THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE XTbc morlD'5 Classics XV THE WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.— II. SKETCHES AND ESSAYS SKETCHES AND ESSAYS BY WILLIAM HAZLITT :b.^ HENRY FROWDE OXFORD rXIVERSITY PRESS LONDON. NKW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOJ KNK \\ ILLIA3I HaZLITT. Born : Maidstone_, Kent^ April 10, 177^. Died : Loudon, September 18, 1880. These Essays were first collected and pub- lished in volume form in the year 1839. They were first printed in the ^ World's Classics' in 1902, and reprinted in 190o, 1907, 1910 and 1912. PHnted by v.. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinhirgfu CONTENTS ^ On RiLVDiNG Nkw Book> . ■ On Cant and Hypocri'^y . Mp:kry Engi-vni) . c On a SiN-DiAi- A On Prejudick f Sei.f-Love anj> Bknkvolkm k. (A Dialogi r.) ( >N Disagreeable People On Knowledge ok the AV'orld , On Fashion 1 On Nicknames On Taste . >\'hy the Heroes of Ko.aiancks On the Conversation ok Lords The Lettku-Bkil . Envy On the Spirit oi- Pautisanshij' Footmen . ... A Chapter on Editors . . . 1 17 30 ■in o() V Dialogi 1.) 71 . 104 • . nil 1 '^"' 144 . lo3 are I.NSIPIO . 173 . ir.o -03 1209 21 G 230 238 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS ON READING NEW BOOKS And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a rout about 7—Stkrnb. I CANNOT understand the rag-e manifested by the greater part of the world for reading New Hooks, 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 1 consider the countless volumes that lie unopened, unregarded, unread, and unthought-of, I cannot enter into the patlietic complaints that I hear made that Sir A\'alter writes no more — that the press is idle — that Lord Byron is dead. If 1 have not read a book before, it is, to ail 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 If it be urged that it has no modern, passing incidents, and is out of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much the newer ; it is farther removed from other works that 1 have lately read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life,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 mouth, or year at the utmost. There is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for tlie season. One 2 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS would imag-ine 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 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. MTiat 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 fragrancy 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 cliaracters 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. \\Tio, 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 ? 1 ' Laws are not like women, the worse for being old.'— The Duke of Buckingham's Speech in the Hotise of Lords, in Charles th« Second'B tivru. ON READING NEW BOOKS 3 A new 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 skie8, and can give an answer to those who have not yet read it and expect an account of it ; and thus show our shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had time to form an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by busying ourselves about it, a kind of accessories after the fact. Though not the parent of the bantling that 'has just come into this breathing world, scarce half made up,' without the rid 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, ft 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 predecessors can have nothing to say to this question, however they may have anticipated U8 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, the 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 ! 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 tliin air of ignorance and uncertainty about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion ; and curiosity, impertinence, 4 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS and vanity, rush eagerly into the vacuum. A new book is the fair field for petulance and coxcombry to gather laurels in — the butt set up for roving opinion to aim at Can we wonder, then, that the circulating libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and their grand - daughters, when a new novel is announced ? That Mail-Coach copies of the Edinburgh Review are or were coveted ? That the Manuscript of the Waveriq/ 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 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, there- fore, 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 recom- mended 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 ON READING NEW BOOKS 6 no more read all the new books that appear, tlian 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 bo sought after with the same avidity as a new and hot-pressed poem, or other po]»ular work r Not generally, certainly, t]ioup:h by a fc\^ 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 egotisrn in any way : it would be the work either of some obscure autlior — in which case it would want the principle of excitement ; or of some illustrious name, whose style and manner would be already familiar to those most versed in the subject, and his fame established — so that, as a matter of comment and controversy, it would only go to account on the old score : there would be no room for learned feuds and heart-burnings, ^^''as 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. Tliere have been several other c^ses, more or loss in point, in our time or near it. A Noblo Duke (wliich 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 exj)ense in ordering reprints of the old Chronicles and black-letter works. Docs not this rather prove tliat 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 Tlato and Aristotle. He did not choose that a larger impression should be struck off, lest the>e authors should get into the hands of the vulgar. Tliere was no danger of a run in that way. 1 tried to read some of the Dialogues in the translation of Plato, but, I confess, could make notliing 6 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS of it : ' the logic was so different from ours ! ' ^ A startling experiment was made on this sort of retro- spective curiosity, in the case of Ireland's celebrated Shakspeare forgery. llie public there certainly manifested no backwardness 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 Shakspeare's would have excited the same ferment ; and, on the other hand, Shak- speare is an essential modern. People read and go to see his real plays, as well as his pretended ones. The fms made about Ossiau is another test to refer to. It was its being the supposed revival of an old work (known only by scattered fragments or lingering 1 An expression borrowed from a voluble German Bcholar, 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 RuU of Three in German was diSerent 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 evening 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 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 (l>ut 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 lor4f with, and the t«a-pot was without a spout. My friend, after a few immaterial ceremonies, aijourned 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) ; and the only interruption to his satisfaction was the fear that his host mi;.'ht suddenly enter, and be shocked at bis imperfect hospitality, lie would probably forget the circumstance altogether. I am afraid that tljis veteran of the old school has not received many proofs of the archaib-in of the prevailing taste ; and that the corrections in his History of the Univergiiy of Cainbridye have cost him more than the public will ever repay him for. ON READING NEW BOOKS 7 tradition) which gave it its chief interest, thoug^h there wa.s also a good deal of mystery and quackery con- cerned along with the din and stir of national jealousy and pretension. A\'ho reads Ossian now? it is one of the reproaches hrought against Buonaparte that he was fond of it when young. 1 cannot for myself see the objection. There is no doubt an antiquarian spirit always at work, and opposed to the spirit of novelty- hunting ; but, though opposed, it is scarcely a match for it in a general and popular point of view. It is not long ago that I happened to be suggesting a new translation of Don Quixote to an enterprising book- seller ; and his answer was — "We want new Don Quixotes." 1 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. A\'e 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 dre.ss and flourishes, to the sublime and affecting simplicity of the original Letters. In some very just and agreeable reflections on the story oi Abelard and Eloi.se, in a late number of a con- temporary publication, there is a quotition 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 : 8 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS maxime conjux ! thalamis indigne meis ! Hoc juris habebat In tantum fortuna caput? Cur impia nupsi, Si miserum factura fui ? Nunc accipe i>8eDas, Sed quas eponte luam.i This speech, quoted by another person, on such an occasion, might seem cold and pedantic ; but from the mouth of the passionate and unaffected Eloise it cannot bear that interpretation. \Miat sounding lines ! A^hat a pomp, and yet what a familiar boldness in their application — ^ proud as when blue Iris bends!' Tlie reading this account brought forcibly to mind what has struck me often before — the unreasonableness of the complaint we constantly hear of the ignorance and barbarism of former ages, and the folly of restricting all refinement and literary elegance to our own. We are, indeed, indebted to the ages that have gone before us, and could not well do without them. But in all ages there will be found still others that have gone before with nearly equal lustre and advantage, though, by distance and the intervention of multiplied excel- lence, this lustre may be dimmed or forgotten. Had it then no existence ? ^Ve 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 landmarks 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 glowing and ■' Pharsalva, lib. 8. ON READING NEW BOOKS 9 impetuous lines which slip niurmured, as she passed on, with spontaneous and rising enthusiasm^ were eng-raven on her heart, familiar to her as her daily thoughts ; her mind must have heen full of them to overflowing, and at the same time enriched with other stores and sources of knowledge equally elegant and impressive ; and we persist, notwithstandinj^ 'this and a thousand similar circumstances, in indulging our surprise how people could exist, and see, and feel, in those days, without ha\'ing access to our opportunities and acquirements, and how Shakspeare wrote long after, in a harbarom ape! 'Ilie mystery in this case is of our own making. ^\'e 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 con- sidering 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 heen just referred to — were thoroughly acquainted with those masters of classic thought and language, com- pared with whom, in all that relates to the artificial graces of composition, the most studied of the moderns are little better than Goths and \'andals. It is true, we have lost sight of, and neglected the former, because the latter have, in a great degree, superseded them, as the elevations nearest to us intercept those farthest off ; but our not availing ourselves of this vantage ground is no reason why our forefathers should not (who had not our superfluity of choice), and most assuredly they did studv and cherish the precious frag- ments of antiquity, collected together in their time. ' like sunken wreck and sumless treasuries' ; and while they did this, we need he 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. (^ne 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 10 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS the subject : we should by all means rise above it I am not for devoting the whole of our time to the study oi the classics, or of any other set of writers, to the exclu- sion and neglect of nature ; but I think we should turn our thoughts enough that way to convince us of the exist- ence of genius and learning before our time, and to cure us of an overweening conceit of ourselves, and of a con- temptuous 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 ^schylus were about as good as the pieces brought out at Sadler's ^Vells or the Adelphi Theatre. An oration of Demosthenes is thought dry and meagre, because it is not ' full of wise saws and modem instances ' ; one of Cicero's is objected to as flimsy and extravagant, for the same reason. There is a style in one age which does not fall in with the taste of the public in another, as it requires greater effeminacy and softness, greater severity or simplicity, greater force or refinement. Guido was more admired than llaphael 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 ON READING NEW BOOKS 11 present : Holbein's faces must be allowed to be very different from Sir 'J'homas Lawrence's — yet the one was the favourite painter of Henry VHI._, as the otlier is of George IW \\'hat should we say in our time to the euphuism of the age of Elizabeth, when style was made a riddle and the court talked in conundrums ? ITiis, as a novelty and a trial of the wits, might take for a while : afterwards, it could only seem absurd. M'e 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. AVhen a whole generation re^d, they will read none but contemporary productions. ITie 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 fluctuations of human affairs. Longinus complains of the want of interest in the Odyssey y 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 wo may go as a lounge to see the man) : even attacks on religion are out of date and insipid. \'oltaire'8 jests and the Jevc't Letters in answer (equal in wit, and more than equal in 12 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS learning), repose quietly on the shelf together. We want something in England about Rent and the Poor- Iaws, and something in France about the Charter — or Lord Byron. "^Vith the attempts, ho^rever, to revive superstition and intolerance, a spirit of opposition has been excited, and Pascal's Provincial Letters have been once more enlisted into the service. In France you meet with no one who can read the New Eloise : the Princess of Cleves is not even mentioned in these degenerate days. Is it not provoking with us to see the Beggars' Opera cut down to two acts, because some of the allusions are too broad, and others not under- stood .'' And in America this sterling satire is hooted off the stage, because, fortunately, they have no such state of manners as it describes before their eyes ; and because, unfortunately, they have no conception of any- thing 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. Tliey arc an independent state in politics : in literature they are still a colony from us — not out of their leading strings, and strangely puzzled how to determine between the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, We have naturalised some of their writers, who had formed them- selves upon us. This is at once a compliment to them and to ourselves. Amidst the scramble and lottery for fame in the present day, besides puffing, which may be regarded as the hotbed 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 ihejlocci-nauci-nihili-pili-jication, in Shenstone's phrase, is vreU 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. Petersburg. Ox\ READING NEW BOOKS 13 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 ac-ce, May 1825. 1 An old friend of mine, when he read the abuse and Billingsgate poured out in certain Tory publications, used to congratulate himself upon it as a favourable sign of the times, and of the progressive im- provement of our manners. Where we now called names, we formerly burnt each other at a stake ; and all the malice of the heart flew to the tongue and vented itself in scolding, instead of crusades and auto da /«— the nobler revenge of our ancestors for a difiference of opinion. An author now libels a prince ; and, if he takes the law of him, or throws him into gaol, it is looked upon as a harsh and ungentlemanly proceeding. He, therefore, gets a dirty secretary to employ a dirty bookseller, to hire a set of dirty scribblers, to pelt him with dirt and cover him with blackguard epithets till he is hardly in a condition to walk the streets. This is hard measure, no doubt, and base ingratitude on the part of the public, according to the imaginary dignity and natural precedence which authors take of kings ; but the latter are men, and will have their revenge where they can get it They have no longer their old summary appeal— their will may still be good— to the dungeon and the dagger. Tliose who 'speak e^il of dignities' may, therefore, think themselves well off in being merely sent to Coventry ; and, besides, if they have pluck, they can make a Parthian retreat, and shoot poisoned arrows behind them. The good people of Florence lift up their hands when they are shown the caricatures in the Queen's Matrimonial Ladder, and ask if they are really a likeness jf the King ? ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY If to do were as easy as to teach others what were good to be done, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes palaces. Mr. Addison, it is said, was fond of tippling; and Curll, it is added, when he called on him in the morning:, used to ask as a particular favour for a ^lass of Canary, by way of ingratiating himself, and that the other might have a pretence to join him and finish the bottle. He fell a martyr to this habit, and yet (some persons more nice than wise exclaim) he desired that the young Earl of Warwick might attend him on his death-bed, 'to see how a Christian could die ! ' 1 see no inconsistency nor hypocrisy in this. A man may be a good Christian, a sound believer, and a sincere lover of virtue, and have, notwithstanding, one or more failings. If he had re- commended it to others to get drunk, then I should have said he was a hypocrite, and that his pretended veneration for the Christian religion was a mere cloak put on to suit the purposes of fashion or convenience. His doing what it condemned was no proof of any such thing : 'ITie spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.' He is a hypocrite who professes wliat he does not believe ; not he who does not practise all he wislies or approves. It might on the same ground be argued, that a man is a hypocrite who admires Raphael or iSliakespeare, because he cannot paint like the one, or write like the other. If any one really despised what he affected outwardly to admire, this would be hypocrisy. If he affected to admire it a great deal more than he really did, this 17 'c 18 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS would be cant. Sincerity has to do with the connection between our words and thouw'hts, and not between our belief and actions. The last constantly belie the strongest convictions and resolutions in the best of men ; it is only the base and dishonest who give them- selves credit with their tongue, for sentiments and opinions which in their hearts they disown. I do not therefore think that the old theological maxim — ^^The greater the sinner, the greater the saint" — is so utterly unfounded. There is some mixture of truth in it. For as long as man is com- posed of two parts, body and soul, and while these are allowed to pull different ways, I see no reason why, in proportion to the length the one goes, the opposition or reaction of the other should not be more violent. It is certain, for example, that no one makes such good resolutions as the sot and the gambler in their moments of repentance, or can be more impressed with the horrors of their situation ; — should this disposition, instead of a transient, idle pang, by chance become lasting, who can be supposed to feel the beauty of temperance and economy more, or to look back with greater gratitude to their escape from the trammels of ^^ce and passion r A\"ould the ingenious and elegant author of the Spectator feel less regard for the Scriptures, because they denounced in pointed terms the infirmity that ' most easily beset him,' that was the torment of his life, and the cause of his death } Such reasoning would be true, if man was a simple animal or a logical machine, and all his faculties and impulses were in strict unison ; instead of which they are eternally at variance, and no one hates or takes part against himself more heartily or heroically than does the same Individual. Does he not pass sentence on his own conduct.^ Is not his conscience both judge and accuser.'* What else is the meaning of all our resolutions against ourselves, as well as of our exhortations to others .'* Video meliora proboque, deteriora seguor, is not the language of h}^o- crisy, but of human nature. TTbie hypocrisy of priests has been a butt for ridicule ON CANT AND PIYPOCRISY 19 in all a^es ; but I am not sure that there has not been more wit than philosophy in it. A priest, it is true, is oblig-ed to affect a greater degree of sanctity than ordinary men, and probably more tha« he possesses ; and this is so far, I am willing to allow, hypocrisy and solemn grimace. But I cannot admit, that though he may exagg-erate, or even make an ostentatious di.splay of religion and virtue through habit and spiritual pride, that this is a proof he has not these sentiments in his heart, or that his whole behaviour is the mere acting of a part. His character, his motives, are not altogether pure and sincere : are they therefore all false and hollow r No such thing. It is contrary to all our observation and experience so to interpret it. We all wear some disguise — make some professions — use some artifice to set ourselves off as being better than we are ; and yet it is not denied that we have some good inten- tions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, though we may endeavour to keep some others that we think less to our credit as much as possible in the background : — why then should we not extend the same favourable con- struction to monks and priests, who may be sometimes caught tripping as well as other men — with less excuse, no doubt ; but if it is also with greater remorse of con- science, which probably often happens, their pretensions are not all downright, barefaced imposture. Ilieir sincerity, compared with that of other men, can only be judged of by the proportion between the degree of virtue they profess, and that which they practise, or at least carefully seek to realise. To conceive it otherwise is to insist that characters must be all perfect or all vicious — neither of which suppositions is even possible. If a clergj'man is notoriously a drunkard, a debauchee, a glutton, or a scoffer, then for him to lay claim at the same time to extraordinary inspirations of faith or grace, is both scandalous and ridiculous. The scene between the Abbot and the poor brother in the Duerma is an admirable exposure of this double-faced dealing. But because a parson has a relish for the good things of this life, or what is commonly called a liquoruh tooth in hU 20 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS head (beyond what he would have it supposed by others, or even by himself), that he has therefore no fear or belief of the next, 1 hold for a crude and vulg-ar prejudice. If a poor half-starved parish priest pays his court to an ol/a jyodrida, or a venison pasty, with uncommon guato, shall we say that he has no other sentiments in oflPer- ing his devotions to a crucifix, or in counting his beads ? I see no more ground for such an inference, than for affirming that Handel was not in earnest when he sat down to compose a Symphony, because he had at the same time perhaps a bottle of cordials in his cupboard ; or that Raphael was not entitled to the epithet of divine, because he was attached to the Fornarina. Everything has its turn in this chequered scene of things, unless we prevent it from taking its turn by over-rigid conditions, or drive men to despair or the most callous effrontery by erecting a standard of perfection, to which no one can conform in reality. Thomson, in his Castle of Indolence (a subject on which his pen ran riot), has indulged in rather a free description of ' a little round, fat, oily man of God, who — •Shone all glistening with ungodly dew, If a tight damsel chanced to trippen by ; Which when observed, he shrunk into his mew, And straight would recollect his piety anew.' Now, was the piety in this case the less real, because it had been forgotten for a moment ? Or even if this motive should not prove the strongest in the end, would this therefore show that it was none, which is necessary to the argument here combated, or to make out our little plump priest a very knave? A priest may be honest, and yet err ; as a woman may be modest, and yet half-inclined to be a rake. So the virtue of prudes may be suspected, though not their sincerity. The strength of their passions may make them more con- scious of their weakness, and more cautious of exposing themselves ; but not more to blind others than as a guard upon themselves. Again, suppose a clergy- man hazards a jest upon sacred subjects, does it follow that he does not believe a word of the matter ? ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 21 Put the case that any one else, encouraired by hia example, takes up the banter or levity, and see what effect it will have upon the reverend divine. He will turn round like a serpent trod upon, with all the vehemence and asperity of the most bifi;oted orthodoxy. Is this dictatorial and exclusive spirit then put on merely as a mask and to browbeat others? Xo ; but he thinks he is privilesred to trifle with the subject safely him- self, from the store of evidence he has in reserve, and from the nature of his functions ; but he is afraid of serious consequences bein^ drawn from what others might say, or from his seeming to countenance it ; and the moment the Church is in danger, or his own faith brought in question, his attachment to each becomes as visible as his hatred to those who dare to impugn either the one or the other. A woman's attachment to her husband is not to be sus-pected, if she will allow no one to abuse him but herself. It has been remarked, that with the spread of liberal opinions, or a more general scepticism on articles of faith, the clergy and religiouspersons in generalhave become more squeamish and jealous of any objections to their favourite doc- trines : but this is what must follow in the natural course of things — the resistance being always in propor- tion to the danger ; and arguments and books that were formerly allowed to pass unheeded, because it was sup- posed impossible they could do any mischief, are now denounced or prohibited with the most zealous vigil- ance, from a knowledge of the contagious nature of their influence and contents. So in morals, it is obvious that the greatest nicety of expression and allusion must be observed, where the manners are the most corrupt, and the imagination most e-asily excited, not out of mere affectation, but as a dictate of common sense and decency. One of the finest remarks that has been made in modern times, is that of Lord Shaftesbury, that there is no such thing as a perfect 'Ilieist, or an absolute Atheist ; that whatever may be the general conviction entertained on the subject, the evidence is not and 22 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS caunot be at all times equally present to the mind ; that even if it were, we are not in the same humour to receive it : a fit of the gout, a shower of rain shakes our best-established conclusions ; and according to circum- stances and the frame of mind we are in, our belief varies from the most sang-uine enthusiasm to lukewarm indifference, or the most gloomy despair. There is a ftoint of conceivable faith which might prevent any apse from virtue, and reconcile all contrarieties between theory and practice ; but this is not to be looked for in the ordinary course of nature, and is reserved for the abodes of the blest. Here, ' upon this bank and shoal of time,' the utmost we can hope to attain is, a strong habitual belief in the excellence of virtue, or the dispensations of Providence ; and the conflict of the passions, and their occasional mastery over us, far from disproving or destroying this general, rational conviction, often fling us back more forcibly upon it, and like other infidelities and misunder- standings, produce all the alternate remorse and raptures of repentance and reconciliation. It has been frequently remarked that the most obstinate heretic or confirmed sceptic, witnessing the service of the Roman Catholic Church, the elevation of the host amidst the sounds of music, the pomp of cere- monies, the embellishments of art, feels himself spell- bound ; and is almost persuaded to become a renegado to his reason or his religion. Even in hearing a vespers chanted on the stage, or in reading an account of a torch-light procession in a romance, a superstitious awe creeps over the frame, and we are momentarily charmed out of ourselves. ^\'hen such is the obvious and involuntary influence of circumstances on the imagination, shall we say that a monkish recluse sur- rounded from his childhood by all this pomp, a stranger to any other faith, who has breathed no other atmos- phere, and all whose meditations are bent on this one subject both by interest and habit and duty, is to be set down as a rank and heartless mountebank in the pro- fessions he makes of belief in it, because his thoughts ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 23 may sometimes wander to forbidden subject*", or his feet stumble on forbidden ground ? Or shall not the deep shadows of the woods in V'allombrosa enhance the solemnity of this feeling, or the icy horrors of the Grand Chartreux add to its elevation and its purity? To argue otherwise is to misdeem of human nature, and to limit its capacities for good or evil by some narrow-minded standard of our own. Man is neither a god nor a brute ; but there is a prosaic and a poetical side to everything concerning him, and it is as im- possible absolutely and for a constancy to exclude either one or the other from the mind, as to make him live without air or food. The ideal, the empire of thought and aspiration after truth and good, is in- separable from the nature of an intellectual being — what right have we then to catch at every strife which in the mortified professors of religion the spirit wages with the llesh as grossly vicious ? or at every doubt, the bare suggestion of which fills them with consternation and despair, as a proof of the most glaring hypocrisy.^ The grossnesses of religion and its stickling for mere forms as its essence, have given a handle, and a just one, to its impugners. At the feast of Ramadan (says V^oltaire) the Mussulmans wash and pray five times a day, and then fall to cutting one another's throats again with the greatest deliberation and goodwill. The two things, I grant, are sufficiently at variance ; but they are, I contend, ee a very pood cover for licentiousness (thouf^li of tliat I saw no signs), but it is a very bad exponent of wit and humour. I should sup>pose there is more drollery and unction in the caricatures in Fore's shop-window, than in all the masks in Italy, without exception.^ Tlie humour of English writing and description has often been wondered at ; and it flows, from the same source as the merry traits of our character. A degree of barbarism and rusticity seems necessary to the per- fection of humour. The droll and laughable depend on peculiarity and incongruity of character. But with the progress of refinement, the peculiarities of indivi- duals and of classes wear out or lose their sharp, abrupt edges ; nay, a certain slowness and dulness of under- standing is required to be struck with odd and unaccountable appearances, for which a greater faci- lity of apprehension can sooner assign an explanation that breaks the force of the seeming absurdity, and to which a wider scope of imagination is more easily reconciled. Clowns and country people are more amused, are more disposed to laugh and make sport of the dress of strangers, because from their ignorance the surprise is greater, and they cannot conceive any- thing to be natural or proper to which they are unused. Without a given portion of hardness and repulsivenesa of feeling the ludicrous cannot well exist. ^V'ondc^ 1 Bells are peculiar to England. They Jangle them In Italy during the carnival as boys do with us at Shrovetiile ; but they have no notion of ringing them. The sound of village bells never chtcrs you In travelling, nor have you the Inte or cittern in their stoaM. The expression of 'Merry Bella' ia a favourite, and not one of tne U-aat appropriate in our language : For him tlie merry bella had rung, I ween, II In thi£ nook of quiet bells had ever been. Ci:hing of importance to do, set about it with the greatest earnestness and perseverance, and are generally grave and sober to a proverb,^ Swift, who wrote more idle or nonsense verses than any man, was the severest of moralists ; and his feelings and observations morbidly acute. Did not Lord Byron himself follow up his Childe Harold with his Don Juan? — not that I insist on what he did as an illustration of the English character. He was one of the English Nobility, not one of the English people ; and his occasional ease and fami- liarity were in my mind equally constrained and affected, whether in relation to the pretensions of his rank or the efforts of his genius. Tliey ask you in France, how you pass your time in England without amusements ; and can with difficulty believe that there are theatres in London, still less that they are larger and handsomer than those in Paris. Tliat we should have comic actors, ' they own surprises them.' They judge of the English character in the lump as one great jolter-head, containing all the stupidity of the country, as the large ball at the top of the Dispensary in A\'arwick Lane, from its resemblance to a gilded pill, has been made to represent the whole pharmacopoeia and professional quackery of the king- dom. They have no more notion, for instance, how we should have such an actor as Liston on our stage, than If we were to tell them we have parts performed by a 1 The strict formality of French serious writing is resorted to m a foil to the natural levity of their character. MERRY ENGLAND 41 8ea-otter ; nor, if they were to f^ee him, wouM they be much the wiser, or know what to tliink of his unaccount- able twitches of countenance or nondescript gestures, of his teeth chattering in his head, his eyes that seem droppinj^ from their sockets, his nose that is tickled by a jest as by a featiier, and shining with self-complacency as if oiled, his ignorant conceit, his gaping stupor, his lumpish vivacity in Lubin Ix)g or Tony Lumpkin ; for as our rivals do not wind up the machine to such a de- termined intensity of purpose, neither have they any idea of its running down to such degrees of imbecility and folly, or coming to an absolute stand-still and lack of meaning, nor can they enter into or be amused with the contrast. No people ever laugh heartily who can give a reason for their doing so : and I believe the English in general are not yet in this predicament. They are not metaphysical, but very much in a state of nature ; and this is one main ground why I give them credit for being merry, notwithstanding appearances. Their mirth is not the mirth of vice or desperation, but of innocence and a native wilduess. They do not cavil or boggle at niceties, or merely come to the edge of a joke, i)ut break their necks over it with a wanton * Here goes,' where others make a pirouette and stand upon decorum. 'ITie French cannot, however, be persuaded of the excellence of our comic stage, nor of the store we set by it. When they ask what amusements we have, it is plain they can never have heard of Mrs. Jordan, nor King, nor Bannister, nor Suett, nor Munden, nor I^wis, nor little Simmons, nor Dodd, and Parsons, and Emery, and Miss Pope, and Miss Farren, and all those who even in my time have gladdened a nation and ' made life's business like a summer's dream.' (an 1 think of them, and of their names that glittered in the play-bills when I was young, exciting all the flutter of hope and expectation of seeing them in their favourite part.-* of Nell, or Little Pickle, or Touchstone, or Sir IVter Tea/.le, or Lenitive in the Prize, or Lingo, or Crabtroe, or Nipperkiu, or old Dornton, or lianger, or the C o])per Captain, or Lord Sanda,or Fitch, or AIose8,orSir Andrew 42 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS A^uecheek, or Acres, or Elbow, or Hodge, or Flora, or the DueDiia, or Lady Teazle, or Lady Grace, or of the gaiety that sparkled in all eyes, and the delight that over- flowed all hearts, as they glanced before us in these parts, Tlirovfing a gaudy shadow upon life— and not feel my heart yearn within me, or couple the thoughts of England and the spleen together? Our cloud has at least its rainbow tints ; ours is not one long polar night of cold and dulness, but we have the gleaming lights of fancy to amuse us, the household fires of truth and genius to warm us. We can go to a play and see Liston ; or stay at home and read Roderick Random; or have Hogarth's prints of Marriage a la Mode hanging round our room. Tut ! ^ there's livers ' even in England, as well as 'out of it.' We are not quite the forlorn hope of humanity, the last of nations. The French look at us across the Channel, and seeing nothing but water and a cloudy mist, think that this is England. If they have any farther idea of us, it is of George III. and our Jack tars, the House of Lords and House of Commons ; and this is no great addition to us. To go beyond this, to talk of arts and elegances as having taken up their abode here, or to say that Mrs. Abington was equal to Mademoiselle Mars, and that we at one time got up the School for Scandal, as they do the Misanthrope, is to persuade them that Iceland is a pleasant winter retreat, or to recommend the whale- fishery as a classical amusement llie French are the cockneys of Europe, and have no idea how any one can exist out of Paris, or be alive without incessant grimace akud Jabber. Yet what imports it.'' \\Tiat ! though the joyous train I have just enumerated were, perhaps, never heard of in the precincts of the Palais-Royal, is it not enough that they gave pleasure where they were, to those who saw and heard them ? Must our laugh, to be sincere, have its echo on the other side of the water .'' Had not the French their favourites and their enjoy- ments at the time, that we knew nothing of? Why then should we not have ours (and boast of them too) MERRY ENGLAND 43 without their leave ? A monopoly of self-conceit is not a monopoly of all other advantaj^es. The Knf^lish, when they ^o abroad, do not take away the prejudice ag^ainst them by their looks. We seem duller and sadder than we are. As I write this, I am sitting in the open air in a beautiful valley, near Vevy : Clarens is on my left, the Dent de Jamaut is behind mo, the rocks of Meillerie opposite : under my feet is a preen bank, enamelled with white and purple flowers, in which a dewdrop here and there still g-litters with pearly lipht — And gaudy butterflies flutter around. Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir within me, I conjure up the cheerful passages of my life, and a crowd of happy images appear before me. No one would see it in my looks — my eyes grow dull and fixed, and 1 seem rooted to the spot, as all this phantasmagoria passes in review before me, glancing a reflex lustre on the face of the world and nature. But the traces of pleasure, in my case, sink into an absorbent ground of thoughtful melancholy, and require to be brought out by time and circumstances, or (as the critics tell you) by the varnish of style ! The comfort, on which the English lay so much stress, is of the same character, and arises from the same source as their mirth. Both exist by contrast and a sort of contradiction. The English are certainly the most un- comfortable of all j»eople in tiiemselves, and therefore it is that they stand in need of every kind of comfort and accommodation. The least thing puts them out of their way, and therefore everything must be in its place. iliey are mightily offended at disagreeable tastes and smells, and therefore they exact the utmost neatness and nicety. 'ITiey are sensible of heat and cold, and therefore they cannot exist, unle>;s every- thing is snug and warm, or else open and airy, where they are. They must have 'all appliances and means to boot.' They are afraid of interruption and intrusion, and therefore they shut themselves up in indoor enjoy- ments and by their own firesides. It is not that they 44 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS require luxuries (for that implies a high degree of epicurean indulgence and gratification), but they cannot do without their comforts; that is, whatever tends to supply their physical wants, and ward off physical pain and annoyance. As they have not a fund of animal spirits and enjoyments in themselves, they cling to external objects for support, and derive solid satis- faction from the ideas of order, cleanliness, plenty, property, and domestic quiet, as they seek for diversion from odd accidents and grotesque surprises, and have the highest possible relish not of voluptuous softness, but of hard knocks and dry blows, as one means of ascertaining their personal identity. ON A SUN-DIAL To carve out dials quaintly, point by point SUAKSPKARS. HoRAS non numero Jiisi serenas — is the motto of a sun- dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thouu^lit unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. ' I count only the hours that are serene.' \Vhat a bland and care- dispelling feeling ! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as the sky lours, and time presents* only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is Joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion ! N\'hat a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind — to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to tiie sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imagina- tions, unheeded or forgotten ! IIow different from the common art of self-tormenting ! For myself, as 1 rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggisli, slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable ; but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to my- self; and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful al)straction. I cannot help fancying it to be a legend of Popish superstition. Some monk of the dark ages must have invented and betjueathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens and watching tlie silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in the sun or his llowera 46 46 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS scented the balmy air, felt a mild languor pervade his senses, and having little to do or to care for, determined (in imitation of his sun-dial) to efface that little from his thoughts or draw a veil over it, making of his life one long dream of quiet ! Uoras non nurnero nisi serenoi — he might repeat, when the heavens were overcast and the gathering storm scattered the falling leaves, and turn to his books and wrap himself in his golden studies ! Out of some such mood of mind, indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speaking volumes) must have originated. Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun-dial is perhaps the most apposite and striking, if not the most convenient or comprehensive. It does not obtrude its observations, though it ' morals on the time," and, by its stationary character, forms a contrast to the most fleeting of all essences. It stands suh dio — under the marble air, and there is some con- nection between the image of infinity and eternity. I should also like to have a sun-flower growing near it with bees fluttering round. ^ It should be of iron to denote duration, and have a dull, leaden look. I hate a sun-dial made of wood, which is rather calculated to show the variations of the seasons, than the progress of time, slow, silent, imperceptible, chequered with light and shade. If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them, as the dial does of those that are clouded. It is the shadow thrown across, that gives us warning of their flight. Otherwise, our impressions would take the same undistinguishable hue ; we should scarce be conscious of our existence. ITiose who have bad none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to vary the prospect before them. Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, 1 Is this a verbal fallacy ? Or in the close, retired, sheltered scene which I have imagined to myself, is not the sun-flower a natural accompaniment of the sun-dial ? ON A SUN-DIAL 47 who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it. 'J'he hour- glass is, I suspect, an older invention ; and it Ls certainly the most defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed an unapt emblem of the minute, countless por- tions of our existence ; and the manner in which they gradually slide through the hollow glass and diminish in number till not a single one is left, also illustrates the way in which our years slip from us by stealth : but as a mechanical invention, it is rather a hindrance than a help, for it requires to have the time, of which it pretends to count the precious moments, taken up in attention to itself, and in seeing that when one end of the glass is empty, we turn it round, in order that it may go on again, or else all our labour is lost, and we must wait for some other mode of ascertaining the time before we can recover our reckoning and proceed as before. 'Ilie philosopher in his cell, the cottager at her spinning-wheel must, however, find an invaluable acquisition in this ^ companion of the lonely hour,' as it has been called,^ which not only serves to tell how the time goes, but to fill up ib^ vacancies. What a treasure must not the little box seem to hold, as if it were a sacred deposit of the very grains and fleeting sands of life ! \\'hat a business, in lieu of other more important avocations, to see it out to the last sand, and then to renew the process again on the instant, that there may not be the least flaw or error in the account ! What a strong sense must be brought home to the mind of the value and irrecoverable nature of the time that is fled ; what a thrilling, incessant consciousness of the slippery tenure by which we hold what remains of it I Our very existence must seem crumbling to atoms, and running down (without a miraculous reprieve) to the last fragment ' Dust to dust and ashes to ashe^ ' is a text that might be fairly inscribed on an hour- glass : it is ordinarily associated with the scythe of 1 Once more, companion of the lonely hour, I'll turn thee up again. Bloomfieid'i Poem*— The Widow to tur Dour-gloM 48 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS Time and a Death's-head, as a memento mori ; and has, no doubt, furnished many a tacit hint to the appre- hensive and visionary enthusiast in favour of a resur- rection to another life ! ' The French give a different turn to things, less sombre and less edifying. A common and also a very pleasing ornament to a clock, in Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a boat which Cupid is rowing along, with the motto, L' Amour fait passer le Temps — which the wits again have travestied into Le Temps fait passer r Amour. All this is ingenious and well ; but it wants sentiment. I like a people who have something that they love and something that they hate, and with whom everything is not alike a matter of indifference or pour passer le temps. Tlie French attach no importance to anything, except for the moment ; they are only thinking how they shall get rid of one sensation for another ; all their ideas are in transitu. Everything is detached, nothing is accumulated. It would be a million of years before a Frenchman would think of the Horas non numero nisi serenas. Its impassioned repose and ideal voluptuousness are as far from their breasts as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare — ' How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! ' ^ They never arrive at the classical — or the romantic. They blow the bubbles of vanity, fashion, and pleasure ; but they do not expand their perceptions into refinement, or strengthen them into solidity. "WTiere there is nothing fine in the groundwork of the imagination, nothing fine in the superstructure can be produced. They are light, airy, fanciful (to give them their due) — but when they attempt to be serious (beyond mere good sense) they are either dull or extravagant. When the volatile salt has flown off, nothing but a caput mortuum remains. They have infinite crotchets and caprices with their clocks and watches, which seem made for anything but to tell the hour — gold repeaters, watches with metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds. There is no escaping from quackery and 1 Merchant of Venice, v. 1. ON A SUN-DIAL 49 impertinence, even in our attempts to calculate the waste of time. The years gallop fast enouf^h for me, without remarking every moment as it llies ; and further, I must say 1 dislike a watch (whether of French or English manufacture) that comes to me like a footpad with its face muffled, and does not present its clear, open aspect like a friend, and point with its linger to the time of day. All this opening and shutting of dull, heavy cases (under pretence tliat the glass lid is liable to be broken, or lets in the dust or air and obstructs the movements of the watch), is not to husband time, but to give trouble. It is mere pomposity and self- importance, like consulting a mysterious oracle that one carries about with one in ones pocket, instead of asking a common question of an acquaintance or companion. There are two clocks which strike the hour in the room where 1 am. 'lliis 1 do not like. In the first place, I do not want to be reminded twice how the time goes (it is like the second tap of a saucy servant at your door when perhaps you have no wish to get up) : in the next place, it is starting a ditiereuce of opinion on the subject, and I am averse to every appearance of wrangling and disputation. Time moves on the same, whatever disparity there may be in our mode of keeping count of it, like true fame in spite of the cavils and contradictions of the critics. 1 am no friend to repeating watches. The only pleasant associa- tion I have with them is the account given by Rousseau of some French lady, who sat up reading the Xew Eloise when it first came out, and ordering her maid to sound the repealer, found it was too late to go to bed, and continued reading on till morning. Vet how different is the interest excited by this story from the account which Rousseau somewhere else gives of his sitting up with his father reading romances, when a boy, till they were startled by the swallows twittering in their nests at daybreak, and the father cried out, half angry and ashamed — ^Allans, vion Jils ; je suis pins enfant que toil' in general, I have heard repeating watches sounded in stage-coaches at night, when some 60 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS fellow-traveller suddenly awaking- and wondering what was the hour, another has very deliberately taken out his watch, and pressing the spring, it has counted out the time ; each petty stroke acting like a sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of the dreary hours I had already passed, and of the more dreary ones I had to wait till morning. Tlie great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over watches and other dumb reckoners of time is, that for the most part they strike the hour — that they are as it were the mouth-pieces of time ; that they not only point it to the eye, but impress it on the ear ; that they 'lend it both an understanding and a tongue.' Time thus speaks to us in an audible and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily distinguished by the sense, and suggest useful reflections to the mind ; sounds, from their intermittent nature, and perhaps other causes, appeal more to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. But to do this, they must be unexpected and involuntary — there must be no trick in the case — they should not be squeezed out with a finger and a thumb ; there should be nothing optional, personal in their occurrence ; they should be like stem, inflexible monitors, that nothing can prevent from discharging their duty. Surely, if there is any- thing with which we should not mix up our vanity and self-consequence, it is with Time, the most independent of all things. All the sublimity, all the superstition that hang upon this palpable mode of announcing its flight, are chiefly attached to this circumstance. Time would lose its abstracted character, if we kept it like a curiosity or a jack-in-a-box : its prophetic warnings would have no efl'ect, if it ob\'iously spoke only at our prompting like a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that tells the coming, dreaded hour — the castle bell, that 'with its brazen throat and iron tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy ear of night ' — the curfew, ' swinging slow with sullen roar' o'er wizard stream or fountain, are like a voice from other worlds, big with unknown events. The last sound, which is still kept up as an ON A SUN-DIAL 61 old custom in many parts of Eutrland, is a great favourite with me. 1 used to liear it when a boy. It tells a tale of other times. H\e days that are past, the generations that are gone, the tangled forest glades and hamlets brown of my native country, the woodman'u art, the Norman warrior armed for the battle or in his festive hall, the conqueror's iron rule and peasant's lamp extinguished, all start up at the clamorous pe^l, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. I confess, nothing at present interests me but what has been — the recollection of the impressions of my early life, or events long past, of which only the dim traces remain in a mouldering ruin or half-obsolete custom, 'lliat things should be that are note no more, creates in my mind the most unfeigned astonishment J cannot solve the mystery of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it Tlje years, the generations to come, are nothing to me. We care no more about the world in the year 2300 than we do about one of the planets, ^\'e might as well make a voyage to the moon as think of stealing a march upon Time with impunity. /V non apparmfWus et non existentibus endem est ratio. 'Jliose who are to come after us and push us from tlie stage seem like upstarts and pretenders, that may be said to exirt in vacuo, we know not upon what, excejit as they are blown up with vanity and self-conceit by their ]»atrou9 among the moderns. But the ancients are true and bona fide people, to whom we are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and in whom, seen by the mellow light of history, we feel our own existence doubled and our pride consoled, as we ruminate on the ve^ige^s of the past. Tlje public in general, however, do not carry this speculative indifference about the future to what is to happen to themselves, or to tlic part they are to act in the busy scene. For my own part, I do ; and the only wish I c^u form, or that ever prompts the passing sigh, would be to live some of my years over again — they would l)e tliose in which J enjoyed and suffered most ! The ticking of a clock in the night ha'^ nothing vfirv 52 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS interesting nor very alarming in it, though superstition has magnified it into an omen. In a state of vigilance or debility, it preys upon the spirits like the persecution of a teasing, pertinacious insect ; and haunting the imagination after it has ceased in reality, is converted into the death-watch. Time is rendered vast by con- templating its minute portions thus repeatedly and painfully urged upon its attention, as the ocean in its immensity is composed of water-drops. A clock striking with a clear and silver sound is a great relief in such circumstances, breaks the spell, and resembles a sylph-like and friendly spirit in the room. Foreigners with all their tricks and contrivances upon clocks and time-pieces, are strangers to the sound of village bells, though perhaps a people that can dance may dispense with them. They impart a pensive, wayward pleasure to the mind, and are a kind of chronology of happy events, often serious in the retrospect — births, mar- riages, and so forth. Coleridge calls them ' the poor man's only music' A village spire in England peeping from its cluster of trees, is always associated in imagina- tion with this cheerful accompaniment, and may be expected to pour its joyous tidings on the gale. In Catholic countries, you are stunned with the everlasting tolling of bells to prayers or for the dead. In the Apennines, and other wild and mountainous districts of Italy, the little chapel -bell with its simple tinkling sound has a romantic and charming effect. The monks in former times appear to have taken a pride in the construction of bells as well as churches ; and some of those of the great cathedrals abroad (as at Cologne and Rouen) may be fairly said to be hoarse with counting the flight of ages. The chimes in Holland are a nuisance. They dance in the hours and the quarters. They leave no respite to the imagina- tion. Before one set has done ringing in your ears, another begins. You do not know whether the hours move or stand still, go backwards or forwards, so fantastical and perplexing are their accompaniments. Time is a more staid personage, and not so full of ON A SUN-DIAL 63 g-ambols. It puts you in mind of a tune with varia- tions, or of an emliroidered dress. Surely, nothintj is more simple than Time. His march is strai^'htforward ; but we should have leisure allowed us to look back upon the distance we have come, and not he counting^ his steps every moment. Time in Holland is a foolish old fellow witii all the antics of a youth, who ' poes to church in a coranto, and lights his pipe in a cinque- pace.' The chimes with us, on the contrary, a-s they come in every three or four hours, are like stages in the journey of the day, Tliey give a fillip to the lazy, creeping hours, and relieve the lassitude of countxv- places. At noon, their desultory, trivial soiiff is diffused through the hamlet with the odour of rasliers of bacon ; at the close of day thoy send the toil-worn sleepers to their beds. Their discontinuance would be a great loss to the thinking or unthinking public. Mr, Wordsworth has painted their etfect on tlie mind when he makes his friend Matthew, in a fit of inspired dotage, Sing those witty rhyroes About the crazy old church-clock And the bewilder d chimes. Tlie tolling of the bell for deaths and executions is m fearful summons, though, as it announces, not the advance of time but the approach of fate, it hai)pily makes no part of our subject. Otherwise, the ' sound of the bell' for Macheath's execution in the Beggars' Opera, or for that of the Conspirators in Vniice Preserved, with the roll of the drum at a soldier's funeral, and a digression to that of my Tncle Toby, as it is so finely described by Sterne, would furnish ample topics to descant upon. If I were a moralist, 1 might disapprove the ringing in the new and ringing out the old year. "VMiy dance ye, mortalB, o er the grave of Time ? St Paul's bell tolls only for the death of our Eugluh 54 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS kings, or a distinguished personage or two, with long intervals between.^ Those who have no artificial means of ascertaining the progress of time, are in general the most acute in discerning its immediate signs, and are most retentive of individual dates. The mechanical aids to Icnowledge are not sharpeners of the wits. The understanding of a savage is a kind of natural almanac, and more true in its prognostication of the future. In his mind's eye he sees what has happened or what is likely to happen to him, ' as in a map the voyager his course.' Those who read the times and seasons in the aspect of the heavens and the configuration of the stars, who count by moons and know when the sun rises and sets, are by no means ignorant of their own affairs or of the common concatenation of events. People in such situations have not their faculties distracted by any multiplicity of inquiries beyond what befalls them- selves, and the outward appearances that mark the change. There is, therefore, a simplicity and clearness in the knowledge they possess, which often puzzles the more learned. I am sometimes surprised at a shepherd- boy by the road-side, who sees nothing but the earth and sky, asking me the time of day — he ought to know so much better than any one how far the sun is above the horizon. I suppose he wants to ask a question of a passenger, or to see if he has a watch, llobinson Crusoe lost his reckoning in the monotony of his life and that bewildering dream of solitude, and was fain to have recourse to the notches in a piece of wood. What a diary was his ! And how time must have spread its circuit round him, vast and pathless as the ocean ! For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other mode of keeping time in my possession, nor ever wish to learn how time goes. It is a sign 1 have had little to do, few avocations, few engagements. WTien I am in a town, I can hear the clock ; and when I am in the 1 Rousseau has admirably described the effect of btUs on the Imagination in a piisaage in the Confeasions, beginning, " Le ton dcs docket ma toujours sirigulierement affecU," etc. ON A SUN-DIAL 55 country, I can listen to the silence. \\'hat I like best is to lie whole morning-s on a sunny bank on i^alisbiary Plain, without any object before me, neither kuowinjf nor caring h«;w time passes, and thus '' with li^ht- wiuged toys of feathered Idleness' to melt down hours to moments. Perhaps some suih thoughts as 1 ha\e here set down iloat before me like motes before my half-shut eyes, or some vivid image of the pa^st by forcible contrast rushes by me — ' Diana and her fawn, and all the glories of the antique world ' ; then I start away to prevent the iron from entering my soul, and let fail some tears into that stream of time which separates me farther and farther from all I once loved ! At length I rouse myself from my reverie, and home to dinner, proud of killing time with thought, nay even without thinking. Somewhat of this idle humour 1 inherit from my father, though he had not the same freedom from ennui, for he was not a metaphysician; and there were stops and vacant intervals in his being which he did not know how to fill up. He used in these cases, and as an obvious resource, carefully to wind up his watch at night, and ' with lack-lustre eye' more than once in the course of the day look to see what o'clock it was. Vet he had nothing else in hia character in common with the elder Mr. Shandy. \V ere I to attempt a sketch of him, for my own or tht» reader's satisfaction, it would be after the following manner But now I recollect I have done some- thing of the kind once before, and were 1 to resume the subject here, some bat or owl of a critic, with spectacled gravity, might swear 1 had stolen the whole of thia Essay from myself — or (what ia worse) from him I So I had better let it go as it i«. ON PREJUDICE Prejudice, in its ordinary and literal sense, is prejudging any question without having sufficiently examined it, and adheringto our opinion upon it through ignorance, malice, or perversity, in spite of every evi- dence to the contrary. The little that we know has a strong alloy of misgiving and uncertainty in it ; the mass of things of which we have no means of judging, but of which we form a blind and confident opinion, as if we were thoroughly acquainted with them, is monstrous. Prejudice is the child of ignorance : for as our actual knowledge falls short of our desire to know, or curiosity and interest in the world about us, so must we be tempted to decide upon a greater number of things at a venture ; and having no check from reason or inquiry, we shall grow more obstinate and bigoted in our conclusions, according as we have been rash and presumptuous. The absence of proof, instead of suspending our judgment, only gives us an opportunity of making things out according to our wishes and fancies ; mere ignorance is a blank canvas, on which we lay what colours we please, and paint objects black or white, as angels or devils, magnify or diminish them at our option ; and in the vacuum either of facts or arguments, the weight of prejudice and passion falls with double force, and bears down everything before it. If we enlarge the circle of our previous knowledge ever so little, we may meet with something to create doubt and difficulty; but as long as we remain confined to the cell of our native ignorance, while we know nothing 56 ON PREJUDICE 57 beyond the routine of sense and custom, we shall refer everything to that standard, or make it out as we would have it to bo, like s^poiled children wlio have never been from homo, and expect to find nothinj^ in the world that does not accord with their wishes and notions. It is evident that the fewer thing-s we know, the more ready we shall be to pronounce upon and condemn, what is new and strang^e to us ; tliat is, the less capable we shall beof varying: our conceptions, and the more prone to mistake a part for the whole. What we do not understand the meaning of, must necessarily appear to us ridiculous and contemptible ; and we do not stop to inquire, till we have been taug^ht by repeated experiments and warnings of our own fallibility, whether the absurdity is in ourselves, or in the object of our dislike and scorn. The most ignorant people are rude and insolent, as the most barbarous are cruel and ferocious. All our knowledge at first lying in a narrow compass (crowded by local and physical causes), whatever does not conform to this shocks us as out of reason and nature. The less we look abroad, the more our ideas are introverted, and our habitual impressions, from being made up of a few particulars always repeated, grow together into a kind of concrete substance, which will not bear taking to pieces, and where the smallest deviation destroys the whole feeling. Thus, the difference of colour in a black man was thought to forfeit his title to belons: to the species, till books of voyages and travels, and old Fuller's quaint expression of 'God's image carved in ebony,' have brought the two ideas into a forced union, and men of colour are no longer to be libelled with im- punity. The word republic has a harsh and inconjjruous sound to ears bred under a constitutional monarchy ; and we strove hard for many years to overturn the French republic, merely because we could not reconcile it to ourselves that such a thing should exist at all, notwithstanding the examples of Holland, i>wit2erland, and many others. Tliis term has hardly yet performed quarantine : to the loyal and patriotic it haa *n uj^ly 68 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS taint in it, and is scarcely fit to be mentioned in g-ood company. If, iiowever, we are weaned by degrees from our prejudices against certain words that shock opinion, this is not the case with all ; those that olfend g-ood manners grow more offensive with the progress of re- finement and civilisation, so that no writer now dares venture upon expressions that unwittingly disfigure the pages of our elder writers, and in this respect, instead of becoming callous or indifferent, we appear to become more fastidious every day. ITiere is then a real gross- ness which does not depend on familiarity or custom. This account of the concrete nature of prejudice, or of the manner in which our ideas by habit and the dearth of general information coalesce together into one in- dissoluble form, will show (what otherwise seems unaccountable) how such violent antipathies and ani- mosities have been occasioned by the most ridiculous or trifling differences of opinion, or outward symbols of it ; for by constant custom, and the want of reflection, the most insignificant of these was as inseparably bound up with the main principle as the most important, and to give up any part was to give up the whole essence and vital interests of religion, morals, and government. Hence we see all sects and parties mutually insist on their own technical distinctions as the essentials and fundamentals of religion and politics, and, for the slightest variation in any of these, unceremoniously attack their opponents as atheists and blasphemers, traitors and incendiaries. In fact, these minor points are laid hold of in prefer- ence, as being more obvious and tangible, and as leaving more room for the exercise of prejudice and passion. Another thing that makes our prejudices rancorous and inveterate is, that as they are taken up without reason, they seem to be self-evident ; and we thence conclude, that they not only are so to ourselves, but must be so to others, so that their differing from us is wilful, hypocritical, and malicious. The Inquisition never pretended to punish its victims for being heretics or infidels, but for avowing opinions which with their ON PREJUDICE 69 eyes open they knew to be false. ITiat is, the whole of the Catholic faith, ' that one entire and perfect chry- solite,' appeared to them so completely without flaw and blamelesa, that they could not conceive ho^v any one else could ima^ie it to be otherwise, except from stub- bornness and contumacy, and would rather admit (to avoid so improbable a suggestion) that men went to the stake for an opinion, not which tliey held, but counter- feited, and were content to be burnt alive for the pleasure of playing the hypocrite. Nor is it wonder- ful that there should be so much repugnance to admit the existence of a serious doubt in matters of such vital and eternal interest, and on which the whole fabric of the Church hinged, since the first doubt that was ex- pressed on any single point drew all the rest after it ; and the first person who started a conscientious scruple, and claimed the trial by reason, threw down, as if by a magic spell, the strongholds of bigotry and super- stition, and transferred tlie determination of the Ishue from the blind tribunal of prejudice and implicit faith to a totally different ground, the fair and open fit-Id of argument and inquiry. On this ground a single champion is a match for thousands. The decision of the majority is not here enough : unanimity is abso- lutely necessary to infallibility ; for the only secure plea on which such a preposterous preten^ion could be set up, is by tiiking it for granted that there can be no possible doubt entertained upon the subject, and by diverting men's minds from ever asking themselves the question of the truth of certain dognias and mysteries, any more than whether two and two vuike four. I're- judice, in short, is egotism : we see a part, and substi- tute it for the whole ; a thing strikes us casually and by halves, and we would have the universe stand proxy for our decision, in order to rivet it more firmly in our own belief ; however insutBcient or sinister the «:roundn of our opinions, we would persuade ourselves that they arise out of the strongest conviction, and are entitley to separate the two thin^. Rea.son seems a very positive and palpable thin? to those who have no notion of it, but as expressing' their own views and feelings ; as prejudice is evidently a very gross and shocking absurdity (that no one C3.n fall into who wishes to avoid it), as long as we continue to apply this term to the prejudices of other people. To sup- pose that we cannot make a mistake is the very way to run headlong into it ; for if the di-trtinction were so broad and glaring as our self-conceit and dogmatism lead us to imagine it is, we could never, but by design, mistake truth for falsehood. lljose, however, who tliink they can m/ike a clear stagf of it , and frame a set of oi)inions on all subjects by an appeal t^ reason alone, and without the smallest intermixture of custom, imagination, or passion, know just as little of them- selves as they do of human nature. 'Hie best way to prevent our running into the wildest exce=se^« of pre- judice and the most dangerous aberrations from reason, is, not to represent the two things as hanng a great gulf between them, which it Ls impossible to pass with- out a violent effort, but to show that we are con.stantly (even when we think ourselves mo.st secure) treading on the brink of a precipice ; that custom, passion, imagina- tion, insinuate themselves into and influence almoeing, is to betray an utter ignorance both of the limits and the several uses of the human capacity. The feding of the truth of anytliing, or the soundness of the judgment formed upon it from 64 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS repeated, actual impressions, is one thing ; the power of vindicating- and enforcing it, by distinctly appealing to or explaining those impressions, is another. The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers. To deny that we can, in a certain sense, know and be justified in believing anything of which we cannot give the complete demonstration, or the exact why and how, would only be to deny that the clown, the mechanic (and not even the greatest philosopher), can know the commonest thing ; for in this new and dogmatical process of reasoning, the greatest philosopher can trace nothing above, nor proceed a single step without taking something for granted ; ^ and it is well if he does not take more things for granted than the most vulgar and illiterate, and what he knows a great deal less about. A common mechanic can tell how to work an engine better than the mathematician who invented it. A peasant is able to foretell rain from the appearance of the clouds, because (time out of mind) he has seen that appearance followed by that consequence ; and shall a pedant catechise him out of a conviction which he has found true in innumerable instances, because he does not understand the composition of the elements, or cannot put his notions into a logical shape? There may also be some collateral circumstance (as the time of day), as well as the appearance of the clouds, which he may forget to state in accounting for his prediction ; though, as it has been a part of his familiar experience, it has naturally guided him in forming it, whether he was aware of it or not. This comes under the head of the well-known principle of the association of ideas ; by which certain impressions, from frequent recurrence, 1 Berkeley, in his Minute Philosopher, atracks Dr. Halley, vrho had objected to faith and mysteries in religion, on this score ; and contends that the mathematician, no less than the theologian, ia obliged to presume on certain postulates, or to resort, before he could establish a single theorem, to a formal definition of those undefinable and hj^poihetical existences, points, lines, and surfaces ; and, according to the ingenious and learned Bisiiop of Olorne, iolids would fare no better than ruperficiali in this war of words and captious contradiction. ON PREJUDICE 66 coalesce and act in uuision truly and mechanically — that is, without our being conscious of anything hut the general and settled result. On this principle it has been well said, that ' there is nothing so true as habit' ; but it is also blind : we feel and can produce a given effect from numberless repetitions of the same cause ; but we neither inquire into the cause, nor advert to the mode. In learning any art or exercise, we are obliged to take lessons, to watcli others, to pro- ceed step by step, to attend to the details and means employed ; but when we are masters of it, we take all this for granted, and do it without labour and without thought, by a kind of habitual instinct — tliat is, by the trains of our ideas and volitions having been directed uniformly, and at last flowing of themselves into the proper channel. \\'e never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically. 'Iliey do not succeed in this from knowledge or reflection, but from inveterate custom, which is a cord that cannot be loosed. In fact, in all that we do, feel, or think, there is a leaven of prejudice (more or less extensive), viz. something implied, of which we do not know or have forgotten the grounds. If I am required to prove the possibility, or demon- strate the mode of whatever I do before I attempt it, I can neither speak, walk, nor see ; nor have the use of my hands, senses, or common understanding. 1 do not know what muscles I use in walking, nor what organs 1 employ in speech : those wlio do, cannot s[)eak or walk better on that account ; nor can they tell how these organs and muscles themselves act. C an I not discover that one object is near, and another at a distance, from the ci/e alone, or from continual im- pressions of sense and custrnn. concurring to make tlie distinction, without going through a course of perspec- tive and optics .?— or am I not to be allowed an opinion on the subject, or to act upon it, without being accused of F 66 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS being a very prejudiced and obstinate person ? .\n artist knows that, to imitate an object in the horizon, he must use less colour ; and the naturalist knows that this effect is produced by the intervention of a greater quantity of air : but a country fellow, who knows nothing of either circumstance, must not only be ignorant but a blockhead, if he could be persuaded that a hill ten miles off was close before him, only because he could not state the grounds of his opinion scientific- ally. Not only must we (if restricted to reason and philosophy) distrust the notices of sense, but we must also dismiss all that mass of knowledge and perception which falls under the head of common sense and natural feeling, which is made up of the strong and urgent, but undefined impressions of things upon us, and lies between the two extremes of absolute proof and the grossest ignorance. Many of these pass for instinctive principles and innate ideas; but there is nothing in them ^ more than natural.' Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room ; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life. Reason may play the critic, and correct certain eiTors afterwards ; but if we were to wait for its formal and absolute decisions in the shifting and multifarious combinations of human affairs, the world would stand still. Even men of science, after they have gone over the proofs a number of times, abridge the process, and Jump at a conclusion : is it therefore false, because they have always found it to be true } Science after a certain time becomes presump- tion ; and learning reposes in ignorance. It has been observed, that women have more tact and insight into character than men, that they find out a pedant, a pretender, a blockhead, sooner. The explanation is, that they trust more to the first impressions and natural indications of things, without troubling themselves with a learned theory of them ; whereas men, affecting greater gravity, and thinking themselves bound to justify their opinions, are afraid to form any judgment at all, without ON PREJUDICE er the formality of proofs and definitions, and blunt the edge of their understanding's, lest thev should commit some mistake, 'lliey stay for facts, till it is too lato to pronounce on the cliaracters. ^\'omeu are naturally physiognomists, and men phrenolo^-ists. The first judge by sensations ; the last by rules. Prejudice is so far then an involuntary and stubborn axAOciation of ideas, of which we cannot assign the distinct grounds and origin ; and the answer to the question, * How do we know whether the prejudice is true or false .'' ' depends chiefly on that other, wliether the first connection between our ideas has been real or imaginary, lliis again resolvea into the iiujuiry — AVliether the subject in dispute falls under the province of our own experience, feeling, and observation, or is referable to the head of autliority, tradition, and fanciful conjecture? Our practical con- clusions are in this respect generally right ; our specu- lative opinions are just as likely to be wrong. U'hat we derive from our personal acquaintance with things (however narrow in its scope or imperfectly digested), is, for the most part, built on a solid foundation — that of Nature ; it is in trusting to others (who give them- selves out for guides and doctors) that we are ail ahroud, and at the mercy of quackery, impudence, and im- posture. Any impression, however absurd, or however we may have imbibed it, by being repeated and indulged in, becomes an article of implicit and incorrigible belief. ITio point to consider is, how we have first taken it up, whether from ourselves or the arbitrary dictation of others. ' 'Hius shall we try the doctrines, whether tliey be of nature or of man.' So far then from the charge lying against vul^^r and illiterate prejudice as the bane of truth and common sense, the argument turns the other way ; for the greatest, the most solemn, and mischievous absurdities that mankind have been the dupes of, they have imbibed from the dogmatism and vanity or hypocrisy of the self- styled wise and learned, who have imposed profitable fictions upon them for self-evident truths, and con- trived to enlarge their power with their pretensions to 68 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS knowledge. Every boor sees that the sun shines above his head ; that ' the moon is made of green cheese,' is a fable that has been taught him. Defoe says, that there were a hundred thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse. This, then, was a prejudice that they did not fill up of their own heads. All the great points that men have founded a claim to superiority, wisdom, and illumination upon, that they have embroiled the world with, and made matters of the last importance, are what one age and country differ diametrically with each other about, have been successively and justly exploded, and have been the levers of opinion and the grounds of con- tention, precisely because, as their expounders and believers are equally in the dark about them, they rest wholly on the fluctuations of will and passion, and as they can neither be proved nor disproved, admit of the fiercest opposition or the most bigoted faith. In what ^ comes home to the business and bosoms of men,' there is less of this uncertainty and presumption ; and there, in the little world of our own knowledge and experience, we can hardly do better than attend to the ^ still, small voice' of our own heai-ts and feelings, instead of being browbeat by the effrontery, or puzzled by the sneers and cavils of pedants and sophists, of whatever school or description. If I take a prejudice against a person from his face, 1 shall very probably be in the right ; if I take a pre- judice against a person from hearsay, I shall quite as probably be in the wrong. AVe have a prejudice in favour of certain books, but it is hardly without know- ledge, if we have read them with delight over and over again. Fame itself is a prejudice, though a fine one. Natural affection is a prejudice : for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others. The error here is, when that which is pro- perly a dictate of the heart passes out of its sphere, and becomes an overweening decision of the under- ON PREJUDICE 69 standing. So in like manner of the love of country ; and there is a prejudice in favour of virtue, genius, liherty, which (though it were possihle) it would he a pity to destroy. The passions, such as avarice, ambi- tion, love, etc., are prejudices, that is amply ex- aggerated views of certain objects, made up of hahit and imagination beyond their real value ; but if we ask what is the real value of any object, independently of its connection with the power of habit, or its afford- ing natural scope for the imagination, we shall perhaps be puzzled for an answer. To reduce things to the scale of abstract reason would be to annihilate our interest in them, instead of raising our affections to a higher standard ; and by striving to make man rational, we should leave him merely brutish. Animals are witliout prejudice : they are not led away by authority or custom, but it is because they are gross, and incapable of being taught. It is, how- ever, a mistake to imagine that only the vulgar and ignorant, who can give no account of their opinions, are the slaves of bigotry and prejudice ; the noisiest declaimers, the most subtle cjisuists, and most irre- fragable doctors, are as far removed from the character of true philosophers, while they strain and nervert all their powers to prove some unintelligible dogma, instilled into their minds by early education, interest, or self-importance; and if we say the peasant or artisan is a Mahometan because he is born in Turkey, or a papist because he is born in Italy, the mufti at Constantinople or the cardinal at Rome is so, for no better reason, in the midst of all his pride and learn- ing. Mr. Ilobbes used to say, that if he had read as much as others, he should have been as ignorant as they. After all, most of our opinions are a mixture of reason and prejudice, experience and authority. \Ve can only judge for ourselves in what concerns our- selves, and in things about us : and e\ en there we must trust continually to established opinion and current report ; in higher and more abstruse points 70 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS we must pin our faith still more on others. It we believe only what we know at first hand, without trusting to authority at all, we shall disbelieve a great many things that really exist ; and the suspicious coxcomb is as void of judgment as the credulous fool. My habitual conviction of the existence of such a place as Rome is not strengthened by my having seen it ; it might be almost said to be obscured and weakened, as the reality falls short of the imagination. I walk along the streets without fearing that the houses will fall on my head, though I have not examined their foundation ; and 1 believe firmly in the Newtonian system, though I have never read the Principia. In the former case, I argue that if the houses were inclined to fall they would not wait for me ; and in the latter, I acquiesce in what all who have studied the subject, and are capable of understanding it, agree in, having no reason to suspect the contrary. That the earth turns round is agreeable to my understanding, though it shocks my sense, which is however too weak to grapple with so vast a question. SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE A DIALOGUE A. For my part, I think Helvetiiis has inade it clear that self-love is at the bottom of all our actions, even of those wliich are apparently the most g^enerous and disinterested. B. I do not know what you mean by saying: that Helvetius has made this clear, nor what you mean by self-love. A. Why, was not he the first who explained to the world that in gratifying- others, we e:ratify ourselves ; that though the result may be difierent, the motive is really the same, and a selfish one ; and that if we had not more pleasure in performing what are called friendly or virtuous actions than the contrary, they would never enter our thoughts? B. Certainly he is no more entitled to tliis discovery (if it be one) than you are. Hobbes and Mandeville long before him asserted the same thing in the most explicit and unequivocal manner ; ' and Hutler, in the Notes and Preface to his Sermons, had also long before answered it in the most satisfactory way. 1 ' II a nianqu^ au plus jf^and philosophe qu'aienl eii le^ Kran<;»li, de vivre dans quehjue solitudedes Alpes, duns (juilur<'K)ljrnf, et de lancer del.