IMPRESSIONS OP THEOPHRASTUS SUCH By GEORGE ELIOT AUTHOR OF "ADAM BEDE" "ROMOLa" " MIDDLEMARCH" " DANIEL DERONDA" ETC. "Suspicione si quis errabit sua, Et rapiet ad se, quod erit commune omnium, Stulte nudabit animi conscientiam. Huic excusatum me velim nihilominus: Neque enim notare singulos mens est mihi, Verum ipsain vitam et mores hominum ostendere." — Ph-sdrps. NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FRANKLIN SQUARE GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS. ADAM BEDS. Illustrated. 19mo, Cloth, |I. 25. DANIEL DERONDA. 9 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTEBOOK. It^tno, Cloth. FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. EDITION. ROMOLA. Illustrated. 12mn, Cloth, $1.25. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.26. THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 12mo, Cloth, $1.26. TUB MILL ON THE FLOSS. lUuatrated. Cloth, $1.26. 12mo, POPTJL^R ADAM BEDS. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 76 cents. 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THE .S.4i5 FORTUNES OF THE REV. AMOS BARTON. 32mo, Paper, 20 centa. PaBiiSHEU BY HARPER & BROTHERS, Njew Yobk. t^* Habpib II Brothbba will aend any of the abovi voJumea by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of (A« United Stales, en receipt of the price. e^r -^1 CONTENTS. OTAP. PAGE I. Looking Inward 5 II. Looking Backward 21 III. How we Encourage Kesearch 40 IV. A Man surprised at his Originality 58 V. A Too Deferential Man 09 VI. Only Temper 79 VII. A Political Molecule 88 1/ VIII. The Watch-dog of Knowledge 94 IX, A Half-breed 104 [/- X. Debasing the Moral Currency 114 XL The Wasp credited waTH the Honey-comb . . . 123 XIL "So Young!" 139 XIII. How we come to Give ourselves False Testimoni- als, AND Believe in Them 146 XIV. The Too Ready Writer . 158 {/ ' ,^V. Diseases of Small Authorship 170 [/^XVI. Moral Swindlers 182 v^XXVII. Shadows of the Coming Race 194 XVIIL The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep! 202 IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. I. LOOKING INWARD. It is my habit to give an account to myself of the ch aract ers I mee t wit h ; c an I give any true account of my own 'i _I^ am a bachelor, without domestic djs^. .tract ions of any sort, and have all my life been an attentive companion to myself, flattering my nature agreeably on plausible occasions, reviling it rather bit- terly when it mortified me, and in general remember- ing its doings and sufferings with a tenacity which is too apt to raise surprise, if not disgust, at the careless inaccuracy of my acquaintances, who impute to me opinions I never held, express their desire to convert me to my favorite ideas, forget whether I have ever been to the East, and are capable of being three several times astonished at my never having told them before of my accident in the Alps, causing me the nervous shock which has ever since notably diminished my 6 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. digestive powers. Surely I oiiglit to know myself better than these indiffei*ent outsiders can know me ; nay, better even than my intimate friends, to whom I have never breathed those items of my inward expe- rience which have chiefly shaped my life. Yet I have often been forced into the reflection that even the acquaintances who are as forgetful of my biography and tenets as they would be if I were a dead philosopher, are probably aware of certain points in me which may not be included in my most active suspicion. We sing an exquisite passage out of tune, and innocently repeat it for the greater pleasure of our hearers. Who can be aware of what his foreign accent is in the ears of a native? And how can a man be conscious of that dull perception which causes him to mistake altogether what will make him agree- able to a particular woman, and to persevere eagerly in a behavior which she is privately recording against him? I have had some confidences from my female friends as to their opinion of other men whom I have observed trying to make themselves amiable, and it haa occurred to me that though I can hardly be so blun dering as Lippns and the rest of those mistaken candi dates for favor whom I have seen ruining their chance by a too elaborate personal canvass, I must still come under the common fatality of mankind, and share the liability to be absurd without knowing that I am absurd. It is in the nature of foolish reasoning to seem good to the foolish reasoner. Hence, with all possible study of myself, with all possible effort to LOOKING INWARD. 7 escape from the pitiable illusion which makes men laugh, shriek, or curl the lip at Folly's likeness, in to- tal unconsciousness that it resembles themselves, I am obliged to recognize that while there are secrets in me unguessed by others, these others have certain items of knowledge about the extent of mj powers and the figure I make with them, which in turn are secrets nn- guessed by me. When I was a lad I danced a horn- pipe with arduous scrupulosity, and while suffering pangs of pallid shyness, was yet proud of my supe- riority as a dancing pupil, imagining for myself a high place in the estimation of beholders ; but I can now picture the amusement they had in the incongruity of my solenm face and ridiculous legs. What sort of hornpipe am I dancing now ? Thus, if I laugh at you, O fellow -men ! if I trace I with_curious interest your labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in jour zealous adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavors in a rashly chosen part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you : the more intimately I seem to discerr^ your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof that I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment ? — for even ■Vi(Vv what we are averse to, what we vow not to entertain, O^fi^j must have shaped or sliadowed itself within us as a ^^ possibilit y before we can think of exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. Dear blunderers, I am one of you. I wince at the fact, but I am not ignorant of it, that I too am laughable on unsuspected occasions; nay, in the very tempest and 8 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. ■whirlwind of my anger, I include myself under my own indignation. If the human race has a bad repu^ tation, I percei\e that I cannot escape being compro- mised. And thus, while I carry in myself the key to other men's experience, it is on ly by observing others th at I c an so far correct my self-ignorance as to arrive at the certa inty that I am liable to commit myself unawares, and to manifest some incompetency which I know no more of than the blind man knows of his image in the glass. Is it then possible to describe one's self at once faith- fully and fully? In all autobiography there is, nay, ought to be, an incompleteness which may have the effect of falsity. We are each of us bound to reticence by the piet}^ we owe to those who have been nearest to us and have had a mingled influence over our lives; by the fellow-feeling which should restrain us from turning our volunteered^ and 2)icked confessions into an act of accusation against others, who have no chance of vindicating themselves; and most of all by that rev- erence for the higher efforts of our common nature, which commands us to bury its lowest fatalities, its invincible remnants of the brute, its most agonizing struggles with temptation, in unbroken silence. But the incompleteness which comes of self-ignorance may be compensated by self-betrayal. A man who is af- fected to tears in dwelling on the generosity of his own sentiments makes me aware of several things not included under those terms. Who has sinned more against those three duteous reticences than Jean LOOKING INWARD. 9 Jacques? Yet half our impressions of his character come not from what he means to convey, but from what he unconsciously enables us to discern. This naive veracity of self-presentation is attainable by the slenderest talent on the most trivial occasions. The least lucid and impressive of orators may be per- fectly successful in showing us the weak 23oints of his grammar. Hence I too may be so far like Jean Jacques as to communicate more than I am aware of. I am not, indeed, writing an autobiography, or pretend- ing to give an unreserved description of myself, but only offering some slight confessions in an apologetic light, to indicate that if in my absence you dealt as freely with my unconscious weaknesses as I have dealt with the unconscious weaknesses of others, I should not feel myself warranted by common-sense in regarding your freedom of observation as an exceptional case of evil-speaking ; or as malignant interpretation of a char- acter which really offers no handle to just objection ; or even as an unfair use for your amusement of disad- vantages which, since they are mine, should be regard- ed with more than ordinary tenderness. Let me at least try to feel myself in the ranks with my fellow- men. It is true, that 1 would rather not hear either your M'ell-founded ridicule or your judicious strictures. Though not averse to finding fault with myself, and conscious of deserving lashes, I like to keep the scourge in my own discriminating hand. I never felt myself sufficiently meritorious to like being hated as a proof of my superiority, or so thirsty for improvement as to 1* 10 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. desire that all my acquaintances should give me their candid opinion of me. I really do not want to learn from my enemies : I prefer having none to learn from. Instead of being glad when men nse me despitef ully, I wish they would behave better, and find a more amia- ble occupation for their intervals of business. In brief, after a close intimacy with myself for a longer period than I choose to mention, I find within me a perma- nent longing for approbation, sympathy, and love. Yet I am a bachelor, and the person I love best has never loved me, or known that I loved her. Though continually in society, and caring about the joys and sorrows of my neighbors, I feel myself, so far as my per- sonal lot is concerned, uncared for and alone. " Your own fault, my dear fellow!'' said Minutius Felix, one day that I had incautiously mentioned this uninterest- ino; fact. And he was rio'ht — in senses other than he intended. Why should I expect to be admired, and have my company doted on ? I have done no ser- vices to my country beyond those of every peaceable orderly citizen ; and as to intellectual contribution, my only published work was a failure, so that I am spoken of to inqniring beholders as " the author of a book you have probably not seen." (The work was a humorous romance, unique in its kind, and I am told is mucli tasted in a Cherokee translation, where the jokes are rendered with all the serious eloquence characteristic of the Red races.) This sort of distinction, as a writer nobody is likely to have read, can hardly counteract an indistinctness in my articulation, Avhich the best-inten- LOOKING INWARD. 