THE SCOTT LIBRARY. 
 
 ESSAYS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
 
 ESSAYS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.- 
 SELECTED AND EDITED BY 
 FRANK CARR. 
 
 London: Walter Scott, Ltd., 
 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
 
 TO 
 
 PROFESSOR F. T. CHILD, M.A., 
 
 HARVARD COLLEGE, 
 
 LOVER AND CRITIC OF CHAUCER, 
 FAITHFUL AND THOROUGH EDITOR OF OUR 
 
 ENGLISH AND SCOTCH BALLADS, 
 
 THIS VOLUME OF 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITTS ESSAYS 
 
 IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 BY 
 
 FRANK CARR.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS I 
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS . . . 18 
 
 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING . . . . . 39 
 
 ON ACTORS AND ACTING 51 
 
 ON MR. KEAN'S IAGO 60 
 
 MRS. SIDDONS 65 
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICHOLAS POUSSIN ... 69 
 
 HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE" .... 76 
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY 85 
 
 ON THE PROSE- STYLE OF POETS 96 
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS? . 109 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS . . . .122 
 
 ON READING NEW BOOKS 134 
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS 15
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 THE FIGHT 163 
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN 1 82 
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE ; OR, ADVICE TO A 
 
 SCHOOL-BOY 196 
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 217 
 
 THE OPERA 233 
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN . . 237 
 
 A FAREWELL TO ESS AY- WRITING 253 
 
 THE SICK CHAMBER 261 
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR 269 
 
 NOTES .... .303
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 OF the life of William Hazlitt, no more will be said here 
 than seems needful for considering his work as an 
 Essayist, He was born on the loth of April 1778, 
 in Mitre Lane, Maidstone. His father was a Unitarian 
 minister, who, after several changes, settled at Wem, in 
 Shropshire. In 1795, amongst other places, young Hazlitt 
 visited Burleigh House, and beheld its pictures, some of which 
 he treasured in his mind to the end of life. In 1796 Coleridge 
 settled at Nether-Stowey, and preached in the Unitarian chapel 
 at Taunton. In January 1798 Coleridge, whilst officiating for 
 Mr. Rowe at Shrewsbury, visited Hazlitt's father at Wem. 
 This proved the great inspiring time of young Hazlitt's 
 intellectual life. He heard Coleridge preach : saw much of 
 him : above all, was invited by the poet to Nether-Stowey 
 in the spring. 
 
 During the interval, Haz'litt went to Llangollen Vale, by way 
 of initiating himself into " the mysteries of natural scenery." 
 Coleridge, in December 1796", had published his " Ode to the 
 Departing Year." The poetry, in its character and music, was 
 new to young Hazlitt. Uplifted in spirit by his approaching 
 visit, inspired by the ode, that expedition was fraught with new 
 awakenings. He remembered, long years afterwards, how he 
 sat up half the night at an inn at Bridgwater to read Paul and 
 Virginia; how on his birthday he sat down to a new volume of 
 the New Heloise at a Llangollen inn. Llangollen Vale itself 
 became to him "the cradle of a new existence: in the river 
 that winds through it, my spirit was baptised in the waters of 
 Helicon." Coleridge received him with a welcome. Words- 
 worth he there met ; heard him chaunt some of his poetry ; saw 
 some of his Lyrical Ballads in manuscript. Hazlitt spent three 
 weeks at Nether-Stowey. There was a walking excursion to
 
 x INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Linton with Coleridge and a silent admirer of the metaphysician 
 and poet, one John Chester. This was a troublous political 
 time. Wordsworth and Coleridge were watched as suspects by 
 a State spy, and Wordsworth, ultimately, went to Germany 
 with his sister and Coleridge. But young Hazlitt, full of his 
 new poetic experience ; with " the first virgin passion of a soul 
 communing with the glorious universe;" did not share the 
 high political feelings. He, who became a frenzied politician, 
 who, as such, condemned these same poets for their change of 
 views, was at present in dreamland. Twenty-eight years after 
 these events he wrote : " I may date my insight into the 
 mysteries of poetry from the commencement of my acquaint- 
 ance with the authors of the Lyrical Ballads." 
 
 We know from one of his essays, that about this time Hazlitt 
 became acquainted with Mr. Joseph Fawcett, who had delivered 
 popular Sunday evening lectures at Old Jewry, but who was 
 then retired to Hedgegrove, in Hertfordshire. He found 
 Fawcett to be a man of keen poetic appreciation, and largely 
 read. "The writings of Sterne, Fielding, Cervantes, 
 Richardson, Rousseau, Godwin, Goethe, etc., were the usual 
 subjects of our discourses." Intended for the ministry, Hazlitt 
 entered the Unitarian College, Hackney, in 1793, but left 
 it in 1795 with the idea given up. His brother John was a 
 miniature-painter. William had a love for painting, which had 
 been stimulated by his visit to Burleigh in 1795. He went to 
 Paris in October 1802, and studied in the Louvre for four 
 months. The remembrance of that visit was always with him. 
 
 In 1803 he made a professional tour through the Midland 
 Counties, but not satisfied with the results, he came to London 
 with his thoughts bent on literature. At this time, he formed 
 intimacies with Dr. Stoddart and his sister Sarah, with Charles 
 and Mary Lamb. His friendship with Lamb originated at the 
 house of Godwin, through a flash of Lamb's humour, as told 
 at the conclusion of the second essay. 
 
 Hazlitt's first publication was the Principles of Human 
 Actions (1805), which he never ceased to esteem as his best 
 work, though a metaphysical choke-pear. Under the stimulus 
 of Coleridge he wrote Free Thoughts on Public Affairs, which 
 was published in 1806. Both fell still-born from the press. 
 Pregnant with important consequences was the first sentence 
 of a letter written by Mary Lamb to her friend and corres- 
 pondent, Miss Stoddart, on the second of July of this year : 
 " My dear Sarah, Charles and Hazlitt are going to the Sadler's 
 Wells." This is the beginning of another epoch in Hazlitt's
 
 INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 mental experience the sowing of the first seed of the theatrical 
 critic. 
 
 On Sunday morning, the ist of May 1808, Hazlitt married 
 Miss Stoddart. There were present at the ceremony Dr. and 
 Mrs. Stoddart, also Charles and Mary Lamb. The newly- 
 wedded couple went to Winterslow, and resided in a cottage 
 which belonged to the bride. Winterslow is a village in 
 Wiltshire, between Andover and Salisbury. It became a 
 favourite resort of Hazlitt's. He found there quiet times for 
 composition. In later years, he took up his quarters at an old 
 inn called Winterslow Hut. The London mails made a 
 busy break in the day ; there was Stonehenge to visit ; 
 there were in view the " woods that crown the clear lone 
 brow of Norman Court " and " the waving woods of 
 Tuderley." The Lambs visited Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt in the 
 autumn of the following year. On that occasion they went to 
 Oxford. Hazlitt, in "On Going a Journey," refers to the circum- 
 stance : " I once took a party to Oxford with no mean tclat? 
 The visit was also described by Elia in " Vacation at Oxford." 
 Of this, we speak at a more acceptable time. 
 
 Hazlitt, in 1812, fairly settled in London. This year, as Mr. 
 Carew Hazlitt observes, marks " an important era in Hazlitt's 
 life." He soon began to deliver a series of lectures at the 
 Russell Institution, on the " English Philosophers and Meta- 
 physicians." For a short time, he became Parliamentary 
 reporter to the Morning Chronicle. Upon giving up this post 
 he retained his connection with the newspaper as the writer of 
 political articles and its theatrical critic. The political contribu- 
 tions were afterwards reprinted in Political Essays, with 
 Sketches of Public Characters (1819), and the others in A View 
 of the English Stage (1821). He was requested to contribute 
 to the Edinburgh Review, and his first contribution appeared 
 in November 1814. By this time, he had become acquainted 
 with Leigh Hunt and his brother John, proprietors of the 
 Examiner. Long ere this, Hazlitt was known as a passionate 
 politician, and he remained consistent in his views, his acrimony 
 and his zeal, to the last. Napoleon was his idol. Therefore, 
 the battle of Waterloo, in 1815, struck him severely. Talfourd 
 says, that when he first met Hazlitt after the event, " he was 
 staggering under the blow of Waterloo." 
 
 Let us now see Hazlitt, as found in the descriptions of those 
 who were his admirers. He was of middle size, slight, but well 
 formed ; of handsome countenance eager and pale, and rather 
 worn with thought and pain ; black hair, which curled stiffly
 
 xii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 over his temples in later years, plentifully sprinkled with grey ; 
 a sensitive mouth, a sunken, glancing eye. A man awkward in 
 gait, negligent in dress, painfully bashful in the presence of 
 strangers. He became a great drinker of fine tea, having 
 given up a stronger stimulant. Tea with him, as Hunt quoted 
 from Waller, "kept the palace of the soul serene." He 
 rises at twelve or one o'clock, drinks his tea, and writes his 
 articles till four or five o'clock. At night he holds an intel- 
 lectual levde at the Southampton, Chancery Lane, where his 
 brilliant talk charms the company, until the grey dawn peeps 
 through the chinks of the shutters. He haunts the Fives Court, 
 in St. Martin's Street, where he assiduously plays the game, 
 rails at himself, and praises Cavanagh. In many ways he will 
 
 " Tear his pleasures with rough strife, 
 Thorough the iron gates of life." 
 
 His temper is suspicious is genial he fights with a shadow 
 he shrinks from general society. He gives his hand as if it 
 were the fin of a fish. Hunt noticed it, and reports that some 
 friends wished to place a fish-slice against the hand of such a 
 friend, but no one dared " bell the cat." 
 
 Upon his acquaintance with Leigh Hunt and his brother, the 
 Round Table essays were commenced in the Examiner. The 
 series were completed in 1817, and republished in two small 
 volumes. His volume of Characters of Shakespere*s Plays, 
 dedicated to his friend, Charles Lamb, was published the 
 same year. The Characters sold well. One edition went 
 off in six weeks ; but the Quarterly attacked it, and the sale 
 was stopped. Almost every event in Hazlitt"s life is alluded to 
 in his essays, and he has not forgotten this. A reckoning with 
 Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly, was now imminent. His 
 attack followed on the heels of other wrongs. In 1818 were 
 published the lectures delivered by him at the Surrey Institu- 
 tion on the English Poets. Then came his Letter to William 
 Gifford) Esq., followed by lectures on the English Comic 
 Writers, and the collection of Political Essays and Sketches of 
 Public Characters. In 1820 the London Magazine was com- 
 menced, and Hazlitt was amongst the brilliant contributors 
 enumerated by Talfourd in his Memorials af Charles Lamb. 
 The first volume of Table Talk (1821) was chiefly composed of 
 essays reprinted from the London. 
 
 Other events, also, made this a memorable year. He took 
 apartments at 9 Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, London,
 
 INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 where he fell in love with one of the daughters of the house. 
 If a ladye-love was called Southampton Buildings, with Hazlitt 
 this might have been " No. 9." He, as well as others of his 
 friends, were rarely without a Dulcinea the newer the better. 
 From that genial true-heart of wedded life, Charles Cowden 
 Clarke, we learn that, infatuated with Miss Mordaunt, "who was 
 making her appearance at the Haymarket in the first bloom and 
 freshness of her youth and beauty," Hazlitt performed the lunatic, 
 the lover, if not the poet. On another occasion, Clarke, in com- 
 paring notes with Leigh Hunt and Vincent Novello, discovered 
 that the whole three were enthralled by a Viola, that is by Miss 
 A. M. Tree. Yea, Clarke confesses to Hunt and himself being 
 woefully in love with (a forgotten name) a columbine. But 
 then it was different with Hazlitt from his fellows. " No. 9," 
 unfortunately, was in his home : was pretty and engaging. This 
 Hebe brought him Nectar to each meal. Ever the child 
 of passion, he declared his frenzy at all times, in all places. 
 The results were that in two years he was divorced, and the 
 Liber Amoris j or, the New Pygmalion, was published. In this 
 transaction his jesses were not the dear heart-strings of the 
 young lady, Miss Sarah Walker. She whistled him off, and let 
 him down the wind to prey on fortune. 
 
 " Lost, was she, lost ; nor could the sufferer say 
 That in the act of preference he had been 
 Unjustly dealt with : but the maid was gone." 
 
 In 1820, were published his Lectures on the Dramatic Litera- 
 ture of the Age of Queen Elizabeth, followed (1821) by A View 
 of the English Stage. In 1821 Lord Byron and Shelley 
 projected a periodical, afterwards named The Liberal. Shelley 
 wrote for Leigh Hunt to go to Italy and share the labours and 
 the profits. He went. Hazlitt was made home editor. The 
 Liberal appeared in 1822. Four numbers were published. It 
 then ceased to exist, Hazlitt having contributed four articles. 
 
 In the few years that remain to be spoken of, we shall name 
 but the chief events. In 1823 he published Characteristics, in the 
 manner of 'Rochefoucauld 's Maxims. The book hardly kept the 
 promise of its title ; but that is argument for other pages. He 
 married a second time, in 1824, Isabella, widow of Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Bridgwater, " a lady of some property." With her he 
 visited the Continent. During their wanderings he contributed 
 to the Morning Chronicle, Notes of a Journey through France 
 and Italy, which were afterwards collected and published in 
 one volume. His life was a constant paradox. Mrs. Hazlitt
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 did not return to England with him. There is a great deal 
 told of the journey ; very little of the companionship. Hazlitt 
 wrote to his wife ; she replied that " they had parted for ever " 
 a brief, but not bright intimacy. 
 
 In 1824 appeared his Sketches of the Principal Picture 
 Galleries in England, and in 1825, The Spirit of the Age; or. 
 Contemporary Portraits, one of the finest volumes of personal 
 and literary criticism, beginning with Jeremy Bentham, ending 
 with Geoffrey Crayon. Hazlitt is searching in his inquisition, 
 sweeping in his judgments, also piquant. Of the first he says, 
 " He writes a language of his own that darkens knowledge. 
 His works have been translated into French they ought to be 
 translated into English." Of Washington Irving, that his 
 "writings are literary anachronisms. . . . Instead of tracing 
 the changes that have taken place in society since Addison 
 and Fielding wrote, he transcribes their account in a different 
 handwriting, and thus keeps us stationary. ... A flattering 
 mode of turning fiction into history, or history into fiction. . . . 
 A pardonable error, . . . giving us credit for the virtues of our 
 forefathers." The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Men, Books, 
 and Things (1826), was a compilation of essays of similar 
 character to Table Talk. 
 
 He was now busy with the work on which his heart was set, 
 The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. The first two volumes were 
 published in 1828. That same year he wrote his "Farewell to 
 Essay- Writing." It was not published then, nor was the title 
 true ; but, alas, it was too true in its ominous note. Two years 
 afterwards (1830), broken in body and mind, he wrote his essays 
 "A Free Admission,"" The Sick Chamber," and "Personal 
 Politics," which was his last essay. His Napoleon Buonaparte 
 was completed and published the same year. On Saturday, 
 3oth September 1830, he died. Charles Lamb, his old friend, 
 was in his room. Something of peacefulness and light came to 
 him in his latest hours. Was that not gently said, as by a 
 woman, to one who had been talking to him in a soothing 
 undertone, during his illness ? " My sweet friend, go into the 
 next room, and sit there for a time, as quiet as is your nature, 
 for I cannot bear talking at present." 
 
 The irritable, discontented temperament was chastened. He 
 saw the past clearly and calmly. His last words were "Well, 
 I've had a happy life." So confessed that once fiery, stormy 
 spirit, recognising what joys and frequent periods of quiet and 
 restoration had been vouchsafed him, in spite of his passions 
 and his desires.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xv 
 
 No writer of merit in this century has been subject to such 
 stupid misrepresentations as William Hazlitt. He has had 
 admirers, he has been a vitalising influence in some minds ; but 
 of the writers of our century, not one has suffered from such 
 reckless distortion and misjudgment. At this moment, the post 
 brings me a sample of those perversions, which affords me a 
 base from which to operate. . . . "The correctness of facts 
 with Hazlitt is nearly in all cases subordinate to the strik- 
 ing construction of a sentence. . . ." This serves my 
 purpose quite as well as though fulminated from an editorial 
 throne. Error and truth, each preserves its native quality, no 
 matter where, no matter by whom it be spoken. That passage 
 is fairly representative of a certain style of criticism, of the 
 mass of misjudgment, in regard to Hazlitt ; it is no exaggeration 
 of the manner in which he has been dealt with by his enemies, 
 by those indifferent to him, and, in their ignorance, by some of 
 his friends. So far as this special charge is concerned, I briefly 
 say that Hazlitt was too passionate a man not to speak the truth 
 sometimes. I do not discern that, as a Truth Speaker as well 
 as a Plain Speaker, he fell beneath his own age, or the present. 
 . . . He was an admirer of Wordsworth's poetry, without de- 
 generating into admiration of his change in politics : he recog- 
 nised the beauties in the poems of Keats, without discovering the 
 subtle music of Shelley's strains : he was separated from his wife, 
 like a celebrated poet, without possessing the domesticity and 
 self-sacrifice of Lamb : his appreciation of humour was as certain 
 as that of Peter Pindar, without the faculty of turning it into 
 human nature's daily food of smiles- and tears, like Tom Hood : 
 he loved a country inn, like Winterslow Hut, without losing 
 his desire for city life, as in the Southampton : he loved the 
 theatre, without giving up his hopes for mankind : he admired 
 the tragic actor, without any diminution of his relish for 
 the comedian : his affection for painters, from Raphael to 
 Rubens and Poussin, was ecstatic, without losing his British 
 taste for Hogarth : his writing displays passion, rapt con- 
 templation, invective, without the serenity, the limpid sweet- 
 ness, the patient cheerfulness of Leigh Hunt and a great 
 number of other things, without a great number of other 
 things. 
 
 I have already said that the nature of Hazlitt's Essay was 
 after the admiration of Montaigne. " I love a poetic march by 
 leaps and skips : 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble, and a 
 little maddish." He has a Bohemian manner, like his masters. 
 Ever and anon, he breaks away : it is not a mere diversion, but
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a flight ; frequently he will tell you so. The man's temper being 
 heated, his language obtains therefrom warmth and motion 
 
 " As full of spirit as the month of May, 
 And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer." 
 
 Particularly, he may surprise you by closing his essay, not with 
 the power of logical application, after the orthodox sermon 
 style, but by a complete change of subject. On all occasions you 
 get a great deal more than is in the bond. The true essay with 
 him is like a sweethearts' meeting : good nature and genius 
 are met together : you are never sure what will come next 
 talk, caresses, or some whisper of lost hearts, dead times : you 
 may get to a flower, or a star kisses or laughter or some 
 recollection, to let you know that nothing is 
 
 " So dainty sweet as lovely melancholy." 
 
 Something Hazlitt had, which is not so predominant in any 
 other essayist, and which brightens his writings his intense 
 love of Nature. In this love, he said, was "all the force of 
 individual attachment, combined with its most airy abstrac- 
 tion." Then, as a mind of power, touching more of his 
 fellows at the opening century than anyone except Leigh 
 Hunt, and declaring as to what or with whom he agrees or 
 disagrees this gives sprightly variety to his pages, and added 
 thereto, is that perfect enrichment of fitly-spoken words in 
 praise of his friends, which, fulfilling the language of the 
 Wise One of old, are " like apples of gold in pictures of 
 silver." 
 
 Into his criticisms cf painting Hazlitt throws more pas- 
 sionate, personal experience than any other writer. Where 
 Ruskin would, with finest discrimination, analyse a painting 
 in a style excellent for his generation and all of art 
 Hazlitt glorifies it in the light of Nature. The colours shine ; 
 the figures breathe and think and glow : being part of his 
 life, he makes the pictures part of yours. When, where, and 
 under what circumstances he has seen a painting is much to 
 him. He is as a pre-Raphaelite ; when he sees a true picture, 
 then you feel he is born anew ; that picture dwells in his spirit 
 for all his years. The pictures that he loved, they live in his 
 pages, there to be beloved by those who love the art. 
 
 As a theatrical critic, Hazlitt has his special place. If not 
 possessing the airy graces of Leigh Hunt, he has observation as 
 close, as true a sympathy, and a more resolute judgment The
 
 INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 pleasure of reading what he has written of the stage will increase 
 with the nation's years. ... At that period England's actors 
 strove to rise and find fame in the best plays. England's 
 theatres, then, produced the best plays. The stock company 
 gave a provincial town each year more of the legitimate drama 
 (as it is called) than the whole kingdom now produces. There 
 was a stimulus to the actor's ambition, when his audience 
 encouraged him to do his best in every character for which he 
 was qualified. Kean having made his hit at Drury Lane as 
 Shylock, the " Merchant of Venice " was not run for a thousand 
 nights. The first of his admirers, in seeing his Shylock a 
 second time, wrote to the London World " We are anxious to 
 see him in Norval and Richard." That was the feeling of the 
 critics and theatre-goers ; they longed to witness his personation 
 of other of all great characters. And the answer was given. 
 Kean opened with Shylock in January, followed with Richard 
 in February, Hamlet in March, Othello and lago in May. In 
 Hazlitt you have the past times of our theatre renewed in narra- 
 tive : you have the imperial line of great plays and characters, 
 and those who impersonate them, and therein find the fleeting 
 glory which is the actor's portion. He lets us knowthe impression 
 produced, the success achieved, by Mrs. Siddons, Kemble, 
 Kean, Miss O'Neill, and the comedians all, with whom he was 
 one in heart for fun and laughter. When fell there upon the 
 stage more lustrous honour than his praise of Mrs. Siddons ? And 
 this he would have said of every one worthy of the profession 
 " She had no need of the robes, of the sweeping train, the orna- 
 ments of the stage : in herself, she is as great as any being 
 she ever represented in the ripeness and plenitude of her 
 power ? " 
 
 Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespertfs Plays have been praised 
 by some later Shakesperian critics, also lightly esteemed by 
 others. The difference of circumstances will account for this. 
 Hazlitt judged his characters as a theatre-goer : he interpreted 
 them with the stage before him ; and such plays as he had not 
 seen performed would, in his mind's eye, be reproduced as 
 under similar conditions. The schools of Shakesperian 
 criticism have developed since then, in proportion to the 
 depression of the stage. The consequence of a natural law. 
 The mind seeks for food which it best loves : if not to be found 
 on the stage, it turns to the closet, and makes of it a mansion 
 
 "Full of noises, 
 Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not ; "
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 alive with gay or tragic incidents, and characters of grace, 
 nobleness, and mirth. The hunger of the soul for the beautiful 
 will be satisfied. Nevertheless, even to the recluse critic, Hazlitt 
 must in much be as correct as he is vigorous and subtle. 
 
 His political feelings can be easily explained. When Words- 
 worth, with Beaupuis, during the Revolution days, saw in a 
 French lane a hunger-bitten girl leading a heifer by a cord tied 
 to her arm, to enable it to crop the grass, 
 
 " While the girl, with pallid hands, 
 Was busy knitting in a heartless mood 
 Of solitude," 
 
 and the soldier, in agitation, cried, "'Tis against that we are 
 fighting " the spirit of Hazlitt was in his words. A dynasty 
 produces that then down with the dynasty down with 
 dynasties the tyranny of monarchy. In time, he came to 
 have no other word in his lexicon of politics than Buonaparte. 
 Buonaparte had risen from the people, he had conquered 
 (Hazlitt did not live to see Wiertz's painting of "Buonaparte 
 in the Shades"); Buonaparte was his sun, his hope 
 symbol of goodness to all mankind. Buonaparte assumed the 
 purple ; ah I but on it swarmed the golden bees, and 
 imperialism had become the bountiful giver of honey, and 
 sweetness, and light. If Hazlitt had been a poet, he should 
 have written a "Revolt of Islam." Be that word remem- 
 bered. I have said thus much of politics, because, ever and 
 anon, in the essays they gleam like the flashing of a shield. 
 Two faces haunted him Napoleon's and the heroine of the 
 Liber Amoris. It was the final and greatest torture in De 
 Quincey's opium experience, the vision of the human face 
 " the tyranny of the human face," as he called it. His last words 
 of terror were " My sleep is still tumultuous, and like the gate 
 of Paradise to our first parents, when looking back from afar, it 
 is still (in the tremendous line of Milton) 
 
 ' With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.' " 
 
 Hazlitt felt such tyranny in his dream of life. Not with terror, 
 but in the pride of sadness and sorrow, he never concealed it. 
 The two faces shall be seen in his pages, for he boldly spoke, 
 feeling it was better to love them despairing " than have all the 
 world beside." 
 
 Hazlitt piqued himself on his metaphysics. We shall not, how- 
 ever, judge him as to that of which he was proudest We leave 
 them out of our considerations accept them only as they may
 
 INTRODUCTION. xix 
 
 steal in to lighten a reflection, or colour a figure ; but in these 
 pages will be found the artist, critic, lover of his special sport, 
 theatre-goer, lover of nature. No one more than myself can 
 be at variance with certain objects of Hazlitt's enthusiasm ; but 
 enthusiasm is so rare : it is such a fire of virtue to inflame the 
 good in man, as well as the evil that we should pardon him 
 especially as under its inspiration he has, even in his excesses, 
 so little power with wrong, and such potency with what is best. 
 Here is no " gentle Lamb," no amiable Leigh Hunt, no lethargic 
 Coleridge, no calm, domestic Southey, but a spirit of energy and 
 fearlessness. His self-contradiction has been insisted upon. 
 Evidence of what such complainers allege is here sufficiently 
 plain, in that he admires and hates the same men Burke, 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott On the other hand, it is con- 
 tended that he was consistent in his political views ; and he him- 
 self thinks it virtuous not to allow his political dislikes to blind 
 him to a man's intellectual merit, nor his admiration for a man's 
 genius to excuse his political action. Self-contradiction is in 
 man's nature. If it is exceptionally well illustrated in Hazlitt, then 
 those who laugh at such things can here laugh the more, and 
 those may now laugh that never laughed before after which, 
 thank the gods that theirs has not been the gift of Hazlitt's 
 outspokenness, nor his genius. But as to the Essays. 
 
 They are not given in sequence of date, but for variety, 
 and with a view to unity ; to show the intellectual powers 
 of the man Hazlitt. Altogether, as Essayist, Hazlitt will be 
 found by the reader to be after the heart of the sociable old 
 saint of literature Montaigne : he will, also, find him a living 
 friend among his book-spirits : of whom, indeed, he can make 
 these words his own, written by Lamb during the one quarrel 
 between them : " I should belie my own conscience, if I said 
 less than that I think William Hazlitt to be, in his natural and 
 healthy state, one of the finest and wisest spirits breathing." 
 
 FRANK CARR. 
 THE WILLOWS, WALKER-ON-TYNE.
 
 ESSAYS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT, 
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS. 
 
 " The proper study of mankind is man." 
 
 I NOW come to speak of that sort of writing which has been 
 so successfully cultivated in this country by our Periodical 
 Essayists, and which consists in applying the talents and 
 resources of the mind to all that mixed mass of human affairs, 
 which, though not included under the head of any regular art, 
 science, or profession, falls under the cognisance of the writer, 
 and "comes home to the business and bosoms of men." 
 
 "Quicquid agunt homines nostri farrago libelli,"* 
 
 is the general motto of this department of literature. It does 
 not treat of minerals or fossils, of the virtues of plants, or the 
 influence of planets ; it does not meddle with forms of belief or 
 systems of philosophy, nor launch into the world of spiritual 
 existences ; but it makes familiar with the world of men and 
 women, records their actions, assigns their motives, exhibits 
 their whims, characterises their pursuits in all their singular 
 and endless variety, ridicules their absurdities, exposes their 
 inconsistencies, " holds the mirror up to nature, and shows the 
 very age and body of the time, its form and pressure ; " takes 
 
 * "Whatever things men are doing shall germ the motley subject of 
 my page." 
 
 573
 
 2 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSA YISTS, 
 
 minutes of our dress, air, looks, words, thoughts, and actions ; 
 shows us what we are, and what we are not ; plays the whole 
 game of human life over before us, and by making us 
 enlightened spectators of its many-coloured scenes, enables us 
 (if possible) to become tolerably reasonable agents in the one 
 in which we have to perform a part. " The act and practic 
 part of life is thus made the mistress of our theorique." It is 
 the best and most natural course of study. It is in morals and 
 manners what the experimental is in natural philosophy, as 
 opposed to the dogmatical method. It does not deal in 
 sweeping clauses of proscription and anathema, but in nice 
 distinction and liberal constructions. It makes up its general 
 accounts from details, its few theories from many facts. It 
 does not try to prove all black or all white as it wishes, but 
 lays on the intermediate colours (and most of them not 
 unpleasing ones), as it finds them blended with " the web 
 of our life, which is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together." 
 It inquires what human life is and has been, to show what 
 it ought to be. It follows it into courts and camps, into town 
 and country, into rustic sports or learned disputations, into the 
 various shades of prejudice or ignorance, of refinement or 
 barbarism, into its private haunts or public pageants, into its 
 weaknesses and littlenesses, its professions and its practices : 
 before it pretends to distinguish right from wrong, or one thing 
 from another. How, indeed, should it do so otherwise ? 
 
 " Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, 
 Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit" 
 
 " It tells what is honourable, what is base, what is expedient, 
 what not, more amply and better than Chrysippus and Grantor." 
 
 The writers I speak of are, if not moral philosophers, moral 
 historians, and that's better : or if they are both, they found the 
 one character upon the other; their premises precede theil 
 conclusions ; and we put faith in their testimony, for we know 
 that it is true. 
 
 Montaigne was the first person who, in his Essays, led the
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSA YfSTS. 3 
 
 way to this kind of writing among the moderns. The great 
 merit of Montaigne, then, was that he may be said to have 
 been the first who had the courage to say as an author 
 what he felt as a man. And as courage is generally the 
 effect of conscious strength, he was probably led to do so 
 by the richness, truth, and force of his own observations 
 on books and men. He was, in the truest sense, a man 
 of original mind ; that is, he had the power of looking at 
 things for himself, or as they really were, instead of blindly 
 trusting to, and fondly repeating what others told him that they 
 were. He got rid of the go-cart of prejudice and affectation, 
 with the learned lumber that follows at their heels, because he 
 could do without them. In taking up his pen he did not set 
 up for a philosopher, wit, orator, or moralist, but he became all 
 these by merely daring to tell us whatever passed through his 
 mind, in its naked simplicity and force, that he thought any- 
 ways worth communicating. He did not, in the abstract 
 character of an author, undertake to say all that could be 
 said upon a subject, but what in his capacity as an inquirer 
 after truth he happened to know about it. He was neither a 
 pedant nor a bigot. He neither supposed that he was bound 
 to know all things, nor that all things were bound to conform to 
 what he had fancied or would have them to be. In treating of 
 men and manners, he spoke of them as he found them, not 
 according to preconceived notions and abstract dogmas ; and 
 he began by teaching us what he himself was. In criticising 
 books he did not compare them with rules and systems, but 
 told us what he saw to like or dislike in them. He did not 
 take his standard of excellence "according to an exact scale" 
 of Aristotle, or fall out with a work that was good for anything, 
 because " not one of the angles at the four corners was a right 
 one." He was, in a word, the first author who was not a book- 
 maker, and who wrote not to make converts of others to 
 established creeds and prejudices, but to satisfy his own mind 
 of the truth of things. In this respect we know not which to 
 be most charmed with, the author or the man. There is an 
 inexpressible frankness and sincerity, as well as power, in what
 
 4 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSA YISTS. 
 
 he writes. There is no attempt at imposition or concealment, 
 no juggling tricks or solemn mouthing, no laboured attempts at 
 proving himself always in the right, and everybody else in the 
 wrong ; he says what is uppermost, lays open what floats at the 
 top or the bottom of his mind, and deserves Pope's character of 
 him, where he professes to 
 
 pour out all as plain 
 
 As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne."* 
 
 He does not converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, 
 whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but 
 like a philosopher and friend who has passed through life with 
 thought and observation, and is willing to enable others to 
 pass through it with pleasure and profit. A writer of this 
 stamp, I confess, appears to me as much superior to a common 
 bookworm, as a library of real books is superior to a mere 
 bookcase, painted and lettered on the outside with the names 
 of celebrated works. As he was the first to attempt this new 
 way of writing, so the same strong natural impulse which 
 prompted the undertaking carried him to the end of his career. 
 The same force and honesty of mind which urged him to throw 
 off the shackles of custom and prejudice would enable him to 
 complete his triumph over them. He has left little for his 
 successors to achieve in the way of just and original speculation 
 on human life. Nearly all the thinking of the two last centuries 
 of that kind which the French denominate morale observatrice, 
 is to be found in Montaigne's Essays: there is the germ, at 
 least, and generally much more. He sowed the seed and 
 cleared away the rubbish, even where others have reaped the 
 fruit, or cultivated and decorated the soil to a greater degree of 
 nicety and perfection. There is no one to whom the old Latin 
 adage is more applicable than to Montaigne, " Pereanl isti qui 
 ante nos nostra dixerunt" (Confound the fellows who have said 
 our good things before us). There has been no new impulse 
 
 * Why Pope should say in reference to him, "Or more wise 
 Charron, " is not easy to determine.
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSA YISTS. 5 
 
 given to thought since Kis time. Among the specimens of 
 criticisms on authors which he has left us, are those on Virgil, 
 Ovid, and Boccaccio, in the account of books which he thinks 
 worth reading, or (which is the same thing) which he finds he 
 can read in his old age, and which may be reckoned among the 
 few criticisms which are worth reading at any age. 
 
 Montaigne's Essays were translated into English by Charles 
 Cotton, who was one of the wits and poets of the age of 
 Charles II. ; and Lord Halifax, one of the noble critics of that 
 day, declared it to be " the book in the world he was the best 
 pleased with." This mode of familiar essay-writing, free from 
 the trammels of the schools, and the airs of professed author- 
 ship, was successfully imitated, about the same time, by 
 Cowley and Sir William Temple, in their miscellaneous 
 Essays, which are very agreeable and learned talking upon 
 paper. Lord Shaftesbury, on the contrary, who aimed at the 
 same easy, degagt mode of communicating his thoughts to the 
 world, has quite spoiled his matter, which is sometimes valu- 
 able, by his manner, in which he carries a certain flaunting, 
 flowery, figurative, flirting style of amicable condescension to 
 the reader, to an excess more tantalising than the most 
 starched and ridiculous formality of the age of James I. There 
 is nothing so tormenting as the affectation of ease and freedom 
 from affectation. 
 
 The ice being thus thawed, and the barrier that kept authors 
 at a distance from common-sense and feeling broken through, 
 the transition was not difficult from Montaigne and his 
 imitators to our Periodical Essayists. These last applied the 
 same unrestrained expression of their thoughts to the more 
 immediate and passing scenes of life, to temporary and local 
 matters ; and in order to discharge the invidious office of 
 Censor Morunt more freely, and with less responsibility, 
 assumed some fictitious and humorous disguise, which, how- 
 ever, in a great degree corresponded to their own peculiar 
 habits and character. By thus concealing their own name and 
 person under the title of the Tatler, Spectator^ etc., they were 
 enabled to inform us more fully of what was passing in the
 
 6 ON THE PERIODICAL ESS A YISTS. 
 
 world, while the dramatic contrast and ironical point of view 
 to which the whole is subjected, added a greater liveliness and 
 piquancy to the descriptions. The philosopher and wit here 
 commences newsmonger, makes himself master of " the perfect 
 spy o' th' time," and from his various walks and turns through 
 life, brings home little curious specimens of the humours, 
 opinions, and manners of his contemporaries, as the botanist 
 brings home different plants and weeds, or the mineralogist 
 different shells and fossils, to illustrate their several theories, 
 and be useful to mankind. 
 
 The first of these papers that was attempted in this country 
 was set up by Steele in the beginning of the last century ; and 
 of all our Periodical Essayists, the Tatler (for that was the 
 name he assumed) has always appeared to me the most 
 amusing and agreeable. Montaigne, whom I have proposed to 
 consider as the father of this kind of personal authorship among 
 the moderns, in which the reader is admitted behind the 
 curtain, and sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers, 
 was a most magnanimous and undisguised egotist ; but Isaac 
 Bickerstaff, Esq., was the more disinterested gossip of the two. 
 The French author is contented to describe the peculiarities of 
 his own mind and constitution, which he does with a copious 
 and unsparing hand. The English journalist good-naturedly 
 lets you into the secret both of his own affairs and those of 
 others. A young lady, on the other side Temple Bar, cannot 
 be seen at her glass for half a day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff 
 takes due notice of it ; and he has the first intelligence of the 
 symptoms of the belle passion appearing in any young gentle- 
 man at the West-end of the town. The departures and arrivals 
 of widows with handsome jointures, either to bury their grief in 
 the country, or to procure a second husband in town, are 
 punctually recorded in his pages. He is well acquainted with 
 the celebrated beauties of the preceding age at the court of 
 Charles II. ; and the old gentleman (as he feigns himself) often 
 grows romantic in recounting "the disastrous strokes which 
 his youth suffered" from the glances of their bright eyes, and 
 their unaccountable caprices. In particular, he dwells with a
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSA YISTS. 7 
 
 secret satisfaction on the recollection of one of his mistresses, 
 who left him for a richer rival, and whose constant reproach to 
 her husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was, 
 " I, that might have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be 
 treated in this manner I " The club at the Trumpet consists of 
 a set of persons almost as well worth knowing as himself. The 
 cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, 
 the country squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who 
 came to wait on him at his chambers, in such form and 
 ceremony, seem not to have settled the order of their precedence 
 to this hour ; and I should hope that the upholsterer and his 
 companions, who used to sun themselves in the Green Park, 
 and who broke their rest and fortunes to maintain the balance 
 of power in Europe, stand as fair a chance for immortality as 
 some modern politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself is a gentle- 
 man and a scholar, a humorist, and a man of the world ; with 
 a great deal of nice easy naivett about him. If he walks out 
 and is caught in a shower of rain, he makes amends for this 
 unlucky accident by a criticism on the shower in Virgil, and 
 concludes with a burlesque copy of verses on a city shower. 
 He entertains us, when he dates from his own apartments, with 
 a quotation from Plutarch, or a moral reflection : from the 
 Grecian coffee-house, with politics ; and from Will's or the 
 Temple, with the poets and players, the beaux and men of wit 
 and pleasure about town. In reading the pages of the Tatler, 
 we seem as if suddenly carried back to the age of Queen Anne, 
 of toupees and full-bottomed periwigs. The whole appearance 
 of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful metamorphosis. 
 The beaux and the belles are of a quite different species from 
 what they are at present ; we distinguish the dappers, the 
 smarts, and the pretty fellows, as they pass by Mr. Lilly's shop- 
 windows in the Strand ; we are introduced to Betterton and 
 Mrs. Oldfield behind the scenes ; are made familiar with the 
 persons and performances of Will Estcourt or Tom Durfey ; 
 we listen to a dispute at a tavern on the merits of the Duke of 
 Marlborough or Marshal Turenne ; or are present at the first 
 rehearsal of a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem
 
 8 ON THE PERIODICAL ESS A YISTS. 
 
 by Mr. Pope. The privilege of thus virtually transporting 
 ourselves to past times is even greater than that of visiting 
 distant places in reality. London, a hundred years ago, would 
 be much better worth seeing than Paris at the present moment 
 It will be said, that all this is to be found, in the same or a 
 greater degree, in the Spectator. For myself, I do not think 
 so ; or at least, there is in the last work a much greater 
 proportion of commonplace matter. I have, on this account, 
 always preferred the Tatler to the Spectator. Whether it is 
 rawing to my having been earlier or better acquainted with the 
 one than the other, my pleasure in reading these two admirable 
 works is not in proportion to their comparative reputation. 
 The Tatler contains only half the number of volumes, and, I 
 will venture to say, nearly an equal quantity of sterling wit and 
 sense. " The first sprightly runnings " are there : it has more 
 of the original spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of nature. 
 The indications of character and strokes of humour are more 
 true and frequent ; the reflections that suggest themselves arise 
 more from the occasion, and are less spun out into regular 
 dissertations. They are more like the remarks which occur in 
 sensible conversation, and less like a lecture. Something is 
 left to the understanding of the reader. Steele seems to have 
 gone into his closet chiefly to set down what he observed out 
 of doors. Addison seems to have spent most of his time in his 
 study, and to have spun out and wire-drawn the hints, which he 
 borrowed from Steele, or took from nature, to the utmost. I 
 am far from wishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but I am 
 anxious to do justice to Steele, who was, I think, upon the 
 whole, a less artificial and more original writer. The humorous 
 descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches, or fragments of 
 a comedy; those of Addison are rather comments or ingenious 
 paraphrases on the genuine text. The characters of the club, 
 not only in the Tatler^ but in the Spectator, were drawn by 
 Steele. That of Sir Roger de Coverley is among the number. 
 Addison has, however, gained himself immortal honour by his 
 manner of filling up this last character. Who is there that can 
 forget, or be insensible to, the inimitable nameless graces and
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSA YISTS. 9 
 
 varied traits of nature and of old English character in it : to his 
 unpretending virtues and amiable weaknesses : to his modesty, 
 generosity, hospitality, and eccentric whims : to the respect of 
 his neighbours, and the affection of his domestics : to his 
 wayward, hopeless, secret passion for his fair enemy, the widow, 
 in which there is more of real romance and true delicacy than in 
 a thousand tales of knight-errantry (we perceive the hectic flush 
 of his cheek, the faltering of his tongue in speaking of her 
 bewitching airs and "the whiteness of her hand"): to the 
 havoc he makes among the game in his neighbourhood : to his 
 speech from the bench, to show the Spectator what is thought of 
 him in the country : to his unwillingness to be put up as a 
 sign-post, and his having his own likeness turned into the 
 Saracen's head : to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a gipsy 
 that tells him "he has a widow in his line of life :" to his doubts 
 as to the existence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed 
 witches : to his account of the family pictures, and his choice of 
 a chaplain : to his falling asleep at church, and his reproof of 
 John Williams, as soon as he recovered from his nap, for 
 talking in sermon-time. The characters of Will Wimble and 
 Will Honeycomb are not a whit behind their friend, Sir Roger, 
 in delicacy and felicity. The delightful simplicity and good- 
 humoured officiousness in the one are set off by the graceful 
 affectation and courtly pretension in the other. How long 
 since I first became acquainted with these two characters 
 in the Spectator! What old-fashioned friends they seem, 
 and yet I am not tired of them like so many other friends, 
 nor they of me ! How airy these abstractions of the poet's 
 pen stream over the dawn of our acquaintance with human 
 life 1 how they glance their fairest colours on the prospect 
 before us 1 how pure they remain in it to the last, like the 
 rainbow in the evening-cloud, which the rude hand of time and 
 experience can neither soil nor dissipate 1 What a pity that we 
 cannot find the reality, and yet if we did, the dream would be 
 over. I once thought I knew a Will Wimble, and a Will 
 Honeycomb, but they turned out but indifferently ; the originals 
 in the Spectator still read, word for word, the same that they
 
 10 ON THE PERIODICAL ESS A YISTS. 
 
 always did. We have only to turn to the page, and find them 
 where we left them 1 Many of the most exquisite pieces in the 
 Tatler, it is to be observed, are Addison's, as the " Court of 
 Honour" and the "Personification of Musical Instruments," 
 with almost all those papers that form regular sets or series. I 
 do not know whether the picture of the family of an old college 
 acquaintance, in the Taller, where the children run to let Mr. 
 Bickerstaff in at the door, and where the one that loses the race 
 that way, turns back to tell the father that he is come : with the 
 nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy who is got into 
 Guy of Warwick and the Seven Champions, and who shakes 
 his head at the improbability of ^Esop's Fables, is Steele's or 
 Addison's, though I believe it belongs to the former. The 
 account of the two sisters, one of whom held up her head 
 higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, 
 and that of the married lady who complained to the Tatler of 
 the neglect of her husband, with her answers to some home 
 questions that were put to her, are unquestionably Steele's. If 
 the Tatler is not inferior to the Spectator as a record of 
 manners and character, it is superior to it in the interest of 
 many of the stories. Several of the incidents related there by 
 Steele have never been surpassed in the heart-rending pathos of 
 private distress. I might refer to those of the lover and his 
 mistress, when the theatre, in which they were, caught fire ; of 
 the bridegroom, who by accident kills his bride on the day of 
 their marriage ; the story of Mr. Eustace and his wife ; and the 
 fine dream about his own mistress when a youth. What has 
 given its superior reputation to the Spectator, is the greater 
 gravity of its pretensions, its moral dissertations and critical 
 reasonings, by which I confess myself less edified than by other 
 things, which are thought more lightly of. Systems and 
 opinions change, but nature is always true. It is the moral and 
 didactic tone of the Spectator which makes us apt to think of 
 Addison (according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as " a parson in a 
 tie-wig." Many of his moral Essays are, however, exquisitely 
 beautiful and quite happy. Such are the reflections on cheerful- 
 ness, those in Westminster Abbey, on the Royal Exchange, and
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS. n 
 
 particularly some very affecting ones on the death of a young 
 lady in the fourth volume. These, it must be allowed, are the 
 perfection of elegant sermonising. His critical Essays are not 
 so good. I prefer Steele's occasional selection of beautiful 
 poetical passages, without any affectation of analysing their 
 beauties, to Addison's finer-spun theories. The best criticism in 
 the Spectator, that on the " Cartoons of Raphael," of which Mr. 
 Fuseli has availed himself with great spirit in his Lectures, is 
 by Steele.* I owed this acknowledgment to a writer who has so 
 often put me in good humour with myself, and everything about 
 me, when few things else could, and when the tomes of casuistry 
 and ecclesiastical history, with which the little duodecimo 
 volumes of the Tatler were overwhelmed and surrounded, in 
 the only library to which I had access when a boy, had tried 
 their tranquillising effects upon me in vain. I had not long ago 
 in my hands, by favour of a friend, an original copy of the 
 quarto edition of the Tatler, with a list of the subscribers. It is 
 curious to see some names there which we should hardly think 
 of (that of Sir Isaac Newton is among them), and also to 
 observe the degree of interest excited by those of the different 
 persons, which is not determined according to the rules of the 
 Heralds' College. One literary name lasts as long as a whole 
 race of heroes and their descendants ! The Guardian, which 
 followed the Spectator, was, as may be supposed, inferior to it. 
 
 The dramatic and conversational turn which forms the 
 distinguishing feature and greatest charm of the Spectator and 
 Tatler, is quite lost in the Rambler by Dr. Johnson. There is 
 no reflected light thrown on human life from an assumed 
 character, nor any direct one from a display of the author's own. 
 The Tatler and Spectator are, as it were, made up of notes and 
 memorandums of the events and incidents of the day, with 
 finished studies after nature, and characters fresh from the life, 
 
 * The antithetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so 
 fond of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substan- 
 tive, such as "proud submission and dignified obedience," are, I think, 
 first to be found in the Tatler.
 
 12 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS. 
 
 which the writer moralises upon, and turns to account as they 
 come before him : the Rambler is a collection of moral Essays, 
 or scholastic theses, written on set subjects, and of which the 
 individual characters and incidents are merely artificial illus- 
 trations, brought in to give a pretended relief to the dryness of 
 didactic discussion. The Rambler is a splendid and imposing 
 commonplace book of general topics, and rhetorical declama- 
 tion on the conduct and business of human life. In this sense, 
 there is hardly a reflection that had been suggested on such 
 subjects which is not to be found in this celebrated work, and 
 there is, perhaps, hardly a reflection to be found in it which had 
 not been already suggested and developed by some other 
 author, or in the common course of conversation. The mass of 
 intellectual wealth here heaped together is immense ; but it is 
 rather the result of gradual accumulation, the produce of the 
 general intellect labouring in the mine of knowledge and 
 reflection, than dug out of the quarry, and dragged into the 
 light by the industry and sagacity of a single mind. I am not 
 here saying that Dr. Johnson was a man without originality, 
 compared with the ordinary run of men's minds ; but he was 
 not a man of original thought or genius, in the sense in which 
 Montaigne or Lord Bacon was. He opened no new vein of 
 precious ore, nor did he light upon any single pebbles of 
 uncommon size and unrivalled lustre. We seldom meet with 
 anything to " give us pause ; " he does not set us thinking for 
 the first time. His reflections present themselves like reminis- 
 cences ; do not disturb the ordinary march of our thoughts ; 
 arrest our attention by the stateliness of their appearance and 
 the costliness of their garb, but pass on and mingle with the 
 throng of our impressions. After closing the volumes of the 
 Rambler^ there is nothing that we remember as a new truth 
 gained to the mind, nothing indelibly stamped upon the 
 memory ; nor is there any passage that we wish to turn to as 
 embodying any known principle or observation with such force 
 and beauty that justice can only be done to the idea in the 
 author's own words. Such, for instance, are many of the 
 passages to be found in Burke, which shine by their own light,
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS. 13 
 
 belong to no class, have neither equal nor counterpart, and of 
 which we say that no one but the author could have written them ! 
 There is neither the same boldness of design, nor mastery of 
 execution in Johnson. In the one, the spark of genius seems to 
 have met with its congenial matter : the shaft is sped ; the forked 
 lightning dresses up the face of nature in ghastly smiles, and the 
 loud thunder rolls far away from the ruin that is made. Dr. 
 Johnson's style, on the contrary, resembles rather the rumbling 
 of mimic thunder at one of our theatres ; and the light he 
 throws upon a subject is like the dazzling effect of phosphorus, 
 or an ignis fatuus of words. There is a wide difference, 
 however, between perfect originality and perfect common- 
 place : neither ideas nor expressions are trite or vulgar because 
 they are not quite new. They are valuable, and ought to be 
 repeated, if they have not become quite common ; and John- 
 son's style both of reasoning and imagery holds the middle 
 rank between startling novelty and vapid commonplace. 
 Johnson has as much originality of thinking as Addison ; but 
 then he wants his familiarity of illustration, knowledge of 
 character, and delightful humour. What most distinguishes 
 Dr. Johnson from other writers is the pomp and uniformity of 
 his style. All his periods are cast in the same mould, are of 
 the same size and shape, and consequently have little fitness 
 to the variety of things he professes to treat of. His subjects 
 are familiar, but the author is always upon stilts. He has 
 neither ease nor simplicity, and his efforts at playfulness, in 
 part, remind one of the lines in Milton : 
 
 " The elephant 
 
 To make them sport wreath'd his proboscis lithe." 
 
 The fault of Dr. Johnson's style is, that it reduces all things to 
 the same artificial and unmeaning level. It destroys all shades 
 of difference, the association between words and things. It is a 
 perpetual paradox and innovation. He condescends to the
 
 14 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSA YISTS. 
 
 familiar till we are ashamed of our interest in it : he expands 
 the little till it looks big. " If he were to write a fable of little 
 fishes," as Goldsmith said of him, " he would make them speak 
 like great whales." We can no more distinguish the most 
 familiar objects in his description of them, than we can a well- 
 known face under a huge painted mask. The structure of his 
 sentences, which was his own invention, and which has been 
 generally imitated since his time, is a species of rhyming in 
 prose, where one clause answers to another in measure and 
 quantity, like the tagging of syllables at the end of a verse ; 
 the close of the period follows as mechanically as the oscillation 
 of a pendulum, the sense is balanced with the sound ; each 
 sentence, revolving round its centre of gravity, is contained 
 with itself like a couplet, and each paragraph forms itself into a 
 stanza. Dr. Johnson is also a complete balance-master in 
 the topics of morality. He never encourages hope, but he 
 counteracts it by fear ; he never elicits a truth, but he suggests 
 some objection in answer to it. He seizes and alternately quits 
 the clue of reason, lest it should involve him in the labyrinths of 
 endless error : he wants confidence in himself and his fellows. 
 
 The most triumphant record of the talents and character of 
 Johnson is to be found in Boswell's Life of him. The man was 
 superior to the author. When he threw aside his pen, which 
 he regarded as an incumbrance, he became not only learned 
 and thoughtful, but acute, witty, humorous, natural, honest ; 
 hearty and determined, "the king of good fellows and wale 
 of old men." There are as many smart repartees, profound 
 remarks, and keen invectives to be found in Boswell's " inventory 
 of all he said," as are recorded of any celebrated man. The life 
 and dramatic play of his conversation forms a contrast to his 
 written works. His natural powers and undisguised opinions 
 were called out in convivial intercourse. In public, he practised 
 with the foils on : in private, he unsheathed the sword of 
 controversy, and it was " the Ebro's temper." The eagerness 
 of opposition roused him from his natural sluggishness and
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESS A YISTS. 15 
 
 acquired timidity ; he returned blow for blow ; and whether the 
 trial were of argument or wit, none of his rivals could boast 
 much of the encounter. Burke seems to have been the only 
 person who had a chance with him ; and it is the unpardonable 
 sin of BoswelPs work, that he has purposely omitted their 
 combats of strength and skill. Goldsmith asked, " Does he 
 wind into a subject like a serpent, as Burke does ? " And when 
 exhausted with sickness, he himself said, " If that fellow Burke 
 were here now, he would kill me." It is to be observed, that 
 Johnson's colloquial style was as blunt, direct, and downright, 
 as his style of studied composition was involved and circuitous. 
 As when Topham Beauclerc and Langton knocked him up at 
 his chambers, at three in the morning, and he came to the door 
 with the poker in his hand, but seeing them, exclaimed, "What, 
 is it you, my lads ? then I'll have a frisk with you !" And he 
 afterwards reproaches Langton, who was a literary milksop, for 
 leaving them to go to an engagement " with some un-idead 
 girls." What words to come from the mouth of the great 
 moralist and lexicographer 1 His good deeds were as many as 
 his good sayings. His domestic habits, his tenderness to 
 servants, and readiness to oblige his friends ; the quantity of 
 strong tea that he drank to keep down sad thoughts ; his many 
 labours reluctantly begun and irresolutely laid aside ; his honest 
 acknowledgment of his own, and indulgence to the weaknesses 
 of others ; his throwing himself back in the post-chaise with 
 Boswell, and saying, " Now I think I am a good-humoured 
 fellow," though nobody thought him so, and yet he was ; his 
 quitting the society of Garrick and his actresses, and his 
 reason for it ; his dining with Wilkes, and his kindness to 
 Goldsmith ; his sitting with the young ladies on his knee at the 
 Mitre, to give them good advice, in which situation, if not 
 explained, he might be taken for Falstaff ; and last and noblest, 
 his carrying the unfortunate victim of disease and dissipation on 
 his back up through Fleet Street (an act which realises the 
 parable of the good Samaritan) all these, and innumerable 
 others, endear him to the reader, and must be remembered to 
 his lasting honour. He had faults, but they lie buried with him.
 
 t6 ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS. 
 
 He had his prejudices and his intolerant feelings ; but he 
 suffered enough in the conflict of his own mind with them. For 
 if no man can be happy in the free exercise of his reason, no 
 wise man can be happy without it. His were not time-serving, 
 heartless, hypocritical prejudices ; but deep, inwoven, not to be 
 rooted out but with life and hope, which he found from old habit 
 necessary to his own peace of mind, and thought so to the 
 peace of mankind. I do not hate, but love him for them. 
 They were between himself and his conscience ; and should be 
 left to that higher tribunal, " where they in trembling hope 
 repose, the bosom of his Father and his God." In a word, he 
 has left behind him few wiser or better men. 
 
 The herd of his imitators showed what he was by their dis- 
 proportionate effects. The Periodical Essayists that succeeded 
 the Rambler are, and deserve to be, little read at present. The 
 Adventurer, by Hawksworth, is completely trite and vapid, 
 aping all the faults of Johnson's style, without anything to atone 
 for them. The sentences are often absolutely unmeaning ; and 
 one half of each might regularly be left blank. The World, 
 and Connoisseur, which followed, are a little better ; and in the 
 last of these there is one good idea, that of a man in indifferent 
 health, who judges of every one's title to respect from their 
 possession of this blessing, and bows to a sturdy beggar with 
 sound limbs and a florid complexion, while he turns his back 
 upon a lord who is a valetudinarian. 
 
 Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, like all his works, bears the 
 stamp of the author's mind. It does not " go about to cozen 
 reputation without the stamp of merit." He is more observing, 
 more original, more natural and picturesque than Johnson. His 
 work is written on the model of the Persian Letters ; and 
 contrives to give an abstracted and somewhat perplexing view 
 of things, by opposing foreign prepossessions to our own, and 
 thus stripping objects of their customary disguises. Whether 
 truth is elicted in this collision of contrary absurdities, I do not 
 know ; but I confess the process is too ambiguous and full of 
 intricacy to be very amusing to my plain understanding. For 
 light summer reading, It is like walking in a garden full of traps
 
 ON THE PERIODICAL ESS A YISTS. 17 
 
 and pitfalls. It necessarily gives rise to paradoxes, and there 
 are some very bold ones in the Essays, which would subject an 
 author less established to no very agreeable sort of censura 
 literaria. Thus the Chinese philosopher exclaims very 
 unadvisedly, " The bonzes and priests of all religions keep up 
 superstition and imposture : all reformations begin with the 
 laity." Goldsmith, however, was staunch in his practical creed, 
 and might bolt speculative extravagances with impunity. There 
 is a striking difference in this respect between him and Addison, 
 who, if he attacked authority, took care to have common sense 
 on his side, and never hazarded anything offensive to the 
 feelings of others, or on the strength of his own discretional 
 opinion. There is another inconvenience in this assumption of 
 an exotic character and tone of sentiment, that it produces an 
 inconsistency between the knowledge which the individual has 
 time to acquire, and which the author is bound to communicate. 
 Thus the Chinese has not been in England three days before he 
 is acquainted with the characters of the three countries which 
 compose this kingdom, and describes them to his friend at 
 Canton, by extracts from the newspapers of each metropolis. 
 The nationality of Scotchmen is thus ridiculed : "Edinburgh. 
 We are positive when we say that Sanders Macgregor, lately 
 executed for horse-stealing, is not a native of Scotland, but born 
 at Carrickfergus." Now this is very good ; but how should our 
 Chinese philosopher find it out by instinct? Beau Tibbs, a 
 prominent character in this little work, is the best comic sketch 
 since the time of Addison ; unrivalled in his finery, his vanity, 
 and his poverty. 
 
 574
 
 1 8 FJRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS, 
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 MY father was a Dissenting minister at Wem, in Shropshire, 
 and in the year 1798 (the figures that compose the date are to 
 me like the " dreaded name of Demogorgon ") Mr. Coleridge 
 came to Shrewsbury to succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual 
 charge of a Unitarian congregation there. He did not come 
 till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to preach, and 
 Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach in a state of 
 anxiety and expectation to look for the arrival of his successor, 
 could find no one at all answering the description but a round- 
 faced man in a short black coat (like a shooting-jacket) which 
 hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who seemed to 
 be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers. Mr. Rowe 
 had scarce returned to give an account of his disappointment 
 when the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all 
 doubts on the subject by beginning to talk. He did not cease 
 while he stayed, nor has he since, that I know of. He held the 
 good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks 
 that he remained there, " fluttering the proud Salopians like an 
 eagle in a dove-cote ;" and the Welsh mountains that skirt the 
 horizon with their tempestuous confusion agree to have heard 
 no such mystic sounds since the days of 
 
 " High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay." 
 
 As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed 
 their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red 
 rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound 
 was in my ears as of a Syren's song ; I was stunned, startled
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 19 
 
 with it, as from deep sleep ; but I had no notion then that I 
 should ever be able to express my admiration to others in 
 motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius 
 shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles 
 of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, 
 like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless ; but 
 now, bursting the deadly bands that " bound them, 
 
 "With Styx nine times round them," 
 
 my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their 
 plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul has 
 indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with 
 longings infinite and unsatisfied ; my heart, shut up in the 
 prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever 
 find, a heart to speak to ; but that my understanding also did 
 not remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to 
 express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this is not to my 
 purpose. 
 
 My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the 
 habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr, 
 Jenkins, of Whitchurch (nine miles further on), according to 
 the custom of Dissenting ministers in each other's neighbour- 
 hood. A line of communication is thus established, by which 
 the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept alive, and 
 nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires in the 
 Agamemnon of ^schylus, placed at different stations, that 
 waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing 
 pyramids the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to 
 come over and see my father, according to the courtesy of the 
 country, as Mr. Rowe's probable successor ; but, in the mean- 
 time, I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his 
 arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian 
 pulpit to preach the Gospel was a romance in these degenerate 
 days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of Christianity 
 which was not to be resisted. 
 
 It was in January of 1798 that I rose one morning before 
 daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud to hear this celebrated
 
 20 FIRST A CQ UAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I 
 have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in 
 the winter of the year 1798. II y a des impressions gut ni le 
 ferns ni les circonstances peuvent effacer. Dusse-je -vivre des 
 siecles entiers, le doux terns de majeunesse ne peut renaitre pour 
 moi, ni s 1 effacer jamais dans ma mtmoire. When I got there 
 the organ was playing the looth Psalm, and when it was done 
 Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, " And he went up into 
 the mountain to pray, HIMSELF, ALONE." As he gave out this 
 text his voice " rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes," 
 and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced 
 loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, 
 as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human 
 heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn 
 silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came into 
 my mind, " of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins 
 girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey." The 
 preacher then launched into his subject like an eagle dallying 
 with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war ; upon 
 church and state not their alliance but their separation on 
 the spirit of the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the 
 same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who 
 had " inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with 
 human gore." He made a poetical and pastoral excursion and 
 to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between 
 the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team afield, or sitting 
 under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, "as though he should 
 never be old," and the same poor country lad, crimped, 
 kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, 
 turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on 
 end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, 
 and tricked out in the loathsome finery of the profession of 
 blood : 
 
 " Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung.' 
 
 And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had 
 heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 21 
 
 met together. Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye 
 and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my 
 hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still 
 labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick 
 mists, seemed an emblem of the good cause; and the cold, dank 
 drops of dew that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle 
 had something genial and refreshing in them ; for there was a 
 spirit of hope and youth in all nature that turned everything 
 into good. The face of nature had not then the brand of Jus 
 DIVINUM on it : 
 
 ''Like to that sanguine flower, inscrib'd with woe." 
 
 On the Tuesday following the half-inspired speaker came. I 
 was called down into the room where he was, and went half- 
 hoping, half-afraid. He received me very graciously, and I 
 listened for a long time without uttering a word. I did not 
 suffer in his opinion by my silence. " For those two hours," he 
 afterwards was pleased to say, "he was conversing with 
 William Hazlitt's forehead 1 " His appearance was different 
 from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a 
 distance, and in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a 
 strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought 
 him pitted with the small-pox. His complexion was at that 
 time clear, and even bright 
 
 " As are the children of yon azure sheen." 
 
 His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with 
 large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them, 
 like a sea with darkened lustre. " A certain tender bloom his 
 face o'erspread," a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thought- 
 ful complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and 
 Valasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent ; 
 his chin good-humoured and round ; but his nose, the rudder 
 of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing 
 like what he has done, It might seem that the genius of his 
 face as from a height surveyed and projected him (with 
 sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into the world unknown
 
 22 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 of thought and imagination, with nothing to support or guide 
 his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his ad- 
 venturous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars 
 or compass. So, at least, I comment on it after the event. 
 Coleridge, in his person, was rather above the common size, 
 inclining to the corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, " somewhat fat 
 and pursy." His hair (now, alas 1 grey) was then black and 
 glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth masses over his fore- 
 head. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to enthusiasts, to 
 those whose minds tend heavenward, and is traditionally insepar- 
 able (though of a different colour) from the pictures of Christ. 
 It ought to belong, as a character, to all who preach Christ 
 crucified, and Coleridge was at that time one of those 1 
 
 It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my 
 father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into 
 the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully 
 brought up by his parents, and sent to the University of 
 Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith) to prepare him 
 for his future destination. It was his mother's proudest wish to 
 see her son a Dissenting Minister. So, if we look back to past 
 generations (as far as eye can reach), we see the same hopes, 
 fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing 
 in the human heart ; and so we may see them (if we look 
 forward) rising up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish 
 bubbles, in the human breast 1 After being tossed about from 
 congregation to congregation in the heats of the Unitarian 
 controversy, and squabbles about the American war, he had 
 been relegated to an obscure village, where he was to spend the 
 last thirty years of his life, far from the only converse that he 
 loved, the talk about disputed texts of Scripture, and the cause 
 of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his days, 
 repining, but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the 
 perusal of the Commentators huge folios, not easily got 
 through, one of which would outlast a winter ! Why did he 
 pore on these from morn to night (with the exception of a walk 
 in the fields or a turn in the garden to gather broccoli-plants or 
 kidney beans of his own rearing, with no small degree of pride
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 23 
 
 and pleasure) ? Here were " no figures nor no fantasies " 
 neither poetry nor philosophy nothing to dazzle, nothing to 
 excite modern curiosity ; but to his lack-lustre eyes there 
 appeared within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldly, 
 neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew 
 capitals : pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to the 
 last fading thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, 
 glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm- 
 trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of camels at the 
 distance of three thousand years ; there was Moses with the 
 Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types, 
 shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets ; there were 
 discussions (dull enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty 
 speculation ! there were outlines, rude guesses at the shape of 
 Noah's Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple ; questions 
 as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of all 
 things ; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the 
 globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned 
 over ; and though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic 
 veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a 
 slumber ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of sense, 
 wit, fancy, or reason. My father's life was comparatively a 
 dream ; but it was a dream of infinity and eternity, of death, 
 the resurrection, and a judgment to come ! 
 
 No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host 
 and his guest A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript ; 
 yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him 
 welcome. He could hardly have been more surprised or 
 pleased if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts 
 had wings : and as the silken sounds rustled round our little 
 wainscoted parlour, my father threw back his spectacles over 
 his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue ; 
 and a smile of delight beamed across his rugged, cordial 
 face, to think that Truth had found a new ally in Fancy 1 
 Besides, Coleridge seemed to take considerable notice of me, 
 and that of itself was enough. He talked very familiarly, but 
 agreeably, and glanced over a variety of subjects. At dinner-
 
 24 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 time he grew more animated, and dilated in a very edifying 
 manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, 
 he said, he considered (on my father's speaking of his Vindicia 
 GalliccB as a capital performance) as a clever, scholastic man 
 a master of the topics or, as the ready warehouseman of 
 letters, who knew exactly where to lay his hand on what he 
 wanted, though the goods were not his own. He thought 
 him no match for Burke, either in style or matter. Burke 
 was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke 
 was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because 
 he had an eye for nature : Mackintosh, on the other hand, 
 was a rhetorician, who had only an eye to commonplaces. 
 On this I ventured to say that I had always entertained a 
 great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I could find) the 
 speaking of him with contempt might be made the test of a 
 vulgar, democratical mind. This was the first observation I 
 ever made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and 
 striking one. I remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the 
 turnips on the table that day had the finest flavour imaginable. 
 Coleridge added that Mackintosh and Tom Wedgwood (of 
 whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very indiff- 
 erent opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he 
 remarked to them "He strides on so far before you that he 
 dwindles in the distance!" Godwin had once boasted to him 
 of having carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three 
 hours with dubious success ; Coleridge told him " If there 
 had been a man of genius in the room he would have settled 
 the question in five minutes." He asked me if I had ever seen 
 Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few moments, 
 and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's objections 
 to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. 
 He replied, that " this was only one instance of the ascend- 
 ency which people of imagination exercised over those of 
 mere intellect." He did not rate Godwin very high* (this 
 
 * He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempt- 
 ing to establish the future immortality of man, " without " (as he
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 25 
 
 was caprice or prejudice, real or affected), but he had a 
 great idea of Mrs. WolstonecrafVs powers of conversation ; 
 none at all of her talent for bookmaking. We talked a 
 little about Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much 
 struck with him, and he said, he thought himself in more 
 danger of being struck by him. I complained that he would 
 not let me get on at all, for he required a definition of every 
 the commonest word, exclaiming, " What do you mean by a 
 sensation, sir? What do you mean by an ideaf" This, 
 Coleridge said, was barricadoing the road to truth ; it was 
 setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we took. I forget a 
 great number of things, many more than I remember ; but the 
 day passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Coleridge 
 was to return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to break- 
 fast I found that he had just received a letter from his friend, 
 T. Wedgwood, making him an offer of ^150 a- year if he chose 
 to waive his present pursuit and devote himself entirely to the 
 study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up 
 his mind to close with this proposal in the act of tying on one 
 of his shoes. It threw an additional damp on his departure. 
 It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast him into 
 Deva's winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead 
 of living at ten miles' distance, of being the pastor of a Dissent- 
 ing congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit 
 the Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable 
 Mountains. Alas 1 I knew not the way thither, and felt very 
 little gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's bounty. I was presently 
 relieved from this dilemma ; for Mr. Coleridge, asking for a 
 pen and ink, and going to a table to write something on a bit 
 of card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and giving 
 me the precious document, said that that was his address, Mr. 
 Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire ; and that he should 
 be glad to see me there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, 
 
 said) "knowing what Death was or what Life was" and the tone 
 in which he pronounced these two words seemed to convey a complete 
 image of both.
 
 26 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 would come half-way to meet me. I was not less surprised 
 than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in "Cas- 
 sandra "), when he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet. I 
 stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this 
 offer (I thought Mr. Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well 
 as I could ; and this mighty business being settled, the poet 
 preacher took leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the 
 road. It was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he 
 talked the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is described as 
 going 
 
 " Sounding on his way." 
 
 So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in pass- 
 ing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to 
 slide on ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he 
 should have preached two sermons before he accepted the 
 situation at Shrewsbury, one on Infant Baptism, the other on 
 the Lord's Supper, showing that he could not administer 
 either, which would have effectually disqualified him for the 
 object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me on 
 the way by shifting from one side cf the footpath to the other. 
 This struck me as an odd movement ; but I did not at that 
 time connect it with any instability of purpose or involuntary 
 change of principle, as I have done since. He seemed 
 unable to keep on in a straight line. He spoke slightingly 
 of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he said was stolen from 
 an objection started in one of South's sermons Credat Judceus 
 Appella /) I was not very much pleased at this account of 
 Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that 
 completest of all metaphysical choke-pears, his Treatise on 
 Human Nature, to which the Essays, in point of scholastic 
 subtilty and close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light 
 summer reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of 
 Hume's general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or 
 candour. He, however, made me amends by the manner in 
 which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his Essay 
 on Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 27 
 
 undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson 
 for striking- the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's 
 Theory of Matter and Spirit, and saying, "Thus I confute him, 
 Sir." Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought 
 about the connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom 
 Paine. He said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other 
 of an acute mind, than which no two things could be more 
 distinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the 
 characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler 
 as a true philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a 
 genuine reader of nature and his own mind. He did not speak 
 of his Analogy, but of his Sermons at the Roll? Chapel, of which 
 I had never heard. Coleridge somehow always contrived to 
 prefer the unknown to the known. In this instance he was 
 right. The Analogy is a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, 
 theological special-pleading ; the Sermons (with the preface to 
 them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid 
 appeal to our observation of human nature, without pedantry 
 and without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few 
 remarks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I 
 had made a discovery on the same subject (the Natural disin- 
 terestedness of the Human Mind) and I tried to explain my 
 view of it to Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, but 
 I did not succeed in making myself understood. I sat down to 
 the task shortly afterwards for the twentieth time, got new pens 
 and paper, determined to make clear work of it, wrote a few 
 meagre sentences in the skeleton style of a mathematical 
 demonstration, stopped half-way down the second page ; and, 
 after trying in vain to pump up any words, images, notions, 
 apprehensions, facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstrac- 
 tion in which I had plunged myself for four or five years 
 preceding, gave up the attempt as labour in vain, and shed 
 tears of helpless despondency on the blank, unfinished paper. 
 I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then ? 
 Oh no ! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being 
 able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in 
 the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was 1
 
 2 8 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places ? 
 If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I 
 would write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrews- 
 bury, and immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical 
 conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and 
 that Harmer Hill stooped, with all its pines, to listen to a poet, 
 as he passed 1 I remember but one other topic of discourse in 
 this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and 
 clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought 
 him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that " the fact of his 
 work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text- 
 book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national char- 
 acter." We parted at the six-mile stone ; and I returned home- 
 ward, pensive, but much pleased. I had met with unexpected 
 notice from a person whom I believed to have been prejudiced 
 against me. " Kind and affable to me had been his con- 
 descension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard." 
 He was the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered 
 to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of his powers of 
 conversation and was not disappointed. In fact, I never met 
 with anything at all like them, either before or since. I could 
 easily credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding 
 forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening or 
 two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole 
 material universe look like a transparency of fine words ; and 
 another story (which I believe he has somewhere told him- 
 self) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of his 
 smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, 
 where the company found him, to their no small surprise, which 
 was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and 
 rubbing his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three- 
 hours' description of the third heaven, of which he had had a 
 dream, very different from Mr. Southey's " Vision of Judgment," 
 and also from that other "Vision of Judgment," which Mr. 
 Murray, the Secretary of the Bridge Street Junta, took into his 
 especial keeping. 
 On my way back I had a sound in my ears it was the voice
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 29 
 
 of Fancy ; I had a light before me it was the face of Poetry. 
 The one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side ! 
 Coleridge, in truth, met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, 
 or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. 
 I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to 
 visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter gave 
 me a welcoming ; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to 
 me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of evening, lighted me 
 on my way to new hopes and prospects. I was to -visit Coleridge 
 in the spring. This circumstance was never absent from my 
 thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to him at 
 the time proposed, and received an answer postponing my 
 intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to 
 complete my promise then. This delay did not damp, but 
 rather increased my ardour. In the meantime, I went to 
 Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mysteries 
 of natural scenery ; and I must say I was enchanted with it. 
 I had been reading Coleridge's description of England in 
 his fine " Ode on the Departing Year," and I applied it, con 
 amore, to the objects before me. That valley was to me (in 
 a manner) the cradle of a new existence : in the river that 
 winds through it, my spirit was baptised in the waters of 
 Helicon I 
 
 I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with 
 unworn heart, and untired feet. My way lay through Worcester 
 and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones 
 and the adventure of the muff. I remember getting completely 
 wet through one day, and stopping at an inn (I think it was at 
 Tewkesbury) where I sat up all night to read Paul and Vir- 
 ginia. Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched 
 my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I 
 read 1 I recollect a remark of Coleridge's upon this very book 
 that nothing could show the gross indelicacy of French manners 
 and the entire corruption of their imagination more strongly 
 than the behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who 
 turns away from a person on board the sinking vessel, that 
 offers to save her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to
 
 30 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 assist him in swimming. Was this a time to think of such a 
 circumstance? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were 
 sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I thought he had 
 borrowed the idea of his Poems on the Naming of Places from 
 the local inscriptions of the same kind in Paul and Virginia. 
 He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction 
 without a difference in defence of his claim to originality. Any, 
 the slightest variation, would be sufficient for this purpose in his 
 mind ; for whatever he added or altered would inevitably be 
 worth all that anyone else had done, and contain the marrow of 
 the sentiment. I was still two days before the time fixed for 
 my arrival, for I had taken care to set out early enough. I 
 stopped these two days at Bridgewater ; and when I was tired 
 of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river, returned to the 
 inn and read Camilla. So have I loitered my life away, reading 
 books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, 
 writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one 
 thing to make me happy ; but wanting that have wanted 
 everything ! 
 
