; and this, I say, is considerable, and not 
 a little matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. 
 To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary from our 
 own superannuated desires or forgetful indifference is 
 about as reasonable as to say, a man never was young 
 because he has grown old, or never lived because he is 
 now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does 
 not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a 
 building to be judged of from the last stone that is added 
 
 D 
 
34 On the Past and Future. 
 
 to it. It is neither the first nor last hour of our existence, 
 but the space that parts these two — not our exit nor our 
 entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think 
 while there — that we are to attend to in pronouncing 
 sentence upon it. Indeed it would be easy to show that 
 it is the very extent of human life, the infinite number of 
 things contained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating 
 interests, the transition from one situation to another, the 
 hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit after 
 another ; that it is, in a word, the length of our common 
 journey and the quantity of events crowded into it, that, 
 baffling the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide 
 from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own 
 perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is 
 nothing ! It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas 
 would be big enough to hold its striking groups, its end- 
 less subjects ! It is light as vanity, and yet if all its 
 weary moments, if all its head and heart aches were com- 
 pressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed 
 with the blow ! What a huge heap, a " huge, dumb heap," 
 of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, 
 loves, joys, friendships, it is composed of ! How many 
 ideas and trains of sentiment, long and deep and intense, 
 often pass through the mind in only one day's thinking or 
 reading, for instance ! How many such days are there in 
 a year, how many years in a long life, still occupied with 
 something interesting, still recalling some old impression, 
 still recurring to some difficult question and making pro- 
 gress in it, every step accompanied with a sense of power, 
 and every moment conscious of " the high endeavour or 
 the glad success ;" for the mind seizes only on that which 
 keeps it employed, and is wound up to a certain pitch of 
 pleasurable excitement or lively solicitude, by the necessity 
 of its own nature. The division of the map of life 
 into its component parts is beautifull¥ made by King 
 Henry VI :— 
 
On the Past and Future. 35 
 
 ** Oh God ! methinks it were a happy life 
 To be no better than a homely swain, 
 To sit upon a hill as I do now, 
 To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 
 Thereby to see the minutes how they run ; 
 How many make the hour full complete, 
 How many hours bring about the day, 
 How many days will finish up the year, 
 How many years a mortal man may live : 
 When this is known, then to divide the times , 
 So many hours must I tend my flock, 
 So many hours must I take my rest, 
 So many hours must I contemplate, 
 So many hours must I sport myself; 
 So many days my ewes have been with young, 
 So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean, 
 So many months ere I shall shear the fleece : 
 So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years 
 Past over to the end they were created, 
 Would bring grey hairs unto a quiet grave." 
 
 I myself am neither a king nor a shepherd : books have 
 been my fleecy charge, and my thoughts have been my 
 subjects. But these have found me sufficient employment 
 at the time, and enough to think of for the time to 
 come. 
 
 The passions contract and warp the natural progress of 
 life. They paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their 
 tyranny and caprice. This makes the difference between 
 the laughing innocence of childhood, the pleasantness of 
 youth, and the crabbedness of age. A load of cares lies 
 like a weight of guilt upon the mind : so that a man ol 
 business often has all the air, the distraction and restless- 
 ness and hurry of feeling of a criminal. A knowledge of 
 the world takes away the freedom and simplicity oi' 
 thought as effectually as the contagion of its example. 
 The artlessness and candour of our early years are open to 
 all impressions alike, because the mind is not clogged and 
 pre-occupied with other objects. Our pleasures and our 
 pains come single, make room for one another, and the 
 
36 On the Past and Future, 
 
 spring of the mind is fresh and unbroken, its aspect clear 
 and unsullied. Hence u the tear forgot as soon as shed, 
 the sunshine of the breast." But as we advance farther, the 
 will gets greater head. We form violent antipathies and 
 indulge exclusive preferences. We make up our minds to 
 some one thing, and if we cannot have that, will have 
 nothing. We are wedded to opinion, to fancy, to pre- 
 judice ; which destroys the soundness of our judgments, 
 and the serenity and buoyancy of our feelings. The chain 
 of habit coils itself round the heart, like a serpent, to gnaw 
 and stifle it. It grows rigid and callous ; and for the soft- 
 ness and elasticity of childhood, full of proud flesh and 
 obstinate tumours. The violence and perversity of our 
 passions come in more and more to overlay our natural 
 sensibility and well-grounded affections ; and we screw 
 ourselves up to aim only at those things which are neither 
 desirable nor practicable. Thus life passes away in the 
 feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty of dis- 
 appointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state 
 of feeling satisfies us : and all common pleasures and 
 cheap amusements are sacrificed to the demon of ambition, 
 avarice, or dissipation. The machine is over- wrought : 
 the parching heat of the veins dries up and withers the 
 flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy ; and any pause, any 
 release from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, 
 seems more insupportable than the pangs which we endure. 
 W r e are suspended between tormenting desires and the 
 horrors of ennui. The impulse of the will, like the wheels 
 of a carriage going down hill, becomes too strong for the 
 driver, Beason, and cannot be stopped nor kept within 
 bounds. Some idea, some fancy, takes possession of the 
 brain ; and however ridiculous, however distressing, 
 however ruinous, haunts us by a sort of fascination 
 through life. 
 
 Not only is this principle of excessive irritability to be 
 seen at work in our more turbulent passions and pursuits, 
 
On the Past and Future. 37 
 
 but even in the formal study of arts and sciences, the same 
 thing takes place, and undermines the repose and happi- 
 ness of life. The eagerness of pursuit overcomes the 
 satisfaction to result from the accomplishment. The 
 mind is overstrained to attain its purpose ; and when it is 
 attained, the ease and alacrity necessary to enjoy it are 
 gone. The irritation of action does not cease and go down 
 with the occasion for it ; but we are first uneasy to get to 
 the end of our work, and then uneasy for want of some- 
 thing to do. The ferment of the brain does not of itself 
 subside into pleasure and soft repose. Hence the dispo- 
 sition to strong stimuli observable in persons of much 
 intellectual exertion to allay and carry off the over-excite- 
 ment. The improvisatori poets (it is recorded by Spence 
 in his Anecdotes of Pope) 1 cannot sleep after an evening's 
 continued display of their singular and difficult art. The 
 rhymes keep running in their head in spite of themselves, 
 and will not let them rest. Mechanics and labouring 
 people never know what to do with themselves on a 
 Sunday, though they return to their work with greater 
 spirit for the relief, and look forward to it with pleasure 
 all the week. Sir Joshua Eeynolds was never comfortable 
 out of his painting-room, 2 and died of chagrin and regret 
 because he could not paint on to the last moment of his 
 life. He used to say that he could go on retouching a 
 picture for ever, as long as it stood on his easel ; but as 
 soon as it was once fairly out of the house, he never wished 
 to see it again. An ingenious artist of our own time hat 
 been heard to declare, that if ever the Devil got him into 
 his clutches, he would set him to copy his own pictures. 
 
 1 Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men. 
 Collected from the conversation of Mr. Pope, &c, Edit. 1860, 
 pp. 87, 88.— Ed. 
 
 2 It is well known that, at the time, it was regarded as an un- 
 mistakable indication of his grief for the loss of Goldsmith, that, 
 when he heard of the poet's death, he quitted his painting-room 
 and never touched a brush again that day. — Ed. 
 
38 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 Thus the secure, self-complacent retrospect to what is 
 done is nothing, while the anxious, uneasy looking forward 
 to what is to come is everything. "We are afraid to dwell 
 upon the past, lest it should retard our future progress ; 
 the indulgence of ease is fatal to excellence ; and to succeed 
 in life, we lose the ends of being ! 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 On Genius and Common Sense, 
 
 We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than 
 understanding, that genius and taste are strictly reducible 
 to rules, and that there is a rule for everything. So far is 
 it from being true that the finest breath of fancy is a 
 definable thing, that the plainest common sense is only 
 what Mr. Locke would have called a mixed mode, subject 
 to a particular sort of acquired and undefinable tact. It 
 is asked, " If you do not know the rule by which a thing 
 is done, how can you be sure of doing it a second time ?" 
 And the answer is, " If you do not know the muscles by 
 the help of which you walk, how is it you do not fall 
 down at every step you take f* In art, in taste, in life, in 
 speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason; 
 that is, from the impression of a number of things on the 
 mind, which impression is true and well founded, though 
 you may not be able to analyse or account for it in the 
 several particulars. In a gesture you use, in a look you 
 see, in a tone you hear, you judge of the expression, 
 propriety, and meaning from habit, not from reason or 
 rules ; that is to say, from innumerable instances of like 
 gestures, looks, and tones, in innumerable other circum- 
 stances, variously modified, which are too many and too 
 refined to be all distinctly recollected, but which do not 
 therefore operate the less powerfully upon the mind and 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 39 
 
 eye of taste. Shall we say that these impressions (the 
 immediate stamp of nature) do not operate in a given 
 manner till they are classified and reduced to rules, or is 
 not the rule itself grounded, upon the truth and certainty 
 of that natural operation ? How then can the distinction 
 of the understanding as to the manner in which they 
 operate be necessary to their producing their due and 
 uniform effect upon the mind? If certain effects did 
 not regularly arise out of certain causes in mind as well 
 as matter, there could be no rule given for them : nature 
 does not follow the rule, but suggests it. Eeason is the 
 interpreter and critic of nature and genius, not their law- 
 giver and judge. He must be a poor creature indeed 
 whose practical convictions do not in almost all cases out- 
 run his deliberate understanding, or who does not feel and 
 know much more than he can give a reason for. — Hence 
 the distinction between eloquence and wisdom, between 
 ingenuity and common sense. A man may be dexterous 
 and able in explaining the grounds of his opinions, and 
 yet may be a mere sophist, because he only sees one-half 
 of a subject. Another may feel the whole weight of a 
 question, nothing relating to it may be lost upon him, and 
 yet he may be able to give no account of the manner in 
 which it affects him, or to drag his reasons from their 
 silent lurking-places. This last will be a wise man, 
 though neither a logician nor rhetorician. Goldsmith was 
 a fool to Dr. Johnson in argument ; that is, in assigning 
 the specific grounds of his opinions : Dr. Johnson was a 
 fool to Goldsmith in the fine tact, the airy, intuitive 
 faculty with which he skimmed the surfaces of things, and 
 unconsciously formed his opinions. Common sense is the 
 just result of the sum-total of such unconscious impressions 
 in the ordinary occurrences of life, as they are treasured up 
 in the memory, and called out by the occasion. Genius 
 and taste depend much upon the same principle exercised 
 on loftier ground and in more unusual combinations. 
 
40 On Genius and Common Senoe. 
 
 I am glad to shelter myself from the charge of affecta- 
 tion or singularity in this view of an often debated but ill- 
 understood point, by quoting a passage from Sir Joshua 
 Eeynolds's Discourses, which is full, and, I think, conclu- 
 sive to the purpose. He says : — 
 
 " I observe, as a fundamental ground common to all the 
 Arts with which we have any concern in this Discourse, 
 that they address themselves only to two faculties of the 
 mind, its imagination and its sensibility. 
 
 " All theories which attempt to direct or to control the 
 Art, upon any principles falsely called rational, which wo 
 form to ourselves upon a supposition of what ought in 
 reason to be the end or means of Art, independent of the 
 known first effect produced by objects on the imagination, 
 must be false and delusive. For though it may appear 
 bold to say it, the imagination is here the residence of 
 truth. If the imagination be affected, the conclusion is 
 fairly drawn ; if it be not affected, the reasoning is 
 erroneous, because the end is not obtained ; the effect itself 
 being the test, and the only test, of the truth and efficacy 
 of the means. 
 
 " There is in the commerce of life, as in Art, a sagacity 
 which is far from being contradictory to right reason, and 
 is superior to any occasional exercise of that faculty 
 which supersedes it, and does not wait for the slow 
 progress of deduction, but goes at once, by what appears a 
 kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A man endowed with 
 this faculty feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is 
 not always in his power, perhaps, to give a reason for it ; 
 because he cannot recollect and bring before him all the 
 materials that gave birth to his opinion ; for very many 
 and very intricate considerations may unite to form the 
 principle, even of small and minute parts, involved in, or 
 dependent on, a great system of things : — though these in 
 process of time are forgotten, the right impression still 
 remains fixed in his mind. 
 
On Genius and Common Se?ise. 41 
 
 K This impression is the result of the accumulated 
 experience of our whole life, and has been collected, we 
 do not always know how, or when. But this mass of 
 collective observation, however acquired, ought to prevail 
 over that reason, which however powerfully exerted on 
 any particular occasion, will probably comprehend but a 
 partial view of the subject ; and our conduct in life, as 
 well as in the arts, is or ought to be generally governed 
 by this habitual reason : it is our happiness that we are 
 enabled to draw on such funds. If we were obliged to 
 enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion 
 before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be 
 impracticable. 
 
 " It appears to me therefore " (continues Sir Joshua) 
 "that our first thoughts, that is, the effect which any 
 thing produces on our minds, on its first appearance, is 
 never to be forgotten ; and it demands for that reason, 
 because it is the first, to be laid up with care. If this be 
 not done, the artist may happen to impose on himself by 
 partial reasoning ; by a cold consideration of those ani- 
 mated thoughts which proceed, not perhaps from caprice 
 or rashness (as he may afterwards conceit), but from the 
 fulness of his mind, enriched with the copious stores of 
 all the various inventions which he had ever seen, or had 
 ever passed in his mind. These ideas are infused into 
 his design, without any conscious effort ; but if he be not 
 on his guard, he may reconsider and correct them, till the 
 whole matter is reduced to a commonplace invention. 
 
 " This is sometimes the effect of what I mean to caution 
 you against ; that is to say, an unfounded distrust of the 
 imagination and feeling, in favour of narrow, partial, 
 confined, argumentative theories, and of principles that 
 seem to apply to the design in hand ; without considering 
 those general impressions on. the fancy in which real 
 principles of sound reason, and of much more weight and 
 importance, are involved, andj as it were, lie hid under 
 
42 On Genius and Common Sense, 
 
 the appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment. Eeason, 
 without doubt, must ultimately determine everything; 
 at this minute it is required to inform as when that very 
 reason is to give way to feeling." 1 
 
 Mr. Burke, by whom the foregoing train of thinking 
 was probably suggested, has insisted on the same thing, 
 and made rather a perverse use of it in several parts of 
 his Reflections on the French Revolution ; and Windham 
 in one of his Speeches has clenched it into an aphorism — 
 " There is nothing so true as habit." Once more I would 
 say, common sense is tacit reason. Conscience is the 
 same tacit sense of right and wrong, or the impression of 
 our moral experience and moral apprehensions on the 
 mind, which, because it works unseen, yet certainly, we 
 suppose to be an instinct, implanted in the mind ; as we 
 sometimes attribute the violent operations of our passions, 
 of which we can neither trace the source nor assign the 
 reason, to the instigation of the Devil 1 
 
 I shall here try to go more at large into this subject, 
 and to give such instances and illustrations of it as occur 
 to me. 
 
 One of the persons who had rendered themselves 
 obnoxious to Government and been included in a charge 
 for high treason in the year 1794, had retired soon after 
 into Wales to write an epic poem and enjoy the luxuries 
 of a rural life. In his peregrinations through that beauti- 
 ful scenery, he had arrived one fine morning at the inn at 
 Llangollen, in the romantic valley of that name. He 
 had ordered his breakfast, and was sitting at the window 
 in all the dalliance of expectation when a face passed, of 
 which he took no notice at the instant — but when his 
 breakfast was brought in presently after, he found his 
 appetite for it gone — the day had lost its freshness in his 
 eye — he was uneasy and spiritless ; and without any cause 
 that he could discover, a total change had taken place in 
 1 Discourse XIII. vol. ii. pp. 113-117. 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 43 
 
 his feelings. While he was trying to account for this 
 odd circumstance, the same face passed again — it was the 
 face of Taylor the spy ; and he was no longer at a loss to 
 explain the difficulty. He had before caught only a 
 transient glimpse, a passing side-view of the face; but 
 though this was not sufficient to awaken a distinct idea 
 in his memory, his feelings, quicker and surer, had taken 
 the alarm ; a string had been touched that gave a jar to 
 his whole frame, and would not let him rest, though he 
 could not at all tell what was the matter with him. To 
 the flitting, shadowy, half-distinguished profile that had 
 glided by his window was linked unconsciously and 
 mysteriously, but inseparably, the impression of the trains 
 that had been laid for him by this person ; — in this brief 
 moment, in this dim, illegible short-hand of the mind he 
 had just escaped the speeches of the Attorney and 
 Solicitor-General over again ; the gaunt figure of 
 Mr. Pitt glared by him ; the walls of a prison enclosed 
 him ; and he felt the hands of the executioner near him, 
 without knowing it till the tremor and disorder of his 
 nerves gave information to his reasoning faculties that all 
 was not well within. That is, the same state of mind 
 was recalled by one circumstance in the series of associa- 
 tion that had been produced by the whole set of circum- 
 stances at the time, though the manner in which this was 
 done was not immediately perceptible. In other words, 
 the feeling of pleasure or pain, of good or evil, is revived, 
 and acts instantaneously upon the mind, before we have 
 time to recollect the precise objects which have originally 
 given birth to it. 1 The incident here mentioned was 
 
 1 Sentiment has the same source as that here pointed out. Thus 
 the Ranz des Vaches, which has such an effect on the minds of the 
 Swiss peasantry, when its well-known sound is heard, does not 
 merely recall to them the idea of their country, but has associated 
 with it a thousand nameless ideas, numberless touches of private 
 affection, of early hope, romantic adventure, and national pride, all 
 which rush in (with mingled currents, to swell the tide of fond 
 
44 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 merely, then, one case of what the learned understand by 
 the association of ideas : but all that is meant by feeling 
 or common sense is nothing but the different cases of the 
 association of ideas, more or less true to the impression 
 of the original circumstances, as reason begins with the 
 more formal development of those circumstances, or pre- 
 tends to account for the different cases of the association 
 of ideas. But it does not follow that the dumb and silent 
 pleading of the former (though sometimes, nay often, 
 mistaken) is less true than that of its babbling interpreter 
 or that we are never to trust its dictates without consult- 
 ing the express authority of reason. Both are imperfect, 
 both are useful in their way, and therefore both are best 
 together, to correct or to confirm one another. It does 
 not appear that in the singular instance above mentioned, 
 the sudden impression on the mind was superstition or 
 fancy, though it might have been thought so, had it not 
 been proved by the event to have a real physical and 
 moral cause. Had not the same face returned again, the 
 doubt would never have been properly cleared up, but 
 would have remained a puzzle ever after, or perhaps have 
 been soon forgot. — By the law of association as laid down 
 by physiologists, any impression in a series can recal any 
 other impression in that series without going through the 
 whole in order : so that the mind drops the intermediate 
 links, and passes on rapidly and by stealth to the more 
 striking effects of pleasure or pain which have naturally 
 taken the strongest hold of it. By doing this habitually 
 and skilfully with respect to the various impressions and 
 circumstances with which our experience makes us ac- 
 
 remembrance, and make them languish or die for home. What a 
 fine instrument the human heart is ! Who shall touch it ? Who 
 shall fathom it ? Who shall u sound it from its lowest note to th& 
 top of its compass ?" Who shall put his hand among the strings, 
 and explain their wayward music ? The heart alone, when touched 
 by sympathy, trembles and responds to their hidden meaning ! 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 45 
 
 quainted, it forms a series of unpremeditated conclusions 
 on almost all subjects that can be brought before it, as 
 just as they are of ready application to human life ; and 
 common sense is the name of this body of unassuming 
 but practical wisdom. Common sense, however, is an 
 impartial, instinctive result of truth and nature, and will 
 therefore bear the test and abide the scrutiny of the most 
 severe and patient reasoning. It is indeed incomplete 
 without it. By ingrafting reason on feeling, we " make 
 assurance double sure." 
 
 " 'Tis the last key-stone that makes up the arch . . . 
 Then stands it a triumphal mark ! Then men 
 Observe the strength, the height, the why and when 
 It was erected ; and still walking under, 
 Meet some new matter to look up, and wonder." 
 
 But reason, not employed to interpret nature, and to 
 improve and perfect common sense and experience, is, for 
 the most part, a building without a foundation. — The 
 criticism exercised by reason, then, on common sense may 
 be as severe as it pleases, but it must be as patient as it 
 is severe. Hasty, dogmatical, self-satisfied reason is worsd 
 than idle fancy, or bigoted prejudice. It is systematic, 
 ostentatious in error, closes up the avenues of knowledge, 
 and u shuts the gates of wisdom on mankind." It is not 
 enough to show that there is no reason for a thing that 
 we do not see the reason of it : if the common feeling, if 
 the involuntary prejudice sets in strong in favour of it, 
 if, in spite of all we can do, there is a lurking suspicion 
 on the side of our first impressions, we must try again, 
 and believe that truth is mightier than we. So, in offering 
 a definition of any subject, if we feel a misgiving that 
 there is any fact or circumstance emitted, but of which 
 we have only a vague apprehension, like a name we can- 
 not recollect, we must ask for more time, and not cut 
 the matter short by an arrogant assumption of the point 
 in dispute. Common sense thus acts as a check-weight 
 
46 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 on sophistry, and suspends our rash and superficial judg- 
 ments. On the other hand, if not only no reason can be 
 given for a thing, but every reason is clear against it, 
 and we can account from ignorance, from authority, from 
 interest, from different causes, for the prevalence of an 
 opinion or sentiment, then we have a right to conclude 
 that we have mistaken a prejudice for an instinct, or have 
 confounded a false and partial impression with the fair 
 and unavoidable inference from general observation. 
 Mr. Burke said that we ought not to reject every pre- 
 judice, but should separate the husk of prejudice from 
 the truth it encloses, and so try to get at the kernel 
 within; and thus far he was right. But he was wrong 
 in insisting that we are to cherish our prejudices, " be- 
 cause they are prejudices :" for if all are well founded, 
 there is no occasion to inquire into their origin or use ; 
 and he who sets out to philosophise upon them, or make 
 the separation Mr. Burke talks of in this spirit and with 
 this previous determination, will \je very likely to mistake 
 a maggot or a rotten canker for the precious kernel oi 
 truth, as was indoed the case with our political sophist. 
 
 There is nothing more distinct than common sense and 
 vulgar opinion. Common sense is only a judge of things 
 that fall under common observation, or immediately come 
 home to the business and bosoms of men. This is of the 
 very essence of its principle, the basis of its pretensions. 
 It rests upon the simple process of feeling, — it anchors in 
 experience. It is not, nor it cannot be, the test of ab- 
 stract, speculative opinions. But half the opinions and 
 prejudices of mankind, those which they hold in the most 
 unqualified approbation and which have been instilled 
 into them under the strongest sanctions, are of this latter 
 kind, that is, opinions, not which they have ever thought, 
 known, or felt one tittle about, but which they have taken 
 up on trust from others, which have been palmed on their 
 understandings by fraud or force, and which they con- 
 
On Genius and Common Same. 47 
 
 tinue to hold at the peril of life, limb, property, and 
 character, with as little warrant from common sense in 
 the first instance as appeal to reason in the last. The 
 ultima ratio reyum proceeds upon a very different plea. 
 Common sense is neither priestcraft nor state-policy. Yet 
 " there's the rub that makes absurdity of so long life ;" 
 and, at the same time, gives the sceptical philosophers the 
 advantage over us. Till nature has fair play allowed it, 
 and is not adulterated by political and polemical quacks 
 (as it so often has been), it is impossible to appeal to it as 
 a defence against the errors and extravagances of mere 
 reason. If we talk of common sense, we are twitted with 
 vulgar prejudice, and asked how we distinguish the one 
 from the other ; but common and received opinion is in- 
 deed " a compost heap " of crude notions, got together by 
 the pride and passions of individuals, and reason is itself 
 the thrall or manumitted slave of the same lordly and be- 
 sotted masters, dragging its servile chain, or committing 
 all sorts of Saturn alian licenses, the moment it feels itself 
 freed from it.— If ten millions of Englishmen are furious 
 in thinking themselves right in making war upon thirty 
 millions of Frenchmen, and if the last are equally bent 
 upon thinking the others always in the wrong, though it is 
 a common and national prejudice, both opinions cannot be 
 the dictate of good sense ; but it may be the infatuated 
 policy of one or both governments to keep their subjects 
 always at variance. If a few centuries ago all Europe 
 believed in the infallibility of the Pope, this was not an 
 opinion derived from the proper exercise or erroneous 
 direction of the common sense of the people ; common 
 sense had nothing to do with it — they believed whatever 
 their priests told them. England at present is divided 
 into Whigs and Tories, Churchmen and Dissenters ; both 
 parties have numbers on +heir side ; but common sense 
 and party spiixt are two different things. Sects and here- 
 sies are upheld partly by sympathy, and partly by the 
 
48 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 love of contradiction ; if there was nobody of a different 
 way of thinking, they would fall to pieces of themselves. 
 If a whole court say the same thing, this is no proof that 
 they think it, but that the individual at the head of the 
 court has said it ; if a mob agree for a while in shouting 
 the same watchword, this is not to me an example of the 
 sensus communis, they only repeat what they have heard 
 repeated by others. If indeed a large proportion of the 
 people are in want of food, of clothing, of shelter — if they 
 are sick, miserable, scorned, oppressed — and if each feeling 
 it in himself, they all say so with one voice and one heart, 
 and lift up their hands to second their appeal, this I 
 should say was but the dictate of common sense, the cry 
 of nature. But to waive this part of the argument, which 
 it is needless to push farther, — I believe that the best way 
 to instruct mankind is not by pointing out to them their 
 mutual errors, but by teaching them to think rightly on 
 indifferent matters, where they will listen with patience in 
 order to be amused, and where they do not consider a 
 definition or a syllogism as the greatest injury you can 
 offer them. 
 
 There is no rule for expression. It is got at solely by 
 feeling, that is, on the principle of the association of ideas, 
 and by transferring what has been found to hold good in 
 one case (with the necessary modifications) to others. A 
 certain look has been remarked strongly indicative of a 
 certain passion or trait of character, and we attach the 
 same meaning to it or are affected in the same pleasurable 
 or painful manner by it, where it exists in a less degree, 
 though we can define neither tbe look itself nor the modi- 
 fication of it. Having got the general clue, the exact 
 result may be left to the imagination to vary, to extenuate 
 or aggravate it according to circumstances. In the 
 
 admirable profile of Oliver Cromwell after , the 
 
 drooping eyelids, as if drawing a veil over the fixed, pene- 
 trating glance, the nostrils somewhat distended, and lips 
 
On Genius and Common ISense. 49 
 
 compressed so as hardly to let the breath escape him, 
 denote the character of the man for high-reaching policy 
 and deep designs as plainly as they can be written. How 
 is it that we decipher this expression in the face ? First, 
 by feeling it ; and how is it that we feel it ? Not by pre- 
 established rules, but by the instinct of analogy, by the 
 principle of association, which is subtle and sure in pro- 
 portion as it is variable and indefinite. A circumstance, 
 apparently of no value, shall alter the whole interpretation 
 to be put upon an expression or action ; and it shall alter 
 it thus powerfully because in proportion to its very insig- 
 nificance it shows a strong general principle at work that 
 extends in its ramifications to the smallest things. This 
 in fact will make all the difference between minuteness 
 and subtlety or refinement ; for a small or trivial effect 
 may in given circumstances imply the operation of a great 
 power. Stillness may be the result of a blow too powerful 
 to be resisted ; silence may be imposed by feelings too 
 agonizing for utterance. The minute, the trifling and 
 insipid is that which is little in itself, in its causes and its 
 consequences; the subtle and refined is that which is 
 slight and evanescent at first sight, but which mounts up 
 to a mighty sum in the end, which is an essential part of 
 an important who]e, which has consequences greater than 
 itself, and where more is meant than meets the eye or ear. 
 We complain sometimes of littleness in a Dutch picture, 
 where there are a vast number of distinct parts and 
 objects, each small in itself, and leading to nothing else. 
 A sky of Claude's cannot fall under this censure, where one 
 imperceptible gradation is as it were the scale to another, 
 where the broad arch of heaven is piled up of endlessly 
 intermediate gold and azure tints, and where an infinite 
 number of minute, scarce noticed particulars blend and melt 
 into universal harmony. The subtlety in Shakespear, of 
 which there is an immense deal scattered everywhere up and 
 down, is always the instrument of passion, the vehicle of 
 
 i E 
 
50 on ijtemas and Common Sense. 
 
 character. The action of a man pulling his hat over his 
 forehead is indifferent enough in itself, and generally 
 speaking, may mean anything or nothing ; but in the cir- 
 cumstances in which Macduff is placed, it is neither insig- 
 nificant nor equivocal. 
 
 •* What ! man, ne'er pull your bat upon your brows,'* &c. 
 
 It admits but of one interpretation or inference, that which 
 follows it : — 
 
 '* Give sorrow words : the grief that does not speak, 
 Whispers the o'er-fraugbt heart, and bids it break." 
 
 The passage in the same play, in which Duncan and his 
 attendants are introduced, commenting on the beauty and 
 situation of Macbeth's castle, though familiar in itself, has 
 been often praised for the striking contrast it presents to 
 the scenes which follow. — The same look in different cir- 
 cumstances may convey a totally different expression. 
 Thus the eye turned round to look at you without turning 
 the head indicates generally slyness or suspicion ; but if 
 this is combined with large expanded eyelids or fixed eye- 
 brows, as we see it in Titian's pictures, it will denote calm 
 contemplation or piercing sagacity, without anything of 
 meanness or fear of being observed. In other cases, it 
 may imply merely indolent enticing voluptuousness, as in 
 Lely's portraits of women. The languor and weakness of 
 the eyelids give the amorous turn to the expression. 
 How should there be a rule for all this beforehand, seeing 
 it depends on circumstances ever varying, and scarce dis- 
 cernible but by their effect on the mind ? Rules are ap- 
 plicable to abstractions, but expression is concrete and 
 individual. We know the meaning of certain looks, and 
 we feel how they modify one another in conjunction. But 
 we cannot have a separate rule to judge of all their com- 
 binations in different degrees and circumstances, without 
 foreseeing all those combinations, which is impossible ; or 
 if we did foresee them, we should only be where we are, 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 51 
 
 that is, we could only make the rule as we now judge 
 without it, from imagination and the feeling of the mo- 
 ment. The absurdity of reducing expression to a pre- 
 concerted system was perhaps never more evidently shown 
 than in a picture of the Judgment of Solomon by so great 
 a man as N. Poussin, which I once heard admired for the 
 skill and discrimination of the artist in making all the 
 women, who are ranged on one side, in the greatest alarm 
 at the sentence of the judge, while all the men on the op- 
 posite side see through the design of it. Nature does not 
 go to work or cast things in a regular mould in this sort 
 of way. I once heard a person remark of another — " He 
 has an eye like a vicious horse." This was a fair analogy. 
 We all, I believe, have noticed the look of a horse's eye, 
 just before he is going to bite or kick. But will any one, 
 therefore, describe to me exactly what that look is ? It 
 was the same acute observer that said of a self-sufficient 
 prating music-master — u He talks on all subjects at sight " 
 — which expressed the man at once by an allusion to his 
 profession. The coincidence was indeed perfect. Nothing 
 else could compare to the easy assurance with which this 
 gentleman would volunteer an explanation of things of 
 which he was most ignorant, but the nonchalance with 
 which a musician sits down to a harpsichord to play a 
 piece he has never seen before. My physiognomical friend 
 would not have hit on this mode of illustration without 
 knowing the profession of the subject of his criticism ; 
 but having this hint given him, it instantly suggested 
 itself to his " sure trailing." The manner of the speaker 
 was evident; and the association of the music-master 
 sitting down to play at sight, lurking in his mind, was 
 immediately called out by the strength of his impression 
 of the character. The feeling of character and the felicity 
 of invention in explaining it were nearly allied to each 
 other. The first was so wrought up and running over that 
 the transition to the last was very easy and unavoidable. 
 
52 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 When Mr. Kean was so much praised for the action of 
 Richard in his last struggle with his triumphant antagonist, 
 where he stands, after his sword is wrested from him, 
 with his hands stretched out, " as if his will could not be 
 disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair had a 
 withering power," he said that he borrowed it from seeing 
 the last efforts of Painter in his fight with Oliver. This 
 assuredly did not lessen the merit of it. Thus it ever is 
 with the man of real genius. He has the feeling of truth 
 already shrined in his own breast, and his eye is still bent 
 on Nature to see how she expresses herself. When we 
 thoroughly understand the subject, it is easy to translate 
 from one language into another. Raphael, in muffling up 
 the figure of Elymas the Sorcerer in his garments, appears 
 to have extended the idea of blindness even to his clothes. 
 Was this design ? Probably not ; but merely the feeling 
 of analogy thoughtlessly suggesting this device, which 
 being so suggested was retained and carried on, because it 
 flattered or fell in with the original feeling. The tide of 
 passion, when strong, overflows and gradually insinuates 
 itself into all nooks and corners of the mind. Invention 
 (of the best kind) I therefore do not think so distinct a 
 thing from feeling as some are apt to imagine. The 
 springs of pure feeling will rise and fill the moulds of 
 fancy that are fit to receive it. There are some striking 
 coincidences of colour in well-composed pictures, as in a 
 straggling weed in the foreground streaked with blue or 
 red to answer to a blue or red drapery, to the tone of the 
 flesh or an opening in the sky : — not that this was intended, 
 or done by rule (for then it would presently become 
 affected and ridiculous), but the eye being imbued with a 
 certain colour, repeats and varies it from a natural fiense 
 of harmony, a secret craving and appetite for beauty, 
 which in the same manner soothes and gratifies the eye of 
 taste, though the cause is not understood. Tact, finesse, 
 is nothing but the being completely aware of the feeling 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 53 
 
 belonging to certain situations, passions, &c, and the 
 being consequently sensible to their slightest indications 
 or movements in others. One of the most remarkable 
 instances of this sort of faculty is the following story, 
 told of Lord Shaftesbury, the grandfather of the author 
 of the Characteristics. He had been to dine with Lady 
 Clarendon and her daughter, who was at that time privately 
 married to the Duke of York (afterwards James II.), and 
 as he returned home with another nobleman who had ac- 
 companied him, he suddenly turned to him, and said, 
 " Depend upon it, the Duke has married Hyde's daughter." 
 His companion could not comprehend what he meant ; but 
 on explaining himself, he said, " Her mother behaved to 
 her with an attention and a marked respect that it is im- 
 possible to account for in any other way ; and I am sure 
 of it." His conjecture shortly afterwards proved to be 
 the truth. This was carrying the prophetic spirit of 
 common sense as far as it could go. 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 The same subject continued. 
 
 Genius or originality is, for the most part, some strong 
 quality in the mind, answering to and bringing out some new 
 and striking quality in nature. 
 
 Imagination is, more properly, the power of carrying on 
 a given feeling into other situations, which must be done 
 best according to the hold which the feeling itself has 
 taken of the mind. 1 In new and unknown combinations, 
 the impression must act by sympathy, and not by rule , 
 but there can be no sympathy where there is no passion, 
 
 1 I do not here speak of the figurative or fanciful exercise of the 
 imagination, which consists in finding out some striking object or 
 image to illustrate another. 
 
54 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 no original interest. The personal interest may in some 
 cases oppress and circumscribe the imaginative faculty, as 
 in the instance of Eousseau : but in general the strength 
 and consistency of the imagination will be in proportion 
 to the strength and depth of feeling ; and it is rarely that 
 a man even of lofty genius will be able to do more than 
 carry on his own feelings and character, or some promi- 
 nent and ruling passion, into fictitious and uncommon 
 situations. Milton has by allusion embodied a great part 
 of his political and personal history in the chief characters 
 and incidents of Paradise Lost. He has, no doub:, 
 wonderfully adapted and heightened them, but the ele- 
 ments are the same ; you trace the bias and opinions of 
 the man in the creations of the poet. Shakespear (almost 
 alone) seems to have been a man of genius, raised above 
 the definition of genius. "Born universal heir to all 
 humanity ," he was " as one, in suffering all who suffered 
 nothing ;" with a perfect sympathy with all things, yet 
 alike indifferent to all : who did not tamper with nature 
 or warp her to his own purposes ; who " knew all qualities 
 with a learned spirit," instead of judging of them by his 
 own predilections ; and was rather " a pipe for the Muse's 
 finger to play what stop she pleased," than anxious to set 
 up any character or pretensions of his own. His genius 
 consisted in the faculty of transforming himself at will 
 into whatever he chose : his originality was the power of 
 seeing every object from the exact point of view in which 
 others would see it. He was the Proteus of human 
 intellect. Genius in ordinary is a more obstinate and less 
 versatile thing. It is sufficiently exclusive and self- 
 willed, quaint and peculiar. It does some one thing by 
 virtue of doing nothing else : it excels in some one pursuit 
 by being blind to all excellence but its own. It is just 
 the reverse of the cameleon ; for it does not borrow, but 
 lends its colours to all about it : or like the glow-worm, 
 discloses a little circle of gorgeous light in the twilight of 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 55 
 
 obscurity, in the night of intellect that surrounds it. So 
 did Eembrandt. If ever there was a man of genius, he was 
 one, in the proper sense of the term. He lived in and 
 revealed to others a world of his own, and might be said 
 to have invented a new view of nature. He did not 
 discover things out of nature, in fiction or fairy land, or 
 make a voyage to the moon " to descry new lands, rivers, 
 or mountains in her spotty globe," but saw things in 
 nature that every one had missed before him, and gave 
 others eyes to see them with. This is the test and triumph 
 of originality, not to show us what has never been, and 
 what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, 
 but to point out to us what is before our eyes and under 
 our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, 
 for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined 
 grasp of mind to seize and retain it. Eembrandt's 
 conquests were not over the ideal, but the real. He did 
 not contrive a new story or character, but we nearly owe 
 to him a fifth part of painting, the knowledge of chiaro- 
 scuro — a distinct power and element in art and nature. 
 He had a steadiness, a firm keeping of mind and eye, that 
 first stood the shock of " fierce extremes " in light and 
 shade, or reconciled the greatest obscurity and the greatest 
 brilliancy into perfect harmony : and he therefore was the 
 first to hazard this appearance upon canvas, and give full 
 effect to what he saw and delighted in. He was led to 
 adopt this style of broad and startling contrast from its 
 congeniality to his own feelings : his mind grappled with 
 that which afforded the best exercise to its master-powers : 
 he was bold in act, because he was urged on by a strong 
 native impulse. Originality is then nothing but nature 
 and feeling working in the mind. A man does not affect 
 to be original : he is so, because he cannot help it, and 
 often without knowing it. This extraordinary artist 
 indeed might be said to have had a particular organ for 
 colour. His eye seemed to come in contact with it as a 
 
56 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 feeling, to lay hold of it as a substance, rather than to 
 contemplate it as a visual object. The texture of his 
 landscapes is "of the earth, earthy" — his clouds are 
 numid, heavy, slow ; his shadows are " darkness that may 
 be felt," a " palpable obscure ;" his lights are lumps of 
 liquid splendour ! There is something more in this than 
 can be accounted for from design or accident : Eembrandt 
 was not a man made up of two or three rules and directions 
 for acquiring genius. 
 
 I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory a 
 character of Mr. Wordsworth, though he too, like Eem- 
 brandt, has a faculty of making something out of nothing, 
 that is, out of himself, by the medium through which he 
 sees and with which he clothes tho barrenest subject. 
 Mr. Wordsworth is the last man to " look abroad into 
 universality," if that alone constituted genius : he looks 
 at home into himself, and is " content with riches fine- 
 less." He would in the other case be " poor as winter," 
 if he had nothing but general capacity to trust to. He is 
 the greatest, that is, the most original poet of the present 
 day, only because he is the greatest egotist. He is " self- 
 involved, not dark." He sits in the centre of his own 
 being, and there "enjoys bright day." He does not 
 waste a thought on others. Whatever does not relate 
 exclusively and wholly to himself, is foreign to his views. 
 He contemplates a whole-length figure of himself, he 
 looks along the unbroken line of his personal identity. 
 He thrusts aside all other objects, all other interests with 
 scorn and impatience, that he may repose on his own 
 being, that he may dig out the treasures of thought 
 contained in it, that he may unfold the precious stores of 
 a mind for ever brooding over itself. His genius is the 
 effect of his individual character. He stamps that 
 character, that deep individual interest, on whatever he 
 meets. The object is nothing but as it furnishes food for 
 internal meditation, for old associations. If there had 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 57 
 
 been no other being in the universe, Mr. Wordsworth's 
 poetry would have been just what it is. If there had 
 been neither love nor friendship, neither ambition nor 
 pleasure nor business in the world, the author of the 
 Lyrical Ballads need not have been greatly changed from 
 what he is — might still have " kept the noiseless tenour of 
 his way," retired in the sanctuary of his own heart, 
 hallowing the Sabbath of his own thoughts. With the 
 passions, the pursuits, and imaginations of other men he 
 does not profess to sympathise, but " finds tongues in the 
 trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and 
 good in everything." With a mind averse from outward 
 objects, but ever intent upon its own workings, he hangs a 
 weight of thought and feeling upon every trifling circum- 
 stance connected with his past history. The note of the 
 cuckoo sounds in his ear like the voice of other years ; the 
 daisy spreads its leaves in the rays of boyish delight, that 
 stream from his thoughtful eyes ; the rainbow lifts its 
 proud arch in heaven but to mark his progress from 
 infancy to manhood ; an old thorn is buried, bowed down 
 under the mass of associations he has wound about it ; 
 and to him, as he himself beautifully says, 
 
 " The meanest flow'r that blows can give 
 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 It is this power of habitual sentiment, or of transferring 
 the interest of our conscious existence to whatever gently 
 solicits attention, and is a link in the chain of association 
 without rousing our passions or hurting our pride, that is 
 the striking feature in Mr. Wordsworth's mind and poetry. 
 Others have left and shown this power before, as Wither 
 Burns, &c, but none have felt it so intensely and abso- 
 lutely as to lend to it the voice of inspiration, as to make 
 it the foundation of a new style and school in poetry, 
 His strength, as it so often happens, arises from the excess 
 of his weakness. But he has opened a new avenue to the 
 
58 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 human heart, has explored another secret haunt and nook 
 of nature, " sacred to verse, and sure of everlasting fame.'' 
 Compared with his lines, Lord Byron's stanzas are but 
 exaggerated common-place, and Walter Scott's poetry (not 
 his prose) old wives' fables. 1 There is no one in whom I 
 have been more disappointed than in the writer here 
 spoken of, nor with whom I am more disposed ob 
 certain points to quarrel : but the love of truth and 
 justice which obliges me to do this, will not suffer me t* 
 blench his merits. Do what he can, he cannot help beir$ 
 an original-minded man. His poetry is not servik 
 While the cuckoo returns in the spring, while the daisy 
 looks bright in the sun, while the rainbow lifts its head 
 above the storm — 
 
 " Yet I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 
 And all that thou hast done for me !" 
 
 Sir Joshua Eeynolds, in endeavouring to show that there 
 is no such thing as proper originality, a spirit emanating 
 from the mind of the artist and shining through his works, 
 has traced Raphael through a number of figures which ho 
 has borrowed from Masaccio and others. This is a 
 bad calculation. If Eaphael had only borrowed those 
 figures from others, would he, even in Sir Joshua's sense, 
 have been entitled to the praise of originality ? Plagiarism, 
 I presume, in so far as it is plagiarism, is not originality. 
 Salvator is considered by many as a great genius. He 
 was what they call an irregular genius. My notion oi 
 genius is not exactly the same as theirs. It has also been 
 made a question whether there is not more genius in 
 Rembrandt's Three Trees than in all Claude Lorraine's 
 landscapes ? I do not know how that may be ; but it was 
 enough for Claude to have been a perfect landscape 
 painter. 
 
 1 Mr. Wordsworth himself should not say this, and yet I am not 
 sure he would not. 
 
On Genius and Common n:nse. 59 
 
 Capacity is not the same thing as genius. Capacity 
 may be described to relate to the quantity of knowledge, 
 however acquired, — genius to its quality and the mode of 
 acquiring it. Capacity is power over given ideas or com- 
 binations of ideas ; genius is the power over those which 
 are not given, and for which no obvious or precise rule 
 can be laid down. Or capacity is power of any sort; 
 genius is power of a different sort from what has yet been 
 shown. A retentive memory, a clear understanding is 
 capacity, but it is not genius. The admirable Crichton 
 was a person of prodigious capacity ; but there is no proof 
 (that I know) that he had an atom of genius. His verses 
 that remain are dull and sterile. He could learn all that 
 was known of any subject : he could do anything if others 
 could show him the way to do it. This was very wonder- 
 ful : but that is all you can say of it. It requires a good 
 capacity to play well at chess : but, after all, it is a game 
 of skill, and not of genius. Know what you will of it, 
 the understanding still moves in certain tracks in which 
 others have trod it before, quicker or slower, with more or 
 less comprehension and presence of mind. The greatest 
 skill strikes out nothing for itself, from its own peculiar 
 resources ; the nature of the game is a thing determinate 
 and fixed : there is no royal or poetical road to check-mate 
 your adversary. There is no place for genius but in the 
 indefinite and unknown. The discovery of the binomial 
 theorem was an effort of genius; but there was none 
 shown in Jedediah Buxton's being able to multiply 
 9 figures by 9 in his head. If he could have multiplied 90 
 figures by 90 instead of 9, it would have been equally 
 useless toil and trouble. 1 He is a man of capacity who 
 
 1 The only good thing I ever heard come of this man's singular 
 faculty of memory was the following. A gentleman was mentioning 
 his having been sent up to London from the place where he lived to 
 see Garrick act. When he went back into the country, he was 
 asked what he thought of the player and the play. '• Oh !" he said, 
 " he did not know : he had only seen a little man strut about the 
 
60 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 possesses considerable intellectual riches : he is a man of 
 genius who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is 
 the seeing nature differently from others, and yet as it is 
 in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the 
 discovery of new and valuable truth. All the world do 
 not see the whole meaning of any object they have been 
 looking at. Habit blinds them to some things : short- 
 sightedness to others. Every mind is not a gauge and 
 measure of truth. Nature has her surface and her dark 
 recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It is only 
 minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that 
 can penetrate her shrine or unveil her Holy of Holies, It 
 is only those whom she has filled with her spirit that have 
 the boldness or the power to reveal her mysteries to 
 others. But nature has a thousand aspects, and one man 
 can only draw out one of them. Whoever does this is a 
 man of genius. One displays her force, another her 
 refinement ; one her power of harmony, another her sudden- 
 ness of contrast; one her beauty of form, another her 
 splendour of colour. Each does that for which he is best 
 fitted by his particular genius, that is to say, by some 
 quality of mind into which the quality of the object sinks 
 deepest, where it finds the most cordial welcome, is per- 
 ceived to its utmost extent, and where again it forces its 
 way out from the fulness with which it has taken posses- 
 sion of the mind of the student. The imagination gives 
 out what it has first absorbed by congeniality of temper- 
 ament, what it has attracted and moulded into itself by 
 
 stage, and repeat 7956 words." We all laughed at this, but a person 
 in one corner of the room, holding one hand to his forehead, and 
 seeming mightily delighted, called out, *' Ay, indeed ! And pray, 
 was he found to be correct ?" This was the supererogation of literal 
 matter-of-fact curiosity. Jedediah Buxton's counting the number 
 of words was idle enough ; but here was a fellow who wanted some 
 one to count them over again to see if he was correct. 
 "The force of dulness could no farther go !" 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 61 
 
 elective affinity, as the loadstone draws and impregnates 
 iron. A little originality is more esteemed and sought 
 for than the greatest acquired talent, because it throws a 
 new light upon things, and is peculiar to the individual. 
 The other is common ; and may be had for the asking, to 
 any amount. 
 
 The value of any work is to be judged of by the 
 quantity of originality contained in it. A very little of 
 this will go a great way. If Goldsmith had never 
 written anything but the two or three first chapters of the 
 Vicar of Wakefield, or the character of a Village School- 
 master, they would have stamped him a man of genius. 
 The Editors of Encyclopedias are not usually reckoned 
 the first literary characters of the age. The works, of 
 which they have the management, contain a great deal of 
 knowledge, like chests or warehouses, but the goods are 
 not their own. We should as soon think of admiring the 
 shelves of a library; but the shelves of a library are 
 useful and respectable. I was once applied to, in a delicate 
 emergency, to write an article on a difficult subject for an 
 Encyclopedia, 1 and was advised to take time and give it 
 a systematic and scientific form, to avail myself of all the 
 knowledge that was to be obtained on the subject, and 
 arrange it with clearness and method. I made answer 
 that as to the first, I had taken time to do all that I ever 
 pretended to do, as I had thought incessantly on different 
 matters for twenty years of my life; 2 that I had no 
 particular knowledge of the subject in question, and no 
 head for arrangement ; and that the utmost I could do ii 
 
 1 I apprehend that this paper was never undertaken. The articles 
 in the Encyclopedia Britannica on the Fine Arts and on the Elgin 
 Marbles were written later, and, besides, could hardly have been 
 described as "a difficult subject " in either case by the author. 
 Indeed, the former had been written in parcels in the Champion many 
 years before, and was something in the nature of a re*chauffee. — Ed. 
 
 2 Sir Joshua Reynolds being asked how long it had taken him to 
 do a certain picture, made answer, " All my life/' 
 
62 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 such a case would be, when a systematic and scientific 
 article was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to 
 insert a remark or illustration of my own (not to be found 
 in former Encyclopedias) or to suggest a better definition 
 than had been offered in the text. There are two sorts of 
 writing. The first is compilation ; and consists in collect- 
 ing and stating all that is already known of any question 
 in the best possible manner, for the benefit of the un- 
 informed reader. An author of this class is a very learned 
 amanuensis of other people's thoughts. The second sort 
 proceeds on an entirely different principle. Instead of 
 bringing down the account of knowledge to the point at 
 which it has already arrived, it professes to start from 
 that point on the strength of the writer's individual 
 reflections ; and supposing the reader in possession of 
 what is already known, supplies deficiencies, fills up 
 certain blanks, and quits the beaten road in search of 
 new tracts ef observation or sources of feeling. It is in 
 vain to object to this last style that it is disjointed, dis- 
 proportioned, and irregular. It is merely a set of additions 
 and corrections to other men's works, or to the common 
 stock of human knowledge, printed separately. You might 
 as well expect a continued chain of reasoning in the notes 
 to a book. It skips all the trite, intermediate, level 
 common-places of the subject, and only stops at the 
 difficult passages of the human mind, or touches on some 
 striking point that has been overlooked in previous 
 editions. A view of a subject, to be connected and 
 regular, cannot be all new. A writer will always be 
 liable to be charged either with paradox or common-place, 
 either with dulness or affectation. But we have no right 
 to demand from any one more than he pretends to. There 
 is indeed a medium in all things, but to unite opposite 
 excellencies is a task ordinarily too hard for mortality. 
 He who succeeds in what he aims at, or who takes the 
 lead in any one mode or path of excellence, may think 
 
On Genius and Common Sense. 63 
 
 himself very well off. It would not be fair to complain 
 of the style of an Encyclopedia as dull, as wanting volatile 
 salt ; nor of the style of an Essay because it is too light 
 and sparkling, because it is not a caput mortuum. So it 
 is rather an odd objection to a work that it is made up 
 entirely of " brilliant passages " — at least it is a fault that 
 can be found with few works, and the book might be par- 
 doned for its singularity. The censure might indeed seem 
 like adroit flattery, if it were not passed on an author 
 whom any objection is sufficient to render unpopular and 
 ridiculous. I grant it is best to unite solidity with show, 
 general information with particular ingenuity. This is 
 the pattern of a perfect style : but I myself do not pretend 
 to be a perfect writer. In fine, we do not banish light 
 French wines from our tables, or refuse to taste sparkling 
 Champagne when we can get it because it has not the 
 body of Old Port. Besides, I do not know that dulness is 
 strength, or that an observation is slight because it is 
 striking. Mediocrity, insipidity, want of character is the 
 great fault. 
 
 i " Mediocribus esse poet is 
 
 Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnx." 
 
 Neither is this privilege allowed to prose-writers in our 
 time any more than to poets formerly. 
 
 It is not then acuteness of organs or extent of capacity 
 that constitutes rare genius or produces the most exquisite 
 models of art, but an intense sympathy with some one 
 beauty or distinguishing characteristic in nature. Irrita- 
 bility alone, or the interest taken in certain things, may 
 supply the place of genius in weak and otherwise ordinary 
 minds. As there are certain instruments fitted to perform 
 certain kinds of labour, there are certain minds so framed 
 as to produce certain chef-d'ceuvres in art and literature, 
 which is surely the best use they can be put to. If a man 
 had all sorts of instruments in his shop and wanted one, 
 he would rather have that one than be supplied with a 
 
64 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 double set of all the others. If he had them twice over, 
 he could only do what he can do as it is, whereas without 
 that one he perhaps cannot finish any one work he has in 
 hand. So if a man can do one thing better than anybody 
 else, the value of this one thing is what he must stand or 
 fall by, and his being able to do a hundred other things 
 merely as well as anybody else would not alter the 
 sentence or add to his respectability ; on the contrary, his 
 being able to do so many other things well would probably 
 interfere with and incumber him in the execution of the 
 only thing that others cannot do as well as he, and so far 
 be a drawback and a disadvantage. More people, in fact, 
 fail from a multiplicity of talents and pretensions than 
 from an absolute poverty of resources. I have given 
 instances of this elsewhere. Perhaps Shakespear's tragedies 
 would in some respects have been better if he had never 
 written comedies at all; and in that case, his comedies 
 might well have been spared, though they must have cost 
 us some regret. Racine, it is said, might have rivalled 
 Moliere in comedy ; but he gave up the cultivation of his 
 comic talents to devote himself wholly to the tragic Muse. 
 If, as the French tell us, he in consequence attained to the 
 perfection of tragic composition, this was better than 
 writing comedies as well as Moliere and tragedies as 
 well as Crebillon. Yet I count those persons fools who 
 think it a pity Hogarth did not succeed better in serious 
 subjects. The division of labour is an excellent principle 
 in taste as well as in mechanics. Without this, I find 
 from Adam Smith, we could not have a pin made to the 
 degree of perfection it is. We do not, on any rational 
 scheme of criticism, inquire into the variety of a man's 
 excellences, or the number of his works, or his facility of 
 production. Venice Preserved is sufficient for Otway's 
 fame. I hate all those nonsensical stories about Lope de 
 Vega and his writing a play in a morning before break- 
 fast. He had time enough to do it after. If a man leaves 
 
Character of Cobbett. 65 
 
 behind him any work which is a model in its kind, we 
 have no right to ask whether he could do anything else, or 
 how he did it, or how long he was about it. All that 
 talent which is not necessary to the actual quantity of 
 excellence existing in the world, loses its object, is so 
 much waste talent or talent to let. I heard a sensible man 
 say he should like to do some one thing better than all the 
 rest of the world, and in everything else to be like all the 
 rest of the world. Why should a man do more than his 
 part ? The rest is vanity and vexation of spirit. We look 
 with jealous and grudging eyes at all those qualifications 
 which are not essential ; first, because they are superfluous, 
 and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial. 
 Why does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of 
 singing, dancing, fencing, &c. ? They say, " It is for his 
 benefit." It is not for his reputation. Garrick indeed 
 shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But he was first, not 
 second-rate in both. There is not a greater impertinence 
 than to ask, if a man is clever out of his profession. I 
 have heard of people trying to cross-examine Mrs. Siddons. 
 I would as soon try to entrap one of the Elgin Marbles 
 into an argument. Good nature and common sense are 
 required from all people ; but one proud distinction is 
 enough for any one individual to possess or to aspire to. 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 Character of Cobbett. 
 
 People have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as 
 they have of Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he him- 
 self is as impenetrable. One has no notion of him as 
 making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist ; his 
 style stuns his readers, and he "fillips the ear of the 
 public with a three-man beetle." He is too much for 
 any single newspaper antagonist ; " lays waste " a city 
 
66 Character of Cobbett. 
 
 orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the 
 government itself. He is a kind of fourth estate in the 
 politics of the country. He is not only unquestionably 
 the most powerful political writer of the present day, but 
 one of the best writers in the language. He speaks and 
 thinks plain, broad, downright English. He might be 
 said to have the clearness of Swift, the naturalness of 
 Defoe, and the picturesque satirical description of Mande- 
 ville ; if all such comparisons were not impertinent. 
 A really great and original writer is like nobody but 
 himself. In one sense, Sterne was not a wit, nor Shake- 
 spear a poet. It is easy to describe second-rate talents, 
 because they fall into a class and enlist under a standard : 
 but first-rate powers defy calculation or comparison, and 
 can be denned only by themselves. They are sui generis, 
 and make the class to which they belong. I have tried 
 half a dozen times to describe Burke's style without ever 
 succeeding ; — its severe extravagance ; its literal bold- 
 ness ; its matter-of-fact hyperboles; its running away 
 with a subject, and from it at the same time — but there 
 is no making it out, for there is no example of the same 
 thing anywhere else. We have no common measure to 
 refer to ; and his qualities contradict even themselves. 
 
 Cobbett is not so difficult. He has been compared to 
 Paine ; and so far it is true there are no two writers who 
 come more into juxta-position from the nature of their 
 subjects, from the internal resources on which they draw, 
 and from the popular effect of their writings and their 
 adaptation (though that is a bad word in the present case) 
 to the capacity of every reader. But still if we turn to a 
 volume of Paine's (his Common Sense or Eights of Man) 
 we are struck (not to say somewhat refreshed) by the 
 difference. Paine is a much more sententious writer than 
 Cobbett. You cannot open a page in any of his best and 
 earlier works without meeting with some maxim, gome 
 antithetical and memorable saying, which is a sort of 
 
Character of Cobbett. 67 
 
 starting-place for the argument, and the goal to which it 
 returns. There is not a single bon mot, a single sentence 
 in Cobbett that has ever been quoted again. If anything 
 is ever quoted from him, it is an epithet of abuse or a 
 nickname. He is an excellent hand at invention in that 
 way, and has " damnable iteration in him." What could 
 be better than his pestering Erskine year after year with 
 his second title of Baron Clackmannan? He is rather 
 too fond of the Sons and Daughters of Corruption. Paine 
 affected to reduce things to first principles, to announce 
 self-evident truths. Cobbett troubles himself about little 
 but the details and local circumstances. The first ap- 
 peared to have made up his mind beforehand to certain 
 opinions, and to try to find the most compendious and 
 pointed expressions for them : his successor appears to 
 have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor ever to 
 have thought on a question till he sits down to write 
 about it ; but then there seems no end of his matters of 
 fact and raw materials, which are brought out in all their 
 strength and sharpness from not having been squared or 
 frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory — he goes on 
 with his descriptions and illustrations as if he would 
 never come to a stop ; they have all the force of novelty 
 with all the familiarity of old acquaintance ; his know- 
 ledge grows out of the subject, and his style is that of a 
 man who has an absolute intuition of what he is talking 
 about, and never thinks of anything else. He deals in 
 premises and speaks to evidence — the coming to a con* 
 elusion and summing up (which was Paine's forte) lies 
 in a smaller compass. The one could not compose an 
 elementary treatise on politics to become a manual for 
 the popular reader ; nor could the other in all proba- 
 bility have kept up a weekly journal for the same number 
 of years with the same spirit, interest, and untired perse- 
 verance. Paine's writings are a sort of introduction to 
 political arithmetic on a new plan : Cobbett keeps a day- 
 
68 Character of Cobbett. 
 
 book, and makes an entry at full of all the occurrences 
 and troublesome questions that start up throughout the 
 year. Cobbett with vast industry, vast information, and 
 the utmost power of making what he says intelligible, 
 never seems to get at the beginning or come to the end of 
 any question : Paine in a few short sentences seems by 
 his peremptory manner " to clear it from all controversy, 
 past, present, and to come." Paine takes a bird's-eye 
 view of things. Cobbett sticks close to them, inspects 
 the component parts, and keeps fast hold of the smallest 
 advantages they afford him. Or, if I might here be in- 
 dulged in a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to enclose his 
 ideas in a fold for security and repose ; Cobbett lets his 
 pour out upon the plain like a flock of sheep to feed and 
 batten. Cobbett is a pleasanter writer for those to read 
 who do not agree with him ; for he is less dogmatical, 
 goes more into the common grounds of fact and argument 
 to which all appeal, is more desultory and various, and 
 appears less to be driving at a previous conclusion than 
 urged on by the force of present conviction. He is there- 
 fore tolerated by all parties, though he has made himself 
 by turns obnoxious to all ; and even those he abuses read 
 him. The Eeformers read him when he was a Tory, and 
 the Tories read him now that he is a Eeformer. He 
 must, I think, however, be caviare to the Whigs. 1 
 
 If he is less metaphysical and poetical than his cele- 
 brated prototype, he is more picturesque and dramatic. 
 His episodes, which are numerous as they are pertinent, 
 are striking, interesting, full of life and naivete, minute, 
 double measure running over, but never tedious — nunquam 
 sufflaminandus erat. He is one of those writers who can 
 never tire us, not even of himself ; and the reason is, he 
 is always " full of matter." He never runs to lees, never 
 gives us the vapid leavings of himself, is never " weary, 
 
 1 The late Lord Thurlow used to say that Cobbett was the only 
 writer that deserved the name of a political reusoner. 
 
Character of Cobbett. 69 
 
 stale, and unprofitable," but always setting out afresh on 
 bis journey, clearing away some old nuisance, and turning 
 up new mould. His egotism is delightful, for there is no 
 affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for lack of 
 something to write about, but because some circumstance 
 that has happened to himself is the best possible illustra- 
 tion of the subject, and he is not the man to shrink from 
 giving the best possible illustration of the subject from a 
 squeamish delicacy. He likes both himself and his 
 subject too well. He does not put himself before it, 
 and say — " Admire me first " — but places us in the same 
 situation with himself, and makes us see all that he does. 
 There is no blindman's-buff, no conscious hints, no 
 awkward ventriloquism, no testimonies of applause, no 
 abstract, senseless self-complacency, no smuggled admi- 
 ration of his own person by proxy : it is all plain and 
 above-board. He writes himself plain William Cobbett, 
 strips himself quite as naked as anybody would wish — in 
 a word, his egotism is full of individuality, and has room 
 for very little vanity in it. We feel delighted, rub our 
 hands, and draw our chair to the fire, when we come to a 
 passage of this sort : we know it will be something new 
 and good, manly and simple, not the same insipid story 
 of self over again. We sit down at table with the writer, 
 but it is to a course of rich viands, flesh, fish, and wild- 
 fowl, and not to a nominal entertainment, like that given 
 by the Barmecide in the Arabian Nights, who put off his 
 visitors with calling for a number of exquisite things 
 that never appeared, and with the honour of his 
 company. Mr. Cobbett is not a make-believe writer. 
 His worst enemy cannot say that of him : still less is he 
 a vulgar one. He must be a puny, common-place critic 
 indeed who thinks him so. How fine were the graphical 
 descriptions he sent us from America : what a Transat- 
 lantic flavour, what a native gusto, what a fine sauce 
 piquante of contempt they were seasoned with! If ho 
 
70 Character of Cdbbeti. 
 
 had sat down to look at himself in the glass, instead of 
 looking about him like Adam in Paradise, he would not 
 have got up these articles in so capital a style. What a 
 noble account of his first breakfast after his arrival in 
 America ! It might serve for a month. There is no 
 scene on the stage more amusing. How well he paints 
 the gold and scarlet plumage of the American birds, only 
 to lament more pathetically the want of the wild wood- 
 notes of his native land ! The groves of the Ohio that 
 had just fallen beneath the axe's stroke " live in his 
 description," and the turnips that he transplanted from 
 Botley " look green " in prose ! How well at another 
 time he describes the poor sheep that had got the tick 
 and had tumbled down in the agonies of death ! It is a 
 portrait in the manner of Bewick, with the strength, the 
 simplicity, and feeling of that great naturalist. What 
 havoc he makes, when he pleases, of the curls of Dr. Parr's 
 wig and of the Whig consistency of Mr. [Coleridge?]! 
 His Grammar, too, is as entertaining as a story-book. 
 He is too hard upon the style of others, and not enough 
 (sometimes) on his own. 
 
 As a political partisan, no one can stand against him. 
 With his brandished club, like Giant Despair in the 
 Pilgrim's Progress, he knocks out their brains ; and not 
 only no individual, but no corrupt system could hold 
 out against his powerful and repeated attacks, but with 
 the same weapon, swung round like a flail, that he levels 
 his antagonists, he lays his friends low, and puts his own 
 party hors de combat. This is a bad propensity, and a 
 worse principle in political tactics, though a common one. 
 If his blows were straightforward and steadily directed 
 to the same object, no unpopular minister could live 
 before him ; instead of which he lays about right and 
 left, impartially and remorselessly, makes a clear stage, 
 has all the ring to himself, and then runs out of it, just 
 when he should stand his ground. He throws his head 
 
Character of Cobhett. 71 
 
 into his adversary's stomach, and takes away from him 
 all inclination for the fight, hits fair or foul, strikes at 
 everything, and as you come up to his aid or stand ready 
 to pursue his advantage, trips up your heels or lays you 
 sprawling, and pummels you when down as much to his 
 heart's content as ever the Yanguesian carriers belaboured 
 Eosinante with their pack-staves. " He has the bach-trick 
 simply the best of any man in Illyria." He pays off both 
 scores of old friendship and new-acquired enmity in a 
 breath, in one perpetual volley, one raking fire of " arrowy 
 sleet " shot from his pen. However his own reputation 
 or the cause may suffer in consequence, he cares not one 
 pin about that, so that he disables all who oppose, or who 
 pretend, to help him. In fact, he cannot bear success of 
 any kind, not even of his own views or party ; and if any 
 principle were likely to become popular, would turn 
 round against it to show his power in shouldering 
 it on one side. In short, wherever power is, there is 
 he against it : he naturally butts at all obstacles, as 
 unicorns are attracted to oak-trees, and feels his own 
 strength only by resistance to the opinions and wishes of 
 the rest of the world. To sail with the stream, to agree 
 with the company, is not his humour. If he could bring- 
 about a Keform in Parliament, the odds are that he would 
 instantly fall foul of and try to mar his own handy-work ; 
 and he quarrels with his own creatures as soon as he has 
 written them into a little vogue — and a prison. I do not 
 think this is vanity or fickleness so much as a pugnacious 
 disposition, that must have an antagonistic power to con- 
 tend with, and only finds itself at ease in systematic 
 opposition. If it were not for this, the high towers and 
 rotten places of the world would fall before the batter- 
 ing-ram of his hard-headed reasoning: but if he once 
 found them tottering, he would apply his strength to prop 
 them up, and disappoint the expectations of his followers. 
 Ho cannot agree to anything established, nor to set up 
 
72 Character of Cobbett. 
 
 anything else in its stead. While it is established, he 
 presses hard against it, because it presses upon him, at 
 least in imagination. Let it crumble under his grasp, 
 and the motive to resistance is gone. He then requires 
 some other grievance to set his face against. His prin- 
 ciple is repulsion, his nature contradiction : he is made 
 up of mere antipathies, an Ishmaelite indeed without a 
 fellow. He is always playing at hunt-the-slipper in 
 politics. He turns round upon whoever is next him. 
 The way to wean him from any opinion, and make him 
 conceive an intolerable hatred against it, would be to 
 place somebody near him who was perpetually dinning it 
 in his ears. When he is in England, he does nothing 
 but abuse the Boroughmongers, and laugh at the whole 
 system : when he is in America, he grows impatient of 
 freedom and a republic. If he had stayed there a little 
 longer, he would have become a loyal and a loving 
 subject of his Majesty King George IV. He lampooned 
 the French Revolution when it was hailed as the dawn of 
 liberty by millions: by the time it was brought into 
 almost universal ill-odour by some means or other 
 (partly no doubt by himself), he had turned, with one or 
 two or three others, staunch Buonapartist. He is always 
 of the militant, not of the triumphant party : so far he 
 bears a gallant show of magnanimity ; but his gallantry 
 is hardly of the right stamp. It wants principle : for 
 though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victim 
 of self-will. He must pull down and pull in pieces : it 
 is not in his disposition to do otherwise. It is a pity ; 
 for with his great talents he might do great things, if he 
 would go right forward to any useful object, make 
 thorough stitch-work of any question, or join hand and 
 heart with any principle. He changes his opinions as he 
 does his friends, and much on the same account. He has 
 no comfort in fixed principles : as soon as anything is 
 settled in his own mind, he quarrels with it. lie has no 
 
Character of Cobhett. 73 
 
 satisfaction but in the chase after truth, runs a question 
 down, worries and kills it, then quits it like vermin, and 
 starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give 
 him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the 
 rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually 
 at fault. This he calls sport-royal. He thinks it as 
 good as cudgel-playing or single-stick, or anything else 
 that has life in it. He likes the cut and thrust, the 
 falls, bruises, and dry blows of an argument : as to 
 any good or useful results that may come of the amicable 
 settling of it, any one is welcome to them for him. 
 The amusement is over when the matter is once fairly 
 decided. 
 
 There is another point of view in which this may be 
 put. I might say that Mr. Cobbett is a very honest man 
 with a total want of principle, and I might explain this 
 paradox thus : — I mean that he is, I think, in downright 
 earnest in what he says, in the part he takes at the time ; 
 but in taking that part, he is led entirely by headstrong 
 obstinacy, caprice, novelty, pique, or personal motive of 
 some sort, and not by a stedfast regard for truth or 
 habitual anxiety for what is right uppermost in his mind. 
 He is not a fee'd, time-serving, shuffling advocate (no man 
 could write as he does who did not believe himself sincere) 
 — but his understanding is the dupe and slave of his 
 momentary, violent, and irritable humours. He does not 
 adopt an opinion " deliberately or for money, " yet his 
 conscience is at the mercy of the first provocation he 
 receives, of the first whim he takes in his head ; he sees 
 things through the medium of heat and passion, not with 
 reference to any general principles, and his whole system 
 of thinking is deranged by the first object that strikes his 
 fancy or sours his temper. — One cause of this phenomenon 
 is perhaps his want of a regular education. He is a self- 
 taught man, and has the faults as well as excellences of 
 that class of persons in their most striking and glaring 
 
74 Character of Cdbhett. 
 
 excess. It must be acknowledged that the Editor of the 
 Political Kegister (the twopenny trash, as it was called, 
 till a bill passed the House to raise the price to sixpence) 
 is not " the gentleman and scholar," though he has quali- 
 ties that, with a little better management, would be worth 
 (to the public) both those titles. For want of knowing 
 what has been discovered before him, he has not certain 
 general landmarks to refer to, or a general standard of 
 thought to apply to individual cases. He relies on his 
 own acuteness and the immediate evidence, without being 
 acquainted with the comparative anatomy or philosophical 
 structure of opinion. He does not view things on a large 
 scale or at the horizon (dim and airy enough perhaps) — 
 but as they affect himself, close, palpable, tangible. 
 Whatever he finds out is his own, and he only knows what 
 he finds out. He is in the constant hurry and fever of 
 gestation; his brain teems incessantly with some fresh 
 project. Every new light is the birth of a new system, 
 the dawn of a new world to him. He is continually out- 
 stripping and overreaching himself. The last opinion is 
 the only true one. He is wiser to-day than he was yester- 
 day. Why should he not be wiser to-morrow than he was 
 to-day? — Men of a learned education are not so sharp- 
 witted as clever men without it ; but they know the balance 
 of the human intellect better ; if they are more stupid, 
 they are more steady, and are less liable to be led astray 
 by their own sagacity and the overweening petulance of 
 hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall 
 in love with every meretricious extravagance at first sight, 
 or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because 
 they are new to the ways of this old world. They do not 
 seize upon it as a prize, but are safe from gross imposition 
 by being as wise and no wiser than those who went before 
 them. 
 
 Paine said on some occasion — " What I have written, I 
 have written " — as rendering any further declaration of his 
 
Character of Cohoett. 75 
 
 principles unnecessary. Not so Mr. Cobbett. What lie 
 has written is no rule to him what he is to write. He 
 learns something every day, and every week he takes the 
 field to maintain the opinions of the last six days against 
 friend or foe. I doubt whether this outrageous incon- 
 sistency, this headstrong fickleness, this understood want 
 of all rule and method, does not enable him to go on with 
 the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not 
 pledged to repeat himself. Every new Eegister is a kind 
 of new Prospectus. He blesses himself from all ties and 
 shackles on his understanding ; he has no mortgages on 
 his brain ; his notions are free and unincumbered. If he 
 was put in trammels, he might become a vile hack like so 
 many more. But he gives himself " ample scope and verge 
 enough." He takes both sides of a question, and main- 
 tains one as sturdily as the other. If nobody else can 
 argue against him, he is a very good match for himself. 
 He writes better in favour of Keform than anybody else ; 
 he used to write better against it. Wherever he is, there 
 is the tug of war, the weight of the argument, the strength 
 of abuse. He is not like a man in danger of being bed-rid 
 in his faculties — he tosses and tumbles about his unwieldy 
 bulk, and when he is tired of lying on one side, relieves 
 himself by turning on the other. His shifting his point 
 of view from time to time not merely adds variety and 
 greater compass to his topics (so that the Political Eegister 
 is an armoury and magazine for all the materials and 
 weapons of political warfare), but it gives a greater zest 
 and liveliness to his manner of treating them. Mr. Cob- 
 bett takes nothing for granted as what he has proved 
 before ; he does not write a book of reference. We see 
 his ideas in their first concoction, fermenting and over- 
 flowing with the ebullitions of a lively conception. We 
 look on at the actual process, and are put in immediate 
 possession of the grounds and materials on which he forms 
 his sanguine, unsettled conclusions. He does not give ua 
 
76 Character of Cobbett. 
 
 samples of reasoning, but the whole solid mass, refuse 
 and all. 
 
 " He pours out all as plain 
 
 As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne." 
 
 This is one cause of the clearness and force of his writings. 
 An argument does not stop to stagnate and muddle in his 
 brain, but passes at once to his paper. His ideas are 
 served up, like pancakes, hot and hot. Fresh theories 
 give him fresh courage. He is like a young and lusty- 
 bridegroom that divorces a favourite speculation every 
 morning, and marries a new one every night. He is not 
 wedded to his notions, not he. He has not one Mrs. Cob- 
 bett among all his opinions. He makes the most of the 
 last thought that has come in his way, seizes fast hold of 
 it, rumples it about in all directions with rough strong 
 hands, has his wicked will of it, takes a surfeit, and throws 
 it away. — Our author's changing his opinions for new ones 
 is not so wonderful; what is more remarkable is his 
 facility in forgetting his old ones. He does not pretend 
 to consistency (like Mr. Coleridge) ; he frankly disavows 
 all connexion with himself. He feels no personal respon- 
 sibility in this way, and cuts a friend or principle with 
 the same decided indifference that Antipholis of Ephesus 
 cuts iEgeon of Syracuse. It is a hollow thing. The only 
 time he ever grew romantic was in bringing over the relics 
 of Mr. Thomas Paine with him from America to go a pro- 
 gress with them through the disaffected districts. Scarce 
 had he landed in Liverpool when he left the bones of a 
 great man to shift for themselves ; and no sooner did he 
 arrive in London than he made a speech to disclaim all 
 participation in the political and theological sentiments of 
 his late idol, and to place the whole stock of his admira- 
 tion and enthusiasm towards him to the account of his 
 financial speculations, and of his having predicted the fate 
 of paper-money. If he had erected a little gold statue to 
 him, it might have proved the sincerity of this assertion • 
 
Character of Cobbett. 77 
 
 but to make a martyr and a patron saint of a man, and to 
 dig up " his canonised bones " in order to expose them as 
 objects of devotion to the rabble's gaze, asks something 
 that has more life and spirit in it, more mind and vivifying 
 soul, than has to do with any calculation of pounds, shil- 
 lings, and pence ! The fact is, he ratted from his own 
 project. He found the thing not so ripe as he had ex- 
 pected. His heart failed him ; his enthusiasm fled, and 
 he made his retractation. His admiration is short-lived ; 
 his contempt only is rooted, and his resentment lasting.- — 
 The above was only one instance of his building too much 
 on practical data. He has an ill habit of prophesying, 
 and goes on, though still deceived. The art of prophesy- 
 ing does not suit Mr. Cobbett 's style. He has a knack of 
 fixing names and times and places. According to him, 
 the Eeformed Parliament was to meet in March, 1818 — it 
 did not, and we heard no more of the matter. When his 
 predictions fail, he takes no farther notice of them, but 
 applies himself to new ones — like the country people who 
 turn to see what weather there is in the almanac for the 
 next week, though it has been out in its reckoning every 
 day of the last. 
 
 Mr. Cobbett is great in attack, not in defence ; he cannot 
 fight an up-hill battle. He will not bear the least punish- 
 ing. If any one turns upon him (which few people like 
 to do) he immediately turns tail. Like an overgrown 
 schoolboy, he is so used to have it all his own way, that 
 he cannot submit to anything like competition or a 
 struggle for the mastery ; he must lay on all the blows, 
 and take none. He is bullying and cowardly ; a Big Ben 
 in politics, who will fall upon others and crush them by 
 his weight, but is not prepared for resistance, and is soon 
 staggered by a few smart blows. Whenever he has been 
 set upon, he has slunk out of the controversy. The Edin- 
 burgh Review made (what is called) a dead set at him 
 some years ago, to which he only retorted by an eulogy 
 
78 On People with One Idea. 
 
 on the superior neatness of an English kitchen-garden to 
 a Scotch one. I remember going one day into a book- 
 seller's shop in Fleet Street to ask for the Eeview ; and 
 on my expressing my opinion to a young Scotchman, who 
 stood behind the counter, that Mr. Cobbett might hit as 
 hard in his reply, the North Briton said with some alarm 
 — " But you don't think, Sir, Mr. Cobbett will be able to 
 injure the Scottish nation ?" I said I could not speak to 
 that point, but I thought he was very well able to defend 
 himself. He however did not, but has borne a grudge to 
 the Edinburgh Eeview ever since, which he hates worse 
 than the Quarterly. I cannot say I do. 1 
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 On People with One Idea. 
 
 There are people who have but one idea : at least, if they 
 have more, they keep it a secret, for they never talk but 
 of one subject. 
 
 There is Major Cartwright : he has but one idea or 
 subject of discourse, Parliamentary Eeform. Now Parlia- 
 mentary Eeform is (as far as I know) a very good thing, 
 
 1 Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time 
 I ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man — easy of access, 
 affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and 
 unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not very 
 qualified. His figure is tall and portly. He has a good sensible 
 face — rather full, with little grey eyes, a hord, square forehead, a 
 ruddy complexion, with hair grey or powdered ; and had on a scarlet 
 broad-cloth waistcoat with the flaps of the pockets hanging down, 
 as was the custom for gentlemen-farmers in the last century, or as 
 we see it in the pictures of Members ol Parliament in the reign of 
 George I. I certainly did not think less favourably of him *ol 
 seeing him. 
 
On People with One Idea. 79 
 
 a very good idea, and a very good subject to talk about ; 
 but why should it be the only one ? To hear the worthy 
 and gallant Major resume his favourite topic, is like law- 
 business, or a person who has a suit in Chancery going on. 
 Nothing can be attended to, nothing can be talked of but 
 that. Now it is getting on, now again it is standing still ; 
 at one time the Master has promised to pass judgment by 
 a certain day, at another he has put it off again and called 
 for more papers, and both are equally reasons for speaking 
 of it. Like the piece of packthread in the barrister's 
 hands, he turns and twists it all ways, and cannot proceed 
 a step without it. Some school-boys cannot read but in 
 their own book : and the man of one idea cannot converse 
 out of his own subject. Conversation it is not ; but a sort 
 of recital of the preamble of a bill, or a collection of grave 
 arguments for a man's being of opinion with himself. It 
 would be well if there was anything of character, of 
 eccentricity in all this ; but that is not the case. It is a 
 political homily personified, a walking common-place we 
 have to encounter and listen to. It is just as if a man was 
 to insist on your hearing him go through the fifth chapter 
 of the Book of Judges every time you meet, or like the 
 story of the Cosmogony in the Vicar of Wakefield. It 
 is a tune played on a barrel-organ. It is a common 
 vehicle of discourse into which they get and are set down 
 when they please, without any pains or trouble to them- 
 selves. Neither is it professional pedantry or trading 
 quackery : it has no excuse. The man has no more to do 
 with the question which he saddles on all his hearers than 
 you have. This is what makes the matter hopeless. If a 
 farmer talks to you about his pigs or his poultry, or a 
 physician about his patients, or a lawyer about his briefs, 
 or a merchant about stock, or an author about himself, 
 you know how to account for this, it is a common infirmity, 
 you have a laugh at his expense, and there is no more to 
 be said. But here is a man who goes out of his way to 
 
80 On People with One Idea. 
 
 be absurd, and is troublesome by a romantic effort of 
 generosity. You cannot say to him, "All this may be 
 interesting to you, but I have no concern in it :" you 
 cannot put him off in that way. He retorts the Latin 
 adage upon you — Nihil humani a me alienum puto. He has 
 got possession of a subject which is of universal and 
 paramount interest (not " a fee-grief, due to some single 
 breast ") — and on that plea may hold you by the button as 
 long as he chooses. His delight is to harangue on what 
 nowise regards himself : how then can you refuse to listen 
 to what as little amuses you ? Time and tide wait for no 
 man. The business of the state admits of no delay. The 
 question of Universal Suffrage and Annual Parliaments 
 stands first on the order of the day — takes precedence in 
 its own right of every other question. Any other topic, 
 grave or gay, is looked upon in the light of impertinence, 
 and sent to Coventry. Business is an interruption; 
 pleasure a digression from it. It is the question before 
 every company where the Major comes, which immediately 
 resolves itself into a committee of the whole world upon 
 it, is carried on by means of a perpetual virtual adjourn- 
 ment, and it is presumed that no other is entertained while 
 this is pending — a determination which gives its per- 
 severing advocate a fair prospect of expatiating on it to 
 his dying day. As Cicero says of study, it follows him 
 into the country, it stays with him at home : it sits with 
 him at breakfast, and goes out with him to dinner. It is 
 like a part of his dress, of the costume of his person, with- 
 out which he would be at a loss what to do. If he meets 
 you in the street, he accosts you with it as a form of 
 salutation : if you see him at his own house, it is supposed 
 you come upon that. If you happen to remark, " It is a 
 fine day, or the town is full," it is considered as a 
 temporary compromise of the question ; you are suspected 
 of not going the whole length of the principle. As Sancho, 
 when reprimanded for mentioning his homely favourite in 
 
On People with One Idea. 81 
 
 the Duke's kitchen, defended himself by saying — " There 
 I thought of Dapple, and there I spoke of him " — so the 
 true stickler for Reform neglects no opportunity of intro- 
 ducing the subject wherever he is. Place its veteran 
 champion under the frozen north, and he will celebrate 
 sweet smiling Reform : place him under the mid-day 
 Afric suns, and he will talk of nothing but Reform — 
 Reform so sweetly smiling and so sweetly promising for 
 the last forty years — 
 
 " Duloe ridentem Lalagen, 
 Dulce loquentem I" 
 
 A topic of this sort of which the person himself may be 
 considered as almost sole proprietor and patentee is an 
 estate for life, free from all incumbrance of wit, thought, 
 or study, you live upon it as a settled income ; and others 
 might as well think to eject you out of a capital freehold 
 house and estate as think to drive you out of it into the 
 wide world of common sense and argument. Every mans 
 house is his castle ; and every man's common-place is his 
 stronghold, from which he looks out and smiles at the 
 dust and heat of controversy, raised by a number of 
 frivolous and vexatious questions — " Rings the world with 
 the vain stir I" A cure for this and every other evil would 
 be a Parliamentary Reform ; and so we return in a per- 
 petual circle to the point from which we set out. Is not 
 this a species of sober madness more provoking than the 
 real ? Has not the theoretical enthusiast his mind as 
 much warped, as much enslaved by one idea as the acknow- 
 ledged lunatic, only that the former has no lucid intervals ? 
 If you see a visionary of this class going along the street, 
 you can tell as well what he is thinking of and will say 
 next as the man that fancies himself a tea-pot or the Czar 
 of Muscovy. The one is as inaccessible to reason as the 
 other : if the one raves, the other dotes ! 
 
 There are some who fancy the Corn Bill the root of all 
 
82 On People with One Idea. 
 
 evil, and others who trace all the miseries of life to the 
 practice of muffling up children in night-clothes when 
 they sleep or travel. They will declaim by the hour 
 together on the first, and argue themselves black in the 
 face on the last. It is in vain that you give up the point. 
 They persist in the debate, and begin again — " But don't 
 you see — ?" These sort of partial obliquities, as they are 
 more entertaining and original, are also by their nature 
 intermittent. They hold a man but for a season. He 
 may have one a year or every two years; and though, 
 while he is in the heat of any new discovery, he will let 
 you hear of nothing else, he varies from himself, and is 
 amusing undesignedly. He is not like the chimes at 
 midnight. 
 
 People of the character here spoken of, that is, who 
 tease you to death with some one idea, generally differ in 
 their favourite notion from the rest of the world; and 
 indeed it is the love of distinction which is mostly at the 
 bottom of this peculiarity. Thus one person is remarkable 
 for living on a vegetable diet, and never fails to entertain 
 you all dinner-time with an invective against animal food. 
 One of this self-denying class, who adds to the primitive 
 simplicity of this sort of food the recommendation of 
 having it in a raw state, lamenting the death of a patient 
 whom he had augured to be in a good way as a convert to 
 his system, at last accounted for his disappointment in a 
 whisper — "But she ate meat privately, depend upon it." 
 It is not pleasant, though it is what one submits to 
 willingly from some people, to be asked every time you 
 meet, whether you have quite left off drinking wine, and 
 to be complimented or condoled with on your looks accord- 
 ing as you answer in the negative or affirmative. Aber- 
 nethy thinks his pill an infallible cure for all disorders. 
 A person once complaining to his physician that he 
 thought his mode of treatment had not answered, he 
 assured him it was the best in the world, — " and as a 
 
On People with One Idea. 83 
 
 proof of it," says lie, " I have had one gentleman, a 
 patient with your disorder, under the same regimen for 
 the last sixteen years!" — I have known persons whose 
 minds were entirely taken up at all times and on all 
 occasions with such questions as the Abolition of the 
 Slave-trade, the Eestoration of the Jews, or the progress 
 of Unitarianism. I myself at one period took a pretty 
 strong turn to inveighing against the doctrine of Divine 
 Eight, and am not yet cured of my prejudice on that 
 subject. How many projectors have gone mad in good 
 earnest from incessantly harping on one idea, the discovery 
 of the philosopher's stone, the finding out the longitude, 
 or paying off the national debt ! The disorder at length 
 comes to a fatal crisis ; but long before this, and while 
 they were walking about and talking as usual, the derange- 
 ment of the fancy, the loss of all voluntary power to 
 control or alienate their ideas from the single subject that 
 occupied them, was gradually taking place, and overturning 
 the fabric of the understanding by wrenching it all on one 
 side. Alderman Wood has, 1 should suppose, talked of 
 nothing but the Queen in all companies for the last six 
 months. Happy Alderman Wood! 1 Some persons have 
 got a definition of the verb, others a system of short-hand, 
 others a cure for typhus fever, others a method for prevent- 
 ing the counterfeiting of bank-notes, which they think the 
 best possible, and indeed the only one. Others insist 
 there have been only three great men in the world, leaving 
 you to add a fourth. A man who has been in Germany 
 will sometimes talk of nothing but what is German : a 
 Scotchman always leads the discourse to his own country. 
 Some descant on the Kantean philosophy. There is a 
 conceited fellow about town who talks always and every- 
 where on this subject. He wears the Categories round his 
 neck like a pearl-chain : he plays off the names of the 
 
 1 The father of the present Lord Chancellor Hatherley (late Sir 
 Page Wood>— Ed. 
 
84 On People with One Idea. 
 
 primary and transcendental qualities like rings on his 
 lingers. He talks of the Kantean system while he dances ; 
 he talks of it while he dines, he talks of it to his children, 
 to his apprentices, to his customers. He called on me to 
 convince me of it, and said I was only prevented from 
 becoming a complete convert by one or two prejudices. 
 He knows no more about it than a pikestaff. Why then 
 does he make so much ridiculous fuss about it ? It is not 
 that he has got this one idea in his head, but that he has 
 got no other. A dunce may talk on the subject of the 
 Kantean philosophy with great impunity : if he opened his 
 lips on any other, he might be found out. A French lady, 
 who had married an Englishman who said little, excused 
 him by saying — " He is always thinking of Locke and 
 Newton." This is one way of passing muster by follow- 
 ing in the suite of great names !— A friend of mine, whom 
 I met one day in the street, accosted me with more than 
 usual vivacity, and said, "Well, we're selling, we're 
 selling !" I thought he meant a house. " No," he said, 
 "haven't you seen the advertisement in the newspapers? 
 I mean five -and- twenty copies of the Essay." This work, 
 a comely, capacious quarto on the most abstruse meta- 
 physics, had occupied his sole thoughts for several years, 
 and he concluded that I must be thinking of what he was. 
 I believe, however, I may say I am nearly the only person 
 that ever read, certainly that ever pretended to understand 
 it. It is an original and most ingenious work, nearly as 
 incomprehensible as it is original, and as quaint as it is 
 ingenious. If the author is taken up with the ideas in his 
 own head and no others, he has a right : for he has ideas 
 there that are to be met with nowhere else, and which 
 occasionally would not disgrace a Berkeley. A dextrous 
 plagiarist might get himself an immense reputation by 
 putting them in a popular dress. Oh ! how little do they 
 know, who have never done anything but repeat after 
 others by rote, the pangs, the labour, the yearnings and 
 
On People with One Idea. 85 
 
 misgivings of mind it costs, to get at the germ of an 
 original idea — to dig it out of the hidden recesses of 
 thought and nature, and bring it half-ashamed, struggling, 
 and deformed into the day — to give words and intelligible 
 symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed 
 before ! It is as if the dumb should speak for the first 
 time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning, 
 through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that 
 some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such 
 store of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their 
 art to this writer. If he, " poor, unfledged " in this 
 respect, " who has scarce winged from view o' th' nest," 
 could find a language for his ideas, truth would find a 
 language for some of her secrets. Mr. Fearn 1 was buried 
 in the woods of Indostan. In his leisure from business 
 and from tiger-shooting, he took it into his head to look 
 into his own mind. A whim or two, an odd fancy, like a 
 film before the eye, now and then crossed it : it struck 
 him as something curious, but the impression at first dis- 
 appeared like breath upon glass. He thought no more of 
 it; yet still the same conscious feelings returned, and 
 what at first was chance or instinct, became a habit. 
 Several notions had taken possession of his brain relating 
 to mental processes which he had never heard alluded to 
 in conversation, but not being well versed in such matters, 
 he did not know whether they were to be found in learned 
 authors or not. He took a journey to the capital of the 
 Peninsula on purpose, bought Locke, Eeid, Stewart, and 
 Berkeley, whom he consulted with eager curiosity when 
 he got home, but did not find what he looked for. He 
 set to work himself ; and in a few weeks, sketched out a 
 
 1 The well-known author of Anti-Tooke (an attempted refutation 
 of the Diversions of Purley), 1824, and of the First Lines of the 
 Human Mind, published in 1820 ; but the work immediately referred 
 to was his able Essay on Consciousness , or a Series of Evidences of a 
 Didimt Mind, 1812.— En. 
 
86 On People with One Idea. 
 
 rough draught of his thoughts and observations on bamboo- 
 paper. The eagerness of his new pursuit, together with 
 the diseases of the climate, proved too much for his con- 
 stitution, and he was forced to return to this country. 
 He put his metaphysics, his bamboo manuscript, into the 
 boat with him, and as he floated down the Ganges, said to 
 himself, " If I live, this will live : if I die, it will not be 
 heard of." What is fame to this feeling ? The babbling 
 of an idiot ! He brought the work home with him, and 
 twice had it stereotyped. The first sketch he allowed 
 was obscure, but the improved copy he thought could not 
 fail to strike. It did not succeed. The world, as Gold- 
 smith said of himself, made a point of taking no notice of 
 it. Ever since he has had nothing but disappointment 
 and vexation — the greatest and most heart-breaking of all 
 others — that of not being able to make yourself understood. 
 Mr. Feam tells me there is a sensible writer in the 
 Monthly Keview who sees the thing in its proper light, 
 and says so. But I have heard of no other instance. 
 There are, notwithstanding, ideas in this work, neglected 
 and ill-treated as it has been, that lead to more curious 
 and subtle speculations on some of the most disputed and 
 difficult points of the philosophy of the human mind (such 
 as relation, abstraction, &c.) than have been thrown out in 
 any work for the last sixty years, I mean since Hume ; 
 for since his time there has been no metaphysician in this 
 country worth the name. Yet his Treatise on Human 
 Nature, he tells us, " fell still-born from the press." So 
 it is that knowledge works its way, and reputation lingers 
 far behind it. But truth is better than opinion, I maintain 
 it ; and as to the two stereotyped and unsold editions of 
 the Essay on Consciousness, I say, Honi soit qui mat y 
 pense! 1 — My Uncle Toby had one idea in his head, that 
 
 1 Quarto poetry, as well as quarto metaphysics, does not always 
 xelL Going one day into a shop in Paternoster-row to see for some 
 
On People with One Idea. 87 
 
 of his bowling-green, and another, that of the Widow 
 Wadman. Oh, spare them both ! I will only add one 
 more anecdote in illustration of this theory of the mind's 
 being occupied with one idea, which is most frequently of 
 a man's self. A celebrated lyrical writer 1 happened to 
 drop into a small party where they had just got the novel 
 of Kob Boy, by the author of Waverley. The motto in 
 the title-page was taken from a poem of his. This was a 
 hint sufficient, a word to the wise. He instantly went to 
 the book- shelf in the next room, took down the volume of 
 his own poems, read the whole of that in question aloud 
 with manifest complacency, replaced it on the shelf, and 
 walked away, taking no more notice of Kob Eoy than if 
 there had been no such person, nor of the new novel than 
 if it had not been written by its renowned author. There 
 was no reciprocity in this. But the writer in question 
 does not admit of any merit second to his own. 2 
 
 Mr. Owen is a man remarkable for one idea. It is that 
 of himself and the Lanark cotton-mills. He carries this 
 idea backwards and forwards with him from Glasgow to 
 London, without allowing anything for attrition, and 
 expects to find it in the same state of purity and perfec- 
 
 lines in Mr. Wordsworth's Excursion to interlard some prose with, 
 I applied to the constituted authorities, and asked if I could look at 
 a copy of the Excursion ? The answer was — " Into which county, 
 Sir?" 
 
 1 Wordsworth, I suppose. — Ed. 
 
 2 These fantastic poets are like a foolish ringer at Plymouth that 
 Northcote tells the story of. He was proud of his ringing, and the 
 boys who made a jest of his foible used to get him in the belfry, and 
 ask him, " Well now, John, how many good ringers are there in 
 Plymouth ?" " Two," he would say, without any hesitation. * Ay, 
 indeed ! and who are they ?" — " Why, first, there's myself, that a 
 
 one ; and — and" " Well, and who's the other i" — " Why, there's, 
 
 there's Ecod, I can't think of any other but myself." Talk we 
 
 of one Master Launcelot. The story is of ringers : it will do for any 
 vain, shallow, self-satisfied egotist of them all. 
 
88 On People with One Idea. 
 
 tion in the latter place as at the former. He acquires a 
 wonderful velocity and impenetrability in his undaunted 
 transit. Eesistance to him is vain, while the whirling 
 motion of the mail-coach remains in his head. 
 
