GIFT OF 
 Mrs. John B. Casserly 
 
WORKS OF 
 
 WILLIAM MATHEWS, 
 
 IN THE ORDEK OF THEIR PUBLICATION, 
 
 GETTING ON IN THE WORLD; or, 
 
 Hints on Success in Life. 1 volume. 
 12ino. Pages 374. Price $1 50 
 
 THE GREAT CONVERSERS, and Other 
 
 Essays. 1 volume. 12mo. Pages 304. Price 1 50 
 
 WORDS, THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 
 
 1 volume. 12mo. Pages 384. Price 150 
 
 HOURS WITH MEN AND BOOKS. 
 
 1 volume. 12mo. Pages 384. Price 150 
 
 MONDAY- CHATS; A Selection from the 
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 with a Biographical and Critical Introduction 
 by the Translator. 1 volume. 12mo. Pages 386. 
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 ORATORY AND ORATORS. 1 volume. 
 
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 LITERARY STYLE, and Other Essays. 
 
 1 volume. 12mo. Pages 345. Price 150 
 
LITERARY STYLE, 
 
 AND OTHEE ESSAYS. 
 
 BY WILLIAM MATHEWS, LL.D., 
 // 
 
 AUTHOR or "GETTING ON IN THE WORLD," " WORDS; THEIR USE AND 
 ABUSE," "ORATORY AND ORATORS," ETC. ETC. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 
 
 1881. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1881, 
 BY S. C. GRIGGS & COMPANY. 
 
 KMISHT 
 
 DONOHUB & HBNNEBEBRT, BINDERS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. LITERARY STYLE, - 
 
 II. THE DUTY OF PRAISE, - 
 
 III. PERIODICAL LITERATURE, 
 
 IV. "THE BLUES" AND THEIR REMEDY, 
 V. THE MODESTY OF GENIUS, - 
 
 VI. SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM, 
 
 VII. THE IDEAL AND THE REAL, 
 
 VIII. FAT vs. LEAN, 
 
 IX. MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS, 
 
 X. FOOLS, - 
 
 XL ANGLING, 
 
 XII. INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS, 
 
 XIII. A PLEA FOR THE ERRING, - 
 
 XIV. THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY, 
 XV. THE SEASON OF TRAVEL, - 
 
 XVI. HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION, 
 
 XVII. ORIGINALITY, 
 
 XVIII. THE ART OF LISTENING, 
 
 XIX. WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 
 
 XX. OFFICE-SEEKING, 
 
 XXI. AMERICANISMS, 
 
 XXII. INDEX, - - - - 
 
 PAGB 
 
 5 
 
 54 
 61 
 72 
 85 
 100 
 111 
 131 
 141 
 173 
 182 
 200 
 207 
 214 
 234 
 241 
 251 
 279 
 287 
 305 
 320 
 337 
 
 56943 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 TTTITHIN a few years a fresh interest has been awak- 
 * V ened, among writers and critics, in literary style. 
 It is beginning to be felt more keenly than for a long time 
 before, that, as the value of the materials of a building, 
 whatever their cost, depends mainly upon the skill with 
 which they are put together, so in literary architecture it 
 is the manner in which the ideas are fitted together into a 
 symmetrical and harmonious whole, as well as adorned and 
 embellished, that, quite as much as the ideas themselves, 
 constitutes the worth of an essay, an oration, or a poem. 
 As the diamond or the emerald, even the Kohinoor itself, 
 has little beauty as it lies in the mine, but must be freed 
 from its incrustations, and cut and polished by the lapidary, 
 before it is fit to blaze in the coronet of a queen, or to 
 sparkle on the breast of beauty, so thought in the ore has 
 little use or charm, and sparkles and captivates only when 
 polished and set in cunning sentences by the literary artist. 
 But there is another and more potent reason for the grow 
 ing estimation of style. As an instrument for winning the 
 public attention, for saving the reader all needless labor, 
 and for keeping a hold on the grateful memory, its value 
 cannot be easily exaggerated. A hundred years ago, in the 
 days of stage-coaches and ramage presses, when literature 
 did not come to us in bales, and to be a man of one book 
 was no disgrace, style might have been regarded as a luxury; 
 but in this age of steam-presses and electrotype-printing, 
 
6 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 with its thousand distractions from study, and its deluge of 
 new publications that must be skimmed by all who would 
 keep abreast with the intelligence of the time, this element 
 of literature is sw?ftly acquiring a new utilitarian value. 
 When W3 consider that Germany alone prints 15,000 books 
 a year; that one library only, the National at Paris, 
 contains 150,000 acres of printed paper; that in one rami 
 fied science, e. g. chemistry, the student needs fourteen years 
 barely to overtake knowledge as it now stands, while, 
 nevertheless, the two lobes of the human brain are not a 
 whit larger to-day than in the days of Adam; that, even 
 after deducting all the old books which the process of 
 "natural selection" and the "survival of the fittest" has 
 spared us from reading, the remnant even of literary and 
 other masterpieces, which cannot be stormed by the most 
 valiant reader, but must be acquired by slow " sap," is 
 simply appalling; and, finally, that even the labor-saving 
 machinery of periodical literature, which was to give us 
 condensations and essences in place of the bulky originals, 
 is already overwhelming us with an inundation of its own, 
 it is easy to see that the manner in which a writer com 
 municates his ideas is hardly less important than the ideas 
 themselves. 
 
 But what, it may be asked, do we mean by style? We 
 shall not attempt any technical definition, but simply say 
 that by it we understand, first of all, such a choice and 
 arrangement of words as shall convey the author s meaning 
 most clearly and exactly, in the logical order of the ideas; 
 secondly, such a balance of clause and structural grace of 
 sentence as shall satisfy the sense of beauty; and, lastly, 
 such a propriety, economy, and elegance of expression, as 
 shall combine business-like brevity with artistic beauty. 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 7 
 
 All these qualities will be found united in styles of the highest 
 order; and therefore style has been well defined as an artistic 
 expedient to make reading easy, and to perpetuate the life 
 of written thought. 
 
 Style, in this sense, is, and ever has been, the most vital 
 element of literary immortality. If we look at the brief 
 list of books which, among the millions that have sunk into 
 oblivion, have kept afloat on the stream of time, we shall 
 find that they have owed their buoyancy to this quality. 
 More than any other, it is a writer s own property; and no 
 one, not even time itself, can rob him of it, or even dimin 
 ish its value. Facts may be forgotten, learning may grow 
 commonplace, startling truths dwindle into mere truisms; 
 but a grand or beautiful style can never lose its freshness 
 or its charm. It is the felicity and idiomatic naivete Q his 
 diction that has raised the little fishing-book of Walton, the 
 linen-draper, to the dignity of a classic, and a similar charm 
 keeps the writings of Addison as green as in the days of 
 Queen Anne. Even works of transcendent intellectual 
 merit may fail of high success through lack of this prop 
 erty; while works of second and even third-rate value, 
 works which swarm with pernicious errors, with false 
 statements and bad logic, may obtain a passport to 
 futurity through the witchery of style. The crystal clear 
 ness and matchless grace of Paley s periods, which were the 
 envy of Coleridge, continue to attract readers, in spite of 
 his antiquated science and dangerous philosophy; and a 
 similar remark may be made of Bolingbroke. The racy, 
 sinewy, idiomatic style of Cobbett, the greatest master of 
 Saxon-English in this century, compels attention to the 
 arch-radical to-day as it compelled attention years ago. 
 Men are captivated by his style, who are shocked alike by 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 his opinions and his egotism, and offended by the profusion 
 of italics which, like ugly finger-posts, disfigure his page, 
 and emphasize till emphasis loses its power. For the pomp 
 and splendor of his style, " glowing with oriental color, and 
 rapid as a charge of Arab horse," even more than for his 
 colossal erudition, is Gibbon admired; it is "the ordered 
 march of his lordly prose, stately as a Roman legion s," that 
 is the secret of Macaulay s charm; and it is the unstudied 
 grace of Hume s periods which renders him, in spite of his 
 unfairness and defective erudition, in spite of his toryism 
 and infidelity, the popular historian of England. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, writing in the "Idler" upon the fate of 
 books, declares that if an author would be long remem 
 bered, he must choose a theme of enduring interest; but 
 the interest with which the " Provincial Letters " are read 
 to-day, by men who never look into the pages of the " Ram 
 bler" or the "Vanity of Human Wishes," shows that the 
 manner in which a subject is treated is often of more im 
 portance than the matter. It is one of the most signal 
 triumphs of genius that it can thus not only overcome the 
 disadvantages of a topic of ephemeral interest, but even 
 give permanent popularity to works which the progress of 
 knowledge renders imperfect; that it can so stamp itself 
 upon its productions, and mould them into beauty, as to 
 make men unwilling to return the gold to the melting-pot, 
 and work it up afresh. What is it but the severe and ex 
 quisite beauty of their form which has given such vitality 
 to the ancient classics, that time, which " antiquates an 
 tiquity itself," has left them untouched? Why do we never 
 tire of lingering over the pages of Virgil, unless we are 
 drawn to them by " the haunting music of his verse, the 
 rhythm and fall of his language? " " The ancients alone," 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 9 
 
 it has been truly said, " possessed in perfection the art of 
 embalming thought. The severe taste which surrounds 
 them has operated like the pure air of Egypt in preserving 
 the sculptures and paintings of that country; where travel 
 ers tell us that the traces of the chisel are often as sharp, 
 and the colors of the paintings as bright, as if the artists 
 had quitted their work but yesterday." 
 
 In works of art, or pure literature, the style is even 
 more important than the thought, for the reason that the 
 style is the artistic part, the only thing in which the writer 
 can show originality. The raw material out of which 
 essays, poems and novels are made, is limited in quantity, 
 and easily exhausted. The number of human passions upon 
 which changes can be rung is very small; and the situa 
 tions to which their play gives rise may be counted on the 
 fingers. Love returned and love unrequited, jealousy and 
 envy, pride, avarice, generosity and revenge, are the hinges 
 upon which all poems and romances turn, and these passions 
 have been the same ever since Adam. I live, I love, I am 
 happy, I am wretched, I was once young, I must die, 
 are very simple ideas, of which no one can claim a copy 
 right; yet out of these few root-ideas has flowed all the 
 poetry the world knows, and all that it ever will know. 
 In Homer and Virgil, Plautus and Terence, we have an 
 epitome of all the men and women on the planet, and the 
 writer who would add to their number must either repeat 
 them or portray monstrosities. Joubert felt this when he 
 cried: " Oh, how difficult it is to be at once ingenious and 
 sensible!" La Bruyere, long before him, had felt it when 
 he exclaimed: "All is said, and one comes too late, now that 
 there have been men for seven thousand years, and men 
 that have thought." It is common to talk of originality as 
 
10 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 the distinguishing mark of genius, when, on the contrary, 
 it is essentially receptive and passive in its nature. Its 
 power lies, not in finding out new material, but in impart 
 ing new life to whatever it discovers, new or old ; not in 
 creating its own fuel, but in fanning its collected fuel into 
 a flame. All the thought, the stuff or substance, of a new 
 poem or essay, is necessarily commonplace. The thing said 
 has been said in some form a thousand times before; the 
 writer s merit lies in the way he says it. We talk, indeed, 
 of creative intellects, but only Omnipotence can create; 
 man can only combine. As Praxiteles, when he wrought 
 his statue of Venus, did not produce it by a pure 
 effort of the imagination, but selected the most beautiful 
 parts of the most beautiful figures he could obtain as 
 models, and combined them into a harmonious whole, 
 so, to a great extent, are literary masterpieces produced. 
 Wherein lies the charm of the " golden-mouthed " Jeremy 
 Taylor? Is it in the absolute novelty of his thoughts? 
 or is it not rather in the fact that, as De Quincey says, old 
 thoughts are surveyed from novel stations and under 
 various angles, and a field absolutely exhausted throws up 
 eternally fresh verdure under the fructifying lava of burn 
 ing imagery? Even the wizard of Avon can strictly pro 
 duce nothing new; he can only call in the worn coin of 
 thought, melt it in his own crucible, and issue it with a 
 fresh superscription and an increased value. 
 
 What would De Quincey be without his style? Bob him 
 of the dazzling fence of his rhetoric, his word-painting, and 
 rhythm, strip him of his organ-like fugues, his majestic 
 swells and dying falls, leave to him only the bare, naked 
 ideas of his essays, and he will be De Quincey no longer. 
 It would be like robbing the rose of its color and perfume, 
 
LITERAKY STYLE. 11 
 
 or taking from an autumnal landscape its dreamy, hazy 
 atmosphere and its gorgeous dyes. Take the finest English 
 classic, The Fairy Queen, L Allegro or II Penseroso, 
 Midsummer Night s Dream; strip it of music, color, wit, 
 alliteration, the marriage of exquisite thoughts to ex 
 quisite language, all that belongs to form as distinguished 
 from the substance, and what will the residuum be? All 
 the ideas in these works are as old as creation. They were 
 everywhere in the air, and any other poet had as good a 
 right to use them as Milton, Spenser and Shakspeare. That 
 critical mouser, the Rev. John Mitford, in his notes to 
 Gray s poems, has shown that hardly an image, an epithet, 
 or even a line in them originated with the ostensible author. 
 Gray cribbed from Pope, Pope from Dryden, Dryden from 
 Milton, Milton from the Elizabethan classics, they from the 
 Latin poets, the Latin from the Greek, and so on till we 
 come to the original Prometheus, who stole the fire directly 
 from Heaven. But does this lessen the merit of these 
 authors? Grant that the finest passages in poetry are to a 
 great extent but embellished recollections of other men s 
 productions; does this detract one jot or tittle from the 
 poet s fame? The great thinkers of every age do not differ 
 from the little ones so much in having different thoughts, as 
 in sifting classifying and focalizing the same thoughts, 
 and, above all, in giving them to the world in the pearl of 
 exquisite and adequate expression. Give to two painters 
 the same pigments, and one of them will produce a " Trans 
 figuration," and the other will exhaust his genius upon 
 the sign-board of a country tavern ; as out of the same 
 stones may be reared the most beautiful or the most un 
 sightly of edifices, the Parthenon of Athens, or an Ameri 
 can Court-House. 
 
12 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 What is the secret of the popularity of our leading 
 journals? Is it their prodigious wisdom, their prophetic 
 sagacity, the breadth and accuracy of their knowledge, their 
 depth and range of thought, in short, their grasp of the 
 themes they discuss? No; the newspaper which each man 
 reads with the most delight is that which has mastered most 
 perfectly the art of putting things; which flatters his self- 
 esteem by giving to his own inchoate ideas artistical de 
 velopment and expression; which, in short, is a mirror in 
 which Jones or Brown can see with his own eyes the 
 Socrates he has taken himself to be. 
 
 Perhaps no other writer of the day has more powerfully- 
 influenced the English-speaking race than Carlyle. Beyond 
 all other living men he has, in certain important respects, 
 shaped and colored the thought of his time. As a historian, 
 he may be almost said to have revolutionized the French 
 Revolution, so different is the picture which other writers 
 have given us from that which blazes upon us under the 
 lurid torchlight of his genius. To those who have read 
 his great prose epic, it will be henceforth impossible to 
 remember the scenes he has described through any other 
 medium. As Helvellyn and Skiddaw are seen now only 
 through the glamour of Wordsworth s genius, as Jura and 
 Mont Blanc are transfigured, even to the tourist, by the 
 magic of Byron and Coleridge, so to Carlyle s readers 
 Danton and Robespierre, Mirabeau and Tinville, will be 
 forever what he has painted them. No other writer equals 
 the great Scotchman in the Rembrandt-like lights and 
 shadows of his style. While, as Mr. McCarthy says, he is 
 endowed with a marvelous power of depicting stormy scenes 
 and rugged, daring natures, yet "at times, strange, wild, 
 piercing notes of the pathetic are heard through his fierce 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 13 
 
 bursts of eloquence like the wail of a clarion thrilling be 
 neath the blasts of a storm." His pages abound in pictures 
 of human misery sadder than poet ever drew, more vivid 
 and startling than artist ever painted. In his conflict with 
 shams and quackeries he has dealt yeoman s blows, and 
 made the bankrupt institutions of England ring with their 
 own hollowness. What is the secret of his power? Is it 
 the absolute novelty of his thoughts? In no great writer 
 of equal power shall we find such an absolute dearth of 
 new ideas. The gospel of noble manhood which he so 
 passionately preaches is as old as Solomon. Its cardinal 
 ideas have been echoed and reechoed through the ages till 
 they have become the stalest of truisms. That brains are 
 the measure of worth; that duty, without reward, is the 
 end of life; that " work is worship 1 ; that a quack is a False 
 hood incarnate; that on a lie nothing can be built; that the 
 victim of wrong suffers less than the wrong-doer; that man 
 has a soul which cannot be satisfied with meats or drinks, 
 fine palaces and millions of money, or stars and ribands; 
 this is the one single peal of bells upon which the seer of 
 Chelsea has rung a succession of changes, with hardly a 
 note of variation, for over half a century. 
 
 Anything more musty or somniferous than these utter 
 ances, so far as their substance is concerned, can hardly be 
 found outside of Blair s sermons. Coming from a common 
 writer, they would induce a sleepiness which neither "poppy, 
 mandragora, nor all the drowsy sirups of the world " could 
 rival in producing. But preached in the strong, rugged 
 words, and with the tremendous emphasis of Carlyle, en 
 forced by sensational contrasts and epic interrogations, 
 made vivid by personification, apostrophe, hyperbole, and 
 enlivened by pictorial illustration, these old saws, which 
 
14 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 are really the essence of all morality, instead of making us 
 yawn, startle us like original and novel fancies. His imt 
 agination transfigures the meanest things, and conveys the 
 commonest thoughts in words that haunt the memory. 
 In his fine characterizations of Schiller and Alfieri, how 
 admirably he contrasts the two men: "The mind of the 
 one is like the ocean, beautiful in its strength, smiling 
 in the radiance of summer, and washing luxuriant and 
 romantic shores; that of the other is like some black, un 
 fathomable lake placed far mid the melancholy mountains; 
 bleak, solitary, desolate, but girdled with grim sky-piercing 
 cliffs, overshadowed with storms, and illuminated only by 
 the red glare of the lightning." How vividly by a few sug 
 gestive words he brings Johnson before us, not the John 
 son of Macaulay, the squalid, unkempt giant in dirty linen, 
 with straining eye-balls, greedily devouring his victuals, 
 not the husk or larvce of the literary leviathan, the poor 
 scrofula-scarred body without the soul, but Johnson " with 
 his great greedy heart and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; 
 stalking mournful on this earth, eagerly devouring what 
 spiritual thing he could come at," in short, the grand old 
 moral hero as he is, in the very center and core of his 
 being! A kind of grim Cyclopean humor gives additional 
 pungency to Carlyle s style, which, " if it is a Joseph s coat 
 of many colors, is dyed red with the blood of passionate con 
 viction." Cherishing, and even parading, an utter contempt 
 for literary art, he sacrifices truth itself to be artistical, 
 and is, in fact, with many glaring faults, one of the greatest 
 literary artists of the time. 
 
 Why, to take an opposite illustration, has John Neal, in 
 spite of his acknowledged genius, been so speedily forgotten 
 by the public whose eye he once so dazzled? why, but 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 15 
 
 because, holding the absurd theory that a man should write 
 as he talks,- and despising the niceties of skill, he bestows 
 no artistic finish on his literary gems, but, like the gorgeous 
 
 East, 
 
 " showers from his lap 
 Barbaric pearls and gold," 
 
 with all their incrustations "thick upon them 1 ? With less 
 prodigality of thought and more patience in execution, he 
 might have won a broad and enduring fame; but, as it is, 
 he is known to but few, and by them viewed as a meteor in 
 the literary firmanent, rather than as a fixed star or luminous 
 planet, Washington Irving has probably less genius than 
 Neal; but by his artistic skill he would make more of a 
 Scotch pebble than Neal of the crown jewel of the Emperor 
 of all the Russias. 
 
 That we have not exaggerated the value of style, that 
 it is, in truth, an alchemy which can transmute the basest 
 metal into gold, will appear still more clearly if we com 
 pare the literatures of different nations. That there are 
 national as well as individual styles, with contrasts equally 
 salient or glaring, is known to every scholar. Metaphors 
 and similes are racy of the soil in which they grow, as you 
 taste, it is said, the lava in the vines on the slopes of 
 Mtndi. As thinkers, the Germans have to-day no equals on 
 the globe. In their systems of philosophy the speculative 
 intellect of our race, its power of long, concatenated, ex 
 haustive thinking, seems to have reached its culmination. 
 Never content with a surface examination of any subject, 
 they dig down to the " hard pan," the eternal granite which 
 underlies all the other strata of truth. As compilers of 
 dictionaries, as accumulators of facts, as producers of 
 thought in the ore, their bookmakers have no peers. The 
 
16 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 German language, too, must be admitted to be one of the 
 most powerful instruments of thought and feeling to which 
 human wit has given birth. But all these advantages are, 
 to a great extent, neutralized by the frightful heaviness and 
 incredible clumsiness of the German literary style. Whether 
 as a providential protection of other nations against the 
 foggy metaphysics and subtle skepticism of that country, or 
 because to have given it a genius for artistic composition as 
 well as thought, would have been an invidious partiality, it 
 is plain that, in the distribution of good things, the advan 
 tages of form were not granted to the Teutons. In Bacon s 
 phrase, they are " the Herculeses, not the Adonises of 
 literature." They are, with a few noble exceptions, the 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water for all the other 
 literatures of the world. The writers of other countries, 
 being blessed more or less with the synthetic and artistic 
 power which they lack, pillage mercilessly, without ac 
 knowledgment, the storehouses which they have laboriously 
 filled, and dressing up the stolen materials in attractive 
 forms, pass them off as their own property. It is one of 
 the paradoxes of literary history, that a people who have 
 done more for the textual accuracy and interpretation of 
 the Greek and Roman classics than all the other European 
 nations put together, who have taught the world the classic 
 tongues with pedagogic authority, should have caught 
 so little of the inspiration, spirit, and style of those eternal 
 models. 
 
 The fatigue which the German style inflicts upon the 
 human brain is even greater than that which their barbarous 
 Gothic letter, a relic of the fifteenth century, blackening all 
 the page, inflicts upon the eye. The principal faults of 
 this style are involution, prolixity, and obscurity. The 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 17 
 
 sentences are interminable in length, stuffed with paren 
 theses within parentheses, and as full of folds as a sleeping 
 boa-constrictor. Of paragraphs, of beauty in the balancing 
 and structure of periods, and of the art by which a succes 
 sion of periods may modify each other, the German prose- 
 writer has apparently no conception. Instead of breaking 
 up his " cubic thought " into small and manageable pieces, 
 he quarries it out in huge, unwieldy masses, indifferent to 
 its shape, structure or polish. He gives you real gold, but 
 it is gold in the ore, mingled with quartz, dirt and sand, 
 hardly ever gold polished into splendor, or minted into 
 coin. Every German, according to De Quincey, regards a 
 sentence in the light of a package, and a package not for 
 the mail-coach, but for the wagon, into which it is his privi 
 lege to crowd as much as he possibly can. Having framed 
 a sentence, therefore, he next proceeds to pack it, which is 
 effected partly by unwieldy tails and codicils, but chiefly by 
 enormous parenthetic involutions. All qualifications, limita 
 tions, exceptions, illustrations, and even hints and insinua 
 tions, that they may be grasped at once and presented in 
 one view, are " stuffed and violently rammed into the 
 bowels of the principal proposition." What being of flesh 
 and blood, with average lungs, can go through a book made 
 up of such sentences, some of them twenty or thirty lines 
 in length, with hardly a break or a solitary semicolon to 
 relieve the eye or cheat the painful journey, without gasp 
 ing for breath, and utterly forgetting the beginning, es 
 pecially when a part of the poor dislocated verb, upon which 
 the whole meaning of the sentence hinges, is withheld till 
 the close? Our countryman, Rufus Choate, had a genius 
 for long periods ; his eulogy on Webster contains one which 
 stretches over more than four pages; but even he yields 
 
18 LITERAKY STYLE. 
 
 to Kant. It is said that some of the latter s sentences have 
 been carefully measured by a carpenter s rule, and found 
 to measure two feet eight by six inches. Who, but a 
 trained intellectual pedestrian, a Rowell or Weston, could 
 hope to travel through such a labyrinth of words, in which 
 there is sometimes no halting-place for three closely-printed 
 octavo pages, without being footsore, or bursting a blood 
 vessel? Is it strange that other peoples, who do not think 
 longwindedness excusable because Kant has shown that Time 
 and Space have no actual existence, but are only forms of 
 thought, are offended by a literature that abounds in such 
 Chinese puzzles? Can we wonder that the German bullion of 
 thought, however weighty or valuable, has to be coined in 
 France before it can pass into the general circulation of the 
 world? 
 
 In direct contrast to the heavy, dragging German style, 
 is the brisk, vivacious, sparkling style of the French. All 
 the qualities which the Teutons lack, form, method, pro 
 portion, grace, refinement, the stamp of good society, the 
 Gallic writers have in abundance; and these qualities are 
 found not only in the masters, like Pascal, Voltaire, Courier, 
 or Sand, but in the second and third-class writers, like 
 Taine and Prevost-Paradol. Search any of the French 
 writers from Montaigne to Renan, and you will have to 
 hunt as long for an obscure sentence as in a German author 
 for a clear one. Dip where you will into their pages, you 
 find every sentence written as with a sunbeam. They state 
 their meaning so clearly, that not only can you not mistake 
 it, but you feel that no other proper collocation of words 
 is conceivable. It is like casting to a statue, the metal 
 flows into its mould, and is there fixed forever. If, in reading 
 a German book, you seem to be jolting over a craggy moun- 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 19 
 
 tain road in one of their lumbering eilwagen, ironically 
 called " post-haste " chaises, in reading a French work you 
 seem to be rolling on C springs along a velvety turf, or 
 on a road that has just been macadamized. The only draw 
 back to your delight is, that it spoils your taste for other 
 writing ; after sipping Chateau-Margaux at its most velvety 
 age, the mouth puckers at Rhine wine or Catawba. This 
 supremacy of the French style is so generally acknowledged, 
 that the French have become for Europe the interpreters 
 of other races to each other. They are the Jews of the 
 intellectual market, the money - changers and brokers 
 of the wealth of the world. The great merits of Sir 
 William Hamilton were unknown to his countrymen till 
 they were revealed by the kindly pen of Cousin; and 
 Sydney Smith hardly exaggerated when he said of Dumont s 
 translation of Bentham, that the great apostle of utilitarian 
 ism was washed, dressed, and forced into clean linen by a 
 Frenchman before he was intelligible even to English 
 Benthamites. It is sometimes said that French liter 
 ature is all style; that its writers have labored so ex 
 clusively to make the language a perfect vehicle of wit and 
 wisdom, that they have nothing to convey. If in a German 
 work the meaning is entangled in the words, and "you can 
 not see the woods for the trees, 1 in the French work the 
 words themselves are the chief object of attention. But 
 the critic who says this is surely not familiar with Pascal, 
 Bossuet, D Alembert, De Stael, De Maistre, Villemain. In 
 these, and many other writers that we might name, there is 
 such a solidity of thought with an exquisite transparency of 
 style, so subtle an interfusion of sound and sense, so perfect 
 an equipoise of meaning and melody, as to satisfy alike the 
 artistic taste of the literary connoisseur and the deeper 
 
20 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 cravings of the thinker and the scholar. The real weak 
 ness of the French to-day is their Chinese isolation and 
 exclusiveness, their ignorance of other nations, their want 
 of cosmopolitan breadth, and of all the other qualities which 
 men that hug their own firesides, that live, as Rabelais 
 says, all their lives in a barrel, and look out only at the 
 bunghole, are sure to lack. Rooted to their native soil, 
 seeing no countries or peoples, and despising all literatures 
 but their own, they lose the comparative standpoint which, 
 it has been said truly, is the great conquest of our cent 
 ury, which has revolutionized history, and created social 
 science and the science of language. 
 
 There is a saying of Buffon s that " the style is of the 
 man, 1 not, as so often quoted, " the style is the man," 
 which is but a repetition of the saying of Erasmus, quails 
 homo, talis oratio , as is the man, so is his speech. As we 
 form our impressions of men, not so much from what they 
 actually say, as from their way of saying it, their looks, 
 manner, tones of voice, and other peculiarities; so we 
 catch glimpses of an author between the lines, and detect 
 his idiosyncrasies even when he tries hardest to hide them. 
 The latent disposition of the man peeps through his words, 
 in spite of himself, and vulgarity, malignity, and littleness 
 of soul, however carefully cloaked, are betrayed by the very 
 phrases and images of their opposites. Marivaux declares 
 that style has a sex ; but we may go farther, and say that 
 literature has its comparative anatomy, and a page or a 
 paragraph will enable a skillful hand to construct the 
 skeleton. " Every sentence of the great writer," says Alex 
 ander Smith, "is an autograph. If Milton had endorsed 
 a bill with half-a-dozen blank verse lines, it would be 
 as good as his name, and would be accepted as good evi- 
 
LITERARY. STYLE. 21 
 
 dence in court." How plainly do we see in the swallow- 
 like gyrations of Montaigne s style the very veins, muscles, 
 and tendons of his moral anatomy! How glaringly he 
 betrays his self-complacency by the very air and tone of his 
 self-humiliations! Again: how visibly do the despotic will, 
 the imperial positiveness and the oriental imagination of 
 Napoleon stamp themselves on his style, in that hurried, 
 abrupt rhythm, under which, as Sainte-Beuve says, we feel 
 palpitating the genius of action and the demon of battles! 
 What perfect simplicity characterizes the writings, as it 
 does the actions, of Julius Csesar ! His art is unconscious, 
 as the highest art always is, and his style has been well 
 compared by Cicero to an undraped human figure, perfect 
 in all its lines as nature made it. 
 
 How grave, courtly, and high-mannered, how politic and 
 guarded, like himself, are the utterances of Bacon ! What 
 serenity of temper is expressed in "the sleepy smile that 
 lies so benignly on the sweet and serious diction of Izaak 
 Walton ! " What haughtiness and savage impatience of 
 contradiction, what egotism and contempt of conventional 
 opinions, are stamped on the plain, blunt and often coarse 
 periods of Swift; and, on the other hand, what an urbanity 
 reveals itself in the almost perfect manner, so easy and 
 high-bred, courteous, not courtier-like, as Bulwer says, 
 of the gentle Addison ! It has been happily said that there 
 is no gall in his ink, and, if it kills, it is after the manner 
 of those perfumed poisons which are not less grateful than 
 deadly. Again, what fierceness breathes in the short, dagger- 
 like sentences of Junius; and how, on the contrary, the shy 
 ness of Lamb s nature, his love of quip, and whimsey, and 
 old black-letter authors, peeps out in his style, with its 
 antique words, and quaint convolutions, and doublings back 
 
22 LITERACY STYLE. 
 
 on itself ! Dean Swift would have torn to pieces a lamb 
 like a wolf; but the loving " Elia" would have tried to coax 
 a wolf into a lamb. How quickly " South is discovered by 
 the lash of a sentence, and Andrews by the mechanism of 
 his exposition!" Did any mirror, even of French plate 
 glass, ever reflect any man s outer configuration more viv 
 idly and distinctly than the strange inner nature of Sir 
 Thomas Browne is mirrored in his periods? What a revela 
 tion we have of his inmost self, what a picture of his wit, 
 imagination, portentous memory, insatiable curiosity, " hu 
 morous sadness," pedantry, and love of crotchets and hobbies, 
 even "a whole stable-full," in the quaint analogies, the 
 grotesque fancies, the airy paradoxes, the fine and dainty 
 fretwork, the subtle and stately music, the amazing Latin- 
 isms, and the riotous paradoxes and eloquent epigrams of 
 the old knight s style ! Again, how plainly the hard, severe, 
 antique cast of Guizot s intellect is seen in his manner of 
 writing, which is so weighty and impressive, but never pic 
 turesque or playful ! How fit a vehicle is it for the thoughts 
 of that lofty mind whose ideas, as soon as they enter it, lose 
 their freshness and become antique, of whom it has been 
 said: "That which he has known only since morning he 
 appears to have known from all eternity!" 
 
 If a man is a sham and a hypocrite, his manner will be 
 sure to blab against him, It is a Frenchman, not a Puritan, 
 who teaches that even the painter s work is deteriorated by 
 his life. "What must the artist have on his canvas? That 
 which he has in his imagination. What can he have in his 
 imagination? That which he has in his life." So with liter 
 ature; it is even more tell-tale than any other art. How 
 easily do we distinguish between the passages which came 
 from the author s heart and those in which his inspiration 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 23 
 
 failed! What thoughtful reader does not know that any 
 doubt or dogmatism; any languor in feeling, or shallowness 
 of insight; any distraction or loss of interest in the theme; 
 any weariness of work or insatiable passion for it; all the 
 shadows of his soul, and all the intermissions of his sensi 
 bility, stamp themselves on the printed page as distinctly 
 as if the writer had purposely told the world his secrets? 
 Even when a writer tries to make a mask of his style, he 
 almost inevitably betrays himself by a pet phrase or man 
 nerism., like Macaulay s antitheses or Cicero s esse videatur. 
 How admirably, with one stroke of the pen, did Sydney 
 Smith characterize Jeffrey, when he wrote to a friend: 
 " Jeffrey has been here with his adjectives, which always 
 travel with him!" How vainly does Gibbon, that great 
 master of the art of sneering, try to mask his hostility to 
 Christianity by suggestion and equivocation! Instead of 
 asserting, he insinuates; and stabs Christianity, not directly, 
 but by side thrusts of parenthesis, innuendo, and implica 
 tion. 
 
 Again, there are writers, and those, too, of high ability, 
 who betray themselves by certain tricks and devices of 
 style which are purely mechanical, and which, by care 
 ful study, we can learn and imitate. Whatever the witch 
 ery of their manner, however wondrous their triumphs 
 over the difficulties of expression, we can mark the process 
 by which they achieve their results almost as easily as we 
 can note the manner in which an artisan puts together the 
 pieces of a watch. Macaulay, for example, by his essays 
 and his history, has won a popularity almost without 
 parallel, because he expresses in vivid language thoughts 
 easy to grasp, and because his power of lucid, swift, 
 brilliant statement has never been surpassed. He is, too, 
 
24 LITEKARY STYLE. 
 
 a remarkably correct writer, uniting splendor and pre 
 cision as few have done before. On the other hand, he 
 is possessed with the very demon of mannerism, and his 
 tricks of style are so transparent that the veriest novice 
 may detect them. The peculiar swing and swell of 
 his sentences, the epigrammatic antitheses and balanced 
 clauses, the short sentences between the long, "that, like 
 the fire of sharp-shooters through cannon, break the vol 
 ume of sound," are not the product of the highest art. 
 Though pleasing at first, they tire at last by their un 
 shaded brilliancy and unvarying monotony. They remind 
 one of the measured march of the grenadier to the music 
 of the fife and drum, rather than of the free and lofty 
 movement of the giant. Again, Macaulay s hatred of pro 
 nouns, limitations, and qualifications; the lack of organic 
 unity in his sentences, of flexibility, airiness, and grace, 
 and especially of those reticences, half-tones, and subtle 
 interblendings of thought which are among the lamps of 
 style; and last, not least, his Chinese lack of perspective, 
 and his fondness for exaggeration and startling contrasts, 
 greatly detract from the excellence of his style. As he 
 himself says of Tacitus, " he stimulates till stimulants lose 
 their power." Because it is thus obtrusive by its bril 
 liancy, and constantly calls attention to itself, Macaulay s 
 style is necessarily second-rate. The writer who perpet 
 ually strikes you as a great literary artist is not artist 
 enough, just as the man who strikes you as crafty is 
 never crafty enough, because he cannot hide his craft. 
 The painter who works consciously, and who is always 
 ready with a reason for every touch of his brush, instead 
 of laying tint on tint at the mandate of a mysterious in 
 stinct, we may be sure is not a Raphael or a Titian. 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 25 
 
 Shakspeare has no style, because he has so many styles, 
 because he is forever coining new forms of expression, 
 and breaking the moulds as fast as they are coined. 
 
 Here, had we space, we should like to speak of the 
 serried strength of Barrow and the indignant brevity of 
 Junius; of Burke, the materials of whose many-colored 
 style were gathered from the accumulated spoils of many 
 tongues and of all ages; of Robert Hall, the stately, im 
 perial march of whose sentences was fashioned after no 
 model of ancient or modern times, a style the product 
 not of art, but of a mind full to bursting with intellect 
 ual riches, and which, though often declamatory, never 
 wearies, because he never declaims only, there is the 
 bolt as well as the thunder; of South, Fuller, and Sydney 
 Smith, the ivy-like luxuriance of whose wit conceals the 
 robust wisdom about which it coils itself; of Walter Sav 
 age Landor, who handles the heavy weights of the lan 
 guage as a juggler his balls; of Froude, some of whose 
 historical pictures are among the triumphs of English 
 prose; of Huxley, in whose hands the hard, granitic vo 
 cabulary of science becomes malleable in such a union 
 of sweetness with strength as to realize the Saturnian 
 prodigy of "honey sweating from the pores of oak"; of 
 our own Everett, whose level passages are never tame, 
 and whose fine passages are never superfine; and, above 
 all, of the three great masters of style, De Quincey, Ruskin, 
 and Newman, who have evoked, as with an enchanter s 
 wand, the sweetness and strength of the English speech. 
 Prof. Newman s diction, polished ad ungnem, is the very 
 acme of simplicity and clearness; but how the colorless 
 diamond blade flashes as he brandishes it on the battle 
 field of controversy! Ask the ghost of poor Kingsley, if 
 
26 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 you doubt its edge! If we must go to other writers to 
 see the full breadth and swesp of our language, the 
 majestic freedom of its unfettered movement, we must 
 go to Prof. Newman to see what it can do when it enters 
 the arena a trained and girded athlete, every limb de 
 veloped into its utmost symmetry, and every blow and 
 every movement directed with definite purpose, and with 
 most clear-sighted and deadly aim. 
 
 Again, how vividly are the seer-like nature and the ex 
 aggerated individualism of Emerson, his serene, Jove-like 
 composure, and icy calmness of temperament, manifested 
 in his disconnected sentences, which some wit has compared 
 to Lucretius s " fortuitous concourse of atoms!" Of all the 
 masters of language (we do not say of style), he is the least 
 sequacious. His verbal troops, like the old Continentals, 
 his townsmen, who fought Pitcairn, never fire in companies, 
 or even by platoons, but each " on his own hook," man by 
 man. Individually complete and self-poised, like his ideal 
 man, his sentences are combined merely by the accident of 
 juxtaposition, and touch without adhering, like marbles 
 in a bag. His language is densely suggestive, and abounds 
 in those focalizing words and turns of expression peculiar 
 to our day, which condense many rays of thought into one 
 burning phrase. It abounds, too, in those happy phrases 
 which are 
 
 " New as if brought from other spheres, 
 Yet welcome as if known for years." 
 
 Hardly any writer surpasses Emerson in what has been 
 called the " polarization of language," by which effete terms 
 are reinforced, and ordinary words are put to novel uses, 
 and charged with unusual powers. But his style lacks 
 repose, and, like Seneca s, wearies by excessive epigram 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 27 
 
 and point. Its main defect is, that, as De Quincey says 
 of Hazlitt s manner, " it spreads no deep diffusions of color, 
 and distributes no mighty masses of shadow. A flash, a 
 solitary flash, and all is gone." It is said that Coleridge, 
 when told that Klopstock was the German Milton, said: 
 "A very German Milton, indeed!" A like exclamation is 
 provoked, when one hears the remark, so thoughtlessly 
 made, than which nothing marks more clearly the prev 
 alent insensibility to the differences of style, that Emer 
 son is " the American Carlyle." As well might one com 
 pare the gentle gales that fan lake Walden to the hoarse 
 blast that blows in winter from Ben Lomond; the stream 
 that ripples along the Concord meadows " with propulsion, 
 eddy, and sweet recoil," to the brawling and turbid High 
 land torrent; the notes of the robin to the scream of the 
 northern eagle; or the cold, pitiless radiance of a sunlit 
 iceberg to the lurid glare of the volcano, blazing with 
 tyrannic fury through the silence and shadows of midnight, 
 and hurling" its sulphureous blackness against the starry 
 canopy. 
 
 Of the few partial exceptions to the law that we have 
 mentioned, Goldsmith is one of the most striking. Never 
 was there a greater chasm between the man and the writer. 
 Why is it that, carousing at college with midnight revelers 
 and ale-house tipplers, fond all his life of coarse pleasures 
 and gambling, at once a dandy and a sloven in his dress 
 and life, he is never either finical, or coarse and slovenly 
 in his writing? Whence come the artless but unapproach 
 able graces of that style, as chaste as it is musical and 
 fascinating? Why does his pen never for a moment betray 
 the disorder of his life? "Like the squalid silk- weaver, 
 sending forth piece after piece of the purest white tissue, 
 
28 LITERARY SYTLE. 
 
 
 
 poor Noll, " says an English writer, " sends forth from his 
 garret only the most snowy-white products, amid circum 
 stances of his outer life which strangely contrast with his 
 inner life of thought. Irish to the backbone in his tem 
 perament and all his ways of life, he is yet English in al 
 most every characteristic of his writings." 
 
 It is in this idiosyncratic peculiarity, this indefinable 
 something which distinguishes one writer from another, and 
 which can neither be imitated nor forged, that lies the 
 priceless value of style. It is not, as it has been too often 
 regarded, a cloak to masquerade in, a kind of ornament 
 or luxury that can be indulged in at will, a communi 
 cable trick of rhetoric or accent, but the pure outcome 
 of the writer s nature, the utterance of his own indi 
 viduality. This sensibility of language to the impulses 
 and qualities of him who uses it, its flexibility in accom 
 modating itself to all the thoughts, feelings, imaginations 
 and aspirations which pass within him, so as to become the 
 faithful expression of his personality, indicating the very 
 pulsation and throbbing of his intellect, and attending on 
 his own inward world of thought as its very shadow, and, 
 strangest, perhaps, of all, the magical power it has to 
 suggest the idea or mood it cannot directly convey, and to 
 give forth an aroma which no analysis of word or expres 
 sion reveals, is one of the marvels of human speech. Be 
 cause language is thus the faithful mirror of our natures, 
 because expression is literally the pressing out into palpable 
 form of that which is already within us, it is plain that 
 nothing can be more foolish than imitation. In the old 
 text-books of rhetoric it used to be stated, in the words of 
 Johnson, that whoever wished to obtain a perfect style 
 should give his days and nights to the study of Addison. 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 29 
 
 But we now know that a good style can never be acquired 
 by aping the manner of another. The only effect of such 
 copying is to annihilate individuality by substituting pro 
 cess for inspiration, mannerism for sincerity, and calcula 
 tion for spontaneity. It was because ho understood this 
 that Rembrandt had such a horror of imitation, and con 
 demned his pupils to solitary study, lest they should bor 
 row one from another. All the virtues of style are, in their 
 roots, moral. They are a product, a reverberation, of the 
 soul itself, and can no more be artificially acquired than 
 the ring of silver can be acquired by lead. If a man has a 
 vulgar mind, he will write vulgarly; if a noble nature, 
 he will write nobly; in every case, the beauty or ugliness 
 of his moral constitution, the force and keenness or the 
 feebleness of his logic, will be imaged in his sentences. 
 Language, as Goldwin Smith says, " is not an instrument 
 into which if a fool breathe it will make melody"; to 
 which we may add, that it matters little that your violin 
 is a genuine Cremona, and the warranted workmanship of 
 Straduarius, unless you have the music of Paganini in 
 your soul, with his masterly touch and his exquisite nervous 
 organism, in vain will you seek to conjure from the instru 
 ment the startling notes, the tones of ecstasy or anguish, 
 which the great magician of the bow evokes from its 
 strings. 
 
 Of the various elements of the literary art, the most 
 important are five, namely: simplicity, freshness or attract 
 iveness, arrangement, choice of words, and careful prepara 
 tion and finish. We might have added clearness, were not its 
 necessity obvious; as Dr. Jortin says, "the man that is not 
 intelligible is not intelligent." Our space will not allow us 
 to dwell upon these qualities, and we must content ourselves 
 
30 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 with a word or two. Of all these elements of good writing, 
 freshness is the most vital; it is the quality which is felt 
 when we turn from Blair s page to Bushnell s, from Prescott 
 to Motley. The best recipe for the acquisition of this qual 
 ity is to keep one s life fresh and vigorous. To have one s 
 page alive, he must be alive himself. He must be con 
 stantly acquiring fresh thought; else he will only dexter 
 ously repeat himself, become his own echo. We have not 
 space to consider the next or logical element of style, im 
 portant as it is, and pass, therefore, to the choice of ivords, 
 of which it may be said that the simplest and most idiomatic 
 are generally best. Joubert has well said that it is by 
 means of familiar words that style takes hold of the reader 
 and gets possession of him. " They beget confidence in the 
 man who uses them because they show that the author has 
 long made the thought or the feeling expressed his mental 
 food; that he has so assimilated and familiarized them, that 
 the most common expressions suffice him in order to express 
 ideas which have become every-day ideas to him by the 
 length of time they have been in his mind." What is the 
 secret qf Spurgeon s* power? Is it not that he uses the 
 plain, nervous, sinewy Saxon; the vocabulary, not of books, 
 but of the fireside and the market-place, not of the uni 
 versity, but of the universe? "The devil," he once said, 
 "does not care for your dialectics and eclectic homilectics, or 
 German objectives and subjectives; but pelt him with Anglo- 
 Saxon in the name of God, and he will shift his quarters." 
 In France the least lettered people make use of the same 
 words as the greatest writers. Malherbe said that he took 
 his words from the porters of the grain market. Stendhal 
 had such a horror of emphasis that, before setting himself 
 to write, he read a page of the civil code. One of the chief 
 
LITEBAKT STYLE. 31 
 
 faults of Gladstone, as a writer, is a kind of " dim magnifi 
 cence " of style; he has a vast command of language which 
 is grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain meaning. 
 But what is meant by simplicity of style? Does it 
 exclude beauty or tasteful ornamentation? Is the best 
 style a colorless medium, which, like good glass, only lets 
 the thought be distinctly seen, or may it, like a painted 
 window which tinges the light with a hundred hues, af 
 ford a pleasure apart from the ideas it conveys? "He 
 was so well dressed, 1 said a person to Beau BrummeU," 
 "that everybody turned to look at him." "Then, 1 said 
 Brummell, "he was not well dressed. 11 So of the garb 
 of thought, it is said by some persons that it is most per 
 fect when it attracts no attention to itself, and we see 
 only the ideas which it habilitates. What is the distinc 
 tive excellence of Scott? Is it not that we rise from his 
 works with a most vivid idea of what is related, and yet 
 are unable to quote a single phrase in the entire narra 
 tion? Well-dressed men and women are not those whose 
 minds are absorbed in the art of dressing, but those who 
 give simply the general impression that they are well- 
 dressed, and nothing more. We do not look to tailors, 
 milliners, and mantua-makers, for the best models of cos 
 tume. That this is true of a large class of writings, 
 those which simply convey information, or seek to explain 
 rather than to suggest or symbolize truth, and depict it 
 in attractive forms, all persons will admit; but that it 
 is true of other kinds of composition, those which are 
 generic to poetry, and address themselves to the imagina 
 tion, and through the imagination to the reason, we are 
 far from believing. There are many literary compositions 
 which, if summoned to give an account of themselves, to 
 
32 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 explain their raison d etre upon any utilitarian principles, 
 would be sorely puzzled. It is something above all prac 
 tical use, like the song of the lark, the colors of the rain 
 bow, the butterfly s painted wing, or the burning breast 
 of the robin. Of all such writings style is the very 
 essence. Scientific books may do without this charm, but 
 these must please or go to the trunk-maker s. In a dwell 
 ing-house or a shop we are content with plain geomet 
 rical lines and rectangular proportions. But, to use the 
 illustration of another, when the painter puts on his can 
 vas an old legendary castle, some illustration of a scene 
 which heroes have trodden or poets have sung, we not 
 only pardon, but expect a different treatment. Then we 
 are delighted, if the moss and the ivy creep up the sides 
 of the time-stained structure, if the thunder-cloud rests 
 upon the ruined battlements, and the moonlight streams 
 through the clefts of the crumbl lng walls, and we catch 
 sight of smooth lawns and nooks of bright garden, and 
 the gleam of a distant river, down which the eye loses 
 itself in woods. We cannot agree, therefore, with those 
 who make it a canon of style that, in writing, one s only 
 aim should be to express his ideas as simply as possible. 
 He should also try to express them as vividly and as ele 
 gantly as possible. Simplicity is no more inconsistent with 
 elegance than is ornament with strength. The Damascus 
 blade cuts none the less keenly because it is polished, nor 
 is a column less strong when its sides are fluted and its 
 capital carved. The plumage that makes the beauty of 
 the eagle supports it in its flight. The "Provincial Let 
 ters " and the writings of Courier are examples of perfect 
 simplicity and of perfect style. If a writer has sufficient 
 wealth of imagination to justify an exhibition of his riches, 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 33 
 
 we need not fear that the groundwork of good sense will 
 be slighter for the delicate arabesques and exquisite tra 
 ceries with which he beautifies his useful products. On 
 the contrary, as Bulwer has said, "the elegance of the 
 ornament not unfrequently attests the stoutness of the 
 fabric. Only into the most durable tissues did the Geno 
 ese embroiderers weave their delicate tissues of gold; only 
 on their hardest steel did the smiths of Milan damaskeen 
 the gracious phantasies which still keep their armor among 
 the heirlooms of royal halls." 
 
 To say, as some do, that the all-sufficing aim of writ 
 ing is to make one s self understood with the smallest ex 
 penditure of words, is to adopt a Board of Trade or Corn 
 Exchange standard. There are themes which require that we 
 should draw upon the prismatic powers of language, and 
 evoke its hidden melodies. Words can yield a music as 
 thrilling as the strings of any instrument; they are suscepti 
 ble of colors more gorgeous than the hues of sunset; they are 
 freighted with associations of feeling which have gathered 
 about them during hundreds of years; and, therefore, to 
 use them for the conveyance of ideas only, as one conveys 
 goods in a wagon, is not enough. Such a rule, if adopted, 
 would reduce all our literature to the dull level of a Trav 
 eler s Guide, to the vocabulary of a courier, and the elo 
 quence of an almanac. Arrangement and repetition, har 
 mony and illustration, every grace and every charm, 
 all that makes "L Allegro" and the "Castle of Indolence," 
 " The Stones of Venice " and " The Marble Faun," what they 
 are, would be wanting. The cup you drink from, the 
 dagger -hilt you handle, are not more useful though 
 they be chased by Benvenuto Cellini; but was Cellini s 
 labor useless? The truth is, however, that these devices 
 
34 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 and beauties of style, which are supposed to be separable 
 from the thought, are not mere distinct decorations, but a 
 part of its vivid presentation. Even in reading purely 
 useful works, who has not a hundred times lamented their 
 lack of style? Who ever read Grote s Greece without 
 wishing that its author had known something of the ca 
 dence of a period, or Butler s Analogy without wish 
 ing its sentences were less involved and elliptical? Who 
 can doubt that Locke s meaning is often made needlessly 
 difficult by the ruggedness of his style, and that many of 
 the wrong inferences drawn since his death from his 
 system, and which would have shocked him had they 
 been published in his lifetime, were due to that lack of 
 verbal precision which the culture of euphony insures ? 
 We cannot sympathize, therefore, with the feeling of the 
 poet Eogers, whom a single superfluous word, like the crum 
 pled rose-leaf on the couch of the princess, made restless and 
 captious. It was one of his peculiar fancies that the best 
 writers might be improved by condensation. In vain did 
 one warn him that to strip Jeremy Taylor or Burke of their 
 so-called redundancies overlaying the sense, was like strip 
 ping a tree of its blossoms and foliage in order to bring 
 out the massive proportions of its trunk. " There," he ex 
 claimed one evening, after condensing one of Burke s noblest 
 passages (in which every word has its appointed task), 
 " there, concentrated as it now is, it would blow up a 
 cathedral ! " 
 
 We are aware that there are persons who have no appre 
 ciation of the graces of literary composition. They would 
 have every sentence trained down to its fighting weight ; 
 not a particle of adipose tissue, but all sinew only, tense, 
 close-knit, for use and not for beauty. So there are per- 
 
LITERAKY STYLE. 35 
 
 sons who cannot feel the difference between a sonata of 
 Beethoven and the Battle -Cry of Freedom, between a 
 gravestone-cutter s cherub and the masterpieces of Raphael. 
 But what does this prove ? Only that they lack a sense, 
 that is all. Napoleon belonged to this class. "What is 
 called style, good or bad," said he to Madame de Remusat, 
 "does not affect me. I care only for the force of the 
 thought." As well might he have said: "I care noth 
 ing for the arrangement of my soldiers in battle ; I care 
 only for the energy with which they fight." The fighting 
 power of soldiers depends upon the tactical skill with 
 which they are handled; and the force of ideas depends 
 upon the way in which the verbal battalions that repre 
 sent them are marshalled on the battle-fields of thought. 
 
 The last element of style we have named is complete 
 ness in preparation and finish. The most brilliant intel 
 lect cannot do without an accumulated fund of facts and 
 ideas. Even the poet, who seems neither to toil nor to 
 spin, whose creative exuberance appears to be innate, 
 can use only materials which have been stored in his brain 
 during years of thought, reading, and observation. Before 
 Johnson began the Rambler he had filled a common 
 place book with thoughts for his essays. Addison amassed 
 three folios of manuscript materials before he began the 
 Spectator; and when a new publication wa,s suggested 
 to him after the Guardian was finished, he replied: "I 
 must now take some time pour me delasser, and lay in fuel 
 for a future work." Frederick W. Robertson spent his 
 leisure hours in the study of geology, chemistry, and other 
 sciences, to gain the materials of thought and illustration, 
 and to give freshness to his sermons; and John Foster, 
 for the same purpose, rambled many hours in the woods 
 
36 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 and fields. Scott did not hesitate to spend the leisure of a 
 week in settling a point in history, or in gathering up the 
 details of a bit of scenery which he wished to work into 
 a poem or a novel. Again, the mastery of any import 
 ant subject demands time. It cannot be accomplished by 
 pressure or cramming, or by the most heroic extempore 
 endeavor. The subject must be brooded over from day to 
 day, till, by the half-conscious, half-unconscious processes 
 of thought, all that is unessential, incongruous, or foreign, 
 has been sloughed off; till all difficulties, surveyed again 
 and again from new angles of vision, have been resolved, 
 and that which was at first but a faint suggestion of truth, 
 has surrounded its-elf, by a kind of elective affinity of ideas, 
 with appropriate imagery and illustration, and stands out, 
 at last, in bold relief and in full proportions before the 
 mental eye. Then how simple and lucid the statement, 
 how luminous the exposition ! The stream of thought runs 
 so clear as almost to seem shallow; it glides so noise 
 lessly that few suspect the depth, the volume, and the 
 majestic sweep and force of its movement. It is because 
 there is to-day so little hard thinking that we have so little 
 good writing. The poverty of style is due largely to the 
 very activity and restless impatience of modern thought. 
 It is because thought and feeling do not have a brooding 
 time, because opinions and sentiments, hastily enter 
 tained, are not allowed to take root undisturbed and in 
 silence, and to gain strength from mere length of tenure, 
 that so few writers master the secret of apt and vivid ex 
 pression. A man of even the highest ability can no more 
 say, " Go to, I will make a great essay, poem, or novel," 
 than he can say, " Go to, I will make a religion." 
 
 Again, besides completeness in preparation, there must 
 
LITEKARY STYLE. 37 
 
 be also careful revision. The history of literature shows 
 that with few exceptions the greatest writers have been the 
 most severe and painstaking in revising and polishing their 
 compositions. The capacity for minute refinement in detail 
 and infinite loving labor has been justly pronounced an 
 instinct of all truly artistic genius. Burke s manuscript 
 was covered with interlineations and alterations; and not 
 till he had examined half-a-dozen proofs of his Reflec 
 tions did he allow it to go to press. When a lady asked 
 Johnson, after he had elaborately revised his early papers 
 in the Rambler, whether he could now improve any of 
 them, he replied: " Yes, rnadam, I could make even the best 
 of them better still." Addison would stop the press to in 
 sert a preposition or conjunction. Sterne was incessantly 
 employed for six months in perfecting one diminutive 
 volume. Gray would spend a week upon a page. Robert 
 Hall gave as a reason for writing so little, that he could so 
 rarely realize even proximately his own ideal of a perfect 
 style. Buffon made eleven draughts of his Epoques de la 
 Nature before he sent it to the press; and he assured a 
 friend that after passing fifty years at his desk, he was still 
 learning to write. Bossuet s manuscript was so bleared 
 with interlineations as to be almost illegible. Cervantes 
 took twelve years to write the second part of Don Quixote. 
 It is true that Scott, who was untiring in gathering the 
 materials of his novels, wrote in a whirlwind of inspiration, 
 and never spent a moment with the file; but this, instead 
 of justifying the neglect of revision, only explains the 
 slovenliness of much of his composition. His writings 
 abound in Scotticisms, errors in grammar, and other faults 
 of style. When finishing the Fair Maid of Perth, he 
 was troubled how to pack the catastrophe into the space 
 2* 
 
38 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 allotted for it. " There is no help for it," he said; " I must 
 make a tour deforce, and annihilate both time and space." 
 He too often made these tours de force. Beginning his 
 novels with no definite plan, he let his plots construct them 
 selves, the result of which was that his conclusions were 
 often hurried, abrupt, and unsatisfactory. 
 
 But, it may be asked, is not the best writing, like the 
 best painting, spontaneous, and does not the practised be 
 come the ready hand? Did not Cervantes say that the jests 
 of Sancho fell from him like drops of rain when he least 
 thought of it, and do not the works of Raphael and Rubens 
 seem to have cost them, as Hazlitt says, no more labor than 
 if they "had drawn in their breath, and puffed it forth 
 again"? Are not many fine literary productions thrown 
 off like the beautiful Dresden Madonna, which Raphael 
 painted without any previous studies or drawings? We 
 answer, yes; the best writing is spontaneous., but it is the 
 spontaneousness of a second and disciplined nature. It is 
 the experience of the veteran accomplishing with ease what 
 seemed impossible to the raw recruit. It was because 
 Gibbon wrote slowly " until he had got his one tune by 
 heart," that he was able to send the last three volumes of 
 the Decline and Fall in the first draught to press. It 
 was after years of laborious self-training and experience, 
 that Raphael was able to throw his whole idea, in all its 
 perfection and completeness, upon the canvas, without the 
 necessity of realizing it by piecemeal in intermediate at 
 tempts. In all such cases, where miracles of swiftness seem 
 to have been performed, the miracle will melt, if we scrutinize 
 it closely. We shall find that the picture has been painted, 
 and the book written, with such ease, because years of 
 study and practice have so lubricated the mental instru- 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 39 
 
 ments, that, when the motive power is applied, they work, 
 to a great extent, with the precision and regularity of a 
 machine. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that one may dawdle too 
 much over his compositions, that he may use the file till 
 it weakens them. There is a medium between the care 
 lessness of Lope de Vega, who wrote a hundred plays in 
 as many days, and the fastidiousness of the poet Dana, of 
 whom Lowell says that he is so well aware how things 
 should be done, that " his own works displease him before 
 they are begun " ; between the excessive caution of the 
 ancient orator who was three olympiads in writing a single 
 oration, and the reckless haste of the poet whose funeral 
 pile was composed of his own productions. Perhaps the 
 best description of the natural manner in which a great 
 work comes into existence, is that quoted by Hammerton 
 from Michelet. The French writer says of one of his own 
 books, that " it was produced ~by the heat of a gentle in 
 cubation. " (" Elle s est fait a la chaleur d une douce incu 
 bation.") 
 
 That the moral character of a writer has much to do with 
 the quality of his work, can hardly be doubted. No man 
 who stands habitually on a low moral and spiritual plane, 
 can produce a great work of art, whether in literature, 
 sculpture, or painting. Noble thoughts can come only from 
 a noble soul. It is said that in India a muslin is manufac 
 tured which is so fine that it has received the poetic name 
 of " Woven Wind." When laid upon the grass to bleach, 
 the dew makes it disappear. It used to be spun only by 
 native women who had been trained to the task from 
 infancy; and so nice was the sense of touch required for the 
 spinning of this yarn, that they were constantly waited 
 
40 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 upon by a retinue of servants, whose duty it was to relieve 
 them of all menial offices that might endanger the fine 
 tactual faculty which long practice and seclusion had be 
 stowed on their delicate finger-tips. So those whose calling 
 it is to spin the fine thread of thought, to be woven in the 
 loom of the mind into the web and woof of a literary pro 
 duction, should jealously seclude themselves from all vulgar 
 and debasing occupations, all that can hurt the delicacy of 
 their minds, or blunt those fine perceptions of truth and 
 beauty which can be acquired by those only who have been 
 trained to the quest of them from early youth. 
 
 We sometimes read of model styles; but there is no 
 model style. As in painting, the manner which we ad 
 mire in Albano and Vanderwerf would be misplaced in 
 the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or even the extended 
 canvas of the Transfiguration, so it is only relatively, 
 not absolutely, that any literary style can be said to be 
 the best. Macaulay, who was certainly not lacking in 
 literary taste, went so far as to say that the style of a 
 magazine or review article, which should strike at the 
 first reading, might be allowed sometimes to be even 
 viciously florid. It is not by his own taste, he said, but 
 by the taste of the fish, that the angler is determined in 
 his choice of bait. That is the best style relatively to the 
 individual, in which his particular cast of thought best 
 utters itself, and in which the peculiarity of the man, 
 that which differentiates him from other men, has the 
 fullest and freest play. That is a good style generally, in 
 which the words are vitalized by the thought, so that if 
 you cut them they will bleed; in which the language is 
 so fresh and forceful as to seem to have been just created; 
 which is so elastic that it accommodates itself unconsciously 
 
LITEKAKY STYLE. 41 
 
 to all the sinuosities of the thought, so that the thought 
 and the expression are never for a moment separated, but 
 are a simultaneous creation, coined at one stroke. The 
 perfect writer, so far from having any one ideal style, 
 will have a hundred styles, shifting and varying with every 
 variation of his ideas and feelings. His instrument of 
 expression will not be a pipe, but an organ with many 
 banks of keys ; capable of giving expression alike to 
 thoughts that require only mellifluous cadences and glid 
 ing graces, and to those that demand diapason grandeur 
 or trumpet stop, to the complex harmonies of a Heroic 
 Symphony, or the tumultuous movements of a Hailstone 
 Chorus. 
 
 To define the charm of style, to show why the same 
 thought, when conveyed in one man s language, is cold 
 and commonplace, and, when conveyed in another s, is, as 
 Starr King says, "a rifle-shot or a revelation," is impos 
 sible. It is easy to see how a magnetic presence, an eagle 
 eye, a commanding attitude, a telling gesture, a siren 
 voice, may give to truths when spoken a force or a charm 
 which they lack in a book. " But how it is," as the same 
 writer says, "that words locked up in forms, still and 
 stiff in sentences, will contrive to tip a wink ; how a 
 proposition will insinuate more skepticism than it states; 
 how a paragraph will drip with the honey of love; how 
 a phrase will trail an infinite suggestion ; how a page can 
 be so serene or so gusty, so gorgeous or so pallid, so sul 
 try or so cool, as to lap you in one intellectual climate 
 or its opposite, who has fathomed this wonder?" There 
 is a mystery in style of which we cannot pluck out the 
 heart. Like that of beauty, music, or a delicious odor, 
 its spell is subtle and impalpable, and baffles all our at- 
 
42 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 tempts to explain it in words. Like that of fine manners, 
 it is indefinable, yet all-subduing, and is the issue of all 
 the mental and moral qualities, bearing the same relation 
 to them that light bears to the sun, or perfume to the 
 flower. Not even the writer himself can explain the secret 
 of his art. In the works of all the great masters there 
 are certain elements which are a mystery to themselves. 
 In the frenzy of creation they instinctively infuse into 
 their productions that of which they would be utterly puz 
 zled to give an account. By a subtle, mysterious gift, an 
 intense intuition, which pierces beneath all surface ap 
 pearances, and goes straight to the core of an object, they 
 lay hold of the essential life, the inmost heart, of a scene, 
 a person, or a situation, and paint it to us in a few im 
 mortal words. A line, a phrase, a single burning term or 
 irradiating word, flashes the scene, the character upon us, 
 and it lives forever in the memory. It is so in sculpture, 
 in painting, and even in the military art. When Napo 
 leon was asked by a flatterer of his generalship how he 
 won his military victories, he could only say that he was 
 fait comme $a. 
 
 It was a saying of Shenstone, which almost everyone s 
 experience will confirm, that the lines of poetry, the periods 
 of prose, and even the texts of Scripture, most frequently 
 recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be pre 
 eminently musical. There are writers who charm us by 
 their language, apart from the ideas it conveys. There is a 
 kind of mysterious perfume about it, a delicious aroma, 
 which we keenly enjoy, but for which we cannot account. 
 Poetry often possesses a beauty wholly unconnected with 
 its meaning. Who has not admired, independently of the 
 sense, its "jewels, five words long, that, on the stretched 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 43 
 
 forefinger of all time, sparkle forever " ? There are verses 
 and snatches of song that continually haunt and twitter 
 about the memory, as in summer the swallows haunt and 
 twitter about the eaves of our dwelling. Coleridge, Shelley 
 and Poe seem to have written some verse only to show how 
 superior is the suggestion of sound to the expression of 
 sense. How perfectly in Tennyson s Lotus-Eaters is the 
 dreamy haze of the enchanted land he depicts reflected in 
 the verse ! How exquisitely do the refinement, the senti 
 ment, the lazy skepticism of the age, find expression in his 
 numbers ! " No stanza," says a critic, " but is a symbol of 
 satiety; no word but breathes itself out languidly as if 
 utterly used up, and every line is glutted weariness." So 
 with " the nectared sweets" of Keats s verse ; it is so dainty 
 and luscious that " it makes the sense of satisfaction ache 
 with the unreachable delicacy of its epithets." There are 
 passages in Milton, Shakspeare, and Wordsworth, in which 
 the mere cadence of the words is by itself delicious to a 
 delicate ear, though we cannot tell how and why. We are 
 conscious of a strange, dreamy sense of enjoyment, such as 
 one feels when listening in the night-time to the pattering 
 of rain upon the roof, or when lying upon the grass in a 
 June evening, while a brook tinkles over stones among the 
 sedges and trees. Sir Philip Sidney could not hear the 
 old ballad of Chevy Chase without his blood being stirred 
 as by the sound of a trumpet. Shelley took fright and 
 fainted the first time he heard a certain magnificent and 
 terrible passage in Christabel recited, and Scott tells 
 us that the music of that poem was ever murmuring in 
 his ears. Pope could never read certain words of Priam 
 in Homer without bursting into tears; Boyle felt a 
 tremor at the utterance of two verses of Lucan ; and 
 
44 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 Spence declares that he never repeated certain lines of 
 delicate modulation without a shiver in his blood not to 
 be expressed. Who is not sensible of certain magical 
 effects, altogether distinct from the thoughts, in some 
 of Coleridge s and Shelley s verse ; in the musical ripple 
 of Irving s words; in the stealthy charm and subtle per 
 fection of Thackeray s and Hawthorne s periods; in the 
 mellow, autumnal hue which falls like the golden lights 
 of harvest aslant the pages of Alexander Smith; in the 
 grand harmonies of Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, 
 and Ruskin; and in the orchestral swells and crashes of 
 De Quincey? How perfectly the impetuosity of Napier s 
 style corresponds to the military movements he describes! 
 As we read his vivid narrative of the Peninsular battles, 
 we seem, it has been said, to hear the tramp of the charg 
 ing squadrons, the sharp rattle of the musquetry, and the 
 booming thunder of the artillery. Words in a master s 
 hands seem more than words; he seems to double or 
 quadruple their power by skill in using, giving them a 
 force and significance which in the dictionary they never 
 possessed. Yet, mighty as is the sorcery of these wizards of 
 words, that of Shakspeare is still greater. The marvel of 
 his diction is its immense suggestiveness, the mysterious 
 synthesis of sound and sense, of meaning and associa 
 tion, which characterizes his verse; a necromancy to which 
 Emerson alludes in a passage which is itself an illustration, 
 almost, of the thing it describes. Speaking of the impossi 
 bility of acting or reciting Shakspeare s plays, he says : 
 " The recitation begins, when lo ! one golden word leaps 
 out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly 
 torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes." 
 Hardly less surprising than this suggestiveness of 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 45 
 
 Shakspeare, is the variety of rhythm in his ten-syllable 
 verse. We speak sometimes of Shakspeare s style; but we 
 might as well speak of the style of Bumor with her hundred 
 tongues. Shakspeare has a multiplicity of styles, varying 
 with the ever-varying character of his themes. The Proteus 
 of the dramatic art, he identifies himself with each of his 
 characters in turn, passing from one to another like the 
 same soul animating different bodies. Like a ventriloquist, 
 he throws his voice into other men s larynxes, and makes 
 every word appear to come from the person whose char 
 acter he for the moment assumes. The movement and 
 measure of Othello and the Tempest, Macbeth and the Mid 
 summer Night s Dream, Lear and Coriolanus, are almost as 
 different from each other as the rhythm of them all from 
 that of Beaumont and Fletcher; and yet in every case the 
 music or melody is a subtle accompaniment to the sentiment 
 that ensouls the play. Whoever would know the exhaust- 
 less riches of our many-tongued language, its capability of 
 expressing the daintiest delicacies and subtlest refinements 
 of thought, as well as the grandest emotions that can thrill 
 the human brain, should give his days and nights to the 
 study of the myriad-souled poet. It may be doubted whether 
 there is any inflection of harmony, any witchery of melody, 
 from the warble of the flute and the low thrill of the flageolet 
 to the trumpet-peal or the deep and dreadful sub-bass of the 
 organ, which is not brought out in the familiar or the pas 
 sionate tones of this imperial master. 
 