 I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether- 
 Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. 
 I saw it but the other day, after an interval of twenty years, 
 from a hill near Taunton. How was the map of my life 
 spread out before me, as the map of the country lay at my 
 feet 1 In the afternoon, Coleridge took me over to All-Foxden, 
 a romantic old family mansion of the St. Aubins, where Words- 
 worth lived. It was then in the possession of a friend of the 
 poet's, who gave him the free use of it. Somehow, that period 
 (the time just after the French Revolution) was not a time when 
 nothing was given for nothing. The mind opened and a soft- 
 ness might be perceived coming over the hearts of individuals, 
 beneath " the scales that fence " our self-interest. Wordsworth 
 himself was from home, but his sister kept house, and set before 
 us a frugal repast ; and we had free access to her brother's 
 poems, the Lyrical Ballads, which were still in manuscript, 
 or in the form of Sybilline Leaves. I dipped into a few of 
 these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice. I
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 31 
 
 slept that night in an old room with blue hangings, and covered 
 with the round-faced family portraits of the age of George I. 
 and II., and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park 
 that overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could 
 
 " hear the loud stag speak." 
 
 In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) 
 our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between 
 sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses 
 of strange shapes, and there is always something to come better 
 than what we see. As in our dreams the fulness of the blood 
 gives warmth and reality to the coinage of the brain, so in 
 youth our ideas are clothed, and fed, and pampered with our 
 good spirits ; we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the 
 weight of future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, 
 and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As 
 we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. 
 We are no longer wrapped in lamtfs-wool, lulled in Elysium. 
 As we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the 
 sense palls ; and nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless 
 shadows of what has been / 
 
 That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled 
 out into the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old 
 ash-tree that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud, 
 with a sonorous and musical voice, the ballad of " Betty Foy." 
 I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of 
 truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in the 
 " Thorn," and the " Mad Mother," and the " Complaint of a 
 Poor Indian Woman," I felt that deeper power and pathos 
 which have been since acknowledged, 
 
 " In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite," 
 
 as the characteristics of this author ; and the sense of a new 
 style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me 
 something of the effect that arises from the turning up of the 
 fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of Spring :
 
 32 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 " "While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed." 
 
 Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and 
 his voice sounded high 
 
 " Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
 Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 
 
 as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or water- 
 fall, gleaming in the summer moonlight ! He lamented that 
 Wordsworth was not prone enough to believe in the traditional 
 superstitions of the place, and that there was a something cor- 
 poreal, a matter-of-fact-ness^ a clinging to the palpable, or often 
 to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a 
 spirit that descended to him through the air ; it sprung out of 
 the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, 
 on which the goldfinch sang. He said, however (if 1 remember 
 right), that this objection must be confined to his descriptive 
 pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a grand and comprehen- 
 sive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the universe 
 like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather than by 
 deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at 
 Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in 
 some degree to his friend's description of him, but was more 
 gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (accord- 
 ing to the costume of that unconstrained period) in a brown 
 fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was something of 
 a roll, a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own " Peter Bell." 
 There was a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, 
 a fire in his eye (as if he saw something in objects more than 
 the outward appearance), an intense, high, narrow forehead, a 
 Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, 
 and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good 
 deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest 
 of his face. Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits ; but he 
 was teased into making it regular and heavy : Haydon's head of 
 him, introduced into the " Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem," 
 is the most like his drooping weight of thought and expression. 
 He sat down and talked very naturally and freely, with a
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 33 
 
 mixture of clear, gushing accents in his voice, a deep guttural 
 intonation, and a strong tincture of the northern burr, like the 
 crust on wine. He instantly began to make havoc of the half of 
 a Cheshire cheese on the table, and said, triumphantly, that 
 " his marriage with experience had not been so productive as 
 Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good things 
 of this life." He had been to see the " Castle Spectre," by 
 Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He 
 said " it fitted the taste of the audience like a glove." This ad 
 captandum merit was however by no means a recommendation 
 of it, according to the severe principles of the new school, which 
 reject rather than court popular effect Wordsworth, looking 
 out of the low, latticed window, said, " How beautifully the sun 
 sets on that yellow bank 1 " I thought within myself, " With 
 what eyes these poets see nature 1 " and ever after, when I saw 
 the sunset stream upon *he objects facing it, conceived I had 
 made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Wordsworth for having made 
 one for me ! We went over to All-Foxden again the day 
 following, and Wordsworth read us the story of " Peter Bell" in 
 the open air ; and the comment upon it by his face and voice 
 was very different from that of some later critics 1 Whatever 
 might be thought of the poem, " his face was as a book where 
 men might read strange matters," and he announced the fate of 
 his hero in prophetic tones. There is a chaunt in the recitation 
 both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon 
 the hearer, and disarms the judgment Perhaps they have 
 deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous 
 accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and 
 varied ; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. 
 The one might be termed more dramatic^ the other more 
 lyrical. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose 
 in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the stragg- 
 ling branches of a copse-wood ; whereas Wordsworth always 
 wrote (if he could) walking up and down a straight gravel walk, 
 or in some spot where the continuity of his verse met with no 
 collateral interruption. Returning that same evening, I got into 
 a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was 
 
 575
 
 34 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in 
 which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly 
 clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether 
 Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the after- 
 noons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the 
 poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, 
 and listening to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed 
 our flip. It was agreed, among other things, that we should 
 make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Linton. 
 We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. 
 This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey, one of those 
 who were attracted to Coleridge's discourse as flies are to 
 honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass 
 pan. He " followed in the chase like a dog who hunts, not 
 like one that made up the cry." He had on a brown cloth 
 coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow- 
 legged, had a drag in his walk like a drover, which he assisted 
 by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side of 
 Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that he 
 might not lose a syllable or sound that fell from Coleridge's 
 lips. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge was a 
 wonderful man. He scarcely opened his lips, much less offered 
 an opinion the whole way : yet of the three, had I to choose 
 during that journey, I would be John Chester. He afterwards 
 followed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean philo- 
 sophers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their 
 categories. When he sat down at table with his idol, John's 
 felicity was complete ; Sir Walter Scott's, or Mr. Blackwood's, 
 when they sat down at the same table with the King, was not 
 more so. We passed Dunster on our right, a small town 
 between the brow of a hill and the sea. I remember eyeing it 
 wistfully as it lay below us : contrasted with the woody scene 
 around, it looked as clear, as pure, as embrowned and ideal 
 as any landscape I have seen since, of Caspar Poussin's or 
 Domenichino's. We had a long day's march (our feet kept 
 time to the echoes of Coleridge's tongue) through Minehead 
 and by the Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 35 
 
 not reach till near midnight, and where we had some difficulty 
 in making a lodgment. We, however, knocked the people of 
 the house up at last, and we were repaid for our apprehensions 
 and fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. 
 The view in coming along had been splendid. We walked 
 for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the 
 Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended 
 into little sheltered valleys close by the sea-side, with a 
 smuggler's face scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical 
 hills with a path winding up through a coppice to a barren 
 top, like a monk's shaven crown, from one of which I pointed 
 out to Coleridge's notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very 
 edge of the horizon, and within the red-orbed disk of the 
 setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the " Ancient Mariner." 
 At Linton the character of the sea-coast becomes more 
 marked and rugged. There is a place called the Valley of 
 Rocks (I suspect this was only the poetical name for it), bedded 
 among precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns 
 beneath, into which the waves dash, and where the sea-gull 
 for ever wheels its screaming flight. On the tops of these 
 are huge stones thrown transverse, as if an earthquake had 
 tossed them there, and behind these is a fretwork of perpen- 
 dicular rocks, something like the Giants Causeway. A 
 thunderstorm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge 
 was running out bareheaded to enjoy the commotion of the 
 elements in the Valley of Rocks, but, as if in spite, the clouds 
 only muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refresh- 
 ing drops. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were 
 to have made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which 
 was to have been in the manner of, but far superior to, 
 the " Death of Abel," but they had relinquished the design. 
 In the morning of the second day we breakfasted luxuri- 
 ously in an old-fashioned parlour on tea, toast, eggs, and 
 honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives from which it had 
 been taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that 
 had produced it. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's 
 Georgics, but not well. I do not think he had much feeling for
 
 36 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 the classical or elegant.* It was in this room that we found a 
 little worn-out copy of the Seasons, lying in a window-seat, on 
 which Coleridge exclaimed, " That is true fame ! " He said 
 Thomson was a great poet, rather than a good one ; his style 
 was as meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of 
 Cowper as the best modern poet. He said the Lyrical Ballads 
 were an experiment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, 
 to see how far the public taste would endure poetry written 
 in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been 
 attempted ; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, 
 and making use only of such words as had probably been com- 
 mon in the most ordinary language since the days of Henry II. 
 Some comparison was introduced between Shakespeare and 
 Milton. He said " he hardly knew which to prefer. Shake- 
 speare appeared to him a mere stripling in the art ; he was as 
 tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity, than Milton, but 
 he never appeared to have come to man's estate ; or if he had, 
 he would not have been a man, but a monster." He spoke with 
 contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope He did not 
 like the versification of the latter. He observed that " the ears 
 of these couplet-writers might be charged with having short 
 memories, that could not retain the harmony of whole 
 passages." He thought little of Junius as a writer ; he had a 
 dislike of Dr. Johnson ; and a much higher opinion of Burke as 
 an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He, however, 
 thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery 
 to some of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. 
 He liked Richardson, but not Fielding ; nor could I get him 
 to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams. In short, he was 
 profound and discriminating with respect to those authors 
 
 * He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time 
 I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present 
 of the Cartoons at Pisa by Buffamalco and others ; of one in particular, 
 where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great 
 and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and 
 the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would, of course, 
 understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.
 
 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 37 
 
 whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment fair-play j 
 capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his antipathies and 
 distastes. We loitered on the " ribbed sea-sands," in such talk 
 as this, a whole morning, and, I recollect, met with a curious 
 sea-weed, of which John Chester told us the country name 1 A 
 fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that had been 
 drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him at 
 the risk of their own lives. He said " he did not know how it 
 was that they ventured, but, Sir, we have a nature towards one 
 another." This expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a 
 fine illustration of that theory of disinterestedness which I (in 
 common with Butler) had adopted. I broached to him an 
 argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere associa- 
 tion of ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in mind 
 of a man's foot, not because it was part of a former impression 
 of a man's foot (for it was quite new), but because it was like 
 the shape of a man's foot. He assented to the justness of this 
 distinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, for the 
 benefit of the curious) and John Chester listened ; not from any 
 interest in the subject, but because he was astonished that I 
 should be able to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not 
 already know. We returned on the third morning, and 
 Coleridge remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the 
 valleys where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights 
 gleaming through the dark. 
 
 In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on 
 my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday 
 morning, and he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of 
 Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared anything for the 
 occasion ? He said he had not even thought of the text, but 
 should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear him this 
 was a fault but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The 
 next day we had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I 
 recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and 
 satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some 
 descriptive lines of his tragedy of "Remorse"; which I 
 must say became his mouth and that occasion better than
 
 38 FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 they, some years after, did Mr. Elliston's and the Drury Lane 
 boards 
 
 " Oh memory I shield me from the world's poor strife, 
 And give those scenes thine everlasting life." 
 
 I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period 
 he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest, in Germany ; and 
 his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It 
 was not till some time after that I knew his friends, Lamb and 
 Southey. The last always appears to me (as I first saw him) 
 with a commonplace book under his arm, and the first with a 
 bon-mot in his mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with 
 Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely 
 which was the best Man as he was, or man as he is to be. 
 " Give me," says Lamb, " man as he is not to be." This saying 
 was the beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe 
 still continues. Enough of this for the present. 
 
 " But there is matter for another rhyme, 
 And I to this may add a second tale. "
 
 ON THE PLEASURE Of PAINTING. 39 
 
 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 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
 
 40 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 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. * 
 
 I have not much pleasure in writing these Essays, or 
 in reading them afterwards ; though I own I now and then 
 meet with a phrase that I like, or a thought that strikes me as 
 
 * 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. I send 
 for a chair and table from the old woman's, and there I drink my 
 coffee and read Homer. It was by accident that I discovered this 
 place one fine afternoon : all was perfect stillness ; everybody was in 
 the fields except a little boy about four years old, who was sitting on 
 the ground, and holding between his knees a child of about six 
 months ; he pressed it to his bosom with 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, without 
 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 rales, they alter the true features, and the 
 natural expression."
 
 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 41 
 
 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," 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 ornaments of 
 style or dress, is little to their advantage. After I have once 
 written on a subject, it goes out of my mind : my feelings about 
 it have been melted down into words, and them I forget. I 
 have, as it were, discharged my memory of its old habitual 
 reckoning, and rubbed out the score of real sentiment. For 
 the future, it exists only for the sake of others. But I cannot 
 say, from my own experience, that the same process takes place 
 in transferring our ideas to canvas ; they gain more than they
 
 42 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 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 overmatch 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 I a rainbow starts 
 from the canvas, with all its humid train of glory, as if it were 
 drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven. The spangled landscape 
 glitters with drops of dew after the shower. The " fleecy fools" 
 show their coats in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds 
 pipe their farewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this 
 bright vision made from a dead dull blank, like a bubble reflect- 
 ing the mighty fabric of the universe ? Who would think this 
 miracle of Rubens's pencil possible to be performed ? 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 Rembrandt's landscapes 1 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 1 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 imagination is lost, in hopes to 
 transfer the whole interminable expanse at one blow upon the
 
 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 43 
 
 canvas. Wilson said, he used to try to paint the effect oPthe 
 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 
 produce, but thought I had failed." Wilson was neglected ; 
 and, by degrees, neglected his art to apply himself to brandy. 
 His hand became unsteady, so that it was only by repeated 
 attempts that he could reach the place, or produce the effect he 
 aimed at ; and when he had done a little to a picture, he would 
 say to any acquaintance who chanced to drop in, "I have 
 painted enough for one day : come, let us go 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 was 
 one fine summer, when I used to walk out of an evening to 
 catch the last light of the sun, gemming the green slopes or 
 russet lawns, and gilding tower or tree, while the 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 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. It .took me number- 
 less sittings to do it. I have it by me still, and sometimes look 
 at it with surprise, to think how much pains were thrown away 
 to little purpose yet not altogether in vain if it taught me to 
 see good in everything, and to know that there is nothing 
 vulgar in nature seen with the eye of science or of true art. 
 Refinement creates beauty everywhere : it is the grossness of 
 the spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object 
 Be this as it may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art was
 
 44 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 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 Rembrandt at Burleigh House, and 
 if I could produce a head at all like Rembrandt in a year, in 
 my lifetime, it would be glory and felicity and wealth and 
 fame enough for me ! The head I had seen at Burleigh was 
 an exact and wonderful 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 
 appearances without individual details, but in giving general 
 appearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had done 
 my work the first day. But I saw something more in nature 
 than general effect, and I thought it worth my while to 
 give it in the picture. There was a gorgeous effect of light and 
 shade : but there was a delicacy as well as depth in the chiaro 
 scuro which I was bound to follow into all its dim and scarce 
 perceptible variety of tone and shadow. Then I had to make 
 the transition from a strong light to as dark a shade, preserving 
 the masses, but gradually softening off the intermediate parts. 
 It was so in nature ; the difficulty was to make it so in the copy. 
 I tried, and failed again and again ; I strove harder, and 
 succeeded as I thought. The wrinkles in Rembrandt were not 
 hard lines, but broken and irregular. I saw the same appear- 
 ance 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 compare what I saw with what I did (with jealous lynx- 
 eyed watchfulness) till I succeeded to the best of my ability 
 and judgment. How many revisions were there 1 How many 
 attempts to catch an expression which I had seen the day 
 before 1 How often did we try to get the old position, and wait
 
 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 45 
 
 for the return of the same light ! There was a puckering up of 
 the lips, a cautious introversion of the eye under the shadow of 
 the bonnet, indicative of the feebleness and suspicion of old age, 
 which at last we managed, after many trials and some quarrels, 
 to a tolerable nicety. The picture was never finished, and I 
 might have gone on with it to the present hour.* I used to set 
 it on the ground when my day's work was done, and saw 
 revealed to me with swimming eyes the birth of new hopes, and 
 of a new world of objects. The painter thus learns to look at 
 nature with different eyes. He before saw her * as in a glass 
 darkly, but now face to face." He understands 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 satisfaction of the thing, I 
 had rather had 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 dis- 
 interested 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 
 
 * It is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish (the 
 perishable vehicle of the English school), like an envelope of gold- 
 beaters' skin, so as to be hardly visible.
 
 46 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 most sensible men I know (taken as a class) are painters ; that 
 is, they are the most lively observers of what passes in the world 
 about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own 
 minds. From their profession they in general mix more with 
 the world than authors ; and if they have not the same fund of 
 acquired knowledge, are obliged to rely more on individual 
 sagacity. I might mention the names of Opie, Fuseli, Northcote, 
 as persons distinguished for striking description and acquaint- 
 ance with the subtle traits of character.* Painters in ordinary 
 society, or in obscure situations where their value is not known, 
 and they are treated with neglect and indifference, have 
 sometimes a forward self-sufficiency of manner ; but this is 
 not so much their fault as that of others. Perhaps their want 
 of regular education may also be in fault in such cases. 
 Richardson, who is very tenacious of the respect in which the 
 profession ought to be held, tells a story of Michael Angelo, 
 that after a quarrel between him and Pope Julius II., "upon 
 account of a slight the artist conceived the pontiff had put upon 
 him, Michael Angelo was introduced by a bishop, who, thinking 
 to serve the artist by it, made it an argument that the Pope 
 should be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were 
 commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise ; his 
 holiness, enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and 
 told him, it was he that was the blockhead, and affronted the 
 man himself would not offend. The prelate was driven out of 
 the chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction, 
 accompanied with presents. This bishop had fallen into the 
 vulgar error, and was rebuked accordingly." 
 Besides the exercise of the mind, painting exercises the body. 
 
 * Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes for the 
 consequences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed to 
 ascertain pretty accurately the grounds on which they act, before they 
 commit themselves on the event, are often men of remarkably quick 
 and sound judgments. Artists in like manner must know tolerably 
 well what they are about, before they can bring the result of their 
 observations to the test of ocular demonstration.
 
 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 47 
 
 It is a mechanical as well as a liberal art To do anything, to 
 dig a hole in the ground, to plant a cabbage, to hit a mark, to 
 move a shuttle, to work a pattern in a word, to attempt to 
 produce any effect, and to succeed has something in it that 
 gratifies the love of power, and carries off the restless activity 
 of the mind of man. Indolence is a delightful but distressing 
 state ; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no 
 less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the 
 human frame ; and painting combines them both incessantly.* 
 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 Rubens 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 Vinci, and Andrea del Sarto, where every touch appears 
 conscious of its charge, emulous of truth, and where the painful 
 artist has so distinctly wrought, 
 
 " That you might almost say his picture thought ! " 
 
 In the one case, the colours seem breathed on the canvas as 
 if by magic, the work and the wonder of a moment ; in the 
 other, they seem inlaid in the body of the work, and as if it 
 took the artist years of unremitting labour, and of delightful 
 never-ending progress to perfection.f Who would wish ever 
 to come to the close of such works not to dwell on them, to 
 
 * 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. 
 
 t 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.
 
 48 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 return to them, to be wedded to them to the last ? Rubens, 
 with his florid, rapid style, complained that when he had just 
 learned his art, he should be forced to die. Leonardo, in the 
 slow advances of his, had lived long enough 1 
 
 Painting is not, like writing, what is properly understood 
 by a sedentary employment. It requires not indeed a strong, 
 but a continued and steady exertion of muscular power. 
 The precision and delicacy of the manual operation, makes up 
 for the want of vehemence as to balance himself for any time 
 in the same 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 acquired for 
 his by riding over Banstead Downs. It is related of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, that " he took no other exercise than what he 
 used in his painting- room" the writer means, in walking 
 backwards and forwards to look at his picture ; but the act of 
 painting itself, of laying on the colours in the proper place, and 
 proper quantity, was a much harder exercise than this alternate 
 receding from and returning to the picture. This last would be 
 rather a relaxation and relief than an effort. It is not to be 
 wondered at, that an artist like Sir Joshua, who delighted so 
 much in the sensual and practical part of his art, should have 
 found himself at a considerable loss when the decay of his sight 
 precluded him, for the last year or two of his life, from the 
 following up of his profession " the source," according to his 
 own remark, "of thirty years' uninterrupted enjoyment and 
 prosperity to him." It is only those who never think at all, or 
 else who have accustomed themselves to brood 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 was a 
 picture of my father, who was then in a green old age, with 
 strong-marked features, and scarred with the 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
 
 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 49 
 
 him to read was to be content, was "riches fineless." The 
 sketch promised 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 pride in the artist, 
 though he would rather I should have written a sermon than 
 painted like Rembrandt or like Raphael. Those winter days, 
 with the gleams of sunshine coming through the chapel 
 windows, and cheered by the notes of the robin-redbreast in our 
 garden (that " ever in the haunch of winter sings ") as my 
 afternoon's work drew to a close were among the happiest of 
 my life. When I gave the effect I intended to any part of the 
 picture for which I had prepared my colours ; when I imitated 
 the roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil ; when 
 I hit the clear pearly tone of a vein ; when I gave the ruddy 
 complexion of health, the blood circulating under the 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 the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George). 
 There was nothing in common 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 1 I could sleep out the three hundred and 
 
 576
 
 So ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 sixty-five thousand intervening years very contentedly 1 The 
 picture is left : the table, the chair, the window where 1 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 1
 
 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 5* 
 
 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 
 
 PLAYERS are " the abstracts and brief chronicles of the times," 
 the motley representatives of human nature. They are the 
 only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream, a 
 studied madness. The height of their ambition is to be beside 
 themselves. To-day kings, to-morrow beggars, it is only when 
 they are themselves that they are nothing. Made up of mimic 
 laughter and tears, passing from the extremes of joy or woe at 
 the prompter's call, they wear the livery of other men's fortunes ; 
 their very thoughts are not their own. They are, as it were, 
 train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to 
 humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand 
 in them ; they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, 
 and all that we dread to be. The stage is an epitome, a 
 bettered likeness, of the world, with the dull part left out ; and 
 indeed, with this omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all 
 the rest. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they 
 imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. How many fine 
 gentlemen do we owe to the stage ! How many romantic 
 lovers are mere Romeos in masquerade ! How many soft 
 bosoms have heaved with Juliet's sighs ! They teach us when 
 to laugh and when to weep, when to love and when to hate, 
 upon principle and with a good grace. Wherever there is a 
 playhouse the world will go on not amiss. The stage not only 
 refines the manners, but it is the best teacher of morals, for it is 
 the truest and most intelligible picture of life. It stamps the 
 image of virtue on the mind by first softening the rude materials
 
 52 ON ACTORS AND ACTING, 
 
 of which it is composed by a sense of pleasure. It regulates 
 the passions by giving a loose to the imagination. It points out 
 the selfish and depraved to our detestation, the amiable and 
 generous to our admiration ; and if it clothes the more seductive 
 vices with the borrowed graces of wit and fancy, even those 
 graces operate as a diversion to the coarser poison of experience 
 and bad example, and often prevent or carry off the infection 
 by inoculating the mind with a certain taste and elegance. To 
 show how little we agree with the common declamations 
 against the immoral tendency of the. stage on this score, we will 
 hazard a conjecture that the acting of the " Beggar's Opera " a 
 certain number of nights every year since it was first brought 
 out has done more towards putting down the practice of highway 
 robbery than all the gibbets that ever were erected. A person 
 after seeing this piece is too deeply imbued with a sense of 
 humanity, is in too good humour with himself and the rest of 
 the world, to set about cutting throats or rifling pockets. What- 
 ever makes a jest of vice leaves it too much a matter of 
 indifference for any one in his senses to rush desperately on his 
 ruin for its sake. We suspect that just the contrary effect must 
 be produced by the representation of " George Barnwell," 
 which is too much in the style of the ordinary's sermon to meet 
 with any better success. The mind, in such cases, instead of 
 being deterred by the alarming consequences held out to it, 
 revolts against the denunciation of them as an insult offered to 
 its freewill, and, in a spirit of defiance, returns a practical answer 
 to them by daring the worst that can happen. The most 
 striking lesson ever read to levity and licentiousness is in the 
 last act of " The Inconstant," where young Mirabel is preserved 
 by the fidelty of his mistress, Orinda, in the disguise of a page, 
 from the hands of assassins, into whose power he has been allured 
 by the temptations of vice and beauty. There never was a rake 
 who did not become in imagination a reformed man during the 
 representation of the last trying scenes of this admirable 
 comedy. 
 
 If the stage is useful as a school of instruction, it is no less so 
 as a scource of amusement. It is the source of the greatest
 
 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 53 
 
 enjoyment at the time, and a never-failing fund of agreeable 
 reflection afterwards. The merits of a new play or of a new 
 actor are always among the first topics of polite conversation. 
 One way in which public exhibitions contribute to refine and 
 humanise mankind is by supplying them with ideas and subjects 
 of conversation and interest in common. The progress of 
 civilisation is in .proportion to the number of commonplaces 
 current in society. For instance, if we meet with a stranger at 
 an inn or in a stage-coach, who knows nothing but his own 
 affairs, his shop, his customers, his farm, his pigs, his poultry, 
 we can carry on no conversation with him on these local and 
 personal matters ; the only way is to let him have all the talk to 
 himself. But if he has fortunately ever seen Mr. Listen act, 
 this is an immediate topic of mutual conversation, and we agree 
 together the rest of the evening in discussing the merits of that 
 inimitable actor, with the same satisfaction as in talking over 
 the affairs of the most intimate friend. 
 
 If the stage thus introduces us familiarly to our contempor- 
 aries, it also brings us acquainted with former times. It is an 
 interesting revival of past ages, manners, opinions, dresses, per- 
 sons, and actions whether it carries us back to the wars of York 
 and Lancaster, or half-way back to the heroic times of Greece 
 and Rome, in some translation from the French, or quite back 
 to the age of Charles II. in the scenes of Congreve and of 
 Etherege (the gay Sir George !) happy age, when kings and 
 nobles led purely ornamental lives ; when the utmost stretch of 
 a morning's study went no further than the choice of a sword- 
 knot or the adjustment of a side-curl ; when the soul spoke out 
 in all the pleasing eloquence of dress ; and beaux and belles, 
 enamoured of themselves in one another's follies, fluttered like 
 gilded butterflies in giddy mazes through the walks of St. 
 James's Park ! 
 
 A good company of comedians, a theatre royal judiciously 
 managed, is your true Heralds' College the only Antiquarian 
 Society that is worth a rush. It is for this reason that there is 
 such an air of romance about players, and that it is pleasanter 
 to see them, even in their own persons, than any of the three
 
 54 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 
 
 learned professions. We feel more respect for John Kemble in 
 a plain coat than for the Lord Chancellor on the woolsack. He 
 is surrounded, to our eyes, with a greater number of imposing 
 recollections ; he is a more reverend piece of formality a more 
 complicated tissue of costume. We do not know whether to 
 look upon this accomplished actor as Pierre, or King John, or 
 Coriolanus, or Cato, or Leontes, or the Stranger. But we see in 
 him a stately hieroglyphic of humanity, a living monument of 
 departed greatness, a sombre comment on the rise and fall of 
 kings. We look after him till he is out of sight as we listen 
 to a story of one of Ossian's heroes, to "a tale of other 
 times ! " 
 
 One of the most affecting things we know is to see a favourite 
 actor take leave of the stage. We were present not long ago 
 when Mr. Bannister quitted it We do not wonder that his 
 feelings were overpowered on the occasion : ours were nearly 
 so too. We remembered him, in the first heyday of our 
 youthful spirits, in " The Prize," in which he played so delight- 
 fully with that fine old croaker Suett, and Madame Storace in 
 the farce of " My Grandmother," in the " Son-in-Law," in 
 Autolycus, and in Scrub, in which our satisfaction was at its 
 height. At that time King, and Parsons, and Dodd, and 
 Quick, and Edwin, were in the full vigour of their reputation, 
 who are now all gone. We still feel the vivid delight with 
 which we used to see their names in the playbills as we went 
 along to the theatre. Bannister was one of the last of these 
 that remained ; and we parted with him as we should with one 
 of our oldest and best friends. The most pleasant feature in 
 the profession of a player, and which indeed is peculiar to it, is, 
 that we not only admire the talents of those who adorn it, but 
 we contract a personal intimacy with them. There is no class of 
 society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors. 
 We greet them on the stage ; we like to meet them in the 
 streets ; they almost always recall to us pleasant associations ; 
 and we feel our gratitude excited without the uneasiness of a 
 sense of obligation. The very gaiety and popularity, however, 
 which surround the life of a favourite performer make the
 
 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 55 
 
 retiring from it a very serious business. It glances a mortifying 
 reflection on the shortness of human life and the vanity of 
 human pleasures. Something reminds us that " all the world's 
 a stage, and all the men and women merely players." 
 
 It has been considered as the misfortune of first-rate talents 
 for the stage that they leave no record behind them except that 
 of vague rumour, and that the genius of a great actor perishes 
 with him, " leaving the world no copy." This is a misfortune, or 
 at least an unpleasant circumstance, to actors ; but it is, 
 perhaps, an advantage to the stage. It leaves an opening to 
 originality. The stage is always beginning anew ; the candi- 
 dates for theatrical reputation are always setting out afresh, 
 unencumbered by the affectation of the faults or the excellences 
 of their predecessors. In this respect we should imagine that 
 the average quantity of dramatic talent remains more nearly 
 the same than that in any other walk of art. In no other 
 instance do the complaints of the degeneracy of the moderns 
 seem so unfounded as in this ; and Colley Gibber's account of 
 the regular decline of the stage, from the time of Shakespeare 
 to that of Charles II., and from the time of Charles II. to the 
 beginning of George II., appears quite ridiculous. The stage 
 is a place where genius is sure to come upon its legs, in a 
 generation or two at furthest. In the other arts (as painting 
 and poetry) it has been contended that what has been well 
 done already, by giving rise to endless vapid imitations, is an 
 obstacle to what might be done well hereafter ; that the models 
 or chefs-d'oeuvre of art, where they are accumulated, choke up 
 the path to excellence ; and that the works of genius, where 
 they can be rendered permanent and handed down from age to 
 age, not only prevent, but render superfluous, future productions 
 of the same kind. We have not, neither do we want, two 
 Shakespeares, two Miltons, two Raphaels, any more than we 
 require two suns in the same sphere. Even Miss O'Neill 
 stands a little in the way of our recollections of Mrs. Siddons. 
 But Mr. Kean is an excellent substitute for the memory of 
 Garrick, whom we never saw. When an author dies it is no 
 matter, for his works remain. When a great actor dies there
 
 56 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 
 
 is a void produced in society, a gap which requires to be rilled 
 up. Who does not go to see Kean ? Who, if Garrick were 
 alive, would go to see him ? At least one or the other must 
 have quitted the stage. We have seen what a ferment has 
 been excited among our living artists by the exhibition of the 
 works of the old masters at the British Gallery. What would the 
 actors say to it if, by any spell or power of necromancy, all the 
 celebrated actors for the last hundred years could be made to 
 appear again on the boards of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, 
 for the last time, in all their most brilliant parts ? What a rich 
 treat to the town, what a feast for the critics, to go and see 
 Betterton, and Booth, and Wilks, and Sandford, and Nokes, 
 and Leigh, and Penkethman, and Bullock, and Estcourt, and 
 Dogget, and Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Montfort, and Mrs. Oldfield, 
 and Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mrs. Gibber, and Gibber himself, the 
 prince of coxcombs, and Macklin, and Quin, and Rich, and 
 Mrs. Clive, and Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs. Abington, and 
 Weston, and Shutter, and Garrick, and all the rest of those 
 who " gladdened life, and whose deaths eclipsed the gaiety of 
 nations 1 " We should certainly be there. We should buy : 
 ticket for the season. We should enjoy our hundred day* 
 again. We should not lose a single night. We would not, 
 for a great deal, be absent from Betterton's Hamlet or his 
 Brutus, or from Booth's Cato, as it was first acted to the 
 contending applause of Whigs and Tories. We should be 
 in the first row when Mrs. Barry (who was kept by 
 Lord Rochester, and with whom Otway was in love) played 
 Monimia or Belvidera ; and we suppose we should go to 
 see Mrs. Bracegirdle (with whom all the world was in 
 love) in all her parts. We should then know exactly whether 
 Penkethman's manner of picking a chicken and Bullock's mode 
 of devouring asparagus answered to the ingenious account of 
 them in the Tatler ; and whether Dogget was equal to Dowton 
 whether Mrs. Montfort or Mrs. Abington was the finest 
 lady whether Wilks or Gibber was the best Sir Harry Wildair 
 whether Macklin was really " the Jew that Shakespeare 
 drew," and whether Garrick was, upon the whole, so great an
 
 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 57 
 
 actor as the world have made him out. Many people have a 
 strong desire to pry into the secrets of futurity : for our own 
 part, we should be satisfied if we had the power to recall the 
 dead, and live the past over again as often as we pleased. 
 Players, after all, have little reason to complain of their hard- 
 earned, short-lived popularity. One thunder of applause from 
 pit, boxes, and gallery is equal to a whole immortality of 
 posthumous fame ; and when we hear an actor, whose modesty 
 is equal to his merit, declare that he would like to see a dog 
 wag his tail in approbation, what must he feel when he sees the 
 whole house in a roar 1 Besides, Fame, as if their reputation 
 had been entrusted to her alone, has been particularly careful 
 of the renown of her theatrical favourites ; she forgets one by 
 one, and year by year, those who have been great lawyers, great 
 statesmen, and great warriors in their day, but the name of 
 Garrick still survives with the works of Reynolds and of 
 Johnson. 
 
 Actors have been accused, as a profession, of being extrava- 
 gant and dissipated. While they are said to be so, as a piece 
 of common cant, they are likely to continue so. But there is a 
 sentence in Shakespeare which should be stuck as a label in 
 the mouths of our beadles and whippers-in of morality : " The 
 web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together : our 
 virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not ; and 
 our vices would despair if they were not cherished by our 
 virtues." With respect to the extravagance of actors, as a 
 traditional character, it is not to be wondered at. They 
 live from hand to mouth : they plunge from want into luxury ; 
 they have no means of making money breed, and all professions 
 that do not live by turning money into money, or have not 
 a certainty of accumulating it in the end by parsimony, spend 
 it. Uncertain of the future, they make sure of the present 
 moment. This is not unwise. Chilled with poverty, steeped in 
 contempt, they sometimes pass into the sunshine of fortune, 
 and are lifted to the very pinnacle of public favour ; yet even 
 there cannot calculate on the continuance of success, but are, 
 " like the giddy sailor on the mast, ready with every blast to
 
 58 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 
 
 topple down into the fatal bowels of the deep." Besides, if the 
 young enthusiast who is smitten with the stage, and with the 
 public as a mistress, were naturally a close hunks, he would 
 become or remain a city clerk, instead of turning player. Again, 
 with respect to the habit of convivial indulgence, an actor, to 
 be a good one, must have a great spirit of enjoyment in himself, 
 strong impulses, strong passions, and a strong sense of 
 pleasure ; for it is his business to imitate the passions, and 
 to communicate pleasure to others. A man of genius is not a 
 machine. The neglected actor may be excused if he drinks 
 oblivion of his disappointments ; the successful one, if he quaffs 
 the applause of the world, and enjoys the friendship of those 
 who are the friends of the favourites of fortune, in draughts of 
 nectar. There is no path so steep as that of fame : no labour 
 so hard as the pursuit of excellence. The intellectual excite- 
 ment inseparable from those professions which call forth all 
 our sensibility to pleasure and pain requires some correspond- 
 ing physical excitement to support our failure, and not a little 
 to allay the ferment of the spirits attendant on success. If 
 there is any tendency to dissipation beyond this in the pro- 
 fession of a player, it is owing to the prejudices entertained 
 against them to that spirit of bigotry which, in a neigbouring 
 country, would deny actors Christian burial after their death, 
 and to that cant of criticism which, in our own, slurs over their 
 characters, while living, with a half-witted jest. 
 
 A London engagement is generally considered by actors as 
 the ne plus ultra of their ambition, as " a consummation 
 devoutly to be wished," as the great prize in the lottery of their 
 professional life. But this appears to us, who are not in the 
 secret, to be rather the prose termination of their adventurous 
 career ; it is the provincial commencement that is the poetical 
 and truly enviable part of it After that, they have com- 
 paratively little to hope or fear. " The wine of life is drunk, 
 and but the lees remain." In London they become gentlemen, 
 and the King's servants ; but it is the romantic mixture of the 
 hero and the vagabond that constitutes the essence of the 
 player's life. It is the transition from their real to their
 
 ON ACTOKS AND ACTING. 59 
 
 assumed characters, from the contempt of the world to the 
 applause of the multitude, that gives its zest to the latter, and 
 raises them as much above common humanity at night, as in 
 the daytime they are depressed below it. " Hurried from 
 fierce extremes, by contrast made more fierce," it is rngs and 
 a flock-bed which give their splendour to a plume of feathers 
 and a throne. We should suppose, that if the most admired 
 actor on the London stage were brought to confession on this 
 point, he would acknowledge that all the applause he had 
 received from " brilliant and overflowing audiences " was 
 nothing to the light-headed intoxication of unlooked-for success 
 in a barn. In town, actors are criticised : in country-places, 
 they are wondered at, or hooted at ; it is of little consequence 
 which, so that the interval is not too long between. For our- 
 selves, we own that the description of the strolling player in 
 Gil JB/as, soaking his dry crusts in the well by the roadside, 
 presents to us a perfect picture of human felicity.
 
 60 ON MR. KEAN'S 2 AGO. 
 
 ON MR. KEAN'S IAGO. 
 
 WE certainly think Mr. Kean's performance of the part of lago 
 one of the most extraordinary exhibitions on the stage. There 
 is no one within our remembrance who has so completely foiled 
 the critics as this celebrated actor. One sagacious person 
 imagines that he must perform a part in a certain manner ; 
 another virtuoso chalks out a different path for him ; and when 
 the time comes, he does the whole off in a way that neither of 
 them had the least conception of, and which both of them are 
 therefore very ready to condemn as entirely wrong. It was ever 
 the trick of genius to be thus. We confess that Mr. Kean has 
 thrown us out more than once. For instance, we are very much 
 inclined to adopt the opinion of a contemporary critic, that his 
 Richard is not gay enough, and that his lago is not grave 
 enough. This he may perhaps conceive to be the mere caprice 
 of idle criticism ; but we will try to give our reasons, and shall 
 leave them to Mr. Kean's better judgment. It is to be remem- 
 bered, then, that Richard was a princely villain, borne along in 
 a sort of triumphal car of royal state, buoyed up with the hopes 
 and privileges of his birth, reposing even on the sanctity of 
 religion, trampling on his devoted victims without remorse, and 
 who looked out and laughed from the high watch-tower of his 
 confidence and his expectations on the desolation and misery 
 he had caused around him. He held on his way, unquestioned, 
 "hedged in with the divinity of kings," amenable to no tribunal, 
 and abusing his power in contempt of mankind. But as for 
 lago, we conceive differently of him. He had not the same
 
 ON MR. KEAN>S /AGO. 61 
 
 natural advantages. He was a mere adventurer in mischief a 
 painstaking, plodding knave, without patent or pedigree, who 
 was obliged to work his uphill way by wit, not by will, and to be 
 the founder of his own fortune. He was, if we may be allowed 
 a vulgar allusion, a sort of prototype of modern Jacobinism, who 
 thought that talents ought to decide the place a man of 
 " morbid sensibility " (in the fashionable phrase), full of distrust, 
 of hatred, of anxious and corroding thoughts, and who, though 
 he might assume a temporary superiority over others by superior 
 adroitness, and pride himself in his skill, could not be supposed 
 to assume it as a matter of course, as if he had been entitled to it 
 from his birth. We do not here mean to enter into the characters 
 of the two men, but something must be allowed to the differ- 
 ence of their situations. There might be the same insensibility 
 in both as to the end -in view, but there could not well be the 
 same security as to the success of the means. lago had to pass 
 through a different ordeal : he had no appliances and means to 
 boot no royal road to the completion of his tragedy. His pre- 
 tensions were not backed by authority ; they were baptised at 
 the font ; they were not holy-water-proof. He had the whole to 
 answer for in his own person, and could not shift the responsi- 
 bility to the heads of others. Mr. Kean's Richard was therefore, 
 we think, deficient in something of that regal jollity and reeling 
 triumph of success which the part would bear ; but this we can 
 easily account for, because it is the traditional commonplace idea 
 of the character, that he is to " play the dog to bite and snarl." 
 The extreme unconcern and laboured levity of his lago, on the 
 contrary, is a refinement and original device of the actor's own 
 mind, and therefore deserves consideration. The character of 
 lago, in fact, belongs to a class of characters common to 
 Shakespeare, and at the same time peculiar to him namely, 
 that of great intellectual activity, accompanied with a total want 
 of moral principle, and therefore displaying itself at the constant 
 expense of others, making use of reason as a pander to will, 
 employing its ingenuity and its resources to palliate its own 
 crimes and aggravate the faults of others, and seeking to 
 confound the practical distinctions of right and wrong by
 
 6s ON MR. KEAN 'S I A GO. 
 
 referring them to some overstrained standard of speculative 
 refinement. Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought 
 the whole of the character of lago unnatural. Shakespeare, who 
 was quite as good a philosopher as he was a poet, thought 
 otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is another 
 name for the love of mischief, was natural to man. He would 
 know this as well or better than if it had been demonstrated to 
 him by a logical diagram, merely from seeing children paddle 
 in the dirt, or kill flies for sport. We might ask those who think 
 the character of lago not natural, why they go to see it per- 
 formed, but from the interest it excites, the sharper edge which 
 it sets on their curiosity and imagination ? Why do we go to 
 see tragedies in general, why do we always read the accounts 
 in the newspapers of dreadful fires and shocking murders, 
 but for the same reason ? Why do so many persons frequent 
 executions and trials, or why do the lower classes almost 
 universally take delight in barbarous sports and cruelty to 
 animals, but because there is a natural tendency in the mind 
 to strong excitement, a desire to have its faculties roused 
 and stimulated to the utmost ? Whenever this principle is not 
 under the restraint of humanity or the sense of moral obligation, 
 there are no excesses to which it will not of itself give rise, 
 without the assistance of any other motive, either of passion or 
 self-interest. lago is only an extreme instance of the kind 
 that is, of diseased intellectual activity, with an almost perfect 
 indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a preference 
 for the latter, because it falls more in with his favourite 
 propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts, and scope to his 
 actions. Be it observed, too (for the sake of those who are for 
 squaring all human actions by the maxims of Rochefoucault), 
 that he is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to that 
 of others ; that he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful 
 advantage ; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling 
 passion an incorrigible love of mischief, an insatiable craving 
 after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. Our 
 " ancient " is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has 
 more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis ; who
 
 ON MR. REAN^S 1AGO. 63 
 
 thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better 
 thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in an 
 air-pump ; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for 
 his understanding, and stabs men in the dark to prevent 
 ennui. Now this, though it be sport, yet it is dreadful sport. 
 There is no room for trifling and indifference, nor scarcely for 
 the appearance of it ; the very object of his whole plot is to 
 keep his faculties stretched on the rack, in a state of watch and 
 ward, in a sort of breathless suspense, without a moment's 
 interval of repose. He has a desperate stake to play for, like a 
 man who fences with poisoned weapons, and has business 
 enough on his hands to call for the whole stock of his sober 
 circumspection, his dark duplicity, and insidious gravity. He 
 resembles a man who sits down to play at chess for the sake of 
 the difficulty and complication of the game, and who imme- 
 diately becomes absorbed in it. His amusements, if they are 
 amusements, are severe and saturnine even his wit blisters. 
 His gaiety arises from the success of his treachery ; his ease 
 from the sense of the torture he has inflicted on others. Even, 
 if other circumstances permitted it, the part he has to play with 
 Othello requires that he should assume the most serious 
 concern, and something of the plausibility of a confessor. " His 
 cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam." 
 He is repeatedly called "honest lago," which looks as if there 
 were something suspicious in his appearance, which admitted a 
 different construction. The tone which he adopts in the scenes 
 with Roderigo, Desdemona, and Cassio is only a relaxation 
 from the more arduous business of the play. Yet there is in all 
 his conversation an inveterate misanthropy, a licentious keen- 
 ness of perception, which is always sagacious of evil, and snuffs 
 up the tainted scent of its quarry with rancorous delight. An 
 exuberance of spleen is the essence of the character. The view 
 which we have here taken of the subject (if at all correct) will 
 not therefore justify the extreme alteration which Mr. Kean has 
 introduced into the part. Actors in general have been struck 
 only with the wickedness of the character, and have exhibited 
 an assassin going to the place of execution. Mr. Kean has
 
 64 ON MR. LEAN'S I AGO. 
 
 abstracted the wit of the character, makes lago appear through- 
 out an excellent good fellow and lively bottle-companion. But 
 though we do not wish him to be represented as a monster or 
 fiend, we see no reason why he should instantly be converted 
 into a pattern of comic gaiety and good-humour. The light 
 which illumines the character should rather resemble the flashes 
 of lightning in the murky sky, which make the darkness more 
 terrible. Mr. Kean's lago is, we suspect, too much in the sun. 
 His manner of acting the part would have suited better with the 
 character of Edmund in " King Lear," who, though in other 
 respects much the same, has a spice of gallantry in his constitu- 
 tion, and has the favour and countenance of the ladies, which 
 always gives a man the smug appearance of a bridegroom.
 
 65 
 
 MRS. SIDDONS. 
 
 MRS. SIDDONS was in the meridian of her reputation when I 
 first became acquainted with the stage. She was an estab- 
 lished veteran, when I was an unfledged novice ; and, perhaps, 
 played those scenes without emotion, which filled me, and so 
 many others, with delight and awe. So far I had the advantage 
 of her, and of myself too. I did not then analyse her excel- 
 lences as I should now, or divide her merits into physical and 
 intellectual advantages, or see that her majestic form rose 
 up against misfortune in equal sublimity, an antagonist power 
 to it ; but the total impression (unquestioned, unrefined upon) 
 overwhelmed and drowned me in a flood of tears. I was 
 stunned and torpid after seeing her in any of her great parts. 
 I was uneasy, and hardly myself ; but I felt (more than ever) 
 that human life was something very far from being indifferent, 
 and I seemed to have got a key to unlock the springs of joy 
 and sorrow in the human heart. This was no mean possession, 
 and I availed myself of it with no sparing hand. The pleasure 
 I anticipated at that time in witnessing her dullest performance, 
 was certainly greater than I should have now in seeing her in 
 the most brilliant. The very sight of her name in the play-bills 
 in "Tamarlane" or "Alexander the Great" threw a light upon 
 the day, and drew after it a long trail of Eastern glory, a joy 
 and felicity unutterable, that has since vanished in the mists of 
 criticism and idle distinctions. I was in a trance, and my 
 dreams were of mighty empires fallen, of vast burning zones, of 
 waning time, of Persian thrones and them that sat on them, of 
 sovereign beauty, and of victors vanquished by love. Death 
 and Life played their pageant before me. The gates were 
 
 577
 
 66 MRS. SIDDONS. 
 
 unbarred, the folding-doors of fancy were thrown open, and 
 I saw all that mankind had been, or that I myself could 
 conceive, pass in review before me. 
 
 The homage she has received is greater than that which is 
 paid to queens. The enthusiasm she excited had something 
 idolatrous about it ; she was regarded less with admiration 
 than with wonder, as if a being of a superior order had dropped 
 from another sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her 
 appearance. She raised tragedy to the skies, or brought it 
 down from thence. It was something above nature. We can 
 conceive of nothing grander. She embodied to our imagina- 
 tion the fables of mythology, of the heroic and deified mortals 
 of elder time. She was not less than a goddess, or than a 
 prophetess inspired by the gods. Power was seated on her 
 brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. She 
 was tragedy personified. She was the stateliest ornament of 
 the public mind. She was not only the idol of the people, she 
 not only hushed the tumultuous shouts of the pit in breathless 
 expectation, and quenched the blaze of surrounding beauty in 
 silent tears, but to the retired and lonely student, through long 
 years of solitude, her face has shone as if an eye had appeared 
 from heaven ; her name has been as if a voice had opened the 
 chambers of the human heart, or as if a trumpet had awakened 
 the sleeping and the dead To have seen Mrs. Siddons was an 
 event in every one's life ; and does she think we have forgot 
 her? 
 
 Who shall give us Mrs. Siddons again, but in a waking 
 dream, a beatific vision of past years, crowned with other hopes 
 and other feelings, whose pomp is almost faded, and their glory 
 and their power gone ? Who shall in our time (or can ever 
 to the eye of fancy) fill the stage like her, with the dignity 
 of their persons and the emanations of their minds ? Or who 
 shall sit majestic on the throne of tragedy a Goddess, a 
 prophetess, and a Muse from which the lightning of her eye 
 flashed o'er the mind, startling its inmost thoughts, and the
 
 MRS. SIDDONS. 67 
 
 thunder of her voice circled through the labouring breast, 
 rousing deep and scarce-known feelings from their slumber? 
 Who shall stalk over the stage of horrors, its presiding genius, 
 or "play the hostess" at the banqueting scene of murder? 
 Who shall walk in sleepless ecstasy of soul, and haunt the 
 mind's eye ever after with the dread pageantry of suffering and 
 of guilt ? Who shall make tragedy once more stand with its 
 feet upon the earth, and with its head raised above the skies, 
 weeping tears and blood ? That loss is not to be repaired. 
 While the stage lasts, there will never be another Mrs. Siddons. 
 Tragedy seemed to set with her ; and the rest are but blazing 
 comets, or fiery exhalations. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons seldom if ever goes (into the boxes), and yet 
 she is almost the only thing left worth seeing there. She need 
 not stay away on account of any theory that I can form. She 
 is out of the pale of all theories, and annihilates all rules. 
 Wherever she sits there is grace and grandeur, there is tragedy 
 personified. Her seat is the undivided throne of the Tragic 
 Muse. She had no need of the robes, the sweeping train, the 
 ornaments of the stage ; in herself she is as great as any being 
 she ever represented in the ripeness and plenitude of her 
 power
 
 68 ON A LANDSCAPE OJF NICOLAS POUSSIN. 
 
 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 sdh 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 " grey 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 atmos- 
 phere tinges and imbues every object, the same dull light 
 "shadowy sets off" the face of nature : one feeling of vastness, 
 of strangeness, and of primeval forms pervades the painter's 
 canvas, and we are thrown back upon the first integrity of 
 things. This great and learned man might be said to see 
 nature through the glass of time ; he alone has a right to
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN. 69 
 
 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, teeming with 
 life and power ; or deck it with all the pomp of art, with 
 temples and towers, and mythologic groves. His pictures 
 "denote a foregone conclusion." He applies nature to his 
 purposes, works out her images according to the standard of his 
 thoughts, embodies high fictions ; and the first conception 
 being given, all the rest seems to grow out of, and be assimi- 
 lated 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
 
 70 ON A LAN DSC A PE OF NICOLAS PO USSIN. 
 
 and her powers, and his mind is universal, and his art the 
 master-art 1 
 
 There is nothing in this "more than natural," if criticism 
 could be persuaded to think so. The historic painter does not 
 neglect or contravene nature, but follows her more closely up 
 into her fantastic heights, or hidden recesses. He demon- 
 strates what she would be in conceivable 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 themselves 
 qualified to paint the ideas which they have not seen. But it is 
 possible to fail in this latter and more difficult style of imitation, 
 as well as in the former humbler one. The 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 lake an epic motto or 
 subject, and conclude that the spirit is implied as a thing of 
 course. They paint inferior portraits, maudlin lifeless faces, 
 without ordinary expression, or one look, feature, or particle of 
 nature in them, and think that this is to rise to the truth of 
 history. They vulgarise and degrade whatever is interesting or 
 sacred to the mind, and suppose that they thus add to the 
 dignity of their profession. They represent a face that seems 
 as if no thought or feeling of any kind had ever passed through 
 it, and would have you believe that this is the very sublime of 
 expression, such as it would appear in heroes, or demi-gods of 
 old, when rapture or agony was raised to its height. They 
 show you a landscape that looks as if the sun never shone upon 
 it, and tell you that it is not modern that so earth looked when 
 Titan first kissed it with his rays. This is not the true ideal. It 
 is not to fill the moulds of the imagination, but to deface and 
 injure them ; it is not to come up to, but to fall short of the
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS PO VSS2N. 7 1 
 
 poorest conception in the public mind. Such pictures should 
 not be hung in the same room with that of "Orion."* 
 
 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 consciousness in whatever he does 
 (sometimes a vice, but oftener a virtue) beyond any other 
 painter. His Giants sitting on the tops of craggy mountains, 
 as huge themselves, and playing idly on their Pan's pipes, seem 
 to have been seated there these three thousand years, and to 
 know the beginning and the end of their own story. An infant 
 
 * 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 
 anyone had told him he could get as good an idea of the subject of 
 one of his great works from reading the Catalogue of it as from seeing 
 the picture itself ! Yet the answer was characteristic of the genius 
 of the painter.
 
 72 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN. 
 
 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 I His human figures are sometimes 
 "rfer-informed" with this kind of feeling. Their actions have 
 too much gesticulation, and the set expression of the features 
 borders too much on the mechanical and caricatured style. In 
 this respect they form a contrast to Raphael's, whose figures 
 never appear to be sitting for their pictures, or to be conscious 
 of a spectator, or to have come from the painter's hand. In 
 Nicolas Poussin, on the contrary, everything seems to have a 
 distinct understanding with the artist ; " the very stones prate 
 of their whereabout;" each object has its part and place 
 assigned, and is in a sort of compact with the rest of the 
 picture. It is this conscious keeping, and, as it were, 
 internal design, that gives their peculiar character to the 
 works of this artist. There was a picture of "Aurora" in 
 the British Gallery a year or two ago. It was a suffusion 
 of golden light. The Goddess wore her saffron-coloured 
 robes, and appeared just risen from the gloomy bed of old 
 Tithonus. Her very steeds, milk-white, were tinged with 
 the yellow dawn. It was a personification of the morning. 
 Poussin succeeded better in classic than in sacred subjects. 
 The latter are comparatively heavy, forced, full of violent 
 contrasts of colour, of red, blue, and black, and without the trut 
 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
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN. 73 
 
 an air of learned indifference. He wants, in one respect, grace, 
 form, expression ; but he has everywhere sense and meaning, 
 perfect costume and propriety. His personages always belong 
 to the class and time represented, and are strictly versed in the 
 business in hand. His grotesque compositions in particular, 
 his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior (at least, as far as style is 
 concerned) even to those of Rubens'. They are taken more 
 immediately out of fabulous history. Rubens' 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 pur- 
 pose. Rubens' are noble specimens of a class; Poussin's are 
 allegorical abstractions of the same class, with bodies less 
 pampered, but with minds more secretly depraved. The 
 Bacchanalian groups of the Flemish painter were, however, 
 his masterpieces in composition. Witness those prodigies of 
 colour, character, and expression at Blenheim. In the more 
 chaste and refined delineation of classic fable, Poussin was 
 without a rival. Rubens, who was a match for him in the 
 wild and picturesque, could not pretend to vie with the elegance 
 and purity of thought in his 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 shall celebrate, in 
 terms of fit praise, his picture of the shepherds in the Vale of 
 Tempe going out in a fine morning of the spring, and coming 
 to a tomb with this inscription : Ex EGO IN ARCADIA vixi ! 
 The eager curiosity of some, the expression of others who start 
 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 prospects
 
 74 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS PO USSIN. 
 
 speak (and for ever will speak on) of ages past to ages yet to 
 come ! * 
 
 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 romantic 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 
 answering looks of the spectator can express 1 What intel- 
 lectual stores have been yearly poured forth from the shrine of 
 ancient art ! The works are various, but the names the same 
 heaps of Rembrandts frowning from the darkened walls, 
 Rubens' glad gorgeous groups, Titians more rich and rare, 
 Claudes always exquisite, sometimes beyond compare, Guide's 
 endless cloying sweetness, the learning of Poussin and the 
 Caracci, and Raphael'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 
 
 * 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 disagreeable recur 
 so often against our will.
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS PO USSIN. 75 
 
 view. One might think that one year's prodigal display of 
 such perfection would exhaust the labours of one man's life ; 
 but the next year, and the next to that, we find another harvest 
 reaped and gathered in to the great garner of art by the same 
 immortal hands 
 
 " Old GENIUS the porter of them was ; 
 He letteth in, he letteth out to wend." 
 
 Their works seem endless as their reputation to be many as 
 they are complete to multiply with the desire of the mind to 
 see more and more of them ; as if there were a living power in 
 the breath of Fame, and in the very names of the great heirs 
 of glory " there were propagation too ! " It is something to 
 have a collection of this sort to count upon once a year ; to 
 have one last, lingering look yet to come. Pictures are 
 scattered like stray gifts through the world ; and while they 
 remain, earth has yet a little gilding left, not quite rubbed off, 
 dishonoured, and defaced. There are plenty of standard works 
 still to be found in this country, in the collections at Blenheim, 
 at Burleigh, and in those belonging to Mr. Angerstein, Lord 
 Grosvenor, the Marquis of Stafford, and others, to keep up 
 this treat to the lovers of art for many years ; and it is the more 
 desirable to reserve a privileged sanctuary of this sort, where 
 the eye may dote, and the heart take its fill of such pictures 
 as Poussin's " Orion," since the Louvre is stripped of its 
 triumphant spoils, and since he, who collected it, and wore it as 
 a rich jewel in his Iron Crown, the hunter of greatness and of 
 glory, is himself a shade I
 
 76 HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE? 
 
 ON HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE." 
 
 THE superiority of the pictures of Hogarth to the common 
 prints is confined chiefly to the " Marriage a la mode." We 
 shall attempt to illustrate a few of their most striking 
 excellences, more particularly with reference to the expression 
 of character. Their merits are indeed so prominent, and have 
 been so often discussed, that it may be thought difficult to point 
 out any new beauties ; but they contain so much truth of nature, 
 they present the objects to the eye under so many aspects and 
 bearings, admit of so many constructions, and are so pregnant 
 with meaning, that the subject is in a manner inexhaustible. 
 
 Boccaccio, the most refined and sentimental of all the 
 novel-writers, has been stigmatised as a mere inventor of 
 licentious tales, because readers in general have only seized on 
 those things in his works which were suited to their own taste, 
 and have reflected their own grossness back upon the writer. 
 So it has happened that the majority of critics having been 
 most struck with the strong and decided expression in 
 Hogarth, the extreme delicacy and subtle gradations of 
 character in his pictures have almost entirely escaped them. 
 In the first picture of the "Marriage a la mode" the three 
 figures of the young nobleman, his- intended bride, and her 
 inamorato the lawyer, show how much Hogarth excelled in the 
 power of giving soft and effeminate expression. They have, 
 however, been less noticed than the other figures, which tell a 
 plainer story and convey a more palpable moral. Nothing can
 
 HOGARTH^S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE." 77 
 
 be more finely managed than the differences of character in 
 these delicate personages. The beau sits smiling at the 
 looking-glass, with a reflected simper of self-admiration and 
 a languishing inclination of the head, while the rest of his body 
 is perked up on his high heels with a certain air of tiptoe 
 elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign of George II., 
 whose powdered peruke, ruffles, gold lace, and patches divide 
 his self-love unequally with his own person the true Sir 
 Plume of his day : 
 
 " Of amber-lidded snuff-box justly vain, 
 And the nice conduct of a clouded cane." 
 
 There is the same felicity in the figure and attitude of 
 the bride courted by the lawyer. There is the utmost flexi- 
 bility and yielding softness in her whole person, a listless 
 languor and tremulous suspense in the expression of her 
 face. It is the precise look and air which Pope has given to 
 his favourite, Belinda, just at the moment of the " Rape of 
 the Lock." The heightened glow, the forward intelligence, 
 and loosened soul of love in the same face, in the assignation 
 scene before the masquerade, form a fine and instructive 
 contrast to the delicacy, timidity, and coy reluctance expressed 
 in the first The lawyer in both pictures is much the same 
 perhaps too much so ; though even this unmoved, unaltered 
 appearance may be designed as characteristic. In both cases 
 he has "a person and a smooth dispose, framed to make 
 woman false." He is full of that easy good-humour and easy 
 good opinion of himself with which the sex are delighted. 
 There is not a sharp angle in his face to obstruct his success or 
 give a hint of doubt or difficulty. His whole aspect is round 
 and rosy, lively and unmeaning, happy without the least 
 expense of thought, careless and inviting, and conveys a 
 perfect idea of the uninterrupted glide and pleasing murmur 
 of the soft periods that flow from his tongue. 
 
 The expression of the bride in the morning scene is the 
 most highly seasoned, and at the same time the most vulgar 
 in the series. The figure, face, and attitude of the husband
 
 78 HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE." 
 
 are inimitable. Hogarth has with great skill contrasted the 
 pale countenance of the husband with the yellow- whitish 
 colour of the marble chimney-piece behind him in such a 
 manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of the former. The airy 
 splendour of the view of the inner room in this picture is prob- 
 ably not exceeded by any of the productions of the Flemish 
 School. 
 
 The young girl in the third picture, who is represented as 
 the victim of fashionable profligacy, is unquestionably one 
 of the artist's chefs-d'oeuvre. The exquisite delicacy of the 
 painting is only surpassed by the felicity and subtlety of the 
 conception. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast 
 between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened 
 indifference of her character. The vacant stillness, the docility 
 to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the 
 doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have 
 no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain show the deepest 
 insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refine- 
 ments in depravity by which it has been good-naturedly asserted 
 that " vice loses half its evil by losing all its grossness." The 
 story of this picture is in some parts very obscure and enig- 
 matical. It is certain that the nobleman is not looking straight 
 forward to the quuck, whom he seems to have been threatening 
 with his cane, but that his eyes are turned up with an ironical 
 leer of triumph to the procuress. The commanding attitude 
 and size of this woman the swelling circumference of her 
 dress, spread out like a turkey-cock's feathers the fierce, 
 ungovernable, inveterate malignity of her countenance, which 
 hardly needs the comment of the clasp-knife to explain her 
 purpose are all admirable in themselves, and still more so 
 they are opposed to the mute insensibility, the as elegant 
 negligence of the dress, and the childish figure of the girl 
 who is supposed to be her protigfo. As for the quack, there 
 can be no doubt entertained about him. His face seems as 
 if it were composed of salve 4 and. his features exhibit all the 
 chaos and confusion of the most gross, ignorant, and impudent 
 empiricism.
 
 HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE." 79 
 
 The gradations of ridiculous affectation in the music scene are 
 finely imagined and preserved. The preposterous, overstrained 
 admiration of the lady of quality ; the sentimental, insipid, 
 patient delight of the man with his hair in papers and sipping 
 his tea; the pert, smirking, conceited, half-distorted approbation 
 of the figure next to him ; the transition to the total insensi- 
 bility of the round face in profile, and then to the wonder 
 of the negro boy at the rapture of his mistress, form a perfect 
 whole. The sanguine complexion and flame-coloured hair of 
 the female virtuoso throw an additional light on the character. 
 This is lost in the print. The continuing the red colour of 
 the hair into the back of the chair has been pointed out as one 
 of those instances of alliteration in colouring of which these 
 pictures are everywhere full. The gross, bloated appearance of 
 the Italian singer is well relieved by the hard features of the 
 instrumental performer behind him, which might be carved 
 of wood. The negro boy holding the chocolate, both in expres- 
 sion, colour, and execution, is a masterpiece. The gay, lively 
 derision of the other negro boy, playing with the Actaeon, is 
 an ingenious contrast to the profound amazement of the first. 
 Some account has already been given of the two lovers in 
 this picture. It is curious to observe the infinite activity of 
 mind which the artist displays on every occasion. An instance 
 occurs in the present picture. He has so contrived the papers 
 in the hair of the bride as to make them look almost like 
 a wreath of half-blown flowers, while those which he has 
 placed on the head of the musical amateur very much 
 resemble a cheval de frise of horns, which adorn and fortify 
 the lack-lustre expression and mild resignation of the face 
 beneath. 
 
 The night scene is inferior to the rest of the series. The 
 attitude of the husband, who is just killed, is one in which 
 it would be impossible for him to stand or even to fall. It 
 resembles the loose pasteboard figures they make for children. 
 The characters in the last picture, in which the wife dies, are all 
 masterly. We would particularly refer to the captious, petulant 
 self-sufficiency of the apothecary, whose face and figure are
 
 8o HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE" 
 
 constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to the fine 
 example of passive obedience and non-resistance in the servant, 
 whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green-and-yellow 
 livery is as long and melancholy as his face. The disconsolate 
 look, the haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in 
 the hair, the broken, gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an 
 answer everything about him denotes the utmost perplexity 
 and dismay. The harmony and gradations of colour in this 
 picture are uniformly preserved with the greatest nicety, and are 
 well worthy the attention of the artist 
 
 It has been observed that Hogarth's pictures are exceedingly 
 unlike any other representations of the same kind of subjects 
 that they form a class, and have a character peculiar to them- 
 selves. It may be worth while to consider in what this general 
 distinction consists. 
 
 In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, historical 
 pictures ; and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of 
 Tom Jones ought to be regarded as an epic prose poem, 
 because it contained a regular development of fable, manners, 
 character, and passion, the compositions of Hogarth will, in like 
 manner, be found to have a higher claim to the title of epic 
 pictures than many which have of late arrogated that denom- 
 ination to themselves. When we say that Hogarth treated his 
 subjects historically, we mean that his works represent the 
 manners and humours of mankind in action, and their characters 
 by varied expression. Everything in his pictures has life and 
 motion in it Not only does the business of the scene never 
 stand still, but every feature and muscle is put into full play ; the 
 exact feeling of the moment is brought out and carried to its 
 utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the 
 canvas for ever. The expression is always taken en passant, in 
 a state of progress or change, and, as it were, at the salient 
 point. Besides the excellence of each individual face, the 
 reflection of the expression from face to face, the contrast and 
 struggle of particular motives and feelings in the different actors 
 in the scene as of anger, contempt, laughter, compassion are 
 conveyed in the happiest and most lively manner. His figures
 
 HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE." 81 
 
 are not like the background on which they are painted : even 
 the pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their own. 
 Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, Hogarth's 
 heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He 
 gives the extremes of character and expression, but he gives 
 them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what 
 distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, 
 that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere 
 still life. It of course happens in subjects from common life, 
 that the painter can procure real models, and he can get them 
 to sit as long as he pleases. Hence, in general, those attitudes 
 and expressions have been chosen which could be assumed the 
 longest, and in imitating which the artist, by taking pains and 
 time, might produce almost as complete fac-similes as he could 
 of a flower or a flower-pot, of a damask curtain or a china vase. 
 The copy was as perfect and as uninteresting in the one case 
 as in the other. On the contrary, subjects of drollery and 
 ridicule, affording frequent examples of strange deformity and 
 peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by 
 another class of artists, who, without subjecting themselves to 
 the laborious drudgery of the Dutch School and their imitators, 
 have produced our popular caricatures, by rudely copying or 
 exaggerating the casual irregularities of the human counten- 
 ance. Hogarth has equally avoided the faults of both these 
 styles the insipid lameness of the one, and the gross vulgarity 
 of the other so as to give to the productions of his pencil equal 
 solidity and effect. For his faces go to the very verge of 
 caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go 
 beyond it : they take the very widest latitude, and yet we 
 always see the links which bind them to nature : they bear all 
 the marks and carry all the conviction of reality with them, as 
 if we had seen the actual faces for the first time, from the 
 precision, consistency, and good sense with which the whole 
 and every part is made out They exhibit the most uncommon 
 features with the most uncommon expressions, but which are 
 yet as familiar and intelligible as possible, because with all 
 the boldness they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has 
 
 578
 
 82 HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE? 
 
 left behind him as many of these memorable faces, in their 
 memorable moments, as perhaps most of us remember in the 
 course of our lives, and has thus doubled the quantity of our 
 observation. 
 
 We have attempted to point out the fund of observation, 
 physical and moral, contained in one set of Hogarth's 
 pictures, the " Marriage k la mode." The rest would furnish 
 as many topics to descant upon, were the patience of 
 the reader as inexhaustible as the painter's invention. But as 
 this is not the case, we shall content ourselves with barely 
 referring to some of those figures in the other pictures which 
 appear the most striking, and which we see not only while we 
 are looking at them, but which we have before us at all other 
 times. For instance, who having seen can easily forget that 
 exquisite frost-piece of religion and morality, and antiquated 
 prude in the morning scene ? or that striking commentary on the 
 good old times, the little wretched appendage of a footboy, who 
 crawls half famished and half frozen behind her? The French 
 man and woman in the " Noon " are the perfection of flighty 
 affectation and studied grimace ; the amiable fraternisation of 
 the two old women saluting each other is not enough to be 
 admired ; and in the little master, in the same national group, 
 we see the early promise and personification of that eternal 
 principle of wondrous self-complacency, proof against all 
 circumstances, and which makes the French the only people 
 who are vain even of being cuckolded and being conquered. 
 Or shall we prefer to this the outrageous distress and unmiti- 
 gated terrors of the boy, who has dropped his dish of meat, 
 and who seems red all over with shame and vexation, and 
 bursting with the noise he makes ? Or what can be better than 
 the good housewifery of the girl underneath, who is devouring 
 the lucky fragments? or than the plump, ripe, florid, luscious 
 look of the servant-wench, embraced by a greasy rascal of an 
 Othello, with her pie-dish tottering like her virtue, and with the 
 most precious parts of its contents running over ? Just no, not 
 quite as good is the joke of the woman overhead, who, having 
 quarrelled with her husband, is throwing their Sunday's dinner
 
 HOGARTH>S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE." 83 
 
 out of the window, to complete this chapter of accidents of baked 
 dishes. The husband in the evening scene is certainly as meek 
 as any recorded in history ; but we cannot say that we admire 
 this picture, or the night scene after it. But then, in the " Taste 
 in High Life," there is that inimitable pair, differing only in sex, 
 congratulating and delighting one another by "all the mutually 
 reflected charities" of folly and affectation with the young 
 lady coloured like a rose, dandling her little, black, pug-faced, 
 white-teethed, chuckling favourite, and with the portrait of 
 Monsieur Des Noyers in the background, dancing in a grand 
 ballet, surrounded by butterflies. And again, in " The Election 
 Dinner," is the immortal cobbler, surrounded by his peers, who, 
 "frequent and full" 
 
 " In loud recess and brawling conclave sit " 
 
 the Jew in the second picture, a very Jew in grain innumerable 
 fine sketches of heads in the " Polling for Votes," of which the 
 nobleman overlooking the caricaturist is the best ; and then the 
 irresistible, tumultuous display of broad humour in the "Chairing 
 the Member," which is, perhaps, of all Hogarth's pictures, the 
 most full of laughable incidents and situations the yellow, rusty- 
 faced thresher, with his swinging flail, breaking the head of one 
 of the chairmen, and his redoubted antagonist, the sailor, with 
 his oak-stick, and stumping wooden leg, a supplemental cudgel 
 the persevering ecstasy of the hobbling blind fiddler, who, in 
 the fray, appears to have been trod upon by the artificial 
 excrescence of the honest tar Monsieur the monkey, with 
 piteous aspect, speculating the impending disaster of the 
 triumphant candidate, and his brother, Bruin, appropriating the 
 paunch the precipitous flight of the pigs, souse over head into 
 the water, the fine lady fainting, with vermilion lips, and the two 
 chimney-sweepers, satirical young rogues ! We had almost 
 forgot "The Politician," who is burning a hole through his hat 
 with a candle in reading the newspaper ; and the chickens, in 
 the " March to Finchley," wandering in search of their lost 
 dam, which is found in the pocket of the sergeant. Of the 
 pictures in the " Rake's Progress " we shall not here say anything,
 
 84 HOGARTH'S "MARRIAGE A LA MODE." 
 
 because we think them, on the whole, inferior to the prints, 
 and because they have already been criticised by a writer, 
 to whom we could .add nothing, in a paper which ought 
 to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius.* 
 
 * See an " Essay on the Genius of Hogartb," by C. Lamb, published 
 in a periodical woik called the Reflector.
 