 "Nor Alps nor Apennines can keep him out, 
 Nor fortified redoubt.*' 
 
 He even got possession, in the suddenness of his onset, of 
 the steam-engine of the Times Newspaper, and struck off 
 ten thousand woodcuts of the Projected Villages, which 
 afforded an ocular demonstration to all who saw them of 
 the practicability of Mr. Owen's whole scheme. He 
 comes into a room with one of these documents in his 
 hand, with the air of a schoolmaster and a quack doctor 
 mixed, asks very kindly how you do, and on hearing you 
 are still in an indifferent state of health owing to bad 
 digestion, instantly turns round, and observes, that " All 
 that will be remedied in his plan ; that indeed he thinks 
 too much attention has been paid to the mind, and not 
 enough to the body; that in his system, which he has 
 now perfected and which will shortly be generally adopted, 
 he has provided effectually for both; that he has been 
 long of opinion that the mind depends altogether on the 
 physical organization, and where the latter is neglected 
 or disordered, the former must languish and want its due 
 vigour ; that exercise is therefore a part of his system, 
 with full liberty to develop every faculty of mind and 
 body ; that two objections had been made to his New 
 View of Society, viz., its want of relaxation from labour, 
 and its want of variety ; but the first of these, the too 
 great restraint, he trusted he had already answered, for 
 where the powers of mind and body were freely exercised 
 and brought out, surely liberty must be allowed to exist 
 in the highest degree ; and as to the second, the monotony 
 which would be produced by a regular and general plan 
 of co-operation, he conceived he had proved in his " New 
 
On People with One Idea. 89 
 
 View" and "Addresses to the higher Classes;" that tho 
 cc -operation he had recommended was necessarily con- 
 ducive to the most extensive improvement of the ideas and 
 faculties, and where this was the case, there must be the 
 greatest possible variety instead of a want of it." And 
 having said this, this expert and sweeping orator takes up 
 his hat and walks down stairs after reading his lecture of 
 truisms like a playbill or an apothecary's advertisement ; 
 and should you stop him at the door to say by way of 
 putting in a word in common, that Mr. Southey seems 
 somewhat favourable to his plan in his late Letter to 
 Mr. William Smith, he looks at you with a smile of pity 
 at the futility of all opposition and the idleness of all 
 encouragement. People who thus swell out some vapid 
 scheme of their own into undue importance seem to me 
 to labour under water in the head — to exhibit a huge 
 hydrocephalus ! They may be very worthy people for all 
 that, but they are bad companions and very indifferent 
 reasoners. Tom Moore says of some one somewhere, 
 " That he puts his hand in his breeches pocket like a 
 crocodile." The phrase is hieroglyphical ; but Mr. Owen 
 and others might be said to put their foot in the question 
 of social improvement and reform much in the same un- 
 accountable manner. 
 
 I hate to be surfeited with anything, however sweet. 
 I do not want to be always tied to the same question, as 
 if there were no other in the world. I like a mind more 
 Catholic. 
 
 u I love to talk with mariners, 
 That come from a far countree." 
 
 I am not for " a collusion " but " an exchange " of ideas. 
 It is well to hear what other people have to say on a 
 number of subjects. I do not wish to be always respiring 
 the same confined atmosphere, but to vary the scene, and 
 get a little relief and fresh air out of doors. Do all we 
 can to shake it off, there is always enough pedantry, 
 
90 On People with One Idea. 
 
 egotism, and self-conceit left lurking behind; we need 
 not seal ourselves up hermetically in these precious 
 qualities ; so as to think of nothing but our own wonderful 
 discoveries, and hear nothing but the sound of our own 
 voice. Scholars, like princes, may learn something by 
 being incognito. Yet we see those who cannot go into a 
 bookseller's shop, or bear to be five minutes in a stage- 
 coach, without letting you know who they are. They 
 carry their reputation about with them as the snail does 
 its shell, and sit under its canopy, like the lady in the 
 lobster. I cannot understand this at all. What is the 
 use of a man's always revolving round his own little 
 circle ? He must, one should think, be tired of it himself, 
 as well as tire other people. A well-known writer says 
 with much boldness, both in the thought and expression, 
 that " a Lord is imprisoned in the Bastille of a name, and 
 cannot enlarge himself into man ;" and I have known men 
 of genius in the same predicament. Why must a man be 
 for ever mouthing out his own poetry, comparing himself 
 with Milton, passage by passage, and weighing every line 
 in a balance of posthumous fame which he holds in his 
 own hands ? It argues a want of imagination as well as 
 common sense. Has he no ideas but what he has put into 
 verse ; or none in common with his hearers ? Why should 
 he think it the only scholar-like thing, the only " virtue 
 extant " to see the merit of his writings, and that " men 
 were brutes without them?" Why should he bear a 
 grudge to all art, to all beauty, to all wisdom that does 
 not spring from his own brain ? Or why should he 
 fondly imagine that there is but one fine thing in the 
 world, namely poetry, and that he is the only poet in it ? 
 It will never do. Poetry is a very fine thing ; but there 
 are other things besides it. Everything must have its 
 turn. Does a wise man think to enlarge his comprehen- 
 sion by turning his eyes only on himself, or hope to con- 
 ciliate the admiration of others by scouting, proscribing, 
 
On People with One Idea. 91 
 
 and loathing all that they delight in ? He must either 
 have a disproportionate idea of himself, or be ignorant of 
 the world in which he lives. It is quite enough to have 
 one class of people born to think the universe made for 
 them ! — It seems also to argue a want of repose, of con- 
 fidence, and firm faith in a man's real pretensions to be 
 always dragging them forward into the foreground, as if 
 the proverb held here — Out of sight out of mind. Does 
 he, for instance, conceive that no one would ever think of 
 his poetry, unless he forced it upon them by repeating it 
 himself? Does he believe all competition, all allowance 
 of another's merit fatal to him ? Must he, like Moody in 
 the Country Girl, lock up the faculties of his admirers in 
 ignorance of all other fine things, painting, music, the 
 antique, lest they should play truant to him ? Methinks 
 such a proceeding implies no good opinion of his own 
 genius or their taste : — it is deficient in dignity and in 
 decorum. Surely if any one is convinced of the reality of 
 an acquisition, he can bear not to have it spoken of every 
 minute. If he knows he has an undoubted superiority in 
 any respect, he will not be uneasy bacause every one he 
 meets is not in the secret, nor staggered by the report of 
 rival excellence. One of the first mathematicians and 
 classical scholars of the day was mentioning it as a com- 
 pliment to himself that a cousin of his, a girl from school, 
 had said of him — M You know [Manning] is a very plain 
 good sort of a young man, but he is not anything at all 
 out of the common." Leigh Hunt once said to me — " I 
 wonder I never heard you speak upon this subject before, 
 which you seem to have studied a good deal." I answered, 
 " Why, we were not reduced to that, that I know 
 
 of!" 
 
 There are persons who, without being chargeable with 
 the vice here spoken of, yet " stand accountant for as great 
 a sin ;" though not dull and monotonous, they are vivacious 
 mannerists in their conversation, and excessive egotists. 
 
92 On People with One Idea. 
 
 Though they run over a thousand subjects in mere gaiety 
 of heart, their delight still flows from one idea, namely, 
 themselves. Open the book in what page you will, there 
 is a frontispiece of themselves staring you in the face. 
 They are a sort of Jacks o' the Green, with a sprig of 
 laurel, a little tinsel, and a little smut, but still playing 
 antics and keeping in incessant motion, to attract attention 
 and extort your pittance of approbation. Whether they 
 talk of the town or the country, poetry or politics, it 
 comes to much the same thing. If they talk to you of 
 the town, its diversions, " its palaces, its ladies, and its 
 streets," they are the delight, the grace, and ornament of 
 it. If they are describing the charms of the country, 
 they give no account of any individual spot or object or 
 source of pleasure but the circumstance of their being 
 there. " With them conversing, we forget all place, all 
 seasons, and their change." They perhaps pluck a leaf 
 or a flower, patronize it, and hand it you to admire, but 
 select no one feature of beauty or grandeur to dispute the 
 palm of perfection with their own persons. Their rural 
 descriptions are mere landscape backgrounds with their 
 own portraits in an engaging attitude in front. They are 
 not observing or enjoying the scene, but doing the honours 
 as masters of the ceremonies to nature, and arbiters of 
 elegance to all humanity. If they tell a love-tale of 
 enamoured princesses, it is plain they fancy themselves 
 the hero of the piece. If they discuss poetry, their 
 encomiums still turn on something genial and unsophisti- 
 cated, meaning their own style ; if they enter into politics, 
 it is understood that a hint from them to the potentates of 
 Europe is sufficient. In short, as a lover (talk of what 
 you will) brings in his mistress at every turn, so these 
 persons contrive to divert your attention to the same 
 darling object — they are, in fact, in love with themselves, 
 and like lovers, should be left to keep their own company. 
 
On the Ignorance of the Learned. 93 
 
 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 On the Ignorance of the Learned. 
 
 • For the more languages a man can speak, 
 His talent has but sprung the greater leak : 
 And, for the industry he has spent upon't, 
 Must full as much some other way discount. 
 The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac, 
 Do, like their letters, set men's reason back, 
 And turn their wits that strive to understand it 
 (Like those that write the characters) left-handed. 
 Yet he that is but able to express 
 No sense at all in several languages, 
 Will pass for learneder than he that's known 
 To speak the strongest reason in his own." 
 
 BUTLEB. 
 
 The description of persons who have the fewest ideas of 
 all others are mere authors and readers. It is better to 
 be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do 
 nothing else. A lounger who is ordinarily seen with a 
 book in his hand, is (we may be almost sure) equally 
 without the power or inclination to attend either to what 
 passes around him, or in his own mind. Such a one may 
 be said to carry his understanding about with him in his 
 pocket, or to leave it at home on his library shelves. He 
 is afraid of venturing on any train of reasoning, or of 
 striking out any observation that is not mechanically 
 suggested to him by passing his eyes over certain legible 
 characters ; shrinks from the fatigue of thought, which, 
 for want of practice, becomes insupportable to him ; and 
 sits down contented with an endless wearisome succession 
 of words and half-formed images, which fill the void of 
 the mind, and continually efface one another. Learning 
 is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a 
 substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made 
 use of as " spectacles " to look at nature with, than as 
 
94 On the Ignorance of the Learned. 
 
 blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery 
 from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The book- 
 worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, 
 and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected 
 from the minds of others. Nature puts him out. The 
 impressions of real objects, stripped of the disguises of 
 words and voluminous round-about descriptions, are blows 
 that stagger him; their variety distracts, their rapidity 
 exhausts him ; and he turns from the bustle, the noise, 
 and glare, and whirling motion of the world about him 
 (which he has not an eye to follow in its fantastic changes, 
 nor an understanding to reduce to fixed principles), to the 
 quiet monotony of the dead languages, and the less 
 startling and more intelligible combinations of the letters 
 of the alphabet. It is well, it is perfectly well. " Leave 
 me to my repose," is the motto of the sleeping and the 
 dead. You might as well ask the paralytic to leap from 
 his chair and throw away his crutch, or, without a miracle, 
 to "take up his bed and walk," as expect the learned 
 reader to throw down his book and think for himself. He 
 clings to it for his intellectual support ; and his dread of 
 being left to himself is like the horror of a vacuum. He 
 can only breathe a learned atmosphere, as other men 
 breathe common air. He is a borrower of sense. He has 
 no ideas of his own, and must live on those of other 
 people. The habit of supplying our ideas from foreign 
 sources " enfeebles all internal strength of thought," as a 
 course of dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. 
 The faculties of the mind, when not exerted, or when 
 cramped by custom and authority, become listless, torpid, 
 and unfit for the purposes of thought or action. Can we 
 wonder at the languor and lassitude which is thus pro- 
 duced by a life of learned sloth and ignorance ; by poring 
 over lines and syllables that excite little more idea or 
 interest than if they were the characters of an unknown 
 tongue, till the eye closes on vacancy, and the book drops 
 
On the Ignorance of the Learned. 95 
 
 from the feeble hand ! I would rather be a wood-cutter, 
 or the meanest hind, that all day " sweats in the eye of 
 Phoebus, and at night sleeps in Elysium," than wear out 
 my life so, 'twixt dreaming and awake. The learned 
 author differs from the learned student in this, that the 
 one transcribes what the other reads. The learned are 
 mere literary drudges. If you set them upon original 
 composition, their heads turn, they don't know where they 
 are. The indefatigable readers of books are like the ever- 
 lasting copiers of pictures, who, when they attempt to do 
 anything of their own, find they want an eye quick enough, 
 a hand steady enough, and colours bright enough, to trace 
 the living forms of nature. 
 
 Any one who has passed through the regular gradations 
 of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may 
 consider himself as having had a very narrow escape. It 
 is an old remark, that boys who shine at school do not 
 make the greatest figure when they grow up and come out 
 into the world. The things, in fact, which a boy is set to 
 learn at school, and on which his success depends, are 
 things which do not require the exercise either of the 
 highest or the most useful faculties of the mind. Memory 
 (and that of the lowest kind) is the chief faculty called 
 into play, in conning over and repeating lessons by rote 
 in grammar, in languages, in geography, arithmetic, &c. 
 so that he who has the most of this technical memory, 
 with the least turn for other things, which have a stronger 
 and more natural claim upon his childish attention, will 
 make the most forward school-boy. The jargon containing 
 the definitions of the parts of speech, the rules for casting 
 up an account, or the inflections of a Greek verb, can have 
 no attraction to the tyro of ten years old, except as tLey 
 are imposed as a task upon him by others, or from his 
 feeling the want of sufficient relish or amusement in other 
 things. A lad with a sickly constitution, and no very 
 active mind, who can just retain what is pointed out to 
 
96 On the Ignorance of the Learned. 
 
 him, and has neither sagacity to distinguish nor spirit to 
 enjoy for himself, will generally be at the head of his 
 form. An idler at school, on the other hand, is one who 
 has high health and spirits, who has the free use of his 
 limbs, with all his wits about him, who feels the circula- 
 tion of his blood and the motion of his heart, who is ready 
 to laugh and cry in a breath, and who had rather chase a 
 ball or a butterfly, feel the open air in his face, look at the 
 fields or the sky, follow a winding path, or enter with 
 eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of his 
 acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spell- 
 ing-book, repeat barbarous distich s after his master, sit so 
 many hours pinioned to a writing-desk, and receive 
 his reward for the loss of time and pleasure in paltry 
 prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer. There is 
 indeed a degree of stupidity which prevents children from 
 learning the usual lessons, or ever arriving at these puny 
 academic honours. But what passes for stupidity is much 
 oftener a want of interest, of a sufficient motive to fix the 
 attention, and force a reluctant application to the dry and 
 unmeaning pursuits of school-learning. The best ca- 
 pacities are as much above this drudgery as the dullest are 
 beneath it. Our men of the greatest genius have not been 
 most distinguished for their acquirements at school or at 
 the university. 
 
 u Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever." 
 
 Gray and Collins were among the instances of this 
 wayward disposition. Such persons do not think so 
 highly of the advantages, nor can they submit their imagi- 
 nations so servilely to the trammels of strict scholastic 
 discipline. There is a certain kind and degree of in- 
 tellect in which words take root, but into which things 
 have not power to penetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with 
 a certain slenderness of moral constitution, is the soil that 
 produces the most brilliant specimens of successful 
 
On the Ignorance of the Learned. 97 
 
 prize-essayists and Greek epigrammatists. It should not 
 be forgotten, that the least respectable character among 
 modern politicians was the cleverest boy at Eton. 
 
 Learning is the knowledge of that which is not gene- 
 rally known to others, and which we can only derive at 
 second-hand from books or other artificial sources. The 
 knowledge of that which is before us, or about us, which 
 appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to the 
 bosoms and businesses of men, is not learning. Learning 
 is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know. 
 He is the most learned man who knows the most of what 
 is farthest removed from common life and actual observa- 
 tion, that is of the least practical utility, and least liable 
 to be brought to the test of experience, and that, having 
 been handed down through the greatest number of inter- 
 mediate stages, is the most full of uncertainty, difficulties, 
 and contradictions. It is seeing with the eyes of others, 
 hearing with their ears, and pinning our faith on their 
 understandings. The learned man prides himself in the 
 knowledge of names, and dates, not of men or things. He 
 thinks and cares nothing about his next-door neighbours, 
 but he is deeply read in the tribes and castes of the 
 Hindoos and Calmuc Tartars. He can hardly iind his way 
 into the next street, though he is acquainted with the 
 exact dimensions of Constantinople and Pekin. He does 
 not know whether his oldest acquaintance is a knave or a 
 fool, but he can pronounce a pompous lecture on all the 
 principal characters in history. He cannot tell whether 
 an object is black or white, round or square, and yet he 
 is a professed master of the laws of optics and the rules of 
 perspective. He knows as much of what he talks about 
 as a blind man does of colours. He cannot give a satis- 
 factory answer to the plainest question, nor is he ever in 
 the right in any one of his opinions upon any one matter 
 of fact that really comes before him, and yet he gives 
 himself out for an infallible judge on all these points, of 
 
98 On the Ignorance of the Learned. 
 
 which it is impossible that he or any other person living 
 should know anything but by conjecture. He is expert 
 in all the dead and in most of the living languages ; but 
 he can neither speak his own fluently, nor write it correctly. 
 A person of this class, the second Greek scholar of his 
 day, undertook to point out several solecisms in Milton's 
 Latin style ; and in his own performance there is hardly a 
 
 sentence of common English. Such was Dr. . 
 
 Such is Dr. . Such was not Porson. He was an 
 
 exception that confirmed the general rule, — a man that, by 
 uniting talents and knowledge with learning, made the 
 distinction between them more striking and palpable. 
 
 A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be 
 ignorant even of them. " Books do not teach the use of 
 books." How should he know anything of a work who 
 knows nothing of the subject of it ? The learned pedant 
 is conversant with books only as they are made of other 
 books, and those again of others, without end. He parrots 
 those who have parroted others. He can translate the 
 same word into ten different languages, but he knows 
 nothing of the thing which it means in any one of them. 
 He stuffs his head with authorities built on authorities, 
 with quotations quoted from quotations, while he locks 
 up his senses, his understanding, and his heart. He is 
 unacquainted with the maxims and manners of the world ; 
 he is to seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no 
 beauty in the face of nature or of art. To him " the 
 mighty world of eye and ear " is hid ; and " knowledge," 
 except at one entrance, " quite shut out." His pride takes 
 part with his ignorance; and his self-importance rises 
 with the number of things of which he does not know the 
 value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his 
 notice. He knows nothing of pictures ; — " of the colour- 
 ing of Titian, the grace of Eaphael, the purity of 
 Domenichino, the corregioscity of Correggio, the learning 
 of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caraeci, or 
 
On the Ignorance of the Learned. 99 
 
 the grand contour of Michael Angelo," — of all those 
 glories of the Italian and miracles of the Flemish school, 
 which have filled the eyes of mankind with delight, and 
 to the study and imitation of which thousands have in 
 vain devoted their lives. These are to him as if they had 
 never been, a mere dead letter, a bye- word; and no 
 wonder : for he neither sees nor understands their proto 
 types in nature. A print of Eubens' Watering-place, or 
 Claude's Enchanted Castle, may be hanging on the walls 
 of his room for months without his once perceiving them ; 
 and if you point them out to him, he will turn away from 
 them. The language of nature, or of art (which is another 
 nature), is one that he does not understand. He repeats 
 indeed the names of Apelles and Phidias, because they are 
 to be found in classic authors, and boasts of their works 
 as prodigies, because they no longer exist; or when he 
 sees the finest remains of Grecian art actually before him 
 in the Elgin Marbles, takes no other interest in them than 
 as they lead to a learned dispute, and (which is the same 
 thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a Greek particle. 
 He is equally ignorant of music ; he" knows no touch of 
 it," from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to 
 the shepherd's pipe upon the mountain. His ears are 
 nailed to his books ; and deadened with the sound of 
 the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of 
 school-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry ? 
 He knows the number of feet in a verse, and of acts in a 
 play; but of the soul or spirit he knows nothing. He 
 can turn a Greek ode into English, or a Latin epigram 
 into Greek verse, but whether either is worth the trouble 
 he leaves to the critics. Does he understand " the act 
 and practique part of life " better than " the theorique ?" 
 No. He knows no liberal or mechanic art ; no trade or 
 occupation ; no game of skill or chance. Learning " has 
 no skill in surgery," in agriculture, in building, in work- 
 ing in wood or in iron ; it cannot make any instrument of 
 
100 On the Ignorance of the Learned. 
 
 labour, or use it when made ; it cannot handle the plough 
 or the spade, or the chisel or the hammer ; it knows 
 nothing of hunting or hawking, fishing or shooting, of 
 horses or dogs, of fencing or dancing, or cudgel-playing, 
 or bowls, or cards, or tennis, or anything else. The 
 learned professor of all arts and sciences cannot reduce 
 any one of them to practice, though he may contribute an 
 account of them to an Encyclopaedia. He has not the use 
 of his hands nor of his feet ; he can neither run, nor walk, 
 nor swim ; and he considers all those who actually under- 
 stand and can exercise any of these arts of body or mind, 
 as vulgar and mechanical men ; — though to know almost 
 any one of them in perfection requires long time and 
 practice, with powers originally fitted, and a turn of mind 
 particularly devoted to them. It does not require more 
 than this to enable the learned candidate to arrive, by 
 painful study, at a doctor's degree and a fellowship, and to 
 eat, drink, and sleep, the rest of his life ! 
 
 The thing is plain. All that men really understand 
 is confined to a very small compass ; to their daily affairs 
 and experience ; to what they have an opportunity to 
 know, and motives to study or practise. The rest is 
 affectation and imposture. The common people have the 
 use of their limbs ; for they live by their labour or skill. 
 They understand their own business, and the characters 
 of those they have to deal with ; for it is necessary that 
 they should. They have eloquence to express their 
 passions, and wit at will to express their contempt and 
 provoke laughter. Their natural use of speech is not 
 hung up in monumental mockery, in an obsolete language ; 
 nor is their sense of what is ludicrous, or readiness at 
 finding out allusions to express it, buried in collections 
 of Anas. You will hear more good things on the outside 
 of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were 
 to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads 
 of colleges, of that famous university ; and more home- 
 
On the Ignorance of the Learned, 101 
 
 truths are to be learnt from listening to a noisy debate 
 in an alehouse than from attending to a formal one in 
 the House of Commons. An elderly country gentle- 
 woman will often know more of character, and be able to 
 illustrate it by more amusing anecdotes taken from the 
 history of what has been said, done, and gossiped in a 
 country town for the last fifty years, than the best blue- 
 stocking of the age will be able to glean from that sort 
 of learning which consists in an acquaintance with all 
 the novels and satirical poems published in the same 
 period. People in towns, indeed, are wofully deficient 
 in a knowledge of character, which they see only in the 
 bust, not as a whole-length. People in the country not 
 only know all that has happened to a man, but trace his 
 virtues or vices, as they do his features, in their descent 
 through several generations, and solve some contradiction 
 in his behaviour by a cross in the breed, half a century 
 ago. The learned know nothing of the matter, either in 
 town or country. Above all, the mass of society have 
 common sense, which the learned in all ages want. The 
 vulgar are in the right when they judge for themselves ; 
 they are wrong when they trust to their blind guides. 
 The celebrated nonconformist divine, Baxter, was almost 
 stoned to death by the good women of Kidderminster, for 
 asserting from the pulpit that " hell was paved with 
 infants' skulls ;" but, by the force of argument, and of 
 learned quotations from the Fathers, the reverend preacher 
 at length prevailed over the scruples of his congregation, 
 and over reason and humanity. 
 
 Such is the use which has been made of human learn- 
 ing. The labourers in this vineyard seem as if it w r as 
 their object to confound all common sense, and the dis- 
 tinctions of good and evil, by means of traditional maxims, 
 and preconceived notions, taken upon trust, and increasing 
 in absurdity, with increase of age. They pile hypothesis 
 on hypothesis, mountain high, till it is impossible to 
 
102 On the Ignorance of the Learned. 
 
 come at the plain truth on any question. They see 
 things, not as they are, but as they find them in books ; 
 and "wink and shut their apprehensions up," in order 
 that they may discover nothing to interfere with their 
 prejudices, or convince them of their absurdity. It might 
 be supposed, that the height of human wisdom consisted 
 in maintaining contradictions, and rendering nonsense 
 sacred. There is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, 
 to which these persons have not set their seals, and tried 
 to impose on the understandings of their followers, as the 
 will of Heaven, clothed with all the terrors and sanctions 
 of religion. How little has the human understanding 
 been directed to find out the true and useful ! How much 
 ingenuity has been thrown away in the defence of creeds 
 and systems! How much time and talents have been 
 wasted in theological controversy, in law, in politics, in 
 verbal criticism, in judicial astrology, and in finding out 
 the art of making gold ! What actual benefit do we reap 
 from the writings of a Laud or a Whitgift, or of Bishop 
 Bull or Bishop Waterland, or Prideaux' Connections, or 
 Beausobre, or Calmet, or St. Augustine, or Puffendorf, or 
 Vattel, or from the more literal but equally learned and 
 unprofitable labours of Scaliger, Cardan, and Scioppius ? 
 How many grains of sense are there in their thousand 
 folio or quarto volumes ? What would the world lose if 
 they were committed to the flames to-morrow ? Or are 
 they not already " gone to the vault of all the Capulets ?" 
 Yet all these were oracles in their time, and would have 
 scoffed at you or me, at common sense and human nature, 
 for differing with them. It is our turn to laugh now. 
 
 To conclude this subject. The most sensible people to 
 be met with in society are men of business and of the 
 world, who argue from what they see and know, instead 
 of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to 
 be. Women have often more of what is called good sense 
 than men. They have fewer pretensions ; are less impli- 
 
The Indian Jugglers. 103 
 
 cated in theories ; and judge of objects more from their 
 immediate and involuntary impression on the mind, and, 
 therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannot reason 
 wrong ; for they do not reason at all. They do not think 
 or speak by rule ; and they have in general more . 
 eloquence and wit, as well as sense, on that account. 
 By their wit, sense, and eloquence together, they gene- 
 rally contrive to govern their husbands. Their style, 
 when they write to their friends (not for the booksellers), 
 is better than that of most authors. — Uneducated people 
 have most exuberance of invention, and the greatest 
 freedom from prejudice. Shakespear's was evidently an 
 uneducated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination 
 and in the variety of his views ; as Milton's was scholastic, 
 in the texture both of his thoughts and feelings. Shake- 
 spear had not been accustomed to write themes at school 
 in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the 
 unaffected, but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. 
 If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should 
 read Shakespear. If we wish to see the insignificance of 
 human learning, we may study his commentators. 
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 The Indian Jugglers. 
 
 Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his 
 white dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian 
 Jugglers begins with tossing up two brass balls, which is 
 what any of us could do, and concludes with keeping up 
 four at the same time, which is what none of us could do 
 to save our lives, nor if we were to take our whole lives 
 to do it in. Is it then a trifling power we see at work, 
 or is it not something next to miraculous? It is the 
 
104 The Indian Jugglers, 
 
 utmost stretch of human ingenuity, which nothing but 
 the bending the faculties of body and mind to it from 
 the tenderest infancy with incessant, ever-anxious appli- 
 cation up to manhood can accomplish or make even a 
 slight approach to. • Man, thou art a wonderful animal, 
 and thy ways past finding out ! Thou canst do strange 
 things, but thou turnest them to little account ! — To 
 conceive of this effort of extraordinary dexterity distracts 
 the imagination and makes admiration breathless. Yet 
 it costs nothing to the performer, any more than if it 
 were a mere mechanical deception with which he had 
 nothing to do but to watch and laugh at the astonishment 
 of the spectators. A single error of a hair's-breadth, of the 
 smallest conceivable portion of time, would be fatal : the 
 precision of the movements must be like a mathematical 
 truth, their rapidity is like lightning. To catch four 
 balls in succession in less than a second of time, and 
 deliver them back so as to return with seeming conscious- 
 ness to the hand again, to make them revolve round him 
 at certain intervals, like the planets in their spheres, 
 to make them chase one another like sparkles of fire, 
 or shoot up like flowers or meteors, to throw them behind 
 his back and twine them round his neck like ribbons or 
 like serpents, to do what appears an impossibility, and to 
 do it with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness 
 imaginable, to laugh at, to play with the glittering 
 mockeries, to follow them with his eye as if he could 
 fascinate them with its lambent fire, or as if he had only 
 to see that they kept time with the music on the stage — 
 there is something in all this which he who does not 
 admire may be quite sure he never really admired any- 
 thing in the whole course of his life. It is skill sur- 
 mounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. 
 It seems as if the difficulty once mastered naturally re- 
 solved itself into ease and grace, and as if to be overcome 
 at all, it must be overcome without an effort. liie 
 
TJie Indian Jugglers, 105 
 
 smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-possession 
 would stop the whole process. It is the work of witch- 
 craft, and yet sport for children. Some of the other 
 feats are quite as curious and wonderful, such as the 
 balancing the artificial tree and shooting a bird from each 
 branch through a quill ; though none of them have the 
 elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brass balls. 
 You are in pain for the result and glad when the experi- 
 ment is over ; they are not accompanied with the same 
 unmixed, unchecked delight as the former ; and I would 
 not give much to be merely astonished without being 
 pleased at the same time. As to the swallowing of the 
 sword, the police ought to interfere to prevent it. When 
 I saw the Indian Juggler do the same things before, his 
 feet were bare, and he had large rings on the toes, which 
 kept turning round all the time of the performance, as if 
 they moved of themselves. — The hearing a speech in 
 Parliament, drawled or stammered out by the Honourable 
 Member or the Noble Lord, the ringing the changes on 
 their common-places, which any one could repeat after 
 them as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my 
 good opinion of my myself; but the seeing the Indian 
 Jugglers does. It makes me ashamed of myself. I ask 
 what there is that I can do as well as this ? Nothing. 
 What have I been doing all my life ? Have I been idle, 
 or have I nothing to show for all my labour and pains ? 
 Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water 
 into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down 
 again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, 
 and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them ? 
 Is there no one thing in which I can challenge compe- 
 tition, that I can bring as an instance of exact perfection, 
 in which others cannot find a flaw ? The utmost I can 
 pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow 
 can do. I can write a book : so can many others who 
 have not even learned to spell. What abortions are these 
 
106 Tlie Indian Jugglers. 
 
 Essays ! What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what 
 crooked reasons, what lame conclusions ! How little is 
 made out, and that little how ill ! Yet they are the best 
 I can do. I endeavour to recollect all I have ever ob- 
 served or thought upon a subject, and to express it as 
 nearly as I can. Instead of writing on four subjects at a 
 time, it is as much as I can manage to keep the thread 
 t)f one discourse clear and unentangled. I have also time 
 on my hands to correct my opinions, and polish my 
 periods : but the one I cannot, and the other I will not 
 do. I am fond of arguing : yet with a good deal of pains 
 and practice it is often as much as I can do to beat my 
 man ; though he may be an indifferent hand. A common 
 fencer would disarm his adversary in the twinkling of an 
 eye, unless he were a professor like himself. A stroke 
 of wit will \ ometimes produce this effect, but there is no 
 such power or superiority in sense or reasoning. There 
 is no complete mastery of execution to be shown there : 
 and you hardly know the professor from the impudent 
 pretender or the mere clown. 1 
 
 I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and 
 slow progress of intellectual compared to mechanical 
 excellence, and it has always made me somewhat dis- 
 satisfied. It is a great many years since I saw Kicher, 
 the famous ropedancer, perform at Sadler's Wells. He 
 
 1 The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) first discovered and 
 brought out the talents of the late Mr. Opie, the painter. He was a 
 poor Cornish boy, and was out at work in the fields, when the poet 
 went in search of him. " Well, my lad, can you go and bring me 
 your very best picture T The other flew like lightning, and soon 
 came back with what he considered as his masterpiece. The 
 stranger looked at it, and the young artist, after waiting for some 
 time without his giving any opinion, at length exclaimed eagerly, 
 " Well, what do you think of it?"— " Think of it?" said Wolcot, 
 •' why, I think you ought to be ashamed of it— that you who might 
 do so well, do no better !" The same answer would have applied to 
 this artist's latest performances, that had been suggested by one ot 
 his earliest efforts. 
 
TJie Indian Jugglers. 107 
 
 was matchless in his art, and added to his extraordinary 
 skill exquisite ease, and unaffected, natural grace. I was 
 at that time employed in copying a half-length picture of 
 Sir Joshua Eeynolds's; 1 and it put me out of conceit 
 with it. How ill this part was made out in the drawing ! 
 How heavy, how slovenly this other was painted ! I could 
 not help saying to myself, " If the ropedancer had per- 
 formed his task in this manner, leaving so many gaps and 
 botches in his work, he would have broken his neck long 
 ago ; I should never have seen that vigorous elasticity of 
 nerve and precision of movement !" — Is it then so easy an 
 undertaking (comparatively) to dance on a tight-rope? 
 Let any one who thinks so get up and try. There is the 
 thing. It is that which at first we cannot do at all, which 
 in the end is done to such perfection. To account for 
 this in some degree, I might observe that mechanical 
 dexterity is confined to doing some one particular thing, 
 which you can repeat as often as you please, in which you 
 know whether you succeed or fail, and where the point of 
 perfection consists in succeeding in a given undertaking. 
 — In mechanical efforts, you improve by perpetual prac- 
 tice, and you do so infallibly, because the object to be 
 attained is not a matter of taste or fancy or opinion, but 
 of actual experiment, in which you must either do the 
 thing or not do it. If a man is put to aim at a mark with 
 a bow and arrow, he must hit it or miss it, that's certain. 
 He cannot deceive himself, and go on shooting wide or 
 falling short, and still fancy that he is making progress. 
 The distinction between right and wrong, between true 
 and false, is here palpable ; and he must either correct 
 his aim or persevere in his error with his eyes open, for 
 which there is neither excuse nor temptation. If a man 
 is learning to dance on a rope, if he does not mind what 
 
 1 See Memoirs of W. IT., 1867, i. xvi. This copy appears to have 
 been made in 1803 ; but I had an impression that it was a half- 
 length of Sir Joshua himself. — Ed. 
 
103 The Indian Jugglers. 
 
 he is about, he will break his neck. After that, it will be 
 in vain for him to argue that he did not make a false 
 step. His situation is not like that of Goldsmith's peda- 
 gogue :— 
 
 " In argument they own'd his wondrous skill, 
 And e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still." 
 
 Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are 
 disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. 
 There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, 
 no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must 
 take the consequences) — neither is there any room for 
 humour or caprice or prejudice. If the Indian Juggler 
 were to play tricks in throwing up the three case-knives, 
 which keep their positions like the leaves of a crocus in 
 the air, he would cut his fingers. I can make a very bad 
 antithesis without cutting my fingers. The tact of style 
 is more ambiguous than that of double-edged instruments. 
 If the Juggler were told that by flinging himself under 
 the wheels of the Juggernaut, when the idol issues forth 
 on a gaudy day, he would immediately be transported into 
 Paradise, he might believe it, and nobody could disprove 
 it. So the Brahmins may say what they please on that 
 subject, may build up dogmas and mysteries without end, 
 and not be detected ; but their ingenious countryman can- 
 not persuade the frequenters of the Olympic Theatre that 
 he performs a number of astonishing feats without actually 
 giving proofs of what he says. — There is then in this sort 
 of manual dexterity, first a gradual aptitude acquired to 
 a given exertion of muscular power, from constant repeti- 
 tion, and in the next place, an exact knowledge how much 
 is still wanting and necessary to be supplied. The ob- 
 vious test is to increase the effort or nicety of the operation, 
 and still to find it come true. The muscles ply instinc- 
 tively to the dictates of habit. Certain movements and 
 impressions of the hand and eye, having been repeated 
 
The Indian Juggters. 109 
 
 together an infinite number of times, are unconsciously 
 but unavoidably cemented into closer and closer union ; 
 the limbs require little more than to be put in motion for 
 them to follow a regular track with ease and certainty ; so 
 that the mere intention of the will acts mathematically 
 like touching the spring of a machine, and you come with 
 Locksley in Ivanhoe, in shooting at a mark, " to allow for 
 the wind." 
 
 Farther, what is meant by perfection in mechanical 
 exercises is the performing certain feats to a uniform 
 nicety, that is, in fact, undertaking no more than you can 
 perform. You task yourself, the limit you fix is optional, 
 and no more than human industry and skill can attain to ; 
 but you have no abstract, independent standard of difficulty 
 or excellence (other than the extent of your own powers). 
 Thus he who can keep up four brass balls does this to 
 'perfection ; but he cannot keep up five at the same instant, 
 and would fail every time he attempted it. That is, the 
 mechanical performer undertakes to emulate himself, not 
 to equal another. 1 But the artist undertakes to imitate 
 another, or to do what nature has done, and this it appears 
 is more difficult, viz., to copy what she has set before us in 
 the face of nature or " human face divine," entire and 
 without a blemish, than to keep up four brass balls at the 
 same instant, for the one is done by the power of human 
 skill and industry, and the other never was nor will be. 
 Upon the whole, therefore, I have more respect for 
 Eeynolds, than I have for Eicher ; for, happen how it 
 will, there have been more people in the world who could 
 dance on a rope like the one than who could paint like 
 Sir Joshua. The latter was but a bungler in his profession 
 to the other, it is true ; but then he had a harder task- 
 master to obey, whose will was more wayward and obscure, 
 and whose instructions it was more difficult to practise. 
 
 1 If two persons play against each other at any game, one of them 
 necessarily fails. 
 
110 The Indian Jugglers, 
 
 You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or rope- 
 dancer with a comfortable prospect of success, if they are 
 but sound of wind and limb ; but you cannot do the same 
 thing in painting. The odds are a million to one. You 
 
 may make indeed as many Haydons and H s as 
 
 you put into that sort of machine, but not one Eeynolds 
 amongst them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his bland- 
 ness of gusto, " in tones and gestures hit," unless you could 
 make the man over again. To snatch this grace beyond 
 the reach of art is then the height of art — where fine art 
 begins, and where mechanical skill ends. The soft 
 suffusion of the soul, the speechless breathing eloquence, 
 the looks " commercing with the skies," the ever-shifting 
 forms of an eternal principle, that which is seen but for a 
 moment, but dwells in the heart always, and is only seized 
 as it passes by strong and secret sympathy, must be taught 
 by nature and genius, not by rules or study. It is sug- 
 gested by feeling, not by laborious microscopic inspection ; 
 in seeking for it without, we lose the harmonious clue to 
 it within ; and in aiming to grasp the substance, we let 
 the very spirit of art evaporate. In a word, the objects of 
 fine art are not the objects of sight but as these last are 
 the objects of taste and imagination, that is, as they appeal 
 to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of power in the 
 human breast, and are explained by that finer sense, and 
 revealed in their inner structure to the eye in return. 
 Nature is also a language. Objects, like words, have a 
 meaning ; and the true artist is the interpreter of this 
 language, which he can only do by knowing its application 
 to a thousand other objects in a thousand other situations. 
 Thus the eye is too blind a guide of itself to distinguish 
 between the warm or cold tone of a deep-blue sky, but 
 another sense acts as a monitor to it, and does not err. 
 The colour of the leaves in autumn would be nothing 
 without the feeling that accompanies it ; but it is that 
 feeling that stamps them on the canvas, faded, seared, 
 
The Indian Jugglers. Ill 
 
 blighted, shrinking from the winter's flaw, and makes the 
 sight as true as touch — 
 
 " And visions, as poetic eyes avow, 
 Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough." 
 
 The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sublime 
 part of art is the seeing nature through the medium of 
 sentiment and passion, as each object is a symbol of the 
 affections and a link in the chain of our endless being. 
 But the unravelling this mysterious web of thought and 
 feeling is alone in the Muse's gift, namely, in the power 
 of that trembling sensibility which is awake to every 
 change and every modification of its ever- varying impres- 
 sions, that 
 
 " Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line." 
 
 This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, 
 feeling, taste ; but the manner in which it acts upon the 
 mind can neither be defined by abstract rules, as is the 
 case in science, nor verified by continual unvarying ex- 
 periments, as is the case in mechanical performances. 
 The mechanical excellence of the Dutch painters in 
 colouring and handling is that which comes the nearest in 
 fine art to the perfection of certain manual exhibitions of 
 skill. The truth of the effect and the facility with which 
 it is produced are equally admirable. Up to a certain 
 point, everything is faultless. The hand and eye have 
 done their part. There is only a want of taste and genius. 
 It is after we enter upon that enchanted ground that the 
 human mind begins to droop and flag as in a strange road, 
 or in a thick mist, benighted and making little way with 
 many attempts and many failures, and that the best of us 
 only escape with half a triumph. The undefined and the 
 imaginary are the regions that we must pass like Satan, 
 difficult and doubtful, " half flying, half on foot." The 
 object in sense is a positive thing, and execution corner 
 with practice. 
 
112 The Indian Jugglers. 
 
 Cleverness is a certain knack or aptitude at doing certain 
 things, which depend more on a particular adroitness and 
 off-hand readiness than on force or perseverance, such as 
 making puns, making epigrams, making extempore verses, 
 mimicking the company, mimicking a style, &c. Clever- 
 ness is either liveliness and smartness, or something 
 answering to sleight of hand, like letting a glass fall side- 
 ways off a table, or else a trick, like knowing the secret 
 spring of a watch. Accomplishments are certain external 
 graces, which are to be learned from others, and which 
 are easily displayed to the admiration of the beholder, 
 viz., dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These 
 ornamental acquirements are only proper to those who are 
 at ease in mind and fortune. I know an individual who 
 if he had been born to an estate of five thousand a year, 
 would have been the most accomplished gentleman of the 
 age. He would have been the delight and envy of the 
 circle in which he moved — would have graced by his man- 
 ners the liberality flowing from the openness of his heart, 
 would have laughed with the women, have argued with 
 the men, have said good things and written agreeable 
 ones, have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harp- 
 sichord, and have set and sung his own verses — nugaz 
 canoroz — with tenderness and spirit ; a Eochester without 
 the vice, a modern Surrey ! As it is, all these capabilities 
 of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a 
 professional man, not dull enough for a political drudge, 
 too gay to be happy, too thoughtless to be rich. He wants 
 the enthusiasm of the poet, the severity of the prose- 
 writer, and the application of the man of business. — 
 Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on 
 application and industry, such as writing a criticism, 
 making a speech, studying the law. Talent differs from 
 genius, as voluntary differs from involuntary power. In- 
 genuity is genius in trifles, greatness is genius in under- 
 takings of much pith and moment. A clever or ingenious 
 
The Indian Jugglers, 113 
 
 man is one who can do anything well, whether it is worth 
 doing or not ; a great man is one who can do that which 
 when done is of the highest importance. Themistocles 
 said he could not play on the flute, but that he could make 
 of a small city a great one. This gives one a pretty good 
 idea of the distinction in question. 
 
 Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It 
 is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he 
 must show it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid 
 or gainsaid. He must fill up a certain idea in the public 
 mind. I have no other notion of greatness than this two- 
 fold definition, great results springing from great inherent 
 energy. The great in visible objects has relation to that 
 which extends over space : the great in mental ones has to 
 do with space and time. No man is truly great who is 
 great only in his life-time. The test of greatness is the 
 page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has 
 a distinct limit, or that borders on something evidently 
 greater than itself. Besides, what is short-lived and 
 pampered into mere notoriety, is of a gross and vulgar 
 quality in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a great man. 
 A city orator or patriot of the day only show, by reaching 
 the height of their wishes, the distance they are at from 
 any true ambition. Popularity is neither fame nor great- 
 ness. A king (as such) is not a great man. He has 
 great power, but it is not his own. He merely wields the 
 lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a madman 
 can do. It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any 
 one else in the same situation would be just as much an 
 object of abject curiosity. We laugh at the country girl 
 who having seen a king expressed her disappointment by 
 saying, " Why, he is only a man !" Yet, knowing this, 
 we run to see a king as if he was something more than a 
 man. — To display the greatest powers, unless they are 
 applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character 
 of greatness. To throw a barleycorn through the eye of 
 
114 The Indian Jugglers. 
 
 a needle, to multiply nine figures by nine • in the memory, 
 argues definite dexterity of body and capacity of mind, 
 but nothing comes of either. There is a surprising power 
 at work, but the effects are not proportionate, or such as 
 take hold of the imagination. To impress the idea of 
 power on others, they must be made in some way to feel 
 it. It must be communicated to their understandings in 
 the shape of an increase of knowledge, or it must subdue 
 and overawe them by subjecting their wills. Admiration 
 to be solid and lasting must be founded on proofs from 
 which we have no means of escaping ; it is neither a slight 
 nor a voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves a 
 profound problem, a poet who creates an image of beauty 
 in the mind that was not there before, imparts knowledge 
 and power to others, in which his greatness and his fame 
 consists, and on which it reposes. Jedediah Buxton will 
 be forgotten; but Napier's bones will live. Lawgivers, 
 philosophers, founders of religion, conquerors and heroes, 
 inventors and great geniuses in arts and sciences, are great 
 men, for they are great public benefactors, or formidable 
 scourges to mankind. Among ourselves, Shakespear, 
 Newton, Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, for 
 they showed great power by acts and thoughts, which have 
 not yet been consigned to oblivion. They must needs be 
 men of lofty stature, whose shadows lengthen out to 
 remote posterity. A great farce-writer may be a great 
 man ; for Moliere was but a great farce- writer. In my 
 mind, the author of Don Quixote was a great man. So 
 have there been many others. A great chess-player is not 
 a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No 
 act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will 
 apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are 
 confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct 
 no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them. 
 Is not an actor then a great man, because " he dies and 
 leaves the world no copy?" I must make an exception 
 
The Indian Jugglers. 115 
 
 for Mrs. Siddons, or else give up my definition of greatness 
 for her sake. A man at the top of his profession is not 
 therefore a great man. He is great in his way, but that 
 is all, unless he shows the marks of a great moving 
 intellect, so that we trace the master-mind, and can 
 sympathise with the springs that urge him on. The rest 
 is but a craft or mystery. John Hunter was a great man — 
 that any one might see without the smallest skill in 
 surgery. His style and manner showed the man. He 
 would set about cutting up the carcase of a whale with 
 the same greatness of gusto that Michael Angelo would 
 have hewn a block of marble. Lord Nelson was a great 
 naval commander; but for myself, I have not much 
 opinion of a seafaring life. Sir Humphry Davy is a 
 great chemist, but I am not sure that he is a great man. 
 I am not a bit the wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never 
 met with any one that was. But it is in the nature of 
 greatness to propagate an idea of itself, as wave impels 
 wave, circle without circle. It is a contradiction in terms 
 for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man has 
 always an idea of something greater than himself. I have 
 observed that certain sectaries and polemical writers have 
 no higher compliment to pay their most shining lights 
 than to say that " Such a one was a considerable man in 
 his day." Some new elucidation of a text sets aside the 
 authority of the old interpretation, and a " great scholar's 
 memory outlives him half a century," at the utmost. A 
 rich man is not a great man, except to his dependants and 
 his steward. A lord is a great man in the idea we have 
 of his ancestry, and probably of himself, if we know 
 nothing of him but his title. I have heard a story of two 
 bishops, one of whom said (speaking of St. Peter's at 
 Eome) that when he first entered it, he was rather awe- 
 struck, but that as he walked up it, his mind seemed to 
 swell and dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole 
 building: the other said that as he saw more of it, he 
 
116 . The Indian Jugglers. 
 
 Appeared to himself to grow less and less every step he took, 
 and in the end to dwindle into nothing. This was in some 
 respects a striking picture of a great and little mind — for 
 greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks 
 into itself. The one might have become a Wolsey ; the 
 other was only fit to become a Mendicant Friar — or there 
 might have been court- reasons for making him a bishop. 
 The French have to me a character of littleness in all 
 about them ; but they have produced three great men that 
 belong to every country, Moliere, Kabelais, and Montaigne. 
 
 To return from this digression, and conclude the Essay. 
 A singular instance of manual dexterity was shown in the 
 person of the late John Cavanagh, whom I have several 
 times seen. His death was celebrated at the time in an 
 article in the Examiner newspaper (Feb. 7, 181 9), written 
 apparently between jest and earnest : but as it is pat to 
 our purpose, and falls in with my own way of considering 
 such subjects, I shall here take leave to quote it. 
 
 " Died at his house in Burbage Street, St. Giles's, John 
 Cavanagh, the famous hand fives-player. When a person 
 dies, who does any one thing better than any one else in 
 the world, which so many others are trying to do well, it 
 leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that any one will 
 now see the game of fives played in its perfection for many 
 years to come — for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his 
 peer behind him. It may be said that there are things of 
 more importance than striking a ball against a wall — there 
 are things indeed that make more noise and do as little 
 good, such as making war and peace, making speeches and 
 answering them, making verses and blotting them ; 
 making money and throwing it away. But the game of 
 fives is what no one despises who has ever played at it. 
 It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best relax- 
 ation for the mind. The Eoman poet said that ' Care 
 mounted behind the horseman and stuck to his skirts.' 
 Bat this remark would not have applied to the fives-player, 
 
The Indian Jugglers. 117 
 
 He who "takes to playing at fives is twice young. He feels 
 neither the past nor future ' in the instant.' Debts, taxes, 
 * domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch him 
 further/ He has no other wish, no other thought, from 
 the moment the game begins, but that of striking the ball, 
 of placing it, of making it ! This Cavanagh was sure to 
 do. Whenever he touched the ball, there was an end of 
 the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his 
 presence of mind complete. He could do what he pleased, 
 and he always knew exactly what to do. He saw the 
 whole game, and played it ; took instant advantage of his 
 adversary's weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a 
 miracle and from sudden thought, that every one gave for 
 lost. He had equal power and skill, quickness and 
 judgment. He could either outwit his antagonist by 
 finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, when 
 he seemed preparing to send the ball with the full swing 
 of his arm, he would by a slight turn of his wrist drop it 
 within an inch of the line. In general, the ball came from 
 his hand, as if from a racket, in a straight horizontal line ; 
 so that it was in vain to attempt to overtake or stop it. 
 As it was said of a great orator that he never was at a 
 loss for a word, and for the properest word, so Cavanagh 
 always could tell the degree of force necessary to be given 
 to a ball, and the precise direction in which it should be 
 sent. He did his work with the greatest ease ; never took 
 more pains than was necessary; and while others were 
 fagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as 
 if he had just entered the court. His style of play was 
 as remarkable as his power of execution. He had no 
 affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away the game 
 to show off an attitude, or try an experiment. He was a 
 fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but 
 that was more than any one else could even affect to do. 
 His blows were not undecided and ineffectual — lumbering 
 like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering like 
 
118 Tlie Indian Jugglers. 
 
 Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like 
 Mr. Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr 
 Canning's wit, nor foul like the Quarterly, nor l let balls 
 like the Edinburgh Eeview. Cobbett and Junius togethei 
 would have made a Cavanagh. He was the best up-hill 
 player in the world ; even when his adversary was four- 
 teen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never 
 flung away the game through carelessness and conceit, he 
 never gave it up through laziness or want of heart. The 
 only peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, but 
 let the balls hop ; but if they rose an inch from the 
 ground, he never missed having them. There was not 
 only nobody equal, but nobody second to him. It is 
 supposed that he could give any other player half the 
 game, or beat them with his left hand. His service was 
 tremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith 
 together (two of the best players in England) in the 
 Fives-court, St. Martin's-street, and made seven-and- 
 twenty aces following by services alone — a thing unheard 
 of. He another time played Peru, who was considered a 
 first-rate fives-player, a match of the best out of five games, 
 and in the three first games, which of course decided the 
 match, Peru got only one ace. Cavanagh was an Irishman 
 by birth, and a house-painter by profession. He had once 
 laid aside his working- dress, and walked up, in his 
 smartest clothes, to the Kosemary Branch to have an 
 afternoon's pleasure. A person accosted him, and asked 
 him if he would have a game. So they agreed to play for 
 half a crown a game, and a bottle of cider. The first 
 game began — it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, 
 all. Cavanagh won it. The next was the same. They 
 played on, and each game was hardly contested. * There,' 
 said the unconscious fives-player, ' there was a stroke that 
 Cavanagh could not take : I never played better in my 
 life, and yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it is !' 
 1 The old edition has not, a misprint, I apprehend. — Ed. 
 
The Indian Jugglers. 119 
 
 However, they played on, Cavanagh winning every game 
 and the bystanders drinking the cider and laughing all 
 the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh was only 
 four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in, and said, 
 ' What ! are you here, Cavanagh ?' The words were no 
 sooner pronounced than the astonished player let the ball 
 drop from his hand, and saying, * What ! have I been break- 
 ing my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh ?' refused to 
 make another effort. i And yet, I give you my word,' said 
 Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, c I played all 
 the while with my clenched fist.'— He used frequently to 
 play matches at Copenhagen House for wagers and dinners. 
 The wall against which they play is the same that supports 
 the kitchen chimney, and when the wall resounded louder 
 than usual, the cooks exclaimed, { Those are the Irishman's 
 balls,' and the joints trembled on the spit! — Goldsmith 
 consoled himself that there were places where he too was 
 admired : and Cavanagh was the admiration of all the 
 fives-courts where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when he 
 played matches in the Court in St. Martin's-street, used 
 to fill his gallery at half-a-crown a head, with amateurs 
 and admirers of talent in whatever department it is shown. 
 He could not have shown himself in any ground in 
 England but he would have been immediately surrounded 
 with inquisitive gazers, trying to find out in what part of 
 his frame his unrivalled skill lay, as politicians wonder to 
 see the balance of Europe suspended in Lord Castlereagh's 
 face, and admire the trophies of the British Navy lurking 
 under Mr. Croker's hanging brow. Now Cavanagh was 
 as good-looking a man as the Noble Lord, and much better 
 looking than the Right Hon. Secretary. He had a clear, 
 open countenance, and d,id not look sideways or down, like 
 Mr. Murray the bookseller. He was a young fellow of 
 sense, humour, and courage. He once had a quarrel with 
 a waterman at Hungerford Stairs, and they say, served 
 him out in great style. In a word, there are hundreds at 
 this day who cannot mention his name without admiration, 
 
120 The Indian Jugglers. 
 
 as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the 
 greatest excellence of which they have any notion) — and 
 the noisy shout of the ring happily stood him in stead of 
 the unheard voice of posterity ! — The only person who 
 seems to have excelled as much in another way as Cavanagh 
 did in his was the late John Davies, the racket-player. 
 It was remarked of him that he did not seem to follow the 
 ball, but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a foot 
 of wall, and he was sure to make the ball. The four best 
 racket-players of that day were Jack Spines, Jem Harding, 
 Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any one of 
 these two hands a time, that is, half the game, and each 
 of these, at their best, could give the best player now in 
 London the same odds. Such are the gradations in all 
 exertions of human skill and art. He once played four 
 capital players together, and beat them. He was also a 
 first-rate tennis-player, and an excellent fives-player. In 
 the Fleet or King's Bench, he would have stood against 
 Powell, who was reckoned the best open-ground player of 
 his time. This last-mentioned player is at present the 
 keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to 
 him for a motto over his door — ' Who enters here, forgets 
 himself, his country, and his friends.' And the best of it 
 is, that by the calculation of the odds, none of the three 
 are worth remembering ! — Cavanagh died from the bursting 
 of a blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for 
 the last two or three years. This, he was often heard to 
 say, he thought hard upon him. He was fast recovering, 
 however, when he was suddenly carried off, to the regret 
 of all who knew him. As Mr. Peel made it a qualification 
 of the present Speaker, Mr. Manners Sutton, that he was 
 an excellent moral character, so Jack Cavanagh was a 
 zealous Catholic, and could not be persuaded to eat meat 
 on a Friday, the day on which he died. We have paid 
 this willing tribute to his memory. 
 
 " Let no rude hand deface it, 
 And his forlorn * Hie JaeeL' " 
 
On Living to Ones-Self. 121 
 
 ESSAY X. 
 
 On Living to One'sself. 1 
 
 " Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, 
 Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po." 
 
 I never was in a better place or humour than I am at 
 present for writing on this subject. I have a partridge 
 getting ready for my supper, my fire is blazing on the 
 hearth, the air is mild for the season of the year, I have 
 had but a slight fit of indigestion to-day (the only thing 
 that makes me abhor myself), I have three hours good 
 before me, and therefore I will attempt it. It is as well 
 to do it at once as to have it to do for a week to come. 
 
 If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the thing 
 itself is a harder one. It asks a troublesome effort to 
 insure the admiration of others : it is a still greater 
 one to be satisfied with one's own thoughts. As I look 
 from the window at the wide bare heath before me, and 
 through the misty moonlight air see the woods that wave 
 over the top of Winterslow, 
 
 " While HeavVs chancel- vault is blind with sleet," 
 my mind takes its flight through too long a series of 
 years, supported only by the patience of thought and 
 secret yearnings after truth and good, for me to be at a 
 loss to understand the feeling I intend to write about ; 
 but I do not know that this will enable me to convey it 
 more agreeably to the reader. 
 
 Lady Grandison, in a letter to Miss Harriet Byron, 
 assures her that " her brother Sir Charles lived to him- 
 self :" and Lady L. soon after (for Kichardson was never 
 tired of a good thing) repeats the same observation ; to 
 which Miss Byron frequently returns in her answers to 
 both sisters — " For you know Sir Charles lives to him- 
 1 Written at Winterslow Hut, January 18th— 19th, 1821. 
 
122 On Living to Ones-Self. 
 
 self," till at length it passes into a proverb among the 
 fair correspondents. This is not, however, an example 
 of what I understand by living to one's-self, for Sir Charles 
 Grandison was indeed always thinking of himself; but 
 by this phrase I mean never thinking at all about one's- 
 self, any more than if there was no such person in 
 existence. The character I speak of is as little of an 
 egotist as possible: Bichardson's great favourite was as 
 much of one as possible. Some satirical critic has repre- 
 sented him in Elysium " bowing over the faded hand of 
 Lady Grandison " (Miss Byron that was) — he ought to 
 have been represented bowing over his own hand, for he 
 never admired any one but himself, and was the God of 
 his own idolatry. — Neither do I call it living to one's- 
 self to retire into a desert (like the saints and martyrs 
 of old) to be devoured by wild beasts, nor to descend into 
 a cave to be considered as a hermit, nor to get to the top 
 of a pillar or rock to do fanatic penance and be seen of 
 all men. What I mean by living to one's-self is living 
 in the world, as in it, not of it : it is as if no one knew 
 there was such a person, and you wished no one to know 
 it : it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of 
 things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it ; to 
 take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in 
 the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to 
 make or meddle with it. It is such a life as a pure 
 spirit might be supposed to lead, and such an interest as 
 it might take in the affairs of men, calm, contemplative, 
 passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, 
 smiling at their follies without bitterness, sharing their 
 affections, but not troubled by their passions, not seeking 
 their notice, nor once dreamt of by them. He who lives 
 wisely to himself and to his own. heart, looks at the busy 
 world through the loop-holes of retreat, and does not 
 want to mingle in the fray. " He hears the tumult, and 
 w stilL" He is not able to mend it, nor willing to mar 
 
On Living to Ones-Self. 123 
 
 it. He sees enough in the universe to interest him 
 without putting himself forward to try what he can do 
 to iix the eyes of the universe upon him. Vain the 
 attempt ! He reads the clouds, he looks at the stars, he 
 watches the return of the seasons, the falling leaves of 
 autumn, the perfumed breath of spring, starts with delight 
 at the note of a thrush in a copse near him, sits by the 
 fire, listens to the moaning of the wind, pores upon a 
 book, or discourses the freezing hours away, or melts 
 down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All this 
 while he is taken up with other things, forgetting him- 
 self. He relishes an author's style without thinking of 
 turning author. He is fond of looking at a print from 
 an old picture in the room, without teasing himself to 
 copy it. He does not fret himself to death with trying 
 to be what he is not, or to do what he cannot. He hardly 
 knows what he is capable of, and is not in the least con- 
 cerned whether he shall ever make a figure in the world. 
 He feels the truth of the lines — 
 
 *' The man whose eye is ever on himself, 
 Doth look one, the least of nature's works ; 
 One who might move the wise man to that scorn 
 Which wisdom holds unlawful ever " — 
 
 he looks out of himself at the wide extended prospect of 
 nature, and takes an interest beyond his narrow preten- 
 sions in general humanity. He is free as air, and 
 independent as the wind. Woe be to him when he first 
 begins to think what others say of him. While a man 
 is contented with himself and his own resources, all is 
 well. When he undertakes to play a part on the stage, 
 and to persuade the world to think more about him than 
 they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he 
 will find nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and 
 disappointment. I can speak a little to this point. For 
 many years of my life I did nothing but think. I had 
 nothing else to do but solve some knotty point, or dip in 
 
124 On Living to Ones-Self. 
 
 some abstruse author, or look at the sky, or wander by 
 the pebbled sea-side — 
 
 " To see the children sporting on the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 
 
 I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time 
 to consider whatever occurred to me, and was in no 
 hurry to give a sophistical answer to a question — there 
 was no printer's devil waiting for me. I used to write a 
 page or two perhaps in half a year ; and remember laugh- 
 ing heartily at the celebrated experimentalist Nicholson, 
 who told me that in twenty years he had written as much 
 as would make three hundred octavo volumes. If I was 
 not a great author, I could read with ever fresh delight, 
 " never ending, still beginning," and had no occasion to 
 write a criticism when I had done. If I could not paint 
 like Claude, I could admire " the witchery of the soft 
 blue sky " as I walked out, and was satisfied with the 
 pleasure it gave me. If I was dull, it gave me little 
 concern : if I was lively, I indulged my spirits. I wished 
 well to the world, and believed as favourably of it as I 
 could. I was like a stranger in a foreign land, at which 
 I looked with wonder, curiosity, and delight, without 
 expecting to be an object of attention in return. I had 
 no relations to the state, no duty to perform, no ties to 
 bind me to others: I had neither friend nor mistress, 
 wife nor child. I lived in a world of contemplation, and 
 not of action. 
 
 This sort of dreaming existence is the best. He who 
 quits it to go in search of realities, generally barters 
 repose for repeated disappointments and vain regrets. 
 His time, thoughts, and feelings are no longer at his own 
 disposal. From that instant he does not survey the 
 objects of nature as they are in themselves, but looks 
 asquint at them to see whether he cannot make them the 
 instruments of his ambition, interest, or pleasure ; for a 
 
On Living! to Ones-Self. 125 
 
 candid, undesigning, undisguised simplicity of character, 
 his views become jaundiced, sinister, and double : he 
 takes no farther interest in the great changes of the world 
 but as he has a paltry share in producing them : instead 
 of opening his senses, his understanding, and his heart to 
 the resplendent fabric of the universe, he holds a crooked 
 mirror before his face, in which he may admire his own 
 person and pretensions, and just glance his eye aside to 
 gee whether others are not admiring him too. He no 
 more exists in the impression which " the fair variety of 
 things " makes upon him, softened and subdued by 
 habitual contemplation, but in the feverish sense of his 
 own upstart self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is 
 become the slave of opinion. He is a tool, a part of a 
 machine that never stands still, and is sick and giddy 
 with the ceaseless motion. He has no satisfaction but 
 in the reflection of his own image in the public gaze — but 
 in the repetition of his own name in the public ear. He 
 himself is mixed up with, and spoils everything. I 
 wonder Buonaparte was not tired of the N. N.'s stuck all 
 over the Louvre and throughout France. Goldsmith (as 
 we all know) when in Holland went out into a balcony 
 with some handsome Englishwomen, and on their being 
 applauded by the spectators, turned round and said 
 peevishly — " There are places where I also am admired." 
 He could not give the craving appetite of an author's 
 vanity one day's respite. I have seen a celebrated talker 
 of our own time turn pale and go out of the room when 
 a showy-looking girl has come into it, who for a moment 
 divided the attention of his hearers. — Infinite are the mor- 
 fications of the bare attempt to emerge from obscurity ; 
 numberless the failures ; and greater and more galling 
 still the vicissitudes and tormenting accompaniments of 
 success— u Whoge top to climb 
 
 Is certain falling, or so slippery, that 
 The fear's as bad as falling." 
 
126 On Living to One's- Self. 
 
 " Would to God," exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when lie was 
 at any time thwarted by the Parliament, " that I had re- 
 mained by my woodside to tend a flock of sheep, rather than 
 have been thrust on such a government as this !" When 
 Buonaparte got into his carriage to proceed on his Russian 
 expedition, carelessly twirling his glove, and singing the 
 air — " Malbrook to the war is going " — he did not think 
 of the tumble he has got since, the shock of which no 
 one could have stood but himself. We see and hear 
 chiefly of the favourites of Fortune and the Muse, of 
 great generals, of first-rate actors, of celebrated poets. 
 These are at the head ; we are struck with the glittering 
 eminence on which they stand, and long to set out on the 
 same tempting career, — not thinking how many discon- 
 tented half-pay lieutenants are in vain seeking promotion 
 all their lives, and obliged to put up with " the insolence 
 of office, and the spurns which patient merit of the un- 
 worthy takes ;" how many half-starved strolling players 
 are doomed to penury and tattered robes in country 
 places, dreaming to the last of a London engagement ; 
 how many wretched daubers shiver and shake in the 
 ague-fit of alternate hopes and fears, waste and pine away 
 in the atrophy of genius, or else turn drawing-masters, 
 picture-cleaners, or newspaper-critics ; how many hapless 
 'poets have sighed out their souls to the Muse in vain, 
 without ever getting their effusions farther known than 
 the Poet's Corner of a country newspaper, and looked and 
 looked with grudging, wistful eyes at the envious horizon 
 that bounded their provincial fame ! — Suppose an actor, 
 for instance, "after the heart-aches and the thousand 
 natural pangs that flesh is heir to," does get at the top of 
 his profession, he can no longer bear a rival near the 
 throne ; to be second or only equal to another, is to be 
 nothing : he starts at the prospect of a successor, and 
 retains the mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp : per 
 haps as he is about to seize the first place which he has 
 
On Living! to One's- Self. 127 
 
 long had in his eye, an unsuspected competitor steps in 
 before him, and carries off the prize, leaving him to com- 
 mence his irksome toil again. He is in a state of alarm 
 at every appearance or rumour of the appearance of a 
 new actor : " a mouse that takes up its lodging in a cat's 
 ear " l has a mansion of peace to him : he dreads every 
 hint of an objection, and least of all, can forgive praise 
 mingled with censure : to doubt is to insult ; to discri- 
 minate is to degrade : he dare hardly look into a criticism 
 unless some one has tasted it for him, to see that there 
 is no offence in it : if he does not draw crowded houses 
 every night, he can neither eat nor sleep ; or if all these 
 terrible inflictions are removed, and he can " eat his meal 
 in peace," he then becomes surfeited with applause and 
 dissatisfied with his profession : he wants to be something- 
 else, to be distinguished as an author, a collector, a 
 classical scholar, a man of sense and information, and 
 weighs every word he utters, and half retracts it before he 
 utters it, lest if he were to make the smallest slip of the 
 
 tongue, it should get buzzed abroad that Mr. ivas 
 
 only clever as an actor ! If ever there was a man who did 
 not derive more pain than pleasure from his vanity that 
 man, says Eousseau, was no other than a fool. A country 
 gentleman near Taunton spent his whole life in making 
 some hundreds of wretched copies of second-rate pictures, 
 which were bought up at his death by a neighbouring 
 Baronet, to whom 
 
 u Some Demon whisper'd, L , have a taste !" 
 
 A little Wilson in an obscure corner escaped the man of 
 virtu, and was carried off by a Bristol picture-dealer for 
 three guineas, while the muddled copies of the owner of 
 the mansion (with the frames) fetched thirty, forty, sixty, a 
 hundred ducats a piece. A friend of mine found a very fine 
 Canaletti in a state of strange disfigurement, with the upper 
 
 1 Webster's Duchess of Malfy. 
 
128 On Living to Ones-Self. 
 
 part of the sky smeared over and fantastically variegated 
 with English clouds ; and on inquiring of the person to 
 whom it belonged whether something had not been done 
 to it, received for answer " that a gentleman, a great artist 
 in the neighbourhood, had retouched some parts of it. 5 ' 
 What infatuation ! Yet this candidate for the honours of 
 the pencil might probably have made a jovial fox-hunter 
 or respectable justice of the peace if he could only have 
 stuck to what nature and fortune intended him for. 
 
 Miss can by no means be persuaded to quit the 
 
 boards of the theatre at , a little country town in the 
 
 West of England. Her salary has been abridged, her 
 person ridiculed, her acting laughed at; nothing will 
 serve — she is determined to be an actress, and scorns to 
 return to her former business as a milliner. Shall I go 
 on ! An actor in the same company was visited by the 
 apothecary of the place in an ague-fit, who on asking his 
 landlady as to his way of life, was told that the poor 
 gentleman was very quiet and gave little trouble, that he 
 generally had a plate of mashed potatoes for his dinner, 
 and lay in bed most of his time, repeating his part. A 
 young couple, every way amiable and deserving, were to 
 have been married, and a benefit-play was bespoke by the 
 officers of the regiment quartered there, to defray the 
 expense of a license and of the wedding-ring, but the 
 profits of the night did not amount to the necessary sum, 
 and they have, I fear, " virgined it e'er since !" Oh for 
 the pencil of Hogarth or Wilkie to give a view of the 
 comic strength of the company at , drawn up in battle- 
 array in the Clandestine Marriage, with a coup oVceil of 
 the pit, boxes, and gallery, to cure for ever the love of the 
 ideal, and the desire to shine and make holiday in the 
 eyes of others, instead of retiring within ourselves and 
 keeping our wishes and our thoughts at home ! — Even in 
 the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and 
 marriage, how little security have we when we trust our 
 
On Living to Ones-Self. 129 
 
 happiness in the hands of others ! Most of the friends I 
 have seen have turned out the bitterest enemies or cold, 
 uncomfortable acquaintance. Old companions are like 
 meats served up too often, that lose their relish and their 
 wholesomeness. He who looks at beauty to admire, to 
 adore it, who reads of its wondrous power in novels, in 
 poems, or in plays, is not unwise : but let no man fall in 
 love, for from that moment he is " the baby of a girl." I 
 like very well to repeat such lines as these in the play of 
 
 Mirandola — 
 
 " With what a waving air she goes 
 
 Along the corridor ! How like a fawn ! 
 Yet statelier. Hark ! No sound, however soft, 
 Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads, 
 But every motion of her shape doth seem 
 Hallowed by silence " 
 
 But however beautiful the description, defend me from 
 meeting with the original ! 
 
 " The fly that sips treacle 
 Is lost in the sweets ; 
 So he that tastes woman 
 Kuin meets." 
 
 The song is Gay's, not mine, and a bitter-sweet it is. — 
 How few out of the infinite number of those that marry 
 and are given in marriage wed with those they would 
 prefer to all the world ! nay, how far the greater propor- 
 tion are joined together by mere motives of convenience, 
 accident, recommendation of friends, or indeed not un- 
 frequently by the very fear of the event, by repugnance 
 and a sort of fatal fascination ! yet the tie is for life, not 
 to be shaken off but with disgrace or death : a man no 
 longer lives to himself, but is a body (as well as mind) 
 chained to another, in spite of himself — 
 
 " Like life and death in disproportion met." 
 
 So Milton (perhaps from his own experience) makes 
 Adam exclaim in the vehemence of his despair, 
 
130 On Living to Ones-Self. 
 
 1 For either 
 
 He never shall find out fit mate, but such 
 
 As some misfortune brings him or mistake ; 
 
 Or whom lie wishes most shall seldom gain 
 
 Through her perverseness, but shall see her gain'd 
 
 By a far worse ; or if she love, withheld 
 
 By parents ; or his happiest choice too late 
 
 Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound 
 
 To a fell adversary, his hate and shame ; 
 
 Which infinite calamity shall cause 
 
 To human life, and household peace confound." 
 
 If love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by 
 kind offices ; if the fondest affection were not so often 
 repaid and chilled by indifference and scorn ; if so many 
 lovers both before and since the madman in Don Quixote 
 had not "worshipped a statue, hunted the wind, cried 
 aloud to the desert ;" if friendship were lasting ; if merit 
 were renown, and renown were health, riches, and long 
 life ; or if the homage of the world were paid to conscious 
 worth and the true aspirations after excellence, instead of 
 its gaudy signs and outward trappings; then indeed I 
 might be of opinion that it is better to live to others than 
 one's-self ; but as the case stands, I incline to the negative 
 side of the question.* — 
 
 " I have not loved the world, nor the world me ; 
 I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd 
 To its idolatries a patient knee — 
 Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles — nor cried aloud 
 In worship of an ocho ; in the crowd 
 
 * Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended to 
 live to himself and the other really did so. Gray shrunk from the 
 public gaze (he did not even like his portrait to be prefixed to his 
 works) into his own thoughts and indolent musings ; Shenstone 
 affected privacy that he might be sought out by the world ; the one 
 courted retirement in order to enjoy leisure and repose, as the other 
 coquetted with it merely to be interrupted with the importunity of 
 visitors and the flatteries of absent friends. 
 
On Living to Ones Self. 131 
 
 They could not deem me one of such ; I stood 
 
 Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud 
 
 Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, 
 
 Had I not filled my mind which thus itself subdued. 
 
 I have not loved the world, nor the world me — 
 
 But let us part fair foes ; I do believe, 
 
 Though I have found them not, that there may be 
 
 Words which are things — hopes which will not deceive, 
 
 And virtues which are merciful nor weave 
 
 Snares for the failing : I would also deem 
 
 O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve ; 
 
 That two, or one, are almost what they seem — 
 
 That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream." 
 
 Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy : 
 but woe betide the ignoble prose-writer who should thus 
 dare to compare notes with the world, or tax it roundly 
 with imposture. 
 
 If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the public, as 
 Ben Jonson did at the audience in the Prologues to his 
 plays, I think I should do it in good set terms, nearly as 
 follows : — There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, 
 pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the 
 Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of 
 itself. From its unwieldy, overgrown dimensions, it 
 dreads the least opposition to it, and shakes like isinglass 
 at the touch of a finger. It starts at its own shadow, like 
 the man in the Hartz mountains, and trembles at the 
 mention of its own name. It has a lion's mouth, the 
 heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It 
 stands " listening its fears." It is so in awe of its own 
 opinion, that it never dares to form any, but catches up 
 the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its 
 judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound 
 of its own voice. The idea of what the public will think 
 prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as 
 a spell on the exercise of private judgment, so that in short 
 the public ear is at the mercy of the first impudent 
 
132 On Living to One's-Self. 
 
 pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or 
 false surmises, or secret whispers. What is said by one is 
 heard by all ; the supposition that a thing is known to all 
 the world makes all the world believe it, and the hollow 
 repetition of a vague report drowns the " still, small 
 voice " of reason. We may believe or know that what is 
 said is not true : but we know or fancy that others believe 
 it — we dare not contradict or are too indolent to dispute 
 with them, and therefore give up our internal, and as we 
 think, our solitary conviction to a sound without sub- 
 stance, without proof, and often without meaning. Nay 
 more, we may believe and know not only that a thing is 
 false, but that others believe and know it to be so, that they 
 are quite as much in the secret of the imposture as we are, 
 that they see the puppets at work, the nature of the 
 machinery, and yet if any one has the art or power to get 
 the management of it, he shall keep possession of the 
 public ear by virtue of a cant phrase or nickname ; and by 
 dint of effrontery and perseverance make all the world 
 believe and repeat what all the world know to be false. 
 The ear is quicker than the judgment. We know that 
 certain things are said ; by that circumstance alone, we 
 know that they produce a certain effect on the imagination 
 of others, and we conform to their prejudices by me- 
 chanical sympathy, and for want of sufficient spirit to 
 differ with them. So far then is public opinion from 
 resting on a broad and solid basis, as the aggregate of 
 thought and feeling in a community, that it is slight and 
 shallow and variable to the last degree — the bubble of the 
 moment ; so that we may safely say the public is the dupe 
 of public opinion, not its parent. The public is pusilla- 
 nimous and cowardly, because it is weak. It knows itself 
 to be a great dunce, and that it has no opinions but upon 
 suggestion. Yet it is unwilling to appear in leading- 
 strings, and would have it thought that its decisions are 
 as wise as they are weighty. It is hasty in taking up its 
 
On Living to Ones-Self. 133 
 
 favourites, more hasty in laying them aside, lest it should 
 be supposed deficient in sagacity in either case. It is 
 generally divided into two strong parties, each of which 
 will allow neither common sense nor common honesty to 
 the other side. It reads the Edinburgh and Quarterly 
 Eeviews, and believes them both — or if there is a doubt, 
 malice turns the scale. Taylor and Hessey told me that 
 they had sold nearly two editions of the Characters of 
 Shakespear's Plays in about three months, but that after 
 the Quarterly Eeview of them came out, they never sold 
 another copy. The public, enlightened as they are, must 
 have known the meaning of that attack as well as those 
 who made it. It was not ignorance then but cowardice, 
 that led them to give up their own opinion. A crew of 
 mischievous critics at Edinburgh having affixed the epithet 
 of the Cockney School* to one or two writers born in the 
 metropolis, all the people in London became afraid of 
 looking into their works, lest they too should be convicted 
 of cockney ism. Oh, brave public ! This epithet proved 
 too much for one of the writers in question, and stuck like 
 a barbed arrow in his heart. Poor Keats ! What was 
 sport to the town was death to him. Young, sensitive, 
 delicate, he was like 
 
 " A bud bit by an envious worm, 
 Ere he could spread his sweet leaves to the air 
 Or dedicate his beauty to the sun " — 
 
 and unable to endure the miscreant cry and idiot laugh, 
 withdrew to sigh his last breath in foreign climes. The 
 public is as envious and ungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid, 
 and pigeon-livered — 
 
 " A huge-sized monster of ingratitudes." 
 
 It reads, it admires, it extols only because it is the fashion, 
 not from any love of the subject or the man. It cries 
 
 * Charles Lamb, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the Author. — 
 Ed 
 
134 On Living/ to Ones Self. 
 
 you up or runs you down out of mere caprice and levity. 
 If you have pleased it, it is jealous of its own involuntary 
 acknowledgment of merit, and seizes the first opportunity, 
 the first shabby pretext, to pick a quarrel with you, and be 
 quits once more. Every petty caviller is erected into a 
 judge, every tale-bearer is implicitly believed. Every 
 little low paltry creature that gaped and wondered, only 
 because others did so, is glad to find you (as he thinks) on 
 a level with himself. An author is not then, after all, a 
 being of another order. Public admiration is forced, and 
 goes against the grain. Public obloquy is cordial and 
 sincere : every individual feels his own importance in it. 
 They give you up bound hand and foot into the power of 
 your accusers. To attempt to defend yourself is a high 
 crime and misdemeanour, a contempt of court, an extreme 
 piece of impertinence. Or if you prove every charge 
 unfounded, they never think of retracing their error, 
 or making you amends. It would be a compromise of 
 their dignity ; they consider themselves as the party 
 injured, and resent your innocence as an imputation on 
 their judgment. The celebrated Bub Doddington, when 
 out of favour at court, said " he would not justify before 
 his sovereign : it was for Majesty to be displeased, and 
 for him to believe himself in the wrong !" The public are 
 not quite so modest. People already begin to talk of the 
 Scotch Novels as overrated. How then can common 
 authors be supposed to keep their heads long above 
 water ? As a general rule, all those who live by the 
 public starve, and are made a bye- word and a standing 
 jest into the bargain. Posterity is no better (not a bit 
 more enlightened or more liberal), except that you are no 
 longer in their power, and that the voice of common fame 
 saves them the trouble of deciding on your claims. The 
 public now are the posterity of Milton and Shakespear 
 Our posterity will be the living public of a future genera- 
 tion. When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, 
 
On Living to Ones-Self. 135 
 
 erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anni- 
 versary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they 
 take any notice of him if he were living ? No ! —I was 
 complaining of this to a Scotchman who had been attend- 
 ing a dinner and a subscription to raise a monument to 
 Burns. He replied he would sodner subscribe twenty 
 pounds to his monument than have given it him while 
 living ; so that if the poet were to come to life again, he 
 would treat him just as he was treated in fact. This was 
 an honest Scotchman. What he said, the rest would do. 
 
 Enough : my soul, turn from them, and let me try 
 to regain the olbscurity and quiet that I love, " far from 
 the madding strife," in some sequestered corner of my 
 own, or in some far-distant land ! In the latter case, I 
 might carry with me as a consolation the passage in 
 Bolingbroke's Eeflections on Exile, in which he describes 
 in glowing colours the resources which a man may always 
 find within himself, and of which the world cannot deprive 
 him : — 
 
 " Believe me, the providence of God has established 
 such an order in the world, that of all which belongs to us, 
 the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of 
 others. Whatever is best is safest ; lies out of the reach 
 of human power ; can neither be given nor taken away. 
 Such is this great and beautiful work of nature, the world. 
 Such is the mind of man, which contemplates and admires 
 the world whereof it makes the noblest part. These are 
 inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in one, we 
 shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore intrepidly 
 wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. 
 Wherever they lead us, on what coast soever we are 
 thrown by them, we shall not find ourselves absolutely 
 strangers. We shall feel the same revolution of seasons, 
 and the same sun and moon * will guide the course of 
 our year. The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, 
 
 * " Plut. of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live out 
 
136 On Thought and Action. 
 
 will be everywhere spread over our heads. There 
 is no part of the world from whence we may not admire 
 those planets which roll, like ours, in different orbits 
 round the same central sun ; from whence we may not 
 discover an object still more stupendous, that army of 
 fixed stars hung up in the immense space of the universe, 
 innumerable suns whose beams enlighten and cherish the 
 unknown world which roll around them : and whilst I 
 am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst my 
 soul is thus raised up to heaven, it imports me little what 
 ground I tread upon." 
 
 ESSAY XI. 
 
 On Thought and Action. 
 
 Those persons who are much accustomed to abstract 
 contemplation are generally unfitted for active pursuits, 
 and vice versa. I myself am sufiicently decided and dog- 
 matical in my opinions, and yet in action I am as imbecile 
 as a woman or a child. I cannot set about the most 
 indifferent thing without twenty efforts, and had rather 
 write one of these Essays than have to seal a letter. In 
 trying to throw a hat or a book upon a table, I miss it ; 
 it just reaches the edge and falls back again, and instead 
 of doing what I mean to perform, I do what I intend to 
 avoid. Thought depends on the habitual exercise of the 
 speculative faculties ; action on the determination of the 
 will. The one assigns reasons for things, the other puts 
 causes into act. Abraham Tucker relates of a friend of his, 
 
 of their own country, to the simple people who fancied the moon of 
 Athens was a finer moon than that of Corinth, 
 
 -Labentem coelo quse ducitis annum. 
 
 Virg. Georg." 
 
On Tliought and Action. 137 
 
 an old special pleader, that once coming out of his cham- 
 bers in the Temple with him to take a walk, he hesitated 
 at the bottom of the stairs which way to go — proposed 
 different directions, to Charing Cross, to St. Paul's, — 
 found some objection to them all, and at last turned back 
 for want of a casting motive to incline the scale. Tucker 
 gives this as an instance of professional indecision, or of 
 that temper of mind which having been long used to 
 weigh the reasons for things with scrupulous exactness, 
 could not come to any conclusion at all on the spur of 
 the occasion, or without some grave distinction to justify 
 its choice. Louvet in his Narrative tells us, that when 
 several of the Brisotin party were collected at the house 
 of Barbaroux (I think it was) ready to effect their escape 
 from the power of Eobespierre, one of them going to the 
 window and finding a shower of rain coming on, seriously 
 advised their stopping till the next morning, for that the 
 emissaries of government would not think of coming 
 in search of them in such bad weather. Some of them 
 deliberated on this wise proposal, and were nearly taken. 
 Such is the effeminacy of the speculative and philosophical 
 temperament, compared with the promptness and vigour 
 of the practical ! It is on such unequal terms that the 
 refined and romantic speculators on possible good and evil 
 contend with their strong-nerved remorseless adversaries; 
 and we see the result. Eeasoners in general are unde- 
 cided, wavering, and sceptical, or yield at last to the 
 weakest motive as most congenial to their feeble habit of 
 soul.* 
 
 Some men are mere machines. They are put in a go- 
 
 * When Buonaparte left the Chamber of Deputies to go and fight 
 his last fatal battle, he advised them not to be debating the forms of 
 Constitutions, when the enemy was at their gates. Benjamin Constant 
 thought otherwise. He wanted to play a game at cat's-cradle between 
 the Republicans and Royalists, and lost his match. He did not care, 
 bo that he hampered a more efficient man than himself. 
 
138 On Tliought and Action. 
 
 cart of business, and are harnessed to a profession — yoked 
 to Fortune's wheels. They plod on, and succeed. Their 
 affairs conduct them, not they their affairs. All they 
 have to do is to let things take their course, and not go 
 oat of the beaten road. A man may carry on the busi- 
 ness of farming on the same spot and principle that his 
 ancestors have done for many generations before him 
 without any extraordinary share of capacity : the proof is, 
 it is done every day in every county and parish in the 
 kingdom. All that is necessary is that he should not 
 pretend to be wiser than his neighbours. If he has a 
 grain more wit or penetration than they, if his vanity gets 
 the start of his avarice only half a neck, if he has ever 
 thought or read anything upon the subject, it will most 
 probably be the ruin of him. He will turn theoretical 
 or experimental farmer, and no more need be said. Mr. 
 Cobbett, who is a sufficiently shrewd and practical man, 
 with an eye also to the main chance, had got some notions 
 in his head (from Tull's Husbandry) about the method 
 of sowing turnips, to which he would have sacrificed not 
 only his estate at Botley, but his native county of Hamp- 
 shire itself, sooner than give up an inch of his argument. 
 " Tut ! will you baulk a man in the career of his 
 humour?" Therefore, that a man may not be ruined 
 by his humours, he should be too dull and phlegmatic to 
 have any : he must have " no figures nor no fantasies 
 which busy thought draws in the brains of men. ,, The 
 fact is, that the ingenuity or judgment of no one man is 
 equal to that of the world at large, which is the fruit of 
 the experience and ability of all mankind. Even where 
 a man is right in a particular notion, he will be apt to 
 overrate the importance of his discovery, to the detri- 
 ment of his affairs. Action requires co-operation, but in 
 general if you set your face against custom, people will 
 set their faces against you. They cannot tell whether 
 you are right or wrong, but they know that you are 
 
On Thought and Action. 139 
 
 guilty of a pragmatical assumption of superiority over 
 them which they do not like. There is no doubt that if 
 a person two hundred years ago had foreseen and attempted 
 to put in practice the most approved and successful 
 methods of cultivation now in use, it would have been a 
 death-blow to his credit and fortune. So that though the 
 experiments and improvements of private individuals 
 from time to time gradually go to enrich the public 
 stock of information and reform the general practice, they 
 are mostly the ruin of the person who makes them, 
 because he takes a part for the whole, and lays more 
 stress upon the single point in which he has found others 
 in the wrong than on all the rest in which they are sub- 
 stantially and prescriptively in the right. The great 
 requisite, it should appear, then, for the prosperous 
 management of ordinary business, is the want of imagina- 
 tion, or of any ideas but those of custom and interest on 
 the narrowest scale : — and as the affairs of the world are 
 necessarily carried on by the common run of its inha- 
 bitants, it seems a wise dispensation of Providence that it 
 should be so. If no one could rent a piece of glebe-land 
 without a genius for mechanical inventions, or stand 
 behind a counter without a large benevolence of soul, 
 what would become of the commercial and agricultural 
 interests of this great (and once flourishing) country ? — 
 I would not be understood as saying that there is not 
 what may be called a genius for business, an extraordinary 
 capacity for affairs, quickness and comprehension united, 
 an insight into character, an acquaintance with a number 
 of particular circumstances, a variety of expedients, a tact 
 for finding out what will do : I grant all this (in Liver- 
 pool and Manchester they would persuade you that your 
 merchant and manufacturer is your only gentleman and 
 scholar) — but still, making every allowance for the differ- 
 ence between the liberal trader and the sneaking shop- 
 keeper, I doubt whether the most surprising success is to 
 
140 On Thought and Action. 
 
 be accounted for from any such unusual attainments, or 
 whether a man's making half a million of money is a 
 proof of his capacity for thought in general. It is much 
 oftener owing to views and wishes hounded but constantly 
 directed to one particular object. To succeed, a man 
 should aim only at success. The child of Fortune should 
 resign himself into the hands of Fortune. A plotting 
 head frequently overreaches itself : a mind confident of 
 its resources and calculating powers enters on critical 
 speculations, which in a game depending so much on 
 chance and unforeseen events, and not entirely on intel- 
 lectual skill, turn the odds greatly against any one in the 
 long run. The rule of business is to take what you can 
 get, and keep what you have got : or an eagerness in seiz- 
 ing every opportunity that offers for promoting your own 
 interest, and a plodding persevering industry in making 
 the most of the advantages you have already obtained, are 
 the most effectual as well as the safest ingredients in the 
 composition of the mercantile character. The world is 
 a book in which the Chapter of Accidents is none of the 
 least considerable ; or it is a machine that must be left, 
 in a great measure, to turn itself. The most that a 
 worldly-minded man can do is to stand at the receipt of 
 custom, and be constantly on the look-out for wind- 
 falls. The true devotee in this way waits for the 
 revelations of Fortune as the poet waits for the inspi- 
 ration of the Muse, and does not rashly anticipate her 
 favours. He must be neither capricious nor wilful. I 
 have known people untrammelled in the ways of business, 
 but with so intense an apprehension of their own interest, 
 that they would grasp at the slightest possibility of gain 
 as a certainty, and were led into as many mistakes by an 
 overgriping usurious disposition as they could have been 
 by the most thoughtless extravagance. — We hear a great 
 outcry about the want of judgment in men of genius. It is 
 not a want of judgment, but an excess of other things. 
 
On Thought and Action. 141 
 
 They err knowingly, and are wilfully blind. The un- 
 derstanding is out of the question. The profound judg- 
 ment which soberer people pique themselves upon is in 
 truth a want of passion and imagination. Give them an 
 interest in anything, a sudden fancy, a bait for their 
 favourite foible, and who so besotted as they ? Stir their 
 feelings, and farewell to their prudence! The under- 
 standing operates as a motive to action only in the silence 
 of the passions. I have heard people of a sanguine tem- 
 perament reproached with betting according to their 
 wishes, instead of their opinion who should win : and I 
 have seen those who reproached them do the very same 
 thing the instant their own vanity or prejudices are con- 
 cerned. The most mechanical people, once thrown off 
 their balance, are the most extravagant and fantastical. 
 What passion is there so unmeaning and irrational as 
 avarice itself? The Dutch went mad for tulips, and 
 
 for love ! To return to what was said a little 
 
 way back, a question might be started, whether as 
 thought relates to the whole circumference of things 
 and interests, and business is confined to a very small part 
 of them, viz., to a knowledge of a man's own affairs and 
 the making of his own fortune, whether a talent for the 
 latter will not generally exist in proportion to the nar- 
 rowness and grossness of his ideas, nothing drawing his 
 attention out of his own sphere, or giving him an interest 
 except in those things which he can realize and bring 
 home to himself in the most undoubted shape ? To the 
 man of business all the world is a fable but the Stock 
 Exchange : to the money-getter nothing has a real exist- 
 ence that he cannot convert into a tangible feeling, that 
 he does not recognize as property, that he cannot " mea- 
 sure with a two-foot rule or count upon ten fingers." The 
 want of thought, of imagination, drives the practical man 
 upon immediate realities : to the poet or philosopher all 
 is real and interesting that is true or possible, that can 
 
142 On Thought and Action. 
 
 reach in its consequences to others, or be made a subject 
 of curious speculation to himself! 
 
 But is it right, then, to judge of action by the quantity 
 of thought implied in it, any more than it would be to 
 condemn a life of contemplation for being inactive ? Or 
 has not everything a source and principle of its own, to 
 which we should refer it, and not to the principles of other 
 things ? He who succeeds in any pursuit in which others 
 fail, may be presumed to have qualities of some sort or 
 other which they are without. If he has not brilliant wit, 
 he may have solid sense : if he has not subtlety of under- 
 standing, he may have energy and firmness of purpose : if 
 he has only a few advantages, he may have modesty and 
 prudence to make the most of what he possesses. Propriety 
 is one great matter in the conduct of life ; which, though 
 like a graceful carriage of the body, it is neither definable 
 nor striking at first sight, is the result of finely balanced 
 feelings, and lends a secret strength and charm to the whole 
 character. 
 
 Quicquid agiU quoquo vestigia vertit, 
 
 ComponU furtim, subsequiturque decor. 
 
 There are more ways than one in which the various 
 faculties of the mind may unfold themselves. Neither 
 words nor ideas reducible to words constitute the utmost 
 limit of human capacity. Man is not a merely talking 
 nor a merely reasoning animal. Let us then take him as 
 he is, instead of " curtailing him of nature's fair pro- 
 portions " to suit our previous notions. Doubtless, there 
 are great characters both in active and contemplative life. 
 There have been heroes as well as sages, legislators and 
 founders of religion, historians and able statesmen and 
 generals, inventors of useful arts and instruments and ex- 
 plorers of undiscovered countries, as well as writers and 
 readers of books. It will not do to set all these asido 
 under any fastidious or pedantic distinction. Comparisons 
 are odious, because they are impertinent, and lead only to 
 
On Thought and Action. 143 
 
 the discovery of defects by making one thing the standard 
 of another which has no relation to it. If, as some one 
 proposed, we were to institute an inquiry, " Which was 
 the greatest man, Milton or Cromwell, Buonaparte or 
 Eubens ?" — we should have all the authors and artists on 
 one side, and all the military men and the whole diplomatic 
 body on the other, who would set to work with all their 
 might to pull in pieces the idol of the other party, and the 
 longer the dispute continued, the more would each grow 
 dissatisfied with his favourite, though determined to allow 
 no merit to any one else. The mind is not well competent 
 to take in the full impression of more than one style of 
 excellence or one extraordinary character at once ; con- 
 tradictory claims puzzle and stupefy it ; and however 
 admirable any individual may be in himself and unrivalled 
 in his particular way, yet if we try him by others in a 
 totally opposite class, that is, if we consider not what he 
 was but what he was not, he will be found to be nothing. 
 We do not reckon up the excellences on either side, for 
 then these would satisfy the mind and put an end to the 
 comparison : we have no way of exclusively setting up our 
 favourite but by running down his supposed rival; and 
 for the gorgeous hues of Eubens, the lofty conceptions of 
 Milton, the deep policy and cautious daring of Cromwell, 
 or the dazzling exploits and fatal ambition of the modern 
 chieftain, the poet is transformed into a pedant, the artist 
 sinks into a mechanic, the politician turns out no better 
 than a knave, and the hero is exalted into a madman. It 
 is as easy to get the start of our antagonist in argument 
 by frivolous and vexatious objections to one side of the 
 question as it is difficult to do full and heaped justice to 
 the other. If I am asked which is the greatest of those 
 who have been the greatest in different ways, I answer, the 
 one that we happen to be thinking of at the time, for while 
 that is the case, we can conceive of nothing higher. — If 
 there is a propensity in the vulgar to admire the achieve- 
 
144 On Thought and Action. 
 
 ments of personal prowess or instances of fortunate enter- 
 prise too much, it cannot be denied that those who have 
 to weigh out and dispense the meed of fame in books have 
 been too much disposed, by a natural bias, to confine all 
 merit and talent to the productions of the pen, or at least 
 to those works which, being artificial or abstract repre- 
 sentations of things, are transmitted to posterity, and cried 
 up as models in their kind. This, though unavoidable, is 
 hardly just. Actions pass away and are forgotten, or are 
 only discernible in their effects : conquerors, statesmen, 
 and kings live but by their names stamped on the page of 
 history. Hume says rightly that more people think about 
 Virgil and Homer (and that continually) than ever trouble 
 their heads about Caesar or Alexander. In fact, poets are 
 a longer-lived race than heroes : they breathe more of the 
 air of immortality. They survive more entire in their 
 thoughts and acts. We have all that Virgil or Homer did, 
 as much as if we had lived at the same time with them : 
 we can hold their works in our hands, or lay them on our 
 pillows, or put them to our lips. Scarcely a trace of what 
 the others did is left upon the earth, so as to be visible to 
 common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men, 
 still breathing and moving in their writings. The others, 
 the conquerors of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. 
 The sympathy (so to speak) between thought and thought 
 is more intimate and vital than that between thought and 
 action. Thought is linked to thought as flame kindles 
 into flame : the tribute of admiration to the manes of 
 departed heroism is like burning incense in a marble 
 monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with the progress of 
 time harden into substances : things, bodies, actions, 
 moulder away, or melt into a sound, into thin air ! — Yet 
 though the Schoolmen in the middle ages disputed more 
 about the texts of Aristotle than the battle of Arbela, 
 perhaps Alexander's Generals in his life- time admired his 
 pupil as much and liked him better. For not only a man's 
 
On Thought and Action. 145 
 
 actions are effaced and vanish with him ; his virtues and 
 generous qualities die with him also : — his intellect only 
 is immortal and bequeathed unimpaired to posterity. 
 Words are the only things that last for ever. 
 
