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CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
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 BY 
 
 A. P. RUSSELL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "LIBRARY NOTES." 
 
 TITLES. 
 
 The Conversation of Coleridge. 
 
 Sarah Siddons. 
 
 Doctor Johnson. 
 
 Lord Macaulay. 
 
 Lamb. 
 
 Burns. 
 
 The Christianity of Woolman, 
 
 John Randolph and John Brown. 
 
 The Audacity of Footb. 
 
 Habit. 
 
 The Habit of Detraction. 
 
 The Art of Living. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
 
 New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. 
 
 1884. 
 
Copyright, 1883, 
 By ADDISON PEALE RUSSELL. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 
 The Riverside Press, Catnhridge : 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Ca 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 I. The Conversation of Coleridge . . . . i 
 
 II. Sarah Siddons . 23 
 
 III. Doctor Johnson S^ 
 
 IV. Lord Macaulay 74 
 
 V. Lamb 105 
 
 VI. Burns 132 
 
 VII. The Christianity of Woolman . . . .160 
 
 VIII. John Randolph and John Brown • . • i9S 
 
 IX. The Audacity of Foote 234 
 
 X. Habit . . . • 255 
 
 XL The Habit of Detraction 281 
 
 XII. The Art of Living 309 
 
 272910 
 
CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE* 
 
 De Quincey. It was, I think, in the month of August, 
 but certainly in the summer season, and certainly in the 
 year 1807, that I first saw this illustrious man, the largest 
 and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most 
 comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed 
 amongst men. . . . Little points of business being set- 
 tled, Coleridge, like some great river, the Orellana, or 
 the St. Lawrence, that had been checked and fretted by 
 rocks, or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its vol- 
 ume of waters, and its mighty music, swept at once, as if 
 returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain 
 of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the 
 most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious 
 fields of thought, by transitions the most just and logical, 
 that it was possible to conceive. 
 
 Hazlitt. I had heard a great deal of Coleridge's 
 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 circulated of his holding forth to a large party of 
 ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on the 
 Berkeleian Theory, where he made the whole material 
 
 * " Not since Pythagoras does an equal charm seem to have graced 
 the speech of any man." 
 
2 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 universe look like a transparency of fine words; and 
 another story of his being asked to a party at Birma- 
 ghan's, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after 
 dinner, on a sofa, where the company found him, to their 
 no small surprise, which was increased to wonder when 
 he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked 
 about him, and launched into a three hours' description 
 of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream. 
 
 H. N. Coleridge. Throughout a long-drawn sum- 
 mer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable, but 
 clear and musical, tones, concerning things human and 
 divine; marshaling all histor}^, harmonizing all experi- 
 ment, probing the depths of your consciousness, and re- 
 vealing visions of glory and of terror to the imagination ; 
 but pouring withal such floods of light upon the mind, 
 that you might, for a season, like Paul, become blind in 
 the very act of conversion. And this he would do, with- 
 out so much as one allusion to himself, without a word of 
 reflection on others, save when any given act fell natu- 
 rally in the way of his discourse, — without one anecdote 
 that was not proof and illustration of a previous posi- 
 tion ; — gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but 
 with a calm mastery over your soul, leading you onward 
 and onward forever through a thousand windings, yet with 
 no pause, to some magnificent point in which, as in a 
 focus, all the party-colored rays of his discourse should 
 converge in light. In all this he was, in truth, your 
 teacher and guide ; but in a little while you might forget 
 that he was other than a fellow-student and the compan- 
 ion of your way, — so playful was his manner, so simple 
 his language, so affectionate the glance of his pleasant 
 eye. — There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, 
 and some whom he sent asleep. It would occasionally so 
 happen, when the abstruser mood was strong upon him, 
 and the visitor was narrow and ungenial. I have seen 
 him at times when you could not incarnate him, — when 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 3 
 
 he shook aside your petty questions or doubts, and burst 
 with some impatience through the obstacles of common 
 conversation. Then, escaped from the flesh, he would 
 soar upward into an atmosphere almost too rare to breathe, 
 but which seemed proper to him, and there he would float 
 at ease. Like enough, what Coleridge then said, his sub- 
 tlest listener would not understand as a man understands 
 a newspaper ; but, upon such a listener, there would steal 
 an influence, and an impression, and a sympathy ; there 
 would be a gradual attempering of his body and spirit, 
 till his total being vibrated with one pulse alone, and 
 thought became merged in contemplation : — 
 
 And so, his senses gradually wrapt 
 In a half sleep, he 'd dream of better worlds, 
 And dreaming, hear thee still, O singing lark, 
 That sangest like an angel in the clouds ! 
 
 But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the gen- 
 eral character of Mr. Coleridge's conversation was ab- 
 struse or rhapsodical. . . . Mr. Coleridge's conversation 
 at all times required attention, because what he said was 
 so individual and unexpected. But when he was dealing 
 deeply with a question, the demand upon the intellect of 
 the hearer was very great ; not so much for any hardness 
 of language, for his diction was always simple and easy ; 
 nor for the abstruseness of the thoughts, for they gener- 
 ally explained, or appeared to explain, themselves ; but 
 pre-eminently on account of the seeming remoteness of 
 his associations, and the exceeding subtlety of his tran- 
 sitional links. ... It happened to him as to Pindar, 
 who in modern days has been called a rambling rhapso- 
 dist, because the connections of his parts, though never 
 arbitrary, are so fine, that the vulgar reader sees them 
 not at all. But they are there nevertheless, and may all 
 be so distinctly shown, that no one can doubt their ex- 
 istence ; and a little study will also prove that the points 
 of contact are those which the true genius of lyric verse 
 
4 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 naturally evolved, and that the entire Pindaric ode, in- 
 stead of being the loose and lawless outburst which so 
 many have fancied, is, without any exception, the most 
 artificial and highly-wrought composition which Time has 
 spared to us from the wreck of the Greek Muse. So I 
 can well remember occasions, in which, after listening to 
 Mr. Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone 
 away with divers splendid masses of reasoning in my 
 head, the separate beauty and coherency of which I 
 deeply felt ; but how they had produced, or how they 
 bore upon each other, I could not then perceive. In 
 such cases I have mused sometimes even for days after- 
 ward upon the words, till at length, spontaneously as it 
 seemed, " the fire would kindle," and the association 
 which had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension 
 before, flashed itself all at once upon my mind with the 
 clearness of noonday light. 
 
 Mary Cowden Clarke. It was in the summer of 
 182 1 that I first met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was 
 on the East Cliff at Ramsgate. He was contemplating 
 the sea under its most attractive aspect : in a dazzling 
 sun, with sailing clouds that drew their purple shadows 
 over its bright green floor, and a merry breeze of suffi- 
 cient prevalence to emboss each wave with a silvery foam. 
 ... As he had no companion, I desired to pay my re- 
 spects to one of the most extraordinary — and, indeed, 
 in his department of genius, the most extraordinary — 
 man of his age. And being possessed of a talisman for 
 securing his consideration, I introduced myself as a friend 
 and admirer of Charles Lamb. The pass-word was suffi- 
 cient, and I found him immediately talking to me in the 
 bland and frank tones of a standing acquaintance. A 
 poor girl had that morning thrown herself from the pier- 
 head in a pang of despair, from having been betrayed 
 by a villain. He alluded to the event, and went on to 
 denounce the morality of the age that will hound from 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 5 
 
 the community the reputed weaker subject, and continue 
 to receive him who has wronged her. He agreed with 
 me, that that question will never be adjusted but by the 
 women themselves. Justice will continue in abeyance so 
 long as they visit with severity the errors of their own 
 sex and tolerate those of ours. He then diverged to the 
 great mysteries of life and death, and branched away to 
 the sublime question — the immortality of the soul. 
 Here he spread the sail-broad vans of his wonderful im- 
 agination, and soared away with an eagle-flight, and with 
 an eagle eye, too, compassing the effulgence of his great 
 argument, ever and anon stooping within my own spar- 
 row's range, and then glancing away again, and careering 
 through the trackless fields of ethereal metaphysics. And 
 this he continued for an hour and a half, never pausing 
 for an instant except to catch his breath (which, in the 
 heat of his teeming mind, he did like a school-boy re- 
 peating by rote his task,) and gave utterance to some of 
 the grandest thoughts I ever heard from the mouth of 
 man. His ideas, embodied in words of purest eloquence, 
 flew about my ears like drifts of snow. He was like a 
 cataract filling and rushing over my penny-phial capacity. 
 I would only gasp, and bow my head in acknowledgment. 
 He required from me nothing more than the simple rec- 
 ognition of his discourse ; and so he went on like a 
 steam-engine — I keeping the machine oiled with my 
 looks of pleasure, while he supplied the fuel : and that 
 upon the same theme, too, would have lasted till now. 
 What would I have given for a short-hand report of that 
 speech ! And such was the habit of this wonderful man. 
 Like the old peripatetic philosophers, he walked about, 
 prodigally scattering wisdom, and leaving it to the winds 
 of chance to waft the seeds into a genial soil. — My first 
 suspicion of his being in Ramsgate had arisen from my 
 mother observing that she had heard an elderly gentle- 
 man in the public library, who looked like a dissenting 
 
6 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 minister, talking as she never heard man talk. Like his 
 own Ancient Mariner, when he had once fixed your eye 
 he held you spell-bound, and you were constrained to 
 listen to his tale ; you must have been more powerful 
 than he to have broken the charm ; and I know no man 
 worthy to do that. He did, indeed, answer to my con- 
 ception of a man of genius, for his mind flowed on "like 
 the Pontick sea," that " ne'er feels retiring ebb." It was 
 always ready for action j like the hare, it slept with its 
 eyes open. He would at any given moment range from 
 the subtlest and most abstruse question in metaphysics 
 to the architectural beauty in contrivance of a flower of 
 the fields; and the gorgeousness of his imagery would 
 increase, and dilate, and flash forth such coruscations of 
 similes and startling theories that one was in a perpetual 
 aurora borealis of fancy. As Hazlitt once said of him, 
 " He would talk on forever, and you wished him to talk 
 on forever. His thoughts never seemed to come with 
 labor or effort, but as if borne on the gusts of genius, 
 and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him off his 
 feet." This is truly as poetically described. He would 
 not only illustrate a theory or an argument with a sus- 
 tained and superb figure, but in pursuing the current of 
 his thought he would bubble up with a sparkle of fancy 
 so fleet and brilliant that the attention, though startled 
 and arrested, was not broken. He would throw these 
 into the stream of his argument, as waifs and strays. 
 Notwithstanding his wealth of language and prodigious 
 power in amplification, no one, I think, (unless it were 
 Shakespeare or Bacon,) possessed with himself equal 
 power of condensation. He would frequently comprise 
 the elements of a noble theorem in two or three words ; 
 and like the genial offspring of a poet's brain, it always 
 came forth in a golden halo. I remember once, in dis- 
 coursing upon the architecture of the Middle Ages, he 
 reduced the Gothic structure into a magnificent abstrac- 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. / 
 
 tion — and in two words. " A Gothic cathedral," he said, 
 " is like a petrified religion." 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. Coleridge sat on the brow of High- 
 gate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and 
 its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of 
 life's battles ; attracting towards him the thoughts of in- 
 numerable brave souls still engaged there. ... A sub- 
 lime man ; who, alone in those dark days, had saved his 
 crown of spiritual manhood ; escaping from the black 
 materialisms, and revolutionary deluges, with "God, 
 Freedom, Immortality" still his: a king of men. The 
 practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, 
 or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer ; but 
 to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this 
 dusky sublime character ; and sat there as a kind of 
 Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak 
 grove (Mr. Gillman's house at Highgate) whispering 
 strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon. . . . 
 Here for hours would Coleridge talk, concerning all con- 
 ceivable or inconceivable things ; and liked nothing bet- 
 ter than to have an intelligent, or failing that, even a 
 silent and patient human listener. He distinguished him- 
 self to all that ever heard him as at least the most sur- 
 prising talker extant in this world, and to some small 
 minority, by no means at all, as the most excellent. — The 
 good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty, perhaps ; 
 and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of suf- 
 ferings ; a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swim- 
 ming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other 
 bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of mas- 
 sive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute ; ex- 
 pressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He 
 hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping 
 attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively 
 stept ; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix 
 which side of the garden walk would suit him best, but 
 
8 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 continually shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying 
 both. A heavy-laden, half-aspiring, and surely much suf- 
 fering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had 
 contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong ; he 
 spoke as if preaching, — you would have said, preaching 
 earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest .things. I 
 still recollect his " object " and " subject," terms of con- 
 tinual recurrence in the Kantean province ; and how he 
 sung and snuffled them into " om-m-mject," and " sum- 
 m-mject," with a kind of a solemn shake or quaver, as he 
 rolled along. No talk in his century, or in any other, 
 could be more surprising. ..." Our interview [said 
 Sterling in his record of his first interview with Coleridge] 
 lasted for three hours, during which he talked two hours 
 and three quarters." Nothing could be more copious 
 than his talk ; and furthermore, it was always virtually 
 or literally, of the nature of a monologue ; suffering no 
 interruption, however reverent ; hastily putting aside all 
 foreign additions, annotations, or most ingenuous desires 
 for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities which would 
 never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing anywhither 
 like a river, but spreading everywhither in inextricable 
 currents and regurgitations like a lake or sea ; terribly 
 deficient in definite goal and aim, nay often in logical 
 intelligibility ; what you were to believe or do, or any 
 earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear 
 from it. So that, most tinies, you felt logically lost; 
 swamped near to drowning in this tide of ingenious voca- 
 bles, spreading out boundless as if to submerge the 
 world. ... I have heard Coleridge talk, with eager 
 musical energ}^, two stricken hours, his face radiant and 
 moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any 
 individual of his hearers, — certain of whom, I for one, 
 still kept eagerly listening in hope ; the most had long 
 before given up, and formed (if the room were large 
 enough) secondary humming groups of their own. He 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 9 
 
 began any where : you put some question to him, made 
 some suggestive observation ; instead of answering this, 
 or decidedly setting out towards answering it, he would 
 accumulate formidable apparatus, logical swim-bladders, 
 transcendental life-preservers, and other precautionary 
 and vehiculatory gear, for setting out ; perhaps did at last 
 get under way^ — but was swiftly solicited, turned aside 
 by the glance of some radiant new game on this hand or 
 that, into new courses ; and ever into new ; and before 
 long into all the universe, where it was uncertain what 
 game you would catch, or whether any. His talk, alas, 
 was distinguished, like himself, by irresolution : it dis- 
 liked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite 
 fulfillments ; — loved to wander at its own sweet will, and 
 make its auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere 
 passive bucket for itself. He had knowledge about many 
 things and topics, much curious reading; but generally 
 all topics led him, after a pass or two, into the high seas 
 of theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean 
 transcendentalism, with its " sum-m-mjects " and " om- 
 m-mjects." Sad enough ; for with such indolent impa- 
 tience of the claims and ignorances of others, he had not 
 the least talent for explaining this or any thing unknown 
 to them ; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide 
 unintelligible deluge of things, for the most part, in a 
 rather profitless, uncomfortable manner. Glorious islets, 
 too, I have seen rise out of the haze : but they were few, 
 and soon swallowed in the general element again. Balmy, 
 sunny islets, islets of the blest and the intelligible ; on 
 which occasion those secondary humming groups would 
 all cease humming, and hang breathless upon the elo- 
 quent words ; till once your islet got wrapped in the mist 
 again, and they could recommence humming. Eloquent 
 artistically expressive words you always had ; piercing 
 radiances of a most subtle insight came at intervals; 
 tones of noble, pious sympathy, recognizable as pious, 
 
lO CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 though strangely colored, were never wanting long : but 
 in general you could not call this aimless, cloud-capt^ 
 cloud-based, lawlessly meandering human discourse of 
 reason by the name of "excellent talk," but only of '"sur- 
 prising j " and were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt's account 
 of it : " Excellent talker, very, — if you let him start from 
 no premises and come to no conclusion." « Coleridge was 
 not without what talkers call wit, and there were touches 
 of prickly sarcasm in him, contemptuous enough of the 
 world and its idols and popular dignitaries ; he had traits 
 even of poetic humor ; but in general he seemed deficient 
 in laughter ; or indeed in sympathy for concrete human 
 things, either on the sunny or on the stormy side. One 
 right peal of concrete laughter at some convicted flesh- 
 and-blood absurdity, one burst of noble indignation at 
 some injustice or depravity, rubbing elbows with us on 
 this solid earth, how strange would it have been in that 
 Kantean haze-world, and how infinitely cheering amid its 
 vacant air-castles and dim-melting ghosts and shadows ! 
 None such ever came. His life had been an abstract 
 thinking and dreaming, idealistic, passed amid the ghosts 
 of defunct bodies and of unborn ones. The moaninsr 
 sing-song of that theosophico-metaphysical monotony left 
 on you, at last, a very dreary feeling. 
 
 Lamb. I dined yesterday in Parnassus, with Words- 
 worth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore — half the 
 poetry of England constellated and clustered in Glouces- 
 ter Place ! It was a delightful evening ! Coleridge was 
 in his finest vein of talk — had all the talk ; and let 'em 
 talk as they will of the envy of poets, I am sure not one 
 there but was content to be nothing but a listener. 
 The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured. 
 
 Leigh Hunt. I heard him one day, under the grove 
 at Highgate, repeat one of his melodious lamentations, 
 as he walked up and down, his voice undulating in a 
 stream of music, and his regrets of youth sparkling with 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. II 
 
 visions ever young. ... On the same occasion he built 
 up a metaphor out of a flower, in a style surpassing the 
 famous passage in Milton ; deducing it from its root in 
 religious mystery, and carrying it up into the bright, con- 
 summate flower, "The bridal chamber of reproductive- 
 ness." Of all " the Muses' mysteries," he was as great 
 a high priest as Spenser ; and Spenser himself might 
 have gone to Highgate to hear him talk, and thank him 
 for his Ancient Mariner. ... He recited his Kubla 
 Khan, one morning to Byron, in his lordship's house in 
 Piccadilly, when I happened to be in another room. I 
 remembered the others coming away from him, highly 
 struck with his poem, and saying how wonderfully he 
 talked. This was the impression of every body who 
 heard him. 
 
 C. R. Leslie. Of this extraordinary man it might be 
 said, as truly as of Burke, that " his stream of mind was 
 perpetual." His eloquence threw a new and beautiful 
 light on most subjects, and when he was beyond my com- 
 prehension, the melody of his voice, and the impressive- 
 ness of his manner, held me a willing listener, and I was 
 flattered at being supposed capable of understanding 
 him. Indeed, men far advanced beyond myself in edu- 
 cation might have felt as children in his presence. 
 
 Julius Charles Hare. It is to be regretted that 
 John Sterling did not preserve an account of Coleridge's 
 conversations with him ; for he was capable of represent- 
 ing their depth, their ever varying lines, their sparkling 
 lights, their oceanic ebb and flow; of which his published 
 Table-talk hardly gives the slightest conception. Unfor- 
 tunately Sterling merely took notes of his first interview 
 with Coleridge ; but these are the only record I have 
 seen which enables one at all to apprehend how his won- 
 derful combination of philosophical and poetical powers 
 manifested themselves in his discourse. 
 
 John Sterling. Mr. Coleridge happened to lay his 
 
12 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 hand upon a little old engraving of Luther with four Ger- 
 man verses above it. He said, " How much better this 
 is than many of the butcher-like portraits of Luther, 
 which we commonly see ! He is of all men the one whom 
 I especially love and admire." Pointing to the first 
 words of the German verses, he explained them, " Luther, 
 the dear hero." " It is singular," he said, " how all men 
 have agreed in assigning to Luther the heroic character ; 
 and indeed it is certainly most just. Luther, however 
 wrong in some of his opinions, was always right in de- 
 sign and spirit. In translating his ideas into conceptions, 
 he always understood something higher and more univer- 
 sal than he had the means of expressing. He did not 
 bestow too much attention on one part of man's nature 
 to the exclusion of the others ; but gave its due place to 
 each, — the intellectual, the practical, and so forth. He 
 is great, even where he is wrong." Some one mentioned 
 Calvin. He said, " Calvin was undoubtedly a man of 
 talent ; I have a great respect for him ; he had a very 
 logical intellect; but he wanted Luther's powers." He 
 then began to speak of landscape gardening, in conse- 
 quence of some remark about the beautiful view behind 
 the house in which he resided. " We have gone too far 
 in destroying the old style of gardens and parks. There 
 was a great deal of comfort in the thick hedges, which 
 always gave you a sheltered walk during winter. There 
 is certainly a propriety in the gradual passing away of 
 the works of man in the neighborhood of a home. The 
 great thing is to discover whether the scenery is such that 
 the country seems to belong to man, or man to the coun- 
 try. Now among the lakes of Westmoreland man evi- 
 dently belongs to the country: the very cottages seem 
 merely to rise out of, and to be growths of, the rock. But 
 the case is different in a countr}^ where every thing speaks 
 of man, houses, corn-fields, cattle. There your improve- 
 ments ought to be in conformity with the character of the 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 1 3 
 
 place. Man is so in love with intelligence, that where he 
 is not intelligent enough to discover it, he will impress it. 
 Some of the finest views about here (Highgate) are only 
 to be seen from among the most wretched habitations. 
 Luther said truly : ' How different is a rich country from a 
 happy country ! A rich country is always an unhappy, 
 miserable, degraded country.' " — He then went into a 
 long exposition of the evils of commerce and manufac- 
 tures ; the argument of which, I think, is to be found in 
 one of the Lay Sermons. In the course of it he took 
 occasion to say that the Legislature is defective. "I 
 don't mean any thing about the nonsense of universal 
 suffrage ; but the land proprietors have too great a pro- 
 portion of power. Land is something fixed and tangible ; 
 if one man have more of it, another must have less. But 
 this other kind of wealth, which is founded in the Na- 
 tional Debt, and so forth, — one man's having a million 
 of it does not prevent another man's getting two millions 
 of it ; nay, it rather makes it more probable that he will 
 do so. Thirty or forty years ago it would have been a 
 disgrace to a merchant to be seen in the Stock Exchange. 
 Now it is thought nothing of. There are only two rem- 
 edies for the evil of our excessive increasing population. 
 We have not virtue enough for the one, which is a plan 
 of general and continued emigrations, in which the peo- 
 ple would be perpetually going forth, headed by the priest 
 and the noble. In every parish a certain portion of every 
 family ought to live under the knowledge that at a certain 
 age they were to emigrate. The other remedy is a per- 
 fectly free trade in corn ; but this would only do for a 
 time. More rich men are springing up in the country 
 than the country can support : the Regent's Park is 
 covered as it were with an enchanted city." — " The di- 
 vision of labor has proceeded so far, even in literature, 
 that people do not think for themselves ; their review 
 thinks for them." — He said to a person in the com- 
 
/// 
 
 14 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 \^ pany : " Your friend Mr. was here some time ago. 
 
 He is evidently a man of great talent. We had a long 
 dispute together about laughter. Mr. was main- 
 taining that notion of Hobbes', that laughter arises from 
 contempt. My theory was, that it always springs from 
 the sudden experience of a pleasure, for which the nerves 
 are not sufficiently prepared, and that laughter is the lit- 
 tle convulsion by which nature gets rid of the struggle." — 
 The population of Highgate, and the number of churches 
 and chapels in ii, happened to be mentioned, when Cole- 
 ridge said : 'fThere never was such a mistake as the 
 government has committed in letting the population out- 
 strip the churches to such an extent. They forgot that 
 religion, even in its exterior forms, is the centre of grav- 
 ity-^ Christendom is so obviously superior to all the rest 
 of the world in every thing, — science, civilization, power, 
 — that it is impossible to doubt of the mere external 
 advantages of religion." But it was said how much of 
 Christianity is there in France! "Why," replied Cole- 
 ridge, " there are a great many queer Christians even here ; 
 but still religion exists as a power in the country. Lon- 
 don has a great weight after all among mankind. People 
 perhaps are not themselves religious ; but they give their 
 half-guineas, and they are civil. Christianity brings im- 
 mense advantages to a savage. It is an evident prefer- 
 ment for him. The missionaries have done a great deal 
 for us in clearing up our notions about savage nations. 
 What an immense deal of harm Captain Cook's Voyages 
 did in that way ! Sailors, after being a long time at sea, 
 found a fertile island, and a people of lax morals, which 
 were just the things they wanted ; and of course there 
 never were such dear, good, kind, amiable people. We 
 know now that they were more detestably licentious than 
 we could have imagined. And then the romance of the 
 Pelew Islanders ! There scarcely ever existed such a 
 set of blood-thirsty barbarians. Savages have a notion 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 1 5 
 
 of higher powers than their own all around them ; but 
 that is a part of superstition, not religion. The person- 
 ality of the Deity is the great thing. The ancients were 
 Spinozists : they could not help seeing an energy in na- 
 ture. This was the anima mundi sine centro of the phi- 
 losophers. The people, of course, changed it into all the 
 forms that their imagination could supply. The religion 
 of the philosophers was Pantheism, that of the people 
 Polytheism. They knew nothing of a creative power: 
 at first there was Chaos and Night ; and what produced 
 the universe they could not tell. The gods were merely 
 the first birth of Chaos. This is very evident also in the 
 notion of the Stoics, that after ten thousand years the 
 gods required to be formed again. Even Plato, who 
 alone of them all had any idea of God, says that it is very 
 hard to discover, and impossible to communicate it. And 
 I have no doubt that the first great apostasy, the building 
 of the Tower of Babel, consisted in erecting a temple to 
 the heavens, to the universe. The first sovereigns of all 
 countries were priests, and after them warriors. This is 
 clear from the Northern traditions of Odin, the Sagas, 
 and so forth. When the families of the priests inter- 
 married with the children of the more ignorant people, 
 their offspring applied their superior intelligence and 
 knowledge to the purposes of conquest ; hence the great 
 conquests recorded of old. We never hear of such con- 
 quests by savage nations when they are not directed by 
 the wisdom of a priesthood." — Mr. Coleridge is not tall, 
 and rather stout : his features, though not regular, are by 
 no means disagreeable ; the hair quite gray ; the eye and 
 forehead very fine. His appearance is rather old-fash- 
 ioned ; and he looks as if he belonged not so much to 
 this, or to any age, as to history. His manner and ad- 
 dress struck me as being rather formally courteous. He 
 always speaks in the tone and in the gesture of common 
 conversation, and laughs a good deal, but gently. His 
 
l6 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 emphasis, though not declamatory, is placed with remark- 
 able propriety. He speaks perhaps rather slowly, but 
 never stops, and seldom ever hesitates. There is the 
 strongest appearance of conviction, without any violence 
 in his manner. His language is sometimes harsh, some- 
 times careless, often quaint, almost always, I think, drawn 
 from the fresh delicious fountains of our elder eloquence. 
 I have no doubt that the diction of much that I have re- 
 ported is different from Coleridge's, and always, of course, 
 vastly inferior. I have treasured up as many of his 
 phrases as I could ; they will easily be recognized. On 
 one occasion he quoted a line of his own poetry, saying, 
 " If I may quote a verse of mine written when I was a 
 very young man. It was something to this effect : * They 
 kill too slow for men to call it murder.' " He happened 
 to mention several books in the course of his remarks ; 
 and he always seemed inclined to mention them good- 
 naturedly. — I was in his company about three hours ; 
 and of that time he spoke during two and three quarters. 
 It would have been delightful to listen as attentively, and 
 certainly easy for him to speak just as well for the next 
 forty-eight hours. On the whole his conversation, or 
 rather monologue, is by far the most interesting I ever 
 heard or heard of. Dr. Johnson's talk, with which it is 
 obvious to compare it, seems to me immeasurably infe- 
 rior. It is better balanced and scrubbed, and more pon- 
 derous with epithets ; but the spirit and flavor and fra- 
 grance, the knowledge and the genius are all wanting. 
 The one is a house of brick, the other a quarry of jasper. 
 It is painful to observe in Coleridge that, with all the 
 kindness and glorious far-seeing intelligence of his eye, 
 there is a glare in it, a light half unearthly, half morbid. 
 It is the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner. His 
 cheek too shows a flush of over-excitement, the red of a 
 storm-cloud at sunset. When he dies, another, and one 
 of the greatest of their race, will rejoin the few Immor- 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 1/ 
 
 tals, the ill-understood and ill-requited, who have walked 
 this earth. 
 
 Professor Wilson. If there be any man of great and 
 original genius alive at this moment, in Europe, it is 
 S. T. Coleridge. Nothing can surpass the melodious 
 richness of words, which he heaps around his images ; 
 images that are not glaring in themselves, but which are 
 always affecting to the verge of tears, because they have 
 all been formed and nourished in the recesses of one of 
 the most deeply musing spirits that ever breathed forth 
 its inspiration, in the majestic language of England. . . . 
 Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he 
 be alive and hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, 
 or in a wood, and be subjected for a few minutes to the 
 ethereal influence of that wonderful man's monologue, 
 and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The barren 
 wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will 
 seem, or rather feel to do so, under the lustre of an im- 
 agination exhaustless as the sun. ... It is easy to talk 
 — not very difficult to speechify — hard to speak ; but to 
 " discourse " is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mor- 
 tal man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is 
 discoursing the world loses all its commonplaces, and you 
 and your wife imagine yourself Adam and Eve listening 
 to the affable Archangel Raphael in the Garden of Eden. 
 You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for 
 a while, than you would a river that " imposes silence 
 with a stilly sound." Whether you understood two con- 
 secutive sentences, we shall not stop too curiously to in- 
 quire ; but you do something better, you feel the whole 
 just like any other divine music. And 't is your own fault 
 if you do not 
 
 " A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." 
 
 . . . Nor are we now using any exaggeration ; for if you 
 will but think how unutterably dull are all the ordinary 
 
1 8 CKARACTERISTICS. 
 
 sayings and doings of this life, spent as it is with ordinary 
 people, you may imagine how in sweet delirium you may 
 be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that has fed 
 -since first it lisped on " honey-dew," and by lips that 
 have " breathed the air of Paradise," and learned a se- 
 raphic language, which, all the while that it is English, it 
 is as grand as Greek and as soft as Italian. We only 
 know this, that Coleridge is the alchemist that in his cru- 
 cible melts down hours to moments — and lo ! diamonds 
 sprinkled on a plate of gold. 
 
 Dr. Dibdin. I shall never forget the effect his con- 
 versation made upon me at the first meeting, at a dinner- 
 party. It struck me as something not only quite out of 
 the ordinary course of things, but an intellectual exhibi- 
 tion altogether matchless. The viands were unusually 
 costly, and the banquet was at once rich and varied ; but 
 there seemed to be no dish like Coleridge's conversation 
 to feed upon — and no information so instructive, as his 
 own. The orator rolled himself up as it were in his chair, 
 and gave the most unrestrained indulgence to his speech ; 
 and how fraught with acuteness and originality was that 
 speech, and in what copious and eloquent periods did it 
 flow ! The audience seemed to be wrapped in wonder and 
 delight, as one conversation, more profound, or clothed 
 in more forcible language than another, fell from his 
 tongue. He spoke nearly for two hours with unhesitating 
 and uninterrupted fluency. 
 
 Talfourd. Instead, like Wordsworth, of seeking the 
 sources of sublimity and beauty in the simplest elements 
 of humanity, he ranges through all history and science, 
 investigating all that has really existed, and all that has 
 had foundation only in the wildest and strangest minds, 
 combining, condensing, developing, and multiplying the 
 rich products of his research with marvelous facility and 
 skill ; now pondering fondly over some piece of exquisite 
 loveliness, brought from an unknown recess, now tracing 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 19 
 
 out the hidden germ of the eldest and most barbaric the- 
 ories, and now calling fantastic spirits from the vasty- 
 deep, where they have slept since the dawn of reason. 
 The term " myriad-minded," which he has happily ap- 
 plied to Shakespeare, is truly descriptive of himself. . . . 
 There is nothing more wonderful than the facile majesty 
 of his images, or rather of his world of imagery, which, 
 whether in his poetry or his prose, start up before us self- 
 raised, and all perfect, like the palace of Aladdin. He 
 ascends to the sublimest truths by a winding track of 
 sparkling glory, which can only be described in his own 
 
 language : 
 
 " The spirit's ladder 
 That from the gross and visible world of dust, 
 Even to the starry world, with thousand rounds 
 Builds itself up ; on which the unseen powers^ 
 Move up and down on heavenly ministries — 
 The circles in the circles, that approach 
 The central sun from every narrowing orbit." 
 
 . . . The riches of his mind were developed, not in writ- 
 ing, but in his speech — conversation I can scarcely call 
 it — which no one who once heard can ever forget. Un- 
 able to work in solitude, he sought the gentle stimulus of 
 social admiration, and under its influence poured forth, 
 without stint, the marvelous resources of a mind rich in 
 the spoils of time — richer — richer far in its own glorious 
 imagination and delicate fancy ! There was a noble prod- 
 igality in these outpourings ; a generous disdain of self ; 
 an earnest desire to scatter abroad the seeds of wisdom 
 and beauty, to take root wherever they might fall, and 
 spring up without bearing his name or impress, which 
 might remind the listener of the first days of poetry be- 
 fore it became individualized by the press, when the Ho- 
 meric rhapsodist wandered through new-born cities and 
 scattered hovels, flashing upon the minds of the wonder- 
 ing audience the bright train of heroic shapes, the series 
 of godlike exploits, and sought no record more enduring 
 
20 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 than the fleshly tablets of his hearers' hearts ; no mem- 
 ory but that of genial tradition ; when copyright did not 
 ascertain the reciter's property, nor marble at once per- 
 petuate and shed chilliness on his fame ; 
 
 " His bounty was as boundless as the sea, 
 His love as deep." 
 
 Like the ocean, in all its variety of gentle moods, his 
 discourse perpetually ebbed and flowed — nothing in it 
 angular, nothing of set purpose, but now trembling as the 
 voice of divine philosophy, " not harsh nor crabbed, as 
 dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute," was 
 wafted over the summer wave ; now glistening, in long 
 line of light over some obscure subject, like the path of 
 moonlight on the black water ; and, if ever receding from 
 the shore, driven by some sudden gust of inspiration, 
 disclosing the treasures of the deep, like the rich strond 
 in Spenser, " far-sunken in their sunless treasuries," to 
 be covered anon by the foam of the same immortal tide. 
 The benignity of his manner befitted the beauty of his 
 disquisitions j his voice rose from the gentlest pitch of 
 conversation to the height of impassioned eloquence 
 without effort, as his language expanded from some com- 
 mon topic of the day to the loftiest abstractions ; as- 
 cending to the highest truths which the naked eye could 
 discern, and suggesting starry regions beyond which his 
 own telescopic gaze might possibly decipher. If his en- 
 tranced hearers often were unable to perceive the bear- 
 ings of his argument — too mighty for any grasp but his 
 own, and sometimes reaching beyond his own — they un- 
 derstood "a beauty in the words, if not the words ;" and 
 a wisdom and piety in the illustrations, even when unable 
 to connect them with the idea which he desired to illus- 
 trate. If an entire scheme of moral philosophy was 
 never developed by him either in speaking or writing, all 
 the parts were great : vast biblical knowledge, though 
 
THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 21 
 
 sometimes eddying in splendid conjecture, was always 
 employed with pious reverence ; the morality suggested 
 was at once elevated and genial ; the charity hoped all 
 things ; and the mighty imaginative reasoner seemed 
 almost to realize the condition suggested by the great 
 Apostle, " that he understood all mysteries and all 
 knowledge, and spake with the tongues both of men and 
 angels." 
 
 Sir Humphry Davy. During his stay in London I 
 saw him seldomer than usual ; when I did see him, it was 
 generally in the midst of large companies, where he is 
 the image of power and activity. His eloquence is un- 
 impaired j perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is 
 less than ever commensurate with his ability. Brilliant 
 images of greatness float upon his mind, like images of 
 the morning clouds on the waters. Their forms are 
 changed by the motion of the waves, they are agitated by 
 every breeze, and modified by every sunbeam. 
 
 John Foster. Prince of magicians, Coleridge ; whose 
 mind, too, is clearly more original and illimitable than 
 Hall's. Coleridge is indeed sometimes less perspicuous 
 and impressive by the distance at which his mental op- 
 erations are carried on. Hall works his enginery close 
 by you, so as to endanger your being caught and torn by 
 some of the wheels ; just as one has felt sometimes when 
 environed by the noise and gigantic movements of a great 
 mill. . . . The eloquent Coleridge sometimes retires 
 into a sublime mysticism of thought ; he robes himself 
 in moonlight, and moves among images of which we can- 
 not be assured for a while whether they are substantial 
 forms of sense or fantastic visions. . . . [His are] the 
 most extraordinary faculties I have ever yet seen resident 
 in a form of flesh and blood. 
 
 Rogers. Wordsworth and myself had walked to High- 
 gate to call on Coleridge, when he was living at Gillman's. 
 We sat with him two hours, he talking the whole time 
 
22 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 without intermission. When we left the house, we walked 
 for some time without speaking. " What a wonderful 
 man he is ! " exclaimed Wordsworth. " Wonderful, in- 
 deed," said I. " What depth of thought, what richness 
 of expression ! " continued Wordsworth. " There 's noth- 
 ing like him that ever I heard," rejoined I, — another 
 pause. " Pray," inquired Wordsworth, " did you pre- 
 cisely understand what he said about the Kantean phi- 
 losophy } " " Not precisely." " Or about the plurality of 
 worlds ? " "I can't say I did. In fact, if the truth must 
 out, I did not understand a syllable from one end of his 
 monologue to the other." " No more," said Wordsworth, 
 "did I." 
 
II. 
 
 SARAH SIDDONS. 
 
 It will always be interesting to read of Mrs. Siddons, 
 and of the mighty influence she exerted over multitudes 
 of her contemporaries. Great and small vied in their 
 admiration of her, and could not say enough in praise of 
 her presence, her genius, and her achievements. From 
 the meanest servant about the theatre to the most exalted 
 personage in the realm, all London, all England, seemed 
 to agree, and all enlightened English-speaking people 
 everywhere accepted the verdict, that Sarah Siddons was 
 incomparably the greatest of all actresses that had been 
 or would be. Crowds gathered wherever and whenever 
 she appeared in public. Every body wanted to see her, 
 on the stage and off. The cream of London society paid 
 obeisance to her, royalty sought her, eminent artists were 
 ambitious to paint her, great poets to apostrophize her, 
 and the greatest orators to enrich and adorn their orations 
 by allusions to her. 
 
 " For my part," said De Quincey, " I shall always re- 
 gard my recollections of Mrs. Siddons as those in which 
 chiefly I have an advantage over the coming generation ; 
 nay, perhaps over all generations ; for many centuries 
 may revolve without producing such another transcendent 
 creature." 
 
