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 NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THE ROOM
 
 TEE 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 R. WORTHINGTON, 
 
 770, BROADWAY.
 
 47TO 
 
 )O0z. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 TABLE TALK. FIRST SERIES. PART L 
 
 Publishers' Advertisement, ........ vii 
 
 Essay I. On the Pleasure or Painting, 1 
 
 II. The same Subject, 12 
 
 III. On the Past and Future, 22 
 
 IV. On People with one Idea, 83 
 
 Y. On the Ignorance of the Learned, . .45 
 
 VI. On Will-Making, 55 
 
 VII. On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 66 
 
 VIII. On Going a Journey, 74 
 
 EL Why Distant Objects Please, 85 
 
 X. On Corporate Bodies, ....... 96 
 
 XI. On the Knowledge of Character, .... 106 
 
 XII. On the Fear of Death, .124 
 
 XIII. On Application to Study, . . . . . .135 
 
 XIV. On the Old Age of Artists, ...... 149 
 
 XV. On Egotism, 161 
 
 XVI. On the Regal Character, 176
 
 PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 Tmt following collection of papers includes all the Essays pub- 
 lished by Hazlitt in Paris under the title of the Table Talk, to 
 which the following notice was prefixed : 
 
 " The work here offered to the public is a selection from the 
 four volumes of Table Talk, printed in London. Should it meet 
 with success, it will be followed by two other volumes of the same 
 description, which will include all that the author wishes to pre- 
 serve of his writings in this kind. The title may perhaps serve 
 to explain what there is of peculiarity in the style or mode of 
 treating the subjects. I had remarked that when I had written 
 or thought upon a particular topic, and afterwards had occasion 
 to speak of it with a friend, the conversation generally took a 
 much wider range, and branched off into a number of indirect 
 and eollateral questions, which were not strictly connected with 
 the original view of the subject, but which often threw a curious 
 and striking light upon it, or upon human life in general. It 
 therefore occurred to me as possible to combine the advantages 
 of these two styles, the literary and conversational ; or after stating 
 and enforcing some leading idea, to follow it up by such obser- 
 vations and reflections as would probably suggest themselves in 
 discussing the same question in company with others. This 
 seemed to me to promise a greater variety and richness, and 
 perhaps a greater sincerity, than could be attained by a more 
 precise and scholastic method. The same consideration had an 
 influence on the familiarity and conversational idiom of the style 
 which I have used How far the plan was feasible, or how far
 
 fit PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 I have succeeded in the execution of it, must be left to others to 
 decide. I am also afraid of having too frequently attempted to 
 give a popular air and effect to subtle distinctions and trains of 
 thought ; so that I shall be considered as too metaphysical by the 
 careless reader, while by the more severe and scrupulous inquirer 
 my style will be complained of as too light and desultory. To 
 all this I can only answer that I have done not what I wished, 
 but the best I could do ; and I heartily wish it had been better. 
 
 A collection made in this manner for a foreign European 
 market by the author himself, may also serve as the best intro- 
 duction (the one nearest the writer's wishes, were he living) of a 
 series of his works to the American public. The second part 
 alluded to was never published at Paris, but it is not difficult to 
 supply it on similar principles of selection, from the various scat- 
 tered writings of the author. This will be attempted in the 
 second part of the Table-Talk, to be published immediately, with 
 no fear of the result, in the production of a brilliant volume of 
 Essays. The volumes of the Bound Table, and Sketches and 
 Essays, published by the author's son, will be left untouched for 
 future publication in this series, which will also include the 
 various volumes of Lectures and Critical Papers of Hazlht.
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY L 
 
 On the Pleasure of Painting. 
 
 " There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters know.' 1 
 [a writing, you nave to contend with the world ; in painting, you 
 have only to carry on a friendly strife with Nature. You sit 
 down, to your task, and are happy. From the moment that you 
 take up the pencil, and took Nature in the face, you are at peace 
 with your own heart. No angry passions rise to disturb the 
 silent progress of the work, to shake the hand, or dim ihe brow : 
 no irritable humours are set afloat : you have no absurd opin- 
 ions to combat, no point to strain, no adversary to crush, no fool 
 to annoy you are actuated by fear or favour to no man. There 
 is "no juggling here," no sophistry, no intrigue, no tampeiing 
 with the evidence, no attempt to make black white, or white 
 hlack : but you resign yourself into the hands of a greater 
 power, that of Nature, with the simplicity of a child, and the 
 devotion of an enthusiast 
 
 " Study with joy 
 Her manner, and with rapture taste her style." 
 
 The mind is calm, and full at the same time. The hand and 
 eye are equally employed. In tracing the commonest object, a 
 plant or the stump of a tree, you learn something every moment. 
 You perceive unexpected differences, and discover likenesses 
 where you looked for no such thing. You try to set down what 
 you see find out your error, and correct it. You need not play 
 tricks, or purposely mistake : with all your pains, you are still 
 
 I*
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 far short of the mark. Patience grows out of the endless pui 
 suit., and turns into a luxury. A streak in a flower, a wrinkle in 
 a leaf, a tinge in a cloud, a stain in an old wall or ruin grey, are 
 seized with avidity as the spolia opima of this sort of mental war- 
 fare, and furnish out labour for another half-day The hours 
 pass on untold, without chagrin, and without weariness; nor 
 would you ever wish to pass them otherwise. Innocence is 
 joined with industry, pleasure with business ; and the mind is 
 satisfied, though it is not engaged in thinking or in doing harm.* 
 I have not much pleasure in writing these Essays, or in read- 
 ing them afterwards ; though I own I now and then meet with a 
 phrase that I like, or a thought that strikes me as a true one. 
 But after I begin them, I am only anxious to get to the end of 
 them, which I am not sure I shall do, for I seldom see my way 
 a page or even a sentence beforehand ; and when I have as by a 
 miracle escaped, I trouble myself little more about them. I 
 sometimes have to write them twice over : then it is necessary to 
 
 * There is a .passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing illustra- 
 tion of this doctrine, and is as follows : 
 
 " About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It is very 
 agreeably situated on the side of a hill : from one of the paths which leads 
 out of the village, you have a view of the whole country ; and there is a 
 good old woman who sells wine, Goffee, and tea there ; but better than all 
 this, are two lime-trees before the church, which spread their branches over 
 a little green, surrounded by barns and cottages. I have seen few places 
 more refined and peaceful. I send for a chair and table from the old 
 woman's, and there 1 drink my coffee and read Homer. It was by accident 
 that 1 discovered this place one fine afternoon : all was perfect stillness ; 
 every body was in the fields, except a little boy about four years old, who 
 was sitting on the ground, and holding between his knees a child of about 
 six months ; he pressed it to his bosom with his little arms, which made a 
 sort of great chair for it ; and notwithstanding the vivacity which sparkled 
 in his eyes, he sat perfectly still, duite delighted with the scene, I sat down 
 on a plough opposite, and had great pleasuse in drawing this little picture 
 of brotherly tenderness. I added a bit of the hedge, the barn-door, and 
 some broken cart-wheels, without any order, just as they happened to lie ; 
 and in about an hour I found 1 had made a drawing of great expression and 
 very correct design, without having put in any thing of my own. This 
 confirmed me in the resolution I had made before, only to copy nature for 
 the future. Nature is inexhaustible, and alone forms the greatest masters 
 Say what you will of rules, they alter the true features, and the natuml ex- 
 piession."
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 read the proof, to prevent mistakes by the printer ; so that by the 
 time they appear in a tangible shape, and one can con them over 
 with a conscious, sidelong glance to the public approbation, they 
 have lost their gloss and relish, and become " more tedious than 
 a twice-told tale." For a person to read his own works over 
 with any great delight, he ought first to forget that he ever wrote 
 them. Familiarity naturally breeds contempt. It is, in fact, 
 like poring fondly over a piece of blank paper : from repetition, 
 the words convey no distinct meaning to the mind, are mere idle 
 sounds, except that our vanity claims an interest and property in 
 them. I have more satisfaction in my own thoughts than in dic- 
 tating them to others : words are necessary to explain the im- 
 pression of certain things upon me to the reader, but they rather 
 weaken and draw a veil over than strengthen it to myself. 
 However I might say with the poet, " My mind to me a kingdom 
 is," yet I have little ambition " to set a throne or chair of state 
 in the understandings of other men." The ideas we cherish 
 most, exist best in a kind of shadowy abstraction, 
 
 " Pure in the last recesses of the mind ;" 
 
 and derive neither force nor interest from being exposed to public 
 view. They are old-established acquaintance, and any change 
 in them, arising from the adventitious ornaments of style or 
 dress, is hardly to their advantage. After I have once written 
 on a subject, it goes out of my mind : my feelings about it have 
 been melted down into words, and them I forget. I have, as it 
 were, discharged my memory of its habitual reckoning, and 
 rubbed out the score of real sentiment. In future, it exists only 
 for the sake of others. 
 
 But I cannot say, from my own experience, that the same pro- 
 cess takes place in transferring our ideas to canvas ; they gain 
 more than they lose in the mechanical transformation. One 
 is never tired of painting, because you have to set down not 
 what you knew already, but what you have just discovered. In 
 the former case, you translate feelings into words ; in the latter, 
 names into things. There is a continual creation out of nothing 
 going on. With every stroke of the brush, a new field of in- 
 quiry is laid open ; new difficulties arise, and new triumphs;
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 are prepared over them. By comparing the imitation with the 
 original, you see what you have done, and how much you have 
 still to do. The test of the senses is severer than that of fancy, 
 and an overmatch even for the delusions of our self-love. One 
 part of a picture shames another, and you determine to paint up 
 to yourself, if you cannot come up to nature. Every object be- 
 comes lustrous from the light thrown back upon it by the mirror of 
 art : and by the aid of the pencil we may be said to touch and handlo 
 the objects of sight. The air- wove visions that hover on the verge 
 of existence have a bodily presence given them on the canvas : 
 the form of beauty is changed into a substance : the dream and 
 the glory of the universe is made " palpable to feeling as to sight." 
 And see ! a rainbow starts from the canvas, with all its humid 
 train of glory, as if it were drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven. 
 The spangled landscape glitters with drops of dew after the 
 shower. The " fleecy fools" shew their coats in the gleams of 
 the setting snn. The shepherds pipe their farewell notes in the 
 fresh evening air. And is this bright vision made from a dead 
 dull blank, like a bubble reflecting the mighty fabric of the uni- 
 verse ? We would think this miracle of Rubens's pencil possible 
 to be performed ? Who, having seen it, would not spend his lile 
 to do the like ? See how the rich fallows, the bare stubble-field, 
 the scanty harvest-home, drag in Rembrandt's landscapes ! flow 
 often have I looked at them and nature, and tried to do the same, 
 till the very " light thickened," and there was an earthiness in 
 the feeling of the air ! There is no end of the refinements of 
 art and nature in this respect. One may look at the misty glim- 
 mering horizon, till the eye dazzles, and the imagination is lost 
 in the hope to transfer the whole interminable expanse at one 
 blow upon the canvas. Wilson said, he endeavoured to paint the 
 effect of the motes dancing in the setting sun. At another time, 
 a friend coming into his painting-room, when he was sitting on 
 the ground in a melancholy posture, observed that his picture 
 looked like a landscape after a shower : he started up with the 
 greatest delight, and said, " That is the effect I intended to re- 
 present, but thought I had failed." Wilson was neglected ; and, 
 by degrees, neglected his art to apply himself to brandy. His 
 hand became unsteady, so that it was only by repeated attempis
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 that he could reach the place, or produce the effect he anned at ; 
 and when he had done a little to a picture, he would say to any 
 acquaintance who chanced to drop in, " I have painted enough 
 for one day : come, let us go somewhere." It was not so Claude 
 left his pictures, or his studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go 
 in search of other enjoyments, or ceased to gaze upon the glitter- 
 ing sunny vales and distant hills ; and while his eye drank in the 
 clear sparkling hues and lovely forms of nature, his hand stamped 
 them on the lucid canvas to remain there for ever ! One of the 
 most delightful parts of my life was one fine summer, when I 
 used to walk out of an evening to catch the last light of the sun, 
 gemming the green slopes or russet lawns, and gilding tower or 
 tree, while the blue sky gradually turning to purple and gold, 
 or skirted with dusky grey, hung its broad marble pavement over 
 all, as we see it in the great master of Italian landscape. But 
 to come to a more particular explanation of the subject. 
 
 The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with 
 the upper part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly 
 laboured it with great perseverance. It took me numberless sit- 
 tings to do it. I have it by me still, and sometimes look at it with 
 surprise, to think how much pains were thrown away to little 
 purpose, yet not altogether in vain, if it taught me to see good 
 in every thing, and to know that there is nothing vulgar in nature 
 seen with the eye of science or of true art. Refinement creates 
 beauty everywhere : it is the grossness of the spectator that dis- 
 covers nothing but grossness in the object. Be this as it may, I 
 spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I thought that 
 life was so too at that moment. I got in the general effect the 
 first day ; and pleased and surprised enough I was at my success. 
 The rest was a work of time of weeks and months (if need were), 
 of patient toil and careful finishing. I had seen an old head by 
 Rembrandt at Burleigh-House ; av.d if I could produce a head at 
 all like Rembrandt in a year, in my life-time, it would be glory 
 and felicity and wealth and fame enough for me ! The head 1 
 had seen at Burleigh was an exact and wonderful fac-simile of 
 nature, and I resolved to make mine (as nearly as I could) an 
 exact fac-simile of nature. I did not then, nor do I now believe 
 with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art consists in giving
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 general appearances without individual details, but in giving 
 general appearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had 
 done my work the first day. But I saw something more in na- 
 ture than general effect, and I thought it worth my while to give 
 it in the picture. There was a gorgeous effect of light and 
 shade : but there was a delicacy as well as depth in the chiaro- 
 scuro, which I was bound to follow into all its dim and scarce 
 perceptible variety of tone and shadow. Then I had to make 
 the transition from a strong light to as dark a shade, preserving 
 the masses, but gradually softening off the intermediate parts. It 
 was so in nature : the difficulty was to make it so in the copy. I 
 tried, and failed again and again ; I strove harder, and succeeded, 
 as I thought. The wrinkles in Rembrandt were not hard lines ; 
 but broken and irregular. I saw the same appearance in nature, 
 and strained every nerve to give it. If I could hit off" this crum- 
 bling appearance, and insert the reflected light in the furrows of 
 old age in half a morning, I did not think I had lost a day. Be- 
 neath the shrivelled yellow parchment look of the skin, there was 
 here and there a streak of blood-colour tinging the face ; this I 
 made a point of conveying, and did not cease to compare what 
 I saw with what I did (with jealous, lynx-eyed watchfulness) till I 
 succeeded to the best of my ability and judgment. How many 
 revisions were there ! How many attempts to catch an expres- 
 sion, which I had seen the day before ! How often did we strive 
 to get the old position, and wait for the return of the same light ! 
 There was a puckering up of the lips, a cautious introversion of 
 the eye under the shadow of the bonnet, indicative of the feeble- 
 ness and suspicion of old age, which at last we managed, after 
 many trials and some quarrels, to a tolerable nicety. The pic- 
 ture was never finished, and I might have gone on with it to the 
 Dresent hour.* I used to set it on the ground when my day's 
 work was done, and saw revealed to me with swimming eyes the 
 birth of new hopes and of a new world of objects. The painter 
 thus learns to look at nature with different eyes. He before saw 
 her "as in a glass darkly, but now face to face." He under- 
 
 * It is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish (the perish- 
 able vehicle of the English school) like an envelope of gold-beaters' skin, so aa 
 to be hardly visible.
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 rtands the texture and meaning of the visible universe, and "sees 
 into the life of things," not by the help of mechanical instruments, 
 but of the improved exercise of his faculties, and an intimate 
 sympathy with nature. The meanest thing is not lost upon him, 
 for he looks at it with an eye to itself, not merely to his own 
 vanity or interest, or the opinion of the world. Even where 
 there is neither beauty nor use if that ever were still there is 
 truth, and a sufficient source of gratification in the indulgence of 
 curiosity and activity of mind. The humblest painter is a true 
 scholar : and the best of scholars the scholar of nature. For 
 myself, and for the real comfort and satisfaction of the thing, I 
 had rather have been Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow, than the greatest 
 casuist or philologer that ever lived. The painter does not view 
 things in clouds or " mist, the common gloss of theologians," but 
 applies the same standard of truth and disinterested spirit of in- 
 quiry, that influence his daily practice, to other subjects. He 
 perceives form ; he distinguishes character. He reads men and 
 books with an intuitive glance. He is a critic as well as a con- 
 noisseur. The conclusions he draws are clear and convincing, 
 because they are taken from actual experience. He is not a 
 fanatic, a dupe, or a slave : for the habit of seeing for himself 
 also disposes him to judge for himself. The most sensible men I 
 know (taken as a class) are painters ; that is, they are the most 
 lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the 
 closest observers of what passes in their own minds. From their 
 profession they in general mix more with the world than authors, 
 and if they have not the sarr e fund of acquired knowledge, are 
 obliged to rely more on individual sagacity. I might mention 
 the names of Opie, Fuseli, Northcote, as persons distinguished 
 for striking description and acquaintance with the subtle traits of 
 character.* Painters in ordinary society, or in obscure situa- 
 tions where their value is not known, and they are treated with 
 
 * Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes for the conse- 
 quences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed to ascertain pretty 
 accurately the grounds on which they act, before they commit themselves on 
 the event, are often men of remarkably quick and sound judgments. Artists* 
 in like manner must know tolerably well what they are about, before they can 
 bring he result of their observations to the test of ocular demonstration.
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 neglect and indifference, have sometimes a forward self-sufficien- 
 cy of manner : but this is not so much their fault as that of others. 
 Perhaps their want of regular education may also be in fault in 
 such cases. Richardson, who is very tenacious of the respect in 
 which the profession ought to be held, tells a story of Michal An- 
 gelo, that after a quarrel between him and Pope Julius II., "upon 
 account of a slight the artist conceived the pontiff had put upon 
 him, Michael Angelo was introduced by a bishop, who, thinking 
 to serve the artist by it, made it an argument that the Pope should 
 be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were com- 
 monly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise :* his holiness, 
 enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it 
 was he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man himself 
 would not offend ; the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and 
 Michal Angelo had the Pope's benediction accompanied with 
 presents. This bishop had fallen into the vulgar error, and was 
 rebuked accordingly." 
 
 Besides the employment of the mind, painting exercises the 
 body. It is a mechanical as well as a liberal art. To do any 
 thing, to dig a hole in the ground, to plant a cabbage, to hit a 
 mark, to move a shuttle, to work a pattern, in a word, to at- 
 tempt to produce any effect, and to succeed, has something in it 
 that gratifies the love of power, and carries off the restless ac- 
 tivity of the mind of man. Indolence is a delightful but distress- 
 ing state : we must be doing something to be happy. Action is 
 no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of 
 the human frame ; and painting combines them both incessantly.* 
 The hand furnishes a practical test of the correctness of the eye ; 
 and the eye, thus admonished, imposes fresh tasks of skill and 
 industry upon the hand. Every stroke tells, as the verifying 
 of a new truth ; and every new observation, the instant it is made, 
 passes into an act and emanation of ihe will. Every step is 
 nearer what we wish, and yet there is always more to do. In 
 spite of the facility, the fluttering grace, the evanescent hues, 
 -hat play round the pencil of Rubens and Vandyke, however 1 
 
 * The famous Schiller used to say, that he found the great happiness of 
 life, after all, to consist in the discharge of some mechanical duty.
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 
 
 may admire, I do not envy them this power so much as I do the 
 slow, patient, laborious execution of Correggio, Leonardo da 
 Vinci, and Andrea del Sarto, where every touch appears oonsci- 
 ous of its charge, emulous of truth, and where the painful artist 
 has " so distinctly wrought," 
 
 " That you might almost say his picture thought !" 
 
 In the one case, the colours seem breathed on the canvas as 
 by magic, the work and the wonder of a moment : in the other, 
 they seem inlaid in the body of the work, 4 and as if it took the 
 artist years of unremitting labour, and of delightful never-ending 
 progress to perfection.* Who would wish ever to come to the 
 close of such works, not to dwell on them, to return to them, to 
 be wedded to them to the last ? Rubens, with his florid, rapid 
 style, complained that when he had just learned his art, he should 
 be forced to die. Leonardo, in the slow advances of his, had 
 lived long enough ! 
 
 Painting is not, like writing, what is properly understood by a 
 sedentary employment. It requires not, indeed, a strong, but a 
 continued and steady exertion of muscular power. The preci- 
 sion and delicacy of the manual operation makes up for the want 
 of vehemence, as to balance himself for any time in the same 
 position the rope-dancer must strain every nerve. Painting for 
 a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's din- 
 ner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over 
 Banstead Downs. It is related of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that 
 " he took no other exercises than what he used in his painting- 
 room," the writer means, in walking backwards and forwards 
 to look at his picture ; but the act of painting itself, of laying on 
 the colours in the proper place and proper quantity, was a much 
 harder exercise than this alternate receding from and returning 
 to the picture. The last would be rather a relaxation and relief 
 than an effort. It is not to be wondered at, that an artist like 
 Sir Joshua, who delighted so much in the sensual and practical 
 
 * The rich impasting of Titian and Giorgione combines something of the 
 advantages of both these styles, the felicity of the one with the carefulness of 
 the other, and is perhaps to be preferred to either.
 
 10 TABLE TALK. 
 
 part of his art, should have found himself at a considerable loss 
 when the decay of his sight precluded him, for the last year or 
 two of his life, from the following up of his profession, " the 
 source," according to his own remark, " of thirty years' un- 
 interrupted enjoyment and prosperity to him." It is only those 
 who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves 
 to brood invariably on abstract ideas, that never feel ennui. 
 
 To give one instance more, and then I will have done with this 
 rambling discourse. One of my first attempts was a picture of 
 my father, who was then in a green old age, with strong-marked 
 features, and scarred with the small-pox. T drew it with a broad 
 light crossing the face, looking down, with spectacles on, reading. 
 The book was Shaftesbury's Characteristics, in a fine old binding, 
 with Gribelin's etchings. My father would as lieve it had been 
 any other book ; but for him to read was to be content, was 
 " riches fineless." The sketch promised well ; and I set to work 
 to finish it, determined to spare no time nor pains. My father 
 was willing to sit as long as I pleased ; for there is a natural 
 desire in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be the object 
 of continued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied ; and 
 besides his satisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the 
 artist, though he would rather I should have written a sermon 
 than have painted like Rembrandt or like Raphael ! Those 
 winter days, with the gleams of sunshine coming through the 
 chapel-windows, and cheered by the notes of the robin red- 
 breast in our garden (that "ever in the haunch of winter 
 sings") as my afternoon's work drew to a close, were among 
 the happiest of my life. When I gave the efiect I intended to 
 any part of the picture for which I had prepared my colours 
 when I imitated the roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke 01 
 the pencil, when I hit the clear pearly tone of a vein, when ] 
 gave the ruddy complexion of health, the blood circulating undei 
 the broad shadows of one side of the face, I thought my fortune 
 made ; or rather it was already more than made, in my fancying 
 that I might one day be able lo say with Correggio, " I also am 
 a painter /" It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit ; but it did 
 not make me less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my 
 work in the chair to look at it through the long evenings ; and
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. ** 
 
 many a time did I return to take leave of it, before I could go to 
 bed at night. I remember sending it with a throbbing heart to 
 the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up there by the side of one of 
 the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George). There was 
 nothing in common between them, but that they were the por- 
 traits of two very good-natured men. I think, but am not sure, 
 that I finished this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same 
 day that the news of the battle of Austerlitz came ; I walked 
 out in the afternoon, and, as I returned, saw the evening star set 
 over a poor man's cottage with other thoughts and feelings than 1 
 shall ever have again. O for the revolution of the great 
 Platonic year, that those times might come over again ! I could 
 sleep out the three hundred and sixty-five thousand intervening 
 years very contentedly ! The picture is left : the table, the 
 chair, the window where I learned to construe Livy, the chapel 
 where my father preached, remain where they were ; but he 
 himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, and 
 charity I
 
 IS TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 The same subject continued. 
 
 The painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has a new and 
 exquisite source of pleasure opened to him in the study and con- 
 templation of works of art 
 
 " Whate'er Lorraine light touch'd with soft'ning hue, 
 Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learn'd Poussin drew." 
 
 He turns aside to view a country-gentleman's seat with eager 
 looks, thinking it may contain some of the rich products of art. 
 There is an air round Lord Radnor's park, for there hang the 
 two Claudes, the Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire 
 round Wilton-house, for there is Vandyke's picture of the Pem- 
 broke family round Blenheim, for there is his picture of the 
 Duke of Buckingham's children and the most magnificent col- 
 lection of Rubenses in the world at Knowsley, for there is 
 Rembrandt's Hand-writing on the Wall and at Burleigh, for 
 there are some of Guido's angelic heads. The young artist 
 makes a pilgrimage to each of these places, eyes them wist- 
 fully at a distance, " bosomed high in tufted trees," and feels 
 an interest in them of which the owner is scarce conscious : he 
 enters the well-swept walks and echoing archways, passes the 
 threshold, is led through wainscotted rooms, is shown the furni- 
 ture, the rich hangings, the tapestry, the massy services of plate 
 and, at last, is ushered into the room where his treasure is, 
 the object of his vows some speaking face or bright landscape ! 
 It is stamped on his brain, and lives there thenceforward, a clue 
 to nature, and a test of art. He furnishes out the chambers of the 
 mind from the spoils of time, picks and chooses which shall have 
 the best places nearest his heart. He goes away richer than 
 he came, richer than the possessor ; and thinks that he may one 
 day return, when he perhaps shall have done something of the
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 13 
 
 same kind, or even from failure shall have learned to admire 
 truth and genius more. 
 
 My first initiation in the mysteries of the art was at the Or- 
 leans Gallery : it was there I formed my taste, such as it is ; so 
 that I am irreclaimably of the old school in painting. I was stag- 
 gered when I saw the works there collected, and looked at them 
 with wondering and with longing eyes. A mist passed away 
 from my sight : the scales fell off. A new sense came upon me, 
 a new heaven and a new earth stood before me. I saw the soul 
 speaking in the face, " hands that the rod of empire had swayed" 
 in mighty ages past " a forked mountain or blue promontory," 
 
 " with trees upon't 
 
 That nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air." 
 
 Old Time had unlocked his treasures and Fame stood portress 
 at the door. ' We had all heard of the names of Titian, Raphael, 
 Guido, Domenichino, the Caracci but to see them face to face, 
 to be in the same room with their deathless productions, was like 
 breaking some potent spell was almost an effect of necromancy ! 
 From that time I lived in a world of pictures. Battles, sieges, 
 speeches in parliament, seemed mere idle noise and fury, "sig- 
 nifying nothing," compared with those mighty works and dreaded 
 names that spoke to me in the eternal silence of thought. This 
 was the more remarkable, as it was but a short time before that 
 I was not only totally ignorant of but insensible to the beauties of 
 art. As an instance, I remember that one afternoon I was read- 
 ing the Provoked Husband with the highest relish, with a green 
 woody landscape of Ruysdael or Hobbima just before me, at 
 which I looked off the book now and then, and wondered what 
 there could be in that sort of work to satisfy or delight the mind, 
 at the same time asking myself, as a speculative question, whether 
 I should ever feel an interest in it like what I took in reading 
 Vanbrugh and Cibber ? 
 
 I had made some progress in painting when I went to the 
 Louvre to study, and I never did any thing afterwards. I 
 never shall forget conning over the Catalogue which a friend 
 tent me just before I set out. The pictures, the names of 
 the painters, seemed to relish in the mouth. There was one
 
 14 TABLE TALK. 
 
 of Titian's Mistress at her toilette. Even the colours with 
 which the painter had adorned her hair were not more golden, 
 more amiable to sight, than those which played round and 
 tantalized my fancy ere I saw the picture. There were two 
 portraits by the same hand " A young nobleman with a glove" 
 another, " a Companion to it" I read the description over 
 and over with fond expectancy, and filled up the imaginary out- 
 line with whatever I could conceive of grace and dignity and an 
 antique gusto all but equal to the original. There was the 
 Transfiguration too. With what awe I saw it in my mind's eye, 
 and was overshadowed with the spirit of the artist ! Not to have 
 been disappointed with these works afterwards, was the highest 
 compliment I can pay to their transcendent merits. Indeed, it 
 was from seeing other works of the same great masters that I had 
 formed a vague, but no disparaging idea of these. The first day 
 I got there, I was kept for some time in the French Exhibition- 
 room, and thought I should not be able to get a sight of the Old 
 Masters. I just caught a peep at them through the door (vile 
 hindrance !) like looking out of purgatory into paradise from 
 Poussin's noble mellow-looking landscapes to where Rubens hung 
 out his gaudy banner, and down the glimmering vista to the rich 
 jewels of Titian and the Italian school. At last, by much im- 
 portunity, I was admitted, and lost not an instant in making use 
 of my new privilege. It was un beau jour to me. I marched 
 delighted through a quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts of 
 the mind of man, a whole creation of genius, a universe of art ! 
 I ran the gauntlet of all the schools from the bottom to the top ; 
 and in the end got admitted into the inner room, where they had 
 been repairing some of their greatest works. Here the Trans- 
 figuration, the St. Peter Martyr, and the St. Jerome of Domeni- 
 chino, stood on the floor, as if they had bent their knees, like 
 camels stooping, to unlade their riches to the spectator. On one 
 side, on an easel, stood Hippolito de Medici (a portrait by Titian) 
 with a boar-spear in his hand, looking through those he saw, till 
 you turned away from the keen glance : and thrown together in 
 heaps were landscapes of the same hand, green pastoral hills 
 and vales, and shepherds piping to their mild mistresses under- 
 neath the flowering shade.- Reader, "if thou hast not seen the
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 15 
 
 Louvre, thou'rt damned !" for thou hast not seen the choices! 
 remains of the works of art ; or thou hast not seen all these to 
 gether, with their mutually reflected glories. I say nothing of 
 the statues ; for I know but little of sculpture, and never liked 
 any, till I saw the Elgin Marbles. . .Here, for four months to- 
 gether, I strolled and studied, and daily heard the warning 
 sounds " Quatre heures passtes, il faut fermer, citoyens" (Ah! 
 why did they ever changetheir style ?) muttered in coarse pro- 
 vincial French ; and brought away with me some loose draughts 
 and fragments, which I have been forced to part with, like drops 
 of life-blood, for " hard money." How often, thou tenantless 
 mansion of godlike magnificence how often has my heart sinc*- 
 gone a pilgrimage to thee ! 
 
 It has been made a question, whether the artist, or the mere 
 man of taste and natural sensibility, receives most pleasure from 
 the contemplation of works of art ? And I think this question 
 might be answered by another as a sort of experimentum cruris, 
 namely, whether any one out of that " number numberless" of 
 mere gentlemen and amateurs, who visited Paris at the period 
 here spoken of, felt as much interest, as much pride or pleasure, 
 in this display of the most striking monuments of art, as the 
 humblest student would ? The first entrance into the Louvre 
 would be only one of the events of his journey, not an event in 
 his life, remembered ever after with thankfulness and regret. 
 He would explore it with the same unmeaning curiosity and idle 
 wonder as he would the Regalia in the Tower, or the Botanic 
 Specimens in the Jardin des Plantes, but not with the fond en- 
 thusiasm of an artist. How should he 1 His is " casual frui- 
 tion, joyless, unendeared." But the painter is wedded to his art, 
 the mistress, queen, and idol of his soul. He has embarked his 
 all in it, fame, time, fortune, peace of mind, his hopes in youth, 
 his consolation in age : and shall he not feel a more intense in- 
 terest in whatever relates to it than the mere indolent trifler ? 
 Natural sensibility alone, without the entire application of the 
 mind to that one object, will not enable the possessor to sympa- 
 thize with all the degrees of beauty and power in the conceptions 
 of a Titian or a Correggio ; but it is he only who does this, who 
 follows them into all their force and matchless grace, that
 
 16 TABLE TALK. 
 
 does or can feel their full value. Knowledge is pleasure as 
 well as power. No one but the artist, who has studied nature 
 and contended with the difficulties of art, can be apprised of 
 the beauties, or intoxicated with a passion for painting. No one 
 who has not devoted his life and soul to the pursuit of art, can 
 feel the same exultation in its brightest ornaments and loftiest 
 triumphs which an artist does. Where the treasure is, there the 
 heart is also. It is now seventeen years since I was studying in 
 the Louvre (and I have long since given up all thoughts of the 
 art as a profession), but long after I returned, and even still, I 
 sometimes dream of being there again of asking for the old 
 pictures and not finding them, or finding them changed or 
 faded from what they were, I cry myself awake ! What gen- 
 tleman-amateur ever does this at such a distance of time, that 
 is, ever received pleasure or took interest enough in them to pro- 
 duce so lasting an impression 1 
 
 But it is said, that if a person had the same natural taste, and 
 the same acquired knowledge as an artist, without the petty in- 
 terests and technical notions, he would derive a purer pleasure 
 from seeing a fine portrait, a fine landscape, and so on. This 
 however is not so much begging the question as asking an im- 
 possibility : he cannot have the same insight into the end without 
 having studied the means ; nor the same love of art without the 
 same habitual and exclusive deference to it. Painters are, no 
 doubt, often actuated by jealousy, partiality, and a sordid attention 
 to that only which they find useful to themselves in painting. 
 .Vilkie has been seen poring over the texture of a Dutch cabinet- 
 | icture, so that he could not see the picture itself. But this is the 
 perversion and pedantry of the profession, not its true or genuine 
 spirit. If Wilkie had never looked at any thing but megilps and 
 handling, he never would have put the soul of life and manners 
 into his pictures as he has done. Another objection is, that the in- 
 strumental parts of the art, the means, the first rudiments, paints, 
 oils, and brushes, are painful or disgusting ; and that the con- 
 sciousness of the difficulty and anxiety with which perfection has 
 been attained, must take away from the pleasure of the finest per- 
 formance. This, however, is only an additional proof of the 
 greater pleasure derived by the artist from his profession j for
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. If 
 
 these things which are said to interfere with and destroy the com. 
 mon interest in works of art, do not disturb him ; he never 
 once thinks of them, he is absorbed in the pursuit of a higher 
 object ; he is intent, not on the means but on the end ; he is taken 
 jp, not with the difficulties, but with the triumph over them. As 
 in the case of the anatomist, who overlooks many things in the 
 eagerness of his search after abstract truth ; or the alchemist 
 who, while he is raking into his soot and furnaces, lives in a golden 
 dream a lesser gives way to a greater object. But it is pretended 
 that the painter may be supposed 10 submit to the unpleasant part 
 of the process only for the sake of the fame or profit in view. So 
 far is this from bemg a true slate of the case, that I will venture 
 to say, in the instance of a friend of mine who has lately succeeded 
 in an important undertaking in his art, that not all the fame he has 
 acquired, not all the money he has received from thousands of 
 admiring spectators, not all the newspaper puffs, nor even the 
 praise of the Edinburgh Review, not all these, put together, ever 
 gave him at any time the same genuine, undoubted satisfaction as 
 any one half-hour employed in the ardent and propitious pursuit 
 of his art in finishing to his heart's content a foot, a hand, or 
 even a piece of drapery. What is the state of mind of an artist 
 while he is at work ? He is then in the act of realizing the 
 highest idea he can form of beauty or grandeur : he conceives, he 
 embodies that which he understands and loves best : that is, he is 
 in full and perfect possession of that which is to him the source 
 of the highest happiness and intellectual excitement which he can 
 enjoy. 
 
 In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will mention a 
 circumstance which fell under my knowledge the other day. A 
 friend had bought a print of Titian's Mistress, the same to which 
 I have alluded above. He was anxious to show it me on this ac- 
 count. I told him it was a spirited engraving, but it had not the 
 look of the original. I believe he thought this fastidious, till 1 
 offered to shew him a rough sketch of it, which I had by me. 
 Having seen this, he said he perceived exactly what 1 meant, 
 and could not bear to look at the print afterwards. He had good 
 sense enough to see the difference in the individual instance ; 
 but a person better acquainted with Titian's manner and with 
 
 2
 
 18 TABLE TALK. 
 
 art in general, that is, of a more cultivated and refined taste, 
 would know that it was a bad print, without having any immedi- 
 ate model to compare it with. He would perceive with a glance 
 of the eye, with a sort of instinctive feeling, that it was hard, and 
 without that bland, expansive, and nameless expression which 
 always distinguished Titian's most famous works. Any one who 
 is accustomed to a head in a picture can never reconcile himself 
 to a print from it : but to the ignorant they are both the same. 
 To a vulgar eye there is no difference between a Guido and a 
 daub, between a penny-print or the vilest scrawl, and the most 
 finished performance. In other words, all that excellence which 
 lies between these two extremes, all, at least, that marks 
 the excess above mediocrity, all that constitutes true beauty, 
 harmony, refinement, grandeur, is lost upon the common ob- 
 server. But it is from this point that the delight, the glowing 
 raptures of the true adept commence. An uninformed spec- 
 tator may like an ordinary drawing better than the ablest con- 
 noisseur ; but for that very reason he cannot like the highest 
 specimens of art so well. The refinements, not only of execu- 
 tion, but of truth and nature, are inaccessible to unpractised eyes. 
 The exquisite gradations in a sky of Claude's are not perceived 
 by such persons, and consequently the harmony cannot be felt. 
 Where there is no conscious apprehension, there can be no con- 
 scious pleasure. Wonder at the first sight of works of art may 
 be the effect of ignorance and novelty ; but real admiration and 
 permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and know- 
 ledge. " I would not wish to have your eyes," said a good-na- 
 tured man to a critic, who was finding fault with a picture, in 
 which the other saw no blemish. Why so ? The idea which 
 prevented him from admiring this inferior production was a higher 
 idea of truth and beauty which was ever present with him, and 
 a continual source of pleasing and lofty contemplations. It may 
 be different in a taste for outward luxuries and the privations of 
 mere sense ; but the idea of perfection, which acts as an intellec- 
 tual foil, is always an addition, a support, and a proud consolation ! 
 Richardson, in his Essays, which ought to be better known, 
 has left some striking examples of the felicity and infelicity of 
 artists, both as it relates to their external fortune, and to the prao-
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 19 
 
 tice of their art. In speaking of the knowledge of hands, he ex- 
 claims " When one is considering a picture or a drawing, one 
 at the same time thinks this was done by him* who had many 
 extraordinary endowments of body and mind, but was withal very 
 capricious ; who was honoured in life and death, expiring in the 
 arms of one of the greatest princes of that age, Francis I., king 
 of France, who loved him as a friend. Another is of himf who 
 lived a long and happy life, beloved of Charles V., emperor ; and 
 many others of the first princes of Europe. When one has an- 
 other in hand, we think this was done by one:): who so excelled in 
 three arts, as that any of them in that degree had rendered him 
 worthy of immortality ; and one moreover that durst contend 
 with his sovereign (one of the haughtiest popes that ever was) 
 upon a slight offered to him, and extricated himself with honour. 
 Another is the work of him who, without any one exterior ad- 
 vantage but mere strength of genius, had the most sublime imagi- 
 nations, and executed them accordingly, yet lived and died ob- 
 scurely. Another we shall consider as the work of him|| who 
 restored Painting when it had almost sunk ; of him whom art 
 made honourable, but who neglecting and despising greatness 
 with a sort of cynical pride, was treated suitably to the figure he 
 gave himself, not his intrinsic worth : which, not having philoso- 
 phy enough to bear it, broke his heart. Another is done by onelT 
 who (on the contrary) was a fine gentleman and lived in great 
 magnificence, and was much honoured by his own and foreign 
 princes ; who was a courtier, a statesman, and a painter ; and 
 so much all these, that when he acted in either character, tliat 
 seemed to be his business, and the others his diversion. I say 
 when one thus reflects, besides the pleasure arising from the 
 beauties and excellencies of the work, the fine ideas it gives us 
 of natural things, the noble way of thinking it may suggest to us, 
 an additional pleasure results from the above considerations. But, 
 oh ! the pleasure, when a connoisseur and lover of art has before 
 him a picture or drawing, of which he can say, this is the hand, 
 .hese are the thoughts of him** who was one of the politest, best- 
 
 * Leonardo da Vinci. t Titian. 1 Michael Angela. 
 
 Correggio. I! Annibal Caracci. IT Rubens 
 
 ** Rafaelie.
 
 26 TABLE TALK. 
 
 natured gentlemen that ever was ; and beloved and assisted by 
 the greatest wits and the greatest men then in Rome : of him who 
 lived in great fame, honour, and magnificence, and died extremely 
 lamented : and missed a cardinal's hat only by dying a few months 
 too soon ; but was particularly esteemed and favoured by two 
 popes, the only ones who filled the chair of St. Peter in his time, 
 and as great men as ever sat there since that apostle, if at leas 
 he ever did : one, in short, who could have been a Leonardo, a 
 Michael Angelo, a Titian, a Correggio, a Parmegiano, an Anni- 
 bal, a Rubens, or any other whom he pleased, but none of them 
 could ever have been a Rafaelle." 
 
 The same writer speaks feelingly of the change in the style of 
 different artists from their change of fortune, and as the circum- 
 stances are little known, I will quote the passage relating to two 
 of them : 
 
 " Guido Reni, from a prince-like affluence of fortune (the just 
 reward of his angelic works), fell to a condition like that of a 
 hired servant to one who supplied him with money for what he 
 did at a fixed rate ; and that by his being bewitched with a pas- 
 sion for gaming, whereby he lost vast sums of money ; and even 
 what he got in this his state of servitude by day, he commonly 
 lost at night : nor could he ever be cured of this cursed madness. 
 Those of his works, therefore, which he did in this unhappy part 
 of his life, may easily be conceived to be in a different style to 
 what he did before, which in some things, that is, in the airs of 
 his heads (in the gracious kind), had a delicacy in them peculiar 
 to himself, and almost more than human. But I must not multi- 
 ply instances. Parmegiano is one that alone takes in all the 
 several kinds of variation, and all the degrees of goodness, from 
 the lowest of the indifferent up to the sublime. I can produce 
 evident proofs of this in so easy a gradation, that one cannot deny 
 but that he that did this, might do that, and very probably did so 
 and thus one may ascend and descend, like the angels on Jacob' 
 ladder, whose foot was upon the earth, but its top reached to 
 heaven. 
 
 " And this great man had his unlucky circumstance : he be 
 came mad after the philosopher's stone, and did but very little in 
 painting or drawing afterwards. Judge what that was, and
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 21 
 
 whether there was not an alteration of style from what he had 
 done before this devil possessed him. His creditors endeavoured 
 to exorcise him, and did him some good, for he set himself to 
 work again in his own way : but if a drawing I have of a Lu- 
 cretia be that he made for his last picture, as it probably is (Va- 
 sari says that was the subject of it), it is an evident proof of his 
 decay : it is good indeed, but it wants much of the delicacy which 
 is commonly seen in his works ; and so I always thought before 
 I knew or imagined it to be done in his ebb of genius." Science 
 of a Connoisseur. 
 
 We have had two artists of -our own country, whose fate has 
 been as singular as it was hard. Gandy was a portrait-painter 
 in the beginning of the last century, whose heads were said to 
 have come near to Rembrandt's ; and he was the undoubted pro- 
 totype of Sir Joshua Reynolds's style. Yet his name has scarce- 
 ly been heard of; and his reputation, like his works, never ex- 
 tended beyond his native county. What did he think of himself 
 and of a fame so bounded ! Did he ever dream he was indeed 
 an artist 1 Or how did this feeling in him differ from the vulgar 
 conceit of the lowest pretender ? The best known of his works 
 is a portrait of an alderman of Exeter, in some public building 
 in that city. 
 
 Poor Dan Stringer ! Forty years ago he had the finest hand 
 and the clearest eye of any artist of his time, and produced 
 heads and drawings that would not have disgraced a brighter 
 period in the art. But he fell a martyr (like Burns) to the soci- 
 ety of country-gentlemen, and then of those whom they would 
 consider as more his equals. I saw him many years ago when 
 he treated the masterly sketches he had by him (one in particu- 
 lar of the group of citizens in Shakspear " swallowing the tailor's 
 news") as " bastards of his genius, not his children ;" and seemed 
 to have given up all thoughts of his art. Whether he is since 
 dead, I cannot say : the world do not so much as know that he 
 ever lived!
 
 23 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 On the Past and Future. 
 
 I have naturally but little imagination, and am not of a very- 
 sanguine turn of mind. I have some desire to enjoy the present 
 good, and some fondness for the past ; but I am not at all given 
 to building castles in the air, nor to look forward with much con- 
 fidence or hope to the brilliant illusions held out by the future. 
 Hence I have perhaps been led to form a theory, which is very 
 contrary to the common notions and feelings on the subject, and 
 which I will here try to explain as well as I can. When Sterne 
 in the Sentimental Journey told the French Minister that if the 
 French people had a fault, it was that they were too serious, the 
 latter replied that if that was his opinion, he must defend it with 
 all his might, for he would have all the world against him ; so 1 
 shall have enough to do to get well through the present argu- 
 ment. 
 
 I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for that 
 mighty difference in the value which mankind generally set upon 
 the past and future, as if the one was every thing, and the other 
 nothing, of no consequence whatever. On the other hand, I con- 
 ceive that the past is as real and substantial a part of our being, 
 that it is as much a bona fide, undeniable consideration in the esti- 
 mate of human life, as the future can possibly be. To say that 
 the past is of no importance, unworthy of a moment's regard, be- 
 cause it has gone by, and is no longer any thing, is an argument 
 that cannot be held to any purpose : for if the past has ceased 
 to be, and is therefore to be accounted nothing in the scale of good 
 or evii, the future is yet to come, and has never been any thing. 
 Should any one choose to assert that the present only is of any 
 value in a strict and positive sense, because that alone has a real 
 existence, that we should seize the instant good, and give all else
 
 THE PAST AND FUTURE. 23 
 
 to the winds, I can understand what he means (though pernaps he 
 does not himself*) : but I cannot comprehend how this distinction 
 between that which has a downright and sensible, and that which 
 has only a remote and airy existence, can be applied to establish 
 the preference of the future over the past ; for both are in this 
 point of view equally ideal, absolutely nothing, except as they are 
 conceived of by the mind's eye, and are thus rendered present to 
 the thoughts and feelings. Nay, the one is even more imaginary, 
 a more fantastic creature of the brain than the other, and the in- 
 terest we take in it more shadowy and gratuitous ; for the future, 
 on which we lay so much stress, may never come to pass at all, 
 that is, may never be embodied into actual existence in the whole 
 course of events, whereas the past has certainly existed once, has 
 received the stamp of truth, and left an image of itself behind. 
 It is so far then placed beyond the possibility of doubt, or as the 
 poet has it, 
 
 " Those joys are lodg'd beyond the reach of fate." 
 
 It is not, however, attempted to be denied that though the future is 
 nothing at present, and has no immediate interest while we are 
 speaking, yet it is of the utmost consequence in itself, and of the 
 utmost interest to the individual, because it will have a real exis- 
 tence, and we have an idea of it as existing in time to come. 
 Well, then, the past also has no real existence ; the actual sensa- 
 tion and the interest belonging to it are both fled ; but it has had 
 a real existence, and we can still call up a vivid recollection of it 
 as having once been ; and therefore, by parity of reasoning, it is 
 not a thing perfectly insignificant in itself, nor wholly indifferent to 
 the mind, whether it ever was or not. Oh no ! Far from it ! 
 Let us not rashly quit our hold upon the past, when perhaps there 
 may be little else left to bind us to existence. It is nothing to 
 have been, and to have been happy or miserable ? Or is it a 
 
 * If we take away from the present the moment that is just gone by and the 
 moment that is next to come, how much of it will be left for this plain, prac- 
 tical theory to rest uponl Their solid basis of sense and reality will reduce 
 itself to a pin's point, a hair-line, on which our moral balance-masters will 
 have some difficulty to maintain their footing without falling over on either 
 side.
 
 34 TABLE TALK. 
 
 matter of no moment to think whether I have been one or the 
 other ? Do I delude myself, do I build upon a shadow or a dream, 
 do I dress up in the gaudy garb of idleness and folly a pure fiction, 
 with nothing answering to it in the universe of things and the 
 records of truth, when I look back with fond delight or with tender 
 regret to that which was at one time to me my all, when I revive 
 the glowing image of some bright reality, 
 
 " The thoughts of which cai\ never from my heart V 
 
 Do I then muse on nothing, do I bend my eyes on nothing, when I 
 turn back in fancy to " those suns and skies so pure" that lighted 
 up my early path ? Is it to think of nothing, to set an idle value 
 upon nothing, to think of all that has happened to me, and of all 
 that can ever interest me ? Or, to use the language of a fine 
 poet (who is himself among my earliest and not least painful re- 
 collections) 
 
 " What though the radiance which was once so bright 
 
 Be now for ever vanish'd from my sight. 
 
 Though nothing can bring back the hour 
 
 Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower" 
 
 yet am I mocked with a lie, when I venture to think of it ? Or do 
 I not drink in and breathe again the air of heavenly truth, when 1 
 but " retrace its footsteps, and its skirts far off adore ?" I cannot 
 say with the same poet 
 
 " And see how dark the backward stream, 
 A little moment past so smiling" 
 
 for it is the past that gives me most delight and most assurance 
 of reality. What to me constitutes the great charm of the Con- 
 fessions of Rousseau is their turning so much upon this feeling. 
 He seems to gather up the past moments of his being like drops 
 ef honey-dew to distil a precious liquor from them ; his alternate 
 pleasures and pains are the bead-roll that he tells over, and pi- 
 ously worships ; he makes a rosary of the flowers of hope and 
 fancy that strewed his earliest years. When he begins the last 
 of the Reveries of a Solitary Walker, " lly a aujoiird'hui, jour des
 
 THE PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 Pdques Fleures, cinquante ans depuis quefai premier vu Ma- 
 dame Warens," what a yearning of the soul is implied in that 
 short sentence ! Was all that had happened to him, all that he 
 had thought and felt in that sad interval of time, to be accounted 
 nothing ? Was that long, dim, faded retrospect of years happy 
 or miserable, a blank that was not to make his eyes fail and his 
 heart faint within him in trying to grasp all that had once vanish, 
 ed, because it was not a prospect into futurity ? Was he wrong 
 in finding more to interest him in it than in the next fifty years 
 which he did not live to see ; or if he had, what then ? Would 
 they have been worth thinking of, compared with the times of 
 his youth, of his first meeting with Madame Warens, with those 
 times which he has traced with such truth and pure delight " in 
 our heart's tables ?" When " all the life of life was flown," was 
 he not to live the first and best part of it over again, and once 
 more be all that he then was ? Ye woods that crown the clear 
 lone brow of Norman-Court, why do I revisit ye so oft, and feel 
 a soothing consciousness of your presence, but that your high 
 tops waving in the wind recall to me the hours and years that 
 are forever fled, that ye renew in ceaseless murmurs the story 
 of long-cherished hopes and bitter disappointment, that in your 
 solitudes and tangled wilds I can wander and lose myself, as I 
 wander on and am lost in the solitude of my own heart ; and that 
 as your rustling branches give the loud blast to the waste below 
 borne on the thoughts of other years, I ?an look down with 
 patient anguish at the cheerless desolation which I feel within ! 
 Without that face pale as the primrose with hyacinthine locks, 
 forever shunning and forever haunting me, mocking my waking 
 thoughts as in a dream, without that smile which my heart could 
 never turn to scorn, without those eyes dark with their own lus- 
 tre, still bent on mine, and drawing the soul into their liquid 
 mazes like a sea of love, without that name trembling in fancy's 
 ear, without that form gliding before me like Oread or Dryad in 
 fabled groves, what should I do, how pass the listless, leaden- 
 footed hours ? Then wave, wave on, ye woods of Tuderley, and 
 lift your high tops in the air ; my sighs and vows uttered by 
 your mystic voice breathe into me my former being, and enable 
 me to bear the thing I am ! The objects that we have known in 
 
 2*
 
 86 TABLE TALK. 
 
 better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our af 
 fections, and give us strength to await our future lot. The fu- 
 ture is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from 
 our view : the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or 
 solemn, and of unfading interest. What is it in fact that we re- 
 cur to oftenest ? What subjects do we think or talk of? Not 
 the ignorant future, but the well-stored past. Othello, the Moor 
 of Venice, amused himself and his hearers at the house ofSignor 
 Brabantio by " running through the story of his life even from 
 his boyish days ;" and oft " beguiled them of their tears, when 
 he did speak of some disastrous stroke which his youth suffered." 
 This plan of ingratiating himself would not have answered, if the 
 past had been, like the contents of an old almanac, of no use but 
 to be thrown aside and forgotten. What a blank, for instance, 
 does the history of the world for the next six thousand years pre- 
 sent to the mind, compared with that of the last ! All that strikes 
 the imagination or excites any interest in the mighty scene is 
 what has been !* 
 
 Neither in itself then, nor as a subject of general contempla- 
 tion, has the future any advantage over the past. But with 
 respect to our grosser passions and pursuits it has. As far as 
 regards the appeal to the understanding or the imagination, the 
 past is just as good, as real, of as much intrinsic and ostensible 
 value as the future : but there is another principle in the human 
 mind, the principle of action or will ; and of this the past has no 
 hold, the future engrosses it entirely to itself. It is this strong 
 lever of the affections that gives so powerful a bias to our senti- 
 ments on this subject, and violently transposes the natural order 
 of our associations. We regret the pleasures we have lost, and 
 eagerly anticipate those which are to come : we dwell with satis- 
 faction on the evils from which we have escaped (Posthcec mend- 
 
 * A treatise on the Millennium is dull ; but who was ever weary of reading 
 the fables of the Golden Age 7 On my once observing I should like to have 
 been Claude, a person said, "he should not, for that then it would by tliis 
 time have been all over with him." As if it could possibly signify when we 
 live (saving and excepting the present minute), or as if the value of human 
 life decreased or increased with successive centuries. At that rate, we had 
 better have our life still to come at some future period, and so postpone our 
 existence century after century ad infinitum.
 
 THE PAST AND FUTURE. 91 
 
 msse juvabit) and dread future pain. The good that is past is 
 in this sense like money that is spent, which is of no further use, 
 and about which we give ourselves little concern. The good we 
 expect is like a store yet untouched, and in the enjoyment of 
 which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What has 
 happened to us we think of no consequence : what is to happen 
 to us, of the greatest. Why so ? Simply because the one is still 
 in our power, and the other not because the efforts of the will 
 to bring any object to pass or to prevent it strengthen our attach- 
 ment or aversion to that object because the pains and attention 
 bestowed upon any thing add to our interest in it, and because 
 the habitual and earnest pursuit of any end redoubles the ardour 
 of our expectations, and converts the speculative and indolent 
 satisfaction we might otherwise feel in it into real passion. Oui 
 regrets, anxiety, and wishes are thrown away upon the past ; but 
 the insisting on the importance of the future is of the utmost use 
 in aiding our resolutions, and stimulating our exertions. If the 
 future were no more amenable to our wills than the past ; if our 
 precautions, our sanguine schemes, our hopes and fears, were of 
 as little avail in the one case as in the other ; if we could neither 
 soften our minds to pleasure, nor steel our fortitude to the resist- 
 ance of pain beforehand ; if all objects drifted along by us like 
 straws or pieces of wood in a river, the will being purely passive, 
 and as little able to obviate the future as to arrest the past, we 
 should in that case be equally indifferent to both ; that is, we 
 should consider each as it affected the thoughts and imagination 
 with certain sentiments of approbation or regret, but without the 
 importunity of desire, the irritation of the will, throwing the 
 whole weight of passion and prejudice into one scale, and leaving 
 the other quite empty. While the blow is coming, we prepare 
 to ment it, we think to ward off or break its force, we arm our- 
 selves rith patience to endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate 
 ourselves with fifty needless alarms about it ; but when the blow 
 is onoe truck, the pang is over, the struggle is no longer neces- 
 sary, an 1 we cease to harass or torment ourselves about it more 
 than we can help. It is not that the one belongs to the future, 
 and the ither to time past ; but that the one is a subject of action, 
 of une-f y apprehension, of strong passion, and that the other has
 
 28 TABLE TALK. 
 
 passed wholly out of the sphere of action into the region of re- 
 flection 
 
 " Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains." * 
 
 It would not give a man more concern to know that he should be put 
 to the rack a year hence, than to recollect that he had been put to 
 it a year ago, but that he hopes to avoid the one, whereas he must 
 sit down patiently under the consciousness of the other. In this 
 hope he wears himself out in vain struggles with fate, and puts him- 
 self to the rack of his imagination every day he has to live in the 
 mean while. When the event is so remote or so independent of 
 the will as to set aside the necessity of immediate action, or to 
 baffle all attempts to defeat it, it gives us little more disturbance 
 or emotion than if it had already taken place, or were something 
 to happen in another state of being, or to an indifferent person. 
 Criminals are observed to grow more anxious as their trial ap- 
 proaches ; but after the sentence is passed, they become tolerably 
 resigned, and generally sleep sound the night before its execution. 
 It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more 
 or less importance to past and future events, according as they 
 are more or less engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. 
 Those who have a fortune to make or are in pursuit of rank and 
 power think little of the past, for it does not contribute greatly to 
 their views : those who have nothing to do but to think, take 
 nearly the same interest in the past as in the future. The con- 
 templation of the one is as delightful and real as that of the other. 
 The season of hope has an end ; but the remembrance of it is 
 left. The past still lives in the memory of those who have leisure 
 to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can from it 
 " catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn." The tur. 
 bulence of action, and uneasiness of desire, must point to the 
 future : it is only in the quiet innocence of shepherds, in the sim- 
 
 * In like manner, though we know that an event must have taken place at 
 a distance, long before we can hear the result, yet as long as we remain in 
 ignorance of it, we irritate ourselves about it, and suffer all the agonies of sus- 
 pense, as if it were still to come ; but as soon as our uncertainty is removed, 
 our fretful impatience vanishes, we resign ourselves to fate, and make up our 
 minds to what has happened as well as we can.
 
 THE PAST AND FUTURE. 29 
 
 plicity of pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this inscrip- 
 tion " I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN !" 
 
 Though I by no means think that our habitual attachment to 
 life is in exact proportion to the value of the gift, yet I am not 
 one of those splenetic persons who affect to think it of no value 
 at all. Que peu de chose est la vie humaine is an exclamation in 
 the mouths of satirists and philosophers, to which I cannot agree. 
 It is little, it is short, it is not worth having, if we take the last 
 hour, and leave out all that has gone before, which has been one 
 way of looking at the subject. Such calculators seem to say 
 that life is nothing when it is over, and that may in their sense be 
 true. If the old rule Respice Jinem were to be made absolute, 
 and no one could be pronounced fortunate till the day of his 
 death, there are few among us whose existence would, upon these 
 conditions, be much to be envied. But this is not a fair view of 
 the case. A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering 
 snuff of the candle ; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a 
 Utile matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To 
 draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary from our own super- 
 annuated desires or forgetful indifference is about as reason- 
 able as to say, a man never was young because he is grown 
 old, or never lived because he is now dead. The length or 
 agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last 
 steps of it ; nor is the size of a building to be judged of from 
 the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor 
 last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two 
 not our exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, 
 feel, and think while there, that we are to attend to in pronounc- 
 ing sentence upon it. Indeed, it would be easy to show that it is 
 the very extent of human life, the infinite number of things con- 
 tained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the transi- 
 tion from one situation to another, the hours, months, years, spent 
 in one fond pursuit after another ; that it is, in a word, the length 
 of our common journey with the quantity of events crowded into 
 it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual perception, makes it slide 
 from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own perspective. 
 It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing ! It is a speck in 
 our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough to hold it9
 
 30 TABLE TALK. 
 
 striking groups, its endless subjects ! It is light as vanity, and 
 yet if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart aches were 
 compressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed 
 with the blow ! What a huge heap, a " huge, dumb heap," of 
 wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, 
 joys, friendships, is it composed of ! How many ideas and trains 
 of sentiment, long and deep and intense, often pass through the 
 mind in only one day's thinking or reading, for instance ! How 
 many such days are there in a year, how many years in a long 
 life, still occupied with something interesting, still recalling some 
 old impression, still recurring to some difficult question and mak- 
 ing progress in it, every step accompanied with a sense of power, 
 and every moment conscious of " the high endeavour or the glad 
 succers;" for the mind fixes chiefly on that which keeps it em- 
 ployed, and is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excite- 
 ment or lively solicitude, by the necessity of its own nature. 
 The division of the map of life into its component parts is beauti- 
 fully made by King Henry VI. 
 
 " O God ! methinks it were a happy life 
 
 To be r.o better than a homely swain, 
 
 To sit upon a hill as I do now, 
 
 To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 
 
 Thereby to see the minutes how they run ; 
 
 How many make the hour full complete, 
 
 How many hours bring about the day, 
 
 How many days will finish up the year, 
 
 How many years a mortal man may live : 
 
 When this is known, then to divide the time ; 
 
 So many hours must I tend my flock, 
 
 So many hours must I take my rest, 
 
 So many hours must I contemplate, 
 
 So many hours must I sport myself; 
 
 So many days my ewes have been with young, 
 
 So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean, 
 
 So many months ere I shall shear the fleece : 
 
 So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years 
 
 Past over to the end they were created, 
 
 Would bring grey hairs unto a quiet grave." 
 
 I myself am neither a king nor a shepherd : books have been my 
 fleecy charge, and my thoughts have been my subjects. But 
 these have found me sufficient employment at the time, and enough 
 to muse* on for the time to come.
 
 THE PAST AND FUTURE. 81 
 
 The passions intercept and warp the natural progress of life. 
 They paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and 
 caprice. This makes the difference between the laughing in- 
 nocence of childhood, the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbed- 
 ness of age. A load of cares lies like a weight of guilt upon the 
 mind : so that a man of business often has all the air, the distrac- 
 tion and restlessness and hurry of feeling of a criminal. A know, 
 ledge of the world takes away the freedom and simplicity of 
 thought as effectually as the contagion of its example. The art- 
 lessness and candour of our early years are open to all impres- 
 sions alike, because the mind is not clogged and pre-occupied with 
 other objects. Our pleasures and our pains come single, make 
 room for one another, and the spring of the mind is fresh and un- 
 broken, its aspect olear and unsullied. Hence " the tear forgot 
 as soon as shed, the sunshine of the breast." But as we advance 
 farther, the will gets greater head. We form violent antipathies 
 and indulge exclusive preferences. We make up our minds to 
 some one thing, and if we cannot have that, will have nothing. 
 We are wedded to opinion, to fancy, to prejudice ; which 
 destroys the soundness of our judgments, and the serenity 
 and buoyancy of our feelings. The chain of habit coils 
 itself round the heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it. 
 It grows rigid and callous ; and for the softness and elasticity 
 of childhood, full of proud flesh and obstinate tumours. The 
 violence and perversity of our passions comes in more and 
 more to overlay our natural sensibility and well-grounded affec- 
 tions ; and we screw ourselves up to aim only at those things 
 which are neither desirable nor practicable. Thus life passes 
 away in the feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty of dis- 
 appointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of 
 feeling satisfies us ; and all common pleasures and cheap amuse- 
 ments are sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipa- 
 tion. The machine is overwrought : the parching heat of the 
 veins dries up and withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy ; 
 and any pause, any release from the rack of ecstasy on which we 
 are stretched, seems more insupportable than the pangs which 
 we endure. We are suspended between tormenting desires and 
 the horrors of ennui. The impulse of the will, like the wheels of
 
 32 TABLE TALK. 
 
 a carriage going down hill, becomes too strong for the driver 
 Reason, and cannot be stopped nor kept within bounds. Some 
 idea, some fancy, takes possession of the brain ; and however ridi- 
 culous, however distressing, however ruinous, haunts us by a sort 
 of fascination through life. 
 
 Not only is the principle here pointed out to be seen at work 
 in our more turbulent passions and pursuits ; but even in the 
 formal study of arts and sciences the same thing takes place, and 
 undermines the repose and happiness of life. The eagerness of 
 pursuit overcomes the satisfaction to result from the accomplish- 
 ment. The mind is overstrained to attain its purpose ; and when 
 it is attained, the ease and alacrity necessary to enjoy it are gone. 
 The irritation of action does not cease and go down with the occa- 
 sion for it ; but we are first uneasy to get to the end of our work, 
 and then uneasy for want of something to do. The ferment of 
 the brain does not of itself subside into pleasure and soft repose. 
 Hence the disposition to strong stimuli observable in persons of 
 much intellectual exertion, to allay and carry off the over-excite- 
 ment. The improvisatori poets (it is recorded by Spence in hi? 
 Anecdotes of Pope) cannot sleep after an evening's continued dis- 
 play of their singular and difficult art. The rhymes keep running 
 in their heads in spite of themselves, and will not let them rest. 
 Mechanics and labouring people never know what to do with 
 themselves on a Sunday ; though they return to their work with 
 greater spirit for the relief, and look forward to it with pleasure all 
 the week. Sir Joshua Reynolds was never comfortable out of his 
 painting-room, and died of chagrin and regret, because he could 
 not paint on to the last moment of his life. He used to say that he 
 could go on retouching a picture forever, as long as it stood on his 
 easel ; but as soon as it was once fairly out of the house, he never 
 wished to see it again. An ingenious artist of our own time has 
 been heard to declare, that if ever the Devil got him into his 
 clutches, he would set him to copy his own pictures. Thus the 
 secure, self-complacent retrospect to what is done is nothing ; while 
 the anxious, uneasy looking forward to what is to come is every 
 thing. We are afraid to dwell upon the past, lest it should retard 
 our future progress ; the indulgence of ease is fatal to excellence ; 
 and to succeed in life, we lose the ends of being !
 
 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. S* 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 On People with one Idea. 
 
 There are people who have but one idea : at least, if they have 
 more, they keep it a secret, for they never talk but of one subject. 
 There is Major Cartwright* : he has but one idea or subject of 
 discourse, Parliamentary Reform. Now Parliamentary Reform is 
 (as far as I know) a very good thing, a very good idea, and a very 
 good subject to talk about : but why should it be the only one ? To 
 hear the worthy and gallant Major resume his favourite topic, is 
 like law-business, or a person who has a suit in Chancery depend- 
 ing. Nothing can be attended to, nothing can be talked of but that. 
 Now it is getting on, now again it is standing still ; at one time 
 the Master has promised to pass judgment by a certain day, at an- 
 other he has put it off again and called for more papers, and both 
 are equally reasons for speaking of it. Like the piece of pack- 
 thread in the barrister's hands, he turns and twists it all ways, and 
 cannot proceed a step without it. Some school-boys cannot read, 
 unless it be in their own book : and the man of one idea cannot 
 converse out of his own subject. Conversation it is not ; but a sort 
 of recital of the preamble of a bill, or a collection of grave argu- 
 ments for a man's being of opinion with himself. It would be well 
 if there was any thing of character, of eccentricity in all this ; but 
 that is not the case. It is a political homily personified, a walking 
 common-place we have to encounter and listen to. It is just as if 
 a man was to insist on your hearing him go through the fifth chap- 
 ter of the Book of Judges every time you meet, or like the story of 
 the Cosmogony in the Vicar of Wakefield. It is a tune played on 
 a barrel-organ. It is a common vehicle of discourse into which 
 such persons get and are set down when they please, without any 
 
 * This most resoectable man died ntely at a very advanced age.
 
 4 TABLE TALK. 
 
 pains or trouble to themselves. Neither is it professional pedantry 
 or trading quackery : it has no excuse. The man has no more to 
 do with the question which he saddles on all his hearers than you 
 have. This is what makes the matter hopeless. If a farmer talks 
 to you about his pigs or his poultry, or a physician about his pa- 
 tients, or a lawyer about his briefs, or a merchant about stock, 01 
 an author about himself, you know how to account for this ; it is a 
 common infirmity : you have a laugh at his expense, and. there is 
 no more to be said. But here is a man who goes out of his way to 
 be absurd, and is troublesome by a romantic effort of generosity. 
 You cannot say to him, " All this may be interesting to you, but I 
 have no concern in it :" you cannot put him off in that way. He 
 retorts the Latin adage upon you Nihil humani a me alienum puto. 
 He has got possession of a subject which is of universal and para- 
 mount interest (not " a fee-grief, due to some single breast") and 
 on that plea may hold you by the button as long as he chooses. 
 His delight is to harangue on what nowise regards himself: how 
 then can you refuse to listen to what as little amuses you ? Time 
 and tide wait for no man. The business of the state admits of no 
 delay. The question of Universal Suffrage and Annual Parlia- 
 ments stands first on the order of the day takes precedence in its 
 jwn right of every other question. Any other topic, grave or gay, 
 \s looked upon in the light of impertinence, and sent to Coventry. 
 Business is an interruption ; pleasure a digression from it. It is 
 he question before every company where the Major comes (which 
 immediately resolves itself into a committee of the whole world 
 upon it), is carried on by means of a perpetual virtual adjournment, 
 and it is presumed that no other is to be entertained while this is 
 pending a presumption which gives its persevering advocate a 
 fair prospect of expatiating on it to his dying day. As Cicero says 
 of study, it follows him into the country, it stays with him at home ; 
 it sits with him at breakfast, and goes out with him to dinner. It 
 is like a part of his dress, of the costume of his person, without 
 which he would be at a loss what to do. If he meets you in the 
 street, he accosts you with it as a form of salutation : if you see 
 him at his own house, it is supposed you come upon that. If you 
 happen to remark, " It is a fine day or the town is full," it is con- 
 sidered as a temporary compromise of the question ; you are sus-
 
 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 35 
 
 pected of hot going the whole length of the principle. As Sancho, 
 when reprimanded for mentioning his homely favourite in the 
 Duke's kitchen, defended himself by saying " There I thought 
 of Dapple, and there I spoke of him" so our true stickler for 
 Reform neglects no opportunity of introducing the subject wher- 
 ever he is. Place its veteran champion under the frozen north, 
 and he will celebrate sweet smiling Reform : place him under 
 the mid-day Afric sun, and he will talk of nothing but Reform 
 Reform so sweetly smiling and so sweetly promising for the last 
 forty years . 
 
 Dulce ridentem Lalagen, 
 Dulce loquentem ! 
 
 A topic of this sort, of which the person himself may be considered 
 as almost sole proprietor and patentee, is an estate for life, free 
 from all incumbrance of wit, thought, or study ; you may live 
 upon it as a settled income ; and others might as well think to eject 
 you out of a capital freehold inheritance as think to drive you out 
 of it into the wide world of common sense and argument. Every 
 man's house is his castle ; and every man's common-place is his 
 stronghold, from which he looks out and smiles at the dust and 
 heat of controversy, raised by a number of frivolous and vexati- 
 ous questions "Rings the world with the vain stir!" A cure for this 
 and every other evil would be a Parliamentary Reform ; and so we 
 return in a perpetual circle to the point from which we set out. Is 
 not this a species of sober madness more provoking than the real ? 
 Has not the theoretical enthusiast his mind as much warped, as 
 much enslaved by one idea as the acknowledged lunatic, besides 
 that the former has no lucid intervals ? If you see a visionary of 
 this class going along the street, you can tell as well what he is 
 thinking of and will say next, as the man that fancies himself a 
 tea-pot or the Czar of Muscovy. The one is as inaccessible tc 
 reason as the other : if the one raves, the other dotes ! 
 
 There are some who fancy the Corn-Bill the root of all evil, 
 and others who trace all the miseries of life to the practice 
 of muffling children in night-clothes when they sleep or travel. 
 They will declaim by the hour together on the first, and argue 
 themserVes black in the face on the last. It is in vain that you
 
 *> TABLE TALK. 
 
 give up the point. They persist in the debate, and begin again 
 " But don't you see ?" These sort of partial obliquities, as they 
 .re more entertaining and original, are also by their nature inter- 
 mittent. They hold a man but for a season. He may have one 
 a year or every two years ; and though, while he is in the heat 
 of any new discovery, he will let you hear of nothing else, he 
 varies from himself, and is amusing undesignedly. He is not 
 like the chimes at midnight. 
 
 People of the character here spoken of, that is, who tease you 
 to death with some one idea, generally differ in their favorite no- 
 tion from the rest of the world ; and indeed it is the love of dis- 
 tinction which is mostly at the bottom of this peculiarity. Thus 
 one person is remarkable for living on a vegetable diet, and never 
 fails to entertain you all dinner-time with an invective against an- 
 imal food. One of this self-denying class, who adds to the pri- 
 mitive simplicity of this sort of food the recommendation of hav- 
 ing it in a raw state, lamenting the death of a patient whom he 
 had augured to be in a good way as a convert to his system, at last 
 accounted for his disappointment in a whisper " But she ate meat 
 privately, depend upon it !" It is not pleasant, though it is what 
 one submits to willingly from some people, to be asked every time 
 you meet, whether you have quite left off drinking wine, and to 
 be complimented or condoled with on your looks according as you 
 answer in the affirmative or negative. Abernethy thinks his pill 
 an infallible cure for all disorders. A person once complaining 
 to his physician that he thought his mode of treatment had not 
 answered, he assured him it was the best in the world, " and as a 
 proof of it," says he, " I have had one gentleman, a patient with 
 your disorder, under the same regimen for the last sixteen years !" 
 I have known persons whose minds were entirely taken up at all 
 times and on all occasions with such questions as the Abolition of 
 the Slave-Trade, the Restoration of the Jews, or the progress of 
 Unitarianism. I myself at one period took a pretty strong turn 
 to inveighing against the doctrine of Divine Right, and am not 
 yet cured of my prejudice on that subject. How many project- 
 ors have gone mad in good earnest from incessantly harping on 
 one idea, the discovery of the philosopher's stone, the finding out 
 the longitude, or paying off the national debt ! The disorder at
 
 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 37 
 
 length comes to a fatal crisis ; but long before this, and while 
 they were walking about and talking as usual, the derangement 
 of the fancy, the loss of all voluntary power to control or alie- 
 nate their ideas from the single subject that occupied them, was 
 gradually taking place, and overturning the fabric of the under- 
 standing by wrenching it on one side. Alderman Wood has, I 
 should suppose, talked of nothing but the Queen in all companies 
 for the last six months. Happy Alderman Wood ! Some per- 
 sons have got a definition of the verb, others a system of short- 
 hand, others a cure for typhus fever, others a method for prevent- 
 ing the counterfeiting of bank-notes, which they think the best 
 possible, and indeed the only one. Others insist there have been 
 only three great men in the world, leaving you to add a fourth. 
 A man who has been in Germany will sometimes talk of nothing 
 but what is German : a Scotchman always leads the discourse 
 to his own country. Some descant on the Kantean philosophy. 
 There is a conceited fellow about town who talks always and every 
 where on this subject. He wears the Categories round his neck 
 like a pearl-chain : he plays off" the names of the primary and 
 transcendental qualities, like rings on his fingers. He talks of 
 the Kantean system while he dances ; he talks of it while he 
 dines ; he talks of it to his children, to his apprentices, to his 
 customers. He called on me to convince me of it, and said I 
 was only prevented from becoming a complete convert by one or 
 two prejudices. He knows no more about it than a pike-staff". 
 Why then does he make so much ridiculous fuss about it ? It is 
 not that he has got this one idea in his head, but that he has got 
 no other. A dunce may talk on the subject of the Kantean phi- 
 losophy with great impunity : if he opened his lips on any other, 
 he might be found out. A French lady, who had married an 
 Englishman who said little, excused him by saying " He is al- 
 ways thinking of Locke and Newton." This is one way of 
 passing muster by following in the suite of great names ! A 
 friend of mine, whom I met one day in the street, accosted me 
 with more than usual vivacity, pnd said, " Well, we're selling, 
 we're selling !" I thought he meant a house. " No," he said, 
 "haven't you seen the advertisement in the newspapers? I 
 mean five-and-twenty copies o f 'he Essay." This work, a comely,
 
 Sft TABLE TALK. 
 
 capacious quarto on the most abstruse metaphysics, had oc- 
 cupied his sole thoughts for several years, and he concluded 
 that I must be thinking of what he was. I believe, however, 
 I may say I am nearly the only person that ever read, cer- 
 tainly that ever pretended to understand it. It is an original 
 and most ingenious work, nearly as incomprehensible as it is 
 original, and as quaint as it is ingenious. If the author is 
 taken up with the ideas in his own head and no others, he 
 has a right : for he has ideas there, that are to be met with no- 
 where else, and which occasionally would not disgrace a Berke- 
 ley. A dextrous plagiarist might get himself an immense repu- 
 tation by putting them in a popular dress. Oh ! how little do 
 they know, who have never done any thing but repeat aftei 
 others by rote, the pangs, the labour, the yearnings and misgiv- 
 ings of mind it costs, to get at the germ of an original idea to 
 dig it out of the hidden recesses of thought and nature, and 
 bring it half-ashamed, struggling, and deformed, into the day to 
 give words and intelligible symbols to that which was never im- 
 agined or expressed before ! It is as if the dumb should speak 
 for the first time, or as if things should stammer out their own 
 meaning, through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish 
 that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such 
 store of words to cover the want of ideas, would lend their art 
 to this writer. If he, " poor, unfledged" in this respect, " who 
 has scarce winged from view o' th' nest,' ; could find a language 
 for his thoughts, truth would find a language for some of her 
 secrets. Mr Fearn was buried in the woods of Indostan. In 
 his leisure from business and from tiger-shooting, he took it into 
 his head to look into his own mind. A whim or two, an odd fancy, 
 like a film before the eye, now and then crossed it : it struck 
 him as something curious, but the impression at first disappeared 
 like breath upon glass. He thought no more of it : yet still the 
 same conscious feelings returned, and what at first was chance 
 or instinct, became a habit. Several notions had taken posses- 
 sion of his brain relating to mental processes which he had never 
 heard alluded to in conversation ; but not being well versed in 
 such matters, he did not know whether they were to be found in 
 learned authors or not. He took a journey to the capital of the
 
 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 38 
 
 Peninsula on purpose, bought Locke, Reid, Stewart, and Berke. 
 ley, whom he consulted with eager curiosity when he got home, 
 but did not find what he looked for. He set to work himself; 
 and in a few weeks, sketched out a rough draught of his thoughts 
 and observations on bamboo paper. The eagerness of his new 
 pursuit, together with the diseases of the climate, proved too 
 much for his constitution, and he was forced to return to this 
 country. He put his metaphysics, his bamboo manuscript, into 
 the boat with him, and as he floated down the Ganges, said to 
 himself, " If I live, this will live : if I die, it will not be heard 
 of." "What is fame to such a feeling? The babbling of an idi- 
 ot ! He brought the work home with him, and twice had it ste- 
 reotyped. The first sketch he allowed was obscure, but the im- 
 proved copy he thought could not fail to strike. It did not suc- 
 ceed. The world, as Goldsmith said of himself, made a point of 
 taking no notice of it. Ever since he has had nothing but disap- 
 pointment and vexation the greatest and most heart-breaking of 
 all others that of not being able to make yourself understood. 
 Mr. Fearn tells me there is a sensible writer in the Monthly Re- 
 view who sees the thing in its proper light, and says so. But I 
 have heard of no other instance. There are notwithstanding 
 ideas in this work, neglected and ill-treated as it has been, 
 that lead to more curious and subtle speculations on some 
 of the most disputed and difficult points of the philosophy 
 of the human mind (such as relation, abstraction, &c.) than have 
 been thrown out in any work for the last sixty years, I mean 
 since Hume ; for since his time, there has been no metaphysician 
 in this country worth the name. Yet his Treatise on Human 
 Nature, he tells us, " fell still-born from the press." So it is 
 that knowledge works its way, and reputation lingers far behind 
 it. But truth is better than opinion, I maintain it ; and as to the 
 two stereotyped and unsold editions of the Essay on Consci- 
 ousness, I say, Honi soit qui mal y pense !* My Uncle Toby had 
 
 * Gtuarto poetry, as well as quarto metaphysics, does not always sell. Go- 
 ing one day into a shop in Paternoster-row to see for some lines in Mr. 
 Wordsworth's Excursion to interlard some prose with, I applied to the con- 
 stituted authorities, and asked if I could look at a copy of the Excursion ? 
 The answer was " Into which county, Sir V
 
 40 TABLE TALK. 
 
 one idea in his head, that of his bowling-green, and another, that 
 of the Widow Wadman. Oh, spare them both ! I will only add 
 one more anecdote in illustration of this theory of the mind's be- 
 ing occupied with one idea, which is most frequently of a man's 
 self. A celebrated lyrical writer happened to drop into a small 
 party where they had just got the novel of Rob Roy, by the au- 
 thor of Waverley. The motto in the title-page was taken from 
 a poem of his. This was a hint sufficient, a word to the wise. 
 He instantly went to the book-shelf in the next room, took down 
 the volume of his own poems, l'ead the whole of that in question 
 aloud with manifest complacency, replaced it on the shelf, and 
 walked away ; taking no more notice of Rob Roy than if there 
 had been no such person, nor of the new novel than if it had 
 not been written by its renowned author. There was no reci- 
 procity in this. But the writer in question does not admit of any 
 merit, second to his own.* 
 
 Mr. Owen is a man remarkable for one idea. It is that of 
 himself and the Lanark cotton-mills. He carries this idea back- 
 wards and forwards with him from Glasgow to London, without 
 allowing any thing for attrition, and expects to find it in the same 
 state of purity and perfection in the latter place as at the former. 
 He acquires a wonderful velocity and impenetrability in his un- 
 daunted transit. Resistance to him is vain, while the whirling 
 motion of the mail-coach remains in his head. 
 
 "Nor Alps nor Appenines can keep him out, 
 Nor fortified redoubt." 
 
 He even got possession, in the suddenness of his onset, of the steam- 
 engine of the Times newspaper, and struck off ten thousand wood- 
 cuts of the Projected Villages, which afforded an ocular demon- 
 
 * These fantastic poets are like a foolish ringer at Plymouth that Northcote 
 tells the story of. He was proud of his ringing, and the boys who made a 
 jest of his foible used to get him into the belfry, and ask him, " Well now, 
 John, how many good ringers are there in Plymouth V " Two," he would 
 Bay, without any hesitation. "Ay, indeed! and who are they 1 ?" "Why, 
 
 first, there's myself, that's one ; and and " " Well, and who's the other?" 
 
 " Wfty, there's, there's Ecod, I can't think of any other but myself." 
 
 Talk we of one Master Launcelot. The story is of ringers: it will do for anj 
 vain, shallow, self-satisfied egotist of them all.
 
 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 41 
 
 stration to all who saw them of the practicability of Mr. Owen's 
 whole scheme. He comes into a room with one of these docu- 
 ments in his hand, with the air of a schoolmaster and a quack-doc- 
 tor mixed, asks very kindly how you do, and on hearing you are 
 still in an indifferent state of health, owing to bad digestion, in- 
 stantly turns round, and observes, "That all that will be remedied 
 in his plan : that indeed he thinks too much attention has been 
 paid to the mind, and not enough to the body ; that in his system, 
 which he has now perfected and which will shortly be generally 
 adopted, he has provided effectually for both : that he has been 
 long of opinion that the mind depends altogether on the physical 
 organization, and where the latter is neglected or disordered, the 
 former must languish and want its due vigour : that exercise is 
 therefore a part of his system, with full liberty to develop every fa- 
 culty of mind and body : that two objections had been made to his 
 New View of Society, viz. its want of relaxation from labour, and 
 its want of variety ; but the first of these, the too great restraint, he 
 trusted he had already answered, for where the powers of mind 
 and body were freely exercised and brought out, surely liberty 
 must be allowed to exist in the highest degree ; and as to the se- 
 cond, the monotony which would be produced by a regular and 
 general plan of co-operation, he conceived he had proved in his 
 " New View" and " Addresses to the Higher Classes" ; that the 
 co-operation he had recommended was necessarily conducive to 
 the most extensive improvement of the ideas and faculties, and 
 where this was the case, there must be the greatest possible va- 
 riety, instead of a want of it." And having said so, this expert 
 and sweeping orator takes up his hat and walks down-stairs af- 
 ter reading his lecture of truisms like a play-bill, or an apothe- 
 cary's advertisement ; and should you stop him at the door to say 
 by way of putting in a word in common, that Mr. Southey seems 
 somewhat favourable to his plan in his late " Letter to Mr. 
 William Smith," he looks at you with a smile of pity at the fu- 
 tility of all opposition and the idleness of all encouragement. 
 People who thus swell out some vapid scheme of their own intc 
 undue importance, seem to me to labour under water in the head 
 to exhibit a huge hydrocephalus ! They may be very worthy 
 people for all that, but they are bad companions, and very indif 
 
 3
 
 42 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ferent reasoners. Tom Moore says of some one somewhere, 
 " That he puts his hand in his breeches' pocket like a crocodile." 
 The phrase is hieroglyphical : but Mr. Owen and others might be 
 said to put their foot in the question of social improvement and 
 reform much in the same unaccountable manner. 
 
 I hate to be surfeited with any thing, however sweet. I do 
 not want to be always tied to the same question, as if there were 
 no other in the world. I like a mind more Catholic. 
 
 " I love to talk with mariners, 
 T^iat come from a far countree." 
 
 I am not for " a collusion " but " an exchange'' of ideas. Jt 
 s well to hear what other people have to say on a number of 
 subjects. I do not wish to be always respiring the same con- 
 fined atmosphere, but to vary the scene, and get a little relief 
 and fresh air out of doors. Do all we can to shake it off, there 
 is always enough pedantry, egotism, and self-conceit left lurking 
 behind : we need not seal ourselves up hermetically in these pre- 
 cious qualities ; so as to think of nothing but our own wonderful 
 discoveries, and hear nothing bnt the sound of our own voice. 
 Scholars, like princes, may learn something by being incognito. 
 Yet we see those who cannot go into a bookseller's shop, or bear 
 to be five minutes in a stage-coach, without letting you know who 
 they are. They carry their reputation about with them as the 
 snail does its shell, and sit under its canopy like the lady in the 
 lobster. I cannot understand this at all. What is the use of a 
 man's always revolving round his own little circle ? He must, 
 one should think, be tired of it himself, as well as tire other peo- 
 ple. A well-known writer says with much boldness both in the 
 thought and expression, that " a Lord is imprisoned in the Bastille 
 of a name, and cannot enlarge himself into man :" and I have 
 known men of genius in the same predicament. Why must a man 
 be forever mouthing out his own poetry, comparing himself with 
 Milton, passage by passage, and weighing every line in a balance 
 of posthumous fame which he holds in his own hands ? It argues 
 a want of imagination as well as of common sense. Has he no 
 ideas but what he has put into verse ; or none in common with 
 bis hearers ? Why should he think it the only scholar-like thing,
 
 ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 4b 
 
 the only " virtue extant," to see the merit of his writings, and that 
 " men were brutes without them ?" Why should he bear a grudge 
 to all art, to all beauty, to all wisdom that does not spring from 
 his own brain ? Or why should he fondly imagine that there is 
 but one fine thing in the world, namely poetry, and that he is the 
 only poet in it ? It will never do. Poetry is a very fine thing ; 
 but there are other things besides it. Every thing must have its 
 turn. Does a wise man think to enlarge his comprehension by 
 turning his eyes only on himself, or hope to conciliate the admi- 
 ration of others by scouting, proscribing, and loathing all that 
 they delight in ? He must either have a disproportionate idea of 
 himself; or be ignorant of the world, in which he lives. It is 
 quite enough to have one class of people born to think the uni- 
 verse made for them ! It seems also to argue a want of repose, 
 of confidence, and firm faith in a man's real pretensions, to be 
 always dragging them forward into the fore-ground, as if the pro- 
 verb held here Out of sight out of mind. Does the author in 
 question conceive that no one would ever think of his poetry, 
 unless he forced it upon them by repeating it himself? Does he 
 believe all competition, all allowance of another's merit, fatal to 
 him ? Must he, like Moody in the Country Girl, lock up the 
 faculties of his admirers in ignorance of all other fine things, 
 painting, music, the antique, lest they should play truant to him ? 
 Methinks, such a proceeding implies no good opinion of his own 
 genius or their taste : it is deficient in dignity and in decorum. 
 Surely if any one is convinced of the reality of an acquisition, 
 he can bear not to have it spoken of every minute. If he knows 
 he has an undoubted superiority in any respect, he will not be 
 uneasy because every one he meets is not in the secret, nor be 
 staggered by the report of rival excellence. One of the first 
 mathematicians and classical scholars of the day was mentioning 
 it as a compliment to himself, that a cousin of his, a girl from 
 
 school, had said of him, " You know M is a very plain 
 
 good sort of young man, but he is not any thing at all out of the 
 common." L. H. once said to me, " I wonder I never heard you 
 speak upon this subject before, which vou seem to have studied 
 a good deal." I answereJ, " Why, we were not reduced to that, 
 that I know of!"
 
 44 TABLE TALK. 
 
 There are persons, who, without being chargeable with the 
 vice here spoken of, yet " stand accountant for as great a sin :" 
 though not dull and monotonous, they are vivacious mannerists 
 in their conversation, and excessive egotists. Though they run 
 over a thousand subjects in mere gaiety of heart, their delight 
 still flows from one idea, namely, themselves. Open the book in 
 what page you will, there is a frontispiece of themselves staring 
 you in the face. They are a sort of Jacks o' the Green, with a 
 sprig of laurel, a little tinsel, and a little smut, but still playing 
 antics and keeping in incessant motion, to attract attention and 
 extort your pittance of approbation. Whether they talk of the 
 town or the country, poetry or politics, it comes to much the 
 same thing. If they talk to you of the town, its diversions, " its 
 palaces, its ladies, and its pomp," they are the delight, the grace, 
 and ornament of it. If they are describing the charms of the 
 country, they give no account of any individual spot or object, 
 or source of pleasure, but the circumstance of their being there. 
 " With them conversing, we forget all place, all seasons, and 
 their change." They, perhaps, pluck a leaf or a flower, patronize 
 it, and hand it to you to admire, but select no one feature of 
 beauty or grandeur to dispute the palm of perfection with their 
 own persons. Their rural descriptions are mere landscape 
 back-grounds, with their own portraits in an engaging attitude 
 in front. They are not observing or enjoying the scene, but 
 doing the honours as masters of the ceremonies of nature, and 
 arbiters of elegance to all humanity. If they tell a love-tale of 
 enamoured princesses, it is plain they fancy themselves the hero 
 of the piece. If they discuss poetry, their encomiums still turn 
 on something genial and unsophisticated, meaning their own 
 style: if they enter into politics, it is understood that a hint from 
 them to the potentates of Europe is sufficient. In short, as a 
 lover (talk of what you will) brings in his mistress at every turn, 
 so these persons contrive to divert your attention to the same 
 darling object they are, in fact, in love with themselves ; ant> 
 like lovers, should be left to keep their own company.
 
 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED. 4 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 On the Ignorance of the Learned. 
 
 ** For the more languages a man can speak, 
 His talent has but sprung the greater leak : 
 And, for the industry he has spent upon't, 
 Must full as much some other way discount 
 The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac, 
 Do, like their letters, set men's reason back, 
 Ar l turn their wits that strive to understand it 
 (Like those that write the characters) left-handed. 
 Yet he that is but able to express 
 No sense at all in several languages, 
 Will pass for learneder than he that's known 
 To speak the strongest reason in his own." 
 
 The Author op Hudibra*. 
 
 The description of persons who have the fewest ideas of all 
 others are mere authors and readers. It is better to be able 
 neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else. A 
 lounger who is ordinarily seen with a book in his hand, is (we 
 may be almost sure) equally without the power or inclination to 
 attend either to what passes around him, or in his own mii.d. 
 Such a one may be said to carry his understanding about with 
 him in his pocket, or to leave it at home on his library shelves. 
 He is afraid of venturing on any train of reasoning, or of striking 
 out any observation that is not mechanically suggested to him by 
 passing his eyes over certain legible characters ; shrinks from 
 the fatigue of thought, which, for want of practice, becomes 
 insupportable to him ; and sits down contented with an endless 
 wearisome succession of words and half-formed images, which 
 fill the void of the mind, and continually efface one another. 
 Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense ; a 
 substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of 
 as " .spectacles" to look at nature with, than as blinds to keen
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 out 'tS strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes apd in- 
 dolent dispositions. The book-worm wraps himself up in his 
 web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows 
 cf things reflected from the minds of others. Nature puts him 
 out. The impressions of real objects, stripped of the disguises 
 of words and voluminous round-about descriptions, are blows thai 
 stagger him ; their variety distracts, their rapidity exhausts him ; 
 and he turns from the bustle, the noise and glare and whirling 
 motion of the world about him (which he has not an eye to follow 
 in its fantastic changes, nor an understanding to reduce to fixed 
 principles) to the quiet monotony of the dead languages, and the 
 less startling and more intelligible combinations of the letters of 
 the alphabet. It is well, it is perfectly well. " Leave me to my 
 repose" is the motto of the sleeping and the dead. You might as 
 well ask the paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his 
 crutch, or, without a miracle, to " take up his bed and walk," as 
 expect the learned reader to lay down his book and think for 
 himself. He clings to it for his intellectual support ; and his 
 dread of being left to himself is like the horror of a vacuum. He 
 can only breathe a learned atmosphere, as other men breathe 
 common air. He is a borrower of sense. He has no ideas of 
 his own, and must live on those of other people. The habit of 
 supplying our ideas from foreign sources " enfeebles all internal 
 strength of thought," as a course of dram-drinking destroys the 
 tone of the stomach. The faculties of the mind, when not ex- 
 erted, or when cramped by custom and authority, become list- 
 less, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought or action. Can 
 we wonder at the languor and lassitude which is thus produced 
 by a life of learned sloth and ignorance ; by poring over lines 
 and syllables that excite little more idea or interest than if they 
 were the characters of an unknown tongue, till the eye closes on 
 vacancy, and the book drops from the feeble hand ! I would 
 rather be a wood-cutter, or the meanest hind, that all day 
 " sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and at night sleeps in Elysium," 
 than wear out my life so, 'twixt dreaming and awake. The 
 learned author differs from the learned student in this, that the 
 one transcribes what the other reads. The learned are mere 
 literary drudges. If you set them upon original composition,
 
 ON THE IGNORANCE OP THE LEARNED. 47 
 
 their heads turn, they know not where they are. The indefati- 
 gable readers of books are like the everlasting copiers of pictures, 
 who, when they attempt to do any thing of their own, find 
 they want an eye quick enough, a hand steady enough, and 
 colours bright enough, to trace the living forms of nature. 
 
 Any one who has passed through the regular gradations of a 
 classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider 
 himself as having had a very narrow escape. It is an old remark, 
 that boys who shine at school do not make the greatest figure 
 when they grow up and come out into the world. The things, in 
 fact, which a boy is set to learn at school, and on which his suc- 
 cess depends, are things which do not require the exercise either 
 of the highest or the most useful faculties of the mind. Memory 
 (and that of the lowest kind) is the chief faculty called into play, 
 in conning over and repeating lessons by rote in grammar, in lan- 
 guages, in geography, arithmetic, &c, so that he who has the 
 most, of this technical memory, with the least turn for other things, 
 which have a stronger and more natural claim upon his childiwt 
 attention, will make the most forward school-boy. The jargon 
 containing the definitions of the parts of speech, the rules for 
 casting up an account, or the inflections of a Greek verb, can 
 have no attraction to the tyro of ten years old, except as they are 
 imposed as a task upon him by others, or from his feeling the 
 want of sufficient relish or amusement in other things. A lad 
 with a sickly constitution, and no very active mind, who can just 
 retain what is pointed out to him, and has neither sagacity to dis- 
 tinguish nor spirit to enjoy for himself, will generally be at the 
 head of his form. An idler at school, on the other hand, is one 
 who has high health and spirits, who has the free use of his limbs, 
 with all his wits about him, who feels the circulation of his blood 
 and the motion of his heait. who is ready to laugh and cry in a 
 breath, and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the 
 open air in his face, look at tfte fields or the sky, follow a wind- 
 ing path, or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and 
 interests of his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty 
 spelling-book, repeat barbarous distichs after his master, sit so 
 many hours pinioned to a writing-desk, and receive his reward 
 for the loss of time and pleasure in paltry prize-medals at Chrisf-
 
 48 TABLE TALK. 
 
 mas and Midsummer. There is indeed a degree of stupidity 
 which prevents children from learning the usual lessons, or ever 
 arriving at these puny academic honours. But what passes for 
 stupidity is much oftener a want of interest, of a sufficient motive 
 to fix the attention, and force a reluctant application to the dry 
 and unmeaning pursuits of school-learning. The best capacities 
 are as much above this drudgery, as the dullest are beneath it. 
 Our men of the greatest genius have not been most distinguished 
 for their acquirements at school or at the university. 
 
 " Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever." 
 
 Gray and Collins were among the instances of this wayward 
 disposition. Such persons do not think so highly of the advan- 
 tages, nor can they submit their imaginations so servilely to the 
 trammels of strict scholastic discipline. There is a certain kind 
 and degree of intellect in which words take root, but into which 
 things have not power to penetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with 
 a certain slenderness of moral constitution, is the soil that pro- 
 duces the most brilliant specimens of successful prize-essayists 
 and Greek epigrammatists. It should not be forgotten, that the 
 most equivocal character among modern politicians was the 
 cleverest boy at Eton. 
 
 Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known 
 to others, and which we can only derive at second-hand from books 
 or other artificial sources. The knowledge of that which is be- 
 fore us or about us, which appeals to our experience, passions, 
 and pursuits, to the bosoms and businesses of men, is not learn- 
 ing. Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the 
 learned know. He is the most learned man who knows the most 
 of what is farthest removed from common life and actual obser- 
 vation, that is of the least practical utility, and least liable to be 
 brought to the test of experience, and that, having been handed 
 down through the greatest number of intermediate stages, is the 
 most full of uncertainty, difficulties, and contradictions. It is 
 seeing with the eyes of others, hearing with their ears, and pin- 
 ning our faith on their understandings. The learned man prides 
 himself in the knowledge of names and dates, not of men or
 
 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED. 49 
 
 things. He thinks and cares nothing about his next-door neigh- 
 bours, but he is deeply read in the tribes and easts of the Hindoos 
 and Calmuc Tartars. He can hardly find his way into the next 
 street, though he is acquainted with the exact dimensions of Con- 
 stantinople and Pekin. He does not know whether his oldest 
 acquaintance is a knave or a fool, but he can pronounce a pomp- 
 ous lecture on all the principal characters in history. He cannot 
 tell whether an object is black or white, round or square, and yet 
 he is a professed master of the laws of optics and the rules of 
 perspective. He knows as much of what he talks about, as a 
 blind man does of colours. He cannot give a satisfactory answer 
 to the plainest question, nor is he ever in the right in any one of 
 his opinions, upon any one matter of fact that really comes before 
 him, and yet he gives himself out for an infallible judge on all 
 those points of which it is impossible that he or any other person 
 living should know anything but by conjecture. He is expert in 
 all the dead and in most of the living languages ; but he can 
 neither speak his own fluently, nor write it correctly. A person 
 of this class, the second Greek scholar of his day, undertook to 
 point out several solecisms in Milton's Latin style ; and in his 
 own performance there is hardly a sentence of common English. 
 
 Such was Dr. . Such is Dr. . Such was not Porson. 
 
 He was an exception that confirmed the general rule, a man 
 that, by uniting talents and knowledge with learning, made the 
 distinction between them more striking and palpable. 
 
 A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant 
 even of them. " Books do not teach the use of books." How 
 should he know anything of a work, who knows nothing of the 
 subject of it ? The learned pedant is conversant with books only 
 as they are made of other books, and those again of others, with- 
 out end. He parrots those who have parroted others. He can 
 translate the same word into ten different languages, but he knows 
 nothing of the thing which it means in any one of them. He stuffs 
 his head with authorities built on authorities, with quotations 
 quoted from quotations, while he locks up his senses, his under- 
 standing, and his heart. He is unacquainted with the maxims 
 and manners of the world ; he is to seek in the characters of in- 
 
 3*
 
 50 TABLE TALK. 
 
 dividuals. He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of art. 
 To him " the mighty world of eye and ear" is hid ; and " know- 
 ledge," except at one entrance, "quite shut out." His pride takes 
 part with his ignorance ; and his self-importance rises with the 
 number of things of which he does not know the value, and which 
 he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing 
 of pictures ; " of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, 
 the purity of Domenichino, the corregiescity of Correggio, the 
 learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caracci, 
 or the grand contour of Michael Angelo," of all those glories 
 of the Italian and miracles of the Flemish school, which have 
 filled the eyes of mankind with delight, and to the study and imi 
 tation of which thousands have in vain devoted their lives. These 
 are to him as if they had never been, a mere dead letter, a by- 
 word ; and no wonder : for he neither sees nor understands their 
 prototypes in nature. A print of Rubens's Watering-place, or 
 Claude's Enchanted Castle, may be hanging on the walls of his 
 room for months without his once perceiving them ; and if you 
 point them out to him, he will turn away from them. The lan- 
 guage of nature or of art (which is another nature) is one that he 
 does not understand. He repeats indeed the names of Apelles and 
 Phidias, because they are to be found in classic authors, and boasts 
 of their works as prodigies, because they no longer exist ; or when 
 he sees the finest remains of Grecian art actually before him in 
 the Elgin marbles, takes no other interest in them than as they 
 lead to a learned dispute, and (which is the same thing) a quarrel 
 about the meaning of a Greek particle. He is equally ignorant 
 of music; he "knows no touch of it," from the strains of the all- 
 accomplished Mozart to the shepherd's pipe upon the mountain. 
 His ears are nailed to his books ; and deadened with the sound 
 of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of 
 school-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry 1 He 
 knows the number of feet in a verse, and of acts in a play ; but 
 of the soul or spirit he knows nothing. He can turn a Greek ode 
 into English, or a Latin epigram into Greek verse, but whether 
 either is worth the trouble, he leaves to the critics. Does he 
 understand " the act and practique part of life" better than " the
 
 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED. 51 
 
 theorique V No. He knows no liberal or mecnanic art ; no 
 trade or occupation ; no game of skill or chance. Learning " has 
 no skill in surgery," in agriculture, in building, in working in 
 wood o v in iron ; it cannot make any instrument of labour, or use 
 it when made ; it cannot handle the plough or the spade, or the 
 chisel or the hammer ; it knows nothing of hunting or hawking, 
 fishing or shooting, of horses or dogs, of fencing or dancing, or 
 cudgel-playing, or bowls, or cards, or tennis, or anything else. 
 The learned professor of all arts and sciences cannot reduce any 
 one of them to practice, though he may contribute an account of 
 them to an Encyclopaedia. He has not the use of his hands or 
 of his feet ; he can neither run, nor walk, nor swim ; and he 
 considers all those who actually understand and can exercise any 
 of these arts of body or mind, as vulgar and mechanical men ; 
 though to know almost, any one of them in perfection requires 
 long time and practice, with powers originally fitted, and a turn 
 of mind particularly devoted to them. It does not require more 
 than this to enable the learned candidate to arrive, by painful 
 study, at a Doctor's degree and a fellowship, and to eat, drink, 
 and sleep the rest of his life ! 
 
 The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is con- 
 fined to a very small compass ; to their daily affairs and experi- 
 ence ; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to 
 study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture. The 
 common people have the use of their limbs ; for they live by 
 their labour or skill. They understand their own business, and 
 the characters of those they have to deal with ; for it is neces- 
 sary that they should. They have eloquence to express their 
 passions, and wit at will to express their contempt and provoke 
 laughter. Their natural use of speech is not hung up in monu- 
 mental mockery, in an obsolete language ; nor is their sense of 
 what is ludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions to express 
 it, buried in collections of Anas. You will hear more good 
 thiugs on the outside of a stage-coach from London to Oxford, 
 than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the Undergraduates 
 or Heads of Colleges of that famous university ; and more home 
 truths are to be learnt from listening to a noisy debate in an ale-
 
 52 TABLE TALK. 
 
 house, than from attending to a formal one in the House of Com- 
 mons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often know more 
 of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusing anec- 
 dotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, and 
 gossiped in a country town for the last fifty years, than the best 
 blue-stocking of the age will be able to glean from that sort of 
 learning which consists in an acquaintance with all the novels 
 and satirical poems published in the same period. People in 
 towns, indeed, are woefully deficient in a knowledge of charac- 
 ter, which they see only in the bust, not as a whole-length. Peo- 
 ple in the country not only know all that has happened to a man, 
 but trace his virtues or vices, as they do his features, in their de- 
 scent through several generations, and solve some contradiction 
 in his behaviour by a cross in the breed, half a century ago. 
 The learned know nothing of the matter, either in town or coun. 
 try. Above all, the mass of society have common sense, which 
 the learned in all ages want. The vulgar are in the right when 
 they judge for themselves; they are wrong when they trust to 
 their blind guides. The celebrated non-conformist divine, Bax- 
 ter, was almost stoned to death by the good women of Kidder- 
 minster, for asserting from the pulpit that " hell was paved with 
 infants' skulls;" but by the force of argument, and of learned 
 quotations from the Fathers, the reverend preacher at length 
 prevailed over the scruples of his congregation, and over reason 
 and humanity. 
 
 Such is the use which has been made of human learning. 
 The labourers in this vineyard seem as if it was their object to 
 confound all common sense, and the distinctions of good and evil, 
 by means of traditional maxims and preconceived notions, taken 
 upon trust, and increasing in absurdity with increase of age. They 
 pile hypothesis on hypothesis, mountain-high, till it is impossible to 
 come at the plain truth on any question. They see things, not as 
 they are, but as they find them in books ; and " wink and shut their 
 apprehensions up," in order that they may discover nothing to 
 interfere with their prejudices, or convince them of their absur- 
 dity. It might be supposed, that the height of human wisdom 
 consisted in maintaining contradictions, and rendering nonsense 
 sacred. There is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, to which
 
 ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED. 53 
 
 these persons have not set their seals, and tried to impose on 
 the understandings of their followers, as the will of Heaven 
 clothed with all the terrors and sanctions of religion. How lit- 
 tle has the human understanding been directed to find out the 
 true and useful! How much ingenuity has, been thrown away 
 in the defence of creeds and systems ! How much time and 
 talents have been wasted in theological controversy, in law, in 
 politics, in verbal criticism, in judicial astrology, and in finding 
 out the art of making gold ! What actual benefit do we reap 
 from the writings of a Laud or a Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or 
 Bishop Waterland, or Prideaux' Connections, or Beausobre, or 
 Calmet, or St. Augustine, or Puffendorf, or Vattel, or from the 
 more literal but equally learned and unprofitable labours of 
 Scaliger, Cardan, and Scioppius ? How many grains of sense 
 are there in their thousand folio or quarto volumes ? What 
 would the world lose, if they were committed to the flames to- 
 morrow ? Or are they not already " gont* to the vault of all the 
 Capulets ?" Yet all these were oracles in their time, and would 
 have scoffed at you or me, at common sense and human nature, 
 for differing with them. It is our turn to laugh now. 
 
 To conclude this subject. The most sensible people to be met 
 with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue 
 from what they see and know, >stead of spinning cobweb dis- 
 tinctions of what things ought to be. Women have often more of 
 what is called good sense than men. They have fewer preten- 
 sions ; are less implicated in theories ; and iudge of objects 
 more from their immediate and involuntary impression on the 
 mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannoi 
 reason wrong ; for they do not reason at all. They do not think 
 or speak by rule ; and they have in general more eloquence and 
 wit, as well as sense, on that account. By their wit, sense, and 
 eloquence together, they generally contrive to govern their hus 
 bands. Their style, when they write to their friends, (not for the 
 booksellers,) is better than that of most authors. Uneducated 
 people have most exuberance of invention, and the greatest 
 freedom from prejudice. Shakespear's was evidently an unedu- 
 cated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination, and in the 
 variety of his views ; as Milton's was scholastic, in the texture
 
 afl TABLE TALK. 
 
 both of his thoughts and feelings. Shakespear had not been ac- 
 customed to write themes at school in favour of virtue or against 
 vice. To this we owe the unaffected, but healthy tone of his 
 dramatic morality. If we wish to know the force of human 
 genius, we should read Shakespear. If we wish to see the insig 
 nificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.
 
 ON WILL-MAKING. 66 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 On Will-Making. 
 
 Few things show the human character in a more ridiculous light 
 than the Circumstance of will-making. It is the latest opportu- 
 nity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposi- 
 tion, and we take care to make a good use of it. We husband it 
 with jealousy; put it off as long as we can; and then employ 
 every precaution that the world shall be no gainer by our deaths. 
 This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them, 
 for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to 
 think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those 
 who are unmannerly enough to survive us) as to do as little 
 good, and to plague and disappoint as many people as possible. 
 
 Some persons have a superstition on the subject of making 
 their last will and testament, and think that when every thing is 
 ready signed and sealed, there is nothing further left to delay their 
 departure. I have heard of an instance of one person who, 
 having a feeling of this kind on his mind, and being teazed into 
 making his will by those about him, actually fell ill with pure 
 apprehension, and thought he was going to die in good earnest, 
 but having executed the deed over-night, awoke, to his great sur- 
 prise, the next morning, and found himself as well as ever he 
 was.* An elderly gentleman possessed of a good estate and the 
 same idle notion, and who found himself in a dangerous way, was 
 
 * A poor woman at Plymouth, who did not like the formality, or could not 
 afford the expense of a will, thought to leave what little property she had in 
 wearing-apparel and household moveables to her friends and relations, vivd 
 voce, and before Death stopped her breath. She gave and willed away (of her 
 proper authority) her chair and table to one, her bed to another, an old cloak 
 to a third, a ught-cap and petticoat to a fourth, and so on. The old cronea 
 sat weeping round, and soon after carried off all they could lay their hand* 
 upon, and left their benefactress to her fate. They were no sooner gone than
 
 56 TABLE TALK. 
 
 anxious to do this piece of justice to those who remained behind 
 him, but when it came to the point, his heart failed him, and his 
 nervous fancies returned in full force : even on his death-bed, 
 he still held back and was averse to sign what he looked upon as 
 his own death-warrant, and just at the last gasp, amidst the 
 anxious looks and silent upbraidings of friends and relatives that 
 surrounded him, he summoned resolution to hold out his feeble 
 hand, which was guided by others to trace his name and he fell 
 back a corpse ! If there is any pressing reason for it, that is, if 
 any particular person would be relieved from a state of harass- 
 ing uncertainty, or materially benefitted by their making a will, 
 tne old and infirm (who do not like to be put out of their way) 
 generally make this an excuse to themselves for putting it off to 
 the very last moment, probably till it is too late : or where this is 
 sure to make the greatest number of blank faces, contrive to give 
 their friends the slip, without signifying their final determination 
 in their favour. Where some unfortunate individual has been 
 kept long in suspense, who has been perhaps sought out for that 
 very purpose, and who may be in a great measure dependent on 
 this as a last resource, it is nearly a certainty that there will be no 
 will to be found ; no trace, no sign to discover whether the person 
 dying thus intestate ever had any intention of the sort, or why 
 they relinquished it. This is to bespeak the thoughts and imagi- 
 nations of others for victims after we are dead, as well as their 
 persons and expectations for hangers-on while we are living. A 
 celebrated beauty of the middle of the last century, towards its 
 close sought out a female relative, the friend and companion of 
 her youth, who had lived during the forty years of their separa- 
 tion in rather straitened circumstances, and in a situation which 
 admitted of some alleviations. Twice they met after that long 
 lapse of time once her relation visited her in the splendour of 
 a rich old family-mansion, and once she crossed the country to 
 become an inmate of the humble dwelling of her early and only 
 remaining friend. What was this for? Was it to revive the 
 image of her youth in the pale and care-worn face of her friend ? 
 
 she unexpectedly recovered, and sent to have her things back again ; but not 
 one of them could she get, and she was left without a rag to her back, or a 
 friend to condole with her.
 
 ON WILL-MAKING, 57 
 
 Or was it to display the decay of her charms and recall her 
 long-forgotten triumphs to the memory of the only person who 
 could bear witness to them ? Was it to show the proud remains 
 of herself to those who remembered or had often heard what she 
 was her skin like shrivelled alabaster, her emaciated features 
 chiseled by nature's finest hand, her eyes that when a smile 
 lighted them up, still shone like diamonds, the vermilion hues 
 that still bloomed among wrinkles? Was it to talk of bone-lace, 
 of the flounces and brocades of the last century, of race-balls in 
 the year 1762, and of the scores of lovers that had died at her 
 feet, and to set whole counties in a flame again, only, with a 
 dream of faded beauty ? Whether it was for this, or whether 
 she meant to leave her friend any thing (as was indeed expected, 
 all things considered, not without reason) nobody knows for she 
 never breathed a syllable on the subject herself, and died without 
 a will. The accomplished coquet of twenty, who had pampered 
 hopes only to kill them, who had kindled rapture with a look and 
 extinguished it with a breath, could find no better employment at 
 seventy than to revive the fond recollections and raise up the 
 drooping hopes of her kinswoman, only to let them fall to rise 
 no more. Such is the delight we have in trifling with and tan- 
 talizing the feelings of others by the exquisite refinements, the 
 studied sleights of love or friendship ! 
 
 W T hen a property is actually bequeathed, supposing the cir- 
 cumstances of the case and the usages of society to leave a 
 practical discretion to the testator, it is most frequently in such 
 portions as can be of the least service. Where there is much 
 already, much is given ; where much is wanted, little or nothing. 
 Poverty invites a sort of pity, a miserable dole of assistance ; ne- 
 cessity is dismissed with neglect and scorn ; wealth attracts and 
 allures to itself more wealth, by natural association of ideas, or 
 by that innate love of inequality and injustice, which is the fa- 
 vourite principle of the imagination. Men like to collect money 
 into large heaps in their life-time : they like to leave it in 
 large heaps after they are dead. They grasp it into their own 
 hands, not to use it for their own good, but to hoard, to lock it 
 up, to make an object, an idol, and a wonder of it. Do you ex- 
 pect them to distribute it so as to do others good ; that they wil
 
 58 TABLE TALK. 
 
 like those who come after them better than themselves ; that if 
 they were willing to pinch and starve themselves, they will not 
 deliberately defraud their sworn friends and nearest kindred of 
 what would be of the utmost use to them ? No, they will thrust 
 their heaps of gold and silver into the hands of others (as their 
 proxies,) to keep for them untouched, still increasing, still of no 
 use to any one, but to pamper pride and avarice, to glitter in the 
 huge, watchful, insatiable eye of fancy, to be deposited as a new 
 offering at the shrine of Mammon, their God this is with them 
 to put it to its intelligible and proper use, this is fulfilling a sacred, 
 indispensable duty, this cheers them in the solitude of the grave, 
 and throws a gleam of satisfaction across the stony eye of death. 
 But to think of frittering it down, of sinking it in charity, of 
 throwing it away on the idle claims of humanity, where it would 
 no longer peer in monumental pomp over their heads ; and that 
 too when on the point of death themselves, in articulo mortis, oh ! 
 it would be madness, waste, extravagance, impiety ! Thus 
 worldlings feel and argue without knowing it ; and while they 
 fancy they are studying their own interest or that of some booby 
 successor, their alter idem, are but the dupes and puppets of a 
 favourite idea, a phantom, a prejudice, that must be kept up 
 somewhere (no matter where), if it still plays before and haunts 
 their imagination while they have sense or understanding left 
 to cling to their darling follies. 
 
 There was a remarkable instance of this tendency to the heap, 
 this desire to cultivate an abstract passion for wealth, in a will 
 of one of the Thellusons some time back. This will went to 
 keep the greater part of a large property from the use of the na- 
 tural heirs and next-of-kin for a length of time, and to let it ac- 
 cumulate at compound interest in such a way and so long, that 
 it would at last amount up in value to the purchase-money of a 
 whole county. The interest accruing from the funded property 
 or the rent of the lands at certain periods, was to be employed to 
 purchase other estates, other parks and manors in the neighbour- 
 hood or farther off, so that the prospect of the future demesne 
 that was to devolve at some distant time to the unborn lord of 
 acres, swelled and enlarged itself, like a sea, circle without cir- 
 cle, vista beyond vista, till the imagination was staggered, and
 
 ON WILL-MAKING. &9 
 
 the mind exhausted. Now here was a scheme for the accumula- 
 tion of wealth and for laying the foundation of family-aggrandise- 
 ment purely imaginary, romantic one might almost say, disin- 
 terested. The vagueness, the magnitude, the remoteness of the 
 object, the resolute sacrifice of all immediate and gross advan- 
 tages, clothe it with the privileges of an abstract idea, so that the 
 project has the air of a fiction or of a story in a novel. It was 
 an instance of what might be called posthumous avarice, like 
 the love of posthumous fame. It had little more to do with selfish- 
 ness than if the testator had appropriated the same sums in the 
 same way to build a pyramid, to construct an aqueduct, to en- 
 dow an hospital, or effect any other patriotic or merely fantastic 
 purpose. He wished to heap up a pile of wealth (millions of 
 acres) in the dim horizon of future years, that could be of no 
 use to him or to those with whom he was connected by positive 
 and persons ties, but as a crotchet of the brain, a gew-gaw of the 
 fancy.* Yet to enable himself to put this scheme in execution, 
 he had perhaps toiled and watched all his life, denied himself 
 rest, food, pleasure, liberty, society, and persevered with the pa- 
 tience and self-denial of a martyr. I have insisted on this point 
 the more, to show how much of the imaginary and speculative 
 there is interfused even in those passions and purposes which 
 have not the good of others for their object, and how little reason 
 this honest citizen and builder of castles jn the air would have 
 had to treat those who devoted themselves to the pursuit of fame, 
 to obloquy and persecution for the sake of truth and liberty, or 
 who sacrificed their lives for their country in a just cause, as 
 visionaries and enthusiasts, who did not understand what was 
 properly due to their own interest and the securing of the main- 
 chance. Man is not the creature of sense and selfishness, even 
 in those pursuits which grow up out of that origin, so much as o 
 imagination, custom, passion, whim, and humour. 
 
 I have heard of a singular instance of a will made by a person 
 who was addicted to a habit of lying. He was so notorious for 
 this propensity (not out of spite or cunning, but as a gratuitous 
 
 * The law of primogeniture has its origin in the principle here stated, the 
 desire of perpetuating some one palpable and prominent proof of wealth 
 and power.
 
 60 TABLE TALK. 
 
 exercise of invention), that from a child no one could ever be- 
 lieve a syllable he uttered. From the want of any dependence 
 to be placed on him, he became the jest and by-word of the 
 school where he was brought up. The last act of his life did not 
 uisgrace him. For having gone abroad, and falling into a 
 dangerous decline, he was advised to return home. He paid all 
 that he was worth for his passage, went on ship-board, and em- 
 ployed the few remaining days he had to live in making and ex- 
 ecuting his will ; in which he bequeathed large estates in differ- 
 ent parts of England, money in the funds, rich jewels, rings, and 
 all kinds of valuables, to his old friends and acquaintance, who 
 not knowing how far the force of nature could go, were not for 
 some time convinced that all this fairy wealth had never had an 
 existence any where but in the idle coinage of his brain, whose 
 whims and projects were no more ! The extreme keeping in this 
 character is only to be accounted for by supposing such an origi- 
 nal constitutional levity as made truth entirely indifferent to him, 
 and the serious importance attached to it by others an object of 
 perpetual sport and ridicule ! 
 
 The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the impor- 
 tunity of expectation. I do not so much find fault with this 
 when it is done as a punishment and oblique satire on servility 
 and selfishness. It is in that case Diamond cut Diamond a trial 
 of skill between the legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which 
 shall fool the other. The cringing toad-eater, the officious tale- 
 bearer, is perhaps well paid for years of obsequious attendance 
 with a bare mention and a mourning-ring ; nor can I think that 
 Gil Bias' library was not quite as much as the coxcombry of his 
 pretensions deserved. There are some admirable scenes in Ben 
 Jonson's Volpone, showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, and 
 the different .ways of putting him off with excuses and assurances 
 of not being forgotten. Yet it is hardly right, after all, to en- 
 courage this kind of pitiful, bare- faced intercourse without mean- 
 ing to pay for it ; as the coquet has no right to jilt the lovers she 
 lias trifled with. Flattery and submission are marketable com- 
 modities like any other, have their price, and ought scarcely to 
 be obtained under false pretences. If we see through and des- 
 pise the wretched creature that attempts to impose on our credu-
 
 ON WILL-MAKING. 61 
 
 lity, we can at any time dispense with his services : if we are 
 soothed by this mockery of respect and friendship, why not in- 
 demnify him like any other drudge, or as we satisfy the actor 
 who performs a part in a play by our particular desire ? But 
 often these premeditated disappointments are as unjust as they 
 are cruel, and are marked with circumstances of indignity, in 
 proportion to the worth of the object. The suspecting, the 
 taking it for granted that your name is down in a will, is sufficient 
 provocation to have it struck out : the hinting at an obligation, 
 the consciousness of it on the part of the testator, will make him 
 determined to avoid the formal acknowledgment of it, at any 
 expense. The disinheriting of relations is mostly for venial of- 
 fences, not for base actions : we punish out of pique, to revenge 
 some instance in which we have been disappointed of our wills, 
 some act of disobedience to what had no reasonable ground to go 
 upon : and we are obstinate in adhering to our resolution, as it 
 was sudden and rash, and doubly bent on asserting our authority 
 in what we have least right to interfere in. It is the wound in- 
 flicted upon our self-love, not the stain upon the character of the 
 thoughtless offender, that calls for condign punishment. Crimes, 
 vices, may go unchecked, or unnoticed : but it is the laughing at 
 our weaknesses, or thwarting our humours, that is never to be for- 
 gotten. It is not the errors of others, but our own miscalculations, 
 on which we wreak our lasting vengeance. It is ourselves that 
 we cannot forgive. In the will of Nicholas Gimcrack, the vir- 
 tuoso recorded in the Tatler, we learn, among other items, that his 
 eldest son is cut off with a single cockle-shell for his undutiful 
 behaviour in laughing at his little sister whom his father kept 
 preserved in spirits of wine. Another of his relations has a col- 
 lection of grasshoppers bequeathed him, as in the testator's opin- 
 ion an adequate reward and acknowledgment due to his merit. 
 The whole will of the said Nicholas Gimcrack, Esq., is a curious 
 document and exact picture of the mind of the worthy virtuoso 
 defunct,* where his various follies, littlenesses, and quaint 
 
 It is as follows : # 
 
 " The Will of a Virtuoso. 
 " 1, Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound Health of Mind, but in great
 
 62 TABLE TALK. 
 
 humours are set forth, as orderly and distinct as his butterflies 
 wings and cockle-shells and skeletons of fleas in glass-cases. 
 
 We often successfully try in this way to give the finishing 
 stroke to our pictures, hang up our weaknesses in perpetuity, 
 and embalm our mistakes in the memories of others. 
 
 " Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries, 
 Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." 
 
 I shall not speak here of unwarrantable commands imposed 
 upon survivors, by which they were to carry into effect the sul- 
 
 Wea&ness of Body, do by this my Last Will and Testament bequeath my 
 worldly Goods and Chattels in Manner following: 
 Imprimis, To my dear Wife, 
 
 One Box of Butterflies, 
 One Drawer of Shells, 
 A Female Skeleton, 
 A dried Cockatrice. 
 Item, To my Daughter Elizabeth, 
 
 My Receipt for preserving dead Caterpillars. 
 
 As also my Preparations of Winter May-Dew, and Embryo Pickle. 
 Item, To my little Daughter Fanny, 
 Three Crocodile's Eggs. 
 And upon the Birth of her first Child, if she marries with her Mother" 
 
 Consent, 
 The Nest of a Humming-Bird. 
 Item, To my eldest Brother, as an Acknowledgment for the Lands he has 
 vested in my Son Charles, I bequeath 
 My last Year's Collection of Grasshoppers. 
 Hem, To his Daughter Susanna, being his only Child, I bequeath my 
 English Weeds pasted on Royal Paper, 
 With my large Folio of Indian Cabbage. 
 
 Having fully provided for my Nephew Isaac, by making over to him, soma 
 Years since, 
 
 A Horned Scarabozus, 
 
 The Skin of a Rattle-Snake, and 
 
 The mummy of an Egyptian King, 
 I make no further Provision for him in this my Will. 
 
 My eldest Son John having spoken disrespectfully of his little Sister, whom 
 I keep by me in Spirits of Wine, and in many other Instances behaved 
 himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, and wholly cut off from any 
 Part of this my Personal,Estate, by giving him a single Cockle-Shell. 
 
 To my Second Son Charles, I give and bequeath all my Flowers, Plants, 
 Minerals, Mosses, Shells, Pebbles, Fossils, Beetles, Butterflies, Caterpillars,
 
 ON WILL-MAKING. 63 
 
 len and revengeful purposes of unprincipled men, after they had 
 breathed their last : but we meet with continual examples of the 
 desire to keep up the farce (if not the tragedy) of life, after we, 
 the performers in it, have quitted the stage, and to have our 
 parts rehearsed by proxy. We thus make a caprice immortal, 
 a peculiarity proverbial. Hence we see the number of legacies 
 and fortunes left, on condition that the legatee shall take the 
 name and style of the testator, by which device we provide for 
 the continuance of the sounds that formed our names and endow 
 them with an estate, that they may be repeated with proper re- 
 spect. In the Memoirs of an Heiress, all the difficulties of the 
 plot turn on the necessity imposed by a clause in her uncle's 
 will, that her future husband should take the family-name of 
 Beverley. Poor Cecilia ! What delicate perplexities she was 
 thrown into by this improvident provision; and with what minute, 
 endless, intricate distresses has the fair authoress been enabled 
 to harrow up the reader on this account ! There was a Sir 
 Thomas Dyot in the reign of Charles II., who left the whole 
 range of property which forms Dyot-street in St. Giles's and the 
 neighbourhood, on the sole and express condition that it should 
 be appropriated entirely to that sort of buildings, and to the re- 
 ception of that sort of population, which still keep undisputed, un- 
 divided possession of it. The name was changed the other day 
 to George-street, as a more genteel appellation, which, I should 
 think, is an indirect forfeiture of the estate. This Sir Thomas 
 Dyot I should be disposed to put upon the list of old English wor- 
 thies as humane, liberal, and no flincher from what he took in 
 his head. He was no common-place man in his line. He was 
 the best commentator on that old-fashioned text " The foxes 
 have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of 
 man hath not where to lay his head." We find some that are 
 curious in the mode in which they shall be buried, and others 
 
 Grasshoppers, and Vermin, not above specified: As also all my Monsters, 
 both wet and dry, making the said Charles whole and sole Executor of this 
 my Last Will and Testament, he paying or causing to be paid the aforesaid 
 Legacies within the Space of Six Months after my Decease. And I do 
 hereby revoke all other Wills whatsoever by me formerly made." Tatler, 
 Vol. IV., No. 216.
 
 64 TABLE TALK. 
 
 in the place. Lord Camelford had his remains buried under an 
 ash-tree that grew on one of the mountains in Switzerland ; and 
 Sir Francis Bourgeois had a little mausoleum built for him in the 
 College at Dulwich, where he once spent a pleasant, jovial day 
 with the Masters and Wardens.* It is, no doubt, proper to at- 
 tend, except for good reasons to the contrary, to these sort of re- 
 quests ; for by breaking faith with the dead, we loosen the confi- 
 dence of the living. Besides, there is a stronger argument : we 
 sympathise with the dead as well as with the living, and are bound 
 to them by the most sacred of all ties, our own involuntary fel- 
 low-feeling with others ! 
 
 Thieves, as a last donation, leave advice to their friends, phy- 
 sicians a nostrum, authors a manuscript work, rakes a confes- 
 sion of their faith in the virtue of the sex all, the last drivellings 
 of their egotism and impertinence. One might suppose that if any 
 thing could, 'the approach and contemplation of death might bring 
 men to a sense of reason and self-knowledge. On the contrary, 
 it seems only to deprive them of the little wit they had, and to 
 make them even more the sport of their wilfulness and short- 
 sightedness. Some men think that because they are going to be 
 hanged, they are fully authorized to declare a future state of re- 
 wards and punishments. All either indulge their caprices or 
 cling to their prejudices. They make a desperate attempt to es- 
 cape from reflection by taking hold of any whim or fancy that 
 crosses their minds, or by throwing themselves implicitly on old 
 habits and attachments. 
 
 An old man is twice a child : the dying man becomes the pro- 
 perty of his family. He has no choice left, and his voluntary 
 power is merged in old saws and prescriptive usages. The pro- 
 perty we have derived from our kindred reverts tacitly to them : 
 and not to let it take its course, is a sort of violence done to na- 
 ture as well as custom. The idea of property, of something in 
 common, does not mix cordially with friendship, but is insepara- 
 
 * Kellerman lately left his heart to be buried in the field of Valmy, where 
 the first great battle was fought in the year 1792, in which the Allies were re- 
 Dulsed. Oh ! might that heart prove the root from which the tree of Liberty 
 may spring up and flourish once more, as the basil-tree grew and grew from 
 the cherished head of Isabella's lover !
 
 Otf WILL-MAKING. j 
 
 ble from near relationship. We owe a return in kind, where we 
 feel no obligation for a favour ; and consign our possessions to 
 our next of kin as mechanically as we lean our heads on the pil- 
 low, and go out of the world in tl e same state of stupid amaze- 
 ment that we came into it 1
 
 66 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 
 On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin. 
 
 " And blind Orion hungry for the morn." Keats. 
 
 Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical Nimrod; 
 and is called by Homer, " a hunter of shadows, himself a shade." 
 he was the son of Neptune ; and having lost an eye in some af- 
 fray between the Gods and men, was told that if he would go to 
 meet the rising sun, he would recover his sight. He is repre- 
 sented setting out on his journey, with men on his shoulders to 
 guide him, a bow in his hand, and Diana in the clouds greeting 
 mm. He stalks along, a giant upon earth, and reels and falters 
 in his gait, as if just awaked out of sleep, or uncertain of his 
 way ; you see his blindness, though his back is turned. Mists 
 rise around him, and veil the sides of the green forests ; earth 
 is dank and fresh with dews, the " grey dawn and the Pleiades 
 betbre him dance," and in the distance are seen the blue hills 
 and sullen ocean. Nothing was ever more finely conceived or 
 done. The picture breathes the spirit of the morning ;_ its mois- 
 ture, its repose, its obscurity, wanting the miracle of light to kin- 
 dle it into smiles : the whole is, like the principal figure in it, " a 
 forerunner of the dawn." The same atmosphere tinges and im- 
 bues every object, the same dull light " shadowy sets off" the 
 face of nature : one feeling of vastness, of strangeness, and of 
 primeval forms, pervades the painter's canvas, and we are thrown 
 back upon the first integrity of things. 
 
 This great and- learned man might be said to see nature 
 through the glass of time ; he alone has a right to be considered 
 as the painter of classical antiquity. Sir Joshua has done him 
 justice in this respect. He could give to the scenery of his he- 
 roic fables the unimpaired look of original nature, full, solid, 
 large, luxuriant, teeming with life and power ; or deck it with
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN. 67 
 
 all the pomp of art, with temples and towers, and mythologic 
 groves. His pictures " denote a foregone conclusion." He ap- 
 plies nature to his purposes, works out her images according to 
 the standard of his thoughts, embodies high fictions ; and the first 
 conception being given, all the rest seems to grow out of, and be 
 assimilated to it, by the unfailing process of a studious imagina- 
 tion. Like his own Orion, he overlooks the surrounding scene, 
 appears to " take up the isles as a very little thing, and to lay 
 the earth in a balance." With a laborious and mighty grasp, 
 he put nature into the mould of the ideal and antique ; and was 
 among painters (more than any one else) what Milton was among 
 poets. There is in both something of the same pedantry, the 
 same stiffness, the same elevation, the same grandeur, the same 
 mixture of art and nature, the same richness of borrowed mate- 
 rials, the same unity of character. Neither the poet nor the 
 painter lowered the subjects they treated, but filled up the outline 
 in the fancy, and added strength and prominence to it ; and thus 
 not only satisfied, but surpassed the expectations of the spectator 
 and the reader. This should be held for the triumph and the 
 perfection of works of art. To give us nature, such as we see 
 it, is well and deserving of praise ; to give us nature such as we 
 have never seen, but have often wished to see it, is better, and 
 deserving of higher praise. He who can show the world in its 
 first naked glory, with the hues of fancy spread over it, or in its 
 high and palmy state, with the gravity of history stamped on the 
 proud monuments of vanished empire, who, by his " so potent 
 art," can recall time past, transport us to distant places, and 
 join the regions of imagination (a new conquest) to those of re- 
 ality, who teaches us not only what nature is, but what she has 
 been, and is capable of being, he who does this, and does it 
 with simplicity, with truth, and grandeur, is lord of nature and 
 her powers ; and his mind is universal, and his art the master- 
 art ! 
 
 There is nothing in this " more than natural," if criticism 
 could be persuaded to think so. The historic painter does not 
 neglect or contravene nature, but follows her more closely up 
 into her fantastic heights, or hidden recesses. He demonstrates 
 what she "would be in conceivable circumstances, and under im-
 
 68 TABLE TALK. 
 
 plied conditions. He " gives to airy nothing a local habitation," 
 not " a name." At his touch j words start up into images, 
 thoughts become things. He clothes a dream, a phantom with 
 form and colour, and the wholesome attributes of reality. His 
 art is a second nature ; not a different one. There are those, in- 
 deed, who think that not to copy nature, is the rule for attaining 
 perfection. Because they cannot paint the objects which they 
 have seen, they fancy themselves qualified to paint the ideas 
 which they have not seen. But it is possible to fail in this latter 
 and more difficult style of imitation, as well as in the former 
 humbler one. The detection, it is true, is not so easy, because 
 the objects are not so nigh at hand to compare ; and therefore 
 there is more room both for false pretension and for self-deceit. 
 They take an epic motto or subject, and conclude that the spirit 
 is implied as a thing of course. They paint inferior portraits, 
 maudlin lifeless faces, without ordinary expression, or one look, 
 feature, or particle of nature in them, and think that this is to 
 rise to the truth of history. They vulgarise and degrade what- 
 ever is interesting or sacred to the mind, and suppose that they 
 thus add to the dignity of their profession. They represent a 
 face that seems as if no thought or feeling of any kind had ever 
 passed through it, and would have you believe that this is the 
 very sublime of expression, such as it would appear in heroes, or 
 demi-gods of old, when rapture or agony was carried to its 
 height. They show you a landscape that looks as if the sun 
 never shone upon it, and tell you that it is not modern that so 
 earth looked when Titan first kissed it with his rays. This is 
 not the true ideal. It is not to fill the moulds of the imagination, 
 but to deface and injure them : it is not to come up to, but to fall 
 short of the poorest conception in the public mind. Such pic. 
 tures should not be hung in the same room with that of Orion.* 
 
 * Every thing tends to show the manner in which a great artist is formed 
 If any person could claim an exemption from the careful imitation of individ- 
 ual objects, it was Nicolas Poussin. He studied the antique, but he also 
 studied nature. " I have often admired," says Vignuel de Marville, who 
 knew him at a late period of his life, " the love he had for his art. Old as he 
 was, I frequently saw him among the ruins of ancient Rome, out in the Cam- 
 pagna, or along the banks of the Tiber, sketching a scene that had pleased 
 him ; and I often met him with his handkerchief full of stones, moss, or flow-
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OP NICOLAS POUSSIN. 69 
 
 Poussin was, of all painters, the most poetical. He was the 
 painter of ideas. No one ever told a story half so well ; nor so 
 well knew what was capable of being told by the pencil. He 
 seized on, and struck off with grace and precision, just that point 
 of view which would be likely to catch the reader's fancy. 
 There is a significance, a consciousness in whatever he does 
 (sometimes a vice, but oftener a virtue) beyond any other paint- 
 er. His Giants sitting on the tops of craggy mountains, as huge 
 themselves, and playing idly on their Pan's-pipes, seem to have 
 been seated there these three thousand years, and to know the 
 beginning and the end of their own story. An infant Bacchus 
 or Jupiter is big with his future destiny. Even inanimate and 
 dumb things speak a language of their own. His snakes, the 
 messengers of fate, are inspired with human intellect. His trees 
 grow and expand their leaves in the air, glad ojf the rain, proud 
 of the sun, awake to the winds of heaven. In his Plague of 
 Athens, the very buildings seem stiff with horror. His picture 
 of the Deluge is, perhaps, the finest historical landscape in the 
 world. You see a waste of waters, wide, interminable : the sun 
 is labouring, wan and weary, up the sky ; the clouds, dull and 
 leaden, lie like a load upon the eye, and heaven and earth seem 
 commingling into one confused mass ! His human figures are 
 sometimes " o'er-informed " with this kind of feeling. Their ac- 
 tions have too much gesticulation, and the set expression of the 
 features borders too much on the mechanical and caricatured 
 style. In this respect, they form a contrast to Raphael's, whose 
 
 ers, which he carried home, that he might copy them exactly from nature. 
 One day I asked him how he had attained to such a degree of perfection, as to 
 have gained so high a rank among the great painters of Italy 1 He answered, 
 I have neglected nothing." See his Life lately published. It appears from 
 this account that he had not fallen into a recent error, that Nature puts the 
 man of genius out. As a contrast to the foregoing description, I might men- 
 tion, that I remember an old gentleman once asking Mr. West in the Bri- 
 tish Gallery, if he had ever been in Athens'? To which the president made 
 answer, No ; nor did he feel any great desire to go ; for that he thought he had 
 as good an idea of the place from the Catalogue, as he could get by living 
 there for any number of years. "What would he have said, if any one had told 
 him, he could get as good an idea of the subject of one of his great works from 
 reading the catalogue of it, as from seeing the picture itse!f ! Yet the answer 
 was characteristic of the genius of the painter.
 
 70 TABLE TALK. 
 
 figures never appear to be sitting for their pictures, or to be coil' 
 scious of a spectator, or to have come from the painter's hand. 
 In Nicolas Poussin, on the contrary, every thing seems to have 
 a distinct understanding with the artist : " the very stones, prate 
 of their whereabout :" each object has its pai*t and place as- 
 signed, and is in a sort of compact with the rest of the picture. 
 It is this conscious keeping, and, as it were, internal design, that 
 gives their peculiar character to the works of our artist. There 
 was a picture of Aurora in the British Gallery a year or two 
 ago. It was a suffusion of golden light. The Goddess wore her 
 saffron-coloured robes, and appeared just risen from the gloomy 
 bed of old Tithonus. Her very steeds, milk-white, were tinged 
 with the yellow dawn. It was a personification of the morning. 
 Poussin succeeded better in his classic than in his sacred sub- 
 jects. The latter, are comparatively heavy, forced, full of vio- 
 lent contrasts of colour, of red, blue, and black, and without the 
 true prophetic inspiration of the characters. But in his Pagan 
 allegories and fables he was quite at home. The native gravity 
 and native levity of the Frenchman were combined with Italian 
 scenery and an antique gusto, and gave even to his colouring an 
 air of learned indifference. He wants, in one respect, grace, 
 form, expression ; but he has everywhere sense and meaning, 
 perfect costume and propriety. His personages always belong 
 to the class and time represented, and are strictly versed in the 
 business in hand. His grotesque compositions in particular, his 
 Nymphs and Fauns, are superior (at least, as far as style is con- 
 cerned) even to those of Rubens. They are taken more imme- 
 diately out of fabulous history. Rubens's Satyrs and Bacchantes 
 have a more jovial and voluptuous aspect, are more drunk with 
 pleasure, more full of animal spirits and riotous impulses ; thev 
 laugh and bound along 
 
 " Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring :" 
 
 but those of Poussin have more of the intellectual part of the 
 cnaracter, and seem vicious on reflection, and of set purpose. 
 Rubens's are noble specimens of a class ; Poussin's are allegori- 
 cal abstractions of the same class, with bodies less pampered, but 
 with minds more secretly depraved. The Bacchanalian groups
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN. 71 
 
 of the Flemish painter were, however, his master-pieces in com- 
 position. Witness those prodigies of colour, character, and ex- 
 pression at Blenheim. In the more chaste and refined delineation 
 of classic fable, Poussin was without a rival. Rubens, who was 
 a match for him in the wild and picturesque, could not pretend 
 to vie with the elegance and purity of thought in his picture of 
 Apollo giving a poet a cup of water to drink, nor with the grace- 
 fulness of design in the figure of a Nymph squeezing the juice of 
 a bunch of grapes from her fingers (a rosy wine-press) which 
 falls into the mouth of a chubby infant below. But, above all, 
 who shall celebrate, in terms of fit praise, his picture of the shep- 
 herds in the vale of Tempe going out in a fine morning of the 
 spring, and coming to a tomb with this inscription : Et ego in 
 Arcadia vixi ! The eager curiosity of some, the expression of 
 others who start back with fear and surprise, the clear breeze 
 playing with the branches of the shadowing trees, " the valleys 
 low, where the mild zephyrs use," the distant, uninterrupted, 
 sunny prospects speak (and forever will speak on) of ages past 
 to ages yet to come !* 
 
 Pictures are a set of chosen images, a succession of pleasant 
 thoughts passing through the mind. It is a luxury to have the 
 walls of our rooms hung round with them ; and no less so to have 
 such a gallery in the mind, to con over the relics of ancient art 
 bound up " within the book and volume of the brain, unmixed (if 
 it were possible) with baser matter !" A life spent among pic- 
 tures, in the study and the love of art, is a happy noiseless dream : 
 or rather, it is to dream and to be awake at the same time ; for it 
 has all " the sober certainty of waking bliss," with the romantic 
 voluptuousness of a visionary and abstracted being. They are 
 the bright consummate essences of things, and we may say that he 
 
 " Who of these delights can judge and knows 
 To interpose them oft, is not unwise." 
 
 The Orion, which I have here taken occasion to descant upon, 
 is one of a collection of excellent pictures, as this collection is 
 
 Poussin nas repeated this subject more than once, and appears to have 
 revelled in its witcheries. I have before alluded to it.
 
 T3 TABLE TALK. 
 
 itself one of a series from the Old Masters, which have for some 
 years past embrowned the walls of the British Gallery, and en- 
 riched the public eye. What hues (those of nature mellowed by 
 time) breathe around, as we enter ! What forms are there, woven 
 into the memory ! What looks, which only the answering looks 
 of the spectator can express ! What intellectual stores have been 
 yearly poured forth from the shrine of ancient art ! The works 
 are various, but the names the same heaps of Rembrandts 
 frowning from the darkened walls, Rubens's glad gorgeous 
 groups, Titian's more rich and rare, Claude's always exquisite, 
 sometimes beyond compare, Guido's endless cloying sweetness, 
 the learning of Poussin and the Caracci, and Raphael's princely 
 magnificence, crowning all. We read certain letters and syl- 
 lables in the Catalogue, and at the well-known magic sound, a 
 miracle of skill and beauty starts to view. It might be thought 
 that one year's prodigal display of such perfection would exhaust 
 the labours of one man's life ; but the next year, and the next to 
 that, we find another harvest reaped and gathered in to the great 
 garner of art, by the same immortal hands 
 
 " Old Genius the porter of them was ; 
 He letteth in, he letteth out to wend." 
 
 Their works seem endless as their reputation to be many, as 
 they are complete to multiply with the desire of the mind to see 
 more and more of them ; as if there were a living power in the 
 breath of fame, and in the very names of the great heirs of glory 
 " there were propagation too !" It is something to have a collec- 
 tion of this sort to count upon once a year ; to have one last, 
 lingering look yet to come. Pictures are scattered " like stray- 
 gifts through the world ;" and while they remain, earth has yet 
 a little gilding left, not quite rubbed off, dishonoured, and de- 
 faced. There are plenty of standard works still to be found in 
 this country, in the collections at Blenheim, at Burleigh, and in 
 those belonging to Mr. Angerstein, Lord Grosvenor, the Marquis 
 of Stafford, and others, to keep up this treat to the lovers of art 
 foi many years : and it is the more desirable to reserve a privi- 
 leged sanctuary of this sort, where the eye mav dote, and the
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN. 12 
 
 heart take its fill of such pictures as Poussin's Orion, since the 
 Louvre is stripped of its triumphant spoils, and since he whr 
 collected it, and wore it as a rich jewel in his Iron Crown, the 
 hunter of greatness and glory, is himself a shade 1 
 
 4
 
 74 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAT YIII. 
 
 On Going a Journey. 
 
 One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey , 
 but 1 like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room ; but 
 out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I arc ih^n never 
 less alone than when alone. 
 
 " The fields his study, nature was his book." 
 
 I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. 
 When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country. 
 I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out 
 of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There 
 are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry 
 the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room, and fewer 
 incumbrances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for 
 the sake of solitude ; nor do I ask for 
 
 " a friend in my retreat, 
 
 Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet." 
 
 The soul of a journey is liberty ; perfect liberty, to think, feel, 
 do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all 
 impediments and of all inconveniences ; to leave ourselves be- 
 hind, much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a 
 little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Con- 
 templation 
 
 " May plume her feathers and let grow her wings, 
 
 Thai in the various bustle of resort 
 
 Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd," 
 
 that 1 absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 15 
 
 a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a 
 post-chaise or in a tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary 
 the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with 
 impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and 
 the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a 
 three hours' march to dinner and then to thinking ! It is hard 
 if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh 5 I run, 
 I leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud, I 
 plunge into my past being, and revel there, as the sun-burnt In- 
 dian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native 
 shore. Then long-forgotten things, like "sunken wrack and 
 sumless treasuries," burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to 
 feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, 
 broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that 
 undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence. 
 No one likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analy- 
 sis, better than I do ; but I sometimes had rather be without them. 
 " Leave, oh, leave me to my repose !" I have just now other 
 business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me 
 "the very stuff of the conscience." Is not this wild rose sweet 
 without a comment ? Does not this daisy leap to my heart, set 
 in its coat of emerald ? Yet if I were to explain to you the cir- 
 cumstance that has so endeared it to me, you would only smile. 
 Had I not better then keep it to myself, and let it serve me to 
 brood over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence 
 onward to the far-distant horizon ? I should be but bad company 
 all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard it 
 said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on 
 by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this looks like a 
 breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all 
 the time that you ought to rejoin your party. " Out upon such 
 half-faced fellowship," say I. I like to be either entirely to my- 
 self, or entirely at the disposal of others ; to talk or be silent, to 
 walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with 
 an observation of Mr. Cobbett's, that " he thought it a bad French 
 custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an English- 
 man ought to do only one thing at a time." So I cannot talk 
 and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversa-
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 tion by fits and starts. " Let me have a companion of my way," 
 says Sterne, " were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen 
 as the sun goes down." It is beautifully said : but in my opinion, 
 this continually comparing of notes interferes with the involun- 
 tary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment. 
 Tf you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is in- 
 sipid : if you have to. explain it, it is making a toil of pleasure. 
 You cannot read the book of nature, without being perpetually 
 put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others. I am 
 for the synthetical method on a journey, in preference to the ana- 
 lytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to ex- 
 amine and anatomize them afterwards. I want to see my vague 
 notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and 
 not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of contro- 
 versy. For once, I like to have it all my own way ; and this is 
 impossible, unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not 
 covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any one for 
 twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you re- 
 mark the scent of a bean-field in crossing the road, perhaps your 
 fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object, 
 perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his glass to look 
 at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the colour of a 
 cloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are un- 
 prepared to account for. There is then no sympathy, but an 
 uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you 
 on the way, and in the end probably produces ill humour. Now 
 I never quarrel with myself, and take all my own conclusions for 
 granted till I find it necessary to defend them against objections. 
 It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and 
 circumstances that present themselves before you they may re- 
 call a number of ideas, and lead to associations too delicate and 
 refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love 
 to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can 
 escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our- feelings 
 before company, seems extravagance or affectation ; on the other 
 hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, 
 and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end 
 is not answered), is a task to which few are competent. We must
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. H 
 
 "give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend Cole- 
 ridge, however, could do both. He could go on in the most de- 
 lightful explanatory way over hill and dale, a summer's day, and 
 convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. 
 " He talked far above singing." If I could so clothe my ideas in 
 sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have some 
 one with me to admire the swelling theme ; or I could be more 
 content, were it possible for me still to hear his echoing voice in 
 the woods of All-Foxden. They had " that fine madness in them 
 which our first poets had ; and if they could have been caught 
 by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains as 
 the following : 
 
 " Here be woods as green 
 
 As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet 
 As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet 
 Face of the curled stream, with flow'rs as many 
 As the young spring gives, and as choice as any ; 
 Here be all new delights, cool streams, and wells, 
 Arbours o'ergrown with woodbine, caves and dells; 
 Choose where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing 
 Or gather rushes to make many a ring 
 For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love, 
 How the pale Phccbe, hunting in a grove, 
 First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
 She took eternal fire that never dies ; 
 How she convey'd him softly in a sleep, 
 His temples bound with poppy, to the steep 
 Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, 
 Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, 
 
 To kiss her sweetest" 
 
 Faithful Shepherdess. 
 
 Had I words and images at command like these, I would at- 
 tempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges 
 in the evening clouds : but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor 
 as it is, droops and closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset. 
 I can make nothing out on the spot : 1 must have time to collect 
 myself. 
 
 In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects : it 
 
 should be reserved for Table-talk. L is for this reason, I 
 
 take it, the worst company in the world out of doors ; because he
 
 78 TABLE TALK. 
 
 is the best within. I grant, there is one subject on which it is 
 pleasant to talk on a journey : and that is, what one shall have 
 for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open air im- 
 proves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting 
 a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the 
 flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is 
 tc enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at the approach 
 of night-fall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights 
 streaming through the surrounding gloom ; and then after in- 
 quiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to " take 
 one's ease at one's inn !" These eventful moments in our lives 
 are in fact too precious, too full of solid, heart- felt happiness to 
 be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would 
 have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop : they 
 will do to talk of or to write about afterwards. What a delicate 
 speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea, 
 
 " The cups that cheer, but not inebriate," 
 
 and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering 
 what we shall have for supper eggs and a rasher, a rabbit 
 smothered in onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet ! Sancho in 
 such a situation once fixed upon cow-heel ; and his choice, though 
 he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then, in the in- 
 tervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch 
 the preparation and the stir in the kitchen Procul, O procul este 
 prof anil These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be 
 treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling 
 thoughts hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk ; or if I 
 must have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather 
 it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger takes his hue 
 and character from the time and place ; he is a part of the fur- 
 niture and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from the 
 West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not even 
 try to sympathize with him, and he breaks no squares. I associ- 
 ate nothing with my travelling companion but present objects and 
 passing events. In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a 
 manner forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, 
 rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the scene.
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 
 
 He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary 
 character. Something is dropped in the course of conversation 
 that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits ; or from having 
 some one with you that knows the less sublime portions of your 
 history, it seems that other people do. You are no longer a 
 citizen of the world : but your " unhoused free condition is put 
 into circumscription and confine." The incognito of an inn is 
 one of its striking privileges " lord of one's-self, uncumber'd 
 with a name." Oh ! it is great to shake off the trammels of the 
 world and of public opinion to lose our importunate, tormenting, 
 everlasting personal identity in the elements of nature, and become 
 the creature of the moment, clear of all ties to hold to the 
 universe only by a dish of sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but 
 the score of the evening and no longer seeking for applause and 
 meeting with contempt, to be known by no other title than the 
 Gentleman in the parlour ! One may take one's choice of all 
 characters in this romantic state of uncertainty as to one's real 
 pretensions, and become indefinitely respectable and negatively 
 right- worshipful. We baffle prejudice and disappoint conjecture ; 
 and from being so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity and 
 wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed 
 common-places that we appear in the world : an inn restores us 
 to the level of nature, and quits scores with society ! I have 
 certainly spent some enviable hours at inns sometimes when I 
 nave been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some 
 metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-Common, where I found 
 out the proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas 
 at other times, when there have been pictures in the room, 
 as at St. Neot's (I think it was,) where I first met with Gribelin's 
 engravings of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once ; and at. 
 a little inn on the borders of Wales, where there happened to be 
 nanging some of Westall's drawings, which I compared triumph- 
 antly (for a theory that I had, not for the admired artist) with the 
 figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up 
 ;'n the boat between me and the fading twilight at other times I 
 might mention luxuriating in books with a peculiar interest in 
 this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul 
 and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after
 
 80 TABLE TALK. 
 
 being drenched in the rain all day ; and at the same place I got 
 through two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was 
 n the tenth of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the 
 New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and 
 a cold chicken. The letter I chose was St. Preux's description 
 of his feelings as he first caught a glimpse from the heights of the 
 Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which I had brought with me as a 
 bonne louche to crown the evening with. It was my birth-day 
 and I had for the first time come from a place in the neighbour- 
 hood to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llangollen turns 
 off between Chirk and Wrexham ; and on passing a certain 
 point, you come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an 
 amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either 
 side, with " green upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks" 
 below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst 
 of them. The valley at this time " glittered green with sunny 
 showers," and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in 
 the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along 
 the high road that commanded the delicious prospect, repeating 
 the lines which I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's poems ! 
 But besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another 
 also opened to my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which 
 were written, in letters large as Hope could make them, these 
 four words, Liberty, Genius, Love, Virtue ; which have since 
 faded into the light of common day, or mock my idle gaze. 
 
 " The beautiful is vanished, and returns not." 
 
 Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot ; 
 but I would return to it alone. What other self could I find to 
 share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the traces 
 of which I could hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they 
 been broken and defaced ! I could stand on some tall rock, and 
 overlook the precipice of years that separates me from what I 
 then was. I was at that time going shortly to visit the poet 
 whom I have above named. Where is he now ? Not only I 
 myself have changed the world, which was then new to me, 
 has become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in 
 thought, O sylvan Dee, as then thou wert in joy, in youth and
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 81 
 
 gladness ; and thou shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, 
 where I will drink of the waters of life freely ! 
 
 There is hardly any thing that shows the short-sightedness .r 
 capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. 
 With change of place we change our ideas, nay, our opinions 
 and feelings. We can by an effort indeed transport ourselves to 
 old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind 
 revives again ; but we forget those that we have just left. It 
 seems that we can think but of one place at a time. The canvas 
 of the fancy has only a certain extent, and if we paint one set 
 of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. We 
 cannot enlarge our conceptions ; we only shift our point of view. 
 The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye ; we take 
 our fill of it ; and seem as if we could form no other image of 
 beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of it : the 
 horizon that shuts it from our sight also blots it from our me- 
 mory, like a dream. In travelling through a wild barren coun- 
 try, I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one. It ap- 
 pears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I see of 
 it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we despise the 
 country-. " Beyond Hyde Park," says Sir Fopling Flutter, " all 
 is a desert." All that part of the map that we do not see before 
 us is a blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much big- 
 ger than a nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another, 
 county joined to county, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, mak- 
 ing an image voluminous and vast ; the mind can form no 
 larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single glance. 
 The rest is a name written on a map, a calculation of arithme- 
 tic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immense 
 mass of territory and population, known by the name of China 
 to us 1 An inch of paste-board on a wooden globe, of no more 
 account than a China orange ! Things near us are seen of the 
 size of life : things at a distance are diminished to the size of 
 the understanding. We measure the universe by ourselves, and 
 even comprehend the texture of our own being only piece-meai. 
 In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and 
 places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a 
 great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One 
 6
 
 89 TABLE TALK. 
 
 idea recalls another, but it at the same time excludes all others. 
 In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot as it were unfold 
 the whole web of our existence ; we must pick out the single 
 threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived 
 and with which we have intimate associations, every one must 
 have found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we ap- 
 proach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impres- 
 sion : we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, 
 names, that we had not thought of for years ; but for the time 
 all the rest of the world is forgotten ! To return to the question 
 I have quitted above. 
 
 I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in 
 company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for 
 the former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, and 
 will bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but 
 communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism ; 
 but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, 
 and philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, the 
 first consideration always is where we shall go : in taking a so- 
 litary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the 
 way. The mind then is " its own place ;" nor are we anxious 
 to arrive at the end of our journey. I can myself do the hon- 
 ours indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once 
 took a party to Oxford with no mean iclat showed them that 
 seat of the Muses at a distance, 
 
 " With glittering spires and pinnacles adorn'd" 
 
 descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quad- 
 rangle and stone-walls of halls and colleges was at home in the 
 Bodleian ; and at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Cice- 
 roni that attended us, and that pointed in vain with his wand to 
 common-place beauties in matchless pictures. As another ex- 
 ception to the above reasoning, I should not feel confident in 
 venturing on a journey in a foreign country without a com- 
 panion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of my own 
 language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an 
 Englishman to foreign manners and notions, that requires the 
 assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. 83 
 
 from home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, 
 becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would almost feel 
 stifled to find himself in the deserts of Arabia without friends and 
 countrymen : there must be allowed to be something in the view 
 of Athens or old Rome, that claims the utterance of speech ; and 
 I own that the Pyramids are too mighty for any single contem- 
 plation. In such situations, so opposite to all one's ordinary 
 train of ideas, one seems a species by one's-self, a limb torn off 
 from society, unless one can mpet with instant fellowship and 
 support. Yet I did not feel thfs want or craving very pressing 
 once, when I first set rny foot on the laughing shores of France. 
 Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The confused, 
 busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into my 
 ears ; nor did the mariners' hymn, which was sung from the top 
 of an old crazy vessel in the harbour as the sun went down, send 
 an alien sound into my soul. I breathed the air of general hu- 
 manity. I walked over " the vine-covered hills and gay regions 
 of France," erect and satisfied ; for the image of man was not 
 cast down and chained to the foot of arbitrary thrones. I was at 
 no loss for language, for that of all the great schools of painting 
 was open to me. The whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures, 
 heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled : nothing remains but the 
 Bourbons and the French people ! There is undoubtedly a sen- 
 sation in travelling into foreign parts that is to be had nowhere 
 else : but it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. It is too 
 remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic of 
 discourse or reference ; and, like a dream or another state of ex- 
 istence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an ani- 
 mated but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to 
 exchange our actual for our ideal identity ; and to feel the pulse 
 of our old transports revive very keenly, we must " jump" all our 
 present comforts and connections. Our romantic and itineran 
 character is not to be domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how 
 little foreign travel added to the facilities of conversation in those 
 who had been abroad. In fact, the time we have spent there is 
 both delightful and in one sense instructive ; but it appears to be 
 cut out of our substantial, downright existence, and never to join 
 kindly on to it. We are not the same, but another, and perhaps
 
 84 TABLE TALK. 
 
 more enviable individual, all the time we are out of our own 
 country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as to our friends. 
 So the poet somewhat quaintly sings, 
 
 " Out of my country and myself I go." 
 
 Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent 
 themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them : 
 but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave 
 us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the 
 whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere bor 
 sow another life to spend afterwards at home.
 
 WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE. 85 
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 Why Distant Objects Please. 
 