 Style is often called the dress of thought, an objectionable 
 term as it seems to imply that there is no vital connection 
 between the two. Style is not a robe which may be put on 
 or off at will; it is the incarnation of the thought. It is the 
 coefficient without which the thought is incomplete. As 
 
46 LITEEARY STYLE. 
 
 words without ideas are soulless, so ideas without words are 
 shadowless ghosts. Analyze any masterpiece of literature, 
 the effect of which is not merely to convey information, 
 or to establish truth by argument, and you will find that 
 the things themselves are identified with the very phrases, 
 words, and syllables, in which they are communicated. 
 True as this is of prose, it is doubly true of poetry; it is a 
 linked strain throughout. So ethereal and evanescent is the 
 poetic spirit, so frail and fugitive is the vehicle in which it 
 is conveyed, that, as a fine poet has said, though this incon 
 vertible diction may be as durable as the firmament, and, 
 like the firmament, may transmit the glories vinlaid in it 
 from generation to generation, yet, if you unsettle but a 
 word in it, it breaks like a bubble, and the imprisoned spirit 
 is gone. The spell of the great magicians of language 
 depends upon the very terms they use, and to attempt con 
 juring with any other is to imitate the folly of Cassim in the 
 Arabian Nights, who cried " Open Wheat, " and " Open 
 Barley " to the door which responded only to " Open Sesame." 
 Though style is not properly the dress of thought, and 
 it degrades it to consider it as such, there is yet a striking 
 analogy oftentimes between the costume of a period and 
 its style. Look at the writers of the Elizabethan age ; 
 how stiff and elaborate, yet how picturesque is their lit 
 erary garniture, like the garniture of their bodies! The 
 peaked beard, the starched collar, the trunk-hose, and the 
 quilted doublet of Bacon, Sydney, and Spenser, are in 
 singular keeping with the high sentence, the quaint fan 
 cies, and the rich decorations of their style. In Pope s 
 day, the day of powdered queues and purple - velvet 
 doublets, of beaux with cocked hats and lace ruffles, and 
 belles with patches on their cheeks, men dressed their 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 47 
 
 thoughts as finically as they did their bodies. As they 
 carried snuff-boxes and wore rapiers, so they put titillating 
 ingredients into their styles, and stabbed each other with 
 epigrams. To-day dress, at least, men s dress, is neat, 
 plain, close-fitting, business-like; with no waste of ma 
 terial, no ornament to please the eye, nor colors to attract 
 attention; and such are the qualities of our literary com 
 position. Our style is to that of the golden age of Eng 
 lish literature what the frock-coat and the stove-pipe are 
 to the doublet and the plumed hat. 
 
 In view of what we have said, even though very in 
 adequately, of the value of style, let us ask if it does not 
 merit the most careful and assiduous cultivation? The 
 power of the orator is mighty, but perishable. His words 
 may be preserved, but the attitude and the look, the voice 
 and the gesture, the fire and the imagination which gave 
 a wizard s spell to his speech, are lost forever. The 
 swords of the champions of eloquence are buried with 
 them in the grave. Where is the electric oratory of 
 Chatham, the dithyrambic melody of Grattan, the winged 
 flame of Henry? Gone, vanished forever, as completely 
 as their forms from the banks of the Thames and the 
 streets of Dublin and Richmond. Not so with those utter 
 ances which the printing-press has saved from destruction; 
 framed in cunning and attractive forms by a master of 
 composition, they may sway the world when the tongue 
 is frozen and the hand is paralyzed. Committed to the 
 frailest of substances, which a baby s hand can tear, a 
 drop of water destroy, they repeat and perpetuate them 
 selves through successive centuries, in defiance of all the 
 agencies of loss and decay. It is an inestimable privilege 
 to be able to hold converse with the mighty dead through 
 
48 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 books, to evoke the ghosts of Virgil and Dante, Bacon 
 and Milton, Moli^re and Pascal, and listen to their win 
 nowed wisdom, as they sit by our firesides and descant 
 upon human and divine things. But there is a joy which 
 as far transcends this as intellectual activity transcends 
 passivity; it is the ecstasy of creation, the joy of wreak 
 ing one s thought upon expression, of giving utterance 
 to the sentiment that has long haunted the brain, and 
 which cries passionately for utterance. How dull and 
 death-like is the life of the bookworm, of the mind which 
 has always absorbed knowledge, and never given it out! 
 Who can wonder that so many cultivated men suffer from 
 mental atrophy, ennui, and melancholy, become shy, sus 
 picious, morbidly self-reflecting and self-conscious, when 
 year after year they hoard information with miserly greed, 
 and never vitalize it by imparting it to others? How 
 many studious and thoughtful men, like the poet Gray, 
 are tormented with an over-nice fastidiousness, which 
 "freezes the genial current of the soul," and extinguishes 
 all the healthy and buoyant activity of the intellect, making 
 their lives as sluggish as " the dull weed that rots by 
 Lethe s wharf," because they repress the natural instinct 
 of creation, instead of giving to the world (pardon the 
 phrase) their "level best" of expression! The mother of 
 Goethe tells us that her son, whenever he had a grief, 
 made a poem on it, and so got rid of it. How many per 
 sons who are dying of "the secret wounds which bleed 
 beneath their cloaks " would find relief in giving voice to 
 their pains in song! How many who make life a selfish 
 paradise would experience a purer happiness if by apt 
 tale, or play, or poem, they would communicate the joys 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 49 
 
 of their deliciously overburdened souls to the souls of 
 others ! 
 
 The popular writer holds the same relation to the public 
 which the merchant holds to the consumer. He is the 
 mediator between the speculative thinker and the uncul 
 tured man. He is the middle man, who stands between the 
 schools and the market-place, bringing the lettered and the 
 unlettered together, and interpreting the one to the other. 
 It is his function to work up the raw material, the rough 
 ore of thought, into attractive forms, and by so doing to 
 indoctrinate and impress the great mass of humanity. He 
 thus contributes to that collision of mind with mind, that 
 agitation and comparison of thought, which is the very life 
 and soul of literature and history. To accomplish this 
 mission, he must be a master of language, acquainted 
 with the infinite beauty and the deepest, subtlest meanings 
 of words; skilled in their finest sympathies; and able, not 
 only to arrange them in logical and lucid forms, but to 
 extract from them their utmost meaning, suggestiveness, 
 and force. A man who has something to say, though he 
 says it ill, may be read once. If he is read again, it will 
 be due to some felicity of execution. No one re-reads a 
 book unless drawn to it and lured on by the style, which 
 magnetizes and entrances the reader like a siren, compell 
 ing him to go on from the beginning to the end. To be 
 master of such a style, vigorous, luminous, flexible, grace 
 ful and musical, which responds to every mood of the 
 writer as the strings or keys of the musical instrument 
 respond to the touch of the master s fingers, to have a 
 prompt command of those subtle, penetrative words which 
 touch the very quick of truth, as well as of those winged 
 words and necromantic terms, freighted with suggestion 
 3 
 
50 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 and association, which are like pictures to the eye, and 
 strains of music to the ear, to be able to pour into lan 
 guage " such a charm, sweetness so penetrating, energy so 
 puissant, 11 that men will be compelled to listen, and listen 
 ing to yield their wills, this is to hold a wand more 
 powerful than magician ever waved, a sceptre more potent 
 than king ever wielded. Style, thus viewed, takes rank 
 with the fine arts, and, as such, is as worthy of study and 
 admiration as those material forms which embody the con 
 ceptions of Angelo, Titian, and Raphael. 
 
 In conclusion, we are aware that in thus urging the 
 claims of the art of expression, we have exposed ourselves 
 to the jest of Diderot on Beccaria, that he had written a 
 work on style in which there was no style; but one may 
 see and feel the beauty of works of art which he can never 
 execute; and we will willingly become a target for the 
 critic s shafts, if we can but induce any of our readers, 
 especially our undergraduate readers, to study the mag 
 nificent mystery of words. We press this matter the more 
 urgently for two reasons: 1. Because, as Prof. Shedd says, 
 the modern mind, especially " the American mind, is full 
 of matter, and overfull of force . . . The Goth needs to 
 become an artist." 2. There is a tendency in some of our 
 colleges to neglect rhetoric as a synonym for the shallow 
 and the showy. The only style sanctioned by their pro 
 fessors is apparently the "colorless-correct," which Julius 
 Hare called Scotch-English, and which Carlyle, himself a 
 Scotchman, likened to power-loom weaving. Its great aim, 
 apparently, is to avoid all impulse, brilliancy, and surprise; 
 and its ideal is reached when a writer, as Coleridge said 
 of Wordsworth, is " austerely accurate in the use of words." 
 Even at our oldest college, where compositions were for- 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 51 
 
 merly required every fortnight for three years, only half-a- 
 dozen essays are now required during the whole four years 
 course; and the department of "Rhetoric and Oratory," 
 so long glorified by an Adams and a Channing, came so 
 near to extinction a few years ago, that we are told it only 
 got a reprieve at the very scaffold, at the intercession of 
 some of the older graduates. Again, there are persons who, 
 like Karl Hildebrand, affirm that nothing in one s native 
 language, but grammar and spelling, can be taught; "I 
 never heard," says he, " that Pascal and Bossuet, Swift and 
 Addison, or Lessing and Goethe, passed through a course 
 of stylistic instruction in French, English, or German; and 
 yet they are supposed not to have written these languages 
 so very badly." So, it might be replied, there have been 
 men in every calling, painters, sculptors, musicians, archi 
 tects, who have mastered their art without technical in 
 struction. But the example of these prodigies of genius 
 proves nothing in regard to the average man. It is true 
 that the highest secrets of a good style cannot be taught, 
 but must be learned by each man for himself, pen in 
 hand; that the knowledge and use of one s native language 
 are grasped, not deliberately, but " by a thousand uncon 
 sciously receptive organs." But the same thing is true 
 of music, painting, and all the other arts, in the acquisi 
 tion of which the student is advised to begin with a teacher. 
 Let the undergraduate, then, begin early to write, to 
 write while his faculties are plastic, lest, when he is called 
 to posts of responsibility and honor, he have to take up 
 tlie lament of Italy s statesman, Count Cavour. Bitterly 
 did he lament that in his youthful days he had never 
 been taught how to speak and write, " arts which," said 
 he, " require a degree of nicety and adaptability in par- 
 
52 LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 ticular organs, which can only be acquired by practice in 
 youth." To obtain such a mastery of language as we 
 have described is the privilege of but few; but all may 
 make an approximation to it, and of all excellence, here 
 as elsewhere, the first, second, and last secret is labor. 
 Intercourse with men of culture, listening to the language 
 of the common people, and the perusal of good authors, 
 it has been truly said, are the basis of a good style; and 
 the true means of perfecting it, are the habit of thinking 
 clearly, conscientiousness in seeking the expression that 
 exactly corresponds to one s thoughts, and the honesty not 
 to write when one has nothing to say.* Above all should 
 it be remembered, that the veins of golden thought do 
 not lie on the surface of the mind; time and patience are 
 required to sink the shafts, and bring out the glittering 
 ore. The compositions whose subtle grace has a peren 
 nial charm, which we sip like old wine, phrase by phrase, 
 and sentence by sentence, till their delicate aroma and 
 exquisite flavor diffuse themselves through every cell of 
 the brain, are wrought out, not under "high pressure, 1 
 but quietly, leisurely, in the dreamy and caressing atmos 
 phere of fancy. They are the mellow vintage of a ripe 
 and unforced imagination. The fitness of our language 
 for such composition needs no proof, though, perhaps, in 
 no other language has the average excellence of its prose- 
 writing been so far below the excellence of its best speci 
 mens. The language which, at the very beginning of its 
 full organization, could produce the linked sweetness of 
 Sidney and the " mighty line " of Marlowe, the voluptuous 
 beauty of Spenser and the oceanic melody of Shakspeare, 
 and which, at a riper age, could show itself an adequate 
 
 * Karl Hildebrand. 
 
LITEKAKY STYLE. 53 
 
 instrument for the organ-like harmonies of Milton and 
 the matchless symphonies of Sir Thomas Browne; which 
 could give full and fit expression to the fiery energy of 
 Dry den and the epigrammatic point of Pope, to the forest- 
 like gloom of Young and the passionate outpourings of 
 Burns; which sustained and supported the tremulous ele 
 gance and husbanded strength of Campbell, the broad- 
 winged sweep of Coleridge, the deep sentiment and all- 
 embracing humanities of Wordsworth, and the gorgeous 
 emblazonry of Moore; and which to-day, in the plenitude 
 of its powers, responds to every call of Tennyson, Ruskin, 
 Newman, and Froude, is surely equal to the demands 
 of any genius that may yet arise to tax its powers. Spoken 
 in the time of Elizabeth by a million fewer persons than to 
 day speak it in London alone, it now girdles the earth with 
 its electric chain of communication, and voices the thoughts 
 of a hundred million of souls. It has crossed the peaks 
 of the Rocky Mountains, and has invaded South America 
 and the Sandwich Islands; it is advancing with giant 
 strides through Africa and New Zealand, and on the scorch 
 ing plains of India; it is penetrating the wild wastes of 
 Australia, making inroads upon China and Japan, and bids 
 fair to become the dominant language of the civilized 
 world. Let us jealously guard its purity, maintain its 
 ancient idioms, and develop its inexhaustible resources, 
 that it may be even more worthy than it now is to be 
 the mother-tongue, not only of the two great brother 
 nations whose precious legacy it is, but of the whole family 
 of man. 
 
THE DUTY OF PRAISE. 
 
 " A MONG the minor duties of life," says Sydney Smith, 
 -**- " I hardly know any more important than that of 
 not praising where praise is not due. Reputation is one of 
 the prizes for which men contend; it is, as Mr. Burke calls 
 it, the cheap defense and ornament of nations, and the 
 nurse of rnanly exertions 1 ; it produces more labor and more 
 talent than twice the wealth of a country could ever rear 
 up. It is the coin of genius, and it is the imperious duty 
 of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice 
 and the wisest economy. 1 Nothing can be truer than this, 
 yet is it not equally true that among the minor duties of 
 life is that of praising where praise is due? Is it not as 
 important that we should admire what is admirable as 
 that we should despise what is worthless? The world is 
 full of men, women and children, who are living unhappily 
 and rusting in comparative activity, or doing but a tithe 
 of the good they might do, for want of a little judicious 
 praise. Having no faith in themselves, they need an as 
 surance of their capabilities from others. The very fear 
 of failure makes their failure sure, and they lose their 
 strength when it is not recognized. To shy, sensitive 
 natures, especially, praise is a vital necessity. They need 
 to be encouraged and caressed as truly as others need to 
 be lashed and spurred; and sincere commendation is to 
 them at once a tonic and a cordial, cheering them with a 
 
 64 
 
THE DUTY OF PRAISE. 55 
 
 flush of pleasant feeling, and bracing them for further 
 good work. 
 
 Sainte Beuve tells us that when an idea occurred for the 
 first time to Lamennais, he believed that the world would 
 hasten to ruin unless he instantly made it known to the 
 world; so he at once set to work to communicate it. During 
 all his processes and applications, all that he did and undid, 
 the orchestra of pride was playing in a low tone, deep down 
 and at a distance within himself, " I am the savior, I am the 
 savior. " It is a popular notion that such self-esteem is a 
 common, if not a universal, weakness: wo believe it is rare. 
 We are confident that a large part of that conduct which so 
 annoys us in our fellow sinners, and which we resist in 
 society, and laugh at out of it, as vanity and egotism, is the 
 very opposite, being only an uneasy or frantic attempt to 
 win from others an assurance of what one himself sorely 
 doubts. What a pity, then, that men in their various deal 
 ings with each other are so niggard of praise! Why do we 
 so often wait till our loved ones are torn from us by death 
 before we give full expression to our affection? Of what 
 use to the faithful wife whom we lay in the grave, are the 
 tears we shed over her, the endearing terms we lavish upon 
 her memory, and the passionate praises of her virtues with 
 which wo vex the ears of friends? She whom we now so 
 deplore, would have drunk such expressions of tenderness 
 in her life-time with ineffable delight; but. alas! our lips 
 were sealed, and now our words cannot reach her. There 
 is hardly a man living who is not keenly susceptible to 
 approbation in some form; and yet there is no instrument 
 of power over the affections or the conduct of our fellow 
 beings which we employ so grudgingly as that which is 
 the most pleasing and the most efficacious of all. Who can 
 
56 THE DUTY OP PRAISE. 
 
 estimate the amount of good that might be accomplished 
 in our schools, in our families, and in all the relations of 
 employer and employed, were we as quick to commend 
 excellence as we are to growl and scold at its absence! 
 Scolding begets fear, praise begets love: and "not only 
 are human hearts more easily governed by love than by 
 fear, but fear often leads less to the correction of faults 
 and the struggle for merits than toward the cunning 
 concealment of the one and the sullen discouragement of 
 the other." 
 
 But, says some one, is not praise sometimes dangerous? 
 Yes, and so is blame; so are knives and pistols and loco 
 motives; and so is everything useful; but would you ban 
 ish the sunshine because it sometimes sets forests on fire? 
 No doubt it is poison to a human soul to breathe the 
 incense of praise habitually; and we may be sure that no 
 man ever attains to complete self-knowledge until he has 
 had an enemy. In the Roman Church no man is canonized 
 until his claims have been formally investigated; and for 
 this purpose a Devil s Attorney, so-called, is appointed, 
 whose business it is to pick flaws in the life and character 
 of the proposed saint, and to show that he is no better 
 than other men. It is said that De Launoy, the famous 
 doctor of the Sorbonne, applied himself to this work with 
 such a will and such earnestness that he won the title of 
 Le Grand DenicTieur des Saints, " The Great Dislodger of 
 Saints." Bonaventura D Argonne said of him: "He was 
 an object of dread to heaven and to earth. He has de 
 throned more saints from paradise than ten popes have 
 canonized. Everything in the martyrology stirred his bile. 
 * * * The curate of St. Eustache, of Paris, said: When I 
 meet the Doctor de Launoy I bow to him down to the very 
 
THE DUTY OP PKAISE. 57 
 
 ground, and I speak to him only hat in hand, and with the 
 deepest humility; so afraid am I of his depriving me of 
 my St. Eustache, who hangs by a thread. " It would be 
 well for most persons to listen occasionally to a function 
 ary of this kind, did not one s neighbors so often volunteer 
 their services as to render his services unnecessary. But 
 praise and overpraise are two different things; and while 
 the latter, when it does not disgust, puffs up and corrupts 
 its subject, the former, when justly bestowed, incites to 
 new and earnest effort. It is not honest commendation 
 that inflates, but that which we bestow insincerely, when 
 we are angling for compliments, and expect to be repaid 
 with compound interest. It has been truly said that the 
 delicacy of the sensitiveness to merited praise may be al 
 most regarded as an exact measure of the delicacy of the 
 civilization, and stands in the same relation to the narrow, 
 blunt, embryonic sense of the savage as the skin of the 
 race-horse to the hide of the rhinoceros. The civilized 
 nature is sensitive all over. The whole surface of the 
 epidermis, every little hair, is electrified by the mere pres 
 ence in the air of praise and blame. 
 
 The writer we have quoted at the beginning of this 
 article says of Sir James Mackintosh that " his chief foible 
 was indiscriminate praise." Better this than indiscrimi 
 nate blame. Vauvenargues, the French moralist, goes so 
 far as to say that " it is a great sign of mediocrity always 
 to praise moderately." Habitually to withhold commen 
 dation where it is deserved and needed, "to damn with 
 faint praise" where there is signal merit, to be always 
 afraid of committing one s self and of being taken in, 
 argues a narrow head and a cold heart. The spirit of 
 cynicism, of depreciation; the mocking goblin that sits at 
 
58 THE DUTY OF PKAISE. 
 
 the elbow of some men to scoff at others, to chill enthu 
 siasm, to prick all the bubbles of the ideal with the needle 
 point, to tell eloquence that it is bombast, love that it is 
 refined selfishness, and devotion that it is cant, is a spirit 
 not of heaven or earth, but of hell. On the other hand, 
 to be quick to recognize merit, even where least expected, 
 and to commend it in unstinted terms, is sure proof of a 
 large and magnanimous soul. 
 
 Moralists in all ages have denounced vanity, but we 
 doubt whether it deserves all the hard names heaped upon 
 it. A certain amount of self-esteem seems absolutely 
 necessary to keep men alive and in heart. It is to a man 
 what the oily secretion is to a bird, with which it sleeks 
 and adjusts its ruffled plumage. It has been justly said 
 that if a man could hear all that his fellows say of him, 
 that he is stupid, that he is hen-pecked, that he will be 
 bankrupt in a week, that his brain is softening, that he 
 has said all his best things and keeps repeating himself, 
 and if he could believe that all these pleasant things are 
 true, he would be in his grave before the month was out. 
 There are some men who need praise as much as flowers 
 need sunshine. You cannot get the best work out of them 
 without it. It is vain to preach to them self-reliance; 
 they need to be propped and buttressed by others opin 
 ions, to be braced by encouragement and sympathy. 
 " Praise me, Mr. Pope," said Sir Godfrey Kneller to the 
 poet of Twickenham, as the latter sat for his portrait; 
 "you know I can t do as well as I should unless you 
 praise me." Ridiculous as this request may seem, who 
 doubts that the crooked little poet got a better portrait 
 by complying with it? And when was praise more effica- 
 
THE DUTY OP PRAISE. 59 
 
 cious, when did it yield a richer harvest, than when be 
 stowed on the sickly poet himself? 
 
 Bulwer, in his essay on " The Efficacy of Praise, 1 in 
 "Caxtoniana" observes that every actor knows how a cold 
 house chills him, and how necessary to the full sustainment 
 of a great part is the thunder of applause. He states that 
 the elder Kean, when he was performing in some theater 
 in this country, came to the manager when the play was 
 half over and said: "I can t go on the stage again, sir, if 
 the pit keeps its hands in its pockets. Such an audience 
 would extinguish ^Etna" Upon this the manager told the 
 audience that Mr. Kean, not being accustomed to the severe 
 intelligence of American citizens, mistook their silent at 
 tention for courteous disappointment, and that if they did 
 not applaud Mr. Kean as he was accustomed to be ap 
 plauded, they could not see Mr. Kean act as he was accus 
 tomed to act. Of course the audience took the hint; and 
 as their fervor rose, so rose the genius of the actor, and 
 their applause contributed to the triumphs it rewarded. 
 
 Adam Clarke tells us that when a boy he was regarded as 
 exceedingly dull of intellect. One day his father said to 
 a teacher who had called at his house: " That boy is very 
 slow at learning; I fear you will not be able to do much 
 with him." " My heart sank," says Dr. Clarke. " I would 
 have given the world to have been as some of the boys 
 around me. The man spoke with kindness, gave me some 
 directions, and laying his hand upon my head, observed: 
 This lad will make a good scholar yet. I felt his kindness; 
 it raised my spirit; the possibility of being able to learn 
 was in this moment, and for the first time, impressed upon 
 my mind; a ray of hope sprang up within me; in that hope 
 I lived and labored; it seemed to create power; my lessons 
 
60 THE DUTY OF PRAISE. 
 
 were all committed to memory with ease, and I could have 
 doubled the effort had it been required." From that mo 
 ment Adam never looked back, and never loitered. The boy 
 who had shown so little love for his books became passion 
 ately fond of them; he bounded over the fields of learning 
 with the speed of a race-horse, and never abated his activity 
 till the day of his death. 
 
PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 MR. LECKY, in his European Morals, calls attention 
 to a " momentous intellectual revolution " which is 
 taking place in England, and, he might have added, in this 
 country. He points out that the work of instructing the 
 public, which used to belong to book-makers, has been al 
 most wholly handed over to the journalists who give us the 
 results of their thinking in the daily and weekly press. 
 Even touching abstruse subjects, such as philosophical and 
 ethical theories, he maintains that the weekly English pa 
 pers exercise a greater influence than any other productions 
 of the day in " forming the ways of thinking of ordinary 
 educated Englishmen/ 1 These statements may startle the 
 thoughtful reader, and strike him, at first, as overcharged; 
 but who that considers the number, variety, and ever-in 
 creasing ability of these periodicals, can doubt it? The pub 
 lic journal, at once the echo and the prompter of the public 
 mind, is constantly enlarging its power and widening its 
 scope. As a means of swaying the minds of men, which is 
 the essence of power; as an instrument for elevating society, 
 which is the object of goodness; in the directness, strength, 
 and persistence of its influence, it has no equal among all 
 the agencies of human utterance. Not only is it becoming 
 the common people s encyclopaedia, its school, lyceum, and 
 college, but the educated classes are looking to it more 
 and more as their oracle. Is this a fact to be deprecated, 
 
 61 
 
62 PERIODICAL LITEEATUEE. 
 
 or shall we rejoice at a revolution which it is evidently not 
 in our power to stop? 
 
 There is a class of persons who talk in a very melan 
 choly strain about the " light literature " with which they 
 say we are deluged in these days. Some of them have even 
 gone so far as to doubt whether newspapers are not, in one 
 way, nuisances, and whether the habit of reading them 
 daily at all hours is not a kind of intellectual dram-drink 
 ing, ultimately very injurious to intellectual digestion. 
 These persons hardly know which to regard as the more 
 deplorable, that the American people should read so many 
 newspapers and magazines, or that scholars should waste so 
 much of their time in contributing to these ephemeral publi 
 cations. Under their baleful influence we are losing, it is 
 feared, all terseness, elegance, and idiomatic purity of style, 
 and all capacity for serious thought. Skimming the surface 
 of things, acquiring no solid, thorough information, we shall 
 be speedily, in Dr. Johnson s phrase, like the inhabitants of 
 a besieged town, we shall have " a mouthful of every kind 
 of knowledge, and a bellyful of none." But what do these 
 croakers mean by light literature? Is not the word purely 
 relative? May not reading which is light as chaff to one 
 man be as weighty as grain to another? The question with 
 the great majority of men is not whether they shall read 
 newspapers and magazines, or solid, thoughtful books, but 
 whether they shall read the former or nothing. Henry of 
 Navarre longed for the time- when every Frenchman should 
 have a hen in his pot. That he deemed a better sign of a 
 people s prosperity than occasional big feasts in the castles 
 of the great. The newspapers and magazines bring liter 
 ature into every home, just as an aqueduct and pipe bring 
 the water of Lake Michigan into the homes of the citizens 
 
PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 63 
 
 of Chicago. It is quite true that the water tastes occasion 
 ally of iron, and wears a rusty stain, quite true that a 
 purer draught may be found at some lake in the shadow of 
 the hills; but the water is flowing in every house, which is 
 the great desideratum ; and, moreover, it is often as pure in 
 the basin of the citizen as beneath the trembling sedges 
 which the wild duck loves. 
 
 It was with the greatest reluctance, and only because 
 they had been republished in America, and thence smug 
 gled into England, that Macaulay consented to the repub- 
 lication of his " ephemeral " essays in book-form by the 
 Longmans; yet upward of a hundred and twenty thou 
 sand copies had been sold five or six years ago, by a 
 single publisher, in Great Britain alone. Can any one 
 doubt that the reading world has been as much profited 
 by his contributions to the Edinburgh Review as by his 
 more ambitious history? 
 
 The truth is, the " light reading " so much stigmatized 
 is a necessary prerequisite to a taste for something more 
 substantial. As a horse cannot live upon oats without 
 hay, so the popular mind cannot digest its nutriment if 
 it is too concentrated. There must be bulk as well as 
 nutriment. Destroy our periodicals, and who believes that 
 Bacon and Milton would have one reader a century hence 
 where they now have a hundred? To thousands and tens 
 of thousands the newspaper is an academy, in which they 
 are prepared to profit by the instruction they will after 
 ward get in the university of which Bacon, Newton, Locke, 
 Mill, all the world s great thinkers, are professors. 
 
 We deny, however, the propriety of the term "light" 
 when applied in so sweeping a manner to the newspaper 
 literature of the day. Is thought more weighty because 
 
64 PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 it is printed in a book and bound in cloth or leather, 
 instead of in a daily or weekly journal? Those who call 
 our newspaper literature " light " forget the enormous 
 stride which journalism has made within the last forty 
 years. Our leading newspapers are no longer filled with 
 news exclusively, with raw-head and bloody-bones stories, 
 or with gossip and twaddling criticism, but with ably- 
 written editorials and contributions, containing the results 
 of much thought and research, touching the gravest ques 
 tions of the day, political, moral, social, literary, and sci 
 entific. Often, too, our great journals contain eloquent 
 and instructive sermons, into which leading American 
 divines have put their best thought; often they contain 
 elaborate and scholarly articles from the reviews, and 
 choice extracts, the crime de la crime, the wheat thrice 
 winnowed, of the ablest works of the day on art, litera 
 ture, theology, finance, and science in all its forms; and 
 the profoundest thinkers and the ripest scholars often make 
 the daily and the weekly press the vehicle of instruction 
 to the world. Many of the best books now published are 
 reprints of articles contributed by the Spencers, Marti- 
 neaus, Agassizes, Herschels, Huxleys, Hawthornes, Arnolds, 
 Carlyles, Kenans, Sainte-Beuves, and hundreds of other 
 writers equally brilliant, learned, or profound, to the news 
 papers, magazines, and quarterlies of the day. The news 
 paper is, in fact, the people s book, the only book which 
 thousands feel able or willing to buy, or think they have 
 time to read; and if by buying it they can be cheated into 
 devouring entire books in slices, or even the juicy and most 
 nutritious portions only, shall we not rejoice? Is it neces 
 sary, in order that a man may be nourished and strength 
 ened by roast-beef, that he should eat from a whole joint? 
 
PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 65 
 
 Shall we be told for the thousandth time that "a little 
 learning is a dangerous thing, 1 that the smattering of 
 knowledge one gets of difficult and complex subjects from 
 newspapers is worse than ignorance? Pray tell us, Mr. 
 Wise Man, how many persons there are in the community, 
 even among the educated, who have a really, not a rela 
 tively, profound knowledge of any subject? How many 
 philosophers, who have exhausted all that is to be learned 
 in any department of knowledge? Again, if a little knowl 
 edge is to be shunned as dangerous, how is one ever to 
 acquire a great deal? It seems to us that if a little knowl 
 edge is dangerous, no knowledge is more dangerous still. 
 A little chemistry will teach a farmer whether his soil needs 
 animal or mineral dressing. A little geology will keep a 
 man from digging hundreds of feet for coal, in formations 
 where it cannot be found. A little mineralogy will prevent 
 him from mistaking mica for gold. A little knowledge of 
 poisons and their antidotes may save his life. It is well 
 enough to know the multiplication-table, though you should 
 never scale the dizzy heights of mathematics, where La 
 Place and Newton dwell like stars apart. 
 
 Wendell Phillips once said that there are two kinds of 
 education ; that there is the education of Harvard and Yale, 
 and there is the education of the New York Tribune and 
 the New York Post ; and the latter kind is quite as valuable 
 as the former. The rudimental discipline of school is, of 
 course, indispensable, and the broader culture and severer 
 training of the college are of high advantage to the young; 
 but who can doubt that the stimulus furnished to their 
 minds by the newspaper, its pungent, suggestive para 
 graphs, its fiery or thoughtful leaders, the libraries of 
 information it contains, its faithful pictures of the great 
 
66 PEKIODICAL LITEEATURE. 
 
 world, "its fluctuations and its vast concerns," its prompt 
 sympathy with the ideas and sentiments of to-day, all 
 combine to render it as an educator more effective and more 
 enduring in its effects, for good or ill, than any other 
 human agency? To live in a village was once to be shut 
 up and contracted; but now a man may be a hermit, and 
 yet a cosmopolite. For the newspaper is a telescope, by 
 which he brings near the most distant things; a microscope, 
 by which he leisurely examines the most minute; an ear- 
 trumpet, by which he collects and brings within his hearing 
 all that is done and said all over the earth; a museum, full 
 of curiosities; a library, containing the quintessence of 
 many books; a picture-gallery, full of living scenes from 
 real life, drawn not on canvas, but on paper with printer s 
 ink. 
 
 It is not strange, perhaps, that the cultivated man, who 
 sees so many sterling books reposing neglected on his 
 shelves, because he cannot find time to read them, should 
 sometimes resolve with Thoreau to throw aside the Times 
 and to read the Eternities. But what would be the result, 
 if his resolution were put in force? Let the experiment of 
 Auguste Comte answer. We are told that at one time this 
 great thinker abstained from newspapers as a teetotaller 
 abstains from spirituous liquors. By so doing he preserved 
 intact his power of abstraction, of dealing with intellect 
 ual conceptions as with material things, which newspaper 
 reading might have impaired; but, by thus isolating him 
 self from the interests and ways of thinking of ordinary 
 men, he arrived at "a peculiar kind of intellectual deca 
 dence," from which a thoughtful writer thinks the rough 
 common sense of the newspapers would have preserved 
 
PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 67 
 
 him.* It looks like a very wise plan to transfer the three 
 hundred hours a year spent over the newspaper to the 
 English classics. But would the gain balance the loss? It 
 was very well for an Englishman of Queen Anne s time to 
 read Addison and Steele s Spectator; but the Englishman 
 of to-day, who would keep abreast with the times in which 
 he lives, must read the Spectators, Timeses, and Saturday 
 Reviews of the present hour. Newspapers are, in truth, 
 contemporary history; not always accurate, but none the 
 less history. They are the glass and mirror of the age. 
 As the author of "The Intellectual Life" observes: "The 
 mind is like a merchant s ledger; it requires to be contin 
 ually posted up to the latest date. Even the last telegram 
 may have upset some venerable theory that has been re 
 ceived as infallible for ages." 
 
 As to the regret that scholars and scientists " waste 
 their time " in contributing to periodicals, we do not see 
 "the waste." When persons cry out against such men 
 frittering away their brains in the production of a liter 
 ature which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the 
 waste-paper basket, they forget the facts we have just 
 stated, and, above all, that, as periodical literature is that 
 which reaches the greatest number of minds, its worth 
 is exactly proportioned to the number of able and well- 
 instructed men who contribute to produce it. Journal 
 ism, which reaches the million, is the very last kind of 
 literary production that should be abandoned to feeble, 
 shallow thinkers and vulgar writers who lack capacity for 
 more enduring work. It should be the work of minds of 
 the largest size and of " the divinest mettle." Who can 
 estimate the good to the community when the leading 
 
 * P. G. Hammerton, in "The Intellectual Life. 1 
 
68 PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 thinkers, instead of lecturing a dozen times a year to 
 audiences of five hundred, or publishing books to be read 
 by a few thousands, pour out their treasures through the 
 daily or weekly press to a hundred thousand readers? 
 Why should the feeblest men control the tremendous power 
 of the press? Why should the elephant be harnessed to 
 the go-cart, and the mouse to the load of hay? 
 
 Those persons who complain when a savant or scholar, 
 instead of concentrating his energies upon some single task, 
 and devoting a life-time to it, writes upon various topics 
 for the press, assume that the former course would be 
 better for himself and the world. They forget that, in 
 stead of having one pet notion which he would like to 
 ventilate, he may have a dozen, or a hundred, perhaps 
 a new one daily or weekly. Perhaps not one of these 
 notions is worth expanding into a book, yet they may all 
 be admirable themes for a newspaper article. Journalism 
 enables a writer to say just what the subject exacts and 
 no more, to say it when the inspiration moves him, and 
 to say it to just those persons to whom he wants to say 
 it. Again, the persons who would have a man write books 
 instead of newspaper articles take for granted that a 
 writer s largest work, that which has cost him the long 
 est and severest toil, is necessarily the best. Literary 
 history teems with instances to the contrary. Leisure 
 and years of devotion to a task have often resulted in 
 tediousness. The Fairy Queen and Hudibras would have 
 far more readers if they were each squeezed into a single 
 book. Who reads Wordsworth s Excursion, or Landor s 
 Gebir? How few Americans have toiled through the long 
 poems of Dryden; yet what school-boy is not familiar with 
 the Ode on St. Cecilia s day? Of Voltaire s hundred vol- 
 
PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 69 
 
 umes, how many are known to-day even by their titles? 
 Voluminous, long-winded authors seldom float securely 
 down the stream of time. Posterity examines unwieldy 
 luggage with a severe and jealous eye, and seems glad of 
 an excuse to toss it into the waves of Lethe. There may 
 be more wealth in a lady s jewel-box than in a merchant s 
 warehouse, and Gray s Elegy, Coleridge s Ancient Mariner, 
 and Milton s LT Allegro and II Penseroso will be read long 
 after their more elaborate poems are forgotten. There 
 can be no greater mistake than to estimate the value of 
 literary productions by their size. A terse newspaper 
 paragraph is often quoted from Eastport to San Francisco, 
 and stirs the hearts of millions. In a few piquant sen 
 tences, a writer may hit off a folly of the day, satirize a 
 social evil, rebuke a vice, or put into a portable form an 
 argument for or against a political or economic policy. In 
 that brief space may be packed a tremendous power of 
 thought and expression, as in a drop of water there is 
 condensed electricity enough to kill an elephant. Above 
 all, we are not to infer that a newspaper article is not 
 weighty or instructive because it is lively and sparkling 
 in style. Lead is not priceless because it is weighty, nor 
 is a bar of gold valueless because it glitters. The public 
 wants a light literature; but it requires a lightness with 
 a value in it, like that of the paper-boat which Shelley 
 launched upon the Serpentine, which was made of a fifty- 
 pound Bank of England bill. 
 
 Finally, it should never be forgotten by those who groan 
 over the " waste " of talent in periodicals that many writers 
 are born for just that kind of work. In literature, as in 
 war, there are many men more brilliant than profound; 
 who have more elan than persistence; who gain their 
 
70 PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 victories, like the Zouaves, by a rapid dash; who, as Byron 
 said of himself, are like the tiger, which, if it does not 
 seize its prey at the first bound, goes back grumbling to 
 its cave. All these do their best in periodicals. Like 
 the orator, whose imagination is kindled by his audience, 
 like the actor who is excited by the crowded house, they 
 need the immediate presence of the reader. If such per 
 sons have minds full of thought and information on an 
 immense variety of topics, and have something new and 
 instructive to communicate on each of them, why should 
 they be condemned to write a big treatise or an epic 
 poem, especially when they have no inspiration to do 
 so, and the task of a single work will preclude them from 
 uttering more than a fraction of what is in them, and of 
 what is the natural outcome of their genius? There is 
 more sentimentality than good sense in the regrets of 
 those who sigh at the "fragmentary" nature of a Mack 
 intosh s or a Jeffrey s productions, because they have 
 chosen to instruct and enlighten the public through the 
 pages of reviews and magazines rather than through those 
 of a magnum opus. If a landscape gardener chooses to 
 give us for our refreshment a grove of shady elms, we 
 will not grumble, but rejoice that he did not give us, 
 instead, a solitary giant oak. If an architect plants in a 
 city a multitude of churches, each of which is a model of 
 convenience and an architectural gem, we will not de 
 mand of him why he did not, with a keener eye to his 
 fame, build a monument to his genius in a single tower 
 ing cathedral. No one is so foolish as to depreciate the 
 odes of Horace because of their brevity, or to lament that 
 Demosthenes spoke on the topics of the hour, instead of 
 writing a history like that of Thucydides. 
 
PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 71 
 
 The interests of society, it must be remembered, are 
 best subserved by the division of labor. To dig the ore 
 of knowledge from the mine, and to strike the coin at 
 the mint, are wholly different operations, and he who 
 does the one is seldom qualified for the other. If Newton 
 was properly employed in elaborating the " Principia," 
 Addison was just as properly employed in writing the 
 Spectators. Instead, therefore, of regretting, we should 
 exult that so many able and accomplished men have come 
 down from their stilts, popularized science and philoso 
 phy, and redeemed journalism from its degradation, in 
 stead of benefiting the few by writing big books. By so 
 doing, they are probably doing more, as Jeffrey truly 
 says, to direct and accelerate the rectification of public 
 opinion upon all practical questions than by any other 
 use they could possibly make of their faculties. "Their 
 names, indeed, may not go down to posterity in connec 
 tion with any work of celebrity, and the greater part even 
 of their contemporaries may be ignorant of the very ex 
 istence of their benefactor. But the benefits conferred 
 would not be the less real, nor the conferring of them 
 less delightful, nor the gratitude of the judicious less 
 ardent and sincere." 
 
THE BLUES" AND THEIR REMEDY. 
 
 human bodies are sic fools, 
 
 For a their colleges and their schools, 
 
 That when nae real ills perplex them, 
 
 They mak enow themsels to vex them; 
 
 An aye the less they have to sturt them, 
 
 In like proportion less will hurt them." BURNS. 
 
 A MONG the various ills that flesh is heir to, one of 
 -j- the direst is a predisposition to melancholy. What 
 are the causes of this tendency in certain men and women 
 is often a puzzling question to decide; nor has old Burton, 
 with all his acuteness and prodigality of learning, cleared 
 up the mysteries of the subject. Neither body nor mind, 
 probably, is exclusively concerned in the matter, but each 
 acts and reacts upon the other. In a large number of 
 cases a tendency to low spirits is hereditary, as in the 
 instance of Dr. Johnson, whose father suffered at times 
 from a mental gloom that bordered on insanity. Though 
 in after-life Johnson described himself and Shenstone at 
 Pembroke College as "a nest of singing birds, 1 it is yet 
 well known that in one of his college vacations he was 
 so overcome with constant irritation, fretfulness, and de 
 spair, that life became almost insupportable. Gaining 
 strength by indulgence, his hypochondria increased in in 
 tensity, till at last he was so languid at times that "he 
 could not distinguish the hour upon the town clock." His 
 friend Shenstone, too, whether from constitutional or other 
 
 72 
 
"THE BLUES" AN^D THEIR EEMEDY. 73 
 
 causes, was also, in after-life, a prey to melancholy. Gray 
 said that he passed his days in hopping round the Lea- 
 sowes, and was miserable except in the company of visi 
 tors. When they were gone, he had nothing to do but 
 "to go to sleep for the winter." He read little, and while 
 his mental gloom increased daily, philosophy furnished him 
 with no stone to fling at the giant. The ennui from which 
 he suffered he has well described in the following lines: 
 
 "Tedious again to curse the drizzly day, 
 
 Again to trace the wintry tract of snow; 
 Or, sooth d by vernal airs, again survey 
 The self-same hawthorns bud and cowslips blow." 
 
 The poet Gray, though he laughed at the sorrows of Shen- 
 stone, was equally unhappy in the old courts of the Cam 
 bridge Pembroke; but his melancholy "wears a serener 
 aspect, and the shadows that seem to hang about him only 
 lend a more mellow and solemn beauty to his character." 
 Ruskin declares that cheerfulness is just as natural to 
 the heart of a man in strong health as color to his cheek: 
 and "wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be 
 either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, 
 or erring habits of life." True as this is generally, it is 
 not so always; there is abundant evidence to show that 
 a melancholy temperament and a prevailing gloomy mood 
 may exist in company with perfect health. A large pre 
 ponderance of sensibility will induce inequality of moods, 
 periods of excessive gayety alternating with periods of ex 
 cessive melancholy. As genius implies an excess of nerv 
 ous force, and hence of sensibility, Aristotle was right in 
 saying" that all men of genius are melancholy. The biog 
 raphies of eminent men show that great powers of mind 
 4 
 
74 "THE BLUES 
 
 are not friendly to cheerfulness. Poets, philosophers, deep- 
 thinkers, all by turns have a touch of Bunyan s experience, 
 "as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to 
 give light, and as if the stones in the streets and the tiles 
 upon the houses did bend themselves against them, 1 the 
 cause being a lack of mental balance, for wherever there 
 is excess, there must also be defect. It is a well-known 
 fact that great wits have usually been melancholy. Though 
 the liveliest of companions, they have been habitually 
 hipped in their solitary hours. Grimaldi was pursued by 
 a devouring melancholy whenever he was off the stage, 
 and Curran, who set the tables in a roar by his merry 
 talk, was so sad that he declared he never went to bed 
 without wishing that he might not rise again. Sydney 
 Smith was an exception to the rule. He was positively 
 mad with spirits, their flow was perennial, and he bub 
 bled over with jokes and merriment alike in winter and 
 Summer, on sunny days and cloudy. Sterne had an equally 
 sunny temperament. Hair -brained, light-hearted, and 
 sanguine, pleased with himself, his whims, follies, and 
 foibles, he treated misfortune as a passing guest, and 
 even extracted amusement from it while it stayed. He 
 tells us that it was by mirth that he fenced against his 
 physical infirmities, persuaded that every time a man 
 laughed he added something to his fragment of life; and 
 so at Paris he laughed till he cried, and believed that his 
 lungs had been improved by the process as much as by 
 the change of air. Even after a fever which nearly cut 
 short his life-long peal of laughter, " a scuffle with death, 
 in which he suffered terribly," he was not depressed; 
 but, while barely out of danger, and still weak and pros 
 trate, he took up his pen to announce the merry contin- 
 
"THE BLUES" AND THEIR REMEDY. 75 
 
 uation of his Tristam Shandy, which had been "as good 
 as a bishopric to him," and so continued to laugh on till 
 pleurisy ended his days. 
 
 As individuals are constitutionally predisposed to melan 
 choly, so there is a national temperament that predisposes 
 men to gloomy views of life. The Englishman, saturated 
 with the fogs of his island, is notoriously less cheerful than 
 the inhabitant of sunny France. It is said that when the 
 former meets with reverses, his resources are his razor 
 and his pistol; a Frenchman, on the other hand, turns to 
 that all-consoling word, " rfimporte" and, having shrugged 
 his shoulders, is instantly transformed into a useful work 
 man. Many years ago Monsieur Zephyre, a first-rate opera 
 dancer, sunk in Waterloo Bridge, London, 5,000, which he 
 had accumulated by laborious instructions in his profession. 
 The shares which he had bought at 100 soon fell to 15. 
 But did lepauvre Zephyre think it incumbent on him to leap 
 into the Thames to drown his cares? No; he used to 
 parade the arches of that noble structure daily, and, when 
 ever he could get a soul to listen to him, would tell his 
 story, winding it up with the oft- repeated clause: "Though 
 the speculation was a bad one, yet it must be confessed that 
 the bridge is perfect." 
 
 There is no doubt that climate, and even the scenery 
 amid which one lives, have much to do with depression of 
 the spirits, especially in the case of certain finely strung 
 and sensitive natures. It has been truly said that every 
 locality is like a dyer s vat, and that the residents take its 
 color, or some other color, from it, just as the clothes do 
 that the dyer steeps in stain. The dreadful midland mo 
 notony of Warwickshire, its endless succession of inclosed 
 fields and hedgerow trees, became at last so repulsive to 
 
76 "THE BLUES" AKD THEIR REMEDY. 
 
 Dr. Arnold, that he panted for wilder scenery as the hart 
 pants for the water-brooks. Robert Hall tells us that the 
 country about Cambridge wrought wofully even on his 
 powerful mind; it depressed him to the level of its own 
 flatness. As the landscape there has no striking or even 
 pleasing features, and is often overhung with fogs or ren 
 dered dreary by rains, one feels there, says a Fellow of one 
 of the Colleges, " like a turkey upon a plain ; one can t rise 
 above it; he is powerless to take wing." Does not this ex 
 plain the doleful dumps and the suicidal feelings men so 
 often have on the dead levels of the West, especially in 
 Chicago, where the people live on the meeting edges of two 
 prairies, one of land, and the other of water? 
 
 Whatever the causes of " the blues," there is no doubt 
 that, with a few exceptions, all men have their splenetic 
 hours. There are times when, if asked how we do, we re 
 ply with Neal s Mr. Trepid: "A great deal worse than I 
 was, thank e; most dead, I m obliged to you, I m always 
 worse than I was, and I don t think I was ever any better. 
 I m going off some of these days, right after my grand 
 father, dying of nothing in particular, but of everything 
 in general. That s what finishes our folks." There are 
 periods when we are dissatisfied with ourselves and with 
 everything about us, without being able to give a substan 
 tial reason for being so, when we can say with Words 
 worth: 
 
 " My apprehensions come in crowds ; 
 
 I dread the rustling of the grass ; 
 
 The very shadows of the clouds 
 
 Have power to shake me as I pass ; 
 
 I question things, and do not find 
 
 One that answers to my mind, 
 
 And all the world appears unkind." 
 
"THE BLUES" AND THEIR REMEDY. 77 
 
 It is a mortifying reflection that at such times the powers 
 of reason should avail less than those of matter, and that a 
 page of Seneca cannot raise the spirits when a glass of 
 Madeira will. But nothing is more certain than the utter 
 worthlessness of most of the advice given to us at such 
 
 times. 
 
 " Consolatories writ with studied argument 
 Extolling patience as the truest fortitude," 
 
 do not produce the patience they extol, because mental states 
 that are not caused by reasoning cannot by reasoning be 
 dispelled. Something better than patience is needed; bodily 
 activity must be roused, high aspirations must be awak 
 ened, and the resiliency of the heart must be called upon 
 rather than its passive strength. 
 
 Generally speaking, if you are troubled with "the 
 blues," and cannot tell why, you may be certain that it 
 springs from physical weakness. The best course, then, is 
 to try to strengthen yourself, of course, by vigorous mus 
 cular exercise. Instead of lying on a sofa, and courting 
 painful ideas, if you are a despairing lover, a hypochon 
 driac, or a valetudinarian, you should be up and stirring 
 yourself. The blood of a melancholy man is thick arid 
 slow, creeping sluggishly through his veins, like muddy 
 waters in a canal; the blood of your merry, chirping phi 
 losopher is clear and quick, brisk as newly broached cham 
 pagne. Try, therefore, to set your blood in motion. To 
 effect this, don t go to guzzling down brandy-smashes, gin- 
 cocktails, or any of the other juggling compounds in which 
 alcohol is disguised; for every artificial stimulant will drag 
 you down two degrees for every one it lifts you up. The 
 devil always beats us at barter. Try, rather, what a smart 
 
78 "THE BLUES" AND THEIR REMEDY. 
 
 walk will do for you; set your pegs in motion on rough, rocky 
 ground, or hurry them up a steep, cragged hill; build stone 
 wall; swing an axe over a pile of hickory or rock-maple; 
 turn a grindstone; dig ditches; practice "ground and lofty 
 tumbling 1 ; pour water into sieves with the Danaides, or, 
 with Sisyphus, "up the high hill heave a huge round 
 stone"; in short, do anything that will start the perspira 
 tion, and you will soon cease to have your brains lined with 
 black, as Burton expresses it, or to rise in the morning, as 
 Cowper did, " like an infernal frog out of Acheron, covered 
 with the ooze and mud of melancholy." When Dr. John 
 son suffered from mental gloom, he saw plainly that, in 
 stead of yielding, as so many do, to the indolence which 
 naturally creeps over a morbid temperament, he must 
 overcome his enemy by persistent physical exercise. He 
 sought the society of the cheerful and the gay; he walked 
 much in the open air, and strengthened his nervous system 
 by daily friction, a spare diet, and frequent change of occu 
 pation; he engaged, too, in merry and mirth-provoking 
 conversation, even "when his heart was ready to burst," 
 as he said, "with gloomy emotions." He thus subdued the 
 constitutional melancholy, which was never wholly eradi 
 cated; and had he overcome his habit of keeping late hours, 
 and drinking strong tea from a kettle that was "never 
 dry," he might have mitigated still more the disease which 
 preyed upon him. It is told of De Quincey, that, during 
 his later years, he fancied that he had a living hippopota 
 mus, or some such horrid creature, in his stomach, and the 
 only remedy he found for this and similar effects of opium, 
 was to walk with all his might for ten miles a day, or, if it 
 rained, to lug a pile of stones from one point to another. 
 An old gentleman of our acquaintance, who is the hero 
 
"THE BLUES" A^D THEIE REMEDY. 79 
 
 of a hundred fights with " the blues, 11 tells us that he early 
 learned a secret which has been of infinite value to him, 
 and that is, that they never ride on horseback. Equally 
 true is it that they never take a smart walk, never visit 
 a gymnasium and lift a thousand pounds, never play at 
 cricket or football, never go skating or hunting, never 
 split their sides over the pages of Cervantes, Moliere, or 
 Tom Hood. They may saunter along with you beneath 
 the solemn elms or weeping willows, or through the quiet 
 walks of the graveyard; they will bend with you over the 
 pages of Byron, Tennyson, or Hawthorne, they will devour 
 greedily the Night Thoughts of Young, and be spell-bound 
 by the dramas of Webster and Ford; they will sit with 
 you by twilight in a lonely, retired chamber, 
 
 "Where glowing embers through the room 
 Teach light to counterfeit a gloom; 
 Far from all resort of mirth, 
 Save the cricket on the hearth"; 
 
 but action, vigorous exercise, society, earnest resolve, 
 the "quips and cranks and wanton wiles 1 of old Fuller, 
 or Charles Lamb, and Jean Paul, all these are their deadly 
 foes; and sometimes a single magic word from these authors 
 dispels them as the crowing of the cock does the spectres of 
 the night. But the grand panacea, the matchless sanative, 
 which is an infallible cure for the disorder, is exercise, exercise, 
 exercise. Plato thought so highly of exercise that he pro 
 nounced it a cure even for a wounded conscience; and Phil 
 lips, in his poem on the Spleen, says sententiously: 
 
 " Fling hut a stone, the giant dies." 
 
 If misfortune hits you hard, do you hit something else 
 hard. Above all things, shun vacant hours. Remember 
 
80 "THE BLUES" AND THEIR REMEDY. 
 
 that much leisure, though a pleasant garment to look at, is 
 a very shirt of Nessus to wear. Who has forgotten the 
 mournful confessions of Charles Lamb on this point? He 
 who fretted over his compulsory monotonous life of thirty- 
 five years of work, defied the chains of habit, and pro 
 claimed that "positively the best thing a man can do is 
 nothing, and next to that, perhaps, good works," how 
 wretched he was when he had his wish of idleness granted 
 to him! When a friend of Southey complained to him of 
 low spirits, the poet said: " Translate Tristam Shandy into 
 Hebrew, and you will be a happy man." There is nothing 
 like business, pleasant work, a steady pegging away at some 
 useful task, to brush away the cobwebs of melancholy 
 from the brain. " When I write against the pope," said 
 Luther, " I am not melancholy; for though I labor with the 
 brains and understanding, then I write with joy of heart." 
 Again he says: " When I am assailed with tribulations, I 
 rush out among the pigs, rather than remain alone by my 
 self. The human heart is like a mill-stone in a mill; when 
 you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds, and brings the 
 wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on, but 
 then it is itself it grinds and wears away." Labor keeps 
 the spirits bright, while pleasure palls, and idleness is " many 
 gathered miseries in one." Burton, after filling five hun 
 dred folio pages with disquisitions on melancholy, could find 
 no better words in which to sum up his advice than these: 
 "BE NOT SOLITARY; BE NOT IDLE." 
 
 As to bad weather, don t become a slave to it, for it will 
 rule you like a tyrant. It is said that even locomotive 
 engines are low-spirited in damp and foggy weather; they 
 enjoy their work when the air is crisp and frosty, but have 
 an intense dislike to haze and Scotch mists. But you are 
 
"THE BLUES" AND THEIR REMEDY. 81 
 
 not a machine, though " more fearfully and wonderfully 
 made." There is no man so pitiable as he who has a consti 
 tution servile to every skyey influence, who is at the mercy 
 of barometrical changes whether he shall be happy or mis 
 erable. It is but the rising or falling of the mercury that 
 makes such a man as poor as a beggar or as rich as Koths- 
 child, as valiant as Caesar, or as cowardly as Falstaff. 
 Treat the weather as Goldsmith advises you to handle the 
 nettle. Just so far as you are delicate with it, it will tor 
 ment you; but 
 
 " Grasp it like a man of mettle, 
 And the rogue obeys you well." 
 
 It was Pascal, we think, who said: "All my fogs and fine 
 days are in myself." 
 
 Whatever may be your misfortunes or your trials, do 
 not give up to "the blues"; do not let despair have you 
 on the hip. Are you at the bottom of Fortune s wheel? 
 Then every change must be for the better, and the next 
 whirl may bring you to the top. When a man is flat on 
 his back, he is always looking up. Do you fail to get 
 your deserts in this world? Then fancy, as Carlyle says, 
 "that thou deservest to be hanged (as it is most likely), 
 thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot; fancy that 
 thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be 
 a luxury to die in hemp." Has some one defrauded you? 
 Turn your loss into a gain, like Charles Lamb, who could 
 say : " Better that our family should have missed that 
 legacy which old Dorrell cheated us out of, than be worth 
 2,000, and be without the idea of that specious old rogue"; 
 or do with your trials as Goethe did, who, his mother said, 
 .whenever he had a grief made a poem on it. "The best 
 
82 "THE BLUES" AKD THEIR REMEDY. 
 
 way to lay the spectres of the mind," says Alexander Smith, 
 " is to commit them to paper." Burton, the author of the 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, when most dejectjed, used to go 
 down to the Thames and hear the bargemen squabble. " I 
 have heard," says Bishop Kennett, "that nothing at last 
 could make him laugh but going down to the Bridge-foot 
 at Oxford and hearing the bargemen scold and storm and 
 swear at one another; at which he would set his hands to 
 his sides and laugh most profusely; yet in his chambers so 
 mute and mopish that he was suspected to be felo de se." 
 Are you afflicted with a rickety constitution, and do you 
 look as thin as a lath that has had a split with the car 
 penter, and a fall out with the plasterer, as Hood says? 
 "So much the better; remember how the smugglers trim 
 the sails of the lugger to escape the notice of the cutter. 
 Turn your edge to the old enemy, and mayhap he won t 
 see you!" Or do as Rufus Choate did; when his constitu 
 tion was all gone, he lived on the by-laws. Above all, 
 keep up a stout heart, and you may still save the crazy 
 vessel from drifting on a lee shore or foundering on the 
 rocks. Don t fancy, because you have a stitch in the side, 
 that you are nearly "sewed up"; or because you have 
 turned a little pale that you are about to kick the bucket. 
 Don t imagine, because you are consumptive at your meals, 
 that you have got the consumption; nor because you have 
 contributed a few times to public charities, that you will 
 die of enlargement of the heart. Give a wide berth to 
 sympathy - hunters, especially to those dyspeptic, green- 
 spectacled gentlemen who bore people with their liver 
 complaints, and give catalogues raisonnes of their diges 
 tive reminiscences during the week. Groans, as well as 
 
83 
 
 laughter, are contagious, and despair is as catching as 
 cutaneous complaints. 
 
 Finally, be not "over-exquisite to cast the fashion of 
 uncertain ills " ; for despondency, in a nice case, is the over 
 weight that may turn the scale, and make you kick the 
 beam. " It is madness," says Jeremy Taylor, " to make 
 the present miserable by fearing it may be ill to-morrow, 
 when your belly is full of to-day s dinner, to fear that 
 you shall want the next day s supper; for it may be you 
 shall not, and then to what purpose was this day s afflic 
 tion? . . . This day only is ours; we are dead to yester 
 day, and we are not born to the morrow." Go often to 
 concerts, and hear good music. Sir Philip Sidney, writing 
 to his brother, tells him "to keep and increase" his music; 
 " you will not believe what a want I find it in my melan 
 choly times." It was with his harp that David exorcised 
 the melancholy that haunted the soul of Saul. Luther, 
 in his despondency, used to seize his flute, and revive his 
 spirit with its strains, saying, " The devil hates good 
 music." Philip the Fifth and Ferdinand his son, the hypo- 
 chondriacal monarchs of Spain, found nothing else so 
 efficacious in dispelling their incurable melancholy as the 
 strains of the sweet singers and harpists whom they re 
 tained as court physicians. Was it not to his fiddlers 
 three that the renowned King Cole, that jolly old soul, 
 owed his jollity? Go and hear Gough and his "gape- 
 seed" story; read Mark Twain and Bret Harte; and let 
 your lungs crow like chanticleer, and as much like a 
 gamecock as possible. There is nothing like a loud ha! 
 ha! to frighten " the blues"; it puts the whole crew of 
 them to flight, be they Prussian-blue or indigo, powder- 
 blue or ultramarine. Its delicious alchemy converts even 
 
84 "THE BLUES" AND THETE REMEDY. 
 
 a tear into merriment, and makes wrinkles themselves 
 expressive of youth and frolic. No man ever cut his throat 
 with a broad grin on his face. Besides this, a laugh has 
 another merit, there is no remorse in it; it leaves no 
 sting, except in the sides, and that goes off. Above all, 
 have a good conscience-, let there be no bugbears, no 
 frightful fiends in your rear which you dare not turn 
 and look upon; and, in the language of Bacon, "avoid 
 envy, anger-fretting inwards; subtle and knotty inquisi 
 tions; joys and exhilarations in excess; sadness not com 
 municated; uncertain hopes; seek variety of delights, rather 
 than surfeit of them; studies that fill the mind with 
 splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, con 
 templations of nature," and you will be able to stave 
 off the foul fiend of melancholy, or, to exorcise him when 
 he has possessed you, better than with all the prescrip 
 tions of Chrysippus or Grantor. 
 
THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 T I ^HE question whether genius is conscious of its own 
 -* powers, is one which has often been discussed, and 
 upon which the acutest writers have held opposite opinions. 
 In the affirmative we have the opinion of Sterling and 
 others, while the negative is supported by the elaborate 
 and powerful arguments of Carlyle. As a general thing, 
 self-love is so natural to man that it would seem the 
 merest affectation in him to pretend to be superior to it. 
 It is, moreover, hardly too much to affirm that vanity, with 
 in certain limits, is almost an indispensable quality. A 
 disposition which, for all practical purposes, is hardly dis 
 tinguishable from vanity, is a necessary spur to a youth 
 who would do anything great. Without a certain amount 
 of self-confidence, no man would attempt any noble or dif 
 ficult task, and even a giant-like intellect would expend 
 itself upon the trifles of a dwarf. In almost every com 
 munity there are certain persons who deem it their mission 
 to dash the vanity of their neighbors. They delight to " take 
 people down," to make them " know their places," as it 
 is called; and if they can but cheat some vain man of his 
 illusions, and rid him of the sense of superiority which is 
 supposed to be so injurious to him as well as insufferable 
 to the lookers on, if they can only " take the conceit out 
 of him," as the phrase goes, they fancy they have done 
 both him and the public a real service. To this end they 
 
 85 
 
86 THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 are fond of citing certain well-worn illustrations, such 
 as the paper-kite, which soars into the air because of its 
 lightness; the heavy-laden vessels, of which we see the less 
 the more richly and heavily they are freighted; and the 
 corn, which bends downward when its ears are well filled, 
 while the empty heads wave high in the field. Yet it is 
 positively certain that no human being is the better for 
 feeling insignificant and merely one of a class. Even 
 though his struggles to rise superior to his fortune may 
 take a ridiculous form, he yet may be serving both private 
 and general interests. What, indeed, has been the main 
 charge in the indictment against aristocratic governments, 
 but that they permitted the ambition for distinction only 
 to privileged classes? 
 
 A great deal of incense is burned in these days to what 
 are called "self-made men"; yet we may be sure that no 
 man who had had all " the conceit taken out of him" ever 
 yet emancipated himself from " those twin-gaolers of the 
 human heart, low birth and narrow fortune." It has been 
 well said that no young man, however remarkable his talent, 
 could ever have been justified, in cold blood, in taking 
 all knowledge to be his province. The chances of a com 
 plete failure were so much greater than the chances of even 
 modified success, that a very exuberant confidence in his 
 own powers was implied in the undertaking. Coleridge, 
 in speaking of vanity, somewhere says: "The decorous 
 manners of this age attach a disproportionate opprobrium 
 to this foible." There is no reason why the self-conscious 
 ness of real genius should be offensive. It is only those 
 who "judge all nature from her feet of clay," and who 
 would " pare the mountain to the plain to leave an equal 
 baseness," that will call a man proud or vain because of 
 
THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 87 
 
 his honest and due esteem of himself. Such "just honoring 
 of ourselves" is, as Milton nobly says, "the radical moisture 
 and fountain-head whence every laudable and worthy en 
 terprise issues forth." The Apostle Paul has, with his 
 usual good sense, given the very best advice on this point: 
 " Let no man think more highly of himself than he ought 
 to think," that is, than his talents will justify. It is 
 only when a man exaggerates the merit of trifles, and 
 sneers at the abilities and deeds of others, when like the 
 fly upon the chariot-wheel, some petty,, insignificant human 
 insect boasts that he raises all the dust and hubbub of the 
 world, that our indignation is kindled. We are not so 
 much vexed at a man s turning his own trumpeter, as at 
 his pitching the key-note of his praises too high. But for 
 a man of really profound genius to affect to be unaware 
 of the greatness of his endowments is the most offensive 
 kind of egotism; it is "the pride that apes humility." 
 
 Some of the most gifted men the world ever saw have 
 been the most daring of egotists. In reading the writings 
 of Shakspeare, Milton, Byron, and Wordsworth, one is not 
 more struck with the matchless beauty of their creations 
 than with the intense egotism that pervades them, and the 
 lofty confidence with which they anticipate their immor 
 tality. It is often this very quality that forms the prin 
 cipal charm of their works. Their poetical heroes, in the 
 majority of cases, are only personifications of their own 
 feelings and passions. Who can doubt that such men have 
 a proud consciousness of their own genius when they dash 
 off some glorious work at a sitting, and with the rapidity 
 and happiness of inspiration? 
 
 The Greek and Roman poets did not hesitate to declare 
 that they had reared for themselves in their verse "monu- 
 
88 THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 ments more lasting than brass. 1 "Orna me!" was Cicero s 
 constant cry, and he entreats Lucceius to write a separate 
 history of Catiline s conspiracy, and to publish it quickly, 
 that the consul who crushed the traitor might, while he 
 yet lived, taste the sweetness of his glory. " I spoke with 
 a divine power in the Senate," he writes one day to Atti- 
 cus; "there never was anything like it." Epicurus wrote 
 to a minister of state, " If you desire glory, nothing can 
 bestow it more than the letters I write to you"; and 
 Seneca quotes the word to Lucilius, adding: "What Epi 
 curus promised to his friend, that I promise to you." 
 When one of the two Guidos, Italian authors, eclipsed the 
 other, Dante wrote: 
 
 "Thus has one Guido from the other snatched 
 The letter d pride; and he perhaps is born 
 Who shall drive either from their nest." 
 
 Not less conscious of their own abilities, and ready to 
 avow that consciousness to the world, are men of genius 
 in modern times. Shakspeare does not hesitate to say in 
 one of his sonnets: 
 
 " Nor marble, nor the gilded monuments 
 Of Princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme"; 
 
 and, to a large extent, the interest of his plays depends 
 upon the egotism of his heroes and heroines. Who does 
 not love the egotism of the melancholy Jacques, who fills 
 the forest of Ardenne with the gloom of his own soul; 
 and in what but his proneness to selfish thoughtfulness 
 lies the charm of Hamlet ? The most fascinating passages 
 in Othello are those in which the Moor speaks of his fiery 
 love of battle, of his personal appearance and history, and 
 
THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 89 
 
 bids farewell to the pride, pomp and circumstance of war, 
 in an outburst of selfish sorrow. Brutus is sternly egotist 
 ical; and our interest in Macbeth reaches its climax only 
 after the murder, when he reveals to us the workings of 
 his soul, now driven in upon itself. The lofty pride of 
 Coriolanus is the ruling passion of his nature; and it is 
 even more palpable when he scorns to have his " nothings 
 monstered," than when he boasts, 
 
 "like an eagle in a dove-cote, I 
 Flutter d your Volscians in Corioli." 
 
 Milton, whose intense egotism has been pronounced al 
 most as conspicuous as his genius, evidently believed his 
 great epic poem to be a work which the world "would 
 not willingly let die." In the touching sonnet on the loss 
 of his eyes, he speaks of the support which he derived in 
 his affliction from the proud consciousness of having 
 
 "lost them overplied 
 In liberty s defense, my noble task 
 Of which all Europe rings from side to side." 
 
