Stack Annex PR 4779 H9f 1069 Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN ' .fr :'<': ^ <'erton. Now then, homewards. ( 1 83 CHAPTER XI. Mv readers will, perhaps, agree with me in being sorry to find that 'we are coming to the end of our present series. I say, " my readers," though I have so little part in purveying for them, that I mostly consider myself one of them. It is no light task, however, to give a good account of a conversa- tion ; and I say this, and would wish people to try whether I am not right in saying so, not to call attention to my labour in the matter, but because it may be well to notice how difficult it is to report anything truly. Were this better known, it might be an aid to charity, and prevent some of those feuds which grow out of the poverty of man's power to express, to apprehend, to represent, rather than out of any malignant part of his nature. But I must not go on moralizing. I almost feel that Ellesmere is looking over my shoulder, and breaking into my discourse with sharp words, which I have lately been so much accustomed to. I had expected that we should have many more 1 84 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. readings this summer, as I knew that Milverton had prepared more essays for us. But finding, as he said, that the other subjects he had in hand were larger than he had anticipated, or was prepared for, he would not read even to us what he had written. Though I was very sorry for this, for I may not be the chronicler in another year, I could not but say he was right. Indeed, my ideas of literature, nourished as they have been in much solitude, and by the reading, if I may say so, mainly of our classical authors, are very high placed, though I hope not fantastical. And, therefore, I would not discourage any one in expending whatever thought and labour might be in him upon any literary work. In fine, then, I did not attempt to dissuade Milverton from his purpose of postponing our readings ; and we agreed that there should only be one more for the present. I wished it to be at our favourite place on the lawn, which had become endeared to me as the spot of many of our friendly councils. It was later than usual when I came over to Worth- Ashton for this reading ; and as I gained the brow of the hill, some few clouds tinged with red were just grouping together to form the accustomed pomp upon the exit of the setting sun. I believe I mentioned in HISTORY. 185 the introduction to our first conversation, that the ruins of an old castle could be seen from our place of meeting. Milverton and Ellesmere were talking about it as I joined them. Milverton. Yes, Ellesmere, many a man has looked out of those windows upon a sunset like this, with some of the thoughts that must come into the minds of all men, on seeing this great emblem, the setting sun has felt, in looking at it, his coming end, or the closing of his great- ness. Those old walls must have been witness to every kind of human emotion. Henry the Second was there ; John, I think ; Margaret of Anjou and Cardinal Beau- fort ; William of Wykeham ; Henry the Eighth's Crom- well ; and many others who have made some stir in the world. Ellesmere. And, perhaps, the greatest there were those who made no stir. " The world knows nothing of its greatest men." Milverton. I am slow to believe that. I cannot well reconcile myself to the idea, that great capacities are given for nothing. They bud out in some way or other. Ellesmere. Yes, but it may not be in a noisy way. Milverton. There is one thing that always strikes me very much in looking at the lives of men : how soon, as it were, their course seems to be determined. They say, or do, or think, something which gives a bias at once to the whole of their career. 1 86 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. Dunsford. You may go farther back than that ; and speak of the impulses they get from their ancestors. Ellesmere. Or the nets around them of other people's ways and wishes. There are many things, you see, that go to make men puppets. Milverton. I was only noticing the circumstance, that there was such a thing, as it appeared to me, as this early direction. But, if it has been ever so unfortunate, a man's folding his hands over it, in melancholy mood, and suffer- ing himself to be made a puppet by it, is a sadly weak proceeding. Most thoughtful men have probably some dark fountains in their souls, by the side of which, if there were time, and it were decorous, they could let their thoughts sit down and wail indefinitely. That long Byron wail fascinated men for a time ; because there is that in human nature. Luckily, a great deal besides. Ellesmere. I delight in the helpful and hopeful men. Milverton. A man that I admire very much, and have met with occasionally, is one who is always of use in any matter he is mixed up with, simply because he wishes that the best should be got out of the thing that is pos- sible. There does not seem much in the description of such a character ; but only see it in contrast with that of a brilliant man, for instance, who does not ever fully care about the matter in hand. Dunsford. I can thoroughly imagine the difference. Milverton. The human race may be bound up together in some mysterious way, each of us having a profound interest in the fortunes of the whole, and so, to some extent, of every portion of it. Such a man as I have described acts as though he had an intuitive perception of HISTORY. 187 that relation, and therefore, a sort of family feeling for mankind, which gives him satisfaction in making the best out of any human affair he has to do with. But we really must have the essay, and not talk any more. It is on History. HISTORY. AMONG the fathomless things that are about us and within us, is the continuity of time. This gives to life one of its most solemn aspects. We may think to' ourselves : Would there could be some halting-place in life, where we could stay, collecting our minds, and see the world drift by us. But no : even while you read this, you are not pausing to read it. As one of the great French preachers, I think, says, We are embarked upon a stream, each in his own little boat, which must move uniformly onwards, till it ceases to move at all. It is a stream that knows " no haste, no rest ; " a boat that knows no haven but one. This unbated continuity suggests the past as well as the future. We would know what mighty empires this stream of time has flowed through, by what battle-fields it has been tinged, how it has been employed towards fertility, and what beautiful shadows n 1 88 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. on its surface have been seized by art, or science, or great words, and held in time-lasting, if not in ever- lasting, beauty. This is what history tells us. Often in a faltering, confused, bedarkened way, like the deeds it chronicles. But it is what we have, and we must make the best of it. The subject of this essay may be thus divided. Why history should be read how it should be read by whom it should be written how it should be written and how good writers of history should be called forth, aided, and rewarded. I. WHY HISTORY SHOULD BE READ. It takes us out of too much care for the present ; it extends our sympathies ; it shows us that other men .have had their sufferings and their grievances; it enriches discourse, it enlightens travel. So does fiction. But the effect of history is more lasting and suggestive. If we see a place which fiction has treated of, we feel that it has some interest for us ; but show us a spot where remarkable deeds have been done, or remarkable people have lived, and our thoughts cling to it. We employ our own imagina- tion about it : we invent the fiction for ourselves. HISTORY. 189 Again, history is at least the conventional account of things : that which men agree to receive as the right account, and which they discuss as true. To understand their talk, we must know what they are talking about. Again, there is something in history which can seldom be got from the study of the lives of individual men ; namely, the movements of men collectively, and for long periods of man, in fact, not of men. In history, the composition of the forces that move the world, has to be analysed. We must have before us the law of the progress of opinion, the interruptions to it of individual character, the prin- ciples on which men act in the main, the trade winds, as we may say, in human affairs, and the recurrent storms which one man's life does not tell us of. Again, by the study of history, we have a chance of becoming tolerant, travelling over the ways of many nations and many periods ; and we may also acquire that historic tact by which we collect upon one point of human affairs the light of many ages. We may judge of the benefit of historical studies by observing what great defects are incident to the moral and political writers who know nothing of history. A present grievance, or what seems such, swallows up in their minds all other considerations ; their little bottle of oil is to still the raging waves of the whole 190 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. human ocean ; their system, a thing that the historian has seen before, perhaps, in many ages, is to reconcile all diversities. Then they would persuade you that this class of men is wholly good, that wholly bad ; or that there is no difference between good and bad. They may be shrewd men, considering what they have seen, but would be much shrewder if they could know how small a part that is of life. We may all refer to our boyhood, and recollect the time when we thought the things about us were the type of all things everywhere. That was, perhaps, after all no silly princess who was for feeding the famishing people on cakes. History takes us out of this confined circle of child-like thought ; and shows us what are the perennial aims, struggles, and distractions of mankind. History has always been set down as the especial study for statesmen, and for men who take interest in public affairs. For history is to nations what biography is to individual men. History is the chart and compass for national endeavour. Our early voyagers are dead : not a plank remains of the old ships that first essayed unknown waters : the sea retains no track ; and were it not for the history of these voyages contained in charts, in chronicles, in hoarded lore of all kinds, each voyager, though he were to start with all the aids of advanced civiliza- HISTORY. 191 tion (if you could imagine such a thing without history), would need the boldness of the first voyager. And so it would be with the statesman, were the civil history of mankind unknown. We live to some extent in peace and comfort upon the results obtained for us by the chronicles of our forefathers. We do not see this without some reflection. But imagine what a full-grown nation would be, if it knew no history like a full-grown man with only a child's experience. The present is an age of remarkable experiences. Vast improvements have been made in several of the outward things that concern life nearly, from inter- course rapid as lightning to surgical operation without pain. We accept them all ; still the difficulties of government, the management of ourselves, our relations with others, and many of the prime difficulties of life remain but little subdued. History still claims our interest, is still wanted to make us think and act with any breadth of wisdom. At the same time, however, that we claim for history great powers of instruction, we must not imagine that the examples which it furnishes will enable its readers to anticipate the experience of life. An inexperienced man reads that Caesar did igz FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. this or that, but he says to himself, " I am not Caesar." Or, indeed, as is most probable, the reader has not to reject the application of the example to himself: for from first to last, he sees nothing but experience for Caesar in what Caesar was doing. I think it may be observed, too, that general maxims about life gain the ear of the inexperienced, in preference to historical examples. But neither wise sayings, nor historical examples, can be understood without experience. Words are only symbols. Who can know anything soundly with respect to the complicated affections and struggles of life, unless he has experienced some of them ? All knowledge of humanity spreads from within. So, in studying history, the lessons it teaches must have something to grow round in the heart they teach. Our own trials, misfortunes, and enterprises are the best lights by which we can read history. Hence it is, that many an historian may see far less into the depths of the very history he has himself written than a man, who, having acted and suffered, reads the history in question with all the wisdom that comes from action and suffering. Sir Robert Walpole might naturally exclaim, " Do not read history to me, for that, I know, must be false." But if he had read it, I do not doubt that he would have seen through the HISTORY. 193 film of false and insufficient narrative into the depth of the matter narrated, in a way that men of great experience can alone attain to. 2, HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE READ. I suppose that many who now connect the very word history with the idea of dulness, would have been fond and diligent students of history, if it had had fair access to their minds. But they were set down to read histories which were not fitted to be read continuously, or by any but practised students. Some such works are mere frame-work, a name which the author of the Statesman applies to them, very good things, perhaps, for their purpose, but that is not, to invite readers to history. You might almost as well read dictionaries with a hope of getting a succinct and clear view of language. When, in any narration, there is a constant heaping up of facts, made about equally significant by the way of telling them, a hasty delinea- tion of characters, and all the incidents moving on as in the fifth act of a confused tragedy, the mind and memory refuse to be so treated ; and the reading ends in nothing but a very slight and inaccurate acquaint- ance with the mere husk of the history. You cannot epitomize the knowledge that it would take years VOL. i. 13 194 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. to acquire, into a few volumes that may be read in as many weeks. The most likely way of attracting men's attention to historical subjects will be by presenting them with small portions of history, of great interest, thoroughly examined. This may give them the habit of applying thought and criticism to historical matters. For, as it is, how are people interested in history ? and how do they master its multitudinous assemblage of facts ? Mostly, perhaps, in this way. A man cares about some one thing, or person, or event; and plunges into its history, really wishing to master it. This pursuit extends : other points of research are taken up by him at other times. His researches begin to intersect. He finds a connexion in things. The texture of his historic acquisitions gradually attains some substance and colour; and so at last he begins to have some dim notions of the myriads of men who came, and saw, and did not conquer only struggled on as they best might, some of them and are not. When we are considering how history should be read, the main thing perhaps is, that the person reading should desire to know what he is reading about, not merely to have read the books that tell of it. The most elaborate and careful historian must HISTORY. 195 omit, or pass slightly over, many parts of his subject. He writes for all readers, and cannot indulge private fancies. But history has its particular aspect for each man : there must be portions which he may be expected to dwell upon. And everywhere, even where the history is most laboured, the reader should have something of the spirit of research which was needful for the writer : if only so much as to ponder well the words of the writer. That man reads history, or anything else, at great peril of being thoroughly misled, who has no perception of any truthfulness except that which can be fully ascertained by reference to facts ; who does not in the least perceive the truth, or the reverse, of a writer's style, of his epithets, of his reasoning, of his mode of narration. In life, our faith in any narration is much influenced by the personal appearance, voice, and gesture of the person narrating. There is some part of all these things in his writing ; and you must look into that well before you can know what faith to give him. One man may make mistakes in names, and dates, and references, and yet have a real substance of truthfulness in him, a wish to enlighten himself and then you. Another may not be wrong in his facts but have a declama- tory, or sophistical, vein in him, much to be guarded against A third may be both inaccurate and untruth- 196 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. ful, caring not so much for anything as to write his book. And if the reader cares only to read it, sad work they make between them of the memories of former days. In studying history, it must be borne in mind, that a knowledge is necessary of the state of manners, customs, wealth, arts and science, at the different periods treated of. The text of civil history requires a context of this knowledge in the mind of the reader. For the same reason, some of the main facts of the geography of the countries in question should be present to him. If we are ignorant of these aids to history, all history is apt to seem alike to us. It becomes merely a narrative of men of our own time, in our own country. And then we are prone to expect the same views and conduct from them that we do from our contemporaries. It is true that the heroes of antiquity have been represented on the stage in bag-wigs, and the rest of the costume of our grandfathers ; but it was the great events of their lives that were thus told the crises of their passions and when we are contemplating the representation of great passions and their consequences, all minor imagery is of little moment. In a long-drawn narrative, however, the more we have in our minds of what concerned the daily life of the people we read about, HISTORY. 197 the better. And, in general, it may be said that history, like travelling, gives a return in proportion to the knowledge that a man brings to it. 3. BY WHOM HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN. Before entering directly on this part of the subject, it is desirable to consider a little the difficulties in the way of writing history. We all know the difficulty of getting at the truth of a matter which happened yester- day, and about which we can examine the living actors upon oath. But in history the most significant things may lack the most important part of their evidence. The people who were making history were not thinking of the convenience of future writers of history. Often the historian must contrive to get his insight into matters from evidence of men and things which is like bad pictures of them. The contemporary, if he knew the man, said of the picture, " I should have known it, but it has very little of him in it." The poor historian, with no original before him, has to see through the bad picture into the man. Then, supposing our historian rich in well-selected evidence, I say, well- selected, because, as students tell us, for many an historian, one authority is of the same weight as another, provided they are both of the same age ; still 198 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. how difficult is narration even to the man who is rich in well-selected evidence. What a tendency there is to round off a narrative into falsehood ; or else by parentheses to destroy its pith and continuity. Again, the historian knows the end of many of the transactions he narrates. If he did not, how differently often he would narrate them. It would be a most instructive thing to give a man the materials for the account of a great transaction, stopping short of the end, and then see how different would be his account from the ordinary ones. Fools have been hardly dealt with, in the saying that the event is their master ("eventus stultorum magister "), seeing how it rules us all. And in nothing more than in history. The event is always present to our minds ; along the pathways to it, the historian and the moralist have walked till they are beaten pathways, and we imagine that they were so to the men who first went along them. Indeed we almost fancy that these ancestors of ours, looking along the beaten path, foresaw the event as we do ; whereas they mostly stumbled upon it suddenly in the forest. This knowledge of the end we must, therefore, put down as one of the most dangerous pitfalls which beset the writers of history. Then consider the difficulty in the " composition," to use an artist's word, of our historian's picture. Before both the artist and the historian lies HISTORY. 