11 tioned loudness will not remedy. Then, in some quar- ters my awkward feet are against me, the length of my upper lip, and an inveterate way I have of walking with my head foremost and my chin projecting. One can become only too well aware of such things by looking in the glass, or in that other mirror held up to nature in the frank opinions of street -boys, or of our Free People travelling by excursion train ; and no doubt they account for the half-suppressed smile which I liave observed on some fair faces when I have first been presented before them. This direct perceptive judgment is not to be argued against. But I am tempted to remonstrate when the physical points I have mentioned are apparently taken to warrant un- favorable inferences concerning my mental quickness. With all the increasino- uncertain tv which modern progress has thrown over the relations of mind and body, it seems tolerably clear that wit cannot be seated in the upper lip, and that the balance of tlie haunches in walkino; has nothing: to do with the subtle discrimi- ration of ideas. Yet strangers evidently do not ex- pect me to make a clever observation, and my good things are as unnoticed as if they were anonymous l^ictures. I have indeed had the mixed satisfaction of finding that when they were appropriated by some one else they were found remarkable, and even brilliant. It is to be borne in mind tliat I am not rich, have nei- ther stud nor cellar, and no very high connections such as give to a look of imbecility a certain prestige of in- heritance through a titled line; just as "the Austrian 12 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. lip" confers a grandeur of histoi-ical associations on a kind of feature whicli might make us reject an adver- tising footman, I have now and then done harm to a good cause by speaking for it in public, and have dis- covered too late that my attitude on the occasion would more suitably have been that of negative beneficence. Is it really to the advantage of an opinion that I should be known to hold it ? And as to the force of my argu- ments, that is a secondary consideration with audiences who have given a new scope to the expede Herculem principle, and from awkward feet infer awkward fal- lacies. Once, when zeal lifted me on my legs, I dis- tinctly heard an enlightened artisan remark, " Here's a rum cut!" — and doubtless he reasoned in the same way as the elegant Glycera when she politely puts on an air of listening to me, but elevates her eyebrows and chills her glance in sign of predetermined neu- trality : both have their reasons for judging the quality of my speech beforehand. This sort of reception to a man of affectionate dis- position, who has also the innocent vanity of desiring to be agreeable, has naturally a depressing if not em- bittering tendency ; and in early life I began to seek for some consoling point of view, some warrantable method of softening the hard pease I had to walk on, some comfortable fanaticism which might supply the needed self-satisfaction. At one time I dwelt mucli on the idea of compensation ; trying to believe that I was all the wiser for my bruised vanity, that I had the higher place in the true spiritual scale, and even that LOOKING INWARD. 13 a day might come when some visible triumph would place me in the French heaven of having the laughers on my side. But I presently perceived tliat this was a very odious sort of self-cajolery. Was it in the least true that I was wiser than several of my friends who made an excellent figure, and were perhaps praised a little beyond their merit? Is the ugly unready man in the corner, outside the current of conversation, really likely to have a fairer view of things than tlie agreeable talker, whose success strikes the unsuccess- ful as a repulsive example of forwardness and conceit ? And as to compensation in future years, would the fact that I myself got it reconcile me to an order of things in which I could see a multitude with as bad a share as mine, who, instead of getting their corresponding compensation, were getting beyond the reach of it in old age ? AVhat could be more contemptible than the mood of mind which makes a man measure the jus- tice of divine or human law by the agreeableness of his own shadow and the ample satisfaction of his own desires ? I dropped a form of consolation which seemed to be encouraging me in the persuasion that my discon- tent was the chief evil in the world, and my benefit the soul of good in that evil. May there not be at least a partial release from the imprisoning verdict that a man's philosophy is the formula of his person- ality ? In certain branches of science we can ascer- tain our personal equation, the measure of difference between our own judgments and an average standard: 14 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. may there not be some corresponding correction of onr personal partialities in moral theorizing? If a squint or other ocular defect disturbs my vision, I can get in- structed in the fact, be made aware that my condition is abnormal, and either through spectacles or diligent imagination I can learn the average appearance of things : is there no remedy or corrective for that in- ward squint which consists in a dissatisfied egoism ov other want of mental balance? In my conscience I saw that the bias of personal discontent was just as misleading and. odious as the bias of self-satisfaction. Whether we look through the rose-colored glass or the indigo, we are equalh' far from the hues which tlie healthy human eye beliolds in heaven above and earth below, I began to dread ways of consoling which were really a flattering of nati^•e illusions, a feeding-up into monstrosity of an inward growth already dispro- portionate ; to get an especial scorn for that scorn of mankind which is a transmuted disappointment of pre- posterous claims ; to watch witli peculiar alarm lest what I called mj^ philosophic estimate of the human lot in general, should be a mere prose h'ric expressing my own pain and consequent bad temper. The stand- ing-ground worth striving after seemed to be some Delectable Mountain, whence I could see things in proportions as little as possible determined by that self-partiality which certainly plays a necessarj- part in our bodilv sustenance, but has a starvins; effect on the mind. Thus I finally gave up any attempt to make out that LOOKING INWARD. 15 I preferred cutting a bad figure, and that I liked to be despised, because in this way I was getting more virtu- ous than my successful rivals ; and I have long looked with suspicion on all views which are recommended as peculiarly consolatory to wounded vanity or other per- sonal disappointment. The consolations of egoism are simply a change of attitude or a resort to a new kind of diet which soothes and fattens it. Fed in this way, it is apt to become a monstrous spiritual pride, or a chuckling satisfaction that the final balance will not be against us, but against those who now eclipse us. Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name, if not in the text, at least in a laudatory note : whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents. Bat an at- tention fixed on the main theme or various matter of the book would deliver us from that slavish subjection to our own self-importance. And I had the miglity volume of the world before me. Kay, I had the strug- gling action of a myriad lives around me, each single life as dear to itself as mine to me. Was there no escape here from this stupidity of a murmuring self- occupation ? Clearly enough, if anything hindered my thouglit from rising to the force of passionately inter- ested contemplation, or my poor pent-up pond of sensi- tiveness from widening into a beneficent river of svm- pathy, it was'my own dulness ; and though I could not make myself the reverse of shallow all at once, 16 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. I had at least learned where I had better turn my attention. Something came of this alteration in my point of view, though I admit that the result is of no striking kind. It is unnecessary for me to utter modest de- nials, since none have assured me that I have a vast intellectual scope, or — what is more surprising, consid- ering I have done so little — that I might, if I chose, surpass any distinguished man whom they wish to de- preciate. I have not attained any lofty peak of mag- nanimity, nor would I trust beforehand in my capa- bility of meeting a severe demand for moral heroism. But that I have at least succeeded in establishino^ a habit of mind which keeps watch against my self- partiality, and promotes a fair consideration of what touches the feelings or the fortunes of my neighbors, seems to be proved by the ready confidence with which men and women appeal to my interest in their expe- rience. It is gratifying to one who would above all things avoid the insanity of fancying himself a more momentous or touching object than he really is, to find that nobody expects from him the least sign of such mental aberration, and that he is evidently held capa- ble of listening to all kinds of personal outpouring without the least disposition to become communicative in the same way. This confirmation of the hope that my bearing is not that of the self-flattering lunatic is given me in ample measure. My acquaintances tell me unreservedly of their triumphs and their piques; explain their purposes at length, and reassure me with LOOKING INWARD. 17 cheerfulness as to their chances of success ; insist on their theories, and accept me as a dummy with .whom tliey rehearse their side of future discussions ; unwind their coiled-up griefs in relation to their husbands, or recite to me examples of feminine incomprehensible- ness as typified in their wives ; mention frequently the fair api3lause which their merits have wrung from some persons, and the attacks to which certain oblique motives have stimulated others. At the time when I ^vas less free from superstition about my own power of charming, I occasionally, in the glow of sympathy which embraced me and my confiding friend on the subject of his satisfaction or resentment, was urged to hint at a corresponding experience in my own case; but the signs of a rapidly lowering pulse and spreading nervous depression in my previously vivacious interloc- utor warned me that I was acting on that dano-erous misreading, " Do as you are done by." Recalling the true version of the golden rule, I could not wish that others should lower my spirits as I was lowering my friend's. After several times obtaininei: the same re- suit from a like experiment in which all the circum- stances were varied except ray own personality, I took it as an established inference that these fitful siens of a lingering belief in my own importance were generally felt to be abnormal, and were something short of that sanity which I aimed to secure. Clearness on this point is not without its gratifications, as I have said. While my desire to explain myself in private ears has been quelled, the habit of getting interested In the 18 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. experience of others has been continnally gathering strength, and I am really at the point of finding that this world wonld be worth living in withont any lot of one's own. Is it not possible for me to enjoy the scen- ery of the earth withont saying to myself, I have a cab- bage-garden in it? But this sounds like the lunacy of fancying one's self everybody else, and being unable to play one's own part decently — another form of the disloyal attempt to be independent of the common lot, and to live without a sharing of pain. Perhaps I have made self-betrayals enough already to show that I have not arrived at that non-hnraan in- dependence. My conversational reticences about my- self turn into garruloiisness on paper — as the sea-lion plunges and swims the more energetically because his limbs are of a sort to make him shambling on land. The act of writing, in spite of past experience, brings with it the vague, delightful illusion of an audience nearer to my idiom than the Cherokees, and more nu- merous than the visionary One for whom many authors have declared themselves willing to go through the pleasing punishment of publication. My illusion is of a more liberal kind, and I imagine a far-off, haz}', mul- titudinous assemblage, as in a picture of Paradise, mak- ing an approving chorus to the sentences and para- graphs of which I myself particularly enjoy the writ- ing. The haze is a necessary condition. If any physi- ognomy becomes distinct in the foreground, it is fatal. The countenance is sure to be one bent on discounte- nancing my innocent intentions : it is pale-eyed, inca- LOOKING INWARD. 