 Frequently, in replying to an opponent, he digresses into 
 an account of himself, his education, his plans; seeming 
 to say: "Remember, it is /, John Milton, a man of such 
 and such antecedents, with such and such intellectual 
 powers, who say this." At the close of his life he un 
 questionably believed himself to be the greatest writer in 
 England, one whose bare ex-cathedra statement should 
 have as much weight in the world of mind as the decree 
 of a magistrate in the order of civil life. In this lofty 
 self-assertion the great Puritan poet but followed the ex 
 ample of his predecessor, Chaucer, who, shy and timid as 
 
90 THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 he was in company, causing his host of the Tabard to say 
 to him, 
 
 " Thou look st as if tliou would st find a hare ; 
 Forever ^on the ground I see thee stare": 
 
 yet did not scorn to speak of himself as the " most noble 
 philosophicall poete in English e," and to assert that " in 
 noble sayings 1 and many other excellent qualities of a 
 poet, he " passeth all other makers." Thomas Hobbes was 
 unquestionably one of England s greatest thinkers, and 
 his metaphysical, moral and political writings are dis 
 tinguished alike for their closeness of logic and clearness 
 and purity of style; yet he was fully aware of this, and 
 boasted that " though physics were a new science, yet civil 
 philosophy was still newer, since it could not be styled 
 older than his book De Give. 1 1 When John Dryden was 
 congratulated on the brilliancy of his famous Ode on St. 
 Cecilia s Day, " You are right," he replied, " a nobler 
 ode was never produced, and never will be." Alexander 
 Pope s good opinion of himself leaks out in numerous 
 passages of his writings. Publishing his Essay on Man 
 anonymously, he spoke of it as a master-piece of its kind. 
 He evidently deemed his critical opinions as infallible as 
 the religious ones of Pope Alexander. Lord Bacon was a 
 lofty egotist, and confidently predicted his own immor 
 tality. Buffon said that, of great geniuses of modern times, 
 there were but five, " Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montes 
 quieu, and Buffon" Everybody is familiar with the daring 
 avowal of Kepler, which reaches the sublime of egotism: 
 "I dare insult mankind by confessing that I am he who 
 has turned Science to advantage. If I am pardoned, 
 I shall rejoice; if blamed, I shall endure it. The die is 
 
THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 91 
 
 cast; I have written this book, and whether it be read by 
 posterity or by my contemporaries, is of no consequence; 
 it may well wait for a reader during one century, when 
 God himself during 6,000 years has waited for an observer 
 like myself ! " 
 
 The egotism of Julius Scaliger almost staggers belief. 
 He looked on himself as the monarch of letters, just as 
 the ancients regarded the Persian King as The King; 
 and spoke of other scholars with profound contempt. He 
 pronounced Bellarmine an atheist, and Meursius a pedant 
 and the son of a monk; he sneered at Baronius, compared 
 Scioppius to an ape, and affirmed that St. Jerome was an 
 ass. Not less overweening was the self-esteem of Milton s 
 great opponent, Salmasius. As he was conversing one 
 day in the royal library with Gaulmin and Maussac, "I 
 think," said Gaulmin, " that we three can match our heads 
 against all that there is learned in Europe. 1 To this 
 Salmasius replied: "Add to all that there is learned in 
 Europe, yourself and M. de Maussac, and I can match my 
 single head against the whole of you." A celebrated 
 French lawyer, Charles Dumoulin, if we may believe Bal 
 zac, often wrote at the top of his opinions given upon 
 consultation: "I, who yield to no man, and who have 
 from no man anything to learn." The Ego et Rex meus 
 " I and my King," of Cardinal Wolsey, has become a 
 proverb. "When I am dead, you will not easily meet 
 with another John Hunter," said the great English an 
 atomist. The stories told of the intense egotism of Kich- 
 ardson, the novelist, place him in the front rank of literary 
 Narcissuses. No mother was ever fonder of her children 
 than he of the offspring of his brain. No visitor was ever 
 suffered to leave him till he had listened to some of his 
 
92 THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 productions; and, once in a large company, when a gentle 
 man just from Paris told him that he had seen one of 
 his novels on the French King s table, he feigned not to 
 hear, because the rest of the company were at the moment 
 occupied with other topics. Waiting some time for a 
 pause, he asked, with affected carelessness, " What was 
 that sir, which you were just saying about the French 
 King?" "Oh! nothing of any consequence," replied his 
 informant, disgusted with the trick, and determined to 
 mortify his self-conceit. 
 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller, the painter, as he lay on his death 
 bed, dreamed of distinctions in heaven, and very com 
 placently reported to his friends the effect his name pro 
 duced when announced at the august portals: "As I 
 approached, Saint Peter very civilly asked my name. I 
 said it was Kneller. I had no sooner said so than Saint 
 Luke, who was standing just by, turned toward me and 
 said, with a great deal of sweetness: What! the famous 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller, of England? The very same, sir, 
 says I, at your service. " Hogarth had an excellent 
 opinion of the abilities of Hogarth. When he was at 
 work upon his " Marriage a-la-Mode," he told Reynolds 
 that the world would soon be gratified " with such a 
 sight as it never had seen equalled." Northcote, a brother 
 painter, while he could detect and ridicule this weakness 
 of Hogarth, was unconscious of his own egregious vanity. 
 Being once asked by Sir William Knighton what he 
 thought of the Prince Regent, he replied, " I am not ac 
 quainted with him." " Why, his Royal Highness says that 
 he knows you." " Know me! Pooh! that s all his brag! " 
 
 The biography of Laurence Sterne shows that he was 
 one of those authors who gloat over their own conceptions, 
 
THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 93 
 
 and who always think their latest works their masterpieces. 
 Burns was comparatively modest; yet, speaking of his days 
 of obscurity, he says: "Pauvre Inconnu as I then was, I 
 had pretty nearly as high an opinion of myself and of 
 my works as I have at this moment, when the public has 
 decided in their favor. 1 Goldsmith s self-conceit is pro 
 verbial. It "stuck out" in every look, gesture, and mo 
 tion. " He would never," said Garrick, " allow a superior 
 in any art, from writing poetry down to dancing a horn 
 pipe." Going into an exhibition of puppets, he warmly 
 exclaimed, on their dexterously tossing a pike: "Pshatv! I 
 can do it better myself"-, and broke his shins the same 
 evening at the house of Burke, in trying to show that he 
 could eclipse the puppets in leaping over a stick. Oratory, 
 he said, was a mere knack, and, hearing a speech of 
 Burke eulogized, boasted that he could do as well himself. 
 Being dared to the trial, he mounted a chair and stuck 
 fast after three sentences; yet reiterated his boast, saying 
 that on this occasion he was " out of luck." When Moser, 
 the Swiss, cut short his conversation at an Academy din 
 ner with a "Stay, stay, Toctor Shonson is going to say 
 something," Goldsmith was almost beside himself with jeal 
 ousy and rage. Lope de Vega trumpeted his own praises 
 under a pseudonym; Butler could harangue with great 
 gust on the merits of Hudibras; and the inscription under 
 Boileau s portrait, which gives the palm to the French 
 satirist over Juvenal and Horace, is known to have come 
 from the pen of Boileau. Wordsworth was a thorough 
 egotist. He never hesitated to express his contempt of his 
 critics, and his self-assurance of his own powers. Nothing 
 less than a large degree of such assurance could have en 
 abled him to bear up against the ridicule with which he 
 
94 THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 was assailed by a generation brought up under different 
 traditions. In Southey s correspondence we find the au 
 thor of " Thalaba " speaking with the utmost confidence of 
 his poems as certain to render his name immortal. Haz- 
 litt, who could criticise other writers so sharply, had evi 
 dently a good opinion of himself. Writing from Winter- 
 slow, he says of his Table-Talks: "I could swear (were 
 they not mine) the thoughts in many of them are founded 
 as a rock, free as air, the tone like an Italian picture." 
 
 It is well known that the hero of Trafalgar and the 
 Nile took an almost childish pleasure in being stared at, 
 and called " great " and " glorious " to his face. His es 
 trangement from his wife has been attributed to her lack 
 of interest in his reputation, and seeming unconsciousness 
 that her husband was the idol of the nation; and it was 
 in part, doubtless, because Lady Hamilton recognized the 
 fact, and often spoke of it, that he became so infatuated 
 with her charms. Bonaparte was an incarnation of ego 
 tism, and so self-conscious that he was visibly offended when 
 after his early victories a vast assembly turned their eyes 
 for a moment from him to look at a beautiful woman. 
 There can be no doubt that William Pinkney was one of 
 the greatest forensic advocates that America has produced, 
 and there can be no doubt that he was one of the proudest. 
 William Wirt, speaking of his absoluteness of manner, 
 says : " Socrates confessed that all the knowledge he had 
 been able to acquire seemed only to convince him that he 
 knew nothing. * * * Pinkney would make you believe 
 that he knew everything." 
 
 Need we allude to that literary Narcissus, Lamartine, 
 who was forever attitudinizing and surveying himself in a 
 mirror; or to the enormous vanity of Chateaubriand, which, 
 
THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 95 
 
 Sainte-Beuve says, Tunivers englouti n assouvrait pas, and 
 which prompts him incessantly to ask: "What would the 
 Nineteenth Century have been without my writings? 1 Enor 
 mous, however, as is the egotism of these men, it is over 
 topped by that of Victor Hugo, who, when reproached for 
 his unhealthy craving for " effects," the excess of tirade 
 and antithesis in his dramas, replies: "People object to 
 my love of antithesis; as if God were not more antithetical 
 than I"; and who again imperiously demands from Heaven 
 an explanation of the great mystery in such terms as these: 
 
 "Et niaintenant, Seigneur, expliquons nous, tons deux!" 
 
 John Knox, the Reformer, was a glorious egotist. In 
 his chronicle he speaks of himself always in the third per 
 son, as if he were writing the biography of some great 
 man whose deeds he had had the good fortune to witness. 
 John Knox s figure is ever the conspicuous figure in John 
 Knox s book. But of all egotists, of ancient or modern 
 times, William Cobbett towers the highest above his fellows. 
 To such a pitch does he carry his self-praise at times that 
 it seems as if he were quizzing his readers, or rather as 
 if it were a caricature, or wicked invention of an enemy. 
 " I am your superior," he boastingly writes to the Bishop 
 of Winchester. "I have ten times your talent, and a 
 thousand times your industry and zeal." Few polemics 
 have held a more caustic pen, but his frame was of the 
 Herculean rather than the Apollonian cast; he thought a 
 man could not be strong enough unless he incessantly dis 
 played his thews. And yet, in his bold and daring self- 
 praise, there is something quite noble, compared with the 
 mean, sneaking, shuffling tricks of many other writers who 
 would play the same game if they had the courage. " There 
 
96 THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 are some men," says Coleridge, " who actually flatter them 
 selves that they abhor all egotism, and never betray it in 
 their writings or discourse. But watch these men nar 
 rowly, 1 he adds, " and in the greater number of cases you 
 will find their thoughts, and feelings, and mode of expres 
 sion, saturated with the passion of contempt, which is the 
 concentrated vinegar of egotism. 1 
 
 The examples we have given abundantly prove, we think, 
 that there is more plausibility than truth in the senti 
 ment that genius is unconscious of its powers. No doubt 
 it is often true that, when a man of genius is vain, he is 
 vain of what is not his genius. The greatest authors, like 
 mothers who have fondled their rickety bantlings most lov 
 ingly, have often been proudest of the poorest of their 
 works. It is natural to exaggerate the value of that 
 which has cost us much effort to produce. We hug and 
 fondle an object which we have acquired with many strug 
 gles; we overprize a talent which we have trained and cul 
 tivated with assiduous care. But to suppose a man of 
 extraordinary intellectual power to be unconscious of the 
 fact, is to suppose him self-ignorant, to know less of him 
 self than smaller men. As well might you suppose a Titan 
 to be ignorant of his giant stature, or a Hercules not to 
 know his physical strength. The truth is, an affectation 
 of humility in such a man, who towers a head and 
 shoulders above his fellows, would be as ridiculous as the 
 struttings of a dwarf. Mock-modesty is even more dis 
 gusting than unwarranted self-praise, as it adds hypocrisy 
 to conceit. " All great men," says Ruskin, " not only know 
 their business, but they usually know that they know it, 
 and are not only right in their main opinions, but they 
 usually know that they are right in them; only they don t 
 
THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 97 
 
 think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows 
 that he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer 
 writes calmly to one who had found fault with his work: 
 * it cannot be better done. Sir Isaac Newton knows that 
 he has worked out a problem or two that would have puz 
 zled anybody else ; only they do not expect their fellow- 
 men therefore to fall down and worship them. They have 
 a curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the 
 greatness is not in them but through them; that they could 
 not be any other thing than God made them. And they 
 see something divine and God-made in every other man they 
 meet, and they are endlessly, foolishly, and incredibly mer 
 ciful." 
 
 Archdeacon Hare, who believes that unconsciousness of 
 its ability belongs to genius in its purity, admits that it 
 cannot be preserved undefiled any more than that which 
 belongs to goodness in its purity. " There are numbers 
 of alarums on all sides," he says, "to rouse our self-con 
 sciousness, should it ever lapse or flag, from our cradle up 
 ward. Whithersoever we go, we have bells on our toes 
 to regale our carnal hearts with their music, and bell-men 
 meet us in every street to sound their chimes in our ears. 
 Others tell us how clever we are; and we repeat the sweet 
 strains with ceaseless iteration, magnifying them at every 
 repetition. Hence it is next to a marvel if genius can ever 
 preserve any of that unconsciousness which belongs to its 
 essence. * * * Narcissus-like, it wastes away in gazing on 
 its own sweet image." There is truth in this, but truth 
 too one-sided to give us a just view of the case. It is 
 doubtless true that every man s eye should be fixed upon 
 his work rather than upon himself, and that he will pro 
 duce the best results when he feels himself movecl by a 
 5 
 
98 THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 divine afflatus, and produces his results unconsciously. To 
 take a good aim one should look at the target, instead of 
 thinking of his own skill or staring at his rifle; and the 
 orator should be absorbed in his theme and self-forgetful 
 if he would sway the souls of his hearers. But he would 
 be more than human if in the intervening hours between 
 his performances he did not think of his own merits and 
 of the testimonies of others to his success. 
 
 Again, it is evident that self-esteem and vanity produce 
 upon different persons effects diametrically opposite, inspir 
 ing one to greater efforts, while it tempts another to indo 
 lence and non-exertion. Nay, these qualities may be at 
 tended with opposite results in the same person. We are 
 told in the memoir of Baron Bunsen that, calling one day 
 on Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, he found him greatly de 
 pressed in spirits. He had lately finished his colossal statue 
 of Christ for Copenhagen, and said that he feared his genius 
 must have reached its best, and be about to decline, " for," 
 said he, " I have never before been satisfied with any of 
 my works; I am satisfied with this, and shall never have 
 a great idea again. 11 The vanity of Wolfe led him to make 
 a fool of himself, by flourishing his sword and indulging 
 in silly gasconade and bravado before Lord Chatham; but 
 the same quality inspired him with that heroic spirit which 
 led him, after a bitter repulse from the enemy, and while 
 convalescing from a fever, to scale the heights of Abraham, 
 defeat Montcalm, and capture the hitherto impregnable for 
 tress of Quebec. The vanity of Wordsworth, as we have 
 already seen, enabled him to despise the sneers of his re 
 viewers, and to work out the work of his life, in spite of 
 the neglect of the public; but it led him too often to be- 
 pome a literary sloven, to spoil a noble thought by mean 
 
THE MODESTY OF GENIUS. 99 
 
 and creeping language, and to be so narrow in his criti 
 cal judgments, as to speak scornfully of poems by Gray 
 and Burns which had stirred men of the most exquisite 
 taste like the sound of a trumpet. On the other hand, 
 the vanity of Pope tempted him to stoop to the meanest 
 artifices to catch applause, and condemned him to tortures 
 from the pettiest literary insects that buzzed about his path, 
 but at the same time it enabled him " to become within 
 his own limits the most exquisite of artists in words, to 
 increase in skill as he increased in years, and to coin 
 phrases for posterity even out of the most trifling ebulli 
 tions of passing spite." 
 
SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 
 
 TT has been often remarked that public station is a sort 
 -*- of pillory, and that every man who becomes a candi 
 date for office voluntarily sets himself up as a target, at 
 which everybody may fire off his bullets of abuse. In the 
 moral world, as in the physical, elevation is exposure, and 
 utter insignificance is a better coat of mail against the 
 darts of slander than the noblest virtues of which human 
 nature can boast. No man, therefore, should for a mo 
 ment think of going into public life unless he is prepared 
 to become " the best abused man in Christendom." Never, 
 until he can smile with indifference while his finest sensi 
 bilities are scraped by satirical sandpaper and moral oyster- 
 shells, should he regard himself as qualified for eminent 
 station. The Indian calmly sings his death-song when tor 
 tured at the stake ; but the politician should be able to 
 fiddle when not only himself, but all his Rome, is burning. 
 For this reason we cannot help .regarding the sensitive 
 ness to criticism manifested by our public men as one of 
 the most unfortunate traits in their characters. Foreigners 
 have often called us a thin-skinned people; but many of 
 our public men seem to have no skin whatever. They are 
 "raw" all over, and the meanest insect is able to sting 
 them into a rage. They have a memory so sadly tenacious 
 as never to allow a solitary line or word of censure that 
 has been written against them to escape ; and so over 
 weening is their egotism, that the pettiest newspaper squib, 
 
 100 
 
SENSITIVENESS TO CKITICISM. 101 
 
 worthy only of contempt, must be answered with solemn 
 comment and contradiction. The result is, that not a few 
 spend a good portion of their lives in defending themselves 
 from newspaper assaults. Can anything be more foolish 
 than this? Is there a surer sign of weakness, of the lack 
 of all weight and dignity of character?./, %> 
 
 If ever a man of respectable character engages in -a 
 losing game, it is when he suffers himself to be dragged 
 into controversy, especially into a personal controversy, 
 with a scurrilous enemy. In every fair controversy there 
 is something like equality in the combatants, something 
 like the same stake in the issue. But in warring with 
 an unscrupulous foe, and especially with the editor of 
 an unprincipled newspaper, an honorable, high-minded 
 man is sure of being worsted; for while the former, 
 reckless of all the laws of honorable hostility, and feeling 
 not the least restraint from delicacy, either of taste or 
 feeling, will use at once his sword and poisoned dagger, 
 his hands and teeth, and his envenomed breath, and will 
 not scruple, upon occasion, to discharge upon his adver 
 sary a shower of filth, from which neither courage nor 
 dexterity can afford any protection; the latter, being 
 not only unversed in the slang of the pot-house and the 
 ribaldry of the brothel, but anxious to assert nothing 
 that is not strictly true, will be temperate in his lan 
 guage, and will make use only of those polished sarcasms 
 which pass in decent society, but whose edge is too fine 
 to pierce the skin of a professional blackguard. Such a 
 controversy, therefore, must necessarily be an unequal 
 match. It would be like a well-dressed gentleman en 
 gaging in a mud-throwing combat with a filthy raga 
 muffin. The latter, from his long experience in the dirty 
 
102 SENSITIVENESS TO CKITICISM. 
 
 game, will throw a dozen handfuls of mud to the former s 
 one, and in a few moments will beplaster him from head 
 to foot; while the little which he can throw, even if he is 
 willing to ,s.o?l .his .hands, will never be perceived on his 
 adversary s already nasty garments. It was justly said 
 ty Miebae 1 Ar-gelo, when he was advised to resent the 
 insolence of some obscure upstart, that " he who contends 
 with the base loses all." You cannot scuffle with the filthy, 
 even if victorious, without getting soiled. 
 
 Everybody who has been at school has noticed that if 
 any boy is peculiarly irascible, or susceptible of irritation 
 under the various annoyances and torments to which 
 schoolboy life is exposed, he is doubly sure of being 
 victimized, is pounced upon and worried at every op 
 portunity. The world, in this respect, is a big school. It 
 is a curious fact that the mass of men, either from in 
 stinctive malice and love of mischief, or from a fondness 
 of exercising petty tyranny, take cruel but exquisite de 
 light in teasing the sensitive and annoying the irritable; 
 while he who, careless of their taunts and jeers, laughs 
 with an air of unconcern at the shafts which malice or 
 envy may hurl at him, soon ceases to be annoyed by them. 
 A public man ought to have a hide as tough and thick 
 as that of a rhinoceros. Not till his epidermis has been 
 hardened to such a degree of impenetrability that rifle- 
 balls will be flattened by it, and his sensibility has become 
 so blunted that the stab of a dagger will be mistaken for 
 a mosquito-bite, is he fit for eminent station. No char 
 acter is so exalted as to be above the audacity, none so 
 sacred as to scare the rapaciousness, of those who are 
 libellers by trade. A public man who escapes being as 
 sailed by censors and calumniators, generally owes his 
 
SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 103 
 
 safety to the thickness of his skull. The public them 
 selves view the matter in the same light. They know that 
 in an orchard a tree that bears poor fruit is left un 
 molested, while one that hangs down with delicious pears 
 or apples is continually pelted with stones. Men of letters, 
 being an irritabile genus, ought particularly to cultivate 
 an indifference to the attacks of the press. Editors and 
 critics are proverbially without bowels, and the more an 
 author winces under their attacks, the more pertinaciously 
 will they apply the literary lash. The young litterateur, 
 who is confident of his power, should rush before the public 
 as the warrior rushes into battle, resolved to hack and 
 hew his way into eminence and influence ; instead of whim 
 pering like a schoolboy at every scratch, he should acknowl 
 edge only home-thrusts, deadly, life-destroying blows, 
 and be determined to conquer or to die. 
 
 There is but one way to get rid of lampooners, and that 
 is to let them alone; then their calumnies will die of them 
 selves, or become perfectly harmless. No one likes to 
 waste his powder; and there is nothing which men are 
 sooner mortified at spending in vain than their abuse and 
 ridicule. The only course for the public man is, like Sir 
 Walter Scott, " to arm himself with the triple brass of in 
 difference against all the roving warfare of satire, parody, 
 and sarcasm; to laugh, if the jest be a good one, or, if 
 otherwise, to let it hum and buzz itself to sleep." The 
 contrary course, however successful for a time, is one of 
 which he will, sooner or later, bitterly repent. To whim 
 per, to chafe, and to fret, to show that you are keenly 
 nettled by some affront or incivility, what a new sting 
 it gives to grief ! How it accomplishes the very object of 
 your enemy! What a suicide it is! for self-murder is the 
 
104 SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 
 
 only way by which moral death comes to any man. We 
 all know how much the author of the Dunciad suffered 
 from the swarms of enemies, most of them individually 
 insignificant, and many of them personally contemptible, 
 whom he consigned to an immortality of infamy in that 
 fiercest of poetical philippics. Though the whole vocabu 
 lary of irony is exhausted, and the poet literally flays and 
 dismembers the miserable scribblers, yet it is evident that 
 the satirist suffered more than his victims, and that the 
 deepest wounds inflicted by the keen and polished weapon 
 of his sarcasm were as flea-bites to the agonies which 
 nerved his own arm to wield that weapon. " It requires 
 no depth of philosophic reflection, says the author of 
 Waverley, "to perceive that the petty warfare of Pope 
 with the dunces of his period could not have been carried 
 on without his suffering the most acute torture, such as a 
 man must endure from mosquitoes, by whose stings he suf 
 fers agony, though he can crush them by myriads in his 
 grasp." It was one of the weaknesses of the great Duke 
 of Marlborough that, beyond all other men of his time, 
 he was sensitive to the attacks of the press. He com 
 plained to Harley and St. John in terms of positive an 
 guish of the attacks to which he was subject. The moral 
 weakness of Napoleon Bonaparte was betrayed by none of 
 his acts more plainly than by his sensitiveness to news 
 paper criticism. The sovereign of a great empire, he 
 entered into a war of words with British journalists, and 
 lowered his own dignity by allowing the world to see that 
 he was stung by the criticisms of ephemeral newspapers, 
 whose comments he might have safely ignored. " It was 
 easy," says Madame De Re*musat, "for the English jour 
 nalists to find out how hard their remarks hit the First 
 
SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 105 
 
 Consul, and a little later the Emperor of France, and they 
 accordingly redoubled their attacks. How many times, 
 when we saw him gloomy and out of temper, did Madame 
 Bonaparte tell us it was because he had read some article 
 against himself in the Courier or the Sun ! He tried to 
 wage a pen-and-ink war with the English press; he sub 
 sidized certain journals in London, expended a great deal 
 of money, and deceived no one either in France or in Eng 
 land." 
 
 Those who are the victims of newspaper abuse should 
 remember that the licentiousness of the press is an evil 
 which, sooner or later, cures itself. No man, as Dr. Bent- 
 ley used to say, was ever written down, except by himself; 
 and we may add that no man ever wrote upon whose pro 
 ductions the public did not ultimately pass righteous judg 
 ment. All that criticism can do is to hasten or retard that 
 judgment; permanently to change it is beyond its power. 
 
 Do not, then, rush into print when you are attacked by 
 a blackguard writer or speaker, but pass by his abuse in 
 absolute silence. Remember that it is your own thought 
 only that can barb the arrow shot from another s bow; 
 that it is your own pride that makes another s criticism 
 rankle, your egotism that is hurt by another s self-asser 
 tion. We know that this is sometimes "a hard lesson." 
 
 Some of the best men that have ever lived have been 
 
 
 
 stung almost to death by criticism. Tannahill, the charm 
 ing lyric poet of Scotland, chanced to hear his productions 
 ridiculed, and never smiled or held up his head afterward. 
 The light, reckless remarks preyed upon his sensitive mind 
 till they drove him to suicide. Cowper was almost mad 
 dened by some nameless critic s scorn, and Robertson, of 
 Brighton, was cut to the heart by an article in a provin- 
 
106 SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 
 
 cial newspaper; "ignorant though it is," said he, "it is 
 before me wherever I turn." Not so with our great-souled 
 Lincoln. When a friend wished to communicate to some 
 newspaper the facts, as they had actually occurred, con 
 cerning some matter about which the President had been 
 outrageously abused, "Oh, no," was the noble reply, "at 
 least not now. If I were to try to read, much less an 
 swer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well 
 be closed for any other business. I do the very best I 
 know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep 
 doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all 
 right, what is said against me won t amount to anything. 
 If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I 
 was right would make no difference." When Dr. Francis 
 Way land was asked for his opinion touching the publica 
 tion of a reply by a western pastor to some spiteful news 
 paper attacks upon him, he said: "Tell him to take no 
 notice of the attacks. A man s character will take care of 
 his reputation" Macaulay, speaking of the attacks upon 
 Dr. Johnson by the Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and 
 Hendersons, who had for various reasons become his ene 
 mies, says they "did their best to annoy him, in the hope 
 that he would give them importance by answering them. 
 But the reader will in vain search his works for any allu 
 sion to Kenrick or Campbell, to MacNicol or Henderson. 
 One Scotchman, bent on vindicating the fame of Scotch 
 learning, defied him to the combat in a detestable Latin 
 hexameter, 
 
 Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum. 
 
 But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He always 
 maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could be 
 
SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 107 
 
 kept up only by being beaten back as well as beaten for 
 ward, and which would soon fall if there were only one 
 battledoor. No saying was oftener in his mouth than that 
 fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written 
 down but by himself." No writer has been more vehe 
 mently denounced than l^mile Zola; but instead of whimper 
 ing and whining under the treatment he has received, he 
 regards it as a positive advantage. " The Parisian," he 
 says, " never purchases a book spontaneously, just from 
 curiosity; he never buys a book until his ears are filled 
 with it, and it has become an event worth chronicling, of 
 which you must be able to talk in society. If it be spoken 
 of, no matter what is said, its fortune is made. Criticism 
 gives life to everything; it is only silence that destroys. 
 Paris is an ocean; but an ocean in which you are lost in 
 the calm, but saved in the storm."* It was Jeffrey s assault 
 on Byron which first woke to activity the powers of that 
 great genius. Without that sharp prick, so quickly re 
 sented, Byron might have dallied in obscurity for years, 
 before putting forth his energies. " It was the birth-pang 
 of the poet. He carne furious to life, ready-armed like 
 Minerva, blazing in sudden light and deadly power, with 
 a quiver full of poisoned arrows, an unsheathed sword 
 which cut wherever it touched." 
 
 " If the critics treat your first book ill," wrote Carlyle 
 to a new author, " write the second better, so much 
 better as to shame them." If your work does not vindi 
 cate itself you should not waste a moment in trying to 
 vindicate it, but should spend your time in writing some 
 thing which will need no defense. As Coleridge says: 
 
 * "Studies of Paris," by Edmondo de Amicis. 
 
108 SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 
 
 " If a foe have kenn d, 
 Or, worse than foe, an alienated friend, 
 A rib of dry rot in thy ship s stout side, 
 Think it God s message, and in humble pride 
 With heart of oak replace it, thine the gains, 
 Give him the rotten timber for his pains!" 
 
 The greatest men have usually been the most heedless 
 to the censure of others. Scipio scorned to reply to a 
 charge of corruption, saying, "Hoc die cum Hannibale bene 
 etfeliciter pugnavi" One of the most notable qualities of 
 Lord Macaulay was his comparative indifference to hostile 
 criticism. As a writer, he was even less thin-skinned than 
 as a politician. According to his biographer, when he 
 felt conscious that he had done his very best, when all 
 that lay within his own power had been faithfully and 
 diligently performed, he would not permit himself to 
 chafe under adverse criticism, nor to waste time and temper 
 by engaging in controversies about his own works. He 
 acted in strict accordance with Bentley s maxim, already 
 quoted, which he was fond of repeating in print and 
 talk. With Johnson, he was convinced, both from read 
 ing and observation, that the place of books in the pub 
 lic estimation is fixed, not by what is written about them, 
 but by what is written in them; and that an author 
 whose works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops 
 to wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to 
 die. " I have never been able," says Macaulay, " to dis 
 cover that a man is at all the worse for being attacked. 
 One foolish line of his own does him more harm than the 
 ablest pamphlets written against him by other people. 1 
 
 When Catullus wrote a stinging epigram on Julius 
 Caesar, what did "the foremost man of all the world" do? 
 
SENSITIVENESS TO CEITICISM. 109 
 
 Cut off Catullus s head? No; he simply invited him to 
 supper. So when a courtier told Constantino that the 
 mob had broken the head off his statue with stones, the 
 emperor simply lifted his hands to his head, saying: "It 
 is very surprising, but I don t feel hurt in the least." 
 Frederick the Great once saw a crowd of men staring 
 at something on a wall. Riding up, he found that the 
 object of curiosity was a scurrilous placard against him 
 self. The placard had been posted up so high that it was 
 not easy to read it. Frederick ordered his attendants to 
 take it down, and put it lower. " My people and I," he 
 said, " have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. 
 They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I 
 please." One day the celebrated D Alembert, who was a 
 friend of the Prussian monarch, and who had some notable 
 weaknesses, was insulted by a gazetteer in the States of 
 Frederick. The philosopher thereupon denounced the libel 
 ler to the king, which drew from the latter the following 
 admirable reply: "I know that a Frenchman, a country 
 man of yours, daubs regularly two sheets of paper a week 
 at Cleves; I know that people buy his sheets, and that a 
 fool always finds a greater fool to read him; but I find 
 it very difficult to persuade myself that a writer of that 
 temper can prejudice your reputation. Ah, my good 
 D Alembert, if you were king of England, you would en 
 counter many other lampoons, with which your very faith 
 ful subjects would furnish you to try your patience. If 
 you knew what a number of infamous writings your dear 
 countrymen have published against me during the war, 
 you would laugh at this miserable scribbler. I have not 
 deigned to read all these works which are the offspring 
 of the hate and envy of my enemies, and I have recollected 
 
110 SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 
 
 that beautiful ode of Horace : The wise man continues 
 unmoved? " 
 
 When Voltaire complained of his critics to Fontenelle, 
 the latter opened a great box of uncut pamphlets, and said: 
 " Here is all that has been written against me." He had 
 never read a page of them. In the same spirit Cardinal 
 Mazarin preserved and used to display, in forty-four bound 
 quarto volumes, all the libels ever written against him. 
 It is said that when the elder Kean was playing in New 
 York the same round of characters with the celebrated 
 Cooper, and was daily attacked by a gazette in the interest 
 of his rival, he ordered his man, Miller, to take the paper 
 with a pair of tongs and remove it from his presence, say 
 ing that "he never read attacks." This was certainly 
 wiser than embroiling himself in a long-winded and irri 
 tating controversy, in which he would have been likely to 
 do many foolish things, and to receive many hard blows, 
 however crushing those he might have dealt against his 
 enemies. When the storm of abuse was raging most fierce 
 ly against Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, the champion of 
 slave emancipation, he was asked by a friend, " What shall 
 I say when I hear people abusing you?" "Say!" he re 
 plied, snapping his fingers, "say that. You good folks 
 think too much of your good name. Do right, and right 
 will be done you." The severest rebuke, oftentimes, to an 
 enemy is silence; the most galling commentary, neglect. 
 "Speak!" screamed a termagant to one on whom she had 
 discharged a whole vocabulary of oaths, "speak, you 
 devil, or I shall burst!" 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 
 
 THE great Catholic writer, Count Joseph de Maistre, 
 in a letter to a friend at the Sardinian court, says: 
 " You are kind enough to caution me against the heat of 
 my style. I will only add, it is impossible to have my 
 style without having my defects. Would you have fire 
 which does not burn, or water which does not wet? A 
 word more on a certain Parisian irony for which I have 
 a turn, which I may sometimes abuse. When irony is 
 exercised upon nothings, it is a silly superfluity. It is not 
 the same when it sharpens the reasoning, when it makes 
 a puncture, so to speak, to let it pass through, as the 
 needle does the thread." In this frank acknowledgment 
 we have one of the thousand illustrations that might be 
 cited of the truth that there is no excellence without some 
 corresponding drawback; that the greatest writer or artist 
 cannot escape from himself, cannot avoid the inevitable 
 fate of all, which is to have the faults of their qualities. 
 It is a fact well understood by every competent art-critic, 
 that faultless precision of detail is the sure mark of 
 mediocrity; anomaly, the invariable characteristic of the 
 highest order of genius in every branch of imitative art. 
 Great poets and novelists do not hesitate to disregard the 
 strict rules of narrative probability, especially when they 
 are likely to hurt the general effect of a composition. 
 The great Italian painters and sculptors did not scruple, 
 
 in 
 
112 THE IDEAL A^D THE REAL. 
 
 at times, to violate truth and nature where a rigid ad 
 herence to them would have defeated their aims. Some 
 times they made a shadow fall on objects which, on strictly 
 optical principles, it would not have reached; at other 
 times, a figure in the background of a picture was drawn 
 larger or smaller, more or less distinct, than the strict 
 rules of perspective enjoin. 
 
 Again, not only do we find these anomalies abounding 
 in the works of genius, but we find that the greater the 
 master, the greater are his faults. Just in proportion as 
 his strength of wing enables him to soar away from the 
 beaten track, the groove in which mediocrity is content 
 to plod, is he likely to fall into mistakes and errors. 
 Raphael s animals are all bad, and so are those of Da 
 Vinci. How the disciples in Raphael s " Miraculous 
 Draught of Fishes" contrived to preserve their equilib 
 rium in the boatlets which the artist allows them, has 
 always been a mystery to critics. The figures of most 
 landscape painters are bad, and even in the productions 
 of the greatest masters, Claude, Poussin, Salvator, 
 there is much carelessness about details and particular 
 truths. One of these painters draws the anatomy of a 
 tree well, but fails in clothing it with leaves; another 
 paints sunshine admirably, but gives us woolen clouds. 
 Claude, so happy in his general effects, drew impossible 
 curves and angles among his tree trunks. Poussin s 
 " Deluge " with boats, and " Saint Jerome " with an eight- 
 day clock before him, are well known to amateurs. One 
 of the Dutch artists makes the river of Eden a canal, and 
 builds Babylon upon piles. Again, in painting, as in 
 poetry and even in prose, many an object is used, not for 
 its own sake, but as a foil, to give effect to something 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 113 
 
 else. Thus the cows and oxen which Hart, instead of 
 drawing with scrupulous fidelity, has blotched with a few 
 broad strokes into the foreground of the beautiful autumn 
 landscape before us, were put there, not to be looked at, 
 but to be looked over, as the spectator gazes at the gorgeous 
 woods beyond, woods which look as if a splendid sunset 
 had fallen in fragments upon them, and set them all ablaze. 
 An artist cannot tell all the truth and show everything 
 in a picture; he must concentrate his force, and therefore 
 we do not complain of the omission or even misrepresen 
 tation of some of the accessories, if the capital object is 
 portrayed with vividness, beauty and truth. It is true 
 that these omissions or misrepresentations cannot, ab 
 stractly, be defended; and so far a Turner who gives us 
 half-finished cows and donkeys, and a Shakspeare that 
 makes Bohemia a seaport and arms the Romans of Phar- 
 salia with the Spanish rapier of the sixteenth century, 
 must yield the palm of superiority to merely mechanical 
 artists, who are " coldly correct and critically dull. 1 But 
 we must remember that had Turner and Shakspeare been 
 scrupulous about details and ambitious of microscopic ex 
 cellence, they would not have been Turner and Shakspeare, 
 and the world would have lacked a " Venice " and a 
 " Macbeth." Indeed, the great difference between a great 
 artist and a little one lies in their respective powers of 
 generalization, in the comparative adroitness and skill 
 with which they balance the general and the particular. 
 A great painter has the courage to commit faults; he 
 neglects or casts aside many petty details, that he may 
 give expression to greater truths; while a feeble painter 
 guards every detail, and prides himself on the number of 
 particulars to which he faithfully adheres. So with ora- 
 
114 THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 
 
 tory, history, biography and essays; the masters in these 
 departments of speaking and writing aim, as a rule, at a 
 general end or impression, instead of wasting their time 
 upon minutiae or little effects. They cull, pick, square, 
 reject, and amalgamate their materials, so as to produce 
 a certain unity of effect. In short, they group instead of 
 analyzing, and produce by a few master touches results 
 which pre-Raphaelite minuteness and laborious finish would 
 mar. 
 
 What can be more unjust, therefore, than that petty 
 criticism so common in our journals and reviews, which 
 overlooks the main qualities of a literary or artistic pro 
 duction, in a microscopic examination of the details? There 
 are critics so constituted that they are utterly blind to 
 the merits of a painting or a poem, if they detect a few 
 faults or flaws, when, perhaps, these very faults may serve 
 as foils to set off the excellence of the work as a whole, 
 and even the discordance of details may contribute to the 
 general harmony of effect. They are almost ready to 
 smash a painted window in their anxiety to destroy an 
 insect on it, and, as Whately says, in looking at a pea 
 cock s train, they would fix on every spot where the 
 feathers were worn or the colors faded, and see nothing 
 else. A late writer, speaking of the subtleties in which 
 some of the Homeric critics have indulged, justly observes 
 that there is no one of their practices more fallacious or 
 pernicious than that, lately so much in vogue, of picking 
 petty flaws and holes in the mechanical structure of the 
 poems, while all their grander features of moral and 
 poetical harmony are overlooked. " Against such an or 
 deal no Epic composition, even if indited by the pen of 
 Calliope herself, could stand for a moment." A critic of 
 
THE IDEAL AKD THE REAL. 115 
 
 this stamp once went through several poems of I^ans 
 Christian Andersen, noticing the number of times he had 
 used the word " beautiful," or some similar word, which 
 at last led a little girl, six years old, who had listened 
 with surprise to the strictures, to take up the book and, 
 pointing to the conjunction "and," observe: "There is 
 still a little word, sir, that you have not scolded about." 
 
 The observations we have made concerning the products 
 of the pen, the brush, and the chisel, apply with equal 
 force to the writers and artists themselves, indeed, to 
 the physical, mental, and moral qualities of every human 
 being. It is a trite remark that no woman, however beau 
 tiful or lovely, is free from all defects. In the most fault 
 less daughter of Eve that ever dances before mortal vision, 
 there is always some blemish which forbids her being de 
 clared perfect. She has, perhaps, a lovely face with an 
 ungraceful figure, or an elegant figure with a plain face; 
 or the ear is too large, the nose too small, the hand or foot 
 too big, or some other blemish peeps out to betray her 
 earthly origin. The perfection of which we so often speak 
 has, in fact, no existence; it is only an idea of the mind, 
 created by our fancying a collection of all fine features in 
 one person. In painting and sculpture we have a realiza 
 tion of such an idea on canvas or in stone; but nobody for 
 a moment dreams that it is ever actualized in nature. In 
 the same way, by piecing together all the good moral 
 qualities, we may conceive of individuals perfect in men 
 tal constitution, or combining every species of mental and 
 moral excellence; but, like winged men, mermaids, and 
 griffins, they are only fictions of the brain. We never 
 meet with such persons in the street or by the fireside, 
 any more than we meet with paragons of female beauty 
 
116 THE IDEAL AND THE KEAL. 
 
 that combine in themselves all possible fine features with 
 out one defect or blemish. 
 
 It is true that there are plenty of such model men and 
 women in romance, for your novelist never hesitates to 
 blend together the most incongruous qualities in one favor 
 ite character. But nature is much more frugal in her 
 distribution of mental endowments than thus to heap to 
 gether all manner of shining qualities in one glaring mass. 
 As the fleet greyhound has no scent, and the peacock, which 
 delights us with the beauty of its plumage, has a discord 
 ant voice; as the gaudy flower has little fragrance, and 
 the hardiest and the loftiest trees are comparatively bar 
 ren of fruit, nearly all productive trees being ugly little 
 cripples; so every son and daughter of Adam has certain 
 desirable mental or moral qualities, but no one can boast 
 of them all. " How," asks Sir William Temple, in his 
 essay on Ancient and Modern Learning, " can a man hope 
 to excel in all qualities, when some are produced by the 
 heat, others by the coldness of the brain and temper? 
 The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the 
 other, like too scanty a blanket when you are a-bed; if 
 you pull it upon your shoulders, you leave your feet bare; 
 if you thrust it down upon your feet, your shoulders are 
 uncovered." Julian Charles Young, who knew Words 
 worth and Coleridge, tells us that the former used to 
 speak regretfully of the moral flaws in the letter s char 
 acter, his opium-eating, ingratitude to Southey, and neg 
 lect of his parental and conjugal obligations; while Col 
 eridge, in turn, denounced Wordsworth s parsimony in the 
 same breath in which he vaunted his purity and piety. 
 " There is no greater monster," adds Mr. Young, " than 
 a faultless man." 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE HEAL. 117 
 
 As this arrangement of Providence must have been 
 intended for some end that is upon the whole beneficial, 
 what can be more unreasonable than the complaints we 
 make of the imperfections of our fellow-beings? How 
 common it is for a man to be condemned by his fellows 
 because he has not certain qualities of mind or heart that 
 are diametrically opposed to each other! One man has a 
 gay temper and a dazzling wit, and we wonder that he 
 has not more gravity and judgment; another has a mathe 
 matical turn of mind, and we complain of his lack of 
 imagination. We wonder, on the one hand, that the act 
 ive, bustling man gives so little time to reflection, and, 
 on the other, that the thinking man should have such a 
 dislike for action. It is thought strange that the many- 
 sided man, who astonishes us by the multifariousness of 
 his knowledge, should be "superficially omniscient"; and, 
 again, that one who has great power of concentration, and 
 sounds the depth of some subjects, should be so deplorably 
 ignorant of all others. The generous, free-hearted man, 
 whose purse flies open at every appeal of charity, is cen 
 sured for his lack of economy, and the prudent, saving 
 man for his stinginess and meanness. The honest, con 
 scientious man, who has a stern hatred of vice, shocks us 
 by his roughness and bluntness; while the polished man 
 of the world, who charms us by his courtesies and win 
 ning conversation, hardly less displeases us by the light 
 censure with which he visits the widest aberrations from 
 virtue. 
 
 The absurdity of our complaints in each of these cases 
 is so evident as hardly to need comment. We do not com 
 plain of the truck-horse that it has not the fleetness of a 
 racer, or of the race-horse that it has not the endurance 
 
118 THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 
 
 of the mule; and yet we are often indignant because a 
 fellow mortal is not somebody else, or does not exhibit 
 qualities which are incompatible with those we admire in 
 him. In youth, especially, are we liable to this error. 
 Enthusiastic and sanguine, we are no sooner captivated 
 by any particular excellence in a character, than we im 
 mediately give it credit for all others; and we are dis 
 gusted beyond reason when we come to discover, as dis 
 cover we must, the defects in the opposite scale of the 
 balance. The unreasonableness of our expectations will be 
 still more apparent if we consider another obvious fact, 
 that even in the rare cases where a man is endowed by 
 Providence with all the mental and moral faculties in a 
 proximately equal degree, the frequent and habitual exer 
 cise of one set of them, so necessary in the division of 
 labor which a complex civilization necessitates, is almost 
 sure to make the other faculties rust or weaken from 
 disuse. 
 
 Again, when by strenuous efforts and unceasing vigi 
 lance certain virtues have been attained by us, how often 
 do we find, in the very hour of our triumph, some oppo 
 site vice peeping out ! In vain do we strive, by suppress 
 ing every bad tendency, and stimulating every lagging 
 virtue, to attain to an ideal state. In vain do we clip 
 and stretch, reduce and inflate, each of our various en 
 dowments, so as to bring all to a level or a match. The 
 plague is, that no sooner have we whipped and goaded 
 some quality into activity, or reined another into repose, 
 than we discover that, like the dog-hating woman, whose 
 husband delighted her by telling her that he had sold his 
 big mastiff for fifty dollars, but afterward explained that 
 he had taken in payment two puppies at twenty-five dol- 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE HEAL. 119 
 
 lars apiece, we have only exchanged one form of error 
 for another, the golden mean being as remote as ever; 
 or, if we have brought up one faculty or quality to par, 
 another, for lack of due attention, is giving way! As 
 frost, raised to its utmost intensity, produces the sensation 
 of fire, so any good quality, over-wrought and pushed to 
 excess, turns into its own contrary. Dam up vice in one 
 place, and lo! you will almost immediately find it oozing 
 out in another. After having acted for years upon Poor 
 Richard s maxims of frugality and prudence, we are startled 
 to find that we have become mere worldlings and niggards; 
 or we find that we have abandoned one form of indul 
 gence only to give ourselves full license in another. Let 
 the right wing of your moral army be victorious, and 
 chase all opposed to it from the field, and straightway you 
 will find, as did the royalists at Marston Moor, that the 
 left has been disgracefully beaten, and has fled twenty 
 miles to the rear. 
 
 We sometimes fancy, when we see a face in which there 
 are some irregularities of feature, that, by slightly varying 
 its lineaments, by adding a little here, and subtracting 
 there, we could make it perfect. But could the altera 
 tions be made, the result would probably show how inferior 
 to nature s own work is the work of " nature s journey 
 men." It is altogether probable that the same secret blend 
 ing of excellence and imperfection in the parts is as 
 essential to the beauty of the whole in the mental and 
 moral man as in the physical. The very discords in our 
 natures, like those in music, may contribute to the general 
 harmony of the effect. As the lily, the emblem of purity, 
 and the lotus-flower, grow out of the mud, as certain 
 trees shed their precious gums by virtue of a disease, 
 
120 THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 
 
 without which the gums would be wanting, as the pearl, 
 the ornament of beauty, owes its existence to the pain of 
 the wounded oyster, and as the pate-de-foie-gras, which 
 is so delicious to the epicure, owes its excellence to the 
 preternaturally swollen liver of the wretched animal that 
 furnishes it, so many of our virtues may grow out of 
 a constitutional infirmity or unsoundness, or be connected 
 with a radical vice of character. Our virtues and vices 
 are often stalks from the same root, and, if you uproot 
 the one, you are very liable to pluck up the other. " The 
 shrub which bears the most beautiful of flowers is that 
 which also bears the keenest of thorns." John Howard, 
 the philanthropist, grudged no toil or sacrifice that would 
 lessen the wretchedness in prisons; but he was either 
 destitute of natural affections, or his zeal for the public 
 good devoured them, for, we are told that he was a tyrant 
 in his own household, and by his neglect suffered his son 
 to fall into dissolute habits which ended in madness. He 
 was the author of a system of solitary confinement, which, 
 no doubt with the best of motives, he recommended in 
 the treatment of refractory boys, " for which " even the 
 gentle Charles Lamb, recollecting the horrors he had seen 
 at Christ s Hospital, could say, " I could spit on his statue." 
 Even where there is the most perfect exemption from 
 the common run of vices, there is usually some other 
 enormous one, which, like Aaron s rod, swallows up all 
 the rest. The Duke of Alva, Robespierre, and Napoleon, 
 were much less liable to petty vices than the average 
 mortal. An English essayist tells us that he was ac 
 quainted in his younger days with a man who at first 
 seemed superior to every foible whatever, and whom he 
 looked upon as a paragon of self-denial, until he met him 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 121 
 
 one evening at supper, when he found him eating and 
 drinking so enormously, that it was easy to see that glut 
 tony was a moral infirmity which in him had swallowed 
 up or precluded all others. It is no libel to say that some 
 of the ultra advocates of " teetotalism " have Gargantua- 
 like appetites for "links and chitterlings"; they compen 
 sate for the banished crystal by the more frequent crock 
 ery. While human nature remains unchanged, men will 
 continue, as in the days of Butler, to 
 
 "Compound for sins they are inclined to, 
 By damning those they have no mind to." 
 
 Again, as there are faces in the individual features of 
 which no blemish can be found, but which show no posi 
 tive beauty, so there are persons of faultless character who 
 have no positive virtues. They harm nobody; they never 
 lie, exaggerate, backbite, cheat, or steal; but neither, on 
 the other hand, do they ever do any great good. If they 
 can but attain to this negative excellence, they are " con 
 tent to dwell in decencies forever." A fellow- traveler of 
 Abraham Lincoln once happily characterized this entire 
 class of men. Riding one night with " old Abe " on the 
 box of a stage-coach, in southern Illinois, he sat for hours 
 in moody silence, puffing away at a cigar, and at last 
 offered one to his companion. Lincoln courteously de 
 clined to accept it, saying: "Thank you; I have no vices. " 
 The smoker did not open his lips again for three hours, 
 at the end of which time he " grunted out," as Lincoln 
 says, the following sa.ge observation: "It has ever been 
 my experience that folks that have no vices have plaguey 
 few virtues." Gray, the poet, was a man of this stamp. 
 He wrote a few beautiful poems, one an " entire and per- 
 
122 THE IDEAL AKD THE REAL. 
 
 feet chrysolite 1 which will last forever. But what has 
 he left to justify the opinion of his biographer that he 
 was probably the most learned man, in his day, in Europe? 
 His vast stores of knowledge, instead of being a running 
 fountain to fertilize the wastes of society, appear to have 
 been, for the most part, a stagnant reservoir. Overladen 
 with intellectual wealth, he became over-refined and pain 
 fully fastidious by contemplating the models which were 
 perpetually before him. " Too much honey clogged his 
 wings." 
 
 "Ten thousand great ideas filled his mind, 
 But with the clouds they fled, and left no trace behind." 
 
 Many an author with glaring faults has done more good 
 to his fellow-beings. 
 
 Why is it that we have so little love for " good " 
 people, that there is an undertone of irony in the words 
 "He is a very good man"? Is it because the world hates 
 goodness, as is sometimes rashly said? Is it because we 
 envy those whom we despair of imitating? No, the true 
 secret of our distaste is, that the virtue of those who are 
 known in society as "good people" springs from a defi 
 ciency in their mental and moral organization, not from 
 superior conscientiousness or more heroic conflicts with 
 temptation than other men have known. It is because 
 they are not tempted that they do not fall into sin; and 
 they are never tempted, not because they are above, but 
 because they are beneath, temptation. One must have a 
 certain amount of mental vigor to be strongly tempted; 
 and, therefore, the dull, lazy, passionless, unimaginative 
 man, who has no cravings for forbidden fruit, who has no 
 fancy to paint the charms and delights of unlawful 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 123 
 
 pleasure, is never sorely tried, hardly imperilled, and 
 " stands a monument of stupid virtue." This is the reason 
 why we dislike the so-called "good people"; as another 
 has said, " for the same reason that we cannot herd with 
 the inferior animals of the creation, we cannot fraternize 
 with them. We are a little lower than the angels, and 
 they are only a very little higher than the brutes. * It is 
 our weaknesses alone that render us lovable, says Goethe; 
 and therefore our pleasure is to walk and talk with those 
 who have been tried, troubled, and tempted, who have 
 enjoyed and suffered like ourselves. We make bosom 
 friends of these, even though they may have sinned and 
 fallen. The beating of a warm though erring heart is 
 dearer to us than the cold and clammy life of the reptile 
 that has ever so long lived imbedded in stone." Did not 
 our Saviour recognize this principle, when he said of an 
 erring woman: "Much is forgiven her because she loved 
 much " ? 
 
 If the views we have taken are just, it follows that 
 nothing can be more unreasonable than many of the com 
 plaints that are made against men of genius, both by critics 
 and moralists. How often is a writer, who has certain 
 acknowledged excellences, censured because he has not 
 certain others that are inconsistent with them! A wine- 
 drinker does not object to sparkling champagne that it 
 has not the body of old port; yet how often is an author, 
 who charms us by his Addisonian elegance and pleasantry, 
 or by a negligent grace like that of Goldsmith, found fault 
 with because he has not the sententious gravity of Bacon 
 or the pregnant brevity of Butler! A critic who is never 
 tired of extolling the terseness, point, and polish of Lan- 
 dor s style, laments that it has not the pornp, variety, and 
 
124 THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 
 
 richness of hue which surprise and delight the reader of 
 De Quincey; and, again, a critic who is in raptures with 
 De Quincey s structural perfection of sentence, and es 
 pecially with its " blending of rhythmical and impassioned 
 music with a Greek-like propriety of phrase and a logical 
 accuracy of thought," dashes the praise with a regret that 
 the workmanship excels the stuff, as if anything else 
 were to be expected from a writer endowed so dispropor 
 tionately with the faculty of expression. Carlyle, without 
 his German compounds, his exaggerations, his ellipses that 
 yawn with chasms wide enough to engulf all thought, 
 would be a more correct and classic writer; but without 
 his mannerism, he would be Carlyle no longer. We can 
 not have in the same writer Macaulay s champagne-like 
 exhilaration of style, his sparkling antithesis, epigram, and 
 point, and the simplicity of Defoe, or the thoughtful repose 
 of Henry Taylor. We cannot combine the luxuriant full 
 ness of Plato and the elliptic brevity of Aristotle. Livy 
 could no more have written like Tacitus than Rembrandt 
 could have painted like Teniers. The prophet Ezekiel 
 would have wanted his peculiar excellences of vgtyle had 
 he possessed those of Isaiah; Paul, without his abrupt 
 transitions, his long parentheses, and his occasional ob 
 scurities, would lose some of his most distinctive char 
 acteristics. 
 
 How common it is to see great conceptions in a book 
 or a painting marred by weakness of expression, or strength 
 of expression squandered on poor conceptions! How often 
 does a Haydon fail to embody ideals to the height of which 
 a Lawrence or a Reynolds, with all his mastery of ex 
 pression, could never rise ! The styles of Hooker and 
 Butler fall as much below their best thought as those of 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 125 
 
 William Melmoth and Alexander Smith tower above their 
 highest ideas. As we have already shown, the very gifts 
 of a writer have a disqualifying tendency, so that every 
 advantage he enjoys is accompanied with a corresponding 
 loss. How many artists are cramped and weighted by an 
 undue development of the critical faculty, which yet is 
 absolutely indispensable to any high attainment! Critical 
 insight and creative power are not necessarily foes, for a 
 broad basis of spiritual sympathy underlies them both ; but 
 so rarely are they united in the same mind, and especially 
 at the same moment, that they may be regarded as prac 
 tically incompatible. A late writer justly observes that 
 though a due proportion and balance of gifts wonderfully 
 enhance their value, yet proportion and balance are them 
 selves a disqualification in some directions. The very un 
 rest and dissatisfaction of an ill-balanced mind give it a 
 certain impetus, which is wanting to the more harmoni 
 ously constituted. What painter has more glaring faults 
 than Rubens? and yet, what painter surpasses him in com 
 pass and variety of artistic power? Strange to say, there 
 was a weakness even in his strength; for even amid his 
 inexhaustible fruitfulness Sir Joshua Reynolds recognized 
 one smooth, flat face continually recurring. Mrs. Stowe, 
 in her book of travel, speaks of him as "the great, joy 
 ous, full-souled, all-powerful Rubens; full of triumphant, 
 abounding life; disgusting and pleasing; making me laugh, 
 and making me angry; defying me to dislike him; drag 
 ging me at his chariot-wheels; in despite of my protests, 
 forcing me to confess there was no other but he. Like 
 Shakspeare, he forces you to accept and forgive a thou 
 sand excesses, and uses his own faults as musicians use 
 discords, only to enhance the perfection of harmony." She 
 
126 THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 
 
 adds: "There is certainly some use even in defects. A 
 faultless style sends you to sleep. Defects arouse and 
 excite the sensibility to seek excellences. Some of Shak- 
 speare s finest passages explode all grammar like sky-rock 
 ets: the thought blows the language to shivers." 
 
 As with their literary faults, so with the moral flaws 
 and blemishes of men of genius; they are often repre 
 hended when, perhaps, a profound consideration of their 
 constitution would lead us to doubt whether their strong 
 points and their weak ones are not inseparably blended. 
 That which was said of a certain philosopher, that if he 
 had not erred he would have done less (si non errasset 
 fecerat ille minus), must often be said of other men. 
 Whether genius be or be not a disease, as some affirm it 
 to be, it is certain that it is often attended with some con 
 stitutional infirmity to which it seems closely allied. Na 
 ture, for some reason, seems often to take a cruel delight 
 in spoiling her fairest handiwork, yoking together the most 
 opposite gifts and qualities, mingling strength and weak 
 ness, wisdom and foolishness, strangely together, like the 
 notes of "bells that are jangled and out of tune." Alex 
 ander Pope, "the little wasp of Twickenham," had a con 
 stitutional irritability which involved him in incessant war 
 fare with the small .wits and poets of his time; yet who 
 can doubt that this very irritability of temper was closely 
 connected with, if not an assential part of, the exquisite 
 genius which charms us in the " Rape of the Lock " and 
 the "Essay on Man? 1 We deplore the misanthropy, coarse 
 ness, and virulence of Swift; but we are too apt to forget 
 that, had he been a model of clerical decorum, that master 
 piece of satire, the " Tale of a Tub," would have remained 
 unwritten. We deplore, again, the fierce passions of Burns, 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL. 127 
 
 which hurried him into so many excesses, and caused an 
 early extinction of his genius; yet who can say that the 
 "fiery sleet" of thought and sentiment that drives along 
 in Burns s page, and the headlong fervors which hurried 
 him over the brink of moral propriety, had not some com 
 mon root, so that, had we been spared the contemplation 
 of his errors, we might also have lost the enjoyment of his 
 songs ? Travelers say that on the sides of volcanoes, in 
 the cool crust of what was once red-hot lava, can be found 
 luxuriant vines, bending with grapes of the most delicious 
 flavor; and so in the soul of Burns, convulsed by volcanic 
 passions, flourished and thrived some of the noblest and 
 tenderest sentiments of humanity. We lament, as we read 
 the impassioned verse of Byron, that his life should have 
 been spent in chasing all the Protean forms of pleasure, 
 only to find the subtle essence escape as soon as grasped, 
 leaving but the languor and satiety of the jaded voluptu 
 ary; yet who cannot see that his elemental force, his vehe 
 ment sensibility, his Rubens-like facility of touch, and the 
 sensuous melody of his verse, together with his wit, manly 
 sense, and knowledge of the world, in short, all his lead 
 ing qualities as a poet, are intimately allied to that 
 egotism and unrest, that contempt for public opinion and 
 the conventional maxims of society, which led him fear 
 lessly to attempt to solve the problem of life in his own 
 way, and to show by his discomfiture the misery of him 
 who lives for self, and drains the cup of pleasure to its 
 dregs? Sir Walter Scott was ruined by his ambition for 
 baronial honors; but was not this weakness the same pecu 
 liarity of mind which, by interesting him in the customs 
 and manners of antiquity, and filling his writings with 
 
128 THE IDEAL AKD THE REAL. 
 
 mediaeval allusion, enabled him, as the " Wizard of the 
 North," to charm the civilized world? 
 
 Again, how common, yet how unreasonable, is the com 
 plaint made against authors, that they do not fully exem 
 plify in their lives the precepts they enforce in their writ 
 ings ! In making the acquaintance of a writer whose 
 printed page has stiffened our moral backbone and flooded 
 our whole spiritual being with energy, who has filled our 
 souls with a noble scorn of all baseness and meanness, and 
 animated us with an earnest determination to " quit our 
 selves like men" in all the relations of life, we expect, 
 as the merest matter of course, a second and even greater 
 influx of that invigorating power. We think that the 
 teaching conveyed before in words will be repeated now 
 in a more impressive form, and that he who has pointed 
 us to ideals glimmering above us in radiance and beauty 
 like Alpine summits, must himself be qualified to guide 
 us along the rocky paths, and by the yawning precipices 
 that intervene between us and those serene heights; that 
 he who has " allured to brighter worlds " will himself 
 "lead the way." We might, as another has well said, 
 as well expect him to have strong legs because he has keen 
 sight. We forget that speculative and practical ability are 
 too distinct kinds of talent, which are often combined in 
 very unequal proportions; that though both are forms of 
 mental power, yet one no more implies the other than 
 dexterity in feats of legerdemain implies the art of leap 
 ing a five-barred gate, or of " witching the world with noble 
 horsemanship," though these are all instances of physical 
 skill. Again, it is evident that a man s writings may im 
 poverish his life; that he may put all his good things into 
 the one, and leave none for the other, just as a man may 
 
THE IDEAL AND THE EEAL. 129 
 
 expend his fortune in dress, and starve his body and mind. 
 While other men have had the whole energy of their nature 
 to throw into action, his has been already drained when 
 he leaves his study and enters the world. The force which 
 they have expended in deeds he has expended in originat 
 ing and uttering the moral ideas which have been their 
 trumpet-call to duty, and enough has not remained to work 
 these ideas into his own life. 
 
 The remarks we have made about literary men of 
 genius apply with equal force to great reformers. How 
 often do we hear it lamented that a Luther, a Knox, or 
 a Garrison, when attacking the wicked institutions or 
 well-fortified abuses of his time, is not more temperate 
 and charitable in his language! Would he be equally 
 strenuous and energetic, without indulging in such vehe 
 mence and coarseness of denunciation, he would be a pattern 
 reformer. The critic does not perceive that without that 
 fierceness of spirit which leads to such excesses, the re 
 former would be incapable of performing the tremendous 
 tasks he undertakes. Broad-axes cannot have the delicate 
 edge of razors. A man may possibly be, as Heine says 
 of Luther, at the same time a dreamy mystic and a prac 
 tical man of action, a scholastic word-thresher and an 
 inspired, God-intoxicated prophet; but he cannot be, at 
 the same moment, " as wild as the storm that uproots the 
 oak, and gentle as the zephyr that dallies with the violet." 
 It often happens in this world that, as De Maistre says, 
 "a sufficiency does not suffice" (ce qui sujfit ne suffit pas)] 
 and, as he adds, we are never sure of our moral qualities, 
 till we have learned to give them a little exaltation. If 
 a person attempts to throw you down, it is not enough 
 to stiffen up against him; you must strike him and make 
 
130 THE IDEAL AtfD THE REAL. 
 
 him recoil. To clear a ditch, you must look beyond the 
 farther edge, if you would not tumble in. In like manner, 
 he who would batter down any mighty evil, any strong 
 fortress of superstition or error, must not nicely calculate 
 the amount of force to be used; he must deal the heaviest 
 blows in his power. The men by whom the world has 
 been most benefited have usually been men of strong 
 passions and broad social sympathies. These passions and 
 sympathies lead them into many errors and excesses; but 
 we must take the evil with the good, nor quarrel with 
 the winds that give life and freshness to the intellect, 
 though they sometimes swell into a storm or even a 
 hurricane. Gentleness, moderation and courtesy are ex 
 cellent qualities in themselves; but to suppose them in a 
 sturdy, thorough-going reformer, is to suppose an intel 
 lectual paradox, a moral monster, a being born under 
 the contending influences of Mercury and Saturn. As an 
 able writer has said: " There is but one alternative in 
 the matter. Either the rudeness of reformers must be 
 tolerated for the sake of the necessary boldness, or the 
 boldness must be wanted also, and the work remain un 
 performed. It is here as in the ordinary walks of life: 
 we must not expect butchers to be men of exquisitely 
 sensitive and refined feelings, nor scavengers to have 
 the squeamishness or delicacy of gentlemen. Those who 
 bewail the want of soft and courteous qualities in a 
 Luther, might as reasonably expect to see the hurricane 
 pause in its tremendous but perhaps necessary mission, 
 in order to waft a pleasure bark across some fairy lake, 
 or fan the cheek of beauty in her rosy bower." 
 
FAT vs. LEAK 
 
 A MONG the witty passages in the writings of the late 
 -*--*- Henry Giles is a panegyric upon fat men, of whom 
 he may be considered the laureate. There is something 
 cordial, he asserts, in a fat man. Everybody likes him, 
 and he likes everybody. He is a living, walking minister 
 of gratitude to the bounty of the earth and the fullness 
 thereof; an incarnate testimony against the vanities of 
 care; a radiant manifestation of the wisdom of good 
 humor. A fat man, almost in virtue of being fat, is, 
 per se, a popular man; he has an abundance of rich 
 juices, and, the hinges of his system being well oiled and 
 his springs noiseless, he goes on his way rejoicing, full of 
 contentment and placidity. A fat man, it is argued again, 
 feels his position solid; "he knows that his being is cog 
 nizable-, he knows that he has a marked place in the 
 universe, and that he need take no extraordinary pains 
 to advertise to mankind that he is among them. He 
 knows that he is in no danger of being overlooked. A 
 fat man has also the decided advantage of being the 
 nearest to that most perfect of figures, a mathematical 
 sphere, while a thin man approximates to a simple line. 
 Moreover, a fat man is a being of harmonious volume, 
 and holds relations to the material universe in every di 
 rection, while the thin man has nothing but length, is, 
 in fact, but the continuation of a point." 
 
 All this is well put, and the logic, so far as it goes, is 
 
 131 
 
132 FAT VS. LEAK. 
 
 without a flaw; but the argument is like a jug-handle, 
 all on one side. Obesity, as well as leanness, has its dis 
 advantages. Who pays the largest bills to his tailor, 
 and requires the most time to dress and undress, to go 
 to sleep or to wake up all over? Which, when in a 
 hurry, has the advantage, the man who lugs about a 
 load of flesh, like Atlas carrying the globe on his shoulders, 
 or he who, composed of skin and bones only, darts from 
 place to place with the agility of a grasshopper? Who, in 
 a crowded church or lecture-room, is squeezed the hardest, 
 and who suffers most from hydrostatic pressure in a horse- 
 car? Whose sides are grazed by narrow doorways, and who 
 in war presents the biggest mark to the bullets of the 
 enemy? Who tumbles from stage-coaches or rolls down 
 staircases or precipices with the greatest momentum; and 
 who is refused admission into light or loaded vehicles? 
 True, the fat man is warmest in winter; but though he 
 may crow over his thin neighbor in January, see him 
 under the sweltering heats of dog-days, when " the whirli 
 gig of time has brought around its revenges," how he 
 puffs, and blows, and " lards the lean earth as he walks 
 along"! You no longer hear the merry chuckle with 
 which in winter he cried out to his thin neighbor, "Away, 
 you starveling; you eel-skin; you dried neat s tongue; 
 you stock-fish!" Gladly would he now exchange the 
 mountain of flesh which he trundles along for the ghost 
 like anatomy of his neighbor. No doubt the fat man is 
 more visible than the lean man. It is hard, sometimes, 
 for the fleshless man to convince the world that he is 
 somebody; that he is an actual entity, a positive sub 
 stance, as well as his corpulent fellow-creature. There is 
 a full abstract admission of his equality; he counts as a 
 
FAT VS. LEAK. 133 
 
 soul in population returns and paragraphs about accidents, 
 the same as the fat man; he is the same in the eye of 
 the law, pays the same taxes, has alike his epitaph and 
 his elegy. But the fat man has only to appear, and the 
 poor fellow is absolutely lost in the obscurity of the fat 
 man s shadow. "The fat man has only to speak, and he 
 drowns the treble squeal of his fleshless brother in the 
 depths of his bass, as the full swell of an organ overpowers 
 the whistle of a penny trumpet." 
 
 But how is it in times of danger? Who is it that, if 
 shy or sensitive, finds it impossible to escape observation? 
 Who, when hunted by a detective, tries in vain to crawl 
 through small holes, or to stow himself in a cranny or 
 snug hiding-place? Who, serving on juries, shrinks and 
 shrivels till he can hardly recognize his own identity, 
 beginning the term with two hundred avoirdupois, and 
 ending it with a lightness that can hardly turn a money- 
 scale? It is another great disadvantage of the fat man 
 that he lacks spirituality. The man who is fat bodily is 
 apt to be lean intellectually. A corpulent intellectualist 
 is, in fact, a contradiction in terms, a palpable cata- 
 chresis. You might as well talk of a brick balloon, a 
 sedentary will-o -the wisp, a pot-bellied spirit, or a lazy 
 lightning. Tn gross, carneous bodies, the thinking prin 
 ciple is buried under a mountain of flesh, like Enceladus 
 under ^Etna. The spirit is apt to be like a little fish in 
 a large frying pan of fat, which is either totally absorbed 
 or tastes of nothing but the lard. No great deeds are 
 ever done by fat men. They are too sluggish to set the 
 world on fire. It is your spare, spiritualized beings, 
 men who can distinctly feel and reckon their own ribs, 
 men in whom the fiery soul has o erinformed its integu- 
 
134 FAT VS. LEAN". 
 
 ment of clay, that stir up revolutions, and set whole 
 nations by the ears. 
 
 Alexander was a spare man, and so was Caesar. Bona 
 parte was thin as long as he climbed the ladder; Nelson 
 was a shadow; Suwarrow was a spectre; the Duke of 
 Wellington offered only an edge to his enemy, and had 
 hardly oil enough in his whole composition to keep his 
 joints from creaking. Gregory the Seventh, the mightiest 
 of the Popes, was of diminutive size; and so was Robes 
 pierre, one of the master-spirits of the French Revolution, 
 who by his force of will " ruled the whirlwind and directed 
 the storm " longer than any of his rivals. Lewis the Four 
 teenth, who passed for a large man in his life-time, was 
 considerably under the average size, and Napoleon the 
 Third was really, as Hugo termed him, " Napoleon the 
 Little," being but little more than five feet high. Athana- 
 sius, who triumphed over the tall Arius at the Council 
 of Nice, and by his intellectual might and combativeness 
 suggested the proverb, "Athanasius contra mundum" was 
 rather a dwarf than a man. Dr. Watts; Pope, the "little 
 crooked thing that asked questions"; Chillingworth, the 
 giant polemic; Montaigne, the prince of essayists; and 
 Scarron, who called himself " an abridgment of human 
 miseries," were all small men. Of Sidney Godolphin Lord 
 Clarendon says: "There was never so great a mind and 
 spirit contained in so little room." Alexander Hamilton 
 was slender and below the average height; the brave 
 General Marion was short and lean; and Dr. Kane, who 
 surpassed all his companions in braving torrid heat and 
 polar cold, was but five feet six in height, and weighed 
 but 135 pounds. Burton, in his "Anatomy," tells us that 
 Uladislaus Cubitatis, "that pigmy king of Poland," who 
 
FAT VS. LEAK. 135 
 
 reigned about A.D. 1306, fought more victorious battles 
 than any of his long-shanked predecessors; and he adds: 
 "Nullam virtus respuit staturam (virtue refuseth no stat 
 ure) ; and commonly your great, vast bodies and fine feat 
 ures are sottish, dull, and leaden spirits. What s in 
 them? Quid nisi pondus iners stolidaeque ferveia mentis. 
 What in Osus and Ephialtes (Neptune s sons in Homer), 
 nine acres long? What in Maximinus, Ajax, Caligula, 
 and the rest of those great Zanzummins, or gigantical 
 Anakims, heavy, vast, barbarous lubbers?" 
 