 Professor Wilson, who had personal knowledge of Mrs. 
 Siddons, has this famous thing to say of her in Noctes 
 Ambrosianae : " Sarah was a glorious creature. Methinks 
 I see her now in the sleep-walking scene. — Shepherd. 
 As Leddy Macbeth ! Her gran' high straicht-nosed face, 
 
24 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 whiter than ashes ! Fixed een, no like the een o' the 
 dead, yet hardly mair like them o' the leevin' ; dim, and 
 yet licht wi' an obscure lustre through which the tormented 
 sowl like in the chains o' sleep and dreams, wi' a' the 
 distraction o' remorse and despair, — and oh ! sic an ex- 
 panse o' forehead for a warld o' dreadful thochts, aneath 
 the braided blackness o' her hair, that had nevertheless 
 been put up wi' a steady and nae uncarefu' haun' before 
 the troubled leddy had lain doon, for it behooved ane so 
 high-born as she, in the middle o' her ruefu' trouble, no 
 to neglect what she owed to her stately beauty, and to 
 the head that lay on the couch of ane o' Scotland's 
 Thanes — noo likewise about to be, during the short 
 space o' the passing o' a thunder-cloud, her bluidy and 
 usurping king. — North. Whisht — Tickler — whisht — 
 no coughing. — Shepherd. Onwards she used to come 
 
 — no Sarah Siddons — but just Leddy Macbeth hersel' 
 
 — though through that melancholy masquerade o' pas- 
 sion, the spectator aye had a confused glimmerin' appre- 
 hension o' the great actress — glidin' wi' the ghostlike 
 motion o' nicht- wanderin' unrest, unconscious o' sur- 
 roundin' objects, — for oh ! how could the glazed, yet 
 gleamin' een, see aught in this material world? — yet, by 
 some mysterious power o' instinct, never touchin' ane o' 
 the impediments that the furniture o' the auld castle might 
 hae imposed to her haunted footsteps, — on she came, 
 wring, wringin' her hauns, as if washin' them in the 
 cleansin' dews frae the blouts o' blood, — but wae 's me 
 for the murderess, out they wad no be, ony mair than the 
 stains on the spat o' the floor where some midnicht-slain 
 Christian has groaned out his soul aneath the dagger's 
 stroke, when the sleepin' hoose heard not the shriek o' 
 departing life. — Tickler. North, look at James' face. 
 Confound me, under the inspiration of the moment, if it 
 is not like John Kemble's ! — Shepherd. Whether a' 
 this, sirs, was nature's or not, ye see I dinna ken, because 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 2$ 
 
 I never beheld ony woman, either gentle or semple, 
 walkin' in her sleep after having committed murder. But, 
 Lord safe us ! That hollow, broken-hearted voice, * out, 
 damned spot,' was o' itsell aneuch to tell to a' that heard 
 it, that crimes done in the flesh during time will needs 
 be punished in the spirit during eternity. It was a 
 dreadfu' homily you, sirs ; and wha that saw 't would ever 
 ask whether tragedy or the stage was moral, purging the 
 soul, as she did, wi' pity and wi' terror." 
 
 Young was acting Beverley with her on the Edinburgh 
 stage, when she gave the exclamation, " 'T is false, old 
 man! — they had no quarrel — there was no cause for 
 quarrel," with such piercing grief that he said his throat 
 swelled, and his utterance was choked. He stood unable 
 to speak the few words which, as Beverley, he ought to 
 have immediately delivered ; the pause lasted long enough 
 to make the prompter several times repeat Beverley's 
 speech, till Mrs. Siddons. coming up to her fellow-actor, 
 put the tips of her fingers on his shoulders, and said, 
 in a low voice, " Mr. Young, recollect yourself." 
 
 Fitzgerald mentions even a more remarkable and strik- 
 ing instance of this influence which was exhibited during a 
 performance of Henry VHI., when she addressed a raw 
 supernumerary, who was playing the Surveyor, warning 
 him against giving false testimony against his master : — 
 
 " If I know you well, 
 You were the Duke's surveyor, and lost your office 
 On the complaints of the tenants. Take good heed 
 You charge not in your spleen a noble person." 
 
 Her scorn was so withering, her looks so menacing, that 
 the actor came off literally perspiring with terror, and 
 protesting that he would not venture again to meet her 
 terrible look of severity. Such was her power, amid all 
 the hackneyed associations of the side scenes, and it helps 
 us to form an idea of what it was over an unsophisticated 
 audience. 
 
26 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 It was this wonderful woman's art, says Fitzgerald, in 
 his Life of the Kembles, to stamp some remarkable image 
 of herself on the recollection, in great plays, like Corio- 
 lanus ; and that fine actor Young, looked back with ad- 
 miration and wonder to the figure of her Volumnia, as it 
 lingered in his memory. " I remember her," he writes to 
 Mr. Campbell, more than forty years after the perform- 
 ance, " coming down the stage, in 1789, in the triumphal 
 entry of her son, Coriolanus, when her dumb-show drew 
 plaudits that shook the building. She came alone, march- 
 ing and beating time to the music ; rolling (if that be not 
 too strong a term to describe her motion) from side to 
 side, swelling with the triumph of her son. Such was 
 the intoxication of joy which flashed from her eye, "and 
 lit up her whole face, that the effect was irresistible. She 
 seemed to me to reap all the glory of that procession to 
 herself. I could not take my eye from her. Coriolanus, 
 banner, and pageant, all went for nothing to me, after she 
 had walked to her place." 
 
 When far advanced in life, Mrs. Siddons appeared as 
 Arpasia in Tamerlane — her brother, John Kemble, 
 taking the part of Bajazet. It is stated that in the last 
 act, when by order of the tyrant, her lover Moneses is 
 strangled before her face, she worked herself up to such 
 a pitch of agony, and gave such terrible reality to the 
 few convulsive words she tried to utter, as she sank a 
 lifeless heap before her murderer, that the audience for 
 a few moments remained in a hush of astonishment, as if 
 awe-struck ; they then clamored for the curtain to be 
 dropped, and insisting on the manager's appearance, re- 
 ceived from him in answer to their vehement inquiries, 
 the assurance that Mrs. Siddons was alive, and recover- 
 ing from the temporary indisposition that her exertions 
 had caused. They were satisfied as regarded her, but 
 would not suffer the performance to be resumed. 
 
 Macready, before he was twenty, appeared twice with 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 2/ 
 
 Mrs. Siddons — then in her fifty-fifth year. He says of 
 her in his Reminiscences : " What eulogy can do justice 
 to her personations. . . . How can any force of descrip- 
 tion imprint on the imagination the sudden but thrilling 
 effect of tone or look, of port or gesture, or even of the 
 silence so often significative in the development of human 
 passion. ... She stood alone on her height of excel- 
 lence. Her acting was perfection, and as I recall it I do 
 not wonder, novice as I was, at my perturbation when on 
 the stage with her. ... In no other theatrical artist 
 were, I believe, the charms of voice, the graces of per- 
 sonal beauty, and the gifts of genius ever so grandly and 
 harmoniously combined." 
 
 Godwin delighted to talk of. her merits. He was an 
 ardent admirer of Garrick, yet he confessed to Campbell 
 that he thought Mrs. Siddons possessed finer powers. 
 
 Crabb Robinson bore testimony to her extraordinary 
 power, and it is known that he was the young man who 
 is described as having burst into loud laughter, in the pit, 
 during the most terrible portion of her performance of 
 the Fatal Curiosity. He was being forcibly ejected, 
 when it was discovered that he was in violent hysterics. 
 
 An accurate division of her tragic characters has been 
 made into four classes. First, it is claimed, should be 
 placed those of Shakespearian grandeur and dignity, like 
 Lady Macbeth ; secondly, those in which a classical dig- 
 nity was combined with the modern ideas of emotion, 
 as in The Grecian Daughter or Jane Shore ; thirdly, purely 
 melodramatic characters, like Mrs. Haller ; and fourthly, 
 characters of dignified Shakespearian comedy, like Her- 
 mione. In each of these distinct departments one or 
 two characters could be named in which she was remark- 
 able — a singular and exceptional proof of genius. 
 
 As to her reading. Miss Edgeworth says : " I heard 
 Mrs. Siddons read, at her town house, a portion of Henry 
 VIII. I was more struck and delighted than I ever was 
 
28 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 with any reading in my life. Tliis is feebly expressing 
 what I felt ; I felt that I had never before fully under- 
 stood or sufficiently admired Shakespeare, or known the 
 full powers of the human voice and the English language. 
 Queen Katharine was a character peculiarly suited to her 
 time of life and to reading. There was nothing that re- 
 quired gesture or vehemence incompatible with the sitting 
 attitude. The composure and dignity, and the sort of 
 suppressed feeling, and touches, not bursts of tenderness, 
 of matronly, not youthful tenderness, were all favorable 
 to the general effect. I quite forgot to applaud — I 
 thought she was what she appeared." 
 
 Miss Wynn, who heard her read Macbeth, said that she 
 never knew what the play was till then. Mrs. Siddons 
 contrived, in the sleep-walking scene, to discharge all ex- 
 pression from her fine eyes, leaving only a glassy stare. 
 
 Washington Irving, dliring his first visit to London, in 
 1805, saw Mrs. Siddons, and thus speaks of her in a let- 
 ter to his brother : " Were I to indulge without reserve in 
 my praises of Mrs. Siddons, I am afraid you would think 
 them hyperbolical. What a wonderful woman ! The very 
 first time I saw her perform I was struck with admiration. 
 It was in the part of Calista. Her looks, her voice, her 
 gestures, delighted me. She penetrated in a moment to 
 my heart. She froze and melted it by turns ; a glance 
 of her eye, a start, an exclamation, thrilled through my 
 whole frame. The more I see her, the more I admire 
 her. I hardly breathe while she is on the stage. She 
 works on my feelings till I am like a mere child." 
 
 Northcote remarked to Hazlitt that he had seen young 
 ladies of quality — Lady Marys and Lady Dorothys — 
 peeping into a room where Mrs. Siddons was sitting, with 
 all the same timidity and curiosity as if it were some pre- 
 ternatural being — he was sure, more than if it had been 
 the Queen. Hazlitt said, that of all the women he had 
 ever seen or known any thing of, Mrs. Siddons struck 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 29 
 
 him as the grandest. She appeared to him " to belong 
 to a superior order of beings, to be surrounded with a 
 personal awe, like some prophetess of old, or Roman 
 matron, the mother of Coriolanus and the Gracchi. Her 
 voice answered to her form, and her expression to both." 
 Northcote said if you had not seen Mrs. Siddons you 
 could have no idea of her, nor could you convey it to any 
 one who had not. She was indeed, he said, like a pre- 
 ternatural being descended to the earth. Byron said of 
 her in Lady Macbeth, that she was " something above 
 nature." 
 
 "I remember," says Mrs. Jameson, "that the first time 
 I found myself in the same room with Mrs. Siddons, I 
 gazed on her as I should have gazed at one of the Egyp- 
 tian pyramids — nay, with a deeper awe, for what is ma- 
 terial and physical immensity, compared with moral and 
 poetical grandeur ? I was struck with a sensation which 
 made my heart pause, and rendered me dumb for some 
 minutes; and when I was led into conversation with her, 
 my first words came faltering and thick, — which never 
 certainly would have been the case in presence of the 
 autocratrix of all the Russias. The greatest, the noblest 
 in the land approached her with' a deference not unmin- 
 gled with a shade of embarrassment, while she stood in 
 regal guise majestic, with the air of one who bestowed 
 and never received honor." 
 
 Tate Wilkinson, the eccentric old stage-manager, would 
 say of her, in his wandering, mixed way, — " To be sure, 
 Mrs. Siddons was all in all. Her grandeur and dignity 
 were indeed wonderful ! and if you ask me what is a 
 queen ? I should say Mrs. Siddons ! as I said, where is 
 there to be found such another Mrs. Siddons ? Her fine 
 figure and majestic mien in Elvira exceeded any thing I 
 ever saw." In his Memoirs he says, " Mrs. Siddons, in 
 a theatrical lottery, would certainly obtain fifteen prizes 
 out of twenty." "Certainly," he says, "where disdain, 
 
30 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 contempt, pride, or indignation, are to be expressed, it 
 may safely be affirmed she there stands unrivaled, and is 
 herself alone." " I do not mean," he says again, " to in- 
 sinuate Mrs. Siddons has not foibles or faults — I can 
 only say, if she has, I am not acquainted with them." 
 
 Of " the great queen of all actresses," Byron wrote in 
 one of his Journals : " Of actors, Cooke was the most 
 natural, Kemble the most supernatural — Kean the me- 
 dium between the two. But Mrs. Siddons was worth 
 them all put together." She took leave of the stage, he 
 said, "to the loss of ages, — for nothing ever was, or can 
 be, like her." 
 
 George the Fourth, after conversing with her, said, with 
 emphasis, " She is the only real queen." 
 
 Imagine her, if you can, standing as a statue, peerless 
 and queenly, in her part of Hermione, in Winter's Tale ! 
 
 " O, royal piece, 
 There 's magic in thy majesty.'* 
 
 It was while she was playing this part, it is related, that 
 Mrs. Siddons escaped death from fire, through the mar- 
 velous presence of mind of the scene-man. As she was 
 standing for the statue, her drapery flitted over the lamps 
 that were placed behind the pedestal, and caught fire. 
 The scene-man crept on his hands and knees and extin- 
 guished the flame, without discovering to her the danger 
 she was in, a service for which she rewarded him by ob- 
 taining from the king a pardon for his son, a soldier who 
 had incurred the death penalty for desertion from the 
 army. 
 
 Joanna Baillie was an intimate friend of Mrs. Siddons, 
 and wrote expressly for her the part of Jane de Mont- 
 fort, in her play of De Montfort. The poet Campbell 
 pronounces the following passage an almost perfect pic- 
 ture of the great actress : 
 
 " Page. — Madam, there is a lady in your hall, 
 
 Who begs to be admitted to your presence. 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 3 1 
 
 Lady. — Is it not one of our invited friends ? 
 
 Page. — No ; far unlike to them. It is a stranger. 
 
 Lady. — How looks her countenance ? 
 
 Page. — So queenly, so commanding, and so noble, 
 
 I shrank at first in awe ; but when she smiled 
 Methought I could have compassed sea and land 
 To do her bidding. 
 
 X,ADY. — Is she young or old ? 
 
 Page. — Neither, if right I guess ; but she is fafr, 
 
 For Time has laid his hand so gently on her, 
 
 As he too had been awed, 
 
 So stately and so graceful is her form. 
 
 I thought at first her stature was gigantic. 
 
 But, on a near approach, I found in truth 
 
 She scarcely does surpass the middle size. 
 
 Lady. — What is her garb ? 
 
 Page. — I cannot well describe the fashion of it ; 
 She is not decked in any gallant trim. 
 But seems to me clad in the usual weeds 
 Of high habitual state. » 
 
 Lady. — ^ Thine eyes deceive thee, boy. 
 
 It is an apparition thou hast seen. 
 
 FreBERG. — It is an apparition he has seen, 
 Or Jane de Montfort." 
 
 Campbell speaks of once having gone through the 
 Louvre with Mrs. Siddons. " I observed," he says, " almost 
 every eye in the hall was fixed upon her and followed 
 her ; yet I could perceive that she was not known, as I 
 could hear the spectators say, * Who is she ? is she not an 
 English woman ? ' At this time, though in her fifty-ninth 
 year, her looks were so noble, that she made you proud 
 of English beauty — even in the presence of Grecian 
 sculpture." This description will not seem extravagant 
 to those who read the letters of Dr. Beattie or Washing- 
 ton Irving, recording the impressions made upon them by 
 this wonderful woman, when far advanced in life. Dr. 
 Johnson, when asked whether he did not think her finer 
 on the stage, where she was adorned by art, replied, " On 
 the stage art does not adorn her ; nature adorns her there, 
 and art glorifies her." 
 
32 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Davies, a contemporary and an actor, as well as a man 
 of letters, said of her: "This actress, like a resistless 
 torrent, has borne down all before her. Her merit, which 
 is certainly very extensive in tragic characters, seems to 
 have swallowed up all remembrance of present and past 
 performers." 
 
 Henderson, not long after her first appearance on the 
 London stage, pronounced her " an actress who never 
 had an equal, nor would ever have a superior." 
 
 James Ballantj-ne gave her the name of " the ^iddons," 
 and he was pronounced by Professor Wilson " the best 
 theatrical creetic in Embro'." She was also called the 
 " Tragic Queen," and the " Queen of Tears." 
 
 De Quincey, who not only often saw Mrs. Siddons upon 
 the stage, but met her privately at the house of Hannah 
 More, has this among other quotable things to say of 
 her : " Amongst the many pleasurable impressions which 
 Mrs. Siddons' presence never failed to make, there was 
 one which was positively painful and humiliating : it was 
 the degradation which it inflicted upon other women. 
 One day there was a large dinner-party at Barley Wood. 
 Mrs. Siddons was present ; and I remarked to a gentle- 
 man who sat next to me — a remark which he heartily 
 confirmed — that upon rising to let the ladies leave us, 
 Mrs. Siddons, by the mere necessity of her regal deport- 
 ment, dwarfed the whole party, and made them look ridic- 
 ulous; though Hannah More, and others of the ladies 
 present, w^ere otherwise really women of very pleasing 
 appearance." 
 
 Harlow, the painter, writing of Mrs. Siddons, said that 
 when, in the character of Queen Katharine, she addressed 
 Wolsey in the words, " Lord Cardinal, to you I speak," 
 her statuesque attitude was the sublimest thing in ancient 
 or modern sculpture. 
 
 The Encyclopaedia Britannica pronounces her " the 
 greatest actor that ever trod the stage. She took posses- 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 33 
 
 sion of the tragic throne, on which, for thirty years she 
 reigned without a rival. The public were astonished at 
 the vastness of her powers, and tragedy became the fash- 
 ion. The symmetry of the great actress's person was 
 most captivating. Her features were strongly marked, 
 but finely harmonized ; the flexibility of her countenance 
 was extraordinary, yielding instantaneously to every 
 change of passion ; her voice was plaintive, yet capable 
 of firmness and exertion ; her articulation was clear, pen- 
 etrating, and distinct; above all she was completely mis- 
 tress of her powers ; and possessed that high judgment 
 which enabled her to display all of her other qualifica- 
 tions to the greatest advantage. One of Mrs. Siddons', 
 highest endowments, if not her very highest, was the 
 power of identifying herself with the character which she 
 personated. The scenes in which she acted were to her 
 far from being a mere mimic show ; so powerfully did 
 her imagination conjure up the reality, that the tears 
 which she shed were those of bitterness felt at the mo- 
 ment. From her frown of proud disdain and scorn, the 
 very actors themselves shrank with something like ter- 
 ror. Her greatest characters were Katharine in Henry 
 Vni. (the most chaste, beautiful, and perfect performance 
 that ever drew a tear), and Lady Macbeth, in which she 
 manifested a dignity and a sensibility, a power, and a pa- 
 thos, never equaled by any female performer." 
 
 It is related, that late one night Mr. Siddons was sit- 
 ting by the fire in the family parlor, dozing and smoking, 
 when suddenly he was roused, with a start,, by hurried 
 footsteps, that were flying rather than running down the 
 passage. Who could it be? he asked himself, all in a 
 maze and a wonder, as he jumped up and rubbed his 
 sleep-laden eyes. He had hardly had time to let the 
 question go darting through his brain, when the door of 
 the room was thrown open quickly, as by a hasty, trem- 
 bling hand, and a female figure rushed in. Mr. Siddons 
 3 
 
34 * CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 gazed in speechless astonishment, not unmixed with a 
 touch of fear. There before him stood his wife, her fine 
 hair disheveled, her dress all in disorder, her face all 
 quiveiing with strong emotion. In bewildered alarm he 
 asked her what was the matter, but her only answer was 
 to throw herself into his arms, and burst into a torrent 
 of tears He soothed her tenderly, not knowing what to 
 think, and gradually she grew calmer. Then her words 
 made the mystery plain enough. Instead of going to 
 bed, as he had bade her do, she had been sitting up study- 
 ing her part as Lady Macbeth ; and the character had so 
 completely absorbed her in itself, she had so entirely 
 realized the horror of each situation in the play, had seen 
 it all so distinctly before her eyes, as if she had been 
 there in the body, that a wild, unreasoning terror had 
 seized her, and she had rushed away to seek human com- 
 panionship. 
 
 The person of Mrs. Siddons, it is said by one familiar 
 with her acting, rather courted the regal attire, and her 
 beauty became more vivid from the decorations of her 
 rank. The commanding height and powerful action of 
 her figure, though always feminine, seemed to tower be- 
 yond her sex. Her walk has never been attempted by 
 any other actress ; and in deliberate dignity was as much 
 alone, as the expression of her countenance. All ac- 
 counts and pictures of her represent her nose as being 
 very prominent. It is on record that while Gainsborough 
 was painting that exquisite portrait of her, which is now 
 in the South Kensington Gallery, after working in ab- 
 sorbed silence for some time, he suddenly exclaimed, 
 " D — n it, madam, there is no end to your nose ! " 
 
 Speaking of the play of The Fair Penitent, one of Mrs. 
 Siddons' admirers said that it was worth sitting out the 
 piece for the scene with Horatio alone, and to see " such 
 a splendid animal in such a magnificent rage." Davies 
 noticed that in the third act she became so affected that 
 " her paleness was seen through her rouge." 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 35 
 
 " When we have such a being as Mrs. Siddons before 
 us in Lady Macbeth," says one who was familiar with her 
 acting, "what signifies the order or disorder of the pic- 
 ture of a castle behind her, or whether the shadows be 
 upwards or downwards on the mouldings of the midnight 
 apartment ? It is to the terror of her eye, it is to the ve- 
 hement and commanding sweep of her action — it is to 
 the perfection of her voice that I am a captive, and I 
 must pity the man who, not being the painter of the can- 
 vas, is at leisure to inquire how it is executed." 
 
 " The great actress steps upon the scene, and how she 
 fills it in a moment ! Mind and majesty wait upon her 
 in the air ; her person is lost in the greatness of her per- 
 sonal presence ; she dilates with thought, and a stupid 
 giantess looks a dwarf beside her." 
 
 Of Mrs. Siddons' Mrs. Haller, one of her admirers 
 once told Fanny Kemble that her majestic and imposing 
 person, and the commanding character of her beauty, 
 militated against her effect in the part. " No man, alive 
 or dead," sa-rd he, " would have dared to take a liberty 
 with her ; wicked she might be, but weak she could not 
 be, and when she told the story of her ill-conduct in the 
 play, nobody believed her." 
 
 The stupidity of the King in not understanding her 
 better, is past comprehension. On one occasion, it is 
 stated, his majesty put into her hands a sheet of paper, 
 merely subscribed with his name, intended, it may be pre- 
 sumed, to afford the opportunity to Mrs. Siddons of pledg- 
 ing the royal signature to any provision of a pecuniary 
 nature, which might be most agreeable to the actress her- 
 self. This paper, wjth the discretion that was suited to 
 the circumstance itself, and which was so characteristic 
 of Mrs. Siddons, she delivered into the hands of the 
 Queen; upon whom conduct so delicate and dignified 
 was not likely to be lost. 
 
 When asked as to her modes of study, discipline of 
 
36 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 mind, etc., she replied, " When a part is first put before 
 me for study, I look it over in a general way, to see if it 
 is in nature, and if it is, I am sure it can be played." 
 
 " I cannot but think it a peculiar happiness to Mrs. 
 Siddons," says Boaden, in his Memoirs of the great ac- 
 tress, " that she seems through life so little to have imi- 
 * tated what other performers did in the parts she acted. 
 I willingly believe this not to have been sufficiency, as 
 despising others, or disdaining help ; but from a settled 
 conviction, that she could only be great by being truly 
 original ; and that she ought to deliver her own concep- 
 tions of character with absolute indifference by what 
 other artists they were either disputed or confirmed." 
 Her own idea of a part she conscientiously aimed to 
 realize in her acting, and nothing could divert her from 
 her purpose. The same integrity marked her professional 
 life that controlled her personal conduct. " Neither praise 
 nor money," wrote Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, " the two 
 powerful corrupters of mankind, seem to have depraved 
 her." 
 
 " Have you ever heard," asked Garrick, in an unpub- 
 lished letter to Moody, then at Liverpool, "of a Mrs. 
 Siddons, who is strolling about somewhere near you?" 
 Four months later, Garrick brought her out at Drury 
 Lane ; but she did not succeed. She returned to Bath, 
 where she was successful. It was at Birmingham, how- 
 ever, in the summer of 1776, (then in her twenty-first 
 year) that Henderson first saw the future great actress. 
 He was immediately struck with her excellence, and de- 
 clared that she would never be surpassed. One night at 
 Bath, accident is said to have conducted into the boxes of 
 the theatre some persons of consummate taste, and of suf- 
 ficient consequence to make their opinions heard. A 
 mysterious smile of derision, it is stated, soon announced 
 to the votaries of fashion, that a great genius was wasting 
 unequaled talents, without either patronage or praise, 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 37 
 
 among people who call themselves enlightened. Old Mr. 
 Sheridan distinguished himself early in the list of admir- 
 ers, and asserted that Mrs. Siddons was more pathetic 
 even than Mrs. Gibber. The prophecy of Henderson, 
 too, was remembered, and the tide of popularity soon 
 flowed in a stream, which was never destined to ebb. A 
 few eddies from occasional obstructions, adds the enthu- 
 siastic Boaden, to carry on the figure, hardly merit to be 
 formally remembered. 
 
 Her second appearance at Drury Lane, in Southern's 
 tragedy of Isabella, is thus referred to in her autobio- 
 graphical Memoranda : " On the evening of the second 
 rehearsal I was seized with a nervous hoarseness, vv'hich 
 made me extremely wretched ; for I dreaded being obliged 
 to defer my appearance, longing, as I most earnestly did, 
 at least to know the worst. I went to bed, therefore, in a 
 state of dreadful suspense. Awaking the next morn- 
 ing, however, though out of restless, unrefreshing sleep, I 
 found, upon speaking to my husband, that my voice was 
 very much clearer. This, of course, was a great comfort 
 to me ; and, moreover, the sun, which had been com- 
 pletely obscured for many days, shone brightly through 
 my curtains. I hailed it, though tearfully, yet thankfully, 
 as a happy omen ; and even now I am not ashamed of 
 this (as it may perhaps be called) childish superstition. 
 On the morning of the loth, my voice was, most happily, 
 perfectly restored, and again 'the blessed sun shone 
 brightly on me.' On this eventful day my father arrived 
 to comfort me, and to be a witness of my trial. He ac- 
 companied me to my dressing-room at the theatre. There 
 he left me ; and I, in one of what I call my desperate 
 tranquillities, which usually impress me under terrific cir- 
 cumstances, there completed my dress, to the astonish- 
 ment of my attendants, without uttering one word, though 
 often sighing most profoundly. At length I was called 
 to my fiery trial. I found my venerable father behind the 
 
38 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 scenes, little less agitated than myself. The awful con- 
 sciousness that one is the sole object of attention to that 
 immense space, lined as it were with human intellects 
 from top to bottom, and all around, may perhaps be im- 
 agined, but can never be described, and by me can never 
 be forgotten. Of the general effect of this night's per- 
 formance I need not speak ; it has already been publicly 
 recorded. I reached my own quiet fireside on retiring 
 from the scene of reiterated shouts and plaudits. I was 
 half dead ; and my joy and thankfulness were of too 
 solemn and overpowering a nature to admit of words, or 
 even tears. My father, my husband, and myself, sat 
 down to a frugal, neat supper, in a silence uninterrupted, 
 except by exclamations of gladness from Mr. Siddons. 
 My father enjoyed his refreshments ; but occasionally 
 stopped short, and laying down his knife and fork, lifting 
 up his venerable face, and throwing back his silver hair, 
 gave way to tears of happiness. We soon parted for the 
 night ; and I, worn out with continually broken rest and 
 laborious exertion, after an hour's retrospection (who can 
 conceive the intenseness of that reverie ?) fell into a sweet 
 and profound sleep, which lasted to the middle of the 
 next day." 
 
 At one of her rehearsals, previous to her night of tri- 
 umph at Drury Lane, an incident occurred which, though 
 trifling enough, must have afforded her great encourage- 
 ment. Her little boy, who was to be her little child in 
 'the piece, was so affected by her acting that he took the 
 whole for reality, and burst into the most passionate flood 
 of tears, thinking he was about to lose his mamma. This 
 satisfactory proof of effect, it is said, deeply impressed 
 the actors and managers, and Sheridan had the story con- 
 veyed to friendly newspapers. 
 
 Not long after, she sat for her portrait, as Isabella, to 
 the distinguished artist Hamilton. Her immense popu- 
 larity, we are told, was now shown, in the general enthu- 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 39 
 
 siasm to see her picture, even when it was scarcely 
 finished. Carriages thronged the artist's door ; and, if 
 every fine lady who stepped out of them did not actually 
 weep before the painting, they had all of them, at least, 
 their white handkerchiefs ready for that demonstration of 
 their sensibility. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these evidences of her popularity, 
 the critics, as usual, were slow to credit her with lasting 
 excellence. Russell, the author of the History of Modern 
 Europe, published a poem called The Tragic Muse, in 
 which he complimented Mrs. Siddons. He was severely 
 reproved by the critics for " wasting his verse upon ex- 
 cellence that was in its nature fugitive, the meteor of the 
 moment." 
 
 In the height pf her popularity she was obliged to de- 
 cline all invitations to parties, routs, etc., preferring to 
 give herself up to study, and to the duties of her family. 
 On one occasion, at the house of a Scotch lady of high 
 rank, but somewhat eccentric, she was conversing with 
 three or four ladies of her acquaintance, "when," she 
 says, " incessantly repeated thunderings at the door, and 
 the sudden influx of such a throng of people as I had 
 never before seen collected in any private house, coun- 
 teracted every attempt that I could make for escape. I 
 was therefore obliged, in a state of indescribable mortifi- 
 cation, to sit quietly down, till I know not what hour in 
 the morning ; but for hours before my departure, the room 
 I sat in was so painfully crowded, that the people abso- 
 lutely stood on the chairs, round the walls, that they 
 might look over their neighbors' heads to stare at me ; 
 and if it had not been for the benevolent politeness of 
 Mr. Erskine, who had been acquainted with my arrange- 
 ment (to meet a few friends only), I know not what weak- 
 ness I might have been surprised into." 
 
 No actress, we are assured, was ever so gratified by the 
 warmth of personal friendships, with attentions from 
 
40 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 persons of consideration, as Mrs. Siddons, and these 
 were not by way of patronage, but from a sincere pleas- 
 ure in her society, and respect for her character. She 
 was to be met at Strawberry Hill, and in such company 
 as Louis Philippe, and the Prince Regent. The latter 
 often invited her to the Pavilion at Brighton. 
 
 A lady described to Mr. Fitzgerald a little scene which 
 happened when she herself was very young, and when 
 she had been taken to see "the great Mrs. Siddons." 
 The child long after recalled the wonderful eyes, and 
 particularly the long, silky eyelashes, which she noticed 
 were of extraordinarj' length, and curled upwards in a 
 beautiful curve. The actress was very good-natured; 
 and on being told that the young girl was obliged to go 
 away to the countr}-, and would, have no opportunity of 
 seeing her, with much good-nature, she at once kindly 
 said that the little girl should not be disappointed — that 
 she w'ould act for her there and then, and at once pro- 
 ceeded to recite from Milton and Shakespeare in her 
 finest manner. 
 
 Boaden was present at the first appearance of Mrs. Sid- 
 dons as Jane Shore. He describes the effect of her act- 
 ing in that part as truly overpowering, especially at the 
 end of the piece. I well remember, he says, (how is it 
 possible I should ever forget ?) the sobs, the shrieks, 
 among the tender part of her audience ; or those tears, 
 which manhood at first struggled to suppress, but at 
 length grew proud of indulging. We then, indeed, knew 
 all the luxury of grief ; but the nerves of many a gentle 
 being gave way before the intensity of such appeals ; and 
 fainting fits, long and frequent, alarmed the decorum of 
 the house, filled almost to suffocation. 
 
 The mother of Lord Byron, being at the Edinburgh 
 Theatre one night, when the character of Isabella was 
 performed by Mrs. Siddons, was so affected by the powers 
 of the great actress, that, toward the conclusion of the 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 4I 
 
 play, she fell into violent fits, and was carried out of the 
 theatre, screaming. 
 
 Her success in Ireland was very great, and in Scotland 
 also ; but her reception there was very different. " I re- 
 member," says Campbell, " Mrs. Siddons describing to 
 me the scene of her probation on the Edinburgh boards 
 with no small humor. The grave attention of my Scottish 
 countrymen, and their canny reservation of praise till 
 they were sure she deserved it, she said had well-nigh 
 worn out her patience. She had been used to speak to 
 animated clay ; but she now felt as if she had been speak- 
 ing to stones. Successive flashes of her elocution, that 
 had always been sure to electrify the South, fell in vain 
 on those Northern flints. At last, as I well remember, 
 she told me she coiled up her powers to the most em- 
 phatic possible utterance of one passage, having previ- 
 ously vowed in her heart, that if this could not touch the 
 Scotch, she would never again cross the Tweed. When 
 it was finished, she paused, and looked to the audience. 
 The deep silence was broken only by a single voice ex- 
 claiming, 'That 's no bad ! ' This ludicrous parsimony of 
 praise convulsed the Edinburgh audience with laughter. 
 But the laugh was followed by such thunders of applause, 
 that amid her stunned and nervous agitation she was not 
 without fears of the galleries coming down." 
 
 The good fortune of Mrs. Siddons, we are told, was 
 seconded by her prudence ; she launched into no unnec- 
 essary expense ; to be herself any where implied sufficient 
 consequence. She had genteel lodgings in the Strand ; 
 was at the theatre in a few minutes ; and full of the best 
 inspiration, a mother's feeling for her family, she prepared 
 herself for a life of such exertion as even mocks the toil 
 of mere manual art. 
 
 To give some idea of her laborious life, it may be 
 stated that during her second season in London she acted 
 Isabella seven times ; Mrs. Beverley, seven also ; Belvi- 
 
42 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 dera and Lady Randolph, six times each ; Shakespeare's 
 Isabella and Thomson's Sigismunda, five times each ; 
 Euphrasia and Constance, four ; Jane Shore and the 
 Countess of Salisbury, three; Zara, in the Mourning 
 Bride, two; Calista, one. In one season alone (1784-5) 
 she appeared seventy-one times, in as many as seventeen 
 different characters. Dr. Franklin was one of her ad- 
 miring auditors. 
 
 The expenditure of intellect and passion in her pow- 
 erful parts was prodigious. In her personation of Con- 
 stance, in King John, one familiar with her acting said 
 that he could point out the passages where her vicissi- 
 tudes of hurried and deliberate gesture would have made 
 you imagine that her very body seemed to think. Her 
 elocution varied its tones from the height of vehemence 
 to the lowest despondency, with an eagle-like power of 
 stooping and soaring, and with the rapidity of thought. 
 Miss Kelly told Crabb Robinson that when, as Constance, 
 Mrs. Siddons wept over her, her collar was wet with the 
 great actress' tears. " The recollection of Mrs. Siddons 
 as Constance," says Robinson, *' is an enjoyment in itself. 
 I remember one scene in particular, where, throwing her- 
 self on the ground, she calls herself * The Queen of Sor- 
 row,' and bids Kings come and worship her ! " He saw 
 her in 181 1, then an old woman, in her part as Margaret 
 of Anjou in the play of The Earl of Warwick. " In the 
 last act," he says, "her triumphant joy at the entrance of 
 Warwick, whom she had stabbed, was incomparable. 
 She laughed convulsively, and staggered off the stage as 
 if drunk with delight ; and in every limb showed the tu- 
 mult of passion. As an actress she has left me the con- 
 viction that there never was and never will be, her equal." 
 In 1828 he notes reading Boaden's Life of Mrs. Siddons, 
 which recalled " the yet unfaded image of that most mar- 
 velous woman, to think of whom is now a greater enjoy- 
 ment than to see any other actress." 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 43 
 
 Her rich emotional nature was easily aroused, and 
 promptly responded to every phase of feeling. " During 
 Henderson's readings from Sterne, I personally wit- 
 nessed," says Campbell, " his power over the feeUngs of 
 Mrs. Siddons ; and the pathetic chapters of Shandy ex- 
 cited no few tears from the brightest eyes that I have 
 ever seen. His alternations of humor and tenderness 
 kept her in the situation of her own CordeUa. 
 
 * You have seen 
 Sunshine and rain at once ; her smiles and tears 
 "Were like, a better way. Those happy smiles 
 That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know 
 "What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence 
 As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.' " 
 
 On one occasion, after her sublime impersonation of 
 Queen Katharine, in Henry the Eighth, she indulged her 
 friends with a recitation of Collins' Ode to the Passions. 
 
 She has been charged with the habit of attaching dra- 
 matic tones and emphasis to commonplace colloquial 
 subjects. She went, it is said, one day, into a shop at 
 Bath, and after bargaining for some calico, and hearing 
 the mercer put forth a hundred commendations of the 
 cloth, she put the question to him, " But will it wash ? " 
 in a manner so electrifying as to make the poor shopman 
 start back from his counter. 
 
 Moore once told a like story of her. A large party 
 was invited to meet her. She remained silent, as was her 
 wont, and disappointed the expectations of the whole 
 company, who watched for every syllable that should 
 escape her lips. At length, however, being asked if she 
 would have some Burton's ale, she replied, with a sepul- 
 chral intonation, that she " liked ale vastly." This anec- 
 dote being told to Mr. Maturin, he said, " The voice of 
 Mrs. Siddons, like St. Paul's bell, should never toll ex- 
 cept for the death of kings." 
 
 In Lockhart's Life of Scott it is written that Mrs. Sid- 
 
44 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 dons, at the table of Sir Walter, in an eminently tragic 
 voice, addressed a servant : *' I asked for water, boy ; 
 you 've brought me beer ! " 
 
 The biographer of Irving states that not long after The 
 Sketch Book had been published in London, and made 
 its author remarked among its literary circles, he met 
 Mrs. Siddons in some fashionable assemblage, and was 
 brought up to be introduced. The Queen of Tragedy 
 had then long left the stage, but her manner and tones to 
 the last, partook of its measured stateliness. The inter- 
 view was characteristic. As he approached and was in- 
 troduced, she looked at him for a moment, and then, in 
 her clear and deep-toned voice, she slowly enunciated, 
 " You 've made me weep." After the appearance of his 
 Bracebridge Hall, he met her in company again, and was 
 asked by a friend to be presented. He told him he had 
 before gone through that ceremony, but he had been so 
 abashed by her address, and acquitted himself so shab- 
 bily, that he was afraid to claim acquaintance. Come 
 then with me, said his friend, and I will stand by you ; 
 so he went forward, and singularly enough, was met with 
 an address of the self-same fashion : " You Ve made me 
 weep again." 
 
 Her manner, even at the social board, partook of the 
 state and gravity of tragedy. Not that there was an un- 
 willingness to unbend, but that there was a difficulty in 
 throwing aside the solemnity of long-acquired habit. She 
 reminded Irving's brother Peter, who dined with her 
 at the poet Campbell's, of Walter Scott's knights, who 
 " carved the meal with their gloves of steel, and drank 
 the red wine through their helmets barred." 
 
 " It was a proud moment for Haydon," says Talfourd, 
 in his Life and Letters of Lamb, " when at the opening 
 of his Exhibition of the Entry into Jerusalem, while the 
 crowd of visitors, distinguished in rank or talent, stood 
 doubting whether in the countenance of the chief figure 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 45 
 
 the daring attempt to present an aspect differing from 
 that which had enkindled the devotion of ages — to min- 
 gle the human with the Divine, resolution with sweetness, 
 dignified composure with the anticipation of mighty suf- 
 fering — had not failed, Mrs. Siddons walked slowly up 
 to the centre of the room, surveyed it in silence for a 
 minute or two, and then ejaculated in her deep, low, 
 thrilling voice, ' It is perfect ! ' quelled all opposition, and 
 removed the doubt from his own mind, at least, forever." 
 What peculiar emphasis she must have put into her 
 words, when the curtain fell, at the end of a most un- 
 pleasant engagement at Leeds ! She had suffered every 
 annoyance from the audience ; but one of a very ludi- 
 crous and distressing nature occurred, for which no part 
 of the auditory was answerable. There is an amusing 
 account of it in the Memoirs of Mathews. The evening 
 was excessively hot, and Mrs. Siddons was tempted by a 
 torturing thirst to consent to avail herself of the only ob- 
 tainable relief proposed to her at the moment. Her 
 dresser, therefore, despatched a boy in great haste to 
 "fetch a pint of beer for Mrs. Siddons," at the same 
 time charging him to be quick, as Mrs. Siddons was in a 
 hurry for it. Meanwhile the play proceeded, and on 
 the boy's return with the frothed pitcher, he looked about 
 for the person who had sent him on his errand ; and not 
 seeing her, inquired, " Where is Mrs. Siddons } " The 
 scene-shifter whom he questioned, pointing his finger to 
 the stage where she was performing the sleeping scene of 
 Lady Macbeth, replied, "There she is." To the surprise 
 and horror of all the performers, the boy promptly walked 
 on the stage close up to Mrs. Siddons, and with a total 
 unconsciousness of the 'impropriety he was committing, 
 presented the beer ! Her distress may be imagined ; she 
 waved the boy away in her grand manner several times, 
 without effect ; at last the people behind the scenes, by 
 dint of beckoning, stamping, and calling in half-audible 
 
46 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 whispers, succeeded in getting him off with the beer, part 
 of which in his exit he spilled on the stage ; while the 
 audience were in an uproar of laughter, which the dignity 
 of the actress was unable to quell for several minutes. 
 It was natural that Mrs. Siddons should be disgusted 
 with her engagement at Leeds ; and on the dropping of 
 the curtain at the close of her last night's performance, 
 she clasped her hands in thankfulness, ejaculating in her 
 most tragic tones, " Farewell, ye brutes ! and for ever, I 
 trust : ye shall never torture me again, be assured." 
 