19 pable of being amused when I am amused or indig- nant at what makes me indignant; it stares at my pre- sumption, pities my ignorance, or is manifestly prepar- ing to expose the various instances in which I uncon- sciously disgrace myself. I shudder at this too corpo- real auditor, and turn toward another point of the com- pass where the haze is unbroken. Why should I not indulge tliis remaining illusion, since I do not take my approving choral paradise as a warrant for setting the press to work again and making some thousand sheets of superior paper unsalable? I leave my manuscripts to a judgment outside my imagination, but I will not ask to hear it, or request ray friend to pronounce, be- fore I have been buried decently, what he really thinks of my parts, and to state candidly whether my papers would be most usefully applied in lighting the cheer- ful domestic fire. It is too probable that he will be exasperated at the trouble I have given him of reading them; but the consequent clearness and vivacity with which he could demonstrate to me that the fault of my manuscripts, as of my one published work, is simply flatness, and not that surpassing subtilty which is the preferable ground of popular neglect — this verdict, however instructively expressed, is a portion of earthly discipline of which I will not beseech my friend to be the instrument. Other persons, I am aware, have not the same cowardly shrinking from a candid opinion of their performances, and are even importunately eager for it ; but I have convinced myself in numerous cases that such.exposers of their own back to the smiter were 20 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. of too hopeful a disposition to believe in the scourge, and really trusted in a pleasant anointing, an outpour- ing of balm Avithout any previous wounds. I am of a less trusting disposition, and will only ask my friend to use his judgment in insm*ing me against posthumous mistake. Thus I make myself a charter to write, and keep the pleasing, inspiring illusion of being listened to, though I may sometimes write about myself. "What I have al- ready said, on this too familiar theme has been meant only as a preface, to show that in noting the weakness- es of my acquaintances I am conscious of my fellow- ship with them. That a gratified sense of superiority is at the root of barbarous laughter may be at least half the truth. But there is a loving laughter in which the only recognized superiority is that of the ideal self, the God within, holding the mirror and the scourge for our own pettiness as well as our neighbors'. LOOKING BACKWARD. 21 n. LOOKING BACKWAKD. Most of us who have had decent parents would shrink from wishing that our father and mother had been somebody else whom we never knew; yet it is held no impiety — rather, a graceful mark of instruction — for a man to wail that he was not the son of another age and another nation, of which also he knows noth- ing except through the easy process of an imperfect imagination and a flattering fancy. But the period thus looked back on with a purely admiring regret, as perfect enough to suit a superior mind, is always a long way off ; the desirable contem- poraries are hardly nearer than Leonardo da Yinci, most likely they are the fellow-citizens of Pericles, or, best of all, of the ^olic lyrists whose sparse remains suggest a comfortable contrast with our redundance. No impassioned personage wishes he had been born in the age of Pitt, that his ardent youth might have eaten the dearest bread, dressed itself with the longest coat-tails and the shortest waist, or heard the loudest grumbling at the heaviest war-taxes ; and it would be really something original in polished verse if one of our young writers declared he would gladly be turned eighty -five that he might have known the jo}' and 22 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. pride of being an Englishman when there were fewer reforms and plenty of highwaymen, fewer discoveries and more faces pitted with the small-pox, when laws were made to keep up the price of corn, and the trou- blesome Irish were more miserable. Three-quarters of a century ago is not a distance that lends much enchantment to the view. "We are familiar with the average men of that period, and are still consciously encumbered with its bad contrivances and mistaken acts. The lords and gentlemen painted by young Lawrence talked and wrote their nonsense in a tonsrue we thoroughly understand ; hence their times are not much flattered, not much glorified, by the yearnings of that modern sect of Flagellants who make a ritual of lashing — not themselves, but all their neighbors. To me, however, that paternal time, the time of my father's youth, never seemed prosaic, for it came to my imagination first through his memories, which made a wondrous perspective to my little daily world of dis- covery. And, for my part, I can call no age absolutely unpoetic : how should it be so, since there are always children to whom the acorns and the swallow's eofffs are a wonder, always those human passions and fatali- ties through which Garrick as Ilaralet in bob-wig and knee-breeches moved his audience more than some have since done in velvet tunic and plume ? But every age since the golden may be made more or less prosaic by minds that attend only to its vulgar and sordid elements, of w^hich there was always an abun- dance even in Greece and Italy, the favorite realms of LOOKING BACKWARD. 23 the retrospective optimists. To be quite fair toward the ages, a little ugliness as well as beauty must be allowed to each of them, a little implicit poetry even to those which echoed loudest with servile, pompous, and trivial prose. Such impartiality is not in vogue at present. If we acknowledge our obligation to the ancients, it is hardly to be done without some flouting of our contempora- ries, w^ho, with all their faults, must be allowed the merit of keeping the world habitable for the refined eulogists of the blameless past. One wonders whether the remarkable originators who first had the notion of digging wells, or of churning for butter, and who were certainly very useful to their own time as well as ours, were left quite free from invidious compari- son with predecessors who let the water and the milk alone, or whether some rhetorical nomad, as he stretched himself on the grass with a good appetite for contemporary butter, became loud on the virtue of ancestors who were uncorrupted by the produce of the cow ; nay, whether in a high flight of imaginative self- sacrifice (after swallowing the butter) he even wislied himself earlier bom and already eaten for the suste- nance of a o;eneration more naive than his own. I have often had the fool's hectic of wishing about the unalterable, but with me that useless exercise has turned chiefly on the conception of a different self, and not, as it usually does in literature, on the advan- tage of having been born in a different age, and more especially in one where life is imagined to have been 24 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. altogether majestic and graceful. With my present abilities, external proportions, and generally small pro- vision for ecstatic enjoyment, where is the ground for confidence that I should have had a preferable career in such an epoch of society 'i An age in which every department has its awkward-squad seems in my mind's eye to suit me better. I might have wandered by the Sti'ymon under Philip and Alexander without throw- ing any new light on method or organizing the sum of human knowledge; on the other hand, I might have objected to Aristotle as too much of a systematizer, and have preferred the freedom of a little self-contradic- tion as offering more chances of truth. I gather, too, from the undeniable testimony of his disciple Theo- phrastus that there were bores, ill-bred persons, and de- tractors even in Athens, of species remarkably corre- sponding to the English, and not yet made endurable by being classic ; and altogether, with my present fas- tidious nostril, I feel that I am the better off for pos- sessing Athenian life solely as an inodorous fragment of antiquity. As to Sappho's Mitylene, while I am convinced that the Lesbian capital held some plain men of middle stature and slow conversational powers, the addition of myself to their number, though clad in the majestic folds of the himation and without cravat, would hardl}^ have made a sensation among the accom- plished fair ones who were so precise in adjusting their own drapery about their delicate ankles. Whereas, by being another sort of person in the present age, I might have given it some needful theoretic clue ; or I might LOOKING BACKWARD. 