 Were our country at war with another, who would 
 not prefer, for commander-in-chief, a lean, fiery Andrew 
 Jackson, prompt as a hair-trigger pistol, to a Daniel- 
 Lambert-like warrior, a huge mountain of flesh in whom 
 the vis inertice overpowers all the other forces of his 
 nature? It is the thin blade that pierces deepest, and 
 the lean horse generally wins the race. " What care I 
 for the bulk of a man ? " says the candid fat Falstaff. 
 " Give me the spirit, Master Shallow, I say, give me 
 the spirit." " Nothing fat," says a writer, " ever yet en 
 lightened the world; for, even in a tallow-candle, the 
 illumination proceeds from the wick." Shakspeare holds 
 the same doctrine: 
 
 Fat paunches make lean pates; and dainty bits 
 Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits." 
 
 Again, not only are all heroic deeds impossible by a 
 fat man, but it is equally hard to associate sentiment 
 with obesity. Who can think without a smile of a fat 
 man in love? Who ever read without merriment the 
 story of Gibbon, the fat historian of the Roman Empire, 
 going down on his knees to make love, and finding it 
 
136 FAT VS. LEA1S". 
 
 impossible to get up till the lady rang the bell for the 
 footman to help him? On the other hand, it should be 
 remembered to their credit that fat men are almost in 
 variably kind-hearted and of a forgiving spirit. Never do 
 you find them cherishing spite and studying schemes of 
 vengeance; never writing carping criticisms, or joining 
 secret associations for attacking their fellow- workmen or 
 shooting emperors. The very faults of fat men are of a 
 kind that awaken sympathy rather than anger. As Fal- 
 staff said of himself, they "have more flesh than other 
 men, therefore more frailty." 
 
 On the whole, the advantages and disadvantages of 
 both fatness and leanness are so nearly balanced that we 
 may consider the discussion a drawn game. There are 
 extreme cases on record, both of obesity and leanness, 
 either of which would give us pause were we compelled 
 to choose between them. One would not care to be so 
 fat that other persons would slip down by just treading 
 on his shadow; nor would he care to be so lean that he 
 could not himself cast a shadow. There are few of us 
 so partial to pinguitude that we would covet a wife as 
 big as the Yankee s, who complained that he could not 
 embrace her all at once, but was obliged to make a chalk- 
 mark at the ultima thule of his caresses, and then begin 
 again where he had left off. On the other hand, there is 
 an extreme of leanness which is hardly less undesirable. 
 Jeffrey, the reviewer, was so thin that Sydney Smith de 
 clared that " he has not body enough to cover his mind 
 decently with; his intellect is improperly exposed." Fal- 
 staff tells of an acquaintance of his who was such a dag 
 ger of lath, that you " might have trussed him and all 
 his apparel into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy 
 
FAT VS. LEAN. 137 
 
 was a mansion for him and court." A story is told of a 
 poor diminutive Frenchman, who, being ordered by his 
 Sangrado to drink a quart of pitsan daily, replied, with 
 a heavy sigh, "Alas! doctor, that is impossible, for I Hold 
 only a pint! 1 1 The Duke de Choiseul was so meagre a 
 man, that, when he came to London to negotiate a peace, 
 Charles Townshend, being asked if the French Govern 
 ment had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, replied: "I 
 do not know; but they have sent me the outline of an 
 ambassador. 1 1 Still more remarkable was the leanness of 
 a French priest, who lived many years ago. Shrivelling 
 up more and more daily, he became at last so thin and 
 dry in his articulations, that he was unable to go through 
 the celebration of mass, as his joints and spine would 
 crack in so loud and strange a manner at every genuflec 
 tion, that the faithful were terrified, and the faithless 
 laughed. This story may be regarded as "too thin" for 
 belief; we admit that it is the knee plus ultra" of its 
 class. 
 
 Per contra, it is on record that a Frenchwoman was so 
 fat that she took fire. An old chronicler tells of a French 
 princess who was afflicted with such an excess of pingui- 
 tude that she melted after she was embalmed. A lady was 
 once spoken of in Sydney Smith s presence, who was So 
 inordinately stout that he declared that "were she" to rise 
 in revolt against the constituted authorities, it would be 
 necessary to read the Riot Act and disperse her!" Gross 
 as were the dimensions of these monsters of humanity, they 
 are all eclipsed by the fatty fame of a Russian girl of 
 Bolschin-Grodna, in the Government of Tula, who, when 
 she was but ten years old, turned the scale at 418 pounds. 
 With an apparently instinctive prevision of her future 
 
138 FAT VS. LEAN. 
 
 proportions, her sponsors at her baptism christened her 
 Fatinitza. Motley, in his history of the Dutch Republic, 
 speaks of an officer in the Spanish army in the Nether 
 lands, one Chiapin Vitelli, equally distinguished for his 
 courage, his corpulence, and his cruelty, who had a 
 stomach so protuberant that it was always supported in 
 a bandage suspended from his neck. Yet, in spite of this 
 enormous impediment, he was personally active on the 
 battle-field, and did more service, not only as a commander, 
 but as a subaltern, than many a younger and lighter man. 
 It was an awful hour for the Dutch when he fell upon 
 his enemies! Cases like this must be regarded as excep 
 tions to the general rule of leanness in military heroes. 
 If Vitelli s face was proportional to his stomach, he must 
 have been as unpleasant to look at in a hot day as the 
 English grazier who distressed Judge Park. It is said that 
 on a smoking hot day, at the assizes in a country town, 
 the grazier planted himself in front of the judge, and sat 
 there perspiring and wiping his face until his honor could 
 bear the sight no longer. Throwing down his pen, he called 
 out: " Fat man, do get out of the way; you make one hot 
 to look at you. 1 
 
 When the late Dixon H. Lewis, who weighed 360 pounds, 
 represented Alabama in Congress, he was nominated by 
 Prentice of the Louisville Journal for the Presidency on 
 the ground that he was the weightiest man in the House, 
 and would fill the Presidential chair as it had been filled 
 by none of his predecessors. To this it was replied that, 
 though he unquestionably overshadowed all his competi 
 tors, yet it was impossible that such a colossus of roads 
 could run ivell for the Presidency. Even England, prolific 
 as she has been of great men, has produced few leviathans 
 
FAT VS. LEAN. 139 
 
 like Lewis. She can boast, however, of one adipose phe 
 nomenon more stupendous than even he; we refer to Sir 
 John Potter, who in 1858 succeeded Mr. Bright in the 
 House of Commons as the representative of Manchester, 
 and who weighed (on the hay-scale, we suppose,) 450 pounds! 
 A London editor, in speaking of his face, said that it re 
 minded him of Milton s description of Satan s shield, which, 
 with the change of a single word, is an admirable picture 
 of Sir John s phiz: 
 
 "The broad circumference 
 
 Stands on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb 
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views." 
 
 It is one of the preeminent glories of England that she 
 knows how to utilize her sons who thus " tallow in the 
 caul," as we see in this case and in that of one Edwards, 
 who lived long ago in Oxford: 
 
 "When Edwards walks the streets, the paviors cry 
 God bless you, sir! and lay their rammers by." 
 
 It is said that one wonderful property of the Krenz- 
 brunnen waters in Bohemia is their power to reduce the 
 "too, too solid flesh," and hence resort to it hundreds who, 
 afflicted with excessive bulkiness, would diminish their 
 burden. " At one time," says a traveler, " we counted 
 seventeen fat men there sitting in an unbroken row, a 
 sight to upset any unprepared nerves ! " It is fortunate 
 for such persons that corpulence is not treated by modern 
 states as a crime, as it was by the ancient Spartans. The 
 latter, according to a late writer,* took charge of the firm 
 ness and looseness of men s flesh, and actually regulated 
 
 *Bruce s " Historic and Classic Portraits." 
 
140 FAT VS. LEAK. 
 
 the degree of fatness to which it was lawful, in a free 
 state, for any citizen to plump out his body. Those who 
 had the audacity to grow too fat or too soft for military 
 exercise and the service of Sparta, were soundly whipped. 
 In one particular instance, that of Nauclis, the son of 
 Polytus, the offender was brought before the Ephori at a 
 meeting of all the people of Sparta, at which his unlaw 
 ful fatness was publicly exposed; and he was threatened 
 with perpetual banishment if he did not bring his body 
 within the regular Spartan compass, and give up his cul 
 pable mode of living, which was declared to be more 
 worthy of an Ionian than of a son of Lacedsemon. 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 OF all the faculties of the human mind, so wonderful 
 both separately and in their combination, there is 
 none more mysterious in its operations than the memory. 
 Physiologists tell us that every three or four years the 
 particles of the human body are exchanged for new ones, 
 so that materially every man becomes an entirely differ 
 ent person from what he was; yet, though his flesh, 
 bones, muscles, nerves, and blood-vessels have passed away 
 and been replaced by others, the man, by means of memory, 
 preserves his identity in spite of these changes. No wonder 
 that Cicero, after much meditation on this faculty, was 
 led to regard it as one of the most cogent proofs of God s 
 existence and of the immateriality of the soul. Necessary 
 as this faculty is, however, to the preservation of all our 
 past thoughts, feelings, and experiences, there is no other 
 mental power the value of which is so generally under 
 rated. The vainest person will not hesitate to com 
 plain of his wretched memory, however reluctantly he 
 may admit that he is slow-witted, or that his judgment 
 is weak, or his taste defective. It has been suggested 
 that one cause for this may be that a poor memory can 
 not be concealed. Men may differ in opinion as to what 
 constitutes judgment, imagination, or taste, but every 
 body can detect at once a failure to recall a fact, a verse, 
 or a date. Another cause is the absurd opinion so gen- 
 
 141 
 
142 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 erally entertained, that the more memory one has, the 
 less is his invention. 
 
 A recent writer says that "if a man have a great 
 memory, if his memory be prodigious in any sense, 
 it will always be found to surpass his other powers." 
 This statement is contradicted by a hundred biographies. 
 Though a defective memory is not, as Quintilian declares, 
 demonstrative proof of the lack of genius, yet nearly all 
 the great men that have ever lived have had remarkable 
 memories. So far from the intellectual powers being, as 
 is so often asserted, in inverse proportion to the strength 
 and tenacity of this faculty, the very reverse is usually 
 true. No memory can be universal, but just in propor 
 tion to its strength and many-sidedness will be found 
 the vigor of the other faculties, and the force with which 
 they can be brought to bear upon the affairs of life. 
 Memory is the main fountain of thought; as Burke says, 
 " there is no faculty of the mind which can bring its 
 energies into effect unless the memory be stored with 
 ideas for it to work upon." Hence it is that this faculty, 
 by a wise provision of Providence, is developed in ad 
 vance of the reasoning powers, so that when the latter 
 begin to assert themselves, there may be material stored 
 up for their use. What is an author without a good 
 memory? We talk of "creative" minds; but this is only 
 a figure of speech, for man can create nothing, he can 
 only select and combine. Genius, it is true, lights its 
 own fire, but not till it has collected materials to feed 
 the flame. When a man writes a book, however original, 
 he draws the materials from his own recollections and 
 experiences. Hence the ancients called Memory the mother 
 of the Muses. Tantum ingenii, quantum memories. What 
 
MEMORY AKD ITS MARVELS. 143 
 
 is a statesman or a politician without a great memory? 
 A political leader is continually called upon for feats of 
 memory. Not only must he distinctly remember the lead 
 ing events of his country s history and much of the his 
 tory of other countries, political, religious, social, financial, 
 but he must have an exact memory of names and dates, 
 and a verbal memory to quote promptly and accurately. 
 He must be able to recall all the leading points and 
 facts of an opponent s speech, and at the same time to 
 adhere to the preconcerted plan of his own reply; and 
 all this must be done with clearness and distinctness, and 
 without hesitation, boggling, or stammering. The weight 
 of Sir Robert Peel as a speaker was owing not more to 
 his argumentative ability than to the extraordinary full 
 ness and accuracy with which he would state the argu 
 ments of his opponents in the order of their succession. 
 
 That memory, like muscular force, may occasionally ex 
 ist, though rarely, without being accompanied by any cor 
 responding superiority of the other faculties, is doubtless 
 true. There are men whose memories, instead of being 
 selective and retaining only what is nutritious and help 
 ful, the things for which they have an intellectual affinity, 
 and which are related to their own individuality (if they 
 can be said to have any), retain important facts and trivi 
 alities, things related and things unrelated to their own 
 personality, with equal tenacity. They read a newspaper 
 article, a poem, or a story, and it is at once daguerreotyped 
 on the memory. They go upon a journey, and years after 
 ward all its minutest incidents are faithfully treasured. 
 Never ruminating upon what they read, they retain their 
 knowledge undigested and unassimilated, and it affords no 
 more nutriment to their minds than the flour to the bar- 
 
144 MEMORY AN"D ITS MARVELS. 
 
 rel which contains it. Who has not been bored a thousand 
 times by men with such memories? Who has not met 
 with encyclopedias on legs, packed full of learning on a 
 great variety of subjects, but learning unassimilated, with 
 out method or system, and made up of information the 
 most trivial as well as the most valuable ? Who has not 
 listened " with sad civility " to more than one person like 
 the Count of Coigny described by Talleyrand, who " pos 
 sesses wit and talent, but his conversation is fatiguing, 
 because his memory is equally exact in quoting the date 
 of the death of Alexander the Great, and that of the 
 Princess de Gu6mnee s poodle?" Lord Bolingbroke has 
 given a vivid picture of a scholar of his acquaintance who 
 was an omnivorous reader, and joined a prodigious memory 
 of this kind to a prodigious industry. "He had read al 
 most constantly," says Bolingbroke, " twelve or fourteen 
 hours a day, for- five-and-twenty or thirty years, and had 
 heaped together as much learning as could be crowded 
 into one head. In the course of my acquaintance with him 
 I consulted him once or twice, not oftener; for I found 
 this mass of learning of as little use to me as to the 
 owner. The man was communicative enough ; but noth 
 ing was distinct in his mind. How could it be otherwise? 
 he had never spared time to think, all was employed in 
 reading. His reason had not the merit of common mech 
 anism. When you press a watch or pull a clock, they an 
 swer your question with precision; for they repeat exactly 
 the hour of the day, and tell you neither more nor less 
 than you desire to know. But when you asked this man a 
 question, he overwhelmed you by pouring forth all that 
 the several terms or words of your question recalled to 
 his memory; and if he omitted anything, it was that very 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 145 
 
 thing to which the sense of the whole question should have 
 led him and confined him. To ask him a question was to 
 wind up a spring in his memory, that rattled on with vast 
 rapidity and confused noise till the force of it was spent, 
 and you went away with all the noise in your ears, stunned 
 and uninformed. I never left him, that I was not ready 
 to say to him, Dieu vous fasse la grace de devenir moins 
 savant! God grant you the favor of becoming less learned. " 
 Such men, deriving little nutriment from their reading, 
 are never men of originality or power. The great vice 
 of our educational systems to-day is that in our schools 
 and colleges too high an estimate is placed upon a literal 
 and formal memory, which receives only as boxes and 
 drawers receive what is put into them. That student is 
 too often regarded as the best scholar who has succeeded 
 best in cramming for an examination, or who has answered 
 most correctly the questions upon the text-books, without 
 regard to the degree in which he has assimilated his in 
 tellectual pabulum, and turned his knowledge into faculty. 
 In mastering any branch of knowledge time is an im 
 portant element. A period must elapse sufficiently long 
 for the formation of mental associations between the newly 
 acquired information and that previously possessed, so that 
 the new ideas may be linked with the old by suggesting 
 chains. No new knowledge can be called our own till we 
 have so meditated upon it, and turned it over and over 
 in the mind, that it not only is added to the old, but in 
 terpenetrates it, so that the old can scarcely come into the 
 " sphere of consciousness " without bringing the new with 
 it. " To know by heart," says Montaigne, " is not to know." 
 Memory varies largely, not only in degree, but in 
 kind. " There is a memory of the heart, of the soul, of 
 7 
 
146 MEMOKY A]$"D ITS MARVELS. 
 
 the reason, of the sense, 1 and few excel in each. Some 
 persons remember the substance of what they read, but 
 not the words; others can inundate you with quotations, 
 but remember little of their sense. Henry Clay could 
 never repeat a verse of poetry correctly, but rarely for 
 got an argument, or a name, or a face. There is a cele 
 brated metaphysician in this country, who retains proper 
 names with such difficulty that it is said that if he has 
 a speech to make in which they occur, he is obliged to 
 write them on a slip of paper, and carry it in his vest 
 pocket for reference while he is making his harangue. 
 Great lawyers recollect principles only; exact lawyers 
 recollect cases, and can repeat decisions by the hour in 
 the very words of the books. The former make the best 
 advocates, the latter the best judges. One man will re 
 member distinctly combinations of sounds, but not of 
 colors; another will remember figures and dates, but not 
 principles, arguments, and reasons. There are hotel clerks 
 who, with poor memories of other things, recognize in 
 stantly the features of any guest they have once seen. It 
 was said of Addison s daughter, who died in 1797, that 
 " she inherited her father s memory, but none of the dis 
 criminating powers of his understanding; with the re 
 tentive powers of Jedediah Buxton, she was incapable of 
 speaking or writing an intelligible sentence." Dr. Ley- 
 den, the friend of Sir Walter Scott, could repeat an Act 
 of Parliament after one perusal; but he had no power of 
 analysis, and could recover a passage or sentence only by 
 going back to the beginning. 
 
 Say, in the introduction to his " Political Economy," 
 tells us that he studied all the books he could find relat 
 ing to his theme, and then took time to forget what he 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 147 
 
 had read, before beginning to write. The practice of Say 
 suggests the question whether one thoroughly compre 
 hends what his memory retains in the gross. Are facts 
 ever properly generalized, digested, and assimilated, 
 made part and parcel of the mind, incorporated chem 
 ically, not by contact, but by solution, till they are, in 
 a great degree, forgotten? No invariable rule can be 
 laid down on this subject, for though generally those 
 who can repeat with perfect accuracy the language of 
 what they read are apt to forget the substance, yet there 
 are many striking instances to the contrary. Mark Patti- 
 son, in his life of Milton, says that he could repeat Homer 
 almost all without book, and then strangely adds that 
 Milton s " was not a verbal memory," and that " psycho 
 logically the power of imagination and the power of verbal 
 memory are almost always found in inverse proportion." 
 If Milton could almost repeat Homer by heart, it is hard 
 to see how he could do it without an exceedingly tena 
 cious verbal memory; and it is equally hard to see what 
 antagonism there can be between verbal memory and im 
 agination. Alike in literature and in art memory is the 
 very life-blood of the imagination, which droops and dies 
 when the veins are empty. As Sir Joshua Eeynolds has 
 Said: "Genius may anticipate the season of maturity; 
 but, in the education of a people, as in that of an indi 
 vidual, memory must be exercised before the powers of 
 reason and fancy can be expanded; nor may the artist 
 hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, 
 the works of his predecessors." It is impossible, as we 
 have already seen, for a man to be a great writer or 
 speaker without a great memory; and it must have, be 
 sides other qualities, that of being a verbal one. Hun- 
 
148 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 dreds of passages in Milton s poems are paraphrases or 
 literal translations of passages in the Greek and Latin 
 poets, and his English words are often used in the sense 
 of the classic words from which they are derived. His 
 wealth of allusion, the passages in Paradise Lost which 
 are little more than a muster-roll of celebrated names, and 
 his diction, which Mr. Pattison says is the elaborated out 
 come of the best words of all antecedent poetry, all 
 contradict the idea that Milton had not a verbal memory. 
 Probably, as a late critic has suggested, Milton s memory 
 of words was as strong as Magliabecchi s; but he had 
 faculties in addition, which the bookworm had not. A 
 verbal memory, when the memory is not merely verbal, 
 is a valuable gift. The power of repeating long passages 
 of prose, or beautiful lines of verse whose cadence de 
 lights the ear, is not only a pleasant social feat of memory, 
 but is a source of amusement in the intervals of care, in 
 solitude, or in making journeys, and is a help to a young 
 writer in forming his style. It is a pity that such selec 
 tions are so rarely committed to memory in these days. 
 If judiciously made, they may become, as Euskin says, 
 " fairy palaces of beautiful thoughts, bright fancies, satis- 
 "fied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure- 
 houses of precious and restful thoughts which care can 
 not disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take 
 away from us, houses built without hands, for our souls 
 to dwell in." It has been justly said that an appropriate 
 prose quotation, led up to by chance, is a pleasant sur 
 prise that one does not forget. " The more ordinary feat 
 of this memory," says an English essayist, " is that of 
 retaining the exact words, whether spoken or written, of 
 what has been neatly or pungently expressed. A good 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 149 
 
 deal of something very like wit itself lies in an apt ver 
 batim reproduction of the wit and humor of other men." 
 
 We speak sometimes of the caprices of memory, which 
 is only another term for our ignorance of its laws. There 
 is no other faculty of the mind which is so inexplicable 
 in its operations. Why the most vivid impressions should 
 be so utterly obliterated, and then, as if by an enchanter s 
 wand, spring suddenly to light, is a mystery which baffles 
 the attempts of the acutest metaphysicians to explain it. 
 Who has not again and again been vexed by forgetting a 
 perfectly familiar quotation, fact, or name, and afterward 
 found it flash upon him in the most unexpected way, when 
 he was thinking of something altogether different? How 
 often, after having been silenced by Jones or Brown in con 
 troversy, do we recall a few minutes too late that fact or 
 argument which would have pulverized him! How many 
 persons, like Artemas Ward, have the gift of oratory, but 
 " haven t it about them " when it is wanted! Charles James 
 Fox was once carving at a dinner party on the Continent, 
 when he suddenly startled the company by crying out 
 "Gorcum! Gorcum!" It was the name of a town which 
 he could not recollect in conversation an hour before. So 
 familiar is this phenomenon, so often has the missing 
 idea, for which we racked our brains in vain, come back 
 all at once into the mind, "delivered like a prepaid par 
 cel laid at the door of consciousness," that we are accus 
 tomed in similar straits to say: "Never mind, the missing 
 name (or whatever else we wish to recall) will come to 
 me by and by"; and, as Miss F. P. Cobbe says, "we de 
 liberately turn away, not intending finally to abandon the 
 pursuit, but precisely as if we were possessed of an obe 
 dient secretary or librarian, whom we could order to hunt 
 
150 MEMORY AKD ITS MARVELS. 
 
 up a missing document or turn out a word in a dictionary, 
 while we amused ourselves with something else. 1 It is 
 probable that no impression made upon the mind, at least 
 no deep impression, ever wholly dies. The brain is a pa 
 limpsest, on which, though new impressions are written 
 over old ones imperfectly rubbed out, the effaced writing 
 may at any time reappear. 
 
 It is a blessed provision of this thesaurus omnium rerum, 
 as Cicero calls it, that the memory treasures pleasing im 
 pressions more easily than those that are painful; that it 
 preserves the roses of life, and casts away the thorns. The 
 happy events of our lives, beautiful scenery we have gazed 
 upon, exquisite music to which we have listened, hours of 
 delicious converse with friends, we can recall with more 
 or less vividness; but of bodily pain, or the vexations and 
 perplexities of life, however keenly we suffered at the time, 
 we have only a general and hazy remembrance. Great 
 calamities, especially, seem to have a stunning effect upon 
 the mind, so that the impressions they make are blunted, 
 and cannot be accurately remembered. Old men, who re 
 call with keen delight the games and pranks of their school 
 boy days, appear to have almost forgotten how irksome 
 they found the drudgery of learning, how they rebelled 
 against the restraints imposed upon their liberty, and how 
 much they suffered from the bullies of the school. 
 
 Among the curious phenomena of memory one of the 
 most striking is its connection with isolated impressions 
 on particular senses. M. Hue, the traveler, says that if he 
 were dropped from the clouds with his eyes bandaged, and 
 fell in any part of China, he should instantly know it by 
 the smell. We have read of an Englishman who said that 
 nothing brought his childhood before him so vividly as the 
 
MEMORY AtfD ITS MARVELS. 151 
 
 smell of the London mud, which used to come in the windows 
 of his father s house when the crossing-sweepers cleaned 
 the street, and collected the mud in the neighboring gut 
 ter. These facts enable us to form some idea of the way 
 in which dogs and horses identify each other by means of 
 their noses. Still more remarkable than these phenomena 
 are the effects produced upon the memory by injuries to 
 the brain. Many instances are recorded of persons who, 
 in consequence of severe hurts on the head, have lost all 
 their mental acquisitions, and been compelled to learn the 
 alphabet again, like children. By a fall from his horse an 
 Englishman lost his knowledge of Greek, but retained 
 his other acquirements; in like manner a young man in 
 northern New York, being kicked over the left eye by a 
 horse, forgot all his attainments in Latin. Dr. Carpenter, 
 in his " Mental Physiology^" gives an account of a dissent 
 ing minister in England, who preached on a Sunday the 
 same sermon which he had preached in the same pulpit 
 on the Sunday before. He also gave out the same hymn, 
 read the same lessons, and directed his extempore prayer in 
 the same channel. When he came down from the pulpit, 
 it was found that he had not the slightest remembrance 
 of having gone through the same service on the previous 
 Sunday. A writer in the " Bibliotheca Sacra 1 tells of an 
 author who wrote a work in defense of a theory, and twenty 
 years after wrote a treatise in opposition to it, citing and 
 refuting its arguments in succession, forgetting all the 
 while that he was the original author to whom he had 
 become the antagonist. Dr. Broussonnet, a European, 
 found, after recovery from an attack of apoplexy, that he 
 had utterly lost the ability to write or pronounce proper 
 names, or any substantive, though his memory abounded 
 
152 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 in adjectives. In speaking of any person, he designated 
 him by calling him " red " or " tall," according to the 
 color of his hair or his stature. There have been persons 
 who, after some injury to the brain, could recollect only 
 the first syllable of the words they used; others have con 
 founded different substantives, calling a watch a hat, and 
 coals paper. Sometimes a person may be able to spell his 
 wants, though he cannot speak the word, asking (for ex 
 ample) for b, r, e, a, d. There is an account given of a 
 British captain who, whilst giving orders on the quarter 
 deck of his ship at the battle of the Nile, was struck on 
 the head by a shot, and immediately became senseless. For 
 fifteen months after his removal to Greenwich Hospital he 
 showed no sign of intelligence. He was then trephined, 
 when consciousness at once returned, and he immediately 
 began busying himself to see the orders executed which 
 he had given during the battle fifteen months ago. The clock 
 work of the brain, unaware that it had stopped, pointed, 
 when set going again, to the exact minute it had last 
 marked. These sudden revivals of a lost intelligence, it 
 has been happily said, "almost rival in their dramatic effect 
 the result of the prince s advent in the palace of the Sleep 
 ing Beauty, where, at the magic of a kiss, the inmates of 
 the royal household, who had gone to sleep for a hundred 
 years, transfixed in their old attitudes, leaped suddenly 
 into life and motion, as though they had only for a moment 
 slept." 
 
 A celebrated woman, to whom one proposed to teach 
 an art of memory, replied: " I should rather learn the 
 art of forgetting." Those who deplore the feebleness of 
 their memories little dream of the heavy penalty which 
 the man with a tenacious memory pays for his gift. What 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 153 
 
 greater affliction could befall us than to remember every 
 thing that we have seen, learned, or felt, with the utmost 
 vividness and distinctness? Who would like to treasure 
 up all the foolish things he had ever read or heard, along 
 with the w r ise and suggestive ones? Who would willingly 
 be cursed with a recollection of all the stupid or wicked 
 things he had himself done, or of all the envious and 
 spiteful sayings and the shabby acts of which he had 
 been the victim? What if we could recall all the morti 
 fications and humiliations of our boyhood; all the nausea 
 of a long sea-sickness; all the excruciating aches and pains 
 of a rheumatic attack; all the horror we felt when on 
 the verge of bankruptcy; all the anguish inflicted by every 
 misunderstanding with those who were dear to us; all 
 the torture we suffered from a malignant newspaper libel? 
 There are memories that are too morbidly retentive of 
 the past; memories which haunt like a ghost, and keep 
 perpetually before their possessors the ugly and disagree 
 able things which they would bury in oblivion. Again, 
 forgetting has so much to do with forgiving-, that in pro 
 portion as a man is blessed (or, in this case, cursed) with 
 a tenacious memory, he finds it harder to obey the scrip 
 tural precept. Men of feeble memories have no concep 
 tion of the clearness and intensity with which an old- 
 time injury comes back to the mind and soul of a man 
 of potent memory. An insult is recalled so vividly that 
 he flames up at the recollection as fiercely as he did at 
 its reception. 
 
 The necessity of memory to the scholar is obvious, but 
 the value of its negative or rejecting power is not so 
 well appreciated. The finest intellects are not more re 
 markable for the readiness with which they unconsciously 
 
154 MEMOKY AND ITS MAEVELS. 
 
 select what is their proper mental food, than for the ease 
 with which they resist and throw off what has no rela 
 tion to their work or life. Their memories, like magnets 
 stirring in sand that is mingled with steel-filings, draw 
 to them only that for which they have an affinity. Ham- 
 merton, the author of " The Intellectual Life," writing 
 to a student who lamented his defective memory, says: 
 " So far from writing, as you seem to expect me to do, 
 a letter of condolence on the subject of what you are 
 pleased to call your * miserable memory/ I feel disposed 
 rather to indite a letter of congratulation. It is possible 
 that you may be blessed with a selecting memory, which 
 is not only useful for what it retains, but for what it 
 rejects." He then cites the case of Goethe, whose passion 
 ate studies in many different directions, always in obedi 
 ence to the predominant interests of the moment, he re 
 gards as the best example of the way in which a great 
 intellect, with rare powers of acquisition and liberty to 
 grow in free luxuriance, sends its roots into various soils, 
 and draws from them the constituents of its sap. As 
 a university or law student, he was not of the type which 
 parents and professors consider satisfactory; but his wealth 
 of mind was probably due to the liberty of browsing 
 freely at will in all the fields of literature, according to 
 the maxim of French law, chacun prend son Uen ou il le 
 trouve; and had he been bound down to legal studies ex 
 clusively, no one, it is likely, would ever have suspected 
 his immense faculty of assimilation. What are called bad 
 memories, Mr. Hammerton continues, are often the best; 
 they are often the selecting memories. They seldom win 
 distinctions in examinations, but in literature and art. 
 "A good literary memory is not like a post-office, that 
 
MEMOKY AND ITS MARVELS. 155 
 
 takes in everything; but like a well-edited periodical, 
 which prints nothing that does not harmonize with its 
 intellectual purpose. A well-known author gave me this 
 piece of advice: What you remember is what you ought 
 to write, and you ought to give things exactly the degree 
 of relative importance that they have in your memory. 
 If you forget much, it will only save beforehand the labor 
 of erasure. 1 " Sydney Smith said that he saw no more 
 reason why he should remember all the books that had 
 made him learned, than that he should remember all the 
 dinners that had made him fat. 
 
 Great memories in our day are so rare that many of 
 the well authenticated facts related concerning the feats 
 of this faculty almost stagger belief. Many persons, be 
 cause they have overtaxed the brain, and enfeebled it by 
 dissipation, by the use of tobacco, opium and alcohol, above 
 all, by feeding it exclusively with novels, daily newspapers, 
 and literary slop generally, doubt the stories told of the 
 astonishing strength and tenacity of other men s memories. 
 It has been justly said that there is in most minds a stand 
 ing guard to resist the entrance of knowledge into the 
 brain, vacancy, indifference, impatience, wool-gathering, 
 narrowness of interests, absorption in self; and it is hard 
 for the possessors of such minds, knowing their own empti 
 ness, to believe that other men are full of information to 
 overflowing. The memories of some of the famous men 
 of antiquity, especially, seem miraculous to a person 
 whose own treacherous memory, like a bag with holes, 
 lets everything slip through that he puts into it. Books, 
 which are a kind of artificial memory, impair the recol 
 lection of many of the moderns. Having few such store 
 houses of knowledge, the ancients were compelled to carry 
 
156 MEMORY AKD ITS MARVELS. 
 
 all their intellectual treasures in their heads. Men found 
 no difficulty in remembering the twenty-four books of 
 Homer, before the art of writing was invented. Cyrus 
 knew the name of every soldier in his army. Themistocles 
 could call the name of every one of the twenty thousand 
 citizens of Athens. Seneca could repeat two thousand 
 proper names in the order in which they had been told 
 him, and could recite two hundred verses read to him for 
 the first time by as many different persons. He tells us 
 that the Emperor Hadrian could repeat two thousand 
 words in the order he heard them. Cinna, the plenipo 
 tentiary sent by Pyrrhus to the Roman Senate, having 
 been entertained at a banquet at which all the leading 
 senators were present, addressed every one of them at 
 their session the next morning accurately by name. 
 
 Prodigious as are these feats, they have been paralleled 
 within the last three or four centuries. Scaliger could 
 repeat a hundred lines after one reading. M. Angelo had 
 on his lips the greater part of the poetry of Dante and 
 Petrarch; and so had Galileo of Ariosto, Petrarch and 
 Berni. Justus Leipsius had all Tacitus by heart, and 
 pledged himself to repeat, word by word, any passage 
 called for, allowing at the same time a dagger to be 
 thrust into his body if he made a single trip or false 
 repetition. Locke says that that " prodigy of parts," Pascal, 
 knew the whole Bible by heart. He forgot nothing of 
 what he had done, read, or thought in any part of his 
 rational life. Magliabecchi, the Florentine librarian, had 
 so portentous a memory that his head was called a " uni 
 versal index, both of titles and matter." A gentleman 
 who had lent him a manuscript, came to him one day 
 after it had been returned, and pretending to have lost it, 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 157 
 
 desired him to repeat of it as much as he could. Maglia- 
 becchi soon after wrote out the whole manuscript, with 
 out missing a word, or even varying from the spelling. 
 So tenacious and exact was his recollection, that he could 
 tell where every important book stood in the great col 
 lections of different countries. He studied libraries as 
 generals study the field in which they are to campaign. 
 One day the Grand Duke sent to ask whether he could 
 get a book that was particularly scarce, marked with four 
 Rs, rarissimiis, as Dominie Sampson would say. " No, 
 sir," promptly replied the monster of memory; "it is im 
 possible. Your Highnesses treasury would not buy it for 
 you; for there is but one in the world that is in the 
 Grand Signor s library at Constantinople, and is the 
 seventh book on the second shelf, on the right hand side 
 as you go in." 
 
 Leibnitz, even when old, could repeat nearly all the 
 poetry of Virgil, word by word. Saunderson knew by 
 heart the Odes of Horace, Cicero s " Offices," and a large 
 part of Juvenal and Persius. Jeremy Taylor, who was 
 a living library, wrote his " Liberty of Prophesying " with 
 out access to books; and Pope tells us that his friend 
 Bolingbroke could write on a particular subject, away 
 from his books, as well as if he had them all about him. 
 An amusing story is told of an English gentleman, whom 
 Frederick the Great placed behind a screen, when Voltaire 
 came to read him a manuscript poem of considerable 
 length. The eavesdropper afterward tormented the poet 
 by asserting that the poem was his, and proved the claim 
 by repeating it word for word. It is related of a cele 
 brated reporter for a London morning newspaper, that 
 he took no notes whatever; and yet if an unexpected 
 
158 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 debate sprang up, and lie was left for hours without any 
 one to relieve him, he would write out the whole verba 
 tim. While listening, he used to close his eyes, and lean 
 with both hands upon his stick; and in this attitude was 
 literally " held by the ear," so as to be incapable of 
 thought, and almost of the use of all his other senses. 
 Even a fortnight after a debate had occurred, and during 
 the intervention of other discussions, he would still retain 
 a full recollection of the former, saying he had put it 
 by in a corner of his mind for future reference. Bishop 
 Jewell, who died in 1571, could repeat exactly anything 
 he had written, after one perusal. While the church bell 
 was ringing for worship, he would commit a whole ser 
 mon, and repeat it verbatim. He could repeat forward 
 and backward a long string of Welsh, Irish, foreign and 
 barbarous words, after one or two hearings. 
 
 Great linguists have always been noted for their power 
 both of retention and reproduction. Person declared that 
 he could repeat Smollett s " Roderick Random " from be 
 ginning to end, and that he would undertake to learn by 
 heart a copy of the London "Morning Chronicle" in a week. 
 One day he called upon a friend who chanced to be read 
 ing Thucydides, and who asked him the meaning of a 
 certain word. Porson, on hearing the word, did not look 
 at the book, but at once repeated the passage. His friend 
 asked how he knew that the word was in that passage. 
 " Because," replied the great linguist, " the word occurs 
 only twice in Thucydides; once on the right-hand page 
 in your edition, and once on the left. I observed on 
 which side you looked, and accordingly knew to which 
 passage you referred." Ignatius de Rossi, the Italian 
 prodigy of learning, surpassed even Porson in mnemonic 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 159 
 
 performances. Canon Lattanzi, his colleague in educa 
 tional labor, related to the late Cardinal Wiseman an 
 anecdote of De Rossi s great memory. Spending a little 
 time with the Canon in villeggiatura at Tivoli, De Eossi said 
 that if any one would repeat a line from any of the four 
 great poets of Italy, he would follow it by reciting a 
 hundred lines in due order of connection. The trial was 
 made, and, to the astonishment of every one, he was en 
 tirely successful. The query was then raised as to his 
 ability to perform the same feat in the Latin classics. " It 
 is twenty years," he replied, " since I read the Italian 
 poets, and then it was only for amusement; of the Latin 
 classics I have been professor, so you had better not try 
 me." In the " Edinburgh Review," some } r ears ago, it was 
 stated that Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary, acquired 
 one of the Indian languages sufficiently to qualify himself 
 for his missionary duties, in three months. The Abbe 
 Poule, BufFon and Byron knew all their own works by 
 heart. Cuvier s memory was enormous. It was a vast 
 mirror of knowledge, embracing at once the grandest 
 and minutest facts in natural science. He died, he said, 
 with three books in his head, the materials all ready 
 and arranged, but not written down. 
 
 Mathews, the elder of the two famous comedians, was 
 so familiar with his plays that he sometimes stepped aside 
 as the curtain drew up, to ascertain the name of the 
 piece advertised for the evening, and that, too, when he 
 was tormented with cracks on the tongue, and uttered 
 with the keenest pain what his audience so delighted to 
 hear. Sir Walter Scott often astonished his friends by 
 the vice-like grip of his memory. The Ettrick Shepherd 
 says that when Scott once desired him to sing one of his 
 
160 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 (Hogg s) imprinted ballads, which the " Wizard of the 
 North " had heard but once, and that three years before, 
 he stuck fast at the eighth verse, upon which Scott began 
 the ballad again, and recited every word from begin 
 ning to end. The ballad consisted of eighty-eight stanzas! 
 Many cases have been known of very illiterate persons 
 with extraordinary verbal memories, some of whom could 
 repeat the whole Bible from end to end with hardly a 
 mistake. Professor Lawson, of England, sometimes ex 
 amined his classes in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, 
 without a book before him; and he once declared that, 
 if the Bible were lost, he could, with the exception of a 
 few chapters in the Old Testament, restore it all. It is 
 said that after he had perused the sermons of Ralph Ers- 
 kine, he could repeat them almost entirely. A friend one 
 day, in a conversation with him, cited certain opinions of 
 Gibbon. "Stop!" cried Lawson again and again, "that 
 is not Gibbon s view at all" ; and thereupon he proceeded 
 to quote the identical words of the great historian of the 
 Roman Empire, though he had not read them for over 
 thirty years. A simple perusal of one of his sermons 
 stamped it indelibly on his brain, so that he could repeat 
 it in the pulpit. 
 
 No class of men are more celebrated for feats of memory 
 than actors. Their memoriter training tends to the strength 
 ening of the faculty to an almost incredible degree. It is 
 said that Cooke could commit to memory the contents of 
 a daily newspaper in eight hours. William Lyon, an itiner 
 ant actor in Edinburgh, won about a hundred years ago 
 a wager of a crown bowl of punch, by one of the most 
 superhuman feats of memory on record. He bet that on 
 the next day at rehearsal he would repeat the whole of a 
 
MEMORY AtfD ITS MARVELS. 161 
 
 "Daily Advertiser"; and, though drunk the night before, 
 accomplished the feat. How any human being could do 
 this, considering the want of connection in the articles, the 
 variety of the advertisements, and the general chaos which 
 often reigns in a daily paper, must ever remain to com 
 mon mortals an inscrutable mystery. The extraordinary 
 powers of calculation, depending entirely upon memory, 
 which some men have possessed, are among the most sur 
 prising facts in the history of this faculty. The mathema 
 tician Wallis, in bed and in the dark, extracted the cube 
 root from a number consisting of thirty figures. Jedediah 
 Buxton, an illiterate peasant, could tramp over a piece of 
 land, and tells its contents in square feet or inches with 
 as much exactness as if he had measured it with a chain. 
 Being asked suddenly in a field how many cubical eighths 
 of an inch there are in a triangular body whose three 
 sides are, respectively, 23,145,789 yards, 5,642,732 yards, 
 and 54,965 yards, he gave the exact solution from his head 
 in five hours. Lawyers with a large practice often exhibit 
 marvelous memories. Lord Lyndhurst, in the famous case 
 of Small vs. At wood, delivered a judgment which lasted for 
 many hours, and dealt with an incredible number of in 
 tricate facts, without once looking at a note. 
 
 One of the most mysterious and striking, yet indisputa 
 ble facts of the memory, is its tendency, when very power 
 ful, to absorb thought, and even language, unconsciously. 
 Ideas and words that vividly impress it, photograph them 
 selves upon it forever. Many striking examples of this 
 are well authenticated. Some years ago a Universalist 
 minister in Massachusetts preached one Sunday afternoon, 
 in exchange with a brother clergyman, a sermon which he 
 
 was thunderstruck to learn had been preached in the fore- 
 
 7* 
 
162 MEMORY AND ITS MAEVELS. 
 
 noon by another speaker. It turned out, on inquiry, that 
 the latter had gathered it from the lips of the supposed 
 plagiarist at church, a few weeks before. The Boston 
 " Congregationalist " states that some years ago two articles 
 appeared in an eastern magazine which were found to be 
 only repetitions, even to the ipsissima verba, of certain 
 essays already printed. The articles had been contributed 
 by students who were regarded as the best writers in col 
 lege, and, strange to say, of unimpeachable integrity. When 
 told of the coincidence, they were as utterly astounded as 
 their friends at the seeming theft, and warmly asserted 
 their innocence. They denied all intention of plagiarism. 
 As they were young men of exact scholarship, trained to 
 great feats of memory, it is beyond a doubt, as the writer 
 in the " Congregationalist " says, that having read up care 
 fully on the subjects on which they were about to write, 
 instead of digesting and assimilating their borrowed ma 
 terials, they had unconsciously appropriated them word for 
 word. Facts like these should make the critics of the 
 daily press a little more charitable when they are disposed 
 to leap to the conclusion that all literary parallelisms and 
 coincidences are necessarily proofs of plagiarism, and to 
 rush into print with the cry of "Stop Thief!" whenever 
 a writer or speaker who has read, not to steal the thoughts 
 of others, but to refresh his own exhausted mind, has un 
 consciously appropriated the thought or language, princi 
 ples or passages, of another. Often a writer fancies his 
 ideas to be original because he cannot recollect their 
 sources. 
 
 It is said that Ben Jonson, one of the most learned 
 men of his day, could not only repeat all that he had 
 ever written, but entire books that he had read. Euse- 
 
MEMORY ASTD ITS MARVELS. 163 
 
 bius says that to the memory of Esdras we are indebted 
 for the Hebrew Scriptures, which were destroyed by the 
 Chaldeans. A French writer tells of a young Corsican, 
 to whom he dictated one day "an innumerable multitude* 
 of Greek, Latin, and barbarous words, all distinct from 
 one another; and when he was tired of doing so, the 
 Corsican repeated them in the same order, and then in a 
 reversed order, without hesitation. In any account of 
 wonderful memories an omission of that of Thomas Fuller, 
 the old divine, who lived in 1608-1661, would be an un 
 pardonable chasm. The anecdotes told of his gift severely 
 tax our credulity. He once undertook, after walking from 
 Temple Bar, in London, to the farthest end of Cheapside, 
 to repeat on his return the inscriptions on all the signs 
 in their order, both backward and forward, a feat which 
 he triumphantly achieved. Pepys, in his diary, under 
 date of January 22, 1660, says that Fuller told him that 
 "he did lately, to four eminent scholars, dictate together 
 in Latin upon different subjects of their proposing, faster 
 than they were able to write, till they were tired." It 
 is further told of Fuller s memory that he could repeat 
 five hundred strange words at two hearings, and a sermon 
 at one, without letting slip a word. He would sometimes, 
 in writing a manuscript page, set down the first word of 
 each line, from the top of the page to the bottom, and 
 then the second word, and so on till the page was filled. 
 
 In 1790 there lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, a gentle 
 man s servant, who, though utterly ignorant of Latin and 
 Greek, yet, upon hearing eight or ten pages of Homer or 
 Virgil distinctly recited, would forthwith repeat them 
 without missing a word. When listening to the reading, 
 he used to cover his face with his hands and lean upon 
 
164 MEMORY AND ITS MAEVELS. 
 
 a table. It is told of "Memory Corner Thompson," an 
 Englishman, so called from his extraordinary gift of 
 memory, that he drew, in the space of twenty-two hours, 
 a correct plan of the parish of St. James, Westminster, 
 with parts of the parishes of St. Marylebone, St. Ann, 
 and St. Martin. In this were included all the squares, 
 streets, courts, lanes, alleys, markets; every church, chapel, 
 and public building; all stables and yards; all the public- 
 houses and corners of the streets, with every pump, post, 
 tree, house, bow- window; and all the minutise about St. 
 James s Palace. This he did in the presence of two gentle 
 men, solely from memory. Name any house with which 
 he was intimate, and he would furnish an inventory of 
 its contents from garret to cellar. The Rev. E. Coleridge 
 had a verbal memory singularly tenacious and exact. He 
 told the Royal Commissioners that he could repeat the 
 whole of Homer, Horace and Virgil by heart. He de 
 clared that if he were called up in school, he could, with 
 an English Shakspeare in his hand (instead of the proper 
 book), take up a lesson wherever the scholars might be 
 reciting, and construe the passage word by word, and 
 answer any question that might be asked, and go on at 
 once with his Shakspeare. The memory of musicians for 
 sounds is well known. The marvelous delicacy of Mozart s 
 ear, and the keenness of his recollection, are well attested 
 by the story of his treasuring the notes of the Miserere at 
 the Sistine Chapel at Rome. Though the copying of this 
 piece of music was strictly forbidden, yet Mozart, then 
 but fourteen years old, determined to make himself master 
 of it. Seating himself in a corner of the church, he con 
 centrated his attention powerfully on it, and on going 
 out, noted down the entire piece. Next day he sang the 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 165 
 
 Miserere at a concert, accompanying himself with the 
 harpsichord, which so electrified the Romans, that tho 
 Pope, hearing of the affair, requested that the musical 
 prodigy should be presented to him. In this case the 
 keenest attention, fastened on the music by an iron will, 
 would not have availed, had it not been assisted by an 
 ear sensitive and delicate to the last degree, a gift for 
 which Mozart paid the tax of frequent torture, and Beeth 
 oven, at last, that of incurable deafness. 
 
 Theodore Parker s memory was remarkably mature, 
 and highly cultivated. When in the Cambridge Divinity 
 School, he feared that it was defective, and so had an 
 immense chronological chart hung up in his room, the 
 contents of which he tasked himself to commit. It in 
 cluded all the names and dates from Adam down to 
 Nimrod, Ptolemy Soter, Heliogabalus, and the rest. A 
 gentleman who was pursuing some historical inquiries, 
 and wished for fuller information concerning the bar 
 barous feudal codes of the Middle Ages before the time 
 of Charlemagne, applied to Parker for information. " Go," 
 was the reply, " to alcove twenty-four, shelf one hundred 
 and thirteen, of the college library at Cambridge, and 
 you will find the information you need in a thick quarto, 
 bound in vellum, and lettered Potgissier de Statu Ser- 
 vorum." De Quincey had all his life an abnormal mem 
 ory. Its minuteness and tenacity were often a positive 
 snare and entanglement, leading him into long digres 
 sions, from which he never came back to his theme. The 
 brilliant conversation of Sir James Mackintosh was fed 
 by a memory that held everything in its grasp. " His 
 mind, 1 said Robert Hall, " is a spacious repository hung 
 round with beautiful images, and when he wants one he 
 
166 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 has nothing to do but reach up his hand to a peg and 
 take it down." 
 
 No faculty of the mind is sharpened more by use, or 
 more quickly blunted by neglect, than the memory. Many 
 of M. Houdin the conjuror s tricks were really feats of 
 memory and quick attention. He trained himself to such 
 a pitch of keenness of attention, that he could walk by a 
 toy-shop window, and take in at a glance, so as to name 
 them afterward, the number, the arrangement and other 
 particulars of forty articles, arranged in a manner purely 
 arbitrary. Sir William Hamilton thought that he could 
 thus take in seven articles at a glance without counting, 
 and was rather proud of his ability! It is said that 
 Henderson, the actor, repeated to Dugald Stewart, after 
 a single reading, such a portion of a newspaper that the 
 metaphysician thought it marvelous. " If, like me," said 
 Henderson modestly, in reply to the exclamations of 
 surprise, " you had trusted for your bread to getting words 
 by heart, you would not be astonished that habit should 
 produce facility." 
 
 We shall speak of but one more remarkable memory, 
 that of Lord Macaulay, which, extraordinary by nature, 
 was also cultivated and trained with the most sedulous 
 care. He forgot nothing, apparently, which he had once 
 read. Like the man in Juvenal, he could tell you at a 
 moment s notice all about 
 
 "Nutricem Anchisae, nomen patriamque novercae 
 Anchemoli ; dicet quot Acestes vixerit annos, 
 Quot Siculus Plirygibus vini donaverit urnas." 
 
 The secret of his vast acquirements, according to his biog 
 rapher, lay in this gift, combined with another hardly less 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 167 
 
 invaluable, the capacity for taking in at a glance the 
 contents of a printed page. When a mere child, he ac 
 companied his father on an afternoon call, and, finding on 
 a table Scott s " Lay of the Last Minstrel," possessed him 
 self so completely of its contents while the elders were talk 
 ing, that on his return home he repeated to his mother 
 as many cantos as she had the patience or strength to 
 listen to. At one period of his life he declared that if by 
 some miracle of vandalism all the extant copies of " The 
 Pilgrim s Progress" and "Paradise Lost" were destroyed, 
 he would undertake to reproduce them both from memory, 
 whenever a revival of learning should come. In his jour 
 nal of a trip across the Irish Sea, we read, under date of 
 August 16, 1849, that he sat on deck during the whole 
 voyage, and, as he could not read, " used an excellent sub 
 stitute for reading. I went through Paradise Lost, in my 
 head. I could still repeat half of it, and that the best 
 half." One day he handed to Lord Aberdeen a sheet of 
 foolscap covered with w r riting arranged in three parallel 
 columns down each of the four pages. " This document, 
 of which the ink was still wet," says Trevelyan, his biog 
 rapher, " proved to be a full list of the senior wranglers 
 at Cambridge, for the hundred years during which the 
 names of senior wranglers had been recorded in the Uni 
 versity calendar." On another occasion, Macaulay picked 
 up, while he was waiting in a Cambridge coffee-house for 
 a post-chaise, a country newspaper containing two poetical 
 pieces, read them once, and, without thinking of them again 
 for forty years, repeated them after that time without the 
 change of a word. An English friend, who was an eye 
 and ear witness to the affair, told the writer of this, some 
 years ago, of the following feat of Macaulay s memory. 
 
168 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 About twenty-seven years ago Dr. Routh, President of Mag 
 dalen College, Oxford, died at the age of one hundred years. 
 The next morning, at a literary breakfast in London, where 
 Macaulay was present, the Times was brought in, and 
 one of the company read from it the announcement of 
 Dr. Routh s decease. Immediately there poured forth from 
 Macaulay a flood of luminous talk, in the course of which 
 he called attention to the fact that Dr. Routh, who was 
 born in 1753, might, as a child, have been in company 
 with Fontenelle, who himself lived to a hundred, having 
 been born in 1657, or about the time Lewis the Fourteenth 
 came to the throne of France, and died in 1757. The 
 speaker then proceeded, on the spur of the moment, to 
 sketch in rapid outline some of the principal events, 
 political, scientific and literary, in Europe, Asia and 
 America, which had occurred within the compass of two 
 lives, of which one had but yesterday been extinguished. 
 With matchless ease and rapidity he condensed into a fif 
 teen minutes talk a multitude of important facts, which 
 few other men could summon from the pages of history, 
 except after many days of research ; and under circum 
 stances which positively forbade any possibility of prepara 
 tion, or a cut-and-dry impromptu, electrified a cultivated 
 and critical audience by the depth, the accuracy, and, above 
 all, the prompt availability of his learning. 
 
 So much does the intellectual and moral advancement 
 of the human race depend upon memory, that Gra*ffe, 
 Dr. Gray, Aim6 Paris, and others have exhausted their 
 ingenuity in contriving systems of mnemotechny to as 
 sist the memory, and increase its power. The great ob 
 jection to such systems is that they are founded upon 
 incongruous or superficial associations of ideas, such as 
 
MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 169 
 
 we observe in the common forms of insanity. Experience, 
 moreover, shows that the resolution and effort which 
 the mastery of these systems implies would render them 
 superfluous, except so far as every man frames an artifi 
 cial memory for himself, suited to his own turn of mind. 
 The true art of cultivating the memory may be condensed 
 into five rules. 1. The association or connection of ideas. 
 To retain facts permanently, we should gain them in 
 such order that each shall be a nucleus or basis for more 
 in an endless series. The highest kind of memory is the 
 philosophic, which associates facts and truths with uni 
 versal principles. 2; The habit of close attention, which 
 depends largely upon the degree of interest we feel in 
 what is to be remembered. The want of memory of which 
 so many complain is like Falstaff s deafness: "Rather 
 out, please you. It is the disease of not listening, the 
 malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal." Al 
 most every person recollects what keenly interests him. 
 The " dull " boy, who cannot remember a line of his arith 
 metic or grammar lesson, is the very one who never for 
 gets a face, a bird s nest, or a foot-path. Why is it that 
 the sportsman, who forgets the facts of history or science, 
 can recall so readily and accurately the names and pedi 
 gree of all the winners in the great races? It is simply 
 because he has been strongly interested in the latter class 
 of facts, but not in the former. When the ghost says to 
 Hamlet: "Remember me! 1 he replies: "Yes, as long as 
 memory holds a place in this distracted globe." The scene 
 he had witnessed made so intense an impression that it 
 formed from that time a part of his moral being, separ 
 able from it only by his dissolution. In strong minds 
 the habit of attention is not a mere aptness to receive 
 
170 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 an impression ; it is a strenuous effort. They seize facts 
 as a hungry lion seizes his prey. Emerson remarks 
 that there are some things which everybody remembers. 
 A creditor is in little danger of forgetting his debtor, and 
 men generally keep an insult fresh. Ben Jonson used 
 to say that it was hard to forget the last kick. In Scot 
 land it was customary in the olden time to maintain 
 boundary lines by whipping a boy on the site. The fever 
 ish, hurried life which most persons live to-day, and the 
 nervous exhaustion consequent upon over-stimulus and 
 prolonged fatigue, are fatal to vivid remembrance. Men 
 whose minds are continually flitting from one thing to 
 another, dwelling upon nothing long, must necessarily 
 receive but transitory impressions. 3. A clear apprehen 
 sion of what is to be remembered. 4. A strong deter 
 mination to remember. Though memory depends largely 
 upon insight and mental activity, yet there is no doubt 
 that a man can remember in a great degree, as Johnson 
 said a man could compose, by dogged determination. 
 Euler, the mathematician, being almost totally blind, was 
 obliged to make and to retain in his head the calculations 
 and formula which others preserve in books. The 
 result was that the extent, readiness and accuracy of his 
 mathematical memory became prodigious, and D Alembert 
 declared it to be barely credible to those who had seen 
 its feats. No other faculty of the mind is so rapidly 
 strengthened by exercise as memory. When Edward Ev 
 erett began preaching, he learned by heart only one page 
 of his sermon at a time; when he quit preaching, he 
 could learn the entire sermon by reading it over twice. 
 "A very common reason," says a writer, " why men do 
 not remember, is that they do not try; a hearty and 
 
MEMORY ASTD ITS MARVELS. 171 
 
 ever-present desire to prevail is the chief element of all 
 success. Nothing but the fairy s wand can realize the 
 capricious desire of the moment, but as to the objects of 
 laudable wishes, deeply breathed and for many a night 
 and day ever present to the mind, these are placed by 
 Providence more within our reach than is commonly be 
 lieved. When a person says, If I could only have my 
 wish I would excel in such an art or science, we may 
 generally answer: The truth is, you have no such wish; 
 all you covet is the empty applause, not the substantial 
 accomplishment." 5. Method. In studying a subject, we 
 shall fix our acquisitions most securely in the mind by 
 mastering its parts in a natural and orderly sequence, 
 from the easier to the most difficult. Study of this kind 
 has been compared to a well-built stair-case, by which 
 you can climb to a great height with a minimum of 
 fatigue, lifting the body only a few inches at a time. In 
 a philosophic memory, the various parts of a subject, like 
 the stones in an arch, will often keep one another in 
 place. 
 
 Among the best rules ever laid down for the cultiva 
 tion of the memory are those of Thomas Fuller, some of 
 whose feats we have mentioned : " First, soundly infix in 
 thy mind what thou desirest to remember. What wonder 
 is it if agitation of business jog that out of thy head which 
 was there rather tacked than fastened? It is best knocking 
 in the nail overnight, and clinching it the next morning. 
 Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant 
 a slave. Remember Atlas was weary. Have as much 
 reason as a camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. 
 Memory, like a purse, if it be overfull that it cannot shut, 
 all will drop out of it: take heed of a gluttonous curiosity 
 
172 MEMORY AND ITS MARVELS. 
 
 to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appe 
 tite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof. Marshal 
 thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice 
 more weight trussed and packed up in bundles than when 
 it lies untoward flapping and hanging about his shoulders, 
 Things orderly fardled up under heads are most portable." 
 Finally, the retentiveness of the memory depends largely 
 upon the bodily condition. The impressions made upon the 
 mental tablet are like those made upon the photographer s 
 plate. If the chemicals, solutions, etc., are good and prop 
 erly applied, and the plate is in a condition to receive the 
 impressions, there will be a good picture ; otherwise it will 
 be dull, brown, and indistinct, So with a man who is 
 sickly and debilitated, and whose brain is consequently 
 weak ; the pictures made upon his mind will partake of 
 its weakness and obscurity. The memory is therefore one 
 of the most delicate tests of disease or natural decay in 
 the brain. When a man constantly forgets his appoint 
 ments; mislays his books and papers; is oblivious of the 
 names of his dearest friends; forgets at any interruption 
 to finish a task which he has begun, and finds that he 
 cannot hold in his mental gripe for a few consecutive 
 minutes the name of the month or the day of the week, 
 and especially when, along with this, he feels an occa 
 sional numbness in a finger, and drops his cane uncon 
 sciously in walking, he has reason, according to medical 
 authority, to fear that a softening of the brain, or some 
 form of cerebral disorganization, has begun, and he can 
 not too quickly apply the remedy. 
 
FOOLS. 
 
 " Be tolerant to fools." MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 "TTTHY is it that fools are laughed at, even by kind- 
 * hearted men? Is not the lack of brains a misfor 
 tune to be pitied rather than sneered at by those who are 
 better endowed? Is intellectual deficiency or deformity 
 less entitled to our commiseration than physical? Pascal 
 has answered these questions in his usual acute way. 
 " Whence is it," he asks, * that a lame man does not of 
 fend us, while the crippled in mind does offend us? It is 
 because the lame man acknowledges that we walk straight; 
 whereas the crippled in mind maintain that it is we who 
 go lame. But for this, we should feel more compassion 
 for them than resentment." The same profound thinker 
 tells us, however, in another place, that man is necessa 
 rily so much of a fool that it would be a species of folly 
 not to be a fool, a comforting theory to the stupid, for 
 if wisdom is attainable only through foolishness, who is 
 more to be congratulated than he who has scaled the diz 
 ziest peaks of folly, the fool par excellence? 
 
 Whatever may be the reason, we confess we have a 
 kindly feeling for fools. Like Charles Lamb, we love to 
 discover a streak of folly in a man; we venerate an honest 
 obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders 
 a man commits in your company, the more tests he gives 
 you that he is not sly, snaky, and hypocritical, that he 
 
 173 
 
174 FOOLS. 
 
 is not, while whispering honeyed words in your ear, play 
 ing some subtle, treacherous game to overreach you. That 
 fools are happy beings, all will admit. It is the empty 
 vessel that has a merry ring ; the open eye that weeps. 
 It is the great fault of the present age that it is over- 
 wise, that it is too transcendentally sapient for its own 
 comfort. We read essays on ventilation and drainage till 
 we hardly dare to breathe lest we should inhale deadly gases 
 and microscopic particles of poison. We analyze our food, 
 hunting for adulterations, till we almost dread to eat for 
 fear of being poisoned. We put microscopes to our eyes, 
 and cannot drink for fear of animalcules. We investi 
 gate and pry into the foundations of our beliefs till we 
 become universal skeptics, and are positive only that we 
 are positive of nothing. Instead of enjoying the sweet of 
 life as it comes up, and finding a heart to laugh at the 
 bitter, we are continually debating whether life is worth 
 living, and racking our brains to provide for some future 
 dreaded contingency, letting the flower and quintessence 
 of life escape ere we are ready to enjoy it. We are al 
 ways preparing for a " rainy day," or some calamity that 
 may break upon us like a thunderbolt. It is even rare 
 to hear any man laugh now-a-days, at least with the care 
 less, ringing laugh of folly; nobody gives care to the winds 
 long enough for such an outburst of merriment ; every 
 where we find that the happy, simple-hearted fool of olden 
 times is extinct, and that the race of calculators and econ 
 omists has succeeded. The schoolmaster is now abroad, 
 and there are few persons in these intensely intellectual 
 days who sympathize with gentle Elia s affection for the 
 fool. " I love a fool," says he, " as naturally as if I were 
 kith and kin to him. When a child, with childlike appro-* 
 
FOOLS. 175 
 
 hensions, that dived not below the surface of the matter, 
 I read those Parables, not guessing at the involved wis 
 dom, I had more yearnings toward that simple architect 
 that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained for 
 his more cautious neighbor; I grudged at the hard censure 
 pronounced at the quiet soul that kept his talent. * * * 
 I never have made an acquaintance since that lasted, or 
 a friendship that answered, with any that had not some 
 tincture of the absurd in their characters. And take my 
 word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you 
 please, that he who had not a dram of folly in his mixture 
 had pounds of much worse matter in his composition." 
 
 One of the advantages of folly is that in society it 
 raises no expectations, pledges you to nothing. Among 
 the most unhappy people in society are those who have 
 won a reputation for smartness, and who therefore have 
 a reputation to maintain. If you are noted as a brilliant 
 talker, a saver of witty things, you must exert yourself, 
 at whatever cost or inconvenience, to keep up to your 
 level. In vain will you plead ill-health or low spirits, a 
 head-ache or a heart-ache; you may have lost money in 
 a stock speculation, or buried your grandmother, or been 
 jilted by a flirt; no matter, you must make an effort to 
 shine, unless you would have it whispered about that 
 you have been overrated, or are suffering from a soften 
 ing of the brain. Everybody has heard the story of the 
 fashionable lady who invited a well-known wit to a party, 
 and in the course of the evening sent her little daughter 
 to him with the message: "Please, sir, mamma wishes to 
 ask if you will proceed to be witty now?" Once a wit, 
 always a wit, so runs the bond. Not so with the dull 
 man; once ranked in this category, he is never pestered 
 
176 FOOLS. 
 
 with solicitations to amuse his fellow-beings, or assailed 
 by criticism. The chance is, that he is suspected of possess 
 ing a hidden fund of wit or wisdom which he does not 
 care to betray. It may be affirmed, therefore, that " in 
 society, if wit is silvern, dullness is golden. Wit is the 
 bee that works; dullness is the drone that waits snugly 
 for the honey to come to its mouth." 
 
 It may seem paradoxical to maintain that fools are a 
 blessing to society; but a little reflection will teach us a 
 large charity for them, will show that they are essen 
 tial to its very existence. They are the cyphers of the 
 community, without which the social problem could not 
 be worked out. What, for example, would be the result, 
 if, whenever a new doctrine is propounded in science, we 
 were all profound thinkers, capable of tracing out all its 
 logical consequences? The world would be in an uproar, 
 and harmony would be an impossibility. Why are men 
 of science often so exceedingly sensitive to some appar 
 ently unimportant attack upon one of their minor con 
 clusions? Is it not because they are accustomed to logical 
 methods, and know that if you touch the remotest out 
 work of their doctrine you send a shock to the very center 
 of their systems? "Be heretical in the most trifling in 
 ference from mathematical investigation, and it is at once 
 evident," says a writer, "that you must come into con 
 flict with the fundamental axioms on which the whole 
 science reposes. We are tolerant only because we are 
 stupid. We allow the enemy to open some very remote 
 back door, because it is so very small, and we do not 
 see that we have admitted him as effectually as if we 
 had flung the main gates wide open." A critic of Joseph 
 De Maistre complains that he would defend the most ab- 
 
FOOLS. 177 
 
 solute superfcetation of the Romish Church, or the most 
 obsolete custom of absolute monarchies, with the same 
 reverence and conviction as the fundamental dogmas of 
 Christianity. But the reason is plain. In the eyes of 
 this unswerving and consistent champion of Ultramon- 
 tanism and Divine Right, each of these things was a part 
 of a sacred whole, and could not be abandoned with 
 safety or honor. He had started in life, as Dr. Johnson 
 phrases it, with his fagot of opinions made up, and he 
 felt that it was impossible to draw out a single stick 
 without weakening the whole. " If we had only known 
 in time," says a writer, "how much trouble early physical 
 inquirers were bringing into the world, how many con 
 troversies they were introducing, what a biting acid they 
 were pouring upon the consolidated doctrines of ages, we 
 should have sprung upon them and strangled them at 
 their birth. We are amazed that Galileo should have 
 been persecuted for asserting the motion of the earth; 
 but if his judges had caught some dim glimpse of the 
 harvest that was to spring from that little seed of heresy, 
 of the tremendous explosion that would follow when the 
 spark had fairly set fire to the train, they would have 
 trampled it out more carefully than we should try to 
 check the speed of the most deadly contagion." Is it not 
 evident, then, that we live in peace with each other only 
 because we are stupid, that, but for this lucky fact, we 
 should be burning everybody who disagrees with us? 
 
 Again, fools make the best reformers. What would 
 be the condition of the world, if it had no men of one 
 idea, men who view every subject from a single stand 
 point, and are dominated by one single purpose, regard 
 ing all others as trivial, it is easy to see. Could we 
 
178 FOOLS. 
 
 lift the veil, and discern all the consequences of a single 
 change in the world s constitution, we should all be con 
 servatives. It is not the men of broad and comprehensive 
 vision, whose horizon of thought embraces many objects 
 and objections, that project and push through great plans 
 of reform. It is the mole-eyed man, who has brooded 
 over a single truth till it overshadows his whole mental 
 horizon, that makes the best reformer. Such a person is 
 tormented by none of the doubts that distract and cripple 
 the profound thinker. Wasting no time in deliberation, 
 he cuts the knots which he cannot untie, and, overleap 
 ing all logical preliminaries, comes at once to a conclu 
 sion. Having got hold of an idea, he never bothers his 
 brains with objections, but goes at once to making pro 
 selytes, satisfied that to procure its adoption is the one 
 thing essential to insure the millennium. For example, 
 his panacea may be ventilation; and, viewing all other 
 conceivable things in its relations to ventilation, he may 
 be content to spend his life like a miner, in continual 
 working at one narrow subterranean gallery; but he 
 generally, by his persistence, gains his end, and the world 
 is benefited by his toils. 
 
 Again, fools are absolutely necessary to make society 
 endurable. There is a disposition in our day to worship 
 great men. Hero-worship, is, indeed, the mania of the 
 age. We are in danger of being tyrannized over by clever 
 men. A man of erratic talents is called a genius, and a 
 hundred follies, and even vices, are excused in him, while 
 his honest neighbor who startles society by no freaks or 
 extravagances, and can boast only of good sense, is sneered 
 at as " slow." Yet in the vast majority of cases the man 
 of brilliant talents is infinitely less useful than the man 
 
FOOLS. 179 
 
 of common sense. All the great departments of practical 
 life are filled with "slow and sure," rather than with 
 smart men. Our best merchants, statesmen, generals, 
 judges, are plain men, not men of genius. God never in 
 tended that clever men should monopolize everything. 
 He did not make the world for clever men only. Doubt 
 less a certain number of men of genius are necessary to 
 every age and country. They are the very guano of the 
 exhausted State. But no sensible farmer thinks of smother 
 ing his field with guano. Make the air all oxygen, and 
 who could breathe it? Brilliant men are well enough 
 occasionally, but who wants to be always staring at pyro 
 technics? 
 
 What a comfort is a dull but kindly person at the fire 
 side, to one who is worn and fatigued by the cares and 
 struggles of life! A ground shade over a gas-light hardly 
 brings more solace to the dazzled eyes than does such a 
 one to our minds. Even the wisest and most thoughtful 
 men love such repose. According to Cumberland, " even 
 dullness, as long as it was accompanied with placidity, 
 was no absolute discommendation of the companion of 
 Lord Mansfield s private hours; it was a kind of cushion 
 to his understanding." Mediocrity is, after all, the best 
 thing in life. The tasteless commonplaces are the stand 
 ards, bread and water, and good dull, steady people. 
 Emerson justly says that society loves Creole natures, 
 and sleepy, languishing manners, the air of drowsy 
 strength that disarms criticism. To make social inter 
 course profitable, there must be an opportunity for per 
 fect relaxation. The charm of the best society is the 
 absence of all effort to sparkle or astonish. The most 
 wearisome of people are the De Staels and "Conversation- 
 
180 FOOLS 
 
 Sharps," wha are always saying brilliant things, who 
 feel like Titus, "I have lost a moment!" if they suffer 
 a fragment of time to escape unenriched by a fine saying. 
 When the author of " Corinne " visited Germany, the 
 leading men-of-letters there shuddered at the approach 
 of this impersonation of volubility. Schiller groaned over 
 "the weary hours he had to pass" in her company, and 
 Goethe was both annoyed and disgusted by her. Nothing 
 tires so soon as unvaried sprightliness, unshaded mirth, 
 and brilliancy unrelieved. It is like the toujours perdrix 
 of the French abb6, or dining eternally off capsicum, 
 peppercorns and jams. 
 