199 nature as far as the horizon ; how shall they choose that portion of it which has some unity and which shall represent the rest? What method is needful in the grouping of facts ; what learning, what patience, what accuracy ! By whom then should history be written ? In the first place, by men of some experience in real life : who have acted and suffered; who have been in crowds, and seen, perhaps felt, how madly men can care about nothings ; who have observed how much is done in the world in an uncertain manner, upon sudden impulses and very little reason ; and who, therefore, do not think themselves bound to have a deep-laid theory for all things. They should be men who have studied the laws of the affections, who know how much men's opinions depend on the time in which they live, how they vary with their age, and their position. To make themselves historians, they should also have considered the combinations amongst men and the laws that govern such things ; for there are laws. Moreover, our historians, like most men who do great things, must combine in themselves qualities which are held to belong to opposite natures ; must at the same time be patient in research and vigorous in imagination, energetic and calm, cautious and enterprising. Such historians, wise, as we may 200 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. suppose they will be, about the affairs of other men, may, let us hope, be sufficiently wise about their own affairs, to understand that no great work can be done without great labour, that no great labour ought to look for its reward. But my reader will exclaim, as Rasselas to Imlac, on hearing the requisites for a poet, " Enough ! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be an historian. Proceed with thy narration." 4. HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN. One of the first things in writing history is for the historian to recollect that it is history he is writing. The narrative must not be oppressed by reflections, even by wise ones. Least of all should the historian suffer himself to become entangled by a theory or a system. If he does, each fact is taken up by him in a particular way : those facts that cannot be so handled cease to be his facts, and those that offer themselves conveniently are received too fondly by him. Then, although our historian must not be mastered by system, he must have some way of taking up his facts, and of classifying them. They must not be mere isolated units in his eyes ; else he is mobbed by them. And a man in the midst of a crowd, though he may HISTORY. 201 know the names and nature of all the crowd, cannot give an account of their doings. Those who look down from the housetop, must do that. But, above all things, the historian must get out of his own age into the time in which he is writing. Imagination is as much needed for the historian as the poet. You may combine bits of books with other bits of books, and so make some new combinations, and this may be done accurately, and, in general, much of the subordinate preparation for history may be accomplished without any great effort of imagina- tion. But to write history, in any large sense of the words, you must be able to comprehend other times. You must know that there is a right and wrong which is not your right and wrong, but yet stands upon the right and wrong of all ages and all hearts. You must also appreciate the outward life and colours of the period you write about. Try to think how the men you are telling of would have spent a day, what were their leading ideas : what they cared about. Grasp the body of the time, and give it to us. If not, and these men could look at your history, they would say, "This is all very well; we dare say some of these things did happen ; but we were not thinking of these things all day long. It does not represent us." After enlarging upon this great requisite, imagination, 202 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. it seems somewhat prosaic to come down to saying that history requires accuracy. But I think I hear the sighs, and sounds more harsh than sighing, of those who have ever investigated anything, and found by dire experience the deplorable inaccuracy which prevails in the world. And, therefore, I would say to the historian almost as the first suggestion, " Be accurate; do not make false references, do not mis- state : and men, if they get no light from you, will not execrate you. You will not stand in the way, and have to be explained and got rid of." Another most important matter in writing history, and that-indeed in which the art lies, is the method of narrating. This is a thing almost beyond rules, like the actual execution in music or painting. A man might have fairness, accuracy, an insight into other times, great knowledge of facts, some power even of arranging them, and yet make a narrative out of it all, so protracted here, so huddled together there, the purpose so buried or confused, that men would agree to acknowledge the merit of the book and leave it unread. There must be a natural line of associations for the narrative to run along. The separate threads of the narrative must be treated separately, and yet the subject not be dealt with sectionally, for that is not the way in which the things occurred. The historian HISTORY. 203 must, therefore, beware that those divisions of the subject which he makes for our ease and convenience, do not induce him to treat his subject in a flimsy manner. He must not make his story easy where it is not so. After all, it is not by rule that a great history is to be written. Most thinkers agree that the main object for the historian, is to get an insight into the things which he tells of, and then to tell them with the modesty of a man who is in the presence of great events ; and must speak about them carefully, simply, and with but little of himself or his affections thrown into the narration. 5. HOW GOOD WRITERS OF HISTORY SHOULD BE CALLED FORTH, AIDED, AND REWARDED. Mainly by history being properly read. The direct ways of commanding excellence of any kind are very few, if any. When a state has found out its notable men, it should reward them, and will show its worthiness by its measure and mode of reward. But it cannot purchase them. It may do something in the way of aiding them. In history, for instance, the records of a nation may be discreetly managed, and some of the minor work, therefore, done to the hand 204 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. of the historian. But the most likely method to ensure good historians, is to have a fit audience for them. And this is a very difficult matter. In works of general literature, the circle of persons capable of judging is large ; even in works of science or philosophy, it is considerable : but in history, it is a very confined circle. To the general body of readers, whether the history they read is true or not, is in no way perceptible. It is quite as amusing to them when it is told in one way, as in another. There is always mischief in error ; but in this case the mischief is remote, or seems so. For men of ordinary culture, even if of much intelli- gence, the difficulty of discerning what is true or false in the histories they read, makes it a matter of the highest duty for those few persons who can give us criticism on historical works, at least to save us from insolent and mendacious carelessness in historical writers, if not by just encouragement to secure for nations some results not altogether unworthy of the great enterprise which the writing of history holds out itself to be. "Hujus enim fidei exempla majorum, vicissitudines rerum, fundamenta prudentiae civilis, hominum denique nomen et fama commissa sunt."* * BACON de Augmentis Scientiarum. HISTORY. 205 Ellesmere. Just wait a minute for me, and do not talk about the essay till I come back. I am going for Anster's Faust. Dunsford. What has Ellesmere got in his head ? Milverton. I see. There is a passage where Faust, in his most discontented mood, falls foul of history in his talk to Wagner, if I am not mistaken. Dunsford. How beautiful it is this evening ! Look at that yellow green near the sunset. Milverton. The very words that Coleridge uses. 1 always think of them when I see that tint. Dunsford. I dare say his words were in my mind, but I have forgotten what you allude to. Milverton. ' ' O Lady ! in this wan and heartless mood, To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing on the western sky, And its peculiar tint of yellow green : And still I gaze and with how blank an eye ! And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars ; Those stars that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen : Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue ; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel how beautiful they are." Dunsford. Admirable ! In the Ode to Dejection, is it not ? where, too, there are those lines, " O Lady ! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does nature live." Milverton. But here comes Ellesmere with trium- 206 . FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. phant look. You look as jovial, my dear Ellesmere, as if you were a Bentley that had found out a false quantity in a Boyle. Ellesmere. Listen and perpend, my historical friends. " To us, my friend, the times that are gone by Are a mysterious book, sealed with seven seals : That which you call the spirit of ages past Is but, in truth, the spirit of some few authors In which those ages are beheld reflected, With what distortion strange heaven only knows. Oh ! often, what a toilsome thing it is This study of thine, at the first glance we fly it. A mass of things confusedly heaped together ; A lumber-room of dusty documents, Furnished with all approved court-precedents, And old traditional maxims ! History ! Facts dramatised say rather action plot Sentiment, everything the writer's own, As it best fits the web-work of his story, With here and there a solitary fact Of consequence, by those grave chroniclers, Pointed with many a moral apophthegm, And wise old saws, learned at the puppet-shows." Milverton. Yes : admirable lines : they describe to the life the very faults we have been considering as the faults of badly written histories. I do not see that they do much more. Ellesmere. " To us, my friend, the times that are gone by Are a mysterious book " Milverton. Those two first lines are the full expres- sion of Faust's discontent unmeasured as in the pre- sence of a weak man who could not check him. But, if HISTOR V. 207 you come to look at the matter closely, you will see that the time present is also in some sense a sealed book to us. Men that we live with daily we often think as little of as we do of Julius Caesar I was going to say but we know much less of them than of him. Ellesmere. I did not mean to say that Faust spoke my sentiments about history in general. Still there are periods of history which we have very few authors to tell us about, and I dare say* in some of those cases the colouring of their particular minds gives us a false idea of the whole age they lived in. Dunsford. This may have happened, certainly. Mil-verton. We must be careful not to expect too much from the history of past ages, as a means of under- standing the present age. There is something wanted besides the preceding history, to understand each age. Each individual life may have a problem of its own, which all other biography, accurately set down for us, might not enable us to work out. So of each age. It has a something in it not known before, and tends to a result which is not down in any books. Dunsford. Yet history must be of greatest use in discerning this tendency. Ellesmere. Yes ; but the Wagner sort of pedant would get entangled in his round of history in his historical resemblances. Ditnsford. Now, Mil vert on, if you were called upon to say what are the peculiar characteristics of this age, what should you say ? Ellesmere. One of Dunsford's questions this, requiring a stout quarto volume with notes, in answer. 208 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. Milverton. I would rather wait till I was called upon. I am apt to feel, after I have left off describing the character of any individual man, as if I had only just begun. And I do not see the extent of discourse that would be needful in attempting to give the characteristics of an age. Ellesmere. I think you are prudent to avoid answering Dunsford's question. For my own part, I should prefer giving an account of the age we live in, after we have come to the end of it in the true historical fashion. And so, Dunsford, you must wait for my notions. Dunsford. I am afraid, Milverton, if you were to write history, you would never make up your mind to condemn anybody. Milverton. I hope I should not be so inconclusive. I certainly do dislike to see any character, whether of a living or a dead person, disposed of in a summary way. Ellesmere. For once I will come to the rescue of Milverton. I really do not see that a man's belief in the extent and variety of human character, and in the diffi- culty of appreciating the circumstances of life, should prevent him from writing history from coming to some conclusions. Of course such a man is not likely to write a long course of history ; but that I hold has been a frequent error in historians that they have taken up subjects too large for them. Milverlon. If there is as much to be said about men's character and conduct as I think there mostly is, why should we be content with shallow views of them ? Take the outward form of these hills and valleys before us. When we have seen them a few times, we think we know HISTORY. 209 them, but are quite mistaken. Approaching from an- other quarter, it is almost new ground to us. It is a long time before you master the outward form and semblance of any small piece of country that has much life and diversity in it. I often think of this, applying it to our little knowledge of men. Now look there a moment : you see that house : close behind it is appa- rently a barren tract. In reality there is nothing of the kind there. A fertile valley with a great river in it, as you know, is between that house and the moors. But the plane of those moors and of the house is coincident from our present point of view. Had we not, as educated men, some distrust of the conclusions of our senses, we should be ready to swear that there was a lonely house on the border of the moors. It is the same in judging of men. We see a man connected with a train of action which is really not near him, absolutely foreign to him perhaps, but in our eyes that is what he is always con- nected with. If there were not a being who understands us immeasurably better than other men can, immeasurably better than we do ourselves, we should be badly off. Such precautionary thoughts as these must be useful, I contend. They need not make us indifferent to cha- racter, or prevent us from forming judgments where we must form them, but they show us what a wide thing we are talking about, when we are judging the life and nature of a man. Ellesmere. I am sure, Dunsford, you are already convinced : you seldom want more than a slight pretext for going over to the charitable side of things. You are only afraid of not dealing stoutly enough with bad things VOL. I. 14 210 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. and people. Do not be afraid though. As long as you have me to abuse, you will say many unjust things against me, you know, so that you may waste yourself in good thoughts about the rest of the world, past and present. Do you know the lawyer's story I had in my mind, then ? " Many times when I have had a good case," he said, " I have failed ; but then I have often succeeded with bad cases. And so justice is done." Milverton. To return to the subject. It is not a sort of equalizing want of thought about men that I desire ; only not to be rash in a matter that requires all our care and prudence. Dunsford. Well, I believe I am won over. But now to another point. I think, Milverton, that you have said hardly anything about the use of history as an incentive to good deeds, and a discouragement to evil ones. Milverton. I ought to have done so. Bolingbroke gives in his Letters on History, talking of this point, a passage from Tacitus, " Praecipuum munus annalium " can you go on with it, Dunsford ? Dunsford. Yes, I think I can. It is a passage I have often seen quoted. " Praecipuum munus annalium, reor, ne virtutes sileantur ; utque pravis dictis factisque ex posteritate et infamia metus sit." Ellesmere. Well done ; Dunsford may have invented it though, for aught that we know, Milverton ; and be passing himself off upon us for Tacitus. Milverton. Then Bolingbroke goes on to say, (I wish I could give you his own flowing words) that the great duty of history is to form a tribunal like that amongst HISTORY. 211 the Egyptians which Diodorus tells of, where both common men and princes were tried after their deaths, and received appropriate honour or disgrace. The sen- tence was pronounced, he says, too late to correct or to recompense ; but it was pronounced in time to render examples of general instruction to mankind. Now, what I was going to remark upon this, is, that Bolingbroke understates his case. History well written is a present correction, and a foretaste of recompence, to the man who is now struggling with difficulties and temptations, now overcast by calumny and cloudy misrepresentations. Ellesmere. Yes ; many a man makes an appeal to posterity, which will never come before the court ; but if there were no such court of appeal Milverton. A man's conviction that justice will be done to him in history is a secondary motive, and not one which, of itself, will compel him to do just and great things ; but, at any rate, it forms one of the benefits that flow from history, and it becomes stronger as histories are better written. Much may be said against care for fame : much also against care for present repute. There is a diviner impulse than either at the doing of any actions that are much worth doing. As a correction, however, this anticipation of the judgment of history may really be very powerful. It is a great enlightenment of con- science, to read the opinions of men on deeds similar to those we are engaged in or meditating. Dunsford. I think Bolingbroke's idea, which I imagine was more general than yours, is more important : namely that this judicial proceeding, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, gave significant lessons to all people, not merely 212 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. to those who had any chance of having their names in history. Milverton. Certainly : for this is one of Bolingbroke's chief points, if I recollect rightly. Ellcsmere. Our conversations are much better things than your essays, Milverton. Milverton. Of course, I am bound to say so : but what made you think of that now ? Ellesmere. Why I was thinking how in talk we can know exactly where we agree or differ. But I never like to interrupt the essay. I never know when it would come to an end if I did. And so it swims on like a sermon, having all its own way : one cannot put in an awkward question in a weak part, and get things looked at in various ways. Dunsford. I suppose, then, Ellesmere, you would like to interrupt sermons. Ellesmere. Why, yes, sometimes do not throw sticks at me, Dunsford. Dunsford. Well, it is absurd to be angry with you ; because if you long to interrupt Milverton with his cautious perhapses and probablys, of course you will be impatient with discourses which do, to a certain extent, assume that the preacher and the hearers are in unison upon great matters. Ellesmere. I am afraid to say anything about sermons, for fear of the argumentum baculinum from Dunsford ; but many essay writers, like Milverton, delight to wind up their paragraphs with complete little aphorisms shutting up something certainly, but shutting out some- thing too. I could generally pause upon them a little. HISTORY. 