25 liave poured forth poetic strains which would have an- ticipated theory, and seemed a voice from " the pro- phetic soul of the wude world dreaming of things to come ;" or I might have been one of those benignant lovely souls who, without astonishing the public and posterity, make a happy difference in the lives close around them, and in this way lift the average of earth- ly joy : in come form or other I might have been so filled from the store of universal existence that I should have been freed from that empty wishing which is like a child's cry to be inside a golden cloud, its imagina- tion being too ignorant to figure the lining of dimness and damp. On the whole, though there is some rash boasting about enlightenment, and an occasional insistance on an originality which is that of the present year's corn- crop, we seem too much disposed to indulge, and to call by complimentary names, a greater charity for other portions of the human race than for our contempora- ries. All reverence and gratitude for the worthy Dead on whose labors we have entered, all care for the fut- ure generations whose lot we are prej^aring ; but some affection and fairness for those who are doino; the actu- al work of the world, some attempt to regard them with the same freedom from ill-temper, whether on private or public grounds, as we may hope will be felt by those who will call ns ancient ! Otherwise, the looking be- fore and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in danger of turning to a sort of other-worldliness, breeding a more illogical indifference or bitterness than o 26 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. was ever bred by the ascetic's contemplation of heaven. Except on the ground of a primitive golden age and continuous degeneracy, I see no rational footing for scorning the whole present population of the globe, un- less I scorn every previous generation from whom they have inherited their diseases of mind and body, and by consequence scorn my own scorn, which is equally an inheritance of mixed ideas and feelings concocted for me in the boiling caldron of this universally contemp- tible life, and so on — scorning to infinity. This may represent some actual states of mind, for it is a narrow prejudice of mathematicians to suppose that ways of thinking are to be driven out of the field by being re- duced to an absurdity. The Absurd is taken as an ex- cellent juicy thistle by many constitutions. Reflections of this sort have gradually determined me not to grumble at tlie age in which I happen to have been born — a natural tendency certainly older than Hesiod. Many ancient beautif :d things are lost, many ugly modern things have arisen ; but invert the proposition, and it is equally true. I at least am a modern with some interest in advocating tolerance; and notwithstandino; an inborn beo-ujlement which car- ries my affection and regret continually into an imag- ined past, I am aware that I must lose all sense of mor- al proportion unless I keep alive a stronger attachment to what is near, and a power of admiring what I best know and understand. Hence this question of wishing to be rid of one's contemporaries associates itself with my filial feeling, and calls up the thought that I might LOOKING BACKWARD. 27 as justifiably wish that I had had other parents than those whose loving tones are my earliest memory, and whose last parting first taught me the meaning of death. I feel bound to quell such a wish as blasphemy. Besides, there are other reasons why I am contented that my father was a country parson, born much about the same time as Scott and Wordsworth ; notwith- standing certain qualms I have felt at the fact that the property on which I am living was saved out of tithe before the period of commutation, and without the provisional transfiguration into a modus. It has some- times occurred to me when I have been taking a slice of excellent ham that, from a too tenable point of view, 1 was breakfasting on a small squealing black pig which, more than half a century ago, was the un- willing representative of spiritual advantages not oth- erwise acknowledged by the grudging farmer or dairy- man who parted with him. One enters on a fearful labyrinth in tracing compound interest backward, and such complications of thought have reduced the flavor of the ham ; but since I have nevertheless eaten it, the chief effect has been to moderate the severity of my radicalism (which was not part of my paternal inherit- ance) and to raise the assuaging reflection, that if the pig and the parishioner had been intelligent enough to anticipate my historical point of view, they would have seen themselves and the rector in a light that would have made tithe voluntary. Notwithstanding such drawbacks, I am rather fond of the mental furni- ture I got by having a father who was well acquainted 28 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. with all ranks of his neighbors, and am thankful that he was not one of those aristocratic clergymen who conld not have sat down to a meal with any family in the parish except my lord's — still more, that he was not an earl or a marquis. A chief misfortune of high birth is that it usually shuts a man out from the large sympathetic knowledge of human experience which comes from contact with various classes on their own level, and in my father's time that entail of social igno- rance had not been disturbed as we see it now. To look always from overhead at tlie crowd of one's fel- low-men must be in many ways incapacitating, even %vith the best will and iutellio-ence. Tlie serious blun- ders it must lead to in the effort to manage them for their good, one may see cleai'ly by tlie mistaken ways people take of flattering and enticing those whose asso- ciations are nnlike tlieir own. Hence I have always thought that the most fortunate Britons are those whose experience has given tliem a practical share in many aspects of the national lot, who have lived long among the mixed commonalty, roughing it with them under difficulties, knowing liow their food tastes to them, and getting acquainted with their notions and motives, not by inference from traditional types in lit- erature or from philosophical theories, but from daily fellowship and observation. Of course such experi- ence is apt to get antiquated, and my father might find himself mucli at a loss among a mixed rural popula- tion of the present day ; but he knew very well what could be wisely expected from the miners, the weavers^, LOOKING BACKWARD. 29 the field-laborers, and farmers of his own tune — yes, and from the aristocracy ; for he had been brought up in close contact with them, and had been companion to a young nobleman who was deaf and dumb. "A clero;vman, lad," he used to sav to me, " should feel in himself a bit of every class ;" and this theory had a felicitous agreement with his inclination and practice, which certainly answered in making him beloved by his parishioners. They grumbled at their obligations toward him ; but what then ? It was natural to grum- ble at any demand for payment, tithe included, but also natural for a rector to desire his tithe and look well after the levjn'ng. A Christian pastor who did not mind about his money was not an ideal prevalent among the rural minds of fat central England, and might have seemed to introduce a dangerous laxity of supposition about Christian laymen who happened to be creditors. My father was none the less beloved be- cause he was understood to be of a saving disposition, and how could he save without getting his tithe? The sight of him was not unwelcome at any door, and he was remarkable among the clergy of his district for having no lasting feud with rich or poor in his parish. I profited by his popularity; and for months after my mother's death, when I was a little fellow of nine, I was taken care of first at one homestead, and then at another — a variety which I enjoyed much more than my stay at the Hall, where there was a tutor. Af- terward, for several years, I was my father's constant companion in his out-door business, riding by his side 80 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. on my little pony and listening to the lengthy dialogues he held with Darby or Joan, the one on the road or in the fields, the other outside or inside her door. In my earliest remembrance of him his hair was already gray, for I was his youngest as well as his only surviv- ing child ; and it seemed to me that advanced age was appropriate to a father, as indeed in all respects I con- sidered him a parent so much to my honor, that the mention of my relationship to him was likely to secure me regard among those to whom I was otherwise a stranger — my father's stories from his life including so many names of distant persons that my imagination placed no limit to his acquaintanceship. He was a pithy talker, and his sermons bore marks of his own composition. It is true, they must have been already old when I began to listen to them, and they were no more than a year's supply, so that they recurred as reg- ularly as the Collects. But though this system has been much ridiculed, I am prepared to defend it as equally sound M'itli tliat of a liturgy; and even if my researches had shown me that some of my father's yearly sei-mons had been copied out from the works of elder divines, this would only have been another proof of his good judgment. One may prefer fresh eggs though laid by a fowl of the meanest understanding, but why fresh sermons ? Nor can I be sorry, though myself given to medi- tative if not active innovation, that my father was a Tory who had not exactly a dislike to innovators and dissenters, but a slight opinion of them as persons of LOOKING BACKWARD. 31 ill-founded self-confidence; whence my young ears gathered many details concerning those who might perhaps have called themselves the more advanced thinkers in our nearest market-town, tending to con- vince me that their characters were quite as mixed as those of the thinkers behind them. This circumstance of my rearing has at least delivered me from certain mistakes of classification which I observe in many of my superiors, who have apparently no affectionate memories of a goodness mingled with what they now regai'd as outworn prejudices. Indeed, my philosoph- ical notions, snch as they are, continually carry me back to the time when the fitful gleams of a spring day used to show me my own shadow as that of a small boy on a small pony, riding by the side of a larger cob- mounted shadow over the breezy uplands which we used to dignify with the name of hills, or along by-roads with broad grassy borders and hedge- rows reckless of utility, on our way to outlying ham- lets, whose groups of inhabitants were as distinctive to my imagination as if they had belonged to different regions of the globe. From these we, sometimes rode onward to the adjoining parish, where also my father ofilciated, for he was a pluralist, but — I hasten to add — on the smallest scale ; for his one extra living was a poor vicarage, with hardly fifty parishioners, and its church would have made a very shabby barn, the gray worm-eaten wood of its pews and pulpit, with their doors only half hanging on the hinges, being exactly the color of a lean mouse which I once observed as an 82 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. interesting member of the scant congregation, and con- jectured to be the identical church mouse I had heard referred to as an example of extreme poverty ; for I was a precocious boy, and often reasoned after the fashion of my elders, arguing that " Jack and Jill " ■were real personages in our parish, and that if I could identify "Jack" I should find on him the marks of a broken crown. Sometimes when I am in a crowded London draw- ing-room (for I am a town-bird now, acquainted with smoky eaves, and tasting Nature in the parks), quick flights of memory take me back among my father's parishioners while I am still conscious of elbowing men who wear the same evening uniform as myself ; and I presently begin to wonder what varieties of his- tory lie hidden under this monotony of aspect. Some of them, perhaps, belong to families with many quar- terings, but how many " quarterings " of diverse con- tact with their fellow-countrymen enter into their qualifications to be parliamentary leaders, professors of social science, or journalistic guides of the popular mind ? Not that I feel m^'self a person made compe- tent by experience ; on the contrary, I argue that since an observation of different ranks has still left me prac- tically a poor creature, what must be the condition of those who object even to read about the life of other British classes than their own ? But of my elbowin^r neighbors with their crush hats I usually imagine that tlic most distinguished among them have probably had a far more instructive journey into manhood than LOOKING BACKWARD. 