 "Better than such discourse doth silence long, 
 Long barren silence square with my desire; 
 
 To sit without emotion, hope or aim, 
 
 In the loved presence of my cottage fire, 
 
 And listen to the flapping of the flame, 
 Or kettle chirping its faint under-song." 
 
 We would as soon lodge over a powder-magazine as 
 live with a man of genius. We would rather have water 
 than nectar for a steady drink, bread and butter than 
 ambrosia for our daily food. In nature the most useful 
 things are the most common. Water, air, bread, are 
 cheap and plentiful. Leaves and grass are neither of 
 crimson nor of gold color, but plain, sober green. " When 
 a boy," says a writer, " I often made fireworks. Once, in 
 compounding a set of squibs, I forgot to mix up with the 
 positives of saltpetre and gunpowder the negative of 
 pounded charcoal; and, in firing them off, each consisted 
 of but one explosion, bright, no doubt, but transient also, 
 and dangerous withal; while the squibs which were rightly 
 mixed up were both bright and sparkling, too, and much 
 
FOOLS. 181 
 
 more lasting; besides, they did not scorch me. Dull men 
 are to society what charcoal is to squibs." 
 
 Finally, we must add that the true fool nasdtur, non 
 fit. If a man has not the natural gift, he may say and 
 do many foolish things, but he will never manifest a 
 positive genius for folly. He may miss the point of a 
 joke or a remark, laugh in the wrong place, read without 
 getting at the drift, be confident without grounds, live 
 without learning by experience, and act without realizing 
 the consequences, and yet not be an absolute, unmistak 
 able fool. On the other hand, if a man has the inborn 
 talent, there is no pinnacle of dullness to which he may 
 not soar. Johnson recognized this when he said of the 
 elder Sheridan: "Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally 
 dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains 
 to become what we now see him. Such an excess of 
 stupidity is not in nature." 
 
ANGLING-. 
 
 OLDEN June, the "leafy month," which is a happy 
 compromise between weeping spring and broiling 
 midsummer, is near at hand, and in a few weeks hun 
 dreds of our fellow-citizens will be seeking refreshment 
 for body and soul in the pleasant and healthful amuse 
 ment of angling. Of all the out-door recreations which 
 relieve the monotony of life, and cheat care and sorrow 
 of their sting, there is no other, we believe, so replete with 
 gentle excitement and sustained gratification, none which 
 so rarely palls on the taste, which age so seldom withers 
 or custom so infrequently stales, as that which has been 
 glorified by Izaak Walton. Who can forget the moment of 
 exultation, when, a newly-breeched urchin, he first captured 
 with a piece of twine, a crooked pin, and a worm, a petty 
 perch or catfish? Who, in reviewing a long life, can re 
 call any other sensation comparable in intensity with that 
 he felt when he grassed his first trout after a long and 
 almost desperate contest? All first sensations have a pecu 
 liar thrill ; but no other so penetrates to the very core 
 and marrow of one s being as this of the first fish caught 
 with a fly. The first successful shot at a flying bird; the first 
 "check-mate!" which has escaped your lips after a hard- 
 fought match with the knights and pawns; the first ten- 
 strike in a bowling alley ; the shooting a boat s length 
 ahead of your rival near the judges stand in your first 
 race; the first appearance of an essay or "pome" from 
 
 182 
 
ANGLING. 183 
 
 your pen in the village newspaper ; the first brief after 
 your call to the bar; the titillating plaudit after your first 
 essay or talk at a literary club: the sensations produced 
 by these are all more or less similar in kind, but they all, 
 even if equal in degree, lose their edge as time wears on. 
 Perhaps the nearest approximation to the feeling in ques 
 tion is that which is experienced by the despairing lover 
 when he hears the trembling " Yes," or the electric thrill 
 that follows the first union of his lips with those of her 
 he adores ; or, again, a young lady may have felt some 
 thing like it on her first appearance at a fashionable party, 
 when she saw all eyes turned toward her, and knew that 
 her dress was divinely made, and that her gloves fitted ex 
 quisitely. But this joy can be felt but once in life, while 
 the first fish comes back to recollection as fresh, as thrill 
 ing, as when the heart beat quick at its capture. It is 
 a striking fact that while other pleasures pall with age, 
 the fondness for fishing outlives even the capacity of en 
 joying it. Bodily infirmities may weigh us down ; the 
 nervous energy may have left our arm, and the quick 
 sight our eye; we may hobble with difficulty to the brook- 
 side, and go away with rheumatic aches and pains; yet, 
 even then, when fallen into the lean and slippered panta 
 loon, we love to fight our piscatory battles over again, and 
 to tell any listener whom we can buttonhole of our tri 
 umphs when we captured 
 
 "The springing trout, in speckled pride, 
 The salmon, monarch of the tribe." 
 
 Is it not strange, then, considering the innocence and 
 admitted fascination of this sport, that it should have been 
 scowled upon by some moralists? "An angler," says the 
 author of the " Tin Trumpet," " is a piscatory assassin, 
 
184 ANGLING. 
 
 a Jack Ketch, catcher of Jack, * * * Everything pertain 
 ing to the angler s art is cowardly, cruel, treacherous, and 
 cat-like." "Angling," growls the great literary bear, Dr. 
 Johnson, " is an amusement with a stick and a string, with 
 a fool at one end and a hook at the other." The secret 
 of this cynical sarcasm probably is that the old fellow 
 essayed at some time to cast a fly for trout or grayling, 
 or to fish with ground bait for gudgeons, and came home 
 with a superfluous basket. No wonder the great lexi 
 cographer conceived a disgust for the sport, and denounced 
 the grapes he could not reach as sour, his morose piety 
 barely saving him from swearing! It would have been 
 marvelous, indeed, if that clumsy, elephantine man, that 
 literary hippopotamus, had succeeded in beguiling the 
 shy tenants of the stream; in mastering without an ap 
 prenticeship a craft which requires as much tact, strategy, 
 and finesse, as diplomacy or war. Fancy this awkward and 
 impatient giant trying to beguile the tricky trout with a 
 rod almost as slender as a pipe-stem, and a line like a 
 spider s thread! Fancy the leviathan of literature strid 
 ing among the bushes on the sedgy bank of a trout-brook, 
 sweating at every pore, blowing like a whale, and crash 
 ing through the tangled branches like a rhinoceros through 
 the underwood of an African jungle! Of course he would 
 lose all patience, especially if he should chance to dash his 
 foot against some hidden stub or stone, and fall sprawling 
 to the earth with thundering sound, while his hat and wig 
 were caught by the branches of an overhanging tree ! Of 
 course he would throw down the rod and line in disgust, 
 and would let many a volcanic explosion escape from his 
 pils, and ever afterward associate the " speckled beauties " 
 of the brook with anything but pleasant recollections! 
 
ANGLING. 185 
 
 We honor the great moralist, in spite of his anti-angling 
 heresies. Gruff and bigoted though he was, he had a large 
 heart, the essential qualities of which were the same as 
 those that made up the fresh, genial, kindly nature of 
 Izaak Walton. He had patience enough to compile his 
 dictionary, a colossal task, which would have taxed the 
 energies of half-a-dozen other men, patience 
 
 "to chase 
 
 A panting syllable through time and space, 
 Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark 
 To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah s ark," 
 
 but not enough to coax the shy trout from his hiding- 
 place. To the opinion of Johnson we would oppose that 
 of men who have made a more thorough trial of the sport, 
 men who have stood for days up to their knees in water, 
 and in the coldest weather, intent on their employ; who 
 have returned to it again and again with the keenest relish, 
 and who, after spending the vacations of a life-time in 
 piscatory amusement, have not wearied of it at last. We 
 might oppose, also, the verdicts of hundreds of men of the 
 highest rank and genius, who have been enthusiastically 
 fond of angling, and proud to rank themselves among the 
 disciples of gentle Izaak Walton. We know that "holy 
 George Herbert," the pet of the English Church, loved 
 angling, and to his name, and those of Dr. Howell, Sir 
 Henry Wotton, Sir John Offley, and others cited by Izaak, 
 might be added that of Gay, who- alternately wrote his 
 poetry and caught his trout at Amesbury; Coleridge, the 
 weird poet of the Lakes; Sir Humphrey Davy, who never 
 tired of fishing, though he confessed that, through his lack 
 of skill, his flies always fell like lead on the water; Gibbon, 
 
186 ANGLING. 
 
 Chantrey, Sir Walter Scott, and the heroic Nelson, who was 
 an expert fly-fisher, and so passionately fond of the sport 
 that he continued it with his left hand, after he had lost 
 his right in the service of his country. Dr. Paley was so 
 enamored of angling that he hobbled to the river s side 
 in spite of his bodily infirmities, to ply the line, and had 
 his portrait painted with a fishing-rod in his hand. Being 
 asked by the Bishop of Durham when one of his great works 
 would be finished, he answered naively, as if fly-fishing, and 
 not philosophy, were the main business of his life: "My 
 lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season 
 is over." It has been said that Zimmerman learned in 
 the seclusion of this pastime to turn his contemplative 
 eye inward, and, finding that he was never less alone than 
 when alone, discovered the virtues and charms of that soli 
 tude on which he has so eloquently and seductively dis 
 coursed. Wordsworth, the man of " cheerful yesterdays 
 and confident to-morrows," was passionately fond of fish 
 ing, and it was while resting 
 
 "beneath the floating shade 
 
 Of willows grey, close crowding o er the brook," 
 
 that he acquired that profound knowledge of Nature s 
 ways which has made his verse a delight to all thoughtful 
 readers. 
 
 Besides all these, the shield of fly-fishing is emblazoned 
 with the names of George IV, Harvey, Dr. Babington, 
 Henry Mackenzie, Christopher North, who has written a 
 book of charming idyls on the craft; Chantrey, the sculp 
 tor ; Emmerson, the geometrician ; Rennie, the zoologist; 
 Dr. Bethune, who has prefaced an edition of Walton s 
 "Angler" with an elaborate and learned introduction, 
 
ANGLING. 187 
 
 and other notables whom we have not time to name. 
 That Shakspeare was an angler we have no positive knowl 
 edge, but cannot doubt, when we consider the apt allusions 
 to the craft in his plays, and how familiar he was with 
 all sports, from liming a bird to stalking a deer. As we 
 read the exclamation of Maria on the approach of Malvolio: 
 " Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling," 
 or the fine passage in which the poet contrasts- fly-fishing 
 with bait-fishing, 
 
 "The pleasantest angling is to see the fish 
 Cut with his golden oars the silver stream, 
 And greedily devour the treacherous bait. 
 So angle we" 
 
 we can easily fancy him strolling along the banks of the 
 beautiful and picturesque Avon, ever and anon casting his 
 line into the stream, and landing a trout or a grayling 
 on the greensward. Walton goes so far as to claim the 
 prophet Amos as a fisher, making Piscator observe that 
 " he that shall read the humble, low, plain style of that 
 prophet, and compare it with the high, glorious, eloquent 
 style of the prophet Isaiah (though they both be equally 
 true) may easily believe Amos to be not only a shepherd, 
 but a good-natured, plain fisherman ; which I do the rather 
 believe by comparing the affectionate, loving, lowly, humble 
 epistles of Saint Peter, Saint James, and Saint John, who 
 we know were all fishers, with the glorious language and 
 high metaphors of Saint Paul, whom we may believe was 
 not." 
 
 The eminent statesman of Europe and America often 
 escapes from his protocols and red-tape to recruit his 
 weary brain on the banks of the trout-brook, or in the 
 
188 AKGLIKG. 
 
 company of the king-fisher and the heron. What elo 
 quence, statesmanship, and wise legislation, do we not 
 owe to such hours of recreation! The great statesman 
 of Marshfield found his best escape from "carldng care" 
 in fishing. As Starr King says, "in bait and debate he 
 was equally persuasive." The old salt, Peterson, declared 
 that he " never saw anybody so smart at taking a trout 
 from his hole"; and after doing this, or hauling a blue- 
 fish through the surf, Webster would turn to his com 
 panions and say: "This is better than wasting time in 
 the Senate, gentlemen." It was in fishing for trout in 
 Marshfield that he composed the famous passage on the 
 surviving veterans of the battle for his first Bunker Hill 
 address. He would pull out a lusty specimen, it is said, 
 shouting: "Venerable men, you have come down to us 
 from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously length 
 ened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous 
 day." He would unhook them into his basket, declaim 
 ing: "You are gathered to your fathers, and live only 
 to your country in her grateful remembrance and your 
 own bright example." In his boat, fishing for a cod, he 
 composed or rehearsed the passage on Lafayette, when he 
 hooked a very large cod, and, as he pulled his nose above 
 water, exclaimed: "Welcome! all hail! and thrice wel 
 come, citizen of two hemispheres!" 
 
 In the days of Greece and Rome even ladies did not 
 disdain to angle for fish as well as men. According to 
 Plutarch, Cleopatra was a votary of the piscatory art, and 
 so keen did the rivalry become between her and Antony, 
 that he resorted to the meanest artifices to insure victory 
 Mortified and irritated by the queen s superiority, he en 
 gaged divers to take live fish, and place them on his 
 
ANGLING. 189 
 
 hook. This was done so expertly that he pulled up fish 
 after fish in rapid succession. Learning in some way the 
 secret of his sudden success, she pretended to congratu 
 late him and to admire his dexterity, at the same time 
 that she devised a cunning means of revenge. Another 
 match was arranged, and the fishing began in the pres 
 ence of a large company of friends. Antony soon had a 
 bite, and pulled up a large salted fish, to his great dis 
 gust, and amid the loud laughter of all present. The 
 secret was out; Antony s trick was exposed; and once 
 more woman s wit had proved too much for man s in 
 genuity. A diver, specially instructed by the queen, had 
 got the start of Antony s, and had attached the salt fish 
 to his hook. 
 
 In England fly-fishing by ladies is by no means un 
 common. Not long since the London "Field" announced 
 that a certain beautiful Miss had captured a salmon weigh 
 ing seventeen pounds, a statement which drew from a 
 Cambridge poet the following impassioned lines: 
 
 " Not artificial flies my fancy took ; 
 Nature s own magic lured me to yoor hook; 
 Play me no more, no thought to scape have I, 
 But land rne, land me, at your feet to die." 
 
 It is to be hoped that American ladies may more gen 
 erally practice this "gentle art," which is so health-giving 
 and so well adapted to them. When they shall have be 
 come as expert in casting a fly as in setting their nets 
 for beaux, we may expect that their husbands will have 
 more trout and fewer pouts for their dinners. 
 
 Angling in our ordinary brooks and lakes is pleasant 
 and healthful, but to enjoy the acme of this earthly feli- 
 
190 ANGLING. 
 
 city, one should go to the mountain brooks and streams 
 of Maine, those running into Moosehead Lake, or those 
 that connect the Rangeley Lakes. Here, in waters of 
 almost icy coldness, surrounded and overhung by the 
 dense forest through whose foliage hardly a sunbeam 
 penetrates, are real brook trout, leviathans, compared 
 with which those caught near the haunts of men are but 
 minnows. Choosing some quiet pool, into which the brawl 
 ing waters, after tumbling and foaming over rocks, pause 
 for a few moments in their headlong career, you glance 
 down into the glassy water. Shade of Walton! what a 
 sight! See those monarchs of the brook resting motion 
 less upon the pebbly bottom! How distinctly they reveal 
 themselves to you in the crystal depths! Now move 
 softly with cat-like step, get ready your rod and reel, 
 attach your fly to the " leader," and drop it on the sur 
 face of the pool as softly as a spider drops at the end of 
 his self-spun thread! Hardly does it touch the surface 
 when an electrifying jerk, which makes your heart throb 
 and leap into your very throat, tells you that a monster 
 of the brook, a triton among the minnows, has seized 
 your bait. Presently the line becomes taut, and begins 
 to move up stream. You pull gently on it, when the 
 trout, feeling the prick of the hook, darts away with an 
 arrow s swiftness, and the reel spins out with a whiz 
 like that of a spindle in a cotton-mill. Let it spin, for 
 he is so big, so strong and so tricky, that if you stop it, 
 it will snap like packthread. Forty yards from the 
 starting-point he brings up under a submerged stump, 
 and there anchors. Evidently he understands the laws 
 of mechanics, for he takes such advantage of a prong of 
 the stump, that all the leverage is in his favor. You 
 
ANGLING. 191 
 
 might as well pull at the root as pull at him. Byron 
 says of one of his languishing beauties, that when she 
 cast herself upon the neck of Don Juan, " there she 
 grew." Well, there, between the arms of that pine stump, 
 he grows. For twenty minutes, that seem an hour, he 
 sticks and hangs. Suddenly, just as you begin to feel 
 that you are literally stumped, without the slightest warn 
 ing, he shoots up like a rocket to the surface, and then 
 begin the most marvelous series of acrobatic feats ever 
 attempted by an ichthyological gymnast, even in Maine. 
 For half an hour more he leaps, whirls, darts, flound 
 ers, dives, dodges, till, at last, exhausted by his desperate, 
 super-piscine efforts, he gives up the struggle. Trem 
 bling in every nerve with excitement, you tow him gently 
 to the bank, and fearing lest he should even now give a 
 sudden flop into the stream, you "creel" the noble victim, 
 and pause to gaze on your prize. There he lies stretched 
 out in the basket, "life s fitful fever over/ 1 an eight- 
 pounder, almost too large for his receptacle. How sym 
 metrical his form! How brilliant those hues of orange 
 and crimson and gold, on his sides; how deep the con 
 trast of those on his back; and how bright and fresh- 
 looking the white, broad belly is! Here are colors and 
 gradations of tint which mock at all efforts of the 
 painter s art to imitate them; and, as you feast your 
 eyes upon their beauty, it seems almost profanation to 
 tickle your palate with such a dish, a dish "fit for the 
 gods " only, and not for vulgar epicures. No more ang 
 ling that day for you! You have won at Waterloo, and 
 the conquest of half-pounders after this death-struggle 
 with Napoleon would be tame. 
 
 There are many amusements which exact patience for 
 
192 ANGLING. 
 
 their enjoyment; but no one, perhaps, makes a more ex 
 hausting draught on this virtue than angling. Fish are very 
 shy and very capricious creatures, hardly less than were 
 Eve s daughters before this age of "Woman s Rights." Like 
 the "gadders" of the sex, they are here, there and every 
 where ; you have first to find where they are, and then you 
 must coax them to bite. No matter how deeply you may 
 have pondered the directions of old Tzaak, that Hooker of 
 the Piscatory Polity, you cannot sometimes, with the utmost 
 cunning, tempt them from their hiding-places. It has 
 been said that no man should ever think of going a-fish- 
 ing who cannot sit all day in a hot sun, amid swarms of 
 hungry flies and mosquitoes, with his feet, if need be, soak 
 ing in cold water, and be content after all that time with 
 one " glorious nibble." To achieve the angler s ordinary 
 successes may not require so much patience as he pos 
 sessed who baited his hook with " a dragon s tail," and 
 "sat upon a rock and bobbed for a whale"; but the fact 
 is certain that those who are most expert in fishing are 
 usually endowed with a large share of that stoicism which 
 bears success and disappointment with the same evenness 
 of temper. Old Burton, in his " Anatomy of Melancholy," 
 tells of a Silesian nobleman who was found booted up to 
 the groins, as he stood in the water fishing; and he adds 
 that " many gentlemen, in like sort, with us, will wade up 
 to the arm-holes on such occasions, and voluntarily under 
 take that to satisfy their pleasure, which a poor man for 
 a good stipend would scarce be hired to undergo." A 
 late English writer says: "I remember a fisherman chid 
 ing me on account of my displeasure at not realizing the 
 sport which had been promised ; and he very coolly said 
 that I should never make an angler, if I could not fish 
 
ANGLING. 193 
 
 a whole day in a bucket of water, without showing impa 
 tience " The same writer tells of a surgeon at Hampton, 
 who is regarded as an example for all anglers in the mani 
 festation of this quality, as he braves the coldest winter 
 weather to pursue his favorite sport. " He gets up before 
 it is light, and has his breakfast, and then fishes till dark, 
 while the water is freezing on his line! " That is angling 
 like a true votary of the craft! A Scottish writer (the 
 charming author of " Nugce Criticce ") tells of a battle- 
 royal with a salmon five feet long, and which must have 
 weighed fifty pounds, that lasted from four o clock in the 
 afternoon till four o clock of a summer morning. Picture 
 to yourself, if you can, the blank feeling of dismay which 
 the fisher must have experienced, when, after that twelve 
 hours tug of war, his line " came in loose," and the con 
 viction flashed across his mind that the monster was 
 off ! ay, 
 
 "turn thy complexion there, 
 
 Patience, thou young and rose-lipp d cherubin!" 
 
 No wonder that, in view of all these facts, many a theoretic 
 angler, who has been charmed into a love of the amuse 
 ment by the witchery of Walton s pages, has found it in 
 practice the most tedious of all ways of killing time. 
 
 Honest Izaak justly declares that " he that hopes to be 
 a good angler, must not only bring an inquiring, search 
 ing, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of 
 hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art 
 itself. 1 Markham, in his " Country Contentments," goes 
 still further, and quaintly assures us that " the angler must 
 be a general scholar, and seen in all the liberal sciences; 
 as a grammarian, to know how to write a discourse of his 
 9 
 
194 ANGLING. 
 
 art, and in true and fitting terms. He should have sweet 
 ness of speech, to entice others to delight in an exercise 
 so much laudable. He should have strength of argument 
 to defend and maintain his profession against envy and 
 slander. Then he must be strong and valiant, neither to 
 be amazed with storms, nor affrighted with thunder; and 
 if he is not temperate, but hath a gnawing stomach that 
 will not endure much fasting, but must observe hours, it 
 troubleth mind and body, and loseth that delight which 
 maketh the pastime only pleasing." We may smile at this 
 as fanciful ; but it must, nevertheless, be acknowledged that 
 there is, at least, a peculiar knack or expertness required 
 to make one a proficient in this mystery or craft, an 
 art a genius for which, like that for painting or writing 
 poetry, must be born in a man, and cannot be acquired. 
 It is not every one who flourishes the lithe rod that can 
 send the feathered line sailing high in the air, so as to 
 alight just on the edge of an eddy, or near a root or 
 stone, where " the hermit trout " is dreamily plying his 
 bright fins, and slowly steering himself about in lazy en 
 joyment. Nor is it every man who knows how, when the 
 graceful creature is hooked, to rein him in, to play with 
 him as a cat does with a mouse, guiding him hither and 
 thither; now humoring his impetuous leaps and dashes; 
 now tenderly coaxing him to the shore, and finally bring 
 ing him, with what Horace would call a lene tormentum, 
 within reach of the gaff or landing-net. No ; these are 
 triumphs reserved for him who by his inborn faculty, added 
 to years of practice of his craft, is able to " snatch a grace 
 beyond the reach of art," the veteran angler. 
 
 Had Byron ever tried to grass a five-pound trout with 
 a line and leader as delicate as the finest hair from the 
 
AXGLItfG. 195 
 
 tresses of a mountain S} r lph," he would never have ridi 
 culed angling as " the coldest and stupidest of pretended 
 sports." A cold and stupid sport! Could there be a more 
 perfect misnomer for a craft that is not only full of the 
 most varying excitement, but exacts the utmost intelli 
 gence and adroitness, the keenest vigilance and the most 
 delicate senses, an eye ever quick, and a hand ever 
 ready? Did a "stupid" fly-fisher ever waylay and cap 
 ture a salmon, or cheat the vigilance of the argus-eyed 
 trout that startles at the faintest shadow? The angler s 
 victories, in many cases, are among the most marvelous 
 examples of the triumph of art over brute force. They 
 are won not by the brutal superiority of sheer strength, 
 but by instruments formed of materials so slight, and 
 some of them so frail, that all the delicacy and cunning 
 resources which human wit can devise are required to 
 enable feebleness to overcome strength. The large, power 
 ful, nervous salmon, "the monarch, of the stream," with 
 all his wondrous agility, the quick-darting trout, active, 
 hardy, gamy, whose dying struggles show an unconquer 
 able spirit, are hooked, held in, wearied out, by the 
 skillful and delicate management of tackle which, if 
 roughly handled, would be bent and strained by the 
 strength and weight of a minnow! "It is wonderful," 
 says a writer, " to see hooks of Lilliputian largeness, gut 
 finer than a hair, and a rod some of whose joints are 
 little thicker than a crow s quill, employed in the cap 
 ture of the strongest of river fish. * * * If the sporting- 
 gear of the fly-fisher were not managed with consummate 
 art, on the mathematical principle of leverage, he could 
 not by its means lift from the ground more than a mi 
 nute fraction of the dead weight of that living, bounding, 
 
196 ANGLING. 
 
 rushing fish he tires unto death, nay drowns in its own 
 element." 
 
 Of all the forms of amusement which human wit has 
 devised to " drive dull care away," we believe there is 
 no one cheaper, or more healthful and innocent than ang 
 ling. The trout-fisher, like the painter, haunts the love 
 liest nooks of the earth, and his soul takes its hue from 
 the scenes with which he is familiar. Wandering far 
 away from the dust and smoke of the town, into the quiet 
 meadows and ravines, he follows up the sparkling brooks 
 to their sources, and penetrates to the inmost recesses of 
 Nature s sanctuaries. He has admittance to her boudoirs, 
 and dallies with her in her most witching moods. He 
 becomes familiar with the ceaseless changes of her coun 
 tenance, varying from sunshine to tempest, and hears all 
 the harmonies of her organ-like music. As he throws his 
 line where " rivulets dance their wayward round," the 
 song of the waters drowns all the jangling noises of the 
 world he has left behind, and while he listens to the chorus 
 of the wavelets, the sleepy whirr of the frog in the pool, 
 or the occasional plash of the trout leaping for his prey, 
 the misty, dreamy quiet all around laps his soul into a 
 temporary Elysium. The shyest and most delicate wild- 
 flowers, set in the golden and azure mosses, are revealed 
 to his gaze. A brooding, meditative spirit takes possession 
 of his soul, and he learns to discern the infinite suggest- 
 iveness of things. He worships, not in temples built by 
 human hands, but in the temple of Nature, 
 
 " Not in that fane where crumbling arch and column 
 Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, 
 But in that fane, most catholic and solemn, 
 Which God hath planned; 
 
ANGLING. 197 
 
 " In that cathedral, boundless as our wonder, 
 "Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply, 
 Its choir the winds and waves, its organ thunder, 
 Its dome the sky." 
 
 Nor is his enjoyment limited to the hours when he sees 
 the scarlet-spots flash within the meshes. He stores up 
 in his memory the enchanting sights and sounds that 
 ravish his eye and ear, to refresh his soul amid the din 
 and dust of town life; and the green fields, the songs of 
 the birds, the " bubbling runnels " leaping through ra 
 vines dark with the shade of overhanging foliage, haunt 
 him like a passion. Even the shadows of old age are 
 illumined by the recollection of these oases in life s sandy 
 waste; and though the crow s feet may have crept into 
 his eyes and the gout into his legs, he " fights his battles 
 over again" among his brothers of the angle, dwelling 
 on each feat of piscatory prowess with as much enthusi 
 asm as if he had captured a fortress instead of a fish. 
 
 If you would know a man s character, you cannot do 
 better than go a-fishing with him. Does he crow like 
 chanticleer when he has caught a fish, and swear like a 
 pirate when his fly has caught in the long grass, giving, 
 perhaps, a violent jerk which breaks the top-joint of his 
 rod, and spoils his temper for the whole day? Hie niger 
 est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto! Depend upon it, he will 
 be an uncomfortable companion; you will find him inso 
 lent and overbearing in prosperity, sulky and savage in 
 misfortune. Does he, after losing a fine fish which he has 
 raised to the surface, quietly thrust a stick into the ground 
 opposite the spot where he rose, and returning fifteen min 
 utes after, again throw a fly and capture the backslider? 
 Such a man, if balked in a love affair or a business scheme 
 
198 ANGLTXG. 
 
 just on the eve of triumph, will await patiently a second 
 trial, and probably win the prize he covets. Does he pull 
 out his fish by main force, and impetuously send him fly 
 ing over his head into the grass behind or into a thicket? 
 We can easily foresee his fate in life, that he will do 
 business without tact or finesse, in a harem-scarem, slap 
 dash, devil-may-care way, and will win success, if at all, 
 at the cost of great losses. Does he, after twenty minutes 
 vain endeavor to ensnare " the speckled beauties," sprawl 
 under a tree, curse the weather, the fish, his tackle, and 
 his luck, and, pulling out a flask, drown his vexations in 
 old Rye or Bourbon? He will be easily disheartened in 
 his calling, and attributing his failures always to ill for 
 tune, never to his own impatience or want of tact and 
 skill, will soak and sulk" himself into his grave. 
 
 There are some sentimental people who denounce fish- 
 catching as cruelty. Leigh Hunt and Byron have both 
 condemned it on this account. But if the angler is cruel 
 because he catches the fish, what shall we say of the fish 
 himself who starts up with his murderous jaws, and tries 
 to swallow what he fancies to be a fly? Evidently so far 
 as the intent is concerned he is a murderer, only he is 
 caught while trying to put his intent into execution. It 
 is only by the artful imitation of the flies, upon which the 
 trout or the salmon loves to feed, that the angler is able 
 to capture him. Upon opening his stomach, you find 
 it crammed with flies ; or, if he is a large fish, you find 
 that he has banqueted upon smaller ones. In fact, the 
 smaller fish live in a constant fright on account of him; 
 they fly to the shallows, hide among the weeds, and dread 
 him as a lamb dreads a wolf, or a chicken a hen-hawk. 
 The big fish is, in fact, a perfect cannibal, an ogre; the 
 
ANGLIKU. 199 
 
 blood-thirsty monster will devour not only his fellow, but 
 even his blood-relations and his own children. It was this 
 consideration that converted Dr. Franklin from vegetarian 
 ism to belief in an animal diet. " If you eat one another," 
 he said to a fish, " I see no reason why we may not eat 
 you." " There is an immense trout in Loch Awe, in Scot 
 land," says a writer, " which is so voracious, and swallows 
 his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained 
 the name of Salmo ferox. I pull about this unnatural 
 monster until he is tired, and give him the coup-de-grace. 
 Is this cruelty? Cruelty should be made of sterner stuff." 
 It is a curious fact that the tender-hearted moralists, 
 who croak so over the cruelty of angling, and think it a 
 dreadful thing to trouble a trout with a line intimating 
 that you would be happy to see him at supper, rarely refuse 
 to eat a perch or trout well browned, and will even add 
 the "cool malignity" of salt and sauce. To all such crabbed 
 and hypercritical objectors we can only say with Horace 
 that jubemus stultos esse libenter, while from our heart of 
 hearts we echo the song of old Izaak: 
 
 "A day with not too bright a beam, 
 
 A warm, but not a scorching sun, 
 A southern gale to curl the stream, 
 And, master, half your work is done. 
 
 "There, whilst behind some bush we wait 
 
 The scaly people to betray, 
 We ll prove it just, with treacherous bait, 
 To make the preying trout our prey; 
 
 "And think ourselves, in such an hour, 
 
 Happier than those, though not so high, 
 Who, like leviathans, devour 
 
 Of meaner men the smaller fry." 
 
INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS. 
 
 THE London " Saturday Review," speaking of the many 
 pretty things said in play by Sydney Smith, re 
 marks that none of the sayings of that obese angel of 
 English wits throws so amiable a light on the essential 
 vein of his intellect, its playfulness, as that recorded in 
 the story of the pretty girl and the sweet peas. " Oh ! 
 Mr. Smith," the pretty girl said, who was visiting his 
 garden with a party of friends, and pointing to some sweet 
 peas, " those sweet peas have not yet come to perfection." 
 " Then," said the witty divine and divine wit, " permit 
 me to conduct perfection to the sweet peas." At first blush 
 this looks like a bit of gallantry, of which any man might 
 be guilty; but, " if we look into the sentiment closely," 
 says the "Review," "and observe how delicate and com 
 plicated is its structure, and, though in its essence spon 
 taneous, how ideal and polished is its wit, the gallantry 
 falls entirely into the background, iced over, as it were, 
 by the playfulness, and by the intellectual process which 
 almost invariably acts as a refrigerator on the emotions." 
 
 Of all the qualities which lend a charm to greatness, 
 there is no other, true courtesy only excepted, which 
 so robes it in beauty as the one here indicated. By play 
 fulness is meant that indescribable something " which, at 
 particular times, surrounds particular people like an elec 
 tric atmosphere, which gilds their thoughts, lends a per 
 fume to the commonest sentiments, and for a time, trans- 
 
INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS. 201 
 
 lates those who fall under its spell into a kind of fairy 
 land remote from the humdrum views, the jog-trot se 
 quences, the little carking cares and little drivelling wor 
 ries and apprehensions, the tiny rules and infinitesimal 
 points of honor, which almost inevitably beset average 
 life at average moments." This quality is the last touch, 
 the finishing perfection, of a noble character; it is the 
 gold on the spire, the sunlight on the cornfield, the smile 
 on the cheek of the noble knight lowering his sword- 
 point to his lady-love; and it can result only from the 
 truest balance and harmony of soul. The best and great 
 est men in all ages have exhibited it; it was seen in Soc 
 rates, in Luther, in Cervantes, in Chaucer, in Sir Thomas 
 More adding a bloom to the sterner graces of their 
 characters, and shining forth with amaranthine bright 
 ness in their hours of darkness and gloom. Why is it so 
 rare? 
 
 Perhaps one reason is, that the quality is so often con 
 founded with a jesting disposition which in our days too 
 often is found in excess, and allied with habitual flip 
 pancy and frivolity. There are persons who cannot speak 
 of the most serious subjects except in terms provocative 
 of merriment. The gravest themes of human contem 
 plation suggest to them only comic images and associa 
 tions, and a remark as gloomy as death will, in passing 
 through their minds, acquire the mot-ley livery of a har 
 lequin. The most popular literature of the day is that 
 which is dedicated to Momus and broad grins. The re 
 fined and delicate humor which once characterized our 
 classic writers, a humor which does not spring from 
 the words alone, but has intense meanings underneath 
 its grotesque sounds, has given place to "laughter hold- 
 
202 INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS. 
 
 ing both his sides." Joking has become a trade. The 
 cap and bells, which once, like greatness, were " thrust 
 upon 1 a man, because he had a genius for joking, are 
 now assumed with cold-blooded calculation. We have had 
 " comic histories " of England and Rome, and " comic 
 Blackstones" ad nauseam, and now we have a "Comic 
 History of the United States." In England the rage for 
 burlesques has almost banished high art from the theatres; 
 and it is now thought to be a fine stroke of wit to call the 
 mightiest of English writers by such titles as " the Divine 
 Williams, 1 or " the Avon party. 1 This superfoetation of 
 fun has disgusted many with all fun. They feel that this 
 incessant rattle, this ceaseless jesting upon even the 
 gravest themes, must ultimately lessen a man s own 
 sense of the real gravity of human life, and weaken the 
 strength and authority of the moral convictions of those 
 who are always listening to it. Barrow, of whom it has 
 been said that he himself might have outshone, had he 
 chosen to do it, all the wits of Charles s Court, and beaten 
 them with weapons like their own, but of a more dazzling 
 blade, a keener edge, and finer temper, has treated this 
 folly with the contempt it merits. " What more plain 
 nonsense can there be," he asks, " than to be earnest in 
 jest, to be continual in divertisement, or constant in pas 
 time, to make extravagance all our play, and sauce all 
 our diet? Is not this plainly the life of a child, that is 
 ever busy, yet never hath anything to do? or the life of 
 that mimical brute, which is always active in playing un 
 couth and unlucky tricks, which, could it speak, might 
 surely pass well for a professed wit?" It is plain that 
 those who find their delight in this jibing and vulgarizing 
 spirit confound true humor with facetiousness. The one 
 
INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS. 203 
 
 is " a gracious as well as tricksy spirit;" the other is often 
 " terribly like the grinning of a death s-head. 1 
 
 There is another class of persons grim, prosaic, matter- 
 of-fact men who, owing to some twist of the brain, can 
 not understand the quality we have commended. The 
 language of pleasantry is to them an unknown tongue. 
 Not only do they fail to detect the good will which wears 
 the mask of satire, but it is lucky if they do not interpret 
 your circuitous compliments as direct insults, and a de 
 sign to cheer and amuse into a deliberate intention to 
 sting and wound. It is said that a tribe called Weddahs 
 has lately been discovered in Ceylon, who never laugh, 
 and who know no more what a joke is than does a horse; 
 and even in civilized countries there are many persons 
 who are not more happy in their mental constitution. 
 Sir William Harcourt quotes Canning as saying of the 
 most conservative class in England: "The country gentle 
 men suspected wit meant something against the land, and 
 solid commercial men thought it had a tendency to de 
 preciate consols." 
 
 We have known some of these people, lean, lathy, 
 crabbed, dyspeptic beings, who think that two and two 
 always make four, and can never possibly make five; and 
 we have sometimes thought that the best way to address 
 them would be to abstain from all irony, and to roll 
 into their spiny natures a few floods of billowy mirth. 
 It was one of these hard, prosaic men, who cannot under 
 stand a joke even when it is as unequivocal as a pistol- 
 shot, that read Knickerbocker s History of New York, 
 and said, on closing it, that it was far inferior to the 
 works of Hildreth and Bancroft, and contained many 
 things which he found it difficult to believe. Miss Cobbe, 
 
204 INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS. 
 
 in her " Work and Play," tells of an Englishman of this 
 stamp, to whom a friend described the scene when Sheri 
 dan was picked up dead drunk, and, being asked his 
 name and address, stammered out, " My name is Wil-Wil- 
 Wilberforce." The serious gentleman, after a few mo 
 ments deep consideration, looked up and asked his fair in 
 formant, "What did Sheridan mean?" Sydney Smith saw 
 one of this class sitting beside him at a dinner party, and 
 plied him with a joke. The man sat grim over it for 
 some five minutes, trying to extract its meaning. At last 
 he looked up and exclaimed, " Why, Mr. Smith, you prob 
 ably intended that for a joke." "I didn t intend it for 
 anything else," was the reply; whereupon the solemn 
 gentleman began to laugh, and couldn t stop, doubtless 
 discovering, for the first time in his life, that things have 
 a funny side. Many will remember a similar misadven 
 ture which befell poor Smith when he told a lady visitor 
 that he found the weather so hot he was actually obliged 
 to take off his flesh and sit in his bones. " Oh! Mr. Smith," 
 answered the lady, in consternation, "how could you do 
 that?" We were once traveling by rail along the left 
 bank of the Seine in France, with an English family, and 
 hearing the mother ask her son if he would not like " to 
 go in swimming" in that river, we said: "It is not pos 
 sible that your son would do such a thing as that." " Why 
 not?" was the reply. "Because," we said, "he would be 
 crazy if he did it." "Crazy? how crazy, pray?" "Why, 
 madam," we replied, "he would be in Seine, would he 
 not?" " H-o-w i-n-s-a-n-e?" she asked, with a mingled 
 look of curiosity and surprise. Natures like this, that 
 seem so poor and thin, have often juice enough latent 
 within them; but as some one has said, it is at the bot- 
 
INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS. 205 
 
 torn, and undissolved. It needs shaking up, in order to 
 impart richness and flavor to their whole being, and save 
 them from bigotry and meanness; and if you can once 
 get a flood of humor fairly to sweep through them, the 
 end may probably be gained. 
 
 There is a third class of men who abstain from all 
 exhibitions of playfulness because it is not " respectable." 
 They have, or think they have, a portentous amount of 
 dignity, and are fearful of sacrificing the most infinitesimal 
 portion of it. Thomas Fuller knew some such in his day, 
 who, " for fear their orations should giggle, would not let 
 them smile." It is evident that Dr. Franklin did not belong 
 to this class, since we are told that the drawing up of the 
 Declaration of Independence would have been committed to 
 him, if it had not been feared that he would " put a joke 
 into it." Nor did Abraham Lincoln belong to it, whose 
 memory has been saved from a taint of levity only by his 
 martyrdom. William Pitt did belong to it, if we may 
 believe the author of " Caxtonia," who says that he rigidly 
 subdued his native faculty of wit, from motives of policy. 
 It was not that he did not appreciate and admire its 
 sparkles in orators unrestrained by the responsibilities of 
 office, but because he considered that a man in the position 
 of First Minister impairs influence and authority by the 
 cheers which transfer his reputation from his rank as 
 Minister to his renown as wit. Doubtless there is force 
 in this. Grave situations, as Bulwer remarks, are not 
 only dignified but strengthened by that gravity of de 
 meanor which is not the hypocrisy of the would-be wise, 
 but the genuine token of the earnest sense of responsi- 
 iblity. There was deep wisdom in the Athenian law which 
 interdicted a judge of the Areopagus from writing a comedy. 
 
206 INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS. 
 
 Yet, as a general thing, it is none the less true that, as 
 "there is beggary in the love that can be reckoned," 
 so there is degradation in the dignity that has to be pre 
 served. If one has the real article, he may safely leave 
 it to take care of itself; and if he has not, no prodigal 
 ity of starch, or snowdrift of white-linen decency, will 
 supply a substitute. Certainly, there can be no greater 
 mistake than to associate frivolity of character with sport- 
 iveness. We are not to suppose that the elephant s trunk 
 is incapable of felling a man because we see it toying 
 with a feather; we do not conclude that the oak wants 
 stability because its light and changeable leaves dance to 
 the music of the breeze; nor may we conclude that a 
 man wants solidity and strength of mind because he may 
 be occasionally playful. Yet, somehow, the man who 
 goes through the world with an owl-like solemnity of face 
 is always thought to be showing a deeper sense of the 
 meaning of life, and to be making more of his talents, 
 than the elastic, sunny, playful man. There are persons 
 who would ever afterward have refused to credit Sydney 
 Smith with the possession of sterling intellectual quali 
 ties, had they heard his pleasantry about " a giraffe with 
 a sore throat." " Fancy," he said, once, sitting quietly 
 at the deanery of St. Paul s with some ladies, when he 
 was told that one of the giraffes at the Zoological Gardens 
 had caught a cold, " fancy a giraffe with a yard of sore 
 throat!" 
 
A PLEA FOR THE ERRING. 
 
 are few subjects upon which men are so likely 
 -*- to err in forming their judgments as in estimating 
 the degrees of guilt involved in the conduct of their err 
 ing and depraved fellow men. Especially is this the case 
 when the judgments are passed upon the poor and the 
 outcast, the unhappy persons who from infancy have 
 lived in daily communion with wretchedness and vice. In 
 spite of Canning s sneer at the nice judge who 
 
 " found with keen, discriminating sight, 
 Black s not so black, nor white so very white," 
 
 the doctrine thus ridiculed is nevertheless true in morals, 
 if not in physics; and not to recognize it is to incur the 
 risk of undue harshness in our estimates of our fellow- 
 men. If there is any one lesson which frequent inter 
 course with them teaches, it is the folly of attempting 
 nicely to classify their characters, so as to place them dis 
 tinctly among the sheep or the goats. Here and there a 
 man is found who is almost wholly bad, and another who 
 is almost wholly good; but, in the infinite majority of 
 cases, the problem is so complex as to defy all our powers 
 of analysis. A young men s debating society may easily 
 enough resolve that some famous man or woman was 
 worthy of approbation or of reprobation; but men of ex 
 perience, who have learned the infinite complexity of hu 
 man nature, know that a just judgment of human beings 
 
 207 
 
208 A PLEA FOR THE ERRIXG. 
 
 is not to be packed into any such summary formula. Even 
 in judging our friends, whom we see daily, we make the 
 grossest mistakes; they are constantly startling us by acts 
 which show us how little we know of the fathomless depths 
 of their moral being. How, then, can we expect to judge 
 accurately of those who are utter strangers to us, and by 
 what right do we presume to place them irrevocably in 
 our moral pigeon-holes? 
 
 It is difficult to say how far in our judgments of the 
 vilest men, or those who seem to be such, allowance 
 should be made for perplexing circumstances, for tempta 
 tions which we have never experienced, and for motives 
 which we can but partially analyze. Certain it is that 
 they who, from their earliest years, have lived always in 
 affluence, who have never known the cravings of a hun 
 ger that they knew not how to satisfy, who have been 
 supplied with a constant succession of innocent pleasures 
 to relieve the monotony of life, and with all the appli 
 ances of art to cheat pain of its sting, have but a faint 
 conception of the privations and anxieties, the irritating 
 and maddening thoughts, that torture the victim of pov 
 erty, and drive him, with an impulse dreadfully strong, to 
 deeds of darkness and blood. Well did Maggie Muckle- 
 backet, in Scott s novel, retort to the Laird of Monkbarns, 
 when he expressed a hope that the distilleries would never 
 work again: "Ay, it is easy for your honor, and the like 
 o you gentle folks, to say sae, that hae stouth and routh, 
 and fire and fending, and meat and claith, and sit dry and 
 canny by the fireside ; but an ye wanted fire, and meat, 
 and dry claise, and were deeing o cauld, and had a sair 
 heart into the bargain, which is warst ava, wi just tip- 
 pence in your nouch, wadna ye be glad to buy a dram 
 
A PLEA FOR THE ERRING. 209 
 
 wi t, to be eliding, and claise, and a supper, and heart s 
 ease into the bargain, till the morn s morning?" We may 
 not admit the strict logic of this appeal, for the dram is 
 too often the cause, as well as the effect, of the absence 
 of fire, and meat, and heart s ease; but the fact upon which 
 the poly-petticoated philosopher insists s^p pathetically, is 
 unquestionably a key, not only to nine-tenths of the vices, 
 but also to many of the darkest crimes, that stain the 
 annals of the poor. 
 
 Easy, indeed, is it, for such persons as Maggie describes, 
 
 those for whom a serene and quiet life has been pro 
 vided by fortune, who are free from all harassing cares, 
 
 their livelier and more errant feelings all stilled down 
 into torpidity, with not even any tastes to lead astray, 
 nothing, in short, to do but to live a life of substantial 
 comfort within the easy bounds which worldly wisdom pre 
 scribes, easy is it for all these sleek and well-fed mem 
 bers of the venerable corps of " excessively good and rig 
 idly righteous people," as Burns calls them, 
 
 "Whose life is like a weal gaun mill, 
 
 Supplied wi store o water, 
 The heapet happer s ebbing still, 
 And still the clap plays clatter," 
 
 to abstain from vice and crime; for were THEY to be guilty 
 of the outrageous sins of the distressed and tempted, they 
 would be monsters indeed. But, before such sit in judg 
 ment on their fellow-men, 
 
 "Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, 
 Their failings and mischances," 
 
 or boast of keeping their own feet within the prescribed 
 
 bounds of virtue, would they not do well to ask them- 
 9* 
 
210 A PLEA FOR THE ERRING. 
 
 selves how many inward struggles this negative merit has 
 cost them, or whether their circumstances were not such as 
 to render temptation to any glaring error impossible? 
 
 It is said that John Bunyan, seeing a drunkard stag 
 gering along the street, exclaimed, " There, but for the 
 grace of God, goes John Bunyan!" "Tolerance," says 
 Goethe, " comes with age. I see no fault committed that 
 I myself could not have committed at some time or 
 other." Truly, we have but to look into our own hearts 
 to find the germ of many a crime which only our more 
 favored circumstances have prevented us from commit 
 ting; and would we ponder on this thought with a wise 
 humility, it might teach us, not to palliate or excuse, but 
 "more gently to scan our fellow man," to judge merci 
 fully of the sinner while we hate the sin, and, above 
 all, meekly to thank God, not that we are better than 
 other men, but that we, too, have not been brought into 
 temptations too fiery for our strength. " No man," says 
 the large-hearted poet, Burns, " can say in what degree 
 any other persons, besides himself, can be with strict 
 justice called wicked. Let any of the strictest character 
 for regularity of conduct among us examine impartially 
 how many vices he has not been guilty of, not from any 
 care or vigilance, but for want of opportunity, or some 
 accidental circumstance intervening; how many of the 
 weaknesses of mankind he has escaped because he was 
 out of the line of such temptation; and what often, if 
 not always, weighs more than all the rest, how much he 
 is indebted to the world s good opinion, because the world 
 does not know all; I say, any man who can thus think, 
 may view the faults and crimes of mankind around him 
 with a brother s eye." 
 
A PLEA FOR THE ERRING. 211 
 
 It was in a land of harsh moralists, and in an age 
 when little pity was shown to the erring, that Burns 
 wrote these words; but, though in these days a great ad 
 vance has been made, it is doubtful if we yet have suffi 
 cient sympathy for those who stray from the paths of 
 virtue. We need again and again to be reminded that 
 the bad are not all bad; that there is " a soul of goodness 
 in things evil " ; and that in balancing the ledger of human 
 conduct, we should make as large subtraction from the 
 bad man s debit side, as from the good man s credit side, 
 of the account. Not more true is it that there are many 
 " mute, inglorious Miltons," or " village Hampdens," whose 
 lofty intellectual powers, like the music of an untouched 
 instrument, have remained dormant for the want of cir 
 cumstances to call them forth, than that there sleep in 
 the breast of many an innocent man impulses and tend- 
 ences of a wicked character, which need but the breath 
 of occasion to start them into a giant life. The pregnant 
 story of Hazael furnishes not the only instance of a 
 nature which, in ordinary circumstances, was shocked at 
 the very imputation of wrong, and yet, when clothed 
 with despotic authority, exhibited all the odious features 
 of the oppressor and the tyrant. " Nature," says the sen 
 tentious Bacon, " may be buried a great while, and yet 
 revive upon the occasion or temptation; like as it was 
 with yEsop s damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who 
 sat very demurely at the board s end till a mouse ran 
 before her." 
 
 It is a striking fact, noted by Sir Arthur Helps, that 
 the man in all England whose duty it is to know most 
 about crime, has been heard to say that he finds more 
 and more to excuse in men, and thinks better of human 
 
212 A PLEA FOR THE ERRING. 
 
 nature, even after tracking it through the most perverse 
 and intolerable courses. It is the man who has seen most 
 of his fellows, who is most tolerant of his fellow man. 
 In the great Battle of Life, we may see many a fellow 
 creature fall beneath a temptation w T hich from our own 
 shield would have glanced harmless; but let us reflect 
 that, though we might have been adamant to this, there 
 are a thousand other darts of Satan, better suited to our 
 natures, by which, though pressing with less crushing 
 force, we might have perished without a struggle. Only 
 the All-Seeing Eye can discern how far the virtues of 
 any one are owing to a happy temperament, or from 
 how many vices he abstains, not from any care or vigi 
 lance, but, as Burns says, " for want of opportunity, or 
 some accidental circumstance intervening. 1 
 
 When Henry Martyn was in college, he was such a 
 slave to anger that he one day hurled a knife with all his 
 force at a fellow student, which might have killed or 
 fearfully mutilated him, had it not missed the mark, and 
 stuck in the wainscot of the room, " Martyn," exclaimed 
 his friend, in consternation, " if you do not learn to 
 govern your temper, you will one day be hanged for 
 murder! 1 He did learn to govern it; became meek and 
 humble; won high honors in college; went to India as a 
 missionary; distinguished himself as a linguist; trans 
 lated the Testament into several languages; and died, 
 after doing and enduring a vast deal to rescue the East 
 from the darkness of Paganism. What, if with his sensitive 
 and fiery organism, he had been born amid the squalor 
 and vice of St. Giles? Or, who can say what Martin 
 Luther would have become, if, born as he was with organs 
 of destructiveness like those of a bull-dog, he had not 
 
A PLEA FOR THE ERRING. 213 
 
 been led by his religious training to employ his destruc 
 tive energies in killing error instead of in killing human 
 beings? An English writer was so struck with the pro 
 digious energy, the native feral force, of Chalmers, that 
 he declared that had it not been intellectualized and sancti 
 fied, it would have made him, who was the greatest of 
 orators, the strongest of ruffians, a mighty murderer upon 
 the earth. On the other hand, who does not remember 
 that even Nero, at one time of his life, could lament that 
 he knew how to read or write, when called on to sign a 
 death-warrant? The colliers of Bristol had been noted 
 for ages as among the most hardened and profligate of 
 beings, till Whitefield touched them one day with the 
 wand of his magic eloquence. Even a Nelly Sykes, amid 
 the grossest degradation, could do many virtuous actions; 
 and the stern Milton has said that " it was from the rind 
 of one apple that the knowledge of good and evil, as two 
 twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world." 
 Moderate then, thou stern moralist, thy harsh and un 
 relenting views of human guilt: 
 
 " Still mark if vice or nature prompts the deed ; 
 Still mark the strong temptation and the need; 
 On pressing want, on famine s powerful call, 
 At least more lenient let thy justice fall; 
 For him, who, lost to every hope of life, 
 Has long with fortune held unequal strife, 
 Known to no human love, no human care, 
 The friendless, homeless object of despair; 
 For the poor vagrant feel, while he complains, 
 Nor from sad freedom send to sadder chains. 
 Alike if fortune or misfortune brought 
 Those last of woes his evil days have wrought; 
 Believe, with social mercy and with me, 
 Folly s misfortune in the first degree." 
 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 T~S it not surprising that, notwithstanding all that has 
 -- been written on the subject of longevity, so little is 
 really known of the causes and conditions of long life ? A 
 few general hints may be gathered from the records of 
 centenarians, but no exact or satisfactory knowledge. Sir 
 G. C. Lewis, who carefully investigated the subject, posi 
 tively denied that any man ever reached a hundred years, 
 though he was nearly convinced that there were in his 
 day some authentic cases of female centenarianism. His 
 great argument for his position was, that since the Chris 
 tian era no person of royal or noble birth has been alleged 
 to have reached the magic limit. Just as the giants of 
 antiquity, seen through the mist and fog of ages, loom up 
 in preternatural proportions, and dwindle as we draw near 
 the light of modern times, so the lives of the centenarians 
 swell or diminish in length as we advance toward or recede 
 from the prehistoric times. If it be argued that kings 
 and nobles have been exposed to greater dangers and 
 more exhausting labors than other men, that the cares 
 of state, the fierce contentions of politics, the brain-work 
 incident to tangled affairs and court cabals, cut short their 
 days, it may be urged on the other hand, that the higher 
 the rank, the greater the care with which they would be 
 nursed, the better the medical attendance, the food, air, 
 clothing, and all the other conditions on which health and 
 longevity are supposed to depend. It must be admitted that 
 
 214 
 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 215 
 
 the higher a man s rank, the greater is the chance of accu 
 racy in respect to dates ; and that if, in all the cases which 
 can be easily attested, centenarianism has been found to be 
 a myth, there is, at least, a strong presumption against the 
 obscure centenarians who grow up in places where the 
 system of registration is unknown, and where skepticism 
 is less common than credulity and love for the marvelous. 
 This presumption, however, is liable to be rebutted by 
 facts; and we think they exist in sufficient abundance not 
 only to overthrow it, but to prove centenarianism beyond 
 all reasonable doubt. To go back no farther than the 
 Romans, Pliny states, from the record of a census taken 
 during the reign of Vespasian, a source of information 
 entirely trustworthy, that there were living, in the year 
 76, in Italy, in the district between the Apennines and 
 the Po, 124 persons who had attained to the age of 100 
 years and upward. Three of them had lived to 140. 
 Haller long ago declared that more than 1,100 persons 
 had been known to have reached to various ages between 
 100 and 169. Thomas Bailey s book, "Records of Longevity," 
 published in 1857, contains the names of about 4,000 cen 
 tenarians, and Dr. Van Oven has collected notices of 6,201. 
 Of the latter we have the names, country, condition, and 
 date of death, of 99 who reached the age of 130; of 37 
 who lived to be 140 years old ; of 11 who reached 150; 
 and of 17 who exceeded a century and a half. Henry 
 Jenkins, a witness in an English court, swore to a hun 
 dred and fifty years memory, and died at 169. The 
 Countess of Desmond, of whom it is said that 
 
 "She lived to much more than a hundred and ten, 
 And died from the fall of a cherry-tree then," 
 
 was known to Sir Walter Raleigh, though she had lived 
 
216 THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 in the time of Edward the Fourth. Lord Bacon says that 
 she cut three sets of teeth, and lived to the age of 140, 
 the age of Galen. Lord Brougham had a great-aunt who 
 died in 1789 at the age of 106. Allen s American Bio 
 graphical Dictionary gives the names of more than 200 
 centenarians. Among them are Abraham Bogart, who died 
 in Tennessee, in 1833, at the age of 118, and Francis Age, 
 who died in Pennsylvania in 1767, aged 134. Some of 
 our readers will recall Judge Basil Hamilton, the Kala- 
 mazoo centenarian, who died a few years ago at the age 
 of 103. He was one of a family of twenty-three children, 
 and had seventeen of his own. Mrs. Peggy Hatch died in 
 November, 1878, in Waterville, Maine, at the age of ninety- 
 nine years and two months. Mrs. Moses Studley, of Bre 
 men, Maine, is said to be nearly 106 years old. She was 
 born May 25, 1774, and has not been sick for three years. 
 According to the records of the town of York, Maine, 
 Stephen Goodale, who died recently at the poor-house of 
 the town, lived to the age of 118. He was a native of 
 York, and had spent in the poor-house forty-two years. 
 We will cite but two cases more, which, if they can be 
 credited, are among the most extraordinary on record. In 
 January, 1865, two men died, one in France, and the 
 other in the United States, whose united ages are said 
 to have reached the startling number of two hundred and 
 seventy years! The former, Antoine Sauve, a native of 
 Normandy, was an old artillery soldier, who attained to 
 the age of 130 years ; the other, Joseph Crele, who was 
 born near Detroit in 1725, died at Caledonia, Wisconsin, 
 at the age of 140. Sauv6 s father fought against Marl- 
 borough at Ramilies, on May 3, 1706, and his elder brother, 
 Peter Sauv, helped Marshal Saxe to gain the bloody vie- 
 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 217 
 
 tory of Fontenoy in 1745. Crele was seven years old at 
 the birth of Washington, and fifty at the opening of the 
 American Revolution, so that he might have claimed ex 
 emption, on the score of age, from military service. These 
 cases, taken together, however incredible some of them 
 may be, seem conclusive. Granting that many of them 
 are not sufficiently authenticated, yet after the utmost al 
 lowance has been made for errors, misstatements, and wil 
 ful exaggerations, enough remain to establish the truth of 
 ultra-longevity, even to many years over a century, beyond 
 all rational doubt. 
 
 But what are the conditions of longevity, so far as we 
 can gather them from the known cases? Are agricultural 
 districts more favorable than manufacturing, the fresh, 
 open country than the crowded city, mild climates than 
 those whose skies are perpetually scowling? Statistics, 
 well authenticated reports on sickness and mortality, say 
 no; rural districts have, at most, the advantage of one in 
 two hundred deaths above city districts, and one in five 
 hundred above the town. Against the overcrowding, the 
 bad air, the noise and excitement, and the liability to acci 
 dent, in the cities, are set the better water, the greater 
 variety of food, the better knowledge of the laws of health, 
 the more accessible and skillful medical aid, so that the 
 advantages and disadvantages are nearly balanced. Hot 
 climates have no superiority over cold ; China is more 
 unhealthy than Norway, Iceland, or Greenland. Is exer 
 cise a vital condition of longevity? It seems not, in view 
 of the fact that a vicar cited by the London Quarterly 
 Review, Rev. William Davies, reached 105, though his only 
 exercise for the last thirty-five years was to slip one foot 
 before another from room to room. Men have lived a 
 10 
 
218 THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 hundred years and upward who only taxed their physical 
 powers to walk a hundred yards a day, from house to office 
 and back. Is temperance, or total abstinence from alcohol, 
 essential? The best answer to this question is the reply 
 of the nonagenarian to the teetotaler, who, hunting for 
 statistics to fortify his views, asked the aged man the secret 
 of his long life? "I have heard," said the enemy of alco 
 hol, "that you have been very regular in your habits; is 
 it so?" The patriarch admitted the regularity, but added 
 that it consisted in regularly chewing tobacco, " liquoring 
 up " with the regularity of a steam-engine, and regularly 
 going to bed drunk. Some of the toughest constitutions, 
 resembling lignum-vitse in their texture, have been pos 
 sessed by old soakers who were hardly ever sober except 
 when they were drunk. Daniel Bull M Carthy, of Kerry, 
 Ireland, who drank freely of undiluted rum and brandy 
 during the last seventy years of his life, died in 1752 at the 
 age of 111. George Kirton, of Oxnop Hall, Yorkshire, who 
 died in 1764, aged 120, was also a hard drinker. William 
 Hirst, a farm laborer, of Micklefield, Yorkshire, who died 
 very old in 1853, considered rum the balm of his life, and 
 spent for it all the money he received from the parish. 
 Is a proper diet a sine qua non of longevity? All 
 writers on health denounce newly made, and especially 
 hot, bread, and not a few discourage the use of tea and 
 coffee. Yet Mr. Davies, the rector of whom we have 
 spoken, breakfasted heartily on hot rolls, well buttered, ate 
 hot roast meat at supper, and drank wine to the last, 
 though never in excess. He suffered neither from gout, 
 stone, paralysis, rheumatism, nor from any other of the 
 besetting diseases of old age, but died in the full posses 
 sion of all his faculties, mental and physical, but his eye- 
 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 219 
 
 sight. " Like most long livers, he was very short of stat 
 ure. 11 Shall we declare that long life depends on "tub 
 bing," or personal cleanliness? What shall we say, then, 
 of the case of "Lady" Lewson, an eccentric London widow, 
 who reached the age of 106, though she was a mortal foe 
 to cleanliness? She never washed her rooms, nor bathed, 
 declaring that people who did the latter were " always 
 catching cold"; but she habitually smeared her face and 
 neck with hog s lard, and her cheeks with rouge. Eliza 
 beth Durieux, a woman of Savoy, though filthy in her 
 habits, reached 119; and it is affirmed of the Icelanders, 
 that though they are very uncleanly, and suffer much from 
 skin diseases, leprosy in particular, their average longevity 
 exceeds that of the continental nations of Europe. "But 
 health," we hear some one say, "is surely a condition of 
 great length of days." Not at all. Longevity is no more 
 dependent upon health than upon great muscularity. The 
 Tom Hyers and Heenans, the great prize-fighters and 
 heavy-weight lifters, men of brawny muscles, who can fell 
 an ox with their fists, are almost always ailing, and rarely 
 live to sixty or even fifty. The late Dr. Winship, of Bos 
 ton, who could lift three thousand pounds weight, died at 
 forty- two. Lewis Cornaro, who contrived to spin out the 
 thread of existence to one hundred, had so sickly a con 
 stitution, and indulged in such excesses, that, when thirty- 
 five, he was told by his doctors that he could not live over 
 two years. Changing his habits, and limiting himself to 
 twelve ounces of solid food a day, he became comparatively 
 vigorous and hale; and he tells us that when one day he 
 took fourteen ounces of food, and two extra ounces of wine, 
 the addition to his ordinary allowance nearly cost him his 
 life. The celebrated Galen had a weak and delicate con- 
 
JUO I ll I , si .cKKT OK 1,0 NCI \ tTT t 
 
 Slihlliitll. yel h\ strict temperance illld CVCnUCSSo! temper, 
 
 lived on.- hundred ;NK| forty years. II is rule in eating 
 
 : 
 
 \\.i I" ii < from the table ;il\v;i\s while In.; apprlile \\;is 
 unclo\ ed. "The three oldest, people I ever knew," ;i\ ; 
 Dr. K. Soul. hey in Hie London Lancet, "\voinen who reached 
 respectively ei : ;hl\ nine, ninety t i. ,hl, and one hnndi ed, 
 \vro valetudinarians, and had been so nearly all then- 
 lives." 
 
 In spite of all these facts, however, ii, is hard to l>e- 
 h -ve that virtuous habits, abstemiousness, exercise, and 
 cleanliness, do not conduce to longevity. l>ut the one 
 llnii"; which outweighs all other l a\ orable circumstances, 
 is what Sir .lohn Sinclair calls "art-Haiti bodily and men 
 tal predisposition to longevity." Thei-e are persons who, 
 as Sir Thomas Hrowne quaintly says, are " preli^ured unto 
 a loii"; duration." In other words, they have a i/t niux for 
 it. l^ilvc any other t ;ilt, it may be cultivated; like any 
 other, it may be squandered; but it exists independently 
 of all cult ivat ion, and no care can supply its place*. Those 
 whit have this ",ilt, which is inherited, will commonly roach 
 old a_";e, thoii";h they trample on the laws of health; while 
 those who have it not \\ill die comparatively early, in spite 
 of I ho utmost regularity of life, and the strictest precau 
 tions against disease. Temperance, sobriety, and industry, 
 how over desirable and estimable, thoii";h they will proioii:-; 
 exMence, \\ill nol insure to tin* latter a loii", lilt , because 
 the\ lack natural strcii",lh of or";ani. .at ion ; while, on the 
 other hand, I hose who are endowed with the necessary in 
 herent stamina will hold out in spite of t heir excesses and 
 irregularities, because. thoii";h they draw more largely on 
 their resources than the others, they be^in life with a vast 
 capital. 
 
ni !; SK< I;]<:T <>K L<)N<;i<:\ ITY. 221 
 
 of tllO most :cn: ililr ;;i\in;-;; oil the ;i.rl. of lolP e vity 
 
 that have fallen under our notice, so i ;ir as longevity 
 can be considered attainable, was that given l>y an I Lilian 
 
 in his one hundred and ; i xl cent li year. lleing asked the 
 secret of his liviii"; ;:< hi.", , he replied wil.li tha.l improvi 
 sation for which lii.: roiinl .rvnn-ii ;i.n; :;> nohul, - 
 
 " \Vlirn liiin.",ry, ol UK- ln-sl. I fill, 
 And dry and warm I keep my fee!,; 
 I screen my head from sun and ruin, 
 Ami let, lew e.aivs perplex my bruin." 
 
 In Uie;;<- linn:, < ,| >ee,ia,l I y in l,he la,sl, vvi^ ha.ye Mm (juini(!S- 
 sence of all I he a,<lvice that has been, or can bo, given on 
 
 UKJ suhjecl.. The <lea,<lliesl, foe l,o loii^iwily is excilrmnil, 
 "To live lon^, 1 says (!ieer<, u ii, is neees.;a,ry to liv<; slowly/ 
 It is we.ll known in Hie ea,:;e of ordinary machine:;, IJiaf. 
 no (wohilioii of force can lake place wilh iindnr ra,|)idil,y 
 wil.lioiil, i|;iin;i.;ri! l.o I, he iiia.c.hino in which l,he l,i-;i,ii:;lornia- 
 l.ion takes place. Mxpre,;,; mil way :;l<>ck, for e.xa,niple, i;; 
 worn out much soonor iha.n thai which is i-e-i-rvrd for 
 slower ti allic. Tin; la.w is univer;al Ihal, inlen::il,y and 
 <liir;i,l.ioii <if action a,re in v(-r,:ely proporfiona,!, and il, ap 
 plies not le : rigorously to the hiiinaii machino than, to 
 a.ny otJier. Mvery man i; Imrn wil.li a ccrta.in stock of 
 vitality, whir.li cannot he increased, Ixil, which may he ex 
 pended or IIM haiid |, as In: deem:; IMV;!,. Within certa,in 
 limil:: lie ha.: his choice, to live fa.sf or slow, to live 6X- 
 !en:;ively or intensively, to draw his little amount of life, 
 over a l:ir;n- s|ace, or to eondeii:;e if into a, narrower one; 
 hilt when hi; slock i,; r.\li;i.u.;l,ed In: ha:; no more. lie who 
 live:; extensively, who avoid: all ::l imii la nl : take; li"lila,nd 
 Agreeable exercise, never ovortusks himself, indulges no 
 
222 THE SECKET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 exhausting passions, feeds his mind and heart with no 
 exciting material, has no debilitating pleasures, lets noth 
 ing ruffle his temper, "keeps his accounts with God and 
 man daily squared up," is sure, if he has a good organ 
 ism, to spin out his life, barring accidents, to the longest 
 limit to which it is possible to attain; while he who lives 
 intensely, who feeds on highly seasoned food, whether 
 material or mental, fatigues his body or brain by hard 
 labor, exposes himself to inflammatory diseases, seeks con 
 tinual excitement, gives loose rein to his passions, frets at 
 every trouble, and enjoys little repose, is burning the 
 candle at both ends, and is sure to shorten his days. Gen. 
 James Grant Wilson, in his sketch of the poet W. C. Bry 
 ant s life, tells us that when he asked him the secret of 
 his health and vigor at eighty and upward, the poet re 
 plied: "It is all summed up in one word, moderation. 
 As you know, I am a moderate eater and drinker, mod 
 erate in my work, as well as in my pleasures." Cornaro, 
 of whom we have already spoken, was similarly temperate; 
 he ate so little, at last, that he required only an egg a 
 day. On the other hand, how many a young man squan 
 ders on a holiday or an evening s entertainment an amount 
 of nervous energy which he will bitterly feel the want of 
 when he is fifty or sixty! It is curious but true, as some 
 writer saj^s, that a bottle of champagne at twenty may in 
 tensify the rheumatism at threescore; and that overtask 
 ing the eye at fourteen may necessitate spectacles at forty, 
 instead of at sixty. 
 
 Even warm affections are prejudicial; they subject the 
 owner to constant anxiety, and are as wearing as the ex 
 citement produced by politics or gambling. Nothing is 
 more exhausting than anxiety for a sick wife or child, or 
 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 223 
 
 nursing a friend through a long sickness, unless, as an 
 English writer cynically says, " you can say with a good 
 conscience that you don t take much interest in the result, 
 and that you can put him out of your mind, and retire 
 calmly to rest at a moment s notice." When " a fine old 
 man" was mentioned in Swift s presence, he exclaimed 
 angrily, but with too much truth: " There s no such thing; 
 if his head or heart had been worth anything, they would 
 have worn him out long ago." In the same spirit Words 
 worth, who lingered on till he was eighty, complains: 
 
 "Oh, but the good die first, 
 And we, whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 
 Burn to the socket." 
 