213 Milverton. Of course one may err, Ellesmere, in too much aphorising as in too much of anything. But your argument goes against all expression of opinion, which must be incomplete, especially when dealing with matters that cannot be circumscribed by exact definitions. Other- wise, a code of wisdom might be made which the fool might apply as well as the wisest man. Even the best proverb, though often the expression of the widest experi- ence in the choicest language, can be thoroughly misap- plied. It cannot embrace the whole of the subject, and apply in all cases like a mathematical formula. Its wisdom lies in the ear of the hearer. Ellesmere. Well, I do not know that there is anything more to say about the essay. I suppose you are aware, Dunsford, that Milverton does not intend to give us any more essays for some time. He is distressing his mind about some facts which he wants to ascertain before he will read any more to us. I imagine we are to have some- thing historical next. Milverton. Something in which historical records are useful. Ellesmere. Really it is wonderful to see how beauti- fully human nature accommodates itself to anything, even to the listening to essays. I shall miss them. Milverton. You may miss the talk before and after. Ellesmere. Well, there is no knowing how much of that is provoked (provoked is a good word, is it not ?) by the essays. Dunsford. Then, for the present, we have come to an end of our readings. Milverton. Yes ; but I trust at no distant time to have 214 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. something more to try your critical powers and patience upon. I hope that that old tower will yet see us meet together here on many a sunny day, discussing various things in friendly council. FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. BOOK II. " IT is good, in Discourse, and Speech of Conversation, to vary, and intermingle Speech of the present Occasion with Arguments ; Tales with Reasons ; Asking of Questions with Telling of Opinions ; and Jest with Earnest : For it is a dull Thing to Tire, and as we say now, to Jade, anything too far. " BACON : Essay of Discourse. CHAPTER I. I AM again enabled to give some account of the read- ings and conversations at Worth-Ashton during another summer. I need not say much in the way of introduction, having before described our friendly council and the place of our meeting. There was but little alteration in the latter, except that Milverton had put up a sun- dial in the centre of the lawn, with the motto, " Horas non numero nisi serenas" which, I remember, gave occasion to Ellesmere to say, that for men the dial was either totally useless or utterly false. The only change about us was that the animal part of our audience had greatly increased ; for Milverton took much pleasure in observing the ways of animals, and Ellesmere, like some other great lawyers of past and present days, was very fond of live creatures of all kinds, men, women, and children excepted, as I used to tell him. The most extraordinary packages 218 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. marked "with great care" and given into the especial custody of railway guards, used to come down from time to time, containing purchases made by Ellesmere at Hungerford Market in his walks home from Westminster to his chambers. There was a New- foundland puppy of remarkable sagacity, which already had' the upper hand of Rollo ; then there were pigeons, guinea-pigs, a jackdaw, and a gorgeous peacock that took his station on the low wall bounding the lawn, and displayed his imperial self to the admiration of all beholders. There were curious fowls of various kinds, and last, though not the least favoured, a hedgehog which Ellesmere had sent (as if we could not find plenty of them in the country) and which he called "his learned friend," and the rest of the family called Snoozelem. Milverton received all these presents with wonderful equanimity ; and Elles- mere thus emboldened, was now threatening to send down a raven whenever he could meet with one of sufficient intelligence to be worthy of the party. The human part of our friendly council seemed to me more worn and altered than one expects to find people in the course of a year. At least I thought so of the young men (young men I am always calling them, though I suppose nobody else would) ; and I found afterwards that they thought the same of me. INTRODUCTION. 219 The winter of 1846 and the spring of 1847 will long be remembered. The famine in Ireland and the distress here, had pressed on the minds of all men who had to deal with it or to think about it, either publicly or privately. In our own district, we had suffered much privation in a quiet way, and the whole minds of those who could do so, had been given to meet it. It was the same, I suppose, with most people who had either property, or office of any kind, lay or clerical, bringing upon them the additional responsibility which such times induce. The general distress and difficulty had, I suspect, weighed much even upon Ellesmere, though, if you had asked him the question, he would have declared that he neither respected, liked, nor cared for, the public ; and that he left all such notions to demagogues and philanthro- pists, vowing that he belonged as little to the one of these classes as to the other. Our first meeting was on a fine afternoon (a Saturday) exactly at the old place on the lawn where we had broken up our last friendly council of the preceding year. It was the first day this summer that Ellesmere had been able to come, and Milverton had taken care to give me due notice of our friend's coming. I found them already seated. Ellesmere really looked pleased to see me. 220 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. Ellesmere. Well, my dear Dunsford, I hope you are glad to see me again, and that you will give me better welcome than you have counselled Milverton, I hear, to give to some of the creatures with which I have enriched his lawn and farmyard, and enlivened your country dul- ness. Love me, not only love my dog, but my pig, my guinea-pig that is to say, my pigeons, and my hedgehog. A London pigeon is very good society for you country people : it could tell you a great deal, perhaps, about the prices of stock it had carried at various times, or the way of living at St. Giles's. I have a great mind to choose some nice animals for your place a couple of young wolves now would do charmingly for the vicarage. Dunsford. No, come yourself, and bring the whole of your bar with you instead : I had rather take the chance of that than of the animals you would be kind enough to provide for me. Ellesmere. Well, well, I will be merciful if you promise not to prejudice Milverton against my pets. But we must not talk any more just now. Let us have our reading.- I must be off at six o'clock on Monday, so we must have the reading this afternoon. Now, Milverton, what is it to be? Something, I suppose, as novel and refreshing as your first essay of last summer. There is no end to your audacity in the choice of hackneyed subjects. I think you take a pride in it. Milverton. No, indeed ; but they do not appear hackneyed to me. However, I am not going to inflict any hackneyed subject upon you now. It is to be an essay on Reading. I will begin at once. READING. 221 Hereupon Milverton read to us the following essay. READING. AS the world grows older and as civilization advances, there is likely to be more and more time given to reading. In several . parts of the earth where mankind are most active, and where the propor- tion of those who need to labour by their hands is less than in other countries, and likely to go on becoming less, the climate is such as to confine, if it does not repress, out-of-door amusements : and, in all climates, for the lovers of ease, the delicate in health, the reserved, the fastidious, and the musing, books are amongst the chief sources of delight, and such as will more probably intrench upon other joys and occupa- tions than give way to them. Notwithstanding this, the ethics of study, if I may use such a phrase, have been little considered ; and those pursuits over which we might have more efficient control than most others, are left to chance as regards their origin, their conduct, and their end. It appears to me remarkable that this subject should have been so little touched upon. Other subjects which are akin to it, but yet very different, 222 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. have been largely investigated. But you will not find in treatises upon education, upon professions, or upon general knowledge of life, any connected considera- tions with regard to the ethics and methods of private study. Bacon's Advancement of Learning is treated as a book belonging to the learned ; and, besides, it deals with universals rather than with particulars ; indicates the sluggishness, the hindrances, and the course of the main rivers of knowledge ; not busying itself with the local fortunes of small streams, retired rivulets and quiet pools, without which, however, these main rivers would float down no argosies towards the sea of time. Gibbon says, " After a certain age, the new publications of merit are the sole food of the many." A sarcastic person would perhaps remark, that the words " of merit " might be omitted without injury to the truth of the sentence. But that would be too severe ; for the publications of merit do mostly obtain some hearing in their own day, though a very disproportionate one to what they should have ; as it is exceedingly difficult, even for highly-cultivated persons, to make good selection of the nascent fruits and flowers of literature amidst the rank herbage of the day. Before entering upon the mode of managing study, READING. 223 or perhaps I ought to use the word reading, instead of study (for it would be quite wrong to suppose that the following remarks apply to professed students only), it would be well to see what does really happen in life as regards the intellectual cultivation of most grown- up people. I ask them, Is it not mainly dependent upon chance? The professional man, wearied with the cares and labours of his office or employment, when he comes home, takes up whatever book may happen to be the reading of his wife, or mother, or daughters : and they, for women are often educated in a way to avoid method and intellectual strength of any kind, are probably contented with what the circulating library affords, and read according to the merest rumour and fashion of the present hour. Again, what is called light literature (how it has obtained or maintained that name is surprising), criticisms, scraps, tales, and the like, is nearly the sole intellectual food of many intelligent persons. Now, without undervaluing this kind of literature, which improved as it would be if addressed to a class of persons who were wont to read with wisdom and method, would be very serviceable to those persons ; we cannot say but that to make such literature the staple of the mind is unworthy, and frivolous in the extreme. 224 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. I believe, however, that many persons are aware how indifferently they are spending their time in the way they read at present ; and I shall not labour any more at this part of the subject, but come at once to what appears to me the remedy for the evil : which is, that every man and every woman who can read at all, should adopt some definite purpose in their reading should take something for the main stem and trunk of their culture, whence branches might grow out in all directions seeking light and air for the parent tree, which, it is hoped, might end in becoming something useful and ornamental, and which, at any rate, all along will have had life and growth in it. I do not think that this is too great a task for the humblest reader. At the same time I am not pre- pared to show how this purpose may be secured in all cases, which must be left to disposition, to what we call chance, to peculiar facilities of any kind afforded to the reader in any one direction. It is so in the choice of a career in life, which is not always determined by a rigid and wise choice, made at once and fully persevered in ; but, on the contrary, there may be many false starts and, occasionally, abrupt changes ; still there is such a thing for each man as a career which might be pursued with some method by him, and which would lead to what is READING. 22$ called worldly success. So, in reading, it would be folly to attempt to lay down some process by which every man might ensure a main course of study for himself; but only let him have a just fear of desultory pursuits, and a wish for mental cultivation, and he may hope at some time or other to discern what it is fittest for him to do. And if he does not, but pursues anything with method, there will be some reward for him, if not the highest. If we consider what are the objects men pursue, when conscious of any object at all, in reading, they are these : amusement, instruction, a wish to appear well in society, and a desire to pass away time. Now even the lowest of these objects is facilitated by reading with method. The keenness of pursuit thus engendered enriches the most trifling gain, takes away the sense of dulness in details, and gives an interest to what would, otherwise, be most repugnant. No one who has never known the eager joy of some intellectual pursuit, can understand the full pleasure of reading. In considering the present subject, the advantage to the world in general of many persons being really versed in various subjects cannot be passed by. And were reading wisely undertaken, much more method VOL. i. 15 226 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. and order would be applied to the consideration of the immediate business of the world ; and there would be men who might form something of a wise public with regard to the current questions of the day, such as railways, politics, finance, and the condition of Ireland. It must not be supposed that this choice and maintenance of one or more subjects of study must necessarily lead to pedantry or narrowness of mind. The Arts are sisters ; Languages are close kindred ; Sciences are fellow workmen : almost every branch of human knowledge- is immediately connected with biography ; biography falls into history, which, after drawing into itself various minor streams, such as geography, jurisprudence, political and social economy, issues forth upon the still deeper waters of general philosophy. There are very few, if any, vacant spaces between various kinds of knowledge : any track in the forest, steadfastly pursued, leads into one of the great highways ; just as you often find, in considering the story of any little island, that you are perpetually brought back into the general history of the world, and that this small rocky place has par- taken the fate of mighty thrones and distant empires. In short, all things are so connected together, that a man who knows One subject well, cannot, if he would, READING. 227 fail to have acquired much besides : and that man will not be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on, than he who picks them up and throws them together without method. This, however, is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter ; for what I would aim at producing, not merely holds together what is gained, but has vitality in itself, is always growing. And anybody will confirm this, who, in his own case, has had any branch of study or human affairs to work upon ; for he must have observed how all he meets seems to work in with, and assimilate itself to his own peculiar subject. During his lonely walks, or in society, or in action, it seems as if this one pursuit were something almost independent of himself, always on the watch, and claiming its share in whatever is going on. Again, by recommending some choice of subject and method in the pursuit of it, I do not wish to be held to a narrow interpretation of that word " subject." For example, I can imagine a man saying, I do not care particularly to investigate this or that question in history ; I am not going to pursue any branch of science ; but I have a desire to know what the most renowned men have written : I will see what the twenty or thirty great poets have said ; what in various ages has appeared the best expression of 228 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. the things nearest to the heart and fancy of man. A person of more adventure and more time might seek to include the greatest writers in morals or history. There are not so many of them. If a man were to read a hundred great authors, he would, I suspect, have heard what mankind has yet had to say upon most things. I am aware of the culture that would be required for such an enterprise ; but I merely give it as an instance of what may justly come under the head of the pursuit of one subject, as I mean it, and which certainly woul'd not be called a narrow purpose. There is another view of reading which, though it is obvious enough, is seldom taken, I imagine, or at least acted upon; and that is, that in the course of our reading we should lay up in our minds a store of goodly thoughts in well-wrought words, which should be a living treasure of knowledge always with us, and from which, at various times and amidst all the shifting of circumstances, we might be sure of drawing some comfort, guidance, and sympathy. We see this with regard to the sacred writings. " A word spoken in due season, how good is it ! " But there is a similar comfort on a lower level to be obtained from other sources than sacred ones. In any work that is worth carefully reading, there is READING. 