\ son livre dans Paris sans y vi-nir JaniaU lijlm^me. Rousseau Hvait trop de scnsibilitt'- et tn-p lun de raison. HiiJTon trop d'hypocrisie a son jardin des plantos, Voltain- trop d cnfnntillajje dans la t^te, pour pouvoir jugerleprincipoil Hilvttiu*.'- /Jr Ji^maur. torn. 2, p. 230. My friend Mr. Beyle here lays too much strcsi on » borrowetl rerbal fallacy. 71 72 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS A. Ay, indeed ! pray how so ? B. By giving the coynmon-sense answer to the ques- tion which I have just asked of you, A. And what is tliat ? I do not exactly comprehend. B. ^y^yj} t^^'t self-love means, both in common and philosophical speech, the love o/'self. A. To be sure, there needs no ghost to tell us that. B. And yet, simple as it is, both you and many great philosophers seem to have overlooked it. A. You are pleased to be obscure — unriddle for the sake of the vulgar. B. Well then. Bishop Butler's statement in the volume I have mentioned A. May I ask, is it the author of the Analogy you speak of.'* B. The same, but an entirely different and much more valuable work. His position is, that the argu- ments of the opposite party go to prove that in all our motives and actions it is the individual indeed who loves or is interested in something, but not in the smallest degree (which yet seems necessary to make out the full import of the compound ^ sound signi- ficant,' self-love) that that something is himself. By self-love is surely implied not only that it is I who feel a certain passion, desire, good-will, and so forth, but that I feel this good-will towards myself — in other words, that I am both the person feeling the attach- ment, and the object of it. In short, the controversy between self-love and benevolence relates not to the person who loves, but to the person beloved — other- wise, it is flat and puerile nonsense. There must always be some one to feel the love, that's certain, or else there could be no love of one thing or another — so far there can be no question that it is a given individual who feels, thinks, and acts, in all possible cases of feeling, thinking, and acting — ' there needs,' according to your own allusion, ' no ghost come from the grave to tell us that' — but whether the said indi- vidual in so doing always thinks of, feels for, and acts with a view to himself, that is a very important question, SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLExNCE 73 and the only real one at issue ; and the very statement of which, in a distinct and intellif^'iblo form, drives at once the proper and inoviUhle answer to it Self-love, to mean auytliing-, must have a douhlo meaning, that is, must not merely signify love, hut love defined and directed in a particular manner, having self for its object, reflecting- and reactinf^ upon self; but it is downright and intolerable trilling to persist that the love or concern which we feel for another still has self for its object, because it is we who feel it The same sort of quibbling would lead to the conclusion that when I am thinking of any other person, I am not- withstanding thinking of myself, because it is / who have his image in my mind. .4. I cannot, I confess, see the connection. B. J wish you would point out the distinction. Or let me ask you — Suppose you were to observe me looking frequently and earnestly at myself in the glass, would you not be inclined to laugh, and say that this was vanity .'' .4. I might be half-tempted to do so. B. Well ; and if you were to find me admiring a fine picture, or speaking in terms of high praise of the person or qualities of another, would you not set it down equally to an e.xcess of coxcomltry and self- conceit .'' A. How, in the name of common sense, should I do so } B. Nay, how should you do otherwise uimn your own principles.^ For if sympathy with another i.s to be construed into self-love because it is I who feel it, surely, by the same rule, my admiration and praise of another must be resolved into self- praise an.l self- admiration, and I am the whole time deliijiitcd with myself, to wit, with my own thoughts and feelings, while I pretend to be delighted with another. Another's limbs are as much mine, who contemplate them, a.-? his feelings. A. Now, my irood friend, you go too far : I can t think you serious. 74 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS B. Do I not tell you that I have a most grave Bishop (equal to a whole Bench) on my side? A. What ! is this illustration of the looking-glass and picture his ? I thought it was in your own far- fetched manner. B. And why far-fetched ? A. Because nobody can think of calling the praise of another self-conceit — the words have a different meaning in the language. B. Nobody has thought of confounding them hitherto, and yet they sound to me as like as selfish- ness and generosity. If our vanity can be brought to admire others dismterestedly, I do not see but our good -nature may be taught to serve them as dis- interestedly. Grant me but this, that self-love signi- fies not simply, ^ I love,' but requires to have this further addition, ' I love nryself,' understood in order to make sense or grammar of it ; and I defy you to make one or the other of Helvetius's theory, if j^ou will needs have it to be his. If, as Fielding says, all our passions are selfish merely because they are ours, then in hating another we must be said to hate our- selves, just as wisely as in loving another, we are said to be actuated by self-love. I have no patience with such foolery. 1 respect that fine old sturdy fellow Hobbes, or even the acute, pertinacious sophistry of Mandeville ; but I do not like the flimsy, self-satisfied repetition of an absurdity, which with its originality has lost all its piquancy. A. You have, I know, very little patience with others who differ from you, nor are you a very literal reporter of the arguments of those who happen to be on your side of the question. You were about to tell me the substance of Butler's answer to Helvetius's theory, if we can let the anachronism pass ; and I have as yet only heard certain quaint and verbal distinctions of your own. I must still think that the most dis- interested actions proceed from a selfish motive. A man feels distress at the sight of a beggar, and he parts with his money to remove this uneasiness. If SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE 76 he did not feel this distress in his own mind, lie would take no steps to relieve tlie other's wants. H. And pray, does he feel this distress in his own mind out of love to himself, or solely that he may have the pleasure of ^ettino;- rid of it ? The first movr in the g-ame of mutual ohligatiou is evidently a social, not a selfish impulse ; and 1 mig-lit rest the dispute here and insist upon p;o'mg no farther till this step is c^ot over, but it is not necessary. I have already told you the substance of Butler's answer to this commonplace and plausible objection. He says, in his fine broad, manly and yet unpretending mode of stating a question, that a living being may be supposed to be actuated either by mere sensations, having no reference to any one else, or else that having an idea and foresight of the consequences to others, he is influenced by and interested in those consequences only in so far as they have a distinct connection with his own ultimate good, in both which cases, seeing that the motives and actions have both their origin and end in self, they may and must be properly denominated .selfish. But where the motive is neither physically nor morally selfish, that is, where the impulse to act is neither excited by a physical sensation nor by a reflection on the consequence to accrue to the individual, it must be hard to say in what sense it can be called so, except in that sense already exploded, namely, that which would infer that an impulse of any kind is selfinh merely because it acts upon some one, or that botore we can entertain disinterested sympathy with another, we must feel no sympathy at all. Benevolence, gene- rosity, compassion, friendship, etc., imply, s;iys the Bishop, that we take an immediate and unfeigned interest in the welfare of others ; tliat their jilea>iurc8 give us pleasure ; that their pains give us pain, barely to know of them, and from no tliought about our- selves. But no ! retort the advocates of self-love, this is not enough : before any person can pretend to tlie title of benevolent, generous, and so on, he must prove, that so far from taking the deepest and most heartfelt 76 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS interest in the happiness of others, he has no feeling on the subject, that he is perfectly indifferent to their weal or woe ; and then taking infinite pains and making unaccountable sacrifices for their good without caring one farthing about them, he might pass for heroic and disinterested. But if he lets it appear he has the smallest good-will towards them, and acts upon it, he then becomes a merely selfish agent ; so that to estab- lish a character for generosity, compassion, humanity, etc. , in any of his actions, he must first plainly prove that he never felt the slightest twinge of any of these passions thrilling in his bosom. This, according to my author, is requiring men to act not from charitable motives, but from no motives at all. Such reasoning has not an appearance of philosophy, but rather of drivelling weakness or of tacit irony. For my part, I can conceive of no higher strain of generosity than that which justly and truly says, Xihil humani a me alienum puto — but, according to your modern French friends and my old English ones, there is no difference between this and the most sordid selfishness ; for the instant a man takes an interest in another's welfare, he makes it his own, and all the merit and disin- terestedness is gone. ' Greater love than this hath no man, that he should give his life for his friend.' It must be rather a fanciful sort of self-love that at any time sacrifices its own acknowledged and obvious interests for the sake of another. A. Not in the least. The expression you have just used explains the whole mystery, and I think you must allow this yourself. The moment I sympathise with another, I do in strictness make his interest my own. The two things on this supposition become inseparable, and my gratification is identified with his advantage. Every one, in short, consults his particular taste and inclination, whatever may be its bias, or acts from the strongest motive. Regulus, as Helvetius has so ably demonstrated, would not have returned to Carth- age, but that the idea of dishonour gave him more uneasiness than the apprehension of a violent death. SELF-LOVE AND BKNEVOLEN'CE 77 B. That is, had he uot preferred tlie honour of hit country to his own interest Surely, when self-love by all accounts takes so very wide a ranpe and eniliraces entirely new objects, of a cliaracter so utterly ((pposed to its general circumscribed and paltry routine of action, it would be as well to desi^^nate it by some new and appropriate appellation, unless it were meant, by the intervention of the old and ambiguous term, to confound the important practical distinction which subsists between the puny circle of a man's physical sensations and private interests and the whole world of virtue and honour, and thus to bring bark the last gradually and disingenuously within the verge of the former. 'Hiings without names are unapt to take root in the human mind : we are prone to re«luce nature to the dimensions of language. If a feeling of a refined and romantic character is expressed by a gross and vulgar name, our habitual associations will be sure to degrade the first to the level of the last, instead of conforming to a forced and tecliaical definition. Hut J beg to deny, not only that the objects in this case are the same, but that the nrinciple is similar. A. Do you tlien seriously pretend that the end of sympathy is not to get rid of the momentary uneasi- ness occasioned by the distress of another." Ji. And has that uneasiness, I Jigain ask, its source in self-love.'' U self-love were the only principle of action, we ought to receive no uneasiness from the pains of others, we ought to be wholly exempt from any sucli weakness : or the least that can be re«iuircMl to give the smallest shadow of excuse to this exclusive tlieory is, that the instant the pain was communicated by oiir foolish, indiscreet symiKithy, we should think of nothing but getting rid of it as fast as possible, l>y fair means or foul, as a mechanical instinct If the pain of sympathy, as soon as it arose, was dccompoundeeinjf necessarily the offspring of undersUnding and imagina- tion (aided by habit and circumst^inces), like that which you take in the welfare of others, and yet this last interest is the only one that is ever the object of rational and voluntary pursuit, or that ever comes into competition with the interests of others. D. I am still to seek for the connecting clue. B. I am almost ashamed to ask for your attention to a statement so very plain that it seems to bonier on a truism. I have an interest of a oecuiiar and limited nature in my present self, inasmuch as 1 feel my actual sensations not simply in a degree, but in a way and by means of faculties which afford me not the smallett 86 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS intimation of the sensations of others. I cannot possibly feel the sensations of any one else, nor con- sequently take the slightest interest in them as such. I have no nerves communicating with another's brain, and transmitting to me either the glow of pleasure or the agony of pain which he may feel at the present moment by means of his senses. So far, therefore, namely, so far as my present self or immediate sensa- tions are concerned, I am cut off from all sympathy with others, I stand alone in the world, a perfectly insulated individual, necessarily and in the most un- qualified sense indifferent to all that passes around me, and that does not in the first instance affect myself, for otherwise I neither have nor can have the remotest con- sciousness of it as a matter of organic sensation, any more than the mole has of light or the deaf adder of sounds. D. Spoken like an oracle. B. Again, I have a similar peculiar, mechanical, and untransferable interest in my past self, because 1 remember, and can dwell upon my past sensations (even after the objects are removed) also in a way and by means of faculties which do not give me the smallest insight into or sj-nipathy with the past feelings of others. I may conjecture and fancy what those feelings have been ; and so I do. But I have no memory or continued consciousness of what either of good or evil may have found a place in their bosoms, no secret spring that, being touched, vibrates to the hopes and wishes that are no more, unlocks the chambers of the past with the same assurance of reality, or identifies my feelings with theirs in the same intimate manner as with those which I have already felt in my own person. Here again, then, there is a real, undoubted, original and positive foundation for the notion of self to rest upon ; for in relation to my former self and past feelings, I do possess a faculty which serves to unite me more especially to my own being, and at the same time draws a distinct and impassable line around that being, separating it from every other. A door of communication, stands always open between my present consciousness and my past SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENXE 87 feelings, which is locked and barred by the hand of Nature and the constitution of the human under- standing against tlie intrusion of any straggling im- pressions from the minds of others. I can only see into their real history darkly and by reflection. To sympathise with their joys or sorrows, and place myself in their situation either now or fomieriy, I must proceed by guess-work, and borrow tlie use of the common faculty of imagination. I am ready to acknow- ledge, then, tliat in what regards the past as well a« the present, there is a strict metaphysical distinction between myself and others, and that my personal identity so far, or in the close, continued, inseparable connection between my past and present impressions, is firmly and irrevocably establislied. D. You go on swimmingly. ISo far all is sufficiently clear. B. But now comes the rub : for beyond that point I deny that the doctrine of personal identity or self- interest (as a consequence from it) has any foundation to rest upon but a confusion of names and ideas. It has none in the nature of things or of the human mind. For I have no faculty by which I can project myself into the future, or hold the same sort of palpable, tangible, immediate, and exclusive communication with my future feelings in the same manner .as I am made to feel the present moment by means of the senses, or the past moment by means of memory. If 1 have any such faculty, expressly set apart for the purpose, name it. If I have no such faculty, I can have no such interest In order that I may possess a pro|»cr personal identity so as to live, breathe, and feel along the whole line of my existence in the same intense and intimate mode, it is absolutely necessary to have some general medium or faculty by which my successive impression* are blended and amalgamated together, and to main- tain and support this extraordinary interest. Hut so far from there being any foundation for this merging and incorporating of m'y future in my present self, there is no link of connection, no 8ymi>athy, no 88 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS reaction, no mutual consciousness between tliem, nor even a possibility of anything of the kind, in a mechanical and personal sense. Up to the present point, the spot on which we stand, the doctrine of personal identity holds good ; hitherto the proud and exclusive pretensions of self come, but no farther. The rest is air, is nothing, is a name, or but the common ground of reason and humanity. If I wish to pass beyond this point and look into my own future lot, or anticipate my future weal or woe before it has had an existence, I can do so by means of the same faculties by which I enter into and identify myself with the welfare, the being, and interests of others, but only by these. As I have already said, I have no particular oi'gan or faculty of self-interest, in that case made and provided. I have no sensation of what is to happen to myself in future, no presentiment of it, no instinctive sympathy with it, nor consequently any abstract and unavoidfible self-interest in it. Now mark : it is only in regard to my past and present being, that a broad and insurmountable barrier is placed between myself and others ; as to future objects there is no absolute and fundamental distinction whatever. But it is only these last that are the objects of any rational or practical interest. The idea of self properly attaches to objects of sense or memory, but these can never be the objects of action or of voluntary pursuit, which must, by the supposition, have an eye to future events. But with respect to these the chain of self-interest is dissolved and falls in pieces by the very necessity of our nature, and our obligations to self as a blind, mechanical, unsociable principle are lost in the general law which binds us to the pursuit of good as it comes within our reach and kno'svledge. A. A most lame and impotent conclusion, I must say. Do you mean to affirm that you have really the same interest in another's welfare that you have in your own ? B. I do not wish to assert anything without proof. Will you tell me, if you have this particular interest SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE 89 in yourself, what faculty is it tliat gives it you — to what conjuration and mighty magic it is owing— or whether it is merely the name of self tliat is to be considered as a proof of all the absurdities and impossibilities that can be drawn from it? A. I do not see that you have hitherto pointed out any. B. What I not the impossibility that you should be another being, with whom you have not a particle of fellow-feeling ? A. Another being ! Yes, I know it is always im- possible for me to be another being. B. Ay, or yourself either, witliout such a fellow- feeling, for it is that wliich constitutes self If not, explain to me what you mean by self. But it is more convenient for you to let tliat magical sound lie involved in the obscurity of prejudice and language. You will please to take notice that it is not i who commence these hairbreadth distinctions and special pleading. I take the old ground of common sense and natural feeling, and maintain that though in a popuLnr, practical sense mankind are strongly swayed by self- interest, yet in the same ordinary sense they are also governed by motives of good-nature, compassion, friend- ship, virtue, honour, etc. Now all this is denied by your modern metaphysicians, wlio would reduce every- thing to abstract self-interest, and exclude every other mixed motive or social tie in a strict philosophical sense. They would drive me from my ground by scholastic subtleties and new-fangled phrases ; am \ to blame, then, if I take them at their word, and try to foil them at their own weapons.^ Either stick to the unpretoHding jog-trot notions on the subject, or if you are determined to refine in analysing words and arguments, do not be angry if I follow the example set me, or even go a little farther to arrive at the truth. i>hall we proceed on this understanding.'' A. As you please. B. We' have got so far, then (if I mistake not, and if there is not some flaw in the argument which I am unable to detect), that the past and present (which 90 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS alone can appeal to our selfish faculties) are not the objects of action, and that the future (which can alone be the object of practical pursuit) has no particular claim or hold upon self. All action, all passion, all morality and self-interest^ is prospective. A, You have not made that point quite clear. "What, then, is meant by a present interest, by the gratification of the present moment, as opposed to a future one ? B. Nothing, in a strict sense ; or rather, in common speech, you mean a near one, the interest of the next moment, the next hour, the next day, the next year, as it happens. A. UTiat ! would you have me believe that I snatch my hand out of the flame of a candle fi"om a calculation of future consequences ? D. (laughing.) A. had better not meddle with that question. B. is in his element there. It is his old and favourite illustration. B. Do you not snatch your hand out of the fire to procure ease from pain ? A. No doubt, I do. B. And is not this ease subsequent to the act, and the act itself to the feeling of pain, which caused it ? A. It may be so ; but the interval is so slight that we are not sensible of it. B. Nature is nicer in her distinctions than we. Thus you could not lift the food to your mouth, but upon the same principle. The viands are indeed tempting, but if it were the sight or smell of these alone that attracted you, you would remain satisfied with them. But you use means to ends, neither of which exist till you employ or produce them, and which would never exist if the understanding which foresees them did not run on before the actual objects and purvey to appetite. If you say it is habit, it is partly so : but that habit would never have been formed were it not for the connection between cause and eflfect, which always takes place in the order of time, or of what Hume calls antecedents and consequents. SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE 01 A. I confess I think this a mij^hty microscopic w»jr of looking at the subject. B. Vet you object equally to more vax^ue and 8weef>- ing generalities. I^t me, however, endeavour to draw the knot a little tighter, as it has a considorabjn weight to bear — no less, in my opinion, than the whole world of moral sentiments. All voluntary action must relate to the future : but the future can only exist or influence the mind as an object of imagination and forethought ; therefore the motive to voluntary action, to all that we seek or shun, must be in all cases ideal and [)rob- lematical. Tlie thing itself which is an object of pursuit can never coexist with the motives which make it an object of pursuit. No one will say that the past can be an object either of prevention or pursuit. It may be a subject of involuntary regrets, or may give rise to the starts and flaws of passion ; but we cannot set about seriously recalling or altering it Neither can that which at present exists, or is an object of sensation, be at the same time an object of acti«)n or of volition, since if it is, no volition or exertion of mine can for the instant make it to be other than it is. 1 can make it cease to be, indeed, but this relates to the future, to the supposed non-existence of the object, and not to its actual impression on me. For a thing to be willed, it must necessarily not be. Over my pa^t and present impressions my will has no control : they are placed, according to the poet, beyond the reach of fate, much more of human means. In order that I may take an efll"ectual and consistent interest in any- thing, that it may be an object of hone or fear, of desire or dread, it must be a tiling still to come, a thing still in doubt, depending on circumstanceu and the means used to bring about or avert it. It i» my will that determines its existence or the contrary (otherwise there would be no use in troubling oneV self about it) ; it does not itself lay its j»oremptory, inexorable mandates on my will. For it is ns yet (and must be in order to be tbe rational ohi< moment's deliberation) a non-entity, a |k) 92 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS merely, and it is plain that nothing can be the cause of nothing. That which is not, cannot act, much less can it act mechanicall)', physically, all-povrerfully. So far is it from being true that a real and practical in- terest in anything are convertible terms, that a prac- tical interest can never by any possible chance be a real one, that is, excited by the presence of a real object or by mechanical sympathy. 1 cannot assuredly be induced by a present object to take means to make it exist — it can be no more than present to me — or if it is past, it is too late to think of recovering the occasion or preventing it now. But the future, the future is all our own ; or rather it belongs equally to others. The world of action, then, of business or pleasure, of self-love or benevolence, is not made up of solid materials, moved by downright, solid springs ; it is essentially a void, an unreal mockery, both in regard to ourselves and others, except as it is filled up, ani- mated, and set in motion by human thoughts and purposes. The ingredients of passion, action, and properly of interest are never positive, palpable matters -of- fact, concrete existences, but symbolical representations of events lodged in the bosom of futurity, and teaching us, by timely anticipation and watchful zeal, to build up the fabric of our own or others' future weal. A. Do we not sometimes plot their woe with at least equal good- will ? B. Not much oflener than we are accessory to our own. A. I must say that savours more to me of an anti- thesis than of an answer. B. For once, be it so. A. But surely there is a difference between a real and an imaginary interest .'' A history is not a romance. B. Yes ; but in this sense the feelings and interests of others are in the end as real, as such matters of fact as mine or yours can be. Tlie history of the world is not a romance, though you and I have had only a small share m it You would turn everything into auto- SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE 03 biofirraphy. The interests of others are no more chimerical, visionary, fantastic, than my own, l>einff founded in truth, and both are brou^-ht home to my bosom in the same way by force of imai,n nation anil sympathy. IJ. But in addition to all this sympathy that you make such a rout about, it is / who am to feel a real, do^vnright interest in my own future ffood, and I shall feel no such interest in another person's. Does not this make a wide, nay a total dirierence in theca.se.' Am 1 to have no more affection for my own Hesli and blood than for another's .'' B. This would indeed make an entire difference in the case, if your interest in your own g-ood were founded in your affection for yourself, and not your affection for yourself in your attachment to your own good. \i you were attached to your own good merely because it was yours, I do not see why you should not be equally attached to your own ill — both are ecpially yours ! Vour own person or that of others would, I take it, be alike indifferent to you, but for the d^'gree of sympathy you have with the feelings of eitber. Take away the sense or ajjprehension of pleasure or pain, and you would care no more about yourself than you do about the hair of your bead or the paring of your nails, the parting with which gives you no sen- sible uneasiness at the time or on after-reflection. D. But up to tlie present moment you allow that I have a particular interest in my proper self. \\'here, then, am 1 to stop, or how draw tlie line between my real and my imaginary identity .'' B. 'llie line is drawn for you by the naturr of thing*. Or if the difference between reality and inmifniation if so small that you cannot perceive it, it only shows the strength of the latter. Certain it is that wo can no more anticipate our future being than we can change places with another individual, except in an iilral and figurative sense. But it is just as impossible that I should have an actual sensation of and interei^l in niv future feelings as that I should have an actual sensa- 94 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS tion of and interest in wiiat another feels at the present instant. An essential and irreconcileable difference in our primary faculties forbids it. The future, were it the next moment,, were it an object nearest and dearest to our hearts, is a dull blank, opaque, impervious to sense as an object close to the eye of the blind, did not the ray of reason and reflection enlighten it. We can never say to its fleeting, painted essence, ' Come, let me clutch thee ! ' it is a thing of air, a phantom that flies before us, and we follow it, and with respect to ail but our past and present sensations, which are no longer anything to action, we totter on the brink of nothing. That self which we project before us into it, that we make our proxy or representative, and empower to embody, and transmit back to us all our real, sub- stantial interests before they have had an existence, except in our imaginations, is but a shadow of our- selves, a bundle of habits, passions, and prejudices, a body that falls in pieces at the touch of reason or the approach of inquiry. It is true, we do build up such an imaginary self, and a proportionable interest in it ; we clothe it with the associations of the past and present, we disguise it in the drapery of language, we add to it the strength of passion and the warmth of affection, till we at length come to class our whole existence under one head, and fancy our future history a solid, permanent, and actual continuation of cur immediate being ; but all this only proves the force of imagination and habit to build up such a structure on a merely partial foundation, and does not alter the true nature and distinction of things. On the sam.e foundation are built up nearly as high natural affec- tion, friendship, the love of country, of religion, etc. But of this presently. ^V'hat shows that the doctrine of self-interest, however high it may rear its head, or however impregnable it may seem to attack, is a mere contradiction, In terms a fallacy, in fact a Action, is this single consideration, that we never know what SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE 96 is to happen to us beforehand — no, not even for a moment— and that we cannot so much as tell whether we shall he alive a year, a month, or a day hence. We have no presentiment of what awaits us, making us feel the future in the instiint. Indeed such an insight into futurity would be inconsistent with itself, or we must become mere passive instruments in the Imnds of fate. A house may fall on my head as I ^^o from this, I may be crushed to pieces by a carriage running over me, or I may receive a piece of news that is death to my hopes, before another four-and-twenty hours are passed over, and yet I feel nothing- of the blow that is thus to stag{?er and stun me. 1 laugh and am well. I have no warning given me either of the course or the consequence (in truth, if I had, I should, if possible, avoid it). This continued self-interest that watchea over all my concerns alike, past, present, and future, and concentrates them all in one powerful and invari- able principle of action, is useless here, leaves me at a loss at my greatest need, is torpid, silent, dead, ami I have no more consciousness of what so nearly atfects me, and no more care about it (till I find out mv danger by other and natural means), than if no such thing were ever to happen, or were to happen to the Man in the Moon. It has been said that Coming event* cast their shadows before ; but this beautiful line is not verified in the ordinary prose of life. That it is not, is a staggering considera- tion for your fine practical, instinctive, abstracted, comprehensive, uniform principle of self- interest. Don't you think so, D ."' v. 1 shall not answer you. Am I to give up my existence for an idle sophism ? You heap riddle upon riddle ; but I am mystery-proof. I still feel my per- sonal identity as I do the chair I sit on, though I am enveloped in a cloud of smoke and words. l>et me have your answer to a plain (juestion.