 If however the empire of words and general knowledge 
 is more durable in proportion as it is abstracted and 
 attenuated, it is less immediate and dazzling : if authors 
 are as good after they are dead as when they were living, 
 while living they might as well be dead : and moreover 
 with respect to actual ability, to write a book is not the 
 only proof of taste, sense, or spirit, as pedants would have 
 us suppose. To do anything well, to paint a picture, to 
 fight a battle, to make a plough or a threshing-machine, 
 requires, one would think, as much skill and judgment as 
 to talk about or write a description of it when done. 
 Words are universal, intelligible signs, but they are not 
 the only real, existing things. Did not Julius Oeesar show 
 himself as much of a man in conducting his campaigns as 
 in composing his Commentaries ? Or was the Retreat of 
 the Ten Thousand under Xenophon, or his work of that 
 name, the most consummate performance ? Or would not 
 Lovelace, supposing him to have existed and to have con- 
 ceived and executed all his fine stratagems on the spur of 
 the occasion, have been as clever a fellow as Eichardson 
 who invented them in cold blood? If to conceive and 
 describe an heroic character is the height of a literary 
 ambition, we can hardly make it out that to be and to do 
 all that the wit of man can feign, is nothing. To use means 
 to ends, to set causes in motion, to wield the machine 
 of society, to subject the wills of others to your own, to 
 manage abler men than yourself by means of that whict 
 is stronger in them than their wisdom, viz. their weakness, 
 and their folly, to calculate the resistance of ignorance and 
 prejudice to your designs, and by obviating, to turn them 
 to account, to foresee a long, obscure, and complicated 
 train of events, of chances and openings of success, tc 
 
 L 
 
146 On Thought and Action. 
 
 unwind the web of others' policy and weave your own out 
 of it, to judge of the effects of things not in the abstract 
 but with reference to all their bearings, ramifications, and 
 impediments, to understand character thoroughly, to see 
 latent talent or lurking treachery, to know mankind for 
 what they are, and use them as they deserve, to have a 
 purpose steadily in view and to effect it after removing 
 every obstacle, to master others and be true to yourself, 
 asks power and knowledge, both nerves and brain. 
 
 Such is the sort of talent that may be shown and that 
 has been possessed by the great leaders on the stage of 
 the world. To accomplish great things argues, I imagine, 
 great resolution : to design great things implies no 
 common mind. Ambition is in some sort genius. Though 
 I would rather wear out my life in arguing a broad specu- 
 lative question than in caballing for the election to a 
 wardmote, or canvassing for votes in a rotten borough, yet 
 I should think that the loftiest Epicurean philosopher 
 might descend from his punctilio to identify himself with 
 the support of a great principle, or to prop a falling state. 
 This is what the legislators and founders of empire did of 
 old ; and the permanence of their institutions showed the 
 depth of the principles from which they emanated. A 
 tragic poem is not the worse for acting well : if it will not 
 bear this test, it savours of effeminacy. Well-digested 
 schemes will stand the touchstone of experience. Great 
 thoughts reduced to practice become great acts. Again, 
 great acts grow out of great occasions, and great occasions 
 spring from great principles, working changes in society 
 and tearing it up by the roots. But still I conceive that 
 a genius for action depends essentially on the strength of 
 the will rather than on that of the understanding ; that 
 the long-headed calculation of causes and consequences 
 arises from the energy of the first cause, which is the will 
 setting others in motion and prepared to anticipate the 
 results ; that its sagacity is activity delighting in meeting 
 
On Thought and Action. 147 
 
 difficulties and adventures more than half-way, and its 
 wisdom courage not to shrink from danger, but to redouble 
 its efforts with opposition. Its humanity, if it has much, 
 is magnanimity to spare the vanquished, exulting in power 
 but not prone to mischief, with good sense enough to be 
 aware of the instability of fortune, and with some regard 
 to reputation. What may serve as a criterion to try this 
 question by is the following consideration, that we some- 
 times find as remarkable a deficiency of the speculative 
 faculty coupled with great strength of will and consequent 
 success in active life as we do a want of voluntary power 
 and total incapacity for business frequently joined to the 
 highest mental qualifications. In some cases it will 
 happen that " to be wise, is to be obstinate." If you are 
 deaf to reason but stick to your own purposes, you will 
 tire others out and bring them over to your way of 
 thinking. Self-will and blind prejudice are the best 
 defence of actual power and exclusive advantages. The 
 forehead of the late king was not remarkable for the 
 character of intellect, but the lower part of his face was 
 expressive of strong passions and fixed resolution. Charles 
 Fox had an animated, intelligent eye, and brilliant, elastic 
 forehead (with a nose indicating fine taste), but the lower 
 features were weak, unsettled, fluctuating, and without 
 purchase — it was in them the Whigs were defeated. What 
 a fine iron binding Buonaparte had round his face, as if it 
 had been cased in steel! What sensibility about the 
 mouth ! What watchful penetration in the eye ! What 
 a smooth, unruffled forehead ! Mr. Pitt, with little sunken 
 eyes, had a high, retreating forehead, and a nose expressing 
 pride and aspiring self-opinion : it was on that (with sub- 
 mission) that he suspended the decisions of the House of 
 Commons and dangled the Opposition as he pleased. 
 Lord Castlereagh is a man rather deficient than redundant 
 in words and topics. He is not (any more than St. Augus- 
 tine was, in the opinion of La Fontaine) so great a wit as 
 
148 On Thought and Action. 
 
 Rabelais, nor is he so great a philosopher as Aristotle : 
 but he has that in him which is not to be trifled with He 
 has a noble mask of a face (not well filled up in the 
 expression, which is relaxed and dormant) with a fine 
 person and manner. On the strength of these he hazards 
 his speeches in the House. He has also a knowledge of 
 mankind, and of the composition of the House. He takes 
 a thrust which he cannot parry on his shield — is " all tran- 
 quillity and smiles " under a volley of abuse, sees when to 
 pay a compliment to a wavering antagonist, soothes the 
 melting mood of his hearers, or gets up a speech full of in- 
 dignation, and knows how to bestow his attentions on that 
 great public body, whether he wheedles or bullies, so as to 
 bring it to compliance. With a long reach of undefined 
 purposes (the result of a temper too indolent for thought, 
 too violent for repose) he has equal perseverance and 
 pliancy in bringing his objects to pass. I would rather be 
 Lord Castlereagh, as far as a sense of power is concerned 
 (principle is out of the question), than such a man as 
 Mr. Canning, who is a mere fluent sophist, and never 
 knows the limit of discretion or the effect which will be 
 produced by what he says, except as far as florid common- 
 places may be depended on. Buonaparte is referred by 
 Mr. Coleridge to the class of active rather than of intel- 
 lectual characters : and Cowley has left an invidious but 
 splendid eulogy on Oliver Cromwell, which sets out on 
 much the same principle. 1 "What," he says, "can be 
 more extraordinary, than that a person of mean birth, no 
 fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have some- 
 times, or of mind which have often, raised men to the 
 highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and 
 the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design, as the 
 destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly- 
 
 1 u A Discourse, by way of Vision, on the Government of Oliver 
 Oauwcll," first printed after the Restoration ; it is included, of 
 oourae, in his Prose Works, 1826, p. 47, et seq.—ED. 
 
On Thought and Action. 149 
 
 founded monarchies upon the earth ? That he should 
 have the power or boldness to put his prince and master 
 to an open and infamous death ; to banish that numerous 
 and strongly-allied family ; to do all this under the name 
 and wages of a Parliament ; to trample upon them too as 
 he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew 
 weary of them ; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster 
 out of their ashes ; to stifle that in the very infancy, and 
 set up himself above all things that ever were called 
 sovereign in England ; to oppress all his enemies by arms, 
 and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all 
 parties patiently for a while, and to command them 
 victoriously at last ; to overrun each corner of the three 
 nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches 
 of the south and the poverty of the north ; to be feared 
 and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother 
 to the Gods of the earth; to call together Parliaments 
 with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the 
 breath of his mouth ; to be humbly and daily petitioned 
 that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions 
 a year, to be the master of those who had hired him 
 before to be their servant ; to have the estates and lives 
 of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little 
 inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in 
 the spending of them ; and lastly (for there is no end of 
 all the particulars of his glory), to bequeath all this with 
 one word to his posterity ; to die with peace at home, and 
 triumph abroad ; to be buried among kings, and with more 
 than regal solemnity ; and to leave a name behind him, 
 not to be extinguished but with the whole world ; which 
 as it is now too little for his praises, so might have 
 been too for his conquests, if the short line of his 
 human life could have been stretched out to the extent of 
 his immortal designs !" 
 
 Cromwell was a bad speaker and a worse writer. 
 Milton wrote his despatches for him in elegant and erudite 
 
150 On Thought and Action. 
 
 Latin : and the pen of the one, like the sword of the 
 other, was " sharp and sweet." We have not that union 
 in modern times of the heroic and literary character 
 which was common among the ancients. Julius Caesar 
 and Xenophon recorded their own acts with equal clear- 
 ness of style and modesty of temper. The Duke of 
 Wellington (worse off than Cromwell) is obliged to get 
 Mr. Mudford to write the History of his Life. Sophocles, 
 iEschylus, and Socrates were distinguished for their 
 military prowess among their contemporaries, though now 
 only remembered for what they did in poetry and philo- 
 sophy. Cicero and Demosthenes, the two greatest orators 
 of antiquity, appear to have been cowards : nor does 
 Horace seem to give a very favourable picture of his 
 martial achievements. But in general there was not that 
 division in the labours of the mind and body among the 
 Greeks and Eomans that has been introduced among us 
 either by the progress of civilization or by a greater 
 slowness and inaptitude of parts. The French, for 
 instance, appear to unite a number of accomplishments, the 
 literary character and the man of the world, better than 
 we do. Among us, a scholar is almost another name for 
 a pedant or a clown: it is not so with them. Their 
 philosophers and wits went into the world and mingled 
 in the. society of the fair. Of this there needs no other 
 proof than the spirited print of most of the great names 
 in French literature, to whom Moliere is reading a comedy 
 in the presence of the celebrated Ninon de l'Enclos. 
 D'Alembert, one of the first mathematicians of his age, 
 was a wit, a man of gallantry and letters. With us a 
 learned man is absorbed in himself and some particular 
 study, and minds nothing else. There is something ascetic 
 and impracticable in his very constitution, and he answors 
 to the description of the Monk in Spenser — 
 '• From every work he challenged essoin 
 For contemplation's sake" 
 
On Thought and Action. 151 
 
 Perhaps the superior importance attached to the institu- 
 tions of religion, as well as the more abstracted and 
 visionary nature of its objects, has led (as a general 
 result) to a wider separation between thought and action 
 in modern times. 
 
 Ambition is of a higher and more heroic strain than 
 avarice. Its objects are nobler, and the means by which 
 it attains its ends less mechanical. 
 
 " Better be lord of them that riches have, 
 Than riches have myself, and be their servile slave/' 
 
 The incentive to ambition is the love of power ; the 
 spur to avarice is either the fear of poverty, or a strong 
 desire of self-indulgence. The amassers of fortunes seem 
 divided into two opposite classes, lean, penurious-looking 
 mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to get 
 possession of, because they want to enjoy, the good things 
 of the world. The one have famine and a workhouse 
 always before their eyes, the others in the fulness of 
 their persons and the robustness of their constitutions 
 seem to bespeak the reversion of a landed estate, rich 
 acres, fat beeves, a substantial mansion, costly clothing, 
 a chine and turkey, choice wines, and all other good 
 things consonant to the wants and full-fed desires of their 
 bodies. Such men charm fortune by the sleekness of 
 their aspects and the goodly rotundity of their honest 
 faces, as the others scare away poverty by their wan, 
 meagre looks. The last starve themselves into riches by 
 care and carking; the first eat, drink, and sleep their 
 way into the good things of this life. The greatest 
 number of warm men in the city are good, jolly fellows. 
 
 Look at Sir William . Callipash and callipee are 
 
 written in his face : he rolls about his un wieldly bulk in 
 a sea of turtle-soup. How many haunches of venison 
 does he carry on his back ! He is larded with jobs and 
 contracts ; he is stuffed and swelled out with layers of 
 
152 On Thought and Action. 
 
 bank-notes, and invitations to dinner! His face Jiangs 
 out a flag of defiance to mischance : the roguish twinkle in 
 his eye with which he lures half the city and beats Alder- 
 man — hollow, is a smile reflected from heaps of 
 
 unsunned gold ! Nature and Fortune are not so much at 
 variance as to dijffer about this fellow. To enjoy the 
 good the Gods provide us, is to deserve it. Nature 
 meant him for a Knight, Alderman, and City Member ; 
 and Fortune laughed to see the goodly person and pros- 
 pects of the man ! l — I am not, from certain early pre- 
 judices, much given to admire the ostentatious marks of 
 wealth (there are persons enough to admire them without 
 rne) — but I confess, there is something in the look of 
 
 1 A thorough fitness for any end implies the means. Where there 
 is a will, there is a way. A real passion, an entire devotion to any 
 object, always succeeds. The strong sympathy with what we wish 
 and imagine, realizes it, dissipates all obstacles, and removes all 
 scruples. The disappointed lover may complain as much as he 
 pleases. He was himself to blame. He was a half-witted, wishy- 
 ivashy fellow. His love might be as great as he makes it out : but 
 it was not his ruling passion. His fear, his pride, his vanity was 
 greater. Let any one's whole soul be steeped in this passion, let him 
 think and care for nothing else, let nothing divert, cool, or intimidate 
 him, let the ideal feeling become an actual one and take possession 
 of his whole faculties, looks, and manner, let the same voluptuous 
 hope3 and wishes govern his actions in the presence of his mistress 
 that haunt his fancy in her absence, and I will answer for his 
 success. But I will not answer for the success of " a dish of skimmed 
 milk" in such a case. — I could always get to see a fine collection of 
 pictures myself. The fact is, I was set upon it. ft either the surliness 
 of porters, nor the impertinence of footmen could keep me back. I 
 had a portrait of Titian in my eye, and nothing could put me out in 
 my determination. If that had not (as it were) been looking on me 
 all the time I was battling my way, I should have been irritated or 
 disconcerted, and gone away. But my liking to the end conquered 
 my scruples or aversion to the means. I never understood the Scotch 
 character but on these occasions. I would not take " No " for an 
 answer. If I had wanted a place under government or a writership 
 to India, I could have got it from the same importunity, and on the 
 aame terms. 
 
On Will-Making. 153 
 
 the old banking-houses in Lombard Street, the posterns 
 covered with mud, the doors opening sullenly and silently, 
 the absence of all pretence, the darkness and the gloom 
 within, the gleaming of lamps in the day-time, 
 
 "Like a faint shadow of uncertain light," 
 that almost realises the poetical conception of the cave of 
 Mammon in Spenser, where dust and cobwebs concealed 
 the roofs and pillars of solid gold, and lifts the mind 
 quite off its ordinary hinges. The account of tho 
 manner in which the founder of Guy's Hospital accumu- 
 lated his immense wealth has always to me something 
 romantic in it, from the same force of contrast. He was 
 a little shop-keeper, and out of his savings bought Bibles 
 and purchased seamen's tickets in Queen Anne's wars, by 
 which he left a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds. 
 The story suggests the idea of a magician ; nor is there 
 anything in the Arabian Nights that looks more like a 
 fiction. 
 
 ESSAY XII. 
 On Will-making. 
 
 Few things show the human character in a more ridi- 
 culous light than the circumstance of will-making. It is 
 the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural 
 perversity of the disposition, and we take care to make 
 a good use of it. We husband it with jealousy, put it off 
 &s long as we can, and then use every precaution that the 
 world shall be no gainer by our deaths. This last act of 
 our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them, for 
 stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we 
 seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling 
 accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive 
 us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint 
 as many people, as possible. 
 
151 On Will-Making. 
 
 Many persons have a superstition on the subject of 
 making their last will and testament, and think that when 
 everything is ready signed and sealed, there is nothing- 
 farther left to delay their departure. I have heard of an 
 instance of one person who, having a feeling of this kind 
 on his mind, and being teazed into making his will by 
 those about him, actually fell ill with pure apprehension, 
 and thought he was going to die in good earnest, but 
 having executed the deed over-night, awoke, to his great 
 surprise, the next morning, and found himself as well as 
 ever he was. 1 An elderly gentleman possessed of a good 
 estate and the same idle notion, and who found himself 
 in a dangerous way, was anxious to do this piece of 
 justice to those who remained behind him, but when it 
 came to the point, his heart failed him, and his nervous 
 fancies returned in full force : — even on his death-bed, 
 he still held back and was averse to sign what he looked 
 upon as his own death-warrant, and just as the last gasp, 
 amidst the anxious looks and silent upbraidings of friends 
 and relatives that surrounded him, he summoned resolu- 
 tion to hold out his feeble hand which was guided by 
 others to trace his name, and he fell back — a corpse ! 
 If there is any pressing reason for it, that is, if any 
 particular person would be relieved from a state of 
 
 1 A poor woman at Plymouth who did not like the formality, or 
 could not afford the expense of a will, thought to leave what little 
 property she had in wearing apparel and household moveables to her 
 friends and relations, viva voce, and before Death stopped her breath. 
 She gave and willed away (of her proper authority) her chair and 
 table to one, her bed to another, an old cloak to a third, a night-cap 
 and petticoat to a fourth, and so on. The old crones sat weeping 
 round, and soon after carried off all they could lay their hands upon, 
 and left their benefactress to her fate. They were no sooner gone 
 than she unexpectedly recovered, and sent to have her things back 
 again ; but not one of them could she get, and she was left without 
 a rag to her back, or a friend to condole with her. [This may be 
 true, but is a very old jest indeed, and is contained in the Collecti >ns 
 printed during the sixteenth century. — Ed.] 
 
On Will-Making. 155 
 
 harassing uncertainty, or materially benefited by their 
 making a will, the old and infirm (who do not like to be 
 put out of their way) generally make this an excuse to 
 themselves for putting it off to the very last moment, 
 probably till it is too late : or where this is sure to make 
 the greatest number of blank faces, contrive to give their 
 friends the slip, without signifying their final determi- 
 nation in their favour. Where some unfortunate indi- 
 vidual has been kept long in suspense, who has been 
 perhaps sought out for that very purpose, and who may 
 be in a great measure dependent on this as a last resource, 
 it is nearly a certainty that there will be no will to be 
 found ; no trace, no sign to discover whether the person 
 dying thus intestate ever had any intention of the sort, 
 or why they relinquished it. This is to bespeak the 
 thoughts and imaginations of others for victims after we 
 are dead, las well as their persons and expectations for 
 hangers-on while we are living. A celebrated beauty of 
 the middle of the last century, towards its close, sought 
 out a female relative, the friend and companion of her 
 youth, who had lived during the forty years of their 
 separation in rather straitened circumstances, and in a 
 situation which admitted of some alleviations. Twice 
 they met after that long lapse of time — once her relation 
 visited her in the splendour of a rich old family-mansion, 
 and once she crossed the country to become an inmate 
 of the humble dwelling of her early and only remaining 
 friend. What was this for ? Was it to revive the image 
 of her youth in the pale and careworn face of her friend ? 
 Or was it to display the decay of her charms and recall 
 her long-forgotten triumphs to the memory of the only 
 person who could bear witness to them ? Was it to show 
 the proud remains of herself to those who remembered 
 or had often heard what she was — her skin like shrivelled 
 alabaster, her emaciated features chiselled by Nature's 
 finest hand, her eyes that, when a smile lighted fchem up, 
 
156 On Will-Mahing. 
 
 still shone like diamonds, the vermilion hues that still 
 bloomed among wrinkles? Was it to talk of bone-lace, 
 of the flonnees and brocades of the last century, of race- 
 balls in the year '62, and of the scores of lovers that had 
 died at her feet, and to set whole counties in a flame 
 again, only with a dream of faded beauty ? Whether it 
 was for this, or whether she meant to leave her friend 
 anything (as was indeed expected, all things considered 
 not without reason) nobody knows — for she never breathed 
 a syllable on the subject herself, and died without a will. 
 The accomplished coquet of twenty, who had pampered 
 hopes only to kill them, who had kindled rapture with a 
 look and extinguished it with a breath, could find no 
 better employment at seventy than to revive the fond 
 recollections and raise up the drooping hopes of her 
 kinswoman only to let them fall — to rise no more. Such 
 is the delight we have in trifling with and tantalizing the 
 feelings of others by the exquisite refinements, the studied 
 sleights of love or friendship ! 
 
 Where a property is actually bequeathed, supposing the 
 circumstances of the case and the usages of society to 
 leave a practical discretion to the testator, it is most 
 frequently in such portions as can be of the least service. 
 Where there is much already, much is given; where 
 much is wanted, little or nothing. Poverty invites a sort 
 of pity, a miserable dole of assistance ; necessity, neglect 
 and scorn ; wealth attracts and allures to itself more 
 wealth by natural association of ideas or by that innate 
 love of inequality and injustice which is the favourite 
 principle of the imagination. Men like to collect money 
 into large heaps in their life-time : they like to leave it in 
 large heaps after they are dead. They grasp it into their 
 own hands, not to use it for their own good, but to hoard, 
 to lock it up, to make an object, an idol, and a wonder of 
 it. Do you expect them to distribute it so as to do others 
 good; that they will like those who come after them 
 
On Will-Making. 157 
 
 better than themselves ; that if they were willing to pinch 
 and starve themselves, they will not deliberately defraud 
 their sworn friends and nearest kindred of what would be 
 of the utmost use to them? No, they will thrust their 
 heaps of gold and silver into the hands of others (as their 
 proxies) to keep for them untouched, still increasing, still 
 of no use to any one, but to pamper pride and avarice, to 
 glitter in the huge, watchful, insatiable eye of fancy, to be 
 deposited as a new offering at the shrine of Mammon, their 
 God — this is with them to put it to its intelligible and 
 proper use, this is fulfilling a sacred, indispensable duty, 
 this cheers them in the solitude of the grave, and throws 
 a gleam of satisfaction across the stony eye of death. 
 But to think of frittering it down, of sinking it in charity, 
 of throwing it away on the idle claims of humanity, where 
 it would no longer peer in monumental pomp over their 
 heads ; and that too when on the point of death them- 
 selves, in articulo mortis, oh ! it would be madness, waste, 
 extravagence, impiety ! — Thus worldlings feel and argue 
 without knowing it ; and while they fancy they are study- 
 ing their own interest or that of some booby successor, 
 their alter idem, are but the dupes and puppets of a 
 favourite idea, a phantom, a prejudice, that must be kept 
 up somewhere (no matter where) if it still plays before 
 and haunts their imagination, while they have sense or 
 understanding left to cling to their darling follies. 
 
 There was a remarkable instance of this tendency to the 
 heap, this desire to cultivate an abstract passion for 
 wealth, in a will of one of the Thelussons some time back. 
 This will went to keep the greater part of a large 
 property from the use of the natural heirs and next-of-kin 
 for a length of time, and to let it accumulate at compound 
 interest in such a way and so long, that it would at last 
 mount up in value to the purchase-money of a whole 
 county. The interest accruing from the funded property 
 or the rent of the lands at certain periods was to bo 
 employed to purchase other estates, other parks and 
 
158 On Will-Making. 
 
 manors in the neighbourhood or farther off, so that the 
 prospect of the future desmesne that was to devolve at 
 some distant time to the unborn lord of acres, swelled and 
 enlarged itself, like a sea, circle without circle, vista 
 beyond vista, till the imagination was staggered, and the 
 mind exhausted. Now here was a scheme for the accumu- 
 lation of wealth and for laying the foundation of family 
 aggrandisement purely imaginary, romantic — one might 
 almost say, disinterested. The vagueness, the magnitude, 
 the remoteness of the object, the resolute sacrifice of all 
 immediate and gross advantages, clothe it with the privi- 
 leges of an abstract idea, so that the project has the air of 
 a fiction or of a story in a novel. It was an instance of 
 what might be called posthumous avarice, like the love of 
 posthumous fame. It had little more to do with selfish- 
 ness than if the testator had appropriated the same sums 
 in the same way to build a pyramid, to construct an aque- 
 duct, to endow an hospital, or effect any other patriotic or 
 merely fantastic purpose. 1 He wished to heap up a pile of 
 wealth (millions of acres) in the dim horizon of future 
 years, that could be of no use to him or to those with 
 whom he was connected by positive and personal ties, 
 but as a crotchet of the brain, a gew-gaw of the fancy. 2 
 Yet to enable himself to put this scheme in execution, he 
 had perhaps toiled and watched all his life, denied himself 
 rest, food, pleasure, liberty, society, and persevered with 
 the patience and self-denial of a martyr. I have insisted 
 on this point the more, to show how much of the imaginary 
 and speculative there is interfused even in those passions 
 and purposes which have not the good of others for their 
 
 1 Legislative action was taken on this extraordinary case, and it 
 is no longer possible to make similar accumulations. Miss Amelia 
 Edwards probably had the Thelusson affair in her thoughts, when 
 she laid the plot of her novel of " Half a Million of Money." — Ed. 
 
 3 The law of primogeniture has its origin in the principle here 
 stated, the desire of perpetuating some one palpable and prominent 
 proof of wealth and power. 
 
On Will-Making. 159 
 
 object, and how little reason this honest citizen and builder 
 of castles in the air would have had to treat those who 
 devoted themselves to the pursuit of fame, to obloquy and 
 persecution for the sake of truth and liberty, or who sacri- 
 ficed their lives for their country in a just cause, as 
 visionaries and enthusiasts, who did not understand what 
 was properly due to their own interest and the securing of 
 the main chance. Man is not the creature of sense and 
 selfishness, even in those pursuits which grow up out of 
 that origin, so much as of imagination, custom, passion, 
 whim, and humour. 
 
 I have heard of a singular instance of a will made by a 
 person who was addicted to a habit of lying. He was so 
 notorious for this propensity (not out of spite or cunning, 
 but as a gratuitous exercise of invention) that from a child 
 no one could ever believe a syllable he uttered. From 
 the want of any dependence to be placed on him, he 
 became the jest and bye-word of the school where he was 
 brought up. The last act of his life did not disgrace him ; 
 for, having gone abroad, and falling into a dangerous 
 decline, he was advised to return home. He paid all that 
 he was worth for his passage, went on ship-board, and 
 employed a few remaining days he had to live in making 
 and executing his will ; in which he bequeathed large 
 estates in different parts of England, money in the funds, 
 rich jewels, rings, and all kinds of valuables to his old 
 friends and acquaintance, who not knowing how far the 
 force of nature could go, were not for some time convinced 
 that all this fairy wealth had never had an existence any- 
 where but in the idle coinage of his brain, whose whims 
 and projects were no more ! — The extreme keeping in this 
 character is only to be accounted for by supposing such an 
 original constitutional levity as made truth entirely in- 
 different to him, and the serious importance attached to it 
 by others an object of perpetual sport and ridicule ! 
 
 The art of will-making chiefly consists in bufiling the 
 
160 On Will-MaUng. 
 
 importunity of expectation. 1 do not so much find fault 
 with this when it is done as a punishment and oblique 
 satire on servility and selfishness. It is in that case 
 Diamond cut Diamond — a trial of skill between the legacy- 
 hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. 
 The cringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps 
 well paid for years of obsequious attendance with a bare 
 mention and a mourning-ring ; nor can I think that Gil 
 Bias' library was not quite as much as the coxcombry of 
 his pretensions deserved. There are some admirable 
 scenes in Ben Jonson's Volpone, showing the humours of 
 a legacy-hunter, and the different ways of fobbing him off 
 with excuses and assurances of not being forgotten. Yet 
 it is hardly right, after all, to encourage this kind of 
 pitiful, barefaced intercourse, without meaning to pay for 
 it, as the coquet has no right to jilt the lovers she has 
 trifled with. Flattery and submission are marketable 
 commodities like any other, have their price, and ought 
 scarcely to be obtained under false pretences. If we see 
 through and despise the wretched creature that attempts 
 to impose on our credulity, we can at any time dispense 
 with his services : if we are soothed by this mockery of 
 respect and friendship, why not pay him like any other 
 drudge, or as we satisfy the actor who performs a part in 
 a play by our particular desire ? But often these pre- 
 meditated disappointments are as unjust as they are cruel, 
 and are marked with circumstances of indignity, in pro- 
 portion to the worth of the object. The suspecting, the 
 taking it for granted that your name is down in the will, 
 is sufficient provocation to have it struck out : the hinting 
 at an obligation, the consciousness of it on the part of the 
 testator, will make him determined to avoid the formal 
 acknowledgment of it, at any expense. The disinheriting 
 of relations is mostly for venial offences, not for base 
 actions : we punish out of pique, to revenge some case in 
 which we have been disappointed of our wills, some act of 
 
On Will-Making. 161 
 
 disobedience to what had no reasonable ground to go 
 upon ; and we are obstinate in adhering to our resolution, 
 as it was sudden and rash, and doubly bent on asserting 
 our authority in what we have least right to interfere in. 
 It is the wound inflicted upon our self-love, not the stain 
 upon the character of the thoughtless offender, that calls 
 for condign punishment. Crimes, vices may go unchecked, 
 or unnoticed : but it is the laughing at our weaknesses, 
 or thwarting our humours, that is never to be forgotten. 
 It is not the errors of others, but our own miscalculations, 
 on which we wreak our lasting vengeance. It is ourselves 
 that we cannot forgive. In the will of Nicholas Gimcrack, 
 the virtuoso recorded in the Tatler, we learn, among other 
 items, that his eldest son is cut off with a single cockle- 
 shell for his undutiful behaviour in laughing at his little 
 sister whom his father kept preserved in spirits of wine. 
 Another of his relations has a collection of grasshoppers 
 bequeathed him, as in the testator's opinion an adequate 
 reward and acknowledgment due to his merit. The whole 
 will of the said Nicholas Gimcrack, Esq., is a curious 
 document and exact picture of the mind of the worthy 
 virtuoso defunct, where his various follies, littlenesses, 
 and quaint humours are set forth, as orderly and distinct 
 as his butterflies' wings and cockle-shells and skeletons of 
 fleas in glass cases. 1 We often successfully try, in this 
 
 1 It is as follows : — 
 
 u The Will of a Virtuoso. 
 "I, Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound Health of Mind, but in 
 irreat Weakness of Body, do by this my Last Will and Testament 
 bequeath my worldly Goods and Chattels in Manner following : — 
 Imprimis, To my dear Wife, 
 One Box of Butterflies, 
 One Drawer of Shells, 
 A Female Skeleton, 
 A Dried Cockatrice. 
 Item, To my Daughter Elizabeth, 
 My Receipt for preserving dead Caterpillars, [As 
 
162 On Will-Making. 
 
 way, to give the finishing stroke to our pictures, hang up 
 our weaknesses in perpetuity, and embalm our mistakes in 
 the memories of others. 
 
 " Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries, 
 Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." 
 I shall not speak here of unwarrantable commands 
 imposed upon survivors, by which they were to carry into 
 effect the sullen and revengeful purposes of unprincipled 
 
 As also my Preparations of Winter May-Dew, and Embrio Pickle. 
 Item, to my little Daughter Fanny, 
 Three Crocodiles' Eggs. 
 And upon the Birth of her first Child, if she marries with her 
 
 Mother's Consent, 
 The Nest of a Humming Bird. 
 Item, To my eldest Brother, as an Acknowledgement for the Lands 
 he has vested in my Son Charles, I bequeath 
 My last Year's Collection of Grasshoppers. 
 Item, To his Daughter Susanna, being his only Child, I bequeath my 
 English Weeds pasted on Koyal Paper, 
 With my large Folio of Indian Cabbage. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Having fully provided for my Nephew Isaac, by making over to 
 him some years since 
 
 A horned Scarabseus, 
 
 The Skin of a Kattle-Snake, and 
 
 The Mummy of an Egyptian King, 
 I make no further Provision for him m this my Will. 
 
 My eldest Son John having spoken disrespectfully of his little 
 Sister, whom I keep by me in Spirits of Wine, and in many other 
 Instances behaved himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, 
 and wholly cut off from any Part of this my Personal Estate, by 
 giving him a single Cockle-Shell. 
 
 To my Second Son Charles, I give and bequeath all my Flowers, 
 Plants, Minerals, Mosses, Shells, Pebbles, Fossils, Beetles, Butter- 
 flies, Caterpillars, Grasshoppers, and Vermin, not above specified: 
 As also my Monsters, both wet and dry, making the said Charlet 
 whole and sole Executor of this my Last Will and Testament, he 
 paying or causing to be paid the aforesaid Legacies within the Space 
 of Six Months after my Decease. And I do hereby revoke all othe; 
 Wills whatsoever by me formerly made."— Tatler, vol. iv., No. 216. 
 
On Will-Making. 163 
 
 men, after they had breathed their last : but we meet with 
 continual examples of the desire to keep up the farce (if 
 not the tragedy) of life, after we, the performers in it, 
 have quitted the stage, and to have our parts rehearsed by 
 proxy. We thus make a caprice immortal, a peculiarity 
 proverbial. Hence we see the number of legacies and 
 fortunes left, on condition that the legatee shall take the 
 name and style of the testator, by which device we provide 
 for the continuance of the sounds that formed our names, 
 and endow them with an estate, that they may be repeated 
 with proper respect. In the Memoirs of an Heiress, all 
 the difficulties of the plot turn on the necessity imposed 
 by a clause in her uncle's will that her future husband 
 should take the family name of Beverley. Poor Cecilia*! 
 What delicate perplexities she was thrown into by this 
 improvident provision ; and with what minute, endless, 
 intricate distresses has the fair authoress been enabled to 
 harrow up the reader on this account ! There was a Sir 
 Thomas Dyot in the reign of Charles II. who left the 
 whole range of property which forms Dyot Street, in 
 St. Giles's, and the neighbourhood, on the sole and express 
 condition that it should be appropriated entirely to that 
 sort of buildings, and to the reception of that sort of 
 population, which still keeps undisputed, undivided pos- 
 session of it. The name was changed the other day to 
 George Street as a more genteel appellation, which, I 
 should think, is an indirect forfeiture of the estate. This 
 Sir Thomas Dyot I should be disposed to put upon the 
 list of old English worthies — as humane, liberal, and no 
 flineher from what he took in his head. He was no 
 commonplace man in his line. He was the best com- 
 mentator on that old-fashioned text — " The foxes have 
 holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of 
 man hath not where to lay his head." — We find some that 
 are curious in the mode in which they shall be buried, 
 and others in the place. Lord Camelford had his remains 
 
164 On Will-Making. 
 
 buried under an ash-tree that grew on one of the mountains 
 in Switzerland ; and Sir Francis Bourgeois had a little 
 mausoleum built for him in the college at Dulwich, where 
 he once spent a pleasant, jovial day with the masters and 
 wardens. 1 It is, no doubt , proper to attend, except for 
 strong reasons to the contrary, to these sort of requests ; 
 for by breaking faith with the dead, we loosen the confi- 
 dence of the living. Besides, there is a stronger argument ; 
 we sympathise with the dead as well as with the living, 
 and are bound to them by the most sacred of all ties, our 
 own involuntary fellow-feeHing with others ! 
 
 Thieves, as a last donation, leave advice to their friends, 
 physicians a nostrum, authors a manuscript work, rakes a 
 confession of their faith in the virtue of the sex — all, the 
 last dri veilings of their egotism and impertinence. One 
 might suppose that if anything could, the approach and 
 contemplation of death might bring men to a sense of 
 reason and self-knowledge. On the contrary, it seems 
 only to deprive them of the little wit they had, and to 
 make them even more the sport of their wilfulness and 
 short-sightedness. Some men think that because they 
 are going to be hanged, they are fully authorized to 
 declare a future state of rewards and punishments. All 
 either indulge their caprices or cling to their prejudices. 
 They make a desperate attempt to escape from reflection 
 by taking hold of any whim or fancy that crosses their 
 minds, or by throwing themselves implicitly on old habits 
 and attachments. 
 
 An old man is twice a child : the dying man becomes 
 the property of his family. He has no choice left, and 
 
 1 Kellerman lately left his heart to be buried in the field of Valmy 
 where the first great battle was fought in the year 1792, in which the 
 Alb'es were repulsed. Oh ! might that heart prove the root from 
 which the tree of Liberty may spring up and nourish once more, as 
 thd basil-tree grew and grew from the cherished head of Isabella's 
 lovei ! * 
 
Inconsistencies in Sir J. Reynolds s Discourses, 165 
 
 his voluntary power is merged in old saws and prescrip- 
 tive usages. The property we have derived from our 
 kindred reverts tacitly to them ; and not to let it take its 
 course, is a sort of violence done to nature as well as 
 custom. The idea of property, of something in common, 
 does not mix cordially with friendship, but is inseparable 
 from near relationship. We owe a return in kind, where 
 we feel no obligation for a favour ; and consign our pos- 
 sessions to our next of kin as mechanically as we lean our 
 heads on the pillow, and go out of the world in the same 
 
 state of stupid amazement that we came into it ! 
 
 Ccetera desunt. 
 
 ESSAY XIII. 
 
 On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
 Discourses. 
 
 The two chief points which Sir Joshua aims at in 
 his Discourses are to show that excellence in the Fine 
 Arts is the result of pains and study, rather than of genius, 
 and that all beauty, grace, and grandeur are to be found, 
 not in actual nature, but in an idea existing in the mind. 
 On both these points he appears to have fallen into con- 
 siderable inconsistencies or very great latitude of expres- 
 sion, so as to make it difficult to know what conclusion 
 to draw from his various reasonings. I shall attempt 
 little more in this Essay than to bring together several 
 passages, that from their contradictory import seem to 
 imply some radical defect in Sir Joshua's theory, and a 
 doubt as to the possibility of placing an implicit reliance 
 on his authority. 
 
 To begin with the first of these subjects, the question 
 of original genius. In the Second Discourse, On the 
 Method of Study, Sir Joshua observes towards the end : 
 
 " There is one precept, however, in which I shall only 
 
166 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 be opposed by the vain, the ignorant, and the idle. 1 am 
 not afraid that I shall repeat it too often. You must have 
 no dependence on your own genius. If you have great 
 talents, industry will improve them: if you have but 
 moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. 
 Nothing is denied to well-directed labour ; nothing is to 
 be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysical 
 discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will- 
 venture to assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty 
 and a disposition eagerly directed to the object of its 
 pursuit, will produce effects similar to those which some 
 call the result of natural powers.'' l 
 
 The only tendency of the maxim here laid down seems 
 to be to lure those students on with the hopes of excel- 
 lence who have no chance of succeeding, and to deter those 
 who have from relying on the only, prop and source of real 
 excellence — the strong bent and impulse of their natural 
 powers. Industry alone can only produce mediocrity ; but 
 mediocrity in art is not worth the trouble of industry. 
 Genius, great natural powers will give industry and ardour 
 in the pursuit of their proper object, but not if you divert 
 them from that object into the trammels of commonplace 
 mechanical labour. By this method you neutralize all 
 distinction of character — make a pedant of the blockhead 
 and a drudge of the man of genius. What, for instance, 
 would have been the effect of persuading Hogarth or 
 Kembrandt to place no dependence on their own genius 
 and to apply themselves to the general study of the 
 different branches of the art and of every sort of excel- 
 lence, with a confidence of success proportioned to their 
 misguided efforts, but to destroy both those great artists ? 
 " You take my house when you do take the prop that doth 
 sustain my house !" You undermine the superstructure 
 of art when you strike at its main pillar and support, con- 
 fidence and faith in nature. We might as well advise a 
 1 Vol. i., p. 44. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, 167 
 
 person who had discovered a silver or a lead mine on his 
 estate to close it up, or the common farmer to plough up 
 every acre he rents in the hope of discovering hidden 
 treasure, as advise the man of original genius to neglect 
 his particular vein for the study of rules and the imita- 
 tion of others, or try to persuade the man of no strong 
 natural powers that he can supply their deficiency by 
 laborious application. — Sir Joshua soon after, in the 
 Third Discourse, alluding to the terms, inspiration, genius, 
 gusto, applied by critics and orators to painting, proceeds : 
 
 Ck Such is the warmth with which both the Ancients 
 and Moderns speak of this divine principle of the art ; 
 but, as I have formerly observed; enthusiastic admiration 
 seldom promotes knowledge. Though a student by such 
 praise may have his attention roused and a desire excited 
 of running in this great career ; yet it is possible that 
 what has been said to excite, may only serve to deter him. 
 He examines his own mind, and perceives there nothing 
 of that divine inspiration with which, he is told, so many 
 others have been favoured. He never travelled to heaven tc 
 gather new ideas ; and he fin&s himself possessed of no other 
 qualifications than what mere common observation and a 
 plain understanding can confer. Thus he becomes gloomy 
 amidst the splendour of figurative declamation, and thinks 
 it hopeless to pursue an object which he supposes out of 
 the reach of human industry." ' 
 
 Yet presently after he adds — 
 
 " It is not easy to define in what this great style con- 
 sists ; nor to describe by words the proper means of ac- 
 quiring it, if the mind of the student should be at all capable 
 of such an acquisition. Could we teach taste or genius by 
 rules, they would be no longer taste and genius." 2 
 
 Here then Sir Joshua admits that it is a question 
 whether the student is likely to be at all capable of such an 
 acquisition as the higher excellencies of art, though 3io 
 i Vol. i., F 56. 2 Ibid., p. 57. 
 
168 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 had said in the passage just quoted above, that it is within 
 the reach of constant assiduity and of a disposition eagerly 
 directed to the object of its pursuit to effect all that is 
 usually considered as the result of natural powers. Is the 
 theory which our author means to inculcate a mere delu- 
 sion, a mere arbitrary assumption? At one moment 
 Sir Joshua attributes the hopelessness of the student to 
 attain perfection to the discouraging influence of certain 
 figurative and overstrained expressions, and in the next 
 doubts his capacity for such an acquisition under any cir- 
 cumstances. Would he have him hope against hope, 
 then ? If he " examines his own mind and finds nothing 
 there of that divine inspiration, with which he is told so 
 many others have been favoured," but which he has never 
 felt himself ; if " he finds himself possessed of no other 
 qualifications " for the highest efforts of genius and imagi- 
 nation " than what mere common observation and a plain 
 understanding can confer," he may as well desist at once 
 from " ascending the brightest heaven of invention :" — if 
 the very idea of the divinity of art deters instead of 
 animating him, if the enthusiasm with which others speak 
 of it damps the flame in his own breast, he had better 
 not enter into a competition where he wants the first 
 principle of success, the daring to aspire and the hope to 
 excel. He may be assured he is not the man. Sir Joshua 
 himself was not struck at first by the sight of the master- 
 pieces of the great style of art, and he seems uncon- 
 sciously to have adopted this theory to show that he 
 might still have succeeded in it but for want of due ap- 
 plication. His hypothesis goes to this — to make the 
 common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can 
 be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe 
 he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules 
 and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible 
 scheme ; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit 
 in his reasoning in support of it. 
 
Sir Joshua B,eynoldss Discourses, 169 
 
 In speaking of Carlo Maratti, lie confesses the ineffi- 
 ciency of this doctrine in a very remarkable manner : — 
 
 "Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those I have 
 first named, and I think owes his superiority to the exten- 
 sion of his views : besides his master Andrea Sacchi, he 
 imitated Eaffaelle, Guido, and the Carracis. It is true, there 
 is nothing very captivating in Carlo Maratti; but this 
 proceeded from a want which cannot be completely sup- 
 plied ; that is, want of strength of parts. In this certainly 
 men are not equal ; and a man can bring home wares only 
 in proportion with the capital with which he goes to 
 market. Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he 
 had : but there was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, 
 which extended itself uniformly to his invention, expres- 
 sion, his drawing, colouring, and the general effect of his 
 pictures. The truth is, he never equalled any of his 
 patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his own." l 
 
 Here, then, Eeynolds, we see, fairly gives up the argu 
 ment. Carlo, after all, was a heavy hand ; nor could all 
 his diligence and his making the most of what he had, 
 make up for the want of " natural powers." Sir Joshua's 
 good sense pointed out to him the truth in the individual 
 instance, though he might be led astray by a vague general 
 theory. Such however is the effect of a false principle 
 that there is an evident bias in the artist's mind to make 
 genius lean upon others for support, instead of trusting 
 to itself and developing its own incommunicable resources. 
 So in treating in the Twelfth Discourse of the way in 
 which great artists are formed, Sir Joshua reverts very 
 nearly to his first position : 
 
 " The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an 
 Artist is found in the great works of his predecessors. 
 There is no other way for him to become great himself. 
 Serpens, nisi serpentem comederit, non fit draco. Eaffaelle, 
 as appears from what has been said, had carefully studied 
 i Vol. i„ p. 772. 
 
170 On Certain inconsistencies in 
 
 the works of Masaccio, and indeed there was no other, if 
 we except Michael Angelo (whom he likewise imitated), 1 
 so worthy of his attention : and though his manner was 
 dry and hard, his compositions formal, and not enough 
 diversified, according to the custom of Painters in that 
 early period, yet his works possess that grandeur and 
 simplicity which accompany, and even sometimes proceed 
 from, regularity and hardness of manner. We must con- 
 sider the barbarous state of the arts before his time, when 
 skill in drawing was so little understood, that the best 
 of the painters could not even foreshorten the foot, but 
 every figure appeared to stand upon his toes ; and what 
 served for drapery had, from the hardness and smallness 
 of the folds, too much the appearance of cords clinging 
 round the body. He first introduced large drapery, 
 flowing in an easy and natural manner : indeed he appears 
 to be the first who discovered the path that leads to every 
 excellence to which the art afterwards arrived, and may 
 therefore be justly considered as one of the Great Fathers 
 of Modern Art. 
 
 " Though I have been led on to a longer digression 
 respecting this greater painter than I intended, yet I 
 cannot avoid mentioning another excellence which he 
 possessed in a very eminent degree ; he was as much 
 distinguished among his contemporaries for his diligence 
 and industry as he was for the natural faculties of his mind. 
 We are told that his whole attention was absorbed in the 
 pursuit of his art, and that he acquired the name of 
 Masaccio from his total disregard to his dress, his person, 
 and all the common concerns of life. He is indeed 
 a signal instance of what well-directed diligence will do in 
 a short time : he lived but twenty-seven years ; yet in 
 that short space carried the art so far beyond what it had 
 
 1 How careful is Sir Joshua, even in a parenthesis, to insinuate the 
 obligations of this great genius to others, as if he would have been 
 nothing without them. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses. 171 
 
 before reached, that he appears to stand alone as a model 
 for his successors. Vasari gives a long catalogue of 
 painters and sculptors who formed their taste and learned 
 their art by studying his works ; among those, he names 
 Michael Angelo, Lionardo da Yinci, Pietro Perugino, 
 Kaffaclle, Bartholomeo, Andrea de Sarto, II Eosso, and 
 Pierino de Vaga." l 
 
 Sir Joshua here again halts between two opinions. 
 He tells us the names of the painters who formed them- 
 selves upon Masaccio's style : he does not tell us on whom 
 he formed himself. At one time the natural faculties of 
 his mind were as remarkable as his industry ; at another 
 he was only a signal instance of what well-directed 
 diligence will do in a short time. Then again, " he 
 appears to have been the first who discovered the path 
 that leads to every excellence to which the Art after- 
 wards arrived," though he is introduced in an argument 
 to show that " the daily food and nourishment of the 
 mind of the Artist must be found in the works of his 
 predecessors." There is something surely very wavering 
 and unsatisfactory in all this. 
 
 Sir Joshua, in another part of his work, endeavours to 
 reconcile and prop up these contradictions by a paradoxical 
 sophism which I think turns upon himself. He says : 
 " I am on the contrary persuaded, that by imitation only " 
 (by which he has just explained himself to mean the 
 study of other masters) " variety and even originality of 
 invention is produced. I will go further ; even genius, 
 at least, what is so called, is the child of imitation. 
 But as this appears to be contrary to the general opinion, 
 I must explain my position before I enforce it. 
 
 " Genius is supposed to be a power of producing ex- 
 cellencies, which are out of the reach of the rules of art j 
 a power which no precepts can teach, and which nc 
 industry can acquire. 
 
 1 Vol. ii., p. 95. 
 
172 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those 
 beauties, which stamp the work with the character of 
 genius, supposes that it is something more fixed than in 
 reality it is ; and that we always do and ever did agree 
 in opinion, with respect to what should be considered as 
 the characteristic of genius. But the truth is, that the 
 degree of excellence which proclaims Genius is different 
 in different times and different places ; and what shows 
 it to be so is, that mankind have often changed their 
 opinion upon this matter : — 
 
 " When the Arts were in their infancy, the power of 
 merely drawing the likeness of any object was considered 
 as one of its greatest efforts. The common people, 
 ignorant of the principles of art, talk the same language 
 even to this day. But when it was found that every man 
 could be taught to do this, and a great deal more, merely 
 by the observance of certain precepts ; the name of Genius 
 then shifted its application, and was given only to him 
 who added the peculiar character of the object he repre- 
 sented — to him who had invention, expression, grace, or 
 dignity ; in short, those qualities or excellencies, the 
 power of producing which could not then be taught by 
 any known and promulgated rules. 
 
 " We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expres- 
 sion of the passions, the art of composition, even the 
 power of giving a general air of grandeur to a work, is 
 at present very much under the dominion of rules. 
 These excellencies were heretofore considered merely as 
 the effects of genius ; and justly, if genius is not taken 
 for inspiration, but as the effect of close observation and 
 experience. 1 
 
 Sir Joshua began with undertaking to show that 
 
 " genius was the child of the imitation of others, and now 
 
 it turns out not to be inspiration indeed, but the effect 
 
 of close observation and experience." The whole drift 
 
 1 The Sixth Discourse, vol. i., p. 153. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds s Discourses. 173 
 
 of this argument appears to be contrary to what the 
 writer intended, for the obvious inference is that the 
 essence of genius consists entirely, both in kind and 
 degree, in the single circumstance of originality. The 
 very same things are or are not genius, according as they 
 proceed from invention or from mere imitation. In so 
 far as a thing is original, as it has never been done before, 
 it acquires and it deserves the appellation of genius : in 
 so far as it is not original, and is borrowed from others 
 or taught by rule, it is not, neither is it called, genius. 
 This does not make much for the supposition that genius 
 is a traditional and second-hand quality. Because, for 
 example, a man without much genius can copy a picture 
 of Michael Angelo's, does it follow that there was no 
 genius in the original design, or that the inventor and 
 copyist are equal ? If indeed, as Sir Joshua labours to 
 prove, mere imitation of existing models and attention 
 to established rules could produce results exactly similar 
 to those of natural powers, if the progress of art as a 
 learned profession were a gradual but continual accumu- 
 lation of individual excellence, instead of being a sudden 
 and almost miraculous start to the highest beauty and 
 grandeur nearly at first, and a regular declension to 
 mediocrity ever after, then indeed the distinction between 
 genius and imitation would be little worth contending 
 for ; the causes might be different, the effects would be 
 the same, or rather skill to avail ourselves of external 
 advantages would be of more importance and efficacy 
 than the most powerful internal resources. But as the 
 case stands, all the great works of art have been the 
 offspring of individual genius, either projecting itself 
 before the general advances of society or striking out a 
 separate path for itself ; all the rest is but labour in vain 
 For every purpose of emulation or instruction, we go 
 back to the original inventors, not to those who imitated, 
 and as it is falsely pretended, improved upon their 
 
174 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 models : or if those who followed have at any tim« 
 attained as high a rank or surpassed their predecessors, 
 it was not from borrowing their excellencies, but by 
 unfolding new and exquisite powers of their own, of 
 which the moving principle lay in the individual mind, 
 and not in the stimulus afforded by previous example 
 and general knowledge. Great faults, it is true, may be 
 avoided, but great excellencies can never be attained in 
 this way. If Sir Joshua's hypothesis of progressive 
 refinement in art was anything more than a verbal fallacy, 
 why does he go back to Michael Angelo as the God of 
 his idolatry ? Why does he find fault with Carlo 
 Maratti for being heavy? Or why does he declare as 
 explicitly as truly, that v{ the judgment, after it has been 
 long passive, by degrees loses its power of becoming 
 active when exertion is necessary ?" — Once more to point 
 out the fluctuation in Sir Joshua's notions on this subject 
 of the advantages of natural genius and artificial study, 
 he says, when recommending the proper objects of ambi- 
 tion to the young artist — 
 
 "My advice in a word is this: keep your principal 
 attention fixed upon the higher excellencies. If you 
 compass them, and compass nothing more, you are still 
 in the first class. We may regret the innumerable 
 beauties which you may want; you may be very imperfect, 
 but still you are an imperfect artist of the highest order." ' 
 
 This is the Fifth Discourse. In the Seventh our 
 artist seems to waver, and flings a doubt on his former 
 decision, whereby " it loses some colour." 
 
 " Indeed perfection in an inferior style may be reason- 
 ably preferred to mediocrity in the highest walks of art. 
 A landscape of Claude Lorraine may 2 be preferred to 
 
 i Vol. L, p. 116. 
 
 2 If Sir Joshua had an offer to exchange a Luca Giordano in his 
 collection for a Claude Lorraine, he would not have hesitated long 
 about the preference. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds s Discourses. 175 
 
 H history by Luca Giordano : but hence appears the 
 necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists 
 the excellency of each class, in order to judge how near 
 it approaches to perfection.' ' l 
 
 As he advances, however, he grows bolder, and alto- 
 gether discards his theory of judging of the artist by the 
 class to which he belongs — " But we have the sanction 
 of all mankind," he says, " in preferring genius in a 
 lower rank of art, to feebleness and insipidity in the 
 highest." This is in speaking of Gainsborough. The 
 whole passage is excellent, and, I should think, conclusive 
 against the general and factitious style of art on which 
 he insists so much at other times. 
 
 " On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to 
 prophesy, that two of the last distinguished Painters of 
 that country, I mean Pompeio Battoni, and Eafaelle 
 Mengs, however great their names may at present sound 
 in our ears, 2 will very soon fall into the rank of Im- 
 periale, Sebastian Concha, Placido Constanza, Masuccio, 
 and the rest of their immediate predecessors ; whose 
 names, though equally renowned in their life-time, are 
 now fallen into what is little short of total oblivion. I 
 do not say that those painters were not superior to the 
 artist I allude to, 3 and whose loss we lament, in a certain 
 routine of practice, which, to the eyes of common ob- 
 servers, has the air of a learned composition, and bears 
 a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the 
 great men who went before them. I know this perfectly 
 well ; but I know likewise, that a man looking for real 
 and lasting reputation must unlearn much of the common- 
 place method so observable in the works of the artists 
 whom I have named. For my own part, I confess, I 
 take more interest in and am more captivated with the 
 powerful impression of nature, which Gainsborough 
 exhibited in his portraits and in his landscapes, and the 
 
 1 Vol. i., p. 217. 2 Written in 1788. P Gainsborough. 
 
176 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 interesting simplicity and elegance of his little ordinary 
 beggar-children, than with any of the works of that 
 School, since the time of Andrea Sacchi, or perhaps we 
 may say, Carlo Maratti ; two painters who may truly be 
 said to be Ultimi Eomanorum. 
 
 " I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the 
 censure and ridicule of the Academical professors of 
 other nations, in preferring the humble attempts of 
 Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates in 
 the great historical style. But we have the sanction of all 
 mankind in 'preferring genius in a lower rank of art to 
 feebleness and insipidity in the highest" l 
 
 Yet this excellent artist and critic had said but a few 
 pages before when working upon his theory — " For this 
 reason I shall beg leave to lay before you a few thoughts 
 on the subject ; to throw out some hints that may lead 
 your minds to an opinion (which I take to be the true 
 one) that Painting is not only not to be considered as an 
 imitation operating by deception, but that it is, and 
 ought to be, in many points of view and strictly speaking, 
 no imitation at all of external nature. Perhaps it ought 
 to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation as 
 the refined civilised state in which we live is removed 
 from a gross state of nature ; and those who have not 
 cultivated their imaginations, which the majority of 
 mankind certainly have not, may be said, in regard to 
 arts, to continue in this state of nature. Such men will 
 always prefer imitation " (the imitation of nature) " to 
 that excellence which is addressed to another faculty that 
 they do not possess; but these are not the persons to 
 whom a painter is to look, any more than a judge of 
 morals and manners ought to refer controverted points 
 upon those subjects to the opinions of people taken from 
 the banks of the Ohio, or from New Holland." 2 
 
 In opposition to the sentiment here expressed that 
 i Vol. ii., p. 152. ■ i b id., p . 119. 
 
Sir Joshua Beynoldss Discourses. 177 
 
 " Painting is and ought to be, in many points of view and 
 strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature,* 
 it is emphatically said in another place — " Nature is and 
 must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and 
 from which all excellences must originally flow." ■ 
 
 I cannot undertake to reconcile so many contradictions, 
 nor do I think it an easy task for the student to derive 
 any simple or intelligible clue from these conflicting 
 authorities and broken hints in the prosecution of his art. 
 Sir Joshua appears to have imbibed from others (Burke or 
 Johnson) a spurious metaphysical notion that art was to 
 be preferred to nature, and learning to genius, with which 
 his own good sense and practical observation were con- 
 tinually at war, but from which he only emancipates him- 
 self for a moment to relapse into the same error again 
 shortly after. 2 The conclusion of the Twelfth Discourse 
 is, I think, however, a triumphant and unanswerable 
 denunciation of his own favourite paradox on the objects 
 and study of art. 
 
 " Those artists " (he says with a strain of eloquent 
 truth) "who have quitted the service of nature (whose 
 service, when well understood, is perfect freedom) and 
 have put themselves under the direction of I know not 
 what capricious fantastical mistress, who fascinates and 
 overpowers their whole mind, and from whose dominion 
 there are no hopes of their being ever reclaimed (since 
 they appear perfectly satisfied, and not at all conscious of 
 their forlorn situation) like the transformed followers of 
 Comus, 
 
 ' Not once perceive their foul disfigurement ; 
 But boast themselves more comely than before/ 
 
 1 The Sixth Discourse, vol. i., p. 162. 
 
 2 Sir Joshua himself wanted academic skill and patience in the 
 details of his profession. From these defects he seems to have been 
 alternately repelled by each theory and style of art, the simply 
 
178 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 " Metliinks such men who have found out so short a 
 path, have no reason to complain of the shortness of life 
 and the extent of art ; since life is so much longer than is 
 wanted for their improvement, or is indeed necessary for 
 the accomplishment of their idea of perfection. 1 On the 
 contrary, he who recurs to nature, at every recurrence 
 renews his strength. The rules of art he is never likely 
 to forget ; they are few and simple : but Nature is refined, 
 subtle, and infinitely various, beyond the power and 
 retention of memory; it is necessary therefore to have 
 continual recourse to her. In this intercourse, there is no 
 end of his improvement : the longer he lives, the nearer 
 he approaches to the true and perfect idea of Art." * 
 
 ESSAY XIV. 
 The same Subject continued. 
 
 The first inquiry which runs through Sir Joshua 
 Eeynolds's Discourses is whether the student ought to 
 look at nature with his own eyes or with the eyes of 
 others, and on the whole, he apparently inclines to the 
 latter. The second question is what is to be understood 
 by nature ; whether it is a general and abstract idea, or 
 an aggregate of particulars ; and he strenuously maintains 
 the former of these positions. Yet it is not easy always 
 
 natural and elaborately scientific, as it came before him ; and in 
 his impatience of each, to have been betrayed into a tissue of 
 inconsistencies somewhat difficult to unravel. 
 
 1 He had been before speaking of Boucher, Director of the French 
 Academy, who told him that " when he was young, studying his art, 
 he found it necessary to use models, but that he had left them off for 
 many years." 
 
 2 Vol. ii., p. 108. 
 
Sir Joshua Beynoldss Discourses. 179 
 
 to determine how far or with what precise limitations he 
 does so. 
 
 The first germ of his speculations on this subject is to 
 be found in two papers in the Idler. In the last paragraph 
 of the second of these, he says — 
 
 "If it has been proved that the Painter, by attending 
 to the invariable and general ideas of nature, produces 
 beauty, he must, by regarding minute particularities and 
 accidental discrimination, deviate from the universal rule, 
 and pollute his canvas with deformity ." l 
 
 In answer to this, I would say that deformity is not 
 the being varied in the particulars, in which all things 
 differ (for on this principle all nature, which is made up 
 of individuals, would be a heap of deformity), but in 
 violating general rules, in which they all or almost all 
 agree. Thus there are no two noses in the world exactly 
 alike, .or without a great variety of subordinate parts, 
 which may still be handsome, but a face without any nose 
 at all, or a nose (like that of a mask) without any parti- 
 cularity in the details, would be a great deformity in art 
 or nature. Sir Joshua seems to have been led into his 
 notions on this subject either by an ambiguity of terms, or 
 by taking only one view of nature. He supposes grandeur, 
 or the general effect of the whole, to consist in leaving out 
 the particular details, because these details are sometimes 
 found without any grandeur of effect, and he therefore 
 conceives the two things to be irreconcileable and the 
 alternatives of each other. This is very imperfect 
 reasoning. If the mere leaving out the details constituted 
 grandeur, any one could do this : the greatest dauber 
 would at that rate be the greatest artist. A house or 
 sign-painter might instantly enter the lists with Michael 
 Angelo, and might look down on the little, dry, hard 
 manner of Eaphael. But grandeur depends on a distinct 
 principle of its own, not on a negation of the parts ; and 
 1 See Works, vol. ii., p. 242. 
 
180 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 as it does not arise from their omission, so neither is it 
 incompatible with their insertion or the highest finishing. 
 In fact, an artist may give the minute particulars of any 
 object one by one and with the utmost care, and totally 
 neglect the proportions, arrangement, and general masses, 
 on which the effect of the whole more immediately 
 depends ; or he may give the latter, viz. the proportions 
 and arrangement of the larger parts and the general masses 
 of light and shade, and leave all the minuter parts of 
 which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general 
 smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the 
 groundwork of a picture : he may do either of these, or 
 he may combine both, that is, finish the parts, but put 
 them in their right places, and keep them in due sub- 
 ordination to the general effect and massing of the whole. 
 If the exclusion of the parts were necessary to the grandeur 
 of the whole composition, if the more entire this exclusion, 
 if the more like a tabula rasa, a vague, undefined, shadowy 
 and abstracted representation the picture was, the greater 
 the grandeur, there could be no danger of pushing this 
 principle too far, and going the full length of Sir Joshua's 
 theory without any restrictions or mental reservations. 
 But neither of these suppositions is true. The greatest 
 grandeur may co-exist with the most perfect, nay with a 
 microscopic accuracy of detail, as we see it does often in 
 nature : the greatest looseness and slovenliness of execution 
 may be displayed without any grandeur at all either in the 
 outline or distribution of the masses of colour. To explain 
 more particularly what I mean. I have seen and copied 
 portraits by Titian, in which the eyebrows were marked 
 with a number of small strokes, like hair-lines (indeed, 
 the hairs of which they were composed were in a great 
 measure given) — but did this destroy the grandeur of 
 expression, the truth of outline, arising from the arrange- 
 ment of these hair-lines in a given form ? The grandeur, 
 the character, the expression remained, for the general 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses. 1S1 
 
 form or arched and expanded outline remained, just aa 
 much as if it had been daubed in with a blacking-brush : 
 the introduction of the internal parts and texture only 
 added delicacy and truth to the general and striking effect 
 of the whole. Surely a number of small dots or lines may 
 be arranged into the form of a square or a circle indis- 
 criminately; the square or circle, that is, the larger 
 figure, remains the same, whether the line of which it 
 consists is broken or continuous ; as we may see in prints 
 where the outlines, features, and masses remain the same 
 in all the varieties of mezzotinto, dotted and line engraving. 
 If Titian in marking the appearance of the hairs had 
 deranged the general shape and contour of the eyebrows, 
 he would have destroyed the look of nature ; but as he did 
 not, but kept both in view, he proportionably improved 
 his copy of it. So, in what regards the masses of light 
 and shade, the variety, the delicate transparency and 
 broken transitions of the tints is not inconsistent with the 
 greatest breadth or boldest contrasts. If the light, for 
 instance, is thrown strongly on one side of a face, and the 
 other is cast into deep shade, let the individual and various 
 parts of the surfaoo be finished with the most scrupulous 
 exactness both in the drawing and in the colours, provided 
 nature is not exceeded, this will not nor cannot destroy the 
 force and harmony of the composition. One side of the 
 face will still have that great and leading distinction of 
 being seen in shadow, and the other of being seen in the 
 light, let the subordinate differences be as many and as 
 precise as they will. Suppose a panther is painted in the 
 sun : will it be necessary to leave out the spots to produce 
 breadth and the great style, or will not this be done more 
 effectually by painting the spots of one side of his shaggy 
 coat as they are seen in the light, and those of the other 
 is they really appear in natural shadow ? The two masses 
 are thus preserved completely, and no offence is done to 
 truth and nature. Otherwise we resolve the distribution 
 
182 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 of light and shade into local colouring. The masses, the 
 grandeur exist equally in external nature with the local 
 differences of different colours. Yet Sir Joshua seems tc 
 argue that the grandeur, the effect of the whole object is 
 confined to the general idea in the mind, and that all the 
 littleness and individuality is in nature. This is an 
 essentially false view of the subject. This grandeur, this 
 general effect is indeed always combined with the details, 
 or what our theoretical reasoner would designate as little- 
 ness in nature : and so it ought to be in art, as far as art 
 can follow nature with prudence and profit. What is the 
 fault of Denner's style ? — It is, that he does not give this 
 combination of properties : that he gives only one view of 
 nature, that he abstracts the details, the finishing, the 
 curiosities of natural appearances from the general result, 
 truth and character of the whole, and in finishing every 
 part with elaborate care, totally loses sight of the more 
 important and striking appearance of the object as it 
 presents itself to us in nature. He gives every part of a 
 face ; but the shape, the expression, the light and shade of 
 the whole is wrong, and as far as can be from what is 
 natural. He gives an infinite variety of tints of the human 
 face, nor are they subjected to any principle of light and 
 shade. He is different from Eembrandt or Titian. The 
 English schools, formed on Sir Joshua's theory, give 
 neither the finishing of the parts nor the effect of the 
 whole, but an inexplicable dumb mass without distinction 
 or meaning. They do not do as Denner did, and think 
 that not to do as he did, is to do as Titian and Eembrandt 
 did ; I do not know whether they would take it as a 
 compliment to be supposed to imitate nature. Some few 
 artists, it must be said, have " of late reformed this in- 
 differently among us ! Oh ! let them reform it altogether !" 
 I have no doubt they would if they could ; but I have 
 some doubts whether they can or not. — Before I proceed 
 to consider the question of beauty and grandeur as it 
 
Sir Joshua Reijnoldss Discourses. 183 
 
 relates to the selection of form, I will quote a few passages 
 from Sir Joshua with reference to what has been said on 
 the imitation of particular objects. In the Third Discourse 
 he observes : " I will now add that nature herself is not to 
 be too closely copied. ... A mere copier of nature can 
 never produce anything great ; can never raise and enlarge 
 the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator. The 
 wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive : 
 instead of endeavouring to amuse mankind with the 
 minute neatness of his imitations, he must endeavour to 
 improve them by the grandeur of his ideas; instead of 
 seeking praise by deceiving the superficial sense of the 
 spectator, he must strive for fame by captivating the 
 imagination." l 
 
 From this passage it would surely seem that there was 
 nothing in nature but minute neatness and superficial 
 effect : nothing great in her style, for an imitator of it can 
 produce nothing great ; nothing " to enlarge the con- 
 ceptions or warm the heart of the spectator." 
 
 " What word hath passed thy lips, Adam severe !" 
 
 All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the 
 imagination, a vapid creation out of nothing, a pure effect 
 of overlooking and scorning the minute neatness of natural 
 objects. This will not do. Again, Sir Joshua Jays it 
 duwn without any qualification that 
 
 " The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in 
 being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, 
 peculiarities, and details of every kind." 2 
 
 Yet 3 we find him acknowledging a different opinion : 
 "I am very ready to allow" (he says, in speaking 
 of history -painting) " that some circumstances of minute- 
 ness and particularity frequently tend to give an air of 
 truth to a piece, and to interest the spectator in an extra- 
 
 1 Vol. i., p. 53. 2 Ibid., p. 58. 3 Ibid., p. 82. 
 
184 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 ordinary manner. Such circumstances therefore cannot 
 wholly be rejected : but if there be anything in the Art 
 which requires peculiar nicety of discernment, it is the 
 disposition of these minute circumstantial parts ; which 
 according to the judgment employed in the choice become 
 so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur." x 
 
 That's true; but the sweeping clause against "all 
 particularities and details of every kind " is clearly got rid 
 of. The undecided state of Sir Joshua's feelings on this 
 subject of the incompatibility between the whole and the 
 details is strikingly manifested in two short passages 
 which follow each other in the space of two pages. Speak- 
 ing of some pictures of Paul Veronese and Eubens as 
 distinguished by the dexterity and the unity of style 
 displayed in them, he adds : 
 
 " It is by this and this alone, that the mechanical power 
 is ennobled, and raised much above its natural rank. 
 And it appears to me, that with propriety it acquires this 
 character, as an instance of that superiority with which 
 mind predominates over matter, by contracting into one 
 whole what nature has made multifarious." 2 
 
 This would imply that the principle of unity and 
 integrity is only in the mind, and that nature is a heap of 
 disjointed, disconnected particulars, a chaos of points 
 and atoms. In the very next page, the following sentence 
 occurs : — 
 
 " As painting is an art, they " (the ignorant) " think 
 they ought to be pleased in proportion as they see that art 
 ostentatiously displayed ; they will from this supposition 
 prefer neatness, high finishing, and gaudy colouring, to the 
 truth, simplicity, and unity of nature." 
 
 Before, neatness and high finishing were supposed to 
 
 belong exclusively to the littleness of nature, but here 
 
 truth, simplicity, and unity are her characteristics. Soon 
 
 after, Sir Joshua says : " I should be sorry if what has 
 
 i Vol. i., p. 82. 2 vol. ii., p. 63. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds s Discourses. 185 
 
 Deen said should be understood to have any tendency to 
 encourage that carelessness which leaves work in an 
 unfinished state. I commend nothing for the want of 
 exactness ; I mean to point out that kind of exactness 
 which is the best, and which is alone truly to be so 
 esteemed." L This Sir Joshua has already told us consists 
 in getting above " all particularities and details of every 
 kind." Once more we find it stated that — 
 
 " It is in vain to attend to the variation of tints, if in 
 that attention the general hue of flesh is lost ; or to finish 
 ever so minutely the parts, if the masses are not observed, 
 or the whole not well put together." 
 
 Nothing can be truer : but why always suppose the two 
 things at variance with each other ? 
 
 " Titian's manner was then new to the world, but that 
 unshaken truth on which it is founded has fixed it as a 
 model to all succeeding painters; and those who will 
 examine into the artifice will find it to consist in the power 
 of generalizing, and in the shortness and simplicity of the 
 means employed." 2 
 
 Titian's real excellence consisted in the power of 
 generalizing and of individualizing at the same time : if it 
 were merely the former, it would be difficult to account 
 for the error immediately after pointed out by Sir Joshua. 
 He says in the very next paragraph : — 
 
 " Many artists, as Yasari likewise observes, have igno- 
 rantly imagined they are imitating the manner of Titian, 
 when they leave their colours rough, and neglect the 
 detail : but not possessing the principles on which he 
 wrought, they have produced what he calls goffe pitture, 
 absurd, foolish pictures." 3 
 
 Many artists have also imagined they were following 
 the directions of Sir Joshua when they did the same thing, 
 that is, neglected the detail, and produced the same results, 
 vapid generalities, absurd, foolish pictures. 
 
 1 Vol. iL, p. 65. 2 Ibid., p. 51. 3 Ibid., p. 54. 
 
186 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 I will only give two short passages more, and have done 
 with this part of the subject. I am anxious to confront Sir 
 Joshua with his own authority : — 
 
 " The advantage of this method of considering objects 
 (as a whole) is what I wish now more particularly to 
 enforce. At the same time I do not forget, that a painter 
 must have the power of contracting as well as dilating his 
 sight ; because he that does not at all express particulars, 
 expresses nothing ; yet it is certain that a nice discrimina- 
 tion of minute circumstances and a punctilious delineation 
 of them, whatever excellence it may have (and I do not 
 mean to detract from it), never did confer on the artist the 
 character of Genius." ' 
 
 At page 53, we find the following words : — 
 
 " Whether it is the human figure, an animal, or even 
 inanimate objects, there is nothing, however unpromising 
 in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey 
 sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a Painter 
 of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even 
 the dung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be 
 applied to Titian ; whatever he touched, however naturally 
 mean, and habitually familiar, by a kind of magic he 
 invested with grandeur and importance." — No, not by 
 magic, but by seeking and finding in individual nature, 
 and combined with details of every kind, that grace and 
 grandeur and unity of effect which Sir Joshua supposes to 
 be a mere creation of the artist's brain ! Titian's practice 
 was, I conceive, to give general appearances with indi- 
 vidual forms and circumstances : Sir Joshua's theory goes 
 too often, and in its prevailing bias, to separate the two 
 things as inconsistent with each other, and thereby to 
 destroy or bring into question that union of striking effect 
 with accuracy of resemblance in which the essence of 
 sound art (as far as relates to imitation) consists. 
 
 Farther, as Sir Joshua is inclined to merge the details 
 1 Vol. ii., p. 44. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds $ Discourses. 187 
 
 of individual objects in general effect, so he is resolved tc 
 reduce all beauty or grandeur in natural objects to a 
 central form or abstract idea of a certain class, so as to 
 exclude all peculiarities or deviations from this ideal 
 standard as unfit subjects for the artist's pencil, and as 
 polluting his canvas with deformity. As the former 
 principle went to destroy all exactness and solidity in 
 particular things, this goes to •■ confound all variety, dis- 
 tinctness, and characteristic force in the broader scale of 
 nature. There is a principle of conformity in nature or 
 of something in common between a number of individuals 
 of the same class, but there is also a principle of contrast, 
 of discrimination and identity, which is equally essential 
 in the system of the universe and in the structure of our 
 ideas both of art and nature. Sir Joshua would hardly 
 neutralize the tints of the rainbow to produce a dingy 
 grey, as a medium or central colour : why then should he 
 neutralize all features, forms, &c. to produce an insipid 
 monotony ? He does not indeed consider his theory of 
 beauty as applicable to colour, which he well understood, 
 but insists upon and literally enforces it as to form and 
 ideal conceptions, of which he knew comparatively little, 
 and where his authority is more questionable. I will not 
 in this place undertake to show that his theory of a middle 
 form (as the standard of taste and beauty) is not true of 
 the outline of the human face and figure or other organic 
 bodies, though I think that even there it is only one 
 principle or condition of beauty ; but I do say that it has 
 little or nothing to do with those other capital parts of 
 painting, colour, character, expression, and grandeur of 
 conception. Sir Joshua himself contends that " beauty in 
 creatures of the same species is the medium or centre of 
 all its various forms;" and he maintains that grandeur is 
 the same abstraction of the species in the individual. 
 Therefore beauty and grandeur must be the same thing, 
 which they are not ; so that this definition must be faulty. 
 
188 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 Grandeur I should suppose to imply something that 
 elevates and expands the mind, which is chiefly power or 
 magnitude. Beauty is that which soothes and melts it, 
 and its source, I apprehend, is a certain harmony, softness. 
 and gradation of form, within the limits of our customary 
 associations, no doubt, or of what we expect of certain 
 species, but not independent of every other consideration. 
 Our critic himself confesses of Michael Angelo, whom he 
 regards as the pattern of the great or sublime style, that 
 "his people are a superior order of beings: there is 
 nothing about them, nothing in the air of their actions or 
 their attitudes, or the style or cast of their limbs, or 
 features, that reminds us of their belonging to our own 
 species. Kafaelle's imagination is not so elevated; his 
 figures are not so much disjoined from our own diminutive 
 race of beings, though his ideas are chaste, noble, and of 
 great conformity to their subjects. Michael Angelo's 
 works have a strong, peculiar, and marked character: 
 they seem to proceed from his own mind entirely, and 
 that mind so rich and abundant, that he never needed 
 or seemed to disdain to look abroad for foreign help, 
 Kafaelle's materials are generally borrowed, though the 
 noble structure is his own." ■ How does all this accord 
 with the same writer's favourite theory that all beauty, all 
 grandeur, and all excellence consist in an approximation 
 to that central form or habitual idea of mediocrity, from 
 which every deviation is so much deformity and littleness ? 
 Michael Angelo's figures are raised above our diminutive 
 race of beings, yet they are confessedly the standard of 
 sublimity in what regards the human form. Grandeur 
 then admits of an exaggeration of our habitual impres- 
 sions ; and " the strong, marked, and peculiar character 
 which Michael Angelo has at the same time given to his 
 works " does not take away from it. This is fact against 
 argument. I would take Sir Joshua's word for the good- 
 1 The Fifth Discourse. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds s Discourses. 189 
 
 ness of a picture, and for its distinguishing properties, 
 sooner than I would for an abstract metaphysical theory. 
 Our artist also speaks continually of high and low 
 subjects. There can be no distinction of this kind upon 
 his principle, that the standard of taste is the adhering to 
 the central form of each species, and that every species is 
 in itself equally beautiful. The painter of flowers, of 
 shells, or of anything else, is equally elevated with 
 Kaphael or Michael, if he adheres to the generic or 
 established form of what he paints : the rest, according to 
 this definition, is a matter of indifference. There must 
 therefore be something besides the central or customary 
 form to account for the difference of dignity, for the high 
 and low style in nature or in art. Michael Angelo's 
 figures, we are told, are more than ordinarily grand : why, 
 by the same rule, may not Eaphael's be more than 
 ordinarily beautiful, have more than ordinary softness, 
 symmetry, and grace ? — Character and expression are still 
 less included in the present theory. All character is a 
 departure from the common-place form ; and Sir Joshua 
 makes no scruple to declare that expression destroys 
 beauty. Thus he says — 
 
 f * If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in iU 
 most perfect state, you cannot express the passions, all of 
 which produce distortion and deformity, more or less, in 
 the most beautiful faces.'' l 
 
 He goes on — " Guido, from want of choice in adapting 
 his subject to his ideas and his powers, or from attempting 
 to preserve beauty where it could not be preserved, has in 
 this respect succeeded very ill. His figures are often 
 engaged in subjects that required great expression : yet his 
 Judith and Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias with the 
 Baptist's head, the Andromeda, and some even of the 
 Mothers of the Innocents, have little more expression than 
 his Venus attired by the Graces." 2 
 
 i Vol. i., p. 118. 2 Ibid. 
 
190 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 What a censure is this passed upon Guido, and what a 
 condemnation of his own theory, which would reduce and 
 level all that is truly great and praiseworthy in art to this 
 insipid, tasteless standard, by setting aside as illegitimate 
 all that does not come within the middle, central form ! 
 Yet Sir Joshua judges of Hogarth as he deviates from 
 this standard, not as he excels in individual character, 
 which he says is only good or tolerable as it partakes of 
 general nature ; and he might accuse Michael Angelo and 
 Eaphael, the one for his grandeur of style, the other for 
 his expression ; for neither are what he sets up as the goal 
 of perfection. — I will just stop to remark here, that 
 Sir Joshua has committed himself very strangely in 
 speaking of the character and expression to be found in 
 the Greek statues. He says in one place — 
 
 " I cannot quit the Apollo without making one observa- 
 tion on the character of this figure. He is supposed to 
 have just discharged his arrow at the Python ; and by the 
 head retreating a little towards the right shoulder, he 
 appears attentive to its effect. What I would remark, is 
 the difference of this attention from that of the Discobolus, 
 who is engaged in the same purpose, watching the effect 
 of his Discus. The graceful, negligent, though animated 
 air of the one, and the vulgar eagerness of the other, 
 furnish an instance of the judgment of the ancient 
 Sculptors in their nice discrimination of character. They 
 are both equally true to nature, and equally admirable." l 
 
 After a few observations on the limited means of the art 
 of Sculpture, and the inattention of the ancients to almost 
 everything but form, we meet with the following pas- 
 
 u Those who think Sculpture can express more than we 
 
 have allowed may ask, by what means we discover, at the 
 
 first glance, the character that is represented in a Bust, a 
 
 Cameo, or Intaglio ? I suspect it will be found, on close 
 
 1 Vol. ii., p. 21. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses. 191 
 
 examination, by him who is resolved not to see more than 
 he really does see, that the figures are distinguished by 
 their insignia more than by any variety of form or beauty. 
 Take from Apollo his Lyre, from Bacchus his Thyrsus 
 and Yine-leaves, and Meleager the Boar's Head, and there 
 will remain little or no difference in their characters. In 
 a Juno, Minerva, or Flora, the idea of the artist seems to 
 have gone no further than representing perfect beauty, and 
 afterwards adding the proper attributes, with a total 
 indifference to which they gave them." 
 
 [What then becomes of that " nice discrimination of 
 character " for which our author has just before celebrated 
 them ?] 
 
 " Thus John De Bologna, after he had finished a group 
 of a young man holding up a young woman in his arms, 
 with an old man at his feet, called his friends together, to 
 tell him what name he should give it, and it was agreed 
 to call it The Eape of the Sabines; and this is the 
 celebrated group which now stands before the old Palace 
 at Florence. The figures have the same general expres- 
 sion which is to be found in most of the antique Sculp- 
 ture ; and yet it would be no wonder, if future critics 
 should find out delicacy of expression which was never 
 intended ; and go so far as to see, in the old man's coun- 
 tenance, the exact relation which he bore to the woman 
 who appears to be taken from him." 1 
 
 So it is that Sir Joshua's theory seems to rest on an 
 inclined plane, and is always glad of an excuse to slide, 
 from the severity of truth and nature, into the milder and 
 more equable regions of insipidity and inanity ; I am 
 sorry to say so, but so it appears to me. 
 
 I confess, it strikes me as a self-evident truth that 
 
 variety or contrast is as essential a principle in art and 
 
 nature as uniformity, and as necessary to make up the 
 
 harmony of the universe and the contentment of the mind. 
 
 1 Vol. ii., p. 25. 
 
192 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 Who would destroy the shifting effects of light and shade, 
 the sharp, lively opposition of colours in the same or in 
 different objects, the streaks in a flower, the stains in 
 a piece of marble, to reduce all to the same neutral, dead 
 colouring, the same middle tint? Yet it is on this 
 principle that Sir Joshua would get rid of all variety, 
 character, expression, and picturesque effect in forms, or 
 at least measure the worth or the spuriousness of all these 
 according to their reference to or departure from a given 
 or average standard. Surely, nature is more liberal, art 
 is wider than Sir Joshua's theory. Allow (for the sake of 
 argument) that all forms are in themselves indifferent, 
 and that beauty or the sense of pleasure in forms can 
 therefore only arise from customary association, or from 
 that middle impression to which they all tend : yet this 
 cannot by the same rule apply to other things. Suppose 
 there is no capacity in form to affect the mind except from 
 its corresponding to previous expectation, the same thing 
 Gannot be said of the idea of power or grandeur. No one 
 can say that the idea of power does not affect the mind 
 with the sense of awe and sublimity. That is, power 
 and weakness, grandeur and littleness, are not indifferent 
 things, the perfection of which consists in a medium be- 
 tween both. Again, expression is not a thing indifferent 
 in itself, which derives its value or its interest solely from 
 its conformity to a neutral standard. Who would neu- 
 tralise the expression of pleasure and pain ? Or say that 
 the passions of the human mind, pity, love, joy, sorrow, &c, 
 are only interesting to the imagination and worth the at- 
 tention of the artist, as he can reduce them to an equivocal 
 state which is neither pleasant nor painful, neither one 
 thing nor the other ? Or who would stop short of the 
 utmost refinement, precision, and force in the delineation 
 of each ? Ideal expression is not neutral expression, but 
 extreme expression. Again, character is a thing of pe- 
 culiarity, of striking contrast, of distinction, and not of 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds' s Discourses. 193 
 
 uniformity. It is necessarily opposed to Sir Joshua's 
 exclusive theory, and yet it is surely a curious and 
 interesting field of speculation for the human mind. 
 Lively, spirited discrimination of character is one source 
 of gratification to the lover of nature and art, which it 
 could not be if all truth and excellence consisted in 
 rejecting individual traits. Ideal character is not common 
 place, but consistent character marked throughout, which 
 may take place in history or portrait. Historical truth in 
 a picture is the putting the different features of the face or 
 muscles of the body into consistent action. The pictu- 
 resque altogether depends on particular points or qualities 
 of an object, projecting as it were beyond the middle line 
 of beauty, and catching the eye of the spectator. It was 
 less, however, my intention to hazard any speculations of 
 my own, than to confirm the common-sense feelings on the 
 subject by Sir Joshua's own admissions in different places. 
 In the Tenth Discourse, speaking of some objections to 
 the Apollo, he has these remarkable words : — 
 
 " In regard to the last objection (viz. that the lower half 
 of the figure is longer than just proportion allows) it 
 must be remembered, that Apollo is here in the exertion 
 of one of his peculiar powers, which is swiftness ; he has 
 therefore that proportion which is best adapted to that 
 character. This is no more incorrectness, than when there 
 is given to an Hercules an extraordinary swelling and 
 strength of muscles." l 
 
 Strength and activity then do not depend on the middle 
 form ; and the middle form is to be sacrificed to the 
 representation of these positive qualities. Character is 
 thus allowed not only to be an integrant part of the 
 antique and classical style of art, but even to take 
 precedence of and set aside the abstract idea of beauty. 
 Little more would be required to justify Hogarth in his 
 Gothic resolution, that if he were to make a figure of 
 1 Vol. ii., p. 20. 
 
 o 
 
194 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 Charon, he would give him bandy legs, because watermen 
 are generally bandy-legged. It is very well to talk of 
 the abstract idea of a man or of a God, but if you come to 
 anything like an intelligible proposition, you must either 
 individualize and define, or destroy the very idea you 
 contemplate. Sir Joshua goes into this question at con- 
 siderable length in the Third Discourse : — 
 
 "To the principle I have laid down, that the idea 
 of beauty in each species of beings is an invariable one, it 
 may be objected," he says, "that in every particular 
 species there are various central forms, which are separate 
 and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably 
 beautiful ; that in the human figure, for instance, the 
 beauty of Hercules is one, of the Gladiator another, of the 
 Apollo another, which makes so many different ideas of 
 beauty. It is true, indeed, that these figures are each 
 perfect in their kind, though of different characters and 
 proportions ; but still none of them is the representation 
 of an individual, but of a class. And as there is one 
 general form, which, as I have said, belongs to the human 
 kind at large, so in each of these classes there is one 
 common idea which is the abstract of the various indi- 
 vidual forms belonging to that class. Thus, though the 
 forms of childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a 
 common form in childhood, and a common form in age, 
 which is the more perfect as it is remote from all 
 peculiarities. But I must add further, that though the 
 most perfect forms of each of the general divisions of the 
 human figure are ideal, and superior to any individual 
 form of that class ; yet the highest perfection of the human 
 figure is not to be found in any of them. It is not in the 
 Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, nor in the Apollo ; but in 
 that form which is taken from all, and which partakes 
 equally of the activity of the Gladiator, of the delicacy of 
 the Apollo, and of the muscular strength of the Hercules. 
 For perfect beauty in any species must combine all the 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds s Discourses. 195 
 
 characters which are beautiful in that species. It cannot 
 consist in any one to the exclusion of the rest : no one, there^ 
 fore, must be predominant, that no one maybe deficient." 1 
 Sir Joshua here supposes the distinctions of classes and 
 character to be necessarily combined with the general 
 leading idea of a middle form. This middle form is not 
 to confound age, sex, circumstance, under one sweeping 
 abstraction ; but we must limit the general ideas by certain 
 specific differences and characteristic marks, belonging to 
 the several subordinate divisions and ramifications of each 
 class. This is enough to show that there is a principle 
 of individuality as well as of abstraction inseparable from 
 works of art as well as nature. We are to keep the human 
 form distinct from that of other living beings, that of men 
 from that of women ; we are to distinguish between age 
 and infancy, between thoughtfulness and ^gaiety, between 
 strength and softness. Where is this to stop ? But Sir 
 Joshua turns round upon himself in this very passage, 
 and says : " No : we are to unite the strength of the 
 Hercules with the delicacy of the Apollo; for perfect 
 beauty in any species must combine all the characters 
 which are beautiful in that species." Now if these 
 different characters are beautiful in themselves, why not 
 give them for their own sakes and in their most striking 
 appearauces, instead of qualifying and softening them 
 down in a neutral form ; which must produce a com- 
 promise, not a union of different excellences. If all 
 excess of beauty, if all character is deformity, then we 
 must try to lose it as fast as possible in other qualities, 
 But if strength is an excellence, if activity is an excel- 
 lence, if delicacy is an excellence, then the perfection, i. e. 
 the highest degree of each of these qualities cannot be 
 attained but by remaining satisfied with a less degree of 
 the rest. But let us hear what Sir Joshua himself 
 advances on this subject in another part of the Discourses : 
 Vol. ii., p. 64. 
 
196 On Certain Inconsistencies in 
 
 " Some excellences bear to be united, and are improved 
 by union : others are of a discordant nature ; and the 
 attempt to unite them only produces a harsh jarring of 
 incongruent principles. The attempt to unite contrary 
 excellences (of form, for instance ') in a single figure, 
 can never escape degenerating into the monstrous but by 
 sinking into the insipid ; by taking away its marked character, 
 and weakening its expression, 
 
 "Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many 
 writers on our art who, not being of the profession and 
 consequently not knowing what can or cannot be done, 
 have been very liberal of absurd praises in their descrip- 
 tion of favourite works. They always find in them what 
 they are resolved to find. They praise excellences that 
 can hardly exist together ; and, above all things, are fond 
 of describing with great exactness the expression of a 
 mixed passion, which more particularly appears to me out 
 of the reach of our art." 2 
 
 "Such are many disquisitions which I have read on 
 some of the Cartoons and other pictures of Raflaelle, 
 where the critics have described their own imaginations ; 
 or indeed where the excellent master himself may have 
 attempted this expression of passions above the powers of 
 the art ; and has, therefore, by an indistinct and imperfect 
 marking, left room for every imagination with equal pro- 
 bability to find a passion of his own. What has been, 
 and what can be done in the art, is sufficiently difficult : 
 we need not be mortified or discouraged at not being able 
 to execute the conceptions of a romantic imagination. 
 Art has its boundaries, though imagination has none. 
 We can easily, like the ancients, suppose a Jupiter to be 
 possessed of all those powers and perfections which the 
 subordinate Deities were endowed with separately. Yet 
 
 1 These are Sir Joshua's words. 
 
 2 I do not know that ; but I do not think the two passions could 
 be expressed by expressing neither or something between both. 
 
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses. 197 
 
 when they employed their art to represent him, they con- 
 fined his character to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore, 
 though we are under great obligations to him for the in- 
 formation he has given us in relation to the works of the 
 ancient artists, is very frequently wrong when he speaks 
 of them, which he does very often, in the style of many 
 of our modern connoisseurs. He observes that in a 
 statue of Paris, by Euphranor, you might discover at the 
 same time three different characters ; the dignity of a 
 Judge of the Goddesses, the Lover of Helen, and tho 
 Conqueror of Achilles. A statue in which you endeavour 
 to unite stately dignity, youthful elegance, and stern 
 valour, must surely possess none of these to any eminent 
 degree. 
 
 " From hence it appears that there is much difficulty 
 as well as danger in an endeavour to concentrate in a 
 single subject those various powers which, rising from 
 various points, naturally move in different directions." 1 
 
 What real clue to the art or sound principles of judging 
 the student can derive from these contradictory state- 
 ments, or in what manner it is possible to reconcile them 
 one to the other, I confess I am at a loss to discover. 
 As it appears to me, all the varieties of nature in the in- 
 finite number of its qualities, combinations, characters, 
 expressions, incidents, &c, rise from distinct points or 
 centres and must move in distinct directions, as the forms 
 of different species are to be referred to a separate 
 standard. It is the object of art to bring them out in all 
 their force, clearness, and precision, and not to blend 
 them into a vague, vapid, nondescript ideal conception, 
 which pretends to unite, but in reality destroys. Sir 
 Joshua's theory limits nature and paralyses art. Accord- 
 ing to him, the middle form or the average of our various 
 impressions is the source from which all beauty, pleasure, 
 interest, imagination springs. I contend, on the contrary, 
 1 Vol. i„ p. 120. 
 
198 Inconsistencies in Sir J. Reynolds's Discourses. 
 
 that this very variety is good in itself, nor do I agree 
 with him that the whole of nature as it exists in fact is 
 stark naught, and that there is nothing worthy of the con- 
 templation of a wise man but that ideal perfection which 
 never existed in the world nor even on canvas. There 
 is something fastidious and sickly in Sir Joshua's system. 
 His code of taste consists too much of negations, and 
 not enough of positive, prominent qualities. It accounts 
 for nothing but the beauty of the common Antique, and 
 hardly for that. The merit of Hogarth, I grant, is 
 different from that of the Greek statues ; but I deny that 
 Hogarth is to be measured by this standard or by Sir 
 Joshua's middle forms : he has powers of instruction and 
 amusement that " rising from a different point, naturally 
 move in a different direction," and completely attain their 
 end. It would be just as reasonable to condemn a comedy 
 for not having the pathos of a tragedy or the stateliness 
 of an epic poem. If Sir Joshua Keynolds's theory were 
 true, Dr. Johnson's Irene would be a better tragedy than 
 any of Shakespear's. 
 
 The reasoning of the Discourses is, I think then, 
 deficient in the following particulars : — 
 
 1. It seems to imply that general effect in a picture is 
 produced by leaving out the details, whereas the largest 
 masses and the grandest outline are consistent with the 
 utmost delicacy of finishing in the parts. 
 
 2. It makes no distinction between beauty and grandeur, 
 but refers both to an ideal or middle form, as the centre 
 of the various forms of the species, and yet inconsistently 
 attributes the grandeur of Michael Angelo's style to the 
 superhuman appearance of his prophets and apostles. 
 