 The poet Rogers was a striking exception to Swift s re 
 mark ; at least, till he was ninety } T ears old. He then 
 gradually dropped into that state which makes one query 
 whether a prolonged life be a blessing: 
 
 "Omni 
 
 Meinbrorum damno major dementia, quse nee 
 Nomina servorum, ncc vultus agnoscit ainicum, 
 Cum queis praeterita ccenavit nocte, nee illos 
 Quos genuit, quos eduxit." 
 
 On the other hand, " ugly" people, vulgarly so-called, often 
 live to great age, because they know nothing of the wear 
 and tear of sympathy, and because the very intensity of 
 their ill-nature shows that they have stamina. 
 
 Again, on the theory that our pulse is to beat a cer 
 tain definite number of times, and that every instinct 
 which makes it beat quicker only makes the candle burn 
 the faster, even our fine enthusiasms, if they exceed a gentle 
 glow, and rise into brilliancy or intensity, are costly, and 
 
224 THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 lessen the number of moments we have to live. And if 
 this be so, a fortiori how wearing must be the difficulty 
 of brain-work, the toil of invention, the worry of leader 
 ship, the responsibility of high office, the severity of a lofty 
 ideal, the distraction of numerous sympathies, the perplex 
 ity of nice judgment, or the arduousness of any great vir 
 tue! How few men learn, till it is too late, that their 
 intellectual and emotional natures are subject to laws as 
 stringent and inflexible, in every particular, as those that 
 regulate their bodily functions? How few clergymen, law 
 yers, and busy men on change and boards of trade, real 
 ize that the dyspepsia, in any of its protean forms, with 
 which they may be afflicted, and which is leading to im 
 paired nutrition or structural change, is the direct and 
 inevitable result of the mental strain, the ceaseless tur 
 moil of brain, to which they have for years subjected 
 themselves! How often has the completion of a fortune 
 or an intellectual masterpiece been followed by the death 
 of the business man or the master ! Some years ago 
 a gentleman in England set himself to ascertaining the 
 causes of the premature deaths of his acquaintances who 
 had been cut off within twelve years. Of forty individ 
 uals he found that twenty had died from excessive mental 
 labor or excitement, and twelve of these were not intel 
 lectual laborers, but men of the world. Sydenham tells 
 us that one of the severest fits of gout he ever suffered 
 from, arose from great mental labor undergone in com 
 posing his treatise on that disease. 
 
 Providence has appointed the succession of labor and 
 rest, by the alternation of day and night; yet how many 
 violate this beneficent law by turning night into day, and 
 day into night! They sleep while the sun is shedding his 
 
THE SECKET OF LONGEVITY. 225 
 
 life-giving beams, and work amid the deadly influences of 
 darkness. Many who are scrupulous not to toil at their 
 callings in the night-time, yet imagine that they may do 
 a full day s work, and afterward with impunity spend half 
 or quarter of a night in charitable labor, or in the pur 
 suit of pleasure or knowledge. But nature cannot be so 
 cheated or outwitted. Though a bounteous giver, she is 
 a hard bargainer, and never remits a debt or forgives 
 an error. Occasionally she lets an offender escape for forty 
 or fifty years even, but she is evermore " shadowing " him, 
 and, hauling him up at last, inflicts her penalty just when 
 and where he least anticipates it. 
 
 While all excess is injurious, it must not be inferred 
 that hard brain-work alone, apart from other causes, tends 
 to shorten life. Mental labor, taken by itself, apart from 
 griefs and fears, from forced or voluntary stinting of the 
 body s needed supply of exercise, food or sleep, and the 
 minds supply of social intercourse, rather prolongs life 
 than cuts short or frays its thread. Even overwork of 
 the brain is probably far less injurious than underwork, 
 " that rare and obscure calamity from which nobody is 
 supposed to suffer." Nine-tenths of the students and pro 
 fessional men who are supposed to break down from in 
 tense toil, wear their brains out, not by repletion of study, 
 but by the privation of something else. It is not the brain- 
 work that saps the strength and disorders the nerves, but 
 the constant and willful violation of the laws of nature. 
 It is well known to college officers of much experience, 
 that the chief mortality among the graduates and under 
 graduates is not in the ranks of the workers, but of the 
 idlers ; not among the conscientious students, but among 
 the aimless, the lazy, and the dissipated. The biographies 
 
226 THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 of famous intellectual workers, of all ages and countries, 
 show conclusively that devotion to mental pursuits, even 
 of the severest character, by those who are accustomed to 
 them, is not imcompatible with longevity. Some of the 
 hardest toilers of the brain have lived long lives, termi 
 nating in a serene and cloudless sunset. 
 
 Lord Brougham, who did the work of half-a-dozen men, 
 lived eighty-nine } r ears. Lord Lyndhurst wore out at 
 ninety-one. Epimenides, the seventh of the wise men, is 
 said to have lived to one hundred and fifty- four; Hippoc 
 rates, a prodigious worker, reached ninety-nine. Zeno, the 
 stoic, killed himself at ninety-eight. Pythagoras, Quintil- 
 ian, and Juvenal, reached fourscore, and Chrysippus died 
 of laughter at the same age. Goethe attained to his eighty- 
 second year; Corneille and Crabbe each to seventy-eight; 
 the poet Young and Dr. Franklin to eighty-four ; Colley 
 Gibber to eighty-six; La Fontaine to seventy-four; Joanna 
 Baillie to ninety; Montgomery, the poet, to eighty- two; 
 Sydney Smith to seventy-six; Hannah More to eighty-eight; 
 Sir Isaac Newton to eighty-five; and Humboldt to nearly 
 eighty-six, toiling to the last with all the enthusiasm of 
 his early years. Bentley, Hobbes, Parr, Neander, and 
 Heyne, reached ages between seventy-eight and ninety-one. 
 Rogers, the banker-poet, attained to ninety- two; Grote, the 
 banker-historian, held out to seventy-six. Fontenelle, 
 famed for his universality, lived a century, and when asked 
 at the close of his long and brilliant career if he felt pain, 
 replied, "I only feel the difficulty of existing." As he 
 was nearing his hundredth year, a friend who was ninety 
 said to him: " Death, I think, has forgotten us." " Hush!" 
 said Fontenelle, putting his finger to his lips; "He may 
 overhear us." Lord Chesterfield, the courtier, orator, and 
 
THE SECEET OF LONGEVITY. 227 
 
 wit, the model of politeness, and the oracle of taste, 
 gave up the ghost at seventy-nine with the characteristic 
 remark, " Tyrawley and myself have been dead these two 
 years, but we do not wish it to be known." Dr. Beard, 
 of New York, in an able paper on the " Longevity of Brain- 
 Workers," has proved, beyond even the shadow of a doubt, 
 that the world s hardest workers, so far from being short 
 lived, show a very high average of life, a far higher aver 
 age than the world s drones, and those who had added 
 nothing to its accumulated capital of happiness, knowl 
 edge, goodness, and truth. After examining the age at 
 tained by five hundred of the most eminent men in his 
 tory, including many who, like Raphael, Pascal, Mozart, 
 Byron, and Keats, died young, he found the average age 
 of these eminent men to be sixty-four years and between 
 two and three months. Even of these long livers, it is 
 altogether probable that not a few might have materially 
 lengthened their days by taking more exercise and sleep, 
 and by economizing more carefully their expenditure of 
 intellectual and moral energy. 
 
 The annual necrologies of our colleges and professional 
 schools yield still further testimony to the point in ques 
 tion. At a recent commencement of Brown University, 
 it was found that of thirty-one graduates who had died 
 during the year, and many of whom had filled eminent 
 offices, the average was nearly threescore and ten. Of the 
 class of 1826, seven of which met to celebrate their fiftieth 
 anniversary, it was found that twelve of the twenty-eight 
 who graduated were still living, and that the united ages 
 of the seven present exceeded five hundred. Dr. Madden 
 justly observes that " every pursuit which ennobles the 
 mind has a tendency to invigorate the body, and, by its 
 
228 THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 tranquillizing influence, to add to the duration of life." 
 That mental application is one of the most effective means 
 of relieving bodily pain, and that it is especially fitted to 
 soothe the ruffled spirit, and to mitigate the asperity of 
 corroding anxiety and care, is known to every scholar. 
 When Burton found that his health and mind were fail 
 ing, he began his " Anatomy of Melancholy, 1 a marvel of 
 quaint, out-of-the-way learning, and spun out his thread, 
 cut by himself at last, to sixty-four. Cowper, whose 
 brains were " lined with black, 1 as Burton would say, 
 cheated them of their melancholy with " John Gilpin " and 
 the " Task," and eked out his threescore and ten. Bacon, 
 in his " History of Life and Death," is emphatic in de 
 claring the religious and the literary to be among the 
 forms of life the most conducive to longevity. " There 
 are in this kind of life" (the religious), says he, "these 
 things, leisure, admiration, and contemplation of heavenly 
 things, joys not sensual, noble hopes, wholesome fears, sweet 
 sorrows. Lastly, continual renovations by observances, 
 penances, expiations, all of which are very powerful to the 
 prolongation of life." The literary life, he says, " is led in 
 leisure, and in those thoughts which, seeing that they are 
 severed from the affairs of the world, bite not, but rather 
 delight through their variety and impertinency." 
 
 It is not the severe mental pursuit, but, as a writer in 
 the British Quarterly Review truly says, the pursuit fol 
 lowed without interest that weighs down the most elastic 
 mind and wears out the toughest body. " It is the weari 
 some music lesson, toiled over by the scholar with neither 
 taste nor ear; the drudgery of committing to memory long 
 lists of names, which to the learner are only names; the 
 prosing geographical lessons, where the most interesting 
 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 229 
 
 scenes call up no pictures for the imagination to dwell 
 upon; the historical lecture where, instead of living and 
 breathing men and women, the student is cheated with 
 the mere dry bones of some historical epitome. These 
 constitute hard work, that useless, thankless hard work 
 that frets and injures the fine texture of the brain, and 
 which, as a high medical authority has told us, is the case 
 with all wearisome, toilsome, lengthened, mental labor." 
 
 There is a popular notion, which has long been deeply 
 rooted, that precocity of intellectual development is un 
 favorable to longevity. Dr. Beard, in the paper to which 
 we have referred, has completely exploded this doctrine. 
 He shows conclusively that, as a rule, a brain of excep 
 tional force is united to a constitution of exceptionally 
 good fibre, and that precocity, so far from being premon 
 itory of early death, is almost always a mark of great 
 talents, and usually, therefore, of the constitutional strength 
 of brain which accompanies great talents. Of two hun 
 dred and thirteen musical prodigies, whose ages had been 
 investigated by one Winterburn, whom he cites, it was 
 found that the average age at death was fifty-eight, while 
 some lived to one hundred and three. Of the five hun 
 dred of the most eminent men in history, whose ages Dr. 
 Beard examined, as we have previously stated, and whose 
 average age he found to be sixty-four years and two to 
 three months, one hundred and fifty were decidedly pre 
 cocious; yet of these precocious men of genius the aver 
 age age at death was sixty-six and six months; that is, 
 and the statement will startle most readers, more than two 
 years higher than the average of the whole five hundred, 
 and three years higher than that of the three hundred and 
 fifty who were not precocious. Three of the most preco- 
 
230 THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 cious geniuses of our day were Bishop Thirlwall, Macaulay, 
 and De Quincey, yet they lived to the ages respectively of 
 seventy-eight, fifty-nine and seventy-four. 
 
 Of all the qualities of mind that conduce to longevity, 
 none are more vitally essential than calmness and serenity 
 of temper, and their concomitants, cheerfulness and hope. 
 It was long ago said that the habit of looking on the 
 bright side of things is worth more than a thousand pounds 
 a year. " To be free-minded, and cheerfully disposed, at 
 hours of meat, and of sleep, and of exercises," says Bacon, 
 " is one of the best precepts of long lasting." Worry, it 
 is well known, kills more men than the toughest work. 
 Worry, indeed, is the converse of legitimate work ; the 
 one, as Dr. Baird says, develops force, the other checks its 
 development, and wastes what already exists. It is a truth 
 which few realize, that every fit of despondency or ennui, 
 every emotion of envy, jealousy, or hate, every burst of 
 passion, takes just so much out of our fund of vital force, 
 and tends, therefore, to abbreviate our term of living. 
 Unfortunately many persons, such as the speculator, the 
 railway manager, the great merchant, follow callings the 
 cares and vicissitudes of which almost necessitate both 
 worry and overwork. Persons who vault suddenly into 
 positions for which, their training has not fitted them, 
 especially if these positions involve the bearing on the 
 mind of a multiplicity of intricate and perplexing details, 
 are peculiarly liable to suffer from cerebral overstrain, 
 and consequent exhaustion, and mental anxiety and gloom. 
 Again, worry in literary and artistic callings, where the 
 utmost elaboration and the nicest finish are required to 
 success, is an almost necessary incident of work. If a man 
 has a higher ideal of the kind of work he ought to do, 
 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 231 
 
 or of the quantity of work he ought to do, than he can 
 possibly hope to realize, how can he help worrying about 
 the result when he foresees that it must inevitably fall 
 far short of his wishes? 
 
 While the vices tend generally to shorten life, there is 
 one exception, namely, avarice. Nine persons out of every 
 ten probably eat double, if not treble, the food that is essen 
 tial to robust health, and the excess engenders diseases 
 which induce a prematur old age, and fill many of its 
 days with torment. It is said that the Arabs of the desert 
 are vigorous and long-lived, though they eat but four 
 ounces of gum, or a pint of earners milk, in a day; and the 
 Indian can travel from fifty to eighty miles in that time 
 with only a few ounces of parched corn for his nourish 
 ment. The miser, whom the epicure despises for his ab 
 stemiousness, is really putting himself in precisely the con 
 ditions which are favorable to a long and healthy life. 
 Keeping regular hours, and using the sunlight instead of 
 gas or oil, he rests and works in periods that accord with 
 the periodicity of nature; economizing in his expenditures, 
 and saving from his income, he avoids the self-contempt 
 and worry incident to penury; and dreading all risks, he 
 steers clear of speculation, gambling, and all the tempta 
 tions to amass riches by hazardous means, with the nervous 
 excitement and violent alternations of feeling that attend 
 the gambler s gains and losses. He is thus not only less 
 exposed to disease than other men, but when he becomes its 
 victim suffers far less from its ravages, and more quickly 
 rallies and resumes his wonted vigor. 
 
 It is said that Lord Palmerston, being asked one day by 
 a friend when he considered a man to be in the prime of 
 life, replied: " Seventy-nine. But," he added with a play- 
 
232 THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 ful smile, " as I have just entered on my eightieth year, 
 perhaps I am myself a little past it." The hereditary legis 
 lators of England, thanks to their freedom from " carking 
 cares," and the vigilance with which in the evening of life 
 they have treasured their ever-diminishing vital force, have 
 generally lived to a great age. Of a score of British peers 
 who died in 1859, the united ages of sixteen amounted to 
 1229, an average of almost seventy-seven years to each. Of 
 thirty-two peers who died in 1868, two died between fifty 
 and sixty years old, eight between sixty and seventy, thirteen 
 between seventy and eighty, and seven above eighty. Two 
 of the latter reached eighty-nine. The average of their 
 combined ages was seventy-one and three-eighths years. 
 
 Of all the orders of society no other one is so dis 
 tinguished for its quiet and comfort, and for its exemption 
 from all that exhausts the vital powers as that of the 
 Quakers. A general prosperity, equally removed from 
 greatness on the one hand, and poverty and embarrassment 
 on the other, shines over the meek heads of this amiable 
 and gentle sect, who have often been the first to exemplify 
 in their lives many Christian precepts treated as only theo 
 retical by their fellows. And what is the result? Statis 
 tics show that the chance of life enjoyed by this tranquil 
 race is nearly twice as good as that of other men, thus prov 
 ing that it is the pace that kills, and that temperate labors 
 and pleasures, with the easy temperament that throws 
 off care like rain-drops from a duck s back, are, next to a 
 genius for longevity, the surest passport to a good old age. 
 
 The royal moralist, in summing up the advantages of 
 heavenly wisdom, tells us that length of days is in her right 
 hand, and there is no doubt that a long life, if it be virtu 
 ously and happily spent, is a blessing most earnestly to be 
 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 coveted. The mere lapse of years, however, is not life; 
 "knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone give 
 vitality to the mechanism of existence." The value of 
 time is purely relative; and if we count it by heart-beats, 
 not by the tickings of the clock, or the shadow on the dial, 
 if "he lives longest," as Bailey says, "who knows most, 
 thinks the wisest, acts the best, 1 then many who were rich 
 in years have really died young, while others whose lives, 
 measured by the calendar, were cut short early, have been 
 opulent in life. Shakspeare, who died at fifty-two, lived 
 ten times as long as poor old Parr, who could boast of his 
 one hundred and forty years; Pascal, who crowded into his 
 thirty-nine years the thought of an antediluvian life, was 
 far older than Antoine Souve at a hundred and thirty. 
 Mere old age, following an oyster-like existence, during 
 which one has droned away his life in his shell, never buf 
 feting the waves for himself or others, is a questionable 
 blessing; but the serene old age which is secured by tem 
 perance, sobriety, and the conquest of vicious appetites and 
 passions, the long, mellow autumn of life, in which are 
 harvested the fruits of years of useful toil, is to be 
 coveted and striven for by all. In the words of an old 
 
 poet: 
 
 " It is not growing like a tree 
 
 In bulk doth make man better be, 
 Or standing long, an oak three hundred year, 
 To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere; 
 A lily of a day 
 Is fairer far in May. 
 Although it fall and die that night, 
 It was the plant and flower of light. 
 In small proportions we just beauties see, 
 And in short measures life may perfect be." 
 10* 
 
THE SEASON OF TRAVEL. 
 
 A BOUT the fourth of July the hot weather comes sud- 
 -"- denly upon us, sending the mercury at one leap to 
 90, and thoughts of the sea-shore, the country, and foreign 
 lands, begin to engross men s minds. Through the open 
 window come the roar of the street and the scream of 
 the locomotive, suggesting, the one the boom of the ocean, 
 the other the cool breezes, shady nooks, and quiet of the 
 inland village. The counting-room, the shop, and the office, 
 have suddenly a prison-like look; our work becomes irk 
 some ; the air seems stifling ; an unaccountable restlessness 
 seizes us, and, half unconsciously, we find ourselves rush 
 ing, carpet-bag in hand, to the railway station, as if not 
 only health, but life itself, depended on our transporting 
 ourselves without delay to the mountain-top, the rushing 
 stream, or the open sea perhaps to some foreign land. 
 
 There is something almost ludicrous in the suddenness 
 with which, at this season, from a nation of intense work 
 ers, thinking only of money-making, we are metamorphosed 
 into a nation of travelers ; and it may be true that, as 
 many a paterfamilias grumbles, locomotion has become a 
 mania of Americans. "Traveling,"" says Emerson, "is a 
 fool s paradise," and no doubt we may expect too much 
 from it. It is true, as the Roman satirist declares, that 
 corroding care scales the brazen-beaked galleys, and that 
 no exile from his country is an exile from himself; or, as 
 the Concord philosopher echoes, that we may pack our 
 
THE SEASON OF TRAVEL. 
 
 235 
 
 trunks, embrace our friends, embark on the sea, and at 
 last wake up in Naples; yet there beside us is the stern 
 fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that we fled from. 
 Our giant goes with us wherever we go. Though we take 
 to ourselves the wings of the morning, and fly to the ut 
 termost parts of the earth, we cannot change our tem 
 perament or constitution; we are still the same grumbling 
 Jones or foolish Brown; we cannot, by running across the 
 sea, run away from our proper selves. Yet, if we cannot 
 "reconstruct 11 our natures, we may at least gain intel 
 lectual expansion by travel; and therefore the man of in 
 tellect and the man of learning, equally with the coxcomb 
 and the man of fashion, will always delight in this stirring 
 idleness, this indolent activity. The most phlegmatic minds 
 are stimulated by the succession of novelties it affords; 
 and the senses never hold so justifiable a sway over the 
 intellect as when they are indulged with the stimulus of 
 perpetual change, and banquet upon .a kaleidoscopic va 
 riety of sights and scenes under the plea of intellectual 
 advantage. 
 
 Aside from this, it is unquestionably a good thing in 
 itself to be "knocked about in the world," not forcibly 
 propelled by the application of others 1 heels, but tossed 
 about, jolted from town to town, from continent to conti 
 nent, now on railroads, now on steamboats, and anon in 
 buggy, stage-coach, diligence, or on the " raging canal,"- 
 anyway but on a fence-rail and learning to bear one s 
 lot ungrumblingly, whatever bed or board, edibles or pota 
 bles, may be set before him. Those who talk of travel as 
 a mere " fashion " forget that there is in human nature 
 an intense craving for change. The more intense the life 
 we live, the stronger and more imperious does that crav- 
 
236 THE SEASON OF TRAVEL. 
 
 ing become. Even the physical organs become weary at 
 last of the same things; the lungs always breathing the 
 same air, the stomach always taking the same food, the 
 ears always hearing the same sounds, even the eyes always 
 resting on the same round of familiar objects, become dis 
 gusted, lose their tone, and cry out for change. But the 
 mind, even more than the body, tires of the mill-horse 
 round. The brain, like the stomach, is disgusted, if it has 
 always the same work to do, or the same material to work 
 upon. The nerves, like the muscles, grow weary of same 
 ness, and must have the stress of labor shifted, and the 
 continuity of labor broken. 
 
 Arctic explorers tell of the dreadful persecution of per 
 petual daylight in the six months polar day, and of the 
 terrible depression produced by perpetual darkness in the 
 six months night. But scarcely less depressing is the 
 effect of perpetual work amid the same scenes, with no 
 play or rest. Life is a balance of opposites, health is their 
 equipoise, and the overbalance of either is disease. Hence 
 the necessity of recreation to redress the injured balance 
 of our nature, and hence the absurdity of saying that it 
 is fashion merely which drives men away in the hot months 
 from their homes; for the fashion is dictated by a deep- 
 lying instinct, and originates in physical and intellectual 
 need. Camping out on the Adirondacks, trouting in the 
 Lake Superior region, or at Moosehead Lake, climbing 
 the dizzy heights of the White Mountains, yachting and 
 bathing at Newport, journeying on foot from village to 
 village, making flying visits to the Old World, all these 
 modes of recreation are compensatory and health-restoring, 
 and are worth many times the greenbacks they cost to 
 enjoy them. Travel lifts both the bodily machine and the 
 
THE SEASON OF TRAVEL. 237 
 
 mental out of the rut in which they have been cabined, 
 cribbed, and confined; it breaks up the monotony and 
 stagnation of life; it vivifies the faculties which have been 
 long suppressed, and out of the scholar, the merchant, or 
 the artisan, reproduces and recreates the man. It emanci 
 pates the student from the books over which he has pored 
 too long; the dealer in merchandise or stocks from the 
 bondage of the day-book and ledger; the clergyman from 
 his musty theology, and the lawyer from the bickerings 
 of Doe and Roe; and it liberates woman from those petty 
 and monotonous domestic cares which tyrannize over her 
 daily life, and check all efforts at self-culture. Especially 
 to those who have reached what has been called the stag 
 nation period of life, who are afflicted with the maladie 
 de quarante aws, is this specific to be recommended. 
 When world-weariness, sadness of heart and countenance, 
 doubts if the play be worth the candle, and all the feel 
 ings that go to make up that tedium vitce which tempts 
 so many to shuffle off this mortal coil, seize upon us, and 
 all the uses of the world seem stale, flat and unprofitable, 
 then is the time to jump, carpet-bag in hand, on board 
 the railway car or steamer, to cut all the ties that bind 
 us to our country, calling and home, and, in a perfect 
 vacation from accustomed duties, faces and aims, to give 
 one s self up to the novelties, incidents and refreshings of 
 travel. It carries the soul, as another has said, over the 
 dead-point in its revolution; it gives the heart time to 
 adjust itself to a new order of circumstances, to take a 
 fresh start, with new and higher motives, and to recover 
 a youth and a goal which no future circumstances can 
 take away or render uninviting. 
 
 But it is chiefly as a prescription for bigotry and preju- 
 
238 THE SEASON OF TRAVEL. 
 
 dice that travel, and especially foreign travel, is to be 
 commended. No doubt there are many persons who add 
 little to their stock of information by visiting other lands, 
 men whose conversation is no more enriched by what 
 they see abroad than was Lord Charlemont s, of whom 
 Johnson grumbled that he never but once had heard him 
 talk of what he had seen, and that was of a large ser 
 pent in one of the Pyramids of Egypt. If a man has no 
 classical or historical knowledge, it is altogether probable 
 that his patriotism will not gain force upon the plains of 
 Marathon, and that his piety will not grow warmer among 
 the ruins of lona; and that if he lacks an artistic educa 
 tion or a cultivated taste, he will derive no more benefit 
 from a visit to the Pitti Palace, the Vatican, or the Louvre, 
 than the great majority of the well-dressed mob who 
 lounge there, and who inwardly regard the pictures as 
 a bore. But though it is too true, as Tom Hood laments 
 in his Ode to Rae Wilson, that 
 
 "Alas! 
 Some minds improve by travel, others rather 
 
 Resemble copper wire or brass, 
 Which gets the narrower by going farther," 
 
 yet this proves only that the eye sees what it brings the 
 means of seeing, and that, as the proverb says, he that 
 would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry 
 out the wealth of the Indies. The general truth remains, 
 that travel brushes away the contractedness, shakes off the 
 one-sidedness, knocks out the nonsense, and polishes the 
 manners of a man, more effectually than any other agency. 
 The great defect of your chimney-corner people is, that 
 they have no breadth or expansiveness of ideas, no knowl 
 edge of, or sympathy with, the millions of their race out 
 
THE SEASON OF TRAVEL. 239 
 
 of their own immediate circle. Hugging perpetually their 
 own firesides, they come at last to confound what is acci 
 dental with what is essential; to fancy that their own no 
 tions, tastes, and feelings, are inseparable from the nature 
 of man. Rabelais has felicitously hit off this whole class 
 of persons by describing them as persons who seem as if 
 they had lived all their lives in a barrel, and only looked 
 out at the bung-hole. Going abroad and ventilating their 
 ideas among strangers, they find that dogmas which they 
 have always looked upon as unquestionable, because they 
 have never heard them questioned, are rejected by great 
 and enlightened communities ; that feelings which they 
 had thought instinctive to the race are unknown to whole 
 nations ; that notions and opinions which have excited 
 their contempt or horror are regarded as ennobling and 
 sublime by millions. They thus lose that Chinese cast of 
 mind, that stupid contempt for everything beyond the wall 
 of their celestial empire, which once made them ridiculous. 
 They doubt where they once dogmatized ; they tolerate 
 where they once execrated. New associations take place 
 among their ideas; they overhaul the old rubbish of their 
 opinions ; bigotry and prejudice are exploded ; and the 
 whole man, perhaps, undergoes a revolution of sentiments 
 and sympathies as complete as the mutation of form in 
 certain insects. 
 
 For these reasons we rejoice in the increasing passion 
 for travel, and cry " lo Triumphe!" to every locomotive 
 that trails its murky banner along the air. Foreigners 
 may smile at what they term our national mania for loco 
 motion, the Bedouin habits of our people; but we regard 
 this circulation, this vagabondizing instinct, this ebb and 
 flow of the masses of our population north, south, east 
 
240 THE SEASON OP TRAVEL. 
 
 and west as the very life-tide of our system. Let the 
 sharp-witted, speculative Yankee, and the impetuous native 
 of the South, the frank, open-hearted son of the West, and 
 the calm-minded, dignified inhabitant of the Middle States, 
 jostle freely together, giving and taking the peculiar tastes, 
 feelings and opinions of their respective communities, and 
 we shall have no fears of disunion or sectional broils. It 
 is ignorance and isolation only which create a want of 
 sympathy; and no American, therefore, should consider his 
 education as complete until he has studied geography prac 
 tically, not merely by scaling the dizzy heights of Mont 
 Blanc, or exploring the vales of Cashmere, but by travel 
 ing over the length and breadth of that mighty country 
 stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which he boasts 
 as " his own, his native land." 
 
HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION. 
 
 rriHE tendency to over-stimulate the mental faculties of 
 -*- the young in this country has been often rebuked by 
 the press, but was never, we think, more alarming than 
 now. When Mr. Parton visited Chicago some time since, 
 to write his article on that city for the " Atlantic Monthly," 
 he was struck with the general excellence of our public 
 schools, but was painfully impressed with the conviction 
 that they were intellectual, hot-houses, where the minds of 
 the young were rapidly developed, but developed at the 
 expense of physical vigor, and at the risk of ultimate 
 weakness, and even insanity. But Chicago is not the only 
 city where the young are educated by steam. The idea 
 that the intellectual growth of children should be forced 
 like lettuces in hot-houses, is prevalent all over the country. 
 East and West, North and South, there is a rage for clever 
 ness; and though, like the pearl in the oyster, it be the 
 result of disease, it is yet encouraged and applauded even 
 when it involves the ruin of both the physical and moral 
 health. The "smart" boy is incited to display his abilities 
 before admiring visitors, and the "smart" girl is perched 
 upon a music-stool at ten or twelve years of age to play a 
 sonata of Beethoven. In a New York paper we read of a 
 little girl whose parents boast that she is so absorbed in 
 her school lessons that she says them over nightly in her 
 sleep. The town of Essex, Massachusetts, boasts of another 
 
 11 241 
 
242 HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION. 
 
 infant phenomenon, which, though only three years old, 
 plays over three hundred pieces on the piano. At a Sun 
 day school celebration on Long Island, where prizes were 
 given to those children who recited from memory the great 
 est number of verses from the Bible, a little pale-faced 
 prodigy, a girl of only four years old, distanced all her 
 rivals by repeating one hundred and eleven verses of Mark s 
 Gospel! Englishmen, it is said, are surprised at the preco 
 city of American children, and the variety of their attain 
 ments at an early age; but even John Bull is beginning to 
 copy our absurdities, and to be dissatisfied unless the young 
 travel in "lightning express" trains along the railways of 
 knowledge. An English editor met a little girl going to 
 school the other day, who had work enough cut out for a 
 full-grown Euclid. Besides lessons in orthography, ety 
 mology, and syntax, she had others to learn in astronomy, 
 belles-lettres, music, drawing, and political economy, with 
 side issues, consisting of cardboard, needle-work, and Ber 
 lin wool, pictures of lemon-colored sheep kept from indigo 
 lions by a saffron-colored shepherd, and the whole to be 
 done up and finished in three hours! 
 
 A writer in Macmillan s Magazine, a few years ago, 
 spoke of four cases that had come to his knowledge of girls 
 seriously injured by excessive educational cramming. In 
 one, the brain was utterly unable to bear the burden put 
 upon it, and the pupil was removed from school in a highly 
 excitable state; in another, epileptic fits had followed the 
 host of subjects pressed upon the scholar; in the third, the 
 symptoms of brain fog had become so obvious that the 
 amount of schooling had been greatly reduced; and in a 
 fourth fits had been induced, followed by complete prostra 
 tion of brain. The same writer quotes from a work by 
 
HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION. 243 
 
 Brudenell Carter on " The Influence of Education and 
 Training in Preventing Diseases of the Nervous System," a 
 statement that there is a large public school in London 
 where boys from ten to twelve years old carry home tasks 
 which will occupy them till near midnight, and where the 
 rules and laws of study are so arranged as to preclude the 
 possibility of sufficient recreation. Some years ago the 
 British public was startled by the suicides of young men 
 who had been preparing for examination at the University 
 of London. As if the cubic capacity of the British skull 
 were annually increasing, new studies are continually 
 added to the academic curriculum, which exacts an amount 
 of labor suited only to a matured brain. Facts like these 
 are alarming, and show that in education, as in everything 
 else, the " haste that makes waste " is the great curse of 
 modern life. Instead of following the course which nature 
 dictates, and leaving the child to feel its own powers, and 
 to revel in infantile wonder at the objects which solicit its 
 gaze, we begin at once to worry it with school-books, and 
 labor with might and main to make it " a useful member 
 of society. 1 Before the age of four we begin the work of 
 oppressing its little brain with an incubus of technical 
 terms and pedantic phrases, and compel it to acquire, by 
 painful and irksome attention, things which would tax 
 severely the intellect of an adult. At seven or eight it is 
 deep in the mysteries of arithmetic, grammar, " geography 
 and the use of globes 1 ; at nine or ten we cram it with 
 Greek and Latin ; at twelve to fourteen it vaults into Col 
 lege and coat-tails; and at seventeen or eighteen has been 
 dragged through a four-years course, having acquired a 
 smattering of everything, with a thorough knowledge of 
 
244 HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION. 
 
 nothing, and having finished its education almost before it 
 should have fairly begun. 
 
 Can any man doubt the fatal effects of such a process? 
 Is it not almost sure to stunt the intellect, to exhaust 
 prematurely the intellectual energies, and thus doom the 
 future man to be an intellectual dwarf ? We hear a great 
 hue and cry about " the educational advantages enjoyed by 
 children in our day/ But in what do these boasted privi 
 leges consist? Is it in the fact that we force open with 
 hasiy hand the 3 7 oung and tender buds of mind; that we 
 encourage precocity of brain at the cost of lasting vigor; 
 that we exhaust the mental soil by crops too heavy for it? 
 Should we consider him wise who would endeavor to plant 
 an oak in a flower-pot? and is it quite sagacious to cloud 
 the open brow of childhood with mannish thoughts, and to 
 shadow with worldly wisdom faces which " should not have 
 borne this aspect yet for many a year?" Let the intellec 
 tual stature of succeeding generations answer. Let the 
 early lives of all men who have astonished the world by 
 the greatness of their intellectual endowments answer. 
 Let the scores and hundreds of men answer who crawl 
 along through life prematurely old, men all brain, with 
 no bodies, mere ghosts or phantoms of humanity, who 
 have never enjoyed a feeling of youtli, and whose over-stimu 
 lated education has been the grave of their healths, pleas 
 ures, and affections. Oh! that doting fathers and mothers, 
 who study only to make their children prodigies of 
 precocity, would take a lesson from Nature ! she who 
 hides the germs and first stirrings of all life in darkness; 
 who is always forced, yet content, to begin with the mi 
 nutest particles, and who never attempts to produce any 
 thing great except by slow and tedious processes of growth 
 
HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION. 245 
 
 and assimilation. How tardily and snail-like she crawls 
 about her task of creating anything that is to be lasting or 
 valuable. SHE never is in a hurry, or does anything per 
 saltum in a day, and at a jerk, as it were. She has no 
 steam-engine processes, or science-made-easy modes of op 
 eration. She cannot get to the end of her journey, as we 
 can, in a trice, by a short cut or royal road with a hop, 
 skip and jump only. She runs up no oaks in a year or 
 two, nor requires less than ages to consummate the virtues 
 of her diamonds. It takes her twenty years to grow a 
 common man, a thousand to grow a nation, and a thousand 
 more to grow a philosopher. 
 
 Of all the human organs the brain is in childhood the 
 most delicate. The nervous system, the source of all vital 
 energy, predominates in youth, and, if it be subjected to too 
 severe a strain, it is at the expense of the other parts of the 
 body at the very time when the greatest amount of vital 
 power is required, and when nature is striving to perfect 
 the physical system. If the strain be long continued, the 
 result is not necessarily, as in the case of the adult, fatigue, 
 which may be readily relieved by rest, but the organ itself 
 yields, and its efficiency is impaired. There "will be, as in 
 the adult, increased circulation and activity of the nutri 
 tive functions of the brain; but "there is this difference: 
 that the brain tissue here is soft and yielding, and, instead 
 of offering the normal resistance to the abnormal flux of 
 blood, it yields to the pressure, the vessels become enlarged, 
 perhaps permanently, and congestion is the result, pro 
 ductive not only of serious consequences for the time being, 
 but, by the very fact of its occurrence, inducing an ever- 
 increasing liability to its occurrence. Then, perhaps, the 
 overcharged vessels make an attempt to relieve themselves 
 
246 HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION". 
 
 by pouring out some of their fluid contents, and effusion 
 into the ventricles, or on the surface of the brain, is the 
 consequence." * " Mentally speaking, 1 says Dr. George 
 Moore, " those who bear the palm in severe universities are 
 often destroyed by the effort necessary to obtain the dis 
 tinction. Like phosphorescent insects, their brilliance lasts 
 but a little while, and is at its height when on the point of 
 being extinguished forever. The laurel crown is commonly 
 for the dead, if not corporeally, at least spiritually; and 
 those who attain the highest honors of their Alma Mater 
 are generally diseased men." 
 
 The sooner American fathers and mothers cease to pride 
 themselves on the ambition and intelligence only of their 
 children, and begin to exult in the development of their 
 limbs, muscles, and solid flesh, the better will it be for the 
 nation. All experience shows that it is not those that are 
 hurried the fastest over the first steps in knowledge that 
 make the greatest headway in after-life. Many a person, 
 by having his mental energy prematurely exhausted in 
 childhood, has been doomed to be an intellectual dwarf all 
 the rest of his days. Teachers who overtax their pupils 
 commit the old mistake of fancying that suffering which 
 does not follow on the heels of transgression will never 
 come. The worst effects of excessive mental labor do not 
 always appear in the form of an overt mental ailment, but 
 in a morbid irritability which deprives the brain of its 
 natural elasticity, and of its power to endure severe and 
 protracted exertion. It is true that children who are kept 
 from school, and whose brains are suffered to lie fallow for 
 a few years, do not gratify the vanity of their parents by 
 their precocity, but they are meanwhile accumulating such 
 
 * "A Physician s Problems." By Charles Elam, M.D., M.R.C.P. 
 
HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION. 247 
 
 an amount of physical and mental strength as will enable 
 them to advance with redoubled impetus hereafter. Robust 
 health, rosy cheeks, well-developed limbs, and lungs that 
 " crow like chanticleer," and make the air ring with laugh 
 ter and shouts, and now and then screams, are far surer 
 indications of a future stalwart intellect than all the 
 mental feats that ever delighted a father s heart. It is a 
 well-established fact that men of true genius have often 
 manifested little superiority of talent in childhood. Great 
 intellectual power is frequently tardy in its development, 
 and often there is a seeming sluggishness or obtuseness, 
 during their early years, in those gifted persons that subse 
 quently tower a head and shoulders above their fellows. 
 " Give me the plodding student," Sir Henry Saville, head 
 master of Eton in the time of Elizabeth and James, used 
 to say; "if I would look for wits, I would go to Newgate: 
 there be wits." Rousseau somewhere remarks that nothing 
 is more difficult than to discriminate between real dullness 
 in children and that apparent and fallacious stupidity which 
 is the forerunner of great abilities. The younger Cato, in 
 his infancy, passed for an idiot; Goldsmith was dull in 
 youth; the school-master of the brilliant Richard Brins- 
 ley Sheridan pronounced the boy " an incorrigible dunce " ; 
 Chatterton was so slow at learning in childhood that he 
 was sent home to his mother as " a fool, of whom nothing 
 could be made." His mother was equally unsuccessful in 
 teaching him ; yet he afterward learned fast enough when 
 he began the task of self-culture. Sir Humphry Davy 
 declared that he had made himself what he was, and re 
 joiced in after-life that he was allowed to be so idle at 
 school. Robert Burns was " a dour, sulky callan " at 
 school, and when the master undertook to teach the pupils 
 
248 HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION". 
 
 a little sacred music, Burns s ear was so dull, and his voice 
 so untunable, that he could not frame a note, and he was 
 distanced by all the other boys. Dr. Scott, the famous 
 commentator, when twelve years old could hardly com 
 pose a correct English sentence. Dr. Adam Clarke, an 
 other celebrated Biblical commentator, was considered a 
 grievous dunce in youth, and was seldom praised by his 
 father except for his ability to roll large stones, " an 
 ability," says a medical writer, " which I conceive a parent 
 should be prouder to have his son possess, previous to the 
 age of seven or eight, than the ability to recite all that is 
 contained in all the manuals, magazines, and books for 
 infants that have ever been published." A farmer in Wis 
 consin, who had been a school-boy with Charles Dickens, 
 was asked one day "if he was bright. " " Not at all," was 
 the reply; " we thought the one who died down there in Chi 
 cago was by far the brightest." Sir Walter Scott had the 
 credit of having " the thickest skull in the school " when he 
 attended the High School in Edinburgh, and disgusted his 
 kind master by his negligence and frivolity. If there was 
 any " bicker," however, or fight with the boys of other 
 schools, " Wattie Scott" was sure to be a ringleader, and in 
 the very thick of the fray. Even at the University he did 
 no better, and went by the nickname of " The Great Block 
 head." His bodily powers, however, had been fully de 
 veloped and matured, and he had devoured a great amount 
 of miscellaneous reading-matter. Even Newton ranked low 
 as a scholar in his boyhood; and the father of Isaac Bar 
 row, Newton s successor at Cambridge, deemed his son such 
 a marvel of stupidity, that he used to say that if it pleased 
 God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might 
 be Isaac, as he was the least promising. At school little 
 
HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION. 249 
 
 Isaac was noted chiefly for his love for fighting, in which 
 he got many a bloody nose. Neither Dryden nor Swift 
 showed talent in his early writings. " Indifferent in be 
 havior, and of doubtful hope," was scored against the name 
 of Berzelius, the eminent Swedish chemist, when he left 
 school for the university. Liebig was distinguished only 
 as a " booby " at school; and when, in reply to the sneering 
 inquiry what he proposed to become since he was so dull a 
 scholar, he said he would be a chemist, the whole school 
 burst into a laugh of derision. The only boy in the school 
 who disputed with Liebig the title of " booby " was one 
 who could never get his lesson by heart, but was continu 
 ally composing music by stealth, and whom Liebig found 
 afterward at Vienna to be distinguished as a composer, and 
 conductor of the Imperial Opera House. Douglas Jerrold 
 was dull in childhood, and could hardly read at nine. 
 Generals Grant and Sheridan graduated at West Point low 
 down in their classes, and General Washington exhibited 
 but little intellectual power in his youth. 
 
 The following anecdote is told of a pupil of General 
 Salem Towne, of Charlton, Mass., who was a teacher in the 
 early part of his life, and who died a few years ago at the 
 age of ninety-two. One day a boy was brought to him, of 
 whom the account given was that he was so incorrigible 
 a dunce, that none of his masters had been able to make 
 anything of him ; and he was brought to Mr. Towne as 
 a last experiment, before apprenticing him to a mechanical 
 trade. The next morning Mr. Towne proceeded to examine 
 him, preparatory to entering upon his instruction. At the 
 first mistake he made the boy dodged on one side, with 
 every sign of terror. "Why do you do that?" asked the 
 master. " Because I was afraid you were going to strike 
 
250 HOT-HOUSE EDUCATION. 
 
 me." "Why should you think so?" "Because I have 
 always been struck whenever I made a mistake." "You 
 need never fear being struck by me," said Mr. Towne. 
 " That is not my way of treating boys who do as well as 
 they can." The lad very soon improved rapidly under 
 this new treatment, so that Mr. Towne advised his father 
 to give him a liberal education. The father consented, 
 and William L. Marcy became a lawyer, judge, governor, 
 United States senator, and secretary of war and of state. 
 
 We might name many other powerful minds that were 
 protected in childhood from injury by their educators by 
 an almost preternatural armor of stolidity; but these will 
 suffice. Let parents, then, not be in a hurry to develop 
 their children s abilities, as the consequences may be fatal. 
 " If a parent," says that acute medical writer, Dr. Edward 
 Johnson, " were seen urging and tempting and stimulating 
 his child to the performance of an amount of labor with 
 legs and arms, sufficient to tax the health and strength 
 of a full-grown man, all the world would say, Shame 
 upon him! he will cripple his child with excessive work. 
 Yet everybody seems to think that, though the limbs of 
 children cannot, without injury, be urged and tasked to 
 do the work of man s limbs, yet that their brains may be 
 tasked to any degree with impunity. What is there in 
 the brain and its powers essentially differing from the leg? 
 Nothing whatever. But people seem to look upon the 
 brain as a mystical, magical something or other, which is 
 exempt from the ordinary laws which govern all the other 
 organs of the body. The principal business of a child s 
 limbs is to grow and acquire strength. Thought, reflection 
 and study constitute the natural work of man s brain, as 
 plowing and sawing are the work of a man s limbs." 
 
ORIGINALITY. 
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, speaking in one of his vigor 
 ous essays of the baleful effects of literary envy and 
 jealousy, says that " one of the most common is the charge 
 of plagiarism. When the excellence of a new composition 
 can no longer be contested, and malice is compelled to 
 give way to the unanimity of applause, there is yet this 
 one expedient to be tried, by which the author may be 
 degraded, though his ivork be reverenced; and the excel 
 lence which we cannot obscure may be set at such a dis 
 tance as not to overpower our fainter lustre. Tins accu 
 sation is dangerous, because, even while it is false, it may 
 sometimes be urged with probability " Charges of this kind 
 have been made so often and so recklessly of late, so 
 much cheap ridicule has been expended upon literary 
 "assimilation" by witlings, who know of no way of using 
 other men s ideas except by filching them bodily, that 
 it may be worth while to inquire into the philosophy of 
 literary creation. Is there such a thing as originality, 
 pure and absolute originality, in letters? Is it, or is it 
 not, still true that, as the wise man proclaimed twenty- 
 eight hundred years ago, there is nothing new under the 
 sun? Are all the supposed novelties of thought that de 
 light or startle us in the works of the day, only rehabili 
 tations of old ideas, or was Chaucer in error when he 
 sang, 
 
 251 
 
252 ORIGINALITY 
 
 " For out of olde feldes, as men saith, 
 Cometh al this newe corn from yeer to yere, 
 And out of olde bokes, in good faith, 
 Cometh al this newe science that men lere " ? 
 
 The answer to this* question depends upon the precise 
 meaning we attach to the word originality. If by origi 
 nality we mean an absolute initiation of what is essentially 
 new in science, art, action, method, or application, it is 
 pretty certain that there has been nothing of the kind 
 since the first germs of thought began to bud and blos 
 som in the prehistoric ages. The germs quickened apace, 
 and multiplied so fast, the intellectual debts from man 
 to man accumulated so rapidly, that originality became 
 lost in antiquity. If we examine modern works of fancy, 
 we shall find that the writers have, strictly speaking, 
 created nothing new; they have only recombined old ma 
 terials, or given new wings to an old body. As our very 
 speech has sprung from roots in scores of dialects, and as 
 our modern machines have their roots in the graves of 
 forgotten inventors, so our literature has blossomed out 
 of a boundless antiquity. Its luxuriant foliage and huge 
 forest growth, which now so gratefully overshadow us, are 
 " rooted in strata of decaying or decayed mind, and de 
 rive their nourishment from them; the very soil we turn 
 is the loose detritus of thought, washed down to us through 
 long ages." In short, we are all our fathers sons. The 
 wisdom of our ancestors, for two hundred generations 
 back, runs in our blood. The thought, study and research 
 of a million of our predecessors are condensed into our 
 mental constitution. All the ages have shared in making 
 us what we are. The wisdom of Moses and Solomon, the 
 glowing fervor of David, Ezekiel, and Isaiah, the sublime 
 
ORIGINALITY. 253 
 
 pathos of Jeremiah, the speculations of Plato and Aristotle, 
 the winged words of Homer, the vivida vis of ^Eschylus 
 and Dante, the sterling sense of Horace, the oceanic genius 
 of Shakspeare, the profound thought of Bacon, Descartes, 
 Kant, Pascal, Newton, Leibnitz, and Kepler, are all repre 
 sented in the fibre of our brain and in our ideas. Few 
 educated men to-day have read the "Inferno"; fewer still 
 the "Novum Organum," or the " Principia"; yet who can 
 say how much poorer they would have been intellectually, 
 had Dante, Bacon, and Newton, never lived, or had they 
 with miser-like selfishness kept their thoughts to them 
 selves ! 
 
 The originality which some critics demand is simply an 
 impossibility. To attain it, a writer must make a tabula 
 rasa of his brain; he must place himself in the condition 
 of the first man, and ignore all- the ideas which he owes 
 to his contemporaries and the generations before him. 
 Like the Greek hero, he must shut his eyes, close his nos 
 trils, and seal his ears with wax, lest he catch the infec 
 tion of other men s thought; or, better* still, he should be 
 shut up from childhood, like Miranda, on a desert island, 
 with no companion but Caliban. Unfortunately, or rather 
 fortunately, he lives in the great ocean of human thought, 
 and cannot, if he would, be unaffected by its contact. He 
 can no more shut himself off from the universal life than 
 the most secluded loch or bay can cease, in the flooding and 
 ebbing of its tiny waters, to respond to the great tidal 
 movements of the ocean. The most conscientious writer, 
 however hard he may strive to be original, is compelled 
 to be, in a greater or less degree, a literary resurrection 
 ist. His brain i.s full of old material that has lost its 
 labels. The echoes of other men s wit and wisdom linger 
 
254 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 in his brain long after he has forgotten their origin. 
 Again, all the topics of literature have been exhausted, 
 and when he is most confident of having hit upon a new 
 idea, he finds, sooner or later, that he was anticipated ages 
 before, and has only changed the form of its expression. 
 Johnson was so convinced of this that he thought of com 
 posing a work "to show how small a quantity of real 
 fiction there is in the world, and that the same images, 
 with very little variation, have served all the authors who 
 have ever written." Piron was so angry because his pre 
 decessors had forestalled him, and robbed him in advance 
 of all his ideas, that he declared he would do as they did, 
 and forestall his descendants: 
 
 "Malheur aux ecrivains qui viendront aprfcs moi!" 
 
 Addison and Goldsmith, each in his turn, felt that he 
 had come at the eleventh hour. The sickles of others had 
 already reaped the full crop of wisdom. " It is a misfor 
 tune," said the latter, " for fine writers to be born in a. 
 period so enlightened as ours. The harvest of wit is 
 gathered in, and little left to glean." " In our own times," 
 says Jeffrey, " all the higher walks of literature have been 
 so long and so often trodden that it is scarcely possible to 
 keep out of the footsteps of some of our precursors. The 
 ancients, it is well known, have stolen most of our bright 
 thoughts, and not only visibly beset all the patent ap 
 proaches to glory, but swarm in such ambushed multitudes 
 behind, that when we think we have gone fairly beyond 
 their plagiarisms, and honestly worked out an original 
 excellence of our own, up starts some deep-read antiquary 
 and makes it out, much to his own satisfaction, that heaven 
 knows how many of these busybodies have been before- 
 
ORIGINALITY. 255 
 
 hand with us in the genus and the species of our invention." 
 In a similar vein the Chevalier de Cailly, two hundred years 
 ago, being charged with stealing from the ancients, laughed 
 at their pretensions: 
 
 "Dis-je quelque chose assez belle! 
 L antiquitS tout en cervelle 
 Pretend 1 avoir elite avant moi! 
 C est ime plaisante clonzelle! 
 Que ne venait elle apres moi, 
 J aurais dit la chose avant elle!" 
 
 If, therefore, we wish to know whether there is any 
 originality in the literature- of our day, we shall not ask 
 whether its materials are absolutely new, but whether they 
 have been so adapted and moulded as to be a new creation. 
 Can the bee make honey without rifling the roses of their 
 sweets? Is the produce of the apple-tree less original 
 because it absorbs the juices of the soil and the balm of 
 the air before it draws from its own sap the life that swells 
 out the trunk and gives color and flavor to the fruit? Is 
 the rainbow less beautiful because it borrows its colors 
 from the sun? Is an architect s design less original be 
 cause he has not baked every brick in his edifice? Or is a 
 Greek or Gothic temple a plagiarism because the acanthus 
 leaf may have suggested the capital to a column, or a vista 
 through forest branches the idea of an arch or an aisle? 
 The essence of originality, of the only originality pos 
 sible in our day, is not the invention of something bizarre 
 and extraordinary, but the vitalizing of materials that 
 already exist, and which are common to all. It is not easy 
 to define what is called genius; but one thing is certain, 
 namely, that it does not feed on itself and spin cobwebs out 
 of its own bowels, which would only keep it forever impov- 
 
256 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 erished and thin, but is essentially passive and receptive in 
 its nature, and impregnates itself continually with the 
 thoughts and feelings of others. The materials upon which 
 it is to act must be gathered from without, not from within; 
 and hence the ancients, who knew that the human mind 
 can create nothing, that the best part of genius is con 
 stituted of recollections, called Memory the mother of 
 the Muses. It was, apparently, because they recognized the 
 truth that the poet must despoil all the fields of literature 
 for his materials, that the old Greek mythologists, whose 
 most fanciful fables often concealed the profoundest wis 
 dom, prefigured the idea of plagiarism by making Mercury 
 the god of the lyre and the god of thieves. So, in later 
 times, Lord Bacon held memory to be the grand source of 
 meditation and thought. Buffon declared that the human 
 mind could create nothing, but merely reproduce from ex 
 perience and reflection; that knowledge only, or what the 
 memory retained, was the germ of all mental products. 
 Chateaubriand averred that the greatest writers have put 
 only their own histories into their works, and that the pro 
 ductions of genius are composed only of recollections. 
 
 The greatest genius that ever blazes on the world would 
 soon cease to illumine it, if its fire were not ceaselessly 
 fed from the funded thought of others. Virgil and Dante, 
 Milton and Shakspeare, were not pure inventors, but debt 
 ors, to an incalculable extent, to the thoughts and imag 
 inings of the army of lesser poets who preceded them. 
 Before they struck their lyres an infinite amount of labor 
 had been done which they had assimilated and converted 
 into their own capital. " All that they had read, as well 
 as all they had ever seen, went into the mill; and what 
 genius did was to turn the wheel and make the grain into 
 
ORIGINALITY. 257 
 
 flour." Had the author of "Hamlet" dwelt always in a 
 desert island he could not have written the least of his 
 sonnets. Even Homer himself, the fountain of imagery 
 to so many poets, was probably no exception to this law. 
 An intelligent writer thinks it hard to believe that he had 
 no reservoir of learning, no mysterious lake of knowledge 
 (as Sir William Temple expresses it), into which he could 
 throw a bucket. Some one has defined originality as only 
 recasting; and we may be sure that when a modern statue 
 is made there is a great melting down of old bronze. 
 Goethe somewhere says that all that is wise has been 
 thought already, but we must try, nevertheless, to think it 
 again. The same writer suggests that the fairest sign of 
 originality is to know how to develop an old thought so 
 fruitfully that no one could have guessed before how much 
 truth there was in it. In other words, we are original 
 when we take thoughts in the bud, and make them fruitful. 
 Thus no mighty intellect is wholly lost, but, in the lapse of 
 
 years, 
 
 " cloth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
 Every work of genius, by coming into mesmeric rapport 
 with the affinities of kindred genius, and firing its latent 
 energies, becomes the parent of many others; and old ma 
 terials continually decomposed and continually recombined, 
 furnish a perpetual succession of imaginative literature. 
 
 It is thus that all the great discoveries in science and 
 the most useful inventions have been made. The mechan 
 ical force of steam was known to Heron two thousand years 
 before Watt watched the jumping lid of the tea-kettle; 
 and, after lying dead for nearly eighteen centuries, the 
 
 fruitful seed-thought of the old Greek sprang up in the in- 
 11* 
 
258 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 vention of Blasco de Garay, who in 1543 propelled a ship 
 of two hundred tons in the harbor of Barcelona, by means 
 of paddles moved by a boiler, and again, at a later day, in 
 the steamboat of Papin, which descended the river Fulda 
 as far as Miinden. The brick-stamps of the Egyptians sug 
 gested our movable types; the mnemonics of Simonides 
 were the precursors of Grey s " Memoria Technica"; and 
 Galileo s telescope sprang from the hint of an obscure 
 Greek of the Lower Empire. The electric telegraph was 
 foreshadowed in Bailie s dictionary a century and a half 
 ago, if not before in the "Mathematical Recreations" pub 
 lished in Paris in 1626. Newton developed the imperfect 
 hints of Hook into the doctrine of gravitation; Dalton con 
 verted the vague and shadowy suggestions of Higgins into 
 the chemical theory of Definite Proportions; and Malthus 
 took an obvious and familiar truth, which till his time had 
 been barren of results, and showed that it teemed with 
 startling consequences. So in philosophy: hardly any of 
 the great intellects that have dedicated their genius to it 
 can lay claim to originality of thought. The " Edinburgh 
 Review" justly says that the great truths of metaphysics 
 are like family jewels, which descend as heir-looms from 
 generation to generation, and are perpetually reset to suit 
 the fashion of the times. " Thought," says Emerson, " is 
 the property of him who can entertain it, and of him 
 who can adequately place it." Again he says: " The nobler 
 the truth or sentiment, the less important the question of 
 authorship. It never troubles the simple seeker from 
 whom he derived such or such a sentiment. Whoever 
 expresses to us a just thought makes ridiculous the pains 
 of the critic who should tell him where such a word has 
 been said before, It is no more according to Plato than 
 
ORIGINALITY. 259 
 
 according to me. " So Karl Ottfried Miller says of Poesy, 
 that, " drawing within its circle all that is glorious and in 
 spiring, it gave itself but little concern as to where its 
 flowers originally grew "; and again, Shelley in the same 
 spirit declares that poetry creates, but it creates by com 
 bination and representation. " One great poet is a master 
 piece of nature, which another not only ought to study, but 
 must study. * * * A poet is the combined product of such 
 internal powers as modify the nature of others, and of 
 such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; 
 he is not one, but both. Every man s mind is, in this 
 respect, modified by all the objects of nature and art; by 
 every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to 
 act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all 
 forms are reflected, and in which they compose one form. 
 Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, 
 and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and in an 
 other the creations, of their age. From this subjection the 
 loftiest do not escape." In the same spirit an English 
 writer used to say: "I don t like my jokes until Sheridan 
 has used them; then I can appreciate them." 
 
 Voltaire laughed to scorn the idea of a perfect origi 
 nality. He declares that the most original writers borrow 
 from one another, and says that the instruction we gather 
 from books is like fire, we fetch it from our neighbors, 
 kindle it at home, and communicate it to others, till it 
 becomes the property of all. So masterly were Voltaire s 
 imitations, that Dubucq said: "He is like the false Am 
 phitryon; although the stranger, it is always he who has 
 the air of being master of the house." Campbell, the 
 poet, when asked to write something original in a lady s 
 album, said that he had nothing original in him except 
 
260 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 original sin, which was also said by John Adams. Heine 
 ridiculed the reproach of plagiarism. He boldly declared 
 that there is no sixth commandment in art. The poet, he 
 said, is entitled to lay his hands upon whatever material 
 he finds necessary for his work; he may even appropriate 
 whole pillars with their sculptured capitals, if only the 
 temple is magnificent for which he employs them as sup 
 ports. Nothing, he added, could be more absurd than to 
 declare that a poet must find all his materials within him 
 self, and that this only is originality. " I am reminded 
 of a fable in which the spider, conversing with the bee, 
 makes it a reproach against the latter that she has to col 
 lect materials from a thousand flowers for the construc 
 tion of her honeycomb, and the preparation of her honey; 
 whereas I, says the spider, draw the original threads 
 of my whole web out of my own body. " Goethe held a 
 similar opinion. "Originality!" he exclaims, "what do 
 they mean by it? The action of the world upon us be 
 gins with the hour of our birth, and ends only with our 
 death. It is here, there, and everywhere. There is noth 
 ing we can claim as our own, but energy, strength, and 
 volition. Very little of me would be left if I could but 
 say what I owe to my great predecessors and contempora 
 ries." "If I could but say"! Ay, there s the rub. Who 
 can say just what ones, of the myriad thoughts that flit 
 through his brain, are his own, and what are not? Who 
 can trace the origin of the multitude of ideas that since 
 his infancy have fallen upon his mind like dust, impalpa 
 ble and ever accumulating? Every day we imbibe thought 
 unconsciously, as we inhale the atmosphere, or as the earth 
 drinks in the dews. Morning, noon and night we are 
 ruminating upon the ideas of others, derived from books, 
 
ORIGINALITY. 261 
 
 magazines, newspapers, conversation, lectures, speeches, and 
 sermons, and unconsciously assimilating these foreign ideas, 
 and fitting them to our individual uses, till they circulate 
 like our life-blood through every vein and artery of our 
 intellectual being, and become an indistinguishable part 
 of ourselves. Who can say, as he draws from his well- 
 stocked quiver a fine arrow, whether or not it has been 
 shafted with the solid sense of Bacon, feathered with the 
 fancy of Byron, or pointed with the logic of Chillingworth? 
 We repeat, therefore, that the most conscientious writer 
 finds it impossible to give credit for all his borrowed ideas. 
 He brings forth from his storehouse things new and old, 
 but is puzzled oftentimes to distinguish the one from the 
 other. He finds that, as Derwent Coleridge finely says, in 
 defending his father, the immortal " S. T. C., 1 from the 
 charge of literary theft, " in an overwrought brain the 
 door which separates the chambers of memory and im 
 agination is so lightly hung, that it will now and then 
 swing open, and allow the treasures of one to roll into 
 the other." There is no man living who, if he were rig 
 idly limited in writing or speaking to ideas which are the 
 pure product of his own brain, would not become as dry 
 and barren as Sahara. He would be more laconic than 
 the Spartans, if not as dumb as the ^Egyptian sphinx. 
 
 It is only by traveling out of ourselves and living in 
 others, by appropriating, re-creating, and remodeling the 
 results of reading and reflection, that we can avoid in 
 tellectual feebleness, conceit, and narrowness. Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds told his pupils that when they had continually 
 before them the great works of art, to impregnate their 
 minds with kindred ideas, they were then, and not till 
 then, fit to produce something of the same species. The 
 
262 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 greatest natural genius, he declared, could not subsist on 
 its own stock; and he added that he who should resolve 
 never to ransack any mind but his own would soon be 
 reduced from mere barrenness to the poorest of all imita 
 tions ; "he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to 
 repeat what he has before repeated." " Behold," says 
 Castera, the French translator of Camoens, " what makes 
 great writers! Those who pretend to give us nothing but 
 fruit of their own growth soon fail, like rivulets which 
 dry up in summer. Far different are those which receive 
 in their course the tribute of a hundred rivers, and which, 
 even in the dog-days, carry mighty waves triumphantly to 
 the ocean." 
 
 We see thus that the very training which every writer 
 undergoes, to which he is universally advised to subject 
 himself, is inevitably destructive of personal originality. 
 Why is he told to give his days and nights to the great 
 masters of literature, unless that he may saturate his mind 
 with their ideas and spirit, and form to theirs the relish 
 of his soul? And is it strange that after years spent in 
 imbuing his mind with their excellences, and in catching 
 their felicities of thought and expression, these thoughts, 
 images and phrases should give the prevailing hue to his 
 own productions, that these borrowed ideas should become 
 so inextricably mingled with his own feelings and mental 
 operations as to make almost a part of himself, and to be 
 with difficulty distinguished from his own sentiments? Was 
 Sir William Temple a plagiarist because he illustrated the 
 advantage of modern over ancient learning, by comparing 
 the former to a dwarf mounted on the shoulders of a giant, 
 an illustration which is quoted in Burton s " Anatomy 
 of Melancholy," ridiculed in Hudibras, and which may be 
 
ORIGINALITY. 263 
 
 traced as far back at least as to a medical poet of the 
 twelfth century? Shall we call Thomas Fuller a thief 
 because he says almost in the very words of Horace that 
 " that fork must have strong tines with which you would 
 thrust out nature"? Did Brougham plagiarize from the 
 same author when he said: " He who is not bold enough to 
 face the perils of the deep may hug the shore too near, and 
 make shipwreck upon its inequalities " ? Was Calhoun 
 guilty of petty larceny when he spoke of a " masterly in 
 activity"; or did Sir James Mackintosh, who had long 
 before used this " fine original expression " for which Cal 
 houn had been complimented, dream of theft when it was 
 suggested to him, as it probably was, by the strenua inertia 
 of Horace? Was Abraham Lincoln a plunderer because, 
 when he said " he had no vices," he used the very words of 
 the same author in the third Satire of the First Book, 
 
 "Nullane habes vitia"? 
 
 When Fillmore, upon being told that Scott had been nomi 
 nated for the Presidency, said to a friend that he must now 
 attach himself to Scott, since " more persons worshipped 
 the rising than the setting sun," was the advice less his 
 own, or less happy, because Pompey had said the same 
 thing to Sylla? Was Choate a plagiarist when, imitating 
 Grattan, he said of Massachusetts: "She will be true to 
 the Constitution. She sat among the most affectionate at 
 its cradle; she will follow, the saddest of the procession of 
 sorrow, its hearse "? 
 
 When Emerson would define a great man, he can find 
 no better definition than one of great affinities, who takes 
 up into himself all knowables as his food. In all ages of 
 the world the greatest geniuses have been the greatest bor- 
 
264 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 rowers. Greedy devourers of books, plucking out "the 
 heart of their mystery " with astonishing quickness and 
 facility, and blessed with memories like hooks of steel, they 
 have not scrupled to seize and utilize ever} 7 good thought 
 they could pick up in their reading. Moliere, when charged 
 with plagiarism, declared that "he recovered his property 
 wherever he found it." A competent critic declares that 
 he is only Plautus in a French court-mask. Beaumar- 
 chais laughingly proclaimed that wherever he found a good 
 thing he would appropriate it, if he needed it. Chaucer, 
 Lowell reminds us, " invented almost nothing. Wherever 
 he found anything directed to Geoffrey Chaucer he took it, 
 and made the most of it." There has been much discus 
 sion about the originality of Montesquieu. " I believe 
 him," says Professor Flint in his " Philosophy of History," 
 f to have been endowed with that most valuable sort of 
 originality ivhich enables a man to draw with independence 
 from the most varied sources, and to use what he obtains 
 according to a plan and principles, and for a purpose of his 
 own, the originality of Aristotle and Adam Smith" 
 Mirabeau was a sublime borrower. When he delivered 
 his electric speeches he used to receive notes from his aids 
 and pupils, which he passed, without pausing, into the 
 texture of his discourse. He emplo} 7 ed others to furnish 
 him with the materials of his speeches, just as the statuary 
 employs others to extract the marble from the quarry, and 
 chip off the rough edges, and then, with the master-touches 
 of his chisel, gives it respiration and life. So with the 
 great painters and composers. Raphael did not disdain to 
 transplant whole figures from Masacchio and Fra Bar- 
 tolommeo. Mozart boldly pillaged from Gliick and Handel; 
 
ORIGINALITY. 265 
 
 and Meyerbeer has been accused of stealing all his airs, 
 and disguising them to hide their origin. 
 
 The drunken old dramatist, Greene, tried to convince his 
 contemporaries that the author of Lear, because he bor 
 rowed his plots, was " an upstart crow, bedecked with pea 
 cock s feathers"; but the sturdy sense of England scouted 
 the aspersion. There were other Lears before Shakspeare s, 
 and some passages from an old play might have been adopted 
 by the great dramatist; but as the author of u Nugae Crit 
 ics " says, we feel, as we compare the two productions, 
 that in one play we have the work of a journeyman, and 
 that in the other a master-mind has been at work in the 
 chambers of the old man s brain, and given us out of the 
 same materials a picture which will last while human 
 hearts throb and thrill. Indeed, Shakspeare s genius is 
 never more imperial than when he borrows most, " he 
 breathed upon dead bodies, and brought them into life." 
 
 Those who are familiar with Alexander Smith s poems 
 will remember his beautiful comparison of the sea to a 
 
 bridegroom : 
 
 "The bridegroom sea 
 
 Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride, 
 And, in the fullness of his marriage joy, 
 He decorates her tawny brow with shells, 
 Retires a space to see how fair she looks, 
 Then, proud, runs up to kiss her." 
 
 The critics pronounced this image a plagiarism from 
 Cyril Torneur; but it was shown, in reply, that the phe 
 nomenon here used for a poetic purpose had been employed 
 in one way or other by generations of poets before Cyril 
 Torneur was heard of, that the love-sick sea had, in fact, 
 been engaged in kissing and hugging the shore from the 
 12 
 
266 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 time of the patriarchs. Sir Arthur Helps, in a letter to 
 the accused poet, said that the trouble with his critics was, 
 .that they could not distinguish between the man who con 
 quers and the man who steals. In this remark we have 
 the marrow of the whole matter. We do not cry " Stop 
 thief ! " when Napoleon annexes half of Europe to his 
 empire, nor do we cry "Plagiarist!" when Shakspeare 
 borrows a plot, or incorporates another s sentiments with 
 his own. Grant that the finest passages of many poets 
 are but embellished recollections of other men s produc 
 tions; that Gray s "snatch a fearful joy" is the " gaudia 
 pallent " of Statius ; that " the purple light of love " is 
 the "lumen juventae purpureum" of Virgil; that "grim- 
 visaged, comfortless despair," is the "grim and comfortless 
 despair" of Shakspeare; that "pangs unfelt before" are 
 the "pangs unfelt before" of Milton; that "mock the air 
 with idle state " is Shakspeare s " mocking the air with 
 colors idly spread"; that "full many a gem," etc., is a 
 gem from Bishop Hall; grant that Ben Jonson cribbed the 
 materials of his mosaics from Philostratus and Catullus; 
 that Pope s fine description of the literary student who, 
 as he climbs the Alpine heights of literature, sees 
 
 "Hills peep o er hills, and Alps on Alps arise," 
 
 a simile which Johnson thought the finest and aptest in 
 the language, was copied from Drummond ; that Dean 
 Swift poached on the preserves of Cyreno Bergerac; that 
 Robert Hall " conveyed " some gems of illustration from 
 Burke and Grattan, and that Macaulay reconveyed them 
 from Hall; that Shelley s "Death and his brother Sleep" 
 was borrowed from Sir Thomas Browne; that Cowper 
 took his " cup that cheers, but not inebriates," from Berke- 
 
ORIGINALITY. 267 
 
 ley s " Sirius," and his " God made the country, man made 
 the town," from the Latin poet Varro ; that Webster s 
 " sea of upturned faces " overflowed into his page from 
 that of Sir Walter Scott, and that a dozen of his best 
 passages are imitations of Burke and Erskine: does all 
 this detract a jot or tittle from these great men s fame? 
 Can you build a house without lumber, bricks, or stone? 
 Can the most skillful architect do without the quarryman, 
 bricklayer, or plasterer? Can Napoleon dispense with the 
 recruiting-sergeant, or Paganini with the maker of Cre- 
 rnonas? Yet, as another has well said, "we do not rank 
 together the great violinist and the artificer who con 
 structed his instrument. We do not place Sir Christopher 
 Wrenn and a hodman on the same level." Stone-masons 
 collected the dome of St. Paul s, but it was a man of genius 
 who " hung it in air." The great thinkers of every age 
 do not differ from the little ones so much in their thoughts 
 as in the manner in which they wreak their thoughts upon 
 expression. It is not "the conception of certain extraor 
 dinary and brilliant ideas that gives them their preemi 
 nence, but the judgment that discriminates and adequately 
 values the ideas, the patience which arrests them in their 
 night, and the skill and strength which mould and con 
 dense them into consistence and form. The great poet is 
 not one who invents wholly novel figures, but one who 
 lays a firm hand upon shapes that have floated dimly be 
 fore a thousand eyes, and fixes them forever upon the can 
 vas. He gives to other men s inchoate thoughts artistic 
 development and expression. 
 