 The death of her father and of her eldest daughter 
 had a terrible and lasting effect upon her. Suffering 
 from the shock of these events, she wisely and profoundly 
 wrote : " The testimony of the wisdom of all ages, from 
 the foundation of the world to this day, is childishness 
 and folly, if happiness be any thing more than a name; 
 and I am assured our own experience will not enable us 
 to refute the opinion : no, no, it is the inhabitant of a 
 better world. Content, the offspring of Moderation, is all 
 we ought to aspire to here, and Moderation will be our 
 best and surest guide to that happiness to which she will 
 most assuredly conduct us." 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds often honored her with his pres- 
 ence at the theatre. He, it is said, always sat in the or- 
 chestra ; and in that place were to be seen Burke, Gibbon, 
 Sheridan, Windham, and the illustrious Fox, of whom it 
 was frequently said, that iron tears were drawn down 
 Pluto's gloomy cheeks. Often she was heard to boast of 
 the times when every other day she had a note or a visit 
 from Sir Joshua Reynolds, from Mrs. Piozzi, or from 
 Erskine, Burke, Sheridan, or Malone. Erskine, the great- 
 est pleader of his age, said that her performance was a 
 school for orators, — that he had studied her cadences 
 and intonations, and that to the harmony of her periods 
 and pronunciation he was indebted for " his best dis- 
 plays." 
 
SARAH SJDDONS. 47 
 
 " I had frequently," she says, " the honor of dining 
 with Sir Joshua Reynolds, in Leicester Square. At his 
 house was assembled all the good, the wise, the talented, 
 the rank and fashion of the age. About this time he 
 produced his picture of me," she says, " in the character 
 of the Tragic Muse. In justice to his genius, I cannot 
 but remark his instantaneous decision of the attitude and 
 expression of the picture. It was, in fact, decided within 
 the twinkling of an eye. When I attended him for the 
 first sitting, after more gratifying encomiums than I can 
 now repeat, he took me by the hand, saying, ' Ascend 
 yon undisputed throne, and graciously bestow upon me 
 some good idea of the Tragic Muse.' I walked up the 
 steps, and instantly seated myself in the attitude in which 
 the Tragic Muse now appears. This idea satisfied him 
 so well, that without one moment's hesitation he deter- 
 mined not to alter it. ... I was delighted when he as- 
 sured me that he was certain the colors would remain 
 unfaded as long as the canvas would keep them together, 
 which, unhappily, has not been the case with all his 
 works : he gallantly added, with his own benevolent 
 smile, ' And, to confirm my opinion, here is my name ; 
 for I have resolved to go down to posterity on the hem 
 of your garment.' Accordingly it appears' upon the 
 comer of the drapery." 
 
 It would not do to omit the description of her memo- 
 rable call upon Dr. Johnson. " I do not exactly remem- 
 ber the time," she says in her Memoranda, " that I was 
 favored with an invitation from Dr. Johnson, but I think 
 it was during the first year of my celebrity. The Doctor 
 was then a wretched invalid, and had requested my friend 
 Mr. Windham to persuade me to favor him by drinking 
 tea with him in Bolt Court. . . . The Doctor's favorite 
 female character in Shakespeare was Katharine, in Henry 
 VIII. He was most desirous of seeing me in that play; 
 but said, ' I am too deaf and too blind to see or hear it at 
 
48 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 a greater distance than the stage-box, and have little 
 taste for making myself a public gaze, in so distinguished 
 a situation.' I assured him that nothing would gratify me 
 so much as to have him for an auditor, and that I could 
 procure for him an easy-chair at the stage-door, where 
 he would both see and hear, and be perfectly concealed. 
 He appeared greatly pleased with this arrangement, but, 
 unhappily for me, he did not live to fulfill our mutual 
 wishes. Some weeks before he died I made him some 
 morning visits. He was extremely, though formally, po- 
 lite ; always apologized for being unable to attend me to 
 my carriage; conducted me to the head of the stairs, 
 kissed my hand, and bowing, said, * Dear madam, I am 
 your most humble servant ; ' and these were always re- 
 peated without the slightest variation." 
 
 At one of these visits of Mrs Siddons to Dr. Johnson, 
 Frank, the Doctor's servant, could not immediately pro- 
 vide the distinguished visitor with a chair. " You see, 
 madam," said Johnson, "wherever you go there are no 
 seats to be got." 
 
 Mrs. Siddons sometimes went to the theatre to see 
 others act, but it was remarked that she always paid the 
 greatest attention to the performance ; that she did not, 
 like some others, sit remarkably forward, and, so to speak, 
 throw her whole person into the lap of the audience, un- 
 der the pretext of applauding strongly those whom she 
 admired. She never applauded at all, and this was judi- 
 cious. She was sitting with their judges and hers. 
 
 In acting, she seemed to forget herself wholly in her 
 part. " It must have happened to her," said a critical 
 contemporary, " as to every other being engaged in the 
 concerns of life, to feel depressed by care, or absent by 
 the rumination over probable occurrences. But on the 
 stage, I never felt the least indication that she had a pri- 
 vate existence, or could be any thing but the assumed 
 character." 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 49 
 
 "When Mrs. Siddons quitted her dressing-room," says 
 the same observing authority, " I believe she left there 
 the last thought about herself. Never did I see her eye 
 wander from the business of the scene — no recognizance 
 of the most noble of her friends exchanged the character 
 for the individual." 
 
 Mrs. Siddons' health was certainly very feeble during 
 the winter and spring of 1804-5, ^^^ she performed only 
 twice at Covent Garden in the whole course of the sea- 
 son. " Yet I suspect," says her biographer, " that bad 
 health was not the only cause of her absence from the 
 stage. This was the season when Master Betty made his 
 first appearance on the London boards, and was equally 
 the magnet of attraction at each of the great theatres. 
 The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not 
 even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in 
 the public mind, and a disgrace to theatrical history. It 
 enabled managers to give him sums for his childish rant- 
 ing that were never accorded to the acting of a Garrick 
 or a Siddons. His bust was cut in marble by the best 
 sculptors j he was painted by Opie and Northcote ; and 
 the verses that were poured out upon him were in a style 
 of idolatrous admiration." The young Roscius, as Mas- 
 ter Betty was called, whom, at Belfast, Mrs. Siddons had 
 inspired with an irresistible passion for tragedy, carried 
 the public of London by storm, the multitude neglecting 
 even the great actress herself for the youthful prodigy. 
 But, making his fortune the first season, he was sent to 
 college, and Mrs. Siddons again reigned supreme. 
 
 The last season but one (1810-11), she performed 
 nearly the whole of her characters ; and never, it is said, 
 did she display greater dignity and force of mind. In 
 18 1 2 she was announced to appear in Lady Macbeth for 
 the last time. The following year, however, she appeared 
 in that part for the benefit of her brother Charles. In 
 the year 18 16 she performed Katharine once more, for 
 4 
 
50 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 the same object j and consented to repeat her Lady Mac- 
 beth to gratify the Princess Charlotte, and her Royal 
 Consort of Saxe-Coburg. 
 
 She gave public readings from Shakespeare at the Argyll 
 Rooms, during two seasons, "from the two-fold induce- 
 ments of personal gratification and an important addition 
 to her income," which were now necessary to support her 
 appropriately. " A large red screen formed what painters 
 would call a background to the figure of the charming 
 reader. She was dressed in white, and her dark hair, a 
 la Grecque, crossed her temples in full masses. Behind 
 the screen a light was placed ; and, as the head moved, 
 a bright circular irradiation seemed to wave around its 
 outline, which gave to a classic mind the impression, that 
 the priestess of Apollo stood before you, uttering the in- 
 spiration of the deity, in immortal verse." 
 
 Joanna Bailhe dined with Mrs. Siddons, in company 
 with the poet Rogers and his sister. The great actress 
 was now an old woman. " We expected," said the poetess, 
 "to see much decay in her powers of expression, and 
 consequently to have our pleasure mingled with pain. 
 Judge then of our delight when we heard her read the best 
 scenes of Hamlet, with expression of countenance, voice, 
 and action, that would have done honor to her best days I 
 She was before us as an unconquerable creature, over 
 whose astonishing gifts of nature Time had no power. At 
 the end of the reading, Rogers said, ' Oh, that we could 
 have assembled a company of young people to witness 
 this, that they might have conveyed the memory of it 
 down to another generation.' " 
 
 Campbell had once by chance the honor of seeing Mrs. 
 Siddons and the Duke of Welliagton in the same party 
 at Paris. They were observed, after a first mutual recog- 
 nizance, to stand by each other without conversing. She 
 had very little light conversation in mixed company for 
 any body, but when her heart was interested, she was 
 
SARAH SIDDONS. 5 1 
 
 very condescending, and would exert herself to please. 
 She doted upon children. Some time after the poet had 
 seen her in Paris, he visited her, with his son, who was 
 then about six years old. He had to leave the child with 
 her for about an hour, and in his absence he had some 
 misgivings that it was unfair to have taxed her with the 
 company of so young a visitant. But when he came back, 
 he found the little fellow's face lighted up in earnest con- 
 versation with her. She had been amusing him with 
 stories adapted to his capacity, and bestowed attentions 
 on a child which she had refused to a conqueror. 
 
III. 
 
 DOCTOR JOHNSON. 
 
 It is impossible to think of Doctor Johnson without 
 being struck with his prodigiousness. He was extraor- 
 dinary in every way : in his mind and in his body, in his 
 wisdom and in his prejudices, in his learning and in his 
 superstitions, in his piety and in his bigotry : there was 
 nothing ordinary about him. All descriptions of him are 
 nearly alike, all impressions much the same. However 
 excellent or mean the artist or the biographer, the picture 
 is recognized ; there is no mistaking the great lexicog- 
 rapher, the imperial talker ; the man and the character 
 stand before you. 
 
 In St. Mary's Square, Lichfield, there is a statue of 
 "the mighty sage." "The figure," says Hawthorne, " is 
 colossal (though perhaps not much more so than the 
 mountainous Doctor himself). . . . The statue is im- 
 mensely massive, a vast ponderosity of stone, not finely 
 spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully humanized, but rather re- 
 sembling a great stone-bowlder than a man." 
 
 Boswell's book has done more for Johnson, in the 
 judgment of Macaulay, 'than the best of his own books 
 could do. " The memory of other authors is kept alive by 
 their works. But the memory of Johnson keeps many of 
 his works alive. The old philosopher is still among us 
 in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt 
 which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his 
 head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a 
 tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans." 
 
 " To have seen such a man as Johnson," said Dr. Camp- 
 bell, " was a thing to talk of a century hence." 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 53 
 
 "His person," says Lord Pembroke, "was large, ro- 
 bust, I may say, approaching to the gigantic, and grown 
 unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was natu- 
 rally of the cast of an ancient statue, but somewhat dis- 
 figured by the scars of that evil, which, it was formerly 
 imagined, the royal touch could cure. He was now [when 
 he started on his tour to the Hebrides] in his sixty-fourth 
 year, and was become a little dull of hearing. . . . His 
 head, and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of 
 motion like the effect of a palsy : he appeared to be fre- 
 quently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions, 
 of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus' dance. 
 He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted 
 hair-buttons of the same color, a large bushy grayish wig, 
 a plain shirt, black worsted stockings, and silver buckles. 
 Upon this tour, when journeying, he wore boots, and a 
 very wide brown cloth great coat, with pockets which 
 might almost have held the two volumes of his folio dic- 
 tionary, and he carried in his hand a large English oak- 
 stick." 
 
 The great oak-stick that he had brought from London 
 he lost in the Hebrides. It had, we are informed, the 
 properties of a measure ; for one nail was driven into it 
 at the length of a foot ; another at that of a yard. In 
 return for the services it had done him, he said he would 
 make a present of it to some museum ; but he little 
 thought he was so soon to lose it. As he preferred riding 
 with a switch, it was intrusted to a fellow to be delivered 
 to the baggage-man, who followed at some distance ; but 
 he never saw it more. " I could not," said his friend, 
 " persuade him out of a suspicion that it had been stolen. 
 *No, no, my friend,' said he; 'it is not to be expected 
 that any man in Mull, who has got it, will part with it. 
 Consider, sir, the value of such a piece of timber here ! ' " 
 
 Madame D'Arblay describes him as "tall, stout, grand, 
 and authoritative : but he stoops horribly j his back is 
 
54 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 quite round : his mouth is continually opening and shut- 
 ting, as if he were chewing something ; he has a singular 
 method of twirling his fingers, and twisting his hands : 
 his vast body is in constant agitation, see-sawing back- 
 ward and forward : his feet are never a moment quiet ; 
 and his whole great person looked often as if it were 
 going to roll itself, quite voluntarily, from his chair to the 
 floor." 
 
 He held his head to one side, we are told, toward his 
 right shoulder, and shook it in a tremulous manner, mov- 
 ing his body backward and forward, and rubbing his left 
 knee in the same direction with the palm of his hand. 
 In the intervals of articulating, he made various sounds 
 with his mouth ; sometimes as if ruminating, or what is 
 called chewing the cud, sometimes giving a half whistle, 
 sometimes making his tongue play backward from the 
 roof of his mouth, as if chuckling like a hen, and some- 
 times protruding it against his upper gums in front, as if 
 pronouncing quickly under his breath, too, too, too, all 
 this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but 
 more frequently with a smile. Generally when he had 
 concluded a period, in the course of a dispute, by which 
 time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vo- 
 ciferation, he used to blow out his breath like a whale. 
 He was very near-sighted, and his big wig was often a 
 good deal singed in consequence. 
 
 As a boy he was overgrown, if not monstrous. A lady 
 once consulted him on the degree of turpitude to be at- 
 tached to her son's robbing an orchard. " Madam," said 
 Johnson, "it all depends upon the weight of the boy. 
 David Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbed a 
 dozen of orchards with impunity ; but the very first time 
 I climbed up an apple-tree — for I was always a heavy 
 boy — the bough broke with me, and it was called judg- 
 ment. I suppose that is why Justice is represented with 
 a pair of scales." This, it must be remembered, is in 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 55 
 
 Hood's Johnsoniana ; but it seems too characteristic and 
 natural to be wholly apocryphal. 
 
 He is described as " a robust genius, born to grapple 
 with whole libraries." When a child, in petticoats, he 
 got by heart the Collect for the day from the Common 
 Prayer-book, and repeated it distinctly, though he had 
 read it but twice. While yet a boy, during the first inter- 
 view with a tutor, in the presence of grave professors, he 
 quoted Macrobius, to the astonishment of the company. 
 About the same time, after a violent attack of his disor- 
 der, he communicated the state of his case to his physi- 
 cian, in Latin, who was struck with the " extraordinary 
 acuteness, research and eloquence " of the paper. 
 
 It is easy for us to see him, as he has been described 
 to us, at table. He was totally absorbed in the busi- 
 ness of the moment ; his looks seemed riveted to his 
 plate j nor would he, unless in very high company, say, 
 one word, or even pay the least attention to what was 
 said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite, which 
 was so fierce, and indulged with such intenseness, that 
 while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead 
 swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible. 
 In eating and drinking he could refrain, but he could not 
 use moderately. Every thing about his character and 
 manners, it is stated, was forcible and violent; there 
 never was any moderation ; many a day did he fast, many 
 a year did he refrain from wine ; but when he did eat, it 
 was voraciously; when he did drink wine, it was copi- 
 ously. He could practice abstinence, but not temperance. 
 He told Boswell that he had fasted two days without in- 
 convenience, and that he had never been hungry but 
 once. " Early in life," he said to Edwards, " I drank 
 wine : for many years I drank none. I then, for several 
 years, drank a great deal." " Some hogsheads, I war- 
 rant you," responded Edwards, daringly, and was uncon- 
 tradicted. "I did not," he said, on another occasion, 
 
56 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 "leave off wine because I could not bear it. I have 
 drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for 
 it." We all know how copiously he drank tea at Thrale's. 
 Sixteen cups, was it not, that he drank at a sitting ? 
 
 He said when he lodged in the Temple, and had no 
 regular system of life, he had fasted for two days at a 
 time, during which he had gone about visiting, though 
 not at the hours of dinner or supper ; that he had drank 
 tea, but he had eaten no bread : that this was no inten- 
 tional fasting, but happened just in the course of a lit- 
 erary life. He closes one of his letters to Cave, " I am, 
 sir, yours, impransus, Sam Johnson." Meaning, without 
 breakfast. No wonder he speaks of his life, in a letter 
 to Mrs. Thrale, as " diversified by misery, spent part in 
 the sluggishness of penur)^, and part under the violence 
 of pain, in gloomy discontent or importunate distress." 
 
 In the midst of his own distresses and pains, we are 
 assured, he was ever compassionate to the distresses of 
 others, and actively earnest in procuring them aid. In a 
 note to Sir Joshua Reynolds he says : " I am ashamed 
 to ask for some relief for a poor man, to whom, I hope, 
 I have given what I can be expected to spare. The man 
 importunes me and the blow goes round." 
 
 During the visit of the " Ursa Major " (as Johnson 
 was called by Boswell's father) to the Parliament House 
 in Edinburgh, a brother of Lord Erskine, after being pre- 
 sented to him by Boswell, and having made his bow, 
 slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it 
 was for the sight of his bear. " Johnson, to be sure," 
 says Goldsmith, " has a roughness in his manner ; but no 
 man alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of 
 the bear but his skin." 
 
 " What a humanity the old man had ! " exclaims Thack- 
 eray. " He was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures : 
 a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. 
 * What, boys, are you for a frolic ? ' he cries, when Top- 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 57 
 
 ham Beauclerk comes and wakes him up at midnight : 
 * I 'm with you.' And away he goes, tumbles on his 
 homely old clothes, and trundles through Covent Gar- 
 den with the young fellows. When he used to frequent 
 Garrick's theatre, and had 'the liberty of the scenes, 
 all the actresses,' he says, 'knew me, and dropped me a 
 courtesy as they passed to the stage.' " 
 
 What Erasmus said of Luther may with the same pro- 
 priety be said of Johnson — there were two natures in 
 him. There is a story that as Johnson was riding in a 
 carriage through London on a rainy day, he overtook a 
 poor woman carrying a baby, without any protection from 
 the weather. Making the driver stop the coach, he in- 
 vited the poor woman to get in with her child, which she 
 did. After she had seated herself, the Doctor said to 
 her, " My good woman, I think it most likely that the 
 motion of the coach will wake your child in a little while, 
 and I wish you to understand that if you talk any "baby- 
 talk to it, you will have to get out of the coach." As 
 the Doctor had anticipated, the child soon awoke, and 
 the forgetful mother exclaimed to it : " Oh ! the little 
 dear, is he going to open his eyesy-pysy ? " " Stop the 
 coach, driver ! " shouted Johnson ; and the woman had to 
 get out and finish her journey on foot. What occurred 
 when he went with his sweetheart, Mrs. Porter, to Derby 
 on horseback to be married, is familiar to every one at 
 all acquainted with his history. Here is his own account 
 of their journey to church on the nuptial morn : " Sir, she 
 had read the old romances, and had got into her head 
 the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use 
 her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first, she told me that I 
 rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me ; and, 
 when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and com- 
 plained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the 
 slave of caprice ; and I resolved to begin as I meant to 
 end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out 
 
58 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I 
 was sure she could not miss it ; and I contrived that she 
 should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed 
 her to be in tears." This, be it remembered, just before 
 what he declared to be " a love marriage on both sides ! " 
 
 His melancholy was sometimes very distressing. One 
 of his friends found him, on one occasion, in a deplor- 
 able state — " sighing, groaning, talking to himself, and 
 restlessly walking from room to room. He then used 
 this emphatical expression of the misery he felt : * I would 
 consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits.' " 
 Being asked if he was really of opinion that, though in 
 general happiness was very rare in human life, a man 
 was not sometimes happy in the moment that was present, 
 he answered, " Never, but when he is drunk." A lady 
 once said to him that she could not understand why men 
 got drunk ; she wondered how a man could find pleas- 
 ure in making a beast of himself; and Johnson said, 
 " He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain 
 of being a man." 
 
 We have the authority of Miss Reynolds for stating 
 that, for the diversion of his mind, he would sometimes 
 climb pretty large trees, and that when he was between 
 fifty and sixty years old. When he felt his fancy, or 
 fancied that he felt it, disordered, his constant recurrence, 
 says Mrs. Piozzi, was to the study of arithmetic ; and 
 one day that he was totally confined to his chamber, and 
 she inquired what he had been doing to divert himself, 
 he showed her a calculation which she could scarce be 
 made to understand, so vast was the plan of it, and so 
 very intricate were the figures : no other, indeed, than 
 that the National Debt, computing it at one hundred and 
 eighty millions sterling, would, if converted into silver, 
 serve to make a meridian of that metal, she forgot how 
 broad (to use her own language), " for the globe of the 
 whole earth." 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 59 
 
 His great resource of reading was generally effectual 
 in quieting his mind and passions when most depressed 
 or turbulent. An instance of his voracious reading is 
 given by his biographer. Before dinner Doctor John- 
 son seized upon Mr. Charles Sheridan's Account of the 
 Late Revolution in Sweden, and seemed to read it raven- 
 ously, as if he devoured it. ** He knows how to read 
 better than any one," said Mr. Knowles ; " he gets at the 
 substance of a book directly ; he tears out the heart of 
 it." He kept it wrapped up in the table-cloth, in his lap, 
 during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one 
 entertainment in readiness when he should have finished 
 another ; resembling (if one may use so coarse a simile) 
 a dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he 
 eats something else which has been thrown to him. 
 
 Tate Wilkinson, in his Memoirs, relates that Johnson, 
 being with Foote, Holland, Woodward, and others, at a 
 party at Mr. Garrick's villa at Hampton, as they were 
 conversing on different subjects, fell into a reverie, from 
 which his attention was drawn by the accidentally casting 
 his eyes on a book-case, to which he was as naturally at- 
 tracted as the needle to the pole : on perusing the title- 
 pages of the best bound, he muttered inwardly with in- 
 effable contempt, but proceeded on his exploring business 
 of observation, ran his finger down the middle of each 
 page, and then dashed the volume disdainfully upon the 
 floor, the which Garrick beheld with much wonder and 
 vexation, while the most profound silence and attention 
 was bestowed on the learned Doctor ; but when he saw 
 his twentieth well-bound book thus manifestly disgraced 
 on the ground, and expecting his whole valuable collec- 
 tion would share the same fate, he could no longer re- 
 strain himself, but suddenly cried out most vociferously, — 
 
 " Why, d n it. Doctor, you, you, you will destroy all 
 
 my books ! " At this, Johnson raised his head, paused, 
 fixed his eyes, and replied, " Lookee, David, you do un- 
 derstand plays, but you know nothing about books ! " 
 
6o CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 His personal courage was prodigious. He would beat 
 large dogs that were fighting, till they separated. To 
 prove that a gun would not burst if charged with many 
 balls, he put in six or seven, and fired it off against a 
 wall. One night he was - attacked in the street by four 
 men, all of whom he kept at bay till relieved by the 
 watch. A man, having taken possession of his seat be- 
 tween the side-scenes, and refusing to give it up, was 
 tossed by the mad philosopher, chair and all, into the pit. 
 Foote had resolved to ridicule him on the stage, but 
 changed his mind when he heard that Johnson had been 
 inquiring of Tom Davies, the bookseller, the price of 
 oak-sticks. " I am told that Foote means to take me off, 
 as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow shall not 
 do it with impunity." He had sometime before knocked 
 down Osborne with a folio, and put his foot upon his 
 neck. " Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him." 
 His defiant letter to Macpherson shows how utterly im- 
 possible it was to intimidate him. 
 
 Yet he had a great horror of death. He said he 
 never had a moment in which death was not terrible to 
 him. Being told that Dr. Dodd seemed willing to die, 
 and full of hopes of happiness, " Sir," said he, " Dr. Dodd 
 would have given both his hands and both his legs to 
 have lived. The better a man is, the more he is afraid 
 of death, having a clearer view of infinite purity." 
 
 He defended prize-fighting. "I am sorry," he said, 
 " that prize-fighting is gone out. Every art should be 
 preser\^ed, and the art of defense is surely important. 
 Prize-fighting made people accustomed not to be alarmed 
 at seeing their own blood, or feeling a little pain from a 
 wound." 
 
 He hated gross flattery. When Hannah More was in- 
 troduced to him she began singing his praise in the 
 warmest manner, and continued in such an extravagant 
 strain, that he turned suddenly to her, with a stern and 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 6 1 
 
 angry countenance, and said, " Madam, before you flatter 
 a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether 
 or not your flattery is worth his having." 
 
 Yet he thought himself very polite. Speaking of Dr. 
 Barnard, the provost of Eton, he said, " Barnard was the 
 only man that did justice to my good-breeding : and you 
 may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless 
 scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not observing the 
 amazement of his hearers, " no man is so cautious not 
 to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to 
 appear attentive when others are speaking ; no man so 
 steadily refuses preference to himself, or so willingly be- 
 stows it on another, as I do ; nobody holds so strongly 
 as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill-effects 
 which follow the breach of it : yet people think me rude ; 
 but Barnard did me justice." 
 
 Boswell said that though Johnson might be charged 
 with bad humor at times, he was always a good-natured 
 man ; and Reynolds remarked, that when upon any occa- 
 sion Johnson had been rough to any person in company, 
 he took the first opportunity of reconciliation, by drink- 
 ing to him, or addressing his discourse to him ; but if he 
 found his dignified indirect overtures sullenly neglected, 
 he was quite indifferent, and considered himself as hav- 
 ing done all that he ought to do, and the other as now in 
 the wrong. 
 
 Polite or not, he certainly excelled in compliment when 
 he saw fit to indulge in it. His compliment to the wife 
 of his friend Dr. Beattie is one of the prettiest we re- 
 member. It occurs in a grave letter to a friend, and is 
 as follows : " Of Dr. Beattie I should have thought much, 
 but that his lady put him out of my head ; she is a very 
 lovely woman." 
 
 His royal treatment of Mrs. Siddons will be recollected 
 by every admirer of that magnificent woman. He was 
 an old man and a wretched invalid when the great actress 
 
62 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 became celebrated. He asked her in the most respectful 
 and complimentary way to drink tea with him in Bolt 
 Court. He lamented to her that his infirmities prevented 
 him from seeing her in his favorite female character, 
 Katharine, in Henry VIII. Some weeks before he died 
 she made him some morning visits. He was extremely, 
 though formally polite j always apologized for being un- 
 able to attend her to her carriage ; conducted her to the 
 head of the stairs, kissed her hand, and bowing, said, 
 " Dear madam, I am your most humble servant ; " and 
 these, she says, were always repeated without the slightest 
 variation. 
 
 It was at one of these visits that Frank, the Doctor's 
 servant, could not immediately provide the distinguished 
 visitor with a chair. " You see, madam," said Johnson, 
 " wherever you go there are no seats to be got." 
 
 Best, in his Personal and Literary Memorials, relates 
 this remarkable circumstance of Johnson : " After break- 
 fast we walked to the top of a very steep hill behind the 
 house. When we arrived at the summit, Mr. Langton 
 said, ' Poor dear Doctor Johnson, when he came to this 
 spot, turned to look down the hill, and said he was de- 
 tennined to take a roll down. When we understood 
 what he meant to do (said Langton) we endeavored to 
 dissuade him ; but he was resolute, saying he had not had 
 a roll for a long time ; and taking out of his lesser pockets 
 whatever might be in them — keys, pencil, purse, or pen- 
 knife — and laying himself parallel with the edge of the 
 hill, he actually descended, turning himself over and over 
 till he came to the bottom.' This story was told with 
 such gravity, and with an air of such affectionate remem- 
 brance of a departed friend, that it was impossible to 
 suppose this extraordinary freak of the great lexicog- 
 rapher to have been a picture or invention of Mr. Lang- 
 ton." 
 
 Such, it is asserted, was the heat and irritability of his 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 63 
 
 blood, that he pared his nails to the quick, and scraped 
 the joints of his fingers with a penknife till they were red 
 and raw. "There is no arguing with Johnson," were the 
 words of Gibber, in one of his comedies, put, you re- 
 member, into the mouth of Goldsmith ; " for when his 
 pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the but-end 
 of it." Dr. Alexander McLean was so struck with his 
 powerful conversation, that he observed, " This man is 
 just a hogshead of sense." His laugh, too, was tremen- 
 dous j not like the laugh of any other man. " He laughs," 
 says Davies, " like a rhinoceros." Which reminds you of 
 Hunt's observation upon the elephant: "The more you 
 consider him, the more he makes good his claim- to be 
 considered the Doctor Johnson of the brute creation." 
 When Hogarth first saw him, he thought he was an idiot ; 
 but when he heard him speak, he thought him inspired. 
 Garrick said of his superlative powers of wit : " Rabelais 
 and all the other wits are nothing, compared with him. 
 You may be diverted by them ; but Johnson gives you 
 a forcible hug, and shakes laughter out of you, whether 
 you will or no." Speaking of Garrick, how funny it must 
 have been to the boys of the little school at Edial to 
 see the future great actor, whose death, Johnson said, 
 "eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the 
 stock of harmless pleasures," take off the "tumultuous 
 and awkward fondness " of their master for " Tetty," or 
 " Tetsy," as he called his wife, — who was fat, fifty, and 
 any thing but pretty. 
 
 That was an interesting view that Maxwell had of John- 
 son, when two young women visited him to consult on the 
 subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. It 
 shows graphically another side of the great moralist. 
 " Come," said he, " you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell 
 and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over the subject ; " 
 which, said Maxwell, they did, and after dinner he took 
 one of them upon his knee, and fondled her for half an 
 hour together. 
 
64 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 At the house of Lady Margaret MacDonald one of 
 the married ladies, a lively, pretty little woman, good- 
 humoredly sat down upon the Doctor's knee, and, being 
 encouraged by some of the company, put her hands round 
 his neck, and kissed him. " Do it again," said he, " and 
 let us see who will tire first." He kept her on his knee 
 some time, while he and she drank tea. 
 
 He was great in his self-respect, and his conduct during 
 the famous interview with the King in the library of the 
 Queen's house, proved that he could not, under any cir- 
 cumstances, be made to forget it. While he showed the 
 profoundest respect for his majesty, his conversation was 
 such as one gentleman would have with another. Dr. 
 Hill, one of the King's favorites, was discussed and crit- 
 icised, and the literary journals of the day were freely 
 commented upon by both. 
 
 He had, every body knows, an extravagant regard for 
 the hierarchy, and particularly for the dignitaries of the 
 Church. That bow of his to the Archbishop of York, 
 described by Mr. Seward, who witnessed it, was in char- 
 acter with the man, and was a thing to see. It was " such 
 a studied elaboration of homage, such an extension of 
 limb, such a flexion of body, as has seldom or ever been 
 equaled." He once said that he who could entertain se- 
 rious apprehensions of danger to the Church, would have 
 " cried fire in the Deluge." 
 
 " I hold Johnson," said Thackeray, " to be the great 
 supporter of the British monarchy and Church during the 
 last age — better than whole benches of bishops, better 
 than Pitts, Norths, and the great Burke himself. John- 
 son had the ear -of the nation ; his immense authority 
 reconciled it to loyalty, and shamed it out of irreligion. 
 When George III. talked with him, and the people heard 
 the great author's good opinion of the sovereign, whole 
 generations rallied to the King. Johnson was revered as 
 a sort of oracle ; and the oracle declared for Church and 
 King." 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 65 
 
 His sense of justice, too, was generally very strong, 
 and he supported it by his generosity. He had recom- 
 mended, you remember, to Strahan, the printer, a poor 
 boy from the country as an apprentice. Johnson, having 
 inquired after him, said, ** Mr. Strahan, let me have five 
 guineas on account, and I '11 give this boy one. Nay, if 
 a man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it 
 is sad work. Call him down." The boy made his ap- 
 pearance, when Johnson gave him a guinea, and some 
 good advice. 
 
 His charity and benevolence were unintermitted, and 
 always beyond his means. Being asked by a lady why 
 he so constantly gave money to beggars, he replied with 
 great feeling, " Madam, to enable them to beg on." It 
 was a common thing for him to empty his pockets when 
 surrounded by beggars. We know how he took on his 
 back the poor street-walker whom he found prostrate in 
 the street, carried her to his home, and procured physician 
 and nurse for her, and honorable employment. He filled 
 up his house with a strange assortment of pensioners and 
 dependents. Poor blincT Mrs. Williams, the daughter of 
 a Welsh physician ; Levett, " an odd little man who prac- 
 ticed medicine among the poorest of the poor, and often 
 received his fees in liquor ; " Mrs. Desmoulins and her 
 daughter, " who had no other claim upon his benevolence 
 than the service which that lady's father, Dr. Swinfen, 
 had rendered to Johnson in a professional capacity in 
 his youth ; " and Francis Barber, his negi-o servant, were 
 among the inmates of his house. 
 
 His prodigious pride is exhibited in his famous letter 
 to Lord Chesterfield, — familiar to every reader, — in 
 which he rejects the condescensions of the elegant would- 
 be patron, and resents the seven years of cold indiffer- 
 ence with which he had been treated. Carlyle, in his 
 essay, characterizes it as "that far-famed Blast of Doom." 
 
 His capacity to acquire, and his ability to work, under 
 5 
 
66 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 pressure, were extraordinary. He struck out at a single 
 heat one hundred lines of The Vanity of Human Wishes. 
 He wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of his 
 celebrated Life of Savage at a sitting. He wrote out 
 whole Parliamentary debates from scanty notes furnished 
 him by persons appointed to attend them; sometimes 
 having nothing more communicated to him than the names 
 of the several speakers, and the part they had taken in 
 the debate. Sayings of his, dropped in casual conversa- 
 tion, about comparatively unimportant things, will live as 
 long as the language in which they were spoken. Wit- 
 ness his reply, familiar to all the world, when asked, at 
 the sale of Thrale's brewery, the value of the property to 
 be disposed of : " We are not here," he said, " to sell a 
 parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing 
 rich beyond the dreams of avarice." Who, but Johnson, 
 in his most comfortable and self-satisfied mood, could 
 have said it ? 
 
 Having asked Langton if his father and mother had 
 sat for their pictures, and being told that they had opposed 
 it, he said, " Sir, among the anfractuosities of the human 
 mind, I know not if it may not be one that there is a su- 
 perstitious reluctance to sit for a picture." 
 
 On one occasion the talk had run upon fable-writing, 
 and Goldsmith observed that in most fables the animals 
 seldom talk in character. " For instance," said he, " the 
 fable of the little fishes, who petitioned Jupiter to be 
 changed into birds — the skill consists in making them 
 talk like little fishes." This struck Johnson as very ridic- 
 ulous talk, and he began to roll himself about and to 
 shake with laughter ; when Goldsmith broke in upon his 
 entertainment by saying, " Why, Doctor Johnson, this is 
 not so easy as you seem to think ; for if you were to make 
 little fishes talk, they would talk like whales." 
 
 An American lady was so charmed at one time by 
 his conversation that she could not help exclaiming. 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 6/ 
 
 " How he does talk ! Every sentence is an essay." Cer- 
 tainly very many of his sentences that have been reported 
 to us are very essences of essays. Short paragraphs are 
 sometimes whole treatises, — full of wit, wisdom, logic, 
 and profound knowledge of human nature. 
 
 A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, 
 married immediately after his wife died ; Johnson said, 
 " It was the triumph of hope over experience." 
 
 Reynolds having observed that the real character of a 
 man was found out by his amusements, Johnson added, 
 "Yes, sir ; no man is .a hypocrite in his pleasures." 
 
 A friend mentioned to him that old Mr. Sheridan com- 
 plained of the ingratitude of Mr. Wedderburne and Gen- 
 eral Fraser, who were mjuch obliged to him when they 
 were young Scotchmen entering upon life in London. 
 Johnson said, " Why, sir, a man is very apt to complain 
 of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. 
 A man when he gets into a higher sphere, into other hab- 
 its of life, cannot keep up all his former connexions. 
 Then, sir, those who knew him formerly upon a level with 
 themselves, may think that they ought still to be treated 
 as on a level, which cannot be ; and an acquaintance in 
 a former situation may bring out things which it would be 
 very disagreeable to have mentioned before higher com- 
 pany, though, perhaps every body knows of them." 
 
 " It is a very good custom," he said once, *' to keep a 
 journal for a man's own use ; he may write upon a card 
 a day all that is necessary to be written, after he has had 
 experience of life. At first there is a great deal to be 
 written, because there is a great deal of novelty; but 
 when once a man has settled his opinions, there is sel- 
 dom much to be set down." 
 
 On one occasion he said, " There is nothing more 
 likely to betray a man into absurdity, than condescension ; 
 when he seems to suppose his understanding too powerful 
 for his company." 
 
68 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Of a certain lord who was something of a speaker, he 
 said, " I never heard any thing from him in company that 
 was at all striking; and depend upon it, sir, it is when 
 you come close to a man in conversation, that you dis- 
 cover what his real abilities are j to make a speech in a 
 public assembly is a knack." 
 
 He observed, " There is a wicked inclination in most 
 people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. 
 If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, 
 does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing ; 
 but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, 
 people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, ' his mem- 
 ory is going.' " 
 
 " Sir," he said, " there is nothing by which a man exas- 
 perates most people more, than by displaying a superior 
 ability of brilliancy in conversation. They seem pleased 
 at the time ; but their envy makes them curse him at their 
 hearts." 
 
 " Our religion is in a book," he said ; " we have an 
 order of men whose duty it is to teach it; we have one 
 day in the week set apart for it, and this is in general 
 pretty well observed : yet ask the first ten gross men you 
 meet, and hear what they can tell you of their religion." 
 
 An easy life had been imputed to clerg}'men. Johnson 
 said, " Sir, the life of a parson, of a conscientious clergy- 
 man, is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman 
 as the father of a larger family than he is able to main- 
 tain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands 
 than the cure of souls. No, sir, I do not envy a clergy- 
 man's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman 
 who makes it an easy life." 
 
 No saint, we are assured, in the course of his religious 
 warfare, was more sensible of the unhappy failure of 
 pious resolves, than Johnson. He said one day, talking 
 to an acquaintance on this subject, " Sir, hell is paved 
 with good intentions." 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 69 
 
 " He that encroaches on another's dignity," he once 
 said, '^ puts himself in his power ; he is either repelled 
 with helpless indignity, or endured by clemency and con- 
 descension." 
 
 You remember his refutation of Bishop Berkeley's in- 
 genious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, 
 and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. It 
 was observed that though we are satisfied the doctrine is 
 not true, it is impossible to refute it. Johnson answered, 
 striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, 
 till he rebounded from it, " I refute it thus." 
 
 Talking of a court-martial that was sitting upon a very 
 momentous public occasion, he expressed much doubt of 
 an enlightened decision ; and said, that " perhaps there 
 was not a member of it, who in the whole course of his 
 life, had ever spent an hour by himself in balancing prob- 
 abilities." 
 
 Dr. Taylor commended a physician, and said, '" I fight 
 many battles for him, as many people in the country dis- 
 like him." Johnson replied, " But you should consider, 
 sir, that by every one of your victories he is a loser ; for 
 every man of whom you get the better will be very angry, 
 and resolve not to employ him; whereas if people get 
 the better of you in argument about him, they '11 think, 
 *We '11 send for the doctor, nevertheless.' " 
 
 In reply to the observation that a certain gentleman 
 had remained silent the whole evening in the midst of a 
 very brilliant and learned society, Johnson said, " Sir, the 
 conversation overflowed, and drowned him." 
 
 Being solicited to compose a funeral sermon for the 
 daughter of a tradesman, he naturally inquired into the 
 character of the deceased ; and being told that she was 
 remarkable for her humility and condescension to infe- 
 riors, he observed that those were very laudable qualities, 
 but it might not be so easy to discover who the lady's 
 inferiors were. 
 