 3. It does not at any time make mention of power or 
 magnitude in an object as a distinct source of the sublime 
 (though this is acknowledged unintentionally in the case 
 of Michael Angelo, &c), nor of softness or symmetry of 
 form as a distinct source of beauty, independently of, 
 
On Paradox and Common-place. 199 
 
 though still in connection with another source arising 
 from what we are accustomed to expect from each indivi- 
 dual species. 
 
 4. Sir Joshua's theory does not leave room for character, 
 but rejects it as an anomaly. 
 
 5. It does not point out the source of expression, but 
 considers it as hostile to beauty; and yet, lastly, he 
 allows that the middle form, carried to the utmost 
 theoretical extent, neither denned by character, nor im- 
 pregnated by passion, would produce nothing but vague, 
 insipid, unmeaning generality. 
 
 In a word, I cannot think that the theory here laid 
 down is clear and satisfactory, that it is consistent with 
 itself, that it accounts for the various excellences of art 
 from a few simple principles, or that the method which 
 Sir Joshua has pursued in treating the subject is, as he 
 himself expresses it, "a plain and honest method." It is, 
 I fear, more calculated to baffle and perplex the student 
 in his progress than to give him clear lights as to the 
 object he should have in view, or to furnish him with 
 strong motives of emulation to attain it. 
 
 ESSAY XV. 
 
 On Paradox and Common-place. 
 
 I have been sometimes accused of a fondness for paradoxes, 
 but I cannot in my own mind plead guilty to the charge. 
 I do not indeed swear by an opinion, because it is old ; 
 but neither do I fall in love with every extravagance at 
 first sight, because it is new. I conceive that a thing 
 may have been repeated a thousand times, without being a 
 bit more reasonable than it was the first time : and I also 
 
200 On Paradox and Common-place. 
 
 conceive that an argument or an observation may be very 
 just, though it may so happen that it was never stated 
 before: but I do not take it for granted that every 
 prejudice is ill-founded ; nor that every paradox is self- 
 evident, merely because it contradicts the vulgar opinion. 
 Sheridan once said of some speech in his acute, sarcastic 
 way, that " it contained a great deal both of what was new 
 and what was true : but that unfortunately what was new 
 was not true, and what was true was not new." This 
 appears to me to express the whole sense of the question 
 
 I do not see much use in dwelling on a common-place, 
 however fashionable or well-established : nor am I very 
 ambitious of starting the most specious novelty, unless I 
 imagine I have reason on my side. Originality implies 
 independence of opinion ; but differs as widely from mere 
 singularity as from the tritest truism. It consists in seeing 
 and thinking for one's-self: whereas singularity is only 
 the affectation of saying something to contradict other 
 people, without having any real opinion of one's own upon 
 the matter. Mr. Burke was an original, though an extra- 
 vagant writer : Mr. Windham was a regular manufacturer 
 of paradoxes. 
 
 The greatest number of minds seem utterly incapable 
 of fixing on any conclusion, except from the pressure of 
 custom and authority : opposed to these, there is another 
 class less numerous but pretty formidable, who in all 
 their opinions are equally under the influence of novelty 
 and restless vanity. The prejudices of the one are 
 counter-balanced by the paradoxes of the other ; and folly, 
 
 II putting in one scale a weight of ignorance, in that of 
 pride," might be said to " smile delighted with the eternal 
 poise." A sincere and manly spirit of inquiry is neither 
 blinded by example nor dazzled by sudden flashes of 
 light. Nature is always the same, the storehouse of 
 lasting truth, and teeming with inexhaustible variety ; 
 and he who looks at her steady ar.d well-practised eyes, 
 
Oit Paradox and Common-place. 201 
 
 will find enough to employ all his sagacity, whether it 
 has or has not been seen by others before him. Strange 
 as it may seem, to learn what an object is, the true philo- 
 sopher looks at the object itself, instead of turning to 
 others to know what they think or say or have heard ot 
 it, or instead of consulting the dictates of his vanity, 
 petulance, and ingenuity to see what can be said against 
 their opinion, and to prove himself wiser than all the 
 rest of the world. For want of this the real powers and 
 resources of the mind are lost and dissipated in a conflict 
 of opinions and passions, of obstinacy against levity, of 
 bigotry against self-conceit, of notorious abuses against 
 rash innovations, of dull, plodding, old-fashioned stupidity 
 against new-fangled folly, of worldly interest against 
 headstrong egotism, of the incorrigible prejudices of the 
 old and the unmanageable humours of the young ; while 
 truth lies in the middle, and is overlooked by both parties. 
 Or as Luther complained long ago, " human reason is like 
 a drunken man on horseback : set it up on one side, and 
 it tumbles over on the other/' — With one sort, example, 
 authority, fashion, ease, interest, rule all : with the other, 
 singularity, the love of distinction, mere whim, the throw- 
 ing off all restraint and showing an heroic disregard of con- 
 sequences, an impatient and unsettled turn of mind, the 
 want of sudden and strong excitement, of some new play- 
 thing for the imagination, are equally " lords of the 
 ascendant," and are at every step getting the start of 
 reason, truth, nature, common sense, and feeling. With 
 one party, whatever is, is right : with their antagonists, 
 whatever is, is wrong. These swallow every antiquated 
 absurdity : those catch at every new, unfledged project — 
 and are alike enchanted with the velocipedes or the 
 French Eevolution. One set, wrapped up in impenetrable 
 forms and technical traditions, are deaf to everything 
 that has not been dinned in their ears, and in those of 
 their forefathers, from time immemorial : their hearing is 
 
202 On Paradox and Commonplace. 
 
 thick with the same old saws, the same unmeaning form of 
 words, everlastingly repeated : the others pique themselves 
 on a jargon of their own, a Babylonish dialect, crude, un- 
 concocted, harsh, discordant, to which it is impossible for 
 any one else to attach either meaning or respect. These 
 last turn away at the mention of all usages, creeds, institu- 
 tions of more than a day's standing as a mass of bigotry, 
 superstition, and barbarous ignorance, whose leaden touch 
 would petrify and benumb their quick, mercurial, " appre- 
 hensive, forgetive" faculties. The opinion of to-day 
 supersedes that of yesterday : that of to-morrow supersedes, 
 by anticipation, that of to-day. The wisdom of the 
 ancients, the doctrines of the learned, the laws of nations, 
 the common sentiments of morality, are to them like a 
 bundle of old almanacs. As the modern politician always 
 asks for this day's paper, the modern sciolist always 
 inquires after the latest paradox. With him instinct is a 
 dotard, nature a changeling, and common sense a discarded 
 byword. As with the man of the world, what everybody 
 says must be true, the citizen of the world has quite a 
 different notion of the matter. With the one, the majority ; 
 " the powers that be " have always been in the right in all 
 ages and places, though they have been cutting one 
 another's throats and turning the world upside down with 
 their quarrels and disputes from the beginning of time : 
 with the other, what any two people have ever agreed in 
 is an error on the face of it. The credulous bigot 
 shudders at the idea of altering anything in "time 
 hallowed " institutions ; and under this cant phrase can 
 bring himself to tolerate any knavery, or any folly, the 
 Inquisition, Holy Oil, the Eight Divine, &c. ; — the more 
 refined sceptic will laugh in your face at the idea of 
 retaining anything which has the damning stamp of 
 custom upon it, and is for abating all former precedents, 
 " all trivial, fond records," the whole frame and fabric of 
 society as a nuisance in the lump. Is not this a pair of 
 
On Paradox and Common-place. 203 
 
 wiseacres well matched ? The one stickles through thick 
 and thin for his own religion and government : the other 
 scouts all religions and all governments with a smile of 
 ineffable disdain. The one will not move for any con- 
 sideration out of the broad and beaten path : the other is 
 continually turning off at right angles, and losing himself 
 in the labyrinths of his own ignorance and presumption. 
 The one will not go along with any party ; the other 
 always joins the strongest side. The one will not con- 
 form to any common practice ; the other will subscribe to 
 any thriving system. The one is the slave of habit, the 
 other is the sport of caprice. The first is like a man 
 obstinately bed-rid ; the last is troubled with St. Vitus's 
 dance. He cannot stand still, he cannot rest upon any 
 conclusion. " He never is — but always to be right." 
 
 The author of the Prometheus Unbound 1 (to take an 
 individual instance of the last character) has a fire in his 
 eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic 
 flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic 
 fanatic. He is sanguine-complexioned, and shrill- voiced. 
 As is often observable in the case of religious enthusiasts, 
 there is a slenderness of constitutional stamina, which 
 renders the flesh no match for the spirit. His bending, 
 flexible form appears to take no strong hold of things, does 
 not grapple with the world about him, but slides from it 
 like a river — • 
 
 11 And in its liquid texture mortal wound 
 Receives no more than can the fluid air." 
 
 The shock of accident, the weight of authority make no 
 impression on his opinions, which retire like a feather, or 
 rise from the encounter unhurt through their own buoy- 
 ancy. He is clogged by no dull system of realities, no 
 earth-bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothing 
 that belongs to the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature 
 and habit, but is drawn up by irresistible levity to the 
 i Shelley.— Ed 
 
204 On Paradox and Common-place. 
 
 regions of mere speculation and fancy, to the sphere of 
 air and fire, where his delighted spirit floats in " seas of 
 pearl and clouds of amber. " There is no caput mortuum 
 of worn-out, threadbare experience to serve as ballast tc 
 his mind ; it is all volatile intellectual salt of tartar, that 
 refuses to combine its evanescent, inflammable essence 
 with anything solid or anything lasting. Bubbles are to 
 him the only realities : — touch them, and they vanish. 
 Curiosity is the only proper category of his mind, and 
 though a man in knowledge, he is a child in feeling. 
 Hence he puts everything into a metaphysical crucible to 
 judge of it himself and exhibit it to others as a subject of 
 interesting experiment, without first making it over to the 
 ordeal of his common sense or trying it on his heart. 
 This faculty of speculating at random on all questions 
 may in its overgrown and uninformed state do much 
 mischief without intending it, like an overgrown child 
 with the power of a man. Mr. Shelley has been accused 
 of vanity — I think he is chargeable with extreme levity ; 
 but this levity is so great, that I do not believe he is 
 sensible of its consequences. He strives to overturn all 
 established creeds and systems : but this is in him an 
 effect of constitution. He runs before the most extra- 
 vagant opinions, but this is because he is held back by 
 none of the merely mechanical checks of sympathy and 
 habit. He tampers with all sorts of obnoxious subjects, 
 but it is less because he is gratified with the rankness of 
 the taint than captivated with the intellectual phosphoric 
 light they emit. It would seem that he wished not so 
 much to convince or inform as to shock the public by the 
 tenor of his productions, but I suspect he is more intent 
 upon startling himself with his electrical experiments in 
 morals and philosophy ; and though they may scorch 
 other people, they are to him harmless amusements, the 
 coruscations of an Aurora Borealis, that f play round the 
 head, but do not reach the heart." Still I could wish 
 
On Paradox and Common-place. 205 
 
 that lie would put a stop to the incessant, alarming whirl 
 of his Voltaic battery. With his zeal, his talent, and his 
 fancy, he would do more good and less harm if he were 
 to give up his wilder theories, and if he took less pleasure 
 in feeling his heart flutter in unison with the panic-struck 
 apprehensions of his readers. Persons of this class, instead 
 of consolidating useful and acknowledged truths, and thus 
 advancing the cause of science and virtue, are never easy 
 but in raising doubtful and disagreeable questions, which 
 bring the former into disgrace and discredit. They are 
 not contented to lead the minds of men to an eminence 
 overlooking the prospect of social amelioration, unless, by 
 forcing them up slippery paths and to the utmost verge of 
 possibility, they can dash them down the precipice the 
 instant they reach the promised Pisgah. They think it 
 nothing to hang up a beacon to guide or warn, if they do 
 not at the same time frighten the community like a comet. 
 They do not mind making their principles odious, pro- 
 vided they can make themselves notorious. To win over 
 the public opinion by fair means is to them an insipid, 
 common-place mode of popularity : they would either 
 force it by harsh methods, or seduce it by intoxicating 
 potions. Egotism, petulance, licentiousness, levity of 
 principle (whatever be the source) is a bad thing in any 
 one, and most of all, in a philosophical reformer. Their 
 humanity, their wisdom is always " at the horizon." Any- 
 thing new, anything remote, anything questionable, comes 
 to them in a shape that is sure of a cordial welcome — a 
 welcome cordial in proportion as the object is new, as it 
 is apparently impracticable, as it is a doubt whether it is 
 at all desirable. Just after the final failure, the comple- 
 tion of the last act of the French Ee volution, when the 
 legitimate wits were crying out, " The farce is over, now 
 let us go to supper," these provoking reasoners got up a 
 lively hypothesis about introducing the domestic govern- 
 ment of the Nayrs into this country as a feasible set-off 
 
206 On Paradox and Common-place. 
 
 against the success of the Borough mongers. The practical 
 is with them always the antipodes of the ideal ; and like 
 other visionaries of a different stamp, they date the Mil- 
 lennium or New Order of Things from the Kestoration of 
 the Bourbons. " Fine words butter no parsnips," says the 
 proverb. "While you are talking of marrying, I am 
 thinking of hanging," says Captain Macheath. Of all 
 people the most tormenting are those who bid you hope 
 in the midst of despair, who, by never caring about any- 
 thing but their own sanguine, hair-brained Utopian schemes, 
 have at no time any particular cause for embarrassment 
 and despondency because they have never the least chance 
 of success, and who by including whatever does not hit 
 their idle fancy, kings, priests, religion, government, public 
 abuses or private morals, in the same sweeping clause of 
 ban and anathema, do all they can to combine all parties 
 in a common cause against them, and to prevent every one 
 else from advancing one step farther in the career of 
 practical improvement than they do in that of imaginary 
 and unattainable perfection. 
 
 Besides, all this untoward heat and precocity often 
 argues rottenness and a falling-off. I myself remember 
 several instances of this sort of unrestrained license of 
 opinion and violent effervescence of sentiment in the first 
 period of the French Kevolution. Extremes meet : and 
 the most furious anarchists have since become the most 
 barefaced apostates. Among the foremost of these I 
 might mention the present poet-laureate l and some of his 
 friends. The prose- writers on that side of the question, 
 Mr. Godwin, Mr. Bentham, &c, have not turned round in 
 this extraordinary manner : they seem to have felt their 
 ground (however mistaken in some points) and have in 
 general adhered to their first principles. But " poets (as 
 it has been said) have such seething brains, that they are 
 disposed to meddle with everything, and mar all. They 
 1 Southey.— Ed, 
 
On Paradox and Common-place. 207 
 
 make bad philosophers and worse politicians. 1 They 
 live, for the most part, in an ideal world of their own ; 
 and it would perhaps be as well if they were confined to 
 it. Their flights and fancies are delightful to themselves 
 and to everybody else : but they make strange work with 
 matter of fact ; and if they were allowed to act in publie 
 affairs, would soon turn the world the wrong side out. 
 They indulge only their own flattering dreams or super- 
 stitious prejudices, and make idols or bugbears of what- 
 ever they please, caring as little for history or particular 
 facts as for general reasoning. They are dangerous 
 leaders and treacherous followers. Their inordinate 
 vanity runs them into all sorts of extravagances ; and their 
 habitual effeminacy gets them out of them at any price. 
 Always pampering their own appetite for excitement, and 
 wishing to astonish others, their whole aim is to produce 
 a dramatic effect, one way or other — to shock or delight 
 the observers ; and they are apparently as indifferent to 
 the consequences of what they write as if the world were 
 merely a stage for them to play their fantastic tricks on, 
 and to make their admirers weep. Not less romantic in 
 their servility than their independence, and equally 
 importunate candidates for fame or infamy, they require 
 only to be distinguished, and are not scrupulous as to the 
 means of distinction. Jacobins or Anti-Jacobins — out- 
 rageous advocates for anarchy and licentiousness, or 
 flaming apostles of political persecution — always violent 
 
 1 " As for politics, I think poets are tories by nature, supposing 
 them to be by nature poets. The love of an individual person or 
 family, that has worn a crown for many successions, is an inclination 
 greatly adapted to the fanciful tribe. On the other hand, mathe- 
 maticians, abstract reasoners, of no manner of attachment to persons, 
 at least to the visible part of them, but prodigiously devoted to the 
 ideas of virtue, liberty, and so forth, are generally whigs. It happens 
 agreeably enough to this maxim, that the whigs are friends to that 
 wise, plodding, unpoetical people, the Dutch." — Shenstone's Letters, 
 1740, p. 105. 
 
208 On Paradox and Conimon-jolace. 
 
 and vulgar in their opinions, they oscillate, with a giddy 
 and sickening motion, from one absurdity to another, and 
 expiate the follies of youth by the heartless vices of 
 advancing age. None so ready as they to carry every 
 paradox to its most revolting and ridiculous excess — none 
 so sure to caricature, in their own persons, every feature 
 of the prevailing philosophy ! In their days of blissful 
 innovation, indeed, the philosophers crept at their heels 
 like hounds, while they darted on their distant quarry 
 like hawks ; stooping always to the lowest game ; eagerly 
 snuffing up the most tainted and rankest scents ; feeding 
 their vanity with a notion of the strength of their digestion 
 of poisons, and most ostentatiously avowing whatever 
 would most effectually startle the prejudices of others. 1 
 
 1 To give the modern reader un petit apergu of the tone of lite- 
 rary conversation about five or six and twenty years ago, I remember 
 being present in a large party composed of men, women, and chil- 
 dren, in which two persons of remarkable candour and ingenuity 
 were labouring (as hard as if they had been paid for it) to prove that 
 all prayer was a mode of dictating to the Almighty, and an arrogant 
 assumption of superiority. A gentleman present said, with great 
 simplicity and naivete, that there was one prayer which did not strike 
 him as coming exactly under this description, and being asked what 
 that was, made answer, " The Samaritan's — ' Lord, Be merciful to me, 
 a sinner !' " This appeal by no means settled the sceptical dogmatism 
 of the two disputants, and soon after the proposer of the objection 
 went away ; on which one of them observed with great marks of 
 satisfaction and triumph — ** I am afraid we have shocked that gentle- 
 man's prejudices." This did not appear to me at that time quite the 
 thing, and this happened in the year 1794. — Twice has the iron 
 entered my soul. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal crew 
 gone over it ; once as they went forth, conquering and to conquer, with 
 reason by their side, glittering like a falchion, trampling on prejudices 
 and marching fearlessly on in the work of regeneration ; once again, 
 when they returned with retrograde steps, like Cacus's oxen dragged 
 backward by the heels, to the den of Legitimacy, " rout on rout, 
 confusion worse confounded," with places and pensions and the 
 Quarterly Review dangling from their pockets, and shouting " De- 
 liverance for mankind," for " the worst, the second fall of man." 
 Yet I have endured all this marching and countermarching of poets 
 
On Paradox and Common-place. 209 
 
 Preposterously seeking for the stimulus of novelty in 
 abstract truth, and the eclat of theatrical exhibition in 
 pure reason, it is no wonder that these persons at last 
 became disgusted with their own pursuits, and that, in 
 consequence of the violence of the change, the most 
 inveterate prejudices and uncharitable sentiments have 
 rushed in to fill up the void produced by the previous 
 annihilation of common sense, wisdom, and humanity !" 
 
 I have so far been a little hard on poets and reformers. 
 Lest I should be thought to have taken a particular spite 
 to them, I will try to make them the amende honorable by 
 turning to a passage in the writings of one who neither is 
 nor ever pretended to be a poet or a reformer, but the 
 antithesis of both, an accomplished man of the world, a 
 courtier, and a wit, and who has endeavoured to move the 
 previous question on all schemes of fanciful improvement, 
 and all plans of practical reform, by the following declara- 
 tion. It is in itself a finished common-place; and may 
 serve as a test whether that sort of smooth, verbal 
 reasoning which passes current because it excites no one 
 idea in the mind, is much freer from inherent absurdity 
 than the wildest paradox. 
 
 " My lot," says Mr. Canning in the conclusion of his 
 Liverpool speech, "is cast under the British Monarchy. 
 Under that I have lived; under that I have seen my 
 country flourish ; 1 under that I have seen it enjoy as 
 great a share of prosperity, of happiness, and of glory, as 
 I believe any modification of human society to be capable 
 of bestowing ; and I am not prepared to sacrifice or to 
 hazard the fruit of centuries of experience, of centuries of 
 struggles, and of more than one century of liberty, as 
 
 philosophers, and politicians over my head as well as I could, like 
 " the camomile that thrives, the more 'tis trod upon." By Heavens 
 I think, I'll endure it no longer ! 
 1 Troja fuit. 
 
 P 
 
210 On Paradox and Common-place. 
 
 perfect as ever blessed any country upon the earth, for 
 visionary schemes of ideal perfectibility, for doubtful 
 experiments even of possible improvement. 1 
 
 Such is Mr. Canning's common-place; and in giving 
 the following answer to it, I do not think I can be accused 
 of falling into that extravagant and unmitigated strain of 
 paradoxical reasoning with which I have already found 
 so much fault. 
 
 The passage then which the gentleman here throws 
 down as an effectual bar to all change, to all innovation, 
 to all improvement, contains at every step a refutation of 
 his favourite creed. He is not " prepared to sacrifice or 
 to hazard the fruit of centuries of experience, of centuries 
 of struggles, and of one century of liberty, for visionary 
 schemes of ideal perfectibility." So here are centuries of 
 experience and centuries of struggles to arrive at one 
 century of liberty ; and yet according to Mr. Canning's 
 general advice, we are never to make any experiments or 
 to engage in any struggles either with a view to future 
 improvement, or to recover benefits which we have lost. 
 Man (they repeat in our ears, line upon line, precept upon 
 precept) is always to turn his back upon the future, and 
 his face to the past. He is to believe that nothing is 
 possible or desirable but what he finds already established 
 to his hands in time-worn institutions or inveterate 
 abuses. His understanding is to be buried in implicit 
 creeds, and he himself is to be made into a political auto- 
 maton, a go-cart of superstition and prejudice, never 
 stirring hand or foot but as he is pulled by the wires and 
 strings of the state- conjurors, the legitimate managers and 
 proprietors of the show. His powers of will, of thought, 
 and action are to be paralyzed in him, and he is to be 
 told and to believe that whatever is, must be. Perhaps 
 
 1 Mr. Canning's Speech at the Liverpool Dinner, given in celebra- 
 tion of his Re-election, March 18, 1820. Fourth Edition, revised and 
 corrected. . 
 
On Paradox and Common-place. 211 
 
 Mr. Canning will say that men were to make experiments, 
 and to resolve upon struggles formerly, but that now they 
 are to surrender their understandings and their rights into 
 his keeping. But at what period of the world was the 
 system df political wisdom stereotyped, like Mr. Cobbett's 
 u Gold against Paper," so as to admit of no farther altera- 
 tions or improvements, or correction . of errors of the 
 press? When did the experience of mankind become 
 stationary or retrograde, so that we must act from the 
 obsolete inferences of past periods, not from the living 
 impulse of existing circumstances, and the consolidated 
 force of the knowledge and reflection of ages up to the 
 present instant, naturally projecting us forward into the 
 future, and not driving us back upon the past? Did 
 Mr. Canning never hear, did he never think, of Lord 
 Bacon's axiom, " That those times are the ancient times 
 in which we live, and not those which, counting backwards 
 from ourselves, ordine retrogrado, we call ancient ?" The 
 latest periods must necessarily have the advantage of the 
 sum-total of the experience that has gone before them, 
 and of the sum-total of human reason exerted upon that 
 experience, or upon the solid foundation of nature and 
 history, moving on in its majestic course, not fluttering 
 in the empty air of fanciful speculation, nor leaving a 
 gap of centuries between us and the long-mouldered 
 grounds on which we are to think and act. Mr. Canning 
 cannot plead with Mr. Burke that no discoveries, no im- 
 provements have been made in political science and 
 institutions ; for he says we have arrived through centuries 
 of experience and of struggles at one century of liberty. 
 Is the world then at a stand ? Mr. Canning knows well 
 enough that it is in ceaseless progress and everlasting 
 change, but he would have it to be the change from liberty 
 to slavery, the progress of corruption, not of regeneration 
 and reform. Why, no longer ago than the present year, 
 the two epochs of November and January last presented 
 
212 On Paradox and Common-flace. 
 
 (he tells us in this very speech) as great a contrast in tlio 
 state of the country as any two periods of its history the 
 most opposite or most remote. Well then, are our 
 experience and our struggles at an end ? No, he says. 
 " the crisis is at hand for every man to take part for or 
 against the institutions of the British Monarchy." His 
 part is taken : " but of this be sure, to do aught good will 
 never be his task !" He will guard carefully against all 
 possible improvements, and maintain all possible abuses 
 sacred, impassive, immortal. He will not give up th6 
 fruit of centuries of experience, of struggles, and of one 
 century at least of liberty, since the Eevolution of 1688, 
 for any doubtful experiments whatever. We are arrived 
 at the end of our experience, our struggles, and our 
 liberty — and are to anchor through time and eternity in 
 the harbour of passive obedience and non-resistance. We 
 (the people of England) will tell Mr. Canning frankly 
 what we think of his magnanimous and ulterior resolution. 
 It is our own ; and it has been the resolution of mankind 
 in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw 
 away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of 
 present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfec- 
 tion. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction 
 of the present, that has produced all changes, all innova- 
 tions, and all improvements — not (as is pretended) the 
 chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the 
 intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggra- 
 vated, and growing abuses. It was the experience of the 
 enormous and disgusting abuses and corruptions of the 
 Papal power that produced the Keformation. It was the 
 experience of the vexations and oppressions of the feudal 
 system that produced its abolition after centuries of 
 sufferings and of struggles. It was the experience of the 
 caprice and tyranny of the Monarch that extorted Magna 
 Charta at Eunnymede. It was the experience of the 
 arbitrary and insolent abuse of the prerogative in the 
 
On Paradox and Common-place. 218 
 
 reigns of the Tudors and the first Stuarts that produced 
 the resistance to it in the reign of Charles I. and the 
 Grand Bebellion. It was the experience of the incor- 
 rigible attachment of the same Stuarts to Popery and 
 Slavery, with their many acts of cruelty, treachery, and 
 bigotry, that produced the Eevolution, and set the House 
 of Brunswick on the Throne. It was the conviction of 
 the incurable nature of the abuse, increasing with time 
 and patience, and overcoming the obstinate attachment to 
 old habits and prejudices, an attachment not to be rooted 
 out by fancy or theory, but only by repeated, lasting, and 
 incontrovertible proofs, that has abated every nuisance 
 that ever was abated, and introduced every innovation and 
 every example of revolution and reform. It was the 
 experience of the abuses, licentiousness, and innumerable 
 oppressions of the old Government in France that pro- 
 duced the French Eevolution. It was the experience of 
 the determination of the British Ministry to harass, insult, 
 and plunder them, that produced the Eevolution of the 
 United States. Away then with this miserable cant 
 against fanciful theories, and appeal to acknowledged 
 experience ! Men never act against their prejudices but 
 from the spur of their feelings, the necessity of their 
 situations — their theories are adapted to their practical 
 convictions and their varying circumstances. Nature has 
 ordered it so, and Mr. Canning, by showing off his 
 rhetorical paces, by his " ambling and lisping and nicknam- 
 ing God's creatures," cannot invert that order, efface the 
 history of the past, or arrest the progress of the future. — 
 Public opinion is the result of public events and public 
 feelings; and government must be moulded by that 
 opinion, or maintain itself in opposition to it by the 
 sword. Mr. Canning indeed will not consent that the 
 social machine should in any case receive a different 
 direction from what it has had, " lest it should be hurried 
 over the precipice and dashed to pieces." These warnings 
 
214 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 of national ruin and terrific accounts of political precipices 
 put one in mind of Edgar's exaggerations to Gloster : they 
 make one's hair stand on end in the perusal ; but the poor 
 old man, like poor Old England, could fall no lower than 
 he was. Mr. Montgomery, the ingenious and amiable 
 poet, after he had been shut up in solitary confinement 
 for a year and a half for printing the Duke of Eichmond's 
 Letter on Eeform, when he first walked out into the 
 narrow path of the adjoining field, was seized with an 
 apprehension that he should fall over it, as if he had trod 
 on the brink of an abrupt declivity. The author of the 
 loyal Speech at the Liverpool Dinner has been so long 
 kept in the solitary confinement of his prejudices, and the 
 dark cells of his interest and vanity, that he is afraid of 
 being dashed to pieces if he makes a single false .step, to 
 the right or the left, from his dangerous and crooked 
 policy. As to himself, his ears are no doubt closed to 
 any advice that might here be offered him ; and as to his 
 country, he seems bent on its destruction. If, however, 
 an example of the futility of all his projects and all his 
 reasonings on a broader scale, "to warn and scare, be 
 wanting," let him look at Spain, and take leisure to 
 recover from his incredulity and his surprise. Spain, as 
 Ferdinand, as the Monarchy, has fallen from its pernicious 
 height, never to rise again : Spain, as Spain, as the 
 Spanish people, has risen from the tomb of liberty, never 
 (it is to be hoped) to sink again under the yoke of the 
 bigot and the oppressor ! 
 
 ESSAY XYI. 
 
 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 Few subjects are more nearly allied than these two — 
 vulgarity and affectation. It may be said of them truly 
 that "thin partitions do their bounds divide." There 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 215 
 
 cannot be a surer proof of a low origin or of an innate 
 meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and 
 thinking of being genteel. One must feel a strong 
 tendency to that which one is always trying to avoid : 
 whenever we pretend, on all occasions, a mighty contempt 
 for anything, it is a pretty clear sign that we feel ourselves 
 very nearly on a level with it. Of the two classes of 
 people, I hardly know which is to be regarded with most 
 distaste, the vulgar aping the genteel, or the genteel con- 
 stantly sneering at and endeavouring to distinguish them- 
 selves from the vulgar. These two sets of persons are 
 always thinking of one another ; the lower of the higher 
 with envy, the more fortunate of their less happy neigh- 
 bours with contempt. They are habitually placed in 
 opposition to each other; jostle in their pretensions at 
 every turn ; and the same objects and train of thought 
 (only reversed by the relative situation of either party) 
 occupy their whole time and attention. The one are 
 straining every nerve, and outraging common sense, to be 
 thought genteel ; the others have no other object or idea 
 in their heads than not to be thought vulgar. This is 
 but poor spite ; a very pitiful style of ambition. To be 
 merely not that which one heartily despises, is a very 
 humble claim to superiority : to despise what one really 
 is, is still worse. Most of the characters in Miss Burney's 
 novels, the Branghtons, the Smiths, the Dubsters, the 
 Cecilias, the Delvilles, &c, are well met in this respect, 
 and much of a piece : the one half are trying not to be 
 taken for themselves, and the other half not to be taken 
 for the first. They neither of them have any pretensions 
 of their own, or real standard of worth. " A feather will 
 turn the scale of their avoirdupois :" though the fair 
 authoress was not aware of the metaphysical identity of 
 her principal and subordinate characters. Affectation is 
 the master-key to both. 
 
 Gentility is only a more select and artificial kind of 
 
216 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 vulgarity. It cannot exist but by a sort of borrowed 
 distinction. It plumes itself up and revels in the homely 
 pretensions of the mass of mankind. It judges of the 
 worth of everything by name, fashion, and opinion ; and 
 hence, from the conscious absence of real qualities or 
 sincere satisfaction in itself, it builds its supercilious and 
 fantastic conceit on the wretchedness and wants of others. 
 Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a 
 secret affinity. The difference between the " Great 
 Vulgar and the Small " is mostly in outward circum- 
 stances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, 
 as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the illiterate, 
 or the prude is shocked at the backslidings of her frail 
 acquaintance. Those who have the fewest resources in 
 themselves, naturally seek the food of their self-love else- 
 where. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at 
 in strangers : scandal and satire prevail most in country 
 places ; and a propensity to ridicule every the slightest 
 or most palpable deviation from what we happen to 
 approve, ceases with the progress of common sense and 
 decency. 1 True worth does not exult in the faults and 
 deficiencies of others ; as true refinement turns away from 
 grossness and deformity, instead of being tempted to 
 indulge in an unmanly triumph over it. Eaphael would 
 
 1 " If an European, when he has cut off his beard and put false 
 hair on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard 
 knots, as unlike nature as he could possibly make it; and after 
 having rendered them immoveable by the help of the fat of hogs, has 
 covered the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost 
 regularity ; if when thus attired he issues forth, and meets with a 
 Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and 
 laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red oker on 
 particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most be- 
 coming ; whoever of these two despises the other for this attention 
 to the fashion of his country, whichever first feels himself provoked 
 to laugh, is the barbarian." — Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, vol. i., 
 pp. 231, 232. 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 217 
 
 not flint away at the daubing of a signpost, nor Homer 
 hold his head the higher for being in the company of a 
 Grub Street bard. Eeal power, real excellence, does not 
 seek for a foil in inferiority ; nor fear contamination from 
 coming in contact with that which is coarse and homely. 
 It reposes on itself, and is equally free from spleen and 
 affectation. But the spirit of gentility is the mere essenco 
 of spleen and affectation ; — of affected delight in its own 
 ivould-be qualifications, and of ineffable disdain poured 
 out upon the involuntary blunders or accidental disadvan- 
 tages of those whom it chooses to treat as its inferiors. 
 Thus a fashionable Miss titters till she is ready to burst 
 her sides at the uncouth shape of a bonnet, or the abrupt 
 drop of a curtsey (such as Jeanie Deans would make) in 
 a country-girl who comes to be hired by her Mamma as a 
 servant : yet to show how little foundation there is for 
 this hysterical expression of her extreme good opinion of 
 herself and contempt for the untutored rustic, she would 
 herself the next day be delighted with the very same 
 shaped bonnet if brought her by a French milliner and 
 told it was all the fashion, and in a week's time will 
 become quite familiar with the maid, and chatter with 
 her (upon equal terms) about caps and ribbons and lace 
 by the hour together. There is no difference between them 
 but that of situation in the kitchen or in the parlour : let 
 circumstances bring them together, and they fit like hand 
 and glove. It is like mistress, like maid. Their talk, 
 their thoughts, their dreams, their likings and dislikes are 
 the same. The mistress's head runs continually on dress 
 and finery, so does the maid's : the young lady longs to 
 ride in a coach and six, so does the maid, if she could : 
 Miss forms a beau-ideal of a lover with black eyes and 
 rosy cheeks, which does not differ from that of her 
 attendant: both like a smart man, the one the footman 
 and the other his master, for the same reason : both like 
 handsome furniture and fine houses : both apply the 
 
218 On Vulgarity and Affectation, 
 
 terms, shocking and disagreeable, to the same things and 
 persons : both have a great notion of balls, plays, 
 treats, song-books, and love-tales : both like a wedding or 
 a christening, and both would give their little fingers to 
 see a coronation, with this difference, that the one has & 
 chance of getting a seat at it, and the other is dying with 
 envy that she has not. Indeed, this last is a ceremony 
 that delights equally the greatest monarch and the meanest 
 of his subjects — the vilest of the rabble. Yet this which 
 is the height of gentility and consummation of external 
 distinction and splendour, is, I should say, a vulgar 
 ceremony. For what degree of refinement, of capacity, of 
 virtue is required in the individual who is so distinguished, 
 or is necessary to his enjoying this idle and imposing 
 parade of his person ? Is he delighted with the stage- 
 coach and gilded panels? So is the poorest wretch 
 that gazes at it. Is he struck with the spirit, the beauty 
 and symmetry of the eight cream-coloured horses ? 
 There is not one of the immense multitude, who flock to 
 see the sight from town or country, St. Giles's or White- 
 chapel, young or old, rich or poor, gentle or simple, who 
 does not agree to admire the same object. Is he delighted 
 with the yeomen of the guard, the military escort, the 
 groups of ladies, the badges of sovereign power, the kingly 
 crown, the marshal's truncheon and the judge's robe, the 
 array that precedes and follows him, the crowded streets, 
 the windows hung with eager looks ? So are the mob, 
 for they "have eyes and see them !" There is no one 
 faculty of mind or body, natural or acquired, essential to 
 the principal figure in this procession more than is 
 common to the meanest and most despised attendant on 
 it. A waxwork figure would answer the same purpose : 
 a Lord Mayor of London has as much tinsel to be proud 
 of. I would rather have a king do something that no one 
 else has the power or magnanimity to do, or say something 
 that no one else has the wisdom to say, or look mora 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 219 
 
 handsome, more thoughtful, or benign than any one else 
 in his dominions. But I see nothing to raise one's idea 
 of him in his being made a show of : if the pageant would 
 do as well without the man, the man would do as well 
 without the pageant ! Kings have been declared to be 
 " lovers of low company :" and this maxim, besides the 
 reason sometimes assigned for it, viz., that they meet with 
 less opposition to their wills from such persons, will I 
 suspect be found to turn at last on the consideration I am 
 here stating, that they also meet with more sympathy in 
 their tastes. The most ignorant and thoughtless have 
 the greatest admiration of the baubles, the outward 
 symbols of pomp and power, the sound and show, which 
 are the habitual delight and mighty prerogative of kings. 
 The stupidest slave worships the gaudiest tyrant. The 
 same gross motives appeal to the same gross capacities, 
 flatter the pride of the superior and excite the servility of 
 the dependant : whereas a higher reach of moral and 
 intellectual refinement might seek in vain for higher 
 proofs of internal worth and inherent majesty in the 
 object of its idolatry, and not finding the divinity lodged 
 within, the unreasonable expectation raised would probably 
 end in mortification on both sides! — There is little to 
 distinguish a king from his subjects but the rabble's shout 
 — if he loses that and is reduced to the forlorn hope of 
 gaining the suffrages of the wise and good, he is of all 
 men the most miserable. — But enough of this. 
 
 " I like it," says Miss Branghton l in Evelina (meaning 
 the Opera) " because it is not vulgar." That is, she likes 
 it, not because there is anything to like in it, but because 
 other people are prevented from liking or knowing any- 
 
 1 This name was originally spelt Branghton in the manuscript, 
 and was altered to Branghton by a mistake of the printer. Brangh- 
 ton, however, was thought a good name for the occasion and was 
 suffered to stand. " Dip it in the ocean," as Sterne's barber says of 
 the buckle, " and it will stand !" 
 
220 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 thing about it. Janus Weathercock, Esq. ! laugheth to 
 acorn and spitefully entreateth and hugely condemneth 
 my dramatic criticisms in the London, for a like exquisite 
 reason. I must therefore make an example of him in 
 terror em to all such hypercritics. He finds fault with me 
 and calls my taste vulgar, because I go to Sadler's Wells 
 ("a place he has heard of" — Lord, Sir!) — because I 
 notice the Miss Dennetts, " great favourites with the 
 Whitechapel orders " — praise Miss Yalancy, " a bouncing 
 Columbine at Ashley's and them there places, as his 
 barber informs him" (has he no way of establishing 
 himself in his own good opinion but by triumphing over 
 his barber's bad English ?) — and finally, because I recog- 
 nise the existence of the Coburg and the Surrey theatres, 
 at the names of which he cries " Faugh " with great 
 significance, as if he had some personal disgust at them, 
 and yet he would be supposed never to have entered 
 them. It is not his cue as a well-bred critic. C'est beau 
 ga. Now this appears to me a very crude, unmeaning, 
 indiscriminate, wholesale, and vulgar way of thinking. It 
 is prejudging things in the lump, by names and places 
 and classes, instead of judging of them by what they are 
 in themselves, by their real qualities and shades of dis- 
 tinction. There is no selection, truth, or delicacy in 
 such a mode of proceeding. It is affecting ignorance, and 
 making it a title to wisdom. It is a vapid assumption of 
 superiority. It is exceeding impertinence. It is rank 
 coxcombry. It is nothing in the world else. To condemn 
 because the multitude admire is as essentially vulgar as 
 to admire because they admire. There is no exercise of 
 taste or judgment in either case : both are equally repug- 
 nant to good sense, and of the two I should prefer the 
 
 1 The nom de plume of Mr. Wainwright, one of the original con- 
 tributors to the London Magazine at its commencement in 1820. Hia 
 name not unfrequently occurs in the correspondence of the period. 
 —Ed, 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 221 
 
 good-natured side. I would as soon agree with my barber 
 as differ from him : and why should I make a point of 
 reversing the sentence of the Whitechapel orders ? Or 
 how can it affect my opinion of the merits of an actor at 
 the Coburg or the Surrey theatres, that these theatres 
 are in or out of the Bills of Mortality ? This is an easy, 
 short-hand way of judging, as gross as it is mechanical. 
 It is not a difficult matter to settle questions of taste by 
 consulting the map of London, or to prove your liberality 
 by geographical distinctions. Janus jumbles things to- 
 gether strangely. If he had seen Mr. Kean in a pro- 
 vincial theatre, at Exeter or Taunton, he would have 
 thought it vulgar to admire him : but when he had been 
 stamped in London, Janus would no doubt show his 
 discernment and the subtlety of his tact for the display 
 of character and passion, by not being behind the fashion. 
 The Miss Dennetts are "little unformed girls," for no 
 other reason than because they danced at one of the 
 Minor Theatres : let them but come out on the Opera 
 boards, and let the beauty and fashion of the season greet 
 them with a fairy shower of delighted applause, and they 
 would outshine Milanie " with the foot of fire." His 
 gorge rises at the mention of a certain quarter of the 
 town : whatever passes current in another, he " swallows 
 total grist unsifted, husks and all." This is not taste, 
 but folly. At this rate, the hackney-coachman who drives 
 him, or his horse Contributor whom he has introduced as 
 a select personage to the vulgar reader, knows as much 
 of the matter as he does. — In a word, the answer to all 
 this in the first instance is to say what vulgarity is. Now 
 its essence, I imagine, consists in taking manners, actions, 
 wordg, opinions on trust from others, without examining 
 one's own feelings or weighing the merits of the case. 
 It is coarseness or shallowness of taste arising from want 
 of individual refinement, together with the confidence and 
 presumption inspired by example and numbers. It may 
 
222 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 be defined to be a prostitution of the mind or body to ape 
 the more or less obvious defects of others, because by so 
 doing we shall secure the suffrages of those we associate 
 with. To affect a gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because 
 it is the rage with a large number of persons, or to hold 
 it in abhorrence because another set of persons very 
 little, if at all, better informed, cry it down to distinguish 
 themselves from the former, is in either case equal 
 vulgarity and absurdity. — A thing is not vulgar merely 
 because it is common. 'Tis common to breathe, to see, to 
 feel, to live. Nothing is vulgar that is natural, spon- 
 taneous, unavoidable. Grossness is not vulgarity, igno- 
 rance is not vulgarity, awkwardness is not vulgarity : but 
 all these become vulgar when they are affected and shown 
 off on the authority of others, or to fall in with the fashion 
 or the company we keep. Caliban is coarse enough, but 
 surely he is not vulgar. We might as well spurn the 
 clod under our feet, and call it vulgar. Cobbett is coarse 
 enough, but he is not vulgar. He does not belong to 
 the herd. Nothing real, nothing original can be vulgar : 
 but I should think an imitator of Cobbett a vulgar man. 
 Emery's Yorkshireman is vulgar, because he is a York- 
 shireman. It is the cant and gibberish, the cunning and 
 low life of a particular district ; it has " a stamp exclusive 
 and provincial." He might " gabble most brutishly " and 
 yet not fall under the letter of the definition : but " his 
 speech bewrayeth him," his dialect (like the jargon of a 
 Bond Street lounger) is the damning circumstance. If he 
 were a mere blockhead, it would not signify: but he 
 thinks himself a knowing hand, according to the notions 
 and practices of those with whom he was brought up, and 
 which he thinks the go everywhere. In a word, this 
 character is not the offspring of untutored nature but of 
 bad habits ; it is made up of ignorance and conceit. It 
 has a mixture of slang in it. All slang phrases are for 
 the same reason vulgar ; but there is nothing vulgar in 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 223 
 
 the common English idiom. Simplicity is not vulgarity ; 
 but the looking to affectation of any sort for distinction is. 
 A cockney is a vulgar character, whose imagination cannot 
 wander beyond the suburbs of the metropolis : so is a 
 fellow who is always thinking of the High Street, Edin- 
 burgh. We want a name for this last character. An 
 opinion is vulgar that is stewed in the rank breath of the 
 rabble : nor is it a bit purer or more refined for having 
 passed through the well-cleansed teeth of a whole court. 
 The inherent vulgarity is in having no other feeling on 
 any subject than the crude, blind, headling, gregarious 
 notion acquired by sympathy with the mixed multitude 
 or with a fastidious minority, who are just as insensible 
 to the real truth, and as indifferent to everything but their 
 own frivolous and vexatious pretensions. The upper are 
 not wiser than the lower orders, because they resolve to 
 differ from them. The fashionable have the advantage of 
 the unfashionable in nothing but the fashion. The true 
 vulgar are the servum pecus imitatorum — the herd of 
 pretenders to what they do not feel and to what is not 
 natural to them, whether in high or low life. To belong 
 to any class, to move in any rank or sphere of life, is not 
 a very exclusive distinction or test of refinement. Eefine- 
 ment will in all classes be the exception, not the rule ; 
 and the exception may fall out in one class as well as 
 another. A king is but an hereditary title. A nobleman 
 is only one of the House of Peers. To be a knight or 
 alderman is confessedly a vulgar thing. The king the 
 other day made Sir Walter Scott a baronet, but not all 
 the power of the Three Estates could make another 
 Author of Waverley. Princes, heroes are often common- 
 place people : Hamlet was not a vulgar character, neither 
 was Don Quixote. To be an author, to be a painter, is 
 nothing. It is a trick, it is a trade. 
 
 " An author ! 'tis a venerable name : 
 How few deserve it, yet what numbers claim !" 
 
224 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 Nay, to be a Member of the Boyal Academy, or a Fellow 
 of the Eoyal Society, is but a vulgar distinction. But 
 to be a Virgil, a Milton, a Kaphael, a Claude, is what 
 fell to the lot of humanity but once ! I do not think they 
 were vulgar people, though for anything I know to the 
 contrary the first Lord of the Bedchamber may be a 
 very vulgar man : for anything I know to the contrary, 
 he may not be so. — Such are pretty much my notions of 
 gentility and vulgarity. 
 
 There is a well-dressed and an ill-dressed mob, both 
 which I hate. Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo. The vapid 
 affectation of the one to me is even more intolerable than the 
 gross insolence and brutality of the other. If a set of 
 low-lived fellows are noisy, rude, and boisterous to show 
 their disregard of the company, a set of fashionable cox- 
 combs are, to a nauseous degree, finical and effeminate to 
 show their thorough breeding. The one are governed by 
 their feelings, however coarse and misguided, which is 
 something : the others consult only appearances, which 
 are nothing, either as a test of happiness or virtue. 
 Hogarth in his prints has trimmed the balance of preten- 
 sion between the downright blackguard and the soi-disant 
 fine gentleman unanswerably. It does not appear in his 
 moral demonstrations (whatever it may do in the genteel 
 letterwriting of Lord Chesterfield, or the chivalrous 
 rhapsodies of Burke) that vice by losing all its grossness 
 loses half its evil. It becomes more contemptible, not 
 less disgusting. What is there in common, for instance, 
 between his beaux and belles, his rakes and his coquets, 
 and the men and women, the true heroic and ideal 
 characters in Baphael ? But his people of fashion and 
 quality are just upon a par with the low, the selfish, the 
 unideal characters in the contrasted view of human life, 
 and are often the very same characters, only changing 
 places. If the lower ranks are actuated by envy and 
 uncharitableness towards the upper, the latter have 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 225 
 
 scarcely any feelings but of pride, contempt, and aversion 
 to the lower. If the poor would pull down the rich tc 
 get at their good things, the rich would tread down the 
 poor as in a wine-press, and squeeze the last shilling out 
 of their pockets and the last drop of blood out of their 
 veins. If the headstrong self-will and unruly turbulence 
 of a common alehouse are shocking, what shall we say 
 to the studied insincerity, the insipid want of common 
 sense, the callous insensibility of the drawing-room and 
 boudoir f I would rather see the feelings of our common 
 nature (for they are the same at bottom) expressed in the 
 most naked and unqualified way, than see every feeling of 
 our nature suppressed, stifled, hermetically sealed under 
 the smooth, cold, glittering varnish of pretended refine- 
 ment and conventional politeness. The one may be cor- 
 rected by being better informed ; the other is incor- 
 rigible, wilful, heartless depravity. I cannot describe 
 the contempt and disgust I have felt at the tone of what 
 would be thought good company, when I have witnessed 
 the sleek, smiling, glossy, gratuitous assumption of 
 superiority to every feeling of humanity, honesty, or 
 principle, as a part of the etiquette, the mental and moral 
 costume of the table, and every profession of toleration or 
 favour for the lower orders, that is, for the great mass of 
 our fellow-creatures, treated as an indecorum and breach 
 of the harmony of well-regulated society. In short, I 
 prefer a bear-garden to the adder's den ; or, to put this 
 case in its extremest point of view, I have more patience 
 with men in a rude state of nature outraging the human 
 form than I have with apes " making mops and mows " 
 at the extravagances they have first provoked. I can 
 endure the brutality (as it is termed) of mobs better than 
 the inhumanity of courts. The violence of the one rages 
 like a fire ; the insidious policy of the other strikes like 
 a pestilence, and is more fatal and inevitable. The slow 
 poison of despotism is worse than the convulsive struggles 
 
 Q 
 
226 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 of anarchy. " Of all evils," says Hume, ** anarchy is tho 
 shortest lived." The one may " break out like a wild 
 overthrow ;" but the other from its secret, sacred stand, 
 operates unseen, and undermines the happiness of king- 
 doms for ages, lurks in the hollow cheek, and stares you 
 in the face in the ghastly eye of want and agony and woe. 
 It is dreadful to hear the noise and uproar of an infuriated 
 multitude stung by the sense of wrong, and maddened by 
 sympathy : it is more appalling to think of the smile 
 answered by other gracious smiles, of the whisper echoed by 
 other assenting whispers, which doom them first to despair 
 and then to destruction. Popular fury finds its counterpart 
 in courtly servility. If every outrage is to be appre- 
 hended from the one, every iniquity is deliberately sanc- 
 tioned by the other, without regard to justice or decency. 
 The word of a king, " Go thou and do likewise," makes 
 the stoutest heart dumb : truth and honesty shrink before 
 it. 1 If there are watchwords for the rabble, have not 
 the polite and fashionable their hackneyed phrases, their 
 fulsome unmeaning jargon as well? Both are to me 
 anathema ! 
 
 To return to the first question, as it regards indi- 
 vidual and private manners. There is a fine illustration 
 of the effects of preposterous and affected gentility in the 
 character of Gertrude, in the old comedy of Eastward 
 Hoe, written by Ben Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in 
 conjunction. This play is supposed to have given rise to 
 Hogarth's series of prints of the Idle and Industrious 
 Apprentice ; and there is something exceedingly Ho- 
 garthian in the view both of vulgar and of genteel life 
 here displayed. The character of Gertrude, in particular, 
 the heroine of the piece, is inimitably drawn. The mix- 
 
 1 A lady of quality, in allusion to the gallantries of a reign- 
 ing Prince, being told, "I suppose it will be your turn next?" 
 Baid, " Ng : I hope not ; for you know it is impossible to re- 
 fuse !" 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 227 
 
 turo of vanity and meanness, the internal worthlessness 
 and external pretence, the rustic ignorance and fine 
 lady-like airs, the intoxication of novelty and infatuation 
 of pride, appear like a dream or romance, rather than any- 
 thing in real life. Cinderella and her glass slipper are 
 common-place to it. She is not, like Millamant (a century 
 afterwards), the accomplished fine lady, but a pretender 
 to all the foppery and finery of the character. It is the 
 honeymoon with her ladyship, and her folly is at the full. 
 To be a wife, and the wife of a knight, are to her plea- 
 sures "worn in their newest gloss," and nothing can 
 exceed her raptures in the contemplation of both parts of 
 the dilemma. It is not familiarity, but novelty that weds 
 her to the court. She rises into the air of gentility from 
 the ground of a city life, and flutters about there with all 
 the fantastic delight of a butterfly that has just changed 
 its caterpillar state. The sound of My Lady intoxicates 
 her with delight, makes her giddy, and almost turns her 
 brain. On the bare strength of it she is ready to turn 
 her father and mother out of doors, and treats her brother 
 and sister with infinite disdain and judicial hardness of 
 heart. With some speculators the modern philosophy 
 has deadened and distorted all the natural affections : and 
 before abstract ideas and the mischievous refinements of 
 literature were introduced, nothing was to be met with 
 in the primeval state of society but simplicity and pastoral 
 innocence of manners — 
 
 " And all was conscience and tender heart/* 
 
 This historical play gives the lie to the above theory 
 pretty broadly, yet delicately. Our heroine is as vain 
 as she is ignorant, and as unprincipled as she is both ; 
 and without an idea or wish of any kind but that of 
 adorning her person in the glass, and being called and 
 thought a lady, something superior to a citizenV 
 
228 On Vulgarity arid Affectation. 
 
 wife. 1 She is so bent on finery that she believes in 
 miracles to obtain it, and expects the fairies to bring it 
 
 " l Gertrude, For the passion of patience, lock if Sir Petronel ap- 
 proach. That sweet, .that fine, that delicate, that for love's sake, 
 
 tell me if he come. Oh, sister Mill, though my father be a low-capt 
 tradesman, yet I must be a lady, and I praise God my mother must 
 call me madam. Does he come? Off with this gown for shame's 
 sake, off with this gown ! Let not my knight take me in the city 
 cut, in any hand! Tear't ! Pox on't (does he come?) tear't off! 
 Thus ivhile she sleeps, Isorroiv for her sake. (Sings.) 
 
 Mildred. Lord, sister, with what an immodest impatiency and dis- 
 graceful scorn do you put off your cityrtire ! I am sorry to think 
 you imagine to right yourself in wronging that, which hath made 
 both you and us. 
 
 Ger. I tell you, I cannot endure it : I must be a lady : do you wear 
 your quoiff with a London licket ! your stamel petticoat with two 
 guards ! the buffin gown with the tuftafitty cap and the velvet lace ! 
 I must be a lady, and I will be a lady. I like some humours of the 
 city dames well ; to eat cherries only at an angel a pound ; good : 
 to dye rich scarlet black ; pretty : to line a grogram gown clean 
 through with velvet; tolerable: their pure linen, their smocks of 
 three pound a smock, are to be borne withal: but your mincing 
 niceries, taffity pipkins, durance petticoats, and silver bodkins — 
 God's my life ! as I shall be a lady, I cannot endure it. 
 
 Mil. Well, sister, those that scorn their nest, oft fly with a sick wing. 
 
 Ger. Bow-bell ! Alas ! poor Mill, when I am a lady, I'll pray for 
 thee yet i'faith ; nay, and I'll vouchsafe to call thee sister Mill still ; 
 for thou art not like to be a lady as I am, yet surely thou art a crea- 
 ture of God's making, and may'st peradventure be saved as soon as 
 I (does he come ?). And ever and anon she doubled in her song. 
 
 Mil. Now (lady's my comfort) what a profane ape's here ! 
 Enter Sir Petronel Flash, Mr. Touchstone, and Mrs. Touchstone. 
 
 Ger. Is my knight come ? O the lord, my band ! Sister, do my 
 cheeks look well ? Give me a little box o' the ear, that I may seem 
 to blush. Now, now ! so. there, there ! here he is ! O my dearest 
 delight ! Lord, lord ! and how does my knight ? 
 
 Touchstone. Fie, with more modesty. 
 
 Ger. Modesty ! why, I am no citizen now. Modesty ! am I not to 
 be married ? You're best to keep me modest, now I am to be a lady. 
 
 Sir Petronel. Boldness is a good fashion and court-like. 
 
 Ger. Aye, in a country lady I hope it is, as I shall be. And how 
 cbance ye came no sooner, knight ? 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 229 
 
 her. 1 She is is quite above thinking of a settlement, 
 jointure or pin-money. She takes the will for the deed 
 
 Sir Pet. Faith, I was so entertained in the progress with on* 
 Count Epernouu, a Welch knight : we had a match at baloon too 
 with my Lord Whackum for four crowns. 
 
 Ger. And when shall's be married, my knight ? 
 
 Sir Pet. I am come now to consummate : and your father may call 
 a poor knight son-in-law. 
 
 Mrs. ToucMone. Yes, that he is a knight : I know where he had 
 money to pay the gentlemen ushers and heralds their fees. Aye, 
 that he is a knight : and so might you have been too, if you had 
 been aught else but an ass, as well as some of your neighbours. An 
 I thought you would not ha* been knighted, as I am an honest 
 woman, I would ha' dubbed you myself. I praise God, I have 
 wherewithal. But as for you, daughter- 
 
 Ger. Aye, mother, I must be a lady to-morrow ; and by your leave, 
 mother (I speak it not without my duty, but only in the right of my 
 husband; I must take place of you, mother. 
 
 Mrs. Touch. That you shall, lady-daughter ; and have a coach as 
 well as I. 
 
 Ger. Yes, mother; but my coach-horses must take the wall of 
 your coach-horses. 
 
 Touch. Come, come, the day grows low; 'tis supper time: and 
 sir, respect my daughter; she has refused for you wealthy and 
 honest matches, known good men. 
 
 Ger. Body o' truth, citizen, citizens ! Sweet knight, as soon a« 
 ever we are married, take me to thy mercy, out of this miserable 
 city. Presently : carry me out of the scent of Newcastle coal and 
 the hearing of Bow-bell, I beseech thee ; down with me, for God's 
 sake." Act I., Scene I. 
 
 This dotage on sound and show seemed characteristic of that age 
 (see New Way to Pay Old Debts, &c.) — as if in the grossuess of 
 sense, and the absence of all intellectual and abstract topics of 
 thought and discourse (the thin, circulating medium of the present 
 day) the mind was attracted without the power of resistance to the 
 tinkling sound of its own name with a title added to it, and the 
 image of its own person tricked out in old-fashioned finery. The 
 effect, no doubt, was also more marked and striking from the con- 
 trast between the ordinary penury and poverty of the age and the 
 first and more extravagant demonstrations of luxury and artificial 
 refinement. 
 
 1 " Gertrude. Good lord, that there are no fairies now-a-days, Syu. 
 
 Syndefy. Why, Madam? [Ger, 
 
230 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 all through the piece, and is so besotted with thia 
 ignorant, vulgar notion of rank and title as a real thing 
 that cannot be counterfeited, that she is the dupe of her 
 own fine stratagems, and marries a gull, a dolt, a broken 
 adventurer for an accomplished and brave gentleman. 
 Her meanness is equal to her folly and her pride (and 
 nothing can be greater), yet she holds ovt on the strength 
 of her original pretensions for a long tine, and plays the 
 upstart with decency and imposing consistency. Indeed 
 her infatuation and caprices are akin to the flighty per- 
 versity of a disordered imagination ; and another turn of 
 the wheel of good or evil fortune would have sent her to 
 keep company with Hogarth's Merveilleuses in Bedlam, or 
 with Decker's group of coquets in the same place. —The 
 other parts of the play are a dreary lee -shore, like 
 Cuckold's Point on the coast of Essex, where the precon- 
 certed shipwreck takes place that winds up the catas- 
 trophe of the piece. But this is also characteristic of 
 the age, and serves as a contrast to the airy and factitious 
 character which is the principal figure in the plot. We 
 
 Ger. To do miracles, and bring ladies money. Sure, if we lay in 
 a cleanly house, they would haunt it, Synne ? I'll sweep the cham- 
 ber soon at night, and set a dish of water o' the hearth. A fairy may 
 come and bring a pearl or a diamond. We do not know, Synne : 
 or there may be a pot of gold hid in the yard, if we had tools to dig 
 for 't. Why may not we two rise early i' the morning, Synne, afore 
 anybody is up, and find a jewel i' the streets worth a hundred 
 pounds ? May not some great court-lady, as she comes from revels 
 at midnight, look out of her coach, as 'tis running, and lose such a 
 jewel, and we find it? ha ! 
 
 Syn. They are pretty waking dreams, these. 
 
 Ger. Or may not not some old usurer be drunk over-night with a 
 bag of money, and leave it behind him on a stall ? For God's sake, 
 Syn, let's rise tomorrow by break of day, and see. I protest, la, if 
 I had as much money as an alderman, I would scatter some on't i' 
 the streets, for poor ladies to find when their knights were laid up. 
 And now I remember my song of the Golden Shower, why may not 
 I have such a fortune? I'll sing it, and try what luck I shall have 
 after it." Act V. Scene I. 
 
On Vulgarity and Affectation. 231 
 
 had made but little progress from that point till Hogarth's 
 time, if Hogarth is to be believed in his description of 
 city manners. How wonderfully we have distanced it 
 since ! 
 
 Without going into this at length, there is one circum- 
 stance I would mention in which I think there has been 
 a striking improvement in the family economy of modern 
 times — and that is in the relation of mistresses and 
 servants. After visits and finery, a married woman of 
 the old school had nothing to do but to attend to her 
 housewifery. She had no other resource, no other sense 
 of power, but to harangue and lord it over her domestics. 
 Modern book-education supplies the place of the old- 
 fashioned system of kitchen persecution and eloquence. 
 A well-bred woman now seldom goes into the kitchen to 
 look after the servants : — formerly what was called a good 
 manager, an exemplary mistress of a family, did nothing 
 but hunt them from morning to night, from one year's end 
 to another, without leaving them a moment's rest, peace, or 
 comfort. Now a servant is left to do her work without 
 this suspicious and tormenting interference and fault- 
 finding at every step, and she does it all the better. The 
 proverbs about the mistress's eye, &c, are no longer held 
 for current. 1 A woman from this habit, which at last 
 became an uncontrollable passion, would scold her maids 
 for fifty years together, and nothing could stop her : now 
 the temptation to read the last new poem or novel, and 
 the necessity of talking of it in the next company she 
 goes into, prevent her — and the benefit to all parties is 
 incalculable. 
 
 1 " The mistress's eye feeds the capon/' " The master's eye 
 makes the horse fat." — English Proverbs and Proverbial Thrate^ 
 1869.— Ed. 
 
232 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin, 
 
 ESSAY XVII. 
 
 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin. 
 
 " And blind Orion hungry for the morn." 
 
 Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical 
 Nimrod ; and is called by Homer, " a hunter of shadows, 
 himself a shade." He was the son of Neptune; and 
 having lost an eye in some affray between the Gods and 
 men, was told that if he would go to meet the rising sun, 
 he would recover his sight. He is represented setting out 
 on his journey, with men on his shoulders to guide him, a 
 bow in his hand, and Diana in the clouds greeting him. 
 He stalks along, a giant upon earth, and reels and falters 
 in his gait, as if just awakened out of sleep, or uncertain 
 of his way ; — you see his blindness, though his back is 
 turned. Mists rise around him, and veil the sides of the 
 green forests; earth is dank and fresh with dews, the 
 u gray dawn and the Pleiades before him dance," and in 
 the distance are seen the blue hills and sullen ocean. 
 Nothing was ever more finely conceived or done. It 
 breathes the spirit of the morning ; its moisture, its repose, 
 its obscurity, waiting the miracle of light to kindle it into 
 smiles ; the whole is, like the principal figure in it, "a 
 forerunner of the dawn." The same atmosphere tinges 
 aJid imbues every object, the same dull light " shadowy 
 sets off" the face of nature : one feeling of vastness, of 
 strangeness, and of primeval forms pervades the painter's 
 canvas, and we are thrown back upon the first integrity of 
 tilings. This great and learned man might be said to see 
 nature through the glass of time ; he alone has a right to 
 be considered as the painter of classical antiquity. Sir 
 Joshua has done him justice in this respect. He could 
 give to the scenery of his heroic fables that unimpaired 
 look of original nature, full, solid, large, luxuriant, teem- 
 
On a Landscape oj Nicolas Poussin. 233 
 
 ing with life and power ; or deck it with all the pomp of 
 art, with temples and towers, and mythologic groves. His 
 pictures " denote a foregone conclusion." He applies 
 nature to his purposes, works out her images according to 
 the standard of his thoughts, embodies high fictions ; and 
 the first conception being given, all the rest seems to grow 
 out of, and be assimilated to it, by the unfailing process of 
 a studious imagination. Like his own Orion, he overlooks 
 the surrounding scene, appears to " take up the isles as a 
 very little thing, and to lay the earth in a balance.'' With 
 a laborious and mighty grasp, he put nature into the 
 mould of the ideal and antique ; and was among painters 
 (more than any one else) what Milton was among poets 
 There is in both something of the same pedantry, the same 
 stiffness, the same elevation, the same grandeur, the same 
 mixture of art and nature, the same richness of borrowed 
 materials, the same unity of character. Neither the poet 
 nor the painter lowered the subjects they treated, but 
 filled up the outline in the fancy, and added strength and 
 reality to it ; and thus not only satisfied, but surpassed 
 the expectations of the spectator and the reader. This is 
 held for the triumph and the perfection of works of art. 
 To give us nature, such as we see it, is well and deserving 
 of praise ; to give us nature, such as we have never seen, 
 but have often wished to see it, is better, and deserving of 
 higher praise. He who can show the world in its first 
 naked glory, with the hues of fancy spread over it, or in 
 its high and palmy state, with the gravity of history 
 stamped on the proud monuments of vanished empire, — 
 who, by his " so potent art," can recall time past, transport 
 us to distant places, and join the regions of imagination 
 (a new conquest) to those of reality, — who shows us not 
 only what nature is, but what she has been, and is capable 
 of, — he who does this, and does it with simplicity, with 
 truth, and grandeur, is lord of nature and her powers 
 and his mind is universal, and his art the master-art ! 
 
234 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin. 
 
 There is nothing in this " more than natural," if criti- 
 cism could be persuaded to think so. The historic painter 
 does not neglect or contravene nature, but follows her 
 more closely up into her fantastic heights, or hidden 
 recesses. He demonstrates what she would be in con- 
 ceivable circumstances, and under implied conditions. 
 He " gives to airy nothing a local habitation," not " a 
 name." At his touch, words start up into images, thoughts 
 become things. He clothes a dream, a phantom with 
 form and colour and the wholesome attributes of reality. 
 His art is a second nature ; not a different one. There 
 are those, indeed, who think that not to copy nature is 
 the rule for attaining perfection. Because they cannot 
 paint the objects which they have seen, they fancy them- 
 selves qualified to paint the ideas which they have not 
 seen. But it is possible to fail in this latter and more 
 difficult style of imitation, as well as in the former humbler 
 one. . The detection, it is true, is not so easy, because the 
 objects are not so nigh at hand to compare, and therefore 
 there is more room both for false pretension and for self- 
 deceit. They take an epic motto or subject, and conclude 
 that the spirit is implied as a thing of course. They paint 
 inferior portraits, maudlin lifeless faces, without ordinary 
 expression, or one look, feature, or particle of nature in 
 them, and think that this is to rise to the truth of history. 
 They vulgarize and degrade whatever is interesting or 
 sacred to the mind, and suppose that they thus add to the 
 dignity of their profession. They represent a face that 
 seems as if no thought or feeling of any kind had ever 
 passed through it, and would have you believe that this is 
 the very sublime of expression, such as it would appear in 
 heroes, or demi-gods of old, when rapture or agony was 
 raised to its height. They show you a landscape that 
 looks as if the sun never shone upon it, and telL you that 
 it is not modern— that so earth looked when Titan first 
 kissed it with his rays. This is not the true ideal. It is 
 
On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin. 235 
 
 not to fill the moulds of the imagination, but to deface 
 and injure them ; it is not to come up to, but to fall short 
 of the poorest conception in the public mind. Such 
 pictures should not be hung in the same room with that 
 of Orion. 1 
 
 Poussin was, of all painters, the most poetical. He 
 was the painter of ideas. No one ever told a story half so 
 well, nor so well knew what was capable of being told by 
 the pencil. He seized on, and struck off with grace and 
 precision, just that point of view which would be likely to 
 catch the reader's fancy. There is a significance, a con- 
 sciousness in whatever he does (sometimes a vice, but 
 oftener a virtue) beyond any other painter. His Giants 
 sitting on the tops of craggy mountains, as huge them- 
 selves, and playing idly on their Pan's-pipes, seem to have 
 
 1 Everything tends to show the manner in which a great artist is 
 formed. If any person could claim an exemption from the careful 
 imitation of individual objects, it was Nicolas Poussin. He studied 
 the antique, but he also studied nature. * I have often admired," 
 says Vignuel de Marville, who knew him at a late period of his life, 
 *• the love he had for his art. Old as he was, I frequently saw him 
 among the ruins of ancient Rome, out in the Campagna, or along the 
 banks of the Tyber, sketching a scene that had pleased him ; and I 
 often met him with his handkerchief full of stones, moss, or flowers, 
 which he carried home, that he might copy them exactly from 
 nature. One day I asked him how he had attained to such a degree 
 of perfection, as to have gained so high a rank among the great 
 painters of Italy? He answered. I have neglected nothing." — > 
 See his Life lately published. It appears from this account that he 
 had not fallen into a recent error, that Nature puts the man of 
 genius out. As a contrast to the foregoing description, I might 
 mention, that I remember an old gentleman once asking Mr. West 
 in the British Gallery, if he had ever been at Athens ? To which 
 the President made answer, No ; nor did he feel any great desire to 
 go ; for that he thought he had as good an idea of the place from 
 the Catalogue, as he could get by living there for any number of 
 years. What would he have said, if any one had told him, he could 
 get as good an idea of the subject of one of his great works from 
 reading the Catalogue of it, as from seeing the picture itself I Yet 
 the answer was characteristic of the genius of the painter. 
 
236 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin. 
 
 been seated there these three thousand years, and to know 
 the beginning and the end of their own story. An infant 
 Bacchus or Jupiter is big with his future destiny. Even 
 inanimate and dumb things speak a language of their own. 
 His snakes, the messengers of fate, are inspired with 
 human intellect. His trees grow and expand their leaves 
 in the air, glad of the rain, proud of the sun, awake to the 
 winds of heaven. In his Plague of Athens, the very 
 buildings seem stiff with horror. His picture of the 
 Deluge is, perhaps, the finest historical landscape in the 
 world. You see a waste of waters, wide, interminable : 
 the sun is labouring, wan and weary, up the sky ; the 
 clouds, dull and leaden, lie like a load upon the eye, and 
 heaven and earth seem commingling into one confused 
 mass ! His human figures are sometimes " o'er-informed " 
 with this kind of feeling. Their actions have too much 
 gesticulation, and the set expression of the features borders 
 too much on the mechanical and caricatured style. In 
 this respect they form a contrast to Eaphael's, whose 
 figures never appear to be sitting for their pictures, or to 
 be conscious of a spectator, or to have come from the 
 painter's hand. In Nicolas Poussin, on the contrary, 
 everything seems to have a distinct understanding w T ith 
 the artist ; u the very stones prate of their whereabout ;" 
 each object has its part and place assigned, and is in a sort 
 of compact with the rest of the picture. It is this con- 
 scious keeping, and, as it were, internal design, that gives 
 their peculiar character to the works of this artist. There 
 was a picture of Aurora in the British Gallery a year or 
 two ago. It was a suffusion of golden light. The 
 Goddess wore her saffron-coloured robes, and appeared 
 just risen from the gloomy bed of old Tithonus. Her 
 very steeds, milk-white, were tinged with the yellow dawn. 
 It was a personification of the morning. Poussin suc- 
 ceeded better in classic than in sacred subjects. The 
 latter are comparatively heavy, forced, full of violent con- 
 
On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin. 237 
 
 trasts of colour, of red, blue, and black, and without the 
 true prophetic inspiration of the characters. But in his 
 Pagan allegories and fables he was quite at home. The 
 native gravity and native levity of the Frenchman were 
 combined with Italian scenery and an antique gusto, and 
 gave even to his colouring an air of learned indifference. 
 He wants, in one respect,., grace, form, expression ; but he 
 has everywhere sense and meaning, perfect costume and 
 propriety. His personages always belong to the class 
 and time represented, and are strictly versed in the busi- 
 ness in hand. His grotesque compositions in particular, 
 his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior (at least, as far as 
 style is concerned) even to those of Eubens. They are 
 taken more immediately out of fabulous history. Eubens' 
 Satyrs and Bacchantes have a more jovial and voluptuous 
 aspect, are more drunk with pleasure, more full of animal 
 spirits and riotous impulses; they laugh and bound 
 
 along — 
 
 Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring : 
 
 but those of Poussin have more of the intellectual part of 
 the character, and seem vicious on reflection, and of set 
 purpose. Eubens' are noble specimens of a class ; 
 Poussin's are allegorical abstractions of the same class, 
 with bodies less pampered, but with minds more secretly 
 depraved. The Bacchanalian groups of the Flemish 
 painter were, however, his masterpieces in composition. 
 Witness those prodigies of colour, character, and expression 
 at Blenheim. In the more chaste and refined delineation 
 of classic fable, Poussin was without a rival. Eubens, 
 who was a match for him in the wild and picturesque, 
 could not pretend to vie with the elegance and purity of 
 thought in his picture of Apollo giving a poet a cup of 
 water to drink, nor with the gracefulness of design in the 
 figure of a nymph squeezing the juice of a bunch of grapes 
 from her fingers (a rosy wine-press) which falls into the 
 mouth of a chubby infant below. But, above all, who 
 
238 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin. 
 
 shall celsbrate, in terms of Hi praise, his picture of the 
 shepherds in the Yale of Tempe going out in a fine morn- 
 ing of the spring, and coming to a tomb with this inscrip- 
 tion : — Et ego in Arcadia vixi ! The eager curiosity of 
 some, the expression of others who start back with fear 
 and surprise, the clear breeze playing with the branches 
 of the shadowing trees, " the valleys low, where the mild 
 zephyrs use," the distant, uninterrupted, sunny prospect 
 speak (and for ever will speak on) of ages past to ages yet 
 to come ! l 
 
 Pictures are a set of chosen images, a stream of pleasant 
 thoughts passing through the mind. It is a luxury to 
 have the walls of our rooms hung round with them, and 
 no less so to have such a gallery in the mind, to con over 
 the relics of ancient art bound up " within the book and 
 volume of the brain, unmixed (if it were possible) with 
 baser matter !" A life passed among pictures, in the study 
 and the love of art, is a happy noiseless dream : or rather, 
 it is to dream and to be awake at the same time ; for it has 
 all " the sober certainty of waking bliss, ,, with the ro- 
 mantic voluptuousness of a visionary and abstracted being , 
 They are the bright consummate essences of things, and 
 " he who knows of these delights to taste and interpose 
 them oft, is not unwise !" — The Orion, which I have here 
 taken occasion to descant upon, is one of a collection of 
 excellent pictures, as this collection is itself one of a series 
 from the old masters, which have for some years back 
 embrowned the walls of the British Gallery, and enriched 
 the public eye What hues (those of nature mellowed by 
 time) breathe around, as we enter ! What forms are there, 
 woven into the memory ! What looks, which only the 
 
 1 Poussin has repeated this subject more than once, and appears 
 to have revelled in its witcheries, I have before alluded to it, and 
 may again. It is hard that we should not be allowed to dwell as 
 often as we please on what delights us, when things that are dis-. 
 agreeable recur so often against our will. 
 
On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin. 239 
 
 answering looks of the spectator can express ! What in- 
 tellectual stores have been yearly poured forth from the 
 shrine of ancient art ! The works are various, but the 
 names the same — heaps of Kembrandts frowning from the 
 darkened walls, Kubens' glad gorgeous groups, Titians 
 more rich and rare, Claudes always exquisite, sometimes 
 beyond compare, Guido's endless cloying sweetness, the 
 learning of Poussin and the Caracci, and Baphael's princely 
 magnificence crowning all. We read certain letters and 
 syllables in the catalogue, and at the well-known magic 
 sound, a miracle of skill and beauty starts to view. One 
 might think that one year's prodigal display of such per- 
 fection would exhaust the labours of one man's life ; but 
 the next year, and the next to that, we find another harvest 
 reaped and gathered in to the great garner of art, by the 
 same immortal hands — 
 
 Old Genius the porter of them was ; 
 He letteth in, he letteth out to wend. — 
 
 Their works seem endless as their reputation — to be many 
 as they are complete— to multiply with the desire of the 
 mind to see more and more of them ; as if there were a 
 living power in the breath of Fame, and in the very names 
 of the great heirs of glory " there were propagation too f" 
 It is something to have a collection of this sort to count 
 upon once a year ; to have one last, lingering look yet to 
 come. Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the 
 world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little 
 gilding left, not quite rubbed off, dishonoured, and defaced. 
 There are plenty of standard works still to be found in 
 this counti y, in the collections at Blenheim, at Burleigh, 
 and in those belonging to Mr. Angerstein, Lord Grosvenor, 
 the Marquis of Stafford, 1 and others, to keep up this treat 
 to the lovers of art for many years ; and it is the more 
 
 1 Now the Bridgewater Gallery. It is *he property of th'5 "Right 
 Honourable the Earl of Ellesmere. — Ed. 
 
240 On Milton's Sonnets. 
 
 desirable to reserve a privileged sanctuary of this sort, 
 where the eye may dote, and the heart take its fill of 
 such pictures as Poussin's Orion, since the Louvre is 
 stripped of its triumphant spoils, and since he, who col- 
 lected it, and wore it as a rich jewel in his Iron Crown, 
 the hunter of greatness and of glory, is himself a 
 shade! 
 
 ESSAY XVIII. 
 On Milton! s Sonnets. 
 
 The great object of the Sonnet seems to be, to express in 
 musical numbers, and as it were with undivided breath, 
 some occasional thought or personal feeling, " some fee- 
 grief due to the poet's breast." It is a sigh uttered from 
 the fulness of the heart, an involuntary aspiration born 
 and dying in the same moment. I have always been fond 
 of Milton's Sonnets for this reason, that they have more 
 of this personal and internal character than any others ; 
 and they acquire a double value when we consider that 
 they come from the pen of the loftiest of our poets. 
 Compared with Paradise Lost, they are like tender flowers 
 that adorn the base of some proud column or stately 
 temple. The author in the one could work himself up 
 with unabated fortitude " to the height of his great 
 argument ;" but in the other he has shown that he could 
 condescend to men of low estate, and after the lightning 
 and the thunderbolt of his pen, lets fall some drops of 
 natural pity over hapless infirmity, mingling strains with 
 the nightingale's, "most musical, most melancholy." The 
 immortal poet pours his mortal sorrows into our breasts, 
 and a tear falls from his sightless orbs on the friendly 
 hand he presses. The Sonnets are a kind of pensive 
 record of past achievements, loves, and friendships, and a 
 
On Milton s Sonnets. 241 
 
 noble exhortation to himself to bear up with cheerful hope 
 and confidence to the last. Some of them are of a more 
 quaint and humorous character; but I speak of those 
 only which are intended to be serious and pathetical. — I 
 do not know indeed but they may be said to be almost the 
 first effusions of this sort of natural and personal sentiment 
 in the language. Drummond's ought perhaps to be 
 excepted, were they formed less closely on the model of 
 Petrarch's, so as to be often little more than translations 
 of the Italian poet. But Milton's Sonnets are truly his 
 own in allusion, thought, and versification. Those of Sir 
 Philip Sydney, who was a great transgressor in his way, 
 turn sufficiently on himself and his own adventures ; but 
 they are elaborately quaint and intricate, and more like 
 riddles than sonnets. They are " very tolerable and not 
 to be endured." 1 Shakespear's, which some persons better 
 informed in such matters than I can preftend to be, profess 
 to cry up as " the divine, the matchless, what you will," — 
 to say nothing of the want of point or a leading, prominent 
 idea in most of them, are I think overcharged and mono- 
 tonous, and as to their ultimate drift, as for myself, I can 
 make neither head nor tail of it. Yet some of them, J 
 own, are sweet even to a sense of faintness, luscious as 
 the woodbine, and graceful and luxuriant like it. Here 
 is one : — 
 
 " From you have I been absent in the spring, 
 When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, 
 Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing ; 
 That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. 
 Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 
 Of different flowers in odour and in hue, 
 
 1 Compare with these remarks on Sydney's Sonnets, Lamb's 
 article on " Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney " (** Elia," second 
 series, 1833, p. 138). The present author and his old friend were at 
 Lssue here. — Ed. 
 
242 On Milton s Sonnets. 
 
 Could make me any summer's story tell, 
 
 Or from their proud lap pluck them where they gse?* J 
 
 Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, 
 
 Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ; 
 
 They were but sweet, but figures of delight, 
 
 Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. 
 
 Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away, 
 
 As with your shadow, I with these did play." 
 
 I am not aware of any writer of Sonnets worth mention- 
 ing here till long after Milton, that is, till the time of 
 Wart on and the revival of a taste for Italian and for our 
 own early literature. During the rage for French models, 
 the Sonnet had not been much studied. It is a mode of 
 composition that depends entirely on expression ; and this 
 the French and artificial style gladly dispenses with, as it 
 lays no particular stress on anything — except vague, 
 general common-places. Warton's Sonnets are undoubtedly 
 exquisite, both in style and matter : they are poetical and 
 philosophical effusions of very delightful sentiment ; but 
 the thoughts, though fine and deeply felt, are not, like 
 Milton's subjects, identified completely with the writer, 
 and so far want a more individual interest. Mr. Words- 
 worth's are also finely conceived and high-sounding 
 Sonnets. They mouth it well, and are said to be sacred 
 to Liberty. Brutus's exclamation, " Oh Virtue, I thought 
 thee a substance, but I find thee a shadow," was not con- 
 sidered as a compliment, but as a bitter sarcasm. The 
 beauty of Milton's Sonnets is their sincerity, the spirit of 
 poetical patriotism which they breathe. Either Milton's 
 or the living bard's are defective in this respect. There 
 is no Sonnet of Milton's on the Eestoration of Charles II. 
 There is no Sonnet of Mr. Wordsworth's, corresponding 
 to that of " the poet blind and bold," " Cm the late Massacre 
 in Piedmont." It would be no niggard praise to Mr. Words- 
 worth to grant that he was either half the man or half the 
 poet that Milton was. He has not his high and various 
 imagination, nor his deep and fixed principle. Milton did 
 
On Milton s Sonnets. 243 
 
 not worship .he rising sun, nor turn his back on a losing 
 and fallen cause. 
 
 " Such recantation had no charms for him !" 
 
 Mr. Southey has thought proper to put the author of 
 " Paradise Lost " into his late Heaven, on the understood 
 condition that he is " no longer to kings and to hierarchs 
 hostile." In his lifetime, he gave no sign of such an 
 alteration; and it is rather presumptuous in the poet- 
 laureate to pursue the deceased antagonist of Salmasius 
 into the other world to compliment him with his own 
 infirmity of purpose. It is a wonder he did not add in a 
 note that Milton called him aside to whisper in his ear 
 that he preferred the new English hexameters to his own 
 blank verse ! 
 
 Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was 
 an eminent instance to prove that a poet is not another 
 name for the slave of power and fashion, as is the case 
 with painters and musicians — things without an opinion — 
 and who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show 
 of the day. There are persons in common life who have 
 that eager curiosity and restless admiration of bustle and 
 splendour, that sooner than not be admitted on great 
 occasions of feasting and luxurious display, they will go 
 in the character of livery-servants to stand behind the 
 chairs of the great. There are others who can so little 
 bear to be left for any length of time out of the grand 
 carnival and masquerade of pride and folly, that they will 
 gain admittance to it at the expense of their characters as 
 well as of a change of dress. Milton was not one of these. 
 He had too much of the ideal faculty in his composition, a 
 lofty contemplative principle, and consciousness of inward 
 power and worth, to be tempted by such idle baits. We 
 have plenty of chanting and chiming in among some 
 modern writers with the triumphs over their own views 
 and principles ; but none of a patient resignation to 
 
244 On Milton s Sonnets. 
 
 defeat, sustaining and nourishing itself with the thought 
 of the justice of their cause, and with firm-fixed rectitude. 
 I do not pretend to defend the tone of Milton's political 
 writings (which was borrowed from the style of contro- 
 versial divinity), or to say that he was right in the part he 
 took, — I say that he was consistent in it, and did not 
 convict himself of error : he was consistent in it in spite 
 of danger and obloquy, ?f on evil days though fallen, and 
 evil tongues," and therefore his character has the salt of 
 honesty about it. It does not offend in the nostrils of 
 posterity. He had taken his part boldly and stood to it 
 manfully, and submitted to the change of times with pious 
 fortitude, building his consolations on the resources of his 
 own mind and the recollection of the past, instead of 
 endeavouring to make himself a retreat for the time to 
 come. As an instance of this, we may take one of the 
 best and most admired of these Sonnets, that addressed 
 to Cyriac Skinner, on his own blindness : — 
 
 t( Cyriac, this three years' day, these eyes, though clear, 
 To outward view, of blemish or of spot, 
 Bereft of light their seeing have forgot, 
 Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
 Of sun or moon or stars throughout the year, 
 Or man or woman. Yet I argue not 
 Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
 Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer 
 Eight onward. "What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
 The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overply'd 
 In liberty's defence, my noble task, 
 Of which all Europe talks from side to side. 
 This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask, 
 Content though blind, had I no better guide." 
 
 Nothing can exceed the mild, subdued tone of this 
 Sonnet, nor the striking grandeur of the concluding 
 thought. It is curious to remark what seems to be a trait 
 of character in the two first lines. From Milton's care to 
 inform the reader that " his eyes were still clear, to out- 
 
On Milton s Sonnets. 245 
 
 ward view, of spot or blemish," it would be thought that 
 he had not yet given up all regard to personal appearance ; 
 a feeling to which his singular beauty at an earlier age 
 might be supposed naturally enough to lead. — Of the 
 political or (what may be called) his State-Sonnets, those 
 to Cromwell, to Fairfax, and to the younger Vane, are 
 full of exalted praise and dignified advice. They are 
 neither familiar nor servile. The writer knows what is 
 due to power and to fame. He feels the true, unassumed 
 equality of greatness. He pays the full tribute of admira- 
 tion for great acts achieved, and suggests becoming 
 occasion to deserve higher praise. That to Cromwell is a 
 proof how completely our poet maintained the erectness of 
 his understanding and spirit in his intercourse with men 
 in power. It is such a compliment as a poet might pay 
 to a conqueror and head of the state, without the possi- 
 bility of self-degradation : — 
 
 " Cromwell, our chief of men, who through, a cloud, 
 Not of war only, but detractions rude, 
 Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, 
 To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd, 
 And on the neck of crowned fortune proud 
 Hast rear'd God's trophies and his work pursued, 
 While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued, 
 And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud, 
 And Worcester's laureat wreath. Yet mucli remains 
 To conquer still ; peace hath her victories 
 No less renown'd than war : new foes arise 
 Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains ; 
 Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
 Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." 
 
 The most spirited and impassioned of them all, and the 
 most inspired with a sort of prophetic fury, is the one 
 entitled, " On the late Massacre in Piedmont." 
 
 " Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones 
 Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold; 
 Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
 When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones, 
 
246 On Milton s Sonnets. 
 
 Forgot not : in thy book record their groans 
 Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
 Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
 The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
 To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow 
 O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 
 The triple Tyrant ; that from these may grow 
 A hundred fold, who having learn'd thy way 
 Early may fly the Babylonian woe." 
 
 In the Nineteenth Sonnet, which is also " On his blind- 
 ness," we see the jealous watchfulness of his mind over the 
 use of his high gifts, and the beautiful manner in which he 
 satisfies himself that virtuous thoughts and intentions are 
 not the least acceptable offering to the Almighty : — 
 
 *' When I consider how my light is spent 
 Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 
 And that one talent which is death to hide, 
 Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
 To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
 My true account, lest he returning chide ; 
 Doth God exact day-labour, light denied. 
 I fondly ask : But patience to prevent 
 That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need 
 Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best ; his state 
 Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
 They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
 Those to Mr. Henry Lawes on his Airs, and to 
 Mr. Lawrence, can never be enough admired. They 
 breathe the very soul of music and friendship. Both 
 have a tender, thoughtful grace ; and for their lightness, 
 with a certain melancholy complaining intermixed, might 
 be stolen from the harp of iEolus. The last is the 
 picture of a day spent in social retirement and elegant 
 relaxation from severer studies. We sit with the poet at 
 
On Milton s Sonnets. 247 
 
 table and near his familiar sentiments from his own lips 
 afterwards : — 
 
 " Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, 
 Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire, 
 Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire 
 Help waste a sullen day, what may be won 
 From the hard season gaining ? Time will run 
 On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire 
 The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire 
 The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun. 
 What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, 
 Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise 
 To hear the lute well-touched, or artful voice • 
 
 Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air ? 
 He who of these delights can judge, and spare 
 To interpose them oft, is not unwise." 
 
 In the last, " On his deceased Wife," the allusion to Alces- 
 tis is beautiful, and shows how the poet's mind raised and 
 refined his thoughts by exquisite classical conceptions, and 
 how these again were enriched by a passionate reference 
 to actual feelings and images. It is this rare union that 
 gives such voluptuous dignity and touching purity to 
 Milton's delineation of the female character : — « 
 
 " Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
 Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, 
 Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, 
 Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. 
 
 . Mine, as whom w r ash d from spot of child- bed taint 
 Purification in the old law did save, 
 And such, as yet once more I trust to have 
 Full sight of her in Heav'n without restraint, 
 Came vested all in white, pure as her mind : 
 Her face was veiPd, yet to my fancied sight 
 Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined 
 So clear, as in no face with more delight : 
 But O as to embrace me she inclined, 
 I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night." 
 
 There could not have been a greater mistake or a more 
 
248 On Milton '* Sonnets. 
 
 unjust piece of criticism than to suppose that Mi] ton only 
 shone on great subjects ; and that on ordinary occasions 
 and in familiar life, his mind was unwieldy, averse to the 
 cultivation of grace and elegance, and unsusceptible of 
 harmless pleasures. The whole tenour of his smaller 
 compositions contradicts this opinion, which, however, they 
 have been cited to confirm. The notion first got abroad 
 from the bitterness (or vehemence) of his controversial 
 writings, and has been kept up since with little meaning 
 and with less truth. His Letters to Donatus and others 
 are not more remarkable for the display of a scholastic 
 enthusiasm than for that of the most amiable dispositions. 
 They are " severe in youthful virtue unreproved.' , There 
 is a passage in his prose- works (the Treatise on Educa 
 tion) which shows, I think, his extreme openness and 
 proneness to pleasing outward impressions in a striking 
 point of view. " But to return to our own institute," he 
 says, " besides these constant exercises at home, there is 
 another opportunity of gaining experience to be won from 
 pleasure itself abroad. In those vernal seasons of the year, 
 when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and 
 sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, 
 and partake in her rejoicing with Heaven and earth. I 
 should not therefore be a persuader to them of studying 
 much then, but to ride out in companies with prudent 
 and well-staid guides, to all quarters of the land," &c. 
 Many other passages might be quoted, in which the poet 
 breaks through the groundwork of prose, as it were, by 
 natural fecundity and a genial, unrestrained sense of 
 delight. To suppose that a poet is not easily accessible 
 to pleasure, or that he does not take an interest in indi- 
 vidual objects and feelings, is to suppose that he is no 
 poet ; and proceeds on the false theory, which has been so 
 often applied to poetry and the Fine Arts, that the whole 
 is not riade up of the particulars. If our author, accord- 
 ing to Dr. Johnson's account of him, could only have 
 
On Goingi a Journey. 249 
 
 treated epic, high-sounding subjects, he would not have 
 been what he was, but another Sir Richard Blackmore. — 
 I may conclude with observing, that I have often wished 
 that Milton had lived to see the Ee volution of 1688. 
 This would have been a triumph worthy of him, and 
 which he would have earned by faith and hope. He 
 would then have been old, but would not have lived in 
 vain to see it, and might have celebrated the event in one 
 more undying strain ! 
 
 ESSAY XIX. 
 
 On Going a Journey. 
 
 One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a 
 journey ; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society 
 in a room ; but out of doors, nature is company enough 
 for me. I am then never less alone than when alone. 
 
 " The fields his study, nature was his book." 
 
 I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same 
 time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like 
 the countiy. I am not for criticising hedge-rows and 
 black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town 
 and all that is in it. 1 There are those who for this pur- 
 pose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with 
 them. I like more elbow-room, and fewer incumbrances. 
 I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake 
 of solitude ; nor do I ask for 
 
 " a frieud in my retreat, 
 
 Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet." 
 
 The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, 
 
 feel, do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to 
 
 be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences ; to 
 
 1 On purpose to get rid of society. — MS. 
 
250 On Going a Journey. 
 
 leave ourselves behind much more to get rid of others. 
 It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on 
 indifferent matters, where Contemplation 
 
 ** May plume her feathers and let grow her wings, 
 That in the various bustle of resort 
 "Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd," 
 
 that I absent myself from the town for a while, without 
 feeling at a loss the moment T am left by myself. Instead 
 of a friend in a postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange 
 good things with, and vary the same stale topics over 
 again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. 
 Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green 
 turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a 
 three hours' march to dinner — and then to thinking ! It 
 is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. 
 I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the point of 
 yonder rolling cloud, I plunge into my past being, and 
 revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong 
 into the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then 
 long-forgotten things, like " sunken wrack and sumless 
 treasuries," burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to 
 feel, think, and be myself again. 1 Instead of an awkward 
 silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, 
 mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone 
 is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliterations, 
 antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do ; but 
 I sometimes had rather be without them. " Leave, oh, 
 leave me to my repose I I have just now other business 
 in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me 
 " very stuff o* the conscience.' ' Is not this wild rose 
 sweet without a comment ? Does not this daisy leap to 
 my heart set in its coat of emerald ? Yet if I were to 
 explain to you the circumstance that has so endeared it 
 to me, you would only smile. Had I not better then keep 
 1 For be myself, the MS. has merely live. 
 
On Going a Journey. 251 
 
 it to myself, and let it serve ine to brood over, from here 
 to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to tho 
 far-distant horizon ? I should be but bad company all 
 that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard 
 it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk 
 or ride on by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But 
 this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, 
 and you are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin 
 your party. " Out upon such half-faced fellowship,' , say 
 I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at 
 the disposal of others ; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit 
 still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an 
 observation of Mr. Cobbett's, that " he thought it a bad 
 French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that 
 an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time." 
 So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melancholy 
 musing and lively conversation by fits and starts. " Let 
 me have a companion of my way," says Sterne, "were 
 it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun 
 declines." It is beautifully said : but in my opinion, this 
 continual comparing of notes interferes with the involun- 
 tary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the 
 sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kind of 
 dumb show, it is insipid : if you have to explain it, it is 
 making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book 
 of nature without being perpetually put to the trouble of 
 translating it for the benefit of others. I am for this 
 synthetical method on a journey in preference to the 
 analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, 
 and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want 
 to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle 
 before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the 
 briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have 
 it all my own way ; and this is impossible unless you are 
 alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no 
 objection to argue a point with any one for twenty miles 
 
252 On tromg a Journey. 
 
 of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark 
 the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps your 
 fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant 
 object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out 
 his glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a 
 tone in the colour of a cloud which hits your fancy, but 
 the effect of which you are unable to account for. There 
 is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a 
 dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the 
 end probably produces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel 
 with myself, and take all my own conclusions for granted 
 till I find it necessary to defend them against objections. 
 It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the 
 objects and circumstances that present themselves before 
 you — these may recall a number of objects, and lead to 
 associations too delicate and refined to be possibly com- 
 municated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and 
 sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape 
 from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings 
 before company seems extravagance or affectation ; and 
 on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of 
 our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal 
 interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered), is a task 
 to which few are competent. We must " give it an under- 
 standing, but no tongue." My old friend Coleridge, how- 
 ever, could do both. He could go on in the most delight- 
 ful explanatory way over hill and dale a summer's day, 
 and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric 
 ode. " He talked far above singing." If I could so clothe 
 my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps 
 wish to have some one with me to admire the swelling 
 theme ; or I could be more content, were it possible for 
 me still to hear his echoing voice in the woods of All- 
 Foxden. 1 They had " that fine madness in them which 
 
 1 Near Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire, where the author of tliii 
 Essay visited Coleridge in 1798. Ho was there again in 1803. 
 