 Distant objects please, because, in the first place, they imply au 
 idea of space and magnitude, and because, not being obtruded 
 too close upon the eye, we clothe them with the indistinct and 
 airy colours of fancy. In looking at the misty mountain-tops 
 that bound the horizon, the mind is, as it were, conscious of all 
 vhe conceivable objects and interests that lie between ; we ima- 
 gine all sorts of adventures in the interim ; strain our hopes and 
 wishes to reach the.air-drawn circle, or to " descry new lands, 
 rivers, and mountains," stretching far beyond it : our feelings 
 carried out of themselves lose their grossness and their husk, are 
 rarefied, expanded, melt into softness and brighten into beauty, 
 turning to " ethereal mould, sky-tinctured." We drink the air 
 before us, and borrow a more refined existence from objects that 
 hover on the brink of nothing. Where the landscape fades from 
 the dull sight, we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of un- 
 known good, and tinge the hazy prospect with hopes and wishes 
 and more charming fears. 
 
 " But thou, oh Hope ! with eyes so fair, 
 
 What was thy delighted measure 1 
 
 Still it whisper'd promised pleasure, 
 
 And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail !" 
 
 Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, 
 whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its 
 leisure ; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, 
 passion claims for its own, and, brooding over it with wings out- 
 spread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of in 
 finite space, and distant objects please because they border on its 
 nfines, and are moulded by its touch. When I was a boy, I
 
 66 TABLE TALK. 
 
 lived within sight of a range of lofty hills, whose blue tops 
 blending with the setting sun had often tempted my longing eyes 
 and wandering feet. At last I put my project in execution, and 
 on a nearer approach, instead of glimmering air woven into fan- 
 tastic shapes, found them huge lumpish heaps of discoloured 
 earth. I learned from this (in part) to leave " Yarrow unvisit- 
 ed," and not idly to disturb a dream of good. 
 
 Distance of time has much the same effect as distance of 
 place. It is not surprising that fancy colours the prospect of 
 the future (as it thinks good,) when it even effaces the forms of 
 memory. Time takes out the sting of pain ; our sorrows after 
 a certain period have been so often steeped in a medium of 
 thought and passion, that they " unniould their essence;" and all 
 that remains of our original impressions is what we would wish 
 them to have been. Not only the untried steep ascent before us, 
 but the rude, unsightly masses of our past experience presently 
 resume their power of deception over the eye : the golden cloud 
 soon rests upon their heads, and the purple light of fancy clothes 
 their barren sides. Thus we pass on, while both ends of our ex- 
 istence touch upon Heaven ! There is (so to speak) " a mighty 
 stream of tendency" to good in the human mind, upon which all 
 objects float and are imperceptibly borne along : and though in 
 the voyage of life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks and 
 quicksands, yet there is " a tide in the affairs of men," a heav- 
 ing and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of which, 
 " with sails and tackle torn," the wreck and scattered fragments 
 of our entire being drift into the port and haven of our desires ! 
 In all that relates to the affections, we put the will for the deed : 
 the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is re- 
 moved, the mind recoils from their grasp*, recovers its elasticity, 
 and re-unites itself to that image of good, which is but a reflec- 
 tion and configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, 
 in the long perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, 
 enlarged and enriched by countless recollections, become inter- 
 esting ; the most painful, broken and softened by time, soothe. 
 How any object, that unexpectedly brings back to us old scenes 
 and associations, startles the mind ! What a yearning it creates 
 within us ; what a longing to leap the intermediate space ! How
 
 WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 87 
 
 fondly we cling to, and try to revive the impression of all that we 
 once were ! 
 
 " Such tricks hath strong Imagination !" 
 
 In truth, we impose upon ourselves, and know not what we wish 
 It is a cunning artifice, a quaint delusion, by which, in pretend- 
 ing to be what wd were at a particular moment of time, we would 
 fain be all that we have since been, and have our lives to come 
 over again. It is not the little, glimmering, almost annihilated 
 speck in the distance, that rivets our attention and " hangs upon 
 the beatings of our hearts :" it is the interval that separates us 
 from it, and of which it is the trembling boundary, that excites 
 all this coil and mighty pudder in the breast. Into that great 
 gap in our being " come thronging soft desires" and infinite re- 
 grets. It is the contrast, the change from what we then were, 
 that arms the half-extinguished recollection with its giant- 
 strength, and lifts the fabric of the affections from its shadowy 
 base. In contemplating its utmost verge, we overlook the map 
 of our existence, and retread, in apprehension, the journey of 
 life. So it is that in early youth we strain our eager sight after 
 tne pursuits of manhood ; and, as we are sliding off the stage, 
 strive to gather up the toys and flowers that pleased our thought- 
 less childhood. 
 
 When I was quite a boy, my father used to take me to the 
 Montpelier Tea-gardens at Walworth. Do I go there now ? 
 No ; the place is deserted, and its borders and its beds o'er- 
 turned. Is there, then, nothing that can 
 
 " Bring back the hour 
 Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower 1" 
 
 Oh ! yes. I unlock the casket of memory, and draw back the 
 warders of the brain ; and there this scene of my infant wan- 
 derings still lives unfaded, or with fresher dyes. A new sense 
 comes upon me, as in a dream ; a richer perfume, brighter 
 colours start out; my eyes dazzle; my heart heaves with its 
 new load of bliss, and I am a child again. My sensations are 
 all glossy, spruce, voluptuous, and fine : they wear a candied 
 coat, and are in holiday trim. I see the beds of larkspur with
 
 88 TABLE TALK. 
 
 purple eyes ; tall hollyhocks, red and yellow ; the broad sun- 
 flowers, caked in gold, with bees buzzing round them ; wilder. 
 nesses of pinks, and hot-glowing pionies ; poppies run to seed ; 
 the sugared lily, and faint mignonette, all ranged in order, and as 
 thick as they can grow ; the box-tree borders ; the gravel-walks, 
 the painted alcove, the confectionary, the clotted cream : I think 
 I see them now with sparkling looks ; or have they vanished 
 while I have been writing this description of them ? No mat- 
 ter ; they will return again when I least think of them. All 
 that I have observed since, of flowers and plants, and grass-plots, 
 and of suburb delights, seems, to me, borrowed from " that first 
 garden of my innocence" to be slips and scions stolen from 
 that bed of memory. In this manner the darlings of our child- 
 hood burnish out in the eye of after-years, and derive their sweet- 
 est perfume from the first heart-felt sigh of pleasure breathed 
 upon them, 
 
 " like the sweet south, 
 
 That b.-eathes upon a bank of violets, 
 Stealing and giving odour !" 
 
 If I have pleasure in a flower-garden, I have in a kitchen-garden 
 too, and for the same reason. If I see a row of cabbage-plants 
 or of peas or beans coming up, I immediately think of those 
 
 which I used so carefully to water of an evening at W m, 
 
 when my days' tasks were done, and of the pain with which I 
 saw them droop and hang down their leaves in the morning's 
 sun. Again, I never see a child's kite in the air, but it seems to 
 pull at my heart. It is to me " a thing of life." I feel the 
 twinge at my elbow, the flutter and palpitation with which I used 
 to let go the string of my own, as it rose in the air and towered 
 among the clouds. My little cargo of hopes and fears ascended 
 with it ; and as it made a part of my own consciousness then, it 
 does so still, and appears " like some gay creature of the ele- 
 ment," my playmate when life was young, and twin-born with 
 my earliest recollections. I could enlarge on this subject of 
 childish amusements, but Mr. Leigh Hunt has treated it so well 
 in a paper in the Indicator, on the productions of the toy-shopa 
 of the metropolis, that if I were to insist more on it, I should only
 
 WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 89 
 
 pass for an imitator of that ingenious and agreeable writer, and 
 for an indifferent one into the bargain. 
 
 Sounds, smells, and sometimes tastes, are remembered longer 
 lhan visible objects, and serve, perhaps, better for links in the 
 chain of association. * The reason seems to be this : they are in 
 their nature intermittent, and comparative^ rare ; whereas objects 
 of sight are always before us, and, by their continuous succession, 
 drive one another out. The eye is always open ; and between 
 any given impression and its recurrence a second time, fifty 
 thousand other impressions have, in all likelihood, been stamped 
 upon the sense and on the brain. The other senses are not so 
 active or so vigilant. They are but seldom called into play 
 The ear, for example, is oftener courted by silence than noise ; 
 and the sounds that break that silence sink deeper and more 
 durably into the mind. I have for this reason a more present 
 and lively recollection of certain scents, tastes, and sounds, than 
 I have of mere visible images, because they are more original, 
 and less worn by frequent repetition. Where there is nothng 
 interposed between any two impressions, whatever the distance 
 of time that parts them, they naturally seem to touch ; and the 
 renewed impression recalls the former one in full force, without 
 distraction or competition. The taste of barberries, which have 
 hung out in the snow during the severity of a North American 
 winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of thirty years ; 
 for I have met with no other taste, in all that time, at all like it. 
 It remains by itself, almost like the impression of a sixth sense. 
 But the colour is mixed up indiscriminately with the colours of 
 many other berries, nor should I be able to distinguish it among 
 them. The smell of a brick-kiln carries the evidence of its own 
 identity with it : neither is it to me (from peculiar associations) 
 unpleasant. The colour of brickdust, on the contrary, is more 
 common, and easily confounded with other colours. Raphael 
 did not keep it quite distinct from his flesh-colour. I will not 
 say that we have a more perfect recollection of the human voice, 
 than of that complex picture, the human face ; but I think the 
 sudden hearing of a well-known voice has something in it more 
 affecting and striking than the sudden meeting with the face 
 perhaps, indeed, this may be because we Jiave a more familiar 
 
 5
 
 90 TABLE TALK. 
 
 remembrance of the one than the other, and the voice takes us 
 more by surprise on that account. I am by no means certain 
 (generally speaking) that we have the ideas of the other senses 
 so accurate and well made out as those of visible form ; what I 
 chiefly mean is, that the feelings belonging to the sensations of 
 our other organs, wherr accidentally recalled, are kept more se- 
 parate and pure. Musical sounds, probably, owe a good deal 
 of their interest and romantic effect to the principle here spoken 
 of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as we 
 may find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not 
 hear after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than that 
 of a blind fiddler, who has but one sense left (if we except the 
 sense of snuff-taking*), and who has that stunned or deafened 
 by his own villanous noises ! Shakespear says, 
 
 " How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night !" 
 
 It has been suggested, in explanation of this passage, that it is 
 because in the day-time lovers are occupied with one another's 
 faces, but that at night they can only distinguish the sound of 
 each other's voices. I know not how this may be ; but I have, 
 ere now, heard a voice break so upon the silence, 
 
 " To angels' 'twas most like," 
 
 and charm the moonlight air with its balmy essence, while the 
 budding leaves trembled to its accents. Would I might have 
 heard it once more whisper peace and hope (as erst when it was 
 mingled with the breath of spring), and with its soft pulsations 
 lift winged fancy to heaven ! But it has ceased, or turned where 
 I no more shall hear it ! Hence, also, we see what is the charm 
 of the shepherd's pastoral reed ; and why we hear him, as it 
 were, piping to his flock, even in a picture. Our ears are fancy- 
 stung ! I remember once strolling along the margin of a stream, 
 skirted with willows and plashy sedges, in one of those low shel- 
 tered valleys on Salisbury Plain, where the monks of former ages 
 had planted chapels and built hermits' cells. There was a little 
 parish-church near, but tall elms and quivering alders hid it frono 
 
 See Wilkie's Blind Fiddler.
 
 WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE. 91 
 
 my sight, when, all of a sudden, I was startled by the sound of 
 the full organ pealing on the ear, accompanied by rustic voices 
 and the willing choir of village-maids and children. It rose, in- 
 deed, " like an exhalation of rich distilled perfumes." The dew 
 from a thousand pastures was gathered in its softness ; the silence 
 of a thousand years spoke in it. It came upon the heart like the 
 calm beauty of death : fancy caught the sound, and faith mounted 
 on it to the skies. It filled the valley like a mist, and still poured 
 out its endless chaunt, and still it swells upon the ear, and wraps 
 me in a golden trance, drowning the noisy tumult of the world ! 
 
 There is a curious and interesting discussion, on the compara- 
 tive distinctness of our visual and other external impressions, in 
 Mr. Fearn's Essay on Consciousness, with which I shall try to 
 descend from this rhapsody to the ground of common sense and 
 plain reasoning again. After observing, a little before, that 
 ' nolhing is more untrue than that sensations of vision do neces- 
 sarily leave more vivid and durable ideas than those of grosser 
 senses," he proceeds to give a number of illustrations in support 
 of this position. " Notwithstanding," he says, " the advantages 
 here enumerated in favour of sight, I think there is no doubt that 
 a man will come to forget acquaintance, and many other visible 
 objects, noticed in mature age, before he will in the least forget 
 tastes and smells, of only moderate interest, encountered either in 
 his childhood, or at any time since. 
 
 " In the course of voyaging to various distant regions, it has 
 several times happened that I have eaten once or twice of differ- 
 ent things that never came in my way before nor since. Some 
 of these have been pleasant, and some scarce better than insipid ; 
 but I have no reason to think 1 have forgot, or much altered the 
 ideas left by those single impulses of taste ; though here the 
 memory of them certainly has not been preserved by repetition. 
 It is clear I must have seen, as well as tasted those things ; and 
 1 am decided that I remember the tastes with more precision than 
 I do the visual sensations. 
 
 " I remember having once, and only once, eat kangaroo in 
 New Holland ; and having once smelled a baker's shop, having 
 a peculiar odour, in the city of Bassorah. Now both these grosa 
 ideas remain with me quite as vivid as any visual ideas of those
 
 93 TABLE TALK. 
 
 places ; and this could not be from repetition, but really from 
 inlerest in the sensation. 
 
 " Twenty-eight years ago, in the island of Jamaica, I partook 
 (perhaps twice) of a certain fruit, of the taste of which I have 
 now a very fresh idea ; and I could add other instances of that 
 period. 
 
 " I have had repeated proofs of having lost retention of visual 
 objects, at various distances of time, though they had once been 
 familiar. I have not, during thirty years, forgot the delicate, 
 and in itself most trifling sensation, that the palm of my hand 
 used to convey, when I was a boy, trying the different effects of 
 what boys call light and heavy tops ; but I cannot remember within 
 several shades of the brown coat which I left off a week ago. If 
 any man thinks he can do better, let him take an ideal survey of 
 his wardrobe, and then actually refer to it for proof. 
 
 " After retention of such ideas, it certainly would be very diffi- 
 cult to persuade me that feeling, taste, and smell can scarce be 
 said to leave ideas, unless indistinct and obscure ones 
 
 " Show a Londoner correct models of twenty London churches, 
 and, at the same time, a model of each, which differs, in several 
 considerable features, from the truth, and I venture to say he 
 shall not tell you, in any instance, which is the correct one, ex- 
 cept by mere chance. 
 
 " If he is an architect, he may be much more correct than any 
 ordinary person : and this obviously is, because he has felt an 
 interest in viewing these structures, which an ordinary person 
 does not feel : and here interest is the sole reason of his remem- 
 bering more correctly than his neighbour. 
 
 " I once heard a person quaintly ask another, How many trees 
 there are in St. Paul's churchyard ? The question itself indi- 
 cates that many cannot answer it ; and this is found to be the 
 case with those who have passed the church a hundred times 
 whilst the cause is, that every individual in the busy stream 
 which glides past St. Paul's is engrossed in various other in- 
 terests. 
 
 " How often does it happen that we enter a well-known apart- 
 ment, or meet a well-known friend, and receive some vague idea 
 of visible difference, but cannot possibly find out what it is : until
 
 WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE. 93 
 
 at length we come to perceive (or perhaps must be told) that 
 some ornament or furniture is removed, altered, or added in the 
 apartment ; or that our friend has cut his hair, taken a wig, or 
 has made any of twenty considerable alterations in his appear- 
 ance. At other times, we have no perception of alteration what- 
 ever, though the like has taken place. 
 
 " It is, however, certain, that sight, apposited with interest, 
 can retain tolerably exact copies of sensations, especially if not 
 too complex ; such as of the human countenance and figure. 
 Yet the voice will convince us, when the countenance will not ; 
 and he is reckoned an excellent painter, and no ordinary genius, 
 who can make a tolerable likeness from memory. Nay, more, 
 it is a conspicuous proof of the inaccuracy of visual ideas, that 
 it is an effort of consummate art, attained by many years' prac- 
 tice, to take a strict likeness of the human countenance, even 
 when the object is present ; and among those cases, where the 
 wilful cheat of flattery has been avoided, we still find in how 
 very few instances the best painters produce a likeness up to the 
 life, though practice and interest join in the attempt. 
 
 " I imagine an ordinary person would find it very difficult, 
 supposing he had some knowledge of drawing, to afford, from 
 memory, a tolerable sketch of such a familiar object as his cur- 
 tain, his carpet, or his dressing-gown, if the pattern of either be 
 at all various or irregular ; yet he will instantly tell, with preci- 
 sion, either if his snuff" or his wine has not the same character it 
 had yesterday, though both these are compounds. 
 
 " Beyond all this I may observe, that a draper, who is in the 
 daily habit of such comparisons, cannot carry in his mind the 
 particular shade of a colour during a second of time ; and has 
 no certainty of tolerably matching two simple colours, except by 
 placing the patterns in contact." Essay on Consciousness, p. 
 303. 
 
 I will conclude the subject of this Essay with observing, that a 
 nearer and more familiar acquaintance with persons has a diffe- 
 rent and more favourable effect than that with places or things. 
 The latter improve by being removed to a distance, for we have 
 no interest in backbiting them : the former gain by being brought 
 nearer and more home to us, and thus stripped of artful and ill-
 
 94 TABLE TALK. 
 
 natured misrepresentations. Report or imagination very sel- 
 dom raises any individual so high in our estimation as to disap- 
 point us greatly when we are introduced to him : prejudice and 
 malice constantly exaggerate defects beyond the reality. Igno- 
 rance alone makes monsters or bugbears : our actual acquaint- 
 ances are all very common-place people. The thing is, that as 
 a matter of hearsay or conjecture, we make abstractions of par- 
 ticular vices, and irritate ourselves against some particular 
 quality or action of the person we dislike : whereas individuals 
 are concrete existences, not arbitrary denominations or nick- 
 names ; and have innumerable other qualities, good, bad, and 
 indifferent, besides the damning feature with which we fill up 
 the portrait or caricature in our previous fancies. We can 
 scarcely hate any one that we know. An acute observer com- 
 plained, that if there was any one to whom he had a particular 
 spite, and a wish to let him see it, the moment he came to sit 
 down with him, his enmity was disarmed by some unforeseen 
 circumstance. If it was a Quarterly Reviewer, he was in other 
 respects like any other man. Suppose, again, your adversary 
 turns out a very ugly man, or wants an eye, you are baulked in 
 that way : he is not what you expected, the object of your ab- 
 stract hatred and implacable disgust. He may be a very disa- 
 greeable person, but he is no longer the same. If you come into 
 a room where a man is, you find, in general, that he has a nose 
 upon his face. " There's sympathy !" This alone is a diver- 
 sion to your unqualified contempt. He is stupid, and says noth- 
 ing, but he seems to have something in him when he laughs. 
 You had conceived of him as a rank Whig or Tory yet he talks 
 upon other subjects. You knew that he was a virulent party- 
 writer ; but you find that the man himself is a tame sort of ani- 
 mal enough. He does not bite. That's something. In short, 
 you can make nothing of it. Even opposite vices balance one 
 another. A man may be pert in company, but he is also dull ; 
 so that you cannot, though you try, hate him cordially, merely 
 for the wish to be offensive. He is a knave. Granted. You 
 l<;arn, on a nearer acquaintance, what you did not know before 
 that he is a fool as well ; so you forgive him. On the other 
 hand, he may be a profligate public character, and may make
 
 WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE. i*5 
 
 no secret of it ; but he gives you a hearty shake by the hand, 
 speaks kindly to servants, and supports an aged father and mo- 
 ther. Politics apart, he is a very honest fellow. You are told 
 that a person has carbuncles on his face ; but you bave ocular 
 proofs that he is sallow, and pale as a ghost. This does not 
 much mend the matter ; but it blunts the edge of the ridicule, 
 and turns your indignation against the inventor of the lie ; but 
 
 he is , the editor of a Scotch Magazine ; so you are just 
 
 where you were. I am not very fond of anonymous criticism ; 
 I want to know who the author can be : but the moment I learn 
 
 this, I am satisfied. Even would do well to come out of 
 
 his disguise. It is the mask only that we dread and hate : the 
 man may have something human about him ! The notions, 
 in short, which we entertain of people at a distance, or from par- 
 tial representations, or from guess-work, are simple uncompounded 
 ideas, which answer to nothing in reality : those which we de- 
 rive from experience are mixed modes, the only true, and, in 
 general, the most favourable ones. Instead of naked deformity 
 or abstract perfection 
 
 " Those faultless monsters which the world ne'er saw" 
 
 " the web of our lives is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: 
 our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not ; and 
 our vices would despair, if they were not encouraged by our 
 virtues." This was truly and finely said long ago, by one who 
 knew the strong and weak points of human nature : but it is 
 what sects and parties, and those philosophers whose pride and 
 boast it is to classify by nicknames, have yet to learn the 
 meaning of !
 
 96 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY X. 
 
 On Corporate Bodies. 
 
 Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than indivi- 
 duals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are 
 less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither 
 shame, remorse, gratitude, nor good-will. The principle of 
 private or natural conscience is extinguished in each individual 
 (we have no moral sense in the breasts of others,) and nothing is 
 considered but how the united efforts of the whole (released from 
 idle scruples) may be best directed to the obtaining of political 
 advantages or privileges to be shared as common spoil. Each 
 member reaps the benefit, and lays the blame, if there is any, 
 upon the rest. The esprit de corps becomes the ruling passion 
 of every corporate body, compared with which the motives of 
 delicacy or decorum towards others are looked upon as being 
 both impertinent and improper. If any person sets up a plea of 
 this sort in opposition to the rest, he is over-ruled, he gets ill- 
 blood, and does no good : he is regarded as an interloper, a 
 black sheep in the flock, and is either sent to Coventry, or obliged 
 to acquiesce in the notions and wishes of those he associates and 
 is expected to co-operate with. The refinements of private 
 judgment are submitted to and negatived by a committee of the 
 whole body, while the projects and interests of the Corporation 
 meet with a secret but powerful support in the self-love of the 
 different members. Remonstrance opposition is fruitless, 
 troublesome, invidious : it answers no one end : and a conform- 
 ity to the sense of the company is found to be no less necessary 
 to a reputation for good-fellowship than to a quiet life. " Self- 
 love and social" here look like the same ; and in consulting the 
 interests of a particular class, which are also your own, there is 
 even a show of public virtue. He who is a captious, impraoti-
 
 ON CORPORATE BODIES. 97 
 
 cable, dissatisfied member of his little club or coterie, is immedi- 
 ately set down as a bad member of the community in general, as 
 no friend to regularity and order, " a pestilent fellow," and one 
 who is incapable of sympathy, attachment, or cordial co-opera- 
 tion in any department or undertaking. Thus the most refrac- 
 tory novice in such matters becomes weaned from his obligations 
 to the larger society, which only breed him inconvenience 
 without any adequate recompense, and wedded to a nearer and 
 dearer one, where he finds every kind of comfort and consola- 
 tion. He contracts the vague and unmeaning character of Man 
 into the more emphatic title of Freeman and Alderman. The 
 claims of an undefined humanity sit looser and looser upon him, 
 at the same time that he draws the bands of his new engage- 
 ments closer and tighter about him. He loses sight, by degrees, 
 of all common sense and feeling in the petty squabbles, intrigues, 
 feuds, and airs of affected importance, to which he has made 
 himself an accessary. He is quite an altered man. " Really 
 the society were under considerable obligations to him in that 
 last business ;" that is to say, in some paltry job or under-hand 
 attempt to encroach upon the rights, or dictate to the understand- 
 ings of the neighbourhood. In the mean time, they eat, drink, 
 and carouse together. They wash down all minor animosities 
 and unavoidable differences of opinion in pint-bumpers ; and the 
 complaints of the multitude are lost in the clatter of plates and 
 the roaring of loyal catches at every quarter's meeting or 
 mayor's feast. The town-hall reels with an unwieldy sense of 
 self-importance : " the very stones prate" of processions : the 
 common pump creaks in concert with the uncorking of bottles 
 and tapping of beer-barrels : the market-cross looks big with 
 authority. Every thing has an ambiguous, upstart, repulsive 
 air. Circle within circle is formed, an imperium in imperio : and 
 the business is to exclude from the first circle all the notions, 
 opinions, ideas, interests, and pretensions of the second. Hence 
 there arises not only an antipathy to common sense and decency 
 in those things where there is a real opposition of interest or 
 clashing of prejudice, but it becomes a habit and a favourite 
 amusement in those who are " dressed in a little brief authority," 
 Jo thwart, annoy, insult, and harass others on all occasions where
 
 98 TABLE TALK. 
 
 the least opportunity or pretext for it occurs. Spite, bickerings, 
 back-biting, insinuations, lies, jealousies, nicknames, are the order 
 of the day, and nobody knows what it is all about. One would 
 think that the mayor, aldermen, and liverymen were a higher 
 and more select species of animals than their townsmen ; though 
 there is no difference whatever, but in their gowns and staff of 
 office ! This is the essence of the esprit de corps. It is certainly 
 not a very delectable source of contemplation or subject to 
 treat of. 
 
 Public bodies are so far worse than the individuals composing 
 them, because the official takes place of the moral sense. The 
 nerves that in themselves were soft and pliable enough, and re- 
 sponded naturally to the touch of pity, when fastened into a ma- 
 chine of that sort, become callous and rigid, and throw off every 
 extraneous application that can be made to them with perfect 
 apathy. An appeal is made to the ties of individual friendship : 
 the body in general know nothing of them. A case has occur- 
 red which strongly called forth the compassion of the person 
 who was witness of it : but the body (or any special deputation 
 of them) were not present when it happened. These little weak- 
 nesses and " compunctious visitings of nature" are effectually 
 guarded against, indeed, by the very rules and regulations of the 
 society, as well as by its spirit. The individual is the creature 
 of his feelings of all sorts, the sport of his vices and his virtues 
 like the fool in Shakespear, " motley's his proper wear :" cor- 
 porate bodies are dressed in a moral uniform ; mixed motives do 
 not operate there, frailty is made into a system, " diseases are 
 turned into commodities." Only so much of any one's natural 
 or genuine impulses can influence him in his artificial capacity 
 as formally comes home to the aggregate conscience of those 
 with whom he acts, or bears upon the interests (real or pretend- 
 ed,) the importance, respectability, and professed objects of the 
 society. Beyond that point the nerve is bound up, the conscience 
 is seared, and the torpedo-touch of so much inert matter operates 
 to deaden the best feelings and harden the heart. Laughter and 
 tears are said to be the characteristic signs of humanity. Laugh- 
 ter is common enough in such places as a set-off to the mock- 
 gravity : but who ever saw a public l>ody in tears ? Nothing
 
 ON CORPORATE BODIES. 99 
 
 but a job or some knavery can keep them serious for ten minutes 
 together.* 
 
 Such are the qualifications and the apprenticeship necessary 
 to make a man tolerated, to enable him to pass as a cypher, or 
 be admitted as a mere numerical unit, in any corporate body : 
 ) be a leader and dictator, he must be diplomatic in impertinence, 
 *nd officious in every dirty work. He must not merely conform 
 to established prejudices; he must flatter them. He must not 
 merely be insensible to the demands of moderation and equity ; 
 he must be loud against them. He must not simply fall in with 
 all sorts of contemptible cabals and intrigues ; he must be inde- 
 fatigable in fomenting them, and setting every body together 
 by the ears. He must not only repeat, but invent lies. He 
 must make speeches and write hand-bills ; he must be devoted 
 to the wishes and objects of the society, its creature, its jackall, 
 its busy-body, its mouth-piece, its prompter ; he must deal in 
 law-cases, in demurrers, in charters, in traditions, in common- 
 places, in logic and rhetoric in every thing but common sense 
 and honesty. He must (in Mr. Burke's phrase) " disembowel 
 himself of his natural entrails, and be stuffed with paltry, blur- 
 red sheets of parchment about the rights" of the privileged few. 
 He must be a concentrated essence, a varnished, powdered re- 
 presentative of the vices, absurdities, hypocrisy, jealousy, pride, 
 and pragmatical meanness of his party. Such a one by bustle 
 and self-importance and puffing, by flattering one to his face, 
 and abusing another behind his back, by lending himself to the 
 weaknesses of some, and pampering the mischievous propensi- 
 ties of others, will pass for a great man in a little society. 
 
 Age does not improve the morality of public bodies. They grow 
 more and more tenacious of their idle privileges and senseless self- 
 
 * We sometimes see a whole play-house in tears. But the audience at a 
 theatre, though a public assembly, are not a public body. They are not in- 
 corporated into a frame-work of exclusive, narrow-minded interssts of their 
 own. Each individual looks out of his own insignificance at a scene, ideal 
 perhaps, and foreign to himself, but true to nature ; friends, strangers, meet on 
 the common ground of humanity, and the tears that spring from their breasts 
 are those which " sacred pity has engendered." They are a mixed multitude 
 melted into sympathy by remote, imaginary events, not a combination ce- 
 mented by petty views, and sordid, selfish prejudices.
 
 100 TABLE TALK. 
 
 consequence. They get weak and obstinate at the same time. 
 Those, who belong to them, have all the upstart pride and petti- 
 fogging spirit of their present character ingrafted on the venerable- 
 ness and superstitious sanctity of ancient institutions. They are 
 naturally at issue, first with their neighbours, and next with their 
 contemporaries, on all matters of common propriety and judg- 
 ment. They become more attached to forms, the more obsolete 
 they are ; and the defence of every absurd and invidious dis- 
 tinction is a debt which (by implication) they owe to the dead as 
 well as to the living. What might once have been of serious 
 practical utility they turn to farce, by retaining the letter when 
 the spirit is gone : and they do this the more, the more glaring 
 the inconsistency and want of sound reasoning ; for they think 
 they thus give proof of their zeal and attachment to the abstract 
 principle on which old establishments exist, the ground of pre- 
 scription and authority. The greater the wrong, the greater the 
 right, in all such cases. The esprit de corps does not take much 
 merit to itself for upholding what is justifiable in any system or 
 in the proceedings of any party, but for adhering to what is pal- 
 pably injurious. You may exact the first from an enemy : the 
 last is the province of a friend. It has been made a subject of 
 complaint, that the champions of the Church, for example, who 
 are advanced to dignities and honours, are hardly ever those who 
 lefend the common principles of Christianity, but those who 
 olunteer to man the out-works, and set up ingenious excuses for 
 le questionable points, the ticklish places in the established form 
 of worship, that is, for those which are attacked from without; 
 and are supposed in danger of being undermined by stratagem, 
 or carried by assault ! 
 
 The great resorts and seats of learning often outlive in this 
 way the intention of the founders, as the world outgrows them. 
 They may be said to resemble antiquated coquets of the last age, 
 who think every thing ridiculous and intolerable that was not in 
 fashion when they were young, and yet are standing proofs of the 
 progress of taste and the vanity of human pretensions. Our uni- 
 versities are, in a great measure, become cisterns to hold, not 
 conduits to disperse knowledge. The age has the start of them ; 
 that is, other sources of knowledge have been opened since their
 
 ON CORPORATE BODIES. 101 
 
 formation, to which the vvorid have had access, and have drunk 
 plentifully at those living fountains, but from which they are de- 
 barred by the tenor of their charter, and as a matter of dignity 
 and privilege. They have grown poor, like the old grandees in 
 some countries, by subsisting on the inheritance of learning, 
 while the people have grown rich by trade. They are too much 
 in the nature of Jixtures in intellect : they stop the way in the 
 road to truth ; or at any rate (for they do not themselves ad- 
 vance) they can only be of service as a check-weight on the too 
 hasty and rapid career of innovation. All that has been invented 
 or thought in the last two hundred years they take no cognisance 
 of, or as little as possible ; they are above it ; they stand upon 
 the ancient land-marks, and will not budge ; whatever was not 
 known when they were first endowed, they are still in profound 
 and lofty ignorance of. Yet in that period how much has been 
 done in literature, arts, and science, of which (with the excep- 
 tion of mathematical knowledge, the hardest to gainsay or subject 
 to the trammels of prejudice and barbarous ipse dirits,) scarce any 
 trace is to be found in the authentic modes of study and legitimate 
 inquiry, which prevail at either of our Universities ! The un- 
 avoidable aim of all corporate bodies of learning is not to grow 
 wise, or teach others wisdom, but to prevent any one else from 
 being or seeming wiser than themselves; in other words, their 
 infallible tendency is in the end to suppress inquiry and darken 
 knowledge, by setting limits to the mind of man, and saying to 
 his proud spirit, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther ! It would 
 not be an unedifying experiment to make a collection of the titles 
 of works published in the course of the year by Members of the 
 Universities. If any attempt is to be made to patch up an idle 
 system in policy or legislation or church-government, it is by a 
 Member of the University : if any hashed-up speculation on an 
 old exploded argument is to be brought forward " in spite of 
 sha?ne, in erring reason's spite," it is by a Member of the Univer- 
 sity : if a paltry project is ushered into the world for combining 
 ancient prejudices with modern time-serving, it is by a Member 
 of the University. Thus we get at a stated supply of annual 
 Defences of the Sinking Fund, Thoughts on the Evils of Educa- 
 tion, Treatises on Predestination, and Eulogies on Mr. Malthus,
 
 103 TABLE TALK. 
 
 all from the same source, and through the same vent. If they 
 came from any other quarter, nobody would look at them ; but 
 they have an Imprimatur from dulness and authority : we know 
 that there is no offence in them ; and they are siuck in the shop- 
 windows, and read (in the intervals of Lord Byron's works, or 
 the Scotch Novels) in cathedral towns and close boroughs ! 
 
 It is, I understand and believe, pretty much the same in more 
 modern institutions for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. 
 The end is lost in the means : rules take place of nature and 
 genius ; cabal and bustle and struggles for rank and precedence 
 supersede the study and the love of art. A Royal Academy is a 
 kind of hospital and infirmary for the obliquities of taste and in- 
 genuity a receptacle where enthusiasm and originality stop and 
 stagnate, and spread their influence no farther, instead of being 
 a school founded for genius, or a temple built to fame. The ge- 
 nerality of those who wriggle, or fawn, or beg their way to a 
 seat there, live on their certificate of merit to a good old age, and 
 are seldom heard of afterwards. If a man of sterling capacity 
 gets among them, and minds his own business, he is nobody ; he 
 makes no figure in council, in voting, in resolutions, or speeches, 
 if he comes forward with plans and views for the good of the 
 Academy and the advancement of art, he is immediately set upon 
 as a visionary, a fanatic, with notions hostile to the interest and 
 credit of the existing members of the society. If he directs tho 
 ambition of the scholars to the study of History, this strikes at 
 once at the emoluments of the profession, who are most of them 
 (by God's will) portrait-painters. If he eulogises the Antique, 
 and speaks highly of the Old Masters, he is supposed to be ac- 
 tuated by envy to living painters and native talent. If, again, 
 he insists on a knowledge of anatomy as essential to correct 
 drawing, this would seem to imply a want of it in our most emi- 
 nent designers. Every plan, suggestion, argument, that has the 
 general purposes and principles of art for its object, is thwarted, 
 scouted, ridiculed, slandered, as bearing a malignant aspect 
 towards the profits and pretensions of the great mass of flourish- 
 ing and respectable artists in the country. This leads to irrita- 
 tion and ill-will on all sides. The obstinacy of the constituted 
 authorities keeps pace with the violence and extravagance op.
 
 ON CORPORATE BODIES. 103 
 
 posed to it ; and they lay all the blame on the folly and mistakes 
 they have themselves occasioned or increased. It is considered as 
 a personal quarrel, not a public question ; by which means the 
 dignity of the body is implicated in resenting the slips and in- 
 advertencies of its members, not in promoting their common and 
 declared objects. In this sort of wretched tracasserie the Barrys 
 
 and H s stand no chance with the Catons, the Tubbs, and 
 
 the F s. Sir Joshua even was obliged to hold himself aloof 
 
 from them, and Fuseli passes as a kind of nondescript, or one of 
 his own grotesques. The air of an Academy, in short, is not 
 the air of genius and immortality ; it is too close and heated, 
 and impregnated with the notions of the common sort. A man 
 steeped in a corrupt atmosphere of this description is no longer 
 open to the genial impulses of nature and truth, nor sees 
 visions of ideal beauty, nor dreams of antique grace and gran- 
 deur, nor has the finest works of art continually hovering and 
 floating through his uplifted fancy ; but the images that haunt it 
 are rules of the Academy, charters, inaugural speeches, resolu- 
 tions passed or rescinded, cards of invitation to a council-meet- 
 ing, or the annual dinner, prize-medals, and the king's diploma, 
 constituting him a gentleman and esquire. He " wipes out all 
 trivial, fond records ;" all romantic aspirations ; " the Raphael 
 grace, the Guido air ;" and the commands of the Academy alone 
 " must live within the book and volume of his brain, unmixed 
 with baser matter." It may be doubted whether any work of 
 lasting reputation and universal interest can spring up in this 
 soil, or ever has done in that of any Academy. The last ques- 
 tion is a matter of fact and history, not of mere opinion or preju- 
 dice ; and may be ascertained as such accordingly. The mighty 
 names of former times rose before the existence of Academies ; 
 and the three greatest painters, undoubtedly, that this country 
 has produced, Reynolds, Wilson, and Hogarth, were not " dan 
 died and swaddled" into artists in any institution for the Fine 
 Arts. I do not apprehend that the names of Chantry or Wilkie 
 (great as one, and considerable as the other of them is) can be 
 made use of in any way to impugn the jet of this argument. 
 We may find a considerable improvement in some of our artists, 
 when they get oul of the vortex for a time. Sir Thomas Law.
 
 104 TABLE TALK. 
 
 rence is all the better for having been abstracted for a year or 
 
 two from Somerset-House ; and Mr. D , they say, has beea 
 
 doing wonders in the North. When will he return, and once 
 more " bid Britannia rival Greece ?" 
 
 Mr. Canning somewhere lays it down as a rule, that corporate 
 bodies are necessarily correct and pure in their conduct, from 
 the knowledge which the individuals composing them have of 
 one another, and the jealous vigilance they exercise over each 
 other's motives and characters ; whereas people collected into 
 mobs are disorderly and unprincipled from being utterly unknown 
 and unaccountable to each other. This is a curious pass of wit. 
 I differ with him in both parts of the dilemma. To begin with 
 the first, and to handle it somewhat cavalierly, according to the 
 model before us : we know, for instance, there is said to be hon- 
 our among thieves, but very little honesty towards others. Their 
 honour consists in the division of the booty, not in the mode of 
 acquiring it : they do not (often) betray one another* but they 
 will waylay a stranger, or knock out a traveller's brains : they 
 may be depended on in giving the alarm when any of their posts 
 are in danger of being surprised ; and they will stand together 
 for their ill-gotten gains to the last drop of their blood. Yet they 
 form a distinct society, and are strictly responsible for their be- 
 haviour to one another and to their leader. They are not a 
 mob, but a gang, completely in one another's power and secrets. 
 Their familiarity, however, with the proceedings of the corps 
 does not lead them to expect or to exact from it a very high 
 standard of moral honesty ; that is out of the question ; but they 
 are sure to gain the good opinion of their fellows by committing 
 all sorts of depredations, fraud, and violence against the com- 
 munity at large. So (not to speak it profanely) some of Mr. 
 
 C 's friends may be very respectable people in their way 
 
 " all honourable men" but their respectability is confined within 
 party-limits ; every one does not sympathize in the integrity of 
 their views ; the understanding between them and the public is 
 not well-defined or reciprocal. Or, suppose a gang of pick- 
 pockets hustle a passenger in the street, and the mob set upon 
 them, and proceeded to execute summary justice upon such as 
 they can lay hands on, am I to conclude that the rogues are in
 
 ON CORPORATE BODIES. 105 
 
 the right, because theirs is a system of well-organized knavery, 
 which they settled in the morning, with their eyes one upon the 
 other, and which they regularly canvass at night, with ? due es- 
 timate of each other's motives, character, and conduct in the 
 business ; and that the honest men are in the wrong, because 
 they are a casual collection of unprejudiced, disinterested indi- 
 viduals, taken at a venture from the mass of the people, acting 
 without concert or responsibility, on the spur of the occasion, 
 and giving way to their instantaneous impulses and honest anger ? 
 Mobs in fact, then, are almost always right in their feelings, and 
 often in their judgments, on this very account that being utterly 
 unknown to and disconnected with each other, they have no point 
 of union or principle of co-operation between them, but the natu- 
 ral sense of justice recognized by all persons in common. They 
 appeal, at the first meeting, not to certain symbols and watch- 
 words privately agreed upon, like Free-Masons, but to the max- 
 ims and instincts proper to them as men. They have no other 
 clue to guide them to their object but either the dictates of the 
 heart, or the universally understood sentiments of society, neither 
 of which are likely to be in the wrong. The flame, which bursts 
 out and blazes from popular sympathy, is made of honest, but 
 homely materials. It is not kindled by sparks of wit or sophis- 
 try, nor damped by the cold calculations of self-interest. The 
 multitude may be wantonly set on by others, as is too often the 
 case, or be carried too far in the impulse of rage and disappoint- 
 ment ; but their resentment, when they are left to themselves, is 
 almost uniformly, in the first instance, excited by some evident 
 abuse and wrong ; and the excesses into which they run arise 
 from that very want of foresight and regular system which is a 
 pledge of the uprightness and heartiness of their intentions. In 
 short, the only class of persons to whom the above courtly charge 
 of sinister and corrupt motives is not applicable, is that body of 
 individuals which usually goes by the name of the People !
 
 10-5 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XI. 
 
 On the Knowledge of Character. 
 
 h Is astonishing, with all our opportunities and practice, how 
 little we know of this subject. For myself, I feel that the more 
 I learn, the less I understand it. 
 
 I remember, several years ago, a conversation in the Diligence 
 coming from Paris, in which, on its being mentioned that a man 
 had married his wife after thirteen years' courtship, a fellow- 
 countryman of mine observed, that " then, at least, he would be 
 acquainted with her character ;" when a Monsieur P , in- 
 ventor and proprietor of the Invisible Girl, made answer, " No, 
 not at all ; for that the very next day she might turn out the very 
 reverse of the character that she had appeared in during all the 
 preceding time."* I could not help admiring the superior saga- 
 city of the French juggler, and it struck me then that we could 
 never be sure when we had got at the bottom of this riddle. 
 
 There are various ways of getting at a knowledge of charac- 
 ter by looks, words, actions. The first of these, which seems 
 the most superficial, is perhaps the safest, and least liable to de- 
 ceive : nay, it is that which mankind, in spite of their pretending 
 to the contrary, are generally governed by. Professions pass 
 for nothing, and actions may be counterfeited : but a man cannot 
 help his looks. " Speech," said a celebrated wit, " was given to 
 man to conceal his thoughts." Yet I do not know that the great- 
 est hypocrites are the least silent. The mouth of Cromwell is 
 pursed up in the portraits of him, as if he was afraid to trust 
 himself with words. Lord Chesterfield advises us, if we wish to 
 know the real sentiments of the person we are conversing with, 
 to look in his face, for he can more easily command his words 
 
 * " It is not a yeai or two shows us a man " Emilia, in Othello.
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER. 107 
 
 than his features. A man's whole life may be a lie to himself 
 and others : and yet a picture painted of him by a great artist 
 would probably stamp his true character on the canvas, and 
 betray the secret to posterity. Men's opinions were divided, in 
 their life-time, about such prominent personages as Charles V. 
 and Ignatius Loyola, partly, no doubt, from passion and interest, 
 but partly from contradictory evidence in their ostensible con- 
 duct : the spectator, who has ever seen their pictures by Titian, 
 judges of them at once, and truly. I had rather leave a good 
 portrait of myself behind me than have a fine epitaph. The 
 face, for the most part, tells what we have thought and felt the 
 rest is nothing. , I have a higher idea of Donne from a rude, 
 half-effaced outline of him prefixed to his poems, than from any 
 thing he ever wrote. Caesar's Commentaries would not have 
 redeemed him in my opinion, if the bust of him had resembled 
 
 the Duke of W . My old friend, Fawcett, used to say, 
 
 that if Sir Isaac Newton himself had lisped, he could not have 
 thought any thing of him. So I cannot persuade myself that 
 any one is a great man, who looks like a blockhead. In this I 
 may be wrong. 
 
 First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfre- 
 quently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them 
 by plausible professions or studied actions. A man's look is the 
 work of years : it is stamped on his countenance by the events 
 of his whole life, nay more, by the hand of nature, and it is not 
 to be got rid of easily. There is, as it has been remarked re- 
 peatedly, something in a person's appearance at first sight which 
 we do not like, and that gives us an odd twinge, but which is 
 overlooked in a multiplicity of other circumstances, till the mask 
 is taken off; and we see this lurking character verified in the 
 plainest manner in the sequel. We are struck at first, and b\ 
 chance, with what is peculiar and characteristic ; also with per- 
 manent trails and general effect : these afterwards go off* in a 
 set of unmeaning, common-place details. This sort of prima 
 facie evidence, then, shows what a man is, better than what he 
 6ays or does ; for it shows us the habit of his mind, which is the 
 same under all circumstances and disguises. You will say, on 
 the other hand, that there is no judging by appearances, as a
 
 108 TABLE TALK. 
 
 general rule. No one, for instance, would take such a person 
 for a very clever man without knowing who he was. Then, ten 
 to one, he is not : he may have got the reputation, but it is a mis- 
 take. You say, there is Mr. , undoubtedly a person of 
 
 great genius : yet, except when excited by something extraordi- 
 nary, he seems half dead. He has wit at will, yet wants life 
 and spirit. He is capable of the most generous acts, yet mean- 
 ness seems to cling to every motion. He looks like a poor crea- 
 ture and in truth he is one ! The first impression he gives you 
 of him answers nearly to the feeling he has of his personal iden- 
 tity j and this image of himself, rising from his thoughts, and 
 shrouding his faculties, is that which sits with him in the house, 
 walks out with him into the street, and haunts his bed-side. 
 The best part of his existence is dull, cloudy, leaden : the 
 flashes of light that proceed from it, or streak it here and there, 
 may dazzle others, but do not deceive himself. Modesty is the 
 lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency 
 it indicates. He who undervalues himself, is justly undervalued 
 by others. Whatever good properties he may possess are, in 
 fact, neutralized by a " cold rheum" running through his veins, 
 and taking away the zest of his pretensions, the pith and marrow 
 of his performances. What is it to me that I can write these 
 Table-talks ? It is true I can, by a reluctant effort, rake up a 
 parcel of half- forgotten observations, but they do not float on the 
 surface of my mind, nor stir it with any sense of pleasure, nor 
 even of pride. Others have more property in them than I have : 
 they may reap the benefit, I have only had the pain. Other- 
 wise, they are to me as if they had never existed : nor should I 
 know that I had ever thought at all, but that I am reminded of it 
 by the strangeness of my appearance, and my unfitness for every 
 
 thing else. Look in C 's face while he is talking. His 
 
 words are such as might " create a soul under the ribs of death." 
 His face is a blank. Which are we to consider as the true index 
 of his mind? Pain, languor, shadowy remembrances are the 
 uneasy inmates there : his lips move mechanically ! 
 
 There are people whom we do not like, though we may have 
 known them long, and have no fault to find with them, except 
 that their appearance is so much against them. That is not all,
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OP CHARACTER. 109 
 
 if we could find it out. There is, generally, a reason for this 
 prejudice ; for nature is true to itself. They may be very good 
 sort of people, too, in their way, but still something is the matter. 
 There is a coldness, a selfishness, a levity, an insincerity, which 
 we cannot fix upon any particular phrase or action, but we see 
 it in their whole persons and deportment. One reason that we 
 do not see it in any other way may be, that they are all the time 
 trying to conceal this defect by every means in their power. 
 There is, luckily, a sort of second-sight in morals : we discern 
 the lurking indications of temper and habit a long while before 
 their palpable effects appear. I once used to meet with a person 
 at an ordinary, a very civil, good-looking man in other respects, 
 but with an odd look about his eyes, which I could not explain, 
 as if he saw you under their fringed lids, and you could not see 
 him again : this man was a common sharper. The greatest hypo- 
 crite I ever knew was a little, demure, pretty, modest-looking 
 girl, with eyes timidly cast upon the ground, and an air soft as 
 enchantment ; the only circumstance that could lead to a sus- 
 picion of her true character was a cold, sullen, watery, glazed 
 look about the eyes, which she bent on vacancy, as if determined 
 to avoid all explanation with yours. I might have spied in their 
 glittering, motionless surface, the rocks and quicksands that 
 awaited me below ! We do not feel quite at ease in the com- 
 pany or friendship of those who have any natural obliquity or 
 imperfection of person. The reason is, they are not on the best 
 terms with themselves, and are sometimes apt to play off on 
 others the tricks that nature has played them. This, however, 
 is a remark that, perhaps, ought not to have been made. I 
 know a person to whom it has been objected as a disqualification 
 for friendship, that he never shakes you cordially by the hand. 
 1 own this is a damper to sanguine and florid temperaments, who 
 abound in these practical demonstrations and " compliments ex- 
 tern." The same person, who testifies the least pleasure at meet- 
 ing you, is the last to quit his seat in your company, grapples 
 with a subject in conversation right earnestly, and is, I take it, 
 backward to give up a cause or a friend. Cold and distant in 
 appearance, he piques himself on being the king of good haters, 
 and a no less zealous partisan. The most phlegmatic constitu-
 
 110 TABLE TALK. 
 
 tions often contain the most inflammable spirits as fire, is struck 
 from the hardest flints. 
 
 And this is another reason that makes it difficult to judge of 
 character. Extremes meet ; and qualities display themselves by 
 the most contradictory appearances. Any inclination, in conse- 
 quence of being generally suppressed, vents itself the more vio- 
 lently when an opportunity presents itself: the greatest grossness 
 sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural re- 
 lief, one to the other ; and we find the most reserved and indif- 
 ferent tempers at the beginning of an entertainment, or an ac- 
 quaintance, turn out the most communicative and cordial at the 
 end of it. Some spirits exhaust themselves at first : others gain 
 strength by progression. Some minds have a greater facility of 
 throwing off impressions, and are, as it were, more transparent or 
 porous than others. Thus the French present a marked contrast 
 to the English in this respect. A Frenchman addresses you at 
 once with a sort of lively indifference : an Englishman is more 
 on his guard, feels his way, and is either exceedingly silent, or 
 lets you into his whole confidence, which he cannot so well im- 
 part to an entire stranger. Again, a Frenchman is naturally 
 humane : an Englishman is, I should say, only friendly by habit. 
 His virtues and his vices cost him more than they do his more 
 gay and volatile neighbours. An Englishman is said to speak 
 his mind more plainly than others : yes, if it will give you pain 
 to hear it. He does not care whom he offends by his discourse : 
 a foreigner generally strives to oblige in what he says. The 
 French are accused of promising more than they perform. That 
 may be, and yet they may perform as many good-natured acts 
 as the English, if the latter are as averse to perform as they are 
 to promise. Even the professions of the French may be sincere 
 at the time, or arise out of the impulse of the moment ; though 
 their desire to serve you may be neither very violent nor very 
 lasting. I cannot think, notwithstanding, that the French are no 
 a serious people ; nay, that they are not a more reflecting people 
 than the common run of the English. Let those who think them 
 merely light and mercurial, explain that enigma, their everlast. 
 ing prosing tragedy. The English are considered as compara- 
 tively a slow, plodding people. If the French are quicker, they
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER. Ml 
 
 are also more plodding. See, for example, how highly finished 
 and elaborate their works of art are ! How systematic and cor- 
 rect they aim at being in all their productions of a graver cast ! 
 " If the French have a fault," as Yorick said, " it is that they are 
 too grave." With wit, sense, cheerfulness, patience, good-nature, 
 and refinement of manners, all they want is imagination and stur- 
 diness of moral principle ! Such are some of the contradictions 
 in the character of the two nations, and so little does the charac- 
 ter of either appear to have been understood ! Nothing can be 
 more ridiculous, indeed, than the way in which we exaggerate 
 each other's vices and extenuate our own. The whole is an 
 affair of prejudice on one side of the question, and of partiality 
 on the other. Travellers who set out to carry back a true report 
 of the case appear to lose not only the use of their understand- 
 ings, but of their senses, the instant they set foot in a foreign 
 land. The commonest facts and appearances are distorted and 
 discoloured. They go abroad with certain preconceived notions 
 on the subject, and they make every thing answer, in reason's 
 spite, to their favourite theory. In addition to the difficulty of 
 explaining customs and manners foreign to our own, there are 
 all the obstacles of wilful prepossession thrown in the way. It is 
 not, therefore, much to be wondered at that nations have arrived 
 at so little knowledge of one another's characters ; and that, 
 where the object has been to widen the breach between them, 
 any slight differences that occur are easily blown into a blaze of 
 fury by repeated misrepresentations, and all the exaggerations 
 that malice or folly can invent ! 
 
 This ignorance of character is not confined to foreign nations : 
 we are ignorant of that of our own countrymen in a class a little 
 below or above ourselves. We can hardly pretend to pronounce 
 magisterially on the good or bad qualities of strangers ; and, at 
 .he same time, we are ignorant of those of our friends, of our 
 kindred, and of our own. We are in all these cases either too 
 near or too far off the object, to judge of it properly. 
 
 Persons, for instance, in a higher or middle rank of life, know 
 little or nothing of the characters of those below them, as ser- 
 vants, country-people, &c. 1 would lay it down in the first place 
 as a general rule on this subject, that all uneducated people are
 
 115a TABLE TALK. 
 
 hypocrites. Their sole business is to deceive. They imagine 
 themselves in a state of hostility with others, and stratagems are 
 fair in war. The inmates of the kitchen and the parlour are al- 
 ways (as far as respects their feelings and intentions towards 
 each other) in Hobbes's " state of nature." Servants and others 
 in that line of life have nothing to exercise their spare talents for 
 invention- upon but those about them. Their superfluous elec- 
 trical particles of wit and fancy are not carried off by those es- 
 tablished and fashionable conductors, novels and romances. 
 Their faculties are not buried in books, but all alive and stirring, 
 erect and bristling like a cat's back. Their coarse conversation 
 sparkles with " wild wit, invention ever new." Their betters try 
 all they can to set themselves up above them, and they try all 
 they can to pull them down to their own level. They do this 
 by getting up a little comic interlude, a daily, domestic, homely 
 drama out of the odds and ends of the family-failings, of which 
 there is in general a pretty plentiful supply, or make up the de- 
 ficiency of materials out of their own heads. They turn the 
 qualities of their masters and mistresses inside out, and any real 
 kindness or condescension only sets them the more against you. 
 They are not to be taken in in that w#y they will not be baulk- 
 ed in the spite they have to you. They only set to work with 
 redoubled alacrity, to lessen the favour or to blacken your cha- 
 racter. They feel themselves like a degraded caste, and cannot 
 understand how the obligations can be all on one side, and the 
 advantages all on the other. You cannot come to equal terms 
 with them they reject all such overtures as insidious and hol- 
 low nor can you ever calculate upon their gratitude or good- 
 will, any more than if they were so many strolling Gipsies or 
 wild Indians. They have no fellow-feeling, they keep no faith 
 with the more privileged classes. They are in your power, and 
 they endeavour to be even with you by trick and cunning, by ly- 
 ing and chicanery. In this they have nothing to restrain them. 
 Their whole life is a succession of shifts, excuses, and expedi- 
 ents. The love of truth is a principle with those only who have 
 made it their study, who have applied themselves to the pursuit 
 of some art or science, where the intellect is severely tasked, and 
 learns by habit to take a pride in, and to set a just value on the
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OB CHARACTER. 113 
 
 correctness of its conclusions. To have a disinterested regard 
 for truth, the mind must have contemplated it in abstract and 
 remote questions ; whereas the ignorant and vulgar are only 
 conversant with those things in which their own interest is 
 concerned. All their notions are local, personal, and conse- 
 quently gross and selfish. They say whatever comes upper- 
 most turn whatever happens to their own account and invent 
 any story, or give any answer that suits their purpose. Instead 
 of being bigoted to general principles, they trump up any lie for 
 the occasion,. and the more of a thumper it is, the better they like 
 it ; the more unlooked-for it is, why so much the more of a God- 
 send ! They have no conscience about the matter ; and if you 
 find them out in any of their manoeuvres, are not ashamed of 
 themselves, but angry with you. If you remonstrate with them, 
 they laugh in your face. The only hold you have of them is 
 their interest you can but dismiss them from your employment ; 
 and service is no inheritance. If they affect any thing like decen, 
 remorse, and hope you will pass it over, all the while they are 
 probably trying to recover the wind of you. Persons of libera . 
 knowledge or sentiments have no kind of chance in this sort of 
 mixed intercourse with these barbarians in civilized life. You 
 cannot tell, by any signs or principles, what is passing in their 
 minds. There is no common point of view between you. You 
 have not the same topics to refer to, the same language to ex- 
 press yourself. Your interests, your feelings are quite distinct. 
 You take certain things for granted as rules of action : they take 
 nothing for granted but their own ends, pick up all their know- 
 ledge out of their own occasions, are on the watch only for what 
 they can catch are 
 
 " Subtle as the fox for prey : 
 Like warlike as the wolf, for what they eat." 
 
 They have indeed a regard to their character, as this last may 
 affect their livelihood or advancement, none as it is connected 
 with a sense of propriety ; and this sets their mother- wit and 
 native talents at work upon a double file of expedients, to bilk 
 their consciences, and save their reputation. In short, you 
 never know where to have them, any more than if they were a 
 
 6
 
 114 TABLE TALK. 
 
 different species of animals ; and in trusting to them, you are 
 sure to be betrayed and over-reached. You have other things 
 to mind, they are thinking only of you, and how to turn you to 
 advantage. Give and take is no maxim here. You can build 
 nothing on youi own moderation or on their false delicacy. 
 After a familiar conversation with a waiter at a tavern, 
 you overhear him calling you by some provoking nick- 
 name. If you make a present to the daughter of the house 
 where you lodge, the mother is sure to recollect some addition to 
 her bill. It is a running fight. In fact, there is a principle in 
 human nature not willingly to endure the idea of a superior, a 
 sour Jacobinical disposition to wipe out the score of obligation, or 
 efface the tinsel of external advantages and where others have 
 the opportunity of coming in contact with us, they generally find 
 the means to establish a sufficiently marked degree of degrading 
 equality. No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, is an old 
 maxim. A new illustration of this principle occurred the other 
 day. While Mrs. Siddons was giving her readings of Shakes- 
 pear to a brilliant and admiring drawing-room, one of the servants 
 in the hall below was saying, " What, I find the old lady is 
 making as much noise as ever !" So little is there in common 
 between the different classes of society, and so impossible is it 
 ever to reconcile the diversities of custom and knowledge which 
 separate them. 
 
 Women, according to Mrs. Peachum, are "bitter bad judges" 
 of the characters of men ; and men are not much better of theirs, 
 if we can form any guess from their choice in marriage. Love 
 is proverbially blind. The whole is an affair of whim and fancy. 
 Certain it is, that the greatest favourites with the other sex are 
 not those who are most liked or respected among their own. 
 I never knew but one clever man who was what is called a 
 lady's man ; and he (unfortunately for the argument) happened 
 to be a considerable coxcomb. It was by this irresistible quality, 
 and not by the force of his genius, that he vanquished. Women 
 *eem to doubt their own judgments in love, and to take tho 
 opinion which a man entertains of his own prowess and accom- 
 plishments for granted. The wives of poets are (for the most 
 part) mere pieces of furniture in the room. If you speak to
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF "CHARACTER. 115 
 
 them of their husbands' talents or reputation in the world, it is aa 
 if you made mention of some office that they held. It can 
 hardly be otherwise, when the instant any subject is started or 
 conversation arises, in which men take an interest, or try one 
 another's strength, the women leave the room, or attend to some- 
 thing else. The qualities then in which men are ambitious to 
 excel, and which ensure the applause of the world, eloquence, 
 genius, learning, integrity, are not those which gain the favour 
 of the fair. I must not deny, however, that wit and courage 
 have this effect. Neither is youth or beauty the sole passport to 
 their affections. 
 
 " The way of woman's will is hard to know, 
 Harder to hit." 
 
 Yet there is some clue to this mystery, some determining cause; 
 for we find that the same men are universal favourites with 
 women, as others are uniformly disliked by them. Is not the 
 load-stone that attracts so powerfully, and in all circumstances, 
 a strong and undisguised bias towards them, a marked attention, 
 a conscious preference of them to every other passing object or 
 topic ? I am not sure, but I incline to think so. The successful 
 lover is the cavalier servente of all nations. The man of gallantry 
 behaves as if he had made an assignation with every woman he 
 addresses. An argument immediately draws off the scholar's 
 attention from the prettiest women in the room. He accordingly 
 succeeds better in argument than in love ! I do not think that 
 what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is 
 sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds 
 beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, 
 black, brown, or fair ; with golden tresses or with raven locks ; 
 and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities 
 we admire, the bargain is soon struck. We have never seen 
 any thing to come up to our newly discovered Goddess before, 
 but she is what we have been all our lives looking for. The 
 idol we fall down and worship is an image familiar to our minds. 
 i T . has been present to our waking thoughts, it has haunted us in 
 our dreams, like some fairy vision. Oh ! thou, who, the first 
 time I ever beheld thee, didst draw my soul into the circle of
 
 116 TABLE TALK. 
 
 thy heavenly looks., and wave enchantment round me, do not 
 think thy conquest ess complete because it was instantaneous ; 
 for in that gentle form (as if another Imogen had entered) I saw 
 all that I had ever loved of female grace, modesty, and sweet- 
 ness ! 
 
 I cannot say much of friendship as giving an insight into 
 character, because it is often founded on mutual infirmities and 
 prejudices. Friendships are frequently taken up on some sudden 
 sympathy, and we see only as much as we please of one another's 
 characters afterwards. Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to 
 character, any more than professed enemies. They cool, indeed, 
 in time part, and retain only a rankling grudge at past errors 
 and oversights. Their testimony in the latter case is not quite 
 free from suspicion. 
 
 One would think that near relations, who live constantly 
 together, and always have done so, must be pretty well ac- 
 quainted with one another's character. They are nearly in 
 the dark about it. Familiarity confounds all traits of dis- 
 tinction : interest and prejudice take away the power of judg- 
 ing. We have no opinion on the subject, any more than of 
 one another's faces. The Penates, the household Gods, are 
 veiled. We do not see the features of those we love, nor do 
 we clearly discern their virtues or their vices. We take them 
 as they are found in the lump : by weight, and not by mea- 
 sure. We know all about the individuals, their sentiments, 
 history, manners, words, actions, every thing : but we know all 
 these too much as facts, as inveterate, habitual impressions, as 
 clothed with too many associations, as sanctified with too many 
 affections, as woven too much into the web of our hearts, to be 
 able to pick out the different threads, to cast up the items of the 
 debtor and creditor account, or to refer them to any general stan- 
 dard of right and wrong. Our impressions with respect to them 
 are too strong, too real, too much sui generis, to be capable of a 
 comparison with any thing but themselves. We hardly inquire 
 whether those for whom we are thus interested, and to whom we 
 are thus knit, are better or worse than others the question is a 
 kind of profanation all we know is, they are more to us than 
 any one else can be. Our sentiments of this kind are rooted
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER. 117 
 
 and grow in us, and we cannot eradicate them by voluntary 
 means. Besides, our judgments are bespoke, our interests take 
 part with our blood, If any doubt arises, if the veil of our im. 
 plicit confidence is drawn aside by any accident for a moment, 
 the shock is too great, like that of a dislocated limb, and we re- 
 coil on our habitual impressions again. Let not that veil eve? 
 be rent entirely asunder, so that those images may be left bare 
 of reverential awe, and lose their religion : for nothing can evei 
 support the desolation of the heart afterwards ! 
 
 The greatest misfortune that can happen among relations is a 
 different way of bringing up, so as to set one another's opinions 
 and characters in an entirely new point of view. This often lets 
 in an unwelcome day-light on the subject, and breeds schisms, 
 coldness, and incurable heart-burnings in families. I have some- 
 times thought whether the progress of society and march of know- 
 ledge does not do more harm in this respect, by loosening the 
 ties of domestic attachment, and preventing those who are most 
 interested in, and anxious to think well of one another, from feel- 
 ing a cordial sympathy and approbation of each other's senti- 
 ments, manners, views, &c. than it does good by any real advan- 
 tage to the community at large. The son, for instance, is brought 
 up to the church, and nothing can exceed the pride and pleasure 
 the father takes in him, while all goes on well in this favourite 
 direction. His notions change, and he imbibes a taste for the 
 Fine Arts. From this moment there is an end of any thing like 
 the same unreserved communication between them. The y*mng 
 man may talk with enthusiasm of his " Rembrandts, Correggios, 
 and stuff:" it is all Hebrew to the elder ; and whatever satisfac- 
 tion he may feel in hearing of his son's progress, or good wishes 
 for his success, he is never reconciled to the new pursuit, he still 
 hankers after the first object that he had set his mind upon. 
 Again, the grandfather is a Calvinist, who never gets the better 
 of his disappointment at his son's going over to the Unitarian 
 side of the question. The matter rests here, till the grandson, 
 some years after, in the fashion of the day and " infinite agita- 
 tion of men's wit," comes to doubt certain points in the creed in 
 which he has been brought up, and the affair is all abroad again 
 Here are three generations made uncomfortable, and in a manner
 
 t TABLE TALK. 
 
 set at variance, by a veering point of theology, and the officious 
 meddling of biblical critics ! Nothing, on the other hand, can 
 be more wretched or common than that upstart pride and inso- 
 lent good fortune which is ashamed of its origin ; nor are there 
 many things more awkward than the situation of rich and poor 
 relations. Happy, much happier, are those tribes and people 
 who are confined to the same caste and way of life from sire to 
 son, where prejudices are transmitted like instincts, and where 
 the same unvarying standard of opinion and refinement blend 
 countless generations in its improgressive, everlasting mould ! 
 
 Not only is there a wilful and habitual blindness in near kin- 
 dred to each other's defects, but an incapacity to judge from the 
 quantity of materials, from the contradictoriness of the evidence. 
 The chain of particulars is too long and massy for us to lift it or 
 put it into the most approved ethical scales. The concrete re- 
 sult does not answer to any abstract theory, to any logical defini- 
 tion. There is black, and white, and grey, square and round 
 there are too many anomalies, too many redeeming points in 
 poor human nature, such as it actually is, for us to arrive at a 
 smart, summary decision on it. We know too much to come to 
 any hasty or partial conclusion. We do not pronounce upon 
 the present act, because a hundred others rise up to contradict 
 it. We suspend our judgments altogether, because in effect one 
 thing unconsciously balances another ; and perhaps this obsti- 
 nate, pertinacious indecision would be the truest philosophy in 
 othej* cases, where we dispose of the question of character easily, 
 because we have only the smallest part of the evidence to decide 
 upon. Real character is not one thing, but a thousand things ; 
 actual qualities do not conform to any factitious standard in the 
 mind, but rest upon their own truth and nature. The dull stu- 
 por under which we labour in respect of those whom we have 
 the greatest opportunities of inspecting nearly, we should do well 
 to imitate, before we give extreme and uncharitable verdicts 
 against those whom we only see in passing, or at a distance. If 
 we knew them better, we should be disposed to say less about 
 them. 
 
 In the truth of things, there are none utterly worthless, none 
 without some drawback on their pretensions, or some alloy of
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER. 119 
 
 imperfection. It has been observed that a familiarity with the 
 worst characters lessens our abhorrence of them ; and a wonder 
 is often expressed that the greatest criminals look like other men. 
 The reason is that they are like other men in many respects. If a 
 particular individual was merely the wretch we read of or con- 
 ceive in the abstract, that is, if he was the mere personified idea 
 of the criminal brought to the bar, he would not disappoint the 
 spectator, but would look like what he would be a monster ! 
 But he has other qualities, ideas, feelings, nay, probably virtues, 
 mixed up with the most profligate habits or desperate acts. This 
 need not lessen our abhorrence of the crime, though it does of 
 the criminal ; for it has the latter effect only by showing him to 
 us in different points of view, in which he appears a common 
 mortal, and not the caricature of vice we took him for, nor spot 
 ted all over with infamy. I do not at the same time think this" a 
 lax or dangerous, though it is a charitable view of the subject. 
 In my opinion, no man ever answered in his own mind (except 
 in the agonies of conscience or of repentance, in which latter 
 case he throws the imputation from himself in another way) to 
 the abstract idea of a murderer. He may have killed a man in 
 self-defence, or " in the trade of war," or to save himself from 
 starving, or in revenge for an injury, but always " so as with a 
 difference," or from mixed and questionable motives. The indi- 
 vidual, in reckoning with himself, always takes into the account 
 the considerations of time, place, and circumstance, and never 
 makes out a case of unmitigated, unprovoked villainy, of " pure 
 defecated evil " against himself. There are degrees in real 
 crimes : we reason and moralize only by names and in classes, 
 r should be loth, indeed, to say, that " whatever is, is right :" 
 but almost every actual choice inclines to it, with some sort of 
 imperfect, unconscious bias. This is the reason, besides the 
 ends of secresy, of the invention of slang terms for different acts 
 of profligacy committed by thieves, pickpockets, &c. The com- 
 mon names suggest associations of disgust in the minds of others, 
 which those who live by them do not willingly recognize, and 
 which they wish to sink in a technical phraseology. So theie is a 
 story of a fellow who, as he was writing down his confession of 
 a murder, stopped to ask how the word murder was spelt ; this, if
 
 120 TABLE TALK. 
 
 true, was partly because his imagination was staggered by the 
 recollection of the thing, and partly because he shrunk from the 
 verbal admission of it. "Amen stuck in his throat !" The de- 
 fence made by Eugene Aram of himself against a charge ot 
 murder some years before, shows that he in imagination com- 
 pletely flung from himself the nominal crime imputed to him : he 
 might, indeed, have staggered an old man with a blow, and bu- 
 ried his body in a cave, and lived ever since upon the money he 
 found upon him, but there was " no malice in the case, none at 
 all," as Peachum says. The very coolness, subtlety, and cir- 
 cumspection of his defence (as masterly a legal document as 
 there is upon record) prove that he was guilty of the act, as 
 much as they prove that he was unconscious of the crime.* In 
 the same spirit, and I conceive with great metaphysical truth, 
 Mr. Coleridge, in his tragedy of Remorse, makes Ordonio (his 
 chief character) waive the acknowledgment of his meditated 
 guilt to his own mind, by putting into his mouth that striking so- 
 liloquy : 
 
 " Say, I had laid a body in the sun ! 
 
 Well ! in a month there swarm forth from the corse 
 
 A thousand, nay, ten thousand sentient beings 
 
 In place of that one man. Say I had MU'd him! 
 
 Yet who shall tell me that each one and all 
 
 Of these ten thousand lives is not as happy 
 
 As that one life, which being push'd aside, 
 
 Made room for these unnumber'd." Act ii. sc. ii. 
 
 I am not sure, indeed, that I have not got this whole train of 
 speculation from him ; but I should not think the worse of it on 
 that account. That gentlemen, I recollect, once asked me 
 whether I thought that the different members of a family really 
 liked one another so well, or had so much attachment as was 
 generally supposed : and I said that I conceived the regard they 
 had towards each other was expressed by the word interest, 
 
 * The bones of the murdered man were dug up in an old hermitage. On 
 this, as one instance of the acuteness which he displayed all through the occa- 
 sion, Aram remarks, " Where would you expect to find the bones of a mar. 
 sooner than in a hermit's cell, except you were to look for them in a ceme- 
 tery ?" See Newgate Calendar for the year 1758 or '9.
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER. 121 
 
 rather than by any other ; which he said was the true answer, 
 I do not know that I could mend it now. Natural affection ia 
 not pleasure in one another's company, nor admiration of, one 
 another's qualities ; but it is an intimate and deep knowledge of 
 the things that affect those, to whom we are bound by the nearest 
 ties, with pleasure or with pain ; it is an anxious, uneasy fellow- 
 feeling with them, a jealous watchfulness over their good .name, 
 a tender and unconquerable yearning for their good. The love, 
 in short, we bear them, is the nearest to that we bear ourselves. 
 Home, according to the old saying, is home, be it never so homely. 
 We love ourselves, not according to our deserts, but our cravings 
 after good : so we love our immediate relations in the next de- 
 gree (if not even sometimes in a higher one,) because we know 
 best what they have suffered and what sits nearest to their hearts. 
 We are implicated, in fact, in their welfare by habit and sym- 
 pathy, as we are in our own. 
 
 If our devotion to our own interests is much the same as to 
 theirs, we are ignorant of our own characters for the same 
 reason. We are parties too much concerned to return a fair 
 verdict, and are too much in the secret of our own motives or 
 situation not to be able to give a favourable turn to our actions. 
 We exercise a liberal criticism upon ourselves, and put off the 
 final decision to a late day. The field is large and open. Ham- 
 let exclaims, with a ncble magnanimity, " I count myself indif- 
 ferent honest, and yet I could accuse me of such things !" If 
 you could prove to a man that he is a knave, it would not make 
 much difference in his opinion ; his self-love is stronger than his 
 love of virtue. Hypocrisy is generally used as a mask to de- 
 ceive the world, not to impose on ourselves : for once detect the 
 delinquent in his knavery, and he laughs in your face or glories 
 in his iniquity. This at least happens, except where there is a 
 contradiction in the character, and our vices are involuntary and 
 at variance with our convictions. One great difficulty is to dis- 
 tinguish ostensible motives, or such as we acknowledge to our- 
 selves, from the tacit or secret springs of action. A man 
 changes his opinion readily, he thinks it candour : it is levity of 
 mind. For the most part, we are stunned and stupid in judging 
 of ourselves. We are callous by custom to our defects or ex- 
 
 6*
 
 122 TABLE TALK. 
 
 cellences, unless where vanity steps in to exaggerate or exten- 
 uate them. I cannot conceive how it is that people are in love 
 with their own^persons, or astonished at their own performances, 
 which are but a nine days' wonder to every one else. In gen- 
 eral, it may be laid down that we are liable to this twofold mis- 
 take in judging of our own talents : we, in the first place, nurse 
 the rickety bantling, we think much of that which has cost us 
 much pains and labour, and which goes against the grain ; and 
 we also set little store by what we do with most ease to our- 
 selves, and therefore best. The works of the greatest genius 
 are produced almost unconsciously, with an ignorance on the 
 part of the persons themselves that they have done anything ex- 
 traordinary. Nature has done it for them. How little Shakes- 
 pear seems to have thought of himself or of his fame ! Yet, 
 if " to know another well, were to know one's self," he must 
 have been acquainted with his own pretensions and character, 
 " who knew all qualities with a learned spirit." His eye seems 
 never to have been bent upon himself, but outwards upon nature. 
 A man, who thinks highly of himself, may almost set it down 
 that it is without reason. Milton, notwithstanding, appears to 
 have had a high opinion of himself, and to have made it good. 
 He was conscious of his powers, and great by design. Perhaps 
 his tenaciousness, on the score of his own merit, might arise 
 from an early habit of polemical writing, in which his preten- 
 sions were continually called to the bar of prejudice and party 
 spirit, and he had to plead not guilty to the indictment. Some 
 men have died unconscious of immortality; as others have almost 
 exhausted the sense of it in their life-time. Correggio might be 
 mentioned as an instance of the one, Voltaire of the other. 
 
 There is nothing that helps a man in his conduct through life 
 more than a knowledge of his own characteristic weaknesses 
 (which, guarded against, become his strength), as there is nothing 
 that tends more to the success of a man's talents than his know- 
 ing the limits of his faculties, which are thus concentrated on 
 some practicable object. One man can do but one thing. Uni- 
 versal pretensions end in nothing. Or, as Butler has it, too much 
 wit requires 
 
 " As much again to govern it."
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 1 *S 
 
 There are those who have gone (for want of this self-knowlodge) 
 strangely out of their way, and others who have never found it 
 We find many who succeed in certain departments, and are yet 
 melancholy and dissatisfied, because they failed in the one to 
 which they first devoted themselves, like discarded lovers who 
 pine after their scornful mistress. I will conclude with observ- 
 ing, that authors in general over-rate the extent and value of 
 posthumous fame : for what (as it has been asked) is the amount 
 even of Shakespear's fame ? That in that very country which 
 boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps scarce one person in ten 
 kas ever heard of. his name, or read a syllable of his writings 2
 
 124 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XII. 
 
 On the Fear of Death. 
 
 " And our little life is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life 
 has a beginning as well as an end. T. ;re was a time when we 
 were not: this gives us no concert* why then should it trouble 
 us that a time will come when we ihull cease to be ? I have no 
 wish to have been alive a hundred years ago, or in the reign of 
 Queen Anne : why should I regret and . ay it so much to heart 
 that I shall not be alive a hundred yeary hence, in the reign of I 
 cannot tell whom ? 
 
 When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays, 1 knew nothing of the sub- 
 jects of them : nay, much later, and but the other day. as it 
 were, in the beginning of the reign of George III., when Gold- 
 smith, Johnson, Burke, used to meet at the Globe, when Gar- 
 rick was in his glory, and Reynolds was over head and ears with 
 his portraits, and Sterne brought out the volumes of Tristram 
 Shandy year by year, it was without consulting me : I had not 
 the slightest intimation of what was going on : the debates in the 
 House of Commons on the American war, or the firing at Bunk- 
 er's Hill, disturbed not me : yet I thought this no evil I neither 
 ate, drank, nor was merry, yet I did not complain : I had not 
 then looked out into this breathing world, yet I was well ; and 
 the world did quite as well without me as I did without it ! 
 Why then should I make all this outcry about parting with it, 
 and being no worse off than I was before ? There is nothing in 
 the recollection that at a certain time we were not come into the 
 world, that " the gorge rises at" why should we revolt at the 
 idea that we must one day go out of it ? To die is only to be as 
 we were before we were born ; yet no one feels any remorse 01 
 regret or repugnance in contemplating this last idea. It is rathei
 
 ON THE FEAR OF DEATH. 125 
 
 a relief and disburthening of the mind : it seems to have been 
 holiday-time with ua then : we were not called to appear upon 
 the stage of life, to wear robes or tatters, to laugh or cry, be 
 hooted or applauded ; we had lain perdu all this while, snug, ou 
 of harm's way ; and had slept out our thousands of centuries 
 without wanting to be waked up ; at peace and free from care, 
 in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that of 
 infancy, wrapped in the softest and finest dust. And the worst 
 that we dread is, after a short, fretful, feverish being, after vain 
 hopes and idle fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the 
 troubled dream of life ! . . . Ye armed men, knights-templars, 
 that sleep in the stone aisles of that old Temple Church, where 
 all is silent above, and where a deeper silence reigns below (not 
 broken by the pealing organ), are ye not contented where ye 
 lie ? Or would you come out of your long homes to go to the 
 Holy War ? Or do ye complain that pain no longer visits you, 
 that sickness has done its worst, that you have paid the last debt 
 to nature, that you hear no more of the thickening phalanx of 
 the foe, or your lady's waning love ; and that while this ball of 
 earth rolls its eternal round, no sound shall ever pierce through 
 to disturb your lasting repose, fixed as the marble over your 
 tombs, breathless as the grave that holds you ! And thou, oh ! 
 thou, to whom my heart turns, and will turn while it has feeling 
 left, who didst love in vain, and whose first was thy last sigh, 
 wilt not thou too rest in peace (or wilt thou cry to me complain- 
 ing from thy clay-cold bed) when that sad heart is no longer sad, 
 and that sorrow is dead, which thou wert only called into the 
 world to feel ! 
 
 It is certain that there is nothing in the idea of a pre-exist- 
 ent state, that excites our longing like the prospect of a posthu- 
 mous existence. We are satisfied to have begun life when we 
 did ; we have no ambition to have set out on our journey sooner; 
 and feel that we have quite enough to do to battle our way 
 through since. We cannot say, 
 
 " The wars we well remember of King Nine, 
 Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine:" 
 
 neither have we any wish : we are contented to read of them ia
 
 126 TABLE TALK. 
 
 story, and 'o stand and gaze at the vast sea of time that sepa- 
 rates us from them. It was early days then : the world was not 
 well-aired enough for us : we have no inclination to have been 
 up and stirring. We do not consider the six thousand years of 
 the world before we were born as so much time lost to us : we 
 are perfectly indifferent about the matter. We do not grieve-and 
 lament that we did not happen to be in time to see the grand 
 mask and pageant of human life going on in all that period ; 
 though we are mortified at being obliged to quit our station 
 before the rest of the procession passes. 
 
 It may be suggested in explanation of this difference, that we 
 know from various records and traditions what happened in the 
 time of Queen Anne, or even in the reigns of the Assyrian mon> 
 archs : but that we have no means of ascertaining what is to hap- 
 pen hereafter except by awaiting the event, and that our eager- 
 ness and curiosity are sharpened in proportion as we are in the 
 dark about it. This is not at all the case ; for at that rate we 
 should be constantly wishing to make a voyage of discovery to 
 Greenland or to the Moon, neither of which we have, in general, 
 the least desire to do. Neither, in truth, have we any particular 
 solicitude to pry into the secrets of futurity, but as a pretext for 
 prolonging our own existence. It is not so much that we care to 
 be alive a hundred or a thousand years hence, any more than to 
 have been alive a hundred or a thousand years ago : but the thing 
 lies here, that we would all of us wish the present moment to last 
 forever. We would be as we are, and would have the world 
 r emain just as it is, to please our fancy. 
 
 " The present eye catches the present object" 
 
 to have and to hold while it may ; and we abhor, on any terms, 
 to have it torn from us, and nothing left in its room. It is the 
 pang of parting, the unloosing our grasp, the breaking asunder 
 some strong tie, the leaving some cherished purpose unfulfilled, 
 that creates the repugnance to go, and " makes calamity of so 
 long life," as it often is. 
 
 " Oh ! thou strong heart ! 
 
 There's such a covenant 'twixt the world and thee, 
 Ye're loth to break !"
 
 ON THE FEAR OF DEATH. 127 
 
 The love cf life, then, is an habitual attachment, not an abstract 
 principle. Simply to be does not " content man's natural desire:" 
 we long to be in a certain time, place, and circumstance. We 
 would much rather be now, "on this bank and shoal of time,'' 
 than have our choice of any future period, than take a slice of 
 fifty or sixty years out of the Millennium, for instance. This 
 shows that our attachment is not confined either to being or to 
 well-being ; but that we have an inveterate prejudice in favour 
 of our immediate existence, such as it is. The mountaineer will 
 not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut ; neither are we will- 
 ing to give up our present mode of life, with all its advantages 
 and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for it. 
 No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other 
 man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be our- 
 selves. There are some persons of that reach of soul that they 
 would like to live two hundred and fifty years hence, to see to 
 what height of empire America will have grown up in that period, 
 or whether the English Constitution will last so long. These are, 
 points beyond me. But I confess I should like to live to see the 
 downfall of Legitimacy. That is a vital question with me ; and 
 I shall like it the better, the sooner it happens ! 
 
 No young man ever thinks he shall die. He may believe that 
 others will, or assent to the doctrine that " all men are mortal" 
 as an abstract proposition, but he is far enough from bringing it 
 home to himself individually.* Youth, buoyant activity, and 
 animal spirits hold absolute antipathy with old age as well as 
 with death ; nor have we, in the heyday of life, any more than 
 in the thoughtlessness of childhood, the remotest conception how 
 
 " This sensible warm motion can become 
 A kneaded clod" 
 
 nor how sanguine, florid health and vigour shall "turn to withered, 
 weak, and grey." Or if in a moment of idle speculation we in- 
 dulge in this notion of the close of life as a theory, it is amazing 
 at what a distance it seems ; what a long, leisurely perspective 
 there is between ; what a contrast its slow and solemn approach 
 
 * "All men think all men mortal but themselves."- -Younu.
 
 2o TABLE TALK. 
 
 affords to our present gay fleeting existence ! We eye the farthest 
 verge of the horizon, and think what a way we shall have to look 
 back upon, ere we arrive at our journey's end ; and without our 
 in the least suspecting it, the mists are at our feet, and the shadows 
 of age encompass us. The two divisions of our lives have melted 
 into each other : the extreme points close and meet with none of 
 that romantic interval stretching out between them, that we had 
 reckoned upon ; and for the rich, melancholy, solemn hues of 
 age, " the sear, the yellow leaf," the deepening shadows of an 
 autumnal evening, we only feel a dank, cold mist encircling all 
 objects, after the spirit of youth is fled. There is no inducement 
 to look forward ; and what is worse, little interest in looking back 
 to what has become so trite and common. The pleasures of our 
 existence have worn themselves out, are " gone into the wastes 
 of time," or have turned their indifferent side to us : the pains 
 by their repeated blows have worn us out, and have left us neither 
 spirit nor inclination to encounter them again in retrospect. We 
 do not want to rip up old grievances, nor to renew our youth like 
 ihe phoenix, nor to live our lives twice over. Once is enough. 
 As the tree falls, so let it lie. We shut up the book and close 
 the account once for all ! 
 
 It has been thought by some that life is like the exploring of 
 a passage that grows narrower and darker the farther we ad- 
 vance, without a possibility of ever turning back, and where we 
 are stifled for want of breath at last. For myself, I do not com- 
 plain of the greater thickness of the atmosphere as I approach 
 the narrow house. I felt it more formerly,* when the idea alone 
 seemed to suppress a thousand rising hopes, and weighed upon 
 the pulses of the blood. At present I rather feel a thinness and 
 want of support, I stretch out my hand to some object and find 
 none, I am too much in a world of abstraction ; the naked map of life 
 is spread out before me, and in the emptiness and desolation I see 
 Death coming to meet me. In my youth I could not behold him 
 for the crowd of objects and feelings, and Hope stood between us, 
 saying " Never mind that old fellow !" If I had lived indeed, 
 
 * I remember, once in particular, having this feeling in reading Schiller's 
 Don Carlos, where there is a description of death, in a degree that almost 
 choaked me.
 
 ON THE FEAR OF DEATH. 129 
 
 I should not so much care to die. But I do not like a contraa 
 of pleasure broken off unfulfilled, a marriage with joy uncon- 
 suinmated, a promise of happiness rescinded. My public and 
 private hopes have been left a ruin, or remain only to mock me. 
 I would wish them to be re-edified. I should like to see some pros- 
 pect of good to mankind, such as my life began with. I should 
 like to leave some sterling work behind me. I should like to have 
 some friendly hand to consign me to the grave. On these con- 
 ditions I am ready, if not willing, to depart. I could then write 
 on my tomb Grateful and Contented ! But I have thought 
 and suffered too much to be willing to have thought and suffered 
 in vain ! In looking back, it sometimes appears to me as if I 
 had in a manner slept out my life in a dream or trance on the 
 side of the hill of knowledge, where I have fed on books, on 
 thoughts, on pictures, and only heard in half-murmurs the tramp- 
 ling of busy feet, or the noises of the throng below. Waked out 
 of this dim, twilight existence, and startled with the passing 
 scene, I have felt a wish to descend to the world of realities, and 
 join in the chase. But I fear too late, and that I had better re- 
 turn to my bookish chimeras and indolence once more ! Zanetto, 
 lascia le donne, e stadia la matamatica. 
 
 It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear of death 
 become more familiar to us as we approach nearer to it : that life 
 seems to ebb with the decay of blood and youthful spirits ; and 
 that as we find every thing about us subject to chance and 
 change, as our strength and beauty die, as our hopes and pas- 
 sions, our friends and our affections leave us, we begin by degrees 
 to feel ourselves mortal ! 
 
 I have never seen death but once, and that was in an infant. 
 It is years ago. The look was calm and placid, and the face 
 was fair and firm. It was as if a waxen image had been laid 
 out in the coffin, and strewed with innocent flowers. It was not 
 like death, but more like an image of life ! No breath moved 
 the lips, no pulse stirred, no sight or sound wou ? d enter those 
 eyes or ears more. While I looked at it, I saw that no pain was 
 there ; it seemed to smile at the short pang of life which was 
 over: but I could not bear the coffin-lid to be closed it almcst 
 9
 
 130 TABLE TALK. 
 
 stifled me ; and still as the nettles wave in a corner of the 
 church-yard over his little grave, the welcome breeze helps to re- 
 fresh me and ease the tightness at my breast ! 
 
 An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's monument of the 
 two children, is contemplated with pure delight. Why do we 
 not grieve and fret that the marble is not alive, or fancy that it 
 has a shortness of breath ? It never was alive ; and it is the 
 difficulty of making the transition from life to death, the struggle 
 between the two in our imagination, that confounds their proper- 
 ties painfully together, and makes us conceive that the infant 
 that is but just dead, still wants to breathe, to enjoy, and look 
 about it, and is prevented by the icy hand of death, locking uj) 
 its faculties and benumbing its senses ; so that, if it could, it 
 would complain of its own hard fate. Perhaps religious consi- 
 derations reconcile the mind to this change sooner than any 
 others, by representing the spirit as fled to another sphere, and 
 leaving the body behind it. But in reflecting on death generally, 
 we mix up the idea of life with it, and thus make it the ghastly 
 monster it is. We think how we should feel, not how the dead 
 feel. 
 
 " Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries ; 
 Even in our ashes live their wonted fires!" 
 
 There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker's Light 
 of Nature Pursued, which I shall transcribe, as by much the best 
 illustration I can offer of it. 
 
 " The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the mansion 
 provided for it to inhabit, dark, cold, close and solitary, are 
 shocking to the imagination ; but it is to the imagination only, 
 not to the understanding : for whoever consults this faculty will 
 see at first glance, that there is nothing dismal in all these cir- 
 cumstances : if the corpse were kept wrapped up in a warm bed, 
 with a roasting fire in the chamber, it would feel no comfortable 
 warmth therefrom; were store of tapers lighted up as soon as 
 day shuts in, it would see no objects to divert it ; were it left at 
 large, it would have ho liberty, nor if surrounded with company, 
 would be cheered thereby ; neither are the distorted features ex- 
 pressions of pain, uneasiness, or distress. This every one knows,
 
 ON THE FEAR OF DEATH. 131 
 
 and will readily allow upon being suggested, yet still cannot be- 
 hold, nor even cast a thought upon those objects without shud- 
 dering ; for knowing that a living person must suffer grievously 
 under such appearances, they become habitually formidable to 
 the mind, and strike a mechanical horror, which is increased by 
 the customs of the world around us." 
 
 There is usually one pang added voluntarily and unnecessarily 
 to the fear of death, by our affecting to compassionate the loss 
 which others will have in us. If that were all, we might rea- 
 sonably set our minds at rest. The pathetic exhortation on 
 country tomb-stones, " Grieve not for me, my wife and children 
 dear," &c. is for the most part speedily followed to the letter. 
 We do not leave so great a void in society as we are inclined to 
 imagine, partly to magnify our own importance, and partly 
 to console ourselves by sympathy. Even in the same family the 
 gap is not so great : the wound closes up sooner than We should 
 expect. Nay, our room is not unfrequently thought better 
 than our company. People walk along the streets the day after 
 our deaths just as they did before, and the crowd is not dimin- 
 ished. While we were living, the world seemed in a manner 
 to exist only for us, for our delight and amusement, because it 
 contributed to them. But our hearts cease to beat, and it goes 
 on as usual, and thinks no more about us than it did in our life- 
 time. The million are devoid of sentiment, and care as little for 
 you or me as if we belonged to the moon. We live the week 
 over in the Sunday's newspaper, or are decently interred in some 
 obituary at the month's end ! It is not surprising that we are 
 forgotten so soon after we quit this mortal stage : we are scarcely 
 noticed, while we are on it. It is not merely that our names are 
 not known in China they have hardly been heard of in the next 
 street. We are hand and glove with the universe, and think the 
 obligation is mutual. This is an evident fallacy. If this, however, 
 does not trouble us now, it will not hereafter. A handful of dust can 
 have no quarrel to pick with its neighbours, or complaint to make 
 against Providence, and might well exclaim, if it had but an un- 
 derstanding and a tongue, " Go thy ways, old world ; swing round 
 in blue ether, voluble to every age, you and I shall no more 
 jostle!"
 
 132 TABLE TALK. 
 
 It is amazing how soon the rich and titled, and even some of 
 those who have wielded great political power, are forgotten : 
 
 " A little rule, a little sway, 
 
 Is all the great and mighty have 
 
 Betwixt the cradle and the grave" 
 
 and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name behind them. 
 " A great man's memory may, at the common rate, survive him 
 half a year." His heirs and successors take his titles, his power, 
 and his wealth all that made him considerable or courted by 
 others ; and he has left nothing else behind him either to flatter 
 or benefit the world. Posterity are not by any means so disin- 
 terested as they are supposed to be. They give their gratitude 
 and admiration only in return for benefits conferred. They 
 cherish the memory of those to whom they are indebted for in- 
 struction and delight ; and they cherish it just in proportion to 
 the instruction and delight they are conscious of receiving. The 
 sentiment of admiration springs immediately from this ground ; 
 and cannot be otherwise than well-founded.* 
 
 The effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general or abstract 
 idea, is the effect of a highly civilized and artificial state of so- 
 ciety. Men formerly plunged into all the vicissitudes and dangers 
 of war, or staked their all upon a single die, or some one pas- 
 sion, which, if they could not have gratified, life became a burthen 
 to them now our strongest passion is to think, our chief amuse- 
 ment is to read new plays, new poems, new novels, and this we 
 may do at our leisure, in perfect security, ad infinitum. If we 
 look into the old histories and romances, before the belles-lettres 
 neutralized human affairs and reduced passion to a state of men- 
 tal equivocation, we find the heroes and heroines not setting their 
 lives " at a pin's fee," but rather courting opportunities of throw- 
 
 * It has been usual to raise a very unjust clamour against the enormous 
 salai-ies of public singers, actors, and so on. This matter seems reducible to 
 a moral equation. They are paid out of money raised by voluntary contribu- 
 tions in the strictest sense; and if they did not bring certain sums into the 
 treasury, the Managers would not engage them. These sums are exactly in 
 proportion to the number of individuals to whom their performances gives an 
 extraordinary degree of pleasure. The talents of a singer, actor, &cc. are there- 
 fore worth just as much as they wil" fetch.
 
 ON THE FEAR OF DEATH. 133 
 
 ing them away in very wantonness of spirit. They raise their 
 fondness for some favourite pursuit to its height, to a pitch of 
 madness, and think no price too dear to pay for its full gratifica- 
 tion. Every thing else is dross. They go to death as to a bridal 
 bed, and sacrifice themselves or others without remorse at the 
 shrine of love, of honour, of religion, or any other prevailing 
 feeling. Romeo runs his "sea-sick, weary bark upon the rocks" 
 of death, the instant he finds himself deprived of his Juliet ; and 
 she clasps his neck in their last agonies, and follows him to the 
 same fatal shore. One strong idea takes possession of the mind 
 and overrules every other ; and even life itself, joyless without 
 that, becomes an object of indifference or loathing. There is at 
 least more of imagination in such a state of things, more vigour 
 of feeling and promptitude to act, than in our lingering, languid, 
 protracted attachment to life, for its own poor sake. It is perhaps 
 also better, as well as more hcroical, to strike at some daring or 
 darling object, and if we IVil n that, to take the consequences 
 manfully, than to renew thtr lease of a tedious, spiritless, charm- 
 less existence, merely (as Pierre says,) "to lose it afterwards in 
 some vile brawl" for some v-orthless object. Was there not a 
 spirit of martyrdom as well as a mixture of the reckless energy 
 of barbarism in this bold defiance of death ? Had not religion 
 something to do with it : the implicit belief in another state of 
 being, which rendered this of less value, and embodied something 
 beyond it to the imagination ; so that the rough soldier, the in- 
 fatuated lover, the valorous knight, &c. could afford to throw 
 away the present venture, and take a leap into the arms of fu- 
 turity, which the modern sceptic shrinks back from, with all his 
 boasted reason and vain philosophy, weaker than a woman ! I 
 cannot help thinking so myself; but I have endeavoured to ex- 
 plain this point before, and will not enlarge farther on it here. 
 
 A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It 
 not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every 
 step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being. 
 Sedentary and studious men are the most apprehensive on this 
 score. Dr. Johnson was an instance in point. A few yeara 
 seemed to him soon over, compared with those sweeping contem 
 plations on time and infinity with which he had been used to pose
 
 134 TABLE TALK. 
 
 himself. In the still-life of a man of letters, there was no obvi- 
 ous reason for a change. He might sit in an arm-chair and 
 pour out cups of tea to all eternity. Would it had been possible 
 for him to do so ! The most rational cure after all for the inor- 
 dinate fear of death is to set a just value on life. If we merely 
 wish to continue on the scene to indulge our headstrong humours 
 and tormenting passions, we had better begone at once : and if 
 wc only cherish a fondness for existence according to tne bene- 
 fit* we reap from it, the pang we feel at parting with it will not 
 be vp*y sereie!
 
 ON APPLICATION TO STUDY. 135 
 
 . ESSAY XIII. 
 
 On Application to Study. 
 
 No one is idle, who can do any thing. It is conscious inability 
 or the sense of repeated failure, that prevents us from undertak 
 ing, or deters us from the prosecution of any work. 
 
 Wilson the painter might be mentioned as an exception to this 
 rule ; for he was said to be an indolent man. After bestowing a 
 few touches on a picture, he grew tired, and said to any friend 
 who called in, " Now, let us go somewhere !" But the fact is, 
 that Wilson could not finish his pictures minutely ; and that those 
 few masterly touches, carelessly thrown in of a morning, were 
 all that he could do. The rest would have been labour lost. 
 Morland has been referred to as another man of genius, who 
 could only be brought to work by fits and snatches. But his land- 
 scapes and figures (whatever degree of merit they might possess) 
 were mere hasty sketches ; and he could produce all that he was 
 capable of, in the first half-hour, as well as in twenty years. 
 Why bestow additional pains without additional effect ? What 
 he did was from the impulse of the moment, from the lively im- 
 pression of some coarse, but striking object ; and with that im- 
 pulse his efforts ceased, as they justly ought. There is no 
 use in labouring, invito. Minerva nor any difficulty in it, when 
 the Muse is not averse. 
 
 " The laoour we delight in physics pain." 
 
 Denner finished his unmeaning portraits with a microscope, 
 and without being ever weary of his fruitless task ; for the es- 
 sence of his genius was industry. Sir Joshua Reynolds, courted 
 by the Graces and by Fortune, was hardly ever out of his pain*.- 
 mg-room ; and lamented a few days, at any time spent at a 
 friend's house or at a nobleman's seat in the country, as so irr^ch
 
 186 TABLE TALK. 
 
 time lost. That darkly-illuminated room " to him a kingdom 
 was :" his pencil was the sceptre that he wielded, and the throne 
 on which his sitters were placed, a throne for Fame. Here he 
 felt indeed at home ; here the current of his ideas flowed full and 
 strong ; here he felt most self-possession j most command over 
 others ; and the sense of power urged him on to his delightful 
 task with a sort of vernal cheerfulness and vigour, even in the 
 decline of life. The feeling of weakness and incapacity would 
 have made his hand soon falter, would have rebutted him from 
 his object ; or had the canvas mocked, and been insensible to Iris 
 toil, instead of gradually turning to 
 
 " A lucid mirror, in which nature saw 
 All her reflected features," 
 
 he would, like so many others, have thrown down his pencil in 
 despair, or proceeded reluctantly, without spirit and without 
 success. Claude Lorraine, in like manner, spent whole mornings 
 on the banks of the Tiber or in his study, eliciting beauty after 
 beauty, adding touch to touch, getting nearer and nearer to per- 
 fection, luxuriating in endless felicity not merely giving the 
 salient points, but filling up the whole intermediate space with 
 continuous grace and beauty ! What farther motive was neces- 
 sary to induce him to persevere, but the bounty of his fate ? What 
 greater pleasure could he seek for, than that of seeing the perfect 
 image of his mind reflected in the work of his hand ? But as is 
 the pleasure and the confidence produced by consummate skill, 
 so is the pain and the disheartening effect of total failure. When 
 for the fair face of nature we only see an unsightly blot issuing 
 from our best endeavours, then the nerves slacken, the tears fill 
 he eyes, and the painter turns away from his art, as the lover 
 from a mistress that scorns him. Alas ! how many such h&.ve, 
 as the poet says, 
 
 " Begun in gladness ; 
 Whereof has come in the end despondency and madness" 
 
 not for want of will to proceed, (oh, no !) but for lack of power ! 
 
 Hence it is that those often do best (up to a certain point of 
 
 common- place success) who have least knowledge and least am-
 
 ON APPLICATION TO STUDY 137 
 
 bition to excel. Their taste keeps pace with their capacity ; and 
 they are not deterred by insurmountable difficulties, of which 
 they have no idea. I have knpwn artists (for instance) of con- 
 siderable merit, and a certain native rough strength and resolu- 
 tion of mind, who have been active and enterprizing in their pro- 
 fession, but who never seemed to think of any works but those 
 which they had in hand ; they never spoke of a picture, or ap- 
 peared to have seen one : to them Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Rem- 
 brandt, Correggio, were as if they had never been : no tones, mel- 
 lowed by time to soft perfection, lured them to their luckless 
 doom, no divine forms baffled their vain embrace ; no sound of 
 immortality rung in their ears, or drew off their attention from 
 the calls of creditors or of hunger : they walked through collec- 
 tions of the finest works, like the Children in the Fiery Furnace, 
 untouched, unapproached. With these true terra Jilii the art 
 might be supposed to begin and end : they thought only of the 
 subject of their next production, the size of their next canvas, 
 the grouping, the getting in of the figures ; and conducted their 
 work to its conclusion with as little distraction of mind and as few 
 misgivings, as a stage-coachman conducts a stage, or a carrier 
 delivers a bale of goods, according to its destination. Such per- 
 sons, if they do not rise above, at least seldom sink below them- 
 selves. They do not soar to the "highest Heaven of invention," 
 nor penetrate the inmost recesses of the heart ; but they succeed 
 in all that they attempt or are capable of, as men of business and 
 of industry in their calling. For them the veil of the Temple of 
 Art is not rent asunder, and it is well : one glimpse of the Sanc- 
 tuary, of the Holy of the Holies, might palsy their hands, and 
 bedim their sight forever after ! 
 
 I think there are two mistakes, common enough on this subject, 
 viz. : That men of genius, or of first-rate capacity, do little, ex- 
 cept by intermittent fits, or per saltum and that they do that little 
 in a slight and slovenly manner. There may be instances of 
 this ; but they are not the highest, and they are the exceptions, 
 not the rule. On the contrary, the greatest artists have in general 
 been the most prolific or the most elaborate, as the best writers 
 nave been frequently the most voluminous as well as indefatigable. 
 "We have a great living instance among writers, that the quality 
 
 7
 
 138 TABLE TALK. 
 
 of a man's productions is not to be estimated in the inverse ratio 
 of their quantity, I mean in the Author of Waverley ; the fecun- 
 dity of whose pen is no less admirable than its felicity. Shake- 
 spear is another instance of the same prodigality of genius \ his 
 materials being endlessly poured forth with no niggard or fastidi- 
 ous hand, and the mastery of the execution being (in many re- 
 spects at least) equal to the boldness of the design. As one ex- 
 ample among others that I might cite of the attention which he 
 gave to his subject, it is sufficient to observe, that there is scarcely 
 a word in any of his more striking passages that can be altered 
 for the better. If any person, for instance, is trying to recollect 
 a favourite line, and cannot hit upon some particular expression, 
 it is in vain to think of substituting any other so good. That in 
 the original text is not merely the best, but it seems the only right 
 one. I will stop to illustrate this point a little. I was at a loss 
 the other day for the line in Henry V., 
 
 " Nice customs curtesy to great kings." 
 
 I could not recollect the word nice : I tried a number of others, 
 such as old, grave, &c. they would none of them do, but seemed 
 all heavy, lumbering, or from the purpose : the word nice, on the 
 contrary, appeared to drop into its place, and be ready to assist 
 ih paying the reverence due. Again, 
 
 " A jest's prosperity lies in the ear 
 Of him that hears it." 
 
 1 thought, in quoting from memory, of " A jest's success," " A 
 jest's renown," &c. I then turned to the volume, and there found 
 the very word that of all others expressed the idea. Had Shake- 
 spear searched through the four quarters of the globe, he could 
 not have lighted on another to convey so exactly what he meant 
 a casual, hollow, sounding success ! I could multiply such ex- 
 amples, but that I am sure the reader will easily supply them 
 himself; and they show sufficiently that Shakespear was not (as 
 he is often represented) a loose or clumsy writer. The bold, 
 happy texture of his style, in which every word is prominent, 
 and yet cannot be torn from its place without violence, any more 
 than a limb from the body, is (one should think) the result either
 
 ON APPLICATION TO STUDY. 139 
 
 of vigilant pains-taking, or of unerring, intuitive perception, and 
 not the mark of crude conceptions, or " the random, blindfold 
 blows of ignorance." 
 
 There cannot be a greater contradiction to the common pre- 
 judice that " Genius is naturally a truant and a vagabond," 
 than the astonishing and (on this ' hypothesis) unaccountable 
 number of chef-d'ceuvres left behind them by the Old Masters. 
 The stream of their invention supplies the taste of successive 
 generations like a river : they furnish a hundred Galleries, and 
 preclude competition, not more by the excellence than by the 
 extent of their performances. Take Raphael and Rubens for 
 instance. There are works of theirs in single Collections enough 
 to occupy a long and laborious life, and yet their works are 
 spread through all the Collections of Europe. They seem to 
 have cost them no more labour than if they " had drawn in their 
 breath and puffed it forth again." But we know that they made 
 drawings, studies, sketches of all the principal of these, with the 
 care and caution of the merest tyros in the art ; and they remain 
 equal proofs of their capacity and diligence. The Cartoons of 
 Raphael alone might have employed many years, and made a 
 life of illustrious labour, though they look as if they had been 
 struck off at a blow, and are not a tenth part of what he pro- 
 duced in his short but bright career. Titian and Michael An- 
 gelo lived longer ; but they worked as hard and did as well. 
 Shall we bring in competition with examples like these some 
 trashy caricaturist or idle dauber, who has no sense of the in- 
 finite resources of nature or art, nor consequently any power to 
 employ himself upon them for any length of time or to any pur- 
 pose, to prove that genius and regular industry are incompatible 
 qualities ? 
 
 In my opinion, the very superiority of the works of the great 
 painters (instead of being a bar to) accounts for their multipli- 
 city. Power is pleasure ; and pleasure sweetens pain. A fine 
 poet thus describes the effect of the sight of nature on his 
 mind: 
 
 " The sounding cataract 
 
 Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
 
 140 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Tneir colours and their forms were then to me 
 An appetite, a feeling, and a love, 
 That had no need of a remoter charm 
 By thought supplied, or any interest 
 Unborrowed from the eye." 
 
 So the fbf-ns of nature, or the human form divine, stood before 
 the great artists of old, nor required any other stimulus to lead 
 the eye to survey, or the hand to embody them, than the pleasure 
 derived from the inspiration of the subject, and " propulsive 
 force" of the mimic creation. 'The grandeur of their works was 
 an argument with them, not to stop short, but to proceed. They 
 could have no higher excitement or satisfaction than in the exer- 
 cise of their art and endless generation of truth and beauty. 
 Success prompts to exertion ; and habit facilitates success. It 
 is idle to suppose we can exhaust nature ; and the more we 
 employ our own faculties, the more we strengthen them and 
 enrich our stores of observation and invention. The more we 
 do, the more we can do. Not indeed if we get our ideas out of 
 our own heads that stock is soon exhausted, and we recur to 
 tiresome, vapid imitations of ourselves. But this is the difference 
 between real and mock talent, between genius and affectation. 
 Nature is not limited, nor does it become effete, like our conceit 
 and vanity. The closer we examine it, the more it refines upon 
 us ; it expands as we enlarge and shift our view ; it " grows 
 with our growth, and strengthens with our strength." The sub- 
 jects are endless ; and our capacity is invigorated as it is called 
 out by occasion and necessity. He who does nothing, renders 
 himself incapable of doing any thing ; but while we are execu- 
 ting any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to 
 undertake another. The principles are the same in all nature ; 
 and we understand them better, as we verify them by experience 
 and practice. It is not as if there was a given number of sub- 
 jects to work upon, or a set of innate or preconceived ideas in 
 our minds, which we encroached upon with every new design ; 
 the subjects, as I said before, are endless, and we acquire ideas 
 by imparting them. Our expenditure of intellectual wealth 
 makes us rich : we can only be liberal as we have previously 
 accumulated the means. By lying idle, as by standing still, we
 
 ON APPLICATION TO STUDF. 141 
 
 are confined to the same trite, narrow round of topics : by con- 
 tinuing our efforts, as by moving forwards in a road, we extend 
 our views, and discover continually new tracts of country. 
 Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use. 
 
 Habit also gives promptness ; and the soul of dispatch is de- 
 cision. One man may write a book or paint a picture, while 
 another is deliberating about the plan or the title-page. The 
 great painters were able to do so much, because they knew ex- 
 actly what they meant to do, and how to set about it. They 
 were thorough-bred workmen, and were not learning their art 
 while they were exercising it. We can do a great deal in a 
 short time if we only know how. Thus an author may become 
 very voluminous, who only employs an hour or two in a day in 
 study. If he has once obtained, by habit and reflection, a use 
 of his pen with plenty of materials to work upon, the pages van- 
 ish before him. The time lost is in beginning, or in stopping 
 after we have begun. If we only go forwards with spirit and 
 confidence, we shall soon arrive at the end of our journey. A 
 practised writer ought never to hesitate for a sentence from the 
 moment he sets pen to paper, or think about the course he is to 
 take. He must trust to his previous knowledge of the subject 
 and to his immediate impulses, and he will get to the close of his 
 task without accidents or loss of time. I can easily understand 
 how the old divines and controversialists produced their folios : I 
 could write folios myself, if I rose early and sat up late at this 
 kind of occupation. But I confess I should be soon tired of it, 
 besides wearying the reader. 
 
 In one sense, art is long and life is short. In another sense, 
 this aphorism is not true. The best of us are idle half our time. 
 It is wonderful how much is done in a short space, provided we 
 set about it properly, and give our minds wholly to it. Let any 
 one devote himself to any art or science ever so strenuously, and 
 he will still have leisure to make considerable progress in half a 
 dozen other acquirements. Leonardo da Vinci was a mathema- 
 tician, a musician, a poet, and an anatomist, besides being one 
 of the greatest painters of his age. The Prince of Painters was 
 a courtier, a lover, and fond of dress and company. Michael 
 Angelo was a prodigy of versatility of talent a writer of Son
 
 142 TABLE TALK. 
 
 nets (which Wordsworth has thought worth translating) and the 
 friend of Dante. Salvator was a lutenist and a satirist. Titian 
 was an elegant letter-writer, and a finished gentleman. Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds's Discourses are more polished and classical 
 even than any of his pictures. Let a man do all he can in any 
 one branch of study, he must either exhaust himself and doze 
 over it, or vary his pursuit, or else lie idle. All our real labour 
 lies in a nut-shell. The mind makes, at some period or other, 
 one Herculean effort, and the rest is mechanical. We have to 
 climb a steep and narrow precipice at first ; but after that, the 
 way is broad and easy, where we may drive several accomplish- 
 ments abreast. Men should have one principal pursuit, which 
 may be both agreeably and advantageously diversified with other 
 lighter ones, as the subordinate parts of a picture may be ma- 
 naged so as to give effect to the centre group. It has been ob- 
 served by a sensible man,* that the having a regular occupation 
 or professional duties to attend to is no excuse for putting forth 
 an inelegant or inaccurate work ; for a habit of industry braces 
 and strengthens the mind, and enables it to wield its energies 
 with additional ease and steadier purpose. Were I allowed to 
 instance in myself, if what I write at present is worth nothing, at. 
 least it costs me nothing. But it cost me a great deal twenty 
 years ago. I have added little to my stock since then, and taken 
 little from it. I " unfold the book and volume of the brain," and 
 transcribe the characters I see there as mechanically as any one 
 might copy the letters in a sampler. I do not say they came 
 there mechanically I transfer them to the paper mechanically. 
 After eight or ten years' hard study, an author (at least) may go 
 to sleep. 
 
 I do not conceive rapidity of execution necessarily implies slo- 
 venliness or crudeness. On the contrary, I believe it is often 
 productive both of sharpness and freedom. The eagerness of 
 composition strikes out sparkles of fancy, and runs the thoughts 
 more naturally and closely into one another. There may be 
 less formal method, but there is more life and spirit and truth. 
 In the play and agitation of the mind, it runs over, and we dally 
 
 The Rev. W. Shepherd of Gateacre, in the Preface to his Life of Poggio.
 
 ON APPLICATION TO STUDY. 143 
 
 with the subject, as the glass-blower rapidly shapes the vitreous 
 fluid. A number of new thoughts rise up spontaneously, and 
 hey come in the proper places, because they arise from the oc- 
 casion. They are also sure to partake of the warmth and vivid- 
 ness of that ebullition of mind, from which they spring. Spirilus 
 precipitandus est. In these sort of voluntaries in composition, the 
 thoughts are worked up to a state of projection : the grasp of the 
 subject, the presence of mind, the flow of expression must be 
 something akin to extempore speaking ; or perhaps such bold but 
 finished draughts may be compared to fresco paintings, which 
 imply a life of study and great previous preparation, but of 
 which the execution is momentary and irrevocable. I will add 
 a single remark on a point that has been much disputed. Mr. 
 Cobbett lays it down that the first word that occurs is always the 
 best. I would venture to differ from so great an authority. Mr. 
 Cobbett himself indeed writes as easily and as well as he talks ; 
 but he perhaps is hardly a rule for others without his practice 
 and without his ability. In the hurry of composition three or 
 four words may present themselves, one on the back of the other, 
 and the last may be the best and right one. I grant thus much, 
 that it is in vain to seek for the word we want, or endeavour to 
 get at it second-hand, or as a paraphrase on some other word 
 it must come of itself, or arise out of an immediate impression 
 or lively intuition of the subject ; that is, the proper word must 
 be suggested immediately by the thought, but it need not be pre 
 sented as soon as called for. It is the same in trying to recol- 
 lect the names of places, persons, &c, where we cannot force 
 our memory ; they must come of themselves by natural associa- 
 tion, as it were ; but they may occur to us when we least think 
 of it, owing to some casual circumstance or link of connection, 
 and long after we have given up the search. Proper expressions 
 rise to the surface from the heat and fermentation of the mind, 
 like bubbles on an agitated stream. It is this which produces a 
 clear and sparkling style. 
 
 In painting, great execution supplies the place of high finish- 
 ing. A few vigorous touches, properly and rapidly disposed, 
 will often give more of the appearance and texture (even) of na- 
 tural objects than the most heavy and laborious details. But this
 
 144 TABLE TALK. 
 
 masterly style of execution is very different from coarse daubing. 
 I do not think, however, that the pains or polish an artist bestowa 
 upon his works necessarily interferes with their number. He 
 only grows more enamoured of his task, proportionably patient, 
 indefatigable, and devotes more of the day to study. The time 
 we lose is not in overdoing what we are about,' but in doing 
 nothing. Rubens had great facility of execution, and seldom 
 went into the details. Yet Raphael, whose oil-pictures were 
 exact and laboured, achieved, according to the length of 
 time he lived, very nearly as much as he. In filling up the 
 parts of his pictures, and giving them the last perfection they 
 were capable of, he filled up his leisure hours, which other- 
 wise would have lain idle on his hands. I have sometimes ac- 
 counted for the slow progress of certain artists from the unfinish- 
 ed state in which they have left their works at last. These were 
 evidently done by fits and throes there was no appearance of 
 continuous labour one figure had been thrown in at a venture, 
 and then another ; and in the intervals between these convulsive 
 and random efforts, more time had been wasted than could have 
 been spent in working up each individual figure on the sure 
 principles of art, and by a careful inspection of nature, to the ut- 
 most point of practicable perfection. 
 
 Some persons are afraid of their own works ; and having made 
 one or two successful efforts, attempt nothing ever after. They 
 stand still midway in the road to fame, from being startled at 
 the shadow of their own reputation. This is a needless alarm. 
 If what they have already done possesses real power, this will 
 increase with exercise ; if it has not this power, it is not suffici- 
 ent to ensure them lasting fame. Such delicate pretenders trem- 
 ble on the brink of ideal perfection, like dew-drops on the edge 
 of flowers ; and are fascinated, like so many Narcissuses, with 
 the image of themselves, reflected from the public admiration. 
 It is seldom indeed, that this cautious repose will answer its end. 
 While seeking to sustain our reputation at the height, we are for- 
 gotten. Shakespear gave different advice, and himself acted 
 upon it. 
 
 " Perseverance, dear my lord, 
 
 Keeps honour bright. To have done, is to hang
 
 ON APPLICATION TO STUDY. 145 
 
 Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, 
 
 In monumenial mockery. Take the instant way , 
 
 For honour travels in a strait so narrow, 
 
 Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path ; 
 
 For emulation hath a thousand sons, 
 
 That one by one pursue. If you give way, 
 
 Or hedge aside from the direct forth-right, 
 
 Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, 
 
 And leave you hindmost : 
 
 Or like a gallant horse, fall'n in first rank, 
 
 Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, 
 
 O'er-run and trampled. Then what they do in present, 
 
 Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours: 
 
 For time is like a fashionable host, 
 
 That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, 
 
 And with his arms outstretch'd as he would fly, 
 
 Grasps in the comer. Welcome ever smiles, 
 
 And farewell goes out sighing. O let not virtue seek 
 
 Remuneration for the thing it was ; for beauty, wit, 
 
 High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, 
 
 Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all 
 
 To envious and calumniating Time. 
 
 One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, 
 
 That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, 
 
 Though they are made and moulded of things past ; 
 
 And give to dust that is a little gilt 
 
 More laud than gilt o'er dusted. 
 
 The present eye praises the present object." 
 
 Troilus and Crersida. 
 
 1 cannot very well conceive how it is that some writers (even 
 of taste and genius) spend whole years in mere corrections for 
 the press, as it were in polishing a line or adjusting a comma. 
 They take long to consider, exactly as there is nothing worth the 
 trouble of a moment's thought ; and the more they deliberate, the 
 farther they are from deciding : for their fastidiousness increases 
 with the indulgence of it, nor is there any real ground for pre- 
 ference. They are in the situation of Ned Softly in the Tatlek, 
 who was a whole morning debating whether a line of poetical 
 epistle should run 
 
 You sing your song wi.h so much art ;" 
 7*
 
 146 TABLE TALK. 
 
 or, 
 
 " Your song you sing with so much art." 
 
 These are points that it is impossible ever to come to a .^termi- 
 nation about ; and it is only a proof of a little mind ever to have 
 entertained the question at all. 
 
 There is a class of persons whose minds seem to move in an 
 element of littleness ; or rather, that are entangled in trifling 
 difficulties, and incapable of extricating themselves from them. 
 There was a remarkable instance of this improgressive, ineffec- 
 tual, restless activity of temper in a late celebrated and very in- 
 genious landscape-painter. " Never ending, still beginning," his 
 mind seemed entirely made up of points and fractions, nor could 
 he by any means arrive at a conclusion or a valuable whole. He 
 made it his boast that he never sat with his hands before him, and 
 yet he never did anything. His powers and his time were frit- 
 tered away in an importunate, uneasy, fidgetty attention to little 
 things. The first picture he ever painted (when a mere boy) was 
 a copy of his father's house ; and he began it by counting the 
 number of bricks in the front upwards and lengthways, and then 
 made a scale of them on his canvas. This literal style and mode 
 of study stuck to him to the last. He was placed under Wilson, 
 whose example (if anything could) might have cured him of this 
 pettiness of conception ; but nature prevailed, as it almost always 
 does. To take pains to no purpose, seemed to be his motto, and 
 the delight of his life. He left (when he died, not long ago) heaps 
 of canvasses with elaborately finished pencil outlines on them, and 
 with perhaps a little dead-colouring added here and there. In this 
 state they were thrown aside, as if he grew tired of his occupation 
 the instant it gave a promise of turning to account, and his whole 
 object in the pursuit of art was to erect scaffoldings. The same 
 intense interest in the most frivolous things extended to the com- 
 mon concerns of life, to the arranging of his letters, the labelling 
 of his books, and the inventory of his wardrobe. Yet he was a 
 man of sense, who saw the folly and the waste of time in all this, 
 and could warn others against it. The perceiving our own weak- 
 nesses enables us to give others excellent advice, but it does not 
 teach us to reform them ourselves. " Physician, heal thyself 1"
 
 ON APPLICATION TO STUDY. 147 
 
 is the hardest lesson to follow. Nobody knew better than our 
 artist that repose is necessary to great efforts, and that he who is 
 never idle, labours in vain ! 
 
 Another error is to spend one's life in procrastination and 
 preparations for the future. Persons of this turn of mind stop 
 at the threshold of art, and accumulate the means of improve- 
 ment, till they obstruct their progress to the end. They are 
 always putting off the evil day, and excuse themselves for doing 
 nothing by commencing some new and indispensable course of 
 study. Their projects are magnificent, but remote, and require 
 years to complete or to put them in execution. Fame is seen in 
 the horizon, and flies before them. Like the recreant boastful 
 knight in Spenser, they turn their backs on their competitors to 
 make a great career, but never return to the charge. They 
 make themselves masters of anatomy, of drawing, of perspec- 
 tive : they collect prints, casts, medallions, make studies of 
 heads, of hands, of the bones, the muscles ; copy pictures ; visit 
 Italy, Greece, and return as they went. They fulfil the proverb, 
 " When you are at Rome, you must do as those at Rome do." 
 This circuitous, erratic pursuit of art can come to no good. It 
 is only an apology for idleness and vanity. Foreign travel es- 
 pecially makes men pedants, not artists. What we seek, we 
 must find at home, or nowhere. The way to do great things is 
 to set about something, and he who cannot find resources in him- 
 self or in his own painting- room, will perform the Grand Tour, 
 or go through the circle of the arts and sciences, and end just 
 where he began ! 
 
 The same remarks that have been here urged with respect to 
 an application to the study of art, will in a great measure 
 (though not in every particular,) apply to an attention to busi- 
 ness : I mean, that exertion will generally follow success and 
 opportunity in the one, as it does confidence and talent in the 
 other. Give a man a motive to work, and he will work. A 
 lawyer who is regularly feed, seldom neglects to look over his 
 briefs : the more business, the more industry. The stress laid 
 upon early rising is preposterous. If we have any thing to do 
 when we get up, we shall not lie in bed, to a certainty. Thom- 
 son the poet was found late in bed by Dr. Burney, and asked
 
 148 TABLE TALK. 
 
 why he had not risen earlier. The Scotchman wisely answered. 
 " I had no motive, young man !" What, indeed, had he to do 
 after writing the Seasons, but to dream out the rest of his exist- 
 ence, or employ it in writing the Castle of Indolence !* 
 
 * School-boys attend to their tasks as soon as they acquire a relish for study, 
 and they apply to that for which they find they have a capacity. If a boy 
 shows no inclination for the Latin tongue, it is a sign he has not a turn for 
 learning languages. Yet he dances well. Give up the thought of making a 
 scholar of him, and bring him up to be a dancing-master !
 
 ON THE OLD AGE OP ARTISTS. 149 
 
 ESSAY XIV. 
 
 On the Old Age of Artists. 
 
 " And their old age is beautiful and free." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Me. Nollekens died the other day at the age of eighty, and 
 left 240,000 pounds behind him, and the name of one of our 
 best English sculptors. There was a great scramble among the 
 legatees, a codicil to a will with large bequests unsigned, and 
 that last triumph of the dead or dying over those who survive 
 hopes raised and defeated without a possibility of retaliation, or 
 the smallest use in complaint. The King was at first said to be 
 left residuary legatee. This would have been a fine instance of 
 romantic and gratuitous homage to Majesty, in a man who all 
 his life-time could never be made to comprehend the abstract 
 idea of the distinction of ranks or even of persons. He would 
 go up to the Duke of York or Prince of Wales (in spite of 
 warning), take them familiarly by the button like common ac- 
 quaintance, ask them how their father did ; and express pleasure 
 at hearing he was well, saying, " when he was gone, we should 
 never get such another." He once, when the old king was sit- 
 ting to him for his bust, fairly stuck a pair of compasses into his 
 nose to measure the distance from the upper lip to the forehead, 
 as if he had been measuring a block of marble. His late Ma- 
 jesty laughed heartily at this, and was amused to find that there 
 was a person in the world, ignorant of the vast interval which 
 separated him from every other man. Nollekens, with all his 
 loyalty, merely liked the man, and cared nothing about the 
 King (which was one of those mixed modes, as Mr. Locke calls 
 them, of which he had no more idea than if he had been one of 
 the cream-coloured horses) handled him like so much common 
 clav^ and had no other notion of the matter, but that it was hia
 
 150 TABLE TALK. 
 
 business to make the best bust of him he possibly could, and to 
 set about it in the regular way. There was something in this 
 plainness and simplicity that savoured perhaps of the hardness 
 and dryness of his art, and of his own peculiar severity of man-, 
 ner. He conceived that one man's head differed from another's 
 only as it was a better or worse subject for modelling ; that a 
 Dad bust was not made into a good one by being stuck upon a 
 pedestal, or by any painting or varnishing ; and that by what- 
 ever name he was called, "a man's a man for a' that." A 
 sculptor's ideas must, I should guess, be somewhat rigid and in- 
 flexible, like the materials in which he works. Besides, Nolle- 
 kens's style was comparatively hard and edgy. He had as 
 much truth and character, but none of the polished graces or 
 transparent softness of Chantrey. He had more of the rough, 
 plain, downright honesty of his art. It seemed to be his char- 
 acter. Mr. Northcote was once complimenting him on his ac- 
 knowledged superiority " Ay, you made the best busts of any 
 body !" " I don't know about that," said the other, his eyes 
 (though their orbs were quenched,) smiling with a gleam of 
 smothered delight " I only know I always tried to make them 
 as like as I could." 
 
 I saw this eminent and singular person one morning in Mr. 
 Northcote's painting-room. He had then been for some trme 
 nearly blind, and had been obliged to lay aside the exercise of 
 his profession ; but he still took a pleasure in designing groups, 
 and in giving directions to others for executing them. He and 
 Northcote made a remarkable pair. He sat down on a low stool 
 (from being rather fatigued) rested with both hands on a stick, 
 as if he clung to the solid and tangible ; had an habitual twitch 
 in his limbs and motions, as if catching himself in the act of 
 going too far in chiselling a lip or a dimple in a chin ; was bolt- 
 upright, with features hard and square, but finely cut, a hooked 
 nose, thin lips, an indented forehead ; and the defect in his sight 
 completed his resemblance to one of his own masterly busts. He 
 seemed, by time and labour, to " have wrought himself to stone." 
 Northcote stood by his side all air and spirit, stooping down to 
 speak to him. The painter was in a loose morning-gown, with 
 his back to the light ; his face was like a pale fine piece of co-
 
 ON THE OLD AGE OF ARTISTS. 151 
 
 louring ; and his eye came out and glanced through the twilight 
 of the past, like an old eagle looking from its eyrie in the clouds. 
 In a moment they had lighted from the top of Mount Cenis in the 
 Vatican 
 
 " As when a vulture on Imaus bred 
 
 Flies tow'rds the springs 
 
 Of Ganges and Hydaspes, Indian streams," 
 
 these two fine old men lighted with winged thoughts on the banks 
 of the Tiber, and there bathed and drank of the spirit of their 
 youth. They talked of Titian and Bernini; and Northcote 
 mentioned, that when Roubilliac came back from Rome, after 
 seeing the works of the latter, and went to look at his own in 
 Westminster Abbey, he said, " By G-d, they looked like tobacco- 
 pipes." 
 
 They then recalled a number of anecdotes of Day (a fellow- 
 student of theirs,) of Barry and Fuseli, Sir Joshua and Burke 
 and Johnson, were talked of. The names of these great sons of 
 memory were in the room, and they almost seemed to answer to 
 them Genius and Fame flung a spell into the air, 
 
 "And by the force of blear illusion, 
 Had drawn me on to my confusion," 
 
 had I not been long ere this siren-proqf ! It is delightful, though 
 painful, to hear two veterans in art thus talking over the adven- 
 tures and studies of their youth, when one feels that they are not 
 quite mortal, that they have one imperishable part about them, 
 and that they are conscious, as they approach the farthest verge 
 of humanity in friendly intercourse and tranquil decay, that they 
 have done something that will live after them. The consolations 
 of religion apart, this is perhaps the only salve that takes out the 
 sung of that sore evil, Death ; and by lessening the impatience 
 and alarm at his approach, often tempts him to prolong the term 
 of his absence. 
 
 It has been remarked that artists, or at least academicians, 
 live long. It is but a short while ago that Northcote, Nollekens, 
 West, Flaxman, Cosway, and Fuseli, were all living at the same 
 time in good health and spirits, without any diminution of facul-
 
 153 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ties, all of them having long past their grand climacteric, and 
 attained to the highest reputation in their several departments. 
 From these striking examples, the diploma of a Royal Academi- 
 cian seems to be a grant of a longer lease of life, among its 
 other advantages. In fact, it is tantamount to the conferring a 
 certain reputation in his profession and a competence on any 
 man, and thus supplies the wants of the body, and sets his mind 
 at ease. Artists in general, (poor devils !) I am afraid, are not a 
 long-lived race. They break up commonly about forty, their 
 spirits giving way with the disappointment of their hopes of ex- 
 cellence, or the want of encouragement for that which they have 
 attained, their plans disconcerted, and their affairs irretrievable ; 
 and in this state of mortification and embarrassment (more or less 
 prolonged and aggravated) they are either starved or else drink 
 themselves to death. But your Academician is quite a different 
 person. He " bears a charmed life, that must not yield" to 
 duns, or critics, or patrons. He is free of Parnassus, and claims 
 all the immunities of fame in his life-time. He has but to paint 
 (as the sun has but to shine) to baffle envious maligners. He has 
 but to send his pictures to the Exhibition at Somerset-House, in 
 order to have them hung up : he has but to dine once a year with 
 the Academy, the Nobility, the Cabinet- Ministers, and the Mem- 
 bers of the Royal Family, in order not to want a dinner all the 
 rest of the year. Shall hunger come near the man that has 
 feasted with princes shall a bailiff tap the shoulder on which a 
 Marquis has familiarly leaned, that has been dubbed with knight- 
 hood 1 No, even " the fell Serjeant Death" stands as it were 
 aloof; and he enjoys a kind of premature immortality in recorded 
 honours and endless labours. Oh ! what golden hours are his ! 
 In the short days of winter he husbands time ; the long evenings 
 of summer still find him employed ! He paints on, and takes no 
 thought for to-morrow. All is right in that respect. His bills are 
 regularly paid ; his drafts are duly honoured. He has exercise 
 for his body, employment for his mind in his profession, and 
 without ever stirring out of his painting- room. He studies as 
 much of other things as he pleases. He joes into the best com- 
 pany, or talks with his sitters attends at the Academy Meetings, 
 and enters into their intrigues and cabaLs, or stays at acme, and
 
 ON THE OLD AGE OF ARTISTS. 153 
 
 enjoys the oiium cum dignitate. If he is fond of reputation, Fame 
 watches him at work, and weaves a woof, like Iris, over his head 
 if he is fond of money, Plutus digs a mine under his feet. What- 
 ever he touches becomes gold. He is paid half-price before he 
 begins ; and commissions pour in upon commissions. His por- 
 traits are like, and his historical pieces fine ; for to question the 
 talents or success of a Royal Academician is to betray your own 
 want of taste. Or if his pictures are not quite approved, he is 
 an agreeable man, and converses well. Or he is a person of 
 elegant accomplishments, dresses well, and is an ornament to a 
 private circle. A man is not an Academician for nothing. 
 " His life spins round on its soft axle ;" and in the lapse of 
 uninterrupted thoughts and pleasing avocations, without any of 
 the wear and tear of the world or of business, there seems no 
 reason why it should not run smoothly on to its last sand! 
 
 Of all the Academicians, the painters, or persons I have ever 
 known, Mr. Northcote is the most to my taste. It may be said of 
 him truly, 
 
 " Age cannot wither, nor custom stale 
 His infinite variety." 
 
 Indeed, it is not possible he should become tedious, since, even if 
 he repeats the same thing, it appears quite new from his manner, 
 that breathes new life into it, and from his eye, that is as fresh as 
 the morning. How you hate any one who tells the same story or 
 anticipates a remark of his it seems so coarse and vulgar, so dry 
 and inanimate ! There is something like injustice in this prefer- 
 ence but no ! it is a tribute to the spirit that is in the man. Mr. 
 Northcote's manner is completely extempore. It is just the reverse 
 of Mr. Canning's oratory. All his thoughts come upon him un- 
 awares, and for this reason they surprise and delight you, because 
 they have evidently the same effect upon his own mind. There 
 is the same unconsciousness in his conversation that has been 
 pointed out in Shakespear's dialogues ; or you are startled with 
 one observation after another, as when the mist gradually with- 
 draws from a landscape and unfolds a number of objects one by 
 one. His figure is small, shadowy, emaciated ; but you think 
 only of his face, which is fine and expressive. His body is out of
 
 154 TABLE TALK. 
 
 the question. It is impossible to convey an adequate idea of the 
 naivety, and unaffected, but delightful ease of the way in which 
 he goes on now touching upon a picture now looking for his 
 snuff-box now alluding to some book he has been reading now 
 returning to his favourite art. He seems just as if he was by 
 himself or in the company of his own thoughts, and makes you 
 feel quite at home. If it is a Member of Parliament, or a beau- 
 tiful woman, or a child, or a young artist that drops in, it makes 
 no difference ; he enters into conversation with them in the same 
 unconstrained manner, as if they were inmates in his family. 
 Sometimes you find him sitting on the floor, like a school-boy at 
 play, turning over a set of old prints ; and I was pleased to hear 
 him say the other day, coming to one of some men putting off in 
 a boat from a shipwreck " That is the grandest and most original 
 thing I ever did !" This was not egotism, but had all the beauty 
 of truth and sincerity. The print was indeed a noble and spirited 
 design. The circumstance from which it was taken happened to 
 Captain Englefield and his crew. He told Northcote the story, 
 sat for his own head, and brought the men from Wapping to sit for 
 theirs ; and these he had arranged into a formal composition, till 
 one Jeffrey, a conceited but clever artist of that day, called in 
 upon him and said, " Oh ! that common- place thing will never do, 
 it is like West ; you should throw them into an action something 
 like this." Accordingly, the head of the boat was reared up like 
 a sea-horse riding the waves, and the elements put into commotion ; 
 and when the painter looked at it the last thing as he went out of 
 his room in the dusk of the evening, he said that " it frightened 
 him." He retained the expression in the faces of the men nearly 
 as they sat to him. It is very fine, and truly English ; and being 
 natural, it was easily made into history. There is a portrait of a 
 young gentleman striving to get into the boat, while the crew are 
 pushing him off with their oars ; but at last he prevailed with 
 them by lis perseverance and entreaties to be taken in. They 
 had only time to throw a bag of biscuits into the boat before the 
 ship went down ; which they divided into a biscuit a day for each 
 man, dipping them into water which they collected by holding up 
 their handkerchiefs in the rain and squeezing it into a bottle 
 They were out sixteen days in the Atlantic, and got ashore at
 
 ON THE OLD AGE OF ARTISTS. 155 
 
 some place in Spain, where the great difficulty was to prevent 
 them from eating too much at once, so as to recover gradually. 
 Captain Englefield observed that he suffered more afterwards than 
 at the time that he had horrid dreams of falling down precipices 
 for a long while after that in the boat they told merry stories, 
 and kept up one another's spirits as well as they could, and on 
 some complaint being made of their distressed situation, the young 
 gentleman who had been admitted into their crew remarked; 
 M Nay, we are not so badly off neither, we are not come to eating 
 one another yet !" Thus, whatever is the subject, the scene is 
 revived in Mr. Northcote's mind, and every circumstance brought 
 before you without affectation or effort, just as it happened. It 
 might be called picture-talking. He has always some apt allusion 
 or anecdote. A young engraver came into his room the other 
 day, with a print which he had put into the crown of his hat, in 
 order not to crumple it, and he said it had been nearly blown 
 away several times in passing along the street. " You put me in 
 mind," said Northcote, " of a bird-catcher at Plymouth, who used 
 to put the birds he had caught into his hat to bring- them home, 
 and one day meeting my father in the road, he pulled off his hat 
 to make him a low bow, and all the birds flew away !" Some- 
 times Mr. Northcote gets to the top of a ladder to paint a palm- 
 tree or to finish a sky in one of his pictures ; and in this situation 
 he listens very attentively to any thing you tell him. I was once 
 mentioning some strange inconsistencies of our modern poets : and 
 on coming to one that exceeded the rest, he descended the steps of 
 the ladder one by one, laid his pallet and brushes deliberately on 
 the ground, and coming up to me, said " You don't say so, it's 
 the very thing 1 should have supposed of them : yet these are the 
 men that speak against Pope and Dryden." Never any sarcasms 
 were so fine, so cutting, so careless as his. The grossest things 
 from his lips seem an essence of refinement : the most refined 
 became more so than ever. Hear him talk of Pope's Epistle to 
 Jervas, and repeat the lines 
 
 " Yet should the Graces all thy figures place, 
 And breathe an air divine on every face ; 
 Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll 
 Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul,
 
 156 TABLE TALK. 
 
 With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater Tie, 
 And these be sung till Granville's Myra die : 
 Alas ! how little from the grave we claim ; 
 Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name." 
 
 Or let him speak of Boccacio and his story of Isabella and her 
 pot of basil, in which she kept her lover's head and watered it 
 with her tears, " and how it grew, and it g'rew, and it grew," and 
 you see his own eyes glisten, and the leaves of the basil-tree 
 tremble to his faltering accents ! 
 
 Mr. Fuseli's conversation is more striking and extravagant, but 
 less pleasing and natural than Mr. Northcote's. He deals in 
 paradoxes and caricatures. He talks allegories and personifica- 
 tions, as he paints them. You are sensible of effort without any 
 repose no careless pleasantry no traits of character or touches 
 from nature every thing is laboured or overdone. His ideas 
 are gnarled, hard, and distorted, like his features his theories 
 stalking and straddle-legged, like his gait his projects aspiring 
 and gigantic, like his gestures his performance uncouth and 
 dwarfish, like his person. His pictures are also like himself, 
 with eye-balls of stone stuck in rims of tin, and muscles twisted 
 together like ropes or wires. Yet Fuseli is undoubtedly a man 
 of genius, and capable of the most wild and grotesque combina- 
 tions of fancy. It is a pity that he ever applied himself to paint- 
 ing, which must always be reduced to the test of the senses. He 
 is a little like Dante or Ariosto perhaps ; but no more like Michael 
 Angelo, Raphael, or Correggio, than I am. Nature, he com- 
 plains, puts him out. Yet he can laugh at artists who " paint la- 
 dies with iron lap-dogs ;" and he describes the great masters of 
 old in words and images full of truth, and glancing from a pen 
 or tongue of fire. I conceive any person would be more struck 
 with Mr. Fuseli at first sight, but would wish to visit Mr. North- 
 cote oftener. There is a bold and startling outline in his style 
 of talking, but not the delicate finishing or bland tone that there 
 is in that of the latter. Whatever there is harsh or repulsive 
 about him is, however, in a great degree carried off by his ani- 
 mated foreign accent and broken English, which give character 
 where there ia none, and soften its asperities where /'. is too abrupt 
 and violent.
 
 ON THE OLD AGE OF ARTISTS. 157 
 
 Compared to either of these artists, Mr. West (the late Presi- 
 dent of the Royal Academy) was a thoroughly mechanical and 
 common-place person a man " of no mark or likelihood." He 
 too was small, thin, but with regular well-formed features, and a 
 precise, sedate, self-satisfied air. This, in part, arose from the 
 conviction in his own mind that he was the greatest painter (and 
 consequently the greatest man) in the world ; kings and nobles 
 were common every-day folks, while there was but one West in 
 the many-peopled globe. If there was any one individual with 
 whom he was inclined to share the palm of undivided superiority, 
 it was with Bonaparte. When Mr. West had painted a pic- 
 ture, he thought it was perfect. He had no idea of any thing in 
 the art but rules, and these he exactly conformed to ; so that, ac- 
 cording to his theory, what he did was quite right. He con- 
 ceived of painting as a mechanical or scientific process, and had 
 no more doubt of a face or a group in one of his high ideal com- 
 positions being what it ought to be, than a carpenter has that he 
 has drawn a line straight with a ruler and a piece of chalk, or 
 than a mathematician has that the three angles of a triangle are 
 equal to two right ones. 
 
 When Mr. West walked through his Gallery, the result of fifty 
 years' labour, he saw nothing, either on the right or the left, to 
 be added or taken away. The account he gave of his own pic- 
 tures, which might seem like ostentation or rhodomontade, had a 
 sincere and infantine simplicity in it. When some one spoke of 
 his St. Paul shaking off the serpent from his arm (at Greenwich 
 Hospital, I believe,) he said, " A little burst of genius, sir !" 
 West was one of those happy mortals who had not an idea of any 
 thing beyond himself or his own actual powers and knowledge. 
 The whole art with him consisted in measuring the distance from 
 the foot to the knee, in counting the number of muscles in the 
 calf of the leg, in dividing his subject into three groups, in lifting 
 up the eyebrows to express pity or wonder, and in contracting 
 them to express anger or contempt. Looking at a picture of Ru- 
 bens's, which he had in his possession, he said, with great indiffer- 
 ence, " What a pity that this man wanted expression !" This 
 natural self-complacency might be strengthened by collateral cir- 
 cumstances of birth and religion. West, as a native of America,
 
 15b TABLE TALK. 
 
 might be supposed to own no superior in the commonwealth of 
 art : as a Quaker, he smiled with sectarian self-sufficiency at the 
 objections that were made to his theory or practice in painting. 
 He lived long in the firm persuasion of being one of the elect 
 among the sons of Fame, and went to his final rest in the arms 
 of Immortality ! Happy error ! Enviable old man ! 
 
 Flaxman is another living and eminent artist, who is distin- 
 guished by success in his profession and by a prolonged and ac- 
 tive old age. He is diminutive in person, like the others. I 
 know little of him, but that he is an elegant sculptor, and a pro- 
 found mystic. This last is a character common to many other 
 artists in our days Loutherbourg, Cosway, Blake, Sharp, Var- 
 ley, &c. who seem to relieve the literalness of their professional 
 studies by voluntary excursions into the regions of the preterna- 
 tural, pass their time between sleeping and waking, and whose 
 ideas are like a stormy night, with the clouds driven rapidly 
 across, and the blue sky and stars gleaming between ! 
 
 Cosway is the last of these I shall mention. At that name I 
 pause, and must be excused if I consecrate to him a frail memo- 
 rial in my careless manner; for he was Fancy's child. What a 
 fairy palace was his of specimens of art, antiquarianism, and 
 vertu, jumbled all together in the richest disorder, dusty, sha- 
 dowy, obscure, with much left to the imagination (how different 
 from the finical, polished, petty, modernized air of some Collec- 
 tions we have seen !) and with copies of the Old Masters, cracked 
 and damaged, which he touched and retouched with his own 
 hand, and yet swore they were the genuine, the pure originals. 
 All other collectors are fools to him : they go about with painful 
 anxiety to find out the realities : he said he had them and in a 
 moment made them of the breath of his nostrils and of the fumes 
 of a lively imagination. His was the crucifix that Abelard 
 prayed to a lock of Eloisa's hair the dagger with which Fel- 
 ton stabbed the Duke of Buckingham the first finished sketch of 
 the Jocunda Titian's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine a 
 mummy of an Egyptian king a feather of a phoenix a piece 
 of Noah's Ark. Were the articles authentic ? What matter ? 
 his faith in them was true. He was gifted with a second-sight 
 in such matters : he believed whatever was incredible Fancy
 
 ON THE OLD AGE OF ARTISTS. 159 
 
 bore sway in him ; and so vivid were his impressions, that they 
 included the substances of things in them. The agreeable and 
 the true with him were one. He believed in Swedenborgianism 
 he believed in animal magnetism he had conversed with more 
 than one person of the Trinity he could talk with his lady at 
 Mantua through some fine vehicle of sense, as we speak to a 
 servant down-stairs through a conduit-pipe. "Richard Cosway 
 was not the man to flinch from an ideal proposition. Once, at 
 an Academy dinner, when some question was made whether the 
 story of Lambert's Leap was true, he started up, and said it was ; 
 for he was the person that performed it : he once assured me 
 that the knee-pan of King James I., in the ceiling at Whitehall, 
 was nine feet across (he had measured it in concert with Mr. Ci- 
 priani, who was repairing the figures) he could read in the Book 
 of the Revelations without spectacles, and foretold the return of 
 Bonaparte from Elba and from St. Helena ! His wife, the most 
 ladylike of Englishwomen, being asked in Paris what sort of a 
 man her husband was, made answer " Toujours riant, toujours 
 gaV. This was his character. He must have been of French 
 extraction. His soul appeared to possess the life of a bird ; and 
 such was the jauntiness of his air and manner, that to see him sit 
 to have his half-boots laced on, you would fancy (by the help of 
 a figure) that, instead of a little withered elderly gentleman, it was 
 Venus attired by the Graces. His miniatures and who-.?-length 
 drawings were not merely fashionable they were fashion itself. 
 His imitations of Michael Angelo were not the thing. When more 
 than ninety, he retired from his profession, and used to hold up 
 the palsied hand that had painted lords and ladies for upwards of 
 sixty years, and smile, with unabated good-humour, at the vanity 
 of human wishes. Take him with all his faults and follies, we 
 scarce " shall look upon his like again !" 
 
 Why should such characters ever die ? It seems hard upon 
 them and us ? Care fixes no sting in their hearts, and their 
 persons " present no mark to the foe-man." Death in them 
 seizes upon living shadows. They scarce consume vital air : 
 their gross functions have been long at an end they live but to 
 paint, to talk or think. Is it that the vice of age, the miser's 
 fault, gnaws them ? Many of them are not afraid of death, but
 
 160 TABLE TALK. 
 
 of coming to want ; and having begun in poverty, are haunted 
 with the idea that they shall end in it, and so are willing to die- 
 to save charges. Otherwise, they might linger on forever, and 
 " defy augury !"
 
 ON EGOTISM. 161 
 
 ESSAY XV. 
 
 On Egotism. 
 
 It is mentioned in the Life of Salvator Rosa, that on the occasion 
 of an altar-piece of his being exhibited at Rome, in the triumph 
 of the moment, he compared himself to Michael Angelo, and 
 spoke against Raphael, calling him hard, dry, &c. Both these 
 were fatal symptoms for the ultimate success of the work : the 
 picture was in fact afterwards severely censured, so as to cause 
 him much uneasiness ; and he passed a great part of his life in 
 quarrelling with the world for admiring his landscapes, which 
 were truly excellent, and for not admiring his historical pieces, 
 which were full of defects. Salvator wanted self-knowledge, 
 and that respect for others which is both a cause and consequence 
 of it. Like many more, he mistook the violent and irritable 
 workings of self-will (in a wrong direction) for the impulse of 
 genius, and his insensibility to the vast superiority of others for a 
 proof of his equality with them. 
 
 In the first place, nothing augurs worse for any one's preten- 
 sions to the highest rank of excellence than his making free with 
 those of others. He who boldly and unreservedly places himself 
 on a level with the mighty dead, shows a want of sentiment the 
 only thing that can ensure immortality to his own works. When 
 we forestal the judgment of posterity, it is because we are not 
 confident of it. A mind that brings all others into a line with its 
 own naked or assumed merits, that sees all objects in the fore- 
 ground as it were, that does not regard the lofty monuments 
 of genius through the atmosphere of fame, is coarse, crude, and 
 repulsive as a picture without aerial perspective. Time, like 
 distance, spreads a haze and a glory round all things. Not to per- 
 ceive this, is to want a sense, is to be without imagination. Yet 
 there are those who strut in their own self-opinion, and deck
 
 1-32 TABLE TALK. 
 
 themselves out in the plumes of fancied self-importance as if they 
 were crowned with laurel by Apollo's own hand. There was 
 nothing in common between Salvator and Michael Angelo : 
 otherwise, the consciousness of the power with which he had to 
 contend would have over-awed and struck him dumb ; so that 
 the very familiarity of his approaches proved (as much as any 
 thing else) the immense distance placed between them. Painters 
 alone seem to have a trick of putting themselves on an equal 
 footing with the greatest of their predecessors, of advancing, on 
 the sole strength of their vanity and presumption, to the highest 
 seats in the Temple of Fame, of talking of themselves and 
 Raphael and Michael Angelo in the same breath ! What should 
 we think of a poet who should publish to the world, or give a 
 broad hint in private, that he conceived himself fully on a par 
 with Homer or Milton or Shakespear ? It would be too much for 
 a friend to say so of him. But artists suffer their friends to putl 
 them in the true " King Cambyses' vein" without blushing. Is 
 it that they are often men without a liberal education, who have 
 no notion of any thing that does not come under their immediate 
 observation, and who accordingly prefer the living to the dead, 
 and themselves to all the rest of the world ? Or that there is 
 something in the nature of the profession itself, fixing the view on 
 a particular point of time, and not linking the present either with 
 the past or future ? 
 
 Again, Salvator's disregard for Raphael, instead of inspiring 
 him with any thing like " vain and self-conceit," ought to have 
 taught him the greatest diffidence in himself. Instead of antici- 
 pating a triumph over Raphael from this circumstance, he might 
 have foreseen it in the sure source of his mortification and defeat. 
 The public looked to find in his pictures what he did not see in 
 Raphael end were necessarily disappointed. He could hardly 
 be expected to produce that which, when produced and set before 
 him, he did not feel or understand. The genius for a particular 
 thing does not imply taste in general or for other things, but it as- 
 suredly pre-supposes a taste or feeling for that particular thing. Sal- 
 vator was so much offended with the dryness, hardness, &c. of Ra- 
 phael, only because he was not struck, that is, did not sympathize 
 with the divine mind within. If he had, he would have bowed as at
 
 ON EGOTISM. 163 
 
 a shrine, in spite of the homeliness or finicalness of the covering. 
 Let no man build himself a spurious self-esteem on his contempt 
 or indifference for acknowledged excellence. He will in the end 
 pay dear for a momentary delusion : for the world will sooner or 
 later discover those deficiencies in him, which render him insen- 
 sible to all merits but his own. 
 
 Of all modes of acquiring distinction, and, as it were, " getting 
 the start of the majestic world," the most absurd as well as dis- 
 gusting is that of setting aside the claims of others in the lump, 
 and holding out our own particular excellence or pursuit as the 
 only one worth attending to. We thus set ourselves up as the 
 standard of perfection, and treat every thing else that diverges 
 from that standard as beneath our notice. At this rate, a con- 
 tempt for any thing and a superiority to it are synonymous. It 
 is a cheap and a short way of showing that we possess all excel- 
 lence within ourselves, to deny the use or merit of all those quali- 
 fications that do not belong to us. According to such a mode of 
 computation, it would appear that our value is to be estimated 
 not by the number of acquirements that we do possess, but of those 
 in which we are deficient and to which we are insensible : so 
 that we can at any time supply the place of wisdom and skill by 
 a due proportion of ignorance, affectation, and conceit. If so, 
 the dullest fellow, with impudence enough to despise what he 
 does not understand, will always be the brightest genius and the 
 greatest man. If stupidity is to be a substitute for taste, know- 
 ledge, and genius, any one may dogmatize and play the critic on 
 this ground. We may easily make a monopoly of talent, if the 
 torpedo-touch of our callous and wilful indifference is to neutralize 
 all other pretensions. We have only to deny the advantages of 
 others to make them our own : illiberality will carve out the 
 way to pre-eminence much better than toil or study or quickness 
 of parts ; and by narrowing our views and divesting ourselves at 
 last of common feeling and humanity, we may arrogate every 
 valuable accomplishment to ourselves, and ex*lt ourselves vastly 
 above our fellow-mortals ! That is, in other words, we have on.y 
 to shut our eyes, in order to blot the sun out of heaven, ana to 
 annihilate whatever gives light or heat to the world, if it does not 
 emanate from one single .source, by spreading the cloud of our
 
 164 TABLE TALK. 
 
 own envy, spleen, malice, want of comprehension, and prejudice 
 over it. Yet how many are there who act upon this theory in 
 good earnest, grow more bigoted to it every day, and not only 
 become the dupes of it themselves, but by dint of gravity, by 
 bullying and brow-beating, succeed in making converts of 
 others ! 
 
 A man is a political economist. Good : but this is no reason 
 he should think there is nothing else in the world, or that every 
 thing else is good for nothing. Let us suppose that this is the 
 most important subject, and that being his favourite study, he is 
 the best judge of that point, still it is not the only one why then 
 treat every other question or pursuit with disdain as insignificant 
 and mean, or endeavour to put others who have devoted their 
 whole time to it out of conceit with that, on which they depended 
 for their amusement or (perhaps) subsistence 1 I see neither the 
 wit, wisdom, nor good-nature of this mode of proceeding. Let 
 him fill his library with books on this one subject, yet other 
 persons are not bound to follow the example, and exclude every 
 other topic from theirs let him write, let him talk, let him think 
 on nothing else, but let him not impose the same pedantic humour 
 as a duty or a mark of taste on others let him ride the high horse, 
 and drag his heavy load of mechanical knowledge along the iron 
 railway of the master-science, but let him not move out of it to 
 taunt or jostle those who are jogging quietly along upon their se- 
 veral hobbies, who " owe him no allegiance," and care not one 
 jot for his opinion. Yet we could forgive such a person, if he 
 made it his boast that he had read Don Quixote twice through in 
 the original Spanish, and preferred Lycidas to all Milton's 
 
 smaller poems ! What would Mr. say to any one who 
 
 should profess a contempt for political economy ? He would 
 nnswer very bluntly and very properly, " Then you know nothing 
 about it." It is a pity that so sensible a man and close a reasoner 
 should think of putting down other lighter and more elegant pur- 
 suits by professing a contempt or indifference for them, which 
 springs from precisely the same source, and is of just the same 
 value. But so it is that there seems to be a tacit presumption 
 of folly in whatever gives pleasure ; while an air of gravity and 
 vrisaom hovers round the painful and precise !
 
 ON EGOTISM. 165 
 
 A man comes into a room, and on his first entering, declares 
 without preface or ceremony his contempt for poetry. Are we 
 therefore to conclude him a greater genius than Homer ? No : 
 but by this cavalier opinion he assumes a certain natural ascen- 
 dancy over those who admire poetry. To look down upon any 
 thing seemingly implies a greater elevation and enlargement of 
 view than to look up to it. The present Lord Chancellor took 
 upon him to declare in open court that he would not go across 
 the street to hear Madame Catalani sing. What did this prove ? 
 His want of an ear for music, not his capacity for any thing 
 higher. So far as it went, it only showed him to be inferior to 
 those thousands of persons who go with eager expectation to 
 hear her, and come away with 'astonishment and rapture. A 
 man might as well tell you he is deaf, and expect you to look at 
 him with more respect. The want of any external sense or 
 organ is an acknowledged defect and infirmity : the want of an 
 internal sense or faculty is equally so, though our self-love con- 
 trives to give a different turn to it. We mortify others by throw- 
 ing cold water on that in which they have an advantage over us, 
 or stagger their opinion of an excellence which is not of self- 
 evident or absolute utility, and lessen its supposed value, by 
 limiting the universality of a taste for it. Lord Eldon's protest 
 on this occasion was the more extraordinary, as he is not only a 
 good-natured but a successful man. These little spiteful allu- 
 sions are most apt to proceed from disappointed vanity, and an 
 apprehension that justice is not done to ourselves. By being at 
 the top of a profession, we have leisure to look beyond it. Those 
 who really excel and are allowed to excel in any thing, have no 
 excuse for trying to gain a reputation by undermining the pre- 
 tensions of others ; they stand on their own ground ; and do not 
 need the aid of invidious comparisons. Besides, the conscious, 
 ness of excellence produces a fondness for, a faith in it. 1 
 should half suspect that any one could not be a great lawyer, 
 who denied that Madame Catalani was a great singer. The 
 Chancellor must dislike her decisive tone, the rapidity of her 
 movements ! The late Chancellor (Erskine) was a man of (at 
 least) a different stamp. In the exuberance and buoyancy of 
 his animal spirits, he scattered the graces and ornaments of lifa
 
 166 TABLE TALK. 
 
 over the dust and cobwebs of the law. What is there mat is 
 now left of him what is there to redeem his foibles, or to recall 
 the flush of early enthusiasm in his favour, or kindle one spark 
 of sympathy in the breast, but his romantic admiration of Mrs. 
 Siddons ? There are those who, if you praise Walton's Complete 
 Angler, sneer at it as a childish or old-womanish performance : 
 some laugh at the amusement of fishing as silly, others carp at 
 it as cruel ; and Dr. Johnson said that " a fishing-rod was a stick 
 with a hook at one end, and a fool at the other." I would rather 
 take the word of one who had stood for days up to his knees in 
 water, and in the coldest weather, intent on this employ, who re- 
 turned to it again with unabated relish, and who spent his whole 
 life in the same manner without being weary of it at last. There 
 is something in this more than Dr. Johnson's definition accounts 
 for. A fool does not take an interest in any thing ; or if he 
 does, it is better to be a fool than a wise man, whose only plea, 
 sure is to disparage the pursuits and occupations of others, and 
 out of ignorance or prejudice to condemn them, merely because 
 they are not his. 
 