— Suppose 1 were actually to see a coach coming along, and 1 was in danger of being run over, what I want to know, is, 96 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS should I not try to save myself sooner than any other person ? B. No, you would first try to save a sister, if she were with you. A. Surely that would be a very curious instance of self, though I do not deny it. B. I do not think so. I believe there is hardly any one who does not prefer some one to themselves. For example, let us look into Waverley. A. Ay, that is the way that you take your ideas of philosophy, from novels and romances, as if they were sound evidence. B. If my conclusions are as true to nature as my premises, I shall be satisfied. Here is the passage 1 was going to quote : ' I was only ganging to say, my lord,' said Evan, in what he meant to be an insinuating manner, ' that if your excellent honour and the honour- able court would let Vich Ian Vohr go free just this once, and let him gae back to France and not trouble King George's government again, that any six o' the very best of his clan will be willing to be justified in his stead ; and if you'll just let me gae down to Glen- naquoich, I'll fetch them up to ye myself to head or hang, and you may begin with me the very first man. ' ^ A. But such instances as this are the effect of habit and strong prejudice. We can hardly argue from so barbarous a state of society. B. Excuse me there. I contend that our preference of ourselves is just as much the effect of habit, and very frequently a more unaccountable and unreason- able one than any other. A. I should like to hear how you can possibly make that out. B. If you will not condemn me before you hear what I have to say, I will try. You allow that D , in the case we have been talking of, would perhaps run a little risk for you or me ; but if it were a perfect stranger, he would get out of the way as fast as his legs would 1 Waverley, voL iiL p. 201. SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENXE 97 carry him, and leave tlie stranj^er to shift for him- self. A. Yes; and does not that overturn yourwholetheory.' B. It would if my theory were as devoid of common sense as you are pleased to suppose ; that is, if liecause I deny an original and absolute distinction in nature (where there is no such thing), it followed that 1 must deny that circumstances, intimacy, liabit, knowlcdure, or a variety of incidental causes o#uld liave any influence on our affections and actions. My inference is just the contrary. For would you not say that D c^red little about the stranger, for this plain reason, that he knew nothing about him ? .4. No doubt. B. And he would care rather more about you and me, because he knows more about us ? A. Why yes, it would seem so. B. And iie would care still more al)Out a sister (according to the same supposition), because he would be still better acquainted with her, and liad l)een more constantly with her ^ A. I will not deny it. B. And it is on tlie same principle (generally speaking) that a man cares most of all about himself, because he knows more about himself than about any- body else, that he is more in tl)o secret of his own most intimate thoughts and feelings, and more in the habit of providing for his own want^ and wislies, which he can anticipate with greater liveliness and certainty than those of others, from being more nearly ' made and moulded of things past' The poetical fiction is rendered easier, and assisted by my accjuaintance with mvself, just as it is by the ties of kindred or habitjj of friendly intercourse. Tliere is no farther approach made to the doctrines of self-love and per>(»nal identity. I), E , here is IJ trying to persuade me I am not myself. E. Sometimes you are not D. But he says that I never am. Or is it only that I am not to be so .'' H 98 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS B. Nay, I hope ^ thou art to continue, thou naughty varlet ' — Here and hereafter, if the last may be ? You have been yourself (nobody like you) for the last forty years of your life : you would not prematurely stuff the next twenty into the account, till you have had them fairly out ? D. Not for "the world, I have too great an affection for them. B. Yet 1 think you would have less if you did not look forward to pass them among old hooks, old friends, old haunts. If you were cut off from all these, you would be less anxious about what was left of yourself. D. 1 would rather be the AYandering Jew tlian not be at all. B. Or you would not be the person I always took you for. D. Does not this willingness to be the "^Yandering Jew J rather than nobody, seem to indicate that there is an abstract attachment to self, to the bare idea of existence, independently of circumstances or habit. B. It must be a very "loose and straggling one. You mix up some of your old recollections and favourite notions with your self-elect, and indulge them in your new character, or you would trouble yourself very little about it. If you do not come in in some shape or other, it is merely saying that you would be sorry if the A^''andering Jew were to disappear from the earth, however strictly he may have hitherto maintained his incognito. D. There is something in that ; and as well as I remember, there is a curious but exceedingly mystical illustration of this point in an original Essay of yours which 1 have read and spoken to you about. B. I believe there is ; but A is tired of making objections, and I of answering them to no purpose. D. I have the book in the closet, and if you like, we will turn to the place. It is after that burst of enthusi- astic recollection (the only one in the book) that SELF-LOVE AND BENE\'OLENX'E ay Soutlicy said at the time was sometliin^ between tlie manner of Milton's i)rose works and Jeremy Taylor. iy. Ali ! I as little thoug^lit then that I should ever be set down as a florid prose writer, as that he would become poet laureate ! J. 1). here took the volume from his brother, and read the followint;: i)assage from it. ' 1 do not think 1 should illustrate the foregoing reasoning so well by anything I could add on the sub- ject, as by relating the manner in which it first struck me. lliere are moments in the life of a solitary thinker which are to him what the evening of some great victory is to the conqueror and hero— milder triumphs, long remembered with truer and deeper delight. And though the shouts of multitudes do not hail his success — though gay trophies, though the sounds of music, the glittering of armour, and the neighing of steeds do not mingle with his joy, yet shall he not want monu- ments and witnesses of his glory — the deep forest, the willowy brook, the gathering clouds of winter, or tlie silent gloom of his own chamber, 'faithful remem- brancers of his high endeavour, and his glad success,* that, as time passes by him with unreturning wing, still awaken the consciousness of a spirit patient, inde- fatigable in the search of truth, and the hope of sur- viving in the thoughts and minds of other men. I remember I had been reading a speech wliich .Mira- baud (the author of the System of Mature) has put into the mouth of a supposed atheist at the l^st Judgment ; and was afterwards led on by some means or other to consider the question, whether it could ]»roperly be said to be an act of virtue in any one to s;icrifice liis own final happiness to that of anv other ]ierson or number of persons, if it were possible for the one ever to be made the price of the other } Sup{»ose it were my own case — that it were in my power to save twenty other persons by voluntarily consenting to suffer for them : VVhy should I not do a generous thing, and never 100 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS trouble myself about what might be the consequence to myself the Lord knows when ? * The reason why a man should prefer his own future welfare to that of others is, that he has a necessary, absolute interest in the one, which he cannot have in the other — and this, again, is a conse- quence of his being always the same individual, of his continued identity with himself. The difference, I thought, was this, that however insensible I may be to my own interest at any future period, yet when the time comes I shall feel differently about it. I shall then judge of it from the actual impression of the object, that is, truly and certainly ; and as I shall still be conscious of my past feelings, and shall bitterly regret my own folly and insensibility, I ought, as a rational agent, to be determined now by what I shall then wish I had done, when I shall feel the conse- quences of my actions most deeply and sensibly. It is this continued consciousness of my own feelings which gives me an immediate interest in whatever relates to my future welfare, and makes me at all times account- able to myself for my own conduct. As, therefore, this consciousness will be renewed in me after death, if I exist again at all — But stop — as I must be conscious of my past feelings to be myself, and as this conscious being will be myself, how if that consciousness should be transferred to some other being ? How am I to know that I am not imposed upon by a false claim of identity ? But that is ridiculous, because you will have no other self than that which arises from this very con- sciousness. ^^Tiy, then, this self may be multiplied in as many different beings as the Diety may think proper to endue with the same consciousness ; which, if it can be renewed at will in any one instance, may clearly be so in a hundred others. Am 1 to regard all these as equally myself? Am I equally interested in the fate of all ? Or if I must fix upon some one of them in particular as my representative and other self, how am I to be determined in my choice ? Here, then, I saw an end put to my speculations about absolute self-interest and SELF-LOVE AND BEXEVOLEN'CE loi personal identity. 1 saw plainly that the conscious- ness of my own feelinj2:s, which is made the foundation of my continued interest in them, could not extend to what had never been, and mi^ht never he ; that my identity with myself must be confined to the connec- tion between my past and present bein^ ; that with respect to my future feelinsrs or interests, they could have no communication with, or influence over, my present feelin^js and interests, merely because they were future ; that I shall be hereafter affected by the recollection of my past feeling-s and action ; and my remorse be equally heightened by reflectinfj^ on my past folly and late-earned wisdom, whether I am really the same being-, or have only the same consciousness renewed in me ; but that to suppose that this remorse can react in the reverse order on my present feelinsrs, or give me an immediate interest in my future fcelinjfs, before they exist, is an express contradiction in terms. It can only affect me as an imaginary idea, or an idea of truth. But so may the interests of others ; and the question proposed was, whether I have not some real, necessary, absolute interest in whatever relates to my future being, in consequence of my immediate connection with myself — independently of the general impression which all positive ideas have on my mind. How, then, can this pretended unity of consciousnei^ which is only reflected from the past — which makes nie so little acquainted with the future that I cannot even tell for a moment how long it will be continued, whether it will be entirely interrupted by or renewed in me after death, and which might be multiplied in I don't know how many different beings, and prolonged by complicated sufferings, without my being any the wiser for it, — how, I say, c.in a principle of this »ort identify my present with my future interests, and make me as much a participator in what does not at all affect me as if it were actually impressed on my senses r It is plain, as this conscious being may l>e decom- pounded, entirely destroyed, renewed again, or multi- plied in a great number of beings, and as, whichever 102 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS of these takes place, it cannot produce the least altera- tion in my present being — that what I am does not depend on what I am to be, and that there is no communication between my future interests, and the motives by which my present conduct must be governed. This can no more be influenced by what may be my future feelings with respect to it, than, it will then be possible for me to alter my past conduct by wishing that I had acted differently. I cannot, therefore, have a principle of active self-interest arising out of the immediate connection between my present and future self, for no such connection exists, or is possible. I am what I am in spite of the future. My feelings, actions, and interests, must be deter- mined by causes already existing and acting, and are absolutely independent of the future. ^VTiere there is not an inter-community of feelings, there can be no identity of interests. ^Iy personal interest in anything must refer either to the interest excited by the actual impression of the object, which cannot be felt before it exists, and can last no longer than while the impres- sion lasts ; or it may refer to the particular manner in which I am mechanically affected by the idea of my own impressions in the absence of the object. I can, therefore, have no proper personal interest in my future impressions, since neither my ideas of future objects, nor my feelings with respect to them, can be excited either directly or indirectly by themselves, or by any ideas or feelings accompanying them, without a complete transposition of the order in which causes and effects follow one another in nature, llie only reason for my preferring my future interest to that of others, must arise from my anticipating it with greater warmth of present imagination. It is this greater liveliness and force with which I can enter into my future feelings, that in a manner identifies them with my present being ; and this notion of identity being once formed, the mind makes use of it to strengthen its habitual propensity, by giving to per- sonal motives a reality and absolute truth which they SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE 103 can never have. Hence it has been inferred thnt my real, substantial interest in anythinj^r must be derivetl in some indirect manner from the impression of the object itself, as if that could have any sort of com- munication with my present feelings, or excite any interest in my mind hut by means of tlie ima|2^itiation, which is naturally affected in a certain manner liy the prospect of future good or evil.' ^ /. D. This is the strangest tale that e'er I heard. C. D. It is the strangest fellow, brother John ! I PrincxTpUs of Human Action, 2nd edit., p. 70l ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others. I do not here mean to speak of persons who offend intentionally, or are obnoxious to dislike from some palpable defect of mind or body, ugliness, pride, ill-humour, etc. ; but of those who are disagreeable in spite of themselves, and, as it might appear, with almost every qualification to recommend them to others. This want of success is owing chiefly to something in what is called their manner ; and this again has its foundation in a certain cross-grained and unsociable state of feeling on their part, which influences us, perhaps, without our distinctly adverting to it. The mind is a finer instrument than we some- times suppose it, and is not only swayed by overt acts and tangible proofs, but has an instinctive feeling of the air of truth. We find many individuals in whose company we pass our time, and have no particular fault to find with their understandings or character, and yet we are never thoroughly satisfied with them ; the reason will turn out to be, upon examination, that they are never thoroughly satisfied with themselves, but uneasy and out of sorts all the time ; and this makes us uneasy with them, without our reflecting on, or being able to discover the cause. Thus, for instance, we meet with persons who do us a number of kindnesses, who show us every mark of respect and good-will, who are friendly and serviceable — and yet we do not feel grateful to them, after all. We reproach ourselves with this as caprice or insensi- 104 ON DISAGREEABLE I'KOPLK 105 bility, and try to g:et the liettor of it ; but there in somethiiifi^ in their way of doiiit; tliiiiffs that prevents us from feeling- cordial or sincerely ohlitjod to them. We think them very worthy people, and would be jrlad of an opportunity to do them a pood turn if it were in our power ; but wo cannot pet beyond this : the utmost we can do is to .save apjiearances, and not come to an open rupture with them. 'I'he truth is, in all such cases, we do not sympathise (as we oupht) with them, because they do not sympathise (as they oupht) with us. They have done what they did from a sense of duty in a cold dry manner, or from a me(i(lle.•^<)me busybody humour ; or to show their superiority over us, or to patronise our infirmity ; or they have dropped some hint by the way, or blundered upon some topic they should not, and have shown, by one means or other, that they were occupied with anything but the pleasure they were affording us, or a delicate attention to our feelings. Such persons may be styled friendly grievances, lliey are commonly people of low spirits and disappointed views, who see the discourapinp side of human life, and, with the best intentions in the world, contrive to make everything they have to do with uncomfortable. They are alive to your distress, and take pains to remove it ; but they have no .•vitis- faction in the gaiety and ease they have communi- cated, and are on the look-out for some new occasion of sipnalisinp their zeal ; nor are they backward to insinuate that you will soon have need of their assist- ance, to guard you against running into fresh dirticulticn, or to extricate you from them. From larpo benevol- ence of soul and ^discourse of reason, looking before and after,' they are continually reminding you of something that has gone wrong in time past, or that may do so in that which is to come, and are surpri.soecuhitive discussion, as if they were engaged in a personal quarrel — and who, though successful over almost every com- petitor, seem still to resent the very offer of resistance to their supposed authority, and are as angry as if they had sustained some premeditated injury. 'Hi ere is an impatience of temper and an intolerance of opinion in this that conciliates neither our affection nor esteem. To such persons nothing appears of any moment but the indulgence of a domineering intellectual superiority, 114 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS to the disreg-ard and discomfiture of tlieir own and every body else's comfort. Mounted on an abstract propo- sition, they trample on every courtesy and decency of behaviour ; and though, perhaps, they do not intend the g"ross personalities they are guilty of, yet they can- not be acquitted of a want of due consideration for others, and of an intolerable egotism in the support of truth and justice. You may hear one of these Quixotic declaimers pleading the cause of humanity in a voice of thunder, or expatiating on the beauty of a Guido with features distorted with rage and scorn. This is not a very amiable or edifying spectacle. There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they ? Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good-nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of: on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction ; but they have one that neutralises all these — they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach ; and when you leave them, it is with a feel- ing that they can do just as Avell without you. This is not suUenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind ; but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude ; and, how- ever their brain works, their pulse beats neither faster nor slower for the common accidents of life. There is, therefore, something cold and repulsive in the air that is about them — like that of marble. In a word, they are modem philosophers ; and the modern philosopher is what the pedant was of old — a being who lives in a world of his own, and has no correspondence with this. It is not that such persons have not done you services — you acknowledge it ; it is not that they have said severe things of you — you submit to it as a necessary evil : but it is the cool manner in which the whole is done that annoys you — the speculating upon you, as if you were nobody — the regarding you, with a view to an experiment in corpore vili — the principle of dissection — ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 115 the determiuation to spare no blemishes— to cut you down to your real standard; — in short, the utter absence of the partiality of friendsliip, the blind en- thusiasm of affection, or the delicacy of connnfui decency, that whether they ' hew you as a carcase tit for hounds, or carve you as a dish tit for the e:ods,' the operation on your feelini^s and your sense of obli^tion is just the same ; and, whether they are demons or ani^els in them- selves, you wish them equally at tlui devil ! Other persons of worth and sense e^ive way to mere violence of temperament (with whicli the understanding has nothing to do) — are burnt up with a perpetual fury — repel and throw you to a distance by their restless, whirling motion — so that you dare not go near them, or feel as uneasy in their company as if you stood on the edge of a volcano. 'ITiey ha\e their tempora vioUia fandi; but then what a stir may you not expect tlie next moment ! Nothing is less inviting or less com- fortable than this state of uncertainty and apprehension. Then there are those who never approach you without the most alarming advice or information, telling you that you are in a dying way, or that your affairs are on the point of ruin, by way of disburthening their con- sciences ; and others, wiio give you to understand much the same thing as a good joke, out of sheer impertinence, constitutional vivacity, and want of somethinif to say. All these, it must be confessed, are disagrewible jn-ople ; and you repay their over-anxiety or total forgetfulness of you, by a determination to cut them as speedily as possible. We meet with instances of persons who overpower you by a sort of boisterous mirth and rude animal spirits, with whose ordinary state of excitement it is as impossible to keep up as with that of any one really intoxicated ; and with others who seem scarce alive— who take no pleasure or interest in anything— who are born to exemplify the maxim, Not to admire is all the art I know To make men happy, or to keep Uiem to,— and whose mawkish insensibility or sullen scorn are 116 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS equally annoying. In general, all people brought up in remote country places, where life is crude and harsh — all sectaries — all partisans of a losing cause, are dis- contented and disagreeable. Commend me above all to the Westminster School of Reform, whose blood runs as cold in their veins as the torpedo's, and whose touch jars like it. Catholics are, upon the whole, more amiable than Protestants — foreigners than English people. Among ourselves, the Scotch, as a nation, are particularly disagreeable. They hate every appear- ance of comfort themselves, and refuse it to others. Their climate, their religion, and their habits are equally averse to pleasure. Tlieir manners are either distinguished by a fawning sycophancy (to gain their own ends, and conceal their natural defects), that makes one sick ; or by a morose, unbending callous- ness, that makes one shudder. 1 had forgot to mention two other descriptions of persons who fall under the scope of this essay ; — those who take up a subject, and run on with it interminably, without knowing whether their hearers care one word about it, or in the least minding what reception their oratory meets with — these are pretty generally voted hore^ (mostly German ones) ; — and others, who may be designated as practical paradox-mongers — who discard the ^ milk of human kindness,' and an attention to common observances, from all their actions, as effeminate and puling — who wear an out-of-the-way hat as a mark of superior under- standing, and carry home a handkerchief full of mush- rooms in the top of it as an original discovery — who give you craw-fish for supper instead of lobsters ; seek their company in a garret, and over a gin-bottle, to avoid the imputation of affecting genteel society ; and discard their friends after a term of years, and warn others against them, as being honest fellows, which is thought a vulgar prejudice. This is carrying the harsh and repulsive even beyond the disagreeable — to the hateful. Such persons are generally people of commonplace understandings, obtuse feelings, and inordinate vanity. They are formidable if they get ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 117 you in their power— otlierwise, they are only to be laughed at. There are a vast numher who are disa^jreeahle from meauuess of spirit, downri^'ht iusoleiire, t'rom slovenli- ness of dress or disgustiujs^ tricks, from folly or ig-norauce ; hut these causes are positive moral or physical defects, and I only meant to speak of that repulsiveness of manners which arises from want of tact and sympathy with others. iSo far of friendship : a word, if I durst, of love. Gallantry to women (tli© sure road to their favour) is nothin"^ but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes — a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in your- self, as being able to contribute towar«ls it 'ITie slightest inditference with regard to them, or distrust of yourself, are eciually fatal. The amiable is the voluptuous in looks, manner, or words. No face that exhibits this kind of expression — whetlier lively or serious, obvious or suppressed, will be thought ugly — • no address, awkward — no lover who approaches e\erv woman he meets as his mistress, will be unsuc(e.s>ful. Diffidence and awkwardness are the two antidott^s to love. To please universally, we must be pleased with our- selves and others. There should be a tiiitre of the cox- comb, an oil of self-complacency, an anticipation of success — there should be no gloom, no moroseness, no shyness — in short, there should be very little of the Englishman, and a good deal of the Frenchman. Hut though, 1 believe, this is the receipt, we are none the nearer making use of it. It is impossible for those who are naturally di.sagreeable ever to become otherwiie. This is some consolation, as it may save a world of useless pains and anxiety. ' Desire to please, and \/ou will infallibly plea.se,' is a true maxim ; but it does not follow that it is in the power of all to practise it A vain man, who thinks he is endeavouring to nlcaso, \% only endeavouring to shine, and is still farther trom the mark. An irritable man, who puts a check uperceptihle a progrena in amending his faults, he will take his swing in the opposite direction, will triumj)h and revel in his sup- posed excellences, will launch out into the wide, untrammelled field of ahstract speculation, and silence envious sneers and petty cavils hy force of ar^-ument and dint of importunity. You will find him the same character at sixty that he was at thirty ; or, should time soften down some of his asperities, and tire him of his absurdities as he has tired others, nothiuij will transform him into a man of the world, and he will die in a garret, or a paltry second -floor, from not having been able to acquire the art ' to see himself m others see him,' or to dress his opinions, looks, and actions in the smiles and approbation of the world. On the other hand, take a youth from the same town (perhaps a school-fellow, and the dunce of the neiijh- bourhood) ; he has 'no figures, nor no fanUisies which busy thought draws in the brain of men,' no precon- ceived notions by which he must scjuare his conduct or his conversation, no doirma to maintain in tlie teeth of opposition, no iShibboleth to which he must force others to subscribe ; the progress of science or the good of his fellow-creatures are things about which he has not the remotest conception, or the smallest par- ticle of anxiety — ITis soul proud science never tRU«lit to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way ; all that he sees or attends to is the immediate path before him, or what can encourage or lend him a help- ing hand through it ; his mind is a complete blank, on 122 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS whicli the world may write its maxims and customs in what characters it pleases ; he has only to study its humours^ flatter its prejudices, and take advantage of its foibles ; while walking the streets he is not taken up with soh^ng an abstruse problem, but with con- sidering his own appearance and that of others ; instead of contradicting a patron, assents to all he hears ; and in every proposition that comes before him asks him- self only what he can get by it, and whether it will make him friends or enemies : such a one is said to possess great penetration and knowledge of the world, understands his place in society, gets on in it, rises from the counter to the counting-house, from the dependant to be a partner, amasses a fortune, gains in size and respectability as his afl^airs prosper, has his town and country house, and ends with buying up half the estates in his native county ! Tlie great secret of a knowledge of the world, then, consists in a subserviency to the will of others, and the primary motive to this attention is a mechanical and watchful perception of our own interest It is not an art that requires a long course of study, the difficulty is in putting one's-self apprentice to it. It does not surely imply any very laborious or profound inquiry into tlie distinctions of truth or falsehood to be able to assent to whatever one hears ; nor any great refinement of moral feeling to approve of what- ever has custom, power, or interest on its side. The only question is, ^\\Tio is willing to do so?' — and the answer is, those who have no other faculties or pre- tensions, either to stand in the way of, or to assist their progress through life. Those are slow to wear the livery of the world who have any independent resources of their own. It is not that the philosopher, or the man of genius, does not see and know all this, that he is not constantly and forcibly reminded of it by his own failure or the success of others, but he can- not stoop to practise it. He has a difl'erent scale of excellence and mould of ambition, which have nothing in common with current maxims and time-serving ca}- ON KNOWLEDGE OF THE \V()IUJ> 125 culations. He is a moral and intellectual epotist, not a mere worldly-minded one. In youth, he has san- gTiine hopes and brilliant dreams, which ho cannot sacrifico for sordid realities — as he advanccH farther in life, habit and pride forbid his turninj^ back. He cannot bring himself to give up his best-grounded con- victions to a blockhead, or his conscientious principlen to a knave, though he might make his fortune by so doing. Tlie rule holds good here, as well as in another sense — ' What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own .soul.'*' If his con- victions and principles had been less stronsr, they would have j'ielded long ago to the suggestions of hit* interest, and he would have relapsed into the man of the world, or rather he would never have had the temptation or capacity to be anything else. < >ne thing that keeps men honest, as well as that confirms them knaves, is their incapacity to do nny better for themselves than nature has done for them. One per- son can with difficulty speak the trutli, as another lies with a very ill grace. After re{>cated awk\v;ird attempts to change characters, they each very properly fall back into their old jog-trot path, as best suited to their genius and habits. There are individuals who make themselves and every one else uncomforta})le by trying to be agrt^e- able, and who are only to be endured in their natural characters of blunt, plain-spoken people. Many a man would have turned rogue if ho had known how. Non ex quoiibet ligno fit MercuriiiJt. The motlcst nuui cannot be impudent if he would. Tlie man of w?n»« cannot play the fool to advanta^re. It is not the mere resolution to act a part that will enable us to do it. without a natural genius and fitness for it Some men are born to be valets, as othej-s are to bo courtiern. 'lliere is the climbing genus in man a** well a.«« in plantj?. It is sometimes made a wonder how men of * no mark or likelihood' frequently rise to court prefcmuMit, and make their way against all competition. That i» the very reason. 'Iliey present no tangible point; they 124 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS offend no feeling of self-importance. They are a perfect unresisting medium of patronage and favour. They aspire through servility ; they repose in insig- nificance. A man of talent or pretension in the same circumstances would be kicked out in a week. A look that implied a doubt, a hint that suggested a difference of opinion, would be fatal. It is of no uarely nominal, and who, if the donor were to return from the other world, would modestly yield it up— one who has no personal identity of his own, no will to encroach upon or dispose of it, otherwise than his {matron would wish after his death — not a hairbrained etrotist, a dii-sh- ing adventurer, to squander, hector, and flourish away with it in wild schemes and ruinous experiments, every one of them at variance with the opinions of the tes- tator, in new methods of turnii>-hoeing ; in specuU- 126 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS tions in madder — this would be to tear his soul from his body twice over — His patron's ghost from Limbo lake the while Sees this which more damnation doth upon him pile ! Mr. Cobbett complained, that in his last interview with Baron Maseres, that gentleman was in his dotage, and that his reverend legatee sat at the bottom of the table, cutting a poor figure, and not contradicting a word the Baron said. No doubt, as he has put this in print in the exuberance of his dissatisfaction, he let both gentlemen see pretty plainly what he thought of them, and fancied that this expression of his contempt, as it gratified him, was the way to ensure the good will of the one to make over his whole estate, or the good word of the other to let him go snacks. This is a new way of being quits with one's benefactors, and an egre- gious quid pro quo. If Baron Maseres had left Mr. Cobbett £200,000 it must have been not to write his epitaph, or visit him in his last moments ! A gossiping chambermaid who only smiles and assents when her mistress wishes to talk, or an ignorant country clown who stands with his hat off when he has a favour to ask of the squire (and if he is wise, at all other times), knows more of the matter. A knowledge of mankind is little more than Sir Pertinax's instinct of hou-ing, or of ^never standing upright in the presence of a great man,' or of that great blockhead, the world. It is not a perception of truth, but a sense of power, and an instant determination of the will to submit to it. It is, therefore, less an intellectual acquirement than a natural disposition. It is on this account that I think both cunning and wisdom are a sort of original endowments, or attain maturity much earlier than is supposed, from their being moral qualities, and having their^ seat in the heart rather than the head. The difference depends on the manner of seeing things. The one is a selfish, the other is a disinterested view of nature. The one is the clear open look of integrity, the other is a contracted and blear-eyed obliquity of ON KNUNVLEDGE OF THE WORLD 127 mental vision. If any one has but the couraire and honesty to look at an ohject as it is in itsolf, or ilivested of prejudice, fear, and favour, he will he sure to see it pretty rio^lit ; as he who ref2:ards it throu{,^li the re- fractious of opinion and fashion, will he sure to see it distorted and falsified, however the error may redound to his own advantiig^e. Certainly, he who makes the universe tributary to his convenience, and subjects all his impressions of what is riju^ht or wronji^, true or false, black or white, round or scjuare, to the standard and maxims of the world, wlio never utters a proposition but he fancies a patron close at his elbow who overliears him, who is even afraid, in private, to suffer an honest conviction to rise in his mind, lest it should mount to his lips, ^et wind, and ruin his prospects in life, ouj^ht to gain somethinw- in excliungo for the restraint and force put upon his thoughts and faculties : on the contrary, he who is confined by no such petty and debasing trammels, whose comprehension of mind is Mn large heart enclosed,' finds his incjuiries and his views expand in a degree commensurate with the universe around him ; makes truth welcome wherever he meets her, and receives her cordial embrace in return. To see things divested of passion and interest, is to see them with the eye of history and philosophy. It is easy to judge right, or at least to come to a mutual understanding, in matters of history and abstract morality. ^V'hy, then, is it so difficult to arrive at the same calm certiiinty in actual life.'' Because the passions and interests are concerned, and it requires so much more candour, love of truth, and independence of spirit to encounter 'the world and its dread laugh,' to throw aside every sinister considera- tion, and grapple with the plain merits of the case. To be wiser than other men is to l>e honester tiian they ; and strength of mind is only courage to see and sin-ak the truth! Perhaps the courage may be also owing to the strength ; but both go together, and are natural, and not acquired. Do we not see in fables the force of the moral principle in detecting the truth f Die onlr 128 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS effect of fables is^ by making inanimate or irrational things actors in the scene, to remove the case com- pletely from our own sphere,, to take our self-love off its guard, to simplify the question ; and yet the result of this obvious appeal is allowed to be universal and irresistible. Is not this another example that ' the heart of man is deceitful above all things ' ; or, that it is less our incapacity to distinguish what is right, than our secret determination to adhere to what is wrong, that prevents our discriminating one from the other ? It is not that great and useful truths are not manifest and discernible in themselves ; but little, dirty objects get between them and us, and from being near and gross, hide the lofty and distant. ITie first business of the patriot and the philanthropist is to overleap this barrier, to rise out of this material dross. Indignation, contempt of the base and grovelling, makes the philosopher no less than the poet ; and it is the power of looking beyond self that enables each to inculcate moral truth and nobleness of sentiment, the one by general precepts, the other by individual example. I have no quarrel with men of the world, mere muck- worms ; every one after his fashion, ' as the flesh and fortune shall serve' ; but I confess I have a little distaste to those who, having set out as loud and vaunting enthusiasts, have turned aside to ' tread the primrose path of dalliance,' and to revile those who did not choose to follow so edifying an example. The candid brow and elastic spring of youth may be ex- changed for the wrinkles and crookedness of age ; but at least we should retain something of the erectness and openness of our first unbiassed thoughts. I cannot understand how any degree of egotism can dispense with the consciousness of personal identity. As we advance farther in life, we are naturally inclined to revert in imagination to its commencement ; but what can those dwell upon there who find only feelings that they despise, and opinions that they have abjured ? ' If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee ' : but the operation is a painful one, and the ON KNOWLEDGE OF THK WOIUJ) 120 Dody remains after it only a niutilntod trai,'TiienL (Generally, those who are cut otf troni tiiis roource in former recollections, make up for it (aa well as thev can) by an exiiijfffe rated and an.xious fondness for their late -espoused convictions — a thintj unsitrhth- and indecent. Why does he wlio at one time despises •^the little Chapel Bell/ afterwards write 'the Hook of the Church?' 'llie one is not an atonement for the other ; each shows only a juvenile or a superainiuated precocity of judjj^ment. It is uuitiiif^ C amille-Deft- moulius and Camille-tlourdan (Jourdan of the ( himes) in one character. I should like, not out of malice, but from curiosity, to see Mr. .Southey rewrite the beau- tiful poem on 'his own miniature -picture, when he was two years old,' and see what he would substitute for the lines — And it was tbouKht That thou shoiildst tread prefernunta fluwery path. A'oung Robert '. 'I'here must here, I think, Ije A/V»7w* in mauu^criptis : the verse must lialt a little I The laureate and his friends say that they are still lalmurin^ in the same design as ever, correcting' the outlines and tilliuif up the unfinished sketch of their early opinions. They seem rather to have quite blotted them out, and to have t^ken a fresh canvas to ln'^'^in another, and no Iohh extravaii^ant caricature. Or their new and old lheorie,s remind one of those heads in picture-dealers" shops, where one half of the face is thoroughly cleaned and repaired, and the other left covered with stains and dirt, to show the necessity of the picture-scourer'^ art : the transition otfends the sifjht. It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, any more than they grow htrongcr or healthier or honester. I'hey may, in cue s^-nst*. imbibe a greater portion of worldly wisdom, and liav© their romantic dight^ tamed to the level of every day't practice and experience; but |>erhap*j it wouhi l>e lH'tt4»r if some of the extravairance and enthusia^^m ot youth could be infused into the latter, inrte^d of l»einir K 130 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS absorbed (perforce) in that sink of pride, envy, selfish- ness, iterance, conceit, prejudice, and h^-pocrisy. One thing is certain, that this is the present course of events, and that if the individual grows wiser as he gains experience, the world does not, and that the tardy penitent who is treading back his steps, may meet the world advancing as he is retreating, and adopting more and more of the genuine impulses and disinterested views of youth into its creed. It is, indeed, only by conforming to some such original and unsophisticated standard, that it can acquire eitlier soundness or consistency. The appeal is a fair one, from the bad habits of society to the unprejudiced aspirations and impressions of human nature. It seem.s, in truth, a hard case to have ail the world against us, and to require uncommon fortitude (not to say presumption) to stand out single against such a host. The bare suggestion must ^ give us pause,' and has no doubt overturned many an honest conviction. The opinion of the world (as it pompously entitles itself), if it means an}i;hing more than a set of local and party prejudices, with which only our interest, not truth, is concerned, is a shadow, a bugbear, and a contradiction in terms. Having all the world against us, is a phrase without a meaning ; for in those points in which all the world agree, no one differs from the world. If all the world were of the same way of thinking, and always kept in the same mind, it would certainly be a little staggering to have them against you. But however widely and angrily they may differ from you, they differ quite as much from one another, and even from themselves. ^V^lat is gospel at one moment, is heresy the next : different countries and climates have different notions of things. When you are put on your trial, therefore, for impugning the public opinion, you may always subpoena this great body against itself. For example, I have been twitted for somewhere calling Tom Paine a great writer, and no doubt his reputation at present * does somewhat smack ' : yet in 1792 he was so great, and so popular an author, and so much ON KNOWLEDGE OF THE U'ORi.h i.n read and admired hy nurulters who would not now mention liis name, tliat the Government was ohliired to suspend the Constitution, and to so to war to counteract the etFects of liis popularity. His extre-me popularity was then the cause (l»y a common and \uljfar reacdnn) of his extreme obnoxiousness. If the Mpinion of the world, then, contradicts itself, why may not 1 contradict it, or choose at what time, and to what extent, I will agree with it? 1 have been accused of ahusinif dis- senters, and sayinor that sectaries, in general, are dry and suspicious ; and 1 believe that all the world wiU say the same thing except themselves. I have said that the church people are proud and overbearing, which has given them umbrage, though in this I have all the sectaries on my side. I have laughed at the Metliodists, and for this I have been accuse, by an adoption on the part of the one of suih rxtornal and fantastic symbols as strike the attention and excite the envy or admir.ttiou of tlie beiioldor, and which are no sooner made known and exposed to public view for this purpose, than tliey are successfully copied by the multitude, the slavish herd of imitators, who do not wish to be l)ehindhand with tiieir betters in out- ward show and pretensions, and then sink without any further notice into disrepute and contempt. 'Hiu* fashion lives only in a perpetual round of g^iddy in- novation and restless vanity. To be old-fa.sliione look like nobodv else is a surticientlv nlortif^iM, 137 138 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS reflection ; to be in dang-er of being mistaken for one of the rabble is worse. Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity. It is the perpetual setting up and then disowning a certain standard of taste, elegance, and refinement, which has no other foundation or authority than that it is the prevailing distraction of the moment, which was yesterday ridiculous from its being new, and to-morrow will be odious from its being common. It is one of the most slight and insignificant of all things. It cannot be lasting, for it depends on the constant change and shifting of its own harlequin dis- guises ; it cannot be sterling, for, if it were, it could not depend on the breath of caprice ; it must be superficial, to produce its immediate effect on the gaping crowd ; and frivolous, to admit of its being assumed at pleasure, by the numbers of those who affect, by being in the fashion, to be distinguished from the rest of the world. It is not anything in itself, nor the sign of anything but the folly and vanity of those who rely upon it as their greatest pride and ornament. It takes the firmest hold of weak, flimsy, and narrow minds, of those whose emptiness conceives of nothing excellent but what is thought so by others, and whose self-conceit makes them willing to confine the opinion of all excellence to themselves and those like them. That which is true or beautiful in itself, is not the less so for standing alone. That which is good for anything, is the better for being more widely diffused. But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism : it i? haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath — tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute. •The fashion of an hour marks the wearer.' It is a sublimated essence of levity, caprice, vanity, extra- vagance, idleness, and selfishness. It thinks of nothing but not being contaminated by vulgar use, and winds and doubles like a hare, and betakes itself to the most r-altry shifts to avoid being overtaken by the common ON FASHION 139 hunt that are always in full chase after it It con- trives to keep up its fastidious pretensions, not by the difficulty of the attainment, but by the rapidity and evanescent nature of the chansres. It is a sort of conventional ])adi^e, or understood passport into select circles, which must still be varying (like the water- mark in bank-notes) not to be counterfeited by those without the pale of fashionable society ; for to make the test of admission to all the privileg-es of that refined and volatile atmosphere depend on any real merit or extraordinary accomplishment, would exclude too many of the pert, the dull, the iirnorant, too many shallow, upstart, and self-admirin^r pretenders, to enable the few that passed muster to keep one another in any tolerable countenance. If it were the fasliion, for instance, to be distinguished for virtue, it would be difficult to set or follow the example ; but then this would confine the pretension to a small number (not the most fashionable part of the community), and would carry a very siiitfular air with it ; or if excellence in any art or science were made tlie standard of fashion, this would also effectually prevent vulerar imit;ition, but then it would equally prevent fashionable impertinence. Tliere would be an obscure circle of vertu as well a* virtue, drawn within the established circle of fashion, a little province of a mighty empire — the example of honesty would spread slowly, and learninar would still have to boast of a respectable minority. But of what use would such inicourtly and out-of-the-way accom- plishments be to the g"reat and nol)le, the ricii and fair, without any of the eclat, the noise and nonsense which belong to that which is followed and admired by all the world alike .'' 'ITie real and solid will never do for the current coin, the common wear and tear of foppery and fashion. It must be the meretricious, the showy, the outwardly fine, and intrinsically worthless— tiuit which lies within the reach of the most indolent aiFectation, that which can be put on or otf at the suggestion of the most wilful caprice, and for whicli, through all its fluctuations, no mortal reason can be 140 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS griven, but that it is the newest absurdity in vogue ; The shape of a head-dress^ whether fiat or piled (curl on curl) several stories high by the help of pins and pomatum, the size of a pair of paste buckles, the quantity of gold lace on an embroidered waistcoat, the mode of taking a pinch of snuff, or of pulling out a pocket-handkerchief, tlie lisping and affected pro- nunciation of certain words, the sayiiig Mem for Madam, Lord Foppington's Tarn and 'Paun honour, with a regular set of visiting phrases and insipid senti- ments ready sorted for the day, were what formerly distinguished the mob of fine gentlemen and ladies from the mob of their inferiors. These marks and appendages of gentility had their day, and were then discarded for others equally peremptory and un- equivocal. But in all this chopping and changing, it is generally one folly that drives out another ; one trifle that by its specific levity acquires a momentary and surprising ascendancy over the last. There is no striking deformity of appearance or behaviour that has not been made ' the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.' Factitious imperfections are laid hold of to hide real defects. Paint, patches, and powder were at one time synonymous with health, cleanliness, and beauty. Obscenity, irreligion, swear- ing, drinking, gaming, effeminacy in the one sex and Amazon airs in the other, anj-thing, is the fashion while it lasts. In the reign of Charles II., the pro- fession and practice of every species of extravagance and debauchery were looked upon as the indispensable marks of an accomplished cavalier. Since that period the court has reformed, and has had rather a rustic air. Our belles formerly overloaded themselves with dress, of late years they have affected to go almost naked — ^ and are, when unadorned, adorned the most.' 'Ilie women having left off stays, the men have taken to wear them, if we are to believe the authentic Memoirs of the Fudge Family. The Niobe head is at present buried in the poke bonnet, and the French milliners and marchande^ de* modes have proved them- ON FASHION 141 selves an overmatch for the Greek sculptors, in tnattern of taste anil costume. A very striking: cljange has, however, taken place in dress of late years, and some prof^ress has been made in taste and elet,'-ance, from the very circumstance, that as fashion has extended its empire in that direc- tion, it has lost its power. While f:ishion in dresH included what was costly, it was confined to the wealthier classes ; even this was an encroachment on the privileges of rank and birth, which for a lont: time were the only things that commanded or pretended to command respect, and we hnd Sliakspeare complaining that * the City bears the cost of {)rinces on unworthy shoulders ' ; but when the appearing in the top of the mode no longer depended on the power (jf purchasing certain expensive articles of dress, or in tiie riirht of wearing them, the rest was so obvious and easy, that any one who chose mi^ht rut as coxcombical a figure as the best. It became a matter of mereatfettation on the one side, and gradually ceased to bo made a matter ot aristocratic assumption on the other. ' In the trrand carnival of this our age,' among other changes, tliis is not the least remarkable, that the monstrous preten- sions to distinctions in dress ha\e dwindled away by tacit consent, and the simplest and most graceful have been in the same request with all classes. In this respect, as well as some others, ' the age is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe ' ; a lord is hardly to be distinguished in the street from an att(»rney's clerk ; and a plume of feathers is no lonc-er mistaken for the highest distinction in the land I The ideas of natural equality and the Manchester steam -enirines together, have, like a double battery, levelled the high towers and artihcial structures of fashion in dreKS. and a white muslin trown is now the common costuine ot the mistress and the maid, instead of the one wearine:, as iieretofore, rich silks mid s,'itins, and the other coarse linsey-wolsey. It would be ridiculous (on a similar principle) for the courtier to take the wall of tiie 142 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS citizen, having no longer a sword by his side to main- tain his right of precedence ; and, from the stricter notions that have prevailed of a man's personal merit and identity, a cane dangling from his wrist is the greatest extension of his tigure that can be allowed to the modern petit-maitre. ^^^hat shows the worthlessness of mere fashion is, to see how easily this vain and boasted distinction is assumed, when the restraint of decency or circum- stances is once removed, by the most uninformed and commonest of the people. I know an undertaker that is the greatest prig in the streets of London, and an Aldermanbury haberdasher that has the most military strut of any lounger in Bond Street or St. James's. We may, at any time, raise a regiment of fops from the same number of fools, who have vanity enough to be intoxicated with the smartness of their appearance, and not sense enough to be ashamed of themselves. Every one remembers the story in Peregrine Pickle, of the strolling gipsy that he picked up in spite, had well scoured, and introduced her into genteel company, where she met with great applause, till she got into a passion by seeing a fine lady cheat at cards, rapped out a volley of oaths, and let nature ^ex the better of art. Dress is the great secret of address. Clothes and confidence will set anybody up in the trade of modish accomplishment. Look at the two classes of well-dressed females whom we see at the play-house in the boxes. Both are equally dressed in the height of the fashion, both are rouged, and wear their neck and arms bare— both have the same conscious, haughty, theatrical air — the same toss of the head — the same stoop in the shoulders, with all the pride that arises from a systematic disdain of formal prudery — the same pretence and jargon of fashionable conversation — the same mimicry of tones and phrases — the same ' lisping, and ambling, and painting, and nicknaming of God's creatures ' ; the same everything but real propriety of behaviour and real refinement of sentiment. In all the externals thev are as like as the reflection in the ON FASHION 143 looking^-glass. The only (Hrference hotweeii the woman of fasliioii and tlie woman of pleasure is, that the one w what tho other only ser.ju.s to he; and yet the victims of dissipation, who thus rival and almost outshine women of the tirst quality in all the blaze, and pride, and p'litter of show and fashion, are, in general, no better than a set of raw, uneducated, inexperienced country fj:irls, or awkward, coarse-fisted servant-maids, who re(juire no other apprenticesliip or ([ualitication to be on a level with persons of the hi2;hest distinction in society, in all tlie brilliancy and ele^rance of outward appearance, than that they hive forfeited its common privilei^es, and every title to its respect. The truth is, that real virtue, beauty, or understanding^, are the same, whether ^ \n a high or low degree'; and the airs and graces of pretended superiority over these which the highest classes give themselves, from mere frivolous and external accomplishments, are easily imitated, with provoking success, by the lowest, when- ever they dare. ON NICKNAMES Ksd nugSB in seria ducuut This is a more important subject than it seems at first sight. It is as serious in its results as it is contempt- ible in the means by which these results are brought about. Nicknames, for the most part, govern the world. The history of politics, of religion, of litera- ture, of morals, and of private life, is too often little less than the history of nicknames. ^V^lat are one-half the convulsions of the civilised world — the frequent overthrow of states and kingdoms — the shock and hostile encounters of mighty continents — the battles by sea and land — the intestine commotions — the feuds of the Vitelli and Orsini, of the Guelphs and Ghibeliines — the civil wars in England and the League in France — the jealousies and heart-burnings of cabinets and councils — the uncharitable proscriptions of creeds and sects, Turk, Jew, Pagan, Papist and Puritan, Quaker, and Methodist — the persecutions and massacres — the burnings, tortures, imprisonments, and lingering deaths, inflicted for a different profession of faith — but so many illustrations of the power of this principle ? Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and Neale's History of tfie Puritans, are comments on the same text. The fires in Smithfield were fanned by nicknames, and a nickname set its seal on the unopened dungeons of the Holy Inquisition. Nicloiames are the talismans and spells that collect and set in motion all the combustible part of men's passions and prejudices, which have hitherto played so much more successful a game, and 144 ON NICKNAMES 145 done their work so much more ofTecttially than rea«on, in all the grand concerns and petty details of human life, and do not yet seem tired of the task assi^-ned them. Nicknames are the convenient, portable tools by wliich they simplify the process of mischief, and get through tlieir job with the least time and trouble. 'Iliix-e worthless, unmeaning-, irritating, envenomed words of reproach are the established signs by wljich the different compartments of society arc ticketed, labelled, and marked out for each other's hatred and contempt. They are to be had, ready cut and dry, of all sorts and lizes, wholesale and retail, for foreign ex]>ortation or for home consumption, and for all occasions in life. 'The priest calls the lawyer a cheat, the lawyer beknaves the divine.' Tlie Frenchman hates the Englisiiman because he is an Englishman ; and the Englishman hates the Frenchman for a? good a reason. The N\'hig hates the Tory, and the Tory the ^^ big. llie Dissenter hates the Church of England man, and the C liurch of England man hates the Dissenter, as if they were of a different species, because they have a different designa- tion. 'Die Mussulman calls the worshipper of the Cross ' Christian dog,' spits in his face, and kicks him from the pavement, i>y virtue of a nickname ; and the Christian retorts the indignity upon the Infidel and the Jew by the same infallible rule of right. In France they damn S]iaksj)eare in the lump, by calling him a harhare ; and wo talk of Racine's verbiage witli inexpre--*- siblo contempt and self-complacency. Among our- selves, an anti-Jacobin critic denounces a Jacobin poet and his friends, at a venture, *as inlideis and fugitives, who have left their wives destitute, and their children fatherless' — whether they have wives and chihlrcn or not. The unenlightened savage makes a meal of hiy enemy's flesh, after reproaching him with the name of his tribe, because he is differently tattooed ; and the literarv cannibal cuts up the character of his opjKincnt by the help of a nickname, llio jest of all this is, tliat a party nickname is always a relative term, and has its countersign, which has just the same force and L 146 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS meanine:, so that both must be perfectly ridiculous and insignificant. A Whig implies a Tory ; there must be ^ Malcontents ' as well as ^ Malignants ' ; Jacobins and anti- Jacobins ; English and French. These sorts ofnoms- de-guerre derive all their force from their contraries. Take away the meaning of the one, and you take the sting out of the other. They could not exist but upon the strength of mutual and irreconcilable antipathies ; there must be no love lost between them. What is there in the names themselves to give them a prefer- ence over each other ? ' Sound them, they do become the mouth as well ; weigh them, they are as heavy ; conjure with them, one will raise a spirit as soon as the other.' If there were not fools and madmen who hated both, there could not be fools and madmen bigoted to either. I have heard an eminent character boast that he had done more to produce the late war by nick- naming Buonaparte ' the Corsican,' than all the state papers and documents on the subject put together. And yet Mr. Southey asks triumphantly, ' Is it to be supposed that it is England, our England, to whom that war was owing ?' As if, in a dispute between two countries, the conclusive argument, which lies in the pronoun our, belonged only to one of them, I like Shakspeare's version of the matter better : — Hath Britain all the sun that shines ? Day, night, Are they not but in Britain ? I' the world's volume Our Britain seems as of it, but not in 't ; In a great pool a swan's nest, prithee, think There's livers out of Britain. In all national disputes, it is common to appeal to the numbers on your side as decisive on the point. If everybody in England thought the late war right, everybody in France thought it wrong. There were ten millions on one side of the question (or rather of the water), and thirty millions on the other side — that's all. I remember some one arguing, in justification of our Ministers interfering without occasion, ' That governments would not go to war for nothing ' ; to ivhich I answered : ' Tlien they could not go to war at ON NICKxNAMES 147 ail ; for, at that rate, neitlier of thorn could he in the wrong-, and yet hoth of them must he in the ritrht. which was ah^;urd.' The only meaning- of these vulvar nicknames and party distinctions, where thev are ur^ed most violently and confidently, is that others ditfer from you in some particular or other (wliether it be opinion, dress, clime, or complexion), which you highly disapprove of, forjrettinij that, by the same rule, they have the very same right to he offended at you because you differ from them, lliose who have reason on their side do not make the most obstinate and grievous appeals to prejudice and abusive language. I know but of one exception to this ffennral rule, and that is where the things that excite disi^ust are of such a kind that they cannot well be gone into without offence to decency and good manners; but it is e<]ually certain in this case, that those who are most shocke- ping ! ' The appeal was, however, ineffectual. He then repeated in a louder tone, but still in an under key, so as not to excite the attention of any one but his friend, ' Dr. Topping ! ' The Doctor took no 162 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS notice. He then grew more impatient, and repeated ' Dr. Topping, Dr. Topping ! ' two or three times pretty loud, to see whether the Doctor did not or would not hear him. Still the Doctor remained immovahle. The joke began at length to get round, and one or two persons, as he continued his invocation of the Doctor's name, joined in with him ; these were reinforced by others calling out, ' Dr. Topping, Dr. Topping ! ' on all sides, so that he could no longer avoid perceiving it, and at length the whole pit rose and roared, ' Dr. Topping ! ' with loud and repeated cries, and the Doctor was forced to retire precipitately, frightened at the sound of his own name. The calling people by their Christian or surname is a proof of affection, as well as of hatred. They are generally the best of good fellows with whom their friends take this sort of liberty. Diminutives are titles of endearment. Dr. Johnson's calling Goldsmith ' Goldy ' did equal honour to both. It showed the regard he had for him. This familiarity may perhaps imply a certain want of formal respect ; but formal respect is not necessary to, if it is consistent with, cordial friendship. Titles of honour are the reverse of nicknames : they convey the idea of respect, as the others do of contempt, but they equally mean little or nothing. Junius's motto, Stat nominis umbra, is a very significant one ; it might be extended farther. A striking instance of the force of names, standing by themselves, is in the respect felt towards Michael Angelo in this country. We know nothing of him but his name. It is an abstraction of fame and greatness. Our admiration of him supports itself, and our idea of his superiority seems self-evident, because it is attached to his name only. ON TASTE » Tastk is nothing but sensibility to the different degrees and kinds of excellence in the works of Art or Nature. This definition will perhaps be disputed ; for I am aware the general practice is to make it consist in a disposition to find fault. A French man or woman will in general conclude their account of Voltaire's denunciation of Shakspeare and Milton as barbarians, on the score of certain technical improprieties, with assuring you that * lie (Voltaire) had a great deal of taste.' It is their phrase, // avait beaucoup de gout. To which the proper answer is, that this may be, but that he did not show it in this case ; as the overlooking great and countless beauties, and being taken up only with petty or accidental blemishes, shows as little strength or understanding as it does refinement or elevation of taste. The French author, indeed, allows of Shakspeare, that ' he had found a few pearls on his enormous duiitrhill.' But there is neither truth nor proportion in this sentence, for his works are (to say the legist) — Rich with praise A3 is the ooze and bottom of tl>e sea With suakeu wreck and sumless tre asurlea. Genius is the power of producing- excellence : taste is the power of perceiving the excellence thus prod\iced in several sorts and degrees, with all their force, refine- ment, distinctions, and connections, in other words, taste (as it relates to the productions of art) is strictly the power of being properly affected by works of genius. 163 154 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS It is the proportioning admiration to power, pleasure to beauty ; it is entire sympathy with the finest impulses of the imagination, not antipathy, not indiffer- ence to them. The eye of taste may be said to reflect the impressions of real geuius, as the even mirror reflects the objects of Nature in all their clearness and lustre, instead of distorting or diminishing them ; Or, like a gate of steel, Fronting the sun, receives and renders back His figure and his heat. To take a pride and pleasure in nothing but defects (and these perhaps of the most paltry, obvious, and mechanical kind) — in the disappointment and tarnish- ing of our faith in substantial excellence, in the proofs of weakness, not of power (and this where there are endless subjects to feed the mind with wonder and increased delight through years of patient thought and fond remembrance), is not a sign of uncommon refinement, but of unaccountable perversion of taste. So, in the case of A'oltaire's hypercriticisms on Milton and Shakspeare, the most commonplace and pre- judiced admirer of these authors knows, as well as Voltaire can tell him, that it is a fault to make a sea- port (we will say) in Bohemia, or to introduce artillery and gunpowder in the war in heaven. TTiis is common to \'oltaire, and the merest English reader : there is nothing in it either way. But what he differs from us in, and, as it is supposed, greatly to his advantage, and to our infinite shame and mortification, is, that this is all that he perceives, or will hear of in Milton or Shakspeare, and that he either knows, or pretends to know, nothing of that prodigal waste, or studied accumulation of grandeur, truth, and beauty, which are to be found in each of these authors. Now, 1 cannot think that, to be dull and insensible to so great and such various excellence — to have no feeling in unison with it, no latent suspicion of the treasures hid beneath our feet, and which we trample upon with ignorant scorn — to be cut off, as by a judicial blind- ON TASTE 155 from that universe of tliou^lit and imagination that shifts its wondrous pa^reant before us — to turn aside from the throntc and splendour of airy sliapes that fancy weaves for our dazzled si^lit, and to strut and vapour over a little pettifo^g^in^ blunder in peop:raphy or chrouoloo^y, whicli a school-boy or villajje pedai^og-ue would be ashamed to insist upon, is any proof of the utmost perfection of taste, but tlie contrary. At this rate, it makes no difference wliether Shakspeare wrote his works or not, or whether the critic, who * damns him into everlasting redemption ' for a siu^rle slip of the pen, ever read them ; ho is absolved from all know- ledg-e, taste, or feeling, of the different excellences, and inimitable creations of the poet's pen — from any sympathy with the wanderings and the fate of Imogen, the beauty and tenderness of Ophelia, the thougbtful abstraction of Hamlet ; his soliloquy on life may never have given him a moment's pause, or touched his breast with one solitary reflection ; the ^V'itche3 in Macbeth may ' lay their choppy lingers upon their skinny lips' without making any alteration in his pulse, and Lear's heart may break in vain for him ; he may hear no strange noises in Prospero's island, and tlie moonlight that sleeps on beds of flowers, where fairies couch in the Midsummer Xigld's Dream, may never once have steeped his senses in repose. Nor will it avail Milton to 'have built high towers in heaven,' nor to have brought down heaven upon e^irth, nor that he has made Satan rear his giant form before us, ^ Majestic though in ruin,' or decked the bridal bed of Eve with beauty, or clothed her with innocence, ' likest heaven,' as she ministered to Adam and his Angel-guest Our critic knows nothing of all this, of beauty or sublimity, of thought or passion, breathed in sweet or solemn sounds, with all the niai,nc of verse 'in tones and numbers fit' ; he lays his finger on the map, and shows you that there is no seaport for Shak- speare's weather-beaten travellers to land at in Bohemia, and takes out a list of mechanical inventions, and proves that gunpowder was not known till long after 156 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS Milton's ' Battle of the Angels ' ; and concludes, that every one who, after these profound and important discoveries, finds anything to admire in these two writers, is a person without taste, or any pretensions to it. By the same rule, a thoroughbred critic might prove that Homer was no poet, and the Odyssey a vulgar performance, because Ulysses makes a pun on the name of Noman ; or some other disciple of the same literal school might easily set aside the whole merit of Racine's Athalie, or Moliere's Ecole des Femmes, and pronounce these chef-d'asuvres of art barbarous and Gothic, because the characters in the first address one another (absurdly enough) as Mon- sieur and Madame, and because the latter is written in rhyme, contrary to all classical precedent. Tliese little false measures of criticism may be misapplied, and retorted without end, and require to be eked out by national antipathy or political prejudice to give them currency and weight. Thus it was in war time that the author of the Friend ventured to lump all the French tragedies together as a smart collection of epigrams, and that the author of the Excursion, a poem, being portion ^ of a larger poem, to be named the Recluse, made bold to call Voltaire a dull prose writer with impunity. Such pitiful quackery is a cheap way of setting up for exclusive taste and wisdom, by pretending to despise what is most gener- ally admired, as if nothing could come up to or 1 Why is the word portion here used, aa if it were a portion of Scripture ? Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care. Cottar's Saturday Night. Xow, ilr. Wordsworth's poems, though not profane, yet neither are they sacred, to deserve this solemn style, though some of his admirers have gone so far as to compare them, for primitive, patri- archal simplicity, to the historical parts of the Bible. Much has been said of the merits and defects of this large poem, which is 'portion of a larger' ; perhaps Horace's rule has been a double bar to its success — Non satis est pulchra pceviata esse, dulcia sunto. The features of this author's muse want sweetness of eipresaion as well as re^rularitv of outline. ON TASTE 167 satisfy that ideal standard of excellence, of wliich the person bears about tlic select pattern in his own mind. ' Not to admire anj'tliinp: ' is as bad a test of wHsdom as it is a rule for happiness. We sometimes meet with individuals who have formed their whole char- acter on tliis maxim, and who ridiculously affect a decided and do^-matical tone of superiority over t>thers, from an uncommon de^ee both of natural and arti- ficial stupidity. They are blind to paintinj,' — deaf to music — indifferent to poetry ; and tliov triumph in tlie catalosrue of their defects as the fault of these arts, because they have not sense enough to perceive their own want of perception. To treat any art or science with contempt, is only to prove your own incapacity and want of taste for it : to say that what lias l>een done best in any kind is {::ood for nothintr, is to say that the utmost exertion of human ability is not equal to the lowest, for the productions of tlie lowest are worth somethincr, except by comparison with what is better. When wo hear persons exilaimin^ that Uie pictures at the Marquis of Stafford's or Mr. Anfrer- stein's, or those at the British Gallery, are a heap of trash, we mi^ht tell them that they betray in this a want, not of taste only, but of common sense, for that these collections contain some of the finest specimens of the greatest masters, and that thai must be excel- lent in the productions of human art, bey(tnd which human genius, in any a^e or country, has not been able to g-o. Ask these very fastidious critics what it is that they do like, and you will soon find, fr(»m tracing out the objects of their secret admiration, that their pretended disdain of first-rate excellence is own- ing eitlier to ignorance of the hvst refinomotils of works of genius, or envy at the general admiration wliich thev have called forth. 1 have known a furious philippic against the faults of shiniiiir talcnta aiul established reputation subside into complacent admir- ation of dull mediocrity, tliat neitlior t.vsketl Uie kin- dred sensibility of its admirer beyond its natural inertness, nor touched hia self-love wiih a consciousnes* 158 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS of inferiority ; and that, by never attempting orig-inal beauties, and never failing-, gave no opportunity to intellectual ingratitude to i^e plausibly revenged for the pleasure or instruction it had reluctantly received. So there are judges who cannot abide Mr. Kean, and think iMr. Young an incomparable actor, for no other reason than because he never shocks them with an idea which they had not before. The only excuse for the over- delicacy and supercilious indifference here described, is when it arises from an intimate acquaint- ance with, and intense admiration of, other and higher degrees of perfection and genius. A person whose mind has been worked up to a lofty pitch of enthu- siasm in this way cannot, perhaps, condescend to notice, or be much delighted with inferior beauties ; but, then, neither will he dwell upon, and be pre- posterously offended with, slight faults. So that the ultimate and only conclusive proof of taste is, even here, not indifference but enthusiasm ; and before a critic can give himself airs of superiority for what he despises, he must first lay himself open to reprisals, by telling us what he admires. There we may fairly join issue with him. Without this indispensable con- dition of all true taste, absolute stupidity must be more than on a par with the most exquisite refine- ment ; and the most formidable Drawcansir of all would be the m.ost impenetrable blockhead. Thus, if we know that Voltaire's contempt of Shakspeare arose from his idolatry of Ilacine, this may excuse him in a national point of view ; but he has no longer any advantage over us ; and we must console ourselves as well as we can for Mr. ^Yord5Worth's not allowing us to laugh at the wit of Voltaire, by laughing now and then at the only author whom he is known to under- stand and admire ! ^ Instead of making a disposition to find fault a proof 1 A French teacher, in reading Titug and Berenice with an English pupil, used to exclaim, in raptures, at the best passages, ' What have you in Shakspeare equal to this ? ' This showed that he had a tast« for Racine, and a power of appreciating his beauties, though hf might want an equal taste for Shakspeare. ON TASTE 169 of tastf, I would reverse the rule, and catimate overy one's pretensions to taste by the decree of their sen- sibility to the highest and most various excellence. An indiiTereuce to less deforces of excellence is only excusable as it arises from a knowledg-e and admira- tion of hiijher ones ; and a readiness in the detection of faults should pass for retinement only as it is owing to a quick sense and impatient love of beauties. In a word, fine taste consists in sympathy, not in antipathy ; ami the rejection of what is bad is only to be accounted a virtue when it implies a preference of and attachment to what is better. There is a certain point which may be considered as the highest point of perfection at wliich the human faculties can arrive in the conception and execution of certain things ; to be able to reach this point in reality is the greatest proof of genius and power ; and I imagine that the greatest proof of taste is given in being able to appreciate it when done. For instance, 1 have heard (and I can believe) that Madame Catalani's manner of singing Hope told a flattering tale was the perfection of singing ; and I cannot conceive that it would have been the perfection of taste to have thought nothing at all of it. Tliere was, I understand, a sort of fluttering of the voice and a breathless palpitation of the heart (like the ruffling of the feathers of the robin- redbreast), which completely gave back all the uneasy and thrilling voluptuousness of the sentiment ; and 1 contend that the person on whom not a particle of this expression was lost (or would have been lost, if it had been even finer), into whom the tones of sweetness or tenderness sink deeper and deeper as they approach the farthest verge of ecstacy or agony, he who has an ear attuned to the trembliiiir liarmony, and a heart ' pierceable' by pleasure's finest point, is the best jinlge of music — not he who remains insensible to the matter himself, or, if you point it out to him, asks, ' \\'\\a\. of it?' I fancied' that I had a triumph, some time ago, over a critic and a connoisseur in music, who thought little of the minuet in Don Giovanni ; but the same 160 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS person redeemed his pretensioDs to musical taste, in my opinion, by saying of some passage in Mozart, 'This is a soliloquy equal to any in Hamlet.' In hear- ing the accompaniment in the Messiah, of angels' voices to the shepherds keeping watch at night, who has the roost taste and delicacy — he who listens in silent rapture to the silver sounds, as they rise in sweetness and soften into distance, drawing the soul from earth to heaven, and making it partake of the music of the spheres — or he who remains deaf to the summons, and remarks that it is an allegorical conceit? Which would Handel have been most pleased with, the man who was seen standing at the performance of the Coronation Anthem in Westminster Abl)ey, with his face bathed in tears, and mingling Hhe drops which sacred joy had engendered' with that ocean of circling sound, or with him who sat with frigid, critical aspect, his heart untouched and his looks unaltered as the statues on the wall ? ^ Again, if any one, in look- ing at ilembrandt's picture of Jacob's Dream, should not be struck with the solemn awe that surrounds it, and with the dazzling flights of angels' wings, like steps of golden light, emanations of flame or spirit hovering between earth and sky, and should observe very wisely that Jacob was thrown in one corner of the picture like a bundle of clothes, without power, form, or motion, and should think this a defect, I should say that such a critic might possess great knowledge of the mechanical part of painting, but not an atom of feeling or imagination. Or who is it that, looking at the pro- ductions of Raphael or Titian, is the person of true 1 It is a fashion among the scientific, or pedantic part of the miisical world, to decry Miss Stephens's singing as feeble and insipid. This it is to take things by their contraries. Her excellence does not lie in force or contrast, but in sweetness and simplicity. To give only one instance. Any pei-son who does not feel the beauty of her singing the lines in Artaxer^^s, ' V^'hat was my pride is now my shame,' etc., in which the notes seem to fall from her lips like languid drops from the bending flower, and her voice flutters and dies away with the expiring conflict of passion in her bosom, may console himself with the possession of other faculties, but assuredly he hsus no ear for music. ON TASTE 101 taste, be who finds wliat there is, or lie who finds wliat there is not, in eacli ? Not he who picks a petty, vulgar quarrel with the colouring of lliiphael, or the drawing ot Titian, is the true critic and judicious spectator, but he who broods over the expression ot the one till it takes possession of his soul, and who dwells on the tones and hues of the other till his eye is saturated with truth and beauty ; for by tliis jnean's he moulds his mind to the study and recej)tion of wliat is most perfect in form and colour, instead of letting it re- main empty, 'swept and garnislied,' or rather a dull blank, with ' knowledge at each entrance quite shut out. ' He who cavils at the want of drawing in 'I'itian is not the most sensible to it in llaphael ; instead of that he only insists on the latter's want of colouring, lie who is offended at Ilaphael's hardness and monotony is not delighted with the soft, rich pencilling of 'J'itian ; he only takes care to find fault with him for wanting that which, if he possessed it in the highest de;::ree, he would not admire or understand. And this is easy to be accounted for. First, such a critic has been told what to do, and follows his instructions ; seco:idly, to perceive the height of any excellence, it is necessar> to have the most exquisite sense of that kind of excel- lence through all its gradations : to perceive the want of any excellence, it is merely necessary to liave a negative or abstract notion of the thing, or perhaps only of the name ; or, in other words, any, the most crude and mechanical idea of a given quality is a measure of positive deficiency, wherwis none but the most refined idea of the same (juality can be a sUindard of superlative merit. To distinguish the finest character- istics of Titian or llaj)hael — to go along with them in their imitation of nature, is to be so far like them — to be occupied only with that in whicli they fell short ol others, instead of that in which they boared above them, shows a vulgar, narrow cajtacity, insensible to an)- thing beyond mediocrity, and an ambition still more grovelling. To be dazzled by admiration of the greate*:t excellence, and of the highest works of genius, it M 162 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS natural to the best capacities and the best natures ; envy and dulness are most apt to detect minute blemishes and unavoidable inequalities, as we see the spots in the sun by having its rays blunted by mist or smoke. It may be asked, then, whether mere extra- vagance and enthusiasm are proofs of taste ? And I answer, no ; where they are without reason and know- ledge. Mere sensibility is not true taste, but sensibility to real excellence is. To admire and be wrapt up in what is trifling or absurd, is a proof of nothing but ignorance or affectation : on the contrary, he who admires most what is most worthy of admiration (let his raptures or his eagerness to express them be what they may), shows himself neither extravagant nor unwise. ^\Tien Mr. ^Vordsworth once said that he could read the description of Satan in Milton — Nor seem'd Less than arch-angel min'd, and the excess Of glorj' obscur'd— till he felt a certain faintness come over his mind from a sense of beauty and g^-andeur, I saw no extravagance in this, but the utmost truth of feeling. When the same author, or his friend Mr. Southey, says, that the Excursion is better worth preserving than the Paradise Lost, this appears to me a great piece of impertinence, or an unwarrantable stretch of friendship. The highest taste is shown in habitual sensibility to the greatest beauties ; the most general taste is shown in a perception of the greatest variety of excellence. Many people admire Milton, and as many admire Pope, while there are but few who have any relish for both. Almost all the disputes on this subject arise, not so much from false as from confined taste. ^Ve suppose that only one thing can have merit ; and that, if we allow it to anything else, we deprive the favourite object of our critical faith of the honours due to it We are generally right in what we approve ourselves, for liking proceeds from a certain conformity of objects to the taste ; as we are generally MTong in condemning what others admire, for our dislike mostly proceeds ON TASTE 103 from a want of taste for what pleases tlicm. Our being totally senseless to what excites extreme delifriit in those who have as good a right to judge as we have, in all human probability, implies a defect of faculty in us rather than a limitation in the resources of nature or art. Tliose who are pleased with the fewest things, know the kvist ; as those who are pleased with every- thing, know nothing. .Shaks})eare makes Mrs. Quickly say of Falstaff, by a pleasant blunder, tliat 'A' could never abide carnation.' So there are persons who can- not like Claude, because he is not Salvator Kosa ; some who cannot endure Rembrandt, and others who would not cross the street to see a A'andyke ; one reader does not like the neatness of Junius, and another objects to the extravagance of Burke ; and they are all riglit, if they expect to find in others what is only to be found in their favourite author or artist, but equall\- wrong if they mean to say that each of tliose they would con- demn by a narrow and arbitrary standard of taste, has not a peculiar and transcendent merit of his own. 