On Going a Journey, 253 
 
 our first poets had ;" and if they could have been caught 
 by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains 
 as the following : — 
 
 il Here be woods as green 
 
 As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet 
 As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet 
 Face of the curled streams, with flow'rs as many 
 As the young spring gives, and as choice as any ; 
 Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, 
 Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells; 
 Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing, 
 Or gather rushes to make many a ring 
 For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love, 
 How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, 
 First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
 She took eternal fire that never dies ; 
 How she convey'd him softly in a sleep, 
 His temples bound with poppy, to the steep 
 Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, 
 Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, 
 To kiss her sweetest." * 
 
 Had I words and images at command like these, I would 
 attempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden 
 ridges in the evening clouds : but at the sight of nature 
 my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves, 
 like flowers at sunset. 2 I can make nothing out on the 
 spot : — I must have time to collect myself. 3 
 
 In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects : 
 it should be reserved for Table-talk. Lamb is for this 
 reason, I take it, the worst company in the world out of 
 doors ; because he is the best within. I grant, there is 
 one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey ; 
 and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get 
 to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of 
 
 1 Fletcher's " Faithful Shepherdess," i. 3 (Dyce's Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, ii. 38, 39). 
 
 2 Like as the marigold. at the sun's eyes. — MS. 
 
 8 Llangollen Vale — Oxon — John— Winf mill, &c. — memoranda in 
 MS. 
 
254 On Going a Journey. 
 
 conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener 
 edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the 
 flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine 
 it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at 
 approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling 
 village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding 
 gloom ; and then after inquiring for the best entertainment 
 that the place affords, to " take one's ease at one's inn !" 
 These eventful moments in our lives' history are too pre- 
 cious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered 
 and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have 
 them a]l to myself, and drain them to the last drop : they 
 will do to talk of or to write about afterwards. What a 
 delicate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of 
 tea, 
 
 " The cups that cheer, but not inebriate," 
 
 and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit con- 
 sidering what we shall have for supper — eggs and a rasher, 
 a rabbit smothered in onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet ! 
 Sancho in such a situation once fixed on cow-heel ; and 
 his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be dis- 
 paraged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and 
 Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the 
 stir in the kitchen [getting ready for the gentleman in the 
 parlour.] l Procul, procul este profani ! These hours are 
 sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the 
 memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts here- 
 after. I would not waste them in idle talk ; or if I must 
 have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather 
 it were by a strangei than a friend. A stranger takes his 
 hue and character from the time and place ; he is a part 
 of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, 
 or from the West Hiding of Yorkshire, so much the better. 
 I do not even try to sympathise with him, and he breaks 
 no squares. [How I love to see the camps of the gypsies, 
 1 Not in the printed copy. — Ed. 
 
On Going a Journey, 255 
 
 and to sigh my soul 1 into that sort of life. If I express 
 this feeling to another, he may qualify and spoil it with 
 some objection.] 2 I associate nothing with my travelling 
 companion but present objects and passing events. In 
 his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner 
 forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, 
 rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the 
 scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our 
 imaginary character. Something is dropped in the course 
 of conversation that gives a hint of your profession and 
 pursuits ; or from having some one with you that knows 
 the less sublime portions of your history, it seems that 
 other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the 
 world ; but your " unhoused free condition is put into cir- 
 cumspection and confine. " The incognito of an inn is one 
 of its striking privileges — " lord of one's self, uncumbered 
 with a name." Oh ! it is great to shake off the trammels 
 of the world and of public opinion— to lose our impor- 
 tunate, tormenting, everlasting personal identity in the 
 elements of nature, and become the creature of the 
 moment, clear of all ties — to hold to the universe only by 
 a dish of sweetbreads, and to owe nothing but the score 
 of the evening — and no longer seeking for applause and 
 meeting with contempt, to be known by no other title than 
 the Gentleman in the parlour ! One may take one's choice 
 of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty as 
 to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely respec- 
 table and negatively right- worshipful. We baffle preju- 
 dice and disappoint conjecture ; and from being so to 
 others, begin to be objects of curiosity and wonder even 
 to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed common- 
 places that we appear in the world ; an inn restores us to 
 the level of nature, and quits scores with society ! I have 
 
 1 These words are very indistinctly written, and may not be what 
 the writer intended. — Ed. 
 
 s Not in the printed copy. — Ed. 
 
256 On Going a Journey. 
 
 certainly spent some enviable hours at inns — sometimes 
 when I have been left entirely to myself, and have tried 
 to solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham 
 Common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not 
 a case of the association of ideas — at other times, when 
 there have been pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's, (I 
 think it was) where I first met with Gribelin's engravings 
 of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a 
 little inn on the borders of Wales, where there happened 
 to be hanging some of Westall's drawings which I com- 
 pared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not for the 
 admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried 
 me over the Severn, standing up in a boat between me and 
 the twilight— at other times I might mention luxuriating 
 in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remem- 
 ber sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, 
 which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after being 
 drenched in the rain all day ; and at the same place I got 
 through two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It 
 was on the 10th of April, 1798, that I sat down to a 
 volume of the New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over 
 a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I chose 
 was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he 
 first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the 
 Pays de Vaud, which I had brought with me as a bon louche 
 to crown the evening with. It was my birthday, and 1 
 had for the first time come from a place in the neighbour- 
 hood to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llan- 
 gollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham ; and on 
 passing a certain point, you come all at once upon the 
 valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren 
 hills rising in majestic state on either side, with " green 
 upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks " below, and 
 the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst of 
 them. The valley at this time " glittered green with 
 sunny showers,'' and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender 
 
On Going a Journey. 257 
 
 branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I 
 was to walk along the high road that overlooks the deli- 
 cious prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted 
 from Mr. Coleridge's poems! But besides the prospect 
 which opened beneath my feet, another also opened to my 
 inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written, 
 in letters large as Hope could make them, these four 
 words, Liberty, Genius, Love, Virtue ; which have since 
 faded into the light of common day, or mock my idle 
 
 gaze. 
 
 " The beautiful is vanished, and returns not." 
 
 Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted 
 spot ; but I would return to it alone. What other self 
 could I find to share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and 
 delight, the fragments of which I could hardly conjure up 
 to myself, so much have they been broken and defaced. I 
 could stand on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice 
 of years that separates me from what I then was. I was 
 at that time going shortly to visit the poet whom 1 have 
 above named. Where is he now ? Not only I myself 
 have changed ; the world, which was then new to me, has 
 become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in 
 thought, sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as 
 thou then wert ; and thou shalt always be to me the river 
 of Paradise, where 1 will drink of the waters of life 
 freely I 1 
 
 There is hardly anything that shows the short-sighted- 
 ness or capriciousness of the imagination more than 
 travelling does. With change of place we change our 
 ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings. We can by an 
 effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten 
 scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives again ; but 
 we forget those that we have just left. It seems that we 
 can think but of one place at a time. The canvas of the 
 
 1 The next paragraph seems to have been added at pres3. The 
 MS. recommences at — " I have no objection, " &c. — Ed. 
 
 8 
 
258 On Going a Journey. 
 
 fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we paint one set of 
 objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. We 
 cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of 
 view. The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured 
 eye, we take our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no 
 other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and 
 think no more of it : the horizon that shuts it from our 
 sight also blots it from our memory like a dream. In 
 travelling through a wild barren country, I can form no 
 idea of a woody and cultivated one. It appears to me 
 that all the world must be barren, like what I see of 
 it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we 
 despise the country. " Beyond Hyde Park," says Sir 
 Topling Flutter, " all is a desert." All that part of the 
 map that we do not see before us is blank. The world in 
 our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It 
 is not one prospect expanded into another, county joined 
 to county, kingdom to kingdom, land to seas, making an 
 image voluminous and vast; — the mind can form no 
 larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single 
 glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calcula- 
 tion of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signifi- 
 cation of that immense mass of territory and population, 
 known by the name of China to us ? An inch of paste- 
 board on a wooden globe, of no more account than a 
 China orange ! Things near us are seen of the size of 
 life : things at a distance are diminished to the size of the 
 understanding. We measure the universe by ourselves, 
 and even comprehend the texture of our own being only 
 piecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an 
 infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mecha- 
 nical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but 
 it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, 
 but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying to 
 renew old recollections, we cannot as it were unfold the 
 whole web of our existence ; we must pick out the single 
 
On Going a Journey. 259 
 
 threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly 
 lived, and with which we have intimate associations, every- 
 one must have found that the feeling grows more vivid 
 the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipa- 
 tion of the actual impression : we remember circumstances, 
 feelings, persons, faces, names that we had not thought of 
 for years ; but for the time all the rest of the world is for- 
 gotten ! — To return to the question I have quitted above : — 
 1 have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, 
 pictures, in company with a friend or a party, but rather 
 the contrary, for the former reason reversed. They are 
 intelligible matters, and will bear talking about. The 
 sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and overt. 
 Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge 
 will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and philo- 
 sophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, the first 
 consideration always is where we shall go to : in taking a 
 solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with 
 by the way. " The mind is its own place ;" nor are we 
 anxious to arrive at the end of our journey. 1 I can myself 
 do the honours indifferently well to works of art and 
 curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean 
 eclat 2 — showed them that seat of the Muses at a distance, 
 
 " With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd "■— 
 
 descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy 
 quadrangles and stone walls of halls and colleges — was at 
 home in the Bodleian ; and at Blenheim quite superseded 
 the powdered Cicerone that attended us, and that pointed in 
 vain with his wand to common-place beauties in matchless 
 pictures. As another exception to the above reasoning, I 
 should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a 
 foreign country without a companion. I should want at 
 
 1 This sentence is not in the MS. — Ed. 
 
 2 In 1809, when the author visited the University in company 
 with the Lambs. See " Memoirs of W. H." i., 173.— Ed. 
 
260 On Going a Journey. 
 
 intervals to hear the sound of my own language. There is 
 an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to 
 foreign manners and notions that requires the assistance 
 of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from 
 home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, 
 becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would 
 almost feel stifled to find himself in the deserts of Arabia 
 without friends and countrymen : there must be allowed 
 to be something in the view of Athens or old Eome that 
 claims the titterance of speech; and I own that the 
 Pyramids are too mighty for any single contemplation. 
 In such situations, so opposite to all one's ordinary train 
 of ideas, one seems a species by one's-self, a limb torn off 
 from society, unless one can meet with instant fellowship 
 and support. Yet I did not feel this want or craving very 
 pressing once, when I first set my foot on the laughing 
 shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty and 
 delight. The confused, busy murmur of the place was 
 like oil and wine poured into my ears ; nor did the 
 mariners' hymn, which was sung from the top of an old 
 crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun went down, send 
 an alien sound into my soul. I only breathed the air of 
 general humanity. I walked over "the vine-covered 
 hills and gay regions of France," erect and satisfied ; for 
 the image of man was not cast down and chained to the 
 foot of arbitrary thrones : I was at no loss for language, for 
 that of all the great schools of painting was open to me 
 The whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes, 
 glory, freedom, all are fled : nothing remains but the 
 Bourbons and the French people ! — There is undoubtedly 
 a sensation in travelling into foreign parts that is to be 
 had nowhere else : but it is more pleasing at the time than 
 lasting. It is too remote from our habitual associations 
 to be a common topic of discourse or reference, and, like a 
 dream or another state of existence, does not piece into 
 our daily modes of life. It is an animated but a momen- 
 
On Coffee-House Politicians. 261 
 
 tary hallucination. It demands an effort to exchange our 
 actual for our ideal identity ; and to feel the pulse of our 
 old transports revive very keenly, we must " jump " all 
 our present comforts and connexions. Our romantic and 
 itinerant character is not to be domesticated. Dr. John- 
 son remarked how little foreign travel added to the 
 facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad. 
 In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful, 
 and in one sense instructive ; but it appears to be cut out 
 of our substantial, downright existence, and never to join 
 kindly on to it. We are not the same, but another, and 
 perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we are out 
 of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as 
 our friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings, 
 
 " Out of my country and myself I go." 
 
 Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well 
 to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects 
 that recall them : but we can be said only to fulfil our 
 destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on 
 this account like well enough to spend the whole of my 
 life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow 
 another life to spend afterwards at home 1 
 
 ESSAY XX. 
 
 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 There is a set of people who fairly come under this 
 denomination. They spend their time and their breath in 
 coffee-houses and other places of public resort, hearing or 
 repeating some new thing. They sit with a paper in their 
 hands in the morning, and with a pipe in their mouths in 
 the evening, discussing the contents of it. The Times, the 
 Morning Chronicle, and the Herald are necessary to their 
 
262 On Coffee-Rouse Politicians. 
 
 existence : in them " they live and move and have their 
 being." The Evening Paper is impatiently expected and 
 called for at a certain critical minute : the news of the 
 morning becomes stale and vapid by the dinner-hour. A 
 fresher interest is required, an appetite for the latest- 
 stirring information is excited with the return of their 
 meals ; and a glass of old port or humming ale hardly 
 relishes as it ought without the infusion of some lively 
 topic that had its birth with the day, and perishes before 
 night. " Then come in the sweets of the evening :" — the 
 Queen, the coronation, the last new play, the next fight, 
 the insurrection of the Greeks or Neapolitans, the price of 
 stocks, or death of kings, keep them on the alert till bed- 
 time. No question comes amiss to them that is quite 
 new — none is ever heard of that is at all old. 
 
 "That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker." 
 
 The World before the Flood or the Intermediate State of 
 the Soul are never once thought of ' — such is the quick 
 succession of subjects, the suddenness 2 and fugitiveness of 
 the interest taken in them, that the Twopenny Post Bag 3 
 would be at present looked upon as an old-fashioned 
 publication ; and the Battle of Waterloo, like the proverb, 
 is somewhat musty. It is strange that people should take 
 so much interest at one time in what they so soon forget : — 
 the truth is, they feel no interest in it at any time, but 
 it does for something to talk about. Their ideas are 
 served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day ; and 
 the whole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, 
 metaphysics, is to them like a file of antedated news- 
 papers, of no use, not even for reference, except the one 
 which lies on the table ! You cannot take any of these 
 persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are 
 
 1 Never by any chance so much as mentioned. — MS. — Ed. 
 
 2 Depth.— MS.— Ed. 
 
 8 By Thomas Moore. — Ei>. 
 
On Coffee-House Politicians, 263 
 
 provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a 
 face of dreary vacuity, " Have you anything new ¥' — and 
 on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing 
 further to say. [They are like an oyster at the ebb of the 
 tide, gaping for fresh tidings.'] l Talk of the Westminster 
 Election, the Bridge Street 2 Association, or Mr. Cobbett's 
 Letter to John Cropper of Liverpool, and they are alive 
 again. Beyond the last twenty-four hours, or the narrow 
 round in which they move, they are utterly to seek, 
 without ideas, feelings, interests, apprehensions of any 
 sort; so that if you betray any knowledge beyond the 
 vulgar routine of Second Editions and first-hand private 
 intelligence, you pass with them for a dull fellow, not 
 acquainted with what is going forward in the world, or 
 with the practical value of things. I have known a 
 person of this stamp censure 3 John Cam Hobhouse for 
 referring so often as he does to the affairs of the Greeks 
 and Eomans, as if the affairs of the nation were not 
 sufficient for his hands : another asks you if a general in 
 modern times cannot throw a bridge over a river without 
 having studied Caesar's Commentaries ; and a third cannot 
 see the use of the learned languages, as he has observed 
 that the greatest proficients in them are rather taciturn 
 than otherwise, and hesitate in their speech more than . 
 other people. A dearth of general information is almost 
 necessary to the thorough-paced coffee-house politician ; 
 in the absence of thought, imagination, sentiment, he is 
 attracted immediately to the nearest common-place, and 
 floats through the chosen regions of noise and empty 
 rumours without difficulty and without distraction. Meet 
 " any six of these men in buckram," and they will accost 
 you with the same question and the same answer ; they 
 have seen it somewhere in print, or had it from some city 
 oracle, that morning ; and the sooner they vent their 
 
 1 Not in printed copy. — Ed. 2 Constitutional.— MS. — Ed. 
 
 3 Rate. — MS. Decry is written above. — Ed. 
 
264 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 opinions the better, for they will not keep. Like tickets 
 of admission to the theatre for a particular evening, they 
 must be used immediately, or they will be worth nothing : 
 and the object is to find auditors for the one and custo- 
 mers for the other, neither of which is difficult; since 
 people who have no ideas of their own are glad to hear 
 what any one else has to say, as those who have not free 
 admissions to the play will very obligingly take up with 
 an occasional order. 1 It sometimes gives one a melan- 
 choly but mixed sensation to see one of the better sort of 
 this class of politicians, not without talents or learning, 
 absorbed for fifty years together in the all-engrossing 
 topic of the day : mounting on it for exercise and recrea- 
 tion of his faculties, like the great horse at a riding-school, 
 and after his short, improgressive, untired career, dis- 
 mounting just where he got up ; flying abroad in con- 
 tinual consternation on the wings of all the newspapers ; 
 waving his arm like a pump-handle in sign of constant 
 change, and spouting out torrents of puddled politics 
 from his mouth; dead to all interests but those of the 
 state ; seemingly neither older nor wiser for age ; un- 
 accountably enthusiastic, stupidly romantic, and actuated 
 by no other motive than the mechanical operations of the 
 spirit of newsmongering. 2 
 
 1 After this word the text in the original MS. recommences at — 
 " What things," &c. on the next page. — Ed. 
 
 2 It is not very long ago that I saw two Dissenting Ministers (the 
 Ultima Thule of the sanguine, visionary temperament in politics) 
 stuffing their pipes with dried currant-leaves, calling it Radical 
 Tobacco, lighting it with a lens in the rays of the sun, and at every 
 puff fancying that they undermined the Boroughmongers, as Trim 
 blew up the army opposed to the Allies ! They had deceived the 
 Senate. Methinks I see them now, smiling as in scorn of Corruption. 
 
 " Dream on, blest pair : 
 
 Yet happier if you knew your happiness, 
 And knew to know no more !" 
 The world of Reform that you dote on, like Berkeley's material 
 
On Coffee-Souse Politicians. 265 
 
 " What things," exclaims Beaumont in his verses to Ben 
 Jonson, " have we not seen done at the Mermaid ! 
 
 Then when there hath been thrown 
 
 Wit able enough to justify the town 
 
 For three days past, wit that might warrant be 
 
 For the whole city to talk foolishly I" 1 
 
 I cannot say the same of the Southampton, though it 
 stands on classic ground, and is connected by local 
 tradition with the great names of the Elizabethan age. 
 What a falling off is here ! Our ancestors of that period 
 seem not only to be older by two hundred years, and 
 proportionably wiser and wittier than we, but hardly a 
 trace of them is left, not even the memory of what has 
 been, 2 How should I make my friend Mounsey 3 stare, if 
 I were to mention the name of my still better friend, old 
 honest Signor Friscobaldo, the father of Bellafront : 4 — yet 
 his name was perhaps invented, and the scenes in which 
 he figures unrivalled might for the first time have been 
 read aloud to thrilling ears on this very spot ! Who reads 
 Decker now ? Or if by chance any one awakes the strings 
 
 world, lives only in your own brain, and long may it live there! 
 Those same Dissenting Ministers throughout the country (I mean 
 the descendants of the old Puritans) are to this hour a sort of Fifth- 
 monarchy men: very turbulent fellows, in my opinion altogether 
 incorrigible, and according to the suggestions of others, should be 
 hanged out of the way without judge or jury for the safety of church 
 and state. Marry, hang them ! they may be left to die a natural 
 death : the race is nearly extinct of itself, andean do little more good 
 or harm ! [This note is not in the MS. but in the text are inserted the 
 words Draper, — Radical Tobacco, the rest being left to be filled 
 in.]— Ed. 
 
 1 Dyce's " Beaumont and Fletcher," xi., 502. — Ed. 
 
 2 The MS. reads : " They were not only two hundred years older, 
 wiser and wittier than we, but not a trace of them is left, not even 
 the memory of what has been." — Ed. 
 
 3 A solicitor in Staple Inn. — Ed. 
 
 4 Characters in Decker's admirable drama of the " Honest Whottfc* 1 
 1604. -Ed. 
 
266 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 of that ancient lyre, and starts with delight as they yield 
 wild, broken music, is he not accused of envy to the living 
 Muse ? What would a linen-draper from Holborn think, 
 if I were to ask him after the clerk of St. Andrew's, the 
 immortal, the forgotten Webster? His name and his 
 works are no more heard of : though these were written 
 with a pen of adamant, " within the red-leaved tables of 
 the heart," his fame was " writ in water." So perishable 
 is genius, so swift is time, so fluctuating is knowledge, and 
 so far is it from being true that men perpetually accumu- 
 late the means of improvement and refinement. On the 
 contrary, living knowledge is the tomb of the dead, and 
 while light and worthless materials float on the surface, 
 the solid and sterling as often sink to the bottom, and are 
 swallowed up for ever in weeds and quicksands! 1 — A 
 striking instance of the short-lived nature of popular 
 reputation occurred one evening at the Southampton, when 
 we got into a dispute, the most learned and recondite that 
 ever took place, on the comparative merits of Lord Byron 
 and Gray. A country gentleman happened to drop in, 
 and thinking to show off in London company, launched 
 into a lofty panegyric on the Bard of Gray as the 
 sublimest composition in the English language. This 
 assertion presently appeared to be an anachronism, though 
 it was probably the opinion in vogue thirty years ago, 
 when the gentleman was last in town. After a little 
 floundering, one of the party volunteered to express a 
 more contemporary sentiment, by asking in a tone of 
 mingled confidence and doubt — " But you don't think, Sir, 
 that Gray is to be mentioned as a poet in the same day 
 with my Lord Byron ?" The disputants were now at 
 issue : all that resulted was that Gray was set aside as a 
 poet who would not go down among readers of the present 
 day, 2 and his patron treated the works of the Noble Bard 
 
 1 The MS. and the printed copy vary extremely throughout. — Ed. 
 s Modem writers. — MS. But over writers is written readen.— Ed. 
 
On Coffee-House Politieians. 267 
 
 as mere ephemeral effusions, and spoke of poets that would 
 be admired thirty years hence, which was the farthest 
 stretch of his critical imagination. His antagonists did 
 not even reach so far. This was the most romantic 
 digression we ever had; and the subject was not after- 
 wards resumed. — No one here (generally speaking) has 
 the slightest notion of anything that has happened, that 
 has been said, thought, or done out of his own recollection. 
 It would be in vain to hearken after those ''wit-skir- 
 mishes," those " brave sublunary things " which were the 
 employment and delight of the Beaumonts and Bens of 
 former times : l but we may happily repose on dulness, 
 drift with the tide of nonsense, and gain an agreeable 
 vertigo by lending an ear to endless controversies. The 
 confusion, provided you do not mingle in the fray and try 
 to disentangle it, is amusing and edifying enough. Every 
 species of false wit and spurious argument may be learnt 
 here by potent examples. Whatever observations you 
 hear dropt have been picked up in the same place or in a 
 kindred atmosphere. There is a kind of conversation 
 made up entirely of scraps and hearsay, as there are a 
 kind of books made up entirely of references to other 
 books. This may account for the frequent contradictions 
 which abound in the discourse of persons educated and 
 disciplined wholly in coffee-houses. There is nothing 
 stable or well-grounded in it : it is " nothing but vanity, 
 chaotic vanity." They hear a remark at the Globe which 
 they do not know what to make of; another at the 
 Eainbow in direct opposition to it ; and not having time 
 to reconcile them, vent both at the Mitre. In the course 
 of half an hour, if they are not more than ordinarily dull, 
 you are sure to find them on opposite sides of the question. 
 This is the sickening part of it. People do not seem to 
 talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to 
 maintain an opinion for the sake of talking. We meet 
 1 Our forefathers. — MS. 
 
268 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 neither with modest ignorance nor studious acquirement 
 Their knowledge has been taken in too much by snatches 
 to digest properly. There is neither sincerity nor system 
 in what they say. They hazard the first crude notion 
 that comes to hand, and then defend it how they can ; 
 which is for the most part but ill. " Don't you think," 
 says Mounsey, " that Mr. is a very sensible, well- 
 informed man ?" — " Why no," I say, " he seems to me to 
 have no ideas of his own, and only to wait to see what 
 others will say in order to set himself against it. I 
 should not think that is the way to get at the truth. I do 
 not desire to be driven out of my conclusions (such as 
 they are) merely to make way for his upstart pretensions." 1 
 
 — " Then there is : what of him ?" — " He might very 
 
 well express all he has to say in half the time, and with 
 half the trouble. Why should he beat about the bush as 
 he does ? He appears to be getting up a little speech 
 and practising on a smaller scale for a Debating Society 
 — the lowest ambition a man can have. Besides, by his 
 manner of drawling out his words, and interlarding his 
 periods with innuendos and formal reservations, he is 
 evidently making up his mind all the time which side he 
 shall take. He puts his sentences together as printers 
 set up types, letter by letter. There is certainly no 
 principle of short-hand in his mode of elocution. He 
 goes round for a meaning, and the sense waits for him. 
 It is not conversation, but rehearsing a part. Men of 
 education and men of the world order this matter better. 
 They know what they have to say on a subject, and come 
 to the point at once. Your coffee-house politician balances 
 between what he heard last and what he shall say next ; 
 and not seeing his way clearly, puts you off with circum- 
 stantial phrases, and tries to gain time for fear of making 
 a false step. This gentleman has heard some one admired 
 for precision and copiousness of language ; and goes away, 
 1 No meanings. — MS. 
 
On Cojfee-House Politicians. 269 
 
 congratulating himself that he has not made a blunder in 
 grammar or in rhetoric the whole evening. He is a 
 theoretical Quidnunc — is tenacious in argument, though 
 wary ; carries his point thus and thus, bandies objections 
 and answers with uneasy pleasantry, and when he has the 
 worst of the dispute, puns very emphatically on his 
 adversary's name, if it admits of that kind of misconstruc- 
 tion.''' George Kirkpatrick is admired by the waiter, who 
 is a sleek hand 1 for his temper in managing an argument. 
 Any one else would perceive that the latent cause is not 
 patience with his antagonist, but satisfaction with himself 
 I think this unmoved self-complacency, this cavalier 
 smooth simpering indifference is more annoying than the 
 extremest violence or irritability. The one shows that 
 your opponent does care something about you, and may be 
 put out of his way by your remarks ; the other seems 
 to announce that nothing you say can shake his opinion a 
 jot, that he has considered the whole of what you have to 
 offer beforehand, and that he is in all respects much wiser 
 and more accomplished than you. Such persons talk to 
 grown people with the same air of patronage and conde- 
 scension that they do to children. " They will explain " 
 — is a familiar expression with them, thinking you can 
 only differ from them in consequence of misconceiving 
 what they say. 2 Or if you detect them in any error in 
 point of fact (as to acknowledged deficiency in wit or 
 argument, they would smile at the idea) they add some 
 correction to your correction, and thus have the whip-hand 
 of you again, being more correct than you who corrected 
 
 1 William, our waiter, is dressed neatly in black, takes in the 
 Tickler (which many of the gentlemen like to look into), wears, I 
 am told, a diamond-pin in his shirt-collar, has a music-master to 
 teach him to play on the flageolet two hours before the maids are 
 up, complains of confinement and a delicate constitution, and is a 
 complete Master Stephen in his way. 
 
 2 In the top-margin of the MS. here are jotted down : Bostoch — 
 unruffled — Paine — Knight — Hope. — Ed, 
 
270 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 them. If you hint some obvious oversight, they know 
 what you are going to say, and were aware of the objection 
 before you uttered it : — " So shall their anticipation 
 prevent your discovery/' By being in the right you gain 
 no advantage : by being in the wrong you are entitled to 
 the benefit of their pity or scorn ! It is sometimes curious 
 to see a select group of our little Gotham getting about a 
 knotty point that will bear a wager, as whether Dr. 
 Johnson's Dictionary was originally published in quarto 
 or folio. The confident assertions, the cautious overtures, 
 the length of time demanded to ascertain the fact, the 
 precise terms of the forfeit, the provisos for getting out of 
 paying it at last, lead to a long and inextricable discussion. 
 George Kirkpatrick was however so convinced in his own 
 mind that the Mourning Bride 1 was written by Shakespear, 
 that he ran headlong into the snare : the bet was decided, 
 and the punch was drunk. He has skill in numbers, and 
 seldom exceeds his seven-pence. — He had a brother once, 
 no Michael Cassio, no great arithmetician. Boger Kirk- 
 patrick was a rare fellow, of the driest humour, and the 
 nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of a picked 
 phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry. I fancy I 
 have some insight into physiognomy myself, but he could 
 often expound to me at a single glance the characters of 
 those of my acquaintance that I had been most at fault 
 about. The account as it was cast up and balanced 
 between us was not always very favourable. How finely, 
 how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the 
 Southampton ! Poor and faint are my sketches compared 
 to his ! It was like looking into a camera obscura — you 
 saw faces shining and speaking — the smoke curled, the 
 lights dazzled, the oak wainscoating took a higher polish 
 — there was old Sarratt, tall and gaunt, with his couplet 
 from Pope and case at Nisi Prius, Mounsey eyeing the 
 ventilator and lying perdu for a moral, and Hume and 
 1 Congreve's play. — Ed. 
 
On Coffee- House Politicians. 271 
 
 Ayrton taking another friendly finishing glass !' These 
 
 and many more windfalls of character he gave us in 
 thought, word, and action. I remember his once describ- 
 ing three different persons together to myself and Martin 
 Burney, viz. the manager of a country theatre, a tragic 
 and a comic performer, till we were ready to tumble on 
 the floor with laughing at the oddity of their humours, 
 and at Koger's extraordinary powers of ventriloquism, 
 bodily and mental ; and Burney said (such was the vivid- 
 ness of the scene) that when he awoke the next morning, 
 he wondered what three amusing characters he had been 
 in company with the evening before. Oh ! it was a rich 
 treat to see him describe Mudford, him of the Courier, 
 the Contemplative Man, who wrote an answer to Ccelebs, 
 coming into a room, folding up his great coat, taking out 
 a little pocket volume, laying it down to think, rubbing 
 the calf of his leg with grave self-complacency, and start- 
 ing out of his reverie when spoken to with an inimitable 
 vapid exclamation of " Eh P Mudford is like a man 
 made of fleecy hosiery : Koger was lank and lean "as is 
 the ribbed sea-sand." Yet he seemed the very man he 
 represented, as fat, pert, and dull as it was possible to be. 
 I have not seen him of late : — 
 
 " For Kais is fled, and our tents are forlorn." 
 
 But I thought of him the other day when the news of the 
 death of Buonaparte came, whom we both loved for 
 precisely contrary reasons, he for putting down the rabble 
 of the people, and I because he had put down the rabble 
 of kings. Perhaps this event may rouse him from his 
 
 1 Instead of this last sentence, the MS. reads : — " H and A 
 
 taking their friendly stroll in the Park of a morning like a couple of 
 old post-horses put out to grass. Him of Cockayne [Lamb ?] who went 
 to Margate by water to save charges, and another of that ilk who went 
 by land for the better display of his person." As to Mr. Hume, sea 
 "Memoirs of William Hazlitt," i., 298.— Ed. 
 
272 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 lurking-place, where lie lies like Beynard, with head 
 declined, in feigned slumbers !" 1 
 
 I had almost forgotten the Southampton Tavern. We 
 for some time took C — ■ — for a lawyer, from a certain 
 arguteness of voice and slender ness of neck, and from his 
 having a quibble and a laugh at himself always ready. 
 
 1 His account of Dr. Whittle was prodigious — of his occult sagacity, 
 of his eyes prominent and wild like a hare's, fugacious of followers, 
 of the arts by which he had left the City to lure the patients that he 
 wanted after him to the West End, of the ounce of tea that he pur- 
 chased by stratagem as an unusual treat to his guest, and of the 
 narrow winding staircase, from the height of which he contemplated 
 in security the imaginary approach of duns. He was a large, plain, 
 fair-faced Moravian preacher, turned physician. He was an honest 
 man, but vain of he knew not what. He wa3 once sitting where 
 Sarratt was playing a game at chess without seeing the board ; and 
 after remaining for some time absorbed in silent wonder, he turned 
 suddenly to me and said, " Do you know, Mr. Hazlitt, that I think 
 there is something I could do ?" " Well, what is that ?" *' Why 
 perhaps you would not guess, but I think I could dance, I'm sure I 
 could ; ay, I could dance like Vestris !" — Sarratt, who was a man of 
 various accomplishments, (among others one of the Fancy,) after- 
 wards bared his arm to convince us of his muscular strength, and 
 Mrs. Sarratt going out of the room with another lady said, " Do you 
 know, Madam, the Doctor is a great jumper !" Moliere could not 
 oat-do this. Never shall I forget his pulling off his coat to eat beef- 
 steaks on equal terms with Martin Burney. Life is short, but full 
 of mirth and pastime, did we not so soon forget what we have 
 laughed at, perhaps that we may not remember what we have cried 
 at ! Sarratt, the chess-player, was an extraordinary man. He had 
 the same tenacious, epileptic faculty in other things that he had at 
 chess, and could no more get any other ideas out of his mind than 
 he could those of the figures on the board. He was a great reader, 
 but had not the least taste. Indeed the violence of his memory 
 tyrannised over and destroyed all power of selection. He could 
 repeat [all] Ossian by heart, without knowing the best passage from 
 the worst; and did not perceive he was tiring you to death by 
 giving an account of the breed, education, and manners of fighting- 
 dogs for hours together. The sense of reality quite superseded the 
 distinction between the pleasurable and the painful. He wag 
 altogether a mechanical philosopher. 
 
On Coffee-House Politicians. 273 
 
 On inquiry, however, he was found to be a patent-medicine 
 seller, and having leisure in his apprenticeship, and a 
 forwardness of parts, he had taken to study Blackstone 
 and the Statutes at Large. On appealing to Mounsey for 
 his opinion on this matter, he observed pithily, " 1 don't 
 like so much law : the gentlemen here seem fond of law, 
 but I have law enough at chambers." One sees a great 
 deal of the humours and tempers of men in a place of this 
 sort, and may almost gather their opinions from their 
 
 characters. There is C , a fellow that is always in 
 
 the wrong — who puts might for right on all occasions — a 
 Tory in grain — who has no one idea but what has been 
 instilled into him by custom and authority 1 — an everlast- 
 ing babbler on the stronger side of the question — 
 querulous and dictatorial, and with a peevish whine in his 
 voice like a beaten schoolboy. He is a great advocate for 
 the Bourbons, and for the National Debt. The former he 
 affirms to be the choice of the French people, and the 
 latter he insists is necessary to the salvation of these 
 kingdoms. This last point a little inoffensive gentleman 
 among us, of a saturnine aspect but simple conceptions, 
 cannot comprehend. " I will tell you, Sir — I will make 
 my propositions so clear that you will be convinced of the 
 truth of my observation in a moment. Consider, Sir, the 
 number of trades that would be thrown out of employ if 
 it were done away with : what would become of the 
 porcelain manufacture without it?" Any stranger to 
 overhear one of these debates would swear that the English 
 as a nation are bad logicians. Mood and figure are 
 unknown to them. They do not argue by the book. 
 They arrive at conclusions through the force of prejudice, 
 and on the principles of contradiction. Mr. C — — 2 having 
 thus triumphed in argument, offers a flower to the notice 
 of the company as a specimen of his flower-garden, a 
 curious exotic, nothing like it to be found in this kingdom, 
 * Profit— MS.— Ed. 2 The printed copy has E.— Ed. 
 
 T 
 
274 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 talks of his carnations, of his country-house, and old 
 English hospitality, but never invites any of his friends 
 to come down and take their Sunday's dinner with him. 
 He is mean and ostentatious at the same time, insolent and 
 servile, does not know whether to treat those he converses 
 with as if they were his porters or his customers : the 
 prentice-boy is not yet wiped out of him, and his imagina- 
 tion still hovers between his mansion at and the 
 
 workhouse. Opposed to him and to every one else, is B., 1 
 a radical reformer and logician, who makes clear work of 
 the taxes and national debt, reconstructs the Government 
 from the first principles of things, shatters the Holy 
 Alliance at a blow, 2 grinds out the future prospects of 
 society with a machine, and is setting out afresh with the 
 commencement of the French Kevolution five-and-twenty 
 years ago, as if on an untried experiment. He minds 
 nothing but the formal agreement of his premises and his 
 conclusions, and does not stick at obstacles in the way, nor 
 consequences in the end. If there was but one side of a 
 question, he would be always in the right. He casts up 
 one column of the account to admiration, but totally 
 forgets and rejects the other. His ideas lie like square 
 pieces of wood in his brain, and may be said to be piled 
 up on a stiff architectural principle, perpendicularly, and 
 at right angles. There is no inflection, no modification, 
 no graceful embellishment, no Corinthian capitals. I 
 never heard him agree to two propositions together, or to 
 more than half a one at a time. His rigid love of truth 
 bends to nothing but his habitual love of disputation. He 
 puts one in mind of one of those long-headed politicians 
 and frequenters of coffee-houses mentioned in Berkeley's 
 Minute Philosopher, who would make nothing of such old- 
 fashioned fellows as Plato and Aristotle. He has the new 
 
 1 The punted copy has K. — Ed. 
 
 a With the whiff of a tobacco-pipe, (like my uncle Toby — only not 
 bo good-natured). — MS.— Ed. 
 
On Coffee-House Politicians. , 275 
 
 light strong upon him, and he knocks other people down 
 with its solid beams. He denies that he has got certain 
 views out of Cobbett, though he allows that there are 
 excellent ideas occasionally to be met with in that writer. 
 It is a pity that this enthusiastic and unqualified regard 
 to truth should be accompanied with an equal exactness of 
 expenditure and unrelenting eye to the main chance. He 
 brings a bunch of radishes with him for cheapness, and 
 gives a band of musicians at the door a penny, observing 
 that he likes their performance better than all the Opera 
 squalling. This brings the severity of his political 
 principles into question, if not into contempt. He would 
 abolish the National Debt from motives of personal 
 economy, and objects to Mr. Canning's pension because it 
 perhaps takes a farthing a year out of his own pocket. A 
 great deal of radical reasoning has its source in this feel- 
 ing. — He bestows no small quantity of his tediousness 
 upon Mounsey, on whose mind all these formulas and dia- 
 grams fall like seed on stony ground : " while the manna 
 is descending," he shakes his ears, and in the intervals 
 of the debate, insinuates an objection, and calls for another 
 half-pint. I have sometimes said to him — " Any one to 
 come in here without knowing you, would take you for the 
 most disputatious man alive, for you are always engaged 
 in an argument with somebody or other." The truth is, 
 that Mounsey is a good-natured, gentlemanly man, who 
 notwithstanding, if appealed to, will not let an absurd or 
 unjust proposition pass without expressing his dissent; 
 and therefore he is a sort of mark for all those (and we 
 have several of that stamp) who like to tease other people V 
 understandings, as wool-combers tease wool. He ik 
 certainly the flower of the flock. He is the oldest 
 frequenter of the place, the latest sitter-up, well-informed, 
 inobtrusive, and that sturdy old English character, a lover 
 of truth and justice. I never knew Mounsey approve of 
 anything unfair or illiberal. There is a candour and 
 
276 On Cqffee-House Politicians. 
 
 uprightness about his mind which can neither be wheedled 
 nor browbeat into unjustifiable complaisance. He looks 
 straight forward as he sits with his glass in his hand, 
 turning neither to the right nor the left, and I will venture 
 to say that he has never had a sinister object in view 
 through life. Mrs. Battle (it is recorded in her Opinions 
 on Whist) could not make up her mind to use the word 
 " Go" Mounsey from long practice has got over this 
 difficulty, and uses it incessantly. It is no matter what 
 adjunct follows in the train of this despisr d monosyllable : 
 — whatever liquid comes after this prefix is welcome. 
 Mounsey, without being the most communicative, is the 
 most conversible man I know. The social principle is 
 inseparable from his person. If he has nothing to say, 
 he drinks your health ; and when you cannot from the 
 rapidity and carelessness of his utterance catch what he 
 says, you assent to it with equal confidence : you know his 
 meaning is good. His favourite phrase is, " We have all 
 of us something of the coxcomb ;" and yet he has none of 
 it himself. Before I had exchanged half a dozen sentences 
 with Mounsey, I found that he knew several of my old 
 acquaintance (an immediate introduction of itself, for the 
 discussing the characters and foibles of common friends 
 is a great sweetener and cement of friendship) — and had 
 been intimate with most of the wits and men about town 
 for the last twenty years. He knew Tobin, Wordsworth, 
 Porson, Wilson, Paley, Erskine, and many others. He 
 speaks of Paley 's pleasantry and unassuming manners, 
 and describes Porson's long potations and long quotations 
 formerly at the Cider Cellar in a very lively way. He has 
 doubts, however, as to that sort of learning. On my 
 saying that I had never seen the Greek Professor but once, 
 at the Library of the London Institution, when he was 
 dressed in an old rusty black coat with cobwebs hanging 
 to the skirts of it, and with a large patch of coarse brown 
 paper covering the whole length of his nose looting for 
 
On Coffee-Souse Politicians, 211 
 
 all the world like a drunken carpenter, and talking to one 
 of the proprietors with an air of suavity, approaching tc 
 condescension, Mounsey could not help expressing some 
 little uneasiness for the credit of classical literature. " 1 
 submit, Sir, whether common sense is not the principa. 
 thing ? What is the advantage of genius and learning ii 
 they are of no use in the conduct of life ?" — Mounsey ie 
 one who loves the hours that usher in the morn, when a 
 select few are left in twos and threes like stars before the 
 break of day, and when the discourse and the ale are " aye 
 growing better and better." Wells, 1 Mounsey, and myseli 
 were all that remained one evening. We had sat together 
 several hours without being tired of one another's com* 
 pany. The conversation turned on the Beauties of Charles 
 the Second's Court at Windsor, and from thence to Count 
 Grammont, their gallant and gay historian. We took our 
 favourite passages in turn — one preferring that of Killi- 
 grew's country-cousin, who having been resolutely refused 
 by Miss Warminster (one of the Maids of Honour), when 
 he found she had been unexpectedly brought to bed, fell 
 on his knees and thanked God that now she might take 
 compassion on him — another insisting that the Chevalier 
 Hamilton's assignation with Lady Chesterfield, when she 
 kept him all night shivering in an old out-house, was 
 better. Jacob Hall's prowess was not forgotten, nor the 
 story of Miss Stuart's garters. I was getting on in my 
 way with that delicate endroit, in which Miss Churchill is 
 first introduced at court and is besieged (as a matter of 
 course) by the Duke of York, who was gallant as well 
 as bigoted on system. His assiduities however soon 
 slackened, owing (it is said) to her having a pale, thin 
 face : till one day, as they were riding out hunting 
 together, she fell from her horse, and was taken up almost 
 lifeless. The whole assembled court were thrown by this 
 event into admiration that such a body should belong to 
 2 See " Memoirs of William Hazlitt," i., 297.— Ed. 
 
278 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 such a face 1 (so transcendant a pattern was she of the 
 female form), and the Duke was fixed. This I contended 
 was striking, affecting, and grand, the sublime of amorous 
 biography, and said I could conceive of nothing finer than 
 the idea of a young person in her situation, who was the 
 object of indifference or scorn from outward appearance, 
 with the proud suppressed consciousness of a Goddess-like 
 symmetry, locked up by "fear and niceness, the hand- 
 maids of all women," from the wonder and worship of 
 mankind. I said so then, and I think so now : my tongue 
 grew wanton in the praise of this passage, and I believe 
 it bore the bell from its competitors. Wells then spoke 
 of Lucius Apuleius and his Golden Ass, which contains 
 the story of Cupid and Psyche, with other matter rich and 
 rare, and went on to the romance of Heliodorus, Thea- 
 genes and Chariclea. This, as he affirmed, opens with a 
 pastoral landscape equal to Claude, and in it the presiding 
 deities of Love and Wine appear in all their pristine 
 strength, youth, and grace, crowned and worshipped as of 
 yore. The night waned, but our glasses brightened, 
 enriched with the pearls of Grecian story. Our cup- 
 bearer slept in a corner of the room, like another 
 Endymion, in the pale ray of an half-extinguished lamp, 
 and starting up at a fresh summons for a farther supply, 
 he swore it was too late, and was inexorable to entreaty. 
 Mounsey sat with his hat on and with a hectic flush in his 
 face while any hope remained, but as soon as we rose to 
 go, he darted out of the room as quick as lightning, 
 determined not to be the last that went. — I said some time 
 after to the waiter, that " Mr. Mounsey was no flincher." — 
 " Oh ! Sir," says he, " you should have known him 
 formerly, when Mr. Hume and Mr. Ayrton used to be 
 here. Now he is quite another man: he seldom stays 
 
 1 "lis ne pouvoient croire qu'un corps de cette beaute fat de 
 quelque chose au visage de Mademoiselle Churchill " — Memoirc* da 
 Grammont, vol. ii., p. 254. 
 
On Coffee-House Politicians, 279 
 
 later than one or two." — " Why, did they keep it up much 
 then ?" — " Oh ! yes ; and used to sing catches and all 
 sorts." — "What, did Mr. Mounsey sing catches?" — u He 
 joined chorus, Sir, and was as merry as the best of them. 
 He was always a pleasant gentleman !" — This Hume and 
 Ayrton succumbed in the fight. Ayrton was a dry 
 Scotchman, Hume a good-natured, hearty Englishman. 1 
 do not mean that the same character applies to all Scotch- 
 men or to all Englishmen. Hume was of the Pipe-Office 
 (not unfitly appointed), and in his cheerfuller cups would 
 delight to speak of a widow and a bowling-green, that ran 
 in his head to the last. 1 " What is the good of talking of 
 those things now?" said the man of utility. "I don't 
 know," replied the other, quaffing another glass of spark- 
 ling ale, and with a lambent fire playing in his eye and 
 round his bald forehead — (he had a head that Sir Joshua 
 would have made something bland and genial of) — <; I 
 don't know, but they were delightful to me at the time, 
 and are still pleasant to talk and think of." — Such a one, 
 in Touchstone's phrase, is a natural philosopher ; and in 
 nine cases out of ten that sort of philosophy is the best ! 
 I could enlarge this sketch, such as it is ; but to prose on 
 to the end of the chapter might prove less profitable than 
 tedious. — 
 
 I like very well to sit in a room where there are 
 people talking on subjects I know nothing of, if I am only 
 allowed to sit silent and as a spectator; but I do not 
 much like to join in the conversation, except with people 
 and on subjects to my taste. Sympathy is necessary to 
 society. To look on, a variety of faces, humours, and 
 opinions is sufficient: to mix with others, agreement as 
 well as variety is indispensable. 2 What makes good 
 
 1 The scene in the " Sentimental Journey " between my uncle 
 Toby and the widow YVadman. — Ed. 
 
 2 In the MS., opposite this sentence is written, by way of memor- 
 andum, " Jacky Taylor."— Mr. Tomhins the penman. — Ed. 
 
280 On Coffee-House Politicians. 
 
 society ? I answer, in one word, real fellowship. Without 
 a similitude of tastes, acquirements, and pursuits (what- 
 ever may be the difference of tempers and characters) 
 there can be no intimacy or even casual intercourse 
 worth the having. What makes the most agreeable 
 party ? A number of people with a number of ideas in 
 common, " yet so as with a difference ;" that is, who can 
 put one or more subjects which they have all studied in 
 the greatest variety of entertaining or useful lights. Or 
 in other words, a succession of good things said with 
 good humour, and addressed to the understandings of 
 those who hear them, make the most desirable conversa- 
 tion. Ladies, lovers, beaux, wits, philosophers, the 
 fashionable or the vulgar, are the fittest company for one 
 another. The discourse at Eandal's is the best for 
 boxers : that at Long's for lords and loungers. I prefer 
 Hunt's conversation almost to any other person's, because, 
 with a familiar range of subjects, he colours with a totally 
 new and sparkling light, reflected from his own character. 
 Elia, the grave and witty, says things not to be surpassed 
 in essence : but the manner is more painful and less a 
 relief to my own thoughts. Some one conceived he could 
 not be an excellent companion, because he was seen 
 walkiug down the side of the Thames, passibus iniquis, 
 after dining at Eichmond. The objection was not valid. 
 I will however admit that the said Elia is the worst 
 company in the world in bad company, if it be granted 
 me that in good company he is nearly l the best that can 
 be. He is one of those. of whom it may be said, Tell me 
 your company, and III tell you your manners. He is the 
 creatHre of sympathy, and makes good whatever opinion 
 you seem to entertain of him. He cannot outgo the 
 apprehensions of the circle; and invariably acts up or 
 down to the point of refinement or vulgarity at which 
 they pitch him. He appears to take a pleasure in 
 1 This qualification was added in proof. — Ed. 
 
On Coffee-House Politicians. 281 
 
 exaggerating the prejudice of strangers against him; a 
 pride in confirming the prepossessions of friends. In 
 whatever scale of intellect he is placed, he is as lively or 
 as stupid as the rest can be for their lives. If you think 
 him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more and more so 
 every minute, a la folie, till he is a wonder gazed [at] by all 
 — set him against a good wit and a ready apprehension, 
 and he brightens more and more — 
 
 " Or like a gate of steel 
 Fronting the sun, receives and renders back 
 Its figure and its heat." 
 
 We had a pleasant party one evening at Procter's. A 
 young literary bookseller 1 who was present went away 
 delighted with the elegance of the repast, and spoke in 
 raptures of a servant in green livery and a patent-lamp. 
 I thought myself that the charm of the evening consisted 
 in some talk about Beaumont and Fletcher and the old 
 poets, in which every one took part or interest, and in a 
 consciousness that we could not pay our host a better 
 compliment than in thus alluding to studies in which he 
 excelled, and in praising authors whom he had imitated 
 with feeling and sweetness ! — I should think it may also 
 be laid down as a rule on this subject, that to constitute 
 good company a certain proportion of hearers and 
 speakers is requisite. Coleridge makes good company for 
 this reason. He immediately establishes the principle of 
 the division of labour in this respect, wherever he comes. 
 He takes his cue as speaker, and the rest of the party 
 theirs as listeners — a " Circean herd " 2 — without any 
 previous arrangement having been gone through. I will 
 just add that there can be no good society without perfect 
 freedom from affectation and constraint. If the unreserved 
 
 1 I thought that one of the Olliers was here intended ; but Mr, 
 Edmund Oilier appears to regard this as improbable. — Ed. 
 
 2 This quotation was added in proof. — Ed. 
 
282 On Coffee-Bouse Politicians. 
 
 communication of feeling or opinion leads to offensive 
 familiarity, it is not well ; but it is no better where the 
 absence of offensive remarks arises only from formality 
 and an assumed respectfulness of manner. 
 
 I do not think there is anything deserving the name of 
 society to be found out of London : and that for the two 
 following reasons. First, there is neighbourhood elsewhere, 
 accidental or unavoidable acquaintance: people are 
 thrown together by chance or grow together like trees ; 
 but you can pick your society nowhere but in London. 
 The very persons that of all others you would wish to 
 associate with in almost every line of life, (or at least of 
 intellectual pursuit,) are to be met with there. It is 
 hard if out of a million of people you cannot find half a 
 dozen to your liking. Individuals may seem lost and hid 
 in the size of the place : but in fact from this very 
 circumstance you are within two or three miles' reach of 
 persons that without it you would be some hundreds apart 
 from. Secondly, London is the only place in which each 
 individual in company is treated according to his value in 
 company, and to that only. In every other part of the 
 kingdom he carries another character about with him, 
 which supersedes the intellectual or social one. It is 
 known in Manchester or Liverpool what every man in the 
 room is worth in land or money ; what are his connections 
 and prospects in life — and this gives a character of 
 servility or arrogance, of mercenariness or impertinence 
 to the whole of provincial intercourse. You laugh not in 
 proportion to a man's wit, but his wealth : you have to 
 consider not what, but whom you contradict. You speak 
 by the pound, and are heard by the rood. In the 
 'metropolis there is neither time nor inclination for these 
 remote calculations. Every man depends on the quantity 
 of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for 
 the reception he meets with in it. A member of parlia- 
 ment soon finds his level as a commoner : the merchant 
 
On Coffee-House Politicians. 283 
 
 and manufacturer cannot bring his goods to market here : 
 the great landed proprietor shrinks from being the lord of 
 acres into a pleasant companion or a dull fellow. When 
 a visitor enters or leaves a room, it is not inquired 
 whether he is rich or poor, whether he lives in a garret 
 or a palace, or comes in his own or a hackney-coach, but 
 whether he has a good expression of countenance, with an 
 unaffected manner, and whether he is a man of under- 
 standing or a blockhead. These are the circumstances 
 by which you make a favourable impression on the 
 company, and by which they estimate you in the abstract. 
 In the country, they consider whether you have a vote at 
 the next election, or a place in your gift ; and measure 
 the capacity of others to instruct or entertain them by the 
 strength of their pockets and their credit with their 
 banker. Personal merit is at a prodigious discount in 
 the provinces. I like the country very well, if I want to 
 enjoy my own company : but London is the only place 
 for equal society, or where a man can say a good thing or 
 express an honest opinion without subjecting himself to 
 being insulted, unless he first lays his purse on the table 
 to back his pretensions to talent or independence of spirit. 
 I speak from experience. 1 
 
 1 When I was young, I spent a good deal of my time at Man- 
 chester and Liverpool ; and I confess I give the preference to the 
 former. There you were oppressed only by the aristocracy of wealth ; 
 in the latter by the aristocracy of wealth and letters by turns. You 
 could not help feeling that some of their great men were authors 
 among merchants and merchants among authors. Their bread was 
 buttered on both sides, and they had you at a disadvantage either 
 way. The Manchester cotton-spinners, on the contrary, set up no 
 pretensions beyond their looms, were hearty good fellows, and took 
 any information or display of ingenuity on other subjects in good 
 part. I remember well being introduced to a distinguished patron 
 of art and rising merit at a little distance from Liverpool, and was 
 received with every mark of attention and politeness ; till, the con- 
 versation turning on Italian literature, our host remarked that there 
 was nothing in the English language corresponding to the severity 
 
284 On the Aristocracy of Letters. 
 
 ESSAY XXI. 
 
 On the Aristocracy of Letters. 
 
 lt Ha ! here's three of us are sophisticated : — off, you lendings." 
 
 There is such a thing as an aristocracy or privileged ordel 
 in letters which has sometimes excited my wonder, and 
 sometimes my spleen. We meet with authors who have 
 never done anything, but who have a vast reputation for 
 what they could have done. Their names stand high, 
 and are in everybody's mouth, but their works are never 
 heard of, or had better remain undiscovered for the sake 
 of their admirers. — Stat nominis umbra — their pretensions 
 are lofty and unlimited, as they have nothing to rest upon, 
 or because it is impossible to confront them with the 
 proofs of their deficiency. If you inquire farther, and 
 insist upon some act of authorship to establish the claims 
 of these Epicurian votaries of the Muses, you find that 
 they had a great reputation at Cambridge, that they were 
 senior wranglers or successful prize-essayists, that they 
 visit at Holland House, and to support that honour, must 
 be supposed of course to occupy the first rank in the 
 world of letters. 1 It is possible, however, that they have 
 
 of the Italian ode — except perhaps Dryden's Alexander's Feast, and 
 Pope's St. Cecilia ! I could no longer contain my desire to display 
 my smattering in criticism, and began to maintain that Pope's Ode 
 was, as it appear 3d to me, far from an example of severity in writing. 
 I soon perceived what I had done, but here am I writing Table-talks 
 in consequence. Alas ! I knew as little of the world then as I do 
 now. I never could understand anything beyond an abstract 
 definition. [Room is left for this note in the MS., but it seems to 
 have been inserted afterwards ; perhaps at press. There is a rough 
 memorandum on the back of the opposite leaf about Walter Scott, 
 Roscoe, &e., but I cannot decipher it. — Ed.] 
 
 1 Lord Holland had made a diary (in the manner of Boswell) oi 
 the conversation held at his house, and read it at the end of a week 
 
On the Aristocracy of Letters. 285 
 
 some manuscript work in hand, which is of too much 
 importance (and the writer has too much at stake in 
 publishing it) hastily to see the light : or perhaps they 
 once had an article in the Edinburgh Keview, which was 
 much admired at the time, and is kept by them ever 
 since as a kind of diploma and unquestionable testimonial 
 of merit. They are not like Grub Street authors, who 
 write for bread, and are paid by the sheet. Like misers 
 who hoard their wealth, they are supposed to be masters 
 of all the wit and sense they do not impart to the public. 
 " Continents have most of what they contain," says a 
 considerable philosopher ; and these persons, it must be 
 confessed, have a prodigious command over themselves in 
 the expenditure of light and learning. The Oriental 
 curse — " that mine enemy had written a book !" — hangs 
 suspended over them. By never committing themselves, 
 they neither give a handle to the malice of the world, nor 
 excite the jealousy of friends ; and keep all the reputation 
 they have got, not by discreetly blotting, but by never 
 writing a line. Some one told Sheridan, who was always 
 busy about some new work and never advancing any 
 farther in it, that he would not write because he was 
 afraid of the Author of the School for Scandal. So these 
 idle pretenders are afraid of undergoing a comparison 
 with themselves in something they have never done, but 
 have had credit for doing. They do not acquire celebrity, 
 
 pro bono publico. Sir James Mackintosh made a considerable figure 
 in it, and a celebrated poet none at all, merely answering Yes and 
 No. With this result he was by no means satisfied, and talked 
 incessantly from that day forward. At the end of the week he 
 asked, with some anxiety and triumph, if his Lordship had continued 
 his diary, expecting himself to shine in " the first row of the rubric." 
 To which his Noble Patron answered in the negative, with an 
 intimation that it had not appeared to him worth while. Our poet 
 was thus thrown again into the background, and Sir James 
 remained master of the field ! 
 
286 On the Aristocracy of Letters. 
 
 they assume it ; and escape detection by never venturing 
 out of their imposing and mysterious incognito. They do 
 not let themselves down by every-day work : for them to 
 appear in print is a work of supererogation as much as in 
 lords and kings, and like gentlemen with a large landed 
 estate, they live on their established character, and do 
 nothing (or as little as possible) to increase or lose it. 
 There is not a more deliberate piece of grave imposture 
 going. I know a person of this description who has been 
 employed many years (by implication) in a translation of 
 Thucydides, of which no one ever saw a word, but it does 
 not answer the purpose of bolstering up a factitious 
 reputation the less on that account. The longer it is 
 delayed and kept sacred from the vulgar gaze, the more 
 it swells into imaginary consequence; the labour and 
 care required for a work of this kind being immense : — 
 and then there are no faults in an unexecuted translation. 
 The only impeccable writers are those that never wrote. 
 Another is an oracle on subjects of taste and classical 
 erudition, because (he says at least) he reads Cicero once 
 a year to keep up the purity of his Latinity. A third 
 makes the indecency pass for the depth of his researches 
 and for a high gusto in virtu, till from his seeing nothing 
 in the finest remains of ancient art, the world by the 
 merest accident find out that there is nothing in him. 
 There is scarcely anything that a grave face with an 
 impenetrable manner will not accomplish, and whoever is 
 weak enough to impose upon himself, will have wit 
 enough to impose upon the public — particularly if he can 
 make it their interest to be deceived by shallow boasting, 
 and contrives not to hurt their self-love by sterling 
 acquirements. Do you suppose that the understood 
 translation of Thucydides costs its supposed author 
 nothing ? A select party of friends and admirers dine 
 with him once a week at a magnificent town mansion, or 
 a more elegant and picturesque retreat in the country. 
 
On the Aristocracy of Letters, 287 
 
 They broach their Horace and their old hock, and some- 
 times allude with a considerable degree of candour to the 
 defects of works which are brought out by contemporary 
 writers — the ephemeral offspring of haste and necessity ! 
 
 Among other things, the learned languages are a readj 
 passport to this sort of unmeaning, unanalysed reputation. 
 They presently lift a man up among the celestial constel- 
 lations, the signs of the Zodiac (as it were) and third 
 heaven of inspiration, from whence he looks down on 
 those who are toiling on in this lower sphere, and earning 
 their bread by the sweat of their brain, at leisure and 
 in scorn. If the graduates in this way condescend to 
 express their thoughts in English, it is understood to be 
 infra dignitatem — such light and unaccustomed essays do 
 not fit the ponderous gravity of their pen — they only draw 
 to advantage and with full justice to themselves in the 
 bow of the ancients. Their native tongue is to them 
 strange, inelegant, unapt, and crude. They "cannot 
 command it to any utterance of harmony. They have 
 not the skill." This is true enough ; but you must not 
 say so, under a heavy penalty — the displeasure of pedants 
 and blockheads. It would be sacrilege against the privi- 
 leged classes, the Aristocracy of Letters. What ! will 
 you affirm that a profound Latin scholar, a perfect Grecian, 
 cannot write a page of common sense or grammar ? Is it 
 not to be presumed, by all the charters of the Universities 
 and the foundations of grammar-schools, that he who can 
 speak a dead language must be a fortiori conversant with 
 his own ? Surely, the greater implies the less. He who 
 knows every science and every art cannot be ignorant of 
 the most familiar forms of speech. Or if this plea is found 
 not to hold water, then our scholastic bungler is said to be 
 above this vulgar trial of skill, "something must be 
 excused to want of practice — but did you not observe the 
 elegance of the Latinity, how well that period would 
 become a classical and studied dress ?" Tims dofccts are 
 
288 On the Aristocracy of Letters. 
 
 " monster'd " into excellences, and they screen their idol, 
 and require you, at your peril, to pay prescriptive homage 
 to false concords and inconsequential criticisms, because 
 the writer of them has the character of the first or second 
 Greek or Latin scholar in the kingdom. If you do not 
 swear to the truth of these spurious credentials, you are 
 ignorant and malicious, a quack and a scribbler — flagranti 
 delicto ! Thus the man who can merely read and construe 
 some old author is of a class superior to any living one, 
 and, by parity of reasoning, to those old authors them- 
 selves : the poet or prose- writer of true and original 
 genius, by the courtesy of custom, " ducks to the learned 
 fool :" or as the author of Hudibras has so well stated the 
 same thing, 
 
 " He that is but able to express 
 
 No sense at all in several languages, 
 
 Will pass for learneder than he that's known 
 
 To speak the strongest reason in his own." 
 
 These preposterous and unfounded claims of mere scholars 
 to precedence in the commonwealth of letters, which they 
 set up so formally themselves and which others so readily 
 bow to, are partly owing to traditional prejudice : — there 
 was a time when learning was the only distinction from 
 ignorance, and when there was no such thing as popular 
 English literature. Again, there is something more 
 palpable and positive in this kind of acquired knowledge, 
 like acquired wealth, which the vulgar easily recognise. 
 That others know the meaning of signs which they are 
 confessedly and altogether ignorant of, is to them both a 
 matter of fact and a subject of endless wonder. The 
 languages are worn like a dress by a man, and distinguish 
 him sooner than his natural figure; and w r e are, from 
 motives of self-love, inclined to give others credit for the 
 ideas they have borrowed or have come into indirect 
 possession of, rather than for those that originally belong 
 to them and are exclusively their own. The merit in 
 
On the Aristocracy of Letters. 289 
 
 tliem and the implied inferiority in ourselves is less. 
 Learning is a kind of external appendage or transferable 
 property — 
 
 " 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and may be any man's " — 
 
 Genius and understanding are a man's self, an integrant 
 part of his personal identity ; and the title to these last, 
 as it is the most difficult to be ascertained, is also the most 
 grudgingly acknowledged. Few persons would pretend 
 to deny that Porson had more Greek than they. It was 
 a question of fact which might be put to the immediate 
 proof, and could not be gainsaid ; but the meanest 
 frequenter of the Cider Cellar or the Hole in the Wall 
 would be inclined, in his own conceit, to dispute the palm 
 of wit or sense with him; and indemnify his self-com- 
 placency for the admiration paid to living learning by 
 significant hints to friends and casual droppers-in, that 
 the greatest men, when you came to know them, were not 
 without their weak sides as well as others. Pedants, I 
 will add here, talk to the vulgar as pedagogues talk to 
 schoolboys, on an understood principle of condescension 
 and superiority, and therefore make little progress in the 
 knowledge of men or things. While they fancy they are 
 accommodating themselves to, or else assuming airs of 
 importance over, inferior capacities, these inferior capa- 
 cities are really laughing at them. There can be no true 
 superiority but what arises out of the presupposed ground 
 of equality : there can be no improvement but from the 
 free communication and comparing of ideas. Kings and 
 nobles, for this reason, receive little benefit from society 
 — where all is submission on one side, and condescension 
 on the other. The mind strikes out truth by collision, as 
 steel strikes fire from the flint ! 
 
 There are whole families who are born classical, and 
 are entered in the heralds' college of reputation by the 
 right of consanguinity. Literature, like nobility, runs in 
 
 v 
 
290 On the Aristocracy of Letters. 
 
 the bloods There is the Burney family. There is no 
 end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits, scholars, 
 novelists, musicians, artists in "numbers numberless." 
 The name is alone a passport to the Temple of Fame. 
 Those who bear it are free of Parnassus by birthright. 
 The founder of it was himself an historian and a musician, 
 but more of a courtier and man of the world than either. 
 The secret of his success may perhaps be discovered in the 
 following passage, where, in alluding to three eminent 
 performers on different instruments, he says : " These three 
 illustrious personages were introduced at the Emperor's 
 court," &c; speaking of them as if they were foreign 
 ambassadors or princes of the blood, and thus magnifying 
 himself and his profession. This overshadowing manner 
 carries nearly everything before it, and mystifies a great 
 many. There is nothing like putting the best face upon 
 things, and leaving others to find out the difference. He 
 who could call three musicians " personages," would him- 
 self play a personage through life, and succeed in his 
 leading object. Sir Joshua Keynolds, remarking on this 
 passage, said : " No one had a greater respect than he had 
 for his profession, but that he should never think of 
 applying to it epithets that were appropriated merely 
 to external rank and distinction." Madame d'Arblay, it 
 must be owned, had cleverness enough to stock a whole 
 family, and to set up her cousin-germans, male and female, 
 for wits and virtuosos to the third and fourth generation. 
 The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep up 
 the name. 
 
 The most celebrated author in modern times has written 
 without a name, and has been knighted for anonymous 
 productions. Lord Byron complains that Horace Walpole 
 was not properly appreciated, "first, because he was a 
 gentleman, and secondly, because he was a nobleman." 
 His Lordship stands in one, at least, of the predicaments 
 here mentioned, and yet he has had justice, or somewhat 
 
Chi the Aristocracy of Letters. 291 
 
 more, done him. He towers above his fellows by all the 
 height of the peerage. If the poet lends a grace to the 
 nobleman, the nobleman pays it back to the poet with 
 interest. What a fine addition is ten thousand a year and 
 a title to the flaunting pretensions of a modern rhapsodist ! 
 His name so accompanied becomes the mouth well : it is 
 repeated thousands of times, instead of hundreds, because 
 the reader in being familiar with the Poet's works seems 
 to claim acquaintance with the Lord. 
 
 " Let but a lord once own the happy lines : 
 How the wit brightens, and the style refines !" 
 
 He smiles at the high-flown praise or petty cavils of little 
 men. Does he make a slip in decorum, which Milton 
 declares to be the principal thing ? His proud crest and 
 armorial bearings support him : — no bend-sinister slurs his 
 poetical escutcheon ! Is he dull, or does he put off some 
 trashy production on the public ? It is not charged to his 
 account, as a deficiency which he must make good at the 
 peril of his admirers. His Lordship is not answerable for 
 the negligence or extravagances of his Muse. He " bears 
 a charmed reputation, which must not yield " like one of 
 vulgar birth. The Noble Bard is for this reason scarcely 
 vulnerable to the critics. The double barrier of his 
 pretensions baffles their puny, timid efforts. Strip off 
 some of his* tarnished laurels, and the coronet appears 
 glittering beneath : restore them, and it still shines 
 through with keener lustre. In fact, his Lordship's blaze 
 of reputation culminates from his rank and place in 
 society. He sustains two lofty and imposing characters ; 
 and in order to simplify the process of our admiration, 
 and " leave no rubs or botches in the way," we equalise 
 his pretensions, and take it for granted that he must be as 
 superior to other men in genius as he is in birth. Or, to 
 give a more familiar solution of the enigma, the Poet and 
 the Peer agree to honour each other's acceptances on the 
 
292 On the Aristocracy of Letters. 
 
 bank of Fame, and sometimes cozen the town to some tune 
 between them. Beally, however, and with all his privi- 
 leges, Lord Byron might as well not have written that 
 strange letter about Pope. I could not afford it, poor as 
 I am. Why does he pronounce, ex cathedra and robed, 
 that Cowper is no poet ? Cowper was a gentleman and of 
 noble family like his critic. He was a teacher of morality 
 as well as a describer of nature, which is more than his 
 Lordship is. His John Gilpin will last as long as Beppo, 
 and his verses to Mary are not less touching than the 
 Farewell. If I had ventured upon such an assertion as 
 this, it would have been worse for me than finding out a 
 borrowed line in the Pleasures of Hope. 1 
 
 There is not a more helpless or more despised animal than 
 a mere author, without any extrinsic advantages of birth, 
 breeding, or fortune to set him off. The real ore of 
 talents or learning must be stamped" before it will pass 
 current. To be at all looked upon as an author, a man 
 must be something more or less than an author — a rich 
 merchant, a banker, a lord, or a ploughman. He is 
 admired for something foreign to himself, that acts as 
 a bribe to the servility or a set-off to the envy of the 
 community. " What should such fellows as we do, crawl- 
 ing betwixt heaven and earth ;" — " coining our hearts for 
 drachmas ;" now scorched in the sun, now shivering in the 
 breeze, now coming out in our newest gloss and best 
 attire, like swallows in the spring, now " sent back like 
 hollowmas or shortest day ?" The best wits, like the 
 handsomest faces upon the town, lead a harassing, pre- 
 carious life — are taken up for the bud and promise of 
 talent, which they no sooner fulfil than they are thrown 
 aside like an old fashion — are caressed without reason, 
 and insulted with impunity — are subject to all the caprice, 
 
 1 This was the line about angels' visits in Campbell's poem ; the 
 tatter's well-known animosity towards the author of " Table-talk '* 
 has been said to have arisen from this cause. — Ed. 
 
On the Aristocracy of Letters. 293 
 
 the malice, and fulsome advances of that great keeper, the 
 Public — and in the end come to no good, like all those 
 who lavish their favours on mankind at large and look to 
 the gratitude of the world for their reward. Instead of 
 this set of Grub Street authors, the mere canaille of letter 
 this corporation of Mendicity, this ragged regiment of 
 genius suing at the corners of streets in forma 'pauperis, 
 give me the gentleman and scholar, with a good house 
 over his head and a handsome table " with wine of Attic 
 taste " to ask his friends to, and where want and sorrow 
 never come. Fill up the sparkling bowl, heap high the 
 dessert with roses crowned, bring out the hot-pressed 
 poem, the vellum manuscripts, the medals, the portfolios, 
 the intaglios — this is the true model of the life of a man 
 of taste and virtu — the possessors, not the inventors of 
 these things, are the true benefactors of mankind and 
 ornaments of letters. Look in, and there, amidst silver 
 services and shining chandeliers, you will see the man of 
 genius at his proper post, picking his teeth and mincing 
 an opinion, sheltered by rank, bowing to wealth — a poet 
 framed, glazed, and hung in a striking light : not a 
 straggling weed, torn and trampled on ; not a poor Kit- 
 run-the-street, but a powered beau, a sycophant plant, an 
 exotic reared in a glass case, hermetically sealed, 
 
 "Free from the Sirian star and the dread thunder-stroke" — 
 
 whose mealy coat no moth can corrupt nor blight can 
 wither. The poet Keats had not this sort of protection 
 for his person — he lay bare to weather — the serpent stung 
 him, and the poison-tree dropped upon this little western 
 flower : — w T hen the mercenary servile crew approached 
 him, he had no pedigree to show them, no rent-roll to hold 
 out in reversion for their praise : he was not in any great 
 man's train, nor the butt and puppet of a lord — he could 
 only offer them " the fairest flowers of the season, carna- 
 tions and streaked gilliflowers," — " rue for remembrance 
 
294 On the Aristocracy of Letters. 
 
 and pansies for thoughts " — they recked not of his gift, 
 but tore him with hideous shouts and laughter, 
 
 " Nor could the Muse protect her son I" 
 
 Unless an author has an establishment of his own, or 
 is entered on that of some other person, he will hardly 
 be allowed to write English or to spell his own name. 
 To be well spoken of, he must enlist under some standard ; 
 he must belong to some coterie. He must get the esprit 
 de corps on his side : he must have literary bail in readi- 
 ness. Thus they prop up one another's ricketty heads 
 at Murray's shop, and a spurious reputation, like false 
 argument, runs in a circle. Croker affirms that Gifford 
 is sprightly, and Gifford that Croker is genteel ; Disraeli 
 that Jacob 1 is wise, and Jacob that Disraeli is good- 
 natured. A Member of Parliament must be answerable 
 that you are not dangerous or dull before you can be of 
 the entree. You must commence toad-eater to have your 
 observations attended to ; if you are independent, uncon- 
 nected, you will be regarded as a poor creature. Your 
 opinion is honest, you will say : then ten to one, it is not 
 profitable. It is at any rate your own. So much the 
 worse ; for then it is not the world's. Tom Hill is a 
 very tolerable barometer in this respect. He knows 
 nothing, hears everything, and repeats just what he hears ; 
 so that you may guess pretty well from this round-faced 
 echo what is said by others ! Almost everything goes by 
 presumption and appearances. " Did you not think Mr. 
 
 B 's language very elegant ?" — I thought he bowed 
 
 very low. " Did you not think him remarkably well- 
 behaved ?" — He was unexceptionably dressed. " But were 
 
 not Mr. C 's manners quite insinuating?" — He said 
 
 nothing. " You will at least allow his friend to be a well- 
 informed man ?" — He talked upon all subjects alike. 
 
 1 The now long-forgotten author of "Travels in the South of 
 Spain, 1811," and other works. — Ed. 
 
On the Aristocracy of Letters. 295 
 
 Such would be a prett y faithful interpretation of the tone 
 of what is called good society. The surface is everything ; 
 we do not pierce to the core. The setting is more valu- 
 able than the jewel. Is it not so in other things as well 
 as letters ? Is not an E.A. by the supposition a greater 
 man in his profession than any one who is not so blazoned ? 
 Compared with that unrivalled list, Eaphael had been 
 illegitimate, Claude not classical, and Michael Angelo 
 admitted by special favour. "What is a physician without 
 a diploma ? An alderman without being knighted ? An 
 actor whose name does not appear in great letters ? All 
 others are counterfeits — men " of no mark or likelihood." 
 This was what made the Jackalls of the North so eager 
 to prove that I had been turned out of the Edinburgh 
 Eeview. It was not the merit of the articles which 
 excited their spleen — but their being there. Of the 
 style they knew nothing; for the thought they cared 
 nothing : all that they knew was that I wrote in that power- 
 ful journal, and therefore they asserted that I did not ! 
 
 We find a class of persons who labour under an obvious 
 natural inaptitude for whatever they aspire to. Their 
 manner of setting about it is a virtual disqualification. 
 The simple affirmation — " What this man has said, I will 
 do," — is not always considered as the proper test of 
 capacity. On the contrary, there are people whose bare 
 pretensions are as good or better than the actual per- 
 formance of others. What I myself have done, for 
 instance, I never find admitted as proof of what I shall 
 be able to do : whereas I observe others who bring as 
 proof of their competence to any task (and are taken at 
 their word) what they have never done, and who gravely 
 assure those w r ho are inclined to trust them that their 
 talents are exactly fitted for some post because they are 
 just the reverse of what they have ever shown them to 
 be. One man has the air of an Editor as much as another 
 has that of a butler or porter in a gentleman's family 
 
296 On ilxe Aristocracy of Letters. 
 
 • is the model of this character, with a prodigious 
 
 look of business, an air of suspicion which passes foi 
 sagacity, and an air of deliberation which passes for judg- 
 ment. If his own talents are no ways prominent, it is 
 inferred he will be more impartial and in earnest in 
 making use of those of others. There is Britton, 1 the 
 responsible conductor of several works of taste and erudi- 
 tion, yet (God knows) without an idea in his head relating 
 to any one of them. He is learned by proxy, and suc- 
 cessful from sheer imbecility. If he were to get the 
 smallest smattering of the departments which are under 
 his control, he would betray himself from his desire to 
 shine ; but as it is, he leaves others to do all the drudgery 
 for him. He signs his name in the title-page or at the 
 bottom of a vignette, and nobody suspects any mistake. 
 This contractor for useful and ornamental literature once 
 offered me two guineas for a "Life and Character of 
 Shakespear," with an admission to his conversationis. I 
 went once. There was a collection of learned lumber, of 
 antiquaries, lexicographers, and other " illustrious obscure," 
 and I had given up the day for lost, when in dropped 
 Jack Taylor of the " Sun " — (Who would dare to deny that 
 he was "the Sun of our table ?") — and I had nothing now 
 to do but hear and laugh. Mr. Taylor knows most of the 
 good things that have been said in the metropolis for the 
 last thirty years, and is in particular an excellent retailer 
 of the humours and extravagances of his old friend Peter 
 Pindar. He had recounted a series of them, each rising 
 above the other in a sort of magnificent burlesque and 
 want of literal preciseness, to a medley of laughing and 
 sour faces, when on his proceeding to state a joke of a 
 
 practical nature by the said Peter, a Mr. (I forget 
 
 the name) objected to the moral of the story, and to the 
 whole texture of Mr. Taylor's facetiae, — upon which our 
 
 1 The co-editor of the last " History of Surrey," and a voluminoua 
 writer and compiler. — Ed. 
 
On Criticism. 297 
 
 host, who had till now supposed that all was going on 
 swimmingly, thought it time to interfere and give a turn 
 to the conversation by saying— " Why yes, Gentlemen, 
 what w r e have hitherto heard fall from the lips of our 
 friend has been no doubt entertaining and highly agree- 
 able in its way ; but perhaps we have had enough of 
 what is altogether delightful and pleasant and light and 
 laughable in conduct. Suppose, therefore, we were to 
 shift the subject, and talk of what is serious and moral 
 and industrious and laudable in character — Let us talk 
 of Mr. Tomkins, the Penman!" — This staggered the 
 gravest of us, broke up our dinner-party, and we went up- 
 stairs to tea. So much for the didactic vein of one of our 
 principal guides in the embellished walks of modern 
 taste, and master manufacturers of letters. He had found 
 that gravity had been a never-failing resource when taken 
 at a pinch — for once the joke miscarried — and Mr. 
 Tomkins the Penman figures to this day nowhere but in 
 Sir Joshua's picture of him ! 
 
 To complete the natural Aristocracy of Letters, we 
 only want a Koyal Society of Authors ! 
 
 ESSAY XXII. 
 
 On Criticism. 
 
 Criticism is an art that undergoes a great variety of 
 changes, and aims at different objects at different times. 
 
 At first, it is generally satisfied to give an opinion 
 whether a work is good or bad, and to quote a passage or 
 two in support of this opinion : afterwards, it is bound 
 to assign the reasons of its decision and to analyse sup- 
 posed beauties or defects with microscopic minuteness. 
 A critic does nothing now-a-days who does not try to 
 torture the most obvious expression into a thousand 
 
298 On Criticism. 
 
 meanings, and enter into a circuitous explanation of all 
 that can be urged for or against its being in tbe best or 
 worst style possible. His object indeed is not to do 
 justice to his author, whom he treats with very little 
 ceremony, but to do himself homage, and to show his 
 acquaintance with all the topics and resources of criticism. 
 If he recurs to the stipulated subject in the end, it is not 
 till after he has exhausted his budget of general know- 
 ledge; and he establishes his own claims first in an 
 elaborate inaugural dissertation de omni scibile et quibusdam 
 aliis, before he deigns to bring forward the pretensions 
 of the original candidate for praise, who is only the second 
 figure in the piece. We may sometimes see articles of 
 this sort, in which no allusion whatever is made to the 
 work under sentence of death, after the first announce- 
 ment of the title-page ; and I apprehend it would be a 
 clear improvement on this species of nominal criticism 
 to give stated periodical accounts of works that had never 
 appeared at all, which would save the hapless author the 
 mortification of writing, and his reviewer the trouble of 
 reading them. If the real author is made of so little 
 account by the modern critic, he is scarcely more an object 
 of regard to the modern reader ; and it must be confessed 
 that after a dozen close-packed pages of subtle meta- 
 physical distinction or solemn didactic declamation, in 
 which the disembodied principles of all arts and sciences 
 float before the imagination in undefined profusion, the 
 eye turns with impatience and indifference to the imper- 
 fect embryo specimens of them, and the hopeless attempts 
 to realize this splendid jargon in one poor work by one 
 poor author, which is given up to summary execution with 
 as little justice as pity. "As when a well-graced actor 
 leaves the stage, men's eyes are idly bent on him that 
 enters next " — so it is here. Whether this state of the 
 press is not a serious abuse and a violent encroachment 
 in the republic of letters, is more than I shall pretend to 
 
On Criticism. 299 
 
 determine. The truth is, that in the quantity of works 
 that issue from the press, it is utterly impossible they 
 should all be read by all sorts of people. There must be 
 tasters for the public, who must have a discretionary power 
 vested in them, for which it is difficult to make them 
 properly accountable. Authors in proportion to their 
 numbers become not formidable, but despicable. They 
 would not be heard of or severed from the crowd without 
 the critic's aid, and all complaints of ill-treatment are 
 vain. He considers them as pensioners on his bounty 
 for any pittance or praise, and in general sets them up as 
 butts for his wit and spleen, or uses them as a stalking- 
 horse to convey his own favourite notions and opinions, 
 which he can do by this means without the possibility 
 of censure or appeal. He looks upon his literary protege 
 (much as Peter Pounce looked upon Parson Adams) as 
 a kind of humble companion or unnecessary interloper 
 in the vehicle of fame, whom he has taken up purely 
 to oblige him, and whom he may treat with neglect or 
 insult, or set down in the common foot-path, whenever it 
 suits his humour or convenience. He naturally grows 
 arbitrary with the exercise of power. He by degrees wants 
 to have a clear stage to himself, and would be thought to 
 have purchased a monopoly of wit, learning, and wisdom — 
 
 *' Assumes the rod, affects the God, 
 And seems to shake the spheres." 
 
 Besides, something of this overbearing manner goes a 
 great way with the public. They cannot exactly tell 
 whether you are right or wrong ; and if you state your 
 difficulties or pay much deference to the sentiments of 
 others, they will think you a very silly fellow or a mere 
 pretender. A sweeping, unqualified assertion ends all 
 controversy, and sets opinion at rest. A sharp, senten- 
 tious, cavalier, dogmatical tone is therefore necessary, 
 even in self-defence, to the office of a reviewer. If you 
 do not deliver your oracles without hesitation, how are 
 
300 On Criticism. 
 
 the world to receive them on trust and without inquiry ? 
 People read to have something to talk about, and "to 
 seem to know that which they do not. ,, Consequently, 
 there cannot be too much dialectics and debateable matter, 
 too much pomp and paradox in a review. To elevate and sur- 
 prise is the great rule for producing a dramatic or critical 
 effect. The more you startle the reader, the more he 
 will be able to startle others with a succession of smart 
 intellectual shocks. The most admired of our Ee views 
 is saturated with this sort of electrical matter, which is 
 regularly played off so as to produce a good deal of 
 astonishment and a strong sensation in the public mind, 
 The intrinsic merits of an author are a question of very 
 subordinate consideration to the keeping up the character 
 of the work and supplying the town with a sufficient 
 number of grave or brilliant topics for the consumption 
 of the next three months ! 
 
 This decided and paramount tone in criticism is the 
 growth of the present century, and was not at all the 
 fashion in that calm peaceable period when the Monthly 
 Keview bore " sole sovereign sway and master dom " over 
 all literary productions. Though nothing can be said 
 against the respectability or usefulness of that publication 
 during its long and almost exclusive enjoyment of the 
 public favour, yet the style of criticism adopted in it is 
 such as to appear slight and unsatisfactory to a modern 
 reader. The writers, instead of " outdoing termagant or 
 out-Heroding Herod," were somewhat precise and prudish, 
 gentle almost to a fault, full of candour and modesty, 
 
 " And of their port as meek as is a maid !" l 
 
 There was none of that Drawcansir work going on then 
 that there is now ; no scalping of authors, no hacking 
 and hewing of their Lives and Opinions, except that they 
 
 1 A. Mr. Rose and the Rev. Dr. Kippis were for many years its 
 principal support. Mrs. Rose (I have heard my father say) con- 
 
On Criticism, SOI 
 
 used those of Tristram Shandy, gent, rather scurvily ; 
 which was to be expected. All, however, had a show 
 of courtesy and good manners. The satire was covert 
 and artfully insinuated ; the praise was short and sweet. 
 We meet with no oracular theories ; no profound analysis 
 of principles ; no unsparing exposure of the least dis- 
 cernible deviation from them. It was deemed sufficient 
 to recommend the work in general terms, " This is an 
 agreeable volume,'' or M This is a work of great learning 
 and research," to set forth the title and table of contents, 
 and proceed without farther preface to some appropriate 
 extracts, for the most part concurring in opinion with the 
 author's text, but now and then interposing an objection 
 to maintain appearances and assert the jurisdiction of 
 the court. This cursory manner of hinting approbation 
 or dissent would make but a lame figure at present. We 
 must have not only an announcement that "this is an 
 agreeable or able work ;" but we must have it explained at 
 full length, and so as to silence all cavillers, in what the 
 agreeableness or ability of the work consists : the author 
 must be reduced to a class, all the living or defunct 
 examples of which must be characteristically and pointedly 
 differenced from one another ; the value of this class of 
 writing must be developed and ascertained in comparison 
 with others ; the principles of taste, the elements of our 
 sensations, the structure of the human faculties, all must 
 undergo a strict scrutiny and revision. The modern or 
 metaphysical system of criticism, in short, supposes the 
 question, Why ? to be repeated at the end of every deci- 
 sion ; and the answer gives birth to interminable argu- 
 
 tributed the Monthly Catalogue. There is sometimes a certain 
 tartness and the woman's tongue in it. It is said of Gray's Elegy — 
 " This little poem, however humble its pretensions, is not without 
 elegance or merit." The characters of prophet and critic are not 
 always united. 
 
302 On Criticism. 
 
 ments and discussion. The former laconic mode was 
 well adapted to guide those who merely wanted to be 
 informed of the character and subject of a work in order 
 to read it : the present is more useful to those whose 
 object is less to read the work than to dispute upon its 
 merits, and go into company clad in the whole defensive 
 and offensive armour of criticism. 
 
 Neither are we less removed at present from the dry 
 and meagre mode of dissecting the skeletons of works, 
 instead of transfusing their living principles, which pre- 
 vailed in Dryden's Prefaces, 1 and in the criticisms written 
 on the model of the French school about a century ago. 
 A genuine criticism should, as I take it, reflect the colours, 
 the light and shade, the soul and body of a work : — here 
 we have nothing but its superficial plan and elevation, as 
 if a poem were a piece of formal architecture. We are 
 told something of the plot or fable, of the moral, and of 
 the observance or violation of the three unities of time, 
 place, and action ; and perhaps a word or two is added on 
 the dignity of the persons or the baldness of the style : 
 but we no more know, after reading one of these com- 
 placent tirades, what the essence of the work is, what 
 passion has been touched, or how skilfully, what tone and 
 movement the author's mind imparts to his subject or 
 receives from it, than if we had been reading a homily or 
 a gazette. That is, we are left quite in the dark as to the 
 feelings of pleasure or pain to be derived from the genius 
 of the performance or the manner in which it appeals to 
 the imagination : we know to a nicety how it squares with 
 the threadbare rules of composition, not in the least how 
 it affects the principles of taste. We know everything 
 about the work, and nothing of it. The critic takes good 
 care not to baulk the reader's fancy by anticipating the 
 
 1 There are some splendid exceptions to this censure. His com- 
 parison between Ovid and Virgil, and his character of Shakespear 
 are masterpieces of their kind. 
 
On Criticism. 303 
 
 effect which the author has aimed at producing. To be 
 sure, the works so handled were often worthy of their 
 commentators : they had the form of imagination without 
 the life or power ; and when any one had gone regularly 
 through the number of acts into which they were divided, 
 the measure in which they were written, or the story on 
 which they were founded, there was little else to be said 
 about them. It is curious to observe the effect which the 
 Paradise Lost had on this class of critics, like throwing a 
 tub to a whale : they could make nothing of it. " It was 
 out of all plumb — not one of the angles at the four corners 
 was a right angle !" They did not seek for, nor would 
 they much relish the marrow of poetry it contained. Like 
 polemics in religion, they had discarded the essentials of 
 fine writing for the outward form and points of con- 
 troversy. They were at issue with Genius and Nature by 
 what route and in what garb they should enter the Temple 
 of the Muses. Accordingly we find that Dryden had no 
 other way of satisfying himself of the pretensions of 
 Milton in the epic style but by translating his anomalous 
 work into rhyme and dramatic dialogue. 1 So there are 
 connoisseurs who give you the subject, the grouping, the 
 perspective, and all the mechanical circumstances of a 
 picture ; but they never say a word about the expression. 
 The reason is, they see the former, but not the latter. 
 
 1 We have critics in the present day [1821 J who cannot tell what to 
 make of the tragic writers of Queen Elizabeth's age (except Shake- 
 spear, who passes by prescriptive right), and are extremely puzzled 
 to reduce the efforts of their " great and irregular " power to the 
 standard of their own slight and showy common-places. The truth 
 is, they had better give up the attempt to reconcile such contra- 
 dictions as an artificial taste and natural genius ; and repose on the 
 admiration of verses which derive their odour from the scent of rose- 
 leaves inserted between the pages, and their polish from the smooth- 
 ness of the paper on which they are printed. They, and such 
 writers as Deckar, and Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford and 
 Marlowe, move in different orbits of the human intellect, and need 
 never jostle. 
 
304 On Criticism. 
 
 There are persons, however, who cannot employ themselves 
 better than in taking an inventory of works of art (they 
 want a faculty for higher studies), as there are works of 
 art, so called, which seem to have been composed expressly 
 with an eye to such a class of connoisseurs. In them are 
 to be found no recondite nameless beauties thrown away 
 upon the stupid vulgar gaze ; no " graces snatched beyond 
 the reach of art ;" nothing but what the merest pretender 
 may note down in good set terms in his commonplace 
 book, just as it is before him. Place one of these half- 
 Informed, imperfectly-organised spectators before a tall 
 canvas with groups on groups of figures, of the size of life, 
 and engaged in a complicated action, of which they know 
 the name and all the particulars, and there are no bounds 
 to their burst of involuntary enthusiasm. They mount on 
 the stilts of the subject and ascend the highest Heaven of 
 Invention, from whence they see sights and hear revela- 
 tions which they communicate with all the fervour of 
 plenary explanation to those who may be disposed to 
 attend to their raptures. They float with wings expanded 
 in lofty circles, they stalk over the canvas at large strides, 
 never condescending to pause at anything of less magnitude 
 than a group or a colossal figure. The face forms no 
 part of their collective inquiries ; or so that it occupies 
 only a sixth or an eighth proportion to the whole body, 
 all is according to the received rules of composition. 
 Point to a divine portrait of Titian, to an angelic head 
 of Guido, close by — they see and heed it not. What are 
 the " looks commercing with the skies," the soul speaking 
 in the face, to them ? It asks another and an inner sense 
 to comprehend them ; but for the trigonometry of paint- 
 ing, nature has constituted them indifferently well. They 
 take a stand on the distinction between portrait and 
 history, and there they are spell-bound. Tell them that 
 there can be no fine history without portraiture, that the 
 painter must proceed from that ground to the one above 
 
On Criticism. 305 
 
 it, and that a hundred bad heads cannot make one good 
 historical picture, and they will not believe you, though 
 the thing is obvious to any gross capacity. Their ideas 
 always fly to the circumference, and never fix at the centre. 
 Art must be on a grand scale ; according to them, the 
 whole is greater than a part, and the greater necessarily 
 implies the less. The outline is in this view of the 
 matter the same thing as the filling-up, and " the limbs 
 and flourishes of a discourse " the substance. Again, the 
 same persons make an absolute distinction, without know- 
 ing why, between high and low subjects. Say that you 
 would as soon have Murillo's " Two Beggar Boys " at the 
 Dulwich Gallery as almost any picture in the world, that 
 is, that it would be one you would choose out of ten (had 
 you the choice), and they reiterate upon you, that surely 
 a low subject cannot be of equal value with a high one. 
 It is in vain that you turn to the picture : they keep to 
 the class. They have eyes, but see not ; and upon their 
 principles of refined taste, would be just as good judges of 
 the merit of the picture without seeing it as with that 
 supposed advantage. They know what the subject is from 
 the catalogue ! — Yet it is not true, as Lord Byron asserts, 
 that execution is everything, and the class or subject 
 nothing. The highest subjects, equally well executed 
 (which, however, rarely happens), are the best. But the 
 power of execution, the manner of seeing nature, is one 
 thing, and may be so superlative (if you are only able to 
 judge of it) as to countervail every disadvantage of subject. 
 Baphael's storks in the " Miraculous Draught of Fishes," 
 exulting in the event, are finer than the head of Christ 
 would have been in almost any other hands. The cant of 
 criticism is on the other side of the question ; because 
 execution depends on various degrees of power in the 
 artist, and a knowledge of it on various degrees of feeling 
 and discrimination in you : but to commence artist or con- 
 noisseur in the grand style at once, without any distino- 
 
 x 
 
306 On Criticism. 
 
 tion of qualifications whatever, it is only necessary for 
 the first to choose his subject, and for the last to pin his 
 faith on the sublimity of the performance, for both to look 
 down with ineffable contempt on the painters and admirers 
 of subjects of low life. I remember a young Scotchman 
 once trying to prove to me that Mrs. Dickons was a 
 superior singer to Miss Stephens, because the former 
 excelled in sacred music, and the latter $id not. At that 
 rate, that is, if it is the singing sacred music that gives 
 the preference, Miss Stephens would only have to sing 
 sacred music to surpass herself and vie with her pretended 
 rival ; for this theory implies that all sacred music is 
 equally good, and therefore better than any other. I 
 grant that Madame Catalani's singing of sacred music is 
 superior to Miss Stephens's ballad-strains, because her 
 singing is better altogether, and an ocean of sound more 
 wonderful than a simple stream of dulcet harmonies. In 
 singing the last verse of " God save the King * not long 
 ago, her voice towered above the whole confused noise of 
 the orchestra, like an eagle piercing the clouds, and poured 
 * such sweet thunder " through the ear, as excited equal 
 astonishment and rapture ! 
 