 Whatever interests, is interesting. I know of no way of esti- 
 mating the real value of objects in all their bearings and conse- 
 quences, but I can tell at once their intellectual value by the de- 
 gree of passion or sentiment the very idea and mention of them 
 excites in the mind. To judge of things by reason or the calcu- 
 lations of positive utility is a slow, cold, uncertain, and barren 
 process their power of appealing to and affecting the imagination 
 as subjects of thoughf and feeling is best measured by the habitual 
 impression they leave upon the mind, and it is with this only we 
 have to do in expressing our delight or admiration of them, or in 
 setting a just mental value upon them. They Ought to excite all 
 the emotion which they do excite ; for this is the instinctive and 
 unerring result of the constant experience we have had of their 
 power of affecting us, and of the associations that cling uncon- 
 sciously to them. Fancy, feeling may be very inadequate tests 
 of truth ; but truth itself operates chiefly on the human mind 
 through them. It is in vain to tell me that what excites the 
 heart-felt sigh of youth, the tears of delight in age, and fills up 
 the busy interval between with pleasing and lofty thoughts, is
 
 ON EGOTISM. 167 
 
 frivolous, or a waste of time, or of no use. You only by that give 
 me a mean opinion of your ideas of utility. The labour of years, 
 the triumph of aspiring genius and consummate skill, is not to be 
 put down by a cynical frown, by a supercilious srriile, by an 
 ignorant sarcasm. Things barely of use are subjects of pro- 
 fessional skill and scientific inquiry : they must also be beautifui 
 and pleasing to attract common attention, and to be naturally and 
 universally interesting. A pair of shoes is good to wear : a pair of 
 sandals is a more picturesque object; and a statue or a poem are cer- 
 tainly good to think and talk about, which are part of the business 
 of life. To think and speak of them with contempt is therefore a 
 wilful and studied solecism. Pictures are good things to go and 
 see. This is what people do ; they do not expect to taste or make 
 a dinner of them.; but we sometimes want to fill up the time before 
 dinner. The progress of civilization and refinement is from in- 
 strumental to final causes ; from supplying the wants of the body 
 to providing luxuries for the mind. To stop at the mechanical, 
 and refuse to proceed to the fine arts, or churlishly to reject all 
 ornamental studies and elegant accomplishments as mean and 
 trivial, because they only afford employment to the imagination, 
 create food for thought, furnish the mind, sustain the soul in health 
 and enjoyment, is a rude and barbarous theory 
 
 " Et propter "vitam perdere causas vivendi." 
 
 Before we absolutely condemn any thing, we ought to be able 
 to show something better, not merely in itself, but in the same 
 class. To know the best in each class infers a higher degree of 
 taste ; to reject the class is only a negation of taste ; for different 
 classes do not interfere with one another, nor can any one's ipse 
 dixit be taken on so wide a question as abstract excellence. 
 Nothing is truly and altogether despicable that excites angry 
 contempt or warm opposition, since this always implies that some 
 one else is of a different opinion, and takes an equal interest in it. 
 
 When I speak of what is interesting, however, I mean not only 
 to a particular profession, but in general to others. Indeed, it is 
 the very popularity and obvious interest attached to certain studies 
 and pursuits, that excites the envy and hostile regard of graver 
 and more recondite professions. Man is perhaps not naturally an
 
 168 TABLE TALK. 
 
 egotist, or at least he is satisfied with his own particular line c 
 excellence and the value that he supposes inseparable from it, tl'\ 
 he comes into the world and finds it of so little account in the ey a 
 of the vulgar ; and he then turns round and vents his chagrin an J 
 disappointment on those more attractive, but (as he conceives.) 
 superficial studies, which cost less labour and patience to under- 
 stand them, and are of so much less use to society. The injustice 
 done to ourselves makes us unjust to others. The man of science 
 a od the hard student (from this cause, as well as from a certain 
 nnbending hardness of mind) come at last to regard whatever is 
 generally pleasing and striking as worthless and light, and to pro- 
 portion their contempt to the admiration of others ; while the artist, 
 the poet, and the votary of pleasure and popularity treat the more 
 solid and useful branches of human knowledge as disagreeable 
 and dull. This is often carried to too great a length. It is enough 
 that " wisdom is justified of her children :" the philosopher ought 
 to smile, instead of being angry at the folly of mankind (if such 
 it is), and those who find both pleasure and profit in adorning and 
 polishing the airy " capitals" of science and of art, ought not to 
 grudge those who toil underground at the foundation, the praise 
 that is due to their perseverance and self-denial. There is a 
 variety of tastes and capacities, that requires all the variety of 
 men's talents to administer to it. The less excellent must be 
 provided for, as well as the more excellent. Those who are only 
 capable of amusement ought to be amused. If all men were forced 
 to be great philosophers and lasting benefactors of their species, 
 how few of us could ever do any thing at all ! But nature acts 
 more impartially, though not improvidently. Wherever she be- 
 stows a turn for any thing on the individual, she implants a cor- 
 responding taste for it in others. We have only to " throw our 
 bread upon the waters, and after many days we shall find it again." 
 Let us do our best, and we need not be' ashamed of the smallnesa 
 of our talent, or afraid of the calumnies and contempt of envious 
 maligners. When Goldsmith was talking one day to Sir Joshua 
 of writing a fable in which little fishes were to. be introduced, Dr. 
 Johnson rolled aboui uneasily in his seat and began to laugh, on 
 which Goldsmith said rather angrily " Why do you laugh ? If 
 you were to write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
 
 ON EGOTISM. 169 
 
 sjipak like great whales !" The reproof was just. Johnson was 
 in truth conscious of Goldsmith's superior inventiveness, and of 
 the lighter graces of his pen, but he wished to reduce every thing 
 to his own pompous and oracular style. There are not only books 
 for children, but books for all ages and for both sexes. After we 
 grow up to years of discretion, we do not all become equally wise 
 at once. Our own tastes change : the tastes of other individuals 
 are still more different. It was said the other day, that " Thom- 
 son's Seasons would be read while there was a boarding-school 
 girl in the world." If a thousand volumes were written against 
 Hervey's Meditations, the Meditations would be read when the 
 criticisms were forgotten. To the illiterate and vain, affectation 
 and verbiage will always pass for fine writing, while the world 
 stands. No woman ever liked Burke, or disliked Goldsmith. It 
 is idle to set up an ur.uversal standard. There is a large class 
 who, in spite of themselves, prefer Westall or Angelica Kauffman 
 to Raphael ; nor is it fit they should do otherwise. We may 
 come to something like a fixed and exclusive standard of taste, if 
 we confine ourselves to what will please the best judges, meaning 
 thereby persons of the most refined and cultivated minds, and by 
 persons of the most refined and cultivated minds, generally mean- 
 ing ourselves !* 
 
 To return to the original question. I can conceive of nothing 
 so little or ridiculous as pride. It is a mixture of insensibility 
 and ill-nature, in which it is hard to say which has the largest 
 share. If a man knows or excels in, or has ever studied any 
 two things, I will venture to affirm he will be proud of neither. 
 It is perhaps excusable for a person who is ignorant of all but 
 one thing, to think that the sole excellence, and to be full of 
 himself as the possessor. The way to cure him of this folly is 
 to give him something else to be proud of. Vanity is a building 
 that falls to the ground as you widen its foundation, or strengthen 
 the props that should support it. The greater a man is, the less 
 he necessarily thinks of himself; for his knowledge enlarges 
 
 * The books that we like in youth we return to in age, if there is nature and 
 simplicity in them. At what age should Robinson Crusoe be laid aside 1 I 
 do not think that Don Cluixote is a book for children , or at least, they under* 
 stand it better as they grow up. 
 
 8*
 
 150 TABLE TALK. 
 
 with his attainments. In himself he feels that he is nothing, a 
 point, a speck in the universe, except as his mind reflects that 
 universe, and as he enters into the infinite variety of truth, 
 oeauty, and power contained in it. Let any one be brought up 
 among books, and taught to think words the only things, and he 
 may conceive highly of himself from the proficiency he lias 
 made in language and in letters. Let him then be compelled to 
 attempt some other pursuit painting, for instance and be made 
 to feel the difficulties, the refinements of which it is capable, and 
 (he number of things of which he was utterly ignorant before, 
 and there will be an end of his pedantry and his pride together. 
 Nothing but the want of comprehension of view or generosity of 
 spirit can make any one fix on his own particular acquirement 
 as the limit of all excellence. No one is (generally speaking) 
 great in more than one thing if he extends his pursuits, he dis- 
 sipates his strength yet in that one thing, how small is the in- 
 terval between him and the next in merit and reputation to him- 
 self! But he thinks nothing of, or scorns or loathes the name of 
 his rival, so that all that the other possesses in common goes for 
 nothing, and the fraction of a difference between them consti- 
 tutes (in his opinion) the sum and substance of all that is excel- 
 lent in the universe ! Let a man be wise, and then let us ask, 
 will his wisdom make him proud ? Let him excel all others in 
 the graces of the mind, has he also those of the body ? He has 
 the advantage of fortune, but has he also that of birth ; or if he 
 has both, has he health, strength, beauty in a supreme degree ? 
 Or have not others the same, or does he think all these nothing 
 because he does not possess them ? The proud man fancies that 
 there is no one worth regarding but himself: he might as well 
 fancy there is no other being but himself. The one is not a 
 greater stretch of madness than the other. To make pride 
 justifiable, there ought to be but one proud man in the world ; 
 for if any one individual has a right to be so, nobody else has. 
 So far from thinking ourselves superior to all the rest of the 
 species, we cannot be sure that we are above the meanest and 
 most despised individual of it : for he may have some virtue, 
 some excellence, some source of happiness or usefulness within 
 himself, which may redeem p.ll other disadvantages: or even if
 
 ON EGOTISM. Ill 
 
 he is without any such hidden worth, this is r.ot a subject of ex- 
 ultation, but of regret, to any one tinctured with the smallest 
 humanity ; and he who is totally devoid of the latter, cannoi 
 have much reason to be proud of any thing else. Arkwright, 
 who invented the spinning-jenny, for many years kept a paltry 
 barber's shop in a provincial town : yet at that time that wonder- 
 ful machinery was working in his brain, which has added more 
 to the wealth and resources of his country than all the pride of 
 ancestry or insolence of upstart nobility for the last hundred 
 years. We should be cautious whom we despise. If we do not 
 know them, we can have no right to pronounce a hasty sentence : 
 if we do, they may espy some few defects in us. No man is a 
 hero to his valet-de-chambre. What is it then that makes the dif 
 ference 1 The dress, and pride. But he is the most of a hero 
 who is least distinguished by the one, and most free from the 
 other. If we enter into conversation upon equal terms with the 
 lowest of the people, unrestrained by circumstance, unawed by 
 interest, we shall find in ourselves but little superiority over 
 them. If we know what they do not, they know what we do 
 hot. In general, those who do things for others, know more 
 about them than those for whom they are done. A groom knows 
 more about horses than his master. He rides them too : but the 
 one rides behind, the other before ! Hence the number of forms 
 and ceremonies that have been invented to keep the magic circle 
 of willing self-importance inviolate. The late King sought but 
 one interview with Dr. Johnson : his present Majesty is never 
 tired of the company of Mr. Croker ! 
 
 The collision of truth or genius naturally gives a shock to the 
 pride of exalted rank : the great and mighty usually seek out the 
 dregs of mankind, buffoons and flatterers, for their pampered self- 
 love to repose on. Pride soon tires of every thing but its sha- 
 dow, servility : but how poor a triumph is that which exists only 
 by excluding all rivalry, however remote. He who invites com- 
 petition (the only test of merit,) who challenges fair comparison, 
 and weighs different claims, is alone possessed of manly ambi- 
 tion ; but will not long continue vain or proud. Pride is " a cell 
 of ignorance; travelling a-bed." If we look at all out of our- 
 selves, we must see how far short we are of what we would be
 
 ITS TABLE TALK. 
 
 thought. The man of' genius is poor ;* the rich man is not a 
 lord : the lord wants to be a king : the king is uneasy to be a 
 tyrant or a God. Yet he alone, who could claim this last cha- 
 racter upon earth, gave his life a ransom for others ! The dwarf 
 in the romance, who saw the shadows of the fairest and the 
 mightiest among the sons of men pass before him, that he might 
 assume the shape he liked best, had only his choice of wealth, or 
 beauty, or valour, or power. But could he have clutched them 
 all, and melted them into one essence of pride, the triumph 
 would not have been lasting. Could vanity take all pomp and 
 power to itself, could it, like the rainbow, span the earth, and 
 seem to prop the heavens, after all it would be but the wonder 
 of the ignorant, the pageant of a moment. The fool who dreams 
 that he is great should first forget that he is a man, and before he 
 thinks of being proud, should pray to be mad. The only great 
 man in modern times, that is, the only man who rose in deeds 
 and fame to the level of antiquity, who might turn his gaze upon 
 himself and wonder at his height, for on him all eyes were fixed 
 as his majestic stature towered above thrones and monuments of 
 renown, died the other day in exile, and in lingering agony ; and 
 we still see fellows strutting about the streets, and fancying they 
 are something ! 
 
 Personal vanity is incompatible with the great and the ideal. 
 He who has not seen or thought or read of something finer than 
 himself, has seen or read or thought little ; and he who has, will 
 
 * I do not speak of poverty as an absolute evil ; though when accompanied 
 with luxurious habits and vanity, it is a great one. Even hardships and pri- 
 vations have their use, and give strength and endurance. Labour renders ease 
 delightful hunger is the best sauce. The peasant, who at noon rests from 
 his weary task under a hawthorn hedge, and eats his slice of coarse bread and 
 cheese or rusty bacon, enjoys more real luxury than the prince with pampered, 
 listless appetite under a canopy of state. Why then does the mind of man 
 pity the former, and envy the latter 1 It is because the imagination changes 
 places with others in situation only, not in feeling; and in fancying ourselves 
 the peasant, we revolt at his homely fare, from not being possessed of his 
 gross taste or keen appetite, while in thinking of the prince, we suppose our- 
 selves to sit down to his delicate viands and sumptuous board, with a relish 
 unabated by long habit and vicious excess. I am not sure whether Monde* 
 ville has not given the same answer to this hackneyed question.
 
 ON EGOTISM. 173 
 
 not be always looking in the glass of his own vanity. Hence 
 norte, artists, and men of genius in general are seldom coxcombs, 
 Dut often slovens ; for they find something out of themselves better 
 worth studying than their own persons. They have an imagi- 
 nary standard in their minds, with which ordinary features (even 
 'heir own) will not bear a comparison, and they turn their 
 thoughts another way. If a man had a face like one of Rapha. 
 el's or Titian's heads, he might be proud of it, but not else ; and 
 even then, he would be stared at as a non-descripl by " the uni- 
 versal English nation." Few persons who have seen the Anti- 
 nous or the Theseus will be much charmed with their own beau- 
 ty or symmetry ; nor will those who understand the costume of 
 the antique or Vandyke's dresses, spend much time in decking 
 themselves out in all the deformity of the prevailing fashion. A 
 coxcomb is his own lay-figure, for want of any better models to 
 employ his time and imagination upon. 
 
 There is an inverted sort of pride, the reverse of that egotism 
 that has been above described, aud which, because it cannot be 
 every thing, is dissatisfied with every thing. A person who is 
 liable to this infirmity " thinks nothing done, while any thing re- 
 mains to be done." The sanguine egotist prides himself on what 
 he can do or possesses ; the morbid egotist despises himself for 
 what he wants, and is ever going out of his way to attempt hope- 
 less and impossible tasks. The effect in either case is not at all 
 owing to reason, but to temperament. The one is as easily de- 
 pressed by what mortifies his latent ambition, as the other is 
 eJated by what flatters his immediate vanity. There are persons 
 whom no success, no advantages, no applause can satisfy ; for 
 they dwell only on failure and defeat. They constantly " forget 
 the things that are behind, and press forward to the things that 
 are before." The greatest and most decided acquisitions would 
 uot indemnify them for the smallest deficiency. They go be- 
 yond the old motto Aut Caesar, aut nihil they not only want to 
 oe at the head of whatever they undertake, but if they succeed 
 in that, they immediately want to be at the head of something 
 else, no matter how gross or trivial. The charm that rivets theii 
 affections is not the importance or reputation annexed to the new 
 pursuit, but its novelty or difficulty. That must be a wonderful
 
 74 TABLE TALK. 
 
 accomplishment indeed, which baffles their skill nothing is with 
 them of any value but as it gives scope to their restless activity 
 of mind, their craving after an uneasy and importunate state of 
 excitement. To them the pursuit is every thing, the possession 
 nothing. I have known persons of this stamp, who, with every 
 reason to be satisfied with their success in life, and with the 
 opinion entertained of them by others, despised themselves be- 
 cause they could not do something which they were not bound 
 to do, and which, if they could have done it, would not have 
 added one jot to their respectability, either in their own eyes 
 or those of any one else, the very insignificance of the attainment 
 irritating their impatience, for it is the humour of such disposi- 
 tions to argue, " If they cannot succeed in what is trifling and 
 contemptible, how should they succeed in any thing else ?" If 
 they could make the circuit of the arts and sciences and master 
 them all, they would take to some mechanical exercise, and if 
 they failed, be as discontented as ever. All that they can do 
 vanishes out of sight the moment it is within their grasp, and 
 " nothing is, but what is not." A poet of this description is am- 
 bitious of the thews and muscles of a prize-fighter, and thinks 
 himself nothing without them. A prose-writer would be a fine 
 tennis-player, and is thrown into despair because he is not one, 
 without considering that it requires a whole life devoted to the 
 game to excel in it ; and that, even if he could dispense with this 
 apprenticeship, he would still be just as much bound to excel in 
 rope-dancing, or horsemanship, or playing at cup and ball like 
 the Indian jugglers, all which is impossible. This feeling is 
 a strange mixture of modesty and pride. We think nothing of 
 what we are, because we cannot be every thing with a wish. 
 Goldsmith was even jealous of beauty in the other sex, and a si- 
 milar character is attributed to Wharton by Pope : 
 
 " Though listening senates hung on all he spoke, 
 The club must hail him master *)f the joke." 
 
 Playertf are for going into the church officers in the army turn 
 ->layen For myself, do what I might, I should think myself a 
 poor creature unless I could beat a boy often years old at chuck' 
 farthi~j[, or an elderly gentlewoman at piquet !
 
 ON EGOTISM. 116 
 
 The extreme of fastidious discontent and repining is as bad as 
 that of over-weening presumption. We ought to be satisfied if 
 we have succeeded in any one thing, or with having done our 
 best. Any thing more is for health and amusement, and should 
 be resorted to as a source of pleasure, not of fretful impatience, 
 and endless, petty, self-imposed mortification. Perhaps the jea- 
 lous, uneasy temperament is most favourable to continued exer- 
 tion and improvement, if it does not lead us to fritter away at- 
 tention on too many pursuits. By looking out of ourselves, we 
 gain knowledge : by being little satisfied with what we have done, 
 we are less apt to sink into indolence and security. To conclude 
 with a piece of egotism : I never begin one of these Essays with 
 a consciousness of having written a line before ; and endeavour 
 to do my best, because I seem hitherto to have done nothing !
 
 J*J TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XVI. 
 
 On the Regal Character. 
 
 This is a subject exceedingly curious, and worth explaining. lu 
 writing a criticism, I hope I shall not be accused for intending a 
 libel. 
 
 Kings are remarkable for long memories in the merest trifles. 
 They never forget a face or person they have once seen, nor an 
 anecdote they have been told of any one they know. Whatever 
 differences of character or understanding they manifest in other 
 respects, they all possess what Dr. Spurzheim would call the or- 
 gan of individuality, or the power of recollecting particular local 
 circumstances, nearly in the same degree ; though I shall attempt 
 to account for it without recurring to his system. This kind of 
 personal memory is' the natural effect of that self-importance 
 which makes them attach a correspondent significance to all that 
 comes in contact with themselves. Nothing can be a matter of 
 indifference to a King, that happens to a King. That intense 
 consciousness of their lofty identity, which never quits them, ex- 
 tends to whatever falls under their immediate cognizance. It is 
 the glare of Majesty reflected from their own persons on the per- 
 sons of those about them, that fixes their attention ; and it is the 
 same false lustre that makes them blind and insensible to all that 
 lies beyond that narrow sphere. " My Lord," said an English 
 King to one of his courtiers, " I have seen you in that coat before 
 with different buttons" to the astonishment of the Noble Peer. 
 There was nothing wonderful in it. It was the habitual jealousy 
 of the Sovereign of the respect due to him, that made him regard 
 with lynx-eyed watchfulness even the accidental change of dress 
 in one of his favourites. The least diminution of glossy splen 
 dour in a birth-day suit, considered as a mark of slackened duty 
 or waning loyalty, would expose it, tarnished and threadbare tJ
 
 ON THE REGAL CHARACTER. 177 
 
 the keen glance of dormant pride, waked to suspicion. A God 
 does not penetrate into the hearts of his worshippers with surer 
 insight, than a King, fond of the attributes of awe and sovereign- 
 ty, detects the different degrees of fawning adulation in those 
 around him. Every thing relating to external appearance and 
 deportment is scanned with the utmost nicety, as compromising 
 the dignity of the royal presence. Involuntary gestures become 
 overt acts ; an inconsiderate word is magnified into a crime 
 against the State. To suggest advice, or offer information un- 
 asked, is to arraign the fallibility of the throne : to hint a differ, 
 ence of opinion to a King, would create as great a shock, as if 
 you were to present a pistol to the breast of any other man. 
 " Never touch a King," was the answer of an infirm monarch to 
 one who had saved him from a dangerous fall. When a glass 
 of wine was presented to the Emperor Alexander by a servant in 
 livery, he started, as if he had trod upon a serpent. Such is their 
 espect for themselves ! Such is their opinion of human nature ! 
 " There's a divinity doth hedge a King," that keeps their bo- 
 dies and their minds sacred within the magic circle of a name ; 
 and it is their fear lest this circle should be violated or approached 
 without sufficient awe, that makes them observe and remember 
 the countenances of others with such infinite circumspection and 
 exactness. 
 
 As Kings have the sagacity of pride, courtiers have the cun- 
 ning of fear. They watch their own behaviour and that of others 
 with breathless apprehension, and move amidst the artificial forms 
 of court-etiquette, as if the least error must be fatal to them. 
 Their sense of personal propriety is heightened by servility : 
 every faculty is wound up to flatter the vanity and prejudices of 
 their superiors. When Coates painted a portrait in crayons of 
 Queen Charlotte on her first arrival in this country, the King 
 followed by a train of attendants, went to ldbk at it. The trem- 
 bling artist stood by. " Well, what do you think ?" said the 
 King to those in waiting. Not a word in reply. " Do you think 
 it like ?" Still all was hushed as death. " Why, yes," (he 
 added,) " I think it is like, very like." A buzz of admiration 
 instantly filled the room ; and the old Duchess of Northumber. 
 land, going up to the artist, and tapping him familiarly on the 
 12
 
 78 TABLE TALK. 
 
 shoulder, said, " Remember, Mr. Coates, I am to have the first 
 copy !" On another occasion, when the Queen had sat foi 'ier 
 portrait, one of the maids of honour coming into the room c vte- 
 sied to the reflection in the glass, affecting to mistake it foi the 
 ^ueen. The picture was, you may be sure, a.flattering likeness. 
 In the Memoirs of Count Grammont, it is related of Louis XIV. 
 that having a dispute at chess with one of his courtiers, no one 
 present would give an opinion. " Oh," said he, "here comes 
 Jount Hamilton, he shall decide which of us is in the right." 
 " Your Majesty is in the wrong," replied the Count, without 
 .ooking at the board. On which the King remonstrating with 
 him on the impossibility of his judging till he saw the state of the 
 game, he answered, " Does your Majesty suppose that if you 
 were in the right, all these Noblemen would stand by and say 
 nothing ?" A King was once curious to know, which was the 
 tallest, himself or a certain courtier. " Let us measure," said 
 the King. The King stood up to be measured first ; but when 
 the person who was fixed upon to take their height came to 
 measure the Nobleman, he found it quite impossible, as he first 
 rose on tip-toe, then crouched down, now shrugged up his shoul- 
 ders to the right, then twisted his body to the left. Afterwards 
 his friend asking him the reason of these unaccountable gesticu- 
 lations, he replied, " I could not tell whether the King wished me 
 to be taller or shorter than himself; and all the time I was making 
 those odd movements, I was watching his countenance to see what 
 I ought to do." If such is the exquisite pliability of the inmates 
 of a court in trifles like these, what must be their independence 
 of spirit and disinterested integrity in questions of peace and war, 
 that involve the rights of Sovereigns or the liberties of the people ! 
 It has been suggested (and not without reason) that the difficulty 
 of trusting to the professions of those who surround them, is one 
 circumstance that renders Kings such expert physiognomists, the 
 language of the countenance being the only one they have left to 
 decypher the thoughts of others-; and the very disguises which 
 are practised to prevent the emotions of the mind from appearing 
 n the face, only rendering them more acute and discriminating 
 jbservers. It is the same insincerity and fear of giving offeree 
 oy candour and plain-speaking in their immediate dependent,
 
 ON THE REGAL CHARACTER. 179 
 
 that makes Kings gossips and inquisitive. They have no way of 
 ascertaining the opinions of others, but by getting them up into a 
 corner, and extorting the commonest information from them, piece- 
 meal, by endless, teasing, tiresome questions and cross-examina- 
 tion. The walls of a palace, like those of a convent, are the 
 favoured abode of scandal and tittle-tattle. The inhabitants of 
 both are equally shut out from the common privileges and com 
 <non incidents of humanity, and whatever relates to the every -da) 
 world about us, has to them the air of romance. The desire 
 which the most meritorious Princes have shown to acquire infor 
 mation on matters of fact rather than of opinion, is partly because 
 their prejudices will not suffer them to exercise their understand 
 ings freely on the most important speculative questions, partly 
 from their jealousy of being dictated to on any point that admits 
 of a question ; as, on the other hand, the desire which the Sove- 
 reigns of northern and uncultivated kingdoms have shown to 
 become acquainted with the arts and elegances of life in southern 
 nations, is evidently owing to their natural jealousy of the advan- 
 tages of civilization over barbarism. From the principle here 
 stated, Peter the Great visited this country, and worked in our 
 dock-yards as a common ship-wright. To the same source may 
 be traced the curiosity of the Duchess of Oldenburgh to see a 
 beef-steak cooked, to take a peep into Mr. Meaux's great brewing- 
 vat, and to hear Mr. Whitbread speak ! 
 
 The common regal character is then the reverse of what it 
 ought to be. It is the purely personal, occupied with its own 
 petty feelings, prejudices, and pursuits ; whereas it ought to be the 
 purely philosophical, exempt from all personal considerations, and 
 contemplating itself only in its general and paramount relation to 
 the State. This is the reason why there have been so few great 
 Kings. They want the power of abstraction : and their situa- 
 tions are necessarily at variance with their duties in this respect ; 
 for every thing forces them to concentrate their attention upon 
 themselves, and to consider their rank and privileges in connec- 
 tion with their private advantage, rather than with public good. 
 This is but natural. It is easier to employ the power they 
 possess in pampering their own appetites and passions, than tc 
 wield it for the benefit of a great empire. They see well
 
 80 TABLE TALK. 
 
 enough how the community is made for them, not so well how 
 hey are made for the community. Not knowing how to act as stew . 
 ards for their trust, they set up for heirs to the estate, and waste 
 t at their pleasure : without aspiring to reign as Kings, they are 
 contented to live as spunges upon royalty. A great King oughl 
 :o be the greatest philosopher and the truest patriot in his domin- 
 ons : hereditary Kings can be but common mortals. It is noi 
 .hat they are not equal to other men, but to be equal to their rank 
 as Kings, they ought to be more than men. Their power is equal 
 .0 that of the whole community : their wisdom and virtue ought 
 .0 keep pace with their power. But in ordinary cases, the height 
 to which they are raised, instead of enlarging their views or en- 
 nobling their sentiments, makes them giddy with vanity, and ready 
 * look down on the world which is subjected to their power, as 
 .he plaything of their will. They regard men crawling on the 
 face of the earth, as we do the insects that cross our path, and 
 survey the common drama of human life as a fantoccini exhibi- 
 tion got up for their amusement. There is no sympathy between 
 Kings and their subjects ; except in a constitutional monarchy 
 like ours, through the medium of Lords and Commons. Take 
 away that check upon their ambition and rapacity, and their pre- 
 tensions become as monstrous as they are ridiculous. Without 
 the common feelings of humanity in their own breasts, they have 
 no regard for them in their aggregate amount and accumulating 
 force. Reigning in contempt of the people, they would crush 
 and trample upon all power but their own. They consider the 
 claims of justice and compassion as so many impertinent interfer- 
 ences with the royal prerogative. They despise the millions of 
 slaves whom they see linked to the foot of the throne ; and they 
 soon hate what they despise. They will sacrifice a kingdom for 
 a caprice, and mankind for a bauble. Weighed in the scales of 
 their pride, the meanest things become of the greatest importance: 
 weighed in the balance of reason, the universe is nothing to them. 
 It is this overweening, aggravated, intolerable sense of swelling 
 pride and ungovernable self-will, that sometimes disorders their 
 imaginations ; as it is their blind fatuity and insensibility to all 
 beyond themselves, that, transmitted through successive genera- 
 tions and confirmed by regal intermarriages, in time makes them
 
 ON THE REGAL CHARACTER. 181 
 
 idiots. When we see a poor creature like Ferdinand VII., who 
 can hardly gabble out his words like a human being, more imbe- 
 cile than a woman, more hypocritical than a priest, decked and 
 dandled in the long robes and swaddling clothes of Legitimacy, 
 lullabied to rest with the dreams of superstition, drunk with the 
 patriot-blood of his country, and launching the thunders of his 
 coward-arm against the rising liberties of a new world, while he 
 claims the style and title of Image of the Divinity, we may laugh 
 or weep, but there is nothing to wonder at. Tyrants forego all 
 respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it : 
 taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really 
 become so ; lose their participation with the kind ; and in mim- 
 icking the God, dwindle into the brute ! Blind with prejudices as 
 a mole, stung with truth as with scorpions, sore all over with 
 wounded pride like a boil, their minds a morbid heap of proud 
 flesh and bloated humours, a disease and gangrene in the State, 
 instead of its life-blood and vital principle ; foreign despots 
 claim mankind as their property, " independently of their conduct 
 or merits," and there is one Englishman found base enough to 
 echo the foul calumny against his country and his kind. 
 
 We might, in the same manner, account for the disparity be- 
 tween the public and private character of Kings. It is the mis- 
 fortune of most Kings (not their fault) to be born to thrones, a 
 situation which ordinary talents or virtue cannot fill with im- 
 punity. We often find a very respectable man make but a very 
 sorry figure as a Sovereign. Nay, a Prince may be possessed 
 of extraordinary virtues and accomplishments, and not be more 
 thought of for them. He may, for instance, be a man of good 
 nature and good manners, graceful in his person, the idol of the 
 other sex, the model of his own ; every word or look may be 
 marked with the utmost sense of propriety and delicate attention 
 to the feelings of others ; he may be a good classic, well-versed 
 in history may speak Italian, French, Spanish, and German 
 fluently ; he may be an excellent mimic ; he may say good 
 things, and do friendly ones ; he may be able to join in a catch, 
 or utter a repartee, or dictate a billet-doux ; he may be master 
 of Hoyle, and deep in the rules of the Jockey Club ; he may 
 havi an equal taste in ragputs and poetry, in dancing and hi
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 iress ; he may adjust a toupee with the dexterity of a friseur 
 or tie a cravat with the hand and eye of a man-milliner : he 
 nay have all these graces and accomplishments, and as many 
 -nore, and yet he may be nothing ; as without any one of them 
 ae may be a great Prince. They are not the graces and ac- 
 complishments of a Sovereign, but of a Lord of the Bedchamber. 
 They do not show a great mind, bent on great objects, and 
 swayed by lofty views. They are rather foibles and blemishes 
 m the character of a ruler ; for they imply that his attention has 
 been turned as much upon adorning his own person as upon ad- 
 vancing the State. Charles II. was a King, such as we have 
 here described ; amiable, witty, and accomplished, and yet his 
 memory is equally despised and detested. Charles was without 
 strength of mind or public principle. He could not arrive at 
 the comprehension of that mixed mass of thought and feeling, a 
 kingdom he thought merely of the throne. He was as unlike 
 Cromwell in the manner in which he came by the Sovereignty 
 of the realm as in the use he made of it. He saw himself, not 
 in the glass of history, but in the glass on his toilette, not in 
 the eyes of posterity, but of his courtiers and mistresses. In- 
 stead of regulating his conduct by public opinion and abstract 
 reason, he did every thing from a* feeling of personal conveni- 
 ence. Charles would have been more annoyed with the rejec- 
 tion of a licentious overture than with the rebellion of a province ; 
 and poured out the blood of his subjects with the same gaiety 
 and indifFerence as he did a glass of wine. He had no idea of 
 his obligations to the State, and only laid aside the private gen- 
 tleman to become the tyrant of his people. Charles was popu- 
 lar in his life-time, Cibber tells us, because he used to walk out 
 with his spaniels and feed his ducks in St. James's Park. His- 
 tory has consigned his name to infamy for the executions under 
 Jeffries, and for his league with a legitimate despot, to under- 
 mine the liberties of his country. 
 
 What is it, then, that makes a great Prince ? Not the under- 
 standing Purcell or Mozart, but the having an ear open to the 
 voice of truth and justice ! Not a taste in made-dishes, or 
 French wines, or court-dresses, but a fellow-feeling with the ca- 
 lamities of hunger, of cold, of disease, and nakedness ! Not a
 
 ON THE REGAL CHARACTER. 183 
 
 knowledge of the elegances of fashionable life, but a heart that 
 feel s for the millions of its fellow-beings in want of the common 
 necessaries of life ! Not a set of brilliant frivolous accomplish- 
 ments, but a manly strength of character, proof against the se- 
 ductions of a throne ! He, in short, is a patriot King, who, with- 
 out any other faculty usually possessed by Sovereigns, has one 
 which they seldom possess, the power in imagination of changing 
 places with his people. Such a King may indeed aspire to the 
 character of a ruling providence over a nation ; any other is but 
 he head-cypher of a court ! 
 
 END OF PAST I
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 TABLE TALK. FIEST SERIES. PART IL 
 
 PAOl 
 
 Essay XVII. On the Look op a Gentleman, .... 1 
 
 XVIII. On Reading Old Books, 15 
 
 XIX. On Personal Character, 27 
 
 XX. On Vulgarity and Affectation, . . . .42 
 
 XXI. On Antiquity, .... ... 5*7 
 
 XXII. On the Conduct of Life : or, Advice to a School- 
 boy, 69 
 
 XXIII. The Indian Jugglers, 86 
 
 XXIV. On the Prose-style of Poets, ..... 101 
 
 XXV. On the Conyersation of Authors, . . . .116 
 
 XXVI. The same subject continued, .... 130 
 
 XXVII. My First acquaintance with Poets, . . . 141 
 
 XXVIII. Of Persons one would wish to have seen, . . 161 
 
 XXIX. Shyness of Scrc~.*s, .... .176 
 
 XXX. On Old English Writers and Speakers, 188 
 
 9
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XVII. 
 
 Or. the. Look of a Gentleman. 
 
 u The ii >blemen-look ? Yes, I know what you mean very well : that look 
 which a nobleman should have, rather than what they have generally now. 
 The Duke of Buckingham (Sheffield*) was a genteel man, and had a great 
 deal the look you speak of. Wycherley was a very genteel man, and had 
 the nobleman look as much as the Duke of Buckingham." Pope. 
 
 " He instanced it too in Lord Peterborough, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Hin- 
 chinbroke, the Duke of Bolton, and two or three more." Spence's Anecdotes 
 of Pope. 
 
 I have chosen the above motto to a very delicate subject, which 
 in prudence I might let alone. I, however, like the title j and 
 will try, at least, to make a sketch of it. 
 
 What it is that constitutes the look of a gentleman is more easily 
 felt than described. We all know it when we see it ; but we do 
 not know how to account for it, or to explain in what it consists. 
 Causa latet, res ipsa notissima. Ease, grace, dignity, have been 
 given as the exponents and expressive symbols of this look ; but 
 I would rather say, that an habitual self-possession determines 
 the appearance of a gentleman. He should have the complete 
 command not only over his countenance, but over his limbs and 
 motions. In other words, he should discover in his air and man- 
 ner a voluntary power over his whole body, which, with every in- 
 flexion of it, should be under the control of his will. It must be 
 
 * Quere, Villiers, because in another place it is said, that " when the latter 
 entered the presence-chamber, he attracted all eyes by the handsomeness of 
 his person, and the gracefulness of his demeanor." 
 1
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 evident that he looks and does as he likes, without any restraint, 
 confusion, or awkwardness. He is, in fact, master of his person, 
 as the professor of an art or science is of a particular instru- 
 ment ; he directs it to what use he pleases and intends. Wher- 
 ever this power and facility appear, we recognize the look and 
 deportment of the gentleman, that is, of a person who by his 
 habits and situation in life, and in his ordinary intercourse with 
 society, has had little else to do than to study those movements, 
 and that carriage of the body, which were accompanied with 
 most satisfaction to himself, and were calculated to excite the ap- 
 probation of the beholder. Ease, it might be observed, is no 
 enough ; dignity is too much. There must be a certain retenu 
 a conscious decorum added to the first, and a certain " famili- 
 arity of regard, quenching the austere countenance of control," 
 in the second, to answer to our conception of this character. Per- 
 haps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners 
 of the gentleman ; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman ; 
 dignity is proper to noblemen ; and majesty to kings ! 
 
 Wherever this constant and decent subjection of the body to the 
 mind is visible in the customary actions of walking, sitting, riding, 
 standing, speaking, &c, we draw the same conclusion as to the 
 individual whatever may be the impediments or unavoidable 
 defects in the machine, of which he has the management. A 
 man may have a mean or disagreeable exterior, may halt in his 
 gait, or have lost the use of half his limbs ; and yet he may show 
 this habitual attention to what is graceful and becoming in the 
 use he makes of all the power he has left in the " nice conduct" 
 of the most unpromising and impracticable figure. A hump- 
 backed or deformed man does not necessarily look like a clown 
 or a mechanic ; on the contrary, from his care in the adjustment 
 of his appearance, and his desire to remedy his defects, he for the 
 most part acquires something of the look of a gentleman. The 
 common nick-name of My Lord, applied to such persons, has 
 allusion to this to their circumspect deportment, and tacit re- 
 sistance to vulgar prejudice. Lord Ogleby, in the Clandestine 
 Marriage, is as crazy a piece of elegance and refinement, even 
 after he is " wound up for the day," as can well be imagined ; 
 yet in the hands of a genuine actor, his tottering step, his twitches
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 f the gout, his unsuccessful attempts at youth and gaiety, take 
 nothing from the nobleman. He has the idea 1 model in his mind, 
 resents his deviations from it with proper horror, recovers himself 
 from any ungraceful action as soon as possible : does all he can 
 with his limited means, and fails in his just pretensions, not from 
 inadvertence, but necessity. Sir Joseph Banks, who was almost 
 bent double, retained to the last the look of a privy-counsellor. 
 There was all the firmness and dignity that could be given by 
 the sense of his own importance to so distorted and disabled a 
 trunk. Sir Charles Bunbury, as he saunters down St. James's 
 street, with a large slouched hat, a lack-lustre eye and aquiline 
 nose, an old shabby drab-coloured coat, buttoned across his breast 
 without a cape with old top-boots, and his hands in his waistcoat 
 or breeches' pockets, as if he were strolling along his own garden- 
 walks, or over the turf at Newmarket, after having made his bets 
 secure presents nothing very dazzling, or graceful, or dignified 
 to the imagination ; though you can tell infallibly at the first 
 glance, or even a bowshot off, that he is a gentleman of the first 
 water (the same that sixty years ago married the beautiful Lady 
 Sarah L-nn-x, with whom the king was in love). What is the 
 clue to this mystery ? It is evident that his person costs him no 
 more trouble than an old glove. His limbs are, from long prac 
 tice, left to take care of themselves ; they move of their own 
 accord ; he does not strut or stand on tip-toe to show 
 
 " how tall 
 
 His person is above them all :" 
 
 but he seems to find his own level, and wherever he is, to slide 
 into his place naturally ; he is equally at home among lords or 
 gamblers ; nothing can discompose his fixed serenity of look and 
 purpose ; there is no mark of superciliousness about him, nor 
 does it appear as if any thing could meet his eye to startle or 
 throw him off" his guard ; he neither avoids nor courts notice ; but 
 the archaism of his dress may be understood to denote a lingering 
 partiality for the costume of the last age, and something like a 
 prescriptive contempt for the finery of this. The old one-eyed 
 Duke of Queensberry is another example that I might quote. As 
 he sat in his bow-window in Piccadilly, erect and emaciated, ha
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 seemed like a nobleman framed and glazed, or a well-dressed 
 mummy of the Court of George II. 
 
 We have few of these precious specimens of the gentleman or 
 nobleman-look now remaining ; other considerations have set 
 aside the exclusive importance of the character, and of course 
 the jealous attention to the outward expression of it. Where we 
 oftenest meet with it now-a-days, is, perhaps, in the butlers in old 
 families, or the valets and " gentlemen's gentlemen" of the 
 younger branches. The sleek pursy gravity of the one answers 
 to the stately air of some of their quondam masters ; and the 
 flippancy and finery of our old-fashioned beaux, having been 
 discarded by the heirs to the title and estate, have been re- - 
 tained by their lackeys. The late Admiral Byron (I have heard 
 Northcote say) had a butler, or steward, who, from constantly 
 observing his master, had so learned to mimic him the look, the 
 manner, the voice, the bow, were so alike he was so " subdued 
 to the very quality of his lord" that it was difficult to distin- 
 guish them apart. Our modern footmen, as we see them flutter- 
 ing and lounging in lobbies or at the doors of ladies' carriages, 
 bedizened in lace and powder, with ivory-headed cane and em- 
 broidered gloves, give one the only idea of the fine gentleman 
 of former periods, as they are still occasionally represented on 
 the stage ; and indeed our theatrical heroes, who top such parts, 
 might be supposed to have copied, as a last resource, from the 
 heroes of the shoulder-knot. We also sometimes meet with a 
 straggling personation of this character, got up in common life 
 from pure romantic enthusiasm, and on absolutely ideal princi- 
 ples. I recollect a well-grown comely haberdasher, who made 
 a practice of walking every day from Bishopsgate-street to Pall- 
 mall and Bond-street with the undaunted air and strut of a gen- 
 eral-officer ; and also a prim undertaker, who regularly tendered 
 his person, whenever the weather would permit, from the neigh 
 bourhood of Camberwell into the favourite promenades of the 
 city, with a mincing gait that would have become a gentleman- 
 usher of the black-rod. What a strange infatuation to live in a 
 dream of being taken for what one is not in deceiving others, 
 and at the same time ourselves ; for no doubt these persons be- 
 lieved that they thus appeared to the world in their true charac
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ters, and that their assumed pretensions did no more than justice 
 to their real merits. 
 
 " Dress makes the man, and want of it the fellow; 
 The rest is all but leather and prunella !" 
 
 I confess, however, that I admire this look of a gentleman, 
 more when it rises from the level of common life, and bears the 
 stamp of intellect, than when it is formed out of the mould of 
 adventitious circumstances. I think more highly of Wycherley 
 than I do of Lord Hinchinbroke, for looking like a lord. In the 
 one, it was the effect of native genius, grace, and spirit ; in the 
 other, comparatively speaking, of pride or custom. A visitor 
 complimenting Voltaire on the growth and flourishing condition 
 of some trees in his grounds, " Aye," said the French wit, 
 " they have nothing else to do !" A lord has nothing to do but 
 to look like a lord : our comic poet had something else to do, and 
 did it !* 
 
 Though the disadvantages of nature or accident do not act as 
 obstacles to the look of a gentleman, those of education and em 
 ployment do. A shoe-maker, who is bent in two over his daily 
 task ; a tailor who sits cross-legged all day ; a ploughman, who 
 wears clog-shoes over the furrowed miry soil, and can hardly 
 drag his feet after him ; a scholar who has pored all his life over 
 books are not likely to possess that natural freedom and ease, 
 or to pay that strict attention to personal appearances, that the 
 look of a gentleman implies. I might add, that a man-milliner 
 behind a counter, who is compelled to show every mark of com- 
 plaisance to his customers, but hardly expects common civility 
 from them in return ; or a sheriff's officer, who has a conscious- 
 ness of power, but none of good-will to or from any body, are 
 equally remote from the beau idtal of this character. A man 
 who is awkward from bashfulness is a clown; as one who is 
 showing off a number of impertinent airs and graces at every 
 turn, is a coxcomb, or an upstart. Mere awkwardness or rus- 
 ticity of behaviour may arise, either from want of presence of 
 mind in the company of our letters, (the commonest hind goes 
 
 * Wycherley was a great favourite with the Duchess of Cleveland. 
 
 9*
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 about his regular business without any of the mauvaise honie,) 
 from a deficiency of breeding, as it is called, in not having been 
 taught certain fashionable accomplishments or from unremit- 
 ting application to certain sorts of mechanical labour, unfitting 
 the body for general or indifferent uses. (That vulgarity which 
 proceeds from a total disregard of decorum, and want of careful 
 control over the different actions of the body such as loud 
 speaking, boisterous gesticulations, &c. is rather rudeness and 
 violence, than awkwardness or uneasy restraint.) Now the gen- 
 tleman is free from all these causes of ungraceful demeanour. 
 He is independent in his circumstances, and is used to enter into 
 society on equal terms ; he is taught the modes of address and 
 forms of courtesy most commonly practised and most proper to 
 ingratiate him into the good opinion of those he associates with ; 
 and he is relieved from the necessity of following any of those 
 laborious trades or callings which cramp, strain, and distort the 
 human frame. He is not bound to do any one earthly thing; to 
 use any exertion, or put himself in any posture, that is not per- 
 fectly easy and graceful, agreeable and becoming. Neither is 
 he (at the present day) required to excel in any art or science, 
 game or exercise. He is supposed qualified to dance a minuet, 
 not to dance on the tight rope to stand upright, not to stand on 
 his head. He has only to sacrifice to the Graces. Alcibiades 
 threw away a flute, because the playing on it discomposed his 
 features. Take the fine gentleman out of the common boarding- 
 school or drawing-room accomplishments, and set him to any 
 ruder or more difficult task, and he will make but a sorry figure. 
 Ferdinand in the Tempest, when he is put by Prospero to carry logs 
 of wood, does not strike us as a very heroical character, though 
 he loses nothing of the king's son. If a young gallant of the 
 first fashion were asked to shoe a horse, or hold a plough, or fell 
 a tree, he would make a very ridiculous business of the first ex- 
 periment. I saw a set of young naval officers, very genteel- 
 looking young men, playing at rackets not long ago, and it is 
 impossible to describe the uncouthness of their motions and un- 
 accountable contrivances for hitting the ball. Something effemi- 
 nate as well as common-place, then, enters into the composition 
 of the gentleman : he is a little of the petit maitre in his preten-
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 8ions. He is only graceful and accomplished in those things to 
 which he has paid almost his whole attention, such as the car- 
 riage of his body, and adjustment of his dress; and to which he 
 is of sufficient importance in the scale of society to attract the 
 idle attention of others. 
 
 A man's manner of presenting himself in company is but a 
 superficial test of his real qualifications. Serjeant Atkinson, we 
 are assured by Fielding, would have marched at the head of his 
 platoon, up to a masked battery, with less apprehension than he 
 came into a room full of pretty women. So we may sometimes 
 see persons look foolish enough on entering a party, or returning 
 a salutation, who instantly feel themselves at home and recover 
 all their self-possession, as soon as any of that sort of conversa- 
 tion begins from which nine-tenths of the company retire in the 
 extremest trepidation, lest they should betray their ignorance or 
 incapacity. A high spirit and stubborn pride are often accom- 
 panied with an unprepossessing and unpretending appearance. 
 The greatest heroes do not discover it by their looks. There ares 
 individuals of a nervous habit, who might be said to abhor their 
 own persons, and to startle at their own appearance, as the pea- 
 cock tries to hide its legs. They are always shy, uncomfortable, 
 restless ; and all their actions are, in a manner, at cross-pur- 
 poses with themselves. This, of course, destroys the look we are 
 speaking of, from the want of ease and self-confidence. There 
 is another sort who have too much negligence of manner and 
 contempt for formal punctilios. They take their full swing in 
 whatever they are about, and make it seem almost necessary to 
 get out of their way. Perhaps something of this bold, licentious, 
 slovenly, lounging character may be objected by a fastidious eye 
 to the appearance of Lord Castlereagh. It might be said of him, 
 without disparagement, that he looks more like a lord than like a 
 gentleman. We see nothing petty or finical, assuredly nothing 
 hard-bound or reined-in but a flowing outline, a broaii free style. 
 He sits in the House of Commons, with his hat slouched ovf his 
 forehead, and a sort of stoop in his shoulders, as if he lowered 
 over his antagonists, like a bird of prey over its quarry, " hatch- 
 ing vain empires." There is an irregular grandeur about him, 
 an unwieldy power, loose, disjointed, " voluminous mid vast,"
 
 g TABLE TALK. 
 
 coiled up in the folds of its own puiposes, cold, death-liite, 
 smooth and smiling, that is neither quite at ease with itself, nor 
 safe for others to approach ! On the other hand, there is the 
 Marquis of Wellesley, a jewel of a man. He advances into his 
 place in the House of Lords, with head erect, and his best foot 
 foremost. The star sparkles on his breast, and the garter is seen 
 bound tight below his knee. It might be thought that he still 
 trod a measure on soft carpets, and was surrounded not only by 
 spiritual and temporal lords, but 
 
 " Stores of ladies, whose bright eyes 
 Rain influence, and judge the prize." 
 
 The chivalrous spirit that shines through him, the air of gallantry 
 in his personal as well as rhetorical appeals to the House, glances 
 a partial lustre on the Woolsack as he addresses it ; and makes 
 Lord Erskine raise his sunken head from a dream of transient 
 popularity. His heedless vanity throws itself unblushingly on 
 the unsuspecting candour of his hearers, and ravishes mute ad- 
 miration. You would almost guess of this nobleman beforehand 
 that he was a marquis something higher than an earl, and less 
 important than a duke. Nature has just fitted him for the niche 
 he fills in the scale of rank or title. He is a finished miniature- 
 picture set in brilliants: Lord Castlereagh might be compared to 
 a loose sketch in oil, not properly hung. The character of the 
 one is ease, of the other, elegance. Elegance is something more 
 than ease ; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or re- 
 straint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling 
 effect, spirited yet delicate, which is perfectly exemplified in Lord 
 Wellesley's face and figure. 
 
 The greatest contrast to this little lively nobleman was the late 
 Lord Stanhope. Tall above his peers, he presented an appear- 
 ance something between a Patagonian chief and one of the Long 
 Parliament. With his long black hair, " unkept and wild" his 
 black clothes, lank features, strange antics, and screaming voice, 
 he was the Orson of debate. 
 
 " A Satyr that comes staring from the woodi, 
 Cannot at first speak like an orator." 
 
 Yet he was both an orator and a wit in his way. His ha
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 rangues were an odd jumble of logic and mechanics, of the sta- 
 tutes at large and Joe Miller jests, of stern principle and sly 
 humour, of shrewdness and absurdity, of method and madness. 
 What is more extraordinary, he was an honest man. He was 
 out of his place in the House of Lords. He particularly de- 
 lighted, in his eccentric onsets, to make havoc of the bench of 
 bishops. " I like," said he, " to argue with one of my lords the 
 bishops ; and the reason why I do so is, that I generally have 
 the best of the argument." He was altogether a different man 
 from Lord Eldon ; yet his lordship "gave him good oeillades," 
 as he broke a jest, or argued a moot-point ; and while he spoke 
 smiles, roguish twinkles glittered in the Chancellor's eyes. 
 
 The look of the gentleman, " the nobleman look," is little else 
 thau the reflection of the looks of the world. We smile at those 
 who smile upon us ; we are gracious to those who pay their court 
 to us : we naturally acquire confidence and ease when all goes 
 well with us, when we are encouraged by the blandishments of 
 fortune, and the good opinion of mankind. A whole street bow- 
 ing regularly to a man, every time he rides out, may teach him 
 how to pull ofF his hat in return, without supposing a particular 
 genius for bowing (more than for governing or any thing else) 
 born in the family. It has been observed that persons who sit 
 for their pictures improve the character of their countenances, 
 from the desire they have to procure the most favorable repre 
 sentation of themselves. " Tell me, pray good Mr. Carmine, 
 when you come to the eyes, that I may call up a look," says the 
 Alderman's wife, jn Foote's farce of Taste. Ladies grow hand- 
 some by looking at themselves in the glass, and heightening the 
 agreeable air and expression of features they so much admire 
 there. So the favourites of fortune adjust themselves in the glass 
 of fashion and the flattering illusions of public opinion. Again, 
 the expression of face in the gentleman, or thorough-bred man ot 
 tne world, is not that of refinement so much as of flexibility ; of 
 sensibility or enthusiasm, so much as of indifference : it argues 
 presence of mind, rather than enlargement of ideas. In this it 
 differs from the heroic and philosophical look. Instead of an in- 
 tense unity of purpose, wound up to some great occasion, it is 
 dissipated and frittered down into a uumber of evanescent expres-
 
 10 TABLE TALK. 
 
 sions, fitted for every variety of unimportant occurrences : in- 
 stead of the expansion of general thought or intellect, you trace 
 chiefly the little, trite, cautious, moveable lines of conscious, but 
 concealed self-complacency. If Raphael had painted St. Paul as 
 a gentleman, what a figure he would have made of the great 
 Apostle of the Gentiles occupied with himself, not carried away, 
 raised, inspired with his subject insinuating his doctrines into 
 his audience, not launching them from him with the tongues of 
 the Holy Spirit, and with looks of fiery, scorching zeal ! Gen- 
 tlemen luckily can afford to sit for their own portraits : painters 
 do not trouble them to sit as studies for history. What a differ- 
 ence is there in this respect between a Madonna of Raphael, and a 
 lady of fashion, even by Vandyke : the former refined and elevated, 
 the latter light and trifling, with no emanation of soul, no depth of 
 feeling, each arch expression playing on the surface, and passing 
 into any other at pleasure, no one thought having its full scope, 
 but checked by some other, soft, careless, insincere, pleased, 
 affected, amiable ! The French physiognomy is more cut up 
 and subdivided into petty lines and sharp angles than any other : 
 it does not want for subtlety, or an air of gentility, which last it 
 often has in a remarkable degree, but it is the most unpoetical 
 and the least picturesque of all others. I cannot' explain what I 
 mean by this variable telegraphic machinery of polite expression 
 better than by an obvious allusion. Every one by walking the 
 streets of London (or any other populous city) acquires a walk 
 which is easily distinguished from that of strangers ; a quick 
 flexibility of movement, a smart jerk, an aspiring and confident 
 tread, and an air as if on the alert to keep the line of march ; 
 but for all that, there is not much grace or grandeur in this local 
 strut : you see the person is not a country-bumpkin, but you 
 would not say, he is a hero or a sage because he is a cockney. 
 So it is in passing through the artificial and thickly peopled 
 scenes of life. You get the look of a man of the world : you 
 rub off the pedant and the clown ; but you do not make much 
 progress in wisdom or virtue, or in the characteristic expression 
 of either. 
 
 The character of a gentleman (I take it) may be explained 
 nearly thus : A blackguard (un vaurien) is a fellow who doe
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 11 
 
 not care whom he offends : a clown is a blockhead who does not 
 know when he offends : a gentleman is one who understands 
 and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in 
 others, and exacts it in return from them. Politeness and the 
 pretension to the character in question have reference almost 
 entirely to this reciprocal manifestation of good-will and good 
 opinion towards each other in casual society. Morality regulates 
 our sentiments and conduct as they have a connection with ulti- 
 mate and important consequences : manners, properly speaking, 
 regulate our words and actions in the routine of personal inter- 
 course. They have little to do with real kindness of intention, 
 or practical services, or disinterested sacrifices; but they put on 
 the garb, and mock the appearance of these, in order to prevent 
 a breach of the peace, and to smooth and varnish over the dis- 
 cordant materials, when any number of individuals are brought 
 in contact together. The conventional compact of good man- 
 ners does not reach beyond the moment and the company. Say, 
 for instance, that the rabble, the labouring and industrious part 
 of the community, are taken up with supplying their own wants, 
 and pining over their own hardships scrambling for what they 
 can get, and not refining on any of their pleasures, or troubling 
 themselves about the fastidious pretensions of others : again, 
 there are philosophers who are busied in the pursuit of truth, or 
 patriots who are active for the good of their country ; but here, 
 we will suppose, are a knot of people got together, who, having 
 no serious wants of their own, with leisure and independence, 
 and caring little about abstract truth or practical utility, are met 
 for no mortal purpose but to say and to do all manner of obliging 
 things, to pay the greatest possible respect, and show the most 
 delicate and flattering attentions to one another. The politest set 
 of gentlemen and ladies in the world can do no more than this. 
 The laws that regulate this species of select and fantastic society 
 are co.nformable to its ends and origin. The fine gentleman or 
 ady must not, on any account, say a rude thing to the persons 
 present, but may turn them into the utmost ridicule the instant 
 they are gone : nay, not to do so is sometimes considered as an 
 indirect slight to the party that remains. You must compliment 
 your bitterest foe to his face, and may slander your dearest friend 
 2 part r.
 
 12 TABLE TALK. 
 
 behind his back. The last may be immoral, but it is not un- 
 mannerly. The gallant maintains his title to tnis cnaracter by 
 treating every woman he meets with the same marked and unre- 
 mitting attention as if she was his mistress : the courtier treats 
 every man with the same professions of esteem and kindness as 
 if he were an accomplice with him in some plot against mankind. 
 Of course, these professions, made only to please, go for nothing 
 in practice. To insist on them afterwards as literal obligations, 
 would be to betray an ignorance of this kind of interlude or mas- 
 querading in real life. To ruin your friend at play is not incon- 
 sistent with the character of a gentleman and a man of honour, 
 if it is done with civility ; though to warn him of his danger, 
 so as to imply a doubt of his judgment, or interference with his 
 will, would be to subject yourself to be run through the body 
 with a sword. It is that which wounds the self-love of the indi- 
 vidual that is offensive that which flatters it that is welcome 
 however salutary the one, or however fatal the other may be. A 
 habit of plain-speaking is totally contrary to the tone of good- 
 breeding. You must prefer the opinion of the company to your 
 own, and even to truth. I doubt whether a gentleman must not 
 be of the Established Church, and a Tory. A true cavalier can 
 only be a martyr to prejudice or fashion. A Whig lord appears 
 to me as great an anomaly as a patriot king. A sectary is sour 
 and unsociable. A philosopher is quite out of the question. He 
 is in the clouds, and had better not be let down on the floor in a 
 basket, to play the blockhead. He is sure to commit himself 
 in good company and by dealing always in abstractions, and 
 driving at generalities, to offend against the three proprieties of 
 time, place, and person. Authors are angry, loud, and vehe- 
 ment in argument : the man of more refined breeding, who has 
 been " all tranquillity and smiles," goes away, and tries to ruin 
 the antagonist whom he could not vanquish in a dispute. The 
 manners of a court and of a polished life are by no means down- 
 right, straight-forward, but the contrary. They have something 
 dramatic in them ; each person plays an assumed part ; the af- 
 fected, overstrained politeness and suppression of real sentiment 
 lead to concealed irony and a spirit of satire and raillery ; and
 
 ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN. 13 
 
 hence we may account for the perfection of the genteel comedy 
 of the. century before the last, when poets were allowed to mingle 
 in the court-circles, and took their cue from the splendid ring 
 
 " Of mimic statesmen and their merry king.'' 
 
 The essence of this sort of conversation and intercourse, both 
 on and off the stage, has somehow since evaporated ; the disguises 
 of royalty, nobility, gentry, have been in some measure seen 
 through : we have become individually of little importance, com- 
 pared with greater objects, in the eyes of our neighbours, and 
 even in our own : abstract topics, not personal pretensions, are 
 the order of the day ; so that what remains of the character we 
 have been talking of, is chiefly exotic and provincial, and may be 
 seen still flourishing in country-places, in a wholesome state of 
 vegetable decay ! 
 
 A man may have the manners of a gentleman without having 
 the look, and he may have the character of a gentleman, in a 
 more abstracted point of view, without the manners. The feel- 
 ings of a gentleman, in this higher sense, only denote a more 
 refined humanity a spirit delicate in itself, and unwilling to 
 offend, either in the greatest or the smallest things. This may 
 be coupled with absence of mind, with ignorance of forms, and 
 frequent blunders. But the will is good. The spring of gentle 
 offices and true regards is untainted. A person of this stamp 
 blushes at an impropriety he was guilty of twenty years before, 
 though he is, perhaps, liable to repeat it to-morrow. He never 
 forgives himself for even a slip of the tongue, that implies an 
 assumption of superiority over any one. In proportion to the 
 concessions made to him, he lowers his demands. He gives the 
 wall to a beggar :* but does not always bow to great men. This 
 
 * The writer of this Essay once saw a Prince of the Blood pull off his hat 
 to every one in the street, till he came to the beggarman that swept the cross- 
 ing. This was a nice distinction. Farther, it was a distinction that the writer 
 of this Essay would not make to be a Prince of the Blood. Perhaps, however, 
 a question might be started in the manner of Montaigne, whether the beggar 
 did not pull off his hat in quality of asking charity, and not as a mark of re- 
 spect Now a prince may decline giving charity, though he is obliged to
 
 U TABLE TALK. 
 
 class of character has been called " God Almighty's gentlemen." 
 There are not a great many of them. The late G. Dyer wag 
 one ; for we understand that that gentleman was not able to sur- 
 vive some ill-disposed person's having asserted of him, that he 
 had mistaken Lord Castlereagh for the Author of Waverley ! 
 
 return a civility. If he does not, he may be treated with disrespect another 
 time, and that is an alternative he is bound to prevent. Any other person 
 might set up such a plea, but the person to whom a whole street had been 
 bowing just before.
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 15 
 
 ESSAY XVIII. 
 
 On Reading Old Books. 
 
 I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes 
 that I have read over and over again, and these are the only 
 ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was a long 
 time before I could bring myself to sit down to the Tales of My 
 Landlord, but now that author's works have made a consider- 
 able addition to my scanty library. I am told that some of Lady 
 Morgan's are good, and have been recommended to look into 
 Anastasius ; but I have not yet ventured upon that task. A 
 lady, the other day, could not refrain from expressing her sur- 
 prise to a friend, who said he had been reading Delphine : she 
 asked " If it had not been published some time back ?" Wo- 
 men judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, which 
 are admired only in their newest gloss." That is not my way. 
 I am not one of those who trouble the circulating libraries much, 
 or pester the booksellers for mail-coach copies of standard pe- 
 riodical publications. I cannot say that I am greatly addicted to 
 black-letter, but I profess myself well versed in the marble bind^ 
 ings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the last century ; nor 
 does my taste revolt at Thurloe's State Papers, in Russia leather ; 
 or an ample impression of Sir William Temple's Essays, with a 
 portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in front. I do not think alto- 
 gether the worse of a book for having survived the author a 
 generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the 
 living. Contemporary writers may generally be divided into 
 two classes one's friends or one's foes. Of the first we are 
 compelled to think too well, and of the last we are disposed to 
 think too ill, to receive much genuine pleasure from the perusal, 
 cr to judge fairly of the merits of either. One candidate for 
 literary fame, who happens to be of our acquaintance, writes
 
 16 TABLE TALK. 
 
 finely, and like a man of genius ; but unfortunately has a foolish 
 face, which spoils a delicate passage : another inspires us with 
 the highest respect for his personal talents and character, but 
 does not quite come up to our expectations in print. All th^se 
 contradictions and petty details interrupt the calm current of 
 our reflections. If you want to know what any of the authors 
 were who lived before our time, and are still objects of anxious 
 inquiry, you have only to look into their works. But the dust 
 and smoke and noise of modern literature have nothing in com- 
 mon with the pure, silent air of immortality. 
 
 When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener 
 the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is 
 not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is 
 altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish 
 turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what to 
 think of the composition. There is a want of confidence and 
 security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also like 
 made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally little else 
 than hashes and rifaccimentos of what has been served up entire 
 and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in thus 
 turning to a well-known author, there is not only an assurance 
 that my time will not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated 
 with the most insipid or vilest trash, but I shake hands with, 
 and look an old, tried, and valued friend in the face, compare 
 notes, and chat the hours away. It is true, we form dear friend- 
 ships with such ideal guests dearer, alas ! and more lasting, 
 than those with our most intimate acquaintance. In reading a 
 book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel I ever 
 read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a criti- 
 cal relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. 
 It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first 
 reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way. 
 Standard productions of this kind are links in the chain of our 
 conscious being. They bind together the different scattered di- 
 visions of our personal identity. They are land-marks and 
 guides in our journey through life. They are pegs and loops on 
 which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at 
 pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 17 
 
 best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours. 
 They are " for thoughts and for remembrance !" They are like 
 Fortunatus's Wishing-Cap they give us the best riches those 
 of Fancy ; and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which 
 is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice ! 
 
 My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give 
 me for this purpose a volume of Peregrine Pickle or Tom Jones. 
 Open either of them any where at the Memoirs of Lady Vane, 
 or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the 
 disputes between Thwackum and Square, or the escape of Molly 
 Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the edifying 
 prolixity of her aunt's lecture and there I find the same delight- 
 ful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as 
 when I was first introduced into the midst of it. Nay, sometimes 
 the sight of an odd volume of these good old English authors on 
 a stall, or the name lettered on the back among others on the 
 shelves of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole 
 train of ideas, and sets " the puppets dallying." Twenty years 
 are struck off the list, and I am a child again. A sage philoso- 
 pher, who was not a very wise man, said, that he should like 
 very well to be young again, if he could take his experience 
 along with him. The ingenious person did not seem to be aware, 
 by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being 
 young is to be without this weight of experience, which he would 
 fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and which never comes 
 too late with years. Oh ! what a privilege to be able to let this 
 hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and 
 transport one's-self, by the help of a little musty duodecimo, to 
 the time when " ignorance was bliss," and when we first got a 
 peep at the raree-show of the world, through the glass of fiction 
 gazing at mankind, as we do at wild beasts in a menagerie, 
 through the bars of their cages or at curiosities in a museum, 
 that we must not touch ! For myself, not only are the old ideas 
 of the contents of the work brought back to my mind in all their 
 vividness, but the old associations of the faces and persons of 
 those I then knew, as they were in their life-time the place 
 where I sat to read the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling 
 of the air, the fields, the sky return, and all my early impros-
 
 18 TABLE TALK. 
 
 sions with them. This is better to me those places, those *imes, 
 those persons, and those feelings that come across me as I re*-ace 
 the story and devour the page, are to me better far than the wet 
 sheets of the last new novel from the Ballantyne press, to say 
 nothing of the Minerva press in Leadenhall street. It is like 
 visiting the scenes of early youth. I think of the time " when I 
 was in my father's house, and my path ran down with butter 
 and honey," when I was a little, thoughtless child, and had no 
 other wish or care but to con my daily task, and be happy ! 
 Tom Jones, I remember, was the first work that broke the spell. 
 It came down in numbers once a fertnight, in Cooke's pocket- 
 edition, embellished with cuts. I had hitherto read only in 
 school-books, and a tiresome ecclesiastical history (with the ex- 
 ception of Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest) : but this had 
 a different relish with it, " sweet in the mouth," though not " bit- 
 ter in the belly." It smacked of the world I lived in, and in 
 which I was to live and showed me groups, " gay creatures" 
 not " of the element," but of the earth ; not " living in the 
 clouds," but travelling the same road that I did ; some that had 
 passed on before me, and others that might soon overtake me. 
 My heart had palpitated at the thoughts of a boarding-school 
 ball, or gala-day at Midsummer or Christmas : but the world I 
 had found out in Cooke's edition of the British Novelists was to 
 me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. The sixpenny 
 numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the 
 middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom 
 Jones discovers Square behind the blanket ; or where Parson 
 Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesign- 
 edly gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader 
 against this impression of Joseph Andrews ; for there is a pic- 
 ture of Fanny in it which he should not set his heart on, lest he 
 should never meet with any thing like it : or if he should, it 
 would, perhaps, be better for him that he had not. It was just 
 
 like ! With what eagerness I used to look forward to 
 
 the next number, and open the prints ! Ah ! never again shall I 
 feel the enthusiastic delight with which I gazed at the figures, 
 and anticipated the story and adventures of Major Bath and 
 Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and my Uncle Toby, of Don
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. It 
 
 Quixote, and Sancho, and Dapple, of Gil Bias aud Dame Loreu- 
 za Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, whose lips open and 
 shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas did they give 
 rise with what airy delights I filled up the outlines, as I hung 
 in silence over the page 1 Let me still recall them that they 
 may breathe fresh life into me, and that I may live that birth- 
 day of thought and romantic pleasure over again ! Talk of 
 the ideal! This is the only true ideal the heavenly tints of 
 Fancy reflected in the bubbles that float upon the spring-tide of 
 human life. 
 
 " Oh, Memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
 And give those scenes thine everlasting life !" 
 
 The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling than 
 it was \ the reader will, by this time, have been let into my se- 
 cret. Much about the same time, or I believe rather earlier, I 
 took a particular satisfaction in reading Chubb's Tracts, and I 
 often think I will get them again to wade through. There is a high 
 gusto of polemical divinity in them ; and you fancy that you hear 
 a club of shoemakers at Salisbury, debating a disputable text 
 from one of St. Paul's Epistles in a workmanlike style, with 
 equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say much for my 
 metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after with 
 great ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was presently 
 entangled in the briers and thorns of subtle distinctions of 
 " fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," though I cannot add 
 that " in their wandering maze I found no end ;" for I did ar 
 rive at some very satisfactory and potent conclusions ; nor will 
 I go so far, however ungrateful the subject might seem, as to ex- 
 claim with Marlowe's Faustus, " Would I had never seen Wit- 
 tenberg, never read book" that is, never studied such authors 
 as Hartley, Hume, Berkeley, &c. Locke's Essay on the Hu- 
 man Understanding is, however, a work from which I never de- 
 rived either pleasure or profit ; and Hobbes, dry and powerful 
 as he is, I did not read till long afterwards. I read a few poets, 
 which did not much hit my taste, for I would have the reader un- 
 derstand, I am deficient in the faculty of imagination ; but I fell 
 early upon French romances and philosophy, and devoured them
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 tooth-and-nail. Many a dainty repast have I made of the New 
 Eloise ; the description of the kiss ; the excursion on the water ; 
 the letter of St. Preux, recalling the time of their first loves ; and 
 the account of Julia's death ; these I read over and over again 
 with unspeakable delight and wonder. Some years after, when I 
 met with this work again, I found I had lost nearly my whole 
 relish for it (except some few parts,) and was, I remember, very 
 much mortified with the change in my taste, which I sought to 
 attribute to the smallness and gilt edges of the edition I had 
 bought, and its being perfumed with rose-leaves. Nothing could 
 exceed the gravity, the solemnity with which I carried home and 
 read the Dedication to the Social Contract, with some other pieces 
 of the same author, which I had picked up at a stall in a coarse 
 leathern cover. Of the Confessions I have spoken elsewhere 
 and may repeat what I have said " Sweet is the dew of thei. 
 memory, and pleasant the balm of their recollection !" Thei . 
 beauties are not " scattered like stray-gifts o'er the earth," but 
 sown thick on the page, rich and rare. I wish I had never read 
 the Emilius, or read it with less implicit faith. I had no oc- 
 casion to pamper my natural aversion to affectation or pretence, 
 by romantic and artificial means. I had better have formed my- 
 self on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter. There is a class ot 
 persons whose virtues and most shining qualities sink in, and are 
 concealed by, an absorbent ground of modesty and reserve ; 
 and such a one I do, without vanity, profess myself.* Now these 
 are the very persons who are likely to attach themselves to the 
 character of Emilius, and of whom it is sure to be the bane. 
 This dull, phlegmatic, retiring humour is not in a fair way to be 
 corrected, but confirmed and rendered desperate by being in that 
 work held up as an object of imitation, as an example of simpli- 
 city and magnanimity by coming upon us with all the recom- 
 mendations of novelty, surprise, and superiority to the prejudices 
 of the world by being stuck upon a pedestal, made amiable, 
 
 * Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a friend, 
 who had some lottery-puffs, which he had been employed to write, returned 
 on his hands for their too great severity of thought and classical terseness of 
 style, and who observed on that occasion, that " Modest merit never can suc- 
 ceed!"
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 81 
 
 dazzling, a leurre de dupe ! The reliance on solid worth which it 
 inculcates, the preference of sober truth to gaudy tinsel, hangs 
 like a mill-stone round the neck of th3 imagination " a load to 
 sink a navy" impedes our progress, and blocks up every pros- 
 pect in life. A man, to get on," to be successful, conspicuous, 
 applauded, should not retire upon the centre of his conscious re- 
 sources, but be always at the circumference of appearances. He 
 must envelop himself in a halo of mystery he must ride in an 
 equipage of opinion he must walk with a train of self-conceit 
 following him he must ,not strip himself to a buff-jerkin, to the 
 doublet and hose of his real merits, but must surround himself 
 with a cortege of prejudices, like the signs of the Zodiac he must 
 seem any thing but what he is, and then he may pass for any 
 thing he pleases. The world love to be amused by hollow pro- 
 fessions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a 
 state of hallucination j and can forgive every thing but the plain, 
 downright, simple honest truth such as we see it chalked out in 
 the character of Emilius. To return from this digression, which 
 is a little out of place here. 
 
 Books have in a great measure lost their power over me ; nor 
 can I revive the same interest in them as formerly. I perceive 
 when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is true, 
 
 Marcian Colonna.is a dainty book ; 
 
 and the reading of Mr. Keats's Eve of Saint Agnes lately made 
 me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender 
 images there conjured up, " come like shadows so depart." 
 The "tiger-moth's wings," which he has spread over his rich 
 poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy ; the gorgeous twilight 
 window which he has painted over again in his verse, to me 
 " blushes" almost in vain " with blood of queens and kings." I 
 know how I should have felt at one time in reading such pas- 
 sages ; and that is all. The sharp luscious flavour, the fine 
 aroma is fled, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of 
 literature is left. If any one were to ask me what I read now, 
 I might answer with my Lord Hamlet in the play " Words, 
 words, words." " What is the matter ?" " Nothing /" They 
 have scarce a meaning. But it was not always so. There wem 
 
 10
 
 22 TABLE TALK. 
 
 a time when, to my thinking, every word was a flower or a pearl, 
 like those which dropped from the mouth of the little peasant-girl 
 in the fairy tale, or like those that fall from the great preacher 
 in the Caledonian Chapel ! I drank of the stream of knowledge 
 that tempted, but did not mock my lips, as of the river of life 
 freely. How eagerly I slaked my thirst of German sentiment, 
 " as the hart that panteth for the water-springs ;" how I bathed 
 and revelled, and added my floods of tears to Goethe's Sorrows 
 of Werter, and to Schiller's Robbers 
 
 Giving my stock of more to that which had too much ! 
 
 I read, and assented with all my soul to Coleridge's fine Son- 
 net, beginning 
 
 " Schiller ! that hour I would have wish'd to die, 
 If through the shuddering midnight I had sent. 
 From the dark dungeon of the tow'r time-rent, 
 That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry!" 
 
 I believe I may date my insight into the mysteries of poetry 
 from the commencement of my acquaintance with the authors of 
 the Lyrical Ballads ; at least, my discrimination of the higher 
 sorts not my predilection for such writers as Goldsmith or Pope : 
 nor do I imagine they will say I got my liking for our Novelists 
 or Comic Writers, for the characters of Valentine, Tattle, or 
 Miss Prue, from them. If so, I must have got from them what 
 they never had themselves. In points where poetic diction and 
 conception are concerned, I may be at a loss, and liable to be 
 imposed upon : but in forming an estimate of passages relating to 
 common life and manners, I cannot think I am a plagiarist from 
 any man. I there " know my cue without a prompter." I may 
 say of such studies lntus et in cute. I am just able to admire 
 those literal touches of observation and description, which persons 
 of loftier pretensions overlook and despise. I think I comprehend 
 something of the characteristic part of Shakespear ; and in him, 
 indeed, all is characteristic, even the nonsense and poetry. I 
 believe it was the celebrated Sir Humphrey Davy who used to 
 say, that Shakespear was rather a metaphysician than a poet. 
 At any rate, it was not ill said. I wish that I had sooner known
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 23 
 
 the dramatic writers contemporary with Shakespear ; for in look- 
 ing them over about a year ago, I almost revived my old passion 
 for reading, and my old delight in books, though they were very 
 nearly new to me. The Periodical Essayists I read long ago. 
 The Spectator I liked extremely : but the Tattler took my fancy 
 most. I read the others soon after, the Rambler, the Adventurer, 
 the World, the Connoisseur : 1 was not sorry to get to the end of 
 them, and have no desire to go regularly through them again. 1 
 consider myself a thorough adept in Richardson. I like the longest 
 of his novels best, and think no part of them tedious ; nor should 
 I ask to have any thing better to do than to read them from begin- 
 ning to end, to take them up when I chose, and lay them down 
 when I was tired, in some old family mansion in the country, till 
 every word and syllable relating to the bright Clarissa, the divine 
 Clementina, the beautiful Pamela, " with every trick and line of 
 their sweet favour," were once more " graven in my heart's 
 tables."* I have a sneaking kindness for Mackenzie's Julia de 
 Roubigne for the deserted mansion, and straggling gilliflowers 
 on the mouldering garden-wall ; and still more for his Man of 
 Feeling ; not that it is better, nor so good ; but at the time I read 
 
 it I sometimes thought of the heroine, Miss Walton, and of Miss 
 
 together, and " that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken !" 
 One of the poets that I have always read with most pleasure, 
 and can wander about in for ever with a sort of voluptuous indo- 
 lence, is Spenser ; and I like Chaucer even better. The only 
 writer among the Italians I can pretend to any knowledge of, is 
 Boccacio, and of him I cannot express half my admiration. His 
 story of the Hawk I could read and think of from day to day, just 
 as I would look at a picture of Titian's ! 
 
 I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a neighbour- 
 ing town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid the plot of his 
 
 * During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of 
 Lovelace, was presented at Bonaparte's levee. Instead of the usual question, 
 " Where have you served, Sir !" the First Consul immediately addressed him, 
 " I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero of Richardson's 
 Romance !" Here was a Consul. The young man's uncle, who was called 
 Lovelace, told mc this anecdote while we were stopping together at Calais. 1 
 had also been thinking that his was the same name as that of the hero of 
 Richardson's Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking Bonaparte. 
 
 10
 
 24 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Recruitirg Officer.) and bringing home with me, "at one proud 
 swoop," a copy of Milton's Paradise Lost, and another of Burke's 
 Reflections on the French Revolution both which I have still ; 
 and I still recollect, when I see the covers, the pleasure with 
 which I dipped into them as I returned with my double prize. I 
 was set up for one while. That time is past " with all its giddy 
 raptures":" but I am still anxious to preserve its memory, "em- 
 balmed with odours." With respect to the first of these works, 
 I would be permitted to remark here in passing, that it is a suffi- 
 cient answer to the German criticism which has since been 
 started against the character of Satan, (viz. that it is not one 
 of disgusting deformity, or pure, defecated malice,) to say that 
 Milton has there drawn, not the abstract principle of evil, not a 
 devil incarnate, but a fallen angel. This is the scriptural ac- 
 count, and the poet has followed it. We may safely retain such 
 passages as that well-known one 
 
 " His form had not yet lost 
 
 All her original brightness ; nor appear'd 
 Less than archangel ruin'd, and the excess 
 Of glory obscur'd" 
 
 for the theory, which is opposed to them, " falls flat upon the 
 grunsel edge, and shames its worshippers." Let us hear no 
 more then of this monkish cant, and bigoted outcry for the re- 
 storation of the horns and tail of the devil ! Again, as to the 
 other work, Burke's Reflections, I took a particular pride and 
 pleasure in it, and read it to myself and others for months after, 
 wards. I had reason for my prejudice in favour of this author. 
 To understand an adversary is some praise : to admire him w 
 more. I thought I did both : I knew I did one. From the first 
 time I ever cast my eyes on any thing of Burke's (which was an 
 extract from his Letter to a Noble Lord in a three-times-a-week 
 paper, The St. James's Chronicle, in 1796,) I said to myself, 
 " This is true eloquence : this is a man pouring out nis mind on 
 paper." All other style seemed to me pedantic and impertinent. 
 Dr. Johnson's was walking on stilts ; and even Junius's (who was 
 at that time a favourite with me,) v/ith all his terseness, shrunk 
 up into little antithetic points and well-trimmed sentences. But
 
 ON READING OLD BOOKS. 3 
 
 Burke's style was forked and playful as the lightning, crested 
 like the serpent. He delivered plain things on a plain ground ; 
 but when he rose, there was no end of his flights and circumgy- 
 rations and in this very Letter, " he, like an eagle in a dove- 
 cot, fluttered his Volscians" (the Duke of Bedford and the Earl 
 of Lauderdale*) "in Corioli." I did not care for his doctrines. 
 I was then, and am still, proof against their contagion ; but I ad- 
 mired the author, and was considered as not a very staunch par- 
 tisan of the opposite side, though I thought myself that an abstract 
 proposition was one thing a masterly transition, a brilliant meta- 
 phor, another. I conceived too that he might be wrong in his 
 main argument, and yet deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false 
 conclusion. I remember Coleridge assuring me, as a poetical 
 and political set-off" to my sceptical admiration, that Wordsworth 
 had written an Essay on Marriage, which, for manly thought and 
 nervous expression, he deemed incomparably superior. As I had 
 not, at that time, seen any specimens of Mr. Wordsworth's prose 
 style, I could not venture my doubts on the subject. If there are 
 greater prose-writers than Burke, they either lie out of my course 
 of study, or are beyond my sphere of comprehension. I am too old 
 to be a convert to a new mythology of genius. The niches are 
 occupied, the tables are full. If such is still my admiration of this 
 man's misapplied powers, what must it have been at a time when I 
 myself was in vain tryirig, year after year, to write a single Essay, 
 nay, a single page or sentence ; when I regarded the wonders of 
 his pen with the longing eyes of one who was dumb and a change- 
 ling ; and when, to be able to convey the slightest conception of 
 my meaning to others in words, was the height of an almost hope- 
 less ambition ! But I never measured others' excellences by my 
 own defects : though a sense of my own incapacity, and of the 
 steep, impassable ascent from me to them made me regard them 
 with greater awe and fondness. I have thus run through most 
 of my early studies and favourite authors, some of whom I have 
 since criticised more at large. Whether those observations will 
 survive me, I neither know nor do I much care : but to the works 
 themselves, " worthy of all acceptation," and to the feelings they 
 
 * He is there called " Citizen Lauderdale." Is this the present Eari ?
 
 26 . TABLE TALK. 
 
 have always excited in me since I could distinguish a meaning in 
 language, nothing shall ever prevent me from looking back with 
 gratitude and triumph. To have lived in the cultivation of an 
 intimacy with such works, and to have familiarly relished such 
 names, is not to have lived quite in vain. 
 
 There are other authors whom I have never read, and yet 
 whom I have frequently had a great desire to read, from some 
 circumstance relating to them. Among these is Lord Claren- 
 don's History of the Grand Rebellion, after which I have a hank- 
 ering, from hearing it spoken of by good judges from my in- 
 terest in the events, and from having seen fine portraits of most 
 of them. I like to read a well-penned character, and Clarendon 
 is said to have been a master in this way. I should like to read 
 Froissart's Chronicles, Hollinshed and Stowe, and Fuller's Wor- 
 thies. I intend, whenever I can, to read Beaumont and Fletcher 
 all through. There are fifty-two of their plays ; and I have only 
 read a dozen or fourteen of them. A Wife for a Month, and 
 Thierry and Theodoret, are, I am told, delicious, and I can believe 
 it. I should like to read the speeches in Thucydides, and Guic- 
 ciardini's His.ory of Florence, and Don Quixote in the original. 
 I have often thought of reading the Loves of Persiles and Sigis- 
 munda, and the Galatea of the same author. But I somehow re- 
 serve them like " another Yarrow." I should also like to read 
 the last new novel (if I could be sure it was so) of the Author of 
 Waverley : no one would be more glad than I to find it the best
 
 ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. tfl 
 
 ESSAY XIX. 
 
 On Personal Character. 
 
 " Men palliate ar;d conceal their original qualities, but do not extirpate 
 them." Montaigne's Essays. 
 
 No one ever changes his character from the time he is two years 
 old ; nay, I might say, from the time he is two hours old. We 
 may, with instruction and opportunity, mend our manners, or else 
 alter them for the worse, " as the flesh and fortune shall serve j" 
 but the character, the internal, original bias remains always the 
 same, true to itself to the very last 
 
 " And feels the ruling passion strong in death." 
 
 A very grave and dispassionate philosopher (the late celebrated 
 chemist, Mr. Nicholson) was so impressed with the conviction of 
 the instantaneous commencement and development of the cha- 
 racter with the birth, that he published a long and amusing article 
 in the Monthly Magazine, giving a detailed account of the pro- 
 gress, history, education, and tempers of two twins, up to the pe- 
 riod of their being eleven years old. This is, perhaps, consider- 
 ing the matter too curiously, and would amount to a species of 
 horoscopy, if we were to build on such premature indications ; 
 but the germ no doubt is there, hough we must wait a little 
 longer to see what form it taKes. We need not in general wait 
 long. The Devil soon betrays the cloven foot ; or a milder and 
 better spirit appears in its stead. A temper sullen or active, shy 
 or bold, grave or lively, selfish or romantic, (to say nothing of 
 quickness or dulness of apprehension,) is manifest very early ; 
 and imperceptibly, but irresistibly moulds our inclinations, ha- 
 bits, and pursuits through life. The greater or less degree of 
 animal spirits, -of nervous irritability, the complexion of the 
 
 3 PART II.
 
 26 TABLE TALK. 
 
 blood, the proportion of "hot, cold, moist, and dry, four cham- 
 pions fierce that strive for mastery," the Saturnine or the Mer- 
 curial, the disposition to be affected by objects near or at a 
 distance, or not at all, to be struck with novelty, or to brood over 
 deep-rooted impressions, to indulge in laughter or in tears, the 
 leaven of passion or of prudence that tempers this frail clay, is 
 born with us, and never quits us. " It is not in our stars," in 
 planetary influence, but neither is it owing " to ourselves, that 
 we are thus or thus." The accession of knowledge, the pres- 
 sure of circumstances, favourable or unfavourable, does little 
 more than minister occasion to the first predisposing bias than 
 assist, like the dews of heaven, or retard, like the nipping north, 
 the growth of the seed originally sown in our constitutions than 
 give a more or less decided expression to that personal character, 
 the outlines of which nothing can alter. What I mean is, that 
 Blifil and Tom Jones, for instance, by changing places, would 
 never have changed characters. The one might, from circum- 
 stances and from the notions instilled into him, have become a 
 little less selfish, and the other a little less extravagant ; but with 
 a trifling allowance of this sort, taking the proposition cum grano 
 salts, they would have been just where they set out. Blifil 
 would have been Blifil still, and Jones what nature inte'nded him 
 to be. I have made use of this example without any apology for 
 its being a fictitious one, because I think good novels are the 
 most authentic as well as most accessible repositories of the na . 
 tural history and philosophy of the species. 
 
 I shall not borrow assistance or illustration from the organic 
 system of Doctors Gall and Spurzheim, which reduces this 
 question to a small compass and very distinct limits, because ] 
 do not understand or believe in it ; but I think those who pul 
 faith in physiognomy at all, or imagine that the mind is stamped 
 upon the countenance, must believe that there is such a thing as 
 an essential difference of character in different individuals. We 
 do not change our features with our situations; neither 6j w 
 change the capacities or inclinations which lurk beneath them. 
 A broad face does not become an oval nor a pug nose a Roman 
 one, with the acquisition of an office, or the addition of a title. 
 So neither is the pert, hard, unfeeling outline of character turned
 
 ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. 29 
 
 from selfishness and cunning to openness and generosity, by any 
 softening of circumstances. If the face puts on an habitual 
 smile in the sunshine of fortune, or if it suddenly lowers in the 
 storms of adversity, do not trust too implicitly to. appearances ; 
 the man is the same at bottom. The designing knave may 
 sometimes wear a vizor, or " to beguile the time, look like the 
 time;" but watch him narrowly, and you will detect him behind 
 his mask I We recognize, after a length of years, the same 
 well-known face that we were formerly acquainted with, changed 
 by time, but the same in itself; and can trace the features of 
 the boy in the full-grown man. Can we doubt that the character 
 and thoughts have remained as much the same all that time ; 
 have borne the same image and superscription ; have grown 
 with the growth, and strengthened with the strength ? In this 
 sense, and in Mr. Wordsworth's phrase, " the child's the father 
 of the man" surely enough. The same tendencies may not al- 
 ways be equally visible, but they are still in existence, and b:eak 
 out, whenever they dare and can, the more for being checked. 
 Again, we often distinctly notice the same features, the same 
 bodily peculiarities, the same look and gestures in different per- 
 sons of the same family ; and find this resemblance extending 
 to collateral branches and through several generations, showing 
 how strongly nature must have been warped and biassed in that 
 particular direction at first. This pre-determination in the blood 
 has its caprices too, and wayward as well as obstinate fits. The 
 family-likeness sometimes skips over the next of kin or the near- 
 est branch, and re-appears in all its singularity in a second or 
 third cousin, or passes over the son to the grand-child. Where 
 the pictures of the heirs and successors to a title or estate have 
 been preserved for any length of time in Gothic halls and old 
 fashioned mansions, the prevailing outline and character does 
 not wear out, but may be traced through its numerous inflections 
 and descents for centuries, like the winding of a river through 
 an expanse of country. The ancestor of many a noble house 
 nas sat for the portraits of his youthful descendants ; and still 
 the soul of " Fairfax and the starry Vere," consecrated in Mar- 
 vel's verse, may be seen mantling in the suffused features of 
 some young court-beauty of the present day. The portrait of 
 
 10*
 
 80 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Judge Jeffries, which was exhibited lately in the Gallery in Pall 
 Mall young, handsome, spirited, good-humoured, and totally 
 unlike, at first view, what you would expect from the character, 
 was an exact likeness of two young men whom I knew some 
 years ago, the living representatives of that family. It is curious 
 that, consistently enough with the delineation in the portrait, old 
 Evelyn should have recorded in his Memoirs, that " he saw the 
 Chief-Justice Jeffries in a large company the night before, and 
 that he thought he laughed, drank, and danced too much for a 
 man who had that day condemned Algernon Sidney to the block." 
 It is not always possible to foresee the tiger's spring, till we are 
 in his grasp ; the fawning, cruel eye dooms its prey, while it 
 glitters ! Features alone do not run in the blood ; vices and vir- 
 tues, genius and folly are transmitted through the same sure, but 
 unseen channel. There is an involuntary, unaccountable family- 
 character, as well as family-face ; and we see it manifesting 
 itself in the same way, with unbroken continuity, or by fits and 
 starts. There shall be a regular breed of misers, of incorrigi- 
 ble old hunkses in a family, time out of mind ; or the shame of 
 the thing, and the hardships and restraint imposed upon him 
 while young, shall urge some desperate spendthrift to wipe out 
 the reproach upon his name by a course of extravagance and 
 debauchery ; and his immediate successors shall make his ex- 
 ample an excuse for relapsing into the old jog-trot incurable in- 
 firmity, the grasping and pinching disease of the family again.* 
 A person may be indebted for a nose or an eye, for a graceful 
 carriage or a voluble discourse, to a great-aunt or uncle, whose 
 existence he has scarcely heard of; and distant relations are 
 surprised, on some casual introduction, to find each other an alter 
 idem. Country cousins, who meet after they are grown up for 
 the first time in London, often start at the likeness, it is like 
 looking at themselves in the glass nay, they shall see, almost 
 
 * " I know at this time a person of vast estate, who is the immediate de- 
 scendant of a fine gentleman, but the great-grandson of a broker, in whom his 
 ancestor is now revived. He is a very honest gentleman in his principles, but 
 cannot for his blood talk fairly : he is heartily sorry for it ; but he cheats by 
 constitution, and over-reaches by instinct." See this subject delightfully 
 treated in the 75th Number of the Tattler, in an account of Mr. BirkeretafTs 
 pedigree, on occasion of his sister's marriage.
 
 ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. 
 
 before they exchange a word, their own thoughts (as it were) 
 staring them in the face, the same ideas, feelings, opinions, pas- 
 sions, prejudices, likings and antipathies; the same turn of mind 
 and sentiment, the same foibles, peculiarities, faults, follies, mis- 
 fortunes, consolations, the same self, the same every thing ! And 
 farther, this coincidence shall take place and be most remark* 
 able, where not only no intercourse has previously been kept up, 
 not even by letter or by common friends, but where the different 
 branches of a family have been estranged for long years, and 
 where the younger part in each have been brought up in totally 
 different situations, with different studies, pursuits, expectations 
 and opportunities. To assure me that this is owing to circum- 
 stances, is to assure me of a gratuitous absurdity, which you 
 cannot know, and which I shall not believe. It is owing, not to 
 circumstances, but to the force of kind, to the stuff of which our 
 blood and humours are compounded being the same. Why should 
 I and an old hair-brained uncle of mine fasten upon the same 
 picture in a Collection, and talk of it for years after, though one 
 of no particular " mark or likelihood" in itself, but for some- 
 thing congenial in the look to our own humour and way of seeing 
 
 nature ? Why should my cousin L and I fix upon the same 
 
 book, Tristram Shandy without comparing notes, have it 
 " doubled down and dog-eared" in the same places, and live 
 upon it as a sort of food that assimilated with our natural dispo- 
 sitions ? " Instinct, Hal, instinct !" They are fools who saj 
 otherwise, and have never studied nature or mankind, but in 
 books and systems of philosophy. But, indeed, the colour of 
 our lives is woven into the fatal thread at our births : our origi- 
 nal sins and our redeeming graces are infused into us ; nor is 
 the bond, that confirms our destiny, ever cancelled. 
 
 Beneath the hills, amid the flowery groves, 
 The generations are prepared ; the pangs, 
 The internal pangs, are ready; the dread strife 
 Of poor humanity's afflicted will 
 Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny. 
 
 The " winged wounds" that rankle in our breasts to our latest 
 day, were planted there long since, ticketed and labelled on the 
 outside in small but indelible characters, written in our blood,
 
 32 TABLE TALK. 
 
 " like that ensanguined flower inscribed with woe :" we are in the 
 toils from the very first, hemmed in by the hunters ; and these are 
 our own passions, bred of our brain and humours, and that never 
 leave us, but consume and gnaw the heart in our short life-time, 
 as worms wait for us in the grave ! 
 
 Critics and authors, who congregate in large cities, and see 
 nothing of the world but a sort of phantasmagoria, to whom the 
 numberless characters they meet in the course of a few hours are 
 fugitive " as the flies of a summer." evanescent as the figures in 
 a camera obscura, may talk very learnedly, and attribute the 
 motions of the puppets to circumstances of which they are con- 
 fessedly in total ignorance. They see character only in the bust, 
 and have not room (for the crowd) to study it as a whole-length, 
 that is, as it exists in reality. But those who trace things to their 
 source, and proceed from individuals to generals, know better. 
 School-boys, for example, who are early let into the secret, and 
 see the seeds growing, are not only sound judges, but true prophets 
 of character ; so that the nick-names they give their play-fellows 
 usually stick by them ever after. The gossips in country-towns, 
 also, who study human nature, not merely in the history of the 
 individual, but in the genealogy of the race, know the compara- 
 tive anatomy of the minds of a whole neighbourhood to a tittle, 
 where to look for marks and defects, explain a vulgarity by a 
 cross in the breed, or a foppish air in a young tradesman by his 
 grandmother's marriage with a dancing-master, and are the only 
 practical conjurors and expert decypherers of the determinate 
 lines of true and supposititious character. 
 
 The character of women (I should think it will at this time of 
 day be granted) differs essentially from that of men, not less so than 
 their shape or the texture of their skin. It has been said indeed, 
 " most women have no character at all," and on the other hand, 
 the fair and eloquent authoress of the Rights of Women was for 
 establishing the masculine pretensions and privileges of her sex 
 on a perfect equality with ours. I shall leave Pope and Mary 
 Wolstonecroft to settle that point between them. I should laugh 
 at any one who told me that the European, the Asiatic, ar\d the 
 African character were the same. I no more believe it than I do 
 that black is the same colour as white, or that a straight line is a
 
 ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. 33 
 
 crooked one. We see in whole nations and large classes tne 
 physiognomies, and I should suppose (" not to speak it profanely") 
 the general characters of different animals with which we are 
 acquainted, as of the fox, the wolf, the hog, the goat, the dog, the 
 monkey ; and 1 suspect this analogy, whether perceived or not, has 
 as prevailing an influence on their habits and actions, as any theory 
 of moral sentiments taught in the schools. Rules and precautions 
 may, no doubt, be applied to counteract the excesses and overt 
 demonstrations of any such characteristic infirmity ; but still the 
 disease will be in the mind, an impediment, not a help to virtue. 
 An exception is usually taken to all national or general reflec- 
 tions, as unjust and illiberal, because they cannot be true of every 
 individual. It is not meant that they are ; and besides, the same 
 captious objection is not made to the handsome things that are said 
 of whole bodies and classes of men. A lofty panegyric, a boasted 
 virtue will fit the inhabitants of an entire district to a hair ; the 
 want of strict universality, of philosophical and abstract truth is 
 no difficulty here ; but if you hint at an obvious vice or defect, 
 this is instantly construed into a most unfair and partial view of 
 the case, and each defaulter throws the imputation from himself 
 and his country with scorn. Thus you may praise the generosity 
 of the English, the prudence of the Scotch, the hospitality of the 
 Irish, as long as you please, and not a syllable Is whispered 
 against these sweeping expressions of admiration ; but reverse 
 the picture, hold up to censure, or only glance at the unfavourable 
 side of each character, (and they themselves admit that they have 
 a distinguishing and generic character as a people,) and you are 
 assailed by the most violent clamours and a confused Babel of 
 noises, as a disseminator of unfounded prejudices, or a libeller of 
 human nature. I am sure there is nothing reasonable in this. 
 Harsh and disagreeable qualities wear out in nations, as in indi- 
 viduals, from time and intercourse with the world, but it is at the 
 expense of their intrinsic excellences. The vices of softness and 
 effeminacy sink deeper with age, like thorns in the flesh. Single 
 acts or events often determine the fate of mortals, yet may have 
 nothing to do with their general deserts or failings. He who is 
 c-aii to be cured of any glaring infirmity may be suspected never 
 to have had it ; and lastly, it may be laid down as a genpra) rule,
 
 3* TABLE TALK. 
 
 that mankind improve, by means of luxury and civilization, in 
 social manneis, and become more depraved in what relates to 
 personal habits and character. There are few nations, as well 
 as few men (with the exception of tyrants) that are cruel and 
 voluptuous, immersed in pleasure, and bent on inflicting pain on 
 others, at the same time. Ferociousness is the characteristic of 
 barbarous ages, licentiousness of more refined periods.* 
 
 I shall not undertake to decide exactly how far the original 
 character may be modified by the general progress of society, 
 or by particular circumstances happening to the individual; but 
 I think the alteration (be it what it may) is more apparent than 
 real, more in conduct than in feeling. 1 will not deny, that an 
 extreme and violent difference of circumstances (as that between 
 the savage and civilized state) will supersede the common dis- 
 tinctions of character, and prevent certain dispositions and sen- 
 timents from ever developing themselves. Yet with reference to 
 this, I would observe, in the first place, that in the most opposite 
 ranks and conditions of life, we find qualities displaying them- 
 selves, which we should have least expected, grace in a cottage, 
 humanity in a bandit, sincerity in courts ; and secondly, in ordi- 
 nary cases, and in the mixed mass of human affairs, the mind 
 contrives to lay hold of those circumstances and motives which 
 suit its own bias and confirm its natural disposition, whatever it 
 may be, gentle or rough, vulgar or refined, spirited or cowardly, 
 open-hearted or cunning. The will is not blindly impelled by 
 outward accidents, but selects the impressions by which it chooses 
 to be governed, with great dexterity and perseverance. Or the 
 machine may be at the disposal of fortune : the man is still his 
 own master. The soul, under the pressure of circumstances, 
 does not lose its original spring ; but, as soon as the pressure is 
 removed, recoils with double violence to its first position. That 
 which any one has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns 
 with proportionable eagerness and haste. Kings have been said 
 to be incorrigible to experience. The maxim might be extended, 
 
 * Fideliter didicisse ingenuas artes. 
 Emollit mores, nee sinit esse feros. 
 
 The same maxim does not establish the purity of morals that infers thefr 
 mildness.
 
 ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. S6 
 
 without injury, to the benefit of their subjects, for every man is a 
 king (with all the pride and obstinacy of one) in his own little 
 world. It is only lucky that the rest of the species are not 
 answerable for his caprices ! We laugh at the warnings and ad- 
 vice of others ; we resent the lessons of adversity, and lose no 
 time in letting it appear that we have escaped from its importu- 
 nate hold. I do not think, with every assistance from reason and 
 circumstances, that the slothful ever becomes active, the coward 
 brave, the headstrong prudent, the fickle steady, the mean gen- 
 erous, the coarse delicate, the ill-tempered amiable, or the knave 
 honest ; but that the restraint of necessity and appearances once 
 taken away, they would relapse into their former and real char- 
 acter again : Cucullus n<m facit monachum. Manners, situa- 
 tion, example, fashion, have a prodigious influence on exterior de- 
 portment. But do they penetrate much deeper ? The thief will 
 not steal by day ; but his having this command over himself 
 does not do away his character or calling. The priest cannot 
 indulge in certain irregularities ; but unless his pulse beats tem- 
 perately from the first, he will only be playing a part through 
 life. Again, the soldier cannot shrink from his duty in a das- 
 tardly manner ; but if he has not naturally steady nerves and 
 strong resolution, except in the field of battle, he may be fearful 
 as a woman, though covered with scars and honour. The judge 
 must be disinterested and above suspicion ; yet should he have 
 from nature an itching palm, an eye servile and greedy of office, 
 he will somehow contrive to indemnify his private conscience out 
 of his public principle, and husband a reputation for legal inte- 
 grity, as a stake to play the game of political profligacy with 
 more advantage ! There is often a contradiction in character, 
 which is composed of various and unequal parts ; and hence 
 there will arise an appearance of fickleness and inconsistency. 
 . A man may be sluggish by the father's side, and of a restless 
 and uneasy temper by the mother's ; and he may favour either 
 of these inherent dispositions according to circumstances. But 
 he will not have changed his character, any more than a man 
 who sometimes lives in one apartment of a house and then takes 
 possession of another, according to whim or convenience, changes 
 his habitation. The simply phlegmatic never turns to the truly
 
 36 TABLE TALK. 
 
 " fiery quality." So, the really gay or trifling never become 
 thoughtful and serious. The light-hearted wretch takes nothing 
 to heart. He, on whom (from natural carelessness of disposi- 
 tion) "the shot of accident and dart of chance" fall like drops 
 of oil on water, so that he brushes them aside with heedless hand 
 and smiling face, will never be roused from his volatile indifFer 
 ence to meet inevitable calamities. He may try to laugh them 
 off, but will not put himself to any inconvenience to prevent 
 them. 1 know a man that, if a tiger were to jump into his 
 room, would only play off some joke, some " quip, or crank, or 
 wanton wile" upon him. Mortifications and disappointments 
 may break such a person's heart ; but they will be the death of 
 him ere they will make him provident of the future, or willing 
 lo forego one idle gratification of the passing moment for any 
 consideration whatever. The dilatory man never becomes punc- 
 tual. Resolution is of no avail ; for the very essence of the 
 character consists in this, that the present impression is of more 
 efficacy than any previous resolution. I have heard it said of a 
 celebrated writer, that if he had to get a reprieve from the gal- 
 lows for himself or a friend (with leave be it spoken,) and was to 
 be at a certain place at a given time for this purpose, he would 
 be a quarter of an hour behind-hand. What is to be done ir/ 
 this case ? Can you talk or argue a man out of his humour ? 
 You might as well attempt to talk or argue him out of a lethargv 
 or a fever. The disease is in the blood : you may see it (if you 
 are a curious observer) meandering in his veins, and reposing on 
 his eye-lids ! Some of our foibles are laid in the constitution of 
 our bodies ; others in the structure of our minds, and both are 
 irremediable. The vain man, who is full of himself, is never 
 cured of his vanity, but looks for admiration to the last, with a 
 restless, suppliant eye, in the midst of contumely and contempt ; 
 the modest man never grows vain from flattery, or unexpected 
 applause, for he sees himself in the diminished scale of other 
 things. He will not " have his nothings monstered." He knows 
 now much he himself wants, how much others have ; and till 
 you can alter this conviction in him, or make him drunk by in- 
 fusing &ome new poison, some celestial ichor into his veins, you 
 cannot make a coxcomb of him. He is too well aware of the
 
 ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. ST 
 
 truth of what has been said, that " the wisest amongst us is a 
 fool in some things, as the lowest amongst men has some just no- 
 tions, and therein is as wise as Socrates ; so that every man re- 
 sembles a statue made to stand against a wall, or in a niche ; on 
 one side it is a Plato, an Apollo, a Demosthenes ; on the other, it 
 is a rough, unformed piece of stone."* Some persons of my ac- 
 quaintance, who think themselves teres et rotundus, and armed at 
 all points with perfections, would not be much inclined to give in 
 to this sentiment, the modesty of which is only equalled by its 
 sense and ingenuity. The man of sanguine temperament is sel- 
 dom weaned from his castles in the air ; nor can you, by virtue 
 of any theory, convert the cold, careful calculator into a wild en- 
 thusiast. A self- tormentor is never satisfied, come what will. 
 He always apprehends the worst, and is indefatigable in conjur- 
 ing up the apparition of danger. He is uneasy at his own good 
 fortune, as it takes from his favourite topic of repining and com- 
 plaint. Let him succeed to his heart's content in all that is 
 reasonable or important, yet if there is any one thing (and that 
 he is sure to find out) in which he does not' get on, this embitters 
 all the rest. I know an instance. Perhaps it is myself. Again, 
 a surly man, in spite of warning, neglects his own interest, and 
 will do so, because he has more pleasure in disobliging you than 
 in serving himself. " A friendly man will show himself friendly," 
 to the last ; for those who are said to have been spoiled by pros- 
 perity were never really good for any thing. A good-natured 
 man never loses his native happiness of disposition : good temper 
 is an estate for life ; and a man born with common sense rarely 
 turns out a very egregious fool. It is more common to see a 
 fool become wise, that is, set up for wisdom, and be taken at his 
 word by fools. We frequently judge of a man's intellectual 
 pretensions by the number of books he writes ; of his eloquence 
 by the number of speeches he makes ; of his capacity for busi- 
 ness, by the number of offices he holds. These are not true 
 tests. Many a celebrated author is a known blockhead (between 
 friends) ; and many a minister of state, whose gravity and self- 
 importance pass with the world for depth of thought and weight 
 
 * Richardson's Works, On the Science of a Connoisseur, p. 212.
 
 38 TABLE TALK. 
 
 of public care, is a laughing-stock to his very servants and de- 
 pendants.* The talents of some men, indeed, which might not 
 otherwise have had a field to display themselves, are called out 
 by extraordinary situations, and rise with the occasion ; but for 
 all the routine and mechanical preparation, the pomp and parade 
 'and big looks of great statesmen, or what is called merely filling 
 office, a very shallow capacity, with a certain immoveableness 
 of countenance, is, I should suppose, sufficient, from what I have 
 seen. Such political machines are not so good as the Mock-Duke 
 in the Honey-Moon. As to genius and capacity for the works of 
 art and science, all that a man really excels in, is his own and 
 incommunicable ; what he borrows from others he has in an in- 
 ferior degree, and it is never what his fame rests on. Sir Joshua 
 observes, that Raphael, in his latter pictures, proved that he had 
 learnt in some measure the colouring of Titian. If he had 
 learnt it quite, the merit would still have been Titian's ; but he 
 did not learn it, and never would. But his expression (his glory 
 and his excellence) was what he had within himself, first and 
 last ; and this it was that seated him on the pinnacle of fame, a 
 pre-eminence that no artist, without an equal warrant from na 
 tuie and genius, will ever deprive him of. With respect to indi- 
 cations of early genius for particular things, I will just mention, 
 tnat I myself know an instance of a little boy who could catch 
 the hardest tunes, when between two and three years old, with- 
 out any assistance but hearing them played on a hand-organ in 
 the street; and who followed the exquisite pieces of Mozart, played 
 to him for the first time, so as to fall in like an echo at the close. 
 Was this accident, or education, or natural aptitude ? I think the 
 last. All the presumptions are for it, and there are none against it. 
 
 * The reputation is not the man. Yet all true reputation begins and ends 
 in the opinion of a man's intimate friends. He is what they think him, and 
 in the last result will be thought so by others. Where there is no solid merit 
 tc oear the pressure of personal contact, fame is but a vapour raised by acci- 
 dent or prejudice, and will soon vanish like a vapour or a noisome stench. 
 But he who appears to those about him what he would have the world think 
 him, from whom every one that approaches him in whatever circumstances 
 brings something away to confirm the loud rumour of the popular voice, is 
 alone great in spite of fortune. The malice of friendship, the littleness of 
 curiosity, is as severe a test as the impartiality and enlarged views of history.
 
 ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. 
 
 In fine, do we not see how hard certain early impressions, or 
 prejudices acquired later, are to overcome ? Do we not say, habit 
 is a second nature ? And shall we not allow the force of nature 
 itself? If the real disposition is concealed for a time and tam- 
 pered with, how readily it breaks out with the first excuse or op- 
 portunity ! How soon does the drunkard forget his resolution 
 and constrained sobriety, at the sight of the foaming tankard and 
 blazing hearth ! Does not the passion for gaming, in which 
 there had been an involuntary pause, return like a madness all 
 at once ? It would be needless to offer instances of so obvious a 
 truth. But if this superinduced nature is not to be got the better 
 of by reason or prudence, who shall pretend to set aside the ori- 
 ginal one by prescription and management ? Thus, if we turn 
 to the characters of women, we find that the shrew, the jilt, the 
 coquette, the wanton, the intriguer, the liar, continue all their 
 lives the same. Meet them after the lapse of a quarter or half 
 a century, and they are still infallibly at their old work. No 
 rebuke from experience, no lessons of misfortune make the least 
 impression on them. On they go ; and, in fact, they can go on 
 in no other way. They try other things, but it will not do. 
 They are like fish out of water, except in the element of their 
 favourite vices. They might as well not be, as cease to be what 
 they are by nature and custom. " Can the Ethiopian change his 
 skin, or the leopard his spots ?" Neither do these wretched 
 persons find any satisfaction or consciousness of their power, but 
 in being a plague and a torment to themselves and every one else 
 as long as they can. A good sort of woman is a character more 
 rare than any of these, but it is equally durable. Look at the 
 head of Hogarth's Idle Apprentice in the boat, holding up his 
 fingers as horns at Cuckold's Point, and ask what penitentiary, 
 what prison-discipline would change the form of his forehead 
 " villanous low," or the conceptions lurking within it ? Nothing 
 no mother's fearful warnings, nor the formidable precautions 
 of that wiser and more loving mother, his country ! That fellow 
 is still to be met with somewhere in our time. Is he a spy, a 
 jack-ketch, or an underling of office ? In truth, almost all the 
 characters in Hogarth are of the class of incorrigibles ; so that F 
 often wouder what has become of some of them. Have the
 
 40 TABLE TALK. 
 
 worst of them been cleared out, like the breed of noxious animals 1 
 Or have they been swept away, like locusts, in the whirlwind 
 of the French Revolution 1 Or has Mr. Bentham put them into 
 nis Panopticon : from which they have come out, so that nobody 
 knows them, like the chimney-sweeper boy at Sadler's Wells, 
 that was thrown into a cauldron and came out a little dapper 
 volunteer ? I will not deny that some of them may, like Chau- 
 cer's characters, have been modernized a little ; but I think I 
 could re-translate a few of them into their mother-tongue, the 
 original honest black-letter. We may refine, we may disguise, 
 we may equivocate, we may compound for our vices, without 
 getting rid of them ; as we change our liquors, but do not leave 
 oft' drinking. We may, in this respect, look forward to a decent 
 and moderate, rather than a thorough and radical reform. Or 
 (without going deep into the political question) I conceive we 
 may improve the mechanism, if not the texture of society ; that 
 is, we may improve the physical circumstances of individuals 
 and their general relations to the siate, though the internal cha- 
 racter, like the grain in wood, or the sap in trees, that still rises, 
 bend them how you will, may remain nearly the same. The 
 clay that the potter uses may be of the same quality, coarse or 
 fine in itself, though he may mould it into vessels of very differ- 
 ent shape or beauty. Who shall alter the stamina of national 
 character by any systematic process ? Who shall make 
 the French respectable, or the English amiable ? Yet the author 
 of the year 2500* has done it ! Suppose public spirit to be- 
 come the general principle of action in the community how 
 would it show itself ? Would it not then become the fashion, like 
 loyalty, and have its apes and parrots, like loyalty ? The man 
 of principle would no longer be distinguished from the crowd, 
 the servurn pecus imitatorum. There is a cant of democracy as 
 well as of aristocracy ; and we have seen both triumphant in our 
 day. The Jacobin of 1794 was the Anti-Jacobin of 1814. The 
 loudest chaunters of the Paeans of liberty were the loudest ap- 
 plauders of the restored doctrine of divine right. They drifted 
 with the stream, they sailed before the breeze in either case. 
 
 * Mercier.
 
 ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. 41 
 
 The politician was changed ; the man was the same, the very 
 same ! But enough of this. 
 
 I do not know any moral to be deduced from this view of the 
 subject but one, namely, that we should mind our own business, 
 cultivate our good qualities, if we have any, and irritate ourselves 
 less about the absurdities of other people, which neither we nor 
 they can help. I grant there is something in what I have said, 
 which might be made to glance towards the doctrines of original 
 sin, grace, election, reprobation, or the Gnostic principle that acta 
 alone did not determine the virtue or vice of the character ; and 
 in those doctrines, so far as they are deducible from what I have 
 said, I agree but always with a salvo.
 
 43 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XX. 
 
 On Vulgarity and Affectation. 
 
 Few subjects are more nearly allied than these two vulgarity 
 and affectation. It may be said of them truly that " thin parti- 
 tions do their bounds divide." There cannot be a surer proof 
 of a low origin or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to 
 be always talking and thinking of being genteel. We must 
 have a strong tendency to that which we are always trying to 
 avoid : whenever we pretend, on all occasions, a mighty contempt 
 for any thing, it is a pretty clear sign that we feel ourselves very 
 nearly on a level with it. Of the two classes of people, I hardly 
 know which is to be regarded with most distaste, the vulgar 
 aping the genteel, or the genteel constantly sneering at and en- 
 deavouring to distinguish themselves from the vulgar. These 
 two sets of persons are alwavs thinking of one another ; the lower 
 of the higher with envy, the more fortunate of their less happy 
 neighbours with contempt. They are habitually placed in oppo- 
 sition to each other ; jostle in their pretensions at every turn ; 
 and the same objects and train of thought (only reserved by the 
 relative situation of either party) occupy their whole time and at- 
 tention. The one are straining every nerve and outraging com- 
 mon sense, to be thought genteel ; the others have no other ob- 
 ject or idea in their heads than not to be thought vulgar. This 
 is but poor spite ; a very pitiful style of ambition. To be merely 
 not that which one heartily despises, is a very humble claim to 
 superiority : to despise what one really is, is still worse. Most 
 of the characters in Miss Burney's novels, the Branghtons, the 
 Smiths, the Dubsters, the Cecilias, the Delvilles, &c. are well 
 met in this respect, and much of a piece : the one half are try- 
 ing not to be taken for themselves, and the other half not to be 
 taken for the first. They neither of them have any pretensions
 
 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 43 
 
 of their own, or real standard of worth. " A feather will turn 
 the scale of their avoirdupois :" though the fair authoress was 
 not aware of the metaphysical identity of her principal and su- 
 bordinate characters. Affectation is the master-key to both. 
 
 Gentility is only a more select and artificial kind of vulgarity. 
 It cannot exist but by a sort of borrowed distinction. It plumes 
 itself up and revels in the homely pretensions of the mass of 
 mankind. It judges of the worth of every thing by name, fash- 
 ion, opinion ; and hence, from the conscious absence of real 
 qualities or sincere satisfaction in itself, it builds its supercilious 
 and fantastic conceit on the wretchedness and wants of others. 
 Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret 
 affinity. The difference between the " Great Vulgar and the 
 Small" is mostly in outward circumstances. The coxcomb criti- 
 cises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad 
 grammar of the illiterate, or as the prude is shocked at the back- 
 slidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have the fewest 
 resources in themselves, naturally seek the food of their self-love 
 elsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in 
 strangers : scandal and satire prevail most in country-places ; 
 and a propensity to ridicule every the slightest or most palpable 
 deviation from what we happen to approve, ceases with the pro- 
 gress of common sense and decency.* True worth does not 
 exult in the faults and deficiency of others ; as true refinement 
 turns away from grossness and deformity, instead of being tempt- 
 ed to indulge in an unmanly triumph over it. Raphael would 
 not faint away at the daubing of a sign-post, nor Homer hold 
 his head the higher for being in the company of a Grub-street 
 
 * " If an European, when he has cut off his beard and put false hair on 
 his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike 
 nature as he can possibly make it; and after having rendered them immove- 
 able by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on 
 by a machine with the utmost regularity; if when thus attired he issues forth, 
 and meets a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, 
 and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red ochre on particu- 
 lar parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming ; whoever of 
 these two despises the other for his attention to the fashion of his country, 
 which ever first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian." Sib 
 Joshua Reynolds's Discourses Vol. I. p. 231, 2. 
 
 4 PART II.
 
 44 TABLE TALK. 
 
 bard. Real power, real excellence does not seek for a foil in im- 
 perfection ; nor fear contamination from coming in contact with 
 that which is coarse and homely. It reposes on itself, and is 
 equally free from spleen and affectation. But the spirit of gen- 
 tility is the mere essence of spleen and affectation ; of affected 
 delight in its own would-be qualifications, and of ineffable disdain 
 poured out upon the involuntary blunders or accidental disadvan- 
 tages of those whom it chooses to treat as its inferiors. Thus a 
 fashionable Miss titters till she is ready to burst her sides at the 
 uncouth shape of a bonnet, or the abrupt drop of a courtesy (such 
 as Jeanie Deans would make) in a country-girl who comes to be 
 hired by her mamma as a servant : yet to show how little foun- 
 dation there is for this hysterical expression of her extreme good 
 opinion of herself and contempt for the untutored rustic, she 
 would herself the next day be delighted with the very same 
 shaped bonnet if brought her by a French milliner and told it 
 was all the fashion, and in a week's time will become quite fa- 
 miliar with the maid, and chatter with her (upon equal terms) 
 about caps and ribbons and lace by the hour together. There 
 is no difference between them but that of situation in the kitchen 
 or in the parlour : let circumstances bring them together, and 
 they fit like hand and glove. It is like mistress, like maid. Their 
 talk, their thoughts, their dreams, their likings and dislikes are 
 the same. The mistress's head runs continually on dress and 
 finery, so does the maid's : the young lady longs to ride in a 
 coach and six, so does the maid, if she could : Miss forms a beau 
 ideal of a lover with black eyes and rosy cheeks, which does not 
 differ from that of her attendant : both like a smart man, the one 
 the foot-man and the other his master, for the same reason : both 
 like handsome furniture and fine houses : both apply the terms, 
 shocking and disagreeable, to the same things and persons : both 
 have a great notion of balls, plays, treats, song-books and love- 
 tales : both like a wedding or a christening, and both would give 
 their little fingers to see a coronation, with this difference, that 
 the one has a chance of getting a seat at it, and the other is dy- 
 ing with envy that she has not. Indeed, this last is a ceremony 
 that delights equally the greatest monarch and the meanest of 
 his subjects, the vilest of the rabble. Yet this which is the
 
 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 45 
 
 freight of gentility and the consummation of external distinction 
 and splendour, is, I should say, a vulgar ceremony. For wbat 
 degree of refinement, of capacity, of virtue,, is required in the in- 
 dividual who i& so distinguished, or is necessary to his enjoying 
 this idle and imposing parade of his person ? Is he delighted 
 with the state-coach and gilded pannels ? So is the poorest wretch 
 that gazes at it. Is he struck with the spirit, the beauty and sym- 
 metry of the eight cream-coloured horses ? There is not one of 
 the immense multitude, who flock to see the sight from town or 
 country, St. Giles's or Whitechapel, young or old, rich or poor, 
 gentle or simple, who does not agree to admire the same object. 
 Is he delighted with the yeomen of the guard, the military escort, 
 the groups of ladies, the badges of sovereign power, the kingly 
 crown, the marshal's truncheon and the judge's robe, the array 
 that precedes and follows him, the crowded streets, the windows 
 hung with eager looks ? So are the mob, for they '? have eyes 
 and see them !" There is no one faculty of mind or body, natu- 
 ral or acquired, essential to the principal figure in this proces- 
 sion, more than is common to the meanest and most despised at- 
 tendant on it. A wax- work figure would answer the same pur- 
 pose : a Lord Mayor of London has as much tinsel to be proud 
 of. I would rather have a king do something that no one else 
 has the power or magnanimity to do, or say something that no 
 one else has the wisdom to say, or look more handsome, more 
 thoughtful, or benign than any one else in his dominions. But I 
 see nothing to raise one's idea of him in his being made a show 
 of: if the pageant would do as well without the man, the man 
 would do as well without the pageant ! Kings have been de- 
 clared to be " lovers of low company :" and this maxim, besides 
 the reason sometimes assigned for it, viz. that they meet with less 
 opposition to their wills from such persons, will I suspect be found 
 to turn at last on the consideration I am here stating, that they 
 also meet with more sympathy in their tastes. The most igno 
 rant and thoughtless have the greatest admiration of the baubles, 
 the outward symbols of pomp and power, the sound and show, 
 which are the habitual delight and mighty prerogative of kings. 
 The stupidest slave worsnips the gaudiest tyrant. The same 
 gros? motives appeal to the same gross capacities, flatter the priae 
 
 11
 
 16 TABLE TALK. 
 
 of the superior and excite the servility of the cependant : where- 
 as a higher reach of moral and intellectual refinement might 
 seek in vain for higher proofs of internal worth and inherent ma- 
 jesty in the object of its idolatry, and not finding the divinity 
 lodged within, the unreasonable expectation raised would pro- 
 bably end in mortification on both sides ! There is little to dis- 
 tinguish a king from his subjects but the rabble's shout if he 
 loses that and is reduced to the forlorn hope of gaining the suf 
 frages of the wise and good, he is of all men the most miserable. 
 But enough of this. 
 
 " I like it," says Miss Branghton* in Evelina, (meaning the 
 Opera,) " because it is not vulgar." That is, she likes it, not 
 because there is any thing to like in it, but because other people 
 are prevented from liking or knowing any thing about it. Janus 
 Weathercock, Esq., laugheth to scorn and despitefully entreateth 
 and hugely condemneth my dramatic articles in the London 
 Magazine, for a like reason. I must therefore make an example 
 of him in terrorem to all such hypercritics. He finds fault with 
 me and calls my taste vulgar, because I go to Sadler's Wells 
 ("a place he has heard of" O Lord, Sir!) because I notice 
 the Miss Dennetts, " great favourites with the Whitechapel or- 
 ders" praise Miss Valancy, " a bouncing Columbine at Astley's 
 and them there places, as his barber informs him" (has he 
 no way of establishing himself in his own good opinion but by 
 triumphing over his barber's bad English ?) and finally, because 
 I recognize the existence of the Cobourg and the Surrey theatres, 
 at the names of which he cries " Faugh" with great significance, 
 as if he had some personal disgust at them, and yet he would be 
 supposed never to have entered them. It is not his cue as a well- 
 bred critic. C'est beau pa. Now this appears to me a very crude, 
 unmeaning, indiscriminate, wholesale and vulgar way of think- 
 ing. It is prejudging things in the lump, by names and places 
 and classes, instead of judging of them by what they are in them- 
 selves, by their real qualities and shades of distinction. There ia 
 no selection, truth, or delicacy in such a mode of proceeding. It 
 
 * This nme was originally spelt Braughton in the manuscript, and was 
 altered to Branghton by a mistake of the printer. Branghton, however, 
 was thought a good name for the occasion, and was suffered to stand.
 
 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 47 
 
 is affecting ignorance, and making it a title to wisdom. It is a 
 vapid assumption of superiority. It is exceeding impertinence. 
 It is rank coxcombry. It is nothing in the world else. To con- 
 demn because the multitude admire is as essentially vulgar as to 
 admire because they admire. There is no exercise of taste or 
 judgment in either case : both are equally repugnant to good 
 sense, and of the two I should prefer the good-natured side. I 
 would as soon agree with my barber as differ from him : and 
 why should I make a point of reversing the sentence of the White- 
 chapel orders ? Or how can it affect my opinion of the merits of 
 an actor at the Cobourg or the Surrey theatres, that these theatres 
 are in or out of the Bills of Mortality ? This is an easy, short- 
 hand way of judging, as gross as it is mechanical. It is nol a dif- 
 ficult matter to settle questions of taste by consulting the map of 
 London, or to prove your liberality by geographical distinctions. 
 Janus jumbles things together strangely. If he had seen Mr. 
 Kean in a provincial theatre, at Exeter or Taunton, he would 
 have thought it vulgar to admire him : but when he had been 
 stamped in London, Janus would no doubt show his discernment 
 and the subtlety of his tact for the display of character and pas- 
 sion, by not being behind the fashion. The Miss Dennetts are 
 " little unformed girls," for no other reason than because they 
 danced at one of the minor theatres : let them but come out on 
 the Opera boards, and let the beauty and fashion of the season 
 greet them with a fairy shower of delighted applause, and they 
 would outshine Milanie " with the foot of fire." His gorge rises 
 at the mention of a certain quarter of the town : whatever passes 
 current in another, he " swallows total grist unsifted, husks and 
 all." This is not taste, but folly. At this rate, the hackney- 
 coachman who drives him, or his horse Contributor whom he has 
 introduced as a select personage to the vulgar reader, knows as 
 much of the matter as he does. In a word, the answer to all this 
 in the first instance is to say what vulgarity is. Now its essence, 
 I imagine, consists in taking manners, actions, words, opinions, on 
 trust from others, without examining one's own feelings or weigh- 
 ing the merits of the case. It is coarseness or shallowness of 
 taste, arising from want of individual refinement, together with the 
 confidence and presu nption inspired by example and numbers 
 
 11
 
 43 TABLE TALK. 
 
 It ma.y be denned to be a prostitution of the mind or body to ape 
 the more or less obvious defects of others, because by so doing we 
 shall secure the suffrages of those we associate with. To aifect 
 a gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because it is the rage with a large 
 number of persons, or to hold it in abhorrence because another set 
 of persons, very little, if at all, better informed, cry it down to dis- 
 tinguish themselves from the former, is in either case equal vul 
 garity and absurdity. A thing is not vulgar merely because it is 
 common. 'Tis common to breathe, to see, to feel, to live. Nothing 
 is vulgar that is natural, spontaneous, unavoidable. Grossness 
 is not vulgarity, ignorance is not vulgarity, awkwardness is not 
 vulgarity : but all these become vulgar when they are affected 
 and shown off on the authority of others, or to fall in with the 
 fashion or the company we keep. Caliban is coarse enough, but 
 surely he is not vulgar. We might as well spurn the clod under 
 our feet, and call it vulgar. Cobbett is coarse enough, but he is 
 not vulgar. He does not belong to the herd. Nothing real, 
 nothing original can be vulgar : but I should think an imitator of 
 Cobbett a vulgar man. Emery's Yorkshireman is vulgar, because 
 he is a Yorkshireman. It is the cant and gibberish, the cunning 
 and low life of a particular district ; it has " a stamp exclusive 
 and provincial." He might " gabble most brutishly" and yet not 
 fall under the letter of the definition : but " his speech bewrayeth 
 him," his dialect (like the jargon of a Bond-street lounger) is the 
 damning circumstance. If he were a mere blockhead, it would 
 not signify : but he thinks himself a knowing hand, according to 
 the notions and practices of those with whom he was brought 
 up, and which he thinks the go everywhere. In a word, this 
 character is not the offspring of untutored nature, but of bad habits ; 
 it is made up of ignorance and conceit. It has a mixture of slang 
 in it. All slang phrases are for the same reason vulgar ; but 
 there is nothing vulgar in the common English idiom. Simplicity 
 is not vulgarity ; but the looking to affectation of any sort for dis- 
 tinction is. A cockney is a vulgar character, whose imagination 
 cannot wander beyond the suburbs of the metropolis : so is a fel 
 low who is always thinking of the High-street, Edinburgh. We 
 want a name for this last character. An opinion is vulgar that is 
 stewed in the rank breath of the rabble : nor is it a bit purer or
 
 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 49 
 
 more refined for having passed through the well-cleansed teeth of 
 a whole court. The inherent vulgarity is in having no other 
 feeling on any subject than the crude, blind, headlong, gregarious 
 notion acquired by sympathy with the mixed multitude or with a 
 fastidious minority, who are just as insensible to the real truth, 
 and as indifferent to every thing but their own frivolous and vexa- 
 tious pretensions. The upper are not wiser than the lower orders, 
 because they resolve to differ from them. The fashionable have 
 the advantage of the unfashionable in nothing but the fashion. 
 The true vulgar are the servum pecus imitatorum the herd of 
 pretenders to what they do not feel and to what is not natural to 
 them, whether in high or low life. To belong to any class, to 
 move in any rank or sphere of life, is not a very exclusive dis- 
 tinction or test of refinement. Refinement will in all classes be 
 the exception, not the rule ; and the exception may fall out in one 
 class as well as another. A king is but an hereditary title. A 
 nobleman is only one of the House of Peers. To be a knight or 
 alderman is confessedly a vulgar thing. The king the other day 
 made Sir Walter Scott a baronet, but not all the power of the 
 Three Estates could make another Author of Waverley. Princes, 
 heroes are often common-place people : Hamlet was not a vulgar 
 character, neither was Don Quixote. To be an author, to be a 
 painter, is nothing. It is a trick, it is a trade. 
 
 " An author! 'tis a venerable name : 
 
 How few deserve it, yet what numbers claim !" 
 
 Nay, to be a Member of the Royal Academy, or a Fellow of the 
 Royal Society, is but a vulgar distinction. But to be a Virgil, a 
 Milton, a Raphael, a Claude, is what fell to the lot of humanity 
 but once ! I do not think they were vulgar people, though for 
 any thing I know to the contrary the first Lord of the Bed-cham- 
 ber may be a very vulgar man : for any thing I know to the con- 
 trary, he may not be so. Such are pretty much my notions of 
 gentility and vulgarity. 
 
 There is a well-dressed and an ill-dressed mob, both which I 
 hate. Odi prqfanum vulgus, et arceo. The vapid affectation of 
 the one is to me even more intolerable than the gross insolence 
 and brutality of the other. If a set of low-lived fellows are
 
 50 TABLE TALK. 
 
 noisy, rude, and boisterous, to show their disregard of the com- 
 pany, a set of fashionable coxcombs are, to a nauseous degree, 
 finical and effeminate, to show their thorough breeding. The 
 one are governed by their feelings, however coarse and mis- 
 guided, which is something : the others consult only appearances, 
 which are nothing, either as a test of happiness or virtue. Ho- 
 garth in his prints has trimmed the balance of pretension be- 
 tween the downright blackguard and the soi-disant fine gentle- 
 man unanswerably. It does not appear in his moral demonstra- 
 tions (whatever it may do in the genteel letter-writing of Lord 
 Chesterfield, or the chivalrous rhapsodies of Burke,) that vice by 
 losing all its giossness loses half its evil. It becomes more con- 
 temptible, not less disgusting. What is there in common, for in- 
 stance, between his beaux and belles, his rakes and his coquets, 
 and the men and women, the true heroic and ideal characters in 
 Raphael ? But his people of fashion and quality are just upon 
 a par with the low, the selfish, the unideal characters in the con- 
 trasted view of human life, and are often the very same charac- 
 ters, only changing places. If the lower ranks are actuated by 
 envy and nncharitableness towards the upper, the latter have 
 scarcely any feelings but of pride, contempt, and aversion to the 
 lower. If the poor would pull down the rich to get at their good 
 things, the rich would tread down the poor as in a vine-press, 
 and squeeze the last shilling out of their pockets and the last drop 
 of blood out of their veins. If the headstrong self-will and un- 
 ruly turbulence of a common ale-house are shocking, what shall 
 we say to the studied insincerity, the inspired want of common 
 sense, the callous insensibility of the drawing-room and boudoir ? 
 I would rather see the feelings of our common nature (for they 
 are the same at bottom) expressed in the most naked and unquali- 
 fied way, than see every feeling of our nature suppressed, stifled, 
 hermetically sealed under the smooth, cold, glittering varnish of 
 pretended refinement and conventional politeness. The one may 
 be corrected by being better informed ; the other is incorrigible, 
 wilful, heartless depravity. I cannot describe the contempt and 
 disgust 1 have felt at the tone of what would be thought good 
 company, when I have witnessed the sleek, smiling, glossy, gra- 
 tuitous assumption of superiority f o every feeling of humanity,
 
 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 51 
 
 honesty or principle, making part of the etiquette, the mental and 
 moral costume of the table, and every orofession of toleration or 
 favour for the lower orders, that is, for the great mass of our fel- 
 low-creatures, treated as an indecorum and breach of the har- 
 mony of well-regulated society. In short, I prefer a bear-garden 
 to the adder's den. Or to put the case in its extremest point of 
 view, I have more patience with men in a rude state of 
 nature outraging the human form, than I have with apes " mak- 
 ing mops and mows" at the extravagances they have first pro- 
 voked. I can endure the brutality (as it is termed) of mobs better 
 than the inhumanity of courts. The violence of the one rages 
 like a fire ; the insidious policy of the other strikes like a pesti- 
 lence, and is more fatal and inevitable. The slow poison of des- 
 potism is worse than the convulsive struggles of anarchy. " Of 
 all evils," says Hume, " anarchy is the shortest-lived." The 
 one may " break out like a wild overthrow ;" but the other from 
 its secret, sacred stand operates unseen, and undermines the hap- 
 piness of kingdoms for ages, lurks in the hollow cheek and stares 
 you in the face in the ghastly eye of want and agony and woe. 
 It is dreadful to hear the noise and uproar of an infuriated mul- 
 titude stung by the sense of wrong, and maddened by sympathy : 
 it is more appalling to think of the smile answered by other 
 gracious smiles, of the whisper echoed by other assenting whis- 
 pers, which doom them first to despair and then to destruction. 
 Popular fury finds its counterpart in courtly servility. If every 
 outrage is to be apprehended from the one, every iniquity is deli, 
 berately sanctioned by the other, without regard to justice or de- 
 cency. The word of a king, " Go thou and do likewise," makes 
 the stoutest heart dumb : truth and virtue shrink before it.* If 
 there are watchwords for the rabble, have not the polite and 
 fashionable their hackneyed phrases, their fulsome unmeaning 
 jargon as well ? Both are to me anathema ! 
 
 To return to the first question, as it regards individual and 
 Drivate manners. There is a fine illustration of the effects of 
 preposterous and affected gentility in the character of Gertrude, 
 
 * A lady of quality, in allusion to the gallantries of a reigning Prince, being 
 told, "I suppose it will be your turn nextl" said, "No: for you know it ia 
 impossible to refuse !"
 
 52 TABLE TALK. 
 
 in the old comedy of Eastward Ho, written by Ben Jonson, 
 Marston, and Chapman in conjunction. This play is supposed 
 to have given rise to Hogarth'3 series of prints of the Idle and 
 Industrious Apprentice ; and there is something exceedingly Ho- 
 garthian in the view both of vulgar and of genteel life here dis- 
 played. The character of Gertrude in particular, the heroine 
 of the piece, is inimitably drawn. The mixture of vanity and 
 meanness, the internal worthlessness and external pretence, the 
 rustic ignorance and fine lady-like airs, the intoxication of nov- 
 elty and infatuation of pride, appear like a dream or romance, 
 rather than any thing in real life. Cinderella and her glass-slip- 
 per are common-place to it. She is not, like Millamant (a cen- 
 tury afterwards,) the accomplished fine lady, but a pretender to 
 all the foppery and finery of the character. It is the honey- 
 moon with her ladyship, and her folly is at the full. To be a 
 wife and the wife of a knight are to her pleasures " worn in 
 their newest gloss," and nothing can exceed her raptures in the 
 contemplation of both parts of the dilemma. It is not familiari- 
 ty, but novelty that weds her to the court. She rises into the air 
 of gentility from the rank soil of a city-life, and flutters about 
 there with all the fantastic delight of a butterfly that has just 
 changed its caterpillar state. The sound of My Lady intoxi- 
 cates her with delight, makes her giddy, and almost turns her 
 brain. On the bare strength of it she is ready to turn her father 
 md mother out of doors, and treats her brother and sister with 
 infinite disdain and judicial hardness of heart. With some 
 speculators, the modern philosophy has deadened and distorted 
 all the natural affections : and before abstract ideas and the mis- 
 chievous refinements of literature were introduced, nothing was 
 to be met with in the primeval state of society but simplicity and 
 pastoral innocence of manners 
 
 " And all was conscience and tender heart." 
 
 This historical play gives the lie to the above theory pretty 
 broadly, yet delicately. Our heroine is as vain as she is igno- 
 rant, and as unprincipled as she is both ; and without an idea or 
 wish of any kind but that of adorning her person in the glas3, 
 and being called and thought a lady, something superior to a
 
 ON AJLGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 53 
 
 citizen's wife.* She is so bent on finery that she believes in 
 miracles to obtain it, and expects the fairies to bring it her. She 
 
 * " Girtred. For the passion of patience, look if Sir Petronel approach. 
 That sweet, that fine, that delicate, that for love's sake tell me if he come. 
 Oh, sister Mill, though my father be a low-capt tradesman, yet I must be a 
 lady, and I praise God my mother must call me Madam. Does he come? 
 Off with this gown for shame's sake, off with this gown ! Let not my knight 
 take me in the city cut, in any hand! Tear't! Pox on't (does he come'?) 
 tear't off! Thus while she sleeps, I sorrow for her sake. (Sings.) 
 
 Mildred. Lord, sister, with what an immodest impatiency and disgraceful 
 scorn do you put off your city-tire ! I am sorry to think you imagine to right 
 yourself in wronging that which hath made both you and us. 
 
 Gir. I tell you, I cannot endure it: I must be a lady: do you wear your 
 quoiff with a London licket ! your stamel petticoat with two guards ! the buf- 
 fin gown with the tuftafitty cap and the velvet lace ! I must be a lady ; and 
 1 will be a lady. I like some humours of the city dames well : to eat cher- 
 ries only at an angel a pound ; good : to dye rich scarlet black ; pretty : to line 
 a grogram gown clean through with velvet ; tolerable : their pure linen, their 
 smocks of three pound a smock, arc to be borne withal : but your mincing 
 niceries, taffity pipkins, durance petticoats, and silver bodkins God's my life ! 
 as I shall be a lady, I cannot endure it. 
 
 Mil. Well, sister, those that scorn their nest, oft fly with a sick wing. 
 
 Gir. Bow-bell! Alas, poor Mill, when I am a lady, I'll pray for thee yet, 
 i'faith ; nay, and I'll vouchsafe to call thee sister Mill still ; for though thou 
 aifcnot like to be a lady as I am, yet surely thou art a creature of God's ma- 
 king, and may'st peradventure be saved as soon as I (does he come 1) And 
 ever and anon she doubled in her song. 
 
 Mil. Now (lady's my comfort) what a profane ape's here! 
 
 Enter Sir Petronel Flash, Mr. Touchstone, and Mrs. Touchstone. 
 
 Gir. Is my knight come "? O the lord, my band ! Sister, do my cheeks 
 look well 1 Give me a little box o' the ear, that I may seem to blush. Now, 
 now ! so, there, there ! here he is ! O my dearest delight! Lord, lord ! and 
 how does my knight 1 
 
 Touchstone. Fie, with more modesty. 
 
 Gir. Modesty ! why, I am no citizen now. Modesty ! am I not to be mar- 
 ried 1 You're best to keep me modest, now I am to be a lady. 
 
 Sir Petronel. Boldness is a good fashion, and court-like. 
 
 Gir. Aye, in a country lady I hope it is, as I shall be. And how chance ye 
 came no sooner, knight 1 
 
 Sir Pet. Faith, I was so entertained in the progress with one Count Eper- 
 noun, a Welch knight : we had a match at baloon too with my Lord Whack- 
 um for four crowns. 
 
 Gir. And when shall 's be married, my knight 1 
 
 Sir Pet. I am come now to consummate : and your father may call a pool 
 
 knight son-in-law. 
 
 11*
 
 54 TABLE TALK. 
 
 is quite above thinking of a settlement, jointure, or pin-money. 
 She takes lie will for the deed all through the piece, and is so 
 
 Mrs. Touchstone. Yes, that he is a knight : I know where he had money to 
 pay the gentlemen ushers and heralds their fees. Aye, that he is a knight: 
 and so might you have been too. if you had been aught else but an ass, as well 
 as some of your neighbours. An' 1 thought you would not ha' been knighted, 
 as I am an honest woman, I would ha' dubbed you myself. 1 praise God, I 
 have wherewithal. But as for you, daughter 
 
 Gir. Aye, mother, I must be a lady to-morrow ; and by your leave, mother 
 (I speak it not without my duty, but only in the right of my husband), I must 
 take place of you, mother. 
 
 Mrs. Touch. That you shall, lady-daughter; and have a coach as well as I. 
 
 Gir. Yes, mother ; but my coach-horses must take the wall of your coach- 
 horses. 
 
 Touch. Come, come, the day grows low; 'tis supper-time : and sir, respect 
 my daughter ; she has refused for you wealthy and honest matches, known 
 good men. 
 
 Gir. Body o'truth, citizens, citizens ! Sweet knight, as soon as ever we 
 are married, take me to thy mercy, out of this miserable city. Presently : 
 carry me out of the scent of Newcastle coal and the hearing of Bow-bell, 1 
 beseech thee ; down with me, for God's sake." Act I. Scene I. 
 
 This dotage on sound and show seemed characteristic of that age (see New 
 Way to Pay Old Debts, &c.) as if in the grossness of sense, and the absence 
 of all intellectual and abstract topics of thought and discourse (the thin, circu- 
 lating medium of the present day), the mind was attracted without the power 
 of resistance to the tinkling sound of its own name with a title added to it, 
 and the image of its own person tricked out in old-fashioned finery. The ef- 
 fect, no doubt, was also more marked and striking from the contrast between 
 the ordinary penury and poverty of the age and the first and more extrava- 
 gant demonstrations of luxury and artificial refinement. Here is one more 
 specimen. 
 
 " Girtred. Good lord, that there are no fairies now-a-days, Syn. 
 
 Syndefy. Why, Madam 1 
 
 Gir. To do miracles, and bring ladies money. Sure, if we lay in a cleanly 
 house, they would haunt it, Synne? I'll try. I'll sweep the chamber soon at 
 night, and set a dish of water o' the hearth. A fairy may come and bring a 
 pearl or a diamond. We do not know, Synne : or there may be a pot of gold 
 hid in the yard, if we had tools to dig for 't. Why may not we two rise early 
 i' the morning. Synne, afore any body is up, and find a jewel i' the streets 
 worth a hundred pounds'? May not some great court-lady, as she comes 
 from revels at midnight, look out of her coach, as 'tis running, and lose such 
 e jewel and we find it 1 ha! 
 
 Syn. They are pretty waking dreams, these. 
 
 Gir. Or may not some old usurer be drunk over-night with h bag of money,
 
 ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 55 
 
 besotted with this ignorant, vulgar notion of rank and title as a 
 real thing that cannot be counterfeited, that she is the dupe of 
 her own fine stratagems, and marries a gull, a dolt, a broken 
 adventurer, for an accomplished and brave gentleman. Her 
 meanness is equal to her folly or her pride (and nothing can be 
 greater,) yet she holds out on the strength of her original pre- 
 tensions for a long time, and plays the upstart with decent and 
 imposing consistency. Indeed, her infatuation and caprices are 
 akin to the flighty perversity of a disordered imagination ; ana 
 another turn of the wheel of good or evil fortune would have 
 sent her to keep company with Hogarth's Merveilleuses in Bedlam, 
 or with Deckar's group of Coquettes in the samejlace. The 
 other parts of the play are a dreary lee-shore, like Cuckold's 
 Point on the coast of Essex, where the preconcerted shipwreck 
 akes place that winds up the catastrophe of the piece. But this 
 is also characteristic of the age, and serves as a contrast to the 
 airy and factitious character which is the principal figure in the 
 plot. We had made but little progress from that point till Ho- 
 garth's time, if Hogarth is to be believed in his description of 
 city manners. How wonderfully we have distanced it since ! 
 
 Without going into this at length, there is one circumstance I 
 would mention in which I think there has been a striking im- 
 provement in the family economy of modern times and that is, 
 in the relation of mistresses and servants. After visits and finery, 
 a married woman of the old school had nothing to do but to at- 
 tend to her housewifery. She had no other resource, no other 
 sense of power, but to harangue and lord it over her domestics. 
 Modern book-education supplies the place of the old-fashioned 
 system of kitchen persecution and eloquence. A well-bred wo- 
 man now seldom goes into the kitchen to look after the servants: 
 formerly what was called a good manager, an exemplary mis- 
 tress of a family, did nothing but hunt them from morning to 
 
 and leave it behind him on a stall 1 For God's sake, Syn, let 's rise to-mor- 
 row by break of day, and see. I protest, la ! if I had as much money as an 
 alderman, I would scatter some on ; t i' the streets, for poor ladies to find when 
 their knights were laid up. And now I remember my song of the Golden 
 Shower, why may not I have such a fortune 1 I'll sing it, and try what luck 
 I shall have after it." Act V Scene I.
 
 86 TABLE TALK. 
 
 night, from me year's end to another, without leaving them a 
 moment's rest, peace, or comfort. Now a servant is left to do 
 her work without this suspicious and tormenting interference and 
 fault-finding at every step, and she does it all the better. The 
 proverbs about the mistress's eye, &c. are no longer held for cur- 
 rent. A woman from this habit, which at last became an un- 
 conquerable passion, would scold her maids for fifty years to- 
 gether, and nothing could stop her : now the temptation to read 
 the last new poem or novel, and the necessity of talking of it in 
 the next company she goes into, prevent her and the benefit to 
 ?I1 parties is incalculable !
 
 ON ANTiaUlTY. . 57 
 
 ESSAY XXI. 
 
 On Antiquity. 
 
 There is no such thing as Antiquity in the ordinary acceptation 
 we affix to the term. Whatever is or has been, while it is pass- 
 ing, must be modern. The early ages may have been barbarous 
 in themselves ; but they *ha\e become ancient with the slow and 
 silent lapse of successive generations. The " olden times" are 
 only such in reference 10 us. The past is rendered strange, mys- 
 terious, visionary, awful, from the great gap in time that parts 
 us from it, and the long perspective of waning years. Things 
 gone by and almost forgotten, look dim and dull, uncouth and 
 quaint, from our ignorance of them, and the mutability of cus- 
 toms. But in their day they were fresh, unimpaired, in full vig- 
 our, familiar, and glossy. The Children in the Wood, and Per- 
 cy's Relics, were once recent productions ; and Auld Robin Gray 
 was, in his time, a very common-place old fellow ! The wars of 
 York and Lancaster, while they lasted, were " lively, audible, 
 ind full of vent," as fresh and lusty as the white and red roses 
 that distinguished their different banners, though they have since 
 become a by-word and a solecism in history. 
 
 The sun shone in Julius Caesar's time just as it does now. On 
 the road-side between Winchester and Salisbury are some remains 
 of old Roman encampments, with their double lines of circumval- 
 lation (now turned into pasture for sheep,) which answer exactly 
 to the descriptions of this kind in Caesar's Commentaries. In a 
 dull and cloudy atmosphere, I can conceive that this is the iden- 
 tical spot that the first Caesar trod ; and figure to myself the de- 
 liberate movements and scarce perceptible march of close-em- 
 bodied legions. But if the sun breaks out, making its way through 
 dazzling, fleecy clouds, lights up the blue serene, and gilas the 
 sombre earth, I can no longer persuade myself that it is the same 
 scene as formerly, or transfer the actual image before me so far
 
 63 TABLE TALK. 
 
 back. The brightness of nature is not easily reduced to the low, 
 twilight tone of history ; and the impressions of sense defeat and 
 dissipate the faint traces of learning and tradition. It is only by 
 an effort of reason, to which fancy is averse, that I bring myself 
 to believe that the sun shone as bright, that the sky was as blue, 
 and the earth as green, two thousand years ago as it is at present. 
 How ridiculous this seems ; yet so it is ! 
 
 The dark or middle ages, when every thing was hid in the fog 
 and haze of confusion and ignorance, seem, to the same involun- 
 tary kind of prejudice, older and farther off, and more inacces- 
 sible to the imagination, than the brilliant and well-defined periods 
 of Greece and Rome. A Gothic ruin appears buried in a greater 
 depth of obscurity, to be weighed down and rendered venerable 
 with the hoar of more distant ages, to have been longer moulder- 
 ing into neglect and oblivion, to be a record and memento of events 
 more wild and alien to our own times, than a Grecian temple.* 
 Amadis de Gaul, and the Seven Champions of Christendom, with 
 me (honestly speaking) rank as contemporaries with Theseus, 
 Pirithous, and the heroes of the fabulous ages. My imagination 
 will stretch no farther back into the commencement of time than 
 the first traces and rude dawn of civilization and mighty enter- 
 prize in either case ; and in attempting to force it upwards by 
 the scale of chronology, it only recoils upon itself, and dwindles 
 from a lofty survey of "the dark rearward and abyss of time," 
 into a poor and puny calculation of insignificant cyphers. In 
 like manner, I cannot go back to any time more remote and 
 dreary than that recorded in Stow's and Hollingshed's Chronicles, 
 unless I turn to " the wars of old Assaracus and Inachus divine," 
 and the gorgeous events of Eastern history, where the distance 
 of place may be said to add to the length of time and weight of 
 thought. That is old (in sentiment and poetry) which is decayed, 
 
 * "The Gothic architecture, though not so ancient as the Grecian, is more 
 so to our imagination, with which the artist is more concerned than will: abs"- 
 lute truth." Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, vol. ii., p 138. 
 
 Till I met with this remark in so circumspect and guarded a writer as Sir 
 Joshua, I was afraid of being charged with extravagance in some of the above 
 assertions. Pereant isti qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. It is thus that our fa- 
 vourite speculations are often accounted paradoxes by the ignorant, while by 
 the learned reader they are set down as plagiarisms.
 
 ON ANTIGIUITY, 69 
 
 shadowy, imperfect, out of date, and changed from what it was. 
 That of which we have a distinct idea, which comes before us 
 entire and made out in all its parts, will have a novel appearance, 
 however old in reality ; nor can it be impressed with the romantic 
 and superstitious character of antiquity. Those times that we 
 can parallel with our own in civilization and knowledge, seem 
 advanced into the same line with our own in the order of pro- 
 gression. The perfection of art does not look like the infancy of 
 things. Or those times are prominent, and, as it were, confront 
 the present age, that are raised high in the scale of polished so- 
 ciety, and the trophies of which stand out above the low, obscure, 
 grovelling level of barbarism and rusticity. Thus, Rome and 
 Athens were tw cities set on a hill, that could not be hid, and 
 that everywhere meet the retrospective eye of history. It is not 
 the full-grown, articulated, thoroughly accomplished periods of 
 the world, that we regard with the pity or reverence due to age ; 
 so much as those imperfect, unformed, uncertain periods, which 
 seem to totter on the verge of non-existence, to shrink from the 
 grasp of our feeble imaginations, as they crawl out of, or retire 
 into the womb of time, and of which our utmost* assurance is to 
 doubt whether they ever were or not ! 
 
 To give some other instances of this feeling, taken at random. 
 Whittington and his Cat, the first and favourite studies of my 
 childhood, are, to my way of thinking, as old and reverend per- 
 sonages as any recorded in more authentic history. It must have 
 been long before the invention of triple bob-majors, that Bow-bells 
 rang out their welcome never-to-be-forgotten peal, hailing him 
 Thrice Lord Mayor of London. Does not all we know relating 
 to the site of old London-wall and the first stones that were laid 
 of this mighty metropolis seem of a far older date (hid in the lap 
 of " chaos and old night") than the splendid and imposing details 
 of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire ? Again, the early 
 Italian pictures of Cimabue, Giotto, and Ghirlandaio are covered 
 with the marks of unquestionable antiquity ; while the Greek 
 statues, done a thousand years before them, shine in glossy, un- 
 diminished splendour, and flourish in immortal youth and beauty. 
 The latter Grecian Gods, as we find them there represented, are 
 to ali appearance a race of modern fine gentlemen who led the 
 
 5 PART II.
 
 60 TABLE TALK. 
 
 life of honour with their favourite mistresses of mortal or immortal 
 mould were gallant, graceful, well-dressed, and well-spoken ; 
 whereas the Gothic deities, long after carved in horrid wood or 
 misshapen stone, and worshipped in dreary waste or tangled forest, 
 belong, in the mind's heraldry, to almost as ancient a date as those 
 elder and discarded Gods of the Pagan mythology, Ops, and Rhea 
 and old Saturn those strange anomalies of earth and cloudy 
 spirit, born of the elements and conscious will, and clothing them 
 selves and all things with shape and formal being. The Chroni- 
 cle of Brute, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, has a tolerable air of 
 antiquity in it ; so in the dramatic line, the Ghost of one of the 
 old kings of Ormus, introduced as Prologue to Fulke Greville's 
 play of Mustapha, is reasonably far-fetched, and palpably obscure. 
 A monk in the Popish Calendar, or even in the Canterbury Tales, 
 is a more questionable and out-of-the-way personage than the 
 Chiron of Achilles, or the high-priest in Homer. When Chaucer, 
 in his Troilus and Cressida, makes the Trojan hero invoke the 
 absence of light, in these two lines 
 
 " Why proffer'st thou light me for to sell 1 
 Go sell it them that smalle seles grave ! ;l 
 
 he is guilty of an anachronism ; or at least I much doubt whether 
 there was such a profession as that of seal-engraver in the Trojan 
 war. But the dimness of the objects and the quaintness of the 
 allusion throw us farther back into the night of time, than the 
 golden glittering images of the Iliad. The Travels of Anachar- 
 sis are less obsolete at this time of day than Coryate's Crudities 
 or Fuller's Worthies. " Here is some of the ancient city," sair 
 a Roman, taking up a handful of dust from beneath his feet. 
 The ground we tread on is as old as the creation, though it does 
 not seem so, except when collected into gigantic masses, or se- 
 parated by gloomy solitudes from modern uses and the purposes 
 of common life. The lone Helvellyn and the silent Andes are 
 in thought coeval with the globe itself, and can only perish witl 
 it. The pyramids of Egypt are vast, sublime, old, eternal ; bu 
 Stonehenge, built no doubt in a later day, satisfies my capacity 
 for the sense of antiquity ; it seems as if as much rain had driz- 
 zled on its grey, withered head, and it had watched out as many
 
 ON ANTIQUITY. 61 
 
 winter-nights ; the hand of time is upon it, and it has sustained 
 the burden of years upon its back, a wonder and a ponderous 
 riddle, time out of mind, without known origin or use, baffling 
 fable or conjecture, the credulity of the ignorant, or wise men's 
 search. 
 
 "Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle, 
 Whether by Merlin's aid, from Scythia's shore 
 To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore, 
 Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile, 
 T'entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile: 
 Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore, 
 Taught 'mid thy massy maze their mystic lore: 
 Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil, 
 To victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine, 
 Rear'd the rude heap, or in thy hallow'd round 
 Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line; 
 Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd ; 
 Studious to trace thy wondrous origin, 
 We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd." 
 
 Warton. 
 
 So it is with respect to ourselves also. It is the sense of change 
 or decay that marks the difference between the real and appa- 
 rent progress of time, both in the events of our own lives and the 
 history of the world we live in. 
 
 Impressions of a peculiar and accidental nature, of which few 
 traces are left, and which return seldom or never, fade in the dis- 
 tance, and are consigned to obscurity ; while those that belong to 
 a given and definite class are kept up, and assume a constant 
 and tangible form from familiarity and habit. That which was 
 personal to myself merely, is lost and confounded with other 
 things, like a drop in the ocean ; it was but a point at first, which 
 by its nearness affected me, and by its removal becomes nothing ; 
 while circumstances of a general interest and abstract importance 
 present the same distinct, well-known aspect as ever, and are 
 durable in proportion to the extent of their influence. Our own 
 idle feelings and foolish fancies we get tired or grow ashamed of, 
 as their novelty wears out; "when we become men, we put 
 away childish things;" but the impressions we derive from the 
 exercise of our higher faculties last as long as the faculties them-
 
 63 TABLE TALK. 
 
 selves. They have nothing to do with time, place, and circum- 
 stance ; and are of universal applicability and recurrence. An 
 incident in my own history, that delighted or tormented me very 
 much at the time, I may have long since blotted from my memo- 
 ry, or have great difficulty in calling to mind after a certain pe- 
 riod ; but I can never forget the first time of my seeing Mrs. Sid- 
 dons act, which appears as if it happened yesterday ; and the 
 reason is because it has been something for me to think of ever 
 since. The petty and the personal, that which appeals to our 
 senses and our appetites, passes away with the occasion that gives 
 it birth. The grand and the ideal, that which appeals to the 
 imagination, can only perish with it, and remains with us, unim- 
 paired in its lofty, abstraction, from youth to age, as, wherever 
 we go, we still see the same heavenly bodies shining over our 
 heads ! An old familiar face, the house that we were brought 
 up in, sometimes the scenes and places that we formerly knew 
 and loved, may be changed, so that we hardly know them again ; 
 the characters in books, the faces in old pictures, the propositions 
 in Euclid, remain the same as when they were first pointed out 
 to us. There is a continual alternation of generation and decay 
 in individual forms and feelings, that marks the progress of ex- 
 istence, and the ceaseless current of our lives, borne along with 
 it ; but this does not extend to our love of art or knowledge of 
 nature. It seems a long time ago since some of the first events 
 of the French Revolution.; the prominent characters that figured 
 then have been swept away and succeeded by others ; yet I cannot 
 say that this circumstance has in any way abated my hatred of 
 tyranny, or reconciled my understanding to the fashionable doc- 
 trine of Divine Right. The sight of an old newspaper of that 
 date would give one a fit of the spleen for half an hour ; on the 
 other hand, it must be confessed, Mr. Burke's Reflections on this 
 subject are as fresh and dazzling as in the year 1791 ; and his 
 Letter to a Noble Lord is even now as interesting as Lord John 
 Russell's Letter to Mr. Wilberforce, which appeared only a few 
 weeks back. Ephemeral politics and still-born productions are 
 speedily consigned to oblivion ; great principles and original 
 works are a match even for time itself! 
 