 ON GO JAG A JO URNE Y. 85 
 
 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 country. 
 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. There 
 are those who for this purpose 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 friend in my retreat, 
 
 Whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet." 
 
 The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, 
 do, just as one pleases. We go ajourney chiefly to be free of 
 all impediments and of all inconveniences ; to leave ourselves 
 behind much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a 
 little breathing-space to muse on 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,"
 
 86 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 
 
 that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling 
 at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend 
 in a post-chaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with 
 and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have 
 a truce with imperlinence. 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 1 
 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. Instead 
 of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull com- 
 monplaces, 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 have just now other business in hand, which 
 would seem idle to you, but is with me " very stuff o' the con- 
 science." 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 it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to 
 yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant 
 horizon ? I should be but bad 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
 
 ON GOING A JO URNE K 87 
 
 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 com- 
 panion of my way," says Sterne, " were it but to remark how 
 the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." It is beautifully 
 said ; but in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes 
 interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the 
 mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel 
 in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid : if you have to explain it, 
 .t is making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of 
 nature without being perpetually put to the trouble of trans- 
 lating 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 im- 
 possible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not 
 covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any one for 
 twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you 
 remark the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps 
 your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant 
 object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his 
 glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the 
 colour of a cloud which hits your fancy, but the effect of which 
 you are unable to account for. There is then no 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 them- 
 selves before you these may recall a number of objects, and 
 lead to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly 
 communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and
 
 88 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 
 
 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 understanding, but no tongue." My old 
 friend Coleridge, however, could do both. He could go on in 
 the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale a 
 summer's day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or 
 a Pindaric ode. " He talked far above singing." If I could so 
 clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps 
 wish to have some one with me to admire the swelling theme ; 
 or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to hear 
 his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had " that 
 fine madness in them which our first poets had ;" and if they 
 could have been caught by some rare instrument, would have 
 breathed such strains as the following : 
 
 " Here be woods as green 
 
 As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet 
 As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet 
 Face of the curled 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 conveyed 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." * 
 
 * Fletcher's "Faithful Shepherdess."
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 89 
 
 Had I words and images at command like these, I would 
 attempt to wake the thoughts that He 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. I can make nothing out on the spot I must have 
 time to collect myself. 
 
 In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects : it 
 should be reserved for Table-talk. Lamb is for this reason, 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 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 1 " These eventful 
 moments in our lives' history are too precious, too full of solid, 
 heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in 
 imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and 
 drain them to the last drop : they will do to talk of or to write 
 about afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after 
 drinking whole goblets of tea, 
 
 " The cups that cheer, but not inebriate," 
 
 and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering 
 what we shall have for supper eggs and a rasher, a rabbit 
 smothered in onions, or an excellent veal cutlet ! Sancho in 
 such a situation once fixed on cow-heel ; and his choice, though 
 he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then, in the 
 intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to 
 catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen. Procul, O 
 procul esteprofani! ("Avaunt ! avaunt ! ye unhallowed.") These 
 hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up
 
 90 ON GOING A JOURNEY 
 
 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 stranger than a friend. A stranger takes his hue and 
 character from the time and place ; he is a part of the 
 furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from 
 the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not 
 even try to sympathise with him, and he breaks no squares. 
 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 forgot 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 someone with you that knows 
 the less sublime portions of your history, it seems that other 
 people do. You are no longer a citizen of the world ; but 
 your " unhoused free condition is put into circumspection 
 and confine." The incognito of an inn is one of its striking 
 privileges "lord of one's self, uncumbered with a name." 
 Oh 1 it is great to shake off the trammels of the world and 
 of public opinion to lose our importunate, tormenting, ever- 
 lasting personal identity in the elements of nature, and become 
 the creature of the moment, clear of all ties to hold to the 
 universe only by a dish of sweetbreads, and to owe nothing 
 but the score of the evening and no longer seeking for 
 applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by no other 
 title than the Gentleman in the parlour ! One may take one's 
 choice of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty 
 as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely respect- 
 able and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and 
 disappoint conjecture ; and from being so to others, begin 
 to be objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We 
 are no more those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear 
 in the world ; an inn restores us to the level of nature, and 
 quits scores with society ! I have certainly spent some
 
 ON G OING A JO URNE V. 9 1 
 
 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 compared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not 
 for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried 
 me over the Severn, standing up in a boat between me and 
 the twilight at other times I might mention luxuriating in 
 books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember 
 sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia^ which I 
 picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in 
 the rain all day ; and at the same place I got through two 
 volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was on the loth of 
 April 1798 that I sat down to a volume of the New Elozse, 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 bouche to crown the evening with. It was 
 my birthday, and I had for the first time come from a place 
 in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road 
 to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham ; and 
 on passing a certain point, you come all at once upon the 
 valley, which opens like an 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 
 branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was 
 to walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious 
 prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted from Mr.
 
 92 ON GOING A fOUXNEY. 
 
 Coleridge's poems I 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 tnis enchanted spot ; 
 but I would return to it alone. What other self could I find to 
 share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the 
 fragments of which I could hardly conjure up to myself, so 
 much have they been broken and defaced. I could stand on 
 some tall rock, and overlook the precipice of years that 
 separates me from what I then was. I was at that time going 
 shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is 
 he now ? Not only I myself have changed ; the world, which 
 was then new to me, has become old and incorrigible. Yet 
 will I turn to thee in thought, O sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth 
 and gladness as thou then wert ; and thou shall always be to 
 me the river of Paradise, where I will drink of the waters of 
 life freely 1 
 
 There is hardly anything that shows the short-sightedness or 
 capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. 
 With change of place we change our ideas ; nay, our opinions 
 and feelings. We can by an effort indeed transport ourselves 
 to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the 
 mind revives again ; but we forget those that we have just left. 
 It seems that we can think but of one place at a time. The 
 canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we paint one 
 set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. We 
 cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. 
 The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take 
 our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no other image of 
 beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of it ; 
 the horizon that shuts it from our sight also blots it from our 
 memory like a dream. In travelling through a wild, barren
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 93 
 
 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 Fopling 
 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 signification 
 of that immense mass of territory and population, known by the 
 name of China to us? An inch of pasteboard on a wooden 
 globe, of no more account than a China orange ! Things 
 near us are seen of the size of life : things at a distance are 
 diminished to the size of the understanding. We 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 
 mechanical 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 threads. So in coming 
 to a place where we have formerly lived, and with which we 
 have intimate associations, every one must have found that the 
 feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from 
 the mere anticipation of the actual impression : we 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 forgotten ! To return to the question I have quitted 
 nbove : 
 
 I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in 
 company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for 
 the former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, and 
 will bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit,
 
 94 ON GOING A JOURNEY, 
 
 but communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of 
 criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, 
 picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party of 
 pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall go to : 
 in taking a solitary ramble, the 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. I can myself do 
 the honours indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I 
 once took a party to Oxford with no mean Mai 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 cottages 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 commonplace 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 intervals to hear the sound of 
 my own language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the 
 mind of an Englishman to foreign manners and notions that 
 requires the assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As 
 the distance from home increases, this relief, which was at first 
 a luxury, becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would 
 almost feel stifled to find himself in the deserts of Arabia 
 without friends and countrymen : there must be allowed to be 
 something in the view of Athens or old Rome that claims the 
 utterance of speech ; and I own that the Pyramids are too 
 mighty for any single contemplation. In such situations, so 
 opposite to all one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species 
 by one's-self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet 
 with instant fellowship and support. Yet I did not feel this 
 want or craving very pressing once, when I first set my foot on 
 the laughing shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty 
 and delight. The confused, busy murmur of the place was like 
 oil and wine poured into my ears ; nor did the Mariners' Hymn,
 
 ON GOING A JO URNE K 95 
 
 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 
 momentary 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 connections. Our romantic and itinerant char- 
 acter is not to be domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how 
 little foreign travel added to the facilities of conversation in 
 those who had been abroad. In fact, the time we have spent 
 there is both delightful, and, in one sense, instructive ; but it 
 appears to be cut out of our substantial, downright existence, 
 and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the same, but 
 another, and perhaps more enviable 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!
 
 96 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 
 
 " Do you read or sing? If you sing, you sing very ill. 
 
 I HAVE but an indifferent opinion of the prose-style of poets : 
 not that it is not sometimes good, nay, excellent ; but it is 
 never the better, and generally the worse, from the habit of 
 writing verse. Poets are winged animals, and can cleave the 
 air, like birds, with ease to themselves and delight to the 
 beholders ; but like those " feathered, two-legged things," when 
 they light upon the ground of prose and matter-of-fact, they 
 seem not to have the same use of their feet. 
 
 What is a little extraordinary, there is a want of rhythmus 
 and cadence in what they write without the help of metrical 
 rules. Like persons who have been accustomed to sing to 
 music, they are at a loss in the absence of the habitual accom- 
 paniment and guide to their judgment. Their style halts, 
 totters, is loose, disjointed, and without expressive pauses or 
 rapid movements. The measured cadence and regular sing- 
 song of rhyme or blank verse have destroyed, as it were, their 
 natural ear for the mere characteristic harmony which ought to 
 subsist between the sound and the sense. I should almost 
 guess the Author of Waverley to be a writer of ambling verses 
 from the desultory vacillation and want of firmness in the march 
 of his style. There is neither momentum nor elasticity in it ; I 
 mean as to the score, or effect upon the ear. He has improved 
 since in his other works : to be sure, he has had practice 
 enough. Poets either get into this incoherent, undetermined, 
 shuffling style, made up of " unplcasing flats and sharps," of
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 97 
 
 unaccountable starts and pauses, of doubtful odds and ends, 
 flirted about like straws in a gust of wind ; or, to avoid it and 
 steady themselves, mount into a sustained and measured prose 
 (like the translation of Ossian's Poems, or some parts of Shaftes- 
 bury's Characteristics) which is more odious still, and as bad as 
 being at sea in a calm. Dr. Johnson's style (particularly in his 
 Rambler) is not free from the last objection. There is a tune in 
 it, a mechanical recurrence of the same rise and fall in the 
 clauses of his sentences, independent of any reference to the 
 meaning of the text, or progress or inflection of the sense. 
 There is the alternate roll of his cumbrous cargo of words ; his 
 periods complete their revolutions at certain stated intervals, 
 let the matter be longer or shorter, rough or smooth, round or 
 square, different or the same. This monotonous and balanced 
 mode of composition may be compared to that species of 
 portrait-painting which prevailed about a century ago, in which 
 each face was cast in a regular and preconceived mould. The 
 eyebrows were arched mathematically as if with a pair of com- 
 passes, and the distances between the nose and mouth, the 
 forehead and chin, determined according to a " foregone con- 
 clusion," and the features of the identical individual were after- 
 wards accommodated to them, how they could 1* 
 
 Home Tooke used to maintain that no one could write a good 
 prose style who was not accustomed to express himself viva 
 voce, or to talk in company. He argued that this was the fault 
 of Addison's prose, and that its smooth, equable uniformity, and 
 want of sharpness and spirit, arose from his not having 
 familiarised his ear to the sound of his own voice, or at least 
 only among his friends and admirers, where there was but little 
 collision, dramatic fluctuation, or sudden contrariety of opinion 
 to provoke animated discussion, and give birth to different 
 intonations and lively transitions of speech. His style (in this 
 view of it) was not indented, nor did it project from the surface. 
 There was no stress laid on one word more than another it did 
 not hurry on or stop short, or sink or swell with the occasion : 
 
 * See the portraits of Kncller, Richardson, and others. 
 
 579
 
 98 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 
 
 it was throughout equally insipid, flowing, and harmonious, and 
 had the effect of a studied recitation rather than of a natural 
 discourse. This would not have happened (so the Member for 
 Old Sarum contended) had Addison laid himself out to argue at 
 his club, or to speak in public ; for then his ear would have 
 caught the necessary modulations of sound arising out of the 
 feeling of the moment, and he would have transferred them 
 unconsciously to paper. Much might be said on both sides of 
 this question :* but Mr. Tooke was himself an unintentional 
 confirmation of his own argument ; for the tone of his written 
 compositions is as flat and unraised as his manner of speaking 
 was hard and dry. Of the poet it is said by some one, that 
 
 " He murmurs by the running brooks 
 A music sweeter than their own." 
 
 On the contrary, the celebrated person just alluded to might be 
 said to grind the sentences between his teeth which he after- 
 wards committed to paper, and threw out crusts to the critics, or 
 bon-mots to the Electors of Westminster (as we throw bones to 
 the dogs) without altering a muscle, and without the smallest 
 tremulousness of voice or eye !t I certainly so far agree with 
 the above theory as to conceive that no style is worth a farthing 
 that is not calculated to be read out, or that is not allied to 
 spirited conversation : but I at the same time think the process 
 of modulation and inflection may be quite as complete, or more 
 so, without the external enunciation ; and that an author had, 
 better try the effect of his sentences on his stomach than on his 
 
 * Goldsmith was not a talker, though he blurted out his good things 
 now and then : yet his style is gay and voluble enough. Pope was also 
 a silent man ; and his prose is timid and constrained, and his verse 
 inclining to the monotonous. 
 
 f- As a singular example of steadiness of nerves, Mr. Tooke on one 
 occasion had got upon the table at a public dinner to return thanks for 
 his health having been drunk. lie held a bumper of wine in his hand, 
 but he was received with considerable opposition by one party, and at 
 the end of the disturbance, which lasted for a quarter of an hour, he 
 found the wine glass still full to the brim.
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 99 
 
 ear. He may be deceived by the last, not by the first. No 
 person, I imagine, can dictate a good style, or spout his own 
 compositions with impunity. In the former case, he will 
 flounder on before the sense or words are ready, sooner than 
 suspend his voice in air ; and in the latter, he can supply what 
 intonation he pleases, without consulting his readers. Parlia- 
 mentary speeches sometimes read well aloud ; but we do not 
 find, when such persons sit down to write, that the prose- 
 style of public speakers and great orators is the best, most 
 natural, or varied of all others. It has almost always either 
 a professional twang, a mechanical rounding off, or else 
 is stunted and unequal. Charles Fox was the most rapid 
 and even hurried of speakers ; but his written style halts and 
 creeps slowly along the ground.* A speaker is necessarily kept 
 within bounds in expressing certain things, or in pronouncing a 
 certain number of words, by the limits of the breath or power of 
 respiration : certain sounds are observed to join in harmoniously 
 or happily with others : an emphatic phrase must not be placed 
 where the power of utterance is enfeebled or exhausted, etc. 
 All this must be attended to in writing (and will be so uncon- 
 sciously by a practised hand), or there will be hiatus in 
 
 * I have been told, that when Sheridan was first introduced to Mr. 
 Fox, what cemented an immediate intimacy between them was the 
 following circumstance. Mr. Sheridan had been the night before to 
 the House of Commons ; and being asked what his impression was, 
 said he had been principally struck with the difference of manner 
 between Mr. Fox and Lord Stormont. The latter began by declaring 
 in a slow, solemn, drawling, nasal tone that ' ' when he considered the 
 enormity and the unconstitutional tendency of the measures just pro- 
 posed, he was hurried away in a torrent of passion and a whirlwind of 
 impetuosity," pausing between every word and syllable ; while the first 
 said (speaking with the rapidity of lightning, and with breathless 
 anxiety and impatience), that "such was the magnitude, such the 
 importance, such the vital interest of this question, that he could not 
 help imploring, he could not help adjuring the House to come to it 
 with the utmost calmness, the utmost coolness, the utmost delibera- 
 tion." This trait of discrimination instantly won Mr. Fox's heart.
 
 ioo ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 
 
 manuscripts. The words must be so arranged, in order to 
 make an efficient readable style, as " to come trippingly off the 
 tongue," Hence it seems that there is a natural measure of 
 prose in the feeling of the subject and the power of expression 
 in the voice, as there is an artificial one of verse in the number 
 and co-ordination of the syllables ; and I conceive that the 
 trammels of the last do not (where they have been long worn) 
 greatly assist the freedom or the exactness of the first. 
 
 Again, in poetry, from the restraints in many respects, a 
 greater number of inversions, or a latitude in the transposition 
 of words is allowed, which is not conformable to the strict laws 
 of prose. Consequently, a poet will be at a loss, and flounder 
 about for the common or (as we understand it) natural order of 
 words in prose-composition. Dr. Johnson endeavoured to give 
 an air of dignity and novelty to his diction by affecting the order 
 of words usual in poetry. Milton's prose has not only this 
 drawback, but it has also the disadvantage of being formed on 
 a classic model. It is like a fine translation from the Latin ; 
 and indeed, he wrote originally in Latin. The frequency of 
 epithets and ornaments, too, is a resource for which the poet 
 finds it difficult to obtain an equivalent. A direct, or simple 
 prose-style seems to him bald and flat ; and instead of forcing 
 an interest in the subject by severity of description and 
 reasoning, he is repelled from it altogether by the absence 
 of those obvious and meretricious allurements by which his 
 senses and his imagination have been hitherto stimulated and 
 dazzled. Thus there is often at the same time a want of 
 splendour and a want of energy in what he writes, without the 
 invocation of the Muse invita Minerva. It is like setting a 
 rope-dancer to perform a tumbler's tricks the hardness of the 
 ground jars his nerves ; or it is the same thing as a painter's 
 attempting to carve a block of marble for the first time the 
 coldness chills him, the colourless uniformity distracts him, the 
 precision of form demanded disheartens him. So in prose 
 writing, the severity of composition required damps the en- 
 thusiasm, and cuts off the resources of the poet. He is looking 
 for beauty when he should be seeking for truth ; and aims at
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 101 
 
 pleasure, which he can only communicate by increasing the 
 sense of power in the reader. The poet spreads the colours of 
 fancy, the illusions of his own mind, round every object, ad 
 libitum; the prose-writer is compelled to extract his materials 
 patiently, and bit by bit, from his subject. What he adds of 
 ornament, what he borrows from the pencil, must be sparing, and 
 judiciously inserted. The first pretends to nothing but the 
 immediate indulgence of his feelings : the last has a remote 
 practical purpose. The one strolls out into the adjoining fields 
 or groves to gather flowers : the other has a journey to go, 
 sometimes through dirty roads, and at others through untrodden 
 and difficult ways. It is this effeminacy, this immersion in 
 sensual ideas, or craving after continual excitement, that spoils 
 the poet for his prose-tasks. He cannot wait till the effect 
 comes of itself, or arises out of the occasion : he must force it 
 upon all occasions, or his spirit droops and flags under a 
 supposed imputation of dulness. He can never drift with the 
 current, but is always hoisting sail, and has his streamers 
 flying. He has got a striking simile on hand ; he lugs it in 
 with the first opportunity, and with little connexion, and so 
 defeats his object. He has a story to tell : he tells it in the first 
 page, and where it would come in well, has nothing to say ; 
 like Goldsmith, who having to wait upon a Noble Lord, was so 
 full of himself and of the figure he should make, that he 
 addressed a set speech, which he had studied for the occasion, 
 to his Lordship's butler, and had just ended as the nobleman 
 made his appearance. The prose- ornaments of the poet are 
 frequently beautiful in themselves, but do not assist the subject. 
 They are pleasing excrescences hindrances, not helps in an 
 argument. The reason is, his embellishments in his own walk 
 grow out of the subject by natural association ; that is, beauty 
 gives birth to kindred beauty, grandeur leads the mind on to 
 greater grandeur. But in treating a common subject, the link 
 is truth, force of illustration, weight of argument, not a graceful 
 harmony in the immediate ideas ; and hence the obvious and 
 habitual clue which before guided him is gone, and he hangs 
 on his patchwork, tinsel finery at random, in despair, without
 
 102 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 
 
 propriety, and without effect. The poetical prose-writer stops 
 to describe an object, if he admires it, or thinks it wiH bear 
 to be dwelt on : the genuine prose-writer only alludes to or 
 characterises it in passing, and with reference to his subject. 
 The, prose-writer is master of his materials : the poet is the 
 slave of his style. Everything showy, everything extraneous 
 tempts him, and he reposes idly on it : he is bent on pleasure, 
 not on business. He aims at effect, at captivating the reader, 
 and yet is contented with commonplace ornaments, rather than 
 none. Indeed, this last result must necessarily follow, where 
 there is an ambition to shine, without the effort to dig for 
 jewels in the mine of truth. The habits of a poet's mind are 
 not those of industry or research : his images come to him, he 
 does not go to them ; and in prose-subjects, and dry matters-of- 
 fact and close reasoning, the natural stimulus that at other 
 times warms and rouses, deserts him altogether. He sees no 
 unhallowed visions, he is inspired by no day-dreams. All is 
 tame, literal, and barren, without the Nine. Nor does he 
 collect his strength to strike fire from the flint by the sharpness 
 of collison, by the eagerness of his blows. He gathers roses, 
 he steals colours from the rainbow. He lives on nectar and 
 ambrosia. He " treads the primrose path of dalliance," or 
 ascends " the highest heaven of invention," or falls flat to the 
 ground. He is nothing, if not fancijul ! 
 
 I shall proceed to explain these remarks, as well as I can, by 
 a few instances in point. 
 
 It has always appeared to me that the most perfect prose- 
 style, the most powerful, the most dazzling, the most daring, 
 that which went the nearest to the verge of poetry, and yet 
 never fell over, was Burke' s. It has the solidity and 
 sparkling effect of the diamond : all other fine writing 
 is like French paste or Bristol-stones in the comparison. 
 Burke's style is airy, flighty, adventurous, but it never 
 loses sight of the subject ; nay, is always in contact 
 with, and derives its increased or varying impulse from 
 it. It may be said to paes yawning gulfs " on the unsteadfast 
 footing of a spear;" still it has an actual resting-place and
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 103 
 
 tangible support under it it is not suspended on nothing. It 
 differs from poetry, as I conceive, like the chamois from the 
 eagle ; it climbs to an almost equal height, touches upon a 
 cloud, overlooks a precipice, is picturesque, sublime but all 
 the while, instead of soaring through the air, it stands upqn a 
 rocky cliff, clambers up by abrupt and intricate ways, and 
 browses on the roughest bark, or crops the tender flower. The 
 principle which guides his pen is truth, not beauty not 
 pleasure, but power. He has no choice, no selection of subject 
 to flatter the reader's idle taste, or assist his own fancy : he 
 must take what comes, and make the most of it. He works 
 the most striking effects out of the most unpromising materials, 
 by the mere activity of his mind. He rises with the lofty, 
 descends with the mean, luxuriates in beauty, gloats over 
 deformity It is all the same to him, so that he loses no 
 particle of the exact, characteristic, extreme impression of the 
 thing he writes about, and that he communicates this to the 
 reader, after exhausting every possible mode of illustration, 
 plain or abstracted, figurative or literal. Whatever stamps the 
 original image more distinctly on the mind is welcome. The 
 nature of his task precludes continual beauty ; but it does not 
 preclude continual ingenuity, force, originality. He had to 
 treat of political questions, mixed modes, abstract ideas, and 
 his fancy (or poetry, if you will) was ingrafted on these 
 artificially, and as it might sometimes be thought, violently, 
 instead of growing naturally out of them, as it would spring of 
 its own accord from individual objects and feelings. There is a 
 resistance in the matter to the illustration applied to it the 
 concrete and abstract are hardly co-ordinate ; and therefore it 
 is that, when the first difficulty is overcome, they must agree 
 more closely in the essential qualities, in order that the coinci- 
 dence may be complete. Otherwise, it is good for nothing ; 
 and you justly charge the author's style with being loose, vague, 
 flaccid, and imbecile. The poet has been said 
 
 " To make us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight in endless lays."
 
 104 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 
 
 Not so the prose-writer, who always mingles clay with his gold, 
 and often separates truth from mere pleasure. He can only 
 arrive at the last through the first. In poetry, one pleasing or 
 striking image obviously suggests another : the increasing the 
 sense of beauty or grandeur is the principle of composition : in 
 prose, the professed object is to impart conviction, and nothing 
 can be admitted by way of ornament or relief that does not add 
 new force or clearness to the original conception. The two 
 classes of ideas brought together by the orator or impassioned 
 prose- writer, to wit, the general subject and the particular image, 
 are so far incompatible, and the identity must be more strict, 
 more marked, more determinate, to make them coalesce to 
 any practical purpose. Every word should be a blow : every 
 thought should instantly grapple with its fellow. There must 
 be a weight, a precision, a conformity from association in the 
 tropes and figures of animated prose to fit them to their place 
 in the argument, and make them tell, which may be dispensed 
 with in poetry, where there is something much more congenial 
 between the subject-matter and the illustration 
 
 " Like beauty making beautiful old rime I" 
 
 What can be more remote, for instance, and at the same time 
 more apposite, more the same, than the following comparison of 
 the English Constitution to "the proud Keep of Windsor," in 
 the celebrated Letter to a Noble Lord? 
 
 " Such are their ideas ; such their religion, and such their 
 law. But as to our country and our race, as long as the well- 
 compacted structure of our Church and State, the sanctuary, 
 the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, 
 defended by power a fortress at once and a temple* shall 
 stand inviolate on the brow of the British Zion ; as long as the 
 British Monarchy not more limited than fenced by the orders 
 of the State shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in 
 the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its 
 
 * " Templum in modum arcis." 
 
 Tacitus, of the Temple of Jerusalem.
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 105 
 
 kindred and coeval towers ; as long as this awful structure shall 
 oversee and guard the subjected land, so long the mounds and 
 dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear 
 from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long as 
 our Sovereign Lord the King, and his faithful subjects, the 
 Lords and Commons of this realm the triple cord which no 
 man can break ; the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge 
 of this nation ; the firm guarantees of each other's being, and 
 each other's rights ; the joint and several securities, each in its 
 place and order, for every kind, and every quality of properly 
 and of dignity as long as these endure, so long the Duke of 
 Bedford is safe : and we are all safe together the high from 
 the blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity ; the low 
 from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of 
 contempt. Amen ! and so be it : and so it will be, 
 
 4 Dum domus JEn&e Capitoli immobile saxum 
 Accolet ; imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.' " 
 
 Nothing can well be more impracticable to a simile than the 
 vague and complicated idea which is here embodied in one ; 
 yet how finely, how nobly it stands out, in natural grandeur, in 
 royal state, with double barriers round it to answer for its 
 identity, with " buttress, frieze, and coigne of 'vantage " for the 
 imagination to " make its pendant bed and procreant cradle," 
 till the idea is confounded with the object representing it the 
 wonder of a kingdom ; and then how striking, how determined 
 the descent, "at one fell swoop," to the "low, fat, Bedford 
 level 1" Poetry would have been bound to maintain a certain 
 decorum, a regular balance between these two ideas ; sterling 
 prose throws aside all such idle respect to appearances, and 
 with its pen, like a sword, " sharp and sweet," lays open the 
 naked truth ! The poet's Muse is like a mistress, whom we 
 keep only while she is young and beautiful, durante bene 
 placito ; the Muse of prose is like a wife, whom we take during 
 life, for better for worse. Burke's execution, like that of all 
 good prose, savours of the texture of what he describes, and 
 his pen slides or drags over the ground of his subject, like the
 
 106 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 
 
 painter's pencil. The most rigid fidelity and the most fanciful 
 extravagance meet, and are reconciled in his pages. I never 
 pass Windsor but I think of this passage in Burke, and hardly 
 know to which I am indebted most for enriching my moral 
 sense, that, or the fine picturesque stanza in Gray, 
 
 " From Windsor's heights the expanse below 
 Of mead, of lawn, of wood survey, " etc. 
 
 I might mention that the so-much-admired description, in one 
 of the India speeches, of Kyder Ally's army (I think it is) 
 which "now hung like a cloud upon the mountain, and now 
 burst upon the plain like a thunderbolt," would do equally well 
 for poetry or prose. It is a bold and striking illustration of a 
 naturally impressive object. This is not the case with the 
 Abbe Sieyes's far-famed " pigeon-holes," nor with the compari- 
 son of the Duke of Bedford to "the Leviathan, tumbling about 
 his unwieldy bulk in the ocean of royal bounty." Nothing 
 here saves the description but the force of the invective ; the 
 startling truth, the vehemence, the remoteness, the aptitude, 
 the perfect peculiarity and coincidence of the allusion. No 
 writer would ever have thought of it but himself ; no reader can 
 ever forget it. What is there in common, one might say, 
 between a Peer of the Realm, and " that sea-beast," of those 
 
 " Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream?" 
 
 Yet Burke has knit the two ideas together, and no man can put 
 them asunder. No matter how slight and precarious the con- 
 nection, the length of line it is necessary for the fancy to give 
 out in keeping hold of the object on which it has fastened, he 
 seems to have " put his hook in the nostrils " of this enormous 
 creature of the crown, that empurples all its track through the 
 glittering expanse of a profound and restless imagination 1 
 
 To my taste, the Author of Rimini, and Editor of the 
 Examiner, is among the best and least corrupted of our 
 poetical prose-writers. In his light but well-supported columns 
 we find the raciness, the sharpness, and sparkling effect of 
 poetry, with little that is extravagant or far-fetched, and no
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 107 
 
 turgidity or pompous pretension. Perhaps there is too much 
 the appearance of relaxation and trifling (as if he had escaped 
 the shackles of rhyme), a caprice, a levity, and a disposition to 
 innovate in words and ideas. Still the genuine master-spirit of 
 the prose-writer is there ; the tone of lively, sensible conversa- 
 tion ; and this may in part arise from the author's being himself 
 an animated talker. Mr. Hunt wants something of the heat 
 and earnestness of the political partisan ; but his familiar and 
 miscellaneous papers have all the ease, grace, and point of 
 the best style of Essay-writing. Many of his effusions in the 
 Indicator show, that if he had devoted himself exclusively to 
 that mode of writing, he inherits more of the spirit of Steele 
 than any man since his time. 
 
 Lord Byron's prose is bad ; that is to say, heavy, laboured, 
 and coarse : he tries to knock some one down with the butt-end 
 of every line, which defeats his object and the style of the 
 Author of Waverley (if he comes fairly into this discussion) as 
 mere style is villainous. It is pretty plain he is a poet ; for the 
 sound of names runs mechanically in his ears, and he rings the 
 changes unconsciously on the same words in a sentence, like 
 the same rhymes in a couplet. 
 
 Not to spin out this discussion too much, I would conclude 
 by observing, that some of the old English prose-writers (who 
 were not poets) are the best, and, at the same time, the most 
 poetical in the favourable sense. Among these we may reckon 
 some of the old divines, and Jeremy Taylor at the head of them. 
 There is a flush like the dawn over his writings ; the sweetness 
 of the rose, the freshness of the morning dew. There is a soft- 
 ness in his style, proceeding from the tenderness of his heart : 
 but his head is firm, and his hand is free. His materials are as 
 finely wrought up as they are original and attractive in them- 
 selves. Milton's prose-style savours too much of poetry, and, as 
 I have already hinted, of an imitation of the Latin. Dryden's 
 is perfectly unexceptionable, and a model, in simplicity, strength, 
 and perspicuity, for the subjects he treated o
 
 io8 GENIUS AND JTS POWERS. 
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS 
 POWERS ? 
 
 No really great man ever thought himself so. The idea of 
 greatness in the mind answers but ill to our knowledge or to 
 our ignorance of ourselves. What living prose-writer, for 
 instance, would think of comparing himself with Burke? Yet 
 would it not have been equal presumption or egotism in him to 
 fancy himself equal to those who had gone before him 
 Bolingbroke, or Johnson, or Sir William Temple? Because 
 his rank in letters is become a settled point with us, we conclude 
 that it must have been quite as self-evident to him, and that he 
 must have been perfectly conscious of his vast superiority to 
 the rest of the world. Alas 1 not so. No man is truly himself 
 but in the idea which others entertain of him. The mind, 
 as well as the eye, " sees not itself, but by reflection from some 
 other thing." What parity can there be between the effect of 
 habitual composition on the mind of the individual, and the sur- 
 prise occasioned by first reading a fine passage in an admired 
 author ; between what we do with ease, and what we thought 
 it next to impossible ever to have done ; between the reveren- 
 tial awe we have for years encouraged, without seeing reason 
 to alter it, for distinguished genius, and the slow, reluctant, 
 unwelcome conviction that after infinite toil and repeated 
 disappointments, and when it is too late and to little purpose, 
 we have ourselves at length accomplished what we at first 
 proposed ; between the insignificance of our petty, personal 
 pretensions, and the vastness and splendour which the atmos- 
 phere of imagination lends to an illustrious name ? He who
 
 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS. 109 
 
 comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have 
 had a very low standard of it in his mind. " What a pity," 
 said some one, "that Milton had not the pleasure of read- 
 ing ( Paradise Lost ! ' " He could not read it as we do, 
 with the weight of impression that a hundred years of admir- 
 ation have added to it " a phoenix gazed by all " with the 
 sense of the number of editions it has passed through with 
 still increasing reputation, with the tone of solidity, time-proof, 
 which it has received from the breath of cold, envious 
 maligners, with the sound which the voice of Fame has lent 
 to every line of it ! The writer of an ephemeral production 
 may be as much dazzled with it as the public : it may sparkle 
 in his own eyes for a moment, and be soon forgotten by every 
 one else. But no one can anticipate the suffrages of posterity. 
 Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. 
 He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long 
 it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, 
 wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it. He must be 
 indifferent to his own merits before he can feel a confidence 
 in them. Besides, everyone must be sensible of a thousand 
 weaknesses and deficiencies in himself; whereas Genius only 
 leaves behind it the monuments of its strength. A great name 
 is an abstraction of some one excellence : but whoever fancies 
 himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, 
 may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of 
 excellence or defect, of himself or others. Mr. Burke, besides 
 being the author of the Reflections, and the Letter to a Noble 
 Lord, had a wife and son ; and had to think as much about 
 them as we do about him. The imagination gains nothing by 
 the minute details of personal knowledge. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be said that no man knows so well 
 as the author of any performance what it has cost him, and the 
 length of time and study devoted to it. This is one, among 
 other reasons, why no man can pronounce an opinion upon 
 himself. The happiness of the result bears no proportion 
 to the difficulties overcome or the pains taken. Materiam 
 superabat opus (the workmanship surpasses the materials) is
 
 no GENIUS AND ITS POWERS, 
 
 an old and fatal complaint. The definition of genius is that 
 it acts unconsciously ; and those who have produced immortal 
 works have done so without knowing how or why. The 
 greatest power operates unseen, and executes its appointed 
 task with as little ostentation as difficulty. Whatever is done 
 best is done from the natural bent and disposition of the 
 mind. It is only where our incapacity begins that we begin 
 to feel the obstacles, and to set an undue value on our triumph 
 over them. Correggio, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, did what 
 they did without premeditation or effort their works came 
 from their minds as a natural birth if you had asked them 
 why they adopted this or that style, they would have answered, 
 because they could not help if, and because they knew of no 
 other. So Shakespeare says : 
 
 " Our poesy is as a gum which oozes 
 From whence 'tis nourished : the fire i' the flint 
 Shows not till it be struck : our gentle flame 
 Provokes itself; and, like the current, flies 
 Each bound it chafes." 
 
 Shakespeare himself was an example of his own rule, and 
 appears to have owed almost everything to industry or design. 
 His poetry flashes from him like the lightning from the summer- 
 cloud, or the stroke from the sun-flower. When we look at the 
 admirable comic designs of Hogarth, they seem from the 
 unfinished state in which they are left, and from the freedom of 
 the pencilling, to have cost him little trouble ; whereas the 
 " Sigismunda " is a very laboured and comparatively feeble 
 performance, and he accordingly set great store by it. He also 
 thought highly of his portraits, and boasted that "he could 
 paint equal to Vandyke, give him his time, and let him choose 
 his subject." This was the very reason why he could not. 
 Vandyke's excellence consisted in this, that he could paint a 
 fine portrait of anyone at sight : let him take ever so much 
 pains or choose ever so bad a subject, he could not help making 
 something of it. His eye, his mind, his hand was cast in the 
 mould of grace and delicacy. Milton, again, is understood to
 
 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS, rn 
 
 have preferred " Paradise Regained " to his other works. This, 
 if so, was either because he himself was conscious of having 
 failed in it, or because others thought he had. We are willing to 
 think well of that which we know wants our favourable opinion, 
 and to prop the rickety bantling. Every step taken, invidt 
 Minerva, costs us something, and is set down to account ; 
 whereas we are borne on the full tide of genius and success into 
 the very haven of our desires almost imperceptibly. The 
 strength of the impulse by which we are carried along prevents 
 the sense of difficulty or resistance : the true inspiration of the 
 Muse is soft and balmy as the air we breathe ; and indeed 
 leaves us little to boast of, for the effect hardly seems to be our 
 own. 
 
 There are two persons who always appear to me to have 
 worked under this involuntary, silent impulse more than any 
 others ; I mean Rembrandt and Correggio. It is not known 
 that Correggio ever saw a picture of any great master. He 
 lived and died obscurely in an obscure village. We have few of 
 his works, but they are all perfect. What truth, what grace, 
 what angelic sweetness are there 1 Not one line or tone that is 
 not divinely soft or exquisitely fair ; the painter's mind rejecting, 
 by a natural process, all that is discordant, coarse, or unpleasing. 
 The whole is an emanation of pure thought. The work grew 
 under his hand as if of itself, and came out without a flaw, like 
 the diamond from the rock. He knew not what he did ; and 
 looked at each modest grace as it stole from the canvas with 
 anxious delight and wonder. Ah ! gracious God ! not he alone ; 
 how many more in all time have looked at their works with the 
 same feelings, not knowing but they too may have done some- 
 thing divine, immortal, and finding in that sole doubt ample 
 amends for pining solitude, for want, neglect, and an untimely 
 fate. Oh ! for one hour of that uneasy rapture, when the mind 
 first thinks that it has struck out something that may last for 
 ever ; when the germ of excellence bursts from nothing on the 
 startled sight ! Take, take away the gaudy triumphs of the 
 world, the long deathless shout of fame, and give back that 
 heartfelt sigh with which the youthful enthusiast first weds
 
 1 1 2 GENIUS AND ITS PO WERS. 
 
 immortality as his secret bride 1 And thou too, Rembrandt ! 
 Thou wert a man of genius if ever painter was a man of 
 genius ! did this dream hang over you as you painted that 
 strange picture of " Jacob's Ladder ? " Did your eye strain over 
 those gradual dusky clouds into futurity, or did those white- 
 vested, beaked figures babble to you of fame as they approached ? 
 Did you know what you were about, or did you not paint much 
 as it happened ? Oh 1 if you had thought once about yourself, 
 or anything but the subject, it would have been all over with 
 " the glory, the intuition, the amenity," the dream had fled, the 
 spell had been broken. The hills would not have looked like 
 those we see in sleep that tatterdemalion figure of Jacob, 
 thrown on one side, would not have slept as if the breath was 
 fairly taken out of his body. So much do Rembrandt's pictures 
 savour of the soul and body of reality, that the thoughts seem 
 identical with the objects if there had been the least question 
 what he should have done, or how he should do it, or how far 
 he had succeeded, it would have spoiled everything. Lumps of 
 light hung upon his pencil and fell upon his canvas like dew- 
 drops : the shadowy veil was drawn over his backgrounds by 
 the dull, obtuse finger of night, making darkness visible by still 
 greater darkness that could only be felt 1 
 
 Cervantes is another instance of a man of genius, whose work 
 may be said to have sprung from his mind, like Minerva from 
 the head of Jupiter. Don Quixote and Sancho were a kind of 
 twins ; and the jests of the latter, as he says, fell from him like 
 drops of rain when he least thought of it. Shakespeare's 
 creations were more multiform, but equally natural and un- 
 studied. Raphael and Milton seem partial exceptions to this 
 rule. Their productions were the composite order; and those 
 of the latter sometimes even amount to centos. Accordingly, 
 we find Milton quoted among those authors who have left 
 proofs of their entertaining a high opinion of themselves, and of 
 cherishing a strong aspiration after fame. Some of Shake- 
 speare's sonnets have been also cited to the same purpose ; but 
 they seem rather to convey wayward and dissatisfied complaints 
 of his untoward fortune than anything like a triumphant and
 
 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS. 113 
 
 confident reliance on his future renown. He appears to have 
 stood more alone and to have thought less about himself than 
 any living being. One reason for this indifference may have 
 been, that as a writer he was tolerably successful in his life-time, 
 and no doubt produced his works with very great facility. 
 
 I hardly know whether to class Claude Lorraine as among 
 those who succeeded most " through happiness or pains." It 
 is certain that he imitated no one, and has had no successful 
 imitator. The perfection of his landscapes seems to have been 
 owing to an inherent quality of harmony, to an exquisite sense 
 of delicacy in his mind. His monotony has been complained of 
 which is apparently produced from a preconceived idea in his 
 mind ; and not long ago I heard a person, not more distinguished 
 for the subtilty than the naiveti of his sarcasms, remark, " Oh ! 
 I never look at Claude : if one has seen one of his pictures, one 
 has seen them all ; they are every one alike : there is the same 
 sky, the same climate, the same time of day, the same tree, and 
 that tree is like a cabbage. To be sure, they say he did pretty 
 well ; but when a man is always doing one thing, he ought to do 
 it pretty well." There is no occasion to write the name under 
 this criticism, and the best answer to it is that it is true his 
 pictures always are the same, but we never wish them to be 
 otherwise. Perfection is one thing. I confess I think that 
 Claude knew this, and felt that his were the finest landscapes in 
 the world that ever had been, or would ever be. 
 
 I am not in the humour to pursue this argument any farther 
 at present, but to write a digression. If the reader is ntot 
 already apprised of it, he will please to take notice that I write 
 this at Winterslow. My style there is apt to be redundant and 
 excursive. At other times it may be cramped, dry, abrupt ; but 
 here it flows like a river, and overspreads its banks. I have not 
 to seek for thoughts or hunt for images : they come of them- 
 selves, I inhale them with the breeze, and the silent groves are 
 vocal with a thousand recollections 
 
 " And visions, as poetic eyes avow, 
 Hang on each leaf, and cling to ev'ry bough." 
 
 580
 
 ii4 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS. 
 
 Here I came fifteen years ago, a willing exile ; and as I trod 
 the lengthened greensward by the low woodside, repeated the 
 old line, 
 
 " My mind to me a kingdom is ! " 
 
 I found it so then, before, and since ; and shall I faint, now 
 that I have poured out the spirit of that mind to the world, and 
 treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, and power, 
 because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since 
 for not being a Government tool? Here I returned a few 
 years after to finish some works I had undertaken, doubtful of 
 the event, but determined to do my best ; and wrote that 
 character of Millimant which was once transcribed by fingers 
 fairer than Aurora's, but no notice was taken of it, because I 
 ras not a Government tool, and must be supposed devoid of 
 taste and elegance by all who aspired to these qualities in their 
 own persons. Here I sketched my account of that old honest 
 Signior Orlando Friscobaldo, which with its fine, racy, acrid 
 tone that old crab-apple, Gifford, would have relished or 
 pretended to relish, had I been a Government tool I Here, too, 
 I have written Table-Talks without number, and as yet without 
 a falling-off, till now that they are nearly done, or I should not 
 make this boast. I could swear (were they not mine) the 
 thoughts in many of them are founded as the rock, free as air, 
 the tone like an Italian picture. What then ? Had the style 
 been like polished steel, as firm and as bright, it would have 
 availed me nothing, for I am not a Government tool ! I had 
 endeavoured to guide the taste of the English people to the 
 best old English writers ; but I had said that English kings did 
 not reign by right divine, and that his present Majesty was 
 descended from an Elector of Hanover in a right line ; and no 
 loyal subject would after this look into Webster or Decker 
 because I had pointed them out. I had done something (more 
 than anyone except Schlegel) to vindicate the Characters of 
 Shakespeare 's Plays from the stigma of French criticism : but 
 our Anti-Jacobin and Anti-Gallican writers soon found out that 
 I had said and written that Frenchmen, Englishmen, men were
 
 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS. 115 
 
 not slaves by birthright. This was enough to damn the work. 
 Such has been the head and front of my offending. While my 
 friend Leigh Hunt was writing the Descent of Liberty ; and 
 strewing the march of the Allied Sovereigns with flowers, I 
 sat by the waters of Babylon and hung my harp upon the 
 willows. I knew all along there was but one alternative the 
 cause of kings or of mankind. This I foresaw, this I feared ; 
 the world would see it now, when it is too late. Therefore I 
 lamented, and would take no comfort when the mighty fell, 
 because we, all men, fell with him, like lightning from heaven, 
 to grovel in the grave of Liberty, in the style of Legitimacy ! 
 There is but one question in the hearts of monarchs whether 
 mankind are their property or not. There was but this one 
 question in mine. I had made an abstract, metaphysical prin- 
 ciple of this question. I was not the dupe of the voice of the 
 charmers. By my hatred of tyrants I knew what their hatred 
 of the freeborn spirit of man must be, of the semblance, of the 
 very name of Liberty and Humanity. And while others bowed 
 their heads to the image of the BEAST, I spat upon it and 
 buffeted it, and made mouths at it, and pointed at it, and 
 drew aside the veil that then half concealed it but has 
 been since thrown off, and named it by its right name ; and it is 
 not to be supposed that my having penetrated their mystery 
 would go unrequited by those whose darling and whose delight 
 the idol, half-brute, half-demon, was, and who were ashamed to 
 acknowledge the image and superscription as their own ! Two 
 half-friends of mine, who would not make a whole one between 
 them, agreed the other day that the indiscriminate, incessant 
 abuse of what I write was mere prejudice and party spirit, and 
 that what I do in periodicals and without a name does well, 
 pays well, and is " cried out upon in the top of the compass." 
 It is this indeed that has saved my shallow skiff from quite 
 foundering on Tory spite and rancour ; for when people have 
 been reading and approving an article in a miscellaneous 
 journal, it does not do to say when they discover the author 
 afterwards (whatever might have been the case before) it is 
 written by a blockhead ; and even Mr. Jerdan recommends the
 
 u6 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS. 
 
 volume of Characteristics as an excellent little work, because it 
 has no cabalistic name in the title-page, and swears " there is 
 a first-rate article of forty pages in the last number of the 
 Edinburgh from Jeffrey's own hand," though when he learns 
 against his will that it is mine, he devotes three successive 
 numbers of the Literary Gazette to abuse " that strange article 
 in the last number of the Edinburgh Review" Others who 
 had not this advantage have fallen a sacrifice to the obloquy 
 attached to the suspicion of doubting, or of being acquainted 
 with anyone who is known to doubt, the divinity of kings. 
 Poor Keats paid the forfeit of this lezl majeste" with his health 
 and life. What, though his verses were like the breath of 
 spring, and many of his thoughts like flowers would this, with 
 the circle of critics that beset a throne, lessen the crime of their 
 having been praised in the Examiner? The lively and most 
 agreeable editor of that paper has in like manner been driven 
 from his country and his friends who delighted in him, for no 
 other reason than having written the Story of Rimini, and 
 asserted ten years ago, " that the most accomplished prince in 
 Europe was an Adonis of fifty ! " 
 
 " Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past 
 That shrunk thy streams ; return Sicilian Muse 1 " 
 
 I look out of my window and see that a shower has just fallen : 
 the fields look green after it, and a rosy cloud hangs over the 
 brow of the hill ; a lily expands its petals in the moisture, 
 dressed in its lovely green and white ; a shepherd boy has just 
 brought some pieces of turf with daisies and grass for his young 
 mistress to make a bed for her skylark, not doomed to dip his 
 wings in the dappled dawn my cloudy thoughts draw off, the 
 storm of angry politics has blown over Mr. Blackwood, I am 
 yours Mr. Croker, my service to you Mr. T. Moore, I am 
 alive and well Really, it is wonderful how little the worse I 
 am for fifteen years' wear and tear, how I came upon my legs 
 again on the ground of truth and nature, and " look abroad into 
 universality," forgetting that there is any such person as myself 
 in the world !
 
 GENIUS AND ITS PO WERS. 1 1 7 
 
 I have let this passage stand (however critical) because it 
 may serve as a practical illustration to show what authors really 
 think of themselves when put upon the defensive (I confess, 
 the subject has nothing to do with the title at the head of the 
 Essay 1) and as a warning to those who may reckon upon their 
 fair portion of popularity, as the reward of the exercise of an 
 independent spirit and such talents as they possess. It some- 
 times seems at first sight as if the low scurrility and jargon of 
 abuse by which it is attempted t6 overlay all common sense and 
 decency by the tissue of lies and nicknames everlastingly 
 repeated and applied indiscriminately to all those who are not 
 of the regular Government party, was peculiar to the present 
 time, and the anomalous growth of modern criticism ; but if we 
 look back, we shall find the same system acted upon as often as 
 power, prejudice, dulness, and spite found their account in 
 playing the game into one another's hands in decrying popular 
 efforts, and in giving currency to every species of base metal 
 that had their own conventional stamp upon it. The names of 
 Pope and Dryden were assailed with daily and unsparing 
 abuse ; the epithet A. P. E. was levelled at the sacred head of 
 the former ; and if even men like these, having to deal with the 
 consciousness of their own infirmities and the insolence and 
 spurns of wanton enmity, must have found it hard to possess 
 their souls in patience, any living writer amidst such contradic- 
 tory evidence can scarcely expect to retain much calm, steady 
 conviction of his own merits, or build himself a secure reversion 
 in immortality. 
 
 However one may in a fit of spleen and impatience turn 
 round and assert one's claims in the face of low-bred, hireling 
 malice, I will here repeat what I set out with saying, that there 
 never yet was a man of sense and proper spirit who would not 
 decline rather than court a comparison with any of those names 
 whose reputation he really emulates who would not be sorry 
 to suppose that any of the great heirs of memory had as many 
 foibles as he knows himself to possess and who would not 
 shrink from including himself or being included by others in 
 the same praise that was offered to long-established and
 
 n8 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS. 
 
 universally-acknowledged merits, as a kind of profanation. 
 Those who are ready to fancy themselves Raphaels and 
 Homers are very inferior men indeed they have not even an 
 idea of the mighty names that " they take in vain." They are 
 as deficient in pride as in modesty, and have not so much as 
 served an apprenticeship to a true and honourable ambition. 
 They mistake a momentary popularity for lasting renown, and 
 a sanguine temperament for the inspirations of genius. The 
 love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be 
 mixed up with realities it is a solitary abstraction, the secret 
 sigh of the soul 
 
 " It is all one as we should love 
 A bright particular star, and think to wed it." 
 
 A name " fast-anchored in the deep abyss of time " is like a 
 star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal 
 and sublime ; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we 
 should contemplate our translation to the skies. If we are not 
 contented with this feeling on the subject, we shall never sit in 
 Cassiopeia's chair, nor will our names, studding Ariadne's 
 crown or streaming with Berenice's locks, ever make 
 
 " the face of hea/ven so bright, 
 That birds shall sing, and think it were not night." 
 
 Those who are in love only with noise and show, instead of 
 devoting themselves to a life of study, had better hire a booth 
 at Bartlemy Fair, or march at the head of a recruiting regiment 
 with drums beating and colours flying I 
 
 It has been urged, that however little we may be disposed to 
 indulge the reflection at other times or out of mere self- 
 complacency, yet the mind cannot help being conscious of the 
 effort required for any great work while it is about it, of 
 
 " The high endeavour and the glad success." 
 
 I grant that there is a sense of power in such cases, with the 
 exception before stated ; but then this very effort and state 
 of excitement engrosses the mind at the time, and leaves it
 
 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS. 119 
 
 listless and exhausted afterwards. The energy we exert, or 
 the high state of enjoyment we feel, puts us out of conceit 
 with ourselves at other times : compared to what we are in 
 the act of composition, we seem dull, commonplace people, 
 generally speaking ; and what we have been able to perform is 
 rather matter of wonder than of self-congratulation to us. The 
 stimulus of writing is like the stimulus of intoxication, with 
 which we can hardly sympathise in our sober moments, when 
 we are no longer under the inspiration of the demon, or 
 when the virtue is gone out of us. While we are engaged 
 in any work, we are thinking of the subject, and cannot 
 stop to admire ourselves ; and when it is done, we look 
 at it with comparative indifference. I will venture to say, 
 that no one but a pedant ever read his own works regularly 
 through. They are not his they are become mere words, 
 waste-paper, and have none of the glow, the creative 
 enthusiasm, the vehemence, and natural spirit with which 
 he wrote them. When we have once committed our 
 thoughts to paper, written them fairly out, and seen that 
 they are right in the printing, if we are in our right wits, we 
 have done with them for ever. I sometimes try to read an 
 article I have written in some magazine or review (for when 
 they are bound up in a volume, I dread the very sight of them) 
 but stop after a sentence or two, and never recur to the task. 
 I know pretty well what I have to say on the subject, and do 
 not want to go to school to myself. It is the worst instance of 
 the bis repetita crambe in the world. I do not think that even 
 painters have much delight in looking at their works after they 
 are done. While they are in progress, there is a great degree 
 of satisfaction in considering what has been done, or what is 
 still to do but this is hope, is reverie, and ceases with the 
 completion of our efforts. I should not imagine Raphael or 
 Correggio would have much pleasure in looking at their former 
 works, though they might recollect the pleasure they had had 
 in painting them ; they might spy defects in them (for the idea 
 of unattainable perfection still keeps pace with our actual 
 approaches to it), and fancy that they were not worthy of
 
 i2o GENIUS AND ITS POWE&S. 
 
 immortality. The greatest portrait-painter the world ever saw 
 used to write under his pictures, " Titianus faciebat? signifying 
 that they were imperfect ; and in his letter to Charles V. 
 accompanying one of his most admired works, he only spoke 
 of the time he had been about it. Annibal Caracci boasted 
 that he could do like Titian and Correggio, and, like most 
 boasters, was wrong.* 
 
 The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading, while we are 
 young. I have had as much of this pleasure as perhaps 
 anyone. As I grow older, it fades ; or else, the stronger 
 stimulus of writing takes off the edge of it. At present, I have 
 neither time nor inclination for it : yet I should like to devote a 
 year's entire leisure to a course of the English Novelists ; and 
 perhaps clap on that sly old knave, Sir Walter, to the end of 
 the list. It is astonishing how I used formerly to relish the 
 style of certain authors, at a time when I myself despaired of 
 ever writing a single line. Probably this was the reason. It is 
 not in mental as in natural ascent intellectual objects seem 
 higher when we survey them from below, than when we look 
 down from any given elevation above the common level. My 
 three favourite writers about the time I speak of were Burke, 
 Junius, and Rousseau. I was never weary of admiring and 
 wondering at the felicities of the style, the turns of expression, 
 the refinements of thought and sentiment. I laid the book 
 down to find out the secret of so much strength and 
 beauty, and I took it up again in despair, to read on and 
 admire. So I passed whole days, months, and I may 
 add, years ; and have only this to say now, that as my 
 life began, so I could wish that it may end. The last time 
 I tasted this luxury in its full perfection was one day after 
 a sultry day's walk in summer between Farnham and Alton. 
 I was fairly tired out ; I walked into an inn-yard (I think at 
 the latter place) ; I was shown by the waiter to what looked at 
 first like common out-houses at the other end of it, but they 
 
 * See his spirited Letter to his cousin Ludovico, on seeing the 
 pictures at Parma.
 
 GENIUS AND ITS POWERS. 121 
 
 turned out to be a suite of rooms, probably a hundred years 
 old the one I entered opened into an old-fashioned garden, 
 embellished with beds of larkspur and a leaden Mercury ; it 
 was wainscoted, and there was a grave-looking, dark-coloured 
 portrait of Charles II. hanging over the tiled chimney-piece. 
 I had Love for Love in my pocket, and began to read ; coffee 
 was brought in in a silver coffee-pot ; the cream, the bread and 
 butter, everything was excellent, and the flavour of Congreve's 
 style prevailed over all. I prolonged the entertainment till a 
 late hour, and relished this divine comedy better even than 
 when I used to see it played by Miss Mellon, as Miss Prue ; 
 Bob Palmer, as Tattle ; and Bannister, as honest Ben. This 
 circumstance happened just five years ago, and it seems like 
 yesterday. If I count my life so by lustres, it will soon glide 
 away ; yet I shall not have to repine, if, while it lasts, it is 
 enriched with a few such recollections !
 
 122 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 
 
 IN general, wit shines only by reflection. You must take your 
 cue from your company must rise as they rise, and sink 
 as they fall. You must see that your good things, your know ing 
 allusions, are not flung away, like the pearls in the adage. 
 What a check it is to be asked a foolish question ; to find that 
 the first principles are not understood! You are thrown on your 
 back immediately ; the conversation is stopped like a country- 
 dance by those who do not know the figure. But when a set of 
 adepts, of illuminati, get about a question, it is worth while to 
 hear them talk. They may snarl and quarrel over it, like 
 dogs ; but they pick it bare to the bone they masticate it 
 thoroughly. 
 
 This was the case formerly at Lamb's where we used to 
 have many lively skirmishes at their Thursday evening parties. 
 I doubt whether the small-coal man's musical parties could 
 exceed them. Oh 1 for the pen of John Buncle to consecrate 
 a petit souvenir to their memory 1 There was Lamb himself, 
 the most delightful, the most provoking, the most witty and 
 sensible of men. He always made the best pun, and the best 
 remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, 
 like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered 
 out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in half-a-dozen 
 half-sentences as he does. His jests scald like tears ; and 
 he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, 
 laughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth 1 What choice 
 venom ! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters,
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 123 
 
 while we discussed the haunch of mutton on the table ! How 
 we skimmed the cream of criticism 1 How we got into the 
 heart of controversy 1 How we picked out the marrow of 
 authors 1 " And, in our flowing cups, many a good name and 
 true was freshly remembered." Recollect (most sage and 
 critical reader) that in all this I was but a guest ! Need I go 
 over the names? They were bat the old everlasting set 
 Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addi- 
 son, Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson, 
 Hogarth's prints, Claude's landscapes, the cartoons at Hampton 
 Court, and all those things that, having once been, must ever 
 be. The Scotch novels had not then been heard of : so we said 
 nothing about them. In general, we were hard upon the 
 moderns. The author of the Rambler was only tolerated in 
 Boswell's Life of him ; and it was as much as anyone could do 
 to edge in a word for Junius. Lamb could not bear Gil Bias. 
 This was a fault. I remember the greatest triumph I ever had 
 was in persuading him, after some years' difficulty, that Field- 
 ing was better than Smollett On one occasion, he was for 
 making out a list of persons famous in history that one would 
 wish to see again at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, 
 Sir Thomas Browne, and Dr. Faustus but we blackballed 
 most of his list 1 But with what a gusto would he describe his 
 favourite authors, Donne, or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their 
 most crabbed passages delicious ! He tried them on his palate 
 as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a smack in 
 them, like a roughness on the tongue. With what discrimina- 
 tion he hinted a defect in what he admired most as in 
 saying that the display of the sumptuous banquet in " Paradise 
 Regained " was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was 
 all that was necessary to tempt the extremity of hunger and 
 stating that Adam and Eve in "Paradise Lost" were too much 
 like married people. He has furnished many a text for 
 Coleridge to preach upon. There was no fuss or cant about 
 him : nor were his sweets or his sours ever diluted with one 
 particle of affectation. I cannot say that the party at Lamb's 
 were all of one description. There were honorary members,
 
 124 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 
 
 lay-brothers. Wit and good fellowship was the motto inscribed 
 over the door. When a stranger came in, it was not asked, 
 "Has he written anything?" we were above that pedantry; 
 but we waited to see what he could do. If he could take a 
 hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down. If a person 
 liked anything, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient. 
 He could understand, by analogy, the pungency of other 
 things besides Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. A 
 character was good anywhere, in a room or on paper. But 
 we abhorred insipidity, affectation, and fine gentlemen. There 
 was one of our party who never failed to mark " two for 
 his Nob" at cribbage, and he was thought no mean 
 person. This was Ned Phillips, and a better fellow in 
 
 his way breathes not. There was , who asserted some 
 
 incredible matter-of-fact as a likely paradox, and settled all 
 controversies by an ipse dixit, a fiat of his will, hammering out 
 many a hard theory on the anvil of his brain the Baron 
 Munchausen of politics and practical philosophy ; there was 
 Captain Burney, who had you at an advantage by never 
 understanding you there was Jem White, the Author of 
 FalstajjFs Letters, who the other day left this dull world to go 
 in search of more kindred spirits, " turning like the latter end of 
 a lover's lute " there was Ayrton, who sometimes dropped in, 
 the Will Honeycomb of our set and Mrs. Reynolds, who being 
 of a quiet turn, loved to hear a noisy debate. An utterly 
 uninformed person might have supposed this a scene of vulgar 
 confusion and uproar. While the most critical question was 
 pending, while the most difficult problem in philosophy was 
 solving, Phillips cried out, "That's game," and Martin Burney 
 muttered a quotation over the last remains of a veal-pie at a 
 side-table. Once, and once only, the literary interest overcame 
 the general. For Coleridge was riding the high German horse, 
 and demonstrating the Categories of the Transcendental 
 Philosophy to the Author of the Road to Ruin, who insisted on 
 his knowledge of German, and German metaphysics, having 
 read the Critique of Pure Reason in the original. " My dear 
 Mr. Holcroft," said Coleridge, in a tone of infinitely provoking
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 125 
 
 conciliation, "you really put me in mind of a sweet, pretty 
 German girl, about fifteen, that I met with in the Hartz forest 
 in Germany and who one day, as I was reading the Limits of 
 the Knowable and the Unknowable^ the profoundest of all his 
 works, with great attention, came behind my chair, and leaning 
 over, said, ' What, you read Kant ? Why, / that am a German 
 born don't understand him ! '" This was too much to bear, and 
 Holcroft, starting up, called out in no measured tone, " Mr. 
 Coleridge, you are the most eloquent man I ever met with, and 
 the most troublesome with your eloquence ! " Philips held the 
 cribbage-peg that was to mark him game, suspended in his 
 hand ; and the whist table was silent for a moment. I saw 
 Holcroft downstairs, and, on coming to the landing-place at 
 Mitre Court, he stopped me to observe, that "he thought 
 Mr. Coleridge a very clever man, with a great command of 
 language, but that he feared he did not always affix very precise 
 ideas to the words he used." After he was gone, we had our 
 laugh out, and went on with the argument on the nature of 
 Reason, the Imagination, and the Will. I wish I could find a 
 publisher for it : it would make a supplement to the Biographia 
 Literaria in a volume-and-a-half octavo. 
 
 Those days are over 1 An event, the name of which I wish 
 never to mention, broke up our party, like a bomb-shell thrown 
 into the room : and now we seldom meet 
 
 " Like angels' visits, short and far between." 
 
 There is no longer the same set of persons, nor of associations. 
 Lamb does not live where he did. By shifting his abode, his 
 notions seem less fixed. He does not wear his old snuff-coloured 
 coat and breeches. It looks like an alteration in his style. An 
 author and a wit should have a separate costume, a particular 
 cloth : he should present something positive and singular to the 
 mind, like Mr. Douce of the Museum. Our faith in the religion 
 of letters will not bear to be taken to pieces, and put together 
 again by caprice or accident. Leigh Hunt goes there some- 
 times. He has a fine vinous spirit about him, and tropical blood 
 in his veins : but he is better at his own table. He has a great
 
 126 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 
 
 flow of pleasantry and delightful animal spirits : but his hits do 
 not tell like Lamb's ; you cannot repeat them the next day. He 
 requires not only to be appreciated but to have a select circle of 
 admirers and devotees, to feel himself quite at home. He sits 
 at the head of a party with great gaiety and grace ; has an 
 elegant manner and turn of features ; is never at a loss 
 aliquando sufflaminandus erat has continual sportive sallies 
 of wit or fancy ; tells a story capitally ; mimics an actor or an 
 acquaintance to admiration ; laughs with great glee and good- 
 humour at his own or other people's jokes ; understands the 
 point of an equivoque, or an observation immediately ; has a 
 taste and knowledge of books, of music, of medals ;' manages 
 an argument adroitly ; is genteel and gallant, and has a set of 
 bye-phrases and quaint allusions always at hand to produce a 
 laugh : if he has a fault, it is that he does not listen so well as 
 he speaks, is impatient of interruption, and is fond of being 
 looked up to, without considering by whom. I believe, however, 
 he has pretty well seen the folly of this. Neither is his ready 
 display of personal accomplishment and variety of resources an 
 advantage to his writings. They sometimes present a desultory 
 and slipshod appearance, owing to this very circumstance. The 
 same things that tell, perhaps, best to a private circle round the 
 fireside, are not always intelligible to the public, nor does he 
 take pains to make them so. He is too confident and secure of 
 his audience. That which may be entertaining enough with the 
 assistance of a certain liveliness of manner, may read very flat 
 on paper, because it is abstracted from all the circumstances 
 that had set it off to advantage. A writer should recollect that 
 he has only to trust to the immediate impression of words, like 
 a musician who sings without the accompaniment of an instru- 
 ment. There is nothing to help out, or slubber over, the defects 
 of the voice in the one case, nor of the style in the other. The 
 reader may, if he pleases, get a very good idea of Leigh Hunt's 
 conversation from a very agreeable paper he has lately pub- 
 lished, called the Indicator, than which nothing can be more 
 happily conceived or executed. 
 The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 127 
 
 being heard. Authors in general are not good listeners. Some 
 of the best talkers are, on this account, the worst company ; and 
 some who are very indifferent, but very great talkers, are as bad. 
 It is sometimes wonderful to see how a person, who has been 
 entertaining or tiring a company by the hour together, drops his 
 countenance as if he had been shot, or had been seized with a 
 sudden lockjaw, the moment anyone interposes a single obser- 
 vation. The best converser I know is, however, the best 
 listener. I mean Mr. Northcote, the painter. Painters by 
 their profession are not bound to shine in conversation, and 
 they shine the more. He lends his ear to an observation as if 
 you had brought him a piece of news, and enters into it with 
 as much avidity and earnestness as if it interested himself 
 personally. If he repeats an old remark or story, it is with the 
 same freshness and point as for the first time. It always arises 
 out of the occasion, and has the stamp of originality. There is 
 no parroting of himself. His look is a continual, ever-varying 
 history-piece of what passes in his mind. His face is a book. 
 There need no marks of interjection or interrogation to what 
 he says. His manner is quite picturesque. There is an excess 
 of character and naivett that never tires. His thoughts bubble 
 up and sparkle like beads on old wine. The fund of anecdote, 
 the collection of curious particulars, is enough to set up any 
 common retailer of jests that dines out every day ; but these 
 are not strung together like a row of galley-slaves, but are 
 always introduced to illustrate some argument or bring out 
 some fine distinction of character. The mixture of spleen 
 adds to the sharpness of the point, like poisoned arrows. Mr. 
 Northcote enlarges with enthusiasm on the old painters, and 
 tells good things of the new. The only thing he ever vexed me 
 in was his liking the Catalogue Raisonnee. I had almost as soon 
 hear him talk of Titian's pictures (which he does with tears in 
 his eyes, and looking just like them) as see the originals, and I 
 had rather hear him talk of Sir Joshua's than see them. He is 
 the last of that school who knew Goldsmith and Johnson. How 
 finely he describes Pope ! His elegance of mind, his figure, his 
 character were not unlike his own. He does not resemble a
 
 128 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 
 
 modern Englishman, but puts one in mind of a Roman cardinal 
 or a Spanish inquisitor. I never ate or drank with Mr. 
 Northcote ; but I have lived on his conversation with undi- 
 minished relish ever since I can remember and when I leave 
 it, I come out into the street with feelings lighter and more 
 ethereal than I have at any other time. One of his tete-cL-tetes 
 would at any time make an Essay ; but he cannot write himself, 
 because he loses himself, in the connecting passages, is fearful 
 to the effect, and wants the habit of bringing his ideas into one 
 focus or view. A lens is necessary to collect the diverging rays, 
 the refracted and broken angular lights of conversation on 
 paper. Contradiction is half the battle in talking the being 
 startled by what others say, and having to answer on the spot. 
 You have to defend yourself, paragraph by paragraph, paren- 
 thesis within parenthesis. Perhaps it might be supposed that a 
 person who excels in conversation and cannot write, would 
 succeed better in dialogue. But the stimulus, the immediate 
 irritation would be wanting ; and the work would read flatter 
 than ever, from not having the very thing it pretended to 
 have. 
 
 Lively sallies and connected discourse are very different 
 things. There are many persons of that impatient and restless 
 turn of mind, that they cannot wait a moment for a conclusion, 
 or follow up the thread of any argument. In the hurry of 
 conversation their ideas are somehow huddled into sense ; but 
 in the intervals of thought, leave a great gap between. Mon- 
 tesquieu said, he often lost an idea before he could find words 
 for it : yet he dictated, by way of saving time, to an amanuensis. 
 This last is, in my opinion, a vile method, and a solecism in 
 authorship. Home Tooke, among other paradoxes, used to 
 maintain that no one could write a good style who was not in 
 the habit of talking and hearing the sound of his own voice. 
 He might as well have said that no one could relish a good 
 style without reading it aloud, as we find common people do to 
 assist their apprehension. But there is a method of trying 
 periods on the ear, or weighing them with the scales of the 
 breath, without any articulate sound. Authors, as they write,
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 129 
 
 may be said to " hear a sound so fine, there's nothing lives 
 'twixt it and silence." Even musicians generally compose in 
 their heads. I agree that no style is good that is not fit to be 
 spoken or read aloud with effect. This holds true not only of 
 emphasis and cadence, but also with regard to natural idiom 
 and colloquial freedom. Sterne's was in this respect the best 
 style that ever was written. You fancy that you hear the people 
 talking. For a contrary reason, no college-man writes a good 
 style, or understands it when written. Fine writing is with him 
 all verbiage and monotony a translation into classical centos 
 or hexameter-lines. 
 