229 generally something that is worth remembering accurately. A man whose mind is enriched with the best sayings of his own country, is a more independent man, walks the streets in a town, or the lanes in the country, with far more delight than he otherwise would have ; and is taught by wise observers of man and nature, to examine for himself Sancho Panza with his proverbs is a great deal better than he would have been without them : and I con- tend that a man has something in himself to meet troubles and difficulties, small or great, who has stored in his mind some of the best things which have been said about troubles and difficulties. Moreover, the loneliness of sorrow is thereby diminished. It need not be feared that a man whose memory is rich in such resources, will become a quoting pedant. Often, the sayings which are dearest to our hearts, are least frequent on our lips ; and those great ideas which cheer men in their direst struggles, are not things which they are likely to inflict by frequent repetition upon those they live with. There is a certain reticence with us as regards anything we deeply love. I have not hitherto spoken of the indirect advantage of methodical reading in the culture of the mind. 230 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. One of the dangers supposed to be incident upon a life of study is, that purpose and decisiveness are worn away. Not, as I contend, upon a life of study, such as it ought to be. For pursued methodically there must be some, and not a little, of the decision, resistance and tenacity of pursuit which create, or further, greatness of character in action. Though, as I have said, there are times of keen delight to a man who is engaged in any distinct pursuit, there are also moments of weariness, vexation, and vacillation, which will try the mettle in him and see whether he is worthy to understand and master anything. For this you may observe, that in all times and all nations, sacrifice is needed. The savage Indian who was to obtain any insight into the future, had to starve for it for a certain time. Even the fancy of this power was not to be gained without paying for it. And was anything real ever gained without sacrifice of some kind ? There is a very refined use which reading might be put to ; namely, to counteract the particular evils and temptations of our callings, the original imperfections of our characters, the tendencies of our age, or of our own time of life. Those, for instance, who are versed in dull crabbed work all day, of a kind which is always exercising the logical faculty and demanding minute, READING. 231 not to say, vexatious criticism, would, during their leisure, do wisely to expatiate in writings of a large and imaginative nature. These, however, are often the persons who particularly avoid poetry and works of imagination, whereas they ought, perhaps, to cultivate them most. For it should be one of the frequent objects of every man who cares for the culture of his whole being, to give some exercise to those faculties which are not demanded by his daily occupations and not encouraged by his disposition. Hitherto, the inducements I have brought forward for more fixedness of pursuit and soundness of method in reading, have been, many of them, comparatively speaking, worldly and slight ones. But there are others, which, if well considered, might alone suffice to change at once any habit of thoughtless and purposeless reading. We suppose that we carry our moral nature to another world; why not our intel- lectual nature? further, why not our acquirements? Is it probable that a man who has scorned here all advantages for commune with the works of God, is at once to be enlightened as if he had done his duty to the intelligence within him or about him ? It may be noticed that, as far as we can discern, the same physical laws govern the most distant parts of creation, as those which prevail here. Moreover, what we call 232 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. Nature, or Providence, is thrifty as well as liberal has apparently given to man no more faculty than he fully needs. May not a similar divine frugality perhaps an essential element for the furtherance of life and the development of energy pervade creation ? These, however, are very serious topics ; and I am afraid of being presumptuous in talking about them. But we must remember that there may be presumption in making too little, as well as in making too much, of knowledge. Added to which, and here I am in much less fear of what I say, I have no doubt that sound intellectual culture is in brotherhood with the best moral culture. Accuracy, for instance, is the prose of truth. And there is a humility which is one of the best things for the mind as well as the soul of man ; and may come through either inlet. At any rate we cannot be wrong, whether we are professed students, or soldiers, or men of the world, or whatever we are, in endeavouring to make the time we give to books a time not spent unprofitably to ourselves and our fellow-creatures ; and this will never be the case, if we are the victims of chance in what we take up to read ; if we vacillate for ever in our studies, or if we never look for anything in them, but the ease of the present moment, or the gratifica- tion of getting rid of it insensibly. READING. 233 Ellesmere. I like that essay. Dunsford. So do I. Milverton. I knew you would, because you have no need of the advice given in it, both of you being careful readers, and choice in what you read. Indeed Ellesmere carries this to an excess, and so misses reading some of the best works of the day. Ellesmere. Yes, but what trash have I not avoided reading? How many works have I escaped the knowledge of, which you would give a great deal to forget ? And at least, Milverton, I always read my friends' books, whether they are treatises on labour, tragedies, or the densest political economy. But to pass from me and my doings to the subject before us. The most important part of it to my mind is one which you have but lightly alluded to : I mean the advantage which would arise, if the common affairs of the world were studied methodically. As it is, men read a clever article in a newspaper or review, or enter into an animated conversation about some common topic of the day, and then they wait for another clever article or review, or another chance conversation, not bringing any study to bear upon the subject meanwhile. Hence opi- nions on public affairs are formed by chance ; and states- men and legislators have a much less enlightened public to appeal to than they might have. Milverton. Very true : and a much less enlightened circle to choose their official men from. An improvement, however, in this respect, is but one of the advantages which would arise from more methodical reading. If there were even but a small part of the public that cared 234 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. for its own education, many of the works of history which have been addressed to the world, would never have been written so carelessly, or would at once have been found out. Dunsjord. Then again, in science, the result of any- thing like methodical reading amongst a large number of persons might carry us forward with greatly accelerated rapidity. When you mention the serious considerations, Mil- verton, which might induce more wisdom in reading, you should not omit to point out that each man has but a certain limited portion of time and energy in this world ; and surely the knowledge of this fact ought to make us careful in what we give our attention to. We cannot afford to throw it away. Milverton. Men seldom feel as if they were bounded as to time ; they think they can afford to throw away a great deal of that commodity, thus showing unconsciously even in their trifling the sense that they have of their immortality. Ellesmere. There is one thing, Milverton, you seem to me to have omitted entirely ; namely, that this methodical reading you recommend would ensure some digestion of what is read would necessitate some thinking. You recollect what Hobbes used to say, " that if he had read as many books as other men, he should have been as ignorant as they," clearly implying that reading is some- times an ingenious device for avoiding thought. Milverton. Well, I think you might have inferred as much from my essay. Dunsford. You are quite right, Milverton, in suggest- READING. 235 ing that we should commit to memory some part of what we like in reading. Now, this very day, as I was coming across the common, perhaps it was that I walked with more difficulty than usual, I bethought me that I was rapidly descending into old age, and the thought was not a pleasant one. It set me, however, thinking of Cicero's De Senectnte, and then to repeating large por- tions of that beautiful and comforting treatise, not failing at the same time to remember what might have been added by a Christian. Before I reached your house I had forgotten my own little trouble about old age, and was deep in Cicero. Ellesmere. You see, also, Milverton, that another of your theories holds good in this case, for Dunsford does not attempt to quote upon us his passages of Cicero ; whether from the passages being too dear to him to quote, or that he believes, in which he would not be far out, that some of us would be unable to construe them, I leave you to guess. Milverton. Do not you both agree with me in this part where I say, that when a man has some object in study, all things seem to fall in with it ? Ellesmere. Yes, they do wonderfully. Milverton. I found a curious instance of that the other day. It is in the Manuscripts of Las Casas, in which, giving an account of his conversion to the cause of the Indians, he says of himself, " From the first hour that he (Las Casas) began to dispel the clouds of that ignorance (his former opinion in favour of Indian slavery) he never read in Latin or Spanish any book, and the books that he read in forty-four years were infinite in number, in 236 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. which he did not find either reason or authority to prove and corroborate the justice which those Indian nations had on their side, and to condemn the injustice and evils and injuries which have been done to them." * I copied out the passage because I thought it would interest you. Ellesmere. Yes ; I can imagine that the good father found in " the sainted Thomas," for I suppose that was the book of those days, many a sentence which seemed written purposely for the behoof of the Indians. Dunsford. I think, Milverton, you might have given us some noble quotations from Bacon, or Cicero, about the grandeur and the comfort of study. Milverton, No : if I had given you anything it would have been from a more unfrequented source ; and if you like, I will do so now (here Milverton called to his servant and requested him to bring Hazlitt's Lectures on the Elizabethan Writers). Ellesmere. What a learned young man that servant of yours is ! What a profound acquaintance he seems to have with the outsides of books, which, after all, is the safest and the pleasantest kind of book-knowledge. Milverton. I think you might extend your commenda- tion to a knowledge of the title-pages, but here he * "Desde la primera hora que comenzo a deshechar las tinie- blas de aquella ignorancia nunca leyo en Libro de latin 6 de romance, que fueron en cuarenta y cuatro anos infinites, en que no hallase 6 razon 6 autoridad para probar y corroborar la Jus- ticia de aquestas Indianas Gentes, y para condenacion de las injusticias que se les han hecho y males y danos." READING. 237 comes with the book. I will read you the passage I alluded to. " They (books) are the nearest to our thoughts ; they wind into the heart ; the poet's verse slides into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we remember them when old. We read there of what has happened to others ; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be had everywhere cheap and good. We breathe but the air of books : we owe every- thing to their authors, on this side barbarism ; and we pay them easily with contempt, while living, and with an epitaph, when dead ! Michael Angelo is beyond the Alps ; Mrs. Siddons has left the stage and us to mourn her loss. Were it not so, there are neither picture-galleries nor theatres-royal on Salisbury-plain, where I write this ; but here, even here, with a few old authors, I can manage to get through the summer or the winter months, without ever knowing what it is to feel ennui. They sit with me at breakfast ; they walk out with me before dinner. After a long walk through unfrequented tracts, after starting the hare from the fern, or hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my head, or being greeted by the wood- man's ' stern good night,' as he strikes into his narrow homeward path, I can ' take mine ease at mine inn,' beside the blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signer Orlando Friscobaldo, as the oldest acquaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned Chapman, Master Webster, and Master Hey wood, are there ; and, seated round, discourse the silent hours away. Shakspeare is there himself, not in Gibber's manager's coat. Spenser is hardly yet returned from a ramble through the woods, or is concealed behind 238 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. a group of nymphs, fauns, and satyrs. Milton lies on the table, as on an altar, never taken up or laid down without reverence. Lyly's Endymion sleeps with the moon, that shines in at the window ; and a breath of wind stirring up at a distance seems a sigh from the tree under which he grew old. Faustus disputes in one corner of the room with fiendish faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bellafront soothes Matheo. Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old Chapman repeats one of the hymns of Homer, in his own fine translation ! I should have no objection to pass my life in this manner out of the world, not thinking .of it, nor it of me ; neither abused by my enemies, nor defended by my friends ; careless of the future, but sometimes dreaming of the past, which might as well be forgotten." Ellesmere. A great many of the gentlemen alluded to by Hazlitt are quite unknown to me, but he has brought out his own feelings so admirably that I do not need to know the particular instances. Here it was necessary that I should return home, and I accordingly took leave of my friends after arranging to have another meeting soon. (239 ) CHAPTER II. THE next time I came over to Worth-Ashton to meet Ellesmere and to hear a chapter read, it was a mild dull day ; and as we had long been looking out for such a day, to go upon the downs, we resolved to take this opportunity ; so, after Milverton had let the dogs loose, we all sallied forth. It was our intention to choose for our place of reading some tumuli which are at no great distance from Worth-Ashton. We had a good deal of conversation in the course of our walk, which Milverton thus began. Milverton. I have had such trouble to let that dog loose. He seemed to know that we were going out upon the downs, which he greatly approves of ; and he was so impatient that I could not get at his collar to undo it. I thought all the time how like I was to Pope Pius the Ninth, who must have much the same difficulty in keeping his Italians quiet enough for him to free them. Ellesmere. That is true, I dare say ; but 1 do not know enough of Italian politics to pronounce anything about them. However, I can see it is a grand thing to have a Pope " of some mark and likelihood " in our times. It gives new life to politics. 240 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. Milverton. And not to politics only. Ellesmere. Well, we shall see. These are matters we shall hear much of in our time. Meanwhile, let us drink in some of this delightful air. Look at that ungainly puppy trying to catch the thistle-down as it steals up the hill. What is it ? Oh ! I see, a seed in the middle and this feathery stuff round it, so that the seed may be carried hither and thither. Not unlike many a book one idea in it, and some airy stuff round it, and so it floats along merrily enough. Milverton. Carry out the simile a little further, my critical friend. What animal is it that feeds upon the parent of the thistle-down ? Is it a little creature that devours the authors of the books ? Dunsford. I think, Ellesmere, you have not gained much by your attack upon Milverton's tribe. Ellesmere. I wonder, now, are authors fonder of their books than painters of their pictures ? Milverton. I suspect it is not a very lasting fondness, even when it is a fondness in either case. But there is a great difference between the two things. Ellesmere. Yes ; for in the picture you have the thing actually made by its author, which he touched, which was for a long time in his presence. Let us think of that when we look at a great picture. It is a relic of the great artist. It was one of his household gods for a time. Milverton. I often think what interest there is in a picture quite independent of its subject, or its merit, or its author. I mean the interest belonging to the history of it, as a work of some one man's labour. I can imagine he was so joyous in the beginning of it : the whole work ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 241 was already done, perhaps, in his mind, where the colours are easily laid on, while the canvas yet was white. Then there were the early sketches. He finds the idea is not so easy after all to put on canvas. At last a beginning is made ; and then the work proceeds for a time rapidly. How often he draws back from the canvas, approaches it again, looks at it fondly yet wistfully, as a watching mother at a sick child. He is interrupted, tries to be courteous or kind, as the occasion requires, but is delighted when the door closes and leaves him alone with the only creature whose presence he cares much for just now. All day long his picture is with him in the background of his mind. He goes out : the bright colours in the shops, the lines of buildings, little children on the door-steps, all show him something ; and when he goes back, he rushes into his painting-room, to expend his fresh vigour and his new insight upon the work of his heart. So it goes on. Let us hope that it prospers. Then there comes a time when the completion of the picture is foreseen by him, when there is not much room for more to be made of it, and yet it is not nearly finished. He is a little weary of it. Observe this, Ellesmere, there is the same thing throughout life, in all forms of human endeavour. These times of weariness need watching. But our artist is patient and plods on. The end of the drama approaches, when the picture is to go into a gilt frame, and be varnished, and hung up like the hero of a novel upon whom a flood of good fortune is let in at last. Ellesmere. Stop here. Do not let us have the " decline and fall " of the picture ; when it comes to be VOL. I. 1 6 242 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. a target for children, or subsides into the corner of an old curiosity shop. Milverton. No. Besides it would not be fair to take the unsuccessful pictures only. How many are delicately cared for and tended in lordly galleries, and hear choice words of praise and nice criticism from the lips of the wise and the beautiful ; and are the pets of the world. But the history x>f any picture before it left the artist's studio, would be enough, if we could know it all, to interest us greatly, even where the picture was but a poor thing a wish rather than a deed. Ellesmere. Let us sit down here. Dunsford. Yes. Ellesmere. Get away, Rollo ! Did you see that dog nearly upset me, coming to shake hands, as their way is, with his mouth. What was it we were talking about before we sat down ? Ah, pictures. I was going to say all the London world now are discussing the designs for the new Houses, and people are very full of suggestions for great historical pictures. There is one comfort, we shall not be troubled with Madonnas. I confess I am wearied with Madonnas. If I were an autocrat I would say, " Let there be no more Madonnas painted : we have had enough of them." Mil-uerton. At the time the great ones were painted, there was a religious intent in the painter and in those for whom he painted, which prevented their looking at a Madonna as a mere work of art. Hence they were not wearied at the repetition. 'Dunsford. There is one sacred subject which seems to me amongst the most touching, if not the most sublime. ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 243 that we can imagine. And yet it is not altogether what can be made of it in a picture that I mean. The scene is one for the mind to work out in all its fulness, and soon outstrips whatever even a Rembrandt can give us. It is " the woman taken in adultery." I often picture that scene to myself the majestic figure of the divine Par- doner : the shrinking, downcast, shame-burnt woman : the crowd of accusers and of unloving bystanders fading away awestricken at the hideous phantoms of their own guilt. For then, perhaps, before each man rose his own sin, not as it lies compressed in any one human heart, a little thing, but vast, unmeasured, darkening the way before him. Their murders and their adulteries then appeared to those who thought they knew not the words murder and adultery as touching them : nor did they as the world knows them. Here stood the man who had been guilty of many things, but whom guilt had not made tolerant. He vanished in affright. Here was the strict, precise, self-righteous man, whose want of charity sud- denly made visible to him was an abyss to look into, which fascinated and appalled him. And he wandered away he knew not whither. Here were those who were strong, inasmuch as they had not been tempted : and they saw for a moment their future selves, or what men such as they might come to ; and hurried away sick at heart and shuddering, as one belated whom the lightning tells suddenly that he has been walking with heedless unconcern through mountain passes needing by daylight the nicest and the firmest footstep. And then I think 1 see at the edge of the crowd a young girl who had come, not from malice or ill-will, but with a curious wish to see 244 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. something of human suffering. And she too moves away like the rest, but not aghast with horror like them, and yet with sorrow, shame, and wailing, in that she had not pitied more. We were silent for a time, and resumed our walk in silence, nor do I recollect any more of our conver- sation till after Milverton had read to us the following essay on giving and taking criticism. ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. I SCARCELY know of anything more valuable to a man than his opinions and his judgments, or of more importance to others. Whether it is that I myself am very slow to form opinions, or that they really are very difficult to attain, they certainly appear to me great acquisitions. Often, like other acqui- sitions, houses, lands, honours, children, money, these opinions are a great care, and a great trouble ; but still they are acquisitions: and it seems to me that any man who wastes his opinions by injudicious scattering, or by throwing them out before they are complete, is a sad spendthrift. And if he pretends to have opinions and utters remarks that appear like judgments when he has them not, he may remind his aV GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 245 hearers somewhat of a coiner and utterer of false money. I suppose, however, that many of those who criticise much do not opine or judge, but only talk. There is, too, a flow of criticism with some men, like the poetry of improvisatori, neither good nor altogether bad, having no deep meaning or purpose in it, bearing marks of no correction, being something like the talk of parrots, except that it lacks the force which belongs to repetition. There are two characteristics which I think may be observed in the conduct of those who form opinions substantially for themselves. These persons are either very reticent about their opinions ; for having worked at them, and, perhaps, suffered for them, and knowing, too, how much there is to be said on the other side, it is not play with such people to produce their opinions (they would as soon expose their cherished feelings) : or, on the other hand, if they have once expressed their opinions, you are very likely to perceive a constant reference to them, and you find that the holders of opinions thus formed, do not soon tire of them. The formers, therefore, of their own opinions are slow to utter and likely to repeat. Men's criticism has chiefly had for its objects the 246 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. appearances of nature and the characters of other men and their doings. When we think what, for centuries, was the criticism upon nature among people fully equal to ourselves ; how they pro- nounced without the slightest experience upon the gravest matters ; how they put words for facts, declaring that bodies descended because it was the nature of bodies to descend, or dicta of that kind ; it may occur to us how often in questions of social and political life, and the judgment of character, we may be exercising a similar rashness and indiscretion. When you have an opportunity of looking well into any one human character, you may see meanness and generosity, sensuality and abstinence, softness and ferocity, profound dissimulation and extreme imprudence all mixed up in one man. And I have seen in the same character great sensitiveness, lively appreciation of difficulties and defects, and extreme fastidiousness, joined to the utmost tenacity of purpose a combination like that of a bull-dog's head to the shivering delicate body of an Italian greyhound. These strangely intermingled characters are then thrown amidst the ever-varying circumstances of life ; and we, the bystanders, having a partial view of the circum- stances and no conception of the original texture of the character, and judging it by an artificial standard ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 247 of our own, pronounce opinions formed, perhaps, in the greatest haste, and in answer to somebody else, fatal opinions on our fellow men. There is one thing \vhich I imagine has much perplexed men in judging of character, and made their judgments often very absurd. I allude to their habit of nice division of qualities and temperaments, about which they talk as if each were a thing by itself and had not entered into almost indissoluble connection with the rest. For example, I imagine that strength of mind is often accompanied by, perhaps we ought to say, absolutely connected with, strength of passions. The critic takes the life and conduct of a man in whom such a combination exists, and talks of him as if he had had originally the sagacity and the force of mind, but that all the passions were acquired ; or, vice versa, gives the passions and makes the judgment acquired; or, at any rate, sees no wholeness in the character. A forcible instance of the kind of character I mean, occurs to me in the person of one of our greatest kings, Henry the Second. In him extreme sagacity and great nobleness of mind were joined with the utmost violence of passion. In reading the history of his reign, we find him at whatever part of his dominions his presence is wanted, conducting his 248 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. affairs with the utmost ability, with almost ability enough to counteract the evils which his passions had raised against him. In business, in pleasure, in study, he would be foremost. Strange to say, he was one of the most prudent men of his time ; and his treaties, especially after conquest, are surprising for their moderation. Then we have an account of him on the floor gnawing straws like a maniac, in excess of uncontrollable passion, Such a man, if he has children, is likely to have a fierce strange brood like himself; and they will not diminish his troubles or fail to call out at all the points of his character. Now what I mean as regards the criticism on such characters, and perhaps on all characters, is that we canvass bit by bit, quality by quality, instead of looking at the whole as a whole. I suspect that what we call Nature is very sparing in giving unqualified good. She lays down a bark of great capacity ; soundly and wisely builds it ; but then freights it, perhaps, with fierce energies and leaves it to stormy impulses, which carry it out into the wildest seas ; and what the result will be, may depend on a very slight balance of favourable and unfavour- able endeavours and influences. Extremely foolish criticism is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the labouring vessel from the land. The great deficiencies in criticism throughout all ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 249 ages have been a deficiency of humility, a lack of charity, and a want of imagination. The absence of humility in critics is something wonderful. The fly on the axle of the chariot in ^sop's fables, though he made a foolish and vain-glorious remark in observing what a dust he raised, was not so absurd as the wren would be, who, perched upon the unconscious eagle, should suppose that he keeps the eagle down, and should talk accordingly. Men who work must expose something to criticism ; and the wider and greater their transactions, the more surface there is likely to be exposed. The larger the fortress, the greater the choice of attack. The smaller kind of critics, like ancient Parthians, or modern Cossacks, hover on the rear of a great army, transfix a sentinel, surprise an outpost, harass the army's march, afflict its flight ; but they rarely determine the campaign. It hardly becomes them to claim the honours of the steady legionary. I have said that criticism has very frequently lacked imagination as well as charity and humility. In no respect will this combined deficiency be better perceived that in considering the way in which men persist in commenting upon the works of others from their own peculiar ground and point of view. They will not exercise a charitable imagination, and look at 250 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. what is done with due regard to the doer's drift and conception. Their own conceits perplex and stultify their judgment. Of the difference between acting and criticising action, you will be easily convinced, if you observe what an immediate change comes over the spirit of those who, having been accustomed to criticise, have suddenly to work in the very vocation which they have been given to criticise. Men called to power from the ranks of opposition, afford a well-known instance of this ; but lower down in life, in domestic authority for example, the same phenomenon takes place. He who has been wont to pronounce so fluently upon the defects of another's rule and management, finds, when in power himself, what a different thing it is to act and to talk. His rash and heated judgment is all at once sobered by the weight of responsibility. We may even go further in this argument, and con- tend that the functions of doing and criticising are not merely different but oftentimes antagonistic ; for you will rarely find that a man given to criticism does much ; and, on the other hand, that the man who does much has not outgrown the habit of much criticism at any rate of the ill-natured kind. It is here, as elsewhere, that those passions and qualities ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 251 which make us injurious or offensive to our neighbour react directly upon ourselves. An ill-tempered man often has everything his own way, and seems very triumphant ; but the demon he cherishes tears him, as well as awes other people. So, in criticism, he who worries others, by injurious or needless remarks, ends in tormenting himself, by a mean and over-solicitous care about his own thoughts and deeds ; and, perhaps, not all the self-inflicted tortures of religious devotees have equalled the misery which men have given them- selves up to from remarks of their own about them- selves, and imaginary remarks on their conduct by their neighbours. In speaking of criticism, we must not omit to men- tion that there is a species of it which may be called needless, as distinguished from that which is inten- tionally unkind. It is a great mistake to suppose that because words are used logically, and may be sensible enough in themselves, that they may never- theless not come under the description of folly, and be liable to all that Solomon has said against foolish talk. I believe that more breaches of friendship and love have been created, and more hatred cemented, by needless criticism than by any one other thing. If you find a man who performs most of the relations of life 252 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. dutifully, is even kind and affectionate, but who, you discover, is secretly disliked and feared by all his friends and acquaintances, you will often, on further investigation, ascertain that he is one who indulges largely in needless criticism. Some considerable part of the troubles and per- plexities of each man's mind lies in the endurance and digestion of criticism more too, perhaps, of the criticism by anticipation, which he fancies he hears, or will hear, than from that which is actually addressed to him. Now there are several ways of dealing with any trouble or misfortune. One is, to magnify it. Machiavelli, in his celebrated letter to Vettori, after describing his sordid occupations and the company he keeps (a lime-kiln man, a butcher, and the landlord of a small country inn), says, " I develope the malig- nity of my fortune." He thought by magnifying it to overcome it. Then there is the stoical way, to ignore misfortune. Then there is the humorous, in which a man pretends, as it were, not to know his misfortune, or will only look at the droll side of it. Then there is the calm and business-like way of deal- ing with misfortune to look at it full in the face measure it carefully, and see what good is in it, what can be done with it, and how it can be stowed away. ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 253 All the above methods may be applied to the endurance of unkind or thoughtless criticism, which, however, is generally attempted to be dealt with as if it were no evil. But making lighter of an evil than it really is does not appear to me the safe way to sup- press it Suppose you have done anything with large expense of labour written a book which you have really tried to write honestly, built a house, begun to drain a moss, established a business, led an expedi- tion, or, in short, done anything which has cost you thought and toil, abnegation and enterprise of various kinds which is, indeed, a considerable part of your life ; it is no good pretending that hostile and thought- less criticism upon this work is not a painful thing. Accept it as an unpleasant circumstance; take into fair consideration the injury that it may be. This is far better than saying you do not care at all about such criticism, and yet all the time secretly fretting at it. Several of the works above enumerated depend for their result upon opinion, and it is idle to talk about not caring for opinion in such cases. The plan is to enlighten yourself about the meaning and force of the opinion in question. If it be sound, and you feel it to be sound, profit by it ; you have then coun- teracted some of the injury, and in this solid gain there should be compensation even for mortified vanity. 254 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. But often there is no good to be gained from the criticism ; it is empty, ill-natured, untrue, and nobody knows that so well as you who have done the work criticised. This criticism is an unwelcome hindrance and an injury. But here, again, what balm there is to be had upon the slightest reflection. This opinion, which annoys you so much, is frequently that of one or few. You will be very cool and indifferent about the whole matter by the time it is rightly judged ; I mean even if it is in your lifetime. Then you are to consider that all men who do anything must endure this depreciation of their efforts. It is the dirt which their chariot wheels throw up. You may then further consider that frequently between the doer and the critic there is a span which cannot be bridged over. It is not wise, however, to let your thoughts go far in this direction, lest they become arrogant. But the main comfort under injurious comments of any kind is to look at them fairly, accept them as an evil, and calculate the extent of the mischief. These injurious comments seldom blacken all creation for you. A humorous friend of mine who suffered some time ago under a severe article in the first newspaper in the world tells me that it was a very painful sensation for the first day, and that he thought all eyes were upon him (he being a retired, quiet, fastidious person), but ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 255 going into his nursery and finding his children were the same to him as usual, and then walking out with his dogs and observing that they frolicked about him as they were wont to do, he began to discover that there was happily a public very near and dear to him, on which even the articles of The Times could make no impression. The next day my poor friend, who, by the way, was firmly convinced that he was right in the matter in controversy, had become quite himself again. Indeed he snapped his fingers at leading articles, and said he wished people would write more of them against him. It may be thought that I have hitherto spoken only, or chiefly, of foolish, indiscreet, or restless criticism ; and have omitted to point out the merits of criticism, when well directed. But I am well aware that there is a criticism which may almost be called a religious criticism ; which holds out its warnings when multi- tudes are mad, and when following a multitude to talk nonsense is much the same thing as following it to do evil. There is also the pious, high-built criticism, which reluctantly points out defects in those works it loves best, and which would be silent if it were too late to be of use. There is the criticism founded upon patient research and studious deliberation, 256 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. which, even if it be given somewhat rudely and harshly, cannot but be useful, and which, like the frost, thins away the weeds which, but for its kindly nipping, would occupy the air and food wanted for the young plantation of serviceable timber. There is the loving criticism which explains, elicits, illumes ; show- ing the force and beauty of some great word or deed which, but for the kind care of the critic, might remain a dead letter or an inert fact ; teaching the people to understand and to admire what is admir- able. There is the every-day criticism of good handy men, which is but a stepping back to look at their own and others' labours, and is the fair judgment on their joint work by a worker. Lastly, there is the silent criticism of example, worth all the rest. Ellesmere. What a scandalous shame it is (don't look so astonished, Milverton, I am not talking of the essay) what a scandalous shame it is, I say, that we should use the word puppy as we do. I have been watching our young friend there ; up he flies at Rollo's ear, Rollo gives him a shake, tumbles him over, and away he goes rolling down the mound. He waddles up directly, commences his attack again and is sent about his business in the CW GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 257 same way. But he is not to be daunted. Now what a shame to make such a noble creature's name a term of reproach. Milverton. Be comforted, Ellesmere ; I dare say old dogs, when they have a more than usually tiresome puppy to scold, call it " young man," in their language. Dunsford. I say, it is a scandalous shame that you two should be talking such nonsense when there is so much to be said about the essay. Ellesmere. Now, my. dear Dunsford, if you think that I have hurried down by the express train this hot day to talk sense, and do criticism, you must be undeceived forthwith. Besides, what is the good of listening to essays or sermons, or moral discourses of any kind, without attempting to act in some accordance with them. After receiving this " heavy blow and great discouragement " to inconsiderate criticism in general, would it become me to be blurting out my poor thoughts and picking an essay