 We may, by following up this train of ideas, give some ac-
 
 ON ANTIQ.UITY. 63 
 
 count why time runs faster as our years increase. We gain by 
 habit and experience a more determinate and settled, that is, a 
 more uniform notion of things. We refer each particular to a 
 given standard. Our impressions acquire the character of iden- 
 tical propositions. Our most striking thoughts are turned into 
 truisms. One observation is like another, that I made formerly. 
 The idea I have of a certain character or subject is just the 
 same as I had ten years ago. I have learnt nothing since. 
 There is no alteration perceptible, no advance made ; so that 
 the two points of time seem to touch and coincide. I get from 
 the one to the other immediately by the familiarity of habit, by 
 the undistinguishing process of abstraction. What I can recall so 
 easily and mechanically does not seem far off; it is completely 
 within my reach, and consequently close to me in apprehension. 
 I have no intricate web of curious speculation to wind or unwind, 
 to pass from one state of feeling and opinion to the other ; no 
 complicated train of associations, which place an immeasurable 
 barrier between my knowledge or my ignorance at different 
 epochs. There is no contrast, no repugnance to widen the in- 
 terval ; no new sentiment infused, like another atmosphere, to 
 lengthen the perspective. I am but where I was. I see the ob- 
 ject before me just as I have been accustomed to do. The ideas 
 are written down in the brain as in the page of a book totidem 
 verbis et Uteris. The mind becomes stereotyped. By not going 
 forward to explore new regions, or break up new grounds, we 
 are thrown back more and more upon our past acquisitions ; and 
 this habitual recurrence increases the facility and indifference 
 with which we make the imaginary transition. By thinking 
 of what has been, we change places with ourselves, and trans- 
 pose our personal identity at will ; so as to fix the slider of our 
 imnrogressive continuance at whatever point we please. This 
 is an advantage or a disadvantage, which we have not in youth. 
 After a certain period, we neither lose nor gain, neither add to 
 nor diminish our stock ; up to that period we do nothing else but 
 lose our former notions and being, and gain a new one every in- 
 stant. Our life is then like the birth of a new day ; the dawn 
 breaks apace, and the clouds clear away. A new world of 
 ttiought and observation is opened to our search. A year makes
 
 64 TABLE TALK. 
 
 the difference of an age. A total alteration takes place in our 
 ideas, feelings, habits, looks. We outgrow ourselves. A sepa- 
 rate set of objects, of the existence of which we had not a sus- 
 picion, engages and occupies our whole souls. Shapes and col- 
 ours of all varieties, and of gorgeous tint, intercept our view of 
 what we were. Life thickens. Time glows on its axle. Ev- 
 ery revolution of the wheel gives an unsettled aspect to things. 
 The world and its inhabitants turn round, and we forget one 
 change of scene in another. Art woos us ; science tempts us 
 into her intricate labyrinths ; each step presents unlooked-for 
 vistas, and closes upon us our backward path. Our onward 
 road is strange, obscure, and infinite. We are bewildered in a 
 shadow, lost in a dream. Our perceptions have the brightness 
 and the indistinctness of a trance. Our continuity of conscious- 
 ness is broken, crumbles, and falls in pieces. We go on, 
 learning and forgetting every hour. Our feelings are chaotic, 
 confused, strange to each other and to ourselves. Our life does 
 not hang together, but straggling, disjointed, winds its slow length 
 along, stretching out to the endless future unmindful of the ig- 
 norant past. We seem many beings in one, and cast the slough 
 of our existence daily. The birth of knowledge is the genera- 
 tion of time. The unfolding of our experience is long and volu- 
 minous ; nor do we all at once recover from our surprise at the 
 number of objects that distract our attention. Every new study 
 is a separate, arduous, and insurmountable undertaking. We 
 are lost in wonder at the magnitude, the difficulty, and the inter- 
 minable prospect. We spell out the first years of our existence, 
 like learning a lesson for the first time, where every advance is 
 slow, doubtful, interesting : afterwards we rehearse our parts by 
 rote, and are hardly conscious of the meaning. A very short 
 period (from fifteen to twenty-five or thirty) includes the whole 
 map and table of contents of human life. From that time we 
 may be said to live our lives over again, to repeat ourselves 
 the same thoughts return at stated intervals, like the tunes of a 
 barrel-organ ; and the volume of the universe is no more than a 
 form of words and book of reference. 
 
 Time in general is supposed to move faster or slower, as we 
 attend more or less, to the succession of our ideas, in ih*. samo
 
 ON ANTIQ.UITY. 65 
 
 manner as distance is increased or lessened by the greater or less 
 variety of intervening objects. There is, however, a difference 
 in this respect. Suspense, where the mind is engrossed with one 
 idea, and kept from amusing itself with any other, is not only thu 
 most uncomfortable, but the most tiresome of all things. The 
 fixing our attention on a single point makes us more sensible of 
 the delay, and hangs an additional weight of fretful impatience 
 on every moment of expectation. People in country-places, with- 
 out employment or artificial resources, complain that time lies 
 heavy on their hands. Its leaden pace is not occasioned by the 
 quantity of thought, but by vacancy, and the continual, languid 
 craving after excitement. It wants spirit and vivacity to give it 
 motion. We are on the watch to see how time goes ; and it ap- 
 pears to lag behind, because, in the absence of objects to arrest 
 our immediate attention, we are always getting on before it. We 
 do not see its divisions, but we feel the galling pressure of each 
 creeping sand that measures out our hours. Again, a rapid suc- 
 cession of external objects and amusements, which leave no room 
 for reflection, and where one gratification is forgotten in the next, 
 makes time pass quickly, as well as delightfully. We do not 
 perceive an extent of surface, but only a succession of points. 
 We are whirled swiftly along by the hand of dissipation, but 
 cannot stay to look behind us. On the contrary, change of scene, 
 travelling through a foreign country, or the meeting with a va- 
 riety of striking adventures that lay hold of the imagination, and 
 continue to haunt it in a waking dream, will make days seem 
 weeks. From the crowd of events, the number of distinct points 
 of view, brought into a small compass, we seem to have passed 
 through a great length of time, when it is no such thing. In 
 traversing a flat, barren country, the monotony of our ideas 
 fatigues, and makes the way longer ; whereas, if the prospect is 
 diversified and picturesque, we get over the miles without count- 
 ing them. In painting or writing, hours are melted almost into 
 minutes: the mind, absorbed in the eagerness of its pursuit, for- 
 gets the time necessary to accomplish it ; and, indeed, the clock 
 often finds us employed on the same thought or part of a picture 
 that occupied us when it struck last. It seems then there are several 
 other circumstances, besides the number and distinctness of our
 
 66 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ideas, to be taken into the account in the measure of time, or in 
 considering " whom time ambles withal, whom time gallops withal, 
 and whom he stands still withal."* Time wears away slowly 
 with a man in solitary confinement ; not from the number or va- 
 riety of his ideas, but from their weary sameness, fretting like 
 drops of water. The imagination may distinguish the lapse of 
 time by the brilliant variety of its tints, and the many striking 
 shapes it assumes ; the heart feels it by the weight of sadness, 
 and " grim-visaged, comfortless despair !" 
 
 I will conclude this subject with remarking, that the fancied 
 shortness of life is aided by the apprehension of a future state. 
 The constantly directing our hopes and fears to a higher state of 
 being beyond the present, necessarily brings death habitually 
 before us, and defines the narrow limits within which we hold our 
 frail existence, as mountains bound the horizon, and unavoidably 
 draw our attention to it. This may be one reason among others 
 why the fear of death was a less prominent feature in ancient 
 times than it is at present : because the thoughts of it, and of a 
 future state, were less frequently impressed on the mind by re- 
 ligion and morality. The greater progress of civilization and 
 security in modern times has also considerably to do with our 
 
 * " Rosalind. Time travels in divers paces with divers persons : HI tell you 
 who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and 
 who he stands still withal. 
 
 Orlando. I prythee, who doth he trot withal 1 
 
 Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her 
 marriage and the day it is solemnized : if the interim be but a se'nnight, time's 
 pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven years. 
 
 Orl. Who ambles time withal 1 
 
 Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not the gout ; 
 for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily 
 because he feels no pain ; the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful 
 learning; the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury. These time 
 ambles with. 
 
 Orl. Who doth he gallop withal 1 
 
 Ros. With a thief to the gallows ; for though he go as softly as foot can 
 fall, he thinks himself too soon there. 
 
 Orl. Who stays it withal 1 
 
 Ros. With lawyers in the vacation ; for they sleep between term and term, 
 and then they perceive not how time moves." As You Like It, Act III., 
 Scene II.
 
 ON ANTiaUITY. 67 
 
 practical effeminacy : for though the old Pagans were not bound 
 to think of death as a religious duty, they never could foresee 
 when they should be compelled to submit to it, as a natural ne- 
 cessity, or accident of war, &c. They viewed death, therefore, 
 with an eye of speculative indifference and practical resolution. 
 That the idea of annihilation did not impress them with the same 
 horror and repugnance as it does the modern believer, or even 
 infidel, is easily accounted for (though a writer in the Edinburgh 
 Review thinks the question insoluble*) from this plain reason, 
 viz. that not being taught from childhood a belief in a future state 
 of existence as a part of the creed of their countiy, the having 
 
 * " On the other point, namely, the dark and sceptical spirit prevalent through 
 the vrorks of this poet (Lord Byron) we shall not now utter all that we feel, but 
 rather direct the notice of our readers to it as a singular phenomenon in the 
 poetry of the age. Whoever has studied the spirit of Greek and Roman litera- 
 ture, must have been struck with the comparative disregard and indifference, 
 wherewith the thinking men ^f these exquisitely polished nations contemplated 
 those subjects of darkness and mystery which afford at some period or other 
 of his life so much disquiet we had almost said so much agony, to the mind 
 of every reflecting modern. It is difficult to account for this in any very satis- 
 factory, and we suspect altogether impossible to do so in any strictly logical, 
 manner. In reading the works of Plato and his interpreter Cicero, we find the 
 germs of all the doubts and anxieties to which we have alluded, so far as these 
 are connected with the workings of our reason. The singularity is, that those 
 clouds of darkness, which hang over the intellect, do not appear, so far as we can 
 perceive, to have thrown at any time any very alarming shade upon the feel- 
 ings or temper of the ancient sceptic. We should think a very great deal of this 
 was owing to the brilliancy and activity of his southern fancy. The lighter 
 spirits of antiquity, like the more mercurial of our moderns, sought refuge in mere 
 gaiete du cceur and derision. The graver poets and philosophers and poetry 
 and philosophy were in those days seldom disunited built up some airy and 
 beautiful system of mysticism, each following his own devices, and suiting the 
 erection to his own peculiarities of hope and inclination ; and this being once 
 accomplished, the mind appears to have felt quite satisfied with what it had 
 done, and to have reposed amidst the splendours of its sand-built fantastic edi- 
 fice, with as much security as if it had been grooved and rivetted into the rock 
 of ages. The mere exercise of ingenuity in devising a system furnished con- 
 solation to its creators, or improvers. Lucretius is a striking example of all 
 this ; and it may be averred that down to the time of Claudian, who lived ir* the 
 fourth century of our aera, in no classical writer of antiquity do there occur any 
 traces of what moderns understand by the restlessness and discomfort of un- 
 certainty, as to the government jf the world and the future destinies of man." 
 Edinburgh Review, voL xxx., p. 9(5, 97 ; Article, Ckilde Harold, Canto 4.
 
 SB TABLE TALK. 
 
 this belief called inti question or struck from under their feet did 
 not cause the same uneasiness or confusion of mind in them as it 
 does in us. He who has never been led to expect the reversion 
 of an estate, does not severely feel the loss of it : for '*, is tho in- 
 dulgence of hope that embitters disappointment.
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ESSAY XXII. 
 
 On the Conduct of Life ; or, Advice to a Schoolboy. 
 
 My dear little fellow : 
 
 You are now going to settle at school, and may consider this 
 as your first entrance into the world. As my health is so indif- 
 ferent, and I may not be with you long, I wish to leave you some 
 advice (the best I can) for your conduct in life, both that it may 
 be of use to you, and as something to remember me by. I may 
 at least be able to caution you against my own errors, if nothing 
 else. 
 
 As we went along to your new place of destination, you often 
 repeated that " you durst say they were a set of stupid, disa- 
 greeable people," meaning the people at the school. You were 
 to blame in this. It is a good old rule to hope for the best. Al- 
 ways, my dear, believe things to be right, till you find them the 
 contrary ; and even then, instead of irritating yourself against 
 them, endeavour to put up with them as well as you can, if you 
 cannot alter them. You said, " You were sure you would not 
 like the school where you were going." This was wrong. 
 What you meant was that you did not like to leave home. But 
 you could not tell whether you should like the school or not, till 
 you had given it a trial. Otherwise, your saying that you 
 should not like it was determining that you would not like it. 
 Never anticipate evils ; or, because you cannot have things ex- 
 actly as you wish, make them out worse than they are, through 
 mere spite and wilfulness. 
 
 You seemed at first to take no notice of your school-fellows, 
 or rather to set yourself against them, because they were stran- 
 gers to you. They knew as little of you as you did of them ; 
 so that this would have been a reason for their keeping aloof 
 from you as well, which you would have felt as a hardship. 
 
 12
 
 70 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Learr. never to conceive a prejudice against others, because you 
 know nothing of them. Jt is bad reasoning, and makes enemies 
 of half the world. Do not think ill of them, till they behave 
 ill to you ; and then strive to avoid the faults which you see in 
 them. This will disarm their hostility sooner than pique or re- 
 sentment or complaint. 
 
 I thought you were disposed to criticize the dress of some of 
 the boys as not so good as your own. Never despise any one 
 for any thing that he cannot help least of all, for his poverty. 
 I would wish you to keep up appearances yourself as a defence 
 against the idle sneers of the world, but I would not have you 
 value yourself upon them. I hope you will neither be the dupe 
 nor victim of vulgar prejudices. Instead of saying above 
 " Never despise any one for any thing that he cannot help" 1 
 might have said, " Never despise any one at all ;" for contempt 
 implies a triumph over and pleasure in the ill of another. It 
 means that you are glad and congratulate yourself on their fail- 
 ings or misfortunes. The sense of inferiority in others, without 
 this indirect appeal to our self-love, is a painful feeling, and not 
 an exulting one. 
 
 You complain since, that the boys laugh at you and do not 
 care about you, and that you are not treated as you were at home. 
 My dear, that is one chief reason for your being sent to school, 
 to inure you betimes to the unavoidable rubs aad uncertain re- 
 ception you may meet with in life. You cannot always be with 
 me, and perhaps it is as well that you cannot. But you must 
 not expect others to show the same concern about you as I 
 should. You have hitherto been a spoiled child, and have been 
 used to have your own way a good deal, both in the house and 
 among your playfellows, with whom you were too fond of being 
 a leader : but you have good nature and good sense, and will 
 get the better of this in time. You have now got among oth&r 
 boys who are your equals, or bigger and stronger than yourself, 
 and who have something else to attend to besides humouring 
 your whims and fancies, and you feel this as a repulse or piece 
 of injustice. But the first lesson to learn is that there are other 
 people in the world besides yourself. There are a number of 
 boys in the school where you are, whose amusements and pur
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 11 
 
 suits (whatever they may be) are and ought to be of as much 
 consequence to them as yours can be to you, and to which there- 
 fore you must give way in your turn. The more airs of childish 
 self-importance you give yourself, you will only expose yourself 
 to be the more thwarted and laughed at. True equality is the 
 only true morality or true wisdom. Remember always that you 
 are but one among others, and you can hardly mistake your 
 place in society. In your father's house, you might do as you 
 pleased ; in the world, you will find competitors at every turn. 
 You are not born a king's son, to destroy or dictate to millions: 
 you can only expect to share their fate, or settle your differences 
 amicably with them. You already find it so at school ; and I 
 wish you to be reconciled to your situation as soon, and with 
 as little pain as you can. 
 
 It was my misfortune (perhaps) to be bred up among Dissent- 
 ers, who look with too jaundiced an eye at others, and set too 
 high a value on their own peculiar pretensions. From being 
 proscribed themselves, they learn to proscribe others ; and come 
 in the end to reduce all integrity of principle and soundness of 
 opinion within the pale of their own little communion. Those 
 who were out of it, and did not belong to the class of Rational 
 Dissenters, I was led erroneously to look upon as hardly deserving 
 the name of rational beings. Being thus satisfied as to the se- 
 lect few who are '* the salt of the earth," it is easy to persuade 
 ourselves that we are at the head of them, and to fancy ourselves 
 of more importance in the scale of true desert than all the rest 
 of the world put together, who do not interpret a certain text of 
 Scripture in the manner that we have been taught to do. You 
 will (from the difference of education) be free from this bigotry 
 and will, I hope, avoid every thing akin to the same exclusive 
 and narrow-minded spirit. Think that the minds of men are 
 various as their faces that the modes and employments of life 
 are numberless as they are necessary that there is more than 
 one class of merit that though others may be wrong in some 
 things, they are not so in all and that countless races of men 
 have been born, have lived and died, without ever hearing of any 
 one of those points in which you take a just pride and pleasure 
 and you will not err on the side of that spiritual pride or in- 
 
 12
 
 78 TABLE TALK 
 
 telleetual coxcombry which has been so often the bane of the 
 studious and learned ! 
 
 I observe you have got a way of speaking of your school- 
 fellows as " that Hoare, that Harris," and so on, as if you meant 
 to mark them out for particular reprobation, or did not think them 
 good enough for you. It is a bad habit to speak disrespectfully 
 of others ; for it will lead you to think and feel uncharitably to- 
 wards them. Ill names beget ill blood. Even where there may 
 be some repeated trifling provocation, it is better to be courteous, 
 mild, and forbearing, than captious, impatient, and fretful. The 
 faults of others too often arise out of our own ill temper ; or 
 though they should be real, we shall not mend them, by exas- 
 perating ourselves against them. Treat your playmates, as 
 Hamlet advises Polonius to treat the players, " according to your 
 own dignity, rather than their deserts." If you fly out at every 
 thing in them that you disapprove or think done on purpose to 
 annoy you, you lie constantly at the mercy of their caprice, 
 rudeness, or ill-nature. You should be more your own master. 
 
 Do not begin to quarrel with the world too soon : for, bad as 
 it may be, it is the best we have to live in here. If railing 
 would have made it better, it would have been reformed long 
 ago : but as this is not to be hoped for at present, the best way 
 is to slide through it as contentedly and innocently as we may. 
 The worst fault it has, is want of charity : and calling knave 
 and fool at every turn will not cure this failing. Consider (as a 
 matter of vanity) that if there were not so many knaves and 
 fools as we find, the wise and honest would not be those rare 
 and shining characters that they are allowed to be ; and (as a 
 matter of philosophy) that if the world be really incorrigible in 
 this respect, it is a reflection to make one sad, not angry. We 
 may laugh or weep at the madness of mankind : we have no 
 right to vilify them, for our own sakes or theirs. Misanthropy 
 is not the disgust of the mind at human nature, but with itself; 
 or it is laying its own exaggerated vices and foul blots at the 
 door of others ! Do not, however, mistake what I have here 
 said. I would not have you, when you grow up, adopt the low 
 and sordid fashion of palliating existing abuses or of Dutting the 
 best face upon the worst things. I only mean that mdiscrimi-
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 oate, unqualified satire can do little good, and that those who in- 
 dulge in the most revolting speculations on human nature, do not 
 .hemselves always set the fairest examples, or strive to prevent 
 its lower degradation. They seem rather willing to reduce'it to 
 their theoretical standard. For the rest, the very outcry that is 
 made (if sincere) shows that things cannot be quite so bad as 
 they are represented. The abstract hatred and scorn of vice 
 implies the capacity for virtue : the impatience expressed at the 
 most striking instances of deformity proves the innate idea and 
 love of beauty in the human mind. The best antidote I can re- 
 commend to you hereafter against the disheartening effect of 
 such writings as those of Rochefoucault, Mandeville, and others, 
 will be to look at the pictures of Raphael and Correggio. You 
 need not be altogether ashamed, my dear little boy, of belonging 
 to a species which could produce such faces as those ; nor de- 
 spair of doing something worthy of a laudable ambition, when 
 you see what such hands have wrought ! You will, perhaps, 
 one day have reason to thank me for this advice. 
 
 As to your studies and school exercises, I wish you to learn 
 Latin, French, and dancing. I would insist upon the last more 
 particularly, both because it is more likely to be neglected, and 
 because it is of the greatest consequence to your success in life. 
 Every thing almost depends upon first impressions ; and these 
 depend (besides person, which is not in our power,) upon two 
 things, dress and address, which every one may command with 
 proper attention. These are the small coin in the intercourse of 
 life, which are continually in request ; and perhaps you will find 
 at the year's end, or towards the close of life, that the daily in- 
 sults, coldness, or contempt to which you have been exposed by 
 a neglect of such superficial recommendations, are hardly atoned 
 for by the few proofs of esteem or admiration which your inte- 
 grity or talents have been able to extort in the course of it. When 
 we habitually disregard those things which we know will ensure 
 the favourable opinion of others, it shows we set that opinion at 
 defiance, or consider ourselves above it, which no one ever did 
 with impunity. An inattention to our own persons implies a dis- 
 respect to others, and nlay often be traced no less to a want of 
 good nature than of good sense. The old maxim Desire t<
 
 74 TABLE TALK. 
 
 phase, and you will infallibly please explains the whole matter, 
 If there is a tendency to vanity and affectation on this side of 
 the question, there is an equal alloy of pride and obstinacy on 
 the opposite one. Slovenliness may at any time be cured by an 
 effort of resolution, but a graceful carriage requires an early 
 habit, and, in most cases, the aid of the dancing-master. I would 
 not have you, from not knowing how to enter a room properly, 
 stumble at the very threshhold in the good graces of those on 
 whom it is possible the fate of your future life may depend. 
 Nothing creates a greater prejudice against any one than awk- 
 wardness. A person who is confused in manner and gesture 
 seems to have done something wrong, or as if he was conscious 
 of no one qualification to build a confidence in himself upon. 
 On the other hand, openness, freedom, self-possession, set others 
 at ease with you by showing that you are on good terms with 
 yourself. Grace in women gains the affections sooner, and se- 
 cures them longer, than any thing else it is an outward and 
 visible sign of an inward harmony of soul as the want of it in 
 men, as if the mind and body equally hitched in difficulties and 
 were distracted with doubts, is the greatest impediment in the 
 career of gallantry and road to the female heart. Another 
 thing I would caution you against is not to pore over your books 
 till you are bent almost double a habit you will never be able 
 to get the better of, and which you will find of serious ill conse- 
 quence. A stoop in the shoulders sinks a man in public and in 
 private estimation. You are at present straight enough, and 
 you walk with boldness and spirit. Do nothing to take away 
 the use of your limbs, or the spring and elasticity of your 
 muscles. As to all worldly advantages, it is to the full of as 
 much importance that your deportment should be erect and 
 manly as your actions. 
 
 You will naturally find out all this and fall into it, if your at- 
 tention is drawn out sufficiently to what is passing around you ; 
 and this will be the case, unless you are absorbed too much in 
 books and those sedentary studies, 
 
 " Which waste the marrow, and consume the brain." 
 You are, I think, too fond of reading, as it is. As one means
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 75 
 
 of avoiding excess in this way, I would wish you to make it a 
 rule, never to read at meal-times, nor in company when there is 
 any (even the most trivial) conversation going on, nor ever to let 
 your eagerness to learn encroach upon your play-hours. Books 
 are but one inlet of knowledge ; and the pores of the mind, like 
 those of the body, should be left open to all impressions. I ap- 
 plied too close to my studies soon after I was of your age, and 
 hurt myself irreparably by it. Whatever may be the value of 
 learning, health and good spirits are of more. 
 
 I would have you, as I said, make yourself master of French, 
 because you may find it of use in the commerce of life ; and 1 
 would have you learn Latin, partly because I learnt it myself, 
 and I would not have you without any of the advantages or 
 sources of knowledge that I possessed it would be a bar of sepa- 
 ration between us and secondly, because there is an atmosphere 
 round this sort of classical ground, to which that of actual life is 
 gross and vulgar. Shut out from this garden of early sweetness, 
 we may well exclaim 
 
 " How shall we part and wander down 
 
 Into a lower world, to this obscure 
 
 And wild. How shall we breathe in other air 
 
 Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits V 
 
 I do not think the Classics so indispensable to the cultivation of 
 your intellect as on another account, which I have explained 
 elsewhere, and you will have no objection to turn with me to the 
 passage. 
 
 " The study of the Classics is less to be regarded as an exer- 
 cise of the intellect, than as a discipline of humanity. The pecu- 
 liar advantage of this mode of education consists not so much in 
 strengthening the understanding, as in softening and refining the 
 taste. It gives men liberal views ; it accustoms the mind to take 
 an interest in things foreign to itself; to love virtue for its own 
 sake ; to prefer fame to life, and glory to riches ; and to fix our 
 thoughts on the remote and permanent, instead of narrow and 
 fleeting objects. It teaches us to believe mat there is something 
 really great and excellent in the world, surviving all the shocks 
 of accident and fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that 
 
 6 PART II.
 
 76 TABLE TALK. 
 
 low and servile fear, which bows only to present power and up. 
 start authority. Rome and Athens filled a place in the history 
 of mankind, which can never be occupied again. They were two 
 cities set on a hill, which could not be hid ; all eyes have seen 
 them, and their light shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss 
 of time. 
 
 " Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, 
 Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; 
 Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, 
 Destructive war, and ail-involving age. 
 Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, 
 Immortal heirs of universal praise ! 
 Whose honours with increase of ages grow, 
 As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!" 
 
 It is this feeling more than any thing else which produces a 
 marked difference between the study of the ancient and modern 
 languages, and which, by the weight and importance of the con- 
 sequences attached to the former, stamps every word with a 
 monumental firmness. By conversing with the mighty dead, we 
 imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached 
 tq those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through 
 the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the pre- 
 sence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts 
 and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations 
 and ages." 
 
 Because, however, you have learnt Latin and Greek, and can 
 speak a different language, do not fancy yourself of a different 
 order of beings from those you ordinarily converse with. They 
 perhaps know and can do more things than you, though you have 
 learnt a greater variety of names to express the same thing by. 
 The great object indeed of these studies is to be " a cure for a 
 narrow and selfish spirit," and to carry the mind out of its petty 
 and local prejudices to the idea of a more general humanity. Do 
 not fancy, because you are intimate with Homer and Virgil, that 
 your neighbours who can never attain the same posthumous fame 
 are to be despised, like those impudent valets who live in noble 
 families and look down upon every one else. Though you are 
 master of Cicero's Orations, think it possible for a cobler at a stall
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 77 
 
 lo be more eloquent than you. " But you are a scholar, and he 
 is not." Well, then, you have that advantage over him, but it 
 does not follow that you are to have every other. Look at the 
 heads of the celebrated poets and philosophers of antiquity in the 
 collection at Wilton, and you will say they answer to their works : 
 but you will find others in the same collection whose names have 
 hardly come down to us, that are equally fine, and cast in the 
 same classic mould. Do you imagine that all the thoughts, ge- 
 nius, and capacity of those old and mighty nations are contained 
 in a few odd volumes, to be thumbed by school-boys ? This re- 
 flection is not meant to lessen your admiration of the great names 
 to which you will be accustomed to look up, but to direct it to 
 that solid mass of intellect and power, of which they were the 
 most shining ornaments. I would wish you to excel in this sort 
 of learning and to take a pleasure in it, because it is the path 
 that has been chosen for you : but do not suppose that others do 
 not excel equally in their line of study or exercise of skill, or that 
 there is but one mode of excellence in art or nature. You have 
 got on vastly beyond the point at which you set out ; but others 
 have been getting on as well as you in the same or other ways, 
 and have kept pace with you. What, then, you may ask, is the 
 use of all the pains you have taken, if it gives you no superiority 
 over mankind in general ? It is this You have reaped all the 
 benefit of improvement and knowledge yourself; and farther, if 
 you had not moved forwards, you would by this time have been 
 left behind. Envy no one, disparage no one, think yourself 
 above no one. Their demerits will not piece out your deficien- 
 cies ; nor is it a waste of time and labour for you to cultivate 
 your own talents, because you cannot bespeak a monopoly of all 
 advantages. You are more learned than many of your acquaint- 
 ance who may be more active, healthy, witty, successful in busi- 
 ness, or expert in some elegant or useful art than you ; but you 
 have no reason to complain, if you have attained the object of 
 your ambition. Or if you should not be able to compass this from 
 a want of genius or parts, yet learn, my child, to be contented 
 with a mediocrity of acquirements. You may still be respectable 
 in your conduct, and enjoy a tranquil obscurity, with more friends 
 and fewer enemies than you might otherwise have had. 
 
 12*
 
 78 TABLE TALK. 
 
 There is one almost certain drawback on a course of scholastic 
 study, that it unfits men for active life. The ideal is always at 
 variance with the practical. The habit of fixing the attention on 
 the imaginary and abstracted deprives the mind equally of energy 
 and fortitude. By indulging our imaginations on fictions and 
 chimeras, where we have it all our own way, and are led on only 
 by the pleasure of the prospect, we grow fastidious, effeminate, 
 lapped in idle luxury, impatient of contradiction, and unable to 
 sustain the shock of real adversity, when it comes ; as by being 
 taken up with abstract reasoning or remote events in which we 
 are merely passive spectators, we have no resources to provide 
 against it, no readiness, or expedients for the occasion, or spirit 
 to use them, even if they occur. We must think again before 
 we determine, and thus the opportunity for action is lost. While 
 we are considering the very best possible mode of gaining an ob- 
 ject, we find that it has slipped through our fingers, or that others 
 have laid rude, fearless hands upon it. The youthful tyro reluct- 
 antly discovers that the ways of the world are not his ways, nor 
 their thoughts his thoughts. Perhaps the old monastic institutions 
 were not in this respect unwise, which carried on to the end of 
 life the secluded habits and romantic associations with which it 
 began, and which created a privileged world for the inhabitants, 
 distinct from the common world of men and women. You will 
 bring with you from your books and solitary reveries a wrong 
 measure of men and things, unless you correct it by careful ex- 
 perience and mixed observation. You will raise your standard 
 of character as much too high at first as from disappointed expec- 
 tation it will sink too low afterwards. The best qualifier of this 
 theoretical mania, and of the dreams of poets and moralists, (who 
 both treat of things as they ought to he and not as they are,) is in 
 one sense to be found in some of our own popular writers, such 
 as our Novelists and periodical Essayists. But you had, after 
 all, better wait and see what things are than try to anticipate the 
 results. You know more of a road by having travelled it than 
 by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world. You will 
 find the business of life conducted on a much more varied and 
 individual scale than you would expect. People will be con- 
 cerned about a thousand things that you have no idea of, and will
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 19 
 
 be utterly indifferent to what you feel the greatest interest in. 
 You will find good and evil, folly and discretion, more mingled, 
 and the shades of character running more into each other tha l 
 they do in the ethical charts. No one is equally wise or guardc d 
 at all points, and it is seldom that any one is quite a fx>l. Do 
 not be surprised, when you go out into the world, to find men talk 
 exceedingly well on different subjects, who do not derive their in- 
 formation immediately from books. In the first place, the light 
 of books is diffused very much abroad in the world in conversa- 
 tion and at second-hand ; and besides, common sense is not a 
 monopoly, and experience and observation are sources of informa- 
 tion open to the man of the world as well as to the retired student. 
 If you know more of the outline and principles, he knows more 
 of the details and " practique part of life." A man may discuss 
 the adventures of a campaign in which he was engaged very 
 agreeably without having read the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, 
 or give a singular account of the method of drying teas in China 
 without being a profound chemist. It is the vice of scholars to 
 suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books. 
 Do you avoid it, I conjure you ; and thereby save yourself the 
 pain and mortification that must ensue from finding out your mis- 
 take continually ! 
 
 Gravity is one great ingredient in the conduct of life, and per- 
 naps a certain share of it is hardly to be dispensed with. Few 
 people can afford to be quite unaffected. At any rate, do not put 
 your worst qualities foremost. Do not seek to distinguish your- 
 self by being ridiculous ; nor entertain that miserable ambition 
 to be the sport and butt of the company. By aiming at a certain 
 standard of behaviour or intellect, you will at least show your 
 taste and value for what is excellent. There are those who blurt 
 out their good things with so little heed of what they are about 
 that no one thinks any thing of them ; as others by keeping 
 their folly to themselves gain the reputation of wisdom. Do not, 
 however, affect to speak only in oracles, or to deal in bon-mots : 
 condescend to the level of the company, and be free and accessible 
 to all persons. Express whatever occurs to you, that cannot offend 
 others or hurt yourself. Keep some opinions to yourself. Say 
 what you please of others, but never repeat what you hear said
 
 SO TABLE TALK. 
 
 of them to themselves. If you have nothing better to offer, laugh 
 with the witty, assent to the wise : they will not think the worse 
 of you for it. Listen to information on subjects you are unac- 
 quainted with, instead of always striving to lead the conversation 
 to some favourite one of your own. By the last method you will 
 shine, but will not improve. I am ashamed myself ever to open 
 my lips on any question I have ever written upon. It is much 
 more difficult to be able to converse on an equality with a number 
 of persons in turn, than to soar above their heads, and excite the 
 stupid gaze of all companies by bestriding some senseless topic of 
 your own and confounding the understandings of those who are 
 ignorant of it. Be not too fond of argument. Indeed, by going 
 much into company (which I do not, however, wish you to do) 
 \ou will be weaned from this practice, if you set out with it. 
 Rather suggest what remarks may have occurred to you on a 
 subject than aim at dictating your opinions to others or at de- 
 fending yourself at all points. You will learn more by agree- 
 ing in the main with others and entering into their trains of 
 thinking, than by contradicting and urging them to extremities. 
 Avoid singularity of opinion as well as of every thing else. 
 Sound conclusions come with practical knowledge, rather than 
 with speculative refinements : in what we really understand, we 
 reason but little. Long-winded disputes fill up the place of com- 
 mon sense and candid inquiry. Do not imagine that you will 
 make people friends by showing your superiority over them : it 
 is what they will neither admit nor forgive, unless you have a 
 high and acknowledged reputation beforehand, which renders 
 this sort of petty vanity more inexcusable. Seek to gain the 
 good-will of others, rather than to extort their applause ; and to 
 this end be neither too tenacious of your own claims, nor in- 
 clined to press too hard on their weaknesses. 
 
 Do not affect the society of your inferiors in rank, nor court 
 that of the great. There can be no real sympathy in either case. 
 The first will consider you as a restraint upon them, and the last 
 as an intruder or upon sufferance. It is not a desirable distinction 
 to be admitted into company as a man of talents. You are a mark 
 for invidious observation. If you say nothing, or mercy behave 
 with common propriety and simplicity, you seem to have no busi
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 31 
 
 ness there. If you make a studied display of yourself, it is arro- 
 gating a consequence you have no right to. If you are contented 
 to pass as an indifferent person, they despise you ; if you distinguish 
 yourself, and show more knowledge, wit, or taste than they do, 
 they hate you for it. You have no alternative. I would rather 
 be asked out to sing than to talk. Every one does not pretend to 
 a fine voice, but every one fancies he has as mucn understanding 
 as another. Indeed the secret of this sort of intercourse has beer 
 pretty well found out. Literary men are seldom invited to the 
 tables of the great ; they send for players and musicians, as they 
 keep monkeys and parrots ! 
 
 I would not, however, have you run away with a notion that 
 the rich are knaves or that lords are fools. They are for what 
 I know as honest and as wise as other people. But it is a trick 
 of our self-love, supposing that another has the decided advantage 
 of us in one way, to strike a balance by taking it for granted 
 (as a moral antithesis) that he must be as much beneath us in 
 those qualities on which we plume ourselves, and which we would 
 appropriate almost entirely to our own use. It is hard indeed if 
 others are raised above us not only by the gifts of fortune, but of 
 understanding too. It is not to be credited. People have an un- 
 willingness to admit that the House of Lords can be equal in 
 talent to the House of Commons. So in the other sex, if a woman 
 is handsome, she is an idiot, or no better than she should be : in 
 ours, if a man is worth a million of money, he is a miser, a fellow 
 that cannot spell his own name, or a poor creature in some way, 
 to bring him to our level. This is malice, and not truth. Be- 
 lieve all the good you can of every one. Do not measure others 
 by yourself. If they have advantages which you have not, let 
 your liberality keep pace with their good fortune. Envy no one, 
 and you need envy no one. If you have but the magnanimity 
 to allow merit wherever you see it understanding in a lord or 
 wit in a cobler this temper of mind will stand you instead of 
 many accomplishments. Think no man too happy. Raphael 
 died young : Milton had the misfortune to be blind. If any one 
 is vain or proud, it is from folly or ignorance. Those who pique 
 themselves excessively on some one thing, have but that one 
 thing to pique themselves upon, as languages, mechanics, fcc. I
 
 82 TABL^ TALK. 
 
 do not say that this is not an enviable delusion where it is not 
 liable to be disturbed ; but at present knowledge is too much dif- 
 fused and pretensions come too much into collision for this to be 
 long the case ; and it is better not to form such a prejudice at 
 first than to have it to undo all the rest of one's life. If you learn 
 any two things, though they may put you out of conceit one with 
 the other, they will effectually cure you of any conceit you might 
 have of yourself, by showing the variety and scope there is in the 
 Human mind beyond the limits you had set to it. 
 
 You were convinced the first day that you could not learn 
 Latin, which now you find easy. Be taught from this, not to 
 think other obstacles insurmountable, that you may meet with in 
 the course of your life, though they seem so at first sight. 
 
 Attend above all things to your health ; or rather, do nothing 
 wilfully to impair it. Use exercise, abstinence, and regular 
 hours. Drink water when you are alone, and wine or very little 
 spirits in company. It is the last that are ruinous by leading to un- 
 limited excess. There is not the same headlong impetus in wine. 
 But one glass of brandy and water makes you want another, that 
 othei makes you want a third, and so on, in an increased propor- 
 tion. Therefore no one can stop midway who does not possess the 
 resolution to abstain altogether ; for the inclination is sharpened 
 with its indulgence. Never gamble. Or if you play for any 
 thing, never do so for what will give you uneasiness the next day. 
 Be not precise in these matters : but do not pass certain limits, 
 which it is difficult to recover. Do nothing in the irritation of the 
 moment, but take time to reflect. Because you have done one 
 foolish thing, do not do another ; nor throw away your health or 
 reputation or comfort, to thwart impertinent advice. Avoid a 
 spirit of contradiction, both in words and actions. Do not aim at 
 what is beyond your reach, but at what is within it. Indulge in 
 calm and pleasing pursuits, rather than violent excitements ; and 
 learn to conquer your own will, instead of striving to obtain the 
 mastery of that of others. 
 
 With respect to your friends, I would wish you to choose them 
 neither from caprice nor accident, and to adhere to them as long 
 as you can. Do not take a surfeit of friendship, through over 
 sanguine enthusiasm, nor expect it to last for ever. Always speak
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 83 
 
 well of those with whom you have once been intimate, or take 
 some part of the censure you bestow on them to yourself. Never 
 quarrel with tried friends, or those whom you wish to continue 
 such. Wounds of this kind are sure to open again. When once 
 the prejudice is removed that sheathes defects, familiarity only 
 causes jealousy and distrust. Do not keep on with a mockery of 
 friendship after the substance is gone but part, while you can 
 part friends. Bury the carcase of friendship : it is not worth 
 embalming. 
 
 As to the books you will have to read by choice or for amuse- 
 ment, the best are the commonest. The names of many of them 
 are already familiar to you. Read them as you grow up with 
 all the satisfaction in your power, and make much of them. It 
 is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will have in life, the one 
 you will think of longest, and repent of least. If my life had 
 been more full of calamity than it has been (much more than 
 I hope yours will be) I would live it over again, my poor little 
 boy, to have read the books I did in my youth. 
 
 In politics I wish you to be an honest man, but no brawler. 
 Hate injustice and falsehood for your own sake. Be neither a 
 martyr, nor a sycophant. Wish well to the world without ex- 
 pecting to see it much better than it is; and do not gratify the 
 enemies of liberty by putting yourself at their mercy, if it can 
 be avoided with honour. 
 
 If you ever marry, I would wish you to marry the woman you 
 like. Do not be guided by the recommendation of friends. No- 
 thing will atone for or overcome an original distaste. It will only 
 increase from intimacy ; and if you are to live separate, it is bet- 
 ter not to come together. There is no use in dragging a chain 
 through life, unless it binds one to the object we love. Choose 
 a mistress from among your equals. You will be able to under- 
 stand her character better, and she will be more likely to under- 
 stand yours. Those in an inferior station to yourself will doubt 
 vour good intentions, and misapprehend your plainest expres- 
 sions. All that you swear is to them a riddle or downright non 
 sense. You cannot by possibility translate your thoughts into 
 their dialect. They will be ignorant of the meaning of half you 
 say. and laugh at the rest. As mistresses, they will have uo
 
 84 TABLE TALK. 
 
 sympathy with you ; and as wives, you can havo none with them. 
 But they will do all they can to thwart you, and to retrieve them- 
 selves in their own opinion by trick and low cunning. No wo- 
 man ever married into a family above herself that did not try to 
 make all the mischief she could in it. Be not in haste to marry, 
 nor to engage your affections, where there is no probability of a 
 return. Do not fancy every woman you see the heroine of a 
 romance, a Sophia Western, a Clarissa, or a Julia ; and yourself 
 the potential hero of it, Tom Jones, Lovelace, or St. Preux. 
 Avoid this error as you would shrink back from a precipice. 
 All your fine sentiments and romantic notions will (of them, 
 selves) make no more impression on one of these delicate crea- 
 tures, than on a piece of marble. Their soft bosoms are steel to 
 your amorous refinements, if you have no other pretensions. It 
 is not what you think of them that determines their choice, but 
 what they think of you. Endeavour, if you would escape lin- 
 gering torments and the gnawing of the worm that dies not, to 
 find out this, and to abide by the issue. We trifle with, make 
 sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow 
 those that fly from us. " We hunt the wind, we worship a statue, 
 cry aloud to the desert." Do you, my dear boy, stop short in 
 this career, if you find yourself setting out in it, and make up 
 your mind to this, that if a woman does not like you of her own 
 accord, that is, from involuntary impressions, nothing you can 
 say or do or suffer for her sake will make her, but will set her 
 the more against you. So the song goes 
 
 " Quit, quit for shame; this will not move: 
 
 If of herself she will not love, 
 Nothing will make her, the devil take her !" 
 
 There is but one other point on which I meant to speak to you, 
 and that is the choice of a profession. This, probably, had bet- 
 ter be left to time or accident or your own inclination. You 
 have a very fine e"ar, but I have somehow a prejudice against 
 men-singers, and indeed against the stage altogether. It is an 
 uncertain and ungrateful soil. All professions are bad that de 
 pend on reputation, which is " as often got without merit as lost 
 without deserving." Yet 1 cannot easilv reconcile myself to
 
 ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. Sf> 
 
 your being a slave to business, and I sball hardly be able to 
 leave you an independence. A situation in a public office is se. 
 cure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the two great 
 springs of life, Hope and Fear. Perhaps, however, it might en- 
 sure you a competence, and leave you leisure for some other 
 favourite amusement or pursuit. I have said all reputation is 
 hazardous, hard to win, harder to keep. Many never attain a 
 glimpse of what they have all their lives been looking for, and 
 others survive a passing shadow of it. Yet if I were to name 
 one pursuit rather than another, I should wish you to be a good 
 painter, if such a thing could be hoped. I have failed in this 
 myself, and should wish you to be able to do what 1 have not 
 o paint like Claude or Rembrandt or Guido or Vandyke, if it 
 Were possible. Artists, I think, who have succeeded in their 
 chief object, live to be old, and are agreeable old men. Their 
 minds keep alive to the last. Cosway's spirits never flagged till 
 after ninety, and Nollekens, though blind, passed all his morn- 
 ings in giving directions about some group or bust in his work- 
 shop. You have seen Mr. , that delightful specimen of the 
 
 last age. With what avidity he takes up his pencil, or lays it 
 down again to talk of numberless things ! His eye has not lost 
 its lustre, nor " paled its ineffectual fire." His body is a 
 shadow : he himself is a pure spirit. There is a kind of im- 
 mortality about this sort of ideal and visionary existence that 
 dallies with Fate and baffles the grim monster, Death. If I 
 thought you could make as clever an artist and arrive at such 
 
 an agreeable old age as Mr. , I should declare at once for 
 
 your devoting yourself to this enchanting profession i and in that 
 reliance, should feel less regret at some of my own disappoint 
 ments, and little anxiety on ycur account !
 
 66 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XXIII. 
 
 The Indian Jugglers. 
 
 Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white 
 dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian Jugglers be- 
 gins with tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us 
 could do, and concludes with keeping up four at the same time, 
 which is what none of us could do to save our lives, nor if we 
 were to take our whole lives to do it in. Is it then a trifling 
 power we see at work, or is it not something next to miraculous 1 
 It is the utmost stretch of human ingenuity, which nothing but 
 the bending the faculties of body and mind to it from the tender 
 est infancy with incessant, ever-anxious application, up to man- 
 hood, can accomplish or make even a slight approach to. Man,, 
 thou art a wonderful animal, and thy ways past finding out ! 
 Thou canst do strange things, but thou turnest them to little ac- 
 count ! To conceive of this effort of extraordinary dexterity 
 distracts the imagination and makes admiration breathless. Yet 
 it costs nothing to the performer, any more than if it were a mere 
 mechanical deception with which he had nothing to do but to 
 watch and laugh at the astonishment of the spectators. A single 
 error of a hair's breadth, of the smallest conceivable portion of 
 time, would be fatal : the precision of the movements must be 
 like a mathematical truth, their rapidity is like lightning. To 
 catch four balls in succession in less than a second of time, and 
 deliver them back so as to return with seeming consciousness to 
 the hand again, to make them revolve round him at certain in- 
 tervals, like the planets in their spheres, to make them chase one 
 another like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers or meteors, 
 to throw them behind his back and twine them round his neck 
 like ribbons or like serpents, U: do what appears an impossibility, 
 and to do it with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness ima-
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 87 
 
 ginable, to laugh at, to play with the glittering mockeries, to follow 
 them with his eye as if he could fascinate them with its lambent 
 fire or as if he had only to see that they kept time with the mu- 
 sic on the stage there is something in all this which he who 
 does not admire may be quite sure he never really admired any 
 thing in the whole course of his life. It is skill surmounting dif- 
 ficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. It seems as if the 
 difficulty once mastered naturally resolved itself into ease and 
 grace, and as if to be overcome at all, it must be overcome with- 
 out an effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or 
 self-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work of 
 witchcraft, and yet sport for children. Some of the other feats 
 are quite as curious and wonderful, such as the balancing the 
 artificial tree and shooting a bird from each branch through a 
 quill ; though none of them have the elegance or facility of the 
 keeping up of the brass balls. You are in pain for the result 
 and glad when the experiment is over ; they are not accompanied 
 with the same unmixed, unchecked delight as the former ; and 
 I would not give much to be merely astonished without being 
 pleased at the same time. As to the swallowing of the sword, 
 the police ought to interfere to prevent it. When I saw the In- 
 dian Juggler do the same things before, his feet were bare, and 
 he had large rings on the toes, which kept turning round all the 
 time of the performance, as if they moved of themselves. The 
 hearing a speech in Parliament, drawled or stammered out by 
 the Honourable Member or the Noble Lord, the ringing the 
 changes on their common-places, which any one could repeat 
 after them as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my good 
 opinion of myself: but the seeing the Indian Jugglers does. It 
 makes me ashamed of myself. I ask what there is that I can 
 do as well as this ? Nothing. What have I been doing all my 
 life ? Have I been idle, or have I nothing to show for all my la- 
 bour and pains ? Or have I passed my time in pouring words 
 like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then 
 down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth cf facts, and 
 looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them ? Is there 
 no one thing in which I can challenge competition, that I can 
 bring as ah instance of exact perfection, in which others cancel
 
 88 TABLE TALK. 
 
 find a flaw ? The utmost I can pretend to is to write a descrip. 
 uon of what this fellow can do. I can write a book : so can 
 many others who have not even learned to spell. What abor- 
 tions are these Essays ! What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, 
 what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions ! How little is 
 made out, and that little how ill ! Yet they are the best I can 
 do. I endeavour to recollect all I have ever observed or thought 
 upon a subject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of 
 writing on four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manag 
 to keep the thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. I 
 have also time on my hands to correct my opinions, and polish 
 my periods : but the one I cannot, and the other I will not do. I 
 am fond of arguing : yet with a good deal of pains and practice 
 it is often as much as I can do to beat my man though he may 
 be a very indifferent hand! A common fencer would disarm hia 
 adversary in the twinkling of an eye, unless he were a professor 
 like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this effect, 
 but there is no such power or superiority in sense or reasoning. 
 There is no complete mastery of execution to be shown there : 
 and h :i hardly know the professor from the impudent pretender 
 or the mere clown.* 
 
 I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and slow 
 progress of intellectual compared with mechanical excellence, 
 and it has always made me somewhat dissatisfied. It is a great 
 many years since I saw Richer, the famous rope-dancer, perform 
 at Sadler's Wells. He was matchless in his art, and added to 
 his extraordinary skill exquisite ease, and unaffected, natural 
 grace. I was at that time employed in copying a half-length 
 
 * The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) first discovered and brought 
 out the talents of the late Mr. Opie, the painter. He was a poor Cornish boy, 
 and was out at work in the fields, when the poet went in search of him. 
 " Well, my lad, can you go and bring me your very best picture ?" The other 
 flew like lightning, and soon came back with what he considered as his mas- 
 ter-piece. The stranger looked at it, and the young artist, after waiting for 
 some time without his giving any opinion, at length exclaimed eagerly, " Well, 
 what do you think of it?" " Think of it?" said Wolcot, " why, I think you 
 ought to be ashamed of it that you who might do so well, do no better!" 
 The same answer would have applied to this artist's latest performances, that 
 bad been suggests! by one of his earliest efforts.
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 89 
 
 picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds's ; and it put me out of conceit 
 with it. How ill this part was made out in the drawing ! How 
 heavy, how slovenly this other was painted ! I could not help 
 saying to myself, " If the rope-dancer had performed his task in 
 this manner, leaving so many gaps and botches in his work, he 
 would have broke his neck long ago ; I should never have seen 
 that vigorous elasticity of nerve and precision of movement !" 
 Is it then so easy an undertaking (comparatively) to dance on 
 a tight-rope ? Let any one, who thinks so, get up and try. There 
 is the thing. It is that which at first we cannot do at all, which 
 in the end is done to such perfection. To account for this in 
 some degree, I might observe that mechanical dexterity is con- 
 fined to doing some one particular thing, which you can repeat 
 as often as you please, in which you know whether you succeed 
 or fail, and where the point of perfection consists in succeeding 
 in a given undertaking. In mechanical efforts, you improve by 
 perpetual practice, and you do so infallibly, because the object 
 to be attained is not a matter of taste or fancy or opinion, but of 
 actual experiment, in which you must either do the thing or not 
 do it. If a man is put to aim at a mark with a bow and arrow, 
 he must hit it or miss it, that's certain. He cannot deceive him- 
 self, and go on shooting wide or falling short, and still fancy that 
 he is making progress. The distinction between right and wrong, 
 between true and false, is here palpable ; and he must either cor- 
 rect his aim or persevere in his error with his eyes open, for 
 which there is neither excuse nor temptation. If a man is learn- 
 ing to dance on a rope, if he does not mind what he is about, he 
 will break his neck. After that, it will be in vain for him to 
 argue that he did not make a false step. His situation is not 
 like that of Goldsmith's pedagogue 
 
 " In argument they own'd his wondrous skill, 
 And e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still." 
 
 Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are dis- 
 grace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There 
 s no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time 
 away, being off your guard (or you must take the consequences)
 
 90 TABLE TALK. 
 
 neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice. 
 If the Indian Juggler were to play tricks in throwing up the three 
 case-knives, which keep their positions like the leaves of a crocua 
 m the air, he would cut his fingers. I can make a very bad an- 
 tithesis without cutting my fingers. The tact of style is more 
 ambiguous than that of double-edged instruments. If the Juggler 
 were told that by flinging himself under the wheels of the Jugger- 
 naut, when the idol issues forth on a gaudy day, he would im- 
 mediately be transported into Paradise, he might believe it, and 
 nobody could disprove it. So the Brahmins may -say what they 
 please on that subject, may build up dogmas and mysteries with- 
 out end, and not be detected : but their ingenious countryman 
 cannot persuade the frequenters of the Olympic Theatre that he 
 performs a number of astonishing feats without actually giving 
 proofs of what he says. There is then in this sort of manual 
 dexterity, first a gradual aptitude acquired tc a given exertion of 
 muscular power, from constant repetition, and in the next place, 
 an exact knowledge how much is still wanting and necessary to 
 be supplied. The obvious test is to increase the effort or nicety 
 of the operation, and still to find it come true. The muscles ply 
 instinctively to the dictates of habit. Certain movements and 
 impressions of the hand and eye, having been repeated together 
 an infinite number of times, are unconsciously but unavoidably 
 cemented into closer and closer union ; the limbs require little 
 more than to be put in motion for them to follow a regular track 
 with ease and certainty ; so that the mere intention of the will 
 acts mathematically like touching the spring of a machine, and 
 you come with Locksley in Ivanhoe, in shooting at a mark, " to 
 allow for the wind." 
 
 Farther, what is meant by perfection in mechanical exercises 
 is the performing certain feats to a uniform nicety, that is, in 
 fact, undertaking no more than you can perform. You task 
 yourself, the limit you fix is optional, and no more than human 
 industry and skill can attain to : but you have no abstract, inde- 
 pendent standard of difficulty or excellence (other than the extent 
 of your own powers). Thus he who can keep up four brass balls 
 does this to perfection ; but he cannot keep up five at the same in 
 stant, and would fail every time he attempted it. That is, the me-
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 91 
 
 chanical performer undertakes to emulate himself, not t equal 
 another.* But the artist undertakes to imitate another, or to do 
 what nature has done, and this it appears is more difficult, viz. to 
 copy what she has set before us in the face of nature or " human 
 face divine," entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four 
 brass balls at the same instant, for the one is done by the power 
 of human skill and industry, and the other never was nor will be. 
 Upon the whole, therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds, 
 than I have for Richer ; for, happen how it will, there have been 
 more people in the world who could dance on a rope like the one 
 than who could painl like Sir Joshua. The latter was but a 
 bungler in his profession to the other, it is true ; but then he had 
 a harder task-master to obey, whose will was more wayward 
 and obscure, and whose instructions it was more difficult to 
 practise. You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or rope- 
 dancer with a comfortable prospect of success, if they are but 
 sound of wind and limb : but you cannot do the same thing in 
 painting. The odds are a million to one. You may make in- 
 deed as many H s and H s, as you put into that sort 
 
 of machine, but not one Reynolds amongst them all, with his 
 grace, his grandeur, his blandness of gusto, " in tones and ges- 
 tures hit," unless you could make the man over again. To 
 snatch this grace beyond the reach of art is then the height of 
 art where fine art begins, and where mechanical skill ends. 
 The soft suffusion of the soul, the speechless breathing eloquence, 
 the looks " commercing with the skies," the ever-shifting forms 
 of an eternal principle, that which is seen but for a moment, but 
 dwells in the heart always, and is only seized as it passes by 
 strong and secret sympathy, must be taught by nature and ge- 
 nius, not by rules or study. It is suggested by feeling, not by 
 laborious microscopic inspection : in seeking for it without, we 
 lose the harmonious clue to it within : and in aiming to grasp 
 the substance, we let the very spirit of art evaporate. In a 
 word, the objects of fine art are not the objects of sight but as 
 these last are the objects of taste and imagination, that is, as they 
 
 * If two persons play against each other at any game, one of them neces- 
 sarily fails. 
 
 7 PART II.
 
 98 TABLE TALK. 
 
 appeal to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of power in the 
 human breast, and are explained by that finer sense, and re- 
 vealed in their inner structure to the eye in return. Nature is 
 also a language. Objects, like words, have a meaning ; and the 
 true artist is the interpreter of this language, which he can only 
 do by knowing its application to a thousand other objects in a 
 thousand other situations. Thus the eye is too blind a guide of 
 itself to distinguish between the warm or cold tone of a deep blue 
 sky, but another sense acts as a monitor to it, and does not err. 
 The colour of the leaves in autumn would be nothing without the 
 feeling that accompanies it ; but it is that feeling that stamps 
 them on the canvas, faded, seared, blighted, shrinking from the 
 winter's flaw, and makes the sight as true as touch 
 
 " And visions, as poetic eyes avow, 
 
 Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough." 
 
 The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sublime pari of 
 art is the seeing nature through the medium of sentiment and 
 passion, as each object is a symbol of the affections and a link in 
 the chain of our endless being. But the unravelling this mys- 
 terious web of thought and feeling is alone in the Muse's gift, 
 namely, in the power of that trembling sensibility which is awake 
 to every change and every modification of its ever-varying im- 
 pressions, that 
 
 " Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line." 
 
 This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, feeling, 
 taste ; but the manner in which it acts upon the mind can neither 
 be defined by abstract rules, as is the case in scienee, nor veri- 
 fied by continual unvarying experiments, as is the case in me- 
 chanical performances. The mechanical excellence of the 
 Dutch painters in colouring and handling is that which comes 
 the nearest in fine art to the perfection of certain manual exhibi- 
 tions of skill. The truth of the effect and the facility with which 
 it is produced are equally admirable. Up to a certain point, 
 every thing is faultless. The hand and eye have done their 
 part. There is only a want j. c f .aste and genius. It is after we
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 93 
 
 enter upon that enchanted ground that the human mind begins 
 to droop and flag as in a strange road, or in a thick mist, be- 
 nighted and making little way with many attempts and many 
 failures, and that the best of us only escape with half a tri- 
 umph. The undefined and the imaginary are the regions that we 
 must pass like Satan, difficult and doubtful, " half flying, half on 
 foot." The object in sense is a positive thing, and execution 
 comes with practice. 
 
 Cleverness is a certain knack or aptitude at doing certain things, 
 which depend more on a particular adroitness and off-hand 
 readiness than on force or perseverance, such as making puns, 
 making epigrams, making extempore verses, mimicking the 
 company, mimicking a style, &c. Cleverness is either live- 
 liness and smartness, or something answering to slight of hand, 
 like letting a glass fall sideways off a table, or else a trick, like 
 knowing the secret spring of a watch. Accomplishments are 
 certain external graces, which are to be learnt from others, and 
 which are easily displayed to the admiration of the beholder, viz. 
 dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These ornamental 
 acquirements are only proper to those who are at ease in mind 
 and fortune. I know an individual who, if he had been born to 
 an estate of five thousand a year, would have been the most ac- 
 complished gentleman of the age. He would have been the de- 
 light and envy of the circle in which he moved would have 
 graced by his manners the liberality flowing from the openness 
 of his heart, would have laughed with the women, have argued 
 with the men, have said good things and written agreeable 
 ones, have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, 
 and have set and sung his own verses nugce, canorce with ten- 
 derness and spirit ; a Rochester without the vice, a modern Sur- 
 rey ! As it is, all these capabilities of excellence stand in his 
 way. He is too versatile for a professional man, not dull enough 
 for a political drudge, too gay to be happy, too thoughtless 
 to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet, the severi- 
 ty of the prose-writer, and the application of the man of 
 business. Talent is the capacity of doing any thing that de- 
 pends on application and industry, such as writing a criti 
 cism making a speech, studying the law. Talent differs from 
 
 13
 
 94 TABLE TALK. 
 
 genius, as voluntary differs from involuntary power. Ingenuity 
 is genius in trifles, greatness is genius in undertakings of much 
 pith and moment. A clever or ingenious man is one who can do 
 any thing well, whether it is worth doing or not: a great 
 man is one who can do that which when done is of the highest 
 importance. Themistocles said he could not play on the flute, 
 but that he could make of a small city a great one. This gives 
 one a pretty good idea of the distinction in question. 
 
 Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not 
 enough that a man has great power in himself, he must show it 
 to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid. He 
 must fill up a certain idea in the public mind. I have no other 
 notion of greatness than this two-fold definition, great results 
 springing from great inherent energy. The great in visible ob- 
 jects has relation to that which extends over space : the great in 
 mental ones has to do with space and time. No man is truly 
 great, who is great only in his life-time. The test of greatness 
 is the page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has 
 a distinct limit, or that borders on something evidently greater 
 than itself. Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere 
 notoriety, is of a gross and vulgar quality in itself. A Lord 
 Mayor is hardly a great man. A city orator or patriot of the 
 day only show, by reaching the height of their wishes, the dis- 
 tance they are at from any true ambition. Popularity is neither 
 fame nor greatness. A king (as such) is not a great man. He 
 has great power, but it is not his own. He merely wields the 
 lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a madman can do. 
 It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any one else in the 
 same situation would be just as much an object of abject curiosi- 
 ty. We laugh at the country-girl who having seen a king ex- 
 pressed her disappointment by saying, " Why, he is only a 
 man !" Yet, knowing this, we run to see a king as if he was 
 something more than a man. To display the greatest powers, 
 unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the 
 character of greatness. To throw a barley-corn through the eye 
 of a needle, to multiply nine figures by nine in the memory, ar- 
 gues infinite dexterity of body and capacity of mind, but nothing 
 comes of either. There is a surprising power at work, but the
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 95 
 
 effects are not proportionate, or such as take hold of the imagi- 
 nation. To impress the idea of power on others, they must be 
 made in some way to feel it. It must be communicated to theii 
 understandings in the shape of an increase of knowledge, or it 
 must subdue and overawe them by subjecting their wills. Ad 
 miration to be solid and lasting must be founded on proofs from 
 which we have no means of escaping; it is neither a slight nor a 
 voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves a profound problem, 
 a poet who creates an image of beauty in the mind that was not 
 there before, imparts knowledge and power to others, in which 
 his greatness and his fame consists, and on which it reposes. 
 Jedediah Buxton will be forgotten ; but Napier's bones will live. 
 Lawgivers, philosophers, founders of religion, conquerors and 
 heroes, inventors and great geniuses in arts and sciences, are 
 great men, for they are great public benefactors, or formidable 
 scourges to mankind. Among ourselves, Shakespear, Newton, 
 Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, for they showed great 
 power by acts and thoughts, which have not yet been consigned 
 to oblivion. They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose 
 shadows lengthen out to remote posterity. A great farce-writer 
 may be a great man ; for Moliere was but a great farce-writer. 
 In my mind, the author of Don Quixote was a great man. So 
 have there been many others. A great chess-player is not a 
 great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act ter- 
 minating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all 
 displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the mo- 
 mentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or 
 trophy of themselves without them. Is not an actor then a great 
 man, because " he dies and leaves the world no copy V I must 
 make an exception for Mrs. Siddons, or else give up m\ defini- 
 tion of greatness for her sake. A man at the top of his vr. Ten- 
 sion is not therefore a great man. He is great in his way, but 
 that is all, unless he shows the marks of a great moving mfe!- 
 lect, so that we trace the master-mind, and can sympathize w.ih 
 the springs that urge him on. The rest is but a craft or m\ TJPtif. 
 John Hunter was a great man that any one might see wiVm 
 the smallest skill in surgery. His style and manner showed the 
 man. He would se about cutting up the carcase of a whaie 
 
 13
 
 96 TABLE TALK. 
 
 with the same greatness of gusto that Michael Angelo would 
 have hewn a block of marble. Lord Nelson was a g.eat js.tv.1 
 commander; but for myself, I have not much opinion of o >. r 3- 
 faring life. Sir Humphrey Davy is a great chemist, but I avn 
 not sure that he is a great man. I am not a bit the wiser fcv auy 
 of his discoveries, nor I never met with any one that was. Put 
 it is in the nature of greatness to propagate an idea of itself, us 
 wave impels wave, circle without circle. It is a contrar iction iu 
 terms for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man 
 has always an idea of something greater than himself I have 
 observed that certain sectaries and polemical writers have no 
 higher compliment to pay their most shining lights thsn to say thf*t 
 " Such a one was a considerable man in his day." Some new 
 elucidation of a text sets aside the authority of the old interim* 
 tation, and a " great scholar's memory outlives him half a cen- 
 tury," at the utmost. A rich man is not a great man, except to 
 his dependants and his steward. A lord is a great man in the 
 idea we have of his ancestry, and probably of himself, if we 
 know nothing of him but his title. I have heard a story of two 
 bishops, one of whom said (speaking of St. Peter's at Rome) that 
 when he first entered it, he was rather awe-struck, but that as he 
 walked up it, his mind seemed to swell and dilate with it, and at 
 last to fill the whole building the other said that as he saw 
 more of it, he appeared to himself to grow less and less every 
 step he took, and in the end to dwindle into nothing. This was 
 in some respects a striking picture of a great and little mind 
 for greatness sympathizes with greatness, and littleness shrinks 
 into itself. The one might have become a Wolsey ; the other 
 was only fit to become a mendicant friar or there might have 
 been court-reasons for making him a bishop. The French have 
 to me a character of littleness in all about them ; but they have 
 produced three great men that belong to every country, Moliere 
 Rabelais, and Montaigne. 
 
 To return from this digression, and conclude the Essay. A 
 singular instance of manual dexterity was shown in the person 
 of tbe late John Cavanagh, whom I have several times seen. His 
 death was celebrated at the time in an article in the Examiner 
 newspaper, (Feb. 7, 1819,) written apparently between jest and
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 97 
 
 earnest : but as it is pat to our purpose, and falls in with my 
 own way of considering such subjects, I shall here take leave to 
 quote it. 
 
 " Died at his house in Burbage-street, St. Giles's, John Ca- 
 vanagh, the famous hand fives-player. When a person dies, 
 who does any one thing better than any one else in the world, 
 which so many others are trying to do well, it leaves a gap in 
 society. It is not likely that any one will now see the game of 
 fives played in its perfection for many years to come for Ca- 
 vanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him. It may 
 be said that there are things of more importance than striking a 
 ball against a wall there are things indeed that make more 
 ncise and do as little good, such as making war and peace, 
 making speeches and answering them ; making verses and 
 blotting them ; making money and throwing it away. But 
 the game of fives is what no one despises who has ever 
 played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the 
 best relaxation for the mind. The Roman poet said that ' Care 
 mounted behind the horseman and stuck to his skirts.' But this 
 remark would not have applied to the fives-player. He who 
 takes to playing at fives is twice young. He feels neither the 
 past nor future ' in the instant.' Debts, taxes, ' domestic treason, 
 foreign levy, nothing can touch him further.' He has no other 
 wish, no other thought, from the moment the game begins, but 
 that of striking the ball, of placing it, of making it ! This Ca- 
 vanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the ball, there 
 was an end of the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, 
 his presence of mind complete. He could do what he pleased, 
 and Jie always knew exactly what to do. He saw the whole 
 game, and played it ; took instant advantage of his adversary's 
 weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle and from sud- 
 den thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal power 
 and skill, quickness, and judgment. He could either outwit his 
 antagonist by finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, 
 when he seemed preparing to send the ball with the full swing 
 of his arm, he would by a slight turn of his wrist drop it within 
 an inch of the line. In general, the ball came from his hand as 
 tf from a racket, in a straight horizontal line ; so that it was in
 
 98 TABLE TALK.. 
 
 vain to attempt to overtake or stop it. As it was said of a great 
 orator that he never was at a loss for a word, and for the pro- 
 perest word, so Cavanagh always could tell the degree of force 
 necessary to be given to a ball, and the precise direction in which 
 it should be sent. He did his work with the greatest ease ; never 
 took more pains than was necessary ; and while others were fag- 
 ging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if he had 
 just entered the court. His style of play was as remarkable as 
 his power of execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He 
 did not throw away the game to show off an attitude, or try an 
 experiment. He was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did 
 what he could, but that was more than any one else could even 
 affect to do. His blows were not undecided and ineffectual 
 lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering like 
 Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr. 
 Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor 
 foul like the Quarterly, net let balls like the Edinburgh Review. 
 Cobbett and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh. He 
 was the best up-hill player in the world ; even when his adver- 
 sary was fourteen, he would play on the same or better, and as 
 he never flung away the gr.me through carelessness and conceit, 
 he never gave it up through laziness or want of heart. The only 
 peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, but let the 
 balls hop ; but if they rose an inch from the ground, he never 
 missed having them. There was not only nobody equal, but no- 
 body second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other 
 player half the game, or beat them with his left hand. His ser- 
 vice was tremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith 
 together (two of the best players in England) in the Fives-court, 
 St. Martin's-street, and made seven and twenty aces following 
 by services alone a thing unheard of. He another time played 
 Peru, who was considered a first-rate fives-player, a match of 
 the best out of five games, and in the three first games, whic v 
 of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace. Cavanagl 
 was an Irishman by birth, and a house- painter by profession. 
 He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his 
 smartest clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's 
 pleasure. A person accosted him, and asked him if he would
 
 THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 99 
 
 have a game. So they agreed to play for half a crown a game, 
 and a bottle of cider. The first game began it was seven, 
 eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh won it. The next 
 was the same. They played on, and each game was hardly con- 
 tested. ' There,' said the unconscious fives-player, ' there was 
 a stroke that Cavanagh could not take : I never played better in 
 my life, and yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it is.' 
 However, they played on, Cavanagh winning every game, and 
 the by-standers drinking the cider and laughing all the time. In 
 the twelfth game, when Cavanagh was only four, and the stranger 
 thirteen, a person came in, and said, ' What ! are you here, Ca- 
 vanagh V The words were no sooner pronounced than the as- 
 tonished player let the ball drop from his hand, and saying, 
 ' What ! have I been breaking my heart all this time to beat Ca- 
 vanagh V refused to make another effort. ' And yet, I give you 
 my word,' said Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, 
 ' I played all the while with my clenched fist.' He used fre- 
 quently to play matches at Copenhagen-house for wagers and 
 dinners. The wall against which they play is the same that 
 supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall resounded 
 louder than usual, the cooks exclaimed, Those are the Irish- 
 man's balls,' and the joints trembled on the spit ! Goldsmith 
 consoled himself that there were places where he too was ad- 
 mired : and Cavanagh was the admiration of all the fives-courts, 
 where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when he played matches in 
 the Court in St. Martin's-street, used to fill his gallery at half-a- 
 crown. a head, with amateurs and admirers of talent in what- 
 ever department it is shown. He could not have shown himself 
 in any ground in England, but he would have been immediately 
 surrounded with inquisitive gazers, trying to find out in what 
 part of his frame his unrivalled skill lay, as politicians wonder 
 to see the balance of Europe suspended in Lord Castlereagh's 
 face, and admire the trophies of the British navy lurking under 
 Mr. Croker's hanging brow. Now Cavanagh was as good-look- 
 ing a man as the Noble Lord, and much better looking than the 
 Right Hon. Secretary. He had a clear, open countenance, and 
 did not look sideways or down, like Mr. Murray the bookseller. 
 He was a young fellow of sense, humour, and courage. Ho
 
 100 TABLE TALK. 
 
 once had a quarrel with a waterman at Hungerford-stairs, and 
 they say, served him out in great style. In a word, there are 
 hundreds at this day, who cannot mention his name without ad- 
 miration, as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the 
 greatest excellence of which they have any notion) and the 
 noisy shout of the ring happily stood him in stead of the unheard 
 voice of posterity! The only person who seems to have excelled 
 as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his, was the late 
 John Davies, the racket-player. It was remarked of him that 
 he did not seem to follow the ball, but the ball seemed to follow 
 him. Give him a foot of wall, and he was sure to make the ball. 
 The four best racket-players of that day were Jack Spines, Jem 
 Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any one 
 of these two hands a time, that is, half the game, and each of 
 these, at their best, could give the best player now in London 
 the same odds. Such are the gradations in all exertions of hu- 
 man skill and art. He once played four capital players together, 
 and beat them. He was also a first-rate tennis-player, and an 
 excellent fives-player. In the Fleet or King's Bench, he would 
 have stood against Powell, who was reckoned the best open- 
 ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is at pre- 
 sent the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to 
 him for a motto over his door ' Who enters here, forgets him- 
 self, his country, and his friends.' And the best of it is, that by 
 the calculation of the odds, none of the three are worth remem- 
 bering ! Cavanagh died from the bursting of a blood-vessel, 
 which prevented him from playing for the last two or three years. 
 This, he was often heard to say, he thought hard upon him. He 
 was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly carried off, 
 to the regret of all who knew him. As Mr. Peel made it a 
 qualification of the present Speaker, Mr. Manners Sutton, that 
 he was an excellent moral character, so Jack Cavanagh was a 
 zealous Catholic, and could not be persuaded to eat meat on a 
 Friday, the day on which he died. We have paid this willing 
 tribute to his memory. 
 
 " Let no rude hand deface it, 
 And his forlorn ' Hie Jacet.'"
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OI POETS. 101 
 
 ESSAY XXIV. 
 
 On the Prose-Style of Poets. 
 
 I have but an indifferent opinion of the prose-style of poets : not 
 that it is not sometimes good, nay excellent ; but it is never the 
 better, and generally the worse, from the habit of writing verse. 
 Poets are winged animals, and can cleave the air like birds, with 
 ease to themselves and delight to the beholders ; but like those 
 " feathered, two-legged things," when they light upon the ground 
 of prose and matter-of-fact, they seem not to have the same use 
 of their feet. 
 
 What is a little extraordinary, there is a want of rhyihmus and 
 cadence in what they write without the help of metrical rules. 
 Like persons who have been accustomed to sing to music, they 
 are at a loss in the absence of the habitual accompaniment and 
 guide to their judgment. Their style halts, totters, is loose, dis- 
 jointed, and without expressive pauses or rapid movements. The 
 measured cadence and regular sing-song of rhyme or blank verse 
 have destroyed, as it were, their natural ear for the mere charac- 
 teristic harmony which ought to subsist between the sound and 
 the sense. I should almost guess the Author of Waverley to be 
 a writer of ambling verses from the desultory vacillation and want 
 of firmness in the march of his style. There is neither momentum 
 nor elasticity in it ; I mean as to the score, or effect upon the ear. 
 He has improved since in his other works : to be sure, he has had 
 practice enough.* Poets either get into this incoherent, undeter- 
 mined, shuffling style, made up of " unpleasing Hats and sharps," 
 of unaccountable starts and pauses, of doubtful odds and ends, 
 flirted about like straws in a gust of wind ; or, to avoid it and 
 
 * Is it not a collateral proof that Sir Walter Scott is the Author of Waverley, 
 ihat ever since these Novels began to appear, his Muse has been silent, till the 
 publication of Halidon.-Hill ? 
 
 13*
 
 !"3 TABLE TALK. 
 
 steady themselves, mount into a sustained and measured prose 
 (like the translation of Ossian's Poems, or some parts of Shaftes- 
 bury's Characteristics) which is more odious still, and as bad as 
 being at sea in a calm. Dr. Johnson's style (particularly in his 
 Rambler), is not free from the last objection. There is a tune in 
 it, a mechanical recurrence of the same rise and fail in the clauses 
 of his sentences, independent of any reference to the meaning of 
 the text, or progress or inflection of the sense. There is the alter- 
 nate roll of his cumbrous cargo of words ; his periods complete 
 their revolutions at certain stated intervals, let the matter be longer 
 or shorter, rough or smooth, round or square, different or the same. 
 This monotonous and balanced mode of composition may be com- 
 pared to that species of portrait-painting which prevailed about a 
 century ago, in which each face was cast in a regular and pre- 
 conceived mould. The eye-brows were arched mathematically 
 as if with a pair of compasses, and the distances between the nose 
 and mouth, the forehead and chin, determined according to a 
 " foregone conclusion," and the features of the identical individual 
 were afterwards, accommodated to them, how they could !* 
 
 Home Tooke used to maintain that no one could write a good 
 prose style, who was not accustomed to express himself viva voce, 
 or to talk in company. He argued that this was the fault of 
 Addison's prose, and that its smooth, equable uniformity, and 
 want of sharpness and spirit, arose from his not having familiar- 
 ized his ear to the sound of his own voice, or at least only among 
 friends and admirers, where there was but little collision, dra- 
 matic fluctuation, or sudden contrariety of opinion to provoke 
 animated discussion, and give birth to different intonations and 
 lively transitions of speech. His style (in this view of it) was 
 not indented, nor did it project from the surface. There was no 
 stress laid on one word more than another it did not hurry on or 
 stop short, or sink or swell with the occasion : it was throughout 
 equally insipid, flowing, and harmonious, and had the effect of a 
 studied recitation rather than of a natural discourse. This would 
 not have happened (so the Member for Old Sarum contended) 
 had Addison laid himself out to argue at his club, or to speak in 
 public ; for then his ear would have caught the necessary modu. 
 
 Sec the portraits of Kneller, Richardson, and others.
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. W, 
 
 lations of sound arising out, of the feeling of the moment, a^d he 
 would have transferred them unconsciously to paper. Much might 
 be said on both sides of this question :* but Mr. Tooke was him- 
 self an unintentional confirmation of his own argument ; for the 
 tone of his written compositions is as flat and unraised as his 
 manner of speaking was hard and dry. Of the poet it is said bv 
 some one, that 
 
 " He murmurs by the running brooks 
 A music sweeter than their own." 
 
 On the contrary, the celebrated person just alluded to might be 
 said to grind the sentences between his teeth, which he after- 
 wards committed to paper, and threw out crusts to the critics, or 
 bon-mots to the Electors of Westminster (as we throw bones to 
 the dogs,) without altering a muscle, and without the smallest 
 tremulousness of voice or eye !f I certainly so far agree with 
 the above theory as to conceive that no style is worth a farthing 
 that is not calculated to be read out, or that is not allied to 
 spirited conversation : but I at the same time think the process 
 of modulation and inflection may be quite as complete, or more 
 so, without the external enunciation ; and that an author had 
 better try the effect of his sentences on his stomach than on his 
 ear. He may be deceived by the last, not by the first. No 
 person, I imagine, can dictate a good style ; or spout his own 
 compositions with impunity. In the former case, he will flounder 
 on before the sense or words are ready, sooner than suspend his 
 voice in air ; and in the latter, he can supply what intonation he 
 pleases, without consulting his readers. Parliamentary speeches 
 sometimes read well aloud ; but we do not find, when such per- 
 
 * Goldsmith was not a talker, though he blurted out his good things now 
 and then: yet his style is gay and voluble enough. Pope was also a silent 
 man ; and his prose is timid and constrained, and his verse inclining to the 
 monotonous. 
 
 t As a singular example of steadiness of nerves, Mr. Tooke on one occa- 
 sion had got upon the table at a public dinner to return thanks for his health 
 having been drank. He held a bumper of wine in his hand, but he wa3 re- 
 ceived with considerable opposition by one party, and at the end of the dis- 
 turbance, which lasted for a quarter of an hour, he found the wine glass still 
 full to the brim.
 
 104 TABLE TALK. 
 
 sons sit down to write, that the prose-style of public speaker? 
 and great orators is thebest, most natural, or varied of all others. 
 It has almost always either a professional twang, a mechanical 
 rounding off, or else is stunted and unequal. Charles Fox was 
 the most rapid and even hurried of speakers ; but his written 
 style halts and creeps slowly along the ground.* A speaker ia 
 necessarily kept within bounds in expressing certain things, or 
 in pronouncing a certain number of words, by the limits of the 
 breath or power of respiration : certain sounds are observed to 
 join in harmoniously or happily with others : an emphatic phrase 
 must not be placed, where the power of utterance is enfeebled 
 or exhausted, &c. All this must be attended to in writing, (and 
 will be so unconsciously by a practised hand.) or there will be 
 hiatus in manuscriptis. The words must be so arranged, in order 
 to make an efficient readable style, as " to come trippingly off 
 the tongue." Hence it seems that there is a natural measure 
 of prose in the feeling of the subject and the power of expres- 
 sion in the voice, as there is an artificial one of verse in the num. 
 ber and co-ordination of the syllables ; and I conceive that the 
 trammels of the last do not (where they have been long worn) 
 greatly assist the freedom or the exactness of the first. 
 
 Again, in poetry, from the restraints in many respects, a 
 greater number of inversions, or a latitude in the transposition 
 of words is allowed, which is not conformable to the strict laws 
 of prose. "Consequently, a poet will be at a loss, and flounder 
 
 * I have been told, that when Sheridan was first introduced to Mr. Fox, 
 what cemented an immediate intimacy between them was the following cir- 
 cumstance. Mr. Sheridan had been the night before to the House of Com- 
 mons ; and being asked what his impression was, said he had been princi- 
 pally struck with the difference of manner between Mr. Fox and Lord Stor- 
 mont. The latter began by declaring in a slow, solemn, drawling, nasal tone 
 that " when he considered the enormity and the unconstitutional tendency of 
 the measures just proposed, he was hurried away in a torrent of passion and 
 a whirlwind of impetuosity," pausing between every word and syllable: 
 while the first said (speaking with the rapidity of lightning, and with breath- 
 less anxiety and impatience,) that "such was the magnitude, such the import- 
 ance, such the vital interest of this question, that he could not help imploring, 
 he could not help adjuring the House to come to it with the utmost calmness, 
 the utmost coolness, the utmost deliberation." This trait of discrimination 
 instantly won Mr. Fox's heart.
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 105 
 
 about for the common or (as we understand it) natural order of 
 words in prose-composition. Dr. Johnson endeavoured to give 
 an air of dignity and novelty to his diction by affecting the order 
 of words usual in poetry. Milton's prose has not only this 
 drawback, but it has also the disadvantage of being formed on 
 a classic model. It is like a fine translation from the Latin ; 
 and indeed, he wrote originally in Latin. The frequency of 
 epithets and ornaments, too, is a resource for which the poet finds 
 it difficult to obtain an equivalent. A direct, or simple prose 
 style seems to him bald and flat ; and, instead of forcing an in- 
 terest in the subject by severity of description and reasoning, he 
 is repelled from it altogether by the absence of those obvious 
 and meretricious allurements, by which his senses and his ima- 
 gination have been hitherto stimulated and dazzled. Thus there 
 is often at the same time a want of splendour and a want of 
 energy in what he writes, without the invocation of the Muse 
 invito. Minerva. It is like setting a rope-dancer to perform a 
 tumbler's tricks the hardness of the ground jars his nerves ; or 
 it is the same thing as a painter's attempting to carve a block of 
 marble for the first time the coldness chills him, the colourless 
 uniformity distracts him, the precision of form demanded dis- 
 heartens him. So in prose-writing, the severity of composition 
 required damps the enthusiasm, and cuts off the resources of 
 the poet. He is looking for beauty, when he should be seeking 
 for truth ; and aims at pleasure, which he can only communicate 
 by increasing the sense of power in the reader. The poel 
 spreads the colours of fancy, the illusions of his own mind, 
 round every object, ad libitum ; the prose-writer is compelled to 
 extract his materials patiently and bit by bit, from his subject. 
 What he adds of ornament, what he borrows from the pencil, 
 must be sparing, and judiciously inserted. The first pretends to 
 nothing but the immediate indulgence of his feelings : the last 
 has a remote practical purpose. The one strolls out into the 
 adjoining fields or groves to gather flowers : the other has a 
 journey to gc, sometimes through dirty roads, and at others 
 through untrodden and difficult ways. It is this effeminacy, this 
 immersion in sensual ideas, or craving after continual excite- 
 ment, that spoils the poet for his prose-tasks. He cannot wait
 
 106 TABLE TALK. 
 
 till the effect comes of itself, or arises out of the occasion : ho 
 must force it upon all occasions, or his spirit droops and flags 
 under a supposed imputation of dullness. He can never drift 
 with the current, but is always hoisting sail, and has his stream- 
 ers flying. He has got a striking simile on hand ; he lugs it in 
 with the first opportunity, and with little connection, and so de- 
 feats his object. He has a story to tell : he tells it in the first 
 page, and where it would come in well, has nothing to say ; like 
 Goldsmith, who having to wait upon a Noble Lord, was so full 
 of himself and of the figure he should make, that he addressed 
 a set speech, which he had studied for the occasion, to his Lord- 
 ship's butler, and had just ended as the nobleman made his ap- 
 pearance. The prose ornaments of the poet are frequently 
 beautiful in themselves, but do not assist the subject. They are 
 pleasing excrescences hindrances, not helps in an argument. 
 The reason is, his embellishments in his own walk grow out of 
 the subject by natural association ; that is, beauty gives birth to 
 kindred beauty, grandeur leads the mind on to greater grandeur. 
 But in treating a common subject, the link is truth, force of il- 
 lustration, weight of argument, not a graceful harmony in the 
 immediate ideas ; and hence the obvious and habitual clue which 
 before guided him is gone, and he hangs on his patchwork, tinsel 
 finery at random, in despair, without propriety and without 
 effect. The poetical prose-writer stops to describe an object, if 
 he admires it, or thinks it will bear to be dwelt on : the genuine 
 prose-writer only alludes to or characterises it in passing, and 
 with reference to his subject. The prose-writer is master of his 
 materials : the poet is the slave of his style. Every thing 
 showy, every thing extraneous tempts him, and he reposes idly 
 on it : he is bent on pleasure, not on business. He aims at 
 effect, at captivating the reader, and yet is contented with com- 
 mon-place ornaments, rather than none. Indeed, this last result 
 must necessarily follow, where there is an ambition to shine, 
 without the effort to dig for jewels in the mine of truth. The 
 habits of a poet's mind are not those of industry or research: 
 his images come to him, he does not go to them ; and in prose- 
 subjects, and dry matters of fact and close reasoning, the natu- 
 ral stimulus that at other times warms and rouses, deserts hinj
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 107 
 
 altogether. He sees no unhallowed visions, he is inspired by no 
 day-dreams. All is tame, literal, and barren, without the Nine. 
 Nor does he collect his strength to strike fire from the flint by 
 the sharpness of collision, by the eagerness of his blows. He 
 gathers roses, he steals colours from the rainbow. He lives on 
 nectar and ambrosia. He " treads the primrose path of dal- 
 liance," or ascends " the highest heaven of invention," or falls 
 flat to the ground. He is nothing, if not fanciful/ 
 
 I shall proceed to explain these remarks, as well as I can, by 
 a few instances in point. 
 
 It has always appeared to me that the most perfect prose- 
 style, the most powerful, the most dazzling, the most daring, that 
 which went the nearest to the verge of, poetry, and yet never fell 
 over, was Burke's. It has the solidity and sparkling effect of 
 the diamond : all other fine writing is like French paste or Bris- 
 tol-stones in the comparison. Burke's style is airy, flighty, ad- 
 venturous, but it never loses sight of the subject ; nay, is always 
 in contact with, and derives its increased or varying impulse 
 from it. It may be said to pass yawning gulfs " on the unstead- 
 fast fitting of a spear :" still it has an actual resting-place and 
 tangible support under it it is not suspended on nothing. It 
 differs from poetry, as I conceive, like the chamois from the 
 eagle : it climbs to an almost equal height, touches upon a cloud, 
 overlooks a precipice, is picturesque, sublime but all the while, 
 instead of soaring through the air, it stands upon a rocky cliff", 
 clambers up by abrupt and intricate ways, and browzes on the 
 roughest bark, or crops the tender flower. The principle which 
 guides his pen is truth, not beauty not pleasure, but power. 
 He has no choice, no selection of subject to flatter the reader's 
 idle taste, or assist his own fancy : he must take what comes, 
 and make the most of it. He works the most striking effects out 
 of the most unpromising materials, by the mere activity of his 
 mind. He rises with the lofty, descends with the mean, luxuri- 
 ates in beauty, gloats over deformity. It is all the same to him, 
 so that he loses no particle of the exact, characteristic, extreme 
 impression of the thing he writes about, and that he communi- 
 cates this to the reader, after exhausting every possible mode of 
 illustration, plain or abstracted, figurative or literal. Whatever 
 
 8 PART II.
 
 108 TABLE TALK. 
 
 stamps the original image more distinctly on the mind, is wel- 
 come. The nature of his task precludes continual beauty ; but 
 it does not preclude continual ingenuity, force, originality. He 
 had to treat of political questions, mixed modes, abstract ideas, 
 and his fancy (or poetry, if you will) was ingrafted on these ar- 
 tificially, and as it might sometimes be thought, violently, instead 
 of growing naturally out of them, as it would spring of its own 
 accord from individual objects and feelings. There is a resist- 
 ance in the matter to the illustration applied to it the concrete 
 and abstract are hardly co-ordinate ; and therefore it is that, 
 when the first difficulty is overcome, they must agree more 
 closely in the essential qualities, in order that the coincidence 
 may be complete. Otherwise, it is good for nothing ; and you 
 justly charge the author's style with being loose, vague, flaccid, 
 and imbecile. The poet has been said 
 
 " To make us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight in endless lays." 
 
 Not so the prose-writer, who always mingles clay with his gold, 
 and often separates truth from mere pleasure. He can orfiy ar- 
 rive at the last through the first. In poetry, one pleasing or strik- 
 ing image obviously suggests another : the increasing the' sense 
 of beauty or grandeur is the principle of composition : in prose, 
 the professed object is to impart conviction, and nothing can be 
 admitted by way of ornament or relief, that does not add new 
 force or clearness to the original conception. The two classes 
 of ideas brought together by the orator or impassioned prose- 
 writer, to wit, the general subject and the particular image, are 
 so far incompatible, and the identity must be more strict, more 
 marked, more determinate, to make them coalesce to any prac- 
 tical purpose. Every word should be a blow : every thought 
 should instantly grapple with its fellow. There must be a weight, 
 a precision, a conformity from association in the tropes and figures 
 of animated prose to fit them to their place in the argument, and 
 make them tell, which may be dispensed with in poetry, where 
 there is something much more congenial between the subject 
 matter and the illustration 
 
 " Like beauty making beautiful old rime !"
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 109 
 
 What can be more remote, for instance, and at the same time 
 more apposite, more the same, than the following comparison of 
 the English Constitution to " the proud Keep of Windsor," in the 
 celebrated Letter to a Noble Lord ? 
 
 " Such are their ideas ; such their religion, and such their law. 
 But as to our country and our race, as long as the well-compacted 
 structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy ot 
 holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by 
 power a fortress at once and a temple* shall stand inviolate 
 on the brow of the British Sion ; as long as the British mon- 
 archy not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State 
 shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of 
 proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval 
 towers ; as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard 
 the subjected land, so long the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, 
 Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of 
 all the levellers of France. As long as our Sovereign Lord the 
 King, and his faithful subjects, the Lords and Commons of this 
 realm the triple cord which no man can break ; the solemn, 
 sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of this nation ; the firm gua- 
 rantees of each other's being, and each other's rights ; the joint 
 and several securities, each in its place and order, for every kind 
 and every quality of property and of dignity, as long as these 
 endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe : and we are all 
 safe together the high from the blights of envy and the spolia- 
 tions of rapacity ; the low from the iron hand of oppression and 
 the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen ! and so be it : and so 
 it will be, 
 
 'Dum domus iEneae Capitoli immobile axum 
 Accolet; imperiumque pater Roman us habebit.' " 
 
 Nothing can well be more impracticable to a simile than the 
 vague and complicated idea which is here embodied in one ; yet 
 how finely, how nobly it stands out, in natural grandeur, in royal 
 state, with double barriers round it to answer for its identity, with 
 " buttress frieze and coigne of 'vantage" for the imagination to 
 
 * "Templum in modum arcis." 
 
 Tacitus of the Temple of Jerusalem.
 
 110 TABLE TALK. 
 
 rt make its pendant bed and procreant cradle," till the idea is con- 
 founded with the object representing it the wonder of a kingdom; 
 and then how striking, how determined the descent, " at one fell 
 swoop," to the " low, fat, Bedford level !" Poetry would have 
 been bound to maintain a certain decorum, a regular balance be- 
 tween these two ideas ; sterling prose throws aside all such idle 
 respect to appearances, and with its pen, like a sword, " sharp 
 and sweet," lays open the naked truth ! The poet's Muse is like 
 a mistress, whom we keep only while she is young and beautiful, 
 durante bene placito ; the Muse of prose is like a wife, whom we 
 take during life, for belter for worse. Burke's execution, like that 
 of all good prose, savours of the texture of what he describes, and 
 his pen slides or drags over the ground of his subject, like the 
 painter's pencil. The most rigid fidelity and the most fanciful 
 extravagance meet, and are reconciled in his pages. I never 
 pass Windsor but I think of this passage in Burke, and hardly 
 know to which I am indebted most for enriching my moral sense, 
 that or the fine picturesque stanza in Gray, 
 
 " From Windsor's heights the expanse below 
 Of mead, of lawn, of wood survey," &c. 
 
 I might mention that the so much admired description in one 
 of the India speeches, of Hyder Ally's army (I think it is), which 
 " now hung like a cloud upon the mountain, and now burst upon 
 the plain like a thunderbolt," would do equally well for poetry 
 or prose. It is a bold and striking illustration of a naturally im- 
 pressive object. This is not the case with the Abbe Sieyes's far 
 famed " pigeon-holes," nor with the comparison of the Duke of 
 Bedford to " the Leviathan, tumbling about his unwieldy bulk iu 
 the ocean of royal bounty." Nothing here saves the description 
 but the force of the invective ; the startling truth, the vehemence, 
 the remoteness, the aptitude, the perfect peculiarity and coinci- 
 dence of the allusion. No writer would ever have thought of K 
 but himself; no reader can ever forget it. What is there in com- 
 mon, one might say, between a Peer of the Realm and ' that 
 <ea-beast," of those 
 
 "Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream 1"
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. Ill 
 
 \et Bu v ke has knit the two ideas together, and no man can put 
 them asunder. No matter how slight and precarious the con- 
 nection, the length of line it is necessary for the fancy to give out 
 in keeping hold of the object on which it has fastened, he seems 
 to have " put his hook in the nostrils" of this enormous creature 
 of the crown, that empurples all its track through the glittering 
 expanse of a profound and restless imagination ! 
 
 In looking into the Iris of last week, I find the following pas- 
 sages, in an article on the death of Lord Castlereagh : 
 
 " The splendour of majesty leaving the British metropolis, ca- 
 reering along the ocean, and landing in the capital of the North, 
 is distinguished only by glimpses through the dense array of clouds 
 in which Death hid himself, while he struck down to the dust the 
 stateliest courtier near the throne, and the broken train of which 
 pursues and crosses the royal progress wherever its glories are 
 presented to the eye of imagination. . \ . . . . 
 
 " The same indefatigable mind a mind of all work which 
 thus ruled the Continent with a rod of iron, the sword within 
 the walls of the House of Commons ruled a more distracted re- 
 gion with a more subtle and finely tempered weapon, the tongue ; 
 and truly, if this was the only weapon his Lordship wielded there, 
 where he had daily to encounter, and frequently almost alone, 
 enemies more formidable than Bonaparte, it must be acknow- 
 ledged that he achieved greater victories than Demosthenes or 
 Cicero ever gained in far more easy fields of strife ; nay, he 
 wrought miracles of speech, outvying those miracles of song 
 which Orpheus is said to have performed, when not only men 
 and brutes, but rocks, woods, and mountains, followed the sound 
 of his voice and lyre 
 
 " But there was a worm at the root of the gourd that flourished 
 over his head in the brightest sunshine of a court ; both perished 
 in a night, and in the morning, that which had been his glory and 
 his shadow, covered him like a shroud ; while the corpse, not- 
 withstanding all his honours, and titles, and offices, lay unmoved 
 in the place where it fell, till a judgment had been passed upor 
 him which the poorest peasant escapes when he dies in the ordi. 
 nary course o r nature." Sheffield Advertises, August 20. 
 1822.
 
 112 TABLE TALK. 
 
 This, it must be confessed, is very unlike Burke : yet Mr. 
 Montgomery is a very pleasing poet, and a strenuous politician. 
 The whole is travelling out of the record, and to no sort of pur- 
 pose. The author is constantly getting away from the impres- 
 sion of his subject, to envelop himself in a cloud of images, which 
 weaken and perplex, instead of adding force and clearness to it. 
 Provided he is figurative, he does not care how commonplace or 
 irrelevant the figures are, and he wanders on, delighted in a 
 labyrinth of words, like a truant school-boy, who is only glad to 
 have escaped from his task. He has a very slight hold of his 
 subject, and is tempted to let it go for any fallacious ornament of 
 style. How obscure and circuitous is the allusion to " the clouds 
 in which Death hid himself, to strike down the stateliest courtier 
 near the throne !" How hackneyed is the reference to Demos- 
 thenes and Cicero, and how utterly quaint and unmeaning is the 
 ringing the changes upon Orpheus and his train of men, beasts, 
 woods, rocks, and mountains in connection with Lord Castlereagh ! 
 But he is better pleased with this classical fable than with the 
 death of the Noble Peer, and delights to dwell upon it, to however 
 little use. So he is glad to take advantage of the scriptural idea 
 of a gourd ; not to enforce, but as a relief to his reflections ; and 
 points his conclusion with a puling sort of common-place, that a 
 peasant, who dies a natural death, has no Coroner's Inquest to 
 sit upon him. All these are the faults of the ordinary poetical 
 style. Poets think they are bound, by the tenour of their inden- 
 tures to the Muses, to " elevate and surprise" in every line ; and 
 not having the usual resources at hand in common or abstracted 
 subjects, aspire to the end without the means. They make, or 
 pretend, an extraordinary interest where there is none. They 
 are ambitious, vain, and indolent more busy in preparing idle 
 ornaments, which they take their chance of bringing in somehow 
 or other, than intent on eliciting truths by fair and honest inquiry. 
 It should seem as if they considered prose as a sort of waiting 
 maid to poetry, that could only be expected to wear her mistress':* 
 cast-off finery. Poets have been said to succeed best in fiction ; 
 and the account here given may in part explain the reason 
 That is to say, they must choose their own subject, in such a 
 manner as to afford them continual opportunities of appealing to
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 113 
 
 the senses and exciting the fancy. Dry details, abstruse specula, 
 tions, do not give scope to vividness of description ; and, as the) 
 cannot bear to be considered dull, they become too often affected, 
 extravagant, and insipid. 
 
 [ am indebted to Mr. Coleridge for the comparison of poetic 
 prose to the second-hand finery of a lady's maid (just made use 
 of.) He himself is an instance of his own observation, and (what 
 is even worse) of the opposite fault an affectation of quaintness 
 and originality. With bits of tarnished lace and worthless frip- 
 pery, he assumes a sweeping oriental costume, or borrows the 
 stiff" dresses of our ancestors, or starts an eccentric fashion of his 
 own. He is swelling and turgid everlastingly aiming to be 
 greater than his subject ; filling his fancy with fumes and vapours 
 in the pangs and throes of miraculous parturition, and bringing 
 forth only still-births. He has an incessant craving, as it were, 
 to exalt every idea into a metaphor, to expand every sentiment 
 into a lengthened mystery, voluminous and vast, confused and 
 cloudy. His style is not succinct, but incumbered with a train 
 of words and images that have no practical, and only a possible 
 relation to one another that add to its stateliness, but impede its 
 march. One of his sentences winds its " forlorn way obscure" 
 over the page like a patriarchal procession with camels laden, 
 wreathed turbans, household wealth, the whole riches of the 
 author's mind poured out upon the barren waste of his subject. 
 The palm-tree spreads its sterile branches over-head, and the land 
 of promise is seen in the distance. All this is owing to his wish- 
 ing to overdo every thing to make something more out of every 
 thing than it is, or than it is worth. The simple truth does not 
 satisfy him no direct proposition fills up the moulds of his under- 
 standing. All is foreign, far-fetched, irrelevant, laboured, unpro- 
 ductive. To read one of his disquisitions is like hearing the 
 variations to a piece of music without the score. Or, to vary 
 the simile, he is not like a man going a journey by the stage- 
 coach along the high-road, but is always getting into a balloon, 
 and mounting into the air, above the plain ground of prose. 
 Whether he soars to the empyrean, or dives to the centre (as ho 
 sometimes does,) it is equally to get away from the question 
 before him, and to prove that he owes every thing to his own
 
 114 TABLE TALK. 
 
 mind. His object is to invent ; he scorns to imitate. The busi- 
 ness of prose is the contrary. But Mr. Coleridge is a poet, and 
 his thoughts are free. 
 
 I think the poet-laureat is a much better prose-writer. His 
 style has an antique quaintness, with a modern familiarity. He 
 has just a sufficient sprinkling of archaisms, of allusions to old 
 Fuller, and Burton, and Latimer, to set off or qualify the smart 
 flippant tone of his apologies for existing abuses, or the ready, 
 galling virulence of his personal invectives. Mr. Southey is a 
 faithful historian, and no inefficient partizan. In the former 
 character, his mind is tenacious of facts ; and in the latter, his 
 spleen and jealousy prevent the " extravagant and erring spirit" 
 of the poet from losing itself in Fancy's endless maze. He 
 " stoops to earth," at least, and prostitutes his pen to some pur- 
 pose (not at the same time losing his own soul, and gaining 
 nothing by it) and he vilifies Reform, and praises the reign of 
 George III. in good set terms, in a straightforward, intelligible, 
 practical, pointed way. He is not buoyed up by conscious 
 power out of the reach of common apprehensions, but makes the 
 most of the obvious advantages he possesses. You may complain 
 of a pettiness and petulance of manner, but certainly there is no 
 want of spirit or facility of execution. He does not waste powder 
 and shot in the air, but loads his piece, takes a level aim, and 
 hits his mark. One would say (though his Muse is ambidexter) 
 that he wrote prose with his right hand ; there is nothing awk- 
 ward, circuitous, or feeble in it. " The words of Mercury are 
 harsh after the songs of Apollo :" but this would not apply to 
 him. His prose-lucubrations are pleasanter reading than his 
 poetry. Indeed, he is equally practised and voluminous in both ; 
 and it is not improbable conjecture, that Mr. Southey may have 
 had some idea of rivalling the reputation of Voltaire in the extent, 
 the spirit, and the versitality of his productions in prose and verse, 
 except that he has written i o tragedies but Wat Tyler ! 
 
 To my taste, the Author of Rimini, and Editor of the Exami- 
 ner, is among the best and least corrupted of our poetical prose- 
 writers. In his light but well supported columns we find the 
 raciness, the sharpness, and sparkling effect of poetry, with little 
 that is extravagant or far-fetched, and no turgidity or pompous
 
 ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS. 1?5 
 
 pretension. Perhaps there is too much the appearance of re- 
 laxation and trifling (as if he had escaped the shackles of rhyme,) 
 a caprice, a levity, and a disposition to innovate in words and 
 ideas. Still the genuine master-spirit of the prose-writer is there ; 
 the tone of lively, sensible conversation ; and this may in part 
 arise from the author's being himself an animated talker. Mr. 
 Hunt wants something of the heat and earnestness of the political 
 partisan ; but his familiar and miscellaneous papers have all the 
 ease, grace, and point of the best style of Essay-writing. Many 
 of his effusions in the Indicator show, that if he had devoted 
 himself exclusively to that mode of writing, he inherits more of 
 the spirit of Steele than any man since his time. 
 
 Lord Byron's prose is bad ; that is to say, heavy, laboured, 
 and coarse : he tries to knock some one down with the butt-end 
 of every line, which defeats his object and the style of the 
 Author of Waverley (if he comes fairly into this discussion) as 
 mere style, is villanous. It is pretty plain he is a poet ; for the 
 sound of names runs mechanically in his ears, and he rings the 
 changes unconsciously on the same words in a sentence, like the 
 same rhymes in a couplet. 
 
 Not to spin out this discussion too much, I would conclude by 
 observing, that some of the old English prose-writers (who were 
 not poets) are the best, and, at the same time, the most poetical in 
 the favourable sense. Among these we may reckon some of the 
 old divines, and Jeremy Taylor at the head of them. There is a 
 flush like the dawn over his writings ; the sweetness of the rose, 
 the freshness of the morning dew. There is a softness in his style, 
 proceeding from the tenderness of his heart : but his head is firm, 
 and his hand is free. His materials are as finely wrought up as 
 they are original and attractive in themselves. Milton's prose- 
 style savours too much of poetry, and, as I have already hinted, 
 of an imitation of the Latin. Dryden's is perfectly unexception- 
 able, and a model, in simplicity, strength, and perspicuity, for the 
 subjects he treated of
 
 IIS TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XXV. 
 
 On the Conversation of Authors. 
 
 An author is bound to write well or ill, wisely or foolishly : it 
 is his trade. But I do not see that he is bound to talk, any more 
 than he is bound to dance, or ride, or fence better than other peo- 
 ple. Reading, study, silence, thought, are a bad introduction to 
 loquacity. It would be sooner learnt of chambermaids and tapsters. 
 He understands the art and mystery of his own profession, which 
 is book-making : what right has any one to expect or require him 
 to do more to make a bow gracefully on entering or leaving a 
 room, to make love charmingly, or to make a fortune at all ? In 
 all things there is a division of labour. A lord is no less amorous 
 for writing ridiculous love-letters, nor a general less successful 
 for wanting wit and honesty. Why then may not a poor author 
 say nothing, and yet pass muster ? Set him on the top of a stage- 
 coach, he will make no figure ; he is mum-chance, while the slang- 
 wit flies about as fast as the dust, with the crack of the whip and 
 the clatter of the horses' heels : put him in a ring of boxers, he is 
 a poor creature 
 
 " And of his port as meek as is a maid." 
 
 Introduce him to a tea-party of milliner's girls, and they are ready 
 to split their sides with laughing at him : over his bottle, he is dry : 
 in the drawing-room rude or awkward : he is too refined for the 
 vulgar, too clownish for the fashionable : " he is one that cannot 
 make a good leg, one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly, 
 one that cannot ride a horse without spflr-galling, one that cannot 
 salute a woman, and look on her directly :" in courts, in camps, 
 in town and country, he is a cypher or a butt : he is good for 
 nothing but a laughing-stock or a scare-crow. You can scarcely 
 get a word out of him for love or money. He knows nothing.
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 117 
 
 He has no notion of pleasure or business, or of what is going on 
 in the world ; he does not understand cookery (unless he it? u 
 doctor in divinity,) nor surgery, nor chemistry (unless he is a 
 Quidnunc,) nor mechanics, nor husbandry and tillage (unless he 
 is as great an admirer of TulPs Husbandry, and has profited as 
 much by it as the philosopher of Botley) no, nor music, paint- 
 ing, the drama, nor the fine arts in general. 
 
 " What the deuce is it then, my good sir, that he does under- 
 stand, or know any thing about V 
 
 BOOKS, VENUS, BOOKS !" 
 
 " What books !" 
 
 " Not receipt-books, Madona, nor account-books, nor books of 
 pharmacy, or the veterinary art (they belong to their respective 
 callings and handicrafts,) but books of liberal taste and general 
 knowledge." 
 
 " What do you mean by that general knowledge which implies 
 not a knowledge of things in general, but an ignorance (by your 
 own account) of every one in particular : or by that liberal taste 
 which scorns the pursuits and acquirements of the rest of the 
 world in succession, and is confined exclusively, and by way of 
 excellence, to what nobody takes an interest in but yourself, and a 
 few idlers like yourself? Is this what the critics mean by the 
 belles-lettres, and the study of humanity V' 
 
 Book-knowledge, in a word, then, is knowledge communicable 
 by books ; and it is general and liberal for this reason, that it is 
 intelligible and interesting on the bare suggestion. That to which 
 any one feels a romantic attachment, merely from finding it in a 
 book, must be interesting in itself: that which he instantly forms 
 a lively and entire conception of, from seeing a few marks and 
 scratches upon paper, must be taken from common nature : 
 that which, the first time you meet with it, seizes upon the atten- 
 tion as a curious speculation, must exercise the general faculties 
 of the human mind. There are certain broader aspects of society 
 and views of things common to every subject, and more or less 
 cognizable to every mind; and these the scholar treats, and founds 
 his claim to general attention upon them, without being charge- 
 able with "pedantry. The minute descriptions of fishing-tackle, 
 :>f baits and flies, in Walton's Complete Angler, make that work 
 
 14
 
 M8 TABLE TALK 
 
 a great favourite with sportsmen : the alloy of an amiable hu- 
 manity, and the modest bui touching descriptions of familiar 
 incidents and rural objects scattered through it, have made it an 
 equal favourite with every reader of taste and feeling. Mon- 
 taigne's Essays, Dilworth's Spelling Book, and Fearn's Treatise 
 on Contingent Remainders, are all equally books, but not equally 
 adapted for all classes of readers. The two last are of no use 
 but to school-masters and lawyers : but the first is a work we 
 may recommend to any one to read who has ever thought at all, 
 or who would learn to think justly on any subject. Persons of 
 different trades and professions the mechanic, the shop-keeper, 
 the medical practitioner, the artist, &c, may all have great 
 knowledge and ingenuity in their several vocations, the details of 
 which will be very edifying to themselves, and just as incompre- 
 hensible to their neighbours : but over and above this professional 
 and technical knowledge, they must be supposed to have a stock 
 of common sense and common feeling to furnish subjects for com- 
 mon conversation, or to give them any pleasure in each other's 
 company. It is to this common stock of ideas, spread over the 
 surface, or striking its roots into the very centre of society, that 
 the popular writer appeals, and not in vain ; for he finds readers. 
 It is of this finer essence of wisdom and humanity, " ethereal 
 mould, sky-tinctured," that books of the better sort are made. 
 They contain the language of thought. It must happen that, in 
 the course of time and the variety of human capacity, some per- 
 sons will have struck out finer observations, reflections, and sen- 
 timents than others. These they have committed to books of 
 memory, have bequeathed as a lasting legacy to posterity ; and 
 such persons have become standard authors. We visit at the 
 shrine, drink in some measure of the inspiration, and cannot easily 
 " breathe in other air less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits." 
 Are we to be blamed for this, because the vulgar and illiterate 
 do not always understand us ? The fault is rather in them, whc 
 are " confined and cabin'd in," each in their own particular 
 sphere and compartment of ideas, and have not the same refined 
 medium of communication or abstracted topics of discourse. 
 Bring a number of literary or of illiterate persons together 
 perfect strangers to eac h other, and see which party will make
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 119 
 
 the best company. " Verily, we have our "reward." We have 
 made our election, and have no reason to repent it, if we were 
 wise. But the misfortune is, we wish to have all the advantages 
 on one side. We grudge, and cannot reconcile it to ourselves, 
 that any one " should go about to cozen fortune, without ihe 
 stamp of learning !" We think " because we are scholars, there 
 shall be no more cakes and ale !" We don't know how to account 
 for it, that bar-maids should gossip, or ladies whisper, or bullies 
 roar, or fools laugh, or knaves thrive, without having gone through 
 the same course of select study that we have ! This vanity is 
 preposterous, and carries its own punishment with it. Books are 
 a world in themselves, it is true ; but they are not the only world 
 The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it. 
 Learning is a sacred deposit from the experience of ages ; but v 
 has not put all future experience on the shelf, or debarred the 
 common herd of mankind from the use of their hands, tongues, 
 ey^s, ears, or understandings. Taste is a luxury for the privi- 
 leged few : but it would be hard upon those who have not the, 
 same standard of refinement in their own minds that we supposA 
 ourselves to have, if this should prevent them from having re 
 course, as usual, to their old frolics, coarse jokes, and horse-play 
 and getting through the wear and tear of the world, with sue! 
 homely sayings and shrewd helps as they may. Happy is it, 
 that the mass of mankind eat and drink, and sleep, and perform 
 their several tasks, and do as they like without us caring nothing 
 for our scribblings, our carpings, and our quibbles ; and moving 
 on the same, in spite of our fine-spun distinctions, fantastic theories, 
 and lines of demarcation, which are like the chalk-figures drawn 
 on ball-room floors to be danced out before morning ! In the field 
 opposite the window where I write this, there is a country-girl 
 picking stones : in the one next it, there are several poor women 
 weeding the blue and red flowers from the corn : farther on, are 
 two boys, tending a flock of sheep. What do they know or care 
 about what I am writing about them, or ever will or what would 
 bey be the better for it, if they did ? Or why need we despise 
 
 " The wretched slave, 
 Who like a lackey, from the rise to the set, 
 Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night 
 14
 
 120 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Sleeps in Elysium ; next day, after dawn, 
 Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse ; 
 And follows so the ever-running year 
 With profitable labour to his grave 1" 
 
 Is not this life as sweet as writing Ephemerides ? But we put 
 that which flutters the brain idly for a moment, and then is heard 
 no more, in competition with nature, which exists everywhere, 
 and lasts always. We not only underrate the force of nature, 
 and make too much of art but we also overrate our own accom- 
 plishments and advantages derived from art. In the presence of 
 clownish ignorance, or of persons without any great pretensions, 
 real or affected, we are very much inclined to take upon our- 
 selves, as the virtual representatives of science, art, and litera- 
 ture. We have a strong itch to show off and do the honours of 
 civilization for all the great men whose works we have ever read, 
 and whose names our auditors have never heard of, as noblemen's 
 lacqueys, in the absence of their masters, give themselves airs of 
 superiority over every one else. But though we have read Con- 
 greve, a stage coachman may be an over-match for us in wit : 
 though we are deep-versed in the excellence of Shakespear's 
 colloquial style, a village beldam may outscold us : though we 
 have read Machiavel in the original Italian, we may be easily 
 outwitted by a clown : and though we have cried our eyes out 
 over the New Eloise, a poor shepherd-lad, who hardly knows how 
 to spell his own name, may " tell his tale, under the hawthorn in 
 the dale," and prove a more thriving wooer. What then is the 
 advantage we possess over the meanest of the mean 1 Why 
 this, that we have read Congreve, Shakespear, Machiavel, the 
 New Eloise ; not that we are to have their wit, genius, shrewd- 
 ness, or melting tenderness. 
 
 From speculative pursuits we must be satisfied with speculative 
 benefits. From reading, too, we learn to write. If we have had 
 the pleasure of studying the highest models of perfection in their 
 kind, and can hope to leave any thing ourselves, however slight, 
 to be looked upon as a model, or even a good copy in its way, we 
 may think ourselves pretty well off, without engrossing all the 
 privileges of learning, ana all the blessings of ignorance into the 
 bargain.
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 121 
 
 It has been made a question whether there have not been in- 
 dividuals in common life of greater talents and powers of mind 
 than the most celebrated writers whether, for instance, such or 
 such a Liverpool merchant, or Manchester manufacturer, wap 
 not a more sensible man than Montaigne, of a longer reach of 
 understanding than the Viscount of St. Albans. There is no 
 saying, unless some of these illustrious obscure had communi- 
 cated their important discoveries to the world. But then they 
 would have been authors ! On the other hand, there is a set of 
 critics who fall into the contrary error ; and suppose that unless 
 the proof of capacity is laid before all the world, the capacity 
 itself cannot exist ; looking upon all those who have not com- 
 menced authors, as literally " stocks and stones, and worse than 
 senseless things." , I remember trying to convince a person of 
 this class that a young lady, whom he knew something of, the 
 niece of a celebrated authoress, had just the same sort of fine tact 
 and ironical turn in conversation, that her relative had shown in 
 her writings when young. The only answer I could get was an 
 incredulous smile, and the observation that when she wrote any 
 
 thing as good as , or , he might think her as clever. I 
 
 said all I meant was, that she had the same family talents, and 
 
 asked whether he thought that if Miss had not been very 
 
 clever, as a mere girl, before she wrote her novels, she would 
 eve j have written them ? It was all in vain. He still stuck to 
 his text, and was convinced that the niece was a little fool com- 
 pared to her aunt at the same age ; and if he had known the aunt 
 formerly, he would have had just the same opinion of her. My 
 friend was one of those who have a settled persuasion that it is the 
 book that makes the author, and not the author the book. That's 
 a strange opinion for a great philosopher to hold. But he wilfully 
 shuts his eyes to the germs and indistinct workings of genius, 
 and treats them with supercilious indifference, till they stare him 
 in the face through the press ; and then takes cognizance only 
 of the overt acts and published evidence. This is neither a 
 proof of wisdom, nor the way to be wise. It is partly pedantry 
 and prejudice, and partly feebleness of judgment and want of 
 magnanimity. He dare as little commit himself on the character 
 of books, as of individuals, till they are stamped by the public.
 
 122 TABLE TALK. 
 
 If you show him any work for his approbation, he asks, " Whose 
 is the superscription?" He judges of genius by its shadow, repu- 
 tation of the metal by the coin. He is just the reverse of ano- 
 ther person whom I know for, as G never allows a particle 
 
 of merit to any one till it is acknowledged by the whole world, 
 
 C withholds his tribute of applause from every person, in 
 
 whom any mortal but himself can descry the least glimpse of un- 
 derstanding. He would be thought to look farther into a millstone 
 than any body else. He would have others see with his eyes, 
 and take their opinions from him on trust, in spite of their senses. 
 The more obscure and defective the indications of merit, the 
 greater his sagacity and candour in being the first to point them 
 out. He looks upon what he nicknames a man of genius, but as 
 the breath of his nostrils, and the clay in the potter's hands. If 
 any such inert, unconscious mass, under the fostering care of the 
 modern Prometheus, is kindled into life, begins to see, speak, 
 and move, so as to attract the notice of other people, our jealous 
 patroniser of latent worth in that case throws aside, scorns, and 
 hates his own handiwork ; and deserts his intellectual offspring 
 from the moment they can go alone and shift for themselves. 
 But to pass on to our more immediate subject. 
 
 The conversation of authors is not so good as might be ima- 
 gined : but, such as it is (and with rare exceptions) it is better 
 than any other. The proof of which is, that, when you are 
 used to it, you cannot put up with any other. That of mixed 
 company becomes utterly intolerable you cannot sit out a com- 
 mon tea and card party, at least, if they pretend to talk at all. 
 You are obliged in despair to cut all your old acquaintance who 
 are not au fait on the prevailing and most smartly contested 
 topics, who are not imbued with the high gusto of criticism and 
 virtu. You cannot bear to hear a friend whom you have not 
 seen for many years, tell at how much a yard he sells his laces 
 and tapes, when he means to move into his next house, when he 
 heard last from his relations in the country, whether trade is 
 alive or dead, or whether Mr. Such-a-one gets to look old. This 
 3ort of neighbourly gossip will not go down after the high-raised 
 tone of literary conversation. The last may be very absurd, 
 very unsatisfactory, and full of turbulence and heart-burnings;
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 123 
 
 but it has a zest in it which more ordinary topics of news or 
 family-affairs do not supply. Neither will the conversation of 
 what we understand by gentlemen and men of fashion, do after 
 that of men of letters. It is flat, insipid, stale, and unprofitable 
 in the comparison. They talk about much the same things, pic- 
 tures, poetry, politics, plays; but they do it worse, and at a sort 
 of vapid secondhand. They, in fact, talk out of newspapers 
 and magazines, what we torite there. They do not feel the same 
 interest in the subjects they affect to handle with an air of fash- 
 ionable condescension, nor have they the same knowledge of 
 them, if they were ever so much in earnest in displaying it. If 
 it were not for the wine and the dessert, no author in his senses 
 would accept an invitation to a well-dressed dinner-party, except 
 out of pure good-nature and unwillingness to disoblige by his 
 refusal. Persons in high-life talk almost entirely by rote. There 
 are certain established modes of address, and certain answers to 
 them expected as a matter of course, as a point of etiquette. 
 The studied forms of politeness do not give the greatest possible 
 scope to an exuberance of wit or fancy. The fear of giving 
 offence destroys sincerity, and without sincerity there can be no 
 true enjoyment of society, nor unfettered exertion of intellectual 
 activity. Those who have been accustomed to live with the 
 great are hardly considered as conversible persons in literary 
 society. They are not to be talked with, any more than puppets 
 or echos. They have no opinions but what will please ; and 
 you naturally turn away, as a waste of time and words, from 
 attending to a person who just before assented to what you said, 
 and whom you find, the moment after, from something that un- 
 expectedly or perhaps by design drops from him, to be of a to- 
 tally different way of thinking. This hush-fighting is not re- 
 garded as fair play among scientific men. As fashionable con- 
 versation is a sacrifice to politeness, so the conversation of low- 
 life is nothing but rudeness. They contradict you without giving 
 a reason, or if they do, it is a very bad one swear, talk loud, 
 repeat the same thing fifty times over, get to calling names, and 
 from words proceed to blows. You cannot make companions of 
 servants, or persons in an inferior station in life. You may talk 
 to them on matters of business, and what they have to do for 
 
 9 PART II.
 
 94 TABLE TALK. 
 
 you (as lords talk to bruisers on subjects of fancy, or country, 
 squires to their grooms on horse-racing,) but out of that narrow 
 sphere, to any general topic, you cannot lead them ; the conver- 
 sation soon flags, and you go back to the old question, or are 
 obliged to break up the sitting for want of ideas in common. 
 The conversation of authors is better than that of most profes- 
 sions. It is better than that of lawyers, who talk nothing but 
 double entendre than that of physicians, who talk of the ap- 
 proaching deaths of the College, or the marriage of some new 
 practitioner with some rich widow than that of divines, who 
 talk of the last place they dined at than that of University- 
 men, who make stale puns, repeat the refuse of the London 
 newspapers, and affect an ignorance of Greek and mathematics 
 it is better than that of players, who talk of nothing but the 
 green-room, and rehearse the scholar, the wit, or the fine gen- 
 tleman, like a part on the stage or than that of ladies, who, 
 whatever you talk of, think of nothing, and expect you to think 
 of nothing, but themselves. It is not easy to keep up a conver- 
 sation with women in company. It is thought a piece of rude- 
 ness to differ from them : it is not quite fair to ask them a reason 
 for what they say. You are afraid of pressing too hard upon 
 them : but where you cannot differ openly and unreservedly, you 
 cannot heartily agree. It is not so iii France. There the wo- 
 men talk of things in general, and reason better than the men 
 in this country. They are mistresses of the intellectual foils. 
 They are adepts in all the topics. They know what is to be 
 said for and against all sorts of questions, and are lively and full 
 of mischief into the bargain. They are very subtle. They put 
 you to your trumps immediately. Your logic is more in requi- 
 sition even than your gallantry. You must argue as well as 
 bow yourself into the good graces of these modern Amazons. 
 What a situation for an Englishman to be placed in !* 
 
 The fault of literary conversation in general is its too great te- 
 
 * The topics of metaphysical argument having got into female society in 
 France, is a proof how much they must have been discussed there generally, 
 and how unfounded the charge is which we bring against them of excessive 
 thoughtlessness and frivolity. The French (taken all together) are a more 
 sensible, reflecting, and better informed people than the English.
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 125 
 
 naciousness It fastens upon a subject, and will not let it go. 
 It resembles a battle rather than a skirmish, and makes a toil of a 
 pleasure. Perhaps it does this from necessity, from a conscious- 
 ness of wanting the more familiar graces, the power to sport and 
 trifle, to touch lightly and adorn agreeably, every view or turn 
 of a question en passant, as it arises. Those who have a reputa- 
 tion to lose are too ambitious of shining, to please. " To excel 
 in conversation," said an ingenious man, " one must not be al- 
 ways striving to say good things : to say one good thing, one 
 must say many bad, and more indifferent ones." This desire to 
 shine without the means at hand, often makes men silent : 
 
 " The fear of being silent strikes us dumb." 
 
 A writer who has been accustomed to take a connected view of 
 a difficult question, and to work it out gradually in all its bear- 
 ings, may be very deficient in that quickness and ease which 
 men of the world, who are in the habit of hearing a variety of 
 opinions, who pick up an observation on one subject, and another 
 on another, and who care about none any farther than the passing 
 away of an idle hour, usually acquire. An author has studied 
 a particular point he has read, he has inquired, he has thought 
 a great deal upon it : he is not contented to take it up casually 
 in common with others, to throw out a hint, to propose an objec- 
 tion : he will either remain silent, uneasy, and dissatisfied, or he 
 will begin at the beginning and go through with it to the end. 
 He is for taking the whole responsibility upon himself. He 
 would be thought to understand the subject better than others, or 
 indeed would show that nobody else knows any thing about it. 
 There are always three or four points on which the literary no- 
 vice at his first outset in life fancies he can enlighten every com- 
 pany, and bear down all opposition : but he is cured of this Quix- 
 otic and pugnacious spirit, as he goes more into the world, where 
 he finds that there are other opinions and other pretensions to be 
 adjusted besides his own. When this asperity wears off, and a 
 certain scholastic precocity is mellowed down, the conversation 
 of men of letters becomes both interesting and instructive. Men 
 of the world have no fixed principles, no ground- work of thought : 
 mere scholars have too much an object, a theory always in view, 
 
 14*
 
 126 TABLE TALK. 
 
 to which they wrest every thing, and not unfrequently, common 
 sense itself. By mixing with society, they rub off their hardness 
 of manner, and impracticable, offensive singularity, while they 
 retain a greater depth and coherence of understanding. There 
 is more to be learnt from them than from their booko. This wa? 
 a remark of Rousseau's, and it is a very true one. In the con- 
 fidence and unreserve of private intercourse, they are more al 
 liberty to say what they think, to put the subject in different and 
 opposite points of view, to illustrate it more briefly and pithily 
 by familiar expressions, by an appeal to individual character and 
 personal knowledge to bring in the limitation, to obviate mis- 
 conception, to state difficulties on their own side of the argument, 
 and answer them as well as they can. This would hardly agree 
 with the prudery, and somewhat ostentatious claims of author- 
 ship. Dr. Johnson's conversation in Boswell's Life is much bet- 
 ter than his published works : and the fragments of the opinions 
 of celebrated men, preserved in their letters or in anecdotes of 
 them, are justly sought after as invaluable for the same reason. 
 For instance, what a fund of sense there is in Grimm's Memoirs ! 
 We thus get at the essence of what is contained in their more 
 laboured productions, without the affectation or formality. Ar- 
 gument, again, is the death of conversation, if carried on in a 
 spirit of hostility : but discussion is a pleasant and profitable 
 thing, where you advance and defend your opinions as far as 
 you can, and admit the truth of what is objected against them 
 with equal impartiality ; in short, where you do not pretend to 
 set up for an oracle, but freely declare what you really know 
 about any question, or suggest what has struck you as throwing 
 a new light upon it, and let it pass for what it is worth. This 
 tone of conversation was well described by Dr. Johnson, when 
 he said of some party at which he had been present the night 
 before " We had good talk, sir !" As a general rule, there is 
 no conversation worth any thing but between friends, or those 
 who agree in the same leading views of a subject. Nothing was 
 ever learnt by either side in a dispute. You contradict one 
 another, will not allow a grain of sense in what your adversary 
 advances, are blind to whatever makes against yourself, dare not 
 look the question fairly in the face, so that you cannot avail
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OP AUTHORS 127 
 
 yourself even of your real advantages, insist most on what you 
 feel to be the weakest points of your argument, and get more 
 and more absurd, dogmatical, and violent every moment. Dis- 
 putes for victory generally end to the dissatisfaction of all par- 
 ties; and the one recorded in Gil Bias breaks up just as it ought. 
 I once knew a very ingenious man, than whom, to take him in 
 the way of common chit-chat or fireside gossip, no one could be 
 more entertaining or rational. He would make an apt classical 
 quotation, propose an explanation of a curious passage in Shake- 
 spear's Venus and Adonis, detect a metaphysical error in Locke, 
 would infer the volatility of the French character from the chap- 
 ter in Sterne where the Count mistakes the feigned name of Yorick 
 for a proof of his being the identical imaginary character in 
 Hamlet (Et vous etes Yorick /) thus confounding words with 
 things twice over but let a difference of opinion be once hitched 
 in, and it was all over with him. His only object from that time 
 was to shut out common sense, and to be proof against convic- 
 tion. He would argue the most ridiculous point (such as that 
 there were two original languages) for hours together, nay, through 
 the horologe. You would not suppose it was the same person. 
 He was like an obstinate run-away horse, that takes the bit in his 
 mouth, and becomes mischievous and unmanageable. He had 
 made up his mind to one thing, not to admit a single particle of 
 what any one else said for or against him. It was all the differ- 
 ence between a man drunk or sober, sane or mad. It is the same 
 when he once gets the pen in his hand. He has been trying to 
 prove a contradiction in terms for the ten last years of his life, 
 viz. that the Bourbons have the same right to the throne of France 
 that the Brunswick family have to the throne of England. 
 Many people think there is a want of honesty or want of under- 
 standing in this. There is neither. But he will persist in an ar- 
 gument to the last pinch ; he will yield, in absurdity, to no man ! 
 This litigious humour is bad enough : but there is one charac- 
 ter still worse, that of a person who goes into company, not to 
 contradict, but to talk at you. This is the greatest nuisance in 
 civilized society. Such a person does not come armed to defend 
 himself at all points, but to unsettle, if he can, and throw a slur 
 on all your favourite opinions. If he has a notion that any one
 
 128 TABLE TALK. 
 
 in the room is fond of poetry, he immediately volunteers a con 
 ternptuous tirade against the idle jingle of verse. If he suspects 
 you have a delight in pictures, he endeavours, not by fair argu- 
 ment, but by a side-wind, to put you out of conceit with so frivo- 
 lous an art. If you have a taste for music, he does not think 
 much good is to be done by this tickling of the ears. If you 
 speak in praise of a comedy, he does not see the use of wit : if 
 you say you have been to a tragedy, he shakes his head at this 
 mockery of human misery, and thinks it ought to be prohibited. 
 He tries to find out beforehand whatever it is that you take a par- 
 ticular pride or pleasure in, that he may annoy your self-love in 
 the tenderest point (as if he were probing a wound) and make 
 you dissatisfied with yourself and your pursuits for several days 
 afterwards. A person might as well make a practice of throwing 
 out scandalous aspersions against your dearest friends or nearest 
 relations, by way of ingratiating himself into your favour. Such 
 ill-timed pertinence is " villainous, and shows a pitiful ambition 
 in the fool that uses it." 
 
 The soul of conversation is sympathy. Authors should con. 
 verse chiefly with authors, and their talk should be of books. 
 " When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war." There 
 is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to be pedantic. No man 
 can get above his pursuit in life : it is getting above himself, 
 which is impossible. There is a Free-masonry in all things. 
 You can only speak to be understood, but this you cannot be, ex- 
 cept by those who are in the secret. Hence an argument has 
 been drawn to supersede the necessity of conversation altogether ; 
 for it has been said, that there is no use in talking to people of 
 sense, who know all that you can tell them, nor to fools, who will 
 not be instructed. There is, however, the smallest encourage- 
 ment to proceed, when you are conscious that the more you really 
 enter into a subject, the farther you will be from the comprehen- 
 sion of your hearers and that the more proofs you give of any 
 position, the more odd and out-of-the-way they will think your 
 notions. Coleridge is the only person who can talk to all sorts 
 of people, on all sorts of subjects, without caring a farthing for 
 their understanding one word he says and he talks only for ad- 
 miration and to be listened to, and accordingly the least inter-
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 139 
 
 ruption puts him out. I firmly believe he would make just the 
 same impression on half his audiences, if he purposely repeated 
 absolute nonsense with the same voice and manner and inex- 
 haustible flow of undulating speech ! In general, wit shines only 
 by reflection. You must take your cue from your company 
 must rise as they rise, and sink as they fall. You must see that 
 your good things, your knowing allusions, are not flung away, 
 like the pearls in the adage. What a check it is to be asked a 
 foolish question ; to find that the first principles are not under- 
 stood ! You are thrown on your back immediately, the conver- 
 sation is stopped like a country-dance by those who do not know 
 the figure. But when a set of adepts, of illuminati, get about a 
 question, it is worth while to hear them talk. They may snarl 
 and quarrel over it, like dogs ; but they pick it bare to the bone, 
 they masticate it thoroughly.
 
 ISO TAELE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XXVI. 
 
 The same subject continued. 
 
 This was the case formerly at L 's, where we used to have 
 
 many lively skirmishes at their Thursday evening parties. 1 
 doubt whether the Small-coal man's musical parties could exceed 
 them. Oh ! for the pen of John Buncle to consecrate a petit 
 
 souvenir to their memory ! There was L himself, the most 
 
 delightful, the most provoking, the most witty and sensible of 
 men. He always made the best pun, and the best remark in the 
 course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious 
 writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine, pi- 
 quant, deep, eloquent things in half a dozen half-sentences as he 
 does. His jests scald like tears : and he probes a question with 
 a play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hair-brained vein 
 of home-felt truth ! What choice venom ! How often did we 
 cut into the haunch of letters, while we discussed the haunch of 
 mutton on the table ! How we skimmed the cream of criticism ! 
 How we got into the heart of controversy ! How we picked out 
 the marrow of authors ! " And, in our flowing cups, many a 
 good name and true was freshly remembered." Recollect (most 
 sage and critical reader) that in all this I was but a guest ! 
 Need I go over the names ? They were but the old everlasting 
 set Milton and Shakespear, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addi- 
 son, Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, Richardson, Ho- 
 garth's prints, Claude's landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton- 
 court, and all those things, that, having once been, must ever 
 be. The Scotch Novels had not then been heard of: so we said 
 nothing about them.. In general, we were hard upon tho 
 moderns. The author of the Rambler was only tolerated in 
 Boswell's Life of him ; and it was as much as any one could do 
 to edge in a word for Junius. L could not bear Gil Bias.
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 131 
 
 This was a fault. I remember the greatest triumph I ever haa 
 was in persuading him, after some years' difficulty, that Fielding 
 was better than Smollet. On one occasion, he was for making 
 out a list of persons famous in history that one would wish to see 
 again at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir Thomas 
 Browne, and Dr. Faustus but we black-balled most of his list ! 
 But with what a gusto-would he describe his favourite authors, 
 Donne, or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed passages 
 delicious! He tried them on his palate as epicures taste olives, 
 and his observations had a smack in them, like a roughness on 
 the tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in 
 what he admired most as in saying that the display of the 
 sumptuous banquet in Paradise Regained was not in true keep- 
 ing, as the simplest fare was all that was necessary to tempt the 
 extremity of hunger and stating that Adam and Eve in Para- 
 dise Lost were too much like married people. He has furnished 
 
 many a text for C to preach upon. There was no fuss or 
 
 cant about him : nor were his sweets or his sours ever diluted 
 with one particle of affectation. I cannot say that the party at 
 L 's were all of one description. There were honorary mem- 
 bers, lay-brothers. Wit and good-fellowship was the motto in- 
 scribed over the door. When a stranger came in, it was not 
 asked, "Has he written any thing?" we were above that 
 pedantry ; but we waited to see what he could do. If he could 
 take a hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down. If a person 
 liked any thing, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient. He 
 would understand, oy analogy, the pungency of other things, 
 besides Irish blackguard, or Scotch rappee. A character was 
 good any-where, in a room or on paper. But we abhorred insi- 
 pidity, affectation, and fine gentlemen. There was one of our 
 party who never failed to mark " two for his Nob" at cribbage, 
 
 and he was thought no mean person. This was Ned P , 
 
 and a better fellow in his way breathes not. There was , 
 
 who asserted some incredible matter-of-fact as a likely para- 
 ox, and settled all controversies by an ipse dixit, a fiat of his 
 will, hammering out many a hard theory on the anvil of iiis 
 Drain the Baron Munchausen of politics and practical philoso* 
 phy : there was Captain , \t ho had you at an advantage
 
 ISi TABLE TALK. 
 
 by never understanding you : there was Jem White, the author 
 of Falstaff's Letters, who the other day left this dull world to go 
 in search of more kindred spirits, " turning like the latter end 
 
 of a lover's lute :" there was A , who sometimes dropped 
 
 in, the Will Honeycomb of our set and Mrs. R , who being 
 
 of a quiet turn, loved to hear a noisy debate. An utterly unin- 
 formed person might have supposed this a scene of vulgar con- 
 fusion and uproar. While the most critical question was pend- 
 ing, while the most difficult problem in philosophy was solving, 
 P cried out, " That's game," and M. B. muttered a quo- 
 tation over the last remains of a veal-pie at a side-table. Once, 
 and once only, the literary interest overcame the general. For 
 
 C was riding the high German horse, and demonstrating the 
 
 Categories of the Transcendental philosophy to the author of 
 the Road to Ruin ; who insisted on his knowledge of German, 
 and German metaphysics, having read the Critique of Pure 
 
 Reason in the original. " My dear Mr. Holcroft," said C , 
 
 in a tone of infinitely provoking conciliation, "you really put 
 me in mind of a sweet pretty German girl, about fifteen, that I 
 met with in the Hartz forest in Germany and who one day, as 
 I was reading the Limits of the Knowable and the Unknowable, 
 the profoundest of all his works, with great attention, came be- 
 hind my chair, and leaning over, said, ' What, you read Kant ? 
 Why, I that am a German born, don't understand him !' " This 
 was too much to bear, and Holcrcft, starting up, called out in no 
 
 measured tone, " Mr. C , you are the most eloquent man I 
 
 ever met with, and the most troublesome with your eloquence !" 
 P held the cribbage-peg that was to mark him game, sus- 
 pended in his hand ; and the whist table was silent for a mo- 
 ment. I saw Holcroft down-stairs, and, on coming to the landing 
 place in Mitre-court, he stopped me to observe, that " he thought 
 
 Mr. C a very clever man, with a great command of language, 
 
 but that he feared he did not always affix very precise ideas to 
 the words he used." After he was gone, we had our laugh out, 
 and went on with the argument on the nature of Reason, the 
 Imagination, and the Will. I wish I could find a publisher for 
 it . it would make a supplement to the Biographia Literaria in a 
 volume and a half octavo.
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 133 
 
 Those days are over ! An event, the name of which I wish 
 never to nention, broke'up our party, like a bomb-shell thrown 
 into the 1 :>om : and now we seldom meet 
 
 " Like angels' visits, short and far between." 
 
 There is no longer the same set of persons, nor of associations. 
 
 L does not live where he did. By shifting his abode, his 
 
 notions seem less fixed. He does not wear his old snuff-coloured 
 coat and breeches. It looks like an alteration in his style. An 
 author and a wit should have a separate costume, a particular 
 cloth : he should present something positive and singular to the 
 mind, like Mr. Douce of the Museum. Our faith in the religion 
 of letters will not bear to be taken to pieces, and put together 
 again by caprice or accident. Leigh Hunt goes there sometimes. 
 He has a fine vinous spirit about him, and tropical blood in his 
 veins : but he is better at his own table. He has a great flow 
 of pleasantry and delightful animal spirits : but his hits do not 
 tell like L 's ; you cannot repeat them the next day. He re- 
 quires not only to be appreciated, but to have a select circle of 
 admirers and devotees, to feel himself quite at home. He sits 
 at the head of a party with great gaiety and grace ; has an ele- 
 gant manner and turn of features ; is never at a loss aliquando 
 sufflaminandus erat has continual sportive sallies of wit or fancy ; 
 tells a story capitally ; mimics an actor, or an acquaintance, to 
 admiration ; laughs with great glee and good humour at his own 
 or other people's jokes ; understands the point of an equivoque, 
 or an observation immediately ; has a taste and knowledge of 
 books, of music, of medals; manages an argument adroitly; is 
 genteel and gallant, and has a set of bye-phrases and quaint al- 
 lusions always at hand to produce a laugh : if he has a fault, it 
 is that he does not listen so well as he speaks, is impatient of in- 
 terruption, and is fond of being looked up to, without considering 
 by whom. I believe, however, he has pretty well seen the folly 
 of this. Neither is his ready display of personal accomplish- 
 ment and variety of resources an advantage to his writings. 
 They sometimes present a desultory and slip-shod appearance, 
 owing to this very circumstance. The same things that tell, 
 perhaps, best, to a private c rcle round the fireside, are not always
 
 134 TABLE TALK. 
 
 intelligible to the public, nor does he take pai is to make them so. 
 He is too confident and secure of his audience. That which 
 may be entertaining enough with the assistance of a certain live- 
 liness of manner, may read very flat on paper, because it is ab- 
 stracted from all the circumstances that had set it off to advantage. 
 A writer should recollect that he has only to trust to the imme- 
 diate impression of words, like a musician who sings without the 
 accompaniment of an instrument. There is nothing to help out, 
 or slubber over, the defects of the voice in the one case, nor of 
 the style in the other. The reader may, if he pleases, get a very 
 good idea of Leigh Hunt's conversation from a very agreeable 
 paper he has lately published, called the Indicator, than which 
 nothing can be more happily conceived or executed. 
 
 The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of 
 being heard. Authors in general are not good listeners. Some 
 of the best talkers are, on this account, the worst company ; and 
 some who are very indifferent, but very great talkers, are as bad. 
 It is sometimes wonderful to see how a person, who has been en- 
 tertaining or tiring a company by the hour together, drops his 
 countenance as if he had been shot, or had been seized with a 
 sudden lock-jaw, the moment any one interposes a single obser- 
 vation. The best converser I know is, however, the best listener. 
 I mean Mr. Northcote, the painter. Painters by their profession 
 are not bound to shine in conversation, and they shine the more. 
 He lends his ear to an observation, as if you had brought him a 
 piece of news, and enters into it with as much avidity and 
 earnestness, as if it interested himself personally. If he repeats 
 an old remark or story, it is with the same freshness and point as 
 for the first time. It always arises out of the occasion, and has 
 the stamp of originality. There is no parroting of himself. His 
 look is a continual, ever-varying history-piece of what passes in 
 his mind. His face is as a book. There need no marks of in- 
 terjection or interrogation to what he says. His manner is quite 
 picturesque. There is an excess of character and naivete that 
 never tires. His thoughts bubble up and sparkle, like beads on 
 old wine. The fund of anecdote, the collection of curious parti- 
 culars, is enough to set up any common retailer of jests, that 
 dines out every day ; but these are not strung together like a row
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OP AUTHORS. 135 
 
 of galley-slaves, but are always introduced to illustrate some ar- 
 gumnt or bring out some fine distinction of character. The 
 mixture of spleen adds to the sharpness of the point, like poisoned 
 arrows. Mr. Northcote enlarges with enthusiasm on the old 
 painters, and tells good things of the new. The only thing he 
 ever vexed me in was his liking the Catalogue Raisonnee. I had 
 almost as soon hear him talk of Titian's pictures (which he does 
 with tears in his eyes, and looking just like them) as see the ori- 
 ginals, and I had rather hear him talk of Sir Joshua's than see 
 them. He is the last of that school who knew Goldsmith and 
 Johnson. How finely he describes Pope ! His elegance of mind, 
 his figure, his character, were not unlike his own. He does not 
 resemble a modern Englishman, but puts one in mind of a Roman 
 Cardinal or Spanish Inquisitor. I never ate or drank with Mr. 
 Northcote ; but I have lived on his conversation with undiminished 
 relish ever since I can remember, and when I leave it, I come 
 out into the street with feelings lighter and more ethereal than I 
 have at any other time. One of his tHe-a-tetes would at any 
 time make an Essay ; but he cannot write himself, because he 
 loses himself in the connecting passages, is fearful of the effect, 
 and wants the habit of bringing his ideas into one focus or point 
 of view. A lens is necessary to collect the diverging rays, the 
 refracted and broken angular lights of conversation on paper. 
 Contradiction is half the battle in talking the being startled by 
 what others say, and having to answer on the spot. You have 
 to defend yourself, paragraph by paragraph, parenthesis within 
 parenthesis. Perhaps it might be supposed that a person who 
 excels in conversation and cannot write, would succeed better in 
 dialogue. But the stimulus, the immediate irritation, would be 
 wanting ; and the work would read flatter than ever, from not 
 having the very thing it pretended to have. 
 
 Lively sallies and connected discourse are very different 
 things. There are many persons of that impatient and restless 
 turn of mind, that they cannot wait a moment for a conclusion, 
 or follow up the thread of any argument. In the hurry of con- 
 versation their ideas are somehow huddled into sense : but in the 
 ntervals of thought, leave a great gap between. Montesquieu 
 said, he often lost an idea before he could find words for it : yet
 
 136 TABLE TALK. 
 
 he dictated, by way of saving time, to an amanuensis. This last 
 is, in my opinion, a vile method, and a solecism in authorship. 
 Home Tooke, among other paradoxes, used to maintain, that no 
 one could write a good style who was not in the habit of talking 
 and hearing the sound of his own voice. He might as well have 
 said that no one could relish a good style without reading it 
 aloud, as we find common people do to assist their apprehension. 
 But there is a method of trying periods on the ear, or weighing 
 them with the scales of the breath, without any articulate sound. 
 Authors, as they write, may be said to " hear a sound so fine, 
 there's nothing lives 'twixt it and silence." Even musicians 
 generally compose in their heads. I agree that no style is good, 
 that is not fit to be spoken or read aloud with effect. This holds 
 true not only of emphasis and cadence, but also with regard to 
 natural idiom and colloquial freedom. Sterne's was in this re- 
 spect the best style that ever was written. You fancy that you 
 hear the people talking. For a contrary reason, no college-man 
 writes a good style, or understands it when written. Fine wri- 
 ting is with him all verbiage and monotony a translation into 
 classical centos or hexameter lines. 
 
 That which I have just mentioned is among many instances I 
 could give of ingenious absurdities advanced by Mr. Tooke in 
 the heat and pride of controversy. A person who knew him 
 well, and greatly admired his talents, said of him that he never 
 (to his recollection) heard him defend an opinion which he 
 thought right, or in which he believed him to be himself sincere. 
 He indeed provoked his antagonists into the toils by the very ex- 
 travagance of his assertions, and the teasing sophistry by which 
 he rendered them plausible. His temper was prompter to his 
 skill. He had the manners of a man of the world, with great 
 scholastic resources. He flung every one else ofFhis guard, and 
 was himself immoveable. I never knew any one who did not 
 admit his superiority in this kind of warfare. He put a full stop 
 
 to one of C 's long-winded prefatory apologies for his youth 
 
 and inexperience, by saying abruptly, " Speak up, young man !" 
 and, at another time, silenced a learned professor, by desiring an 
 explanation of a word which the other frequently used, and which,, 
 he said, he had been many years 'rying to get at the meaning of,
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 131 
 
 the copulative Is ! He was the best intellectual fencer of his 
 day. He made strange havoc of Fuseli's fantastic hieroglyphics, 
 violent humours, and oddity of dialect. Curran, who was some- 
 times of the same party, was lively and animated in convivial 
 conversation, but dull in argument ; nay, averse to any thing 
 like reasoning or serious observation, and had the worst taste I 
 ever knew. His favourite critical topics were to abuse Milton's 
 Paradise Lost, and Romeo and Juliet. Indeed, he confessed a 
 want of sufficient acquaintance with books when he found him- 
 self in literary society in London. He and Sheridan once dined 
 at John Kemble's with Mrs. Inchbald and Mary Woolstonecroft, 
 when the discourse almost wholly turned on Love, " from noon 
 to dewy eve, a summer's day !" What a subject ! What speak- 
 ers, and what hearers ! What would I not give to have been 
 there, had I not learned it all from the bright eyes of Amaryllis, 
 and may one day make a Table-talk of it ! Peter Pindar was 
 rich in anecdote and grotesque humour, and profound in technical 
 knowledge both of music, poetry, and painting, but he was gross 
 and over-bearing. Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man in- 
 spired on subjects of poetry (his own out of the question) Cole- 
 ridge well on every subject, and G dwin on none. To finish 
 this subject : Mrs. M 's conversation is as finecut as her fea- 
 tures, and I like to sit in the room with that sort of coronet face. 
 What she says leaves a flavour, like fine green tea. H t's is 
 
 like champaigne, and N 's like anchovy sandwiches. H y- 
 
 d n's is like a game at trap-ball : L 's like snap-dragon : and 
 my own (if I do not mistake the matter) is not very much unlike 
 
 a game at nine-pins ! One source of the conversation 
 
 of authors, is the character of other authors, and on that they are 
 rich indeed. What things they say ! What stories they tell of one 
 another, more particularly of their friends ! If I durst only give 
 some of these confidential communications ! . . . The reader may 
 perhaps think the foregoing a specimen of them : but indeed he 
 is mistaken. 
 
 I do not know of any greater impertinence, than for an ob- 
 scure individual to set about pumping a character of celebrity. 
 " Bring him to me," said a Doctor Tronchin, speaking of Rous- 
 seau, " that I may see whether he has any thing in him." Be-
 
 138 TABLE TALK. 
 
 fore you can take measure of the capacity of others, you ought 
 to be sure that they have not taken measure of yours. They 
 may think you a spy on them, and may not like their company. 
 If you really want to know whether another person can talk 
 well, begin by saying a good thing yourself, and you will have 
 a right to look for a rejoinder. " The best tennis-players," says 
 Sir Fopling Flutter, " make the best matches." 
 
 For wit is like a rest 
 
 Held up at tennis, which men do the best 
 With the best players. 
 
 We hear it often said of a great author, or a great actress, that 
 they are very stupid people in private. But he was a fool that 
 said so. Tell me your company, and Fll tell you your manners. In 
 conversation, as in other things, the action and reaction should 
 bear a certain proportion to each other. Authors may, in 
 some sense, be looked upon as foreigners, who are not natural- 
 ized even in their native soil. L once came down into the 
 
 country to see us. He was " like the most capricious poet Ovid 
 among the Goths." The country-people thought him an oddity, 
 and did not understand his jokes. It would be strange if they 
 had ; for he did not make any, while he staid. But when we 
 crossed the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and 
 the old colleges were hail-fellow well met ; and in the quadran- 
 gles, he " walked gowned." 
 
 There is a character of a gentleman ; so there is a, character 
 of a scholar, which is no less easily recognized. The one has 
 an air of books about him, as the other has of good-breeding. 
 The one wears his thoughts as the other does his clothes, grace- 
 fully ; and even if they are a little old-fashioned, they are not 
 ridiculous : they have had their day. The gentleman shows, by 
 his manner, that he has been used to respect from others : the 
 scholar, that he lays claim to self-respect and to a certain inde- 
 pendence of opinion. The one has been accustomed to the best 
 company ; the other has passed his time in cultivating an inti- 
 macy with the best authors. There is nothing forward or vul- 
 gar in the behaviour of the one ; nothing shrewd or petulant in 
 the observations of the other, as if he should astonish the bye-
 
 ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 131* 
 
 standers, or was astonished himself at his own discoveries. Good 
 taste and good sense, like common politeness, are, or are sup- 
 posed to be, matters of course. One is distinguished by an ap- 
 pearance of marked attention to every one present ; the other 
 manifests an habitual air of abstraction and absence of mind. 
 The one is not an upstart with all the self-important airs of the 
 founder of his own fortune ; nor the other a self-taught man, with 
 the repulsive self-sufficiency which arises from an ignorance of 
 what hundreds have known before him. We must excuse per- 
 haps a little conscious family-pride in the one, and a little harm- 
 less pedantry in the other. As there is a class of the first cha- 
 racter which sinks into the mere gentleman, that is, which has 
 nothing Vut this sense of respectability and propriety to support 
 it so the character of a scholar not unfrequently dwindles down 
 into the shadow of a shade, till nothing is left of it but the mere 
 book- worm. There is often something amiable as well as envia- 
 ble in this last character. I know one such instance, at least. 
 The person I mean has an admiration for learning, if he is 
 only dazzJed by its light. He lives among old authors, if he 
 does not enter much into their spirit. He handles the covers, 
 and turns over the page, and is familiar with the names and 
 dates. He is busy and self-involved. He hangs like a film and 
 cobweb upon letters, or is like the dust upon the outside of know- 
 ledge, which should not be rudely brushed aside. He follows 
 learning as its shadow ; but, as such, he is respectable. He 
 browzes on the husk and leaves of books, as the young fawn 
 browzes on the bark and leaves of trees. Such a one lives all 
 his life in a dream of learning, and has never once had his sleep 
 broken by a real sense of things. He believes implicitly in ge- 
 nius, truth, virtue, liberty, because he finds the names of these 
 things in books. He thinks that love and friendship are the 
 finest things imaginable, both in practice and theory. The le- 
 gend of good women is to him no fiction. When he steals from 
 the twilight of his cell, the scene breaks upon him like an illu- 
 minated missal, and all the people he sees are but so many 
 figures in a camera obscura. He reads the world, like a favourite 
 volume, only to find beauties in it, or like an edition of some old 
 work which he is preparing for the press, only to make emenda- 
 10 PART TI
 
 140 TABLE TALK. 
 
 lions in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently slipt in 
 He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted, 
 faithful, affectionate creatures if Tray could but read ! His 
 mind cannot take the impression of vice : but the gentleness of 
 his nature turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He 
 draws the picture of mankind from the guileless simplicity of his 
 own heart : and when he dies, his spirit will take its smiling 
 leave without having ever had an ill thought of otherr, or tl rf 
 consciousness of one in itself !
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 141 
 
 ESSAY XXVII. 
 
 My First Acquaintance with Poets. 
 
 My father was a dissenting minister at Wem, in Shropshire ; and 
 in the year 1798 (the figures that compose that date are to me 
 like the " dreaded name of Demogorgon") Mr. Coleridge came to 
 Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a 
 Unitarian congregation there. He did not come till late on the 
 Saturday afternoon before he was to preach ; and Mr. Rowe, 
 who himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and 
 expectation to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no 
 one at all answering the description but a round-faced man in a 
 short black coat (like a shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to 
 have been made for him, but who seemed to be talking at a great 
 rate to his fellow-passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce returned to 
 give an account of his disappointment when the round-faced 
 man in black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject by 
 beginning to talk. He did not cease while he stayed ; nor has he 
 since, that I know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in 
 delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there, " flut- 
 tering the proud Salopians, like an eagle in a dove-cote ;" and the 
 Welsh mountains that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous 
 confusion agree to have heard no such mystic sounds since the 
 days of 
 
 " High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay !" 
 
 As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed 
 their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red rust- 
 ling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was 
 in my ears as of Siren's song; I was stunned, startled with it, as 
 from deep sleep ; but I had no notion then that I should ever be 
 
 15
 
 J 12 TABLE TALK. 
 
 able to express my admiration to others in motley imagery or 
 quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like 
 the sun's rays glittering in the puddles of the road. I was at that 
 time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the way-side, 
 crushed, bleeding, lifeless ; but now, bursting from the deadly 
 bands that " bound them, 
 
 " With Styx nine times round them," 
 
 iry ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, 
 :atch the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed re- 
 named in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite 
 and unsatisfied ; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this 
 rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak 
 to ; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb and 
 brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to 
 Coleridge. But this is not to my purpose. 
 
 My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the 
 habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins 
 of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on,) according to the custom of 
 dissenting ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line of 
 communication is thus established, by which the flame of civil 
 and religious liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering 
 fire unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of iEschylus, 
 placed at different stations, that waited for ten long years to an- 
 nounce with their blazing pyramids the destruction of Troy. 
 Coleridge had agreed to come over and see my father, according 
 to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's probable suc- 
 cessor ; but, in the mean time, I had gone to hear him preach 
 the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting 
 up into a Unitaiian pulpit to preach the gospel, was a romance in 
 these degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of 
 Christianity, which was not to be resisted. 
 
 It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before day 
 light, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person 
 preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such 
 another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the 
 year 1798, H y a des impressions que ni le terns ni les circonstances 
 peuvent effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles enliers, le doux ferns de
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 143 
 
 ma jeunesse ne peut renailre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma 
 memoire. When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th 
 psalm, and when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out 
 his text, " And he went up into the mountain to pray, himself, 
 alone." As he gave out his text, his voice " rose like a stream 
 of rich distilled perfumes," and when he came to the two last 
 words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to 
 me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the 
 bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have 
 floated iq solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. 
 John came into my mind, " of one crying in the wilderness, who 
 had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild 
 honey." The preacher then launched into his subject, like an 
 eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and 
 war ; upon church and state not their alliance, but their sepa- 
 ration on the spirit of the world and the spirit of Christianity, not 
 as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those 
 who had " inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with 
 human gore." He made a poetical and pastoral excursion, 
 and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast 
 between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team afield, or sitting 
 under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, " as though he should 
 never be old," and the same poor country-lad, crimped, kid- 
 napped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned 
 into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with 
 powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in 
 the loathsome finery of the profession of blood. 
 
 " Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung." 
 
 And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had 
 heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and philosophy had met 
 together, Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and 
 with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. 
 I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring 
 paie and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed 
 an emblem of the good cause ; and the cold dank drops of dew, 
 that hung half-melted on the beard of the thistle, had something 
 genial and refreshing in them ; for there was a spirit of hope 
 
 15
 
 144 TABLE TALK. 
 
 and youth in all nature, that turned every thing into good. The 
 face of nature had not then the brand of Jus Divinum on it : 
 
 " Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.' 
 
 On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I 
 was called down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, 
 half-afraid. He received me very graciously, and I listened 
 for a long time without uttering a word. I did not suffer in his 
 opinion by my silence. " For those two hours," he afterwards 
 was pleased to say, " he was conversing with William Hazlitt's 
 forehead !" His appearance was different from what I had an- 
 ticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim 
 light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his 
 aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small- 
 pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright, 
 
 " As are the children of yon azure sheen." 
 
 His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with 
 large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them, like 
 a sea with darkened lustre. " A certain tender bloom his face 
 o'erspread," a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful 
 complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Velas- 
 quez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent : his 
 chin good-humoured and round ; but his nose, the rudder of the 
 face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing like what 
 he has done. It might seem that the genius of his face as from a 
 height surveyed and projected him (with sufficient capacity and 
 huge aspiration) into the world unknown of thought and imagi- 
 nation, with nothing to support or guide his veering purpose, as 
 if Columbus had launched his adventurous course for the New 
 World in a scallop, without oars or compass. So at least I com- 
 ment on it after the event. Coleridge, in his person, was rather 
 above the common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like Lord 
 Hamlet, " somewhat fat and pursy." His hair (now, alas ! grey) 
 was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth 
 masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is peculiar 
 to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward ; and is
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 145 
 
 traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour) from the 
 pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character, to all who 
 preach Christ crucified, and Coleridge was at that time one of 
 those ! 
 
 It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my 
 father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into 
 the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully 
 brought up by his parents, and sent to the University of Glasgow 
 (where he studied under Adam Smith) to prepare him for his 
 future destination. It was his mother's proudest wish to see her 
 son a dissenting minister. So, if we look back to past genera- 
 tions (as far as eye can reach), we see the same hopes, fears, 
 wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing in the 
 human heart ; and so we may see them (if we look forward) rising 
 up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in the hu- 
 man breast ! After being tossed about from congregation to con- 
 gregation in the heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles 
 about the American war, he had been relegated to an obscure 
 village, where he was to spend the last thirty years of his life, 
 far from the only converse that he loved, the talk about dis- 
 puted texts of Scripture, and the cause of civil and religious 
 liberty. Here he passed his days, repining, but resigned, in the 
 study of the Bible, and the perusal of the commentators, huge 
 folios, not easily got through, one of which would outlast a 
 winter ! Why did he pore on these from morn to night (with 
 the exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to 
 gather broccoli-plants or kidney beans of his own rearing, with 
 no small degree of pride and pleasure)? Here were "no figures 
 nor no fantasies," neither poetry nor philosophy nothing to 
 dazzle, nothing to excite modern curiosity ; but to his lack-lustre 
 eyes there appeared, within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldy 
 neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew 
 capitals : pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to the 
 last fading thinness of the understanding, there were- glimpses, 
 glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm-treea 
 hovering in the horizon, and processions of camels at the distance 
 of three thousand years; there was Moses with the burning bush 
 the number of the Twelve Tribes, tyoes, shadows, glosses on fl**
 
 146 TABLE TALK. 
 
 law and (.he prophets ; there were discussions (dull enough) on the 
 age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation ! there were outlines, 
 rude guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the riches of 
 Solomon's Temple ; questions as to the date of the creation, pre 
 dictions of the end of all things ; the great lapses of time, the 
 strange mutations ol die globe, were unfolded with the voluminous 
 leaf, as it turned over ; and though the soul might slumber with 
 an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it 
 was in a slumber ill exchanged for all the sharpened realities of 
 sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's life was comparatively 
 a dream ; but it was a dream of infinity and eternity, of death, 
 the resurrection, and a judgment to come ! 
 