70 CHARACTERISTICS. . 
 
 The question, whether drinking improved conversation 
 and benevolence, vi^as discussed. Sir Joshua maintained 
 it did. Johnson said, " No, sir ; before dinner, men meet 
 v^ith great inequality of understanding ; and those who 
 are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not 
 to talk. When they have drunk wine, every man feels 
 himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impu- 
 dent and vociferous ; but he is not improved : he is only 
 not sensible of his defects." 
 
 A pension he defined in his Dictionary to be, *' An al- 
 lowance made to any one without an equivalent. In Eng- 
 land it is generally understood to mean pay given to a 
 state-hireling for treason to his countr}^" After such a 
 definition, it is scarcely to be wondered, naturally observes 
 the critic, that Johnson paused, and felt some " com- 
 punctious visitings " before he accepted a pension him- 
 self. 
 
 He loved a good hater. " Dr. Bathurst," he said, 
 " was a man to my heart's content : he hated a fool, and 
 he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig; he was a very 
 good hater." 
 
 Every one knows the violence of his prejudices against 
 the Whigs, the Americans, the Scotch, and the Presby- 
 terians. He meant to say a very severe thing when he 
 called Burke a " bottomless Whig," and generally spoke 
 of Whigs as rascals, and maintained that the first Whig 
 was the devil. Hating Walpole and the Whig excise act, 
 he defines Excise, " A hateful tax levied upon commodi- 
 ties, and adjudged, not by the common judges of prop- 
 erty, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is 
 paid." He said, " I am willing to love all mankind, except 
 an American ; " and his " inflammable corruption burst- 
 ing into horrid fire, he breathed out threatenings and 
 slaughter ; " calling them " rascals, robbers, pira.tes ; " 
 and exclaiming, " he 'd burn and destroy them." Miss 
 Seward, looking at him with mild but steady astonish- 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 71 
 
 ment, said, " Sir, this is an instance that we are always 
 most violent against those whom we have injured." He 
 was irritated still more by this delicate and keen reproach ; 
 and roared out another tremendous volley, which one 
 might fancy, imagined Boswell, could be heard across the 
 Atlantic. The inn that the Doctor and Boswell once 
 stayed at for a while was wretched. " Let us see now," 
 said Boswell, " how we "should describe it." '^Describe 
 it, sir," said Johnson. " Why, it was so bad that Bos- 
 well wished to be in Scotland." " Scotland is a very vile 
 country, to be sure, sir," said Johnson to Strahan, who 
 was also a Scotchman. " Well, sir," replied the latter, 
 somewhat mortified, " God made it." " Certainly he did," 
 answered Johnson, " but we must remember that he made 
 it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. Stra- 
 han j but God made hell." Oats he defines, in his Dic- 
 tionary, " A grain which in England is generally given to 
 horses, but in Scotland supports the people." " Yes," 
 observed Lord Elibank, when he heard the offensive defi- 
 nition, " and where will you find such horses and such 
 men ? " He would not allow Scotland to derive any 
 credit from Lord Mansfield, for he was educated in Eng- 
 land. " Much," said he, " may be made of a Scotchman 
 if he be caught young." But we must say that we think 
 that he was bigger in his bigotries than in any thing else. 
 Who but " that majestic teacher of moral and religious 
 wisdom " could have declined to hear Dr. Robertson 
 preach, for no other reason than that he " would not be 
 seen in a Presbyterian church " ? One of the tall steeples 
 in Edinburgh, which he was told was in danger, he wished 
 not to be taken down ; " for," said he, " it may fall on 
 some of the posterity of John Knox ; and no great mat- 
 ter." Like the detested and infamous Jeffreys, he could 
 " smell a Presbyterian forty miles." 
 
 Not long before his death, Johnson applied to Langton 
 for spiritual advice. " I desired him," he said, *' to tell 
 
72 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 me sincerely in what he thought my life was faulty." 
 Langton wrote upon a sheet of paper certain texts rec- 
 ommending Christian charity ; and explained, upon in- 
 quiry, that he was pointing at Johnson's violence of vitu- 
 peration and contradiction. The old Doctor began by 
 thanking him earnestly for his kindness ; but gradually 
 waxed savage, and asked Langton, in a loud and angry 
 tone, " What is your drift, sir ? " He complained of the 
 well-meant advice, to Boswell, with a sense that he had 
 been unjustly treated. It was a scene for a comedy, as 
 Reynolds observed, to see a penitent get into a passion 
 and belabor his confessor. 
 
 Dozing one day in a railway car, in the State of Min- 
 nesota, there appeared before us, suddenly, in a seat at 
 the other end of the carriage, a personage who seemed 
 to be in every way familiar. His face was toward us, 
 and he was busily engaged conversing with the man in 
 the seat before him. The figure was enormous, and very 
 remarkable. It filled nearly the whole seat, so gigantic 
 it appeared. It stooped horribly ; the back was round ; 
 the mouth was continually opening and shutting, as if the 
 man were chewing something ; he twisted his fingers ; he 
 twirled his hands ; he see-sawed backward and forward ; 
 his feet seemed never for a moment quiet ; his whole 
 great person looked often as if it were going to roll itself 
 quite voluntarily from his seat to the floor. Now and 
 then he rubbed his knee with the palm of his hand, chew- 
 ing his cud, and blowing out his breath like a whale. His 
 face was disfigured by scars. His eyes were near, and 
 otherwise imperfect. His head shook with a kind of 
 motion like the effect of a palsy. He wore a bushy gray 
 wig, and a brown coat, with metal buttons, and enor- 
 mous pockets. Black worsted stockings and silver buckles 
 were conspicuous. A huge English oak-stick was be- 
 tween his knees. He talked in a bow-wow way. He 
 laughed like a rhinoceros. We felt sure the remarkable 
 
DOCTOR JOHNSON. 73 
 
 man was Doctor Johnson ; so sure, that we determined to 
 approach him, whatever the risk. Respectfully, reveren- 
 tially calling him by name, and apologizing for the in- 
 trusion, he said, with a sort of smile extending over his 
 now more familiar face, " No intrusion, sir. Your ap- 
 proach is both natural and welcome. Let me introduce 
 you to my friend Boswell. He is a Scotchman, sir, but 
 he won't hurt you." In the act of extending a hand to 
 Bozzy, and laughing at so amusing an exhibition of one 
 of the Doctor's characteristic prejudices, the interview 
 ended. 
 
 Cuthbert Shaw, in his' poem entitled The Race, in which 
 he whimsically made the living poets of England contend 
 for pre-eminence of fame by running, gives an animated 
 description of Johnson. We have only room for eight 
 lines of it : — 
 
 " To view him, porters with their loads would rest, 
 And babes cling frighted to the nurse's breast. 
 With looks convulsed, he roars in pompous strain, 
 And, like an angry lion, shakes his mane. 
 The Nine, with terror struck, who ne'er had seen 
 Aught human with so terrible a mien, 
 Debating whether they should stay or run. 
 Virtue steps forth, and claims him for her son." 
 
IV. 
 LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 AS A READER. 
 
 Perhaps no one ever existed who was a greedier reader 
 or who had better mental digestion than Lord Macaulay. 
 From his infancy, he was an insatiable and omnivorous 
 devourer of books. His nephew, in his delightful biog- 
 raphy of him, tells us, that from the time he was three 
 years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying on 
 the rug before the fire, with his book in one hand, and a 
 piece of bread and butter in the other. A woman who 
 lived in the house as a parlor-maid, told how he used to 
 sit in his nankeen frock, perched on the table by her as 
 she was cleaning the plate, expounding to her out of a 
 volume as big as himself. Hannah More, it is said, was 
 fond of relating how she called at Mr. Macaulay's, and 
 was met by a fair, pretty, slight child, about four years of 
 age, with abundance of light hair, who came to the front- 
 door to receive her, and tell her that his parents were out, 
 but that if she would be good enough to come in he would 
 bring her a glass of old spirits ; a proposition which 
 greatly startled the good lady, who had never aspired be- 
 yond cowslip-wine. When questioned as to what he knew 
 about old spirits, he could only say that Robinson Crusoe 
 often had some. In childhood he was permitted to make 
 frequent and long visits to the Misses More, and to Han- 
 nah especially he was greatly indebted for valuable sug- 
 gestions and direction in his reading. When he was six 
 years old, she writes to him : " Though you are a little 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 75 
 
 boy now, you will one day, if it please God, be a man ; 
 but long before you are a man I hope you will be a 
 scholar. I therefore wish you to purchase such books as 
 will be useful and agreeable to you then, and that you 
 employ this very small sum in laying a little tiny corner- 
 stone for your future library." A year or two afterward, 
 she thanks him for his " two letters, so neat and free from 
 blots. By this obvious improvement, you have entitled 
 yourself to another book. You must go to Hatchard's 
 and choose. I think we have nearly exhausted the epics. 
 What say you to a little good prose ? Johnson's Hebrides, 
 or Walton's Lives, unless you would like a neat edition 
 of Cowper's Poems, or Paradise Lost, for your own eat- 
 ing ? In any case, choose something which you do not 
 possess. I want you to become a complete Frenchman, 
 that I may give you Racine, the only dramatic poet I 
 know in any modern language that is perfectly pure and 
 good." 
 
 With such intelligent and encouraging associations, and 
 with such healthy mental appetites, he grew every day in 
 intellectual capacity. While yet a boy, at school at Cam- 
 bridge, he attracted the attention of Dean Milner, the 
 eminent President of Queen's College, then at the sum- 
 mit of its celebrity. The Dean " recognized the promise 
 of the boy, and entertained him at his college residence 
 on terms of friendliness and almost equality." After one 
 of these visits, he writes to Macaulay's father : " Your 
 lad is a fine fellow. He shall stand before kings. He 
 shall not stand before mean men." In his thirteenth 
 year, " the boy " wrote to his mother : " The books 
 which I am at present employed in reading to myself 
 are, in English, Plutarch's Lives, and Milner's Ecclesi- 
 astical History; in French, Fenelon's Dialogues of the 
 Dead." 
 
 "The secret of his immense acquirements," says Tre- 
 velyan, " lay in two invaluable gifts of Nature — an un- 
 
J6 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 erring memory, and the capacity for taking m at a glance 
 the contents of a printed page. During the first part of 
 his life, he remembered whatever caught his fancy, with- 
 out going through the process of consciously getting it 
 by heart. As a child, he accompanied his father on an 
 afternoon call, and found on the table the Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel, which he had never before met with. He kept 
 himself quiet with his prize while the elders were talking, 
 and on his return home sat down upon his mother's bed, 
 and repeated to her as many cantos as she had the pa- 
 tience or the strength to listen to. At one period of his 
 life he was known to say that, if by some miracle of van- 
 dalism all copies of Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress were destroyed off the face of the earth, he would 
 undertake to reproduce them both from recollection when- 
 ever a revival of learning came." Certain provincial 
 newspaper poems, which he happened to look once 
 through, while waiting in a coffee-room for a post-chaise, 
 and never gave a thought to for forty years, " at the end 
 of that time he repeated them both without missing, or, 
 as far as he knew, changing a single word." During his 
 last years he had a habit, while he was dressing in the 
 morning, of learning by heart one of Martial's epigrams, 
 of which he was very fond. 
 
 An illustration of Macaulay's preternatural quickness 
 is given by Caroline Fox in her Journal. A friend of his 
 traveling with him was reading a new book which Ma- 
 caulay had not seen. The friend grew weary and in- 
 dulged in a ten minutes' sleep ; on awaking, they resumed 
 their talk, which fell on topics apropos of the book, when 
 Macaulay was full of quotations, judgments and criticisms. 
 "But I thought you had not seen it," said his friend. 
 " Oh, yes ; when you were asleep I looked at it ; " and it 
 seemed as if no comer of it were unexplored. 
 
 " Many Londoners — not all — (said Thackeray) have 
 seen the British Museum Library. ... I have (he says) 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 7/ 
 
 seen all sorts of domes of Peters and Pauls, Sophia, Pan- 
 theon, — what not? — and have been struck by none of 
 them as much as by that catholic dome in Bloomsbury, 
 under which one million volumes are housed. . . . Under 
 the dome which held Macaulay's brain, and from which 
 his solemn eyes looked out on the world, what a vast, 
 brilliant, and wonderful store of learning was ranged! 
 what strange lore would he not fetch for you at your bid- 
 ding ! A volume of law or history, a book of poetry 
 familiar or forgotten (except by himself, who forgot noth- 
 ing), a novel ever so old, and he had it at hand." 
 
 He was a voracious novel-reader, and read all the ro- 
 mances, good and bad, he could lay his hands on. He 
 was so familiar with Sir Charles Grandison that he thought 
 it probable that he could rewrite it from memory. On 
 the last page of a trashy sentimental novel read by him, 
 '* there appears an elaborate computation of the number 
 of fainting-fits that occur in the course of the five vol- 
 umes." 
 
 "After all," he says, in a letter to Ellis, soon after he 
 arrived in India, " the best rule in all parts of the world, 
 as in London itself, is to be independent of other men's 
 minds. My power of finding amusement without com- 
 panions was pretty well tried on my voyage. I read in- 
 satiably j the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil, Horace, Caesar's 
 Commentaries, Bacon, (De Augmentis,) Dante, Petrarch, 
 Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote, Gibbon's Rome, Mill's 
 India, all the seventy volumes of Voltaire, Sismondi's 
 History of France, and the seven thick folios of the Bio- 
 graphia Britannica." In a letter written to his sister 
 Margaret, soon after, he speaks of his " thirst for knowl- 
 edge," his " passion for holding converse with the greatest 
 minds of all ages and nations," his " power of forgetting 
 what surrounded him," and of " living with the past, the 
 future, the distant, and the unreal. Books are becoming 
 every thing to me," he says. " If I had at this moment 
 
78 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 my choice of life, I would bury myself in one of those 
 immense libraries that we saw together at the universities, 
 and never pass a waking hour without a book before me." 
 Conspicuous in his letters from India to Mr. Napier, the 
 editor of the Edinburgh Review, were his requests for 
 books, books. He writes to Ellis from Calcutta: "I 
 have just finished a second reading of Sophocles. I am 
 now deep in Plato, and intend to go right through all his 
 works." In another letter to the same person, soon after, 
 he says : " During the last thirteen months I have read 
 ^schylus twice ; Sophocles twice ; Euripides once ; Pin- 
 dar twice ; Callimachus ; Apollonius Rhodius ; Quintus 
 Calaber ; Theocritus twice ; Herodotus ; Thucydides ; 
 almost all Xenophon's works ; almost all Plato ; Aris- 
 totle's Politics, and a good deal of his Organon, besides 
 dipping elsewhere in him ; the whole of Plutarch's Lives ; 
 about half of Lucian ; two or three books of Athenaeus ; 
 Plautus twice ; Terence twice ; Lucretius twice ; Catul- 
 lus ; Tibullus ; Propertius ; Lucan ; Statins ; Silius Ital- 
 icus; Livy; Velleius Paterculus ; Sallustj Caesar; and, 
 lastly, Cicero. I have, indeed, still a little of Cicero left ; 
 but I shall finish him in a few days. I am now deep in 
 Aristophanes and Lucian." A little later, he writes to 
 Ellis again : " My mornings, from five to nine, are quite 
 my own. I still give them to ancient literature. I have 
 read Aristophanes twice through since Christmas, and 
 have also read Herodotus and Thucydides again. I got 
 into a way last year of reading a Greek play every Sun- 
 day. I began on Sunday, the i8th of October, with the 
 Prometheus, and next Sunday I shall finish with the Cy- 
 clops of Euripides. ... I have read, as one does read 
 such stuff, Valerius Maximus, Annaeus Florus, Lucius Am- 
 pelius, and Aurelius Victor. I have also gone through 
 Phaedrus. I am now better employed. I am deep in the 
 Annals of Tacitus, and I am at the same time reading 
 Seutonius." With plenty of acute criticism following 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 79 
 
 these dry lists of classical literature, showing how per- 
 fectly saturated he was with it. In another letter to Ellis, 
 two months later, he says : " I read in the evenings a 
 great deal of English, French, and Italian, and a little 
 Spanish. I have picked up Portuguese enough to read 
 Camoens with care, and I want no more." A little later, 
 he says : " My classical studies go on vigorously. I have 
 read Demosthenes twice — I need not say with what de- 
 light and admiration. I am now deep in Isocrates ; and 
 from him I shall pass to Lysias. I have finished Dio- 
 dorus Siculus at last, after dawdling over him at odd 
 times ever since last March. He is a stupid, credulous, 
 prosing old ass ; yet I heartily wish that we had a good 
 deal more of him." And so he goes on, writing familiarly 
 of Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Longus, Xenophon, Helio- 
 dorus, Achilles Tatius, Theocritus, Pliny, Marcellinus, 
 Quintilian, Lucan, etc., to the bottom of his sheet. 
 
 In November, 1836, (he was then thirty-six years old,) 
 in a letter to Napier, he says : " In little more than a year 
 I shall be embarking for England, and I am determined 
 to employ the four months of my voyage in mastering 
 the German language. I should be much obliged to you 
 to send me out, as early as you can, so that they may be 
 certain to arrive in time, the best grammar and the best 
 dictionary that can be procured ; a German Bible ; Schil- 
 ler's works; Goethe's works; and Niebuhr's History, 
 both in the orginal and in the translation. My way of 
 learning a language is always to begin with the Bible, 
 which I can read without a dictionary. After a few days 
 passed in this way, I am master of all the common par- 
 ticles, the common rules of syntax, and a pretty large 
 vocabulary. Then I fall on some good classical work. 
 It was in this way that I learned both Spanish and Por- 
 tuguese, and I shall try the same course with German." 
 
 His journals, after his return from India, are full of 
 notes of his reading. His first prose letter to his little 
 
80 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 niece, Margaret, contains this sentence : " If any body 
 would make me the greatest king that ever Hved, with 
 palaces, and gardens, and fine dinners, and wine, and 
 coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, 
 on condition that I would not read books, I would not 
 be a king. I would rather be a poor man in a garret, 
 with plenty of books, than a king who did not love read- 
 ing." When he was a little past fifty, he wrote to his old 
 friend Ellis : " I do not think that I ever, at Cambridge 
 or India, did a better day's work in Greek than to-day. 
 I have read at one stretch fourteen books of the Odyssey, 
 from the sixth to the nineteenth, inclusive. I did it while 
 walking to Worcester and back." In his journal, he says : 
 " I was afraid to be seen crying by the parties of walkers 
 that met me as I came back ; crying for Achilles cutting 
 off his hair ; crying for Priam rolling on the ground in 
 the court-yard of his house : mere imaginary beings, 
 creatures of an old ballad-maker, who died near three 
 thousand years ago." In October, 1857, two years before 
 his death, he wrote : " I walked in the portico, and learned 
 by heart the noble fourth act of the Merchant of Venice. 
 There are four hundred lines, of which I knew a hundred 
 and fifty. I made myself perfect master of the whole, 
 the prose letter included, in two hours." That " invinci- 
 ble love of reading," which Gibbon declared that he 
 would not exchange for the treasures of India, was with 
 Macaulay, says his nephew and biographer, " a main ele- 
 ment of happiness in one of the happiest lives that has 
 ever fallen to the lot of a biographer to record." The 
 great reader died in his library, in his easy-chair, in his 
 usual dress, with his book open on the table beside him. 
 
 AS A WRITER. 
 
 When Macaulay was seven years old, he took it into 
 his head to write a compendium of universal history, and 
 gave, it is stated, a tolerably connected view of the lead- 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 8l 
 
 ing events from the Creation to the beginning of this 
 century, filling about a quire of paper. Before he was 
 eight years old, he told his mother that he had been writ- 
 ing a paper, to be translated into Malabar, to persuade 
 the people of Travancore to embrace the Christian re- 
 ligion. On reading it, she found it to contain "a very 
 clear idea of the leading facts and doctrines of that relig- 
 ion, with some strong arguments for its adoption." About 
 the same time, he determined on writing a poem in six 
 cantos, which he called The Battle of Cheviot. After he 
 had finished three of the cantos, of about one hundred 
 and twenty lines each, which he did in a couple of days, 
 he became tired of it. " I make no doubt," says his 
 mother, " he would have finished his design, but as he 
 was proceeding with it the thought struck him of writing 
 an heroic poem, to be called Olaus the Great, or The Con- 
 quest of Mona, in which, after the manner of Virgil, he 
 might introduce in prophetic song the future fortunes of 
 his family." The clan to which the bard belonged was 
 supposed to derive its name from Olaus Magnus, King of 
 Norway; and so much as remains of the great family 
 epic is an interesting treasure. The specimen stanzas 
 given by his biographer read very well, considering the 
 childhood of the poet. He also wrote many hymns, which 
 Hannah More pronounced to be " quite extraordinary for 
 such a baby." A little later, he undertook the produc- 
 tion of an extended poem, which he entitled Fingal : a 
 Poem in XH Books. It is described as " a vast pile of 
 blank verse." Two of the " books " are in a " complete 
 and connected shape, while the rest of the story is lost 
 amidst a labyrinth of many hundred scattered lines." 
 
 The voluminous writings of his childhood, we are in- 
 formed, displayed the same lucidity of meaning and scru- 
 pulous accuracy in punctuation and the other minor details 
 of the literary art, which characterize his mature works. 
 This was a result, doubtless, in great part, of the care in 
 6 
 
82 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 his home education, especially of the careful teaching and 
 good advice of his mother. Here are a few advisory, 
 encouraging sentences from one of her letters to her " dear 
 Tom : " "I know you write with great ease to yourself, 
 and would rather write ten poems than prune one ; btt 
 remember, that excellence is not attained at first. All 
 your pieces are much mended after a little reflection, and 
 therefore take some solitary walks, and think on each 
 separate thing. Spare no time or trouble to render each 
 piece as perfect as you can, and then leave the event 
 without one anxious thought. I have always admired a 
 saying of one of the old heathen philosophers. When 
 a friend was condoling with him that he so well deserved 
 of the gods, and yet that they did not shower their favors 
 on him, as on some others less worthy, he answered, ' I 
 will, however, continue to deserve well of them.' So do 
 you, my dearest." 
 
 Macaulay's father disapproved of novel-reading. While 
 his novel-devouring son was yet a boy, he received an 
 anonymous letter addressed to him as editor of the Chris- 
 tian Obser\'er, " defending works of fiction, and eulogiz- 
 ing P^ielding and Smollett. This he incautiously inserted 
 in his periodical, and brought down upon himself the 
 most violent objurgations from scandalized contributors, 
 one of whom informed the public that he had committed 
 the obnoxious number to the flames, and should thence- 
 forward cease to take in the magazine. The editor re- 
 plied with becoming spirit, although by that time he was 
 aware that the communication, the insertion of which in 
 an unguarded moment had betrayed him into a contro- 
 versy for which he had so little heart, had proceeded from 
 the pen of his son." Such, we are assured, was young 
 Macaulay's first appearance in print. 
 
 At twenty-two, he became a contributor to Knight's 
 Quarterly Magazine. The boldness and freedom of some 
 of his articles were the cause of some not very agreeable 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 83 
 
 correspondence with his father. About that time ap- 
 peared " A Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley 
 and Mr. John Milton touching the great civil war." He 
 was now in his twenty-fifth year, and his abilities were 
 becoming pretty well known to the literary profession. 
 Overtures were made to him by Jeffrey, who was then the 
 editor of the Edinburgh Review, and the result was the 
 production of the article on Milton. The effect on the au- 
 thor's reputation, says his nephew and biographer, was 
 instantaneous. Like Lord Byron, he awoke one morning 
 and found himself famous. Murray declared that it 
 would be worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have 
 Macaulay on the staff of the Quarterly. The family 
 breakfast-table in Bloomsbury was covered with cards of 
 invitation to dinner from every quarter of London, and 
 his father groaned in spirit over the conviction that thence- 
 fonvard the law would be less to him than ever. Robert 
 Hall, the great preacher, " then well-nigh worn out with 
 that long disease, his life, was discovered lying on the 
 floor, employed in learning, by aid of grammar and dic- 
 tionary, enough Italian to enable him to verify the par- 
 allel between Milton and Dante." Jeffrey, in acknowl- 
 edging the receipt of the manuscript, said : " The more I 
 think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that 
 style." 
 
 His article on Byron, too, proved to be very popular — 
 "one among a thousand proofs," he said to his sister, 
 "of the bad taste of the public." Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine, of course, disparaged him. It described him " as a 
 little splay-footed, ugly, dumpling of a fellow, with a 
 mouth from ear to ear." The review of Croker's Boswell 
 made a great sensation. " Croker," he wrote to Ellis, 
 "looks across the House of Commons at me with a leer 
 of hatred, which I repay with a gracious smile of pity." 
 Busy as he was for eighteen months at the Board of Trade, 
 he managed to supply the Edinburgh Review with the 
 
84 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 articles on Horace Walpole, Lord Chatham, and Lord 
 Mahon's History. Napier, then the editor of the Edin- 
 burgh, called upon him to tell him that the sale of the 
 periodical was falling off, and that his articles were " the 
 only things that kept the work up at all." The book- 
 sellers said : " The Review sells, or does not sell, accord- 
 ing as there are, or are not, articles by Macaulay." Napier 
 said of his article on Walpole, that it was the best that 
 he had written. Macaulay himself said of it to his sister 
 Margaret : " Nothing ever cost me more pains than the 
 first half ; I never wrote any thing so flowingly as the lat- 
 ter half J and I like the latter half the best." 
 
 A few months after he arrived in India, he sent to Na- 
 pier his article on Mackintosh ; and less than two years 
 after — being then in his thirty-sixth year — he produced 
 the more famous article on Bacon. To Napier he says, 
 writing from Calcutta : " At last, I send you an article of 
 interminable length, about Lord Bacon. I hardly know 
 w^hether it is not too long for an article in a Review ; but 
 the subject is of such vast extent that I could easily have 
 made the paper twice as long as it is. ... I never be- 
 stowed so much care on any thing that I have written. 
 There is not a sentence in the latter half of the article 
 which has not been repeatedly recast. I have no expec- 
 tation that the popularity of the article will have any pro- 
 portion to the trouble which I have expended on it." 
 The paper occupied one hundred and four of the large 
 pages of the Review. Jeffrey saw it before it was printed, 
 and said of it to Napier : " Since Bacon himself, I do 
 not know that there has been any thing so fine." And 
 marvelous the essay seems when we consider that it was 
 written at the time when he was laboriously and exhaus- 
 tively engaged upon *' a complete penal code for a hun- 
 dred millions of people, with a commentary explaining 
 and defending the provisions of the text;" and in a 
 climate that " destroys all the works of man, with scarcely 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 85 
 
 one exception. Steel rusts ; razors lose their edge ; thread 
 decays ; clothes fall to pieces ; books moulder away and 
 drop out of their bindings ; plaster cracks ; timber rots ; 
 matting is in shreds." All the time, too, he was devour- 
 ing books, without number. The records of his Calcutta 
 life, written in half a dozen languages, are scattered, it is 
 said, throughout the whole range of classical literature, 
 from Hesiod to Macrobius. 
 
 In 1840, two years after his return from Bengal, was 
 published his essay on Lord Clive. Busy, as a member 
 of the House of Commons, and as Secretary of War, he 
 still found time to write essays, and plan his History. 
 When a change of government occurred, he became en- 
 grossed with Ills literary work. The articles on Hastings, 
 Frederic, Addison, etc., appeared in pretty quick succes- 
 sion. The Lays came out about the same time. The 
 terrible paper on Barbre a little later — " shade, unrelieved 
 by a gleam of light." Soon he was at work on his His- 
 tory, the first two volumes of which were published early 
 in 1849. His method of composition, as disclosed to us 
 by Trevelyan, is interesting. "As soon as he had got 
 into his head all the information relating to any partic- 
 ular episode in his History, he would sit down and write 
 off the whole story at a headlong pace, sketching in the 
 outlines under the genial and audacious impulse of a first 
 conception, and securing in black and white each idea, 
 and epithet, and turn of phrase, as it flowed straight from 
 his busy brain to his rapid fingers. His manuscript, at 
 this stage, to the eyes of any one but himself, appeared 
 to consist of column after column of dashes and flourishes, 
 in which a straight line, with a half-formed letter at each 
 end and another in the middle, did duty for a word. . . . 
 As soon as he had finished his rough draft, he began to 
 fill it in at the rate of six sides of foolscap every morning, 
 written in so large a hand, and with such a multitude of 
 erasures, that the whole six pages were, on an average, 
 
S6 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 compressed into two pages of print. This portion he 
 called his 'task/ and he was never quite easy unless he 
 completed it daily. . . . He never allowed a sentence to 
 pass muster until it was as good as he could make it. He 
 thought little of recasting a chapter in order to obtain a 
 more lucid arrangement, and nothing whatever of recon- 
 structing a paragraph for the sake of one happy stroke 
 or apt illustration." He is said to have spent nineteen 
 working days over thirty octavo pages, and ended by 
 humbly acknowledging that the result was not to his mind. 
 " When, at length, after repeated revisions, he had satis- 
 fied himself that his writing was as good as he could 
 make it, he would submit it to the severest of all tests, 
 that of being read aloud to others. . . . Whenever one 
 of his books was passing through the press, he extended 
 his indefatigable industry and his scrupulous precision to 
 the minutest mechanical drudgery of the literary calling. 
 There was no end to the trouble that he devoted to mat- 
 ters which most authors are only too glad to leave to the 
 care and experience of their publisher. He could not 
 rest until the lines were level to a hair's breadth, and the 
 punctuation correct to a comma ; until every paragraph 
 concluded with a telling sentence^ and every sentence 
 flowed like running water." 
 
 During the later years of his life, Macaulay sent arti- 
 cles on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, and 
 William Pitt, to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The last 
 of these, which is little more than seventy octavo pages 
 in length, was on hand, he tells us, for three quarters of 
 a year. Early in November, 1857, he writes : " The plan 
 of a good character of Pitt is forming in my mind ; " and 
 on the 9th of August, 1858 : " I finished and sent off the 
 paper which has caused me so much trouble. I began 
 it, I see, in last November. What a time to have been 
 dawdling over such a trifle ! " 
 
 His fame was hardly earned. " Take at hazard," says 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 8/ 
 
 Thackeray, " any three pages of the Essays or History, 
 and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, you, 
 an average reader, see one, two, three, a half score allu- 
 sions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, 
 with which you are acquainted. Your neighbor, who has 
 his reading and his little stock of literature stowed away 
 in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy 
 touches, indicating not only the prodigious memory and 
 vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, ■ 
 the honest, humble, previous toil of this great scholar. 
 He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he traveled 
 a hundred miles to make a line of description." 
 
 " My task j " " Did my task ; " " My task, and some- 
 thing over," continually occur in his diary. July 28, 1850, 
 he says : " To-morrow I shall begin to transcribe again, 
 and to polish. What trouble these few pages will have 
 cost me ! " February 6, 1854, he says : " I worked hard 
 at altering the arrangement of the first three chapters 
 of the third volume. What labor it is to make a toler- 
 able book, and how little readers know how much trouble 
 the ordering of parts has cost the writer ! " In 1858, he 
 made this entry : " I read my own writings during some 
 hours, and was not ill-pleased on the whole. Yet, alas ! 
 how short life, and how long art ! I feel as if I had just 
 begun to understand how to write ; and the probability is 
 that I have very nearly done writing." The next year, 
 the pen dropped from his hand for ever, leaving his great 
 " task "-work — his History — unfinished. 
 
 AS A SPEAKER AND AS A TALKER. 
 
 It is as a writer that Lord Macaulay is famous, and it 
 is not often that he is thought of as a speaker or as a 
 talker. Proverbially, the world is slow to credit any one 
 with more than one excellence. The mighty Caesar, even, 
 is rarely thought of but as a great general. 
 
 " When I praise an author," Macaulay used to say, " I 
 
88 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 love to give a sample of his wares." It would be a 
 pleasure to copy, as it would be to read, samples of Ma- 
 caulay's speeches, but there is not room enough for them 
 in one short article. Any one of many passages that 
 might be produced would give convincing proof of his 
 great powers as a speaker. 
 
 When a little child, he had an uncommon way of speak- 
 ing, which foretold his future extraordinary power of ex- 
 pression. On one occasion a servant blunderingly spilled 
 hot coffee over his legs. The hostess, after a while, asked 
 him how he was feeling. The little fellow looked up in 
 her face, and replied : " Thank you, madam, the agony 
 is abated." He had, it is stated, a little plot of ground at 
 the back of the house marked out as his own by a row 
 of oyster-shells, which a maid one day threw away as 
 rubbish. He went straight to the drawing-room, where 
 his mother was entertaining some visitors, walked into 
 the circle, and said, very solemnly : " Cursed be Sally ; 
 for it is written, * Cursed is he that removeth his neigh- 
 bor's landmark.' " In later years, his father was often 
 heard to exclaim : " If I had only Tom's power of 
 speech ! " 
 
 His first public speech was made when he was not 
 twenty-four years old, at the annual anti-slavery meeting 
 in London, and all accounts agree in the statement that 
 its brilliancy confirmed the reputation he had acquired 
 in the debating societies of Cambridge and the metrop- 
 olis. The Edinburgh Review described it as " a display 
 of eloquence so signal for rare and matured excellence, 
 that the most practiced orator may well admire how it 
 should have come from one who then for the first time 
 addressed a public assembly." His first speech in the 
 House of Commons was made five or six years afterward, 
 in support of the bill to repeal the civil disabilities of the 
 Jews of Great Britain, and his second on Slavery in the 
 West Indies. The next year he delivered the first of what 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 89 
 
 are known as his Reform speeches. When he sat down, 
 it is said, the Speaker sent for him, and told him that, in 
 all his prolonged experience, he had never seen the House 
 in such a state of excitement. Portions of the speech, 
 said a distinguished opponent, " were as beautiful as any- 
 thing I have ever heard or read. It reminded one of the 
 old times." The names of Fox, Burke, and Canning, it 
 is stated, were during that evening in every body's mouth ; 
 and Macaulay overheard with delight a knot of old mem- 
 bers illustrating their criticisms by recollections of Lord 
 Plunket. It was no easy thing to achieve such extraor- 
 dinary success in such a peculiar place. "A place," to 
 use Macaulay's own language, " where Walpole succeeded 
 and Addison failed ; where Dundas succeeded and Burke 
 failed ; where Peel now succeeds and Mackintosh fails ; 
 where Erskine and Scarlett were dinner-bells ; where 
 Lawrence and Jekyll, the two wittiest men, or nearly so, 
 of their time, were thought bores, is surely a very strange 
 place." Peel described the speech as a " wonderful flow 
 of natural and beautiful language," richly freighted with 
 "thought and fancy." Jeffrey said of it: "It was pro- 
 digiously cheered, as it deserved, and, I think, puts him 
 clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the de- 
 baters, of the House." Cockburn, who sat under the gal- 
 lery for twenty-seven hours during the last three nights 
 of the Reform bill, pronounced Macaulay's speech to have 
 been "by far the best." Mackintosh writes from the 
 library of the House of Commons : " Macaulay and Stan- 
 ley have made two of the finest speeches ever spoken in 
 Parliament." The bill was carried by one vote. In a 
 letter to his old friend Ellis, Macaulay gives an animated 
 description of the effect of its passage. "If I should 
 live fifty years," he says, " the impression of it will be 
 as sharp in my mind as if it had just taken place. It 
 was like seeing Caesar stabbed in the Senate-house, or 
 seeing Oliver taking the mace from the table ; a sight to 
 
90 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 be seen only once, and never to be forgotten." You 
 might, he says, have heard a pin drop as Duncannon de- 
 clared the result. "Then again the shouts broke out, 
 and many of us shed tears. I could scarcely refrain. 
 And the jaw of Peel fell ; and the face of Twiss was as 
 the face of a damned soul ; and Herries looked like Ju- 
 das taking his neck-tie off for the last operation." 
 
 His speeches in behalf of the Jews, the Slaves in the 
 West Indies, and the Catholics, must stand as fine speci- 
 mens of a high order of eloquence. His whole heart 
 was in every word of them. By nature and by education 
 he bitterly hated every form of injustice and oppression. 
 The orator, it should be remembered, was a son of 
 Zachary Macaulay, the philanthropist, one of the chiefs 
 of the Clapham sect, and an active associate of Clarkson 
 and Wilberforce. The inscription on the pedestal of the 
 eminent man's bust in Westminster Abbey characterizes 
 him as one " who during forty successive years, partaking 
 in the counsels and the labors which, guided by favoring 
 Providence, rescued Africa from the woes, and the British 
 empire from the guilt, of slavery and the slave-trade, 
 meekly endured the toil, the privation, and the reproach, 
 resigning to others the praise and the reward." Living 
 in the moral atmosphere of such a man, Macaulay imbibed 
 his convictions and enthusiasm, and was fully prepared, 
 when the time came, to assist in finishing the work which 
 the little despised band of reformers had so inauspiciously 
 begun. 
 
 His set speeches were of course carefully prepared ; 
 yet, it is said, when he rose in his place to take part in a 
 discussion which had been long foreseen, he had no notes 
 in his hand and no manuscript in his pocket. "If a de- 
 bate was in prospect, he would turn the subject over 
 while he paced his chamber or tramped along the streets. 
 Each thought, as it rose in his mind, embodied itself in 
 phrases, and clothed itself in an appropriate drapery of 
 
LORD MAC AULA Y. 9 1 
 
 images, instances, and quotations j and when, in the 
 course of his speech, the thought recurred, all the words 
 which gave it point and beauty spontaneously recurred 
 with it." 
 
 " A torrent of words," said a critical listener, " is the 
 only description of Macaulay's style, when he has warmed 
 into speed. And such words ! " " In all probability," 
 said another, " it was that fullness of mind, which broke 
 out in many departments, that constituted him a born 
 orator. Vehemence of thought, vehemence of language, 
 vehemence of manner, were his chief characteristics. 
 The listener might almost fancy he heard ideas and words 
 gurgling in the speaker's throat for priority of utterance. 
 There was nothing graduated or undulating about him. 
 He plunged at once into the heart of the matter, and 
 continued his loud resounding pace from beginning to 
 end, without halt or pause." When highly excited in 
 speech, his mind might have been likened — as somebody 
 has compared Napoleon's at times — to "a volcano, sur- 
 charged with molten granite." Of his most tremendous 
 bursts might have been said what Jeffrey once said of 
 Chalmers' eloquence, — " he buried his adversaries under 
 the fragments of burning mountains." 
 
 As a talker, Macaulay must have been very extraordi- 
 nary, judging even from the accounts of associate talkers, 
 who, wanting their own share in the conversation, found 
 it difficult to give due credit to a brilliant competitor. 
 Crabb Robinson met him at a dinner-party, about the 
 time he began to be famous, and described him in his 
 diary as " very eloquent and cheerful. Overflowing with 
 words, and not poor in thought. Liberal in opinion, 
 but no radical. He seems a correct as well as a full 
 man. He showed a minute knowledge of subjects not 
 introduced by himself." A high compliment, certainly, to 
 be paid by one wit to another. Sumner, the first time 
 he was in England, dined with Macaulay. He speaks of 
 
92 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 " the incessant ringing of Macaulay's voice," in contrast 
 with Bulwer's "lisping, slender, and effeminate tones." 
 Altogether, he thought Macaulay " oppressive." Perhaps, 
 bred under P-uritan influence, and imbibing some of the 
 same tastes and convictions, they both wanted to talk of 
 the same things at the same time. Sydney Smith, we 
 suspect, was a little inclined to disparage him for a like 
 reason. With such great conversers as Rogers, Luttrell, 
 Sydney Smith, Tom Moore, Mackintosh, and Conversa- 
 tion Sharp, it was a bitter thing to be put out in conver- 
 sation. Any thing might be forgotten before that. Hardly 
 any loss was more serious, for the time being, than the 
 loss of opportunity to say a good thing. He was a favor- 
 ite at Holland House. Lady Holland, we know, listened 
 to him with unwonted deference, and scolded him with a 
 circumspection that was in itself a compliment. Rogers 
 spoke of him with friendliness, and to him with positive 
 affection. Sharp treated him with great kindness and 
 consideration. For the space of three seasons, we are 
 informed, he dined out almost nightly, and spent many 
 of his Sundays in the suburban mansions of his friends. 
 It would have been interesting to have heard him converse 
 with Talleyrand, at Holland House, about Metternich and 
 Cardinal Mazarin. If some Boswell had followed him 
 about, what an interesting book we should have had ! 
 Lord Carlisle, in his journal, mentions having met Ma- 
 caulay at a dinner-party. " Never," he says, " were such 
 torrents of good talk as burst and sputtered over from 
 Macaulay and Hallam." He notes another occasion when 
 he breakfasted with Macaulay in his rooms at the top of 
 the Albany — their walls covered with seven to ten thou- 
 sand books. Macaulay's conversation, he says, "ranged 
 the world." 
 