 That which I have just mentioned is among many instances 
 I could give of ingenious absurdities advanced by Mr. Tooke in 
 the heat and pride of controversy. A person who knew him 
 well, and greatly admired his talents, said of him that he 
 never (to his recollection) heard him defend an opinion which 
 he thought right, or in which he believed him to be himseli 
 sincere. He indeed provoked his antagonists into the toils 
 by the very extravagance of his assertions, and the teasing 
 sophistry by which he rendered them plausible. His temper 
 was prompter to his skill. He had the manners of a man of the 
 world, with great scholastic resources. He flung everyone else 
 off his guard, and was himself immovable. I never knew 
 anyone who did not admit his superiority in this kind of 
 warfare. He put a full-stop to one of Coleridge's long-winded 
 prefatory apologies for his youth and inexperience, by saying 
 abruptly, " Speak up, young man ! " and, at another time, 
 silenced a learned professor by desiring an explanation of a 
 word which the other frequently used, and which, he said, he 
 had been many years trying to get at the meaning of the 
 copulative Is ! He was the best intellectual fencer of his day. 
 He made strange havoc of Fuseli's fantastic hieroglyphics, 
 violent humours, and oddity of dialect. Curran, who was 
 sometimes of the same party, was lively and animated in 
 convivial conversation, but dull in argument ; nay, averse to 
 anything like reasoning or serious observation, and had the 
 worse taste I ever knew. His favourite critical topics were to
 
 130 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS, 
 
 abuse Milton's " Paradise Lost," and " Romeo and Juliet." In- 
 deed, he confessed a want of sufficient acquaintance with books 
 when he found himself in literary society in London. He and 
 Sheridan once dined at John Kemble's with Mrs. Inchbald and 
 Mary Woolstonecroft, when the discourse almost wholly turned 
 on Love "from noon to dewy eve, a summer's day 1" What a 
 subject ! What speakers, and what hearers 1 What would I 
 not give to have been there, had I not learned it all from the 
 bright eyes of Amaryllis, and may one day make a Table-talk 
 of it ! Peter Pindar was rich in anecdote and grotesque 
 humour, and profound in technical knowledge both of music, 
 poetry, and painting, but he was gross and overbearing. 
 Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired on subjects 
 of poetry (his own out of the question) Coleridge well on every 
 subject, and Godwin on none. To finish this subject Mrs. 
 Montagu's conversation is as fine-cut as her features, and I like 
 to sit in the room with that sort of coronet face. What she says 
 leaves a flavour, like fine green tea. Hunt's is like champagne, 
 and Northcote's like anchovy sandwiches. Haydon's is like a 
 game at trap-ball : Lamb's like snap-dragon : and my own (if 
 I do not mistake the matter) is not very much unlike a game 
 at ninepins ! . . . One source of the conversation of authors 
 is the character of other authors, and on that they are rich 
 indeed. What things they say ! What stories they tell of one 
 another, more particularly of their friends 1 If I durst only 
 give some of these confidential communications ! . . . The 
 reader may perhaps think the foregoing a specimen of them 
 but indeed he is mistaken. 
 
 I do not know of any greater impertinence than for an 
 obscure individual to set about pumping a character of 
 celebrity. " Bring him to me," said a Doctor Tronchin, speak- 
 ing of Rousseau, " that I may see whether he has anything in 
 him." Before you can take measure of the capacity of others, 
 you ought to be sure that they have not taken measure of yours. 
 They may think you a spy on them, and may not like their 
 company. If you really want to know whether another person 
 can talk well, begin by saying a good thing yourself, and you
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 131 
 
 will have a right to look for a rejoinder. " The best tennis- 
 players," says Sir Fopling Flutter, " make the best matches." 
 
 " For wit is like a rest 
 
 Held up at tennis, which men do the best 
 With the best players." 
 
 We hear it often said of a great author, or a great actress, 
 that they are very stupid people in private. But he was a fool 
 that said so. Tell me your company, and m tell you your 
 manners. In conversation, as in other things, the action and 
 reaction should bear a certain proportion to each other. 
 Authors may, in some sense, be looked upon as foreigners, who 
 are not naturalised even in their native soil. Lamb once came 
 down into the country to see us. He was "like the most 
 capricious poet Ovid among the Goths." The country people 
 thought him an oddity, and did not understand his jokes. It 
 would be strange if they had ; for he did not make any while 
 he stayed. But when he crossed the country to Oxford, then 
 he spoke a little. He and the old colleges were "hail- 
 fellow well met ; " and in the quadrangles, he " walked 
 gowned." 
 
 There is a character of a gentleman ; so there is a character 
 of a scholar, which is no less easily recognised. The one has 
 an air of books about him, as the other has of good-breeding. 
 The one wears his thoughts as the other does his clothes, 
 gracefully ; and even if they are a little old-fashioned, they are 
 not ridiculous : they have had their day. The gentleman shows, 
 by his manner, that he has been used to respect from others : 
 the scholar that he lays claim to self-respect and to a certain 
 independence of opinion. Trie one has been accustomed to the 
 best company ; the other has passed his time in cultivating an 
 intimacy with the best authors. There is nothing forward or 
 vulgar in the behaviour of the one ; nothing shrewd or petulant 
 in the observations of the other, as if he should astonish the 
 bystanders, or was astonished himself at his own discoveries. 
 Good taste and good sense, like common politeness, are, or are 
 supposed to be, matters of course. One is distinguished by an
 
 132 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 
 
 appearance of marked attention to every one present ; the 
 other manifests an habitual air of abstraction and absence of 
 mind. The one is not an upstart, with all the self-important 
 airs of the founder of his own fortune ; nor the other a self- 
 taught man, with the repulsive self-sufficiency which arises 
 from an ignorance of what hundreds have known before him. 
 We must excuse perhaps a little conscious family pride in the 
 one, and a little harmless pedantry in the other. As there is a 
 class of the first character which sinks into the mere gentleman, 
 that is, which has nothing but this sense of respectability and 
 propriety to support it so the character of a scholar not 
 unfrequently dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, till 
 nothing is left of it but the mere bookworm. There is often 
 something amiable as well as enviable in this last character. I 
 know one such instance, at least. The person I mean has an 
 admiration for learning, if he is only dazzled by its light. He 
 lives among old authors, if he does not enter much into their 
 spirit He handles the covers, and turns over the page, and is 
 familiar with the names and dates. He is busy and self- 
 involved. He hangs like a film and cobweb upon letters, or is 
 like the dust upon the outside of knowledge, which should not 
 be rudely brushed aside. He follows learning as its shadow ; 
 but as such, he is respectable. He browses on the husk and 
 leaves of books, as the young fawn browses on the bark and 
 leaves of trees. Such a one lives all his life in a dream of 
 learning, and has never once had his sleep broken by a real 
 sense of things. He believes implicitly in genius, truth, virtue, 
 liberty, because he finds the names of these things in books. 
 He thinks that love and friendship are the finest things 
 imaginable, both in practice and theory. The legend of good 
 women is to him no fiction. When he steals from the twilight 
 of his cell, the scene breaks upon him like an illuminated missal, 
 and all the people he sees are but so many figures in a camera 
 obscura. He reads the world, like a favourite volume, only to 
 find beauties in it, or like an edition of some old work which he 
 is preparing for the press, only to make emendations in it, and 
 correct the errors that have inadvertently slipt in. He and his
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 133 
 
 dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted, faithful, 
 affectionate creatures if Tray could but read ! His mind 
 cannot take the impression of vice : but the gentleness of his 
 nature turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws 
 the picture of mankind from the guileless simplicity of his own 
 heart : and when he dies, his spirit will take its smiling leave, 
 without having ever had an ill thought of others, or the 
 consciousness of one in itself 1
 
 134 ON READING NE W BOOKS, 
 
 ON READING NEW BOOKS. 
 
 " And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a 
 rout about ? " STERNE. 
 
 I CANNOT understand the rage manifested by the greater part 
 of the world for reading New Books. If the public had read 
 all those that have gone before, I can conceive how they should 
 not wish to read the same work twice over ; but when I con- 
 sider the countless volumes that lie unopened, unregarded, 
 unread, and unthought-of, I cannot enter into the pathetic com- 
 plaints that I hear made that Sir Walter writes no more that 
 the press is idle that Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read 
 a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, 
 whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago. 
 If it be urged that it has no modern, passing incidents, and is 
 out of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much the newer; it 
 is farther removed from other works that I have lately read, 
 from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes so much 
 more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as 
 soon think of putting on old armour as of taking up a book not 
 published within the last month, or year at the utmost. There 
 is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for 
 the season. One would imagine that books were, like women, 
 the worse for being old ;* that they have a pleasure in being 
 read for the first time ; that they open their leaves more 
 
 * "Laws are not like women, the worse for being old." The Duke 
 of Buckingham! s Speech in the House of Lords, in Charles the Second's 
 time.
 
 ON READING NK W BOOKS. 135 
 
 cordially ; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit 
 of novelty ; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put 
 them on the shelf. This conceit seems to be followed up in 
 practice. What is it to me that another that hundreds or 
 thousands have in all ages read a work? Is it on this account 
 the less likely to give me pleasure, because it has delighted so 
 many others? Or can I taste this pleasure by proxy ? Or am 
 I in any degree the wiser for their knowledge ? Yet this might 
 appear to be the inference. Their having read the work 
 may be said to act upon us by sympathy, and the knowledge 
 which so many other persons have of its contents deadens our 
 curiosity and interest altogether. We set aside the subject as 
 one on which others have made up their minds for us (as if 
 we really could have ideas in their heads), and are quite on the 
 alert for the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which 
 we shall be the first to read, criticise, and pass an opinion on. 
 Oh, delightful ! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance 
 of the scarcely dry paper, to examine the type to see who is the 
 printer (which is some clue to the value that is set upon the 
 work), to launch out into regions of thought and invention 
 never trod till now,, and to explore characters that never met a 
 human eye before this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner- 
 party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when 
 the work is critical and full of expectation, would venture to 
 dine out, or to face a coterie of blue-stockings in the evening, 
 without having gone through this ordeal, or at least without 
 hastily turning over a few of the first pages, while dressing, to 
 be able to say that the beginning does not promise much, or to 
 tell the name of the heroine ? 
 
 A hew work is something in our power : we mount the bench, 
 and sit in judgment on it ; we can damn or recommend it to 
 others at pleasure, can decry or extol it to the skies, and can 
 give an answer to those who have not yet read it and expect an 
 account of it ; and thus show our shrewdness and the inde- 
 pendence of our taste before the world have had time to form 
 an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by 
 busying ourselves about it, a kind of accessories after the fact.
 
 1 36 ON READING WE W BOOKS. 
 
 Though not the parent of the bantling that " has just come into 
 this breathing world, scarce half made up," without the aid of 
 criticism and puffing, yet we are the gossips and foster-nurses 
 on the occasion, with all the mysterious significance and self- 
 importance of the tribe. If we wait, we must take our report 
 from others ; if we make haste, we may dictate ours to them. 
 It is not a race, then, for priority of information, but for 
 precedence in tattling and dogmatising. The work last out is 
 the first that people talk and inquire about. It is the subject 
 on the tapis the cause that is pending. It is the last 
 candidate for success (other claims have been disposed of), 
 and appeals for this success to us, and us alone. Our pre- 
 decessors can have nothing to say to this question, however 
 they may have anticipated us on others ; future ages, in all 
 probability, will not trouble their heads about it ; we are the 
 panel. How hard, then, not to avail ourselves of our immediate 
 privilege to give sentence of life or death to seem in ignorance 
 of what every one else is full of to be behind-hand with the 
 polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind to be at 
 a loss and dumbfounded, when all around us are in their 
 glory, and figuring away, on no other ground than that of 
 having read a work that we have not 1 Books that are to be 
 written hereafter cannot be criticised by us ; those that were 
 written formerly have been criticised long ago : but a new book 
 is the property, the prey of ephemeral criticism, which it darts 
 triumphantly upon ; there is a raw thin air of ignorance and 
 uncertainty about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion ; and 
 curiosity, impertinence, and vanity rush eagerly into the 
 vacuum. A new book is the fair field for petulance and cox- 
 combry to gather laurels in the butt set up for removing 
 opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then, that the circulating 
 libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and their grand- 
 daughters, when a new novel is announced? That Mail-Coach 
 copies of the Edinburgh Review are or were coveted ? That 
 the Manuscript of the Waverley Romances is sent abroad in 
 time for the French, German, or even Italian translation to 
 appear on the same day as the original work, so that the
 
 ON READING NEW BOOKS. 137 
 
 longing Continental public may not be kept waiting an instant 
 longer than their fellow-readers in the English metropolis, 
 which would be as tantalising and insupportable as a little girl 
 being kept without her new frock, when her sister's is just come 
 home and is the talk and admiration of every one in the house ? 
 To be sure, there is something in the taste of the times ; a 
 modern work is expressly adapted to modern readers. It 
 appeals to our direct experience, and to well-known subjects ; 
 it is part and parcel of the world around us, and is drawn from 
 the same sources as our daily thoughts. There is, therefore, 
 so far, a natural or habitual sympathy between us and the 
 literature of the day, though this is a different consideration 
 from the mere circumstance of novelty. An author now alive 
 has a right to calculate upon the living public : he cannot count 
 upon the dead, nor look forward with much confidence to those 
 that are unborn. Neither, however, is it true that we are eager 
 to read all new books alike : we turn from them with a certain 
 feeling of distaste and distrust, unless they are recommended 
 to us by some peculiar feature or obvious distinction. Only 
 young ladies from the boarding-school, or milliners' girls, 
 read all the new novels that come out. It must be spoken of 
 or against ; the writer's name must be well known or a great 
 secret ; it must be a topic of discourse and a mark for criticism 
 that is, it must be likely to bring us into notice in some way 
 or we take no notice of it. There is a mutual and tacit 
 understanding on this head. We can no more read all the new 
 books that appear, than we can read all the old ones that have 
 disappeared from time to time. A question may be started 
 here, and pursued as far as needful, whether, if an old and 
 worm-eaten Manuscript were discovered at the present moment, 
 it would be sought after with the same avidity as a new and 
 hot-pressed poem, or other popular work? Not generally, 
 certainly, though by a few with perhaps greater zeal. For it 
 would not affect present interests, or amuse present fancies, or 
 touch on present manners, or fall in with the public egotism in 
 any way : it would be the work either of some obscure author 
 in which case it would want the principle of excitement ; or of
 
 138 ON READING NEW BOOKS. 
 
 some illustrious name, whose style and manner would be 
 already familiar to those most versed in the subject, and his 
 fame established so that, as a matter of comment and con- 
 troversy, it would only go to account on the old score : there 
 would be no room for learned feuds and heart-burnings. Was 
 there not a Manuscript of Cicero's talked of as having been 
 discovered about a year ago? But we have heard no more of 
 it. There have been several other cases, more or less in point, 
 in our time or near it. A Noble Duke (which may serve to 
 show at least the interest taken in books not for being new) 
 some time ago gave 2260 for a copy of the first edition of the 
 Decameron : but did he read it ? It has been a fashion also of 
 late for noble and wealthy persons to go to a considerable 
 expense in ordering reprints of the old Chronicles and black- 
 letter works. Does not this rather prove that the books did 
 not circulate very rapidly or extensively, or such extraordinary 
 patronage and liberality would not have been necessary ? Mr. 
 Thomas Taylor, at the instance, I believe, of the old Duke of 
 Norfolk, printed fifty copies in quarto of a translation of the 
 works of Plato and Aristotle. He did not choose that a larger 
 impression should be struck off, lest these authors should get 
 into the hands of the vulgar. There was no danger of a 
 run in that way. I tried to read some of the Dialogues 
 in the translation of Plato, but, I confess, could make 
 nothing of it : "the logic was so different from ours!"* A 
 
 * An expression borrowed from a voluble German scholar, who gave 
 this as an excuse for not translating the Critique of Pure Reason into 
 English. He might as well have said seriously, that the Rule of Three 
 in German was different from ours. Mr. Taylor (the Platonist, as he 
 was called) was a singular instance of a person in our time believing in 
 the heathen mythology. He had a very beautiful wife. An impudent 
 Frenchman, who came over to London, and lodged in the same house, 
 made love to her, by pretending to worship her as Venus, and so 
 thought to turn the tables on our philosopher. I once spent an even- 
 ing with this gentleman at George Dyer's chambers, in Clifford's Inn, 
 where there was no exclusion of persons or opinions. I remember he 
 showed with some triumph two of his fingers, which had been bent so
 
 ON READING NE W BOOKS. 139 
 
 startling experiment was made on this sort of retrospective 
 curiosity, in the case of Ireland's celebrated Shakespeare 
 forgery. The public there certainly manifested no backward- 
 ness nor lukewarmness : the enthusiasm was equal to the 
 folly. But then the spirit exhibited on this occasion was partly 
 critical and polemical, and it is a problem whether an actual 
 and undoubted play of Shakespeare's would have excited the 
 same ferment ; and, on the other hand, Shakespeare is an 
 essential modern. People read and go to see his real plays, 
 as well as his pretended ones. The fuss made about Ossian 
 is another test to refer to. It was its being the supposed 
 revival of an old work (known only by scattered fragments 
 or lingering tradition) which gave it its chief interest, though 
 there was also a good deal of mystery and quackery concerned 
 along with the din and stir of national jealousy and pretension. 
 Who reads Ossian now ? It is one of the reproaches brought 
 against Buonaparte that he was fond of it when young. I 
 
 that he had lost the use of them, in copying out the manuscripts of 
 Proclus and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand. Such are the trophies of 
 human pride ! It would be well if our deep studies often produced no 
 other crookedness and deformity ! I endeavoured (but in vain) to learn 
 something from the heathen philosopher as to Plato's doctrine of 
 abstract ideas being the foundation of particular ones, which I suspect 
 has more truth in it than we moderns are willing to admit. Another 
 friend of mine once breakfasted with Mr. Dyer (the most amiable and 
 absent of hosts), when there was no butter, no knife to cut the loaf 
 with, and the tea-pot was without a spout. My friend, after a few 
 immaterial ceremonies, adjourned to Peele's coffee-house, close by, 
 where he regaled himself on buttered toast, coffee, and the newspaper 
 of the day (a newspaper possessed some interest when we were young) j 
 and the only interruption to his satisfaction was the fear that his host 
 might suddenly enter, and be shocked at his imperfect hospitality. He 
 would probably forget the circumstance altogether. I am afraid that 
 this veteran of the old school has not received many proofs of the 
 archaism of the prevailing taste ; and that the corrections in his 
 History of the University of Cambridge have cost him more than the 
 public will ever repay him for.
 
 140 ON READING NE W BOOKS. 
 
 cannot for myself see the objection. There is no doubt an 
 antiquarian spirit always at work, and opposed to the spirit 
 of novelty-hunting ; but, though opposed, it is scarcely a match 
 for it in a general and popular point of view. It is not long 
 ago that I happened to be suggesting a new translation of 
 Don Quixote to an enterprising bookseller ; and his answer 
 was " We want new Don Quixotes." I believe I deprived 
 the same active-minded person of a night's rest, by telling 
 him there was the beginning of another novel by Goldsmith 
 in existence. This, if it could be procured, would satisfy both 
 tastes for the new and the old at once. I fear it is but a 
 fragment, and that we must wait till a new Goldsmith 
 appears. We may observe of late a strong craving after 
 Memoirs and Lives of the Dead. But these, it may be 
 remarked, savour so much of the real and familiar, that 
 the persons described differ from us only in being dead, 
 which is a reflection to our advantage : or, if remote and 
 romantic in their interest and adventures, they require to 
 be bolstered up in some measure by the embellishments 
 of modern style and criticism. The accounts of Petrarch 
 and Laura, of Abelard and Eloise, have a lusciousness and 
 warmth in the subject which contrast quaintly and pointedly 
 with the coldness of the grave ; and, after all, we prefer 
 Pope's " Eloise and Abelard," with the modern dress and 
 flourishes, to the sublime and affecting simplicity of the 
 original Letters. 
 
 In some very just and agreeable reflections on the story 
 of Abelard and Eloise^ in a late number of a contemporary 
 publication, there is a quotation of some lines from Lucan, 
 which Eloise is said to have repeated in broken accents as 
 she was advancing to the altar to receive the veil. 
 
 " O maxima conjux I 
 
 O thalamis indigne meis 1 Hoc juris habebat 
 In tantum fortuna caput ? Cur impia nupsi, 
 Si miserum factura fui ? Nunc accipe paenas, 
 Sed quas sponte luam."
 
 ON READING NE W BOOKS. 141 
 
 " Ah ! my once greatest lord ! ah, cruel hour ! 
 Is thy victorious head in fortune's power ? 
 Since miseries my baneful love pursue, 
 Why did I wed thee, only to undo ? 
 But see, to death my willing neck I bow ; 
 Atone the angry gods by one kind blow." 
 
 ROWE'S TRANSLATION. 
 
 This speech, quoted by another person, on such an occasion, 
 might seem cold and pedantic ; but from the mouth of the 
 passionate and unaffected Eloise it cannot bear that interpre- 
 tation. What sounding lines 1 What a pomp, and yet what 
 a familiar boldness in their application " proud as when 
 blue Iris bends!" The reading this account brought forcibly 
 to mind what has struck me often before the unreason- 
 ableness of the complaint we constantly hear of the ignorance 
 and barbarism of former ages, and the folly of restricting 
 all refinement and literary elegance to our own. We are, 
 indeed, indebted to the ages that have gone before us, and 
 could not well do without them. But in all ages there will be 
 found still others that have gone before with nearly equal lustre 
 and advantage, though, by distance and the intervention of 
 multiplied excellence, this lustre may be dimmed or forgotten. 
 Had it then no existence ? We might, with the same reason, 
 suppose that the horizon is the last boundary and verge of the 
 round earth. Still, as we advance, it recedes from us ; and so 
 time from its storehouse pours out an endless succession of the 
 productions of art and genius ; and the farther we explore the 
 obscurity, other trophies and other land-marks rise up. It is 
 only our ignorance that fixes a limit as the mist gathered 
 round the mountain's brow makes us fancy we are treading the 
 edge of the universe ! Here was Eloise living at a period when 
 monkish indolence and superstition were at their height in one 
 of those that are emphatically called the dark ages ; and yet, 
 as she is led to the altar to make her last fatal vow, expressing 
 her feelings in language quite natural to her, but from which 
 the most accomplished and heroic of our modern females would 
 shrink back with pretty and affected wonder and affright. The
 
 142 ON READING NE W BOOKS, 
 
 glowing and impetuous lines which she murmured, as she 
 passed on, with spontaneous and rising enthusiasm, were 
 engraven on her heart, familiar to her as her daily thoughts ; 
 her mind must have been full of them to overflowing, and at 
 the same time enriched with other stores and sources of know- 
 ledge equally elegant and impressive ; and we persist, notwith- 
 standing this and a thousand similar circumstances, in indulging 
 our surprise how people could exist, and see, and feel, in those 
 days, without having access to our opportunities and acquire- 
 ments, and how Shakespeare wrote long after, in a barbarous 
 age ! The mystery in this case is of our own making. We 
 are struck with astonishment at finding a fine moral sentiment 
 or a noble image nervously expressed in an author of the age 
 of Queen Elizabeth; not considering that, independently of 
 nature and feeling, which are the same in all periods, the 
 writers of that day, who were generally men of education and 
 learning, had such models before them as the one that has been 
 just referred to were thoroughly acquainted with those masters 
 of classic thought and language, compared with whom, in all 
 that relates to the artificial graces of composition, the most 
 studied of the moderns are little better than Goths and 
 Vandals. It is true, we have lost sight of, and neglected the 
 former, because the latter have, in a great degree, superseded 
 them, as the elevations nearest to us intercept those farthest 
 off; but our not availing ourselves of this vantage ground is no 
 reason why our forefathers should not (who had not our super- 
 fluity of choice), and most assuredly they did study and cherish 
 the precious fragments of antiquity, collected together in their 
 time, "like sunken wreck and sumless treasuries ;"* and while 
 they did this, we need be at no loss to account for any examples 
 of grace, of force, or dignity in their writings, if these must 
 always be traced back to a previous source. One age cannot 
 understand how another could subsist without its lights, as one 
 country thinks every other must be poor for want of its physical 
 productions. This is a narrow and superficial view of the 
 
 * "Henry V.,"i.,2.
 
 ON READING NE W BOOKS. 143 
 
 subject : we should by all means rise above it. I am not for 
 devoting the whole of our time to the study of the classics, or of 
 any other set of writers, to the exclusion and neglect of nature ; 
 but I think we should turn our thoughts enough that way to 
 convince us of the existence of genius and learning before our 
 time, and to cure us of an overweening conceit of ourselves, 
 and of a contemptuous opinion of the world at large. Every 
 civilised age and country (and of these there is not one, but a 
 hundred) has its literature, its arts, its comforts, large and ample 
 though we may know nothing of them ; nor is it (except for our 
 own sakes) important that we should. 
 
 Books have been so multiplied in our days (like the Vanity 
 Fair of knowledge), and we have made such progress beyond 
 ourselves in some points, that it seems at first glance as if we 
 had monopolised every possible advantage, and the rest of the 
 world must be left destitute and in darkness. This is the 
 cockneyism (with leave be it spoken) of the nineteenth century. 
 There is a tone of smartness and piquancy in modern writing, 
 to which former examples may, in one sense, appear flat and 
 pedantic. Our allusions are more pointed and personal : the 
 ancients are, in this respect, formal and prosaic personages. 
 Some one, not long ago, in this vulgar, shallow spirit of 
 criticism (which sees everything from its own point of view), 
 said that the tragedies of Sophocles and jEschylus were about 
 as good as the pieces brought out at Sadler's Wells or the 
 Adelphi Theatre. An oration of Demosthenes is thought dry 
 and meagre, because it is not " full of wise saws and modern 
 instances : " one of Cicero's is objected to as flimsy and extra- 
 vagant, for the same reason. There is a style in one age which 
 does not fall in with the taste of the public in another, as it 
 requires greater effeminacy and softness, greater severity or 
 simplicity, greater force or refinement. Guido was more 
 admired than Raphael in his day, because the manners were 
 grown softer without the strength : Sir Peter Lely was thought 
 in his to have eclipsed Vandyke an opinion that no one holds 
 at present : Holbein's faces must be allowed to be very different 
 from Sir Thomas Lawrence's yet the one was the favourite
 
 144 ON READING NEW BOOKS. 
 
 painter of Henry VIII., as the other is of George IV. What 
 should we say in our time to the euphuism of the age of Eliza- 
 beth, when style was made a riddle and the court talked in 
 conundrums ? This, as a novelty and a trial of the wits, might 
 take for a while : afterwards, it could only seem absurd. We 
 must always make some allowance for a change of style, which 
 those who are accustomed to read none but works written 
 within the last twenty years neither can nor will make. When 
 a whole generation read, they will read none but contemporary 
 productions. The taste for literature becomes superficial, as it 
 becomes universal, and is spread over a larger space. When 
 ten thousand boarding-school girls, who have learnt to play 
 on the piano, are brought out in the same season, Rossini will 
 be preferred to Mozart, as the last new composer. I remember 
 a very genteel young couple in the boxes of Drury Lane being 
 very much scandalised some years ago at the phrase in " A New 
 Way to Pay Old Debts" "an insolent piece of paper" 
 applied to the contents of a letter ; it wanted the modern 
 lightness and indifference. Let an old book be ever so good, 
 it treats (generally speaking) of topics that are stale, in a style 
 that has grown " somewhat musty ; " of manners that are 
 exploded, probably by the very ridicule thus cast upon them ; 
 of persons that no longer figure on the stage ; and of interests 
 that have long since given place to others in the infinite fluctu- 
 ations of human affairs. Longinus complains of the want of 
 interest in the Odyssey, because it does not, like the Iliad, treat of 
 war. The very complaint we make against the latter is that it 
 treats of nothing else ; or that, as Fuseli expresses it, everything 
 is seen "through the blaze of war." Books of devotion are no 
 longer read (if we read Irving's Orations, it is merely that we 
 may go as a lounge to see the man) : even attacks on religion are 
 out of date and insipid. Voltaire's jests and the Jew's Letters 
 in answer (equal in wit, and more than equal in learning), 
 repose quietly on the shelf together. We want something in 
 England about Rent and the Poor-Laws, and something in 
 France about the Charter or Lord Byron. With the attempts, 
 however, to revive superstition and intolerance, a spirit of
 
 ON READING NE W BOOKS. 145 
 
 opposition has been excited, and Pascal's Provincial Letters 
 have been once more enlisted into the service. In France you 
 meet with no one who can read the New Eloise : the Princess 
 of Cleves is not even mentioned in these degenerate days. Is it 
 not provoking with us to see the " Beggars' Opera " cut down to 
 two acts, because some of the allusions are too broad, and 
 others not understood ? And in America this sterling satire is 
 hooted off the stage, because, fortunately, they have no such 
 state of matters as it describes before their eyes ; and because, 
 unfortunately, they have no conception of anything but what 
 they see. America is singularly and awkwardly situated in this 
 respect. It is a new country with an old language ; and while 
 everything about them is of a day's growth, they are constantly 
 applying to us to know what to think of it, and taking their 
 opinions from our books and newspapers with a strange mixture 
 of servility and of the spirit of contradiction. They are an 
 independent state in politics : in literature thy are still a 
 colony from us not out of their leading strings, ajid strangely 
 puzzled how to determine between the Edinburgh and Quarterly 
 Reviews. We have naturalised some of their writers, who had 
 formed themselves upon us. This is at once a compliment to 
 them and to ourselves. Amidst the scramble and lottery for 
 fame in the present day, besides puffing, which may be regarded 
 as the hot-bed of reputation, another mode has been attempted 
 by transplanting it ; and writers who are set down as drivellers 
 at home, shoot up great authors on the other side of the water ; 
 pack up their all a title-page and sufficient impudence ; and a 
 work, of which \htflocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication, in Shenstone's 
 phrase, is well known to every competent judge, is placarded 
 into eminence, and "flames in the forehead of the morning sky" 
 on the walls of Paris or St. Petersburgh. I dare not mention 
 the instances, but so it is. Some reputations last only while 
 the possessors live, from which one might suppose that they 
 gave themselves a character for genius : others are cried up by 
 their gossiping acquaintances, as long as they give dinners, and 
 make their houses places of polite resort ; and, in general, in 
 our time, a book may be considered to have passed the ordeal 
 
 582
 
 146 ON READING NE W BOOKS. 
 
 that is mentioned at all three months after it is printed 
 Immortality is not even a dream a boy's conceit ; and 
 posthumous fame is no more regarded by the author than by 
 his bookseller. 
 
 This idle, dissipated turn seems to be a set-off to, or the 
 obvious reaction of, the exclusive admiration of the ancients, 
 which was formerly the fashion : as if the sun of human 
 intellect rose and set at Rome and Athens, and the mind of man 
 had never exerted itself to any purpose since. The ignorant, as 
 well as the adept, were charmed only with what was obsolete 
 and far-fetched, wrapped up in technical terms and in a learned 
 tongue. Those who spoke and wrote a language which hardly 
 any one at present even understood, must of course be wiser 
 than we. Time, that brings so many reputations to decay, had 
 embalmed others and rendered them sacred. From an implicit 
 faith and overstrained homage paid to antiquity, we of the 
 modern school have taken too strong a bias to what is new ; 
 and divide all wisdom and worth between ourselves and 
 posterity not a very formidable rival to our self-love, as we 
 attribute all its advantages to ourselves, though we pretend to 
 owe little or nothing to our predecessors. About the time of the 
 French Revolution, it was agreed that the world had hitherto been 
 in its dotage or its infancy ; and that Mr. Godwin, Condorcet, 
 and others were to begin a new race of men a new epoch in 
 society. Everything up to that period was to be set aside as 
 puerile or barbarous ; or, if there were any traces of thought 
 and manliness now and then discoverable, they were to be 
 regarded with wonder as prodigies as irregular and fitful 
 starts in that long sleep of reason and night of philosophy. In 
 this liberal spirit Mr. Godwin composed an Essay to prove that, 
 till the publication of The Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, 
 no one knew how to write a word of common grammar, or a 
 style that was not utterly uncouth, incongruous, and feeble. 
 Addison, Swift, and Junius were included in this censure. The 
 English language itself might be supposed to owe its stability 
 and consistency, its roundness and polish, to the whirling 
 motion of the French Revolution. Those who had gone before
 
 ON READING NE W BOOKS. 147 
 
 us were, like our grandfathers and grandmothers, decrepit, 
 superannuated people, blind and dull ; poor creatures, like flies 
 in winter, without pith or marrow in them. The past was 
 barren of interest had neither thought nor object worthy to 
 arrest our attention ; and the future would be equally a sense- 
 less void, except as we projected ourselves and our theories into 
 it. There is nothing I hate more than I do this exclusive, 
 upstart spirit. 
 
 " By Heavens, I'd rather be 
 A pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
 So might I, standing on some pleasant lea, 
 Catch glimpses that might make me less forlorn, 
 Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea. 
 Or hear Old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 
 
 Neither do I see the good of it even in a personal and interested 
 point of view. By despising all that has preceded us, we teach 
 others to despise ourselves. Where there is no established 
 scale nor rooted faith in excellence, all superiority our own as 
 well as that of others soon comes to the ground. By applying 
 the wrong end of the magnifying glass to all objects indis- 
 criminately, the most respectable dwindle into insignificance, 
 and the best are confounded with the worst. Learning, no 
 longer supported by opinion, or genius by fame, is cast into the 
 mire, and " trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multitude." 
 I would rather endure the most blind and bigoted respect for 
 great and illustrious names, than that pitiful, grovelling humour 
 which has no pride in intellectual excellence, and no pleasure 
 but in decrying those who have given proofs of it, and reducing 
 them to its own level. If, with the diffusion of knowledge, we 
 do not gain an enlargement and elevation of views, where is the 
 benefit ? If, by tearing asunder names from things, we do not 
 leave even the name or shadow of excellence, it is better to let 
 them remain as they were ; for it is better to have something to 
 admire than nothing names, if not things the shadow, if not 
 the substance the tinsel, if not the gold. All can now read 
 and write equally ; and, it is therefore presumed, equally well.
 
 i 4 8 ON READING NE W BOOKS. 
 
 Anything short of this sweeping conclusion is an invidious dis- 
 tinction ; and those who claim it for themselves or others are 
 exclusionists in letters. Every one at least can call names 
 can invent a falsehood, or repeat a story against those who 
 have galled their pragmatical pretensions by really adding to 
 the stock of general amusement or instruction. Every one 
 in a crowd has the power to throw dirt ; nine out of ten 
 have the inclination. It is curious that, in an age when 
 the most universally-admitted claim to public distinction is 
 literary merit, the attaining this distinction is almost a sure 
 title to public contempt and obloquy.* They cry you up 
 because you are unknown, and do not excite their jealousy ; 
 and run you down, when they have thus distinguished 
 you, out of envy and spleen at the very idol they have 
 set up. A public favourite is "kept like an apple in the 
 jaw of an ape first mouthed, to be afterwards swallowed. 
 When they need what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing 
 you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again." At first they think 
 only of the pleasure or advantage they receive : but, on 
 reflection, they are mortified at the superiority implied in this 
 involuntary concession, and are determined to be even with you 
 the very first opportunity. What is the prevailing spirit of 
 modern literature ? To defame men of letters. What are the 
 publications that succeed ? Those that pretend to teach the 
 public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly 
 to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than them- 
 selves, or a set of vagabonds, miscreants that should be hunted 
 out of society. Hence men of letters, losing their self-respect, 
 become government tools, and prostitute their talents to the 
 most infamous purposes, or turn dandy scribblers, and set up for 
 gentlemen authors in their own defence. I like the Order of 
 the Jesuits better than this ; they made themselves respected 
 by the laity, kept their own secret, and did not prey on one 
 another. Resume then, oh ! Learning, thy robe pontifical ; 
 
 * Is not this partly owing to the disappointment of the public at 
 finding any defect in their idol ?
 
 ON READING NEW BOOKS. 149 
 
 clothe thyself in pride and purple ; join the sacred to the 
 profane ; wield both worlds ; instead of twopenny trash and 
 mechanics' magazines, issue bulls and decretals ; say not, let 
 there be light, but darkness visible ; draw a bandage over the 
 eyes of the ignorant and unlettered ; hang the terrors of super- 
 stition and despotism over them ; and for thy pains they will 
 bless thee ; children will pull off their caps as thou dost pass ; 
 women will courtesy ; the old will wipe their beards ; and thou 
 wilt rule once more over the base serving people, clowns, and 
 nobles, with a rod of iron !
 
 150 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 I HATE to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes 
 that I have read over and over again, and these are the only 
 ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was a long 
 time before I could bring myself to sit down to the Tales of 
 My Landlord, but now that author's works have made a con- 
 siderable addition to my scanty library. I am told that some 
 of Lady Morgan's are good, and have been recommended to 
 look into Anastasius; but I have not yet ventured upon that 
 task. A lady, the other day, could not refrain from expressing 
 her surprise to a friend, who said he had been reading Delphine: 
 she asked, I fit had not been published some time back? 
 Women judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, 
 which are admired only "in their newest gloss." That is not 
 my way. I am not one of those who trouble the circulating 
 libraries much, or pester the booksellers for mail-coach copies 
 of standard periodical publications. I cannot say that I am 
 greatly addicted to black-letter, but I profess myself well 
 versed in the marble bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle 
 of the last century ; nor does my taste revolt at Thurlow's 
 State Papers^ in russia leather ; or an ample impression of Sir 
 William Temple's Essays, with a portrait after Sir Godfrey 
 Kneller in front. I do not think altogether the worse of a book 
 for having survived the author a generation or two. I have 
 more confidence in the dead than the living. Contemporary 
 writers may generally be divided into two classes one's friends 
 or one's foes Of the first we are compelled to think too well,
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 151 
 
 and of the last we are disposed to think too ill, to receive much 
 genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to judge fairly of the 
 merits of either. One candidate for literary fame, who happens 
 to be of our acquaintance, writes finely, and like a man of 
 genius ; but unfortunately has a foolish face, which spoils a 
 delicate passage ; another inspires us with the highest respect 
 for his personal talents and character, but does not quite come 
 up to our expectations in print. All these contradictions and 
 petty details interrupt the calm current of our reflections. If 
 you want to know what any of the authors were who lived 
 before our time, and are still objects of anxious inquiry, you 
 have only to look into their works. But the dust and smoke 
 and noise of modern literature have nothing in common with 
 the pure, silent air of immortality. 
 
 When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener 
 the better), I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is 
 not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is 
 altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish 
 turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what 
 to think of the composition. There is a want of confidence 
 and security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also 
 like made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally little 
 else than hashes and rifaccimenti of what has been served up 
 entire and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in 
 thus turning to a well-known author, there is not only an 
 assurance that my time will not be thrown away, or my palate 
 nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash, but I shake 
 hands with, and look an old, tried, and valued friend in the 
 face, compare notes, and chat the hours away. It is true, we 
 form dear friendships with such ideal guests dearer, alas ! 
 and more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaint- 
 ance. In reading a book which is an old favourite with me 
 (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of 
 imagination and of a critical relish of the work, but the 
 pleasures of memory added to it. It recalls the same feelings 
 and associations which I had in first reading it, and which I 
 can never have again in any other way. Standard productions
 
 152 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 of this kind are links in the chain of our conscious being. 
 They bind together the different scattered divisions of our 
 personal identity. They are landmarks and guides in 
 our journey through life. They are pegs and loops on 
 which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at 
 pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of 
 our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest 
 hours. They are " for thoughts and for remembrance ! " 
 They are like Fortunatus's Wishing Cap they give us the 
 best riches those of Fancy j and transport us, not over half 
 the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, at a word's 
 notice 1 
 
 My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give 
 me for this purpose a volume of Peregrine Pickle or Tom 
 Jones. Open either of them anywhere at the Memoirs of 
 Lady Vane, or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady 
 Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and Square, 
 or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia 
 and her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture 
 and there I find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as 
 ever, and feel myself the same as when I was first introduced 
 into the midst of it. Nay, sometimes the sight of an odd 
 volume of these good old English authors on a stall, or the 
 name lettered on the back among others on the shelves of 
 a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, 
 and sets " the puppets dallying." Twenty years are struck off 
 the list, and I am a child again. A sage philosopher, who was 
 not a very wise man, said, that he should like very well to 
 be young again, if he could take his experience along with 
 him. This ingenious person did not seem to be aware, by the 
 gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being 
 young is to be without this weight of experience, which he 
 would fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and which 
 never comes too late with years. Oh ! what a privilege to 
 be able to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from 
 off one's back, and transport oneself, by the help of a little 
 musty duodecimo, to the time when "ignorance was bliss,"
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 153 
 
 and when we first got a peep at the raree-show of the world, 
 through the glass of fiction gazing at mankind, as we do at 
 wild beasts in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages 
 or at curiosities in a museum, that we must not touch I For 
 myself, not only are the old ideas of the contents of the work 
 brought back to my mind in all their vividness, but the old 
 associations of the faces and persons of those I then knew, 
 as they were in their lifetime the place where I sat to read 
 the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, 
 the fields, the sky return, and all my early impressions with 
 them. This is better to me those places, those times, those 
 persons, and those feelings that come across me as I retrace the 
 story and devour the page, are to me better far than the wet 
 sheets of the last new novel from the Ballantyne press, to say 
 nothing of the Minerva press in Leadenhall Street. It is like 
 visiting the scenes of early youth. I think of the time " when 
 I was in my father's house, and my path ran down with butter 
 and honey " when I was a little, thoughtless child, and had no 
 other wish or care but to con my daily task, and be happy ! 
 Tom Jones, I remember, was the first work that broke the spell. 
 It came down in numbers once a fortnight, in Cooke's pocket- 
 edition, embellished with cuts. I had hitherto read only in 
 school-books, and a tiresome ecclesiastical history (with the 
 exception of Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest") : but this 
 had a different relish with it " sweet in the mouth," though 
 not " bitter in the belly." It smacked of the world I lived in, 
 and in which I was to live and showed me groups, "gay 
 creatures " not " of the element," but of the earth ; not " living in 
 the clouds," but travelling the same road that I did ; some 
 that had passed on before me, and others that might soon over- 
 take me. My heart had palpitated at the thoughts of a board- 
 ing-school ball, or gala-day at Midsummer or Christmas : but 
 the world I had found out in Cooke's edition of the British 
 Novelists was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. 
 The sixpenny numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave 
 off just in the middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, 
 where Torn Jones discovers Square behind the blanket ; or
 
 i54 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 where Parson Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, 
 very undesignedly gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me 
 caution the reader against this impression of Joseph Andrews ; 
 for there is a picture of Fanny in it which he should not set his 
 heart on, lest he should never meet with anything like it ; or if 
 he should, it would, perhaps, be better for him that he had 
 
 not. It was just like ! With what eagerness I used 
 
 to look forward to the next number, and open the prints ! Ah ! 
 never again shall I feel the enthusiastic delight with which 
 I gazed at the figures, and anticipated the story and adventures 
 of Major Bath and Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and my 
 Uncle Toby, of Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil 
 Bias and Dame Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair 
 Lucretia, whose lips open and shut like buds of roses. To what 
 nameless ideas did they give rise with what airy delights 
 I filled up the outlines, as I hung in silence over the page I Let 
 me still recall them, that they may breathe fresh life into me, 
 and that I may live that birthday of thought and romantic 
 pleasure over again 1 Talk of the ideal/ This is the only true 
 ideal the heavenly tints of Fancy reflected in the bubbles that 
 float upon the spring-tide of human life. 
 
 " O Memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
 And give those scenes thine everlasting life !" 
 
 The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling 
 than it was ; the reader will, by this time, have been let into my 
 secret. Much about the same time, or I believe rather earlier, 
 I took a particular satisfaction in reading Chubb's Tracts, and I 
 often think I will get them again to wade through. There is a 
 high gusto of polemical divinity in them ; and you fancy that 
 you hear a club of shoemakers at Salisbury debating a disput- 
 able text from one of St. Paul's Epistles in a workmanlike style, 
 with equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say much for 
 my metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after 
 with great ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was 
 presently entangled in the briars and thorns of subtle dis- 
 tinctionsof " fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," though
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 155 
 
 I cannot add that "in their wandering mazes I found no end ;" 
 for I did arrive at some very satisfactory and potent conclusions; 
 nor will I go so far, however ungrateful the subject might seem, 
 as to exclaim with Marlowe's Faustus " Would I had never 
 seen Wittenberg, never read book " that is, never studied such 
 authors as Hartley, Hume, Berkeley, etc. Locke's Essay on the 
 Human Understanding is, however, a work from which I never 
 derived either pleasure or profit ; and Hobbes, dry and powerful 
 as he is, I did not read till long afterwards. I read a few poets, 
 which did not much hit my taste for I would have the reader 
 understand, I am deficient in the faculty of imagination ; but I 
 fell early upon French romances and philosophy, and devoured 
 them tooth-and-nail. Many a dainty repast have I made of the 
 New Eloise ; the description of the kiss ; the excursion on the 
 water ; the letter of St. Preux, recalling the time of their first 
 loves ; and the account of Julia's death ; these I read over and 
 over again with unspeakable delight and wonder. Some years 
 after, when I met with this work again, I found I had lost 
 nearly my whole relish for it (except some few parts), and was, 
 I remember, very much mortified with the change in my taste, 
 which I sought to attribute to the smallness and gilt edges of 
 the edition I had bought, and its being perfumed with rose- 
 leaves. Nothing could exceed the gravity, the solemnity with 
 which I carried home and read the Dedication to the Social 
 Contract, with some other pieces of the same author, which I 
 had picked up at a stall in a coarse leathern cover. Of the 
 Confessions I have spoken elsewhere, and may repeat what 
 I have said " Sweet is the dew of their memory, and pleasant 
 the balm of their recollection ! " Their beauties are not 
 "scattered like stray-gifts o'er the earth,'' but sown thick 
 on the page, rich and rare. I wish I had never read the 
 Emilius, or read it with implicit faith. I had no occasion to 
 pamper my natural aversion to affectation or pretence, by 
 romantic and artificial means. I had better have formed 
 myself on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter. There is a class 
 of persons whose virtues and most shining qualities sink in, 
 and are concealed by, an absorbent ground of modesty and
 
 156 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 reserve ; and such a one I do, without vanity, profess myself.* 
 Now these are the very persons who are likely to attach them- 
 selves to the character of Emilius, and of whom it is sure to be 
 the bane. This dull, phlegmatic, retiring humour is not in a 
 fair way to be corrected, but confirmed and rendered desperate, 
 by being in that work held up as an object of imitation, as an 
 example of simplicity and magnanimity by coming upon us 
 with all the recommendations of novelty, surprise, and superiority 
 to the prejudices of the world by being stuck upon a pedestal, 
 made amiable, dazzling, a leurre de dupe! The reliance on 
 solid worth which it inculcates, the preference of sober truth to 
 gaudy tinsel, hangs like a mill-stone round the neck of the 
 imagination " a load to sink a navy " impedes our progress, 
 and blocks up every prospect in life. A man, to get on, to be 
 successful, conspicuous, applauded, should not retire upon the 
 centre of his conscious resources, but be always at the circum- 
 ference of appearances. He must envelop himself in a halo of 
 mystery he must ride in an equipage of opinion he must 
 walk with a train of self-conceit following him he must not 
 strip himself to a buff-jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his 
 real merits, but must surround himself with a cortege of 
 prejudices, like the signs of the Zodiac he must seem anything 
 but what he is, and then he may pass for anything he pleases. 
 The world love to be amused by hollow professions, to be 
 deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallu- 
 cination ; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, 
 simple, honest truth such as we see it chalked out in the 
 character of Emilius. To return from this digression, which is 
 a little out of place here. 
 
 Books have in a great measure lost their power over me ; 
 nor can I revive the same interest in them as formerly. I 
 perceive when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is true, 
 
 * Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a 
 
 friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to 
 
 write, returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and 
 
 classical terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that 
 
 ' Modest merit never can succeed I "
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 157 
 
 " Marcian Colonna is a dainty book ; " 
 
 and the reading of Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately made 
 me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and 
 tender images there conjured up, " come like shadows so 
 depart." The " tiger-moth's wings," which he has spread over 
 his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy ; the gorgeous 
 twilight window which he has painted over again in his verse, 
 to me " blushes " almost in vain " with blood of queens and 
 kings." I know how I should have felt at one time in reading 
 such passages ; and that is all. The sharp luscious flavour, 
 the fine aroma is fled, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the 
 husk of literature is left. If any one were to ask me what I 
 read now, I might answer with my Lord Hamlet in the play 
 "Words, words, words." " What is the matter ?"" Nothing /" 
 They have scarce a meaning. But it was not always so. 
 There was a time when to my thinking, every word was a 
 flower or a pearl, like those which dropped from the mouth of 
 the little peasant-girl in the Fairy tale, or like those that fall 
 from the great preacher in the Caledonian Chapel 1 I drank of 
 the stream of knowledge that tempted, but did not mock my 
 lips, as of the river of life, freely. How eagerly I slaked my 
 thirst of German sentiment, " as the hart that panteth for the 
 water-springs ; " how I bathed and revelled, and added my 
 floods of tears to Goethe's Sorrows of Werter^ and to Schiller's 
 Robbers 
 
 " Giving my stock of more to that which had too much !" 
 
 I read and assented with all my soul to Coleridge's fine 
 Sonnet, beginning 
 
 " Schiller ! that hour I would have wish'd to die, 
 If through the shuddering midnight I had sent, 
 From the dark dungeon of the tow'r time-rent, 
 That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry ! " 
 
 I believe I may date my insight into the mysteries of poetry 
 from the commencement of my acquaintance with the Authors 
 of the Lyrical Ballads; at least, my discrimination of the higher 
 sorts not my predilection for such writers as Goldsmith or
 
 158 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 Pope : nor do I imagine they will say I got my liking for the 
 Novelists, or the comic writers for the characters of Valentine, 
 Tattle, or Miss Prue from them. If so, I must have got from 
 them what they never had themselves. In points where poetic 
 diction and conception are concerned, I may be at a loss, and 
 liable to be imposed upon : but in forming an estimate of 
 passages relating to common life and manners, I cannot think I 
 am a plagiarist from any man. I there " know my cue without 
 a prompter." I may say of such studies, Intus et in cute. I am 
 just able to admire those literal touches of observation and 
 description which persons of loftier pretensions overlook and 
 despise. I think I comprehend something of the characteristic 
 part of Shakespeare ; and in him indeed all is characteristic, 
 even the nonsense and poetry. I believe it was the celebrated 
 Sir Humphry Davy who used to say, that Shakespeare was 
 rather a metaphysician than a poet. At any rate, it was not ill 
 said. I wish that I had sooner known the dramatic writers 
 contemporary with Shakespeare ; for in looking them over 
 about a year ago, I almost revived my old passion for reading, 
 and my old delight in books, though they were very nearly new 
 to me. The Periodical Essayists I read long ago. The Spec- 
 tator I liked extremely : but the Tatler took my fancy most. I 
 read the others soon after, the Rambler, the Adventurer, the 
 World, the Connoisseur. I was not sorry to get to the end of 
 them, and have no desire to go regularly through them again. 
 I consider myself a thorough adept in Richardson. I like the 
 longest of his novels best, and think no part of them tedious ; 
 nor should I ask to have anything better to do than to read 
 them from beginning to end, to take them up when I chose, and 
 lay them down when I was tired, in some old family mansion in 
 the country, till every word and syllable relating to the bright 
 Clarissa, the divine Clementina, the beautiful Pamela, " with 
 every trick and line of their sweet favour," were once more 
 "graven in my heart's table."* I have a sneaking kindness for 
 
 * During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name 
 of Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte's levee. Instead of the usual
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 159 
 
 Mackenzie's Julia de Roubignt for the deserted mansion, and 
 straggling gilliflowers on the mouldering garden-wall ; and still 
 more for his Man of Feeling; not that it is better, nor so good ; 
 but at the time I read it, I sometimes thought of the heroine, 
 Miss Walton, and of Miss together, and " that ligament, 
 fine as it was, was never broken ! "One of the poets that I 
 have always read with most pleasure, and can wander about in 
 for ever with a sort of voluptuous indolence, is Spenser ; and I 
 like Chaucer even better. The only writer among the Italians 
 I can pretend to any knowledge of, is Boccaccio, and of him I 
 cannot express half my admiration. His story of the Hawk I 
 could read and think of from day to day, just as I would look at 
 a picture of Titian's ! 
 
 I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a 
 neighbouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid the 
 plot of his Recruiting Officer) and bringing home with me, " at 
 one proud swoop," a copy of Milton's Paradise Los/, and another 
 of Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution both which 
 I have still ; and I still recollect, when I see the covers, the 
 pleasure with which I dipped into them as I returned with my 
 double prize. I was set up for one while. That time is past 
 " with all its giddy raptures : " but I am still anxious to preserve 
 its memory, "embalmed with odours." With respect to the 
 first of these works, I would be permitted to remark here in 
 passing, that it is a sufficient answer to the German criticism 
 which has since been started against the character of Satan 
 (viz., that it is not one of disgusting deformity, or pure, defecated 
 malice), to say that Milton has there drawn, not the abstract 
 principle of evil, not a devil incarnate, but a fallen angel. This 
 
 question, " Where have you served, Sir ? " the First Consul immediately 
 addressed him, " I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the 
 hero of Richardson's Romance ! " Here was a Consul. The young 
 man's uncle, who was called Lovelace, told me this anecdote while we 
 were stopping together at Calais. I had also been thinking that his 
 was the same name as that of the hero of Richardson's Romance. 
 This is one of my reasons for liking Buonaparte.
 
 160 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 is the Scriptural account, and the poet has followed it. We 
 may safely retain such passages as that well-known one 
 
 " His form had not yet lost 
 
 All her original brightness ; nor appear'd 
 Less than archangel ruin'd ; and the excess 
 Of glory obscur'd " 
 
 for the theory, which is opposed to them, " falls flat upon the 
 grunsel edge, and shames its worshippers." Let us hear no 
 more, then, of this monkish cant, and bigoted outcry for the 
 restoration of the horns and tail of the devil 1 Again, as to the 
 other work, Burke's Reflections^ I took a particular pride and 
 pleasure in it, and read it to myself and others for months 
 afterwards. I had reason for my prejudice in favour of this 
 author. To understand an adversary is some praise : to admire 
 him is more. I thought I did both : I knew I did one. From the 
 first time I ever cast my eyes on anything of Burke's (which was 
 an extract from his "Letter to a Noble Lord" in a three-times- 
 a-week paper, the St.. James's Chronicle, in 1796), I said to myself, 
 " This is true eloquence : this is a man pouring out his mind on 
 paper." All other style seemed to me pedantic and impertinent. 
 Dr. Johnson's was walking on stilts; and even Junius's (who was 
 at that time a favourite with me), with all his terseness, shrunk 
 up into little antithetic points and well-trimmed sentences. 
 But Burke's style was forked and playful as the lightning, 
 crested like the serpent. He delivered plain things on a plain 
 ground ; but when he rose, there was no end of his flights and 
 circumgyrations and in this very Letter, " he, like an eagle in 
 a dove-cot, fluttered his Volscians," (the Duke of Bedford and 
 the Earl of Lauderdale) " in Corioli." I did not care for his 
 doctrines. I was then, and am still, proof against their 
 contagion ; but I admired the author, and was considered as 
 not a very staunch partisan of the opposite side, though I 
 thought myself that an abstract proposition was one thing a 
 masterly transition, a brilliant metaphor, another. I conceived, 
 too, that he might be wrong in his main argument, and yet 
 deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion. I remember
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 161 
 
 Coleridge assuring me, as a poetical and political set-off to my 
 sceptical admiration, that Wordsworth had written an "Essay 
 on Marriage," which, for manly thought and nervous expression, 
 he deemed incomparably superior. As I had not, at that time, 
 / seen any specimens of Mr. Wordsworth's prose style, I could 
 : not express my doubts on the subject. If there are greater 
 prose-writers than Burke, they either lie out of my course 
 of study, or are beyond my sphere of comprehension. I am 
 too old to be a convert to a new mythology of genius. The 
 niches are occupied, the tables are full. If such is still my 
 admiration of this man's misapplied powers, what must it 
 have been at a time when I myself was in vain trying, year 
 after year, to write a single, essay, nay, a single page or 
 sentence ; when I regarded the wonders of his pen with the 
 longing eyes of one who was dumb and a changeling ; and 
 when to be able to convey the slightest conception of my 
 meaning to others in words, was the height of an almost hope- 
 less ambition 1 But I never measured others' excellences by my 
 own defects : though a sense of my own incapacity, and of the 
 steep, impassable ascent from me to them, made me regard 
 them with greater awe and fondness. I have thus run through 
 most of my early studies and favourite authors, some of whom I 
 have since criticised more at' large. Whether those observa- 
 tions will survive me, I neither know nor do I much care : but 
 to the works themselves, " worthy of all acceptation," and to the 
 feelings they have always excited in me since I could distinguish 
 a meaning in language, nothing shall ever prevent me from 
 looking back with gratitude and triumph. To have lived in the 
 cultivation of an intimacy with such works, and to have 
 familiarly relished such names, is not to have lived quite in 
 vain. 
 
 There are other authors whom I have never read, and yet 
 whom I have frequently had a great desire to read, from some 
 circumstance relating to them. Among these is Lord Claren- 
 don's History of the Grand Rebellion, after which I have a 
 hankering, from hearing it spoken of by good judges from 
 my interest in the events, and knowledge of the characters 
 
 583
 
 162 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 from other sources, and from having seen fine portraits of 
 most of them. I like to read a well-penned character, and 
 Clarendon is said to have been a master in his way. I should 
 like to read Froissart's Chronicles, Holinshed and Stowe, and 
 Fuller's Worthies. I intend, whenever I can, to read Beaumont 
 and Fletcher all through. There are fifty-two of their plays, 
 and I have only read a dozen or fourteen of them. " A Wife 
 for a Month" and "Thierry and Theodoret " are, I am told, 
 delicious, and I can believe it. I should like to read the 
 speeches in Thucydides, and Guicciardini's History of Florence, 
 and Don Quixote in the original. I have often thought of 
 reading the Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, and the Galatea 
 of the same author. But I somehow reserve them like "another 
 Yarrow." I should also like to read the last new novel (if I 
 could be sure it was so) of the author ot Waverley \ no one 
 would be more glad than I to find it the best t
 
 THE FIGHT. 
 
 THE FIGHT. 
 
 the fight 's the thing, 
 
 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." 
 
 Where there's a will therms a way. I said so to myself, as I 
 walked down Chancery Lane, about half-past six o'clock on 
 Monday, the loth of December, to inquire at Jack Randall's 
 where the fight the next day was to be ; and I found the 
 proverb nothing "musty" in the present instance. I was 
 determined to see this fight, come what would, and see it I did, 
 in great style. It was my first fight, yet it more than answered 
 my expectations. Ladies I it is to you I dedicate this descrip- 
 tion ; nor let it seem out of character for the fair to notice the 
 exploits of the brave. Courage and modesty are the old 
 English virtues ; and may they never look cold and askance on 
 one another I Think, ye fairest of the fair, loveliest of the 
 lovely kind, ye practisers of soft enchantment, how many more 
 ye kill with poisoned baits than ever fell in the ring ; and listen 
 with subdued air and without shuddering, to a tale tragic only 
 in appearance, and sacred to the FANCY 1 
 
 I was going down Chancery Lane, thinking to ask at Jack 
 Randall's where the fight was to be, when looking through the 
 glass-door of the Hole in the Wall, I heard a gentleman asking 
 the same question at Mrs. Randall, as the author cf Wa-verley 
 would express it. Now Mrs. Randall stood answering the 
 gentleman's question, with all the authenticity of the lady of the 
 Champion of the Light Weights. Thinks I, I'll wait till this 
 person comes out, and learn from him how it is. For to say a
 
 164 THE FIGHT. 
 
 truth, I was not fond of going into this house of call for heroes 
 and philosophers, ever since the owner of it (for Jack is no 
 gentleman) threatened once upon a time to kick me out of 
 doors for wanting a mutton-chop at his hospitable board, when 
 the conqueror in thirteen battles was more full of blue ruin than 
 of good manners. I was the more mortified at this repulse, 
 inasmuch as I had heard Mr. James Simpkins, hosier in the 
 Strand, one day when the character of the Hole in the Wall 
 was brought in question, observe " The house is a very good 
 house, and the company quite genteel : I have been there 
 myself 1 " Remembering this unkind treatment of mine host, 
 to which mine hostess was also a party, and not wishing to put 
 her in unquiet thoughts at a time jubilant like the present, I 
 waited at the door, when, who should issue forth but my friend 
 
 Joe P s, and, seeing him turn suddenly up Chancery Lane 
 
 with that quick jerk and impatient stride which distinguish a 
 lover ol the FANCY, I said, " I'll be hanged if that fellow is not 
 going to the fight, and is on his way to get me to go with him." 
 So it proved in effect, and we agreed to adjourn to my lodgings 
 to discuss measures with that cordiality which makes old 
 friends like new, and new friends like old, on great occasions. 
 We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, and 
 have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them. Give a 
 man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he 
 will be glad to share it with the first person he meets. Joe and 
 I, though we seldom meet, were an altet idem on this 
 memorable occasion, and had not an idea that we did not 
 candidly impart ; and " so carelessly did we fleet the time," that 
 I wish no better, when there is another fight, than to have him 
 for a companion on my journey down, and to return with my 
 friend Jack Pigott, talking of what was to happen or of what 
 did happen, with a noble subject always at hand, and liberty to 
 digress to others whenever they offered. Indeed, on my 
 repeating the lines from Spenser in an involuntary fit of 
 enthusiasm, 
 
 ' What more felicity can fall to creature, 
 Than to enjoy delight with liberty ? "
 
 THE FIGHT. 165 
 
 my last-named ingenious friend stopped me by saying that this, 
 translated into the vulgate, meant " Going to see a fight? 
 
 Joe and I could not settle about the method of going down. 
 He said there was a caravan, he understood, to start from Tom 
 Belcher's at two, which would go there right out and back 
 again the next day. Now, I never travel all night, and said I 
 should get a cast to Newbury by one of the mails. Joe swore 
 the thing was impossible, and I could only answer that I had 
 made up my mind to it. In short, he seemed to me to waver, 
 said he only came to see if I was going, had letters to write, a 
 cause coming on the day after, and faintly said at parting (for 
 I was bent on setting out that moment) " Well, we meet at 
 Philippi?" I made the best of my way to Piccadilly. The 
 mail-coach stand was bare. "They are all gone," said I "this 
 is always the way with me in the instant I lose the future if 
 I had not stayed to pour out that last cup of tea, I should have 
 been just in time ;" and cursing my folly and ill-luck together, 
 without inquiring at the coach-office whether the mails were 
 gone or not, I walked on in despite, and to punish my own 
 dilatoriness and want of determination. At any rate, I would 
 not turn back : I might get to Hounslow, or perhaps farther, to 
 be on my road the next morning. I passed Hyde Park corner 
 (my Rubicon), and trusted to fortune. Suddenly I heard the 
 clattering of a Brentford stage, and the fight rushed full upon 
 my fancy. I argued (not unwisely) that even a Brentford 
 coachman was better company than my own thoughts (such as 
 they were just then), and at his invitation mounted the box 
 with him. I immediately stated my case to him namely, my 
 quarrel with myself for missing the Bath or Bristol mailjand 
 my determination to get on in consequence as well as I could, 
 without any disparagement or insulting comparison between 
 longer or shorter stages. It is a maxim with me that stage- 
 coaches, and consequently stage-coachmen, are respectable in 
 proportion to the distance they have to travel : so I said 
 nothing on that subject to my Brentford friend. Any incipient 
 tendency to an abstract proposition, or (as he might have 
 construed it) to a personal reflection of this kind, was however
 
 1 66 THE FIGHT. 
 
 nipped in the bud ; for I had no sooner declared indignantly 
 that I had missed the mails, than he flatly denied that they 
 were gone along, and lo 1 at the instant three of them drove by 
 in rapid, provoking, orderly succession, as if they would devour 
 the ground before them. Here again I seemed in the contra- 
 dictory situation of the man in Dryden who exclaims, 
 
 " I follow Fate, which does too hard pursue 1 " 
 
 If I had stopped to inquire at the White Horse Cellar, which 
 would not have taken me a minute, I should now have been 
 driving down the road in all the dignified unconcern and ideal 
 perfection of mechanical conveyance. The Bath mail I had set 
 my mind upon, and I had missed it, as I miss everything else, 
 by my own absurdity, in putting the will for the deed, and 
 aiming at ends without employing means. " Sir," said he of 
 the Brentford, " the Bath mail will be up presently, my brother- 
 in-law drives it, and I will engage to stop him if there is a place 
 empty." I almost doubted my good genius ; but, sure enough, 
 up it drove like lightning, and stopped directly at the call of the 
 Brentford Jehu. I would not have believed this possible, but 
 the brother-in-law of a mail-coach driver is himself no mean 
 man. I was transferred without loss of time from the top of 
 one coach to that of the other, desired the guard to pay my 
 fare to the Brentford coachman for me as I had no change, was 
 accommodated with a great coat, put up my umbrella to keep 
 off a drizzling mist, and we began to cut through the air like an 
 arrow. The mile-stones disappeared one after another, the 
 rain kept off; Tom Turtle* the trainer sat before me on the 
 coach-box, with whom I exchanged civilities as a gentleman 
 going to the fight ; the passion that had transported me an 
 hour before was subdued to pensive regret and conjectural 
 musing on the next day's battle ; I was promised a place inside 
 at Reading, and upon the whole, I thought myself a lucky 
 fellow. Such is the force of imagination 1 On the outside of 
 any other coach on the loth of December, with a Scotch mist 
 
 * John Thurtell, to wit.
 
 THE FIGHT. 167 
 
 drizzling through the cloudy moonlight air, I should have been 
 cold, comfortless, impatient, and, no doubt, wet through ; but 
 seated on the Royal mail, I felt warm and comfortable, the air 
 did me good, the ride did me good, I was pleased with the 
 progress we had made, and confident that all would go well 
 through the journey. When I got inside at Reading, I found 
 Turtle and a stout valetudinarian, whose costume bespoke him 
 one of the FANCY, and who had risen from a three months' 
 sick bed to get into the mail to see the fight. They were 
 intimate, and we fell into a lively discourse. My friend the 
 trainer was confined in his topics to fighting dogs and men, to 
 bears and badgers ; beyond this he was " quite chap-fallen," 
 had not a word to throw at a dog, or indeed very wisely fell 
 asleep, when any other game was started. The whole art 
 of training (I, however, learnt from him) consists in two 
 things, exercise and abstinence, abstinence and exercise, 
 repeated alternately and without end. A yolk of an egg 
 with a spoonful of rum in it is the first thing in a morning, 
 and then a walk of six miles till breakfast. This meal consists 
 of a plentiful supply of tea and toast and beef-steaks. Then 
 another six or seven miles till dinner-time, and another supply 
 of solid beef or mutton with a pint of porter, and perhaps, at 
 the utmost, a couple of glasses of sherry. Martin trains on 
 water, but this increases his infirmity on another very dangerous 
 side. The Gasman takes now and then a chirping glass (under 
 the rose) to console him, during a six weeks' probation, for the 
 absence of Mrs. Hickman an agreeable woman, with (I under- 
 stand) a pretty fortune of two hundred pounds. How matter 
 presses on me 1 What stubborn things are facts 1 How inex- 
 haustible is nature and art 1 " It is well," as I once heard Mr. 
 Richmond observe, "to see a variety." He was speaking of 
 cock-fighting as an edifying spectacle. I cannot deny but that 
 one learns more of what is (I do not say of what ought to be) in 
 this desultory mode of practical study, than from reading the 
 same book twice over, even though it should be a moral 
 treatise. Where was I ? I was sitting at dinner with the 
 candidate for the honours of the ring, " where good digestion
 
 1 68 THE FIGHT. 
 
 waits on appetite, and health on both." Then follows an hour 
 of social chat and native glee ; and afterwards, to another 
 breathing over heathy hill or dale. Back to supper, and then to 
 bed, and up by six again our hero 
 
 " Follows so the ever-running sun, 
 With profitable ardour" 
 
 to the day that brings him victory or defeat in the green fairy 
 circle. Is not this life more sweet than mine ? I was going to 
 say ; but I will not libel any life by comparing it to mine, which 
 is (at the date of these presents) bitter as coloquintida and the 
 dregs of aconitum ! 
 
 The invalid in the Bath mail soared a pitch above the trainer, 
 and did not sleep so sound, because he had " more figures 
 and more fantasies." We talked the hours away merrily. He 
 had faith in surgery, for he had three ribs set right, that had 
 been broken in a turn-up at Belcher's, but thought physicians 
 old women, for they had no antidote in their catalogue for 
 brandy. An indigestion is an excellent commonplace for two 
 people that never met before. By way of ingratiating myself, 
 I told him the story of my doctor, who, on my earnestly repre- 
 senting to him that I thought his regimen had done me harm, 
 assured me that the whole pharmacopeia contained nothing 
 comparable to the prescription he had given me ; and, as a 
 proof of its undoubted efficacy, said, that "he had had one 
 gentleman with my complaint under his hands for the last 
 fifteen years." This anecdote made my companion shake the 
 rough sides of his three greatcoats with boisterous laughter; 
 and Turtle, starting out of his sleep, swore he knew how the fight 
 would go, for he had had a dream about it. Sure enough the 
 rascal told us how the three first rounds went off, but "his 
 dream " like others, " denoted a foregone conclusion." He knew 
 his men. The moon now rose in silver state, and I ventured, 
 with some hesitation, to point out this object of placid beauty, 
 with the blue serene beyond, to the man of science, to which his 
 ear he " seriously inclined," the more as it gave promise (fun 
 beau jour for the morrow, and showed the ring undrenched by
 
 THE FIGHT. 169 
 
 envious showers, arrayed in sunny smiles. Just then, all going 
 on well, I thought on my friend Joe, whom I had left behind, 
 and said innocently, "There was a blockhead of a fellow 
 I left in town, who said there was no possibility of getting down 
 by the mail, and talked of going by a caravan from Belcher's 
 at two in the morning, after he had written some letters." 
 " Why," said he of the lapels, " I should not wonder if that 
 was the very person we saw running about like mad from one 
 coach-door to another, and asking if any one had seen a friend 
 of his, a gentleman going to the fight, whom he had missed 
 stupidly enough by staying to write a note." " Pray, sir," said 
 my fellow-traveller, "had he a plaid-cloak on?" "Why, no," 
 said I, " not at the time I left him, but he very well might after- 
 wards, for he offered to lend me one." The plaid-cloak and the 
 letter decided the thing. Joe, sure enough, was in the Bristol 
 mail, which preceded us by about fifty yards. This was droll 
 enough. We had now but a few miles to our place of destina- 
 tion, and the first thing I did on alighting at Newbury, both 
 coaches stopping at the same time, was to call out, " Pray is 
 
 there a gentleman in that mail of the name of P s ?" " No," 
 
 said Joe, borrowing something of the vein of Gilpin, "for I 
 have just got out." " Well 1 " says he, " this is lucky ; but you 
 don't know how vexed I was to miss you ; for," added he, 
 lowering his voice, " do you know when I left you I went to 
 Belcher's to ask about the caravan, and Mrs. Belcher said very 
 obligingly, she couldn't tell about that, but there were two gentle- 
 men who had taken places by the mail and were gone on in 
 a landau, and she could frank us. It's a pity I didn't meet with 
 you ; we could then have got down for nothing. But muirfs the 
 word? If s the devil for any one to tell me a secret, for it is 
 sure to come out in print I do not care so much to gratify a 
 friend, but the public ear is too great a temptation to me. 
 