 No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host 
 and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript 
 yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him 
 welcome. He could hardly have been more surprised or pleased, 
 if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts had wings ; 
 and as the silken sounds rustled round our little wainscoted parlor, 
 my father threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white 
 hairs mixing with its sanguine hue ; and a smile of delight 
 beamed across his rugged cordial face, to think that Truth had 
 found a new ally in Fancy !* Besides, Coleridge seemed to 
 take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. 
 He talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over a 
 variety of subjects. At dinner-time he grew more animated, 
 and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft 
 and Mackintosh. The last, he said, he considered (on my 
 father's speaking of his 'Vindicise Gallicise' as a capital per- 
 formance) as a clever scholastic man a master of the topics, 
 or as the ready warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly 
 where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were 
 not his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style 
 or matter. Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere 
 
 * My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to 
 be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The 
 last were forced and dry : the first came naturally from him. For ease, half- 
 plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasan ry, I have never seen 
 them equalled.
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 147 
 
 logician. Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in 
 figures, because he had an eye for nature : Mackintosh, on the 
 other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an eye to common- 
 places. On this I ventured to say that I had always entertained 
 a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I could find) the 
 speaking of him with contempt might be made the test of a vulgar 
 democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever made 
 to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I 
 remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table 
 Jiat day had the finest flavor imaginable. Coleridge added that 
 Mackintosh and Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke 
 highly) had expressed a very indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. 
 Wordswortb, on which he remarked to them " He strides on so 
 far before you, that he dwindles in the distance !" Godwin had 
 once boasted to him of having carried on an argument with 
 Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success ; Coleridge told 
 him " If there had been a man of genius in the room, he would 
 have settled the question in five minutes." He asked me if I had 
 ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few 
 moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off" Godwin's objec- 
 tion to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. 
 He replied, that " this was only one instance of the ascendency 
 which people of imagination exercised over those of mere intel- 
 lect." He did not rate Godwin very high* (this was caprice or 
 prejudice, real or affected,) but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wol- 
 stonecraft's powers of conversation ; none at all of her talent for 
 book-making. We talked a little about Holcroft. He had been 
 asked if he was not much struck with him, and he said, he thought 
 himself in more danger of being struck by him. I complained 
 that he would not let me get on at all, for he required a defini- 
 tion of every the commonest word, exclaiming, " What do you 
 mean by a sensation, Sir ? What do you mean by an idea ?" 
 This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing the road to truth ; it was 
 setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we took. I forget a great 
 
 * He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempting to 
 establish the future immortality of man, " without" (as he said) " knowing 
 what Death was or what Life was" and the tone in whih he pronounced 
 these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both.
 
 148 TABLE TALK. 
 
 lumber of things, many more than I remember ; but the day 
 passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Coleridge was 
 to return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, 1 
 found that he had just received a letter from his friend, T. 
 Wedgwood, making him an offer of j150 a-year if he choose to 
 waive his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study 
 of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his 
 mind to close with this proposal in the act of tying on one of his 
 shoes. It threw an additional damp on his departure. It took 
 the wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast him into Deva's 
 winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of living 
 at ten miles' distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting congre- 
 gation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of 
 Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas ! 
 I knew not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr. 
 Wedgwood's bounty. I was presently relieved from this dilemma ; 
 for Mr. Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table 
 to write something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with 
 undulating step, and giving me the precious document, said that 
 that was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether- Stowey, Somerset- 
 shire ; and that he should be glad to see me there in a few 
 weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet me. 
 I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be 
 found in Cassandra) when he sees a thunder-bolt fall close at his 
 feet. I stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of 
 this offer (I thought Mr. Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as 
 well as I could ; and this mighty business being settled, the poet- 
 preacher took leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. 
 It was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he talked the 
 whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is described as going 
 
 " Sounding on his way." 
 
 So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing, 
 from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide 
 on ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should 
 have preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at 
 Shrewsbury, one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Sup- 
 per, showing that he could not administer either, which would
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 149 
 
 have effectually disqualified him for the object in view i ob- 
 served that he continually crossed me on the way by shifting 
 from one side of the foot-path to the other. This struck me as 
 an odd movement ; but I did not at that time connect it with any 
 instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle, as I 
 have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight 
 line. He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose ' Essay on Miracles' 
 he said was stolen from an objection started in one of South's 
 sermons Credat Judaus Apella !) I was not very much pleased 
 at this account of Hume, for I had just been reading, with in- 
 finite relish, that completest of all metaphysical choke-pears, his 
 ' Treatise on Human Nature,' to which the ' Essays,' in point of 
 scholastic subtilty and close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, 
 light summer reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of 
 Hume's general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or 
 candour. He however made me amends by the manner in which 
 he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his ' Essay on 
 Vision' as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it un- 
 doubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for 
 striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's 
 Theory of Matter and Spirit, and saying, " Thus I confute him, 
 Sir." Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought 
 about the connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. 
 He said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute 
 mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. The 
 one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the characteristic of a 
 philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a true philosopher, 
 a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature 
 and of his own mind. He did not speak of his 'Analogy,' but 
 of his ' Sermons at the Rolls' Chapel,' of which I had never 
 heard. Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer the un- 
 known to the known. In this instance he was right. The ' Ana- 
 logy' is a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special- 
 pleading ; the ' Sermons' (with the Preface to them) are in a fine 
 vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observa- 
 tion of human nature, without pedantry and without bias. I told 
 Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was sometimes 
 foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery on the 
 
 15*
 
 lad TABLE TALK. 
 
 same subject (lie ' Natural Disinterestedness of the Human 
 Mind') and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who 
 listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed in making 
 myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards for 
 the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make 
 clear work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton- 
 style of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half-way down 
 the second page ; and after trying in vain to pump up any words, 
 images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or observations from that 
 gulph of abstraction in which I had plunged myself for four or 
 five years preceding, gave up the attempt as labour in vain, and 
 shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. 
 I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then ? Oh 
 no ! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able 
 to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the 
 world. Would that I could go back to what I then was ! Why 
 can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places ? If I 
 had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would 
 write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury, and 
 immortalize every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I 
 would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer- 
 hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed ! 
 I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He 
 mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his 
 style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time- 
 serving casuist, and said that " the fact of his work on Moral and 
 Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our Universities 
 was a disgrace to the national character." We parted at the 
 six-mile stone ; and I returned homeward, pensive but much 
 pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person, whom 
 I believed to have been prejudiced against me. " Kind and af- 
 fable to me had been his condescension, and should be honoured 
 ever with suitable regard." He was the first poet I had known, 
 and he certainly answered to that inspired name. I had heard a 
 great deal of his powers of conversation, and was not disappointed. 
 In fact, I never met with any thing at all like them, either before 
 or since. I could easily credit the accounts which were circu- 
 lated of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentle-
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 151 
 
 men, an evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when 
 he made the whole material universe look like a transparency of 
 fine words ; and another story (which I believe he has somewhere 
 told himself) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of hi" 
 smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, where 
 the company found him to their no small surprise, which was in- 
 creased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing 
 his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three-hours' de- 
 scription of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream, very 
 different from Mr. Southey's ' Vision of Judgment,' and also 
 from that other ' Vision of Judgment,' which Mr. Murray, the 
 Secretary of the Bridge-street Junto, took into his especial 
 keeping ! 
 
 On my way back, I had a sound in my ears it was the voice 
 of Fancy : I had a light before me it was the face of Poetry. 
 The one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side ! 
 Coleridge in truth met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, 
 or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. I 
 had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to 
 visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter gave 
 me a welcoming ; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. 
 The golden sun-sets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my 
 way to new hopes and prospects. I was to visit Coleridge in the 
 Spring. This circumstance was never absent from my thoughts, 
 and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to him at the time 
 proposed, and received an answer postponing my intended visit 
 for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to complete my 
 promise then. This delay did not damp, but rather increased my 
 ardour. In the mean time, I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of 
 initiating myself in the mysteries of natural scenery ; and I must 
 say I was enchanted with it. I had been reading Coleridge's de- 
 scription of England, in his fine ' Ode on the Departing Year,' 
 and I applied it, con amore, to the objects before me. That valley 
 was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a new existence : in the 
 river that winds through it, my spirit was baptised in the waters 
 of Helicon ! 
 
 I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with un- 
 worn heart and untried feet. My way lay through Worcester
 
 153 TABLE TALK. 
 
 and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Fanes 
 and the adventure of the muff. I remember getting completely 
 Vet through one day, and stopping at an inn (I think it was at 
 Tewkesbury,) where I sat up all night to read ' Paul and Virginia.' 
 Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched my body, 
 and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read ! I 
 recollect a remark of Coleridge's upon this very book, that no- 
 thing could show the gross indelicacy of French manners and the 
 entire corruption of their imagination more strongly than the be- 
 haviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns, away 
 from a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save her 
 life, because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swim- 
 ming. Was this a time to think of such a circumstance ? I 
 once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on 
 Grasmere lake, that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his 
 ' Poems on the Naming of Places' from the local inscriptions of 
 the same kind in ' Paul and Virginia.' He did not own the ob- 
 ligation, and stated some distinction without a difference, in de- 
 fence of his claim to originality. Any the slightest variation 
 would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind ; for whatever 
 he added or altered would inevitably be worth all that any one 
 else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. I was 
 still two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken 
 care to set out early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridge- 
 water, and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its 
 muddy river, returned to the inn, and read ' Camilla.' So have 
 I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going 
 to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. 
 I have wanted only one thing to make me happy ; but wanting 
 that, have wanted every thing ! 
 
 I arrived and was well received. The country about Nether 
 Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I 
 saw it but the other day, after an interval of twenty years, from 
 a hill near Taunton. How was the map of my life spread out 
 before me, as the map of the country lay at my feet ! In the 
 afternoon, Coleridge took me over to All-Foxden, a romantic old 
 family mansion of the St. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived. It 
 was then in the possession of a friend of the poet's, who gave h>ii
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 153 
 
 the free use of it. Somehow that period (the time just after tbe 
 French Revolution) was not a time when nothing was given for 
 nothing. The mind opened, and a softness might be perceived 
 coming over the heart of individuals, beneath " the scales that 
 fence" our self-interest. Wordsworth himself was from home, 
 but his sister kept house*, and set before us a frugal repast ; and 
 we had free access to her brother's poems, the x Lyrical Ballads,' 
 which were still in manuscript, or in the form of ' Sybilline 
 Leaves.' I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and 
 with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room with 
 blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced family-portraits 
 of the age of George I. and II., and from the wooded declivity 
 of the adjoining park that overlooked my window, at the dawn 
 of day, could 
 
 " hear the loud stag speak." 
 
 In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) 
 our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between 
 sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of 
 strange shapes, and there is always something to come better than 
 what we see. As in our dreams the fulness of the blood gives 
 warmth and reality to the coinage of the brain, so in youth our 
 ideas are clothed, and fed, and pampered with our good spirits ; 
 we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight of future 
 years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, and we repose 
 with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As we advance, we 
 exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. We are no longer 
 wrapped in lamb's-wool, lulled in Elysium. As we taste the 
 pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the sense palls ; and 
 nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows of v. hat has 
 been ! 
 
 That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out 
 into the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of the old ash- 
 tree that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with 
 a sonorous and musical voice, the ballad of ' Betty Foy.' I was 
 not critically or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and 
 nature, and took the rest for granted. But in the ' Thorn,' the 
 Mad Mother,' and the ' Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman,' I
 
 1 54 TABLE TALK. 
 
 felt that deeper power and pathos which have been since ac- 
 knowledged, 
 
 " In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite," 
 
 as the characteristics of this author ; and the sense of a new 
 style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me 
 something of the effect that arises from the turning up of the 
 fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of Spring, 
 
 " While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed." 
 
 Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and 
 uis voice sounded high 
 
 " Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
 Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 
 
 as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or water- 
 fall, gleaming in the summer moonlight !" He lamented that 
 Wordsworth was not prone enough to believe in the traditional 
 superstitions of the place, and that there was a something corpo- 
 real, a matter-qf-fact-ness, a clinging to the palpable, or often to 
 the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a 
 spirit that descended to him through the air : it sprung out of the 
 ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, on 
 which the goldfinch sang. He said, however, (if I remember 
 right,) that this objection must be confined to his descriptive 
 pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a grand and comprehen- 
 sive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the universe like 
 a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather than by de- 
 duction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at 
 Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in 
 some degree to his friend's description of him, but was more 
 gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (accord- 
 ing to the costume of that unconstrained period) in a brown fus- 
 tian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was something of a 
 roll, a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own ' Peter Bell.' There 
 was a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire 
 in his eye (as if he saw something in objects more than the out- 
 ward appearance,) an intense, high, narrow forehead, a Roman
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 65 
 
 nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, and a con- 
 vulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal at 
 variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his 
 face. Chantry's bust wants the marking trafts ; but he was 
 teazed into making it regular and heavy ; Haydon's head of him, 
 introduced into the Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, is the most 
 like his drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down 
 and talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear 
 gushing accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a 
 strong tincture of the northern burr, like the crust on wine. He 
 instantly began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese 
 on the table, and said triumphantly that " his marriage with ex- 
 perience had not been so productive as Mr. Southey's in teaching 
 him a knowledge of the good things of this life." He had been 
 to see the Castle Spectre' by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and 
 described it very well. He said " it fitted the taste of the audi- 
 ence like a glove." 
 
 This ad captandum merit was however by no means a recom- 
 mendation of it, according to the severe principles of the new 
 school, which reject rather than court popular effect. Words- 
 worth, looking out of the low, latticed window, said, How 
 beautifully the sun sets on that yellow bank !" I thought within 
 myself, " With what eyes these poets see nature !" and ever 
 after when I saw the sun-set stream upon the objects facing it, 
 conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Wordsworth for 
 having made one for me ! We went over to All-Foxden again 
 the day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of ' Peter 
 Bell' in the open air ; and the comment made upon it by his face 
 and voice was very different from that of some later critics ! 
 Whatever might be thought of the poem, " his face was as a book 
 where men might read strange matters," and he announced the 
 fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There is a chaunt in the re- 
 citation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell 
 upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have 
 deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous 
 accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, 
 and varied ; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. 
 The one might be termed more dramatic, the other more lyrical 
 11 PART II.
 
 156 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose in walk- 
 .ng over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling 
 branches of a copsewood ; whereas Wordsworth always wrote 
 (if he could) walking up and down a straight gravel-walk, or in 
 some spot where the continuity of his verse met with no collate- 
 ral interruption. Returning that same evening, I got into a meta- 
 physical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was ex- 
 plaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in 
 which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly 
 clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether 
 Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the after- 
 noons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's 
 friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and listening 
 to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our Jlip. It was 
 agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down 
 the Bristol Channel, as fa # r as Linton. We set off together on 
 foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a native 
 of Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Cole- 
 ridge's discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time 
 to the sound of a brass pan. He " followed in the chace, like a 
 dog who hunts, not like one that made up the cry." He had on 
 a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in 
 stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a drover, which 
 he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the 
 side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that 
 he might not lose a syllable or sound, that fell from Coleridge's 
 lips. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge was a won- 
 derful man. He scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an 
 opinion the whole way : yet of the three, had I to choose during 
 that journey, I would be John Chester. He afterwards followed 
 Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean philosophers were 
 puzzled how to bring him under any of their categories. When 
 he sat down at table with his idol, John's felicity was complete ; 
 Sir Walter Scott's, or Mr. Blackwood's, when they sat down at 
 the same table with the King, was not more so. We passed 
 Dunster on our right, a small town between the brow of a hill 
 and the sea. I remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay below us: 
 contrasted with the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as
 
 MY FIRST ACaUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 151 
 
 pure, as embrowned and ideal as any landscape I have seen since, 
 of Gasper Poussin's or Domenichino's. We had a long day's 
 march (our feet kept time to the echoes of Coleridge's tongue) 
 through Minehead and by the Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, 
 which we did not reach till near midnight, and where we had 
 some difficulty in making a lodgment. We however knocked 
 the people of the house up at last, and we were repaid for our 
 apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried 
 bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had been splendid. 
 We walked for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlook- 
 ing the Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times de- 
 scended into little sheltered valleys close by the sea-side, with a 
 smuggler's face scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical 
 hills with a path winding up through a coppice to a barren top, 
 like a monk's shaven crown, from one of which I pointed out to 
 Coleridge's notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very edge of 
 the horizon and within the red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like 
 his own spectre-ship in the ' Ancient Mariner.' At Linton the 
 character of the sea-coast becomes more marked and rugged. 
 There is a place called the Valley of the Rocks (I suspect this 
 was only the poetical name for it) bedded among precipices over- 
 hanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into which the 
 waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels its screaming 
 flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse, 
 as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind these is a 
 fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like the Giant's 
 Causeway. 
 
 A thunder-storm came on while we were at the inn, and Cole- 
 ridge was running out bareheaded to enjoy the commotion of the 
 elements in the Valley of Rocks, but as if in spite, the clouds 
 only muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing 
 drops. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have 
 made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which was to have 
 been in the manner of, but far superior to, the Death of Abel,' 
 but they had relinquished the design. In the morning of the se- 
 cond day, we breakfasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlor, 
 on tea, toast, eggs and honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives 
 from which it had been taken, and a garden full of thyme ana
 
 158 TABLE TALK. 
 
 wild flowers that had produced it. On this occasion Coleridge 
 spoke of Virgil's ' Georgics,' but not well. 1 do not think he had 
 much feeling for the classical or elegant. It was in this room 
 that we found a little worn-out copy of the ' Seasons,' lying in a 
 window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, " That is true fame !" 
 He said Thomson was a great poet, rather than a good one ; his 
 style was as meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He 
 spoke of Cowper as the best modern poet. He said the ' Lyrical 
 Ballads ' were an experiment about to be tried by him and 
 Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would endure poetry 
 written in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been 
 attempted ; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, and 
 making use only of such words as had probably been common in 
 the most, ordinary language since the days of Henry II. Some 
 comparison was introduced between Shakespear and Milton. 
 He said H he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakespear seemed 
 to him a mere stripling in the art ; he was as tall and as strong, 
 with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he never appeared 
 to have come to man's estate ; or if he had, he would not have 
 been a man, but a monster." He spoke with contempt of Gray, 
 and with intolerance of Pope. He did not like the versification 
 of the latter. He observed that " the ears of these couplet-wri- 
 ters might be charged with having short memories, that could 
 not retain the harmony of whole passages." He thought little 
 of Junius as a writer ; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson ; and a 
 much higher opinion of Burke as an orator and politician, than 
 of Fox or Pitt. He however thought him very inferior in rich- 
 ness of style and imagery to some of our elder prose-writers, 
 particularly Jeremy Taylor. He liked Richardson, but not 
 Fielding ; nor could I get him to enter into the merits of ' Caleb 
 Williams.'* In short, he was profound and discriminating with 
 
 * He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time I had 
 as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of the Car- 
 toons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others ; of one in particular, where Death is 
 seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the eartb 
 shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as 
 their deliverer. He would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as 
 this at any time.
 
 MY FIRST ACaUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 159 
 
 respect to those authors whom he liked, and where he gave his 
 judgment fair play ; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his 
 antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the " ribbed seasand," 
 in such talk as this a whole morning, and I recollect met with a 
 curious sea-weed, of which John Chester told us the country 
 name ! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that 
 had been drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save 
 him at the risk of their own lives. He said " he did not know 
 now it was that they ventured, but, Sir, we have a nature to- 
 wards one another." This expression, Coleridge remarked to 
 me, was a fine illustration of that theory of disinterestedness 
 which I (in common with Butler) had adopted. I broached to 
 him an argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere 
 association of ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in 
 mind of a man's foot, not because it was part of a former im- 
 pression of a man's foot (for it was quite new), but because it 
 was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented to the justness 
 of this distinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, 
 for the benefit of the curious,) and John Chester listened ; no: 
 from any interest in the subject, but because he was astonished 
 that I should be able to suggest any thing to Coleridge that he 
 did not already know. We returned on the third morning, and 
 Coleridge remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the val- 
 leys where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights gleam- 
 ing through the dark. 
 
 In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on 
 my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morn- 
 ing, and he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Tauntod. 
 I asked him if he had prepared any thing for the occasion ? 
 He said he had not even thought of the text, but should as soon 
 as we parted. I did not go to hear him, this was a fault, but 
 we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a 
 long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well- 
 side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when 
 Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines from his tragedy 
 of' Remorse ;' which I must say became his mouth and that oc- 
 casion better than they, some years after, did Mr Elliston'a and 
 the Drury-lane boards,
 
 160 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ' O memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife 
 And give those scenes thine everlasting life." 
 
 I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period 
 he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany ; and his 
 return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was 
 not till some time after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. 
 The last always appears to me (as I first saw him) with a com- 
 mon-place book under his arm, and the first with a hem-mot in his 
 mouth. It .was at Godwin's that I met him with Holcroft and 
 Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which was the 
 best Man as he was, or man as he is to be. " Give me," says 
 Lamb, " man as he is not to be." This saying was the begin- 
 ning of a friendship between us, which I believe still continues. 
 Enough of this for the present. 
 
 " But there is matter for another rhyme, 
 Aad I to this may add a second tale."
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 161 
 
 ESSAY XXVIII. 
 
 Of Persons one would wish to have seen. 
 
 " Come like shadows so depart. ' 
 
 Lamb it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as weL as tne 
 defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute-. As, now- 
 ever, he would undertake neither, I suppose I must do botu a 
 task for which he would have been much fitter, no less from the 
 temerity than the felicity of his pen 
 
 " Never so sure our rapture to create 
 
 As when it touched the brink of all we hate." 
 
 Compared with him I shall, I fear, make but a common-place 
 piece of business of it ; but I should be loth the idea was entirely 
 lost, and besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the 
 progress of it. I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of 
 the ideas of other people than expounder of my own. I pursue 
 the one too far into paradox or mysticism ; the others I am not 
 bound to follow farther than I like, or than seems fair and rea- 
 sonable. 
 
 On the question being started, A said, " I suppose the two 
 
 first persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest 
 names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke ?" 
 
 In this A , as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one 
 
 burst out a-laughing at the expression of Lamb's face, in which 
 impatience was restrained by courtesy. " Yes, the greatest 
 names," he stammered out hastily, " but they were not persons 
 
 not persons." " Not persons ?" said A , looking wise and 
 
 foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. 
 " That is," rejoined Lamb, " not characters you know. By Mr. 
 Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the ' Essay on the Hu- 
 man Understanding,' and the ' Principia,' which %ve have to this
 
 162 TABLii TALK 
 
 day. Beyond their contents there is nothing personally interest, 
 ing in the men. Bat what we want to see any one bodily for, 
 is when there is something peculiar, striking in the individuals, 
 more than we can learn from their writings, and yet are curious 
 to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Knel- 
 ler's portraits of them. But who could paint Shakespear ?" 
 
 " Ay," retorted A , "there it is ; then I suppose you would 
 
 prefer seeing him and Milton instead ? " No," said Lamb, 
 " neither. I have seen so much of Shakespear on the stage 
 and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantel-pieces, that 
 I am quite tired of the everlasting repetition : and as to Mil- 
 ton's face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do 
 not like; it is too starched and puritanical; and I should be 
 afraid of losing some of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of 
 his countenance and the precisian's band and gown." " I shall 
 
 guess no more," said A . " Who is it, then, you would like to 
 
 see ' in his habit as he lived,' if you had your choice of the whole 
 range of English literature ? Lamb then named Sir Thomas 
 Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the 
 two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to en- 
 counter on the door of his apartment in their night-gown and 
 slippers, and to encounter friendly greeting with them. At this 
 
 A laughed outright, and conceived Lamb was jesting with 
 
 him ; but as no one followed his example, he thought there might 
 be something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state of 
 whimsical suspense. Lamb then (as well as I can remember a 
 conversation that passed twenty years ago how time slips !) 
 went on as follows : " The reason why I pitch upon those two 
 authors is, that their writings are riddles, and they themselves 
 the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the sooth- 
 sayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles ; and 
 I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but 
 themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson, 
 I have no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him : he and 
 Boswell together have pretty well let me into the secret "of what 
 passed through his mind. He and other writers like him are 
 sufficiently explicit : my friends whose repose I should be tempted
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN *G3 
 
 to disturb (were it in my power), are implicit, inextricable, in- 
 scrutable. 
 
 " When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composition, 
 the ' Urn-burial,' I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at 
 the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure ; or it is 
 like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I 
 would invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. Be- 
 sides, who would not be curious to see the lineaments of a man 
 who, having himself been twice married, wished that m*ankind 
 were propagated like trees! 
 
 " As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own 
 1 Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus,' a truly 
 formidable and inviting personage : his style is apocalyptical, ca- 
 balistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie ; and for 
 the unravelling a passage or two, I would stand the brunt of an 
 encounter with so portentous a commentator ! " I am afraid in 
 
 that case," said A , " that if the mystery were once cleared up. 
 
 the merit might be lost ;" and turning to me, whispered a friend- 
 ly apprehension, that while Lamb continued to admire these old 
 crabbed authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr. 
 Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with a 
 very interesting countenance, whose history was singular, and 
 whose meaning was often quite as un-come-atable, without a per- 
 sonal citation from the dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. 
 The volume was produced ; and while some one was expatiating 
 on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait prefixed tc 
 
 the old edition, A got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming 
 
 " What have we here ?" read the following : 
 
 " Here lies a She-Sun and a He-Moon there, 
 She gives the best light to his sphere, 
 Or each is both and all, and so, 
 They unto one another nothing owe." 
 
 There was no resisting this, till Lamb seizing the volume, 
 turned to the beautiful " Lines to his Mistress," dissuading her 
 from accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused 
 features and a faltering tongue.
 
 f64 TABLE TALK. 
 
 " By our first strange and fatal interview, 
 
 By all desires which thereof did ensue, 
 
 By our long starving hopes, by that remorse 
 
 Which my words' masculine persuasive force 
 
 Begot in thee, and by the memory 
 
 Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten'd me, 
 
 I calmly beg. But by thy father's wrath, 
 
 By all pains which want and divorcement hath, 
 
 I conjure thee ; and all the oaths which I 
 
 And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy, 
 
 Here I unswear, and overswear them thus, 
 
 Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous. 
 
 Temper, oh fairLove! love's impetuous rage, 
 
 Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd page ; 
 
 I'll go, and by thy kind leave, leave behind 
 
 Thee ! only worthy to nurse in my mind, 
 
 Thirst to come back ; oh, if thou die befoie 
 
 My soul from other lands to thee shall soar, 
 
 Thy (else almighty) beauty cannot move 
 
 Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love. 
 
 Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness ; thou hast read, 
 
 How roughly he in pieces shiverd 
 
 Fair Orithea, whom he swore he loved. 
 
 Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have prov'd 
 
 Dangers unurg'd : Feed on this flattery, 
 
 That absent lovers one in th' other be. 
 
 Dissemble nothing, not a boy ; nor change 
 
 Thy body's habit, nor mind ; be not strange 
 
 To thyself only. All will spy in thy face 
 
 A blushing, womanly, discovering grace. 
 
 Richly clothed apes are called apes, and as soon 
 
 Eclips'd as bright we call the moon the moon. 
 
 Men of France, changeable cameleons, 
 
 Spitals of diseases, shops of fashions, 
 
 Love's fuellers, and the rightest company 
 
 Of players, which upon the world's stage be, 
 
 Will quickly know thee O stay here ! for the* 
 
 England is only a worthy gallery, 
 
 To walk in expectation ; till from thence 
 
 Our greatest King call thee to his presence. 
 
 When I am gone, dream me some happiness, 
 
 Nor lot thy looks our long hid love confess. 
 
 Nor praise, nor dispraise me ; nor bless, nor curse 
 
 Cpmly loves force, nor in bed fright thy nurse 
 
 With midnight startings, crying o it, Oh, h,
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 1U5 
 
 Nurse, oh, my love is slain, I saw him g> 
 O'er the white Alps alone ; I saw him, I, 
 Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die. 
 Augur me better chance, except dread Jove 
 Think it enough for me to have had thy love." 
 
 Some one then inquired of Lamb if we could not see from the 
 window the Temple-walk in which Chaucer used to take his 
 exercise ; and on his name being put to the vote, I was pleased 
 to find that there was a general sensation in, his favour in all but 
 
 A , who said something about the ruggedness of the metre, and 
 
 even objected to the quaintness of the orthography. I was vexed 
 at this superficial gloss, pertinaciously reducing every thing to 
 its own trite level, and asked " if he did not think it would be 
 worth while.to scan the eye that had first greeted the Muse in 
 that dim twilight and early dawn of English literature ; to see 
 the head, round which the visions of fancy must have played like 
 gleams of inspiration or a sudden glory ; to watch those lips that 
 ' lisped in numbers, for the numbers came' as by a miracle, or 
 as if the dumb should speak ? Nor was it alone that he had been 
 the first to tune his native tongue (however imperfectly to modern 
 ears) ; but he. was himself a noble, manly character, standing 
 before his age and striving to advance it-; a pleasant humourist 
 withal, who has not only handed down to us the living manners 
 of his time, but had, no doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, 
 and would make as hearty a companion as Mine Host of the 
 Tabard. His interview with Petrarch is fraught with interest. 
 Yet I would rather have seen Chaucer in company with the 
 author of the Decameron,' and have heard them exchange their 
 best stories together, the Squire's Tale against the Story of the 
 Falcon, the Wife of Bath's Prologue against the Adventures of 
 Friar Albert. How fine to see the high mysterious brow which 
 learning then wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of 
 the world, by the courtesies of genius ! Surely, the thoughts and 
 feelings which passed through the minds of these great revivers 
 of learning, these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must 
 have stamped an expression on their features, as different from 
 the moderns as their books, and well worth the perusal. Dante," 
 1 continued, " is as interesting a person as his own Ugolino, ono 
 
 16
 
 J fi6 TABLE TALK. 
 
 whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly devour in order to 
 penetrate his spirit, and the only one of the Italian poets I should 
 care much to see. There is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no 
 less a hand than Titian's ; light, Moorish, spirited, but not an- 
 swering our idea. The same artist's large colossal profile of 
 Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind that has the effect 
 of conversing with ' the mighty dead,' and this is truly spectral, 
 ghastly, necromantic." Lamb put it to me if I should like to see 
 Spenser as well as Qbaucer ; and I answered without hesitation, 
 " No ; for his beauties were ideal, visionary, not palpable or 
 personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity about the 
 man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo round 
 the bright orb of fancy ; and the bringing in the individual might 
 dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come up to the 
 mellifluous cadence of his verse ; no form but of a winged angel 
 could vie wiih the airy shapes he has described. He was (to 
 our apprehensions) rather ' a creature of the element, that lived 
 in the rainbow and played in the plighted clouds,' than an ordi- 
 nary mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it to be as a 
 mere vision, like one of his own pageants, and that he should pass 
 by unquestioned like a dream or sound 
 
 ' That was Arion crown'd : 
 
 So went be playing on the wat'ry plain !' " 
 
 Captain Burney muttered something about Columbus, and 
 Martin Burney hinted at the Wandering Jew; but the last was 
 set aside as spurious, and the first made over to the New World. 
 
 " I should like," says Mrs. Reynolds, " to have seen Pope 
 talking with Patty Blount ; and I have seen Goldsmith." Every 
 one turned round to look at Mrs. Reynolds, as if by so doing they 
 too could get a sight of Goldsmith. 
 
 " Where," asked a harsh croaking voice, " was Dr. Johnson 
 in the years 1745-6 ? He did not write any thing that we know 
 of, nor is there any account of him in Bos well during those two 
 years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender ? He seems to have 
 passed through the scenes in the Highlands in company with 
 Boswell many years after ' with lack-lustre eye," yet as if they
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 1 67 
 
 were familiar to him, or associated in his mind with interests that 
 he durst not explain. If so, it would be an additional reason for 
 my liking him ; and I would give something to have seen him 
 seated in the tent with the youthful majesty of Britain, and pen- 
 ning the proclamation to all true subjects and adherents of the 
 legitimate government." 
 
 " I thought," said A , turning short round upon Lamb, "that 
 
 you of the Lake School did not like Pope ?" " Not like Pope ! My 
 dear sir, you must be under a mistake I can read him over ana 
 over for ever !" " Why certainly, the ' Essay on Man' must be 
 allowed to be a masterpiece." " It may be so, but I seldom look 
 into it." " Oh ! then it's his Satires you admire ?" " No, not 
 his Satires, but his friendly Epistles and his compliments." 
 "Compliments; I did not know he ever made any." "The 
 finest," said Lamb, " that were ever paid by the wit of man. 
 Each of them is worth an estate for life nay. is an immortality 
 There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury : 
 
 ' Despise low joys, low gains ; 
 Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains; 
 Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.' 
 
 Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise 1 
 And then that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield 
 (however little deserved) when, speaking of the House of Lords, 
 he adds 
 
 ' Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh, 
 (More silent far) where kings and poets lie; 
 Where Murray (long enough his country's pride) 
 Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde !' 
 
 And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses 
 Lord Bolingbroke 
 
 ' Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine, 
 Oh ! all-accomplished St John, deck thy shrine T 
 
 Or turn," continued Lamb, with a slight hectic on his cheek and 
 his eye glistening, " to his list of early friends 
 
 16
 
 168 TABLE TALK, 
 
 ' But why then publish "? Granville the polite, 
 And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ; 
 Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise, 
 And Congreve loved and Swift endured my lays: 
 The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
 Even mitred Rochester would nod the head ; 
 And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
 Received with open arms one poet more. 
 Happy my studies, if by these approved ! 
 Happier their author, if by these beloved ! 
 From these the world will judge of men and books, 
 Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.' " 
 
 Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the book, 
 he said, " Do you think I would not wish to have been friends 
 with such a man as this?" 
 
 " What say you to Dryden ?" " He rather made a show of 
 himself, and courted popularity in that lowest temple of Fame, 
 a coffee-house, so as in some measure to vulgarize one's idea of 
 him. Pope, on the contrary, reached the very beau ideal of 
 what a poet's life should be ; and his fame while living seemed 
 to be an emanation from that which was to circle his name after 
 death. He was so far enviable (and one would feel proud to 
 have witnessed the rare spectacle in him) that he was almost the 
 only poet and man of genius who met with his reward on this 
 side of the tomb, who realized in friends, fortune, the esteem of 
 the world, the most sanguine hopes of a youthful ambition, and 
 who found that sort of patronage from the great during his life- 
 time which they would be thought anxious to bestow upon him 
 after his death. Read Gray's verses to him on his supposed re- 
 turn from Greece, after his translation of Homer was finished, 
 and say if you would not gladly join the bright procession that 
 welcomed him home, or see it once more land at Whitehall 
 stairs." " Still," said Mrs. Reynolds, " I would rather have 
 seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in a coronet- 
 coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu !" 
 
 Erasmus Phillips, who was deep in a game of piquet at the 
 other end of the room, whispered to Martin Burney to ask if 
 Junius would not be a fit person to invoke from the dead. 
 " Yes," said Lamb, " provided he would agree to lay aside ms 
 mask."
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 169 
 
 We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding was 
 mentioned as a candidate : only one, however, seconded the pro- 
 position. " Richardson ?" " By all means, but only to look at 
 him through the glass-door of his back-shop, hard at work upon 
 one of his novels (the most extraordinary contrast that ever was 
 presented between an author and his works,) but not to let him 
 come behind his counter lest he should want you to turn cus- 
 tomer, nor to go up-stairs with him, lest he should offer to read 
 the first manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison, which was origi- 
 nally written in eight-and-twenty volumes octavo, or get out the 
 letters of his female correspondents, to prove that Joseph An- 
 drews was low." 
 
 There was but one statesman in the whole English history 
 that any one expressed the least desire to see Oliver Cromwell, 
 with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face, and wily policy ; and 
 one enthusiast, John Bunyan, the immortal author of the ' Pil- 
 grim's Progress.' It seemed that if he came into the room, 
 dreams would follow him, and that each person would nod under 
 his golden cloud, " nigh-sphered in Heaven," a canopy as strange 
 and stately as any in Homer. 
 
 Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was re- 
 ceived with the greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by Baron 
 Field. He presently superseded both Hogarth and Handel, who 
 had been talked of, but then it was on condition that he should 
 act in tragedy and comedy, in the play and farce, ' Lear' and 
 1 Wildair' and ' Abel Drugger.' What a sight for sore eyes that 
 would be ! Who would not part with a year's income at least, 
 almost with a year of his natural life, to be present at it ? Be- 
 sides, as he could not act alone, and recitations are unsatisfactory 
 things, what a troop he must bring with him the silver-tongued 
 Barry, and Quin, and Shuter and Weston, and Mrs. Clive and 
 Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have heard my father speak as so 
 great a favourite when he was young ! This would indeed be a 
 revival of the dead, the restoring of art ; and so much the more 
 desirable, as such is the lurking scepticism mingled with our 
 overstrained admiration of past excellence, that though we have 
 the speeches of Burke, the portraits of Reynolds, the. wncing3 
 of Goldsmith, and the conversation of Johnson, to show what
 
 170 TABLE TALK. 
 
 people could do at that period, and to confirm the universal tes- 
 timony to the merits of Garrick ; yet, as it was before our time, 
 we have our misgivings, as if he was probably after all little 
 better than a Bartlemy-fair actor, dressed out to play Macbeth 
 in a scarlet coat and laced cocked-hat. For one, I should like to 
 have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears. Certainly, by 
 all accounts, if any one was ever moved by the true histrionic 
 (Bstu's, it was Garrick. When he followed the Ghost in ' Ham- 
 let,' he did not drop the , sword, as most actors do, behind the 
 scenes, but kept the point raised the whole way round, so fully 
 was he possessed with the idea, cr so anxious not to lose sight of 
 his part for a moment. Once at a splendid dinner-party at 
 Lord -'s, they suddenly missed Garrick, and could not ima- 
 gine what was become of him, till they were drawn to the win- 
 dow by the convulsive screams and peals of laughter of a young 
 negro boy, who was rolling on the ground in an ecstacy of de- 
 light to see Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the court-yard, 
 with his coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a seeming flutter of 
 feathered rage and pride. Of our party only two persons 
 present had seen the British Roscius ; and they seemed as will- 
 ing as the rest to renew their acquaintance with their old fa- 
 vourite. 
 
 We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of this 
 fanciful speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who declared it 
 was a shame to make all this rout about a mere player and 
 farce-writer, to the neglect and exclusion of the fane old dra- 
 matists, the contemporaries and rivals of Shakespear. Lamb 
 said he had anticipated this objection when he had named the 
 author of ' Mustapha and Alaham ;' and out of caprice insisted 
 upon keeping him to represent the set, in preference to the wild 
 hair-brained enthusiast Kit Marlowe ; to the sexton of St. Ann's, 
 Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death's-heads ; to 
 Deckar, who was but a garrulous proser ; to the voluminous 
 Hey wood ; and even to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we might 
 offend by complimenting the wrong author on their joint produc- 
 tions. Lord Brook, on the contrary, stood quite by himself, or 
 in Cowley's words, was " a vast species alone." Some one 
 hinted at tne circumstance of his being a lord, which rathei
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 171 
 
 startled Lamb, but he said a ghost would perhaps dispense with 
 strict etiquette, on being regularly addressed by his title. Ben 
 Jonson divided our suffrages pretty equally. Some were afraid 
 he would begin to traduce Shakespear, who was not present to 
 defend himself. " If he grows disagreeable," it was whispered 
 aloud, " there is Godwin can match him." At length, his ro- 
 mantic visit to Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and 
 turned the scale in his favor. 
 
 Lamb inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I 
 would choose to mention ? And I answered, Eugene Aram.* 
 The name of the " Admirable Crichton" was suddenly started 
 as a splendid example of waste talents, so different from the gen- 
 erality of his countrymen. This choice was mightily approved 
 by a North-Briton present, who declared himself descended from 
 that prodigy of learning and accomplishment, and said he had 
 family plate in his possession as vouchers for the fact, with the 
 initials A. C. Admirable Crichton! Hunt laughed or rather 
 roared as heartily at this as I should think he has done for many 
 years. 
 
 The last-named Mitre-courtierj" then wished to know whether 
 there were any metaphysicians to whom one might be tempted to 
 apply the wizard spell ? I replied, there were only six in 
 modern times deserving the name Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, 
 Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz ; and perhaps Jonathan Edwards, a 
 Massachusetts man.:}: As to the French, who talked fluently of 
 having created this science, there was not a tittle in any of their 
 writings, that was not to be found literally in the authors I had 
 mentioned. Home [Home Tooke, who might have a claim to 
 
 * See ' Newgate Calendar' for 1758. 
 
 t Lamb at this time occupied chambers in Mitre court, Fleet street. 
 
 t Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should 
 come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation together. 
 This great and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it to pour 
 a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over it, inhaling 
 the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil of specula- 
 tion with the fine aromatic spirit of his genius. His 'Essays' and his ' Ad- 
 vancement of Learning,' are works of vast depth and scope of observation. 
 The last, tnough it contains no positive discoveries, is a noble cfc.art of the 
 human intellect, and a guide to all future inquirers. 
 12 PART II.
 
 172 TABLE TALK. 
 
 come in under the head of Grammar, was still living.] None 
 of these names seemed to excite much interest, and I did not 
 plead for the re-appearance of those who might be thought best 
 fitted by the abstracted nature of their studies for their present 
 spiritual and disembodied state, and who, even while on this 
 living stage, we*e nearly divested of common flesh and blood. 
 
 As A with an uneasy fidgetty face was about to put some 
 
 question about Mr. Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was prevented 
 by Martin Burney, who observed, " If J ' was here, he would un- 
 doubtedly be for having up those' profound and redoubted scho- 
 liasts, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus." I said this might be 
 fair enough in him who had read or fancied he had read the 
 original works, but I did not see how we could have any right 
 to call up those authors to give an account of themselves in per- 
 son, till we had looked into their writings. 
 
 By this time it should seem that some rumor of our whim- 
 sical deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the irritabile 
 genus in their shadowy abodes, for we received messages from 
 several candidates that we had just been thinking of. Gray 
 declined our invitation, though he had not yet been asked : Gay 
 offered to come and bring in his hand the Duchess of Bolton, the 
 original Polly: Steel and Addison left their cards as Captain 
 Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley : Swift came in and sat down 
 without speaking a word, and quitted the room as abruptly : Ot- 
 way and Chatterton were seen lingering on the opposite side of 
 the Styx, but could not muster enough between them to pay 
 Charon his fare : Thomson fell asleep in the boat, and was rowed 
 back again and Burns sent a low fellow, one John Barleycorn, 
 an old companion of his who had conducted him to the other 
 world, to say that he had during his life-time been drawn out of 
 his retirement as a show, only to be made an exciseman of, and 
 that he would rather remain where he was. He desired, how- 
 ever, to shake hands by his representative the hand, thus held 
 out, was in a burning fever, and shook prodigiously. 
 
 The room was hung round with several portraits of eminent 
 painters. While we were debating whether we should demand 
 speech with these masters of mute eloquence, whose features 
 were so familiar to us, it seemed that all at once they glided
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 173 
 
 from their frames, and seated themselves at some little distance 
 from us. There was Leonardo with his majestic beard and 
 watchful eye, having a bust of Archimedes before him ; next 
 him was Raphael's graceful head turned round to the Fornarina ; 
 and on his other side was Lucretia Borgia, with calm, golden 
 locks ; Michael Angelo had placed the model of St. Peter's on 
 the table before him ; Correggio had an angel at his side ; Titian 
 was seated with his Mistress between himself and Giorgioni ; 
 Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora, who took a dice- 
 box from him j Claude held a mirror in his hand; Rubens 
 patted a beautiful panther (led in by a satyr) on the head ; Van- 
 dyke appeared as his own Paris, and Rembrandt was hid under 
 furs, gold chains, and jewels, which Sir Joshua eyed closely, 
 holding his hand so as to shade his forehead. Not a word was 
 spoken ; and as we rose to do them homage, they still presented 
 the same surface to the view. Not being bond fde representa- 
 tions of living people, we got rid of the splendid apparitions by 
 signs and dumb show. As soon as they had melted into thin 
 air, there was a loud noise at the outer door, and we found it was 
 Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio, who had been raised from the 
 dead by their earnest desire to see their illustrious successors 
 
 " Whose names on earth 
 In Fame's eternal records live for aye !" 
 
 Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after them, 
 and moutp fully withdrew. "Egad!" said Lamb, "those are 
 the very fallows I should like to have had some talk with, to 
 know how they could see to paint when all was dark around 
 them ?" 
 
 " But shall we have nothing to say," interrogated G. J , 
 
 " to the Legend of Good Women ?" " Name, name, Mr. J ," 
 
 cried Hunt in a boisterous tone of friendly exultation, " name 
 as many as you please, without reserve or fear of molestation !" 
 
 J was perplexed between so many amiable recollections, 
 
 that the na.p.e of the lady of his choice expired in a pensive 
 whiff of b.s pipe ; and Lamb impatiently declared for the 
 Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner men- 
 tioned, than she carried the day from the Duchess. We were 
 
 10*
 
 174 TABLE TALK. 
 
 the less solicitous on this subject of filling up the posthumous 
 lists of Good Women, as there was already one in the room as 
 good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, as the best 
 of them could be for their lives ! " I should like vastly to have 
 seen Ninon de l'Enclos," said that incomparable person ; and 
 this immediately puts us in mind that we had neglected to pay 
 honour due to our friends on the other side of the Channel : Vol- 
 taire, the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, the father of senti 
 ment, Montaigne and Rabelais (great in wisdom and in wit), Mo- 
 lie re and that illustrious group that are collected round him (in 
 the print of that subject) to hear him read his comedy of the 
 ? Tartuffe' at the house of Ninon ; Racine, La Fontaine, Rcche- 
 foucault, St. Evremont, &c. 
 
 " There is one person," said a shrill, querulous voice, " I 
 would rather see than all these Don Quixote !" 
 
 "Come, come!" said Hunt, " I thought we should have no 
 heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. Lamb ? Are you 
 for eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, 
 Julius Csesar, Tamerlane, or Ghenghis Khan ?" " Excuse me," 
 said Lamb ; " on the subject of characters in active life, plot- 
 ters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, 
 which I beg leave to reserve." "No, no! come, out with your 
 worthies !" " What do you think of Guy Fawkes and Judas 
 Iscariot ?" Hunt turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, 
 but cordial and full of smothered glee. " Your most exquisite 
 
 reason !" was echoed on all sides ; and A thought that Lamb 
 
 had now fairly entangled himself. " Why, I cannot but think," 
 retorted he of the wistful countenance, " that Guy Fawkes, that 
 poor, fluttering annual scare-crow of straw and rags, is an ill- 
 used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale 
 and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of 
 gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him 
 to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion ; but if I say any more, 
 there is that fellow Godwin will make something of it. And as 
 to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would fain see the 
 face of him, who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with 
 the Son of Man, could afterwards betray him. I have no con- 
 ception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not
 
 OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 175 
 
 even Leonardo's very fine one) that gave me the least idea of 
 it." " You have said enough, Mr. Lamb, to justify youi 
 choice." 
 
 " Oh ! ever right, Menenius, ever right !" 
 
 " There is only one other person I can ever think of after 
 this," continued Lamb; but without mentioning a name that 
 once put on a semblance of mortality. " If Shakespear was 
 to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him ; but 
 if that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and 
 try to kiss the hem of his garment !" 
 
 As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the 
 conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke 
 with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabu.e, and 
 Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest works ; and 
 we parted to meet again and renew, similar topics at night, the 
 next night, and the night after that, till that night overspread 
 Europe which saw no dawn. The same event, in truth, broke 
 up our little Congress that broke up the great one. But that 
 was to meet again : our deliberations have never been resumed
 
 176 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XXIX. 
 
 Tke Shyiiiss of Scnolars. 
 
 " Ar.I cf his port as meek as is a mdd." 
 
 Scholars lead a contemplative and retired life, both which circum- 
 stances must be supposed to contribute to the effect in question. 
 A life of study is also conversant with high and ideal models, 
 which gives an ambitious turn to the mind ; and pride is nearly 
 akin to delicacy of feelings 
 
 That a life of privacy and obscurity should render its votaries 
 bashful and awkward, or unfit them for the routine of society, 
 from the want both of a habit of going into company and from 
 ignorance of its usages, is obvious to remark. No one can be 
 expected to do that well or without a certain degree of hesitation 
 and restraint, which he is not accustomed to do except on parti- 
 cular occasions, and at rare intervals. You might as rationally 
 set a scholar or a clown on a tight-rope and expect them to dance 
 gracefully and with every appearance of ease, as introduce either 
 into the - gay, laughing circle, and suppose that he will acquit 
 himself handsomely and come off with applause in the retailing 
 of anecdote or the interchange of repartee. " If you have not 
 seen the Court, your manners must be naught; and if your 
 manners are naught, you must be damned," according to Touch- 
 stone's reasoning. The other cause lies rather deeper, and is so 
 far better worth considering, perhaps. A student, then, that is, 
 a man who condemns himself to toil for a length of time and 
 through a number of volumes in order to arrive at a conclusion, 
 naturally loses that smartness and ease which distinguish the 
 gay and thoughtless rattler. There is a certain elasticity of 
 movement and hey-day of the animal spirits seldom to be met 
 with but in those who have never cared for any thing beyond tha 
 moment, or looked lower than the surface. The scholar having
 
 THE SHYJSESS OF SCHOLARS. lT7 
 
 io encounter doubts and difficulties on all hands, and indeed to 
 apply by way of preference to those subjects which are most 
 beset with mystery, becomes hesitating, sceptical, irresolute, ab- 
 sent, dull. All the processes of his mind are slow, cautious, 
 circuitous, instead of being prompt, heedless, straight-forward. 
 Finding the intricacies of the path increase upon him in every 
 direction, this can hardly be supposed to add to the lightness of 
 his step, the confidence of his brow as he advances. He does 
 not skim the surface, but dives under it like the mole to make 
 his way darkling, by imperceptible degrees and throwing up 
 heaps of dirt and rubbish over his head to track his progress. 
 He is therefore startled at any sudden light, puzzled by any 
 casual question, taken unawares and at a disadvantage in every 
 critical emergency. He must have time given him to collect his 
 thoughts, to consider objections to make farther inquiries, and 
 come to no conclusion at last. 
 
 This is very different from the dashing, off-hand manner of the 
 mere man of business or fashion ; and he who is repeatedly 
 found in situations to which he is unequal (particularly if he is 
 of a reflecting and candid temper) will be apt to look foolish, and 
 to lose both his countenance and his confidence in himself at 
 least as to the opinion others entertain of him, and the figure he 
 is likely on any occasion to make in the eyes of the world. The 
 course of his studies has not made him wise, but has taught him 
 the uncertainty of wisdom ; and has supplied him with excellent 
 reasons for suspending his judgment, when another would throw 
 the casting-weight of his own presumption or interest into the 
 scale. 
 
 The inquirer after truth learns to take nothing for granted ; 
 least of all, to make an assumption of his own superior merits 
 He would have nothing proceed without proper proofs and an 
 exact scrutiny ; and would neither be imposed upon himself, noi 
 impose upon others by shallow and hasty appearances. It taket 
 years of patient toil and devoted enthusiasm to master any art 
 or science; and, after all, the success is doubtful. He infers 
 that other triumphs must be prepared in like manner at an 
 humble distance : he cannot bring himself to imagine that any 
 object worth seizing on or deserving of regard, can be carried
 
 178 TABLE TALK. 
 
 by a coup de main. So far from being proud or puffed up by 
 them, he would be ashamed and degraded in Ids own opinion by 
 any advantages that were to be obtained by such cheap and vul- 
 gar means as putting a good face on the matter, as strutting and 
 vapouring about his own pretensions. He would not place him- 
 self on a level with bullies "or coxcombs ; nor believe that those 
 whose favour he covets, can be the dupes of either. Whatever 
 is excellent in his fanciful creed is hard of attainment ; and he 
 would (perhaps absurdly enough) have the means in all cases 
 answerable to the end. He knows that there are difficulties in 
 his favourite pursuits to puzzle the will, to tire the patience, to 
 unbrace the strongest nerves, and make the stoutest courage 
 quail ; and he would fain think that if there is any object more 
 worthy than another to call forth the earnest solicitude, the hopes 
 and fears of a wise man, and to make his heart yearn within 
 him at the most distant prospect of success, this precious prize 
 in the grand lottery of life is not to be had for the asking for, or 
 from the mere easy indifference or overbearing effrontery with 
 which you put in your claim. He is aware that it will be long 
 enough before any one paints a fine picture by walking up and 
 down and admiring himself in the glass ; or writes a fine poem 
 by being delighted with the sound of his own voice ; or solves a 
 single problem in philosophy by swaggering and haughty airs. 
 He conceives that it is the same with the way of the world 
 woos the fair as he woos the Muse ; in conversation, never puts 
 in a word till he has something better to say than any one else 
 in the room; in business, never strikes while the iron is hot, and 
 flings away all his advantages by endeavouring to prove to his 
 own and the satisfaction of others, that he is clearly entitled to 
 them. It never once enters into his head (till it is too late) that 
 impudence is the current coin in the affairs of life ; that he who 
 doubts his own merit, never has credit given him by others ; that 
 Fortune does not stay to have her overtures canvassed ; that he 
 who neglects opportunity, can seldom command it a second time ; 
 that the world judge by appearances, not by realities ; and that 
 they sympathize more readily with those who are prompt to do 
 themselves justice, and to show off their various qualifications 
 or enforce their pretensions to the utmost, than with those who
 
 THE SHYNESS OF SCHOLARS. 179 
 
 wait for others to award their claims, and carry their fastidious 
 refinement into helplessness and imbecility- Thus " fools rush 
 in where angels fear to tread ;" and modest merit finds to its 
 cost, that the bold hand and dauntless brow succeed where tim- 
 idity and bashfulness are pushed aside ; that the gay, laughing 
 eye is preferred to dejection and gloom, health and animal spirits 
 to the shattered, sickly frame and trembling nerves ; and that to 
 succeed in life, a man should carry about with him the outward 
 and incontrovertible signs of success, and of his satisfaction with 
 himself and his prospects, instead of plaguing every body near 
 him with fantastical scruples and his ridiculous anxiety to realize 
 an unattainable standard of perfection. From holding back him- 
 self, the speculative enthusiast is thrust back by others : his pre 
 tensions are insulted and trampled on ; and the repeated and 
 pointed repulses he ir.eets with, make him still more unwilling 
 to encounter, and more unable to contend, with those that await 
 him in the prosecution of his career. He therefore retires from 
 the contest altogether, or remains in the back-ground, a passive 
 but uneasy spectator of a scene in which he finds from expe- 
 rience, that confidence, alertness, and superficial acquirements 
 are of more avail than all the refinement and delicacy in the 
 world. 
 
 Action, in truth, is referable chiefly to quickness and strength 
 of resolution, rather than to depth of reasoning or scrupulous 
 nicety : again, it is to be presumed that those who show a popular 
 reliance on themselves, will not betray the trust we place in them 
 through pusillanimity or want of spirit : in what relates to the 
 opinion of others, which is often formed hastily and on slight ac- 
 quaintance, much must be allowed to what strikes the senses, to 
 what excites the imagination ; and in all popular worldly schemes, 
 popular and worldly means must be resorted to, instead of de- 
 pending wholly on the hidden and intrinsic merits of the case. 
 
 " In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man 
 As modest stillness, and humility : 
 But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
 Then imitate the action of the tiger, 
 Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, 
 Disguise fair nature with hard-fa vour'd rage :
 
 180 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; 
 
 Let it pry through the portage of the head, 
 
 Like the brass cannon ; let the brow o'erwhelm it, 
 
 As fearfully as doth a galled rock 
 
 O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, 
 
 Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean." 
 
 This advice (sensible as it is) is abhorrent to the nature of a 
 man who is accustomed to place all his hopes of victory in rea- 
 soning and reflection only. The noisy, rude, gratuitous success 
 of those who have taken so much less pains to deserve it disgusts 
 and disheartens him he loses his self-possession and self-esteem, 
 has no standard left by which to measure himself or others, and 
 as he cannot be brought to admire them, persuades himself at 
 last that the blame rests with himself; and instead of bespeaking 
 a fashionable dress, learning to bow, or taking a few lessons in 
 boxing or fencing to brace his nerves or raise his spirits, aggra- 
 vates all his former faults by way of repairing them, grows more 
 jealous of the propriety of every word and look, lowers his voice 
 into a whisper, gives his style the last polish, reconsiders his ar- 
 guments till they evaporate in a sigh, and thus satisfies himself 
 that he can hardly fail ; that men judge impartially in the end, 
 that the public will sooner or later do him justice, Fortune 
 smile, and the Fair no longer be averse ! Oh malore ! He is 
 just where he was, or ten times worse off" than ever. 
 
 There is another circumstance that tends not a little to perplex 
 the judgment, and add to the difficulties of the retired student, 
 when he comes out into the world. He is like one dropped from 
 the clouds. He has hitherto conversed chiefly with historic per- 
 sonages and abstract propositions, and has no just notion of actual 
 men and things. He does not well know how to reconcile the 
 sweeping conclusions he has been taught to indulge in to the 
 cautious and pliant maxims of the world, nor how to compare 
 himself, an inhabitant of Utopia, with sublunary mortals. He 
 has been habituated all his life to look up to a few great names 
 handed down by virtue or science as the " gods of his idolatry," 
 as the fixed stars in the firmament of reputation, and to have 
 some respect for himself and other learned men as votaries at
 
 THE SHYNESS OF SCHOLARS. .31 
 
 the shrine and as appreciating the merits of their idol ; but all 
 the rest of the world, who are neither the objects of this sort of 
 homage, nor concerned as a sort of priesthood in collecting and 
 paying it, he looks upon as actually nobody, or as worms crawl- 
 ing upon the face of the earth without intellectual value or pre- 
 tensions. He is, therefore, a little surprised and shocked to find, 
 when he deigns to mingle with his fellows, those every-day mor- 
 tals, on ordinary terms, that they are of a height nearly equal to 
 himself, that they have words, ideas, feelings in common with the 
 best, and are not the mere cyphers he had been led to consider 
 them. From having under-rated he comes to over-rate them. 
 Having dreamt of no such thing, he is more struck with what he 
 finds than perhaps it deserves ; magnifies the least glimpse 
 of sense or humour into sterling wit or wisdom ; is startled by 
 any objection from so unexpected a quarter ; thinks his own ad- 
 vantages of no avail, because they are not the only ones ; and 
 shrinks from an encounter with weapons he has not been used to, 
 and from a struggle by which he feels himself degraded. The 
 Knight of La Mancha, when soundly beaten by the packstaves 
 of the Yanguesian carriers, laid all the blame on his having con- 
 descended to fight with plebeians. The pride of learning comes 
 in to aid the awkwardness and bashfulness of the inexperienced 
 novice, converting his want of success into the shame and morti- 
 fication of defeat in what he habitually considers as a contest 
 with inferiors. Indeed, those will always be found to submit with 
 the worst grace to any check or reverse of this kind in common 
 conversation or reasoning, who have been taught to set the most 
 exclusive and disproportioned value on letters : and the most en- 
 lightened and accomplished scholars will be less likely to be 
 humbled or put to the blush by the display of common sense or 
 native talent, than the more ignorant, self-sufficient, and pedantic 
 among the learned ; for that ignorance, self-sufficiency, and pe- 
 dantry, are sometimes to be reckoned among the attributes of 
 learning, cannot be disputed. These qualities are not very re- 
 concilable with modest merit ; but they are quite consistent with 
 a great deal of blundering, confusion, and want of tact in the com- 
 merce of the world. The genuine scholar retires from an une-
 
 182 TABLE TALK. 
 
 qual conflict from silence and obscurity : the pedant swells into 
 self-importance, and renders himself conspicuous by pompou? Ar- 
 rogance and absurdity ! 
 
 It is hard upon those who have ever taken pains or done any 
 thing to distinguish themselves, that they are seldom the trjm- 
 peLTs of their own achievements ; and I believe it may be laid 
 down as a rule, that we receive just as much homage from 
 others as we exact from them by our own declarations, looks, and 
 manner. But no one who has performed any thing great looks 
 big upon it : those who have any thing to boast of are generally 
 sflent on that head, and altogether shv of the subject. With 
 Coriolanus, they " will not have their nothings monster'd." From 
 familiarity, his own acquirements do not appear so extraordinary 
 to the individual as to others ; and there is a natural want of 
 sympathy in this respect. No one who is really capable of great 
 things is proud or vain of his success ; for he thinks more of what 
 he had hoped or has failed to do, than of what he has done. A 
 habit of extreme exertion, or of anxious suspense, is not one of 
 buoyant, overweening self-complacency : those who have all their 
 lives tasked their faculties to the utmost, may be supposed to have 
 quite enough to do without having much disposition left to antici- 
 pate their success with confidence, or to glory in it afterwards. 
 The labours ol the mind, like the drudgery of the body, depress 
 and take away the usual alacrity of the spirits. Nor can such 
 persons be lifted up with the event ; for the impression of the 
 consequences to result from any arduous undertaking must be 
 light and vain, compared with the toil and anxiety accompany- 
 ing it. It is only those who have done nothing, who fancy they 
 can do every thing ; or who have leisure and inclination to ad- 
 mire themselves. To sit before a glass and smile delighted a{ 
 our own image, is merely a tax on our egotism and self-conceit ; 
 and these are resources not easily exhausted in some persons ; or 
 if they are, the deficiency is supplied by flatterers, who surround 
 the vain like a natural atmosphere. Fools who take all their 
 opinions at second-hand cannot resist the coxcomb's delight in 
 himself: or it might be said that folly is the natural mirror of 
 vanity. 
 
 The greatest heroes, it has often been observed, do not show it
 
 THE SHYNESS OF SCHOLARS. 183 
 
 in their faces ; nor do philosophers affect to be thought wise. 
 Little minds triumph on small occasions, or over puny competi- 
 tors : the loftiest wish for higher opportunities of signalizing them- 
 selves, or compare themselves with those models that leave them 
 no room for flippant exultation. Either great things are accom- 
 plished with labour and pains, which stamp their impression on 
 the general character and tone of feeling ; or if this should not 
 be the case (as sometimes happens), and they are the effect of 
 genius and a happiness of nature, then they cost too little to be 
 munh thought of, and we rather wonder at others for admiring 
 them, than at ourselves for having performed them. " Vix ea 
 nostra voco" is the motto of spontaneous talent ; and in neither 
 case is conceit the exuberant growth of great original power or 
 of great attainments. 
 
 In one particular, the uneducated man carries it hollow against 
 the man of thought and refinement : the first can shoot in the 
 long bow, which the last cannot for the life of him. He who has 
 spent the best part of his time and wasted his best powers in en- 
 deavouring to answer the question, " What is truth?" scorns a 
 lie, and every thing making the smallest approach to one. His 
 mind by habit has become tenacious of, devoted to the truth. The 
 grossness and vulgarity of falsehood shock the delicacy of his 
 perceptions, as much as it would shock the finest artist to be 
 obliged to daub in a sign-post, or scrawl a caricature. He can- 
 not make up his mind to derive any benefit from so pitiful and 
 disgusting a source. Tell me that a man is a metaphysician, 
 and at the same time that he is given to shallow and sordid boast- 
 ing, and I will not believe you. After striving to raise himself 
 to an equality with truth and nature by patient investigation and 
 refined distinctions (which few can make) whether he succeed 
 or fail, he cannot stoop to acquire a spurious reputation, or to 
 advance himself or lessen others by paltry artifice and idle rho- 
 domontade, which are in every one's power w,io has never known 
 the value or undergone the labour of discovering a single truth. 
 Gross personal and local interests bear the principal sway with 
 the ignorant or mere man of the world, who considers not what 
 things are in themselves, but what they are to him : the man of 
 science attaches a higher importance to, because he finds a more
 
 184 TABLE TALK. 
 
 constant pleasure in the contemplation and pursuit of general 
 and abstracted truths. Philosophy also teaches self-knowledge ; 
 and self-knowledge strikes equally at the root of any inordinate 
 opinion of ourselves, or wish to impress others with idle admira- 
 tion. Mathematicians have been remarked for persons of strict 
 probity and a conscientious and somewhat literal turn of mind.* 
 But are poets and romance-writers equally scrupulous and severe 
 judges of themselves, and martyrs to right principle ? I cannot 
 acquit them of the charge of vanity, and a wish to aggrandize 
 themselves in the eyes of the world, at the expense of a little 
 false complaisance (what wonder when the world are so prone 
 to admire, and they are so spoiled by indulgence in self-pleasing 
 fancies ?) but in general they are too much taken up with their 
 ideal creations, which have also a truth and keeping of their 
 own, to misrepresent or exaggerate matters of fact, or to trouble 
 their heads about them. The poet's waking thoughts are dreams : 
 the liar has all his wits and senses about him, and thinks only 
 of astonishing his hearers by some worthless assertion, a mixture 
 of impudence and cunning. But what shall we say of the clergy 
 and the priests of all countries 1 Are they not men of learning ? 
 And are they not, with few exceptions, noted for imposture and 
 time-serving, much more than for a love of truth and candour? 
 They are good subjects, it is true ; bound to keep the peace, and 
 hired to maintain certain opinions, not to inquire into them. So 
 this is an exception to the rule, such as might be expected. I 
 speak of the natural tendencies of things, and not of the- false 
 bias that may be given to them by their forced combination with 
 other principles. 
 
 The worst effect of this depression of spirits, or of the 
 " scholar's melancholy," here spoken of, is when it leads a man, 
 from a distrust of himself, to seek for low company, or to forget 
 it by matching below himself. Gray is to be pitied, whose exlra 
 diffidence or fastidiousness was such as to prevent his associating 
 with his fellow-collegians, or mingling with the herd, till at 
 
 * I have heard it said that carpenters, who do every thing by the square and 
 line, are honest men, and I am willing to suppose it. Shakespear, in the 
 " Midsummer Night's Dream," makes Snug the Joiner the moral man of the 
 piece.
 
 THE SHYNESS OF SCHOLARS. 185 
 
 length, like the owl, shutting himself up from society and day- 
 light, he was hunted and hooted at like the owl whenever he 
 chanced to appear, and was even assailed and disturbed in the 
 haunts in which " he held his solitary reign." He was driven 
 from college to college, and subjected to a persecution the more 
 harrassing to a person of his indolent and retired habits. But 
 he only shrunk the more within himself in consequence read 
 over his favourite authors corresponded with his distant friends 
 was terrified out of his wits at the bare idea of having his por- 
 trait prefixed to his works and probably died from nervous agi- 
 tation at the publicity into which his name had been forced by 
 his learning, taste, and genius. This monastic seclusion and re- 
 serve is, however, better than a career such as Porson's ; who 
 from not liking the restraints, or not possessing the exterior re- 
 commendations of good society, addicted himself to the lowest 
 indulgences, spent his days and nights in cider-cellars and pot- 
 houses, cared not with whom or where he was, so that he had 
 somebody to talk to and something to drink, " from humble 
 porter to imperial tokay" (a liquid, according to his own pun,) 
 and fell a martyr, in all likelihood, to what in the first instance 
 was pure mauvaise honte. Nothing could overcome this pro- 
 pensity to low society and sotting, but the having something to 
 do which required his whole attention and faculties ; and then 
 he shut himself up for weeks together in his chambers, or at the 
 University, to collate old manuscripts, or edite a Greek tragedy, 
 or expose a grave pedant, without seeing a single boon-compan- 
 ion, or touching a glass of wine. 1 saw him once at the London 
 Institution with a large patch of coarse brown paper on his nose, 
 the skirts of his rusty black coat hung with cobwebs, and talking 
 in a tone of suavity, approaching to condescension, to one of the 
 managers. 
 
 It is a pity that men should so lose themselves from a cen*in 
 awkwardness and rusticity at the outset. But did not Sherui&n 
 make the same melancholy ending, and run the same fetal 
 career, though in a higher and more brilliant circle ? Kc 
 did ; and though not from exactly the same cause (for no 
 cne could accuse Sheridan's purple nose and flashing e>c of 
 a bashfulness " modest as morning when she coldly ew
 
 186 TABLE TALK. 
 
 the youthful Phoebus !") yeU it was perhaps from one nearly 
 allied to it, namely, the want of that noble independence 
 and confidence in its own resources which should distinguish 
 genius, and the dangerous ambition to get sponsors and vouchers 
 for it in persons of rank and fashion. The affectation of the 
 society of lords is as mean and low-minded as the love of that of 
 coblers and tapsters. It is that coblers and tapsters may admire, 
 that we wish to be seen in company of their betters. The tone 
 of literary patronage is better than it was a hundred or a hundred 
 and fifty years ago. What dramatic author would think now of 
 getting a lady of quality to take a box at the first night of a play 
 to prevent its being damned by the pit 1 Do we not read the ac- 
 count of Parson Adams taking his ale in Squire Booby's kitchen 
 with mingled incredulity and shame ? At present literature has t 
 to a considerable degree, found its level, and is hardly in danger, 
 " deprived of its natural patrons and protectors, the great and 
 noble, of being trodden in the mire, and trampled under the hoofs 
 of a swinish multitude" though it can never again hope to be 
 what learning once was in the persons of the priesthood, the lord 
 and sovereign of principalities and powers. Fool that it was 
 ever to forego its privileges, and loosen the strong hold it had on 
 opinion in bigotry and superstition ! 
 
 I remember hearing a lady of great sense and acuteness speak 
 of it as a painful consequence of the natural shyness of scholars, 
 that from the want of a certain address, or an acquaintance with 
 the common forms of society, they despair of making themselves 
 agreeable to women of education and a certain rank in life, and 
 throw away their fine sentiments and romantic tenderness on 
 chambermaids and mantua-makers. Not daring to hope for suc- 
 cess where it would be most desirable, yet anxious to realize in 
 some way the dream of books and of their youth, they are will, 
 ing to accept a return of affection which they count upon as a 
 tribute of gratitude in those of lower circumstances (as if grati- 
 tude were ever bought by interest,) and take up with the first 
 Dulcinea del Toboso that they meet with, when, would they only 
 try the experiment, they might do much better. Perhaps so ; 
 but there is here also a mixture of pride as well as modesty. The 
 scholar is not only apprehensive of not meeting with a return of
 
 THE SHYNESS OF SCHOLARS. 187 
 
 fondness where it might be most advantageous to him, but he is 
 afraid of subjecting his self-love to the mortification of a repulse, 
 and to the reproach of aiming at a prize far beyond his deserts. 
 Besides, living (as he does) in an ideal world, he has it in his op- 
 Xion to clothe his Goddess (be she who or what she may,) with all 
 the perfections his heart dotes on ; and he works up a dowdy of 
 this ambiguous description a son gr, as an artist does a piece of 
 dull clay, or the poet the sketch of some unrivalled heroine. The 
 contrast is also the greater (and not the less gratifying as being 
 his own discovery) between his favourite figure and the back- 
 ground of her original circumstances ; and he likes her the bet- 
 ter, inasmuch as, like himself, she owes all to her own merit 
 and his notice ! 
 
 Possibly, the best cure for this false modesty, and for the un- 
 easiness and extravagances it occasions, would be for the retired 
 and abstracted student to consider that he properly belongs to 
 another sphere of action, remote from the scenes of ordinary life, 
 and may plead the excuse of ignorance, and the privilege granted 
 to strangers and to those who do not speak the same language. If 
 any one is travelling in a foreign diligence, he is not expected to 
 shine nor to put himself forward, nor need he be out of counte- 
 nance because he cannot : he has only to conform as well as he 
 can to his new and temporary situation, and to study common 
 propriety and simplicity of manners. Every thing has its own 
 limits, a little centre of its own, round which it moves ; so that 
 our true wisdom lies in keeping to our own walk in life, how- 
 ever humble or obscure, and being satisfied if we can succeed 
 in it. The best of us can do no more, and we shall only become 
 ridiculous or unhappy by attempting it. We are ashamed, be 
 cause we are at a loss in things to which we have no pretensions, 
 and try to remedy our mistakes by committing greater. An 
 overweening vanity or self-opinion is, in truth, often at the bottom 
 of this weakness ; and we shall be most likely to conquer the 
 one by emdicating the other, of restricting it with'n duo and 
 moderate bounds. 
 
 13 PART II.
 
 188 TABLE TALK- 
 
 ESSAY XXX. 
 
 On Old English Writers and Speakers. 
 
 When I see a \vhole row of standard French authors piled up on 
 a Paris book-stall, to the height of twenty or thirty volumes, 
 showing their mealy coats to the sun, pink, blue, and yellow, they 
 seem to me a wall built up to keep out the intrusion of foreign 
 letters. There is scarcely such a thing as an English book to be 
 met with, unless, perhaps, a dusty edition of Clarissa Harlowe 
 lurks in an ohscure corner, or a volume of the Sentimental Jour- 
 ney perks its well-known title in your face.* But there is a huge 
 column of Voltaire's works complete in sixty volumes, another 
 (not so frequent) of Rousseau's in fifty, Racine in ten volumes, 
 Moliere in about the same number, La Fontaine, Marmontel, Gil 
 Bias, for ever ; Madame Sevigne's Letters, Pascal, Montesquieu, 
 Crebillon, Marivaux, with Montaigne, Rabelais, and the grand 
 Corneille more rare ; and eighteen full-sized volumes of La 
 Harpe's criticism, towering vain-gloriously in the midst of them, 
 furnishing the streets of Paris with a graduated scale of merit 
 for all the rest, and teaching the very garcons perruquiers how to 
 measure the length of each act of each play by a stop-watch, 
 and to ascertain whether the angles at the four corners of each 
 classic volume are right ones. How climb over this lofty pile 
 of taste and elegance to wander down into the bogs and wastes 
 of English or of any other literature, " to this obscure and wild ?" 
 Must they "on that fair mountain leave to feed, to batten on this 
 moor ?" Or why should they ? Have they not literature 
 enough of their own, and to spare, without coming to us ? Is 
 
 A splendid edition of Goldsmith has been lately got up under the super- 
 intendence of Mr. Washington Irving, with a preface and a portrait of each 
 author. By what concatenation of ideas that gentleman arrived at the neces- 
 sity of placing his own portrait before a collection of Goldsmith's works, one 
 must have been early imprisoned in transatlantic solitudes to understand.
 
 ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. 189 
 
 not the public mind crammed, choaked with French books, pic- 
 tures, statues, plays, operas, newspapers, parties, and an inces- 
 sant farrago of words, so that it has not a moment left to look at 
 home into itself, 01 abroad into nature ? Must they cross the 
 Channel to increase the vast stock of impertinence, to acquire 
 foreign tastes, suppress native prejudices, and reconcile the opin- 
 ions of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews ? It is quite need- 
 less. There is a project at present entertained in certain cir- 
 cles, to give the French a taste for Shakespear. They should 
 really begin with the English.* Many of their own best authors 
 are neglected ; others, of whom new editions have been printed, 
 lie heavy on the booksellers' hands. It is by an especial dispen- 
 sation of Providence that languages wear out ; as otherwise we 
 should be buried alive under a load of books and knowledge. 
 People talk of a philosophical and universal language. We 
 have enough to do to understand our own, and to read a thou- 
 sandth part (perhaps not the best) of what is written in it. It is 
 ridiculous and monstrous vanity. We would set up a standard 
 of general taste and of immortal renown ; we would have the 
 benefits of science and of art universal, because we suppose our 
 own capacity to receive them unbounded ; and we would have 
 the thoughts of others never die, because we flatter ourselves that 
 our own will last for ever ; and like the frog imitating the ox in 
 the fable, we burst in the vain attempt. Man, whatever he may 
 think, is a very limited being; the world is a narrow circle 
 drawn about him ; the horizon limits our immediate view; im- 
 mortality means a century or two. Languages happily restrict 
 the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as 
 rivers and mountains bound countries ; or the empire of learn- 
 ing, as well as states, would become unwieldly and overgrown. 
 
 * I would as soon try to remove one side of the Seine or of the Thames tc 
 the other. By the time an author begins to be much talked of abroad, he is 
 going out of fashion at home. We have many little Lord Byrons among our- 
 selves, who think they can write nearly, if not quite as well. I am not anx- 
 ious to spread Shakespear's fame, or to increase the number of his admirers. 
 " What's lie that wishes for more men from England 1" &c. It is enough if 
 he is admired by all those who understand him. He may be very inferior to 
 many French writers, for what I know; but I am quite sure he is superior 
 to all English ones. We may say that, without natiomd prejudice or vanity 
 17
 
 190 TABLE TALK. 
 
 A little importation from foreign markets may be gc od ; but the 
 home production is the chief thing to be looked to. 
 
 " The proper study of the French is French f 
 
 No people can act more uniformly upon a conviction of this max- 
 im, and in that respect I think they are much to be commended. 
 Mr. Lamb has lately taken it into his head to read St. Evre- 
 mont, and works of that, stamp. I neither praise nor blame him 
 for it. He observed, that St. Evremont was a writer half-way 
 between Montaigne and Voltaire, with a spice of the wit of the 
 one and the sense of the other. I said I was always of opinion 
 that there had been a great many clever people in the world, 
 both in France and England, but I had been sometimes rebuked 
 for it. Lamb took this as a slight reproach ; for he has been a 
 little exclusive and national in his tastes. He said that Coleridge 
 had lately given up all his opinions respecting German litera- 
 ture, that all their high-flown pretensions were in his present es- 
 timate sheer cant and affectation, and that none of their works 
 were worth any thing but Schiller's and the early ones of Go- 
 ethe. " What," I said, " my old friend Werter ! How many 
 battles have I had in my own mind, and compunctious visitings 
 of criticism to stick to my old favourite, because Coleridge 
 thought nothing of it ! It is hard to find one's-self right at last!" 
 I found they were of my mind with respect to the celebrated 
 Faust that, it is a mere piece of abortive perverseness, a wilful 
 evasion of the subject and omission of the characters ; that it is 
 written on the absurd principle that as to produce a popular and 
 powerful effect is not a proof of the highest genius, so to produce 
 no effect at all is an evidence of the highest poetry and in fine, 
 that the German play is not to be named in a day with Mar- 
 lowe's. Poor Kit! How Lord Byron would have sneered at 
 this comparison between the boasted modern and a contempo- 
 rary of Shakespear's ! Captain Medwin or his Lordship must 
 have made a mistake in the enumeration of plays of that period 
 still acted. There is one of Ben Jonson's, " Every Man in his 
 Humour;" and one of Massinger's, " A New Way to Pay Old 
 Leuts ;" but there is none of Ford's either acted or worth act- 
 ing, except " 'Tis Pity She's a Whore," and that would no more
 
 ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. 191 
 
 bear acting than Lord Byron and Goethe together could have 
 vritten it. 
 
 This account of Coleridge's vacillations of opinion on such sub- 
 jects might be adduced .o show that our love for foreign literature 
 :'s an acquired or rather an assumed taste ; that it is, like a 
 foreign religion, adopted for the moment, to answer a purpose or 
 to please an idle humour ; that we do not enter into the dialect 
 of truth and nature in their works as we do in our own ; and that 
 consequently our taste for them seldom becomes a part of our- 
 selves, that " grows with our growth, and strengthens with our 
 strength," and only quits us when we die. Probably it is this 
 acquaintance with, and pretended admiration of, extraneous 
 models, that adulterates and spoils our native literature, that 
 polishes the surface but undermines its basis, and by taking away 
 its original simplicity, character, and force, makes it just tolerable 
 to others, and a matter of much indifference to ourselves. When 
 I see Lord Byron's poems stuck all over Paris, it strikes me as 
 ominous of the decline of English genius : on the contrary, 
 when I find the Scotch novels in still greater request, I think it 
 augurs well for the improvement of French taste.* 
 
 There was advertised not long ago in Paris an Elegy on the 
 Death of Lord Byron, by his friend Sir Thomas More, evidently 
 confounding the living bard with the old statesman. It is thus 
 the French in their light, salient way transpose every thing. The 
 mistake is particularly ludicrous to those who have ever seen 
 
 * I have heard the popularity of Sir Walter Scott in France ingeniously and 
 bomewhat whimsically traced to Bonaparte. He did not like the dissipation 
 and frivolity of Paris, and relegated the country-gentlemen to their seats foi 
 eight months in the year. Here they yawn and gasp for breath, and would not 
 know what to do without the aid of the author of Waverley. They ask impa- 
 tiently when the " Tales of the Crusaders" will be out; and what you think 
 of " Red-Gauntlet V To the same cause is to be attributed the change of 
 manners. Messieurs, je veux des mmiirs, was constantly in the French Ruler's 
 mouth. Manners, according to my informant, were necessary to consolidate 
 his plans of tyranny; how, I do not know. Forty years ago no man was 
 ever seen in company with Maihime sa femme. A comedy was written or. 
 the ridicule of a man being in love with his wife. Now he must be with her 
 three-and-twenty hours out of the four-and-twenty ; it is from this that they 
 date the decline of happiness in Fraice; and the unfortunate couple endeavour 
 to pass the time and get rid of ennu as well as they can, by reading the Scotch 
 
 novels together. 
 
 17
 
 192 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Mr. Moore, or Mr. Shee's portrait of him in Mr. Hookham's shop, 
 and who chance to see Holbein's head of Sir Thomas More in 
 the Louvre. There is the same difference that there is between 
 a surly English mastiff and a little lively French pug. Mr. 
 Moore's face is gay and smiling enough, old Sir Thomas's is se- 
 vere, not to say sour. It seems twisted awry with difficult ques- 
 tions, and bursting asunder with a ponderous load of meaning. 
 Mr. Moore has nothing of this painful and puritanical cast. He 
 floats idly and fantastically on the top of the literature of his age ; 
 his renowned and almost forgotten namesake has nearly sunk to 
 the bottom of his. The author of Utopia was no flincher, he was 
 a martyr to his opinions, and was burnt to death for them the 
 most heroic action of Mr. Moore's life is, the having burnt the 
 Memoirs of his friend ! 
 
 The expression in Holbein's pictures conveys a faithful but 
 not very favourable notion of the literary character of that pe- 
 riod. It is painful, dry, and laboured. Learning was then an 
 ascetic, but recluse and profound. You see a weight of thought 
 and care in the studious heads of the time of the Reformation, 
 a sincerity, an integrity, a sanctity of purpose, like that of a 
 formal dedication to a religious life, or the inviolability of mon- 
 astic vows. They had their work to do ; we reap the benefits 
 of it. We skim the surface, and travel along the high road. 
 They had to explore dark recesses, to dig through mountains, 
 and make their way through pathless wildernesses. It is no 
 wonder they looked grave upon it. The seriousness, indeed, 
 amounts to an air of devotion ; and it has to me something fine, 
 manly, and old English about it. There is a heartiness and de- 
 termined resolution ; a willingness to contend with opposition ; a 
 superiority to ease and pleasure ; some sullen pride, but no 
 trifling vanity. They addressed themselves to study as to a 
 duty, and were ready to " leave all and follow it." In the be- 
 ginning of such an era, the difference between ignorance and 
 learning, between what was commonly known and what was 
 possible to be known, would appear immense ; and no pains or 
 time would be thought too great to master the difficulty. Con- 
 scious of their own deficiencies and the scanty information of 
 those about them, they would be glad to look out for aids and 
 support, and to put themselves apprentices to time and nature.
 
 ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS ^ 193 
 
 This temper would lead them to exaggerate rather than to make 
 iight a*" the difficulties of their undertaking; and would call 
 forth sacrifices in proportion. Feeling how little they knew, 
 they would be anxious to discover all that others had known, and 
 instead of making a display of themselves, their first object 
 would be to dispel the mist and darkness that surrounded them. 
 They did not cull the flowers of learning, or pluck a leaf of 
 laurel for their own heads, but tugged at the roots and very 
 heart of their subject, as the woodman tugs at the roots of the 
 gnarled oak. The sense of the arduousness of their enterprize 
 braced their courage, so that they left nothing half done. They 
 inquired de omne scibile et quibusdam aliis. They ransacked 
 libraries, they exhausted authorities. They acquired languages, 
 consulted books, and decyphered manuscripts. They devoured 
 learning, and swallowed antiquity whole, and (what is more) di- 
 gested it. They read incessantly, and remembered what they 
 read, from the zealous interest they took in it. Repletion is only 
 bad, when it is accompanied with apathy and want of exercise. 
 They laboured hard, and showed great activity both of reason- 
 ing and speculation. Their fault was that they were too prone 
 to unlock the secrets of nature with the key of learning, and 
 often to substitute authority in the place of argument. They 
 were also too polemical ; as was but naturally to be expected in 
 the first breaking up of established prejudices and opinions. It 
 is curious to observe the slow progress of the human mind in 
 loosening and getting rid of its trammels, link by link, and how 
 it crept on its hands and feet, and with its eyes bent on the 
 ground, out of the cave of Bigotry, making its way through one 
 dark passage after another ; those who gave up one half of an 
 absurdity contending as strenuously for the remaining half, the 
 lazy current of tradition stemming the tide of innovation, and 
 making an endless struggle between the two. But in the dullest 
 minds of. this period there was a deference to the opinions of 
 their leaders ; an imposing sense of the importance of the sub- 
 ject, of the necessity of bringing all the faculties to bear upon 
 it ; a weight either of armour or of internal strength, a zeal 
 either for or against ; a head, a heart, and a hand, a holding out 
 to the death for conscience sake, a strong spirit of proselytism 
 no flippancy, no indifference, no compromising, no pert shallow
 
 194 TABLE TALK. 
 
 scepticism, but truth was supposed indissolubly knit to good, 
 knowledge to usefulness, and the temporal and eternal welfare 
 of mankind to hang in the balance. The pure springs of a lofty 
 faith (so to speak) had not then descended by various gradations 
 from their skyey regions and cloudy height, to find their level in 
 the smooth, glittering expanse of modern philosophy, or to settle 
 in the stagnant pool of stale hypocrisy ! A learned man of that 
 day, if he knew no better than others, at least knew all that 
 they did. He did not come to his subject, like some dapper bar- 
 rister who has never looked at his brief, and trusts to the smart- 
 ness of his wit and person for the agreeable effect he means to 
 produce, but like an old and practised counsellor, covered over 
 with the dust and cobwebs of the law. If it was a speaker in 
 Parliament, he came prepared to handle his subject, armed with 
 cases and precedents, the constitution and history of Parliament 
 from the earliest period, a knowledge of the details of business 
 and the local interests of the country ; in short, he had taken up 
 the freedom of the House, and did not treat the question like a 
 cosmopolite, or a writer in a Magazine. If it were a divine, he 
 knew the Scriptures and the Fathers, and the Councils and the 
 Commentators by heart, and thundered them in the ears of his 
 astonished audience. Not a trim essay or a tumid oration, pat- 
 ronizing religion by modern sophisms, but the Law and the 
 Prophets, the chapter and the verse. If it was a philosopher, 
 Aristotle and the Schoolmen were drawn out in battle-array 
 against you : if an antiquarian, the Lord bless us ! There is a 
 passage in Selden's notes on Drayton's Poly-Olbion, in which he 
 elucidates some point of topography by a reference not only to 
 Stowe and Holinshed and Camden and Saxo-Grammaticus and 
 Dugdale and several other authors that we are acquainted with, 
 but to twenty obscure names, that no modern reader ever heard 
 of: and so on through the notes to a folio volume, written appa- 
 rently for relaxation. Such were the intellectual amusements 
 of our ancestors ! Learning then ordinarily lay-in of folio 
 volumes : now she litters octavos and duodecimos, and will soon, 
 as in France, miscarry of half-sheets ! Poor Job Orton ! why 
 should 1 not record a jest of his (perhaps the only one he ever 
 made,) emblematic as it is of the living and the learning of the 
 good old times ? The Rev. Job Orton was a Dissenting Minis-
 
 ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. 195 
 
 tet m the middle of the last century, and had grown heavy and 
 gouty by sitting long at dinner and at his studies. He could 
 only get down-stairs at last by spreading the folio volumes of 
 Caryl's Commentaries upon Job on the steps and sliding down 
 them. Surprised one day in his descent, he exclaimed, " You 
 have often heard of Caryl upon Job now you see Job upon 
 Cary !" This same quaint- witted gouty old gentleman seems 
 to have been one of those " superior, happy spirits," who elid 
 through life on the rollers of learning, enjoying the good things 
 of the world and laughing at them, and turning his infirmities to 
 a livelier account than his patriarchal name-sake. Reader, 
 didst thou ever hear either of Job Orton or of Caryl on Job ? 
 I dare say not. Yet the one did not therefore slide down his 
 theological staircase the less pleasantly ; nor did the other com- 
 pile his Commentaries in vain! For myself, I should like to 
 browze on folios, and have to deal chiefly with authors that I 
 have scarcely strength to lift, that are as solid as they are heavy, 
 and if dull, are full of matter. It is delightful to repose on the 
 wisdom of the ancients;* to have some great name at hand, be- 
 sides one's own initials always staring one in the face : to travel 
 out of one's-self into the Chaldee, Hebrew, and Egyptian char- 
 acters; to have the palm-trees waving mystically in the margin 
 of the page, and the camels moving slowly on in the distance of 
 three thousand years. In that dry desert of learning, we gather 
 strength and patience, and a strange and insatiable thirst of 
 knowledge. The ruined monuments of antiquity are also there, 
 and the fragments of buried cities (under which the adder lurks,) 
 and cool springs, and green sunny spots, and the whirlwind and 
 the lion's roar, and the shadow of angelic wings. To those 
 who turn with supercilious disgust from the ponderous tomes of 
 scholastic learning, who never felt the witchery of the Talmuds 
 and the Cabbala, of the Commentators and the Schoolmen; of 
 texts and authorities, of types and anti-types, hieroglyphics and 
 mysteries, dogmas and contradictions, and endless controversies 
 and doubtful labyrinths, and quaint traditions, I would recom- 
 mend the lines of Warton written in a blank leaf of Dugdale's 
 Monasticon : 
 
 " Deem not devoid of elegance the sage, 
 By fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled,
 
 !96 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Of painful pedantry the poring child, 
 Who turns of these proud domes the historic page, 
 Now sunk by time and Henry's fiercer rage. 
 Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smiled 
 On his lone hours 1 Ingenuous views engage 
 His thoughts, on themes (unclassic falsely styled) 
 Intent. While cloister'd piety displays 
 Her mouldering scroll, the piercing eye explores 
 New manners and the pomp of elder days ; 
 Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores. 
 Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways 
 Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers." 
 
 This sonnet, if it were not for a certain intricacy in the sty'ie 
 would be a perfect one : at any rate, the thought it contains is 
 fine and just. Some of the caput mortuum of learning is a useful 
 ballast and relief to the mind. It must turn back to the acquisi- 
 tions of others as its natural sustenance and support ; facts must 
 go hand in hand with feelings, or it will soon prey like an empty 
 stomach on itself, or be the sport of the windy impertinence of 
 ingenuity self-begotten. Away then with this idle cant, as if 
 every thing were barbarous and without interest, that is not the 
 growth of our own times and of our own taste ; with this ever- 
 lasting evaporation of mere sentiment, this affected glitter of 
 style, this equivocal generation of thought out of ignorance and 
 vanity, this total forgetfulness of the subject, and display of the 
 writer, as if every possible train of speculation must originate 
 in the pronoun 7, and the world had nothing to do but to 
 look on and admire. It will not do to consider all truth or 
 good as a reflection of our own pampered and inordinate 
 self-love : to resolve the solid fabric of the universe into an 
 essence of Della-Cruscan witticism and conceit. The perpetual 
 search after effect, the premature and effeminate indulgence of 
 nervous sensibility, defeats and wears itself out. We cannot 
 make an abstraction of the intellectual ore from the material 
 dross, of feelings from objects, of results from causes. We must 
 get at the kernel of pleasure through the dry and hard husk of 
 truth. We must wait nature's time. These false births weaken 
 the constitution. It has been observed that men of science live 
 longer than mere men of letters. They exercise their under- 
 standings more, their sensibility less. There is with them less 
 wear and tear of the irritable fibre, which is not shattered and
 
 ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. 197 
 
 worn to a very thread. On the hill of science, they keep an 
 eye intent on truth and fame : 
 
 " Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains." 
 
 while the man of letters mingles in the crowd below, courting 
 popularity and pleasure. His is a frail and feverish existence 
 accordingly, and he soon exhausts himself in the tormenting pur- 
 suit in the alternate excitement of his imagination and gratifi- 
 cation of his vanity. 
 
 " Earth destroys 
 
 Those raptures duly: Erebus disdains !" 
 
 Lord Byron appears to me to have fairly run himself out in 
 nis debilitating intercourse with the wanton Muse. He had no 
 other idea left but that of himself and the public he was un 
 easy unless he was occupied in administering repeated provoca- 
 tives to idle curiosity, and receiving strong doses of praise or 
 censure in return : the irritation at last became so violent and 
 importunate, that he could neither keep on with it nor take any 
 repose from it. The glittering orb of heated popularity 
 
 " Glared round his soul and mocked his closing eye-lids." 
 
 The successive endless cantos of Don Juan were the quotidian 
 that killed him ! Old Sir Walter will last long enough, stuffing 
 his wallet and his " wame," as he does, with mouldy fragments 
 and crumbs of comfort. He does not " spin his brains," but 
 something much better. The cunning chieM, the old canty gaber- 
 lunzie has got hold of another clue that of nature and history 
 and long may he spin it, " even to the crack of doom," watching 
 the threads as they are about to break through his fringed eye- 
 lids, catching a tradition in his mouth like a trap, and heaping his 
 forehead with facts, till it shoves up the Baronet's blue bonnet 
 into a Baron's crown, and then will the old boy turn in his chair, 
 rest his chin upon his crutch, give a last look to the Highlands, 
 and with his latest breath, thank God that he leaves the world as 
 he found it ! And so he will pretty nearly with one exception, 
 the Scotch Novels. They are a small addition to this round 
 world of ours. We and they shall jog on merrily together for a
 
 198 TABLE TALK. 
 
 century or two, I hope, till some future Lord Byron asks, " Who 
 reads Sir Walter Scott now ?*' Theie is the last and almost 
 worst of them. I would take it with me into a wilderness. Three 
 pages of poor Peter Peebles will at any time redeem three 
 volumes of Red- Gauntlet. And Nanty Ewart is even better with 
 his steady walk upon the dock of the Jumping Jenny and his 
 story of himself, " and her whose foot (whether he came in or 
 went out) was never off the stair." There you came near me, 
 there you touched me, old true-penny ! And then again the 
 catch that blind Willie and his wife and the boy sing in the hol- 
 low of the heath there is more mirth and heart's ease in it than 
 in all Lord Byron's Don Juan, or Mr. Moore's Lyrics. And 
 why ? Because the author is thinking of beggars and a beggar's 
 brat, and not of himself, while he writes it. He looks at nature, sees 
 it, hears it, feels it, and believes that it exists, before it is printed, 
 hot-pressed and labelled on the back, By the Author of Waverley. 
 He does not fancy, nor would he for one moment have it supposed, 
 that his name and fame compose all that is worth a moment's 
 consideration in the universe. This is the great secret of his 
 writings a perfect indifference to self. Whether it is the same 
 in his politics, I cannot say. I see no comparison between his 
 prose-writing and Lord Byron's poems. The only writer that I 
 should hesitate about is Wordsworth. There are thoughts and 
 lines of his that to me show as fine a mind, a subtler sense of beauty 
 than any thing of Sir Walter's, such as those above quoted, and 
 that other line in the Laodamia 
 
 " Elysian beauty, melancholy grace." 
 
 I would as soon have written that line as have carved a Greek 
 statue. But in this opinion I shall have three or four with me, 
 and all the rest of the world against me. I do not dislike a 
 Flouse-of-Commons Minority in matters of taste that is, one 
 that is select, independent, and has a proxy from posterity. To 
 roturn to the question with which I set out. 
 
 Learning is its own exceeding great reward ; and at the pe- 
 riod of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it. 
 Genius, when not smothered and kept down by learning, blazed 
 out triumphantly over it ; and the Fancy often rose to a height 
 proportioned to the depth to which the Understanding had struck
 
 ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. 199 
 
 its roots. After the first emancipation of the mind from the 
 trammels of Papal ignorance and superstition, people seemed to 
 be in a state of breathless wonder at the new light that was suf- 
 fered to break in upon them. They were startled as " at the 
 birth of nature from the unapparent deep." They seized on all 
 objects that rose in view with a firm and eager grasp, in order to 
 be sure whether they were imposed upon or not. The mind of 
 man, " pawing to get free" from custom and prejudice, struggled 
 and plunged, and like the fabled Pegasus, opened at each spring 
 a new source of truth. Images were piled on heaps, as well as 
 opinions and facts, the ample materials for poetry or prose, to 
 which the bold hand of enthusiasm applied its torch, and kindled 
 it into a flame. The accumulation of past records seemed to 
 form the frame-work of their prose, as the observation of exter- 
 nal objects did of their poetry 
 
 " Whose body nature was, and man the soul." 
 
 Among poets they have to boast such names, for instance, as 
 Shakespear, Spenser, Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlowe, Web- 
 ster, Deckar, and soon after, Milton ; among prose- writers, Sel- 
 den, Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, and Sir Thomas Brown ; 
 for patriots, they have such men as Pym, Hampden, Sydney ; 
 and for a witness of their zeal and piety, they have Fox's Book 
 of Martyrs, instead of which we have Mr. Southey's Book of the 
 Church, and a whole host of renegades ! Perhaps Jeremy 
 Taylor and also Beaumont and Fletcher may be mentioned as 
 rather -exceptions to the gravity and severity I have spoken of as 
 characteristic of our earlier literature. It is true, they are florid 
 and voluptuous in their style, but they still keep their state apart, 
 and there is an eloquence of the heart about them, which seems 
 to gush from the " pure well of English undefiled." The one 
 treats of sacred things with a vividness and fervour as if he had 
 a revelation of them : the others speak of human interests with 
 a tenderness as if man's nature were divine. Jeremy Taylnr'a 
 pen seems to have been guided by the very spirit of joy and 
 youth, but yet with a sense of what was due to the reverence of 
 age, and " tears of pious awe, that feared to have offended.'* 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's love-scenes are like the meeting of 
 heaits in Elysium. Let any one have dwelt on any object with
 
 200 . - TABLE TALK. 
 
 the greatest fondness, let hirn have cherished the feeling to the 
 utmost height, and have it put to the test in the most trying cir 
 cumstances, and he will find it described to the life in Beaumon. 
 and Fletcher. Our modern- dramatists (with one exception,*) 
 appeal not to nature or the heart, but to the readers of modern 
 poetry. Words and paper, each couleur de rose, are the two re- 
 quisites of a fashionable style. But the glossy splendour, the 
 voluptuous glow of the obsolete, old-fashioned writers just men- 
 tioned has nothing artificial, nothing meretricious in it. It is the 
 luxuriance of natural feeling and fancy. I should as soon think 
 of accusing the summer-rose of vanity for unfolding its leaves tc 
 the dawn, or the hawthorn that puts forth its blossoms in the ge- 
 nial warmth of spring, of affecting to be fine. We have heard a 
 good deal of the pulpit-eloquence of Bossuet and other celebrated 
 preachers of the time of Fenelon ; but I doubt much whether all 
 of them together could produce any number of passages to match 
 the best of those in the Holy Living and Dying, or even Baxter's 
 severe or thrilling denunciations of the insignificance and nothing- 
 ness of life and the certainty of a judgment to come. There is 
 a fine portrait of this last-named controversialist, with his high 
 forehead and black velvet cap, in Calamy's Non-Conformist's 
 Memorial, containing an account of the Two Thousand Ejected 
 Ministers at the Restoration of Charles II. This was a proud 
 list for Old England ; and the account of their lives, their zeal, 
 their eloquence and sufferings for conscience sake, is one of the 
 most interesting chapters in the history of the human mind. How 
 high it can soar in faith ! How nobly it can arm itself with re- 
 solution and fortitude ! How far it can surpass itself in 
 cruelty and fraud ! How incapable it seems to be of good, ex- 
 cept as it is urged on by the contention with evil ! The retired 
 and inflexible descendants of the Two Thousand Ejected Minis- 
 ters and their adherents are gone with the spirit of persecution 
 that gave a soul and body to them; and with them, I am afraid 
 the spirit of liberty, of manly independence, and of inward self- 
 respect, is nearly extinguished in England. There appears to 
 be no natural necessity for evil, but that there is a perfect indif- 
 ference to good without it. One thing exists and has a value set 
 
 * The author of Virginius.
 
 ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS 201 
 
 upon it only as it has a foil in some other ; learning is set off by 
 ignorance, liberty by slavery, refinement by barbarism. The 
 cultivation and attainment of any art or excellence is followed 
 by its neglect and decay ; and even religion owes its zest to the 
 spirit of contradiction, for it flourishes most from persecution 
 and hostile factions. Mr. Irving speaks of the great superiority 
 of religion over every other motive, since it enabled its professors 
 to " endure having hot molten lead poured down their throats." 
 He ft>rget3 that it was religion that poured it down their 
 throats!, and that this principle, mixed with the frailty of human 
 passion, has often been as ready to inflict, as to endure. I could 
 make the world good, wise, happy to-morrow, if, when made, 
 it would be contented to remain so without the alloy of mischief, 
 misery, and absurdity : that is, if every possession did not re- 
 quire the principle of contrast, contradiction, and excess, to en- 
 liven and set it off and keep it at a safe distance from sameness 
 and insipidity. 
 
 The different styles of art and schools of learning vary and 
 fluctuate on this principle. After the Restoration of Charles, 
 the grave, enthusiastic, puritanical, " prick-eared" style became 
 quite exploded, and a gay and piquant style, the reflection of 
 courtly conversation and polished manners, and borrowed from 
 the French, came into fashion, and lasted till the Revolution. 
 Some examples of the same thing were given in the time of 
 Charles I. by Sir J. Suckling and others, but they were eclipsed 
 and overlaid by the prevalence and splendour of the opposite ex- 
 amples. It was at its height, however, in the reign of the re- 
 stored monarch, and in the witty and licentious writings of 
 Wycherley, Congreve, Rochester, and Waller. Milton alone 
 stood out as a partisan of the old Elizabethan school. Out of 
 compliment, I suppose, to the Houses of Orange and Hanover, 
 we sobered down, after the Revolution, into a strain of greater 
 demureness, and into a Dutch and German fidelity of imitation 
 of domestic manners and individual character, as in the periodi- 
 jal Essayists, and in the works of Fielding and Hogarth. Yet, 
 if the two last-named painters of manners are not English, who 
 are so ? I cannot give up my partiality to them for the fag-end 
 of a theory. They have this mark of genuine English intellect, 
 that they constantly combine truth of external observation with
 
 202 TABLE TALK. 
 
 strength of internal meaning. The Dutch are patient observers 
 of nature, but want character and feeling. The French, as far 
 as we have imitated them, aim only at the pleasing, and glance 
 over the surfaces of words and things. Thus has our literature 
 descended (according to the foregoing scale) from the tone of the 
 pulpit to that of the court or drawing-room, from the drawing, 
 room into the parlour, and from thence, if some critics say true, 
 into the kitchen and ale-house. It may do even worse than that ! 
 
 French literature has undergone great changes in like man- 
 ner, and was supposed to be at its height in the time of Louis 
 XIV. We sympathize less, however, with the pompous and set 
 speeches in the tragedies of Racine and Corneille, or in the se 
 rious comedies of Moliere, than we do with the grotesque farce? 
 of the latter, with the exaggerated descriptions and humour of 
 Rabelais (whose wit was a madness, a drunkenness,) or with the 
 accomplished humanity, the easy style, and gentlemanly and 
 scholar-like sense of Montaigne. But these we consider as in a 
 great measure English, or as what the old French character in- 
 clined to, before it was corrupted by courts and academies of 
 criticism. The exquisite graces of La Fontaine, the indifferent 
 sarcastic tone of Voltaire and Le Sage, who make light of every 
 thing, and who produce their greatest effects with the most im- 
 perceptible and rapid touches, we give wholly to the constitu- 
 tional genius of the French, and despair of imitating. Perhaps 
 in all this we proceed by guess-work at best. Nations (particu- 
 larly rival nations) are bad judges of one another's literature or 
 physiognomy. The French certainly do not understand us : it 
 is most probable we do not understand them. How slowly great 
 works, great names make their way across the Channel ! M. 
 Tracey's ' ; Ideologic" has not yet been heard of among us, and 
 a Frenchman who asks if you have read it almost subjects 
 himself to the suspicion of being the author. They have also 
 their little sects and parties in literature, and though they do not 
 nickname and vilify their rivals, as is done with us, (thanks to the 
 national politeness!) yet if you do not belong to the prevailing par- 
 ty, they very civilly suppress all mention of you, your name is no 4 , 
 noticed in the journals, nor your work inquired for at the shops. 
 
 In Paris, to be popular, you must wear out, they say, twenty ra!r of
 
 ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. 203 
 
 Those who explain every thing by final causes (that is, who 
 deduce causes from effects,) might avail themselves of their pri- 
 vilege on this occasion. There must be some checks to the ex- 
 cessive increase of literature as of population, or we should be 
 overwhelmed by it ; and they are happily found in the envy, dul- 
 ness, prejudices, and vanity of mankind. While we think we 
 are weighing the merits of an author, we are indulging in our 
 own national pride, indolence, or ill-humour, by laughing 
 at what we do not understand, or condemning what thwarts 
 our inclinations. The French reduce all philosophy to a 
 set of agreeable sensations : the Germans reduce the commonest 
 things to an abstruse metaphysics. The one are a mystical, the 
 other a superficial people. Both proceed by the severest logic ; 
 but the real guide to their conclusions is the proportion of phlegm 
 or mercury in their dispositions. When we appeal to a man's 
 reason against his inclinations, we speak a language without 
 meaning, and which he will not understand. Different nations 
 have favourite modes of feeling and of accounting for things to 
 please themselves and fall in with their ordinary habits ; and our 
 different systems of philosophy, literature, and art meet, contend, 
 and repel one another on the confines of opinion, because their 
 elements will not amalgamate with our several humours, and all 
 the while we fancy we settle the question by an abstract exercise 
 of reason, and by laying down some refined and exclusive stan- 
 dard of taste. There is no great harm in this delusion, nor can 
 there be much in seeing through it ; for we shall still go on just 
 as we did before.* 
 
 pumps and twenty pair of silk stockings, in calls upon the different newspaper 
 editors. In England, you have only to give in your resignation at the Trea- 
 sury, and you receive your passport to the John Bull Parnassus ; otherwise 
 you are shut out and made a bye-word. Literary jealousy and littleness is 
 still the motive, politics the pretext, and blackguardism the mode. 
 
 * Bonaparte got a committee of the French Institute to draw up a report 
 of the Kantean Philosophy ; he might as well have ordered them to draw up 
 a report of the geography of the moon. It is difficult for an Englishman to 
 underhand Kant; for a Frenchman impossible. The latter has a certain 
 routirv of phrases into which his ideas run habitually as into a mould, and 
 you cannot get him out of them. 
 
 END OF PART II.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 TABLE TALK. SECOND SERIES. PART L 
 
 MM 
 
 Hbsat I. On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, ... I 
 
 II. On the Want of Money, 8 
 
 III. On Sitting for One's Picture, ..... 25 
 IV. Whether Genius is conscious of its Powers, . . 37 
 V. On Londoners and Country People, . . . .50 
 
 VI. On Living to One's Self, ,64 
 
 VII. On Genius and Common Sense, 78 
 
 VIII. Same subject continued, 92 
 
 IX. Hot and Cold, . . 103 
 
 X. On Thought and Action, 115 
 
 XL Portrait by Vandyke, ; 130 
 
 XII. On Dreams, 148 
 
 XIII. On Envy (a dialogue), 15*7 
 
 XIV. On the Difference between Writing and Speaking, . 170 
 XV. On Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses, 192 
 
 XVI. The same subject continued, 204 
 
 XVII. On Qualifications Necessary to Success in Life, . 222 
 
 XVIII. Madame Pasta and Mademoiselle Mars, . . . 239 
 
 XIX. Sir Walter Scott, Racine, and Shakspeare, . . 258
 
 TABLE TALI. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 On the feeling of immortality in youth. 
 
 No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying 
 of my brother's, and a fine one. There is a feeling of Eternity 
 ji youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young 
 is to be as one of the Immortals. One half of time indeed is 
 spent the other half remains in store for us with all its count- 
 less treasures, for there is no line drawn and we see no limit to 
 our hopes and wishes. We make the coming age our own 
 
 " The vast, unbounded prospect lies before us." 
 
 Death, old age, are words without a meaning, a dream, a fiction, 
 with which we have nothing to do. Others may have undergone, 
 or may still undergo them we " bear a charmed life," which 
 laughs to scorn all such idle fancies. As, in setting out on a de- 
 lightful journey, we strain our eager sight forward, 
 
 " Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail," 
 
 and see no end to prospect after prospect, new objects presenting 
 themselves as we advance, so in the outset of life we see no end 
 to our desires nor to the opportunities of gratifying them. We 
 have as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag, and it seems 
 that we can go on so for ever. We -look round in a new world, 
 full cf life and motion, and ceaseless progress, and feel in our- 
 selves all the vigor and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not 
 foresee from any present signs how we shall be left behind in the 
 race, decline into old age, and drop into the grave. It is the 
 
 SECOND SERIES PAET I. 2
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 simplicity and, as it were, abstractedness of our feelings in youth 
 that (so to speak) identifies us with nature and (our experience 
 Deing weak and our passion strong) makes us fancy ourselves 
 immortal like it. Our short-lived connection with being, we 
 fondly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and lasting union. As 
 infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our de- 
 sires, and hushed into fancied security by the roar of the universe 
 around us we quaff the cup of life with eager thirst without 
 draining it, and joy and hope seem ever mantling to the brim 
 objects press around us, filling the mind with their magnitude 
 and with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that there 
 is no room for the thoughts of death. We are too much dazzled 
 by the gorgeousness and novelty of the bright waking dream 
 about us to discern the dim shadow lingering for us in the dis- 
 tance. Nor would the hold that life has taken of us permit us 
 to detach our thoughts that way even if we could. We are too 
 much absorbed in present objects and pursuits. While the spirit 
 of youth remains unimpaired, ere " the wine of life is drunk," we 
 are like people intoxicated or in a fever, who are hurried away 
 by the violence of their own sensations : it is only as present ob- 
 jects begin to pall upon the sense, as we have been disappointed 
 m our favorite pursuits, cut off from our closest ties, that we by 
 degrees become weaned from the world, that passion loosens its 
 hold upon futurity, and that we begin to contemplate as in a glass 
 darkly the possibility of parting with it for good. Till then, the 
 example of others has no effect upon us. Casualties we avoid ; 
 the slow approaches of age we play at hide and seek with. Like 
 the foolish fat scullion in Sterne who hears that Master Bobby is 
 dead, our only reflection is, " So am not I !" The idea of death, 
 instead of staggering our confidence, only seems to strengthen and 
 enhance our sense of the possession and our enjoyment of life. 
 Others may fall around us like leaves or be mowed down by the 
 scythe of Time like grass : these are but metaphors to the unre- 
 flecting buoyant ears and overweening presumption of youth. It 
 is not till we see the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy withering 
 around us, that we give up the flattering delusions that before led 
 us on, and that the emptiness and dreariness of the prospect be- 
 fore us reconciles us hypothetically to the silence of the grave.
 
 FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH. 3 
 
 Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most myste- 
 rious. No wonder when it is first granted to us, that our grati- 
 tude, our admiration, and our delight, should prevent us from re- 
 flecting on our own nothingness, or from thinking it will ever be 
 recalled. Our first and strongest impressions are borrowed from 
 the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we unconsciously 
 transfer its durability as well as its splendor to ourselves. So 
 newly found we cannot think of parting with it yet, or at least 
 put off that consideration sine die. Like a rustic at a fair, we 
 are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going 
 home, or that it will soon be night. We know our existence only 
 by ourselves, and confound our knowledge with the objects of it. 
 We and nature are therefore one. Otherwise the illusion, the 
 " feast of reason and the flow of soul," to which we are invited, 
 is a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play till 
 the last act is ended, and the lights are about to be extinguished. 
 But the fairy face of nature still shines on : shall we be called 
 away before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had a 
 glimpse of what is going on ? Like children, our step-mother 
 nature holds us up to see the raree-show of the universe, and then, 
 as if we were a burden to her to support, lets us fall down again. 
 Yet what brave sublunary things does not this pageant present, 
 like a ball or fete of the universe ! 
 
 To see the golden sun, the azure sky, the outstretched ocean ; 
 to walk upon the green earth, and to be lord of a thousand crea- 
 tures ; to look down yawning precipices or over distant sunny 
 vales ; to see the world spread out under one's feet on a map ; 
 to bring the stars near ; to view the smallest insects through a 
 microscope ; to read history, and consider the revolutions of em- 
 pire and the successions of generations ; to hear of the glory of 
 Tyre, of Sidon, of Babylon, and of Susa, and to say all these were 
 before me and are now nothing ; to say I exist in such a point of 
 time, and in such a point of space ; to be a spectator and a part 
 of its every moving scene ; to witness the change of season, of 
 spring and autumn, of winter and summer ; to feel hot and cold, 
 pleasure and pain, beauty and deformity, right and wrong ; to be 
 sensible to the accidents of nature ; to consider the mighty world 
 ol eve and ear ; to listen to the stock-dove's notes amid the forest 
 18
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 deep ; to journey over moor and mountain : to hear the mid- 
 night sainted choir ; to visit lighted halls, or the cathedral's 
 gloom, or sit in crowded theatres and see life itself mocked ; to 
 study the works of art, and refine the sense of beauty to agony ; 
 to worship fame, and to dream of immortality j to look upon the 
 Vatican, and to read Shakspeare ; to gather up the wisdom of 
 the ancients, and to pry into the future ; to listen to the trump 
 of war, the shout of victory ; to question history as to the move- 
 ments of the human heart ; to seek for truth ; to plead the cause 
 of humanity ; to overlook the world as if time and nature poured 
 their treasures at our feet, to be and to do all this, and then in 
 a moment to be nothing to have it all snatched from us as by a 
 juggler's trick, or a phantasmagoria ! There is something in this 
 transition from all to nothing that shocks us and damps the en- 
 thusiasm of youth new flushed with hope and pleasure, and we 
 cast the comfortless thought as far from us as we can. In the 
 first enjoyment of the estate of life we discard the fear of debts 
 and duns, and never think of the final payment of our great 
 debt to nature. Art we know is long, life we flatter ourselves 
 should be so too. We see no end of the difficulties and delays 
 we have to encounter : perfection is slow of attainment, and we 
 must have time to accomplish it in. The fame of the great 
 names we look up to is immortal ; and shall not we who contem- 
 plate it imbibe a portion of etherial fire, the divinm particula aura, 
 which nothing can extinguish ? A wrinkle in Rembrandt or in 
 nature takes whole days to resolve itself into its component parts, 
 its softenings and its sharpnesses ; we refine upon our perfections, 
 and unfold the intricacies of nature. What a prospect for the 
 future ! What a task have we not begun ! And shall we be 
 arrested in the middle of it ? We do not count our time thus 
 employed lost, or our pains thrown away ; we do not flag or grow 
 tired, but gain new vigor at our endless task. Shall Time then 
 grudge us to finish what we have begun, and have formed a com- 
 pact with nature to do ? Why not fill up the blank that is left 
 us in this manner ? I have looked for hours at Rembrandt with- 
 out being conscious of the flight of time, but with every new won- 
 der and delight, have thought that not only my own but another 
 existence 1 could pass in the same manner. This rarefied, re
 
 FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH. 
 
 fined existence seemed to have no end, nor stint, nor principle of 
 decay in it. The print would remain long after I who looked on 
 it had become the prey of worms. The thing seems in itself out 
 of all reason : health, strength, appetite are opposed to the idea of 
 death, and we are not ready to credit it till we have found our 
 illusions vanished, and our hopes grown cold. Objects in youth 
 from novelty, &c, are stamped upon the brain with such force 
 and integrity that one thinks nothing can remove or obliterate 
 them. They are riveted there, and appear to us as an element 
 of our nature. It must be a mere violence that destroys them, 
 not a natural decay. In the very strength of this persuasion we 
 seem to enjoy an age by anticipation. We melt down years into 
 a single moment of intense sympathy, and by anticipating the 
 fruits defy the ravages of time. If then a single moment of our 
 lives is worth years, shall we set any limits to its total value and 
 extent ? Again, does it not happen that so secure do we think 
 ourselves of an indefinite period of existence, that at times when 
 left to ourselves, and impatient of novelty, we feel annoyed at 
 what seems to us the slow and creeping progress of time, and 
 argue that if it always moves at this tedious snail's pace it will 
 never come to an end ? How ready are we to sacrifice any 
 space of time which separates us from a favorite object, little 
 thinking that before long we shall find it move too fast ! 
 
 For my own part I started in life with the French Revolution, 
 and I have lived, alas ! to see the. end of it. But I did not 
 foresee this result. My sun rose with the first dawn of liberty, 
 and I did not think how soon both must set. The new impulse 
 to ardor given to men's minds imparted a congenial warmth and 
 glow to mine ; we were strong to run a race together, and I little 
 dreamed that long before mine was set, the sun of liberty would 
 turn to blood, or set once more in the night of despotism. Since 
 then, I confess, I have no longer felt myself young, for with that 
 my hopes fell. 
 
 I have since turned my thoughts to gathering up some of 
 the fragments of my early recollections, and putting them into 
 a form to which I might occasionally revert. The future was 
 barred to my progress, and I turned for consolation and encourage- 
 ment to the past. It is thus that while we find our person*'
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 and substantial identity vanishing from us, we strive to gain 
 a reflected and vicarious one in our thoughts : we do not like 
 to perish wholly, and wish to bequeathe our names, at least, to 
 posterity. As long as we can make our cherished thoughts 
 and nearest interests live in the minds of others, we do not 
 appear to have retired altogether from the stage. We still 
 occupy the breasts of others, and exert an influence and power 
 over them, and it is only our bodies that are reduced to dust 
 and powder. Our favorite speculations still find encouragement, 
 and we make as great a figure in the eye of the world or 
 perhaps a greater than in our life-time. The demands of our 
 self-love are thus satisfied, and these are the most imperious 
 and unremitting. Besides, if by our intellectual superiority 
 we survive ourselves in this world, by our virtues and faith 
 we may attain an interest in another, and a higher state of 
 being, and thus flourish in immortal youth, and may thus be reci- 
 pients at the same time of men and angels. 
 
 " E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, 
 E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires." 
 
 As we grow old, our sense of the value of time becomes vivid. 
 Nothing else indeed seems of any consequence. We can never 
 cease wondering that that which has ever been should cease 
 to be. We find many things remain the same : why then 
 should there be change in us ? This adds a convulsive grasp 
 of whatever is, a sense of fallacious hollowness in all we see. 
 Instead of the full, pulpy feeling of youth tasting existence 
 and every object in it, all is flat and vapid, a whited sepul- 
 chre, fair without but full of ravening and uncleanness within. 
 The world is a witch that puts us off with false shows and 
 appearances. The simplicity of youth, the confiding expecta- 
 tion, the boundless raptures, are gone : we only think of get 
 ting out of it as well as we can, and without any great mis- 
 chance or annoyance. The flush of illusion, even the com- 
 placent retrospect of past joys and hopes, is over : if we can 
 slip out of life without indignity, can escape with little bodily 
 infirmity, and frame our minds to the calm and respectable 
 composure of still-life, before we return to absolute nothingness,
 
 FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH. 7 
 
 it is as much as we can expect. We do not die wholly at 
 our deaths : we have mouldered away gradually long before. 
 Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after at- 
 tachment disappear : we are torn from ourselves while living, 
 year after year sees us no longer the same, and death only con- 
 signs the last fragment of what we were to the grave. That we 
 should wear out by slow stages, and dwindle at last into nothing, 
 is not wonderful, when even in our prime our strongest impres- 
 sions leave little traces but for the moment, and we are the 
 creatures of petty circumstances. How little effect is made ou 
 us in our best days by the books we have read, the scenes we 
 have witnessed, the sensations we have gone through ! Think 
 only of the feelings we experience in reading a fine romance 
 (one of Sir Walter's, for instance) ; what beauty, what sublimity, 
 what interest, what heart-rending emotions ! You would suppose 
 the feelings you then experience would last for ever, or subdue 
 the mind to their own harmony and tone : while we are reading 
 it seems as if nothing could ever after put us out of our way, 
 or trouble us : the first splash of mud that we get on entering 
 he street, the first twopence we are cheated out of, the feeling 
 /anishes clean out of our minds, and we become the prey of petty 
 and annoying circumstance. The mind soars to the lofty : it is 
 at home in the grovelling, the disagreeable, and the little. And 
 yet we wonder that age should be feeble and querulous, that the 
 freshness of youth should fade away. Both worlds would hardly 
 satisfy the extravagance of our desires and our presumption.
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 Or. the Want of Money. 
 
 It is hard to be without money. To get on without it. is like trav- 
 elling in a foreign country without a passport you are stopped, 
 suspected, and made ridiculous at every turn, besides, being sub- 
 jected to the most serious inconveniences. The want of money I 
 here allude to is not altogether that which arises from absolute 
 poverty for where there is a downright absence of the common 
 necessaries of life, this must be remedied by incessant hard labor, 
 and the least we can receive in return is a supply of our daily 
 wants but that uncertain, casual, precarious mode of existence, 
 in which the temptation to spend remains after the means are ex- 
 hausted, the want of money joined with the hope and possibility 
 of getting it, the intermediate state of difficulty and suspense be- 
 tween the last guinea or shilling and the next that we may have 
 the good luck to encounter. This gap. this unwelcome interval, 
 constantly recurring, however shabbily got over, is really full of 
 many anxieties, misgivings, mortifications, meannesses, and de- 
 plorable embarrassments of every description. I may attempt 
 (this Essay is not a fanciful speculation) to enlarge upon a few 
 of them. 
 
 It is hard to go without one's dinner through sheer distress, but 
 harder still to go without one's breakfast. Upon the strength o( 
 that first and aboriginal meal, one may muster courage to face the 
 difficulties before one, and to dare the worst : but to be roused out 
 of one's warm bed, and perhaps a profound oblivion of care, with 
 golden dreams (for poverty does not prevent golden dreams), and 
 told there is nothing for breakfast, is cold comfort, for which one's 
 half-strung nerves are not prepared, and throws a damp upon the 
 prospects of the day. It is a bad beginning. A man without a 
 breakfast is a poor creature, unfit to go in search of one, to meet
 
 ON THE WANT OF MONEY. 
 
 tne frown of the world, or to borrow a shilling of a friend. He 
 may beg at the corner of a street nothing is too mean for the 
 tone of his feelings robbing on the highway is out of the question, 
 as requiring too much courage, and some opinion of a man's self. 
 It is, indeed, as old Fuller, or some worthy of that age, expresses 
 it, " the heaviest stone which melancholy can throw at a man," to 
 learn, the first thing after he rises in the morning, or even to be 
 dunned with it in bed, that there is no loaf, tea, or butter in the 
 house, and that the baker, the grocer, and the butterman have 
 refused to give any farther credit. This is taking one sadly at a 
 disadvantage. It is striking at one's spirit and resolution in their 
 very source, the stomach it is attacking one on the side of hunger 
 and mortification at once ; it is casting one into the very mire of 
 humility and Slough of Despond. The worst is, to know what 
 face to put upon the matter, what excuse to make to the servants, 
 what answer to send to the tradespeople ; whether to laugh it off, 
 or be grave, or angry, or indifferent ; in short, to know how to 
 parry off an evil which you cannot help. What a luxury, what 
 a God's-send in such a dilemma, to find a half-crown which had 
 slipped through a hole in the lining of your waistcoat, a crumpled 
 banknote in your breeches-pocket, or a guinea clinking in the 
 bottom of your trunk, which had been thoughtlessly left there out 
 of a former heap ! Vain hope ! Unfounded illusion ! The ex- 
 perienced in such matters know better, and laugh in their sleeves 
 at so improbable a suggestion. Not a corner, not a cranny, not a 
 pocket, hot a drawer, has been left unrummaged, or has no" been 
 subjected over and over again to more .than the strictness of a 
 custom-house scrutiny. Not the slightest rustle of a piece of bank- 
 paper, not the gentlest pressure of a piece of hard metal, but 
 would have given notice of its hiding-place with electrical rapidity, 
 long before, in such circumstances. All the variety of pecuniary 
 resources, which form a legal tender in the current coin of the 
 realm, are assuredly drained, exhausted to the last farthing before 
 this time. But is there nothing in the house that one can turn to 
 account ? Is there not an old family-watch, or piece of plate, or a 
 ring, or some worthless trinket, that one could part with ? nothing 
 belonging to one's self, or a friend, that one could raise the wind 
 upon, till something better turns up ? At this moment an old- 
 
 18
 
 10 TABLE TALK. 
 
 clothes man passes, and his deep, harsh tones sound like a pre- 
 meditated insult on one's distress, and banish the thought of ap- 
 plying for his assistance, as one's eye glances furtively at an old 
 hat or a great-coat, hung up behind a closet-door. Humiliating 
 contemplations ! Miserable uncertainty ! One hesitates, and the 
 opportunity is gone by ; for without one's breakfast, one has not 
 the resolution to do anything ! The late Mr. Sheridan was often 
 reduced to this unpleasant predicament. Possibly he had little 
 appetite for breakfast himself; but the servants complained bit- 
 terly on this head, and said that Mrs. Sheridan was sometimes 
 kept waiting for a couple of hours, while they had to hunt through 
 the neighborhood, and beat up for coffee, eggs, and French rolls. 
 The same perplexity in this instance appears to have extended to 
 the providing for the dinner ; for so sharp-set were they, that to 
 cut short a debate with a butcher's apprentice about leaving a leg 
 of mutton without the money, the cook clapped it into the pot : the 
 butcher's boy, probably used to such encounters, with equal cool- 
 ness took it out again, and marched off with it in his tray in 
 triumph. It required a man to be the author of " The School for 
 Scandal," to run the gauntlet of such disagreeable occurrences 
 every hour of the day.* 
 
 * Taylor, of the Opera House, used to say of Sheridan, that he could not 
 pull off his hat to him in the street without its costing him fifty pounds ; and 
 if he stopped to speak with him, it was a hundred. No one could be a 
 stronger instance than he was of what is called living from hand to mouth. 
 He was always in want of money, though he received vast sums which he 
 must have disbursed ; and yet nobody can tell what became of them, for he 
 paid nobody. He spent his wife's fortune (sixteen hundred pounds) in a 
 six weeks' jaunt to Bath, and returned to town as poor as a rat. Whenever 
 he and his son were invited out into the country, they always went in two 
 post-chaises and four ; he in one, and his son Tom following in another. 
 This is the secret of those who live in a round of extravagance, and are at 
 the same time always in debt and difficulty they throw away all the ready 
 money they get upon any new-fangled whim or project that comes in their 
 way, and never think of paying off old scores, which of course accumulate 
 to a dreadful amount. " Such gain the cap of him who makes them fine, 
 yet keeps his book uncrossed." Sheridan once wanted to take Mrs. Sheri- 
 dan a very handsome dress down into the country, and went to Barber and 
 Nunn's to order it, saying he must have it by such a day, but promising they 
 should have ready money. Mrs. Barber (I think it was) made answer that
 
 ON THE WANT OF MONEY. 11 
 
 The going without a dinner is another of the miseries of wanting 
 money, though one can bear up against his calamity better than 
 
 the time was short, but that ready money was a charming thing, and that he 
 should have it. Accordingly, at the time appointed, she brought the dress, 
 which came to five-and-twenty pounds, and it was sent in to Mr. Sheridan, 
 who sent out a Mr. Grimm (one of his jackalls) to say that he admired it 
 exceedingly, and that he was sure Mrs. Sheridan would be delighted with 
 it, but he was sorry to have nothing under a hundred pound banknote in the 
 house. She said she had come provided for such an accident ; and could 
 give change for a hundred, two hundred, or five hundred pound note, if it 
 were necessary. Grimm then went back to his principal for further in- 
 structions ; who made an excuse that he had no stamped receipt by him. For 
 this, Mrs. B. said she was also provided ; she had brought one in her pocket. 
 At each message, she could hear them laughing heartily in the next room, 
 at the idea of hiving met with their match for once ; and presently after, 
 Sheridan came out in high good humor, and paid her the amount of her bill 
 in ten, five, and one pound notes. Once when a creditor brought him a bill 
 for payment which had often been presented before, and the man complained 
 of its soiled and tattered state, and said he was quite ashamed to see it, 
 " I'll tell you what I'd advise you to do with it, my friend," said Sheridan; 
 " take it home, and write it upon parchment!" He once mounted a horse 
 which a horse-dealer was showing off near a coffee-house at the bottom 
 of St. James's street, rode it to Tattersall's, and sold it, and walked quietly 
 back to the spot from which he set out. The owner was furious, swore ho 
 would be the death of him ; and, in a quarter of an hour afterwards, they 
 were seen sitting together over a bottle of wine in the coffee-house, the 
 horse-jockey with the tears running down his face at Sheridan's jokes-, and 
 almost ready to hug him as an honest fellow. Sheridan's house and lobby 
 were beset with duns every morning, who were told that Mr. Sheridan was 
 not yet up, and shown into the several rooms on each side of the entrance. 
 As soon as he had breakfasted, he asked, " Are those doors all shut, John ?" 
 and, being assured they were, marched out very deliberately between them, 
 to the astonishment of his self-invited guests, who soon found the bird was 
 flown. I have heard one of his old city friends declare, that such was the effect 
 of his frank, cordial manner, and insinuating eloquence, that he was always 
 afraid to go to ask him for a debt of long standing, lest he should borrow 
 twice as much. A play had been put off one night, or a favorite actor did 
 not appear, and the audience demanded to have their money back again : 
 but when they came to the door they were told by the check-takers there 
 wa3 none for them, for that Mr. Sheridan had been in the meantime, and 
 had carried off all the money in the till. He used often to get the old cob- 
 bler who kept a stall under the ruins of Drury Lane to broil a beef-steak for 
 him, and take their dinner together. On the night that Drury Lane was 
 burnt down, Sheridan was in the House of Commons, making a speech, 
 though he could hardly stand without leaning his hands on the table, and it 
 
 18*
 
 12 TABLE TALK. 
 
 the former, which really " blights the tender blossom and promise 
 of the day." With one good meal, one may hold a parley with 
 hunger, and moralize upon temperance. One has time to turn 
 one's self, and look about one to " screw one's courage to the 
 sticking-place," to graduate the scale of disappointment, and stave 
 off appetite tili supper-time. You gain time, and time in this 
 weather-cock world is everything. You may dine at two, or at 
 six, or seven as most convenient. You may in the meanwhile 
 receive an invitation to dinner, or some one (not knowing how 
 you are circumstanced) may send you a present of a haunch of 
 venison, or a brace of pheasants, from the country, or a distant 
 relation may die and leave you a legacy, or a patron may call 
 and overwhelm you with his smiles and bounty, 
 
 " As kind as kings upon their coronation day ;" 
 
 was with some difficulty he was forced away, urging the plea, " What sig- 
 nified the concerns of a private individual, compared to the good of the 
 state ?" When he got to Covent Garden, he went into the Piazza Coffee- 
 House, to steady himself with another bottle, and then strolled out to the 
 end of the Piazza to look at the progress of the fire. Here he was accosted 
 by Charles Kemble and Fawcett, who complimented him on the calmness 
 with which he seemed to regard so great a loss. He declined this praise, 
 and said " Gentlemen, there are but three things in human life that in my 
 opinion ought to disturb a wise man's patience The first of these is bodily 
 pain, and that (whatever the ancient stoics may have said to the contrary) 
 is too much for any man to bear without flinching: this I have felt severely, 
 and I know it to be the case. The second is the loss of a friend whom you 
 have dearly loved ; that, gentlemen, is a great evil : this I have also felt, 
 and I know it to be too much for any man's fortitude. And the third is the 
 consciousness of having done an unjust action. That, gentlemen, is a great 
 evil, a very great evil, too much for any man to endure the refaction of ; 
 but that " (laying his hand upon his heart), " but that, thank God, I have 
 never felt ! " I have been told that these were nearly the very words, except 
 that he appealed to the mens conscia recti very emphatically three or four 
 limes over, by an excellent authority, Mr. Matthews the player, who was 
 on the spot at the time, a gentleman whom the public admire deservedly, 
 but with whose real talents and nice discrimination of character his fiiends 
 only are acquainted. Sheridan's reply to the watchman who had picked 
 him up in the street, and who wanted to know wio he was, " I am M-. 
 Wilberforce !" is well known, and shows that, however frequently ) 
 might be at a loss for money, he never wanted wit !
 
 ON THE WANT OF MONEY. 13 
 
 or there is no saying what may happen. One may wait for 
 dinner breakfast admits of no delay, of no interval interposed 
 between that and our first waking thoughts.* Besides, there are 
 shifts and devices, shabby and mortifying enough, but still avail- 
 able in case of need. How many expedients are there in this 
 great city, time out of mind and times without number, resorted 
 to by the dilapidated and thrifty speculator, to get through this 
 grand difficulty without utter failure ! One may dive into a cellar, 
 and dine on boiled beef and carrots for temperance, with the knives 
 and forks chained to the table, and jostled by greasy elbows that 
 seem to make such precaution not unnecessary (hunger is proof 
 against indignity ! ) or one may contrive to part with a super- 
 fluous article of wearing apparel, and carry home a mutton-chop and 
 cook it in a garret ; or one may drop in at a friend's at the dinner- 
 hour, and be asked to stay or not ; or one may walk out and take a 
 turn in the Park, about the time, and return home to tea, so as at least 
 to avoid the sting of the evil the appearance of not having dined. 
 You then have the laugh on your side, having deceived the gossips, 
 and can submit to the want of a sumptuous repast without mur- 
 muring, having saved your pride, and made a virtue of necessity. 
 I say all this may be done by a man without family (for what 
 business has a man without money with one ? See English Mal- 
 thus and Scotch Macculloch) and it is only my intention here to 
 bring forward such instances of the want of money as are tole- 
 rable both in theory and practice. I once lived on coffee (as an 
 experiment) for a fortnight together, while I was finishing the copy 
 of a half-length portrait of a Manchester manufacturer, who died 
 worth a plum. I rather slurred over the coat, which was a red- 
 dish brown, "of formal cut," to receive my five guineas, with 
 which I went to market myself, and dined on sausages and 
 mashed potatoes, and while they were getting ready, and I could 
 hear them hissing in the pan, read a volume of " Gil Bias," con- 
 taining the account of the fair Aurora. This was in the days of 
 my youth. Gentle reader, do not smile ! Neither Monsieur de 
 Very, nor Louis XVIII., over an oyster-pat^, nor Apicius himself, 
 ever understood the meaning of the word luxury, better than I dia 
 
 * In Scotland, it seems, the draught of ale or whiskey, with which ) >u 
 commence the day, is emphatically called " taking your morning."
 
 14 TABLE TALK. 
 
 at that moment ! If the want of money has its drawbacks and 
 disadvantages, it is not without its contrasts and counterbalancing 
 effects, for which I fear nothing else can make us amends. Ame- 
 lia's hashed mutton is immortal ; and there is something amus- 
 ing, though carried to excess and caricature (which is very 
 unusual with the author) in the contrivance of old Caleb, in " The 
 Bride of Lammermuir," for raising the wind at breakfast, dinner, 
 and supper-time. I recollect a ludicrous instance of a disappoint- 
 ment in a dinner which happened to a person of my acquaintance 
 some years ago. He was not only poor, but a very poor creature, 
 as will be imagined. His wife had laid by fourpence (their whole 
 remaining stock) to pay for the baking of a shoulder of mutton 
 and potatoes, which they had in the house, and on her return home 
 from some errand, she found he had expended it. in purchasing a 
 new string for a guitar. On this occasion, a witty friend quoted 
 the lines from Milton : 
 
 " And ever against eating cares, 
 Wrap me in soft Lydian airs ! " 
 
 Defoe, in his " Life of Colonel Jack," gives a striking picture of 
 his young beggarly hero sitting with his companion for the first 
 time in his life at a three-penny ordinary, and the delight with 
 which he relished the hot smoking soup, and the airs with which 
 he called about him " and every time," he says, " we called 
 for bread or beer, or whatever it might be, the waiter answered, 
 'coming, gentlemen, coming ;' and this delighted me more than 
 all the rest." It was about this time, as the same pithy author 
 expresses it, " the Colonel took upon him to wear a shirt !" No- 
 thing can be finer than the whole of the feeling conveyed in the 
 commencement of this novel, about wealth and finery from the 
 immediate contrast of privation and poverty. One would think it 
 a labor, like the Tower of Babel, to build up a beau and a fine 
 gentleman about town. The little vagabond's admiration of the 
 old man at the banking house, who sits surrounded by heaps of 
 gold, as if it were a dream or poetic vision, and his own eager, 
 anxious visits day by day, to the hoard he had deposited in the 
 hollow tree, are in the very foremost style of truth and nature. 
 See the same intense feeling expressed in Luke's address to his
 
 ON THE WANT OF MONEY. 15 
 
 riches, in the " City Madam," and in the extraordinary raptures 
 of the " Spanish Rogue," in contemplating and hugging his ingots 
 of pure gold and Spanish pieces of eight : to which Mr. Lamb 
 has referred in excuse for the rhapsodies of some of our elder 
 poets on this subject, which, to our present more refined and tamer 
 apprehensions, sound like blasphemy.* In earlier times, before 
 the diffusion of luxury, of knowledge, and other sources of enjoy- 
 ment had become common, and acted as a diversion to the crav- 
 ings of avarice, the passionate admiration, the idolatry, the hun- 
 ger and thirst of wealth and all its precious symbols, was a kind 
 of madness or hallucination, and Mammon was truly worshipped 
 as a god ! 
 
 It is among the miseries of the want of money, not to be able 
 to pay your reckoning at an inn or, if you have just enough to 
 do that, to have nothing left for the waiter ; to be stopped at a 
 turnpike gate, and forced to turn back ; not to venture to' call a 
 hackney-coach in a shower of rain (when you have only one 
 shilling left yourself, it is a bore to have it taken out of your pocket 
 by a friend, who comes into your house eating peaches in a hot 
 summer's day, and desiring you to pay for the coach in which he 
 visits you) ; not to be able to purchase a lottery ticket by which 
 you might make your fortune, and get out of all your difficulties ; 
 or to find a letter lying for you at a country post office, and not 
 to have money in your pocket to free it, and to be obliged to return 
 for it the next day. 
 
 The letter so unseasonably withheld may be supposed to con- 
 tain money, and in this case there is a foretaste, a sort of actual 
 possession taken through the thin folds of the paper and the wax, 
 which, in some measure, indemnifies us for the delay : the bank- 
 note, the post-bill seems to smile upon us, and shake hands through 
 its prison bars ; or it may be a love-letter, and then the tantali- 
 sation is at its height : to be deprived in this manner of the only 
 consolation that can make us amends for the want of money, by 
 this very want to fancy you see the name to try to get a peep 
 at the hand-writing to touch the seal, and yet not dare to break 
 it open is provoking indeed the climax of amorous and gen- 
 
 * Shylock's lamentation over the loss of " his daughter and his ducats,' 
 fa another case in point.
 
 16 TABLE TALK. 
 
 tleinanly distress. Players are sometimes reduced to great extr 
 mity, by the seizure of their scenes and dresses, or (what is called) 
 the -property of. the theatre, which hinders them from acting : as 
 authors are prevented from finishing a work, for want of money 
 to buy the books necessary to be consulted on some material point 
 or circumstance, in the progress of it. 
 
 There is a set of poor devils, who live upon a printed prospectus 
 of a work that never will be written, for which they solicit your 
 name and half-a-crown. Decayed actresses take an annual bene- 
 fit at one of the theatres; there are patriots who live upon periodi- 
 cal subscriptions, and critics who go about the country lecturing 
 on poetry. I confess I envy none of these ; but there are persons 
 who, provided they can live, care not how they live who are 
 fond of display, even when it implies exposure ; who court noto- 
 riety under every shape, and embrace the public with demonstra- 
 tions of wantonness. There are genteel beggars, who send up 
 a well-penned epistle requesting the loan of a shilling. Your 
 snug bachelors and retired old maids pretend they can distinguish 
 the knock of one of these at their door. I scarce know which I 
 dislike the most the patronage that affects to bring premature 
 genius into notice, or that extends its piece-meal, formal chai ity 
 towards it in its decline. I hate your Literary Funds and Funds 
 for decayed Artists they are corporations for the encouragement 
 of meanness, pretence, and insolence. Of all people, I cannot 
 tell how it is, but the players appear to me the best able to do 
 without money. They are a privileged class. If not exempt 
 from the common calls of necessity and business, they are enabled 
 " by their so potent art," to soar above them. As they make ima- 
 ginary ills their own, real ones become imaginary, sit light upon 
 them, and are thrown off with comparatively little trouble. Their 
 life is theatrical its various accidents are the shifting scenes of 
 a play rags and finery, tears and laughter, a mock dinner or a 
 re?l one, a crown of jewels or of straw, are to them nearly the 
 sajne. I am sorry I cannot carry on this reasoning to actors who 
 are past their prime. The gilding of their profession is then worn 
 ofr, and shows the false metal beneath ; vanity and hope (the 
 props of their existence) have had their day ; their former gaiety 
 and carelessness serve as a foil to their present discouragement j
 
 ON THE WANT OF MONEY. 17 
 
 and want and infirmities press upon them at once. " We Know 
 what we are," as Ophelia says, " but we know not what we shall 
 be." A workhouse seems the last resort of poverty and distress 
 a parish-pauper is another name for all that is mean and to be 
 deprecated in human existence. But that name is but an abstrac- 
 tion, an average term " within that lowest deep, a lower deep 
 may open to receive us." I heard, not long ago, of a poor man 
 who had been for many years a respectable tradesman in Lon- 
 don, and who was compelled to take shelter in one of those recep- 
 tacles of age and wretchedness, and who said he could be contented 
 with it he had his regular meals, a nook in the chimney, and a 
 coat to his back but he was forced to lie three in a bed, and one 
 of the three was out of his mind and crazy, and his great delight 
 ^was, when the others fell asleep, to tweak their noses, and flourish 
 his night-cap over their heads, so that they were obliged to lie 
 awake, and hold him down between them. One should be quite 
 mad to bear this. To what a point of human insignificance may 
 not human life dwindle ! To what fine, agonizing threads will it 
 not cling ! Yet this man had been a lover in his youth, in a hum- 
 ble way, and still begins his letters to an old maid (his former 
 flame), who sometimes comforts him by listening to his com- 
 plaints, and treating him to a dish of weak tea, " My dear Miss 
 Nancy !" 
 
 Another of the greatest miseries of a want of money, is the tap 
 of a dun at your door, or the previous silence when you expect 
 it the uneasy sense of shame at the approach of your tormentor ; 
 the wish to meet, and yet to shun the encounter ; the disposition 
 to bully, yet the fear of irritating ; the real and the sham excuses ; 
 the submission to impertinence ; the assurances of a speedy sup- 
 ply ; the disingenuousness you practise on him and on yourself; 
 the degradation in the eyes of others and your own. Oh ! it is 
 wretched to have to confront a just and oft- repeated demand, and 
 to be without the means to satisfy it ; to deceive the confidence 
 that has been placed in you ; to forfeit your credit ; to be placed 
 at the power of another, to be indebted to his lenity ; to stand con- 
 victed of having played the knave or the fool ; and to have no 
 way left to escape contempt but by incurring pity. The suddenly 
 meeting a creditor on turning the corner of a street, whom yoi_ 
 
 SECOND SERIES. PART I. 3
 
 18 TABLE TALK. 
 
 have been trying to avoid for months, and had persuaded you were 
 several hundred miles off, discomposes the features and shatters the 
 nerves for some time. It is also a serious annoyance to be unable tc 
 repay a loan to a friend, who is in want of it nor is it very pleasant 
 to be so hard run, as to be induced to request a repayment. It is 
 difficult to decide the preference between debts of honor and legal 
 demands ; both are bad enough, and almost a fair excuse for 
 driving any one into the hands of money lenders to whom an 
 application, if successful, is accompanied with a sense of being 
 in the vulture's gripe a reflection akin to that of those who for- 
 merly sold themselves to the devil or, if unsuccessful, is rendered 
 doubly galling by the smooth, civil leer of cold contempt with which 
 you are dismissed, as if they had escaped from your clutches 
 not you from theirs. If anything can be added to the mortifica- 
 tion and distress arising from straitened circumstances, it is when 
 vanity comes in to barb the dart of poverty when you had a 
 picture on which you had calculated, rejected from an exhibition, 
 01 a manuscript returned on your hands, or a tragedy damned, at 
 the very instant when your cash and credit are at the lowest ebb. 
 This forlorn and hopeless feeling has reached its acme in the pri- 
 son-scene in Hogarth's " Rake's Progress," where his unfortunate 
 hero has just dropped the Manager's letter from his hands, with 
 the laconic answer written in it : " Your play has been read, and 
 won't do."* To feel poverty is bad ; but to feel it with the addi- 
 tional sense of our incapacity to shake it off, and that we have not 
 merit enough to retrieve our circumstances and, instead of being 
 held up to admiration, are exposed to persecution and insult is the 
 last stage of human infirmity. We have heard it remarked, that 
 the most pathetic story in the world is that of Smollett's fine gen- 
 tleman and lady in gaol, who have been roughly handled by the 
 mob for some paltry attempt at raising the wind, and she exclaims 
 in extenuation of the pitiful figure he cuts, " Ah ! he was a fine 
 fellow once !" 
 
 It is justly remarked by the poet, that poverty has no greater 
 
 * It is provoking enough, and makes one look like a fool, to receive 
 printed notice of a blank in the last lottery, with a postscript hoping for 
 your future favors.
 
 ON THE WANT OF MONEY la 
 
 inconvenience attached to it than that of making men ridiculous. 
 It not only has this disadvantage with respect to ourselves, but it 
 often shows us others in a very contemptible point of view. Peo- 
 ple are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet 
 with in it. When we do not want assistance,* every one is ready 
 to obtrude it on us, as if it were advice. If we do, they shun us 
 instantly. They anticipate the increased demand on their sym- 
 . pathy or bounty, and escape from it as from a falling houue. It 
 is a mistake, however, that we court the society of the rich and 
 prosperous, merely with a view to what we can get from them. 
 We do so, because there is something in external rank and splen- 
 dor that gratifies and imposes on the imagination ; just as we pre- 
 fer the company of those who are in good health and spirits to that 
 of the sickly and hypochondrical, or as we would rather converse 
 with a beautiful woman than with an ugly one. I never knew 
 but one man who would lend his money freely and fearlessly in 
 spite of circumstances (if you were likely to pay him, he grew 
 peevish, and would pick a quarrel with you). I can only account 
 for this from a certain sanguine buoyancy and magnificence of spi- 
 rit, not deterred by distant consequences, or damped by untoward 
 appearances. I have been told by those who shared of the same 
 bounty, that it was not owing to generosity, but ostentation if so, 
 he kept his ostentation a secret from me, for I never received a 
 hint or a look from which I could infer that I was not the len-ier, 
 and he the person obliged. Neither was I expected to keep in 
 the back-ground, or play an under part. On the contrary, I was 
 encouraged to do my best ; my dormant faculties roused, the 
 ease of my circumstances was on condition of the freedom and 
 independence of my mind, my lucky hits were applauded, and 
 I was paid to shine. I am not ashamed of such patronage as 
 this, nor do I regret any circumstance relating to it but its termi- 
 nation. People endure existence even in Paris ; the rows of 
 chairs on the Boulevards are gay with smiles and dress : the sa- 
 loons are brilliant ; at the theatre there is Mademoiselle Mars 
 what is all this to me ? After a certain period, we live only in 
 the past. Give me back one single evening at Boxhill, after a 
 stroll in the deep-empurpled woods, before Bonaparte was yet 
 beaten, " with wine of attic taste," when wit, beauty, friendship
 
 20 TABLE TALK 
 
 presided at the board ! But no ! Neither the time nor friends that 
 are fled, can be recalled ! Poverty is the test of sincerity, the 
 touchstone of civility. Even abroad, they treat you scurvily if 
 your remittances do not arrive regularly, and though you have 
 hitherto lived like a Milord Anglais. The want of money bses 
 us friends not worth the keeping, mistresses who are naturally jilts 
 or coquets ; it cuts us out of society, to which dress and equip- 
 age are the only introduction ; and deprives us of a number of 
 luxuries and advantages of which the only good is, that they can 
 only belong to the possessors of a large fortune. Many people 
 are wretched because they have not money to buy a fine horse, 
 or to hire a fine house, or to keep a carriage, or to purchase a 
 diamond necklace, or to go to a raceball, or to give their servants 
 new liveries. I cannot myself enter into all this. If I can live 
 to think, and think to live, I am satisfied. Some want to possess 
 pictures, others to collect libraries. All I wish is, sometimes, to 
 see the one, and read the other. Gray was mortified because he 
 had. not a hundred pounds to bid for a curious library : and the 
 
 Duchess of has immortalized herself by her liberality on 
 
 that occasion, and by the handsome compliment she addressed to 
 the poet, that "if it afforded him any satisfaction, she had been 
 more than paid, by her pleasure in reading the ' Elegy in a 
 Country Church-yard.' " 
 
 Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without 
 money. To be in want of it, is to pass through life with little 
 credit or pleasure ; it is to live out of the world, or to be despised 
 if you come into it ; it is not to be sent for to court, or asked out 
 to dinner, or noticed in the street ; it is not to have your opinion 
 consulted, or else rejected with contempt, to have your acquire- 
 ments carped at and doubted, your good things disparaged, and at 
 last to lose the wit and the spirit to say them ; it is to be scruti- 
 nized by strangers, and neglected by friends ; it is to be a thrall to 
 circumstances, an exile in one's own country ; to forego leisure, 
 freedom, ease of body and mind, to be dependent on the good-will 
 and caprice of others, or earn a precarious and irksome livelihood 
 by some laborious employment ; it is to be compelled to stand be- 
 hind a counter, or to sit at a desk in some public office, or to marry 
 your landlady, or not the person you wish ; or to go out to the
 
 OIS THE WANT OF MONEY. 21 
 
 East or West-Indies, or to get a situation as judge abroad, and 
 return home with a liver-complaint ; or to be a law stationer, or a 
 scrivener or scavenger, or newspaper reporter ; or to read law 
 and sit in court without a brief; or to be deprived of the use of 
 your fingers by transcribing Creek manuscripts, or to be a seal- 
 engraver and pore yourself blind ; or to go upon the stage, or try 
 some of the Fine Arts ; with all your pains, anxiety, and hopes, 
 most probably to fail, or, if you succeed, after the exertions of 
 years, and undergoing constant distress of mind and fortune, to be 
 assailed on every side with envy, back-biting, and falsehood, or to 
 be a favorite with the public for a while, and then thrown into the 
 back-ground or a gaol, by the fickleness of taste and some new 
 favorite to be full of enthusiasm and extravagance in youth, of 
 chagrin and disappointment in after-life ; to be jostled by the 
 rabble because you do not ride in your coach, or avoided by those 
 who know your worth, and shrink from it as a claim on their res- 
 pect or their purse ; to be a burden to your relations, or unable to 
 do anything for them ; to be ashamed to venture into crowds ; to 
 have cold comfort at home ; to lose by degrees your confidence 
 and any talent you might possess ; to grow crabbed, morose, and 
 querulous, dissatisfied with every one, but most so with yourself; 
 and plagued out of your life, to look about for a plade to die in, 
 and quit the world without any one's asking after your will. The 
 wiseacres- will possibly, however, crowd round your coffin, and 
 raise a monument at a considerable expense, and after a lapse of 
 ime, to commemorate your genius and your misfortunes ! 
 
 The only reason why I am disposed to envy the professions of 
 the church or army is, that men can afford to be poor in them 
 without being subjected to insult. A girl with a handsome fortune 
 in a country town may marry a poor lieutenant without degrading 
 herself. An officer is always a gentleman ; a clergyman some- 
 thing more. Echard's book ' On the Contempt of the Clergy' is 
 unfounded. It is surely sufficient for any set of individuals, 
 raised above actual want, that their characters are not merely 
 respectable, but sacred. Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never 
 despicable, but takes an heroical aspect. What are the begging 
 friars ? Have they not put their base feet upon the necks of 
 princes ? Money as a luxury is valuable only as a passport to
 
 22 TABLE TALK. 
 
 respect. It is one instrument of power. Where there are other 
 admitted and ostensible claims to this, it becomes superfluous, and 
 the neglect of it is even admired and looked up to as a mark of 
 superiority over it. Even a strolling beggar is a popular charac- 
 ter, who makes an open profession of his craft and calling, and 
 who is neither worth a doit, nor in want of one. The Scotch are 
 proverbially poor and proud : we know they can remedy their 
 poverty when they set about it. No one is sorry for them. The 
 French emigrants were formerly peculiarly situated in England. 
 The priests were obnoxious to the common people on account of 
 their religion ; both they and the nobles, for their politics. Their 
 poverty and dirt subjected them to many rebuffs ; but their pri- 
 vations being voluntarily incurred, and also borne with the cha- 
 racteristic patience and good-humor of the nation, screened them 
 from contempt. I little thought, when I used to meet them, walk- 
 ing out in the summer's-evenings, at Somers' Town, in their long 
 great coats, their beards covered with snuff, and their eyes gleam- 
 ing with mingled hope and regret in the rays of the setting sun, 
 and regarded them with pity bordering on respect, as the last 
 filmy vestige of the ancien regime, as shadows of loyalty and 
 superstition still flitting about the earth and shortly to disappear 
 from it for'ever, that they would one day return over the bleeding 
 corpse of their country, and sit like harpies, a polluted triumph, 
 over the tomb of human liberty ! To be a lord, a papist, and 
 poor, is perhaps to some temperaments a consummation devoutly 
 to be wished. There is all the subdued splendor of external rank, 
 the pride of self-opinion, irritated and goaded on by petty priva- 
 tions and vulgar obloquy to a degree of morbid acuteness. Pri- 
 vate and public annoyances must perpetually remind him of what 
 he is, of what his ancestors were (a circumstance which might 
 otherwise be forgotten) ; must narrow the circle of conscious dig- 
 nity more and more, and the sense of personal worth and preten- 
 sion must be exalted by habit and contrast into a refined abstrac- 
 tion lt pure in the last recesses of the mind " unmixed with, or 
 alloyed by " baser matter ! " It was an hypothesis of the late 
 Mr. Thomas Wedgewood, that there is a principle of compensation 
 in the human mind which equalizes all situations, and by which 
 the absence of anything only gives us a more intense and intimate
 
 ON THE WANT OF MONEY. 23 
 
 perception of the reality ; that insult adds to pride, that pain looks 
 forward with ease to delight, that hunger already enjoys the un- 
 savory morsel that is to save it from perishing ; that want is sur- 
 rounded with imaginary riches, like the poor poet in Hogarth, who 
 has a map of the mines of Peru hanging on his garret walls ; in 
 short, that " we can hold a fire in our hand by thinking on the 
 frosty Caucasus " but this hypothesis, though ingenious and to a 
 certain point true, is to be admitted only in a limited and qualified 
 sense, 
 
 There are two classes of people that I have observed who are 
 not so distinct as might be imagined those who cannot keep their 
 own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands 
 from other people's. The first are always in want of money, 
 though they do not know what they do with it. They muddle it 
 away, without method or object, and without having anything to 
 show for it. They have not, for instance, a fine house, but they 
 hire two houses at a time ; they have not a hot-house in their 
 garden, but a shrubbery within doors ; they do not gamble, but 
 they purchase a library, and dispose of it when they move house. A 
 princely benefactor provides them with lodgings, where, for a time, 
 you are sure to find them at home : and they furnish them in a 
 handsome style for those who are to come after them. With all 
 this sieve-like economy, they can only afford a leg of mutton and 
 a single bottle of wine, and are glad to get a lift in a common stage ; 
 whereas, wrth a little management, and the same disbursements, 
 they might entertain a round of company and drive a smart 
 tilbury. But they set no value upon money, and throw it away 
 on any object or in any manner that first presents itself, merely to 
 have it off their hands, so that you wonder what has become of it. 
 The second class above spoken of not only make away with what 
 belongs to themselves, but you cannot keep anything you have 
 from their rapacious grasp. If you refuse to lend them what you 
 want, they insist that you must : if you let them have anything to 
 take charge of for a time (a print or a bust) they swear that you 
 have given it them, and that they have too great a regard for the 
 donor ever to part with it. You express surprise at their having 
 run so largely in debt ; but where is the singularity while others 
 continue to lend ? And how is this to be helped, when the manner
 
 24 TABLE TALK. 
 
 of these sturdy beggars amounts to dragooning you out of youi 
 money, and they will not go away without your purse, any more 
 than if they came with a pistol in their hand ? If a person has 
 no delicacy, he has you in his power, for you necessarily feel some 
 towards him ; and since he will take no denial, you must comply 
 with his peremptory demands, or send for a constable, which out 
 of respect for his character you will not do. These persons are 
 also poor light come, light go and the bubbles burst at last. Yet 
 if they had employed the same time and pains in any laudable 
 art or study that they have in raising a surreptitious livelihood, 
 they would have been respectable, if not rich. It is their facility 
 in borrowing money that has ruined them. No one will set heartily 
 to work, who has the face to enter a strange house, ask the master 
 of it for a considerable loan, on some plausible and pompous pre- 
 text, and walk off with it in his pocket. You might as well suspect 
 a highwayman of addicting himself to hard study in the intervals 
 of his profession. 
 
 There is only one other class of persons I can think of, in con- 
 nection with the subject of this Essay those who are always in 
 the want of money from the want of spirit to make use of it. Such 
 persons are perhaps more to be pitied than all the rest. They live 
 in want in the midst of plenty dare not touch what belongs to 
 them, are afraid to say that their soul is their own, have their wealth 
 locked up from them by fear and meanness as effectually as by 
 bolts and bars, scarcely allowing themselves a coat t& their backs 
 or a morsel to eat, are in dread of coming to the parish all their 
 lives, and are not sorry when they die, to think that they shall no 
 longer be an expense to themselves according to the old 
 epigram : 
 
 " Here lies Father Clarges, 
 Who died to save charges/
 
 ON SITTING FOR ONE'S PICTURE. 85 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 On Sitting for One's Picture. 
 