33 mine. Here, perhaps, is a thouglit-vvorn physiognomy, seeming at the present moment to be classed as a mere species of white cravat and swallow-tail, which may once, like Faraday's, have shown itself in curiously du- bious embryonic form leaning against a cottage lintel in small corduroys, and hungrily eating a bit of brown bread and bacon ; there is a pair of eyes, now too much wearied by the gas -light of public assemblies, that once perhaps learned to read their native England through the same alphabet as mine — not within the boundaries of an ancestral park, never even being driven through the county town five miles off, but — among the midland villages and markets, along by the tree-studded hedge-rows, and where the heavy barges seem in the distance to float mysteriously among the rushes and the feathered grass. Our vision, both real and ideal, has since then been filled with far otlier scenes : among eternal snows and stupendous sun- scorched monuments of departed empires ; within the scent of the long orange-groves ; and where the tem- ple of N'eptune looks out over the siren-haunted sea. But my eyes at least have kept their early affectionate joy in our native landscape, which is one deep root of our national life and language. And I often smile at my consciousness that certain conservative prepossessions have mingled themselves for me with the influences of our midland scenery, from the tops of the elms down to the buttercups and tlie little waA'-side vetches. Naturally enough. That part of my father's prime to which he oftenest referred 2* 84 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. had fallen on tlie days when the great wave of political enthusiasm and belief in a speedy regeneration of all things had ebbed, and the supposed millennial initia- tive of France was turning into a Napoleonic empire, the sway of an Attila with a mouth speaking proud things in a jargon half revolutionary, half Koman. Men were beginning to shrink timidly from the mem- ory of their own words and fi-om the recognition of the fellowships they had formed ten years before ; and even reforming Englishmen, for the most part, were willing to wait for the perfection of society, if only they could keep their throats perfect and help to drive away the chief enemy of mankind from our coasts. To my father's mind the noisy teachers of revolution- ary doctrine w'ere, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the fool and the scoundrel; the w^elfare of the nation lay in a strong government which could main- tain order; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word " government " in a tone that charged it with awe, and made it part of my effective religion, in con- trast with the word " rebel," which seemed to carry the stamp of evil in its syllables, and, lit by the fact that Satan was the first rebel, made an argument dis- pensing with more detailed inquiry. I gathered that our national troubles in the first two decades of this century were not at all due to the mistakes of our administrators, and that England, with its fine Church and Constitution, would have been exceedingly well off if every British subject had been thankful for what was provided, and had minded his own business — if, LOOKING BACKWARD, 35 for example, numerous Catholics of that period had been aware how very modest they ought to be, consid- ering they wei-e Irish, The times, I heard, had often been bad, but I was constantly hearing pf " bad times" as a name for actual evenings and mornings when the godfathers M'ho gave them that name appeared to me remai'kably comfortable. Altogether, my father's Eng- land seemed to me lovable, laudable, full of good men, and having good rulers, froui Mr. Pitt on to the Duke of Wellington, until he was for emancipating the Catholics; and it M'as so far from prosaic to me that I looked into it for a more exciting romance than such as I could find in my own adventures, which consisted mainly in fancied crises calling for the resolute wield- ing of domestic swords and iire-ai-ms against unap- parent robbers, rioters, and invaders who, it seemed, in my father's prime, had more chance of being real. The morris-dancers had not tlien dwindled to a ragged and almost vanished rout (owing the traditional name probably to the historic fancy of our superannuated groom) ; also, the good old king was alive and well, which made all the more difference because I had no notion what he was and did — only understanding in general that if he had been still on the throne he would have hindered everytiiing that wise persons thouo-ht undesirable. Certainly that elder England, with its frankly sal- ai)le boroughs, so clieap compared with the seats ob- tained under the i-eformed method, and its boroughs kindly presented by noblemen desirous to encourage 3G THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. gratitude, its prisons with a miscellaneous company of felons and maniacs, and, without any supply of water, its bloated, idle charities, its non-resident jovial clergy, its militia-balloting, and, above all, its blank ignorance of what we, its posterity, should be thinking of it, has great differences from the England of to-day. Yet we discern a strong family likeness. Is there any coun- try which shows at once as much stability and as much susceptibility to change as ours? Our national life is like that scenery which I early learned to love, not subject to great convulsions, but easily showing more or less delicate (sometimes melancholy) effects from minor changes. Hence our midland plains have never lost their famiHar expression and conservative spirit for me ; yet at every other mile, since I first looked on them, some sign of world-wide change, some new direc- tion of human labor, has wrought itself into what one may call the speech of the landscape — in contrast with those grander and vaster regions of the earth which keep an indifferent aspect in the presence of men's toil and devices. What does it signify that a lilipu- tian train passes over a viaduct amidst the abysses of the Apennines, or that a caravan laden with a nation's offerings creeps across the unresting sameness of the desert, or tliat a petty cloud of steam sweeps for an instant over the face of an Egyptian colossus immov- ably submitting to its slow burial beneath the sand? But our woodlands and pastures, our hedge -parted cornfields and meadows, our bits of high common where we used to plant the wind-mills, our quiet little LOOKING BACKWARD. 37 rivers here and there fit to turn a mill-wheel, our villages along the old coach-roads, are all easily alter- able lineaments that seem to make the face of onr Mother-land sympatlietic with the laborious lives of her cliildren. She does not tahe their ploughs and wagons contemptuously, but rather makes every hovel and eveiy sheepfold, every railed bridge or fallen tree- trunk, an agreeably noticeable incident ; not a mere speck in the midst of unmeasured vastness, but a piece of our social history in pictorial wi-iting. Our rural tracts — where no Babel -chimney scales the heavens — are without mighty objects to fill the soul with the sense of an outer world unconquerably aloof from our efforts. The wastes are play-grounds (and let us try to keep them such for the children's children who will inherit no other sort of demesne); the gi-asses and reeds nod to each other over the river, but we have cut a canal close by; the very lieiglits laugh with corn in August, or lift the plongli-tcam against the sky in September. Then comes a crowd of burly navvies with pickaxes and barrows; and while hardly a wrinkle is made in the fading mother's face or a new curve of health in the blooming girl's, the liills are cut through or the breaches between them spanned, we choose our level, and the white steam-pen- non flies along it. But because our land shows this readiness to be changed, all signs of permanence upon it raise a tender attachment instead of awe: some of us, at least, love the scanty relics of our forests, and are thankful if a 88 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. bush is left of the old hedge-row. A crumbling bit of wall where the delicate ivy-leaved toad-flax hangs its light branches, or a bit of gray thatch with patches of dark moss on its shoulder and a troop of grass-stems on its ridge, is a thing to visit. And then the tiled roof of cottage and homestead, of the long cow-shed where generations of the milky mothers have stood patiently, of the broad-shouldered barns where the old-fashioned flail once made resonant music, while the watch-dog barked at the timidly venturesome fowls making peck- ing raids on the outflying grain — the roofs that have looked out from among the elms and walnut-trees, or beside the yearly group of hay and corn stacks, or be- low the square stone steeple, gathering- their gray or ochre-tinted lichens and their olive-green mosses nnder all ministries — let us praise the sober harmonies they give to our landscape, helping to unite us pleasantly with the elder generations who tilled the soil for us be- fore we were born, and paid heavier and heavier taxes, with much grumbling, but without that deepest root of corruption — the self-indulgent despair which cuts down and consumes, and never plants. But I check myself. Perhaps this England of my affections is half visionary — a dream in which things arc connected according to my well-fed, lazy mood, and not at all by the multitudinous links of graver, sadder fact, such as belong everywhere to the story of human labor. AVell, well, the illusions that began for us when we were less acquainted with evil have not lost their value when we discern them to be illusions. LOOKING BACKWARD. 