 " If a company of giants were got together," says 
 Thackeray, in one of his Roundabout Papers, "very 
 likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 93 
 
 angry at the incontestable superiority of the very tallest 
 of the party ; so I have heard some of the London wits, 
 rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that 
 he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now 
 that that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not 
 many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance to 
 listen? To remember the talk is to wonder: to think 
 not only of the treasures he had in his memory, but of 
 the trifles he had stored there, and could produce with 
 equal readiness. . . . Every man who has known him has 
 his story regarding that astonishing memory. It may be 
 that he was not ill-pleased that you should recognize it ; 
 but to those prodigious intellectual feats, which were so 
 easy to him, who would grudge his tribute of homage ? " 
 
 Hawthorne, you remember, in one of his English Note- 
 Books, speaks of having met Macaulay at Milnes'. " All 
 through breakfast," he says, " I had been more and more 
 impressed by the aspect of one of the guests, sitting next 
 to Milnes. He was a man of large presence, — a portly 
 presence, gray-haired, but scarcely as yet aged ; and his 
 face had a remarkable intelligence, not vivid nor sparkling, 
 but conjoined with great quietude, — and if it gleamed 
 or brightened at one time more than another, it was like 
 the sheen over a broad surface of sea. There was a 
 somewhat careless self-possession, large and broad enough 
 to be called dignity ; and the more I looked at him, the 
 more I knew that he was a distinguished person, and won- 
 dered who. He might have been a minister of state; 
 only there is not one of them who has any right to such 
 a face and presence. At last, — I do not know how the 
 conviction came, — but I became aware that it was Ma- 
 caulay, and began to see some slight resemblance to his 
 portraits. But I have never seen any that is not wretch- 
 edly unworthy of the original. As soon as I knew him, 
 I began to listen to his conversation, but he did not talk 
 a great deal." 
 
94 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 In one of his letters to his sisters, he speaks of an 
 occasion when he dined with the two wits, Rogers and 
 Sydney Smith. Two or three sentences are worth quot- 
 ing, though a little out of the way, to show how different 
 and incompatible they were. " Singly," says Macaulay, 
 " I have often seen them ; but to see them both together 
 was a novelty, and a novelty not the less curious because 
 their mutual hostility is well known, and the hard hits 
 which they have given to each other are in every body's 
 mouth. They were very civil, however. But I was 
 struck by the truth of what Matthew Bramble says in 
 Smollett's Humphry Clinker — that one wit in a company, 
 like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a flavor, but two are 
 too many. Rogers and Sydney Smith would not come 
 into conflict. If one had possession of the company, the 
 other was silent ; and, as you may conceive, the one who 
 had possession of the company was always Sydney Smith, 
 and the one who was always silent was Rogers." The 
 conversation of Rogers, he informs us, was remarkably 
 polished and artificial. What he said seemed to have 
 been long meditated, and might have been published 
 with little correction. Sydney talked from the impulse 
 of the moment, and his fun was quite inexhaustible. No 
 wonder such opposites could never agree. No intellec- 
 tual or moral amalgam — not even Macaulay, with all 
 his genius and good-nature — could have fused them to- 
 gether. 
 
 At the Palace of the Queen his powers of conversation 
 were as well known and as fully appreciated as at the 
 house of his sisters. A lady who met him frequently at 
 the Palace, whether in the character of a cabinet minis- 
 ter or of a private guest, said of him : " Mr. Macaulay 
 was very interesting to listen to ; quite immeasurably 
 abundant in anecdote and knowledge." 
 
 " Years ago," says Thackeray, " there was a wretched 
 outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay dated a letter from 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 95 
 
 Windsor Castle, where he was staying. Immortal gods ! 
 Was this man not a fit guest for any palace in the world ? 
 or a fit companion for any man or woman in it ? " 
 
 His appearance and bearing in conversation are de- 
 scribed as singularly effective. " Sitting bolt upright, his 
 hands resting on the arms of his chair, or folded over the 
 handle of his walking-stick ; knitting his great eyebrows 
 if the subject was one which had to be thought out as he 
 went along, or brightening from the forehead downward 
 when a burst of humor was coming ; his massive features 
 and honest glance suited well with the manly, sagacious 
 sentiments which he set forth in his pleasant, sonorous 
 voice, and in his racy and admirably intelligible language. 
 To get at his meaning, people had never the need to think 
 twice, and they certainly had seldom the time. And with 
 all his ardor, and all his strength and energy of convic- 
 tion, he was so truly considerate toward others, so deli- 
 cately courteous with the courtesy which is of the essence, 
 and not only in the manner. However eager had been 
 the debate, and however prolonged the sitting, no one in 
 the company ever had personal reasons for wishing a 
 word of his unsaid, or a look or a tone recalled." 
 
 Great, however, as were his gifts as a talker and as a 
 speaker, he surrendered them all finally to literature. 
 " At a period," says his biographer, " when the mere 
 rumor of his presence would have made the fortune of 
 any drawing-room in London, Macaulay consented to see 
 less and less, and at length almost nothing, of general 
 society, in order that he might devote all his energies to 
 the work which he had in hand. He relinquished that 
 House of Commons which the first sentence of his 
 speeches hushed into silence, and the first five minutes 
 filled to overflowing." He gave up all to devote himself 
 to his History. 
 
 AS A MAN. 
 
 Carlyle once said of Macaulay, that he was " an honest, 
 
96 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 good sort of fellow, made out of oatmeal." In other 
 words, that he was of good Scotch stock, and had been 
 generously brought up on good air, simple food, and 
 sound instruction. The qualities that he had inherited 
 and scrupulously cultivated, were genuine, and of the 
 highest manhood. The "pith o' sense," and "pride o' 
 worth," and books, made him so much a man, and so 
 different from other men, that independence was a neces- 
 sity to him. If he was to be a man, and fight the battle 
 of life on his own ground, it must be his, without any 
 question of title. Believing that in the hour in which a 
 man " mortgages himself to two, or ten, or twenty, he 
 dwarfs himself below the stature of one;" and being 
 determined that he would not be " cramped and dimin- 
 ished of his proportions," the desire, not for riches, but 
 for independence, took deep root within him. He felt 
 that he had much to say in this world, and would say it, 
 without fear or favor. He felt, too, there is reason to 
 believe, as a late writer expresses it, that " good work, as 
 a rule, is only done by people who have paid their bills. 
 Why was Shakespeare so far ahead of all contemporary 
 dramatists? Because Shakespeare had the good sense 
 to make money, and was therefore able to command the 
 market, and write his late works without undue pressure. 
 Others could only write in a tavern, or to get out of a 
 creditor's clutches. Shakespeare's mind was at ease by 
 the consciousness of his comfortable investments at Strat- 
 ford. Hamlet was written because Shakespeare was sol- 
 vent." 
 
 Just before going to India, Macaulay wrote to Lord 
 Lansdowne : " I feel that the sacrifice which I am about to 
 make is great. But the motives which urge me to make 
 it are quite irresistible. Every day that I live, I become 
 less and less desirous of great wealth. But every day 
 makes me more sensible of the importance of a compe- 
 tence. Without a competence, it is not very easy for a 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 97 
 
 public man to be honest : it is almost impossible for him 
 to be thought so. I am so situated that I can subsist 
 only in two ways : by being in office, and by my pen. 
 Hitherto literature has been merely my relaxation — the 
 amusement of perhaps a month in the year. I have never 
 considered it as the means of support. I have chosen 
 my own topics, taken my own time, and dictated my own 
 terms. The thought of becoming a bookseller's hack ; 
 of writing to relieve, not the fullness of the mind, but 
 the emptiness of the pocket ; of spurring a jaded fancy 
 to reluctant exertion ; of filling sheets with trash merely 
 that the sheets may be filled ; of bearing from publishers 
 and editors what Dryden bore from Tonson, and what, 
 to my own knowledge, Mackintosh bore from Lardner, 
 is horrible to me. Yet thus it must be if I should quit 
 office. Yet to hold office merely for the sake of emolu- 
 ment would be more horrible still. The situation in 
 which I have been placed, for some time back, would 
 have broken the spirit of many men. It has rather 
 tended to make me the most mutinous and unmanage- 
 able of the followers of the Government. I tendered my 
 resignation twice during the course of the last session. 
 I certainly should not have done so if I had been a man 
 of fortune." 
 
 Not long after he arrived in India, he wrote familiarly 
 to two of his sisters : " Money matters seem likely to 
 go on capitally. My expenses, I find, will be smaller 
 than I anticipated. The rate of exchange, if you know 
 what that means, is very favorable indeed ; and, if I live, 
 I shall get rich fast. I quite enjoy the thought of ap- 
 pearing in the light of an old hunks who knows on which 
 side his bread is buttered ; a warm man ; a fellow who 
 will cut up well. This is not a character which the Ma- 
 caulays have been much in the habit of sustaining ; but 
 I can assure you that, after next Christmas, I expect to 
 lay up, on an average, about seven thousand pounds a 
 7 
 
98 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 year, while I remain in India. At Christmas, I shall 
 send home a thousand or twelve hundred pounds for my 
 father, and you all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it 
 is to me to find that I shall be able to do this. It recon- 
 ciles me to all the pains — acute enough, sometimes, God 
 knows — of banishment. In a few years, if I live — prob- 
 ably in less than five years from the time at which you 
 will be reading this letter, — we shall be again together 
 in a comfortable, though modest, home ; certain of a good 
 fire, a good joint of meat, and a good glass of wine ; with- 
 out owing obligations to any body, and perfectly indif- 
 ferent, at least as far as our pecuniary interest is con- 
 cerned, to the changes of the political world." 
 
 The sacrifice he made for independence was indeed 
 great. He wrQte to one of his sisters from Calcutta : " I 
 have no words to tell you how I pine for England, or 
 how intensely bitter exile has been to me, though I hope 
 that I have borne it well. I feel as if I had no other 
 wish than to see my country again, and die. Let me as- 
 sure you that banishment is no light matter. No person 
 can judge of it who has not experienced it. A complete 
 revolution in all the habits of life ; an estrangement from 
 almost every old friend and acquaintance : fifteen thou- 
 sand miles of ocean between the exile and every thing 
 that he cares for ; all this is, to me at least, very trying. 
 There is no temptation of w^ealth or power which would 
 induce me to go through it again." But, back again in 
 London, two or three years after his return — his object 
 accomplished, — he wrote to Napier : " I can truly say, 
 that I have not, for many years, been so happy as I am 
 at present. Before I went to India, I had no prospect of 
 a change of government, except that of living by my pen, 
 and seeing my sisters governesses. In India I was an 
 exile. When I came back, I was for a time at liberty ; 
 but I had before me the prospect of parting in a few 
 months, probably forever, with my dearest sister and her 
 
LORD MACAULAY. 99 
 
 children. That misery was removed ; but I found myself 
 in office, a member of a Government wretchedly weak, and 
 struggling for existence. Now I am free. I am inde- 
 pendent. I am in Parliament, as honorably seated as 
 man can be. My family is comfortably off. I have leisure 
 for literature, yet I am not reduced to the necessity of 
 writing for money. If I had to choose a lot from all that 
 are in human life, I am not sure that I should prefer any 
 to that which has befallen me. I am sincerely and thor- 
 oughly contented." 
 
 To his sisters, especially to Margaret and Hannah, he 
 was warmly attached. Although younger than himself 
 by ten and twelve years respectively, they were on terms 
 of the most intimate companionship with him. After- 
 noons he took long walks with them. " We traversed," 
 says one of them, " every part of the city, Islington, 
 Clerkenwell, and the parks, returning just in time for a 
 six o'clock dinner. What anecdotes he used to pour out 
 about every street, and square, and alley. There are 
 many places I never pass without the tender grace of a 
 day that is dead coming back to me. Then, after dinner, 
 he always walked up and down the drawing-room between 
 us, chatting till tea-time. Our noisy mirth, his wretched 
 puns, so many a minute, so many an hour ! Then we 
 sung, none of us having any voices, and he, if possible, 
 least of all ; but still the old nursery songs were set to 
 music and chanted." "When alone with his sisters," 
 says Trevelyan, " and, in after years, with his nieces, he 
 was fond of settling himself deliberately to manufactur- 
 ing conceits resembling those on the heroes of the Trojan 
 war which have been thought worthy of publication in 
 the collected works of Swift. When walking in London 
 [he had Dr. Johnson's passion for the great town] he 
 would undertake to give some droll turn to the name of 
 every shopkeeper in the street, and, when traveling, to 
 the name of every station along the line. At home, he 
 
ICX) CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 would run through the countries of Europe, the States 
 of the Union, the chief cities of our Indian Empire, the 
 provinces of France, the Prime Ministers of England, or 
 the chief writers and artists of any given century ; strik- 
 ing off puns, admirable, endurable, and execrable, but 
 all irresistibly laughable, which followed each other in 
 showers like sparks from flint. Capping verses was a 
 game of which he never tired." Such entries as this 
 occur in Margaret's diary : " Jan'y 8th, 1832. Yesterday 
 Tom dined with us, and staid late. He talked almost 
 uninterruptedly for six hours. In the evening he made a 
 great many impromptu charades in verse." He read his 
 works to them in manuscript, and when they found fault, 
 as they often did, with his being too severe upon people, 
 he took it with the greatest kindness, and often altered 
 what they did not like. After a visit to Holland House, 
 he writes to Hannah : " But for all this, I would much 
 rather be quietly walking with you : and the great use of 
 going to these fine places is to learn how happy it is pos- 
 sible to be without them." In another letter to Hannah, 
 after speaking of the compliments showered upon him 
 by Althorp, Graham, Stanley, Russell, O'Connell, and 
 the newspaper press, he says : " My greatest pleasure, in 
 the midst of all this praise, is to think of the pleasure 
 which my success will give to my father and my sisters. 
 It is happy for me that ambition has in my mind been 
 softened into a kind of domestic feeling, and that affec- 
 tion has at least as much to do as vanity with my wish to 
 distinguish myself. This I owe to my dear mother, and 
 to the interest which she always took in my childish suc- 
 cesses. From my earliest years, the gratification of those 
 whom I love has been associated with the gratification of 
 my own thirst for fame, until the two have become insep- 
 arably joined in my mind." After reciting his engage- 
 ments to dine with lords and ladies, every day for a fort- 
 night, he writes : " Yet I would give a large slice of my 
 
LORD MACAULAV.' 101 
 
 quarter's salary, which is now nearly due, to be at the 
 Dingle. I am sick of lords with no brains in their heads, 
 and ladies with paint on their cheeks, and politics, and 
 politicians, and that reeking furnace of a House. As the 
 poet says : 
 
 * Oh ! rather would I see this day 
 My little Nancy well and merry, 
 Than the blue ribbon of Earl Grey, 
 Or the blue stockings of Miss Berry.' " 
 
 Writing anxiously to Hannah about her health, he says : 
 " I begin to wonder what the fascination is which attracts 
 men, who could sit over their tea and their books in their 
 own cool, quiet room, to breathe bad air, hear bad 
 speeches, lounge up and down the long gallery, and doze 
 uneasily on the green benches till three in the morning. 
 Thank God, these luxuries are not necessary to me. My 
 pen is sufficient for my support, and my sister's company 
 is sufficient for my happiness. Only let me see her well 
 and cheerful, and let offices in Government and seats in 
 Parliament go to those who care for them." Again he 
 says : " The Tories are quite welcome to take every thing, 
 if they will only leave me my pen and my books, a warm 
 fireside, and you chattering beside it. This sort of phil- 
 osophy, an odd kind of cross between Stoicism and Epi- 
 cureanism, I have learned where most people unlearn all 
 their philosophy — in crowded senates and fine drawing- 
 rooms." " There are not ten people in the world whose 
 deaths would spoil my dinner ; but there are one or two 
 whose deaths would break my heart. The more I see 
 of the world, and the more numerous my acquaintance 
 becomes, the narrower and more exclusive my affection 
 grows, and the more I cling to my sisters, and to one or 
 two old tried friends of my quiet days." The marriage 
 of Margaret, and his separation from her, were serious 
 things to Macaulay. Hannah (Nancy) he took with him 
 to India, where she met and married Trevelyan. He 
 
I'a2 CtiXRACTERISTICS. 
 
 wrote to Margaret (Mrs. Cropper) from Calcutta : " My 
 parting from you almost broke my heart. But when I 
 parted from you I had Nancy ; I had all my other rela- 
 tions ; I had my friends ; I had my country. Now I have 
 nothing except the resources of my own mind, and the 
 consciousness of having acted not ungenerously." Next 
 came Margaret's death. One of the many painful refer- 
 ences he makes to it is in a letter to his dear old friend 
 Ellis, nearly a year after the event : " I have but very 
 lately begun to recover my spirits. The tremendous blow 
 which fell on me at the beginning of this year has left 
 marks behind it which I shall carry to my grave. Liter- 
 ature has saved my life and my reason. Even now, I dare 
 not, in the inter\^als of business, remain alone for a min- 
 ute without a book in my hand." 
 
 After his departure to India, writes one of his sisters : 
 " You can have no conception of the change which has 
 come over this household. It is as if the sun had de- 
 serted the earth. The chasm Tom's departure has made 
 can never be supplied. He was so unlike any other 
 being one ever sees, and his visits among us were a sort 
 of refreshment which served not a little to enliven and 
 cheer our monotonous way of life; but now day after 
 day rises and sets without object or interest, so that 
 sometimes I almost feel aweary of this world." 
 
 " He was peculiarly susceptible," says Lady Trevelyan, 
 " of the feeling of ennui when in society. He really hated 
 staying out, even in the best and most agreeable houses. 
 It was with an effort that he even dined out, and few of 
 those who met him, and enjoyed his animated conversa- 
 tion, could guess how much rather he would have re- 
 mained at home, and how much difficulty I had to force 
 him to accept invitations and prevent his growing a re- 
 cluse. But though he was very easily bored in general 
 society, I think he never felt ennui when he was alone, 
 or when he was with those he loved. Many people are 
 
LORD MACAULAY. IO3 
 
 very fond of children, but he was the only person I ever 
 knew who never tired of being with them. Often has 
 he come to our house, at Clapham or in Westbourne 
 Terrace, directly after breakfast, and finding me out, he 
 dawdled away the whole morning with the children ; and 
 then, after sitting with me at lunch, has taken Margaret 
 a long walk through the city, which lasted the whole af- 
 ternoon. Such days are always noted in his journals as 
 especially happy." 
 
 All this of the man who was so severe upon Robert 
 Montgomery, Croker, Barere, and others, that his severity 
 has become famous. He had no mercy for bad, loose, or 
 inaccurate writing. His models were classics. "See," 
 he says, referring to Croker, " see whether I do not dust 
 that varlet's jacket for him in the next number of the 
 Blue and Yellow. I detest him more than cold boiled 
 veal." Again he says : " I have, though I say it who 
 should not say it, beaten Croker black and blue." Of 
 Barere, he wrote to Napier : " If I can, I will make the 
 old villain shake, even in his grave." What he said of 
 Churchill was perhaps more or less applicable to himself : 
 " There was too great a tendency to say with willing ve- 
 hemence whatever could be eloquently said." There 
 is something in the prolonged pounding he gave Walpole 
 that reminds us of Walpole's blow or two at Johnson. 
 Bold, too, he was, as well as severe. In his famous re- 
 view of Ranke's History of the Popes, " he contrived," 
 says one who knew, " to offend all parties — Romanist, 
 Anglican, and Genevan." But all the boldness he ever 
 evinced would have appeared timidity, and all his severity 
 gentleness, if he had once fallen upon Brougham, who 
 bitterly hated him, and whom Macaulay cordially disliked 
 in return, and would have delighted beyond measure, we 
 believe, in combating to the death. He was perfectly 
 aware of Brougham's jealousies, insincerities, and cruel- 
 ties, and would have exhausted upon him all the pro- 
 
104 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 digious resources of his genius and passions. " I do not 
 think it possible," he said to ElUs, *' for human nature, in 
 an educated, civiHzed man — a man, too, of great intel- 
 lect — to have become so depraved." " Strange fellow ! " 
 he characterized him, more than twenty years afterward. 
 " His powers gone. His spite immortal. A dead nettle." 
 What a contest there would have been had the two giants 
 come together ! 
 
 Of Macaulay's public life and character, Sydney Smith 
 expressed the truth in a fewAvords : " I believe Macaulay 
 to be incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, 
 wealth, title, before him in vain. He has an honest, gen- 
 uine love of his country, and the world could not bribe 
 him to neglect her interests." 
 
 The last use the great man made of his pen was to sign 
 a letter he had dictated, inclosing twenty-five pounds to a 
 DOor curate. 
 
LAMB. 
 
 Some one has said, that to have a true idea of man, 
 or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of 
 suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once. It 
 does seem impossible that easy-going people, who have 
 been easily prosperous, who have uniformly enjoyed good 
 health, who have always been free from distressing care, 
 should know at all what is inevitably and perfectly known 
 by being between the millstones. " We learn geology," 
 says Emerson, "the morning after the earthquake, on 
 ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, 
 and the dry bed of the sea." It is only an experience of 
 the awful that fully opens the eyes of the understanding 
 upon the dread abysses of extremity and possibility. To 
 know life, it is necessary to have struggled hard in the 
 midst of it ; to feel for the suffering, we must have suf- 
 fered acutely ourselves. " Before there is wine or there 
 is oil, the grape must be trodden and the olive must be 
 pressed." The sweetest characters, we know, often re- 
 sult from the bitterest experiences. The weight of great 
 misfortunes, and the perpetual annoyance of petty evils, 
 only tend to make them stronger and better. Patience 
 and resignation under multiplied ills can hardly be con- 
 ceived by those who have only trodden at will, without 
 burdens, over safe and pleasant ground in easy sandals. 
 They look upon life and inquire, " What would the pos- 
 session of a hundred thousand a year, or fame, and the 
 applause of one's countrymen, or the loveliest and best- 
 beloved woman — of any glory and happiness, or good 
 
I06 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 fortune, avail to a man, who was allowed to enjoy them 
 only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a couple 
 of nails or sharp pebbles inside of it ? " Good men, 
 knowledge of the world teaches us, are not easily found 
 amongst those who have never known misfortune : " the 
 heart must be softened by sufferings, to make it constant, 
 firm, patient, and wise." As there are fishes which are 
 intended by nature for great sea-depths, so there are hu- 
 man beings to whom severe pressure seems to be suited, 
 and who seem to thrive best when every weight is upon 
 them. Birds of paradise, from the very nature of their 
 plumage, cannot fly except against the wind. One of the 
 most marvelously beautiful of all the many species of the 
 humming-bird is only to be found in the crater of an ex- 
 tinguished volcano. 
 
 That Charles Lamb ever contemplated suicide, we do 
 not' know ; but we do know, that he was, early in life, 
 confined in an insane asylum for a short period. Once, 
 alas ! he not only stood upon, but passed, the door-sill of 
 madness, and was ever after indeed wise in a wisdom 
 unknowable but by those who dwell long enough in the 
 midst of mental chaos for the impression of the dreadful 
 situation ineradicably to infix itself. No wonder, knowing 
 what we do of his wretched experiences, the best picture 
 we have of him should show to us a face full of all en- 
 durable suffering, all possible pain, awful in its expression 
 of wretchedness, and looking, for all the world — we can- 
 not help saying it — like a skillful limner's painstaking 
 study of madness. 
 
 Life very early taught him the bitter lesson that the 
 ancient Mexicans taught their children : so soon as a 
 child was born they saluted it, " Child, thou art come 
 into the world to endure, suffer, and say nothing." Lamb 
 endured, and suffered, how long ! and was dumb beyond 
 comprehension. When his wretchedness voiced itself, it 
 was unconsciously or inevitably. When the burden was 
 
LAMB. 107 
 
 unbearable, merciless, the cry announcing it was but the 
 creak of the timber before breaking — the echo of the 
 agony within his soul. 
 
 Is it too much to say, that his peculiar genius was in 
 great part a direct result of his supreme wretchedness ? 
 His humor, his wit, his wisdom, his very style, seem in- 
 deed to be, literally, expression — to have been forced out 
 of him by pressure, as juices and oils are forced from 
 plants. We know how much mere physical suffering has 
 had to do with the most famous productions of literature. 
 We know that the Caudle Lectures, which, as social droll- 
 eries, set all the world laughing, were written to dictation 
 on a bed of sickness, racked by rheumatism. We know 
 that Scott dictated that fine love story, the Bride of Lam- 
 mermoor, from a bed of torment ; and that so great was 
 his suffering that when he rose from his bed, and the 
 published book was placed in his hands, he did not recol- 
 lect one single incident, character, or conversation it con- 
 tained. We know that Heine, for several years preceding 
 his death, was a miserable paralytic. All that time he 
 lay upon a pile of mattresses, racked by pain and ex- 
 hausted by sleeplessness, till his body was reduced below 
 all natural dimensions. The muscular debility was such 
 that he had to raise the eyelid with his hands when he 
 wished to see the face of any one about him ; and thus in 
 darkness, he thought, and listened, and dictated, preserv- 
 ing to the very last his clearness of intellect, his precision 
 of diction, and his invincible humor. The wretchedness 
 of Scarron, at whose jests, burlesques, and buffooneries 
 all France was laughing, may be guessed from his own 
 description. . His form, to use his own words, " had be- 
 come bent like a Z." " My legs," he adds, " first made 
 an obtuse angle with my thighs, then a right, and at last 
 an acute angle ; my thighs made another with my body. 
 My head is bent upon my chest ; my arms are contracted 
 as well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. 
 
I08 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I am, in truth, a pretty complete abridgment of human 
 misery." His days were passed in a chair with a hood, 
 and his wife had to kneel to look in his face. He could 
 not be moved without screaming from pain, nor sleep 
 without taking opium. Balzac said of him, " I have often 
 met in antiquity with pain that was wise, and pain that 
 was eloquent ; but I never before saw pain joyous, nor 
 found a soul merrily cutting capers in a paralytic frame." 
 He continued to jest to the last j and seeing the by- 
 standers in tears, he said, "I shall never, my friends, 
 make you weep as much as I have made you laugh." 
 Pascal, we know, was pitifully feeble, and constantly in 
 pain, at the same time that he " fixed," to use the glowing 
 words of Chateaubriand, "the language w^hich Bossuet 
 and Racine spoke, and furnished a model of the most 
 perfect wit as well as of the closest reasoning ; and in 
 the brief intervals of his pain solved by abstraction the 
 highest problems of geometry, and threw on paper 
 thoughts which breathe as much of God as of man." 
 We know, too, that many of Hood's most humorous pro- 
 ductions were dictated to his wife, while he himself was 
 in bed from distressing and protracted sickness. His 
 own family was the only one which was not delighted with 
 the Comic Annual, so well thumbed in every house. " We 
 ourselves," said his son, "did not enjoy it till the lapse of 
 many years had mercifully softened down some of the 
 sad recollections connected with it." It is recorded of 
 him, that upon a mustard plaster being applied to his at- 
 tenuated feet, as he lay in the direst extremity, he was 
 heard feebly to remark, that there was " very little meat 
 for the mustard." 
 
 Physical suffering having had so much to do with so 
 many of the productions of genius, is it hard to believe 
 that mental anguish may not have contributed even more 
 and to a greater number ? Literature is full of instances 
 to enforce the conclusion. Mental wretchednesses of every 
 
LAMB. 109 
 
 description connect themselves inseparably with the mem- 
 ory of many of the most illustrious names, and with their 
 greatest achievements. Curran, for instance, at the very 
 time he was one of the most unhappy and melancholy 
 of men, was one of the most delightful and wonderful. 
 What a talker he was ! Such imagination ! " There 
 never was any thing Hke it," said Byron, " that I ever saw 
 or heard of. His published life, his published speeches, 
 give you no idea of the man — none at all. He was a 
 machine of imagination. The riches of it were exhaust- 
 less. I have," said the poet, " heard that man speak more 
 poetry than I have ever seen written, though I saw him 
 seldom, and but occasionally. I saw him presented to 
 Madame de Stael. It was the great confluence between 
 the Rhone and the Saone." Cervantes, from all accounts, 
 dragged on a most wretched and melancholy existence. 
 He was groaning and weeping while all Spain was laugh- 
 ing at the adventures of Don Quixote and the wise say- 
 ings of Sancho Panza. The great Swift, we know, was 
 never known to smile. Butler's private history was but 
 a record of his miseries. Burns confessed that his de- 
 sign in seeking society was to fly from constitutional mel- 
 ancholy. " Even in the hour of social mirth," he tells us, 
 "my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal 
 under the hands of the executioner." The author of 
 John Gilpin said of himself and that humorous poem, 
 " Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever 
 wrote have been when in the saddest mood, and but for 
 that saddest mood, perhaps, would never have been 
 written at all." While it was being read by Henderson, 
 in London, to large audiences, its author was mad. Jean 
 Paul wrote a great part of a comic romance in an agony 
 of heart-break from the death of his son. Washington 
 Irving completed that most extravagantly humorous of all 
 his works — The History of New York — while suffering 
 from the death of his sweetheart, which nearly broke his 
 
no CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 heart. The fact, therefore, that the most facetious of all 
 Lamb's letters was written in a paroxysm of melancholy, 
 amounting almost to madness, does not deserve to be 
 called curious, but is only another instance added to the 
 list that might easily be extended, if not to the point of 
 tediousness, certainly beyond the purposes of this paper. 
 
 The circumstances of Lamb's life were awfully de- 
 pressing. Conceive them if you can. Himself, as we 
 have said, in a mad-house for a short time at the end of 
 his twentieth year ; his sister insane at intervals through- 
 out her life ; his mother hopelessly bedridden till killed 
 by her daughter in a fit of frenzy ; his father pitifully im- 
 becile ; his old maiden aunt home from a rich relation's 
 to be nursed till she died — all dependent upon him, his 
 more prosperous brother declining to bear any part of the 
 burden ; his work for more than thirty years distasteful 
 and monotonous, and most of it performed at the same 
 desk in the same office. Imagine his loneliness during 
 all those thirty dreary years, with no one in the vast es- 
 tablishment at all congenial to him that we hear of ; in- 
 deed we do not remember that he any where refers by 
 name to any one employed there with him. Dr. James 
 Alexander, describing a visit to the India House, says he 
 inquired for Charles Lamb of the doorkeeper, who replied 
 he had been there since he was sixteen years old, and 
 had never heard of any Mr. Lamb. But the doorkeeper 
 of the British Museum knew him very well. 
 
 It is now well-known that Lamb's description of Lovel, 
 in one of his essays, is an accurate description of his own 
 father. It helps us to a better understanding of himself, 
 besides being good enough to read over and over. " I 
 knew this Lovel," he says. " He was a man of an in- 
 corrigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and 
 * would strike.' In the cause of the oppressed he never 
 considered inequalities, or calculated the number of his 
 opponents. He once wrested a sword out of the hand of 
 
LAMB. Ill 
 
 a man of quality that had drawn upon him, and pom- 
 meled him severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman 
 had offered insults to a female — an occasion upon which 
 no odds against him could have prevented the interfer- 
 ence of Lovel. He w^ould stand next day bareheaded to 
 the same person, modestly to excuse his interference — 
 for L. never forgot rank, where something better was not 
 concerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had 
 a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to re- 
 semble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), pos- 
 sessed a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to Swift 
 and Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to 
 admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely; turned 
 cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfec- 
 tion ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility : 
 made punch better than any man of his degree in Eng- 
 land ; had the merriest quips and conceits ; and was alto- 
 gether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could 
 desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, and 
 just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak 
 Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw 
 him in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy- 
 smitten, in the last sad stage of human weakness — *a 
 remnant most forlorn of what he was,' — yet even then 
 his eye would light up upon the mention of his favorite 
 Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes — 
 *was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole per- 
 formance, and as busy as a bee.' At intervals, too, he 
 would speak of his former life, and how he came up a 
 little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how his 
 mother cried at parting with him, and how he returned, 
 after some few years' absence, in his smart new livery, to 
 see herj and she blessed herself at the change, and could 
 hardly be brought to believe that it was * her own bairn.' 
 And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till 
 I have wished that sad second childhood might have a 
 
112 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the com- 
 mon mother of us all in no long time after received him 
 gently into hers." 
 
 The circumstances attending the death of Lamb's 
 mother, by the hand of his sister, were reported by the 
 coroner : " It appeared, by the evidence adduced, that, 
 while the family were preparing for dinner, the young lady 
 seized a case-knife, lying on the table, and in a menacing 
 manner pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round the 
 room. On the calls of her infirm mother to forbear, she 
 renounced her first object, and with loud shrieks, ap- 
 proached her parent. The child, by her cries, quickly 
 brought up the landlord of the house, but too late. The 
 dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless, 
 pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet wildly 
 standing over her with the fatal knife, and the old man, 
 her father, weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the 
 forehead from the effects of a severe blow he received 
 from one of the forks she had been madly hurling about 
 the room. . . . The jury, of course, brought in their ver- 
 dict — Lunacy." 
 
 Lamb's own account of the dreadful event, to Coleridge, 
 is extremely touching : — " My Dearest Friend : White, 
 or some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time 
 may have informed you of the terrible calamities that 
 have fallen on our family. I will only give you the out- 
 lines : My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, 
 has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand 
 only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. 
 She is at present in a mad-house, from whence I fear she 
 must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me 
 my senses — I eat and drink, and sleep, and have my 
 judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was 
 slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and 
 my aunt. . . . Write as religious a letter as possible, but 
 no mention of what is gone and done with. With me. 
 
LAMB. 113 
 
 *the former things are passed away,' and I have some- 
 thing more to do than to feel. . . . Mention nothing of 
 poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities 
 of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, pub- 
 lish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and 
 never send me a book, I charge you. ... I charge you, 
 don't think of coming to see me. Write. I will not see 
 you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of us." 
 
 Whenever, we are told, the approach of one of her fits 
 of insanity was announced by some irritability or change 
 of manner, he would take her under his arm to Hoxton 
 Asylum. It was very afflicting to encounter the young 
 brother and his sister walking together (weeping together) 
 on this painful errand ; Mary herself, although sad, very 
 conscious of the necessity for temporary separation from 
 her only friend. They used to carry a strait-jacket with 
 them. 
 
 Dr. Weddell, in the account of his travels and adven- 
 tures in South Africa, speaks of a species of variegated 
 woodpecker, called the carpenter. If one is killed, it is 
 rare that its mate does not come and place itself beside 
 the dead body, as if imploring a similar fate. Such touch- 
 ing fidelity on the part of a bird, but feebly and imper- 
 fectly suggests the perpetual, unwearying, undying devo- 
 tion of Lamb to his poor sister. He was always at her 
 side, in any and every extremity, and there was no sacri- 
 fice that he did not stand ready to make. Year after year 
 for years, he was father, mother, brother, sister, friend, 
 nurse, comforter — every thing to her. 
 
 " I do not observe," says Barry Cornwall, "more than 
 one occasion on which (being then himself ill) his firm- 
 ness seemed altogether to give way. In 1798, indeed, he 
 had said, ' I consider her perpetually on the brink of mad- 
 ness.' But in May, 1800, his old servant Hetty having 
 died, and Mary (sooner than usual) falling ill again, 
 Charles was obliged to remove her to an asylum ; and 
 
1 14 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 was left in the house alone with Hetty's dead body. * My 
 heart is quite sick (he cries), and I don't know where to 
 look for relief. My head is very bad. I almost wish that 
 Mary were dead.' This was the one solitary cry of an- 
 guish that he uttered during his long years of anxiety and 
 suffering. At all other times he bowed his head in si- 
 lence, uncomplaining." 
 
 To Coleridge he wrote, " Mary will get better again, 
 but her constantly being liable to such relapses is dread- 
 ful ; nor is it the least of our evils [they v/ere then at 
 Pentonville, in the neighborhood of Holborn] that her 
 case and all our story is so well known around us. We 
 are in a manner marked." To Manning he wrote, about 
 the same time, " It is a great object to me to live in town, 
 where we shall be much more private, and to quit a bouse 
 and a neighborhood, where poor Mary's disorder, so fre- 
 quently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people. 
 We can be nowhere private except in the midst of Lon- 
 don." 
 
 Sensitive natures, like Lamb's, are wretched under the 
 social microscope. Hawthorne, nearly alike sensitive, 
 wrote of the Eternal City, " Rome is not like one of our 
 New England villages, where we need the permission of 
 each individual neighbor for every act that we do, every 
 word that we utter, and every friend that we make or 
 keep." It is rather a weary thing for any one to live 
 under the microscope. In every man's life are there 
 not apartments he would have forever locked, the keys 
 forever lost, into 'which he himself never enters but by 
 a skeleton ? It is pleasant sometimes to get where no 
 one knows you, nor cares a brass farthing what you say 
 or do. No one knew better than Lamb, shrinking from 
 microscopic observation, what a perfect place for any 
 wretchedness is a great city. 
 
 No man, we imagine, ever suffered more from compas- 
 sion, than Lamb, unless it was Steele. The latter, out of 
 
LAMB. 115 
 
 his bitter experience called it shrewdly the best disguise 
 of malice, and said that the most apposite course to cry 
 a man down was to lament him. Lamb had a great dread 
 of being lectured, as all sensitive people have naturally. 
 A lady, we are told — a sort of social Mrs. Fry — had 
 been for some time lecturing him on his irregularities. 
 At last, she said : " But, really, Mr. Lamb, I 'm afraid all 
 that I 'm saying has very little effect on you. I'm afraid 
 from your manner of attending to it, that it will not do 
 you much good." "No, ma'am," said Lamb, "I don't 
 think it will. But as all that you have been saying has 
 gone in at this ear (the one next her) and out at the 
 other, I dare say it will do this gentleman a great deal of 
 good," turning to a stranger who stood on the other side 
 of him. The advice — ill-timed and ill-applied, no doubt 
 — had much the same effect that the whipping had upon 
 the German soldier, who laughed all the time he was be- 
 ing flogged. When the officer, at the end, inquired the 
 cause of his mirth, he broke out into a fresh fit of laugh- 
 ter, and cried, " Why, I 'm the wrong man ! " 
 
 Impertinence, or offensive interference of any sort, 
 Lamb could not brook. An unpopular head of a depart- 
 ment in the India House came to him one day (perhaps 
 at the very time he was engaged on one of his inimitable 
 essays or letters) and inquired, " Pray, Mr. Lamb, what 
 are you about ? " " Forty, next birthday," said Lamb. 
 " I don't like your answer," said the man. " Nor I your 
 question," was Lamb's reply. 
 
 He did not like to have the epithet "gentle " applied 
 to him. Coleridge, in a poem, had characterized him as 
 " My gentle-hearted Charles." Lamb replied, " For God's 
 sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridicu- 
 lous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or 
 do it in better verses. It did well enough five years ago 
 when I came to see you, and was moral coxcomb enough 
 at the time you wrote the lines, to feed upon such epi- 
 
1 16 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 thets ; but, besides that, the meaning of gentle is equiv- 
 ocal at best, and almost always means poor spirited ; the 
 very quality, of gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trump- 
 etings. My sentiment is long since banished. I hope 
 my virtues have done sucking. I can scarce think but 
 you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be 
 ashamed to think you could think to gratify me by such 
 praise, fit only to be a cordial to some green-sick son- 
 neteer." 
 