 The Roman writers borrowed with such freedom from 
 their predecessors that their literature has been called one 
 immense plagiarism. Horace boasts of his originality, 
 
268 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 "Libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps: 
 Non aliena meo pressi pede " ; 
 
 yet we know that he poaches on the pages of Alceeus and 
 Pindar; and Virgil "conveys" images, epithets, and even 
 whole passages, from Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, and En- 
 nius. He regards these writers as mere quarries for ideas, 
 just as the builders of English country mansions used the 
 ruins of old castles. The most original of Latin poets are 
 usually thought to be Lucretius and Catullus, yet a high 
 authority declares them to be only the echo of something 
 still more ancient. So with the modern writers, there is 
 not one of them but is indebted to his ancestors ; as Dryden 
 happily says, " we shall track him everywhere in the snow 
 of the ancients." Spenser borrowed largely from Tasso; 
 and Milton, " the celestial thief, 1 is accused by Dr. John 
 son of being a wholesale plagiarist. This is too sweeping 
 a charge, but it is certain that Milton began by reproducing 
 the classics, and was a copyist before he became an in 
 ventor of thoughts and harmonies. When he began " Para 
 dise Lost, 1 he had the reading of a life-time behind him, 
 and he drew upon his accumulated store without conscious 
 distinction of its sources. As Mark Pattison, his latest 
 biographer, says, " his verse flowed from his own soul, but 
 it was a soul which had grown up nourished with the spoil 
 of all the ages. * * * His dic-tion is the elaborated out 
 come of all the best words of all antecedent poetry." 
 Maifei and other Italian writers assert that the ground 
 work of his great epic was taken" from the " Angelei da " 
 of Valvazone. The influence of Tasso upon Milton is 
 universally conceded. Hallam reminds us that being blind 
 when he began "Paradise Lost," Milton "had only his 
 recollection to rely upon. Then the remembrance of early 
 
ORIGINALITY. 269 
 
 reading came over his dark and lonely path like the moon 
 emerging from the clouds. Then it was that the Muse 
 was truly his; not only as she poured her native inspira 
 tion into his mind, but as the daughter of memory, com 
 ing with fragments of ancient melodies, the voice of Homer, 
 Euripides, and Tasso." Alexander Pope was the most con 
 summate adopter and adapter of ideas that English liter 
 ature can boast. It was in the prose writers of the sev 
 enteenth century, little read in his day even by scholars, 
 that he found many of those witty sayings and axioms of 
 moral wisdom which, polished with taste and sharpened 
 with skill, present such rows of glittering points in his 
 verse. Every elegant turn he met with, he introduced 
 from native or naturalized from foreign authors ; but it 
 was usually only the raw material that he appropriated, 
 and he set every borrowed jewel in gold. " To be selected 
 out of a second-rate author, and put into one of Pope s 
 lines, was the apotheosis of an expression." It is now well 
 known that Coleridge never saw Mont Blanc, but borrowed 
 the inspiration of his magnificent hymn from Frederica 
 Brun. Byron, who pronounced all pretensions to origi 
 nality ridiculous, borrowed not only the plans, but even, 
 to a large extent, the very language of his poems. The 
 description of the shipwreck in Don Juan is almost a 
 literal transcript of a narrative published many years be 
 fore; and the beautiful lines on the death of Kirke White, 
 in which this poet is compared to a struck eagle 
 stretched upon the plain, viewing its own feather on the 
 arrow, the plumage that had warmed its nest, drinking 
 the last life-drop of its blood, are copied, almost verbatim, 
 from an old English poet, who, in turn, it is said, had bor 
 rowed the figure from a Greek poet that lived two thou- 
 
270 ORIGINALITY 
 
 sand years ago. Byron s mind has been compared to an 
 JSolian harp; the gentlest breeze, the slightest hint, was 
 sufficient to evoke its music; but, without this breeze, with 
 out this hint, it was silent. His latest biographer admits 
 that he hardly brought a new idea into the world, but 
 asserts that he quadrupled the force of existing ideas, and 
 scattered them far and wide. 
 
 Literature abounds in stock-sayings and illustrations, 
 which are common property. Macaulay s New Zealander, 
 and Talleyrand s observation about language, have long 
 pedigrees. Bacon s saying that the earliest generations of 
 men should be called the youngsters rather than the an 
 cients, is as old as Giordano Bruno. Matthew Arnold took 
 his "sweetness and light" from Swift s "Battle of the 
 Books." Paley s watch ticked in Holland before it did in 
 England; Columbus s egg learned its trick of balancing 
 long before the fifteenth century; and Poe s "ghastly, grim, 
 and ancient raven" croaked to Albert Pike before it sat 
 above Poe s chamber door. 
 
 All the arguments against Christianity to-day, which 
 are paraded with such a flourish of trumpets, are rehashes 
 of old ones. The Darwinian theory is but a republication, 
 with fresh illustrations, of Monboddo and Lamarck* Tyn- 
 dall defends himself by showing that he has only repeated 
 the speculations of Epictetus, Helvetius, and Descartes. 
 Kenan s " femme hallucinee" the hypothesis with which he 
 accounts for the testimony of the women who saw Christ 
 after his resurrection, is as old as Celsus. Again, according 
 to the author of the late learned work on the "Conflict 
 of Christianity with Heathenism," the argument of this 
 most ancient antagonist of Christianity strikingly coincides 
 with that of Strauss, its modern foe. Like Celsus, the Ger- 
 
ORIGINALITY. 271 
 
 man skeptic denies any design in the world, any improve 
 ment or deterioration, any distinction between man and 
 animal.* Ingersoll has shot no new arrows at Christianity, 
 but only newly feathered and pointed the darts of Toland 
 and Tom Paine. 
 
 So with many of the defenses of Christianity. The 
 germinal thoughts of Butler s Analogy may be dimly traced 
 in Lactantius, in Clarke, and in Bishop Berkeley; but 
 they are none the less Butler s because they were vaguely 
 hinted at by others. Ideas belong not to him who has first 
 thought them, but to him who has used them with the most 
 effect, as in the industrial arts inventions belong to those 
 who know how to apply them. They are the property, not 
 of him who has seen them drifting by like fragments of a 
 wreck, but of him who puts out in his boat and drags 
 them to the land. As Paley says: " He only discovers who 
 proves." It may be hard that the man who first dimly 
 conceived an 01 iginal idea should be deprived of the honors 
 it confers; but if it has fallen into better hands than his, 
 and has been more clearly, more vividly, or more completely 
 presented than before, the world is the gainer, whatever 
 the individual loss. Coleridge took the germinal idea of 
 " The Ancient Mariner " from a passage of Shelrocke in 
 " Purchases Pilgrims," which relates the circumstance of 
 foul weather having followed the killing of an albatross; 
 but who else, out of so paltry an incident, could have 
 woven in the loom of his imagination the warp and woof 
 of that most weird and unearthly of poems, a poem so 
 saturated with magic and snaky fascination, that, com 
 pared with it, the demonologies of Godwin, Maturin, Lewis 
 and Shelley seem tame and cold. Goldsmith borrowed the 
 * "The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," American Translation, p. 104. 
 
272 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 beautiful simile which ends the description of the country 
 clergyman in " The Deserted Village," from a poem by the 
 Abbe de Chaulieu, a poet whose verses were on every 
 tongue when Goldsmith traveled in France. The Abba s 
 lines are as follows: 
 
 "Tel qu un rocher dont la tete, 
 
 Egalant le Mont Athos, 
 Voit a ses pieds la tempete 
 
 Troubler le calm des flots; 
 La mer autour bruit et gronde; 
 
 Malgre* ses emotions, 
 Sur son front e leve regne une paix profonde," 
 
 which Goldsmith thus reproduces: 
 
 " As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
 Though round its base the rolling clouds be spread, 
 Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 
 
 Here every reader of taste can see that Goldsmith has 
 not only surpassed the original, but by his happy applica 
 tion of the image to the Christian preacher, has given it a 
 moral sublimity to which it has no pretension in Chaulieu, 
 who, Frenchman-like, applies it to his own philosophical 
 patience under his physical maladies. So with scientific 
 discoveries and inventions. It is none the less honor to him 
 who discovered the art of printing that some germ of the 
 principle had been known and in use ages before; nor is 
 the discovery of gunpowder as a means of warfare less 
 creditable because some inflammable composition had been 
 used by the Romans and the Chinese for many centuries in 
 making fireworks. Was Leverrier s location of the undis 
 covered planet less meritorious because, as he searched the 
 pathless infinitude with his telescope, he availed himself of 
 
ORIGINALITY. 273 
 
 the labors and recorded demonstrations of Newton? Was 
 Newton s discovery of the law of gravitation less creditable 
 because he availed himself of other men s mathematics? 
 Grant that Morse had saturated his mind with the ideas of 
 Priestly and Franklin, Volta and Galvani, and caught his 
 hint of the electric telegraph from Professor Jackson as the 
 two were breasting the Atlantic waves in the Sully in 
 1832, does this prove that Morse s name should not be 
 yoked with the lightning in our thoughts? As well might 
 the apple say to Newton: "If I had not dropped to the 
 ground on that sunny afternoon when you walked in the 
 garden, the glory of discovering the principle of gravita 
 tion would never have been yours." Gliick, the father of 
 dramatic music, confessed that the conception of the 
 " ground tone " of one of his finest operas was the voice 
 of the people, of which he had learned at Vienna, crying 
 to their Emperor for "Bread! Bread!" But was there 
 less genius shown in thus seizing and reducing to harmony 
 the outpourings of a nation s heart, because the idea was 
 suggested from without? Thorwaldsen s Mercury was sug 
 gested by a lad whom he saw sitting at rest; and the action 
 of Kean s Richard III, in his last struggle with his tri 
 umphant antagonist, when he stands, after his sword has 
 been wrested from him, with his hands stretched out "as 
 if his will could not be disarmed, and the very phantoms 
 of his despair had a withering power," was borrowed, 
 Hazlitt tell us, from the last effort of Painter in his fight 
 with Oliver. But does this or that detract from the genius 
 of the actor or the sculptor? Millions of other men might 
 have seen the lad or the pugilist, but no Mercury would 
 have sprang out of the one vision, nor any masterpiece of 
 acting out of the other. 
 
274 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 So far are the claims of a man of genius from being 
 invalidated because his inventions or discoveries have not 
 been absolutely insulated from every preceding achieve 
 ment, that the very opposite is true. It is only because of 
 the state of a science at the time when a man takes it up 
 that he is able to make his own peculiar discoveries. 
 Hence, as Samuel Bailey observes, those fugitive glimpses, 
 those scattered lights, those casual touches, which we find 
 in writings of the same date. The minds of a number of 
 individuals seem to be contemporaneously laboring with 
 obscure intimations of the same truth till, in the most 
 vigorous among them, it struggles from its obscurity and. 
 bursts into day. " The greatest inventor in science," says 
 an eminent philosopher, " was never able to do more than 
 to accelerate the progress of discovery." In fine, every 
 thinker, whether inventor or writer, lives in the great 
 ocean of human thought, and could not, if he would, divest 
 himself of its influence. Hence it is that the same dis 
 coveries and inventions are often hit upon simultaneously 
 in different countries, as we see in the case of the planet 
 Neptune, which was discovered nearly at the same time by 
 Leverrier in France and Adams in England, and the dis 
 covery respecting the nervous system made simultaneously 
 by Sir Charles Bell in England and Signer Bellinger! in 
 Italy. Professor Marsh, in his "Lectures on the English 
 Language," observes that society now is so intensely social, 
 and men through the action of the printing-press par 
 ticipate so largely in one another s intellectual condition, 
 that instances of concurrent mental action between un 
 connected individuals are perpetually recurring. "Not 
 only does almost every new mechanical contrivance, 11 says 
 he, " originate with half a dozen different inventors at the 
 
ORIGINALITY. 275 
 
 same moment, but the same thing is true of literary crea 
 tion. If you conceive a striking thought, a beautiful 
 image, an apposite illustration, which you know to be 
 original with yourself, and delay for a twelvemonth to 
 vindicate your priority of claim by putting It on record, 
 you will find a dozen scattered authors simultaneously 
 uttering the same thing." 
 
 Again, it must be remembered by those who see in 
 every literary parallelism a deliberate plagiarism, that all 
 truth is a unit, and hence that every man who has mental 
 force to break through the shells and husks of things, and 
 penetrate to their very heart and core, must of necessity 
 bring back the same report as his predecessors. Consider 
 ing how many thousand workers there have been in the 
 fields of science and literature since the first poet sang and 
 the first philosopher wrote, and considering that nature 
 and truth are unvarying and eternal, is it any more sur 
 prising that they suggest to different writers the same 
 ideas, and are described in the same language, than that 
 the sky, the earth, the wood and the wave should be pic 
 tured on the canvas of one painter in the same hues with 
 which they are clothed by another? Must I call the grass 
 gray to avoid the charge of plagiarism, because somebody 
 else has called it green? Those who object to a writer that 
 he says nothing absolutely new, might as well object to 
 Nature, because in her -lusty prodigality she delights in 
 repeating herself, and reproduces the same flowers year 
 after year. Walking in a garden, and seeing a rose, they 
 might say: "I have met with that remark before." The 
 question is one not of priority, but of truth ; not of chro 
 nology, but of successful assimilation and expression; not 
 whether we have nicely discriminated our borrowed 
 
276 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 thoughts from our own, but whether " we have breathed 
 our own convictions into the thoughts that have got 
 mixed up in our skulls," and given them a fresh vitality 
 by conveying them in language that is flavored with our 
 own idiosyncrasy. La Bruyere said of Boileau, who 
 abounds in imitations, that he seemed to create the 
 thoughts of other people, so ingenious are the turns he 
 gives to a simile or expression. Bossuet borrows freely 
 from Tertullian, Chrysostom, and Augustine, but he does 
 it so felicitously that his earliest editor regards him as 
 scarcely less original when he quotes than when he invents. 
 Sterne has shocked the moral nerves of some critics by 
 the audacity with which, in " Tristam Shandy," he has 
 helped himself to the ideas, and even the language, of 
 Burton s "Anatomy"; but were two books ever more un 
 like than the " Anatomy of Melancholy " and " Tristam 
 Shandy"? So Gray borrowed his jewels of phrase from 
 all sources; but he rendered them his own by his inim 
 itable arrangement of them, and nothing is more amaz 
 ing than the transcendent originality with which, in 
 working upon these foreign substances, his genius pre 
 serves unique, unimitating and inimitable, its own essen 
 tial idiosyncrasy. He wrought his poems in precisely the 
 way that Mozart composed his music. Nobody has ever 
 disputed the originality of the author of " The Magic 
 Flute"; yet his biographer, Mr. .Holmes, tells us that he 
 readily assimilated into his musical constitution all that he 
 found suitable in the works of others as pabulum for his 
 genius. He often reproduced from them whatever was 
 striking or beautiful, not servilely, but mingling his own 
 nature and feeling with them, in a manner at once sur 
 prising and delightful. His example strikingly shows that 
 
ORIGINALITY. 277 
 
 not only are the originals not original, as some define 
 originality, but that varied knowledge, whether derived 
 from study or observation, is a necessary condition of all 
 original conceptions properly so called. In what do the 
 novelty and freshness of Bacon s thoughts consist? Is it 
 not in the aptness with which he illustrates one group of 
 ideas by another group brought from a far distant region 
 in the realm of knowledge? 
 
 We have, therefore, little sympathy with those literary 
 detectives who are always on the alert to detect petty 
 parallelisms and coincidences of expression, and cry out 
 " Stop thief! " whenever they spy out an instance of as 
 similation or appropriation of thought in a work which is 
 original in the only sense in which originality is possible. 
 A definition of plagiarism which makes all authors pla 
 giarists is evidently absurd. In nineteen cases out of 
 twenty that which is denounced as such is just such pla 
 giarism as the plants exercise upon the earth and air, or 
 the bee upon the flowers and honeysuckles, to organize 
 the stolen material into higher forms and make it suit 
 able for the food of man. But when a writer, instead of 
 assimilating his acquisitions, is overmastered by them, and 
 lets them assimilate him; when, instead of rifling the 
 flowers of literature of their sweets like the bee, to make 
 a new compound distinct from the substances of which it 
 is composed, he transplants the flowers bodily, stalk and 
 root, into his own pages; when, instead of using the 
 thoughts of other minds as fertilizing pollen to make his 
 own more productive, and giving back what he absorbs in 
 new conceptions, " new by a juster application, or a more 
 felicitous expression, or a fresh development of the origi 
 nal thought," he simply copies both sentences and para- 
 
278 ORIGINALITY. 
 
 graphs, he is a literary thief, and as such deserves to be 
 held up to public reprobation and scorn. The true dis 
 tinction between such a writer and the one who gathers 
 from innumerable sources the materials which he fuses 
 into a new and homogeneous composition, is drawn in the 
 well-known colloquy between the two broom-sellers: "I do 
 not understand how you undersell me," said one, "for I 
 steal my materials." " The explanation is simple," rejoined 
 the other; "I steal my brooms ready made." Nobody 
 ever censured Burke for expanding the " like a cloud " of 
 Demosthenes into " the one black cloud which hung for 
 a while on the declivities of the mountains"; but what 
 would be thought of Webster or Canning if the former s 
 fine personification of the power and glory of England, 
 or the beautiful and elaborate imagery in the latter s Ply 
 mouth speech, should turn out to- have been baldly copied? 
 Are we asked, then, wherein lies the merit of a writer? 
 We answer, in his form. His true originality lies in the 
 plan of his work and in his style, that manner of expres 
 sion which distinguishes the mould of his genius from the 
 mintage of any other brain. Of the novelty of his ideas 
 he can have no guarantee, but the form in which they 
 are conveyed is his own peculiar property. He may use 
 the selfsame facts and ideas as another, yet so express, 
 marshal and arrange them as to make them his own, and 
 delight us with a new and original product. Two archi 
 tects may use the same bricks, and produce respectively 
 a palace and a hovel. All painters use the same colors; 
 but one is a Raphael or a Titian, the other exhausts his 
 genius upon the sign-board of a country tavern. 
 
THE ART OF LISTENING. 
 
 A GREAT deal has been written on the art of speak- 
 -- ing; but a treatise on the art of listening would be 
 more valuable. There are plenty of good talkers in so 
 ciety, but good hearers are rare. Carlyle s discourses; 
 preached in so many volumes, with sad earnestness, on the 
 text " Silence is golden," have borne thus far but little 
 fruit. A Frenchman once said of a gentleman in com 
 pany, in whom he could detect no other quality worthy of 
 a compliment, that he had " a great talent for silence." 
 This apparent equivoque was a real compliment, for of all 
 gifts one of the very rarest is that self-control which 
 enables one to hold his tongue. Few persons have reflected 
 how difficult it is to command that attention and concen 
 tration of mind which constitute a good listener. It re 
 quires not only high moral but also rare intellectual quali^ 
 ties. It is not, as one is apt to suppose, a merely passive 
 state. It implies positive labor of mind, close, consecutive 
 thinking, and sometimes a powerful and even painful effort 
 of the will, to arrest one s own train of ideas or dreamy 
 reveries, and fix the mind upon the thought or reasoning 
 of another. 
 
 Besides this power of attention, there must be also 
 great power of sympathy, indeed, the latter is almost 
 essential to the former. There is an ear of the soul as 
 well as of the body, which must be wide open if one would 
 listen well. It has been well said that the most apprecia- 
 
 279 
 
280 THE ART OF LISTENING. 
 
 tive listening is done with the eyes. Man cannot, like the 
 lower animals, prick up his ears or bend them forward 
 when he wants to hear; hence the look of the eyes is the 
 surest test of attention. All the other marks of interest 
 may be counterfeited. The manner may be apparently full 
 of respect, every word and gesture of impatience may be 
 repressed, and yet the wits of the seeming listener may 
 be wool-gathering. But the eye refuses to dissemble. By 
 its dull, vacant stare, its introspective look, or its restless 
 wandering from place to place, it trill betray the hypocrit 
 ical hearer in spite of every attempt at deception. Hence, 
 no unspoken affront, short of absolute rudeness, rouses 
 resentment so readily as wandering attention manifested 
 by wandering glances. A man s thoughts are wont to 
 follow his eyes, and be engrossed by what they see rather 
 than by what he hears. 
 
 To- sit in dumb silence, and be forever a recipient, a 
 bucket eternally pumped into, without power of reaction, 
 as Carlyle somewhere expresses it, is doubtless good for 
 ho man; yet most men, it can hardly be doubted, would be 
 benefited by oftener listening in place of talking. It is 
 well, at times, to interchange thought, and there are mo 
 ments when, as Sydney Smith said of his jokes, we must let 
 out our ideas or burst; yet it is evidently the listener who 
 gets the richest harvest from conversation. It has been 
 well said that he who speaks, sows, he who listens, reaps, 
 in colloquy. We may be neither wise nor witty; but, 
 listening to the acute and learned, we may make their 
 shrewdness and knowledge in a measure our own. In 
 conversation better than in books may we read human 
 nature; and a sentiment dropped burning from the lips 
 settles more deeply in the mind than the finest writing. It 
 
THE ART OF LISTEtfLN G. 281 
 
 was Scott, we believe, who made it a rule to pump every 
 man upon the subjects with which he was best acquainted; 
 and thus from every ride in a stage-coach brought home 
 some fact, hint, or trait of character, which added to the 
 charm of his writings. All men have their hobbies, which 
 they dearly love to mount, their strong points, the sub 
 jects nearest to their hearts, and upon which they are at 
 home in conversation, and happy is he who turns this 
 peculiarity in others to his own advantage. Dr. Johnson 
 once faced a fellow-traveler in a stage-coach, from whom 
 he found that every attempt to draw out a scintilla of in 
 formation was like trying to extract sunbeams from cucum 
 bers. " Try me on leather," said the poor fellow in despair. 
 The Doctor tried him on leather, and found that, regarding 
 that topic, he had both soul and understanding. " The 
 study of books," says Montaigne, " is a languishing and 
 feeble motion that heats not; but if I converse with a man 
 of mind, and no flincher, who presses hard upon me, and 
 digs at me right and left, his imagination raises up mine, 
 it stimulates me to something above myself." 
 
 Of all bores, the loquacious are the most disagreeable; 
 the society enjoyed by such is generally a series of first 
 invitations. Burns has well portrayed them in his de 
 scription of the " venerable corps " of excessively good 
 and rigidly righteous people, whose life he compares to 
 a well-going mill, supplied with store of water, and whose 
 machinery goes on in one unvarying clack, their hopper 
 constantly ebbing, but never exhausted. It is amusing 
 to see how one of these persons, who has been gabbling 
 for an hour or less, drops his countenance as if he had 
 been shot, or seized with lockjaw, the moment any one of 
 his hearers interposes a single remark. On the contrary, 
 12* 
 
284 THE ART OF LISTENING. 
 
 of narrators or raconteurs. Of all the bores whom man 
 in his folly hesitates to hang, the most insufferable, he 
 declares, is the teller of "good stories," a nuisance which, 
 he asserts, should be put down by cudgeling, by submer 
 sion in horse-ponds, or any mode of abatement, as sum 
 marily as men would combine to suffocate a vampire or a 
 mad dog. 
 
 It seems to be an almost inevitable result, when great 
 wits are pitted against each other in the social circle, 
 that the wish to shine prevents the conversation from 
 taking an easy, natural course. Every one is anxious to 
 seize as it flies by the opportune moment for saying his 
 brilliant things, and in many cases the apropos is very 
 far-fetched. Marinontel, in picturing the fine conversa 
 tions of his day, tells us that in Marivaux, the impatient 
 wish to display his sagacity and finesse was conspicuously 
 manifest. Montesquieu waited with more calmness till 
 the ball should come to him, but he waited for it never 
 theless. Mairan watched for the favorable opportunity. 
 Astruc disdained to wait. There is, perhaps, hardly any 
 greater nuisance than when a company at dinner, or in 
 a drawing-room, are compelled to listen to two or three 
 literary lions who are trying to dazzle it with their bril 
 liant wit. No doubt they enjoy this, but they show that 
 they lack the very first element of good breeding, which 
 is courtesy ; and it is absurd to call their talk conversa 
 tion, when it is confined to themselves. A still greater 
 nuisance is when two men interrupt the easy flow of talk 
 by a controversial discussion. As De Quincey says, " mere 
 good sense is sufficient, without any experience at all of 
 high life, to point out the intolerable absurdity of allow 
 ing two angry champions to lock up and sequestrate, as 
 
THE ART OF LISTENING. 285 
 
 it were, the whole social enjoyment of a large party, and 
 compel them to sit in sad civility, witnesses of a contest 
 which can interest the majority neither by its final object 
 nor by its management." Listening to such logomachy 
 is even more disagreeable than sitting within ear-shot of 
 " the young college don who solves the enigma of Free 
 Will and constructs a Philosophy of Being in twenty min 
 utes." 
 
 Hazlitt tells us that the best converser he ever knew 
 was the best listener. " I mean Northoote, the painter. 
 Painters, by their profession, are not bound to shine in 
 conversation, and they shine the more. He lends his ear 
 to an observation as if you had brought him a piece of 
 news, and enters into it with as much avidity and ear 
 nestness as if it interested him personally." Romilly was 
 a similar talker; his conversation never indicated a wish 
 to display, but flowed from the abundance of a refined 
 and richly informed understanding. Carlyle, on the other 
 hand, is a poor listener. He gives no one else a chance, 
 but, according to Margaret Fuller, bears down all opposi 
 tion, not only by his wit and onset of words resistless in 
 their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual phys 
 ical superiority, raising his voice and rushing on his oppo 
 nent with a torrent of sound. 
 
 It is said that Thiers, the late French president, was 
 an interminable monologist, and that it was cfhly when 
 he shaved that one could get a chance of being listened 
 to by him. Only while the razor was at his throat was 
 he silent, or did he vouchsafe attention. Thiers could 
 speak from morning till night unwearied, with ever new 
 sparkling thoughts, ever new plays of wit flashing forth, 
 rejoicing his audience, teaching, blinding, in short, a 
 
284 THE ART OF LISTENING. 
 
 of narrators or raconteurs. Of all the bores whom man 
 in his folly hesitates to hang, the most insufferable, he 
 declares, is the teller of "good stories, 1 a nuisance which, 
 he asserts, should be put down by cudgeling, by submer 
 sion in horse-ponds, or any mode of abatement, as sum 
 marily as men would combine to suffocate a vampire or a 
 mad dog. 
 
 It seems to be an almost inevitable result, when great 
 wits are pitted against each other in the social circle, 
 that the wish to shine prevents the conversation from 
 taking an easy, natural course. Every one is anxious to 
 seize as it flies by the opportune moment for saying his 
 brilliant things, and in many cases the apropos is very 
 far-fetched. Marmontel, in picturing the fine conversa 
 tions of his day, tells us that in Marivaux, the impatient 
 wish to display his sagacity and finesse was conspicuously 
 manifest. Montesquieu waited with more calmness till 
 the ball should come to him, but he waited for it never 
 theless. Mairan watched for the favorable opportunity. 
 Astruc disdained to wait. There is, perhaps, hardly any 
 greater nuisance than when a company at dinner, or in 
 a drawing-room, are compelled to listen to two or three 
 literary lions who are trying to dazzle it with their bril 
 liant wit. No doubt they enjoy this, but they show that 
 they lack the very first element of good breeding, which 
 is courtesy ; and it is absurd to call their talk conversa 
 tion, when it is confined to themselves. A still greater 
 nuisance is when two men interrupt the easy flow of talk 
 by a controversial discussion. As De Quincey says, " mere 
 good sense is sufficient, without any experience at all of 
 high life, to point out the intolerable absurdity of allow 
 ing two angry champions to lock up and sequestrate, as 
 
THE ART OF LISTENING. 285 
 
 it were, the whole social enjoyment of a large party, and 
 compel them to sit in sad civility, witnesses of a contest 
 which can interest the majority neither by its final object 
 nor by its management." Listening to such logomachy 
 is even more disagreeable than sitting within ear-shot of 
 " the young college don who solves the enigma of Free 
 Will and constructs a Philosophy of Being in twenty min 
 utes." 
 
 Hazlitt tells us that the best converser he ever knew 
 was the best listener. " I mean Northoote, the painter. 
 Painters, by their profession, are not bound to shine in 
 conversation, and they shine the more. He lends his ear 
 to an observation as if you had brought him a piece of 
 news, and enters into it with as much avidity and ear 
 nestness as if it interested him personally." Romilly was 
 a similar talker; his conversation never indicated a wish 
 to display, but flowed from the abundance of a refined 
 and richly informed understanding. Carlyle, on the other 
 hand, is a poor listener. He gives no one else a chance, 
 but, according to Margaret Fuller, bears down all opposi 
 tion, not only by his wit and onset of words resistless in 
 their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual phys 
 ical superiority, raising his voice and rushing on his oppo 
 nent with a torrent of sound. 
 
 It is said that Thiers, the late French president, was 
 an interminable monologist, and that it was cftily when 
 he shaved that one could get a chance of being listened 
 to by him. Only while the razor was at his throat was 
 he silent, or did he vouchsafe attention. Thiers could 
 speak from morning till night unwearied, with ever new 
 sparkling thoughts, ever new plays of wit flashing forth, 
 rejoicing his audience, teaching, blinding, in short, a 
 
286 THE ART OF LISTENING. 
 
 spoken firework. The colloquial despotism of such a man 
 is comparatively excusable; yet even from monopolists of 
 far inferior gifts the skillful listener will glean many 
 kernels of wheat among the chaff. Madame Geoffrin, who 
 was impatient of prolonged talk, was asked how she could 
 bear the conversation of a very tiresome man for three 
 or four hours. "I made him talk of himself and his af 
 fairs," was the reply, " and in talking of ourselves, we 
 become interesting to others." Sainte-Beuve states that 
 one day when she saw the good Abb< de Saint-Pierre in 
 stalling himself at her house for a whole winter s even 
 ing, she was frightened for a moment, but drawing in 
 spiration from the desperate situation, she did so well 
 that she utilized the worthy abb, and made him posi 
 tively amusing. He was completely astonished at it him 
 self; and when, as he withdrew, she complimented him 
 upon his good conversation, saying: "You have been de 
 lightful to-day; you have said many witty things," he re 
 plied: "Madame, I am but an instrument; you have played 
 on it according to your own taste, and you know how to 
 sound it." 
 
WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 
 
 "A gentleman? 
 
 What, o the wool-pack ? or the sugar chest ? 
 Or lists of velvet? which is t, pound or yard, 
 You vend your gentry by?" 
 
 "T^vEMOCRATIC as we profess to be in this country, 
 *-^ and though we are as fond of denouncing aristo 
 crats as were the "sansculottes" at the beginning of the 
 French Revolution, there is, nevertheless, hardly an Ameri 
 can town of a thousand inhabitants where there are not 
 certain families that pique themselves on being " genteel." 
 But what do they mean by "genteel"? The word is one 
 which some persons have continually on their lips, yet 
 there is hardly one, perhaps, between the two covers of 
 Webster s "Unabridged," the precise meaning of which 
 they would be more sorely puzzled to define. Gentility, 
 what is it? It is harder to define than the term with 
 which Sir Robert Peel was wont to puzzle the financiers, 
 "What is a pound"? We all have some dim, shadowy 
 ideas of the thing; but what mental chemist has yet ap 
 peared gifted with powers so subtle as to analyze the 
 elements of this mysterious attribute of humanity; or 
 what lexicographer, living or dead, has presumed to ex 
 pound to the world the curious substance or essence of 
 which it is composed? Ask any man who is in the habit 
 of applying and denying this epithet to scores of his spe- 
 
 287 
 
WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 
 
 cies, Who or what is a gentleman? and the chances are 
 that you will get a reply about as precise and satisfactory 
 as Bardolph s definition of "accommodation"; gentleman, 
 
 that is a gentleman; or when a person is being 
 
 whereby he may be thought to be a gentleman; which 
 is an excellent thing. All will unhesitatingly agree that 
 a man well born, having an independent fortune, an up 
 right, generous, high-minded character, with courteous 
 manner, and withal good clothes, is a gentleman. But the 
 puzzle is to tell how many of these qualities is essential 
 to give one a claim to gentility, for it is on this point 
 that men s sentiments so widely vary. Undoubtedly there 
 are in every case many seemingly trivial but really im 
 portant circumstances to be taken into account before we 
 may pronounce a man to be, absolutely and unqualifiedly, 
 a gentleman; and hence, it behooves us always to be ex 
 ceedingly cautious, for to a nice mind, ardently engaged 
 in the pursuit of truth, a hair s-breadth distinction is 
 found oftentimes more obstinately irreconcilable than a 
 glaring discrepancy. 
 
 Dr. Johnson defines a gentleman as a man of birth, 
 which is no doubt the etymological sense of the word. A 
 gentleman was originally a man of noble family, or gens, 
 as it was called in Latin. How the barbarians who con 
 quered the Romans came to use the word as a word of 
 honor, has been much disputed. Some say that as the bar 
 barians were gentiles, or outer nations to the Romans, their 
 leaders assumed the appellation as one of honor to dis 
 tinguish themselves from the degenerate people they had 
 enslaved. This was the learned Selden s view, but Gibbon 
 preferred to derive the word from the civilian s use of it 
 as synonymous with ingenuus. A " gentle " (its derivative) 
 
WHO ARE GENTLEMEN"? 289 
 
 is used as the opposite to "simple." Still another learned 
 writer asserts that no one is strictly a gentleman but he 
 who can trace himself to the first barbarian conquerors. 
 The term is evidently one of great antiquity, as the uncer 
 tainty about its meaning plainly shows, and all the facts 
 go to prove that gentility, which is always spoken of as 
 a matter of blood, was an affair of race. The original 
 gentlemen, far back in the ages, were distinguished by 
 larger size, and greater strength and energy, than other 
 men, and thus became their governors and rulers. In the 
 course of time the descendants and heirs of such persons 
 came to have means to maintain an outward show of 
 superior elegance, with leisure to cultivate the graces of 
 social life, so that they were distinguished from the labor 
 ing classes by greater refinement of manners and a more 
 tasteful dress. To-day neither birth nor wealth, nor both 
 together, make a gentleman, unless other qualities are 
 added; and even a person of the meanest birth, if en 
 dowed with the qualities supposed to be annexed to gentle 
 blood, is often entitled a gentleman because he possesses 
 a gentleman s nature. Beau Brummell, at one time the 
 ideal of English patricians, was the son of a petty lodging- 
 house keeper, and the grandson of a menial servant. 
 
 This peculiarity of English society has always been a 
 standing puzzle to foreigners, who cannot understand how 
 a man can be a gentilhomme who is not gentilis, or of noble 
 race. It has been well observed that what the foreigner 
 means by this expression is strictly applicable to the Eng 
 lish gentry, who are descendants of the old feudal land 
 lords and bearers of coats of armor, are gentilhommes in 
 the primitive sense of the word, and so noble; while the 
 lord, in spite of his peerage and coronet, may be of origin 
 13 
 
290 WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 
 
 almost immediately plebeian. " How is it," writes Tocque- 
 ville in 1853, " that the word gentleman, which in our lan 
 guage denotes a mere superiority of blood, with you is now 
 used to express a certain social position and amount of 
 education independent of birth; so that in two countries 
 the same word, though the sound remains the same, has 
 entirely changed its meaning? When did this revolution 
 take place? How, and through what transitions? If I 
 had the honor of a personal acquaintance with Mr. Ma- 
 caulay, I should venture to write to ask him these ques 
 tions. In the excellent history which he is now publishing 
 he alludes to this fact, but he does not try to explain it." 
 These questions, which were put to Macaulay, and which 
 he could not answer, have been answered with very poor 
 success by M. Taine, in his "Notes on England." He sees 
 clearly, however, that the word has in England no fixed 
 and well-defined meaning, being indiscriminately used to 
 express birth, an independent fortune, habits of luxury 
 and ease, education, tone of mind, bearing and manners, 
 
 in conjunction or apart. Thus B , when he said to 
 
 M. Taine, of " a great lord, a diplomatist," that he was 
 "no gentleman," referred to manners, conduct, or char 
 acter. Archdeacon Hare declares that " a Christian is the 
 Almighty s gentleman; a gentleman, in the vulgar, super 
 ficial way of understanding the word, is the devil s Chris 
 tian." I)r. Arnold wrote from France that he was struck 
 by the total absence of gentlemen there, whether the 
 people were judged by their appearance and manners, or 
 by their education and sentiments; and he doubted whether 
 a real English Christian gentleman, of manly heart and 
 enlightened mind, was not more than Guizot or Sismondi 
 could comprehend. An English reviewer increases the con- 
 
WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 291 
 
 fusion by quoting "the well known Irish boast" that an 
 Irish gentleman would be the most perfect gentleman in 
 the world if you could but meet with him. 
 
 That eminent professor of gentility, Lord Chesterfield, 
 deemed wealth a sine qua non of a gentleman. But money 
 alone, it is clear, cannot make a gentleman, though there 
 are many occasions when, to entitle one s self to that ap 
 pellation, it is very necessary to have a good supply of 
 bank-notes. "You are no gentleman," said a boot-black 
 in a tavern to a guest who had given him but five cents, 
 all the change he had in his wallet. Here, in the eyes of 
 " boots," the payment of five cents additional would have 
 constituted the gentleman. " What sort of a person is 
 that new boarder of yours?" asked a lady of the land 
 lord of a hotel. " He is a printer by trade," was the reply, 
 " but is very much the gentleman." In this case, being a 
 gentleman implied chiefly the regular and prompt payment 
 of bills. In England a gentleman need not pay his debts 
 unless his creditor has no security but his bare word, and 
 financial obligations which relate to horses are sacred above 
 all other obligations. Maginn, in " Old Ebony," quoted 
 an Irish authority who laid it down that for duelling pur 
 poses any one might be considered a gentleman who wore 
 a clean shirt once a week. An English writer says that 
 in the snuggery of an inn bar the appellation is in great 
 request; and to descend to the bottom of the scale, he has 
 more than once heard a prisoner in the dock declaring that 
 " he warn t a doin nufnn till the genelman kem and tuk 
 him up," an epithet which has a bland and conciliatory 
 influence on the policeman. 
 
 The Byronic idea of a gentleman is well known, small 
 hands and feet, high forehead, curly hair, and a delicate 
 
292 WHO ABE GENTLEMEN"? 
 
 taste for gin at night and hock and soda water in the 
 morning. In the year 1500 a gentleman is represented 
 as saying: "To blow a neat blast on the horn, to under 
 stand hunting, to carry a hawk handsomely and train it, 
 that is what becomes the son of a gentleman; but as for 
 book learning, he should leave that to louts" In the time of 
 Charles the Second, both gentlemen and ladies prided them 
 selves on the fact that they could not spell the commonest 
 words correctly. To do nothing for a livelihood has long 
 been the extra-legal definition, a remarkable illustration 
 of which was given in England, in an assault case some 
 years ago, at the Middlesex sessions. A prosecutor was 
 asked if he was a gentleman; he replied in the affirma 
 tive, and being next asked if he had not been an omnibus- 
 driver, he replied: "Not for a living." "Will you swear 
 you have not been an omnibus-driver?" pressed the de 
 fendant s attorney. "I am a gentleman," was the answer, 
 " but I have driven an omnibus by way of amusement. 
 I never did anything to earn a living." According to this 
 theory, one may be an omnibus-driver and even a clown, 
 for such the prosecutor had been, and yet not forfeit 
 one s claim to be a gentleman, provided he does it in idle 
 ness, or from a positive taste for the business. The for 
 feiture of the gentle condition lies in acting from a sordid 
 motive. This view was confirmed, about thirty years ago, 
 by a decision in an English bankruptcy court. A person 
 offered as a surety was objected to by counsel because, 
 while he was described as "a gentleman," he was really 
 a clerk in a steam-packet company. The objection, which 
 would have been considered ridiculous by a genealogist 
 or a herald, was held to be fatal. According to Aristotle, 
 all forms of labor which require physical strength are 
 
WHO ARE GEKTLEMEIST ? 293 
 
 degrading to a freeman. The prince Lee Boo, who con 
 cluded that in England the hog was the only gentleman 
 because he was the only animal that did not labor, had 
 some grounds for his opinion. In Otaheite, a chieftain is 
 fed by his attendants like a baby, because it does not com 
 port with his dignity to feed himself. As a rule, a calling 
 is against a man in England, with the exception of the 
 aristocratic professions; and even these an Edinburgh Re 
 viewer thinks should be avoided, as the gentleman par emi 
 nence should resemble Voltaire s trees, of which, when a 
 visitor was complimenting him on their looking so fine 
 and flourishing, the wit said: "Yes, they ought, for they 
 have nothing else to do." 
 
 In the estimation of the vulgar, "the great vulgar 
 and the small, 1 as Cowley classes them, genteel clothes 
 are one of the main characteristics of a gentleman. " Why 
 do you call him a gentleman?" asked a magistrate in one 
 of our cities of a sailor, who had charged a youth, whom 
 he described as a gentleman, with robbing him. " Because 
 he wore a long-tailed coat" replied the tar. There is some 
 thing peculiarly significant in the unhesitating readiness 
 and confidence of this reply. Honest Jack well knew the 
 defendant s moral obliquities; he knew he had violated the 
 laws of God and man; he knew that it was only by false 
 promises to Snip the tailor that he was enabled to " cut 
 a figure" in fashionable apparel; but still there was no 
 getting over the stubborn fact, he wore a long- tailed 
 coat, and so long as he did so it was impossible to impugn 
 his claim to be a gentleman. Let those who unthinkingly 
 laugh at Jack s beau ideal of gentility turn their eyes in 
 ward to their own ideas on the subject, and ask themselves 
 if their own sentiments are not often quite as ridiculous. 
 
294 WHO ARE GENTLEMEN ? 
 
 Are there not many occasions when they peremptorily de 
 cide a man to be no gentleman because he wears a brown 
 coat instead of a black one, a frock instead of a dress coat, 
 or carries a red handkerchief instead of a white one ? The 
 essential qualities of a gentleman depend neither upon the 
 tailor nor upon the toilet; and yet a decent regard to dress 
 and cleanliness is evidently one of the marks of a gentle 
 man. A scavenger would hardly be regarded as a gentle 
 man, though he might have many gentlemanly qualities; 
 but a man of the noblest blood and finest manners, who 
 despises him because he is a scavenger, is assuredly not 
 a gentleman. It is said that Burke, when a person ex 
 pressed surprise because he touched his hat to a footman, 
 replied: "Sir, would you have me outdone in courtesy by a 
 footman? " 
 
 Some persons regard politeness as the criterion of a 
 gentleman. It is true that one cannot be a gentleman 
 without being polite; but, on the other hand, it is equally 
 true that one may be polite without being a gentleman. 
 A man may very politely lie; borrow money, which he 
 never means to return, in the politest way possible; or 
 politely make you a present of articles which he has 
 stolen. He may be profligate, licentious, knavish, selfish, 
 a blackleg, gambler, nay, an assassin even, yet a very 
 Castlereagh in his manners. He may, in fine, be a per 
 fectly gentlemanlike or polite scoundrel; but a scoundrel 
 certainly cannot be a gentleman. 
 
 Of all men, Robert Burns seems to have had the most 
 eccentric and hopelessly unfashionable notions of what 
 makes a gentleman. Think of the more than Egyptian 
 darkness of one who could write thus wildly: 
 
WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 295 
 
 What though on homely fare we dine, 
 
 Wear hodden gray and a that, 
 Gi e fools their silk, and knaves their wine, 
 
 A man s a man for a that." 
 
 James the First had notions equally eccentric on this 
 subject. When his nurse followed him from Edinburgh to 
 London to entreat him to make her son a gentleman, "My 
 good dame, 1 said the king, "I can make him a lord, but 
 it is out of my power to make him a gentleman." Yet 
 one of his predecessors did create a gentleman, John 
 Kingston, whom ad ordinem generosorum adoptabat, but 
 the case stands alone. Sir Robert Peel declared that 
 in such and all other cases "it took three generations to 
 make a gentleman." The reason of this doubtless is the 
 opinion that some portion of the vulgarity of the founder 
 of a family will descend to his immediate descendants who 
 have been reared with him; and that it is only by those 
 who have been ahvays in the class of gentry that their 
 habits and manners will be exhibited unconsciously and in 
 every respect. 
 
 That gentility builds a high partition wall around the 
 persons who practice it, a wall which, like a sunk fence 
 in an English park, is not seen in the distance, but is very 
 hard to climb over, we all know; and perhaps the most 
 puzzling fact about this wall is that, like the horizon, as 
 you advance toward it, it continually flies before you. 
 Some men claim to be genteel on account of their birth, 
 others on account of their clothes; some base their preten 
 sions on a door-plate ; some are genteel because their great- 
 great-grandfathers were colonels in the militia, others be 
 cause they are justices of the peace; one family by a front 
 pew at church, another by a private box at the opera; 
 
296 WHO .ARE GENTLEMEN? 
 
 some because they are related to the Simpkinses, others 
 because they reside on the same street with the Simpkinses. 
 Some writers have attempted to define gentility by neg 
 atives, which is certainly easier than to do it by positives. 
 Thus, a late English author complains that it is not genteel 
 to earn your bread; but it is highly genteel to work at 
 some utterly worthless and silly piece of finery, and to 
 sell the same in the name of charity at a fancy fair. It 
 is never genteel to speak your mind, but it is so to use 
 a false periphrasis, and with a complimentary turn to inti 
 mate a falsehood. It is not genteel to have any opinion, 
 and to think for yourself ; but it is so to follow the dic 
 tates of an injurious fashion, even if they should be in 
 jurious to the health, or positively immoral and noxious 
 to the soul. It is a curious fact connected with this sub 
 ject, that, in spite of its metaphysical difficulties, women, 
 from their Superior acuteness and delicacy of discrimina 
 tion, divide and subdivide gentility as easily as quicksilver. 
 They have their " respectable sort of people," " very re 
 spectable," " highly respectable," " extremely respectable," 
 and " most respectable," ranging from the lowest positive 
 to the highest superlative, each weighed in a verbal hair- 
 balance, and as distinctive in their minds as the degrees 
 of hot, hotter, hottest, on the scale of a thermometer. In 
 spite of this conflict of opinions, and though the boundary 
 between the genteel and the ungenteel is vague and shad 
 owy, yet we feel, like the genteel young barber in Dickens s 
 story, that " we must draw a line somewheres." Being a 
 shaver of the chins of genteel persons only, he refused, 
 upon a notable occasion, to reap the stubble from a dust 
 man s. " Why," cried the injured individual, his gentility 
 being touched, " I seed you a shavin a baker t other day." 
 
WHO AEE GENTLEMEN? 297 
 
 "Ah!" returned the hair-dresser, "we must draw a line 
 somewheres; I draws it at journeymen bakers; I can t shave 
 you. 1 In England one of the most unerring tests of gen 
 tility is propriety of conduct and demeanor, a rigid ob 
 servance of " the linen decencies " of life. No merit quite 
 counteracts the want of this, whilst this sometimes stands 
 in lieu of all. According to this theory, a man who rigidly 
 observes the rules of etiquette, who never pours his tea 
 into a saucer, nor eats his peas with a knife, nor speaks in 
 company without an introduction, etc. etc. is a gentleman; 
 and hence George IV, who was so ignorant that he could 
 hardly spell, and who in heart and soul was a thorough 
 snob, whom Thackeray has described as " a waistcoat, an 
 under-waistcoat, another under-waistcoat, and then noth 
 ing," was pronounced, on the ground of his grand and 
 suave manners, "the first gentleman of Europe"; an ap 
 pellation which would be regarded as an exquisite sarcasm, 
 did we not know that it was given in all seriousness. 
 
 One of the most daring and decided opinions that we 
 have known to be volunteered concerning the meaning of 
 this perplexing term was that given by a witness in Thur- 
 tell s case, who, on being asked by the judge his reason for 
 affirming that the defendant was a gentleman, replied: 
 " Because he keeps a gig." In this brief answer we have 
 a flood of light on the subject; volumes could not have 
 shed more. On the whole, it may be questioned whether 
 there is any more patent or glaring test of what is popu 
 larly regarded as gentility, adapted to all countries, chal 
 lenging as it does the eyes of all the world, than a car 
 riage. In England carriages are of as many grades as 
 there are shades of rank: the ducal carriage, with its 
 liveried footmen and apoplectic coachman, the lordly Ian- 
 
298 WHO ARE OEXTLEMEtf? 
 
 dau, the easy caliche, the elegant barouche, the dashing 
 phaeton, the comfortable chariot, the luxurious vis- a vis, the 
 economical clarence, the brougham, etc., all mark so many 
 degrees on the barometer of respectability. Quite differ 
 ent from this and all the preceding tests was the opinion 
 of gentility given by an Irish gentleman, whose debts more 
 than doubled his estate. Some person having spoken be 
 fore him of a man who had the reputation of being a 
 gentleman, "He a gentleman! he"! was the indignant 
 reply; " why, it is impossible. Do you know that the fel 
 low never owed a hundred dollars in his life? " The gentle 
 Isaiah Rynders, who acted as marshal at the time the pirate 
 Hicks was executed in New York, had doubtless similar 
 notions of gentility, for, after conversing a moment with 
 the culprit, he said to the bystanders: "I asked the gentle 
 man if he desired to address the audience, but he declined." 
 In a similar spirit Booth, the assassin, when he was sur 
 rounded in the barn where he was shot like a beast, offered 
 to pledge his word "as a gentleman 1 1 to come out and try to 
 shoot one or two of his captors. 
 
 Whatever the difficulty attending the solution of this 
 question, of one thing we may be sure, that there cannot 
 be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness 
 of disposition, than to be always thinking and prating of 
 being genteel. The most vulgar of all things is preten 
 sion, for it is the sign of a low and vulgar mind. All the 
 homeliness of the poor, the gaucherles and blunders of the 
 unpolished, and even the provincialisms of the illiterate, 
 are as the dust in the balance as regards vulgarity, com 
 pared with the affectation that is always trying to seem 
 fine. The one thing which distinguishes the truly great, 
 either by birth or mental acquirements, is repose. A great 
 
WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 299 
 
 man never strains and tries to make himself greater than 
 he is, any more than a giant tries to stand upon tiptoe. 
 Both are conscious of their own true height; and this con 
 sciousness is so true that it is found and recognized, not 
 only in the leaders of the ton in Paris, but in the Hindoo 
 and Chinese gentleman, and in the Indian of the Rocky 
 Mountains. The true secret, the quintessence of all gentle- 
 manhood, is a quiet, undemonstrative bearing, and a dis 
 position to look upon others as being as worthy as one s 
 self. There can be no greater mistake, therefore, than to 
 suppose, as many do, that gentlemanliness is an outward 
 thing, a matter of form and ceremony, and that its essence 
 lies in a punctilious observance of etiquette, in the ele 
 gant bow, the five minutes call, the courteous and polished 
 speech, the graceful restoration of a fan, the quick pres 
 entation of a dropped handkerchief, and other forms of 
 exterior behavior which may indicate a knowledge of " fash 
 ionable life," yet spring from a heart full of the intensest 
 selfishness. True politeness is not a thing of formality 
 and ceremony; it consists in no artificial smiles or precise 
 carriage of the body, but in an earnest and sincere desire 
 to promote the happiness of those with whom one comes 
 in contact, in a willingness to sacrifice one s own ease 
 and comfort to the enjoyment of others. 
 
 The poor negro woman who found Mungo Park perish 
 ing under the palm trees of Africa, and who led him to 
 her hut and supplied him with food, and lulled him to 
 sleep with her simple songs, it has been justly said was 
 truly polite. Sir Philip Sidney, the glass of English 
 knighthood, was most truly a gentleman when, as he lay 
 bleeding upon the field of Zutphen, he denied himself the 
 draught of cool water that was brought to quench his 
 
300 WHO ABE GENTLEMEN"? 
 
 mortal thirst that it might be given to a dying soldier. 
 Joseph Paice, the London merchant of whom Charles 
 Lamb wrote as follows, was a gentleman intus et in cute: 
 "I have seen him stand bareheaded, smile, if you please, 
 to a poor servant girl while she has been inquiring of him 
 the way to some street, in such a posture of unforced 
 civility as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance nor 
 himself in the offer of it. He was no dangler, in the 
 common acceptation of the term, after women, but he rev 
 erenced, and upheld in eve-ry form in which it came before 
 him, womanhood. I have seen him, nay, smile not, ten 
 derly escorting a market-woman whom he had encountered 
 in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket 
 of fruit that it might receive no damage, with as much 
 carefulness as if she had been a countess. To the rev 
 erend form of Female Eld he would yield the wall, though 
 it were to an ancient beggar-woman, with more ceremony 
 than we can afford to show our grandams. He was the 
 Preux Chevalier of his age; the Sir Calidore or Sir Tristan 
 to those who have no Tristans to defend them. The roses 
 that had long faded thence still bloomed for him in those 
 withered and yellow cheeks." 
 
 A story is told of a poor drover who was driving his 
 cattle to market, and meeting a lady whom the drove com 
 pelled to turn out from the path into the deep snow, 
 " Madam," said he, " if the cattle knew as well as I 
 what they should do, you should not walk in the snow." 
 Here was genuine politeness. Such a man, though rough 
 and awkward in his manners, coarse in his speech, and 
 clad in homespun, is essentially a gentleman; while many 
 a finical and smirking ape, who prides himself upon the 
 immaculate purity of his white kid gloves, and the grace- 
 
WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 301 
 
 ful air with which he enters a drawing-room, or lifts 
 his hat as he meets an acquaintance, is an incarnation 
 of rudeness and incivility. 
 
 Robert Burns showed himself a gentleman when jew 
 eled duchesses were charmed with his ways; and so did 
 Dr. Arnold, when the poor woman felt that he treated her 
 like a lady; and Chalmers, when every old woman in Morn- 
 ingside was elated by his courteous salute. Dr. Hopkins 
 showed himself a gentleman, when seeing a delicate wom 
 an once nauseated by coming into an atmosphere which he 
 and his brethren had polluted with tobacco smoke, he put 
 away the almost universal clerical pipe of which he was 
 so fond, never to take it up again. But Johnson, who 
 silenced an objector with " Sir, I perceive that you are a 
 vile Whig," who ate his food like a famished wolf, and who 
 deferred so little to his friends that they could differ from 
 him only in silence, was not a gentleman, though he had 
 many manly qualities. Nor was Lord Chesterfield a gen 
 tleman, though he had blue blood in his veins, and dis 
 played all the outward characteristics of a gentleman, be 
 cause beneath his exquisitely polished manners lay the heart 
 of a libertine and the soul of a sneak. His famous " Let 
 ters, 1 once so lauded as a manual of deportment, embody 
 a false philosophy, because they are based upon the idea 
 that polite manners consist only of external graces, and can 
 be learned by rule. The truth is, that the essential char 
 acteristics of a gentleman are not an outward varnish or 
 veneer, but inward qualities, developed in the heart. They 
 are a form, not a garment of the mind, and cannot be put 
 on or off at will. They are the outgrowth of a noble and 
 kindly nature, which manifests itself in spontaneous acts 
 of courtesy and grace. Hence the absurdity of the remark 
 
302 WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 
 
 we sometimes hear that a certain person " can be a gentle 
 man when he pleases." The truth is, that he who can be 
 a gentleman when he pleases never pleases to be anything 
 else. A man may simulate the outward marks of a gentle- 
 Ynan, speaking with practiced intonation, and bowing with 
 well studied grace, though he is vulgar to the very core; 
 but he will lack the charm of unconsciousness which is one 
 of nature s finest gifts, the grace that is beyond the reach 
 of art, and will be no more a gentleman in thought and 
 feeling than the tinseled actor who struts during his brief 
 hour on the stage is the monarch his costume would be 
 speak him. A celebrated actress, who had to personate 
 queens on the stage, said that she found it was absurd to 
 attempt to be a queen during two or three hours in a day 
 when she had not acted and felt as a queen during the 
 rest of the day; and so the man who is a " gentleman 
 when he chooses to be " only personates the character, 
 never is what he purports to be. He has the smell of the 
 footlights about him, and can never cheat a practiced eye. 
 
 " The churl in spirit, howe er he veil 
 His want in forms, for fashion s sake, 
 Will let his coltish nature break 
 At seasons through the gilded pale." 
 
 The first principle of all true politeness is deference, 
 manly, genial, natural deference; and this can be no more 
 acquired by studying manuals of deportment than a man 
 can become a swimmer by reading treatises on hydrostatics, 
 or a statesman by studying parliamentary debates. To the 
 attainment of this end familiarity with St. John and St. 
 Paul will conduce more than all the books of etiquette 
 that were ever published. The latter teach only external 
 
WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 303 
 
 politeness, which, as we have already said, is only the husk 
 or shell of true politeness, is, in fact, so far as the es 
 sence of the thing is concerned, no politeness at all, though 
 with many it is the hinge upon which all their social con 
 duct turns, while in mingling with others of a different 
 temperament they freeze, as does the wintry air in nature, 
 the kindlier feelings of the heart, and reduce everything 
 to a smooth surface, polished but cold, like a sheet of ice. 
 Many a man who is rough and even boorish in manners 
 has a warm and generous heart; and many a one who is 
 reckless of the comfort of others seeks by a scrupulous 
 observance of etiquette and ceremony to hide his real in 
 difference to the happiness of his fellow men. When we 
 see a person who evinces on all occasions a delicate regard 
 for the rights and feelings of others, however inferior in 
 wealth, dress or station; "who is slow to take offense, as 
 being one that never gives it, and who is slow to surmise 
 evil, as being one that never thinks it;" who betrays no 
 anxiety to engross the best seats at the public table, in the 
 car, or in the concert- room; who at his meals prefers to 
 carve for others the juiciest slices, rather than for himself ; 
 who speaks as respectfully to a peasant as he would to a 
 king, and is as prompt to offer his umbrella in a rainstorm 
 to an old lady as to a young one; when, in short, we see a 
 person acting always upon the golden rule of doing unto 
 others " whatsoever he would that they should do unto 
 him," then we feel that we have looked upon one who 
 is, in all the essential elements, a gentleman. But, after 
 all our attempts to define that whose essential quality is as 
 subtle as the aroma of a flower, we may conclude that the 
 highest significance of the term was reached in the rev 
 erential language of Dekker, who called the founder of 
 
304 WHO ARE GENTLEMEN? 
 
 Christianity " the first true gentleman that ever breathed/ 
 Chaucer, too, in his " Romaunt of the Rose," has given an 
 exquisite picture of the true gentleman : 
 
 "But understand in thine entent 
 That this is not mine entendement 
 To clepe no wight in no ages 
 Only gentle for his linages; 
 But who is so virtuous, 
 And in his port not outrageous, 
 When such one thou seest thee beforne, 
 Though he be not gentle borne, 
 Thou maiest well saine this in soth 
 That he is gentle, because he doth 
 As longeth to a gentleman." 
 
OFFICE -SEEKING. 
 
 The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to 
 greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men 
 come to dignities. BACON. 
 
 years ago a Washington letter- writer, describing 
 a visit to General Cass, reported him to have said: 
 " Office-seeking, in men, women and children, has become 
 our national malady. God only knows how it is to be 
 checked, or in what direction the cure lies." This unlucky 
 speech provoked a volley of gibes and sarcasms from the 
 press, by which its author was regarded very much in the 
 light of a thief bellowing " Stop thief ! " in a crowd. Hav 
 ing by assiduous effort climbed nearly to the topmost bough 
 of the official tree, where snugly perched he could swing 
 to and fro, and regale himself at leisure on its golden fruit, 
 the old gentleman suddenly turned up his eyes in horror 
 at the mania of office-seeking, and began thoughtfully con 
 sidering the means of abating it. Such a spectacle re 
 minds one of the distillers in the olden time, who, having 
 filled their coffers by the manufacture and sale of ardent 
 spirits, turned round in their old age, and becoming presi 
 dents of temperance societies, denounced in fiery periods 
 the traffickers in " wet damnation." 
 
 Consistent or inconsistent in his denunciations, General 
 Cass did not exaggerate in declaring office-seeking to be 
 " our national malady." There is probably no other coun- 
 
 13* 305 
 
306 OFFICE-SEEKING. 
 
 try in the world where the appetite for place and patron 
 age is so universal and so craving. In view of the fact that 
 the very best office for any man is that which he can make 
 for himself by energy, industry, tact and faith; that pri 
 vate life offers ten times more inducements to an upright, 
 ambitious man than any place within the people s gift; and 
 above all, that the man who holds office for a few years 
 loses all taste and energy for the ordinary pursuits of life, 
 it is marvelous to see what a greed for the loaves and 
 fishes of office has seized upon all classes of the American 
 people. Scarcely is a new president elected ere he is sur 
 rounded by a sea of upturned faces, with jaws distended, 
 ready to catch the smallest morsel that may be thrown 
 from the public trough. For months afterward the White 
 House and the doors of the departments are besieged by 
 a ravenous crowd of applicants begging for sops from the 
 public table. Probably Washington was never before so 
 overrun with political mendicants as during the first few 
 months of Grant s administration. All the hotels were full 
 of keen, gray-eyed men who longed to fill for four years 
 some pet place under the government. The streets were 
 thronged with them; the steamers and the railway car 
 riages, the public departments, the steps of the senators 1 
 dwellings, the lobbies of the capital, the president s man 
 sion, were crowded with long-limbed, nervous, eager-eyed 
 men, who had hurried on the wings of steam to Washing 
 ton to concentrate in one focus on the mind of the presi 
 dent all the myriad influences which, by letter, testimonial, 
 personal application, unceasing " canvass," and sleepless 
 solicitation they could collect together. " Every Senator," 
 says a Washington correspondent, writing at the time, 
 " has a clientelle more numerous than had the most popu- 
 
OFFICE-SEEKING. 307 
 
 lar young Roman noble who ever sauntered down the Via 
 Sacra. If one of them ventures out of cover the cry is 
 raised, and he is immediately run to earth. The printing 
 presses are busy with endless copies of testimonials, which 
 are hurled at everybody with reckless profusion." The 
 hungry swarms that killed Harrison outright, shortened 
 the days of Taylor, and gave Lincoln nearly as much 
 trouble as the rebellion itself, were outnumbered by the 
 hosts of patriots who besieged and beseeched Grant that 
 they might serve their country, and draw salaries for the 
 same. So violent at times has been the pressure in the de 
 partments, that roundabouts, it is said, have been adopted 
 as the uniform, the officials finding skirts a serious im 
 pediment to locomotion, as the cormorants would grab at 
 their coat-tails when they darted from door to door. 
 
 As at Washington, so at the state capitals, and wher 
 ever there are offices, even with starvation salaries, to fill. 
 The scramble of fifty applicants for every vacancy in the 
 post-office or police force of Chicago is no anomaly, but a 
 single example of the mania that rages throughout the 
 country. A Massachusetts newspaper states that at a polit 
 ical convention, held a few years ago at Worcester, in 
 that state, for the nomination of a governor, there were 
 numbers of respectable men, with anxious faces, eager 
 eyes, and busy tongues, engaged in electioneering for of 
 fices. The second place on the ticket, a comparatively in 
 significant position, was sought for by a sufficient number 
 of able-bodied and able-minded men to form a military 
 company. There were embryo treasurers, auditors, and 
 secretaries enough, aching for office and begging aid to 
 get it, to manage the finances of France; while three or 
 four of the cleverest fellows in the commonwealth crossed 
 
308 OFFICE-SEEKING. 
 
 and recrossed one another s paths in the halls of the hotels 
 and the lobbies of the convention hundreds of times, in 
 eager, personal striving against one another for the office 
 of attorney-general, and succeeded in dividing the conven 
 tion so that no one obtained a majority of votes. 
 
 It was not always thus that office was regarded by the 
 people of this country. Within this century, and even 
 within the last fifty years, a revolution has taken place 
 in the public sentiment on the subject. In the ante-revo 
 lution times, office-holding was regarded like serving on 
 the jury, as a burden, to be avoided rather than coveted. 
 So deep and general was the feeling, that it became neces 
 sary to enforce the acceptance of office by legal penalties. 
 The private citizen who shunned notoriety, or deemed his 
 time too precious to permit him to serve his country, was 
 obliged to purchase his exemption by a fine. In 1632 the 
 General Court of Plymouth passed an act that " whoever 
 should refuse the office of governor should pay 20 ster- 
 ling, unless he should be chosen two years successively, 
 and whoever should refuse the office of councillor or mag 
 istrate should pay 10." When afterward the people had 
 become richer, and with wealth had acquired leisure, they 
 were more willing to accept office, but they never thought 
 of nominating themselves, much less of making stump- 
 speeches, going about to beg for votes, packing conventions 
 with their friends, or resorting to any of the other de 
 grading arts that are now employed by the successful 
 politician. Many of the great men who then took office, 
 did so with reluctance electioneering, if they did so, to 
 prevent their nomination declining a reelection; and if 
 they served a second term, it was because the people, know 
 ing their fitness, dragged them from the quiet and seclu- 
 
OFFICE-SEEKING. 309 
 
 sion of the homes they loved so well, and forced them into 
 chairs of state. Had these men coveted and struggled for 
 place like the politicians of to-day, they would have shocked 
 the public, killed their own influence, and history would 
 have made no mention, or only a scornful mention, of 
 their names. From the infancy of the nation down to 
 the year 1829, ninety-five, at least, out of every hundred 
 voters, lived and died without a thought of gaining their 
 livelihood at the public charge. 
 
 Now all is changed. The mania for office has been 
 raging more and more fiercely during the last fifty years, 
 till now it attacks all classes of society. We say mania, 
 for such it really is, an epidemic, a disease of the body 
 politic, which must have its run, and will then disappear. 
 The motives which prompt the general scramble for place, 
 are usually a desire for the pickings and stealings which 
 are supposed to be incident to it, and a disposition to 
 shirk honest work. "Do you want a clerk?" said an 
 aspirant for a " situation " to a vender of mutton pies. 
 "Why do you want to tend my stand?" asked the latter. 
 " Because," was the frank reply, " Pm awfully hungry" 
 The great mass of place-hunters, if equally honest, would 
 make a similar avowal. Considering, however, how paltry 
 is the remuneration of most office-holders, compared with 
 the sums one may earn in a good business, we cannot but 
 be surprised at the general eagerness for office. That fat 
 places, yielding a rich harvest of greenbacks, the few 
 brilliant prizes to a thousand blanks, should be greedily 
 coveted, and the machinery of log-rolling set in motion to 
 obtain them, is not surprising; but, as there is no coun 
 try on the globe where office confers so little distinction 
 as here, so there is none where, all things considered, it 
 
310 OFFICE-SEEKING. 
 
 yields so wretched a remuneration. The number of offices 
 in the gift of the American people, which, if honestly ad 
 ministered, will yield to the order of talent required to 
 fill them as much income as a legitimate private busi 
 ness, is exceedingly small. Then, again, the precarious 
 tenure by which offices are held in this country affords 
 another reason to show that they are not worth the sacri 
 fice of time and trouble necessary to obtain them. A 
 party which is victorious at one election may be van 
 quished at the next, and then ensues an entire change of 
 policy, in which those who but lately abandoned their 
 regular business for the emoluments of office are hurled 
 from their places as abruptly as their predecessors, when 
 they have but just learned how properly to discharge their 
 duties. Few persons are ever known to get rich by office, 
 while thousands who before were slowly but steadily ac 
 cumulating an independence for themselves and families, 
 have, by holding an office for a few years, acquired a dis 
 taste and unfitness for the pursuits of ordinary industry, 
 and been finally reduced to poverty and ruin. 
 
 One of the wisest things done by Daniel Webster in his 
 youth, was to refuse the office of clerk of a New Hamp 
 shire court, which his father, after much effort, had obtained 
 for him, and which yielded a salary of fifteen hundred dol 
 lars a year, a sum which was then probably equal to five 
 thousand dollars to-day, and which to a poor struggling 
 attorney must have been very tempting. If ever a young 
 man of ability had a good excuse for abandoning his chosen 
 calling, and "shelving" himself in a snug office, Daniel 
 Webster would have been excusable for doing so, in view 
 of his own and his father s poverty. "I had felt," he says, 
 " the res angustce domi till my very bones ached." With 
 
OFFICE-SEEKING. 311 
 
 many pangs, yet resolutely, lie followed the advice of Mr. 
 Gore (with whom he had been reading law), which shut 
 him out from this opening paradise, and which was so 
 pithy and sensible that it deserves to be pondered by all 
 young men who are similarly situated: "Go and finish 
 your studies; you are poor enough, but there are greater 
 evils than poverty. Live on no man s favor; what bread 
 you do eat, let it be the bread of independence ; pursue 
 your profession, make yourself useful to your friends, and 
 a little formidable to your enemies, and you have noth 
 ing to fear." The acceptance of this advice was the more 
 difficult because Mr. Webster had to reconcile his father 
 to this decision. " I knew, 11 he says, " that it would strike 
 him like a thunderbolt. He had long had this office in 
 view for me. Its income would make him, and make us 
 all, easy and comfortable; his health was bad, and grow 
 ing worse. 11 Yet young Webster mustered resolution, told 
 his father, and, fortunately for himself and for his country, 
 obtained his acquiescence. Had he gratified his father 
 by accepting the appointment, it is doubtful, considering 
 his phlegmatic temperament, whether, instead of becoming 
 the great constitutional lawyer of the country, he would 
 not have remained a clerk to the end of his days. So with 
 Vanderbilt, Stewart, and other great merchants and rail 
 road kings. Can any one doubt that they would have 
 been doomed to poverty and insignificance, had they been 
 appointed when young to petty offices, and held them until 
 the red tape and drudgery had destroyed their elasticity, 
 and unfitted them for great enterprises and affairs? 
 