'Ilie question is not whether you like a certain excellence (it is your own fault if you do not), but wljether another possessed it in a very eminent degree. If he did not, who is there that possessed it in a greater — that ranks above him in that particular.'' Those who are accounted the best, are the best in their line, ^^'hen we say that Rembrandt was a master of chiaroscuro, for instance, we do not say that he joined to this the symmetry of the Greek statues, but we mean that we must go to him for the }>erfection of chiaroscuro, and that a Greek statue has not chiaroscuro. If any one objects to Junius's Letters, that they are a tissue of epigrams, we answer, be it so ; it is for that very reason that we admire them. Again, should any one find fault with Mr. Burke's writings as a collection of rhapsodies, tlie proper answer alwajrs would be, * \\'ho is there that has written finer rhapsodies.''' I know an admirer of Don Quixote who can see no merit in Gil Ultif. and an admirer of Gil Bias who could never get through Don Quijcote. I myself have great pleasure in 164 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS reading both these works, and in that respect think 1 have an advantage over both these critics. It always struck me as a singular proof of good taste, good sense, and liberal thinking, in an old friend, who had Paine's Rights of Man and Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution bound up in one volume, and who said, that, both together, they made a very good book. To agree with the greatest number of sound judges is to be in the right, and sound judges are persons of natural sensibility and acquired knowledge.^ On the other hand, it must be owned, there are critics whose praise is a libel, and whose recommendation of any work is enough to condemn it. Men of the greatest genius are not always persons of the most liberal and unprejudiced taste. They have a strong bias to certain qualities themselves, are for reducing others to their own standard, and lie less open to the general impressions of things. This exclusive pre- ference of their own peculiar excellences to those oi others, in writers whose merits have not been suf- ficiently understood or acknowledged by their con- temporaries, chiefly because they were not commonplace, may sometimes be seen mounting up to a degree ol bigotry and intolerance, little short of insanity. There are some critics 1 have known who never allow an author any merit till all the world ' cry out upon him,' and others who never allow another any merit that any one can discover but themselves. If there are connoisseurs who spend their lives and waste their breath in extolling sublime passages in obscure viTiters, and lovers who choose their mistresses for their ugly faces, this is not taste but affectation. AVhat is popular is not necessarily vulgar ; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity, had in general much better remain where it is. 1 I apprehend that natural is of more importance than acquired sensibility. Thus, any one, without having been at an opera, may judge of opera dancing, only from ha%ing seen (with judicious eves) a stag bound across a lawn, or a tree wave its branches in the air. In all, the general principles of motion are the same. ON TASTK 165 Taste relates to that whicli, eitlier in the objoctfl of nature or the imitation of them, or the Fine Arts in general, is calculated to give pleasure. Now, to know what is calculated to give pleasure, the way is to inquire what does give pleasure : so that taste is, after all, much more a matter of fact ami less of theory than might be imagined. ^V'e may hence determine another point, viz. — whether there is any univer&il or exclu.sive standard of taste, since this is to inquire, in other words, whether there is any one thing that pleases all the world alike, or whether there is only one thing that pleases anybody, both which questions carry their own answers with them. Still it does not follow, because there is no dogmatic or bigoted standard ot taste, like a formula of faith, which whoever does not believe without doubt he shall be damned everlast- ingly, that there is no standard of taste whatever, that is to say, that certain things are not more apt to please than others, that some do not please more generally, that there are not others that give most pleasure to those who have studied the subject, that one nation is most susceptible of a particular kind of beauty, and another of another, according to their characters, etc. It would be a difficult attempt to force all these into one general rule or system, and yet equally so to deny that they are absolutely capricious, and without any founda- tion or principle whatever. There are, doubtless, books for children that we discard as we grow up ; yet, what are themajority of mankind, or even readers, but grown children .'' If put to the vote of all the milliners' girls in London, Old Mortality, or even Heart of Mi//-Lotfiian, would not carry the day (or, at least, not very trium])h- antly) over a common Minerva-press novel ; and I will hazard another opinion,thatnowomen ever liked Burke. Mr Pratt, on the contrary, said that he had to ' boast of many learned and beautiful suffrn^es.'^ It is not, then, solely from the greatest number of voices, but from the opinion of the greatest number of well-informed 1 In answer to a criticism by Mr. Godwin on his poem :'«il«J Sympaihy. 166 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS minds, that we can establish, if not an absolute standard, at least a comparative scale, of taste. Certainly, it can hardly be doubted that the greater the number of persons of strong natural sensibility or love for any art, and who have paid the closest attention to it, who agree in their admiration of any work of art, the higher do its pretensions rise to classical taste and intrinsic beauty. In this way, as the opinion of a thousand good judges may outweigh that of nearly all the rest of the world, so there may be one individual among them whose opinion may outweigh that of the other nine hundred and ninety-nine ; that is, one of a still stronger and more refined perception of beauty than all the rest, and to whose opinion that of the others and of the world at large would approximate and be conformed, as their taste or perception of what was pleasing became stronger and more confirmed by exercise and proper objects to call it forth. Thus, if we were still to insist on an universal standard of taste, it must be that, not which does, but which would please universally, sup- posing all men to have paid an equal attention to any subject and to have an equal relish for it, which can only be guessed at by the imperfect and yet more than casual agreement among those who have done so from choice and feeling. Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagina- tion, etc. It is time, however, to apply this rule. There is, for instance, a much greater number of habit- ual readers and play-goers in France, who are devoted admirers of Placine or Moliere, than there are in Eng- land of Shakspeare ; does Shakspeare's fame rest, then, on a less broad and solid foundation than that of either of the others.'' I think not, supposing that the class of judges to whom Shakspeare's excellences appeal are a higher, more independent, and more original court of criticism, and that their suffrages are quite as unanimous (though not so numerous) in the one case as in the other. A simile or a sentiment is not the worse in common opinion for being somewhat super- ficial and hackneyed, but it is the worse in poetry. C^N TASTE U57 Tlie perfection of commonplace is that which wouM unite the greatest number of suffrat^es, if tiiere were not a tribunal above commonplace. For instance, in Shakspeare's dcscriptiou of flowers, primroses are mentioned — That como before the swallo\r dares, and luke The wiuda of ^farch with beauty : i Now, 1 do not know that this expression is translatable into French, or intelligible to the common re;uler of either nation, but raise the scale of fancy, passion, ami observation of nature to a certain point, and I will be bold to say that there will be no scruple entertained whether this single metaphor does not contain more poetry of the kind than is to be found in all Ilacine. As no Frenchman could write it, so I believe no Frenchman can understand it. We cannot t^ike this insensibility on their part as a mark of our superiority, for we have plenty of persons among ourselves in tlie same predicament, but not the wisest or most retined, and to these the appeal is fair from the many — 'and fit audience rind, though iew.' So I think it refjuircs a higher degree of tasto to judge of Titian's portraits than Raphael's scripture pieces: not that I think moro highly of the former than tlie latter, but the world and connoisseurs in general think there is no comparison (from the dignity of the subject), whereas 1 think it difficult to decide which are the finest. Here again we have a commonplace, a preconception, tiie moulds of the judgment preoccupied by cerUiin assumptions of degrees and classes of excellence, insteail of judging from the true and genuine impressions of things. Men of genius, or those who can produce excellence, would be the best judges of it— poets of poetry, painters of painting, etc. — but that persons of original and strong powers of mind are too much disposed to refer everything to their own peculiar bias, and are compara- tively inditferent to merely passive impressions. Ou the other hand, it is wholly wrong to oppose taste to 1 WuUreter and organ of all that can touch the soul and the affections, that the perfection of fine art is shown. Taste, then, does not place in the first rank of merit what merely proves difficulty or gratifies curiosity, unless it \> combined with excellence and sentiment, or the pleasures of imagination and the moral sense. In tliis case the pleasure is more than doubled, where not only the imitation but the thing imitated, is fine in itself. Hence the preference given to Italian over Dutch pictures. ]n respect to the imitation of nature, I would further observe that I think Sir Joshua Reynolds was wrong in making the grandeur of the design depend on the omission of ihe details, or the want of finisliing. This seems also to proceed on the supposition that there cannot be two views of nature, but tliat the details are opposed to and inconsistent with an attention to general effect. Now this is evidently false, since the two things are undoubtedly combined by nature. For instance, the grandeur of design or character in the arch of an eyebrow is not injureil or destroyed in reality by the hair-lines of which it is composed. Nor is the general form or outline of the eyeltrow altered in the imitation, whetiier you make it one rude ma>s or descend into the minuti;e of the parts, which are arrangee altogether contemptible, and to seek perforce some other outlet or purchase for the mind to take hold of. Tlie metaphysical theory above premised will account not only for the difficulty of imitating nature, but for the excellence of various masters, and the diversity and popularity of different styles. If the truth of sense and nature were one, there could be but one mode of representing it, more or less correct. Hut nature contains an infinite variety of parts, with their relations and significations, and different artists take these, and all together do not give the whole. Ihus Titian coloured, Raphael designed, Rubens gave the fiorid hue and motions, Rembrandt chiuro-icurt), etc. ; but none of these reached perfection in their several departments, much less with reference to the whole 172 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS circumference of art. It is ridiculous to suppose there is but one standard or one style. One artist looks at objects with as difTerent an eye from another, as he does from the mathematician. It is erroneous to tie down individual genius to ideal models. Eacli person should do that, not which is best in itself, even supposing this could be known, but that which he can do best, which he will find out if left to him.self. Spenser could not have written Paradise Lost, nor Alii ton the Faerie Queene. Those who aim at faultless regularity wilJ only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and un- known to themselves. Did Correggio know what he had done when he had painted the ^ St. Jerome' — or Rembrandt when he made the sketch of 'Jacobs Dream ' .'' Oh, no ! Those who are conscious of their powers never do anything. WHY THE HEROES OF ROMANXES ARE INSH'JD Because it is taken for f^niiited that they must be amiable and interestiui^, in the first instance, wliich, like other things that are taken for fi:raiite(i, is but indifferently, or indeed cannot he, made out at all in the sequel. To put it to tlic proof, to ^We illustration*^ of it, would be to throw a doubt upon the question. They have only to show themselves to ensure conquest, indeed, the reputation of their victories iroes before t/icm, and is a pledge of their success before they even ap])ear. lliey are, or aio supposed to be, so amiable, so handsome, .so accomplished, so captivatin-r, that all hearts bow before them, and all the women are in love with them without knowing why or wherefore, except that it is understood tliat they are io be so. All obsLacles vanish without a hnger lilted or a word spoken, and the effect is produced without a blow being struck. When there is this imaginary charm at work, ever}i:hing they could do or siiy must we-iken the impression, like arguments brought in favour of a self- evident truth ; they very wisely say or do little or nothing, rely on their names and the author's good word, look, smile, and are adored ; but to all but the heroines of romance and their confidant ivs, are exceed- ingly uninteresting and cummonpUwe persouaires, either great coxcombs or wonderfully insipid. When a lover is able to look unutt<;rable things which produce the desired effect, what occasion for him to exert his eloquence or make an impassioned speech, in order to 173 174 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS bring about a revolution in bis favour, which ii already accomplished by other less doubtful means r ^Vhen the impression at first sight is complete and irresistible, why throw sway any farther thou2rhts or words to make it more so ? This were ' to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to smooth the ice, to throw a perfume on the violet, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or seek with taper-light the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish,' which has been pronounced to be ' wasteful and superfluous excess/ Authors and novel-writers therefore reserve for their second - rate and less prominent characters, the artillery of words, the arts of persuasion, and all the unavailing battery of hopeless attentions and fine sentiment, which are of no use to the more accomplished gallant, who makes his tri- umphant approaches by stolen glances and breathing sighs, and whose appearance alone supersedes the disclosure of all his other implied perfections and an importunate display of a long list of titles to the fa^'our of the fair, which, as they are not insisted on, it would be vain and unbecoming to produce to the gaze of the world, or for the edification of the curious reader. It is quite enough if the lady is satisfied with her choice, and if (as generally happens both as a c^use and consequence in such cases) the gentleman is satisfied with himself. If he indeed seemed to entertain a doubt upon the subject, the spell of his fascination would be broken, and the author would be obliged to derogate from the beau ideal of his character, and make him do something to deserve the good opinion that might be entertained of him, and to which he himself had not led the way by boundless self-complacency and the conscious assurance of infallible success. Another circumstance that keeps our novel heroes in the background is, that if there was any doubt of their succe-bS, or they were obliged to employ the ordinary and vulgar means to establish their superiority over every one else, they would be no longer those 'faultless monsters' which it is understood that they must be to fill their part in the drama. The discarded or WHY HEROES OF ROMANCES ARE INSIPID 176 despairing-, not tlie favoured lovers, are unavoidably the most iutere.stin<( persons in tiie story. In fact, the princi{)als are already disjtosod of in the first pag-e ; they are destined for eacli other by an un- accountable and uncontrollable synipathv : the cere- mony is in a manner over, and they are already married people, with all the lawful attributes and inililTerence belonging to the character, 'i"o produce an intereiH, there must be mixed motives, alternate hoi)e and fear, difficulties to struggle with, bacritices to make ; but the true hero of romance is too fine a gentleman to be subjected to this rude ideal or mortifying exposure, which devolves upon some much more unworthy and unpretending personage. 'J'he beauty of the outline must not be disturl>ed by the painful conflicts of passion or the strong contrast of light and sliade. 'Jlie taste of the heroic cannot swerve for a moment from the object of its previous choice, who must never be jdaced in disadvantageous circumstances, 'ilie top characters occupy a certain prescriptive rank in tlie world of romance, by the rules of cti(|uette and laws of this sort of fictitious composition, reign like princes, and have only to do nothing to forfeit their privileges or com- promise their supposed dignity. The heroes of the old romances, the Grand Cyruses, the Artamenes, and Oroondates, are in this respect better than the moderns. 'Jliey had their steel helmet and jdume of feathers, the glittering spear and shield, the barbed steed, and the spread banner, and had knightly service to j)erform in joust and tournament, in the field of battle or the deep forest, In^sides tlie duty which they owed to their 'mistress' eyebrow," and the favours they received at her hands. They were comparatively picturesque and achenturous j>ersonaires, and men of action in the tented field, and lost all title to the smile of beauty if they did not deserve it by feats of prowess, and by the valour of their arms. However insipid they might be as accepted lovers, in their set speeches and improgressive languishments b> which they paid their court to their hearts' idols, tie 176 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS ' fairest of the fair/ yet in their character ot warriors and heroes, they were men of mettle, and hud some- thing in thern. They did not merely sigh and smile and kneel in the presence of their mistresses — they had to unhorse their adversaries in combat, to storm castles, to vanquish giants, and lead armies. So far, so well. In the good old times of chivalry and romance, favour was won and maintained by the bold achievements and fair fame of the chosen knight, which keeps up a show of suspense and dramatic interest instead of depending, as in more effeminate times, on taste, sympatliy, and a refinement of sentiment and manners, of the delicacy of which it is impossible to convey any idea by words or actions. Even in the pompous and affected courtship of the romances of the seventeenth century (now, alas .' exploded), the interviews between the lovers are so rare and guarded, their union, though agrev^d upon and in- evitable, is so remote, the smile with which the lady regards her sworn champion, though as steady as that of one of the fixed stars, is like them so cold, as to give a tone of passion and interest to their enamoured flights as though they were affected by the chances and changes of sublunary affairs. I confess I have read some of these fabulous folios formerly with no small degree of delight and breathless anxiety, particularly that of Cassandra ; and would willingly indeed go over it again to catch even a faint, a momentary glimpse of the pleasure with which I used at one period to peruse its prolix descrip- tions and high-flown sentiments. Not only the Palmerins of England and Amadises of Gaul, who made their way to their mistresses' hearts by slaying giants and taming dragons, but the heroes of the French romances of in- trigue and gallantry which succeeded those of necro- mancy and chivalry, and where the adventurers for the prize have to break through the fences of morality and scruples of conscience instead of stone walls and en- chantments dire, are to be excepted from the censure of downright insipidity, which attaches to those ordinary drawing-room heroes, who are installed in the good graces of their divinities by a look, and keep their V\^HY HEROES OF ROMANCES ARE INSIPID 177 places there by the force of still li/f! It is (iray who crie.s out, ' Be mine to read eternal new roinani-es of Marivaux aud Crehillon ! ' I could say the siimo of those of Madame La Fayette and the l)uiest 1 should forget it, I will mention, while 1 am on the subject of Scotch novels, that Mackenzie's Man of Feeling \)?. not without interest, but it is an interest brought out in a very singular and unprecedented way. He not merely says or does nothing to deserve the approl»a- tion of the goddess of his idolatry, but, from extreme shyness and sensitiveness, instead of presuming on his merits, gets out of her way, and only declares his |)at»- sion on his death-bed. Poor Harley ! — .Mr. (iodwin's Falkland is a very high and heroic character ; he, however, is not a love- hero ; and the only jart in which an episode of this kind is introduced, is of tlie most trite and mawkish description. The ca*ie is ditferent in St. Leon. 'I'he author's resuscitated hem there (juatfs joy, love, and immortality with a con- siderable gusto, and with appropriate manifestations of triumph. As to the heroes of the philosophi«al schotd of romance, such as Goethe's Werter, etc., they are evi- dently out of the pale of this reasoning. Instead of 164 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS being commonplace and insipid, they are one violent and startling paradox from beginning to end. They run atilt at all established usages and prejudices^ and overset all the existing order of society. There is plenty of interest here ; and, instead of complaining of a calm, we are borne along by a hurricane of pas- sion and eloquence, certainly without anything of 'temperance that may give it smoothness.' Schiller's Moor, Kotzebue's heroes, and all the other German prodigies are of this stamp. Shakspeare's lovers and Boccaccio's I like much : they seem to me full of tenderness and manly spirit, and free from insipidity and cant. Otway's Jaffier is, however, the true woman's man — full of passion and effeminacy, a mixture of strength and weakness. Perhaps what I have said above may suggest the true reason and apology for Milton's having unwit- tingly made Satan the hero of Paradise Lost. He suffers infinite losses, and makes the most desperate efforts to recover or avenge them ; and it is the struggle with fate and the privation of happiness that sharpens our desires, or enhances our symipathy with good or evil. M^e have little interest in unalterable felicity, nor can we join with heart and soul in the endless symphonies and exalting hallelujahs of the spirits of the blest. The remorse of a fallen spirit, or ' tears such as angels shed,' touch us more nearly. ON THE COm^ERSATION OF LORDS An Infinite deal of nothing.— Shakbpeauk. The conversation of lords is very different from that of authors. Mounted on horsehack, they stick at nothinji? in the chase, and clear every obstacle v\'ith llyintr leaps, while we poor devils have no chance of keopinj^ up with them with our clouten shoes and lon^ huntinij- poles. They have all the benefit of education, society, confidence ; they read books, purchase pictures, breed horses, learn to ride, dance, and fence, look after their estates, travel abroad : authors have none of these advantages, or inlets of knowledi::e, to assist them, except one, reading ; and this is still more im- poverished and clouded by the painful exercise of their own thoughts. The knowledge of the great haj* a character of wealth and property in it, like the stores of the rich merchant or manufacturer, who lays h'\» hands on all within his reach : the understanding of the student is like tlie worksliop of the mechanic, who has nothing but what he himself creates. How diffi- cult is the production, how small th»» display in the one case compared to tlie other ! Most of ( orreggio's designs are contained in one small room at I'arma : how diflferent from the extent and variety of some hereditary and princely collections I The human mind has a trick (probal)iy a very natural and consoling one) of striking a balance be- tween the favours of wisdom and of fortune, and of making a gratuitous and convenient foil to another. V^Tiether this is owing to envy or to a love of justice, 1B5 186 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS I will not say ; but whichever it is owing to, 1 must own I do not think it well founded, A scholar is without money : therefore (to make the odds even) we argue (not very wisely) that a rich man must be without ideas. This does not follow : ' the wish is father to that thought ' ; and the thought is a spurious one. We might as well pretend, that because a man has the advantage of us in height, he is not strong or Ln good health ; or because a woman is handsome, she is not at the same time young, accomplished, and well- bred. Our fastidious self-love or our rustic prejudices may revolt at the accumulation of advantages in others ; but we must learn to submit to the mortifying truth, which every day's experience points out, with what grace we may. There were those who grudged to Lord Bjrron the name of a poet because he was of noble birth ; as he himself could not endure the praises bestowed upon Wordsworth, whom he considered as a clown. He carried this weakness so far, that he even seemed to regard it as a piece of presumption in Shakspeare to be preferred before him as a dramatic author, and contended that Milton's writing an epic poem and the Answer to Salmasius was entirely owing to vanity — so little did he relish the superiority of the old blind schoolmaster. So it is that one party would arrogate every advantage to themselves, while those on the other side would detract from all in their rivals that they do not themselves possess. Some will not have the statue painted ; others can see no beauty in the clay model. The man of rank and fortune, besides his chance for the common or (now and then) an uncommon share of wit and understanding, has it in his power to avail himself of everything that is to be taught of art and science ; he has tutors and valets at his beck ; he may master the dead languages, he must acquire the modern ones ; he moves in the highest circles, and may descend to the lowest ; the paths of pleasure, of ambition, of knowledge, are open to him ; he may devote himself to a particular study, or skim the cream of all ; he may ON THE CONVERSATION OF IX)RDS 187 read books or men or things, as he finds most con- venient or agreeable ; he is not forced to confine his attention to some one dry, uninteresting pursuit; he has a single hobby, or half a dozen ; he is not dis- tracted by care, by poverty and want of leisure ; he has every opportunity and facility afforded him for acquiring various accomplishments of body or mind, and every encouragement, from confidence and suc- cess, for making an imposing display of them ; he mav laugh with the gay, jest with the witty, argue witfi the wise ; he has been in courts, in colleges, and camps, is familiar with playhouses and taverns, with the riding- house and the dissecting-room, has been present at or taken part in the debates of both Houses of Parliament, was in the O. P. row, and is deep in the Fancy, understands the broadsword exercise, is a connoisseur in regimentals, plays the whole game at whist, is a tolerable proficient at backgammon, drives four-in-hand, skates, rows, swims, shoots ; knows the different sorts of game and modes of agriculture in the different counties of England, tlie manufactures and commerce of the different towns, the politics of Europe, the campaigns in Spain, has the Gazette, the news- papers, and reviews at his fingers' ends, has visited the finest scenes of Nature and beheld the choicest works of Art, and is in society where he is continually hear- ing or talking of all these things ; and yet wo are surprised to find that a person so circumstimed and qualified has any ideas to communicate or words to express himself, and is not, as by patent and prescrip- tion he was bound to be, a mere well-d rested fop of fashion or a booby lord ! It would be less remarkable if a poor author, who has none of this giddy range and scope of information, who pores over the pare till it fades from his sight, and refines upon his stylo till the words stick in his throat, should be dull as a beetle and mute as a fish, instead of sponUneously pouring out a volume of wit and wisdom on every subject that can be started. All author lives out of the world, or mixes chiefly 188 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS with those of his own class ; which renders him pedantic and pragmatical^ or gives him a reserved, hesitating, and interdicted manner. A lord or gentle- man-commoner goes into the world, and this imparts that fluency, spirit, and freshness to his conversation, which arises from the circulation of ideas and from the greater animation and excitement of unrestrained inter- course. An author's tongue is tied for want of some- body to speak to : his ideas rust and become obscured, from not being brought out in company and exposed to the g-aze of instant admiration. A lord has always some one at hand on whom he can ^ bestow his tedious- ness,' and grows voluble, copious, inexhaustible in consequence : his wit is polished, and the flowers of his oratory expanded by his smiling commerce with the world, like the figures in tapestry, that after being thrust into a corner and folded up in closets, are dis- played on festival and gala-days. Again, the man of fashion and fortune reduces many of those arts and mysteries to practice, of which the scholar gains all his knowledge from books and vague description. ^V\\\ not the rules of architecture find a readier reception and sink deeper into the mind of the pro- prietor of a noble mansion, or of him who means to build one, than of the half- starved occupier of a garret.'' Will not the political economist's insight into Mr. Ricardo's doctrine of Rent, or Mr. Malthus's theory of Population, be vastly quickened by the cir- cumstance of his possessing a large landed estate and having to pay enormous poor-rates t And, in general, is it not self-evident that a man's knowledge of the true interests of the country will be enlarged just in proportion to the stake he has in it .'' A person may have read accounts of difl^erent cities and the customs of difi'erent nations : but will this give him the same accurate idea of the situation of celebrated places, of the aspect and manners of the inhabitants, or the same lively impulse and ardour and fund of striking parti- culars in expatiating upon them, as if he had run over half the countries of Europe, for no other purpose than ON THE CONVERSATION OF LORDS 189 to satisfy his own curiosity, and excite that of others on his return? I many years as^o looked into the Duke of Newcastle's Treatue on llornemnnship; all I remember of it is some quaint cuts of the Duke and his riding-master introduced to illustrate the lessons. Had I myself possessed a stud of Arabian courser«, with grooms and a master of the horse to assist me in reducing these precepts to practice, they would have made a stronger impression on my mind ; and what interested myself from vanity or habit, 1 could liave made interesting- to others. I am sure I could have learnt to ride the Grreat Horse, and do twenty other things, in the time I have employed in endeavouring to make something out of nothing, or in conning the same problem fifty times over, as monks count over their beads ! 1 have occasionally in my life l)ought a few prints, and hung them up in my room with gre^it satisfaction ; but is it to be supposed possible, from this casual circumstance, that I should compete in Uiste or in the knowledge of vertu with a peer of the realm, who has in his possession the costly designs, or a wealthy commoner, who has spent half his fortune in learniiii.' to distinguish copies from originals.'' 'A (juestion not to be asked !' Nor is it likely that tiie having dipped into the Memoirs of Count Grammont, or of I-ady Vane in Peregrine Pickle, should enable any one to sustain a conversation on subjects of love and gallantry with the same ease, grace, brilliancy, and spirit as the having been engaged in a hundred adventuras of one's own, or heard the scandal and tittle-tattle of fjishion- able life for the last thirty years canva.ssed a hundred times. Books may be manufactured from other books by some dull, mechanical process : it is convers;ttiou and the access to the best society that alone fit us for society ; or 'tlie act and practique part of life must be the m'istress to our theoriquo,' before wo can hope to shine in mixed company, or bend our previous know- ledge to ordinary and familiar uses out of tliat plaster- cast mould which is as brittle as it is fi)rmal I There is another thing which tends to produce thf 190 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS -^me effect^ viz., that lords and gentlemen seldom trouble themselves about the knotty and uninviting parts of a subject: they leave it to Hhe dregs of earth ' to drain the cup or find the bottom. They are attracted, by the frothy and sparkling. If a question puzzles them, or is not likely to amuse others, they leave it to its fate, or to those whose business it is to contend with difficulty, and to pursue truth for its own sake. They string together as many available off-hand topics as they can procure for love or money ; and, aided by a good person or address, sport them with very considerable effect at the next rout or party thev go to. They do not hore you with pedantry, or tease you with sophistry. Tneir conversation is not made up of moot-points or choke-pears. They do not willingly forego • the feast of reason or the flow of soul ' to grub up some solitary truth or dig for hidden treasure. Yiiej are amateurs, not professors ; the patrons, not the drudges of knowledge. An author loses half his life, and stultifie-s his faculties, in hopes to find out something which perhaps neither he nor any one else can ever find out. For this he neglects half a hundred acquirements, half a hundred accomplishments. Ant Ccesar aut nihil. He is proud of the discovery or of the fond pursuit of one truth — a lord is vain of a thousand ostentatious commonplaces. If the latter ever devotes himself to some crabbed study, or sets about finding out the longitude, he is then to be looked upon as a b amorist if he fails — a genius if he succeeds — and no Longer belongs to the class I have been speaking of. Perhaps a multiplicity of attainments and pursuits is not very favourable to their selectness ; as a local and personal acquaintance with objects of imagination takes away from, instead of adding to, their romantic interest. Familiarity is said to breed contempt ; or at any rate, the being brought into contact with places, persons, or things that we have hitherto only heard or read of, removes a certain aerial, delicious veil of refinement from them, and strikes at that ideai abstraction which is the charm and boast of a life ON THE CONVERSATION OF LORDS 191 conversant chiefly with hooks. 'Hie huddlintr a number of bistes and studies tog-ether tends to dojrrade and vulgarise each, and to ^ve a crudo, unroncocted, dissipated turn to the mind. Instead of stuflina- it full of gross, palpable, immediate objects of excitement, a wiser plan would be to leave sompt hintj: 'n reserve, some- thing hoverina: in airy space to draw our attention out of ourselves, to excite hope, curiosity, wonder, and never to satisfy it The crreat art is not to throw a g-Jare of lig-ht upon all objects, or to lay the wljole extended landscape bare at one view ; but so to manage a.s to see the more amiable side of things, and through the narrow vistas and loop-holes of retreat — Catch glimpses that may make us less forlorn. 1 hate to annihilate air and distance by the perpetual use of an opera glass, to run everything into fore- ground, and to interpose no medium between the thought and the object. Tho breath of words stirs and plays idly with the gossamer web of fancy ; the touch of things destroys it. I have seen a good deal of authors ; and I believe that they (as well as I) would quite as lieve I had not. Places I have seen, too, that did not answer my expectation. Pictures (that is. some few of them) are the only things that are the better for our having studied them * face to fnco, not in a glass darkly,' and that in themselves Rurpas.s any description we can give, or any notion we ran form of them. But I do not think seriously, af^er ail, that those who pos-sess are the best judges of them. 'Iliey become furniture, property in their hand>. 'Hio purchasers look to the price they will fetch, or turn t« that which they have cost. lliey consider not beauty or expression, but the workmanship, the date, the pedigree, the school— something that will figure in the description in a catalogue or in a puff in a newsp:iper. They are blinded by silly admiration of whatever belongs to themselves, and warped so ;is to eye ' with jealous leer malign ' all that is not theirs. Taste i- 192 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS melted down in the crucible of avarice and vanity, and leaves a wretched caput mortuum of pedantry and con- ceit. As to books, they * best can feel them who have read them most/ and who rely on them for their only support and their only chance of distinction. They most keenly relish the graces of style who have in vain tried to make them their own : they alone under- stand the value of a thought who have gone through the trouble of thinking. The privation of other advantages is not a clear loss, if it is counterbalanced by a proportionable concentration and unity of interest in what is left. The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame. A member of the Roxburghe Club has a certain work (let it be the Decameron of Boc- caccio) splendidly bound, and in the old quarto edition, we will say. In this not only his literary t^te is gratified, but the pride of property, the love of external elegance and decoration. The poor student has only a paltry and somewhat worn copy of the same work (or perhaps only a translation) which he picked up at a stall, standing out of a shower of rain. What then I has not the Noble Virtuoso doubly the advan- tage, and a much higher pleasure in the perusal of the work } No ; for these are vulgar and mechanical helps to the true enjoyment of letters. From all this mock display and idle parade of binding and arms and dates, his unthought-of rival is precluded, and sees only the talismanic words, feels only the spirit of the author, and in that author reads ' with sparkling eyes ' His title to a mansion in the skies. Oh ! divine air of learning, fanned by the undying breath of genius, still let me taste thee, free from all adventitious admixtures, Pure in the last recesses of the soul ! We are far, at present, from the style of Swift's Polite Conversation. The fashionable tone has quite ON THE CONVERSATION OF LORDS 193 changed in this respect, and almost ^'•one into the opposite extreme. At that |)eriod the polite world seems to have heen nearly at a stand, in a sUito of intellectual abeyance ; or, in the interval between the disuse of chivalrous exercises and the introduction of modern philosophy, not to have known how to pass its time, and to have sunk into the most commrmplace formality and unmeaning- a])athy. But lo I at a si-^nal given, or rather prompted by that most powerful of all calls, the want of something to do, all rush into the lists, having armed themselves anew with the shining panoply of science and of letters, with an eagerness, a perseverance, a dexterity, and a success, that are truly astonishing. Tlie higher classes have of late taken the lead almost as much in arts as they formerly did in arms, wlien the last was the only prescril)ed mode of distinguishing themselves from the rabble, whom thev treated as serfs and churls. The prevailing cue at present is to regard mere authors (wlio are not also <»f gentle blood) as dull, illiterate, poor creatures, a sort of pretenders to taste and elegance, and a(i\enturers in intellect. The true adopts in black-letter are knie:hti» of thesliire : the sworn patentees of i'arnassus are Peers of the Realm. Not to pass for a literary quack, vou must procure a diploma from the College of Heralds. A dandy conceals a bibliomiinist : our l)elles are blue- stockings. The Press is so entirely monopolised by beauty, birth, or importance in the State,' that an author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or pride ; is fain to keep out of sight — Or write by stealth, any Noble Authors was at itJ height— Er>. of Skeichu aiui K$iavi. 1839, u 194 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS argument ; and though I demur to the truth of the assertion, yet there is no saj'ing till the thing is tried. Young gentlemen make very pretty sparrers, but are not the ' ugliest customers ' when they take off the gloves. Lord Byron himself was in his capacity of author an out-and-outer ; but then it was at the expense of other things, for he could not talk except in short sentences and sarcastic allusions, he had no ready resources ; all his ideas moulded themselves into stanzas, and all his ardour was carried off in rhyme. The channel of his pen was worn deep by habit and power ; the current of his thoughts flowed strong in it, and nothing remained to supply the neighbouring flats and shallows of miscel- laneous conversation, but a few sprinklings of wit or gushes of spleen. An intense purpose concentrated and gave a determined direction to his energies, that ^ held on their way, unslacked of motion.' 