 There is a pleasure in sitting for one's picture, which many- 
 persons are not aware of. People are coy on this subject at first, 
 coquet with it, and pretend not to like it, as is the case w'th other 
 venial indulgences, but they soon get over their scruples, and be- 
 come resigned to their fate. There is a conscious vanity in it ; 
 and vanity is the aurum poiabiie in ail our pleasures, the true 
 elixir of human life. The sitter at first affects an air of indif- 
 ference, throws himself into a slovenly or awkward position, like 
 a clown when he goes a courting for the first time, but gradually 
 recovers himself, attempts an attitude, and calls up his best looks, 
 the moment he receives intimation that there is something about 
 him that will do for a picture. The beggar in the street is proud 
 to have his picture painted, and would almost sit for nothing :'the 
 finest lady in the land is as fond of sitting to a favorite artist as 
 of seating herself before her looking-glass ; and the more so, as 
 the glass in this case is sensible of her charms, and does all it can 
 to fix or heighten them. Kings lay aside their crowns to sit for 
 their portraits, and poets their laurels to sit for their busts ! I am 
 sure, my father had as little vanity, and as little love for the art 
 as most persons : yet when he had sat to me a few times (now 
 some twenty years ago), he grew evidently uneasy when it was a 
 fine day, that is, when the sun shone into the room, so that we 
 could not paint ; and when it became cloudy, began to bustle 
 about, and ask me if I was not getting ready. Poor old room ! 
 Does the sun stdl shine into thee, or does Hope fling its colors 
 round thy walls, gaudier than the rainbow ? No, never, while 
 thy oak-panels endure, will they inclose such fine movements of 
 the brain as passed through mine, when the fresh hues of nature 
 gleamed from the canvas, and my heart silently breathed the 
 names of Rembrandt and Correggio ! Between my father's lov
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 of sittirg and mine of painting, we hit upon a tolerable likeness 
 at last ; but the picture is cracked and gone ; and Megilp (that 
 nane of the English school) has destroyed as fine an old Noncon- 
 formist head as one could hope to see in these degenerate times. 
 
 The fact is, that the having one's picture painted is like the 
 creation of another self; and that is an idea, of the repetition or 
 reduplication of which no man is ever tired, to the thousandth 
 reflection. It has been said that lovers are never tired of each 
 other's company, because they are always talking of themselves. 
 This seems to be a bond of connexion (a delicate one it is !) be- 
 tween the painter and the sitter they are always thinking and 
 talking of the same thing, the picture, in which their self-love 
 finds an equal counterpart. There Is always something to be 
 done or altered, that touches that sensitive cord this feature was 
 not exactly hit off, something is wanting to the nose or to the eye- 
 brows, it may perhaps be as well to leave out this mark or that 
 blemish, if it were possible to recal an expression that was re- 
 marked a short time before, it would be an indescribable advan- 
 tage to the picture a squint or a pimple on the face handsomely 
 avoided may be a link of attachment ever after. He is no mean 
 friend who conceals from ourselves, or only gently indicates, our 
 obvious defects to the world. The sitter, by his repeated, minute, 
 Jidgetty, inquiries about himself may be supposed to take an indi- 
 rect and laudable method of arriving at self-knowledge ; and the 
 artist, in self-defence, is obliged to cultivate a scrupulous tender- 
 ness towards the feelings of his sitter, lest he should appear in the 
 character of a spy upon him. I do not conceive there is a stronger 
 call upon secret gratitude than the having made a favorable like- 
 ness of any one ; nor a surer ground of jealousy and dislike than 
 the having failed in the attempt. A satire or a lampoon in writ- 
 ing is bad enough ; but here we look doubly foolish, for we are 
 ourselves parties to the plot, and have been at considerable pains 
 to give evidence against ourselves. I have never had a plaster 
 cast taken of myself: in truth, I rather shrink from the experi- 
 ment ; for I know I should be very much mortified if it did not 
 turn out well, and should never forgive the unfortunate artist 
 who had lent his assistance to prove that I looked like a block- 
 head !
 
 ON SIT TING FOR ONE'S PICTURE. 27 
 
 The late Mr. Opie used to remark that the most sensible people 
 made the best sitters ; and I incline to his opinion, especially as I 
 myself am an excellent sitter. Indeed, it seems to me a piece of 
 mere impertinence not to sit as still as one can in these cir- 
 cumstances. I put the best face I can upon the matter, as well 
 out of respect to the artist as to myself. I appear on my trial in 
 the court of physiognomy, and am as anxious to make good a 
 certain idea I have of myself, as if I were playing a part on a 
 stage. I have no notion how people go to sleep, who are sitting 
 for their pictures. It is an evident sign of want of thought and 
 of internal resources. There are some individuals, all whose 
 ideas are in their hands and feet make them sit still, and you 
 put a stop to the machine altogether. The volatile spirit of 
 quicksilver in them turns to a caput mortuum. Children are par- 
 ticularly sensible of this constraint from their thoughtlessness and 
 liveliness. It is the next thing with them to wearing the fool's- 
 cap at school : yet they are proud of having their pictures taken, 
 ask when they are to sit again, and are mightily pleased when 
 they are done. Charles the First's children seem to have been 
 good sitters, and the great dog sits like a Lord Chancellor. 
 
 The second time a person sits, and the view of the features is 
 determined, the head seems fastened in an imaginary vice, and he 
 can hardly tell what to make of his situation. He is continually 
 overstepping the bounds of duty, and is tied down to certain lines 
 and limits chalked out upon the canvas, to him " invisible or 
 dimly seen " on the throne where he is exalted. The painter has 
 now a difficult task to manage to throw in his gentle admoni- 
 tions, " A little more this way, sir," or " You bend rather too 
 forward, madam," and ought to have a delicate white hand, that 
 he may venture to adjust a straggling lock of hair, or by giving a 
 slight turn to the head, co-operate in the practical attainment of a 
 position. These are the ticklish and tiresome places of the work, 
 before much progress is made, where the sitter grows peevish and 
 abstracted, and the painter more anxious and particular than he 
 was the day before. Now is the time to fling in a few adroit com- 
 pliments, or to introduce general topics of conversation. The 
 artist ought to be a well-informed and agreeable man able to ex- 
 patiate on his art, and abounding in lively and characteristic ane<;- 
 
 19
 
 28 TABLE TALK 
 
 dotes. Yet he ought not to talk too much, or to grow too animated ; 
 or the picture is apt to staud still, and the sitter to be aware of it. 
 Accordingly, the best talkers in the profession have not always 
 been the most successful portrait-painters. For this purpose it is 
 desirable to bring a friend, who may relieve guard, or fill up the 
 pauses of conversation, occasioned by the necessary attention of 
 the painter to his business, and by the involuntary reveries of the 
 sitter on what his own likeness will bring forth ; or a book, a news- 
 paper, or a portfolio of prints may serve to amuse the time. When 
 the sitter's face begins to flag, the artist may theti properly start 
 a fresh topic of discourse, and while his attention is fixed on the 
 graces called out by the varying interest of the subject, and the 
 model anticipates, pleased and smiling, their being transferred 
 every moment to the canvas, nothing is wanting to improve and 
 cany to its height the amicable understanding and mutual satis- 
 faction and good-will subsisting between these two persons, so 
 happily occupied with each other ! 
 
 Sir Joshua must have had a fine time of it with his sitters. 
 Lords, ladies, generals, authors, opera-singers, musicians, the 
 learned and the polite, besieged his doors, and found an unfailing 
 w elcome. What a rustling of silk ! What a fluttering of floun- 
 ces and brocades ! What a cloud of powder and perfumes ! 
 What a flow of periwigs ! What an exchange of civilities and of 
 titles ! What a recognition of old friendships, and an introduc- 
 tion of new acquaintance and sitters ! It must, I think, be al- 
 lowed that this is the only mode in which genius can form a 
 legitimate union with wealth and fashion. There is a secret and 
 sufficient tie in interest and vanity. Abstract topics of wit or 
 learning do not furnish a connecting link : but the painter, the 
 sculptor, come in close contact with the persons of the Great. 
 The lady of quality, the courtier, and the artist, meet and shake 
 hands on this common ground ; the latter exercises a sort of natu- 
 ral jurisdiction and dictatorial power over the pretensions of the 
 first to external beauty and accomplishment, which produces a 
 mild sense and lone _of equality ; and the opulent sitter pays the 
 taker of flattering likenesses handsomely for his trouble, which 
 does not lessen the sympathy between them. There is even a 
 satisfaction in paying down a high price for a picture it seems
 
 ON SITTING FOR ONE'S PICTURE. 29 
 
 as if one's head was worth something ! During the first sitting, 
 Sir Joshua did little hut chat with the new candidate for the fame 
 of portraiture, try an attitude, or remark an expression. His ob- 
 ject was to gain time, by not being in haste to commit himself, 
 until he was master of the subject before him. No one ever 
 dropped in but the friends and acquaintance of the sitter it was 
 a rule with Sir Joshua that from the moment the latter entered, 
 he was at home the room belonged to him but what secret 
 whisperings would there be among these, what confidential, inau- 
 dible communications ! It must be a refreshing moment, when 
 the cake and wine had been handed round, and the artist began 
 again. He, as it were, by this act of hospitality assumed a new 
 character, and acquired a double claim to confidence and respect. 
 In the mean time, the sitter would perhaps glance his eye round 
 the room, and see a Titian or a Vandyke hanging in one corner, 
 with a transient feeling of scepticism whether he should make 
 such a picture. How the ladies of quality and fashion must bless 
 themselves from being made to look like Dr. Johnson or Gold- 
 smith ! How proud the first of these would be, how happy the 
 last, to fill the same arm-chair where the Bunburys and the 
 Hornecks had sat ! How superior the painter would feel to them 
 all ! By "happy alchemy of mind," he brought out all their 
 good qualities and reconciled their defects, gave an air of studi- 
 ous ease to his learned friends, or lighted up the face of folly and 
 fashion with intelligence and graceful smiles. Those portraits, 
 however, that were most admired at the time, do not retain their 
 pre-eminence now : the thought remains upon the brow, while 
 the color has faded from the cheek, or the dress grown obsolete ; 
 and after all, Sir Joshua's best pictures are those of his worst 
 sitters to Children. They suited best with his unfinished style ; 
 and are like the infancy of the art itself, happy, bold, and care- 
 less. Sir Joshua formed the ch'cle of his private friends from the 
 elite of his sitters ; and Vandyke was, it appears, on the same 
 footing with his. When any of those noble or distinguished per- 
 sons whom he has immortalised with his pencil, were sitting to 
 him. he used to ask them to dinner, and afterwards it was their 
 custom to return to the picture again, so that it is said that many 
 of his finest portraits were done in this manner, ere the colors
 
 30 TABLE TALK. 
 
 were yet dry, in the course of a single day. Oh ! ephemeral 
 works to last for ever ! 
 
 Vandyke married a daughter of Earl Cowper, ot whom there 
 is a very beautiful picture. She was the CEnone, and he his own 
 
 Paris. A painter of the name of Astley married a Lady , 
 
 who sat to him tor her picture. He was a wretched hand, but a 
 fine person of a man, and a great coxcomb ; and on his strutting 
 up and down before the portrait when it was done with a pro- 
 digious air of satisfaction, she observed, " If he was so pleased 
 with the copy, he might have the original." This Astley was a 
 person of magnificent habits and a sumptuous taste in living ; 
 and is the same of whom the anecdote is recorded, that when 
 some English students walking out near Rome were compelled 
 by the heat to strip off their coats, Astley displayed a waistcoat 
 with a huge waterfall streaming down the back of it, which was 
 a piece of one of his own canvases that he had converted to this 
 purpose. Sir Joshua fell in love with one of his fair sitters, a 
 young and beautiful girl, who ran out one day in a great panic 
 and confusion, hid her face in her companion's lap who was read- 
 ing in an outer room, and said, " Sir Joshua had made her an 
 offer !" This circumstance perhaps deserves mentioning the 
 more, because there is a general idea that Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 was a confirmed old bachelor. Goldsmith conceived a fruitless 
 attachment to the same person, and addressed some passionate 
 letters to her. Alas ! it is the fate of genius to admire and to 
 celebrate beauty, not to enjoy it ! It is a fate, perhaps not with- 
 out its compensations 
 
 " Had Petrarch gained his Laura for a wife, 
 Would he have written Sonnets all his life ?" 
 
 This distinguished beauty is still living, and handsomer than Sir 
 Joshua's picture of her when a girl ; and inveighs against the free- 
 dom of Lord Byron's pen with all the charming prudery of the 
 last age.* 
 
 * Sir Joshua may be thought to have studied the composition of his fe- 
 male portraits very coolly. There is a picture of his remaining of a Mrs. 
 Symmons.who appears to have been a delicate beauty, pale, with a very little 
 color in her cheeks : but then to set off this want of complexion, she is
 
 ON SITTING FOR ONE'S PICTURE. 31 
 
 The relation between the portrait-painter and his amiable sit. 
 ters is one of established custom : but it is also one of metaphysi- 
 cal nicety, and is a running double entendre. The fixing an inqui- 
 sitive gaze on beauty, the heightening a momentary grace, the 
 dwelling on the heaven of an eye, the losing one's-self in the dim- 
 ple of a chin, is a dangerous employment. The painter may 
 chance to slide into the lover the lover can hardly turn painter. 
 The eye indeed grows critical, the hand is busy : but are the 
 senses unmoved ? We are employed to transfer living charms 
 to an inanimate surface ; but they may sink into the heart by the 
 way, and the nerveless hand be unable to carry its luscious bur- 
 then any further. St. Preux wonders at the rash mortal who 
 had dared to trace the features of his Julia ; and accuses him of 
 insensibility without reason. Perhaps he too had an enthusiasm 
 and pleasures of his own ! Mr. Burke, in his Sublime and Beau- 
 tiful, has left a description of what he terms the most beautiful 
 object in nature, the neck of a lovely and innocent female, which 
 is written very much as if he had himself formerly painted this 
 object, and sacrificed at this formidable shrine. There is no 
 doubt that the perception of beauty becomes more exquisite ("till 
 the sense aches at it ") by being studied and refined upon as an 
 object of art it is at the same time fortunately neutralised by 
 this means, or the painter would run mad. It is converted into 
 an abstraction, an ideal thing, into something intermediate between 
 nature and art, hovering between a living substance and a sense- 
 less shadow. The health and spirit that but now breathed from 
 a speaking face, the next moment breathe with almost equal effect 
 from a dull piece of canvas, and thus distract attention : the eye 
 sparkles, the lips are moist there too ; and if we can fancy the 
 picture alive, the face in its turn fades into a picture, a mere ob- 
 ject of sight. We take rapturous possession with one sense, the 
 eye ; but the artist's pencil acts as a non-conductor to the grosser 
 desires. Besides, the sense of duty, of propriety interferes. It 
 is not the question at issue : we have other work on our hands, 
 and enough to do. Love is the product of ease and idleness : but 
 
 painted in a snow-white satin dress, there is a white marble pillar near her, 
 n white cloud over her head, and by her side stands one white lily.
 
 32 TABLE TALK. 
 
 the painter has an anxious, feverish, never-ending task, to rival 
 the beauty, to which he dare not aspire even in thought, or in a 
 dream of bliss. Paints and brushes are not " amorous toys of 
 light-winged Cupid ;" a rising sigh evaporates in the aroma of 
 some fine oil-color or varnish, a kindling blush is transfixed in a 
 bed of vermilion on the palette. A blue vein meandering in a 
 white wrist invites the hand to touch it : but it is better to pro- 
 ceed, and not spoil the picture. The ambiguity becomes more 
 striking in painting from the naked figure. If the wonder occa- 
 sioned by the object is greater, so is the despair of rivalling what 
 we see. The sense of responsibility increases with the hope of 
 creating an artificial splendor to match the real one. The dis- 
 play of unexpected charms foils our vanity, and mortifies passion. 
 The paintmg A Diana and Nymphs is like plunging into a cold 
 bath of desire : to make a statue of a Venus transforms the sculp- 
 tor himself to stone. The snow on the lap of beauty freezes the 
 soul. The heedless, unsuspecting licence of foreign manners 
 gives the artist abroad an advantage over ours at home. Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds painted only the head of Iphigene from a beau- 
 tiful woman of quality : Canova had innocent girls to sit to him 
 for his Graces. The Princess Borghese, whose symmetry of 
 form was admirable, sat to him for a model, which he considered 
 as his master-piece and the perfection of the female form ; and 
 when asked if she did not feel uncomfortable while it was taking, 
 she replied with great indifference, " No : it was not cold !" I 
 have but one other word to add on this part of the subject : if 
 having to paint a delicate and modest female is a temptation to 
 gallantry, on the other hand the sitting to a lady for one's picture 
 is a still more trying situation, and amounts (almost of itself) 
 to a declaration of love ! 
 
 Landscape-painting is free from these tormenting dilemmas and 
 embarrassments. It is as full of the feeling of pastoral sim- 
 plicity and ease, as portrait-painting is of personal vanity and 
 egotism. Away then with those incumbrances to the true 
 liberty of thought the sitter's chair, the bag-wig and sword, 
 the drapery, the lay figure and let us to some retired spot 
 in the country, take out our portfolio, plant our easel, and 
 begin. We are all at once shrouded from observation
 
 ON SITTING FOR ONE'S PICTURE. 33 
 
 '* The world forgetting, by the world forgot '." 
 
 Me enjoy the cool shade with solitude and silence ; or hear 
 the dashing waterfall, 
 
 " Or stock-dove plain amid the forest deep, 
 That drowsy rustles to the sighing gale." 
 
 Il seems almost a shame to do anything, we are so well con- 
 tent without it ; but the eye is restless, and we must have 
 something to show when we get home. We set to work, and 
 failure or success prompts us to go on. We take up the pen- 
 cil, or .ay it down again, as we please. We muse or paint, 
 as objects strike our senses or our reflection. The perfect leis- 
 ure we feel turns labor to a luxury. We try to imitate the 
 grey color of a rock or of the bark of a tree : the breeze wafted 
 from its broad foliage gives us fresh spirits to proceed, we dip 
 our pencil in the sky, or ask the white clouds sailing over its 
 bosom to sit for their pictures. We are in no hurry, and have 
 the day before us. Or else, escaping from the close-embowered 
 scene, we catch fading distances on airy downs, and seize on 
 golden sunsets with the fleecy flocks glittering in the evening ray, 
 after a shower of rain has fallen. Or from Norwood's ridgy 
 height, survey the snake-like Thames, or its smoke-crowned 
 capital ; 
 
 " Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain, 
 Then shield us in the woods again." 
 
 No one thinks of disturbing a landscape-painter at his task : 
 he seems a kind of magician, the privileged genius of the 
 place. Wherever a Claude, a Wilson has introduced his own 
 portrait in the foreground of a picture, we look at it with 
 interest (however ill it may be done) feeling that it is the portrait 
 of one who was quite happy at the time, and how glad we 
 should be to change places with him. 
 
 Mr. Burke has brought in a striking episode in one of his later 
 works in allusion to Sir Joshua's portrait of Lord Keppel, with 
 those of some other friends, painted in their better days. The 
 portrait is indeed a fine one, worthy of the artist and the critic, 
 
 SECOND SERIES- -PART I. 19
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 and perhaps recalls Lord Keppel's memory oftener than any other 
 circumstance at present does.* Portrait-painting is in truth a 
 sort of cement of friendship, and a clue to history. That block- 
 head, Mr. C****r, of the Admiralty, the other day blundered upon 
 some observations of mine relating to this subject, and made the 
 House' stare by asserting that portrait-painting was history or his- 
 tory portrait, as it happened ; but went on to add, " That those 
 gentlemen who had seen the ancient portraits lately exhibited in 
 
 * " No man lives too long, who lives to do with spirit, and suffer with 
 resignation, what Providence pleases to command or inflict : but indeed they 
 are sharp incommodities which beset old age. It was but the other day, 
 that in putting in order some things which had been brought here on my 
 taking leave of London for ever, I looked over a number of fine portraits 
 most of them of persons now dead, but whose society, in my better days, 
 made this a proud and happy place. Amongst these was the picture of 
 Lord Keppel. It was painted by an artist worthy of the subject, the ex- 
 cellent friend of that excellent man from their earliest youth, and a com- 
 mon friend of us both, with whom we lived for many years without a mo- 
 ment of coldness, of peevishness, of jealousy, or of jar, to the day of our 
 final separation. 
 
 " I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men of 
 his age ; and I loved and cultivated him accordingly. He was much in my 
 heart, and I believe I was in his to the very last beat. It was after his trial 
 at Portsmouth that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious 
 jffection I attended him through that his agony of glory ; what part, my 
 son, in early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue and the pious passion with 
 which he attached himself to all my connexions, with what prodigality we 
 both squandered ourselves in courting almost every sort of enmity for his 
 sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt, such friendship on such 
 an occasion." Letters to' a Noble Lord, p. 29, second edition, printed by 
 T. Williams. 
 
 I have given this passage entire here, because I wish to be informed, if I 
 :ould, what is the construction of the last sentence of it. It has puzzled 
 me all my life. One difficulty might be got over by making a pause after 
 " I believe he felt," and leaving out the comma between " have felt" and 
 "such friendship," That is, the meaning would be, "I believe he felt 
 with what zeal and anxious affection," &c, "just as I should have felt such 
 friendship on such an occasion." But then again, what is to become of the 
 " what part, my son ?" &c. With what does this connect, or to what verb 
 is " my son" the nominative case, or by what verb is " what part" governed ? 
 I should really be glad, if, from any manuscript, printed copy, or marginal 
 correction, this point could be cleared up, and so fine a passage resolved, 
 b/any possible ellipsis, into ordinary grammar.
 
 ON SITTING FOR ONE'S PICTURE. 35 
 
 Pall-mall, must have been satisfied that they were strictly histori- 
 cal j" which showed that he knew nothing at all of the matter, 
 but merely talked by rote. There was nothing historical in the 
 generality of those portraits, except that they were portraits of 
 people mentioned in history there was no more of the spirit of' 
 history in them (which is passion or action) than in their dresses. 
 But this is the way in which that person, by his pettifogging ha- 
 bits and literal understanding, always mistakes a verbal truism 
 for sense, and a misnomer for wit ! I was going to observe, iiiat 
 I think the aiding the recollection of our family and friends in 
 our absence may be a frequent and strong inducement in sitting 
 for our pictures ; but that I believe the love of posthumous fame, 
 or of continuing our memories after we are dead, has very little 
 to do with it. And one reason I should give for that opinion is 
 this, that we are not naturally very prone to dwell with pleasure 
 on anything that may happen in relation to us after we are dead, 
 because we are not fond of thinking of death at all. We shrink 
 equally from the prospect of that fatal event as from any specu- 
 lation on its consequenees. The surviving ourselves in our pictures 
 is but a poor compensation it is rather adding mockery to cala- 
 mity. The perpetuating our names in the wide page of history 
 or to a remote posterity is a vague calculation, that may take 
 out the immediate sting of mortality whereas we ourselves may 
 hope to last (by a fortunate extension of the term of human life) 
 almost as long as an ordinary portrait ; and the wounds of Ite- 
 rated friendship it heals must be still green, and our ashes scarcely 
 cold. I think therefore that the looking forward to this mode of 
 keeping alive the memory of what we were by lifeless hues and 
 discolored features, is not among the most approved consolations 
 of human life, or favorite dalliances of the imagination. Yet I 
 own I should like some part of me, as the hair or even nails, to 
 be preserved entire, or I should have no objection to lie like Whit- 
 field in a state of petrifaction. This smacks of the bodily reality 
 at least acts like a deception to the spectator, and breaks the fall 
 from this " warm, kneaded motion to a clod" from that to no- 
 thing even to the person himself. I suspect that the idea of 
 posthumous fame, which has so unwelcome a condition annexed 
 to it, loses its general relish as we advance in life, and that it u 
 
 19*
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 only while we are young that we pamper our imaginations with 
 this bait, with a sort of impunity. The reversion of immortality 
 is then so distant, that we may talk of it without much fear of 
 entering upon immediate possession : death is itself a fable a 
 sound that dies upon our lips ; and the only certainty seems the 
 only impossibility. Fame, at that romantic period, is the firsl 
 thir.g in our mouths, and death the last in our thoughts.
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS? 37 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 Whether genius is conscious of its power* . 
 
 No really great man ever thought himself so. The idea of 
 greatness in the mind answers but ill to our knowledge or to 
 our ignorance of ourselves. What living prose-writer, for in- 
 stance, would think of comparing himself with Burke ? Yet 
 would it not have been equal presumption or egotism in him to 
 fancy himself equal to those who had gone before him Boling- 
 broke or Johnson or Sir William Temple ? Because his rank in 
 letters is become a settled point with us, we conclude that it must 
 nave been quite as self-evident to him, and that he must have 
 been perfectly conscious of his vast superiority to the rest of the 
 world. Alas ! not so. No man is truly himself, but in the idea 
 which others entertain of him. The mind, as well as the eye, 
 " sees not itself, but by reflection from some other thing." What 
 jrarity can there be between the effect of habitual composition on 
 the mind of the individual, and the surprise occasioned by first 
 reading a fine passage in an admired author ; between what we 
 do with ease, and what we thought it next to impossible ever 
 to be done ; between the reverential awe we have for years 
 encouraged, without seeing reason to alter it, for distinguished 
 genius, and the slow, reluctant, unwelcome conviction that after 
 infinite toil and repeated disappointments, and when it is too late* 
 and to little purpose, we have ourselves at length accomplished 
 what we at first proposed ; between the insignificance of oui 
 petty, peisonal pretensions, and the vastness and splendor which 
 the atmosphere of imagination lends to an illustrious name ? He 
 who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have 
 had a very low standard of it in his mind. " What a pity," said 
 some one, " that Milton h id not the pleasure of reading Paradise 
 Lost !" He could not read it, as we do, with the weight of im-
 
 S8 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ' ression that a hundred years of admiration have added to it 
 " a phoenix gazed by all " with the sense of the number of 
 editions it has passed through with still increasing reputation, 
 with the tone of solidity, time-proof, which it has received from 
 the breath of cold, envious maligners, with the sound which the 
 voice of Fame has lent to every line of it ! The writer of an 
 ephemeral production may be as much dazzled with it as the 
 public ; it may sparkle in his own eyes for a moment, and be 
 soon forgotten by every one else. But no one can anticipate the 
 suffrages of posterity. Every man, in judging of himself, is his 
 own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he 
 cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants 
 distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it. 
 He must be indifferent to his own merits, before he can feel a con- 
 fidence in them. Besides, every one must be sensible of a thou- 
 sand weaknesses and deficiencies in himself; whereas Genius 
 only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength. A great 
 name is an abstraction of some one excellence : but whoever fan- 
 cies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, 
 may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excel- 
 lence or defect, of himself or others. Mr. Burke, besides being 
 the author of the Reflections, and the Letter to a Noble Lord, had 
 a wife and son ; and had to think as much about them as we do 
 about him. The imagination gains nothing by the minute details 
 of personal knowledge. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be said that no man knows so well 
 as the author of any performance what it has cost him, and the 
 length of time and study devoted to it. This is one, among other 
 reasons, why no man can pronounce an opinion upon himself. 
 The happiness of the result bears no proportion to the difficulties 
 overcome or the pains taken. Materiam superdbat opus, is an 
 old and fatal complaint. The definition of genius is that it acts 
 unconsciously ; and those who have produced immortal works, 
 nave done so without knowing how or why. The greatest power 
 operates unseen, and executes its appointed task with as little os- 
 tentation as difficulty. Whatever is done best, is done from the 
 natural bent and disposition of the mind. It is only where our 
 incapacity begins, that we begin to feel the obstacles, and to sot
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS? 19 
 
 an undue value on our triumph over them. Correggio, Michael 
 Angelo, Rembrandt, did what they did without premeditation or 
 effort their works came from their minds as a natural birth if 
 you had asked them why they adopted this or that style, they 
 would have answered, because they could not help it, and because 
 they knew of no other. So Shakspeare says : 
 
 " Our poesy is as a gum which issues 
 From whence 'tis nourished. The fire i' th' flint 
 Shows not till it be struck ; our gentle flame 
 Provokes itself; and, like the current, flies 
 Each bound it chafes." 
 
 Shakspeare himself was an example of his own rule, and appears 
 to have owed almost everything to chance, scarce anything to in- 
 dustry or design. His poetry flashes from him, like the lightning 
 from the summer-cloud, or the stroke from the sun-flower. When 
 we look at the admirable comic designs of Hogarth, they seem, 
 from the unfinished state in which they are left, and from the 
 freedom of the pencilling, to have cost him little trouble ; where- 
 as the Sigismunda is a very labored and comparatively feeble 
 performance, and he accordingly set great store by it. He also 
 thought highly of his portraits, and boasted that " he could paint 
 equal to Vandyke, give him his time and let him choose his sub- 
 ject." This was the very reason why he could not. Vandyke's 
 excellence consisted in this, that he could paint a fine portrait of 
 any one at sight : let him take ever so much pains or choose ever 
 so bad a subject, he could not help making something of it. His 
 eye, his mind, his hand was cast in the mould of grace and deli- 
 cacy. Milton again is understood to have preferred Paradise 
 Regained- to his other works. This, if so, was either because he 
 himself was conscious of having failed in it ; or because other* 
 thought he had. We are willing to think well of that which we 
 know wants our favorable opinion, and to prop the ricketty bant- 
 ling. Every step taken, invito, Minerva, costs us something, and 
 is set down to account ; whereas we are borne on the full tide of 
 genius and success into the very haven of our desires, almost im- 
 perceptibly. The strength of the impulse by which we are car- 
 ried along prevents the sense of difficulty or resistance : the true
 
 10 TABLE TALK. 
 
 inspiration of the Muse is soft and balmy as the air we breathe ; 
 and indeed, leaves us little to boast of, for the effect hardly seems 
 to be our own. 
 
 There are two persons who always appear to me to have worked 
 under this involuntary, silent impulse more than any others ; 
 I mean Rembrandt and Correggio. It is not known thai Correg- 
 gio ever saw a picture of any great master. He lived and died 
 obscurely in an obscure village. We have few of his works, 
 but they are all perfect. What truth, what grace, what angelic 
 sweetness are there ! Not one line or tone that is not divinely 
 soft or exquisitely fair ; the painter's mind rejecting, by a na- 
 tural process, all that is discordant, coarse, or unpleasing. The 
 whole is an emanation of pure thought. The work grew under 
 his hand as if of itself, and came out without a flaw, like the 
 diamond from the rock. He knew not what he did ; and looked 
 at each modest grace as it stole from the canvas with anxious de- 
 light and wonder. Ah ! gracious God ! not he alone ; how many 
 more in all time have looked at their works with the same feelings, 
 not knowing but they too may have done something divine, im- 
 mortal, and finding in that sole doubt ample amends for pining 
 solitude, for want, neglect, and an untimely fate. Oh ! for one 
 hour of that uneasy rapture, when the mind first thinks it has 
 struck out something that may last for ever ; when the germ of 
 excellence bursts from nothing on the startled sight ! Take, take 
 away the gaudy triumphs of the world, the long deathless shout 
 of fame, and give back that heart-felt sigh with which the youth- 
 ful enthusiast first weds immortality as his secret bride ! And 
 hou too, Rembrandt ! who wert a man of genius, if ever painter 
 was a man of genius, did this dream hang over you as you 
 painted that strange picture of Jacob's Ladder? Did your eye 
 strain over those gradual dusky clouds into futurity, or did those 
 white-vested, beaked figures babble to you of fame as they ap- 
 proached ? Did you know what you were about, or did you not 
 paint much as it happened ? Oh ! if you had thought once about 
 yourself, or anything but the subject, it would have been all over 
 with " the glory, the intuition, the amenity," the dream had fled, 
 the spell had been broken. The hills would not have looked like 
 those we see in sleep that tatterdemalion figure of Jacob, thrown
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS? 41 
 
 on one side, would not have slept as if the breath was fairly taken 
 out of his body. So much do Rembrandt's pictures savor of the 
 soul and body of reality, that the thoughts seem identical with 
 the objects-*-if there had been the least question what he should 
 have done, or how he should do it, or how far he had succeeded, 
 it would have spoiled everything. Lumps of light hung upon 
 his pencil and fell upon his canvas like dew-drops : the shadowy 
 veil was drawn over his backgrounds by the dull, obtuse finger 
 of night, making darkness visible by still greater darkness that 
 could only be felt ! . 
 
 Cervantes is another instance of a man of genius, whose work 
 may be said to have sprung from his mind, like Minerva from the 
 head of J upiter. Don Quixote and Sancho were a kind of twins ; 
 and the jests of the latter, as he says, fell from him like drops of 
 rain when he least thought of it. Shakspeare's creations were 
 more multiform, but equally natural and unstudied. Raphael 
 and Milton seem partial exceptions to this rule. Their produc- 
 tions were of the composite order ; and those of the latter some- 
 times even amount to centos. Accordingly, we find Milton quoted 
 among those authors, who have left proofs of their entertaining a 
 high opinion of themselves, and of cherishing a strong aspiration 
 after fame. Some of Shakspeare's Sonnets have been also cited 
 to the same purpose ; but they seem rather to convey wayward 
 and dissatisfied complaints of his untoward fortune than anything 
 like a triumphant and confident reliance on his future renown. 
 He appears to have stood more alone and to have thought less 
 about himself than any living being. One reason for this differ- 
 ence may have been, that as a writer he was tolerably successful 
 in his life-time, and no doubt produced his works with very great 
 facility. 
 
 I hardly know whether to class Claude Lorraine as among 
 those who succeeded most " through happiness or pains." Tt is 
 certain that he imitated no one, and has had no successful imita- 
 tor. The perfection of his landscapes seems to nave been owing 
 to an inherent quality of harmony, to an exquisite sense of delicacy 
 in his mind. His monotony has been complained of, which is 
 apparently produced from a preconceived idea in his mind ; and 
 not long ago I heard a person, not more distinguishea for the sub-
 
 42 TABLE TALK. 
 
 tilty than the naivete of his sarcasms, remark, " Oh ! I never look 
 at Claude : if one has seen one of his pictures, one has seen them 
 all ; they are every one alike : there is the same sky, the same 
 climate, the same time of day, the same tree, and th&t tree is like 
 a cabbage. To be sure, they say he did pretty well ; but when 
 a man is always doing one thing, he ought to do it pretty well." 
 There is no occasion to write the name under this criticism, and 
 the best answer to it is that it is true his pictures are always 
 the same, but we never wish them to be otherwise. Perfection is 
 one thing. I confess I think that Claude knew this, and felt that 
 his were the finest landscapes in the world that ever had been, 
 or would ever be. 
 
 I am not in the humor to pursue this argument any farther at 
 present, but to write a digression. If the reader is not already 
 apprised of it, he will please to take notice that I write this at 
 Winterslow. My style there is apt to be redundant and excursive. 
 At other times it may be cramped, dry, abrupt ; but here it flows 
 like a river, and overspreads its banks. 1 have not to seek for 
 thoughts or hunt for images : they come of themselves, 1 inhale 
 them with the breeze, and the silent groves are vocal with a thous- 
 and recollections 
 
 " And visions, as poetic eyes avow, 
 Hang on each leaf, and cling to every bough." 
 
 Here I came fifteen years ago, a willing exile ; and as I trod the 
 lengthened greensward by the low wood-side, repeated the old 
 line, 
 
 " My mind to me a kingdom is !" 
 
 [ found it so then, before, and since ; and shall I faint, now that 
 1 have poured out the spirit of that mind to the world, and treated 
 many subjects with truth, with freedom, and power, because I 
 have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being 
 a government-tool ? Here I returned a few years after to finish 
 some works I had undertaken, doubtful of the event, but deter 
 mined to do my best ; and wrote that character of Millimant, 
 which was once transcribed by fingers fairer than Aurora's, but
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS ? 43 
 
 no notice was taken of it, because I was not a government-tool, 
 and must be supposed devoid of taste and elegance by all who 
 aspired to these qualities in their own persons. Here I sketched 
 my account of that old honest Signior Orlando Friscobaldo, which 
 with its fine, racy, acrid tone that old crab-apple, G*fF***d, would 
 have relished or pretended to relish, had I been a government- 
 tool ! Here too I have written Table-Talks without number, and 
 as yet without a falling off, till now that they are nearly done, or 
 I should not make this boast. I could swear (were they not mine) 
 the thoughts in many of them are founded as the rock, free as air, 
 the tone like an Italian picture. What then ? Had the style 
 been like polished steel, as firm and as bright, it would have 
 availed me nothing, for I am not a government-tool ! I had en- 
 deavored to guide the taste of the English people to the best old 
 English writers ; but I had said that English Kings did not reign 
 by right divine, and that his present majesty was descended from 
 an elector of Hanover in a right line ; and no loyal subject would 
 after this look into Webster or Deckar because I had pointed 
 them out. I had done something ^more than any one except 
 Schlegel) to vindicate the Characters of Shakspeare's Plays from 
 the stigma of French criticism : but our Anti-Jacobin and Anti- 
 Gallican writers soon found out that I had said and written that 
 Frenchmen, Englishmen, men were not slaves by birth-right. 
 This was enough to damn the work. Such has been the head and 
 front of my offending. While my friend Leigh Hunt was writing 
 the Descent of Liberty, and strewing the march of the Allied 
 Sovereigns with flowers, I sat by the waters of Babylon and hung 
 my harp upon the willows. I knew all along there was but one 
 alternative the cause of kings or of mankind. This I foresaw, 
 this I feared ; the world see it now, when it is too late. There- 
 fore I lamented, and would take no comfort when the Mighty fell, 
 because we, all men, fell with him, like lightning from heaven, to 
 grovel in the grave of Liberty, in the style of Legitimacy ! 
 There is but one question in the hearts of monarchs, whether 
 mankind are their property or not. There was but this one ques- 
 tion in mine. I had made an abstract, metaphysical principle of 
 this question. I was not the dupe of the voice of the charmers. 
 By my hatred of tyrants I knew what their hatred of the free-
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 born spirit of man must be, of the semblance, of the very name 
 of Liberty and Humanity. And while others bowed their heads 
 to the image of the Beast, I spit upon it and buffeted it, and 
 made mouths at it, and pointed at it, and drew aside the veil that 
 then half concealed it, but has been since thrown off, and named 
 it by its right name ; and it is not to be supposed that my having 
 penetrated their mystery would go unrequited by those whose 
 delight the idol, half-brute, half-demon, was, and who are ashamed 
 to acknowledge the image and superscription as their own ! Two 
 half-friends of mine, who would not make a whole one between 
 them, agreed the other day that the indiscriminate, incessant abuse 
 of what I write was mere prejudice and party-spirit, and that what 
 I do in periodicals and without a name does well, pays well, 
 and is " cried out upon in the top of the compass." It is this indeed 
 that has saved my shallow skiff from quite foundering on Tory 
 spite and rancor ; for when people have been reading and approv- 
 ing an article in a miscellaneous journal, it does not do to say 
 when they discover the author afterwards (whatever might have 
 Deen the case before) it is written by a blockhead ; and even Mr. 
 Jerdan recommends the volume of Characteristics as an excel- 
 lent little work, because it has no cabalistic name in the title-page, 
 and swears " there is a first-rate article of forty pages in the last 
 number of the Edinburgh from Jeffrey's own hand," though 
 when he learns against his will that it is mine, he devotes three 
 successive numbers of the Literary Gazette to abuse " that 
 strange article in the last number of the Edinburgh Review." 
 Others who had not this advantage have fallen a sacrifice to the 
 obloquy attached to the suspicion of doubting, or of being ac- 
 quainted with any one who is known to doubt, the divinity of kings. 
 Poor Keats paid the forfeit of this leze majeste with his health and 
 life. What, though his Verses were like the breath of spring, 
 and many of his thoughts like flowers would this, with the circle 
 of critics that beset a throne, lessen the crime of their having been 
 praised in the Examiner ? The lively and most agreeable Editor 
 of that paper has in like manner been driven from his country 
 and his friends who delighted in him, for no other reason than 
 having written the story of Rimini, and asserted ten years ago,
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS i 45 
 
 " that the most accomplished prince in Europe was an Adonis of 
 fifty !" 
 
 " Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past, 
 That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse !" 
 
 I look out of my window and see that a shower has just 
 fallen : the fields look green after it, and a rosy cloud hangs 
 over the brow of the hill ; a lily expands its petals in the moisture, 
 dressed in its lovely green and white ; a shepherd-boy has just 
 brought some pieces of turf with daisies and grass for his young 
 mistress to make a bed for her sky-lark, not doomed to dip his 
 wings in the dappled dawn my cloudy thoughts drawn off, the 
 storm of angry politics has blown over Mr. Blackwood, I am 
 yours Mr. Croker, my service to you Mr. T. Moore, I am 
 alive and well really, it is wonderful how little the worse I am 
 for fifteen years' wear and tear, how I come upon my legs again 
 on the ground of truth and nature, and " look abroad into univer- 
 sality," forgetting that there is any such person as myself in the 
 world ! 
 
 I have let this passage stand (however critical) because it may 
 serve as a practical illustration to show what authors really think 
 of themselves when put upon the defensive (I confess, the sub- 
 ject has nothing to do with the title at the head of the Essay !) 
 and as a warning to those who may reckon upon their fair pro- 
 portion of popularity as the reward of the exercise of an indepen- 
 dent spirit and such talents as they possess. It sometimes seems 
 at first sight as if the low scurrility and jargon of abuse by which 
 it is attempted to overlay all common sense and decency by a 
 tissue of lies and nicknames, everlastingly repeated and applied 
 indiscriminately to all those who are not of the regular govern- 
 ment-party, was peculiar to the present time, and the anomalous 
 growth of modern criticism ; but if we look back, we shall find 
 the same system acted upon, as often as power, prejudice, dul- 
 ness, and spite found their account in playing the game into one 
 another's hands in decrying popular efforts, and in giving cur- 
 rency to every species of base metal that had iheir own conven- 
 tional stamp upon it. The names of Pope and Dryden were as-
 
 46 TABLE TALK. 
 
 sailed with daily and unsparing abuse the epithet A. P. E. was 
 levelled at the sacred head of the former and if even men like 
 these, having to deal with the consciousness of their own infirmi- 
 ties and the insolence and spurns of wanton enmity, must have 
 found it hard to possess their souls in patience, any living writer 
 amidst such contradictory evidence can scarcely expect to retain 
 much calm, steady conviction of his own merits, or build himself 
 a secure reversion in immortality. 
 
 However one may in a fit of spleen and impatience turn round 
 and assert one's claims in the face of low-bred, hireling malice, I 
 will here repeat what I set out with saying, that there never yet 
 was a man of sense and proper spirit, who would not decline 
 rather than court a comparison with any of those names, whose 
 reputation he really emulates who would not be sorry to sup- 
 pose that any of the great heirs of memory had as many foibles 
 as he knows himself to possess and who would not shrink from 
 including himself or being included by others in the same praise, 
 that was offered to long-established and universally acknowledged 
 merit, as a kind of profanation. Those who are ready to fancy 
 themselves Raphaels and Homers are very inferior men indeed 
 they have not even an idea of the mighty names that " they take 
 in vain." They are as deficient in pride as in modesty, and 
 have not so much as served an apprenticeship to a true and 
 honorable ambition. They mistake a momentary popularity for 
 lasting renown, and a sanguine temperament for the inspira- 
 tions of genius. The love of fame is too high and delicate a 
 feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities it is a solitary 
 abstraction, the secret sigh of the soul 
 
 " It is all one as we should love 
 A bright particular star, and think to wed it." 
 
 A name " fast-anchored in the deep abyss of time " is like a star 
 twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and 
 sublime ; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should 
 contemplate our translation to the skies. If we are not contented 
 with this feeling on the subject, we shall never sit in Cassiopeia's 
 chair, nor will our names, studding Ariadne's crown or stream- 
 ing with Berenice's locks, ever make
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS? 47 
 
 " the face of heaven so bright 
 That birds shall sing, and think it were not night." 
 
 Those who are in love only with noise and show, ^.stead of devot- 
 ing themselves to a life of study, had better hire a booth at Bar. 
 tlemy-Fair, or march at the head of a recruiting regiment with 
 drums beating and colors flying ! 
 
 It has been urged, that however little we may be disposed to 
 indulge the reflection at other times or out of mere self-compla- 
 cency, yet the mind cannot help being conscious of the effort 
 required for any great work while it is about it, of 
 
 " The high endeavor and the glad success." 
 
 I grant that there is a sense of power in such cases, with the ex- 
 ception before stated ; but then this very effort and state of excite- 
 ment engrosses the mind at the time, and leaves it listless and 
 exhausted afterwards. The energy we exert, or the high state 
 of enjoyment we feel, puts us out of conceit with ourselves at 
 other times : compared to what we are in the act of composition, 
 we seem dull, common-place people, generally speaking ; and 
 what we have been able to perform is rather matter of wonder 
 than of self-congratulation to us. The stimulus of writing is like 
 the stimulus of intoxication, with which we can hardly sympa- 
 thize in our sober moments, when we are no longer under the 
 inspiration of the demon, or when the virtue is gone out of us. 
 While we are engaged in any work, we are thinking of the 
 subject, and cannot stop to admire ourselves ; and when it is 
 done, we look at it with comparative indifference. I will venture 
 to say, that no one but a pedant ever read his own works regu- 
 larly through. They are not his they are become mere words, 
 waste-paper, and have none of the glow, the creative enthusiasm, 
 the vehemence, and natural spirit with which he wrote them. 
 When we have once committed our thoughts to paper, written 
 them fairly out, and seen that they are right in the printing, if 
 we are in our right wits, we have done with them for ever. I 
 sometimes try to read an article I have written in some maga- 
 zine or review (for when they are bound up in a volume, I 
 dread the very sight of them) but stop afte/ a sentence or two
 
 U TABLE TALK. 
 
 and never recur to the task. I know pretty well what I have to 
 Bay on the subject, and do not want to go to school to myself. It 
 is the worst instance of the bis repetita crambe in the world. I do 
 not think that even painters have much delight in looking at their 
 works after they are done. While they are in progress, there is 
 a great degree of satisfaction in considering what has been done, 
 or what is still to do but this is hope, is reverie, and ceases with 
 the completion of our efforts. I should not imagine Raphael or 
 Correggio would have much pleasure in looking at their former 
 works, though they might recollect the pleasure they had had in 
 painting them ; they might spy defects in them (for the idea of 
 unattainable perfection still keeps pace with our actual approaches 
 to it), and fancy that they were not worthy of immortality. The 
 greatest portrait-painter the world ever saw used to write under 
 his s pictures, " Titianus faciebat" signifying that they were im- 
 perfect ; and in his letter to Charles V. accompanying one of his 
 most admired works, he only spoke of the time he had been about 
 it. Annibal Caracci boasted that he could do like Titian and 
 Correggio, and, like most boasters, was wrong. (See his spirited 
 Letter to his cousin Ludovico, on seeing the pictures at Parma.) 
 
 The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading, while we are 
 young. I have had as much of this pleasure as perhaps any one. 
 As I grow older, it fades ; or else, the stronger stimulus of writing 
 takes off the edge of it. At present, I have neither time nor 
 inclination for it : yet I should like to devote a year's entire leis- 
 ure to a course of the English Novelists ; and perhaps clap on that 
 old sly knave, Sir Walter, to the end of the list. It is astonishing 
 how I used formerly to relish the style of certain authors, at a 
 time when I myself despaired of ever writing a single line. Pro- 
 bably this was the reason. It is in mental as in natural as- 
 cent intellectual objects seem higher when we survey them from 
 below, than when we look down from any given elevation above 
 the common level. My three favorite writers about the time I 
 speak of were Burke, Junius, and Rousseau. I was never weary 
 of admiring and wondering at the felicities of the style, the turns 
 of expression, the refinements of thought and sentiment : I laia 
 the book down to find out the secret of so much strength and 
 beauty, and took it up again in despair, to read on and admir*
 
 WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS ? 49 
 
 So I passed whole days, months, and I may add, years ; and have 
 only this to say now, that as my life began, so I could wish that 
 it may end. The last time I tasted this luxury in its full perfec- 
 tion was one day after a sultry day's walk in summer between 
 Farnham and Alton. I was fairly tired out ; I walked into an 
 inn-yard (I think at the latter place) ; I was shown by the waiter 
 to what looked at first like common out-houses at the other end 
 of it, but they turned out to be a suite of rooms, probably a hun- 
 dred years old the one I entered opened into an old-fashioned 
 garden, embellished with beds of larkspur and a leaden Mercury ; 
 it was wainscoted, and there was a grave-looking, dark-colored 
 portrait of Charles II. hanging up over the tiled chimney-piece. 
 I had " Love for Love " in my pocket, and began to read ; coffee 
 was brought in, in a silver coffee-pot ; the cream, the bread and 
 butter, everything was excellent, and the flavor of Congreve's 
 style prevailed over all. I prolonged the entertainment til a late 
 hour, and relished this divine comedy better even than when I 
 used to see it played by Miss Mellon, as Miss Prue ; Bob Palmer, 
 as Tattle ; and Bannister, as honest Ben. This circumstance 
 happened just five years ago, and it seems like^yesterday. If I 
 count my life so by lustres, it will soon glide away ; yet I shall 
 not have to repine, if, while it lasts, it is enriched with a few suet 
 recollections ! 
 
 JBCOND SERIES PART I. 5
 
 50 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 On Londoners and Country People. 
 
 [ do not agree with Mr. Blackwood in his definition of the word 
 Cockney. He means by it a person who has happened at any 
 time to live in London, and who is not a Tory I mean by it a 
 person who has never lived out of London, and who has got all 
 his ideas from it. 
 
 The true Cockney has never travelled beyond the purlieus of 
 the Metropolis, either in the body or the spirit. Primrose-hill is 
 the Ultima Thule of his most romantic desires ; Greenwich Park 
 stands "him in stead of the Vales of Arcady. Time and space are 
 lost to him. He is confined to one spot, and to the present mo- 
 ment. He sees everything near, superficial, little, in hasty suc- 
 cession. The world turns round, and his head with it, like a 
 roundabout at a fair, till he becomes stunned and giddy with the 
 motion. Figures glide by, as in a camera obscura. There is a 
 glare, a perpetual hubbub, a noise, a crowd about him ; he sees 
 and hears a vast number of things, and knows nothing. He is 
 pert, raw, ignorant, conceited, ridiculous, shallow, contemptible. 
 His senses keep him alive ; and he knows, inquires, and cares for 
 aothing farther. He meets the Lord Mayor's coach, and without 
 ceremony treats himself to an imaginary ride in it. He notices 
 .he people going to court or to a city-feast, and is quite satisfied 
 with the show. He takes the wall of a Lord, and fancies himself 
 as good as he. He sees an infinite quantity of people pass along 
 the street, aud thinks there is no such thing as life or a knowledge 
 of character to be found out of London. " Beyond Hyde Park 
 all is a desert to him." He despises the country, because lie is 
 ignorant of it, and the town, because he is familiar with it. He 
 is as well acquainted with St. Paul's as if he had built it, and talks 
 of Westminster Abbey and Poets' Corner with great indifference.
 
 ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE. 51 
 
 The King, the House of Lords and Commons are his very good 
 friends. He knows the members for Westminster or the City by 
 sight, and bows to the Sheriffs or the Sheriffs' men. He is hand 
 and glove with the Chairman of some Committee. He is, in short. 
 a great man by proxy, and comes so often in contact with fine 
 persons and things, that he rubs off a little of the gilding, and is 
 surcharged with a sort of second-hand, vapid, tingling, trouble, 
 some self-importance. His personal vanity is thus continually 
 flattered and perked up into ridiculous self-complacency, while his 
 imagination is jaded and impaired by daily misuse. Everything 
 is vulgarised in his mind. Nothing dwells long enough on it to 
 produce an interest ; nothing is contemplated sufficiently at a 
 distance to excite curiosity or wonder. Your true Co:kney is your 
 only true leveller. Let him be as low as he will, he fancies he is 
 as good as anybody else. He has no respect for himself, and 
 still less (if possible) for you. He cares little about his own ad- 
 vantages, if he can only make a jest at yours. Every feeling 
 comes to him through a medium of levity and impertinence ; nor 
 does he like to have this habit of mind disturbed by being brought 
 into collision with anything serious or respectable. He despairs 
 (in such a crowd of competitors) of distinguishing himself, bu 
 laughs heartily at the idea of being able to trip up the heels of 
 other people's pretensions. A Cockney feels no gratitude. This 
 is a first principle with him. He regards any obligation you confer 
 upon him as a species of imposition, a ludicrous assumption of 
 fancied superiority. He talks about everything, for he has heard 
 something about it ; and understanding nothing of the matter, 
 concludes he has as good a right as you. He is a politician ; for 
 he has seen the Parliament House : he is a critic ; because he 
 knows the principal actors by sight has a taste for music, be- 
 cause he belongs to a glee-club at the West End, and is gallant, 
 in virtue of sometimes frequenting the lobbies at half-price. A 
 mere Londoner, in fact, from the opportunities he has of knowing 
 something of a number of objects (and those striking ones) fancies 
 himself a sort of privileged person ; remains satisfied with the 
 assumption of merits, so much the more unquestionable as they 
 are not his own ; and from being dazzled with noise, show, an'.l 
 appearances, is. less capable of giving a real opinion, or emenng 
 
 20
 
 52 TABLE TALK 
 
 into any subject than the meanest peasant. There are greater 
 lawyers, orators, painters, philosophers, poets, players in London, 
 than in any other part of the United Kingdom : he is a Londoner, 
 and therefore it would be strange if he did not know more of law, 
 eloquence, art, philosophy, poetry, acting, than any one without 
 his local advantages, and who is merely from the country. This 
 is a non sequilur ; and it constantly appeals so when put to the 
 test. 
 
 A real Cockney is the poorest creature in the world, the most 
 literal, the most mechanical, and yet he too lives in a world of 
 romance a fairy-land of his own. He is a citizen of London ; 
 and this abstraction leads his imagination the finest dance in the 
 world. London is the first city in the habitable globe ; and 
 therefore he must be superior to every one who lives out of it. 
 There are more people in London than anywhere else ; and 
 though a dwarf in stature, his person swells out and expands into 
 ideal importance and borrowed magnitude. He resides in a garret 
 or in a two pair of stairs' back room ; yet he talks of the mag- 
 nificence of London, and gives himself airs of consequence upon 
 it, as if all the houses in Portman or in Grosvenor Square were 
 his by right or in reversion. " He is owner of all he surveys." 
 The Monument, the Tower of London, St. James's Palace, the 
 Mansion House, White-Hall, are part and parcel of his being. 
 Let us suppose him to be a lawyer's clerk at half-a-guinea a 
 week : but he knows the Inns of Court, the Temple Gardens, 
 and Gray's-Inn Passage sees the lawyers in their wigs walking 
 up and down Chancery Lane, and has advanced within half-a- 
 dozen yards of the Chancellor's chair : who can doubt that he 
 understands (by implication) every point of the law (however 
 intricate) better than the most expert country practitioner ? He is 
 a shopman, and nailed all day behind the counter : but he sees 
 hundreds and thousands of gay, well-dressed people pass an 
 endless phantasmagoria and enjoys their liberty and gaudy 
 fluttering pride. He is a footman but he rides behind beauty, 
 through a crowd of carriages, and visits a thousand shops. Is he 
 a tailor that last infirmity of human nature ? The stigma on 
 his profession is last in the elegance of the patterns he provides, 
 and of the persons he adorns ; and he is something very different
 
 ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE. 53 
 
 from a mere country botcher. Nay, the very scavenger and 
 nightman thinks the dirt in the street has something precious in it, 
 and his employment is solemn, silent, sacred, peculiar to London : 
 A barker in Monmouth Street, a slop-seller in Radcliffe Highway, 
 a tapster at a night-cellar, a beggar in St. Giles' , a drab in Fleet- 
 Ditch, live in the eye of millions, and eke out a dreary, wretched, 
 scanty, or loathsome existence from the gorgeous, busy, glowing 
 scene around them. It is a common saying, among such persons, 
 that " they had rather be hanged in London, than die a natural 
 death out of it anywhere else " Such is the force of habit and 
 imagination. Even the eye of childhood is dazzled and delighted 
 with the polished splendor of the jewellers' shops, the neatness of 
 the turnery ware, the festoons of artificial flowers, the confec- 
 tionery, the chemists' shops, the lamps, the horses, the carriages, 
 the sedan-chairs : to this was formerly added a set of traditional 
 associations Whittington and his Cat, Guy Faux and the Gun- 
 powder Treason, the Fire and the Plague of London, and the 
 Heads of the Scotch Rebels that were stuck on Temple Bar in 
 1745. These have vanished, and in their stead the curious and 
 romantic eye must be content to pore in Pennant for the site of 
 old London-Wall, or to peruse the sentimental mile-stone that 
 marks the distance to the place " where Hickes's Hall formerly 
 stood ! " 
 
 The Cockney lives in a go-cart of local prejudices and positive 
 illusions ; and when he is turned out of it, he hardly knows how 
 to stand or move. He ventures through Hyde Park Corner, as a 
 cat crosses a gutter. The trees pass by the coach very oddly. 
 The country has a strange blank appearance. It is not lined 
 with houses all the way, like London. He comes to places he 
 never saw or heard of. He finds the world is bigger than he 
 thought for. He might have dropped from the moon, for anything 
 he knows of the matter. He is mightily disposed to laugh, but is 
 half afraid of making some blunder. Between sheepishness and 
 conceit, he is in a very ludicrous situation. He finds that the 
 people walk on two legs, and wonders to hear them talk a dialect 
 so different from his own. He perceives London fashions have 
 got down into the country before him, and that some of the better 
 sort are aressed as well as he is. A drove o e pigs or cattle
 
 84 TABLE TALK 
 
 stopping the road is a very troublesome interruption. A crow in 
 a field, a magpie in a hedge, are to him very odd animals he 
 can't tell what to make of them, or how they live. He does not 
 altogether like the accommodations at the inns it is not what he 
 has been used to in town. He begins to be communicative says 
 he was " born within the sound of Bow-bell," and attempts some 
 jokes, at which nobody laughs. He asks the coachman a ques 
 tion, to which he receives no answer. All this is to him very 
 unaccountable and unexpected. He arrives at his journey's end ; 
 and instead of being the great man he anticipated among his 
 friends and country relations, finds that they are barely civil to 
 him, or make a butt of him ; have topics of their own which he 
 is as completely ignorant of as they are indifferent to what he 
 says, so that he is glad to get back to London again, where he 
 meets with his favorite indulgences and associates, and fancies 
 the whole world is occupied with what he hears and sees. 
 
 A Cockney loves a tea-garden in summer, as he loves the play 
 or the Cider-Cellar in winter where he sweetens the air with 
 the fumes of tobacco, and makes it echo to the sound of his owg 
 voice. This kind of suburban retreat is a most agreeable relief 
 to the close and confined air of a city life. The imagination, 
 long pent up behind a counter or between brick walls, with 
 noisome smells, and dingy objects, cannot bear at once to launch 
 into the boundless expanse of the country, but " shorter excur- 
 sions tries," coveting something between the two, and finding it at 
 White-Conduit House, or the Rosemary Branch, or Bagnigge 
 Wells. The landlady is seen at a bow-window in near perspec- 
 tive, with punch-bowls and lemons disposed orderly around the 
 lime-trees or poplars wave overhead to " catch the breezy air," 
 through which, typical of the huge dense cloud that hangs over 
 the metropolis, curls up the thin, blue, odoriferous vapor of Vir- 
 ginia or Oronooko the benches are ranged in rows, the fields and 
 hedge-rows spread out their verdure ; Hampstead and Highgate 
 are seen in the back-ground, and contain the imagination within 
 gentle limits here the holiday people are playing ball ; here 
 they are playing bowls here they are quaffing ale, there sipping 
 tea here the loud wager is heard, there the political debate. Ip 
 a sequestered nook a slender youth with purple face and droop
 
 ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE. 55 
 
 ing head, nodding over a glass of gin toddy, breathes in tender 
 accents " There's naught so sweet on earth as Love's young 
 dream ;' : while " Rosy Ann " takes its turn, and " Scots wha hae 
 wi' Wallace bled " is thundered forth in accents that might wake 
 the dead. In another pait sit carpers and critics, who dispute the 
 score of the reckoning or the game, or cavil at the taste and exe- 
 cution of the would-be Brahams and Durusets. Of this latter 
 class was Dr. Goodman, a man of other times I mean of those 
 of Smollet and Defoe who was curious in opinion, obstinate in 
 the wrong, great in little things, and inveterate in petty warfare. 
 I vow he held me an argument once " an hour by St. Dunstan's 
 clock," while I held an umbrella over his head (the friendly pro- 
 tection of which he was unwilling to quit to walk in the rain to 
 Camberwell) to prove to me that Richard Pinch was neither a 
 fives-player nor a pleasing singer. " Sir," said he, " I deny that 
 Mr. Pinch plays the game. He is a cunning player, but not a 
 good one. I grant his tricks, his little mean dirty ways, but he 
 is not a manly antagonist. He has no hit, and no left-hand. 
 How then can he set up for a superior player ? And then as to 
 his always striking the ball against the side wings at Copenhagen- 
 house, Cavanagh, sir, used to say, ' The wall was made to hit at !' 
 I have no patience with such pitiful shifts and advantages. They 
 are an insult upon so fine and athletic a game ! And as to his 
 setting, up for a singer, it's quite ridiculous. You know, Mr. 
 
 H , that to be a really excellent singer, a man must lay claim 
 
 ,to one of two things ; in the first place, sir, he must have a na- 
 turally fine ear for music, or secondly, an early education, ex- 
 clusively devoted to that study. But no one ever suspected Mr. 
 Pinch of refined sensibility ; and his education, as we all know, has 
 been a little at large. Then again, why should he of all other thing's 
 be always singing ' Rosy Ann,' and ' Scots wha haewi' Wallace 
 bled,' till one is sick of hearing them ? It's preposterous, and I 
 mean to tell him so. You know, I am sure, without my hinting it, 
 that in the first of these admired songs, the sentiment is voluptuous 
 and tender, and in the last patriotic. Now Pinch's romance never 
 wandered from behind his counter, and his patriotism lies in hig 
 breeches' pocket. Sir, the utmost he should aspire to would be to 
 play upon the Jews' harp !" This story of the Jews' harp tickled
 
 58 TABLE TALK. 
 
 some of Pinch's friends, who gave him various hints of it, which 
 nearly drove him mad, till he discovered what it was ; for though 
 no jest or sarcasm ever had the least effect upon him, yet he can- 
 not bear to think that there should be any joke of this kind about 
 him, and he not in the secret : it makes against that knowing cha- 
 racter which he so much affects. Pinch is in one respect a com. 
 plete specimen of a Cockney. He never has anything to say,- and 
 yet is never at a loss for an answer. That is, his pertness keeps 
 exact pace with his dulness. His friend, the Doctor, used to 
 complain of this in good set terms. " You can never make any- 
 thing of Mr. Pinch," he would say. " Apply the most cutting 
 lemark to him, and his only answer is, ? The same to you, sir.' If 
 Shakspeare were to rise from the dead to confute him, I firmly be- 
 lieve it would be to no purpose. I assure you, I have found it so. 
 I once thought indeed I had him at a disadvantage, but I was mis- 
 taken. You shall hear, sir. I had been reading the following 
 sentiment in a modern play ' The Road to Ruin,' by the late 
 Mr. Holcroft ' For how should the soul of Socrates inhabit the 
 body of a stocking-weaver V This was pat to the point (you 
 know our friend is a hosier and haberdasher). I came full with it 
 to keep an appointment I had with Pinch, began a game, quar- 
 relled with him in the middle of it on purpose, went up stairs to 
 dress, and as I was washing my hands in the slop-basin (watch- 
 ing my opportunity) turned coolly round and said, ' It's impossi- 
 ble there should be any sympathy between you and me, Mr. 
 Pinch : for as the poet says, how should the soul of Socrates in- , 
 habit the body of a stocking- weaver V * Ay,' says he, ' does the 
 poet say so ? then the same to you, sir !' I was confounded, I gave 
 up the attempt to conquer him in wit or argument. He would 
 pose the Devil, sir, by his ' The same to you, sit.' " We had 
 another joke against Richard Pinch, to which the Doctor was not 
 a party, which was, that being asked after the respectability of 
 the Hole in the Wall, at the time that Randall took it, he answered 
 quite unconsciously. " Oh ! it's a very genteel place, I go there 
 myself sometimes !" Dr. Goodman was descended by the mo- 
 ther's side from the poet Jago, was a private gentleman in town, 
 and a medical dilettanti in the country, dividing his time equally 
 between busi less and pleasure ; had an inexhaustible flow of
 
 ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE. 57 
 
 words, and an imperturbable vanity, and held " stout notions on 
 the metaphysical score." He maintained the free agency of man, 
 with the spirit of a martyr and the gaiety of a man of wit and 
 pleasure about town told me he had a curious tract on that 
 subject by A. C. (Anthony Collins) which he carefully locked up 
 in his box, lest any one should see it but himself, to the detriment 
 of the character and morals, and put it to me whether it was not 
 hard, on the principles of philosophical necessity, for a man to 
 come to be hanged ? To which I replied, " I thought it hard on 
 any terms !" A knavish marker, who had listened to the dispute, 
 laughed at this retort, and seemed to assent to the truth of it, sup- 
 posing it might one day be his own case. 
 
 Mr. Smith and the Brangtons, in "Evelina," are the finest 
 possible examples of the spirit of Cockneyism. I once knew a 
 linen-draper in the City, who owned to me he did not quite like 
 this part of Miss Burney's novel. He said, " I myself lodge in 
 a first floor, where there are young ladies in the house : they 
 sometimes have company, and if I am out, they ask me to lend 
 them the use of my apartment, which I readily do out of polite- 
 ness, or if it is an agreeable party, I perhaps join them. All this 
 is so like what passes in the novel, that I fancy myself a sort of 
 second Mr. Smith, and am not quite easy at it !" This was men- 
 tioned to the fair Authoress, and she was delighted to find that 
 her characters were so true, that an actual person fancied him- 
 self to be one of them. The resemblance, however, was only in 
 the externals; and the real modesty of the individual stumbled 
 on the likeness to a city coxcomb ! 
 
 It is curious to what degree persons, brought up in certain oc- 
 cupations in a great city, are shut up from a knowledge of the 
 world, and carry their simplicity to a pitch of unheard-of extra- 
 vagance. London is the only place in which the child grows 
 completely up into the man. I have known characters of this 
 kind, which, in the way of childish ignorance and self-pleasing 
 delusion, exceeded anything to be met with in Shakspeare or Ben 
 Jonson, or the old comedy. For instance, the following may be 
 taken as a true sketch. Imagine a person with a florid, shining 
 complexion like a plough-boy, large staring teeth, a merry eye, 
 his hair stuck into the fashion with curling-irons and pomatum, 
 
 20
 
 58 TABLE TALK. 
 
 a slender figure, and a decent suit of black add to which the 
 Jioughtlessness of the school-boy, the forwardness of the thriving 
 tradesman, and the plenary consciousness of the citizen of Lon- 
 don and you have Mr. Dunster before you, the fishmonger in the 
 Poultry. You shall hear how he chirps over his cups, and exults 
 in his private opinions. " I'll play no more with you," I said, 
 " Mr. Dunster you are five points in the game better than I am." 
 I had just lost three half-crown rubbers at cribbage to him, which 
 loss of mine he presently thrust into a canvas pouch (not a silk 
 purse) out of which he had produced just before, first a few half- 
 pence, then half a dozen pieces of silver, then a handful of gui- 
 neas, and lastly, lying perdu at the bottom, a fifty-pound bank- 
 note. " I'll tell you what," I said, " I should like to play you a 
 game at marbles" this was a sort of Christmas party or Twelfth 
 Night merry-making. " Marbles !" said Dunster, catching up 
 the sound, and his eye brightening with childish glee, " What ! 
 you mean ring-taw?" "Yes." "I should beat you at it to 
 a certainty . 1 was one of the best in our school (it was at Clap- 
 ham, sir, the Rev. Mr. Denman's, at Clapham, was the place 
 where I was brought up) though there were two others there better 
 than me. They were the best that ever were. I'll tell you, sir, 
 I'll give you an idea. There was a water-butt or cistern, sir, at 
 our school, that turned with a cock. Now suppose that brass- 
 ring which the window-curtain is fastened to, to be the cock, and 
 that these boys were standing where we are, about twenty feet 
 off well, sir, I'll tell you what I have seen them do. One of 
 them had a favorite taw (or alley we used to call them) ; he'd take 
 aim at the cock of the cistern with this marble, as I may do now. 
 Well, sir, will you believe it ? such was his strength of knuckle 
 and certainty of aim, he'd hit it, turn it, let the water out, and 
 then, sir, when the water had run out as much as it wanted, the 
 other boy (he'd just the same strength of knuckle, and the same 
 certainty of eye) he'd aim at it too, be sure to hit it, turn it round, 
 and stop the water from running out. Yes, what I tell you is 
 very remarkable, but it's true. One of these boys was named 
 Cock, and t' other Butler." " They might have been named 
 Spigot and Fawcett, my dear sir, from your account of them." 
 " I should not mind playing you at fives neither, though I'm ojxt
 
 ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE. 59 
 
 of practice. I think I should beat you in a week : I was a real 
 good one at that. A pretty game, sir ! I had the finest ball that 
 I suppose ever was seen. Made it myself, I'll tell you how, sir. 
 You see, I put a piece of cork at the bottom, then I wound some 
 fine worsted yarn round it, then I had to bind it round with some 
 packthread, and then sew the case on. You'd hardly believe it, 
 but I was the envy of the whole school for that ball. They all 
 wanted to get it from me, but lord, sir, I would let none of them 
 come near it. I kept it in my waistcoat pocket all day, and at 
 night I used to take it to bed with 'me and put it under my pil- 
 low. I could n't sleep easy without it." 
 
 The same idle vein might be found in the country, but I doubt 
 whether it would find a tongue to give it utterance. Cockneyism 
 is a ground of native shallowness mounted with pertness and 
 conceit. Yet with all this simplicity and extravagance in dilating 
 on his favorite topics, Dunster is a man of spirit, of attention to 
 business, knows how to make out and get in his bills, and is far 
 from being hen-pecked. One thing is certain, that such a man 
 must be a true Englishman and a loyal subject. He has a slight 
 tinge, of letters, with shame I confess it has in his possession a 
 volume of the European Magazine for the year 1761, and is an 
 humble admirer of Tristram Shandy (particularly the story of 
 the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, which is something in 
 his own endless manner) and of Gil Bias of Santillane. Over 
 these (the last thing before he goes to bed at night) he smokes a 
 pipe, and meditates for an hour. After all, what is there in these 
 harmless half-lies, these fantastic exaggerations, but a literal, 
 prosaic, Cockney translation of the admired lines in Gray's Od<> 
 to Eton College : 
 
 " What idle progeny succeed 
 To chase the rolling circle's speed 
 Or urge the flying ball ?" 
 
 A man shut up all his life in his shop, without anything to interes 
 him from one year's end to another but the cares and details of 
 business, with scarcely any intercourse with books or opportunities 
 tor society, distracted with the buzz and glare and noise about 
 him, turns for relief to the retrospect of his childish years : ant* 
 20*
 
 60 TABLE TALK. 
 
 there, through the long vista, at one bright loop-hole, leading out 
 of the thorny mazes of the world into the clear morning light, he 
 sees the idle fancies and gay amusements of his boyhood dancing 
 like motes in the sunshine. Shall we blame or shall we laugh at 
 him, if his eye glistens, and his tongue grows wanton in their 
 praise ? 
 
 None but a Scotchman would that pragmatical sort of person- 
 age, who thinks it a folly ever to have been young, and who, in- 
 stead of dallying with the frail past, bends his brows upon the 
 future, and looks only to the main-chance. Forgive me, dear 
 Dunster, if I have drawn a sketch of some of thy venial foibles, 
 and delivered thee into the hands of these Cockneys of the North, 
 who will fall upon thee and devour thee, like so many cannibals, 
 without a grain of salt ! 
 
 If familiarities in cities breed contempt, ignorance in the coun- 
 try breeds aversion and dislike. People come too much in con- 
 tact in town : in other places they live too much apart, to unite 
 cordially and easily. Our feelings, in the former case, are dissi- 
 pated and exhausted by being called into constant and vain acti- 
 vity ; in the latter they rust and grow dead for want of use. If 
 there is an air of levity and indifference in London manners, there 
 is a harshness, a moroseness, and disagreeable restraint in those of 
 the country. We have little disposition to sympathy, when we 
 have few persons to sympathize with : we lose the relish and capa- 
 city for social enjoyment the seldomer we meet. A habit of sul- 
 lenness, coldness, and misanthropy grows upon us. If we look 
 for hospitality and a cheerful welcome in country places, it must 
 be in those where the arrival of a stranger is an event, the recur- 
 rence of which need not be greatly apprehended, or it must be on 
 rare occasions, on " some high festival of once a year." Then 
 indeed the stream of hospitality, so long dammed up, may flow 
 without stint for a short season ; or a stranger may be expected with 
 the same sort of eager impatience as a caravan of wild beasts, or 
 any other natural curiosity, that excites our wonder and fills up 
 the craving of the mind after novelty. By degrees, however, 
 even this last principle loses its effect : books, newspapers, what- 
 ever carries us out of ourselves into a world of which we see 
 and know nothing, become distasteful, repulsive ; and we turn
 
 ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE. 6 
 
 away with indifference and disgust from everything that disturbs 
 our lethargic animal existence, or takes off our attention from our 
 petty local interests and pursuits. Man, left long to himself, is 
 no better than a mere clod ; or his activity, for want of some other 
 vent, preys upon himself, or is directed to splenetic, peevish dis- 
 likes, or vexatious, harassing persecution of others. I once drew 
 a picture of country-life ; it was a portrait of a particular place, 
 a caricature if you will, but with certain allowances, I fear it was 
 too like in the individual instance, and that it would hold too gene- 
 rally true. See Round Table, vol. ii., p. 116. 
 
 If these then are the faults and vices of the inhabitants of town 
 or of the country, where should a man go to live, so as to escape 
 from them ? I answer, that in the country we have the society 
 of the groves, the fields, the brooks, and in London a man may 
 keep to himself, or choose his company as he pleases. 
 
 It appears to me that there is an amiable mixture of these two 
 opposite characters in a person who chances to have passed his youth 
 in London, and who has retired into the country for the rest of his 
 life. We may find in such a one a social polish, a pastoral sim- 
 plicity. He rusticates agreeably, and vegetates with a degree of 
 sentiment. He comes to the next post-town to see for letters, 
 watches the coaches as they pass, and eyes the passengers with a 
 look of familiar curiosity, thinking that he too was a gay fellow 
 in his time. He turns his horse's head down the narrow lane 
 that leads homewards, puts on an old coat to save his' wardrobe, 
 and fills his glass nearer to the brim. As he lifts the purple juice 
 to his lips and to his eye, and in the dim solitude that hems him 
 round, thinks of the glowing line 
 
 " This bottle 's the sun of our table" 
 
 another sun rises upon his imagination ; the sun of his youth, the 
 blaze of vanity, the glitter of the metropolis, " glares round his 
 soul, and mocks his closing eye-lids." The distant roar of 
 coaches is in his ears the pit stare upon him with a thousand 
 eyes Mrs. Siddons, Bannister, King, are before him he starts, 
 as from a dream, and swears he will to London ; but the ex- 
 pense, the length of way deters him, and he rises the next morn-
 
 62 TABLE TALK 
 
 ing to trace the footsteps of the hare that has brushed the dew. 
 drops from the lawn, or to attend a meeting of Magistrates ! Mr. 
 Justice Shallow answered in some sort to this description of a 
 retired Cockney and indigenous country-gentleman. He " knew 
 the Inns of Court, where they would talk of mad Shallow yet, 
 and where the bona robas were, and had them at commandment : 
 aye, and had heard the chimes at midnight !" 
 
 It is a strange state of society (such as that in London) where 
 a man does not know his next-door neighbor, and where the feel- 
 ings (one would think) must recoil upon themselves, and either 
 fester or become obtuse. Mr. Wordsworth, in the preface to his 
 poem of the "Excursion," represents men in cities as so many 
 wild beasts or evil spirits, shut up in cells of ignorance, without 
 natural affections, and barricadoed down in sensuality and selfish- 
 ness. The nerve of humanity is bound up, according to him, the 
 circulation of the blood stagnates. And it would be so, if men 
 were merely cut off from intercourse with their immediate neigh- 
 bors, and did not meet together generally and more at large. But 
 man in London becomes, as Mr. Burke has it, a sort of " public 
 creature." He lives in the eye of the world, and the world in his. 
 If he witnesses less of the details of private life, he has better op- 
 portunities of observing its larger masses and varied movements. 
 He sees the stream of human life pouring along the streets its 
 comforts and embellishments piled up in the shops the houses are 
 proofs of the industry, the public buildings of the art and magnifi- 
 cence of man ; while the public amusements and places of resort 
 are a centre and support for social feeling. A playhouse alone is 
 a school of humanity, where all eyes are fixed on the same gay 
 or solemn scene, where smiles or tears are spread from face to 
 face, and where a thousand hearts beat in unison ! Look at the 
 company in a country theatre (in comparison) and see the cold- 
 ness, the sullenness, the want of sympathy, and the way in which 
 they turn round to scan and scrutinize one another. In London 
 there is a public ; and each man is part of it. We are gregarious, 
 and affect the kind. We have a sort of abstract existence ; and 
 a community of ideas and knowledge (rather than local proximity) 
 is the bond of society and good-fellowship. This is one great 
 cause of the tone of political feeling in large and populous cities.
 
 ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE. 
 
 There is here a visible body-politic, a type and image of that huge 
 Leviathan the State. We comprehend that vast denomination, 
 the People, of which we see a tenth part daily moving before us ; 
 and by having our imaginations emancipated from petty interests 
 and personal dependence, we learn to venerate ourselves as men, 
 and to respect the rights of human nature. Therefore it is that 
 the citizens and freemen of London and Westminster are patriots 
 by prescription, philosophers and politicians by the right of their 
 birth-place. In the country, men are no better than a herd of cat- 
 tle or scattered deer. They have no idea but of individuals, none 
 of rights or principles and a king, as the greatest individual, is 
 the highest idea they can form. He is " a species alone," and as 
 superior to any single peasant as the latter is to the peasant's dog. 
 or to a crow flying over his head. In London the king is but as 
 one to a million (numerically speaking), is seldom seen, and then 
 distinguished only from others by the superior graces of his person. 
 A country 'squire or a lord of the manor is a greater man in his 
 village or hundred !
 
 <54 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 On living to one's-self.*. 
 
 ' Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, 
 Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po." 
 
 I never was in a better place or humor than I am at present fbi* 
 writing on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my 
 supper, my fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the 
 season of the year, I have had but a slight fit of indigestion to- 
 day (the only thing that makes me abhor myself), I have three 
 hours good before me, and therefore I will attempt it. It is as 
 well to do it at once as to have it to do for a week to come. 
 
 If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the thing itself is 
 a harder one. It asks a troublesome effort to ensure the admira- 
 tion of others : it is a still greater one to be satisfied with one's 
 own thoughts. As I look from the window at the wide bare heath 
 before me, and through the misty moon-light air see the woods 
 that wave over the top of Winterslow, 
 
 " While Heav'n's chancel- vault is blind with sleet," 
 
 my mind takes its flight through too long a series of years, sup- 
 ported only by the patience of thought and secret yearnings after 
 truth and good, for me to be at a loss to understand the feeling I 
 intend to write about ; but I do not know that this will enable me 
 to convey it more agreeably to the reader. 
 
 Lady G., in a letter to Miss Harriet Byron, assures her that 
 " her brother Sir Charles lived to himself:" and Lady L. soon 
 after (for Richardson was never tired of a good thing) repeats the 
 
 * Written at Winterslow Hut, January 18th 19th, 1891.
 
 ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF 65 
 
 same observation ; to which Miss Byron frequently returns in her 
 answers to both sisters " For you know Sir Charles lives to him- 
 self," till at length it passes into a proverb among the fair corres- 
 pondents. This is not, however, an example of what I under- 
 stand by living to one's-self, for Sir Charles Grandison was indeed 
 always thinking of himself; but by this phrase I mean never 
 thinking at all about one's-self, any more than if there was no 
 such person in existence. The character I speak of is as little 
 of an egotist as possible : Richardson's great favorite was as much 
 of one as possible. Some satirical critic has represented him in 
 Elysium " bowing over the 'faded hand of Lady Grandison " (Miss 
 Byron that was) he ought to have been represented bowing over 
 his own hand, for he never admired any one but himself, and was 
 the god of his own idolatry. Neither do I call it living to one's- 
 self to retire into a desert (like the saints and martyrs of old) to 
 be devoured by wild beasts, nor to descend into a cave to be con- 
 sidered as a hermit, nor to get to the top of a pillar of rock to do 
 fanatic penance and be seen of all men. What I mean by living 
 to one's-self is living in the world, as in it, not of it : it is as if no 
 one knew there was such a person, and you wish no one to know 
 it : it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene, of things, not 
 an object of attention or curiosity in it ; to take a thoughtful, 
 anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel 
 the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. It is such a 
 life as a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and such an inte- 
 rest as it might take in the affairs of men, calm, contemplative, 
 passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at 
 their follies without bitterness, sharing their affections, but not 
 troubled by their passions, not seeking their notice, nor once 
 dreamt of by them. He who lives wisely to himself and to his 
 own heart, looks at the bu-y world through the loop-holes of re- 
 treat, and does not want to mingle in the fray. " He hears the 
 tumult, and is still." He is not able to mend it, nor willing to 
 mar it. He sees enough in the universe to interest him without 
 putting himself forward to try what he can do to fix the eyes of 
 the universe upon him. Vain the attempt ! He reads the 
 clouds, he looks at the stars, he watches the return of the sea- 
 sons, the falling leaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of 
 
 SECOND SERIES PART I.
 
 66 TABLE TALK. 
 
 spring, starts with delight at the note of a thrush in a copse 
 near him, sits by the fire, listens to the moanings of the wind, 
 pores upon a book, or discourses the freezing hours away, or 
 melts down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All this 
 while he is taken up with other things, forgetting himself. He 
 relishes an author's style, without thinking of turning author. 
 He is fond of looking at a print from an old picture in the 
 room, without teasing himself to copy it. He does not fret him- 
 self to death with trying to be what he is not, or to do what 
 he cannot. He hardly knows what he is capable of, and is not 
 in the least concerned whether he shall ever make a figure 
 in the world. He feels the truth of the lines 
 
 " The man whose eye is on himself, 
 Doth look on one, the least of nature's works ; 
 One who might move the wise man to that scorn 
 Which wisdom holds unlawful ever " 
 
 ne looks out of himself at the wide extended prospect of nature, 
 and takes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general 
 humanity. He is free as air, and independent as the wind. 
 Wo be to hjm when he first begins to think what others say 
 of him. While a man is contented with himself and his own 
 resources, all is well. When he undertakes to play a part on 
 the stage, and to persuade the world to think more about him 
 than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he 
 will find nothing but briars and thorns, vexations and disap- 
 pointment. I can speak a little to this point. For many years 
 of my life I did nothing but think. I had nothing else to do 
 but to solve some knotty point, or dip in some abstruse author, 
 or look at the sky, or wander by the pebbled sea-side 
 
 " To see the children sporting on the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 
 
 I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to con- 
 sider whatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give a 
 sophistical answer to a question there was no printer's devil 
 waiting for me. I used to write a page or two perhaps in half & 
 year ; and remember laughing heartily at the celebrated experi-
 
 ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 67 
 
 mentalist Nicholson, who told me that in twenty years he h&d 
 written as much as would make three hundred octavo volumes. 
 If 1 was not a great author, I could read with ever fresh delight, 
 " never ending, still beginning," and had no occasion to write a 
 criticism when I had done. If I could not paint like Claude, I 
 could admire " the witchery of the soft blue sky " as I walked 
 out, and was satisfied with the pleasure it gave me. If I was 
 dull, it gave me little concern : if I was lively, I indulged my 
 spirits. I wished well to the world, and believed as favorably of it 
 as I could. I was like a stranger in a foreign land, at which 1 
 looked with wonder, curiosity and delight, without expecting to 
 be an object of attention in return. I had no relations to the 
 state, no duty to perform, no ties to bind me to others ; I had 
 neither friend nor mistress, wife nor child. I lived in a world of 
 contemplation, and not of action. 
 
 This sort of dreaming existence is the best. He who quits it 
 to go in search of realities, generally barters repose for repeated 
 disappointments and vain regrets. His time, thoughts, and feel- 
 ings are no longer at his own disposal. From that instant he 
 does not survey the objects of nature as they are in themselves, 
 but looks asquint at them to see whether he cannot make them 
 the instruments of his ambition, interest, or pleasure ; for a can- 
 did, undesigning, undisguised simplicity of character, his views 
 become jaundiced, sinister, and double : he takes no farther inte- 
 rest in the great changes of the world but as he has a paltry 
 share in producing them : instead of opening his senses, his un- 
 derstanding, and his heart to the resplendent fabric of the uni- 
 verse, he holds a crooked mirror before his face, in which he may 
 admire his own person and pretensions, and just glance his eye 
 aside to see whether others are not admiring him too. He no 
 more exists in the impression which " the fair variety of things " 
 makes upon him, softened and subdued by habitual contempla- 
 tion, but in the feverish sense of his own upstart self-importance. 
 By aiming to fix, he is become the slave of opinion. He is a 
 tool, a part of a machine that never stands still, and is sick and 
 giddy with the ceaseless motion. He has no satisfaction but ir 
 tne reflection of his own image in the public gaze, but in the 
 repetition of his own name in the public, ear. He himself is
 
 68 TABLE TALK. 
 
 mixed up with, and spoils everything. I wonder Buonaparte was 
 not tired of the N. N.'s stuck all over the Louvre and through, 
 out France. Goldsmith (as we all know), when in Holland, 
 went out into a balcony with some handsome Englishwomen, and 
 on their being applauded by the spectators, turned round, and 
 said peevishly " There are places where I also am admired." 
 He could not give the craving appetite of an author's vanity one 
 day's respite. I have seen a celebrated talker of our own time 
 turn pale and go out of the room when a showy-looking girl has 
 come into it, who for a moment divided the attention of his hear- 
 ers. Infinite are the mortifications of the bare attempt to emerge 
 from obscurity ; numberless the failures ; and greater and more 
 galling still the vicissitudes and tormenting accompaniments o e 
 success 
 
 " Whose top to climb 
 Is certain falling, or so slippery, that 
 The fear's bad as the falling." 
 
 "Would to God," exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when he was a. 
 any time thwarted by the Parliament, " that I had remained by 
 my woodside to tend a flock of sheep, rather than have been 
 thrust on such a government as this !" When Buonaparte got 
 into his carriage to proceed on his Russian expedition, carelessly 
 twirling his glove, and singing the air " Malbrook to the wars is 
 going" he did not think of the tumble he has got since, the 
 shock of which no one could have stood but himself. We see and 
 hear chiefly of the favorites of Fortune and the Muse, of great 
 generals, of first-rate actors, of celebrated poets. These are at 
 the head ; we are struck with the glittering eminence on which 
 they stand, and long to set out on the same tempting career : not 
 thinking how many discontented half-pay lieutenants are in vain 
 seeking promotion all their lives, and obliged to put up with " the 
 insolence of office, and the spurns which patient merit of the un- 
 worthy takes ;" how many half-starved strolling players are 
 doomed to penury and tattered robes in country-places, dreaming 
 to the last of a London engagement ; how many wretched daubers 
 shiver and shake in the ague-fit of alternate hopes and fears, 
 waste and pine away in the atrophy of genius, or else turn
 
 ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 69 
 
 drawing-masters, picture-cleaners, or newspaper critics ; how 
 many hapless poets have sighed out their souls to the Muse in 
 vain, without ever getting their effusions farther known than the 
 Poet's-Corner Of a country newspaper, and looked and looked 
 with grudging, wistful eyes at the envious horizon that bounded 
 their provincial fame 1 Suppose an actor, for instance, " after the 
 heart-aches and the thousand natural pangs that flesh is heir to," 
 does get at the top of his profession, he can no longer bear a rival 
 near the throne ; to be second, or only equal to another, is to be 
 nothing : he starts at the prospect of a successor, and retains the 
 mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp : perhaps as he is about to 
 seize the first place which he has long had in his eye, an unsus- 
 pected competitor steps in before him, and carries ofF the prize, 
 leaving him to commence his irksome toil again : he is in a state 
 of alarm at every appearance or rumor of the appearance of a 
 new actor ; a " mouse that takes up his lodging in a cat's ear " * 
 has a mansion of peace to him : he dreads every hint of an ob- 
 jection, and least of all can forgive praise mingled with censure : 
 to doubt is to insult, to discriminate is to degrade : he dare hardly 
 look into a criticism unless some one has tasted it for him, to see 
 that there is no offence in it : if he does not draw crowded houses 
 every night, he can neither eat nor sleep ; or if all these terrible 
 inflictions are removed, and he can " eat his meal in peace," he 
 then becomes surfeited with applause and dissatisfied with his 
 profession : he wants to be something else, to be distinguished as 
 an author, a collector, a classical scholar, a man of sense and 
 information, and weighs every word he utters, and half retracts 
 it before he utters it, lest if he were to make the smallest slip of 
 
 the tongue, it should get buzzed abroad that Mr. was only 
 
 clever as an actor ! If ever there was a man who did not derive 
 more pain than pleasure from his vanity, that man, says Rousseau 
 was no other than a fool. A country-gentleman near Taunton 
 spent his whole life in making some hundreds of wretched copies 
 of second-rate pictures, which were bought up at his death by 
 neighboring Baronet, to whom 
 
 M Some demon whisper'd, L , have a taste !" 
 
 * Webster's Duchess of Malfy.
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 A little Wilson in an obscure corner escaped the man of virtu, 
 and was carried off by a Bristol picture-dealer for three guineas, 
 while the muddled copies of the owner of the mansion (with the 
 *rames) fetched thirty, forty, sixty, a hundred ducats a-piece. A 
 friend of mine found a very fine Canaletti in a state of strange 
 disfigurement, with the upper part of the sky smeared over and 
 fantastically variegated with English clouds ; and on inquiring of 
 the person to whom it belonged whether something had not been 
 done to it, received for answer " that a gentleman, a great artist 
 in the neighborhood, had retouched some parts of it." What 
 infatuation ! Yet this candidate for the honors of the pencil 
 might probably have made a jovial fox-hunter or respectable 
 justice of the peace, if he could only have stuck to what nature 
 
 and fortune intended him for. Miss can by no means be 
 
 persuaded to quit the boards of the theatre at , a little country 
 
 town in the West of England. Her salary has been abridged, 
 her person ridiculed, her acting laughed at ; nothing will serve 
 she is determined to be an actress, and scorns to return to her 
 former business as a millinej". Shall I go on ? An actor in the 
 same company was visited by the apothecary of the place in an 
 ague-fit, who, on asking his landlady as to his way of life, was 
 told that the poor gentleman was very quiet and gave little trouble, 
 that he generally had a plate of mashed potatoes for his dinner, 
 and lay in bed most of his time, repeating his part. A young 
 couple, every way amiable and deserving, were to have been 
 married, and a benefit-play was bespoke by the officers of the 
 regiment quartered there, to defray the expense of a license and 
 of the wedding-ring, but the profits of the night did not amount to 
 the necessary sum, and they have, I fear, " virgined it e'er since !" 
 Oh for the pencil of Hogarth or Wilkie to give a view of the 
 
 comic strength of the company at , drawn up in battle-array 
 
 in the Clandestine Marriage, with a coup-d'oeil of the pit, boxes, 
 and gallery, to cure for ever the love of the ideal, and the desire 
 to shine and make holiday in the eyes of others, instead of retir- 
 ing within ourselves and keeping our wishes and our thoughts at 
 home ! 
 
 Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and 
 marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness
 
 ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 71 
 
 in the hands of others! Most of the friends I have seen have turned 
 out the bitterest enemies, or cold, uncomfortable acquaintance. 
 Old companions are like meats served up too often, that lose their 
 relish and their wholegomeness. He who looks at beauty to ad- 
 mire, to adore it, who reads of its wondrous power in novels, in 
 poems, or in plays, is not unwise : but let no man fall in love, for 
 from that moment he is " the baby of a girl." I like very well 
 to repeat such lines as these in the*play of Mirandola 
 
 " With what a waving air she goes 
 /Jong the corridor. How like a fawn ! 
 Yet statelier. Hark ! No sound, however soft, 
 Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads, 
 But every motion of her shape doth seem 
 Hallowed by silence " 
 
 but however beautiful the description, defend me from meeting 
 with the original ! 
 
 " The fly that sips treacle 
 Is lost in the sweets ; 
 So he that tastes woman 
 Ruin meets." 
 
 The song is Gay's, not mine, and a bitter-sweet it is. How few 
 out of the infinite number of those that marry and are given in 
 marriage, wed with those they would prefer to all the world ; nay, 
 how far the greater proportion are joined together by mere mo- 
 tives of convenience, accident, recommendation of friends, or 
 indeed not unfrequently by the very fear of the event, by repug- 
 nance and a sort of fatal fascination : yet the tie is for life, not to 
 be shaken off but with disgrace or death : a man no longer lives 
 to himself, but is a body (as well as mind) chained to another, in 
 spite of himself- 
 
 " Like life and death in disproportion met." 
 
 So Milton (perhaps from his own experience) makes Adam ex- 
 claim, in the vehemence of his despair, 
 
 " For either 
 He shall nevei find out fit mate, but such
 
 78 TABLE TALK. 
 
 As some misfortune brings him or mistake ; 
 Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain 
 Through her perverseness, but shall see her gain'd 
 By a far worse; or if she love, withheld 
 By parents ; or his happiest choice too late 
 Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound 
 To a fell adversary, his hate and shame ; 
 Which infinite calamity shall cause 
 To human life, and household peace confound." 
 
 [f love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by kind 
 offices ; if the fondest affection were not so often repaid and chilled 
 by indifference and scorn ; if so many lovers both before and 
 since the madman in Don Quixotte had not " worshipped a statue, 
 hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert;'' if friendship were 
 lasting ; if merit were renown, and renown were health, riches, 
 and long life ; or if the homage of the world were paid to con- 
 scious worth and the true aspirations after excellence, instead of 
 its gaudy signs and outward trappings ; then indeed I might be of 
 opinion that it is better to live to others than one's-self ; but as the 
 case stands, I incline to the negative side of the question.*- 
 
 " I have not loved the world, nor the world me ; 
 I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd 
 To its idolatries a patient knee 
 Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles nor cried aloud 
 In worship of an echo; in the crowd 
 They could not deem me one of such ; I stood 
 Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud 
 Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, 
 Had I not filed my mind which thus itself subdued. 
 
 I have not loved the world, nor the world me 
 
 But let us part fair foes ; I do believe, 
 
 Though I have found them not, that there may be 
 
 * Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended to live to 
 himself, and the other really did so. Gray shrank from the public gaze 
 (he did not even like his portrait to be prefixed to his works) into his own 
 thoughts and indolent musings ; Shenstone affected privacy, that he mighi 
 be sought out by the world ; the one courted retirement in order to enjov 
 leisure and repose, as the other coquetted with it, merely to be interrupted 
 with the importunity of visitors and the flatteries of absent friends.
 
 ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. Hi 
 
 Words which are things hopes which will not deceive, 
 
 And virtues which are merciful nor weave 
 
 Snares for the failing : I would also deem 
 
 O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; 
 
 That two, or one, are almost what they seem 
 
 That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream." 
 
 Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy : but wo 
 oetide the ignoble prose-writer who should thus dare to compare 
 notes with the world, or tax it roundly with imposture. 
 
 If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the publjc, as Ben 
 Jonson did at the audience in the Prologues to his plays, I think 
 I should do it in good set terms, nearly as follows. There is not 
 a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, 
 ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, 
 for it is afraid of itself. From its unwieldy, over-grown dimen- 
 sions, it dreads the least opposition to it, and shakes like isinglass 
 at the touch of a finger. It starts at its own shadow, like the 
 man in the Hartz mountains, and trembles at the mention of its 
 own name. It has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears 
 erect and sleepless eyes. It stands " listening its fears." It is so 
 in awe of its own opinion, that it never dares to form any, but 
 catches up the first idle rumor, lest it should be behindhand in its 
 judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own 
 voice. The idea of what the public will think, prevents the public 
 from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of 
 private judgment, so that in short the public ear is at the mercy 
 of the first impudent pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy 
 assertions, or false surmises, or secret whispers. What is said 
 by one is heard by all ; the supposition that a thing is known to 
 all the world makes all the world believe it, and the hollow repe. 
 tition of a vague report drowns the " still, small voice" of rea- 
 son. We may believe or know that what is said is not true : but 
 we know or fancy that others believe it we dare not contradict 
 or are too indolent to dispute with them, and therefore give up our 
 internal, and, as we think, our solitary conviction to a sound without 
 substance, without proof, and often without meaning. Nay more, we 
 may believe and know not only that a thing is false, but that others 
 believe and know it to be so, that they are quite as much in the
 
 74 TABLE TALK. 
 
 oecret of the imposture as we are, that they see the puppets at 
 /york, the nature of the machinery, and yet if any one has the 
 art or power to get the management of it, he shall keep possession 
 of the public ear by virtue of a cant-phrase or nick-name ; and, 
 by dint of effrontery and perseverance, make all the world believe 
 and repeat what all the world know to be false. The ear is quicker 
 than the judgment. We know that certain things are said : by that 
 circumstance alone we know that they produce a certain effect on 
 the imagination of others, and we conform to their prejudices by 
 mechanical sympathy, and for want of sufficient spirit to differ with 
 them. So far then is public opinion from resting on a broad and 
 solid basis, as the aggregate of thought and feeling in a commu- 
 nity, that it is slight and shallow and variable to the last degree 
 the bubble of the moment so that we may safely say the pub- 
 lic is the dupe of public opinion, not its parent. The public is 
 pusillanimous and cowardly, because it is weak. It knows itself 
 to be a great dunce, and that it has no opinions but upon sugges- 
 tion. Yet it is unwilling to appear in leading-strings, and would 
 have it thought that its decisions are as wise as they are weighty. 
 It is hasty in taking up its favorites, more hasty in laying them 
 aside, lest it should be supposed deficient in sagacity in either 
 case. It is generally divided into two strong parties, each of 
 which will allow neither common sense nor common honesty to 
 the other side. It. reads the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, 
 and believes them both or if there is a doubt, malice turns the 
 scale. Taylor and Hessey told me that they had sold nearly two 
 editions of the Characters of Shakspeare's Plays in about three 
 months, but after the Quarterly Review of them came out, they 
 never sold another copy. The public, enlightened as they are, 
 must have known the meaning of that attack as well as those 
 who made it. It was not ignorance, then, but cowardice that 
 led them to give up their own opinion. A crew of mischie- 
 ous critics at Edinburgh having fixed the epithet of the Cock- 
 ney School to one or two writers born in the metropolis, all the 
 people in London became afraid of looking into their works, 
 lest they too should be convicted of cockneyism. Oh brave 
 public ! This epithet proved too much for one of the writers 
 in question, and stuck like a barbed arrow in his heart. Poor
 
 ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 75 
 
 Keats ! Wiiat was sport to the town was death to him. Young, 
 sensitive, delicate, he was like 
 
 *' A bud bit by an envious worm, 
 Ere he could spread his sweet leaves to the air, 
 Or dedicate his beauty to the sun " 
 
 and unable to endure the miscreant cry and idiot laugh, with- 
 drew to sigh his last breath in foreign climes. The public is as 
 envious and ungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid, and pigeon-liver- 
 ed 
 
 " A huge-sized monster of ingratitude." 
 
 It reads, it admires, it extols only because it is the fashion, not 
 from any love of the subject or the man. It cries you up or runs 
 you down out of mere caprice and levity. If you have pleased 
 it, it is jealous of its own involuntary acknowledgment of merit, 
 and seizes the first opportunity, the first shabby pretext, to pick 
 a quarrel with you, and be quits once more. Every petty cavil- 
 ler is erected into a judge, every tale-bearer is implicitly believed. 
 Every little low paltry creature that gaped and wondered only 
 because others did so, is glad to find you (as he thinks) on a level 
 with himself. An author is not then, after all, a being of another 
 order. Public admiration is forced, and goes against the grain. 
 Public obloquy is cordial and sincere : every individual feels his 
 own importance in it. They give you up bound hand and foot 
 into the power of your accusers. To attempt to defend yourself 
 is a high crime and misdemeanor, a contempt of court, an ex- 
 treme piece of impertinence. Or if you prove every charge 
 unfounded, they never think of retracting their error, or making 
 you amends. It would be a compromise of their dignity ; they 
 consider themselves as the party injured, and resent your inno- 
 cence as an imputation on their judgment. The celebrated Bubb 
 Doddington, when out of favor at court, said, " he would not jus- 
 tify before his sovereign : it was for majesty to be displeased, and 
 for him to believe himself in the wrong !" The public are not 
 quite so modest. People already begin to talk of the Scotch 
 Novels as overrated. How then can common authors be sup- 
 posed to keep their heads long above water ? As a general rul*> 
 21
 
 76 TABLE TALK. 
 
 all those who live by the public starve, and are made a bye-word 
 and a standing jest into the bargain. Posterity is no better (not 
 a bit more enlightened or more liberal), except that you are no 
 longer in their power, and that the voice of common fame saves 
 them the trouble of deciding on your claims. The public now 
 are the posterity of Milton and Shakspeare. Our posterity will 
 be the living public of a future generation. When a man is 
 dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his 
 memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birth-day in set 
 speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living ? 
 No ! I was complaining of this to a Scotchman who had been 
 attending a dinner and a subscription to raise a monument to 
 Burns. He replied, he would sooner subscribe twenty pounds to 
 his monument than have given it him while living ; so that if the 
 poet were to come to life again, he would treat him just as he was 
 treated in fact. This was an honest Scotchman. What he said, 
 the res* would do. 
 
 Enough : my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain 
 the obscurity and quiet that I love, " far from the madding strife," 
 in some sequestered corner of my own, or in some far-distant 
 land ! In the latter case, I might carry with me as a consolation 
 the passage in Bolingbroke's Reflections on Exile, in which he 
 describes in glowing colors the resources which a man may 
 always find within himself, and of which the world cannot de- 
 prive him. 
 
 " Believe me, the providence of God has established such an 
 order in the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least valu- 
 able parts can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is 
 best is safest ; lies out of the reach of human power ; can neither 
 be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful 
 work of nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which con- 
 templates and admires the world whereof it makes the noblest 
 part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in 
 one we shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore intrepidly 
 wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. Wher- 
 ever they lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, 
 we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers. We shall feel
 
 ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 77 
 
 the same revolution of seasons, and the same sun and moon* will 
 guide the course of our year. The same azure vault, bespan- 
 gled with stars, will be everywhere spread over our heads. There 
 is no part of the world from whence we may not admire those 
 planets which roll, like ours, in different orbits round the same 
 central sun ; from whence we may not discover an object still 
 more stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in the immense 
 space of the universe, innumerable suns whose beams enlighten 
 and cherish the unknown worlds which roll around them ; and 
 whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst my 
 soul is thus raised up to heaven, imports me little what ground J 
 tread upon." 
 
 * " Plut. of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live out of 
 their own country, to the simple people who fancied the moon of Athens 
 was a finer moon than that of Corinth, 
 
 Labentem calo quae ducitis annum 
 
 Vi*g. Georg."
 
 78 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY VV. 
 On Genius and Common Sense. 
 
 We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than under- 
 standing, that genius and taste are strictly reducible to rules, and 
 that there is a rule for everything. So far is it from being true 
 that the finest breath of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest 
 common sense is only what Mr. Locke would have called a 
 mixed mode, subject to a particular sort of acquired and undefina- 
 ble tact. It is asked, " If you do not know the rule by which a 
 thing is done, how can you be sure of doing it a second time ? " 
 And the answer is, " If you do not know the muscles by the help 
 of which you walk, how is it you do not fall down at every step 
 you take ?" In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from 
 feeling, and not from reason ; that is, from the impression of a 
 number of things on the mind, which impression is true and well- 
 founded, though you may not be able to analyze or account for it 
 in the several particulars. In a gesture you use, in a look you 
 see, in a tone you hear, you judge of the expression, propriety, 
 and meaning from habit, not from reason or rules ; that is to say, 
 from innumerable instances of like gestures, looks, and tones, in 
 innumerable other circumstances, variously modified, which are 
 too many and too refined to be all distinctly recollected, but which 
 do not therefore operate the less powerfully upon the mind and 
 eye of taste. Shall we say that these impressions (the immediate 
 stamp of nature) do not operate in a given manner till they are 
 classified and reduced to rules, or is not the rule itself grounded 
 upon the truth and certainty of that natural operation ? How 
 then can the distinction of the understanding as to the manner in 
 which they operate be necessary to their producing their due and 
 uniform effect upon the mind ? If certain effects did not regularly 
 arise out of certain causes in mind as well as matter, there could
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 79 
 
 be no rule given for them : nature does not follow the rule, but 
 suggests it. Reason is the interpreter and critic of nature and 
 genius, not their lawgiver and judge. He must be a poor crea- 
 ture indeed whose practical convictions do not in almost all cases 
 outrun his deliberate understanding, or who does not feel and 
 know much more than he can give a reason for. Hence the dis- 
 tinction between eloquence and wisdom, between ingenuity and 
 common sense. A man may be dexterous and able in explaining 
 the grounds of his opinions, and yet may be a mere sophist, because 
 he only sees one half of a subject. Another may feel the whole 
 weight of a question, nothing relating to it may be lost upon him, 
 and yet he may be able to give no account of the manner in 
 which it affects him, or to drag his reasons from their silent 
 lurking-places. This last will be a wise man, though neither a 
 logician nor a rhetorician. Goldsmith was a fool to Dr. Johnson 
 in argument ; that is, in assigning the specific grounds of his 
 opinions : Dr. Johnson was a fool to Goldsmith in the fine tact, 
 the airy, intuitive faculty with which he skimmed the surfaces of 
 things, and unconsciously formed his opinions. Common sen <e 
 is the just result of the sum-total of such unconscious impressions 
 in the ordinary occurrences of life, as they are treasured up in the 
 memory, and called out by the occasion. Genius and taste depend 
 much upon the same principle exercised on loftier ground and in 
 more unusual combinations. 
 
 I am glad to shelter myself from the charge of affectation or 
 singularity in this view of an often debated, but ill understood 
 point, by quoting a passage from Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, 
 which is full, and, I think, conclusive to the purpose. He says, 
 
 " I observe, as a fundamental ground, common to all the Arts 
 with which we have any concern in this Discourse, that they 
 address themselves only to two faculties of the mind, its imagina- 
 tion and its sensibility. 
 
 " All theories which attempt to direct or to control the Art, 
 upon any principles falsely called rational, which we form to ou%. 
 selves upon a supposition of what ought in reason to be the eno 
 or means of Art, independent of the known first effect produced 
 by objects on the imagination, must be false and delusive. For 
 though it may appear bold to say it, the imagination is here the
 
 80 TABLE TALK. 
 
 residence of truth. If the imagination be affected, the conclusion 
 is fairly drawn ; if it be not affected, the reasoning is erroneous, 
 because the end is not attained ; the effect itself being the test, 
 and the only test, of the truth and efficacy of the means. 
 
 " There is in the commerce of life, as in Art, a sagacity which 
 is far from being contradictory to right reason, and is superior to 
 any occasional exercise of that faculty ; which supersedes it ; 
 and does not wait for the slow progress of deduction, but goes at 
 once, by what appears a kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A 
 man endowed with this faculty feels and acknowledges the truth, 
 though it is not always in his power, perhaps, to give a reason for 
 it ; because he cannot recollect and bring before him all the ma- 
 terials that gave birth to his opinion ; for very many and very 
 intricate considerations may unite to form the principle, even of 
 small and minute parts, involved in, or dependent on, a great 
 system of things : though these in process of time are forgotten, 
 Urn right impression still remains fixed in his mind. 
 
 " This impression is the result of the accumulated experience 
 of our whole life, and has been collected we do not always know 
 how, or when. But this mass of collective observation, however 
 acquired, ought to prevail over that reason, which, however pow- 
 erfully exerted on any particular occasion, will probably compre- 
 hend but a partial view of the subject ; and our conduct in life, 
 as in the arts, is or ought to be generally governed by this habitual 
 reason : it is our happiness that we are enabled to draw on such 
 funds. If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation 
 on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art 
 would be impracticable. 
 
 " It appears to me, therefore" (continues Sir Joshua), " that 
 our first thoughts, that is, the effect which anything produces on 
 our minds, on its first appearance, is never to be forgotten ; and 
 it demands for that reason, because it is the first, to be laid up 
 with care. If this be not done, the artist may happen to impose 
 on himself by partial reasoning ; by a cold consideration of those 
 animated thoughts which proceed, not perhaps from caprice or 
 rashness (as he may afterwards conceit), but from the fulness of 
 his mind, enriched with the copious stores of all the various in- 
 ventions which he had ever seen, or had ever passed in his mind.
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 81 
 
 These ideas are infused into his design, without any conscious 
 effort ; but if he be not on his guard, he may reconsider and 
 correct them, till the whole matter is reduced to a common-place 
 invention. 
 
 " This is sometimes the effect of what I mean to caution you 
 against : that is to say, an unfounded distrust of the imagination 
 and feeling, in favor of narrow, partial, confined, argumentative 
 theories, and of principles that seem to apply to the design in 
 hand ; without considering those general impressions on the fancy 
 in which real principles of sound reason, and of much more weight 
 and importance, are involved, and, as it were, lie hid under the 
 appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment. Reason, without 
 doubt, must ultimately determine everything ; at this minute 
 it is required to inform us when that very reason is to give way 
 to feeling." Discourse XIII., vol. ii., p. 11317. 
 
 Mr. Burke, by whom the foregoing train of thinking was pro- 
 bably suggested, has insisted on the same thing, and made rather 
 a perverse use of it in several parts of his Reflections on the 
 French Revolution ; and Windham in one of his Speeches has 
 clenched it into an aphorism " There is nothing so true as 
 habit." Once more I would say, common sense is tacit reason. 
 Conscience is the same tacit sense of right and wrong, or the 
 impression of our moral experience and moral apprehensions on 
 the mind, which, because it works unseen, yet certainly, we 
 suppose to be an instinct, implanted in the mind ; as we sometimes 
 attribute the violent operations of our passions, of which we can 
 neither trace the source nor assign the reason, to the instigation 
 if the Devil ! 
 
 I shall here try to go more at large into this subject, and to 
 give such instances and illustrations of it as occur to me. 
 
 One of the persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to 
 Government, and been included in a charge for high treason in 
 the year 1794, had retired soon after into Wales to write an epic 
 poem and enjoy the luxuries of a rural life. In his peregrina- 
 tions through that beautiful scenery, he had arrived one fine 
 morning at the inn at Llangollen, in the romantic valley of that 
 name. He had ordered his breakfast, and was sitting at the win- 
 dow in all the dalliance of expectation, when a face passed of 
 
 SECOND SERIES PART I. 21
 
 6* TABLE TALK. 
 
 which he took no notice at the instant but when his breakfast 
 was brought in presently after, he found his appetite for it gone, 
 the day had lost its freshness in his eye, he was uneasy and spirit- 
 less ; and without any cause that he could discover, a total change 
 had taken place in his feelings. While he was trying to account 
 for this odd circumstance, the same face passed again it was the 
 face of Taylor the spy ; and he was no longer at a loss to ex- 
 plain the difficulty. He had before caught only a transient 
 glimpse, a passing side-view of the face ; but though this was 
 not sufficient to awaken a distinct idea in his memory, his 
 feelings, quicker and surer, had taken the alarm ; a string 
 had been touched that gave a jar to his whole frame, and 
 would not let him rest, though he could not at all tell 
 what was the matter with him. To the flitting, shadowy, 
 half-distinguished profile that had glided by his window was 
 linked unconsciously and mysteriously, but inseparably, the im- 
 pression of the trains that had been laid for him by this person ; 
 in this brief moment, in this dim, illegible short-hand of the 
 mind, he had just escaped the speeches of the Attorney and So- 
 licitor-General over again ; the gaunt figure of Mr. Pitt glared 
 by him ; the walls of a prison enclosed him ; and he felt the 
 hands of the executioner near him, without knowing it till the 
 tremor and disorder of his nerves gave information to his reason- 
 ing faculties that all was not well within. That is, the same 
 state of mind was recalled by one circumstance in the series of 
 association that had been produced by the whole set of circum- 
 stances at the time, though the manner in which this was done 
 was not immediately perceptible. In other words, the feeling of 
 pleasure or pain, of good or evil, is revived, and acts instantane- 
 ously upon the mind, before we have time to recollect the precise 
 objects which have originally given birth to it.* The incident 
 
 * Sentiment has the same source as that here pointed out. Thus the 
 Ranz des Vaches, which has such an effect on the minds of the Swiss pea- 
 santry, when its well known sound is heard, does not merely recall to them 
 the idea of their country, but has associated with it a thousand nameless 
 ideas, numberless touches of private affection, of early hope, romantic ad- 
 venture, and national pride, all which rush in (with mingled currents) to 
 swell the tide of fond remembrance, and make them languish or die for 
 home. What a fine instrument the human heart is ! Who shall touch it?
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 8? 
 
 here mentioned was merely, then, one case of what the learned 
 understand by the association of ideas : but all that is meant by 
 feeling or common sense is nothing but the different cases of the 
 association of ideas, more or less true to the impression of the 
 original circumstances, as reason begins with the more formal 
 development of those circumstances, or pretends to account for 
 the different cases of the association of ideas. But it does not 
 follow that the dumb and silent pleading of the former (though 
 sometimes, nay, often mistaken) is less true than that of its bab- 
 bling interpreter, or that we are never to trust its dictates with- 
 out consulting the express authority of reason. Both are imper- 
 fect, both are useful in their way, and therefore both are best 
 together, to correct or to confirm one another. It does not appear 
 that in the singular instance above mentioned, the sudden im- 
 pression on the mind was superstition or fancy, though it might 
 have been thought so, had it not been proved by the event to have 
 a real physical and moral cause. Had not the same face re- 
 turned again, the doubt would never have been properly cleared 
 up, but would have remained a puzzle ever after, or perhaps 
 have been soon forgotten. By the law of association, as laid down 
 by physiologists, any impression in a series can recall any other 
 impression in that series without going through the whole in 
 order : so that the mind drops the intermediate links, and passes 
 on rapidly and by stealth to the more striking effects of pleasure 
 or pain which have naturally taken the strongest hold of it. By 
 doing this habitually and skilfully with respect to the various im- 
 pressions and circumstances with which our experience makes 
 us acquainted, it forms a series of unpremeditated conclusions 
 on almost all subjects that can be brought before it, as just as 
 they are of ready application to human life ; and common sense 
 is the name of this body of unassuming but practical wisdom. 
 Common sense, however, is an impartial, instinctive result of 
 truth and nature, and will therefore bear the test and abide the 
 scrutiny of the most severe and patient reasoning. It is indeed 
 
 Who shall fathom it? Who shall "sound it from its lowest rote to the 
 top of its compass ?" Who shall put his hand among the strings, and ex- 
 plain their wayward music ? The heart alone, when touched by aympathj, 
 trembles and responds to their hidden meaning ! 
 
 21*
 
 84 TABLE TALK. 
 
 incomplete without it. By ingrafting reason on feeling, we 
 " make assurance doubly sure." 
 
 " 'Tis the last key-stone that makes up the arch 
 Then stands it a triumphal mark ! Then men 
 Observe the strength, the height, the why and when 
 It was erected: and still walking under, 
 Meet some new matter to kok up, and wonder." 
 
 But reason, not employed to interpret nature, and to improve and 
 perfect common sense and experience, is, for the most part, a 
 building without a foundation. The criticism exercised by rea- 
 son then on common sense may be as severe as it pleases, but it 
 must be as patient as it is severe. Hasty, dogmatical, self-satis- 
 fied reason is worse than idle fancy, or bigoted prejudice. It is 
 systematic, ostentatious in error, closes up the avenues of know- 
 ledge, and " shuts the gates of wisdom on mankind." It is not 
 enough to show that there is no reason for a thing, that we do not 
 see the reason of it : if the common feeling, if the involuntary 
 prejudice sets in strong in favor of it, if, in spite of all we can 
 do, there is a lurking suspicion on the side of our first impres- 
 sions, we must try again, and believe that truth is mightier than 
 we. So, in offering a definition of any subject, if we feel a mis- 
 giving that there is any fact or circumstance omitted, but of which 
 we have only a vague apprehension, like a name we cannot re- 
 collect, we must ask for more time, and not cut the matter short 
 by an arrogant assumption of the point in dispute. Common 
 sense thus acts as a check-weight on sophistry, and suspends our 
 rash and superficial judgments. On the other hand, if not only 
 no reason can be given for a thing, but every reason is clear 
 against it, and we can account from ignorance, from authority, 
 from interest, from different causes, for the prevalence of an 
 opinion or sentiment, then we have a right to conclude that we 
 have mistaken a prejudice for an instinct, or have confounded a 
 false and partial impression with the fair and unavoidable infer- 
 ence from general observation. Mr. Burke said that we ought 
 not to reject every prejudice, but should separate the husk of pre- 
 judice from the truth it encloses, and so try to get at the kernel 
 within ; and thus far he was right. But he was wrong in insist-
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. S5 
 
 ing that we are to cherish our prejudices, " because they are pre- 
 judices:" for if they are all well founded, there is no occasion 
 to inquire into their origin or use ; and he who sets out to phi- 
 losophize upon them, or make the separation Mr. Burke talks of 
 in this spirit and with this previous determination, will be very 
 likely to mistake a maggot or a rotten canker for the precious 
 kernel of truth, as was indeed the case with our political sophist. 
 There is nothing more distinct than common sense and vul- 
 gar opinion. Common sense is only a judge of things that fall 
 under common observation, or immediately come home to the 
 business and bosoms of men. This is of the very essence of its 
 principle, the basis of its pretensions. It rests upon the simple 
 process of feeling, it anchors in experience. It is not, nor it can- 
 not be, the test of abstract, speculative opinions. But half the 
 opinions and prejudices of mankind, those which they hold in the 
 most unqualified approbation and which have been instilled into 
 them under the strongest sanctions, are of this latter kind, that is, 
 opinions, not which they have ever thought, known, or felt one 
 tittle about, but which they have taken up on trust from others, 
 which have been palmed on their understandings by fraud or 
 force, and which they continue to hold at the peril of life, limb, 
 property, and character, with as little warrant from common sense 
 in the first instance as appeal to reason in the last. The ultima 
 ratio regum proceeds upon a very different plea. Common sense 
 is neither priestcraft nor state-policy. Yet " there's the rub that 
 makes absurdity of so long life j" and, at the same time, gives 
 the sceptical philosophers the advantage over us. Till nature 
 has fair play allowed it, and it is not adulterated by political and 
 polemical quacks (as it so often has been), it is impossible to ap- 
 peal to it as a defence against the errors and extravagances of 
 mere reason. If we talk of common sense, we are twitted with 
 vulgar prejudice, and asked how we distinguish the one from the 
 other : but common and received opinion is indeed " a compost 
 heap" of crude notions, got together by the pride and passions of 
 individuals, and reason is itself the thrall or manumitted slave 
 of the same lordly and besotted masters, dragging its servile 
 chain, or committing all sorts of Saturnalian licenses, the moment 
 it feels itself freed from it. If ten millions of Englishmen are
 
 86 TABLE TALK. 
 
 furious in thinking themselves right in making war upon thirty 
 millions of Frenchmen, and if the last are equally bent upon 
 thinking the others always in the wrong, though it is a common 
 and national prejudice, both opinions cannot be the dictate of 
 good sense : but it may be the infatuated policy of one or both 
 governments to keep their subjects always at variance. If a 
 few centuries ago all Europe believed in the infallibility of the 
 Pope, this was not an opinion derived from the proper exercise or 
 erroneous direction of the common sense of the people : common 
 sense had nothing to do with it they believed whatever their 
 priests told them. England at present is divided into Whigs and 
 Tories, Churchmen and Dissenters : both parties have numbers 
 on their side ; but common sense and party-spirit are two different 
 things. Sects and heresies are upheld partly by sympathy, and 
 partly by the love of contradiction : if there was nobody of a 
 different way of thinking, they would fall to pieces of themselves. 
 If a whole court say the same thing, this is no proof that they 
 ihink it, but that the individual at the head of the court has said 
 it : if a mob agree for a while in shouting the same watch-word, 
 this is not to me an example of the sensus communis ; they only 
 repeat what they have heard repeated by others. If indeed a 
 large proportion of the people are in want of food, of clothing, 
 of shelter, if they are sick, miserable, scorned, oppressed, and if 
 each feeling it in himself, they all say so with one voice and one 
 heart, and lift up their hands to second their appeal, this I should 
 say was but the dictate of common sense, the cry of nature. 
 But to waive this part of the argument, which it is needless to 
 push farther, I believe that the best way to instruct mankind is 
 not by pointing out to them their mutual errors, but by teaching 
 them to think rightly on different matters, where they will listen 
 with patience in order to be amused, and where they do not con- 
 sider a definition or a syllogism as the greatest injury you can 
 olfer them. 
 
 There is no rule for expression. It is got at solely by feeling., 
 that is, on the principle of the association of ideas, and by trans, 
 ferring what has been found to hold good in one case (with the 
 necessary modifications) to others. A certain look has been re- 
 marked strongly indicative of a certain passion o trait of cha-
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 87 
 
 racter, and we attach the same meaning to it or are affected in 
 the same pleasurable or painful manner by it, where it exists in 
 a less degree, though we can define neither the look itself nor the 
 modification of it. Having got the general clue, the exact result 
 may be left to the imagination to vary, to extenuate or aggravate 
 it according to circumstances. In the admirable profile of Oliver 
 
 Cromwell after , the drooping eye-lids, as if drawing a 
 
 veil over the fixed, penetrating glance, the nostrils somewhat dis- 
 tended, and lips compressed so as hardly to let the breath escape 
 him, denote the character of the man for high-reaching policy 
 and deep designs as plainly as they can be written. How is it 
 that we decipher this expression in the face ? First, by feeling 
 it : and how is it that we feel it ? Not by pre-established rules, 
 but by the instinct of analogy, by the principle of association, 
 which is subtle and sure in proportion as it is variable and inde- 
 finite. A circumstance, apparently of no value, shall alter the 
 whole interpretation to be put upon an expression or action ; and 
 it shall alter it thus powerfully because in proportion to its very 
 insignificance it shows a strong general principle at work that 
 extends in its ramifications to the smallest things. This in fact 
 will make all the difference between minuteness and subtlety or 
 refinement ; for a small or trivial effect may in given circum- 
 stances imply the operation of a great power. Stillness may be 
 the result of a blow too powerful to be resisted ; silence may be 
 imposed by feelings too agonizing for utterance. The minute, 
 the trifling and insipid, is that which is little in itself, in its causes 
 and its consequences : the subtle and refined is that which is 
 slight and evanescent at first sight, but which mounts up to a 
 mighty sum in the end, which is an essential part of an important 
 whole, which has consequences greater than itself, and where 
 more is meant than meets the eye or ear. We complain some- 
 times of littleness in a Dutch picture, where there are a vast 
 number of distinct parts and objects, each small in itself, and 
 leading to nothing else. A sky of Claude's cannot fall under 
 this censure, where one imperceptible gradation is as it were the 
 scale to another, where the broad arch of heaven is piled up of 
 endlessly intermediate gold and azure tints, and where an infinite 
 number of minute, scarce noticed particulars blend and melt into
 
 8S TABLE TALK 
 
 universal harmony. The subtlety in Shakspeare, of which there 
 is an immense deal everywhere scattered up and down, is always 
 the instrument of passion, the vehicle of character. The action 
 of a man pulling his hat over his forehead is indifferent -enough 
 in itself, and, generally speaking, may mean anything or nothing : 
 but in the circumstances in which Macduff is placed, it is neither 
 insignificant nor equivocal. 
 
 " What ! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows," &c. 
 
 It admits but of one interpretation or inference, that which fol- 
 lows it : 
 
 " Give sorrow words : the grief that does not speak, 
 Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break." 
 
 The passage in the same play, in which Duncan and his attend- 
 ants are introduced commenting on the beauty and situation of 
 Macbeth's castle, though familiar in itself, has been often praised 
 for the striking contrast it presents to the scenes which follow. 
 The same look in different circumstances may convey a totally 
 different expression. Thus the eye turned round to look at you 
 without turning the head indicates generally slyness or suspicion ; 
 but if this is combined with large expanded eye-lids or fixed eye- 
 brows, as we see it in Titian's pictures, it will denote calm con- 
 templation or piercing sagacity, without anything of meanness or 
 fear of being observed. In other cases, it may imply merely 
 indolent enticing voluptuousness, as in Lely's portraits of women. 
 The languor and weakness of the eye-lids gives the amorous turn 
 to the expression. How should there be a rule for all this be- 
 forehand, seeing it depends on circumstances ever varying, and 
 scarce discernible but by their effect on the mind ? Rules are 
 applicable to abstractions, but expression is concrete and indivi- 
 dual. We know the meaning of certain looks, and we feel how 
 they modify one another in conjunction. But we cannot have a 
 separate rule to judge of all their combinations in different de- 
 grees and circumstances, without foreseeing all those combina- 
 tions, which is impossible : or if we did foresee them, we should
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. g> 
 
 only be where we are ; that is, we could only make the rule as 
 we now judge without it, from imagination and the feeling of the 
 moment. The absurdity of reducing expression to a preconcert- 
 ed system was perhaps never more evidently shown than in a 
 picture of the Judgment of Solomon by so great a man as N. 
 Poussin, which I once heard admired for the skill and discrimina- 
 tion of the artist in making all the women, who are ranged on 
 one side, in the greatest alarm at the sentence of the judge, 
 while all the men on the opposite side see through the design of 
 it. Nature does not go to work or cast things in a regular mould 
 in this sort of way. I once heard a person remark of another 
 " He has an eye like a vicious horse." This was a fair analogy. 
 We all, I believe, have noticed the look of a horse's eye, just 
 before he is going to bite or kick. But will any one, therefore, 
 describe to me exactly what that look is ? It was the same acute 
 observer that said of a self-sufficient prating music-master " He 
 talks on all subjects at sight" which expressed the man at once 
 by an allusion to his profession. The coincidence was indeed per- 
 feet. Nothing else could compare to the easy assurance with which 
 this gentleman would volunteer an explanation of things of which 
 he was most ignorant, but the nonchalance with which a musician 
 sits down to a harpsichord to play a piece he has never seen before. 
 My physiognomical friend would not have hit on this mode of illus- 
 tration without knowing the profession of the subject of his criti- 
 cism ; but having this hint given him, it instantly suggested itself 
 to his " sure trailing." The manner of the speaker was evident ; 
 and the association of the music-master sitting down to play at 
 sight, lurking in his mind, was immediately called out by the 
 strength of his impression of the character. The feeling of cha- 
 racter, and the felicity of invention in explaining it, were nearly 
 allied to each other. The first was so wrought up and running 
 over, that the transition to the last was easy and unavoidable. 
 When Mr. Kean was so much praised for the action of Richard 
 in his last struggle with his triumphant antagonist, where he 
 stands, after his sword is 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," he said that he 
 borrowed it from seeing the last efforts of Painter in his fight with
 
 90 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Oliver. This assuredly did not lessen the merit of it. Thus it 
 ever is with the man of real genius. He has the feeling of truth 
 already shrined in his own breast, and his eye is still bent on na- 
 ture to see how she expresses herself. When we thoroughly un- 
 derstand the subject, it is easy to translate from one language into 
 another. Raphael, in muffling up the figure of Elymas the Sor- 
 cerer in his garments, appears to have extended the idea of blind- 
 ness even to his clothes. Was this design ? Probably not ; but 
 merely the feeling of analogy thoughtlessly suggesting this de- 
 vice, which being so suggested was retained and carried on, be- 
 cause it flattered or fell in with the original feeling. The tide of 
 passion, when strong, overflows and gradually insinuates itself 
 into all nooks and corners of the mind. Invention (of the best 
 kind) I therefore do not think so distinct a thing from feeling, as 
 some are apt to imagine. The springs of pure feeling will rise 
 and fill the moulds of fancy that are fit to receive it. There are 
 some striking coincidences of color in well-composed pictures, as 
 in a straggling weed in the foreground streaked with blue or red 
 to answer to a blue or red drapery, to the tone of the flesh or an 
 opening in the sky : not that this was intended, or done by rule 
 (for then it would presently become affected and ridiculous), but 
 the eye being imbued with a certain color, repeats and varies it 
 from a natural sense of harmony, a secret craving and appetite 
 for beauty which in the same manner soothes and gratifies the 
 eye of taste though the cause is not understood. Tact, finesse, 
 is nothing but the being completely aware of the feeling be- 
 longing to certain situations, passions, &c, and the being con- 
 sequently sensible to their slightest indications or movements in 
 others. One of the most remarkable instances of this sort of 
 (acuity is the following story, told of Lord Shaftesbury, the 
 grandfather of the author of the Characteristics. He had been 
 to dine with Lady Clarendon and her daughter, who was at that 
 time privately married to the Duke of York (afterwards James 
 II.) and as he returned home with another nobleman who had 
 accompanied him, he suddenly turned to him, and said, "De- 
 pend upon it, the Duke has married Hyde's daughter.'* His 
 companion could not comprehend what he meant ; but on ex- 
 plaining himself, he said, " Her mother behaved to her with an
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 1 
 
 attention and a marked respect that it is impossible to ac- 
 count for in any other way ; and I am sure of it." His con- 
 jecture shortly afterwards proved to be the truth. This was 
 carrying the prophetic spirit of common sense as Ail. as it 
 could go.
 
 TABLE TAL. 
 
 ESSAY VIII. 
 The same subject continued. 
 
 Genius or originality is, for the most part, some strong qualify in 
 the mind, answering to and bringing out some new and striking 
 quality in nature. 
 
 Imagination is, more properly, the power of carrying on a given 
 feeling into other situations, which must be done best according 
 to the hold which the feeling itself has taken of the mind.* In 
 new and unknown combinations, the impression must act by sym- 
 pathy, and not by rule ; but there can be no sympathy, where 
 there is no passion, no original interest. The personal interest 
 may in some cases oppress and circumscribe the imaginative 
 faculty, as in the instance of Rousseau : but in general the 
 strength and consistency of the imagination will be in proportion 
 to the strength and depth of feeling ; and it is rarely that a man 
 even of lofty genius will be able to do more than carry on his own 
 feelings and character^, or some prominent and ruling passion, into 
 fictitious and uncommon situations. Milton has by allusion em- 
 bodied a great part of his political and personal history in the 
 nhief characters and incidents of Paradise Lost. He has, no 
 doubt, wonderfully adapted and heightened them, but the elements 
 are the same ; you trace the bias and opinions of the man in ths 
 creations of the poet. Shakspeare (almost alone) seems to have 
 been a man of genius, raised above the definition of genius. 
 " Born universal heir to all humanity," he was " as one, in suf- 
 fering all who suffered nothing ;" with a perfect sympathy with 
 all things, yet alike indifferent to all : who did not tamper with 
 nature or warp her to his own purposes ; who " knew all quali- 
 
 * I do not here speak of the figurative or fanciful exercise of the imagina- 
 tion, which consists in finding out some striking ot ject or image to illus- 
 trate another.
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 93 
 
 ties with a learned spirit," instead of judging of them by his own 
 predilections ; and was rather " a pipe for the Muse's finger to 
 play what stop she pleased," than anxious to set up any character 
 or pretensions of his own. His genius consisted in the faculty of 
 transforming himself at will into whatever he chose : his original- 
 ity was the power of seeing every object from the exact point of 
 view in which others would see it. He was the Proteus of human 
 intellect. Genius in ordinary is a more obstinate and less versa- 
 tile thing. It is sufficiently exclusive and self-willed, quaint and 
 peculiar. It does some one thing by virtue of doing nothing else : 
 it excels in some one pursuit by being blind to all excellence but 
 its own. It is just the reverse of the cameleon ; for it does not 
 borrow, but lends its colors to all about it : or like the glow-worm, 
 discloses a little circle of gorgeous light in the twilight of obscur- 
 ity, in the night of intellect, that surrounds it. So did Rem- 
 brandt. If ever there was a man of genius, he was one, in the 
 proper sense of the term. He lived in and revealed to others a 
 world of his own, and might be said to have invented a new view 
 of nature. He did not discover things out of nature, in fiction or 
 fairy land, or make a voyage to the moon " to descry new lands, 
 rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe," but saw things in nature 
 that every one had missed before him, and gave others eyes to 
 see them with. This is the test and triumph of originality, not to 
 show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very 
 easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before 
 our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of 
 its existence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of deter- 
 mined grasp of mind to seize and retain it. Rembrandt's con- 
 quests were not over the ideal, but the real. He did not contrive 
 a new story or character, but we nearly owe to him a fifth part 
 of painting, the knowledge of chiaroscuro a distinct power and 
 element in art and nature. He had a steadiness, a firm keeping 
 of mind and eye, that first stood the shock of " fierce extremes" 
 in light and shade, or reconciled the greatest obscurity and the 
 greatest brilliancy into perfect harmony ; and he therefore was 
 the first to hazard this appearance upcn canvas, and give full 
 effect to what he saw and delighted in. He was led to adopt this 
 style of broad and startling contrast from its congeniality to his
 
 94 TABLE TALK. 
 
 own feelings : his mind grappled with that which afforded tha 
 best exercise to its master-powers : he was bold in act, because 
 he was urged on by a strong native impulse. Originality is then 
 nothing but nature and feeling working in the mind. A man 
 does not affect to be original : he is so, because he cannot help it, 
 and often without knowing it. This extraordinary artist indeed 
 might be said to have had a particular organ for color. His eye 
 seemed to come in contact with it as a feeling, to lay hold of it. as 
 a substance, rather than to contemplate it as a visual object. 
 The texture of his landscapes is " of the earth, earthy" his 
 clouds are humid,* heavy, slow ; his shadows are " darkness that 
 may be felt," a " palpable obscure ;" his lights are lumps of 
 liquid splendor ; there is something more in this than can be 
 accounted for from design or accident : Rembrandt was not a 
 man made up of two or three rules and directions for acquiring 
 genius. 
 
 I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory a character of 
 Mr. Wordsworth, though he, too, like Rembrandt, has a faculty 
 of making something out of nothing, that is, out of himself, by the 
 medium through which he sees and with which he clothes the 
 barrenest subject. Mr. Wordsworth is the last man to " look 
 abroad into universality," if that alone constituted genius : he 
 looks at home into himself, and is " content with riches fineless." 
 He would in the other case be " poor as winter," if he had 
 nothing but general capacity to trust to. He is the greatest, that 
 is, the most original poet of the present day, only because he is 
 the greatest egotist. He is " self-involved, not dark." He sits 
 in the centre of his own being, and there " enjoys bright day." 
 He does not waste a thought on others. Whatever does not 
 relate exclusively and wholly to himself, is foreign to his views. 
 He contemplates a whole-length figure of himself, he looks along 
 the unbroken line of his personal identity. He thrusts aside all 
 other objects, all other interests, with scorn and impatience, that 
 he may repose on his own being, that he may dig out the trea- 
 sures of thought contained in it, that he may unfold the precious 
 stores of a mind for ever brooding over itself. His genius is the 
 effect of his individual character. He stamps that character, that 
 deep individual interest, on whatever he meets. The object js
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 95 
 
 nothing but as it furnishes food for internal meditation, for old 
 associations. If there had been no other being in the universe, Mr. 
 Wordsworth's poetry would have been just what it is. If there 
 had been neither love nor friendship, neither ambition nor plea- 
 sure nor business in the world, the author of the Lyrical Ballads 
 need not have been greatly changed from what he is might still 
 have " kept the noiseless tenor of his way," retired in the sanc- 
 tuary of his own heart, hallowing the Sabbath of his own thoughts. 
 With the passions, the pursuits, and imaginations of other men, 
 he does not profess to sympathize, but " finds tongues in the trees, 
 books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every 
 thing." With a mind averse from outward objects, but ever 
 intent upon its own workings, he hangs a weight of thought and 
 feeling upon every trifling circumstance connected with his past 
 history. The note of the ouckoo sounds in his ear like the voice 
 of other years ; the daisy spreads its leaves in the rays of boyish 
 delight, that stream from his thoughtful eyes ; the rainbow lifts 
 Us proud arch in heaven but to mark his progress from infancy 
 to manhood ; an old thorn is buried, bowed down under the mass 
 of associations he has wound about it ; and to him, as he himself 
 beautifully says, 
 
 " The meanest flow'r that blows can give 
 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 It is this power of habitual sentiment, or of transferring the interest 
 of our conscious existence to whatever gently solicits attention, 
 and is a link in the chain of association, without rousing our pas- 
 sions or hurting our pride, that is the striking feature in Mr. 
 Wordsworth's mind and poetry. Others have felt and shown this 
 power before, as Withers, Burns, &c, but none have felt it so 
 intensely and absolutely as to lend to it the voice of inspiration, as 
 to make it the foundation of a new style and school in poetry. 
 His strength, as it so often happens, arises from the excess of his 
 weakness. But he has opened a new avenue to the human heart, 
 has explored another secret haunt and nook of nature, " sacred 
 to verse, and sure of everlasting fame." Compared with his 
 lines, Lord Byron's stanzas are but exaggerated common-place;
 
 96 TABLE TALK. 
 
 and Walter Scott's poetry (not his prose) old wives' fables.* 
 There is no one in whom I have been more disappointed than in 
 the writer here spoken of, nor with whom I am more disposed on 
 certain points to quarrel : but the love of truth and justice which 
 obliges me to do this, will not suffer me to blench his merits. Do 
 what he can, he cannot help being an original-minded man. His 
 poetry is not servile. While the cuckoo returns in the spring, 
 while the daisy looks bright in the sun, while the rainbow lifts its 
 head above the storm 
 
 " Yet I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 
 And all that thou hast done for me !" 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, in endeavoring to show that there is no such 
 thing as proper originality, a spirit emanating from the mind of 
 the artist and shining through his works, has traced Raphael 
 through a number of figures which he has borrowed from Masac- 
 cio and others. This is a bad calculation. If Raphael had only 
 borrowed those figures from others, would he, even in Sir Joshua's 
 sense, have been entitled to the praise of originality ? Plagiarism, 
 I presume, in so far as it is plagiarism, is not originality. Salva- 
 tor is considered by many as a great genius. He was what they 
 call an irregular genius. My notion of genius is not exactly the 
 same as theirs. It has also been made a question whether there 
 is not more genius in Rembrandt's Three Trees than in all Claude 
 Lorraine's landscapes ? I do not know how that may be : but 
 it was enough for Claude to have been a perfect landscape- 
 painter. 
 
 Capacity is not the same thing as genius. Capacity may be 
 described to relate to the quantity of knowledge, however ac- 
 quired ; genius to its quality and the mode of acquiring it. Ca- 
 pacity is a power over given ideas or combinations of ideas ; 
 genius is the power over those which are not given, and for which 
 no obvious or precise rule can be laid down. Or capacity is 
 power of any sort : genius is power of a different sort from what 
 has yet been shown. A retentive memory, a clear undeTstand- 
 
 Mr. Wordsworth himself should not say this, and yet I am not fcure be 
 would nut.
 
 ON GKNIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 7 
 
 ing is capacity, but it is not genius. The admirable Crichton 
 was a person of prodigious capacity ; but there is no proof (that I 
 know of) that he had an atom of genius. His verses that remain 
 are dull and sterile. He could learn all that was known of any 
 subject : he could do anything if others could show him the way 
 to do it. This was very wonderful : but that is all you can say of 
 it. It requires a good capacity to play well at chess : but, after all, 
 it is a game of skill, and not of genius. Know what you will of 
 it, the understanding still moves in certain tracks in which others 
 have trod before it, quicker or slower, with more or less compre- 
 hension and presence of mind. The greatest skill strikes out 
 nothing for itself, from its own peculiar resources ; the nature of 
 the game is a thing determinate and fixed : there is no royal or 
 poetical road to check-mate your adversary. There is no place 
 for genius but in the indefinite and unknown. The discovery of 
 the binomial theorem was an effort of genius ; but there was none 
 shown in Jedediah Buxton's being able to multiply 9 figures by 
 9 in his head. If he could have multiplied 90 figures by 90 in- 
 stead of nine, it would have been equally useless toil and trouble.* 
 He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable intellectual 
 riches : he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of new ore. 
 Originality is the seeing nature differently from others, and yet 
 as it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the dis- 
 covery of new and valuable truth. All the world do not see the 
 whole meaning of any object they have been looking at. Habit 
 blinds them to some things ; short-sightedness to others. Every 
 
 * The only good thing I ever heard come of this man's singular faculty of 
 memory was the following. A gentleman was mentioning his having been 
 sent up to London from the place where he lived to see Garrick act. When 
 he went back into the country, he was asked what he thought of the player 
 and the play. " Oh !" he said, " he did not know : he had only seen a 
 little man strut about the stage, and repeat 7956 words." We all laughed 
 at this, but a person in one corner of the room, holding one hand to his 
 forehead, and seeming mightily delighted, called out, " Ay, indeed ! And 
 pray, was he found to be correct ?" This was the supererogation of literal 
 matter-of-fact curiosity. Jedediah Buxton's counting the number of word> 
 was idle enough ; but here was a fellow who wanted some one to count 
 them over again to see if he was correct. 
 
 " The force of dulness could nc farther 150 f 
 SECOND SERIES PART I. 8
 
 TABLE TALK. 
 
 mind is not a gauge and measure of truth. Nature has her sur 
 face and her dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. 
 It is only minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that 
 can penetrate her shrine or unveil her Holy of Holies. It is only 
 those whom she has filled with her spirit that have the boldness 
 or the power to reveal her mysteries to others. But nature has a 
 thousand aspects, and one man can only draw out one of them. 
 Whoever does this, is a man of genius. One displays her force, 
 another her refinement, one her power of harmony, another her 
 suddenness of contrast, one her beauty of form, another her splen- 
 dor of color. Each does that for which he is best fitted by his 
 particular genius, that is to say, by some quality of mind into 
 which the quality of the object sinks deepest, where it finds the 
 most cordial welcome, is perceived to its utmost extent, and where 
 again it forces its way out from the fulness with which it has 
 taken possession of the mind of the student. The imagination 
 gives out what it has first absorbed by congeniality of tempera- 
 ment, what it has attracted and moulded into itself by elective 
 affinity, as the loadstone draws and impregnates iron. A little 
 originality is more esteemed and sought for than the greatest 
 acquired talent, because it throws a new light upon things, and is 
 peculiar to the individual. The other is common ; and may be 
 had for the asking, to any amount. 
 
 The value of any work is to be judged of by the quantity of 
 originality contained in it. A very little of this will go a great 
 way. If Goldsmith had never written anything but the two or 
 three first chapters of the Vicar of Wakefield, or the character of 
 a Village-Schoolmaster, they would have stamped him a man of 
 genius. The Editors of Encyclopedias are not usually reckoned 
 the first literary characters of the age. The works, of which 
 they have the management, contain a great deal of knowledge, 
 like chests or warehouses, but the goods are not their own. We 
 should as soon think of admiring the shelves of a library ; but the 
 shelves of a library are useful and respectable. 1 was once 
 applied to, in a delicate emergency, to write an article on a diffi- 
 cult subject for an Encyclopedia, and was advised to take time 
 and give it a systematic and scientific form, to avail myself of all 
 the knowledge that was to be obtained on the subject, and arrange
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 99 
 
 it with clearness and method. I made answer that as to the first, 
 I had taken time to do all that I ever pretended to do, as I had 
 thought incessantly on different matters for twenty years of mv 
 life* ; that I had no particular knowledge of the subject in ques- 
 tion, and no head for arrangement ; and that the utmost I could 
 do in such a case would be, when a systematic and scientific 
 article was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to insert a 
 remark or illustration of my own (not to be found in former En- 
 cyclopedias) or to suggest a better definition than had been offered 
 in the text. There are two sorts of writing. The first is com- 
 pilation ; and consists in collecting and stating all that is already 
 known of any question in the best possible manner, for the bene- 
 fit of the uninformed reader. An author of this class is a very 
 learned amanuensis of other people's thoughts. The second sort 
 proceeds on an entirely different principle. Instead of bringing 
 down the account of knowledge to the point at which it has 
 already arrived, it professes to start from that point on the 
 strength of the writer's individual reflections ; and supposing the 
 reader in possession of what is already known, supplies deficien- 
 cies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the beaten road in search 
 of new tracts of observation or sources of feeling. It is in vain 
 to object to this last style that it is disjointed, disproportioned, and 
 irregular. It is merely a set of additions and corrections to other 
 men's works, or to the common stock of human knowledge, print- 
 ed separately. You might as well expect a continued chain of 
 reasoning in the notes to a book. It skips all the trite, interme- 
 diate, level common-places of the subject, and only stops at the 
 difficult passages of the human mind, or touches on some striking 
 point that has been overlooked in previous editions. A view of 
 a subject, to be connected and regular, cannot be all new. A 
 writer will always be liable to be charged either with paradox or 
 common-place, either with dullness or affectation. But we have 
 no right to demand from any one more than he pretends to. 
 There is indeed a medium in all things, but to unite opposite ex- 
 cellences, is a task ordinarily too hard for mortality. He who 
 
 * Sir Joshua Reynolds being asked how long it had taken him to do a cer 
 tain picture, made answer, " All his life." 
 
 22
 
 100 TABLE TALK. 
 
 succeeds in what he aims at, or who takes the lead in any one 
 mode or path of excellence, may think himself very well off. It 
 would not be fair to complain of the style of an Encyclopedia as 
 dull, as wanting volatile salt ; nor of the style of an Essay be- 
 cause it is too light and sparkling, because it is not a caput mor- 
 tuum. So it is rather an odd objection to a work that is made up 
 entirely of " brilliant passages " at least it is a fault that can 
 be found with few works, and the book might be pardoned for its 
 singularity. The censure might indeed seem like adroit flattery, 
 if it were not passed on an author whom any objection is suffi- 
 cient to render unpopular and ridiculous. I grant it is best to 
 unite solidity with show, general information with particular inge- 
 nuity. This is the pattern of a perfect style : but I myself do not 
 pretend to be a perfect writer. In fine, we do not banish light 
 French wines from our tables, or refuse to taste sparkling Cham- 
 pagne when we can get it, because it has not the body of Old 
 Port. Besides, I do not know that dulness is strength, or that an 
 observation is slight, because it is striking. Mediocrity, insipi- 
 dity, want of character, is the great fault. Mediocribus esse poe- 
 tis non Dii, non homines, non concessere columns. Neither is this 
 privilege allowed to prose-writers in our time, any more than to 
 poets formerly. 
 
 It is not then acuteness of organs or extent of capacity that 
 constitutes rare genius or produces the most exquisite models of 
 art, but an intense sympathy with some one beauty or distinguish- 
 ing characteristic in nature. Irritability alone, or the interest 
 taken in certain things, may supply the place of genius in weak 
 and otherwise ordinary minds. As there are certain instruments 
 fitted to perform certain kinds of labor, there are certain minds 
 so framed as to produce certain chef-cVccuvres in art and litera- 
 ture, which is surely the best use they can be put to. If a man 
 had all sorts of instruments in his shop and wanted one, he would 
 rather have that one than be supplied with a double set of all the 
 others. If he had them all twice over, he could only do what he 
 can do as it is, whereas without that one he perhaps cannot finish 
 any one work he has in hand. So if a man can do one thing 
 better than anybody else, the value of this one thing is what he 
 must stand or fall by, and his being able to do a hundred other
 
 ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE. 
 
 things merely as well as anybody else, would not alter the sen- 
 tence or add to his respectability ; on the contrary, his being 
 able to do so many other things well would probably interfere 
 with and encumber him in the execution of the only thing that 
 others cannot do as well as he, and so far be a draw-back and a 
 disadvantage. More people in fact fail from a multiplicity of 
 talents and pretensions than from an absolute poverty of resour- 
 ces. I have given instances of this elsewhere. Perhaps Shak- 
 speare's tragedies would in some respects have been better, if he 
 had never written comedies at all ; and in that case, his come- 
 dies might well have been spared, though they might have cost 
 us some regret. Racine, it is said, might have rivalled Moliere 
 in comedy ; but he gave up the cultivation of his comic talents 
 to devote himself wholly to .he tragic Muse. If, as the French 
 tell us, he in consequence attained to the perfection of tragic com- 
 position, this was better than writing comedies as well as Mo- 
 liere and tragedies as well as Crebillon. Yet I count those per. 
 sons fools who think it a pity Hogarth did not succeed better ir 
 serious subjects. The division of labor is an excellent principle 
 in taste as well as in mechanics. Without, this, I find from 
 Adam Smith, we could not have a pin made to the degree of per- 
 fection it is. We do not, on any rational scheme of criticism, 
 inquire into the variety of a man's excellences, or the number of 
 his works, or his facility of production. Venice Preserved is suf- 
 ficient for Otway's fame. I hate all those nonsensical stories 
 about Lopez de Vega and his writing a play in a morning before 
 breakfast. He had time enough to do it after. If a man leaves 
 behind him any work which is a model in its kind, we have no 
 right to ask whether he could do anything else, or how he did it, 
 or how long he was about it. All that talent which is not neces- 
 sary to the actual quantity of excellence existing in the world, 
 loses its object, is so much waste talent or talent to let. I heard 
 a sensible man say he should like to do some one thing better 
 than all the rest of the world, and in everything else to be like 
 all the rest of the world. Why should a man do more than his 
 part ? The rest is vanity and vexation of spirit. We look with 
 jealous and grudging eye at all those qualifications which are not 
 essential ; first, because they are superfluous, and next, because
 
 102 TABLE TALK. 
 
 we suspect they will be prejudicial. Why does Mr. Kean play 
 all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing, fencing, &c. ? 
 They say, " It is for his benefit." It is not for his reputation. 
 Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But he 
 was first, not second-rate in both. There is not a greater imper- 
 tinence than to ask, if a man is clever out of his profession. I 
 have heard of people trying to cross-examine Mrs. Siddons. I 
 would as soon try to entrap one of the Elgin Marbles into an 
 argument. Good nature and common sense are required from 
 all people : but one proud distinction is enough for any one indi- 
 vidual to possess or to aspire to !
 
 HOT AND COLD 103 
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 Hot and Cold. 
 
 M Hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, 
 
 Strive here for mastery." Milton. 
 
 *' The Protestants are much cleaner than the Catholics," said a 
 shopkeeper of Vevay to me. " They are so," I replied, " but 
 why should they ?" A prejudice appeared to him a matter-of- 
 fact, and he did not think it necessary to assign reasons for a mat- 
 ter-of-fact. That is not my way. He had not bottomed his pro- 
 position on proofs, nor rightly defined it. 
 
 Nearly the same remark, as to the extreme cleanliness of the 
 poeple in this part of the country, had occurred to me as soon as 
 I got to Brigg, where however the inhabitants are Catholics. So 
 the original statement requires some qualification as to the mode 
 of enunciation. I had no sooner arrived in this village, which is 
 situated just under the Simplon, and where you are surrounded 
 with glaciers and goitres, than the genius of the place struck me 
 on looking out at the pump under my window the next morning, 
 where the " neat-handed Phyllises " were washing their greens 
 in the water, that not a caterpillar could crawl on them, and 
 scouring their pails and tubs that not a stain should be left in 
 them. The raw, clammy feeling of the air was in unison with 
 the scene. I had not seen such a thing in Italy. They have 
 there no delight in splashing and dabbling in fresh streams and 
 fountains they have a dread of ablutions and abstersions, almost 
 amounting to hydrophobia. Heat has an antipathy in nature to 
 cold. The sanguine Italian is chilled and shudders at the touch 
 of cold water, while the Helvetian boor, whose humors creep 
 through his veins like the dank mists along the sides of his frozen 
 mountains, is " native and endued unto that element." Here 
 everything* is purified and filtered : there it is baked and burnt
 
 104 TABLE TALK 
 
 up, and sticks together in a most amicable union of filth and lazi- 
 ness. There is a little mystery and a little contradiction in the 
 case let us try if we cannot get rid of both by means of caution 
 and daring together. It is not that the difference of latitude be- 
 tween one side of the Alps and the other can signify much ; but 
 the phlegmatic blood of their German ancestors is poured down 
 the valleys of the Swiss like water, and iced in its progress ; 
 whereas that of the Italians, besides its vigorous origin, is en- 
 riched and ripened by basking in more genial plains. A single 
 Milanese market-girl (to go no farther south) appeared to me to 
 have more blood in her body, more fire in her eye (as if the sun 
 had made a burning lens of it), more spirit and probably more 
 mischief about her than all the nice, tidy, good-looking, hard- 
 working girls I have seen in Switzerland. To turn this physiog- 
 nomical observation to a metaphysical account, I should say then 
 that Northern people are clean and Southern people dirty as a 
 general rule, because where the principle of life is more cold, 
 weak, and impoverished, there is a greater shyness and aversion 
 to come in contact with external matter (with which it does not. 
 so easily amalgamate), a greater fastidiousness and delicacy in 
 choosing its sensations, a greater desire to know surrounding ob- 
 jects and to keep them clear of each other, than where this prin- 
 ciple being more warm and active, it may be supposed to absorb 
 outward impressions in itself, to melt them into its own essence, 
 to. impart its own vital impulses to them, and in fine, instead of 
 shrinking from everything, to be shocked at nothing. The South- 
 ern temperament is (so to speak) more sociable with matter, more 
 gross, impure, indifferent, from relying on its own strength ; while 
 that opposed to it, from being less able to react on external appli- 
 cations, is obliged to be more cautious and particular as to the 
 kind of excitement to which it renders itself liable. Hence the 
 timidity, reserve, and occasional hypocrisy of Northern manners ; 
 the boldness, freedom, levity, and frequent licentiousness of 
 Southern ones. It would be too much to say, that if there is any- 
 thing of which a genuine Italian has a horror, it is of cleanli- 
 ness ; or that if there is anything which seems ridiculous to a 
 thoroughly-bred Italian woman, it is modesty : but certainly the 
 degree to which nicety is carried by some people is a bore to an
 
 HOT AND COLD. Wo 
 
 Italian imagination, as the excess of delicacy which is pretended 
 or practised by some women is quite incomprehensible to the 
 females of the South. It is wrong, however, to make the greater 
 confidence or forwardness of manners an absolute test of morals : 
 the love of virtue is a different thing from the fear or even hatred 
 of vice. The squeamishness and prudery in the one case, have 
 a more plausible appearance ; but it does not follow that there 
 may not be more native goodness and even habitual refinement in 
 the other, though accompanied with stronger nerves and a less 
 morbid imagination. But to return to the first question.* I can 
 readily understand how a Swiss peasant should stand a whole 
 morning at a pump, washing cabbages, cauliflowers, salads, and 
 getting rid half a dozen times over of the sand, dirt, and insects 
 they contain, because I myself should not only be gravelled by 
 meeting with the one at table, but should be in horrors at the 
 other. A Frenchman or an Italian would be thrown into convul- 
 sions of laughter at this superfluous delicacy, and would think his 
 repast enriched or none the worse for such additions. The re- 
 luctance to prey on life, or on what once had it, seems to arise 
 from a sense of incongruity, from the repugnance between life 
 and death from the cold, clammy feeling which belongs to the 
 one, and which is enhanced by the contrast to its former warm, 
 lively state, and by the circumstance of its being taken into the 
 mouth, and devoured as food. Hence the desire to get rid of the 
 idea of the- living animal even in ordinary cases by all the dis- 
 guises of cookery, of boiled and roast, and by the artifice of 
 changing the name of the animal into something different when 
 it becomes food.j" Hence sportsmen are not devourers of game, 
 
 * Women abroad (generally speaking) are more like men in the tone of 
 their conversation and habits of thinking, so that from the same premises 
 you cannot draw the same conclusions as in England. 
 
 f This circumstance is noticed in Ivanhoe, though a different turn is 
 given to it by the philosopher of Rotherwood. 
 
 " Nay, I can tell you more," said Wamba in the same tone, " there is 
 old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under 
 the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou ; but becomes Beef, a fiery 
 French gallant, when he arrives before the, worshipful jaws that are des- 
 tined to consume him. Mynheer Calf too becomes Monsieur de Veau in 
 like manner: he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman 
 name when he becomes matter of enjoyment." Vol. i.. Chan, 1 
 
 22
 
 106 TABLE TALK. 
 
 nd hence the aversion to kill the animals we eat.* There is 
 a contradiction between the animate and inanimate, which is felt 
 as matter of peculiar annoyance by the more cold and congealed 
 temperament which cannot so well pass from one to the other ; 
 but this objection is easily swallowed by the inhabitant of gayer 
 and more luxurious regions, who is so full of life himself that he 
 can at once impart it to all that comes in his way, or never trou- 
 bles himself about the difference. So the Neapolitan bandit 
 takes the life of his victim with little remorse, because he has 
 enough and to spare in himself: his pulse still beats warm and 
 vigorous, while the blood of a more humane native of the frozen 
 North would run cold with horror at the sight of the stiffened 
 corse, and this makes him pause before he stops in another the 
 gushing source, of which he has such feeble supplies in himself. 
 The wild Arab of the Desert can hardly entertain the idea of 
 death, neither dreading it for himself nor regretting it for others. 
 The Italians, Spaniards, and people of the South swarm alive 
 without being sick or sorry at the circumstance : they hunt the 
 accustomed prey in each other's tangled locks openly in the streets 
 and on the highways, without manifesting shame or repugnance : 
 combs are an invention of our Northern climes. Now I can com- 
 prehend this, when I look at the dirty, dingy, greasy, sun- burnt 
 complexion of an Italian peasant or beggar, whose body seems 
 alive all over with a sort of tingling, oily sensation, so that from 
 any given particle of his shining skin to the beast " whose name 
 signifies love," the transition is but small. This populousness is 
 not unaccountable where all teems with life, where all is glowing 
 and in motion, and every pore thrills with an exuberance of feel- 
 ing. Not so in the dearth of life and spirit, in the drossy, dry, 
 material texture, the clear complexions and fair hair of the Saxon 
 races, where the puncture of an insect's sting is a solution of their 
 personal identity, and the idea of life attached to and courting an 
 intimacy with them in spite of themselves, naturally produces all 
 the revulsions of the most violent antipathy, and nearly drives 
 them out of their wits. How well the smooth ivory comb and 
 
 * Hence the peculiar horror of cannibalism from the stronger symp \thy 
 with our own sensations, and the greater violence that is done to it by the 
 sacrilegious use of what once possessed human life and feeling.
 