39 They feed the ideal Better, and in loving them still, we strengthen the precious habit of loving something not visibly, tangibly existent, but a spiritual product of our visible, tangible selves. I cherish my childish loves — the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged. Since then I have learned to care for foreign countries, for literatures foreign and ancient, for the life of conti- nental towns dozing round old cathedrals, for the life of London, half sleepless with eager thought and strife, with indigestion or with hunger; and now my con- sciousness is chiefly of the busy, anxious metropolitan sort. My system responds sensitively to the London weather-signs, political, social, literary; and my bach- elor's hearth is imbedded where, by much craning of head and neck, I can catch sight of a sycamore in the Square garden : I belong to the " Nation of London." Why ? There have been many voluntary exiles in the world, and probably in the very first exodus of the pa- triarchal Aryans — for I am determined not to fetch my examples from races whose talk is of uncles and no fathers — some of those who sallied forth went for the sake of a loved companionship, when they would willingly have kept sight of the familiar plains, and of the hills to which they had first lifted up their eyes. 40 TUEOPHRASTUS SUCH. III. HOW WE ENCOUKAGE RESEARCH. The serene and beneficent goddess Truth, like other deities whose disposition has been too hastily inferred from that of the men who have invoked them, can hardly be well pleased with much of the worship paid to her even in this milder age, when the stake and the rack have ceased to form part of her ritual. Some cruelties still pass for service done in her honor: no thumb -screw is used, no iron boot, no scorching of flesh; but plenty of controversial bruising, laceration, and even life-long maiming. Less than formerly; but so long as this sort of truth-worship has the sanction of a public that can often understand nothing in a controversy except personal sarcasm or slanderous ridi- cule, it is likely to continue. The suffei-ings of its victims are often as little regarded as those of the sacrificial i)ig offered in old time, with what we now regard as a sad miscalculation of effects. One such victim is my old acquaintance Merman. Twenty years ago Merman was a young man of promise, a conveyancer with a practice which had cer- tainly budded, but, like Aaron's rod, seemed not des- tined to pro(;eed further in that marvellous activity. Meanwhile he occupied himself in miscellaneous pe- HOW WE ENCOUKAGE RESEARCH. 41 riodical writing and in a multifarious study of moral and physical science. What chiefly attracted hiiu in all subjects were the vexed questions which have the advantage of not admitting the decisive proof or dis- proof that renders many ingenious arguments super- annuated. Not that Merman had a wrangling dispo- sition : he put all his doubts, queries, and paradoxes deferentially, contended without unpleasant heat, and only with a sonorous eagerness against the personality of Homer, expressed himself civilly though firmly on the origin of language, and had tact enough to drop at the right moment such subjects as the ultimate re- duction of all the so-called elementary substances, his own total scepticism concerning Manetho's chronology, or even the relation between the magnetic condition of the earth and the outbreak of revolutionary tenden- cies. Such flexibility was naturally much helped by his amiable feeling toward woman, whose nervous sys- tem, he was convinced, would not bear the continuous strain of difiicult topics; and also by his willingness to contribute a song whenever the same desultory charm- er proposed music. Indeed, his tastes were domestic enough to beguile him into marriage when his re- sources were still very moderate and partly uncertain. His friends wished that so ingenious and ao-reeable a fellow might have more prospei'ity than they ventured to hope for him, their chief regret on his account be- ing that he did not concentrate his talent and leave off forming opinions on at least half a dozen of the sub- jects over which he scattered his attention^ especially 42 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. now that he had married a "nice little woman" (tlie generic name for acquaintances' wives when they aio not markedly disagreeable). lie could not, they ob- served, want all his various knowledge and Laputan ideas for his periodical writing which brought him most of his bread, and he would do well to nse his talents in getting a specialty that would tit him for a post. Perhaps these well-disposed persons were a lit- tle rash in presuming that fitness for a post would be the surest ground for getting it ; and, on the whole, in now looking back on their wishes for Merman, their chief satisfaction must be that those wishes did not contribute to the actual result. For in an evil hour Merman did concentrate him- self. He had for many years taken into his interest the comparative history of the ancient civilizations, but it had not preoccupied him so as to narrow his gener- ous attention to everything else. One sleepless night, however (his wife has more than once narrated to me the details of an event memorable to her as the begin- ning of sorrows), after spending some hours over the epoch-making work of Grampus, a new idea seized him with regard to the possible connection of certain sym- bolic monuments common to widely scattered races. Merman started up in bed. The night was cold, and the sudden withdrawal of warmth made his wife first dream of a snowball, and then ciy, " What is the matter, Proteus «" "A great matter, Julia. That fellow Grampus, whose book is cried up as a revelation, is all wrong now WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 43 about the Mao-icodumbras and the Znzumotzis, and I have got hold of the right clew." "Good gracious! does it matter so much? Don't drag the clothes, dear." " It signifies this, Julia, that if I am right I shall set the world right; I shall regenerate history' ; I shall win the mind of Europe to a new view of social origins ; I shall bruise the head of many superstitions." " Oh no, dear, don't go too far into things. Lie down again. You have been dreaming. What are the Ma- dicojumbras and Zuzitotzums? I never heard jou talk of them before. What use can it be troubling yourself about such things ?" " That is the way, Julia ! That is the way wives alienate their husbands, and make any hearth pleas- anter to him than his own." " What do you mean, Proteus?" " Why, if a woman will not try to understand her husband's ideas, or at least to believe that they are of more value than she can understand — if she is to join anybody who happens to be against him, and suppose he is a fool because others contradict him — there is an end of our happiness. That is all I have to say." " Oh no, Proteus, dear. I do believe what you say is right. That is my only guide. I am sure I never have any opinions in any other way : I mean about subjects. Of course there are many little things that would tease you, that you like me to judge of for myself. I know I said once that I did not want you to sing ' Oh, rud- dier than the cherry,' because it was not in your voice. 44 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. But I cannot remember ever differing from you about subjects. I never in nij life thonght any one cleverer than you." Julia Merman was really "a nice little woman," not one of the stately Dians sometimes spoken of in those terms. Her black silhouette had a very infantine aspect, but she had discernment and wisdom enough to act on the strong hint of that memorable conversation, never again giving her husband the slightest ground for suspecting that she thought treasonably of his ideas in relation to the Magicod umbras and Zuzumotzis, or in the least relaxed her faith in his infallibility because Europe was not also convinced of it. It was well for her that she did not increase her troubles in this wav ; but to do her justice, what she was chiefly anxious about was to avoid increasing her husband's troubles. Not that these were great in the beginning. In the first development and writing out of his scheme. Mer- man had a more intense kind of iutellectual pleasure than he had ever known before. His face became more radiant, his general view of human prospects more cheerful. Foreseeing that truth as presented by himself would win the recognition of his contempora- ries, he excused with much liberality their rather rough treatment of other theorists whose basis was less per- fect. His own periodical criticisms had never before been so amiable: he was sorry for that unlucky major- ity whom the spirit of the age, or some other prompt- ing more definite and local, compelled to write without any particular ideas. The possession of an original HOW WE ENCOUEAGE RESEARCH. 45 theory which has not yet been assailed must certain- ly sweeten tlie temper of a man who is not before- liand ill-natured. And Merman was the reverse of ill-natured. But the hour of publication came ; and to half a doz- en persons, described as the learned world of two hemi- spheres, it became known that Grampus was attacked. This might have been a small matter, for who or what on earth that is good for anything is not assailed by ignorance, stupidity, or malice — and sometimes even by just objection? But on examination it appeared that the attack might possibly be held damaging, un- less the ignorance of the author were well exposed, and his pretended facts shown to be chimeras of that re- markably hideous kind begotten by imperfect learning on the more feminine element of original incapacity. Grampus himself did not immediately cut open the volume which Merman had been careful to send him, not without a very lively and shifting conception of the possible effects which the explosive gift might pro- duce on the too eminent scholar — eifects that must cer- tainly have set in on the third day from the despatch of the parcel. But in point of fact Grampus knew nothing of the book until his friend Lord Narwhal sent him an American newspaper containing a spirited ar- ticle by the well-known Professor Sperm N. Whale, which was rather equivocal in its bearing, the passages quoted from Merman being of rather a telling sort, and the paragra])hs which seemed to blow defiance be- ing unaccountably feeble, coming from so distinguish- 46 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. ed a Cetacean. Then, by another post, arrived letters from Butzkopf and Dugong, both men whose signa- tures were familiar to the Teutonic world in the Selten- erscheinende Monat-scJinft, or Hayrick for the inser- tion of Split Ilaii-s, asking their Master whether he meant to take up the combat, because, in the contrary case, both were ready. Thus America and Germany were roused, though England was still drowsy, and it seemed time now for Grampus to find Merman's book under the heap and cut it open. For his own part, he was perfectly at ease about his system ; but this is a world in which the truth requires defence, and specious falsehood must be met with exposure. Grampus having once looked through the book, no longer wanted any urging to wu'ite the most crushing of replies. This, and nothing less than this, was due from him to the cause of sound inquiry ; and the punishment would cost him little pains. In three weeks from that time the palpitating Merman saw his book announced in the programme of the leading Review. I^o need for Grampus to put his signature. Who else had his vast yet microscopic knowledge, who else his power of epithet ? This ar- ticle in which Merman was pilloried and as good as mutilated — for