 Some kinds of criticism are as much too insipid as 
 others are too pragmatical. It is not easy to combine 
 point with solidity, spirit with moderation and candour. 
 Many persons see nothing but beauties in a work, others 
 nothing but defects. Those cloy you with sweets, and 
 are " the very milk of human kindness," flowing on in a 
 stream of luscious panegyrics; these take delight in 
 poisoning the sources of your satisfaction, and putting 
 you out of conceit with nearly every author that comes in 
 their way. The first are frequently actuated by personal 
 friendship, the last by all the virulence of party spirit. 
 Under the latter head would fall what may be termed 
 political criticism. The basis of this style of writing is a 
 caput mortuum of impotent spite and dulness, till it is 
 
On Criticism. 307 
 
 varnished over with the slime of servility, and thrown 
 into a state of unnatural activity by the venom of the most 
 rancorous bigotry. The eminent professors in this 
 grovelling department are at first merely out of sorts with 
 themselves, and vent their spleen in little interjections and 
 contortions of phrase : — cry Pish at a lucky hit, and Hem 
 at a fault, are smart on personal defects, and sneer at 
 "Beauty out of favour and on crutches" — are thrown 
 into an ague-fit by hearing the name of a rival, start back 
 with horror at any approach to their morbid pretensions, 
 like Justice Woodcock with his gouty limbs — rifle the 
 flowers of the Delia Cruscan school, and give you in their 
 stead, as models of a pleasing pastoral style, Verses upon 
 Anna — which you may see in the notes to the Baviad and 
 Maeviad. All this is like the fable of the " Kitten and the 
 Leaves." But when they get their brass collar on and 
 shake their bells of office, they set up their backs like the 
 Great Cat Kodilardus, and pounce upon men and things. 
 Woe to any little heedless reptile of an author that 
 ventures across their path without a safe-conduct from the 
 Board of Control. They snap him up at a mouthful, and 
 sit licking their lips, stroking their whiskers, and rattling 
 their bells over the imaginary fragments of their devoted 
 prey, to the alarm and astonishment of the whole breed of 
 literary, philosophical, and revolutionary vermin, that 
 were naturalised in this country by a Prince of Orange 
 and an Elector of Hanover a hundred years ago. 1 
 When one of these pampered, sleek, " demure-looking, 
 spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed " critics makes his 
 King and Country parties to this sort of sport literary, 
 you have not much chance of escaping out of his clutches 
 in a whole skin. Treachery becomes a principle with 
 them, and mischief a conscience, that is, a livelihood. 
 
 1 The intelligent reader will be pleased to understand, that there 
 is here a tacit allusion to Squire Westerns significant phrase fd 
 Hanover Rats. 
 
308 On Criticism. 
 
 They not only damn the work in the lump, but vilify and 
 traduce the author, and substitute lying abuse and sheer 
 malignity for sense and satire. To have written a popular 
 work is as much as a man's character is worth, and some- 
 times his life, if he does not happen to be on the right side 
 of the question. The way in which they set about 
 stultifying an adversary is not to accuse you of faults, or 
 to exaggerate those which you may really have, but they 
 deny that you have any merits at all, least of all, those 
 that the world have given you credit for ; bless them- 
 selves from understanding a single sentence in a whole 
 volume ; and unless you are ready to subscribe to all their 
 articles of peace, will not allow you to be qualified to 
 write your own name. It is not a question of literary 
 discussion, but of political proscription. It is a mark of 
 loyalty and patriotism to extend no quarter to those of 
 the opposite party. Instead of replying to your argu- 
 ments, they call you names, put words and opinions into 
 your mouth which you have never uttered, and consider 
 it a species of misprision of treason to admit that a Whig 
 author knows anything of common sense or English. The 
 only chance of putting a stop to this unfair mode of dealing 
 would perhaps be to make a few reprisals by way of 
 example. The Court-party boast some writers who have a 
 reputation to lose, and who would not like to have their 
 names dragged through the kennel of dirty abuse and 
 vulgar obloquy. What silenced the masked battery of 
 Blackwood's Magazine was the implication of the name of 
 Sir Walter Scott in some remarks upon it — (an honour of 
 which it seems that extraordinary person was not ambi- 
 tious) — to be " pilloried on infamy's high stage " was a 
 distinction and an amusement to the other gentlemen con- 
 cerned in that praiseworthy publication. I was complain- 
 ing not long ago of this prostitution of literary criticism 
 as peculiar to our own times, when I was told that it was 
 just as bad in the time of Pope and Dryden, and indeed 
 
On Criticism. 309 
 
 worse, inasmuch as we have no Popes or Drydens now on 
 the obnoxious side to be nicknamed, metamorphosed into 
 scarecrows, and impaled alive by bigots and dunces. I 
 shall not pretend to say how far this remark may be true. 
 The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed 
 nation. 
 
 Besides temporary or accidental biases of this kind, 
 there seem to be sects and parties in taste and criticism 
 (with a set of appropriate watchwords) coeval with the 
 arts of composition, and that will last as long as the 
 difference with which men's minds are originally consti- 
 tuted. There are some who are all for the elegance of an 
 author's style, and some who are equally delighted with 
 simplicity. The last refer you to Swift as a model of 
 English prose — thinking all other writers sophisticated 
 and naught — the former prefer the more ornamented and 
 sparkling periods of Junius or Gibbon. It is to no 
 purpose to think of bringing about an understanding 
 between these opposite factions. It is a natural difference 
 of temperament and constitution of mind. The one will 
 never relish the antithetical point and perpetual glitter of 
 the artificial prose- style; as the plain unper verted English 
 idiom will always appear trite and insipid to the others. 
 A toleration, not an uniformity of opinion, is as much as 
 can be expected in this case : and both sides may acknow- 
 ledge, without imputation on their taste or consistency, 
 that these different writers excelled each in their way. I 
 might remark here that tne epithet elegant is very 
 sparingly used in modern criticism. It has probably 
 gone out of fashion with the appearance of the Lake 
 School, who, I apprehend, have no such phrase in their 
 vocabulary. Mr. Kogers was, I think, almost the last 
 poet to whom it was applied as a characteristic compli- 
 ment. At present it would be considered as a sort of 
 diminutive of the title of poet, like the terms pretty or 
 fanciful, and is banished from the haut ton of letters. It 
 
310 On Criticism. 
 
 may perhaps come into request at some future period. — 
 Again, the dispute between the admirers of Homer and 
 Virgil has never been settled and never will: for there 
 will always be minds to whom the excellences of Virgil 
 will be more congenial, and therefore more objects of 
 admiration and delight than those of Homer, and vice 
 versa. Both are right in preferring what suits them best, 
 ihe delicacy and selectness of the one, or the fulness and 
 majestic flow of the other. There is the same difference 
 in their tastes that there was in the genius of their two 
 favourites. Neither can the disagreement between the 
 French and English school of tragedy ever be reconciled, 
 till the French become English, or the English French. 1 
 Both are right in what they admire, both are wrong in 
 condemning the others for what they admire. We see 
 the defects of Kacine, they see the faults of Shakespear 
 probably in an exaggerated point of view. But we may be 
 sure of this, that when we see nothing but grossness and 
 barbarism, or insipidity and verbiage in a writer that is 
 the god of a nation's idolatry, it is we and not they who 
 want true taste and feeling. The controversy about 
 Pope and the opposite school in our own poetry comes to 
 much the same thing. Pope's correctness, smoothness, 
 &c, are very good things and much to be commended in 
 him. But it is not to be expected or even desired that 
 others should have these qualities in the same paramount 
 degree, to the exclusion of everything else. If you like 
 correctness and smoothness of all things in the world, 
 there they are for you in Pope. If you like other things 
 better, such as strength and sublimity, you know where to 
 go for them. Why trouble Pope or any other author for 
 what they have not, and do not profess to give ? Those 
 who seem to imply that Pope possessed, besides his own 
 peculiar, exquisite merits, all that is to be found in 
 
 1 Of the two the latter alternative is more likely to happen. We 
 abuse and imitate them. They laugh at, but do not imitate us. 
 
On Criticism. 311 
 
 Shakespear or Milton, are I should hardly think in 
 good earnest. But I do not therefore see that, because 
 this was not the case, Pope was no poet. 1 We cannot by 
 a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different 
 minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all 
 the intolerance in the world. We may pull Pope in 
 pieces as long as we please, for not being Shakespear or 
 Milton, as we may carp at them for not being Pope : but 
 this will not make a poet equal to all three. If we have 
 a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may 
 keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are 
 more catholic in our notions, and want variety of 
 excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to pro- 
 fusion in the variety of books and in the several growth 
 of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary 
 rules. Those who would proscribe whatever falls short 
 of a given standard of imaginary perfection, do so, not 
 from a higher capacity of taste or range of intellect than 
 others, but to destroy, to " crib and cabin in " all enjoy- 
 ments and opinions but their own. 
 
 We find people of a decided and original, and others of 
 a more general and versatile taste. I have sometimes 
 thought that the most acute and original-minded men 
 made bad critics. They see everything too much through 
 a particular medium. What does not fall in with their 
 own bias and mode of composition, strikes them as 
 common-place and factitious. What does not come into 
 the direct line of their vision, they regard idly, with 
 vacant, " lack-lustre eye." The extreme force of their 
 original impressions compared with the feebleness of 
 those they receive at second hand from others, oversets 
 the balance and just proportion of their minds. Men who 
 have fewer native resources, and are obliged to apply 
 
 1 See this point more elaborately discussed in the writer's Essay 
 " On the Question whether Pope was a Poet ?" in the Scots Maga- 
 zine for 1818.— Ed. 
 
312 On Criticism. 
 
 oftener to the general stock, acquire by habit a greater 
 aptitude in appreciating what they owe to others. Their 
 taste is not made a sacrifice to their egotism and vanity, 
 and they enrich the soil of their minds with continual 
 accessions of borrowed strength and beauty. I might 
 take this opportunity of observing, that the person of the 
 most refined and least contracted taste I ever knew was 
 the late Joseph Fawcett, the friend of my youth. 1 He 
 was almost the first literary acquaintance I ever made, 
 and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He 
 had a masterly perception of all styles and of every kind 
 and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from 
 Milton's Paradise Lost to Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad, 
 from Butler's Analogy down to Humphry Clinker. If 
 you had a favourite author, he had read him too, and 
 knew all the best morsels, the subtle traits, the capital 
 touches. " Do you like Sterne ?" — " Yes, to be sure," he 
 would say ; " I should deserve to be hanged, if I didn't !" 
 His repeating some parts of Comus with his fine, deep, 
 mellow-toned voice, particularly the lines, " I have heard 
 my mother Circe with the Sirens three," &c. — and the 
 enthusiastic comments he made afterwards were a feast to 
 the ear and to the soul. He read the poetry of Milton 
 with the same fervour and spirit of devotion that I have 
 since heard others read their own. 2 " That is the most 
 delicious feeling of all," I have heard him exclaim, " to 
 like what is excellent, no matter whose it is." In this 
 respect he practised what he preached. He was incapable 
 of harbouring a sinister motive, and judged only from 
 what he felt. There was no flaw or mist in the clear 
 mirror of his mind. He was as open to impressions as he 
 was strenuous in maintaining them. He did not care a 
 rush whether a writer was old or new, in prose or in 
 verse — " What he wanted," he said, " was something to 
 
 1 See " Memoirs of William Hazlitt," 1867, i. 75-79.— Ed. 
 
 2 He intends Coleridge and Wordsworth. — Ed. 
 
On Criticism. 313 
 
 make him think." Most men's minds are to me like 
 musical instruments out of tune. Touch a particular key, 
 and it jars and makes harsh discord with your own. 
 They like Gil Bias, but can see nothing to laugh at in 
 Don Quixote : they adore Kichardson, but are disgusted 
 with Fielding. Fawcett had a taste accommodated to all 
 these. He was not exceptions. He gave a cordial 
 welcome to all sorts, provided they were the best in their 
 kind. He was not fond of counterfeits or duplicates. 
 His own style was laboured and artificial to a fault, while 
 his character was frank and ingenuous in the extreme. 
 He was not the only individual whom I have known to 
 counteract their natural disposition in coming before the 
 public, and by avoiding what they perhaps thought an 
 inherent infirmity, debar themselves of their real strength 
 and advantages. A heartier friend or honester critic 1 
 never coped withal. He has made me feel (by contrast) 
 the want of genuine sincerity and generous sentiment in 
 some that I have listened to since, and convinced me (if 
 practical proof were wanting) of the truth of that text of 
 Scripture — " That had I all knowledge and could speak 
 with the tongues of angels, yet without charity I were 
 nothing !" I would rather be a man of disinterested 
 taste and liberal feeling, to see and acknowledge truth 
 auad beauty wherever I found it, than a man of greater 
 and more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all 
 excellence but my own — but that poor scanty pittance of it 
 (compared with the whole) which I had myself produced ! 
 There is another race of critics 1 who might be desig- 
 nated as the Occult School — vere adepti. They discern no 
 beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and 
 overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of man- 
 kind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By 
 happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold — 
 
 1 The writer had Charles Lamb in his thoughts here evidently.— 
 Ei>. 
 
314 On Criticism. 
 
 and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone 
 than most others. If an author is utterly unreadable, 
 they can read him for ever : his intricacies are their 
 delight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer 
 Sir Thomas Brown to the Eambler by Br. Johnson, and 
 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy to all the writers of the 
 Georgian Age. They judge of works of genius as misers 
 do of hid treasure — it is of no value unless they have it 
 all to themselves. They will no more share a book than 
 a mistress with a friend. If they suspected their favourite 
 volumes of delighting any eyes but their own, they would 
 immediately discard them from the list. Theirs are 
 superannuated beauties that every one else has left off 
 intriguing with, bedridden hags, a " stud of nightmares.' ' 
 This is not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to 
 singularity, a love of what is odd and out of the way. 
 They must come at their pleasures with difficulty, and 
 support admiration by an uneasy sense of ridicule and 
 opposition. They despise those qualities in a work 
 which are cheap and obvious. They like a monopoly of 
 taste, and are shocked at the prostitution of intellect 
 implied in popular productions. In like manner, they 
 would choose a friend or recommend a mistress for gross 
 defects ; and tolerate the sweetness of an actress's voice 
 only for the ugliness of her face. Pure pleasures are in 
 their judgment cloying and insipid — 
 
 " An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet !" 
 Nothing goes down with them but what is caviare to the 
 multitude. They are eaters of olives and readers of 
 black-letter Yet they smack of genius, and would be 
 worth any money, were it only for the rarity of the thing ! 
 
 The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics — mere 
 word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence 
 and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. 1 
 
 1 The title of Ultra- Crepidarian critics has been given to a variety 
 of this species. 
 
On Great and Little Things. 315 
 
 These erudite persons constantly find out by anticipation 
 that you are deficient in the smallest things — that you 
 cannot spell certain words or join the nominative case and 
 the verb together, because to do this is the height of their 
 own ambition, and of course they must set you down 
 lower than their opinion of themselves. They degrade 
 by reducing you to their own standard of merit ; for the 
 qualifications they deny you, or the faults they object are 
 so very insignificant, that to prove yourself possessed of 
 the one or free from the other, is to make yourself doubly 
 ridiculous. Littleness is their element, and they give a 
 character of meanness to whatever they touch. They 
 creep, buzz, and fly-blow. It is much easier to crush 
 than to catch these troublesome insects ; and when they 
 are in your power, your self-respect spares them. The 
 race is almost extinct : — one or two of them are sometime* 
 seen crawling over the pages of the Quarterly Keview ! 
 
 ESSAY XXIII. 
 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 " These little things are great to little man." 
 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 The great and the little have, no doubt, a real existence 
 in the nature of things : but they both find pretty much 
 the same level in the mind of man. It is a common 
 measure, which does not always accommodate itself to the 
 size and importance of the objects it represents. It has a 
 certain interest to spare for certain things (and no more) 
 according to its humour and capacity ; and neither likes 
 to be stinted in its allowance, nor to muster up an unusual 
 share of sympathy, just as the occasion may require. 
 Perhaps, if we could recollect distinctly, we should dis- 
 cover that the two things that have affected us most in the 
 course of our lives have been, one of them of the greatest, 
 
316 On Great and Little Tilings. 
 
 and the other of the smallest possible consequence. To 
 let that pass as too fine a speculation, we know well enough 
 that very trifling circumstances do give us great and 
 daily annoyance, and as often prove too much for our 
 philosophy and forbearance, as matters of the highest 
 moment. A lump of soot spoiling a man's dinner, a plate 
 of toast falling in the ashes, the being disappointed of a 
 ribbon to a cap or a ticket for a ball, have led to serious 
 and almost tragical consequences. Friends not unfre- 
 quently fall out and never meet again for some idle mis- 
 understanding, " some trick not worth an egg" who have 
 stood the shock of serious differences of opinion and 
 clashing interests of life ; and there is an excellent paper 
 in the Tatler, to prove that if a married couple do not 
 quarrel about some point in the first instance not worth 
 contesting, they will seldom find an opportunity afterwards 
 to quarrel about a question of real importance. Grave 
 divines, great statesmen, and deep philosophers are put 
 out of their way by very little things : nay, discreet, 
 worthy people, without any pretensions but to good- 
 nature and common-sense, readily surrender the happiness 
 of their whole lives sooner than give up an opinion to 
 which they have committed themselves, though in all like- 
 lihood it was the mere turn of a feather which side they 
 should take in the argument. It is the being baulked or 
 thwarted in anything that constitutes the grievance, the 
 unpardonable affront, not the value of the thing to which 
 we had made up our minds. Is it that we despise little 
 things; that we are not prepared for them; that they 
 take us in our careless, unguarded moments, and tease 
 us out of our ordinary patience by their petty, incessant, 
 insect warfare, buzzing about us and stinging us like 
 gnats ; so that we can neither get rid of nor grapple with 
 them, whereas we collect all our fortitude and resolution 
 to meet evils of greater magnitude ? Or is it that there 
 is a certain stream of irritability that is continually fretting 
 
On Great and Little Things. 317 
 
 upon the wheels of life, which finds sufficient food to play 
 with in straws and feathers, while great objects are too 
 much for it, either choke it up, or divert its couise into 
 serious and thoughtful interest ? Some attempt might 
 be made to explain this in the following manner. 
 
 One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort 
 by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance 
 of winning it. This is no doubt in part or chiefly because 
 the prospect of success irritates the subsequent disappoint- 
 ment. But people have been known to pine and fall sick 
 from holding the next number to the twenty thousand 
 pound prize in the lottery. Now this could only arise from 
 their being so near winning in fancy, from there seeming 
 to be so thin a partition between them and success. When 
 they were within one of the right number, why could they 
 not have taken the next — it was so easy : this haunts their 
 minds and will not let them rest, notwithstanding the ab- 
 surdity of the reasoning. It is that the will here has a 
 slight imaginary obstacle to surmount to attain its end ; 
 it should appear it had only an exceedingly trifling effort 
 to make for this purpose, that it was absolutely in its 
 power (had it known) to seize the envied prize, and it is 
 continually harassing itself by making the obvious trans- 
 ition from one number to the other, when it is too late. 
 That is to say, the will acts in proportion to its fancied 
 power, to its superiority over immediate obstacles. Now 
 in little or indifferent matters there seems no reason why 
 it should not have its own way, and therefore a disappoint- 
 ment vexes it the more. It grow r s angry according to the 
 insignificance of the occasion, and frets itself to death 
 about an object, merely because from its very futility 
 there can be supposed to be no real difficulty in the way 
 of its attainment, nor anything more required for this 
 purpose than a determination of the will. The being 
 baulked of this throws the mind off its balance, or puts it 
 into what is called a passion ; and as nothing bri an act 
 
318 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 of voluntary power still seems necessary to get rid of 
 every impediment, we indulge our violence more and more, 
 and heighten our impatience by degrees into a sort of 
 frenzy. The object is the same as it was, but we are no 
 longer as we were. The blood is heated, the muscles are 
 strained. The feelings are wound up to a pitch of agony 
 with the vain strife. The temper is tried to the utmost 
 it will bear. The more contemptible the object or the 
 obstructions in the way to it, the more are we provoked at 
 being hindered by them. It looks like witchcraft. 
 We fancy there is a spell upon us, so that we are 
 hampered by straws and entangled in cobwebs. We 
 believe that there is a fatality about our affairs. It is 
 evidently done on purpose to plague us. A demon is at 
 our elbow to torment and defeat us in everything, even 
 in the smallest things. We see him sitting and mocking 
 us, and we rave and gnash our teeth at him in return. 
 It is particularly hard that we cannot succeed in any one 
 point, however trifling, that we set our hearts on. We 
 are the sport of imbecility and mischance. We make 
 another desperate effort, and fly out into all the extra- 
 vagance of impotent rage once more. Our anger runs 
 away with our reason, because, as there is little to give it 
 birth, there is nothing to check it or recal us to our senses 
 in the prospect of consequences. We take up and rend in 
 pieces the mere toys of humour, as the gusts of wind take 
 up and whirl about chaff and stubble. Passion plays the 
 tyrant, in a grand tragi-comic style, over the Lilliputian 
 difficulties and petty disappointments it has to encounter, 
 gives way to all the fretfulness of grief and all the tur- 
 bulence of resentment, makes a fuss about nothing because 
 there is nothing to make a fuss about — when an impending 
 calamity, an irretrievable loss, would instantly bring it to 
 its recollection, and tame it in its preposterous career 
 A man may be in a great passion and give himself strange 
 airs at so simple a thing as a game at ball, for instance ; 
 
On Great and Little Things. 319 
 
 may rage like a wild beast, and be ready to dash his bead 
 against the wall about nothing, or about that which ho 
 will laugh at the next minute, and think no more of ten 
 minutes after, at the same time that a good smart blow 
 from the ball, the effects of which he might feel as a serious 
 inconvenience for a month, would calm him directly — 
 
 " Anon as patient as the female dove, 
 His silence will sit drooping." 
 
 The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and 
 bear great ones as well as we can. We can afford to dally 
 and play tricks with the one, but the others we havo 
 enough to do with, without any of the wantonness and 
 bombast of passion — without the swaggering of Pistol, or 
 the insolence of King Cambyses' vein. To great evils we 
 submit ; we resent little provocations. 1 have before now 
 been disappointed of a hundred-pound job and lost half a 
 crown at rackets on the same day, and been more mortified 
 at the latter than the former. That which is lasting we 
 share with the future, we defer the consideration of till to- 
 morrow : that which belongs to the moment we drink up 
 in all its bitterness, before the spirit evaporates. We 
 probe minute mischiefs to the quick ; we lacerate, tear, 
 and mangle our bosoms with misfortune's finest, brittlest 
 point, and wreak our vengeance on ourselves and it for 
 good and all. Small pains are more manageable, more 
 within our reach ; we can fret and worry ourselves about 
 them, can turn them into any shape, can twist and torture 
 them how we please : — a grain of sand in the eye, a thorn 
 in the flesh only irritates the part, and leaves us strength 
 enough to quarrel and get out of all patience with it : — a 
 heavy blow stuns and takes away all power of sense as 
 well as of resistance. The great and mighty reverses of 
 fortune, like the revolutions of nature, may be said to 
 carry their own weight and reason along with them : they 
 seem unavoidable and remediless, and we submit to them 
 without murmuring as to a fatal necessity. The magni- 
 
320 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 tude of the events in which we may happen to be con- 
 cerned, fills the mind, and carries it out of itself, as it 
 were, into the page of history. Our thoughts are ex- 
 panded with the scene on which we have to act, and lend 
 us strength to disregard our own personal share in it. 
 Some men are indifferent to the stroke of fate, as before 
 and after earthquakes there is a calm in the air. From 
 the commanding situation whence they have been accus- 
 tomed to view things, they look down at themselves as 
 only a part of the whole, and can abstract their minds 
 from the pressure of misfortune, by the aid of its very 
 violence. They are projected, in the explosion of events, 
 into a different sphere, far from their former thoughts, 
 purposes, and passions. The greatness , of the change 
 anticipates the slow effects of time and reflection : — they 
 at once contemplate themselves from an immense distance, 
 and look up with speculative wonder at the height on 
 which they stood. Had the downfall been less complete, 
 it would have been more galling and borne with less 
 resignation, because there might still be a chance of re- 
 medying it by farther efforts and farther endurance — but 
 past cure, past hope. It is chiefly this cause (together with 
 something of constitutional character) which has enabled 
 the greatest man in modern history to bear his reverses of 
 fortune with gay magnanimity, and to submit to the loss 
 of the empire of the world with as little discomposure as 
 if he had been playing a game at chess. 1 This does not 
 prove by our theory that he did not use to fly into violent 
 passions with Talleyrand for plaguing him with bad news 
 when things went wrong. He was mad at uncertain fore- 
 bodings of disaster, but resigned to its consummation, 
 A man may dislike impertinence, yet have no quarrel with 
 necessity ! 
 
 There is another consideration that may take off our 
 wonder at the firmness with which the principals in great 
 1 This Essay was written in January, 1821. 
 
On Great and Little Things. 321 
 
 vicissitudes of fortune bear their fate, which is, that they 
 are in the secret of its operations, and know that what to 
 others appears chance-medley was unavoidable. The 
 clearness of their perception of all the circumstances 
 converts the uneasiness of doubt into certainty : they have 
 not the qualms of conscience which their admirers have, 
 who cannot tell how much of the event is to be attributed 
 to the leaders, and how much to unforeseen accidents : 
 they are aware either that the result was not to be helped, 
 or that they did all they could to prevent it. 
 
 " Si Pergama dextra 
 
 Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent." 
 
 It is the mist and obscurity through which we view objects 
 that makes us fancy they might have been, or might still 
 be otherwise. The precise knowledge of antecedents and 
 consequents makes men practical as well as philosophical 
 Necessarians. — It is the want of this knowledge which is 
 the principle and soul of gambling, and of all games of 
 chance or partial skill. The supposition is, that the issue 
 is uncertain, and that there is no positive means of ascer- 
 taining it. It is dependent on the turn of a die, on the 
 tossing up of a halfpenny : to be fair it must be a lottery ; 
 there is no knowing but by the event ; and it is this 
 which keeps the interest alive^ and works up the passion 
 little short of madness. There is all the agitation of sus- 
 pense, all the alternation of hope and fear, of good and 
 bad success, all the eagerness of desire, without the pos- 
 sibility of reducing this to calculation, that is, of subject- 
 ing the increased action of the will to a known rule, or 
 restraining the excesses of passion within the bounds of 
 reason. We see no cause beforehand why the run of the 
 cards should not be in our favour : — we will hear of none 
 afterwards why it should not have been so. As in the 
 absence of all data to judge by, we wantonly fill up the 
 blank with the most extravagant expectations, so, when all 
 is over, we obstinately recur to the chance we had pre- 
 
 Y 
 
322 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 viously. There is nothing to tame us down to the event, 
 nothing to reconcile us to our hard luck, for so we think 
 it. We see no reason why we failed (and there was none, 
 any more than why we should succeed) — we think that, 
 reason apart, our will is the next best thing ; we still try 
 to have it our own way, and fret, torment, and harrow 
 ourselves up with vain imaginations to effect impos- 
 sibilities. 1 We play the game over again : we wonder 
 how it was possible for us to fail. We turn our brain 
 with straining at contradictions, and striving to make 
 things what they are not, or in other words, to subject the 
 course of nature to our fastastical wishes. " If it had been 
 so — if we had done such and such a thing " — we try it in a 
 thousand different ways, and are just as far off the mark 
 as ever. We appealed to chance in the first instance, and 
 yet, when it has decided against us, we will not give in, 
 and sit down contented with our loss, but refuse to submit 
 to anything but reason, which has nothing to do with the 
 matter. In drawing two straws, for example, to see which 
 is the longest, there was no apparent necessity we should 
 fix upon the wrong one, it was so easy to have fixed upon 
 the other, nay, at one time we were going to do it —if we 
 had — the mind thus runs back to what was so possible 
 and feasible at one time, while the thing was pending, 
 and would fain give a bias to causes so slender and insig- 
 nificant, as the skittle-player bends his body to give a bias 
 to the bowl he has already delivered from his hand, not 
 considering that what is once determined, be the causes 
 ever so trivial or evanescent, is in the individual instance 
 unalterable. Indeed, to be a great philosopher, in the 
 practical and most important sense of the term, little 
 more seems necessary than to be convinced of the truth 
 
 1 Losing gamesters thus become desperate, because the continued 
 and violent irritation of the will against a run of ill luck drives it to 
 extremity, and makes it bid defiance to common sense and every 
 sonaideration of prudence or self-interest 
 
On Great and Little Things, 323 
 
 of the maxim, which the wise man repeated to the 
 daughter of King Cophetua, That if a thing is, it is, and 
 there is an end of it ! 
 
 We often make life unhappy in wishing things to have 
 turned out otherwise than they did, merely because that 
 is possible to the imagination which is impossible in fact. 
 I remember, when Lamb's farce l was damned (for damned 
 it was, that's certain), I used to dream every night for a 
 month after (and then I vowed I would plague myself no 
 more about it) that it was revived at one of the Minor 
 or provincial theatres with great success, that such and 
 such retrenchments and alterations had been made in it, 
 and that it was thought it might do at the other House. I 
 had heard indeed (this was told in confidence to Lamb) 
 that Gentleman Lewis was present on the night of its per- 
 formance, and said, that if he had had it, he would have 
 made it, by a few judicious curtailments, " the most popular 
 little thing that had been brought out for some time." 
 How often did I conjure up in recollection the full dia- 
 pason of applause at the end of the Prologue, and hear my 
 ingenious friend in the first row of the pit roar with 
 laughter at his own wit! Then I dwelt with forced 
 complacency on some part in which it had been doing 
 well : then we would consider (in concert) whether the 
 long, tedious opera of the " Travellers," which preceded it, 
 had not tired people beforehand, so that they had not 
 spirits left for the quaint and sparkling " wit skirmishes " 
 of the dialogue; and we all agreed it might have gone 
 down after a Tragedy, except Lamb himself, who swore 
 he had no hopes of it from the beginning, and that he knew 
 the name of the hero when it came to be discovered could 
 
 not be got over. Mr. H , thou wert damned ! Bright 
 
 shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy 
 appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of 
 
 1 " Mr. H," brought out at Drtiry Lane, on the 10th of December, 
 1806, and decisively damned. — Ed. 
 
324 On Great and Little Things 
 
 persons asking one another if they would go to see 
 
 Mr. H , and answering that they would certainly: 
 
 but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his 
 friends and the town was eclipsed, for thou wert 
 damned ! Hadst thou been anonymous, thou haply 
 mightst have lived. But thou didst come to an untimely 
 end for thy tricks, and for want of a better name to pass 
 them off! 
 
 In this manner we go back to the critical minutes on 
 which the turn of our fate, or that of any one else in whom 
 we are interested, depended ; try them over again with 
 new knowledge and sharpened sensibility ; and thus think 
 to alter what is irrevocable, and ease for a moment the 
 pang of lasting regret. So in a game at rackets 1 {to 
 compare small things with great) I think if at such a 
 point I had followed up my success, if I had not been too 
 secure or over-anxious in another part, if I had played 
 for such an opening, in short, if I had done anything but 
 what I did and what has proved unfortunate in the result, 
 the chances were all in my favour. But it is merely 
 because I do not know what would have happened in the 
 other case, that I interpret it so readily to my own ad- 
 vantage. I have sometimes lain awake a whole night, 
 trying to serve out the last ball of an interesting game in 
 a particular corner of the court, which I had missed from 
 a nervous feeling. Backets (I might observe, for the sake 
 of the uninformed reader) is, like any other athletic game, 
 very much a thing of skill and practice : but it is also a 
 thing of opinion, " subject to all the skyey influences." 
 If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is neces- 
 sary to victory. If you hesitate in striking at the ball, 
 it is ten to one but you miss it. If you are apprehensive 
 
 1 Some of the poets in the beginning of th^ last century would 
 often set out on a simile by observing — '• So in Arabia have I seen a 
 Phoenix !" I confess my illustrations are of a more homely and 
 bumble nature. 
 
On Great and Little Things. 325 
 
 of committing some particular error (such as striking the 
 ball foul) you will be nearly sure to do it. While think 
 ing of that which you are so earnestly bent upon avoiding, 
 your hand mechanically follows the strongest idea, and 
 obeys the imagination rather than the intention of the 
 striker. A run of luck is a forerunner of success, and 
 courage is as much wanted as skill. No one is, however, 
 free from nervous sensations at times. A good player 
 may not be able to strike a single stroke if another comes 
 into the court that he has a particular dread of ; and it 
 frequently so happens that a player cannot beat another, 
 even though he can give half the game to an equal player, 
 because he has some associations of jealousy or personal 
 pique against the first which he has not towards the last. 
 Sed hose hadenus. Chess is a game I do not understand, 
 and have not comprehension enough to play at. But I 
 believe, though it is so much less a thing of chance than 
 science or skill, eager players pass whole nights in march- 
 ing and counter-marching their men and check-mating a 
 successful adversary, supposing that at a certain point of 
 the game, they had determined upon making a particular 
 move instead of the one which they actually did make. 
 I have heard a story of two persons playing at back- 
 gammon, one of whom was so enraged at losing his match 
 at a particular point of the game, that he took the board 
 and threw it out of the window. It fell upon the head of 
 one of the passengers in the street, who came up to de- 
 mand instant satisfaction for the affront and injury he had 
 sustained. The losing gamester only asked him if he 
 understood backgammon, and finding that he did, said, 
 that if upon seeing the state of the game he did not excuse 
 the extravagance of his conduct, he would give him any 
 other satisfaction he wished for. The tables were accord- 
 ingly brought, and the situation of the two contending 
 parties being explained, the gentleman put up his sword, 
 mid went away perfectly satisfied. To return from this, 
 
326 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 which to some will seem a digression, and to others will 
 serve as a confirmation of the doctrine I am insisting on. — ■ 
 It is not then the value of the object, but the time and 
 pains bestowed upon it, that determines the sense and 
 degree of our loss. Many men set their minds only on 
 trifles, and have not a compass of soul to take an interest 
 in anything truly great and important beyond forms and 
 minuticB. Such persons are really men of little minds, or 
 may be complimented with the title of great children, 
 
 " Pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw." 
 
 Larger objects elude their grasp, while they fasten eagerly 
 on the light and insignificant. They fidget themselves 
 and others to death with incessant anxiety about nothing. 
 A part of their dress that is awry keeps them in a fever of 
 restlessness and impatience ; they sit picking their teeth, 
 or paring their nails, or stirring the fire, or brushing a 
 speck of dirt off their coats, while the house or the world 
 tumbling about their ears would not rouse them from their 
 morbid insensibility. They cannot sit still on their chairs 
 for their lives, though, if there were anything for them to 
 do, they would become immovable. Their nerves are as 
 irritable as their imaginations are callous and inert. 
 They are addicted to an inveterate habit of littleness and 
 perversity, which rejects every other motive to action or 
 object of contemplation but the daily, teazing, contemp- 
 tible, familiar, favourite sources of uneasiness and dis- 
 satisfaction. When they are of a sanguine instead of a 
 morbid temperament, they become quidnuncs and virtuosos 
 — collectors of caterpillars and odd volumes, makers of 
 fishing-rods and curious in watch-chains. Will Wimble 
 dabbled in this way, to his immortal honour. But many 
 others have been less successful. There are those who 
 build their fame on epigrams or epitaphs, and others who 
 devote their lives to writing the Lord's Prayer in little. 
 Some poets compose and sing their own verses. Which 
 
On Great and Little Things. 327 
 
 character would they have us think most highly of — the 
 poet or the musician ? The Great is One. Some there 
 are who feel more pride in sealing a letter with a head of 
 Homer than ever that old blind bard did in reciting his 
 Iliad. These raise a huge opinion of themselves out of 
 nothing, as there are those who shrink from their own 
 merits into the shade of unconquerable humility. I know 
 one person at least, who would rather be the author of an 
 unsuccessful farce than of a successful tragedy. Kepeated 
 mortification has produced an inverted ambition in his 
 mind, and made failure the bitter test of desert. He 
 cannot lift his drooping head to gaze on the gaudy crown 
 of popularity placed within his reach, but casts a pensive, 
 riveted look downwards to the modest flowers which the 
 multitude trample under their feet. If he had a piece 
 likely to succeed, coming out under all advantages, he 
 would damn it by some ill-timed, wilful jest, and lose the 
 favour of the public, to preserve the sense of his personal 
 identity. " Misfortune," Shakespear says, " brings a man 
 acquainted with strange bedfellows:" and it makes our 
 thoughts traitors to ourselves. — It is a maxim with many 
 — " Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of 
 themselves" Those only put it in practice successfully 
 who think more of the pence than of the pounds. To 
 such, a large sum is less than a small one. Great specu- 
 lations, great returns are to them extravagant or imagi- 
 nary : a few hundreds a year are something snug and 
 comfortable. Persons who have been used to a petty, 
 huckstering way of life cannot enlarge their apprehensions 
 to a notion of anything better. Instead of launching out 
 into greater expense and liberality with the tide of fortune, 
 they draw back with the fear of consequences, and think 
 to succeed on a broader scale by dint of meanness and 
 parsimony. My uncle Toby frequently caught Trim 
 standing up behind his chair, when he had told him to be 
 seated. What the corporal did out of respect, others 
 
328 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 would do out of servility. The menial character does not 
 wear out in three or four generations. You cannot keep 
 some people out of the kitchen, merely because their 
 grandfathers or grandmothers came out of it. A poor 
 man and his wife walking along in the neighbourhood of 
 Portland-place, he said to her peevishly, "What is the 
 use of walking along these fine streets and squares ? Let 
 us turn down some alley !" He felt he should be more at 
 home there. Lamb said of an old acquaintance of his, 
 that when he was young, he wanted to be a tailor, but had 
 not spirit ! This is the misery of unequal matches. The 
 woman cannot easily forget, or think that others forget, 
 her origin ; and with perhaps superior sense and beauty, 
 keeps painfully in the back-ground. It is worse when 
 she braves this conscious feeling, and displays all the 
 insolence of the upstart and affected fine lady. But 
 shouldst thou ever, my Infelice, grace my home with thy 
 loved presence, as thou hast cheered my hopes with thy 
 smile, thou wilt conquer all hearts with thy prevailing 
 gentleness, and I will show the world what Shakespear's 
 women were! — Some gallants set their hearts on prin- 
 cesses ; others descend in imagination to women of quality ; 
 others are mad after opera-singers. For my part, I am 
 shy even of actresses, and should not think of leaving my 
 card with Madame Yestris. I am for none of these bonnes 
 fortunes ; but for a list of humble beauties, servant-maids 
 and shepherd-girls, with their red elbows, hard hands, 
 black stockings and mob-caps, I could furnish out a gallery 
 equal to Cowley's, and paint them half as well. Oh ! 
 might I but attempt a description of some of them in 
 poetic prose, Don Juan would forget his Julia, and 
 Mr. Davison might both print and publish this volume. I 
 agree so far with Horace, and differ with Montaigne. I 
 admire the Clementinas and Clarissas at a distance : the 
 Pamelas and Fannys of Kichardson and Fielding make 
 my blood tingle. I have written love-letters to such in 
 
<Jii Great and Little Things. 329 
 
 my time, oVun pathetique a faire fendre les rochers, and with 
 about as much effect as if they had been addressed to 
 stone. The simpletons only laughed, and said, that 
 " those were not the sort of things to gain the affections.' ' 
 I wish I had kept copies in my own justification. What 
 is worse, I have an utter aversion to blue stockings. I do 
 not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an 
 author means. If I know that she has read anything I 
 have written, I cut her acquaintance immediately. This 
 sort of literary intercourse with me passes for nothing. 
 Her critical and scientific acquirements are carrying coals 
 to Newcastle. I do not want to be told that I have 
 published such or such a work. I knew all this before. 
 It makes no addition to my sense of power. I do not 
 wish the affair to be brought about in that way. I would 
 have her read my soul : she should understand the 
 language of the heart : she should know what I am, as if 
 she were another self! She should love me for myself 
 alone. I like myself without any reason : I would have 
 her do so too. This is not very reasonable. I abstract 
 from my temptations to admire all the circumstances of 
 dress, birth, breeding, fortune ; and I would not willingly 
 put forward my own pretensions, whatever they may be. 
 The image of some fair creature is engraven on my 
 inmost soul ; it is on that I build my claim to her regard, 
 and expect her to see into my heart, as I see her form 
 always before me. Wherever she treads, pale primroses, 
 like her face, vernal hyacinths, like her brow, spring up 
 beneath her feet, and music hangs on every bough : but all 
 is cold, barren, and desolate without her. Thus I feel, 
 and thus I think. But have I ever told her so ? No. 
 Or if I did, would she understand it ? No. I " hunt the 
 wind, I worship a statue, cry aloud to the desert." To see 
 beauty is not to be beautiful, to pine in love is not to be loved 
 again. — I always was inclined to raise and magnify the power * 
 cf Love. I thought that his sweet power should only be 
 
330 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 exerted to join together the loveliest forms and fondest 
 hearts ; that none but those in whom his godhead shone 
 outwardly, and was inly felt, should ever partake of his 
 triumphs ; and I stood and gazed at a distance, as un- 
 worthy to mingle in so bright a throng, and did not (even 
 for a moment) wish to tarnish the glory of so fair a 
 vision by being myself admitted into it. I say this was 
 my notion once, but God knows it was one of the errors of 
 my youth. For coming nearer to look, I saw the maimed, 
 the blind, and the halt enter in, the crooked and the 
 dwarf, the ugly, the old and impotent, the man of pleasure 
 and the man of the world, the dapper and the pert, the 
 vain and shallow boaster, the fool and the pedant, the 
 ignorant and brutal, and all that is farthest removed from 
 earth's fairest-born, and the pride of human life. Seeing 
 all these enter the courts of Love, and thinking that I also 
 might venture in under favour of the crowd, but finding 
 myself rejected, I fancied (I might be wrong) that it was 
 not so much because I was below, as above the common 
 standard. I did feel, but I was ashamed to feel, mortified 
 at my repulse, when I saw the meanest of mankind, the 
 very scum and refuse, all creeping things and every 
 obscene creature, enter in before me. I seemed a species 
 by myself. I took a pride even in my disgrace : and 
 concluded I had elsewhere my inheritance ! The only thing 
 I ever piqued myself upon was the writing the " Essay on 
 the Principles of Human Action " ' — a work that no woman 
 ever read, or would ever comprehend the meaning of. 
 But if I do not build my claim to regard on the preten- 
 sions I have, how can I build it on those I am totally 
 without ? Or why do I complain and expect to gather 
 grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? Thought has in me 
 cancelled pleasure; and this dark forehead, bent upon 
 truth, is the rock on which all affection has split. And 
 
 1 Published in 1805, but the composition of the work, though a 
 thin octavo, cost the author seven or eight years' labour.— Ed. 
 
On Great and Little Things. 331 
 
 thus I waste my life in one long sigh ; nor ever (till too 
 late) beheld a gentle face turned gently upon mine ! . . . 
 But no I not too late, if that face, pure, modest, downcast, 
 tender, with angel sw r eetness, not only gladdens the pro- 
 spect of the future, but sheds its radiance on the past, 
 smiling in tears. A purple light hovers round my head. 
 The air of love is in the room. As I look at my long- 
 neglected copy of the Death of Clorinda, 1 golden gleams 
 play upon the canvas, as they used when I painted it. 
 The flowers of Hope and Joy springing up in my mind, 
 recal the time when they first bloomed there. The years 
 that are fled knock at the door and enter. I am in the 
 Louvre once more. The sun of Austerlitz has not set. 
 It still shines here — in my heart; and he, the son of 
 glory, is not dead, nor ever shall, to me. I am as when 
 my life began. The rainbow is in the sky again. I see 
 the skirts of the departed years. All that I have thought 
 and felt has not been in vain. I am not utterly worthless, 
 unregarded ; nor shall I die and wither of pure scorn. 
 Now could I sit on the tomb of Liberty, and write a 
 Hymn to Love. Oh ! if I am deceived, let me be deceived 
 still. Let me live in the Elysium of those soft looks ; 
 poison me with kisses, kill me with smiles ; but still mock 
 me with thy love I* 
 
 Poets choose mistresses who have the fewest charms, 
 that thay may make something out of nothing. They 
 succeed best in fiction, and they apply this rule to love. 
 They make a goddess of any dowdy. As Don Quixote 
 said, in answer to the matter-of-fact remonstrances of 
 Sancho, that Dulcinea del Toboso answered the purpose 
 of signalising his valour just as well as the "fairest 
 
 1 By Lana, Titian's contemporary. It was copied by the writer 
 in 1802, and is still in good preservation. — Ed. 
 
 2 I beg the reader to consider this passage merely as a specimen 
 of the mock-heroic style, and as having nothing to do with any real 
 facts or feelings. 
 
332 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 princess under sky," so any of the fair sex will serve them 
 to write about just as well as another. They take some 
 awkward thing and dress her up in fine words, as children 
 dress up a wooden doll in fine clothes. Perhaps, a fine 
 head of hair, a taper waist, or some other circumstance 
 strikes them, and they make the rest out according to their 
 fancies. They have a wonderful knack of supplying 
 deficiencies in the subjects of their idolatry out of the 
 storehouse of their imaginations. They presently trans- 
 late their favourites to the skies, where they figure with 
 Berenice's locks and Ariadne's crown. 1 This predilection 
 for the unprepossessing and insignificant, I take to arise 
 not merely from a desire in poets to have some subject to 
 exercise their inventive talents upon, but from their 
 jealousy of any pretensions (even those of beauty in the 
 other sex) that might interfere with the continual incense 
 offered to their personal vanity. 
 
 Cardinal Mazarine never thought anything of Cardinal 
 de Eetz, after he told him that he had written for the 
 last thirty years of his life with the same pen. Some 
 Italian poet going to present a copy of verses to the Pope, 
 and finding, as he was looking them over in the coach as 
 he went, a mistake of a single letter in the printing broke 
 his heart of vexation and chagrin. A still more remark- 
 able case of literary disappointment occurs in the history 
 of a countryman of his, which I cannot refrain from giving 
 here, as I find it related. "Anthony Codrus Urceus, a 
 most learned and unfortunate Italian, born near Modena, 
 
 1 " We put on Berenice's hair, 
 And sit in Cassiopeia's chair." 
 
 Dixon's Canidia, or the Witches, 1683. 
 u Shine forth a constellation, full and bright, 
 Bless the poor heavens with more majestick light ; 
 Who in requitall shall present you there, 
 Ariadne's crowne and Cassiopeia's chayre." 
 Randolph's Poems, 1640, p. 14. 
 See also my edition of Lovelace, 1864, p. 185. — Ed. 
 
On Great and Little Things. 333 
 
 1446, was a striking instance," says his biographer, " of 
 the miseries men bring upon themselves by setting their 
 affections unreasonably on trifles. This learned man 
 lived at Forli, and had an apartment in the palace. His 
 room was so very dark, that he was forced to use a 
 candle in the daytime ; and one day, going abroad without 
 putting it out, his library was set on fire, and some papers 
 which he had prepared for the press were burned. The 
 instant he was informed of this ill news, he was affected 
 even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and 
 stopping at the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, 
 1 Christ Jesus! what mighty crime have I committed! 
 whom of your followers have I ever injured, that you 
 thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me ?' Then turn- 
 ing himself to an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, 
 * Virgin (says he), hear what I have to say, for I speak in 
 earnest, and with a composed spirit : if I shall happen to 
 address you in my dying moments, I humbly entreat you 
 not to hear me, nor receive me into Heaven, for I am 
 determined to spend all eternity in Hell !' Those who 
 heard these blasphemous expressions endeavoured to 
 comfort him ; but all to no purpose : for, the society of 
 mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the 
 city, and retired, like savage, to the deep solitude of a 
 wood. Some say that he was murdered there by ruffians : 
 others, that he died at Bologna in 1500, after much con- 
 trition and penitence." 
 
 Perhaps the censure passed at the outset of the anec- 
 dote on this unfortunate person is unfounded and severe, 
 when it is said that he brought his miseries on himself 
 "by having set his affections unreasonably on trifles." 
 To others it might appear so : but to himself the labour 
 of a whole life was hardly a trifle. His passion was not 
 a causeless one, though carried to such frantic excess. 
 Tho story of Sir Isaac Newton presents a strong contrast 
 to the last-mentioned one, who on going into his study 
 
33 i On Great and Little Tilings. 
 
 and finding that his dog Tray had thrown down a 
 candle on the table, and burnt some papers of great value, 
 contented himself with exclaiming, " Ah ! Tray, you don't 
 know the mischief you have done !" Many persons would 
 not forgive the overturning a cup of chocolate so 
 soon. 
 
 I remember hearing an instance some years ago of a 
 man of character and property, who through unexpected 
 losses had been condemned to a long and heartbreaking 
 imprisonment, which he bore with exemplary fortitude. 
 At the end of four years, by the interest and exertions 
 of friends, he obtained his discharge with every pro- 
 spect of beginning the world afresh, and had made his 
 arraugements for leaving his irksome abode, and meeting 
 his wife and family at a distance of two hundred miles 
 by a certain day. Owing to the miscarriage of a letter, 
 some signature necessary to the completion of the business 
 did not arrive in time, and on account of the informality 
 which had thus arisen, he could not set out home till the 
 return of the post, which was four days longer. His 
 spirit could not brook the delay. He had wound himself 
 up to the last pitch of expectation ; he had, as it were, 
 calculated his patience to hold out to a certain point, and 
 then to throw down his load for ever, and he could not find 
 resolution to resume it for a few hours beyond this. Ho 
 put an end to the intolerable conflict of hope and disap- 
 pointment in a fit of excruciating anguish. Woes that 
 we have time to foresee and leisure to contemplate break 
 their force by being spread over a larger surface, and 
 borne at intervals; but those that come upon us suddenly, 
 for however short a time, seem to insult us by their un- 
 necessary and uncalled-for intrusion ; and the very pro- 
 spect of relief, when held out and then withdrawn from us, 
 to however small a distance, only frets impatience iuto 
 agony by tantalizing our hopes and wishes ; and to rend 
 asunder the thin partition that separates us from our 
 
On Great and Little Things. 335 
 
 favourite object, we are ready to burst even the fetters 
 of life itself! 
 
 I am not aware that any one has demonstrated how it 
 is that a stronger capacity is required for the conduct of 
 great affairs than of small ones. The organs of the mind, 
 like the pupil of the eye, may be contracted or dilated to 
 view a broader or a narrower surface, and yet find suffi- 
 cient variety to occupy its attention in each. The 
 material universe is infinitely divisible, and so is the 
 texture of human affairs. We take things in the gross or 
 in the detail, according to the occasion. I think I could 
 as soon get up the budget of Ways and Means for the 
 current year, as be sure of making both ends meet, and 
 paying my rent at quarter-day in a paltry huckster's shop. 
 Great objects move on by their own weight and impulse ; 
 great power turns aside petty obstacles; and he who 
 wields it is often but the puppet of circumstances, like 
 the fly on the wheel that said, " What a dust we raise !" 
 It is easier to ruin a kingdom and aggrandise one's own 
 pride and prejudices than to set up a greengrocer's stall. 
 An idiot or a madman may do this at any time, whose 
 word is law, and whose nod is fate. Nay, he whose look 
 is obedience, and who understands the silent wishes of 
 the great, may easily trample on the necks and tread out 
 the liberties of a mighty nation, deriding their strength, 
 and hating it the more from a consciousness of his own 
 meanness. Power is not wisdom, it is true ; but it equally 
 ensures its own objects. It does not exact, but dispenses 
 with talent. When a man creates this power, or new- 
 moulds the state by sage counsels and bold enterprises, 
 it is a different thing from overturning it with the levers 
 that are put into his baby hands. In general, however, 
 it may be argued that great transactions and complicated 
 concerns ask more genius to conduct them than smaller 
 ones, for this reason, viz., that the mind must be able 
 sither to embrace a greater variety of details in a more 
 
336 On Great and Little Things. 
 
 extensive range of objects, or must have a greater faculty 
 of generalising, or a greater depth of insight into ruling 
 principles, and so come at true results in that way- 
 Buonaparte knew everything, even to the names of our cadets 
 in the East India service ; but he failed in this, that he 
 did not calculate the resistance which barbarism makes 
 to refinement. He thought that the Eussians could not 
 burn Moscow, because the Parisians could not burn Paris. 
 The French think everything must be French. The 
 Cossacks, alas ! do not conform to etiquette : the rudeness 
 of the seasons knows no rules of politeness ! Some 
 artists think it a test of genius to paint a large picture, 
 and I grant the truth of this position, if the large picture 
 contains more than a small one. It is not the size of the 
 canvas, but the quantity of truth and nature put into it, 
 that settles the point. It is a mistake, common enough on 
 this subject, to suppose that a miniature is more finished 
 than an oil-picture. The miniature is inferior to the oil- 
 picture only because it is less finished, because it cannot 
 follow nature into so many individual and exact parti- 
 culars. The proof of which is, that the copy of a good 
 portrait will always make a highly-finished miniature (see 
 for example Mr. Bone's enamels), whereas the copy of a 
 good miniature, if enlarged to the size of life, will make 
 but a very sorry portrait. Several of our best artists, 
 who are fond of painting large figures, invert this reason- 
 ing. They make the whole figure gigantic, not that they 
 may have room for nature, but for the motion of their 
 brush (as if they were painting the side of a house), 
 regarding the extent of canvas they have to cover as an 
 excuse for their slovenly and hasty manner of getting 
 over it ; and thus, in fact, leave their pictures nothing 
 at last but overgrown miniatures, but huge caricatures. 
 It is not necessary in any case (either in a larger or a 
 smaller compass) to go into the details, so as to lose sight 
 of the effect, and decompound the face into porous and 
 
On Great and Little Things. 337 
 
 transparent molecules, in the manner of Denner, who 
 painted what he saw through a magnifying glass. The 
 painter's eye need not be a microscope, but I contend that 
 it should be a looking-glass, bright, clear, lucid. The 
 little in art begins with insignificant parts, with what 
 does not tell in connection with other parts. The true 
 artist will paint not material points, but moral qualities. 
 In a word, wherever there is feeling or expression in a 
 muscle or a vein, there is grandeur and refinement too. 
 — I will conclude these remarks with an account of the 
 manner in which the ancient sculptors combined great 
 and little things in such matters. " That the name of 
 Phidias," says Pliny, " is illustrious among all the nations 
 that have heard of the fame of the Olympian Jupiter, no 
 one doubts ; but in order that those may know that he 
 is deservedly praised who have not even seen his works, 
 we shall offer a few arguments, and those of his genius 
 only : nor to this purpose shall we insist on the beauty 
 of the Olympian Jupiter, nor on the magnitude of the 
 Minerva at Athens, though it is twenty-six cubits in 
 height (about thirty-five feet), and is made of ivory and 
 gold : but we shall refer to the shield, on which the 
 battle of the Amazons is carved on the outer side : on 
 the inside of the same is the fight of the Gods and Giants ; 
 and on the sandals, that between the Centaurs and 
 Lapithae ; so well did every part of that work display the 
 powers of the art. Again, the sculptures on the pedestal 
 he called the birth of Pandora : there are to be seen in 
 number thirty gods, the figure of Victory being particu- 
 larly admirable : the learned also admire the figures of 
 the serpent and the brazen sphinx, writhing under the 
 spear. These things are mentioned, in passing, of an 
 artist never enough to be commended, that it may be 
 seen that he showed the same magnificence even in small 
 things." 
 
 1 Pliny's Natural History, Book 36. 
 
 Z 
 
338 On Familiar Style. 
 
 ESSAY XXIV. 
 
 On Familiar Style. 
 
 It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people 
 mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to 
 write without affectation is to write at random. On the 
 contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, 
 and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style I 
 am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning 
 pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slip- 
 shod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, 
 but the best word in common use ; it is not to throw words 
 together in any combinations We please, but to follow and 
 avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language. To write 
 a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as any 
 one would speak in common conversation, who had a 
 thorough command and choice of words, or who could dis- 
 course with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all 
 pedantic and oratorical flourishes. Or, to give another illus- 
 tration, to write naturally is the same thing in regard to 
 common conversation, as to read naturally is in regard to 
 common speech. It does not follow that it is an easy thing 
 to give the true accent and inflection to the words you 
 utter, because you do not attempt to rise above the level of 
 ordinary life and colloquial speaking. You do not assume 
 indeed the solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of stage- 
 declamation : neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a 
 venture, without emphasis or discretion, or to resort to 
 vulgar dialect or clownish pronunciation. You must 
 steer a middle course. You are tied down to a given and 
 appropriate articulation, which is determined by the 
 habitual associations between sense and sound, and which 
 you can only hit by entering into the author's meaning, as 
 you must find the proper words and style to express your- 
 
On Familiar Style. 339 
 
 self by fixing your thoughts on the subject you have to 
 write about. Any one may mouth out a passage with a 
 theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts : 
 but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a 
 more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous 
 style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to 
 express: it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word 
 that exactly fits it. Out of eight or ten words equally 
 common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal preten- 
 sions, it is a matter of some nicety and discrimination to 
 pick out the very one, the preferableness of which is 
 scarcely perceptible, but decisive. The reason why I 
 object to Dr. Johnson's style is, that there is no discrimi- 
 nation, no selection, no variety in it. He uses none but 
 "tall, opaque words," taken from the "first row of the 
 rubric i" 1 — words with the greatest number of syllables, or 
 Latin phrases with merely English terminations. If a 
 fine style depended on this sort of arbitrary pretension, 2 it 
 would be fair to judge of an author's elegance by the 
 measurement of his words, 3 and the substitution of foreign 
 circumlocutions (with no precise associations) for the 
 mother-tongue. 4 [Happy are they in this respect that 
 hold up the style of Ancient Pistol! who imitate Dr. 
 Johnson's rounded periods, who write Latin centos ! 5 ] 
 How simple is it to be dignified without ease, to be 
 pompous without meaning ! Surely, it is but a mechanical 
 rule for avoiding what is low to be always pedantic and 
 
 1 His words are all in the first row of the rvhric— MS. — Ed. 
 
 3 Arbitrary sort of mechanical selection. — MS. 
 8 Alien sounds. — MS. 
 
 4 I have heard of such a thing as an author who makes it a rule 
 never to admit a monosyllable into his vapid verse. Yet the charm 
 and sweetness of Marlowe's lines depended often on their Demg 
 made up almost entirely of monosyllables. [In the MS. is this 
 memorandum : " Quote some lines. Introduce four pp. at least, about 
 Croly (? Cowley)/' This Essay was written in the country. — Ed.] 
 
 Not in printed copy. — Ed. 
 
340 On Familiar Style, 
 
 affected. It is clear you cannot use a vulgar English 
 word, if you never use a common English word at all. A 
 fine tact is shown in adhering to those which are perfectly 
 common, and yet never falling into any expressions which 
 are debased by disgusting circumstances, or which owe 
 their signification and point to technical or professional 
 allusions. A truly natural or familiar style can never be 
 quaint or vulgar, for this reason, that it is of universal 
 force and applicability, and that quaintness and vulgarity 
 arise out of the immediate connection of certain words 
 with coarse and disagreeable, or with confined ideas. The 
 last form what we understand by cant or slang phrases. — 
 To give an example of what is not very clear in the 
 general statement. I should say that the phrase Tc cut 
 with a knife, or To cut a piece of wood, is perfectly free 
 from vulgarity, because it is perfectly common : but to cut 
 an acquaintance is not quite unexceptionable, because it is 
 'lot perfectly common or intelligible, and has hardly yet 
 escaped out of the limits of slang phraseology. I should 
 hardly therefore use the word in this sense without 
 putting it in italics as a license of expression, to be 
 received cum grano salis. All provincial or bye-phrases 
 come under the same mark of reprobation — all such as the 
 writer transfers to the page from his fireside or a par- 
 ticular coterie, or that he invents for his own sole use and 
 convenience. I conceive that words are like money, not 
 the worse for being common, but that it is the stamp of 
 custom alone that gives them circulation or value. I am 
 fastidious in this respect, and would almost as soon coin 
 the currency of the realm as counterfeit the King's Eng- 
 lish. I never invented or gave a new and unauthorised 
 meaning to any word but one single one (the term 
 impersonal applied to feelings) and that was in an abstruse 
 metaphysical discussion to express a very difficult distinc- 
 tion. I have been (I know) loudly accused of revelling in 
 vulgarisms and broken English. I cannot speak to that 
 
On Familiar Style. 341 
 
 point : but so far I plead guilty to the determined use of 
 acknowledged idioms and common elliptical expressions. 
 I am not sure that the critics in question know the one 
 from the other, that is, can distinguish any medium 
 between formal pedantry and the most barbarous solecism. 
 As an author, I endeavour to employ plain words and 
 popular modes of construction, as were I a chapman and 
 dealer, I should common weights and measures. 
 
 The proper force of words lies not in the words them- 
 selves, but in their application. A word may be a fine- 
 sounding word, of an unusual length, and very imposing 
 from its learning and novelty, and yet in the connection 
 in which it is introduced, may be quite pointless and 
 irrelevant. It is not pomp or pretension, but the adapta- 
 tion of the expression to the idea that clenches a writer's 
 meaning ?, — as it is not the size or glossiness of the 
 materials, but their being fitted each to its place, that 
 gives strength to the arch ; or as the pegs and nails are as 
 necessary to the support of the building as the larger 
 timbers, and more so than the mere showy, unsubstantial 
 ornaments. I hate anything that occupies more space 
 than it is worth. I hate to see a load of bandboxes go 
 along the street, and I hate to see a parcel of big words 
 without anything in them. A person who does not 
 deliberately dispose of all his thoughts alike in cumbrous 
 draperies and flimsy disguises, may strike out twenty 
 varieties of familiar every-day language, each coming 
 somewhat nearer to the feeling he wants to convey, and at 
 last not hit upon that particular and only one, which may 
 be said to be identical with the exact impression in his 
 mind. This would seem to show that Mr. Cobbett is 
 hardly right in saying that the first word that occurs is 
 always the best. It may be a very good one ; and yet a 
 better may present itself on reflection or from time to 
 
 1 What follows, down to anything in them, dees not occur in th* 
 MS.— Ed. 
 
342 On Familiar Style. 
 
 time. It should be suggested naturally, however, and 
 spontaneously, from a fresh and lively conception of the 
 subject. We seldom succeed by trying at improvement, 
 or by merely substituting one word for another that we 
 are not satisfied with, as we cannot recollect the name of 
 a place or person by merely plaguing ourselves about it. 
 We wander farther from the point by persisting in a wrong 
 scent; but it starts up accidentally in the memory when 
 we least expected it, by touching some link in the chain of 
 previous association. 
 
 There are those who hoard up and make a cautious 
 display of nothing but rich and rare phraseology; — 
 ancient medals, obscure coins, and Spanish pieces of eight. 
 They are very curious to inspect; but I myself would 
 neither offer nor take them in the course of exchange. A 
 sprinkling of archaisms is not amiss; but a tissue of 
 obsolete expressions is more fit for keep than wear. I do 
 not say I would not use any phrase that had been brought 
 into fashion before the middle or the end of the last 
 century : but I should be shy of using any that had not 
 been employed by any approved author during the whole 
 of that time. Words, like clothes, get old-fashioned, or 
 mean and ridiculous, when they have been for some time 
 laid aside. Mr. Lamb is the only imitator of old English 
 style I can read with pleasure ; and he is so thoroughly 
 imbued with the spirit of his authors, that the idea of 
 imitation is almost done away. There is an inward 
 unction, a marrowy vein both in the thought and feeling, 
 an intuition, deep and lively, of his subject, that carries off 
 any quaintness or awkwardness arising from an antiquated 
 style and dress. The matter is completely his own, 
 though the manner is assumed. Perhaps his ideas are 
 altogether so marked and individual, as to require their 
 point and pungency to be neutralised by the affectation of 
 a singular but traditional form of conveyance. Tricked 
 out in the prevailing costume, they would probably seem 
 
On Familiar Style. 343 
 
 more startling and out of the way. The old English 
 authors, Burton, Fuller, Coryat, Sir Thomas Brown, are a 
 kind of mediators between us and the more eccentric and 
 whimsical modern, reconciling us to his peculiarities. I 
 do not however know how far this is the case or not, till 
 he condescends to write like one of us. I must confess 
 that what I like best of his papers under the signature of 
 Elia (still I do not presume, amidst such excellence, to 
 decide what is most excellent) is the account of Mrs. 
 Battle's Opinions on Whist, 1 which is also the most free 
 from obsolete allusions and turns of expression — 
 
 ^ " A well of native English undefiled." 
 
 To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these 
 Essays of the ingenious and highly-gifted author have the 
 same sort of charm and relish, that Erasmus's Colloquies 
 or a fine piece of modern Latin have to the classical 
 scholar. Certainly, I do not know any borrowed pencil 
 that has more power or felicity of execution than the one 
 of which I have here been speaking. 
 
 It is as easy to write a gaudy style without ideas, as it 
 is to spread a pallet of showy colours, or to smear in a 
 flaunting transparency. " What do you read ?" — " Words, 
 words, words." — " What is the matter ?" — " Nothing" it 
 might be answered. The florid style is the reverse of the 
 familiar. The last is employed as an unvarnished medium 
 to convey ideas ; the first is resorted to as a spangled veil 
 to conceal the want of them. When there is nothing to 
 be set down but words, it costs little to have them fine. 
 Look through the dictionary, and cull out a florilegium, 
 rival the tulippomania. Rouge high enough, and never 
 mind the natural complexion. The vulgar, who are not in 
 the secret, will admire the look of preternatural health 
 and vigour ; and the fashionable, who regard only appear- 
 ances, will be delighted with the imposition. Keep to 
 
 1 Lamb's Elia, 1st Series, p. 73 of edition 1823.— Ed. 
 
344 On Familiar Style. 
 
 your sounding generalities, your tinkling phrases, and all 
 will be well. Swell out an unmeaning truism to a perfect 
 tympany of style. A thought, a distinction is the rock on 
 which all this brittle cargo of verbiage splits at once. 
 Such writers have merely verbal imaginations, that retain 
 nothing but words. Or their puny thoughts have dragon- 
 wings, all green and gold. They soar far above the 
 vulgar failing of the Sermo humi obrepens — their most 
 ordinary speech is never short of an hyperbole, splendid, 
 imposing, vague, incomprehensible, magniloquent, a cento 
 of sounding common-places. If some of us, whose " ambi- 
 tion is more lowly," pry a little too narrowly into nooks 
 and corners to pick up a number of " unconsidered trifles," 
 they never once direct their eyes or lift their hands to 
 seize on any but the most gorgeous, tarnished, threadbare 
 patch-work set of phrases, the left-off finery of poetic 
 extravagance, transmitted down through successive genera- 
 tions of barren pretenders. If they criticise actors and 
 actresses, a huddled phantasmagoria of feathers, spangles, 
 floods of light, and oceans of sound float before their 
 morbid sense, which they paint in the style of Ancient 
 Pistol. Not a glimpse can you get of the merits or defects 
 of the performers : they are hidden in a profusion of 
 barbarous epithets and wilful rhodomontade. Our hyper- 
 critics are not thinking of these little fantoccini beings— 
 M That strut and fret their hour upon the stage " — 
 
 but of tall phantoms of words, abstractions, genera and 
 species, sweeping clauses, periods that unite the Poles, 
 forced alliterations, astounding antitheses — 
 
 " And on their pens Fustian sits plumed." 
 
 If 'they describe kings and queens, it is an Eastern pageant. 
 The Coronation at either House is nothing to it. We get 
 at four repeated images — a curtain, a throne, a sceptre, 
 and a footstool. These are with them the wardrobe of a 
 lofty imagination ; and they turn their servile strains to 
 
On Familiar Style. 345 
 
 servile uses. Do we read a description of pictures ? It is 
 not a reflection of tones and hues which " nature's own 
 sweet and cunning hand laid on," but piles of precioxw 
 stones, rubies, pearls, emeralds, Golconda's mines, and all 
 the blazonry of art. Such persons are in fact besotted 
 with words, and their brains are turned with the glittering, 
 but empty and sterile phantoms of things. Personifica- 
 tions, capital letters, seas of sunbeams, visions of glory, 
 shining inscriptions, the figures of a transparency, Britannia 
 with her shield, or Hope leaning on an anchor, make up 
 their stock in trade. They may be considered as Mero- 
 glyphical writers. Images stand out in their minds isolated 
 and important merely in themselves, without any ground- 
 work of feeling — there is no context in their imaginations. 
 Words affect them in the same way, by the mere sound, 
 that is, by their possible, not by their actual application to 
 the subject in hand. They are fascinated by first appear- 
 ances, and have no sense of consequences. Nothing more 
 is meant by them than meets the ear : they understand or 
 feel nothing more than meets their eye. The web and 
 texture of the universe, and of the heart of man, is a 
 mystery to them : they have no faculty that strikes a 
 chord in unison with it. They cannot get beyond the 
 daubings of fancy, the varnish of sentiment. Objects are 
 not linked to feelings, words to things, but images revolve 
 in splendid mockery, words represent themselves in their 
 strange rhapsodies. The categories of such a mind are 
 pride and ignorance — pride in outside show, to which they 
 sacrifice everything, and ignorance of the true worth and 
 hidden structure both of words and things. With a 
 sovereign contempt for what is familiar and natural, they 
 are the slaves of vulgar affectation — of a routine of high- 
 flown phrases. Scorning to imitate realities, they are 
 unable to invent anything, to strike out one original idea. 
 They are not copyists of nature, it is true : but they are 
 the poorest of all plagiarists, the plagiarists of words. 
 
346 On Effeminacy of Character. 
 
 All is far fetched, dear-bought, artificial, oriental, in sub- 
 ject and allusion : all is mechanical, conventional, vapid, 
 formal, pedantic in style and execution. They startle and 
 confound the understanding of the reader, by the remote- 
 ness and obscurity of their illustrations : they soothe the 
 ear by the monotony of the same everlasting round of 
 circuitous metaphors. They are the mock-school in poetry 
 and prose. They flounder about between fustian in 
 expression, and bathos in sentiment. They tantalise the 
 fancy, but never reach the head nor touch the heart. 
 Their Temple of Fame is like a shadowy structure raised 
 by Dulness to Vanity, or like Cowper's description of the 
 Empress of Bussia's palace of ice, " as worthless as in 
 show 'twas glittering " — 
 
 " It smiled, and it was cold !" 
 
 ESSAY XXV. 
 
 On Effeminacy of Character. 
 
 Effeminacy of character arises from a prevalence of the 
 sensibility over the will : or it consists in a want of for- 
 titude to bear pain or to undergo fatigue, however urgent 
 the occasion. We meet with instances of people who 
 cannot lift up a little finger to save themselves from ruin, 
 nor give up the smallest indulgence for the sake of any 
 other person. They cannot put themselves out of their 
 way on any account. No one makes a greater outcry 
 when the day of reckoning comes, or affects greater com- 
 passion for the mischiefs they have occasioned ; but till 
 the time comes, they feel nothing, they care for nothing. 
 They live in the present moment, are the creatures of the 
 present impulse (whatever it may he) — and beyond that, 
 the universe is nothing to them. The slightest toy coun- 
 tervails the empire of the world; they will not forego 
 
On Effeminacy of Character, 347 
 
 the smallest inclination they feel, for any object that can 
 be proposed to them, or any reasons that can be urged for 
 it. You might as well ask of the gossamer not to wanton 
 in the idle summer air, or of the moth not to play with 
 the flame that scorches it, as ask of these persons to put 
 off any enjoyment for a single instant, or to gird them- 
 selves up to any enterprise of pith or moment. They 
 have been so used to a studied succession of agreeable 
 sensations that the shortest pause is a privation which 
 they can by no means endure — it is like tearing them 
 from their very existence — they have been so inured to 
 ease and indolence, that the most trifling effort is like one 
 of the tasks of Hercules, a thing of impossibility, at which 
 they shudder. They lie on beds of roses, and spread 
 their gauze wings to the sun and summer gale, and cannot 
 bear to put their tender feet to the ground, much less to 
 encounter the thorns and briars of the world. Life for 
 
 them 
 
 i " rolls o'er Elysian flowers its amber stream," 
 
 and they have no fancy for fishing in troubled waters. 
 The ordinary state of existence they regard as something 
 importunate and vain, and out of nature. What must 
 they think of its trials and sharp vicissitudes ? Instead 
 of voluntarily embracing pain, or labour, or danger, or 
 death, every sensation must be wound up to the highest 
 pitch of voluptuous refinement, every motion must be grace 
 and elegance ; they live in a luxurious, endless dream, or 
 
 " Die of a rose in aromatic pain !" 
 Siren sounds must float around them ; smiling forms must 
 everywhere meet their sight; they must tread a soft 
 measure on painted carpets or smooth-shaven lawns ; 
 books, arts, jests, laughter, occupy every thought and 
 hour — what have they to do with the drudgery, the 
 struggles, the poverty, the disease or anguish, which are 
 the common lot of humanity ? These things are intole- 
 rable to them, even in imagination. They disturb the 
 
348 On Effeminacy of Character. 
 
 enchantment in which they are lapt. They cause a 
 wrinkle in the clear and polished surface of their exist- 
 ence. They exclaim with impatience and in agony, " Oh, 
 leave me to my repose !" How " they shall discourse the 
 freezing hours away, when wind and rain beat dark 
 December down," or "bide the pelting of the pitiless 
 storm," gives them no concern, it never once enters their 
 heads. They close the shutters, draw the curtains, and 
 enjoy or shut out the whistling of the approaching tempest. 
 " They take no thought for the morrow," not they. They 
 do not anticipate evils. Let them come when they will 
 come, they will not run to meet them. Nay more, they 
 will not move one step to prevent them, nor let any one 
 else. The mention of such things is shocking ; the very 
 supposition is a nuisance that must not be tolerated. The 
 idea of the trouble, the precautions, the negotiations ne- 
 cessary to obviate disagreeable consequences oppresses 
 them to death, is an exertion too great for their enervated 
 imaginations. They are not like Master Barnardine in 
 Measure for Measure, who would not " get up to be 
 hanged " — rthey would not get up to avoid being hanged. 
 They are completely wrapped up in themselves ; but then 
 all their self-love is concentrated in the present minute. 
 They have worked up their effeminate and fastidious ap- 
 petite of enjoyment to such a pitch, that the whole of their 
 existence, every moment of it, must be made up of these 
 exquisite indulgences ; or they will fling it all away, with 
 indifference and scorn. They stake their entire welfare 
 on the gratification of the passing instant. Their senses, 
 their vanity, their thoughtless gaiety have been pampered 
 till they ache at the smallest suspension of their perpetual 
 dose of excitement, and they will purchase the hollow 
 happiness of the next five minutes by a mortgage on the 
 independence and comfort of years. They must have 
 their will in everything, or they grow sullen and peevish 
 like spoiled children. Whatever they set their eyes on, 
 
On Effeminacy of Character. 349 
 
 or make up their minds to, they must have that instant. 
 They may pay for it hereafter. But that is no matter. 
 They snatch a joy beyond the reach of fate, and consider 
 the present time sacred, inviolable, unaccountable to that 
 hard, churlish, niggard, inexorable task-master, the future. 
 Now or never is their motto. They are madly devoted to 
 the plaything, the ruling passion of the moment. What 
 is to happen to them a week hence is as if it were to 
 happen to them a thousand years hence. They put off 
 the consideration for another day, and their heedless un- 
 concern laughs at it as a fable. Their life is " a cell of 
 ignorance, travelling a-bed ;" their existence is ephemeral ; 
 their thoughts are insect-winged, their identity expires 
 with the whim, the folly, the passion of the hour. 
 
 Nothing but a miracle can rouse such people from their 
 lethargy. It is not to be expected, nor is it even possible 
 in the natural course of things. Pope's striking exclama- 
 tion, 
 
 " Oh ! blindness to the future kindly given, 
 That each may fill the circuit mark'd by Heaven !" 
 
 hardly applies here ; namely, to evils that stare us in the 
 face, and that might be averted with the least prudence or 
 resolution. But nothing can be done. How should it ? 
 A slight evil, a distant danger will not move them ; and a 
 more imminent one only makes them turn away from it 
 in greater precipitation and alarm. The more desperate 
 their affairs grow, the more averse they are to look into 
 them ; and the greater the effort required to retrieve them, 
 the more incapable they are of it. At first, they will not 
 do anything; and afterwards, it is too late. The very 
 motives that imperiously urge them to self-reflection and 
 amendment, combine with their natural disposition to pre- 
 vent it. This amounts pretty nearly to a mathematical 
 demonstration. Ease, vanity, pleasure, are the ruling 
 passions in such cases. How will you conquer these, or 
 wean their infatuated votaries from them ? By the dread 
 
350 On Effeminacy of Character. 
 
 of hardship, disgrace, pain ? They turn from them and 
 you who point them out as the alternative, with sickly 
 disgust ; and instead of a stronger effort of courage or 
 self-denial to avert the crisis, hasten it by a wilful deter- 
 mination to pamper the disease in every way, and arm 
 themselves, not with fortitude to bear or to repel the con- 
 sequences, but with judicial blindness to their approach. 
 Will you rouse the indolent procrastinator to an irksome 
 but necessary effort, by showing him how much he has to 
 do ? He will only draw back the more for all your en- 
 treaties and representations. If of a sanguine turn, he 
 will make a slight attempt at a new plan of life, be satisfied 
 with the first appearance of reform, and relapse into in- 
 dolence again. If timid and undecided, the hopelessness 
 of the undertaking will put him out of heart with it, and 
 he will stand still in despair. Will you save a vain man 
 from ruin, by pointing out the obloquy and ridicule that 
 await him in his present career ? He smiles at your fore- 
 bodings as fantastical; or the more they are realised 
 around him, the more he is impelled to keep out the 
 galling conviction, and the more fondly he clings to 
 flattery and death. He will not make a bold and resolute 
 attempt to recover his reputation, because that would 
 imply that it was capable of being soiled or injured ; or 
 he no sooner meditates some desultory project, than he 
 takes credit to himself for the execution, and is delighted 
 to wear his unearned laurels while the thing is barely 
 talked of. The chance of success relieves the uneasiness 
 of his apprehensions ; so that he makes use of the interval 
 only to flatter his favourite infirmity again. Would you 
 wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable con- 
 sequences to which they lead? — What holds more an- 
 tipathy to pleasure than pain? The mind given up to 
 self-indulgence revolts at suffering, and throws it from 
 it as an unaccountable anomaly, as a piece of injustice 
 when it comes. Much less will it acknowledge any affinity 
 
On Effeminacy of Character. 351 
 
 with or subjection to it as a mere threat. If the prediction 
 does not immediately come true, we laugh at the prophet 
 of ill : if it is verified, we hate our adviser proportionally, 
 hug our vices the closer, and hold them dearer and more 
 precious, the more they cost us. We resent wholesome 
 counsel as an impertinence, and consider those who warn 
 us of impending mischief, as if they had brought it on 
 our heads. We cry out with the poetical enthusiast — 
 
 " And let us nurse the fond deceit ; 
 And what if we must die in sorrow ? 
 Who would not cherish dreams so sweet, 
 Though grief and pain should come to-morrow ?" 
 
 But oh thou ! who didst lend me speech when I was dumb, 
 to whom I owe it that I have not crept on my belly all 
 the days of my life like the serpent, but sometimes lift 
 my forked crest or tread the empyrean, wake thou out of 
 thy mid-day slumbers ! Shake off the heavy honeydew 
 of thy soul, no longer lulled with that Circean cup, drink- 
 ing thy own thoughts with thy own ears, but start up in 
 thy promised likeness, and shake the pillared rottenness 
 of the world ! Leave not thy sounding words in air, write 
 them in marble, and teach the coming age heroic truths ! 
 Up, and wake the echoes of Time ! Eich in deepest lore, 
 die not the bed-rid churl of knowledge, leaving the sur- 
 vivors unblest ! Set, set as thou didst rise in pomp and 
 gladness! Dart like the sunflower one broad, golden 
 flash of light ; and ere thou ascendest thy native sky, 
 show us the steps by which thou didst scale the Heaven 
 of philosophy, with Truth and Fancy for thy equal guides, 
 that we may catch thy mantle, rainbow-dipped, and still 
 read thy words dear to Memory, dearer to Fame ! l 
 
 There is another branch of this character, which is the 
 trifling or dilatory character. Such persons are always 
 creating difiiculties, and unable or unwilling to remove 
 
 1 The allusion must be to Coleridge. Compare "Memoirs of 
 W. Hazlitt," 1867, vol. i, pp. 39-40.— Ej>. 
 
S52 On Effeminacy of Character, 
 
 them. They cannot brush aside a cobweb, and are stopped 
 by an insect's wing. Their character is imbecility, rather 
 than effeminacy. The want of energy and resolution in 
 the persons last described, arises from the habitual and 
 inveterate predominance of other feelings and motives ; 
 in these it is a mere want of energy and resolution, that 
 is, an inherent natural defect of vigour of nerve and 
 voluntary power. There is a specific levity about such 
 persons, so that you cannot propel them to any object, or 
 give them a decided momentum in any direction or pursuit. 
 They turn back, as it were, on the occasion that should 
 project them forward with manly force and vehemence. 
 They shrink from intrepidity of purpose, and are alarmed 
 at the idea of attaining their end too soon. They will 
 not act with steadiness or spirit, either for themselves or 
 you. If you chalk out a line of conduct for them, or 
 commission them to execute a certain task, they are sure 
 to conjure up some insignificant objection or fanciful im- 
 pediment in the way, and are withheld from striking an 
 effectual blow by mere feebleness of character. They 
 may be officious, good-natured, friendly, generous in dis- 
 position, but they are of no use to any one. They will 
 put themselves to twice the trouble you desire, not to carry 
 your point, but to defeat it; and in obviating needless 
 objections, neglect the main business. If they do what 
 you want, it is neither at the time nor in the manner that 
 you wish. This timidity amounts to treachery ; for by 
 always anticipating some misfortune or disgrace, they 
 realise their unmeaning apprehensions. The little bears 
 sway in their minds over the great : a small inconvenience 
 outweighs a solid and indispensable advantage ; and their 
 strongest bias is uniformly derived from the weakest 
 motive. They hesitate about the best way of beginning 
 a thing till the opportunity for action is lost, and are less 
 anxious about its being done than the precise manner of 
 doing it. They will destroy a passage sooner than let an 
 
On Effeminacy of Character. 353 
 
 objectionable word pass; and are much less concerned 
 about the truth or the beauty of an image than about the 
 reception it will meet with from the critics. They alter 
 what they write, not because it is, but because it may 
 possibly be wrong : and in their tremulous solicitude to 
 avoid imaginary blunders, run into real ones. What is 
 curious enough is, that with all this caution and delicacy, 
 they are continually liable to extraordinary oversights. 
 They are, in fact, so full of all sorts of idle apprehensions, 
 that they do not know how to distinguish real from 
 imaginary grounds of apprehension ; and they often give 
 some unaccountable offence either from assuming a sudden 
 boldness half in sport, or while they are secretly pluming 
 themselves on their dexterity in avoiding everything ex- 
 ceptionable ; and the same distraction of motive and short- 
 sightedness which gets them into scrapes hinders them 
 from seeing their way out of them. Such persons (often 
 of ingenious and susceptible minds) are constantly at 
 cross-purposes with themselves and others ; will neither do 
 things nor let others do them ; and whether they succeed 
 or fail, never feel confident or at their ease. They spoil 
 the freshness and originality of their own thoughts by 
 asking contradictory advice; and in befriending others, 
 while they are about it and about it, you might have done 
 the thing yourself a dozen times over. 
 
 There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly 
 firmness and decision of character. I like a person who 
 knows his own mind and sticks to it ; who sees at once 
 what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He 
 does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, 
 but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to 
 attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object. If 
 he can serve you, he will do so ; if he cannot, he will say 
 so without keeping you in needless suspense, or laying 
 you under pretended obligations. The applying to him 
 in any laudable undertaking is not like stirring " a dish of 
 
 2 a 
 
354 On Effeminacy of Character. 
 
 skimmed milk." There is stuff in him, and it is of the 
 right practicable sort. He is not all his life at hawk-and- 
 buzzard whether he shall be a Whig or a Tory, a friend 
 or a foe, a knave or a fool ; but thinks that life is short, 
 and that there is no time to play fantastic tricks in it, to 
 tamper with principles, or trifle with individual feelings. 
 If he gives you a character, he does not add a damning 
 clause to it : he does not pick holes in you lest others 
 should, or anticipate objections lest he should be thought 
 to be blinded by a childish partiality. His object is to 
 serve you ; and not to play the game into your enemies' 
 hands. 
 
 u A generous friendship no cold medium knows, 
 Burns with one love, with one resentment glows." 
 
 I should be sorry for any one to say what he did not think 
 of me ; but I should not be pleased to see him slink out of 
 his acknowledged opinion, lest it should not be confirmed 
 by malice or stupidity. He who is well acquainted and 
 well inclined to you, ought to give the tone, not to 
 receive it from others, and may set it to what key he 
 pleases in certain cases. 
 
 There are those of whom it has been said, that to them 
 an obligation is a reason for not doing anything, and there 
 are others who are invariably led to do the reverse of what 
 they should. The last are perverse, the first imprac- 
 ticable people. Opposed to the effeminate in disposition 
 and manners are the coarse and brutal. As those were all 
 softness and smoothness, these affect or are naturally 
 attracted to whatever is vulgar and violent, harsh and re- 
 pulsive in tone, in modes of speech, in forms of address, 
 in gesture and behaviour. Thus there are some who ape 
 the lisping of the fine lady, the drawling of the fine gentle- 
 man, and others who all their life delight in and catch the 
 uncouth dialect, the manners and expressions of clowns 
 and hoydens. The last are governed by an instinct of the 
 disagreeable, by an appetite and headlong rage for violat- 
 
On Effeminacy of Character. 355 
 
 ing decorum, and hurting other people's feelings, their own 
 being excited and enlivened by the shock. They deal in 
 home truths, unpleasant reflections, and unwelcome 
 matters of fact ; as the others are all compliment and 
 complaisance, insincerity and insipidity. 
 
 We may observe an effeminacy of style, in some degree 
 corresponding to effeminacy of character. Writers of this 
 stamp are great interliners of what they indite, alterers of 
 indifferent phrases, and the plague of printers' devils. By 
 an effeminate style I would be understood to mean one 
 that is all florid, all fine ; that cloys by its sweetness, and 
 tires by its sameness. Such are what Dryden calls "■ calm, 
 peaceable writers." They only aim to please, and never 
 offend by truth or disturb by singularity. Every thought 
 must be beautiful per se, every expression equally fine. 
 They do not delight in vulgarisms, but in commonplaces, 
 and dress out unmeaning forms in all the colours of the 
 rainbow. They do not go out of their way to think — that 
 would startle the indolence of the reader : they cannot ex- 
 press a trite thought in common words — that would be a 
 sacrifice of their own vanity. They are not sparing of 
 tinsel, for it costs nothing. Their works should be printed, 
 as they generally are, on hot-pressed paper, with vignette 
 margins. The Delia Cruscan school comes under this 
 description, which is now nearly exploded. Lord Byron 
 is a pampered and aristocratic writer, but he is not effemi- 
 nate, or we should not have his works with only the 
 printer's name to them ! I cannot help thinking that the 
 fault of Mr. Keats's poems was a deficiency in masculine 
 energy of style. He had beauty, tenderness, delicacy, in 
 an uncommon degree, but there was a want of strength and 
 substance. His Endymion is a very delightful description 
 of the illusions of a youthful imagination, given up to airy 
 dreams — we have flowers, clouds, rainbows, moonlight, all 
 sweet sounds and smells, and Oreads and Dryads flitting 
 by — but there is nothing tangible in it, nothing marked 
 
356 Why Distant Objects Please. 
 
 or palpable — we have none of the hardy spirit or rigid 
 forms of antiquity. He painted his own thoughts and 
 character; and did not transport himself into the fabulous 
 and heroic ages. There is a want of action, of character, 
 and so far of imagination, but there is exquisite fancy. 
 All is soft and fleshy, without bone or muscle. We see 
 in him the youth without the manhood of poetiy. His 
 genius breathed rt vernal delight and joy.*' — " Like Maia's 
 son he stood and shook his plumes," with fragrance filled. 
 His mind was redolent of spring. He had not the fierce- 
 ness of summer, nor the richness of autumn, and winter he 
 seemed not to have known, till he felt the icy hand of 
 death ! 
 
 ESSAY XXVI. 
 
 Why Distant Objects Please. 
 
 Distant objects please, because in the first place, they 
 imply an idea of space and magnitude, and because, not 
 being obtruded too close upon the eye, we clothe them 
 with the indistinct and airy colours of fancy. In looking 
 at the misty mountain-tops that bound the horizon, the 
 mind is as it were conscious of all the conceivable objects 
 and interests that lie between ; we imagine all sorts of 
 adventures in the interim ; strain our hopes and wishes 
 to reach the air-drawn circle, or to " descry new lands, 
 rivers, and mountains," stretching far beyond it : our 
 feelings, carried out of themselves, lose their grossness 
 and their husk, are rarefied, expanded, melt into softness 
 and brighten into beauty, turning to ethereal mould, sky- 
 tinctured. We drink the air before us, and borrow a 
 more refined existence from objects that hover on the 
 brink of nothing. Where the landscape fades from the 
 dull sight, we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of 
 
Why Distant Objects Please. 857 
 
 unknown good, and tinge the hazy prospect with hopes 
 and wishes and more charming fears. 
 
 " But thou, oh Hope ! with eyes so fair, 
 What was thy delighted measure ? 
 Still it whisper'd promised pleasure, 
 And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail !" 
 
 Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and know- 
 ledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces 
 out at its leisure ; and all but the present moment, but the 
 present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over 
 it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself 
 Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please 
 because they border on its confines, and are moulded by 
 its touch. When I was a boy, I lived within sight of a 
 range of lofty hills, whose blue tops blending with the 
 setting sun had often tempted my longing eyes and 
 wandering feet. At last I put my project in execution, 
 and on a nearer approach, instead of glimmering air woven 
 into fastastic shapes, found them huge lumpish heaps of 
 discoloured earth. I learnt from this (in part) to leave 
 " Yarrow unvisited," and not idly to disturb a dream of 
 good! 
 
 Distance of time has much the same effect as distance 
 of place. It is not surprising that fancy colours the 
 prospect of the future as it thinks good, when it even 
 effaces the forms of memory. Time takes out the sting of 
 pain ; our sorrows after a certain period have been so 
 often steeped in a medium of thought and passion, that 
 they " unmould their essence ;" and all that remains of our 
 original impressions is what we would wish them to have 
 been. Not only the untried steep ascent before us, but 
 the rude, unsightly masses of our past experience presently 
 resume their power of deception over the eye : the golden 
 cloud soon rests upon their heads, and the purple light of 
 fancy clothes their barren sides ! Thus we pass on, while 
 both ends of our existence touch upon Heaven ! There ia 
 
358 Why Distant Objects Please. 
 
 (so to speak) " a mighty stream of tendency " to good in 
 the human mind, upon which all objects float and are 
 imperceptibly borne along : and though in the voyage of 
 life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks and quick- 
 sands, yet there is " a tide in the affairs of men," a heaving 
 and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of which, 
 " with sails and tackle torn," the wreck and scattered 
 fragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven 
 of our desires ! In all that relates to the affections, we 
 put the will for the deed : — so that the instant the pressure 
 of unwelcome circumstances is removed, the mind recoils 
 from their hold, recovers its elasticity, and re-unites 
 itself to that image of good, which is but a reflection and 
 configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in 
 the long perspective of waning years, the meanest in- 
 cidents, enlarged and enriched by countless recollections, 
 become interesting ; the most painful, broken and softened 
 by time, soothe. How any object, that unexpectedly 
 brings back to us old scenes and associations, startles the 
 mind ! What a yearning it creates within us ; what a 
 longing to leap the intermediate space ! How fondly we 
 cling to, and try to revive the impression of all that we 
 then were ! 
 
 " Such tricks hath strong imagination !" 
 
 In truth we impose upon ourselves, and know not what we 
 wish. It is a cunning artifice, a quaint delusion, by 
 which, in pretending to be what we were at a particular 
 moment of time, we would fain be all that we have since 
 been, and have our lives to come over again. It is not 
 the little, glimmering, almost annihilated speck in the 
 distance that rivets our attention and " hangs upon the 
 beatings of our hearts :" it is the interval that separates 
 us from it, and of which it is the trembling boundary, 
 that excites all this coil and mighty pudder in the breast. 
 Into that great gap in our being " come thronging soft 
 desires" and infinite regrets. It is the contrast, th© 
 
Wliy Distant Objects Please. 359 
 
 change from what we then were, that arms the half- 
 extinguished recollection with its giant strength, and lifts 
 the fabric of the affections from its shadowy base. In 
 contemplating its utmost verge, we overlook the map of 
 our existence, and re-tread, in apprehension, the journey 
 of life. So it is that in early youth we strain our eager 
 sight after the pursuits of manhood; and, as we are 
 sliding off the stage, strive to gather up the toys and 
 flowers that pleased our thoughtless childhood. 
 
 When I was quite a boy, my father used to take me to 
 the Montpelier Tea-gardens at Walworth. Do I go there 
 now ? No ; the place is deserted, and its borders and its 
 beds o'erturned. Is there, then, nothing that can 
 
 " Bring back the hour 
 Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower ?" 
 
 Oh ! yes. I unlock the casket of memory, and draw back 
 the warders of the brain; and there this scene of my 
 infant wanderings still lives unfaded, or with fresher dyes. 
 A new sense comes upon me, as in a dream ; a richer 
 perfume, brighter colours start out ; my eyes dazzle ; my 
 heart heaves with its new load of bliss, and I am a child 
 again. My sensations are all glossy, spruce, voluptuous, 
 and fine : they wear a candied coat, and are in holiday 
 trim. I see the beds of larkspur with purple eyes ; tall 
 hollyhocks, red or yellow ; the broad sunflowers, caked in 
 gold, with bees buzzing round them; wildernesses of 
 pinks, and hot glowing peonies ; poppies run to seed ; the 
 sugared lily, and faint mignionette, all ranged in order, 
 and as thick as they can grow ; the box-tree borders ; the 
 gravel-walks, the painted alcove, the confectionery, the 
 clotted cream : — I think I see them now with sparkling 
 looks ; or have they vanished while I have been writing 
 this description of them ? No matter ; they will return 
 again when I least think of them. All that I have ob- 
 served since, of flowers and plants, and grass-plots, and of 
 Buburb delights, seems to me borrowed from " that first 
 
300 Why Distant Objects Please. 
 
 garden of my innocence " — to be slips and scions stolen 
 from that bed of memory. In this manner the darlings of 
 our childhood burnish out in the eye of after years, and 
 derive their sweetest perfume from the first heartfelt sigh 
 of pleasure breathed upon them, 
 
 * like the sweet south, 
 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 Stealing and giving odour I" 
 
 If I have pleasure in a flower-garden, I have in a kitchen- 
 garden too, and for the same reason. If I see a row of 
 cabbage -plants, or of peas or beans coming up, I imme- 
 diately think of those which I used so carefully to water 
 of an evening at Wein, 1 when my day's tasks were done, 
 and of the pain with which I saw them droop and hang 
 down their leaves in the morning's sun. Again, I never 
 see a child's kite in the air, but it seems to pull at my 
 heart. It is to me " a thing of life." I feel the twinge 
 at my elbow, the flutter and palpitation, with which I used 
 to let go the string of my own, as it rose in the air and 
 towered among the clouds. My little cargo of hopes and 
 fears ascended with it ; and as it made a part of my own 
 consciousness then, it does so still, and appears " like 
 some gay creature of the element," my playmate when 
 life was young, and twin-born with my earliest recollec- 
 tions. 1 could enlarge on this subject of childish amuse- 
 ments, but Mr. Leigh Hunt has treated it so well, in a 
 paper in the " Indicator," on the productions of the toy- 
 shops of the metropolisj that if I were to insist more on 
 it I should only pass for an imitator of that ingenious and 
 agreeable writer, and for an indifferent one into the bargain. 
 Sounds, smells, and sometimes tastes, are remembered 
 longer than visible objects, and serve, perhaps, better for 
 
 1 Wem, in Shropshire, his father's place of residence during 
 many years. The task to which the author alludes was probably 
 his father's portrait, executed in 1804, and particularly noticed in 
 the Essay " On the Pleasures of Painting." — Kx>. 
 