to pieces which orders me to pick nothing to pieces with- out good reason, and desires me, the critic, (not that there was any need in my particular case) to stand hat in hand before the writer, the maker of any work. For to-day I will be of Hamlet's mind, and consider that even praise may be arrogant. Dunsford. Where does Hamlet say that ? Ellesmere. He intimates something of the kind, when Osric brings the news of the King's wager. Osric. You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is Hamlet. I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in excellence. Milverton. I am not altogether sorry to be exempt VOL. I. 17 258 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. from Ellesmere's criticism to-day : though, to tell the truth, I rather distrust our friend's sudden modesty, Dunsford. Ellesmere. You may take it another way if you please. There is the silent criticism of silence, worth all the rest. But if you want to know what I really have been thinking about during the reading, I will tell you ; and my thoughts, though you will hardly see how, grew out of the reading in a distant way, and out of thinking where we are and what these mounds contain. . Dunsford. In 1837 there was Ellesmere. Yes, yes, I suppose some one has routed into these mounds ; but, please, do not tell me about it ; I do not want to know. I can imagine that here were huddled together the bodies of brave men and some of their rude implements of war : and other men, as brave mayhap, who fell around here the kites fed upon ; and the army marched on ; and there was mourning on this side arid rejoicing on that ; and men missed their comrades for a few days : and these were at rest. Well, I thought of such things ; and then I wondered what they made of life in those ages ; and then I returned to present times ; and thought of our chief modern men ; and you will both be pleased to find that those I thought of were amongst your author and artist tribe. Dunsford. Well, that is a redeeming point in this vague thinking of yours. Ellesmere. You know, Milverton, your clan have always received me kindly ; and, indeed, I was fortunate enough, when a younger man, to know some of the great people of old. But to come to the substance of what I ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 259 was going to say, I thought that these people, though they were excellent company (they ought to be, their knowledge is more extensive and various, and in general better arranged than that of other men), yet that they were a sad-hearted race at least many of them were. And then I thought to myself ought this to be ? These men, according to our theory, get nearer to the meaning of many things. Is that meaning a sad one ? Is the great ' ' open secret " of the world a grievous thing ? You, I know, Dunsford, imagine my thoughts to be a mass of unreasoning and somewhat hopeless scepticism ; but I must say, at the risk of gaining some of your good opinion, that I cannot but believe that the nearer we could get to this inner meaning I have been talking of, the more comfort and joy we should find. I venture to suspect that Solomon was melancholy rather than wise, when he pronounced that Wisdom is sorrow. But it jars upon one to find that men who seem to know so much, do not make a better thing of it, themselves. These may be common-place thoughts ; but there you have what I was thinking about instead of criticising. Milverton. Supposing that what you say is a fair statement .of facts, there are many ways of accounting for it. The original constitution of men of genius, for it is of such, I suppose, that you are talking, may be unfavour- able to joy. Though, after all, I question whether there are any persons who can be so jovial. Well, then mental toil is the greatest of toil ; and naturally undermines that health which we know is a needful element for comfort and joy. Then a man cannot serve two masters ; and consequently the worldly relations of men of genius, as of 260 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. statesmen absorbed in state affairs, are very apt to become a torment to them. I do not say this as any excuse for the irregularities, as they are called, of men of genius. But it is a fact. Almost any worldly state in which a man can be placed is a hindrance to him if he have other than mere worldly things to do. Poverty, wealth, many duties, or many affairs distract and confuse him. No affairs, no distresses, no ties leave him uneducated in the most important knowledge he can have. Then again, though this is a difficult and dangerous subject to enter upon, men of genius have been apt to make a sad busi- ness of some of their domestic relations. Moreover, there is often a great deal in their ways of going on that provokes disesteem in those around them. They are simple, child-like, worldly wise and worldly foolish. Their foolishness is understood. They see further than those around them, but it is into a region where the others have no view, and, therefore, do not believe in the country thinking it entirely cloud-land. While, in the near region, though the former understand that too and its just place and proportion ; yet as it must be all in all to them to be thoroughly managed by them, and as they will not suffer it to be all in all, but rather depreciate it perhaps, they often miss even the proper hold of it. And for all these and many other reasons (for I do not see where we should end, if we were to go minutely into this matter) they sooner meet with the imperfections of sympathy ; and find out earlier than other men that man is only partially understood, or pitied, or loved, by man ; but for the fulness of these things he must go to some far- off country. And here philosophy and experience are ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 261 permitted to enter into the track of piety, and have their thoughts, too, of how good a thing it must be for the soul to be with God.* Ellesmere. There is something in all this ; but of course I did not make my remark with an utter forgetful- ness of these things. Milverton. I meant to begin with the more obvious part of the matter, which, however, ought not to be neglected. Now, here is a view that perhaps you have not thought of. You see some great result come from a man's work, and you conclude justly enough that there are power and insight in that man. That is the main thing which is before you in thinking of him. Then you wonder his gifts do not do more. You want them to lift him up altogether. But is it unreasonable to imagine that there may sometimes be proportion in natural gifts for instance, * Talking once with Milverton upon the same subject, he said that train of thought was based on something in Emerson's essay on Love. The following must be the passage : " But we are often made to feel that our affections are but tents of a night. Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of thought do. There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the man, and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in health the mind is presently seen again, its over-arching vault, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, must lose their finite character, and blend with God, to attain their own perfection. But we need not fear that we can lose anything by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must be succeeded and sup- planted only by what is more beautiful, and so on for ever. " 262 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. that where there is great sagacity there may be great pas- sions ? that, in short, where there are great powers there may be great inherent drawbacks ? I am but repeating what I have said in other words in the essay. Ellesmere. Yes, there is something in this. I think, however, I had in my mind men whose insight had not had much odds to contend against, but still who seem to have progressed into sadness. Milverton. The traveller may come into a fine country which fills his heart with consolation, if not with joy ; but he himself remains, at least for a time, travel-worn, travel-stained, with eyes that have not lost the anxious watching look of one accustomed to lie down at night in peril. Ellesmere. Oh I am no match for you if you once get amongst metaphors. It is your trade. A plain man like me, who has to address plain men, like Lord Chan- cellors and judges, cannot ascend with these flights of yours. Milverton. There are subjects the truth of which can never be so well brought out as by the aid of metaphors. Metaphors give body and circumstance to things which could not be adequately represented if discussed in cold though precise terms. Ellesmere. Good that's true, I dare say. However, I still venture to think, that metaphors have done at least as much harm by introducing falsehood as they have by representing truth. But you have made a good plea, and you may indulge in as many metaphors as you like. Proceed. Milverton. Then, too, if it be not too bold to say so ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 263 on behalf of any men, may there not be something vica- rious in the sufferings of men of genius ? Again, the work before them sits heavy and grievous on their minds. Moreover, when you talk of their wisdom and what you extract from it, though I admit the difference between a wise man, or a man of genius, and a fool is colossal to us, yet you must recollect, that as measured against the great verities it is engaged with, it may be very very small indeed. Dunsford. We cannot keep that too much in mind : and I would say, though you may both think it common- place, that the wisdom or insight you have been talking of, may be that which the Scriptures call foolishness. Ellesmere. I have had in my thoughts, Dunsford, religious men, or what we consider such, as well as others. Milverton. Then another thing, we know so little of men, that we can hardly judge of their moods. I was very much struck the other day with a quotation from Seneca, which was in the margin of one of these old Spanish historians I am looking into just now. " Levis est dolor qui capere consilium potest." Ellesmere. That is a good deal deeper than Seneca used to go in my time, when I looked into him. Dunsford. Having to do with Nero would make a man think deeply upon some subjects especially upon concealed griefs and fears. Milverton. But to go back to our subject, for I have more to say yet. I question whether even men of genius have ever suffered more than dull men, or merely clever men, with one idea which has sunk under them a small 264 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. ambitious man, for instance, utterly unsuccessful in his schemes, or a man set on one affection which turns out ill. Genius is multiform and artistic : it twines beautiful garlands round the images of past hopes, knowing all the time, as well as other men, that it is only adorning what is lifeless. Dunsford. This world is a world of trial, not of com- pletion and attainment in any way. You expect more of clear and distinct gain than you ought, Ellesmere. Milverton. I somehow fancy we are a little wrong in our general notions about this world being a place of trial ; I would rather, if I might say so, call .it a place of education, of continuous creation, than of trial. It may not be, as we sometimes pronounce, that life, the life of souls, is sent here to see what will become of it, to see whether it is good or bad, but to form it and further it, in accordance with which, it may be, (as the author of The Natural History of Enthusiasm would say*) that all are getting the fittest education for them. The hardest criminal, for instance, what can subdue him into humanity * This is doubtless the passage which Milverton had in his mind : " The world of nature affords no instances of complicated and exact contrivances, comparable to that which so arranges the vast chaos of contingencies as to produce, with unerring precision, a special order of events adapted to the character of every indi- vidual of the human family. Amid the whirl of myriads of fortuities, the means are selected and combined for constructing as many independent machineries of moral discipline as there are moral agents in the world ; and each apparatus is at once com- plete in itself, and complete as part of a universal movement." ON GIVING AND TAKING CRITICISM. 265 like the having committed crime ? It may be, too, that men take their gains with them. A man's insight (what little he can get) may not therefore be unprofitable to him, Ellesmere, or be otherwise than insight, though it cannot be expressed in joy and serenity here. However this may be, I think it is perhaps nearer the truth to look upon this world as one of education than of trial. Ellesmere. Also a world to live in. It has a substan- tive existence of its own, which we should make what we can of. It does not become us to depreciate time present too much. Here we are, with a great deal to look upon, and use, and understand, if we can. Milverton. Yes : it is a part of education, and not the least, to deal with the present steadily and healthily. Dunsford. How very few, for example, make a tithe of what they might out of the every day beauty of nature. They come crying to it sometimes and asking for peace and repose from it. Milverton. I quite agree with you, if you mean that few of us enjoy enough the beauty we ought to see every day about us, and which should go to form the substance of our day's delight. But I doubt whether the contem- plation of inanimate Nature will do for us what poets sometimes imagine it will in the way of soothing. To look upon nature, to get into the forest or out upon the moor, is no doubt a delightful escape from the teasing ways of man. But there is, perhaps, an aching of the heart as well as a soothing in much contemplation of still life. Where I think there is most consolation, is in the immensity of creation, in the vigour and pertinacity of life : the most wounded heart considering these things, 266 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. can throw its griefs into the vast mass of life, see that there are other things beside it, have an impression that there is a scheme of creation large enough to answer all the demands of vexed imagination. Herein, I think, the results of science minister much comfort to the mind. Ellesmere. Some of us, speaking so coldly of still life, hardly deserve, I think, to look over these beautiful downs. Milverton. Let us not mind that, if we can in any way deserve to look up at the stars sometimes. But we must be moving homewards, unless we mean to find our way by starlight : and even now I think I see some " bright particular" stars that will not wait for darkness to be somewhat seen. Ah ! beautiful creations, it is not in guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but out of the dark waters of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to ourselves the most of your significance. We returned home, not sorry to be mostly silent as we went, and glad that our friendship was so assured that we could be silent, without the slightest danger of offence. 267 CHAPTER III. To enable my readers to understand this chapter, I must first trouble them with some domestic circum- stances. Whether it was from our excursion to the downs, mentioned in the last chapter, or from some other cause I do not know, but at this time I became so unwell as to be unable to leave my room. It would have been a great deprivation to me not to know something about the conversation before and after Milverton's next reading, so I resolved to send over to Worth-Ashton one who might take my place and bring me some account of what was said. My home is graced by the presence of my sister, Mrs. Daylmer, and her daughter Lucy. Daylmer and I were fellow-collegians and intimate friends, and our friendship led to a union between the families. Men of my standing may recollect what a scholar Daylmer was ; and though it is a trivial thing to recall, yet some may remember a translation of his into Latin Alcaics of that magnificent chorus in the Antigone 268 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. about love,* which translation made some noise amongst us when we were freshmen. Daylmer died young, leaving some few results of his scholarship, which yet remain with me in manuscript. Ever since his death my sister and my niece have lived with me. My sister manages the house for me, and does not leave me much to do as regards the management of myself. But I must not complain, as it is a great thing to be loved and cared for by anybody ; and then too, my sister (her name is Marian) is always so right and reasonable, as she proves to me that what I want now is inconsistent with what I wanted on some other occasion, or would not do for me upon some former showing of mine, or would not be proper with my position in the parish. Somehow I seem to walk between walls which I am said to have helped to build myself. I should rather like to look into the open country sometimes. However, Marian is a good creature, and totally unconscious of wishing to manage any one. I do not know what I should do without her. Did she ever look into a book, I would not say all that I have just said, but it is quite confidential with the public. My niece Lucy is my darling. I have educated * *Epw aviKare fia-^av Soph. Ant. v. 781. ON THE ART OF LIVING. 269 her myself. I hope I have not done unwisely, but I have taught her Greek; for I thought she should know something of the study in which her father excelled, and be able to form some notion of his great powers of criticism. We often talk of him, and I think we are able to do this much better as she knows more of what were his favourite studies. Lucy has long been a great favourite of Milverton's ; and in former days (for he had then too the same theory he has given us in his essay on education, of the advantage of some training for women that should sternly exercise the reason) he essayed, I recollect, to teach her Euclid, which, considering he expected the most unreasonably swift apprehension and progress, went off very well. I knew he would not take it ill, if I sent her over in my place ; and that she would bring me back some report of the conversation. In this she seems to have succeeded very well. Milverton and Ellesmere were already out upon the lawn expecting me, when Lucy and her mother entered the gate at Worth-Ashton. Ellesmere. This is an honour, Miss Daylmer. " Gratior it dies." Latin is not rude in the presence of learned young ladies, you know. Milverton. I hope, Mrs. Daylmer, there is nothing the matter with Dunsford ? 270 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. Mrs. Day Inter. He is not well, I am sorry to say, and so sends Lucy to pick up what she can for him of your talk to bring back and amuse him with. I know you gentlemen will not care to have me with you : so I will go and chat with Phoebe, and see the new dairy. How can you both be so foolish as to be lying on the grass, as you were when we came in ? That is, I am sure, the way in which my brother gets ill, and I shall not allow him to come over, if you don't take more care of him. Ellesmere. My good Mrs. Daylmer, if some twenty years ago you had kept our friend out of the Combination room at College, it might have been more to the purpose : for my opinion is that it is the gout and nothing else which Lucy. No, Mr. Ellesmere, my uncle says not. Ellesmere. I know he does not choose to call it by that name. I do not see why not. I always thought it was very respectable in the country to have the gout. But we have a long chapter before us, as I see from that solemn bulk of paper, and so we must not talk any more just now. You do not know, Miss Daylmer, what you have before you to endure, or you would have preferred to have had, yourself, a fit of the gout at least such a fit as would not have prevented you from going to a dance the next day. Milverton. Do not be frightened, Lucy ; the subject for to-day's reading shall not be very terrific in the way of dulness ; but shall rather touch on matters which any lady may like to consider, and the regulation of which lies entirely within her province. Ellesmere (muttering to himself). " The suckling of fools," an essay by Leonard Milverton ; " The chronicling ON THE ART OF LIVING. 