 The immediate cause of Lamb's insanity was his love 
 for his sweetheart, Alice W., as he delicately calls her. 
 He says that his sister would often " lend an ear to his 
 desponding, love-sick lay." After he had been in the 
 asylum, he writes to Coleridge that his " head ran upon 
 him, in his madness, as much almost as on another per- 
 son [meaning the dear one] who was the more immediate 
 cause of my frenzy." Later, he burned the " little jour- 
 nal," as he called it, " of his foolish passion." 
 
 It must have been at about this time that Coleridge had 
 a call from Lamb, which he speaks of in a letter to Ma- 
 tilda Betham. " I had," he says, " just time enough to 
 have half an hour's mournful conversation with him. He 
 displayed such fortitude in his manners, and such a rav- 
 age of mental suffering in his countenance, that I walked 
 off, my head throbbing with long weeping." 
 
 Wretched man ! In his disordered state — a tempest 
 of agitation — events sometimes affected him most 
 strangely. In a letter to Southey he says, " I was at 
 Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have been turned out 
 several times during the ceremony. Any thing awful 
 makes me laugh." 
 
 Ah ! poor humanity — in extremity — what are you to 
 say of it ? The plague, says Bulwer, breaks out at Flor- 
 ence, — all the pious virgins, the religious matrons, and 
 even the sacred sisters, devoted to seclusion and God, 
 give themselves up in a species of voluptuous delirium to 
 
LAMB. H7 
 
 the wildest excesses of prostitution and debauch. The 
 same pestilence visits Aix, and the oldest courtezans of 
 the place rush in pious frenzy to the hospitals, and devote 
 themselves to the certain death which seizes those who 
 attend upon the sick. 
 
 Yet, who but Lamb could have said so tender a word 
 for an unfortunate man as this ? — addressed also to 
 Southey : " Your friend John May has formally made 
 kind offers to Lloyd of serving me in the India House, 
 by the interest of his friend, Sir Francis Baring. It is 
 not likely that I shall ever put his goodness to the test 
 on my own account, for my prospects are very comfort- 
 able. But I know a man, a young man, whom he could 
 serve through the same channel, and, I think, would be 
 disposed to serve if he were acquainted with his case. 
 This poor fellow (whom I know just enough of to vouch 
 for his strict integrity and worth) has lost two or three 
 employments from illness, which he cannot regain. He 
 was once insane, and, from the distressful uncertainty of 
 his livelihood, has reason to apprehend a return of that 
 malady. He has been for some time dependent on a 
 woman whose lodger he formerly was, but who can ill 
 afford to maintain him ; and I know that on Christmas 
 night last he actually walked about the streets all night, 
 rather than accept of a bed, which she offered him, and 
 offered herself to sleep in the kitchen ; and in conse- 
 quence of that severe cold, he is laboring under a bilious 
 disorder, besides a depression of spirits, which incapac- 
 itates him from exertion when he most needs it. For 
 God's sake, Southey, if it does not go against you to ask 
 favors, do it now ; ask it as for me ; but do not do a vio- 
 lence to your feelings, because he does not know of this 
 application, and will suffer no disappointment." 
 
 You know what he did for John Morgan — Coleridge's 
 friend — whose name deserves to go down with the 
 Thrales, the Shaftesburys, the Abneys, the Gillmans, the 
 
1 18 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Unwins, and others who have afforded kindly shelter to 
 illustrious men of excellence, learning, or genius. Mor- 
 gan was the only child of a retired spirit merchant of 
 Bristol, who left him a handsome independence. He was, 
 according to Cottle, a worthy kind-hearted man, possessed 
 of more than an average of reading and good sense ; 
 generally respected, and of unpresuming manners. He 
 was a great friend and admirer of Coleridge ; deploring 
 his habits, and laboring to correct them. Except Mr. 
 Gillman there was no individual with whom Coleridge 
 lived gratuitously so much, during Morgan's residence in 
 London, extending to a domestication of several years. 
 When Morgan removed to Calne, in Wiltshire, for a long 
 time he gave Coleridge an asylum, and till his affairs, 
 through the treachery of others, became involved, Cole- 
 ridge, through him, never wanted a home. Morgan, after 
 the turn of the wheel of fortune till the day of his death, 
 was supported by a subscription, set on foot, and con- 
 tributed to — too liberally, no doubt — by Lamb. 
 
 To be taken into Lamb's favor and protection, it was 
 said, you had only to get discarded, defamed, and 
 shunned by every body else ; and if you deserved this 
 treatment, so much the better. " If I may venture so to 
 express myself," says Patmore, " there was in Lamb's eye 
 a sort of sacredness in sin, on account of its sure ill- 
 consequences to the sinner ; and he seemed to open his 
 arms and his heart to the rejected and reviled of man- 
 kind in a spirit kindred at least with that of the Deity." 
 
 "Take life too seriously, and what is it worth?" asks 
 Goethe, in Egmont. " If the morning wake us to no new 
 joys, if in the evening we have no pleasures, is it worth 
 the trouble of dressing and undressing ? " Lamb, under 
 the most discouraging circumstances, tried always to 
 make the best of life. You remember the Spaniard that 
 Southey tells us about, who always put on his spectacles 
 when about to eat cherries, that they might look bigger 
 
LAMB. 119 
 
 and more tempting. In like manner Lamb made the 
 most of his enjoyments, and though he did not cast his 
 eyes away from his troubles, he packed them in as little 
 compass as he could for himself, and never let them an- 
 noy others. 
 
 What a resource to him Rickman was ! — a clerk in the 
 House of Commons, introduced to him by George Dyer. 
 " This Rickman," says Lamb, describing him, " lives in 
 our Buildings, immediately opposite our house ; the finest 
 fellow to drop in o' nights, about nine or ten o'clock — 
 cold bread-and-cheese time — just in the wishing time of 
 the night, when you wish for some body to come in, with- 
 out a distinct idea of a probable any body. Just in the 
 nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a 
 reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand ; a fine 
 rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn 
 apes ; — himself hugely literate, oppressively full of in- 
 formation in all stuff of conversation, from matter of fact 
 to Xenophon and Plato — can talk Greek with Person, 
 politics with Thelwall, conjecture with George Dyer, non- 
 sense with me, and any thing with any body ; a great 
 farmer, somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine 
 — reads no poetry but Shakespeare, very intimate with 
 Southey, but never reads his poetry, relishes George 
 Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wherever 
 found, understands the first time (a great desideratum in 
 common minds) — you need never twice speak to him ; 
 does not want explanations, translations, limitations, as 
 Professor Goodwin does when you make an assertion ; 
 up to any thing ; down to every thing ; whatever sapit 
 hominem. A perfect man. ... a species in one. A 
 new class. . . . The clearest-headed fellow. Fullest of 
 matter, with least verbosity." 
 
 And here a word or two about Lamb's friends — mostly 
 an odd set of intellectual worthies. Coleridge — deep in 
 metaphysical subtleties, or up in the empyrean ; scholarly 
 
120 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 George Dyer — simple-hearted as my Uncle Toby — al- 
 ways conjecturing and always absent-minded — at one 
 time emptying the contents of his snuff-box into the tea- 
 pot, at another walking straight into the river at noonday ; 
 Barton — the healthful friend, and good Quaker poet; 
 Hazlitt — passionate and untamable — with a face as 
 pale as marble, yet pointed at as the " pimpled Haz- 
 litt " — who never tasted any thing but water, yet was 
 held up as an habitual gin-drinker ; Crabb Robinson — ■ 
 with the most hospitable of intellects — who had seen 
 every thing and every body, and was always entertaining ; 
 Talfourd — full of law and literature, and ever ready with 
 his reason or his rhetoric ; Rickman — bounding, as you 
 have seen, as a roe, and as fresh as the morning ; Rough 
 
 — a chronic and incurable borrower, to whom some of 
 Lamb's most amusing letters were written ; Manning — 
 the most wonderful of all, Lamb said ; Barry Cornwall — 
 who wrote sea songs, yet was rarely if ever on the toss- 
 ing element — whose poetry, it was said, is a record of the 
 extravagances of one who was habitually sober, the au- 
 dacities of one who was habitually cautious, the eloquence 
 of one who was habitually reserved ; Godwin — who 
 wrote against matrimony and was twice married, and 
 while scouting all commonplace duties, was a good hus- 
 band and kind father ; Lloyd — an insane poet, who took 
 lodgings at a working brazier's shop to distract his mind 
 from melancholy and postpone his madness ; Southey — 
 a bookworm and a bookmaker — who loved books so 
 well that some of his last hours were spent caressing 
 them; De Quincey — who had made himself famous by 
 inimitably confessing to the sin of opium ; Hammond 
 
 — an incomprehensible character, who journalized his 
 food, his sleep, and his dreams — who had a conviction 
 that he was to have been, and ought to have been, the 
 greatest of men, but was conscious in fact that he was 
 not — and who said, the chief philosophical value of his 
 
LAMB. . ft I 
 
 papers consisted in the fact that they recorded something 
 of a mind that was very near taking a station far above 
 all that had hitherto appeared in the world ; Blake — 
 artist, genius, mystic, madman — of whom it was said, 
 he possessed the highest and most exalted powers of the 
 mind, but not the lower — who could fly, but could not 
 walk — who had genius and inspiration, without the pro- 
 saic balance-wheel of common sense — who all his life 
 was a victim of poverty and privation, but who, in his old 
 age, put his hands on the head of a little girl, and said, 
 " May God make this world to you, my child, as beautiful 
 as it has been to me ; " and Wordsworth — who heard 
 and saw in abounding nature what nobody saw or heard 
 but himself without his assistance — who loved himself 
 chiefly, and disparaged Burns, and even Shakespeare, as 
 we shall see ; and Hood — " so grave, and sad, and 
 silent " — one of Lamb's youngest friends ; and Cottle, 
 the kind old bookseller ; and Munden, his favorite com- 
 edian ; and Liston ; and Charles Kemble ; and Morgan ; 
 and Jem White, " the drollest of fellows," the author of 
 the Falstaif Letters ; and the passionate Thelwall ; and 
 Clarkson, the destroyer of the slave-trade; and Basil 
 Montagu, the constant opponent of the judicial inflic- 
 tion of death ; and scholarly Barnes, the editor of the 
 Times newspaper ; and the turbulent, ambitious Haydon ; 
 and the frank-hearted Captain Burney, who voyaged round 
 the world with Captain Cook ; and stalwart Allan Cun- 
 ningham ; and Cary, "pleasantest of clergymen," who 
 " rendered the adamantine poetry of Dante into English ; " 
 and the Reverend Edward Irving; and the easy-going, 
 delightful Leigh Hunt ; and ever so many more, only a 
 little more obscure, — all of whom were visitors, friends, 
 associates, favorites, or pets, of Lamb — walking with 
 him in London streets — talking with him in quiet upper 
 rooms, all about books and authors, plays and players, 
 pictures and artists — any thing about which any one of 
 
122 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 them was interested. Nothing is easier than to gossip 
 about these interesting characters, — always interesting 
 in themselves, but especially so to us now, on account of 
 their acquaintance and association with Lamb. 
 
 His literary worli was mostly done for occupation, al- 
 though he did hope — occasionally, at least — for consid- 
 erable pecuniary remuneration from it. His plays disap- 
 pointed him — they did not take with the public. The 
 same may be said of his essays. " Present time and 
 future," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, " are rivals ; he who 
 solicits the one, must expect to be discountenanced by 
 the other." Willis, breakfasting at the Temple with a 
 friend, met Lamb. He mentioned having bought a 
 copy of Elia the last day he was in America, to send as 
 a parting gift to a lady. " What did you give for it ? " 
 said Lamb. " About seven and sixpence." " Permit 
 me to pay you that," said he ; and with the utmost ear- 
 nestness he counted out the money upon the table. " I 
 never yet wrote any thing that would sell. I am the pub- 
 lishers' ruin." " To be neglected by his contemporaries," 
 said Macaulay, speaking of Milton, "was the penalty 
 which he paid for surpassing them." 
 
 His literary expedients were many, and some of them 
 were very curious. " Coleridge," he says, in a letter to 
 Manning, "has lugged me to the brink of engaging to a 
 newspaper, and has suggested to me for a first plan, the 
 forgery of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the anato- 
 mist of melancholy. I have even written the introduc- 
 tory letter ; and, if I can pick up a few guineas in this 
 way, I feel they will be most refreshing, bread being so 
 dear." 
 
 Although he felt the need of money, and was con- 
 stantly in some literary employment, he fully realized the 
 miseries of subsisting by authorship. " 'T is a pretty 
 appendage to a situation like yours or mine," he wrote to 
 Barton ; " but a slavery, worse than all slavery, to be a 
 
LAMB. • 123 
 
 bookseller *s dependent, to drudge your brains for pots of 
 ale, and breasts of mutton, to change your free thoughts 
 and voluntary numbers for ungracious task-work. These 
 fellows hate us. The reason I take to be, that contrary 
 to other trades, in which the master gets all the credit, 
 (a jeweler or silversmith for instance,) and the journey- 
 man, who really does the fine work, is in the background ; 
 in our work the world gives all the credit to us, whom 
 they consider as their journeymen, and therefore do they 
 hate us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring 
 the blood of us out, to put another sixpence in their me- 
 chanic pouches." 
 
 The best of his literary achievements, no doubt, are 
 owing to the very necessity of occupation. In his isola- 
 tion and dreariness and gloom, he wrote and wrote to 
 keep his mind from preying on itself. You remember 
 the story of the black pin which the lady wore as a 
 brooch — repeated some time ago by Holmes in one of 
 his happy little speeches. Her husband had been con- 
 fined in prison for some political offense. He was left 
 alone with his thoughts to torture him. No voice, no 
 book, no implement — silence, darkness, misery, sleepless 
 self-torment ; and soon it must be madness. All at once 
 he thought of something to occupy these terrible unsleep- 
 ing faculties. He took a pin from his -neckcloth and 
 threw it upon the floor. Then he groped for it. It was 
 a little object, and the search was a long and laborious 
 one. At last he found it, and felt a certain sense of sat- 
 isfaction in difficulty overcome. But he had found a great 
 deal more than a pin — he had found an occupation, and 
 every day he would fling it from him and lose it, and 
 hunt for it, and at last find it, and so he saved himself 
 from going mad : and you will not wonder that when he 
 was set free and gave the little object to which he owed 
 his reason and, perhaps, his life, to his wife, she had it 
 set round with pearls and wore it next her heart. 
 
124 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 His monotonous, uninteresting, tread-mill work at the 
 office, it is easy to understand, became very oppressive 
 to him, and finally nearly unendurable. " My head is in 
 such a state from incapacity for business," wrote he to 
 Miss Betham, " that I certainly know it to be my duty 
 not to undertake the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly 
 know how I can go on. I have tried to get some redress 
 by explaining my health, but with no great success. No 
 one can tell how ill I am because it does not come out to 
 the exterior of my face, but lies in my skull deep and in- 
 visible. I wish I was leprous, and black-jaundiced skin- 
 over, and that all was as well within as my cursed looks. 
 You must not think me worse than I am. I am deter- 
 mined not to be over-set, but to give up business rather, 
 and get 'em to allow me a trifle for services past. O that 
 I had been a shoemaker or a baker, or a man of large 
 independent fortune. O darling laziness ! heaven of Ep- 
 icurus ! Saints' Everlasting Rest ! that I could drink vast 
 potations of thee through unmeasured Eternity — Otium 
 cum vel sine dignitate. Scandalous, dishonorable, any 
 kind of repose. I stand not upon the dignified sort. 
 Accursed, damned desks, trade, commerce, business. In- 
 ventions of that old original busy-body, brain-working 
 Satan — Sabbathless, restless Satan. A curse relieves : 
 do you ever try it ? " 
 
 In a letter to Barton he thus wails out his distresses : 
 "Of time, health, and riches, the first in order is not last 
 in excellence. Riches are chiefly good, because they give 
 us Time. What a weight of wearisome prison-hours have 
 I to look back and forward to, as quite cut out of life ! 
 and the sting of the thing is, that for six hours every day 
 I have no business which I could not contract into two, 
 if they would let me work task-work." 
 
 But, let us say, for the " weight of wearisome prison- 
 hours," we should never have had his precious letters. To 
 Walter Wilson, one of the friends of his youth, he wrote • 
 
LAMB. 125 
 
 " I have a habit of never writing letters but at the office ; 
 *tis so much time cribbed out of the company." He 
 sometimes spent a week at a time in elaborating a single 
 humorous letter. He was hunting the brooch. 
 
 Release came at length, but it was no better with him. 
 He found no-work worse even than over-work. To Bar- 
 ton he wrote : " I pity you for over-work, but, I assure 
 you, no work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the 
 most unwholesome food. I bragged formerly that I could 
 not have too much time. I have a surfeit. With but few 
 years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is 
 not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load 
 off that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have 
 killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl." 
 
 As to his indulgences, regrets, and indecision, he has 
 spoken for himself. He wrote to Manning, "I have been 
 ill more than a month, with a bad cold, which comes upon 
 me (like a murderer's conscience) about midnight, and 
 vexes me for many hours. ... I am afraid I must leave 
 off drinking." To Hazlitt he said, at the end of a letter, 
 " I am going to leave off smoke. In the meantime I am 
 so smoky with last night's ten pipes, that I must leave 
 off." 
 
 Ah ! these medicines for the mind. Easily indulged, 
 bitterly lamented, hardly avoided. In such cases as poor 
 Lamb's, a sentence from one of his own favorite authors 
 is peculiarly fitting : " In speaking of the dead, so fold 
 up your discourse that their virtues may be outwardly 
 shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence." " He 
 shall be immortal," said old Thomas Fuller, " who liveth 
 to be stoned by one without fault." 
 
 He drank wine only during dinner — none after it. 
 Over him, at one period of his life, " there passed regu- 
 larly," says De Quincey, "after taking wine, a brief 
 •eclipse of sleep. It descended upon him as softly as a 
 shadow. In a gross person, laden with superfluous flesh, 
 
1 26 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 and sleeping heavily, this would have been disagreeable ; 
 but in Lamb, thin even to meagreness, spare and wiry as 
 an Arab of the desert, or as Thomas Aquinas, wasted by 
 scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed rather a 
 net-work of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb — 
 more like a golden haze falling upon him gently from the 
 heavens than a cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh. 
 Motionless in his chair as a bust, breathing so gently as 
 scarcely to seem certainly alive, he presented the image 
 of repose midway between life and death, like the repose 
 of sculpture ; and to one who knew his history, a repose 
 affectingly contrasting with the calamities and internal 
 storms of his life. I have heard more persons," con- 
 tinues De Quincey, "than I can now distinctly recall, 
 observe of Lamb when sleeping, that his countenance in 
 that state assumed an expression almost seraphic, from 
 its intellectual beauty of outline, its childlike simplicity 
 and its benignity. It could not be called a transfigu- 
 ration that sleep had worked in his face ; for the features 
 wore essentially the same expression when waking ; but 
 sleep spiritualized that expression, exalted it, and also 
 harmonized it." 
 
 It was Coleridge, who, after smoking tobacco after 
 dinner, went to sleep on a sofa, where the company found 
 him, to their no small surprise, which was increased to 
 wonder, when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his 
 eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three hours' 
 description of the third heaven, of which he had had a 
 dream. 
 
 All accounts represent Lamb as one of the most punc- 
 tual of men, although he never carried a watch. A friend 
 observing the absence of this usual adjunct of a business 
 man's atlire, presented him with a new gold one, which 
 he accepted (no doubt reluctantly) and carried for one 
 day only. A colleague asked him what had become of 
 it. " Pawned," was the reply. He had actually pawned 
 
LAMB. 127 
 
 the watch, finding it a useless encumbrance. Nobody- 
 knows how much his necessities had to do with that man- 
 ner of disposing of the article ; or perhaps pride, which, 
 you remember, made proud old Sam Johnson reject the 
 new shoes which an officious or inconsiderate friend had 
 placed at his chamber door. 
 
 Lamb was never introduced to Scott ; but we are told 
 he used to speak with gratitude and pleasure of the cir- 
 cumstances under which he saw him once in Fleet-street. 
 A man, in the dress of a mechanic, stopped him just at 
 Inner Temple-gate, and said, touching his hat, " I beg 
 your pardon, sir, but perhaps you would like to see Sir 
 Walter Scott ; that is he just crossing the road ; " and 
 Lamb stammered out his hearty thanks to his truly hu- 
 mane informer. 
 
 He literally loved books, and every thing pertaining to 
 them. Sometimes — in a way scarcely discernible — he 
 would, kiss a volume of Burns ; as he would also a book 
 by Chapman, or Sir Philip Sidney, or any other which he 
 particularly valued. " I have seen him," said Procter, 
 *'read out passages from the Holy Dying and the Urn 
 Burial, and express in the same way his devotion and 
 gratitude." 
 
 We all know his supreme devotion to Shakespeare. 
 In a letter to Talfourd, he says that Wordsworth, who 
 worshiped nobody but himself, affected to slight Shake- 
 speare — said he was a clever man, but his style had a 
 great deal of trick in it, and that he could imitate him if 
 he had a mind to. " So you see," said Lamb, " there 's 
 nothing wanting but the mind." 
 
 Of Lamb's pathos, and deep religious feeling, we give 
 one interesting example, recorded by Hazlitt. Speaking, 
 in conversation, of Judas Iscariot, Lamb said : " I would 
 fain see the face of him, who, having dipped his hand in 
 the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterward be- 
 tray him. I have no conception of such a thing; nor 
 
128 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's very- 
 fine one) that gave me the least idea of it." ..." 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 Shakespeare 
 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." 
 
 *' Lamb's essays, the gossip of creative genius," says 
 an acute critic, " are of a piece with the records of his 
 life and conversation. Whether saluting his copy of 
 Chapman's Homer with a kiss, — or saying a grace before 
 reading Milton, — or going to the theatre to see his own 
 farce acted, and joining in the hisses of the pit when it 
 fails, — or eagerly wondering if the Ogles of Somerset 
 are not descendants of King Lear, — or telling Barry 
 Cornwall not to invite a lugubrious gentleman to dinner 
 because his face would cast a damp over a funeral, — or 
 giving as a reason why he did not leave off smoking, the 
 difficulty of finding an equivalent vice, — or striking into 
 a hot controversy between Coleridge and Holcroft, as to 
 whether man as he is, or man as he is to be, is preferable, 
 and settling the dispute by saying, ' Give me man as he 
 is not to be,' — or doing some deed of kindness and love 
 with tears in his eyes and a pun on his lips, — he is 
 always the same dear, strange, delightful companion and 
 friend. He is never — the rogue — without a scrap of 
 logic to astound common sense. * Mr. Lamb,' says the 
 head clerk at the India House, 'you come down very 
 late in the morning ! ' ' Yes, sir,' Mr. Lamb replies, ' but 
 then you know I go home very early in the afternoon ! ' " 
 
 When reminded by his sister of the days when they 
 were poor, and capable of enjoying every little treat with 
 the keenest relish, so different from the days when they 
 were rich, stately and dull, he said, "Well, Bridget, since 
 we are in easy circumstances, we must just endeavor to put 
 
LAMB. 129 
 
 up with it." On a certain occasion he blandly proposed 
 to his friend who offered to wrap up for him a bit of old 
 cheese which he had seemed to like at dinner, to let him 
 have a bit of string with which he could probably " lead 
 it home." He said to Coleridge, " You are one of the 
 most perfect of men, with only this one slight fault, that 
 if you have any duty to do, you never do it." You re- 
 member his objection to brandy-and-water, — " It spoiled 
 two good things." Crabb Robinson, just called to the 
 .bar, told Lamb exultingly, that he was retained in a cause 
 in the King's Bench. " Ah," said Lamb, " the great first 
 cause, least understood." Some one spoke of a Miss 
 Pate, when Lamb inquired if she was any relation of 
 Mrs. John Head of Ipswich. A person in his company 
 said something about his grandmother. "Was she a tall 
 woman ? " said Lamb. " I don't know ; no. Why do 
 you ask } " " Oh, mine was ; she was a granny dear.'* 
 Running on ludicrously about some lady who had died of 
 ^^^ love for him, he said, he " was very sorry, but we could 
 ^^vHOt command such inclinations." A lady who had been 
 visiting in the neighborhood of Ipswich, on her return 
 could"~tiiJk of nothing else but the beauty of the country 
 and the Writs of the people. Lamb remarked that she 
 was " Suffolfe^.ted." Like Dr. Johnson, he disliked the 
 country. " A garden," he said, " was the primitive prison, 
 till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily 
 sinned himself out of it." One of his odd sayings is re- 
 ported by Macready, — tnat " the last breath he drew in 
 he wished might be through a pipe and exhaled in a pun." 
 You have heard of his defense of lying, related by Leigh 
 Hunt, that " Truth was precious, and not to be wasted on 
 every body." " Hang the age," he wrote after one of his 
 literary failures, " I will write for antiquity." " One can- 
 not bear," he said, " to pay for articles he used to get for 
 nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny for non- 
 pareils at some stall in Mesopotamia, I think it went hard 
 
130 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where 
 he had so many for nothing." " The water-cure," he said, 
 " is neither new nor wonderful, but it is as old as the 
 Deluge, which, in my opinion, killed more than it cured." 
 
 But Lamb's " witty and curious sayings," says Talfourd, 
 " give no idea of the general tenor of his conversation, 
 which was far more singular and delightful in the traits, 
 which could never be recalled, than in the epigrammatic 
 turns which it is possible to quote. It was fretted into 
 perpetual eddies of verbal felicity and happy thought, 
 with little tranquil intervals reflecting images of exceed- 
 ing elegance and grace." 
 
 His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is 
 said to have been his best. Yet no one, it is stated, " ever 
 stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things 
 in half-a-dozen half sentences ; his jests scald like tears, 
 and he probes a question with a play on words." 
 
 " Charles Lamb is gone," lamented De Quincey ; "his 
 life was a continued struggle in the service of love the 
 purest, and within a sphere visited by little of contempo- 
 rary applause. Even his intellectual displays won but a 
 narrow sympathy at any time, and in his earlier period 
 were saluted with positive derision and contumely on the 
 few occasions when they were not oppressed by entire 
 neglect. But slowly all things right themselves. All 
 merit, which is founded in truth, and is strong enough, 
 reaches by sweet exhalations in the end a higher sensory ; 
 reaches higher organs of discernment, lodged in a selecter 
 audience. But the original obtuseness or vulgarity of 
 feeling that thwarted Lamb's just estimation in life, will 
 continue to thwart its popular diffusion. There are even 
 some that continue to regard him with the old hostility. 
 And we, therefore, standing by the side of Lamb's grave, 
 seemed to hear, on one side, (but in abated tones,) strains 
 of the ancient malice — * This man, that thought himself 
 to be somebody, is dead — is buried — is forgotten ! ' and, 
 
LAMB. 131 
 
 on the other side, seemed to hear ascending, as with the 
 solemnity of an anthem — * This man, that thought him- 
 self to be nobody, is dead — is buried ; his life has been 
 searched ; and his memory is hallowed forever ! ' " 
 
VI. 
 
 BURNS. 
 
 A DISTINGUISHED gentleman asked a poor man, whom 
 he overtook on a visit to the birth-place of Robert Burns, 
 — " Can you explain to me what it is that makes Burns 
 such a favorite with you all in Scotland? Other poets 
 you have, and great ones, but I do not perceive the same 
 instant flash, as it were, of an electric feeling when any 
 name is named but that of Burns." " I can tell you," 
 said the man, " what it is. It is because he had the heart 
 of a man in him. He was all heart and all man ; and 
 there 's .nothing, at least in a poor man's experience, 
 either bitter or sweet, which can happen to him, but a 
 line of Burns springs into his mouth, and gives him 
 courage and comfort if he needs it. It is like a second 
 Bible." 
 
 The reply of the peasant explains, in a few words, the 
 popularity and growing fame of the poet. Everywhere, 
 wherever men live and Burns is known, he is and will be, 
 we believe, the acknowledged poet of humanity. Scotch- 
 men especially, — on every spot of civilized earth, the 
 same as in Scotland, — love him and quote him, and ever 
 will love and quote him, particularly in every extremity 
 of ill-fortune. He was the one exceptional fearless man, 
 conceived by one of his countrymen, who had uttered 
 feelings and thoughts participated in by the whole human 
 race, and was the mouth of a dumb humanity. 
 
 When a very young man it was our good fortune to re- 
 ceive occasional nocturnal visits from an itinerant Scotch 
 clock-tinker, who highly entertained us with readings and 
 
BURNS. 133 
 
 recitations from Burns. He was very poor, but seemed 
 content with the very scanty living that his humble occu- 
 pation brought him. His figure we can see now, in all 
 its proportions, as we saw it then, by the light of a tallow 
 candle, in a little upper room in an Ohio village. His 
 head, especially, is vividly in memory. It was colossal, 
 in comparison with common heads, and would have been 
 picked out from an hundred thousand as in every way re- 
 markable. It was one of those two-storied heads that 
 Holmes talks so suggestively about, with the advantage 
 or disadvantage of having its upper story most commo- 
 dious and best occupied. The top of it rose like Walter 
 Scott's, and his brow had the expression that Socrates* 
 had, as shown in the bust we have of the philosopher. 
 His face, though rather a hard one in repose, warmed 
 and glowed under the inspiration of his beloved poet, as 
 the great Stockton's did in the sublime passages of his 
 sermons. The subtlest meanings were echoed by his 
 varying emphasis ; and responsive tears flowed down his 
 weather-beaten cheeks. When he gave a convivial song, 
 your ear caught the resounding laughter ; when he recited 
 a love ditty, you heard the 
 
 " Youthful, loving, modest pair, 
 In other's arms breathe out the tender tale, 
 Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale ; " 
 
 when he read a pitiless satire, you saw the miserable pre- 
 tender writhing under the poet's lash ; when he repeated 
 a passage full of all humanity and Christian charity, the 
 pathetic tenderness of his accents stirred the very foun- 
 tains of feeling ; when he read a lamentation upon pov- 
 erty, you understood at once the reconcilement the poet 
 so feelingly expresses of penury with death ; and when 
 he sang, with prodigious emphasis and spirit, that best of 
 all war-songs, Bruce's Address, you felt the truth of the 
 tradition, that the famous air was indeed the hero's march 
 at the battle of Bannockburn, and that the words were 
 
134 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 the veritable language addressed by the gallant royal 
 Scot to his heroic followers on that eventful morning. 
 The honest old man, who was so kind as to seek us out 
 in that solitary upper room, always met with a generous 
 welcome, a warm fire, and a pot of good ale from Father 
 Bowers', which helped him, for the time being, to forget 
 his patches and his hard lot, and to 
 " Snatch a taste 
 Of truest happiness." ^ 
 
 Burns, to him — the good clock-tinker — was indeed " like 
 a second Bible." 
 
 The learned Judge Rodgers once related to us a death- 
 bed incident of a neighbor of his, — another poor, honest 
 Scotchman, a woodsawyer, — whose inspiration and sol- 
 ace, all through his hard life, had been Scotia's great 
 poet. The good man, worn out and weary, was told by 
 his physician that his last hour had come — that he must 
 soon die. He received the announcement philosoph- 
 ically ; and after naming a few things for which he ex- 
 pressed a desire to live, he said to the judge — about the 
 last thing he said on earth — " Yes," (with a glowing face 
 and a grasp of the hand,) " for these things I should like 
 to live ; but — but — judge " (they had many a time 
 read the poet together,) — "I shall see — Burns ! " To 
 the honest woodsawyer also, Bums was " like a second 
 Bible." 
 
 In the Central Park, New York, is a piece of statuary 
 (removed, we believe, from its conspicuous place, on ac- 
 count of injury by the weather, and suffering somewhat 
 by fire in the building where it was placed for protection) 
 representing the meeting of two friends — Scotchmen. 
 The figures, as we remember them, are about half nat- 
 ural size, cut in light-colored sandstone. Traveling-bag, 
 hat, and dog, are hard by. The friends are seated at a 
 table, and are taking 
 
 " A cup o' kindness yet. 
 For auld lang syne." 
 
BURNS. 135 
 
 And they are grasping hands, — the whole illustrating the 
 verse — 
 
 " An' here 's a hand, my trusty fiere, 
 An' gie 's a hand o' thine ; 
 An' we '11 tak' a right guid willie-waught, 
 For auld lang syne." 
 
 Happy the sculptor so fortunate as to choose a subject 
 expressing the friendly feeling of all mankind ; especially 
 happy in wedding his art to Burns' immortal verse. Go 
 when you would, early or late, you always found a rapt 
 crowd surrounding the interesting work. 
 
 All his life in the jaws of need, Burns knew how to 
 feel for the poor and poverty-stricken. The circum- 
 stances even of his birth, were wretched. While his 
 mother was yet on the straw, the miserable clay cottage 
 fell above her and the infant bard, who both narrowly 
 escaped, first being smothered to death, and then of being 
 killed by cold, as they were conveyed through frost and 
 snow by night to another dwelling. Every day the pov- 
 erty of the family increased. The cattle died, the crops 
 failed, debts accumulated. They lived so sparingly that 
 butchers'-meat was nearly unknown to the family for 
 years. The poet describes his life, until his sixteenth 
 year, as "the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the un- 
 ceasing moil of a galley-slave." " Stubborn, ungainly 
 integrity, and headlong ungovernable irascibility," inter- 
 fered seriously with his father's success in the world ; 
 they made him poor and kept him so. At the age of 
 twenty-three Robert set out for himself. He "joined a 
 flaxdresser in a neighboring town to learn his trade. 
 This was an unlucky affair, and, to finish the whole, as 
 we were giving," he says, " a welcome to the New Year, 
 the shop took fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left like 
 a true poet, not worth a sixpence." And so all the way 
 through ; he had little of thrift at any time. His business 
 enterprises failed ; nothing he touched turned into gold. 
 
1 36 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 The pictures he drew were of life as he had seen it and 
 felt it. He had experienced its ills, and had realized their 
 benefits. Who but one who had known misfortunes could 
 have said of them so wisely? — 
 
 ** I, here, wha sit, ha'e met wi' some, 
 
 An 's thankf u' for them yet. 
 
 They gie the wit of age to youth ; 
 
 They let us ken oursel' ; 
 They mak' us see the naked truth, 
 The real guid and ill. 
 
 Though losses and crosses 
 Be lessons right severe, 
 There 's wit there, ye '11 get there, 
 Ye '11 find nae other where." 
 
 Who but one who had himself known " the miseries of 
 man " could so sympathizingly remember and immortalize 
 an old granduncle, with whom his mother lived while in 
 her girlish years ? The good old man was long blind ere 
 he died ; during which time his highest enjoyment was 
 to sit down and cry, while the poet's mother would sing 
 the simple old song of the Life and Age of Man. From 
 that pitiful scene in real life, and from his own bitter 
 experiences, he produced those immortal lines — so con- 
 solatory to poverty and wretchedness : — 
 
 " O Death ! the poor man's dearest friend — 
 
 The kindest and the best ! 
 Welcome the hour my aged limbs 
 
 Are laid with thee at rest ! 
 The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow. 
 
 From pomp and pleasure torn ; 
 But, oh ! a blest relief to those 
 
 That weary-laden mourn ! " 
 
 George Sand, in the introduction to one of her novels, 
 has been looking at an engraving of Holbein's Laborer. 
 " An old, thick-set peasant, in rags, is driving his plow in 
 the midst of a field. All around spreads a wild land- 
 scape, dotted with a few poor huts. The sun is setting 
 behind a hill ; the day of toil is nearly over. It has been 
 
BURNS. 137 
 
 > 
 
 hardj the ground is rugged and stony; the laborer's 
 horses are but skin and bone, weak and exhausted. There 
 is but one alert figure, the skeleton Death, who with a 
 whip skips nimbly along at the horse's side and urges the 
 team. Under the picture is a quotation in old French, 
 to the effect that after the laborer's life of travail and 
 service, in which he has to gain his bread by the sweat of 
 his brow, here comes Death to fetch him away. And 
 from so rude a life does Death take him, says George 
 Sand, that Death is hardly unwelcome ; and in another 
 composition by Holbein, where men of almost every con- 
 dition — popes, sovereigns, lovers, gamblers, monks, sol- 
 diers — are taunted with their fear of Death, and do in- 
 deed see his approach with terror, Lazarus alone is easy 
 and composed, and sitting on his dunghill at the rich 
 man's door, tells Death that he does not mind him." 
 What a picture the poet makes of 
 
 " Age and Want, oh ! ill-matched pair I " 
 further back in the poem last quoted. See ! 
 
 " On the edge of life. 
 With cares and sorrows worn ; 
 Then Age and Want — oh ! ill-matched pair I — 
 Show man was made to mourn." 
 
 Dr. Hooker, a traveler in Thibet, describes it as a 
 mountainous country, and inconceivably poor. There 
 are no plains save flats in the bottom of the valleys, and 
 the paths lead over lofty mountains. Sometimes, when 
 the inhabitants are obliged from famine to change their 
 habitations in winter, the old and feeble are frozen to 
 death standing and resting their chins on their staves ; 
 remaining as pillars of ice, to fall only when the thaw of 
 the ensuing spring commences ! — Ah ! 
 
 " Age and Want — oh ! ill-matched pair I " 
 a terrible illustration : too terrible to be contemplated. 
 It proves, that in life there are extremities of distress and 
 
138 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 wretchedness inconceivable, even to poetic fancy. Dante, 
 amongst the damned, saw nothing more dreadful. 
 
 " We talk," said Douglas Jerrold, " of the intemper- 
 ance of the poor ; why, when we philosophically consider 
 the crushing miseries that beset them — the keen suffer- 
 ing of penury, and the mockery of luxury and profusion 
 with which it is surrounded — the wonder is, not that 
 there are so many who purchase temporary oblivion of 
 their misery, but that there are so few." 
 
 Living in London streets accounts for the younger 
 Weller's shrewdness ; but the pretended advantages of 
 poverty are not to the poor themselves so easy to see, 
 nor so pleasant to contemplate. If success hath crowned 
 the struggle, the battle may be calculatingly, perhaps com- 
 placently, remembered. " I would not," said Jean Paul, 
 "for any money, have had money in my youth;" but 
 Jean Paul, no doubt, when he wrote the quaint words, 
 was looking back over the rugged way to eminence at- 
 tained. Looking up at the precipitous, jagged path, he 
 would have cried out in quite other words, if not too 
 dumb by despairing discouragement to utter them. 
 
 " Moralists tell you," said Sydney Smith, " of the evils 
 of wealth and station, and the happiness of poverty. I 
 have been very poor the greatest part of my life, and 
 have borne it as well, I believe, as most people, but I can 
 safely say that I have been happier every guinea I have 
 gained." 
 
 The advantages of poverty, at best but remote and 
 fortuitous, are sometimes subject to facetious illustration. 
 For instance, it is said that amongst the higher classes in 
 Constantinople, the mortality is out of proportion great, 
 owing to tv\'o facts ; first, whenever a person is unwell he 
 calls in a doctor, and the doctor as sure as fate calls in a 
 barber, and has the patient bled ; then, between doctors, 
 barbers, bleedings, and leechings, the patient stands a 
 fair chance of being soon carried to the burying- ground. 
 Poor folks cannot afford all this expense, and they live. 
 
BURNS. 139 
 
 Asa, King of Judah, Bible readers remember, " was 
 diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great : 
 yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the 
 physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers." 
 
 No man ever existed who better understood the uses 
 of money than Burns ; else could he have written those 
 oft-quoted lines ? They occur in The Epistle to a Young 
 Friend, — Mr. Andrew H. Aikin of Ayr, to whose father 
 the Cotter's Saturday Night is inscribed. Andrew is said 
 to have profited by the advice, as he lived and died a 
 prosperous man. Better did he " reck the rede than ever 
 did the adviser." 
 
 " To catch dame Fortune's golden smile. 
 Assiduous wait upon her ; 
 And gather gear by ev'ry wile 
 That 's justified by honor ; 
 Not for to hide it in a hedge, 
 Nor for a train attendant, 
 But for the glorious privilege 
 Of being independent." 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh returned to England from India 
 in broken health. He had enjoyed opportunities for ac- 
 cumulating a competency. He was judge of the admi- 
 ralty court, besides being recorder of Bombay. " He had 
 been," he said, '^ to El Dorado ; but he had forgotten the 
 gold ; and was obliged to confess to his friends that he 
 was ashamed of his poverty, since it showed a want of 
 common sense." 
 