 Our present business was to get beds and supper at an inn ; 
 but this was no easy task. The public-houses were full, and 
 where you saw a light at a private house, and people poking 
 their heads out of the casement to see what was going on, they 
 instantly put them in and shut the window, the moment you
 
 170 THE FIGHT. 
 
 seemed advancing with a suspicious overture for accommoda- 
 tion. Our guard and coachman thundered away at the outer 
 gate of the Crown for some time without effect such was the 
 greater noise within ; and when the doors were unbarred, and 
 we got admittance, we found a party assembled in the kitchen 
 round a good hospitable fire, some sleeping, others drinking, 
 others talking on politics and on the fight. A tall English 
 yeoman (something like Matthews in the face, and quite as 
 great a wag) 
 
 " A lusty man to ben an abbot able " 
 
 was making such a prodigious noise about rent and taxes, and 
 the price of corn now and formerly, that he had prevented us 
 from being heard at the gate. The first thing I heard him say 
 was to a shuffling fellow who wanted to be off a bet for a 
 shilling glass of brandy and water " Confound it, man, don't 
 be insipid! " Thinks I, that is a good phrase. It was a good 
 omen. He kept it up so all night, nor flinched with the 
 approach of morning. He was a fine fellow, with sense, wit, 
 and spirit, a hearty body and a joyous mind, free-spoken, frank, 
 convivial one of that true English breed that went with Harry 
 the Fifth to the siege of Harfleur "standing like greyhounds 
 in the slips," etc. We ordered tea and eggs (beds were soon 
 found to be out of the question), and this fellow's conversation 
 was sauce piquante. It did one's heart good to see him 
 brandish his oaken towel and to hear him talk. He made 
 mince-meat of a drunken, stupid, red-faced, quarrelsome, 
 frowsy farmer, whose nose "he moralised into a thousand 
 similes," making it out a firebrand like Bardolph's. " I'll tell 
 you what, my friend," says he, "the landlady has only to 
 keep you here to save fire and candle. If one was to touch 
 your nose, it would go off like a piece of charcoal." At this the 
 other only grinned like an idiot, the sole variety in his purple 
 face being his little peering grey eyes and yellow teeth, called 
 for another glass, swore he would not stand it, and after many 
 attempts to provoke his humorous antagonist to single combat, 
 which the other turned off (after working him up to a ludicrous
 
 THE FIGHT. 171 
 
 pitch of choler) with great adroitness, he fell quietly asleep with 
 a glass of liquor in his hand, which he could not lift to his head. 
 His laughing persecutor made a speech over him, and turning 
 to the opposite side of the room, where they were all sleeping in 
 the midst of this "loud and furious fun," said "There's a 
 scene, by G d, for Hogarth to paint. I think he and 
 Shakespeare were our two best men at copying life." This 
 confirmed me in my good opinion of him. Hogarth, Shake- 
 speare, and Nature, were just enough for him (indeed for any 
 man) to know. I said, " You read Cobbett, don't you ? At 
 least," says I, " you talk just as well as he writes." He seemed 
 to doubt this. But I said, " We have an hour to spare : if 
 you'll get pen, ink, and paper, and keep on talking, I'll write 
 down what you say ; and if it doesn't make a capital Political 
 Register^ I'll forfeit my head. You have kept me alive to-night, 
 however. I don't know what I should have done without you." 
 He did not dislike this view of the thing, nor my asking if he 
 was not about the size of Jem Belcher ; and told me soon 
 afterwards, in the confidence of friendship, that " the circum- 
 stance which had given him nearly the greatest concern in his 
 life, was Cribb's beating Jem after he had lost his eye by 
 racket-playing." The morning dawns ; that dim but yet clear 
 light appears, which weighs like solid bars of metal on the 
 sleepless eyelids ; the guests dropped down from their chambers 
 one by one but it was too late to think of going to bed now 
 (the clock was on the stroke of seven), we had nothing for it but 
 to find a barber's (the pole that glittered in the morning sun 
 lighted us to his shop), and then a nine miles' march to 
 Hungerford. The day was fine, the sky was blue, the mists 
 were retiring from the marshy ground, the path was tolerably 
 dry, the sitting-up all night had not done us much harm at 
 least the cause was good ; we talked of this and that with 
 amicable difference, roving and sipping of many subjects, but 
 still invariably we returned to the fight. At length, a mile to 
 the left of Hungerford, on a gentle eminence, we saw the ring 
 surrounded by covered carts, gigs, and carriages, of which 
 hundreds had passed us on the road ; Joe gave a youthful
 
 172 THE FIGHT. 
 
 shout, and we hastened down a narrow lane to the scene of 
 action. 
 
 Reader, have you ever seen a fight ? If not, you have a 
 pleasure to come, at least if it is a fight like that between the 
 Gasman and Bill Neate. The crowd was very great when we 
 arrived on the spot ; open carriages were coming up, with 
 streamers flying and music playing, and the country-people 
 were pouring in over hedge and ditch in all directions, to see 
 their hero beat or be beaten. The odds were still on Gas, but 
 only about five to four. Gully had been down to try Neate, and 
 had backed him considerably, which was a damper to the 
 sanguine confidence of the adverse party. About ,200,000 
 were pending. Gas says he has lost ,3000, which were 
 promised him by different gentlemen if he had won. He 
 had presumed too much on himself, which had made others 
 presume on him. This spirited and formidable young fellow 
 seems to have taken for his motto, the old maxim, that " there 
 are three things necessary to success in life Impudence! 
 Impudence! Impudence!" It is so in matters of opinion, but 
 not in the Fancy, which is the most practical of all things, 
 though even here confidence is half the battle, but only half. 
 Our friend had vapoured and swaggered too much, as if he 
 wanted to grin and bully his adversary out of the fight. "Alas ! 
 the Bristol man was not so tamed!" "This is the grave' 
 digger" (would Tom Hickman exclaim in the moments of 
 intoxication from gin and success, showing his tremendous 
 right hand), " this will send many of them to their long homes ; 
 I haven't done with them yet ! " Why should he though he 
 had licked four of the best men within the hour why should he 
 threaten to inflict dishonourable chastisement on my old 
 master Richmond, a veteran going off the stage, and who has 
 borne his sable honours meekly ? Magnanimity, my dear Tom, 
 and bravery, should be inseparable. Or why should he go up 
 to his antagonist, the first time he ever saw him at the Fives 
 Court, and measuring him from head to foot with a glance of 
 contempt, as Achilles surveyed Hector, say to him, " What, are 
 you Bill Neate ? I'll knock more blood out of that great
 
 THE FIGHT. 173 
 
 carcase of thine, this day fortnight, than you ever knock'd out 
 of a bullock's 1 " It was not manly 'twas not fighter-like. If 
 he was sure of the victory (as he was not), the less said about 
 it the better. Modesty should accompany the Fancy as its 
 shadow. The best men were always the best behaved. Jem 
 Belcher, the Game Chicken (before whom the Gasman could 
 not have lived) were civil, silent men. So is Cribb ; so is Tom 
 Belcher, the most elegant of sparrers, and not a man for every 
 one to take by the nose. I enlarged on this topic in the mail 
 (while Turtle was asleep), and said very wisely (as I thought) 
 that impertinence was a part of no profession. A boxer was 
 bound to beat his man, but not to thrust his fist, either actually 
 or by implication, in every one's face. Even a highwayman, in 
 the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if he uses foul 
 language at the same time, I should say he was no gentleman. 
 A boxer, I would infer, need not be a blackguard or a coxcomb, 
 more than another. Perhaps I press this point too much on a 
 fallen man Mr. Thomas Hickman has by this time learnt that 
 first of all lessons, " That man was made to mourn." He has 
 lost nothing by the late fight but his presumption ; and that 
 every man may do as well without ! By an over display of 
 this quality, however, the public had been prejudiced against 
 him, and the knowing ones were taken in. Few but those who 
 had bet on him wished Gas to win. With my own preposses- 
 sions on the subject, the result of the nth of December 
 appeared to me as fine a piece of poetical justice as I had ever 
 witnessed. The difference of weight between the two com- 
 batants (14 stones to 12) was nothing to the sporting men. 
 Great, heavy, clumsy, long-armed Bill Neate kicked the beam 
 in the scale of the Gasman's vanity. The amateurs were 
 frightened at his big words, and thought they would make up 
 for the difference of six feet and five feet nine. Truly, the 
 Fancy are not men of imagination. They judge of what has 
 been, and cannot conceive of anything that is to be. The Gas- 
 man had won hitherto ; therefore he must beat a man half as 
 big again as himself and that to a certainty. Besides, there 
 are as many feuds, factions, prejudices, pedantic notions in the
 
 174 THE FIGHT. 
 
 Fancy as in the state or in the schools. Mr. Gully is almost 
 the only cool, sensible man among them, who exercises an 
 unbiassed discretion, and is not a slave to his passions in these 
 matters. But enough of reflections, and to our tale. The 
 day, as I have said, was fine for a December morning. The 
 grass was wet, and the ground miry, and ploughed up with 
 multitudinous feet, except that, within the ring itself, there was 
 a spot of virgin-green, closed in and unprofaned by vulgar 
 tread, that shone with dazzling brightness in the mid-day sun. 
 For it was now noon, and we had an hour to wait. This is the 
 trying time. It is then the heart sickens, as you think what the 
 two champions are about, and how short a time will determine 
 their fate. After the first blow is struck, there is no opportunity 
 for nervous apprehensions ; you are swallowed up in the 
 immediate interest of the scene but 
 
 " Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
 And the first motion, all the interim is 
 Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream." 
 
 I found it so as I felt the sun's rays clinging to my back, and 
 saw the white wintry clouds sink below the verge of the horizon. 
 " So," I thought, " my fairest hopes have faded from my sight ! 
 so will the Gasman's glory, or that of his adversary, vanish in 
 an hour." The swells were parading in their white box-coats, 
 the outer ring was cleared with some bruises on the heads and 
 shins of the rustic assembly (for the cockneys had been distanced 
 by the sixty-six miles) ; the time drew near ; I had got a good 
 stand ; a bustle, a buzz, ran through the crowd ; and from the 
 opposite side entered Neate, between his second and bottle- 
 holder. He rolled along, swathed in his loose greatcoat, his 
 knock-knees bending under his huge bulk ; and, with a modest, 
 cheerful air, threw his hat into the ring. He then just looked 
 round, and begun quietly to undress ; when from the other side 
 there was a similar rush and an opening made, and the Gasman 
 came forward with a conscious air of anticipated triumph, too 
 much like the cock-of-the-walk. He strutted about more than 
 became a hero, sucked oranges with a supercilious air, and
 
 THE FIGHT. 175 
 
 threw away the skin with a toss of his head, and went up and 
 looked at Neate, which was an act of supererogation. The 
 only sensible thing he did was, as he strode away from the 
 modern Ajax, to fling out his arms, as if he wanted to try 
 whether they would do their work that day. By this time they 
 had stripped, and presented a strong contrast in appearance. 
 If Neate was like Ajax, "with Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear" 
 the pugilistic reputation of all Bristol, Hickman might be com- 
 pared to Diomed, light, vigorous, elastic, and his back glistened 
 in the sun, as he moved about, like a panther's hide. There 
 was now a dead pause attention was awe-struck. Who at 
 that moment, big with a great event, did not draw his breath 
 short did not feel his heart throb ? All was ready. They 
 tossed up for the sun, and the Gasman won. They were led 
 up to the scratch shook hands, and went at it 
 
 In the first round every one thought it was all over. After 
 making play a short time, the Gasman flew at his adversary 
 like a tiger, struck five blows in as many seconds, three first, 
 and then following him as he staggered back, two more, right 
 and left, and down he fell, a mighty ruin. There was a shout, 
 and I said, ** There is no standing this." Neate seemed like a 
 lifeless lump of flesh and bone, round which the Gasman's 
 blows played with the rapidity of electricity or lightning, and 
 you imagined he would only be lifted up to be knocked down 
 again. It was as if Hickman held a sword or a fire in that 
 right hand of his, and directed it against an unarmed body. 
 They met again, and Neate seemed, not cowed, but particularly 
 cautious. I saw his teeth clenched together and his brows knit 
 close against the sun. He held out both his arms at full length 
 straight before him, like two sledge hammers, and raised his 
 left an inch or two higher. The Gasman could not get over 
 this guard they struck mutually and fell, but without advantage 
 on either side. It was the same in the next round ; but the 
 balance of power was thus restored the fate of the battle was 
 suspended. No one could tell how it would end. This was the 
 only moment in which opinion was divided ; for, in the next, 
 the Gasman aiming a mortal blow at his adversary's neck, with
 
 176 THE FIGHT. 
 
 his right hand, and failing from the length he had to reach, the 
 other returned it with his left at full swing, planted a tremen- 
 dous blow on his cheek-bone and eyebrow, and made a red 
 ruin of that side of his face. The Gasman went down, and 
 there was another shout a roar of triumph as the waves of 
 fortune rolled tumultuously from side to side. This was a 
 settler. Hickman got up, and "grinned horrible a ghastly 
 smile," yet he was evidently dashed in his opinion of himself ; 
 it was the first time he had ever been so punished ; all one side 
 of his face was perfect scarlet, and his right eye was closed in 
 dingy blackness, as he advanced to the fight, less confident, but 
 still determined. After one or two rounds, not receiving 
 another such remembrancer, he rallied and went at it with 
 his former impetuosity. But in vain. His strength had been 
 weakened his blows could not tell at such a distance he was 
 obliged to fling himself at his adversary, and could not strike 
 from his feet ; and almost as regularly as he flew at him with 
 his right hand, Neate warded the blow, or drew back out of its 
 reach, and felled him with the return of his left. There was 
 little cautious sparring no half-hits no tapping and trifling, 
 none of the petit-maitreship of the art they were almost all 
 knock-down blows : the fight was a good stand-up fight. The 
 wonder was the half-minute time. If there had been a minute 
 or more allowed between each round, it would have been 
 intelligible how they should by degrees recover strength and 
 resolution ; but to see two men smashed to the ground, smeared 
 with gore, stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out of their 
 bodies ; and then, before you recover from the shock, to see 
 them rise up with new strength and courage, stand ready to 
 inflict or receive mortal offence, and rush upon each other "like 
 two clouds over the Caspian" this is the most astonishing 
 thing of all : this is the high and heroic state of man ! From 
 this time forward the event became more certain every round ; 
 and about the twelfth it seemed as if it must have been over. 
 Hickman generally stood with his back to me ; but in the 
 scuffle, he had changed positions, and Neate just then made a 
 tremendous lunge at him, and hit him full in the face. It was
 
 THE FIGHT. 177 
 
 doubtful whether he would fall backwards or forwards ; he 
 hung suspended for a minute or two, and then fell back, 
 throwing his hands in the air, and with his face lifted up to the 
 sky. I never saw anything more terrific than his aspect just 
 before he fell. All traces of life, of natural expression, were 
 gone from him. His face was like a human skull, a death's 
 head spouting blood. The eyes were filled with blood, the nose 
 streamed with blood, the mouth gaped blood. He was not like 
 an actual man, but like a preternatural, spectral appearance, or 
 like one of the figures in Dante's Inferno. Yet he fought on 
 after this for several rounds, still striking the first desperate 
 blow, and Neate standing on the defensive, and using the same 
 cautious guard to the last, as if he had still all his work to do ; 
 and it was not till the Gasman was so stunned in the seven- 
 teenth or eighteenth round, that his senses forsook him, and he 
 could not come to time, that the battle was declared over.* 
 Ye who despise the Fancy, do something to show as much 
 pluck) or as much self-possession as this, before you assume a 
 superiority which you have never given a single proof of by 
 any one action in the whole course of your lives 1 When the 
 Gasman came to himself, the first words he uttered were, 
 "Where am I? What is the matter?" "Nothing is the 
 matter, Tom, you have lost the battle, but you are the bravest 
 man alive." And Jackson whispered to him, " I am collecting 
 a purse for you, Tom." Vain sounds, and unheard at that 
 moment 1 Neate instantly went up and shook him cordially 
 by the hand, and seeing some old acquaintance, began to 
 flourish with his fists, calling out, " Ah 1 you always said I 
 couldn't fight what do you think now?" But all in good- 
 humour, and without any appearance of arrogance ; only it 
 was evident Bill Neate was pleased that he had won the fU;ht. 
 
 * Scroggins said of the Gasman, that he thought he was a man of 
 that courage, that if his hands were cut off he would still fight on with 
 the stumps like that of Widdrington 
 
 " In doleful dumps, 
 
 Who, when his legs were smitten off, 
 Still fought upon his stumps." 
 
 584
 
 178 THE FIGHT. 
 
 When it was over, I asked Cribb if he did not think it was a 
 good one? He said, "Pretty ivell!" The carrier-pigeons 
 now mounted into the air, and one of them flew with the news 
 of her husband's victory to the bosom of Mrs. Neate. Alas, for 
 Mrs. Hickman 1 
 Mats au revoir, as Sir Fopling Flutter says. I went down 
 
 with Joe P s ; I returned with Jack Pigott, whom I met on 
 
 the ground. Toms is a rattle-brain ; Pigott is a sentimentalist. 
 Now, under favour, I am a sentimentalist too therefore I say 
 nothing, but that the interest of the excursion did not flag as I 
 came back. Pigott and I marched along the causeway leading 
 from Hungerford to Newbury, now observing the effect of a 
 brilliant sun on the tawny meads or moss-coloured cottages, 
 now exulting in the fight, now digressing to some topic of 
 general and elegant literature. My friend was dressed in 
 character for the occasion, or like one of the Fancy ; that is, 
 with a double portion of greatcoats, clogs, and overhauls : and 
 just as we had agreed with a couple of country-lads to carry his 
 superfluous wearing-apparel to the next town, we were over- 
 taken by a return post-chaise, into which I got, Pigott prefer- 
 ring a seat on the bar. There were two strangers already in 
 the chaise, and on their observing they supposed I had been to 
 the fight, I said I had, and concluded they had done the same. 
 They appeared, however, a little shy and sore on the subject ; 
 and it was not till after several hints dropped, and questions 
 put, that it turned out that they had missed it. One of these 
 friends had undertaken to drive the other there in his gig : 
 they had set out, to make sure work, the day before at three in 
 the afternoon. The owner of the one-horse vehicle scorned to 
 ask his way, and drove right on to Bagshot, instead of turning 
 off at Hounslow : there they stopped all night, and set off the 
 next day across the country to Reading, from whence they took 
 coach, and got down within a mile or two of Hungerford, just 
 half-an-hour after the fight was over. This might be safely set 
 down as one of the miseries of human life. We parted with 
 these two gentlemen who had been to see the fight, but 
 had returned as they went, at Wolhampton, where we were
 
 THE FIGHT. 179 
 
 promised beds (an irresistible temptation, for Pigott had passed 
 the preceding night at Hungerford as we had done at New- 
 bury), and we turned into an old bow-windowed parlour with a 
 carpet and a snug fire ; and after devouring a quantity of tea, 
 toast, and eggs, sat down to consider, during an hour of 
 philosophic leisure, what we should have for supper. In the 
 midst of an Epicurean deliberation between a roasted fowl and 
 mutton chops with mashed potatoes, we were interrupted by 
 an inroad of Goths and Vandals O procul este profani not 
 real flash-men, but interlopers, noisy pretenders, butchers 
 from Tothill Fields, brokers from Whitechapel, who called 
 immediately for pipes and tobacco, hoping it would not be 
 disagreeable to the gentlemen, and began to insist that it 
 was a cross. Pigott withdrew from the smoke and noise into 
 another room, and left me to dispute the point with them 
 for a couple of hours sans intermission by the dial. The next 
 morning we rose refreshed ; and on observing that Jack had 
 a pocket volume in his hand, in which he read in the intervals 
 of our discourse, I inquired what it was, and learned to my 
 particular satisfaction that it was a volume of the New 
 Eloise. Ladies, after this, you will contend that a love for 
 the Fancy is incompatible with the cultivation of sentiment ? 
 We jogged on as before, my friend setting me up in a genteel 
 drab great coat and green silk handkerchief (which I must 
 say became me exceedingly), and after stretching our legs 
 for a few miles, and seeing Jack Randall, Ned Turner, and 
 Scroggins pass on the top of one of the Bath coaches, we 
 engaged with the driver of the second to take us to London 
 for the usual fee. I got inside, and found three other 
 passengers. One of them was an old gentleman with an 
 aquiline nose, powdered hair, and a pig-tail, and who looked 
 as if he had played many a rubber at the Bath rooms. I said 
 to myself, he is very like Mr. Windham ; I wish he would enter 
 into conversation, that I might hear what fine observations 
 would come from those finely-turned features. However, 
 nothing passed, till, stopping to dine at Reading, some inquiry 
 was made by the company about the fight, and I gave (as
 
 i8o THE FIGHT. 
 
 the reader may believe) an eloquent and animated descrip- 
 tion of it. When we got into the coach again, the old 
 gentleman, after a graceful exordium, said he had, when a 
 boy, been to a fight between the famous Broughton and 
 George Stevenson, who was called the Fighting Coachman, 
 in the year 1770, with the late Mr. Windham. This beginning 
 flattered the spirit of prophecy with me, and riveted my 
 attention. He went on " George Stevenson was coachman to 
 a friend of my father's. He was an old man when I saw him, 
 some years afterwards. He took hold of his own arm and said, 
 ' there was muscle here once, but now it is no more than this 
 young gentleman's.' He added, ' well, no matter ; I have been 
 here long, I am willing to go hence, and I hope I have done no 
 more harm than another man.' Once," said my unknown 
 companion, " I asked him if he had ever beat Broughton ? 
 He said Yes ; that he had fought with him three times, and 
 the last time he fairly beat him, though the world did not allow 
 it. ' I'll tell you how it was, master. When the seconds lifted 
 us up in the last round, we were so exhausted that neither of us 
 could stand, and we fell upon one another, and as Master 
 Broughton fell uppermost, the mob gave it in his favour, and he 
 was said to have won the battle. But the fact was, that as his 
 second (John Cuthbert) lifted him up, he said to him, " I'll fight 
 no more, I've had enough ; " which,' says Stevenson, ' you know 
 gave me the victory. And to prove to you that this was the case, 
 when John Cuthbert was on his death-bed, and they asked him 
 if there was anything on his mind which he wished to confess, 
 he answered, " Yes, that there was one thing he wished to set 
 right, for that certainly Master Stevenson won that last fight 
 with Master Broughton ; for he whispered him as he lifted him 
 up in the last round of all, that he had had enough.'" " This," 
 said the Bath gentleman, " was a bit of human nature ; " and I 
 have written this account of the fight on purpose that it might 
 not be lost to the world. He also stated as a proof of the 
 candour of mind in this class of men, that Stevenson acknow- 
 ledged that Broughton could have beat him in his best day ; 
 but that he (Broughton) was getting old in their last rencounter.
 
 THE FIGHT. 181 
 
 When we stopped in Piccadilly, I wanted to ask the gentleman 
 some questions about the late Mr. Windham, but had not 
 courage. I got out, resigned my coat and green silk hand- 
 kerchief to Pigott (loth to part with these ornaments of life), 
 and walked home in high spirits. 
 
 P.S. Joe called upon me the next day, to ask me if I did not 
 think the fight was a complete thing? I said I thought it was. 
 I hope he will relish my account of it.
 
 1 82 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 The nobleman-look ? Yes, I know what you mean very well : that 
 look which a nobleman should have, rather than what they have 
 generally now. The Duke of Buckingham (Sheffield) was a genteel 
 man, and had a great deal the look you speak of. Wycherley was a 
 very genteel man, and had the nobleman-look as much as the Duke of 
 Buckingham. POPE. 
 
 He instanced it too in Lord Peterborough, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord 
 Hinchinbroke, the Duke of Bolton, and two or three more. SPENCE'S 
 Anecdotes of Pope. 
 
 I HAVE chosen the above motto to a very delicate subject, 
 which in prudence I might let alone. I, however, like the title ; 
 and will try, at least, to make a sketch of it. 
 
 What it is that constitutes the look of a gentleman is more 
 easily felt than described. We all know it when we see it ; but 
 we do not know how to account for it, or to explain in what it 
 consists. Causa tatet, res ipsi noiassima. Ease, grace, dignity 
 have been given as the exponents and expressive symbols of 
 this look; but I would rather say, that an habitual self- 
 possession determines the appearance of a gentleman. He 
 should have the complete command, not only over his 
 countenance, but over his limbs and motions. In other words, 
 he should discover in his air and manner a voluntary power 
 over his whole body, which, with every inflection of it, should be 
 under the control of his will. It must be evident that he looks 
 and does as he likes, without any restraint, confusion, or 
 awkwardness. He is, in fact, master of his person, as the
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 183 
 
 professor of any art or science is of a particular instrument ; he 
 directs it to what use he pleases and intends. Wherever this 
 power and facility appear, we recognise the look and deport- 
 ment of the gentleman that is, of a person who by his habits 
 and situation in life, and in his ordinary intercourse with 
 society, has had little else to do than to study those movements, 
 and that carriage of the body, which were accompanied with 
 most satisfaction to himself, and were calculated to excite the 
 approbation of the beholder. Ease, it might be observed, is not 
 enough ; dignity is too much. There must be a certain retenu, 
 a conscious decorum, added to the first and a certain 
 "familiarity of regard, quenching the austere countenance of 
 control," in the other, to answer to our conception of this 
 character. Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to 
 denote the manners of the gentleman ; elegance is necessary to 
 the fine gentleman ; dignity is proper to noblemen ; and 
 majesty to kings 1 
 
 Wherever this constant and decent subjection of the body to 
 the mind is visible in the customary actions of walking, sitting, 
 riding, standing, speaking, etc, we draw the same conclusion 
 as to the individual whatever may be the impediments or 
 unavoidable defects in the machine of which he has the 
 management. A man may have a mean or disagreeable 
 exterior, may halt in his gait, or have lost the use of half his 
 limbs ; and yet he may show this habitual attention to what is 
 graceful and becoming in the use he makes of all the power 
 he has left in the " nice conduct " of the most unpromising 
 and impracticable figure. A hump-backed or deformed man 
 does not necessarily look like a clown or a mechanic ; on 
 the contrary, from his care in the adjustment of his appear- 
 ance, and his desire to remedy his defects, he for the most 
 part acquires something of the look of a gentleman. The 
 common nick-name of My Lord, applied to such persons, 
 has allusion to this to their circumspect deportment, and 
 tacit resistance to vulgar prejudice. Lord Ogleby, in the 
 " Clandestine Marriage," is as crazy a piece of elegance and 
 refinement, even after he is " wound up for the day," as can
 
 i>84 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN, 
 
 well be imagined ; yet in the hands of a genuine actor, his 
 tottering step, his twitches of the gout, his unsuccessful attempts 
 at youth and gaiety, take nothing from the nobleman. He has 
 the ideal model in his mind, resents his deviations from it with 
 proper horror, recovers himself from any ungraceful action as 
 soon as possible ; does all he can with his limited means, and 
 fails in his just pretensions, not from inadvertence, but necessity. 
 Sir Joseph Banks, who was almost bent double, retained to the 
 last the look of a privy-councillor. There was all the firmness 
 and dignity that could be given by the sense of his own import- 
 ance to so distorted and disabled a trunk. Sir Charles Bunbury, 
 as he saunters down St. James's Street, with a large slouched 
 hat, a lack-lustre eye, and aquiline nose, an old shabby drab- 
 coloured coat, buttoned across his breast without a cape with 
 old top-boots, and his hands in his waistcoat or breeches 
 pockets, as if he were strolling along his own garden-walks, or 
 over the turf at Newmarket, after having made his bets secure 
 presents nothing very dazzling, or graceful, or dignified to the 
 imagination ; though you can tell infallibly at the first glance, 
 or even a bow-shot off, that he is a gentleman of the first water 
 (the same that sixty years ago married the beautiful Lady Sarah 
 Lennox, with whom the king was in love). What is the clue to 
 this mystery ? It is evident that his person costs him no more 
 trouble than an old glove. His limbs are, as it were, left to take 
 care of themselves ; they move of their own accord ; he does 
 not strut or stand on tip-toe to show 
 
 " how tall 
 
 His person is above them all ; " 
 
 but he seems to find his own level, and wherever he is, to slide 
 into his place naturally ; he is equally at home among lords or 
 gamblers ; nothing can discompose his fixed serenity of look 
 and purpose ; there is no mark of superciliousness about him, 
 nor does it appear as if anything could meet his eye to startle 
 or throw him off his guard ; he neither avoids nor courts notice ; 
 but the archaism of his dress may be understood to denote 
 a lingering partiality for the costume of the last age, and
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 185 
 
 something like a prescriptive contempt for the finery of this. 
 The old one-eyed Duke of Queensbury is another example that 
 I might quote. As he sat in his bow- window in Piccadilly, erect 
 and emaciated, he seemed like a nobleman framed and glazed, 
 or a well-dressed mummy of the court of George II. 
 
 We have few of these precious specimens of the gentleman or 
 nobleman-look now remaining ; other considerations have set 
 aside the exclusive importance of the character, and, of course, 
 the jealous attention to the outward expression of it. Where we 
 oftenest meet with it now-a-days is, perhaps, in the butlers in 
 old families, or the valets, and " gentlemen's gentlemen " of the 
 younger branches. The sleek pursy gravity of the one answers 
 to the stately air of some of their quondam masters ; and the 
 flippancy and finery of our old-fashioned beaux, having been 
 discarded by the heirs to the title and estate, have been retained 
 by their lacqueys. The late Admiral Byron (I have heard 
 Northcote say) had a butler, or steward, who, from constantly 
 observing his master, had so learned to mimic him the look, 
 the manner, the voice, the bow were so alike he was so 
 " subdued to the very quality of his lord " that it was difficult 
 to distinguish them apart Our modern footmen, as we see 
 them fluttering and lounging in lobbies, or at the doors 
 of ladies' carriages, bedizened in lace and powder, with ivory- 
 headed cane and embroidered gloves, give one the only 
 idea of the fine gentlemen of former periods, as they are 
 still occasionally represented on the stage ; and indeed our 
 theatrical heroes, who top such parts, might be supposed to 
 have copied, as a last resource, from the heroes of the shoulder- 
 knot. We also sometimes meet with straggling personation of 
 this character, got up in common life from pure romantic 
 enthusiasm, and on absolutely ideal principles. I recollect a 
 well-grown comely haberdasher, who made a practice of walk- 
 ing every day from Bishopsgate Street to Pall Mall and Bond 
 Street with the undaunted air and strut of a general-officer ; 
 and also a prim undertaker, who regularly tendered his person, 
 whenever the weather would permit, from the neighbourhood of 
 Camberwell into the favourite promenades of the City with
 
 1 86 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 a mincing gait that would have become a gentleman-usher of 
 the black-rod. What a strange infatuation to live in a dream 
 of being taken for what one is not in deceiving others, and at 
 the same time ourselves ; for no doubt these persons believed 
 that they thus appeared to the world in their true characters, 
 and that their assumed pretensions did no more than justice to 
 their real merits. 
 
 ' ' Dress makes the man, and want of it the fellow : 
 The rest is all but leather and prunella." 
 
 ' I confess, however, that I admire this look of a gentleman 
 more when it rises from the level of common life, and bears the 
 stamp of intellect, than when it is formed out of the mould of 
 adventitious circumstances. I think more highly of Wycherley 
 than I do of Lord Hinchinbroke, for looking like a lord. In 
 the one it was the effect of native genius, grace, and spirit ; in 
 the other, comparatively speaking, of pride or custom. A 
 visitor complimenting Voltaire on the growth and flourishing 
 condition of some trees in his grounds, "Ay," said the French 
 wit, " they have nothing else to do 1 " A lord has nothing to do 
 but to look like a lord : our comic poet had something else to 
 do, and did it 1 * 
 
 Though the disadvantages of nature or accident do not act as 
 obstacles to the look of a gentleman, those of education and 
 employment do. A shoemaker who is bent in two over his 
 daily task ; a tailor who sits crossed-legged all day ; a plough- 
 man who wears clog-shoes over the furrowed miry soil, and can 
 hardly drag his feet after him ; a scholar who has pored all his 
 life over books are not likely to possess that natural freedom 
 and ease, or to pay that strict attention to personal appearances, 
 that the look of a gentleman implies. I might add, that a man- 
 milliner behind a counter, who is compelled to show every mark 
 of complaisance to his customers, but hardly expects common 
 civility from them fa return ; or a sheriff's officer, who has a con- 
 sciousness of power, but none of good-will to or from anybody, 
 
 * Wycherley was a great favourite with the Duchess of Cleveland.
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 187 
 
 are equally remote from the beau-idtal of this character. A 
 man who is awkward from bashfulness is a clown as one 
 who is showing off a number of impertinent airs and graces 
 at every turn, is a coxcomb or an upstart. Mere awkwardness 
 or rusticity of behaviour may arise either from want of presence 
 of mind in the company of our betters (the commonest hind 
 goes about his regular business without any of the mauvatse 
 honte), from a deficiency of breeding, as it is called, in not 
 having been taught certain fashionable accomplishments or 
 from unremitting application to certain sorts of mechanical 
 labour, unfitting the body for general or indifferent uses. . (That 
 vulgarity which proceeds from a total disregard of decorum, 
 and want of careful control over the different actions of the 
 body such as loud speaking, boisterous gesticulations, etc. 
 is rather rudeness and violence, than awkwardness or 
 uneasy restraint.) Now the gentleman is free from all these 
 causes of ungraceful demeanour. He is independent in his 
 circumstances, and is used to enter into society on equal 
 terms ; he is taught the modes of address and forms of courtesy 
 most commonly practised and most proper to ingratiate him 
 into the good opinion of those he associates with ; and he is 
 relieved from the necessity of following any of those laborious 
 trades or callings which cramp, strain, and distort the human 
 frame. He is not bound to do any one earthly thing ; to use 
 any exertion, or put himself in any posture, that is not perfectly 
 easy and graceful, agreeable and becoming. Neither is he (at 
 the present day) required to excel in any art or science, game 
 or exercise. He is supposed qualified to dance a minuet, not to 
 dance on the tight-rope to stand upright, not to stand on his 
 head. He has only to sacrifice to the Graces. Alcibiades 
 threw away a flute, because the playing on it discomposed his 
 features. Take the fine gentleman out of the common boarding- 
 school or drawing-room accomplishments, and set him to any 
 ruder or more difficult task, and he will make but a sorry figure. 
 Ferdinand in the "Tempest," when he is put by Prospero to carry 
 logs of wood, does not strike us as a very heroic character, 
 though he loses -nothing of the king's son. If a youner gallant
 
 i88 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 of the first fashion were asked to shoe a horse, or hold a 
 plough, or fell a tree, he would make a very ridiculous business 
 of the first experiment. I saw a set of young naval officers, 
 very genteel-looking young men, playing at rackets not long 
 ago, and it is impossible to describe the uncouthness of their 
 motions and unaccountable contrivances for hitting the ball. 
 Something effeminate as well as commonplace, then, enters 
 into the composition of the gentleman : he is a little of the 
 petit-mattre in his pretensions. He is only graceful and 
 accomplished in those things to which he has paid almost his 
 whole attention such as the carriage of his body, and adjust- 
 ment of his dress ; and to which he is of sufficient importance 
 in the scale of society to attract the idle attention of others. 
 
 A man's manner of presenting himself in company is but a 
 superficial test of his real qualifications. Serjeant Atkinson, we 
 are assured by Fielding, would have marched, at the head of 
 his platoon, up to a masked battery with less apprehension than 
 he came into a room full of pretty women. So we may some- 
 times see persons look foolish enough on entering a party, or 
 returning a salutation, who instantly feel themselves at home, 
 and recover all their self-possession, as soon as any of that sort 
 of conversation begins from which nine-tenths of the company 
 retire in the extremest trepidation lest they should betray their 
 ignorance or incapacity. A high spirit and stubborn pride are 
 often accompanied with an unprepossessing and unpretending 
 appearance. The greatest heroes do not show it by their looks. 
 There are individuals of a nervous habit, who might be said to 
 abhor their own persons, and to startle at their own appearance, 
 as the peacock tries to hide its legs. They are always shy, 
 uncomfortable, restless ; and all their actions are, in a manner, 
 at cross-purposes with themselves. This, of course, destroys 
 the look we are speaking of, from the want of ease and self- 
 confidence. There is another sort who have too much 
 negligence of manner and contempt for formal punctilios. 
 They take their full swing in whatever they are about, and 
 make it seem almost necessary to get out of their way. 
 Perhaps something of this bold, licentious, slovenly, lounging
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 189 
 
 character maybe objected by a fastidious eye to the appearance 
 of Lord Castlereagh. It might be said of him, without dis- 
 paragement, that he looks more like a lord than a gentleman. 
 We see nothing petty or finical, assuredly nothing hard-bound 
 or reined-in but a flowing outline, a broad, free style. He sits 
 in the House of Commons, with his hat slouched over his 
 forehead, and a sort of stoop in his shoulders, as if he cowered 
 over his antagonists, like a bird of prey over its quarry 
 " hatching vain empires." There is an irregular grandeur about 
 him, an unwieldy power, loose, disjointed, " voluminous and 
 vast" coiled up in the folds of its own purposes cold, death- 
 like, smooth, and smiling that is neither quite at ease with 
 itself, nor safe for others to approach I On the other hand, 
 there is the Marquis Wellesley, a jewel of a man. He advances 
 into his place in the House of Lords, with head erect, and his 
 best foot foremost. The star sparkles on his breast, and the 
 garter is seen bound tight below his knee. It might be thought 
 that he still trod a measure on soft carpets, and was surrounded, 
 not only by spiritual and temporal lords, but 
 
 " Stores of ladies, whose bright eyes 
 Rain influence, and judge the prize." 
 
 The chivalrous spirit that shines through him, the air of gal- 
 lantry in his personal as well as rhetorical appeals to the 
 House, glances a partial lustre on the Woolsack as he addresses 
 it ; and makes Lord Erskine raise his sunken head from a 
 dream of transient popularity. His heedless vanity throws 
 itself unblushingly on the unsuspecting candour of his hearers, 
 and ravishes mute admiration. You would almost guess of this 
 nobleman beforehand that he was a marquis something higher 
 than an earl, and less important than a duke. Nature has just 
 fitted him for the niche he fills in the scale of rank or title. He 
 
 is a finished miniature-picture set in brilliants : Lord C 
 
 might be compared to a loose sketch in oil, not properly hung. 
 The character of the one is ease, of the other, elegance. 
 Elegance is something more than ease ; it is more than a 
 freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive,
 
 r 9 o ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN 
 
 a precision, a polish, a sparkling effect, spirited yet delicate, 
 which is perfectly exemplified in Lord Wellesley's face and 
 figure. 
 
 The greatest contrast to this little lively nobleman was the 
 late Lord Stanhope. Tall above his peers, he presented an 
 appearance something between a Patagonian chief and one of 
 the Long Parliament. With his long black hair, " unkempt and 
 wild" his black clothes, lank features, strange antics, and 
 screaming voice, he was the Orson of debate. 
 
 " A Satyr that comes staring from the woods 
 Cannot at first speak like an orator." 
 
 Yet he was both an orator and a wit in his way. His harangues 
 were an odd jumble of logic and mechanics, of the Statutes at 
 Large and Joe Miller jests, of stern principle and sly humour, 
 of shrewdness and absurdity, of method and madness. What 
 is more extraordinary, he was an honest man. He was out of 
 his place in the House of Lords. He particularly delighted, in 
 his eccentric onsets, to make havoc of the bench of bishops. 
 " I like," said he, " to argue with one of my lords the bishops ; 
 and the reason why I do so is, that I generally have the best of 
 the argument." He was altogether a different man from Lord 
 Eldon ; yet his lordship " gave him good oeillades" as he broke 
 a jest, or argued a moot-point, and, while he spoke, smiles, 
 roguish twinkles, glittered in the Chancellor's eyes. 
 
 The look of the gentleman, " the nobleman-look," is little else 
 than the reflection of the looks of the world. We smile at those 
 who smile upon us : we are gracious to those who pay their 
 court to us : we naturally acquire confidence and ease when all 
 goes well with us, when we are encouraged by the blandish- 
 ments of fortune and the good opinion of mankind. A whole 
 street bowing regularly to a man every time he rides out may 
 teach him how to pull off his hat in return, without suppos- 
 ing a particular genius for bowing (more than for governing, 
 or anything else) born in the family. It has been observed 
 that persons who sit for their pictures improve the character 
 of their countenances, from the desire they have to procure
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 191 
 
 the most favourable representation of themselves. "Tell me, 
 pray, good Mr. Carmine, when you come to the eyes, that 
 I may call up a look," says the Alderman's wife, in Foote's 
 farce of " Taste." Ladies grow handsome by looking at them- 
 selves in the glass, and heightening the agreeable airs and 
 expression of features they so much admire there. So the 
 favourites of fortune adjust themselves in the glass of fashion 
 and the flattering illusions of public opinion. Again, the 
 expression of face in the gentleman or thorough-bred man of 
 the world is not that of refinement so much as of flexibility ; of 
 sensibility or enthusiasm, so much as of indifference : it argues 
 presence of mind, rather than enlargement of ideas. In this it 
 differs from the heroic and philosophical look. Instead of an 
 intense unity of purpose, wound up to some great occasion, it is 
 dissipated and frittered down into a number of evanescent 
 expressions, fitted for every variety of unimportant occurrences : 
 instead of the expansion of general thought or intellect, you 
 trace chiefly the little, trite, cautious, movable lines of conscious 
 but concealed self-complacency. If Raphael had painted St. 
 Paul as a gentleman, what a figure he would have made of the 
 great Apostle of the Gentiles occupied with himself, not 
 carried away, raised, inspired with his subject insinuating his 
 doctrines into his audience, not launching them from him with 
 the tongues of the Holy Spirit, and with looks of fiery, scorching 
 zeal 1 Gentlemen, luckily, can afford to sit for their own por- 
 traits : painters do not trouble them to sit as studies for history. 
 What a difference is there in this respect beween a Madonna of 
 Raphael, and a lady of fashion, even by Vandyke : the former 
 refined and elevated, the latter light and trifling, with no 
 emanation of soul, no depth of feeling each arch expression 
 playing on the surface, and passing into any other at pleasure 
 no one thought having its full scope, but checked by some 
 other soft, careless, insincere, pleased, affected, amiable 1 The 
 French physiognomy is more cut up and subdivided into petty 
 lines and sharp angles than any other : it does not want for 
 subtlety, or an air of gentility, which last it often has in a 
 remarkable degree but it is the most unpoetical and the least
 
 1 92 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 picturesque of all others. I cannot explain what I mean by this 
 variable telegraphic machinery of polite expression better than 
 by an obvious allusion. Every one by walking the streets of 
 London (or any other populous city) acquires a walk which 
 is easily distinguished from that of strangers ; a quick flexibility 
 of movement, a smart jerk, an aspiring and confident tread, and 
 an air as if on the alert to keep the line of march ; but for all 
 that, there is not much grace or grandeur in this local strut : 
 you see the person is not a country bumpkin, but you would not 
 say he is a hero or a sage because he is a cockney. So it is in 
 passing through the artificial and thickly-peopled scenes of life. 
 You get the look of a man of the world : you rub off the pedant 
 and the clown ; but you do not make much progress in wisdom 
 or virtue, or in the characteristic expression of either. 
 
 The character of a gentleman (I take it) may be explained 
 nearly thus : A blackguard (un vaurien) is a fellow who does 
 not care whom he offends : a clown is a blockhead who does 
 not know when he offends : a gentleman is one who under- 
 stands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self- 
 love in others, and exacts it in return from them. Politeness 
 and the pretensions to the character in question have reference 
 almost entirely to this reciprocal manifestation of good-will and 
 good opinion towards each other in casual society. Morality 
 regulates our sentiments and conduct as they have a connection 
 with ultimate and important consequences. Manners, properly 
 speaking, regulate our words and actions in the routine of 
 personal intercourse. They have little to do with real kindness 
 of intention, or practical services, or disinterested sacrifices ; 
 but they put on the garb, and mock the appearance of these, 
 in order to prevent a breach of the peace, and to smooth 
 and varnish over the discordant materials, when any number 
 of individuals are brought in contact together. The conven- 
 tional compact of good manners does not reach beyond the 
 moment and the company. Say, for instance, that the rabble^ 
 the labouring and industrious part of the community, are 
 taken up with supplying their own wants, and pining over 
 their own hardships scrambling for what they can get, and
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 193 
 
 not refining on any of their pleasures, or troubling themselves 
 about the fastidious pretensions of others : again, there are 
 philosophers who are busied in the pursuit of truth or patriots 
 who are active for the good of their country ; but here, we 
 will suppose, are a knot of people got together, who, having 
 no serious wants of their own, with leisure and independence, 
 and caring little about abstract truth or practical utility, are 
 met for no mortal purpose but to say and to do all manner 
 of obliging things, to pay the greatest possible respect, and 
 show the most delicate and flattering attentions to one 
 another. The politest set of gentlemen and ladies in the 
 world can do no more than this. The laws that regulate this 
 species of select and fantastic society are conformable to its 
 ends and origin. The fine gentleman or lady must not, on 
 any account, say a rude thing to the persons present, but you 
 may turn them into the utmost ridicule the instant they are 
 gone : nay, not to do so is sometimes considered as an indirect 
 slight to the party that remains. You must compliment your 
 bitterest foe to his face, and may slander your dearest friend 
 behind his back. The last may be immoral, but it is not 
 unmannerly. The gallant maintains his title to this character 
 by treating every woman he meets with the same marked and 
 unremitting attention as if she was his mistress : the courtier 
 treats every man with the same professions of esteem and 
 kindness as if he were an accomplice with him in some 
 plot against mankind. Of course, these professions, made 
 only to please, go for nothing in practice. To insist on them 
 afterwards as literal obligations, would be to betray an ignor- 
 ance of this kind of interlude, or masquerading in real life. 
 To ruin your friend at play is not inconsistent with the 
 character of a gentleman and a man of honour, if it is done 
 with civility ; though to warn him of his danger, so as to 
 imply a doubt of his judgment, or interference with his will, 
 would be to subject yourself to be run through the body 
 with a sword. It is that which wounds the self-love of the 
 individual that is offensive that which flatters it that is 
 welcome however salutary the one, or however fatal the 
 
 585
 
 194 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN, 
 
 other may be. A habit of plain speaking is totally contrary 
 to the tone of good breeding. You must prefer the opinion 
 of the company to your own, and even to truth. I doubt 
 whether a gentleman must not be of the Established Church, 
 and a Tory. A true cavalier can only be a martyr to prejudice 
 or fashion. A Whig lord appears to me as great an anomaly 
 as a patriot king. A sectary is sour and unsociable. A 
 philosopher is quite out of the question. He is in the clouds, 
 and had better not be let down on the floor in a basket, to 
 play the blockhead. He is sure to commit himself in good 
 company, and by dealing always in abstractions, and driving 
 at generalities, to offend against the three proprieties of time, 
 place, and person. Authors are angry, loud, and vehement in 
 argument : the man of more refined breeding, who has been 
 " all tranquillity and smiles," goes away, and tries to ruin 
 the antagonist whom he could not vanquish in a dispute. 
 The manners of a court and of polished life are by no 
 means downright, straightforward, but the contrary. They 
 have something dramatic in them ; each person plays an 
 assumed part ; the affected, overstrained politeness and sup- 
 pression of real sentiment lead to concealed irony, and the 
 spirit of satire and raillery ; and hence we may account for 
 the perfection of the genteel comedy of the century before 
 the last, when poets were allowed to mingle in the court-circles, 
 and took their cue from the splendid ring 
 
 " Of mimic statesmen and their merry king." 
 
 The essence of this sort of conversation and intercourse, both 
 on and off the stage, has somehow since evaporated ; the 
 disguises of royalty, nobility, gentry have been in some 
 measure seen through : we have become individually of little 
 importance, compared with greater objects, in the eyes of our 
 neighbours, and even in our own : abstract topics, not personal 
 pretensions, are the order of the day ; so that what remains of 
 the character we have been talking of, is chiefly exotic and 
 provincial, and may be seen still flourishing in country-places, 
 in a wholesome state of vegetable decay 1
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN, 195 
 
 A man may have the manners of a gentleman without having 
 the look, and he may have the character of a gentleman, in a 
 more abstracted point of view, without the manners. The 
 feelings of a gentleman, in this higher sense, only denote a 
 more refined humanity a spirit delicate in itself, and unwilling 
 to offend, either in the greatest or the smallest things. This 
 may be coupled with absence of mind, with ignorance of forms, 
 and frequent blunders. But the will is good. The spring of 
 gentle offices and true regards is untainted A person of this 
 stamp blushes at an impropriety he was guilty of twenty years 
 before, though he is, perhaps, liable to repeat it to-morrow. He 
 never forgives himself for even a slip of the tongue, that implies 
 an assumption of superiority over any one. In proportion to 
 the concessions made to him, he lowers his demands. He 
 gives the wall to a beggar : but does not always bow to 
 great men. This class of character have been called " God 
 Almighty's gentlemen." There are not a great many of them. 
 The late George Dyer was one ; for we understand that that 
 gentleman was not able to survive some ill-disposed person's 
 having asserted of him that he had mistaken Lord Castlereagh 
 for the Author of Waverlcy.
 
 196 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE; OR, ADVICE TO 
 A SCHOOL-BOY. 
 
 MY DEAR LITTLE FELLOW, You are now going to settle at 
 school, and may consider this as your first entrance into the 
 world. As my health is so indifferent, and I may not be with 
 you long, I wish to leave you some advice (the best I can) for 
 your conduct in life, both that it may be of use to you, and as 
 something to remember me by. I may at least be able to 
 caution you against my own errors, if nothing else. 
 
 As we went along to your new place of destination, you often 
 repeated that "You durst say they were a set of stupid, dis- 
 agreeable people," meaning the people at the school. You were 
 to blame in this. It is a good old rule to hope for the best. 
 Always, my dear, believe things to be right till you find them 
 the contrary ; and even then, instead of irritating yourself 
 against them, endeavour to put up with them as well as you can, 
 if you cannot alter them. You said, " You were sure you should 
 not like the school where you were going." This was wrong. 
 What you meant was that you did not like to leave home. But 
 you could not tell whether you should like the school or not, 
 till you had given it a trial. Otherwise, your saying that you 
 should not like it was determining that you would not like 
 it. Never anticipate evils ; or, because you cannot have things 
 exactly as you wish, make them out worse than they are, 
 through mere spite and wilfulness. 
 
 You seemed at first to take no notice of your school-fellows, 
 or rather to set yourself against them, because they were
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 197 
 
 strangers to you. They knew as little of you as you did ol 
 them ; so that this would have been a reason for their keeping 
 aloof from you as well, which you would have felt as a hardship. 
 Learn never to conceive a prejudice against others, because 
 you know nothing of them. It is bad reasoning, and makes 
 enemies of half the world. Do not think illl of them, till they 
 behave ill to you ; and then strive to avoid the faults which you 
 see in them. This will disarm their hostility sooner*than pique, 
 or resentment, or complaint. 
 
 I thought you were disposed to criticise the dress of some of 
 the boys as not so good as your own. Never despise any one 
 for anything that he cannot help least of all, for his poverty. 
 I would wish you to keep up appearances yourself as a defence 
 against the idle sneers of the world, but I would not have you 
 value yourself upon them. I hope you will neither be the dupe 
 nor victim of vulgar prejudices. Instead of saying above 
 " Never despise any one for anything that he cannot help " I 
 might have said " Never despise any one at all ; " for con- 
 tempt implies a triumph over and pleasure in the ill of another. 
 It means that you are glad and congratulate yourself on their 
 failings or misfortunes. The sense of inferiority in others, with- 
 out this indirect appeal to our self-love, is a painful feeling, and 
 not an exulting one. 
 
 You complain since, that the boys laugh at you and do not 
 care about you, and that you are not treated as you were at 
 home. My dear, that is one chief reason for your being sent to 
 school, to inure you betimes to the unavoidable rubs and 
 uncertain reception you may meet with in life. You cannot 
 always be with me, and perhaps it is as well that you cannot. 
 But you must not expect others to show the same concern 
 about you as I should. You have hitherto been a spoiled child, 
 and have been used to have your own way a good deal, both 
 in the house and among your play-fellows, with whom you 
 were too fond of being a leader : but you have good nature and 
 good sense, and will get the better of this in time. You have 
 now got among other boys who are your equals, or bigger and 
 stronger than yourself, and who have something else to attend
 
 198 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 to besides humouring your whims and fancies, and you feel this 
 as a repulse or piece of injustice. But the first lesson to learn 
 is that there are other people in the world besides yourself. 
 There are a number of boys in the school where you are, whose 
 amusements and pursuits (whatever they may be) are and 
 ought to be of as much consequence to them as yours can be to 
 you, and to which therefore you must give way in your turn. 
 The more airs of childish self-importance you give yourself, you 
 will only expose yourself to be the more thwarted and laughed 
 at. True equality is the only true morality or true wisdom. 
 Remember always that you are but one among others, and you 
 can hardly mistake your place in society. In your father's 
 house you might do as you pleased : in the world, you will find 
 competitors at every turn. You are not born a king's son, to 
 destroy or dictate to millions : you can only expect to share 
 their fate, or settle your differences amicably with them. You 
 already find it so at school ; and I wish you to be reconciled to 
 your situation as soon and with as little pain as you can. 
 
 It was my misfortune, perhaps, to be bred up among 
 Dissenters, who look with too jaundiced an eye at others, 
 and set too high a value on their own peculiar pretensions. 
 From being prosciibed themselves, they learn to proscribe 
 others ; and come in the end to reduce all integrity of principle 
 and soundness of opinion within the pale of their own little 
 communion. Those who were out of it, and did not belong to 
 the class of Rational Dissenters, I was led erroneously to look 
 upon as hardly deserving the name of rational beings. Being 
 thus satisfied as to the select few who are "the salt of the 
 earth," it is easy to persuade ourselves that we are at the head 
 of them, and to fancy ourselves of more importance in the scale 
 of true desert than all the rest of the world put together, who 
 do not interpret a certain text of Scripture in the manner that 
 we have been taught to do. You will (from the difference of 
 education) be free from this bigotry, and will, I hope, avoid 
 everything akin to the same exclusive and narrow-minded 
 spirit. Think that the minds of men are various as their faces 
 that the modes and employments of life are numberless as
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. igg 
 
 they are necessary that there is more than one class of merit 
 that though others may be wrong in some things, they are 
 not so in all and that countless races of men have been born, 
 have lived and died, without ever hearing of any one of those 
 points in which you take a just pride and pleasure and you 
 will not err on the side of that spiritual pride or intellectual 
 coxcombry which has been so often the bane of the studious 
 and learned 1 
 
 I observe you have got a way of speaking of your school- 
 fellows as " that Hoare, that Harris," and so on, as if you 
 meant to mark them out for particular reprobation, or did not 
 think them good enough for you. It is a bad habit to speak 
 disrespectfully of others : for it will lead you to think and feel 
 uncharitably towards them. Ill names beget ill blood. Even 
 where there may be some repeated trifling provocation, it is 
 better to be courteous, mild, and forbearing, than captious, 
 impatient, and fretful. The faults of others too often arise out 
 of our own ill temper ; or though they should be real, we shall 
 not mend them by exasperating ourselves against them. Treat 
 your playmates as Hamlet advises Polonious to treat the 
 players, " according to your own dignity rather than their 
 deserts." If you fly out at everything in them that you dis- 
 approve or think done on purpose to annoy you, you lie 
 constantly at the mercy of their caprice, rudeness, or ill-nature. 
 You should be more your own master. 
 
 Do not begin to quarrel with the world too soon : for, bad as 
 it may be, it is the best we have to live in here. If railing 
 would have made it better, it would have been reformed long 
 ago : but as this is not to be hoped for at present, the best way 
 is to slide through it as contentedly and innocently as we may. 
 The worst fault it has is want of charity : and calling knave and 
 fool at eveiy turn will not cure this failing. Consider (as a 
 matter of vanity) that if there were not so many knaves and 
 fools as we find, the wise and honest would not be those rare 
 and shining characters that they are allowed to be ; and (as a 
 matter of philosophy) that if the world be really incorrigible in 
 this respect, it is a reflection to make one sad, not angry. We
 
 200 OlV THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 may laugh or weep at the madness of mankind : we have no 
 right to vilify them, for our own sakes or theirs. Misanthropy 
 is not the disgust of the mind at human nature, but with itself; 
 or it is laying its own exaggerated vices and foul blots at the 
 door of others ! Do s not, however, mistake what I have here 
 said. I would not have you, when you grow up, adopt the low 
 and sordid fashion of palliating existing abuses or of putting 
 the best face upon the worst things. I only mean that indis- 
 criminate unqualified satire can do little good, and that those 
 who indulge in the most revolting speculations on human nature 
 do not themselves always set the fairest examples, or strive 
 to prevent its lower degradation. They seem rather willing 
 to reduce it to their theoretical standard. For the rest, the very 
 outcry that is made (if sincere) shows that things cannot be 
 quite so bad as they are represented. The abstract hatred and 
 scorn of vice implies the capacity for virtue : the impatience 
 expressed at the most striking instances of deformity proves the 
 innate idea and love of beauty in the human mind. The best 
 antidote I can recommend to you hereafter against the dis- 
 heartening effect of such writings as those of Rochefoucault, 
 Mandeville, and others, will be to look at the pictures of 
 Raphael and Correggio. You need not be altogether ashamed, 
 my dear little boy, of belonging to a species which could 
 produce such faces as those ; nor despair of doing something 
 worthy of a laudable ambition, when you see what such hands 
 have wrought I You will, perhaps, one day have reason to 
 thank me for this advice. 
 
 As to your studies and school-exercises, I wish you to learn 
 Latin, French, and dancing. I would insist upon the last more 
 particularly, both because it is more likely to be neglected, and 
 because it is of the greatest consequence to your success in life. 
 Everything almost depends upon first impressions ; and these 
 depend (besides person, which is not in our power) upon two 
 things, dress and address, which every one may command with 
 proper attention. These are the small coin in the intercourse 
 of life which are continually in request ; and perhaps you will 
 find at the year's end, or towards the close of life, that the daily
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 201 
 
 insults, coldness, or contempt, to which you have been exposed 
 by a neglect of such superficial recommendations, are hardly 
 atoned for by the few proofs of esteem or admiration which your 
 integrity or talents have been able to extort in the course of it. 
 When we habitually disregard those things which we know will 
 ensure the favourable opinion of others, it shows we set that 
 opinion at defiance, or consider ourselves above it, which no 
 one ever did with impunity. An inattention to our own persons 
 implies a disrespect to others, and may often be traced no 
 less to a want of good-nature than of good sense. The old 
 maxim Desire to please, and you will infallibly please 
 explains the whole matter. If there is a tendency to vanity 
 and affectation on this side of the question, there is an equal 
 alloy of pride and obstinacy on the opposite one. Slovenliness 
 may at any time be cured by an effort of resolution, but a 
 graceful carriage requires an early habit, and in most cases the 
 aid of the dancing-master. I would not have you, from not 
 knowing how to enter a room properly, stumble at the very 
 threshold in the good graces of those on whom it is possible the 
 fate of your future life may depend. Nothing creates a greater 
 prejudice against anyone than awkwardness. A person who is 
 confused in manner and gesture seems to have done something 
 wrong, or as if he was conscious of no one qualification to build 
 a confidence in himself upon. On the other hand, openness, 
 freedom, self-possession, set others at ease with you by showing 
 that you are on good terms with yourself. Grace in women 
 gains the affections sooner, and secures them longer, than 
 anything else it is an outward and visible sign of an inward 
 harmony of soul as the want of it in men, as if the mind and 
 body equally hitched in difficulties and were distracted with 
 doubts, is the greatest impediment in the career of gallantry and 
 road to the female heart. Another thing I would caution you 
 against is not to pore over your books till you are bent almost 
 double a habit you will never be able to get the better of, and 
 which you will find of serious ill-consequence. A stoop in the 
 shoulders sinks a man in public and in private estimation. You 
 are at present straight enough, and you walk with boldness and
 
 202 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 spirit. Do nothing to take away the use of your limbs, or 
 the spring and elasticity of your muscles. As to all wordly 
 advantages, it is to the full of as much importance that your 
 deportment should be erect and manly as your actions. 
 
 You will naturally fmd out all this, and fall into it, if your 
 attention is drawn out sufficiently to what is passing around 
 you ; and this will be the case, unless you are absorbed too 
 much in books and those sedentary studies, 
 
 " Which waste the marrow, and consume the brain." 
 
 You are, I think, too fond of reading as it is. As one means 
 of avoiding excess in this way, I would wish you to make it a 
 rule, never to read at meal-times, nor in company when there is 
 any (even the most trivial) conversation going on, nor even to let 
 your eagerness to learn encroach upon your play-hours. Books 
 are but one inlet of knowledge ; and the pores of the mind, like 
 those of the body, should be left open to all impressions. I 
 applied too close to my studies, soon after I was of your age, 
 and hurt myself irreparably by it. Whatever may be the value 
 of learning, health and good spirits are of more. 
 
 I would have you, as I said, make yourself master of French, 
 because you may find it of use in the commerce of life ; and I 
 would have you learn Latin, partly because I learnt it myself, 
 and I would not have you without any of the advantages or 
 sources of knowledge that I possessed it would be a bar of 
 separation between us and secondly, because there is an 
 atmosphere round this sort of classical ground, to which that of 
 actual life is gross and vulgar. Shut out from this garden of 
 early sweetness, we may well exclaim 
 
 " How shall we part and wander down 
 Into a lower world, to this obscure 
 And wild ? How shall we breathe in other air 
 Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits? " 
 
 I do not think the classics so indispensable to the cultivation 
 of your intellect as on another account, which I have seen 
 explained elsewhere, and you will have no objection to turn 
 with me to the passages. " The study of the classics is less to
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 203 
 
 be regarded as an exercise of the intellect, than as a discipline 
 of humanity. The peculiar advantage of this mode of education 
 consists not so much in strengthening the understanding, as in 
 softening and refining the taste. It gives men liberal views ; 
 k accustoms the mind to take an interest in things foreign to 
 its.elf ; to love virtue for its own sake ; to prefer fame to life, and 
 glory to riches ; and to fix our thoughts on the remote and 
 permanent, instead of narrow and fleeting objects. It teaches 
 us to believe that thfere is something really great and excellent 
 in the world, surviving all the shocks of accident and fluctua- 
 tions of opinion, and raises us above that low and servile fear, 
 which bows only to present power and upstart authority. 
 Rome and Athens filled a place in the history of mankind, 
 which can never be occupied again. They were two cities set 
 on a hill, which could not be hid ; all eyes have seen them, and 
 their light shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time. 
 
 ' Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, 
 Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; 
 Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, 
 Destructive war, and all-involving age. 
 Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, 
 Immortal heirs of universal praise ! 
 Whose honours with increase of ages grow, 
 As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow ! ' 
 
 It is this feeling more than anything else which produces a 
 marked difference between the study of the ancient and modern 
 languages, and which, by the weight and importance of the 
 consequences attached to the former, stamps every word with 
 a monumental firmness. By conversing with the mighty dead, 
 we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly 
 attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, 
 except through the influence which they exert over the mind. 
 We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to 
 human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm 
 from all the nations and ages." 
 
 Because, however, you have learnt Latin and Greek, and can
 
 204 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 speak a different language, do not fancy yourself of a different 
 order of beings from those you ordinarily converse with. They 
 perhaps know and can do more things than you, though you 
 have learnt a greater variety of names to express the same 
 thing by. The great object, indeed, of these studies is, to be 
 " a cure for a narrow and selfish spirrt," and to carry the mind 
 out of its petty and local prejudices to the idea of a more 
 general humanity. Do not fancy, because you are intimate 
 with Homer and Virgil, that your neighbours who can never 
 attain the same posthumous fame are to be despised, like those 
 impudent valets who live in noble families and look down upon 
 every one else. Though you are master of Cicero's Orations, 
 think it possible for a cobbler at a stall to be more eloquent than 
 you. " But you are a scholar, and he is not." Well, then, you 
 have that advantage over him, but it does not follow that you 
 are to have every other. Look at the heads of the celebrated 
 poets and philosophers of antiquity in the collection at Wilton, 
 and you will say they answer to their works ; but you will find 
 others in the same collection whose names have hardly come 
 down to us that are equally fine, and cast in the same classic 
 mould. Do you imagine that all the thoughts, genius, and 
 capacity of those old and mighty nations are contained in a few 
 odd volumes, to be thumbed by school-boys ? This reflection 
 is not meant to lessen your admiration of the great names to 
 which you will be accustomed to look up, but to direct it to that 
 solid mass of intellect and power of which they were the most 
 shining ornaments. I would wish you to excel in this sort of 
 learning and to take a pleasure in it, because it is the path that 
 has been chosen for you ; but do not suppose that others do 
 not excel equally in their line of study or exercise of skill, or 
 that there is but one mode of excellence in the art or nature. 
 You have got on vastly beyond the point at which you set out ; 
 but others have been getting on as well as you in the same or 
 other ways, and have kept pace with you. What then, you 
 may ask, is the use of all the pains you have taken, if it gives 
 you no superiority over mankind in general ? It is this You 
 have reaped all the benefit of improvement and knowledge
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE, 205 
 
 yourself ; and farther, if you had not moved forwards, you 
 would by this time have been left behind. Envy no one, 
 disparage no one, think yourself above no one. Their demerits 
 will not piece out your deficiencies ; nor is it a waste of time 
 and labour for you to cultivate your own talents, because you 
 cannot bespeak a monopoly of all advantages. You are more 
 learned than many of your acquaintance who may be more 
 active, healthy, witty, successful in business, or expert in some 
 elegant or useful art than you ; but you have no reason to 
 complain, if you have attained the object of your ambition. 
 Or if you should not be able to compass this from a want of 
 genius or parts, yet learn, my child, to be contented with a 
 mediocrity of acquirements. You may still be respectable in 
 your conduct, and enjoy a tranquil obscurity, with more friends 
 and fewer enemies than you might otherwise have had. 
 
 There is one almost certain drawback on a course of 
 scholastic study, that it unfits men for active life. The ideal is 
 always at variance with the practical. The habit ot fixing the 
 attention on the imaginary and abstracted deprives the mind 
 equally of energy and fortitude. By indulging our imaginations 
 on fictions and chimeras, where we have it all our own way and 
 are led on only by the pleasure of the prospect, we grow 
 fastidious, effeminate, lapped in idle luxury, impatient of con- 
 tradiction, and unable to sustain the shock of real adversity 
 when it comes ; as by being taken - up with abstract reasoning 
 or remote events in which we are merely passive spectators, we 
 have no resources to provide against it, no readiness, or expe- 
 dients for the occasion, or spirit to use them, even if they occur. 
 We must think again before we determine, and thus the oppor- 
 tunity for action is lost. While we are considering the very 
 best possible mode of gaining an object, we find that it has 
 slipped through our fingers, or that others have laid rude, fear- 
 less hands upon it. The youthful tyro reluctantly discovers 
 that the ways of the world are not his ways, nor their 
 thoughts his thoughts. Perhaps the old monastic institutions 
 were not in this respect unwise, which carried on to the end 
 of life the secluded habits and romantic associations with which
 
 206 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 it began, and which created a privileged world for the inhab- 
 itants, distinct from the common world of men and women. 
 You will bring with you from your books and solitary reveries 
 a wrong measure of men and things, unless you correct it by 
 careful experience and mixed observation. You will raise your 
 standard of character as much too high at first as from dis- 
 appointed expectation it will sink too low afterwards. The 
 best qualifier of this theoretical mania and of the dreams of 
 poets and moralists (who both treat of things as they ought to 
 be and not as they are) is in one sense to be found in some of 
 our own popular writers, such as our Novelists and periodical 
 Essayists. But you had, after all, better wait and see what 
 things are, than try to anticipate the results. You know more 
 of a road by having travelled it than by all the conjectures and 
 descriptions in the world. You will find the business of life 
 conducted on a much more varied and individual scale than 
 you would expect. People will be concerned about a thousand 
 things that you have no idea of, and will be utterly indifferent 
 to what you feel the greatest interest in. You will find good 
 and evil, folly and discretion, more mingled, and the shades of 
 character running more into each other than they do in the 
 ethical charts. No one is equally wise or guarded at all points, 
 and it is seldom that anyone is quite a fool. Do not be surprised, 
 when you go out into the world, to find men talk exceedingly 
 well on different subjects, who do not derive their information 
 immediately from books. In the first place, the light of books 
 is diffused very much abroad in the world in conversation and 
 at second-hand ; and besides, common sense is not a monopoly, 
 and experience and observation are sources of information open 
 to the man of the world as well as to the retired student. If 
 you know more of the outline and principles, he knows more of 
 the details and " practique part of life." A man may discuss 
 very agreeably the adventures of a campaign in which he was 
 engaged without having read the " Retreat of the Ten 
 Thousand," or give a singular account of the method of drying 
 teas in China without being a profound chemist. It is the vice 
 of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE, 207 
 
 but that of books. Do you avoid it, I conjure you ; and thereby 
 save yourself the pain and mortification that must otherwise 
 ensue from finding out your mistake continually 1 
 
 Gravity is one great ingredient in the conduct of life, and 
 perhaps a certain share of it is hardly to be dispensed with. 
 Few people can afford to be quite unaffected. At any rate, 
 do not put your worst qualities foremost. Do not seek 
 to distinguish yourself by being ridiculous ; nor entertain 
 that miserable ambition to be the sport and butt of the 
 company. By aiming at a certain standard of behaviour or 
 intellect, you will at least show your taste and value for what is 
 excellent. There are those who blurt out their good things 
 with so little heed of what they are about that no one thinks 
 anything of them ; as others by keeping their folly to them- 
 selves gain the reputation of wisdom. Do not, however, affect 
 to speak only in oracles, or to deal in bon-mots ; condescend t^ 
 the level of the company, and be free and acce" .ule to all 
 persons. Express whatever occurs to you, t^di cannot offend 
 others or hurt yourself. Keep some opLrbns to yourself. Say 
 what you please of others, but never repeat what you hear said 
 of them to themselves. If you have nothing yourself to offer, 
 laugh with the witty assent to the wise : they will not think 
 the worse of you for it. Listen to information on subjects you 
 are acquainted with, instead of always striving to lead the 
 conversation to some favourite o^ of your own. By the last 
 method you will shine, but will not improve. I am ashamed 
 myself ever to open my lips on any question I have ever 
 written upon. It is much more difficult to be able to converse 
 on an equality with a number of persons in turn, than to soar 
 above their heads, and excite the stupid gaze of all companies 
 by bestriding some senseless topic of your own and con 
 founding the understandings of those who are ignorant of it. 
 Be not too fond of argument. Indeed, by going much into 
 company (which I do not, however, wish you to do) you will be 
 weaned from this practice, if you set out with it. Rather 
 suggest what remarks may have occurred to you on a subject 
 than aim at dictating your opinions to others or at defending
 
 2o8 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE, 
 
 yourself at all points. You will learn more by agreeing in the 
 main with others and entering into their trains of thinking, than 
 by contradicting and urging them to extremities. Avoid 
 singularity of opinion as well as of everything else. Sound 
 conclusions come with practical knowledge, rather than with 
 speculative refinements : in what we really understand, we 
 reason but little. Long-winded disputes fill up the place of 
 common-sense and candid inquiry. Do not imagine that you 
 will make people friends by showing your superiority over 
 them : it is what they will neither admit nor forgive, unless you 
 have a high and acknowledged reputation beforehand, which 
 renders this sort of petty vanity more inexcusable. Seek to 
 gain the good-will of others rather than to extort their 
 applause ; and to this end, be neither too tenacious of your own 
 claims, nor inclined to press too hard on their weaknesses. 
 uJDo not affect the society of your superiors in rank, nor court 
 that ol tn^j?reat. There can be no real sympathy in either 
 case. The firsi^i'.l consider you as a restraint upon them, and 
 the last as an intruao, r .or upon sufferance. It is not a desirable 
 distinction to be admitted into company as a man of talents. 
 You are a mark for invidious observation. If you say nothing, 
 or merely behave with common propriety and simplicity, you 
 seem to have no business there. If you make a studied display 
 of yourself, it is arrogating a consequence you have no right 
 to. If you are contented to pass as an indifferent person, they 
 despise you ; if you distinguish yourself, and show more 
 knowledge, wit, or taste than they do, they hate you for it. 
 You have no alternative. I would rather be asked out to sing 
 than to talk. Everyone does not pretend to a fine voice, but 
 every one fancies he has as much understanding as another. 
 Indeed, the secret of this sort of intercourse has been pretty 
 well found out. Literary men are seldom invited to the tables 
 of the great ; they send for players and musicians, as they keep 
 monkeys and parrots 1 
 
 I would not, however, have you run away with a notion 
 that the rich are knaves, or that lords are fools. They are 
 for what I know as honest and as wise as other people. But
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 209 
 
 it is a trick of our self-love, supposing that another has the 
 decided advantage of us in one way, to strike a balance by 
 taking it for granted (as a moral antithesis) that he must 
 be as much beneath us in those qualities on which we 
 plume ourselves, and which we would appropriate almost 
 entirely to our own use. It is hard indeed if others are 
 raised above us not only by the gifts of fortune, but of under- 
 standing too. It is not to be credited. People have an 
 unwillingness to admit that the House of Lords can be equal in 
 talent to the House of Commons. So in the other sex, if a 
 woman is handsome, she is an idiot or no better than she 
 should be : in ours, if a man is worth a million of money, he is 
 a miser, a fellow that cannot spell his own name, or a poor 
 creature in some way, to bring him to our level. This is malice, 
 and not truth. Believe all the good you can of every one. Do 
 not measure others by yourself. If they have advantages which 
 you have not, let your liberality keep pace with their good 
 fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one. If you 
 have but the magnanimity to allow merit wherever you see it 
 understanding in a lord or wit in a cobblerthis temper of 
 mind will stand you instead of many accomplishments. Think 
 no man too happy. Raphael died young. Milton had the 
 misfortune to be blind. If any one is vain or proud, it is from 
 folly or ignorance. Those who pique themselves excessively on 
 some one thing have but that one thing to pique themselves 
 upon, as languages, mechanics, etc. I do not say that this is 
 not an enviable delusion, where it is not liable to be disturbed ; 
 but at present knowledge is too much diffused and pretensions 
 come too much into collision for this to be long the case ; and 
 it is better not to form such a prejudice at first than to have it 
 to undo all the rest of one's life. If you learn any two things, 
 though they may put you out of conceit one with the other, 
 they will effectually cure you of any conceit you might have of 
 yourself by showing the variety and scope there is in the 
 human mind beyond the limits you had set to it. 
 
 You were convinced the first day that you could not learn 
 Latin, which now you find easy. Be taught from this, not to 
 
 586
 
 2io ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 think other obstacles insurmountable that you may meet with 
 in the course of your life, though they seem so at first sight. 
 