Why Distant Objects Please. 361 
 
 links in the chain of association. The reason seems to 
 be this : they are in their nature intermittent, and com- 
 paratively rare; whereas objects of sight are always 
 before us, and, by their continuous succession, drive one 
 another out. The eye is always open; and between 
 any given impression and its recurrence a second time, 
 fifty thousand other impressions have, in all likeli- 
 hood, been stamped upon the sense and on the brain. 
 The other senses are not so active or vigilant. They are 
 but seldom called into play. The ear, for example, is 
 oftener courted by silence than noise; and the sounds 
 that break that silence sink deeper and more durably into 
 the mind. I have a more present and lively recollection 
 of certain scents, tastes, and sounds, for this reason, than 
 I have of mere visible images, because they are more 
 original, and less worn by frequent repetition. Where 
 there is nothing interposed between any two impressions, 
 whatever the distance of time that parts them, they 
 naturally seem to touch ; and the renewed impression 
 recals the former one in full force, without distraction or 
 competitor. The taste of barberries, which have hung 
 out in the snow during the severity of a North American 
 winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of 
 thirty years ; ' for I have met with no other taste, in all 
 that time, at all like it. It remains by itself, almost like 
 the impression of a sixth sense. But the colour is mixed 
 up indiscriminately with the colours of many other berries, 
 nor should I be able to distinguish it among them. The 
 smell of a brickkiln carries the evidence of its own iden- 
 tity with it : neither is it to me (from peculiar associations) 
 unpleasant. The colour of brickdust, on the contrary, 
 is more common, and easily confounded with other colours. 
 Eaphael did not keep it quite distinct from his flesh- 
 colour. I will not say that we have a more perfect re- 
 collection of the human voice than of that complex picture 
 1 See "Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1867," i. 6-7.— Ed. 
 
362 Why Distant Objects Please. 
 
 the human face, but I think the sudden hearing of a well- 
 known voice has something in it more affecting and 
 striking than the sudden meeting with the face : perhaps 
 indeed this may be because we have a more familiar re- 
 membrance of the one than the other, and the voice takes 
 us more by surprise on that account. I am by no means 
 certain (generally speaking) that we have the ideas of the 
 other senses so accurate and well made out as those of 
 visible form : what I chiefly mean is, that the feelings 
 belonging to the sensations of our other organs, when 
 accidentally recalled, are kept more separate and pure. 
 Musical sounds, probably, owe a good deal of their interest 
 and romantic effect to the principle here spoken of. Were 
 they constant, they would become indifferent, as we may 
 find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not 
 hear after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than 
 that of a blind fiddler, who has but one sense left (if we 
 except the sense of snuff-taking l ) and who has that 
 stunned or deafened by his own villanous noises. Shake- 
 spear says, 
 
 " How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night !" 
 
 It has been observed in explanation of this passage, that 
 it is because in the day-time lovers are occupied with one 
 another's faces, but that at night they can only distinguish 
 the sound of each other's voices. I know not how this 
 may be ; but I have, ere now, heard a voice break so upon 
 upon the silence, 
 
 ** To angels' 'twas most like," 
 
 and charm the moonlight air with its balmy essence, that 
 the budding leaves trembled to its accents. Would I 
 might have heard it once more whisper peace and hope 
 (as erst when it was mingled with the breath of spring), 
 and with its soft pulsations lift winged fancy to heaven 
 
 J See Wilkie's " Blind Fiddler." 
 
Why Distant Objects Please. , 363 
 
 But it has ceased, or turned where I no more shall hear 
 it ! — Hence, also, we see what is the charm of the shep- 
 herd's pastoral reed ; and why we hear him, as it were, 
 piping to his flock, even in a picture. Our ears are fancy 
 stung ! I remember once strolling along the margin of a 
 stream, skirted with willows and plashy sedges, in one of 
 those low sheltered valleys on Salisbury Plain, where the 
 monks of former ages had planted chapels and built 
 hermits' cells. There was a little parish church near, 
 but tall elms and quivering alders hid it from my sight, 
 when, all of a sudden, I was startled by the sound of the 
 full organ pealing on the ear, accompanied by rustic 
 voices and the willing quire of village maids and children. 
 It rose, indeed, " like an exhalation of rich distilled per- 
 fumes." The dew from a thousand pastures was gathered 
 in its softness ; the silence of a thousand years spoke in 
 it. It came upon the heart like the calm beauty of death ; 
 fancy caught the sound, and faith mounted on it to the 
 skies. It filled the valley like a mist, and still poured 
 out its endless chant, and still it swells upon the ear, and 
 wraps me in a golden trance, drowning the noisy tumult 
 of the world ! 
 
 There is a curious and interesting discussion, on the 
 comparative distinctness of our visual and other external 
 impressions, in Mr. Fearn's " Essay on Consciousness," 
 with which I shall try to descend from this rhapsody to the 
 ground of common sense and plain reasoning again. After 
 observing, a little before, that " nothing is more untrue 
 than that sensations of vision do necessarily leave more 
 vivid and durable ideas than those of grosser senses," he 
 proceeds to give a number of illustrations in support # of 
 this position. " Notwithstanding," he says, " the advan- 
 tages here enumerated in favour of sight, I think there is 
 no doubt that a man will come to forget acquaintance, 
 and many other visible objects, noticed in mature age, 
 before he will in the least forget tastes and smells, of 
 
364 i Why Distant Objects Please. 
 
 only moderate interest, encountered either in his child- 
 hood, or at any time since. 
 
 u In the course of voyaging to various distant regions, 
 it has several times happened that I have eaten once or 
 twice of different things that never came in my way before 
 nor since. Some of these have been pleasant, and some 
 scarce better than insipid ; but I have no reason to think 
 I have forgot, or much altered the ideas left by those 
 single impulses of taste ; though here the memory of them 
 certainly has not been preserved by repetition. It is clear 
 I must have seen, as well as tasted those things ; and I 
 am decided that I remember the tastes with more precision 
 than I do the visual sensations. 
 
 " I remember having once, and only once, eat Kangaroo 
 in New Holland ; and having once smelled a baker's shop, 
 having a peculiar odour in the city of Bassorah. Now 
 both these gross ideas remain with me quite as vivid as 
 any visual ideas of those places ; and this could not be 
 from repetition, but really from interest in the sensation. 
 
 " Twenty-eight years ago, in the island of Jamaica, I 
 partook (perhaps twice) of a certain fruit, of the taste of 
 which I have now a very fresh idea ; and I could add 
 other instances of that period. 
 
 " I have had repeated proofs of having lost retention of 
 visual objects, at various distances of time, though they 
 had once been familiar. I have not, during thirty years, 
 forgot the delicate, and in itself most trifling sensation, 
 that the palm of my hand used to convey, when I was 
 a boy, trying the different effects of what boys call light 
 and heavy tops; but I cannot remember within several 
 shades of the brown coat which I left off a week ago. If 
 any man thinks he can do better, let him take an ideal 
 survey of his wardrobe, and then actually refer to it for 
 proof. 
 
 " After retention of such ideas, it certainly would be 
 very difficult to persuade me that feeling, taste, and smell 
 
Why Distant Objects Please. 365 
 
 can scarce be said to leave ideas, unless indistinct and 
 obscure ones. . . . 
 
 " Show a Londoner correct models of twenty London 
 churches, and, at the same time, a model of each, which 
 differs, in several considerable features, from the truth, 
 and I venture to say he shall not tell you, in any instance, 
 which is the correct one, except by mere chance. 
 
 "If he is an architect, he may be much more correct 
 than any ordinary person : and this obviously is, because 
 he has felt an interest in viewing these structures, which 
 an ordinary person does not feel : and here interest is the 
 sole reason of his remembering more correctly than his 
 neighbour. 
 
 "I once heard a person quaintly ask another, How 
 many trees there are in St. Paul's churchyard? The 
 question itself indicates that many cannot answer it ; and 
 this is found to be the case with those who have passed 
 the church a hundred times : whilst the cause is, that 
 every individual in the busy stream which glides past 
 St. Paul's is engrossed in various other interests. 
 
 " How often does it happen that we enter a well-known 
 apartment, or meet a well-known friend, and receive some 
 vague idea of visible difference, but cannot possibly find 
 out what it is ; until at length we come to perceive (or 
 perhaps must be told) that some ornament or furniture is 
 removed, altered, or added in the apartment ; or that our 
 friend has cut his hair, taken a wig, or has made any of 
 twenty considerable alterations in his appearance. At 
 other times, we have no perception of alteration whatever, 
 though the like has taken place. 
 
 "It is, however, certain that sight, apposited with 
 interest, can retain tolerably exact copies of sensations, 
 especially if not too complex,* such as of the human 
 countenance and figure : yet the voice will convince us, 
 when the countenance will not ; and he is reckoned an 
 excellent painter, and no ordinary genius, who can make 
 
366 Why Distant Gbjects Please. 
 
 a tolerable likeness from memory. !Nay, more, it is a 
 conspicuous proof of the inaccuracy of visual ideas, that 
 it is an effort of consummate art, attained by many years* 
 practice, to take a strict likeness of the human countenance, 
 even when the object is present ; and among those cases, 
 where the wilful cheat of flattery has been avoided, we 
 still find in how very few instances the best painters 
 produce a likeness up to the life, though practice and 
 interest join in the attempt. 
 
 M I imagine an ordinary person would find it very diffi- 
 cult, supposing he had some knowledge of drawing, to 
 afford from memory, a tolerable sketch of such a familiar 
 object as his curtain, his carpet, or his dressing-gown, if 
 the pattern of either be at all various or irregular ; yet 
 he will instantly tell, with precision, either if his snuff 
 or his wine has not the same character it had yesterday, 
 though both these are compounds. 
 
 " Beyond all this I may observe, that a draper who is 
 in the daily habit of such comparisons cannot carry in his 
 mind the particular shade of a colour during a second 
 of time ; and has no certainty of tolerably matching two 
 simple colours, except by placing the patterns in con- 
 tact." * 
 
 I will conclude the subject of this Essay with observing, 
 that (as it appears to me) a nearer and more familiar 
 acquaintance with persons has a different and more favour- 
 able effect than that with places or things. The latter 
 improve (as an almost universal rule) by being removed 
 to a distance : the former, generally at least, gain by 
 being brought nearer and more home to us. Report or 
 imagination seldom raises any individual so high in our 
 estimation as to disappoint us greatly when we are intro- 
 duced to him : prejudice and malice constantly exaggerate 
 defects beyond the reality. Ignorance alone makes 
 monsters or bugbears : our actual acquaintances are all 
 1 u Essay on Consciousness/' p. 303. 
 
Wliy Distant Objects Please. 367 
 
 very common-place people. The thing is, that as a 
 matter of hearsay or conjecture, we make abstractions of 
 particular vices, and irritate ourselves against some par- 
 ticular quality or action of the person we dislike : — 
 whereas individuals are concrete existences, not arbitrary 
 denominations or nicknames ; and have innumerable 
 other qualities, good, bad, and indifferent, besides the 
 damning feature with which we fill up the portrait or 
 caricature, in our previous fancies. We can scarcely hate 
 any one that we know. An acute observer complained, 
 that if there was any one to whom he had a particular 
 spite, and a wish to let him see it, the moment he came 
 to sit down with him, his enmity was disarmed by some 
 unforeseen circumstance. If it was a Quarterly Keviewer, 
 he was in other respects like any other man. Suppose, 
 again, your adversary turns out a very ugly man, or wants 
 an eye, you are balked in that way : he is not what you 
 expected, the object of your abstract hatred and implacable 
 disgust. He may be a very disagreeable person, but he 
 is no longer the same. If you come into a room where a 
 man is, you find, in general, that he has a nose upon his 
 face. " There's sympathy !" This alone is a diversion 
 to your unqualified contempt. He is stupid, and says 
 nothing, but he seems to have something in him when he 
 laughs. You had conceived of him as a rank Whig or 
 Tory — yet he talks upon other subjects. You knew that 
 he was a virulent party- writer ; but you find that the man 
 himself is a tame sort of animal enough. He does not bite. 
 That's something. In short, you can make nothing of it. 
 Even opposite vices balance one another. A man may be 
 pert in company, but he is also dull ; so that you cannot, 
 though you try, hate him cordially, merely for the wish 
 to be offensive. He is a knave. Granted. You learn, on 
 a nearer acquaintance, what you did not know before — 
 that he is a fool as well ; so you forgive him. On 
 the other hand, he may bo a profligate public character, 
 
368 Why Distant Objects Please. 
 
 and may make no secret of it ; but he gives you a hearty 
 shake by the hand, speaks kindly to servants, and sup- 
 ports an aged father and mother. Politics apart, he is 
 a very honest fellow. You are told that a person has 
 carbuncles on his face ; but you have ocular proofs that 
 he is sallow, and pale as a ghost. This does not much 
 mend the matter ; but it blunts the edge of the ridicule, 
 and turns your indignation against the inventor of the lie ; 
 
 but he is , the editor of a Scotch magazine ; so you 
 
 are just where you were. I am not very fond of anonymous 
 criticism ; I want to know who the author can be : but 
 
 the moment I learn this, I am satisfied. Even 
 
 would do well to come out of his disguise. It is the 
 mask only that we dread and hate : the man may have 
 something human about him ! The notions, in short, 
 which we entertain of people at a distance, or from partial 
 representations, or from guess-work, are simple uncom- 
 pounded ideas, which answer to nothing in reality : those 
 which we derive from experience are mixed modes, the 
 only true, and in general, the most favourable ones. In- 
 stead of naked deformity, or abstract perfection — 
 
 " Those faultless monsters which the world ne'er saw " — 
 
 " the web of our lives is of mingled yarn, good and ill 
 together : our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt 
 them not ; and our vices would despair, if they were not 
 encouraged by our virtues." This was truly and finely 
 said long ago, by one who knew the strong and weak 
 points of human nature : but it is what sects, and parties, 
 and those philosophers whose pride and boast it is to 
 classify by nicknames, have yet to know the meaning of ! 
 
On Corporate Bodies. 369 
 
 ESSAY XXVII. 
 
 On Corporate Bodies. 
 
 " Corporate bodies have no soul." 
 
 Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than 
 individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, 
 and are less amenable to disgrace * or punishment. They 
 feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor good-will. 
 The principle of private or natural conscience is extin- 
 guished in each individual (we have no moral sense in 
 the breasts of others), and nothing is considered but how 
 the united efforts 2 of the whole (released from idle 
 scruples) may be best directed to the obtaining of poli- 
 tical advantages * and privileges to be shared as common 
 spoil. Each member 4 reaps the benefit, and lays the 
 blame, if there is any, upon the rest. The esprit de 
 corps becomes the ruling passion 5 of every corporate body, 
 compared with which the motives 6 of delicacy or decorum 
 towards others are looked upon as being both impertinent 
 and improper. 7 If any person sets up a plea of this 8 sort 
 in opposition to the rest, he is overruled, he gets ill- 
 blood, 9 and does no good : he is regarded as an interloper, 
 a black sheep in the flock, and is either sent to Coventry, 
 or obliged to acquiesce in the notions and wishes l0 of 
 those he associates and is expected to co-operate with. 
 
 1 The original MS. reads : have less responsibility to shame, &c. — Ed. 
 
 2 Aggregate power. — Original MS. 
 8 In common. — Original MS. 
 
 4 Person. — Original MS. 
 
 5 Principle. — Original MS. 
 
 6 Considerations. — Original MS. 
 
 7 Useless (over which is written impracticable). — Original MS. 
 
 8 After this word, unavailing is marked for insertion in the 
 original MS. 
 
 9 Will is written over in original MS. 
 
 10 Object* (over which is written wishes, as in text).— Original MS. 
 
 2 B 
 
wO On Corporate Bodies 
 
 The refinements ' of private judgment are referred to and 
 negatived in a cummittee of the whole body, while the 
 projects and interests of the Corporation meet with a 
 secret but powerful support 2 in the self-love of the differ- 
 ent members. Eemonstrance — opposition, is fruitless, 
 troublesome, 3 invidious : it answers no one end : and a 
 conformity to the sense of the company is found to be 
 no less necessary to a reputation 4 for good-fellowship 
 than to a quiet life. Self-love and social here look like 
 the same ; and in consulting the interests of a particular 
 class, which are also your own, there is even a show of 
 public virtue. He who is a captious, impracticable, dis- 
 satisfied member of his little club or coterie, is imme- 
 diately 5 set down as a bad member of the community in 
 general, 6 as no friend to regularity and order, as " a 
 pestilent fellow," and one who is incapable of sympathy, 
 attachment, or cordial co-operation in any department 7 or 
 undertaking. Thus the most refractory novice in such 
 matters becomes weaned from his obligations to the larger 
 society, which only breed him inconvenience without any 
 adequate recompense, and wedded to a nearer and dearer 
 one, where he finds 8 every kind of comfort and consola- 
 tion. 9 He contracts the vague and unmeaning character 
 of Man into the more emphatic title of Freeman and 
 Alderman. The claims of an undefined humanity sit 
 looser and looser upon him, at the same time that l0 he 
 
 1 Scruples is written over this word in original MS. 
 
 2 Meet with a favourable reception. — Original MS., where are 
 almost sure is written over meet with. 
 
 3 Importunate is written over in MS. 
 
 4 Character is written over. — Original MS. 
 
 5 Not in original MS. 
 
 6 Not in original MS. 
 
 7 Society. — Original MS. 
 
 8 Meets. — Original MS., hut find* is written cv«i. 
 
 9 Encouragement. — MS. 
 "> While.— MS. 
 
On Corporate Bodies. 371 
 
 draws the bands of his new engagements closer and 
 tighter about him. He loses sight, by degrees, of all 
 common sense and feeling in the petty squabbles, intrigues, 
 feuds, and airs of affected ■ importance to which he has 
 made himself an accessary. He is quite an altered 
 man. 2 " Eeally the society were under considerable 
 obligations to him in that last business ;" that is to say, 
 in some paltry job or underhand 3 attempt to encroach 
 upon the rights, or dictate to the understandings of 4 
 the neighbourhood. In the meantime, they eat, drink, 
 and carouse 6 together. They wash down 6 all minor 
 animosities and unavoidable differences of opinion in pint 
 bumpers ; and the complaints of the multitude are lost 
 in the clatter of plates and the roaring of loyal catches 
 at every quarter's meeting or mayor's feast. 7 The town- 
 hall 8 reels with an unwieldy sense of self-importance : 
 "the very stones prate" of processions: the common 
 pump creaks in concert with the uncorking of bottles and 
 tapping of beer-barrels : the market-cross looks big with 
 authority. Everything has an ambiguous, upstart, repul- 
 sive air. Circle within circle is formed, an imjperium in 
 im/perio : and the business is to exclude from the first 
 circle 9 all the notions, opinions, ideas, interests, and 
 pretensions, of the second. 10 Hence there arises u not only 
 
 1 Not in MS. 
 
 2 He is become an altered man. — MS., but quite and oilier aro 
 written over. 
 
 3 Not in MS. 
 
 4 Dictate their opinion to. — MS. 
 ■ Visit— MS, 
 
 6 Not in MS. 
 
 7 From The town-hall, down to repulsive air, is not in MS. 
 
 * It appears from a rough memorandum on the back of one of the 
 leaves of the MS. that the Mayor's Feast at Basingstoke was in the 
 writer's mind when he wrote this. — Ed. 
 
 9 Not in MS. 
 
 10 Other.— MS. 
 
 u Thus there fc.— MS. 
 
372 On Corporate Bodies, 
 
 an antipathy to common sense and decency 1 in those things 
 where there is a real opposition of interest or clashing of pre- 
 judice, 2 but it becomes a habit and a favourite amusement f 
 in those who are " dressed in a little brief authority," to 
 thwart, annoy, insult, and harass * others on all occasions 
 where the least opportunity or pretext for it occurs. 5 
 Spite, bickerings, back-biting, insinuations, lies, jealousies, 
 nicknames, are the order of the day, and nobody knows 
 what it's all about. 8 One would think that the mayor, 
 aldermen, and liverymen were a higher 7 and more 
 select species of animals than their townsmen ; though 
 there is no difference whatever but in their gowns and 
 staff of office ! This is the essence of the esprit de corps. 
 It is certainly not a very delectable source of contempla- 
 tion 8 or subject to treat of. 
 
 Public bodies are so far worse than the individuals 
 composing them, because the official takes place of the 
 moral sense. 9 The nerves that in themselves were soft 
 and pliable enough, and responded naturally l0 to the touch 
 of pity, 11 when fastened into a machine of that sort, 12 
 become callous and rigid, and throw off every extraneous 
 application 13 that can be made to them with perfect apathy. 
 An appeal is made to the ties of individual friendship : 
 
 1 Common feeling and propriety. — MS. 
 
 2 Authority.— MS. 
 
 3 Ruling passion. — MS., which for in those who are dressed in a 
 little brief authority, reads simply in them. 
 
 4 Harass, over which is written throw obstacles. — MS. 
 
 5 Over this word is written in MS. can be set up. 
 
 6 Tliij* last sentence is not in the MS., which concludes with day. 
 The words, however, are inserted below, after townsmen. 
 
 ' Different. — MS. 8 Source of is not in MS. 
 
 9 Public bodies are worse. . . . The official takes place, &c— MS. 
 
 10 Immediately in MS., but naturally is written over. 
 
 11 Humanity.— "MLS., but pity is written over. 
 
 12 Tliat sort of is written over machine in MS., as if the author wa* 
 ni two minds which form to employ. 
 
 43 For extraneous application the MS. reads simply appeal. 
 
On Corporate Bodies. 373 
 
 the body in general know nothing of them. 1 A case 2 has 
 occurred which strongly called forth 3 the compassion of 
 the person who was witness of it ; but the body (or any 
 special deputation of them) were 4 not present when it 
 happened. These little weaknesses 5 and " compunctious 
 visitings of nature" are effectually guarded against, 
 indeed, by the very rules and regulations of the society, 
 as well as by its spirit. The individual is the creature 
 of his feelings of all sorts, the sport of his vices and his 
 virtues 6 — like the fool in Shakespear, * motley's his 
 proper wear :" — corporate bodies are dressed in a moral 
 uniform ; mixed motives do not operate there, frailty is 
 made into a system, " diseases are turned into commo- 
 dities." Only so much of any one's natural or genuine 
 impulses can influence him in his artificial capacity as 
 formally comes home to the aggregate conscience of 
 those with whom he acts, 7 or bears upon the interests 
 (real or pretended), the importance, respectability, and 
 professed objects of the society. Beyond that point the 
 nerve is bound up, the conscience is seared, and the 
 torpedo-touch of so much inert matter operates to deaden 
 the best feelings and harden the heart. Laughter and 
 tears are said to be the characteristic signs of humanity. 
 Laughter is common enough in such places as a set-off 
 
 1 The MS. reads: "[They are a] bundle of proud flesh and 
 obstinate tumours. I daresay there may be good sort of men in the 
 comp [any]. An appeal is made. . . The body knows, &c." 
 
 2 A case is written over an instance, in MS. 
 
 3 Called forth is written over exalted, in MS. 
 
 4 The MS. reads : " the body were not present, &c." 
 6 And aberrations is added in MS. 
 
 6 After this word the printed copy inserts several lines (down to 
 commodities) not in MS., while the other reads after virtues: " One 
 of these are precluded in corporate bodies : mixed motives do not 
 operate there." 
 
 7 Over this sentence are written in the MS. the words, creates 
 to tlie libations of Bacchus. 
 
374 On Corporate Bodies. 
 
 to the mock-gravity ; but who ever saw a public body 
 in tears ? Nothing but a job or some knavery can keep 
 them serious for ten minutes together. 1 
 
 Such are the qualifications and the apprenticeship 
 necessary to make a man tolerated, to enable him to pass 
 as a cypher, or be admitted as a mere numerical unit, in 
 any corporate body : to be a leader and dictator, he 
 must be diplomatic in impertinence, and officious in every 
 dirty work. He must not merely conform to established 
 prejudices ; he must flatter them. He must not merely 
 be insensible to the demands of moderation and equity ; 
 he must be loud against them. He must not simply fall 
 in with all sorts of contemptible cabals and intrigues ; 
 he must be indefatigable in fomenting them, and setting 
 everybody together by the ears. He must not only 
 repeat, 2 but invent lies. He must make speeches and 
 write handbills ; he must be devoted to the wishes 3 and 
 objects of the society [solely], its creature, its jackal, its 
 busybody, its mouth-piece, its prompter ; he must deal 
 in law-cases, in demurrers, in charters, in traditions, in 
 common-places, in logic and rhetoric — in everything 
 but common sense and honesty. 4 He must (in Mr. 
 Burke's phrase) 5 " disembowel himself of his natural 
 entrails, and be stuffed with 6 paltry, blurred sheets of 
 parchment about the rights " of the privileged few. 7 He 
 
 1 We sometimes see a whole play- bouse in tears. But the audience 
 at a theatre, though a public assembly, are not a public body. They 
 are not incorporated into a frame-work of exclusive, narrow-minded 
 interests of their own. Each individual looks out of his own in- 
 significance at a scene, ideal perhaps, and foreign to himself but 
 true to nature ; friends, strangers, meet on the common ground of 
 humanity, and the tears that spring from their breasts are those 
 which " sacred pity has engendered." They are a mixed multitude 
 melted into sympathy by remote, imaginary events, not a combination 
 cemented by petty views, and sordid, selfish prejudices. 
 
 2 Repeat. — MS. A page of the latter is deficient here. 
 
 3 Interests.— US. 4 Decency— MS. 5 Not in MS. 
 6 Made up of- MS. 7 Parchment, &c— MS. 
 
On Corporate Bodies. 375 
 
 must be a concentrated essence, a varnished, powdered re- 
 presentative of the vices, absurdities, hypocrisy, jealousy, 
 pride, and pragma ticalness of his party. 1 Such a one 
 by bustle and self-importance and puffing, by flattering 
 one to his face, and abusing another behind his back, by 
 lending himself to the weaknesses of some, and pamper- 
 ing the mischievous propensities 2 of others, will pass for 
 a great man in a little society. [He would do for Chair- 
 man to the Society for the Suppression (of Vice) or 
 Secretary to the Constitutional Association !] 
 
 Age does not improve the morality of public bodies. 
 They grow more and more tenacious of their idle 3 
 privileges and senseless 4 self-consequence. They get 
 weak and obstinate at the same time. Those who belong 
 to them have all the upstart pride and pettifogging 
 spirit 5 of their present character ingrafted on the vene- 
 rableness and superstitious sanctity 6 of ancient insti- 
 tutions. They are naturally 7 at issue, first with their 
 neighbours, and next with their contemporaries, on all 
 matters of common propriety and judgment. They 
 become more attached to forms, the more obsolete they 
 are; and the defence of every absurd and invidious 
 distinction is a debt which (by implication) 8 they owe to 
 the dead as well as the living. What might once have 
 been of serious practical utility 9 they turn to farce, by 
 retaining 10 the letter when the spirit is gone : and they 
 
 1 Mischief, and self-importance of the society. 
 
 2 Qualities.— MS. 
 
 3 Not in MS. 
 
 4 In MS. fancied is written over this word. 
 
 5 For pettifogging spirit, the MS. reads restlessness, 
 
 6 Inviolable formality. — MS. 
 
 7 Not in MS., which reads : " They are at war (issue written over 
 with, &c." 
 
 8 Not in MS. 
 
 9 " What was once of serious and practical, &c." — MS. 
 
 10 Standing up for, is written over in MS. 
 
376 On Corporate Bodies. 
 
 do this the more, the more glaring the inconsistency 1 
 and want of sound reasoning ; for they think they thus 
 give proof of their zeal and 2 attachment to the abstract 
 principle on which old establishments 3 exist, the ground 
 of prescription and authority. The greater the wrong, the 
 greater the right, in all such cases. 4 The esprit de corps 
 does not take much merit to itself 5 for upholding what 
 is justifiable in any system, or the proceedings of any 
 party, but for adhering to what is palpably injurious. 6 
 You may exact the first from an enemy : the last is the 
 province 7 of a friend. It 8 has been made a subject of 
 complaint, that the champions of the Church, for example, 
 who are advanced to dignities and honours, are hardly 
 ever those who defend the common principles of Chris- 
 tianity, but those who volunteer to man the out-works, 
 and set up ingenious excuses for the questionable points, 
 the ticklish places in the established form of worship, that 
 is, for those which are attacked from without, and are 
 supposed in danger of being undermined by stratagem, or 
 carried by assault ! 
 
 The great resorts and seats of learning 9 often outlive in 
 this way the intention of the founders as the world out- 
 
 1 The MS. reads simply : " the want of reason: ' 
 
 2 Zeal and is added in the printed copy. 
 
 3 Tliey.— MS. 
 
 4 This sentence is an addition to the printed copy. 
 
 5 Show itself.— MS. 
 
 6 Here the MS. reads : " in upholding what is right in the [do] 
 ings of the junto, but in adhering to what is [wrong] as the leagues 
 defend their chief. Quand meme? You may effect, &c." 
 
 7 Office. — MS., where test is written above. 
 
 8 Here the MS. differs greatly. It reads (much more briefly): 
 " The champions of the Church, for example, who are advanced to 
 dignities, are not those who defend the common principles of 
 Christianity, but who set up ingenious excuses for the absurdity 
 of its questionable points, i. e., those which are attacked from with 
 out, and in danger of being undermined or carried by assault'* 
 
 9 Places of charity and learning. — MS. 
 
On Corporate Bodies. 377 
 
 grows them. Tbey may be said to resemble antiquated 
 coquets of the last age, who think everything ridiculous 
 and intolerable but what was in fashion when they were 
 young, and yet are standing proofs of the progress of 
 taste, and the vanity of human pretensions. Our univer- 
 sities are, in a great measure, become cisterns to hold, not 
 conduits to disperse knowledge. The age has the start 
 of them ; that is, other sources of knowledge have been 
 opened since their formation, to which the world have 
 had access, and have drunk plentifully at those living 
 fountains, 1 but from which they are debarred by the tenor 
 of their charter, and as a matter of dignity and privilege. 
 They have grown poor, like the old grandees in some 
 countries, 2 by subsisting on the inheritance of learning, 
 while the people have grown rich by trade. They are 
 too much in the nature of fixtures in intellect : they 
 stop the way in the road to truth ; or at any rate (for 
 they do not themselves advance) they can only be of 
 service as a check-weight on the too hasty and rapid 
 career of innovation. All that has been invented or 
 thought in the last two hundred years they take no 
 cognizance of, or as little as possible ; they are above it ; 
 they stand upon the ancient land-marks, and will not 
 budge; whatever was not known when they were first 
 endowed, they are still in profound and lofty ignorance 
 of. Yet 3 in that period how much has been done in 
 literature, arts, and science, of which (with the exception 
 of mathematical knowledge, the hardest to gainsay or 
 subject to the trammels of prejudice and barbarous ipse 
 
 1 The MS. reads: "have drunk plentifully," but over drunk is 
 written slaked their thirst. 
 
 2 Spain. — MS. From this point I shall note only the variations 
 of consequence or curiosity. " By subsisting on the inheritance of 
 learning,'' is not in the MS. 
 
 3 The MS. differs greatly from the printed copy here and througn- 
 out; numberless changes must l.ave been introduced at press. 
 
378 On Corporate Bodies. 
 
 dixits) scarce any trace is to be found in the authentic 
 modes of study, and legitimate inquiry, which prevail at 
 either of our Universities ! the unavoidable aim of all cor- 
 porate bodies of learning is not to grow wise, or teach others 
 wisdom, but to prevent any one else from being or seem- 
 ing wiser than themselves ; in other words, their infallible 
 tendency is in the end to suppress inquiry and darken 
 knowledge, by setting limits to the mind of man, and 
 saying to his proud spirit, Hitherto shalt thou come, and 
 no farther I It would not be an unedifying experiment 
 to make a collection of the titles of works published in 
 the course of the year by Members of the Universities. 
 If any attempt is to be made to patch up an idle system 
 in policy or legislation, or church government, it is by a 
 Member of the University : if any hashed-up speculation 
 on an old exploded argument is to be brought forward 
 " in spite of shame, in erring reason's spite," it is by a 
 Member of the University : if a paltry project is ushered 
 into the world for combining ancient prejudices with 
 modern time-serving, it is by a Member of the University. 
 Thus we get at a stated supply of the annual Defences of 
 the Sinking Fund, Thoughts on the Evils of Education, 
 Treatises on Predestination, and Eulogies on 1 Mr. 
 Malthus, all from the same source, and through the same 
 vent. If they came from any other quarter nobody would 
 look at them ; but they have an Imprimatur from dulness 
 and authority : we know that there is no offence in them ; 
 and 2 they are stuck in the shop windows, and read (in 
 the intervals of Lord Byron's works, or the Scotch novels) 
 in cathedral towns and close boroughs ! 
 
 It is, I understand and believe, pretty much the same 
 
 1 Letters to.— MS. 
 
 2 The MS. originally read : " and they are read in cathedral 
 towns and close boroughs," but are stuck in the shop windows is 
 written above; the allusions to Scott and Byron were introduced 
 apparently in proofc 
 
On Corporate Bodies. 379 
 
 in more modern institutions for the encouragement of 
 the Fine Arts. The end is lost in the means : rules take 
 place of nature and genius ; cabal and bustle, and strug- 
 gles for rank and precedence, supersede the study and 
 the love of art. A Royal Academy is a kind of hospital 
 and infirmary for the obliquities of taste and ingenuity — 
 a receptacle where enthusiasm and originality stop and 
 stagnate, and spread their influence no farther, instead 
 of being a school founded for genius, or a temple built to 
 fame. The generality of those who wriggle, or fawn, or 
 beg their way to a seat there, live on their certificate of 
 merit to a good old age, and are seldom heard of after- 
 wards. If a man of sterling capacity gets among them, 
 and minds his own business, he is nobody ; he makes no 
 figure in council, in voting, in resolutions or speeches. 
 If he comes forward with plans and views for the good 
 of the Academy and the advancement of art, he is imme- 
 diately set upon as a visionary, a fanatic, with notions 
 hostile to the interest and credit of the existing members 
 of the society. If he directs the ambition of the scholars 
 to the study of History, this strikes at once at the emolu- 
 ments of the profession, who are most of them (by God's 
 will) portrait painters. If he eulogises the Antique, and 
 speaks highly of the Old Masters, he is supposed to be 
 actuated by envy to living painters and native talent. If, 
 again, he insists on a knowledge of anatomy as essential 
 to correct drawing, this would seem to imply a want of it 
 in our most eminent designers. Every plan, suggestion, 
 argument, that has the general purposes and principles 
 of art for its object, is thwarted, scouted, ridiculed, 
 slandered, as having a malignant aspect towards the 
 profits and pretensions of the great mass of flourishing 
 and respectable artists in the country. 1 This leads to 
 irritation and ill-will on all sides. The obstinacy of the 
 
 1 Of the component members of the aggregate body. — MS., but 
 above aggregate body is written profession. 
 
380 On Corporate Bodies. 
 
 constituted authorities keeps pace with the violence and 
 extravagance opposed to it ; and they lay all the blame 
 on the folly and mistakes they have themselves occasioned 
 or increased. It is considered as a personal quarrel, not 
 a public question ; l by which means the dignity of the 
 body is implicated in resenting the slips and inadvertencies 
 of its members, not in promoting their common and 
 declared objects. In this sort of wretched tracasserie the 
 
 Barrys and H s stand no chance with the Catons, the 
 
 Tubbs, and F s. Sir Joshua even was obliged to 
 
 hold himself aloof from them, and Fuseli passes as a kind 
 of nondescript, or one of his own grotesques. The air of 
 an academy, in short, is not the air of genius and immor- 
 tality ; it is too close and heated, and impregnated with 
 the notions of the common sort. A man steeped in 
 a corrupt atmosphere of this description is no longer open 
 to the genial impulses of nature and truth, nor sees 
 visions of ideal beauty, nor dreams of antique grace and 
 grandeur, nor has the finest works of art continually 
 hovering and floating through his uplifted fancy; but 
 the images that haunt it are rules of the academy, 
 charters, inaugural speeches, resolutions passed or re- 
 scinded, cards of invitation to a council-meeting, or the 
 annual dinner, prize medals, and the king's diploma, con- 
 stituting him a gentleman and esquire. He " wipes 
 out all trivial, fond records ;" all romantic aspirations ; 
 " the Kaphael grace, the Guido air ;" and the commands 
 of the academy alone " must live within the book and 
 volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter." It 
 may be doubted whether any work of lasting reputation 
 and universal interest can spring up in this soil, or ever 
 has done in that of any academy. The last question is 
 a matter of fact and history, not of mere opinion or pre- 
 judice; and may be ascertained as such accordingly. 
 
 1 It must be stated generally, that the MS. and the printed copy 
 scarcely correspond in two consecutive words. 
 
On Corporate Bodies. 381 
 
 The ! mighty names of former times rose before the 
 existence of academies ; and the three greatest painters, 
 undoubtedly, that this country has produced, Eeynolds, 
 Wilson, and Hogarth, were not " dandled and swaddled " 
 into artists in any institution for the fine arts. I do not 
 apprehend that the names o£ Chantry or Wilkie (great 
 as one, and considerable as the other of them is), can be 
 made use of in any way to impugn the jet of this argu- 
 ment. We may find a considerable improvement in some 
 of our artists, when they get out of the vortex for a time. 
 Sir Thomas Lawrence is all the better for having been 
 abstracted for a year or two from Somerset House ; and 
 Mr. Dawe, 2 they say, has been doing wonders in the North. 
 When will he return, and once more " bid Britannia 
 rival Greece ?" 
 
 Mr. Canning somewhere lays it down as a rule, that 
 corporate bodies are necessarily correct and pure in their 
 conduct, from the knowledge which the individuals com- 
 posing them have of one another, and the jealous vigilance 
 they exercise over each other's motives and characters ; 
 whereas people collected into mobs are disorderly and 
 unprincipled from being utterly unknown and unaccount- 
 able to each other. This is a curious pass 3 of wit. I 
 differ with him in both parts of the dilemma. 4 To begin 
 with the first, and to handle it somewhat cavalierly, ac- 
 cording to the model before us; we know, for instance, 
 there is said to be honour among thieves, but very little 
 honesty towards others. Their honour consists in the 
 
 1 From here down to argument is not in the original MS., but the 
 author has jotted down at the foot of the page: Chantry, Wilkie, 
 Hayclon. 
 
 2 James Dawe, R.A., as to whom see Miss Lamb's Letters to 
 Miss Stoddart, passim, and Lamb's Recollections of a late Royal 
 Academician (Englishman's Magazine, 1831). — Ed. 
 
 3 In the MS., paralogism is written above. 
 
 4 After this word there is a caret, but the next sentence, which 
 was no doubt to be inserted, does not occur. 
 
382 On Corporate Bodies. 
 
 division of the booty, not in the mode of acquiring it : 
 they do not (often) betray one another, but they will 
 waylay a stranger, or knock out a traveller's brains : they 
 may be depended on in giving the alarm when any of 
 their posts are in danger of being surprised ; and they 
 will stand together for their ill-gotten gains to the last 
 drop of their blood. Yet they form a distinct society, 
 and are strictly responsible for their behaviour to one 
 another and to their leader. They are not a mob, bat a 
 gang, completely in one another's power and secrets. 1 
 Their familiarity, however, with the proceedings of the 
 corps? does not lead them to expect or to exact from it a 
 very high standard of moral honesty ; that is out of 
 the question ; but they are sure to gain 3 the good opinion 
 of their fellows by committing all sorts of depredations, 
 fraud, and violence against the community at large. So 
 (not to speak it profanely) 4 some of Mr. Croker's friends 
 may be very respectable people in their way — " all honour- 
 able men" — but their respectability is confined within 
 party limits ; every one does not sympathise in the inte- 
 grity of their views ; the understanding between them 
 and the public is not well defined or reciprocal. Or, 
 suppose a gang of pickpockets hustle a passenger in the 
 street, and the mob set upon them, and proceed to execute 
 summary justice upon such as they can lay hands on, am 
 I to conclude that the rogues are in the right, because 
 theirs is a system of well-organised knavery, which they 
 settled in the morning, with their eyes one upon the other, 
 and which they regularly review at night, with a due 
 estimate of each other's motives, character, and conduct in 
 the business ; and that the honest men are in the wrong, 
 because they are a casual collection of unprejudiced, dis- 
 
 1 This sentence is not in the MS. 
 
 2 With one another's characters.— MS. 
 
 3 Moral honesty. They gain, &c. — MS. 
 
 « Not in MS. 
 
On Corporate Bodies. 883 
 
 interested individuals, taken at a venture from the mass 
 of the people, acting without concert or responsibility, 
 on the spur of the occasion, and giving way to their 
 instantaneous impulses and honest anger ? Mobs, in fact, 
 then, are almost always right in their feelings, and often 
 in their judgments, on this very account — that being 
 utterly unknown to and disconnected with each other, 
 they have no point of union or principle of co-operation 
 between them, but the natural sense of justice recognised 
 by all persons in common. They appeal, at the first meeting, 
 not to certain symbols and watchwords privately agreed 
 upon, like Freemasons, but to the maxims and instincts 
 proper to all the world. They have no other clue to 
 guide them to their object but either the dictates of the 
 heart, or the universally-understood sentiments of society, 
 neither of which are likely to be in the wrong. 1 The 
 flame which bursts out and blazes from popular sympathy 
 is made of honest, but homely materials. It is not 
 kindled by sparks of wit or sophistry, 2 nor damped by the 
 cold calculations of self-interest. The multitude 3 may 
 be wantonly set on by others, as is too often the case, or 
 be carried too far in the impulse of rage and disappoint- 
 ment ; but their resentment, when they are left to them- 
 
 1 "They appeal at their first meeting not to thepr] ancient 
 prejudices, interests, or a knowledge of each other's characters like 
 Freemasons, but to certain maxims and feelings common to all the 
 world. They have no other central point of union but the dictates 
 of the heart or the universal popular instinct of society, and in this, 
 popular as it is, they can hardly be wrong.'' — MS. 
 
 2 The rest of the sentence was added in proof. 
 
 3 The MS. differs much from the printed copy here. " They may 
 be set on by others, as is too often the case, or be carried too far in 
 the impulse of rage and disappointment, but their resentment is 
 almost always excited by some evident abuse and wrong, and the 
 excesses into which they run arise from the same want of foresight 
 and regular system that answers for the honesty and uprightness of 
 their intentions." 
 
384 Whether Actors ought 
 
 selves, is almost uniformly, in the first instance, excited 
 by some evident abuse and wrong ; and the excesses into 
 which they run arise from that very want of foresight and 
 regular system, which is a pledge of the uprightness and 
 heartiness of their intentions. In short, the only class of 
 persons to whom the above courtly l charge of sinister and 
 corrupt motives is not applicable, is that body of indi- 
 viduals 2 which usually goes by the name of the People I 
 
 ESSAY XXVIII. 
 
 Whether Actors ought to sit in the Boxes ? 
 
 I think not ; and that for the following reasons, as well as 
 I can give them :— 
 
 Actors belong to the public : their persons are not their 
 own property. They exhibit themselves on the stage: 
 that is enough, without displaying themselves in the boxes 
 of the theatre. I conceive that an actor, on account of the 
 very circumstances of his profession, ought to keep him- 
 self as much incognito as possible. He plays a number of 
 parts disguised, transformed into them as much as he can 
 "by his so potent art," and he should not disturb this 
 borrowed impression by unmasking before company, more 
 than he can help. Let him go into the pit, if he pleases, 
 to see — not into the first circle, to be seen. He is seen 
 enough without that : he is the centre of an illusion, that 
 he is bound to support, both, as it appears to me, by a 
 certain self-respect which should repel idle curiosity, and 
 by a certain deference to the public, in whom he has 
 inspired certain prejudices which he is covenanted not to 
 break. He represents the majesty of successive kings 
 
 1 For above courtly the MS. reads simply foregoing, 
 8 Body corporate. — MS. 
 
to sit in the Boxes. 385 
 
 he takes the responsibility of heroes and lovers on him- 
 self; the mantle of genius and nature falls on his 
 shoulders; we "pile millions" of associations on him, 
 under which he should be " buried quick," and not perk 
 out an inauspicious face upon us, with a plain-cut coat, to 
 say — " What fools you all were ! — I am not Hamlet the 
 Dane !" 
 
 It is very well and in strict propriety for Mr. Mathews, 
 in his At Home, after he has been imitating his inimitable 
 Scotchwoman, to slip out as quick as lightning, and appear 
 in the side-box shaking hands with our old friend Jack 
 Bannister. It adds to our surprise at the versatility of 
 his changes of place and appearance, and he had been 
 before us in his own person during a great part of the 
 evening. There was no harm done — no imaginary spell 
 broken — no discontinuity of thought or sentiment. Mr. 
 Mathews is himself (without offence be it spoken) both a 
 cleverer and more respectable man than many of the 
 characters he represents. Not so when 
 
 " O'er the stage the Ghost of Hamlet stalks, 
 Othello rages, Desdemona mourns, 
 And poor Monimia pours her soul in love." 
 
 A different feeling then prevails : — close, close the scene 
 upon them, and never break that fine phantasmagoria of 
 the brain. Or if it must be done at all, let us choose some 
 other time and place for it : let no one wantonly dash the 
 Circean cup from our lips, or dissolve the spirit of en 
 chantment in the very palace of enchantment. Go, 
 
 Mr. , and sit somewhere else ! "What a thing it is, 
 
 for instance, for any part of an actor's dress to come off 
 unexpectedly while he is playing ! What a cut it is upon 
 himself and the audience ! What an effort he has to 
 recover himself, and struggle through this exposure of the 
 naked truth! It has been considered as one of the 
 triumphs of Garrick's tragic power, that once, when he 
 
 2 o 
 
386 Whether Actors ought 
 
 was playing Lear, his crown of straw came off, and nobody 
 laughed or took the least notice, so much had he identified 
 himself with the character. Was he, after this, to pay 
 so little respect to the feelings he had inspired, as to tear 
 off his tattered robes, and take the old crazed king ftdth 
 him to play the fool in the boxes ? 
 
 11 No ; let him pass. Vex not his parting spirit, 
 Nor on the rack of this rough world 
 Stretch him out farther !" 
 
 Some lady is said to have fallen in love with Garrick from 
 being present when he played the part of Romeo, on which 
 he observed, that he would undertake to cure her of her 
 folly if she would only come and see him in Abel Drugger. 
 So the modern tragedian and fine gentleman, by appearing 
 to advantage, and conspicuously, in propria persona, may 
 easily cure us of our predilection for all the principal 
 characters he shines in. " Sir ! do you think Alexander 
 looked o' this fashion in his life-time, or was perfumed 
 so ? Had Julius Cfesar such a nose ? or wore his frill as 
 you do ? You have slain I don't know how many heroes 
 'with a bare bodkin/ the gold pin in your shirt, and 
 spoiled all the fine love speeches you will ever make by 
 picking your teeth with that inimitable air !" 
 
 An actor, after having performed his part well, instead 
 of courting farther distinction, should affect obscurity, and 
 " steal most guilty-like away," conscious of admiration that 
 he can support nowhere but in his proper sphere, and 
 jealous of his own and others' good opinion of him, in pro- 
 portion as he is a darling in the public eye. He cannot 
 avoid attracting disproportionate attention : why should 
 he wish to fix it on himself in a perfectly flat and insig- 
 nificant part, viz. his own character ? It was a bad custom 
 to bring authors on the stage to crown them. Omne Igno- 
 turn pro magnifico est. Even professed critics, I think, 
 should be shy of putting themselves forward to applaud 
 
to sit in the Boxes. 387 
 
 loudly : any one in a crowd has " a voice potential " as the 
 press: it is either committing their pretensions a little 
 indiscreetly, or confirming their own judgment by a clap- 
 ping of hands, If you only go and give the cue lustily, 
 the house seems in wonderful accord with your opinions. 
 An actor, like a king, should only appear on state occa- 
 sions. He loses popularity by too much publicity; or, 
 according to the proverb, familiarity breeds contempt. Both 
 characters personate a certain abstract idea, are seen in a 
 fictitious costume, and when they have " shuffled off this 
 more than mortal coil," they had better keep out of the 
 way — the acts and sentiments emanating from themselves 
 will not carry on the illusion of our prepossessions. 
 Ordinary transactions do not give scope to grace and dig- 
 nity like romantic situations, or prepared pageants, and 
 the little is apt to prevail over the great, if we come to 
 count the instances. 
 
 The motto of a great actor should be out Ccesar out nihil 
 I do not see how with his crown, or plume of feathers, he 
 can get through those little bcx-doors without stooping and 
 squeezing his artificial importance to tatters. The 
 entrance of the stage is arched so high " that players may 
 get through, and keep their gorgeous turbans on, without 
 good-morrow to the gods !" 
 
 The top-tragedian of the day has too large and splendid 
 a train following him to have room for them in one of 
 the dress-boxes. When he appears there, it should be 
 enlarged expressly for the occasion ; for at his heels march 
 the figures, in full costume, of Cato, and Brutus, and Cas- 
 sius, and of him with the falcon eye, and Othello, and Lear, 
 and crook-backed Kichard, and Hamlet, Prince of Den- 
 mark, and numbers more, and demand entrance along with 
 him, shadows to which he alone lends bodily substance ! 
 " The graves yawn and render up their dead to push us 
 from our stools." There is a mighty bustle at the door, 
 a gibbering and squeaking in the lobbies. An actor* 
 
388 Whether Actors ought 
 
 retinue is imperial, it presses upon the imagination too 
 much, and he should therefore slide unnoticed into the 
 pit. Authors, who are in a manner his makers and 
 masters, sit there contented — why should not he ? " He 
 is used to show himself." That then is the very reason 
 he should conceal his person at other times. A habit of 
 ostentation should not be reduced to a principle. If I had 
 seen the late Gentleman Lewis fluttering in a prominent 
 situation in the boxes, I should have been puzzled whether 
 to think of him as the Copper Captain, or as Bobadil, or 
 Ranger, or Young Kapid, or Lord Foppington, or fifty 
 other whimsical characters : then I should have got 
 Munden and Quick, and a parcel more of them in my 
 head, till " my brain would have been like a smoke-jack :" 
 I should not have known what to make of it ; but if I had 
 seen him in the pit, I should merely have eyed him with 
 respectful curiosity, and have told every one that that was 
 Gentleman Lewis. We should have concluded from the 
 circumstance that he was a modest, sensible man : we all 
 knew beforehand that he could show off whenever he 
 pleased ! 
 
 There is one class of performers that I think is quite 
 exempt from the foregoing reasoning, I mean retired actws. 
 Come when they will and where they will, they are wel- 
 come to their old friends. They have as good a right to 
 sit in the boxes as children at the holidays. But. they do 
 npt, somehow, come often. It is but a melancholy recol- 
 lection with them : — 
 
 " Then sweet, 
 
 Now sad to think on !" 
 
 Mrs. Garrick still goes often, and hears the applause of 
 her husband over again in the shouts of the pit. Had 
 Mrs. Pritchard or Mrs. Clive been living, I am afraid we 
 should have seen little of them — it would have been too 
 home a feeling with them. Mrs. Sid dons seldom if ever 
 
to sit in the Boxes. 389 
 
 goes, and yet she is almost the only thing left worth see- 
 ing there. She need not stay away on account of any 
 theory that I can form. She is out of the pale of all 
 theories, and annihilates all rules. Wherever she sits 
 there is grace and grandeur, there is tragedy personified. 
 Her seat is the undivided throne of the Tragic Muse. 
 She had no need of the robes, the sweeping train, the 
 ornaments of the stage ; in herself she is as great as any 
 being she ever represented in the ripeness and plenitude 
 of her power ! I should not, I confess, have had the same 
 paramount abstracted feeling at seeing John Kemble there, 
 whom I venerate at a distance, and should not have known 
 whether he was playing off the great man or the great 
 actor : — 
 
 " A little more than kin, and less than kind." 
 
 I know it may be said in answer to all this pretext of keep- 
 ing the character of the player inviolate — " What is there 
 more common, in fact, than for the hero of a tragedy to 
 speak the prologue, or than for the heroine, who has been 
 stabbed or poisoned, to revive, and come forward laughing 
 in the epilogue ?" As to the epilogue, it is spoken to get 
 rid of the idea of the tragedy altogether, and to ward off 
 the fury of the pit, who may be bent on its damnation. 
 The greatest incongruity you can hit upon is, therefore, 
 the most proper for this purpose. But I deny that the 
 hero of a tragedy, or the principal character in it, is ever 
 pitched upon to deliver the prologue. It is always, by 
 prescription, some walking shadow, some poor player, who 
 cannot even spoil a part of any consequence. Is there not 
 Mr. Claremont always at hand for this purpose, whom the 
 late king pronounced three times to be "a bad actor?" 1 
 
 : Mr. Munden and Mr. Claremont went one Sunday to Windsor, 
 tc feee the king. They passed with other spectators once or twice : 
 at last, his late maiesty distinguished Munden in the crowd, and 
 called him to him. After treating him with much cordial familiarity. 
 
390 Whether Actors ought 
 
 What is there in common between that accustomed wave 
 of the hand, and the cocked hat under the arm, and any 
 passion or person that can be brought forward on the 
 stage ? It is not that we can be said to acquire a preju- 
 dice against so harmless an actor as Mr. Claremont ; we 
 are born with a prejudice against a speaker of prologues. 
 It is an innate idea : a natural instinct : there is a parti- 
 cular organ in the brain provided for it. Do we not all 
 hate a manager ? It is not because he is insolent or im- 
 pertinent, or fond of making ridiculous speeches, or a 
 notorious puffer, or ignorant, or mean, or vain, but it is 
 because we see him in a coat, waistcoat, and breeches. 
 The stage is the world of fantasy : it is Queen Mab that 
 has invited us to her revels there, and all that have to do 
 with it should wear motley !■ 
 
 Lastly, there are some actors by profession, whose faces 
 we like to see in the boxes or anywhere else ; but it is 
 because they are no actors, but rather gentlemen and 
 scholars, and in their proper places in the boxes, or 
 wherever they are. Does not an actor himself, I would 
 ask, feel conscious and awkward in the boxes, if he thinks 
 that he is known ? And does he not sit there in spite of 
 this uneasy feeling, and run the gauntlet of impertinent 
 looks and whispers, only to get a little by-admiration, as 
 he thinks ? It is hardly to be supposed that he comes to 
 see the play — the show. He must have enough of plays 
 and finery. But he wants to see a favourite (perhaps a 
 rival) actor in a striking part. Then the place for him to 
 
 the king said, " And, pray, who is that with you ?" Munden, with 
 many congees, and contortions of face, replied, "An please your 
 majesty, it's Mr. Claremont of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane." 
 " Oh ! yes" said the king, " I know him well — a bad actor, a bad 
 actor, a bad actor !" Why kings should repeat what they say three 
 times, is odd : their saying it once is quite enough. I have always 
 liked Mr. Claremont' s face since I heard this anecdote, and perhaps 
 the telling it may have the same effect on other people. 
 
to sit in the Boxes. 391 
 
 do this is the pit. Painters, I know, always get as close 
 up to a picture they want to copy as they can ; and I 
 should imagine actors would want to do the same, in order 
 to look into the texture and mechanism of their art. Even 
 theatrical critics can make nothing of a part that they see 
 from the boxes. If you sit in the stage-box, your atten- 
 tion is drawn off by the company and other circumstances. 
 If you get to a distance (so as to be out of the reach of 
 notice) you can neither hear nor see well. For myself, I 
 would as soon take a seat on the top of the Monument to 
 give an account of a first appearance, as go into the second 
 or third tier of boxes to do it. I went, but the other day, 
 with a box-ticket, to see Miss Fanny Brunton come out in 
 Juliet, and Mr. Macready make a first appearance in 
 Komeo ; and though I was told (by a tolerable judge) 
 that the new Juliet was the most elegant figure on the 
 stage, and that Mr. Macready's Komeo was quite beautiful, 
 I vow to God I knew nothing of it. So little could I tell 
 of the matter, that at one time I mistook Mr. Horrebowfor 
 Mr. Abbott. I have seen Mr. Kean play Sir Giles Over- 
 reach one night from the front of the pit, and a few nights 
 after from the front boxes, facing the stage. It was 
 another thing altogether. That which had been so lately 
 nothing but flesh and blood, a living fibre, " instinct with 
 fire" and spirit, was no better than a little fantoccini 
 figure, darting backwards and forwards on the stage, 
 starting, screaming, and playing a number of fantastic 
 tricks before the audience. I could account, in the latter 
 instance, for the little approbation of the performance 
 manifested around me, and also for the general scepticism 
 with respect to Mr. Kean's acting, which has been said to 
 prevail among those who cannot condescend to go into the 
 pit, and have not interest in the orchestra — to see him act. 
 They may then stay away altogether. His face is the 
 running comment on his acting, which reconciles the 
 audience to it. Without that index to his mind, you are 
 
392 Wliether Actors ought 
 
 not prepared for the vehemence and suddenness of his 
 gestures ; his pauses are long, abrupt, and unaccountable, 
 if not filled up by the expression ; it is in the working of 
 his face that you see the writhing and coiling up of the 
 passions before they make their serpent-spring; the 
 lightning of his eye precedes the hoarse burst of thunder 
 from his voice. 
 
 One may go into the boxes, indeed, and criticise acting 
 and actors with Sterne's stop-watch, but not otherwise — 
 " ' And between the nominative case and the verb (which, 
 as your lordship knows, should agree together in number, 
 person, &c.) there was a full pause of a second and two- 
 thirds.' 'But was the eye silent — did the look say 
 nothing ?' — ■ I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord.' 
 — * Excellent critic !' " — If any other actor, indeed, goes 
 to see Mr. Kean act, with a view to avoid imitation, this 
 may be the place, or rather it is the way to run into it, for 
 you see only his extravagances and defects, which are the 
 most easily carried away. Mr. Mathews may translate 
 him into an At Home even from the slips ! — Distinguished 
 actors then ought, I conceive, to set the example of going 
 into the pit, were it only for their own sakes. I remem- 
 ber a trifling circumstance, which I worked up at the time 
 into a confirmation of this theory of mine, engrafted on 
 old prejudice and tradition. 1 I had got into the middle 
 of the pit, at considerable risk of broken bones, to see 
 Mr. Kean in one of his early parts, when I perceived two 
 young men seated a little behind me, with a certain space 
 left round them. They were dressed in the height of the 
 fashion, in light drab-coloured great coats, and with their 
 shirt-sleeves drawn down over their hands, at a time when 
 this was not so common as it has since become. I took 
 them for younger sons of some old family at least. One of 
 
 1 The trunk-maker, I grant, in the Spectator's time, sat in the 
 iwo-shilling gallery. But that was in the Spectator's time, and cot 
 In the days of Mr. Smirke and Mr. Wyatt. 
 
to sit in the Boxes. 393 
 
 them, that was very good looking, I thought might be 
 Lord Byron, and his companion might be Mr. Hobhouse. 
 They seemed to have wandered from anothei sphere of 
 this our planet to witness a masterly performance to the 
 utmost advantage. This stamped the thing. They were, 
 undoubtedly, young men of rank and fashion ; but their 
 taste was greater than their regard for appearances. The 
 pit was, after all, the true resort of thoroughbred critics 
 and amateurs. When there was anything worth seeing, 
 this was the place. ; and I began to feel a sort of reflected 
 importance in the consciousness that I also was a critic. 
 Nobody sat near them — it would have seemed like an 
 intrusion. Not a syllable was uttered. — They were two 
 clerks in the Victualling Office ! 
 
 What I would insist on, then, is this — that for Mr. 
 Kean, or Mr. Young, or Mr. Macready, or any of those 
 that are " cried out upon in the top of the compass " to 
 obtrude themselves voluntarily or ostentatiously upon our 
 notice, when they are out of character, is a solecism in 
 theatricals. For them to thrust themselves forward 
 before the scenes, is to drag us behind them against our 
 will, than which nothing can be more fatal to a true 
 passion for the stage, and which is a privilege that should 
 be kept sacred for impertinent curiosity. Oh! while I 
 live, let me not be admitted (under special favour) to an 
 actor's dressing-room. Let me not see how Cato painted, 
 or how Caesar combed ! Let me not meet the prompt-boys 
 in the passage, nor see the half-lighted candles stuck 
 against the bare walk, nor hear the creaking of machines, 
 or the fiddlers laughing ; nor see a Columbine practising a 
 pirouette in sober sadness, nor Mr. Grimaldi's face drop 
 from mirth to sudden melancholy as he passes the side- 
 scene, as if a shadow crossed it, nor witness the long- 
 chinned generation of the pantomime sit twirling their 
 thumbs, nor overlook the fellow who holds the candle for 
 the moon in the scene between Lorenzo and Jessica! 
 
394 On the Disadvantages of 
 
 Spare me this insight into secrets I am not bound to 
 know. The stage is not a mistress that we are sworn to 
 undress. Why should we look behind the glass of 
 fashion ? Why should we prick the bubble that reflects 
 the world, and turn it to a little soap and water ? Trust 
 a little to first appearances — leave something to fancy. I 
 observe that the great puppets of the real stage, who 
 themselves play a grand part, like to get into the boxes 
 over the stage ; where they see nothing from the proper 
 point of view, but peep and pry into what is going on like 
 a magpie looking into a marrow-bone. This is just like 
 them. So they look down upon human life, of which they 
 are ignorant. They see the exits and entrances of the 
 players, something that they suspect is meant to be kept 
 from them (for they think they are always liable to be im- 
 posed upon) : the petty pageant of an hour ends with each 
 scene long before the catastrophe, and the tragedy of life 
 is turned to farce under their eyes. These people laugh 
 loud at a pantomime, and are delighted with clowns and 
 pantaloons. They pay no attention to anything else. 
 The stage-boxes exist in contempt of the stage and com- 
 mon sense. The private boxes, on the contrary, should 
 be reserved as the receptacle for the officers of state and 
 great diplomatic characters, who wish to avoid, rather than 
 court popular notice ! 
 
 ESSAY XXIX. 
 
 On tlie Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority. 
 
 The chief disadvantage of knowing moro and seeing 
 farther than others, is not to be generally understood. 
 A man is, in consequence of this, liable to start paradoxes, 
 which immediately transport him beyond the reach of 
 the common-place reader. A person speaking once in a 
 
Intellectual Superiority. 395 
 
 slighting manner of a very original-minded man, received 
 for answer — " He strides on so far before you, that he 
 dwindles in the distance !" 
 
 Petrarch complains, that " Nature had made him dif- 
 ferent from other people " — singular d'altri genti. The 
 great happiness of life is, to be neither better nor worse 
 than the general run of those you meet with. If you are 
 beneath them, you are trampled upon ; if you are above 
 them, you soon find a mortifying level in their difference 
 to what you particularly pique yourself upon. What is 
 the use of being moral in a night-cellar, or wise in 
 Bedlam ? "To be honest, as this world goes, is to be 
 one man picked out of ten thousand." So says Shakespear ; 
 and the commentators have not added that, under these 
 circumstances, a man is more likely to become the butt of 
 slander than the mark of admiration for being so. " How 
 now, thou particular fellow ?"* is the common answer to all 
 such out-of-the-way pretensions. By not doing [at Eome] 
 as those at Home do, we cut ourselves off from good-fellow- 
 ship and society. We speak another language, have 
 notions of our own, and are treated as of a different 
 species. Nothing can be more awkward than to intrude 
 with any such far-fetched ideas among the common herd, 
 who will be sure to 
 
 * Stand all astonied, like a sort of steers, 
 
 'Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race 
 Un wares is chanced, far straying from his peers : 
 So will their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears." 
 
 Ignorance of another's meaning is a sufficient cause of 
 fear, and fear produces hatred : hence the suspicion and 
 rancour entertained against all those who set up for 
 greater refinement and wisdom than their neighbours. Jt 
 is in vain to think of softening down this spirit of hostility 
 
 1 Jack Cade's salutation to one who tries to recommend himself 
 by saying he can write and read. — See Henry VI. Part Second. 
 
396 On the Disadvantages of 
 
 by simplicity of manners, or by condescending to persons 
 of low estate. The more yon condescend, the more they 
 will presume upon it ; they will fear you less, but hate 
 you more ; and will be the more determined to take their 
 revenge on you for a superiority as to which they are 
 entirely in the dark, and of which you yourself seem to 
 entertain considerable doubt. All the humility in the 
 world will only pass for weakness and folly. They have 
 no notion of such a thing. They always put their best 
 foot forward ; and argue that you would do the same if 
 you had any such wonderful talents as people say. You 
 had better, therefore, play off the great man at once — 
 hector, swagger, talk big, and ride the high horse over 
 them : you may by this means extort outward respect or 
 common civility; but you will get nothing (with low 
 people) by forbearance and good-nature but open insult or 
 silent contempt. Coleridge always talks to people about 
 what they don't understand : I, for one, endeavour to talk 
 to them about what they do understand, and find I only 
 get the more ill-will by it. They conceive I do not think 
 them capable of anything better ; that I do not think it 
 worth while, as the vulgar saying is, to throw a word to a 
 dog, I once complained of this to Coleridge, thinking it 
 hard I should be sent to Coventry for not making a pro- 
 digious display. He said: "As you assume a certain 
 character, you ought to produce your credentials. It is a 
 tax upon people's good-nature to admit superiority of any 
 kind, even where there is the most evident proof of it : 
 but it is too hard a task for the imagination to admit it 
 without any apparent ground at all." 
 
 There is not a greater error than to suppose that you 
 avoid the envy, malice, and uncharitableness, so common 
 in the world, by going among people without pretensions. 
 There are no people who have no pretensions; or the 
 fewer their pretensions, the less they can afford to 
 acknowledge yours without some sort of value received 
 
Intellectual Superiority. 397 
 
 The more information individuals possess, or the more 
 they have refined upon any subject, the more readily can 
 they conceive and admit the same kind of superiority 
 to themselves that they feel over others. But from the 
 low, dull, level sink of ignorance and vulgarity, no idea 
 or love of excellence can arise. You think you are doing 
 mighty well with them ; that you are laying aside the 
 buckram of pedantry and pretence, and getting the 
 character of a plain, unassuming, good sort of fellow. It 
 will not do. All the while that you are making these 
 familiar advances, and wanting to be at your ease, they 
 are trying to recover the wind of you. You may forget 
 that you are an author, an artist, or what not — they do 
 not forget that they are nothing, nor bate one jot of their 
 desire to prove you in the same predicament. They take 
 hold of some circumstance in your dress ; your manner of 
 entering a room is different from that of other people ; 
 you do not eat vegetables — that's odd ; you have a par- 
 ticular phrase, which they repeat, and this becomes a sort 
 of standing joke ; you look grave, or ill ; you talk, or are 
 more silent than usual ; you are in or out of pocket : all 
 these pretty, inconsiderable circumstances, in which you 
 resemble, or are unlike other people, form so many counts 
 in the indictment which is going on in their imaginations 
 against you, and are so many contradictions in your 
 character. In any one else they would pass unnoticed, 
 but in a person of whom they had heard so much, they 
 cannot make them out at all. Meanwhile, those things in 
 which you may really excel go for nothing, because they 
 cannot judge of them. They speak highly of some book 
 which you do not like, and therefore you make no answer. 
 You recommend them to go and see some picture in 
 which they do not find much to admire. How are you to 
 convince them that you are right ? Can you make them 
 perceive that the fault is in them, and not in the picture, 
 unless you could give them your knowledge? They 
 
398 On the Disadvantages of 
 
 hardly distinguish the difference between a Correggio and 
 a common daub. Does this bring you any nearer to an 
 understanding ? The more you know of the difference, 
 the more deeply you feel it, or the more earnestly you 
 wish to convey it, the farther do you find yourself removed 
 to an immeasurable distance from the possibility of 
 making them enter into views and feelings of which they 
 have not even the first rudiments. You cannot make them 
 see with your eyes, and they must judge for themselves. 
 
 Intellectual is not like bodily strength. You have no 
 hold of the understanding of others but by their sympathy. 
 Your knowing, in fact, so much more about a subject does 
 not give you a superiority, that is, a power over them, 
 but only renders it the more impossible for you to make 
 the least impression on them. Is it then an advantage to 
 you ? It may be, as it relates to your own private satis- 
 faction, but it places a greater gulf between you and 
 society. It throws stumbling-blocks in your way at every 
 turn. All that you take most pride and pleasure in is lost 
 upon the vulgar eye. What they are pleased with is a 
 matter of indifference or of distaste to you. In seeing a 
 number of persons turn over a portfolio of prints from 
 different masters, what a trial it is to the patience, how it 
 jars the nerves to hear them fall into raptures at some 
 commonplace flimsy thing, and pass over some divine 
 expression of countenance without notice, or with a remark 
 that it is very singular-looking? How useless it is in 
 such cases to fret or argue, or remonstrate ? Is it not 
 quite as well to be without all this hypercritical, fastidious 
 knowledge, and to be pleased or displeased as it happens, 
 or struck with the first fault or beauty that is pointed out 
 by others ? I would be glad almost to change my 
 acquaintance with pictures, with books, and, certainly, 
 what I know of mankind, for anybody's ignorance of 
 them! 
 
 It is recorded in the life of some worthy (whose name I 
 
Intellectual Superiority. 
 
 forget) that he was one of those " who loved hospitality 
 and respect :" and I profess to belong to the same classifi- 
 cation of mankind. Civility is with me a jewel. I like a 
 little comfortable cheer, and careless, indolent chat. I 
 hate to be always wise, or aiming at wisdom. I have 
 enough to do with literary cabals, questions, critics, actors, 
 essay-writing, without taking them out with me for 
 recreation, and into all companies. I wish at these times 
 to pass for a good-humoured-fellow ; and good-will is all 
 I ask in return to make good company. I do not desire 
 to be always posing myself or others with the questions of 
 fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute, &c. I must un- 
 bend sometimes. I must occasionally lie fallow. The 
 kind of conversation that I affect most is what sort of a 
 day it is, and whether it is likely to rain or hold up fine 
 for to-morrow. This I consider as enjoying the otium cum 
 dignitate, as the end and privilege of a life of study. I 
 would resign myself to this state of easy indifference, but 
 I find I cannot. I must maintain a certain pretension, 
 which is far enough from my wish. I must be put on my 
 defence, I must take up the gauntlet continually, or I find 
 I lose ground. " I am nothing, if not critical." While 
 I am thinking what o'clock it is, or how I came to blunder 
 in quoting a well-known passage, as if I had done it on 
 purpose, others are thinking whether I am not really as 
 dull a fellow as I am sometimes said to be. If a drizzling 
 shower patters against the windows, it puts me in mind of 
 a mild spring rain, from which I retired twenty years ago, 
 into a little public house near Wem in Shropshire, and 
 while I saw the plants and shrubs before the door imbibe 
 the dewy moisture, quaffed a glass of sparkling ale, and 
 walked home in the dusk of evening, brighter to me than 
 noon-day suns at present are! Would I indulge this 
 feeling ? In vain. They ask me what news there is, and 
 stare if I say I don't know. If a new actress has come 
 out, why must I have seen her ? If a new novel ha? 
 
400 On the Disadvantages of 
 
 appeared, why must I have read it ? I, at one time, used 
 to go and take a hand at cribbage with a friend, and after- 
 wards discuss a cold sirloin of beef, and throw out a few 
 lack-a-daisical remarks, in a way to please myself, but it 
 would not do long. I set up little pretension, and there- 
 fore the little that I did set up was taken from me. As I 
 said nothing on that subject myself, it was continually 
 thrown in my teeth that I was an author. From having 
 me at this disadvantage, my friend wanted to peg on a 
 hole or two in the game, and was displeased if I would 
 not let him. If I won of him, it was hard he should be 
 beat by an author. If he won, it would be strange if he 
 did not understand the game better than 1 did. If I men- 
 tioned my favourite game of rackets, there was a general 
 silence, as if this was my weak point. If I complained of 
 being ill, it was asked why I made myself so. If I said 
 such an actor had played a part well, the answer was, 
 there was a different account in one of the newspapers. 
 If any allusion was made to men of letters, there was a 
 suppressed smile. If I told a humorous story, it was 
 difficult to say whether the laugh was at me or at the 
 narrative. The wife hated me for my ugly face ; the 
 servants because I could not always get them tickets for 
 the play, and because they could not tell exactly what an 
 author meant. If a paragraph appeared against anything 
 I had written, I found it was ready there before me, and 
 I was to undergo a regular roasting. I submitted to all 
 this till I was tired, and then I gave it up. 
 
 One of the miseries of intellectual pretensions is, that 
 nine-tenths of those yon come in contact with do not 
 know whether you are an impostor or not. I dread that 
 certain anonymous criticisms should get into the hands of 
 servants where I go, or that my hatter or shoemaker 
 should happen to read them, who cannot possibly tell 
 whether they are well or ill founded. The ignorance of 
 the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice. There 
 
Intellectual Superiority. 401 
 
 are people whose good opinion or good -will you want, 
 setting aside all literary pretensions ; and it is hard to 
 lose by an ill report (which you have no means of rectify- 
 ing) what you cannot gain by a # good one. After a 
 diatribe in the Quarterly (which is taken in by a gentle- 
 man who occupies my old apartments on the first-floor) 1 my 
 landlord brings me up his bill (of some standing), and on 
 my offering to give him so much in money, and a note of 
 hand for the rest, shakes his head, and says, he is afraid 
 he could make no use of it. Soon after, the daughter 
 comes in, and, on my mentioning the circumstance care- 
 lessly to her, replies gravely : " that indeed her father has 
 been almost ruined by bills." This is the unkindest cut of 
 all. It is in vain for me to endeavour to explain that the 
 publication in which I am abused is a mere government 
 engine — an organ of a political faction. They know 
 nothing about that. They only know such and such 
 imputations are thrown out ; and the more I try to remove 
 them, the more they think there is some truth in them. 
 Perhaps the people of the house are strong Tories — 
 government-agents of some sort. Is it for me to en- 
 lighten their ignorance ? If I say, I once wrote a thing 
 called " Prince Maurice's Parrot," and an " Essay on the 
 Eegal Character," 2 in the former of which allusion is made 
 to a noble marquis, and in the latter to a great personage 
 (so at least, I am told, it has been construed), and that 
 Mr. Croker has peremptory instructions to retaliate ; 
 they cannot conceive what connection there can be 
 between me and such distinguished characters. I can 
 get no farther. Such is the misery of pretensions 
 beyond your situation, and which are not backed by 
 any external symbols of wealth or rank, intelligible to all 
 mankind ! 
 
 The impertinence of admiration is scarcely more toler* 
 1 Mr. Walker's, 9, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane. — "Ed. 
 * " Political Essays," 1819, pp. 51, 335 —Ed. 
 
 2 D 
 
402 On the Disadvantages of 
 
 able titan the demonstrations of contempt. I have known 
 a person, whom I had never seen before, besiege me all 
 dinner-time with asking what articles I had written in 
 the Edinburgh Beview? I was at last ashamed to 
 answer to my splendid sins in that way. Others will 
 pick out something not yours, and say, they are sure no 
 one else could write it. By the first sentence they can 
 always tell your style. Now I hate my style to be known ; 
 as I hate all idiosyncrasy. These obsequious flatterers 
 could not pay me a worse compliment. Then there are 
 those who make a point of reading everything you write 
 (which is fulsome) ; while others, more provoking, regu- 
 larly lend your works to a friend as soon as they receive 
 them. They pretty well know your notions on the differ- 
 ent subjects, from having heard you talk about them. 
 Besides, they have a greater value for your personal cha- 
 racter than they have for your writings. You explain 
 things better in a common way, when you are not aiming 
 at effect. Others tell you of the faults they have heard 
 found with your last book, and that they defend your 
 style in general from a charge of obscurity. A friend 
 once told me of a quarrel he had had with a near relation, 
 who denied that I knew how to spell the commonest 
 words. These are comfortable confidential communica- 
 tions, to which authors, who have their friends and 
 excusers, are subject. A gentleman told me, that a lady 
 had objected to my use of the word learneder, as bad 
 grammar. He said he thought it a pity that I did 
 not take more care, but that the lady was perhaps pre- 
 judiced, as her husband held a government office. I 
 looked for the word, and found it in a motto from Butler. 
 I was piqued, and desired him to tell the fair critic, that 
 the fault was not in me, but in one who had far more 
 wit, more learning, and loyalty than I could pretend to. 
 Then, again, some will pick out the flattest thing of 
 yours they can find, to load it with panegyrics; and 
 
Intellectual Superiority. 403 
 
 others tell you (by way of letting you see how high they 
 rank your capacity), that your best passages are failures. 
 Lamb has a knack of tasting (or as he would say, palating) 
 the insipid. Leigh Hunt has a trick of turning away 
 from the relishing morsels you put on his plate. There 
 is no getting the start of some people. Do what you will, 
 they can do it better ; meet with what success you may, 
 their own good opinion stands them in better stead, and 
 runs before the applause of the world. I once showed 
 a person of this overweening turn (with no small triumph 
 I confess) a letter of a very flattering description I had 
 received from the celebrated Count Stendhal, dated Eome. 
 He returned it with a smile of indifference, and said, he 
 had had a letter from Eome himself the day before, from 
 
 his friend S ! I did not think this " germane to the 
 
 matter." Godwin pretends I never wrote anything worth 
 a farthing but my "Answers to Vetus," 1 and that I fail 
 altogether when I attempt to write an essay, or anything 
 in a short compass. 
 
 What can one do in such cases ? Shall I confess a 
 weakness ? The only set-off I know to these rebuffs and 
 mortifications, is sometimes in an accidental notice or 
 involuntary mark of distinction from a stranger. I feel 
 the force of Horace's digito monstrari — I like to be 
 pointed out in the street, or to hear people ask in Mr. 
 Powell's court, 2 which is Mr. Hazlitt f This is to me a 
 pleasing extension of one's personal identity. Your name 
 so repeated leaves an echo like music on the ear : it stirs 
 the blood like the sound of a trumpet. It shows that 
 other people are curious to see you : that they think of 
 you, and 'feel an interest in you without your knowing it. 
 This is a bolster to lean upon ; a lining to your poor, 
 shivering, threadbare opinion of yourself. You want 
 some such cordial to exhausted spirits, and relief to the 
 
 1 Contributed to the Morning Chronicle in 1813. — Ed. 
 
 2 The racket- ground in St. Martin's Street. — Ed. 
 
404 On the Disadvantages of 
 
 dreariness of abstract speculation . You are something ; 
 and, from occupying a place in the thoughts of others, 
 think less contemptuously of yourself. You are the 
 better able to run the gauntlet of prejudice and vulgar 
 abuse. It is pleasant in this way to have your opinion 
 quoted against yourself, and your own sayings repeated 
 to you as good things. I was once talking to an intel- 
 ligent man in the pit, and criticising Mr. Knight's per- 
 formance of Filch. " Ah !" he said, " little Simmons was 
 the fellow to play that character." He added, " There 
 was a most excellent remark made upon his acting it in the 
 ' Examiner,' (I think it was) — That he looked as if he hid 
 the galloivs in one eye and a pretty girl in the other." 1 I said 
 nothing, but was in remarkably good humour the rest of 
 the evening. I have seldom been in a company where 
 fives-playing has been talked of, but some one has asked, 
 in the course of it, " Pray did any one ever see an 
 account of one Cavanagh, that appeared some time back in 
 most of the papers ? Is it known who wrote it ?" These 
 are trying moments. I had a triumph over a person, 
 whose name I will not mention, on the following occasion. 
 I happened to be saying something about Burke, and was 
 expressing my opinion of his talents in no measured terms, 
 when this gentleman interrupted me by saying, he thought, 
 for his part, that Burke had been greatly over-rated, and 
 then added, in a careless way, * Pray did you read a 
 
 character of him in the last number of the ?' 
 
 " I wrote it T 2 — I could not resist the antithesis, but was 
 afterwards ashamed of my momentary petulance. Yet 
 no one that I find ever spares me. 
 
 Some persons seek out and obtrude themselves on 
 public characters, in order, as it might seem, to pick out 
 
 1 "View of the English Stage," 1821, pp. 176-7. The passage 
 occurs in a criticism by the writer on the Beggars' Opera.— Ed. 
 
 2 The " Character of Burke " was written, in 1807, (" Eloquence o! 
 the British Senate," 1807, ii, 206-17.) it is reprinted in " Winterslow, 
 1850," Essay xii.— Ed. 
 
Intellectual Superiority. 405 
 
 their failings, and afterwards betray them. Appearances 
 are for it, but truth and a better knowledge of nature are 
 against this interpretation of the matter. Sycophants 
 And flatterers are undesignedly treacherous and fickle. 
 They are prone to admire inordinately at first, and not 
 finding a constant supply of food for this kind of sickly 
 appetite, take a distaste to the object of their idolatry. 
 To be even with themselves for their credulity, they 
 sharpen their wits to spy out faults, and are delighted to 
 find that this answers better than their first employment. 
 It is a course of study, " lively, audible, and full of vent." 
 They have the organ of wonder and the organ of fear in 
 a prominent degree. The first requires new objects of 
 admiration to satisfy its uneasy cravings : the second makes 
 them crouch to power wherever its shifting standard 
 appears, and willing to curry favour with all parties, and 
 ready to betray any out of sheer weakness and servility. 
 I do not think they mean any harm : at least, I can look 
 at this obliquity with indifference in my own particular 
 case. I have been more disposed to resent it as I have 
 seen it practised upon others, where I have been better 
 able to judge of the extent of the mischief, and the 
 heartlessness and idiot folly it discovered. 
 
 I do not think great intellectual attainments are any 
 recommendation to the women. They puzzle them, and 
 are a diversion to the main question. If scholars talk to 
 ladies of what they understand, their hearers are none 
 the wiser : if they talk of other things, they only prove 
 themselves fools. The conversation between Angelica and 
 Foresight in u Love for Love," is a receipt in full for all 
 such overstrained nonsense : while he is wandering among 
 the signs of the zodiac, she is standing a tip-toe on the 
 earth. It has been remarked that poets do not choose 
 mistresses very wisely. I believe it is not choice, but 
 necessity. If they could throw the handkerchief like 
 the Grand Turk, I imagine we should see scarce mortals. 
 
406 On the Disadvantages of 
 
 but rather goddesses,. surrounding their steps, and each 
 exclaiming, with Lord Byron's own Ionian maid — 
 " So shalt thou find me ever at thy side, 
 Here and hereafter, if the last may be !" 
 Ah ! no, these are bespoke, carried off by men of mortal, 
 not of ethereal mould, and thenceforth the poet from 
 whose mind the ideas of love and beauty are inseparable 
 as dreams from sleep, goes on the forlorn hope of the 
 passion, and dresses up the first Dulcinea that will take 
 compassion on him in all the colours of fancy. What 
 boots it to complain if the delusion lasts for life, and 
 the rainbow still paints its form in the cloud ? 
 
 There is one mistake T would wish, if possible, to 
 correct. Men of letters, artists, and others, not succeed- 
 ing with women in a certain rank of life, think the 
 objection is to their want of fortune, and that they shall 
 stand a better chance by descending lower, where only 
 their good qualities or talents will be thought of. Oh ! 
 worse and worse. The objection is to themselves, not to 
 their fortune — to their abstraction, to their absence of 
 mind, to their unintelligible and romantic notions. 
 Women of education may have a glimpse of their meaning, 
 may get a clue to their character, but to all others they 
 are thick darkness. If the mistress smiles at their ideal 
 advances, the maid will laugh outright ; she will throw 
 water over you, get her sister to listen, send her 
 sweetheart to ask you what you mean, will set the village 
 or the house upon your back ; it will be a farce, a comedy, 
 a standing jest for a year, and then the murder will out. 
 Scholars should be sworn at Highgate. 1 They are no 
 match for chambermaids, or wenches at lodging-houses. 
 They had better try their hands on heiresses or ladies of 
 quality. These last have high notions of themselves that 
 may fit some of your epithets ! They are above mortality, 
 
 1 An allusion to the jocular custom (long since become obsolete) 
 of making one a freeman of Higtyate. — Ed. 
 
Intellectual Superiority. 407 
 
 so are your thoughts ! But with low life, trick, ignorance, 
 and cunning, you have nothing in common. Whoever you 
 are, that think you can make a compromise or a conquest 
 there by good nature, or good sense, be warned by a friendly 
 voice, and retreat in time from the unequal contest. 
 
 If, as I have said above, scholars are no match for 
 chambermaids, on the other hand, gentlemen are no 
 match for blackguards. The former are on their honour, 
 act on the square; the latter take all advantages, and 
 have no idea of any other principle. It is astonishing 
 how soon a fellow without education will learn to cheat. 
 He is impervious to any ray of liberal knowledge ; his 
 understanding is 
 
 * Not pierceable by power of any star " — 
 but it is porous to all sorts of tricks, chicanery, stratagems, 
 and knavery, by which anything is to be got. Mrs. 
 Peachum, indeed, says, that to succeed at the gaming- 
 table, the candidate should have the education of a 
 nobleman. I do not know how far this example con- 
 tradicts my theory. I think it is a rule that men in 
 business should not be taught other things. Any one 
 will be almost sure to make money who has no other 
 idea in his head. A college-education, or intense study 
 of abstract truth, will not enable a man to drive a bargain, 
 to over-reach another, or even to guard himself from 
 being over-reached. As Shakespear says, that " to have 
 a good face is the effect of study, but reading and writing 
 come by nature :" so it might be argued, that to be a 
 knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to 
 advantage it is necessary to be a learned man. The best 
 politicians are not those who are deeply grounded in 
 mathematical or in ethical science. Eules stand in the 
 way of expediency. Many a man has been hindered from 
 pushing his fortune in the world by an early cultivation 
 of his moral sense, and has repented of it at leisure during 
 the rest of his life. A shrewd man said of my father, that 
 
408 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 he would not send a son of his to school to him on any 
 account, for that by teaching him to speak the truth, he 
 would disqualify him from getting his living in the world ! 
 It is hardly necessary to add any illustration to prove 
 that the most original and profound thinkers are not 
 always the most successful or popular writers. This is 
 not merely a temporary disadvantage ; but many great 
 philosophers have not only been scouted while they were 
 living, but forgotten as soon as they were dead. The name 
 of Hobbes is perhaps sufficient to explain this assertion. 
 But I do not wish to go farther into this part of the sub- 
 ject, which is obvious in itself. I have said, I believe, 
 enough to take off the air of paradox which hangs over 
 the title of this Essay. 
 
 ESSAY XXX. 
 
 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 " A gentle husher, Vanity by name." — Spenser. 
 
 A lady was complaining to a friend of mine of the cre- 
 dulity of people in attending to quack advertisements, and 
 wondering who could be taken in by them — "for that she 
 
 had never bought but one half-guinea bottle of Dr. 's 
 
 Elixir of Life, and it had done her no sort of good P 
 This anecdote seemed to explain pretty well what made 
 it worth the doctor's while to advertise his wares in every 
 newspaper in the kingdom. He would no doubt be satis- 
 fied if .every delicate, sceptical invalid, in his majesty's 
 dominions, gave his Elixir one trial, merely to show the 
 absurdity of the thing. We affect to laugh at the folly 
 of those who put faith in nostrums, but are willing to see 
 ourselves whether there is any truth in them. 
 
 There is a strong tendency in the human mind to flatter 
 itself with secret hopes, with some lucky reservation in our 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 409 
 
 own favour, though reason may point out the grossness of the 
 trick in general ; and, besides, there is a wonderful power 
 in words, formed into regular propositions, and printed in 
 capital letters, to draw the assent after them, till we have 
 proof of their fallacy. The ignorant and idle believe what 
 they read, as Scotch philosophers demonstrate the existence 
 of a material world, and other learned propositions, from 
 the evidence of their senses. The ocular proof is all that 
 is wanting in either case. As hypocrisy is said to be the 
 highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the 
 strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth. We can 
 hardly believe a thing to be a lie, though we know it to be 
 so. The " puff direct," even as it stands in the columns 
 of the Times newspaper, branded with the title of Adver- 
 tisement before it, claims some sort of attention and re- 
 spect for the merits that it discloses, though we think the 
 candidate for public favour and support has hit upon 
 (perhaps) an injudicious way of laying them before the 
 world. Still there may be something in them ; and even 
 the outrageous improbability and extravagance of the 
 statement on the very face of it stagger us, and leave a 
 hankering to inquire farther into it, because we think the 
 advertiser would hardly have the impudence to hazard 
 such barefaced absurdities without some foundation. Such 
 is the strength of the association between words and things 
 in the mind — so much oftener must our credulity have been 
 justified by the event than imposed upon. If every second 
 story we heard was an invention, we should lose our 
 mechanical disposition to trust to the meaning of sounds, 
 just as when we have met with a number of counterfeit 
 pieces of coin, we suspect good ones ; but our implicit 
 assent to what we hear is a proof how much more sin- 
 cerity and good faith there is in the sum total of our 
 dealings with one another, than artifice and imposture. 
 
 " To elevate and surprise " is the great art of quackery 
 and puffing ; to raise a lively and exaggerated image in 
 
410 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 the mind, and take it by surprise before it can recover 
 breath, as it were ; so that by having been caught in the 
 trap, it is unwilling to retract entirely — has a secret 
 desire to find itself in the right, and a determination to 
 see whether it is or not. Describe a picture as lofty, 
 imposing, and grand, these words excite certain ideas in 
 the mind like the sound of a trumpet, which are not to 
 be quelled, except by seeing the picture itself, nor even 
 then, if it is viewed by the help of a catalogue, written 
 expressly for the occasion by the artist himself. It is not 
 to be supposed that he would say such things of his 
 picture, unless they were allowed by all the world ; and 
 he repeats them, on this gentle understanding, till all 
 the world allows them. 1 So Eeputation runs in a vicious 
 circle, and Merit limps behind it, mortified and abashed 
 at its own insignificance. It has been said that the test 
 of fame or popularity is to consider the number of times 
 your name is repeated by others, or is brought to their 
 recollection in the course of a year. At this rate, a man 
 has his reputation in his own hands, and by the help of 
 puffing and the press, may forestall the voice of posterity, 
 and stun the " groundling " ear of his contemporaries. 
 A name let off in your hearing continually, with some 
 bouncing epithet affixed to it, startles you like the report 
 of a pistol close at your ear : you cannot help the effect 
 upon the imagination, though you know it is perfectly 
 harmless — vox et prmterea nihil. So, if you see the same 
 name staring you in the face in great letters at the corner 
 of every street, you involuntarily think the owner of it 
 must be a great man to occupy so large a space in the eye of 
 the town. The appeal is made, in the first instance, to the 
 senses, but it sinks below the surface into the mind. There 
 are some, indeed, who publish their own disgrace, and 
 
 1 It is calculated that West cleared some hundred pounds by the 
 catalogues that were sold of his great picture of " Death riding on 
 the pale Horse." 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 411 
 
 make their names a common by-word and nuisance, 
 notoriety being all that they want. A quack gets him- 
 self surreptitiously dubbed Doctor or Knight \ and though 
 you may laugh in his face, it pays expenses. Parolles 
 and his drum typify many a modern adventurer and 
 court-candidate for unearned laurels and unblushing 
 honours. Of all puffs, lottery puffs are the most ingenious 
 and most innocent. A collection of them would make an 
 amusing Vade mecum. They are still various and the 
 same, with that infinite ruse with which they lull the 
 reader at the outset out of all suspicion, the insinuating 
 turn in the middle, the home-thrust at the ruling passion 
 at last, by which your spare cash is conjured clean out of 
 the pocket in spite of resolution, by the same stale, well- 
 known, thousandth-time repeated, artifice of All prizes and 
 No blanks — a self-evident imposition ! Nothing, however, 
 can be a stronger proof of the power of fascinating the 
 public judgment through the eye alone. I know a gentle- 
 man who amassed a considerable fortune (so as to be able 
 to keep his carriage) by printing nothing but lottery 
 placards and handbills of a colossal size. Another friend 1 
 of mine (of no mean talents) was applied to (as a snug 
 thing in the way of business) to write regular lottery 
 puffs for a large house in the city, and on having a parcel 
 of samples returned on his hands as done in too severe and 
 terse a style, complained quaintly enough, " That modest 
 merit never could succeed /" Even Lord Byron, as he tells 
 us, has been accused of writing lottery-puffs. There are 
 various ways of playing one's self off before the public, 
 and keeping one's name alive. The newspapers, the lamp- 
 posts, the walls of empty houses, the shutters of windows, 
 the blank covers of magazines and reviews, are open to 
 every one. I have heard of a man of literary celebrity 
 sitting in his study writing letters of remonstrance to 
 
 1 Lamb's early performances in this direction must be hinted at 
 here. — J±jd. 
 
412 On Patronage and Puffing, 
 
 himself, on the gross defects of a plan of education he had 
 just published, and which remained unsold on the book- 
 seller's counter. Another feigned himself dead in order 
 to see what would be said of him in the newspapers, and 
 to excite a sensation in this way. A flashy pamphlet has 
 been run to a five-and-thirtieth edition, and thus ensured 
 the writer a " deathless date " among political charlatans, 
 by regularly striking off a new title-page to every fifty or 
 a hundred copies that were sold. This is a vile practice. 
 It is an erroneous idea got abroad (and which I will con- 
 tradict here) that paragraphs are paid for in the leading 
 Journals. It is quite out of the question. A favourable 
 notice of an author, an actress, &c. may be inserted 
 through interest, or to oblige a friend, but it must in- 
 variably be done for love, not money ! 
 
 When I formerly had to do with these sort of critical 
 verdicts, I was generally sent out of the way when any 
 debutant had a friend at court, and was to be tenderly 
 handled. For the rest, or those of robust constitutions, 
 I had carte blanche given me. Sometimes I ran out of the 
 course, to be sure. Poor Perry ! what bitter complaints 
 he used to make, that by running -a-much at lords and 
 Scotchmen I should not leave him a place to dine out at ! 
 The expression of his face at these moments, as if he 
 should shortly be without a friend in the world, was 
 truly pitiable. What squabbles we used to have about 
 Kean and Miss Stephens, the only theatrical favourites I 
 ever had ! Mrs. Billington had got some notion that Miss 
 Stephens would never make a singer, and it was the tor- 
 ment of Perry's * life (as he told me in confidence) that he 
 could not get any two people to be of the same opinion 
 on any one point. I shall not easily forget bringing him 
 my account of her first appearance in the Beggar's Opera. 
 
 1 James Perry, proprietor and editor of the Morning Chronicle 
 newspaper. He was the father of the present Sir Erskine Perry.— 
 Ed. 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 413 
 
 I Lave reason to remember that article : it was almost the 
 last I ever wrote with any pleasure to myself. I had been 
 down on a visit to my friends near Chertsey, and on my 
 return had stopped at an inn near Kingston-upon-Thames, 
 where I had got the Beggar's Opera, and had read it over- 
 night. The next day I walked cheerfully to town. It 
 was a fine sunny morning, in the end of autumn, and as 
 I repeated the beautiful song, " Life knows no return of 
 Spring," I meditated my next day's criticism, trying to do 
 all the justice I could to so inviting a subject. I was not 
 a little proud of it by anticipation. I had just then begun 
 to stammer out my sentiments on paper, and was in a 
 kind of honeymoon of authorship. But soon after, my 
 final hopes of happiness, and of human liberty, were 
 blighted nearly at the same time ; and since then I have 
 had no pleasure in anything : — 
 
 " And Love himself can flatter me no more." 
 