 Burns, no doubt, often lamented his situation in the 
 same self-upbraiding spirit ; though the independence he 
 enjoyed was of the genuine sort, and altogether agreed 
 with his theory of life. It was that kind of independence 
 inculcated in the Oriental story. They asked the famous 
 Hatim Tayi, the most generous of mankind, " Have you 
 ever met any one more independent than yourself ? " He 
 replied : " Yes ! One day I gave a feast to the whole 
 neighborhood, and had fifty oxen roasted. As I was pro- 
 
140 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 ceeding to the place, I found a woodcutter tying up his 
 fagots. I said, *Why do you not go to Hatim's feast, 
 which is open to all ? ' But he answered, ' Whoever can 
 eat the bread earned by his own labor will not put him- 
 self under obligation to Hatim Tayi.' Then I knew that 
 I had found one more independent than myself." 
 
 Burns had a proud hatred of patronage. He would 
 not, like Samson's bees, " make honey in the bowels of a 
 lion, and fatten on the offal of a rich man's superfluities." 
 
 Charlemagne had the habit of impressing the seal upon 
 treaties which he had concluded with the pommel of his 
 sword, upon which was engraved, " Thus with the pom- 
 mel of my sword I seal this act, the conditions of which 
 I will execute with its point." Burns, with a like sense 
 of personal responsibility, swore " by that honor which 
 crowns the upright statue of Robert Burns' Integrity." 
 Like Voltaire, he perceived very early that every man 
 must be hammer or anvil, and he determined with the 
 great Frenchman to become a hammer. With what effect 
 he hammered injustice, falsehood, and hypocrisy, and 
 struck for liberty, equality, and the rights of man, all the 
 world will attest till the last day. 
 
 For his boldness he was, of course, hated. The hurt 
 cried out. Enemies were as hostile as friends were faith- 
 ful. The division was natural. Tze-Kung asked Confu- 
 cius, " What do you say of a man who is loved by all the 
 people of his village ? " The Master replied, " We may 
 not for that accord an approval of him." " And what do 
 you say of him who is hated by all the people of his vil- 
 lage } " The Master said, " We may not for that con- 
 clude that he i? bad. It is better than either of these 
 cases that the good in the village love him, and the bad 
 hate him." 
 
 Said old Daniel, enthusiastically, in his Epistle to Lady 
 Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, 
 
 " Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man." 
 
BURNS. 141 
 
 Like all enthusiasts, Burns' standards, in his exalted mo- 
 ments, were apt to be too high. The pattern was inimi- 
 table, and approximations only were discouraging. Soc- 
 rates' precept to attain honest fame — " Study to be what 
 you wish to seem" — was to him disheartening. His 
 self-reverence was shaken; and he felt himself as much 
 worse than himself as he had purposed being better. 
 Self-reverence ! You remember how it was urged upon 
 every one by the elder Cato, as every one is always in his 
 own presence. 
 
 " I was a lad of fifteen," said Scott to Lockhart, " when 
 Burns came to Edinburgh. The only thing I remember 
 which was remarkable in his manner was the effect pro- 
 duced upon him by a print, representing a soldier lying 
 dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side — 
 on the other, his widow with a child in her arms. These 
 lines of Langhorne's were written beneath : — 
 
 " Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain. 
 Perhaps that parent wept her soldiejr slain — 
 Bent o 'er the babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
 The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, 
 Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
 The child of misery baptized in tears." 
 
 Burns seemed much affected by the print: he actually 
 shed tears. There was a strong expression of sense and 
 shrewdness in all his lineaments j the eye alone, 1 think, 
 indicated the poetical character and temperament. It 
 was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say liter- 
 ally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I 
 never saw such another eye in a human head, though I 
 have seen the most distinguished men of my time." 
 
 Of Jeffrey, when a lad in his teens, it is recorded that 
 one day, as he stood on the High street of Edinburgh, 
 staring at a man whose appearance struck him, a person 
 at a shop door tapped him on the shoulder, and said, 
 "Aye, laddie, ye may weel look at. that man. That's 
 Robbie Burns." 
 
142 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 " I have been in the company of many men of genius, 
 some of them poets," said Ramsey, a laird, to Dr. Currie, 
 " but I never witnessed such flashes of intellectual bright- 
 ness as from him, the impulse of the moment, sparks of 
 celestial fire. When I asked whether the Edinburgh lit- 
 erati had mended his poems by their criticisms, ' Sir,' said 
 he, * these gentlemen remind me of some spinsters in my 
 country, who spin their thread so fine, that it is neither fit 
 for weft nor woof.' " 
 
 The scholarly and refined Edinburghers rigidly scruti- 
 nized the rustic poet, but all accounts warrant the state- 
 ment that he paid them back in their own coin. His 
 natural penetration was too keen to be blinded by a 
 learned look, a haught}^ bearing, or the glitter of a fashion. 
 One of his remarks, when he first went to Edinburgh was, 
 that " between the men of rustic life and the polite world 
 he observed little difference ; that in the former, though 
 unpolished by fashion, and unenlightened by science, he 
 had found much observation and intelligence." " He 
 manifested," says Lockhart, " in the whole strain of his 
 bearing and conversation, a most thorough conviction, 
 that in the society of the most eminent men of his na- 
 tion, he was exactly where he was entitled to be ; hardly 
 deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an occasional 
 symptom of being flattered by their notice ; by turns 
 calmly measured himself against the most cultivated un- 
 derstandings of his time in discussion ; overpowered the 
 witty sayings of the most celebrated convivialists by broad 
 floods of merriment, impregnated with all the burning 
 fire of genius ; astounded persons habitually enveloped 
 in the thrice-piled folds of social resen^e, by compelling 
 them to tremble, nay to tremble visibly beneath the fear- 
 less touch of natural pathos ; and all this without indi- 
 cating the smallest willingness to be ranked among those 
 professional ministers of excitement, who are content to 
 be paid in money and smiles for doing what the specta- 
 
BURNS. 143 
 
 tors and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their own 
 persons, even if they had the power of doing it." 
 
 Now and again, it is said, the homage to genius would 
 assume the character of the patronage of dependence, 
 afid then Burns' proud spirit would break through the 
 very courtesies of society, and lash the offender against 
 his jealous sense of independence with sarcasm or satire. 
 From this it has been judged by an English critic that 
 pride was the key to the personal character of Burns, 
 sometimes manifesting itself in what appeared to be arro- 
 gance and injustice. Pride he had undoubtedly, says one 
 of his biographers, but it was the pride of a man — an 
 honest uncompromising pride, that scorned the arrogance 
 and injustice of those who dared to obtrude their petty 
 conventional honors or social position before one who 
 knew their unreality. Could he have mounted a little of 
 the furnishings of the artful hypocrite, or the pliant syco- 
 phant, he might have slipped into the robes and dignity 
 of some lucrative office. 
 
 What a talker he must have been ! All accounts agree 
 in representing his conversation as wonderful. It was 
 better even than his verse. Sir Richard Phillips once 
 went up to Coleridge, after hearing him talk in a large 
 party, and offered him nine guineas a sheet for his con- 
 versations. If any enterprising publisher had been for- 
 tunate enough to secure a few hundred pages of Burns' 
 conversation, he might have dreamed of building another 
 Abbotsford. If another Boswell had followed him about, 
 what a book we should have ! 
 
 We have an account of a call that two Englishmen 
 made upon him. They found him fishing. He received 
 them with great cordiality, and asked them to share his 
 humble dinner. He was in his happiest mood, and the 
 charm of his conversation was altogether fascinating. 
 He ranged over a variety of topics, illuminating whatever 
 he touched. He related the tales of his infancy and 
 
144 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 youth; he recited some of his gayest and some of his 
 tenderest poems j in the wildest of the strains of his mirth 
 he threw in some touches of melancholy, and spread 
 around him the electric emotions of his powerful mind. 
 The Highland whiskey improved in its flavor ; the marble 
 bowl was again and again emptied and replenished ; the 
 guests of the poet forgot the flight of time and the dic- 
 tates of prudence ; at the hour of midnight they lost 
 their way to Dumfries, and could scarcely distinguish it 
 when assisted by the morning's dawn. No wonder that 
 " nicht wi' Bums " was so vividly remembered and so viv- 
 idly narrated. 
 
 In his fifteenth summer he first fell in love with a 
 "bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass." The tones of her voice 
 made his "heart-strings thrill like an ^olian harp," and 
 made his pulse beat a " furious ratan," when he " looked 
 and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel 
 nettle-stings and thistles." To her he wrote his first 
 song. Handsome Nell. In it occurs this felicitous verse : 
 
 " She dresses aye sae clean and neat, 
 Baith decent and genteel, 
 And then there 's something in her gait 
 Gars ony dress look weal." 
 
 "I composed it," he says, " in a wild enthusiasm of pas- 
 sion, and to this hour I never recollect it but my heart 
 melts, my blood sallies at the remembrance." 
 
 In his nineteenth summer he fell in love again, "which 
 ebullition," he says, " ended the school business at Kirk- 
 oswold. It was in vain to think of doing any more good 
 at school. The remaining week I stayed," he says, " I 
 did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, 
 or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my 
 stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the 
 image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me 
 guiltless." From that time on, we are told, for several 
 years, love-making was his chief amusement, or rather 
 
BURNS. 145 
 
 most serious business. His brother tells us that he was 
 in the secret of half the love affairs of the parish of Tar- 
 bolton, and was never without at least one of his own. 
 There was not a comely girl in the parish on whom he did 
 not compose a song, and then he made one which in- 
 cluded them all. 
 
 At twenty-three he had an affair which turned out to 
 be serious. Ellison Begbie, whom he " adored," and who 
 had " pledged her soul " to meet him " in the field of 
 matrimony," jilted him, " with peculiar circumstances of 
 mortification." His constitutional melancholy was in- 
 creased to such a degree, that " for three months," he 
 says, " I was in a state of mind scarcely to be envied 
 by the hopeless wretches who have got their mittimus. 
 Depart from me, ye accursed ! " To the cause of all this 
 distress he wrote some of his finest songs, especially that 
 of Mary Morison. 
 
 " Yestreen when to the trembling string 
 
 The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha', 
 To thee my fancy took its wing, 
 
 I sat, but neither heard nor saw : 
 Tho' this was fair, an' that was braw, 
 
 An' yon the toast of a' the town, 
 I sighed, an' said amang them a', 
 
 * Ye are na Mary Morison.' 
 
 O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, 
 
 Wha for thy sake would gladly dee ? 
 Or canst thou break that heart of his, 
 
 Whase only faut is loving thee ? 
 If love for love thou wilt nae gie, 
 
 At least be pity on me shown ; 
 A thought ungentle canna be 
 
 The thought o' Mary Morison." 
 
 In these lines to Clarinda, Mrs. MXehose, with whom 
 he had the famous correspondence, are concentrated, 
 Scott and Byron both thought, " the essence of a thou- 
 sand love tales : " 
 
146 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 ** Had we never loved so kindly, , 
 
 Had we never loved so blindly; 
 Never met, or never parted. 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 
 
 What a favorite he was with the fair ! It is said that 
 Abdallah, the father of Mahomet, the most admirable of 
 the Arabian youths, when he consummated his marriage 
 with Amina, of the noble race of Zahrites, two hundred 
 virgins died of jealousy and despair. Burns ! such a 
 splendid fellow ! such a hearty lover ! what wonder that 
 he also was the admiration of hosts of sighing maidens. 
 Salvini, magnificent histrionic lover that he is, were tame 
 indeed in comparison with Burns as an incarnation of the 
 tender passion. 
 
 He yielded to woman as Hercules yielded to Omphale, 
 or Samson to Delilah. His love was not platonic, but, 
 " the love of human passion, burning with the warmth of 
 human affection." Lovely woman inspired him. He 
 told Thomson that when he wished to compose a love- 
 song, his recipe was to put himself on a " regimen of ad- 
 miring a beautiful woman." When Aristotle was asked 
 why people liked to spend a great deal of time in the 
 presence of beauty, he said, " That is a question for a 
 blind man to ask." 
 
 His intense earnestness put him often at loggerheads 
 with the universe. The Orientalists have a saying, that 
 when a word has once escaped, a chariot with four horses 
 cannot overtake it. He had opinions, and was unwise 
 enough to express them. Wise men, said old John Sel- 
 den, say nothing in dangerous times. The Lion, you 
 know, called the Sheep to ask her if his breath smelt : 
 she said Aye ; he bit off her head for a fool. He called 
 the Wolf and asked him : he said No ; he tore him in 
 pieces for a flatterer. At last he called the Fox and 
 asked him : Truly he had got a cold and could not smell. 
 
 Joubert has said, that we use up in the passions the 
 
BURNS. 147 
 
 stuff that was given us for happiness. It is accounted a 
 melancholy fact by Madame de Stael, that from the influ- 
 ence of the passions, the human race is doomed to move 
 in the same circle of error, notwithstanding its advance- 
 ment by the acquisition of intellect. To most men, " ex- 
 perience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine 
 only the track it has passed." 
 
 Memnon, in the story, conceived the insensate idea of 
 becoming perfectly wise. He said to himself, To become 
 very wise, all which is necessary is to control the passions, 
 and that may be easily done. The day after, on his way 
 home from the Palace, he reflected on the excellent res- 
 olutions he had formed — to defy the power of women ; 
 to guard against intemperance and quarrels ; preserve his 
 independence, and not solicit favors at court : yet in one 
 day, he had suffered himself to be duped by a woman, 
 and robbed, been intoxicated, lost deeply at play, had his 
 eye knocked out in a quarrel, was reduced to poverty, 
 and had solicited a favor at court, where he had received 
 nothing but contempt. 
 
 The ways of men will be awry. They will not straighten 
 them, nor let you, without resistance. Remember the 
 battle ! It is in cracking the bad nuts that you hurt your 
 fingers. Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, when 
 he abdicated a throne, and retired to the monastery of 
 Yuste, amused himself with the mechanical arts, and 
 particularly with that of watch-making. He one day ex- 
 claimed, " What an egregious fool must I have been to 
 have squandered so much blood and treasure, in an ab- 
 surd attempt to make all men think alike, when I cannot 
 even make a few watches keep time together." 
 
 Men mean better than they do ; and pride of opinion 
 will account for most of their differences. For fifteen 
 hundred years, the story is, two sects in Babylon had 
 maintained a violent contest. One said it was proper to 
 enter the Temple with the right foot foremost ; the other 
 
148 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 insisted that it should be with the left foot foremost ; and 
 both sects impatiently expected the day on which the fes- 
 tival of the sacred fire was to be celebrated to see which 
 of them Zadig would favor. Zadig, you must know, had 
 acquired the admiration and love of the people ; his 
 name was celebrated throughout the empire. The learned 
 considered him as an oracle ; the priests confessed that 
 he was wiser than the old archmagi Yebor ; and they be- 
 lieved only what he thought was probable. The people 
 were all in suspense and perturbation. The day arrived, 
 and every eye was fixed on the feet of Zadig. He placed 
 them close together, and jumped into the Temple. 
 
 Genius is bold, and strikes to the core. Talent hesitates, 
 and stops short. There is said to be a species of cactus 
 from whose outer bark, if torn by some ignorant person, 
 there exudes a poisonous liquid ; but the natives, who 
 know the plant, strike to the core, and thus find a sweet, 
 refreshing juice, that renews their strength. 
 
 Talent busies itself with modes and accommodations, 
 and the purpose is apt to be obscured in a chaos of de- 
 tails. We have an analysis of one of the most pathetic 
 of Balzac's minor stories, which describes the fate of a 
 poor painter, who had labored for years at a picture des- 
 tined to create a new era in art. All his hopes in life, his 
 love and his ambition, were involved in his success. No 
 one had been admitted to the room in which he labored 
 with unremitting devotion. At last, the day came when 
 the favored person stood before the curtain which con- 
 cealed the masterpiece. The painter drew it aside, slowly 
 and solemnly, and revealed a meaningless confusion of 
 chaotic coloring. The artist's mind was unhinged, and 
 had been nearly destroyed by endless refinements and de- 
 tails. Recalling the statement made by Dr. Johnson, that 
 Mallet, though pensioned for the purpose, never wrote a 
 single line of his projected life of Marlborough, — grop- 
 ing for materials, and thinking of it, till he exhausted his 
 mind. 
 
BURNS. 149 
 
 The rapidity of Burns' genius may be imagined from 
 the production of some of his poems — Tam o' Shanter, 
 for instance — which, we are told by Mrs. Burns, was the 
 work of a single day. She retained a vivid recollection 
 of it. Her husband had spent most of the day by the 
 river side, and in the afternoon she joined him with her 
 two children. He was busily engaged crooning to himself ; 
 and Mrs. Burns perceiving that her presence was an in- 
 terruption, loitered behind with her little ones among the 
 broom. Her attention was presently attracted by the 
 strange and wild gesticulations of the bard, who was now 
 seen at some distance, agonized with an ungovernable 
 access of joy. He was reciting very loud, and with tears 
 rolling down his cheeks, those animated verses which he 
 had just conceived : 
 
 " Now Tam ! O Tam ! had thae been queans, 
 A' plump and strapping, in their teens." 
 
 " I wish ye had seen him," said his wife ; " he was 
 in such ecstasy that the tears were happing down his 
 cheeks." Some passages of that poem, produced that 
 day by the river side, appear to us as the figures of Michel 
 Angelo appeared to Castelar — " as if they had issued 
 from the flashes of a tempest, and been produced from 
 the fury of a giant." The rapidity of his genius may be 
 illustrated by a tradition of Mahomet, who, his followers 
 believe, was conveyed by the angel Gabriel through the 
 seven heavens, paradise, and hell, and held fifty-nine thou- 
 sand conferences with God, and was brought back to his 
 bed before the water had finished flowing from a pitcher 
 which he upset as he departed. 
 
 In sight of the Mexicans, who had a vast superiority of 
 men and artillery. General Taylor held a council of war, 
 and the nearly unanimous opinion was, that he should not 
 risk a contest. " Gentlemen," said Taylor, " I adjourn 
 this council, until to-morrow — after the battle," — which, 
 it is hardly necessary to say, he won, against the great 
 
150 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 odds. Burns had like confidence in his abilities, and 
 knew what he could do. Scott told Leslie, the artist, that 
 he had known a laboring man who was with Burns when 
 he turned up the mouse with his plow. The poet's first 
 impulse was to kill it, but checking himself, as his eye 
 followed the little creature, he said, " I '11 make that mouse 
 immortal." In connection with this, how amusing the 
 letter received by Goethe, from a conceited student, who 
 begged of him the plan for the second part of Faust, 
 with the design of completing the work himself ! 
 
 The first object that strikes the eye on approaching 
 Palermo is the Monte Pellegrino, whose square and iso- 
 lated mass shelters the town from the north-westerly 
 winds, and makes the sirocco still more oppressive. When 
 the great Napoleon was in power, the people believed, 
 it is said, so great was their confidence in his supernat- 
 ural power, that if he made himself master of Sicily, he 
 would cause this mountain to be thrown into the sea. 
 The ruder country lads and the lower peasantry, looked 
 upon Burns as more than a man — with something like 
 supernatural power. Especially they dreaded "lest he 
 should pickle and preserve them in sarcastic song." Once 
 at a penny wedding, when two wild lads quarreled, and 
 were about to fight, Burns rose up and said, " Sit down, 
 or I '11 hang you up like potato-bogles in sang to-morrow." 
 They ceased, and sat down, it is stated, as if their noses 
 had been bleeding. 
 
 It is an observation of Lord Halifax that a man has 
 rarely one good quality but he possesses too much of it. 
 Burns' detestation of falsehood, injustice, and hypocrisy, 
 sometimes made him merciless in assaulting them. Hyp- 
 ocrites, especially, trembled and winced under his lash. 
 He was well aware, with Moliere, of the marvelous ad- 
 vantages that the profession of hypocrisy possesses, and 
 the fact angered him. It is an act, says the French dram- 
 atist, of which the imposture is always respected; and 
 
BURNS. 151 
 
 though it may be discovered, no one dares to do any- 
 thing against it. All the other vices of man are liable to 
 censure, and every one has the liberty of boldly attack- 
 ing them, but hypocrisy is a privileged vice, which with 
 its hand closes everybody's mouth, and enjoys its repose 
 with sovereign impunity. 
 
 " The tender creature's eyes with sweetness swell : 
 Heaven 's in those eyes, and in his heart is hell." 
 
 " There is some hypocrisy," says Thackeray, " of which 
 one does not like even to entertain the thought ; espe- 
 cially that awful falsehood which trades with divme truth, 
 and takes the name of Heaven in vain." Kossuth had a 
 similar horror of the same awful falsehood, when he spoke 
 of one who had climbed to the top of the altar of God 
 to light the torch of Satan. 
 
 Burns hated lying, and had a conscience toward God, 
 which, says George Macdonald, is the guide to freedom, 
 but conscience toward society is the slave of a fool. 
 " Any man may put himself in training for a liar by doing 
 things he would be ashamed to have known." You re- 
 member the philosopher in Lucian, who was present at 
 Jupiter's whispering place, and heard one pray for rain, 
 another for fair weather ; one for his wife's, another for 
 his father's death, etc., — all asking that at God's hand 
 which they were ashamed any man should hear. 
 
 Peasantry and gentry, saint and sinner, alike knew, and 
 alike dreaded, his ridicule. And what is there, pray, that 
 is more dreadful than the ridicule of genius ? Nothing 
 so much put Napoleon in a rage : it made him drive Mad- 
 ame de Stael out of his empire. Nobody likes it, for the 
 reason that nobody likes to be exposed, and all the world 
 is ready to unite in punishing it. The Koran threatens 
 that on the day of resurrection, those who have indulged 
 in ridicule will be called to the door of Paradise, and 
 hear it shut in their faces, when they reach it. Again, on 
 their turning back they will be called to another door, 
 
152 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 and again, on reaching it, will see it closed against them ; 
 and so on without end. 
 
 Burns, for his disposition to satire, was bitterly pun- 
 ished by his neighbors, in the only way they could punish 
 one so superior to them. They exaggerated his follies, 
 and scandalized his name. "The disposition," says 
 Froude, speaking of a certain scandal relating to Caesar, 
 "to believe evil of men who have risen a few degrees 
 above their contemporaries, is a feature of human nature 
 as common as it is base ; and when to envy there are 
 added fear and hatred, malicious anecdotes spring like 
 mushrooms in a forcing-pit." Arthur Helps remarks, in 
 reference to the accusation against Cortez of having 
 poisoned Ponce de Leon, that " any man who is much 
 talked of will be much misrepresented. Indeed, malig- 
 nant intention is unhappily the least part of calumny, 
 which has its sources in idle talk, playful fancies, gross 
 misrepresentations, utter exaggerations, and many other 
 rivulets of error that sometimes flow together in one huge 
 river of calumniation, which pursues its muddy, mischiev- 
 ous course unchecked for ages." 
 
 Admire him, however, they would, abuse him as they 
 might. They were proud of him, even those who hated 
 him. Moore records in his Diary, that when a number of 
 persons in his presence were speaking of O'Connell, — 
 of the mixture there was in the great Irishman of high 
 and low, formidable and contemptible, mighty and mean, 
 Bobus Smith summed up all by saying : " The only way 
 to deal with such a man is to hang him up, and erect a 
 statue to him under his gallows." 
 
 Speaking his mind, as freely as Burns did, has ruined 
 many a man. It is an extravagance that few men can af- 
 ford. Sydney Smith, at a meeting of the clergy to petition 
 parliament against the passage of the Catholic emancipa- 
 tion bill, found himself in a minority of one. A poor cler- 
 gyman whispered to him that he was quite of his way of 
 
BURNS. 153 
 
 thinking, but had nine children. The witty and humane 
 parson begged he would remain a Protestant. 
 
 They pronounced him irreligious, because he hated and 
 scourged hypocrisy. Full as he was of religious feeling, 
 they were ready to deny him belief in God ; — the truth 
 being that no one exceeded him in reverence of the Deity, 
 nor had a greater horror of atheism or an atheist. Who 
 could ever forget his expression ? — 
 
 " An atheist's laugh 's a poor exchange 
 For Deity offended." 
 
 Few really great men have been professed atheists. 
 Voltaire, it will be remembered, said to the atheist Dam- 
 ilaville, " My friend, after you have supped on well-dressed 
 partridges, drank your sparkling champagne, and slept on 
 cushions of down in the arms of your mistress, I have 
 no fear of you, though you do not believe in God. But 
 if you are perishing of hunger, and I meet you in the 
 corner of a wood, I would rather dispense with your com- 
 pany." 
 
 His hatred of injustice, cant, and hypocrisy, had the 
 effect no doubt to put him often into too intimate relation 
 and association with those who were really uncongenial 
 to him, but who had like aversions with himself. It has 
 been said, somewhat cynically perhaps, " That we must 
 have the same enmities to be united in spirit. In order 
 to love one another, we must have hatreds in common." 
 Some strange friendships in political life might be cited 
 in illustration. Literature, too, could produce some 
 proofs. We know, for instance, how, on account of the 
 satire of- Fielding, the moral Richardson and the disso- 
 lute Gibber became lasting friends. 
 
 But, in mixing with all, he found many advantages. 
 Meeting freely the low and the mean, as well as the high 
 and influential, he had every view of man, and was en- 
 abled to know the possibilities of so great a composition. 
 The good and the evil lie close together ; the virtues and 
 
154 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 the vices alternate : so is power accumulated ; alternately 
 metals and rags — a terrible voltaic pile. To know man, 
 you must know men — all sorts of men. Nothing, it has 
 been truly said, more conducts to liberality of judgment 
 than facile intercourse with various minds. The com- 
 merce of intellect loves distant shores. The small retail 
 dealer trades only with his neighbor ; when the great 
 merchant trades, he links the four quarters of the globe. 
 
 But with all his gettings, he did not get the wisdom of 
 silence. He knew it, but could not put it in practice. 
 He advised it, but did not act upon it. 
 
 " Aye free, aff han' your story tell, 
 When wi' a bosom crony ; 
 But still keep something to yoursel' 
 Ye scarcely tell to ony." 
 
 And here we may profit by an observation of Leigh 
 Hunt's — which Burns above all men realized — that the 
 great secret of giving advice successfully is to mix up 
 with it something that implies a real consciousness of the 
 adviser's own defects, and as much as possible of an ac- 
 knowledgment of the other party's merits. Most advisers 
 sink both the one and the other ; and hence the failure 
 which they meet with, and deserve. Burns knew too well 
 his own habit of talking right out of his mind, and mem- 
 orably warned against the dangers of so easy and costly 
 an indulgence. The law of the Pundits he should have 
 nailed on his door-post : " The Magistrate, at what time 
 he is desirous to consult with his counselors, should 
 choose a retired place, on the top of the house, or on the 
 top of a mountain, or in the desert, or some such secret 
 recess, and shall hold his council there ; and in places 
 where there are parrots, or other talkative birds, he shall 
 not hold his council, while they are present." 
 
 He was a born convivialist, and they pronounced him 
 a drunkard. Drinking was very general in his day, and 
 we imagine he drank little if any more than those who 
 
BURNS. 155 
 
 drank less publicly. " It is a current story in Teviot- 
 dale," says Scott, " that in the house of an ancient family 
 of distinction, much addicted to Presbyterianism, a Bible 
 was always put into the sleeping apartment of the guests, 
 along with a bottle of strong ale. On some occasion 
 there was a visiting of clergymen in the vicinity of the 
 castle, all of whom were invited to dinner by the worthy 
 baronet, and several abode all night. According to the 
 fashion of the times, seven of the reverend guests were 
 allotted to one large barrack-room, which was used on 
 such occasions of extended hospitality. The butler took 
 care that the divines were presented, according to custom, 
 each with a Bible and a bottle of ale. But after a little 
 consultation amongst themselves, they are said to have 
 recalled the domestic as he was leaving the apartment. 
 * My friend,' said one of the venerable guests, ' you must 
 know, when we meet together as brethren, the youngest 
 minister reads aloud a portion of Scripture to the rest ; — 
 only one Bible, therefore, is necessary ; take away the 
 other six, and in their place bring six more bottles of 
 ale.' " 
 
 It is yet not an uncommon thing, we believe, in Scot- 
 land, for the clerg}^man, upon returning with the gentle- 
 men to the dining-hall, after dinner, to ask a blessing, the 
 same as at dinner when the ladies were present, although 
 only the bottles and the necessary conveniences for drink- 
 ing have a place upon the table. 
 
 Alcohol is as old as Satan. Klopstock, in his Messiah, 
 indulges the speculation that the loved and hated thing 
 was introduced by Satan into the tree of knowledge be- 
 fore our first parents partook of it, and was attended with 
 the same effects that have followed it ever since. One of 
 the tales in Gesta Romanorum is to the effect that Noah 
 discovered the wild vine, and because it was bitter, he took 
 the blood of four animals, — of a lion, of a lamb, a pig, 
 and a monkey; this mixture he united with earth, and 
 
156 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 made a kind of fertilizer, which he put at the roots of the 
 vines. Thus the blood sweetened the fruit, with which 
 he afterward intoxicated himself, and lying naked in his 
 tent, was derided by his younger son. 
 
 The excuse generally given for drinking is, that it un- 
 clogs the wheels of life, and sets them running faster than 
 usual. A zest in that way is given to it, for the time be- 
 ing, in spite of all its impediments and burdens. Black- 
 stone composed his Commentaries with a bottle of port 
 before him. Addison's conversation is reported as not 
 good for much till he had taken a similar dose. Byron's 
 account of a party with Sheridan is picturesque. It was, 
 he says, first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then 
 disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then in- 
 articulately, then drunk. Irving used to tell a witty anec- 
 dote of one of his early friends, Henry Ogden, illustrative 
 of the convivial feature of the dinners in New York when 
 he was a young man. Ogden had been at one of these 
 festive meetings on the evening before, and had left with 
 a brain half bewildered by the number of bumpers he 
 had been compelled to drink. He told Irving the next 
 day that in going home he had fallen through a grating, 
 which had carelessly been left open, into a vault beneath. 
 The solitude, he said, was rather dismal at first, but sev- 
 eral other of the guests fell in, in the course of the even- 
 ing, and they had on the whole quite a pleasant night 
 of it. 
 
 The implicit faith the Scotch have in their clergy, in 
 all things, is sometimes a great protection to the cloth. 
 Fifty years ago, we are told, when most of the good folk 
 in Scotland esteemed going to the theatre as entirely 
 analogous to going to destruction, a popular Edinburgh 
 preacher, being in London, was surreptitiously entering 
 with the multitude into the pit of Drury Lane. Suddenly 
 a hand was laid upon him, and an awe-stricken voice said, 
 " Oh, Doctor MacGrugar, what would the congregation in 
 
BURNS. 157 
 
 Tolbooth Kirk say if I told them I saw you here ? " 
 " Deed," replied the ready-witted divine, " they wadna 
 believe you, and so you needna tell them." 
 
 Dr. Alexander Webster, also of Edinburgh, was re- 
 markable, according to Scott, for the talent with which 
 he at once supported his place in convivial society, and a 
 high character as a leader of the strict and rigid Presby- 
 terian party in the Church of Scotland, which certainly 
 seemed to require very different qualifications. He was 
 ever gay amid the gayest. When it once occurred to 
 some one present to ask, what one of his elders would 
 think, should he see his pastor in such a merry mood : — 
 " Think ! " replied the doctor ; " why he would not believe 
 his own eyes." 
 
 Johnson and Boswell were told in Sky, that every week 
 a hogshead of claret was drunk at the table of Sir Alex- 
 ander MacDonald — kinsman of the romantic and heroic 
 Flora, the guide and companion of Charles Edward 
 Stuart, after his defeat at Culloden, disguised as a woman. 
 
 That for which a laird or a doctor of divinity was ex- 
 cused, was punished with severity in a peasant. Burns 
 was, and is, bitterly censured, for what were, in his day, 
 common sins of society. It is too much the way of the 
 world, savage or civilized, and, we fear, ever will be. It 
 is the Feejeean idea of justice, where the criminality of an 
 act is in proportion to the rank of the offender. Murder 
 by a chief is less heinous than petty larceny committed 
 by a man of low rank. It is the universal rule, to esti- 
 mate men, and respect them, according to circumstances. 
 Pope was one day with Sir Godfrey Kneller, when his 
 nephew, a Guinea-trader, came in. "Nephew," said Sir 
 Godfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest 
 men in the world." " I don't know how great you may 
 be," said the slave-trader, " but I don't like your looks : 
 I have often bought a man, much better than both of you 
 together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas." 
 
158 CHAPACTERISTICS. 
 
 " It is a folly," said Publius Syrus, " to punish your 
 neighbor by fire when you live next door." " If he that 
 were guiltless himself," said old Burton, " should fling 
 the first stone at thee, and he alone should accuse thee 
 that were faultless, how many executioners, how many ac- 
 cusers, wouldst thou have ? If every man's sins were 
 written in his forehead, and secret faults known, how many 
 thousands would parallel, if not exceed thy offense? It 
 may be the judge that gave you sentence, the jury that 
 condemned thee, the spectators that gazed on thee, de- 
 served much more, and were far more guilty than thou 
 thyself. But it is thine infelicity to be taken, to be made 
 a public example of justice, to be a terror to the rest ; yet 
 should every man have his desert, thou wouldst peradven- 
 ture be a saint in comparison." 
 
 Say the Buddhists, "This is an old saying, O Atula! 
 this is not only of to-day : ' They blame him who sits si- 
 lent, they blame him who speaks much, they also blame 
 him who says little ; there is no one on earth who is not 
 blamed.' " 
 
 Archibald Prentice could not bear to hear any one 
 speak evil of his friend Burns. Once at a meeting of 
 ministers and elders, some of them began to denounce 
 Burns' works as immoral. "I tell you what," said the 
 old man, " if you had a' his ill and the half o' his gude 
 amang ye, ye 'd be a' better men than ye are." 
 
 "Since Adam," said Margaret Fuller, "there has been 
 none that approached nearer fitness to stand up before 
 God and angels in the naked majesty of manhood than 
 Robert Bums ; — but there was a serpent in his field also ! 
 Yet but for his fault we could never have seen brought 
 out the brave and patriotic modesty with which he owned 
 it. Shame on him who could bear to think of faults in 
 this rich jewel, unless reminded by such confession." 
 
 Ah ! the chances and accidents and risks of life ! We 
 never can estimate them. The Duke of Wellington was 
 
BURNS. 1 59 
 
 accustomed to say that the stumbling of a horse in a 
 charge of cavalry might lose a battle ; and, mindful of 
 these chances, Sir Charles Napier wrote, "I am as sure 
 of a victory as a man who knows that victory is an acci- 
 dent can be." Julius Caesar owed two millions when he 
 risked the experiment of being General in Gaul. If Ju- 
 lius Caesar, reflected Bulwer, had not lived to cross the 
 Rubicon, and pay off his debts, what would his creditors 
 have called Julius Caesar ? 
 
 There is a novel by Emile Souvestre, in which all the 
 warm-hearted people come to grief, and the cold-hearted 
 calculating monopolize all the honors and riches of this 
 world. But the balance is restored in the next, when all 
 hearts being laid bare, in those of the prosperous appears 
 a serpent, and in those of the reprobates a star. 
 
VII. 
 THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 
 
 In the year of our Lord 1720, in the province of New 
 Jersey, was born into the world, in the judgment of a very 
 high literary and critical authority of Great Britain, " the 
 man, who, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, 
 lived nearest to the Divine pattern." John Woolman was 
 the name of the remarkable man. He was a Quaker, 
 who lived a quiet, somewhat ascetic life, and left behind 
 him some simple, unrhetorical writings, all of which to- 
 gether would make no more than one ordinary volume. 
 The chief and best known of his published works is the 
 Journal of his Life and Travels. It is one of those little 
 books that have had incalculable good influence. " Re- 
 member," says Joubert, " what St. Francis of Sales said, 
 in speaking of the Imitation of Christ, — * I have sought 
 repose every where, and have only found it in a little cor- 
 ner, with a little book.' Happy is the writer who can 
 make a beautiful little book! " Woolman's Journal is 
 such another beautiful little book, and deserves to be read 
 and cherished along with the' immortal Imitation. The 
 one, indeed, is a constant reminder of the other, as the 
 same spirit of purity, humility, and devotion characterizes 
 both. 
 
 " Get the writings of John Woolman by heart," is the 
 emphatic advice of Charles Lamb, in one of his essays. 
 Dr. Channing, not long before his death, expressed his 
 very great surprise that the writings of Woolman were so 
 little known. His countenance lighted up as he pro- 
 nounced Woolman's Journal "beyond comparison the 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. l6l 
 
 sweetest and purest autobiography in the language." "I 
 should almost despair of that man," said Coleridge, "who 
 could peruse the Life of John Woolman without an ame- 
 lioration of heart." Crabb Robinson, after referring to a 
 sermon by the distinguished Edward Irving, which he 
 feared would deter rather than promote belief, said : 
 " How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have 
 been reading at the same time ! A perfect gem ! His is 
 a beautiful soul. An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style 
 of the most exquisite purity and grace. His moral quali- 
 ties are transferred to his writings. His religion was love. 
 His whole existence and all his passions were love. If 
 one could venture to impute to his creed, and not to his 
 personal character, the delightful frame of mind he ex- 
 hibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert. His 
 Christianity is most inviting, — it is fascinating." Theo- 
 dore Parker was in like manner impressed with the ex- 
 traordinary qualities of the Journal, and the Christian 
 character of its author. ** This is one of the most en- 
 couraging books," he wrote, "that I ever read. What 
 depths of insight into divine things ! How lowly and 
 meek ! How lofty, too, his aspirations ! What gentle 
 courage — what faith ! " 
 
 The most encouraging of all the thousands and thou- 
 sands of books the great reader and scholar and thinker 
 had read 1 Why ? Because, the Christianity inculcated 
 in it, illustrated in it, incarnated in its author, is appre- 
 hensible, comprehensible — more than all, it is practical 
 and practicable. That, we take to be the reason, and a 
 reason sufficient, why the Journal of John Woolman is 
 so encouraging to Christians and so unique in religious 
 literature. The religion it inculcates and illustrates is a 
 religion for men, not for angels — for human creatures, 
 not for celestial intelligences — very human creatures, 
 with appetites, and passions, and naked bodies — only a 
 little while on the earth at the longest, and not long 
 II 
 
l62 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 enough to know any thing that is really worth knowing 
 except by suffering and blundering — creatures that are 
 not only sinners, but bom sinners — of infinitely long 
 lines of sinners — sinners from the foundation — blind, 
 ignorant, and erring — for such human creatures — and 
 all human creatures are such — is the Christianity of 
 Woolman adapted. He did not understand Christianity 
 to be for the super-terrestrial, to whom sin is known only 
 by wisdom. He understood it to be for men, needing it, 
 and showed its adaptability by accepting it — its practi- 
 cableness by practicing it. His Christianity was encour- 
 aging, in that it did not require absolute imitation of, but 
 some slight approximation to the Divine Founder. 
 
 The discouraging mistake too commonly made by the 
 preacher is to set up standards of conduct unattainable 
 by himself or by any of his hearers. He turns the key 
 of heaven against himself and all mankind. He preaches 
 an empty heaven, when an empty heaven, in his reflective 
 moments, he no more believes in than any of his hearers. 
 His logic and his law, he perceives, exclude him as cer- 
 tainly from paradise as they exclude all the myriads of 
 mankind. He knows, if he has observed, that no man 
 is so bad but that there is some good in him, and that no 
 man is so good but that he might be better. The good 
 and the bad, too, appear to him, the more he observes, so 
 much worse or better according to situation and circum- 
 stances, that his abstract estimates of them become con- 
 fused, and require constant revision. The differences 
 between the good and the bad, which appeared to him so 
 great, as he knows more of man and men — more of the 
 weaknesses and distresses and ignorances of his fellows 
 — seem less and less to him ; and he reflects how, in *the 
 eye of the Maker, who knows every thing of every one 
 of his creatures — every besetment and every infirmity — 
 how impossible, with all his efforts, to accomplish very 
 much — how next to impossible to use at all his imper- 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 163 
 
 fectly developed wings — the good and the bad must ap- 
 pear pitifully alike, if not the same. The moral distinc- 
 tions which appear to the preacher, with his imperfect 
 vision, so very definite, may in the eye of God, who sees 
 all, be nearly invisible. But for every little departure 
 from his rigidly straight line, the preacher has a penalty 
 ready-made — to be found in his own inflexible little code, 
 if not in the New Testament. As if the creature, who 
 knows next to nothing, should judge for the Creator, who 
 knows every thing ! Ah ! justly is it said, our measure o f 
 rewards and punishments^is most par tial and incomplete , 
 absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly, and we wish to con - 
 tinue it into the next world. Into that next and awful 
 world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our 
 impotent party verdicts, of condemnation or acquittal. 
 We set up our paltry little rods to measure Heaven im- 
 measurable, as if, in comparison to that, Newton's mind, 
 or Pascal's, or Shakespeare's, was any loftier than mine ; 
 as if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me 
 sooner than the man who blacks my boots. Measured 
 by that altitude, the tallest and the smallest among us are 
 so alike diminutive and pitifully base that we should take 
 no count of the calculation, and it is a meanness to reckon 
 the difference. 
 