 Attend above all things to your health ; or rather, do nothing 
 wilfully to impair it. Use exercise, abstinence, and regular 
 hours. Drink water when you are alone, and wine or very little 
 spirits in company. It is the last that are ruinous by leading to 
 an unlimited excess. There is not the same headlong impetus 
 in wine. But one glass of brandy and water makes you want 
 another, that other makes you want a third, and so on in an 
 increased proportion. Therefore no one can stop midway who 
 does not possess the resolution to abstain altogether ; for the 
 inclination is sharpened with its indulgence. Never gamble. 
 Or if you play for anything, never do so for what will give you 
 uneasiness the next day. Be not precise in these matters ; but 
 do not pass certain limits, which it is difficult to recover. Do 
 nothing in the irritation of the moment, but take time to reflect. 
 Because you have done one foolish thing do not do another ; 
 nor throw away your health, or reputation, or comfort, to 
 thwart impertinent advice. Avoid a spirit of contradiction, 
 both in words and actions. Do not aim at what is beyond your 
 reach, but at what is within it. Indulge in calm and pleasing 
 pursuits, rather than violent excitements ; and learn to conquer 
 your own will, instead of striving to obtain the mastery of that 
 of others. 
 
 With respect to your friends, I would wish you to choose 
 them neither from caprice nor accident, and to adhere to them 
 as long as you can. Do not make a surfeit of friendship, 
 through over sanguine enthusiasm, nor expect it to last for ever. 
 Always speak well of those with whom you have once been 
 intimate, or take some part of the censure you bestow on them 
 to yourself. Never quarrel with tried friends, or those whom 
 you wish to continue such. Wounds of this kind are sure to 
 open again. When once the prejudice is removed that 
 sheathes defects, familiarity only causes jealousy and distrust. 
 Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the 
 substance is gone but part, while you can part friends. Bury 
 the carcase of friendship : it is not worth embalming.
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 211 
 
 As to the books you will have to read by choice or for 
 amusement, the best are the commonest. The names of many 
 of them are already familiar to you. Read them as you grow 
 up with all the satisfaction in your power, and make much of 
 them. It is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will have in life, 
 the one you will think of longest, and repent of least. If my 
 life had been more full of calamity than it has been (much more 
 than I hope yours will be) I would live it over again, my poor 
 little boy, to have read the books I did in my youth. 
 
 In politics I wish you to be an hdnest man, but no brawler. 
 Hate injustice and falsehood for your own sake. Be neither a 
 martyr nor a sycophant. Wish well to the world without 
 expecting to see it much better than it is ; and do not gratify 
 the enemies of liberty by putting yourself at their mercy, if it 
 can be avoided with honour. 
 
 If you ever marry, I would wish you to marry the woman you 
 like. Do not be guided by the recommendation of friends. 
 Nothing will atone for or overcome an original distaste. It will 
 only increase from intimacy ; and if you are to live separate, it 
 is better not to come together. There is no use in dragging a 
 chain through life unless it binds one to the object we love. 
 No woman ever married into a family above herself that did not 
 try to make all the mischief she could in it. Be not in haste to 
 marry, nor to engage your affections, where there is no proba- 
 bility of a return. Do not fancy every woman you see the 
 heroine of a romance, a Sophia Western, a Clarissa, or a Julia ; 
 and yourself the potential hero of it, Tom Jones, Lovelace, or 
 St. Preux. Avoid this error as you would shrink back from a 
 precipice. All your fine sentiments and romantic notions will 
 (of themselves) make no more impression on one of these 
 delicate creatures than on a piece of marble. Their soft 
 bosoms are steel to your amorous refinements, if you have no 
 other pretensions. It is not what you think of them that deter- 
 mines their choice, but what they think of you. Endeavour, if 
 you would escape lingering torments, and the gnawing of the 
 worm that dies not, to find out this, and to abide by the issue. 
 We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are
 
 212 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 attached to us, and follow those that fly from us. " We hunt 
 the wind we worship a statue cry aloud to the desert." Do 
 you, my dear boy, stop short in this career if you find yourself 
 setting out in it, and make up your mind to this that, if a 
 woman does not like you of her own accord, that is, from 
 involuntary impressions, nothing you can say, or do, or suffer 
 for her sake will make her, but will set her the more against 
 you. So the song goes 
 
 " Quit, quit for shame; this will not move : 
 
 If of herself she will not love, 
 Nothing will make her, the devil take her ! " 
 
 Your pain is her triumph ; the more she feels you in her 
 power, the worse she will treat you : the more you make it 
 appear you deserve her regard, the more she will resent it as an 
 imputation on her first judgment. Study first impressions 
 above all things, for everything depends on them in love 
 especially. Women are armed by nature and education with a 
 power of resisting the importunity of men, and they use this 
 power according to their discretion. They enforce it to the 
 utmost rigour of the law against those whom they do not like, 
 and relax their extreme severity proportionably in favour of 
 those that they do like, and who in general care as little about 
 them. Hence we see so many desponding love/s and forlorn 
 damsels. Love in women, at least, is either vanity, or interest, 
 or fancy. It is a merely selfish feeling. It has nothing to do, 
 I am sorry to say, with friendship, or esteem, or even pity. I 
 once asked a girl, the pattern of her sex in shape and mind and 
 attractions, whether she did not think Mr. Coleridge had done 
 wrong in making the heroine of his beautiful ballad story of 
 Genevieve take compassion on her hapless lover 
 
 " When on the yellow forest-leaves 
 A dying man he lay ; "- 
 
 and whether she believed that any woman ever fell in love 
 through a sense of compassion, and she made answer " Not if 
 it was against her inclination 1 " I would take this lady's word
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 213 
 
 for a thousand pounds on this point. Pain holds antipathy to 
 pleasure ; pity is not akin to love ; a dying man has more need 
 of a nurse than of a mistress. There is no forcing liking. It is 
 as little to be fostered by reason and good-nature as it can be 
 controlled by prudence or propriety It is a mere blind, head- 
 strong impulse. Least of all, flatter yourself that talents or 
 virtue will recommend you to the favour of the sex in lieu of 
 exterior advantages. Oh ! no. Women care nothing about 
 poets, or philosophers, or politicians. They go by a man's 
 looks and manner Richardson calls them "an eye-judging 
 sex," and I am sure he knew more about them than I can 
 pretend to do. If you run away with a pedantic notion that 
 they care a pin's point about your head or your heart, you will 
 repent it too late. Some blue-stocking may have her vanity 
 flattered by your reputation, or be edified by the solution of a 
 metaphysical problem, or a critical remark, or a dissertation on 
 the state of the nation, and fancy that she has a taste for 
 intellect and is an epicure in sentiment. No true woman ever 
 regarded anything but her lover's person and address. Gravity 
 will here answer all the same purpose without understanding, 
 gaiety without wit, folly without good-nature, and impudence 
 without any other pretension. The natural and instinctive 
 passion of love is excited by qualities not peculiar to artists, 
 authors, and men of letters. It is not the jest but the 
 laugh that follows, not the sentiment but the glance that 
 accompanies it, that tells in a word, the sense of actual 
 enjoyment that imparts itself to others, and excites mutual 
 understanding and inclination. Authors, on the other hand, 
 feel nothing spontaneously. The common incidents and cir- 
 cumstances of life with which others are taken up, make no 
 alteration in them, nor provoke any of the common expressions 
 of surprise, joy, admiration, anger, or merriment. Nothing 
 stirs their blood or accelerates their juices or tickles their veins. 
 Instead of yielding to the first natural and lively impulses of 
 things, in which they would find sympathy, they screw them- 
 selves up to some far-fetched view of the subject in order to be 
 unintelligible. Realities are not good enough for them, till
 
 214 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 they undergo the process of imagination and reflection. If you 
 offer them your hand to shake, they will hardly take it ; for this 
 does not amount to a proposition. If you enter their room 
 suddenly, they testify neither surprise nor satisfaction : no new 
 idea is elicited by it. Yet if you suppose this to be a repulse 
 you are mistaken. They will enter into your affairs or combat 
 your ideas with all the warmth and vehemence imaginable as 
 soon as they have a subject started. But their faculty for 
 thinking must be set in motion, before you can put any soul 
 into them. They are intellectual dram-drinkers ; and without 
 their necessary stimulus, are torpid, dead, insensible to every- 
 thing. They have great life of mind, but none of body. They 
 do not drift with the stream of company or of passing 
 occurrences, but are straining at some hyberbole, or striking out 
 a bye-path of their own. Follow them who list. Their minds 
 are a sort of Herculaneum, full of old, petrified images ; are 
 set in stereotype, and little fitted to the ordinary occasions of 
 life. 
 
 What chance, then, can they have with women, who deal only 
 in the pantomime of discourse, in gesticulation and the flippant 
 bye-play of the senses, " nods and winks and wreathed smiles ;" 
 and to whom to offer a remark is an impertinence, or a reason 
 an affront ? The only way in which I ever knew mental 
 qualities or distinction tell was in the clerical character ; and 
 women do certainly incline to this with some sort of favourable 
 regard. Whether it is that the sanctity of pretension piques 
 curiosity, or that the habitual submission of their understand- 
 ings to their spiritual guides subdues the will, a popular 
 preacher generally has the choice among the Mite of his 
 female flock. According to Mrs Inchbald (see her Simple 
 Story) there is another reason why religious courtship is 
 not without its charms 1 But as I do not intend you for 
 the church, do not, in thinking to study yourself into the 
 good graces of the fair, study yourself out of them, millions 
 of miles. Do not place thought as a barrier between you 
 and love : do not abstract yourself into the regions of 
 truth, far from the smile of earthly beauty. Let not the cloud
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 215 
 
 sit upon your brow : let not the canker sink into your heart. 
 Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the colour in your cheek 
 and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your 
 health, your beauty, and your animal spirits, and you will pass 
 for a fine man. But should you let your blood stagnate in some 
 deep metaphysical question, or refine too much in your ideas of 
 the sex, forgetting yourself in a dream of exalted perfection, you 
 will want an eye to cheer you, a hand to guide you, a bosom to 
 lean on, and will stagger into your grave, old before your time, 
 unloved and unlovely. If you feel that you have not the 
 necessary advantages of person, confidence, and manner, and 
 that it is up-hill work with you to gain the ear of beauty, 
 quit the pursuit at once, and seek for other satisfactions and 
 consolations. 
 
 A spider, my dear, the meanest creature that crawls or lives, 
 has its mate or fellow : but a scholar has no mate or fellow. 
 For myself, I had courted thought, I had felt pain ; and Love 
 turned away his face from me. I have gazed along the silent 
 air for that smile which had lured me to my doom. I no more 
 heard those accents which would have burst upon me like a 
 voice from heaven. I loathed the light that shone on my 
 disgrace. Hours, days, years passed av/ay, and only turned 
 false hope to fixed despair. And as my frail bark sails down 
 the stream of time, the God of Love stands on the shore, and as 
 I stretch out my hands to him in vain, claps his wings, and 
 mocks me as I pass ! 
 
 There is but one other point on which I meant to speak 
 to you, and that is the choice of a profession. This, probably, 
 had better be left to time or accident or _your own inclination. 
 You have a very fine ear, but I have somehow a prejudice 
 against men-singers, and indeed against the stage altogether. 
 It is an uncertain and ungrateful soil. All professions are bad 
 that depend on reputation, which is "as often got without merit 
 as lost without deserving." Yet I cannot easily reconcile my- 
 self to your being a slave to business, and I shall be hardly 
 able to leave you an independence. A situation in a public 
 office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the
 
 2i6 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 two great springs of life, Hope and Fear. Perhaps, however, it 
 might ensure you a competence, and leave you leisure for 
 some other favourite amusement or pursuit. I have said 
 all reputation is hazardous, hard to win, harder to keep. 
 Many never attain a glimpse of what they have all their 
 lives been looking for, and others survive a passing shadow 
 of it. Yet if I were to name one pursuit rather than another, 
 I should wish you to be a good painter, if such a thing 
 could be hoped. I have failed in this myself, and should 
 wish you to be able to do what I have not to paint like Claude 
 or Rembrandt or Guido or Vandyke, if it were possible. 
 Artists, I think, who have succeeded in their chief object, live to 
 be old, and are agreeable old men. Their minds keep alive to 
 the last. Cosway's spirits never flagged till after ninety, and 
 Nollekins, though nearly blind, passed all his mornings in giving 
 directions about some group or bust in his workshop. You 
 have seen Mr. Northcote, that delightful specimen of the last 
 age. With what avidity he takes up his pencil, or lays it down 
 again to talk of numberless things 1 His eye has not lost its 
 lustre, nor "paled its ineffectual fire." His body is a shadow : 
 he himself is a pure spirit. There is a kind of immortality about 
 this sort of ideal and visionary existence that dallies with Fate 
 and baffles the grim monster, Death. If I thought you could 
 make as clever an artist and arrive at such an agreeable old age 
 as Mr. Northcote, I should declare at once for your devoting 
 yourself to this enchanting profession ; and in that reliance, 
 should feel less regret at some of my own disappointments, and 
 little anxiety on your account J
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 217 
 
 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 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 
 are past finding out ! Thou canst do strange things, but thou 
 turnest them to little account ! To conceive of this effort of 
 extraordinary dexterity distracts the imagination and makes 
 admiration breathless. Yet it costs nothing to the performer, 
 any more than if it were a mere mechanical deception with 
 which he had nothing to do but to watch and laugh at the 
 astonishment of the spectators. A single error of a hair's- 
 breadth, of the smallest conceivable portion of time, would be 
 fatal : the precision of the movements must be like a mathe- 
 matical truth, their rapidity is like lightning. To catch four 
 balls in succession in less than a second of time, and deliver 
 them back so as to return with seeming consciousness to the 
 hand again, to make 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
 
 2i8 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 meteors, to throw them behind his back and twine them round 
 his neck like ribbons or like serpents, to do what appears an 
 impossibility, and to do it with all the ease, the grace, the 
 carelessness imaginable, to laugh at, to play with the glittering 
 mockeries, to follow them with his eye as if he could fascinate 
 them with its lambent fire, or as if he had only to see that they 
 kept time with the music on the stage there is something in 
 all this which he who does not admire may be quite sure he 
 never really admired anything in the whole course of his life. 
 It is skill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over 
 skill. It seems as if the difficulty once mastered naturally 
 resolved itself into ease and grace, and as if to be overcome 
 at all, it must be overcome without an effort The smallest 
 awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-possession would stop 
 the whole process. It is the work of witchcraft, and yet sport 
 for children. Some of the other feats are quite as curious and 
 wonderful, such as the 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 his 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 commonplaces, which any one could repeat 
 after them as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my 
 good opinion of myself; but the seeing the Indian Jugglers 
 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
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS, 219 
 
 in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone 
 up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in 
 the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not 
 finding them ? Is there no one thing in which I can challenge 
 competition, that 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 Essays ! What 
 errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what 
 lame conclusions ! How little is made out, and that little how 
 ill 1 Yet they are the best I can do. I endeavour to recollect 
 all I have ever observed or thought upon a subject, and to 
 express it as nearly as I can. Instead of writing on four 
 subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage to keep the 
 thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. I have also 
 time on my naiads 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 sometimes produce 
 this effect, but there is no such power or superiority in sense or 
 reasoning. There is no complete mastery of execution to be 
 shown there : and you hardly know the professor from the 
 impudent pretender or the mere clown.* 
 
 I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and slow pro- 
 gress of intellectual compared to mechanical excellence, and it 
 has always made me somewhat dissatisfied. It is a great many 
 years since I saw Richer, the famous rope-dancer, perform 
 
 * 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 ? " The other flew like lightning, and soon 
 came back with what he considered as his masterpiece. The stranger
 
 220 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 at Sadler's Wells. He was matchless in his art, and added to 
 his extraordinary skill exquisite ease, and unaffected, natural 
 grace. I was at that time employed in copying a half-length 
 picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds's ; and it put me out of conceit 
 with it. How ill this part was made out in the drawing 1 How 
 heavy, how slovenly this other was painted ! I could not help 
 saying to myself, " If the rope-dancer had performed his task 
 in this manner, leaving so many gaps and botches in his work, 
 he would have broken his neck long ago ; I should never have 
 seen that vigorous elasticity of nerve and precision of move- 
 ment 1" Is it then so easy an undertaking (comparatively) 
 to dance on a tight-rope ? Let anyone 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 practice, 
 and you do so infallibly, because the object to be attained is 
 not a matter of taste or fancy or opinion, but of actual experi- 
 ment, 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 he 
 
 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 
 hetter ! " The same answer would have applied to this artist's latest 
 performances, that had been suggested by one of his earliest efforts.
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 221 
 
 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 pedagogue : 
 
 " In argument they own'd his wondrous skill, 
 And e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still." 
 
 Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are 
 disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. 
 There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no 
 idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take 
 the consequences) neither is there any room for humour or 
 caprice or prejudice. If the Indian Juggler were to play tricks 
 in throwing up the three case-knives, which keep their positions 
 like the leaves of a crocus in the air, he would cut his fingers. 
 I can make a very bad antithesis without cutting my fingers. 
 The tact of style is more 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 cannot 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 repetition, and in the next place, an 
 exact knowledge how much is still wanting and necessary 
 to be supplied. The obvious test is to increase the effort or 
 nicety of the operation, and still to find it come true. The 
 muscles ply instinctively to the dictates of habit. Certain 
 movements and impressions of the hand and eye, having been 
 repeated together an infinite number of times, are unconsciously 
 but unavoidably cemented into closer and closer union ; the 
 limbs require little more than to be put in motion for them 
 to follow a regular track with ease and certainty ; so that
 
 222 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 the mere intention of the will acts mathematically like touching 
 the spring of a machine, and you come with Locksley in 
 Jvanhoe, 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 lour brass balls does this to perfection ; but he cannot keep 
 up five at the same instant, and would fail every time lie 
 attempted it. That is, the mechanical performer undertakes 
 to emulate himself, not to equal another.* But the artist 
 undertakes to imitate another or to do what nature has done, 
 and this it appears is more difficult viz., to copy what she 
 has set before us in the face of nature or "human face divine," 
 entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four brass balls 
 at the same instant, for the one is done by the power of human 
 skill and industry, and the other never was nor will be. Upon 
 the whole, therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds than 
 I have for Richer ; tor, 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 taskmaster to obey, whose will was 
 more wayward and obscure, and whose instructions it was 
 more difficult to practice. You can put a child apprentice 
 to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a comfortable prospect of 
 success, if they are but sound ot 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 Reynolds 
 amongst them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his blandness 
 
 * If two persons play against each other at any game, one of them 
 necessarily fails.
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 223 
 
 of gtiste, "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 suggested by feeling, not by laborious microscopic 
 inspection ; in seeking for it without, we lose the harmonious 
 clue to it within ; and in aiming to grasp the substance, we 
 let the very spirit of art evaporate. In a word, the objects 
 of fine art are not the objects of sight but as these last are 
 the objects of taste and imagination, that is, as they appeal 
 to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of power in the human 
 breast, and are explained by that finer sense, and revealed 
 in their inner structure to the eye in return. Nature is also 
 a language. Objects, like words, have a meaning ; and the 
 true artist is the interpreter of this language, which he can 
 only do by knowing its application to a thousand other objects 
 in a thousand other situations. Thus the eye is too blind a 
 guide of itself to distinguish between the warm or cold tone 
 of a deep-blue sky, but another sense acts as a monitor to 
 it, and does not err. The colour of the leaves in autumn 
 would be nothing without the feeling that accompanies it ; 
 but it is that feeling that stamps them on the canvas, faded, 
 seared, blighted, shrinking from the winter's flaw, and makes 
 the sight as true as touch 
 
 " And visions, as poetic eyes a"ow, 
 Cling to each leaf and hang oil 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
 
 224 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 gift namely, in the power of that trembling sensibility which is 
 awake to every change and every modification of its ever-varying 
 impressions, that 
 
 " Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line." 
 
 This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, feeling, 
 taste ; but the manner in which it acts upon the mind can 
 neither be defined by abstract rules, as is the case in science, 
 nor verified by continual unvarying experiments, as is the case 
 in mechanical performances. The mechanical excellence of 
 the Dutch painters in colouring and handling is that which 
 comes the nearest in fine art to the perfection of certain manual 
 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 comes with practice. 
 
 Cleverness is a certain knack or aptitude at doing certain 
 things, which depend more on a particular adroitness and off- 
 hand readiness than on force or perseverance, such as making 
 puns, making epigrams, making extempore verses, mimicking 
 the company, mimicking a style, etc. Cleverness is either 
 liveliness and smartness, or something answering to sleight of 
 hand, like letting a glass fall sideways off a table, or else a trick, 
 like knowing the secret spring of a watch. Accomplishments 
 are certain external graces, which are to be learned from others, 
 and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the 
 beholder namely, 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
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 225 
 
 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 manners the liberality flow- 
 ing from the openness of his heart, would have laughed with 
 the women, have argued with the men, have said good things 
 and written agreeable ones, have taken a hand at piquet or the 
 lead at the harpsichord, and have set and sung his own verses 
 nugce canora with tenderness and spirit ; a Rochester with- 
 out the vice, a modern Surrey 1 As it is, all these capabilities 
 of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a profes- 
 sional 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 undertakings 
 of much pith and moment. A clever or ingenious man is one 
 who can do anything well, whether it is worth doing or not ; a 
 great man is one who can do 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 
 
 587
 
 226 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 mere notoriety, is of a gross and vulgar quality in itself. A 
 Lord Mayor is hardly a great man. A city orator or patriot of 
 the day only show, by reaching the height of their wishes, the 
 distance they are at from any true ambition. Popularity is 
 neither fame nor greatness. A king (as such) is not a great 
 man. He has great power, but it is not his own. He merely 
 wields the lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a mad- 
 man 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 1 " 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 barley- 
 corn through the eye of a needle, to multiply nine figures by nine 
 in the memory, argues definite dexterity of body and capacity of 
 mind, but nothing comes of either. There is a surprising power 
 at work, but the effects are 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 formid- 
 able scourges to mankind. Among ourselves, Shakespeare, 
 Newton, Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, for they 
 showed great power by acts and thoughts, which have not yet
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 227 
 
 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 con- 
 struct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without 
 them. Is not an actor, then, a great man, because "he dies 
 and leaves the world no copy?" I must make an exception 
 for Mrs. Siddons, or else give up my definition of greatness for 
 her sake. A man at the top of his profession is not therefore a 
 great man. He is great in his way, but that is all, unless he 
 shows the marks of a great moving intellect, so that we trace 
 the master-mind, and can sympathise with the springs 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 dis- 
 coveries ; 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.
 
 228 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 except to his dependants and his steward. A lord is a great 
 man in the idea we have of his ancestry, and probably of 
 himself, if we know nothing of him but his title. I have heard 
 a story of two bishops, one of whom said (speaking of St 
 Peter's at Rome) that when he first entered it, he was rather 
 awestruck, but that as he walked up it, his mind seemed to 
 swell and dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole building : 
 the other said that as he saw more of it, he appeared to himself 
 to grow less and less every step he took, and in the end to 
 dwindle into nothing. This was in some respects a striking 
 picture of a great and little mind for greatness sympathises 
 with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself. The one 
 might have become a Wolsey ; the other was only fit to 
 become a 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, 
 Molie're, Rabelais, and Montaigne. 
 
 To return from this digression, and conclude the Essay. A 
 singular instance of manual dexterity was shown in the person 
 of the late John Cavanagh, whom I have several times seen. 
 His death was celebrated at the time in an article in the 
 Examiner newspaper (Feb. 7, 1819), written apparently between 
 jest and 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
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 229 
 
 and blotting them ; making money and throwing it away. But 
 the game of fives is what no one despises who has ever played 
 at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best 
 relaxation for the mind. The Roman poet said that 'Care 
 mounted behind the horseman and stuck to his skirts.' But 
 this remark would not have applied to the fives-player. He 
 who takes to playing at fives is twice young. He feels neither 
 the past nor future ' in the instant.' Debts, taxes, 'domestic 
 treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further.' He has 
 no other wish, no other thought, from the moment the game 
 begins, but that of striking the ball, of placing it, of making it ! 
 This Cavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the 
 ball, there was an end of the chase. His eye was certain, his 
 hand fatal, his 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 oi 
 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
 
 230 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 affect to do. His blows were not undecided and ineffectual 
 lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering like 
 Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr. 
 Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor 
 foul like the Quarterly, not let balls like the Edinburgh Review. 
 Cobbet and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh. He 
 was the best up-hill player in the world ; even when his 
 adversary was fourteen, he would play on the same or better, 
 and as he never flung away the game through carelessness and 
 conceit, he never gave it up through laziness or want of heart. 
 The only peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, but 
 let the balls hop ; but if they rose an inch from the ground, he 
 never missed having them. There was not only nobody equal, 
 but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give 
 any other player half the game, or beat them with his left hand. 
 His service was tremendous. He once played Woodward and 
 Meredith together (two of the best players in England) in the 
 Fives-court, St. Martin's Street, and made seven-and-twenty 
 aces following by services alone a thing unheard of. He 
 another time played Peru, who was considered a first-rate 
 fives-player, a match of the best out of five games, and in the 
 three first games, which of course decided the match, Peru got 
 only one ace. Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a 
 house-painter by profession. He had once laid aside his 
 working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest clothes, to the 
 Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's pleasure. A person 
 accosted him, and asked him if he 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 rives-player, ' there was a stroke 
 that Cavanagh could not take : I never played better in my 
 life, and yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it is ! ' 
 However, they played on, Cavanagh 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
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS, 231 
 
 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 say- 
 ing, ' What ! have I been breaking my heart all this time to 
 beat Cavanagh ? ' refused to make another effort. ' And yet, I 
 give you my word,' said Cavanagh, telling the story with some 
 triumph, ' I played all the while with my clenched fist.' He 
 used frequently to play matches at 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 sus- 
 pended in Lord Castlereagh's face, and admire the trophies of 
 the British Navy lurking under Mr. Croker"s hanging brow. 
 Now, Cavanagh was as good-looking a man as the Noble 
 Lord, and much better looking than the Right Hon. Secretary. 
 He had a clear, open countenance, and did not look sideways 
 or down, like Mr. Murray, the bookseller. He was a young 
 fellow of sense, humour, and courage. He once had a quarrel 
 with a waterman at Hungerford Stairs, and, they say, served 
 him out in great style. In a word, there are hundreds at this 
 day who cannot mention his name without admiration, as the 
 best fives-player that 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 1 
 The only person who seems to have excelled as much in 
 another way as Cavanagh did in his was the late John Davies, the
 
 232 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 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 recom- 
 mend 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 1 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 ' Hicjacetl "
 
 THE OPERA. 233 
 
 THE OPERA. 
 
 THE Opera is a fine thing : the only question is, whether it is 
 not too fine. It is the most fascinating, and at the same time 
 the most tantalising, of all places. It is not the too little, but 
 the too much, that offends us. Every object is there collected, 
 and displayed in ostentatious profusion, that can strike the 
 senses or dazzle the imagination ; music, dancing, painting, 
 poetry, architecture, the blaze of beauty, " the glass of fashion, 
 and the mould of form ; " and yet one is not satisfied for the 
 multitude and variety of objects distract the attention, and, by 
 flattering us with a vain show of the highest gratification of 
 every faculty and wish, leave us at last in a state of listlessness, 
 disappointment, and ennui. The powers of the mind are 
 exhausted, without being invigorated ; our expectations are 
 excited, not satisfied ; and we are at some loss to distinguish an 
 excess of irritation from the height of enjoyment. To sit at the 
 Opera for a whole evening is like undergoing the process of 
 animal magnetism for the same length of time. It is an illusion 
 and a mockery, where the mind is made " the fool of the 
 senses," and cheated of itself; where pleasure after pleasure 
 courts us, as in a fairy palace ; where the Graces and the 
 Muses, weaving in a gay, fantastic round with one another, still 
 turn from our pursuit ; where art, like an enchantress with a 
 thousand faces, still allures our giddy 'admiration, shifts her 
 mask, and again eludes us. The Opera, in short, proceeds 
 upon a false estimate of taste and morals ; it supposes that the 
 capacity for enjoyment may be multiplied with the objects
 
 234 THE OPERA, 
 
 calculated to afford it. It is a species of intellectual pros- 
 titution ; for we can no more receive pleasure from all our 
 faculties at once than we can be in love with a number of 
 mistresses at the same time. Though we have different senses, 
 we have but one heart ; and, if we attempt to force it into the 
 service of them all at once, it must grow restive or torpid, 
 hardened or enervated. The spectator may say to the sister- 
 arts of Painting, Poetry, and Music, as they advance to him in 
 a pas-de-trois at the Opera, "How happy could I be with 
 either, were t'other dear charmers away ; " but while " they all 
 tease him together," the heart gives a satisfactory answer to 
 none of them ; is ashamed of its want of resources to supply 
 the repeated calls upon its sensibility, seeks relief from the 
 importunity of endless excitement in fastidious apathy or 
 affected levity ; and in the midst of luxury, pomp, vanity, 
 indolence, and dissipation, feels only the hollow, aching void 
 within, the irksome craving of unsatisfied desire, because more 
 pleasures are placed within its reach than it is capable of 
 enjoying, and the interference of one object with another ends 
 in a double disappointment. Such is the best account I can 
 give of the nature of the Opera, of the contradiction between 
 our expectations of pleasure and our uneasiness there, of our 
 very jealousy of the flattering appeals which are made to our 
 senses, our passions, and our vanity, on all sides, of the little 
 relish we acquire for it, and the distaste it gives us for other 
 things. Any one of the sources of amusement to be found there 
 would be enough to occupy and keep the attention alive ; the 
 tout ensemble fatigues and oppresses it. One may be stifled to 
 death with roses. A headache may be produced by a pro- 
 fusion of sweet smells or of sweet sounds ; but we do not 
 like the headache the more on that account. Nor are we 
 reconciled to it, even at the Opera. 
 
 What makes the difference between an opera of Mozart's 
 and the singing of a thrush confined in a wooden cage at the 
 corner of the street ? The one is nature, and the other is art : 
 the one is paid for, and the other is not. Madame Foder sang 
 the air of Vedrai Carino in " Don Giovanni " so divinely,
 
 THE OPERA. 235 
 
 because she was hired to sing it ; she sang it to please the 
 audience, not herself, and did not always like to be encored in 
 it ; but the thrush that awakes us at daybreak with its song, 
 does not sing because it is paid to sing, or to please others, or 
 to be admired or criticised. It sings because it is happy : it 
 pours the thrilling- sounds from its throat, to relieve the over- 
 flowings of its own heart the liquid notes come from, and go 
 to the heart, dropping balm into it, as the gushing spring 
 revives the traveller's parched and fainting lips. That stream 
 of joy comes pure and fresh to the longing sense, free from art 
 and affectation ; the same that rises over vernal groves, 
 mingled with the breath of morning, and the perfumes of the 
 wild hyacinth ; it waits for no audience, it wants no rehearsing, 
 and still 
 
 " Hymns its good God, and carols sweet of love." 
 
 This is the great difference between nature and art, that the one 
 is what the other seems to be, and gives all the pleasure it 
 expresses, because it feels it itself. Madame Fodor sang as a 
 musical instrument may be made to play a tune, and perhaps 
 with no more real delight ; but it is not so with the linnet or 
 the thrush, that sings because God pleases, and pours out its 
 little soul in pleasure. This is the reason why its singing is (so 
 far) so much better than melody or harmony, than bass or 
 treble, than the Italian or the German school, than quavers or 
 crotchets, or half-notes, or canzonets, or quartetts, or anything 
 in the world but truth and nature 1 
 
 The Opera is the most artificial of all things. It is not only 
 art, but ostentatious, unambiguous, exclusive art. It does not 
 subsist as an imitation of nature, but in contempt of it ; and, 
 instead of seconding, its object is to pervert and sophisticate all 
 our natural impressions of things. When the Opera first made 
 its appearance in this country, there were strong prejudices 
 entertained against it, and it was ridiculed as a species of the 
 mock-heroic. The prejudices have worn out with time, and the 
 ridicule has ceased ; but the grounds for both remain the same 
 in the nature of the thing itself. At the theatre we see and
 
 236 THE OPERA. 
 
 hear what has been said, thought, and done by various people 
 elsewhere ; at the Opera we see and hear what was never said, 
 thought, or done any where but at the Opera. Not only is all 
 communication with nature cut off, but every appeal to the 
 imagination is sheathed and softened in the melting medium of 
 Siren sounds. The ear is cloyed and glutted with warbled 
 ecstasies or agonies ; while every avenue to terror and pity is 
 carefully stopped up and guarded by song and recitative. 
 Music is not made the vehicle of poetry, but poetry of music ; 
 the very meaning of the words is lost or refined away in the 
 effeminacy of a foreign language. A grand serious Opera is a 
 tragedy wrapped up in soothing airs, to suit the tender feelings 
 of the nurslings of fortune where tortured victims swoon on 
 beds of roses, and the pangs of despair sink in tremulous 
 accents into downy repose. Just so much of human misery is 
 given as is proper to lull those who are exempted from it into a 
 deeper sense of their own security : just enough of the picture 
 of human life is shewn to relieve their languor without disturb- 
 ing their indifference ; it is calculated not to excite their 
 sympathy, but " with some sweet, oblivious antidote," to pamper 
 their sleek and sordid apathy. In a word, the whole business 
 of the Opera is to stifle emotion in its birth, and to intercept 
 every feeling in its progress to the heart. Every impression 
 that, left to itself, might sink deep into the mind, and wake it to 
 real sympathy, is overtaken and baffled by means of some other 
 impression, plays round the surface of the imagination, trembles 
 into airy sound, or expires in an empty pageant. In the grand 
 carnival of the senses the pulse of life is suspended, the link 
 which binds us to humanity is broken ; the soul is fretted by 
 the sense of excessive softness into a feverish hectic dream ; 
 truth becomes a fable ; good and evil matters of perfect 
 indifference, except as they can be made subservient to our 
 selfish gratification ; and there is hardly a vice for which the 
 mind is not thus gradually prepared, no virtue of which it is not 
 rendered incapable !
 
 OF PERSONS. 237 
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE 
 SEEN. 
 
 " Come like shadows so depart." 
 
 LAMB it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the 
 defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, 
 however, he would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both, 
 a task for which he would have been much fitter, no less from 
 the temerity than the felicity of his pen 
 
 " Never so sure our rapture to create 
 As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate." 
 
 Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a commonplace 
 piece of business of it ; but I should be loth the idea was 
 entirely lost, and, besides, I may avail myself of some hints of 
 his in the progress of it. I am sometimes, I suspect, a better 
 reporter of the ideas of other people than expounder of my own. 
 I pursue the one too far into paradox or mysticism ; the others 
 I am not bound to follow farther than I like, or than seems fair 
 and reasonable. 
 
 On the question being started, Ayrton said, " I suppose the 
 two first persons you would choose to see would be the two 
 greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. 
 Locke?" In this Ayrton, as usual, reckoned without his host. 
 Every one burst out a-laughing at the expression on Lamb's 
 face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. " Yes, 
 the greatest names," he stammered out hastily ; " but they were 
 not persons not persons." " Not persons," said Ayrton, look- 
 ing wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might 
 be premature. " That is," rejoined Lamb, " not characters, you 
 know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the
 
 238 OF PERSONS. 
 
 Essay on the Human Understanding, and the Prindpia, which 
 we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is nothing 
 personally interesting in the men. But what we want to see 
 any one bodily for, is when there is something peculiar, striking 
 in the individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, 
 and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton 
 were very like Kneller's portraits of them. But who could paint 
 Shakespeare ? " " Ay," retorted Ayrton, " there it is ; then 
 I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?" 
 "No," said Lamb, "neither. I have seen so much of 
 Shakespeare on the stage and on bookstalls, in frontispieces 
 and on mantelpieces, that I am quite tired 01 the everlasting 
 repetition : and as to Milton's lace, the impressions that have 
 come down to us of it I do not like ; it is too starched and 
 puritanical ; and I should be afraid of losing some of the manna 
 of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the 
 precisian's band and gown." " I shall guess no more," said 
 Ayrton. " Who is it, then, you would like to see ' in his habit 
 as he lived,' it you had your choice of the whole range of 
 English literature?" Lamb then named Sir Thomas Browne 
 and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two 
 worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter 
 on the floor of his apartment in their nightgown and slippers 
 and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this Ayrton 
 laughed outright, and conceived Lamb was jesting with him ; 
 but as no one followed his example, he thought there might be 
 something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state 01 
 whimsical suspense. Lamb then (as well as I can remember a 
 conversation that passed twenty years ago how time slips !) 
 went on as follows. " The reason why I pitch upon these two 
 authors is, that their writings are riddles, and they themselves 
 the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the sooth- 
 sayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles ; 
 and I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal 
 but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. 
 Johnson : I have no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about 
 him ; he and Boswell together have pretty well let me into the
 
 OF PERSONS. 239 
 
 secret of what passed through his mind. He and other writers 
 like him are sufficiently explicit : my friends, whose repose 
 I should be tempted to disturb (were it in my power), are 
 implicit, inextricable, inscrutable. 
 
 " When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose composi- 
 tion, the Urn-burial^ I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, 
 at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure ; or it is 
 like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and 
 I would invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. 
 Besides, who would not be curious to seethe lineaments of a 
 man who, having himself been twice married, wished that man- 
 kind were propagated like trees 1 As to Fulke Greville, he is 
 like nothing but one of his own ' Prologues spoken by the ghost 
 of an old king of Ormus,' a truly formidable and inviting 
 personage : his style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, a knot worthy 
 of such an apparation to untie ; and for the unravelling a 
 passage or two, I would stand the brunt of an encounter with so 
 portentous a commentator I " " I am afraid, in that case," said 
 Ayrton, "that if the mystery were once cleared up, the merit 
 might be lost;" and turning to me, whispered a friendly 
 apprehension, that while Lamb continued to admire these old 
 crabbed authors, he would never become a popular writer. 
 Dr. Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with 
 a very interesting countenance, whose history was singular, 
 and whose meaning was often quite as uncomeatable^ without 
 a personal citation from the dead, as that of any of his contem- 
 poraries. The volume was produced ; and while some one was 
 expatiating on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait 
 prefixed to the old edition, Ayrton got hold of the poetry, and 
 exclaiming " What have we here ? " read the following : 
 
 " Here lies a She-Sun and a He- Moon there 
 She gives the best light to his sphear 
 Or each is both, and all, and so 
 They unto one another nothing owe."* 
 
 * Epithalamion on Frederick, Count Palatina of the Rhyne and the 
 Lady Elizabeth.
 
 240 OF PERSONS. 
 
 There was no resisting this, till Lamb, seizing the volume, 
 turned to the beautiful " Lines to his Mistress," dissuading her 
 from accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused 
 features and a faltering tongue : 
 
 " By our first strange and fatal interview, 
 By all desires which thereof did ensue, 
 By our long starving hopes, by that remorse 
 Which my words' masculine perswasive force 
 Begot in thee, and by the memory 
 Of hurts, which spies and rivals threatned me, 
 I calmely beg. But by thy father's wrath, 
 By all paines which want and divorcement hath, 
 I conjure thee ; and all the oathes which I 
 And thou have sworne to scale joynt constancy 
 Here I unsweare, and overswear them thus 
 Thou shalt not love by wayes so dangerous. 
 Temper, O fair love 1 love's impetuous rage, 
 Be my true mistris still, not my faign'd Page ; 
 I'll goe, and, by thy kinde leave, leave behinde 
 Thee ! onely worthy to nurse it in my minde. 
 Thirst to come backe ; O, if thou die before, 
 My soule, from other lands to thee shall soare. 
 Thy (else almighty) beautie cannot move 
 Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, 
 Nor tame wild Boreas' harshnesse : thou hast reade 
 How roughly hee in peeces shivered 
 Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd. 
 Fall ill or good, 'tis madnesse to have prov'd 
 Dangers unurg'd : Feed on this flattery, 
 That absent lovers one in th' other be. 
 Dissemble nothing, not a boy ; nor change 
 Thy bodie's habite, not minde ; be not strange 
 To thyeselfe onely. All will spie in thy face 
 A blushing, womanly, discovering grace. 
 Richly -cloath'd apes are call'd apes, and as soon 
 Eclips'd as bright, we call the moone the moon. 
 Men of France, changeable camelions, 
 Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions, 
 Love's fuellers, and the rightest company
 
 OF PERSONS. 241 
 
 Of players, which upon the world's stage be, 
 Will quickly know thee . . . 
 O stay here ! for for thee 
 England is onely a worthy gallerie, 
 To walke in expectation ; till from thence 
 Our greatest King call thee to his presence. 
 When I am gone, dreame me some happinesse, 
 Nor let thy lookes our long-hid love confesse, 
 Nor praise, nor dispraise me ; nor blesse, nor curse 
 Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse 
 With midnight's starlings, crying out, Oh, oh, 
 Nurse, oh, my love is slaine, I saw him goe 
 O'er the white Alpes alone ; I saw him, I, 
 Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die. 
 Augure me better chance, except dread Jove 
 Thinke it enough for me to have had thy love. " 
 
 Someone then inquired of Lamb if we could not see from the 
 window the Temple-walk in which Chaucer used to take his 
 exercise ; and on his name being put to the vote, I was pleased 
 to find that there was a general sensation in his favour in all but 
 Ayrton, who said something about the ruggedness of the metre, 
 and even objected to the quaintness of the orthography. I was 
 vexed at this superficial gloss, pertinaciously reducing every- 
 thing to its own trite level, and asked "if he did not think 
 it would be worth while to scan the eye that had first greeted 
 the Muse in that dim twilight and early dawn of English 
 literature ; to see the head round which the visions of fancy 
 must have played like gleams of inspiration or a sudden 
 glory ; to watch those lips that ' lisped in numbers, for the 
 numbers came' as by a miracle, or as if the dumb should 
 speak ? Nor was it alone that he had been the first to tune 
 his native tongue (however imperfectly to modern ears) ; but 
 he was himself a noble, manly character, standing before his 
 age and striving to advance it ; a pleasant humourist withal, 
 who has not only handed down to us the living manners 
 of his time, but had, no doubt, store of curious and quaint 
 devices, and would make as hearty a companion as mine 
 
 588
 
 242 OF PERSONS. 
 
 host of the Tabard. His interview with Petrarch is fraught 
 with interest. Yet I would rather have seen Chaucer in 
 company with the author of the Decameron, and have heard 
 them exchange their best stories together the Squires Tale 
 against the story of the Falcon, the Wife of BatKs Prologue 
 against the Adventures of Friar Albert. How fine to see 
 the high mysterious brow which learning then wore, relieved 
 by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and by 
 the courtesies of genius 1 Surely, the thoughts and feelings 
 which passed through the minds of these great revivers 
 of learning, these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, 
 must have stamped an expression on their features as 
 different from the moderns as their books, and well worth 
 the perusal Dante," I continued, " is as interesting a person 
 as his own Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity would 
 as eagerly devour in order to penetrate his spirit, and the 
 only one of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There 
 is a, fine portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's ; 
 light, Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same 
 artist's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness 
 of the kind that has the effect of conversing with ' the mighty 
 dead ; ' and this is truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic." 
 Lamb put it to me if I should like to see Spenser as well 
 as Chaucer ; and I answered, without hesitation, " No ; for 
 that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not palpable or personal, 
 and therefore connected with less curiosity about the man. 
 His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo round 
 the bright orb of fancy ; and the bringing in the individual 
 might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come 
 up to the mellifluous cadence of his verse ; no form but of 
 a winged angel could vie with the airy shapes he has described. 
 He was (to my apprehension) rather a ' creature of the 
 element, that lived in the rainbow and played in the plighted 
 clouds,' than an ordinary mortal Or if he did appear, I 
 should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one of his own 
 pageants, and that he should pass by unquestioned like a 
 dream or sound
 
 OF PERSONS. 243 
 
 * That was Arion crown'd : 
 
 So went he playing on the wat'ry plain ' " 
 
 Captain Burney muttered something about Columbus, and 
 Martin Burney hinted at the Wandering Jew; but the last 
 was set aside as spurious, and the first made over to the 
 New World. 
 
 "I should like," said Mrs. Reynolds, "to have seen Pope 
 talk with Patty Blount ; and I have seen Goldsmith." Every 
 one turned round to look at Mrs. Reynolds, as if by so doing 
 they could get a sight at Goldsmith. 
 
 "Where," asked a harsh, croaking voice, "was Dr. Johnson 
 in the years 1745-46? He did not write anything that we 
 know of, nor is there any account of him in Boswell during 
 those two years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender ? 
 He seems to have passed through the scenes in the Highlands 
 in company with Boswell, many years after, ' with lack-lustre 
 eye,' yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his 
 mind with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would 
 be an additional reason for my liking him ; and I would give 
 something to have seen him seated in the tent with the youthful 
 Majesty of Britain, and penning the Proclamation to all true 
 subjects and adherents of the legitimate Government." 
 
 " I thought," said Ayrton, turning short round upon Lamb, 
 "that you of the Lake School did not like Pope?" "Not like 
 Pope 1 My dear sir, you must be under a mistake I can read 
 him over and over lor ever 1 " " Why, certainly, the Essay on 
 Man must be allowed to be a masterpiece." " It may be so, 
 but I seldom look into it." " Oh ! then it's his Satires you 
 admire ? " " No, not his Satires, but his friendly Epistles and 
 his compliments." " Compliments 1 I did not know he ever 
 made any." " The finest," said Lamb " that were ever paid by 
 the wit of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life 
 nay, is an immortality. There is that superb one to Lord 
 
 Cornbury : 
 
 * Despise low joys, low gains ; 
 Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains ; 
 
 Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains. 1
 
 244 OF PERSONS. 
 
 Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise? 
 And then that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield 
 (however little deserved), when, speaking of the House of 
 Lords, he adds : 
 
 * Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh, 
 (More silent far) where kings and poets lie ; 
 Where Murray (long enough his country's pride) 
 Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde ! ' 
 
 And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses 
 Lord Bolingbroke : 
 
 ' Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine, 
 Oh ! all-accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine ? ' 
 
 Or turn," continued Lamb, with a slight hectic on his cheek and 
 his eye glistening, "to his list of early friends : 
 
 ' But why then publish ? Granville the polite, 
 And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write j 
 Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise, 
 And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays : 
 The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
 Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head ; 
 And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
 Received with open arms one poet more. 
 Happy my studies, if by these approved 1 
 Happier their author, if by these beloved ! 
 From these the world will judge of men and books, 
 Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.' " 
 
 Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the book, 
 he said, " Do you think I would not wish to have been friends 
 with such a man as this ? " 
 
 " What say you to Dryden?" "He rather made a show of 
 himself, and courted popularity in that lowest temple of fame, a 
 coffee-shop, so as in some measure to vulgarise one's idea of
 
 OP PERSONS. 245 
 
 him. Pope, on the contrary, reached the very beau ideal of 
 what a poet's life should be ; and his fame while living seemed 
 to be an emanation from that which was to circle his name after 
 death. He was so far enviable (and one would feel proud to 
 have witnessed the rare spectacle in him) that he was almost 
 the only poet and man of genius who met with his reward on 
 this side of the tomb, who realised in friends, fortune, the 
 esteem of the world, the most sanguine hopes of a youthful 
 ambition, and who found that sort of patronage from the great 
 during his lifetime which they would be thought anxious to 
 bestow upon him after his death. Read Gay's verses to him on 
 his supposed return from Greece, after his translation of Homer 
 was finished, and say if you would not gladly join the bright 
 procession that welcomed him home, or see it once more land 
 at Whitehall stairs."" Still," said Mrs. Reynolds, " I would 
 rather have seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in 
 a coronet-coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 1 " 
 
 Erasmus Phillips, who was deep in a game of piquet at the 
 other end of the room, whispered to Martin Burney to ask if 
 Junius would not be a fit person to invoke from the dead. 
 " Yes," said Lamb, " provided he would agree to lay aside 
 his mask." 
 
 We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding was 
 mentioned as a candidate ; only one, however, seconded the 
 proposition. " Richardson ?" " By all means, but only to look 
 at him through the glass door of his back shop, hard at work 
 upon one of his novels (the most extraordinary contrast that 
 ever was presented between an author and his works) ; not to 
 let him come behind his counter, lest he should want you to 
 turn customer, or to go upstairs with him, lest he should offer 
 to read the first manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison, which 
 was originally written in eight-and-twenty volumes octavo, or 
 get out the letters of his female correspondents, to prove that 
 Joseph Andrews was low." 
 
 There was but one statesman in the whole of English history 
 that any one expressed the least desire to see Oliver Crom- 
 well, with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face, and wily policy ;
 
 246 OF PERSONS. 
 
 and one enthusiast, John Bunyan, the immortal author of the 
 Pilgrirrfs Progress. It seemed that if he came into the room, 
 dreams would follow him, and that each person would nod 
 under his golden cloud, "nigh-sphered in heaven," a canopy as 
 strange and stately as any in Homer. 
 
 Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was 
 received with the greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by 
 Baron Field. He presently superseded both Hogarth and 
 Handel, who had been talked of, but then it was on condition 
 that he should act in tragedy and comedy, in the play and the 
 farce, Lear and Wildair and Abel Drugger. What a sight for 
 sore eyes that would be 1 Who would not part with a year's 
 income at least, almost with a year of his natural life, to be 
 present at it ? Besides, as he could not act alone, and recita- 
 tions are unsatisfactory things, what a troop he must bring with 
 him the silver-tongued Barry, and Quin, and Shuter and 
 Weston, and Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have 
 heard my father speak as so great a favourite when he was 
 young. This would indeed be a revival of the dead, the 
 restoring of art ; and so much the more desirable, as such is 
 the lurking scepticism mingled with our overstrained admira- 
 tion of past excellence, that though we have the speeches of 
 Burke, the portraits of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith, 
 and the conversation of Johnson, to show what people could do 
 at that period, and to confirm the universal testimony to the 
 merits of Garrick ; yet, as it was before our time, we have our 
 misgivings, as if he was probably, after all, little better than a 
 Bartlemy-fair actor, dressed out to play Macbeth in a scarlet 
 coat and laced cocked-hat. For one, I should like to have seen 
 and heard with my own eyes and ears. Certainly, by all 
 accounts, if any one was ever moved by the true histrionic 
 izstuS) it was Garrick. When he followed the Ghost in Hamlet, 
 he did not drop the sword, as most actors do, behind the 
 scenes, but kept the point raised the whole way round, so fully 
 was he possessed with the idea, or so anxious not to lose sight 
 of his part for a moment. Once at a splendid dinner-party at 
 Lord 's, they suddenly missed Garrick, and could not
 
 OF PERSONS. 247 
 
 imagine what was become of him, till they were drawn to the 
 window by the convulsive screams and peals of laughter of a 
 young negro boy, who was rolling on the ground in an ecstasy 
 of delight to see Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the court- 
 yard, with his coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a seeming 
 flutter of feathered rage and pride. Of our party only two 
 persons present had seen the British Roscius ; and they seemed 
 as willing as the rest to renew their acquaintance with their old 
 favourite. 
 
 We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of this 
 fanciful speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who declared it 
 was a shame to make all this rout about a mere player and 
 farce-writer, to the neglect and exclusion of the fine old 
 dramatists, the contemporaries and rivals of Shakespeare. 
 Lamb said he had anticipated this objection when he had 
 named the author of Mustapha and Alaham; and, out of 
 caprice, insisted upon keeping him to represent the set, in 
 preference to the wild, hare-brained enthusiast, Kit Marlowe ; 
 to the sexton of St. Ann's, Webster, with his melancholy yew- 
 trees and death's-heads ; to Decker, who was but a garrulous 
 proser ; to the voluminous Heywood ; and even to Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, whom we might offend by complimenting the 
 wrong author on their joint productions. Lord Brooke, on the 
 contrary, stood quite by himself, or, in Cowley's words, was " a 
 vast species alone." Some one hinted at the circumstance of 
 his being a lord, which rather startled Lamb, but he said a 
 ghost would perhaps dispense with strict etiquette, on being 
 regularly addressed by his title. Ben Jonson divided our 
 suffrages pretty equally. Some were afraid he would begin to 
 traduce Shakespeare, who was not present to defend himself. 
 " If he grows disagreeable," it was whispered aloud, " there is 
 Godwin can match him." At length, his romantic visit to 
 Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and turned the 
 scale in his favour. 
 
 Lamb inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I 
 would choose to mention? And I answered, Eugene Aram. 
 The name of the "Admirable Crichton" was suddenly started
 
 248 OF PERSONS. 
 
 as a splendid example of waste talents, so different from the 
 generality of his countrymen. This choice was mightily 
 approved by a North-Briton present, who declared himself 
 descended from that prodigy of learning and accomplishment, 
 and said he had family plate in his possession as vouchers for 
 the fact, with the initials A. C. Admirable Crichton / Hunt 
 laughed, or rather roared, as heartily at this as I should think 
 he has done for many years. 
 
 The last-named Mitre-courtier* then wished to know whether 
 there were any metaphysicians to whom one might be tempted 
 to apply the wizard spell ? I replied, there were only six in 
 modern times deserving the name Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, 
 Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz ; and perhaps Jonathan Edwards, a 
 Massachusetts man.t As to the French, who talked fluently of 
 having created this science, there was not a tittle in any of their 
 writings that was not to be found literally in the authors I had 
 mentioned. [Home Tooke, who might have a claim to come in 
 under the head of Grammar, was still living.] None of these 
 names seemed to excite much interest, and I did not plead for 
 the reappearance of those who might be thought best fitted by 
 the abstracted nature of their studies for the present spiritual 
 and disembodied state, and who, even while on this living 
 stage, were nearly divested of common flesh and blood. As 
 Ayrton, with an uneasy, fidgety face, was about to put some 
 question about Mr. Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was pre- 
 vented by Martin Burney, who observed, " If J was here, 
 
 * Lamb at this time occupied chambers in Mitre Court, Temple. 
 
 + Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should 
 come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation 
 together. This great and celebrated man in some of his works recom- 
 mends it to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning, and 
 to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched the 
 dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine aromatic spirit of his 
 genius. His Essays and his Advancement of Learning are works of 
 vast depth and scope of observation. The last, though it contains no 
 positive discoveries, is a noble chart of the human intellect, and a guide 
 to all future inquirers.
 
 OF PERSONS. 249 
 
 he would undoubtedly be for having up those profound and 
 redoubted socialists, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus." I 
 said this might be fair enough in him who had read, or fancied 
 he had read, the original works, but I did not see how we could 
 have any right to call up these authors to give an account of 
 themselves in person till we had looked into their writings. 
 
 By this time it should seem that some rumour of our whim- 
 sical deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the irritable 
 gemts in their shadowy abodes, for we received messages from 
 several candidates that we had just been thinking of. Gray 
 declined our invitation, though he had not yet been asked ; 
 Gay offered to come, and bring in his hand the Duchess ol 
 Bolton, the original Polly ; Steele and Addison left their cards 
 as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley ; Swift came in 
 and sat down without speaking a word, and quitted the room 
 as abruptly ; Otway and Chatterton were seen lingering on the 
 opposite side of the Styx, but could not muster enough between 
 them to pay Charon his fare ; Thomson fell asleep in the boat, 
 and was rowed back again ; and Burns sent a low fellow, one 
 John Barleycorn, an old companion of his, who had conducted 
 him to the other world, to say that he had during his lifetime 
 been drawn out of his retirement as a show, only to be made 
 an exciseman of, and that he would rather remain where he 
 was. He desired, however, to shake hands by his representative 
 the hand, thus held out, was in a burning fever, and shook 
 prodigiously. 
 
 The room was hung round with several portraits of eminent 
 painters. While we were debating whether we should demand 
 speech with these masters of mute eloquence, whose features 
 were so familiar to us, it seemed that all at once they glided 
 from their frames, and seated themselves at some little distance 
 from us. There was Leonardo, with his majestic beard and 
 watchful eye, having a bust of Archimedes before him ; next 
 him was Raphael's graceful head turned round to the 
 Fornarina ; and on his other side was Lucretia Borgia, with 
 calm, golden locks ; Michael Angelo had placed the model of 
 St. Peter's on the table before him ; Correggio had an angel at
 
 2 5 o OF PERSONS. 
 
 his side ; Titian was seated with his mistress between himself 
 and Giorgione ; Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora, 
 who took a dice-box from him ; Claude held a mirror in his 
 hand ; Rubens patted a beautiful panther (led in by a satyr) on 
 the head ; Vandyke appeared as his own Paris, and Rembrandt 
 was hid under firs, gold chains, and jewels, which Sir Joshua 
 eyed closely, holding his hand so as to shade his forehead. 
 Not a word was spoken ; and as we rose to do them homage, 
 they still presented the same surface to the view. Not being 
 bond-fide representations of living people, we got rid of the 
 splendid apparitions by signs and dumb show. As soon as 
 they had melted into thin air, there was a loud noise at the 
 outer door, and we found it was Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghir- 
 landaio, who had been raised from the dead by their earnest 
 desire to see their illustrious successors 
 
 " Whose names on earth 
 In Fame's eternal records live for aye ! " 
 
 Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after 
 them, and mournfully withdrew. "Egad 1" said Lamb, "these 
 are the very fellows I should like to have had some talk with, to 
 know how they could see to paint when all was dark around 
 them." 
 
 " But shall we have nothing to say," interrogated G. J , 
 
 "to the Legend of Good Women f" "Name, name, Mr. J ," 
 
 cried Hunt in a boisterous tone of friendly exultation, " name as 
 many as you please, without reserve or fear of molestation ! " 
 
 J was perplexed between so many amiable recollections, 
 
 that the name of the lady of his choice expired in a pensive 
 whiff of his pipe ; and Lamb impatiently declared for the 
 Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner 
 mentioned, than she carried the day from the Duchess. We 
 were the less solicitous on this subject of filling up the 
 posthumous lists of Good Women, as there was already one in 
 the room as good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, 
 as the best of them could be for their lives ! " I should like 
 vastly to have seen Ninon de 1'Enclos," said that incomparable
 
 OF PERSON'S. 251 
 
 person ; and this immediately put us in mind that we had 
 neglected to pay honour due to our friends on the other side of 
 the Channel : Voltaire, the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, 
 the father of sentiment ; Montaigne and Rabelais (great in 
 wisdom and in wit) ; Moliere and that illustrious group that are 
 collected round him (in the print of that subject) to hear him 
 read his comedy of the Tartuffe at the house of Ninon ; Racine, 
 La Fontaine, Rochefoucalt, St. Evremont, etc. 
 
 " There is one person," said a shrill, querulous voice, " I 
 would rather see than all these Don Quixote 1 " 
 
 " Come, come 1 " said Hunt ; " I thought we should have no 
 heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. Lamb? Are you 
 for ekeing out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, 
 Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan?" "Excuse me," 
 said Lamb ; " on the subject of characters in active life, 
 plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my 
 own, which I beg leave to reserve." " No, no ! come out with 
 your worthies 1 " " What do you think of Guy Fawkes and 
 Judas Iscariot?" Hunt turned an eye upon him like a wild 
 Indian, but cordial and full of smothered glee. "Your most 
 exquisite reason ! " was echoed on all sides ; and Ayrton 
 thought that Lamb had now fairly entangled himself. " Why, 
 I cannot but think," retorted he of the wistful countenance, 
 " that Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering, annual scarecrow of 
 straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give some- 
 thing to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his 
 matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the 
 moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic 
 self-devotion ; but if I say any more, there is that fellow 
 Godwin will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, 
 my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him who, 
 having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, 
 could afterwards betray him. I have no conception of such a 
 thing ; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's 
 very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it" " You have 
 said enough, Mr. Lamb, to justify your choice." 
 
 " Oh 1 ever right, Menenius ever right ! "
 
 252 OF PERSONS. 
 
 " There is only one other person I can ever think of after 
 this," continued Lamb ; but without mentioning a name that 
 once put on a semblance of mortality. " If Shakespeare was to 
 come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him ; but if 
 that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try 
 to kiss the hem of his garment ! " 
 
 As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the 
 conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke 
 with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabue, and 
 Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest works ; and 
 we parted to meet again and renew similar topics at night, the 
 next night, and the night after that, till that night overspread 
 Europe which saw no dawn. The same event, in truth, broke 
 up our little Congress that broke up the great one. But 
 that was to meet again : our deliberations have never been 
 resumed.
 
 A FAKE WELL TO ESSAY- WAITING. 253 
 
 A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING. 
 
 " This life is best, if quiet life is best." 
 
 FOOD, warmth, sleep, and a book ; these are all I at present 
 ask the ultima Thule of my wandering desires. Do you not 
 then wish for 
 
 " A friend in your retreat, 
 Whom you may whisper, solitude is sweet? " 
 
 Expected, well enough : gone, still better. Such attractions 
 are strengthened by distance. Nor a mistress ? " Beautiful 
 mask 1 I know thee 1 " When I can judge of the heart from 
 the face, of the thoughts from the lips, I may again trust 
 myself. Instead of these give me the robin redbreast, pecking 
 the crumbs at the door, or warbling on the leafless spray, 
 the same glancing form that has followed me wherever I have 
 been, and "done its spiriting gently;" or the rich notes of 
 the thrush that startle the ear of winter, and seem to have 
 drunk up the full draught of joy from the very sense of contrast. 
 To these I adhere, and am faithful, for they are true to me ; 
 and, dear in themselves, are dearer for the sake of what is 
 departed, leading me back (by the hand) to that dreaming 
 world, in the innocence of which they sat and made sweet 
 music, waking the promise of future years, and answered by the 
 eager throbbings of my own breast. But now " the credulous 
 hope of mutual minds is o'er," and I turn back from the world 
 that has deceived me, to nature that lent it a false beauty, and 
 that keeps up the illusion of the past. As I quaff my libations 
 of tea in a morning, I love to watch the clouds sailing from the
 
 254 A FAXEIVELL TO ESSAY- WAITING. 
 
 west, and fancy that "the spring comes slowly up this way." 
 In this hope, while "fields are dank and ways are mire," I 
 follow the same direction to a neighbouring wood, where, 
 having gained the dry, level greensward, I can see my way foi 
 a mile before me, closed in on each side by copse-wood, and 
 ending in a point of light more or less brilliant, as the day is 
 bright or cloudy. What a walk is this to me 1 I have 
 no need of book or companion the days, the hours, the 
 thoughts of my youth are at my side, and blend with the 
 air that fans my cheek. Here I- can saunter for hours, 
 bending my eye forward, stopping and turning to look back, 
 thinking to strike off into some less trodden path, yet 
 hesitating to quit the one I am in, afraid to snap the brittle 
 threads of memory. I remark the shining trunks and slender 
 branches of the birch trees, waving in the idle breeze ; or a 
 pheasant springs up on whirring wing ; or I recall the spot 
 where I once found a wood-pigeon at the foot of a tree, 
 weltering in its gore, and think how many seasons have flown 
 since "it left its little life in air." Dates, names, faces come 
 back to what purpose ? Or why think of them now ? Or 
 rather why not think of them oftener? We walk through life, 
 as through a narrow path, with a thin curtain drawn around it ; 
 behind are ranged rich portraits, airy harps are strung yet we 
 will not stretch forth our hands and lift aside the veil, to catch 
 glimpses of the one, or sweep the chords of the other. As in a 
 theatre, when the old-fashioned green curtain drew up, groups 
 of figures, fantastic dresses, laughing faces, rich banquets, 
 stately columns, gleaming vistas appeared beyond ; so we have 
 only at any time to " peep through the blanket of the past," to 
 possess ourselves at once of all that has regaled our senses, that 
 is stored up in our memory, that has struck our fancy, that 
 has pierced our hearts : yet to all this we are indifferent, 
 insensible, and seem intent only on the present vexation, the 
 future disappointment. If there is a Titian hanging up in the 
 room with me, I scarcely regard it : how then should I be 
 expected to strain the mental eye so far, or to throw down, by 
 the magic spells of the will, the stone-walls that enclose it in the
 
 A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING. 255 
 
 Louvre? There is one head there of which I have often 
 thought, when looking at it, that nothing should ever disturb 
 me again, and I would become the character it represents 
 such perfect calmness and self-possession reigns in it ! Why 
 do I not hang an image of this in some dusky corner of my 
 brain, and turn an eye upon it ever and anon, as I have need of 
 some such talisman to calm my troubled thoughts? The 
 attempt is fruitless, if not natural ; or, like that of the French, 
 to hand garlands on the grave, and to conjure back the dead by 
 miniature pictures of them while living 1 It is only some 
 actual coincidence or 'local association that tends, without 
 violence, to "open all the cells where memory slept." I can 
 easily, by stooping over the long-sprent grass and clay cold clod, 
 recall the tufts of primroses, or purple hyacinths, that formerly 
 grew on the same spot, and cover the bushes with leaves and 
 singing-birds, as they were eighteen summers ago ; or pro- 
 longing my walk and hearing the sighing gale rustle through a 
 tall, straight wood at the end of it, can fancy that I distinguish 
 the cry of hounds, and the fatal group issuing from it, as in the 
 tale of Theodore and Honoria. A moaning gust of wind aids 
 the belief ; I lock once more to see whether the trees before me 
 answer to the idea of the horror-stricken grove, and an air-built 
 city towers over their grey tops. 
 
 " Of all the cities in Romanian lands, 
 The chief and most renown'd Ravenna stands." 
 
 I return home resolved to read the entire poem through, and, 
 after dinner, drawing my chair to the fire, and holding a small 
 print close to my eyes, launch into the full tide of Dryden's 
 couplets (a stream of sound), comparing his didactic and 
 descriptive pomp with the simple pathos and picturesque truth 
 of Boccacio's story, and tasting with a pleasure, which none 
 but an habitual reader can feel, some quaint examples of 
 pronunciation in this accomplished versifier. 
 
 " Which when Honoria view'd, 
 The fresh impulse her former fright renew'd."
 
 256 A FAREWELL TO ESS AY- WRITING. 
 
 " And made th' insult, which in his grief appears, 
 The means to mourn thee with my pious tears." 
 
 These trifling instances of the wavering and unsettled state of 
 the language give double effect to the firm and stately march of 
 the verse, and make me dwell with a sort of tender interest on 
 the difficulties and doubts of an earlier period of literature. 
 They pronounced words then in a manner which we should 
 laugh at now ; and they wrote verse in a manner which we can 
 do anything but laugh at The pride of a new acquisition seems 
 to give fresh confidence to it ; to impel the rolling syllables 
 through the moulds provided for them, and to overflow the 
 envious bounds of rhyme into time-honoured triplets. 
 
 What sometimes surprises me in looking back to the past is, 
 with the exception already stated, to find myself so little changed 
 in the time. The same images and trains of thought stick by 
 me : I have the same tastes, likings, sentiments, and wishes 
 that I had then. One great ground of confidence and support 
 has, indeed, been struck from under my feet ; but I have made 
 it up to myself by proportionable pertinacity of opinion. The 
 success of the great cause, to which I had vowed myself, 
 was to me more than all the world : I had a strength in its 
 strength, a resource which I knew not of, till it failed me 
 for the second time. 
 
 " Fall'n was Glenartny's stately tree 1 
 Oh 1 ne'er to see Lord Ronald more ! " 
 
 It was not till I saw the axe laid to the root that I found the 
 full extent of what I had to lose and suffer. But my conviction 
 of the right was only established by the triumph of the wrong ; 
 and my earliest hopes will be my last regrets. One source of 
 this unbendingness (which some may call obstinancy) is that, 
 though living much alone, I have never worshipped the Echo. 
 I see plainly enough that black is not white, that the grass is 
 green, that kings are not their subjects ; and, in such self- 
 evident cases, do not think it necessary to collate my opinions 
 with the received prejudices. In subtler questions, and matters 
 that admit of doubt, as I do not impose my opinion on others
 
 A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING. 257 
 
 without a reason, so I will not give up mine to them without a 
 better reason ; and a person calling me names, or giving him- 
 self airs of authority, does not convince me of his having taken 
 more pains to find out the truth than I have, but the contrary. 
 Mr. Gifford once said, that "while I was sitting over my gin 
 and tobacco-pipes, I fancied myself a Leibnitz." He did not 
 so much as know that I had ever read a metaphysical book : 
 was I, therefore, out of complaisance or deference to him, to 
 forget whether I had or not ? Leigh Hunt is puzzled to recon- 
 cile the shyness of my pretensions with the inveteracy and 
 sturdiness of my principles. I should have thought they were 
 nearly the same thing. Both from disposition and habit, I can 
 assume nothing in word, look, or manner. I cannot steal a 
 march upon public opinion in any way. My standing upright, 
 speaking loud, entering a room gracefully, proves nothing ; 
 therefore I neglect these ordinary means of recommending 
 myself to the good graces and admiration of strangers (and, as 
 it appears, even of philosophers and friends). Why ? Because 
 I have other resources, or, at least, am absorbed in other studies 
 and pursuits. Suppose this absorption to be extreme, and even 
 morbid that I have brooded over an idea till it has become a 
 kind of substance in my brain, that I have reasons for a thing 
 which I have found out with much labour and pains, and to 
 which I can scarcely do justice without the utmost violence of 
 exertion (and that only to a few persons) is this a reason for 
 my playing off my out-of-the-way notions in all companies, 
 wearing a prim and self-complacent air, as if I were " the 
 admired of all observers ? " or is it not rather an argument 
 (together with a want of animal spirits), why I should retire 
 into myself, and perhaps acquire a nervous and uneasy look, 
 from a consciousness of the disproportion between the interest 
 and conviction I feel on certain subjects, and my ability to 
 communicate what weighs upon my own mind to others ? If 
 my ideas, which I do not avouch, but suppose, lie below the 
 surface, why am I to be always attempting to dazzle super- 
 ficial people with them, or smiling, delighted, at my own want 
 of success ? 
 
 589
 
 258 A FAREWELL TO ESSAY- WRITING. 
 
 In matters of taste and feeling, one proof that my conclusions 
 have not been quite shallow or hasty, is the circumstance of 
 their having been lasting. I have the same favourite books, 
 pictures, passages that I ever had : I may, therefore, presume 
 that they will last me my life nay, I may indulge a hope that 
 my thoughts will survive me. This continuity of impression is 
 the only thing on which I pride myself. Even Lamb, whose 
 relish of certain things is as keen and earnest as possible, takes 
 a surfeit of admiration, and I should be afraid to ask about his 
 select authors or particular friends, after a lapse of ten years. 
 As to myself, anyone knows where to have me. What I have 
 once made up my mind to, I abide by to the end of the chapter. 
 One cause of my independence of opinion is, I believe, the 
 liberty I give to others, or the very diffidence and distrust of 
 making converts. I should be an excellent man on a jury. I 
 might say little, but should starve " the other eleven obstinate 
 fellows " out. I remember Mr. Godwin writing to Mr. Words- 
 worth, that " his tragedy of ' Antonio ' could not fail of success." 
 It was damned past all redemption. I said to Mr. Wordsworth 
 that I thought this a natural consequence ; for how could any- 
 one have a dramatic turn of mind who judged entirely of others 
 from himself? Mr. Godwin might be convinced of the excel- 
 lence of his work ; but how could he know that others would be 
 convinced of it, unless by supposing that they were as wise as 
 himself, and as infallible critics of dramatic poetry so many 
 Aristotles sitting in judgment on Euripides ! This shows why 
 pride is connected with shyness and reserve ; for the really 
 proud have not so high an opinion of the generality as to sup- 
 pose that they can understand them, or that there is any 
 common measure between them. So Dryden exclaims of his 
 opponents with bitter disdain 
 
 " Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive.'' 
 
 I have not sought to make partisans, still less did I dream of 
 making enemies ; and have therefore kept my opinions myself, 
 whether they were currently adopted or not. To get others to 
 come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs ;
 
 A FAXEIVELL TO ESSAY- WAITING. 259 
 
 and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead. At the time I 
 lived here formerly, I had no suspicion that I should ever 
 become a voluminous writer, yet I had just the same confidence 
 in my feelings before I had ventured to air them in public as I 
 have now. Neither the outcry for or against moves me a jot : 
 I do not say that the one is not more agreeable than the 
 Other. 
 
 Not far from the spot where I write, I first read Chaucer's 
 Flower and Leaf, and was charmed with that young beauty, 
 shrouded in her bower, and listening with ever-fresh delight to 
 the repeated song of the nightingale close by her the impres- 
 sion of the scene, the vernal landscape, the cool of the morning, 
 the gushing notes of the songstress, 
 
 " And ayen meth ought she sung close by mine ear," 
 
 is as vivid as if it had been of yesterday ; and nothing can 
 persuade me that that is not a fine poem. I do not find this 
 impression conveyed in Dryden's version, and therefore nothing 
 can persuade me that that is as fine. I used to walk out at this 
 time with Mr. and Miss Lamb of an evening, to look at the 
 Claude Lorraine skies over our heads melting from azure into 
 purple and gold, and to gather mushrooms, that sprung up at 
 our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton at supper. I was at 
 that time an enthusiastic admirer of Claude, and could dwell 
 for ever on one or two of the finest prints from him hung round 
 my little room ; the fleecy flocks, the bending trees, the winding 
 streams, the groves, the nodding temples, the air-wove hills, 
 and distant sunny vales ; and tried to translate them into their 
 lovely living hues. People then told me that Wilson was much 
 superior to Claude : I did not believe them. Their pictures 
 have since been seen together at the British Institution, and all 
 the world have come into my opinion. I have not, on that 
 account, given it up. I will not compare our hashed mutton 
 with Amelia's ; but it put us in mind of it, and led to a dis- 
 cussion, sharply seasoned and well sustained, till midnight, the 
 result of which appeared some years after in the Edinburgh 
 Review. Have I a better opinion of those criticisms on that
 
 260 A FARE WELL TO ESSA Y- WRITING. 
 
 account, or should I therefore maintain them with greater 
 vehemence and tenaciousness ? Oh no ; both rather with less, 
 now that they are before the public, and it is for them to make 
 their election. 
 