 HOT AND COLD 107 
 
 auburn hair agree while the G/eek dandy, on entering a room, 
 applies his hand to brush a cloud of busy stragglers from his hair 
 like powder, and gives himself no more concern about them than 
 about the motes dancing in the sun- beams ! The dirt of the Ita- 
 lians is as it were baked into them, and so ingrained as to be- 
 come a part of themselves, and occasion :/o discontinuity of their 
 being, 
 
 I can forgive the dirt and sweat of a gipsy under a hedge, 
 when I consider that the earth is his mother, the sun is his father. 
 He hunts vermin for food : he is himself hunted like vermin for 
 prey. His existence is not one of choice, but of necessity. The 
 hungry Arab devours the raw shoulder of a horse. This again 
 I can conceive. His feverish blood seethes it, and the virulence 
 of his own breath carries off the disagreeableness of the smell. I 
 do not see that the horse should be reckoned among unclean ani- 
 mals, according to any notions I have of the matter. The divid- 
 ing of the hoof or the contrary, I should think, has not anything 
 to do with the question. I can understand the distinction between 
 beasts of prey and the herbivorous and domestic animals, but the 
 horse is tame. The natural distinction between clean and unclean 
 animals (which has been sometimes made into a religious one) I 
 take to depend on two circumstances, viz. the claws and bristly 
 hide, which generally, though not always, go together. One 
 would not wish to be torn in pieces instead of making a comforta- 
 ble meal, " to be supped upon" where we thought of supping. 
 With respect to the wolf, the tiger, and other animals of the same 
 species, it seems a question which of us should devour the other : 
 this baulks our appetite by distracting our attention, and we have 
 so little relish for being eaten ourselves, or for the fangs and teeth 
 of these shocking animals, that it gives us a distaste for their 
 whole bodies. The horror we conceive at preying upon them 
 arises in part from the fear we had of being preyed upon by them. 
 No such apprehension crosses the mind with respect to the deer, 
 the sheep, the hare "here all is conscience and tender heart." 
 These gentle creatures (whom we compliment as useful) offer no 
 resistance to the knife, and there is therefore nothing shocking or 
 repulsive in the idea of devoting them to it. There is no confu 
 sion of ideas, but a beautiful simplicity and uniformity in our re- 
 
 22*
 
 108 TABLE TALK 
 
 lation to each other, we as the slayers, they as the slain. A per- 
 fect understanding subsists on the subject. The hair of animals 
 of prey is also strong and bristly, and forms an obstacle to our 
 Epicurean designs. The calf or fawn is sleek and smooth : the 
 bristles on a dog's or cat's back are like " the quills upon the 
 fretful porcupine," a very impracticable repast to the imagination, 
 that stick in the throat and turn the stomach. Who has not read 
 and been edified by the account of the supper of Gil Bias ? Be- 
 sides, there is also in all probability the practical consideration 
 urged by Voltaire's traveller, who being asked " which he pre- 
 ferred black mutton or white ?" replied, " Either, provided it 
 was tender." The greater rankness in the flesh is however accom- 
 panied by a corresponding irritability of surface, a tenaciousness, 
 a pruriency, a soreness to attack, and not that fine, round, pam- 
 pered passiveness to impressions which cuts up into handsome 
 joints and entire pieces without any fidgetty process, and with an 
 obvious view to solid, wholesome nourishment. Swine's flesh, the 
 abomination of the Jewish law, certainly comes under the objec- 
 tion here stated ; and the bear with its shaggy fur is only smug- 
 gled into the Christian larder as half-brother to the wild boar, and 
 because from its lazy, lumpish character and appearance, it seems 
 matter of indifference whether it eats or is eaten. The horse, 
 with sleek round haunches, is fair game, except from custom ; 
 and I think I could survive having swallowed part of an ass's foal 
 without being utterly loathsome to myself* Mites in a rotten 
 cheese are endurable, from being so small and dry that they are 
 
 * Thomas Cooper of Manchester, the able logician and political partisan, 
 tried the experiment some years ago, when he invited a number of gentle 
 men and officers quartered in the town to dine with him on an ass's foal in- 
 stead of a calf 's-head, on the anniversary of the 30th of January The cir- 
 cumstance got wind, and gave great offence. Mr. Cooper had to attend a 
 county-meeting soon after at Boulton-le-Moors, and one of the county ma- 
 gistrates coming to the inn for the same purpose, and when he asked " If 
 any one was in the room ?" receiving for answer " No one but Mr. Cooper 
 of Manchester" ordered out his horse and immediately rode home again. 
 Some verses made on the occasion by Mr. Scarlett and Mr. Shepherd of 
 Gateacre explained the story thus 
 
 " The reason how this came to pass is 
 
 The Justice had heard that Cooper ate asses !"
 
 HOT AND COLD. j09 
 
 scarce distinguishable from the atoms of the cheese itself, " so 
 drossy and divisible are they :" but the Lord deliver me from 
 their more thriving next-door neighbors ! Animals that are made 
 use of as food should either be so small as to be imperceptible, or 
 else we should dig into the quarry of life, hew away the masses, 
 and not leave the form standing to reproach us with our gluttony 
 and cruelty. I hate to see a rabbit trussed, or a hare brought to 
 table in the form which it occupied while living : they seem to 
 me apparitions of the burrowers in the earth or the rovers in the 
 wood, sent to scare away appetite. One reason why toads and 
 serpents are disgusting, is from the way in which they run against 
 or suddenly cling to the skin ; the encountering them causes a 
 solution of continuity, and we shudder to feel a life which is not 
 ours in contact with us. It is this disjointed or imperfect sympa- 
 thy which in the recoil produces the greatest antipathy. Sterne 
 asks why a sword, which takes away life, may be named without 
 offence, though other things, which contribute to perpetuate it, 
 cannot ? Because the idea in the one case is merely painful, and 
 there is no mixture of the agreeable to lead the imagination on to 
 a point from which it must make a precipitate retreat. The 
 morally indecent arises from the doubtful conflict between temp- 
 tation and duty : the physically revolting is the product of alter- 
 nate attraction and repulsion, of partial adhesion, or of something 
 that is foreign to us sticking closer te our persons than we could 
 wish. The nastiest tastes and smells are not the most pungent 
 and painful, but a compound of sweet and bitter, of the agreeable 
 and disagreeable ; where the sense, having been relaxed and ren- 
 dered effeminate as it were by the first, is unable to contend with 
 the last, faints and sinks under it, and has no way of relieving 
 itself but by violently throwing off the load that oppresses it. 
 Hence loathing and sickness. But these hardly ever arise with- 
 out something contradictory or impure in the objects, or unless the 
 mind, having been invited and prepared to be gratified at first, this 
 expectation is turned to disappointment and disgust. Mere pains, 
 mere pleasures do not have this effect, save from an excess of the 
 first causing insensibility and then a faintness ensues, or of the 
 last, causing what is called a surfeit. Sea-sickness has some 
 analogy to this. It comes on with that unsettled motion of tlio
 
 110 TABLE TALK 
 
 ship, which takes away the ordinary footing or firm hold we have 
 of things, and by relaxing our perceptions, unbraces the whole 
 nervous system. The giddiness and swimming of the head on 
 looking down a precipice, when we are ready with every breath 
 of imagination to topple down into the abyss, has its source in the 
 same uncertain and rapid whirl of the fancy through possible ex- 
 tremes. Thus we find that for cases of fainting, sea-sickness, 
 &c, a glass of brandy is recommended as " the sovereign'st thing 
 on earth," because by grappling with the coats of the stomach 
 and bringing our sensations to a focus, it does away that nauseous 
 fluctuation and suspense of feeling which is the root of the mis- 
 chief. I do not know whether I make myself intelligible, for the 
 utmost I can pretend is to suggest some very subtle and remote 
 analogies : but if I have at all succeeded in opening up the train 
 of argument I intend, it will at least be possible to conceive how 
 the sanguine Italian is less nice in his intercourse with material 
 objects, less startled at incongruities, less liable to take offence, 
 than the more literal and conscientious German, because the more 
 headstrong current of his own sensations fills up the gaps and 
 " makes the odds all even." He does not care to have his cab- 
 bages and salads washed ten times over, or his beds cleared of 
 vermin : he can lend or borrow satisfaction from all objects in- 
 differently. The air over his head is full of life, of the hum of 
 insects ; the grass under his feet rings and is loud with the cry 
 of the grasshopper ; innumerable green lizards dart from the rocks 
 and sport before him : what signifies it if any living creature ap- 
 proaches nearer his own person, where all is one vital glow ? 
 The Indian even twines the forked serpent round his hand un- 
 harmed, copper-colored like it, his veins as heated ; and the Brah- 
 min cherishes life and disregards his own person as an act of his 
 religion the religion of fire and of the sun ! Yet how shall we 
 reconcile to this theory the constant ablutions (five times a day) 
 of the Eastern nations, and the squalid customs of some Northern 
 people, the dirtiness of the Russians and of the Scotch ? Super- 
 stition may perhaps account for the one, and poverty and bar- 
 barism for the other.* 
 
 * What a plague Moses had with his Jews to make them " reform and 
 live cleanly !" To this day (according to a learned traveller) the Jews,
 
 HOT AND COLD. Ill 
 
 Laziness has a great deal to do in the question, and this again 
 is owing to a state of feeling sufficient to itself, and rich in enjoy- 
 ment without the help of action. Clothilde (the finest and darkest 
 of the Gensano girls) fixes herself at her door about noon (when 
 her day's work is done) : her smile reflects back the brightness 
 of the sun, she darts upon a little girl with a child in her arms, 
 nearly overturns both, devours it with kisses, and then resumes 
 her position at the door, with her hands behind her back and her 
 shoes down at heel. This slatternliness and negligence is the 
 more remarkable in so fine a girl, and one whose ordinary cos- 
 tume is a gorgeous picture, but it is a part of the character ; her 
 dress would never have been so rich, if she could take more pains 
 about it they have no nervous or fidgetty feeling whether a thing 
 is coming off or not : all their sensations, as it were, sit loose upon 
 them. Their clothes are no part of themselves, they even fling 
 their limbs about as if they scarcely belonged to them ; the heat 
 in summer requires the utmost freedom and airiness (which be- 
 comes a habit), and they have nothing tight-bound or strait-laced 
 about their minds or bodies. The same girl in winter (for " dull, 
 cold winter does inhabit here " also) would have a scaldalelto (an 
 earthen pan with coals in it) dangling at her wrists for four months 
 together, without any sense of incumbrance or distraction, or any 
 other feeling but of the heat it communicated to her hands. She 
 does not mind its chilling the rest of her body or disfiguring her 
 hands, making her fingers look like " long purples " these 
 children of nature " take the good the Gods provide them," and 
 trouble themselves little about consequences or appearances. 
 Their self-will is much stronger than their vanity they have as 
 little curiosity about others as concern for their good opinion. 
 Two Italian peasants talking by the roadside will not so much as 
 turn their heSds to look at an English carriage that is passing. 
 They have no interest except in what is personal, sensual. Hence 
 they have as little tenaciousness on the score of property as in the 
 acquisition of ideas. They want neither. Their good spirits are 
 
 vherever scattered, have an aversion to agriculture and almost to its pro- 
 lucts ; and a Jewish girl will refuse to accept a flower if you offer her a 
 piece of money, of jewellery or embroidery, she knows well enough what to 
 make of the proffered courtesy. See Hacquefs Travels in Carpathia, Sfc
 
 M2 TABLE TALK. 
 
 food, clothing, and books to them. They are fond of comfort too, 
 but their notion of it differs from ours ours consists in accumu- 
 lating the means of enjoyment, theirs in being free to enjoy, in 
 the dear far niente. What need have they to encumber them- 
 selves with furniture or wealth or business, when all they require 
 (for the most part) is air, a bunch of grapes, bread, and stone- 
 walls ? The Italians, generally speaking, have nothing, do 
 nothing, want nothing, to the surprise of foreigners, who ask how 
 they live ? The men are too lazy to be thieves, the women to be 
 something else. The dependence of the Swiss and English on 
 their comforts, that is, on all " appliances and means to boot," as 
 nelps to enjoyment or hindrances to annoyance, makes them not 
 only eager to procure different objects of accommodation and 
 luxury, but makes them take such pains in their preservation and 
 embellishment, and pet them so when acquired. " A man," says 
 Yorick, " finds an apple, spits upon it, and calls it his." The 
 more any one finds himself clinging to material objects for exist- 
 ence or gratification, the more he will take a personal interest in 
 them, and the more will he clean, repair, polish, scrub, scour, and 
 tug at them without end, as if it were his own soul that he was 
 keeping clear from spot or blemish. A Swiss dairy-maid scours 
 the very heart out of a wooden pail ; a scullion washes the taste 
 as well as the worms out of a dish of brocoli. The wenches are 
 in like manner neat and clean in their own persons, but insipid. 
 The most coarse and ordinary furniture in Switzerland has more 
 pains bestowed upon it to keep it in order, than the finest works 
 of art in Italy. There the pictures are suffered to moulder on the 
 walls ; and the Claudes in the Doria Palace at Rome are black 
 with age and dirt. We set more store by them in England, where 
 we have scarce any other sunshine ! At the common inns on this 
 side the Simplon, the very sheets have a character"for whiteness 
 to lose ; the rods and testers of the beds are like a peeled wand. 
 On the opposite side you are thankful when you are not shown 
 into an apartment resembling a three-stalled stable, with horse- 
 cloths for coverlids to hide the dirt, and beds of horse-hair or 
 withered leaves as harborage for vermin. The more, the mer- 
 rier ; the dirtier, the warmer ; live and let live, seem maxims in- 
 culcated by the climate. Wherever things are not kept carefullv
 
 HOT AND COLD. ,13 
 
 apart from foreign admixtures and contamination, the distinctions 
 of property itself will not, I conceive, be held exceedingly sacred. 
 This feeling is strong as the passions are weak. A people that 
 are remarkable for cleanliness, will be so for industry, for hones- 
 ty, for avarice, and vice versa. The Italians cheat, steal, rob 
 (when they think it worth their while to do so) with licensed im 
 punity : the Swiss, who feel the value of property, and labor in- 
 cessantly to acquire it, are afraid to lose it. At Brigg I first heard 
 the cry of watchmen at night, which I had not heard for many 
 months. I was reminded of the traveller who after wandering in 
 remote countries saw a gallows near at hand, and knew by this 
 circumstance that he approached the confines of civilisation. The 
 police in Italy is both secret and severe, but it is directed chiefly 
 to political and not to civil matters. Patriot sighs are heaved un- 
 heard in the dungeons of St. Angelo : the Neapolitan bandit 
 breathes the free air of his native mountains ! 
 
 It may by this time be conjectured wtiy Catholics are less 
 cleanly than Protestants, because in fact they are less scrupulous, 
 and swallow whatever is set before them in matters of faith as well 
 as other things. Protestants, as such, are captious and scrutiniz- 
 ing, try to pick holes and find fault, have a dry, meagre, penu- 
 rious imagination. Catholics are buoyed up over doubts and diffi- 
 culties by a greater redundance of fancy, and make religion sub- 
 servient to a sense of enjoyment. The one are for detecting and 
 weeding out all corruptions and abuses in doctrine or worship : 
 the others enrich theirs with the dust and cobwebs of antiquity, 
 and think their ritual none the worse for the tarnish of age. 
 Those of the Catholic Communion are willing to take it for granted 
 that everything is right ; the professors of the Reformed religion 
 have a pleasure in believing that everything is wrong, in order 
 that they may have to set it right. In morals, again, Protestants 
 are more precise than their Catholic brethren. The creed of the 
 latter absolves them of half their duties, of all those that are a 
 clog on their inclinations, atones for all slips, and patches up all 
 deficiencies. But though this may make them less censorious 
 and sour, I am not sure that it renders them less in earnest in the 
 part they do perform. When more is left to freedom of choice, 
 perhaps the service that is voluntary will be pur^r and more 
 
 SECOND SERIES PART I. 9
 
 114 TABLE TALK. 
 
 effectual. That which is not so may as well be done by proxy; 
 or if it does not come from the heart, may be suffered to exhale 
 merely from the lips. If less is owing in this case to a dread of 
 'ice and fear of shame, more will proceed from a love of virtue, 
 iree from the least sinister construction. It is asserted that Italian 
 women are more gross ; I can believe it, and that they are at the 
 same time more refined than others. Their religion is in the same 
 manner more sensual : but is it not to the full as visionary and 
 imaginative as any ? I have heard Italian women say things that 
 others would not it does not therefore follow that they would do 
 them : partly because the knowledge of vice that makes it familiar 
 renders it indifferent ; and because the same masculine tone of 
 thinking that enables them to confront vice, may raise them above 
 it into a higher sphere of sentiment. If their senses are more 
 inflammable, their passions (and their love of virtue and of reli- 
 gion among the rest) may glow with proportionable ardor. Indeed 
 the truest virtue is that which is least susceptible of contamination 
 from its opposite. I may admire a Raphael, and yet not swoon 
 at sight of a daub. Why should there not be the same taste in 
 morals as in pictures or poems ? Granting that vice has more 
 votaries here, at least it has fewer mercenary ones, and this is no 
 trifling advantage. As to manners, the Catholics must be allowed 
 to carry it over all the world. The better sort not only say nothing 
 to give you pain ; they say nothing of others that it would give 
 them pain to hear repeated. Scandal and tittle-tattle are long 
 banished from good society. After all, to be wise is to be humane. 
 What would our English blue-stockings say to this ? The fault 
 and the excellence of Italian society is, that the shocking or dis- 
 agreeable is not supposed to have an existence in the nature of 
 things.* 
 
 * The dirt and comparative want of conveniences among Catholics is often 
 attributed to the number of their Saints' days and festivals, which divert 
 fiem from labor, and give them an idle and disorderly turn of mind.
 
 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION. 115 
 
 ESSAY X. 
 
 On thought and action. 
 
 Those persons who are much accustomed to abstract contempla. 
 tion are generally unfitted for active pursuits and vice versa. 1 
 myself am sufficiently decided and dogmatical in my opinions, 
 and yet in action I am as imbecile as a woman or a child. I 
 cannot set about the most indifferent thing without twenty efforts, 
 and had rather write one of these Essays than have to seal a 
 letter. In trying to throw a hat or a book upon a table I miss 
 it ; it just reaches the edge and falls back again, and instead of 
 doing what I mean to perform, I do what I intend to avoid. 
 Thought depends on the habitual exercise of the speculative 
 faculties ; action on the determination of the will. The one 
 assigns reasons for things, the other puts causes into act. Abra- 
 ham Tucker relates of a friend of his, an old special pleader, 
 that once coming out of his chambers in the Temple with him to 
 take a walk, he hesitated at the bottom of the stairs which way 
 to go proposed different directions, to Charing-Cross, to St. Paul's 
 found some objection to them all, and at last turned back for 
 want of a casting motive to incline the scale. Tucker gives 
 this as "an instance of professional indecision, or of that temper 
 of mind which having been long used to weigh the reasons for 
 things with scrupulous exactness, could not come to any conclu- 
 sion at all on the spur of the occasion, or without some grave 
 distinction to justify its. choice. Louvet, in his Narrative, tells 
 us, that when several of the Brissotin party were collected at the 
 house of Barbaroux (I think it was) ready to effect their escape 
 from the power of Robespierre, one of them going to the window 
 and finding a shower of rain coming on, seriously advised their 
 stopping till the next morning, for that the emissaries of govern- 
 ment would not think of coming in search of them in such bad 
 weather. Some of them deliberated on this wise proposal, and
 
 113 TABLE TALK. 
 
 were nearly taken. Such is the effeminacy of the speculative 
 and philosophical temperament, compared with the promptness 
 and vigor of the practical ! It is on such unequal terms that the 
 refined and romantic speculators on possible good and evil con- 
 tend with their strong-nerved, remorseless adversaries, and we 
 see the result. Reasoners in general are undecided, wavering, 
 and sceptical, or yield at last to the weakest motive, as most con- 
 genial to their feeble habit of soul.* 
 
 Some men are mere machines. They are put in a go-cart of 
 business, and are harnessed to a profession yoked to fortune's 
 wheels. They plod on, and succeed. Their affairs conduct 
 them, not they their affairs. All they have to do is to let things 
 take their course, and not go out of the beaten road. A man 
 may carry on the business of farming on the same spot and 
 principle that his ancestors have done for many generations be- 
 fore him without any extraordinary share of capacity : the proof 
 is, it is done every day in every county and parish in the king- 
 dom. All that is necessary is that he should not pretend to be 
 wiser than his neighbors. If he has a grain more wit or pene- 
 tration than they, if his vanky gets the start of his avarice only 
 half a neck, if he has ever thought or read anything upon the 
 subject, it will most probably be the ruin of him. He will turr. 
 theoretical or experimental farmer, and no more need be said. 
 Mr. Cobbett, who is a sufficiently shrewd and practical man, 
 with an eye also to the main chance, had got some notions in his 
 head (from Tull's Husbandry) about the method of sowing tur- 
 nips, to which he would have sacrificed not only his estate at 
 Botley, but his native county of Hampshire itself, sooner than 
 give up an inch of his argument. " Tut ! will you baulk a man 
 in the career of his humor?" Therefore, that a man may not 
 be ruined by his humors, he should be too dull and phlegmatic to 
 have any : he must have " no figures nor no fantasies which busy 
 
 * When Bonaparte left the Chamber of Deputies to go and fight his 
 last fatal battle, he advised them not to be debating the forms of Constitu- 
 tions when the enemy was at their gates. Benjamin Constant thought 
 otherwise. He wanted to play a game at cafs-cradle between the Repub- 
 licans and Royalists, and lost hi > v. atch. He did not care, so that he ham 
 pereu a more emcient man man lumseu.
 
 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION. 117 
 
 thought draws in the brains of men." The fact is, that the in- 
 genuity or judgment of no one man is equal to that of the world 
 at large, which is the fruit of the experience and ability of all 
 mankind. Even where a man is right in a particular notion, he 
 will be apt to over-rate the importance of his discovery, to the 
 detriment of his affairs. Action requires co-operation, but in 
 general if you set your face against custom, people will set their 
 faces against you. They cannot tell whether you are right or 
 wrong, but they know that you are guilty of a pragmatical 
 assumption of superiority over them, which they do not like. 
 There is no doubt that if a person two hundred years ago had 
 foreseen and attempted to put in practice the most approved and 
 successful methods of cultivation now in use, it would have been 
 a death-blow to his credit and fortune. So that though the 
 experiments and improvements of private individuals from time to 
 time gradually go to enrich the public stock of information and 
 reform the general practice, they are mostly the ruin of the per- 
 son who makes them, because he takes a part for the whole, and 
 lays more stress upon the single point in which he has found 
 others in the wrong, than on all the rest in which they are sub- 
 stantially and prescriptively in the right. The great requisite, 
 it should appear then, for the prosperous management of ordinary 
 business, is the want of imagination, or of any ideas but those 
 of custom and interest on the narrowest scale : and as the affairs 
 of the world are necessarily carried on by the common run of 
 its inhabitants, it seems a wise dispensation of Providence that it 
 should be so. If no one could rent a piece of glebe-land without 
 a genius for mechanical inventions, or stand behind a counter 
 without a large benevolence of soul, what would become of the 
 commercial and agricu'tural interest of this great (and once 
 flourishing) country ? I would not be understood as saying tha* 
 there is not what may be called a genius for business, an extra 
 ordinary capacity for affairs, quickness and comprehension united, 
 an insight into character, an acquaintance with a number of par- 
 ticular circumstances, a variety of expedients, a tact for finding 
 out what will do : I grant all this (in Liverpool and Manchester 
 they would persuade you that your merchant and manufacturer 
 is your only gentleman and scholar) but still, making every
 
 118 TABLE TALK. 
 
 allowance for the difference between the liberal trader and the 
 sneaking shop-keeper, I doubt whether the most surprising suc- 
 cess is to be accounted for from any such unusual attainments, or 
 whether a man's making half a million of money is a proof 
 of his capacity for thought in general. It is much oftener 
 owing to views and wishes bounded but constantly directed to 
 one particular object. To succeed, a man should aim only at 
 success. The child of Fortune should resign himself into the 
 hands of Fortune. A plotting head frequently overreaches itself: 
 a mind confident of its resources and calculating powers enters 
 on critical speculations, which, in a game depending so much on 
 chance and unforeseen events, and not entirely on intellectual 
 skill, turn the odds greatly against any one in the long run. The 
 rule of business is to take what you can get, and keep what you 
 have got : or an eagerness in seizing every opportunity that offers 
 for promoting your own interest, and a plodding persevering in- 
 dustry in making the most of the advantages you have already 
 obtained, are the most effectual as well as safest ingredients in 
 the composition of the mercantile character. The world is a 
 book in which the Chapter of Accidents is none of the least con- 
 siderable ; or it is a machine that must be left, in a great mea- 
 sure, to turn itself. The most that a worldly-minded man can 
 do is, to stand at the receipt of custom, and be constantly on the 
 look-out for windfalls. The true devotee in this way waits for 
 the revelations of Fortune as the poet waits for the inspiration of 
 the Muse, and does not rashly anticipate her favors. He must 
 be neither capricious nor wilful. I have known people untram- 
 melled in the ways of business, but with so intense an apprehen- 
 sion of their own interest, that they would grasp at the slightesl 
 possibility of gain as a certainty, and were led into as many mis- 
 takes by an over-griping usurious disposition as they could have 
 been by the most thoughtless extravagance. We hear a great 
 outcry about the want of judgment in men of genius. It is not 
 a want of judgment, but an excess of other things. They err 
 knowingly, and are wilfully blind. The understanding is out of 
 the question. The profound judgment which soberer people 
 pique themselves upon is in truth a want of passion and imagina- 
 tion. Give them an interest in anything, a sudden fancy, a bait
 
 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION. 119 
 
 for their favorite foible, and who so besotted as they ? Stir their 
 feelings, and farewell to their prudence 1 The understanding 
 operates as a motive to action only in the silence of the passions. 
 I have heard people of a sanguine temperament reproached with 
 betting according to their wishes, instead of their opinion who 
 should win : and I have seen those who reproached them do the 
 very same thing the instant their own vanity or prejudices were 
 concerned. The most mechanical people, once thrown off their 
 balance, are the most extravagant and fantastical. What passion 
 is there so unmeaning and irrational as avarice itself? The 
 
 Dutch went mad for tulips, and for love ! To return 
 
 to what was said a little way back, a question might be started, 
 whether, as thought relates to the whole circumference of things 
 and interests, and business is confined to a very small part of 
 them, viz. to a knowledge of a man's own affairs and the making 
 of his own fortune, whether a talent for the latter will not gene- 
 rally exist in proportion to the narrowness and grossness of his 
 ideas, nothing drawing his attention out of his own sphere, or 
 giving him an interest except in those things which he can realize 
 and bring home to himself in the most undoubted shape ? To 
 the man of business all the world is a fable but the Stock-Ex- 
 change : to the money-getter nothing has a real existence that he 
 cannot convert into a tangible feeling, that he does not recognize 
 as property, that he cannot " measure with a two-foot rule or 
 count upon ten fingers." The want of thought, of imagination, 
 drives the practical man upon immediate realities : to the poet or 
 philosopher all is real and interesting that is true or possible, 
 that can reach in its consequences to others, or be made a subject 
 of curious speculation to himself! 
 
 But is it right, then, to judge of action by the quantity of 
 thought implied in it, any more than it would be to condemn a 
 life of contemplation for being inactive ? Or has not everything 
 a source and principle of its own, to which we should refer it, 
 and not to the principles of other things ? He who succeeds in 
 any pursuit in which others fail, may be presumed to have quali- 
 ties of some sort or other which they are without. If he has 
 not brilliant wit, he may have solid sense ; if he has not subtlety 
 of understanding, he may have energy and firmness of purpose,
 
 120 TABLE TALK. 
 
 if he has only a few advantages, he may have modesty and pru- 
 dence to make the most of what he possesses. Propriety is one 
 great matter in the conduct of life ; which, though like a grace- 
 ful carriage of the body, it is neither definable nor striking at 
 first sight, is the result of finely balanced feelings, and lends a 
 secret strength and charm to the whole character. 
 
 Quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia vertit, 
 
 Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor. 
 
 There are more ways than one in which the various faculties of 
 the mind may unfold themselves. Neither words, nor ideas re- 
 ducible to words, constitute the utmost limit of human capacity. 
 Man is not a merely talking nor a merely reasoning animal. Let 
 us then take him as he is, instead of " curtailing him of nature's 
 fair proportions " to suit our previous notions. Doubtless, there 
 are great characters both inactive and contemplative life. There 
 have been heroes as well as sages, legislators and founders of 
 religion, historians and able statesmen and generals, inventors of 
 useful arts and instruments, and explorers of undiscovered coun- 
 tries, as well as writers and readers of books. It will not do to 
 set all these aside under any fastidious or pedantic distinction. 
 Comparisons are odious, because they are impertinent, and lead 
 only to the discovery of defects by making one thing the standard 
 of another which has no relation to it. If, as some one proposed, 
 we were to institute an inquiry, "Which was the greatest man, 
 Milton or Cromwell, Bonaparte or Rubens ?" we should have 
 all the authors and artists on one side, and all the military men 
 and the whole diplomatic body on the other, who would set to 
 work with all their might to pull in pieces the idol of the other 
 party ; and the longer the dispute continued, the more would each 
 grow dissatisfied with his favorite, though determined to allow no 
 merit to any one else. The mind is not well competent to take 
 in the full impression of more than one style of excellence ot one 
 extraordinary character at once ; contradictory claims puzzle 
 and stupefy it ; and however admirable any individual may be 
 in himself, and unrivalled in his particular way, yet if we try 
 him by others in a totally opposite class, that is, if we consHei 
 not what he was but what he was not, he will be found to be
 
 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION. 121 
 
 nothing. We do not reckon up the excellences on either side, 
 for then these would satisfy the mind and put an end to the com- 
 parison : we have no way of exclusively setting up our favorite 
 but by running down his supposed rival ; and for the gorgeous 
 hues of Rubens, the lofty conceptions of Milton, the deep policy 
 and cautious daring of Cromwell, or the dazzling exploits and 
 fatal ambition of the modern chieftain, the poet is transformed into 
 a pedant, the artist sinks into a mechanic, the politician turns out 
 no better than a knave, and the hero is exalted into a madman. 
 It is as easy to get the start of our antagonist in argument by frivo- 
 lous and vexatious objections to one side of the question, as it is 
 difficult to do full and heaped justice to the other. If I am asked 
 which is the greatest of those who have been the greatest in dif- 
 ferent ways, I answer the one that we happen to be thinking of 
 at the time, for while that is the case, we can conceive of nothing 
 higher. If there is a propensity in the vulgar to admire the 
 achievements of personal prowess or instances of fortunate enter- 
 prise too much, it cannot be denied that those who have to weigh 
 out and dispense the meed of fame in books, have been too much 
 disposed, by a natural bias, to confine all merit and talent to the 
 productions of the pen, or at least to those works which, being 
 artificial or abstract representations of things, are transmitted to 
 posterity, and cried up as models in their kind. This, though 
 unavoidable, is hardly just. Actions pass away and are forgot- 
 ten, or are only discernible in their effects : conquerors, states- 
 men, and kings live by their names stamped on the page of his- 
 tory. Hume says rightly that more people think about Virgil 
 and Homer (and that continually) than ever trouble their heads 
 about Caesar or Alexander. In fact, poets are a longer-lived race 
 than heroes : they breathe more of the air of immortality. They 
 survive more entire in their thoughts and acts. We have all 
 that Virgil or Homer did, as much as if we had lived at the same 
 time with them : we can hold their works in our hands, or lay 
 them on our pillows, or put them to our lips. Scarcely a trace 
 of what the others did is left upon the earth, so as to be visible to 
 common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men, still 
 breathing and moving in their writings. The others, the con- 
 ouerors of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. The sympa-
 
 122 TABLE TALK. 
 
 thy (so to speak) between thought and thought is more intimate 
 and vital than that between thought and action. Thought is 
 linked to thought as flame kindles into flame : the tribute of ad- 
 miration to the manes of departed heroism is like burning incense 
 in a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with the progress 
 of time harden into substances : things, bodies, actions, moulder 
 away, or melt into a sound, into thin air ! Yet though the 
 Schoolmen in the middle ages disputed more about the texts of 
 Aristotle than the battle of Arbela, perhaps Alexander's Generals 
 in his life-time admired his pupil as much, and liked him better. 
 For not only a man's actions are effaced and vanish with him ; 
 his virtuous and generous qualities die with him also : his in- 
 tellect only is immortal, and bequeathed unimpaired to posterity. 
 Words are the only things that last for ever. 
 
 If however the empire of words and general knowledge is more 
 durable in proportion as it is abstracted and attenuated, it is less 
 immediate and dazzling : if authors are as good after they are 
 dead as when they were living, while living they might as well 
 be dead : and moreover with respect to actual ability, to write a 
 book is not the only proof of taste, sense, or spirit, as pedants would 
 have us suppose. To do anything well, to paint a picture, to 
 fight a battle, to make a plough or a threshing-machine, requires, 
 one would think, as much skill and judgment as to talk about or 
 write a description of it when done. Words are universal, intel- 
 ligible signs, but they are not the only real, existing things. Did 
 not Julius Caesar show himself as much of a man in conducting 
 his campaigns as in composing his Commentaries ? Or was the 
 Retreat of the Ten Thousand under Xenophon, or his work of 
 that name, the most consummate performance ? Or would not 
 Lovelace, supposing him to have existed and to have conceived 
 and executed all his fine stratagems on the spur of the occasion, 
 have been as clever a fellow as Richardson, who invented them 
 in cold blood ? If to conceive and describe an heroic character 
 is the height of a literary ambition, we can hardly make it out 
 that to be and to do all that the wit of man can feign, is nothing. 
 To use means to ends, tc set causes in motion, to wield the ma- 
 chine of society, to subject the wills of others to your own, to 
 manage abler men than yourself by means of that which is stron.
 
 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION. 123 
 
 ger in them than their wisdom, 'viz. their weakness and their folly, 
 to calculate the resistance of* ignorance and prejudice to your de- 
 signs, and hy obviating to turn them to account, to foresee a long, 
 obscure, and complicated train of events, of chances and openings 
 of success, to unwind the web of others' policy, and weave your 
 own out of it, to judge of the effects of things not in the abstract 
 but with reference to all their bearings, ramifications and impe- 
 diments, to understand character thoroughly, to see latent talent 
 or lurking treachery, to know mankind for what they are, and 
 use them as they deserve, to have a purpose steadily in view and 
 to effect it after removing every obstacle, to master others and be 
 true to yourself, asks power and knowledge, both nerves and 
 brain. 
 
 Such is the sort of talent that may be shown, and that has been 
 possessed by the great leaders on the stage of the world. To 
 accomplish great things argues, 1 imagine, great resolution : to 
 design great things implies no common mind. Ambition is in some 
 sort genius. Though I would rather wear out my life in arguing 
 a broad speculative question than in caballing for the election to 
 a wardmote, or canvassing for votes in a rotten borough, yet I 
 should think that the loftiest Epicurean philosopher might descend 
 from his punctilio to identify himself with the support of a great 
 principle, or to prop a falling state. This is what the legislators 
 and founders of empire did of old ; and the permanence of their 
 institutions showed the depth of the principles from which they 
 emanated. A tragic poem is not the worse for acting well : if it 
 will not bear this test, it savors of effeminacy. Well-digested 
 schemes will stand the touchstone of experience. Great thoughts 
 reduced to practice become great acts. Again, great acts grow 
 out of great occasions, and great occasions spring from great 
 principles, working changes, in society, and tearing it up by the 
 roots. But still I conceive that a genius for action depends 
 essentially on the strength of the will rather than on that of the 
 understanding ; that the long-headed calculation of causes and 
 consequences arises from the energy of the first cause, which is 
 the will, setting others in motion and prepared ,to anticipate the 
 results ; that its sagacity is activity delighting in meeting diffi- 
 culties and adventures more than halfway, and its wisdom cour- 
 
 23
 
 124 v TABLE TALK. 
 
 age not to shrink from danger, but to redouble its efforts with op. 
 position. Its humanity, if it has much, is magnanimity to spare 
 the vanquished, exulting in power but not prone to mischief, with 
 good sense enough to be aware of the instability of fortune, and 
 with some regard to reputation. What may serve as a criterion 
 to try this question by is the following consideration, that we 
 sometimes find as remarkable a deficiency of the speculative 
 faculty coupled with great strength of will and consequent success 
 in active life, as we do a want of voluntary power and total inca- 
 pacity for business, frequently joined to the highest mental quali- 
 fications. In some cases it will happen that " to be wise, is to be 
 obstinate." If you are deaf to reason but stick to your own pur- 
 poses, you will tire others out, and bring them over to your way 
 of thinking. Self-will and blind prejudice are the best defence 
 of actual power and exclusive advantages. The forehead of the 
 late king was not remarkable for the character of intellect, but 
 the lower part of his face was expressive of strong passions and 
 fixed resolution. Charles Fox had an animated, intelligent eye, 
 and brilliant, elastic forehead (with a nose indicating fine taste), 
 but the lower features were weak, unsettled, fluctuating, and 
 without purchase it was in them the Whigs were defeated. 
 What a fine iron binding Bonaparte had round his face, as if it 
 had been cased in steel ! What sensibility about the mouth ! 
 Wiiat watchful penetration in the eye ! What a smooth, unruf- 
 fled forehead ! Mr. Pitt, with little sunken eyes, had a high, 
 retreating forehead, and a nose expressing pride and aspiring self- 
 opinion : it was on that (with submission) that he suspended the 
 decision of the House of Commons, and dangled the Opposition as 
 he pleased. Lord Castlereagh is a man rather deficient than 
 redundant in words and topics. He is not (any more than St. Au- 
 gustine was, in the opinion of La Fontaine) so great a wit as 
 Rabelais, nor is he so great a philosopher as Aristotle : but he 
 has that in him which is not to be trifled with. He has a noble 
 mask of a face (not well filled up in the expression, which is 
 relaxed and dormant), with a fine person and manner. On the 
 strength of these he hazards his speeches in the House. He has 
 also a knowledge of mankind, and of the composition of the House. 
 He takes a thrust which he cannot parry on his shield is, " all
 
 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION. 125 
 
 tranquillity and smiles " under a volley of abuse, sees when to 
 pay a compliment to a wavering antagonist, soothes the melting 
 mood of his hearers, or gets up a speech full of indignation, and 
 knows how to bestow his attentions on that great public body, 
 whether he wheedles or bullies, so as to bring it to compliance. 
 With a long reach of undefined purposes (the result of a temper 
 too indolent for thought, too violent for repose) he has equal per- 
 severance and pliancy in bringing his objects to pass. I would 
 rather be Lord Castlereagh, as far as a sense of power is con- 
 cerned (principle is out of the question), than such a man as Mr. 
 Canning, who is a mere fluent sophist, and never knows the limits 
 of discretion, or the effect which will be produced by what he 
 says, except as far as florid common-places may be depended on. 
 Bonaparte is referred by Mr. Coleridge to the class of active 
 rather than of intellectual characters : and Cowley has left an 
 invidious but splendid eulogy on Oliver Cromwell, which sets out 
 on much the same principle. " What," he says, " can be more 
 extraordinary, than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no 
 eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, 
 which have often raised men to the highest dignities, should have 
 the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so im- 
 probable a design, as the destruction of one of the most ancient 
 and most solidly-founded monarchies upon the earth ? That he 
 should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to 
 an open and infamous death ; to banish that numerous and 
 strongly-allied family ; to do all this under the name and wages 
 of a Parliament ; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and 
 spurn them out of door when he grew weary of them ; to raise 
 up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes ; to stifle 
 that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that 
 ever were called sovereign in England ; to oppress all his ene- 
 mies "by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice ; to serve 
 all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victori- 
 ously at last ; to over-run each corner of the three nations, and 
 overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the 
 poverty of the north ; to be feared and courted by all foreign 
 princes, and adopted a brother to the Gods of the earth ; to call 
 together Parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them
 
 126 TABLE TALK. 
 
 again with the breath of his mouth ; to be humbly and daily pe- 
 titioned that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two mil- 
 lions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before 
 to be their servant ; to have the estates and lives of three king- 
 doms as much at his disposal, as was the little inheritance of his 
 father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them ; 
 and lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory) 
 to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity ; to die with 
 peace at home, and triumph abroad ; to be buried among kings, 
 and with more than regal solemnity ; and to leave a name behind 
 him, not to be extinguished but with the whole world ; which as 
 it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too [narrow] 
 for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have 
 been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs !" 
 
 Cromwell was a bad speaker and a worse writer. Milton wrote 
 his dispatches for him in elegant and erudite Latin : and the pen 
 of the one, like the sword of the other, was " sharp and sweet." 
 We have not that union in modern times of the heroic and lite- 
 rary character which was common among the ancients. Julius 
 Csesar and Xenophon recorded their own acts with equal clear 
 ness of style and modesty of temper. The Duke of Wellington 
 (worse off than Cromwell) is obliged to get Mr. Mudford to write 
 the History of his Life. Sophocles, ./Eschylus, and Socrates, 
 were distinguished for their military prowess among their contem- 
 poraries, though now only remembered for what they did in poe- 
 try and philosophy. Cicero and Demosthenes, the two greatest 
 orators of antiquity, appear to have been cowards : nor does 
 Horace seem to give a very favorable picture of his martia. 
 achievements. But in general there was not that division in the 
 labors of the mind and body among the Greeks and Romans that 
 has been introduced among us either by the progress of civilisa- 
 tion or by a greater slowness and inaptitude of parts. The 
 French, for instance, appear to unite a number of accomplish- 
 ments, the literary character and the man of the world, better 
 than we do. Among us a scholar is almost another name for a 
 pedant or a clown : it is not so with them. Their philosophers 
 and wits went into the world, and mingled in the society of the 
 fair Of this there needs no other proof than the spirited print
 
 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION. 127 
 
 of most of the great names in French literature, to whom Mo- 
 lidre is reading a comedy in the presence of the celebrated Ninon 
 de 1'Enclos. D'Alembert, one of the first mathematicians of his 
 age, was a wit, a man of gallantry and letters. With us a learned 
 man is absorbed in himself and some particular study, and minds 
 nothing else. There is something ascetic and impracticable in his 
 very constitution, and he answers to the description of the Monk 
 in Spenser 
 
 " From every work he challenged essoin 
 For contemplation's sake " 
 
 Perhaps the superior importance attached to the institutions of 
 religion, as well as the more abstracted and visionary nature of 
 its objects, has led (as a general result) to a wider separation be- 
 tween thought and action in modern times. Ambition is of a 
 higher and more heroic strain than avarice. Its objects are 
 nobler, and the means by which it attains its ends less mecha- 
 nical. 
 
 " Better be lord of them that riches have, 
 Than riches have myself, and be their servile slave." 
 
 The incentive to ambition is the love of power ; the spur to 
 avarice is either the fear of poverty, or a strong desire of self- 
 indulgence. The amassers of fortunes seem divided into two 
 opposite classes, lean, penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows 
 who are determined to get possession of, because they want to 
 enjoy the good things of the world. The one have famine and a 
 work-house always before their eyes ; the others, in the fullness 
 of their persons and the robustness of their constitutions, seem to 
 bespeak the reversion of a landed estate, rich acres, fat beeves, a 
 substantial mansion, costly clothing, a chine and turkey, choice 
 wines, and all other good things consonant to the wants and full- 
 fed desires of their bodies. Such men charm fortune by the 
 sleekness of their aspects and the goodly rotundity of their honest 
 faces, as the others scare away poverty by their wan, meagre 
 looks. The last starve themselves into riches by care and cark- 
 ing : the first eat, drink, and sleep their way into the good things
 
 12S TABLE TALK. 
 
 of this life. The greatest number of warm men in the city are 
 
 good, jolly fellows. Look at Sir William , Callipash and 
 
 callipee are written in his face : he rolls about his unwieldy bulk 
 in a sea of turtle-soup. How many haunches of venison does 
 he carry on his back ! He is larded with jobs and - contracts ; he 
 is stuffed and swelled out with layers of bank-notes, and invita- 
 tions to dinner ! His face hangs out a flag of defiance to mis- 
 chance : the roguish twinkle in his eye with which he lures half 
 
 the city and beats Alderman hollow, is a smile reflected 
 
 from heaps of unsunned gold ! Nature and Fortune are not so 
 much at variance as to differ about this fellow. To enjoy the 
 goods the Gods provide us, is to deserve it. Nature meant him 
 for a Knight, Alderman, and City-Member ; and Fortune laughed 
 to see the goodly person and prospects of the man !* I am 
 not, from certain early prejudices, much given to admire 
 the ostentatious marks of wealth (there are persons enough to 
 
 * A thorough fitness for any end implies the means. Where there is 9 
 will, there is a way. A real passion, an entire devotion to any object 
 always succeeds. The strong sympathy with what we wish and imagine, 
 realizes it, dissipates all obstacles, and removes all scruples. The disap- 
 pointed lover may complain as much as he pleases. He was himself to 
 blame. He was a half-witted, wishy-washy fellow. His love might be as 
 great as he makes it out : but it was not his ruling passion. His fear, his 
 pride, his vanity was greater. Let any one's whole soul be steeped in this 
 passion, let him think and care for nothing else, let nothing*divert, cool, or 
 intimidate him, let the ideal feeling become an actual one and take posses- 
 sion of his whole faculties, looks and manner, let the same voluptuous 
 hopes and wishes govern his actions in the presence of his mistress that 
 haunt his fancy in her absence, and I will answer for his success. But I 
 will not answer for the success of " a dish of skimmed milk " in such a 
 case. I could always get to see a fine collection of pictures myself. The 
 fact is, I was set upon it. Neither the surliness of porters, nor the imper- 
 tinence of footmen could keep me back. I had a portrait of Titian in my 
 eye, and nothing could put me out in my determination. If that had not 
 (as it were) been looking on me all the time I was battling my way, I should 
 have been irritated or disconcerted, and gone away. But my liking to the 
 end conquered my scruples or aversion to the means. I never understood 
 the Scotch character but on these occasions. I would not take " No " for 
 an answer. If I had wanted a place under government, or a writership to 
 India, I could have got it from the same importunity, and on the same 
 terms.
 
 ON THOUGHT AND ACTION. 129 
 
 admire ihem without me) but I confess, there is something in the 
 look of the old banking-houses in Lombard-street, the posterns 
 covered with mud, the doors opening sullenly and silently, the ab- 
 sence of all pretence, the darkness and the gloom within, the 
 gleaming of lamps in the day-time, 
 
 " Like a faint shadow of uncertain light," 
 
 that almost realizes the poetical conception of the cave of Mam- 
 mon in Spenser, where dust and cobwebs concealed the roofs and 
 pillars of solid gold, and lifts the mind quite off its ordinary 
 hinges. The account of the manner in which the founder of 
 Guy's Hospital accumulated his immense wealth has always to 
 me something romantic in it, from the same force of contrast. He 
 was a little shop-keeper, and out of his savings bought Bibles, and 
 purchased seamen's tickets in Queen Anne's wars, by which he 
 left a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds. The story sug- 
 gests the idea of a magician ; nor is there anything in the Ara- 
 bian Nights that looks more like a fiction. 
 
 SECOND SERIES PART I. 23
 
 130 TABLE TALK 
 
 ESSAY XL 
 
 On a portrait of an English lady, by Vandyke. 
 
 The portrait I speak of is in the Louvre, where it is numbered 
 416, and the only account of it in the Catalogue is that of a Lady 
 and her daughter. It is companion to another whole-length by 
 the same artist, No. 417, of a Gentleman and a little girl. Both 
 are evidently English. 
 
 The face of the lady has nothing very remarkable in it, but 
 that it may be said to be the very perfection of the English fe- 
 male face. It is not particularly beautiful, but there is a sweet- 
 ness in it, and a goodness conjoined, which is inexpressibly de- 
 lightful. The smooth ivory forehead is a little ruffled, as if some 
 slight cause of uneasiness, like a cloud, had just passed over it. 
 The eyes are raised with a look of timid attention ; the mouth is 
 compressed with modest sensibility ; the complexion is delicate 
 and clear ; and over the whole figure (which is seated) there 
 reign the utmost propriety and decorum. The habitual gentle- 
 ness of the character seems to have been dashed with some 
 anxious thought or momentary disquiet, and, like the shrinking 
 flower, in whose leaves the lucid drop yet trembles, looks out and 
 smiles at the storm that is overblown. A mother's tenderness, a 
 mother's fear, appears to flutter on the surface, and on the ex- 
 treme verge of the expression, and not to have quite subsided 
 into thoughtless indifference or mild composure. There is a re- 
 flection of the same expression in the little child at her knee, 
 who turns her head round with a certain appearance of constraint 
 and innocent wonder ; and perhaps it is the difficulty of getting 
 her to sit (or to sit still) that has caused the transient contraction 
 of her mother's brow, that lovely, unstained mirror of pure 
 affection, too fair, too delicate, too soft and feminine for the breath 
 of serious misfortune ever to come near, or not to crush it. It is
 
 ON A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. 131 
 
 a face, in short, of the greatest purity and sensibility, sweetness 
 and simplicity, or such as Chaucer might have described 
 
 " Where all is conscience and tender heart." 
 
 I have saia that it is an English face ; and I may add (without 
 being invidious) that it is not a French one. I will not say that 
 they have no face to equal this ; of that I am not a judge ; but 
 I am sure they have no face equal to this, in the qualities by 
 which it is distinguished. They may have faces as amiable, but 
 then the possessors of them will be conscious of it. There may 
 be equal elegance, but not the same ease ; there may be even 
 greater intelligence, but without the innocence ; more vivacity, 
 but then.it will run into petulance or coquetry; in short, there 
 may be every other good quality but a total absence of all pre- 
 tension to or wish to make a display of it, but the same unaffected 
 modesty and simplicity. In French faces (and I have seen some 
 that were charming both for the features and expression) there is 
 a varnish of insincerity, a something theatrical or meretricious ; 
 but here, every particle is pure to the " last recesses of the 
 mind." The face (such as it is, and it has a considerable share 
 both of beauty and meaning) is without the smallest alloy of 
 affectation. There is no false glitter in the eyes to make them 
 look brighter : no little wrinkles about the corners of the eye- 
 lids, the effect of self-conceit ; no pursing up of the mouth, no 
 significant leer, no primness, no extravagance, no assumed levity 
 or gravity. You have the genuine text of nature without gloss 
 or comment. There is no heightening of conscious charms to 
 produce greater effect, no studying of airs and graces in the glass 
 of vanity. You have not the remotest hint of the milliner, the 
 dancing-master, the dealer in paints and patches. You have be- 
 fore you a real English lady of the seventeenth century, who 
 looks like one, because she cannot look otherwise ; whose ex- 
 pression of sweetness, intelligence, or concern is just what is 
 natural to her, and what the occasion requires ; whose entire 
 demeanor is the emanation of her habitual sentiments and dis- 
 position, and who is as free from guile or affectation as the little 
 child by her side. I repeat that this is not the distinguishing 
 
 23*
 
 132 TABLE TALK. 
 
 character of the French physiognomy, which, at its best, is often 
 spoiled by a consciousness of what it is, and a restless desire to 
 be something more. 
 
 Goodness of disposition, with a clear complexion and handsome 
 features, is the chief ingredient in English beauty. There is a 
 great difference in this respect between Vandyke's portraits of 
 women and Titian's, of which we may find examples in the 
 Louvre. The picture, which goes by the name of his Mistress, 
 is one of the most celebrated of the latter. The neck of this 
 picture is like a broad crystal mirror ; and the hair which she 
 holds so carelessly in her hand is like meshes of beaten gold. 
 The eyes which roll in their ample sockets, like two shining orbs, 
 and which are turned away from the spectator, only dart their 
 glances the more powerfully into the soul ; and the whoje picture 
 is a paragon of frank cordial grace, and transparent brilliancy 
 of coloring. Her tight boddice compresses her full but finely 
 proportioned waist ; while the tucker in part conceals and almost 
 clasps the snowy bosom. But you never think of anything be- 
 yond the personal attractions, and a certain sparkling intelligence. 
 She is not marble, but a fine piece of animated clay. There is 
 none of that retired and shrinking character, that modesty of de- 
 meanor, that sensitive delicacy, that starts even at the shadow of 
 evil that are so evidently to be traced in the portrait by Van- 
 dyke. Still there is no positive vice, no meanness, no hypocrisy, 
 but an unconstrained elastic spirit of self-enjoyment, more bent 
 on the end than scrupulous about the means ; with firmly braced 
 nerves, and a tincture of vulgarity. She is not like an English 
 lady, nor like a lady at all ; but she is a very fine servant-girl, 
 conscious of her advantages, and willing to make the most 
 of them. In fact, Titian's Mistress answers exactly, I conceive, 
 to the idea conveyed by the English word, sweetheart. The 
 Marchioness of Guasto is a fairer comparison. She is by the 
 supposition a lady, but still an Italian one. There is a honeyed 
 richness about the texture of the skin, and her air is languid from 
 a sense of pleasure. Her dress, though modest, has the marks 
 of studied coquetry about it ; it touches the very limits which it 
 dares not pass ; and her eyes which are bashful and downcast,
 
 ON A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. 133 
 
 do not seem to droop under the fear of observation, but to retire 
 from the gaze of kindled admiration, 
 
 " As if they thrill'd 
 
 Frail hearts, yet quenched not !" 
 
 One might say, with Othello, of the hand with which she holrta 
 the globe that is offered to her acceptance 
 
 " This hand of your's requires 
 
 A sequester from liberty, fasting and pray'r, 
 Much castigation, exercise devout ; 
 For here's a young and melting devil here, 
 That commonly rebels." 
 
 The hands of Vandyke's portrait have the purity and coldness 
 of marble. The color of the face is such as might be breathed 
 upon it by the refreshing breeze ; that of the Marchioness of 
 Guasto's is like the glow it might imbibe from a golden sunset. 
 The expression in the English lady springs, from her duties and 
 her affections ; that of the Italian Countess inclines more to her 
 ease and pleasures. The Marchioness of Guasto was one of 
 three sisters, to whom, it is said, the inhabitants of Pisa proposed 
 to pay divine honors, in the manner that beauty was worshipped 
 by the fabulous enthusiasts of old. Her husband seems to have 
 participated in the common infatuation, from the fanciful homage 
 that is paid to her in this allegorical composition ; and if she was 
 at all intoxicated by the incense offered to her vanity, the painter 
 must be allowed to have " qualified " the expression of it " very 
 craftily." 
 
 I pass on to another female face and figure, that of the Virgin, 
 in the beautiful picture of the Presentation in the Temple, by 
 Guido. The expression here is ideal, and has a reference to 
 visionary objects and feelings. It is marked by an abstraction 
 from outward impressions, a downcast Iook, an elevated brow, 
 an absorption of purpose, a stillness and resignation, that become 
 the person and the scene in which she is engaged. The color i? 
 pale or gone ; so that purified from every grossness, dead to 
 worldly passions, she almost seems like a statue kneeling. W'th
 
 134 TABLE TALK. 
 
 knees bent, and hands uplifted, her motionless figure appears sup- 
 ported by a soul within, all whose thoughts, from the low ground 
 of humility, tend heavenward. We find none of the triumphant 
 buoyancy of health and spirit as in the Titian's Mistress, nor the 
 luxurious softness of the portrait of the Marchioness of Guasto, 
 nor the flexible, tremulous sensibility, nor the anxious attention 
 to passing circumstances, nor the- familiar look of the lady by 
 Vandyke ; on the contrary, there is a complete unity and con- 
 centration of expression, the whole is wrought up and moulded 
 into one intense feeling, but that feeling fixed on objects remote, 
 refined, and etheriel as the form of the fair supplicant. A still 
 greater contrast to this internal, or as it were, introverted ex- 
 pression, is to be found in the group of female heads by the same 
 artist, Guido, in his picture of the Flight of Paris and Helen. 
 They are the three last heads on the left-hand side of the pic- 
 ture. They are thrown into every variety of attitude, as if to 
 take the heart by surprise at every avenue. A tender warmth 
 is suffused over their faces ; their head-dresses are airy and fan- 
 ciful, their complexion sparkling and glossy ; their features seem 
 to catch pleasure from every surrounding object, and to reflect it 
 back again. Vanity, beauty, gaiety glance from their conscious 
 looks and wreathed smiles, like the changing colors from the 
 ring-dove's neck. To sharpen the effect and point the moral, 
 they are accompanied by a little negro-boy, who holds up the 
 train of elegance, fashion, and voluptuous grace ! 
 
 Guido was the " genteelest " of painters ; he was a poetical 
 Vandyke. The latter could give, with inimitable and perfect 
 skill, the airs and graces of people of fashion under their daily 
 and habitual aspects, or as he might see them in a looking-glass. 
 The former saw them in his " mind's eye," and could transform 
 them into supposed characters and imaginary situations. Still 
 the elements were the same. Vandyke gave them with the man- 
 nerism of habit and the individual details ; Guido, as they were 
 rounded into grace and smoothness by the breath of fancy, and 
 borne along by the tide of sentiment. Guido did not want the 
 ideal faculty, though he wanted strength and variety. There is 
 an effeminacy about his pictures, for he gave only the different 
 modifications of beauty. It was the Goddess that inspired him,
 
 ON A PORTRAIT OF VANDVKE. 18S 
 
 the Siren that seduced him ; -and whether as saint or sinner, was 
 equally welcome to him. His creations are as frail as they are 
 fair. They all turn on a passion for beauty, and without this 
 support, are nothing. He could paint beauty combined with 
 pleasure, or sweetness, or grief, or devotion ; but unless it were 
 the ground-work and the primary condition of his performance, 
 he became insipid, ridiculous, and extravagant. There is one 
 thing to be said in his favor ; he knew his own powers or fol- 
 lowed his own inclinations ; and the delicacy of his tact in gene- 
 ral prevented him from attempting subjects uncongenial with it. 
 He " trod the primrose path of dalliance," with equal prudence 
 and modesty. That he is a little monotonous and tame, is all 
 that can be said against him ; and he seldom went out of his 
 way to expose his deficiencies in a glaring point of view. He 
 came round to subjects of beauty at last, or gave them that turn. 
 A story is told of his having painted a very lovely head of a 
 girl, and being asked from whom ,he had taken it, he replied, 
 " From his old man !" This is not unlikely. He is the only 
 great painter (except Correggio) who appears constantly to have 
 subjected what he saw to an imaginary standard. His Magda- 
 lens are more beautiful than sorrowful ; in his Madonnas there 
 is more of sweetness and modesty than of elevation. He makes 
 but little difference between his heroes and his heroines ; his 
 angels are women, and his women angels ! If it be said that he 
 repeated himself too often, and has painted too many Magda- 
 lens and Madonnas, I can only say in answer, " Would he had 
 painted twice as many !" If Guido wanted compass and variety 
 in his art, it signifies little, since what he wanted is abundantly 
 supplied by others. He had softness, delicacy, and ideal grace in a 
 supreme degree, and his fame rests on these as the cloud on the 
 rock. It is to the highest point of excellence in any art or de- 
 partment that we look back with gratitude and admiration, as it 
 is the highest mountain peak that we catch in the distance, and 
 lose sight of only when it turns to air. 
 
 I know of no other difference between Raphael and Guido, 
 than that the one was twice the man the other was. Raphael 
 was a bolder genius, and invented according to nature : Guido 
 only made draughts after his own disposition and character
 
 136 . TABLE TALK. 
 
 There is a common cant of criticism which makes Titian merely 
 a colorist. What he really wanted was invention : he had ex- 
 pression in the highest degree. I declare I have seen heads of 
 his with more meaning in them than any of Raphael's. But he 
 fell short of Raphael in this, that (except in one or two instances) 
 he could not heighten and adapt the expression that he saw to dif- 
 ferent and more striking circumstances. He gave more of what 
 he saw than any other painter that ever lived, and in the imitative 
 part of his art had a more universal genius than Raphael had in 
 composition and invention. Beyond the actual and habitual look 
 of nature, however, " the demon that he served " deserted him, 
 or became a very tame one. Vandyke gave more of the general 
 air and manners of fashionable life than of individual character; 
 and the subjects that he treated are neither remarkable for intel- 
 lect nor passion. They are- people of polished manners and pla- 
 cid constitutions ; and many of the very best of them are " stu- 
 pidly good." Titian's portraits, on the other hand, frequently 
 present a much more formidable than inviting appearance. You 
 would hardly trust yourself in a room with them. You do not 
 bestow a cold, leisurely approbation on them, but look to see what 
 they may be thinking of you, not without some apprehension for 
 the result. They have not the clear smooth skins or the even 
 pulse that Vandyke's seem to possess. They are, for the most 
 part, fierce, wary, voluptuous, subtle, haughty. Raphael painted 
 Italian faces as well as Titian. But he threw into them a cha- 
 racter of intellect rather than of temperament. In Titian the 
 irritability takes the lead, sharpens and gives direction to the un- 
 derstanding. There seems to be a personal controversy between 
 the spectator and the individual whose portrait he contemplates, 
 which shall be master of the other. I may refer to two portraits 
 in the Louvre, the one by Raphael, the other by Titian (Nos. 
 1153 and 1210), in illustration of these remarks. I do not know 
 two finer or more characteristic specimens of these masters, each 
 in its way. The one is of a student dressed in black, absorbed 
 in thought, intent on some problem, with the hands crossed and 
 leaning on a table for support, as it were to give freer scope to 
 the labor of the brain, and though the eyes are directed towards 
 you, it is with evident absence of mind. Not so the other por-
 
 ON A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. >37 
 
 trait, No. 1210. All its faculties are collected to see what it can 
 make of you, as if you had intruded upon it with some hostile 
 design, it takes a defensive attitude, and shows as much vigilance 
 as dignity. It draws itself up, as if to say, " Well, what do you 
 think of me ?" and exercises a discretionary power over you. It 
 has " an eye to threaten and command," not to be lost in idle 
 thought, or in ruminating over some abstruse, speculative proposi- 
 tion. It is this intense personal character which, I think, gives 
 the superiority to Titian's portraits over all others, and stamps 
 them with a living and permanent interest. Of other pictures 
 you tire, if you have them constantly before you ; of his, never. 
 For other pictures have either an abstracted look and you dismiss 
 them, when you have made up your mind on the subject as a 
 matter of criticism ; or an heroic look, and you cannot be always 
 straining your enthusiasm ; or an insipid look, and you sicken of 
 it. But whenever you turn to look at Titian's portraits, they 
 appear to be looking at you ; there seems to be some question pend- 
 ing between you, as though an intimate friend or inveterate foe 
 were in the room with you ; they exert a kind of fascinating 
 power ; and there is that exact resemblance of individual nature 
 which is always new and always interesting, because you cannot 
 carry away a mental abstraction of it, and you must recur to the 
 object to revive it in its full force and integrity. I would as soon 
 have Raphael's or most other pictures hanging up in a Collection, 
 that I might pay an occasional visit to them : Titian's are the 
 only ones that I should wish to have hanging in the same room 
 with me for company ! 
 
 Titian in his portraits appears to have understood the principle 
 of historical design better than anybody. Every part tells, and 
 has a bearing on the whole. There is no one who has such sim- 
 plicity and repose no violence, no affectation, no attempt at fore 
 ing an effect ; insomuch that by the uninitiated he is often con. 
 demned as unmeaning and insipid. A turn of the eye, a com- 
 pression of the lip decides the point. He just draws the face out 
 of its most ordinary state, and gives it the direction he would 
 have it take ; but then every part takes the same direction, and 
 the effect of this united impression (which is absolutely momen- 
 tary and all but habitual) is wonderful. It is that which makes
 
 138 TABLE TALK. 
 
 his portraits the most natural and the most striking in tne world. 
 It may be compared to the effect of a number of small loadstones, 
 that by acting together lift the greatest weights. Titian seized 
 upon the lines of character in the "_"ost original and connected 
 point of view. Thus in his celebrated portrait of Hippolito de 
 Medici, there is a keen, sharpened expression that strikes you, 
 like a blow from the spear that he holds in his hand. The look 
 goes through you ; yet it has no frown, no startling gesticulation 
 no affected penetration. It is quiet, simple, but it almost withers 
 you. The whole face and each separate feature is cast in the same 
 acute or wedge-like form. The forehead is high and narrow, the 
 eye-brows raised and coming to a point in the middle, the nose 
 straight and peaked, the mouth contracted and drawn up at the 
 corners, the chin acute, and the two sides of the face slanting to 
 a point. The number of acute angles which the lines of the face 
 form, are, in fact, a net entangling the attention and subduing the 
 will. The effect is felt at once, though it asks time and considera- 
 tion to understand the cause. It is a face which you would be- 
 ware of rousing into anger or hostility, as you would beware of 
 setting in motion some complicated and dangerous machinery. 
 The possessor of it, you may be sure, is no trifler. Such, indeed, 
 was the character of the man. This is to paint true portrait and 
 true history. So if our artist painted a mild and thoughtful 
 expression, all the lines of the countenance were softened and 
 relaxed. If the mouth was going to speak, the whole face was 
 going to speak. It was the same in color. The gradations are 
 infinite, and yet so blended as to be imperceptible. No two 
 tints are the same, though they produce the greatest harmony 
 and simplicity of tone, like flesh itself. " Tf," said a person, 
 pointing to the shaded side of a portrait of Titian, " you could 
 turn this round to the light, you would find it would be of the 
 same color as the other side !" In short, there is manifest in his 
 portraits a greater tenaciousness and identity of impression than 
 in those of any other painter. Form, color, feeling, character, 
 seemed to adhere to his eye, and to become part of himself; and 
 his pictures, on this account, " leave stings " in the minds of the 
 spectators ! There is, I grant, the same personal appeal, the same 
 point-blank look in some of Raphael's portraits (see those of a
 
 ON A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. 139 
 
 Princess of Arragon and of Count Castiglione, Nos. 1150 and 
 1151 as in Titian : but they want the texture of the skin and the 
 minute individual details to stamp them with the same reality. 
 And again, as to the uniformity of outline in the features, this 
 principle has been acted upon and carried to excess by Kneller 
 and other artists. The eyes, the eye-brows, the nose, the mouth, 
 the chin, are rounded off as if they were turned in a lathe, or as 
 a peruke-maker arranges the curls of a wig. In them it is vile 
 and mechanical, without any reference to truth of character or 
 nature ; and instead of being pregnant with meaning and origi- 
 nality of expression, produces only insipidity and monotony. 
 
 Perhaps what is offered above as a key to the peculiar expres- 
 sion of Titian's heads may also serve to explain the difference 
 between painting or copying a portrait. As the perfection of his 
 faces consists in the entire unity and coincidence of all the parts, 
 so the difficulty of ordinary portrait-painting is to bring them to 
 bear at all, or to piece one feature, or one day's labor, on to ano- 
 ther. In copying, this difficulty does not occur at all. The hu- 
 man face is not one thing, as the vulgar suppose, nor does it 
 remain always the same. It has infinite varieties which the artist 
 is obliged to notice and to reconcile, or he will make strange work. 
 Not only the light and shade upon it do not continue for two 
 minutes the same : the position of the head constantly varies (or 
 if you are strict with a sitter, he grows sullen and stupid), each 
 feature is in motion every moment, even while the artist is work- 
 ing at it, and in the course of a day the whole expression of the 
 countenance undergoes a change, so that the expression which 
 you gave to the forehead or eyes yesterday is totally incompatible 
 with that which you have to give to the mouth to-day. You can 
 only bring it back again to the same point or give it a consistent 
 construction by an effort of imagination, or a strong feeling of 
 character ; and you must connect the features together less by 
 the eye than by the mind. The mere setnng down what you 
 see in this medley of successive, teasing, contradictory impres- 
 sions, would never do ; either you must continually efface what 
 you have done the instant before, or if you retain it, you will 
 produce a piece of patchwork, worse than any caricature. There 
 must be a comprehension of the whole, and in truth a moral sense
 
 140 TABLE TALK. 
 
 (as well as a literal one) to unravel the confusion, and guide 
 you through the labyrinth of shifting muscles and features. 
 You must feel what this means, and dive into the hidden soul, 
 in order to know whether that is as it ought to be ; for you cannot 
 be sure that it remains as it was. Portrait-painting is, then, 
 painting from recollection and from a conception of character, 
 with the object before us to assist the memory and understanding. 
 In copying, on the contrary, one part does not run away and leave 
 you in the lurch, while you are intent upon another. You have 
 only to attend to what is before you, and finish it carefully a bit 
 al a time, and you are sure that the whole will come right. One 
 might parcel it out into squares, as in engraving, and copy one at 
 a time, without seeing or thinking of the rest. I do not say that 
 a conception of the whole, and a feeling of the art will not 
 abridge the labor of copying, or produce a truer likeness ; but 
 it is the changeableness or identity of the object that chiefly con- 
 stitutes the difficulty or facility of imitating it, and, in the latter 
 case, reduces it nearly to a mechanical operation. It is the same 
 in the imitation of still-life, where real objects have not a princi- 
 ple of motion in them. It is as easy to produce a facsimile of a 
 table or a chair as to copy a picture, because these things do not 
 stir from their places any more than the features of a portrait 
 stir from theirs. You may therefore bestow any given degree of 
 minute and continued attention on finishing any given part with- 
 out being afraid that when finished it will not correspond with the 
 rest. Nay, it requires more talent to copy a fine portrait than to 
 paint an original picture of a table or a chair, for the picture has 
 a soul in it, and the table has not. It has been made an objection 
 (and I think a just one) against the extreme high-finishing of the 
 drapery and back-grounds in portraits (to which some schools, 
 particularly the French, are addicted), that it gives an unfinished 
 look to the face, the most important part of the picture. A lady 
 or a gentleman cannot sit quite so long or so still as a lay-figure, 
 and if you finish up each part according to the length of time it 
 will remain in one position, the face will seem to have been painted 
 for the sake of the drapery, not the drapery to set off* the face. 
 There is an obvious limit to everything, if we attend to com- 
 mon sense and feeling. If a carpet or a curtain will admit of
 
 ON A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. Ul 
 
 being finished more than the living face, we finish them less 
 because they excite less interest, and we are less willing to 
 throw away our time and pains upon them. This is the una- 
 voidable result in a natural and well regulated style of art ; 
 but what is to be said of a school where no interest is felt in 
 anything, where nothing is known of any object but that it is 
 there, and where superficial and petty details which the eye can 
 explore, and the hand execute, with persevering and systematic 
 indifference, constitute the soul of art ? 
 
 The expression is the great difficulty in history or portrait- 
 painting, and yet it is the great clue to both. It renders forms 
 doubly impressive from the interest and signification attached to 
 them, and at the same time renders the imitation of them critically 
 nice, by making any departure from the line of truth doubly 
 sensible. Mr. Coleridge used to say, that what gave the roman- 
 tic and mysterious interest to Salvator's landscapes was their 
 containing some implicit analogy to human or other living forms. 
 His rocks had a latent resemblance to the outline of a human 
 face ; his trees had the distorted jagged shape of a satyr's horns 
 and grotesque features. I do not think this is the case ; but it 
 may serve to supply us with an illustration of the present ques- 
 tion. Suppose a given outline to represent a human face, but to 
 be so disguised by circumstances and little interruptions as to be 
 mistaken for a projecting fragment of a rock in a natural scenery. 
 As long as we conceive of this outline merely as a representation 
 of a rock or other inanimate substance, any copy of it, however 
 rude, will seem the same and as good as the original. Now let 
 the disguise be removed and the general resemblance to a human 
 face pointed out, and what before seemed perfect, will be found 
 to be deficient in the most essential features. Let it be further 
 understood to be a profile of a particular face thai we know, ana 
 all likeness will vanish from the want of the individual expression, 
 which can only be given by being felt. That is, the imitation of 
 external and visible form is only correct or nearly perfect, when 
 the information of the eye and the direction of the hand are aided 
 and confirmed by the previous knowledge and actual feeling of 
 character in the object represented. The more there is of char- 
 acter and feeling in any object, and the greater sympathy there is
 
 142 TABLE TALK. 
 
 with it in the mind of the artist, the closer will be the affinity be- 
 tween the imitation and the thing imitated ; as the more there is 
 of character and expression in the object without a proportionable 
 sympathy with it in the imitator, the more obvious will this 
 defect and the imperfection of the copy become. That is, ex- 
 pression is the great test and measure of a genius for painting and 
 the fine arts. The mere imitation of still-life, however perfect, 
 can never furnish proofs of the highest skill or talent ; for there 
 is an inner sense, a deep intuition into nature that is never un- 
 folded by merely mechanical objects, and which, if it were called 
 out by a new soul being suddenly infused into an inanimate 
 substance, would make the former unconscious representation 
 appear crude and vapid. The eye is sharpened and the hand 
 made more delicate in its tact, 
 
 " While by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things." 
 
 We could not only see but feel expression, by the help of the 
 finest of all our senses, the sense of pleasure and pain. He then 
 is the greatest painter who can put the greatest quantity of ex- 
 pression into his works, for this is the nicest and most subtle ob- 
 ject of imitation ; it is that in which any defect is soonest visible, 
 which must be able to stand the severest scrutiny, and where the 
 power of avoiding errors, extravagance, or tameness, can only be 
 supplied by the fund of moral feeling, the strength or delicacy of 
 the artist's sympathy with the ideal object of his imitation. To 
 see or imitate any given sensible object is one thing, the effect 
 of attention and practice ; but to give expression to a face is to 
 collect its meaning from a thousand other sources, is to bring into 
 play the observation and feeling of one's whole life, or an infinity 
 of knowledge bearing upon a single object in different degrees 
 and manners, and implying a loftiness and refinement of charac 
 ter proportioned to the loftiness and refinement of expression de- 
 lineated. Expression is of all things the least to be mistaken, and 
 the most evanescent in its manifestations. Pope's lines on the 
 character of women may be addressed to the painter who under- 
 takes to embody it :
 
 ON A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. 143 
 
 ' Come then, the colors and the ground prepare, 
 Dip in the rainbow, trick it off in air ; 
 Choose a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it 
 Catch, ere it change, the Cynthia of the minute." 
 
 It is a maxim among painters that no one can paint more than 
 nis own character, or more than he himself understands or can 
 enter into. Nay, even in copying a head, we have some difficulty 
 in making the features unlike our own. A person with a low 
 forehead or a short chin puts a constraint on himself in painting 
 a high forehead or a long chin. So much has sympathy to do 
 with what is supposed to be a mere act of servile imitation ! 
 To pursue this argument one step further. People sometimes 
 wonder what difficulty there can be in painting, and ask what 
 you have to do but to set down what you see ? This is true, but 
 the difficulty is to see what is before you. This is at least as dif- 
 ficult as to learn any trade or language. We imagine that we 
 see the whole of nature, because we are aware of no more than 
 we see of it. We also suppose that any given object, a head, a 
 hand, is one thing, because we see it at once, and call it by one 
 name. But how little we see or know, even of the most familiar 
 face, beyond a vague abstraction, will be evident to every one 
 who tries to recollect distinctly all its component parts, or to 
 draw the most rude outline of it for the first time ; or who con- 
 siders the variety of surface, the numberless lights and shades, 
 the tints of the skin, every particle and pore of which varies, the 
 forms and markings of the features, the combined expression, and 
 all these caught (as far as common use is concerned) by a ran- 
 dom glance, and communicated by a passing word. A student, 
 when he first copies a head, soon comes to a stand, or is at a loss 
 to proceed from seeing nothing more in the face than there is 
 in his copy. After a year or two's practice he never knows 
 when to have done, and the longer he has been occupied in copy- 
 ing a face or any particular feature, sees more and more in it, 
 that he has left undone and can never hope to do. There have 
 been only four or five painters who could ever produce a copy of 
 the human countenance really fit to be seen ; and even of these 
 few none was ever perfect, except in giving some single quality 
 or partial aspect of nature which happened to fall in with his own
 
 H4 TABLE TALK. 
 
 particular studies and the bias of his genius, as Raphael the 
 drawing, Rembrandt the light and shade, Vandyke ease and deli, 
 cacy of appearance, &c. Titian gave more than any one else ; 
 and yet he had his defects. After this, shall we say that any 
 the commonest and most uninstructed spectator sees the whole 
 of nature at a single glance, and would be able to stamp a pertect 
 representation of it on the canvas, if he could embody the image 
 in his mind's eye ? 
 
 I have in this Essay mentioned one or two of the portraits in 
 the Louvre that I like best. The two landscapes which I should 
 most covet, are the one with a Rainbow by Rubens, and the Adam 
 and Eve in Paradise by Poussin. In the first, shepherds are re- 
 posing with their flocks under the shelter of a breezy grove, the 
 distances are of air, and the whole landscape seems just washed 
 with the shower that has passed off. The Adam and Eve of 
 Poussin is the full growth and luxuriant expansion of the princi- 
 ple of vegetation. It is the first lovely dawn of creation, when 
 nature played her virgin fancies wild ; when all was sweetness 
 and freshness, and the heavens dropped fatness. It is the very 
 ideal of landscape-painting, and of the scene it is intended to re- 
 present. It throws us back to the first ages of the world, and to 
 the only period of perfect human bliss, which is, however, on the 
 point of being soon disturbed.* I should be contented with these 
 
 * I may be allowed to mention here (not for the sake of invidious compa- 
 rison, but to explain my meaning), Mr. Martin's picture of Adam and Eve 
 asleep in Paradise. It has this capital defect, that there is no repose in it. 
 You see two insignificant naked figures, and a preposterous architectural 
 landscape, like a range of buildings over-Jooking them. They might as 
 well have been represented on the top of the pinnacle of the Temple, with 
 the world and all the glories thereof spread out before them. -They ought 
 to have been painted imparadised in one another's arms, shut up in mea- 
 sureless content, with Eden's choicest bowers closing round them, and Na- 
 ture stooping to clothe them with vernal flowers. Nothing could be too 
 retired, too voluptuous, too sacred from " day's garish eye;" on the contrary, 
 you have a gaudy panoramic view, a glittering barren waste, a triple row 
 of clouds, of rocks, and mountains, piled one upon the other, as if the ima- 
 gination already bent its idle gaze over that wide world which was so soon 
 to be our place of exile, and the aching, restless spirit of the artist was oc- 
 cupied in building a stately prison for our first parents, instead of decking 
 their bridal bed, and wrapping them in a short-lived dream of bliss.
 
 ON A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. 145 
 
 four or five pictures, the Lady by Vandyke, the Titian, the Pre- 
 sentation in the Temple, the Rubens, and the Poussin, or even 
 with faithful copies of them, added to the two which I have of a 
 young Neapolitan Nobleman and of the Hippolito de Medici ; and 
 which, when I look at them, recal other times and the feelings 
 with which they were done. It is now twenty years since I made 
 those copies, and I hope to keep them while I live. It seems to 
 me no longer ago than yesterday. Should the next twenty years 
 pass as swiftly, forty years will have glided by me like a dream. 
 By this kind of speculation I can look down as from a slippery 
 height on the beginning and the end of life beneath my feet, and 
 the thought makes me dizzy ! 
 
 My taste in pictures is, I believe, very different from that of 
 rich and princely collectors. I would not give two-pence for the 
 whole Gallery at Fonthill. I should like to have a few pictures 
 hung round the room, that speak to me with well-known looks, 
 that touch some string of memory not a number of varnished, 
 smooth, glittering gewgaws. The taste of the Great in pictures 
 is singular, but not unaccountable. The King is said to prefer 
 the Dutch to the Italian school of painting ; and if you hint your 
 surprise at this, you are looked upon as a very Gothic and outre 
 sort of person. You are told, however, by way of consolation, 
 " To be sure, there is Lord Carlisle likes an Italian picture Mr. 
 Hoi well Carr likes an Italian picture the Marquis of Stafford is 
 fond of an Italian picture Sir George Beaumont likes an Italian 
 picture !" These, notwithstanding, are regarded as quaint and 
 daring exceptions to the established rule ; and their preference 
 is a species of leze majeste in the Fine Arts, as great an eccen- 
 tricity and want of fashionable etiquette, as if any gentleman or 
 nobleman still preferred old claret to new, when the King is 
 known to have changed his mind on this subject ; or was guilty 
 of dipping his forefinger and thumb in the middle of a snuff-box, 
 instead of gradually approximating the contents to the edge of the 
 box, according to the most approved models. One would imagine 
 that the great and exalted in station would like lofty subjects in 
 works of art, whereas they seem to have an almost exclusive pre- 
 dilection for the mean and mechanical. One would think those 
 whose word was law, would be pleased with the great and strik- 
 
 SECONE SERIES. PART I. 11
 
 146 TABLE TALK 
 
 ing effects of the pencil ;* on the contrary, they admire nothing 
 but the little and elaborate. They have a fondness for cabinet 
 and furniture pictures, and a proportionable antipathy to works of 
 genius. Even art with them must bo servile, to be tolerated. 
 Perhaps the seeming contradiction may be explained thus. Such 
 persons are raised so high above the rest of the species, that the 
 more violent and agitating pursuits of mankind appear to them 
 like the turmoil of ants on a mole-hill. Nothing interests them 
 but their own pride and self-importance. Our passions are to 
 them an impertinence ; an expression of high sentiment they 
 rather shrink from as a ludicrous and upstart assumption of 
 equality. They therefore like what glitters to the eye, what is 
 smooth to the touch ; but they shun, by an instinct of sovereign 
 taste, whatever has a soul in it, or implies a reciprocity of feeling. 
 The Gods of the earth can have no interest in anything human ; 
 they are cut off from all sympathy with the " bosoms and busi- 
 nesses of men." Instead of requiring to be wound up beyond 
 their habitual feeling of stately dignity, they wish to have the 
 springs of over-strained pretension let down, to be relaxed with 
 " trifles light as air," to be amused with the familiar and frivo- 
 lous, and to have the world appear a scene of still-life, except as 
 they disturb it ! The little in thought and internal sentiment is a 
 natural relief and set off to the oppressive sense of external mag- 
 nificence. Hence kings babble and repeat they know not what. 
 A childish dotage often accompanies the consciousness of absolute 
 power. Repose is somewhere necessary, and the soul sleeps 
 while the senses gloat around ! Besides the mechanical and 
 high-finished style of art may be considered as something done to 
 order. It is a task to be executed more or less perfectly, accord, 
 ing to the price given, and the industry of the artist. We stand 
 by, as it were, to see the work done, insist upon a greater de- 
 
 * The Duke of Wellington, it is said, cannot enter into the merits of Ra- 
 phael ; but he admires " the spirit and fire" of Tintoret. I do not wonder 
 at this bias. A sentiment probably never dawned upon his Grace's mind ; 
 but he may be supposed to relish the dashing execution and hit or mist 
 manner of the Venetian artist. Oh, Raphael ! well is it that it was on 
 who did not understand thee, that blundered upon the destruction of hu- 
 manity!
 
 ON A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. 147 
 
 gree of neatness and accuracy, and exercise a sort of petty, jeal- 
 ous jurisdiction over each particular. We are judges of the 
 minuteness of the details, and though ever so nicely executed, as 
 they give us no ideas beyond what we had before, we do not feel 
 humbled in the comparison. The artizan scarcely rises into the 
 artist ; and the name of genius is degraded rather than exalted in 
 his person. The performance is so far ours that we have paid for 
 it, and the highest price is all that is necessary to produce the 
 highest finishing. But it is not so in works of genius and imagi- 
 nation. Their price is above rubies. The inspiration of the 
 Muse comes not with the Jial of a monarch, with the donation of 
 a patron ; and, therefore, the Great turn with disgust or eileim- 
 nate indifference from the mighty masters of the Italian school, 
 because such works baffle and confound their self-love, and make 
 them feel that there is something in the mind of man which they 
 3an neither give nor take away. 
 
 "Quam nihil ad tuum, Papiniane, ingenium !" 
 24
 
 148 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XII. 
 On Dreams. 
 
 Dr. Spurzheim, in treating of the Physiology of the Brain, has 
 
 the following curious passage : 
 
 " The state of somnambulism equally proves the plurality of 
 the organs. This is a state of incomplete sleep, wherein several 
 organs are watching. It is known that the brain acts upon the 
 external world by means of voluntary motion, of the voice, and 
 of the five external senses. Now, if in sleeping some organs be 
 active, dreams take place ; if the action of the brain be propagat- 
 ed to the muscles, there follow motions ; if the action of the brain 
 be propagated to the vocal organs, the sleeping person speaks. 
 Indeed, it is known that sleeping persons dream and speak ; 
 others dream, speak, hear, and answer ; others still dream, 
 rise, do various things and walk. This latter state is called 
 somnambulism, that is, the state of walking during sleep. Now, 
 as the ear can near, so tne eyes may see, while the other organs 
 sleep ; -and there are facts quite positive which prove that seve- 
 ral persons in the state of somnambulism have seen, but always 
 with open eyes. There are also convulsive fits, in which the pa- 
 tients see without hearing, and vice versa. Some somnambulists 
 do things of which they are not capable in a state of watching ; 
 and dreaming persons reason sometimes better than they do when 
 awake. This phenomenon is not astonishing,' ' &c. Physiog- 
 nomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, p. 217. 
 
 There is here a very singular mixing up of the flattest truisms 
 with the most gratuitous assumptions ; so that the one being told 
 with great gravity, and the other delivered with the most familiar 
 air, one is puzzled in a cursory perusal to distinguish which is 
 which. This is an art of stultifying the reader, like that of the 
 juggler, who shows you some plain matter-of-fact experiment just
 
 ON DREAMS. 149 
 
 as he is going to play off his capital trick. The mind is, by this 
 alternation of style, thrown off its guard ; and between wondering 
 first at the absurdity, and then at the superficiality of the work, 
 becomes almost a convert to it. A thing exceedingly questionable 
 is stated so roundly, you think there must be something in it : 
 the plainest proposition is put in so doubtful and cautious a man- 
 ner, you conceive the writer must see a great deal farther into 
 the subject than you do. You mistrust your ears and eyes, and 
 are in a fair way to resign the use of your understanding. It is 
 a fine style of mystifying. Again, it is the practice with the 
 German school, and in particular with Dr. Spurzheim, to run 
 counter with common sense and the best authenticated opinions. 
 They must always be more knowing than everybody else, and 
 treat the wisdom of the ancients, and the wisdom of the moderns, 
 much in the same supercilious way. It has been taken for 
 granted generally that people see with their eyes ; and therefore 
 it is stated in the above passage as a discovery of the author, 
 " imparted in dreadful secresy," that sleep-walkers always see 
 with their eyes open. The meaning of which is, that we are not 
 to give too implicit or unqualified an assent to the principle, at 
 which modern philosophers have arrived with some pains and 
 difficulty, that we acquire our ideas of external objects through 
 the senses. The transcendental sophists wish to back out of that, 
 as too conclusive and well-defined a position. They would be 
 glad to throw the whole of what has been done on this question 
 into confusion again, in order to begin de novo, like children who 
 construct houses with cards, and when the pack is built up, shuf- 
 fle them all together on the table again. These intellectual Sysi- 
 phuses are always rolling the stone of knowledge up a hill, for 
 the perverse pleasure of rolling it down again. Having gone as 
 far as they can in the direction of reason and good sense, rather than 
 seem passive or the slaves of any opinion, they turn back with a 
 wonderful look of sagacity to all sorts of exploded prejudices and 
 absurdity. It is a pity that we cannot let well done alone, and 
 that after laboring for centuries to remove ignorance, we set our 
 faces with the most wilful officiousness against the stability of 
 knowledge. The Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurz- 
 heim is full of this disgusting cant. We are still only to believe
 
 150 TABLE TALK. 
 
 in all unbelief in what they tell us. The less credulous we are 
 of other things, the more faith we shall have in reserve for them : 
 by exhausting our stock of scepticism and caution on such obvi- 
 ous matters of fact as that people always see with their eyes open, 
 we shall be prepared to swallow their crude and extravagant the- 
 ories whole ; and not be astonished at " the phenomenon, that per- 
 sons sometimes reason better asleep than awake !" 
 
 I have alluded to this passage because I myself am (or used 
 some time ago to be) a sleep-walker ; and know how the thing is. 
 In this sort of disturbed, unsound sleep, the eyes are not closed, 
 and are attracted by the light. I used to get up and go towards 
 the window, and make violent efforts to throw it open. The air 
 in some measure revived me, or I might have tried to fling myself 
 out. I saw objects indistinctly, the houses, for instance, facing 
 me on the opposite side of the street ; but still it was some time 
 before I could recognize them or recollect where I was : that is, 
 I was still asleep, and the dimness of my senses (as far as it pre- 
 vailed) was occasioned by the greater numbness of my memory. 
 This phenomenon is not astonishing, unless we choose in all such 
 cases to put the cart before the horse. For in fact, it is the mind 
 that sleeps, and the senses (so to speak) only follow the example. 
 The mind dozes, and the eyelids close in consequence : we do not 
 go to sleep, because we shut our eyes. I can, however, speak to 
 the fact of the eyes being open, when their sense is shut ; or 
 rather, when we are unable to draw just inferences from it. It 
 is generally in the night-time indeed, or in a strange place, that 
 the circumstance happens ; but as soon as the light dawns upon 
 the recollection, the obscurity and perplexity of the senses clear 
 up. The external impression is made before, much in the same 
 manner as it is after we are awake ; but it does not lead to the 
 usual train of associations connected with that impression ; e. g. 
 the name of the street or town where we are, who lives at the 
 opposite house, how we came to sleep in the room where we are, 
 &c. ; all which are ideas belonging to our waking experience, 
 and are at this time cut off or greatly disturbed by sleep. It is 
 just the same an when persons recover from a swoon, and fix their 
 ye.3 unconsciously on those about them, for a considerable tme 
 before they recollect where they are. Would any one but a
 
 ON DREAMS. 151 
 
 German physiologist think it necessary to assure us that at this 
 time they see, but with their eyes open, or pretend that though 
 they have lost all memory or understanding during their fainting 
 fit, their minds then act more vigorously and freely than ever, 
 because they are not distracted by outward impressions ? The 
 appeal is made to the outward sense, in the instances we have 
 seen ; but the mind is deaf to it, because its functions are for the 
 time gone. It is ridiculous to pretend with this author, that in 
 sleep some of the organs of the mind rest, while others are active ; 
 it might as well be pretended that in sleep one eye watches while 
 the other is shut. The stupor is general : the faculty of thought 
 itself is impaired ; and whatever ideas we have, instead of being 
 confined to any particular faculty or the impressions of any one 
 sense, and invigorated thereby, float at random from object to 
 object, from one class of impressions to another, without coherence 
 or control. The conscious or connecting link between our ideas, 
 which forms them into separate groups or compares different parts 
 and views of a subject together, seems to be that which is princi- 
 pally wanting in sleep ; so that any idea that presents itself in 
 this anarchy of the mind is lord of the ascendant for the moment, 
 and is driven out by the next straggling notion that comes across 
 it. The bundles of thought are, as it were, united, loosened from 
 a eommon centre, and drift along the stream of fancy as it hap- 
 pens. Hence the confusion (not the concentration of the facul- 
 ties) that continually takes place in this state of half-perception. 
 The mind takes in but one thing at a time, but one part of a sub- 
 ject, and therefore cannot correct its sudden and heterogeneous 
 transitions from one momentary impression to another by a larger 
 grasp of understanding. Thus we confound one person with 
 another, merely from some accidental coincidence, the name or 
 the place where we have seen them, or their having been con- 
 cerned with us in some particular transaction the evening before. 
 They lose and regain their proper identity perhaps half a 
 dozen times in this rambling way ; nor are we able (though 
 we are somewhat incredulous and surprised at these compound 
 creations) to detect the error, from not being prepared to trace 
 the same connected subject of thought to a number of varying 
 and successive ramifications, or to form the idea of a whole.
 
 152 TABLE TALK. 
 
 We think that Mr. Such-a-one did so and so : then, from a 
 second face coming across us, like the sliders of a magic lan- 
 tern, it was not he, but another ; then some one calls him by 
 his right name, and he is himself again. We are little shocked 
 at these gross contradictions ; for if the mind was capable of 
 perceiving them in all their absurdity, it would not be liable 
 to fall into them. It runs into them for the same reason that 
 it is hardly conscious of them when made. 
 
 " That which was now a horse, a bear, a cloud, 
 
 Even with a thought the rack dislimns, 
 And makes it indistinct as water is in water." 
 
 The difference, so far then, between sleeping and waking seems 
 to be, that in the latter we have a greater range of conscious 
 recollections, a larger discourse of reason, and associate ideas in 
 longer trains and more as they are connected one with another in 
 the order of nature ; whereas in the former, any two impressions, 
 that meet or are alike, join company, and then are parted again, 
 without notice, like the froth from the wave. So in madness, 
 there is, I should apprehend, the same tyranny of the imagination 
 over the judgment ; that is, the mind has slipped its cable, and 
 single images meet, and jostle, and unite suddenly together, with- 
 out any power to arrange or compare them with others, with 
 which they are connected in the world of reality. There is a 
 continual phantasmagoria : whatever shapes and colors come 
 together are by the heat and violence of the brain referred to exter- 
 nal nature, without regard to the order of time, place, or circum- 
 stance. From the same want of continuity, we often forget oui 
 dreams so speedily : if we cannot catch them as they are passing 
 out at the door, we never set eyes on them again. There is no 
 clue or thread of imagination to trace them by. In a morning 
 sometimes we have had a dream that we try in vain to recollect ; 
 it is gone, like the rainbow from the cloud. At other times (so 
 evanescent is their texture) we forget that we have dreamt at all ; 
 and at these times the mind seems to have been a mere blank, 
 and sleep presents only an image of death. Hence has arisen 
 the famous dispute, Whether the soul thinks always ? on which 
 Mr. Locke and different writers have bestowed so much tedioua
 
 ON DREAMS. 153 
 
 and unprofitable discussion ; some maintaining that the mind was 
 like a watch that goes continually, though more slowly and irregu- 
 larly at one time than another ; while the opposite party con- 
 tended that it often stopped altogether, bringing the example of 
 sound sleep as an argument, and desiring to know what proof we 
 could have of thoughts passing through the mind, of which it was 
 itself perfectly unconscious, and retained not the slightest recol- 
 lection. I grant, we often sleep so sound, or have such faint ima- 
 gery passing through the brain, that if we awake by degrees, we 
 forget it altogether : we recollect our first waking, and perhaps 
 some imperfect suggestions of fancy just before ; but beyond this, 
 all is mere oblivion. But I have observed that whenever I have 
 been waked up suddenly, and not left to myself to recover from 
 this state of mental torpor, I have been always dreaming of some- 
 thing, i. e. thinking, according to the tenor of the question. Let 
 any one call you at any time, however fast asleep you may be, 
 you make out their voice in the first surprise to be like some one's 
 you were thinking of in your sleep. Let an accidental noise, 
 the falling of something in the next room, rouse you up, you con- 
 stantly find something to associate it with, or translate it back 
 into the language of your slumbering thoughts. You are never 
 taken completely at a nonplus summoned, as it were, out of a 
 state of non-existence. It is easy for any one to try the experi- 
 ment upon himself; that is, to examine every time he is waked 
 up suddenly, so that his waking and sleeping states are brought 
 into immediate contact, whether he has not in all such cases been 
 dreaming of something, and not fairly caught napping. For 
 myself, I think I can speak with certainty. It would indeed be 
 rather odd to awake out of such an absolute privation and suspense 
 of thought as is contended for by the partisans of the contrary 
 theory. It would be a peep into the grave, a consciousness of 
 death, an escape from the world of non-entity ! 
 
 The vividness of our impressions in dreams, of which so much 
 has been said, seems to be rather apparent than real ; or, if this 
 mode of expression should be objected to as unwarrantable, rather 
 physical than mental. It is a vapor, a fume, the effect of the 
 " heat-oppressed brain." The imagination gloats over an idea, 
 and doats at the same time. However warm or brilliant the 
 
 24
 
 154 TABLE TALK. 
 
 coloring of these changing appearances, they vanish with the 
 dawn. They are put out by our waking thoughts, as the sun 
 puts out a candle. It is unlucky that we sometimes remember 
 the heroic sentiments, the profound discoveries, the witty repar- 
 tees we have uttered in our sleep. The one turn to bombast, the 
 others are mere truisms, and the last absolute nonsense. Yet 
 we clothe them certainly with a fancied importance at the mo- 
 ment. This seems to be merely the effervescence of the blood or 
 of the brain, physically acting. It is an odd thing in sleep, that 
 we not only fancy we see different persons, and talk to them, but 
 that we hear them make answers, and startle us with an observa- 
 tion or a piece of news ; and though we of course put the answer 
 into their mouths, we have no idea beforehand what it will be, and 
 it takes us as much by surprise as it would in reality. This kind 
 of successful ventriloquism which we practise upon ourselves 
 may perhaps be in some measure accounted for from the short- 
 sightedness and incomplete consciousness which were remarked 
 above as the peculiar characteristics of sleep. 
 
 The power of prophesying or foreseeing things in our sleep, as 
 from a higher and more abstracted sphere of thought, need not 
 be here argued upon. There is, however, a sort of profundity in 
 sleep ; and it may be usefully consulted as an oracle in this way. 
 It may be said, that the voluntary power is suspended, and things 
 come upon us as unexpected revelations, which we keep out of 
 our thoughts at other times. We may be aware of a danger, 
 that yet we do not choose, while we have the full command of 
 our faculties, to acknowledge to ourselves : the impending event 
 will then appear to us as a dream, and we shall most likely find 
 it verified afterwards. Another thing of no small consequence 
 is, that we may sometimes discover our tacit, and almost uncon- 
 scious sentiments, with respect to persons or things in the same 
 way. ) We are not hypocrites in our sleep. The curb is taken 
 off from our passions, and our imagination wanders at will. 
 When awake, we check these rising thoughts, and fancy we have 
 them not. In dreams, when we are off our guard, they return 
 securely and unbidden. We may make this use of the infirmity 
 of our sleeping metamorphosis, that we may repress any feelings 
 of this sort that we disapprove in their incipient state, and detect,
 
 ON DREAMS. 155 
 
 I 
 
 fire it be too late, an unwarrantable antipathy or fatal passion. 
 Infants cannot disguise their thoughts from others ; and in sleep 
 we reveal the secret to ourselves. 
 
 It should appear that I have never been in love, for the same 
 reason. I never dream of the face of any one I am particularly 
 attached to. I have thought almost to agony of the same person 
 for years, nearly without ceasing, so as to have her face always 
 before me, and to be haunted by a perpetual consciousness of 
 disappointed passion, and yet I never in all that time dreamt of 
 this person more than once or twice, and then not vividly. I con- 
 ceive, therefore, that this perseverance of the imagination in a 
 fruitless track must have been owing to mortified pride, to an 
 intense desire and hope of good in the abstract, more than to love, 
 which I consider as an individual and involuntary passion, and 
 which therefore, when it is strong, must predominate over the 
 fancy in sleep. I think myself into love, and dream myself out 
 of it. I should have made a very bad Endymion, in this sense ; 
 for all the time the heavenly Goddess was shining over my head, 
 I should never have had a thought about her. If I had waked 
 and found her gone, I might have been in a considerable taking. 
 Coleridge used to laugh at me for my want of the faculty of dream- 
 ing ; and once, on my saying that I did not like the preternatural 
 stories in the Arabian Nights (for the comic parts I love dearly), 
 he said, " That must be because you never dream. There is a 
 class of poetry built on this foundation, which is surely no incon- 
 siderable part of our nature, since we are asleep and building up 
 imaginations of this sort half our time." I had nothing to say 
 against it : it was one of his conjectural subtleties, in which he 
 excels all the persons I ever knew ; but I had some satisfaction 
 in finding afterwards, that I had Bishop Atterbury expressly on 
 my side in this question, who has recorded his detestation of 
 Sinbad the Sailor, in an interesting letter to Pope . Perhaps he 
 too did not dream ! 
 
 Yet I dream sometimes ; I dream of the Louvre Intus et in 
 cute. I dreamed I was there a few weeks ago, and that the old 
 scene returned that I looked for my favorite pictures, and found 
 them gone or erased. The dream of my youth came upon me ; 
 glory and a vision unutterable, that comes no more but in dark- 
 
 24*
 
 156 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ness and in sleep : my heart rose up, and I fell on my knees, and 
 lifted up my voice and wept, and I awoke. I also dreamed a little 
 while ago, that I was reading the New Eloise to an old friend, and 
 came to the concluding passages in Julia's farewell letter, which had 
 much the same effect upon me. The words are, "Trap heureuse 
 d'acJieter an prix de ma vie le droit de t' aimer toujours sans crime 
 et de te le dire encore une fois, avant que je meurs I" I used to 
 sob over this passage twenty years ago ; and in this dream about 
 it lately, I seemed to live these twenty years over again in one 
 short moment ! I do not dream ordinarily ; and there are people 
 who never could see anything in the New Eloise. Are we not 
 quits?
 
 ON ENVY. HI 
 
 ESSAY XIII. 
 
 On Envy (A Dialogue). 
 
 H. I had a theory about Envy at one time, which I have partly 
 given up of late which was, that there was no such feeling, or 
 that what is usually considered as envy or dislike of real mer 
 is, more properly speaking, jealousy of false pretensions to it. 1 
 used to illustrate the argument by saying, that this was the rea- 
 son we were not envious of the dead, because their merit was 
 established beyond the reach of cavil or contradiction ; whereas 
 we are jealous and uneasy at sudden and upstart popularity, 
 which wants the seal of time to confirm it, and which after all 
 may turn out to be false and hollow. There is no danger that 
 the testimony of ages should be reversed, and we add our suf- 
 frages to it with confidence, and even with enthusiasm. But we 
 doubt reasonably enough, whether that which was applauded 
 yesterday may not be condemned to-morrow ; and are afraid of 
 setting our name to a fraudulent claim to distinction. Howevel 
 satisfied we may be in our own minds, we are not sufficiently born! 
 out by a general opinion and sympathy to prevent certain mis 
 givings and scruples on the subject. No one thinks, for instance 
 of denying the merit of Teniers in his particular style of art, and 
 no one consequently thinks of envying him. The merit of Wilkie, 
 on the contrary, was at first strongly contested, and there were 
 other painters set up in opposition to him, till now that he has 
 become a sort of classic in his way, he has ceased to be an object 
 of envy or dislike, because no one doubts his real excellence, as 
 far as it goes. He has no more than justice done him, and the 
 mind never revolts at justice. It only rejects false or superficial 
 claims to admiration, and is incensed to see the world take up 
 with appearances, when they have no solid foundation to support 
 them. We are not envious of Rubens or Raphael, because theii 
 fame is a pledge of their genius : but if any one were to bring
 
 I5S TABLE TALK. 
 
 forward the highest living names as equal to these, it immediately 
 sets the blood in a ferment, and we try to stifle the sense we have 
 of their merits, not because they are new or modern, but because 
 we are not sure they will ever be old. Could we be certain that 
 posterity would sanction our award, we should grant it without 
 scruple, even to an enemy and a rival. 
 
 N. That which you describe is not envy. Envy is when ycu 
 hate and would destroy all excellence that you do not yourself 
 possess. So they say that Raphael, after he had copied the 
 figures on one of the antique vases, endeavored to deface them ; 
 and Hoppner, it has been said, used to get pictures of Sir Joshua's 
 into his possession, on purpose to paint them over and spoil them. 
 
 H. I do not believe the first, certainly. Raphael was too great 
 a man, and with too fortunate a temper, to need or to wish to prop 
 himself up on the ruins of others. As to Hoppner, he might 
 perhaps think that there was no good reason for the preference 
 given to Sir Joshua's portraits over his own, that his women of 
 quality were the more airy and fashionable of the two, and might 
 be tempted (once perhaps) in a fit of spleen, of caprice or impa- 
 tience, to blot what was an eye-sore to himself from its old- 
 fashioned, faded, dingy look, and at the same time dazzled others 
 from the force of tradition and prejudice. Why, he might argue, 
 should that old fellow run away with all the popularity even among 
 those who (as he well knew) in their hearts preferred his own 
 insipid, flaunting style to any other ? Though it might be true 
 that Sir Joshua was the greater painter, yet it was not true that 
 Lords and Ladies thought so : he felt that he ought to be their 
 favorite, and he might naturally hate what was continually thrust 
 in his dish, and (as far as those about him were concerned) un- 
 justly set over his head. Besides, Hoppner had very little of his 
 own to rely on, and might wish, by destroying, to conceal the 
 source from whence he had borrowed almost everything. 
 
 N. Did you nevei feel envy ? 
 
 H. Very little, I think. In truth, I am out of the way of it : 
 for the only pretension, of which I am tenacious, is that of being 
 a metaphysician ; and there is so little attention paid to this sub- 
 ject to pamper one's vanity, and so little fear of losing that little 
 from competition, that there is scarcely any room for envy here.
 
 ON ENVY. 159 
 
 One occupies the niche of eminence in which one places one's 
 self, very quietly and contentedly ! If I have ever felt this pas- 
 sion at all, it has been where some very paltry fellow has by trick 
 and management contrived to obtain much more credit than he 
 
 was entitled to. There was , to whom I had a perfect 
 
 antipathy. He was the antithesis of a man of genius ; and yet 
 he did better, by mere dint of dullness, than many men of genius. 
 This was intolerable. There was something in the man and in 
 his manner, with which you could not possibly connect the idea 
 of admiration, or of anything that was not merely mechanical 
 
 " His look made the still air cold." 
 
 He repelled all sympathy and cordiality. What he did (though 
 amounting only to mediocrity) was an insult on the understanding. 
 It seemed that he should be able to do nothing ; for he was nothing 
 either in himself or in other people's idea of him ! Mean actions 
 or gross expressions too often unsettle one's theory of genius. We 
 are unable as well as unwilling to connect the feeling of high intel- 
 lect with low moral sentiment : the one is a kind of desecration 
 of the other. I have for this reason been sometimes disposed to 
 disparage Turner's fine landscapes, and be glad when he failed in 
 his higher attempts, in order that my conception of the artist and 
 his pictures might be more of a piece. This is not envy or an 
 impatience of extraordinary merit, but an impatience of the incon- 
 gruities in human nature, and of the drawbacks and stumbling- 
 blocks in the way of our admiration of it Who is there that 
 admires the Author of Waverley more than I do ? Who is there 
 that despises Sir Walter Scott more ? I do not like to think there 
 should be a second instance of the same person's being 
 
 " The wisest, meanest of mankind" 
 
 and should be heartily glad if the greatest genius of the age should 
 turn out to be an honest man. The only thing that renders this 
 mis-alliance between first-rate intellect and want of principle en 
 durable is that such an extreme instance of it teaches us that 
 great moral lesson of moderating our expectations of human per- 
 fection, and enlarging our indulgence for human infirmity
 
 160 TABLE TALK. 
 
 N. You start off with an idea as usual, and torture the plain 
 state of the case into a paradox. There may be some truth in 
 what you suppose ; but malice or selfishness is at the bottom of 
 the severity of your criticism, not the love of truth or justice, 
 though you may make it the pretext. You are more angry at Sir 
 Walter Scott's success than at his servility. You would give 
 yourself no trouble about his poverty of spirit, if he had not made 
 a hundred thousand pounds by his writings. The sting lies there, 
 though you may try to conceal it from yourself. 
 
 H. I do not think so. I hate the sight of the Duke of Wel- 
 lington for his foolish face, as much as for anything else. I can- 
 not believe that a great general is contained under such a paste- 
 board vizor of a man. This, you'll say, is party spite, and rage 
 at his good-fortune. I deny it. I always liked Lord Castlereagh 
 for the gallant spirit that shone through his appearance ; and his 
 fine bust surmounted and crushed fifty orders that glittered beneath 
 it. Nature seemed to have meant him for something better than 
 he was. But in the other instance, Fortune has evidently played 
 Nature a trick, 
 
 " To throw a cruel sunshine on a fool." 
 
 N. The truth is, you were reconciled to Lord Castlereagh's face, 
 and patronized his person, because you felt a sort of advantage 
 over him in point of style. His blunders qualified his success ; 
 and you fancied you could take his speeches in pieces, whereas" 
 you could not undo the battles the other had won. 
 
 H. So I have been accused of denying the merits of Pitt, 
 from political dislike and prejudice : but who is there that has 
 praised Burke more than I have ? It is a subject I am never 
 weary of, because I feel it. ( 
 
 N. You mean, because he is dead, and is now little talked of; 
 and you think you show superior discernment and liberality by 
 praising him. If there was a Burke-Club, you would say nothing 
 about him. You deceive yourself as to your own motives, and 
 weave a wrong theory out of them for human nature. The love 
 of distinction is the ruling passion of the human mind ; we grudge 
 whatever draws off attention from ourselves to others ; and all 
 our actions are but different contrivances, either by sheer malice
 
 CN ENVY. 161 
 
 or affected liberality, to keep it to ourselves or share it with 
 others. Goldsmith was jealous even of beauty in the other sex. 
 When the people of Amsterdam gathered round the balcony to 
 look at the Miss Hornecks, he grew impatient, and said peevishly, 
 " There are places where I also am admired." It may be said 
 What could their beauty have to do with his reputation ? No : it 
 could not tend to lessen it, but it drew admiration from himself to 
 them. So Mr. Croker, the other day, when he was at the Acade- 
 my dinner, made himself conspicuous by displaying the same 
 feeling. He found fault with everything, damned all the pictures 
 landscapes, portraits, busts, nothing pleased him ; and not con- 
 tented with this, he then fell foul of the art itself, which he treat- 
 ed as a piece of idle foolery, and said that Raphael had thrown 
 away his time in doing what was not worth the trouble. This, 
 besides being insincere, was a great breach of good-manners, 
 which none but a low-bred man would be guilty of; but he felt 
 his own consequence annoyed ; he saw a splendid exhibition of 
 art, a splendid dinner set out, the Nobility, the Cabinet-Ministers, 
 the branches of the Royal Family invited to it ; the most eminent 
 professors were there present ; it was a triumph and a celebration 
 of art ; a dazzling proof of the height to which it had attained in 
 this country, and of the esteem in which it was held. He felt 
 that he played a very subordinate part in all this ; and in order 
 to relieve his own wounded vanity, he was determined (as he 
 thought) to mortify that of others. He wanted to make himself 
 of more importance than anybody else, by trampling on Raphael 
 and on the art itself. It was ridiculous and disgusting, because every 
 one saw through the motive ; so that he defeated his own object. 
 
 H. And he would have avoided this exposure, if with all his 
 conceit and ill-humor, he had had the smallest taste for the art, or 
 perception of the beauties of Raphael. He has just knowledge 
 enough of drawing to make a whole-length sketch of Bonaparte, 
 verging on caricature, yet not palpably outraging probability ; so 
 that it looked like a fat, stupid, common-place man, or a flattering 
 likeness of some legitimate monarch he had skill, cunning, ser- 
 vility enough to do this with his own hand, and to circulate a print 
 of it with zealous activity, as an indirect means of degrading him 
 in appearance to that low level to which fortune had once raised 
 
 SECOND SERIES. PART I. 12
 
 162 TABLE TALK. 
 
 him in reality. But the man who could do this deliberately, and 
 with satisfaction to his own nature, was. not the man to understand 
 Raphael, and might slander him or any other, the greatest of 
 earth's born, without injuring or belying any feeling of admira- 
 tion or excellence in his own breast ; for no such feeling had ever 
 entered there. 
 
 N. Come, this is always the way. Now you are growing 
 personal. Why do you so constantly let your temper get the 
 better of your reason ? 
 
 H. Because I hate a hypocrite, a time-server, and a slave. 
 But to return to the question, and say no more about this " talking 
 fotatoe"* I do not think that, except in circumstances of pecu- 
 liar aggravation, or of extraordinary ill-temper and moroseness of 
 disposition, any one who has a thorough feeling of excellence has 
 a delight in gainsaying it. The excellence that we feel, we partici- 
 pate in as if it were our own it becomes ours by transfusion of mind 
 it is instilled into our hearts it mingles with our blood. We are 
 unwilling to allow merit, because we are unable to perceive it. But 
 to be convinced of it, is to be ready to acknowledge and pay horn- 
 age to it. Illiberality or narrowness of feeling is a narrowness of 
 aste, a want of proper tact. A bigoted and exclusive spirit i:- 
 real blindness to all excellence but our own, or that of some par 
 ticular school or sect. I think I can give an instance of this ir 
 some friends of mine, on whom you will be disposed to have nc 
 more mercy than I have, on Mr. Croker I mean the Lake School. 
 Their system of Ostracism is not unnatural : it begins only with 
 the natural limits of their tastes and feelings. Mr. Wordsworth, 
 Mr. Coleridge, and Mr. Southey have no feeling for the excellence 
 of Pope, or Goldsmith, or Gray they do not enter at all into 
 their merits, and on that account it is that they deny, proscribe, 
 and envy them. Incredulus odi, is the explanation here, and in 
 all such cases. I am satisfied that the fine turn of thought in 
 Pope, the gliding verse of Goldsmith, the brilliant diction of Gray 
 have no charms for the Author of the Lyrical Ballads : he has no 
 faculty in his mind to which these qualities of poetry address 
 
 Mr. Croker made his first appearance in this country as a hack-writer, 
 and received this- surname from the classic lips of Mr. Cumberland.
 
 ON ENVY. 163 
 
 themselves. It is not an oppressive, galling sense of them, and a 
 burning envy to rival them, and shame that he cannot he would 
 not, if he could. He has no more ambition to write couplets like 
 Pope, than to turn a barrel-organ. He has no pleasure in such 
 poetry, and therefore he has no patience with others that have. 
 The enthusiasm that they feel and express on the subject seeina 
 an effect without a cause, and puzzles and provokes the mind 
 accordingly. Mr. Wordsworth, in particular, is narrower in his 
 tastes than other people, because he sees everything from a single 
 and original point of view. Whatever does not fall in strictly 
 with this, he accounts no better than a play or a delusion, or a play 
 upon words. 
 
 N. You mistake the matter altogether. The acting principle 
 in their minds is an inveterate selfishness or desire of distinction. 
 They see that a particular kind of excellence has been carried to 
 its height a height that they have no hope of arriving at the 
 road is stopped up ; they must therefore strike into a different 
 path ; and in order to divert the public mind and draw attention 
 to themselves, they affect to decry the old models, and overturn 
 what they cannot rival. They know they cannot write like Pope 
 or Dryden, or would be only imitators if they did ; and they con- 
 sequently strive to gain an original and equal celebrity by singu- 
 larity and affectation. Their simplicity is not natural to them : it 
 is the forlorn-hope of impotent and disappointed vanity. 
 
 H. I cannot think that. It may be so in part, but not princi- 
 pally or altogether. Their minds are cast in a peculiar mould, 
 and they cannot produce or receive any other impressions than 
 those which they do. They are, as to matters of taste, tres 
 bornes. 
 
 N. You make them out stupider than I thought. I have some- 
 times spoken disrespectfully of their talents, and so I think, com- 
 paratively with those of some of our standard writers. But I 
 certainly should never conceive them so lost to common sense, as 
 not to perceive the beauty, or splendor, or strength of Pope and 
 Dryden. They are dazzled by it, and wilfully shut their eyes to 
 it, and try to throw dust in those of other people. We easily dis- 
 cern and are confounded by excellence, which we are conscious 
 we should in vain attempt to equal. We may see that another is
 
 o4 TABLE TALK. 
 
 taller than ourselves, and yet we may know that we can never 
 grow to his stature. A dwarf may easily envy a giant. 
 
 H.. They would like the comparison to Polyphemus in " Acis 
 and Galatea " better. They think that little men have run away 
 with the prize of beauty. 
 
 N. No one admires poetry more than I do, or sees more beau- 
 ties in it ; though if I were to try a thousand years, I should never 
 be able to do anything to please myself. 
 
 H. Perhaps not in the mechanical part ; but still you admire 
 and are most struck with those passages in poetry, that accord 
 with the previous train of your own feelings, and give you back 
 the images of your own mind. There is something congenial in 
 taste, at least, between ourselves and those we admire. I do not 
 think there is any point of sympathy between Pope and the Lake 
 School : on the contrary, I know there is an antipathy between 
 them. When you speak of Titian, you look like him. I can 
 understand how it is that you talk so well on that subject, and that 
 your discourse has an extreme unction about it, a marrowiness like 
 his coloring. But I do not believe that the late Mr. West had the 
 least notion of Titian's peculiar excellences he would think one 
 of his own copies of him as good as the original, and his own 
 historical compositions much better. He would therefore, I con- 
 ceive, sit and listen to a conversation in praise of him with some- 
 thing like impatience, and think it an interruption to more import- 
 ant discussions on the principles of high art. But if Mr. West 
 had ever seen in nature what there is to be found in Titian's copies 
 from it, he would never have thought of such a comparison, and 
 would have bowed his head in deep humility at the very mention 
 of his name. He might not have been able to do like him, and 
 yet might have seen nature with the same eyes. 
 
 N. We do not always admire most what we can do best ; but 
 often the contrary. Sir Joshua's admiration of Michael Angelo 
 was perfectly sincere and unaffected ; but yet nothing could be 
 more diametrically opposite than the minds of the two men there 
 was an absolute gulf between them. It was the consciousness 
 of his own inability to execute such works, that made him more 
 sensible of the difficulty and the merit. It was the same with his 
 fondness for Poussin. He was always exceedingly angry with
 
 GN ENVY. 185 
 
 me for not admiring him enough. But this showed his good sense 
 and modesty. Sir Joshua was always on the look-out for what- 
 ever might enlarge his notions on the subject of his art, and sup- 
 ply his defects ; and did not, like some artists, measure all possi- 
 ble excellence by his own actual deficiencies. He thus improved 
 and learned something daily. Others have lost their way by set 
 ting out with a pragmatical notion of their own self-sufficiencj', 
 and have never advanced a single step beyond their first crude 
 conceptions. Fuseli was to blame in this respect. He did not 
 want capacity or enthusiasm, but he had an overweening opinion 
 of his own peculiar acquirements. Speaking of Vandyke, he 
 said he would not go across the way to see the finest portrait he 
 nad ever painted. He asked " What is it but a little bit of co- 
 lor V Sir Joshua said, on hearing this " Aye, he '11 live to 
 repent it." And he has lived to repent it. With that little bit 
 added to his own heap, he would have been a much greater 
 painter, and a happier man. 
 
 H. Yes : but I doubt whether he could have added it in prac 
 tice. I think the indifference, in the first instance, arises from 
 the want of taste and capacity. If Fuseli had possessed an eye 
 for color, he would not have despised it in Vandyke. But we 
 reduce others to the limits of our own capacity. We think little 
 of what we cannot do, and envy it where we imagine that it 
 meets with disproportioned admiration from others. A dull, pom- 
 pous and obscure writer has been heard to exclaim, " That dunce, 
 Wordsworth !" This was excusable in one who is utterly with- 
 out feeling for any objects in nature, but those which would make 
 splendid furniture for a drawing-room, or any sentiment of the 
 human heart, but that with which a slave looks up to a despot, or 
 a despot looks down upon a slave. This contemptuous expres- 
 sion was an effusion of spleen and impatience at the idea tha 
 there should be any one who preferred Wordsworth's descriptions 
 of a daisy or a linnet's nest to his auctioneer-poetry about cur- 
 tains, and palls, and sceptres, and precious stones : but had 
 Wordsworth, in addition to his original sin of simplicity and true 
 genius, been a popular writer, his contempt would have turned 
 into hatred As it is, he tolerates his idle nonsense : there is a 
 link of friendship in mutual political servility ; and besides, he
 
 166 TABLE TALK. 
 
 has a fellow feeling with him, as one of those writers of whose 
 merits the world have not been fully sensible. Mr. Croly set out 
 with high pretensions, and had some idea of rivalling Lord Byron 
 in a certain lofty, imposing style of versification : but he is pro- 
 bably by this time convinced that mere constitutional hauteur as 
 ill supplies the place of elevation of genius, as of the pride of 
 birth ; and that the public know how to distinguish between a 
 string of gaudy, painted, turgid phrases, and the vivid creations 
 of fancy, or touching delineations of the human heart. 
 
 N. What did you say the writer's name was ? 
 
 H. Croly. He is one of the Royal Society of Authors. 
 
 N. I never heard of him. Is he an imitator of Lord Byron, 
 did you say ? 
 
 H. I am afraid neither he nor Lord Byron would have it 
 thought so. 
 
 N. Such imitators do all the mischief, and bring real genius 
 into disrepute. This is in some measure an excuse for those who 
 have endeavored to disparage Pope and Dry den. We have had 
 a surfeit of imitations of them. Poetry, in the hands of a set of 
 mechanic scribblers, had become such a tame, mawkish thing, 
 that we could endure it no longer, and our impatience of the abuse 
 of a good thing transferred itself to the original source. It was 
 this which enabled Wordsworth and the rest to raise up a new 
 school (or to attempt it) on the ruins of Pope ; because a race of 
 writers had succeeded him without one particle of his wit, sense 
 and delicacy, and the world were tired of their everlasting sing- 
 song and namby-pamby. People were disgusted at hearing the 
 faults of Pope (the part most easily imitated) cried up as his 
 greatest excellence, and were willing to take refuge from such 
 nauseous cant in any novelty. 
 
 H. What you now observe comes nearly to my account of the 
 matter. Sir Andrew Wylie will sicken people of the Author of 
 Waverley. It was but the other day that some one was propos- 
 ing that there should be a Society formed for not reading the 
 Scotch Novels. But it is not the excellence of that fine writer 
 that we are tired of, or revolt at, but vapid imitations or catch- 
 penny repetitions of himself. Even the quantity of them has an 
 obvious tendency to lead to this effect. It lessens, instead of
 
 ON ENVY. 167 
 
 increasing our admiration : for it seems to be an evidence that 
 there is no difficulty in the task, and leads us to suspect something 
 like trick or deception in their production. We have not been 
 used to look upon works of genius as of the fungus tribe. Yet 
 these are so. We had rather doubt our own taste than ascribe 
 such a superiority of genius to another, that it works without con- 
 sciousness or effort, executes the labor of a life in a few weeks, 
 writes faster than the public can read, and scatters the rich mate, 
 rials of thought and feeling like so much chaff. 
 
 N. Aye, there it is. We had rather do anything than ac- 
 knowledge the merit of another, if we have any possible excuse 
 or evasion to help it. Depend upon it, you are glad Sir Walter 
 Scott is a Tory because it gives you an opportunity of qualify- 
 ing your involuntary admiration of him. You would be sorry 
 indeed if he were what you call an honest man ! Envy is like a 
 viper coiled up at the bottom of the heart, ready to spring upon and 
 poison whatever approaches it. We live upon the vices, the im- 
 perfections, the misfortunes, and disappointments of others, as our 
 natural food. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Even our 
 pretended cordial admiration is only a subterfuge of our vanity. 
 By raising one, we proportionably lower and mortify others. Our 
 self-love may perhaps be taken by surprise and thrown off its 
 guard by novelty ; but it soon recovers itself, and begins to cool 
 in its warmest expressions, and finds every possible fault. Ridi- 
 cule, for this reason, is sure to prevail over truth, because the 
 malice of mankind thrown into the scale gives the casting- weight. 
 We have one succession of authors, of painters, of favorites, after 
 another, whom we hail in their turns, because they operate as a 
 diversion to one another, and relieve us of the galling sense of the 
 superiority of any one individual for any length of time. By 
 changing the object of our admiration, we secretly persuade our. 
 selves that there is no such thing as excellence. It is that which 
 we hate above all things. It is the worm that gnaws us, that 
 never dies. The mob shout when a king or a conqueror appears : 
 they would take him and tear him in pieces, but that he is the 
 scape-goat of their pride and vanity, and makes all other men 
 appear like a herd of slaves and cowards. Instead of a thousand 
 equals, we compound for one superior, and allay all heart-burn.
 
 108 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ings and animosities among ourselves, by giving the palm to the 
 least worthy. This is the secret of monarchy. Loyalty is not the 
 love of kings, but hatred and jealousy of mankind. A lacquey 
 rides behind his lord's coach, and feels no envy of his master. 
 Why ? because he looks down and laughs, in his borrowed finery, 
 at the ragged rabble below. Is it not so in our profession ? What 
 Academician eats his dinner in peace, if a rival sits near him ; if 
 his own are not the most admired pictures in the room ; or, in 
 that case, if there are any others that are at all admired, and 
 divide distinction with him ? Is not every artifice used to place 
 the pictures of other artists in the worst light ? Do they not go 
 there after their performances are hung up, and try to paint one 
 another out ? What is the case among players ? Does not a 
 favorite actor threaten to leave the stage, as soon as a new can- 
 didate for public favor is taken the least notice of ? Would 
 not a Manager of a theatre (who has himself pretensions) sooner 
 see it burnt down, than that it should be saved from ruin and 
 lifted into the full tide of public prosperity and favor, by the 
 efforts of one whom he conceives to have supplanted himself 
 in the popular opinion ? Do we not see an author, who has 
 had a tragedy damned, sit at the play every night of a new per- 
 formance for years after, in the hopes of gaining a new companion 
 in defeat ? Is it not an indelible offence to a picture-collector 
 and patron of the arts, to hint that another has a fine head in 
 his collection ? Will any merchant in the city allow another 
 to be worth a plum ? What wit will applaud a bon mot by a 
 rival 1 He sits uneasy and out of countenance, till he has 
 made another, which he thinks will make the company forget 
 the first. Do women ever allow beauty in others ? Observe the 
 people in a country-town, and see how they look at those who 
 are better dressed than themselves ; listen to the talk in coun- 
 try-places, and mind if it is composed of anything but slanders, 
 gossip, and lies. 
 
 H. But don't you yourself admire Sir Joshua Reynolds ? 
 
 N. Why, yes : I think I have no envy myself, and yet I have 
 sometimes caught myself at it. I don't know that I do not ad- 
 mire Sir Joshua merely as a screen against the reputation of bad 
 pictures.
 
 ON ENVY. I* 
 
 H. Then, at any rate, what I say is true : we envy the good 
 less than we do the bad. 
 
 N. I do not think so ; and am not sure that Sir Joshua did 
 himself not admire Michael Angeio to get rid of the superiority 
 of Titian, Rubens, and Rembranat, which pressed closer on him, 
 and " galled his kibe more." 
 
 H. I should not think that at aii unlikely ; for I look upon Sir 
 Joshua as rather a spiteful man, ana always thought he could 
 have little real feeling for the wonts of Michael Angeio or Ra- 
 phael, which he extolled so highly, or he would not have been 
 insensible to their effect the first time ne ever beheld them. 
 
 N. He liked Sir Peter Lely better.
 
 170 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XIV. 
 
 On the difference between Writing and Speaking. 
 
 " Some minds are proportioned to that which may be despatched at 
 once, or within a short return of time : others to that which begins afar 
 off', and is to be won with length of pursuit." Lord Bacow. 
 
 It is a common observation, that few persons can be found who 
 speak and write equally well. Not only is it obvious that the 
 two faculties do not always go together in the same proportions : 
 but they are not usually in direct opposition to each other. We 
 find that the greatest authors often make the worst company in 
 the world ; and again, some of the liveliest fellows imaginable in 
 'conversation, or extempore speaking, seem to lose all their vivacity 
 and spirit the moment they set pen to paper. For this a greatei 
 degree of quickness or slowness of parts, education, habit, temper, 
 tun of mind, and a variety of collateral and predisposing causes, 
 are necessary to account. The subject is at least curious, and 
 worthy of an attempt to explain it. I shall endeavor to illustrate the 
 difference by familiar examples rather than by analytical reason- 
 ings. The philosopher of old was not unwise, who defined motion 
 by getting up and walking. 
 
 The great leading distinction between writing and speaking is, 
 that more time is allowed for the one than the other : and hence 
 different faculties are required for, and different objects attained 
 by, each. He is properly the best speaker who can collect 
 together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's 
 warning : he is properly the best writer who can give utterance 
 to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the course of his 
 whole life. The chief requisite for the one, then, appears to be 
 quickness and facility of perception for the other, patience of soul, 
 and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master. He 
 cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion,
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING 171 
 
 who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or 
 subject that offers : he, by the same rule, will make a respectable 
 writer, who, by dint of study, can find out anything good to say 
 upon any one point that has not been touched upon before, or who, 
 by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehen- 
 sive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a 
 single blow : the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, 
 by having time to think and do better. In speaking, less is 
 required of you, if you only do it at once, with grace and spirit : in 
 writing, you stipulate for all that you are capable of, but you have 
 the choice of your own time and subject. You do not expect 
 from the manufacturer the same dispatch in executing an order 
 that you do from the shopkeeper or warehouseman. The differ- 
 ence of quicker and slower, however, is not all : that is merely a 
 difference of comparison in doing the same thing. But the writer 
 and speaker have to do things essentially different. Besides 
 habit, and greater or less facility, there is also a certain reach of 
 capacity, a certain depth or shallowness, grossness or refinement 
 of intellect, which marks out the distinction between those whose 
 chief ambition is to shine by producing an immediate effect, or 
 who are thrown back, by a natural bias, on the severer researches 
 of thought and study. 
 
 We see persons of that standard or texture of mind that they 
 can do nothing, but on the spur of the occasion : if they have time 
 to deliberate, they are lost. There are others who have no 
 resource, who cannot advance a step by any efforts or assistance, 
 beyond a successful arrangement of common-places : but these 
 they have always at command, at everybody's service. There 
 
 is F ; meet him where you will in the street, he has his 
 
 topic ready to discharge in the same breath with the customary 
 forms of salutation ; he is hand and glove with it ; on it goes and 
 off, and he manages it like Wart his caliver. 
 
 Hear him but reason in divinity, 
 And, all-admiring, with an inward wish 
 You wou?d desire that he were made a prelate. 
 Let him but talk of any state-affair, 
 You'd say it had been all in all his study. 
 Turn him to any cause of policy, 
 25
 
 172 TABLE TALK. 
 
 The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, 
 Familiar as his garter. When he speaks, 
 The air, a charter'd libertine, stands still 
 
 but, ere you have time to answer him, he is off like a shot, to 
 repeat the same rounded, fluent observations to others : a perfect 
 master of the sentences, a walking polemic wound up for the day, 
 a smartly bound political pocket-book ! Set the same person to 
 write a common paragraph, and he cannot get through it for very 
 weariness : ask him a question, ever so little out of the common 
 road, and he stares you in the face. What does all this bustle, 
 animation, plausibility, and command of words amount to ? A 
 lively flow of animal spirits, a good deal of confidence, a commu- 
 nicative turn, and a tolerably tenacious memory with respect to 
 floating opinions and current phrases. Beyond the routine of the 
 daily newspapers and coffee-house criticism, such persons do not 
 venture to think at all : or if they did, it would be so much the 
 worse for them, for they would only be perplexed in the attempt, and 
 would perform their part in the mechanism of society with so 
 much the less alacrity and easy volubility. 
 
 The most dashing orator I ever heard is the flattest writer I 
 ever read. In speaking, he was like a volcano vomiting out lava ; 
 in writing, he is like a volcano burnt out. Nothing but the 
 dry cinders, the hard shell remains. The tongues of flame, with 
 which, in haranguing a mixed assembly, he used to illuminate 
 his subject, and almost scorched up the panting air, do not appear 
 painted on the margin of his works. He was the model of a 
 flashy, powerful demagogue a madman blest with a fit audience. 
 He was possessed, infuriated with the patriotic mania ; he seemed 
 to rend and tear the rotten carcase of corruption with the remorse- 
 less, indecent rage of a wild beast : he mourned over the bleeding 
 body of his country, like another Antony over the dead body of 
 Caesar, as if he would " move the very stones of Rome to rise and 
 mutiny :" he pointed to the " Persian abodes, the glittering temples" 
 of oppression and luxury, with prophetic exultation ; and, like 
 another Helen, had almost fired another Troy ! The lightning of 
 national indignation flashed from his eye ; the workings of the 
 popular mind were seen laboring in his bosom : it writhed and 
 swelled with its rank " fraught of aspics' tongues," and the poison
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 173 
 
 frothed over at his lips. Thus qualified, he " wielded at will the 
 fierce democracy, and fulmin'd over " an area of souls, of no 
 mean circumference. He who might be said to have " roared 
 you in the ears of the groundlings an 'twere any lion, aggravates 
 his voice " on paper, " like any sucking-dove." It is not merely 
 that the same individual cannot sit down quietly in his closet, and 
 produce the same, or a correspondent effect that what he delivers 
 over to the compositor is tame, and trite, and tedious that he 
 cannot by any means, as it were, " create a soul under the ribs 
 of death " but sit down yourself, and read one of these very 
 popular and electrical effusions (for they have been published) 
 and you would not believe it to be the same ! The thunder-and- 
 lightning mixture of the orator turns out a mere drab-colored suit 
 in the person of the prose-writer. We wonder at the change, 
 and think there must be some mistake, some leger-de-main trick 
 played off" upon us, by which what before appeared so fine now 
 appears to be so worthless. The deception took place before ; 
 now it is removed. "Bottom! thou art translated!" might be 
 placed as a motto under most collections of printed speeches that 
 I have had the good fortune to meet with, whether originally 
 addressed to the people, the senate, or the bar. Burke's and 
 Windham's form an exception : Mr. Coleridge's Condones ad 
 Populum do not, any more than Mr. Thelwall's Tribune. What 
 we read is the same : what we hear and see is different " the 
 self-same words, but not to the self-same tune." The orator's 
 vehemence of gesture, the loudness of the voice, the speaking eye, 
 the conscious attitude, the inexplicable dumb show and noise, 
 all " those brave sublunary things that made his raptures clear," 
 are no longer there, and without these he is nothing ; his 
 " fire and air " turn to puddle and ditch-water, and the God of 
 eloquence and of our idolatry sinks into a common mortal, or an 
 image of lead, with a few labels, nicknames, and party watch- 
 words stuck in his mouth. The truth is, that these always made 
 up the stock of his intellectual wealth ; but a certain exaggera- 
 tion and extravagance of manner covered the nakedness, and 
 swelled out the emptiness of the matter : the sympathy of angry 
 multitudes with an impassioned theatrical declaimer supplied the 
 place of argument or wit ; while the physical animation and
 
 174 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ardor of the speaker evaporated in " sound and fury, signifying 
 nothing," and leaving no trace behind it. A popular speaker 
 (such as I have been here describing) is like a vulgar actor off 
 the stage take away his cue, and he has nothing to say for him- 
 self. Or he is so accustomed to the intoxication of popular 
 applause, that without that stimulus he has no motive or power of 
 exertion left neither imagination, understanding, liveliness, com- 
 mon sense, words nor ideas he is fairly cleared out ; and in the 
 intervals of sober reason, is the dullest and most imbecile of all 
 mortals. 
 
 An orator can hardly get beyond comtnon-phces : if he does, he 
 gets beyond his hearers. The most successful speakers, even in 
 the House of Commons, have not been the best scholars or the 
 finest writers neither those who took the most profound views of 
 their subject, nor who adorned it with the most original fancy, or 
 the richest combinations of language. Those speeches that in 
 general told best at the time, are not now readable. What were the 
 materials of which they were chiefly composed ? An imposing 
 detail of passing events, a formal display of official documents, an 
 appeal to established maxims, an echo of popular clamor, some 
 worn-out metaphor newly vamped-up, some hackneyed argu- 
 ment used for the hundredth, nay thousandth time, to fall in with 
 the interests, the passions, or prejudices of listening and 
 devoted admirers ; some truth or falsehood, repeated as the 
 Shibboleth of party time out of mind, which gathers strength from 
 sympathy as it spreads, because it is understood or assented to by 
 the million, and finds, in the increased action of the minds of 
 numbers, the weight and force of an instinct. A common-place 
 does not leave the mind " sceptical, puzzled, and undecided in the 
 moment of action :" " it gives a body to opinion, and a perma- 
 nence to fugitive belief." It operates mechanically, and open 
 an instantaneous and infallible communication between the hear 
 er and speaker. A set of cant phrases, arranged in sounding 
 sentences, and pronounced " with good emphasis and discretion," 
 keep the gross and irritable humors of an audience in constant 
 fermentation ; and levy no tax on the understanding. To give a 
 reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it, which doubt you 
 may not remove in the sequel ; either because your reason may
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 175 
 
 not be a good one, or because the person to whom it is addressed 
 may not be able to comprehend it, or because others may not be 
 able to comprehend it. He who offers to go into the grounds of 
 an acknowledged axiom, risks the unanimity of the company 
 " by most admired disorder," as he who digs to the foundation of 
 a building to show its solidity, risks its falling. But a common- 
 place is enshrined in its own unquestioned evidence, and consti- 
 tutes its own immortal basis. Nature, it has been said, abhors a 
 vacuum : and the House of Commons, it might be said, hates 
 everything but a common-place ! Mr. Burke did not often shock 
 the prejudices of the House : he endeavored to account for them, 
 to " lay the flattering unction" of philosophy " to their souls." 
 They could not endure him. Yet he did not attempt this by dry 
 argument alone ; he called to his aid the flowers of poetical fic- 
 tion, and strewed the most dazzling colors of language over the 
 Standing Orders of the House. It was a double offence to them 
 an aggravation of the encroachments of his genius. They 
 would rather " hear a cat mew or an axle-tree grate," than hear 
 a man talk philosophy by the hour 
 
 Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
 And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns. 
 
 He was emphatically called the Dinner-Bell. They went out by 
 shoals when he began to speak. They coughed and shuffled him 
 down. While he was uttering some of the finest observations (to 
 speak in compass) that ever were delivered in that House, they 
 walked out, not as the beasts came out of the ark, by twos and by 
 threes, but in droves and companies of tens, of dozens, and scores ! 
 Oh ! it is " the heaviest stone which melancholy can throw at a 
 man," when you are in the middle of a delicate speculation to see 
 " a robustious, periwig-pated fellow" deliberately take up his hat 
 and walk out. But what effect could Burke's finest observations 
 be expected to have on the House of Commons in their corporate 
 capacity ? On the supposition that they were original, refined, 
 comprehensive, his auditors had never heard, and assuredly they 
 had never thought of them before: how then should thev know
 
 1-76 TABLE TALK. 
 
 that they were good or bad, till they had time to consider better 
 of it, or till they were told what to think ? In the mean time, 
 their effect would be to stop the question : they were blanks in the 
 debate : they could at best only be laid aside and left ad referen- 
 dum. What would it signify if four or five persons, at the utmost, 
 felt their full force and fascinating power the instant they were 
 delivered 1 They would be utterly unintelligible to nine-tenths 
 of the persons present, and their impression upon any particular 
 individual, more knowing than the rest, would be involuntarily 
 paralysed by the torpedo touch of the elbow of a country gentleman 
 or city-orator. There is a reaction in insensibility as well as in 
 enthusiasm ; and men in society judge not by their own convic- 
 tions, but by sympathy with others. In reading, we may go over 
 the page again, whenever anything new or questionable " gives 
 us pause :" besides, we are by ourselves, and it is a word to the 
 wise. We are not afraid of understanding too much, and being 
 called upon to unriddle. In hearing we are (saving the mark !) 
 in the company of fools ; and time presses. Was the debate to 
 be suspended while Mr. Fox or Mr. Windham took this or that 
 Honorable Member aside, to explain to them that fine observation 
 of Mr. Burke's, and to watch over the new birth of their under- 
 standings, the dawn of this new light ! If we were to wait till 
 Noble Lords and Honorable Gentlemen were inspired with a relish 
 for abstruse thinking, and a taste for the loftier flights of fancy, 
 the business of this great nation would shortly be at a stand. 
 No : it is too much to ask that our good things should be duly 
 appreciated by the first person we meet, or in the next minute 
 after their disclosure ; if the world are a little, a very little, the 
 wiser or better for them a century hence, it is full as much as 
 can be modestly expected ! The impression of anything delivered 
 in a large assembly must be comparatively null and void, unless 
 you not only understand and feel its value yourself, but are con- 
 scious that it is felt and understood by the meanest capacity pre- 
 sent. Till that is the case, the speaker is in your power, not you 
 in his. The eloquence that is effectual and irresistible must stir 
 the inert mass of prejudice, and pierce the opaquest shadows of 
 ignorance. Corporate bodies move slow in the progress of intel- 
 lect for this reason, that they must keep back, like convoys, foi
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 177 
 
 .nil heaviest sailing vessels under their charge. The sinews of 
 the wisest councils are, after all, impudence and interest : the 
 most enlightened bodies are often but slaves of the weakest intel- 
 lects they reckon among them, and the best-intentioned are but 
 tools of the greatest hypocrites and knaves. To conclude what I 
 had to say on the character of Mr. Burke's parliamentary style, 
 I will just give an instance of what I mean in affirming that it 
 was too recondite for his hearers ; and it shall be even in so 
 obvious a thing as a quotation. Speaking of the new fangled 
 French Constitution, and in particular of the King (Louis XVI.) 
 as the chief power in form and appearance only, he repeated the 
 famous lines in Milton describing Death, and concluded with 
 peculiar emphasis, 
 
 What seem' d. its head, 
 
 The likeness of a kingly crown had on. 
 
 The person who heard him make the speech said, that, if ever 
 a poet's language had been finely applied by an orator to express 
 his thoughts and make out his purpose, it was in this instance. 
 The passage, I believe, is not in his reported speeches ; and I 
 should think, in all likelihood, it " fell still-born" from his lips ; 
 while one of Mr. Canning's well-thumbed quotations out of Virgil 
 would electrify the Treasury Benches, and be echoed by all the 
 politicians of his own standing, and the tyros of his own school, 
 from Lord Liverpool in the Upper down to Mr. William Ward in 
 the Lower House. 
 
 Mr. Burke was an author before he was a Member of Parlia- 
 ment : he ascended to that practical eminence from " the plat- 
 form" of his literary pursuits. He walked out of his study into 
 the House. But he never became a thorough-.bred debater. He 
 was not " native to that element," nor was he ever " subdued to 
 the quality" of that motley crew of knights, citizens, and bur- 
 gesses. The late Lord Chatham was made for, and by it. He 
 seemed to vault into his seat there, like Hotspur, with the excla- 
 mation in his mouth " that Roan shall be my throne." Or he 
 sprang out of the genius of the House of Commons, like Pallas 
 from the head of Jupiter, completely armed. He assumed an 
 ascendency there from the very port and stature of his mind 
 
 SECOND SERIES PART I. 25
 
 J 78 TABLE TALK. 
 
 from his aspiring and fiery temperament- He vanquished, be- 
 cause he could not yield. He controlled the purposes of others, 
 because he was strong in his own obdurate self-will. He convinced 
 his followers, by never doubting himself. He did not argue, but 
 assert ; he took what he chose for granted, instead of making a 
 question of it. He was not a dealer in moot-points. He seized 
 on some strong-hold in the argument, and held it fast with a con- 
 vulsive grasp or wrested the weapons out of his adversaries' 
 hands by main force. Hl entered the lists like a gladiator. He 
 made political controversy a combat of personal skill and courage. 
 He was not for wasting time in long-winded discussions with his 
 opponents, but tried to disarm them by a word, by a glance of his 
 eye, so that they should not dare to contradict or confront him 
 again. He did not wheedle, or palliate, or circumvent, or make 
 a studied appeal to the reason or the passions he dictated his 
 opinions to the House of Commons. " He spoke as one having 
 authority, and not as the Scribes." But if he did not produce 
 such an effect either by reason or imagination, how did he pro- 
 duce it ? The principle by which he exerted his influence over 
 others (and it is a principle of which some speakers that I might 
 mention seem not to have an idea, even in possibility) was sym. 
 pathy. He himself evidently had a strong possession of his sub- 
 ject, a thorough conviction, an intense interest ; and this commu- 
 nicated itself from his manner, from the tones of his voice, from 
 his commanding attitudes, and eager gestures, instinctively and 
 unavoidably to his hearers. His will was surcharged with elec- 
 trical matter like a Voltaic battery ; and all who stood within its 
 reach felt the full force of the shock. Zeal wdl do more than 
 knowledge. To say the truth, there is little knowledge, no 
 ingenuity, no parade of individual details, not much attempt at 
 general argument, neither wit nor fancy in his speeches but 
 there are a few plain truths told home : whatever he says, he does 
 not mince the matter, but clenches it in the most unequivocal 
 manner, and with the fullest sense of its importance, in clear, 
 shorl, pithy, old English sentences. The most obvious things, as 
 he puts them, read like axioms so that he appears, as it were, 
 the genius of common sense personified ; and in turning to his 
 gpeeches you fancy that you have met with (at least) one honest
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 179 
 
 statesman ! Lord Chatham commenced his career in the intrigues 
 of a camp and the bustle of a mess-room ; where he probably- 
 learnt that the way to govern others, is to make your will your 
 warrant, and your word a law. If he had spent the early part 
 of his life, like Mr. Burke, in writing a treatise on the Sublime 
 and Beautiful, and in dreaming over the abstract nature and 
 causes of things, he would never have taken the lead he did in 
 the British Senate. 
 
 Both Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt (though as opposite to each other 
 as possible) were essentially speakers, not authors, in their mode 
 of oratory. Beyond the moment, beyond the occasion, beyond 
 the immediate power shown, astonishing as that was, there was 
 little remarkable or worth preserving in their speeches. There 
 is no thought in them that implies a habit of deep and refined 
 reflection (more than we are accustomed ordinarily to find in peo- 
 ple of education) ; there is no knowledge that does not lie within 
 the reach of obvious and mechanical search ; and as to the powers 
 of language, the chief miracle is, that a source of words so apt, 
 forcible, and well-arranged, so copious and unfailing, should have 
 been found constantly open to express their ideas without any pre- 
 vious preparation. Considered as written style, they are not far 
 out of the common course of things ; and perhaps it is assuming 
 too much, and making the wonder greater than it is, with a very 
 natural love of indulging our admiration of extraordinary persons, 
 when we conceive that parliamentary speeches are in general 
 delivered without any previous preparation. They do not, it is 
 true, allow of preparation at the moment, but they have the pre- 
 paration of the preceding night, and of the night before that, and 
 of nights, weeks, months, and years of the same endless drudgery 
 and routine, in going over the- same subjects, argued (with some 
 paltry difference) on the same grounds. Practice makes perfect. 
 He who has got a speech by heart on any particular occasion, 
 cannot be much gravelled for lack of matter on any similar occa- 
 sion in future. Not only are the topics the same ; the very same 
 phrases whole batches of them, are served up as the Order of 
 the Day ; the same parliamentary bead-roll of grave impertinence 
 is twanged off, in full cadence, by the Honorable Member or his 
 Ijearned and Honorable Friend ; and the well-known, voluminous, 
 
 25*
 
 180 TABLE TALK. 
 
 calculable periods roll over the drowsy ears of the auditors, almost 
 before they are delivered from the vapid tongue that utters them ! 
 It may appear, at first sight, that here are a number of persons 
 got together, picked out from the whole nation, who can speak at 
 all times upon all subjects in the most exemplary manner ; but 
 the fact is, they only repeat the same things over and over on the 
 same subjects, and they obtain credit for general capacity and 
 ready wit, like Chaucer's Monk, who, by having three words of 
 Latin always in his mouth, passed for a great scholar. 
 
 A few termes coude he, two or three, 
 That he had learned out of som decree ; 
 No wonder is, he herd it all the day. 
 
 Try them on any other subject out of doors, and see how soon 
 the extempore wit and wisdom " will halt for it." See how few 
 of those who have distinguished themselves in the House of 
 Commons have done anything out of it ; how few that have, shine 
 there I Read 'over the collections of old Debates, twenty, forty, 
 eighty, a hundred years ago ; they are the same, mutatis mutandis, 
 as those of yesterday. You wonder to see how little has been 
 added ; you grieve that so little has been lost. Even in their 
 own favorite topics, how much are they to seek ! They still talk 
 gravely of the Sinking Fund in St. Stephen's Chapel, which has 
 been for some time exploded as a juggle by Mr. Place of Charing- 
 Cross ; and a few of the principles of Adam Smith, which every 
 one else had been acquainted with long since, are just now begin- 
 ning to dawn on the collective understanding of the two Houses 
 of Parliament. Instead of an exuberance of sumptuous matter, 
 you have the same meagre standing dishes for every day in the 
 year. You must serve an apprenticeship to a want of originality, 
 to a suspension of thought and feeling. You are in a go-cart of 
 prejudices, in a regularly constructed machine of pretexts and 
 precedents ; you are not only to wear the livery of other men's 
 thoughts, but there is a House-of-Commons jargon which must 
 be used for everything. A man of simplicity and independence 
 of mind cannot easily reconcile himself to all this formality and 
 mummery ; yet wo to him that shall attempt to discard it ! You 
 can no more move against the stream of custom, than you can make
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 181 . 
 
 head against a crowd of people ; the mob of lords and gentlemen 
 will not let you speak or think but as they do. You are hemmed 
 in, stifled, pinioned, pressed to death, and if you make one false 
 step, are " trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multitude !" 
 Talk of mobs ! Is there any body of people that has this charac- 
 ter in a more consummate degree than the House of Commons ? 
 Is there any set of men that determines more by acclamation, and 
 less by deliberation and individual conviction ? That is moved 
 more en masse, in its aggregate capacity, as brute force and phy- 
 sical number? That judges with more Midas ears, blind and 
 sordid, without discrimination of right and wrong ? The greatest 
 test of courage I can conceive, is to speak truth in the House of 
 Commons. I have heard Sir Francis Burdett say things there 
 which I could not enough admire ; and which he could not have 
 ventured upon saying, if, besides his honesty, he had not been a 
 man of fortune, of family, of character, aye, and a very good- 
 looking man into the bargain ! Dr. Johnson had a wish to try 
 his hand in the House of Commons. An elephant might as well 
 have been introduced there, in all the forms : Sir William Curtis 
 makes a better figure. Either he or the Speaker (Onslow) must 
 have resigned. The orbit of his intellect was not the one in 
 which the intellect of the house moved by ancient privilege. His 
 common-places were not their common-places. Even Home 
 Tooke failed, with all his tact, his self-possession, his ready talent, 
 and his long practice at the hustings. He had weapons of his 
 own, with which he wished to make play, and did not lay his 
 hand upon the established levers for wielding the House of Com- 
 mons. A succession of dry, sharp-pointed sayings, which come 
 in excellently well in the pauses or quick turns of conversation, 
 do not make a speech. A series of drops is not a stream. Be- 
 sides, he had been in the practice of rallying his guests and 
 tampering wit v his subject ; and this ironical tone did not suit 
 his new situation. He had been used to " give his own little 
 Senate laws," and when he found the resistance of the great one 
 more than he could manage, he shrank back from the attempt, 
 disheartened and powerless. It is nothing that a man can talk 
 (the better, the worse it is for him) unless he can talk in trammels ; 
 he must be drilled into the regiment ; he must not run out of the
 
 lb'2 TABLE TALK. 
 
 course ! The worst thing a man can do is to set up for a wit there 
 or rather (I would say) for a humorist to say odd out-of-the- 
 way things, to ape a character, to play the clown or the wag in 
 the House. This is the very forlorn hope of a parliamentary 
 ambition. They may tolerate it till they know what you are at, 
 but no longer. It may succeed once or twice, but the third time 
 you will be sure to break your neck. They know nothing of you, 
 or your whims, nor have they time to look at a puppet-show. 
 " They look only at the stop-watch, my Lord !" We have seen 
 a very lively sally of this sort which failed lately. The House 
 of Commons is the last place where a man will draw admiration 
 by making a jest of his own character. But if he has a mind to 
 make a jest of humanity, of liberty, and of common sense and 
 decency, he will succeed well enough ! 
 
 The only person who ever " hit the House between wind and 
 water " in this way, who made sport for the Members, and kept 
 his own dignity (in our time at least), was Mr. Windham. He 
 carried on the traffic in parliamentary conundrums and enigmas 
 with great eclat for more than one season. He mixed. up a vein 
 of characteristic eccentricity with a succession of far-fetched and 
 curious speculations, very pleasantly. Extremes meet ; and Mr. 
 Windham overcame the obstinate attachment of his hearers to 
 fixed opinions by the force of paradoxes. He startled his bed-rid 
 audience effectually. A paradox was a treat to them, on the 
 score of novelty at least ; " the sight of one," according to the 
 Scotch proverb, " was good for sore eyes." So Mr. Windham 
 humored them in the thing for once. He took all sorts of conr.- 
 monly received doctrines and notions (with an understood reserve) 
 reversed them, and set up a fanciful theory of his own, instead. 
 The changes were like those of a pantomime. Ask the first old 
 woman you met her opinion on any subject, and you could get at 
 the statesman's ; for he would be just the contrary. He would be 
 wiser than the old woman at any rate. If a thing had' been 
 thought cruel, he would prove that it was humane : if barbarous, 
 manly ; if wise, foolish ; if sense, nonsense. His creed was the 
 antithesis of common sense, loyalty excepted. Economy he could 
 turn into ridicule, " as a saving of cheese-parings and candle, 
 ends;" and total failure was with him " negative success." He
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 193 
 
 had no occasion, for thus setting up for original thinking, to 
 inquire into the truth or falsehood of any proposition, but to as- 
 certain whether it was currently believed in, and then to contra- 
 dict it point-blank. He made the vulgar prejudices of others 
 " servile ministers " to his own solecisms. It was not easy to say 
 whether he was in jest or earnest but he contrived to hitch his 
 extravagances into the midst of some grave debate ; the House 
 had their laugh for nothing ; the question got into shape again, 
 and Mr. Windham was allowed te have been more brilliant than 
 ever.* 
 
 Mr. Windham was, I have heard, a silent man in company. 
 Indeed his whole style was an artificial and studied imitation, or 
 capricious caricature of Burke's bold, natural, discursive manner. 
 This did not imply much spontaneous power or fertility of inven- 
 tion ; he was an intellectual posture-master, rather than a man 
 of real elasticity and vigor of mind. Mr. Pitt was also, I believe, 
 somewhat taciturn and reserved. There was nothing clearly in the 
 subject-matter of his speeches to connect with the ordinary topics 
 of discourse, or with any given aspect of human life. One would 
 expect him to be quite as much in the clouds as the automaton 
 chess-player, or the last new Opera-singer. Mr. Fox said little 
 in private, and complained that in writing he had no style. So 
 (to compare great things with small) Jack Davies, the unrivalled 
 racket-player, never said anything at all in company, and was 
 what is understood by a modest man. When the racket was out 
 of his hand, his occupation, his delight, his glory (that which he 
 excelled all mankind in) was gone ! So when Mr. Fox had no 
 longer to keep up the ball of debate, with the floor of Saint 
 Stephen's for a stage, and the world for spectators of the game, it 
 is hardly to be wondered at that he felt a little at a loss without 
 his usual train of subjects, the same crowd of associations, the 
 same spirit of competition, or stimulus to extraordinary exertion. 
 
 * It must be granted, however, that there was something piquant and 
 provoking in his manner of "making the worse appear the better reason." 
 In keeping off the ill odor of a bad cause, he applied hartshorn and burnt 
 feathers to the offended sense ; and did not, like Mr. Canning, treat us w:th 
 the faded flowers of his oratory, like the faint smell of a perfumer's shop, 
 or try to make Government " love-locks " of dead men's hair !
 
 184 TABLE TALK. 
 
 The excitement of leading in the House of Commons (which, in 
 addition to the immediate attention and applause that follows, is a 
 sort of whispering gallery to all Europe) must act upon the brain 
 like brandy or laudanum upon the stomach ; and must, in most 
 cases, produce the same debilitating effects afterwards. A man's 
 faculties must be quite exhausted, his virtue gone out of him. 
 That any one accustomed all his life to the tributary roar of ap- 
 plause from the great council of the nation, should think of diet- 
 ing himself with the prospect of posthumous fame as an author, is 
 like offering a confirmed dram-drinker a glass of fair water for 
 his morning's draught. Charles Fox is not to be blamed for 
 naving written an indifferent history of James II., but for having 
 written a history at all. It was not his business to write a history 
 his business was not to have made any more Coalitions ! But he 
 found writing so dull, he thought it better to be a colleague of 
 Lord Grenville ! He did not want style (to say so is nonsense, 
 because the style of his speeches was just and fine) he wanted 
 a sounding-board in the ear of posterity to try his periods upon. 
 If he had gone to the House of Commons in the morning, and tried 
 to make a speech fasting, when there was nobody to hear him, he 
 might have been equally disconcerted at his want of style. The 
 habit of speaking is the habit of being heard, and of wanting to 
 be heard ; the habit of writing is the habit of thinking aloud, but 
 without the help of an echo. The orator sees his subject in the 
 eager looks of his auditors ; and feels doubly conscious, doubly 
 impressed with it in the glow of their sympathy ; the author can 
 only look for encouragement in a blank piece of paper. The 
 orator feels the impulse of popular enthusiasm, 
 
 like proud seas under him : 
 
 the only Pegasus the writer has to boast, is the hobby-horse of his 
 own thoughts and fancies. How is he to get on then ? From 
 the lash of necessity. We accordingly see persons of rank anj 
 fortune continually volunteer into the service of oratory and the 
 State ; but we have few authors who are not paid by the sheet ! 
 I myself have heard Charles Fox engaged in familiar conver- 
 sation. It was in the Louvre. He was describing the pictures
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 18f 
 
 to two persons that were with him. He spoke rapidly, but very 
 unaffectedly. I remember his saying " All these blues anc 
 greens and reds are the Guercinos ; you may know them by the 
 colors." He set Opie right as to Domenichino's Saint Jerome. 
 " You will find," he said, " though you may not be struck with 
 it at first, that there is a great deal of truth and good sense in that 
 picture." There was a person at one time a good deal with Mr. 
 Fox, who, when the opinion of the latter was asked on any sub- 
 ject, very frequently interposed to give the answer. This sort of 
 tantalizing interruption was ingeniously enough compared by 
 some one, to walking up Ludgate-hill, and having the spire of St. 
 Martin's constantly getting in your way, when you wish to see 
 the dome of St. Paul's ! Burke, it is said, conversed as he spoke 
 in public, and as he wrote. He was communicative, diffuse, 
 magnificent. " What is the use," said Mr. Fox to a friend, " of 
 Sheridan's trying to swell himself out in this manner, like the 
 frog in the fable ?" alluding to his speech on Warren Hastings's 
 trial. " It is very well for Burke to express himself in that figu- 
 rative way. It is natural to him ; he talks so to his wife, to his 
 servants, to his children ; but as for Sheridan, he either never 
 opens his mouth at all, or if he does, it is to utter some joke, ft 
 is out of the question for him to affect these Orientalisms." Burke 
 once came into Sir Joshua Reynolds's painting-room, when one of 
 his pupils was sitting for one of the sons of Count Ugolino ; this 
 gentleman was personally introduced to him ; " Ah ! then," said 
 Burke, " I find that Mr. N has not only a head that would do 
 fo Titian to paint, but is himself a painter." At another time, 
 he came in when Goldsmith was there, and poured forth such a 
 torrent of violent personal abuse against the King, that they got 
 to high words, and Goldsmith threatened to leave the room if he 
 did not desist. Goldsmith bore testimony to his powers of con- 
 versation. Speaking of Johnson, he said, " Does he wind into a 
 subject like a serpent, as Burke does ?" With respect to his faci- 
 lity in composition, there are contradictory accounts. It has been 
 stated by some, that he wrote out a plain* sketch first, like a sort 
 of dead coloring, and added the ornaments and tropes afterwards. 
 I have been assured by a person who had the best means of 
 knowing, that the Letter to a Noble Lord (the most rapid, impetu
 
 186 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ous, glancing, and sportive of all his works) was printed off, and 
 the proof sent to him : and that it was returned to the printing- 
 office with so many alterations and passages interlined, that the 
 compositors refused to correct it as it was took the whole matter 
 in pieces, and re-set the copy. This looks like elaboration and 
 after-thought. It was also one of Burke's latest compositions.* A 
 regularly bred speaker would have made up his mind beforehand ; 
 but Burke's mind being, as originally constituted and by its first 
 bias, that of an author, never became set. It was in further 
 search and progress. It had an internal spring left. It was not 
 tied down to the printer's form. It could still project itself into 
 new beauties, and explore strange regions from the unwearied 
 impulse of its own delight or curiosity. Perhaps among the 
 passages interlined, in this case, were the description of the Duke 
 of Bedford, as " the Leviathan among all the creatures of the 
 crown," the catalogue raisonnee of the Abbe Sieyes's pigeon- 
 holes, or the comparison of the English Monarchy to " the proud 
 keep of Windsor, with its double belt of kindred and coeval 
 towers-." Were these to be given up ? If he had had to make 
 nis defence of his pension in the House of Lords, they would not 
 have been ready in time, it appears ; and, besides, would have 
 been too difficult of execution on the spot : a speaker must not set 
 his heart on such forbidden fruit. But Mr. Burke was an author, 
 and the press did not " shut the gates of genius on mankind." A 
 set of oratorical flourishes, indeed, is soon exhausted, and is gene- 
 rally all that the extempore speaker can safely aspire to. Not 
 so with the resources of art or nature, which are inexhaustible, 
 and which the writer has time to seek out, to embody, and to fit 
 into shape and use, if he has the strength, the courage, and patience 
 to do so. 
 