271 of small beer," an historical attempt by John Ellesmere. I am merely running over in my mind the catalogue of essays we keep by us, Miss Daylmer, for the edification of our female friends when they are good enough to honour our readings with their presence. Milverton. It is on the " art of living." Ellesmere. Oh, I had forgotten to mention that essay, Miss Daylmer ; that is our essay on cookery the one we always begin with in reading to ladies ; as Milverton said, " entirely within their province." I wish they paid more attention to it ; but people seldom do attend to things within their province. Milverton. Do not mind his impertinence, Lucy. Lucy. I am keeping my attention, Mr. Milverton, for what I am sure I shall like better than even Mr. Elles- mere's witty sayings. Pray do not let us detain you from beginning. Mr. Milverton then read the following essay ON THE ART OF LIVING. IT has often occurred to me to think how inappro- priate is the eulogy of the moralist, or the preacher, on the life of the rich and powerful, when for the sake of contrast it is set up as if it were the height of human success, at least in the way in which it professes to succeed. You would think, to hear a preacher of this kind, that the lives of people in the 272 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. upper classes were something really comfortable, genial, and beautiful. To be sure, he intimates that all this joy and beauty is likely to be paid for by some dire equivalent hereafter ; but of its existence here he entertains no doubt. To me, on the contrary, since my first entrance into society, the life of those who are considered to be the most highly favoured by the God of this world has always appeared poor, mean, joyless, and in some respects even squalid. The cottage of a poor man is certainly a sad affair to contemplate. Should an average specimen of this kind of building of our date be dug up hereafter, when 'the world has largely improved in these things (if it does), this cottage will not give a very exalted idea of the civilization of the nineteenth century. But then, considering the narrowness of means of the owner, (for life, except with considerable dexterity and knowledge, cannot be made very beautiful on an income varying from six shillings to twelve shillings a week,) this cottage is not so bad. Its defects are negative, whereas the new-built house of a rich man often exemplifies a career of blunders. Not only where masses of men are congregated together, but even in mansions built in solitary places, the provisions for pure air, for water, and for the means of cleanliness of all kinds, are defective and ON THE ART OF LIVING. 273 absurd ; and even amongst the most practical people in the world, science is but beginning to be wedded to the arts of life. I think it may also be observed that, independently of these errors committed with regard to scientific matters, such as change of air, maintenance of warmth and the supply of light, there is also a singular inaptitude of means to ends, which prevails generally throughout the human aids and appliances for living I mean dress, houses, equipages and house- hold furniture. The causes of this unsuitableness of means to ends lie very deep in human nature and in the present form of human society. I attribute them chiefly to the imitative nature of the great bulk of man- kind, and to the division of labour, which latter practice being carried to a great extent in every civilized state, renders a man expert in his own business, but timid even in judging of what he has not to make, but only to use. The result is, I believe, that more than half of what we do to procure good, is needless or mischievous : in fact that more than half of the labour and capital of the world is wasted : in savage life, by not knowing how to compass what is necessary; in civilized life, by the pursuit of what is needless. It is almost impossible to attribute too much effect to this quality of imitativeness, as most men rule their wants by next to no thought of their own, but simply VOL. i. 1 8 274 FKIEA'DS IN COUNCIL. by what they see around them. To give examples : there are very few cities, for instance, in the world where it would be more convenient to have porches, or covered entrances to the houses, than in London. There cannot well be a city more devoid of such things. Again, there can hardly be a more effectual arrangement for producing a rapid influx of cold air than a modern carriage; indeed it is constructed in every way upon wrong principles. A person going to buy such a thing would be glad to have ventilation without draught, to have a carriage roomy and yet light ; but he is shown what is the fashion and adopts it. Dress furnishes a still more striking illustration of imitation carried to an extreme. Here, at the sacrifice of comfort, time and money, we follow the schemes of vanity and ugliness; and adopt permanently what were the fleeting notions of some of the most foolish of mankind. I can imagine that some of my readers who have never thought upon these subjects, would contest the point as regards the above instances ; but I will give others which they cannot contend against. Upon some occasion in former days, perhaps upon a sudden attack of a town, the great clock of the place, which they were probably putting up or mending, was left with one hand. This you would have imagined would have been considered a defect, and would have ON THE ART OF LIVING. 275 been remedied the first time the town became quiet. But no ; like many other things, not having been finished at the time it was begun, it remained un- finished ; after remaining long in that state, people began to think that this defect was intentional ; some foolish person imitated it ; in the race of folly there are always many runners, and the result in this particular case is, that there are scores of clocks set up in public places, which exercise the patience and the ingenuity of the hurried and vexed spectator who, if he has good eyesight and some power of calculating, may make an approximation to the time which the two hands would have told him accurately at once. Another instance occurs to me of a similar kind. There is a large and increasing portion of the human species, who have to make constant reference to dictionaries. Now, there are two instances in the alphabet of two consecutive letters, which were in former times one letter. The words beginning with these letters are often still arranged as if they belonged to one letter. Hence, there constantly arises a con- fusion in those parts of the dictionary alluded to, which I will venture to say has cost every studious person much loss of time and some loss of temper, (for study does not always render the temper im- pregnable) and which loss of time and temper they 276 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. may attribute entirely to the unwise imitativeness which has led one maker of dictionaries to follow another maker of dictionaries in confounding his I's and his J's, his U's and his V's, just as one sheep succeeds another in jumping needlessly over some imaginary obstacle. Another instance occurs to me. Travellers tell us that there is a nation very wise and thoughtful in many matters, who, nevertheless, choose to have all their most important documents (such, for example, as those used in conveyance of land) written upon leaves of such extent that you can hardly hold them in both hands, and all along in one line, so that it is very difficult to go from line to line down the page. It is curious, however, to notice how injured humanity protects itself; for these documents are written in such jargon, and so many unnecessary words are put in, that it does not much matter whether you do skip a line, or not, in attempting to go regularly down the page. This people is very skilful in building boats and is perpetually trying improvements in that art ; but as regards these wide pages of jargon, no race can be more contemptibly imitative and conservative of wrong. The above have chiefly been physical instances of the ill effects of imitation as regards the art of living ; ON THE ART OF LIVING. 277 yet these are but trifling. Men might live with very foolish furniture around them, with very ill-arranged dictionaries and worse grammars, with very ridiculous equipages, with absurdly ill-built houses, noisy and smoky, mostly of one pattern and that a bad one, nay even in an ill-ventilated town, where every form of disease is rising up and curling about them, which fortunately they do not see : in the midst of all this, men might live happily, if all were well in their social regulations and social intercourse ; if they had found out the art of living in these important respects. But, as it is, how poor a thing is social intercourse. How often in society a man goes out, from interested or vain motives, at most unseasonable hours, in very uncom- fortable clothes, to sit or stand in a constrained position, inhaling tainted air, suffering from great heat, and his sole occupation or amusement being to talk only to talk. I do not mean to say that there are not delightful meetings in society, which all who were present at remember afterwards, where the party has been well chosen, the host and hostess genial (a matter of the first necessity), where wit has been kind as well as playful, where information has known how to be silent as well as how to speak, where good-humour to the absent as well as to the present has assured the company that they were 278 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. among good people, where ostentation has gone away to some more gilded rooms, and where a certain feeling of regard and confidence has spread throughout the company, so that each man has spoken out from his heart. But these are sadly rare ; they are days, as the Romans would say, to be marked with chalk ; and it would not fatigue any man to mark those which he himself has experienced. The main current of society is very dreary and dull, and not the less so for its restlessness. The chief hindrances to its improvement are of a moral nature, and may be placed under the following heads. These hindrances to the pleasure and profit of society (and by society I do not mean the society of the great world, as we call it, but the humblest and smallest reunions down to the domestic circle) these hindrances may be thus enumerated want of truth, vanity, shyness, imitation, foolish concern about trifles, want of faithfulness to society, which leads to repetition and publicity, habits of ridicule, and puritanical notions. I began my list with want of truth, which I have always contended is as fatal, if not more so, to enjoy- ment as it is to business. From want of the boldness which truth requires, people are driven into uncon- genial society, into many modes of needless and ON THE ART OF LIVING. 279 painful ostentation, and into various pretences, excuses, and all sorts of vexatious dissimulation. The spirit of barter is carried into the amusements and enjoyments of life ; and, as in business, the want of truth prevents you often from knowing what the person you are dealing with really wishes and means, so in pleasure, you are equally unable to know whether you are gratifying others ; and you offer what is not wanted and what you do not wish to offer, to one who accepts it only from the fear of giving offence to you. Shyness comes next in our catalogue, for I believe if most young persons were to tell us what they had suffered from shyness upon their entrance into society, it would well deserve to be placed next to want of truth as a hindrance to the enjoyment of society. Now, admitting that there is a certain degree of graceful modesty mixed up with this shyness, very becoming in the young, there is at the same time a great deal of needless care about what others think and say. In fact it proceeds from a painful egotism, sharpened by needless self-examinations and foolish imaginations in which the shy youth or maiden is tormented by his or her personality, and is haunted by imagining that he or she is the centre of the circle the observed of all observers. The great cause of 280 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. this shyness is not sufficiently accustoming children to society, or making them suppose that their conduct in it is a matter of extreme importance, and especially in urging them from their earliest youth by this most injurious of all sayings, If you do this or that, what will be said, what will be thought of you? thus referring the child not to religion, not to wisdom, not to virtue, not even to the opinion of those whose opinion ought to have weight, but to the opinion of whatever society he may chance to come into. I often think that the parent, guardian, or teacher, who has happily omitted to instil this vile prudential consideration, or enabled the child to resist it, even if he, the teacher, has omitted much good advice and guidance, has still done better than that teacher or parent who has filled the child to the brim with good moral considerations, and yet has allowed this one piece of arrant worldliness to creep in. We are now, however, only considering its injurious effect as regards the enjoyment of society, which nobody can doubt. I have spoken of vanity as one of the moral hindrances to the pleasure and profit to be derived from society. There is a certain degree of vanity which, often accompanying good animal spirits, prompts a man to endeavour to please and to shine in society ; ON THE ART OF LIVING. 281 but any considerable extent of vanity is likely to be injurious to the peace of society. Under the influence of this passion, a man demands much, gives little, is easily offended, apt to be dishonest in conversation, and altogether is so prone to be small-minded, restless and unjust, that I think vanity must be looked upon as a great hindrance to the welfare of social inter- course. I come now to foolish concern about trifles a besetting error in highly-civilized communities. In these societies, there are many things both physical and intellectual which are outwardly complete, highly polished and varnished ; much too is in its proper place, and corresponds with what it ought to corre- spond to, k< Grove nods to grove, each alley has its brother," so that at last there comes a morbid excitement to have every little thing and circumstance square and neat, which neither nature nor man will allow. Hence the pleasure of visits and entertainments, and in general the plans and projects of social intercourse, are at the mercy of small accidents, absurd cares and trifling offences. When this care for small things is combined with an intense fear of the opinion of others, a state of mind is generated which will 282 . FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. neither allow the possessor of it to be happy in himself, or herself, nor permit those about him or her to enjoy any peace or comfort for long. It is of course a pre-eminent hindrance to the blessing of social intercourse. The next hindrance I shall mention is one rarely commented upon, but which I maintain to be very important want of faithfulness to society. A man should consider that in whatever company he is thrown, there are certain duties incident upon him in respect of that association. The first of these is reticence about what he hears in that society. We see this as regards the intercourse of intimate friends. If your friend in a quiet walk with you were to. tell you of some of his inner troubles and vexations, you would not consider yourself at liberty to mention these things in general society the next day. So, in all social intercourse, there is an implied faithfulness of the members of, the society, one to another ; and if this faithfulness were well maintained, not only would a great deal of pain and mischief be prevented, but men, knowing that they were surrounded by people with a nice sense of honour in this respect, would be more frank and explicit in all they said and did. As it is, a thoughtful and kind-hearted man is often obliged to make his discourse very barren lest it should be ON THE ART OF LIVING. 283 repeated to a circle for whom it was not intended, by whom it could not be understood, and who can rarely have before them the circumstance which led to its being uttered. The fault of indiscreet publication is very prevalent in the present day ; and has, I have no doubt, thrown a general constraint over all communi- cations, personal or by letter, amongst those very persons with whom unconstrained communication would be most valuable. I pass to another hindrance to the well being of social intercourse, namely, the habit of ridicule. There is a light, jesting, flippant, unkind mode of talking about things and persons very common in society, exceedingly different from wit, which stifles good conversation and gives a sense of general hostility rather than sociability as if men came together chiefly for the purpose of ridiculing their neighbours and of talking slightly about matters of great concern. I am not sure that this conduct in society is not a result rather than a cause, a result of vanity, want of truth, want of faithfulness and other hindrances which we have been considering. It certainly bespeaks a lamentable want of charity, and shows that those who indulge in it are sadly ignorant of the dignity of social intercourse, and of what a grand thing it might be. 284 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. Lastly, there is the want of something to do besides talking, which must be put down as one of the greatest drawbacks to the pleasantness, as well as usefulness, of social intercourse. Puritanical notions have gone some way in occasioning this want, by forbidding many innocent or indifferent amusements. But I suspect that anybody who should study human nature much, would find that it was one of the most dangerous amusements to bring people together to talk who have but little to say. The more variety men have in their amusements the better; and I confess that I am one of those who think that games are often very good instructors of mankind, and as little mischievous as anything else they do. But this consideration of the want of something to do besides talking, leads naturally to that branch of the art of living which is connected with accomplish- ments. In this we have hitherto been singularly neglectful ; and our poor and arid education has often made time hang heavy on our hands, given oppor- tunity for scandal, occasioned domestic dissension, and prevented the just enjoyment we should have had of the gifts of nature. More large and general cultivation of music, of the fine arts, of manly and graceful exercises, of various minor branches of science and natural philosophy, will, I am persuaded, enhance ON THE ART OF LIVING. 