 It is in looking back to such scenes that I draw my best 
 consolation for the future. Later impressions come and go, 
 and serve to fill up the intervals ; but these are my standing 
 resource, my true classics. If I have had few real pleasures or 
 advantages, my ideas, from their sinewy texture, have been to 
 ne in the nature of realities ; and if I should not be able to 
 add to the stock, I can live by husbanding the interest. As to 
 my speculations, there is little to admire in them but my 
 admiration of others ; and whether they have an echo in time 
 to come or not, I have learned to set a grateful value on the 
 past, and am content to wind up the account of what is personal 
 only to myself and the immediate circle of objects in which I 
 have moved, with an act of easy oblivion, 
 
 "And curtain-close such scene from every future view.''
 
 THE SICK CHAMBER. 261 
 
 THE SICK CHAMBER. 
 
 FROM the crowded theatre to the sick chamber, from 
 the noise, the glare, the keen delight, to the loneliness, the 
 darkness, the dulness, and the pain, there is but one step. 
 A breath of air, an overhanging cloud, effects it ; and though 
 the transition is made in an instant, it seems as if it would 
 last for ever. A sudden illness not only puts a stop to the 
 career of our triumphs and agreeable sensations, but blc ts 
 out all recollection of and desire for them. We lose the relish 
 of enjoyment ; we are effectually cured of our romance. Our 
 bodies are confined to our beds ; nor can our thoughts wantonly 
 detach themselves and take the road to pleasure, but turn back 
 with doubt and loathing at the faint evanescent phantom which 
 has usurped its place. If the folding-doors of the imagination 
 were thrown open or left ajar, so that from the disordered couch 
 where we lay, we could still hail the vista of the past or future, 
 and see the gay and gorgeous visions floating at a distance, 
 however denied to our embrace, the contrast, though mortify- 
 ing, might have something soothing in it, the mock-splendour 
 might be the greater for the actual gloom, but the misery is 
 that we cannot conceive anything beyond or better than the 
 present evil : we are shut up and spell-bound in that, the 
 curtains of the mind are drawn close, we cannot escape from 
 "the body of this death," our souls are conquered, dismayed, 
 "couped and cabined in," and thrown with the lumber of our 
 corporeal frames in one corner of a neglected and solitary room.
 
 26a THE SICK CHAMBER. 
 
 We hate ourselves and everything else ; nor does one ray of 
 comfort "peep through the blanket of the dark" to give us 
 hope. How should we entertain the image of grace and beauty 
 when our bodies writhe with pain ? To what purpose invoke 
 the echo of some rich strain of music, when we ourselves can 
 scarcely breathe ? The very attempt is an impossibility. We 
 give up the vain task of linking delight to agony, of urging 
 torpor into ecstasy, which makes the very heart sick. We feel 
 the present pain, and an impatient longing to get rid of it. 
 This were indeed " a consummation devoutly to be wished : " 
 on this we are intent, in earnest, inexorable, all else is 
 impertinence and folly; and could we but obtain Ease (that 
 Goddess of the infirm and suffering) at any price, we think we 
 could forswear all other joy and all other sorrow. Hoc erat in 
 votis. All other things but our disorder and its cure seem less 
 than nothing and vanity. It assumes a palpable form ; it 
 becomes a demon, a spectre, an incubus hovering over and 
 oppressing us : we grapple with it ; it strikes its fangs into us, 
 spreads its arms round us, infects us with its breath, glares 
 upon us with its hideous aspect ; we feel it take possession of 
 every fibre and of every faculty ; and we are at length so 
 absorbed and fascinated by it, that we cannot divert our 
 reflections from it for an instant, for all other things but pain 
 (and that which we suffer most acutely) appear to have lost 
 their pith and power to interest. They are turned to dust and 
 stubble. This is the reason of the fine resolutions we some- 
 times form in such cases, and of the vast superiority of the 
 sick-bed to the pomps and thrones of the world. We easily 
 renounce wine when we have nothing but the taste of physic in 
 our mouths ; the rich banquet tempts us not, when "our very 
 gorge rises" within us. Love and Beauty fly from a bed 
 twisted into a thousand folds by restless lassitude and tor- 
 menting cares, the nerve of pleasure is killed by the pains that 
 shoot through the head or rack the limbs ; and indigestion 
 seizes you with its leaden grasp and giant force (down Am- 
 bition !) you shiver and tremble like a leaf in a fit of the ague. 
 (Avarice, let go your palsied hold !) We then are in mood,
 
 THE SICK CHAMBER. 263 
 
 without ghostly advice, to betake ourselves to the life of the 
 " hermit poor," 
 
 " In pensive place obscure," 
 
 and should be glad to prevent the return of a fever raging in 
 the blood by feeding on pulse, and slaking our thirst at the 
 limpid brook. The sudden resolutions, however, or "vows 
 made in pain as violent and void," are generally of short 
 duration : the excess and the sorrow for it are alike selfish ; and 
 those repentances which are the most loud and passionate are 
 the surest to end speedily in a relapse ; for both originate in 
 the same cause, the being engrossed by the prevailing feeling 
 (whatever it may be), and an utter incapacity to look beyond it 
 
 " The Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be : 
 The Devil grew well, the Devil a monk was he ! " 
 
 It is amazing how little effect physical suffering or local 
 circumstances have upon the mind, except while we are subject 
 to their immediate influence. While the impression lasts they 
 are everything ; when it is gone they are nothing. We toss 
 and tumble about in a sick-bed ; we lie on our right side, we 
 then change to the left ; we stretch ourselves on our backs, we 
 turn on our faces ; we wrap ourselves under the clothes to 
 exclude the cold, we throw them off to escape the heat and 
 suffocation ; we grasp the pillow in agony, we fling ourselves 
 out of bed, we walk up and down the room with hasty or feeble 
 steps ; we return to bed ; we are worn out with fatigue and 
 pain, yet can get no repose for the one, nor intermission for the 
 other ; we summon all our patience, or give vent to passion and 
 petty rage ; nothing avails ; we seem wedded to our disease, 
 " like life and death in disproportion met ; " we make new 
 efforts, try new expedients, but nothing appears to shake it off, 
 or promise relief from our grim foe : it infixes its sharp sting 
 into us, or overpowers us by its sickly and stunning weight ; 
 every moment is as much as we can bear, and yet there 
 seems no end of our lengthening tortures ; we are ready to 
 faint with exhaustion or work ourselves up to a frenzy : we
 
 264 THE SICK CHAMBER. 
 
 " trouble deaf Heaven with our bootless prayers ; " we think 
 our last hour has come, or peevishly wish it were, to put an end 
 to the scene ; we ask questions as to the origin of evil, and the 
 necessity of pain ; we "moralise our complaints into a thousand 
 similes ;" we deny the use of medicine in toto, we have a full 
 persuasion that all doctors are mad or knaves, that our object 
 is to gain relief, and theirs (out of the perversity of human 
 nature, or to seem wiser than we) to prevent it ; we catechise 
 the apothecary, rail at the nurse, and cannot so much as 
 conceive the possibility that this state of things should not last 
 for ever ; we are even angry at those who would give us 
 encouragement as if they would make dupes or children of us ; 
 we might seek a release by poison, a halter, or the sword, 
 but we have not strength of mind enough our nerves are 
 too shaken to attempt even this poor revenge when lo ! 
 a change comes, the spell falls off, and the next moment 
 we forget all that has happened to us. No sooner does 
 our disorder turn its back upon us than we laugh at it 
 The state we have been in sounds like a dream a fable ; 
 health is the order of the day, strength is ours de jure and de 
 facto j and we discard all uncalled-for evidence to the contrary 
 with a smile of contemptuous incredulity, just as we throw 
 our physic-bottles out of the window ! I see (as I awake from 
 a short uneasy doze) a golden light shine through the white 
 window-curtains on the opposite wall ; is it the dawn of a new 
 day, or the departing light of evening ? I do not well know, for 
 the opium " they have drugged my posset with " has made 
 strong havoc with my brain, and I am uncertain whether time 
 has stood still, or advanced, or gone backward. By " puzzling 
 o'er the doubt," my attention is drawn a little out of myself to 
 external objects ; and I consider whether it would not 
 administer some relief to my monotonous langour if I call up 
 a vivid picture of an evening sky I witnessed a short time 
 before the white, fleecy clouds, the azure vault, the verdant 
 fields, and balmy air ! In vain ! The wings of fancy refuse to 
 mount from my bedside. The air without has nothing in 
 common with the closeness within ; the clouds disappear, the
 
 THE SICK CHAMBER. 265 
 
 sky is instantly overcast and black. I walk out in this scene 
 soon after I recover ; and with those favourite and well-known 
 objects interposed, can no longer recall the tumbled pillow, the 
 juleps, or the labels, or the wholesome dungeon in which I was 
 before immured. What is contrary to our present sensations or 
 settled habits amalgamates indifferently with our belief; the 
 imagination rules over imaginary themes ; the senses and 
 customs have a narrower sway, and admit but one guest at a 
 time. It is hardly to be wondered at that we dread physical 
 calamities so little before-hand ; we think no more of them 
 after they have happened. Out of sight, out of mind. This 
 will perhaps explain why all actual punishment has so little 
 effect ; it is a state contrary to Nature, alien to the will. If it 
 does not touch honour and conscience (and where these are not 
 how can it touch them ?) it goes for nothing ; and where these 
 are, it rather sears and hardens them. The gyves, the cell, the 
 meagre fare, the hard labour, are abhorrent to the mind of the 
 culprit on whom they are imposed, who carries the love of 
 liberty or indulgence to licentiousness ; and who throws the 
 thought of them behind him (the moment he can evade the 
 penalty) with scorn and laughter, 
 
 " Like Samson his green wythes." 
 
 So, in travelling, we often meet with great fatigue and incon- 
 venience from heat or cold, or other accident, and resolve 
 never to go a journey again ; but we are ready to set off on a 
 new excursion to-morrow. We remember the landscape, the 
 change of scene, the romantic expectation, and think no more 
 of the heat, the noise, and the dust. The body forgets its 
 grievances till they recur ; but imagination, passion, pride, have 
 a longer memory and quicker apprehensions. To the first, the 
 pleasure or pain is nothing when once over ; to the last, 
 it is only then that they begin to exist. The line in Metastasio, 
 
 " The worst of every evil is the fear," 
 
 is true only when applied to this latter sort. It is curious that, 
 on coming out of a sick room, where one has been pent up some
 
 266 THE SICK CHAMBER. 
 
 time, and grown weak and nervous, and looking at Nature for 
 the first time, the objects that present themselves have a very 
 questionable and spectral appearance ; the people in the street 
 resemble flies crawling about, and seem scarce half alive. It is 
 we who are just risen from a torpid and unwholesome state, 
 and who impart our imperfect feelings of existence, health, and 
 motion to others. Or it may be that the violence and exertion 
 of the pain we have gone through make common everyday 
 objects seem unreal and unsubstantial. It is not till we have 
 established ourselves in form in the sitting-room, wheeled round 
 the arm-chair to the fire (for this makes part of our re-intro- 
 duction to the ordinary modes of being in all seasons), felt our 
 appetite return, and taken up a book, that we can be con- 
 sidered as at all returned to ourselves. And even then our 
 sensations are rather empirical than positive, as after sleep we 
 stretch out our hands to know whether we are awake. This is 
 the time for reading. Books are then indeed " a world both 
 pure and good," into which we enter with all our hearts, after 
 our revival from illness and respite from the tomb, as with the 
 freshness and novelty of youth. They are not merely accept- 
 able as without too much exertion they pass the time and 
 relieve ennui; but from a certain suspension and deadening of 
 the passions, and abstraction of worldly pursuits, they may be 
 said to bring back and be friendly to the guileless and enthusi- 
 astic tone of feeling with which we formerly read them. 
 Sickness has weaned us pro tempore from contest and cabal ; 
 and we are fain to be docile and children again. All strong 
 changes in our present pursuits throw us back upon the past. 
 This is the shortest and most complete emancipation from our 
 late discomfiture. We wonder that anyone who has read the 
 History of a Foundling should labour under an indigestion, nor 
 do we comprehend how a perusal of the Fairy Queen should 
 not ensure the true believer an uninterrupted succession of 
 halcyon days. Present objects bear a retrospective meaning, 
 and point to " a foregone conclusion." Returning back to life 
 with half-strung nerves and shattered strength, we seem as 
 when we first entered it with uncertain purposes and faltering
 
 THE SICK CHAMBER. 267 
 
 aims. The machine has received a shock, and it moves on 
 more tremulously than before, and not all at once in the beaten 
 track. Startled at the approach of death, we are willing to get 
 as far from it as we can by making a proxy of our former selves ; 
 and finding the precarious tenure by which we hold existence, 
 and its last sands running out, we gather up and make the 
 most of the fragments that memory has stored up for us. 
 Everything is seen through a medium of reflection and con- 
 trast. We hear the sound of merry voices in the street, and 
 this carries us back to the recollections of some country town 
 or village group 
 
 " We see the children sporting on the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters roaring evermore." 
 
 A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of 
 Christmas gambols long ago. The very cries in the street 
 seem to be of a former date, and the dry toast eats very much 
 as it did twenty years ago. A rose smells doubly sweet after 
 being stifled with tinctures and essences, and we enjoy the idea 
 of a journey and an inn the more for having been bed-rid. But 
 a book is the secret and sure charm to bring all these implied 
 associations to a focus. I should prefer an old one, Mr. Lamb's 
 favourite, the Journey to Lisbon, or the Decameron, if I could 
 get it ; but, if a new one, let it be Paul Clifford. That book 
 has the singular advantage of being written by a gentleman, 
 and not about his own class. The characters he commemorates 
 are every moment at fault between life and death, hunger and 
 forced loan on the public ; and therefore the interest they take 
 in themselves, and which we take in them, has no cant or 
 affectation in it, but is " lively, audible, and full of vent." A 
 set of well-dressed gentlemen, picking their teeth with a 
 graceful air after dinner, and endeavouring to keep their cravats 
 from the slightest discomposure, and saying the most insipid 
 things in the most insipid manner, do not make a scene. Well, 
 then, I have got the new paraphrase on the Beggar's Opera, am 
 fairly embarked in it ; and at the end of the first volume, where 
 I am galloping across the heath with the three highwaymen,
 
 268 THE SICK CHAMBER. 
 
 while the moon is shining full upon them, feel my nerves so 
 braced, and my spirits so exhilarated, that, to say truth, I am 
 scarce sorry for the occasion that has thrown me upon the work 
 and the author have quite forgot my SICK ROOM, and am 
 more than ready to recant the doctrine that Free-Admission to 
 the theatre is 
 
 ' ' The true pathos, and sublime 
 Of human life," 
 
 for I feel as I read that if the stage shows us the masks of 
 men and the pageant of the world, books let us into their souls 
 and lay open to us the secrets of our own. They are the first 
 and last, the most home-felt, the most heart-felt of all our 
 enjoyments !
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 269 
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 MAN is the only animal that laughs and weeps ; for he is the 
 only animal that is struck with the difference between what 
 things are and what they ought to be. We weep at what 
 thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious matters : we laugh at 
 what only disappoints our expectations in trifles. We shed 
 tears from sympathy with real and necessary distress, as we 
 burst into laughter from want of sympathy with that which 
 is unreasonable and unnecessary, the absurdity of which pro- 
 vokes our spleen or mirth, rather than any serious reflections 
 on it. 
 
 To explain the nature of laughter and tears is to account for 
 the condition of human life, for it is in a manner compounded 
 of these two ! It is a tragedy or a comedy sad or merry, as it 
 happens. The crimes and misfortunes that are inseparable 
 from it shock and wound the mind when they once seize upon 
 it, and when the pressure can no longer be borne, seek relief in 
 tears ; the follies and absurdities that men commit, or the odd 
 accidents that befall them, afford us amusement from the very 
 rejection of these false claims upon our sympathy, and end in 
 laughter. If everything that went wrong, if every vanity or 
 weakness in another, gave us a sensible pang, it would be hard 
 indeed ; but as long as the disagreeableness of the consequences 
 of a sudden disaster is kept out of sight by the immediate 
 oddity of the circumstances, and the absurdity or unaccount- 
 ableness of a foolish action is the most striking thing in it, the 
 ludicrous prevails over the pathetic, and we receive pleasure
 
 270 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 instead of pain from the farce of life which is played before us, 
 and which discomposes our gravity as often as it fails to move 
 our anger or our pity ! 
 
 Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary 
 resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent 
 emotion before it has had time to reconcile its feelings to the 
 change of circumstances, while laughter may be defined to be 
 the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occa- 
 sioned by mere surprise or contrast (in the absence of any 
 more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief 
 to contradictory appearances. If we hold a mask before our 
 face, and approach a child with this disguise on, it will at first, 
 from the oddity and incongruity of the appearance, be inclined 
 to laugh ; if we go nearer to it, steadily, and without saying a 
 word, it will begin to be alarmed, and be half inclined to cry ; if 
 we suddenly take off the mask, it will recover from its fears, and 
 burst out a-laughing ; but if, instead of presenting the old well- 
 known countenance, we have concealed a satyr's head or some 
 frightful caricature behind the first mask, the suddenness of the 
 change will not in this case be a source of merriment to it, but 
 will convert its surprise into an agony of consternation, and will 
 make it scream out for help, even though it may be convinced 
 that the whole is a trick at bottom. 
 
 The alternation of tears and laughter, in this little episode in 
 common life, depends almost entirely on the greater or less 
 degree of interest attached to the different changes of appear- 
 ance. The mere suddenness of the transition, the mere 
 baulking our expectations, and turning them abruptly into 
 another channel, seems to give additional liveliness and gaiety 
 to the animal spirits ; but the instant the change is not only 
 sudden, but threatens serious consequences, or calls up the 
 shape of danger, terror supersedes our disposition to mirth, and 
 laughter gives place to tears. It is usual to play with infants, 
 and make them laugh by clapping your hands suddenly before 
 them ; but if you clap your hands too loud, or too near their 
 sight, their countenances immediately change, and they hide 
 them in the nurse's arms. Or suppose the same child, grown
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 271 
 
 up a little older, comes to a place, expecting to meet a person it 
 is particularly fond of, and does not find that person there, its 
 countenance suddenly falls, its lips begin to quiver, its cheek 
 turns pale, its eye glistens, and it vents its little sorrow (grown 
 too big to be concealed) in a flood of tears. Again, if the child 
 meets the same person unexpectedly after long absence, the 
 same effect will be produced by an excess of joy, with different 
 accompaniments ; that is, the surprise and the emotion excited 
 will make the blood come into his face, his eyes sparkle, his 
 tongue falter or be mute ; but in either case the tears will gush 
 to his relief, and lighten the pressure about his heart. On the 
 other hand, if a child is playing at hide-and-seek, or blindman's 
 buff, with persons it is ever so fond of, and either misses them 
 where it had made sure of finding them, or suddenly runs up 
 against them where it had least expected it, the shock or 
 additional impetus given to the imagination by the disappoint- 
 ment or the discovery, in a matter of this indifference, will only 
 vent itself in a fit of laughter.* The transition here is not 
 from one thing of importance to another, or from a state of 
 indifference to a state of strong excitement ; but merely from one 
 impression to another that we did not at all expect, and when 
 we had expected just the contrary. The mind having been led 
 to form a certain conclusion, and the result producing an 
 immediate solution of continuity in the chain of our ideas, this 
 alternate excitement and relaxation of the imagination, the 
 object also striking upon the mind more vividly in its loose, 
 unsettled state, and before it has had time to recover and 
 collect itself, causes that alternate excitement and relaxation, or 
 irregular convulsive movement of the muscular and nervous 
 system, which constitutes physical laughter.- The discontinuous 
 in our sensations produces a correspondent jar aad discord in 
 the frame. The steadiness of our faith and of our features 
 begins to give way at the same time. We turn with an 
 
 * A child that has hid itself out of the way in sport is under a great 
 temptation to laugh at the unconsciousness of others as to its situation. 
 A person concealed from assassins is in no danger of betraying his 
 situation by laughing.
 
 272 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 incredulous smile from a story that staggers our belief ; and we 
 are ready to split our sides with laughing at an extravagance 
 that sets all common sense and serious concern at defiance. 
 
 To understand or define the ludicrous, we must first know 
 what the serious is. Now, the serious is the habitual stress 
 which the mind lays upon the expectation of a given order of 
 events, following one another with a certain regularity and 
 weight of interest attached to them. When this stress is 
 increased beyond its usual pitch of intensity, so as to overstrain 
 the feelings by the violent opposition of good to bad, or of 
 objects to our desires, it becomes the pathetic or tragical. The 
 ludicrous, or comic, is the unexpected loosening or relaxing this 
 stress below its usual pitch of intensity, by such an abrupt 
 transposition of the order of our ideas, as taking the mind 
 unawares, throws it off its guard, startles it into a lively sense 
 of pleasure, and leaves no time nor inclination for painful 
 reflections. 
 
 The essence of the laughable, then, is the incongruous, the 
 disconnecting one idea from another, or the jostling of one 
 feeling against another. The first and most obvious cause of 
 laughter is to be found in the simple succession of events, as in 
 the sudden shifting of a disguise, or some unlooked-for acci- 
 dent, without any absurdity of character or situation. The 
 accidental contradiction between our expectations and the 
 event can hardly be said, however, to amount to the ludicrous : 
 it is merely laughable. The ludicrous is where there is the 
 same contradiction between the object and our expectations, 
 heightened by some deformity or inconvenience, that is, by its 
 being contrary to what is customary or desirable ; as the 
 ridiculous, which is the highest degree of the laughable, is that 
 which is contrary not only to custom, but to sense and reason, 
 or is a voluntary departure from what we have a right to expect 
 from those who are conscious of absurdity and propriety in 
 words, looks, and actions. 
 
 Of these different kinds or degrees of the laughable, the first 
 is the most shallow and short-lived ; for the instant the imme- 
 diate surprise of a thing's merely happening one way or another
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 273 
 
 is over, there is nothing to throw us back upon our former 
 expectation, and renew our wonder at the event a second time. 
 The second sort, that is, the ludicrous arising out of the 
 improbable cr distressing, is more deep and lasting, eithei 
 because the painful catastrophe excites a greater curiosity, 01 
 because the old impression, from its habitual hold on the 
 imagination, still recurs mechanically, so that it is longer 
 before we can seriously make up our minds to the unaccount- 
 able deviation from it. The third sort, or the ridiculous arising 
 out of absurdity as well as improbability, that is, where the 
 defect or weakness is of a man's own seeking, is the most 
 refined of all, but not always so pleasant as the last, because 
 the same contempt and disapprobation which sharpens and 
 subtilises our sense of the impropriety, adds a severity to it 
 inconsistent with perfect ease and enjoyment. This last species 
 is properly the province of satire. The principle of contrast is, 
 however, the same in all the stages, in the simply laughable, the 
 ludicrous, the ridiculous ; and the effect is only the more com- 
 plete, the more durably and pointedly this principle operates. 
 
 To give some examples in these different kinds. We laugh, 
 when children, at the sudden removing of a pasteboard mask ; 
 we laugh, when grown-up, more gravely at the tearing off the 
 mask of deceit. We laugh at absurdity ; we laugh at de- 
 formity. We laugh at a bottle-nose in a caricature ; at a 
 stuffed figure of an alderman in a pantomime ; and at the tale 
 of Slaukenbergius. A giant standing by a dwarf makes a con- 
 temptible figure enough. Rosinante and Dapple are laughable 
 from contrast, as their masters from the same principle make 
 two for a pair. We laugh at the dress of foreigners, and they 
 at ours. Three chimney-sweepers meeting three Chinese in 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, they laughed at one another till they were 
 ready to drop down. Country people laugh at a person because 
 they never saw him before. Anyone dressed in the height of 
 the fashion, or quite out of it, is equally an object of ridicule. 
 One rich source of the ludicrous is distress with which we can- 
 not sympathise from its absurdity or insignificance. Women 
 laugh at their lovers. We laugh at a damned author, in spite 
 
 590
 
 274 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 of our teeth, and though he may be our friend. " There is 
 something in the misfortunes of our best friends that pleases 
 us." We laugh at people on the top of a stage-coach, or in it, 
 if they seem in great extremity. It is hard to hinder children 
 from laughing at a stammerer, at a negro, at a drunken man, 
 or even at a madman. We laugh at mischief. We laugh at 
 what we do not believe. We say that an argument or an asser- 
 tion that is very absurd, is quite ludicrous. We laugh to show 
 our satisfaction with ourselves, or our contempt for those about 
 us, or to conceal our envy or our ignorance. We laugh at 
 fools, and at those who pretend to be wise at extreme sim- 
 plicity, awkwardness, hypocrisy, and affectation. " They were 
 talking of me," says Scrub, " for they laughed consumedly" 
 Lord Foppington's insensibility to ridicule, and airs of ineffable 
 self-conceit, are no less admirable ; and Joseph Surface's cant 
 maxims of morality, when once disarmed of their power to do 
 hurt, become sufficiently ludicrous. We laugh at that in others 
 which is a serious matter to ourselves ; because our self-love is 
 stronger than our sympathy, sooner takes the alarm, and 
 instantly turns our heedless mirth into gravity, which only 
 enhances the jest to others. Someone is generally sure to be 
 the sufferer by a joke. What is sport to one is death to 
 another. It is only very sensible or very honest people who 
 laugh as freely at their own absurdities as at those of their 
 neighbours. In general the contrary rule holds, and we only 
 laugh at those misfortunes in which we are spectators, not 
 sharers. The injury, the disappointment, shame, and vexation 
 that we feel put a stop to our mirth ; while the disasters that 
 rome home to us, and excite our repugnance and dismay, are 
 an amusing spectacle to others. The greater resistance we 
 make, and the greater the perplexity into which we are thrown, 
 the more lively and piquant is the intellectual display of cross- 
 purposes to the bystanders. Our humiliation is their triumph. 
 We are occupied with the disagreeableness of the result instead 
 of its oddity or unexpectedness. Others see only the conflict 
 of motives, and the sudden alternation of events ; we feel the 
 pain as well, which more than counterbalances the speculative
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 275 
 
 entertainment we might receive from the contemplation of our 
 abstract situation. 
 
 You cannot force people to laugh : you cannot give a reason 
 why they should laugh : they must laugh of themselves, or not 
 at all. As we laugh from a spontaneous impulse, we laugh the 
 more at any restraint upon this impulse. We laugh at a thing 
 merely because we ought not. If we think we must not laugh, 
 this perverse impediment makes our temptation to laugh the 
 greater ; for by endeavouring to keep the obnoxious image out 
 of sight, it comes upon us more irresistibly and repeatedly ; 
 and the inclination to indulge our mirth, the longer it is held 
 back, collects its force, and breaks out the more violently in 
 peals of laughter. In like manner, anything we must not 
 think of makes us laugh, by its coming upon us by stealth and 
 unawafes, and from the veiy efforts we make to exclude it. A 
 secret, a loose word, a wanton jest, make people laugh. 
 Aretine laughed himself to death at hearing a lascivious story. 
 Wickedness is often made a substitute for wit ; and in most of 
 our good old comedies, the intrigue of the plot and the double 
 meaning of the dialogue go hand-in-hand, and keep up the ball 
 with wonderful spirit between them. The consciousness, how- 
 ever it may arise, that there is something that we ought to look 
 grave at, is almost always a signal for laughing outright : we 
 can hardly keep our countenance at a sermon, a funeral, or a 
 wedding. What an excellent old custom was that of throwing 
 the stocking 1 What a de'al of innocent mirth has been spoiled 
 by the disuse of it ! It is not an easy matter to preserve 
 decorum in courts of justice. The smallest circumstance that 
 interferes with the solemnity of the proceedings throws the 
 whole place into an uproar of laughter. People at the point of 
 death often say smart things. Sir Thomas More jested with 
 his executioner. Rabelais and Wycherley both died with a 
 bon-mot in their mouths. 
 
 Misunderstandings (inal-entendus\ where one person means 
 one thing, and another is aiming at something else, are another 
 great source of comic humour, on the same principle of 
 ambiguity and contrast. There is a high-wrought instance
 
 276 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 of this in the dialogue between Aimwell and Gibbet, in the 
 " Beaux' Stratagem," where Aimwell mistakes his companion 
 for an officer in a marching regiment, and Gibbet takes it for 
 granted that the gentleman is a highwayman. The alarm and 
 consternation occasioned by someone saying to him, in the 
 course of common conversation, " I apprehend you," is the most 
 ludicrous thing in that admirably natural and powerful perform- 
 ance, Mr. Emery's " Robert Tyke." Again, unconsciousness in 
 the person himself of what he is about, or of what others think 
 of him, is also a great heightener of the sense of absurdity. 
 It makes it come the fuller home upon us from his insensibility 
 to it His simplicity sets off the satire, and gives it a finer 
 edge. It is a more extreme case still where the person is 
 aware of being the object of ridicule, and yet seems perfectly 
 reconciled to it as a matter of course. So wit is often the more 
 forcible and pointed for being dry and serious, for it then seems 
 as if the speaker himself had no intention in it, and we were 
 the first to find it out. Irony, as a species of wit, owes its force 
 to the same principle. In such cases it is the contrast between 
 the appearance and the reality, the suspense of belief and the 
 seeming incongruity, that gives point to the ridicule, and makes 
 it enter the deeper when the first impression is overcome. 
 Excessive impudence, as in the " Liar ; " or excessive modesty, 
 as in the hero of " She stoops to Conquer ; " or a mixture of the 
 two, as in the " Busy Body," are equally amusing. Lying is a 
 species of wit and humour. To lay anything to a person's 
 charge from which he is perfectly free, shows spirit and 
 invention ; and the more incredible the effrontery, the greater 
 is the joke. 
 
 There is nothing more powerfully humorous than what is 
 called keeping in comic character, as we see it very finely 
 exemplified in Sancho Panza and Don Quixote. The pro- 
 verbial phlegm and the romantic gravity of these two celebrated 
 persons may be regarded as the height of this kind of excel- 
 lence. The deep feeling of character strengthens the sense of 
 the ludicrous. Keeping in comic character is consistency in 
 absurdity ; a determined and laudable attachment to the
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 277 
 
 incongruous and singular. The regularity completes the 
 contradiction ; for the number of instances of deviation from 
 the right line, branching out in all directions, shows the 
 inveteracy of the original bias to any extravagance or folly, 
 the natural improbability, as it were, increasing every time 
 with the multiplication of chances for a return to common 
 sense, and in the end mounting up to an incredible and 
 unaccountably ridiculous height, when we find our expectations 
 as invariably baffled. The most curious problem of all is this 
 truth of absurdity to itself. That reason and good sense 
 should be consistent is not wonderful : but that caprice, and 
 whim, and fantastical prejudice should be uniform and infallible 
 in their results, is the surprising thing. But while this 
 characteristic clue to absurdity helps on the ridicule, it also 
 softens and harmonises its excesses ; and the ludicrous is here 
 blended with a certain beauty and decorum, from this very 
 truth of habit and sentiment, or from the principle of similitude 
 in dissimilitude. The devotion to nonsense, and enthusiasm 
 about trifles, is highly affecting as a moral lesson : it is one of 
 the striking weaknesses and greatest happinesses of our nature. 
 That which excites so lively and lasting an interest in itself, 
 even though it should not be wisdom, is not despicable in 
 the sight of reason and humanity. We cannot suppress the 
 smile on the lip ; but the tear should also stand ready to 
 start from the eye. The history of hobby-horses is equally 
 instructive and delightful ; and after the pair I have just 
 alluded to, My Uncle Toby's is one of the best and 
 gentlest that " ever lifted leg 1 " The inconveniences, odd 
 accidents, falls, and bruises, to which they expose their 
 riders, contribute their share to the amusement of the 
 spectators ; and the blows and wounds that the Knight of 
 the Sorrowful Countenance .received in his many perilous 
 adventures have applied their healing influence to many a hurt 
 mind. In what relates to the laughable, as it arises from 
 unforeseen accidents or self-willed scrapes, the pain, the shame, 
 the mortification, and utter helplessness of situation, add to 
 the joke, provided they are momentary, or overwhelming only
 
 278 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 to the imagination of the sufferer. Malvolio's punishment and 
 apprehensions are as comic, from our knowing that they are 
 not real, as Christopher Sty's drunken transformation and 
 short-lived dream of happiness are for the like reason. Parson 
 Adams's fall into the tub at the 'Squire's, or his being discovered 
 in bed with Mrs. Slipslop, though pitiable, are laughable 
 accidents nor do we read with much gravity of the loss of his 
 " jschylus," serious as it was to him at the time. A Scotch 
 clergyman, as he was going to church, seeing a spruce, conceited 
 mechanic who was walking before him, suddenly covered all 
 over with dirt, either by falling into the kennel, or by some 
 other calamity befalling him, smiled and passed on : but 
 afterwards seeing the same person, who had stopped to refit, 
 seated directly facing him in the gallery, with a look ol perfect 
 satisfaction and composure, as if nothing ol the sort had 
 happened to him, the idea ot his late disaster and present self- 
 complacency struck him so powerfully that, unable to resist 
 the impulse, he flung himself back in the pulpit, and laughed 
 till he could laugh no longer. I remember reading a story in 
 an odd number of the European Magazine^ of an old gentle- 
 man who used to walk out every afternoon, with a gold-headed 
 cane, in the fields opposite Baltimore House, which were then 
 open, only with footpaths crossing them. He was frequently 
 accosted by a beggar with a wooden leg, to whom he gave 
 money, which only made him more importunate. One day, 
 when he was more troublesome than usual, a well-dressed 
 person happening to come up, and observing how saucy the 
 fellow was, said to the gentleman, " Sir, if you will lend me 
 your cane for a moment, I'll give him a good thrashing for his 
 impertinence." The old gentleman, smiling at the proposal, 
 handed him his cane, which the other no sooner was going to 
 apply to the shoulders of the culprit, than he immediately 
 whipped off his wooden leg, and scampered off with great 
 alacrity, and his chastiser after him as hard as he could go. 
 The faster the one ran, the faster the other followed him, 
 brandishing the cane, to the great astonishment of the gentle- 
 man who owned it, till having fairly crossed the fields, they
 
 ON WIT AND HUMO UR. 279 
 
 suddenly turned a corner, and nothing more was seen of 
 either of them. 
 
 In the way of mischievous adventure, and a wanton exhibi- 
 tion of ludicrous weakness in character, nothing is superior to 
 the comic parts of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. To 
 take only the set of stories of the Little Hunchback, who was 
 choked with a bone, and the Barber of Bagdad and his seven 
 brothers there is that of the tailor who was persecuted by the 
 miller's wife, and who, after toiling all night in the mill, got 
 nothing for his pains ; of another who fell in love with a fine 
 lady who pretended to return his passion, and inviting him to 
 her house, as the preliminary condition of her favour, had his 
 eyebrows shaved, his clothes stripped off, and being turned 
 loose into a winding gallery, he was to follow her, and by over- 
 taking obtain all his wishes ; but, after a turn or two, stumbled on 
 a trap-door, and fell plump into the street, to the great astonish- 
 ment of the spectators and his own, shorn of his eyebrows, 
 naked, and without a ray of hope left ; that of the castle-building 
 pedlar who, in kicking his wife, the supposed daughter of an 
 emperor, kicks down his basket of glass, the brittle foundation 
 of his ideal wealth, his good fortune, and his arrogance ; that, 
 again, of the beggar who dined with the Barmecide, and 
 feasted with him on the names of wines and dishes ; and, last 
 and best of all, the inimitable story of the Impertinent Barber 
 himself, one of the seven, and worthy to be so; his pertinacious, 
 incredible, teasing, deliberate, yet unmeaning folly, his wearing 
 out the patience of the young gentleman whom he is sent for to 
 shave, his preparations and his professions of speed, his taking 
 out an astrolabe to measure the height of the sun while his 
 razors are getting ready, his dancing the dance of Zimri and 
 singing the song of Zamtout, his disappointing the young man 
 of an assignation, following him to the place of rendezvous, and 
 alarming the master of the house in his anxiety for his safety, 
 by which his unfortunate patron loses his hand in the affray ; 
 and this is felt as an awkward accident. The danger which the 
 same loquacious person is afterwards in of losing his head for 
 want of saying who he was, because lie would not forfeit his
 
 2 So ON WIT AND HUMOUR, 
 
 character of being "justly called the Silent," is a consummation 
 of the jest, though, if it had really taken place, it would have 
 been carrying the joke too far. There are a thousand instances 
 of the same sort in the Thousand and One Nights, which are an 
 inexhaustible mine of comic humour and invention, and which, 
 from the manners of the East which they describe, carry the 
 principle of callous indifference in a jest as far as it can go. 
 The serious and marvellous stories in that work, which have 
 been so much admired and so greedily read, appear to me 
 monstrous and abortive fictions, like disjointed dreams, dictated 
 by a preternatural dread of arbitrary and despotic power, as 
 the comic and familiar stories are rendered proportionately 
 amusing and interesting from the same principle operating 
 in a different direction, and producing endless uncertainty and 
 vicissitude, and an heroic contempt for the untoward accidents 
 and petty vexations of human life. It is the gaiety of despair, 
 the mirth and laughter of a respite during pleasure from death. 
 The strongest instances of effectual and harrowing imagination 
 are in the story of Amine and her three sisters, whom she led 
 by her side as a leash of hounds, and of the goul who nibbled 
 grains of rice for her dinner, and preyed on human carcasses. 
 In this condemnation of the serious parts of the Arabian 
 Nights, I have nearly all the world, and in particular the author 
 of the "Ancient Mariner," against me, who must be allowed to 
 be a judge of such matters, and who said, with a subtlety of 
 philosophical conjecture which he alone possesses, "That if I 
 did not like them, it was because I did not dream." On the 
 other hand, I have Bishop Atterbury on my side, who, in a 
 letter to Pope, fairly confesses that "he could not read them in 
 his old age." 
 
 There is another source of comic humour which has been but 
 little touched on or attended to by the critics not the infliction 
 of casual pain, but the pursuit of uncertain pleasure and idle 
 gallantry. Half the business and gaiety of comedy turns upon 
 this. Most of the adventures, difficulties, demurs, hair-breadth 
 'scapes, disguises, deceptions, blunders, disappointments, suc- 
 cesses, excuses, all the dexterous manoeuvres, artful inuendoes,
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 281 
 
 assignations, billets-doux, double entendres, sly allusions, and 
 elegant flattery, have an eye to this to the obtaining of those 
 "favours secret, sweet, and precious," in which love and pleasure 
 consist, and which when attained, and the equivoque is at an 
 end, the curtain drops, and the play is over. All the attractions 
 of a subject that can only be glanced at indirectly, that is a sort 
 of forbidden ground to the imagination, except under severe 
 restrictions, which are constantly broken through ; all the 
 resources it supplies for intrigue and invention ; the bashful- 
 ness of the clownish lover, his looks of alarm and petrified 
 astonishment ; the foppish affectation and easy confidence of 
 the happy man ; the dress, the airs, the languor, the scorn, and 
 indifference of the fine lady ; the bustle, pertness, loquacious 
 ness, and tricks of the chambermaid ; the impudence, lies, and 
 roguery of the valet ; the match-making and unmaking ; the 
 wisdom of the wise ; the sayings of the witty, the folly of the 
 fool ; " the soldier's, scholar's, courtier's eye, tongue, sword, the 
 glass of fashion and the mould of form," have all a view to this. 
 It is the closest in "Blue-Beard." It is the life and soul of 
 Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar's plays. It is 
 the salt of comedy, without which it would be worthless and 
 insipid. It makes Horner decent, and Millamant divine. It 
 is the jest between Tattle and Miss Prue. It is the bait with 
 which Olivia, in the " Plain Dealer," plays with honest Manly. 
 It lurks at the bottom of the catechism which Archer teaches 
 Cherry, and which she learns by heart. It gives the finishing 
 grace to Mrs. Amlet's confession " Though I'm old, I'm 
 chaste." Valentine and his Angelica would be nothing without 
 it ; Miss Peggy would not be worth a gallant ; and Slender's 
 " sweet Anne Page " would be no more ! " The age of comedy 
 would be gone, and the glory of our playhouses extinguished 
 for ever." Our old comedies would be invaluable, were it only 
 for this, that they keep alive this sentiment, which still survives 
 in all its fluttering grace and breathless palpitations on the 
 stage. 
 
 Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself ; wit is 
 the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something
 
 282 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and acci- 
 dent ; wit is the product of art and fancy. Humour, as it 
 is shown in books, is an imitation of the natural or acquired 
 absurdities of mankind, or of the ludicrous in accident, situation, 
 and character : wit is the illustrating and heightening the sense 
 of that absurdity by some sudden and unexpected likeness or 
 opposition of one thing to another, which sets off the quality 
 we laugh at or despise in a still more contemptible or striking 
 point of view. Wit, as distinguished from poetry, is the 
 imagination or fancy inverted, and so applied to given objects, 
 as to make the little look less, the mean more light and 
 worthless ; or to divert our admiration or wean our affections 
 from that which is lofty and impressive, instead of producing a 
 more intense admiration and exalted passion, as poetry does. 
 Wit may sometimes, indeed, b*e shown in compliments as well 
 as satire ; as in the common epigram 
 
 " Accept a miracle, instead of wit : 
 See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ." 
 
 But then the mode of paying it is playful and ironical, and 
 contradicts itself in the very act of making its own performance 
 an humble foil to another's. Wit hovers round the borders of 
 the light and trifling, whether in matters of pleasure or pain ; 
 for as soon as it describes the serious seriously, it ceases to be 
 wit, and passes into a different form. Wit is, in fact, the 
 eloquence of indifference, or an ingenious and striking exposi- 
 tion of those evanescent and glancing impressions of objects 
 which affect us more from surprise or contrast to the train of 
 our ordinary and literal preconceptions, than from anything in 
 the objects themselves exciting our necessary sympathy or 
 lasting hatred. The favourite employment of wit is to add 
 littleness to littleness, and heap contempt on insignificance by 
 all the arts of petty and incessant warfare ; or if it ever affects 
 to aggrandise, and use the language of hyperbole, it is only to 
 betray into derision by a fatal comparison, as in the mock- 
 heroic ; or if it treats of serious passion, it must do it so as to 
 lower the tone of intense and high-wrought sentiment, by the
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 283 
 
 introduction of burlesque and familiar circumstances. To give 
 an instance or two. Butler, in his Hudibras^ compares the 
 change of night into day, to the change of colour in a boiled 
 lobster 
 
 " The sun had long since, in the lap 
 
 Of Thetis, taken out his nap ; 
 
 And like a lobster boil'd, the morn 
 
 From black to red, began to turn : 
 
 When Hudibras, whom thoughts and aching 
 
 'Twixt sleeping kept all night, and waking, 
 
 Began to rub his drowsy eyes, 
 
 And from his couch prepared to rise, 
 
 Resolving to dispatch the deed 
 
 He vow'd to do with trusty speed." 
 
 Compare this with the following stanzas in Spenser, treating of 
 the same subject : 
 
 " By this the Northern Waggoner had set 
 His seven-fold team behind the stedfast star, 
 That was in Ocean waves yet never wet, 
 But firm is fix'd and sendeth light from far 
 To all that in the wide deep wand'ring are : 
 And cheerful chanticleer with his note shrill, 
 Had warned once that Phoebus' fiery car 
 In haste was climbing up the eastern hill, 
 Full envious that the night so long his room did fill. 
 
 At last the golden oriental gate 
 
 Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair, 
 
 And Phcebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate, 
 
 Came dancing forth, shaking his dewy hair, 
 
 And hurl'd his glist'ring beams through gloomy air : 
 
 Which when the wakeful elf perceiv'd, straightway 
 
 He started up and did himself prepare 
 
 In sun-bright arms and battailous array, 
 
 For with that pagan proud he combat will that day." 
 
 In this last passage, every image is brought forward that can 
 give effect to our natural impression of the beauty, the
 
 284 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 splendour, and solemn grandeur of the rising sun ; pleasure 
 and power wait on every line and word ; whereas, in the other, 
 the only memorable thing is a grotesque and ludicrous 
 illustration of the alteration which takes place from darkness to 
 gorgeous light, and that brought from the lowest instance, and 
 with associations that can only disturb and perplex the 
 imagination in its conception of the real object it describes. 
 There cannot be a more witty, and at the same time degrading 
 comparison, than that in the same author, of the Bear turning 
 round the pole-star to a bear tied to a stake : 
 
 " But now a sport more formidable 
 Had raked together village rabble ; 
 'Twas an old way of recreating 
 Which learned butchers call bear-baiting. 
 A bold adventrous exercise 
 With ancient heroes in high prize, 
 For authors do affirm it came 
 From Isthmian or Nemsean game ; 
 Others derive it from the Bear 
 That's fixed in northern hemisphere, 
 And round about his pole does make 
 A circle like a bear at stake, 
 That at the chain's end wheels about 
 And overturns the rabble rout." 
 
 I need not multiply examples of this sort. Wit or ludicrous 
 invention produces its effect oftenest by comparison, but not 
 always. It frequently effects its purposes by unexpected and 
 subtle distinctions. For instance, in the first kind, Mr. 
 Sheridan's description of Mr. Addington's administration as 
 the fag end of Mr. Pitt's, who had remained so long on the 
 treasury bench that, like Nicias in the fable, "he left the 
 sitting part of the man behind him," is as fine an example 
 of metaphorical wit as any on record. The same idea 
 seems, however, to have been included in the old well-known 
 nickname of the Rump Parliament. Almost as happy an 
 instance of the other kind of wit, which consists in sudden
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 285 
 
 retorts, in turns upon an idea, and diverting the train of 
 your adversary's argument abruptly and adroitly into another 
 channel, may be seen in the sarcastic reply of Person, who 
 hearing some one observe, that " certain modern poets would 
 be read and admired when Homer and Virgil were forgotten," 
 made answer " And not till then ! " Sir Robert Walpole's 
 definition of the gratitude of place-expectants, " That it is 
 a lively sense of future favours," is no doubt wit, but it does 
 not consist in the finding out any coincidence or likeness, but 
 in suddenly transposing the order of time in the common 
 account of this feeling, so as to make the professions of those 
 who pretend to it correspond more with their practice. 
 It is filling up a blank in the human heart with a word that 
 explains its hollowness at once. Voltaire's saying, in answer 
 to a stranger who was observing how tall his trees grew 
 "That thay had nothing else to do" was a quaint mixture 
 of wit and humour, making it out as if they really led a lazy, 
 laborious life ; but there was here neither allusion or metaphor. 
 Again, that master-stroke in Hudibras is sterling wit and 
 profound satire, where speaking of certain religious hypocrites 
 he says that they 
 
 " Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, 
 By damning those they have no mind to ; " 
 
 but the wit consists in the truth of the character, and in the 
 happy exposure of the ludicrous contradiction between the 
 pretext and the practice ; between their lenity towards their 
 own vices, and their severity to those of others. The same 
 principle of nice distinction must be allowed to prevail in 
 those lines of the same author, where he is professing to 
 expound the dreams of judicial astrology. 
 
 " There's but the twinkling of a star 
 Betwixt a man of peace and war ; 
 A thief and justice, fool and knave, 
 A huffing officer and a slave ; 
 A crafty lawyer and pickpocket, 
 A great philosopher and a blockhead ;
 
 286 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 A formal preacher and a player, 
 
 A learn'd physician and man slayer." 
 
 The finest piece of wit I know of is in the lines of Pope on the 
 Lord Mayor's show 
 
 " Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, 
 But lives in Settle's numbers one day more." , 
 
 This is certainly as mortifying an inversion of the idea of 
 poetical immortality as could be thought of; it fixes the 
 maximum of littleness and insignificance : but it is not by 
 likeness to anything else that it does this, but by literally 
 taking the lowest possible duration of ephemeral reputation, 
 marking it (as with a slider) on the scale of endless renown, 
 and giving a rival credit for it as his loftiest praise. In a 
 word, the shrewd separation or disentangling of ideas that 
 seem the same, or where the secret contradiction is not 
 sufficiently suspected, and is of a ludicrous and whimsical 
 nature, is wit just as much as the bringing together those 
 that appear at first sight totally different. There is then no 
 sufficient ground for admitting Mr. Locke's celebrated defini- 
 tion of wit, which he makes to consist in the finding out 
 striking and unexpected resemblances in things as so to make 
 pleasant pictures in the fancy, while judgment and reason, 
 according to him, lie the clean contrary way, in separating and 
 nicely distinguishing those wherein the smallest difference is 
 to be found.* 
 
 * His words are " If in having our ideas in the memory ready at 
 hand consists quickness of parts, "in this of having them unconfused, 
 and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where 
 there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the 
 exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be 
 observed in one man above another. And hence, perhaps, may be 
 given some reason of that common observation, that men who have 
 a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the 
 clearest judgment or deepest reason. For wit lying mostly in the 
 assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and 
 variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR, 287 
 
 On this definition Harris, the author of Hermes^ has very 
 well observed that the demonstrating the equality of the three 
 angles of a right-angled triangle to two right ones, would, upon 
 the principle here stated, be a piece of wit instead of an act 
 of the judgment or understanding, and Euclid's Elements a 
 collection of epigrams. On the contrary, it has appeared that 
 the detection and exposure of difference, particularly where 
 this implies nice and subtle observation, as in discriminating 
 between pretence and practice, between appearance and reality, 
 is common to wit and satire with judgment and reasoning, and 
 certainly the comparing and connecting our ideas together is an 
 essential part of reason and judgment, as well as of wit and 
 fancy. Mere wit, as opposed to reason or argument, consists in 
 
 to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy ; 
 judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating 
 carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least 
 difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by 
 affinity to take one thing for another." This definition, such as it is, 
 Mr. Locke took without acknowledgment from Hobbes, who says in 
 his Leviathan, " This difference of quickness is caused by the 
 difference of men's passions that love and dislike some one thing, some 
 another, and therefore some men's thoughts run one way, some 
 another, and are held to, and observe differently the things that pass 
 through their imagination. And whereas in this succession of men's 
 thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they think on, but 
 either in what they be like one another, or in what they be unlike, . . . 
 those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but 
 rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by which on 
 this occasion is meant a good fancy. But they that observe their 
 differences and dissimilitudes, which is called distinguishing and dis- 
 cerning, and judging between thing and thing, in case such discerning 
 be not easy, are said to have a good judgment ; and particularly in 
 matter of conversation and business ; wherein times, places, and 
 persons are to be discerned, this virtue is called discretion. The 
 former, that is, fancy, without the help of judgment, is not commended 
 for a virtue ; but the latter, which is judgment or discretion, is 
 commended for itself, without the help of fancy."
 
 288 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 striking out some casual and partial coincidence which has 
 nothing to do, or at least implies no necessary connection with 
 the nature of the things which are forced into a seeming 
 analogy by a play upon words, or some irrelevant conceit, 
 as in puns, riddles, alliteration, etc. The jest, in all such cases, 
 lies in the sort of mock-identity, or nominal resemblance, 
 established by the intervention of the same words expressing 
 different ideas, and countenancing as it were, by a fatality of 
 language, the mischievous insinuation which the person who 
 has the wit to take advantage of it wishes to convey. So 
 when the disaffected French wits applied to the new order 
 of the Fleur du lys the double entendre of Compagnons d* Ulysse, 
 or companions of Ulysses, meaning the animal into which the 
 fellow-travellers of the hero of the Odyssey were transformed, 
 this was a shrewd and biting intimation of a galling truth (if 
 truth it were) by a fortuitous concourse of letters of the alphabet, 
 jumping in "a foregone conclusion," but there was no proof of 
 the thing, unless it was self-evident. And, indeed, this may be 
 considered as the best defence of the contested maxim That 
 ridicule is the test of truth; viz., that it does not contain or 
 tempt a formal proof of it, but owes its power of conviction 
 to the bare suggestion of it, so that if the thing when once 
 hinted is not clear in itself, the satire fails of its effect and 
 falls to the ground. The sarcasm here glanced at the character 
 of the new or old French noblesse may not be well founded ; 
 but it is so like truth, and " comes in such a questionable 
 shape," backed with the appearance of an identical proposition, 
 that it would require a long train of facts and laboured argu- 
 ments to do away the impression, even if we were sure of the 
 honesty and wisdom of the person who undertook to refute it. 
 A flippant jest is as good a test of truth as a solid bribe ; 
 and there are serious sophistries, 
 
 " Soul-killing lies, and truths that work small good," 
 
 as well as idle pleasantries. Of this we may be sure, that 
 ridicule fastens on the vulnerable points of a cause, and 
 finds out the weak sides of an argument ; if those who resort
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 289 
 
 to it sometimes rely too much on its success, those who are 
 chiefly annoyed by it almost always are so with reason, and 
 cannot be too much on their guard against deserving it. 
 Before we can laugh at a thing, its absurdity must at least 
 be open and palpable to common apprehension. Ridicule is 
 necessarily built on certain supposed facts, whether true or 
 false, and on their inconsistency with certain acknowledged 
 maxims, whether right or wrong. It is, therefore, a fair test, if 
 not of philosophical or abstract truth, at least of what is truth 
 according to public opinion and common sense ; for it can only 
 expose to instantaneous contempt that which is condemned by 
 public opinion, and is hostile to the common sense of mankind. 
 Or to put it differently, it is the test of the quantity of truth 
 that there is in our favourite prejudices. To show how nearly 
 allied wit is thought to be to truth, it is not unusual to say of 
 any person " Such a one is a man of sense, for though he said 
 nothing, he laughed in th right place." Alliteration comes in 
 here under the head of a certain sort of verbal wit ; or, by 
 pointing the expression, sometimes points the sense. Mr. 
 Grattan's wit or eloquence (I don't know by what name to call 
 it) would be nothing without this accompaniment. Speaking 
 of some ministers whom he did not like, he said, " Their only 
 means of government are the guinea and the gallows." There 
 can scarcely, it must be confessed, be a more effectual mode of 
 political conversion than one of these applied to a man's 
 friends, and the other to himself. The fine sarcasm of Junius 
 on the effect of the supposed ingratitude of the Duke of Graft on 
 at court " The instance might be painful, but the principle 
 would please" notwithstanding the profound insight into 
 human nature it implies, would hardly pass for wit without the 
 alliteration, as some poetry would hardly be acknowledged as 
 such without the rhyme to clench it. A quotation or a hack- 
 neyed phrase dexterously turned or wrested to another purpose, 
 has often the effect of the liveliest wit. An idle fellow who had 
 only fourpence left in the world, which had been put by to pay 
 for the baking some meat for his dinner, went and laid it 
 out to buy a new string for a guitar. An old acquaintance, 
 
 59*
 
 290 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 on hearing this story, repeated those lines out of the 
 L' Allegro" 
 
 " And ever against eating cares 
 Lap me in soft Lydian airs. " 
 
 The reply of the author of the periodical paper called the 
 World to a lady at church, who seeing him look thoughtful, 
 asked what he was thinking of" The next World" is a per- 
 version of an established formula of language, something of the 
 same kind. Rhymes are sometimes a species of wit, where 
 there is an alternate combination and resolution or decompo- 
 sition of the elements of sound, contrary to our usual division 
 and classification of them in ordinary speech, not unlike the 
 sudden separation and reunion of the component parts of the 
 machinery in a pantomime. The author who excels infinitely 
 the most in this way is the writer of Hudibras. He also excels 
 in the invention of single words and names which have the 
 effect of wit by sounding big, and meaning nothing : " full of 
 sound and fury, signifying nothing." But of the artifices of this 
 author's burlesque style I shall have occasion to speak here- 
 after. It is not always easy to distinguish between the wit of 
 words and that of things ; " For thin partitions do their bounds 
 divide." Some of the late Mr. Curran's bon-mots or jeux 
 d?esprit might be said to owe their birth to this sort of equivo- 
 cal generation ; or were a happy mixture of verbal wit and a 
 lively and picturesque fancy, of legal acuteness in detecting the 
 variable applications of words, and of a mind apt at perceiving 
 the ludicrous in external objects. " Do you see anything 
 ridiculous in this wig ?" said one of his brother judges to him. 
 " Nothing but the head," was the answer. Now here instan- 
 taneous advantage was taken of the slight technical ambiguity 
 in the construction of language, and the matter-of-fact is flung 
 into the scale as a thumping makeweight. After all, verbal and 
 accidental strokes of wit, though the most surprising and laugh- 
 able, are not the best and most lasting. That wit is the most 
 refined and effectual which is founded on the detection of 
 unexpected likeness or distinction in things, rather than in
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 291 
 
 words. It is more severe and galling that is, it is more 
 unpardonable though less surprising, in proportion as the 
 thought suggested is more complete and satisfactory from its 
 being inherent in the nature of the things themselves. Hizret 
 laterz lethalis arundo* Truth makes the greatest libel ; and 
 it is that which barbs the darts of wit. The Duke of Buck- 
 ingham's saying, " Laws are not like women, the worse for 
 being old," is an instance of a harmless truism and the utmost 
 malice of wit united. This is, perhaps, what has been meant 
 by the distinction between true and false wit. Mr. Addison, 
 indeed, goes so far as to make it the exclusive test of true wit 
 that it will bear translation into another language that is to 
 say, that it does not depend at all on the form of expression. 
 But this is by no means the case. Swift would hardly have 
 allowed of such a strait-laced theory to make havoc with his 
 darling conundrums, though there is no one whose serious 
 wit is more that of things, as opposed to a mere play either 
 of words or fancy. I ought, I believe, to have noticed before, 
 in speaking of the difference between wit and humour, that 
 wit is often pretended absurdity, where the person overacts 
 or exaggerates a certain part with a conscious design to 
 expose it as if it were another person, as when Mandrake 
 in the Twin Rivals says, "This glass is too big, carry it 
 away. I'll drink out of the bottle." On the contrary, when 
 Sir Hugh Evans says, very innocently, "'Od's plessed will, 
 I will not be absence at the grace," though there is here 
 a great deal of humour, there is no wit. This kind of wit 
 of the humorist, where the person makes a butt of himself, 
 and exhibits his own absurdities or foibles purposely in the 
 most pointed and glaring lights, runs through the whole of 
 the character of Falstaff, and is, in truth, the principle on. 
 which it is founded. It is an irony directed against one's self. 
 Wit is, in fact, a voluntary act of the mind, or exercise of 
 the invention, showing the absurd and ludicrous consciously, 
 whether in ourselves or another. Cross-readings, where the 
 
 * " The deadly arrow still sticks in his side."
 
 292 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 blunders are designed, are wit ; but if any one were to light 
 upon them through ignorance or accident, they would be 
 merely ludicrous. 
 
 It might be made an argument of the intrinsic superiority 
 of poetry or imagination to wit, that the former does not 
 admit of mere verbal combinations. Whenever they do occur, 
 they are uniformly blemishes. It requires something more 
 solid and substantial to raise admiration or passion. The 
 general forms and aggregate masses of our ideas must be 
 brought more into play to give weight and magnitude. Imag- 
 ination may be said to be the finding out something similar 
 in things generally alike, or with like feelings attached to 
 them ; while wit principally aims at finding out something 
 that seems the same, or amounts to a momentary deception 
 where you least expected it namely, in things totally opposite. 
 The reason why more slight and partial, or merely accidental 
 and nominal resemblances serve the purposes of wit, and 
 indeed characterise its essence as a distinct operation and 
 faculty of the mind, is, that the object of ludicrous poetry 
 is naturally to let down and lessen ; and it is easier to let 
 down than to raise up ; to weaken than to strengthen ; to 
 disconnect our sympathy from passion and power, than to 
 attach and rivet it to any object of grandeur or interest ; to 
 startle and shock our preconceptions by incongruous and 
 equivocal combinations, than to confirm, enforce, and expand 
 them by powerful and lasting associations of ideas, or striking 
 and true analogies. A slight cause is sufficient to produce a 
 slight effect, To be indifferent or sceptical, requires no effort ; 
 to be enthusiastic and in earnest, requires a strong impulse and 
 collective power. Wit and humour (comparatively speaking, 
 or taking the extremes to judge of the gradations by) appeal 
 to our indolence, our vanity, our weakness, and insensibility ; 
 serious and impassioned poetry appeals to our strength, our 
 magnanimity, our virtue, and humanity. Anything is sufficient 
 to heap contempt upon an object ; even the bare suggestion of 
 a mischievous allusion to what is improper dissolves the whole 
 charm, and puts an end to our admiration of the sublime or
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 293 
 
 beautiful. Reading the finest passage in Milton's Paradise 
 Lost in a false tone, will make it seem insipid and absurd. 
 The cavilling at, or invidiously pointing out, a few slips of the 
 pen, will embitter the pleasure, or alter our opinion of a whole 
 work, and make us throw it down in disgust. The critics are 
 aware of this vice and infirmity in our nature, and play upon it 
 with periodical success. The meanest weapons are strong 
 enough for this kind of warfare, and the meanest hands can 
 wield them. Spleen can subsist on any kind of food. The 
 shadow of a doubt, the hint of an inconsistency, a word, a look, 
 a syllable, will destroy our best-formed convictions. What puts 
 this argument in as striking a point of view as anything, is the 
 nature of parody or burlesque, the secret of which lies merely 
 in transposing or applying at a venture to anything, or to the 
 lowest objects, that which is applicable only to certain given 
 things, or to the highest matters. "From the sublime to 
 the ridiculous there is but one step." The slightest want of 
 unity of impression destroys the sublime ; the detection of 
 the smallest incongruity is an infallible ground to rest the 
 ludicrous upon. But in serious poetry, which aims at riveting 
 our affections, every blow must tell home. The missing a 
 single time is fatal, and undoes the spell We see how difficult 
 it is to sustain a continued flight of impressive sentiment : how 
 easy it must be then to travestie or burlesque it, to flounder 
 into nonsense, and be witty by playing the fool. It is a 
 common mistake, however, to suppose that parodies degrade, 
 or imply a stigma on the subject ; on the contrary, they in 
 general imply something serious or sacred in the originals. 
 Without this, they would be good for nothing, for the immediate 
 contrast would be wanting, and with this they are sure to tell. 
 The best parodies are, accordingly, the best and most striking 
 things reversed. Witness the common travesties of Homer and 
 Virgil. Mr. Canning's court parodies on Mr. Southey's popular 
 odes, are also an instance in point (I do not know which were 
 the cleverest) ; and the best of the Rejected Addresses is the 
 parody on Crabbe, though I do not certainly think that Crabjj- 
 is the most ridiculous poet now living.
 
 294 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 Lear and the Fool are the sublimest instance I know of 
 passion and wit united, or of imagination unfolding the most 
 tremendous sufferings, and of burlesque on passion playing 
 with it, aiding and relieving its intensity by the most pointed, 
 but familiar and indifferent illustrations of the same thing 
 in different objects, and on a meaner scale. The Fool's 
 reproaching Lear with "making his daughters his mothers," 
 his snatches of proverbs and old ballads, "The hedge-sparrow 
 fed the cuckoo so long, that it had its head bit off by its young," 
 and " Whoop jug, I know when the horse follows the cart," are 
 a running commentary of trite truisms, pointing out the extreme 
 folly of the infatuated old monarch, and in a manner reconciling 
 us to its inevitable consequences. 
 
 Lastly, there is a wit of sense and observation, which consists 
 in the acute illustration of good sense and practical wisdom, by 
 means of some far-fetched conceit or quaint imagery. The 
 matter is sense, but the form is wit. Thus the lines in Pope 
 
 " 'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none 
 Go just alike ; yet each believes his own " 
 
 are witty, rather than poetical ; because the truth they convey 
 is a mere dry observation on human life, without elevation or 
 enthusiasm, and the illustration of it is of that quaint and 
 familiar kind that is merely curious and fanciful. Cowley is an 
 instance of the same kind in almost all his writings. Many of 
 the jests and witticisms in the best comedies are moral 
 aphorisms and rules for the conduct of life, sparkling \vfth wit 
 and fancy in the mode of expression. The ancient philosophers 
 also abounded in the same kind of wit, in telling home truths in 
 the most unexpected manner. In this sense JEsop was the 
 greatest wit and moralist that ever lived. Ape and slave, he 
 looked askance at human nature, and beheld its weaknesses 
 and errors transferred to another species. Vice and virtue were 
 to him as plain as any objects of sense. He saw in man a 
 talking, absurd, obstinate, proud, angry animal ; and clothed 
 these abstractions with wings, or a beak, or tail, or claws, or 
 long ears, as they appeared embodied in these hieroglyphics in
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 295 
 
 the brute creation. His moral philosophy is natural history. 
 He makes an ass bray wisdom, and a frog croak humanity. 
 The store of moral truth, and the fund of invention in exhibiting 
 it in eternal forms, palpable and intelligible, and delightful to 
 children and grown persons, and to all ages and nations, are 
 almost miraculous. The invention of a fable is to me the 
 most enviable exertion of human genius : it is the discovering 
 a truth to which there is no clue, and which, when once found 
 out, can never be forgotten. I would rather have been the 
 author of jEsofis Fables, than of Euclid's Elements! That 
 popular entertainment, Punch and the Puppet-show, owes 
 part of its irresistible and universal attraction to nearly the same 
 principle of inspiring inanimate and mechanical agents with 
 sense and consciousness. The drollery and wit of a piece of 
 wood is doubly droll and farcical. Punch is not merry in 
 himself, but " he is the cause of heartfelt mirth in other men." 
 The wires and pulleys that govern his motions are conductors 
 to carry off the spleen, and all "that perilous stuff that weighs 
 upon the heart." If we see a number of people turning the 
 corner of a street, ready to burst with secret satisfaction, and 
 with their faces bathed in laughter, we know what is the matter 
 that they are just come from a puppet-show. Who can see 
 three little painted, patched-up figures, no bigger than one's 
 thumb, strut, squeak and gibber, sing, dance, chatter, scold, 
 knock one another about the head, give themselves airs of 
 importance, and "imitate humanity most abominably,'' without 
 laughing immoderately ? We overlook the farce and mummery 
 of human life in little, and for nothing ; and what is still better, 
 it costs them who have to play in it nothing. We place the 
 mirth, and glee, and triumph, to our own account ; and we 
 know that the bangs and blows they have received go for 
 nothing, as soon as the showman puts them up in his box and 
 marches off quietly with them, as jugglers of a less amusing 
 description sometimes march off with the wrongs and rights of 
 mankind in their pockets ! I have heard no bad judge of such 
 matters say, that " he liked a comedy better than a tragedy, a 
 faice better than comedy, a pantomime better than a farce, but
 
 296 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 a puppet-show best of all." I look upon it, that he who 
 invented puppet-shows was a greater benefactor to his species 
 than he who invented operas ! 
 
 I shall conclude this imperfect and desultory sketch of wit 
 and humour with Barrow's celebrated description of the same 
 subject. He says, " But first it may be demanded, what the 
 thing we speak of is, or what this facetiousness doth import ; to 
 which question I might reply, as Democritus did to him that 
 asked the definition of a man '/is that which we all see and 
 know ; and one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance, 
 than I can inform him by description. It is, indeed, a thing 
 so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so 
 many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by 
 several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to 
 settle a clear and certain notice thereof, than to make a portrait 
 of Proteus, or to define the figure of fleeting air. Sometimes it 
 lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable appli- 
 cation of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale : some- 
 times it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from 
 the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound : 
 sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of luminous expression ; 
 sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude. Sometimes it is 
 lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer ; in a quirkish 
 reason ; in a shrewd intimation ; in cunningly diverting or 
 cleverly restoring an objection : sometimes it is couched in a 
 bold scheme of speech ; in a tart irony ; in a lusty hyperbole ; 
 in a startling metaphor ; in a plausible reconciling of contradic- 
 tions, or in acute nonsense : sometimes a scenical repre- 
 sentation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical 
 look or gesture passeth for it; sometimes an affected simplicity, 
 sometimes a presumptuous bluntness giveth it being ; some- 
 times it riseth only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange : 
 sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the 
 purpose : often it consisteth in one knows not what, and 
 springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccount- 
 able and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless 
 rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 297 
 
 manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as 
 reason teacheth and knoweth things by), which by a pretty 
 surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and 
 amuse the fancy, showing in it some wonder, and breathing 
 some delight thereto. It raiseth admiration, as signifying a 
 nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of invention, 
 a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar : it 
 seeming to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch 
 in remote conceits applicable ; a notable skill that he can 
 dexterously accommodate them to a purpose before him, 
 together with a lively briskness of humour, not apt to damp 
 those sportful flashes of imagination. (Whence in Aristotle 
 such persons are termed eiride&oi, dexterous men, and evrpoirot, 
 men of facile or versatile manners, who can easily turn them- 
 selves to all things, or turn all things to themselves.) It also 
 procureth delight by gratifying curiosity with its rareness or 
 semblance of difficulty (as monsters, not for their beauty but 
 their rarity ; as juggling tricks, not for their use but their 
 abstruseness, are beheld with pleasure) ; by diverting the mind 
 from its road of serious thoughts ; by instilling gaiety and 
 airiness of spirit ; by provoking to such dispositions of spirit, in 
 way of emulation or complaisance, and by seasoning matter, 
 otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual and thence 
 grateful tang." 
 
 I will only add by way of general caution, that there is 
 nothing more ridiculous than laughter without a cause, nor 
 anything more troublesome than what are called laughing 
 people. A professed laugher is as contemptible and tiresome 
 a character as a professed wit : the one is always contriving 
 something to laugh at, the other is always laughing at nothing. 
 An excess of levity is as impertinent as an excess of gravity. 
 A character of this sort is well personified by Spenser, in the 
 "Damsel of the Idle Lake" 
 
 " Who did assay 
 
 To laugh at shaking of the leaves light." 
 
 Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless who is surprised
 
 298 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 at everything he sees ; or wonderfully conceited, who expects 
 everything to conform to his standard of propriety. Clowns and 
 idiots laugh on all occasions ; and the common failing of wish- 
 ing to be thought satirical often runs through whole families 
 in country places, to the great annoyance of their neighbours. 
 To be struck with incongruity in whatever comes before us, 
 does not argue great comprehension or refinement of percep- 
 tion, but rather a looseness and flippancy of mind and temper, 
 which prevents the individual from connecting any two ideas 
 steadily or consistently together. It is owing to a natural 
 crudity and precipitateness of the imagination, which assimi- 
 lates nothing properly to itself. People who are always laugh- 
 ing, at length laugh on the wrong side of their faces, for they 
 cannot get others to laugh with them. In like manner, an 
 affectation of wit by degrees hardens the heart, and spoils good 
 company and good manners. A perpetual succession of good 
 things puts an end to common conversation. There is no 
 answer to a jest, but another ; and even where the ball can be 
 kept up in this way without ceasing, it tires the patience of the 
 bystanders, and runs the speakers out of breath. Wit is the 
 salt of conversation, not the food. 
 
 The four chief names for comic humour out of our own lan- 
 guage are Aristophanes and Lucian among the ancients, 
 Moliere and Rabelais among the moderns. Of the two first 1 
 shall say, for I know, but little. I should have liked Aristo- 
 phanes better if he had treated Socrates less scurvily, for he 
 has treated him most scurvily both as to wit and argument. 
 His Plutus and his Birds are striking instances, the one of dry 
 humour, the other of airy fancy. Lucian is a writer who 
 appears to deserve his full fame : he has the licentious and 
 extravagant wit of Rabelais, but directed more uniformly to a 
 purpose ; and his comic productions are interspersed with 
 beautiful and eloquent descriptions, full of sentiment, such as 
 the exquisite account of the fable of the halcyon put into the 
 mouth of Socrates, and the heroic eulogy on Bacchus, which is 
 conceived in the highest strain of glowing panegyric. 
 