 There is then a certain range of thought and expression beyond 
 the regular rhetorical routine, on which the author, to vindicate 
 his title, must trench somewhat freely. The proof that this is 
 understood to be so, is, that what is called an oratorical style is 
 
 * Tom Paine, while he was busy about any of his works, used to walk 
 out, compose a sentence or paragraph in his head, come home and write 1 
 down, and never altered it afterwards He then added another, and so on, 
 till the whole was completed.
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 187 
 
 exploded from all good writing ; that we immediately lay down an 
 article, even in a common newspaper, in which such phrases 
 occur as " the Angel of Reform," " the drooping Genius of 
 Albion ;" and that a very brilliant speech at a loyal dinner-party 
 makes a very flimsy, insipid pamphlet. The orator has to get up 
 for a certain occasion a striking compilation of partial topics, 
 which, " to leave no rubs or botches in the work," must be pretty 
 familiar! as well as palatable to his hearers ; and in doing this, he 
 may avail himself of all the resources of an artificial memory. 
 The writer must be original, or he is nothing. He is not to take 
 up with ready-made goods ; for he has time allowed him to create 
 his own materials, to make novel combinations of thought and 
 fancy, to contend with unforeseen difficulties of style and execu- 
 tion, while we look on, and admire the growing work in secret 
 and at leisure. There is a degree of finishing as well as of solid 
 strength in writing, which is not to be got at every day, and we 
 can wait for perfection. The author owes a debt to truth and 
 nature which he cannot satisfy at sight, but he has pawned his 
 head in redeeming it. It is not a string of clap-traps to answer a 
 temporary or party-purpose, violent, vulgar, and illiberal, but 
 general and lasting truth that we require at his hands. We go 
 to him as pupils, not as partisans. We have a right to expect 
 from him profounder views of things ; finer observations ; more 
 ingenious illustrations ; happier and bolder expressions. He is 
 to give the choice and picked results of a whole life of study ; 
 what he has struck out in his most felicitous moods, has treasured 
 up with most pride, has labored to bring to light with most 
 anxiety and confidence of success. He may turn a period in his 
 head fifty different ways, so that it comes out smooth and round 
 at last. He may have caught a glimpse of a simile, and it may 
 have vanished again : let him be on the watch for it, as the idle 
 boy watches for the lurking-place of the adder. We can wait. 
 He is not satisfied with a reason he has offered for something : let 
 him wait till he finds a better reason. There is some word, some 
 phrase, some idiom that expresses a particular idea better than any 
 other, but he cannot for the life of him recollect it : let him wait 
 till he does. Is it strange that among twenty thousand words in 
 ihe English language, the one of all others that he most needs
 
 188 TABLE TALK. 
 
 should have escaped him ? There are more things in nature than 
 there are words in the English language, and he must not expect 
 to lay rash hands on them all at once. 
 
 Learn to write slow : all other graces 
 Will follow in their proper places. 
 
 You allow a writer a year to think of a subject ; he should not 
 put you off with a truism at last. You allow him a year more to 
 find out words for his thoughts ; he should not give us an echo of 
 all the fine things that have been said a hundred times.* All 
 authors, however, are not so squeamish ; but take up with words 
 and ideas as they find them delivered down to them. Happy are 
 they who write Latin verses ! Who copy the style of Dr. John- 
 son! Who hold up the phrase of ancient Pistol ! They do not 
 trouble themselves with those hair-breadth distinctions of thought 
 or meaning that puzzle nicer heads let us leave them to their 
 repose ! A person in habits of composition often hesitates in con- 
 versation for a particular word : it is because he is in search of 
 the best word, and that he cannot hit upon. In writing he would 
 stop till it came."]" It is not true, however, that the scholar could 
 avail himself of a more ordinary word if he chose, or readily 
 acquire a command of ordinary language ; for his associations 
 are habitually intense, not vague and shallow ; and words occur 
 to him only as tallies to certain modifications of feeling. They 
 are links in the chain of thought. His imagination is fastidious, 
 and rejects all those that are " of no mark or likelihood." Cer- 
 tain words are in his mind indissolubly wedded to certain things ; 
 and none are admitted at the levee of his thoughts, but those of 
 which the banns have been solemnized with scrupulous propriety. 
 Again, the student finds a stimulus to literary exertion, not in the 
 immediate eclat of his undertaking, but in the difficulty of his 
 subject, and the progressive nature of his task. He is not wound 
 
 * Just as a poet ought not to cheat us with lame metre and defective 
 rhymes, which might be excusable in an improvisatori versifier. 
 
 f That is essentially a bad style which seems as if the person writing it 
 never stopped for breath, nor gave himself a moment's pause, but strove to 
 make up by redurdancy and fluency for want of choice and correctness of 
 expression
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 189 
 
 up to a sudden and extraordinary effort of presence of mind ; but 
 is for ever awake to the silent influxes of things, and his life is one 
 long labor. Are there no sweeteners of his toil ? No reflections, 
 in the absence ol popular applause or social indulgence, to cheer 
 him on his way ? Let the reader judge. His pleasure is the 
 counterpart of, and borrowed from the same source as the 
 writer's. A man does not read out of vanity, nor in company, 
 but to amuse his own thoughts. If the reader, from disinterested 
 and merely intellectual motives, relishes an author's " fancies 
 and good nights," the last may be supposed to have relished them 
 no less. If he laughs at a joke, the inventor chuckled over it to 
 the full as much. If he is delighted with a phrase, he may be 
 sure the writer jumped at it ; if he is pleased to cull a straggling 
 flower from the page, he may believe that it was plucked with no 
 less fondness from the face of nature. Does he fasten, with 
 gathering brow and looks intent, on some difficult speculation ? 
 He may be convinced that the writer thought it a fine thing to 
 split his brain in solving so curious a problem, and to publish his 
 discovery to the world. There is some satisfaction in the 
 contemplation of power ; there is also a little pride in the con- 
 scious possession of it. With what pleasure do we read books ! 
 If authors could but feel this, or remember what they themselves 
 once felt, they would need no other, temptation to persevere. 
 
 To conclude this account with what perhaps I ought to have 
 set out with, a definition of the character of an author. There 
 are persons who, in society, in public intercourse, feel no excite- 
 ment, 
 
 " Dull as the lake that slumbers in the storm," 
 
 but who, when left alone, can lash themselves into a foam. The} 
 are never less alone than when alone. Mount them on a dinner- 
 table, and they have nothing to say ; shut them up jn a room by 
 themselves, and they are inspired. They are " made fierce with 
 dark keeping." In revenge for being tongue-tied, a torrent of 
 words flows from their pens, and the storm which was so long 
 collecting comes down apace. It never rains but it pours. 
 Is not this strange, unaccountable ? Not at all so. They have
 
 190 TABLE 1ALK. 
 
 a real interest, a real knowledge of the subject, and they cannot 
 summon up all that interest, or bring all that knowledge to bear, 
 while they have anything else to attend to. Till they can 
 do justice to the feeling they have, they can do nothing. For 
 this they look into their own minds, not in the faces of a gaping 
 multitude. What they would say (if they could) does not lie at 
 the orifices of the mouth ready for delivery, but is wrapped in the 
 folds of the heart and registered in the chambers of the brain. In 
 the sacred cause of truth that stirs them, they would put their 
 whole strength, their whole being into requisition ; and as it 
 implies a greater effort to drag their words and ideas from their 
 lurking-places, so there is no end when they are once set 
 in motion. The whole of a man's thoughts and feelings cannot 
 lie on the surface, made up for use ; but the whole must be 
 a greater quantity, a mightier power, if they could be got at, 
 layer under layer, and brought into play by the levers of 
 imagination and reflection. Such a person then sees further and 
 feels deeper than most others. He plucks up an argument by the 
 roots, he tears out the very heart of his subjec*. He has more 
 pride in conquering the difficulties of a question, than vanity in 
 courting the favor of an audience. He wishes to satisfy himself 
 before he pretends to enlighten the public. He takes an interest 
 in things in the abstract more than by common consent. Nature 
 is his mistress, truth his idol. The contemplation of a pure idea 
 is the ruling passion of his breast. The intervention of other 
 people's notions, the being the immediate object of their censure 
 or their praise, puts him out. What will tell, what will produce 
 an effect, he cares little about ; and therefore he produces 
 the greatest. The personal is to him an impertinence ; so he 
 conceals himself and writes. Solitude " becomes his glittering 
 bride, and airy thoughts his children." Such a one is a true 
 author ; and not a member of any Debating Club, or Dilettanti 
 Society whatever !* 
 
 * I have omitted to dwell on some other differences of body and mind 
 that often prevent the same person from shining in both capacities of 
 speaker and writer. There are natural impediments to public speaking 
 such as the want of a strong voice and steady nerves. A high authority of 
 the present day (Mr. Canning) has thought this a matter of so much import
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING. 191 
 
 ance, that he goes so far as even to let it affect the constitution of Parlia- 
 ment, and conceives that gentlemen who have not bold foreheads and 
 brazen lungs, but modest pretensions and patriotic views, should be allowed 
 to creep into the great assembly of *hi: nation through the avenue of close 
 boroughs, and not be called upon " 4 o face the storms of the hustings." In 
 this point of view, Stentor was a man of genius, and a noisy jack-pudding 
 may cut a considerable figure in the " Political House that Jack r\ilt." I 
 fancy Mr. C. Wynne is the only person in the kingdom who nas i*ai'v made 
 up his mind that a total defect of voice is the most necessary qualification 
 for a Speaker of the House of Commons :
 
 19 TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XV. 
 
 On certain inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds' discourses. 
 
 The two chief points which Sir Joshua aims at in his Discourses 
 are to show that excellence in the Fine Arts is the result of pains 
 and study, rather than of genius, and that all beauty, grace, and 
 grandeur are to be found, not in actual nature, but in an idea 
 existing in the mind. On both these points he appears to have 
 fallen into considerable inconsistencies, or very great latitude of 
 expression, so as to make it difficult to know what conclusion to 
 draw from his various reasonings. I shall attempt little more in 
 this Essay than to bring together several passages, that from their 
 contradictory import seem to imply some radical defect in Sir 
 Joshua's theory, and a doubt as to the possibility of placing an 
 implicit reliance on his authority. 
 
 To begin with the first of these subjects, the question of original 
 genius. In the -Second Discourse, On the Method of Study, Sir 
 Joshua observes towards the end, 
 
 " There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be 
 opposed by the vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid 
 ihat I shall repeat it too often. You must have no dependence on 
 your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will im- 
 prove them : if you have but moderate abilities, industry will sup- 
 ply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor ; 
 nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysi- 
 cal discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will venture 
 to assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition 
 eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects 
 similar to those which some call the result of natural powers." 
 Vol. i., p. 44. 
 
 The only tendency of the maxim here laid down seems to be 
 to lure those students on with the hopes of excellence who have
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 193 
 
 no chance of succeeding, and to deter those who have, from rely- 
 ing on the only prop and source of real excellence the strong 
 bent and impulse of their natural powers. Industry alone can 
 only produce mediocrity ; but mediocrity in art is not worth the 
 trouble of industry. Genius, great natural powers will give 
 industry and ardor in the pursuit of their proper object, but not 
 if you divert them from that object into the trammels of common- 
 place mechanical labor. By this method you neutralise all dis- 
 tinction of character make a pedant of the blockhead, and a 
 drudge of the man of genius. What, for instance, would have 
 been the effect of persuading Hogarth or Rembrandt to place no 
 dependence on their own genius, and to apply themselves to the 
 general study of the different branches of the art and of every 
 sort of excellence, with a confidence of success proportioned to 
 their misguided efforts, but to destroy both those great artists ? 
 " You take my house when you do take the prop that doth sustain 
 my house ?" You undermine the superstructure of art when you 
 strike at its main pillar and support, confidence and faith in 
 nature. We might as well advise a person who had discovered 
 a silver or a lead mine on his estate to close it up, or the common 
 farmer to plough up every acre he rents in the hope of discover- 
 ing hidden treasure, as advise the man of original genius to 
 neglect his particular vein for the study of rules and the imita- 
 tion of others, or try to persuade the man of no strong natural 
 powers that he can supply their deficiency by laborious applica- 
 tion. Sir Joshua soon after, in the Third Discourse, alluding to 
 the terms, inspiration, genius, gusto, applied by critics and orators 
 to painting, proceeds, 
 
 " Such is the warmth with which both the Ancients and Moderns 
 speak of this divine principle of the art ; but, as I have formerly 
 observed, enthusiastic admiration seldom promotes knowledge. 
 Though a student by such praise may have his attention roused 
 and a desire excited of running in this great career ; yet it is 
 possible that what has been said to excite, may only serve to deter 
 him. He examines his own mind, and perceives there nothing 
 of that divine inspiration, with which, he is told, so many others 
 have been favored. He never travelled to heaven to gather new 
 ideas; and he finds himself possessed of no other qualifications 
 
 SECOND SERIES. PART I. 14
 
 194 TABLE TALK. 
 
 than what mere common observation and a plain understanding 
 can confer. Thus he becomes gloomy amidst the splendor of 
 figurative declamation, and thinks it hopeless to pursue an object 
 which he supposes out of the reach of human industry." Vol. 
 i., p. 56. 
 
 Yet presently after he adds, 
 
 " It is not easy to define in what this great style consists ; noi 
 to describe by words the proper means of acquiring it, if the mind 
 of the student should he at all capable of such an acquisition. Could 
 we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste 
 and genius." Ibid., p. 57. 
 
 Here then Sir Joshua admits that it is a question whether the 
 student is likely to be at all capable of such an acquisition as the 
 higher excellences of art, though he had said in the passage just 
 quoted above, that it is within the reach of constant assiduity, and 
 of a disposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, to 
 effect all that is usually considered as the result of natural powers. 
 Is the theory which our author means to inculcate a mere delu- 
 sion, a mere arbitrary assumption ? At one moment Sir Joshua 
 attributes the hopelessness of the student to attain perfection to the 
 discouraging influence of certain figurative and overstrained ex- 
 pressions, and in the next doubts his capacity for such an acquisi- 
 tion under any circumstances. Would he have him hope against 
 hope, then ? If he " examines his own mind and finds nothing 
 there of that divine inspiration, with which he is told so many 
 others have been favored," but which he has never felt himself; 
 if " he finds himself possessed of no othpr qualifications" for the 
 highest efforts of genius and imagination " than what mere com- 
 mon observation and a plain understanding can confer," he may 
 as well desist at once from "ascending the brightest heaven of 
 invention :" if the very idea of the divinity of art deters instead 
 of animating him, if the enthusiasm with which others speak of 
 it damps the flame in his own breast, he had better not enter into 
 a competition where he wants the first principle of success, the 
 daring to aspire and the hope to excel. He may be assured he 
 is not the man. Sir Joshua himself was not struck at first by the 
 sight of the masterpieces of the great style of art, and he seems 
 unconsciously to have adopted this theory to show that he might
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 195 
 
 still have succeeded in it but for want of due application. His 
 hypothesis goes to this to make the common run of his readers 
 fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make 
 the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by 
 mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very 
 feasible scheme ; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit 
 in his reasoning in support of it. 
 
 In speaking of Carlo Maratti, he confesses the inefficiency of 
 this doctrine in a very remarkable manner : 
 
 " Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those I have first named, 
 and I think owes his superiority to the extension of his views : 
 besides his master Andrea Sacchi, he imitated RafFaelle, Guido, 
 and the Caraccis. It is true, there is nothing very captivating in 
 Carlo Maratti ; but this proceeded from a want which cannot be 
 completely supplied ; that is, want of strength of parts. In this 
 certainly men are not equal; and a man can bring home wares 
 only in proportion to the capital with which he goes to market. 
 Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he had : but there was 
 undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which extended itself uni- 
 formly to his invention, expression, his drawing, coloring, and the 
 general effect of his pictures. The truth is, he never equalled 
 any of his patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his 
 own." Ibid., p. 172. 
 
 Here then Reynolds, we see, fairly gives up the argument. 
 Carlo, after all, was a heavy hand ; nor could all his diligence 
 and his making the most of what he had, make up for the want 
 of "natural powers." Sir Joshua's good sense pointed out to 
 him the truth in the individual instance, though he might be led 
 astray by a vague general theory. Such however is the effect 
 of a false principle that there is an evident bias in the artist's 
 mind to make genius lean upon others for support, instead of 
 trusting to itself, and developing its own incommunicable resour- 
 ces. So in treating in the Twelfth Discourse of the way in which 
 great artists are formed, Sir Joshua reverts very nearly to his first 
 position. 
 
 u The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an Artist is 
 found in the great works of his predecessors. There is no other 
 way for him to become great himself. Serpens, nisi scrpentem 
 
 2(5
 
 196 TABLE TALK 
 
 comederit, non jit draco. Raffaelle, as it appears from what hag 
 been said, had carefully studied the works of Masaccio, and indeed 
 there was no other, if we except Michael Angelo (whom he like- 
 wise imitated)* so worthy of his attention : and though his man- 
 ner was dry and hard, his compositions formal, and not enough 
 diversified, according to the custom of Painters in that early 
 period, yet his works possess that grandeur and simplicity which 
 accompany, and even sometimes proceed from, regularity and 
 hardness of manner. We must consider the barbarous state of 
 the arts before his time, when skill in drawing was so little un- 
 derstood, that the best of the painters could not even fore-shorten 
 the foot, but every figure appeared to stand upon his toes ; and 
 what served for drapery had, from the hardness and smallness of 
 the folds, too much the appearance of cords clinging round the 
 body. He first introduced large drapery, flowing in an easy and 
 natural manner : indeed he appears to be the first who discovered 
 the path that leads to every excellence to which the art after- 
 wards arrived, and may therefore be justly considered as one 
 of the Great Fathers of Modern Art. 
 
 " Though I have been led on to a longer digression respecting 
 this great painter than I intended, yet I cannot avoid mentioning 
 another excellence which he possessed in a very eminent degree ; 
 he was as much distinguished among his contemporaries for his 
 diligence and industry, as he was for the natural faculties of his 
 mind. We are told that his whole attention was absorbed in the 
 pursuit of his art, and that he acquired the name of Masaccio 
 from his total disregard to his dress, his person, and all the com- 
 mon concerns of life. He is indeed a signal instance of what well- 
 directed diligence will do in a short time : he lived but twenty- 
 seven years ; yet in that short space carried the art so far beyond 
 what it had before reached, that he appears to stand alone as a 
 model for his successors. Vasari gives a long catalogue of 
 painters and sculptors who formed their taste and learned their 
 art, by studying his works ; among those, he names Michael 
 
 * How careful is Sir Joshua, even in a parenthesis, to insinuate the 
 obligations of this great genius to others, as if he would have been nothing 
 without them 1
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 197 
 
 Angelo, Lionardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle, Barto- 
 omeo, Andrea del Sarto, II Rosso, and Pierino del Vaga." Vol. 
 ii., p. 95. 
 
 Sir Joshua here again halts between two opinions. He tells us 
 the names of the painters who formed themselves upon Masaccio's 
 style : he does not tell us on whom he formed himself. At one 
 time the natural faculties of his mind were as remarkable as his 
 industry ; at another he was only a signal instance of what well- 
 directed diligence will do in a short time. Then again " he 
 appears to have been the first who discovered the path that leads 
 to every excellence to which the Art afterwards arrived," though 
 he is introduced in an argument to show that " the daily food and 
 nourishment of the mind of the Artist must be found in the works 
 of his predecessors." There is something surely very wavering 
 and unsatisfactory in all this. 
 
 Sir Joshua, in another part of his work, endeavors to reconcile 
 and prop up these contradictions by a paradoxical sophism which 
 I think turns upon himself. He says, " I am on the contrary 
 persuaded, that by imitation only" (by which he has just explained 
 himself to mean the study of other masters) " variety and even 
 originality of invention is produced. I will go further ; even 
 genius, at least what is so called, is the child of imitation. But 
 as this appears to be contrary to the general opinion, I must ex- 
 plain my position before I enforce it. 
 
 " Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences, 
 which are out of the reach of the rules of art ; a power which no 
 precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire. , 
 
 " This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those beauties, 
 which stamp the work with the character of genius, supposes that 
 it is something more fixed than in reality it is ; and that we 
 always do and ever did agree in opinion, with respect to what 
 should be considered as the characteristic of genius. But the 
 truth is, that the degree of excellence which proclaims Genius is 
 different in different times and different places ; and what shows 
 it to be so is, that mankind have often changed their opinion upon 
 this matter. 
 
 " When the Arts were in their infancy, the power of merely 
 drawing the likeness of any object, was considered as one of ita
 
 198 TABLE TALK. 
 
 greatest efforts. The common people, ignorant of the principles 
 of art, talk the same language even to this day. But when it 
 was found that every man could be taught to do this, and a great 
 deal more, merely by the observance of certain precepts ; the 
 name of Genius then shifted its application, and was given only 
 to him who added the peculiar character of the object he repre- 
 sented ;. to him who had invention, expression, grace, or dignity, 
 in short, those qualities or excellences, the power of producing 
 which could not llien be taught by any known and promulgated 
 rules. 
 
 " We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of 
 the passions, the art of composition, even the power of giving a 
 general air of grandeur to a work, is at present very much under 
 the dominion of rules. These excellences were heretofore con- 
 sidered merely as the effects of genius ; and justly, if genius is 
 not taken for inspiration, but as the effect of close observation and 
 experience." The Sixth Discourse, Vol. i., p. 153. 
 
 Sir Joshua began with undertaking to show that " genius was 
 the child of the imitation of others ; and now it turns out not to 
 be inspiration indeed, but the effect of close observation and expe- 
 rience." The whole drift of this argument appears to be contrary 
 to what the writer intended ; for the obvious inference is that the 
 essence of genius consists entirely, both in kind and degree, in 
 the single circumstance of originality. The very same things 
 are or are not genius, according as they proceed from invention 
 or from mere imitation. In so far as a thing is original, as it has 
 never been done before, it acquires and it deserves the appellation 
 of genius : in so far as it is not original, and is borrowed from 
 others or taught by rule, it is not, neither is it called, genius. 
 This does not make much for the supposition that genius is a tra- 
 ditional and second-hand quality. Because, for example, a man 
 without much genius can copy a picture of Michael Angelo's 
 does it follow that there was no genius in the original design, or 
 that the inventor and the copyist are equal ? If indeed, as Sir 
 Joshua labors to prove, mere imitation of existing models and 
 attention to established rules could produce results exactly simi- 
 lar to those of natural powers, if the progress of art as a learned 
 Drofession were a gradual but continual accumulation of individ-
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 199 
 
 ual excellence, instead of being a sudden and almost miraculous 
 start to the highest beauty and grandeur nearly at first, and a 
 regular declension to mediocrity ever after, then indeed the dis- 
 tinction between genius and imitation would be little worth con- 
 tending for ; the causes might be different, the effects would be 
 the same, or rather skill to avail ourselves of external advantages 
 would be of more importance and efficacy than the most pow- 
 erful internal resources. But as the case stands, all the great 
 works of art have been the offspring of individual genius, either 
 projecting itself before the general advances of society or striking 
 out a separate path for itself; and all the rest is but labor in 
 vain. For every purpose of emulation or instruction, we go back 
 to the original inventors, not to those who imitated, and as it is 
 falsely pretended, improved upon their models : or if those who 
 followed have at any time attained as high a rank or surpassed 
 their predecessors, it was not from borrowing their excellences, 
 but by unfolding new and exquisite powers of their own, of which 
 the moving principle lay in the individual mind, and not in the 
 stimulus afforded by previous example and general knowledge. 
 Great faults, it is true, may be avoided, but great excellences 
 can never be attained in this way. If Sir Joshua's hypothesis of 
 progressive refinement in art was anything more than a verbal 
 fallacy, why does he go back to Michael Angelo as the God of 
 his idolatry ? Why does he find fault with Carlo Maratti for 
 being heavy ? Or why doe's he declare as explicitly as truly, 
 that " the judgment, after it had been long passive, by degrees 
 loses its power of becoming active when exertion is necessary ?" 
 Once more to point out the fluctuation in Sir Joshua's notions 
 on this subject of the advantages of natural genius and artificial 
 study, he says, when recommending the proper objects of ambi- 
 tion to the young artist 
 
 " My advice in a word is this : keep your principal attention 
 fixed upon the higher excellences. If you compass them, and 
 compass nothing more, you are still in the first class. We may 
 regret the innumerable beauties which you may want ; you may 
 be very imperfect ; but still you are an imperfect artist of the 
 highest order." Vol. i., p. 116. 
 
 This is the Fifth Discourse. In the Seventh our artist seem*
 
 200 TABLE TALK. 
 
 to waver, and fling a doubt on his former decision, whereby " it 
 loses some color.*' 
 
 " Indeed perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably 
 preferred to mediocrity in the highest walks of art. A landscape 
 of Claude Lorraine may* be preferred to a history by Luca Gior 
 dano : but hence appears the necessity of the connoisseur's know, 
 ing in what consists the excellency of each class, in order to 
 judge how near it approaches to perfection." Ibid., p. 217. 
 
 As he advances, however, he grows bolder, and altogether dis- 
 cards his theory of judging of the artist by the class to which he 
 belongs " But we have seen the sanction of all mankind," he 
 says, " in preferring genius in a lower rank of art, to feebleness 
 and insipidity in the highest." This is in speaking of Gains- 
 borough. The whole passage is excellent, and, I should think, 
 conclusive against the general and factitious style of art on which 
 he insists so much at other times. 
 
 " On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to prophesy, 
 that two of the last distinguished Painters of that country, I mean 
 Pompeio Battoni, and Raffaelle Mengs, however great their names 
 may at present sound in our ears,f will very soon fall into the 
 rank of Imperiale, Sebastian Concha, Placido Constanza, Mas- 
 succio, and the rest of their immediate predecessors ; whose 
 names, though equally renowned in their life-time, are now fallen 
 into what is little short of total oblivion. I do not say that those 
 painters were not superior to the artist I allude to,^ and whose 
 loss we lament, in a certain routine of practice, which, to the eyes 
 of common observers, has the air of a learned composition, and 
 bears a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the great 
 men who went before them. I know this perfectly well ; but 1 
 know likewise, that a man looking for real and lasting reputation 
 must unlearn much of the common-place method so observable in 
 the works of the artists whom I have named. For my own part, 
 I confess, I take more interest in and am more captivated with 
 the powerful impression of nature, which Gainsborough exhibited 
 
 * If Sir Joshua had an offer to exchange a Luca Giordano in his collec 
 tion for a Claude Lorraine, he would not have hesitated long about th 
 preference. 
 
 f Written in 1788 % Gainsborough
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 201 
 
 in his portraits and in his landscapes, and the interesting simpli- 
 city and elegance of his .ittle ordinary beggar-children, than with 
 any of the works of that School, since the time of Andrea Sacchi, 
 or perhaps we may say, Carlo Maratti ; two painters who may 
 truly be said to be Ultimi Romanorum. 
 
 " I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the censure 
 and ridicule of the Academical professors of other nations, in 
 preferring the humble attempts of Gainsborough to the works of 
 those regular graduates in the great historical style. But we 
 liave the sanction of all mankind in preferring genius in a lower 
 rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the highest." Vol. ii., 
 p. 152. 
 
 Yet this excellent artist and critic had said but a few pages 
 before, when working upon his theory " For this reason I shall 
 beg leave to lay before you a few thoughts on the subject ; to 
 throw out some hints that may lead your minds to an opinion 
 (which I take to be the true one) that Painting is not only not to 
 be considered as an imitation operating by deception, but that it 
 is, and ought to be, in many points of view and strictly speaking, 
 no imitation at all of external nature. Perhaps it ought to be as 
 far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation as the refined civil- 
 ized state in which we live is removed from a gross state of 
 nature ; and those who have not cultivated their imaginations, 
 which the majority of mankind certainly have not, may be said, 
 in regard to arts, to continue in this state of nature. Such men 
 will always prefer imitation " (the imitation of nature) " to that 
 excellence which is addressed to another faculty that they do not 
 possess ; but these are not the persons to whom a painter is to 
 look, any more than a judge of morals and manners ought to refer 
 controverted points upon those subjects to the opinions of people 
 taken from the banks of the Ohio, or from New Holland." Vol. 
 ii., p. 119. 
 
 In opposition to the sentiment here expressed, that " Painting is 
 and ought to be, in many points of view and strictly speaking, no 
 imitation at all of external nature," it is emphatically said in 
 another place " Nature is and must be the fountain which alone 
 is inexhaustible ; and from which all excellences must originally 
 flow." Discourse VI. Vol. i., p. 162. 
 
 26
 
 20? TABLE TALK 
 
 I cannot undertake to reconcile so many contradictions, nor do 
 I think it an easy task for the student 1o derive any simple or 
 intelligible clue from these conflicting authorities and broken hints 
 in the prosecution of his art. Sir Joshua appears to have imbibed 
 from others (Burke or Johnson) a spurious metaphysical notion 
 that art was to be preferred to nature, and learning to genius, 
 with which his own good sense and practical observation were 
 continually at war, but from which he only emancipates himself 
 for a moment to relapse into the same error again shortly after.* 
 The conclusion of the Twelfth Discourse is, I think, however, a 
 triumphant and unanswerable denunciation of his own favorite 
 paradox on the objects and study of art. 
 
 " Those artists " (he says with a strain of eloquent truth), 
 " who have quitted the service of nature (whose service, when 
 well understood, is perfect freedom), and have put themselves 
 under the direction of I know not what capricious fantastical 
 mistress, who fascinates and overpowers their whole mind, and 
 from whose dominion there are no hopes of their being ever 
 reclaimed (since they appear perfectly satisfied, and not at all 
 conscious of their forlorn situation), like the transformed followers 
 of Comus, 
 
 ' Not once perceived their foul disfigurement ; 
 But boast themselves more comely than before.' 
 
 " Methinks, such men, who have found out so short a path, 
 have no reason to complain of the shortness of life and the extent 
 of art ; since life is so much longer than is wanted for their 
 improvement, or is indeed necessary for the accomplishment of 
 their idea of perfection. \ On the contrary, he who recurs to 
 nature, at every recurrence renews his strength. The rules of 
 
 * Sir Joshua himself wanted academic skill and patience in the details of 
 his profession. From these defects he seems to have been alternately 
 repelled by each theory and style of art, the simply natural and elaborately 
 scientific, as it came before him ; and in his impatience of each, to have 
 been betrayed into a tissue of inconsistencies somewhat difficult to unravel. 
 
 t He had been before speaking of Boucher, Director of the French Aca- 
 demy, who told him that " when he was young, studying his art, he found 
 it necessary to use models, but that he had left them off for many years,"
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 203 
 
 art he is never likely to forget : they are few and simple : but 
 Nature is refined, subtle, and infinitely various, beyond the power 
 and retention of memory ; it is necessary therefore to have con- 
 tinual recourse to her. In this intercourse, there is no end of his 
 improvement : the longer he lives, the nearer he approaches to 
 the true and perfect idea of Art." Vol. ii., p. 108. 
 
 26*
 
 *H TABLE TALK. 
 
 ESSAY XVI. 
 
 The same Subject continued. 
 
 The first inquiry which runs through Sir Joshua Reynolds's Dis- 
 courses is, whether the student ought to look at nature with his own 
 eyes or with the eyes of others, and on the whole, he apparently 
 inclines to the latter. The second question is, what is to be un- 
 derstood by nature ; whether it is a general and abstract idea ; or an 
 aggregate of particulars ; and he strenuously maintains the for- 
 mer of these positions. Yet it is not easy always to determine 
 how far or with what precise limitations he does so. 
 
 The first germ of his speculations on this subject is to be found 
 in two papers in the Idler. In the last paragraph of the second 
 of these, he says, 
 
 " If it has been proved that the Painter, by attending to the in- 
 variable and general ideas of nature, produces beauty, he must, 
 by regarding minute particularities and accidental discriminations, 
 deviate from the universal rule, and pollute his canvas with de- 
 formity." See Works, Vol. ii., p. 242. 
 
 In answer to this, I would say that deformity is not the being 
 varied in the particulars, in which all things differ (for on this 
 principle all nature, which is made up of individuals, would be a 
 heap of deformity), but in violating general rules, in which they 
 all or almost all agree. Thus there are no two noses in the 
 world exactly alike, or without a great variety of subordinate 
 parts, which may still be handsome, but a face without any nose 
 at all, or a nose (like that of a mask) without any particularity in 
 the details, would be a great deformity in art or nature. Sir 
 Joshua seems to have been led into his notions on this subject either 
 by an ambiguity of terms, or by taking only one view of nature. 
 He supposes grandeur, or the general effect of the whole, to con- 
 sist in leaving out the particular details, because these details are 
 sometimes found without any grandeur of effect, and he therefor*
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 205 
 
 conceives the two things to be irreconcileable and the alternatives 
 of each other. This is very imperfect reasoning. If the mere 
 leaving out the details constituted grandeur, any one could do 
 this : the greatest dauber would at that rate be the greatest artist. 
 A house or sign-painter might instantly enter the lists with Michael 
 Angelo, and might look down on the little, dry, hard manner of 
 Raphael. But grandeur depends on a distinct principle of its own, 
 not on a negation of the parts ; and as it does not arise from their 
 omission, so neither is it incompatible with their insertion or the high- 
 est finishing. In fact, an artist may give the minute particulars of 
 any object one by one, and with the utmost care, and totally neglect 
 the proportions, arrangement and general masses, on which the 
 effect of the whole more immediately depends ; or he may give the 
 latter, viz., the proportions and arrangement of the larger parts and 
 the general masses of light and shade, and leave all the minuter 
 parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general 
 smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the round-work 
 of a picture : he may do either of these, or he may combine both, that 
 is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, and keep 
 them in due subordination to the general effect and massing of 
 the whole. If the exclusion of the parts were necessary to the 
 grandeur of the whole composition, if the more entire this exclu- 
 sion, if the more like a tabula rasa, a vague, undefined, shadowy 
 and abstract representation the picture was, the greater the gran- 
 deur, there could be no danger of pushing this principle too far, 
 and going the full length of Sir Joshua's theory without any re- 
 strictions or mental reservations. But neither of these supposi- 
 tions is true. The greatest grandeur may co-exist with the most 
 perfect, nay with a microscopic accuracy of detail, as we see it 
 does often in nature : the greatest looseness and slovenliness of 
 execution may be displayed without any grandeur at all either in 
 the outline or distribution of the masses of color. To explain 
 more particularly what I mean. I have seen and copied portraits 
 by Titian, in which the eyebrows were marked with a number of 
 small strokes, like hair lines (indeed, the hairs of which they 
 were composed were in a great measure given) but did this de- 
 stroy the grandeur of expression, the truth of outline, arising from 
 the arrangement of these hair-lines in a given form ? The gran-
 
 206 TABLE TALK. 
 
 deur, the character, the expression remained, for the general form 
 or arched and expanded outline remained, just as much as if it 
 had been daubed in with a blacking-brush : the introduction of 
 the internal parts and texture only added delicacy and truth to 
 the general and striking effect of the whole. Surely a number 
 of small dots or lines may be arranged into the form of a square 
 or a circle indiscriminately ; the square or circle, that is, the 
 larger figure, remains the same, whether the line of which it con- 
 sists is broken or continuous ; as we may see in prints where the 
 outlines, features, and masses remain the same in all varieties of 
 mezzotinto, dotted and line engraving. If Titian in marking the 
 appearance of the hairs had deranged the general shape and con- 
 tour of the eyebrows, he would have destroyed the look of nature ; 
 but as he did not, but kept both in view, he proportionately im- 
 proved his copy of it. So in what regards the masses of light 
 and shade, the variety, the delicate transparency and broken 
 transitions of the tints is not inconsistent with the greatest breadth 
 or boldest contrasts. If the light, for instance, is thrown strongly 
 on one side of a face, and the other is cast into deep shade, let 
 the individual and various parts of the surface be finished with 
 the most scrupulous exactness both in the drawing and in the col- 
 ors : provided nature is not exceeded, this will not nor cannot de- 
 stroy the force and harmony of the composition. One side of the 
 face will still have that great and leading distinction of being seen 
 in shadow, and the other of being seen in the light, let the subor- 
 dinate differences be as many and as precise as they will. Sup- 
 pose a panther is painted in the sun : will it be necessary to leave 
 out the spots to produce breadth and the great style, or will this 
 not be done more effectually by painting the spots on one side of 
 his shaggy coat as they are seen in the light, and those of the 
 other as they really appear in natural s"hadow ? the two masses 
 are thus preserved completely, and no offence is done to truth and 
 nature. Otherwise we resolve the distribution of light and shade 
 into local coloring. The masses, the grandeur exist equally in 
 external nature with the local differences of different colors. Yet 
 Sir Joshua seems to argue that the grandeur, the effect of the 
 whole object, is confined to the general idea in the mind, and that 
 all the littleness and individuality is in nature. This is an essen-
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 207 
 
 tially false view of the subject. This grandeur, this general 
 effect, is indeed always combined with the details, or what our 
 theoretical reasoner would designate as littleness in nature : and 
 so it ought to be in art, as far as art can follow nature with pru- 
 dence and profit. What is the fault of Denner's style ? It is, 
 that he does not give this combination of properties : that he gives 
 only one view of nature, that he abstracts the details, the finish, 
 ing, the curiosities of natural appearances from the general result, 
 truth and character of the whole, and in finishing every part with 
 elaborate care, totally loses sight of the more important and strik- 
 ing appearance of the object as it presents itself to us in nature. 
 He gives every part of a face ; but the shape, the expression, tha 
 light and shade of the whole is wrong, and as far as can be from 
 what is natural. He gives an infinite variety of tints, but they 
 are not the tints of the human face, nor are they subjected to 
 any principle of light and shade. He is different from Rem- 
 brandt or Titian. The English school, formed on Sir Joshua's 
 theory, give neither the finishing of the parts nor the effect of the 
 whole, but an inexplicable dumb mass without distinction or 
 meaning. They do not do as Denner did, and think that not to 
 do as he did is to do as Titian and Rembrandt did ; I do not know 
 whether they would take it as a compliment to be supposed to imi- 
 tate nature. Some few artists, it must be said, have " of late 
 reformed this indifferently among us ! Oh ! let them reform it al- 
 together !" I have no doubt they would if they could ; but I have 
 some doubts whether they can or not. Before I proceed to con- 
 sider the question of beauty and grandeur as it relates to the se- 
 lection of form, I will quote a few passages from Sir Joshua with 
 reference to what has been said on the imitation of particular ob- 
 jects. In the Third Discourse he observes, " I will now add that 
 nature herself is not to be too closely copied. ... A mere copier 
 of nature can never produce anything great ; can never raise and 
 enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator. The 
 wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive: instead of 
 endeavoring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his 
 imitations, he must endeavor to improve them by the grandeur 
 of his ideas; instead of seeking praise by deceiving the
 
 208 TABLE TALK 
 
 superficial sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame by capti- 
 vating the imagination." Vol. i., p. 53. 
 
 From this passage it would surely seem that there was nothing 
 in nature but minute neatness and superficial effect : nothing great 
 in her style, for an imitator of it can produce nothing great ; no- 
 thing " to enlarge the conceptions or warm the heart of the spec- 
 tator." 
 
 " What word hath passed thy lips, Adam severe !" 
 
 All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the imagina- 
 tion, a vapid creation out of nothing, a pure effect of overlooking 
 and scorning the minute neatness of natural objects. This will 
 not do. Again, Sir Joshua lays it down without any qualification 
 that 
 
 " The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in 
 being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, peculiar- 
 ities, and details of every kind," Page 58. 
 
 Yet at p. 82 we find him acknowledging a different opinion. 
 
 " I am very ready to allow" (he says in speaking of history- 
 painting) " that some circumstances of minuteness and particu- 
 larity frequently tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and to 
 interest the spectator in an extraordinary manner. Such circum- 
 stances therefore cannot wholly be rejected : but if there be any- 
 thing in the Art which requires peculiar nicety Of discernment, it 
 is the disposition of these minute circumstantial parts ; which, 
 according to the judgment employed in the choice, become so use- 
 ful to truth or so injurious to grandeur." Page 82. 
 
 That's true ; but the sweeping clause against " all particulari- 
 ties and details of every kind " is clearly got rid of. The unde- 
 cided state of Sir Joshua's feelings on this subject of the incompa- 
 tibility between the whole and the details is strikingly manifested 
 in two short passages which follow each other in the space of two 
 pages. Speaking of some pictures of Paul Veronese and Rubens 
 as distinguished by the dexterity and the unity of style displayed 
 in them, he adds 
 
 " It is by this and this alone, that the mechanical power is en- 
 nobled, and raised much above its natural rank. And it appears 
 to me, that with propriety it acquires this character, as an in-
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. *0S 
 
 stanoe of that superiority with which mind predominates over 
 matter, by contracting into one whole what nature has made mul- 
 tifarious." Vol. ii., p. 63. 
 
 This would imply that the principle of unity and integrity is 
 only in the mind, and that nature is a heap of disjointed, discon- 
 nected particulars, a chaos of points and atoms. In the very next 
 page, the following sentence occurs 
 
 " As painting is an art, they" (the ignorant) " think they ought 
 to be pleased in proportion as they see that art ostentatiously dis- 
 played ; they will from this supposition prefer neatness, high 
 finishing, and gaudy coloring, to the truth, simplicity and unity 
 of nature." 
 
 Befoie, neatness and high finishing were supposed to belong 
 exclusively to the littleness of nature, but here truth, simplicity 
 and unity are her characteristics. Soon after, Sir Joshua says, 
 " I should be sorry if what has been said should be understood to 
 have any tendency to encourage that carelessness which leaves 
 work in an unfinished state. I commend nothing for the want of 
 exactness ; I mean to point out that_ kind of exactness which is 
 the best, and which is alone truly to be so esteemed.'-' Vol. ii., 
 p. 65. This Sir Joshua has already told us consists in getting 
 above " all particularities and details of every kind." Once more 
 we find it is stated that 
 
 " It is in vain to attend to the variation of tints, if in that atten- 
 tention the general hue of flesh is lost ; or to finish ever so mi- 
 nutely the parts, if the masses are not observed, or the whole not 
 well put together." 
 
 Nothing can be truer : but why always suppose the two things 
 at variance with each other ? 
 
 Titian's manner was then new to the world, but that unshaken 
 truth on which it is founded, has fixed it as a model to all suc- 
 ceeding painters ; and those who will examine into the artifice, 
 will find it to consist in the power of generalizing, and in the 
 shortness and simplicity of the means employed." Page 51. 
 
 Titian's real excellence consisted in the power of generalizing 
 and of individualizing at the same time : if it were merely the 
 former, it would be difficult to account for the error immediately 
 
 SECOND SERIES PART I. 15
 
 210 TABLE TALK. 
 
 after pointed out by Sir Joshua. He says in the very next para- 
 graph : 
 
 " Many artists, as Vasari likewise observes, have ignorantly 
 imagined they are imitating the manner of Titian, when they 
 leave their colors rough, and neglect the detail : but not possess- 
 ing the principles on which he wrought, they have produced 
 what he calls goffe pitture, absurd, foolish pictures." Ibid., p. 54. 
 
 Many artists have also imagined they were following the direc- 
 tions of Sir Joshua when they did the same thing, that is, neglected 
 the detail, and produced the same results, vapid generalities, 
 absurd, foolish pictures. 
 
 I will only give two short passages more, and have done with 
 this part of the subject. I am anxious to confront Sir Joshua 
 with his own authority. 
 
 " The advantage of this method of considering objects (as a 
 whole) is what I wish now more particularly to enforce. At the 
 same time I do not forget, that a painter must have the power of 
 contracting as well as dilating his sight ; because he that does 
 not at all express particulars, expresses nothing ; yet it is certain 
 that a nice discrimination of"minute circumstances, and a puncti- 
 lious delineation of them, whatever excellence it may have (and 
 I do not mean to detract from it), never did confer on the artist 
 the character of Genius." Vol. ii., p. 44. 
 
 At page 53, we find the following words . 
 
 " Whether it is the human figure, and animal, or even inani- 
 mate objects, there is nothing, however unpromising in appear- 
 ance, but may be raised into dignity, convey sentiment, and pro- 
 duce emotion, in the hands of a painter of genius. What was 
 said of Virgil, that he threw even the dung about the ground with 
 an air of dignity, may be applied to Titian ; whatever he touched, 
 however naturally mean, and habitually familiar, by a kind of 
 magic he invested with grandeur and importance." No, not by 
 magic, but by seeking and finding in individual nature, and com- 
 bined with details of every kind, that grace and grandeur and 
 unity of effect which Sir Joshua supposes to be a mere creation 
 of the artist's brain ! Titian's practice was, I conceive, to give 
 general appearances with individual forms and circumstances : 
 Sir Joshua's theory goes too often, and in its prevailing bias, to
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 211 
 
 separate the two things as inconsistent with each other, and thereby 
 to destroy or bring into question that union of striking effect with 
 accuracy of resemblance in which the essence of sound art (as 
 far as relates to imitation) consists. 
 
 Farther, as Sir Joshua is inclined to merge the details of indi- 
 vidual objects in general effect, so he is resolved to reduce all 
 beauty or grandeur in natural objects to a central form or abstract 
 idea of a certain class, so as to exclude all peculiarities or devia- 
 tions from this ideal standard as unfit subjects for the artist's pen- 
 cil, and as polluting his canvas with deformity. As the former 
 principle went to destroy all exactness and solidity in particular 
 things, this goes to confound all variety, distinctness, and charac- 
 teristic force in the broader scale of nature. There is a principle 
 of conformity in nature or of something in common between a 
 number of individuals of the same class, but there is also a prin- 
 ciple of contrast, of discrimination and identity, which is equally 
 essential in the system of the universe and in the structure of our 
 ideas both of art and nature. Sir Joshua would hardly neutralize 
 the tints of the rainbow to produce a dingy grey, as a medium or 
 central color : why then should he neutralize all features, forms, 
 &c, to produce an insipid ^monotony ? He does not indeed con- 
 sider his theory of beauty as applicable to color, which he well 
 understood, but insists upon, and literally enforces it as to form 
 and ideal conceptions, of which he knew comparatively little, 
 and where his authority is more questionable. I will not in this 
 place undertake to show that his theory of a middle form (as the 
 standard of taste and beauty) is not true of the outline of the 
 human face and figure or other organic bodies, though I think 
 that even there it is only one principle or condition of beauty ; 
 but I do say that it has little or nothing to do with those other 
 capital parts of painting, color, character, expression, and gran- 
 deur of conception. Sir Joshua himself contends that "beauty 
 in creatures of the same species is the medium or centre of all 
 its various forms ;" and he maintains that grandeur is the same 
 abstraction of the species in the individual. Therefore beauty 
 and grandeur must be the same thing, which they are not ; so 
 that this definition must be faulty. Grandeur I should suppose 
 to imply something that elevates and expands the mind, which ia
 
 212 TABLE TALK. 
 
 chiefly power or magnitude. Beauty is that which soothes and 
 melts it, and its source I apprehend is a certain harmony, soft- 
 ness, and gradation of form, within the limits of our customary 
 associations, no doubt, or of what we expect of certain species, 
 but not independent of every other consideration. Our critic 
 himself confesses of Michael Angelo, whom he regards as the 
 pattern of the great and sublime style, that " his people are a supe 
 rior order of beings ; there is nothing about them, nothing in the 
 air of their actions or their attitudes, or the style or cast of their 
 limbs or features, that reminds us of their belonging to our own 
 species. Raffaelle's imagination is not so elevated : his figures 
 are not so much disjoined from our own diminutive race of beings, 
 though his ideas are chaste, noble, and of great conformity to 
 their subjects. Michael Angelo's works have a strong, peculiar, 
 and marked character : they seem to proceed from his own mind 
 entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant, that he never needed 
 or seemed to disdain to look abroad for foreign help. Raffaelle's 
 materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is 
 his own." Fifth Discourse. How does all this accord with the 
 same writer's favorite theory that all beauty, all grandeur, and 
 all excellence, consist in an approximation to that central form 
 or habitual idea of mediocrity, from which every deviation is so 
 much deformity and littleness ? Michael Angelo's figures are 
 raised above our diminutive race of beings, yet they are con- 
 fessedly the standard of sublimity in what regards the human 
 form. Grandeur then admits of an exaggeration of our habitual 
 impressions ; and " the strong, marked, and peculiar character 
 which Michael Angelo has at the same time given to his works," 
 does not take away from it. This is fact against argument. I 
 would take Sir Joshua's word for the goodness of a picture, and 
 for its distinguishing properties, sooner than I would for an abstract 
 metaphysical theory. Our artist also speaks continually of high 
 and low subjects. There can be no distinction of this kind upon 
 his principle, that the standard of taste is the adhering to the cen- 
 tral form of each species, and that every species is in itself 
 equally beautiful. The painter of flowers, of shells, or of any- 
 thing else, is equally elevated with Raphael or Michael, if he 
 adheres to the generic or established form of what he paints : the
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 213 
 
 rest, according to this definition, is a matter of indifference. 
 There must therefore be something besides the central or custo- 
 mary form to account for the difference of dignity, for the high 
 and low style in nature or in art. Michael Angelo's figures, we 
 are told, are more than ordinarily grand : why, by the same rule, 
 may not Raphael's be more than ordinarily beautiful, have more 
 than ordinary softness, symmetry, and grace ? Character and 
 expression are still less included in the present theory. All cha- 
 racter is a departure from the common-place form ; and Sir 
 Joshua makes no scruple to declare that expression destroys 
 beauty. Thus he says, 
 
 " If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in its most 
 perfect state, you cannot express the passions, all of which pro- 
 duce distortion and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful 
 faces." Vol. i., p. 118. 
 
 He goes on " Guido, from want of choice in adapting his 
 subject to his ideas and his powers, or from attempting to preserve 
 beauty where it could not be preserved, has in this respect suc- 
 ceeded very ill. His figures are often engaged in subjects that 
 required great expression : yet his Judith and Holofernes, the 
 daughter of Herodias with the Baptist's head, the Andromeda, and 
 some even of the Mothers of the Innocents, have little more ex- 
 pression than his Venus attired by the Graces." Ibid. 
 
 What a censure is this passed upon Guido, and what a con- 
 demnation of his own theory, which would reduce and level all 
 that is truly great and praiseworthy in art to this insipid, tasteless 
 standard, by setting aside as illegitimate all that does not come 
 within the middle, central form ! Yet Sir Joshua judges of Ho- 
 garth as he deviates from this standard, not as he excels in indi- 
 vidual character, which he says is only good or tolerable as i* 
 partakes of general nature ; and he might accuse Michael An 
 gelo and Raphael, the one for his grandeur of style, the other foi 
 his expression ; for neither are what he sets up as the goal of 
 perfection. I will just stop to remark here, that Sir Joshua has 
 committed himself very strangely in speaking of the character 
 and expression to be found in the Greek statues. He says in one 
 place 
 
 " I cannot quit the Apollo, without making one observation on
 
 214 TABLE TALK. 
 
 the character of this figure. He is supposed to have just dis- 
 charged his arrow at the Python ; and by the head retreating a 
 little towards the right shoulder, he appears attentive to its eficct. 
 What I would remark, is the difference of this attention from that 
 of the Discobolus, who is engaged in the same purpose, watching 
 the effect of his Discus. The graceful, negligent, though animat 
 ed air of the one, and the vulgar eagerness of the other, furnish 
 an instance of the judgment of the ancient Sculptors in their nice 
 discrimination of character. They are both equally true to nature, 
 and equally admirable." Vol. ii., p. 21. 
 
 After a few observations on the limited means of the art of 
 Sculpture, and the inattention of the ancients to almost every, 
 thing but form, we meet with the following passage : 
 
 " Those who think Sculpture can express more than we have 
 allowed may ask, by what means we discover, at the first glance, 
 the character that is represented in a Bust, a Cameo, or Intaglio ? 
 I suspect it will be found, on close examination, by him who is 
 resolved not to see more than he really does see, that the figures 
 are distinguished by their insignia more than by any variety of 
 form or beauty. Take from Apollo his Lyre, from Bacchus his 
 Thyrsus and Vine-leaves, and Meleager the Boar's Head, and 
 there will remain little or no difference in their characters. In a 
 Juno, Minerva, or Flora, the idea of the artist seems to have gone 
 no further than representing perfect beauty, and afterwards 
 adding the proper attributes, with a total indifference to which 
 they gave them." 
 
 [What then becomes of that " nice discrimination of character" 
 for which our author has just before celebrated them ?} 
 
 " Thus John De Bologna, after he had finished a group of a 
 young man holding up a young woman in his arms, with an old 
 man at his feet, called his friends together, to tell him what name 
 he should give it, and it was agreed to call it The Rape of the 
 Sabines ; and this is the celebrated group which now stands 
 before the old Palace at Florence. The figures have the same 
 general expression 'which is to be found in most of the antique 
 Sculpture ; and yet it would be no wonder, if future critics 
 should find out delicacy of expression which was never intended ; 
 and go so far as to see, in the old man's countenance, the exac
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 215 
 
 relation which he bore to the woman who appears to be taken 
 from him." Ibid., p. 25. 
 
 So it is that Sir Joshua's theory seems to rest on an inclined 
 plane, and is always glad of an excuse to slide, from the severity 
 of truth and nature, into the milder and more equable regions of 
 insipidity and inanity ! I am sorry to say so, but so it appears to 
 me. 
 
 I confess, it strikes me as a self-evident truth that variety or 
 contrast is as essential a principle in art and nature as uniform- 
 ity, and as necessary to make up the harmony of the universe 
 and the contentment of the mind. Who would destroy the shift- 
 ing effects of light and shade, the sharp, lively opposition of colors 
 in the same or in different objects, the streaks in a flower, the 
 stains in a piece of marble, to reduce all to the same neutral, dead 
 coloring, the same middle tint ? Yet it is on this principle that 
 Sir Joshua would get rid of all variety, character, expression, and 
 picturesque effect in forms, or at least measure the worth or the 
 spuriousness of all these according to their reference to or depart- 
 ure from a given or average standard. Surely, nature is more 
 liberal, art is wider than Sir Joshua's theory. Allow (for the sake 
 of argument) that all forms are in themselves indifferent, and that 
 beauty or the sense of pleasure in forms can therefore only arise 
 from customary association, or from that middle impression to 
 which they all tend : yet this cannot by the same rule apply to 
 other things. Suppose there is no capacity in form to affect the 
 mind except from its corresponding to previous expectation, the 
 same thing cannot be said of power or grandeur. No one can say 
 that the idea of power does not affect the mind with the sense of 
 awe and sublimity. That is, power and weakness, grandeur and 
 littleness, are not indifferent things, the perfection of which con- 
 sists in a medium between both. Again, expression is not a thing 
 indifferent in itself, which derives its value or its interest solely 
 from its conformity to a neutral standard. Who would neutralize 
 the expression of pleasure and pain 1 Or say that the passions 
 of the human mind, pity, love, joy, sorrow, &c, are only inter- 
 esting to the imagination and worth the attention of the artist, as 
 he can reduce them to an equivocal state whicn is neither pleasant 
 nor painful, neither one thing nor the o'her ? Or who would stop
 
 216 TABLE TALK. 
 
 short of the utmost refinement, precision, and force in the deline- 
 ation of each ? Ideal expression is not neutral expression, but 
 extreme expression. Again, character is a thing of peculiarity, of 
 striking contrast, of distinction, and not of uniformity. It is ne- 
 cessarily opposed to Sir Joshua's exclusive theorv, and yet it is 
 surely a curious and interesting field of speculation for the human 
 mind. Lively, spirited discrimination of character is one source 
 of gratification to the lover of nature and art, which it could not 
 be, if all truth and excellence consisted in rejecting individual 
 traits. Ideal character is not common-place, but consistent cha- 
 racter marked throughout, which may take place in history or 
 portrait. Historical truth in a picture is the putting the different 
 features of the face or muscles of the body into consistent action. 
 The picturesque altogether depends on particular points or quali- 
 ties of an object, projecting as it were beyond the middle line of 
 beauty, and catching the eye of the spectator. It was less, how- 
 ever, my intention to hazard any speculations of my own, than to 
 confirm the common-sense feelings on the subject by Sir Joshua's 
 own admissions in different places. In the Tenth Discourse, 
 speaking of some objections to the Apollo, he has these remark- 
 able words : 
 
 " In regard to the last objection (viz. that the lower half of 
 the figure is longer than just proportion allows) it must be re- 
 membered, that Apollo is here in the exertion of one of his pecu- 
 liar powers, which is swiftness ; he has therefore that proportion 
 which is best adapted to that character. This is no more incor. 
 rectness, than where there is given to an Hercules an extraordi- 
 nary swelling and strength of muscles." Vol. ii., p. 20. 
 
 Strength and activity then do not depend on the middle form ; 
 and the middle form is to be sacrificed to the representation of 
 these positive qualities. Character is thus allowed not only to be 
 an integrant part of the antique and classical style of art, but 
 even to take precedence of and set aside the abstract idea of 
 beauty. Little more would be required to justify Hogarth in his 
 Gothic resolution, that if he were to make a figure of Charon, he 
 would give him bandy legs, because watermen are generally 
 bandy-legged. It is very well to talk of the abstract idea of a 
 man or of a God, but if you come to anything like an intelligible
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOUDS'S DISCOURSES. 217 
 
 proposition, you must either individualize and define, or destroy 
 the very idea you contemplate. Sir Joshua goes into this ques- 
 tion at considerable length in the Third Discourse. 
 
 " To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in 
 each species of beings is an invariable one, it may be objected," 
 he says, " that in every particular species there are various cen- 
 tral forms, which are separate and distinct from each other, and 
 yet are undeniably beautiful ; that in the human figure, foi 
 instance, the beauty of Hercules is one, of the Gladiator another, 
 of the Apollo another, which makes so many different ideas of 
 beauty. It is true, indeed, that these figures are each perfect in 
 their kind, though of different characters and proportions ; but 
 still none of them is the representation of an individual, but of a 
 class. And as there is one general form, which, as I have said, 
 belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of these classes 
 there is one common idea which is the abstract of the various indi- 
 vidual forms belonging to that class. Thus, though the forms of 
 childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a common form in 
 childhood, and a common form in age, which is the more perfect 
 as it is remote from all peculiarities. But I must add further, that 
 though the most perfect forms of each of the general divisions of 
 the human figure are ideal, and superior to any individual form of 
 that class ; yet the highest perfection of the human figure is not 
 to be found in any of them. It is not in the Hercules, nor in the 
 Gladiator, nor in the Apollo ; but in that form which is taken from 
 all, and which partakes equally of the activity of the Gladiator, 
 of the delicacy of the Apollo, and of the muscular strength of the 
 Hercules. For perfect beauty in any species must combine all 
 the characters which are beautiful in that species. It cannot con- 
 sist in any one to the exclusion of the rest : no one, therefore, 
 must be predominant, that no one may be deficient." Vol. ii., 
 n. 64. 
 
 Sir Joshua here supposes the distinctions of classes and charac- 
 ter to be necessarily combined with the general leading idea of a 
 middle form. This middle form is not to confound age, sex, cir- 
 cumstance, under one sweeping abstraction : but we must limit 
 the genera 1 idea by certain specific differences and characteristic 
 marks, belonging to the several subordinate divisions and ramifi-
 
 218 TABLE TALK 
 
 cations of each class. This is enough to show that there is a prin- 
 ciple of individuality as well as of abstraction inseparable from 
 works of art as well as nature. We are to keep the human form 
 distinct from that of other living beings, that of men from that of 
 women ; we are to distinguish between age and infancy, between 
 thoughtfulness and gaiety, between strength and softness. Where 
 is this to stop ? But Sir Joshua turns round upon himself in this 
 very passage, and says, " No : we are to unite the strength of the 
 Hercules with the delicacy of the Apollo ; for perfect beauty in 
 any species must combine all the characters which are beautiful 
 in that species." Now if these different characters are beautiful 
 in themselves, why not give them for their own sakes and in their 
 most striking appearances, instead of qualifying and softening 
 them down in a neutral form ; which must produce a compromise, 
 not a union of different excellences. If all excess of beauty, if 
 all character is deformity, then we must try to lose it as fast as 
 possible in other qualities. But if strength is an excellence, if 
 activity is an excellence, if delicacy is an excellence, then the 
 perfection, i. e. the highest degree of each of these qualities can- 
 not be attained but by remaining satisfied with a less degree of 
 the rest. But let us hear what Sir Joshua himself advances on 
 this subject in another part of the Discourses. 
 
 " Some excellences bear to be united, and are improved by 
 union : others are of a discordant nature : and the attempt to 
 unite them only produces a harsh jarring of incongruent princi- 
 ples. The attempt to unite contrary excellences (of form, for 
 instance*) in a single figure, can "never escape degenerating into 
 the monstrous but by sinking into the insipid ; by taking away its 
 marked character, and weakening its expression. 
 
 " Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many writers on 
 our art, who not being of the profession, and consequently not 
 knowing what can or cannot be done, have been very liberal of 
 absurd praises in their description of favorite works. They always 
 find in them what they are resolved to find. They praise excel, 
 lences that can hardly exist together ; and above all things are 
 fond of describing with great exactness the expression of a mixed 
 
 * These are Sir Joshua's words.
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 719 
 
 passion, which more particularly appears to me out of the reach 
 of our art.* 
 
 " Such are many disquisitions which I have read on some of 
 the Cartoons and other pictures of Raffaelle, where the critics 
 have described their own imaginations ; or indeed where the ex- 
 cellent master himself may have attempted this expression of 
 passions above the powers of the art ; and has, therefore, by an 
 indistinct and imperfect marking, left room for every imagination 
 with equal probability to find a passion of his own. What has 
 been, and what can be done in the art, is sufficiently difficult : we 
 need not be mortified or discouraged at not being able to execute 
 the conceptions of a romantic imagination. Art has its bounda- 
 ries, though imagination has none. We can easily, like the an- 
 cients, suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers and 
 perfections which the subordinate Deities were endowed with 
 separately. Yet when they employed their art to represent him, 
 they confined his character to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore, 
 though we are under great obligations to him for the information 
 he has given us in relation to the works of the ancient artists, is 
 very frequently wrong when he speaks of them, which he does 
 very often, in the style of many of our modern connoisseurs. 
 He observes that in a statue of Paris, by Euphranor, you might 
 discover at the same time three different characters ; the dignity 
 of a Judge of the Goddesses, the Lover of Helen, and the Con- 
 queror of Achilles. A statue in which you endeavor to unite 
 stately dignity, youthful elegance, and stern valor, must surely 
 possess none of these to any eminent degree. 
 
 " From hence it appears, that there is much difficulty as well 
 as danger in an endeavor to concentrate in a single subject those 
 various powers, which, rising from various points, naturally move 
 in different directions." Vol. i., p. 120. 
 
 What real clue to the art or sound principles of judging the 
 student can derive from these contradictory statements, or in what. 
 manner it is possible to reconcile them one to the other, I confess 
 I am at a loss to discover. As it appears to me, all the varieties 
 
 * I do not know that : but I do not think the two passion? could be 
 expressed by expressing neither or something between both. 
 
 27
 
 220 TABLE TALK. 
 
 of nature in the infinite number of its qualities, combinations, cha- 
 racters, expressions, incidents, &c, rise from distinct points or 
 centres, and must move in distinct directions, as the forms of dif- 
 ferent species are to be referred to a separate standard. It is the 
 object of art to bring them out in all their force, clearness, and 
 precision, and not to blend them into a vague, vapid, nondescript 
 ideal conception, which pretends to unite, but in reality destroys. 
 Sir Joshua's theory limits nature and paralyzes art. According 
 to him, the middle form or the average of our various impressions 
 is the source from which all beauty, pleasure, interest, imagina- 
 tion springs. I contend, on the contrary, that this very variety is 
 good in itself, nor do I agree with him that the whole of nature as 
 it exists in fact is stark naught, and that there is nothing worthy 
 of the contemplation of a wise man but that ideal perfection which 
 never existed in the world nor even on canvas. There is some- 
 thing fastidious and sickly in Sir Joshua's system. His code of 
 taste consists too much of negations, and not enough of positive, 
 prominent qualities. It accounts for nothing but the beauty of the 
 common Antique, and hardly for that. The merit of Hogarth, I 
 grant, is different from that of the Greek statues ; but I deny that 
 Hogarth is to be measured by this standard, or by Sir Joshua's 
 middle forms : he has powers of instruction and amusement that 
 " rising from a different point, naturally move in a different direc- 
 tion," and completely attain their end. It would be just as rea- 
 sonable to condemn a comedy for not having the pathos of a tra- 
 gedy or the stateliness of an epic poem. If Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
 theory were true, Dr. Johnson's Irene would be a better tragedy 
 than any of Shakspeare's. 
 
 The reasoning of the Discourses is, I think then, deficient in 
 the following particulars : 
 
 1. It seems to imply that general effect in a picture is produced 
 by leaving out the details, whereas the largest masses and the 
 grandest outline are consistent with the utmost delicacy of finish- 
 ing in the parts. 
 
 2. It makes no distinction between beauty and grandeur, but 
 refers both to an ideal or middle form, as the centre of the various 
 forms of the species, and yet inconsistently attributes the grandeur
 
 ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 221 
 
 of Michael Angelo's style to the superhuman appearance of his 
 prophets and apostles. 
 
 3. It does not at any time make mention of power or magnitude 
 in an object as a distinct source of the sublime (though this is 
 acknowledged unintentionally in the case of Michael Angelo, 
 &c), nor of softness or symmetry of form as a distinct source of 
 beauty, independently of, though still in connection with another 
 source arising from what we are accustomed to expect from each 
 individual species. 
 
 4. Sir Joshua's theory does not leave room for character, but 
 rejects it as an anomaly. 
 
 5. It does not point out the source of expression, but considers 
 it as hostile to beauty ; and yet, lastly, he allows that the middle 
 form, carried to the utmost theoretical extent, neither defined by 
 character, nor impregnated by passion, would produce nothing but 
 vague, insipid, unmeaning generality. 
 
 In a word, I cannot think that the theory here laid down is 
 clear and satisfactory, that it is consistent with itself, that it ac- 
 counts for the various excellences of art from a few simple prin- 
 ciples, or that the method which Sir Joshua has pursued in treat- 
 ing the subject is, as he himself expresses it, " a plain and honest 
 method.'''' It is, I fear, more calculated to baffle and perplex the 
 student in his progress, than to give him clear lights as to the 
 object he should have in view, or to furnish him with strong 
 motives of emulation to attain it.
 
 222 TABLE TALK 
 
 ESSAY XVII. 
 
 On the Qualifications necessary to Success In Life. 
 
 It is cuiious to consider the diversity of men's talents, and the 
 causes of their failure or success, which are not less numerous 
 and contradictory than their pursuits in life. Fortune does not 
 always smile on merit : " the race is not to the swift, nor the battle 
 to the strong :" and even where the candidate for wealth or honors 
 succeeds, it is as often, perhaps, from the qualifications which he 
 wants as from those which he possesses ; or the eminence which he 
 is lucky enough to obtain, is owing to some faculty or acquire- 
 ment, which neither he nor anybody else suspected. There is a 
 balance of power in the human mind, by which defects frequently 
 assist in furthering our views, as superfluous excellences are 
 converted into the nature of impediments ; and again, there 
 is a continual substitution of one talent for another, through 
 which we mistake the appearance for the reality, and judge 
 (by implication) of the means from the end. So a Minister 
 of State wields the House of Commons by his manner alone ; 
 while his friends and his foes are equally at a loss to account 
 for his influence, looking for it in vain in the matter or style 
 of his speeches. So the air with which a celebrated barris- 
 ter waved a white cambric handkerchief passed for eloquence. 
 So the buffoon is taken for a wit. To be thought wise, it is for 
 the most part necessary only to seem so ; and the noisy demagogue 
 is easily translated, by the popular voice, into the orator and 
 patriot. Qualities take their color from those that are next to 
 them, as the cameleon borrows its hue from the nearest object ; 
 and unable otherwise to grasp the phantom of our choice or our 
 ambition, we do well to lay violent hands on something else within 
 our reach, which bears a general resemblance to it ; and the im-
 
 QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY TO SUCCESS IN LIFE. 223 
 
 pression of which, in proportion as the thing itself is cheap and 
 worthless, is likely to be gross, obvious, striking, and effectual. 
 The way to secure success, is to be more anxious about obtaining 
 than about deserving it ; the surest hindrance to it is to have too 
 high an opinion of the discernment of the public. He who is 
 determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection, 
 will never do anything at all, either to please himself or others. 
 The question is not what we ought to do, but what we can do for 
 the best. An excess of modesty is in fact an excess of pride, and 
 more hurtful to the individual, and less advantageous to society, 
 than the grossest and most unblushing vanity 
 
 Aspiring to be Gods, if angels fell, 
 Aspiring to be angels, men rebel. 
 
 If a celebrated artist in our own day had stayed to do justice to 
 his principal figure in a generally admired painting, before he had 
 exhibited it, it would never have seen the light. He has passed 
 on to other things more within his power to accomplish, and more 
 within the competence of the spectators to understand. They see 
 vt'hat he has done, which is a great deal they could not have 
 judged of, or given him credit for the ineffable idea in his own 
 mind, which he might vainly have devoted his whole life in 
 endeavoring to embody. The picture, as it is, is good enough 
 for the age and the public. If it had been ten times better, its 
 merits would have been thrown away : and if it had been ten times 
 better in the more refined and lofty conception of character and 
 sentiment, and had failed in the more palpable appeal to the senses 
 and prejudices of the vulgar, in the usual " appliances and means 
 to boot," it would never have done. The work might have been 
 praised by a few, a very few, and the artist himself have pined in 
 penury and neglect. Mr. Wordsworth has given uc- the essence 
 of poetry in his works, without the machinery, the apparatus of 
 poetical diction, the theatrical pomp, the conventional ornamen.j ; 
 and we see what he has made of it. 
 
 The way to fame, through merit alone, is the narrowest, the 
 steepest, the longest, the hardest of all others (that ii is the most 
 certain and lasting, is even a doubt) the most sterling reputation 
 is, after all, but a species of imoosture. As for ordinary cases of
 
 224 TABLE TALK. 
 
 success and failure, they depend on the slightest shades of charac- 
 ter or turn of accident " some trick not worth an egg " 
 
 There's but the twinkling of a star 
 Betwixt a man of peace and war ; 
 A thief and justice, fool and knave, 
 A huffing officer and a slave ; 
 A crafty lawyer and pick-pocket, 
 A great philosopher and a blockhead ; 
 A formal preacher and a player, 
 A learned physician and manslayer. 
 
 Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for 
 no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else. 
 Negative merit is the passport for negative success. In common 
 life, the narrowness of our ideas and appetites is more favorable 
 to the accomplishment of our designs, by confining our attention 
 and ambition to one single object, than a greater enlargement of 
 comprehension or susceptibility of taste, which (as far as the tram- 
 mels of custom and routine of business are concerned) only operate 
 as diversions to our ensuring the main chance ; and, even in the pur- 
 suit of arts and science, a dull plodding fellow will often do better 
 than one of a more mercurial and fiery cast the mere unconscious- 
 ness of -his own deficiencies, or \>{ anything beyond what he him- 
 self can do, reconciles him to his mechanical progress, and enables 
 him to perform all that lies in his power with labor and patience. 
 By being content with mediocrity, he advances beyond it ; where- 
 as the man of greater taste or genius may be supposed to fling 
 down his pen or pencil in despair, haunted with the idea of unat- 
 tainable excellence, and ends in being nothing, because he can- 
 not be everything at once. Those even who have done the great- 
 est things, were not always perhaps the greatest men. To do any 
 given work,,a man should not be greater in himself than the work 
 he has to do ; the faculties which he has beyond this, will be 
 faculties to let, either, not used, or used idly or unprofitably, to 
 hinder, not to help. To do any one thing best, there should be 
 an exclusiveness, a concentration, a bigotry, a blindness of attach- 
 ment to that one object ; so that the widest range of knowledgt 
 and most diffusive subtlety of intellect will not uniformly produce 
 the most beneficial results; and the performance is very frequent-
 
 QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY TO SUCCESS IN LIFE. 225 
 
 y in the inverse ratio, not only of the pretensions, as we might 
 superficially conclude, but of the real capacity. Apart is greater 
 than the whole : and this old saying seems to hold true in moral 
 and intellectual questions also in nearly all that relates to the 
 mind of man, which cannot embrace the whole, but only a part. 
 
 I do not think (to give an instance of what I mean) that Mil- 
 ton's mind was (so to speak) greater than the Paradise Lost ; it 
 was just big enough to fill that mighty mpuld ; the shrine contain- 
 ed the Godhead. Shakspeare's genius was, I should say, greater 
 than anything he has done, because it still soared free and uncon- 
 fined beyond whatever he undertook ran over, and could not be 
 " constrained by mastery " of his subject. Goldsmith, in his 
 Retaliation, celebrates Burke as one who was kept back in his 
 dazzling, wayward career, by the supererogation of his talents 
 
 Though equal to all things, for all things unfit, 
 Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, in Boswell's Life, tells us that the only person 
 whose conversation he ever sought for improvement was George 
 Psalmanazar : yet who knows anything of this extraordinary man 
 now, but that he wrote about twenty volumes of the Universal 
 History invented a Formosan alphabet and vocabulary being a 
 really learned man, contrived to pass for an impostor, and died 
 no one knows how or where ! The well known author of the 
 " Inquiry concerning Political Justice," in conversation has not 
 a word to throw at a dog ; all the stores of his understanding or 
 genius he reserves for his books, and he has need of them, other- 
 wise there would be hiatus in manuscriptis. He says little, and 
 that little were better left alone, being both dull and nonsensical ; 
 his talk is as flat as a pancake, and there is no leaven in it, he has 
 not dough enough to make a loaf and a cake ; he has no idea of 
 anything till he has wound up, like a clock, not to speak, but to 
 write, and then he seems like a person risen from sleep or from 
 the dead. The author of the Diversions of Purley, on the other 
 hand, besides being the inventor of the theory of grammar, was a 
 politician, a wit, a master of conversation, and overflowing with 
 
 SECOND SERIES. PART I. 27
 
 226 TABLE TALK. 
 
 an interminable babble that fellow had cut and come again in 
 him, and 
 
 " Tongue with a garnish of brains ;" 
 
 but it only served as an excuse to cheat posterity of the definition 
 of a verb, one of those conversational ruses de guerre by which he 
 put off his guests at Wimbledom with some teasing equivoque 
 which he would explain the next time they met and made him 
 die at last with a nostrum in his mouth ! The late Professor Por- 
 son was said to be a match for the Member for Old Sarum in 
 argument and raillery : he was a profound scholar, and had wit 
 at will yet what did he come to ? His jests have evaporated 
 with the marks of the wine on the tavern table ; the page of 
 Thucydides or iEschylus, which was stamped on his brain, and 
 which he could read there with equal facility backwards or 
 forwards, is contained, after his death, as it was while he lived, 
 just as well in the volume on the library shelf. The man of per- 
 haps the greatest ability now living is the one who has not only 
 done the least, but who is actually incapable of ever doing anything 
 worthy of him unless he had a hundred hands to write with, and a 
 hundred mouths to utter all that it hath entered into his heart to con- 
 ceive, and centuries before him to embody the endless volumes of 
 his waking dreams. Cloud rolls over cloud ; one train of thought 
 suggests and is driven away by another ; theory after theory is 
 spun out of the bowels of his brain, not like the spider's web, 
 compact and round, a citadel and a snare, built for mischief and 
 for use ; but, like the gossamer, stretched out and entangled with- 
 out end, clinging to every casual object, flitting in the idle air, 
 and glittering only in the ray of fancy. No subject can come 
 amiss to him, and he is alike attracted and alike indifferent to all 
 he is not tied down to any one in particular but floats from one to 
 another, his mind everywhere finding its level, and feeling no limit 
 but that of thought now soaring with its head above the stars, 
 now treading with fairy feet among flowers, now winnowing the 
 air with winged words passing from Duns Scotus to Jacob Beh- 
 men, from the Kantean philosophy to a conundrum, and from the 
 Apocalypse to an acrostic taking in the whole range of poetry, 
 painting, wit, history, politics, metaphysics, criticism, and private
 
 QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY TO SUCCESS IN LIFE 227 
 
 scandal every question giving birth to some new thought, and 
 every thought " discoursed in eloquent music," that lives only in 
 the ear of fools, or in the report of absent friends. Set him to 
 write a book, and he belies all that has been ever said about 
 him 
 
 Ten thousand great ideas filled his mind, 
 
 But with the clouds they fled, and left no trace behind. 
 
 Now there is , who never had an idea in his life, and 
 
 who therefore has never been prevented by the fastidious refine- 
 ments of self-knowledge, or the dangerous seductions of the Muse, 
 from succeeding in a number of things which he has attempted, 
 to the utmost extent of his dulness, and contrary to the advice 
 and opinion of all his friends. He has written a book without 
 being able to spell, by dint of asking questions has painted dra- 
 peries with great exactness, which have passed for finished por- 
 traits daubs in an unaccountable figure or two, with a back- 
 ground, and on due deliberation calls it history he is dubbed an 
 Associate after being twenty times black-balled, wins his way to 
 the highest honors of the Academy, through all the gradations of 
 discomfiture and disgrace, and may end in being made a foreign 
 Count ! And yet (such is the principle of distributive justice in 
 matters of taste) he is just where he was. We judge of men not 
 by what they do, but by what they are. Non ex quov/s lignojit 
 
 Mercurius. Having once got an idea of , it is impossible 
 
 mat anything he can do should ever alter it though he were to 
 paint like Raphael and Michael Angelo, no one in the secret 
 would give him credit for it, and " though he had all knowledge, 
 and could speak with the tongues of angels," yet without genius 
 he would be nothing. The original sin of being what he is, 
 renders his good works and most meritorious efforts null and void. 
 " You cannot gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles." Na- 
 ture still prevails over art. You look at , as you do at a 
 
 curious machine, which performs certain puzzling operations, and 
 as your surprise ceases, gradually unfolds other powers which 
 you would little expect but do what it will, it is but a machine 
 still ; the thing is without a soul ! 
 
 Respice jinem, is the great rule in all practical pursuits: to 
 27*
 
 228 TABLE TALK. 
 
 attain our journey's end, we should look little to the right 
 or to the left ; the knowledge of excellence as often deters 
 and distracts, as it stimulates the mind to exertion ; and hence 
 we may see some reason, why the general diffusion of taste 
 and liberal arts is not always accompanied with an increase of 
 individual genius. 
 
 As there is a degree of dulness and phlegm, which, in the long 
 run, sometimes succeeds better than the more noble and aspiring 
 impulses of our nature (as the beagle by its sure tracing 
 overtakes the bounding stag),, so there is a degree of animal 
 spirits and showy accomplishment, which enables its possessors 
 " to get the start of the majestic world," and bear the palm alone. 
 How often do we see vivacity and impertinence mistaken for wit ; 
 fluency for argument ; sound for sense ; a loud or musical voice 
 for eloquence! Impudence again is an equivalent for courage; 
 and the assumption of merit and the possession of it are too often 
 considered as one and the same thing. On the other hand, sim- 
 plicity of manner reduces the person who cannot so far forego his 
 native disposition as by any effort to shake it off, to perfect insig- 
 nificance in the eyes of the vulgar, who, if you do not seem .to 
 doubt your own pretensions, will never question them ; and on 
 the same principle, if you do not try to palm yourself on them 
 for what you are not, will never be persuaded you can be 
 anything. Admiration, like mocking, is catching : and the good 
 opinion which gets abroad of us begins at home. If a man is not 
 as much astonished at his own acquirements as proud of and as 
 delighted with the bauble, as others would be if put into sudden 
 possession of it, they hold that true desert and he must be 
 strangers to each other : if he entertains an idea beyond his own 
 immediate profession or pursuit, they tmnk very wisely he can 
 know nothing at all : if he does not play off the quack or the cox- 
 comb upon them at every step, they are confident he is a dunce 
 and a fellow of no pretensions. It has been sometimes made a 
 matter of surprise that Mr. Pitt did not talk politics out of the 
 House ; or that Mr. Fox conversed like any one else on common 
 subjects ; or that Walter Scott is fonder of an old Scotch ditty 
 or antiquarian record, than of listening to the praises of the 
 Author of Waverley. On the contrary, I cannot conceive how
 
 QUALI1 ICATIONS NECESSARY TO SUCCESS IN LIFE. 229 
 
 any one who feels conscious of certain powers, should always be 
 laboring to convince others of the fact ; or how a person, to whom 
 their exercise is as familiar as the breath he draws, should think 
 it worth his while to convince them of what to him must seem so 
 very simple, and at the same time, so very evident. I should not 
 wonder, however, if the Author of the Scotch Novels laid an 
 undue stress on the praises of the Monastery. We nurse the 
 ricketty child, and prop up our want of self-confidence by the 
 opinion of friends. A man (unless he is a fool) is never vain, 
 but when he stands in need of the tribute of adulation to strengthen 
 the hollowness of his pretensions ; nor conceited, but when he can 
 find no one to flatter him, and is obliged secretly to pamper his 
 good opinion of himself, to make up for the want of sympathy in 
 others. A damned author has the highest sense of his own 
 merits, and an inexpressible contempt for the judgment of his 
 contemporaries ; in the same manner that an actor who is hissed 
 or hooted from the stage, creeps into exquisite favor with himself, 
 in proportion to the blindness and injustice of the public. A 
 prose-writer, who has been severely handled in the Reviews, will 
 try to persuade himself that there is nobody else who can write a 
 word of English : and we have seen a poet of our time, whose 
 works have been much, but not (as he thought) sufficiently 
 admired, undertake formally to prove, that no poet, who deserved 
 the name of one, was ever popular in his life-time, or scarcely 
 after his death ! 
 
 There is nothing that floats a man sooner into the tide of repu- 
 tation, or oftener passes current for genius, than what might be 
 called constitutional talent. A man without this, whatever may be 
 his worth or real powers, will no more get on in the world than a 
 leaden Mercury will fly into the air ; as any pretender with it, 
 and with no one quality beside to recommend him, will be sure 
 either to blunder upon success, or will set failure at defiance. 
 By constitutional talent I mean, in general, the warmth and vigor 
 given to a man's ideas and pursuits by his bodily stamina, by 
 mere physical organization. A weak mind in a sound body is 
 better, or at least more profitable, than a sound mind in a weak 
 and crazy conformation. How many instances might I quote ! 
 Let a man have a quick circulation, a good digestion, the bulk,
 
 *30 TABLE TALK. 
 
 and thews, and sinews of a man, and the alacrity, the unthinking 
 confidence inspired by these ; and without an atom, a shadow of 
 the mens divinior, he shall strut, and swagger, and vapor and 
 'ostle his way through life, and have the upper-hand of those who 
 are his betters in everything but health and strength. His jeste 
 shall be echoed with loud laughter, because his own lungs begir 
 to crow like chanticleer, before he has uttered them ; while fc 
 little hectic nervous humorist shall stammer out an admirable 
 conceit that is damned in the doubtful delivery vox faucibus 
 h(Bsil. The first shall tell a story as long as his arm, without 
 interruption, while the latter stops short in his attempts from mere 
 weakness of chest : the one shall be empty and noisy and suc- 
 cessful in argument, putting forth the most common-place things 
 " with a confident brow and a throng of words, that come with 
 more than impudent sauciness from him," while the latter shrinks 
 from an observation " too deep for his hearers," into the delicacy 
 and unnoticed retirement of his own mind. The one shall never 
 feel the want of intellectual resources, because he can back his 
 opinions with his person ; the other shall lose the advantages of 
 mental superiority, seek to anticipate contempt by giving offence, 
 court mortification in despair of popularity, and even in the midst 
 of public and private admiration, extorted slowly by incontrover- 
 tible proofs of genius, shall never get rid of the awkward, uneasy 
 sense of personal weakness and insignificance, contracted by early 
 and long-continued habit. What imports the inward to the out- 
 ward man, when it is the last that is the general and inevitable 
 butt of ridicule or object of admiration ? It has been said that a 
 good face is a letter of recommendation. But the finest face will 
 not carry a man far, unless it is set upon an active body, and a 
 stout pair of shoulders. The countenance is the index of a man's 
 talents and attainments : his figure is the criterion of his progress 
 through life. We may have seen faces that spoke " a soul as 
 fair 
 
 " Bright as the children of yon azure sheen" 
 
 yet that met with but an indifferent reception in the world and 
 that being supported by a couple of spindle-shanks and a weak 
 stomach, in fulfilling what was expected of them, 
 
 "Fell flat, and shamed their worshippers."
 
 QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY TO SUCCESS IN LIFE. 23i 
 
 Hence the successes of such persons did not correspond with 
 their deserts. There was a natural contradiction between the 
 physiognomy of their minds and bodies! The phrase, " a good- 
 looking man," means different things in town and country ; and 
 artists have a separate standard of beauty from other people. A 
 country-squire is thought good-looking; who is in good condition 
 like his horse : a country-farmer, to take the neighbors' eyes, must 
 seem stall fed, like the prize-ox ; they ask, " how he cuts up in 
 the caul, how he tallows in the kidneys." The ktter-of-recom- 
 mendation face, in general, is not one that expresses the finer 
 movements of thought or of the soul, but that makes part of a 
 vigorous and healthy form. It is one in which Cupid and Mar3 
 take up their quarters, rather than Saturn or Mercury, ft may 
 be objected here that some of the greatest favorites of fortune have 
 been little men. " A little man, but of high fancy," is Sterne's 
 description of Mr. Hammond Shandy. But then they have been 
 possessed of strong fibres and an iron constitution. The late Mr. 
 West said, that Bonaparte was the best made man he ever saw 
 in his life. In other cases the gauntlet of contempt which a puny 
 body and a fiery spirit are forced to run, may determine the pos- 
 sessors to aim at great actions ; indignation may make men 
 heroes as well as poets, and thus revenge them on the niggardli- 
 ness of nature and the prejudices of the world. I remember Mr. 
 Wordsworth's saying, that he thought ingenious poets had been 
 of small and delicate frames, like Pope ; but that the greatest 
 (such as Shakspeare and Milton) had been healthy, and cast in a 
 larger and handsomer mould. So were Titian, Raphael, and 
 Michael Angelo. This is one of the few observations of Mr; 
 Wordsworth's I recollect worth quoting, and I accordingly set it 
 down as his, because I understand he is tenacious on that point. 
 
 In love, in war, in conversation, in business, confidence and 
 resolution are the principal things. Hence the poet's reasoning : 
 
 " For women, born to be controll'd, 
 Affect the loud, the vain, the bold." 
 
 Nor is this peculiar to them, but runs all through life. It is the 
 opinion we appear to entertain of ourselves, from which (thinking 
 we. must be the best judges of our own merits) others accept their
 
 235 TABLE TALK. 
 
 idea of us on trust. It is taken for granted that every one pre- 
 tends to the utmost he can do, and he who pretends to little, is 
 supposed capable of nothing. The humility of our approaches to 
 power or beauty ensures a repulse, and the repulse makes us 
 unwilling to renew the application ; for there is pride as well as 
 humility in this habitual backwardness and reserve. If you do 
 not bully the world, they will be sure to insult over you, because 
 they think they can do it with impunity. They insist upon the 
 arrogant assumption of superiority somewhere, and if you do not 
 prevent them, they will practise it on you. Some one must top 
 the part of Captain in the play. Servility however chimes in, 
 and plays Scrub in the farce. Men patronize the fawning and 
 obsequious, as they submit to the vain and boastful. It is the air 
 of modesty and independence, which will neither be put upon 
 itself, nor put upon others, that they cannot endure that excites 
 all the indignation they should feel for pompous affectation, and 
 all the contempt they do not show to meanness and duplicity. Our 
 indolence, and perhaps our envy take part with our cowardice and 
 vanity in all this. The obtrusive claims of empty ostentation, 
 played off like the ring on the finger, fluttering and sparkling in 
 our sight, relieve us from the irksome task of seeking out obscure 
 merit : the scroll of virtues written on the bold front, or triumph- 
 ing in the laughing eye, save us the trouble of sifting the evidence 
 and deciding for ourselves : besides, our self-love receives a less 
 sensible shock from encountering the mere semblance than the 
 solid substance of worth ; folly chuckles to find the blockhead 
 put over the wise man's head, and cunning winks to see the 
 knave, by his own good leave, transformed into a saint. 
 
 " Doubtless, the pleasure is as great 
 In being cheated as to cheat." 
 
 In all cases, there seems a sort of compromise, a principle of col- 
 lusion between imposture and credulity. If you ask what sort of 
 adventurers have swindled tradesmen of their goods, you will find 
 they are all likely men, with plausible manners or a handsome 
 equipage, hired on purpose : if you ask what sort of gallants have 
 robbed women of their hearts, you will find they are those who
 
 QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY TO SUCCESS IN LIFE. 233 
 
 nave jilted hundreds before, from which the willing fair conceives 
 the project of fixing the truant to heiself so the bird flutters its 
 idle wings in the jaws of destruction, and the foolish moth rushes 
 into the flame that consumes it ! There is no trusting to appear- 
 ances, we are told ; but this maxim is of no avail, for men are the 
 eager dupes of them. Life, it has been said, is " the art of being 
 well deceived ;" and accordingly, hypocrisy seems to be the great 
 business of mankind. The game of fortune is, for the most part, 
 set up with counters ; so that he who will not cut in because he 
 has no gold in his pocket, must sit out above half his time, and 
 lose his chance of sweeping the tables. Delicacy is, in ninety- 
 nine cases out of a hundred, considered as rusticity ; and sincerity 
 of purpose is the greatest affront that can be offered to society. 
 To insist on simple truth, is to disqualify yourself for place or 
 patronage the less you deserve, the more merit in their encour- 
 aging you ; and he who, in the struggle for distinction, trusts to 
 realities and not to appearances, will in the end find himself the 
 object of universal hatred and scorn. A man who thinks to gain 
 and keep the public ear by the force of style, will find it very up- 
 hill work ; if you wish to pass for a great author, you ought not 
 to look as if you were ignorant that you had ever written a sen- 
 tence or discovered a single truth. If you keep your own secret, 
 be assured the world will keep it for you. A writer, whom I 
 know very well, cannot gain an admission to Drury-Iane Theatre, 
 because he does not lounge into the lobbies, or sup at the Shak- 
 speare nay, the same person having written upwards of sixty 
 columns of original matter on politics, criticism, belles-lettres, and 
 virtu in a respectable Morning Paper, in a single half-year, was, 
 : t the end of that period, on applying for a renewal of his engage 
 ment, told by the Editor " he might give in a specimen of what 
 he could do !" One would think sixty columns of the Morning 
 Chronicle were a sufficient specimen of what a man could do 
 But while this person was thinking of his next answer to Vetus. 
 or his account of Mr. Kean's performance of Hamlet, he had neg- 
 lected " to point the toe," to hold up his head higher than usual 
 (having acquired a habit of poring over books when young), and 
 to get a new velvet collar to an old-fashioned great coat. These 
 are ** the graceful ornaments to the columns of a newspaper the
 
 234 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Corinthian capitals of a polished style !" This unprofitable ser. 
 vant of the press found no difference in himself before or after he 
 became known to the readers of the Morning Chronicle, and it 
 accordingly made no difference in his appearance or pretensions. 
 " Don't you remember," says Gray, in one of his letters, " Lord 
 
 C and Lord M , who are now great statesmen, little dirty 
 
 boys playing at cricket ? For my own part, I don't feel myself 
 a bit taller, or older, or wiser, than I did then." It is no wonder 
 that a poet, who thought in this manner of himself, was hunted 
 from college to college, has left us so few precious specimens 
 of his fine powers, and shrunk from his reputation into a silent 
 grave ! 
 
 " I never knew a man of genius a coxcomb in dress," said a 
 man of genius and a sloven in dress. I do know a man of genius 
 who is a coxcomb in his dress, and in everything else. But let 
 that pass. 
 
 " C'est un mauvais metier que celui de medire." 
 
 1 also know an artist who has at least the ambition and the bold- 
 ness of genius, who has been reproached with being a coxcomb, 
 and with affecting singularity in his dress and demeanor. If he 
 is a coxcomb that way, he is not so in himself, but a rattling hare- 
 brained fellow, with a great deal of unconstrained gaiety, and 
 impetuous (not to say turbulent) life of mind ! Happy it is when 
 a man's exuberance of self-love flies off to the circumference of a 
 broad-brimmed hat, descends to the toes of his shoes, or carries 
 itself off with the peculiarity of his gait, or even vents itself in a 
 little professional quackery ; and when he seems to think some- 
 times of you, sometimes of himself, and sometimes of others, and 
 you do not feel it necessary to pay to him all the finical devotion, 
 or to submit to be treated with the scornful neglect of a proud 
 beauty, or some Prince Prettyman. It is well to be something 
 besides the coxcomb, for our own sake as well as that of others ; 
 but to be born wholly without this faculty or gift of Providence, 
 a man had better have had a stone tied about his neck, and been 
 cast into the sea. 
 
 In general, the consciousness of internal power leads rather to
 
 QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY TO SUCCESS IN LIFE. 233 
 
 a disregard of, than a studied attention to external appearance. 
 The wear and tear of the mind does not improve the sleekness of 
 the skin, or the elasticity of the muscles. The burden of thought 
 weighs down the body like a porter's burden. A man cannot 
 stand so upright or move so briskly under it as if he had nothing 
 to carry in his head or on his shoulders. The rose on the cheek 
 and the canker at the heart do not flourish at the same time ; and 
 he' who has much to think of, must take many things to heart ; for 
 thought and feeling are one. He who can truly say, Nihil humani 
 a me alienum puto, has a world of cares on his hands, which no- 
 body knows anything of but himself. This is not one of the leas* 
 miseries of a studious life. The common herd do not by any 
 means give him full credit for his gratuitous sympathy with their 
 concerns ; but are struck with his lack-lustre eye and wasted 
 appearance. They cannot translate the expression of his coun- 
 tenance out of the vulgate ; they mistake the knitting of his brows 
 for the frown of displeasure, the paleness of study for the languor 
 of sickness, the furrows of thought for the regular approaches of 
 old age. They read his looks, not his books ; have no clue to 
 penetrate the last recesses of the mind, and attribute the height 
 of abstraction to more than an ordinary share of stupidity. 
 
 " Mr. never seems to take the slightest interest in anything," 
 
 is a remark I have often heard made in a whisper. People do not 
 like your philosopher at all, for he does not look, say, or think as 
 they do ; and they respect him still less. The majority go by per- 
 sonal appearances, not by proofs of intellectual power ; and they 
 are quite right in this, for they are better judges of the one than 
 of the other. There is a large party who undervalue Mr. Kean's 
 acting (and very properly, as far as they are concerned), for 
 they can see that he is a little ill-made man, but they are incapa- 
 ble of entering into the depth and height of the passion in his 
 Othello. A nobleman of high rank, sense, and merit, who had 
 accepted an order of knighthood, on being challenged for so doing 
 by a friend, as a thing rather degrading to him than otherwise, 
 made answer " What you say, may be very true ; but I am a 
 little man, and am sometimes jostled, and treated with very littla 
 ceremony in walking along the streets ; now the advantage of this 
 new honor will be that when people see the star at my breast,
 
 236 TABLE TALK. 
 
 they will every one make way for me with the greatest respect.' 
 Pope bent himself double and ruined his constitution by over-study 
 when young. He was hardly indemnified by all his posthumous 
 fame, " the flattery that soothes the dull cold ear of death," nor 
 by the admiration of his friends, nor the friendship of the great, 
 for the distortion of his person, the want of robust health, and the 
 insignificant figure he made in the eyes of strangers, and of Lady 
 Mary Wortley Montague. Not only was his diminutive and mis- 
 shapen form against him in such trivial toys, but it was made a 
 set-off and a bar to his poetical pretensions by his brother-poets, 
 who ingeniously converted the initial and final letters of his name 
 into the invidious appellation A. P. E. He probably had the pas- 
 sage made under-ground from his garden to his grotto, that he 
 might not be rudely gazed at in crossing the road by some untu- 
 tored clown ; and perhaps started to see the worm he trod upon 
 writhed into his own form, like Elshie the Black Dwarf. Let 
 those who think the mind everything and the body nothing, " ere 
 we have shuffled off" this mortal coil," read that fine moral fiction, 
 or the real story of David Ritchie believe and tremble !* 
 
 It may be urged that there is a remedy for all this in the appeal 
 from the ignorant many to the enlightened few. But the few who 
 are judges of what is called real and solid merit, are not forward 
 to communicate their occult discoveries to others : they are with- 
 held partly by envy, and partly by pusillanimity. The strongest 
 minds are by rights the most independent and ingenuous : but 
 then they are competitors in the lists, and jealous of the prize. 
 
 * It is more desirable to be the handsomest than the wisest man in his 
 Majesty's dominions, for there are more people who have eyes than under- 
 standings. Sir John Suckling tells us that 
 
 He prized black eyes and a lucky hit 
 At bowls, above all the trophies of wit. 
 
 In like manner, I would be permitted to say, that I am somewhat sick of 
 this trade of authorship, where the critics look askance at one's best-meant 
 efforts, but am still fond of those athletic exercises, where they do not keep 
 two scores to mark the game, with Whig and Tory notches. The accom- 
 plishments of the body are obvious and clear to all : those of the mind are 
 recondite and doubtful, and therefore grudgingly acknowledged, or held up 
 as the sport of prejudice, spite, and folly.
 
 QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY TO SUCCESS IN LIFE. 237 
 
 The prudent (and the wise are prudent !) only add their hearty 
 applause to the acclamations of the multitude, which they can 
 neither silence nor dispute. So Mr. Gifford dedicated those verses 
 to Mr. Hoppner, when securely seated on the heights of fame and 
 fortune, which before he thought might have savored too much 
 of flattery or friendship. Those even who have the sagacity to 
 discover it, seldom volunteer to introduce obscure merit into pub- 
 licity, so as to endanger their own pretensions : they praise the 
 world's idols, and bow down at the altars which they cannot over- 
 turn by violence or undermine by stealth ! Suppose literary men 
 to be the judges and vouchers for literary merit : but it may 
 sometimes happen that a literary man (however high in genius or 
 in fame) has no passion but the love of distinction, and hates every 
 person or thing that interferes with his inadmissible and exorbitant 
 claims. Dead to every other interest, he is alive to that, and 
 starts up, like a serpent when trod upon, out of the slumber of 
 wounded pride. The cold slime of indifference is turned into 
 rank poison at the sight of your approach to an equality or com- 
 petition with himself. If he is an old acquaintance, he would 
 keep you always where you were, under his feet to be trampled 
 on : if a new one, he wonders he never heard of you before. As 
 you become known, he expresses a greater contempt for you, and 
 grows more captious and uneasy. The more you strive to merit 
 his good word, the farther you are from it. Such characters will 
 not only sneer at your well-meant endeavors, and keep silent as 
 to your good qualities, but are out of countenance, " quite chop- 
 fallen," if they find you have a cup of water, or a crust of bread. 
 It is only when you are in a jail, starved or dead, that their exclu- 
 sive pretensions are. safe, or their Argus-eyed suspicions laid 
 asleep. This is a true copy, nor is it taken from one sitting, or a 
 single subject. An author now-a-days, to succeed, must be some- 
 thing more than an author, a nobleman, or rich plebeian : the 
 simple literary character is not enough. " Such a poor forked 
 animal," as a mere poet or philosopher turned loose upon public 
 opinion, has no chance against the flocks of bats and owls that in- 
 stantly assail him. It is name, it is wealth, it is title and influence 
 that mollifies the tender-hearted Cerberus of criticism first, by 
 placing the honorary candidate for fame out of the reach of Grub-
 
 238 TABLE TALK. 
 
 street malice ; secondly, by holding out the prospect of a dinner 
 or a vacant office to successful sycophancy. This is the reason 
 why a certain Magazine praises Percy Bysshe Shelley, and vili- 
 fies " Johnny Keats :"* they know very well that they cannot 
 ruin the one in fortune as well as in fame, but they may ruin the 
 other in both, deprive him of a livelihood together with his good 
 name, send him to Coventry, and into the Rules of a prison ; and 
 this is a double incitement to the exercise of their laudable and 
 legitimate vocation. We do not hear that they plead the good- 
 natured motive of the Editor of the Quarterly Review, that " they 
 did it for his good," because some one, in consequence of that 
 critic's abuse, had sent the author a present of five-and-twenty 
 pounds ! One of these writers went so far, in a sort of general 
 profession of literary servility, as to declare broadly that there 
 had been no great English poet, and that no one had a right to 
 pretend to the character of a man of genius in this country, who 
 was not of patrician birth or connexions by marriage ! This 
 hook was well baited. 
 
 These are the doctrines that enrich the shops, 
 That pass with reputation through the land, 
 And bring their authors an immortal name. 
 
 It is the sympathy of the public with the spite, jealousy, and 
 irritable humors of the writers, that nourishes this disease in the 
 public mind ; this " embalms and spices to the April day again," 
 what otherwise "the spital and the lazar-house would heave the 
 gorge at I" 
 
 * Written in June, 1820.
 
 MADAME PASTA AND MADEMOISELLE MARS. 238 
 
 ESSAY XVIII. 
 
 Madame Pasta and Mademoiselle Mars. 
 
 I liked Mademoiselle Mars exceedingly well, till I saw Madame 
 Pasta whom I liked so much better. The reason is, the one is 
 the perfection of French, the other of natural acting. Madame 
 Pasta is Italian, and she might be English Mademoiselle Mars 
 belongs emphatically to her country ; the scene of her triumphs 
 is Paris. She plays naturally too, but it is French nature. Let 
 me explain. She has, it is true, none of the vices of the French 
 theatre, its extravagance, its flutter, its grimace, and affectation, 
 but her merit in these respects is as it were negative, and she 
 seems to put an artificial restraint upon herself. There is 
 still a pettiness, an attention to minutiae,, an etiquette, a manner- 
 ism about her acting : she does not give an entire loose to her 
 feelings, or trust to the unpremeditated and habitual impulse of 
 her situation. She has greater elegance, perhaps, and precision 
 of style than Madame Pasta, but not half her boldness or grace. 
 In short, everything she does is voluntary, instead of being spon- 
 taneous. It seems as if she might be acting from marginal 
 directions to her part. When not speaking, she stands in general 
 quite still. When she speaks, she extends first one hand and then 
 the other, in a way that you can foresee every time she does so, 
 or in which a machine might be elaborately constructed to deve- 
 lope different successive movements. When she enters, she 
 advances in a straight line from the other end to the middle of the 
 stage with the slight unvarying trip of her country-women, and 
 then stops short, as if under the drill of a fugal-man. When she 
 speaks, she articulates with perfect clearness and propriety, but it 
 is the facility of a singer executing a difficult passage. The case 
 is that of habit not of nature. Whatever she does, is right in the 
 intention, and she takes care not to carry it too far; but she
 
 4U TABLE TALK. 
 
 appears fo say beforehand, " This I will do, I must not do that." 
 Her acting is an inimitable study or consummate rehearsal of the 
 part as a preparatory performance : she hardly yet appears to 
 have assumed the character ; something more is wanting, and 
 that something you find in Madame Pasta. If Mademoiselle 
 Mars has to smile, a slight and evanescent expression of pleasure 
 passes across the surface of her face ; twinkles in her eyelids, 
 dimples her chin, compresses her lips, and plays on each feature : 
 when Madame Pasta smiles, a beam of jo) seems to have struck 
 upon her heart, and to irradiate her countenance. Her whole 
 face is bathed and melted in expression, instead of its glancing 
 from particular points. When she speaks, it is in music. When 
 she moves, it is without thinking whether she is graceful or not. 
 When she weeps, it is a fountain of tears, not a few trickling 
 drops, that glitter and vanish the instant after. The French 
 themselves admire Madame Pasta's acting (who indeed can help 
 it ?) but they go away thinking how much one of her simple 
 movements would be improved by their extravagant gesticulations, 
 and that her noble, natural expression would be the better for 
 having twenty airs of mincing affectation added to it. In her 
 Nina there is a listless vacancy, an awkward grace, a want of 
 biense'ance, that is like a child or a changeling, and that no 
 French actress would venture upon for a moment, lest she should 
 be suspected of a want of esprit or of bon mien. A French actress 
 always plays before the court ; she is always in the presence of 
 an audience, with whom she first settles her personal pretensions 
 by a significant hint or side-glance, and then as much nature and 
 simplicity as you please. Poor Madame Pasta thinks no more of 
 the audience than Nina herself would, if she could be observed 
 by stealth, or than the fawn that wounded comes to drink, or the 
 flower that droops in the sun or wags its sweet head in the gale. 
 She gives herself entirely up to the impression of the part, loses 
 her power over herself, is led away by her feelings either to an 
 expression of stupor or of artless joy, borrows beauty from 
 deformity, charms unconsciously, and is transformed into the very 
 being she represents. She does not act the character she is it, 
 looks it, breathes it. She does not study for an effect, but strives 
 to possess herself of the feeling which should dictate what she ii
 
 MADAME PASTA AND MADEMOISELLE MARS. 241 
 
 to do, and whicn gives birth to the proper degree of grace, dignity, 
 ease, or force. She makes no point all the way through, but her 
 whole style and manner is in perfect keeping, as if she were 
 really a love-sick, care-crazed maiden, occupied with one deep 
 sorrow, and who had no other idea or interest in the world. This 
 alone is true nature and true art. The rest is sophistical ; and 
 French art is not free from the imputation; it never places at; 
 implicit faith in nature, but always mixes up a certain portion of 
 art, that is of consciousness and affectation with it. I shaL 
 illustrate this subject from a passage in Shakspeare. 
 
 " Polixenes. Shepherdess, 
 (A fair one are you) well you fit our ages 
 With flow'rs of winter. 
 
 Perdita. Sir, the year growing ancient, 
 Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth 
 Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o* th' season 
 Are our carnations and streak'd gilliflowers, 
 Which some call nature's bastards ; of that kind 
 Our rustic garden's barren, and I care no-; 
 To get slips of them. 
 
 Polix. Wherefore, gentle maiden, 
 Do you neglect them ? 
 
 Perdita. For I have heard it said, 
 There is an art which in their piedness shares 
 With great creating nature. 
 
 Polix. Say, there be, 
 Yet nature is made better by no mean, 
 But nature makes that mean ; so o'er that art, 
 Which you say adds to nature, is an art, 
 That nature makes ; you see, sweet maid, we marry 
 A gentle scion to the wildest stock, 
 And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
 By bud of nobler race. This is an art, 
 Which does mend nature; change it rather ; but 
 The art itself is nature. 
 
 Perdita. So it is. 
 
 Polix. Then make your garden rich in gillifloweiBs, 
 And do not call them bastards. 
 
 Perdita. I'll not put 
 A dibble in earth, to set one slip of them ; 
 No more than, were I painted, I should wish 
 This youth to say, 'twere well ; and only therefore 
 Desire to breed by me." Winters Tale, Act IV. 
 KKCONr SERIES PART I. 17
 
 242 TABLE TALK. 
 
 Madafne Pasta appears to be of Perdita's mind in respect to 
 her acting, and I applaud her reso.ution heartily. We English 
 are charged unjustly with wishing to disparage the French : we 
 cannot help it ; there is a natural antipathy between the two 
 nations. Thus unable to deny their theatrical merit, we are said 
 insidiously to have invented the appellation, French nature, to 
 explain away or throw a stigma on their most successful 
 exertions : 
 
 " Though that their art be nature, 
 
 We throw such changes of vexation on it, 
 As it may lose some color." 
 
 The English are a heavy people, and the most like a stone 
 of all others. The French are a lively people, and more like a 
 feather. They are easily moved and by slight causes, and each 
 part of the impression has its separate effect : the English, if they 
 are moved at all (which is a work of time and difficulty), are 
 moved altogether, or in mass, and the impression, if it takes root, 
 strikes deep and spreads wide, involving a number of other im- 
 pressions in it. If a fragment of a rock wrenched from its place 
 rolls slowly at first, gathers strength and fury as it proceeds, tears 
 up everything in its way, and thunders to the plain below, there 
 is something noble and imposing in the sight, for it is an image of 
 our own headlong passions, and the increasing vehemence of our 
 desires. But we hate to see a feather launched into the air and 
 driven back on the hand that throws it, shifting its course with 
 every puff of wind, and carried no farther by the strongest than 
 by the slightest impulse. It is provoking (is it not ?) to see the 
 strength of the blow always defeated by the very insignificance 
 and want of resistance in the object, and the impulse received 
 never answering to the impulse gfven. It is the very same flut- 
 tering, fidgetting, tantalizing, inconsequential, ridiculous process 
 that annoys us in the French character. There seems no natural 
 correspondence between objects ,nd feelings, between things and 
 words. By yielding to every impulse at once, nothing produces 
 a powerful or permanent impression ; nothing produces an aggre- 
 gate impression, for every part tells separately. Every idea turns 
 off to something else, or back upon itself; there is no progress
 
 MADAME PASTA AND MADEMOISELLE MARS. 24 
 
 made, no blind impulse, no accumulation of imagination with cir 
 cumstances, no absorption of all other feelings in one overwhelm- 
 ing one, that is, no keeping, no momentum, no integrity, no totality, 
 no inflexible sincerity of purpose ; and it is this resolution of the 
 sentiments into their detached points and first impressions, so that 
 they do not take an entire and involuntary hold of them, but 
 either they can throw them off from their lightness, or escape 
 from them by reason of their minuteness, that we English com- 
 plain of as French nature or a want of nature, for by nature is 
 only meant that the mind identifies itself with something so as to 
 be no longer master of itself, and the French mind never identi- 
 fies itself with anything, but always has its own consciousness, its 
 own affectation, its own gratification, its own slippery inconstancy 
 or impertinent prolixity interposed between the object and the 
 impression. It is this theatrical or artificial nature with which 
 we cannot and will not sympathize, because it circumscribes the 
 truth of things and the capacities of the human mind within the 
 petty round of vanity, indifference, and physical sensations, stunts 
 the growth of imagination, effaces the broad light of nature, and 
 requires us to look at all things through the prism of their petu- 
 lance and self-conceit. The French in a word leave sincerity 
 out of their nature (not moral but imaginative sincerity), cut down 
 the varieties of feeling to their own narrow and superficial stan- 
 dard, and having clipped and adulterated the current coin of ex- 
 pression, would pass it off as sterling gold. We cannot make an 
 exchange with them. They are affected by things in a different 
 manner from us, not in a different degree ; and a mutual under- 
 standing is hopeless. We have no dislike to foreigners as such : 
 on the contrary, a rage for foreign artists and works of art is one 
 of our foibles. But if we give up our national pride, it must be 
 to our taste and understandings. Nay, we adopt the manners and 
 the fashions of the French, their dancing and their cooking, not 
 their music, not their painting, not their poetry, not their meta- 
 physics, not their style of acting. If we are sensible of our own 
 stupidity, we cannot admire their vivacity ; if we are sick of our 
 own awkwardness, we like it better than their grace j we cannot 
 part with our grossness for their refinement ; if we would be glad 
 to have our lumpish clay animated, it must be with true Prome 
 
 28
 
 844 TABLE TALK. 
 
 thean heat, not with painted phosphorus : they are not the Frank- 
 ensteins that must perform this feat. Who among us in reading 
 Schiller's Robbers for the first time ever asked if it was German 
 or not ? Who in reading Klopstock's Messiah did not object that 
 it was German, not because it was German, but because it was 
 heavy ; that is, because the imagination and the heart do not act 
 like a machine, so as to be wound up or let down by the pulleys 
 of the will ? Do not the French complain (and complain justly), 
 that a picture is English, when it is coarse and unfinished, and 
 leaves out the details which are one part of nature ? Do not the 
 English remonstrate against this defect too, and endeavor to cure 
 it ? But it may be said we relish Schiller, because he is barba- 
 rous, violent, and like Shakspeare. We have the Cartoons of 
 Raphael then, and Elgin marbles ; and we profess to admire and 
 understand these too, and I think without any affectation. The 
 reason is that there is no affectation in them. We like those 
 noble outlines of the human face at Hampton Court ; the sustain. 
 ed dignity of the expression ; the broad, ample folds of the dra- 
 pery ; the bold, massive limbs ; there is breath and motion in 
 them, and we would willingly be so transformed and spiritualized : 
 but we do not want to have our heavy, stupid faces frittered away 
 into a number of glittering points or transfixed into a smooth pet- 
 rifaction on French canvas. Our faces, if wanting in expression, 
 have a settled purpose in them ; are as solid as they are stupid ; 
 and we are at least flesh and blood. We also like the sway of 
 the limbs and negligent grandeur of the Elgin marbles ; in spite 
 of their huge weight and manly strength, they have the buoyancy 
 of a wave of the sea, with all the ease and softness of flesh : they 
 fall into attitudes of themselves : but if they were put into atti- 
 tudes by the genius of Opera-dancing, we should feel no disposi- 
 tion to imitate or envy them, any more than we do the Zephyr 
 and Flora graces of French statuary. We prefer a single head 
 of Chantry's to a quarry of French sculpture. The English are 
 a modest people, except in comparing themselves with their next 
 neighbors, and nothing provokes their pride in this case, so much 
 as the self-sufficiency of the latter. When Madame Pasta 
 walks in upon the stage, and looks about her with the same 
 unconsciousness or timid wonder as the young stag in the forest ;
 
 MADAME PASTA AND MADEMOISELLE MARS. 245 
 
 when she moves her limbs as carelessly as a tiee its branches; 
 when she unfolds one of her divine expressions of countenance, 
 which reflect the inmost feelings of the soul, as the calm, deep 
 lake reflects the face of heaven ; do we not sufficiently admire 
 her, do we not wish her ours, and feel, with the same cast of 
 thought and character, a want of glow, of grace, and ease in the 
 expression of what we feel ? We bow, like Guiderius and Arvi- 
 ragus in the cave when they saw Imogen, as to a thing superior. 
 On the other hand, when Mademoiselle Mars comes on the stage, 
 something in the manner of a fantoccini figure slid along on a 
 wooden frame, and making directly for the point at which her 
 official operations commence when her face is puckered into a 
 hundred little expressions like the wrinkles on the skin of a bowl 
 of cream, set in a window to cool, her eyes peering out with an 
 ironical meaning, her nose pointing it, and her lips confirming it 
 with a dry pressure we admire indeed, we are delighted, we 
 may envy, but we do not sympathize or very well know what to 
 make of it. We are not electrified, as in the former instance, 
 but animal-magnetised* We can manage pretty well with any 
 one feeling or expression (like a clown that must be taught his 
 letters one at a time) if it keeps on in the same even course, that 
 expands and deepens by degrees, but we are distracted and puz- 
 zled, or at best only amused with that sort of expression which is 
 hardly itself for two moments together, that shifts from point to 
 point, that seems to have no place to rest on, no impulse to urie 
 it forward, and might as well be twenty other things at the same 
 time where tears come so easily they can hardly be real, where 
 smiles are so playful they appear put on, where you cannot tell what 
 you are to believe, for the parties themselves do not know whether they 
 are in jest or earnest, where the whole tone is ironical, conven- 
 tional, and where the difference between nature and art is nearly 
 
 * Even her fexiste in Valeria (when she first acquires the use of sight) 
 is pointed like an epigram, and put in italics, tike a technical or metaphy- 
 sical distinction, instead of being a pure effusion of joy. Accordingly a 
 French pit-critic took up the phrase, insisting that to exist was common to 
 all things, and asked what the expression was in the original German. 
 This treatment of passion is topical and extraneous, and seld< m strikes at 
 the seat of the disorder, the heart.
 
 246 TABLE TALK. 
 
 imperceptible. This is what we mean by French nature, viz., 
 that the feelings and ideas are so slight and discontinuous that 
 they can be changed for others like a dress or vizor ; or else, to 
 make up for want of truth and breadth, are caricatured into a 
 mask. This is the defect of their tragedy, and the defect and 
 excellence of their comedy ; the one is a pompous abortion, the 
 other a fac-simile of life, almost too close to be agreeable. A 
 French comic actor might be supposed to have left his shop for 
 half an hour to show himself upon a stage there is no differ- 
 ence, worth speaking of, between the man and the actor whether 
 on the stage or at home, he is equally full of gesticulation, equally 
 voluble, and without meaning as their tragic actors are solemn 
 puppets, moved by rules, pulled by wires, and with their mouths 
 stuffed with rant and bombast. This is the harm that can be 
 said of them : they themselves are doubtless best acquainted with 
 the good, and are not too diffident to tell it. Though other people 
 abuse them, they can still praise themselves ! I once knew a 
 French lady who said all manner of good things and forgot them 
 the next moment ; who maintained an argument with great wit 
 and eloquence, and presently after changed sides, without knowing 
 that she had done so ; who invented a story and believed it on 
 the spot ; who wept herself and made you weep with the force of 
 her descriptions, and suddenly drying her eyes, laughed at you 
 for looking grave. Is not this like acting ? Yet it was not 
 affected in her, but natural, involuntary, incorrigible. The hurry 
 and excitement of her natural spirits was like a species of intoxi- 
 cation, or she resembled a child in thoughtlessness and incoher- 
 ence. She was a Frenchwoman. It was nature, but nature that 
 had nothing to do with truth or consistency. 
 
 In one of the Paris Journals lately, there was a criticism on 
 two pictures by Girodet of Bonchamps and Cathelineau, Vendean 
 chiefs. The paper is well written, and points out the defects of 
 the portraits very fairly and judiciously. These persons are 
 there called " Illustrious Vendeans." The dead dogs of 1812 are 
 the illustrious Vendeans of 1824. Monsieur Chateaubriand will 
 have it so, and the French are too polite a nation to contradict 
 him. They split on this rock of complaisance, surrendering every 
 principle to the fear of giving offence, as we do on the opposite
 
 MADAME PASTA AND MADEMOISELLE MARS. 247 
 
 one of party-spirit and rancorous hostility, sacrificing the best of 
 causes, and our best friends to the desire of giving offence, to the 
 indulgence of our spleen, and of an ill-tongue. We apply a de- 
 grading appellation, or bring an opprobrious charge against ar 
 individual; and such is our tenaciousness of the painful and dis- 
 agreeable, so fond are we of brooding over grievances, so incapa- 
 ble are our imaginations of raising themselves above the lowest 
 scurrility or the dirtiest abuse, that should the person attacked 
 come out an angel from the contest, the prejudice against him re- 
 mains nearly the same as if the charge had been fully proved. 
 An unpleasant association has been created, and this is too de- 
 lightful an exercise of the understanding with the English public 
 easily to be parted with. John Bull would as soon give up an 
 estate as a bug-bear. Having been once gulled, they are not 
 soon ungulled. They are too knowing for that. Nay, they re- 
 sent the attempt to undeceive them as an injury. The French 
 apply a brilliant epithet to the most vulnerable characters ; and 
 thus gloss over a life of treachery or infamy. With them the 
 immediate or last impression is everything ; with us, the first, if 
 it is sufficiently strong and gloomy, never wears out ! The French 
 critic observes that M. Girodet has given General Bonchamps, 
 though in a situation of great difficulty and danger, a calm and 
 even smding air, and that the portrait of Cathelineau, instead of a 
 hero, looks only like an angry peasant. In fact, the lips in the 
 first portrait are made of marmalade, the complexion is cosmetic, 
 and the smile ineffably engaging ; while the eye of the peasant 
 Cathelineau darts a beam* of light, such as no eye, however illus- 
 trious, was ever illumined with. But so it is, the Senses, like a 
 favorite lap-dog, are pampered and indulged at any expense : the 
 Imagination, like a gaunt hound, is starved and driven away. 
 Danger and death, and ferocious courage and stern fortitude, 
 however the subject may exact them, are uncourtly topics and 
 kept out of sight : but smiling lips and glistening eyes are pleas- 
 ing objects, ani there you find them. The style of portrait re- 
 quires it. It is of this varnish and glitter of sentiment that we 
 complain (perhaps it is no business of ours) as what must forever 
 intercept the true feeling and genuine rendering of nature in 
 French ar% as what makes it spurious and counterfeit, and strips
 
 248 TABLE TALK. 
 
 it of simplicity, force and grandeur. Whatever pleases, whatever 
 strikes, holds out a temptation to the French artist too strong to 
 be resisted, and there is too great a sympathy in the public mind 
 with this view of the subject, to quarrel with or severely criticise 
 what is so congenial with its own feelings. A premature and 
 superficial sensibility is thegi'ave of French genius and of French 
 taste. 'Beyond the momentary impulse of a lively organization, 
 all the rest is mechanical and pedantic ; they give you rules and 
 theories for truth and nature, the Unities for poetry, and the dead 
 body for the living soul of art. They color a Greek statue ill 
 and call it a picture : they paraphrase a Greek tragedy, and over- 
 load it with long-winded speeches, and they think they have a 
 national drama of their own. Any other people would be ashamed 
 of such preposterous pretensions. In invention, they do not get 
 beyond models ; in imitation, beyond details. Their microscopic 
 vision hinders them from seeing nature. I observed two young 
 students the other day near the top of Montmartre, making oil 
 sketches of a ruinous hovel in one corner of -the road. Paris lay 
 below, glittering grey and gold (like a spider's web) in the setting 
 sun, which shot its slant rays upon their shining canvas, and they 
 were busy in giving the finishing touches. The little outhouse 
 was in itself picturesque enough : it was covered with moss, 
 which hung down in a sort of drooping form as the rain had 
 streamed down it, and the walls were loose and crumbling in 
 pieces. Our artists had repaired everything : not a stone was 
 out of its place : no traces were left of the winter's flaw in the 
 pendent moss. One would think the bricklayer and gardener 
 had been regularly set to work to do away everything like senti- 
 ment or keeping in the object before them. Oh, Paris ! it was 
 indeed on this thy weak side (thy inability to connect any two 
 ideas into one) that thy barbarous and ruthless foes entered in ! 
 The French have a great dislike to anything obscure. They 
 cannot bear to suppose for a moment there should be anything 
 they do not understand : they are shockingly afraid of being mys- 
 tified. Hence they have no idea either of mental or aerial per- 
 spective. Everything must be distinctly made out and in the 
 foreground ; for if it is not so clear that they can take it up bit 
 by bit, it is wholly lost upon them, and they turn away as from
 
 MADAME PASTA AND MADEMOISELLE MARS. 24u 
 
 an unmeaning blank. This is the cause of the stiff, unnatural 
 look of their portraits. No allowance is made for the veil that 
 shade as well as an oblique position casts over the different parts 
 of the face ; every feature, and every part of every feature is 
 given with the same flat effect, and it is owing to this perverse 
 fidelity of detail, that that which is literally true, is naturally 
 false. The side of a face seen in perspective does not present so 
 many markings as the one that meets your eye full ; but if it is 
 put into the vice of French portrait, wrenched round by incorrigi- 
 ble affectation and conceit (that insist upon knowing all that is 
 there, and set it down formally, though it is not to be seen), what 
 can be the result, but that the portrait will look like a head stuck 
 in a vice, will be flat, hard, and finished, will have the appear- 
 ance of reality and at the same time look like paint ; in short, 
 will be a French portrait ? That is, the artist, from a pettiness 
 of view and want of more enlarged and liberal notions of 
 art, comes iorward not to represent nature, but like an imperti- 
 nent commentator to explain what she has left in doubt, to insist 
 on that which she passes over or touches only slightly, to throw a 
 critical light on what she casts into shade, and to pick out the de- 
 tails of what she blends into masses. I wonder they allow the 
 existence of the term clair-obscur at all, but it is a word ; and a 
 word is a thing they can repeat and remember. A French gen- 
 tleman formerly asked me what 1 thought of a landscape in their 
 Exhibition. I said that I thought it too clear. He made answer 
 that he should never have conceived that to be possible. I re- 
 plied, that what I meant was, that the parts of the several objects 
 were made out with too nearly equal distinctness all over the picture; 
 that the leaves of the trees in the shadow were as distinct as those 
 in light, the branches of the trees at a distance as plain as of those 
 near. The perspective arose only from the diminution of objects, 
 and there was no interposition of air. I said, one could not see 
 the leaves of a tree a mile off, but this, I added, appertained to a 
 question in metaphysics. He shook his head, thinking that a 
 young Englishman could know as little of abstruse philosophy as 
 of fine art, and no more was said. I owe to this gentleman 
 (whose name was Merimee, and who I understand is still living), 
 a grateful sense of many friendly attentions and many useful sujp 
 
 28
 
 2U0 TABLE TALK. 
 
 gestions, and 1 take this opportunity of acknowledging my obliga- 
 tions. 
 
 Some one was observing of Madame Pasta's acting, that its 
 chief merit consisted in its being natural. To which it was re- 
 plied, " Not so, for that there was an ugly and a handsome nature." 
 There is an old proverb, that " Home is home, be it never so 
 homely :" and so it may be said of nature ; that whether ugly or 
 handsome, it is nature still. Besides beauty there is truth, which 
 is always one principal thing. It doubles the effect of beauty, 
 which is mere affectation without it, and even reconciles us to de- 
 formity. Nature, the truth of nature in imitation, denotes a given 
 object, a " foregone conclusion" in reality, to which the "artist is 
 to conform in his copy. In nature real objects exist, real causes 
 act, which are only supposed to act in art ; and it is in the sub- 
 ordination of the uncertain and superficial combinations of fancy 
 to the more stable and powerful law of reality that the perfection 
 of art consists. A painter may arrange fine colors on his palette ; 
 but if he merely does this, he does nothing. It is accidental or 
 arbitrary. The difficulty and the charm of the combination 
 begins with the truth of imitation, that is, with the resemblance to 
 a given object in nature, or in other words, with the strength, 
 coherence, and justness of our impressions, which must be verified 
 by a reference to a known and determinate class of objects as the 
 test. Art is so far the development or the communication of 
 knowledge, but there can be no knowledge unless it be of some 
 given or standard object which exists independently of the repre- 
 sentation and bends the will to an obedience to it. The strokes 
 of the pencil are what the artist pleases, are mere idleness and 
 caprice without meaning, unless they point to nature. Then they 
 are right or wrong, true or false, as they follow in her steps and 
 copy her style. Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of 
 every breath of folly. Natural objects convey giveli or intelligible 
 ideas which art embodies and represents, or it represents nothing, is 
 a mere chimera or bubble ; and, farther, natural objects or events 
 cause certain feelings, in expressing which art manifests its power, 
 and genius its prerogative. The capacity of expressing these 
 movements of passion is in proportion to the power with which they 
 are felt ; and this is the same as sympathy with the human mind
 
 MADAME PASTA AND MADEMOISELLE MARS. 25\ 
 
 placed in actual situations, and influenced by the real causes that 
 are supposed to act. Genius is the power which equalizes or 
 identifies the imagination with the realitj' or with nature. Cer- 
 tain events happening to us naturally produce joy, others sorrow, 
 and these feelings, if excessive, lead to other consequences, such as 
 stupor or ecstasy, and express themselves by certain signs in the 
 countenance or voice or gestures ; and we admire and applaud 
 an actress accordingly, who gives these tones and gestures as they 
 would follow in the order of things, because we then know that 
 ner mind has been affected in like manner, that she enters deeply 
 into the resources of nature, and understands the riches of the hu- 
 man heart. For nothing else can impel and stir her up to the 
 imitation of the truth. The way in which real causes act upon 
 the feelings is not arbitrary, is not fanciful ; it is as true as it is 
 powerful and unforeseen ; the effects can only be similar when 
 the exciting causes have a correspondence with each other, and 
 there is nothing like feeling but feeling. The sense of joy can 
 alone produce the smile of joy; and in proportion to the sweet- 
 ness, the unconsciousness, and the expansion of the last, we may 
 De sure is the fulness and sincerity of the heart from which it pro- 
 ceeds. The elements of joy at least are there, in their integrity 
 and perfection. The death or absence of a beloved object is 
 nothing as a word, as a mere passing thought, till it comes to be 
 dwelt upon, and we begin to feel the revulsion, the long dreary 
 separation, the stunning sense of the blow to our happiness, as we 
 should in reality. The power of giving this sad and bewildering 
 effect of sorrow on the stage is derived from the force of sympathy 
 with what we should feel in reality. That is, a great histrionic 
 genius is one that approximates the effects of words, or of sup- 
 posed situations on the mind, most nearly to the deep and vivid 
 effect of real and inevitable ones. Joy produces tears : the vio- 
 lence of passion turns to childish weakness ; but this could not be 
 foreseen by study, nor taught by rules, nor mimicked by observa- 
 tion. Natural acting is therefore fine, because it implies and calls 
 forth the most varied and strongest feelings that the supposed cha- 
 racters and circumstances can possibly give birth to : it reaches 
 he height of the subject. The conceiving or entering into a part 
 in this sense is everything : the acting follows easily and of course. 
 
 28*
 
 IS? TABLE TALK. 
 
 But art without nature is a nickname, a word without meaning, 
 a conclusion without any premises to go upon. The beauty of 
 Madame Pasta's acting in Nina proceeds upon this principle. It 
 is not what she does at any particular juncture, but she seems to 
 be the character, and to be incapable of divesting herself of it. 
 This is true acting : anything else is playing tricks, may be clever 
 and ingenious, is French Opera-dancing, recitation, heroics or 
 hysterica but it is not true nature or true art.
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, RACINE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 253 
 
 ESSAY XIX. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, Racine, and Shakspeare 
 
 The argument at the end of the last Essay may possibly serve 
 to throw some light on the often agitated and trite question, 
 Whether we receive more pleasure from an Opera or a Tragedy, 
 from the words or the pantomime of a fine dramatic representa- 
 tion ? A musician I can conceive to declare, sincerely and con- 
 scientiously, in favor of the Opera over the theatre, for he has 
 made it his chief or exclusive study. But I have heard some 
 literary persons do the same ; and in them it appears to me to be 
 more the affectation of candor, than candor itself. " The still 
 small voice is wanting " in this preference ; for however lulling 
 or overpowering the effect of music may be at the time, we return 
 to nature at last ; it is there we find solidity and repose, and it ia 
 from this that the understanding ought to give its casting vote. 
 Indeed there is a sense of reluctance and a sort of critical re- 
 morse in the opposite course as in giving up an old prejudice or 
 a friend to whom we are under considerable obligations ; but this 
 very feeling of the conquest or sacrifice of a prejudice is a tacit 
 proof that we are wrong ; for it arises only out of the strong inte- 
 rest excited in the course of time, and involved in the nature and 
 principle of the drama. 
 
 Words are the signs which point out and define the objects of 
 the highest import to the human mind ; and speech is the habitual, 
 and as it were most intimate mode of expressing those signs, the 
 one with which our practical and serious associations are most in 
 unison. To give a deliberate verdict on the other side of the 
 question seems, therefore, effeminate and unjust. A rose is de- 
 lightful to the smell, a pine-apple to the taste. The nose and the 
 Dalate, if their opinion were asked, might very fairly give it in 
 favor of these against any rival sentiment ; but the head and the 
 heart cannot be expected to become accomplices against them
 
 254 TABLE TALK. 
 
 selves. We cannot pay a worse compliment to any pleasure or 
 pursuit than to surrender the pretensions of some other to it. 
 Everything stands best on its own foundation. A sound expresses, 
 for the most part, nothing but itself; a word expresses a million 
 of sounds. The thought or impression of the moment is one 
 thing, and it may be more or less delightful ; but beyond this, it 
 may relate to the fate or events of a whole life, and it is this 
 moral and intellectual perspective that words convey in its full 
 signification and extent, and that gives a proportionable superior- 
 ity in weight, in compass, and dignity to the denunciations of the 
 tragic Muse. The language of the understanding is necessary 
 to a rational being. Man is dumb and prone to the earth without 
 it. It is that which opens the vista of our past or future years. 
 Otherwise a cloud is upon it, like the mist of the morning, like a 
 veil of roses, an exhalation of sweet sounds, or rich distilled per- 
 fumes ; no matter what it is the nerve or organ that is chiefly 
 touched, the sense that is wrapped in ecstasy or waked to mad- 
 ness ; the man remains unmoved, torpid, and listless, blind to 
 causes and consequences, which he can never remain satisfied 
 without knowing, but seems shut up in a cell of ignorance, baf- 
 fled and confounded. Sounds without meaning are like a glare 
 of light without objects ; or, an Opera is to a Tragedy what a 
 transparency is to a picture. We are delighted because we are 
 dazzled. But words are a key to the affections. They not only 
 excite feelings, but they point to the why and wherefore. Causes 
 march before them, and consequences follow after them. They 
 are links in the chain of the universe, and the grappling-irons 
 that bind us to it. They open the gates of Paradise, and reveal 
 the abyss of human wo. 
 
 " Four lagging winters and four wanton springs 
 Die in a word ; such is the breath of kings." 
 
 But in this respect all men who have the use of speech are kings. 
 It is words that constitute all but the present moment, but the pre. 
 sent object. They may not and they do not give the whole of 
 any train of impressions which they suggest ; but they alone 
 answer in any degree to the truth of things, unfold the dark laby- 
 rinth of fate, or unravel the web of the human heart ; for they
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, RACINE, AND SHAKSPEARE 255 
 
 alone describe things in the order and relation in which thev hap- 
 pen in human life. Men do not dance or sing through life ; or 
 an Opera or a ballet would " come home to the bosoms and busi- 
 ness of men," in the same manner that a Tragedy or Comedy 
 does. As it is, they do not piece on to our ordinary existence, 
 nor go to enrich our habitual reflections. We wake from them 
 as from a drunken dream, or a last night's debauch ; and think 
 of them no more, till the actual impression is repeated. On the 
 other hand, pantomime action (as an exclusive and new species 
 of the drama) is like tragedy obtruncated and thrown on the 
 ground, gasping for utterance and struggling for breath. It is a 
 display of the powers of art, I should think more wonderful than 
 satisfactory. There is a stifling sensation about it. It does not 
 throw off* " the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart," bu* 
 must rather aggravate and tighten the pressure. 
 
 " Give sorrow words ; the grief that does not speak, 
 Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break." 
 
 This is perhaps the cause of our backwardness to admit a com- 
 parison between Mrs. Siddons and Palarini, between Shakspeare 
 and Vigano. Poetry and words speak a language proper to hu- 
 manity ; every other is comparatively foreign to it. The dis- 
 tinction here laid down is important, and should be kept sacred. 
 Even in speaking a foreign language, words lose half their mean- 
 ing, and are no longer an echo to the sense ; virtue becomes a 
 cant-term, vice sounds like an agreeable novelty, and ceases to 
 shock. How much more must this effect happen, if we lay aside 
 speech (our distinguishing faculty) altogether, or try to " gabble 
 most brutishly," measure good and evil by the steps of a dance, 
 and breathe our souls away in dying swan-like symphonies ! But 
 it may be asked, how does all this affect my favorite art of paint- 
 ing ? I leave somebody else to answer that question. It will be 
 a good exercise for their ingenuity, if not for their ingenuousness. 
 I proceed to the more immediate object of this Essay, which 
 was to distinguish between the talents of Sir Walter Scott, Racine, 
 and Shakspeare. The subject occurred to me from some conver- 
 sation with a French lady, who entertains a project of introducing 
 Shakspeare in France. As I demurred to the probability of this
 
 256 TABLE TALK. 
 
 alteration in the national taste, she endeavored to overcome my 
 despondency by several lively arguments, and among other things, 
 urged the instantaneous and universal success of the Scotch 
 Novels among all ranks and conditions of the French people. As 
 Shakspeare had. been performing quarantine among them for a 
 century and a half to no purpose, I thought this circumstance 
 rather proved the difference in the genius of the two writers than 
 a change in the taste of the nation. Madame B. stoutly main- 
 tained the contrary opinion : and when an Englishman argues 
 with a Frenchwoman he has very considerable odds against him. 
 The only advantage you have in this case is that you can plead 
 inability to express yourself properly, and may be supposed to 
 have a meaning where you have none. An eager manner will 
 supply the place of distinct ideas, and you have only not to sur- 
 render in form, to appear to come off with flying colors. The 
 not being able to make others understand me, however, prevents 
 me from understanding myself, and I was by no means satisfied 
 with the reasons I alleged in the present instance. I tried to 
 mend them the next day, and the following is the result. It was 
 supposed at one time that the genius of the Author of Waverley 
 was confined to Scotland ; that his Novels and Tales were a 
 bundle of national prejudices and local traditions, and that his 
 superiority would desert him, the instant he attempted to cross 
 the Border. He made the attempt,<however, and contrary to these 
 unfavorable prognostics, succeeded. Ivanhoe, if not equal to the 
 very best of the Scotch Novels, is very nearly so ; and the scenery 
 and manners are truly English. In Quentin Durward, again, he 
 made a descent upon France, and gained new laurels, instead of 
 losing his former ones. This seemed to bespeak a versatility of 
 talent and a plastic power, which in the first instance had been 
 called in question. A Scotch mist had been suspected to hang 
 its mystery over the page ; his imagination was borne up on High- 
 land superstitions and obsolete traditions, " sailing with supreme 
 dominion " through the murky regions of ignorance and barba- 
 rism ; and if ever at a loss, his invention was eked out and got a 
 east by means of ancient documents and the records of criminal 
 jurisprudence or fanatic rage. The Black Dwarf was a para- 
 phrase of the current anecdotes of David Ritchie, without any
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, RACINE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 257 
 
 additional point or interest, and the story of Effie Deans had slept 
 for a century in the law reports and depositions relative to the 
 Heart of Mid-Lothian. To be sure, nothing could be finer or 
 truer to nature ; for the human heart, whenever or however it is 
 wakened, has a stirring power in it, and as to the truth of nature, 
 nothing can be more like nature than facts, if you know where to 
 find them. But as to sheer invention, there appeared to be about 
 as much as there is in the getting up the melo-dramatic represen- 
 tation of the Maid and the Magpie from the Causes Ce'lebres. The 
 invention is much greater and the effect is not less in Mrs. Inch- 
 bald's Nature and Art, where there is nothing that can have 
 been given in evidence but the Trial-Scene near the end, and even 
 that is not a legal anecdote, but a pure dramatic fiction. Before 
 I proceed, I may as well dwell on this point a little. The heroine 
 of the story, the once innocent and beautiful Hannah, is brought 
 by a series of misfortunes and crimes (the effect of a misplaced 
 attachment) to be tried for her life at the Old Bailey, and as her 
 Judge, her former lover and seducer, is about to pronounce sen- 
 tence upon her, she calls out in an agony " Oh ! not from you !" 
 and as the Hon. Mr . Norwynne proceeds to finish his solemn 
 address, falls in a swoon, and is taken senseless from the bar. 1 
 know nothing in the world so affecting as this. Now if Mrs. 
 Inchbald had merely found this story in the Newgate-Calendar, 
 and transplanted it into a novel, I conceive that her merit in point 
 of genius (not to say feeling) would be less than if having all the 
 other circumstances given, and the apparatus ready, and this ex. 
 clamation alone left blank, she had filled it up from her own heart 
 that is, from an intense conception of the situation of the parties, 
 so that from the harrowing recollections passing through the mind 
 of the poor girl so circumstanced, this uncontrollable gush of 
 feeling would burst from her lips. Just such I apprehend, gene, 
 rally speaking, is the amount of the difference between the genius 
 of Shakspeare and that of Sir Walter Scott. It is the difference 
 between originality and the want of it, between writing and tran- 
 scribing. Almost all the finest scenes and touches, the great 
 master-strokes in Shakspeare, are such as must have belonged to 
 the class of invention, where the secret lay between him and hia 
 own heart, and the power exerted is in adding to the given mate- 
 
 SECOND SERIES. PART I. 18
 
 3J>8 TABLE TALK. 
 
 rials and working something out of them : in the Author of Wa- 
 verley, not all, but the principal and characteristic beauties are 
 such as may and do belong to the class of compilation, that is, 
 consist in bringing the materials together and leaving them to pro- 
 duce their own effect. Sir Walter Scott is much such a writer 
 as the Duke of Wellington is a General (I am profaning a number 
 of great names in this article by unequal comparisons). The one 
 gets a hundred thousand men together, and wisely leaves it to 
 them to fight out the battle, for if he meddled with it, he might 
 spoil sport : the other gets an innumerable quantity of facts to- 
 gether, and lets them tell their own story, as best they may. The 
 facts are stubborn in the last instance as the men are in the first, 
 and in neither case is the broth spoiled by the cook. This absti- 
 nence from interfering with their resources, lest they should defeat 
 their own success, shows great modesty and self-knowledge in the 
 compiler of romances and the leader of armies, but little boldness 
 or inventiveness of genius. We begin to measure Shakspeare's 
 height from the superstructure of passion and fancy he has raised 
 out of his subject and story, on which too rests the triumphal 
 arch of his fame : if we were to take away the subject and story, 
 the portrait and history from the Scotch Novels, no great deal 
 would be left worth talking about. 
 
 No one admires or delights in the Scotch Novels more than I 
 do ; but at the same time when I hear it asserted that his mind is 
 of the same class with Shakspeare's, or that he imitates nature in 
 the same way, I confess I cannot assent to it. No two things 
 appear to me more different. Sir Walter is an imitator of nature 
 and nothing more ; but I think Shakspeare is infinitely more than 
 this. The creative principle is everywhere restless and redun- 
 dant in Shakspeare, both as it relates to the invention of feeling 
 and imagery ; in the Author of Waverley it lies for the most part 
 dormant, sluggish and unused. Sir Walter's mind is full of infor- 
 mation, but the " o 'er '-informing power" is not there. Shak- 
 speare's spirit, like fire, shines through him : Sir Walter's like a 
 stream, reflects surrounding objects. It is true, he has shifted 
 the scene from Scotland into England and France, and the man- 
 ners and characters are strikingly English and French ; but this 
 does not prove that they are not local, and that they are not bor
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, RACINE, AND SHAKSPEARE 2ft9 
 
 rowed, as well as the scenery and costume, from comparatively 
 obvious and mechanical sources. Nobody from reading Shak- 
 speare would know (except from the Dramatis Persona) that Lear 
 was an English king. He is merely a king and a father. The 
 ground is common : but what a well of tears has he dug out of 
 it ! The tradition is nothing, or a foolish one. There are no 
 data in history to go upon ; no advantage is taken of costume, no 
 acquaintance with geography or architecture or dialect is neces- 
 sary : but there is an old tradition, human nature an old tem- 
 ple, the human mind and Shakspeare walks into it and looks 
 about him with a lordly eye, and seizes on the sacred spoils as 
 his own. The story is a thousand or two years old, and yet the 
 tragedy has no smack of antiquarianism in it. I should like very 
 well to see Sir Walter giving us a tragedy of this kind, a huge 
 " globose" of sorrow, swinging round in mid-air, independent of 
 time, place, and circumstance, sustained by its own weight and 
 motion, and not propped up by the levers of custom, or patched 
 up with quaint, old-fashioned dresses, or set off by grotesque 
 backgrounds or rusty armor, but in which the mere parapher- 
 nalia and accessories were left out of the question, and nothing 
 but the soul of passion and the pith of imagination was to be 
 found. " A Dukedom to a beggarly denier," he would make no- 
 thing of it. Does this prove he has done nothing, or that he has 
 not done the greatest things ? No, but that he is not like Shak- 
 speare. For instance, when Lear says, " The little dogs and all, 
 Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at me !" there 
 is no old Chronicle of the line of Brute, no black-letter broad-side, 
 no tattered ballad, no vague rumor, in which this exclamation is 
 registered ; there is nothing romantic, quaint, mysterious in the 
 objects introduced : the illustration is borrowed from the com- 
 monest and most casual images in nature, and yet it is this veiy 
 circumstance that lends its extreme force to the expression of his 
 grief by showing that even the lowest things in creation and the 
 last you would think of had in his imagination turned against 
 him. All nature was, as he supposed, in a conspiracy against 
 him, and the most trivial and insignificant creatures concerned in 
 it were the most striking proofs of its malignity and extent. It 
 is the depth of passion, however, or of the poet's sympathy witli
 
 260 TABLE TALK. 
 
 it, that distinguishes this character of torturing familiarity in 
 them, invests them with corresponding importance, and suggests 
 them by the force of contrast. It is not that certain images are 
 surcharged with a prescriptive influence over the imagination 
 from known and existing prejudices, so that to approach or even 
 mention them is sure to excite a pleasing awe and horror in the 
 mind (the effect in this case is mostly mechanical) the whole 
 sublimity of the passage is from the weight of passion thrown 
 into it, and this is the poet's own doing. This is not trick, but 
 genius. Meg Merrilies on her death-bed says, " Lay my head 
 to the East !" Nothing can be finer or more thrilling than this 
 in its way ; but the author has little to do with it. It is an 
 Oriental superstition ; it is a proverbial expression ; it is part of the 
 gibberish (sublime though it be) of her gipsey clan ! "Nothing 
 but his unkind daughters could have brought him to this pass." 
 This is not a cant-phrase, nor the fragment of an old legend, nor 
 a mysterious spell, nor the butt-end of a wizard's denunciation. 
 It is the mere natural ebullition of passion, urged nearly to mad- 
 ness, and that will admit no other cause of dire misfortune but its 
 own, which swallows up all other griefs. The force of despair 
 hurries the imagination over the boundary of fact and common 
 sense, and renders the transition sublime ; but there is no pre- 
 cedent or authority for it, except in the general nature of the 
 human mind. I think, but am not sure that Sir Walter Scott has 
 imitated this turn of reflection, by making Madge Wildfire ascribe 
 Jenny Deans's uneasiness to the loss of her baby, which had 
 unsettled her own brain. Again, Lear calls on the Heavens to 
 take his part, for " they are old like him." Here there is nothing 
 to prop up the image but the strength of passion, confounding the 
 infirmity of age with the stability of the firmament, and equalling 
 the complainant, through the sense of suffering and wrong, with 
 the Majesty of the Highest. This finding out a parallel between 
 the most unlike objects, because the individual would wish to find 
 one to support the sense of his own misery and helplessness, is 
 truly Shakspearian ; it is an instinctive law of our nature, and 
 the genuine inspiration of the Muse. Racine (but let me not 
 anticipate) would make him pour out three hundred verses of 
 lamentation for his loss of kingdom, his feebleness, and his old
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, RACINE, AND SHAKSPEARE 201 
 
 age, coming to the same conclusion at the end of every third 
 couplet, instead of making him grasp at once at the Heavens for 
 support. The witches in Macbeth are traditional, preternatural 
 personages ; and there Sir Walter would have left them after 
 making what use of them he pleased as a sort of Gothic machinery. 
 Shakspeare makes something more of them, and adds to the mys- 
 tery by explaining it. 
 
 " The earth hath bubbles as the water hath, 
 And these are of them." 
 
 We have their physiognomy too 
 
 " and enjoin'd silence, 
 
 By each at once her choppy finger laying 
 Upon her skinny lip." 
 
 And the mode of their disappearance is thus described 
 
 " And then they melted into thin air." 
 
 What an idea is here conveyed of silence and vacancy ! The 
 geese of Micklestane Muir (the country-woman and her flock of 
 geese turned into stone) in the Black Dwarf, are a fine and petri- 
 fying metamorphosis ; but it is the tradition of the country and 
 no more. Sir Walter has told us nothing farther of it than the 
 first clown whom we might ask concerning it. I do not blame 
 him for that, though I cannot give him credit for what he has not 
 done. The poetry of the novel is a fixture of the spot. Meg 
 Merrilies I also allow, with all possible good-will, to be a most 
 romantic and astounding personage ; yet she is a little melo- 
 dramatic. Her exits and entrances are pantomimic, and her long 
 red cloak, her elf-locks, the rock on which she stands, and th 
 white cloud behind her are, or might be made, the property of a 
 theatre. Shakspeare's witches are nearly exploded on the stage. 
 Their broomsticks are left ; their metaphysics are gone, buried 
 five editions deep in Captain Medwin's Conversations ! The pas- 
 sion in Othello is made out of nothing but itself; there is no ex- 
 ternal machinery to help it on ; its highest intermediate agent \a 
 an old-fashioned pocket-handkerchief. Yet " there's magic in
 
 262 TABLE TALK 
 
 the web" of thoughts and feelings, done after the commonest pat- 
 era of human life. The power displayed in it is that of intense 
 passion and powerful intellect, wielding every-day events, and 
 imparting its force to them, not swayed or carried along by them 
 as in a go-cart. The splendor is that of genius darting out its 
 forked flame on whatever comes in its way, and kindling and 
 melting it in the furnace of affection, whether it be flax or iron. 
 The coloring, the form, the motion, the combination of objects 
 depend on the predisposition of the mind, moulding nature to its 
 own purposes ; in Sir Walter the mind is as wax to circumstan- 
 ces, and owns no other impress. Shakspeare is a half-worker 
 with nature. Sir Walter is like a. man who has got a romantic 
 spinning-jenny, which he has only to set a going, and it does his 
 work for him much better and faster than he can do it for him- 
 self. He lays an embargo on " all appliances and means to boot," 
 on history, tradition, local scenery, costume and manners, and 
 makes his characters chiefly up of these. Shakspeare seizes 
 only on the ruling passion, and miraculously evolves all the rest 
 from it. The eagerness of desire suggests every possible event 
 that can irritate or thwart it, foresees all obstacles, catches at 
 every trifle, clothes itself with imagination, and tantalises itself 
 with hope ; " sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt," starts at 
 a phantom, and makes the universe tributary to it, and the play- 
 thing of its fancy. There is none of this "over- weening importu- 
 nity of the imagination in the Author of Waverley ; he does his 
 work well, but in another-guess manner. His imagination is a 
 matter-of-fact imagination. To return to Othello. Take the 
 celebrated dialogue in the third act. " 'Tis common." There 
 is nothing but the writhings and contortions of the heart, probed 
 by affliction's point, as the flesh shrinks under the surgeon's 
 knife. All its starts and flaws are but the conflicts and misgiv- 
 ings of hope and fear, in the most ordinary but trying circum- 
 stances. The " Not a jot, not a jot," has nothing to do with any 
 old legend or prophecy. It is only the last poor effort of human 
 hope, taking refuge on the lips. When after being infected with 
 jealousy by Iago, he retires apparently comforted and resigned, 
 and then without anything having happened in the interim, re- 
 turns stung to madness, crowned with his wrongs, and raging for
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, RACINE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 263 
 
 revenge, the effect is like that of poison inflaming the blood, or 
 like fire inclosed in a furnace. The soli principle of invention 
 is the sympathy with the natural revulsion of the human mind, 
 and its involuntary transition from false security to uncontrollable 
 fury. The springs of mental passion are fretted and wrought to 
 madness, and produce this explosion in the poet's breast. So 
 when Othello swears " By yon marble heaven," the epithet is 
 suggested by the hardness of his heart from the sense of injury : 
 the texture of the outward object is borrowed from that of the 
 thoughts : and that noble simile, " Like the Propontic," &c, 
 seems only an echo of the sounding tide of passion, and to roll 
 from the same source, the heart. The dialogue between Hubert 
 and Arthur, and that between Brutus and Cassius, are among the 
 finest illustrations of the same principle, which indeed is every- 
 where predominant (perhaps to a fault) in Shakspeare. His 
 genius is like the Nile overflowing and enriching its banks ; that 
 of Sir Walter is like a mountain-stream rendered interesting by 
 the picturesqueness of the surrounding scenery. Shakspeare 
 produces his most striking dramatic effects out of the workings 
 of the finest and most intense passions ; Sir Walter places his 
 dramatis persona in romantic situations, and subjects them to 
 extraordinary occurrences, and narrates the results. The one 
 gives us what we see and hear ; the other what we are. Hamlet 
 is not a person whose nativity is cast, or whose death is foretold 
 by portents : he weaves the web of his destiny out of his own 
 thoughts, and a very quaint and singular one it is. We have, I 
 think, a stronger fellow-feeling with him than we have with Ber- 
 tram or Waverley. All men feel and think, more or less : but 
 we are not all foundlings, Jacobites, or astrologers. We might 
 have been overturned with these gentlemen in a stage-coach: we 
 seem to have been schoolfellows with Hamlet at Wittenberg. 
 
 I will not press this argument farther, lest I should make it 
 tedious, and run into questions I have no intention to meddle with. 
 All I mean to insist npon is, that Sir Walter's forte is in the rich- 
 ness and variety of his materials, and Shakspeare's in the working 
 them np. Sir Walter is distinguished by the most amazing 
 retentiveness of memory, and vividness of conception of what
 
 264 TABLE TALK. 
 
 would happen, be seen, and felt by everybody in given circum 
 stances ; as Shakspeare is by inventiveness of genius, by a faculty 
 of tracing and unfolding the most hidden yet powerful springs of 
 action, scarce recognized by ourselves, and by an endless and 
 felicitous range of poetical illustration, added to a wide scope of 
 reading and of knowledge. One proof of the justice of these 
 remarks is, that whenever Sir Walter comes to a truly dramatic 
 situation, he declines it or fails. Thus ill the Black Dwarf, all 
 that relates to the traditions respecting this mysterious personage, 
 to the superstitious stories founded on it, is admirably done and to 
 the life, with all the spirit and freedom of originality : but when 
 he comes to the last scene for which all the rest is a preparation, 
 and which is full of the highest interest and passion, nothing is 
 done ; instead of an address from Sir Edward Mauley, recounting 
 the miseries of his whole life, and withering up his guilty rival 
 with the recital, the Dwarf enters with a strange rustling noise, 
 the opposite doors fly open, and the affrighted spectators rush out 
 like the figures in a pantomime. This is not dramatic, but melo- 
 dramatic. There is a palpable disappointment and falling-off", 
 where the interest had been worked up to the highest pitch of 
 expectation. The gratifying of this appalling curiosity and 
 interest was all that was not done to Sir Walter's hand ; and this 
 he has failed to do. All that was known about the Black Dwarf, 
 his figure, his desolate habitation, his unaccountable way of life, 
 his wrongs, his bitter execrations against intruders on his privacy, 
 the floating and exaggerated accounts of him, all these are 
 given with a masterly and faithful hand, this is matter of de- 
 scription and narrative : but when the true imaginative and 
 dramatic part comes, when the subject of this disastrous tale is to 
 pour out the accumulated and agonizing effects of all this series 
 of wretchedness and torture upon his own mind, that is, when the 
 person is to speak from himself and to stun us with the recoil of 
 passion upon external agents or circumstances that have caused 
 it, we find that it is Sir Walter Scott and notShakspeare that is his 
 counsel-keeper, that the author is a novelist and not a poet. All 
 that is gossipped in the neighborhood, all that is handed down in 
 print, all of which a drawing or an etching might be procured, in
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, RACINE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 263 
 
 gathered together and communicated to the public : what the 
 heart whispers to itself in secret, what the imagination tells in 
 thunder, this alone is wanting, and this is the great thing required 
 to make good the comparison in question. Sir Walter has not 
 then imitated Shakspeare, but he has given us nature, such 
 as he found and could best describe it ; and he resembles him 
 only in this, that he thinks c<*his characters and never of himself, 
 and pours out his works with such unconscious ease and prodigal- 
 ity of resources that he thinks nothing of them, and is even greater 
 than his own fame. 
 
 The genius of Shakspeare is dramatic, that of Scott narrative or 
 descriptive, that of Racine is didactic. He gives, as I conceive, 
 the common-places of the human heart better than any one, but 
 nothing or very little more. He enlarges on a set of obvious sen- 
 timents and well-known topics with considerable elegance of 
 language and copiousness of declamation, but there is scarcely 
 one stroke of original genius, nor anything like imagination in 
 his writings. He strings together a number of moral reflections, 
 and instead of reciting them himself, puts them into the mouths 
 of his dramatis persona, who talk well about their own situations 
 and the general relations of human life. Instead of laying bare 
 the heart of the sufferer with all its bleeding wounds and palpitat- 
 ing fibres, he puts into his hand a common-place book, and he 
 reads us a lecture from this. This is not the essence of the 
 drama, whose object and privilege it is to give us ihe extreme and 
 subtle workings of the human mind in individual circumstances, 
 to make us sympathize with the sufferer, or feel as we should feel 
 in his circumstances, not to tell the indifferent spectator what the 
 indifferent spectator could just as well tell him. Tragedy is hu- 
 man nature tried in the crucible of affliction, not exhibited in the 
 vague theorems of speculation. The poet's pen that paints all 
 this in words of fire and images of gold is totally wanting in Ra- 
 cine. He gives neither external images nor the internal and 
 secret workings of the human breast. Sir Walter Scott gives the 
 external imagery or machinery of passion ; Shakspeare the soul ; 
 and Racine the moral or argument of it. The French object 
 to Shakspeare for his breach of the Unities, and hold up Racine
 
 266 TABLE TALK. 
 
 as a model of classical propriety, who makes a Greek hero address 
 a Grecian heroine as Madame. Yet this is not barbarous 
 Why ? Because it is French, and because nothing that is French 
 can be barbarous in the eyes of this frivolous and pedantic nation, 
 who would prefer a peruke of the age of Louis XIV. to a simple 
 Greek head-dress ! 
 
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