'i'he track of his genius was like a volcanic eruption, a torrent of burning lava, full of heat and splendour and headlong fury, that left ail dry, cold, hard, and barren behind it ! To say nothing of a host of female authors, a bright galaxy above our heads, there is no young lady of fashion in the present day, scarce a boarding-school girl, that is not mistress of as many branches of know- ledge as would set up half a dozen literary hacks. In lieu of the sampler and the plain-stitch of our grand- mothers, they have so many hours for French, so many for Italian, so many for English grammar and com- position, so many for geography and the use of the globes, so many for history, so many for botany, so many for painting, music, dancing, riding, etc. One almost wonders how so many studies are crammed into the twenty- four hours ; or how such fair and delicate creatures can master them without spoiling the smooth- ness of their brows, the sweetness of their tempers, or the graceful simplicity of their manners. A girl learns French (not only to read, but to speak it) in a few months, while a boy is as many years in learning to construe Latin. Why so .'' Chiefly because the one is treated as a bagatelle or agreeable relaxation ; the other ON THE CONVERSATION OF LORDS i9i as a serious task or necessary evil. Kducation, a very few years baci<, was looked upon as a hardship, and enforced by menaces and blows, instead of beinj^ ciirried on fas now) as an amusement and under the parh of pleasure, and witli the allurements of 8elf-l<)ve. It io found that the products of the mind flourish luitter and shoot up more quickly in the sunsliine of trood-humour and in the air of freedom, than under the frowns of sulleuness, or the shackles of authority. ' The lalumr we delight in physics pain.' The idlest p«H>ple are not those who have most leisure time to dispose of as they choose : take away the feelinj; of compulsion, and you supply a motive for application, by converting" a toil into a pleasure. Tiiis makes nearly all the ditference between the hardest drudgery and the most delijfhtful exercise — not the de^jree of exertion, but the motive and the accompanyinii^ sensation. Learniriff does not f^aiu proselytes by the austerity or awfulness of it« ooks. By representing thiuirs as so di/Rcult, and as exacting such dreadful sacrifices, and to be ac»juired under such severe penalties, we not only deter the student from the attempt, but lay a dead-weight upon the imagination, and destroy that cheerfulness and alacrity of spirit which is the spring of thouj^ht and action. But to return. An author by profession reads a few works that he intends to criticise and cut up 'for a consideration'; a blue- stocking by profession reads all that comes out to pass the time or satisfy her curiosity. The author has somethintr to say about Fielding, Richardson, or even the Scotch novels ; but he is soon distanced by the fair critic, or overwhelmed with the contents of whole Circulating Librarie.* poured out upon his head without stint or intermission. He reads for an object, and to live ; she for the sake of reading, or to talk. Be this as it may, the idle reader at present reads twenty times as many I'ot.ks ah the learned one. llie former skims the surface of knowledge, and carries away the striking points and a variety of amusing detail, while the latter reserves himself for great occaaious, or perhaps doc- 196 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS nothing under the pretence of having so much to do. From every work he challenges estoin, For contemplation's sake. The literati of Europe threaten at present to become the Monks of letters, and from having taken up learning as a profession, to live on the reputation of it. As gentlemen have turned authors, authors seem inclined to turn gentlemen ; and enjoying the otium cum dignitate, to be much too refined and abstracted to condescend to the subordinate or mechanical parts of knowledge. They are too wise in general to be acquainted with anything in particular ; and remain in a proud and listless ignorance of all that is within the reach of the vulgar. They are not, as of old, walking libraries or Encyclopaedias, but rather certain faculties of the mind personified. They scorn the material and instrumental branches of inquiry, the husk and bran, and affect only the fine flour of literature — they are only to be called in to give the last polish to style, the last refinement to thought. They leave it to their drudges, the Reading Public, to accumulate the facts, to arrange the evidence, to make out the data, and like great painters whose pupils have got in the groundwork and the established proportions of a picture, come for- ward to go over the last thin glazing of the colours, or throw in the finer touches of expression. On my excus- ing myself to Northcote for some blunder in history, by saying, ^ I really had not time to read,' — he said, ^ No, but you have time to write ! ' And once a celebrated critic taking me to task as to the subject of my pursuits, and receiving regularly the same answer to his queries, that I knew nothing of chemistry, nothing of astronomy, of botany, of law, of politics, etc., at last exclaimed, somewhat impatiently, * ^V^lat the devil is it, then, you do know.'*' i laughed, and was not very much discon- certed at the reproof, as it was just. Modern men of letters may be divided into three classes ; the mere scholar or hookworm^ all whose knowledge is taken from books, and who may be passed ON THE CONVERSATION OF LORDS lie by as an obsolete character, little inquired after — the literary hack or cotfee-house politician, who jfeta hit information mostly from liearsay, and who makes Kome noise indeed, but the echo of it does not reai-h beyond his own club or circle — and the man of real or of pretended genius, who aims to draw upon his own resources of thought or feeling, and to tlirow a new light upon nature and books, 'lliis last personage (if he acts up to his supposed character) has too much to do to lend himself to a variety of pursuits, or to lay himself out to please in all companies. He has a task in hand, a vow to perform ; and he cannot be diverted from it by incidental or collateral objects. All the time that he does not devote to this paramount duty, he should have to himself, to repose, to lie fallow, to gather strength and recruit himself A boxer is led into the lists that he may not waste a particle of vigour needlessly ; and a leader in Parliament, on the day that he is expected to get up a grand attack or defence, is not to be pestered with the ordinary news of the day. So an author (who is, or would be thought original) has no time for spare accomplishments or ornamental studies. All that he intermeddles with must l»o marshalled to bear upon his purpo«attern : he mounts his hohhy as he does lii-^ horse, which is brought to his door for an airing, and 1 As when a person a&ks you ' whether you do not find a strorg resemblance between Kubens s pictures and yuarlea's poetr>T'— which is owing to the critics havinp lately '"^i" at Antwerp aod bought an edition of Quarles's Emhlems. Od«l coniblnatii>n« mu»l take place where a number of ideas are brought t«>Rt.'ther, with only a thin, hasty partition between them, and without a sutlUienl quantity of juilgment to discriminate. An EuKlishman, of some apparent consei|uence, passing by the St Peter Martyr of Titian at Venice, observed, ' It was a copy of the same 8Ul>Ject by Dojiicn! chino at Bologna.' This betrayed an absolute ignorance both of Titian and of Uomenichino, and of the whole world of art; yel. unless I had also seen the St Peter at liolojfiia, this connoitaenr would have had the advantage of me, two U.> one, and micht have disputed the precedence of the two pictures with me. but Uial chronology would have come to my aid. Thus persons who travel from place to place, and roam from subject to subject, make up by the extent and discursiveness of their knowledge f'-r tlie want i.( truth and refinement In their conception of tlie objects of it 200 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS which (should it prove restive or sluggish) he turns away for another ; or, like a child at a fair, gets into a roundabout of knowledge, till his head becomes giddy, runs from sight to sight, from booth to booth, and, like the child, goes home loaded with trinkets, gewgaws and rattles. He does not pore and pine over an idea (like some poor In^ochondriac) till it becomes impracticable, unsociable, incommunicable, absorbed in mysticism, and lost in minuteness-: he is not upon oath never to utter anything but oracles, but rattles away in a fine careless, hare-brained, dashing manner, hit or miss, and succeeds the better for it. Nor does he prose over the same stale round of politics and the state of the nation (with the coffee-house politician), but launches out with freedom and gaiety into whatever has attraction and interest in it, ' runs the great circle, and is still at home.' He is inquisitive, garrulous, credulous, sanguine, florid — neither pedantic nor vulgar. Neither is he intolerant, exclusive, bigoted to one set of opinions or one class of individuals. He clothes an abstract theory with illustrations from his own experi- ence and observation, hates what is dry and dull, and throws in an air of high health, buoyant spirits, fortune, and splendid connections to give animation and vivid- ness to what perhaps might otherwise want it. He selects what is palpable without being gross or trivial, lends it colour from the flush of success, and elevation from the distinctions of rank. He runs on and never stops for an answer, rather dictating to others than endeavouring to ascertain their opinions, solving his own questions, improving upon their hints, and bear- ing down or precluding opposition by a good-natured loquacity or stately dogmatism. All this is perhaps more edifying as a subject of speculation than delightful in itself. Shakspeare says, ' A man's mind is parcel of his fortunes' — and 1 think the inference will be borne out in the present case. 1 should guess that in the prevailing tone of fashionable society or aristocratic literature would be found all that variety, splendour, facility, and startling effect which corresponds with ON THE CONVERSATION OF LX)III)S 201 external wealth, masfuirk-ence of appearance, and a command of opjxirtunity ; while tliere would be wanting whatever depends chielly on intensity ol pursuit, on depth of feeling, and on simplicity and independence of mind joined witli straitened for- tune. Prosperity is a great teacher ; adversity in a greater. Possession pampers the mind ; privation trains and strengthens it. Accordingly, we Hnd hut one really great name (Hacon) in this rank of Knglish society, where superiority is taken for granted, and reflected from outward circumstances. 'Ihe rest are in the second class. Lord liolinghroke, whom i'ope idolised (and it pains me that all his idols are not mine), was a boastful, empty mouther ! 1 never knew till the other day, tliat Lord Bolingbroke was the model on which Mr. Pitt formed himself. He was his Mat/nu* Apollo; and no wonder. The late Minister used to lament it as the great desideratum of F^nglish literature, that there was no record anywhere existing of his speeches as they were spoken, and declared that he would give any price for one of them, reported as speeches were reported in the newspapers in our time iieing asked which he thought the best of his written productions, he would answer, raising his eyebrows and deepening the tones of his voice to a sonorous bass — * VV^hy, undoul)tedly. Sir, the Letter to iiir WillUuu Wyndham is the most masterly of all his writings, and the first composition for wit and elocjuence in the English language ' ; — and then he would give his rejisons at great lengtli and con flashy and vapid, or is like the rinsings of different liquors at a night-cellar instead of a bottle of fine old port. It is without body or clearness, and a heap of affectation. In fact, I am very much of the opinion of that old Scotch gentleman who owned that 'he preferred the dullest book he had ever read to the most brilliant conversation it had ever faUen to his lot to hear ! ' THE LETfER-BELL Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of human life, when, if we examine ita smallest details, they present a world by themselves. ITie most tririing ol)jects, retraced with the eye of memory, assume the vividness, the delicacy, and import- ance of insects seen through a magnifying- ghiss. There is no end of the brilliancy or the variety. Tlie habitual feeling of the love of life may be compared to * one entire and perfect chrysolite,' which, if analysed, breaks into a thousand shining fragments. Ask tlie sum-total of the value of human life, and we are puzzled with the length of the account, and the multiplicity of items in it: take any one of them apart, and it is wonderful what matter for reflection will bo found in it ! As I write this, the Letter- Bell passes; it has a lively, pleasant sound with it, and not only fills the street with its importunate clamour, but rings clear through the length of many half-forgotten years. It strikes upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it wakes me from the dreim of time, it flings me back ujH)n my first entrance into life, the period of my first coming up to town, when all around was strange, uncerUiin, .niverse — a hubbub of confused noises, a chaos of shiftinjf objects — and when this sound alone, st-irtlinu: ino with the recollection of a letter 1 had to send to the friends 1 had lately left, brought me as it were to myse'lf, made me feel that I had links still contiecting me with the universe, and gave me hope and patience to per>ever»». At that loud -tinkling, interrupted sound, tlie louii 203 204 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS line of blue bills near tbe place wbere I was brought up waves in the horizon, a g-olden sunset hovers over them, the dwarf oaks rustle their red leaves in the evening breeze, and the road from Wem to Shrewsbury, by which I first set out on my journey through life, stares me in the face as plain, but, from time and change, not less visionary and mysterious than the pictures in the Pilgrim's Progress. Or if the Letter-Bell does not lead me a dance into the country, it fixes me in the thick of my town recollections, I know not bow long ago. It was a kind of alarm to break ofi^ from my work when there happened to be company to dinner or when 1 was going to the play. That was going to the play, indeed, when I went twice a year, and had not been more than half a dozen times in my life. Even the idea that any one else in the house was going, was a sort of reflected enjoyment, and conjured up a lively anticipation of the scene. I remember a Miss D , a maiden lady from Wales (who in her youth was to have been married to an earl), tantalised me greatly in this way, by talking all day of going to see Mrs. Siddons' * airs and graces ' at night in some favourite part ; and when the Letter- Bell announced that the time was approaching, and its last receding sound lingered on the ear, or was lost in silence, how anxious and uneasy I became, lest she and her companion should not be in time to get good places — lest the curtain should draw up before they arrived — and lest I should lose one line or look in the intelligent report which I should hear the next morning I Tbe punctuating of time at that early period — everything that gives it an articulate voice — seems of the utmost consequence ; for we do not know what scenes in the ideal world may run out of them : a world of interest may hang upon every instant, and we can hardly sustain the weight of future years which are contained in embryo in the most minute and inconsiderable passing evente. How often have I put off writing a letter till it was too late ! How often have I had to run after the postman with it — now missing, now recovering the sound of his bell — breathless, angry with myself — then THE LETTER-BELL 20A hearings the welcome sound come full round a corner — and seeing the scarlet costume which set all my fears and self-reproaclies at rest I I do not recollect havin^r ever repented g-iving a letter to the postman or wishing to retrieve it after he had once deposited it in his hag. What I have once set my hand to, 1 take tlie con- sequences of, and have heen always pretty much of the same humour in this respect. I am not like the person who, having sent off a letter to his mistress, who resided a hundred and twenty miles in the country, and disapproving, on second thoughts, of some expressions contained in it, took a post-chaise and four to follow and intercept it the next morning. At other times, I have sat and watched the decaying emhers in a little back painting-room (just as the wintry day declined), and brooded over the half- finished copy of a Rem- brandt, or a landscape by \'angoyen, placing it where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the tire ; while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my thouffht« to the world without, and reminded me that 1 had a task to perform in it. As to that landscape, methiuki I see it now — The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale, The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail. There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage beside it : how delighted 1 was wlien I had made the tremulous, undulating reflection in the water, and saw the dull canvas become a lucid mirror of the commonest features of nature I Certainly, jiainting gives one a strong interest in nature and humanity (it is not the dandy-school of morals or sentiment) — \ATiile with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of Joy, We see into the life of things. Perhaps there is no part of a painter's life (if w« must tell ' the secrets of the prison-house ') in which he has more enjoyment of himself and his art, thaii that in which, after hie work is over, and with furtive, 206 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS sidelong glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing his brushes and cleaning his pallet for tlie day. Afterwards, when he gets a servant in livery to do this for him, he may have other and more ostensible sources of satisfaction — greater splendour, wealth, or fame ; but he will not be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such a hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest drudgery to others — too humble to despise aught that had to do with the object of his glory and his pride, with that on which all his projects of ambition or pleasure were founded. ' Entire affection scorueth nicer hands.' ^V'hen the professor is above this mechanical part of his business, it may have become a stalking-horse to other worldly schemes, but is no longer his hobby-horse and the delight of his inmost thoughts. I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner- bell) summoned me to the fraternal board, where youth and hope Made good digestion wait on appetite And health on both ; or oftener I put it off till after dinner, that I might loiter longer and with more luxurious indolence over it, and connect it with the thoughts of my next day's labours. The dustman's bell, with its heavy monotonous noise, and the brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin -bell, have something in them, but not much. They will bear dilating upon with the utmost licence of inventive prose. All things are not alike conductors to the imagination. A learned Scotch professor found fault with an ingenious friend and arch-critic for cultivating a rookery on his grounds : the professor declared ' he would as' soon think of encouraging o. froggery.' This was barbarous as it was senseless. Strange, that a country that has produced the Scotch Novels and Gertrude oj Wyoming should want sentiment ! The postman's double knock at the door the next morning is 'more germain to the matter.' How that THE LETTER-BELL 207 knock often g^oes to the heart I We distinjfuish to -♦ nicety the arrival of the Twopenny or the Cieiieral Post The summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bring-in^ news from a greater distance, and as, the long-er it has been delayed, frau/^ht with a deejM'r interest. We catch the sound of what is to he paid — ei^htpence, ninepence, a shilling — and our hope? e^enerally rise with tlie posta^-e. How we are [>rov<)ked at the delay in g^ettin^ change — at the servant who does not hear the door ! Tlien if the postman passes, and we do not hear the expected knock, what a pang is there ! It is like the silence of death — of hope I ^Ve think he does it on purpose, and enjoys all the misery of our suspense. 1 have sometimes walked out to see the Mail-C'oach pass, by which 1 had sent a letter, or to meet it when I expected one. 1 never see a Mail Coach, for this reason, but 1 look at it as the hearer of glad tidings — the messenger of fate. I have reason to say so. The finest sight in the metropolis is that of the Mail-Coaches setting otf from Piccadilly. 'Hie horses paw the ground, and are impatient to be gone, as if conscious of the precious burden they convey. 'Hiere is a peculiar secrecy and despatch, siy;nificant and full of meaning, in all the proceedings concerning them. Even the outside passengers have an erect and super- cilious air, as if proof against the accidents of the journey. In fact, it seems indifferent whether they are to encounter the summer's heat or winter's c«dd, since they are borne on through the air in a winged chariot The Mail-Carts drive up ; the transfer of packages i.- made ; and, at a signal given, they start off, bearing the irrevocable scrolls that give wings to thoui^ht, and that bind or sever hearts for ever. How we hate tlie Putney and Brentford stages that draw up in a line after they are gone ! Some persons think the suldimejit object in nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the ocejin ; but give me, for my private satisfaction, the Mail-Coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour tlie wav before them to the I^aud's-End ! 208 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS In Cowper's time, Mail-Coaches were hardly set up ; but he has beautifully described the coming-in of the Post-Boy :— Hark ! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright : He comes, the herald of a noisy world, With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks ; News from all nations lumbering at his back. True to his charge, the close-packed load behind. Yet careless what he brings, his one concern Is to conduct it to the destined inn ; And having dropped the expected bag, pass on. He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch ! Cold and yet cheerful ; messenger of grief Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some ; To him indifferent whether grief or joy. Houses in ashes and the fall of stocks, Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks Fast as the periods from his fluent quill. Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains Or nymphs responsive, equally affect His horse and him, unconscious of tliem alL And yet, notvpithstanding this, and so many other passages that seem like the very marrow of our being, Lord Byron denies that Cowper was a poet ! — The Mail- Coach is an improvement on the Post-Boy ; but I fear it will hardly bear so poetical a description. The picturesque and dramatic do not keep pace with the useful and mechanical. The telegraphs that lately communicated the intelligence of the new revolution to all France within a few hours, are a wonderful con- trivance ; but they are less striking and appalling than the beacon-fires (mentioned by ^Eschylus), which, lighted from hilltop to hilltop, announced the taking of Troy, and the return of Agamemnon. Envy is the grudging, or receiviug pain from, any accom- plisliment or advantage possessed by another. It is one of the most tormenting and odious of the passions, inas- much as it does not consist in the enjoyment or pursuit of any good to ourselves, but in the hatred and jealousy of the good fortune of otliers, and the debarring and defrauding tljem of their due and what is of no use to us, on the dog in the manger principle ; and it is at the same time as mean as it is revolting, as being accom- panied with a sense of weakness, and a desire to conceal and tamper with the truth and its own convictions, out of paltry spite and vanity. It is, however, but an excess or excrescence of tlie other passions (such as pride or avarice), or of a wish to monopolise all the good things of life to ourselves, which makes us im- patient and dissatisfied at seeing any one else in posses- sion of that to which we think we have the only fair title. Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egoti&m ; and when we reflect on the strange and dis- proportioned character of tlie parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of tlie child. Such is the absorbing and exorbitant quality of our self- love, that it represents us as of infinitely more im- portance in our own eyes than the mIioIc universe put together, and would sacrifice the claims and interest of all the world beside to the least of its caj'rices or extravagances: need we be surprised, tlien, tiiat this little, upstart, overweening self, that would trample ou the globe itself, and tlien weep for new ones to 20U p 210 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS conquer, should be uneasy, mad, mortified, eaten up with chagrin and melancholy, and hardly able to bear its own existence, at seeing a simple competitor among the crowd cross its path, jostle its pretensions, and stagger its opinion of its exclusive right to admiration and superiority ? This it is that constitutes the offence, that gives the shock, that inflicts the wound, that some poor creature (as we would fain suppose) whom we had before overlooked and entirely disregarded as not worth our notice, should of a sudden enter the lists and challenge comparison with us. The presumption is excessive ; and so is our thirst of revenge. PVom the moment, however, that the eye fixes on another as the object of envy, we cannot take it off ; for our pride and self-conceit magnify that which obstructs our success and lessens our self-importance into a monster ; we see nothing else, we hear of nothing else, we dream of nothing else ; it haunts us and takes possession of our whole souls ; and as we are engrossed by it ourselves, so we fancy that all the rest of the world are equally taken up with our petty annoyances and disappointed pride. Hence the ^jealous leer malign' of envy, which, not daring to look that which provokes it in the face, cannot yet keep its eyes from it, and gloats over and becomes as it were enamoured of the very object of its loathing and deadly hate. We pay off the score which our littleness and vanity has been running up, by ample and gratuitous concessions to the first person that gives a check to our swelling self-complacency, and forces us to drag him into an unwilling comparison with ourselves. It is no matter who the person is, or what his pretensions — if they are a counterpoise to our own, we think them of more consequence than anything else in the world. This often gives rise to laughable results. We see the jealousies among servants, hackney-coach- men, cobblers in a stall : we are amused with the rival advertisements of quacks and stage-coach proprietors, and smile to read the significant intimation on some shop window, ' No connection with next door ' ; but the same folly runs through the whole of life ; each ENVY I'll person thinks that he who stands in his way or out- strips him in a particular pursuit, is the most enviable, and at the &inie time the most hateful character in the worhi. Nothinjj can show the ahsuniity of the paKsion of envy in a more striking point of view than the number of rival chaims which it entirely overlooks, wliile it would arro^jate all excellence to itself. 'Ilie loftiness of our ambition and the narrowness of our views are equal, and, indeed, both depend upon the same cause. Ilie player envies only tbe player, the poet envies only the poet, because each contines his idea of excellence to his own profession and pursuit, and thinks, if he could but remove some one particular competitor out of his way, he should have a clear sta^e to himself, and be a * Phoenix pazed by all ' : a.s if, though we crushed one rival, another would not start up ; or as if there were not a thousand other claims, a thousand other modes of excellence and praiseworthy acquirements, to divide the palm and defeat his idle pretension to the sole and untjualitied admiration of mankind. Professors of every chiss see merit only in their own line ; yet they would blight and destroy that little bit of excellence which alone they acknowledire to exist, except as it centres in themselves. Speak in praise of an actor to another actor, and ho turns away with impatience and dis^^ust: speak disnanM^iritfly of the first as an actor in general, and the latter eiurerly takes up tlie quarrel as his own : thus the esprit rir corps only comes in as an appendatre to our selt-love. It is, perhaps, well that we are so blind to merit out of our immediate sphere, for it mif?ht only prove an addi- tional eyesore, increase the obliquity of our mental vision, multiply our antinathies, or end in toUl in- difference and despair. 'I here is nothing' so bad an a cynical apathy and contempt for every art and ncience from a superficial smatteriny and general acquaintance with them all. 'Ilie merest pedantry and the mo«t tormenting- jealousy and heart- burninjf of envy are better than this. Those who are masters of different advauta^as and accomplishments are seldom the more 212 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS satisfied with them : they still aim at something else (however contemptible) which they have not or cannot do. So Pope says of Wliarton — Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke, The club must hail him master of the joke. Shall parts so various aim at nothing new ? He'll shine a TuUy and a Wilmot too. The world, indeed, are pretty even with these constel- lations of splendid and superfluous qualities in their fastidious estimate of their own pretensions, for (if possible) they never give any individual credit for more than one leading- attainment, if that. If a man is an artist, his being a fine musician adds nothing to his fame. Mlien the public strain a point to own one claim, it is on condition that the fortunate candidate waives every other. The mind is prepared with a plausible antithesis in such cases against the formidable encroachment of vanity : one qualification is regularly made a foil to another. We allow no one to be two things at a time : it quite unsettles our notion of personal identity. If we allow a man wit, it is part of the bargain that he wants judgTnent: if style, he wants matter. Rich, but a fool or miser : a beauty, but vain, and no better than she should be ; — so runs the bond. 'But' is the favourite monosyllable of envy and self-love. Raphael could draw and Titian could colour : we shall never get beyond these points while the world stands ; the human understanding is not cast in a mould to receive double proofs of entire superiority to itself. It is folly to expect it. If a further claim be set up, we call in question the solidity of the first, incline to retract it, and suspect that the whole is a juggle and a piece of impudence, as we threaten a common beggar with the stocks for following us to ask a second alms, lliis is, in fact, one source of the prevalence and deep root which envy has in the human mind : we are incredulous as to the truth and justice of the demands which are so often made upon our pity or our admiration ; but let the distress or the ENVY 213 merit be established beyond all controversy, and we open our hearts and purses on the spot, and sometimes run into the contrary extreme when charity or admira- tion becomes the fjishion. No one envies tlie Author of Waverley, because all admire him, and are sonpil)le that admire him as they will, they can never admire him enoutrh. We do not envy the sun for sliinin^ when we feel the warmth and sec the litrht. U'lien some persons start an injudicious j)arallel l)etweeu Sir Walter and Shakspeare, we then may t^row jealous and uneasy, hecause this interferes with our older and more firmly rooted conviction of g^enius, and one which has stood a surer and severer test. Envy l)as, then, some connection with a sense of Justice — it is a defence against imposture and quackery. Tliou^h we do not willingly give up the secret and silent consciousness of our own worth to vapouring and false pretences, we do homage to the true candidate for fame when he appe-irs, and even exult and take a pride in our capacity to appreciate the higliest desert, Tliis is one reason why we do not envy the dead — less because they are removed out of our way, than because all doubt and diversity of opinion is dismissed from the question of their title to veneration and respect. Our tongue, having a licence, trrows wanton in their [iraiso. We do not envy or stint our admiration of Rul)ens, ))ec^use the mists of uncertainty or prejudice are withdrawn by the hand of time from the splendour of his worki. Fame is to genius Like a gate of steel, Fronting the sun, receives and renders baribes and lulls envy asleep. The most painful kind of envy n the envy towards inferiors ; for we cannot bear to think that a person (in other resi»een defiance. We are here, where a principle only is in dang-er, at leisure to calculate con- sequences, prudently for ourselves, or favourably for others: were it a point of honour (we tliink the honour of human nature is not our honour, that its disijrace is not our disgrace — we are not tlie rnhfile !) we should throw consideration and compassion to the doirs, and cry — 'Away to heaven resjtective lenity, and tire-eyed fury be my conduct now ! ' But charity is cold. \\'e are the dupes of the liatteries of our opponents, because we are indifferent to our own object : we stand in awe of fheir threats, because in the absence of passion we are tender of our persons. 'Hiey beat us in courage and in intellect, because we liave nothinf>- but the common good to sharpen our faculties or ^'^oad our will ; they have no less an alternative in view than to be uncon- trolled masters of mankind, or to be Imrle.l from high— To prinning scorn a saorilkc, Ami einik-83 infamy I They do not celebrate the triumphs of their enemies as their own : it is with them a more feeling disputitioa. 'Hiey never pve an inch of ground tliat they ctn keep; they keep all tiiat they can get ; they make no con- cessions that can redound to their own discredit; they assume all that makes for tliem ; if they pause it is to gain time ; if they offer terms it is to break th^m 222 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS they keep no faith with enemies : if you relax in your exertions, they persevere the more : if you make new efforts, they redouble theirs. While they give no quarter, you stand upon mere ceremony. \\Tiile they are cutting your throat, or putting the gag in your mouth, you talk of nothing but liberality, freedom of inquiry, and douce humanite. Tlieir object is to destroy you, your object is to spare them — to treat them according to your own fancied dignity. They have sense and spirit enough to take all advantages that will furtlier their cause : you have pedantry and pusil- lanimity enough to undertake the defence of yours, in order to defeat it. It is the difference between the efficient and the inefficient ; and this again resolves itself into the difference between a speculative pro- position and a practical interest. One thing that makes tyrants bold is, that they have the power to justify their wrong. They lay their hands upon the sword, and ask who will dispute their commands. ITie friends of humanity and justice have not in general this ark of confidence to recur to, and can only appeal to reason and propriety. They oppose power on the plea of right and conscience ; and shall they, in pursuance of their claims, violate in the smallest tittle what is due to truth and justice.'' So that the one have no law but their wills, and the absolute extent of their authority, in attaining or securing their ends, because they make no pretensions to scrupulous delicacy : the others are cooped and cabined in by all sorts' of nice investigations in philo- sophy, and misgivings of the moral sense ; that is, are deprived or curtailed of the means of succeeding in their ends, because those ends are not barefaced violence and wrong. It might as well be said that a man has a right to knock me on the head on the high- way, and that I am only to use mildness and persuasion in return, as best suited to the justice of my cause ; as that I am not to retaliate and make reprisals on the com- mon enemies of mankind in their own style and mode of execution. Is not a man to defend his liberty, or the ON THE SPIRIT OF PARTISANSHIP 223 liberties of his fellow men, as strenuously and remorao- lessly as he would his life or his purse? Men are Quakers in political principle, Turks and JewH in private conscience. 