 The two other authors I proposed to mention are modem,
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 299 
 
 and French. Moliere, however, in the spirit of his writings, is 
 almost as much an English as a French author quite a barbare 
 in all in which he really excelled. He was unquestionably one 
 of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived ; a man of 
 infinite wit, gaiety, and invention full of life, laughter, and 
 whim. But it cannot be denied that his plays are in general 
 mere farces, without scrupulous adherence to nature, refinement 
 of character, or common probability. The plots of several of 
 them could not be carried on for a moment without a perfect 
 collusion between the parties to wink at contradictions, and act 
 in defiance of the evidence of their senses. For instance, take 
 the Medetin malgrt lui (the "Mock Doctor"), in which a 
 common wood-cutter takes upon himself, and is made success- 
 fully to support through a whole play, the character of a learned 
 physician, without exciting the least suspicion ; and yet, not- 
 withstanding the absurdity of the plot, it is one of the most 
 laughable and truly comic productions that can well be 
 imagined. The rest of his lighter pieces, the " Bourgeois 
 Gentilhomme," " Monsieur Pourceaugnac," " George Dandin " 
 (or " Barnaby Brittle"), etc., are of the same description 
 gratuitous assumptions of character, and fanciful and outrageous 
 caricatures of nature. He indulges at his peril in the utmost 
 license of burlesque exaggeration, and gives a loose to the 
 intoxication of his animal spirits. With respect to his two 
 most laboured comedies, the "Tartuffe" and "Misanthrope," 
 I confess that I find them rather hard to get through : they 
 have much of the improbability and extravagance of the others, 
 united with the endless commonplace prosing of French decla- 
 mation. What can exceed, for example, the absurdity of the 
 Misanthrope, who leaves his mistress, after every proof of her 
 attachment and constancy, for no other reason than that she will 
 not submit to the technical formality of going to live with him in 
 a wilderness ? The characters, again, which Celimene gives of 
 her female friends near the opening of the play, are admirable 
 satires (as good as Pope's characters of women), but not exactly 
 in the spirit of comic dialogue. The strictures of Rousseau on 
 this play, in his Letter to D'Alembert, are a fine specimen
 
 300 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 of the best philosophical criticism. The same remarks apply 
 in a greater degree to the " Tartuffe." The long speeches 
 and reasonings in this play tire one almost to death : they 
 may be very good logic, or rhetoric, or philosophy, or anything 
 but comedy. If each of the parties had retained a special 
 pleader to speak his sentiments, they could not have appeared 
 more verbose or intricate. The improbability of the character 
 of Orgon is wonderful. This play is in one point of view inval- 
 uable, as a lasting monument of the credulity of the French 
 to all verbal professions of wisdom or virtue ; and its existence 
 can only be accounted for from that astonishing and tyrannical 
 predominance which words exercise over things in the mind 
 of every Frenchman. The Ecole dcs Femmes, from which 
 Wycherley has borrowed his " Country Wife," with the true 
 spirit of original genius, is, in my judgment, the masterpiece 
 of Moliere. The set speeches in the original play, it is true, 
 would not be borne on the English stage, nor indeed on the 
 French, but that they are carried off by the verse. The 
 Critique de FEcole des femmes, the dialogue of which is prose, 
 is written in a very different style. Among other things, this 
 little piece contains an exquisite and almost unanswerable 
 defence of the superiority of comedy over tragedy. Moliere 
 was to be excused for taking this side of the question. 
 
 A writer of some pretensions among ourselves has re- 
 proached the French with "an equal want of books and 
 men." There is a common French print, in which Moliere 
 is represented reading one of his plays in the presence of 
 the celebrated Ninon de PEnclos, to a circle of the wits and 
 first men of his own time. Among these are the great 
 Corneille ; the tender, faultless Racine ; Fontaine, the artless 
 old man, unconscious of immortality ; the accomplished 
 St. Evremond ; the Duke de la Rochefoucault, the severe 
 anatomiser of the human breast ; Boileau, the flatterer of 
 courts and judge of men 1 Were these men nothing? They 
 have passed for men (and great ones) hitherto, and though 
 the prejudice is an old one, I should hope it may still last 
 our time.
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR, 301 
 
 Rabelais is another name that might have saved this 
 unjust censure. The wise sayings and heroic deeds of Gar- 
 gantua and Pantagruel ought not to be set down as nothing. 
 I have already spoken my mind at large of this author; but I 
 cannot help thinking of him here, sitting in his easy chair, 
 with an eye languid with excess of mirth, his lip quivering 
 with a new-born conceit, and wiping his beard after a well- 
 seasoned jest, with his pen held carelessly in his hand, his 
 wine-flagons, and his books of law, of school divinity, and 
 physic, before him, which were his jest-books, whence he 
 drew endless stores of absurdity ; laughing at the world and 
 enjoying it by turns, and making the world laugh with him 
 again, for the last three hundred years, at his teeming wit 
 and its own prolific follies. Even to those who have never 
 read his works, the name of Rabelais is a cordial to the spirits, 
 and the mention of it cannot consist with gravity or spleen '.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 33 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS. 
 
 This Essay is taken from the Lectures on the English Comic Writers. 
 It is claimed for these pages, because the whole matter referring to the 
 Toiler appeared in the Examiner as No. 10 of the Round Table 
 Essays, March 5th, 1815 : in the index, entitled " Characters of Sir 
 R. Steele and Addison as Essayists." It was republished in the 
 Round Table Essays, 2 vols., 1817, as " On the Taller." 
 
 Hazlitt here states clearly what, to his mind, is the nature and pur- 
 pose of the Essay. " It plays the whole game of life over before us. 
 ... It inquires what human life is and has been, to show what it 
 ought to be. We put faith in the testimony of the essayist, for we 
 know that it is true." 
 
 In the Round Table we have the first fruits of Hazlitt's essay- 
 writing. He had yet to approve himself, according to the picture he 
 has here drawn. This he certainly did. The London Magazine had to 
 be born. The New Monthly had to find hi him a new contributor. 
 Hence came the series of Essays, republished in four volumes as Table 
 Talk and The Plain Speaker. 
 
 HazliU loved old books as old books. An original edition of the 
 Taller is of rare interest to him, even in its list of subscribers. 
 
 The felicitous comparison of Burke and Johnson prepares us 
 for Hazlitt's great admiration of Burke as a writer. Indeed, his pen 
 was always as ready thus to praise Burke's style as to depreciate him 
 as a politician. 
 
 It will be noted that it is in this paper Hazlitt makes his famous 
 compensation to Johnson. It has been said that Hazlitt had not a 
 sympathetic audience ; nevertheless, he did not fail to make some fine
 
 304 NOTES. 
 
 points, and this one should be held in generous remembrance. 
 Sergeant Talfourd (introduced by Lamb to Wordsworth, as his 
 (Lamb's) "only admirer") was present at these lectures, and he 
 records that when Hazlitt mentioned Johnson's "carrying the unfor- 
 tunate victim of disease on his back up through Fleet Street," a 
 titter arose from some of the audience, who were struck by the picture 
 as ludicrous, "and a murmur from others, who deemed the allusion 
 unfit for ears polite." He paused for an instant, and then added in his 
 sturdiest and most impressive manner, " An act which realises the 
 parable of the good Samaritan," at which his moral and delicate hearers 
 "shrunk rebuked into deep silence." 
 
 In leaving the lectures, we may mark two other points made by 
 Hazlitt. At the outset, says Talfourd, he startled many of his audience 
 by the observation that, since Jacob's dream, "the heavens have gone 
 further off, and became astronomical." The other point speaks for itself, 
 in the lecture on the "Living Poets." He prefaced his reading Words- 
 worth's poem, " Hart-Leap Well," with these words : " Those who do 
 not feel the beauty and the force of it may save themselves the trouble of 
 inquiring further." What an air of bounty and disdain is there in this 
 short sentence. " Here is a poem for your admiration; you who know 
 not Wordsworth shall now learn with what he delights our ears and 
 imaginations ; if you cannot appreciate it, lose no time go back to 
 your bathos." De Quincey distinguished three periods in Wordsworth's 
 reputation persecuted, militant, triumphant. During the poet's 
 persecuted and militant periods Hazlitt's voice in public was of great 
 effect, although he denounced Wordsworth the politician as much as he 
 praised Wordsworth the poet. 
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 
 
 In the Examiner of 8th September 1816 Hazlitt severely criticised 
 Coleridge's Lay Sermon, before it had appeared in print. On the 29th 
 December he noticed it when it had appeared ; and on the 1 2th 
 January 1817, in the same periodical, he wrote a letter on the subject 
 signed Semper ego Auditor. This letter complained of Coleridge's 
 change of opinion. A whimpering letter : If, twenty years ago, 
 Coleridge preached such a sermon (which Hazlitt described), why, 
 in the name of the dread political furies, dare he publish this Lay 
 Sermon? That epistle, brief and ill-tempered, contained the beautiful
 
 NOTES. 305 
 
 passage in this essay, an amaranth in a desert, beginning, " It was 
 January 1798 that I," etc., to, " Like to that sanguine flower inscribed 
 with woe." 
 
 In Political Tracts the letter was reprinted. In 1822 the ill-fated 
 Liberal was founded, as already explained. The contributions worthiest 
 of the venture were Byron's "Vision of Judgment," and the ampli- 
 fication by Hazlitt of the Examiner-letter into the above essay. 
 Hunt would have added Shelley's translations of Goethe's "May- 
 day Night." 
 
 Hazlitt makes beautiful use of quotations. He is free in the use of 
 them without inverted commas. "Like a worm by the wayside," 
 He had lectured on Chaucer, and marked that heart-breaking 
 utterance of Griselda 
 
 " Wherefore, I you pray, 
 Let me not Hke a worm go by the way I " 
 
 " Longings infinite " he adopts from Wordsworth without quotation 
 marks. 
 
 " Then I should have sight 
 Of him I wait for day and night 
 With love and longings infinite." 
 
 So ends a verse in the " Affliction of Margaret." 
 
 The offer of T. Wedgewood of a hundred and fifty pounds a-year was 
 the turning-point in Coleridge's life. He gave up preaching. The 
 artless Cottle puts it thus "Up to this day, iSth February 1798 
 Coleridge held laxly the doctrines of Socinus." 
 
 ' ' Ever after, when 1 saw the sunset stream ttpon the objects facing it. 
 I conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Wordsworth for having 
 made one for me." This is as fine as Gray's sunrise " It is very odd 
 it makes no figure on paper ; yet I shall remember it as long as the 
 sun or, at least, as long as I endure. I wonder whether anybody 
 ever saw it before : I hardly believe it." . . . 
 
 Here, in the room of an inn at Linton, we have Coleridge uttering 
 the memorable saying, on finding a little worn-out copy of Thomson's 
 Seasons lying on a window-seat " That is true fame ! " 
 
 " The next day Wordsworth arrived." This was a meeting of 
 young men, each of whom set his mark upon the present century. 
 Wordsworth was twenty-eight years of age, Coleridge twenty- 
 six, and Hazlitt twenty. Lamb and his sister had been visiting 
 
 592
 
 306 NOISES. 
 
 Coleridge a little before, on which occasion Coleridge wrote the 
 poem, " A lime-tree bower my prison is." Lamb's age was twenty 
 three. 
 
 This Chester is a good picture of worthy, sincere, silent admirer. 
 His happiness was consummated when his knees were beneath the same 
 mahogany as Coleridge's. How delightfully this is put. They were to 
 eat and drink together : there was a temporary equality between 
 Chester and Coleridge "John's felicity was complete." 
 
 ' ' My heart . . . has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to 
 speak to it." Here we have the open secret a sigh from the deeps 
 the tale of Liber Amoris. 
 
 " Vision of Judgment which Mr. Murray." This is a reference to 
 Byron's satire, which had appeared in the first number of the Liberal. 
 
 ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 This Essay appeared in the London Magazine for December 1820, 
 as No. 5 of Table Talk. This was the first year of the London. Its 
 brilliant set of contributors included Thomas Carlyle, Allan Cunning- 
 ham, De Quincey (his Confessions of an Opium-Eater], Gary (the 
 translator of Dante), Thomas Hood, Landor, Keats. "EliaV'fame, too, 
 lies in the pages of the London ; Hazlitt, therein, displayed his mature 
 powers as Essayist. "The Pleasure of Painting" reappeared in the 
 earliest pages of the first volume of Table Talk, and divided into two 
 parts. For the sake of space, the first portion only is taken, being a good 
 instance of his style when inspired by his passion for painting. His 
 first picture was that of an old woman. He said, " I had seen an old 
 head by Rembrandt at Burleigh House, and if I could produce a head 
 at all like Rembrandt's in a year, in my life-time, it would be glory and 
 felicity, and wealth and fame enough for me." Mrs. Charles Cowden 
 Clarke, on reading this quotation, used in my Hesperides, wrote me 
 from Genoa in May last, that " Hazlitt's aspiration was fulfilled by the 
 incident of the portrait of his old nurse." This incident is thus given 
 in Mr. and Mrs. Clarke's Recollections : " The very first portrait 
 that Hazlitt took was a mere head of his old nurse ; and so remark- 
 able are the indications in it of early excellence in style and manner, 
 that a member of the profession inquired of the person to whom 
 Hazlitt lent it for his gratification, ' Why, where did you get that
 
 NOTES. 307 
 
 Rembrandt ? ' The upper part of the face was in strong shadow, from 
 an overpending black silk bonnet, edged with black lace, that threw 
 the forehead and eyes into darkened effect ; while this, as well as the 
 wrinkled cheeks, the lines about the mouth, and the touches of actual 
 and reflected light, were all given with a truth and vigour that might 
 well recall the hand of the renowned Flemish master." But of his 
 visionary Burleigh, and that old woman's head, we shall hear from 
 himself in an Essay further on. 
 
 The little pleasure Hazlitt finds in writing these Essays is given in 
 the style of Montaigne, who said : " I have neither fancy nor 
 expression worth anything, and am ignorant beyond a child, of the 
 phrases, and even the very words, proper to express the most common 
 things." Luxurious self-dispraise, by the father of the Essay. 
 
 "A picture of my father." His father had died a few months 
 before (i6th July 1820). He loved that father; his language 
 respecting him is always gentle and reverential. The passage in the 
 foregoing Essay gives evidence of this. So, also, does his reference to 
 him in an Essay on the " Clerical Character." Out of the recollection 
 of his attempting a picture of his father arose another Essay, which is 
 to be found in the first volume of the Plain Speaker " On Sitting for 
 One's Picture." 
 
 Note that flash of the news of the battle of Austerlitz. A stormy 
 soul in politics has Hazlitt proved long ere this. When Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, and he, twenty years ago, strolled in the green lanes round 
 Nether-Stowey, the poet-charmed youth would have taken little 
 interest in the nearness of a political spy ; but the time came when the 
 fierce partisan spirit was roused in him, nevermore to be subdued. 
 
 ON ACTORS AND ACTING. 
 
 This Round Table Essay appeared in the Examiner for the 5th of 
 January 1817 ; and the same year it was published in the second volume 
 of the Round 7^able. It is selected as a general Essay, best suited to 
 introduce Hazlitt as the theatre-goer and critic. The stage is much 
 lauded to-day by a select class which formerly eschewed it. They may 
 further sharpen their judgments by the dogma of one whose defence is 
 praise : " Wherever there is a playhouse, the world will go on not
 
 3o8 NOTES. 
 
 amiss." Perhaps actors, too, would take hints from the moralising of 
 their loving friend, some of whose last thoughts were on a playhouse. 
 The hand of death was on him when, in 1830, he wrote his Essay, 
 "The Free Admission." 
 
 ON MR. KEAN'S " IAGO." 
 
 This paper appeared in the Examiner for 24th July, and was 
 continued on 7th August 1814. The greater portion of it forms the 
 eighth Essay in the first volume of Round Table. It was afterwards 
 inserted complete in View of the English Sta*e. Kean first appeared 
 in London at Drury Lane, 26th January of that year, as Shylock. On 
 mention of that, two singular pictures arise, of the actor and the critic. 
 After provincial training, Kean has come to London. Driven to des- 
 pair by poverty and the ill-treatment of the Drury Lane directors, nearly 
 bankrupted at that time, he is saved (22nd January) on his way from 
 Cecil Street, half-intent on suicide, by the news that he is advertised to 
 play Shylock on the twenty-sixth. The day arrived ; a drizzly, heart- 
 depressing day. One rehearsal is given at noon. His interpretation 
 of the Jew causes the manager to protest. The rehearsal is flat ; failure 
 is foretold by those whose business it is to know what acting ought to 
 be, and what the public is. Kean goes to his lodgings, and shares with 
 his wife "the unusual luxury of a dinner." Six o'clock is struck by 
 St. Clement Danes's clock, sullenly answered through the dark rain 
 from the neighbouring steeples. Kean takes a little bundle of such 
 necessaries as an actor provides, and hurries off. " I wish I was going 
 to be shot ! " spoken as he leaves, tells his sickness at heart. Into the 
 foul night he goes (but as Venus once in ambrosial cloud, so, now, the 
 Muse of Tragedy is near her favourite son). On, through the slush of 
 the street to a common dressing-room, amongst second-rate actors. 
 There he prepares himself, and puts on a black wig. Burbadge played 
 " the red-haired Jew ; " Macklin revived the red-haired Jew. Can a 
 great actor win upon the colour black or red ? Insolence and scorn and 
 disspiritment surround him, except an encouraging word from Bannister, 
 a glass of brandy and water from Oxberry, a pleasant phrase from Dr. 
 Drury. He is now at the wings. The stage, the house, all the world are 
 before him. He goes across the stage, peeps through the eyelet hole, 
 beholds the house empty boxes and fifty people in the pit. But great
 
 NOTES. 309 
 
 actors always received their laurels from the pit. These fifty represent 
 not five hundred, five thousand but the world of London fame, or 
 dishonour. These fifty in the pit, and a critic unseen William Hazlitt 
 haveJCoesar and his fortunes in keeping. Nothing can be said here of 
 the charm of intonation, the power, the grace. The night is won. The 
 Muse of Tragedy has claimed her son at the voice of fifty and one. 
 Through the rain and darkness Kean rushed to his lodgings. Husband 
 and wife embrace each other. Tears are brighter than the rain ; and in 
 the sun of fortune they now flash brighter than jewels. *' Mary, you 
 
 shall ride in your carriage, and ;'' he took their child from the 
 
 cradle, "Charley!". . . The actor has a double life. But enough. 
 The critic William Hazlilt saw Kean and the fifty in the pit. The 
 night was memorable through all his days. He had been wearied by the 
 exigent trials and failures of Drury Lane ; he could not have a good 
 heart as to the man now to try the house advertised as, " Mr. Kean, 
 from the Theatre Royal, Exeter." His report in the Morning 
 Chronicle, next day, told of the new star risen on the stage " For 
 voice, eye, action, and expression, no actor has come out for many 
 years equal to him." 
 
 "lago" was first played by Kean at Drury Lane in May; the second 
 time in July 1814. 
 
 It soon appeared that Hazlitt's views in the Essay, or critique, were 
 in opposition to those of the Theatrical Critic of the Examiner, who 
 replied to Hazlitt's on the 4th of September 1814. Hazlitt gave 
 the retort courteous in the following number. On September i8th 
 the hostile critic made his final response, and the home-thrust proved 
 a cruel one. In his letter Hazlitt spoke of lago as the busy, med- 
 dling fiend " who rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm, 
 triumphing over the scattered wrecks, and listening to the shrieks 
 of death." The critic's reference to this shows how well Hazlitt's 
 vehement idolatry of Napoleon was known amongst his fellow- 
 labourers in the field of literature. " Perhaps he (Hazlitt) had some 
 existing character before him ; at any rate the picture bears a stronger 
 resemblance to Buonaparte than to Shakspere's 'Ancient.'" The 
 critic had a more severe revenge than this biting repartee. In three- 
 quarters of a year Waterloo was fought. As an antidote to that 
 passionate fencing, we have given some of Hazlitt's remarks on Mrs. 
 Siddons the first portion from " Whether Actors ought to sit in the 
 Boxes;" the second from "Novelty and Familiarity."
 
 3 io NOTES. 
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICHOLAS POUSSIN 
 
 Appeared in the London Magazine, August 1821 ; republished 
 in the second volume of Table Talk. This essay affords a good 
 example of Ilazlitt's art-criticism, which caused Hunt to say that his 
 writings on that subject " cast a light like a painted window." 
 Hunt's expression occurs in his short, sudden notice of Ilazlitt's 
 death, in the fourteenth number of Hunt's Taller. The TATLER I 
 Hunt took the opportunity of saying that Hazlitt "would not have 
 thought it beneath his sympathy with greater things, to express his 
 satisfaction at the name and the hopes of the paper." Of that, 
 Hunt and the admirers of Hazlitt might be certain. He spake 
 handsome praise of his friends, by the way : he made sure they 
 should live if his own name lived. 
 
 In this Essay, as in others at opportune moments, Hazlitt never tires 
 of mentioning certain names for which he has admiration any more 
 than the world tires of mentioning Shakspere. Rembrandt, Rubens, 
 Titian, Claude, Guido, Poussin, Caracci, Raphael, here in one 
 cluster, are music upon the tongue and a scene of varying shades and 
 splendours. 
 
 "El ego in Arcadia vixi .'" I, too, lived in Arcadia. This is a 
 reference to a picture by Poussin in the Louvre, where shepherds 
 in the Vale of Tempe survey a tombstone bearing this inscription. 
 This picture haunted Hazlitt with its colours and language through 
 life. 
 
 I have spoken of Hazlitt's influence on other minds. The Louvre 
 brings us to an instance. When Talfourd, with his wife, his eldest son, 
 and niece, in 1841, made that happy tour which embraced Switzerland 
 and its Alps, of course, when at Paris, he visited the Louvre. And 
 these are his words following his slight description : 
 
 " I regarded the Louvre with more interest as a great chapter in 
 Hazlitt's intellectual history, than as the richest gallery of pictures in 
 the world. The intensity of his first admiration ; the association of the 
 scene with the triumphs of his favourite hero ; and the softened spirit 
 in which he received it, when spoiled of its noblest trophies, and when 
 that hero had been finally vanquished by what he regarded as the 
 commonplace virtues and tyrannies of the world gave to the place, in 
 my mind, a personal interest, nearer, if lower, than its matchless 
 treasures could inspire. Hazlitt's true history was all within of the
 
 NOTES. 311 
 
 struggles and the winnings of thought ; and as thought will sympathise 
 with thought itself, more perfectly than with thought's grandest objects, 
 so here the tenderest associations this mighty collection rendered back 
 were those which a mind, now snatched from human view, once 
 imparted to its glories and its losses." 
 
 ON HOGARTH'S MARRIAGE-A-LA-MODE. 
 
 This was published in the two volumes of the Round Table, essays 
 eleven and twelve, and was taken into Sketches of the Principal 
 Picture Galleries in England. 
 
 "Boccaccio, the most refined" This is one of Hazlitt's references 
 to the great writer of the Decameron, which caused Leigh Hunt, in his 
 Bacchus in Tuscany, to say that " Hazlitt was the first to point out 
 to our own times the nobler character of Boccaccio." 
 
 7 he Reflector (1810-12) was a quarterly magazine, projected by Leigh 
 Hunt's brother : edited by Leigh Hunt himself. In his Autobiography 
 he says, " Some of the liveliest effusions of Lamb appeared in this 
 magazine." 
 
 "Lamb's Essay on the Genius of Hogarth.'" The note here given is 
 at the end of the essay as it appeared in the Round Table. When 
 incorporated with Sketches of Picture Galleries (1824), the words 
 following " C. Lamb" were left out. A glance at the advertisements 
 at the end of the volume acquaints us with the reason. Eiia : Essays 
 which have appeared under that signature in the London Magazine. 
 My copy of that original edition is now before me "ELIA," as Mr. 
 P. Fitzgerald thought it pertinent to remark, "ELIA," not the Essays 
 of Elia as they became afterwards in dark green cloth, clear in its type 
 as its humour after sixty-five years. Looking again at the Taylor and 
 Hessey advertisements, it is singular to note amongst those books then 
 "just published " how many have become famous. The first in the 
 list is Landor's Imaginary Conversations there are Gary's Dante and 
 Aristophanes ; Bowring's Poetry and Romance of Spain ; Coleridge's 
 Aids to Re/lection ; Flora Domestiea (fragrant with anonymous contri- 
 butions by Leigh Hunt) ; Songs and 7^a!es, by Allan Cunningham ; the 
 "Endymion," "Lamia," "Isabella," and "Eve of St. Agnes" of Keats; 
 Clare's poems ; and Elia. It should be noted that the many-sided 
 Coleridge did much to unseal the eyes as to discrimination of Hogarth's 
 powers. This we learn through a quotation by Lamb from The Friend.
 
 312 NOTES. 
 
 My copy of the original Friend shows me that Lamb quoted from the 
 second of Satyrane 's Letters 77ie Friend, No. 16, Thursday -, 
 December *]th, 1809 so that Coleridge's thought must have been 
 germinating for years, too, in Lamb's mind. Lamb's best sentence in his 
 Hogarth Essay refers to ' ' the quantity of thought which Hogarth 
 crowds into every picture." Lamb's limitation as art- critic is soon 
 reached. Not so with Hazlitt. Enthusiasm in dallying with a 
 favourite subject tricks it out with fruits and foliage not its own, 
 and elevates it into one of the most supreme of human efforts, 
 crying "Here is the Phoenix!" Lamb, indeed, did say Shakspere 
 and Hogarth ! Hazlitt having Hogarth solely in his mind's regard, 
 and angered with the world in its neglect of the painter, spoke, perhaps, 
 in hardly less ardent terms. But Hazlitt had travelled through the 
 lengths and breadths of the golden realms of this art, and in the 
 higher hours of contemplation he had some other thing to say. 
 Hogarth was not the artist for all nations and all time. To speak of 
 the man is one thing ; his relations to the great masters is another. 
 This Hazlitt made manifest in his Characteristics. ' ' Raphael's figures 
 are sustained by ideas ; Hogarth's are dictated by mechanical habits 
 and instincts. It is elevation of thought that gives grandeur and 
 delicacy of expression to passion. The expansion and refinement of 
 the soul are seen in the face as in a mirror. . . . Now, if mental 
 expression has this superior grandeur and grace, we can account at 
 once for the superiority of Raphael. For there is no doubt that it is 
 more difficult to give a whole, continuously and proportionably, than 
 to give the parts separate and disjointed, or to diffuse the same subtle 
 but powerful expression over a large mass than to caricature it in 
 a single part or feature. The actions in Raphael are like a branch of a 
 tree swept by the surging blast ; those in Hogarth like straws whirled 
 and twitched about in the gusts and eddies of passion. I do not mean 
 to say that goodness alone constitutes greatness, but mental power 
 does. Hogarth's Good Apprentice is insipid. Raphael has clothed 
 Elymas the Sorcerer with all the dignity and grandeur of vice." 
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 
 
 This Essay is of the first of the series of Table Talk which appeared 
 in the New Monthly, 1822. A note at the commencement informs the 
 reader that these essays "are by the well-known author of Table Talk,
 
 NOTES. 313 
 
 in one vol., Svo, published during the last year." It is the third 
 essay in the second volume of the republication of Table Talk. 
 
 " Repeating the lines which 1 have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's 
 poem!" They are from Coleridge's "Ode to the Departing Year," 
 referred to in the second essay. The lines he quotes appear in the 
 following extract : 
 
 " O, my mother Isle ! 
 Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers, 
 Glitter green with sunny showers ; 
 Thy grassy upland's gentle swells 
 
 Echo to the bleat of flocks ; 
 (Those grassy hills, those glittering dells, 
 
 Proudly ramparted with rocks,) 
 And ocean mid his uproar wild 
 Speaks safety to his island child." 
 
 " 1 once took a party to Oxford" Of course, this is the visit referred 
 to in the Introduction, and memorialised by Lamb in Vacation at 
 Oxford^ and spoken upon, again, in Conversation of Authors. 
 
 ON THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS. 
 
 The reason for giving this extract is to afford a specimen of his 
 loyalty to the Muses, even when his political passion is engaged. 
 He never wearied, in or out of season, in praising and denouncing 
 Burke. It is Hazlitt himself, and no other, to opine that Hunt 
 required something of the heat and earnestness of the political 
 partisan. Yet what would have destroyed the Ariel of essayists is the 
 making of Hazlitt. 
 
 WHETHER GENIUS is CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS? 
 
 This essay is the twelfth in the first volume of the Plain Speaker. 
 
 "I am not in the humour to pursue this argument any further at 
 present, but to write a digression." A transition as cheerful as it is 
 abrupt, which transports us at once to Winterslow. He is happy in his 
 seclusion there, as is told in other places. That sketch of Millimant 
 vras something he was proud of: also, that of Friscobaldo. Then
 
 314 NOTES. 
 
 another break, fresh as mountain spring : " I look out of my window 
 and see that a shower has just fallen." 
 
 " The circle of critics that beset a throne." Of course, he has the 
 arch-critic Gilford in his mind, as thus written in his letter to him 
 afterwards: " It is your business to keep a strict eye over all writers 
 who differ in opinion with his Majesty's Ministers, and to measure their 
 talents and attainments by the standard of their servility and meanness." 
 To say that Leigh Hunt, Editor of the Examiner, was driven from 
 country and friends because, ten years before, he had called a prince 
 "an Adonis of fifty," is fevered exaggeration. Hunt was imprisoned 
 for that offence, as is well known, but in the migration he simply suffered 
 from the chances of political warfare. His own representation was that 
 politics " different from ours, were triumphing all over Europe ; " 
 consequently, the Examiner, on which the fortunes of Hunt and his 
 brother depended, declined. Byron proposed that he should go to 
 Italy, and, in conjunction with himself and Shelley, "set up a Liberal 
 publication." That was the origin of the Liberal of which Hazlitt was 
 home editor. Twice Hazlitt's temper broke out in this essay. 
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION DF AUTHORS. 
 
 This Essay is dated " Winterslow Hut," appearing as number three 
 of Table Talk in the London for September 1820 ; republished as 
 Essays three and four in the first volume of the Plain Speaker. 
 
 These are the opening rays to the immortality which awaited 
 Lamb's Wednesdays. Of these I have spoken of elsewhere, and 
 abstain from other remarks, now that Hazlitt's descriptions are before 
 the reader. Other reference will be found in Barry Cornwall's 
 Memoir of Lamb, and Talfourd's Letters of Lamb. 
 
 The Indicator, as giving a good idea of Hunt's conversation ; a 
 kindly hint, again, for readers to make acquaintance of his friend's 
 writings. 
 
 "Afr. Northcote the fainter." An infatuation with Hazlitt. Boswell- 
 Redivivus was Hazlitt's conversations with Northcote idealised. Mr. 
 Carew Hazlitt illuminates the hero and the book in his Memoirs of 
 William Hazlitt, vol. i., page 198. Enough here of his words, that 
 Northcote was "a person of average conversational powers ... an 
 ill-conditioned, malevolent, mean-spirited person, for whom nobody 
 probably ever entertained any real regard." " An old cynic," says Mr.
 
 NOTES. 315 
 
 Leslie Stephen, "out of whom it does not seem that anybody else could 
 strike many sparks." And thus reported a friend of a conversation with 
 Hazlitt : "What fine things Northcote says." "Yes, and what ill- 
 natured things : they are all malicious to the last word. Lamb called 
 him a little bottle of aqua-fortis, which, you know, corrodes everything 
 it touches." "Except gold," interrupted Hazlitt; "he never drops 
 upon Sir Joshua or the great masters." " Well, but is he not flowing 
 over with envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness? I am told that he is 
 as spiteful as a woman. Then his niggardness ! Did he ever give 
 anything away?" "Yes," retorted Hazlitt, "his advice, and very 
 unpleasant it is." 
 
 "Lamb once came down . . . we crossed the country to Oxford" It was 
 in the second year after Hazlitt's marriage October 1809 that Lamb, 
 with his sister and Martin Burney, made this visit. (" Martin says, if 
 you can borrow a blanket or two, he can sleep on the floor without 
 either bed or mattress, which would save his expenses at the Hut. . . . 
 You may think it as well to make him up a bed in the best kitchen." 
 Mary Lamb to Mrs. Hazlitt, June 1809.) In Hazlitt's Farewell to 
 Essay-Writing, written 1828, he pathetically refers to this visit : "I 
 used to walk out at this time with Mr. and Miss Lamb of an evening, 
 to look at the Claude Lorraine skies over our heads, melting from 
 azure into purple and gold ; and to gather mushrooms, that sprung up 
 at our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton at supper. " Hazlitt has 
 already referred to the Oxford visit in Going a Journey. 
 
 ON NEW BOOKS. 
 
 Written in Florence, when on his wedding tour. Dated May 1825. 
 Lard Byron is dead. Yes, in the previous year April 19, 1824. 
 Waverley romances. Although it became an open secret, through the 
 bankruptcy of Constable in January 1826, it was not till the dinner of 
 the Theatrical Fund in Edinburgh, February 23, 1827, that Scott 
 avowed his authorship of the romances. Sir Walter himself was 
 in the chair. He wrote out for the occasion the three cardinal rules 
 for the maintenance of this dignity, as became his boonful nature, and 
 a fourth " always speak short, and skeoch dock na skiel cut a tale with 
 a drink. 
 
 This is the purpose and intent 
 
 Of gude Schir Walter's testament."
 
 316 NOTES. 
 
 Lord Meadowbank proposed Scott's health, and revealed the Great 
 Unknown. The company rose to their feet, thence upon the chairs 
 ind tables, to vent their rapturous applause. Scott replied, and 
 "dedicated a bumper to the health ... of my friend Bailie Nicol 
 Jarvie" that was Mackay, the actor who responded briefly " My 
 conscience ! My worthy father the deacon could never have believed 
 that his son would hae sic a compliment paid him by the Great 
 Unknown." 
 
 "If -we read Irving s Orations, it is merely that we may go as a 
 lounge to see the man." Irving has entered the Scotch Church : has 
 been a lesser light beside Chalmers in Glasgow : has arrived in London 
 and become the hero of the Pulpit. He holds forth in the Caledonian 
 Church, Cross Street, Covent Garden, and all fashionable London 
 is now around him, to treasure every word of his Orations. He has 
 "put new wine into old bottles," says Hazlitt, "or new cloth on old 
 garments. He has taken the thorns and briars of scholastic divinity, 
 and garlanded them with the flowers of modern literature." 
 
 " Everyone in a crowd has power to throw dirt : nine out of ten have 
 the inclination" These words are only a figurative paraphrase of the 
 Greek. 
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 
 
 This appeared as seventh Talle Talk in the London, February 1821, 
 and is the third Essay in the second volume of the Plain Speaker. 
 
 Marcian Colonna. A poetic tale of the passions, of sorrows, and 
 death. It would suit Hazlitt's mood. Of it was written by the sweet 
 Grecian hand of the time W. B. Procter's (Barry Cornwall's), 
 "heroine coming to the ball is delicious. He should always write 
 of beauty and gentleness, and all beautiful and gentle things, whether 
 in tears or smiles. If Titian could come to life again, to paint his 
 portrait for him in gratitude for his love to Italy, he would put by the 
 side of it a rose, bending with dew, from out a sunny glass." 
 
 " Keats' s Eve of St. Agnes." This was timely spoken. All praise of 
 Keats was now good, and it was a good thing for Hazlitt to measure 
 Keats against Gifford in the Spirit of the Age. " Adonais" was written 
 by Shelley in 1821, but not reprinted in England until 1829, and then 
 with fear and trembling by some young admirers. 
 
 " Like (these sentences) from the great preacher in the Caledonian 
 Chapel" This is praise indeed for Irving.
 
 NOTES. 317 
 
 " To understand an adversary is some praise: lo admire him is more ; 1 
 thought I did both : I knew I did one" He puts his whole of loving, 
 and liking, and hating into these words. Praise of Burke for his style 
 to the last, and a disclaimer as to his politics. 
 
 THE FIGHT 
 
 Appeared in New Monthly 1822, republished as the eighteenth essay 
 in Hazlitt's Literary Remains. 
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN 
 
 Appeared in the London, January 1821, as sixth essay of its Table 
 Talk, and is the second essay in the second volume of the Plain 
 Speaker. Take him at his word, that of manners he borrows 
 of no one ; take this as a mere society-essay, he the Observer and 
 Plain Speaker. But then, what colour and life there is in it. "Sir 
 Charles Bunbury" presents nothing startling. Ah, but then there 
 is romance in him ; "he is a gentleman of the first water " (the 
 same that sixty years ago married the beautiful Lady Sarah Lennox, 
 with whom the king was in love). Walking with Lamb in London, 
 Crabb Robinson met Sir Charles, who shook hands with him. Lamb 
 was all astonishment. " I had no idea that you knew Sheridan." 
 "Nor do I. That is Sir Charles Bunbury." " That's impossible. I 
 have known him to be Sheridan all my life. That shall be Sheridan. 
 You thief ! You have stolen my Sheridan." 
 
 "Lord C -" (Castlereagh), a well-hated man, cursed in his grave by 
 poets. Leigh Hunt, late in life, wrote kindly of him and said, " How 
 pleasant it is thus to find oneself reconciled to men whom we have 
 ignorantly undervalued, and how fortunate to have lived long enough 
 to say so." But these were political opponents. The approach of 
 the Marquis Wellesley, after the description of Castlereagh, is a masterly 
 contrast. 
 
 "Wycherley. . . . looking like a lord." Any grace added to a writer 
 of good English comedy would, with Hazlitt, add double lustre to 
 him. Wycherley's marriage with the Countess of Drogheda would 
 commend his memory further to Hazlitt ; the persecution of jealousy he 
 endured would win his sympathy. " Does not the reader wonder that 
 he did not beat her, although she was a Countess?" says a biographer.
 
 3i8 NOTES. 
 
 "It is not recorded, but we will hope that he did." He married a 
 second time, "just at the eve of death " that is eleven days before 
 he died to pay his debts with his wife's fortune. 
 
 " The late George Dyer." George Dyer did not remove from earth 
 until 1841. He is here, nineteen years before, the victim of a joke-arti- 
 fice which lies in the word " late." He was a respected, book-delving, 
 slovenly, kindly, down-at-the-heel, forgetful man. This will be seen to 
 some extent in Hazlitt's note on " New Books " and in Leigh Hunt's 
 "Jack Abbot's Breakfast," where Goodall, the author of all the comic 
 misery, is George Dyer. In 1800 Lamb spoke of him as "of burlesque 
 memory;" another time he wrote "George writes Odes, where the 
 rhymes, like fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of 
 six or eight lines apart, and calls that 'observing the laws of verse.' " 
 Lamb also said, " All poems aizgood to George ; all msnjine geniuses ; " 
 Lamb, also, made George the good genius in his Oxford in the Vacation, 
 and concluded by saying of him " On the Muses' hill he is as happy, 
 and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; and 
 when he goes about with you to show you the halls and colleges, you 
 think you have with you the Interpreter at the House Beautiful." 
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 Is the eleventh essay in Literary Remains. I read it as a paper 
 addressed to " My dear old fellow," with a smack of childhood in it. 
 I read it with Heine's baby-house poem in my mind, or with 
 Coleridge's 
 
 " Life is but thought ; so think I will 
 That youth and I are house-mates still." 
 
 Nearly all the subjects in Emerson's Conduct of Life are touched 
 upon by Hazlitt, from fate, power, culture, behaviour, and beauty, to 
 illusions, although in a different key. We are in the school of the 
 world, and reading "fellow" instead of "school-fellow," every one 
 can obtain benefit from the serious and judicious directions and warn- 
 ings. Hazlitt writes himself plainly in the essay. It is better than 
 his Characteristics, ten times told. The worldly wisdom in it is 
 condensed, pure, and powerful, as in the best of essays. Here comes 
 in his favourite maxim, as a heritage of wisdom for his son. " Desire 
 to please, and you will infallibly please. " When he speaks of marriage,
 
 NOTES. 319 
 
 the wound of heart opens and bleeds afresh. There, again, is the 
 wail from Don Quixote, " We hunt the wind, we worship a statue 
 and cry aloud to the desert." But of that enough, in fitter place. A 
 sigh from the Liber Amoris closes the penultimate paragraph. 
 Faithful to his admiration and art- affection, a cluster of painters con- 
 cludes his great argument. Of all the world of men they are to him 
 the finest spirits, and Northcote reappears, clothed with exhalations like 
 the dawn. 
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 
 
 This Essay is the ninth in the first volume of Table Talk. 
 
 i 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 
 
 Appeared in Netv Monthly, 1826 ; republished as the eighteenth 
 essay in Literary Remains. This is one of Lamb's Wednesdays. 
 
 " As, ho-vevtr, he would do neither, I suppose I must do both." There 
 is the joke of hide-and-seek in this. Nay, Mr. Carew Hazlitt observes 
 on his grandfather's papers, which appeared in the Examiner 
 " Curiously enough, a few months afterwards (November 1823) Lamb 
 capped the Examiner ' Guy Faux ' with a London Magazine ' Guy 
 Faux.' The subject had been allowed to sleep thus far, and now in 
 the same year two of the principal authors of the day emptied out 
 their thoughts, etc." Thus, in 1826, Hazlitt writes that Lamb had 
 suggested the subject, but as Lamb would not undertake it, he must. 
 Mr. Carew Hazlitt says that in "the same year" 1823 both 
 essays appeared ; but, in fact, Lamb's was in the November 
 London of that year, Hazlitt's in the November Examiner for 1821. 
 The loathness to reproduce both of these essays may have something 
 to do with the mystification. Elia's Essay is made up of a long 
 extract from Hazlitt's " Guy Faux," a passage from one of Jeremy 
 Taylor's sermons, and some general remarks of his own, amidst 
 which, to the dirge-like sound of Elia's prose, the Houses of Par- 
 liament ascend to the stars, and became fixed there a constellation 
 large, and bright, and wonderful. Hazlitt did not aspire to such a 
 height. He is more human. He moves amongst principalities and 
 powers of the earth with explosive fury : praising martyrs and making 
 Guy Faux triumphant. He regales his wrath by dwelling on Guy 
 Faux's sincere fanaticism. " What lighted up the dungeon-gloom in
 
 320 NOTES. 
 
 which Guy Faux buried himself alive ? The face of heaven open to 
 receive him." He is not content with Guy Faux; he has tasted 
 blood ; he is on the track of carnage. He thrills at the heroism of 
 Margaret Lambrun ; he dwells, with unexpected praise, long and 
 admiringly, on Southey's Cid ; and at length sees Kean as a man of 
 promptitude and valour, and worthy of being mentioned in the heroic 
 mood. 
 
 We must now leave names to speak for themselves. If the reader is 
 curious to inquire further, he will be as sure of his reward as though he 
 were transported to the Mermaid, Only, of Martin Burney by the 
 way. He it was who went to Winterslow with the Lambs five pounds in 
 his pocket prepared to " sleep on the floor without either bed or mat- 
 tress." Martin's name is attached to two of Lamb's jokes. Earnestly 
 explaining the three kinds of acids, he was stopped by Lamb, ' ' The 
 best of all kinds of acid, however, as you know, Martin, is assid-uity." 
 A person, speaking to Lamb, insisted on Martin's obstinacy. Lamb 
 parried, but at last " Well, I like a good solid, obstinacy something 
 may come of it. Besides, there's something to quarrel with. One's 
 blows don't tell upon a fellow who goes whisking about like a ball of 
 worsted, and won't stand up for his opinion. Martin's a freeholder, 
 and insists upon having his vote. " 
 
 A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING. 
 
 Written at Winterslow, February 20, 1828, but not printed until it 
 appeared in the Winterslow volume, 1850. 
 
 Probably this Essay was intended to be sent to a magazine some day. 
 Hazlitt's return to the past has a melancholy sweetness in it. When he 
 first read the "Flower and the Leaf" of Chaucer! Ah, and that 
 time ! We have already glanced at it more than once when Charles 
 and Mary Lamb visited Winterslow. He verifies his own words : 
 " I have learned to set a grateful value on the past." 
 
 THE SICK CHAMBER. 
 
 11 A Free Admission.'" We have reached the final year, 1830. 
 Hazlitt contributed the Free Admission to the New Monthly this 
 year, and in August the Sick Chamber to the same magazine. 
 His earliest love speaks from the sick couch. Books "they are
 
 NOTES. 321 
 
 the first and last, the most home-felt, the most heart-felt, of all our 
 enjoyments." Then there is his latest wish "I should like to leave 
 some sterling work behind me. " Earliest love ! Yes, he was enamoured 
 of Books before Pictures. 
 
 ON WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 It is at "special request" that I insert this paper, which is intro- 
 ductory to Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Comic Writers. But a 
 lecture is frequently nothing more than an essay delivered in public 
 there may be no inconsistency. 
 
 The Essay is all that the well-wisher could desire, and probably dis- 
 plays Hazlitt a little more at large as the literary critic. Then, it fails 
 not to be Hazlittean : if this be not seen in the beginning, it will be felt at 
 the end. Perhaps, also, in this : " The essence of the laughable is the 
 incongruous" (page 272). There was no necessity, in dealing with Wit 
 and Humour, to lay down such a doctrine. Of course, then, he 
 needs must give us what men laugh at, and trips himself up in his 
 catalogue. We laugh royally at things which are not incongruous 
 such are even specified by Hazlitt. He protests too much. Indeed, he 
 can go to any extreme. He says, " You cannot give people a reason 
 why they should laugh " (page 275) yet he would endeavour to give 
 a reason why they should not laugh. Thus on Marvel, in this volume, 
 he gives as an instance of the "fixed, far-fetched" method of 
 treatment, the poet's line, where he says of the Hollanders, when their 
 dykes overflowed 
 
 " The fish ofttimes tho burgher dispossessed, 
 And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest." 
 
 Now, Hunt has this remark " Hazlitt made the same observation to 
 Charles Lamb and myself, and was entering into a very acute discourse 
 to prove that we ought not to laugh at such exaggerations, when we were 
 forced to interrupt him by a fit of laughter uncontrollable." Hazlitt's 
 Essay should be read along with Leigh Hunt's on Wit and Humour. 
 Hunt begins where Hazlitt ends, and he is a master-hand, having the 
 animal spirits which he affirms Hazlitt wanted. This you feel with 
 every quotation that Hunt makes. As for the definition of Wit and 
 Humour, after having written as much as would serve for ten notes, 
 we put it aside. Although we cannot agree with Hazlitt's theorising, it is 
 well to acquiesce, and pass on ; not worry with reasonings especially
 
 322 NOTES. 
 
 as he brings food for mirth. For there are good specimens here of Wit 
 and Humour ; and to read such, like reading fine poetry, is better than 
 all the definitions in the world. How a lecturer, apparently without 
 explanation or apology, could give, as a lecture on Comic Writers, one 
 upon "The Works of Hogarth," which Hazlitt does, would be inex- 
 plicable in any other person than William Hazlitt. That lecture is 
 nothing else than the essay of this volume, plus remarks on Raphael 
 and Wilkie. Then, again, Reproached the French "with an equal 
 want of books and men. " This is not a worthy diversion ; but it is 
 an instance of Hazlitt's temper. It is real saturnine humour, and 
 we can laugh at it. See, after he raises the shadow, how he is beaten. 
 " The writer of some pretensions " is Wordsworth. But neither 
 poet nor reader could be satisfied with Hazlitt's production of " Ninon 
 de Lenclos and her friends in a common French print." Moreover, 
 Wordsworth would have refused to accept as names of greatness those 
 mentioned by Hazlitt, from Corneille to Boileau, who was not praised 
 by Byron, for his facile touch of 
 
 " His country's creakinj; lyre, 
 That whetstone of the teeth, monotony in wire." 
 
 As for Rabelais, great as he is, he is of a different order from the genius 
 of Milton, who is mentioned by Wordsworth. Besides, Hazlitt is not 
 to the point. Wordsworth spoke of great minds we have amongst us, 
 and remarks how strange it is that in her exigencies of revolution, 
 France had not produced such souls. 
 
 " No single volume paramount, no code, 
 No master-spirit, no determined road, 
 But equally a want of books and men ! " 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NE\VC'\STI,E-ON-TYN3.
 
 New Illustrated Edition. 
 
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 "As you read on you say, not, 'This is like life,' but, 'This is 
 life.' It has not only the complexion, the very hue, of life, but its 
 movement, its advances, its strange pauses, its seeming reversions to 
 former conditions, and its perpetual change, its apparent isolations, 
 its essential solidarity. It is a world, and you live in it while you 
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 PEER GYNT: A Dramatic Poem. 
 
 BY HENRIK IBSEN. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 WILLIAM AND CHARLES ARCHER. 
 
 This Translation^ though unrhymed, preserves throughout the 
 various rhythms of the original. 
 
 " In Brand the hero is an embodied protest against the poverty of 
 spirit and half-heartedness that Ibsen rebelled against in his country- 
 men. In Peer Gynt the hero is himself the embodiment of that spirit. 
 In Brand the fundamental antithesis, upon which, as its central theme, 
 the drama is constructed, is the contrast between the spirit of com- 
 promise on the one hand, and the motto ' everything or nothing ' on 
 the other. And Peer Gynt is the very incarnation of a compromising 
 dread of decisive committal to any one course. In Brand the problem 
 of self-realisation and the relation of the individual to his surroundings 
 is obscurely struggling for recognition, and in Peer Gynt it becomes the 
 formal theme upon which all the fantastic variations of the drama are 
 built up. In both plays alike the problems of heredity and the influence 
 of early surroundings are more than touched upon; and both alike 
 culminate in the doctrine that the only redeeming power on earth or in 
 heaven is the power of love." Mr. P. H. WICKSTEED. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, 24 Warwick Lane.
 
 THE SCOTT LIBRARY. 
 
 Cloth, Uncut Edges, Gilt Top. Price is. 6d. per Volume. 
 
 VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED 
 
 1 MALORY'S ROMANCE OF KING ARTHUR AND THE 
 
 Quest of the Holy Grail. Edited by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 2 THOREAU'S WALDEN. WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 by Will H. Dircks. 
 
 3 THOREAU'S "WEEK." WITH PREFATORY NOTE BY 
 
 Will H. Dircks. 
 
 4 THOREAU'S ESSAYS. EDITED, WITH AN INTRO- 
 
 duction, by Will H. Dircks. 
 
 5 CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, ETC. 
 
 By Thomas De Quincey. With Introductory Note by William Sharp. 
 
 6 LANDOR'S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. SELECTED, 
 
 with Introduction, by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 7 PLUTARCH'S LIVES (LANGHORNE). WITH INTRO- 
 
 ductory Note by B. J. Snell, M.A. 
 
 8 BROWNE'S RELIGIO MEDICI, ETC. WITH INTRO- 
 
 duction by J. Addington Symonds. 
 
 9 SHELLEY'S ESSAYS AND LETTERS. EDITED, W r ITH 
 
 Introductory Note, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 10 SWIFT'S PROSE WRITINGS. CHOSEN AND ARRANGED, 
 
 with Introduction, by Walter Lewin. 
 
 11 MY STUDY WINDOWS. BY TAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 With Introduction by R. Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 12 LOWELL'S ESSAYS ON THE ENGLISH POETS. WITH 
 
 a new Introduction by Mr. Lowell. 
 
 13 THE BIGLOW PAPERS. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 With a Prefatory Note by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square.
 
 THE SCOTT LIBRARY continued. 
 
 14 GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS. SELECTED FROM 
 
 Cunningham's Lives. Edited by William Sharp. 
 
 15 BYRON'S LETTERS AND JOURNALS. SELECTED, 
 
 with Introduction, by Mathilde Blind. 
 
 16 LEIGH HUNT'S ESSAYS. WITH INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 Notes by Arthur Symons. 
 
 17 LONGFELLOW'S "HYPERION," " KAVANAH," AND 
 
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 Edited, with Introduction, by Mrs. William Sharp. 
 
 19 THE MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS. EDITED 
 
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 20 THE TEACHING OF EPICTETUS. TRANSLATED FROM 
 
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 21 SELECTIONS FROM SENECA. WITH INTRODUCTION 
 
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 22 SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA. BY WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Revised by the Author, with fresh Preface. 
 
 23 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS, AND OTHER PAPERS. P.Y 
 
 Walt Whitman. (Published by arrangement with the Author.) 
 
 24 WHITE'S NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. WITH 
 
 a Preface by Richard Jefferies. 
 
 25 DEFOE'S CAPTAIN SINGLETON. EDITED, WITH 
 
 Introduction, by H. Halliday Sparling. 
 
 26 MAZZINI'S ESSAYS : LITERARY, POLITICAL, AND 
 
 Religious. With Introduction by William Clarke. 
 
 27 PROSE WRITINGS OF HEINE. WITH INTRODUCTION 
 
 by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 28 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. WITH INTRODUCTION 
 
 by Helen Zimmern. 
 
 29 PAPERS OF STEELE AND ADDISON. EDITED BY 
 
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 30 BURNS'S LETTERS. SELECTED AND ARRANGED, 
 
 with Introduction, by J. Logie Robertson, M.A. 
 
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 31 VOLSUNGA SAGA. WILLIAM MORRIS. WITH INTRO- 
 
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 32 SARTOR RESARTUS. BY THOMAS CARLYLE. WITH 
 
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 33 SELECT WRITINGS OF EMERSON. WITH INTRO- 
 
 duction by Percival Chubb. 
 
 34 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LORD HERBERT. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Will H. Dircks. 
 
 35 ENGLISH PROSE, FROM MAUNDEVILLE TO 
 
 Thackeray. Chosen and Edited by Arthur Galton. 
 
 36 THE PILLARS OF SpCIETY, AND OTHER PLAYS. BY 
 
 Henrik Ibsen. Edited, with an Introduction, by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 37 IRISH FATRY AND FOLK TALES. EDITED AND 
 
 Selected by W. 13. Yeats. 
 
 38 ESSAYS OF DR. JOHNSON, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
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 39 ESSAYS OF WILLIAM HAZL1TT. SELECTED AND 
 
 Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Frank Can-. 
 
 40 LANDOR'S PENTAMERON, AND OTHER IMAGINARY 
 
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 41 POE'S TALES AND ESSAYS. EDITED, WITH INTRO- 
 
 duction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 42 VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Edited, with Preface, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 43 POLITICAL ORATIONS, FROM WENTWORTH TO 
 
 Macaulay. Edited, with Introduction, by William Clarke. 
 
 44 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. BY 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 45 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. BY OLIVER 
 
 Wendell Holmes. 
 
 46 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST- TABLE. BY 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 47 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS SON. 
 
 Selected, with Introduction, by Charles Sayle. 
 
 iLondon : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square
 
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 48 STORIES FROM CARLETON. SELECTED, WITH INTRO- 
 
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 49 JANE EYRE. BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE. EDITED BY 
 
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 50 ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND. EDITED BY LOTHROP 
 
 Withington, with a Preface by Dr. Furnivall. 
 
 51 THE PROSE WRITINGS OF THOMAS DAVIS. EDITED 
 
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 52 SPENCE'S ANECDOTES. A SELECTION. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction and Notes, by John Underbill. 
 
 53 MORE'S UTOPIA, AND LIFE OF EDWARD V. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Maurice Adams. 
 
 54 SADI'S GULISTAN, OR FLOWER GARDEN. TRANS- 
 
 lated, with an Essay, by James Ross. 
 
 55 ENGLISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. EDITED BY 
 
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 56 NORTHERN STUDIES. BY EDMUND GOSSE. WITH 
 
 a Note by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 57 EARLY REVIEWS OF GREAT. WRITERS. EDITED BY 
 
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 58 ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. WITH GEORGE HENRY 
 
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 59 LANDOR'S PERICLES AND ASPASIA. EDITED, WITH 
 
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 60 ANNALS OF TACITUS. THOMAS GORDON'S TRANS- 
 
 lation. Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Galton. 
 
 6 1 ESSAYS OF ELIA. BY CHARLES LAMB. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 62 BALZAC'S SHORTER STORIES. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 William Wilson and the Count Stenbock. 
 
 63 COMEDIES OF DE MUSSET. EDITED, WITH AN 
 
 Introductory Note, by S. L. Gwynn. 
 
 64 CORAL REEFS. BY CHARLES DARWIN. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Dr. J. W. Williams. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Squaro.
 
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 65 SHERIDAN'S PLAYS. EDITED, WITH AN INTRO- 
 
 duction, by Rudolf Dircks. 
 
 66 OUR VILLAGE. BY MISS MITFORD. EDITED, WITH 
 
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 67 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 By Charles Dickens. With Introduction by Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 68 TALES FROM WONDERLAND. BY RUDOLPH 
 
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 69 ESSAYS AND PAPERS BY DOUGLAS JERROLD. EDITED 
 
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 70 VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN, BY 
 
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 71 " THE ATHENIAN ORACLE." A SELECTION. EDITED 
 
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 72 ESSAYS OF SAINT - BEUVE. TRANSLATED AND 
 
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 73 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. FROM THE TRANS- 
 
 lation of Sydenham and Taylor. Edited by T. W. Rolleston. 
 
 74 HEINE'S ITALIAN TRAVEL SKETCHES, ETC. TRANS- 
 
 lated by Elizabeth A. Sharp. With an Introduction from the French of 
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 75 SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS. TRANSLATED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 76 SELECTIONS FROM SYDNEY SMITH. EDITED, WITH 
 
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 77 THE NEW SPIRIT. BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 
 78 THE BOOK OF MARVELLOUS ADVENTURES. FROM 
 
 the "Morte d'Arthur." Edited by Ernest Rhys. [This, together with 
 No. 1, forms the complete " Morte d'Arthur."] 
 
 79 ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. BY SIR ARTHUR HELPS. 
 
 With an Introduction by E. A. Helps. 
 
 80 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE. SELECTED, WITH A 
 
 Prefatory Note, by Percival Chubb. 
 
 Si THE LUCK OF BARRY LYNDON. BY W. M. 
 Thackeray. Edited by F. T. Marzials. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square.
 
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 82 SCHILLER'S WILLIAM TELL. TRANSLATED, WITH 
 
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 83 CARLYLE'S ESSAYS ON GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
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 84 PLAYS AND DRAMATIC ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Rudolf Dircks. 
 
 85 THE PROSE OF WORDSWORTH. SELECTED AND 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Professor William Knight. 
 
 86 ESSAYS, DIALOGUES, AND THOUGHTS OF COUNT 
 
 Giacomo Leopardi. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by 
 Major-Ueneral Patrick MaxwelL 
 
 87 THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL A RUSSIAN COMEDY. 
 
 By Nikolai V. Gogol. Translated from the original, with an Introduction 
 and Notes, by Arthur A. Sykes. 
 
 88 ESSAYS AND APOTHEGMS OF FRANCIS, LORD BACON : 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by John Buchan. 
 
 89 PROSE OF MILTON: SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Richard Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 90 THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Thomas Taylor, with an Introduction by Theodore Wratialaw. 
 
 91 PASSAGES FROM FROISSART. WITH AN INTRO- 
 
 duction by Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 02 THE PROSE AND TABLE TALK OF COLERIDGE. 
 Edited by W. H. Dircks. 
 
 93 HEINE IN ART AND LETTERS TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Elizabeth A. Sharp. 
 
 94 SELECTED ESSAYS OF DE QUINCEY. WITH AN 
 
 Introduction by Sir Geor^s Douglas, Bart 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED. Paternoster Square.
 
 Great Writers. 
 
 A NEW SERIES OF CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES, 
 Edited by E. ROBERTSON and F. T. MARZIALS. 
 
 Cloth, Uncut Edges, Gilt Top. Price 1/6. 
 Longfellow . By Professor Eric S. Robertson 
 
 Coleridge By Hall Caine 
 
 Dickens .... By Frank T. Marzials 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti . . . By J. Knight 
 Samuel Johnson . . . By Colonel F. Grant 
 
 Darwin By G. T. Bettany 
 
 Charlotte Bronte . . . . By A. Birrell 
 Carlyle . . . . By R. Garnett, LL.D. 
 Adam Smith . . . By R. B. Haldane, M.P. 
 
 Keats By W. M. Rossetti 
 
 Shelley By William Sharp 
 
 Smollett By David Hannay 
 
 Goldsmith .... By Austin Dobson 
 
 Scott By Professor Yonge 
 
 Burns .... Jy Professor Blackie 
 Victor Hugo . . . i>y Frank T. Marzials 
 Emerson . . . . By R. Garnett, LL. D. 
 
 Goethe By James Sime 
 
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 Schiller .... By Henry W. Nevinson 
 
 Marryat By David Hannay 
 
 Losing By T. W. Rolleston 
 
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 George Eliot . . . .By Oscar Browning 
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 Voltaire .... By Francis Espinasse 
 Leigh Hunt By Cosmo Monkhouse 
 
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 LIBRARY OF HUMOUR 
 
 Cloth Elegant^ Large Crown 8v0, Price 3/6 per voL 
 
 VOL UMES ALREAD Y ISSUED. 
 
 THE HUMOUR OF FRANCE. Translated, with an 
 Introduction and Notes, by Elizabeth Lee. With 
 numerous Illustrations by Paul Fre*nzeny. 
 
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 Introduction and Notes, by Hans Miiller-Casenov. 
 With numerous Illustrations by C. E. Brock. 
 
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 troduction and Notes, by A. Werner. With 50 Illustra- 
 tions and a Frontispiece by Arturo Faldi. 
 
 THE HUMOUR OF AMERICA. Selected with a 
 copious Biographical Index of American Humorists, by 
 James Barr. 
 
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 an Introduction and Notes, by A. Werner, With 
 numerous Illustrations by Dudley Hardy. 
 
 THE HUMOUR OF IRELAND. Selected by D. J. 
 O'Donoghue. With numerous Illustrations by Oliver 
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 IBSEN'S PROSE DRAMAS. 
 
 EDITED BY WILLIAM ARCHER. 
 
 Complete in Five Vols. Crown 8vo, Cloth, Price 3/6 each. 
 Set of Five Vols., in Case, 17/6; in Half Morocco, in Case, 32/6. 
 
 " We seem at last to bt shjwn men and women as tliey are ; and at first it 
 is more than we can endure, ... All Ibsen's c/tai acters speak and act as if 
 they were hypnotised, and under their creator's imperious demand to reveal 
 themselves. There never was such a mirror held up to nature before: it is 
 too terrible. . . . Yet we must return to Ibsen, with his remorseless surgery, 
 his remorseless electric-light, until we, too, have grown strong and learned to 
 face the naked if necessary, the Jlaycd and bleeding reality." SPEAKER 
 (London). 
 
 VOL. I. "A DOLL'S HOUSE," "THE LEAGUE OF 
 YOUTH," and "THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY." With 
 Portrait of the Author, and Biographical Introduction by 
 WILLIAM ARCHER. 
 
 VOL. II. "GHOSTS," "AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE," 
 and "THE WILD DUCK." With an Introductory Note. 
 
 VOL. III. "LADY INGER OF OSTRAT," "THE VIKINGS 
 AT HELGELAND," "THE PRETENDERS." With an 
 Introductory Note and Portrait of Ibsen. 
 
 VOL. IV. "EMPEROR AND GALILEAN." With an 
 Introductory Note by WILLIAM ARCHER. 
 
 VOL. V. " ROSMERSHOLM," "THE LADY FROM THE 
 SEA," "HEDDA GABLER." Translated by WILLIAM 
 ARCHER. With an Introductory Note. 
 
 The sequence of the plays in each -volume is chronological ; the complete 
 set of volumes comprising the dramas thus presents them in chronological 
 order. 
 
 "The art of prose translation does not perhaps enjoy a very high literary 
 status in England, but we have no hesitation in numbering the present 
 version of Ibsen, so far as it has gone (Vols. I. and II.), among the very 
 best achievements, in that kind, ot our generation." Academy. 
 
 "We have seldom, if ever, met with a translation so absolutely 
 idiomatic." Glasgow Herald. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square.
 
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 CONVERSATION BOOKS, 
 
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 The contents of these little handbooks are so arranged as to 
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 COUNT TOLSTOI'S WORKS. 
 
 The following Volumes are already issued 
 
 A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR 
 
 THE COSSACKS 
 
 IVAN ILYITCH, AND OTHER 
 
 STORIES 
 
 MY RELIGION 
 LIFE 
 
 MY CONFESSION 
 CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, 
 
 YOUTH 
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR 
 ANNA KARENINA. 3/6 
 
 WHAT TO DO? 
 
 WAR AND PEACE. (4vols.) 
 
 THE LONG EXILE, AND 
 OTHER STORIES FOR CHILD- 
 REN 
 
 SEVASTOPOL 
 
 THE KREUTZER SONATA, 
 AND FAMILY HAPPI- 
 NESS 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS 
 WITHIN YOU. 
 
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 NEW 'BOOKLETS' BY COUNT TOLSTOI. 
 
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 WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD 
 
 IS ALSO 
 
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 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 THE GODSON 
 
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 OUT 
 
 WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A 
 MAN ? 
 
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 TANGLEWOOD TALES. 
 
 TWICE-TOLD TALES. 
 
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 OUR OLD HOME. 
 
 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 
 
 THE SNOW IMAGE. 
 
 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 THE NEW ADAM AND EVE. 
 
 LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 
 
 By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
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 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
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 EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
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 EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Prof. GEDDES and THOMSON. 
 ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE. By G. W. DE 
 
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 THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. By Dr. TAYLOR. 
 PHYSIOGNOMY AND EXPRESSION. P. MANTEGAZZA. 
 EVOLUTION AND DISEASE. By J. B. SUTTON. 
 THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. By G. L. GOMME. 
 THE CRIMINAL. By HAVELOCK ELLI?. 
 SANITY AND INSANITY. By Dr. C. MERCIER. 
 HYPNOTISM. By Dr. ALBERT MOLL (Berlin). 
 MANUAL TRAINING. By Dr. WOODWARD (St. Louis). 
 SCIENCE OF FAIRY TALES. By E. S. HARTLAND. 
 PRIMITIVE FOLK. By ELIE RECLUS. 
 EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. By LETOURNEAU. 
 BACTERIA AND THEIR PRODUCTS. Dr. WOODHEAD. 
 EDUCATION AND HEREDITY. By J. M. GUYAU. 
 THE MAN OF GENIUS. By Prof. LOMEROSO. 
 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE. By Prof. PEARSON. 
 PROPERTY: ITS ORIGIN. By CH. LETOURNEAU. 
 VOLCANOES, PAST AND PRESENT. By Prof. HULL. 
 PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEMS. By Dr. J. F. SYKES. 
 MODERN METEOROLOGY. By FRANK WALDO, Ph.D. 
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 1 CHRISTIAN YEAR. With Portrait of John Keble. 
 
 2 LONGFELLOW. With Portrait of Longfellow. 
 
 3 SHELLEY. With Portrait of Shelley. 
 
 4 WORDSWORTH. With Portrait of Wordsworth. 
 
 5 WHITTIER. With Portrait of Whittier. 
 
 6 BURNS. Songs > With Portrait of Barns, and View of "The 
 
 7 BURNS. Poems/ Auld Brig o' Doon." 
 
 8 KEATS. With Portrait of Keats. 
 
 9 EMERSON. With Portrait of Emerson. 
 
 10 SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY. Portrait of D. Q. Rossetti. 
 
 11 WHITMAN. With Portrait of Whitman. 
 
 12 LOVE LETTERS OF A VIOLINIST. Portrait of Eric Mackay. 
 
 13 SCOTT. Lady of the Lake,^| With Portrait of Sir Walter Scott, 
 
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 14 SCOTT. Mansion, etc. ) Strand, Loch Katrine." 
 
 15 CHILDREN OF THE POETS. With an Engraving of " The 
 
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 17 SYDNEY DOBELL. With Portrait of Sydney Dobell. 
 
 18 HERRICK. With Portrait of Herrick. 
 
 19 BALLADS AND RONDEAUS. Portrait of W. E. Henley. 
 
 20 IRISH MINSTRELSY. With Portrait of Thomas Davis. 
 
 21 PARADISE LOST. With Portrait of Milton. 
 
 22 FAIRY MUSIC. Engraving from Drawing by C. E. Brock. 
 
 23 GOLDEN TREASURY. With Engraving of Virgin Mother. 
 
 24 AMERICAN SONNETS. With Portrait of J. R. Lowell. 
 
 25 IMITATION OF CHRIST. With Engraving, " Ecce Homo." 
 
 26 PAINTER POETS. With Portrait of Walter Crane. 
 
 27 WOMEN POETS. With Portrait of Mrs. Browning. 
 
 28 POEMS OF HON. RODEN NOEL. Portrait of Hon. R. NoeL 
 
 29 AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE. Portrait of Mark Twain. 
 80 SONGS OF FREEDOM. With Portrait of William Morris. 
 
 31 SCOTTISH MINOR POETS. With Portrait of R. Tannahill. 
 
 32 CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH VERSE. With Portrait of 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson.
 
 S3 PARADISE REGAINED. With Portrait of Milton. 
 
 34 CAVALIER POETS. With Portrait of Suckling. 
 
 35 HUMOROUS POEMS. With Portrait of Hood. 
 
 36 HERBERT. With Portrait of Herbert. 
 
 37 POE. With Portrait of Poe. 
 
 38 OWEN M EREDITH. With Portrait of late Lord Lytton. 
 
 39 LOVE LYRICS. With Portrait of Ralwigh. 
 
 40 GERMAN BALLADS. With Portrait of Schiller. 
 
 41 CAMBPELL. With Portrait of CampbelL 
 
 42 CANADIAN POEMS. With View of Mount Stephen. 
 
 43 EARLY ENGLISH POETRY. With Portrait of Earl of Surrey. 
 
 44 ALLAN RAMSAY. With Portrait of Ramsay. 
 
 45 SPENSER, With Portrait of Spenser. 
 
 46 CHATTERTON. With Engraving, " The Death of Chattertoa." 
 
 47 COWPER, With Portrait of Cowper. 
 
 48 CHAUCER. With Portrait of Chaucer. 
 
 49 COLERIDGE. With Portrait of Coleridge. 
 
 50 POPE. With Portrait of Pope. 
 
 51 i' - Misce T llaneous \ With Portraits of Byron. 
 
 52 BYRON. Don Juan / 
 
 53 JACOBITE SONGS. With Portrait of Prince Charlie. 
 
 54 BORDER BALLADS. With View of Neidpath Castle. 
 
 55 AUSTRALIAN BALLADS. With Portrait of A. L. Gordon. 
 
 56 HOGG. With Portrait of Hogg. 
 
 57 GOLDSMITH. With Portrait of Goldsmith. 
 
 58 MOORE. With Portrait of Moore. 
 
 59 DORA GREEXWELL. With Portrait of Dora GreenwelL 
 
 60 BLAKE. With Portrait of Blake. 
 
 61 POEMS OF NATURE. With Portrait of Audrew Lan^. 
 
 62 PRAED. With Portrait. 
 
 63 SOUTHEY. With Portrait. 
 
 64 HUGO. With Portrait. 
 
 65 GOETHE. With Portrait. 
 
 66 BERANGER. With Portrait. 
 
 67 HEINE. With Portrait 
 
 68 SEA MUSIC. With View of Corbiere Rocks, Jersey. 
 
 69 SONG-TIDE. With Portrait of Philip Bourke Marston. 
 
 70 LADY OF LYONS. With Portrait of Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 71 SHAKESPEARE : Songs and Sonnets. With Portrait. 
 
 72 CRABBE. With Portrait. 
 
 73 BEN JONSON. With Portrait. 
 
 74 CRADLE SONGS. With Drawing by T. Eyre Macklin.
 
 MR. GEORGE MOORE'S NEW NOVEL 
 
 Cloth, Crown 8vo, Price 6s. 
 
 ESTHER WATERS: A Novel. 
 
 BY GEORGE MOORE. 
 
 " Strong, vivid, sober, yet undaunted in its realism, full to the brim of obser- 
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 to anything the author has ever written before, but it is one of the most 
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 credit not only to the author, but the country in which it has been written." 
 Th World. 
 
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 take account." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 "It may be as well to set down, beyond possibility of misapprehension, my 
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 'masses' been delineated as they are delineated here. . . . Esther Waters is 
 the best story that he (Mr. Moore) has written, and one on which he may be 
 heartily congratulated." Globe. 
 
 "Matthew Arnold, reviewing one of Tolstoi's novels, remarked that the 
 Russian novelist seemed to write because the thing happened so, and for no 
 other reason. That is precisely the merit of Mr. Moore's book. ... It seems 
 inevitable." Westminster Gazette. 
 
 OTHER NOVELS BY GEORGE MOORE. 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth, 33. 6d. each. 
 
 A DRAMA IN MUSLIN. Seventh Edition. 
 
 A MODERN LOVER. New Edition. 
 
 A MUMMER'S WIFE. Twentieth Edition. 
 
 VAIN FORTUNE. New Edition. With Five Illustrations by 
 Maurice Greiffenhagen. 
 
 Second Edition, Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. 
 
 MODERN PAINTING. By George Moore. 
 
 "Of the very few books on art that painters and critics should on no account 
 leave unread this is surely one." Studio. 
 
 "His book is one of the best books about pictures that have come into our 
 hands for some years." St. James's Gazette. 
 
 "A more original, a better informed, a more suggestive, and, let us add, a 
 more amusing work on the art of to-day, we have never read than this volume." 
 Glaagow Herald. 
 
 London . WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 675 628 2