 It was not so ten years since (ten short years since. — 
 Ah ! how fast those years run that hurry us away from 
 our last fond dream of bliss !) when I loitered along thy 
 green retreats, Twickenham ! and conned over (with 
 enthusiastic delight) the chequered view, which one of 
 thy favourites drew of human life ! I deposited my ac- 
 count of the play at the Morning Chronicle Office in the 
 afternoon, and went to see Miss Stephens as Polly. Those 
 were happy times, in which she first came out in this 
 character, in Mandane, where she sang the delicious air, 
 " If o'er the cruel tyrant, Love," (so as it can never be 
 sung again), in "Love in a Village," where the scene 
 opened with her and Miss Matthews in a painted garden 
 of roses and honeysuckles, and " Hope, thou nurse of young 
 Desire," thrilled from two sweet voices in turn. Oh! 
 may my ears sometimes still drink the same sweet sounds, 
 embalmed with the spirit of youth, of health, and joy, 
 but in the thoughts of an instant, but in a dream of fancy, 
 
414 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 and I shall hardly need to complain ! When I got back, 
 after the play, Perry called out, with his cordial, grating 
 voice, " Well, how did she do ?" and on my speaking in 
 high terms, answered, that " he had been to dine with his 
 friend the Duke, that some conversation had passed on 
 the subject, he was afraid it was not the thing, it was not 
 the true sostenuto style ; but as I had written the article " 
 (holding my peroration on the Beggar's Opera carelessly 
 in his hand) " it might pass !" 1 could perceive that the 
 rogue licked his lips at it, and had already in imagination 
 u bought golden opinions of all sorts of people " by this very 
 criticism, and I had the satisfaction the next day to meet 
 Miss Stephens coming out of the Editor's room, who had 
 been to thank him for his very flattering account of her. 
 
 I was sent to see Kean the first night of his perform- 
 ance in Shylock, when there were about a hundred people 
 in the pit, but from his masterly and spirited delivery of 
 the first striking speech, " On such a day you called me a 
 dog," &c. I perceived it was a hollow thing. So it was 
 given out in the Chronicle ; but Perry was continually at 
 me as other people were at him, and was afraid it would 
 not last. It was to no purpose I said it would last : yet 
 I am in the right hitherto. It has been said, ridiculously, 
 that Mr. Kean was written up in the Chronicle. I beg 
 leave to state my opinion that no actor can be written up 
 or down by a paper. An author may be puffed into 
 notice, or damned by criticism, because his book may not 
 have been read. An artist may be over-rated, or unde- 
 servedly decried, because the public is not much accus- 
 tomed to see or judge of pictures. But an actor is judged 
 by his peers, the play-going public, and must stand or 
 fall by his own merits or defects. The critic may give 
 the tone or have a casting voice where popular opinion is 
 divided; but he can no more force that opinion either 
 way, or wrest it from its base in common sense and feel- 
 ing, than he can move Stonehenge. Mr. Kean had, how 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 415 
 
 ever, physical disadvantages and strong prejudices to en- 
 counter, and so far the liberal and independent part of the ' 
 press might have been of service in helping him to his 
 seat in the public favour. May he long keep it with 
 dignity and firmness ! l 
 
 It was pretended by the Covent Garden people, and 
 some others at the time, that Mr. Kean's popularity was 
 a mere effect of love of novelty, a nine days' wonder, like 
 the rage after Master Betty's acting, and would be as 
 soon over. The comparison did not hold. Master 
 Betty's acting was so far wonderful, and drew crowds to 
 see it as a mere singularity, because he was a boy. Mr. 
 Kean was a grown man, and there was no rule or prece- 
 dent established in the ordinary course of nature why 
 some other man should not appear in tragedy as great as 
 John Kemble. Farther, Master Betty's acting was a 
 singular phenomenon, but it was also as beautiful as it 
 was singular. I saw him in the part of Douglas, and 
 he seemed almost like "some gay creature of the ele- 
 ment," moving about gracefully, with all the flexibility 
 of youth, and murmuring iEolian sounds with plaintive 
 tenderness. I shall never forget the way in which he 
 repeated the line in which Young Norval says, speaking 
 of the fate of two brothers : 
 
 u And in my mind happy was he that died 1" 
 
 The tones fell and seemed to linger prophetic on my ear. 
 Perhaps the wonder was made greater than it was. Boys 
 
 1 I cannot say how in this respect it might have fared if a Mr. 
 Mudford, a fat gentleman, who might not have " liked yon lean and 
 hungry Koscius," had continued in the theatrical department of Mr. 
 Perry's paper at the time of this actor's first appearance ; but I had been 
 put upon this duty just before, and afterwards Mr. Mudford's spare 
 talents were not in much request. This, I believe, is the reason why 
 he takes pains every now and then to inform the readers of the 
 Courier that it is impossible for any one to understand a word tli£** 
 I write. 
 
416 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 at that age can often read remarkably well, and certainly 
 •are not without natural grace and sweetness of voice. 
 The Westminster school-boys are a better company of 
 comedians than we find at most of our theatres. As to 
 the understanding a part like Douglas, at least, I sec no 
 difficulty on that score. I myself used to recite the 
 speech in Enfield's Speaker, with good emphasis and dis- 
 cretion when at school, and entered, about the same age, 
 into the wild sweetness of the sentiments in Mrs. Ead- 
 clifiVs Eomance of the Forest, I am sure, quite as much 
 as I should do now ; yet the same experiment has been 
 often tried since, and has uniformly failed. 1 
 
 It was soon after this that Coleridge returned from 
 Italy, 2 and he got one day into a long tirade to explain 
 what a ridiculous farce the whole was, and how all the 
 people abroad were shocked at the gullibility of the 
 English nation, who on this and every other occasion 
 were open to the artifices of all sorts of quacks, wondering 
 how any persons with the smallest pretensions to common 
 sense could for a moment suppose that a boy could act 
 the characters of men without any of their knowledge, 
 their experience, or their passions. We made some faint 
 
 1 I (not very long ago) had the pleasure of spending an evening 
 with Mr. Betty, when we had some " good talk " about the good old 
 times of acting. I wanted to insinuate that I had been a sneaking 
 admirer, but could not bring it in. As, however, we were putting 
 on our great coats downstairs, I ventured to break the ice by saying, 
 •* There is one actor of that period of whom we have not made 
 honourable mention, I mean Master Betty." " Oh !" he said, " 1 
 have forgot all that." I replied, that he might, but that I could not 
 forget the pleasure I had had in seeing him. On which he turned 
 off, and shaking his sides heartily, and with no measured demand 
 upon his lungs, called out, " Oh, memory ! memory !" in a way that 
 showed he felt the full force of the allusion. I found afterwards that 
 the subject did not offend, and we were to have drunk some Burton 
 ale together the following evening, but were prevented. I hope ho 
 will consider that the engagement still stands good. 
 
 2 In 1807— Ed. 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 417 
 
 resistance, but in vain. The discourse then took a turn, 
 and Coleridge began a laboured eulogy on some promising 
 youth, the son of an English artist, whom he had met in 
 Italy, and who had wandered all over the Campagna with 
 him, whose talents, he assured us, were the admiration of 
 all Eome, and whose early designs had almost all the 
 grace and purity of Eaphael's: At last, some one inter- 
 rupted the endless theme by saying a little impatiently, 
 " Why just now you would not let us believe our own 
 eyes and ears about young Betty, because you have a 
 theory against premature talents, and now you start a 
 boy phenomenon, that nobody knows anything about but 
 yourself — a young artist that, you tell us, is to rival 
 Eaphael !" The truth is, we like to have something to 
 admire ourselves, as well as to make other people gape 
 and stare at ; but then it must be a discovery of our own, 
 an idol of our own making and setting up : — if others 
 stumble on the discovery before us, or join in crying it 
 up to the skies, we then set to work to prove that this is 
 a vulgar delusion, and show our sagacity and freedom 
 from prejudice by pulling it in pieces with all the coolness 
 imaginable. Whether we blow the bubble or crush it in 
 our hands, vanity and the desire of empty distinction are 
 equally at the bottom of our sanguine credulity or fasti- 
 dious scepticism. There are some who always fall in 
 with the fashionable prejudice as others affect singularity 
 of opinion on all such points, according as they think 
 they have more or less wit to judge for themselves. 
 
 If a little varnishing and daubing, a little puffing and 
 quacking, and giving yourself *a good name, and getting 
 a friend to speak a word for you, is excusable in any 
 profession, it is, I think, in that of painting. Painting is 
 an occult science, and requires a little ostentation and 
 mock-gravity in the professor. A man may here rival 
 Katterfelto, " with his hair on end at his own wonders, 
 wondering for his bread ;" for, if he does not, he may in 
 
 2 B 
 
418 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 the end go without it. He may ride on a high-trotting 
 horse, in green spectacles, and attract notice to his person 
 anyhow he can, if he only works hard at his profession. 
 If " it only is when he is out he is acting," let him make 
 the fools stare, but give others something worth looking 
 at. Good Mr. Carver and Gilder, good Mr. Printer's 
 Devil, good Mr. Billsticker, "do me your offices" un- 
 molested! Painting is a plain ground, and requires a 
 great many heraldic quarterings and facings to set it off. 
 Lay on, and do not spare. No man's merit can be fairly 
 judged of if he is not known ; and how can he be known 
 if he keeps entirely in the back-ground ? l A great name 
 in art goes but a little way, is chilled as it creeps along 
 the surface of the world, without something to revive and 
 make it blaze up with fresh splendour. Fame is here 
 almost obscurity. It is long before your name affixed 
 to a sterling design will be spelt out by an undiscerning 
 regardless public. Have it proclaimed, therefore, as a 
 necessary precaution, by sound of trumpet at the corners 
 of the street, let it be stuck as a label in your mouth, 
 carry it on a placard at your back. Otherwise, the world 
 will never trouble themselves about you, or will very 
 soon forget you. A celebrated artist of the present day, 
 whose name is engraved at the bottom of some of the 
 most touching specimens of English art, once had a 
 frame-maker call on him, who, on entering his room, 
 exclaimed with some surprise, " What, are you a painter, 
 sir ?" The other made answer, a little startled in his 
 turn, M Why, didn't you know that? Did you never see 
 my name at the bottom of prints ?" He could not recol- 
 lect that he had. " And yet you sell picture-frames and 
 
 1 Sir Joshua, who was not a vain man, purchased a tawdry sheriffs 
 carriage, soon after he took his house in Leicester-fields, aikl desired 
 his sister to ride about in it, in order that people might ask, " Whose 
 it was?" and the answer would be, " It belongs to the great 
 painter!" 
 
Oil Patronage and Puffing. 419 
 
 prints?" "Yes." "What painters' names then did he 
 recollect : Did he know West's ?" " Oh ! yes." " And 
 Opie's?" "Yes." "And Fuseli's ?" "Oh! yes." 
 " But you never heard of me ?" "I cannot say that I 
 ever did !" It was plain from this conversation, that 
 Mr. Northcote had not kept company enough with picture- 
 dealers and newspaper critics. On another occasion, a 
 country gentleman, who was sitting to him for his por- 
 trait, asked him if he had any pictures in the Exhibition 
 at Somerset House, and on his replying in the affirmative, 
 desired to know what they were. He mentioned among 
 others, " The Marriage of Two Children ;" on which the 
 gentleman expressed great surprise, and said that was 
 the very picture his wife was always teasing him to go 
 and have another look at, though he had never noticed 
 the painter's name. When the public are so eager to 
 be amused, and care so little who it is that amuses them, 
 it is not amiss to remind them of it now and then ; or even 
 to have a starling taught to repeat the name, to which they 
 owe such misprized obligations, in their drowsy ears. 
 On any other principle I cannot conceive how painters 
 (not without genius or industry) can fling themselves at 
 the head of the public in the manner they do, having 
 lives written of themselves, busts made of themselves, 
 prints stuck in the shop-windows of themselves, and their 
 names placed in M the first row of the rubric,' ' with those 
 of Kubens, Eaphael, and Michael Angelo, swearing by 
 themselves or their proxies that these glorified spirits 
 would do well to leave the abodes of the blest in order 
 to stand in mute wonder and with uplifted hands before 
 some production of theirs, which is yet hardly dry ! Oh ! 
 whatever you do, leave that string untouched. It will 
 jar the rash and unhallowed hand that meddles with 
 it. Profane not the mighty dead by mixing them up with 
 the uncanonized living. Leave yourself a reversion in 
 immortality, beyond the noisy clamour of the day. Do 
 
420 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 not quite lose your respect for public opinion by making 
 it in all cases a palpable cheat, the echo of your own 
 lungs that are hoarse with calling on the world to admire. 
 Do not think to bully posterity, or to cozen your contem- 
 poraries. Be not always anticipating the effect of your 
 picture on the town — think more about deserving success 
 than commanding it. In issuing so many promissory 
 notes upon the bank of fame, do not forget you have to 
 pay in sterling gold. Believe that there is something 
 in the pursuit of high art, beyond the manufacture of a 
 paragraph or the collection of receipts at the door of 
 an exhibition. Venerate art as art. Study the works of 
 others, and inquire into those of nature. Gaze at beauty. 
 Become great by great efforts, and not by pompous pre- 
 tensions. Do not think the world was blind to merit 
 before your time, nor make the reputation of great 
 geniuses the stalking-horse to your vanity. You have 
 done enough to insure yourself attention : you have now 
 only to do something to deserve it, and to make good 
 all that you have aspired to do ! 
 
 There is a silent and systematic assumption of superi- 
 ority which is as barefaced and unprincipled an imposture 
 as the most impudent puffing. You may, by a tacit or 
 avowed censure on all other arts, on all works of art, on 
 all other pretensions, tastes, talents, but your own, 
 produce a complete ostracism in the world of intellect, 
 and leave yourself and your own performances alone 
 standing, a mighty monument in an universal waste and 
 wreck of genius. By cutting away the rude block and 
 removing the rubbish from around it, the idol may be 
 effectually exposed to view, placed on its pedestal of 
 pride, without any other assistance. This method is 
 more inexcusable than the other. For there is no egotism 
 or vanity so hateful as that which strikes at our satis- 
 faction in everything else, and derives its nourishment 
 from preying, like the vampire, on the carcase of others' 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 421 
 
 reputation. I would rather, in a word, that a man should 
 talk for ever of himself with vapid senseless assurance, 
 than preserve a malignant, heartless silence, when the 
 merit of a rival is mentioned. I have seen instances of 
 both, and can judge pretty well between them. 
 
 There is no great harm in putting forward one's own 
 pretensions (of whatever kind) if this does not bear a 
 sour, malignant aspect towards others. Every one sets 
 himself off to the best advantage he can, and tries to steal 
 a march upon public opinion. In this sense, too, " all 
 the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely 
 players." Life itself is a piece of harmless quackery. 
 A great house over your head is of no use but to an- 
 nounce the great man within. Dress, equipage, title, 
 livery-servants, are only so many quack advertisements 
 and assumptions of the question of merit. The star that 
 glitters at the breast would be worth nothing but as a 
 badge of personal distinction ; and the crown itself is but 
 a symbol of the virtues, which the possessor inherits 
 from a long line of illustrious ancestors ! How much 
 honour and honesty have been forfeited to be graced 
 with a title or a ribbon ; how much genius and worth 
 have sunk to the grave, without an escutcheon and 
 without an epitaph ! 
 
 As men of rank and fortune keep lacqueys to reinforce 
 their claims to self-respect, so men of genius sometimes 
 surround themselves with a coterie of admirers to increase 
 their reputation with the public. These proneurs, or 
 satellites, repeat all their good things, laugh loud at all 
 their jokes, and remember all their oracular decrees. 
 They are their shadows and echoes. They talk of them 
 in all companies, and bring back word of all that has 
 been said about them. They hawk the good qualities 
 of their patrons, as shopmen and barkers tease you to buy 
 goods. I have no notion of this vanity at second-hand ; 
 nor can I see how this servile testimony from inferiors 
 
4.22 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 (" some followers of mine own ") can be a proof of merit. 
 It may soothe the ear ; but that it should impose on the 
 understanding, I own, surprises me : yet there are persons 
 who cannot exist without a cortege of this kind about 
 them, in which they smiling read the opinion of the 
 world, in the midst of all sorts of rancorous abuse and 
 hostility, as Otho called for his mirror in the Illyrian 
 field. One good thing is, that this evil, in some degree, 
 cures itself ; and when a man has been nearly ruined by 
 a herd of these sycophants, he finds them leaving him, 
 like thriftless dependents, for some more eligible situa- 
 tion, carrying away with them all the tattle they can 
 pick up, and some left-off suit of finery. The same 
 proneness to adulation which made them lick the dust 
 before one idol, makes them bow as low to the rising 
 Sun ; they are as lavish of detraction as they were 
 prurient with praise ; and the protege and admirer of the 
 
 editor of the figures in Blackwood's train. The 
 
 man is a lacquey, and it is of little consequence whose 
 livery he wears ! 
 
 I would advise those who volunteer the office of puffing, 
 to go the whole length of it. No half-measures will do. 
 Lay it on thick and threefold, or not at all. If you are 
 once harnessed into that vehicle, it will be in vain for 
 you to think of stopping. You must drive to the devil 
 at once. The mighty Tamburlane, to whose car you are 
 yoked, cries out, 
 
 u Holloa, you pamper'd jades of Asia, 
 Can you not drive but twenty miles a day f 
 
 He has you on the hip, for you have pledged your taste 
 and judgment to his genius. Never fear but he will 
 drive this wedge. If you are once screwed into such a 
 machine, you must extricate yourself by main force. No 
 hyperboles are too much : any drawback, any admiration 
 on this side idolatry, is high treason. It is an un- 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 423 
 
 pardonable offence to say that the last production of 
 your patron is not so good as the one before it ; or that 
 a performer shines more in one character than another. 
 I remember once hearing a player declare that he never 
 looked into any newspapers or magazines on account of 
 the abuse that was always levelled at himself in them, 
 though there were not less than three persons in company, 
 who made it their business through these conduit pipes 
 of fame to " cry him up to the top of the compass." 
 This sort of expectation is a little exigeante I 
 
 One fashionable mode of acquiring reputation is by 
 patronising it. This may be from various motives, real 
 good nature, good taste, vanity, or pride. I shall only 
 speak of the spurious ones in this place. The quack and 
 the would-be patron are well met. The house of the latter 
 is a sort of curiosity-shop or menagerie, where all sorts of 
 intellectual pretenders and grotesques, musical children, 
 arithmetical prodigies, occult philosophers, lecturers, 
 accoucheurs, apes, chemists, fiddlers, and buffoons are to 
 be seen for the asking, and are shown to the company 
 for nothing. The folding-doors are thrown open, and 
 display a collection that the world cannot parallel again. 
 There may be a few persons of common sense and esta- 
 blished reputation, rari nantes in gurgite vasto, otherwise it 
 is a mere scramble or lottery. The professed encourager 
 of virtu and letters, being disappointed of the great 
 names, sends out into the highways for the halt, the 
 lame, and the blind, for all who pretend to distinction, 
 defects, and obliquities, for all the disposable vanity or 
 affectation floating on the town, in hopes that, among so 
 many oddities, chance may bring some jewel or treasure 
 to his door, which he may have the good fortune to 
 appropriate in some way to his own use, or the credit of 
 displaying to others. The art is to encourage rising 
 genius — to bring forward doubtful and unnoticed merit. 
 You thus get a set of novices and raw pretenders about 
 
424 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 you, whose actual productions do not interfere with your 
 self-love, and whose future efforts may reflect credit on 
 your singular sagacity and faculty for finding out talent 
 in the germ ; and in the next place, by having them 
 completely in your power, you are at liberty to dismiss 
 them whenever you will, and to supply the deficiency by 
 a new set of wondering, unwashed faces, in a rapid 
 succession ; an " aiery of children," embryo actors, artists, 
 poets, or philosophers. Like unfledged birds they are 
 hatched, nursed, and fed by hand ; this gives room for a 
 vast deal of management, meddling, care, and condescend- 
 ing solicitude, but the instant the callow brood are 
 fledged, they are driven from the nest, and forced to shift 
 for themselves in the wide world. One sterling pro- 
 duction decides the question between them and their 
 patrons, and from that time they become the property of 
 the public. Thus a succession of importunate, hungry, 
 idle, overweening candidates for fame, are encouraged by 
 these fickle keepers, only to be betrayed, and left to 
 starve or beg, or pine in obscurity, while the man of 
 merit and respectability is neglected, discountenanced, 
 and stigmatised, because he will not lend himself as a 
 tool to this system of splendid imposition, or pamper the 
 luxury and weaknesses of the Vulgar Great. When a 
 young artist is too independent to subscribe to the dogmas 
 of his superiors, or fulfils their predictions and prog- 
 nostics of wonderful contingent talent too soon, so as to 
 get out of leading-strings, and lean on public opinion 
 for partial support, exceptions are taken to his dress, 
 dialect, or manners, and he is expelled the circle with a 
 character for ingratitude and treachery. None can pro- 
 cure toleration long but those who do not contradict 
 the opinions, or excite the jealousy of their betters. 
 One independent step is an appeal from them to the 
 public, their natural and hated rivals, and annuls the 
 contract between them, which implies ostentatious coun* 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 425 
 
 tenance on the one part, and servile submission on the 
 other. But enough of this. 
 
 The patronage of men of talent, even when it proceeds 
 from vanity, is often carried on with a spirit of generosity 
 and magnificence, as long as these are in difficulties and 
 a state of dependence : but as the principle of action in 
 this case is a love of power, the complacency in the 
 object of friendly regard ceases with the opportunity or 
 necessity for the same manifest display of power ; and 
 when the unfortunate protege is just coming to land, and 
 expects a last helping hand, he is, to his surprise, pushed 
 back, in order that he may be saved from drowning once 
 more. You are not hailed ashore, as you had supposed, 
 by these kind friends, as a mutual triumph after all your 
 struggles and their exertions in your behalf. It is a 
 piece of presumption in you to be seen walking on terra 
 firma : you are required, at the risk of their friendship, to 
 be always swimming in troubled waters, that they may 
 have the credit of throwing out ropes, and sending out 
 life-boats to you, without ever bringing you ashore. 
 Your successes, your reputation, which you think would 
 please them, as justifying their good opinion, are coldly 
 received, and looked at askance, because they remove 
 your dependence on them : if you are under a cloud, 
 they do all they can to keep you there by their good- 
 will : they are so sensible of your gratitude that they 
 wish your obligations never to cease, and take care you 
 shall owe no one else a good turn ; and provided you are 
 compelled or contented to remain always in poverty, 
 obscurity, and disgrace, they will continue your very 
 good friends and humble servants to command, to the 
 end of the chapter. The tenure of these indentures is 
 hard. Such persons will wilfully forfeit the gratitude 
 created by years of friendship, by refusing to perform 
 the last act of kindness that is likely ever to be demanded 
 of them ; will lend you money, if you have no chance of 
 
426 On Patronage and Puffing. 
 
 repaying them : will give you their good word, if nobody 
 will believe it ; and the only thing they do not forgive 
 is an attempt or probability on your part, of being able 
 to repay your obligations. There is something disinter- 
 ested in all this : at least, it does not show a cowardly or 
 mercenary disposition, but it savours too much of arro- 
 gance and arbitrary pretension. It throws a damning 
 light on this question to consider who are mostly the 
 subjects of the patronage of the great, and in the habit of 
 receiving cards of invitation to splendid dinners. I 
 confess, for one, I am not on the list ; at which I do not 
 grieve much, nor wonder at all. Authors, in general, 
 are not in much request. Dr. Johnson was asked why 
 he was not more frequently invited out ; and he said, 
 " Because great lords and ladies do not like to have their 
 mouths stopped." Garrick was not in this predicament : 
 he could amuse the company in the drawing-room by 
 imitating the great moralist and lexicographer, and make 
 the negro-boy, in the courtyard, die with laughing to see 
 him take off the swelling airs and strut of the turkey- 
 cock. This was clever and amusing, but it did not 
 involve an opinion, it did not lead to a difference of 
 sentiment, in which the owner of the house might be 
 found in the wrong. Players, singers, dancers, are hand 
 and glove with the great. They embellish, and have an 
 eclat in their names, but do not come into collision. 
 Eminent portrait-painters, again, are tolerated, because 
 they come into personal contact with the great : and 
 sculptors hold equality with lords when they have a 
 certain quantity of solid marble in their workshops to 
 answer for the solidity of their pretensions. People of 
 fashion and property must have something to show for 
 their patronage, something visible or tangible. A senti- 
 ment is a visionary thing; an argument may lead to 
 dangerous consequences, and those who are likely to 
 broach either one or the other, are not, therefore, fit for 
 
On Patronage and Puffing. 427 
 
 good company in general. Poets, and men of genius, 
 who find their way there, soon find their way out. They 
 are not of that ilk, with some exceptions. Painters who 
 come in contact with majesty get on by servility or 
 buffoonery, by letting themselves down in some way. 
 Sir Joshua was never a favourite at court. He kept too 
 much at a distance. Beechey gained a vast deal of 
 favour by familiarity, and lost it by taking too great 
 freedoms. 2 West ingratiated himself in the same quarter 
 by means of practices as little creditable to himself as 
 his august employer, namely, by playing the hypocrite, 
 and professing sentiments the reverse of those he naturally 
 felt. Kings (I know not how justly) have been said to 
 be lovers of low company, and low conversation. They 
 are also said to be fond of dirty practical jokes. If the 
 fact is so, the reason is as follows. From the elevation 
 of their rank, aided by pride and flattery, they look down 
 on the rest of mankind, and would not be thought to 
 have all their advantages for nothing. They wish to 
 maintain the same precedence in private life that belongs 
 to them as a matter of outward ceremony. This pre- 
 tension they cannot keep up by fair means ; for in wit 
 or argument they are not superior to the common run of 
 men. They therefore answer a repartee by a practical 
 joke, which turns the laugh against others, and cannot 
 be retaliated with safety. That is, they avail themselves 
 
 1 Sharp became a great favourite of the king on the following 
 occasion. It was the custom, when the king went through the 
 lobbies of the palace, for those who preceded him to cry out, " Sharp, 
 sharp, look sharp/' in order to clear the way. Mr. Sharp, who was 
 waiting in a room just by (preparing some colours), hearing his 
 name repeated so urgently, ran out in great haste, and came up with 
 all his force against the king, who was passing the door at the time. 
 The young artist was knocked down in the encounter, and the 
 attendants were in the greatest consternation ; but the king laughed 
 heartily at the adventure, and took great notice of the unfortunate 
 subject of it from that time forward. 
 
428 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 of the privilege of their situation to take liberties, and 
 degrade those about them, as they can only keep up the 
 idea of their own dignity by proportionably lowering 
 their company. 
 
 ESSAY XXXI. 
 
 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 It is astonishing, with all our opportunities and practice, 
 how little we know of this subject. For myself, I feel 
 that the more I learn, the less I understand it. 
 
 I remember, several years ago, a conversation in the 
 Diligence coming from Paris, in which, on its being men- 
 tioned that a man had married his wife after thirteen 
 years' courtship, a fellow-countryman of mine observed, 
 that "then, at least, he would be acquainted with her 
 character ;" when a Monsieur P , inventor and pro- 
 prietor of the Invisible Girl, made answer, " No, not at 
 all ; for that the very next day she might turn out the 
 very reverse of the character that she had appeared in 
 during all the preceding time." * I could not help ad- 
 miring the superior sagacity of the French juggler, and 
 it struck me then that we could never be sure when we 
 had got at the bottom of this riddle. 
 
 There are various ways of getting at a knowledge 
 of character — by looks, words, actions. The first of 
 these, which seems the most superficial, is perhaps the 
 safest, and least liable to deceive : nay, it is that which 
 mankind, in spite of their pretending to the contrary, 
 most generally go by. Professions pass for nothing, and 
 actions may be counterfeited : but a man cannot help his 
 looks. " Speech," said a celebrated wit, " was given to 
 man to conceal his thoughts." Yet I do not know that 
 
 1 "It is not a year or two shows us a man." — JEmilia, in 
 Othello. 
 
On the Knowledge of Character. 429 
 
 Hie greatest hypocrites are the least silent. The mouth 
 of Cromwell is pursed up in the portraits of him, as if he 
 was afraid to trust himself with words. Lord Chester- 
 field advises us, if we wish to know the real sentiments of 
 the person we are conversing with, to loot in his face, for 
 he can more easily command his words than his features. 
 A man's whole life may be a lie to himself and others : 
 and yet a picture painted of him by a great artist would 
 probably stamp his true character on the canvas, and 
 betray the secret to posterity. Men's opinions were 
 divided, in their life-times, about such prominent person- 
 ages as Charles V. and Ignatius Loyola, partly, no doubt, 
 from passion and interest, but partly from contradictory 
 evidence in their ostensible conduct : the spectator, who 
 has ever seen their pictures by Titian, judges of them at 
 once, and truly. I had rather leave a good portrait of 
 myself behind me than have a fine epitaph. The face, 
 for the most part, tells what we have thought and felt — 
 the rest is nothing. I have a higher idea of Donne from 
 a rude, half-effaced outline of him prefixed to his poems 
 than from anything he ever wrote. 1 Caesar's Commentaries 
 would not have redeemed him in my opinion, if the bust 
 of him had resembled the Duke of Wellington. My old 
 friend Fawcett used to say, that if Sir Isaac Newton 
 himself had lisped, he could not have thought anything of 
 him. So I cannot persuade myself that any one is a great 
 man, who looks like a fool. In this I may be wrong. 
 
 First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not 
 unfrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled 
 out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's 
 look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance 
 by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of 
 nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily. There is, as 
 it has been remarked repeatedly, something in a person's 
 
 1 The portrait by W. Marshall, prefixed to Donne's Poems. It repre- 
 sents him as a young man, and is a poor performance enough. — Ed, 
 
430 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 appearance at first sight which we do not; like, and 
 that gives us an odd twinge, but which is overlooked in a 
 multiplicity of other circumstances, till the mask is taken 
 off, and we see this lurking character verified in the 
 plainest manner in the sequel. We are struck at first, 
 and by chance, with what is peculiar and characteristic ; 
 also with permanent traits and general effect : this after- 
 wards goes off in a set of unmeaning, commonplace de- 
 tails. This sort of prima facie evidence, then, shows what 
 a man is better than what he says or does ; for it shows 
 us the habit of his mind, which is the same under all cir- 
 cumstances and disguises. You will say, on the other 
 hand, that there is no judging by appearances, as a general 
 rule. No one, for instance, would take such a person for 
 a very clever man, without knowing who he was. Then, 
 ten to one, he is not : he may have got the reputation, 
 but it is a mistake. You say, there is Mr. , un- 
 doubtedly a person of great genius : yet, except when 
 excited by something extraordinary, he seems half dead. 
 He has wit at will, yet wants life and spirit. He is 
 capable of the most generous acts, yet meanness seems to 
 cling to every motion. He looks like a poor creature — 
 and in truth he is one ! The first impression he gives 
 you of him answers nearly to the feeling he has of his 
 personal identity ; and this image of himself, rising from 
 his thoughts, and shrouding his faculties, is that which 
 sits with him in the house, walks out with him into the 
 street, and haunts his bed-side. The best part of his 
 existence is dull, cloudy, leaden : the flashes of light that 
 proceed from it, or streak it here and there, may dazzle 
 others, but do not deceive himself. Modesty is the lowest 
 of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it 
 indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly under- 
 valued by others. Whatever good properties he may 
 possess are. in fact, neutralized by a " cold rhenm " 
 running through his veins, and taking away the zest of 
 
On the Knowledge of Character. 431 
 
 his pretensions, the pith and marrow of his performances. 
 What is it to me that I can write these Table-talks 4 ? 
 It is true I can, by a reluctant effort, rake up a parcel 
 of half-forgotten observations, but they do not float on 
 the surface of my mind, nor stir it with any sense of 
 pleasure, nor even of pride. Others have more property 
 in them than I have : they may reap the benefit, I have only 
 had the pain. Otherwise, they are to me as if they had 
 never existed : nor should I know that I had ever thought at 
 all, but that I am reminded of it by the strangeness of my 
 appearance, and my unfitness for everything else. Look in 
 Coleridge's face while he is talking. His words are such as 
 might " create a soul under the ribs of death." His face is 
 a blank. Which are we to consider as the true index of 
 his mind ? Pain, languor, shadowy remembrances, are 
 the uneasy inmates there : his lips move mechanically ! 
 
 There are people that we do not like, though we may 
 have known them long, and have no fault to find with 
 them, " their appearance, as we say, is so much against 
 them." That is not all, if we could find it out. There 
 is, generally, a reason for this prejudice ; for nature is 
 true to itself. They may be very good sort of people, 
 too, in their way, but still something is the matter. 
 There is a coldness, a selfishness, a levity, an insincerity, 
 which we cannot fix upon any particular phrase or action, 
 but we see it in their whole persons and deportment. 
 One reason that we do not see it in any other way may 
 be, that they are all the time trying to conceal this defect 
 by every means in their power. There is, luckily, a sort 
 of second sight in morals : we discern the lurking indica- 
 tions of temper and habit a long while before their pal- 
 pable effects appear. I once used to meet with a person 
 at an ordinary, a very civil, good-looking man in other 
 respects, but with an odd look about his eyes, which 
 I could not explain, as if he saw you under their fringed 
 lids, and you could not see him again : this man was a 
 
432 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 common sharper. The greatest hypocrite I ever knew 
 was a little, demure, pretty, modest-looking girl, with 
 eyes timidly cast upon the ground, and an air soft as 
 enchantment ; x the only circumstance that could lead to a 
 suspicion of her true character was a cold, sullen, watery, 
 glazed look about the eyes, which she bent on vacancy, 
 as if determined to avoid all explanation with yours. 
 I might have spied in their glittering, motionless surface, 
 the rocks and quicksands that awaited me below! We 
 do not feel quite at ease in the company or friendship of 
 those who have any natural obliquity or imperfection of 
 person. The reason is, they are not on the best terms 
 with themselves, and are sometimes apt to play off on 
 others the tricks that nature has played them. This, 
 however, is a remark that, perhaps, ought not to have 
 been made. I know a person 2 to whom it has been ob- 
 jected as a disqualification for friendship, that he never 
 shakes you cordially by the hand. I own this is a damper 
 to sanguine and florid temperaments, who abound in these 
 practical demonstrations and " compliments extern.'* The 
 same person, who testifies the least pleasure at meeting 
 you, is the last to quit his seat in your company, grapples 
 with a subject in conversation right earnestly, and is, I 
 take it, backward to give up a cause or a friend. Cold and 
 distant in appearance, he piques himself on being the king 
 of good haters, and a no less zealous partizan. The most 
 phlegmatic constitutions often contain the most in- 
 flammable spirits — as fire is struck from the hardest flints. 
 And this is another reason that makes it difficult to 
 judge of character. Extremes meet ; and qualities dis- 
 play themselves by the most contradictory appearances. 
 Any inclination, in consequence of being generally sup- 
 pressed, vents itself the more violently when an oppor- 
 tunity presents itself: the greatest grossness sometimes 
 
 1 The heroine of the Liber Amoris. — Ed. 
 
 2 Himself.— Ed. 
 
On the Knowledge of Character. 433 
 
 accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief, 
 one to the other ; and we find the most reserved and 
 indifferent tempers at the beginning of an entertainment, 
 or an acquaintance, turn out the most communicative and 
 cordial at the end of it. Some spirits exhaust themselves 
 at first : others gain strength by progression. Some 
 minds have a greater facility of throwing off impressions — 
 are, as it were, more transparent or porous than others. 
 Thus the French present a marked contrast to the English 
 in this respect. A Frenchman addresses you at once 
 with a sort of lively indifference : an Englishman is more 
 on his guard, feels his way, and is either exceedingly re- 
 served, or lets you into his whole confidence, which he 
 cannot so well impart to an entire stranger. Again, a 
 Frenchman is naturally humane : an Englishman is, I 
 should say, only friendly by habit. His virtues and his 
 vices cost him more than they do his more gay and volatile 
 neighbours. An Englishman is said to speak his mind 
 more plainly than others : — yes, if it will give you pain 
 to hear it. He does not care whom he offends by his 
 discourse : a foreigner generally strives to oblige in what 
 he says. The French are accused of promising more 
 than they perform. That may be, and yet they may per- 
 form as many good-natured acts as the English, if the 
 latter are as averse to perform as they are to promise. 
 Even the professions of the French may be sincere at the 
 time, or arise out of the impulse of the moment ; though 
 their desire to serve you may be neither very violent nor 
 very lasting. I cannot think, notwithstanding, that the 
 French are not a serious people ; nay, that they are not a 
 more reflecting people than the common run of the 
 English. Let those w T ho think them merely light and 
 mercurial, explain that enigma, their everlasting prosing 
 tragedy. The English are considered as comparatively a 
 slow, plodding people. If the French are quicker, they 
 ure also more plodding. See, for example, how highly 
 
 2 F 
 
434 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 finished and elaborate their works of art are ! How sys- 
 tematic and correct they aim at being in all their produc- 
 tions of a graver cast ! " If the French have a fault," as 
 Yorick said, "it is that they are too grave." With wit, 
 sense, cheerfulness, patience, good-nature, and refinement 
 of manners, all they want is imagination and sturdiness 
 of moral principle ! Such are some of the contradictions 
 in the character of the two nations, and so little does the 
 character of either appear to have been understood ! No- 
 thing can be more ridiculous indeed than the way in 
 which we exaggerate each other's vices and extenuate our 
 own. The whole is an affair of prejudice on one side 
 of the question, and of partiality on the other. Travellers 
 who set out to carry back a true report of the case appear 
 to lose not only the use of their understandings, but of 
 their senses, the instant they set foot in a foreign land. 
 The commonest facts and appearances are distorted, and 
 discoloured. They go abroad with certain preconceived 
 notions on the subject, and they make everything answer, 
 in reason's spite, to their favourite theory. In addition 
 to the difficulty of explaining customs and manners 
 foreign to our own, there are all the obstacles of wilful 
 prepossession thrown in the way. It is not, therefore, 
 much to be wondered at that nations have arrived at 
 so little knowledge of one another's characters; and 
 that, where the object has been to widen the breach 
 between them, any slight differences that occur are easily 
 blown into a blaze of fury by repeated misrepresenta- 
 tions, and all the exaggerations that malice or folly can 
 invent ! 
 
 This ignorance of character is not confined to foreign 
 nations : we are ignorant of that of our own countrymen 
 in a class a little below or above ourselves. We shall 
 hardly pretend to pronounce magisterially on the good or 
 bad qualities of strangers ; and, at the same time, we are 
 ignorant of those of our friends, of our kindred, and of 
 
On the Knowledge of Character. 435 
 
 our own. We are in all these cases either too near or too 
 far off the object to judge of it properly. 
 
 Persons, for instance, in a higher or middle rank of 
 life know little or nothing of the characters of those below 
 them, as servants, country people, &c. I would lay it 
 down in the first place as a general rule on this subject, 
 that all uneducated people are hypocrites. Their sole 
 business is to deceive. They conceive themselves in a 
 state of hostility with others, and stratagems are fair in 
 war. The inmates of the kitchen and the parlour are 
 always (as far as respects their feelings and intentions 
 towards each other) in Hobbes's "state of nature." 
 Servants and others in that line of life have nothing to 
 exercise their spare talents for invention upon but those 
 about them. Their superfluous electrical particles of wit 
 and fancy are not carried off by those established and 
 fashionable conductors, novels and romances. Their fa- 
 culties are not buried in books, but all alive and stirring, 
 erect and bristling like a cat's back. Their coarse con- 
 versation sparkles with " wild wit, invention ever new." 
 Their betters try all they can to set themselves up above 
 them, and they try all they can to pull them down to their 
 own level. They do this by getting up a little comic 
 interlude, a daily, domestic, homely drama out of the odds 
 and ends of the family failings, of which there is in 
 general a pretty plentiful supply, or make up the 
 deficiency of materials out of their own heads. They 
 turn the qualities of their masters and mistresses inside 
 out, and any real kindness or condescension only sets 
 them the more against you. They are not to be taken in 
 in that way — they will not be baulked in the spite they 
 have to you. They only set to work with redoubled 
 alacrity, to lessen the favour or to blacken your character. 
 They feel themselves like a degraded caste, and cannot 
 understand how the obligations can be all on one side, 
 and the advantages all on the other. You cannot come to 
 
436 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 equal terms with them — they reject all such overtures as 
 insidious and hollow — nor can you ever calculate upon 
 their gratitude or good-will, any more than if they were 
 so many strolling Gipsies or wild Indians. They have no 
 fellow-feeling, they keep no faith with the more pri- 
 vileged classes. They are in your power, and they 
 endeavour to be even with you by trick and cunning, by 
 lying and chicanery. In this they have nothing to 
 restrain them. Their whole life is a succession of shifts, 
 excuses, and expedients. The love of truth is a principle 
 with those only who have made it their study, who have 
 applied themselves to the pursuit of some art or science, 
 where the intellect is severely tasked, and learns by habit 
 to take a pride in, and to set a just value on, the correct- 
 ness of its conclusions. To have a disinterested regard to 
 truth, the mind must have contemplated it in abstract and 
 remote questions ; whereas the ignorant and vulgar are 
 only conversant with those things in which their own 
 interest is concerned. All their notions are local, per- 
 sonal, and consequently gross and selfish. They say 
 whatever comes uppermost — turn whatever happens to 
 their own account — and invent any story, or give any 
 answer that suits their purposes. Instead of being 
 bigoted to general principles, they trump up any lie for 
 the occasion, and the more of a thumper it is, the better 
 they like it ; the more unlooked-for it is, why, so much 
 the more of a God-send ! They have no conscience about 
 the matter; and if you find them out in any of their 
 manoeuvres, are not ashamed of themselves, but angry with 
 you, If you remonstrate with them, they laugh in your 
 face. The only hold you have of them is their interest — 
 you can but dismiss them from your employment; and 
 service is no inheritance. If they effect anything like 
 decent remorse, and hope you will pass it over, all the 
 while they are probably trying to recover the wind of you. 
 Persons of liberal knowledge or sentiments have no kind 
 
On the Knowledge of Character* 437 
 
 of chance in this sort of mixed intercourse with these 
 barbarians in civilised life. You cannot tell, by any signs 
 or principles, what is passing in their minds. There is 
 no common point of view between you. You have not 
 the same topics to refer to, the same language to express 
 yourself. Your interests, your feelings are quite distinct. 
 You take certain things for granted as rules of action : 
 they take nothing for granted but their own ends, pick up 
 all their knowledge out of their own occasions, are on the 
 watch only for what they can catch — are 
 
 * Subtle as the fox for prey : 
 Like warlike as the wolf, for what they eat." 
 
 They have indeed a regard to their character, as this last 
 may affect their livelihood or advancement, none as it is 
 connected with a sense of propriety ; and this sets their 
 mother-wit and native talents at work upon a double file 
 of expedients, to bilk their consciences, and salve their 
 reputation. In short, you never know where to have 
 them, any more than if they were of a different species of 
 animals; and in trusting to them, you are sure to be 
 betrayed and overreached. You have other things to 
 mind, they are thinking only of you, and how to turn you 
 to advantage. Give and take is no maxim here. You can 
 build nothing on your own moderation or on their false 
 delicacy. After a familiar conversation with a waiter at 
 a tavern, you overhear him calling you by some provoking 
 nick-name. If you make a present to the daughter of the 
 house where you lodge, the mother is sure to recollect 
 some addition to her bill. It is a running fight. In fact, 
 there is a principle in human nature not willingly to 
 endure the idea of a superior, a sour Jacobinical disposition 
 to wipe out the score of obligation, or efface the tinsel of 
 external advantages — and where others have the oppor- 
 tunity of coming in contact with us, they generally find 
 
438 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 the means to establish a sufficiently marked degree of 
 degrading equality. No man is a hero to his valet-de- 
 chambre, is an old maxim. A new illustration of this 
 principle occurred the other day. While Mrs. Siddons 
 was giving her readings of Shakespear to a brilliant and 
 admiring drawing-room, one of the servants in the hall 
 below was saying : " What, I find the old lady is making 
 as much noise as ever !" So little is there in common 
 between the different classes of society, and so impossible 
 is it ever to unite the diversities of custom and knowledge 
 which separate them. 
 
 Women, according to Mrs. Peachum, are " bitter bad 
 judges " of the characters of men ; and men are not much 
 better of theirs, if we can form any guess from their choice 
 in marriage. Love is proverbially blind. The whole is 
 an affair of whim and fancy. Certain it is, that the 
 greatest favourites with the other sex are not those who 
 are most liked or respected among their own. I never 
 knew but one clever man who was what is called a ladys 
 man ; and he (unfortunately for the argument) happened 
 to be a considerable coxcomb. It was by this irresistible 
 quality, and not by the force of his genius, that he 
 vanquished. Women seem to doubt their own judgments 
 in love, and to take the opinion which a man entertains of 
 his own prowess and accomplishments for granted. The 
 wives of poets are (for the most part) mere pieces of 
 furniture in the room. If you speak to them of their 
 husbands' talents or reputation in the world, it is as if 
 you made mention of some office that they held. It can 
 hardly be otherwise, when the instant any subject is 
 started or conversation arises, in which men are interested, 
 or try one another's strength, the women leave the room, 
 or attend to something else. The qualities then in which 
 men are ambitious to excel, and which ensure the applause 
 of the world, eloquence, genius, learning, integrity, are 
 not those which gain the favour of the fair. I must not 
 
On the Knowledge of Character. 439 
 
 deny, however, that wit and courage have this effect. 
 Neither is youth or beauty the sole passport to their 
 affections. 
 
 ** The way of woman's will is hard to find, 
 Harder to hit." 
 
 Yet there is some clue to this mystery, some determining 
 cause; for we find that the same men are universal 
 favourites with women, as others are uniformly disliked 
 by them. Is not the load-stone that attracts so power- 
 fully, and in all circumstances, a strong and undisguised 
 bias towards them, a marked attention, a conscious pre- 
 ference of them to every other passing object or topic ? 
 I am not sure, but I incline to think so. The successful 
 lover is the cavalier servente of all nations. The man of 
 gallantry behaves as if he had made an assignation w T ith 
 every woman he addresses. An argument immediately 
 draws off my attention from the prettiest woman in the 
 room. I accordingly succeed better in argument — than in 
 love ! — I do not think that what is called Love at first 
 sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined 
 to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to 
 the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, 
 brown, or fair ; with golden tresses or with raven locks ; — 
 and when we meet with a complete example of the 
 qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck. We 
 have never seen anything to come up to our newly-dis- 
 covered goddess before, but she is what we have been all 
 our lives looking for. The idol we fall down and worship 
 is an image familiar to our minds. It has been present to 
 our waking thoughts, it has haunted us in our dreams, 
 like some fairy vision. Oh ! thou, who, the first time I 
 ever beheld thee, didst draw my soul into the circle of thy 
 heavenly looks, and wave enchantment round me, do not 
 think thy conquest less complete because it was instanta- 
 neous ; for in that gentle form (as if another Imogen had 
 
440 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 entered) I saw all that I had ever loved of female grace, 
 modesty, and sweetness ! 
 
 I shall not say much of friendship as giving an insight 
 into character, because it is often founded on mutual 
 infirmities and prejudices. Friendships are frequently 
 taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we see only as much 
 as we please of one another's characters afterwards. 
 Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to character, any 
 more than professed enemies. They cool, indeed, in time, 
 part, and retain only a rankling grudge of past errors and 
 oversights. Their testimony in the latter case is not 
 quite free from suspicion. 
 
 One would think that near relations, who live con- 
 stantly together, and always have done so, must be pretty 
 well acquainted with one another's characters. They are 
 nearly in the dark about it. Familiarity confounds all 
 traits of distinction : interest and prejudice take away the 
 power of judging. We have no opinion on the subject, 
 any more than of one another's faces. The Penates, the 
 household-gods, are veiled. We do not see the features 
 of those we love, nor do we clearly distinguish their 
 virtues or their vices. We take them as they are found 
 in the lump : — by weight, and not by measure. We know 
 all about the individuals, their sentiments, history, 
 manners, words, actions, everything : but we know all 
 these too much as facts, as inveterate, habitual impressions, 
 as clothed with too many associations, as sanctified with 
 too many affections, as woven too much into the web of 
 our hearts, to be able to pick out the different threads, 
 to cast up the items of the debtor and creditor account, or 
 to refer them to any general standard of right and wrong. 
 Our impressions with respect to them are too strong, too 
 real, too much sui generis, to be capable of a comparison 
 with anything but themselves. We hardly inquire 
 whether those for whom we are thus interested, and to 
 whom we are thus knit, are better or worse than others — 
 
On the Knowledge of Character. 441 
 
 the question is a kind of profanation — all we know is, 
 they are more to us than any one else can be. Our 
 sentiments of this kind are rooted and grow in us, and 
 we cannot eradicate them by voluntary means. Besides, 
 our judgments are bespoke, our interests take part with 
 our blood. If any doubt arises, if the veil of our implicit 
 confidence is drawn aside by any accident for a moment, 
 the shock is too great, like that of a dislocated limb, and 
 we recoil on our habitual impressions again. Let not 
 that veil ever be rent entirely asunder, so that those 
 images may be left bare of reverential awe, and lose their 
 religion : for nothing can ever support the desolation of 
 the heart afterwards. 
 
 The greatest misfortune that can happen among rela- 
 tions is a different way of bringing up, so as to set one 
 another's opinions and characters in an entirely new point 
 of view. This often lets in an unwelcome daylight on 
 the subject, and breeds schisms, coldness, and incurable 
 heart-burnings in families. I have sometimes thought 
 whether the progress of society and march of knowledge 
 does not do more harm in this respect, by loosening the 
 ties of domestic attachment, and preventing those who are 
 most interested in, and anxious to think well of one another, 
 from feeling a cordial sympathy and approbation of each 
 other's sentiments, manners, views, &c, than it does good 
 by any real advantage to the community at large. The 
 son, for instance, is brought up to the Church, and nothing 
 can exceed the pride and pleasure the father takes in him, 
 while all goes on well in this favourite direction. His 
 notions change, and he imbibes a taste for the Fine Arts. 
 From this moment there is an end of anything like the 
 same unreserved communication between them. The 
 young man may talk with enthusiasm of his " Eembrandts, 
 Correggios, and stuff :" it is all Hebrew to the elder ; and 
 whatever satisfaction he may feel in the hearing of hip 
 son's progress, or good wishes for his success, he is 
 
442 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 never reconciled to the new pursuit, he still hankers after 
 the first object that he had set his mind upon. Again, the 
 grandfather is a Calvinist, who never gets the better of his 
 disappointment at his son's going over to the Unitarian side 
 of the question. The matter rests here, till the grandson, 
 some years after, in the fashion of the day and " infinite 
 agitation of men's wit," comes to doubt certain points in 
 the creed in which he has been brought up, and the 
 affair is all abroad again. Here are three generations 
 made uncomfortable and in a manner set at variance, 
 by a veering point of theology, and the officious meddling 
 biblical critics ! Nothing, on the other hand, can be 
 more wretched or common than that upstart pride and 
 insolent good fortune which is ashamed of its origin ; nor 
 are there many things more awkward than the situation 
 of rich and poor relations. Happy, much happier, are 
 those tribes and people who are confined to the same 
 caste and way of life from sire to son, where prejudices 
 are transmitted like instincts, and where the same un- 
 varying standard of opinion and refinement blends count- 
 less generations in its improgressive, everlasting mould ! 
 
 Not only is there a wilful and habitual blindness in 
 near kindred to each other's defects, but an incapacity to 
 judge from the quantity of materials, from the contra- 
 dictoriness of the evidence. The chain of particulars is 
 too long and massy for us to lift it or put it into the 
 most approved ethical scales. The concrete result does 
 not answer to any abstract theory, to any logical definition. 
 There is black, and white, and grey, square and round — 
 there are too many anomalies, too many redeeming points, 
 in poor human nature, such as it actually is, for us to 
 arrive at a smart summary decision on it. We know too 
 much to come to any hasty or partial conclusion. We 
 do not pronounce upon the present act, because a hundred 
 others rise up to contradict it. We suspend our judg* 
 ments altogether, because in effect one thing unconsciously 
 
On the Knowledge of Character. 443 
 
 balances another ; and perhaps this obstinate, pertinacious 
 indecision would be the truest philosophy in other cases, 
 where we dispose of the question of character easily, 
 because we have only the smallest part of the evidence 
 to decide upon. Eeal character is not one thing, but a 
 thousand things ; actual qualities do not conform to any 
 factitious standard in the mind, but rest upon their own 
 truth and nature. The dull stupor under which we 
 labour in respect of those whom we have the greatest 
 opportunities of inspecting nearly, we should do well to 
 imitate before we give extreme and uncharitable verdicts 
 against those whom we only see in passing, or at a distance. 
 If we knew them better, we should be disposed to say 
 less about them. 
 
 In the truth of things, there are none utterly worthless, 
 none without some drawback on their pretensions, or 
 some alloy of imperfection. It has been observed that 
 a familiarity with the worst characters lessens our abhor- 
 rence of them ; and a wonder is often expressed that the 
 greatest criminals look like other men. The reason is 
 that tliey are like other men in many respects. If a parti- 
 cular individual was merely the wretch we read of, or 
 conceive in the abstract, that is, if he was the mere 
 personified idea of the criminal brought to the bar, he 
 would not disappoint the spectator, but would look like 
 what he would be — a monster ! But he has other quali- 
 ties, ideas, feelings, nay, probably virtues, mixed up with 
 the most profligate habits or desperate acts. This need 
 not lessen our abhorrence of the crime, though it does of 
 the criminal ; for it has the latter effect only by showing 
 him to us in different points of view, in which he appears 
 a common mortal, and not the caricature of vice we took 
 him for, or spotted all over with infamy. I do not at 
 the same time think this a lax or dangerous, though it is 
 a charitable view of the subject. In my opinion, no man 
 ever answered in his own mind (except in the agonies of 
 
444 On the Knowledge of Character, 
 
 conscience or of repentance, in which latter case he 
 throws the imputation from himself in another way) to 
 the abstract idea of a murderer. He may have killed a 
 man in self-defence, or " in the trade of war," or to save 
 himself from starving, or in revenge for an injury, but 
 always "so as with a difference," or from mixed and 
 questionable motives. The individual, in reckoning with 
 himself, always takes into the account the considerations 
 of time, place, and circumstance, and never makes out a 
 case of unmitigated, unprovoked villany, of " pure defe- 
 cated evil " against himself. There are degrees in real 
 crimes : we reason and moralize only by names and in 
 classes. I should be loth, indeed, to say, that " whatever 
 is, is right :" but almost every actual choice inclines to it, 
 with some sort of imperfect, unconscious bias. This is the 
 reason, besides the ends of secresy, of the invention of 
 slang terms for different acts of profligacy committed by 
 thieves, pickpockets, &c. The common names suggest 
 associations of disgust in the minds of others, which those 
 who live by them do not willingly recognise, and which 
 they wish to sink in a technical phraseology. So there 
 is a story of a fellow who, as he was writing down his 
 confession of a murder, stopped to ask how the word 
 murder was spelt ; this, if true, was partly because his 
 imagination was staggered by the recollection of the thing, 
 and partly because he shrunk from the verbal admission 
 of it. " Amen stuck in his throat !" The defence made 
 by Eugene Aram of himself against a charge of murder, 
 some years before, shows that he in imagination completely 
 flung from himself the nominal crime imputed to him : he 
 might, indeed, have staggered an old man with a blow, 
 and buried his body in a cave, and lived ever since upon 
 the money he found upon him, but there was " no malice 
 in the case, none at all," as Peachum says. The very 
 coolness, subtlety, and circumspection of his defence 
 (as masterly a legal document as there is upon record) 
 
On the Knowledge of (Jliaracter. 445 
 
 prove that he was guilty of the act, as much as they prove 
 that he was unconscious of the crime, 1 In the same 
 spirit, and I conceive with great metaphysical truth, Mr. 
 Coleridge, in his tragedy of Bemorse, makes Ordonio (his 
 chief character) wave the acknowledgment of his meditated 
 guilt to his own mind, by putting into his mouth that 
 striking soliloquy : 
 
 Say, I had la/d a body in the sun ! 
 Well ! in a month there swarm forth from the corse 
 A thousand, nay, ten thousand sentient beings 
 In place of that one man. Say I had hilVd him ! 
 Yet who shall tell me, that each one and all 
 Of these ten thousand lives is not as happy 
 As that one life, which being push'd aside, 
 Made room for these unnumberM. — Act ii. sc. ii. 
 
 I am not sure, indeed, that I have not got this whole 
 train of speculation from him ; but I should not think the 
 worse of it on that account. That gentleman, I recollect, 
 once asked me whether I thought that the different 
 members of a family really liked one another so well, or 
 had so much attachment as was generally supposed : and 
 I said that I conceived the regard they had towards each 
 other was expressed by the word interest, rather than by 
 any other ; which he said was the true answer. I do not 
 know that I could mend it now. Natural affection is not 
 pleasure in one another's company, nor admiration of one 
 another's qualities ; but it is an intimate and deep know- 
 ledge of the things that affect those to whom we are 
 bound by the nearest ties, with pleasure or pain ; it is an 
 anxious, uneasy, fellow-feeling with them, a jealous watch- 
 
 1 The bones of the murdered man were dug up in an old hermit- 
 age. On this, as one instance of the acuteness which he displayed 
 all through the occasion, Aram remarks, " Where would you expect 
 to find the bones of a man sooner than in a hermit's cell, except you 
 were to look for them in a cemetery ?" See Newgate Calendab 
 for the year 1758 or 1759. 
 
446 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 fulness over their good name, a tender and unconquerable 
 yearning for their good. The love, in short, we bear 
 them, is the nearest to that we bear ourselves. Home, 
 according to the old saying, is home, be it never so homely. 
 We love ourselves, not according to our deserts, but our 
 cravings after good : so we love our immediate relations 
 in the next degree (if not, even sometimes a higher one) 
 because we know best what they have suffered and what 
 sits nearest to their hearts. We are implicated, in fact, 
 in their welfare, by habit and sympathy, as we are in our 
 own. 
 
 If our devotion to our own interests is much the same 
 as to theirs, we are ignorant of our own characters for the 
 same reason. We are parties too much concerned to 
 return a fair verdict, and are too much in the secret of 
 our own motives or situation not to be able to give a 
 favourable turn to our actions. We exercise a liberal 
 criticism upon ourselves, and put off the final decision to 
 a late day. The field is large and open. Hamlet ex- 
 claims, with a noble magnanimity, u I count myself indif- 
 ferent honest, and yet I could accuse me of such things !" 
 If you could prove to a man that he is a knave, it would 
 not make much difference in his opinion, his self-love is 
 stronger than his love of virtue. Hypocrisy is generally 
 used as a mask to deceive the world, not to impose on 
 ourselves : for once detect the delinquent in his knavery, 
 and he laughs in your face or glories in his iniquity. 
 This at least happens except where there is a contradic- 
 tion in the character, and our vices are involuntary, and 
 at variance with our convictions. One great difficulty is 
 to distinguish ostensible motives, or such as we acknow- 
 ledge to ourselves, from tacit or secret springs of action. 
 A man changes his opinion readily, he thinks it candour : 
 it is levity of mind. For the most part, we are stunned 
 and stupid in judging of ourselves. We are callous by 
 custom to our defects or excellences, unless where vanitv 
 
On (he Knowledge of Character. 447 
 
 stops in to exaggerate or extenuate them. I cannot con- 
 ceive how it is that people are in love with their own 
 persons, or astonished at their own performances, which 
 are but a nine days' wonder to every one else. In general 
 it may be laid down that we are liable to this twofold 
 mistake in judging of our own talents : we, in the first 
 place, nurse the rickety bantling, we think much of that 
 which has cost us much pains and labour, and comes 
 against the grain ; and we also set little store by what we 
 do with most ease to ourselves, and therefore best. The 
 works of the greatest genius are produced almost uncon- 
 sciously, with an ignorance on the part of the persons 
 themselves that they have done anything extraordinary. 
 Nature has done it for them. How little Shakespear 
 seems to have thought of himself or of his fame ! Yet, if 
 " to know another well, were to know one's self," he must 
 have been acquainted with his own pretensions and cha- 
 racter, u who knew all qualities with a learned spirit." 
 His eye seems never to have been bent upon himself, but 
 outwards upon nature. A man, who thinks highly of 
 himself, may almost set it down that it is without reason. 
 Milton, notwithstanding, appears to have had a high 
 opinion of himself, and to have made it good. He was 
 conscious of his powers, and great by design. Perhaps 
 his tenaciousness, on the score of his own merit, might 
 arise from an early habit of polemical writing, in which 
 bis pretensions were continually called to the bar of pre- 
 judice and party-spirit, and he had to plead not guilty to 
 the indictment. Some men have died unconscious of im- 
 n ortality, as others have almost exhausted the sense of it 
 in their life-times. Correggio might be mentioned as an 
 instance of the one, Voltaire of the other. 
 
 There is nothing that helps a man in his conduct through 
 life more than a knowledge of his own characteristic 
 weaknesses (which, guarded against, become his strength), 
 as there is nothing that tends more to the success of a 
 
448 On the Picturesque and Ideal. 
 
 man's talents than his knowing the limits of his faculties, 
 which are thus concentrated on some practicable object. 
 One man can do but one thing. Universal pretensions end 
 in nothing. Or, as Butler has it, too much wit requires 
 
 " As much again to govern it." 
 
 There are those who have gone, for want of this self- 
 knowledge, strangely out of their way, and others who 
 have never found it. We find many who succeed in 
 certain departments, and are yet melancholy and dis- 
 satisfied, because they failed in the one to which they first 
 devoted themselves, like discarded lovers, who pine after 
 their scornful mistress. I will conclude with observing, 
 that authors in general overrate the extent and value of 
 posthumous fame : for what (as it has been asked) is the 
 amount even of Shakespear's fame ? That in that very 
 country which boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps, 
 scarce one person in ten has ever heard of his name, or 
 read a syllable of his writings I 1 
 
 ESSAY XXXII. 
 On the Picturesque and Ideal. 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 The natural in visible objects is whatever is ordinarily 
 presented to the senses: the picturesque is that which 
 stands out, and catches the attention by some striking 
 peculiarity : the ideal is that which answers to the pre- 
 conceived imagination and appetite in the mind for love 
 and beauty. The picturesque depends chiefly on the 
 principle of discrimination or contrast ; the ideal on har- 
 mony and continuity of effect : the one surprises, the 
 other satisfies the mind ; the one starts off from a given 
 1 This was written in 1822.— Ed. 
 
On the Picturesque and Ideal 449 
 
 point, the other reposes on itself ; the one is determined 
 by an excess of form, the other by a concentration of 
 feeling. 
 
 The picturesque may be considered as something like 
 an excrescence on the face of nature. It runs imperceptibly 
 into the fantastical and grotesque. Fairies and satyrs are 
 picturesque ; but they are scarcely ideal. They are an 
 extreme and unique conception of a certain thing, but not 
 of what the mind delights in, or broods fondly over. The 
 image created by the artist's hand is not moulded and 
 fashioned by the love of good and yearning after grace 
 and beauty, but rather the contrary : that is, they are 
 ideal deformity, not ideal beauty. Eubens was perhaps 
 the most picturesque of painters ; but he was almost the 
 least ideal. So Kembrandt was (out of sight) the most 
 picturesque of colourists ; as Correggio was the most ideal. 
 In other words, his composition of light and shade is more 
 a whole, more in unison, more blended into the same har- 
 monious feeling than Kenibrandt's, who staggers by con- 
 trast, but does not soothe by gradation. Correggio's forms, 
 indeed, had a picturesque air ; for they often incline 
 (even when most beautiful) to the quaintness of caricature. 
 Vandyke, I think, was at once the least picturesque and 
 least ideal of all the great painters. He was purely 
 natural, and neither selected from outward forms nor 
 added anything from his own mind. He owes every- 
 thing to perfect truth, clearness, and transparency ; and 
 though his productions certainly arrest the eye, and strike 
 in a room full of pictures, it is from the contrast they 
 present to other pictures, and from being stripped quite- 
 naked of all artificial advantages. They strike almost as 
 a piece of white paper would, hung up in the same situa- 
 tion. — I began with saying that whatever stands out from 
 a given line, and as it were projects upon the eye, is pic- 
 turesque ; and this holds true (comparatively) in form 
 and colour. A rough terrier-dog, with the hair bristled 
 
 2 G 
 
450 On the Picturesque and Ideal. 
 
 and matted together, is picturesque. As we say, there is 
 a decided character in it, a marked determination to an 
 extreme point. A shock-dog is odd and disagreeable, but 
 there is nothing picturesque in its appearance ; it is a 
 mere mass of flimsy confusion. A goat with projecting 
 horns and pendent beard is a picturesque animal ; a sheep 
 is not. A horse is only picturesque from opposition of 
 colour ; as in Mr. Northcote's study of Gadshill, 1 where 
 the white horse's head coming against* the dark scowling 
 face of the man makes as fine a contrast as can be imagined. 
 An old stump of a tree with rugged bark, and one or two 
 straggling branches, a little stunted hedge-row line, 
 marking the boundary of the horizon, a stubble-field, a 
 winding path, a rock seen against the sky, are picturesque, 
 because they have all of them prominence and a distinctive 
 character of their own. They are not objects (to borrow 
 Shakespear's phrase) "of no mark or likelihood." A 
 country may be beautiful, romantic, or sublime, without 
 being picturesque. The Lakes in the North of England 
 are not picturesque, though certainly the most interesting 
 sight in this country. To be a subject for painting, a 
 prospect must present sharp striking points of view or 
 singular forms, or one object must relieve and set off 
 another. There must be distinct stages and salient points 
 for the eye to rest upon or start from, in its progress over 
 the expanse before it. The distance of a landscape will 
 oftentimes look flat or heavy, that the trunk of a tree or a 
 ruin in the foreground would immediately throw into per- 
 spective and turn to air. Kembrandt's landscapes are the 
 least picturesque in the world, except from the straight 
 lines and sharp angles, the deep incision and dragging of 
 his pencil, like a harrow over the ground, and the broad 
 contrast of earth and sky. Earth, in his copies, is rough 
 and hairy; and Pan has struck his hoof against it! — A 
 
 1 The author made a copy of this in his painting days. See 
 " Memoirs of W. H." 1867, ii. 202.— Ed. 
 
On the Picturesque and Ideal. 451 
 
 camel is a picturesque ornament in a landscape or history- 
 piece. This is not merely from its romantic and oriental 
 character ; for an elephant has not the same effect, and if 
 introduced as a necessary appendage, is also an unwieldy 
 incumbrance. A negro's head in a group is picturesque 
 from contrast: so are the spots on a panther's hide. 
 This was the principle that Paul Veronese went upon, 
 who said the rule for composition was black upon white, 
 and white upon black. He was a pretty good judge. His 
 celebrated picture of the Marriage of Cana is in all like- 
 lihood the completest piece of workmanship extant in the 
 art. When I saw it, it nearly covered one side of a large 
 room in the Louvre (being itself forty feet by twenty) — 
 and it seemed as if that side of the apartment was thrown 
 open, and you looked out at the open sky, at buildings, 
 marble pillars, galleries with people in them, emperors, 
 female slaves, Turks, negroes, musicians, all the famous 
 painters of the time, the tables loaded with viands, goblets, 
 and dogs under them — a sparkling, overwhelming con- 
 fusion, a bright, unexpected reality — the only fault you 
 could find was that no miracle was going on in the faces 
 of the spectators : the only miracle there was the picture 
 itself! A French gentleman, who showed me this 
 " triumph of painting " (as it has been called), perceiving 
 I was struck with it, observed, " My wife admires it ex- 
 ceedingly for the facility of the execution." I took this 
 proof of sympathy for a compliment. It is said that when 
 Humboldt, the celebrated traveller and naturalist, was 
 introduced to Buonaparte, the Emperor addressed him in 
 these words — " Vous aimez la botanique, Monsieur " — and 
 on the other's replying in the affirmative, added — " Et ma 
 femme aussi /" This has been found fault with as a piece 
 of brutality and insolence in the great man by bigoted 
 critics, who do not know what a thing it is to get a French- 
 woman to agree with them in any point. For my part, I 
 took the observation as it was meant, and it did not put 
 
452 On the Picturesque and Ideal 
 
 me out of conceit with myself or the picture that Madame 
 M[errimee] liked it as well as Monsieur VAnglois. Certainly, 
 there could be no harm in that. By the side of it hap- 
 pened to be hung two allegorical pictures of Eubens (and 
 in such matters he too was "no baby" 1 ) — I don't re- 
 member what the figures were, but the texture seemed of 
 wool or cotton. The texture of the Paul Veronese was 
 not wool or cotton, but stuff, jewels, flesh, marble, air, 
 whatever composed the essence of the varied subjects, in 
 endless relief and truth of handling. If the Fleming 
 had seen his two allegories hanging where they did, he 
 would, without a question, have wished them far enough. 
 
 I imagine that Kubens's landscapes are picturesque : 
 Claude's are ideal. Eubens is always in extremes ; Claude 
 in the middle. Eubens carries some one peculiar quality 
 or feature of nature to the utmost verge of probability : 
 Claude balances and harmonises different forms and 
 masses with laboured delicacy, so that nothing falls short, 
 no one thing overpowers another. Eainbows, showers, 
 partial gleams of sunshine, moonlight, are the means with 
 which Eubens produces his most gorgeous and enchanting 
 effects : there are neither rainbows, nor showers, nor 
 sudden bursts of sunshine, nor glittering moonbeams 
 in Claude. He is all softness and proportion ; the other 
 is all spirit and brilliant excess. The two sides (for 
 example) of one of Claude's landscapes balance one 
 another, as in a scale of beauty : in Eubens the several 
 objects are grouped and thrown together with capricious 
 wantonness. Claude has more repose : Eubens more 
 gaiety and extravagance. And here it might be asked, 
 Is a rainbow a picturesque or an ideal object ? It seems 
 to me to be both. It is an accident in nature ; but it is 
 an inmate of the fancy. It startles and surprises the 
 sense, but it soothes and tranquillises the spirit. It 
 
 1 " And surely Mandricardo was no baby." 
 
 Habbington's AbiostOv 
 
On the Picturesque and Ideal. 453 
 
 makes the eye glisten to behold it, but the mind turns 
 to it long after it has faded from its place in the sky. 
 It has both properties then of giving an extraordinary 
 impulse to the mind by the singularity of its appearance, 
 and of riveting the imagination by its intense beauty. I 
 may just notice here in passing, that I think the effect of 
 moonlight is treated in an ideal manner in the well- 
 known line in Shakespear — 
 
 u See how the moonlight deeps upon yon bank." 
 
 The image is heightened by the exquisiteness of the 
 expression beyond its natural beauty, and it seems as if 
 there could be no end to the delight taken in it. — A 
 number of sheep coming to a pool of water to drink, 
 with shady trees in the background, the rest of the 
 flock following them, and the shepherd and his dog left 
 carelessly behind, is surely the ideal in landscape-com- 
 position, if the ideal has its source in the interest excited 
 by a subject, in its power of drawing the affections after 
 it linked in a golden chain, and in the desire of the mind 
 to dwell on it for ever. The ideal, in a word, is the 
 height of the pleasing, that which satisfies and accords 
 with the inmost longing of the soul : the picturesque 
 is merely a sharper and bolder impression of reality. A 
 morning mist drawing a slender veil over all objects is 
 at once picturesque and ideal : for it in the first place 
 excites immediate surprise and admiration, and in the 
 next a. wish for it to continue, and a fear lest it should be 
 too soon dissipated. Is the Cupid riding on a lion in the 
 ceiling at Whitehall, and urging him with a spear over a 
 precipice, with only clouds and sky beyond, most pic- 
 turesque or ideal f It has every effect of startling con- 
 trast and situation, and yet inspires breathless expectation 
 and wonder for the event. Eembrandt's Jacob's Dream, 
 again, is both — fearful to the eye, but realizing that loftiest 
 vision of the soul. Take two faces in Leonardo da Vinci's 
 
454 On the Picturesque and Ideal. 
 
 Last Supper, the Judas and the St. John ; the one is all 
 strength, repulsive character, the other is all divine grace 
 and mild sensibility. The individual, the characteristic 
 in painting, is that which is in a marked manner — the 
 ideal is that which we wish anything to be, and to con- 
 template without measure and without end. The first is 
 truth, the last is good. The one appeals to the sense 
 and understanding, the other to the will and the affections. 
 The truly beautiful and grand attracts the mind to it 
 by instinctive harmony, is absorbed in it, and nothing can 
 ever part them afterwards. Look at a Madonna of 
 Kaphael's : what gives the ideal character to the expression, 
 — the insatiable purpose of the soul, or its measureless 
 content in the object of its contemplation? A portrait 
 of Vandyke's is mere indifference and still-life in the 
 comparison : it has not in it the principle of growing and 
 still unsatisfied desire. In the ideal there is no fixed 
 stint or limit but the limit of possibility : it is the infinite 
 with respect to human capacities and wishes. Love is 
 for this reason an ideal passion. We give to it our all 
 of hope, of fear, of present enjoyment, and stake our 
 last chance of happiness wilfully and desperately upon 
 it. A good authority puts into the mouth of one of his 
 heroines — 
 
 " My bounty is as boundless as the sea, 
 My love as deep l" — 
 
 How many fair catechumens will there be found in all 
 ages to repeat as much after Shakespear's Juliet I 
 
On the Fear of Death. 455 
 
 ESSAY XXXIII. 
 
 On the Fear of Death. 
 
 " And our little life is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect 
 that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was 
 a time when we were not : this gives us no concern — why- 
 then should it trouble us that a time will come when we 
 shall cease to be? I have no wish to have been alive 
 a hundred years ago, or in the reign of Queen Anne : 
 why should I regret and lay it so much to heart that I 
 shall not be alive a hundred years hence, in the reign of 
 I cannot tell whom ? 
 
 When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays, I knew nothing of 
 the subjects of them : nay, much later, and but the other 
 day, as it were, in the beginning of the reign of George III., 
 when Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, used to meet at the 
 Globe, when Garrick was in his glory, and Eeynolds was 
 over head and ears with his portraits, and Sterne brought 
 out the volumes of Tristram Shandy year by year, it was 
 without consulting me : I had not the slightest intimation 
 of what was going on: the debates in the House of 
 Commons on the American war, or the firing at Bunker's 
 Hill, disturbed not me : yet I thought this no evil — I 
 neither ate, drank, nor was merry, yet I did not complain : 
 I had not then looked out into this breathing world, 
 yet I was well ; and the world did quite as well without 
 me as I did without it ! Why then should I make all 
 this outcry about parting with it, and being no worse off 
 than I was before ? There is nothing in the recollection 
 that at a certain time we were not come into the 
 world, that " the gorge rises at " — why should we revolt 
 at the idea that we must one day go out of it ? To die 
 is only to be as we were before we were born ; yet no 
 one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance," in con- 
 
456 On the Fear of Death. 
 
 templating this last idea. It is rather a relief and dis- 
 burthening of the mind : it seems to have been holiday- 
 time with us then : we were not called to appear upon 
 the stage of life, to wear robes or tatters, to laugh or cry, 
 be hooted or applauded ; we had lain perdus all this while, 
 snug, out of harm's way ; and had slept out our thousands 
 of centuries without wanting to be waked up ; at peace 
 and free from care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper 
 and calmer than that of infancy, wrapped in the softest and 
 finest dust. And the worst that we dread is, after a 
 short, fretful, feverish being, after vain hopes, and idle 
 fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the troubled 
 
 dream of life ! Ye armed men, knights templars, 
 
 that sleep in the stone aisles of that old Temple church, 
 where all is silent above, and where a deeper silence 
 reigns below (not broken by the pealing organ), are ye 
 not contented where ye lie ? Or would you come out 
 of your long homes to go to the Holy War ? Or do ye 
 complain that pain no longer visits you, that sickness 
 has done its worst, that you have paid the last debt to 
 nature, that you hear no more of the thickening phalanx 
 of the foe, or your lady's waning love; and that while 
 this ball of earth rolls its eternal round, no sound shall 
 ever pierce through to disturb your lasting repose, fixed 
 as the marble over your tombs, breathless as the grave 
 that holds you ! And thou, oh ! thou, to whom my heart 
 turns, and will turn while it has feeling left, who didst 
 love in vain, and whose first was thy last sigh, wilt not 
 thou too rest in peace (or wilt thou cry to me complain- 
 ing from thy clay-cold bed) when that sad heart is no 
 longer sad, and that sorrow is dead which thou wert only 
 called into the world to feel ! 
 
 It is certain that there is nothing in the idea of a pre- 
 existent state that excites our longing like the prospect of 
 a posthumous existence. We are satisfied to have begun 
 life when we did ; we have no ambition to have set out 
 
On the Fear of Death. 457 
 
 on our journey sooner ; and feel that we have had quite 
 enough to do to battle our way through since. We can- 
 not say, 
 
 u The wars we well remember of King Nine, 
 Of old Assaracus and Inaehus divine." 
 
 Neither have we any wish : we are contented to read of 
 them in story, and to stand and gaze at the vast sea of 
 time that separates us from them. It was early days 
 then : the world was not well-aired enough for us : we 
 have no inclination to have been up and stirring. We 
 do not consider the six thousand years of the world 
 before we were born as so much time lost to us : we are 
 perfectly indifferent about the matter. We do not grieve 
 and lament that we did not happen to be in time to see 
 the grand mask and pageant of human life going on in all 
 that period ; though we are mortified at being obliged to 
 quit our stand before the rest of the procession passes. 
 
 It may be suggested in explanation of this difference, 
 that we know from various records and traditions what 
 happened in the time of Queen Anne, or even in the 
 reigns of the Assyrian monarchs : but that we have no 
 means of ascertaining what is to happen hereafter but by 
 awaiting the event, and that our eagerness and curiosity 
 are sharpened in proportion as we are in the dark about 
 it. This is not at all the case ; for at that rate we 
 should be constantly wishing to make a voyage of dis- 
 covery to Greenland or to the Moon, neither of which we 
 have, in general, the least desire to do. Neither, in truth, 
 have we any particular solicitude to pry into the secrets of 
 futurity, but as a pretext for prolonging our own existence. 
 It is not so much that we care to be alive a hundred or a 
 thousand years hence, any more than to have been alive 
 a hundred or a thousand years ago : but the thing lies 
 here, that we would all of us wish the present moment to 
 last for ever. We would be as we are, and would have 
 the world remain just as it is, to please us. 
 
458 On the Fear of Death. 
 
 M The present eye catches the present object " — 
 
 to have and to hold while it may ; and abhors, on any 
 terms, to have it torn from us, and nothing left in its 
 room. It is the pang of parting, the unloosing our 
 grasp, the breaking asunder some strong tie, the leaving 
 some cherished purpose unfulfilled, that creates the re- 
 pugnance to go, and " makes calamity of so long life," as 
 it often is. 
 
 " Oh ! thou strong heart ! 
 
 There's such a covenant 'twixt the world and thee, 
 They're loth to break !" 
 
 The love of life, then, is an habitual attachment, not an 
 abstract principle. Simply to be does not " content man's 
 natural desire :" we long to be in a certain time, place, 
 and circumstance. We would much rather be now, " on 
 this bank and shoal of time," than have our choice of any 
 future period, than take a slice of fifty or sixty years out 
 of the Millennium, for instance. This shows that our 
 attachment is not confined either to being or to well-being ; 
 but that we have an inveterate prejudice in favour of our 
 immediate existence, such as it is. The mountaineer will 
 not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut ; neither are we 
 willing to give up our present mode of life, with all its 
 advantages and disadvantages, for any other that could be 
 substituted for it. No man would, I think, exchange his 
 existence with any other man, however fortunate. We 
 had as lief not be, as not be ourselves. There are some 
 persons of that reach of soul that they would like to live 
 two hundred and fifty years hence, to see to what height 
 of empire America will have grown up in that period, or 
 whether the English constitution will last so long. These 
 are points beyond me. But I confess I should like to live 
 to see the downfall of the Bourbons. That is a vital 
 question with me ; and I shall like it the better, the sooner 
 it happens ! 
 
On the Fear of Death. 459 
 
 No young man ever thinks he shall die. He may 
 believe that others will, or assent to the doctrine that " all 
 men are mortal " as an abstract proposition, but he is far 
 enough from bringing it home to himself individually. 1 
 Youth, buoyant activity, and animal spirits, hold absolute 
 antipathy with old age as well as with death ; nor have 
 we, in the hey-day of life, any more than in the thought- 
 lessness of childhood, the remotest conception how 
 
 '• This sensible warm motion can become 
 A kneaded clod " — 
 
 nor how sanguine, florid health and vigour, shall " turn to 
 withered, weak, and grey." Or if in a moment of idle 
 speculation we indulge in this notion of the close of life 
 as a theory, it is amazing at what a distance it seems ; 
 what a long, leisurely interval there is between ; what a 
 contrast its slow and solemn approach affords to' our pre- 
 sent gay dreams of existence ! We eye the farthest verge 
 of the horizon, and think what a way we shall have to 
 look back upon, ere we arrive at our journey's end ; and 
 without our in the least suspecting it, the mists are at our 
 feet, and the shadows of age encompass us. The two 
 divisions of our lives have melted into each other : the 
 extreme points close and meet with none of that romantic 
 interval stretching out between them, that we had reckoned 
 upon ; and for the rich, melancholy, solemn hues of age, 
 " the sear, the yellow leaf," the deepening shadows of an 
 autumnal evening, we only feel a dank, cold mist, en- 
 circling all objects, after the spirit of youth is fled. There 
 is no inducement to look forward ; and what is worse, 
 little interest in looking back to what has become so trite 
 and common. The pleasures of our existence have worn 
 themselves out, are " gone into the wastes of time," or 
 have turned their indifferent side to us: the pains by 
 their repeated blows have worn us out, and have left us 
 1 " All men think all men mortal but themselves/'— UToung. 
 
460 On the Fear of Death. 
 
 neither spirit nor inclination to encounter them again in 
 retrospect. We do not want to rip up old grievances, nor 
 to renew our youth like the phoenix, nor to live our lives 
 twice over. Once is enough. As the tree falls, so let it 
 lie. Shut up the book and close the account once for all ! 
 It has been thought by some that life is like the ex- 
 ploring of a passage that grows narrower and darker the 
 farther we advance, without a possibility of ever turning 
 back, and where we are stifled for want of breath at last. 
 For myself, I do not complain of the greater thickness of 
 the atmosphere as I approach the narrow house. I felt 
 it more, formerly, 1 when the idea alone seemed to suppress 
 a thousand rising hopes, and weighed upon the pulses of 
 the blood. At present I rather feel a thinness and want 
 of support, I stretch out my hand to some object and find 
 none, I am too much in a world of abstraction; the 
 naked map of life is spread out before me, and in the 
 emptiness and desolation I see Death coming to meet me. 
 In my youth I could not behold him for the crowd of 
 objects and feelings, and Hope stood always between us, 
 saying — " Never mind that old fellow !" If I had lived 
 indeed, I should not care to die. But I do not like a 
 contract of pleasure broken off unfulfilled, a marriage 
 with joy unconsummated, a promise of happiness re- 
 scinded. My public and private hopes have been left a 
 ruin, or remain only to mock me. I would wish them to 
 be re-edified. I should like to see some prospect of good 
 to mankind, such as my life began with. I should like 
 to leave some sterling work behind me. I should like to 
 have some friendly hand to consign me to the grave. On 
 these conditions I am ready, if not willing, to depart. 
 I shall then write on my tomb — Grateful and Con- 
 tented ! But I have thought and suffered too much to be 
 
 1 I remember once, in particular, having this feeling in reading 
 Schiller's Don Carlos, where there is a description of death, in a de- 
 gree that almost stifled me. 
 
On the Fear of Death. 461 
 
 willing to have thought and suffered in vain. — In looking 
 back, it sometimes appears to me as if I had in a manner 
 slept out my life in a dream or shadow on the side of the 
 hill of knowledge, where I have fed on books, on thoughts, 
 on pictures, and only heard in half-murmurs the trampling 
 of busy feet, or the noises of the throng below. Waked 
 out of this dim, twilight existence, and startled with the 
 passing scene, I have felt a wish to descend to the world 
 of realities, and join in the chase. But I fear too late, 
 and that I had better return to my bookish chimeras and 
 indolence once more ! Zanetto, lascia le donne, et studio, 
 la matematica. I will think of it. 1 
 
 It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear 2 of 
 death become more familiar to us as we approach nearer 
 to it : that life seems to ebb with the decay of blood and 
 youthful spirits ; and that as we find everything about us 
 subject to chance and change, as our strength and beauty die, 
 as our hopes and passions, our friends and our affections 
 leave us, 8 we begin by degrees to feel ourselves mortal! 
 
 I have never seen death but once, and that was in an 
 infant. It is years ago. The look was calm and placid, 
 and the face was fair and firm. It was as if a waxen 
 image had been laid out in the coffin, and strewed with 
 innocent flowers. It was not like death, but more like an 
 image of life ! No breath moved the lips, 4 no pulse 
 stirred, no sight or sound would enter those eyes or ears 
 more. While I looked at it, I saw no pain was there ; 
 it seemed to smile at the short pang of life which was 
 over : but I could not bear the coffin-lid to be closed — it 
 seemed to stifle me ; and still as the nettles wave in a 
 corner of the churchyard over his little grave, the wel- 
 
 1 This sentence was added in proof. — Ed. 
 8 Image.— MS. 
 * Affections are dead. — MS. 
 
 4 No breath wwd, the lips did not breathe. — MS. Compare 
 Memoirs of W. E. 1867, i. 170.— Ed. 
 
462 On the Fear of Death. 
 
 come breeze helps to refresh me, and ease the tightness 
 at my breast ! 
 
 [I did not see my father after he was dead, but I saw 
 Death shake him by the palsied hand, and stare him in 
 the face. He made as good an end as Falstaff ; though 
 different, as became him. After repeating the name of 
 his E(edeemer) often, he took my mother's hand, and, 
 looking up, put it in my sister's, and so expired. There 
 was something graceful and gracious in his nature, which 
 showed itself in his last act.] 1 
 
 An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's 2 monument of 
 the two children, is contemplated with pure delight. Why 
 do we not grieve and fret that the marble is not alive, or 
 fancy that it has a shortness of breath ? 3 It never was 
 alive ; and it is the difficulty of making the transition 
 from life to death, the struggle between the two in our 
 imagination, that confounds their properties painfully 
 together, and makes us conceive that the infant that is 
 but just dead, still wants to breathe, to enjoy, and look 
 about it, and is prevented by the icy hand of death, lock- 
 ing up its faculties 4 and benumbing its senses ; so that, 
 if it could, it would complain of its own hard state. Per- 
 haps 5 religious considerations reconcile the mind to this 
 change sooner than any others, by representing the spirit 
 as fled to another sphere, and leaving the body behind it 
 So in reflecting on death generally, we mix up the idea of 
 life with it, and thus make it the ghastly monster it is. 
 We think, how we should feel, not how the dead feel. 
 
 " Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries ; 
 Even in our ashes live their wonted fires !" 
 
 There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker'b 
 
 1 This paragraph is not in printed copy. — Ed. 
 
 2 Chantry.— MS. 
 
 3 Difficulty in breathing. — MS. 
 
 4 Stifling its breath. — MS. 
 
 1 This paragraph is not in MS. 
 
On the Fear of Death. 463 
 
 1 Light of Nature Pursued/ which I shall transcribe, as by 
 much the best illustration I can offer of it. 
 
 J' The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the 
 mansion provided for it to inhabit, dark, cold, close and 
 solitary, are shocking to the imagination ; but it is to the 
 imagination only, not the understanding; for whoever 
 consults this faculty will see at first glance, that there is 
 nothing dismal in all these circumstances : if the corpse 
 were kept wrapped up in a warm bed, with a roasting 
 fire in the chamber, it would feel no comfortable warmth 
 therefrom ; were store of tapers lighted up as soon as day 
 shuts in, it would see no objects to divert it ; were it left 
 at large it would have no liberty, nor if surrounded with 
 company would be cheered thereby ; neither are the dis- 
 torted features expressions of pain, uneasiness, or distress. 
 This every one knows, and will readily allow upon being 
 suggested, yet still cannot behold, nor even cast a thought 
 upon those objects without shuddering; for knowing 
 that a living person must suffer grievously under such 
 appearances, they become habitually formidable to the 
 mind, and strike a mechanical horror, which is increased 
 by the customs of the world around us." 
 
 There is usually one pang added voluntarily and un- 
 necessarily to the fear of death, by our affecting to com- 
 passionate the loss which others will have in us. If that 
 were all, we might reasonably set our minds at rest. The 
 pathetic exhortation on country tombstones, " Grieve not 
 for me, my wife and children dear," &c, is for the most 
 part speedily followed to the letter. We do not leave so 
 great a void in society as we are inclined to imagine, 
 partly to magnify our own importance, and partly to 
 console ourselves by sympathy. Even in the same family 
 the gap is not so great ; the wound closes up sooner than 
 we should expect. Nay, our room is not unfrequently 
 thought better than our company. People walk along the 
 streets the day after our deaths just as they did before, 
 
464 On the Fear of Death. 
 
 and the crowd is not diminished. While we were living, 
 the world seemed in a manner to exist only for us, for our 
 delight and amusement, because it contributed to them. 
 But our hearts cease to beat, and it goes on as usual, and 
 thinks no more about us than it did in our lifetime. 1 
 The million are devoid of sentiment, and care as little for 
 you or me as if we belonged to the moon. We live the 
 week over in the Sunday's paper, or are decently interred 
 in some obituary at the month's end ! 2 It is not sur- 
 prising that we are forgotten so soon after we quit this 
 mortal stage : we are scarcely noticed while we are on it. 
 It is not merely that our names are not known in China 
 — they have hardly been heard of in the next street. We 
 are hand and glove with the universe, and think the 
 obligation is mutual. This is an evident fallacy. If this, 
 however, does not trouble us now, it will not hereafter. 
 A handful of dust can have no quarrel to pick with its 
 neighbours, or complaint to make against Providence, 
 and might well exclaim, if it had but an understanding 
 and a tongue, " Go thy ways, old world, swing round in 
 blue ether, voluble to every age, you and I shall no more 
 jostle !" 
 
 It is amazing how soon the rich and titled, and even 
 some of those who have wielded great political power, are 
 forgotten. 
 
 * A little rule, a little sway, 
 Is all the great and mighty have 
 Betwixt the cradle and the grave " — 
 
 and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name behind 
 them. " A great man's memory may, at the common rate, 
 
 1 The verbal differences between the MS. and printed copv are 
 innumerable ; but perhaps it is unnecessary to specify them, as the 
 changes were probably made by the author himself at press. — Ed. 
 
 2 The matter which follows, down to the quotation in the next 
 page, has been greatly amplified in the printed copy.— Er. 
 
On the Fear of Death. 465 
 
 survive him half a year." 1 His heirs and successors take 
 his titles, his power, and his wealth — all that made him 
 considerable or courted by others ; and he has left nothing 
 else behind him either to delight or benefit the world. 
 Posterity are not by any means so disinterested as they 
 are supposed to be. They give their gratitude and ad- 
 miration only in return for benefits conferred. They 
 cherish the memory of those to whom they are indebted 
 for instruction and delight ; and they cherish it just in 
 proportion to the instruction and delight they are conscious 
 they receive. The sentiment of admiration springs im- 
 mediately from this ground; and cannot be otherwise 
 than well founded. 2 
 
 The effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general 
 or abstract idea, is the effect of a highly civilized and 
 artificial state of society. Men formerly plunged into all 
 the vicissitudes and dangers of war, or staked their all 
 upon a single die, or some one passion, which if they 
 could not have gratified, life became a burden to them — 
 now our strongest passion is to think, our chief amuse- 
 ment is to read new plays, new poems, new novels, and 
 this we may do at our leisure, in perfect security, ad in- 
 finitum. If we look into the old histories and romances, 
 before the belles-lettres neutralized human affairs and re- 
 duced passion to a state of mental equivocation, we find 
 the heroes and heroines not setting their lives " at a pin's 
 
 1 This sentence is not in the MS., which varies again considerably 
 from the text. — Ed. 
 
 2 It has been usual to raise a very unjust clamour against the 
 enormous salaries of public singers, actors, and so on. This matter 
 seems reducible to a moral equation. They are paid out of money 
 raised by voluntary contributions in the strictest sense ; and if they 
 did not bring certain sums into the treasury, the Managers would 
 not engage them. These sums are exactly in proportion to the 
 number of individuals to whom their performance gives an extra- 
 ordinary degree of pleasure. The talents of a singer, actor, &c, arf 
 therefore worth just as much as thev will fetch. 
 
 2 n 
 
166 On the Fear of Death. 
 
 fee," but rather courting opportunities of throwing them 
 away in very wantonness of spirit. They raise their 
 fondness for some favourite pursuit to its height, to a 
 pitch of madness, and think no price too dear to pay .or 
 its full gratification. Everything else is dross. They 
 go to death as to a bridal bed, and sacrifice themselves or 
 others without remorse at the shrine of love, of honour, 
 of religion, or any other prevailing feeling. Eomeo runs 
 his " sea-sick, weary bark upon the rocks " of death, the 
 instant he finds himself deprived of his Juliet ; and she 
 clasps his neck in their last agonies, and follows him to 
 the same fatal shore. One strong idea takes possession 
 of the mind and overrules every other; and even life 
 itself, joyless without that, becomes an object of indif- 
 ference or loathing. There is at least more of imagina- 
 tion in such a state of things, more vigour of feeling and 
 promptitude to act than in our lingering, languid, pro- 
 tracted attachment to life for its own poor sake. It is, per- 
 haps, also better, as well as more heroical, to strike at some 
 daring or darling object, and if we fail in that, to take the 
 consequences manfully, than to renew the lease of a 
 tedious, spiritless, charmless existence, merely (as Pierre 
 says) " to lose it afterwards in some vile brawl " for some 
 worthless object. Was there not a spirit of martyrdom 
 as well as a spice of the reckless energy of barbarism in 
 this bold defiance of death ? Had not religion something 
 to do with it ; the implicit belief in a future life, which 
 rendered this of less value, and embodied something be- 
 yond it to the imagination ; so that the rough soldier, the 
 infatuated lover, the valorous knight, &c, could afford to 
 throw away the present venture, and take a leap into the 
 arms of futurity, which the modern sceptic shrinks back 
 from, with all his boasted reason and vain philosophy, 
 weaker than a woman! I cannot help thinking so 
 myself ; but I have endeavoured to explain this point be- 
 fore, and will not enlarge farther on it here. 
 
On the Fear of Death, 467 
 
 A life of action and danger moderates the dread of 
 death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but 
 teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which 
 we hold our present being. Sedentary and studious men 
 are the most apprehensive on this score. Dr. Johnson 
 was an instance in point. A few years seemed to him 
 soon over, compared with those sweeping contemplations 
 on time and infinity with which he had been used 
 to pose himself. In the still-life of a man of letters, 
 there was no obvious reason for a change. He might sit 
 in an arm-chair and pour out cups of tea to all eternity. 
 Would it had been possible for him to do so ! The most 
 rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is 
 to set a just value on life. If we merely wish to continue 
 on the scene to indulge our headstrong humours and tor- 
 menting passions, we had better begone at once : and if 
 we only cherish a fondness for existence according to the 
 good we derive from it, the pang we feel at parting with 
 it will not be very severe ! 
 
 THE END, 
 
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Selected Works. 15 
 
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Selected Works, 17 
 
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Selected Works. 
 
 19 
 
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20 George Bell and Sons' 
 
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Selected Works. 21 
 
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22 George Bell and Sons' 
 
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Selected Works. 23 
 
 By Hans Christian Andersen. 
 
 FAIRY TALES AND SKETCHES. Translated by C. C. 
 
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24 George Bell and Sons' Selected Works. 
 
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