'Hie wlioie is an error arising; from coufounding^ the distinction between theory and pra«;tice, between the still-life of letters and the tuij and onset of contending factions. I mii^ht recommend to our political mediators the advice which Henry V. addresseil to his soldiers on a critical occasion : — In peace there's nothing so beconieb a inan As modest stillness and huniiliiy ; But when the blast of war blows in our mn, Then imitate the action of the tiger ; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour d rai;e ; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect ; Let it pry through the portage of the head, Like the brass cannon : let the brow o erwhelniit As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill (1 with the wild and wasteful ocean : >'ow set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide; Hold hard the breath, and bend up everj- spirit To his full height. So, in speculation refine as much as you please, in- tellectually and morally speaking', and you may do it with advantage. Reason is then the instrument you use, and you cannot raise the sUmdard of perfection you fix upon and propose to otlicrs too h'l^h, or proceed with too much candour and moderation in the advance- ment ot truth : but in practice you have not your choice of ends or means. You have two thinp to decide between, the extreme, prol»al)ly, of an evil and a consideralde g^ood ; and if you will not make your mind up to take the best of the two with all itjj dis- advantages arul drawbacks, you must be contented to take the worst : for as you cannot alter the state of the conflicting parties who are carrying their point by force, or dictate what is best by a word speaking ; so by finding fault with the attainable good, and throwing cold water on it, you add fuel to your enenjy's coura>re and assist his success. ' Hiose who are not for us are 224 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS ag-ainst us.' You create a di version in his favourj by distracting and enervating men's minds, as much as by questioning the general's orders, or drawing off a strong detachment in the heat of a battle. Political is like military warfare. There are but two sides ; and after you have once chosen your party, it will not do to stand in the midway, and say you like neither. ITiere is no other to like, in the eye of common sense, or in the practical and inevitable result of the thing. As active partisans, we must take up with the best we can get in the circumstances, and defend it with all our might against a worse cause (which will prevail, if this does not), instead of ' letting our frail thoughts dally with faint surmise ' ; or, while dreaming of an ideal perfection, we shall find ourselves surprised into the train, and gracing the triumph, of the common enemy. It is sufficient if our objects and principles are sound and disinterested. If we were engaged in a friendly contest, where integrity and fair dealing were the order of the day, our means might be as unimpeach- able as our ends ; but in a struggle with the passions, interests, and prejudices of men, right reason, pure intention, are hardly competent to carry us through : we want another stimulus. The vices may be opposed to each other sometimes with advantage and propriety. A little of the alloy of human frailty may be allowed to lend its aid to the service of humanity ; and if we have only so much obstinacy or insensibility as enables us to persevere in the path of public duty with more determination and effect, both our motives and con- duct will be above the ordinary standard of political morality. To suppose that we can do much more than this, or that we can set up our individual opinion of what is best in itself, or of the best means of attaining it, and be listened to by the world at large, is egregiously to overrate their docility or our own powers of persuasion. Jt is the same want of a centripetal force, of a ruling passion, of a moral instinct of union and co-operation for a general purpose, that makes men ily off into knots and factions, and each set up for the leader ot a ON THE SPIRIT OF PARTISANSHIT 226 party himself. ^Vhere there is a stroiij^ feeling of interest at work, it reconciles and comhines the moat discordant materials, and fits them to their place in the social machine. But in the conduct and supj)ort of the public good, we see *nothinjj^ but vanity, chaotic vanity.' There is no forbearance, no self-denial, no magnanimity of proceeding. Kvery one is seeking his own aggrandisement, or to supplant his neighbour, instead of advancing the popular cause. It is because they have no real regard for it but as it serves as a stalking horse to their ambition, restless inijuietude, or love of cabal. They abuse and vilify their own party, just as they do the ministers. Each lolls his tongue out at the other, And shakes his empty noddle at his brother. John Bull does not aim so maliciously, or hit so hard at ^Vhigs and Reformers, as Cobbett. Tlie reason is, that a very large proportion of tliese .Marplots and regenerators of the world are actuated by no love of their species or zeal for a general question, but by envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. They are dis- contented with themselves and with everything about them. They object to, they dissent from, every measure. Notliing pleases their fastidious tastes. For want of something to exercise their ill-humour and troublesome officiousness upon, they abuse the govern- ment : when they are baulked or tired of this they fall foul of one another. The slightest slip or difference of opinion is never forgiven, but gives birth to a deadly feud. Touch but their petty self-importance, and out comes a flaming denunciation of their own calial, and all they know about the individuals composing it. This is not patriotism but spleen— a want of somethiuK to do and to talk ai)out— of sense, honesty, and feeling. To wreak their spite on an individual, they will ruin the cause, and serve up the friend and idol of the people sliced and carbonachuMl, a delicious morsel to the other side. There is a strange want of keeping in this. ITiey are true neither to themselves nor to their Q 226 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS principles. The Reformers are in general, it must be confessed, an ill-conditioned set; and they should be told of this infirmity tliat most easily besets them. ^V'^hen they find their gall and bitterness oversowing on the very persons who take the lead, and deservedly take the lead, in their affairs, for some slight flaw or misunder- standing, they should be taught to hold their tongues, or be drummed out of the regiment as spies and informers. Trimming, and want of spirit to declare the honest truth, arise in part from the same source. W^hen a man is not thoroughly convinced of an opinion, or where he does not feel a deep interest in it, he does not like to make himself obnoxious by avowing it ; is willing to make all the allowance he can for difference of sentiment, and consults his own safety by retiring from a sinking cause. This is the very time when the genuine partisan, who has a rooted attachment to a principle, and feels it as a part of himself, finds himself most called upon to come forward in its support. His anxiety for truth and justice leaves him in no fear for himself, and the sincerity of his motives makes him regardless of censure or obloquy. His profession of hearty devotion to freedom was not an ebullition called forth by the sunshine of prosperity, a lure for popularity and public favour ; and when these desert it, he still maintains his post with his integrity. There is a natural timidity of mind, also, which can never go the whole length of any opinion, but is always inter- larding its qualified assent with unmeaning buts and ifs; as there is a levity and discursiveness of imagina- tion which cannot settle finally in any belief, and requires a succession of glancing views, topics, and opposite conclusions, to satisfy its appetite for intel- lectual variety. I have known persons leave the cause of independence and freedom, not because they found it unprofitable, but because they found it flat and stale for want of novelty. At the same time, interest is a great stimulator ; and perhaps the success of their early principles might have reconciled them to their embarrassing monotony. Few persons have strength ON THE SPIRIT OF PARTISANSHIP 227 and simplicity of mind (without some additional induce- ment) to be always harpintr on the same Htritiir, or to put up with the legitimate variety to he f<»unigotry throws human nature into strong light and shade ; he has his sympathies aa well as his antipathies; it is not all black or a dull drab colour. lie does not generalise in his contempt or disgust, or proceed from individiials to universals. He lays the ':uilts and vices of mankind to the account of sects and parties, creeds and classes. Man in him- self is a good sort of animal. It is the beiiijr a Tory or a ^Miig (as it may happen) that makes a man a knave or fool ; but then we hardly look upon him a« of the same species with ourselves, Kiii;:> are not arbitrary, nor jtriests hypocritical, because they are men, but because they are kings and priests. We form certain nominal abstractions of these classes, which the more we dislike them the less natural do they seem, and leave the general character of the «j»ecMe« untouched, or act as a foil to it There is nothiiii: that is a greater dam{)er to party spirit than to sutrir»'st that the errors and enormities of both sides arise from 228 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS certain inherent dispositions common to the species. It shocks the liberal and enlightened among us, to suppose that under any circumstances they could become bigots, tools, persecutors. They wipe their hands clean of all such aspersions. There is a great gulf of prejudice and passion placed between us and our opponents ; and this is interpreted into a natural barrier and separation of sentiment and feeling. ' Our withers are unwrung.' Burke represented modern revolutionists to himself under the equivocal similitude of 'green-eyed, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed philo- sophers, whether going on two legs or on four' ; and thus removed to a distance from his own person all the ill attributes with which he had complimented the thoroughbred metaphysician. By comparing the plausible qualities of a minister of state to the sleek- ness of the panther, I myself seem to have no more affinity with that whole genus, than with the whiskers and claws of that formidable and spirited animal. Bishop Taylor used to reprimand his rising pride by saying, at the sight of a reprobate, ' There goes my wicked self : we do not apply the same method politi- cally, and say, ' Tliere goes my Tory or my Jacobin self.' We suppose the two things incompatible. The Calvinist damns the Arminian, the Protestant the Papist, etc. , but it is not for a difference of nature, but an opposition of opinion. The spirit of partisanship is not a spirit of our misanthropy. But for the vices and errors of example and institution, mankind are (on this principle) only a little lower than the angels ; it is false doctrine and absurd prejudices that make demons of them. The only original sin is differing in opinion with us : of that they are curable like any occasional disorder, and the man comes out, from beneath the husk of his party and prejudices, pure and immaculate. Make prosehi;es of them, let them come over to our way of thinking, and they are a different race of beings quite. This is to be effected by the force of argument and the progress of knowledge. It is well, it is per- fectly well, ^^'^e cast the slough of our vices with the ON THE SrilUT OF PAllTISANSHIP 229 shibboleth of our party ; a real Reform in Parliament would banish all knavery and folly from tlie land. It is not the same wretched little mischievous animal, man, that is alike under all denominations and all systems, and in whom different situations and notions only bring out different inherent, incorrif;ii)le vice.sand propensities ; but the professions and the theory being chanfi:ed for the one which we think the only true and infallible one, the whole world, by the mere removal of our arbitrary prejudices and modes of thinking, would become as sincere, as benevolent, aa in- dependent, and as worthy people as we are ! To hate and proscribe half the species under various pretext* and nicknames, seems, therefore, the only way to entertain a good opinion of ourselves and mankind iu general. FOOTMEN FooTMisN are no part of Christianity ; but they are a very necessary appendage to our happy Constitution in Church and State. What would the bishop's mitre be without these g"rave supporters to his dignity ? Even the plain presbj^ter does not dispense with his decent serving-man to stand behind his chair and load his duly emptied plate with beef and pudding-, at which the genius of Ude turns pale. ^V'llat would become of the coronet-coach filled with elegant and languid forms, if it were not for the triple row of powdered, laced, and liveried footmen, clustering, fluttering, and lounging behind it } VVhat an idea do we not conceive of the fashionable belle, who is making tlie most of her time and tumbling over silks and satins within at Howell and James's, or at the Bazaar in Soho Square, from the tall lacquey in blue and silver with gold-headed cane, cocked-hat, white thread stockings, and large calves to his legs, who stands as her representative without ! Tne sleek shopman appears at the door, at an under- stood signal the livery -servant starts from his position, the coach-door flies open, the steps are let down, the young lady enters the carriage as young ladies are taught to step into carriages, the footman closes the door, mounts behind, and the glossy vehicle rolls off, bearing its lovely burden and her gaudy attendant from the gaze of the gaping crowd ! Is there not a spell in beauty, a charm in rank and fashion, that one would almost wish to be this fellow — to obey its nod, to watch its looks, to breathe but by its 230 FOOTMEN 231 permission, and to live but for it«? use, its scorn, or pride ? Footmen are in general looked upon as a sort of supernumeraries in society — they have no place assif^ned them in any Kncyclopa?(lia — they do not come under any of the heads in Mr. Mill's fJ/ettifuds, or Mr. Macculloch's I'rhiciples of Political Erojwtny ; and they nowhere have had impartial justice done them, except in I^ady Boohy's love for one of that order. Hut if not 'the Corinthian capitals of polished society,' they are 'aafraceful ornament to the civil order.' Ix)nls and ladies could not do without them. Nothing'- exists in this worlil hut by contrast. A foil is necessary to make the plainest truths self-evident. It is the very insi^ui- rtcance, the nonentity, as it were, of the trentlemen of the cloth, that constitutes their imi)ortance, and makes them an indispensable feature in the social system, by setting off the pretensions of their superiors to the liest advantage. What would be the p-ood of having- a will of our own, if we had not others about us who are deprived of all will of their own, and who wear a badjfe to say, ' I serve' .'' How can we show that we are the lords of the creation but by reducino^ others to the condition of machines, who never move but at the beck of our cajirices.^ Is not the plain suit of tlie master wniiderfully relieved by the borrowed trappinifs and mock finery of his servant.'' You see th.it man on horseback who keeps at some distance behind anutlier. who follows him as his shadow, turns as he turns, and as he j)asses or speaks to him, lifts his hand t<» Ins liat and oiiserves the nuist profound attention —what is the difference l)etwpen these two men } The one is as well mounted, as well fed, is young-er and seemintrly in better health than the other ; but between these two there are perhaps seven or ei^'-ht chisses of society each of whom is dependent on and trembles at the frown of the other— it is a nobleman and his lac<|uey. l^t any one take a stroll towards the \N est Knd of the town, ISouth Audlev or I'pper (Jrosvonor Streets ; it is then ho will feel himself tirst enterinjr into the Uau 232 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS ideal of civilised lite, a society composed entirely of lords and footmen ! Deliver me from the filth and cellars of St. Giles's, from the shops of Holborn and the Strand, from all that appertains to middle and to low life ; and commend me to the streets with the straw at the doors and hatchments over head to tell us of those who are just born or who are just dead, and with groups of footmen lounging- on the steps and insulting the passengers — it is then I feel the true dignity and imaginary pretensions of human nature realised ! lliere is here none of the squalidness of poverty, none of the hardships of daily labour, none of the anxiety and petty artifice of trade ; life's busi- ness is changed into a romance, a summer's dream, and nothing painful, disgusting, or vulgar intrudes. All is on a liberal and handsome scale. 'Flie true ends and benefits of society are here enjoyed and bounti- fully lavished, and all the trouble and misery banished, and not even allowed so much as to exist in thought. Those who would find the real Utopia, should look for it somewhere about Park Lane or Mayfair. It is there only any feasible approach to equality is made — for it is like master like man. Here, as 1 look down Curzon Street, or catch a glimpse of the taper spire of South Audley Chapel, or the family arms on the gate of Chesterfield House, the vista of years opens to me, and I recall the period of the triumph of Mr. Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, and the overthrow of The Rights of Man I You do not, indeed, penetrate to the interior of the mansion where sits the stately possessor, luxurious and refined ; but you draw your inference from the lazy, pampered, motley crew poured forth from his portals. This mealy-coated, moth-like, butterfiy generation, seem to have no earthly business but to enjoy themselves. Their green liveries accord with the budding leaves and spreading branches of the trees in Hyde Park — they seem ^ like brothers of the groves' — their red faces and powdered heads har- monise with the blossoms of the neighbouring almond trees, that shoot their sprays over old-fashioned brick FOOTMEN 233 walls. They come forth like a;^rass}io[>f)er8 in June, as numerous and as noisy. They bask in the sun and laujtrh in your face. Not only does the ma>ter enjoy an uninterrupted leisure and tranle to tell tliem apart. See the porter in the ^reat leather chair in the hall — how big, and burly, and self-important he looks ; while my Lord's gentleman (the politician of the family) is read- ing the second edition of The Courier (once more in request) at the side window, and the footman is romp- ing, or taking tea with the maids in the kitchen below. A match-girl meanwhile plies her shrill trade at the railing ; or a gipsy woman passes with her rustic warej* through the street, avoiding the closer haunts of the city. NV^hat a pleasant farce is that of Nicfh Li/e lidow Stairs! What a careless life do the tic8 of the great lead ! For, not to speak of the reflected self- importance of their masters and mistresses, and the contempt with which they look down on the herd of mankind, they have only to eat and drink their till, talk the scandal of the neighbourhood, lauL'h at the follies, or assist the ititrigues of their betters, till tiiey themselves fall in love, marry, set up a publir-ljouse (the only thing they are fit for), and without habit* of industry, resources in them.selves, or self-respe<-t, and drawing fruitless comparisons with the jmsi, are, of all people, the most miserable I Service is uu inheritance ; and when it fails, there is not a more helpless, or mort 234 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS worthless set of devils in the world. Mr. C used to say he should like to be a footman to some elderly lady of quality, to carry her prayer-book to church, and place her hassock ri^ht for her. lliere can be no doubt that this would have been better, and quite as useful as the life he has led, dancing attendance on Prejudice, but flirting- with Paradox in such a way as to cut himself out of the old lady's will. For my part, if I had to choose, I should prefer the service of a young mistress, and might share the fate of the footmen recorded in heroic verse by Lady Wortley Montagu. Certainly it can be no hard duty, though a sort of forlorn hope, to have to follow three sisters, or youthful friends (resembling the three Graces), at a slow pace, and with grave demeanour, from Cumberland Gate to Kensington Gardens — to be there shut out, a privation enhancing the privilege, and making the sense of distant, respectful, idolatrous admiration more intense — and then, after a brief interval lost in idle chat, or idler reverie, to have to follow them back again, observing, not observed, to keep within call, to watch every gesture, to see the breeze play with the light tresses or lift the morning robe aside, to catch the half-suppressed laugh, and hear the low murmur of indistinct words and wishes, like the music of the spheres. An amateur footman would seem a more rational occupation than that of an amateur author, or an amateur artist An insurmountable barrier, if it excludes passion, does not banish sentiment, but draws an atmosphere of superstitious, trembling apprehension round the object of so much attention and respect ; nothing makes women seem so much like angels as always to see, never to converse with them ; and those whom he has to dangle a cane after, must, to a lacquey of any spirit, appear worthy to wield sceptres. But of all situations of this kind, the most enviable is that of a lady's maid in a family travelling abroad. In the ol)tuseness of foreigners to the nice gradations of English refinement and manners, the maid has not seldom a chance of being taken for the mistress — a FOOTMFIN 236 circumiJtance never to he forgot ! Se« our Abifrail mountwl in the dickey with Jolin, sniif^ ami conUort- able, aettiiiff out on the pratid tour as frist as four horses can carry her, whirled over the * vine-oovered hills and tray retrioiis of Franjte," crosfiirijf tlie Alps and Apennines in breathless terror and wonder — fritrliLened at a prela(e is one for show and form rather than use ; and as he cannot maintain his pretended superiority by what he does himself, he thinks to arrive at the same end by hindering others from doing their best. The * dog-in- tlie-manger ' principle comes into full play. If an article has nothing to recommend it, is one of no mark or likelihood, it goes in ; there is no offence in it. If it is likely to strike, to draw attention, to niake a noise, then every syllable is scanned, every objection is weighed : if grave, it is too grave ; if witty, it is too witty. One way or other, it might be better ; and while this nice point is pending, it gives place, as a matter of course, to something that there is no question about. Tho responsibility, the delicacy, the nervous appre- hension of the Editor, naturally increase with the probable effect and popularity of the contributions on which he has to pass judgment ; and the nearer an effusion approaches to perfection, the more fatal is • single flaw, or its falling short of that superhuman standard by a hair's- breadth ditTerence, to its rtual reception. If people are likely to ask, M\ho wrote a certain paper in the last number of ?' the Pxlitor 240 SKETCHES A>rD ESSAYS is bound, as a point of honour, to baulk that imper- tinent curiosity on the part of the public. He would have it understood that all the articles are equally good, and may be equally his own. If he inserts a paper of more than the allowed average merit, his next care i» to spoil by revising it. The sting, with the honey, is sure to be left out. If there is anything that pleased you in the writing, you look in vain for it in the proof. What might electrify the reader, startles the Editor. With a paternal regard for the interests of the public, he takes care that their tastes should not be pampered, and their expectations raised too high, by a succession of fine passages, of which it is impossi})le to continue a supply. He interposes between the town and their vicious appetite for the piquant and bigh-seasoned, as we forbid children to indulge in sweetmeats. The trite and superficial are always to be had to order, and present a beautiful uniformity of appearance. There is no unexpected relief, no unwelcome ine(|uality of style, to disorder the nerves, or perplex the under- standing : the reader may read, and smile, and sleep, without meeting. a single idea to break his repose. Some Editors, moreover, have a way of altering the first parag-raph : they have then exercised their privi- leges, and let you alone for the rest of the chapter. This is like paying ' sl pepper-corn rent,' or making one's bow on entering a room : it is being: let off cheap. Others add a pointless conclusion of their owu : it is like signing their names to the article. Some have a passion for sticking in the word hov-ever at every opportunity, in order to impede the march of the style ; and others are contented and take great pains (with Lindley Murray's Grammar lying open before them) to alter ' \i it is' into 'if it he..' An Editor abhors an ellipsis. If you fling your thouyht^ into continued passag-es, they set to work to cut them up into short paragraphs: if you make fre«|uent breaks, they turn the tables on you that way, and throve the whole composition into masses. Anything to preserve the form and appearance of power, to make the work A CHAPTER ON EDITORS 241 their own by mental stratoijem, to stamp it by some fiction of criticism with their personal identity, to enable them to run away with the credit, and look upon theniselves as the master-spirits of the work and of the aire ! If there is any point they do not under- stand, they are sure to metidle with it, and mar the sense ; for it piques their self-love, and they tliink thoy are bound ex-officio to know better than the writer. Thus they sui)stitute (at a venture, and merely for the sake of alterinir) one epitliet for another, when perhaps the same word has occurred just before, and prculuces a cruel tiutoio^y, never considering the troui>l»' you have taken tocomj)are the context and vary the pliraseolo^'. Editors have no misplaced confidence it) the powers of their contributors: they think by the supposition they must be in the ri^rht from a sinii^le supercilious glance — and you in the wron*,--, after porinjr over a subject for a month. Tliere are Editors who, if you insert the name of a popular actor, strike it out, and, in virtue of.their authority, insert a favourite of their own — as a dexterous attorney substitutes the name of a friend in a will. Some Editors will let you praise nobody ; others will let you blame nobody. Tlie first excites their jealousy of contemporary merit; the last excites their fears, and they do not like to make enemies. Some insist upon g:ivin^ no oninion at all, and observe an ujuirnwd neutrality as to all parties and persons : it is no wonder the world think very little oi them in return. Some Editors stand upon their characters for this ; otliers for that Some picpie them- selves upon beino^ genteel and well-dresseii ; others on beinff moral and immaculate, and do not perceive that the public never trouble their heads about the matter. 1 knew one Editor who openly discarded all rec:ard to character and decency, and who throve by the dissolution of partnership, if indeed the articles were ever drawn up. Some Editors drink tea with a set of blne-stockiirgs and literary ladies : not a whisper, not a breath that miyht blow away those fine cobwebs of the brain — R 242 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS More subtle web Arachne cannot spin ; Hot those fine threads which oft we woven see Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly fle« I Others dine with Lords and Academicians — for God's sake, take care what you say ! Would you strip the Editor's mantel-piece of the cards of invitation that adorn it to select parties for the next six months ? An Editor takes a turn in St. James's Street, and is con- gratulated by the successive literary or political groups on all he does not write ; and when the mistake is found out, the true Simon Pure is dismissed. ^\''e have heard that it was well said by the proprietor of a leading journal, that he would take good care never to write a line in his own paper, as he had conflicting interests enough to manage, without adding literary jealousies to the number. On the other hand, a very good-natured and warm-hearted individual declared, ^ he would never have another man of talent for an Editor ' (the Editor, in this cavse, is to the proprietor as the author to the Editor), ' for he was tired of having their good things thrust in his teeth.' Some Editors are scrubs, mere drudges, newspaper puflPs ; others are bullies or quacks ; others are nothing at all — they have the name, and receive a salary for it ! A literary sinecure is at once lucrative and highly respectable. At Lord's Ground there are some old hands that are famous for blocking out and staying in': it would seem that some of our literary veterans had taken a lesson from their youthful exercises at Harrow or Eton. AD this is bad enough ; but the worst is, that Editors, besides their own failings, have friends who aggravate and take advantage of them. These self- styled friends are the nightshade and hemlock clinging to the work, preventing its growth and circulation, and dropping a slumberous poison from its jaundiced leaves. They form a cordon, an opaque mass round the Editor, and persuade him that they are the support, the prop, and pillar of his reputation. They get between him and the public, and shut out the light, A CHAPTER ON EDITORS 243 and set aside common sense. They pretend anxiety for the interest of some establislied ortran of opinion, while all they want is to make it the ort^an of their dog^mas, prejudices, or party. Iliey want to he the Magazine or the Review — to wield tliat power covertly, to warp that influence to their own purposes. If they cannot do this, they care not if it sinks or swims, 'lliey prejudge every question — fly-blow every writer who is not of their own set A friend of theirs has three articles in the la.st number of ; they strain every nerve and make pressing instances to throw a slur on a popular contribution by anutlier hand, in order that he may write a fourth in the next number. The short articles which are rejid by the vul^-^ar, are cut down to make room for the long ones, which are read by nobody but the writers and their friends. If an opinion is expressed contrary to the shibboleth of the party, it is represented as an outrage on decency and public opinion, when in truth the public are delighted with the candour and boldness displayed They would convert the most valuable and spirited journal into a dull pamphleteer, stutfed with their own lucubrations on certain heavy topics. 'Hie self-import- ance of these people is in proj)ortion to their insigni- ftcance ; and what they cannot do by an appeal to argument or sound policy, they eff"ect by importunity and insinuation, 'lliey keep the Kditor in continual alarm as to what will be said of him by the public, when in fact the public will think (in nine cases out o/ ten) just what he Iclls them. These people create much of the mischief. An Editor should have no friends — his only prompter should be the number of copies of the work that sell. It is superfluous to strike off a large impression of a work for those few squeamish persons who prefer lead to tinsel. Principle and good manners are barrier* that are, in our estimate, inviolable : the rest is open to popular suffrage, and is not to be prejudged by a coterie with closed doors. Another dithculty lies here. An Editor should, in one sense, be a respectable man— 244 SKETCHES AND ESSAYS a. disting-uished character ; otherwise he cannot lend his name and sanction to the work. But ' here's the rub' — that one so graced and gifted can neitlier have his time nor his thoughts to himself. He who dines out loses his free agency. He may improve in polite- ness, he falls off in the pith and pungency of his style. A poem is dedicated to the son of the Muses : can the critic do otherwise than praise it .'' A tragedy is brought out by a noble friend and patron : the severe rules of the drama must yield in some measure to the amenities of private life. On the contrary, Mr. is a garret- teer — a person that nobody knows ; his work has nothing but the contents to recommend it ; it sinks into obscurity, or addresses itself to the canaille.. An Editor, then, should be an abstraction — a being in the clouds — a mind without a body — reason withoui passion. But where find such a one? THE \^ORLD'S CLASSICS ♦-»♦♦< M » MM» »4*« »♦ M f^ ♦♦♦♦♦»>»♦ ♦♦♦^ »♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦»♦♦♦ ♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ M 4»»» 4 i The World's Classics j ^ HE best recommendation of 77?^ IVorld's Classics is the books themselves, which have earned unstinted praise from critics and all classes of the public. Nearly five million copies have been sold, and of the volumes already published very many have gone into a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, or later impression. It is only possible to give so much for the money when large sales are certain. The I clearness of the type, the quality of the paper, I the size of the page, the printing, and the I binding — from the cheapest to the best — I cannot fail to commend themselves to all who I love good literature presented in worthy J form. That a high standard is insisted upon ♦ is proved by the list of books already pub- X lished and of those on the eve of publication. I Many of the volumes contain critical introduc- t tions written by leading authorities. : A NUMBER of the volumes are issued in ♦ XV the Oxford Library of Standard Works, X the size and type as The World's Classics, X but bound in antique leather, in Italian, thin I boards, gilt design, gilt top, and in Suede, X yapp edges, gilt top, each with bookmarker. t These are specially recommended for pre- X sentation. (The volumes are obtainable only ♦ through the booksellers.) Pocket size, 6 x 3? inches. Large type, on thin opaque paper. Obtainable either in superfine art cloth or sultan-rcd leather. LIST OF THE SERIES The figures in paretttheses deuo/e the number 0/ the Iry.ik in the series Aeschylus. The Seven I'lays. Translated by Lewis CAMPBELL. (117) Ainsworth (W. Harrison). The ToAer of Lon.ion. (i6a) A Kempis (Thomas i. (3f the Imitation of Christ 149) Aksakoff iSerghei). Trans. J. D. Duff. A Russian CfntU-man. (241) Years of Childhood. 24^1 A Russian Sciiooiboy. (261) Apocrypha, The, in the Revised Version. ^294^ Aristophanes. Frere's translation of thf .Acharnians. Knii,'hfs, Birds, and Frogs. Introduction by \V. W. MnwKV. (lU) Arnold (Matthew). Fo»Mns. Intro, by Sir -\ T Qi'iLLKR-CourH. 1H5) Aurelius (Marcus). Thoujjhts. Trans. J. Jacksom. (60) Austen (Jane.). Lmma. Introduction by E. V. Lucas. (12Q) Bacon. The A'lvancemcnt of Learning, and the NewAtlanti*. Intro- duction by Professor Cask, (qvi Essays. 134) Barham. The Ingoldsby Legends. (<>) Barrow (Sir John). The Mutiny of the Bounty, (iq.";) Bethani-Edwards (M.). The Lord of tlie Har%est. (194) Blackmore (R. D.). Lorna Doone. Intro, by Sir H. Wakhen. (171) Borrow. The Bible in Spain. (75) Lavcnjjro. (66) The Romany Rye. (73) Wild Wales. {22^) Bronte Sisters. Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre, (i) Shirley. (14) Villettc. (47) The Professor, and the Poems of Charlotte, Emily, and .Anne Bronte. Introduction by Theouore WattsDunton. (78) Life of Charlotte Bronte, by E. C. GasKELL (J141 Emily Bronte. Wuthering Heights, (lo) Anne Bronte. Agnes Grev. (141) The Tenant of Wildfeli Hall. (.67) Brown Dr. John). Horae Subsecivae. Intro, by .\tiSTls Ddbsos. (118) Browning (Elizabeth Barrett). Poem.s: .A Selection. (176) Browning (Robert,'. Poems and Plays, 1833-1843. (5S) Poems, 1843-1864. (1,^7) Buckle. The History of Civilization. 3 vols. (41,48,50 Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress. (13) Burke. 6 vols. Vol. I. General Introduction by Judge WlLl.lS and Preface by F. W. Raffbty. (71) Vols. II, IV, V, VI. Prefaces by F. W. R.AFFETY. (81, lU 114) Vol. III. Preface by F. H. Willis, (iii) Letters. Selected, with Introduction, by H. J. LaskI. (237) Burns. Poems. (34) Byron. Poems : A Selection. (180) k-»-M-»-»« ♦♦ »»>■♦-♦ THE WORLD'S CLASSICS Carlyle. On Heroes and Hero-Worship. (62) Past and Present. Introduction by G. K. CHESTERTON. (153) Sartor Resartus. (10) The French Revolution. Intro. C. R. L. Fletcher. 2vo1s. (125. 126) The Life of John Sterling;. Introduction by W. HaLE WHITE. (144) Cellini (Benvenuto). Memoirs, written by himself. (300) Cervantes. Don Quixote. 2 vols. With a frontispiece. (130, 131) Chaucer. The Works of. 3 vols. Vol. I f42) : Vol. II (56); Vol. Ill, containing the whole of the Canterbury Tales (76) Cobbold. Margaret Catchpole. Intro, by Clement Shorter. (119) Coleridge. Poems. Introduction by Sir A. T. QUILLER-C0U..H. (99) Collins iWilkie). The Woman in White. (226* Consreve. The Comedies, with Introduction byBoNAMY DobReE. (276) The Mourning Bride; and Miscellanies. (277) Cooper (J. Fenimore). The Last of the Mohicans. (163) Cowper. Letters. Selected, with Introduction, by E. V. LuCAS. (138) Crime and Detection : Stories selected by E. M. Wrong. (301) Czecho-Slovak Short Stories. Translated, with a preface, by Marie BuscH. u8S) Darwin. The Origin of Species. With a Note by GRANT Allen, (ii) Defoe. Captain Singleton. Intro, by Theodore W'ATTS-Dunton. (82) Robinson Crusoe. (17) De Quincey. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. (33) Dickens. Barnaby Rudge. (286) Edwin Drood. (26?) Great Expectations. 6 Illustrations. (i2♦•♦ ♦♦♦^^♦♦♦♦♦♦♦< English Letters. (Fiftemth to Ninetr<»nth Crnturirs.) (iqj) English Prose. Chosen and arranged by W. Pf.acock. Mandtville to Ruskin. (45) Wycliffc to Clarendon. (319) Milton to Gray. (22*)) W alpolr to Lainh. (jji) Lan.Ior to Holmes. (222) Mrs. Ci.iskrll to Hrnrv lamra. (aij^) English Prose : Narrative, Descriptive, and Dramatic. (ao4) English Short Stories. (NinetPfnth Century ) (lO.^) Srcoiid bcrifs (N iiicte. nth and Twintirtli Centuries.) (238) English Songs and Ballads. ( ompilrd l)\ T. W. H. CROSt.ANn. (13) English Speeches, from Burke to Gladstone, (iqi) Fielding. Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, &c. Intro. A. DOBSOS. (142) Francis (St.t. The Little Flowers of St. Francis. In F-ngllsh Verse by J. Rhoaoks. (2651 Franklin Benjamin). Autobioprapliy. (250) Froude J. A.\ Short Studios on Great Sulijects. First Series. (j6o) Gait (John). The Entail. Introduction by JOHS Ayscoit.h. (177) Gaskell (Mrs.X Introductions by Ci.EMENT Shorter. Cousin I'hillis, and Other Tales, f^cc. (168) Cranford, The Cage at Cranford, and The Moorland Cottage, (no) Lizzie Leigh, The Grey Woman, and Oilur Tales, SiC. (175) Mary Barton. (86) No. ih and South. (154) Right at Last, and Other Talt, Part I (with Marlowe's Dr. Faustus). (135) Goldsmith, Poems. (123) The Vicar ot WaUefid.i. (4) Gray iThomas . Letters, selected by J. hs Bkwksforu. (283) Hawthorne. House of the Seven Gables. (273) The ScarUt Letter. (26) Hazlitt. Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. Introduction by Sir A. QUILLEK-COUCH. (205) Lectures on the Ei'gjish Comic Writers. Introduction by R. BrimlBY Johnson. (124) Lectures on the Englisli Pix-ts. U55' Memtjirs of Thomas Hokroft. (302) Sketches and Essays. (15) Spirit ol the Age. (57) Table- Talk. (5) Wmtcrslow. (25) Herbert (George). Poems. Introduction by Arthur Wauch. (ioq) Herrick. Poems. (16) Holcroft (Thomas) Memoirs, continued by W. Hazlitt. ^302) Holmes (Oliver Wendell). The Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table. (61) The Poet at the Breakfast-Table. Intro. Sir W. R. NICOLL. (95) The Professor at the Breakfast Table. Intro. Sir W. R. NicoLI- (89) ♦-»♦♦♦»««♦♦♦»» «<»»»»»4 ♦♦»«♦♦>♦♦>♦> ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦4*»« ♦♦♦♦>♦♦♦«♦♦♦♦«♦♦*»><>««♦»«» 6 THE WORLD'S CLASSICS Homer. Translated by Pope. Iliad. (18) Odyssey. (36) Hood. Poems. Introduction by WALTER Jerrold. (87) Home (R. H.). A New Spirit of the Age. Intro. W. JeRROLD. (127) Hume. Essays. (33) Hunt (Leigh). Essays and Sketches. Intro. R. B. Johnson. (115) The Town. Introduction and Notes by AUSTIN Dobson. (132) Irving (Washington). The Conquest of Granada. (150) The Sketch-Book. Introduction by T. Balston. (173) Johnson iSamuel). Letters, selected by R. W. Chapman. (282) Lives of the Poets. Intro. A. Waugh. 2 vols. (83, 84) Keats. Poems. (7) Keble. The Christian Year. (181) Kingsley (Henry). Geoffry Hamlyn. (271) Ravenshoe. (267) Lamb. Essays of Ella, and The Last Essays of Elia. (a) Landor. Imaginary Conversations. Selected, with Introduction, by Prof. E. DC S6LINCOURT. (iq6) Lesage. Gil Bias. Ed. J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly. 2 vols. (151, 152) Letters written in War Time. Selected by H. Wragg. (202) Longfellow. Evangeline, The Golden Legend, &c. (39) Hiawatha, Miles Standish, Tales of a Wayside Inn, &c. (174) Lytton. Harold. With 6 Illustrations by Charles Burton. (165) Macaulay. Lays of Ancient Romr; Ivry; The Armada. (27) Machiavelli. The Prince. Translated by LuiGl RicCL (43) Marcus Aurelius. See .Aurelius. Marlowe. Dr. Faustus (with Goetlie's Faust, Part I). (135) Marryat. Mr. Midshipman Easy. (160) Melville (Herman). Moby Dick. Intro. ViOLA Meynell. (225) Typee. (274) Omoo. (275) White Jacket. Intro. C. VAN Dorkn. (253) Mill (John Stuart). On Liberty, &c. Intro. Mrs. Fawcett. (170) Autobiography. Intro. H. J. Laskl (262) Milton. The English Poems. (182) Selected Prose. Intro. Malcolm W. Wallace. (293) Montaigne. Essays. Translated by J. Florio. 3 vols. (65,70,77) Morier {J. J.). Hajji Baba of Ispahan. With a Map. (238) Hajji Baba in Enjjland. (285) Morilr (C. P.). Anton Reiser. With Introduction by P. E. MathesON. (299) Morris (W.). The Defence of Guenevere, Jason, Sac. (183) Motley. Rise of the Dutch Republic. 3 vols. (96, 97, 98) Nekrassov. Who can be happy and free in Russia? A Poem. Trans. by Juliet Soskice. (213) Palgrave. The Golden Treasury. With additional Poems, including FitzGehald's translation of Omar Khayyam. (133) LIST OF THE SERIES 7 Peacock (T. L.). Misfortunes ol Elphin ; and Crotcliet Castle. Intra by R. W. Chapman. (J44) Peacock fW.). Enjjlish Prose from MancJevillc to Ru>kin. (45) Enjjiish Pro3e. 5 vols. : — Wycliffp to Clarendon, (aig) Walpol.* to LamU (aai) Milton to Gray. (220) I^andor to HoltnM. {322) Mrs. Gaskell to Henry James. (iJi) Selected Enjrlisli Essays. (32) Persian (From the). The Three Dervishes, and Other Stories. (254) Poe (Edgar Allan). Tales of Mystery and Imagination. •'21) Polish Tales. Trans, by Elsb C. M. Benkcke and MAkiE BuscH. (ajo) Prescott iVV. H.). The Conquest of Mexico. 2 vols. (ly;, 19.S) Reynolds Sir Joshua). The DiscourNcs, and the Letters to 'The Idler*. Introduction by Austin DOHSO.v, (149) Rosselti (Christina). Goblin Market, Prince's Progress, ie. (184) Rossetti {D. G.}. Poems and Translations, 1850-1870. (185) Ruskin, iRuskin House Editions, by arrangement with Messrs. Allen and Unwtn, Ltd.) • A Joy for Evt-r,' and The Two Faths. Illustrated. (1.47) Sesame and Lilies, and Ethics of the Dust. (i4:;l Time and Tide, and Tiie Crown of Wild Olive. (146) I'nto this Last, and Munera Pulveris. (148) Russian Short Stories. Selected and translated by A. E. Cha«oT. (-VS7) Scott. Ivanhoe. (20) Live-? of the Novelists. Intro. .U'SriN DOBSOH. (94) Poems. A Sfl.ctioii. 1186) Selected English Short Stories. (Nineteenth and Twtrntieth Centarirs.) 1 wo Series. (193, 2j8j Selected Speeches and Documents on Eritish Colonial Policy •763-1917;. Ed. A. B. Kknii. -'Mils. (215, 2ifi) Selected Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy 11756-igai). Edited, with hitro-Juction. by Prof. .A. H. Keith. .231. 232J Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 11738-1914". E«lited by EuGAk K. Jo.NT.S. M.P. (2<)l) Shakespeare. Piavs and Poems. Preface by .A. C. Swinbl'KKE. Intro- ductions by Euwakd Dowden. 9 vols. Comedies. 3 %-ols. (100, loi, 102) Histories and Poems. 3 vols. (103, 104, 105) Tragedies 3 vols. (106, 107, 108) Shakespeare's Contemporaries. Six Plavs by Beal'MOWT and iLETt MEK, DeKKEK, W EbSTEK, and Massingkk. Edited by C B. Wheeler. 1199) Shakespearean Criticism. A Selection. Ed. D. N. SiitiH. (an) Shelley. Poems. A Selection. (187) Sheridan. Plays. Intnxluction by Joseph Ksight. (79) Smith (Adam). The Wealth of Natioris, 2 vols. (5;. 59) Smith (Alexander . Dreamthorp. with Selections from Last Leave*. Introduction by Prof. HuGH Walker. (21X)) Smollett. Travels tlir'ou>:h France and Italv. Intro. T. SecCOMBB. (00) Humphry Clinker. With an Introduction by L. KiCK-UxLEV. (29i.>) ♦ ♦♦♦♦«♦ ♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦»»««♦♦♦♦♦♦♦»♦♦♦♦♦♦«♦♦«♦♦»»♦»»♦♦♦«.»♦»»»> »l »«♦♦♦»♦♦♦♦♦»♦♦♦ 8 THE WORLD'S CLASSICS Sophocles. The Seven Plays. Trans. Lewis Campbell. (ii6) Southey. Letters. Selected by M. H. FitzGerald, (i6g) Steme. Tristram Shandy. (40) Stevenson (R.L.). Treasure Island. (295) VirginibusPuerisque, (296) Kidnapped ; and Catriona. (297) Swift. Gulliver's Travels. (20) Taylor (Meadows). Confessions of a Thug. (207) Tennyson. Selected Poems. Introduction by Sir H. War REN. (3) Thackeray. Bookof Snobs, Sketches and Travels in London, S:c. (50) Henry Esmond. (28) Thoreau. Walden. Introduction by Theouo.re W.^tts-Dunton. (68) Twenty-three Tales. Translated by L. and A. Maude. {72) Three Dervishes, The, &:c. Stories from the Persian by R. LEvr. (254) Tolstoy. Translated by Louise and Aylmer MAUue. A Confession, and What I Believe. (229) Anna Karenina. 2 vols. (210,211) The Cossacks, &c. (208) Essays and Letters. (46) The Kreutzer Sonata, &c. (266) Plays, complete. (243) Resurrection. (209) Twenty-three Tales. (72) War and Peace. 3 vols. (233-^) What then must we do ? (28 1) Trelawny (E. J.). Adventures of a Younger Son. With an Intro, by ElHEL COLBURN MAYNE. (289) Trollope. An .\utobiography. Intro, by Mich.\el Sauleir. (239) Barchester Towers. (268) The Belton Estate. (251) TheClaverings. Intro, by G. S. STREET. (2=12) Doctor Thorne. (29S) Miss Mackenzie. (278) Orl^v Farm. (292) Rachel Ray. (279) The Three Clerks. Intro, by W. Teignmouth Shore. (140) The Warden. 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