 The truth is, not one office in a hundred is worth striv 
 ing for by a man of ability, considering the enormous labor 
 the pursuit exacts, the annoyance and chagrin he has to 
 
312 OFFICE-SEEKING. 
 
 submit to, the loss of self-respect which victory and de 
 feat alike entail, and the time and money he has to spend 
 to qualify him to talk of his " claims on the party." We 
 say annoyances, for considering the liability to criticism, 
 the envy r fault-findings, and perpetual watchfulness and 
 struggles to keep one s place which it involves, an office 
 is anything but a bed of roses. Life under a burning- 
 glass, or a microscope, is not the pleasantest of lives, and, 
 with the growth of the press in power, ability, and watch 
 fulness, every public man, even the most insignificant, be 
 gins to live with the light concentrated upon his face, till 
 half his strength is exhausted in keeping his eyes from 
 the glare. But when we add to all this the expense of a 
 pilgrimage to the office-seeker s Mecca, and the ennui of 
 hanging about the hotels and loafing about the streets 
 for weeks, whilst one s business is going to ruin at home, 
 all of which may end in, "My dear Mr. Greenhorn, I 
 feel the full force of your claims; your certificates are of 
 the very highest character, but, though you have been the 
 Ajax of the party in your district, yet it is impossible to 
 deny Mr. Artful Dodger; you must really wait till there 
 is some other vacancy; good morning, sir," the univer 
 sality of scramble for place seems unaccountable. 
 
 There is no other pursuit, certainly no legitimate one, 
 which is so full of humiliations, disappointments and vex 
 ations; nor is there any in which failure so sours the 
 temper, and writes such sad wrinkles on the forehead. 
 De Maistre has well characterized the capriciousness with 
 which political honors are bestowed, by telling of a French 
 
 courtier who wrote to a friend that Monsieur had 
 
 just been appointed to a certain important office, "not 
 withstanding he had every qualification in the world." 
 
OFFICE-SEEKING. 313 
 
 The miseries of court dependence, as described by Spenser, 
 do not surpass those experienced by the office-hunter in our 
 own country: 
 
 "Full little knowest thou who hast not tried, 
 What hell it is in suing long to bide; 
 To lose good days that might be better spent; 
 To waste long nights in pensive discontent; 
 To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; 
 To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow; 
 To have thy princess s grace, yet want her peers ; 
 To have thy asking, yet wait many years; 
 To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares 
 To eat thy heart in comfortless despairs; 
 To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run; 
 To spend, to give, to wait, to be undone." 
 
 Nearly all the celebrated men who have tried public 
 life have borne similar testimony. The Duke of Shrews 
 bury, who was one of the most conspicuous of the great 
 Whig nobles that invited William of Holland to England, 
 abandoned politics in disgust, and retired to Italy. "I 
 wonder," he wrote with great bitterness to Somers in 1700, 
 "how any man who has bread in England, will be con 
 cerned in business of State. Had I a son, I would sooner 
 bind him a cobbler than a courtier, and a hangman than a 
 statesman." " How I long," wrote Lord Cornwallis, when 
 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, " to kick those whom it is my 
 duty obliges me to court!" Daniel Webster, at the end of 
 his life, confessed to his friend Harvey that his political 
 life had been full of disappointment. " If I were to live 
 my life over again," said he, " with my present experiences, 
 I would, under no considerations, allow myself to enter 
 public life. The public are ungrateful. The man who 
 serves the public most faithfully receives no adequate 
 14 
 
314 OFFICE-SEEKING. 
 
 reward. In my own history, those acts which have been, 
 before God, most disinterested and the least stained by 
 selfish considerations, have been precisely those for which 
 I have been most freely abused. No, no! have nothing to 
 do with politics. Sell your iron; eat the bread of inde 
 pendence; support your family with the rewards of honest 
 toil; do your duty as a private citizen to your country, 
 but let politics alone. It is a hard life, a thankless life. 
 * * * I have had, in the course of my official life, 
 which is not a short one, my full share of ingratitude; 
 but the unkindest cut of all, the shaft that has sunk 
 deepest in my heart, has been the refusal of this Adminis 
 tration to grant my request for an office of small pecuniary 
 consideration for my only son. 
 
 Office is sometimes sought for the vulgar notoriety it 
 brings; but oftener for the power and influence it gives; 
 but the chief power it gives at the present day is that of 
 making enemies. Every man who is elected to a desirable 
 place is expected to reward the partisans to whom he 
 chiefly owes his election; and, whatever he may do, he is 
 sure to offend ten to every one he pleases. The honor 
 which office confers is, in the generality of cases, purely 
 imaginary. No man is honored by a public station, unless 
 he honors it; in the very degree in which it adds to his 
 dignity or respectability, he shows himself to be unfit for 
 it. "A fool in high station," it has been well said, "is 
 like a man on the top of a mountain; everybody appears 
 small to him, and he appears small to everybody." 
 
 Some years ago a gentleman who had spent all his best 
 years as a political manager, said just before his death to 
 the editor of the New York "Liberal Christian," that 
 though his political life was generally regarded as a success, 
 
OFFICE-SEEKING. 315 
 
 he himself looked upon it as a failure. By close appli 
 cation and great exertions and sacrifices he had carried 
 measure after measure, secured the nomination or election 
 of this man or that, gained point after point, even when 
 other men had given them up as lost, seen his man in the 
 Senate and the House and the Governor s chair, and had 
 his bill written on the statute book times without number. 
 But, after all, the work had not paid. The men he had 
 worked so hard to elect generally disappointed his expecta 
 tion. The reputation he had gained by this sort of activity 
 prevented his elevation to the highest offices, and the 
 suspicion of dishonesty shut him out from all lucrative 
 ones. After twenty-five years of work, hard enough to 
 have made his fame as lawyer, minister, reformer or au 
 thor, or to have gained a fortune in mercantile life, he was 
 left behind, like a worn-out mule by an advancing army, 
 without name, learning or influence, and with barely a 
 competence for his old age. He had managed the stage 
 for other men to act other men s ideas upon; and while he 
 had done the work, they had secured the applause and the 
 pay. "I am haunted now by the memory of a wasted life." 
 " Here," says the editor in conclusion, " was a lesson well 
 worth the pondering. This man, of more than ordinary 
 abilities, who had held all sorts of offices up to representa 
 tive in Congress, and had been looked up to as one of the 
 magnates of his party, summed up the whole account at 
 the end of a quarter of a century in a long-drawn sigh. 
 That sigh was more impressive, more eloquent than any 
 sermon we ever heard. It was a sermon, preached from 
 a pulpit built of years of such work as is put into no oaken 
 or rosewood structure by a joiner s or carver s hand, in 
 
316 OFFICE-SEEKING. 
 
 tones we shall never forget. Twenty-five years were con 
 densed into that breath." 
 
 Macaulay, in a letter to his friend Ellis, expresses his 
 astonishment that any man who might hope to be success 
 ful in literature or politics should choose the latter and 
 quit the former. " On the one side," he declares, " are 
 health, leisure, peace of mind, the search after truth, and 
 all the enjoyments of friendship and conversation. On the 
 other side are almost certain ruin to the constitution, con 
 stant labor, constant anxiety. Every friendship which a 
 man may have becomes precarious as soon as he engages 
 in politics." In a similar vein Landor, in his " Imaginary 
 Conversations," strikingly illustrates the miseries of those 
 who forsake the peaceful paths of literature for the jang 
 ling pursuits of politics. " How many," says Sir Philip 
 Sidney, one of the imaginary interlocutors, " who have 
 abandoned for public life the studies of philosophy and 
 poetry, may be compared to brooks and rivers which in the 
 beginning of their course have assuaged our thirst, and 
 have invited us to tranquillity by their bright resemblance 
 of it, and which afterward partake of the nature of that vast 
 body into which they run, its dreariness, its bitterness, its 
 foams, its storms, its everlasting noise and commotion! I 
 have known several such, and when I have innocently 
 smiled at them, their countenances seemed to say: I wish 
 I could despise you; but alas! I am a runaway slave, and 
 from the best of mistresses to the worst of masters; I 
 serve at a tavern where every hour is dinner-time, and 
 pick a bone upon a silver dish. " 
 
 We have already alluded to the fact that persons who 
 hold office for some years acquire a distaste for the ordi 
 nary pursuits of life. It is, indeed, one of the misfor- 
 
OFFICE-SEEKING. 317 
 
 tunes of place and power, that those who have tasted them 
 can be happy neither with them nor without them ; they are 
 uneasy upon their eminence, and yet feel it a mortification 
 to come down from it, tenaciously clinging to its emolu 
 ments, while they are made wretched by its vexations and 
 disappointments. In 1841, in his seventy-fourth year, 
 John Quincy Adams, who had received almost every polit 
 ical honor within the gift of the people, received a letter 
 from a stranger advising him to retire from public life. 
 " The only reason," he records in his diary, " for my post 
 poning this is, that I cannot afford it. There is another 
 which I should have much trouble to overcome, but which 
 I would encounter; that is, the vacuity of occupation in 
 which I could take an interest. More than sixty years of 
 incessant active intercourse with the world has made polit 
 ical movement to me as much a necessary of life as atmos 
 pheric air. This is the weakness of my nature, which I 
 have intellect enough left to perceive, but not energy to 
 control. And thus, while a remnant of physical power is 
 left to me to write and speak, the world will retire from 
 me before I shall retire from the world." 
 
 Let every young man then who would succeed in life 
 resolve that, whatever may be his calling, however hard 
 his early struggles, he will not be an office-seeker. Of the 
 thousands who engage in this pursuit, the vast majority 
 must necessarily be unsuccessful; to every prize in the lot 
 tery there are a hundred blanks. The increasing greed 
 for place, the readiness with which men sacrifice money, 
 health, integrity and reputation to obtain it, is one of the 
 saddest signs of the times. In view of the sacrifice of 
 personal independence involved in office-holding, and of 
 the extent to which public places have been cheapened 
 
318 OFFICE-SEEKING. 
 
 and degraded till they have become, as Nicholas Biddle 
 once said, " like the tops of the Pyramids, which reptiles 
 may reach as well as eagles," we do not wonder that some 
 of our best men are beginning to decline the acceptance 
 of official appointments which others eagerly covet. One 
 of the ablest lawyers in New England has again and again 
 refused pressing invitations to accept a nomination for 
 Congress, and to a seat on the bench of the Supreme 
 Court of his State, declaring that he will never consent 
 to occupy any public place while he has " wit enough to 
 keep out of the poor-house." We cannot expect giants 
 to stoop to offices that have been degraded by pigmies. 
 They will continue, and in greater numbers, to refuse 
 them, till places of honor and trust cease to be regarded 
 as the mere spoils of political victors, and to be regarded 
 as desirable chiefly for the pickings and stealings incident 
 thereto, or that one may shirk honest work, or for the 
 vulgar notoriety they will give, or for the power they will 
 lend him to advance his own selfish ends. 
 
 In conclusion, we commend to the attention of every 
 young man who meditates engaging in the scramble for 
 office the advice which Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, is said 
 to have given some years ago, when Secretary at Wash 
 ington, to one who importuned him for a clerkship. Tell 
 ing him to go West, squat, build a cabin, and live like 
 a freeman, he said, " Accept a clerkship here, and you 
 sink at once all independence; your energy becomes re 
 laxed, and you are unfitted in a few years for any other 
 and more independent position. I may give you a place 
 to-day, and I can kick you out again to-morrow; and 
 there s another man over at the White House who can 
 kick me out; and the people, by-and-by, can kick him out. 
 
OFFICE-SEEKING. 319 
 
 and so we go. But if you own an acre of land it is your 
 kingdom, and your cabin is your castle; you are a sov 
 ereign, and you will feel it in every throbbing of your 
 pulse, and every day of your life will assure me of your 
 thanks for having thus advised you." 
 
AMERICANISMS. 
 
 There is a purism which, while it seeks to maintain the in 
 tegrity of language, in effect stifles its growth. W. D. WHITNEY. 
 
 TTTHEN a colony is established in a distant land, its 
 * * language begins at once to diverge from that of 
 the mother country in various ways. Not only do certain 
 words cease to be used by the one people, and certain other 
 words by the other, but the same word is applied differ 
 ently by the two peoples ; words are compounded differ 
 ently by them ; and the pronunciation and orthography of 
 words will vary, especially through the use of convertible 
 consonants. We have a striking illustration of this in 
 the ancient Scandinavian language, or Old Norse, which 
 a thousand years ago was the common speech of Iceland, 
 Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, but now exists entire in 
 no one of those countries. When in 1825 the Duke of 
 Saxe Weimar traveled in the United States, and visited a 
 colony of Germans in Pennsylvania who had been settled 
 there only a quarter of a century, he was surprised to find 
 that, owing to the European wars, which had cut off all 
 intercourse with the Fatherland, the people were speaking 
 a dialect which at home had become obsolete. So when 
 our forefathers left England, and began to form a new 
 nation three thousand miles away from the mother country, 
 it was inevitable that the differences of climate, natural 
 productions, and national customs, should insensibly lead, 
 
 320 
 
AMERICANISMS. 321 
 
 in the course of two hundred and fifty years, to some 
 striking differences in the speech of the two countries. 
 These differences, however, thanks to our close connection 
 with the mother country, the community of culture we 
 have kept up with her, and our admission of her superior 
 authority in matters of learning and literature, have been 
 far fewer and less glaring than might reasonably have 
 been feared. Though sundered from our British cousins by 
 a vast ocean, we have been, and still are, bound with them 
 by invisible ties into one community. The divergence of 
 what Sydney Smith calls "the American language" from 
 the English is not a tithe so great as the differences in 
 the dialects of England. Still British purism, not to say 
 hypercriticism, finds fault with even our higher styles of 
 discourse, as disfigured by "Americanisms," and in both 
 the tone and material of colloquial talk the discrepancies 
 are, of course, much more marked. Retaining not a few 
 older words, phrases, and meanings which their use rejects, 
 we have failed at the same time to adopt certain others 
 which have sprung up in England since the separation, 
 and have coined yet others of which they have not ap 
 proved. " Upon all these points," as an able American 
 philologist remarks, " we are, in the abstract, precisely as 
 much in the right as they; but the practical question is, 
 which of the two is the higher authority, whose approved 
 usage shall be the norm of correct English speaking." 
 
 It is said that when Melville, Queen Elizabeth s am 
 bassador, told her that the Queen of Scots was an inch 
 taller than her majesty, she replied, " Then she is an inch 
 too tall"; and in much the same spirit British purists 
 have assumed their own customs and usages, linguistic or 
 otherwise, to be the sole absolute standard of taste ancj 
 
322 AMERICANISMS. 
 
 propriety. Notwithstanding the fact that our mother 
 tongue came from nowhere in particular, but may be 
 said to have been " at a feast of languages, and stolen 
 the scraps," and though, never for a moment fixed or 
 stationary, it still continues to beg, borrow, steal and as 
 similate words wherever it can find them, provided only 
 they express new ideas, or render an old one more tersely 
 than before, yet every new term coined on this side of 
 the Atlantic has been branded and pilloried, whether it 
 originated in circumstances out of the reach of English 
 experience, and met a clamorous necessity of our situation, 
 or not. Too often the growls of the British lion have 
 been echoed by his American imitators, who have not 
 taken the trouble even to ask themselves, " What is an 
 Americanism?" and thus get a clear meaning of the term. 
 Before joining in the hue-and-cry against any words thus 
 stigmatized, would it not be well to pause and ask what 
 is meant by the epithet? Is it any chance misuse of Eng 
 lish of which an American writer may be guilty, or the 
 vulgarism of any clique or locality? Is it just to term 
 all the anomalies and provincialisms which can be raked 
 and scraped together from the slang of the backwoods and 
 the bar-rooms, the dialects of the Mississippi boatmen, the 
 southern sand-hillers, the Bowery boys, Yankee peddlers, 
 the frequenters of pot-houses, as well as from the rubbish 
 and scum of our raw-head-and-bloody-bones literature of 
 the Cobb and Ingraham school, and, cramming them into 
 a thick volume, label them "Americanisms?" As justly 
 might we collect all the slang of London thieves, the " ex 
 asperated haitches " of the cockneys, the provincialisms of 
 Yorkshire, the Northumberland " burrs," the patois of 
 Cornwall, the uncouth verbal anomalies of the miners, and 
 
AMERICANISMS. 323 
 
 mingling with them the comic compounds of Sydney Smith, 
 and the monstrosities of Carlyle and his imitators, label 
 the whole as the common speech of England. 
 
 It is absurd to pronounce every word that chances first 
 to see the light in this country an Americanism, No term 
 can justly be so called until it has received the sanction of 
 general and respectable usage. Till recently we have been 
 willing to bow to English authority upon all questions 
 touching English speech; but, as it has been well said, 
 America is now out of her leading-strings, and the nation 
 which has supplied the world with two of the best diction 
 aries of our tongue, may certainly trust its own judgment 
 and instincts in inventing the new words it needs. We 
 deny the exclusive right of John Bull to coin new expres 
 sions, or that it is a statutory offense to invent on this side 
 of the Atlantic a felicitous, or daring, or useful, expression 
 unauthorized by Todd or Johnson. Our language is no 
 longer the language of England merely; and while she 
 merits our profoundest homage as the land which nursed 
 our tongue in its infancy, and whose scholars have done the 
 most to enrich, refine and beautify it, we yet hold that any 
 genuine improvement of it, any legitimate addition to its 
 wealth of words, should be welcomed from any quarter 
 of the globe where it is spoken. The peculiar circum 
 stances in which the inhabitants of the United States are 
 placed, the objects of nature, the productions of the earth, 
 the employments, the modes of thought, the characteristic 
 tastes and sensibilities, necessitate a corresponding diversity 
 of language, not only between this and the mother country, 
 but even between different parts of our own vast country. 
 Hence, such words as backtvoodsman, congressional, prairie, 
 immigrants, improvements, and many others, meeting real 
 
324 AMERICANISMS. 
 
 exigencies of our situation, and describing tilings which do 
 not exist in England, are entitled to rank, not as American 
 isms, but as genuine English; for the English would have 
 coined them had they been in our places. 
 
 We have no objection, however, to the term "American 
 ism/ 1 provided it be not deemed equivalent, as it certainly 
 is not, to vulgarism. It is natural enough that lexicog 
 raphers and schoolmasters should deprecate innovations; 
 but they should not forget that language, like everything 
 else that is living, is progressive. It is an incessant act 
 of creation, ever advancing, ever developing. New cir 
 cumstances of life, new discoveries of thought, new con 
 quests of art and science, exact new forms of expression. 
 The influences of climate and history are continually pro 
 ducing fresh revolutions in the character of a nation, and 
 the change of character necessitates modifications of the 
 prevalent idiom. The very words we use to-day will sound 
 strange to a future generation; even our great-grand 
 children will detect something quaint and unfamiliar in 
 our speech, many of the terms of which will have become 
 pedantic, vulgar, or obsolete. Who uses "sweetheart" 
 to-day, and yet what term of endearment have we to 
 supply its place? "Commence" is fast displacing "begin," 
 and "plain," "lewd," "odd," "crafty," have very different 
 meanings from those they had a hundred years ago. Woe 
 to that nation whose language has become fixed and un 
 changing ! Fixity of language argues stagnation of thought; 
 a lack of energy, stir, and new ideas; and, conversely, the 
 growth of a nation s vocabulary may be regarded as almost 
 the exact measure of the activity and advancement of a 
 people, of the development of its general intelligence. 
 The Americanisms we have coined, the odd-looking words 
 
AMERICANISMS. 325 
 
 and phrases by which we designate novel thoughts and 
 novel things, are proofs of our mental activity. They 
 mark our arrival at the stature of manhood, and our 
 intellectual emancipation from the shackles of the old 
 country. The health and vigor of a tree are shown by the 
 vigor with which it sends off new shoots and increases its 
 foliage. When it ceases to do this, decay has set in; the 
 sap no longer flows vigorously, and its branches begin to 
 wither. 
 
 Already not a few of our verbal inventions have com 
 mended themselves to the good sense of the English people. 
 Many of them by steam presses and steamships have been 
 smuggled into the British islands and their colonies, and, 
 to the great horror of purists, and in spite of their pro 
 tests, have been indissoluby incorporated with the mother- 
 speech. Philologists have denounced them; but a legion 
 of academicians could not keep them out. By a law as 
 sure in its operation as the laws of physical motion or 
 chemical attraction, the popular coinages of one age become 
 the classic phraseology of the next. "Mob," "sham," 
 "advocate," "bully," "banter," "bubble," were all outlaws 
 once; but they were long ago received into the body of 
 good citizens. " Skate " was a new word in Swift s day, and 
 so was "fanatics" in Fuller s. A writer in the "World" 
 tells us that he assisted at the birth of that most significant 
 word " flirtation," which " dropped from the most beautiful 
 mouth in the world, and which has since received the sanc 
 tion of our most accurate Laureate in one of his comedies." 
 Dean Swift objected to "hoax," as vulgar, and "humbug" 
 was denounced in the middle of the eighteenth century as 
 "the uncouth dialect of the Huns, the jabber of Hotten 
 tots"; but which of the synonyms of these words could 
 
326 AMERICANISMS. 
 
 supply their place? No one now objects to "suicide," which 
 is certainly pithier than " self homicide"; yet Phillips, a 
 nephew of Milton, denounced it as a word that should be 
 " hissed off," because it was quite as suggestive of sus, a 
 sow, as of the pronoun sui. Chaucer imported so many 
 " wagonfuls " of French words into our language, that he 
 was nicknamed " The French Brewer." The truth is, how 
 ever, that he did hardly more than crystallize in literature 
 verbal forms already in solution among the floating word- 
 material of the day. Robert Mannyng and Richard Rolle, 
 in the fourteenth century, protested vehemently against 
 the " strange Ynglyss," that is the neologisms of their day. 
 Ascham in the sixteenth century, and Phillips in the seven 
 teenth, had the same horror of foreign and outlandish 
 terms. Arthur Golding in 1565 complained that 
 
 "All good inditers find 
 
 Our English tongue is driven almost out of mind; 
 Dismember d, hack d, maim d, rent, and torne, 
 Defaced, patcli d, marr d, and made a skorne." 
 
 These protests were of little avail. Many of the words 
 that knocked for admission into the language were ur 
 gently needed, and it threw open its doors and let them 
 in. The philosophic poet Daniel coined the splendid class 
 of words with the prefix inter, to denote reciprocation. 
 Coleridge substituted the fine word ancestral for the lum 
 bering ancestorial. It is probable that more than thirty 
 thousand words have been added to our recognized vo 
 cabulary since the appearance of Johnson s dictionary. 
 Who can doubt that this has been, for the most part, a 
 positive gain? Look at the French words which have 
 forced their way into our language within the present 
 century. Ennui, blase, employe, debut, nonchalance, pro- 
 
AMERICAKISMS. 327 
 
 gramme, renaissance, soiree, how could we dispense with 
 any of these? Had they not met a positive want of the 
 language they would never have established themselves 
 in the dictionary. Prestige, meaning the presumption 
 which past successes beget of future ones, is a coinage of 
 rare felicity. Exploitation, verve, nuances, badinage, finesse, 
 personnel, which are now hovering on the confines of Eng 
 lish, are pretty sure to be domesticated in it. Persiflage 
 (light, mocking talk, bantering on grave or comic themes), 
 which Sydney Smith parodies when he speaks of a meas 
 ure as being rejected " with Percivalism and contempt," 
 is a word for which we have no equipollent one. Soli 
 darity, a term invented by the French communists, and 
 popularized by Kossuth in his visit to England and this 
 country, and which signifies a fellowship in gain and loss, 
 in victory and defeat, that the men or things of which 
 it is affirmed are indissolubly united, or all in the same 
 bottom, is so convenient that, though new even in France, 
 it is already printed in italic in our dictionaries. Sociology, 
 which gives a name to a late work of Herbert Spencer, 
 is so apt a designation of a new science that it will be in 
 vain to struggle against it. Equally convenient are such 
 coinages as atavism, dissimilation, extradition, and neutrali 
 zation. Police and reconnoitre, which were once ridiculed 
 by the "Spectator" and other English periodicals, have 
 been so long domesticated in the language that they have 
 almost lost their foreign look. 
 
 Caesar used to say: "Avoid a new word as you would 
 a rock." The rule is often quoted by rhetoricians, and is 
 certainly a good one within certain limits ; but where, had 
 it been rigidly followed, would have been the boasted copi 
 ousness of our glorious English tongue? Had every new 
 
328 AMERICANISMS. 
 
 word been branded and outlawed by our ancestors, would 
 not the language have been dwarfed in its cradle? Let 
 us try, by all legitimate and proper means, to preserve the 
 purity of " the well of English undefiled." Let us mend 
 the walls where they are broken, and gather out the stones, 
 and clear away the weeds and briers, with which it has 
 been overgrown and choked. But let us not prevent its 
 waters from running. Let it be a stream, and not a tank. 
 However desirable it may be to restrain language within 
 due bounds, and especially to check that undergrowth of 
 words which threatens to choke up and impoverish its great 
 roots, it is still more desirable that it should be chartered 
 with sufficient liberty to embrace all the new demands that 
 are made upon it from age to age. It is thus, only, as an 
 able writer has said, that language really becomes, in a 
 figurative sense, the depository of history. It is thus that 
 the- phraseology of one age differs from the phraseology of 
 another; and that hence we are enabled to see reflected in 
 the writings of Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Defoe, and of the 
 Addisons, the Goldsmiths, and of the Byrons, as in a mir 
 ror, not only the vernacular idiom of the period, but its 
 moral and social peculiarities. The languages which are 
 likely to live the longest, and to spread most widely, are 
 those which welcome most readily the terms which advanc 
 ing knowledge needs; and it is because our English tongue 
 is so catholic and hospitable that we believe it, though five 
 hundred years old, to have only started on its grand career. 
 The necessity and fitness of many of the words coined 
 in America no sensible man can doubt. What equivalents 
 can be found in Johnson s dictionary, or Richardson s, for 
 such Western terms as sawyer, cut-off, and broad-horn? 
 These words denote certain peculiarities of the Mississippi 
 
AMERICANISMS. 329 
 
 river, and convey to those who are familiar with its navi 
 gation perfectly distinct ideas. So to fall a tree, to log, 
 to raft, lumbering, are words which have sprung up in 
 the great forest-belts of our country, but which England 
 lacks, simply because she has no pineries, or great forest- 
 belts, where the pine grows almost exclusively, and there 
 fore no such operations as these words describe. In felling 
 the pine trees it is necessary that they should fall in a 
 particular direction, lest they lodge; it is necessary also to 
 haul the logs on sleds to a stream, where they may be 
 rafted (that is, bound together) and set afloat; and hence 
 the verbs to raft and to log. Again, in traversing these 
 forests, it is often necessary to ascend a stream, disem 
 bark, and carry the canoe and its contents over a height 
 of land to another stream flowing in an opposite direc 
 tion. In the Eastern States this height of land is called 
 a carry; in the Northwest, where the voyageurs (that is, 
 the men who paddle your canoe on the streams or along 
 the shores of the broad lakes) are of French extraction, 
 it is called a portage. In the high Northern regions, where 
 the boats are made of white birch, they are called canoes. 
 In the temperate regions, where they are excavated from 
 the trunks of trees, they are called pirogues (from the 
 French pirogue, originally an Indian word). 
 
 A convenient and expressive term, which we had too 
 frequent occasion to use during our late civil war, is de 
 moralize. It is the only word which Noah Webster, who 
 spent a life-time in the study of words, ever coined. We 
 have his own statement that it was first used in a tract 
 which he wrote on the French revolution, " about the year 
 1793." A ludicrous misapplication of the word, in which 
 it was used in an individual instead of its true collective 
 
330 AMERICANISMS. 
 
 sense, is furnished by the familiar story of a soldier at 
 the battle of Fredericksburg. Having skulked to the rear, 
 or to a considerable distance from the fight, he was en 
 countered by an indignant officer, who demanded: "What 
 are you here for, you rascal? Are you wounded? 1 "No, 
 colonel," coolly replied the man, " I can t exactly say I m 
 wounded; but Fm dreadfully demoralized." Who will deny 
 the utility in a new country of such words as diggings, 
 betterments, or improvements, and squatter? So buncombe 
 (applied to electioneering speeches), caucus, breadstuff 
 (bread, corn-meal, or flour), freshet, grit, gully, to lobby, to 
 lynch, mass-meeting, rowdy, to snicker (to laugh slyly), to 
 spot (a rogue), and splurge, are terms which, if not im 
 peratively demanded by novel things, practices and cus 
 toms of the New World, are, at least, very significant and 
 convenient. What can be more ludicrously expressive than 
 the phrase sometimes heard in New England, " He has no 
 sprawl?" Could any word express more vividly the inertia 
 of a man who is not only too lazy to sit upright, but 
 even too lazy to stretch himself when he is lying flat on 
 his back? Two other words, which, if not absolutely 
 needed, are very convenient, are the American outsider 
 and comeouter. The first, according to Professor Marsh, 
 owes its circulation, if not its birth, to the Baltimore Con 
 vention, in 1844, which nominated Mr. Polk for the Presi 
 dency, Some persons, not members of the convention, 
 having attempted to control its action in an irregular 
 way, a member rose and energetically protested against 
 all interference with the meeting by outsiders. The word 
 comeouter, which seems to have been coined in defiance of 
 all the ordinary rules of derivation, denotes a class of 
 independent thinkers who, priding themselves upon their 
 
AMERICANISMS. 331 
 
 contempt for venerable shams and hoary conventionalities, 
 " come out " from the sects and parties that are supposed 
 to maintain them. 
 
 Again, many words which have been ridiculed by our 
 transatlantic cousins as belonging to what Sydney Smith 
 called " the American language," are of genuine British 
 stock. They have simply become obsolete in the land of 
 their birth, while they have been kept alive here. As our 
 nasal drawl is from Suffolk, England, where they say eend 
 for end, ceoiv for cow, eout for out, just like some New Eng- 
 landers, so a large portion of our so-called vulgarisms, 
 which, like chickens, are apt to go home to roost, were 
 hatched on the other side of the Atlantic. Thus the word 
 bug, which in America is used as a general appellation of 
 the beetle tribe, is a genuine old English term. The mean 
 ing of the word, according to Wedgwood, is simply an 
 object of terror, from the cry of Bo! Boo! Boh! made by 
 a person, often covering his face to represent the unknown, 
 to frighten children. In a secondary sense the name is 
 given to insects considered an object of disgust and hor 
 ror. Thus Bacon says in a letter: "A bug hath bussed 
 in my ears." In England, to-day, the word is appropriated 
 to the noisome inhabitants of beds; and so perfectly ob 
 solete has the old meaning become, that when, some years 
 ago, an edition of Edgar A. Poe s works was published in 
 London, the editor was compelled to alter the title of the 
 story entitled "The Gold Bug" to "The Golden Beetle," 
 to avoid offending English ears. Again, we talk of big 
 bugs; but one of the meanings of the word is " swelling," 
 "protuberant"; and in Linconshire bug is still used for 
 " proud." " In my time, at Rugby school," says Grose, 
 " bug was the regular term for conceited, proud." In this 
 
332 AMERICANISMS. 
 
 sense the word, Wedgwood thinks, seems to rest on the 
 notion of frightening with a loud noise, blustering, 
 threatening, and is thus connected with bug, bug-bear. 
 Fuller, in his " Pisgah Sight of Palestine," praises the 
 New Jerusalem for being " slicker than any fabric the 
 earth afforded." An intelligent writer states that the 
 Bible has "reckon," and that Southey uses "realize," in 
 the precise sense in which they are used colloquially here. 
 Burke has " pretty considerable," and Miss Burney " I 
 trembled a few." The modern phrase, " let drive," which 
 many suppose to be a vulgarism, was used by Spenser; and 
 the American politician who some years ago expressed his 
 willingness, in a certain contingency, " to let the Union 
 slide," had for his phraseology, if not for his sentiment, 
 as Professor Marsh has remarked, the best authority, that 
 of Shakspeare. So the word guess, which a Yankee has on 
 his lips as often as a Frenchman has glory, is not only used 
 by Locke and Thomas Fuller, but is as old as Chaucer, who 
 
 says: 
 
 "Her yelwe here was broicled in a tresse, 
 Behind hire back, a yerde long, I guesse." 
 
 Izaak Walton, in his Life of Hooker, says " His admission 
 into this place was the very beginning of those oppositions 
 and anxieties which till then this good man was a stranger 
 to; and of which the Reader may guess by what follows." 
 So the Yankee term sight, for " a good many," dates back 
 as far as the fifteenth century, when we find by the 
 writings of a high-born and accomplished lady of that time, 
 that " abomynable sight of monkes " was elegant English 
 for a " large company of friars." So old fogy is no new 
 comer, but literally " an old fogy " in the language. 
 The word gumption, signifying acuteness, is said by a 
 
AMERICANISMS. 333 
 
 writer in " Notes and Queries " to be still in use in the 
 south of Scotland. Prink, to deck, to adorn, is used in the 
 Eastern States in precisely the sense in which it was used 
 by Spenser and Shakspeare. Lam, which is obsolescent in 
 America now, was a familiar term in England in the time 
 of Charles II. Some etymologists derive it from lemja, a 
 Norse word, meaning to give a sound drubbing; a late 
 English writer thinks it is derived from the fate of one 
 Doctor Lamb, an astrologer, who was knocked in the head 
 by the mob in the preceding reign. The verb to progress, 
 which English purists have specially branded, may be found 
 in Shakspeare s King John; in Milton s "Treatise of Ref 
 ormation in England," where we read of certain persons 
 "progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of Eter 
 nity " ; and in the folio edition of Bailey s " Universal 
 Dictionary," published in 1755, where it is given as a 
 neuter. Shakspeare uses learn in the sense of teach, as in 
 Troilus and Cressida, II, 1: 
 
 " Toad-stool, learn me the proclamation " ; 
 and so do Drayton and even Langlande in the fourteenth 
 century. Muss, too, is good Shakspearean English, and the 
 word is used also by Massinger and Fletcher. 
 
 No so-called Americanism has been more sharply rated 
 than the employment of sick for ill, English critics insist 
 ing that sick shall be applied only to a certain condition 
 of the stomach. Not so Shakspeare, as will be seen by the 
 following extracts: 
 
 Ligarius. * * * What s to do? 
 
 Brutus. A piece of work that will make sick men whole. 
 
 Ligarius. But are not some whole that we must make siekf 
 
 Nor Milton: 
 
 " Despair 
 Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch." 
 
334 AMERICANISMS. 
 
 Nor Pope: 
 
 "Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said; 
 Tie up the knocker; say I m sick, I m dead." 
 
 It is said that the word ill, in the present English sense, 
 does not occur once in King James s version of the Bible. 
 
 Another supposed Americanism is baggage, which is said 
 to be improperly used for luggage. The best English lexi 
 cographers, however, define luggage as "heavy, cumbrous 
 baggage, or package," that is, for example, the bulky, 
 ponderous movables which an army, or a family when 
 moving, transport with them. The phrase " bag and bag 
 gage" is one of the most familiar in English literature. A 
 late English writer, Rev. W. L. Blackley, in his " Word- 
 Gossip," speaking of the American use of slim, as applied 
 to attendance, says that " it is nearer the original meaning 
 in which the word came to us than either of the senses in 
 which we are wont to use it. It does not strike us as 
 awkward to say, there was a thin attendance, which is 
 equivalent to the ordinary meaning of slim; and still less 
 do we object to the expression a bad attendance, which is 
 the sense in which we first received the word, from the 
 German schlimm, bad, 1 its root idea in that language 
 probably signifying crooked, irregular. " So clever, in 
 the sense of "good-natured," plunder in the American 
 sense, overslaugh, and wilt, may all be defended by the best 
 English authority. The truth is, while John Bull has been 
 sneering at us for our vulgarisms, it is we who have 
 adhered to, and he who has departed from, the ancient and 
 sound usage in regard to these words; it is the island, and 
 not the continent, that has corrupted the tongue. 
 
 The force of these considerations our English censors 
 are beginning at last themselves to acknowledge. They 
 
AMERICANISMS. 335 
 
 are beginning to admit that the vast number of words, 
 obsolete or provincial in England, which were brought to 
 this country generations ago, which have cropped up among 
 us, and which, when met with in American writers, have 
 an outlandish look to an Englishman, are a clear gain to 
 the language. A late number of "Blackwood" has an 
 article on this subject, in which it admits that these words 
 and phrases have been branded, very unjustly, with the 
 name of Americanisms, when many of them are not only 
 pure Anglicisms, but made English for evermore in the 
 pages of Spenser, Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. It is not 
 the first time in history that the language of a people has 
 been preserved in greater purity in the colonies than in the 
 mother country. The descendants of the Greek colonists of 
 Asia Minor, it is said, speak a language much nearer to the 
 old Greek than do the citizens of Greece. Dutch resembles 
 the old German more closely than the present dialect of 
 Prussia; and Spanish is more Latin-like than the Italian. 
 Among these legitimate English words, current in Amer 
 ica, but little known in English, "Blackwood 1 cites these: 
 Bender "to go on the bender" from bend, to crook the 
 elbow in lifting the glass to the mouth; fall, the beautiful 
 synonym of "autumn"; meech, an old Shakspearean word 
 for "skulk"; platform, in its political sense, a term fre 
 quently employed by the writers of the Commonwealth; 
 rile, to vex a person by exciting his temper; sag; slick, as 
 used in the phrase, " he goes slick about his business " ; 
 slide, in the sense of which we have already spoken; 
 splurge, to swagger and make a great fuss and display of 
 one s wealth; squelch, of the old English use of which we 
 have an example in the old ballad in which it is said that 
 St. George " did the dragon fell, and gave him a plaguy 
 
336 AMEEICAISTISMS. 
 
 squelch" 1 ; squirm, to wriggle like an eel or worm; stent or 
 stint, and wilt. 
 
 All these words, excepting bender, the critic in " Black- 
 wood " declares " are worthy of the favor of English 
 writers and speakers, and can boast an ancient, and in 
 some cases an illustrious, ancestry." Another class of 
 words, which the critic deems true Americanisms, such as 
 "buncombe, 11 "lobbying," "wire-pulling," "log-rolling," 
 " axe-grinding," he thinks the purists will not be able long 
 to shut out from the dictionary, especially as the English 
 are becoming very familiar with the practices they describe. 
 But a third class of Americanisms, which are clamoring 
 for admission into the language, he pronounces " offensive, 11 
 and declares should be resisted at the threshold. These 
 are donate, locate; balance, for a part of anything; to post 
 or post up a person; pled for "pleaded"; avails for "pro 
 ceeds"; illy for "ill"; quite for "very"; retiracy, boss, 
 at that, as in the sentence, " He has a scolding wife, and 
 an ugly one at that"-, and many others which are re 
 garded as slang as well by educated Americans as by 
 Englishmen. For these words, the meanings of which are 
 fully expressed by old and legitimate words, there is no 
 necessity whatever; and we are perfectly willing that the 
 interlopers should be handed over to the critic, to be ex 
 communicated. It must be admitted, too, that some oi 
 our words, which are legitimate enough of themselves, are 
 too often overworked, as Mr. Choate said of the sheriff s par 
 ticiple. As Dominie Sampson could never open his mouth 
 without letting out "Prodigious!" so Americans are sure 
 to " guess," " reckon," " presume," " calculate," whenever 
 they give an opinion. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, on the ef 
 fects of political life, 317. 
 
 Addison, his style, 21 ; his prepa 
 ration for writing, 35 ; his lit 
 erary nicety, 37. 
 
 Americanisms, 320-336 ; their or 
 igin, 320, 321, 323; limitations 
 of the term, 322, 323 ; some of 
 them indispensable, 328-330; 
 their expressiveness, 330 ; many 
 of British stock, 331-335; 
 adopted in England, 336; ille 
 gitimate, 336. 
 
 Andersen, Hans Christian, 115. 
 
 Anglers, denounced, 183, 184 ; 
 qualities they need, 193-195; 
 their intimacy with nature, 196. 
 
 Angling, 182-199; its delights, 
 182, 183, 196, 197; practiced by 
 eminent men, 185-188; also by 
 ladies, 188, 189 ; in Maine lakes, 
 190, 191; demands patience, 
 192; and skill, 195; healthful 
 and innocent, 196; reveals 
 character, 197, 198; not cruel, 
 198, 199. 
 
 Antony, Mark, his angling 
 tricks, 188. 
 
 Authors, their lives inconsistent 
 with their teachings, 128. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, his style, 21; his 
 egotism, 90; on human na 
 ture, 211; on healthfullness of 
 the literary and the religious 
 life, 228 ; on memory, 256. 
 
 Barrow, Isaac, on jesting, 202; 
 dull when at school, 248. 
 
 Beard, George M., M.D., on 
 longevity of brain-workers, 
 227; on longevity of the pre 
 cocious, 229. 
 
 Beauty, imperfection essential to 
 physical and moral, 119, 120. 
 
 " Blues, the," and their remedy, 
 72-84; their causes, 72, 73, 75, 
 77; how cured, 77-84; Dr. 
 Johnson s, 72-78 ; Southey on, 
 80 ; exorcised by music, 83. 
 
 Boileau, his self-praise, 93. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Lord, his anecdote 
 of a great scholar, 144; his 
 memory, 157. 
 
 Books, voluminous, little read, 
 68, 69. 
 
 Borrowing, literary, great geni 
 uses addicted to it, 264, 265; 
 Shakspeare s, 265; the poet 
 Gray s, 266; Voltaire on, 259. 
 
 Bossuet, his corrections, 37. 
 
 Brain-work, healthful, 225-228; 
 when injurious, 228; effects of 
 excessive, 246. 
 
 Brilliant men, less useful than 
 men of common sense, 178, 179. 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, his style, 22. 
 
 Bruyere, La, saying of, 9. 
 
 Bryant, William C., secret of his 
 health in old age, 222. 
 
 Buflbn, his painstaking, 37; his 
 egotism, 90 ; on mental produc 
 tion, 256. 
 
 Bunyan, John, saying of, 210. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, his style, 25 ; his 
 care in writing, 37. 
 
 Burns, Robert, 93 ; his excesses, 
 126, 127; on fat men, 134, 135; 
 on charity in judging others, 
 210; his courtesy, 301. 
 
 Burton, Robert, his cure of " the 
 
 337 
 
338 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 blues," 82; on angling, 192; 
 his " Anatomy," 228. 
 
 Butler, Samuel, his self-praise, 93. 
 
 Buxton, Jedediah, his memory, 
 161. 
 
 Buxton, Sir T. Fowell, anecdote 
 of, 110. 
 
 Byron, Lord, roused by Jeffrey s 
 criticism, 107; connection of 
 his virtues and vices, 127 ; his 
 ridicule of angling, 194, 195, 
 198; a literary borrower, 269. 
 
 Csesar, Julius, his style, 21; his 
 treatment of Catullus, 108. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, on original 
 ity, 259. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, his qualities as 
 a writer, 12-14, 124; his por 
 traiture of Dr. Johnson, 14; 
 advice to a new author, 107 ; a 
 poor listener, 285. 
 
 Carriages, tests of gentility, 297, 
 298. 
 
 Castera, translator of Camoens, 
 quoted, 262. 
 
 Centenarians, 214-217. 
 
 Cervantes, 37, 38. 
 
 Chalmers, his native feral force, 
 213. 
 
 Chateaubriand, his vanity, 94. 
 
 Chaucer, his egotism, 89, 90 ; his 
 importations of French words, 
 326 ; his borrowings, 264. 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, not a gentle 
 man, 301 ; his Letters, 301. 
 
 Cicero, his egotism, 88. 
 
 Clarke, Adam, anecdote of, 59; 
 dull in boyhood, 248. 
 
 Classics, the ancient, 8. 
 
 Clay, Henry, his memory, 146. 
 
 Climate, a cause of melancholy, 
 75, 76. 
 
 Cobbett, William, his style, 7; 
 his egotism, 95. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., his advice to the 
 criticised, 108 ; his alleged pla 
 giarisms, 261 ; origin of his 
 " Ancient Mariner," 271. 
 
 Coleridge, Rev. E., his memory, 
 164. 
 
 Comte, Auguste, his abstinence 
 from newspapers, 66, 67. 
 
 Constantine, the Emperor, say 
 ing of, 109. 
 
 Controversy, personal, 101. 
 
 Conversation, its advantages, 280 ; 
 on what its force depends, 283 ; 
 of men of the town, ib.; of 
 literary lions, 284 ; controversy % 
 its foe, ib. 
 
 Cornaro, Lewis, 219, 222. 
 
 Corawallis, Lord, saying of, 313. 
 
 Corwin, Hon. Thomas, on office- 
 holding, 318. 
 
 Cramming, the vice of public 
 schools, 145. 
 
 Criticism, sensitiveness to, 100- 
 110 ; what makes it rankle, 105 ; 
 petty, unjust, 114; Homeric, 
 114; of men of genius, 123, 124. 
 
 Curran, John Philpot, his melan 
 choly, 74. 
 
 Cuvier, his memory, 159. 
 
 Dawdling, literary, 39. 
 
 DeCailly, the Chevalier, quoted, 
 255. 
 
 Defects, their compensations, 125, 
 126. 
 
 DeLaunoy, 56. 
 
 DeMaistre, Count Joseph, on 
 style, 111; his conservatism, 
 176. 
 
 DeQuiucey, Thomas, his style, 10 ; 
 on the German style, 17; his 
 cure of hypochondria, 78; his 
 memory, 165 ; on French con 
 versation, 283, 284; on logom 
 achy in conversation, 284. 
 
 DeRossi, Ignatius, his memory, 
 158. 
 
 DeStael, Madame, 180. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 248. 
 
 Discoveries and inventions, sug 
 gested bv previous ones, 272, 
 273. 
 
 Dryden, John, his egotism, 90. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 339 
 
 Dullness, of eminent men in 
 childhood, 247-250. 
 
 Education, haste in, 243; effects 
 
 of too early, 243-246, 250. 
 Egotism, of Shakspeare and 
 
 other celebrated men, 86-99; 
 
 of Shakspeare s heroes and 
 
 heroines, 88, 89 ; Coleridge on, 
 
 95,96. 
 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 
 
 saying of, 321. 
 Emerson, R. W., his style, 26, 27 ; 
 
 on property in thought, 258; 
 
 his definition of a great man, 
 
 263. 
 English language, the, its fitness 
 
 for literary composition, 52, 53 ; 
 
 its rapid spread, 53; should 
 
 welcome needed new words, 
 
 328. 
 
 Epicurus, his egotism, 88. 
 Erring, the, a plea for, 207-213; 
 
 too harshly judged, 208-210; 
 
 their temptations, 208. 
 Excellence, its drawbacks, 112, 
 
 120, 121; negative, 121. 
 Exercise, 79, 217. 
 
 Fat men, celebrated, 138, 139; 
 their good nature, 136. 
 
 Fatness, its advantages and dis 
 advantages, 131-140 ; punished 
 by the Spartans, 139; relieved 
 by the Krenzbrunnen waters, 
 139. 
 
 Fontenelle, his treatment of criti 
 cisms, 110. 
 
 Fools, 173-181 ; why they offend 
 us, 173 ; why happy, 174 ; their 
 social advantages, 175, 176; 
 essential to society, 176 ; make 
 best reformers, 177, 178 ; make 
 society endurable, 178, 179 ; as 
 fireside companions, 179 ; born, 
 not made, 181; Charles Lamb 
 on, 174. 
 
 Foster, John, his preparation for 
 writing, 35. 
 
 Fox, Charles James, anecdote of, 
 149. 
 
 Frederick the Great, anecdote of, 
 109; his reply to D Alembert, 
 109. 
 
 French, the, their style, 18, 19; 
 their faults, 20. 
 
 Froude, James Anthony, his 
 style, 25. 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, D.D., his mem 
 ory 163 ; his rules for improv 
 ing the memory, 171, 172. 
 
 G 
 
 Galen, 219. 
 
 Genius, receptive, 10, 256; its 
 modesty, 85-99; not ignorant 
 of its powers, 96, 97; its in 
 firmities, 126; often tardy in 
 its development, 247 ; a debtor 
 to its predecessors, 266. 
 
 Gentility, difiiculty of defining 
 it, 287, 288; its requisites, 295, 
 296, 297 ; defined by negatives, 
 296; divided and sub-divided 
 by women, 296 ; repose a mark 
 of it, 299 ; cannot be put on at 
 will, 302. 
 
 Gentleman, a, Dr. Johnson s defi 
 nition of the word, 288; Sel- 
 den s and Gibbon s derivation 
 of it, 288; De Tocqueville on 
 it, 290 ; defined by Archdeacon 
 Hare, 290; also by Maginn, 
 291; the Byronic idea of it, 
 291 ; variously defined, 292- 
 298; politeness not a criterion 
 of one, 294; true characteris 
 tics of, 287-304; described by 
 Chaucer, 304 ; Burns s idea of, 
 295; James the First s notion 
 of, 295 ; Sir Robert Peel on, 295. 
 
 Geofirin, Madame, anecdote of, 
 286. 
 
 Germans, the, their literary merits 
 and delects, 15-18. 
 
 Gibbon, his style, 8; his sneers 
 at Christianity, 23; his "De- 
 
340 
 
 ISTDEX. 
 
 cline and Fall," 38; his love- 
 making, 135. 
 
 Giles, Henry, on fat men, 131. 
 
 Gladstone, Sir William, his style, 
 31. 
 
 Gluck, composer of music, 273. 
 
 Goethe, 48; on human weakness 
 es, 123, 210; irregularity of his 
 studies, 154 ; on originality, 257. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, his style, 27, 
 28 ; his vanity, 93 ; his borrow 
 ings, 271, 272. 
 
 "Good people," why disliked, 
 122, 123. 
 
 Gravity of demeanor, 205, 206. 
 
 Gray, Thomas, his borrowings, 
 11, 266; his painstaking, 37; 
 his melancholy, 73 ; his learn 
 ing and fastidiousness, 121, 122 ; 
 his individuality, 276. 
 
 Guizot, his style, 22. 
 
 H 
 
 Hall, Robert, his style, 25; his 
 high ideal, 37. 
 
 Hamnierton,- P. G., on value of 
 newspapers, 67; on good and 
 bad memories, 154. 
 
 Hare, Archdeacon, on the uncon 
 sciousness of genius, 97. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, his self-esteem, 
 94. 
 
 Helps, Sir Arthur, on criminals, 
 211. 
 
 Hildebrand, Karl, on style, 51, 52. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 90. 
 
 Hogarth, his vanity, 92. 
 
 Hopkins, Dr. Samuel, his gentle- 
 manliness, 301. 
 
 Hothouse education, 241-250 ; in 
 Chicago, 241 ; in England, New 
 England, and New York, 241, 
 243 ; its eflects, 242, 244^6. 
 249. 
 
 Houdin, M., 166. 
 
 Howard, John, 120. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, his egotism, 95. 
 
 Hume, the historian, MS.J style, 8. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, on angling, 198. 
 
 Hunter, John, his self-esteem, 91. 
 
 Huxley, Thomas Henry, his style, 
 25. 
 
 I 
 
 Ideal, the, and the Real, 111-130. 
 
 Ideas, belong to him who uses 
 them best, 271. 
 
 Inventions and discoveries, how 
 made, 257, 258, 274; made si 
 multaneously in different coun 
 tries, 274. 
 
 J 
 
 Jeffrey, Lord, 23; his leanness, 
 136. 
 
 Jesting, excess of to-day, 201, 202. 
 
 Jewell, Bishop John, his mem 
 ory, 158. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, saying of, 
 37 ; his hypochondria, 72 ; how 
 he subdued his melancholy, 78 ; 
 on angling, 184; why disgusted 
 with angling, 184; on charges 
 of plagiarism, 251 ; on fiction, 
 254 ; anecdote of, 281 ; his rude 
 ness, 301. 
 
 Johnson, Edward, M.D., on the 
 education of children, 250. 
 
 Jon son, Ben, his memory, 162. 
 
 Joubert, Joseph, saying of, 9 ; on 
 familiar words, 30. 
 
 Journalism, its influence, 61, 65, 
 66, 69 ; its rapid improvement, 
 64; should employ the best 
 thinkers, 68. 
 
 K 
 
 Kant, length of his sentences, 18 ; 
 anecdote of, 282. 
 
 Kean, Edmund, the elder, anec 
 dote of, 59; his treatment of 
 newspaper attacks, 110; his 
 Richard III, 273. 
 
 Keats, John, his verse, 43. 
 
 Kepler, his egotism, 90. 
 
 King, Starr, on style, 41. 
 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, his fond 
 ness for praise, 58; anecdote 
 of, 92. 
 
 Knox, John, his egotism, 95. 
 
1KDEX. 
 
 341 
 
 Labor, its blessings, 80. 
 
 Lamartine, his vanity, 94. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, his style, 21 ; 
 made wretched by idleness, 
 80; saying of, 81; on John 
 Howard, 120; on tools, 174, 175. 
 
 Lamennais, his egotism, 55. 
 
 Lampoons, how to treat them, 103. 
 
 Lanclor, Walter Savage, his style, 
 25 ; on political life, 316. 
 
 Language, progressive, 824; a 
 depository of history, 328. 
 
 Laughter, 83, 84. 
 
 Lawson, Professor George, his 
 memory, 160. 
 
 Lean men, celebrated, 134, 137. 
 
 Learning, a little not "danger 
 ous," 65. 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., on English 
 journalism, 61. 
 
 Leipsius, Justus, his great mem 
 ory, 156. 
 
 Lewis, Dixon H., M.C., 138. 
 
 Lewis, Sir George C., on centena- 
 rianism, 214. 
 
 Liebig, Baron, dull at school, 248. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, saying of, 106 ; 
 anecdote of, 121. 
 
 Listeners, good, welcome in so 
 ciety, 282. 
 
 Listening, the art of, 279-286; 
 qualities it demands, 279 ; with 
 the eyes, 281, 282; more profit 
 able than talking, 280. 
 
 Literature, " light, 1 its value, 62- 
 67 ; the kind demanded by the 
 public, 69 ; its topics exhausted, 
 254. 
 
 Longevity, the secret of, 214-233 ; 
 ignorance of its causes, 214; 
 its conditions, 217; how af 
 fected by city life, climate, 
 diet, cleanliness, health, and 
 temperance, 217-220 ,- a gift of 
 Nature, 220; an Italian on, 
 221 ; Cicero on, 221 ; excite 
 ment its foe, 221, 222; warm 
 affections prejudicial to it, 223 ; 
 also, overwork, intense enthu 
 
 siasms, and night-work, 223- 
 225; eminent men who have 
 attained to it, 226, 227; of 
 graduates of Brown Univer 
 sity, 227; precocity not un 
 favorable to it, 229; ennui, 
 envy, and worry its foes, 230; 
 promoted by avarice, 231; of 
 British peers and the Quak 
 ers, 232; a blessing, 232; how 
 to be estimated, 233. 
 
 Loquacity, 281, 283. 
 
 Luther, Martin, sayings of, 80; 
 on music, 83. 
 
 Lyon, William, actor, his feat of 
 memory, 160, 161. 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, his style, 8, 24; on 
 style of magazine and review 
 articles, 40 ; his essays, 63 ; on 
 the attacks upon Dr. Johnson, 
 106; his indifference to criti 
 cism, 108; his memory, 166- 
 168; compares literature with 
 politics, 168. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, his mem 
 ory, 165. 
 
 Magliabecchi, his memory, 156. 
 
 Marcy, Hon. William L., anec 
 dote of, 249. 
 
 Marivaux, on style, 21. 
 
 Marl borough, the Duke of, his 
 sensitiveness to criticism, 104. 
 
 Marmontel, on French conversa 
 tion, 284. 
 
 Marsh, Professor George, quoted, 
 274. 
 
 Martyn, Henry, missionary, anec 
 dote of, 212. 
 
 Mathews, Charles, the elder, his 
 memory, 159; his loquacity, 
 283. 
 
 Matter-of-fact-men, 203, 204. 
 
 Mazarin, Cardinal, his treatment 
 of libels, 110. 
 
 Mediocrity, its blessings, 179. 
 
 Memory, and its marvels, 141- 
 172; how regarded by Cicero, 
 141 ; its value underrated, 141 ; 
 
342 
 
 ItfDEX. 
 
 the fountain of thought, 142; 
 its value to statesmen and poli 
 ticians, 143; when not selec 
 tive, a nuisance, 143-145 ; a 
 formal, overestimated in public 
 schools, 145 ; requires time, 
 145; kinds of, 145, 146; Mil 
 ton s, 147, 148; its value to 
 artists and writers, 147; value 
 of verbal, 147, 148; its sup 
 posed caprices, 149; treasures 
 pleasing impressions more 
 easily than painful, 150; _its 
 connection with isolated im 
 pressions, 150; how affected 
 by injuries to brain, 151, 152; 
 its disadvantages, when tena 
 cious, 152, 153; value of its 
 rejecting power, 153-155; a 
 bad one often the best, 154; 
 causes of its feebleness, 155; 
 marvelous feats of, 156-168; 
 of actors, 160 ; its unconscious 
 action, 161, 162; of lawyers, 
 161; of musicians, 164; af 
 fected by use and disuse, 166 ; 
 systems of artificial, 168, 169; 
 how it may be cultivated, 169- 
 172; its retentiveness depend 
 ent on the bodily condition, 
 172 ; a test of disease, 172. 
 
 Michelet, his manner of writing, 
 39. 
 
 Miller, Karl Ottfried, on Poetry, 
 259. 
 
 Milton, John, his egotism, 89; 
 his verbal memory, 147, 148; 
 his borrowings, 268. 
 
 Mirabeau, a literary borrower, 
 264. 
 
 Misers, long-lived, 231. 
 
 Montaigne, his style, 21 ; on con 
 versation, 281. 
 
 Montesquieu, his originality, 264 ; 
 in society, 284. 
 
 Moore, John, M.D., quoted, 246. 
 
 Morality, of writers, 39, 40. 
 
 Morse, S. F. B., his invention of 
 the electric telegraph, 273. 
 
 Mozart, his memory, 164. 
 
 Music, a remedy for melancholy, 
 83. 
 
 N 
 
 Napier, Sir C. J., his style, 44. 
 
 Napoleon, his style, 21 ; his in 
 difference to style, 35; his 
 egotism, 94; his sensitiveness 
 to criticism, 104; his estima 
 tion of Madame de R6musat, 
 282. 
 
 Nature, slow in her operations, 
 245. 
 
 Neal, John, why forgotten, 14, 
 15. 
 
 Nelson, Lord, his love of praise, 
 94. 
 
 Newman, J. H., his style, 25, 26. 
 
 Newspapers, when most popular, 
 12; as educators, 65, 66; are 
 contemporary history, 66, 67. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, dull in boy, 
 hood, 248. 
 
 Northcote, painter, his vanity, 
 92; his talk, 285. 
 
 Office, political, avoided in ante- 
 Revolution times, 308; penal 
 ties for refusing it then, 308; 
 poorly remunerated, 309 ; _ its 
 annoyances and disappoint 
 ments, 312, 315 ; causes distaste 
 for other pursuits, 316, 317. 
 
 Office-seeking, 305-320; Lord Ba 
 con on, 305 ; Gen. Cass on, 305 ; 
 our national malady, 305; its 
 virulence under Grant s admin 
 istration, 306 ; in Massachu 
 setts, 307 ; motives that prompt 
 it, 309 ; its discouragements, 
 310-315, 317. 
 
 Oratory, its influence perishable, 
 47. 
 
 Originality, 9, 10, 11, 251-278 ; not 
 an initiation of what is new, 
 252 ; absolute, an impossibility, 
 253-257, 260, 261, 267 ; defined, 
 255, 257 ; how regarded by the 
 
INDEX. 
 
 343 
 
 ancients, 256; Campbell and 
 Voltaire on, 259; Goethe on, 
 260; hindered by literary train 
 ing, 262; Byron on, 269; diffi 
 culty of attaining to it, 275 ; in 
 what it consists, 278. 
 
 Paice, Joseph, his politeness, 300. 
 
 Painters, eminent, their defects, 
 112. 
 
 Paley, his style, 7; his love of 
 angling, 186. 
 
 Parallelisms, literary, not neces 
 sarily plagiarisms, 275. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, his memory, 
 165. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, his memory, 156 ; 
 on fools, 173. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 143. 
 
 Perfection, an idea of the mind 
 only, 115, 116. 
 
 Periodical literature, 61-71. 
 
 Pinkney, William, his pride, 94. 
 
 Pitt, William, his abstinence from 
 wit, 205. 
 
 Plagiarism, unjust charges of, 162, 
 251, 276 ; Heine on, 260 ; of Ro 
 man writers, 267, 268; distin 
 guished from legitimate bor 
 rowing, 277. 
 
 Playfulness, intellectual, 200-206 ; 
 denned, 200 ; why rare, 201 ; of 
 ten misunderstood, 203, 204; 
 " not respectable," 205. 
 
 Poets, creators and creations, 259. 
 
 Politeness, defined and illustrated, 
 299-304. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 43 ; his egotism, 
 90, 99 ; his war with the dunces, 
 104; his irritability, 126; his 
 borrowings, 269. 
 
 Porson, his memory, 158. 
 
 Potter, John, M.P., 139. 
 
 Praise, the duty of, 54-60; dan- 
 gerous only in excess, 56, 57; 
 Vauvcnargues on, 57 ; by whom 
 needed, 54, 58. 
 
 Precocity, intellectual, favorable 
 to longevity, 229. 
 
 Quakers, their longevity, 232. 
 R 
 
 Raphael, his Dresden Madonna, 
 38 ; his faults, 112. 
 
 Reformers, their excesses inevi 
 table, 129, 130. 
 
 Revision, literary, 36, 37. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his advice 
 to his pupils, 261. 
 
 Richardson, novelist, his egotism, 
 91. 
 
 Robertson, Rev. Frederick W., his 
 studies, 35 ; stung by criticism, 
 105. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, on condensation 
 of style, 84 ; his longevity, 223. 
 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, his talk, 285. 
 
 Rubens, his merits and defects, 
 125. 
 
 Ruskin, John, on cheerfulness, 
 73 ; on great men, 96 ; on com 
 mitting to memory prose and 
 poetry, 148. 
 
 Salmasius, Claudius, his egotism, 
 91. 
 
 Saville, Sir Henry, on wits, 247. 
 
 Say, J. B., his writing habits, 
 146. 
 
 Scaliger, Julius, his egotism, 91 ; 
 his memory, 156. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, his painstaking, 
 36; his literary faults, 37, 38; 
 on the treatment of libels, 103 ; 
 his baronial ambition, 127 ; his 
 memory, 159; his dullness at 
 school, 248 ; his habits of in 
 quiry, 281. 
 
 Self-esteem, its uses, 58, 85-87; 
 produces opposite effects in 
 men, 98. 
 
 Shakspeare, his suggestiveness, 
 44; his styles, 45; his mastery 
 of English, 45; his egotism, 
 88; his excesses, 125, 126; on 
 fatness, 135 ; on angling, 187. 
 
344 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shedd, Prof. W. G. T, quoted, 50. 
 
 Shelley, Percy B., affected by 
 14 Cliristabel," 43; on poets, 
 259. 
 
 Shenstonc, William, saying of, 
 42 ; his " blues," 72, 73. 
 
 Shrewsbury, the Duke of, his 
 disgust with politics, 313. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 43. 
 
 Smith, Alexander, on style, 20; 
 charged with plagiarism, 265, 
 266. 
 
 Smith, Sydney, on praise, 54; 
 his spirits, 74; on memory, 
 155; anecdotes of, 200, 204; 
 saying of, 206. 
 
 Southey, Robert, his self-esteem, 
 94. 
 
 Southey, R., M.D., quoted, 220 
 
 Spence, Joseph, 44. 
 
 Sportiveness, not allied to frivol 
 ity, 206. 
 
 Spurgeon, Rev. C. H., his style, 30 ; 
 saying of, oO. 
 
 Stendhal, his dislike of empha 
 sis, 30. 
 
 Sterne, Laurence, his pains 
 taking, 37; his sunny tem 
 perament, 74; his borrowings, 
 276; his vanity, 93. 
 
 Stock-sayings, 270. 
 
 Stowe, Mrs. Harriet B., on Ru 
 bens and Shakspeare, 125, 126. 
 
 Style, 5-53 ; defined, 6 ; gives im 
 mortality to books, 7, 8; the 
 mark of originality in a writer, 
 9; German, 16-18; French, 18, 
 19; betrays character, 20-23; 
 mechanical devices of, 23 ; the 
 expression of personality, 28, 
 29 ; not to be acquired by imi 
 tation, 28, 29 ; its elements, 29- 
 39 ; freshness a vital element of 
 it, 30; choice of words, 30; 
 simplicity in, 31, 32; should 
 be vivid and elegant, 31-34; 
 Bulwer on, 33; Carlyle s, 13, 
 14; John Neal s, 14; Kant s, 
 18; Alexander Smith on, 20; 
 Montaigne s, 21; Napoleon s, 
 21; Julius Cassar s, 21; Lord 
 
 Bacon s, 21 ; Swift s, 21 ; Addi- 
 son s, 21 ; Charles Lamb s, 21 ; 
 Sir Thomas Browne s, 22; 
 Guizot s, 22; Gibbon s, 8, 23; 
 Macaulay s, 23, 25; Burke s, 
 25; Robert Hall s, 25; W. S. 
 Landor s, 25; Fronde s, 25; 
 Huxley s, 25; Edward Ever 
 ett s, 25 ; J. H. Newman s, 25 ; 
 R. W. Emerson s, 26; Gold 
 smith s, 27; Gladstone s, 31; 
 Grote s, 34; Butler s, 34; 
 Locke s, 34; persons insensible 
 toit,35 ; Napoleon on, 35 ; causes 
 of its poverty, 36 ; is best only 
 relatively, 40; when good, 40, 
 41 ; its charm indefinable, 41, 
 42 ; its magical effects, distinct 
 from the thought, 42-44; not 
 the dress of thought, 45 ; anal 
 ogy between it and costume, 46, 
 47 ; why it should be cultivated, 
 47-53; its power, 49, 50; takes 
 rank with the fine arts, 50; its 
 cultivation discouraged by 
 some colleges, 50, 51 ; Karl 
 Hildebrand on, 51; how ex 
 cellence in it is acquired, 52; 
 DeMaistre on, 111. 
 Swift, his style, 21,22; his viru 
 lence, 126 ; saying of, 223. 
 
 Tannahill, the poet, 105. 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 10; on fore 
 boding, 83 ; his memory, 157. 
 Temple, Sir William, on human 
 
 ability, 116. 
 
 Tennyson, his " Lotus-Eaters," 43. 
 Thiers, his loquacity, 285. 
 Thinkers, great, characterized, 
 
 267. 
 "Thompson, Memory Corner," 
 
 164. 
 Thorwaldsen, sculptor, anecdote 
 
 of, 98 ; origin of his " Mercury," 
 
 273. 
 Townshend, Charles, saying of, 
 
 137. 
 Travel, the season of, 234-240 ; a 
 
INDEX. 
 
 345 
 
 mania of Americans, 234 ; Em 
 erson on, 234 ; its benefits, 235- 
 240; expands the mind, 235; 
 not a mere fashion, 236; de 
 manded by body and mind, 235, 
 236 ; a specific for ennui, 237 ; 
 banishes bigotry and prejudice, 
 237-239 ; to whom not helpful, 
 
 Vanity, Coleridge on, 86. 
 Verse, its magical effects, 44. 
 Vices, difficulty of subduing, 118, 
 
 119. 
 
 Vitelli, Chiapin, 138. 
 Voltaire, anecdote of, 157; on 
 
 originality, 259. 
 
 W 
 
 Walton, Izaak, his style, 21 ; on 
 qualifications of an angler, 193 ; 
 song by, 199. 
 
 Wayland, Dr. Francis, on news 
 paper attacks, 106. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, his habits as an 
 angler, 188; his refusal of a 
 clerkship, 310; on political 
 life, 313, 314. 
 
 Wits, their melancholy, 74. 
 
 Wolfe, James, his vanity, 98. 
 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 91. 
 
 Words, English, that were once 
 outlaws, 325, 326; borrowed 
 
 from the French, 326, 327; 
 coined by Daniel and Cole 
 ridge, 326 ; the use of new, 327. 
 
 Wordsworth, quoted, 76; his 
 egotism, 93, 98, 99 ; his love of 
 angling, 186. 
 
 Worry, its effects, 230. 
 
 " Woven wind," 39. 
 
 Writers, mission of popular, 49 ; 
 often do best in periodicals, 69, 
 70 ; not all fitted to write large 
 works, 70; cannot have oppo 
 site excellences, 123, 124; va 
 riance of their lives from their 
 teachings, 128. 
 
 Writing, preparation for, 35, 36, 
 38; the best spontaneous, 38; 
 natural manner of, 39 ; how af 
 fected by the moral character, 
 39,40; pleasures of, 48. 
 
 Xavier, Francis, his memory, 159. 
 
 Young, Julian Charles, on Words, 
 worth and Coleridge, 116. 
 
 Zephyr, Monsieur, 75. 
 Zimmerman, his love of angling, 
 
 186. 
 Zola, Emile, on criticism, 107. 
 
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