285 greatly the pleasure of society, and mainly in this, that it will fill up that want of something to do besides talking, which is so grievously felt at present. A group of children, with their nursery chairs as play- things, are often able to make a better and pleasanter evening of it than an assembly of fine people in London, where nobody has anything to do, where nothing is going on but vapid conversation, where the ladies dare not move freely about, and where a good chorus, a childish game, or even the liberty to work or read, would be a perfect Godsend to the whole assembly. This, however, is but a very small part of the advantage and aid to the art of living which would flow from a greatly widened basis of education in accomplishments and what are now deemed minor studies. I am persuaded that the whole of life would be beautified and vivified by them ; and one great advantage, which I do not fear to repeat, though I have urged it two or three times before in different places, is that from this variety of cultivation various excellences would be developed in persons whose natures not being suitable for the few things cultivated and rewarded at present, are thick with thorns and briers, and present the appearance of waste land, whereas if sown with the fit seed and tended in a proper manner, they would 286 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. come into some sort of cultivation, would bring forth something good, perhaps something which is excellent of its kind. Such people, who now lie sunk in self- disrespect, would become useful, ornamental, and therefore genial; they would be an assistance to society instead of a weight upon it. Another great matter as regards the art of living is the art of living with inferiors. A house may be ever so well arranged for domestic and social comfort, the principal inmates of it well-disposed and accomplished people, their circumstances of life felicitous; yet if there is a want of that harmony which should extend throughout every house, embracing all the members of the household, there is an under-current of vexa- tion sufficient to infect and deaden all the above- named advantages. To obviate this is one of the great difficulties of modern life, a difficulty not only great in itself, but largely aggravated by mismanage- ment for many generations. In dealing with servants, we have to deal with some of the worst educated people in the country not only ill-instructed for the peculiar functions they have to undertake, but ill- educated both in mind and soul, and having all the insubordination of extreme ignorance. This will improve however; and perhaps one of the greatest ON THE ART OF LIVING. 287 rewards the rich will enjoy, for having of late years encouraged and facilitated education amongst the poor, will arise from their being furnished with a wiser, more amiable, and, therefore, more governable set of dependants. The duties of masters, too, are often most inadequately fulfilled, so that a man who wishes to act rightly in this respect often finds that he has to work upon bad material which has already been badly treated. Still, with all these disadvantages, it is surprising how much may be done with servants by firmness, kindness, geniality, and just familiarity. Under the head of kindness I should particularly wish to include full employment. The master who keeps one servant more than he has absolutely need for is not only a mischief to society, but is unkind to that servant and to all his fellow-servants ; for what is more cruel to a vacant mind than to leave it half employed ? A master, such as I would have him, should not only exercise passive kindness, but active kindness, towards his servants, should interest himself in their relationships, partake their hopes and fears, be watch- ful to provide amusements for them, and should look upon them as his children once or twice removed. Instances of ingratitude and intractability, partial defeats as well as partial successes, such a man will be sure to meet with ; but, at any rate, he will have 288 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. done his best to produce that harmony in his house- hold which, viewed merely with regard to the enjoy- ment of life, must be looked upon as one of the most desirable attainments in the art of living. It may be thought that in the course of this essay the ends proposed have not been very great, and that too much mention has been made of such words as enjoyment. But at least the means proposed have not been ignoble ones ; and I am convinced that, in the furtherance of the art of living, true enjoyment would be often found to march hand in hand with economy, with truth, and especially with kindness and thoughtfulness for those around us. Benevolent people of the present day are constantly investigating the life of the poorer classes, in order to make it more comely, more dignified, more enjoyable. There is no doubt that much may be done in this direction ; but I contend that the standard of what is beautiful in living requires to be raised generally, and it seems to me that the life of the poor will not be well arranged while that of so many of the rich remains vapid, insincere, unenjoyable, and unadorned. ON THE ART OF LIVING. 289 Ellesmere. I agree with you in all you have said in dispraise. The many failures of civilized life make one long for something more free and wider ; and would prove one of the main incentives to colonization, except that people find out the insipidity of civilized life when they are too stiff and rooted to think of going to a young colony. I was quite surprised the other day to find even in such a writer as Sydney Smith, who, I should have imagined, would have been pretty well satisfied with the present state of things in our old world, a sentence or two intimating that he conceived how people might go into distant climes to get rid of some of the nuisances of civilization, a passage, in fact, which reminded me of that in Eothen, where the traveller exclaims, " The first night of your first campaign, (though you be but a mere peaceful campaigner) is a glorious time in your life. It is so sweet to find oneself free from the stale civiliza- tion of Europe ! Oh, my dear ally ! when first you spread your carpet in the midst of these eastern scenes, do think for a moment of those your fellow-creatures, that dwell in squares and streets, and even (for such is the fate of many !) in actual country-houses ; think of the people that are ' presenting their compliments ' and ' requesting the honour,' and ' much regretting,' of those that are pinioned at dinner tables, or stuck up in ball-rooms, or cruelly planted in pews ay, think of these, and so remembering how many poor devils are living in a state of utter respectability, you will glory the more in your own delightful escape." Milverton. On the other hand, I often feel how much might be made of society here. Whenever you go into VOL. I. IQ 290 , FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. any neighbourhood, or penetrate into any small circle of society, you are surprised at the agreeable people there are in that quarter such people as you thought belonged only to your own particular circle. Yet it seems as if there was a want of some master mind devoted to the arts of social life, which should bring out the good qualities of those around it, and sun them into more active being. Ellesmere. This is all meant to be carried home, Miss Daylmer, to the Grange, that your uncle may be induced to believe that Milverton thinks there are civilized people even in these remote parts of the earth, but you know better. Lucy. Having only heard that part of the wit and wisdom of London which you, Mr. Ellesmere, and Mr. Milverton, bring down to us occasionally, I cannot pre- tend to judge of its intellectual resources ; but I recollect, when .1 was reading the Life of Sir Walter Scott, that on some occasion of his being in town, he dined with a company whom he called the wits, a short time after- wards at a dinner-party of lawyers, a day or two after that at a dinner-party of bishops ; and he says that the lawyers beat the wits, and the bishops the lawyers. Now we have plenty of clergymen about here, and it is from clergymen that bishops are made. For my own part, I am afraid that I am simple enough to prefer the society of the old women and children whom I go to visit in our parish to all that London could give me. Ellesmere. Ah, you would find that most of us had forgotten our Greek, Miss Daylmer, and that we should ON THE ART OF LIVING. 291 form but indifferent companions to a modern version of Lady Jane Grey. Milverton. Do not answer him any more, Lucy : you see he is obliged to have recourse to personalities. Ellesmere. Just as if that Scott story was not aimed at me. But, Milverton, you were going to say something. Milverton. Yes. I was going to say that I do not think sufficient credit is given to people for eminence in social qualities. To take an instance, you know our old college friend . Well, you know what a serviceable man he is in society, how sure he is in any company to promote the happiness and amusement of all around him. His wit, Lucy, is of the lambent and not of the forked kind : it lights up every topic with grace and variety, and it hurts nobody. I suppose no one ever left his company aggrieved by any saying of his. Very often you can carry away nothing that he has said, for his humour has been continuous, and a pailful of water from any river will no more give a notion of its beauty than a quotation from his conversation of its richness, grace and drollery. I do not know whether is, or will be, suc- cessful in his profession ; that greatly depends upon other people ; but to my mind he is a successful man. If he does not, however, obtain professional success, he may have all the graces and merits in the world, but most people will pronounce his life a failure. Then you have some man of keen intellect, eminently disagreeable, living on the abuses of his age Ellesmere. Do not be personal, Milverton. Milverton. And this man makes an abundance of money or gains great station, and you run after him and 292 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. shout his praises and desire to have his countenance on canvas or in marble. When I look round upon some of the statues in the world, I am afraid of the indignation and contempt which rise up in my mind. Ellesmere. Whew ! it is pretty evident that our pre- siding friend Dunsford is not here. When these out- wardly calm and placid men do break out, Miss Daylmer, it is somewhat volcanic. Lucy. I have heard my uncle say, Mr. Ellesmere, that he prefers downright anger to a sneer. Ellesmere. How, womanlike, somebody always shelters herself behind the sayings of some one else. Milverton. I need not have expressed myself so warmly nor so unjustly ; for nobody pretends that notoriety, the cause of many a statue being set up, is a sure measure of merit. Lucy. Never mind, Mr. Milverton ; I will only repeat to my uncle just so much of your outbreak as will enable him to understand Mr. Ellesmere's ill-nature and sarcasm. Ellesmere. Equitable, certainly : a rustic Daniel come to judgment ! This is the way I am always treated here ; none of you will buy a bust of me, it is clear. But to go back to the subject. If you are not quite satisfied with the state of society in this country, do you know of any other people who fulfil better your idea of the art of living, or who might do so ? The Spaniards, for instance ; I have heard you frequently praise them for various things. Do they make life so very successful a transaction ? Milverton. I have been but too short a time in their ON THE ART OF LIVING. 293 country to speak with any confidence, but I will give you my impressions. Ellesmere. You may see a great deal of people in travelling with them and amongst them ; though of course there are things in a foreign country which you may utterly misunderstand, or pass by, if you do not get into society, and that, of course, requires time. Milverton. They seemed to me a most intelligent people admirably courteous, without any of the mere grimace of courtesy very courageous, as many a story of their late wars will testify and, altogether, I must say, not unlike ourselves, especially the Castilians, except that they are more courteous and less enterprising ; and to answer specially the question you first addressed to me about them, I think they bid fair to understand the art of living as well as any nation on the earth. Ellesmere. Well, how is it that they make such a bad business of it in the way of government ? Milverton. Nations, like individuals, have what, for want of a more pious name, we may call their fortune, good and ill. These people have had a series of untoward circumstances to contend against their monarchs holding other dominions too much gold coming in upon them from the Indies, and standing in the way of home culture and domestic enterprise then disputed successions for many, many years their contests at present having little or no principle in them, but being chiefly personal contests. These things, or things like them, they used to say to me themselves. Ellesmere. They were aware then of their political state ? VOL. I. 19 3 294 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. Milverton. Thoroughly. Moreover, in all classes, as far as I saw, the national feeling is very strong. I have before me now the elaborate bow which a muleteer, with whom I was coming from the Escurial, made to me on my happening in conversation about his country to utter some just praise of it. He ran on from my side before me to the middle of the road, and receiving me, as it were, made a bow of which this is but a very faint and angular representation. Ellesmere, Well, their time may come again. Milverlon. If you mean for national pre-eminence, I do not know that I wish it for them. Of course one would wish the government to be much more stable and well directed than it has been. But withal, the bulk of the people at present seems to me anything but ill off. These southern nations have a way of enjoying life and a power of lazy contentment not altogether to be despised. But to go back for a moment to their intelligence. The general conversation in a diligence was almost always good. I have tried, for the purpose of learning the language, to get them to give me the distinctions between words nearly allied such as in English, pretty, handsome, beautiful, elegant, the proper use of which it would require some nicety to explain to a foreigner. Ellesmere. And they managed it well ? Milverton. Yes. Another thing struck me much. As far as I could see, they are an accurate people, not pretending to understand things before they do. I always augur much from that in a mart, or in a people. Ellesmere. As to the country itself, I suppose that is magnificent. Tell us something about it ; but do not be ON THE ART OF LIVING. 295 voluminous. I very soon get tired of hearing other people's travels. Tell us, for instance, about the Cathedral at Seville, the town of Cadiz, and the Alhambra. Milverton. Well, the three things you have just men- tioned did not lose any of their hold on the imagination by being seen. They quite came up to what has been said of them. Ellesmere. The Moorish architecture delighted you then? Milverton. Yes : not only in their palaces but in their houses. Those Moors knew well that important part of the art of living which consists in building a house, therein being very superior to the Frankish nations. Ellesmere. It is very well to tell us, as you did just now, that things come up to the descriptions of them, which is like a novelist " drawing a veil " over the feelings of his hero and heroine, when they become troublesome and difficult to describe. But now sit down again, and describe to Miss Daylmer and me what the Alhambra is like. I have read no description, I never do read such things. Miss Daylmer has, I suppose ; for every earthly thing is in Pinnock. Lucy. I am sure, Mr. Milverton, you cannot resist such an encouraging invitation to describe. I will engage to put aside all the information I have derived from Pinnock. and will listen, like the dutiful pupil I once was, to you with the proper blankness of mind which Mr. Ellesmere vouches for himself. Milverton. Well, come with me then in imagination to the Generalife, not a part of the Alhambra, but another palace close to it and more elevated, the summer palace 296 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. of the Moorish kings, built exactly in the same style as the Alhambra. We will imagine ourselves to have got to the highest point of it, or to be looking down from the gallery which faces southwards. Beneath us, far beneath us, at the base of the palace, lies the town, in itself an object of great beauty. To the left, still close to us, the rocks down there have holes in them, the habitations of the gipsies. Beyond is the beautiful Vega, a vast green plain with water running through it. The whole scene is enclosed by mountains, forming an amphitheatre such as we might think fit for the tournament of the world, or rather for the world's empire to be fought for. Westward, the sun, as I saw it, is declining over the mountains : we look to the east, and high up above us, and seemingly close to us, lies the Sierra Nevada, its snows coloured by the setting sun. Fed by that perpetual snow, streams are rushing through the elevated court where we stand, and are then seen courSing down the gardens and bubbling over the fountains, making their way to the green Vega. The luxury of Heat and the luxury of Cold meet here : and find rooms worthy such great powers to revel in. Here (and how rare it is) man, instead of defacing nature, has adorned it. These light columns ; this profusion of ornament which yet never intrudes ; this aptitude of the building for the climate and the people and the place, make us not ashamed of our fellow-men having built there. I strive to see it all again ; but there are some things I cannot see : and yet I turned and looked and came again, and looked again and tried to impress it on my brain that it might be with me sometimes hereafter. Lucy. But you kept a diary ? ON THE ART OF LIVING. 297 Milverton. No, Lucy ; nor would I if I were to go again. It is not words that will do. I could write many words about it now, but they would not bring back to me what I want, though they might have some appropriateness. I thought of this the other day when I was looking over your copy of Milnes's Poems. I know he is a great favourite of yours. There is a sonnet giving the advice which I have already taken. Lucy. Lessons to Poets ? Milverton. Yes, that is the title I think : only it must be adapted in my case to prose writers. But do you recollect it, Lucy, well enough to give Ellesmere any notion of it ? Lucy. I do recollect it, I believe, but I do not much like repeating it, because Mr. Ellesmere will be sure to tear it to pieces, if he is not in the humour to hear it, and though I do not mind what he says to me, I do not like to have any favourite bit of poetry shaken about in his critical mouth as that bit of cloth is by Rollo. Ellesmere. Upon my word, Attic maiden, you are very unfair ; just as if, too, it were anything remarkable, a man's criticism depending upon his humours. Milverton. He deserves the sonnet for that satire on his own tribe, Lucy. Lucy. ' ' Try not, or murmur not if tried in vain, In fair rememberable words to set Each scene or presence of especial gain, As hoarded gems in precious cabinet. Simply enjoy the present loveliness ; Let it become a portion of your being ; Close your glad gaze, but see it none the less, No clearer with your eye, than spirit, seeing. 298 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. And, when you part at last, turn once again, Swearing that beauty shall be unforgot : So in far sorrows it shall ease your pain, In distant struggles it shall calm your strife, And in your further and serener life, Who says that it shall be remembered not ? " Milverton. It is excellent advice. If you make too much of diary-keeping, you blur every beautiful sight by thinking what you should write about it. Here Mrs. Uaylmer entered ; the conversation took another turn; and after some mock salutations of great courtesy between my niece and Ellesmere, upon her receiving some ironical messages sent by him to me, she came away to give me the essay, and to relate the above conversation. END OF VOL. ;. LONDON: PRINTED BY SMITH, ELDER AND CO., OLD BAILEY, E.G. . ^ r