he was shown to have neither ear nor nose for the subtleties of philological and archaeologi- cal study — was much read and more talked of, not be- cause of any interest in the system of Grampus, or any precise conception of the danger attending lax views of the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, but because HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 47 the sharp epigrams with which the victim was lacer- ated, and the soaring fountains of acrid mud which were shot upward and poured over the fresh wounds, were found amusing in recitah A favorite passage was one in which a certain kind of sciolist was de- scribed as a creature of the "Walrus kind, having a phantasmal resemblance to higher animals when seen by ignorant minds in the twilight, dabbling or hob- bling in first one element and then the other, without parts or organs suited to either; in fact, one of Nature's impostors, who could not be said to have any artful pretences, since a congenital incompetence to all pre- cision of aim and movement made their every action a pretence — just as a being born in doeskin gloves would necessarily pass a judgment on surfaces, but we all know what his judgment would be worth. In drawing-room circles, and for the immediate hour, this ingenious comparison was as damaging as the showing up of Merman's mistakes and the mere smattering of linguistic and historical knowledge M-hich he had pre- sumed to be a sufficient basis for theorizing; but tlie more learned cited his blunders aside to each other, and laughed the laugh of the initiated. In fact. Mer- man's was a remarkable case of sudden notoriety. In London drums and clubs he was spoken of abundantly as one who had written ridiculously about the Magico- dumbras and Zuzumotzis : the leaders of conversation, whether Christians, Jews, infidels, or of any other con- fession except the confession of ignorance, pronounc- ing him shallow and indiscreet, if not presumptuous 48 THEOPnRASTUS SUCH. and absurd. He was heard of at Warsaw, and even Paris took knowled^-e of liiin. M. Cachalot had not read either Grampus or Merman, but he heard of their dispute in time to insert a paragraph upon it in his brilhant work, L^ Orient au Point de Viie Actuel, in which he was dispassionate enough to speak of Gram- pus as possessing a coiip d''oeil presque francais in matters of historical interpretation, and of Merman as nevertlieless an objector qui merite d'etre connu. M. Porpesse, also, availing himself of M, Cachalot's knowledge, reproduced it in an article with certain ad- ditions, which it is only fair to distinguish as his own, implying that the vigorous English of Grampus was not always as correct as a Frenchman could desire, while Merman's objections were more sophistical than solid. Presently, indeed, there appeared an able ex- trait of Grampus's article in the valuable Itajyporteur Scientifique et Historique, and Merman's mistakes were thus brought under the notice of certain Frenchmen who are among the masters of those who know on Ori- ental subjects. In a word, Merman, though not exten- sively read, was extensively read about. Meanwhile, how did he like it ? Perhaps nobody, except his wife, for a moment reflected on that. An amused societj^ considered that he was severely pun- ished, but did not take the trouble to imagine his sen- sations; indeed, this would have been a difficulty for persons less sensitive and excitable than Merman him- self. Perhaps that popular comparison of the Walrus had truth enough to bite and blister on thorough appli- HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 49 cation, even if exultant ignorance had not applauded it. But it is well known that the walrus, though not in the least a malignant animal, if allowed to display its remarkably plain person and blundering perform- ances at ease in any element it chooses, becomes des- perately savage, and musters alarming auxiliaries when attacked or hurt. In this characteristic, at least, Mer- man resembled the walrus. And now he concentrated himself with a vengeance. Tliat liis counter -theory was fundamentally the right one he had a genuine conviction, whatever collateral mistakes he might have committed; and his bread would not cease to be bitter to him until he had convinced his contemporaries that Grampus had used his minute learning as a dust-cloud to hide sophistical evasions — that, in fact, minute learn- ing was an obstacle to clear -siglited judgment, more especially with regard to the Magicod umbras and Zu- zumotzis, and tliat the best preparation in this matter was a wide survey of history and a diversified observa- tion of men. Still, Merman was resolved to muster all the learning within his reach, and he wandered day and night through many wildei-nesses of German print, he tried compendious methods of learning Oriental tongues, and, so to speak, getting at the marrow of languages independently of the bones, for the chance of finding details to corroborate his own views, or pos- sibly even to detect Grampus in some oversight or text- ual tampering. All other work was neglected : rare clients were sent awav, and amazed editors found ia:3 maniac indifferent to his chance of getting book-par- 3 50 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. eels from them. It was many mouths before Merman had satisfied himself that he was strong enough to face round upon his adversary. But at last he had pre- pared sixty condensed pages of eager argument which seemed to him worthy to rank with the best models of contro\ersial writing. He had acknowledged his mis- takes, but had restated his theory, so as to show that it was left intact in spite of them ; and he had even found cases in which Ziphius, Microps, Scrag Whale the ex- plorer, and other Cetaceans of unanswerable authority, were decidedly at issue with Grampus. Especially a passage cited by this last from that greatest of fossils Megalosaurus was demonstrated by Merman to be ca- pable of three different interpretations, all preferable to that chosen by Grampus, who took the words in their most literal sense ; for, 1°, the incomparable Saurian, alike unequalled in close observation and far -glan- cing comprehensiveness, might have meant those words ironically ; 2°, inotzls was probably a false reading for ])otzis^ in which case its bearing was reversed ; and, 3°, it is known that in the age of the Saurians there were conceptions about the motzis which entirely remove it from the category of things comprehensible in an age when Saurians run ridiculously small : all which views were godfathered by names quite fit to be ranked with that of Grampus. In fine, Merman wound up his re- joinder by sincerely thanking the eminent adversary, without whose fierce assault he might not have under- taken a revision, in the course of which he had met with unexpected and striking confirmations of his own HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCn. 51 faiidamental views. Evidently Merman's anger was at white-heat. The rejoinder being complete, all that remained was to find a suitable medinm for its publication. This was not so easy. Distinguished mediums would not lend themselves to contradictions of Grampus, or if they would, Merman's article was too long and too ab- struse, while he would not consent to leave anything out of an article which had no superfluities ; for all this happened years ago, when the world was at a different stage. At last, however, he got his rejoinder printed, and not on hard terms, since the medium, in every sense modest, did not ask him to pay for its insertion. But if Merman expected to call out Grampus again, he was mistaken. Everybody felt it too absurd that Merman should undertake to correct Grampus in mat- ters of erudition, and an eminent man has something else to do than to refute a petty objector twice over. What was essential had been done: the public had been enabled to form a true judgment of Merman's incapacity, the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis were but subsidiary elements in Grampus's system, and Merman might now be dealt with by younger mem- bers of the master's scliool. But he had at least the satisfaction of finding that he had raised a discussion which would not be let die. The followers of Gram- pus took it up with an ardor and industry of research worthy of their exemplar. Butzkopf made it the sub- ject of an elaborate Einleitung to his important work, Die Bedeutung des j^gyjptischen Labijrinthes ; and 52 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. DusroDo:, in a remarkable address which he delivered to a learned society in Central Europe, introduced Merman's theory with so much power of sarcasm that it became a theme of more or less derisive allusion to men of many tongues. Merman with his Magico- dnmbras and Zuzumotzis was on the way to become a proverb, being used illustratively by many able jour- nalists who took those names of questionable things to be Merman's own invention, " than which," said one of the graver guides, " we can recall few more melan- choly examples of speculative aberration." Natural!}', the subject passed into popular literature, and figured A-ery Conmionlj' in advertised progranmies. The fluent Loligo, the formidable Shark, and a 3'ounger member of his remarkable family known as S. Catulus, made a special reputation by their numerous articles, eloquent, lively, or abusive, all on the same theme, under titles ingeniously varied, alliterative, sonorous, or boldly fan- ciful; such as, "Moments with Mr. Merman," "Mr. Merman and the Magicodumbras," " Greenland Gram- pus and Proteus Merman," " Grampian Heights and their Climbers, or the New Excelsior." They tossed him on short sentences; they swathed him in para- graphs of windiug imagery; they found him at once a mere plagiarist and a theorizer of unexampled per- versity, ridiculously wroug about j)ot2is and ignorant of Pali ; they hinted, indeed, at certain things which to their knowledge he had silently brooded over in his boyhood, and seemed tolerably well assured that this preposterous attempt to gainsay an incomparable Ce- HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 53 tacean of world-wide fame had its origin in a peculiar mixture of bitterness and eccentricitj", which, rightly estimated and seen in its definite proportions, would furnish the best key to his argumentation. All alike were sorry for Merman^s lack of sound learning, but how could their readers be sorry ? Sound learning M'ould not have been amusing ; and as it was, Merman was made to furnish these readers with amusement at no expense of trouble on their part. Even burlesque writers looked into his book to see where it could be made use of, and tliose who did not know him were desirous of meeting him at dinner as one likely to feed their comic vein. On the other hand, he made a serious figure in ser- mons under the name of "Some" or "Others" who had attempted presumptuously to scale eminences too high and arduous for human ability, and had given an example of ignominious failure edifying to the lium- ble Christian. All this might be very advantageous for able per- sons whose superfluous fund of expression needcnl a paying investment, but the effect on Merman himself was unhappily not so transient as the busy writing and speaking of which he had become the occasion. His certainty that he was right naturally got stronger in proportion as the spirit of resistance was stimulated. The scorn and unfairness with which he felt himself to have been treated by those really competent to aj)- preciate his ideas had galled him and made a chron- ic sore; and the exultant chorus of the incompetent 54 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. seemed a pouring of vinegar on his wound. Ilis brain became a registry of the foolish and ignorant objec- tions made against him, and of continually amplified answers to these objections. Unable to get his answers printed, he had recourse to that more primitive mode of publication, oral transmission or button-holding, now generally regarded as a troublesome survival, and the once pleasant, flexible Merman was on the way to be shunned as a bore. His interest in new acquaint- ances turned chiefly on the possibility that they would care about the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis; that they would listen to his complaints and exposures of unfairness, and not only accept copies of what he had written on the subject, but send him appreciative let- ters in acknowledgment. Kepeated disappointment of such hopes tended to embitter him, and not the less because after awhile the fashion of mentioning him died out, allusions to his theory were less undei-stood, and people could only pretend to remember it. And all the while Mei-raan was perfectly sure that his very opponents who had knowledge enough to be capable judges were aware that his book, whatever errors of statement they might detect in it, had served as a sort of divining rod, pointing out hidden sources of histor- ical interpretation ; nay, his jealous examination dis- cerned in a new work by Grampus himself a certain shifting of ground which — so poor Merman declared — was the sign of an intention gradually to appropri- ate the views of the man he had attempted to brand as an ignorant impostor. HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 55 And Julia? And the house -keeping? — the rent, food, and clothing, which controversy can hardly supply, unless it be of the kind that serves as a reconunen- dation to certain posts. Controversial pamphlets have been known to earn large plums; but nothing of the sort could be expected from unpractical heresies about the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis. Painfully the contrary. Merman's reputation as a sober thinker, a safe writer, s\ sound lawyer, was irretrievably in- jured : the distnctions of controversy had cau:^ed him to neglect usefnl editorial connections, and indeed his dwindling care for miscellaneous sul)jects made his contributions too dull to be desirable. Even if he could now have given a new turn to his concentration, and applied his talents so as to be ready to show him- self an exceptionally qualified lawyer, he would only have been like an architect in competition, too late with his superior plans; he would not have had an opportunity of showing his qualification. lie was thrown out of the course. The small capital which had filled up deficiencies of income was almost ex- hausted, and Julia, in the effort to make supplies equal to wants, had to use much ingenuity in diminishing the wants. The brave and affectionate woman whose small outline, so unimpressi\'e against an illuminated background, held within it a good share of feminine heroism, did her best to keep up the charm of home and soothe her husband's excitement ; parting with the best jewel among her wedding presents in order to pay rent, without ever hinting to her husband that 56 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. this sad result had come of his undertaking to con- vince people who only laughed at liim. She was a resigned little creature, and reflected that some hus- bands took to drinking and others to forgery : hers had only taken to the Magicoduinbras and Znzuniotzis, and was not unkind — only a little more indifferent to lier and the two children than she had ever expected he would he, his mind being eaten up with "subjects," and constantly a little angry, not with her, but with everybody else, especially those w^lio were celebrated. This was the sad truth. Merman felt himself ill- used by the world, and thought very niuch worse of the world in consequence. The gall of his adversaries' ink had been sucked into his system and ran in his blood. He was still in the prime of life, but his mind was aged by that eager, monotonous construction which comes of feverish excitement on a single topic, and uses up the intellectual strength. Merman had never been a rich man, but he was now conspicuously poor, and in need of the friends who had power or interest which he believed they could exert on his behalf. Their omitting or declin- ing to give this help could not seem to him so clearly as to them an inevitable consequence of his having become impracticable, or at least of his passing for a man whose views were not likely to be safe and sober. Each friend in turn offended him, though unwillingly, and was suspected of wishing to shake him off. It was not altogether so ; but poor Merman's society had undeniably ceased to be attractive, and it was difficult HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 57 to help him. At hist the pressure of want urged him to try for a post far beneath his earlier prospects, and he gained it. lie holds it still, for he has no vices, and his domestic life has kept up a sweetening current of motive around and within him. Nevertheless, the bitter flavor mingling itself with all topics, the prema- ture weariness and withering, are irrevocablj^ there. It is as if he had gone through a disease which alters what we call the constitution. He has long ceased to talk eagerly of the ideas which possess him, or to at- tempt making proselytes. The dial has moved on- ward, and he himself sees many of his former guesses in a new light. On the other hand, he has seen what he foreboded, that the main idea which was at the root of his too rash theorizing has been adopted by Grampus and received with general respect, no refer- ence being heard to the ridiculous figure this important conception made when ushered in by the incompetent " Others." Now and then, on rare occasions, when a sympathetic tete-d-tete has restored some of his old expansiveness, he will tell a companion in a railway-carriage, or other place of meeting favoi'able to autobiographical confi- dences, what has been the course of things in his par- ticular case, as an example of the justice to be expected of the world. The companion usually allows for the bitterness of a disappointed man, and is secretly disin- clined to believe that Grampus was to blame. 3* 58 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. IV. A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. Among the many acute sayings of La Rocliefoucauld, there is hardly one more acute than this: "La plus grande ambition n'en a pas la moindre apparencie lorsqu'elle se rencontre dans une impossibilite absolne d'arriver ou elle aspire." Some of us might do well to use this hint in our treatment of acquaintances and friends from whom we are expecting gratitude because we are so very kind in thinking of them, inviting them, and even listening to what they say — considering how insignificant they must feel themselves to be. We are often fallaciously confident in supposing that our friend's state of mind is appropriate to our moderate estimate of his importance: almost as if we imagined the humble mollusk (so useful as an illustration) to have a sense of his own exceeding softness and low place in the scale of being. Your mollusk, on the con- trary, is inwardly objecting to every other grade of solid rather than to himself. Accustomed to obser\e what we think an unwarrantable conceit exhibiting itself in ridiculous pretensions and forwardness to play the lion's part, in obvious self-complacenc}^ and loud peremptoriness, we are not on the alert to detect the egoistic claims of a more exorbitant kind often hidden A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 59 under an apparent neutrality or an acquiescence in being pnt out of the question. TiiDUghts of tliis kind occurred to me yesterday wlien I saw the name of Lentulus in the obituary. The majority of his acquaintances, I imagine, have always thought of him as a man justly unpretending and as nobody's rival ; but some of them have perhaps been struck with surprise at his reserve in praising the works of his contemporaries, and have now and then felt themselves in need of a key to his remarks on men of celebrity in various departments. He was a man of fair position, deriving his income from a business in which he did nothing, at leisure to frequent clubs and at ease in giving dinners; well -looking, polite, and generally acceptable in society as a part of what we may call its bread-crumb — the neutral basis needful for the plums and spice. Why, then, did he speak of the modern Maro or the modern Flaccus with a pe- culiarity in his tone of assent to other people's praise which might almost have led you to suppose that the eminent poet had borrowed money of him and showed an indisposition to repay? He had no criticism to offer, no sign of objection more specific than a sliglit cough, a scarcely perceptible pause before assenting, and an air of self-control in his utterance — as if cer- tain considerations had determined him not to inform against the so-called poet, who to his knowledge was a mere versifier. If you had questioned him closely, he would perhaps have confessed that he did think some- thing better might be done in the way of Eclogues 60 TIIEOPHRASTUS SUCH. and Georgics, or of Odes and Epodes, and that to his mind poetry was something very different from what had hitherto been known under that name. For my own part, being of a superstitions nature, given readily to imagine alarming causes, I immedi- ately, on first getting these mystic hints from Lentulus, concluded that he held a numljer of entirely original poems, or at the very least a revolutionary treatise on poetics, in that melanclioly manuscript state to which works excelling all that is ever printed are necessarily condemned ; and I was long timid in speaking of the poets when he was present. rt)r what iniglit not Len- tuhis have done, or be profoundly aware of, that would make my ignorant impressions ridiculous? One can- not well be sure of the negative in such a case, except through certain positives that bear witness to it; and those witnesses are not always to be got hold of. But time wearing on, I perceived that the attitude of Len- tulus toward the philosophers was essentially the same as his attitude toward the poets; nay, there was some- thing so much more decided in his mode of closing his mouth after brief speech on the foi'mer, there was such an air of rapt consciousness in his private hints as to his conviction that all thinkin