 A religion that is discouraging to hope, is a poor relig- 
 ion for men; and a religion that requires of them the 
 impossible, is such. For some it may be easy to be good 
 — very good — as we understand goodness ; for others 
 it is nearly impossible to be good at all, according to pul- 
 pit standards. To the former it may seem easy to be- 
 lieve that Christ should be imitated ; to the latter it seems 
 to be only possible he should be approximated. He is 
 the Great Exemplar, the Divine, to be approached, and 
 only approached, as nearly as possible, by the creature. 
 Now and then, it may be, a man is born into the world in 
 whom are all the virtues so admirably mixed that it is 
 
l64 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 possible for him to approach very near to the Divine 
 Founder — so near as almost to touch the hem of His 
 garment ; the many, however, are unable to approach so 
 near by a very great way ; while the great multitudes are 
 so far off that, instead of seeing the light of His coun- 
 tenance, they only see the reflection of it as it appears 
 faintly, very faintly, in the comparatively few, very few, 
 alas! who are able to approach near enough to feel a 
 little the direct rays of the Divine Effulgence. After a 
 poor human creature has done all that it is possible for 
 him to do, it is discouraging to be told that he has net 
 done enough ; that after he has done all that it is possible 
 for him to do, he shall be damned. He knows himself 
 what he can do and what he cannot do ; and finds him- 
 self unable to accept a faith which offers rewards for the 
 impracticable and impossible only. If the gate of para- 
 dise is to remain shut against him, for what he could not 
 help, it must remain shut against all mankind, as he is 
 not able to see the mighty difference in men that their 
 hopeless separation implies ; — a separation inconceivable 
 to a vast number of sincere believers in a future state, — 
 believers in Christ, and heirs to heaven under his Tes- 
 tament. 
 
 The Christianity of Woolman is a practical, practi- 
 cable Christianity. It is broad enough to meet the wants 
 of every human being, and generous enough to encourage 
 every human being to accept it, and, to the extent of pos- 
 sibility, to shape his life by it. Nowhere in all his writ- 
 ings do we find a single word discouraging to any human 
 creature. The life he recommended he lived ; the wisdom 
 he taught he illustrated ; the Christianity he preached he 
 incarnated. Without violence or passion, he was com- 
 manding; without great intellect or learning, he was con- 
 vincing. His simplicity was more than eloquence ; his 
 goodness was power. Humble, sincere, and devoted, 
 there was no trace of selfishness visible in his transpar- 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 65 
 
 ent character. He was what he wished to seem, and 
 seemed to be what he was. 
 
 Whittier, in his Introduction to the Journal, has some 
 just observations upon Woolman's writings in general, — 
 the larger portion of which are devoted to the subjects 
 of slavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil 
 and suffering of the many to support the luxury of the 
 few. " The argument running through them is searching, 
 and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender 
 love for the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer under- 
 lies all. They aim to convince the judgment and reach 
 the heart without awakening prejudice and passion. 
 To the slaveholders of his time they must have seemed 
 like the voice of conscience speaking to them in the cool 
 of the day. One feels, in reading them, the tenderness 
 and humility of a nature redeemed from all pride of opin- 
 ion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight, and 
 intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human 
 sorrow and sin by drawing men nearer to God and to 
 each other. The style is that of a man unlettered, but 
 with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness, the 
 purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is 
 no attempt at fine writing, not a word or phrase for ef- 
 fect ; it is the simple unadorned diction of one to whom 
 the temptations of the pen seem to have been wholly un- 
 known. He wrote as he believed from an inward spirit- 
 ual prompting ; and with all his unaffected humility he 
 evidently felt that his work was done in the clear radiance 
 of ' the light which never was on land or sea.' It was not 
 for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne 
 expresses it, to ' order the finger of the Almighty to his 
 will and pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers 
 of Providence.' Very wise are these essays, but their 
 wisdom is not altogether that of this world. They lead 
 one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and competitions 
 of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of parties 
 
l66 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 and sects, into a region of calmness, — * the haunt of 
 every gentle wind whose breath can teach the wild to love 
 tranquillity ; ' — a quiet habitation where all things are or- 
 dered in what he calls ' the pure reason ; ' a rest from 
 all self-seeking, and where no man's interest or activity 
 conflicts with that of another. Beauty they certainly have, 
 but it is not that which the rules of art recognize ; a cer- 
 tain indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensi- 
 ble, as he reads, of a sweetness as of violets. ' The secret 
 of Woolman's style,' said Dr. Channing, 'is that his eye 
 was single, and that conscience dictated his words.' Of 
 course we are not to look to the WTitings of such a man 
 for tricks of rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the 
 unscrupulousness of epigram and antithesis. He wrote 
 as he lived, conscious of 'the great Task-master's eye.' 
 With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he had 
 learned to 'wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and 
 let the spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his 
 guardian and guide, bear rule.' " 
 
 John Woolman's gift, it has been well and justly said, 
 by an appreciating religious writer, was love, — "a char- 
 ity of which it does not enter into the natural heart of 
 man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary expe- 
 riences, even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow^ 
 Every now and then, in the world's history, we meet with 
 such men, the kings and priests of Humanity, on whose 
 heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth 
 that it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and 
 extended over the whole of the visible creation ; men 
 who have entered, like Francis of Assisi, into the secret 
 of that deep amity with God and with his creatures which 
 makes man to be in league with the stones of the field, 
 and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him. In 
 this pure, universal charity there is nothing fitful or inter- 
 mittent, nothing that comes and goes in showers and 
 gleams and sunbursts. Its springs are deep and constant, 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 167 
 
 its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very overflow 
 calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it." 
 
 " Looking at the purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his 
 life, who shall say," asks a distinguished admirer, " that 
 his faith in the teaching of the Holy Spirit — the interior 
 guide and light — was a mistaken one ? Surely it was no 
 illusion by which his feet were so guided that all who saw 
 him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God. ' Without 
 the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward 
 teacher and soul of our souls,' says Fenelon, 'we could 
 neither do, will, nor believe good. We must silence every 
 creature, we must silence ourselves also, to hear in a pro- 
 found stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of 
 Christ. The outward word of the gospel itself without 
 this living efficacious word within would be but an empty 
 sound.' 'I am sure,' says Sir Thomas Browne, 'that 
 there is a common spirit that plays within us, and that is 
 the Spirit of God. Whoever feels not the warm gale and 
 gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives ; 
 for truly without this to me there is no heat under the 
 tropic, nor any light though I dwelt in the body of the 
 sun.' ' Thou Lord,' says Augustine, * communicatest thy- 
 self to all : thou teachest the heart without words ; thou 
 speakest to it without articulate sounds.' Never was this 
 divine principle more fully tested than by John Woolman ; 
 and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence 
 that the world is still better and richer for its sake, and 
 the fragrance of it comes down to us through a century, 
 still sweet and precious." 
 
 At twenty-one he became a clerk and book-keeper in a 
 small store kept by a tailor at Mount Holly. During the 
 second year of his employment there, his employer, " hav- 
 ing a negro woman, sold her, and desired me," he says, 
 " to write a bill of sale, the man being waiting who bought 
 her. The thing was sudden ; and though I felt uneasy 
 at the thoughts of writing an instrument of slavery for 
 
l68 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 one of my fellow-creatures, yet I remembered that I was 
 hired by the year, that it was my master who directed me 
 to do it, and that it was an elderly man, a member of our 
 Society, who bought her; so through weakness I gave 
 way, and wrote it ; but at the executing of it I was so 
 afflicted in my mind, that I said before my master and 
 the Friend, that I believed slave-keeping to be a practice 
 inconsistent with the Christian religion. This, in some 
 degree, abated my uneasiness ; yet as often as I reflected 
 seriously upon it I thought I should have been clearer if 
 I had desired to be excused from it, as a thing against 
 my conscience ; for such it was. Some time after this a 
 young man of our Society spoke to me to write a convey- 
 ance of a slave to him, he having lately taken a negro 
 into his house. I told him I was not easy to write it ; 
 for, though many of our meeting and in other places kept 
 slaves, I still believed the practice was not right, and de- 
 sired to be excused from the writing. I spoke to him in 
 good-will ; and he told me that keeping slaves was not 
 altogether agreeable to his mind ; but that the slave being 
 a gift made to his wife he had accepted her." 
 
 This circumstance was the beginning of a life of quiet 
 but persistent opposition to slavery. Not long afterward 
 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He 
 was afflicted by the prevalence of the sin of slavery. It 
 appeared to him, in his own words, " as a dark gloominess 
 overhanging the land." On his return he wrote an essay 
 on the subject, which was published in 1754, bearing the 
 imprint of Benjamin Franklin. Three years later he made 
 a second visit to the Southern meetings of Friends. 
 " Traveling as a minister of the gospel, he was compelled 
 to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who 
 were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, 
 and who could not comprehend the scruples of their guest 
 against receiving as a gift food and lodging which he re- 
 garded as the gain of oppression. He was a poor man, 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 169 
 
 but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either 
 placed the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some 
 member of the family, for the benefit of the slaves, or 
 gave it directly to them, as he had opportunity." " When 
 I expected," he says, "soon to leave a friend's house 
 where I had entertainment, if I believed that I should not 
 keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving 
 money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family pri- 
 vately, and desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and 
 give them to such of their negroes as they believed would 
 mabe the best use of them ; and at other times I gave 
 them to the negroes myself, as the way looked clearest to 
 me. Before I came out, I had provided a large number 
 of small pieces for this purpose, and this offering them 
 to some who appeared to be wealthy people was a trial 
 both to me and them. But the fear of the Lord so cov- 
 ered me at times that my way was made easier than I ex- 
 pected ; and few, if any, manifested any resentment at 
 the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, ac- 
 cepted of them." 
 
 He also journeyed through New York and the New 
 England States in the same unostentatious but earnest 
 way, bearing his testimony as he went against sinfulness 
 of every sort, especially against the sin of slavery. The 
 object of his travels was of course to meet with the mem- 
 bers of his Society ; but, says a distinguished anti-slavery 
 leader, "the influence of the life and labors of John 
 Woolman has by no means been confined to the religious 
 society of which he was a member. It may be traced 
 wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been 
 taken in America or in Europe. During the war of the 
 Revolution many of the noblemen and officers connected 
 with the French army became, as their journals abun- 
 dantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends, 
 and took back to France with them something of its 
 growing anti-slavery sentiment. Especially was this the 
 
170 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the thinker and statesman 
 of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner Mifflin, a 
 friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected 
 his whole after life. He became the leader of the Friends 
 of the Blacks, and carried with him to the scaffold a pro- 
 found hatred of slavery. To his efforts may be traced 
 the proclamation of Emancipation in Hayti by the com- 
 missioners of the French convention, and indirectly the 
 subsequent uprising of the blacks and their successful 
 establishment of a free government. The same influence 
 reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated his early efforts 
 for the abolition of the slave-trade ; and in after life the 
 volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished com- 
 panion of himself and his amiable helpmate. It was in 
 a degree, at least, the influence of Stephen Grellet and 
 William Allen, men deeply imbued with the spirit of 
 Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his 
 mantle had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. 
 of Russia to the importance of taking measures for the 
 abolition of serfdom, an object the accomplishment of 
 which the wars during his reign prevented, but which, left 
 as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his 
 namesake, Alexander II. In the history of Emancipation 
 in our own country evidences of the same original im- 
 pulse of humanity are not wanting. . . . Looking back 
 to the humble workshop at Mount Holly from the stand- 
 point of the Proclamation of President Lincoln, how has 
 the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power ! " 
 
 " Having now been several years with my employer," 
 he says, " and he doing less in merchandise than hereto- 
 fore, I was thoughtful about some other way of business, 
 perceiving merchandise to be attended with much cumber 
 in the way of trading in these parts. My mind, through 
 the power of truth, was in a great degree weaned from 
 the desire of outward greatness, and I was learning to be 
 content with real conveniences, that were not costly, so 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 171 
 
 that a way of life free from much entanglement appeared 
 best for me, though the income might be small. I had 
 several offers of business that appeared profitable, but I 
 did not see my way clear to accept of them, believing 
 they would be attended with more outward care and cum- 
 ber than was required of me to engage in. I saw that 
 an humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might 
 live on a little, and that where the heart was set on great- 
 ness, success in business did not satisfy the craving ; but 
 that commonly with an increase of wealth the desire of 
 wealth increased. There was a care on my mind so to 
 pass my time that nothing might hinder me from the most 
 steady attention to the voice of the true Shepherd. My 
 employer, though now a retailer of goods, was by trade a 
 tailor, and kept a servant-man at that business ; and I 
 began to think about learning the trade, expecting that if 
 I should settle I might by this trade and a little retailing 
 of goods get a living in a plain way, without the load of 
 great business. I mentioned it to my employer, and we 
 soon agreed on terms, and when I had leisure from the 
 affairs of merchandise I worked with this man. I be- 
 lieved the hand of Providence pointed out this business 
 for me, and I was taught to be content with it, though I 
 felt at times a disposition that would have sought for 
 something greater; but through the revelation of Jesus 
 Christ I had seen the happiness of humility, and there 
 was an earnest desire in me to enter deeply into it ; at 
 times this desire arose to a degree of fervent supplication, 
 wherein my soul was so environed with heavenly light 
 and consolation that things were made easy to me which 
 had been otherwise." 
 
 A person at some distance lying sick, his brother came 
 to Woolman to write his will. " I knew he had slaves," 
 writes Woolman, " and, asking his brother, was told he 
 intended to leave them as slaves to. his children. As 
 writing is a profitable employ, and as offending sober peo- 
 
IJ2 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 pie was disagreeable to my inclinations, I was straitened 
 in my mind ; but as I looked to the Lord, he inclined my 
 heart to his testimony. I told the man that I believed 
 that the practice of continuing slavery to this people was 
 not right, and that I had a scruple in my mind against 
 doing writings of that kind ; that though many in our 
 Society kept them as slaves, still I was not easy to be 
 concerned in it, and desired to be excused from going to 
 write the will. I spake to him in the fear of the Lord, 
 and he made no reply to what I said, but went away ; 
 he also had some concerns in the practice, and I thought 
 he was displeased with me. In this case I had fresh con- 
 firmation that acting contrary to present outward interest, 
 from a motive of Divine love and in regard to truth and 
 righteousness, and thereby incurring the resentments of 
 people, opens the way to a treasure better than silver, and 
 to a friendship exceeding the friendship of men." 
 
 His persistence in declining to write wills bequeathing 
 human beings, and his mild and sincere manner — Chris- 
 tian manner — of advocating emancipation, resulted some- 
 times in the freedom of those whose enslavement it was 
 intended to perpetuate. 
 
 The increase of business soon became a burden. 
 " Though my natural inclination," he says, " was towards 
 merchandise, yet I believed truth required me to live 
 more free from outward cumbers ; and there was now a 
 strife in my mind between the two. In this exercise my 
 prayers were put up to the Lord, who graciously heard 
 me, and gave me a heart resigned to his holy will. Then 
 I lessened my outward business, and, as I had opportu- 
 nity, told my customers of my intentions, that they might 
 consider what shop to turn to ; and in a while I wholly 
 laid down merchandise, and followed my trade as a tailor 
 by myself, having no apprentice. I also had a nursery of 
 apple-trees, in which I employed some of my time in hoe- 
 ing, grafting, trimming, and inoculating." " He seems," 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 73 
 
 says Whittier, " to have regarded agriculture as the busi- 
 ness most conducive to morals and physical health. He 
 thought ' if the leadings of the spirit were more attended 
 to, more people would be engaged in the sweet employ- 
 ment of husbandry, where labor is agreeable and health- 
 ful.' He does not condemn the honest acquisition of 
 wealth in other business free from oppression ; even 
 * merchandising,' he thought, might be carried on inno- 
 cently and in pure reason. Christ does not forbid the 
 laying up of a needful support for family and friends ; 
 the command is, * Lay not up for yourselves treasures on 
 earth.' From his little farm on the Rancocas he looked 
 out with a mingled feeling of wonder and sorrow upon the 
 hurry and unrest of the world ; and especially was he 
 pained to see luxury and extravagance overgrowing the 
 early plainness and simplicity of his own religious society. 
 He regarded the merely rich man with unfeigned pity. 
 With nothing of his scorn, he had all of Thoreau's com- 
 miseration, for people who went about bowed down with 
 the weight of broad acres and great houses on their 
 backs." " Though trading in things useful," he says, " is 
 an honest employ, yet through the great number of super- 
 fluities which are bought and sold, and through the cor- 
 ruption of the times, they who apply to merchandise for 
 a living have great need to be well experienced in that 
 precept which the Prophet Jeremiah laid down for his 
 scribe : * Seekest thou great things for thyself ? seek them 
 not.' " 
 
 Writing to Friends at their monthly meeting in North 
 Carolina, he says : " First, my dear friends, dwell in hu- 
 mility j and take heed that no views of outward gain get 
 too deep hold of you, that so your eyes being single to 
 the Lord, you may be preserved in the way of safety. 
 Where people let loose their minds after the love of out- 
 ward things, and are more engaged in pursuing the profits 
 and seeking the friendships of this world than to be in- 
 
174 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 wardly acquainted with the way of true peace, they walk 
 in a vain shadow, while the true comfort of life is wanting. 
 Their examples are often hurtful to others ; and their 
 treasures thus collected do many times prove dangerous 
 snares to their children. . . . Treasures, though small, 
 attained on a true principle of virtue, are sweet ; and 
 while we walk in the light of the Lord there is true com- 
 fort and satisfaction in the possession ; neither the mur- 
 murs of an oppressed people, nor a throbbing, uneasy 
 conscience, nor anxious thoughts about the events of 
 things, hinder the enjoyment of them. When we look 
 towards the end of life, and think on the division of our 
 substance among our successors, if we know that it was 
 collected in the fear of the Lord, in honesty, in equity, 
 and in uprightness of heart before him, we may consider 
 it as his gift to us, and, with a single eye to his blessing, 
 bestow it on those we leave behind us. Such is the hap- 
 piness of the plain ways of true virtue." 
 
 How strange this old-fashioned Christian philosophy 
 seems to us, in these feverish days of greed and desperate 
 competition ! How strange to us this pious " taste for 
 poverty," as Souvestre calls it, when gold, more than ever, 
 is an object of worship, and poverty so generally is thought 
 to be, and sometimes admits itself to be, criminal. 
 
 " Having at times," he says, " perceived a shyness in 
 some Friends of considerable note towards me, I found 
 an engagement in gospel love to pay a visit to one of 
 them ; and as I dwelt under the exercise, I felt a resign- 
 edness in my mind to go and tell him privately that I had 
 a desire to have an opportunity with him alone ; to this 
 proposal he readily agreed, and then, in the fear of the 
 Lord, things relating to that shyness were searched to the 
 bottom, and we had a large conference, which, I believe, 
 was of use to both of us, and I am thankful that way was 
 opened for it." 
 
 In a debate in one of the church meetings on the sul> 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 75 
 
 ject of lotteries, he took decided grounds against them. 
 " In the heat of zeal," he says, " I made reply to what an 
 ancient Friend said, and when I sat down I saw that my 
 words were not enough seasoned with charity. After this 
 I spoke no more on the subject. Some time after the 
 minute was made I remained uneasy with the manner of 
 my speaking to an ancient Friend, and could not see my 
 way clear to conceal my uneasiness, though I was con- 
 cerned that I might say nothing to weaken the cause in 
 which I had labored. After some close exercise and 
 hearty repentance for not having attended closely to the 
 safe guide, I stood up, and, reciting the passage, ac- 
 quainted Friends that though I durst not go from what 
 I had said as to the matter, yet I was uneasy with the 
 manner of my speaking, believing milder language would 
 have been better. As this was uttered in some degree of 
 creaturely abasement after a warm debate, it appeared to 
 have a good savor amongst us." 
 
 Thinking of " hats and garments dyed with a dye hurt- 
 ful to them," and of "wearing more clothes in summer 
 than are useful," made him " uneasy," " believing them 
 to be customs which have not their foundation in pure 
 wisdom. The apprehension," he says, " of being singu- 
 lar from my beloved friends was a strait upon me, and 
 thus I continued in the use of such things contrary to my 
 judgment." Pretty soon, however, his " mind was settled 
 in relation to hurtful dyes," having determined that all 
 new garments should be of . the natural color. " Then I 
 thought," he says, " of getting a hat the natural color of 
 the fur, but the apprehension of being looked upon as 
 one affecting singularity felt uneasy to me." On this ac- 
 count he was " under close exercise of mind, greatly de- 
 siring to be rightly directed," " when," he says, *' being 
 deeply bowed in spirit before the Lord, I was made will- 
 ing to submit to what I apprehended was required of me, 
 and when I returned home got a hat of the natural color 
 
176 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 of the fur. In attending meetings this singularity was 
 a trial to me, and more especially at this time, as white 
 hats were used by some who were fond of following the 
 changeable modes of dress, and as some Friends who 
 knew not from what motives I wore it grew shy of me, 
 I felt my way for a time shut up in the exercise of the 
 ministry." 
 
 He was greatly distressed on account of the sale by 
 white people of rum to the Indians, and his Journal, dur- 
 ing a missionary visit to the natives, contains some note- 
 worthy observations growing out of it. " I was," he says, 
 "renewedly confirmed in a belief that if all our inhab- 
 itants lived according to sound wisdom, laboring to pro- 
 mote universal love and righteousness, and ceased from 
 every inordinate desire after wealth, and from all customs 
 which are tinctured w4th luxury, the way would be easy 
 for our inhabitants, though they might be much more nu- 
 merous than at present, to live comfortably on honest 
 employments, without the temptation they are so often 
 under of being drawn into schemes to make settlements 
 on lands which have not been purchased of the Indians, 
 or of applying to that wicked practice of selling rum to 
 them." "A weighty and heavenly care came over. my 
 mind, and love filled my heart towards all mankind, in 
 which I felt a strong engagement that we might be obe- 
 dient to the Lord while in tender mercy he is yet calling 
 to us, and that we might so attend to pure universal right- 
 eousness as to give no just cause of offense to the Gen- 
 tiles, who do not profess Christianity, whether they be 
 the blacks from Africa, or the native inhabitants of this 
 continent." 
 
 The circumstance of having joined with another exec- 
 utor in selling a negro lad till he might attain the age of 
 thirty years, was the cause of great sorrow to him. " With 
 abasement of heart I may now say," he says, " that some- 
 times as I have sat in a meeting with my heart exercised 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 177 
 
 towards that awful Being who respecteth not persons nor 
 colors, and have thought upon this lad, I have felt that 
 all was not clear in my mind respecting him ; and as I 
 have attended to this exercise and fervently sought the 
 Lord, it hath appeared to me that I should make some 
 restitution. My mind for a time was covered with dark- 
 ness and sorrow. Under this sore affliction my heart was 
 softened to receive instruction, and I now first perceived 
 that as I had been one of the two executors who had sold 
 this lad for nine years longer than is common for our 
 children to serve, so I should now offer part of my sub- 
 stance to redeem the last half of the nine years ; but as 
 the time was not yet come, I executed a bond, binding 
 myself and my executors to pay to the man to whom he 
 was sold what to candid men might appear equitable for 
 the last four and a half years of his time, in case the said 
 youth should be living, and in a condition likely to pro- 
 vide comfortably for himself." 
 
 In 1772, in the fifty-second year of his age, he visited 
 England, with a certificate directed to Friends in Great 
 Britain. He declined a passage in the cabin for the rea- 
 sons (to use his own language) " That on the outside of 
 that part of the ship where the cabin was I observed sun- 
 dry sorts of carved work and imagery ; that in the cabin 
 I observed some superfluity of workmanship of several 
 sorts ; and that according to the ways of men's reckoning, 
 the sum of money to be paid for a passage in that apart- 
 ment has some relation to the expense of furnishing it to 
 please the minds of such as give way to a conformity to 
 this world ; and that in this, as in other cases, the moneys 
 received from the passengers are calculated to defray the 
 cost of these superfluities, as well as the other expenses 
 of their passage. I therefore felt a scruple with regard 
 to paying my money to be applied to such purposes." 
 
 Lodging in the steerage, he was much among the sea- 
 men, and, "from a motion of love," took "sundry oppor- 
 12 
 
178" CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 tunities with one of them at a time," and "labored," "in 
 free conversation," " to turn their minds towards the fear 
 of the Lord." Deeply he grieved over their oppression 
 and distresses, and his lamentations, as set down in his 
 Journal, are profoundly touching. "They mostly," he 
 says, " appeared to take kindly what I said to them ; but 
 their minds were so deeply impressed with the almost 
 universal depravity among sailors that the poor creatures 
 in their answers to me have revived in my remembrance 
 that of the degenerate Jews a little before the captivity, 
 as repeated by Jeremiah the prophet, * There is no 
 hope.'" 
 
 Arriving in London, he went straight to the Quaker 
 meeting, which he knew to be in session. Coming in late 
 and unannounced, his peculiar dress and manner .nat- 
 urally excited attention, and apprehension that he was an 
 itinerant enthusiast. He presented his certificate from 
 Friends in America, but the dissatisfaction still remained, 
 and some one remarked that perhaps the stranger Friend 
 might feel that his dedication of himself to this appre- 
 hended service was accepted, without further labor, and 
 that he might now feel free to return to his home ! John 
 Woolman sat silent, it is stated, for a space, seeking the 
 unerring counsel of Divine Wisdom. He was profoundly 
 affected by the unfavorable reception he met with, and 
 his tears flowed freely. The words, however, which he 
 was permitted to utter, made a different impression on 
 the meeting. A deep silence, it is said, prevailed over 
 the assembly, many of whom were touched by the -wise 
 simplicity of the stranger's words and manner. At the 
 conclusion, " the Friend who had advised against his 
 further service rose up and humbly confessed his error, 
 and avowed his full unity with the stranger." 
 
 The low wages paid to English laborers, and the pov- 
 erty and wretchedness visible on every hand, caused him 
 to cry out, " Oh may the wealthy consider the poor ! " It 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 79 
 
 gave him also great distress of mind to discover that in 
 many instances members of his Society "mixed with the 
 world in various sorts of traffic, carried on in impure 
 channels." He found them loading ships engaged in the 
 slave-trade, and trading as others in all kinds of super- 
 fluities, till, he said, " dimness of sight came over many." 
 " I have felt," he says, " in that which doth not deceive, 
 that if Friends who have known the truth keep in that 
 tenderness of heart where all views of outward gain are 
 given up, and their trust is only in the Lord, he will gra- 
 ciously lead some to be patterns of deep self-denial in 
 things relating to trade and handicraft labor ; and others 
 who have plenty of the treasures of this world will be ex- 
 amples of a plain frugal life, and pay wages to such as 
 they may hire more liberally than is now customary in 
 some places." 
 
 He " saw that people setting off their tables with silver 
 vessels at entertainments was often stained with worldly 
 glory," and he preferred not to drink from them. His 
 sense of cleanliness was also affected as he traveled 
 through the kingdom. " Some of the great," he says, 
 " carry delicacy to a great height themselves, and yet real 
 cleanliness is not generally promoted. Dyes being in- 
 vented partly to please the eye and partly to hide dirt, I 
 have felt, when traveling in dirtiness, and affected with 
 unwholesome scents, a strong desire that the nature of 
 dyeing cloth to hide dirt may be more fully considered. 
 Real cleanliness becometh a holy people ; but hiding that 
 which is not clean by coloring our garments seems con- 
 trary to the sweetness of sincerity." He declined to 
 travel in stage-coaches, because the horses and drivers 
 were cruelly used ; the former sometimes being killed by 
 hard driving, and the latter sometimes frozen to death by 
 exposure. "So great," he says, "is the hurry in the 
 spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly 
 and to gain wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly 
 
l80 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 groan." For the reasons mentioned, his travels in Eng- 
 land were entirely on foot. Sickness came upon him ; 
 the climate and every thing seemed to be against him ; 
 he was even sometimes in need. " I have," he says, near 
 the end of his Journal, " known poverty of late." His 
 mind, it appears, was greatly exercised by a sense of the 
 intimate connection of luxury and oppression ; the burden 
 of the laboring poor rested heavily upon him. In his 
 lonely wanderings on foot through the rural districts, or 
 in his temporary sojourn in crowded manufacturing towns, 
 the eager competitions and earnest pursuit of gain of one 
 class, and the poverty and physical and moral degrada- 
 tion of another, so oppressed him that his health suffered 
 and his strength failed. In his frequent mention through- 
 out his Journal of trials and afflictions, he nowhere be- 
 trays any personal solicitude, any merely selfish anxiety. 
 He offered no prayers for special personal favors. He 
 was, to use his own words, mixed with his fellow-creatures 
 in their misery, and could not consider himself a distinct 
 and separate being. His last public labor, says his emi- 
 nent biographer, was a testimony in the York Meeting in 
 behalf of the poor and enslaved. His last prayer on his 
 death-bed was a commendation of his " fellow-creatures 
 separated from the Divine harmony " to the Omnipotent 
 Power, whom he had learned to call his Father. He died 
 of small-pox in the city of York, on the 7 th day of Octo- 
 ber, 1772, aged fifty- two years. 
 
 His simple words have a precious flavor of sweetness 
 and purity and genuineness that is not surpassed, we be- 
 lieve, in the whole range of literature. Passages like 
 these, for instance : how delicious ! how Christlike ! 
 
 " Selfish men may possess the earth : it is the meek 
 alone who inherit it from the Heavenly Father free from 
 all defilements and perplexities of unrighteousness." 
 
 " Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some, thereby 
 promotes the good of the whole." 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. l8l 
 
 " If one suffers by the unfaithfulness of another, the 
 mind, the most noble part of him that occasions the dis- 
 cord, is thereby alienated from its true happiness." 
 
 " There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine 
 work in the hearts of men. He who leads them to cease 
 from those gainful employments which are carried on in 
 the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the 
 desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so 
 plain that a little suffices." 
 
 " Oppression in the extreme appears terrible ; but op- 
 pression in more refined appearances is nevertheless op- 
 pression. To labor for a perfect redemption from the 
 spirit of it is the great business of the whole family of 
 Jesus Christ in this world." 
 
 "There is a principle which is pure, placed in the hu- 
 man mind, which in different places and ages hath had 
 different names ; it is, however, pure, and proceeds from 
 God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of 
 religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in 
 perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and 
 grows, they become brethren." 
 
 What precious society a man capable of so generous, 
 so comprehensive, so profound a sentiment would have 
 been to Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, 
 Thomas k Kempis, Fenelon, or Sir Thomas Browne ! 
 
 " He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Cre- 
 ator, and in his Son Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent 
 on the honors, profits, and friendships of the world than 
 he is, in singleness of heart, to stand faithful to the 
 Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry ; while 
 the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, 
 is established in the true principle of virtue, and humbly 
 adores an Almighty Power, may be of the number that 
 fear God and work righteousness." 
 
 "To treasure up wealth for another generation, by 
 means of the immoderate labor of those who in some 
 
1 82 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 measure depend upon us, is doing evil at present, without 
 knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to 
 evil purposes when we are gone. To labor hard, or cause 
 others to do so, that we may live conformably to customs 
 which our Redeemer discountenanced by his example, 
 and which are contrary to Divine order, is to manure a 
 soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth." 
 
 " When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, 
 until there is no place, and the poor are thereby strait- 
 ened, though this is done by bargain and purchase, yet so 
 far as it stands distinguished from universal love, so far 
 that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany their 
 proceedings. As he who first founded the earth was 
 then the true proprietor of it, so he still remains, and 
 though he hath given it to the children of men, so that 
 multitudes of people have had their sustenance from it 
 while they continued here, yet he hath never alienated 
 it, but his right is as good as at first ; nor can any apply 
 the increase of their possessions contrary to universal 
 love, nor dispose of lands in a way which they know 
 tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being 
 justly chargeable with usurpation." 
 
 " I find that to be a fool as to worldly wisdom, and to 
 commit my cause to God, not fearing to offend men, who 
 take offense at the simplicity of truth, is the only way to 
 remain unmoved at the sentiment of others." 
 
 " Deep humility is a strong bulwark, and as we enter 
 into it we find safety and true exaltation. The foolish- 
 ness of God is wiser than man, and the weakness of God 
 is stronger than man. Being unclothed of our own wis- 
 dom, and knowing the abasement of the creature, we find 
 that power to arise which gives health and vigor to us." 
 
 " The love of ease and gain are the motives in general 
 of keeping slaves, and men are wont to take hold of weak 
 arguments to support a cause which is unreasonable. I 
 have no interest on either side, save only the interest 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 83 
 
 which I desire to have in the truth. I believe Hberty is 
 their right, and as I see they are not only deprived of it, 
 but treated in other respects with inhumanity in many 
 places, I believe he who is a refuge for the oppressed 
 will, in his own time, plead their cause, and happy will it 
 be for such as walk in uprightness before him." 
 
 How Uke the sentiment and thought of John Brown, 
 who died a martyr on the scaffold a little more than a 
 hutidred years after this prophecy was uttered ! 
 
 " The natural man loveth eloquence, and many love to 
 hear eloquent orations, and if there be not a careful at- 
 tention to the gift, men who have once labored in the 
 pure gospel ministry, growing weary of suffering, and 
 ashamed of appearing weak, may kindle a fire, compass 
 themselves about with sparks, and walk in the light, not 
 of Christ, who is under suffering, but of that fire which 
 they in departing from the gift have kindled, in order that 
 those hearers who have left the meek, suffering state for 
 worldly wisdom may be warmed with this fire and speak 
 highly of their labors. That which is of God gathers to 
 God, and that which is of the world is owned by the 
 world." 
 
 A little while before he died he asked for pen and ink, 
 and wrote : " I believe my being here is in the wisdom of 
 Christ ; I know not as to life or death." 
 
 It will not lessen the value of these detached passages 
 in the minds of the true disciples of our Divine Lord, 
 that they are manifestly not written to subserve the inter- 
 ests of a narrow sectarianism. They might have been 
 penned, says his brother Whittier, by Fenelon in his time, 
 or Robertson in ours, dealing as they do with Christian 
 practice, — the life of Christ manifesting itself in purity 
 and goodness, — rather than with the dogmas of theology. 
 The underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the 
 Divine word in the soul. " Not every one that saith unto 
 me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, 
 
1 84 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven." John 
 Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is manifested by his 
 labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration of 
 the spirit, — a faith that works by love to the purifying of 
 the heart. The entire outcome of this faith was love 
 manifested in reverent waiting upon God, and in that un- 
 tiring benevolence, that quiet but deep enthusiasm of 
 humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow- 
 creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father. 
 
 John Woolman's religion was real Christianity, "which 
 being too spiritual to be seen by us," saith old Dr. Donne, 
 " doth therefore take an apparent body of good life and 
 works." His life was religion incarnate, of perpetual good 
 works, that had but little time to voice itself but in acts, — 
 like the good woman's, who, after having bred a large 
 family, and led a long life of devotion and self-sacrifice — 
 worn out by care, and weary of her burdens — came at 
 length to what was supposed to be her death-bed. A 
 clerg3'man in the neighborhood thought it to be his duty 
 to call upon her. He asked her in language usual with 
 his sect if she had made her peace with her Maker ; to 
 which she replied that she was not aware that there had 
 been any trouble. John Woolman lived his religion, and 
 so the world had faith in it. " Preachers say," said old 
 John Selden, " Do as I say, not as I do. But if a phy- 
 sician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he 
 should bid me do one thing, and he do quite another, 
 could I believe him ? " 
 
 " To the multitude," says the author of Ecce Homo, 
 " religion will always mean what parsons talk about, what 
 goes on in churches and chapels. . . . Religion, many 
 will insist, means, and must mean, churches and clergy- 
 men, and you determine the condition of it by ascertain- 
 ing what proportion of the population goes to church, and 
 whether the number of candidates for orders increases 
 or diminishes, just as you ascertain the state of trade by 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 85 
 
 looking at the returns of export and import. . . . Religion 
 has been so defined, that morality can be separated from 
 it, that the laws of the universe can be separated from it, 
 that all noble and elevated acts can be separated from it ; 
 what wonder then that nothing but a caput mortuum 
 seems to remain ? " " All Christians believe," says an- 
 other eminent English writer, " that the blessed are the 
 poor and humble, and those who are ill-used by the world ; 
 that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a 
 needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
 heaven ; that they should judge not, lest they be judged ; 
 that they should swear not at all ; that they should love 
 their neighbor as themselves ; that if one take their cloak, 
 they should give him their coat also ; that they should 
 take no thought for the morrow ; that if they would be 
 perfect, they should sell all that they have and give it to 
 the poor. They are not insincere when they say that they 
 believe these things. They do believe them, as people 
 believe what they have always heard lauded and never 
 discussed. But in the sense of that living belief which 
 regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to 
 the point to which it is usual to act upon them. When- 
 ever conduct is concerned, they look round for Mr. A. 
 and B. to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ." 
 By such sort of mere nominalism we are apt to get as 
 far away from Christ as possible, and possibly without 
 knowing it. A writer in Temple Bar states that the native 
 trading community in Cyprus consists of Moslems, Jews, 
 and Christians. Of these he says a European merchant 
 can nearly always believe the first upon his simple word, 
 the two latter he can rarely credit on oath, and tli^ harder 
 they swear the more certain one may be that they are 
 stating what is not true. 
 
 Theology is one thing and religion another. " Trav- 
 elers have often observed," says Archibald Alison, in his 
 essay on Chateaubriand, "that in a certain rank in all 
 
1 86 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 countries manners are the same ; naturalists know, that 
 at a certain elevation above the sea in all latitudes, we 
 meet with the same vegetable productions ; and philos- 
 ophers have often remarked, that in the highest class of 
 intellects, opinions on almost every subject in all ages 
 and places are the same. A similar uniformity may be 
 observed in the principles of the greatest writers of the 
 world on religion ; and while the inferior followers of 
 their different tenets branch out into endless divisions, 
 and indulge in sectarian rancor, in the more lofty regions 
 of intellect the principles are substantially the same, and 
 the objects of all identical. So small a proportion do all 
 the disputed points in theology bear to the great objects 
 of religion, love to God, charity to man, and the subju- 
 gation of human passion." There is, we are compelled 
 to believe, a respectable amount of truth in the two fa- 
 miliar lines of Pope : 
 
 ** For forms and creeds let graceless bigots fight ; 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 Dr. Holmes, expatiating in the Professor on the pos- 
 sible church of the future, says: "The Broad Church, 
 I think, will never be based on any thing that requires 
 the use of language. Free Masonry gives an idea of 
 such a church, and a brother is known and cared for in 
 a strange land where no word of his can be understood. 
 The apostle of this church may be a deaf mute carrying 
 a cup of cold water to a thirsting fellow-creature. The 
 cup of cold water does not require to be translated for a 
 foreigner to understand it. I am afraid the only Broad 
 Church possible is one that has its creed in the heart, 
 and not in the head, — that we shall know its members 
 by their fruits, and not by their words." 
 
 John Woolman's religion was as broad as the brother- 
 hood of man, and as boundless as Christian charity. 
 Wherever there was a man, there was a brother, good 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 18/ 
 
 enough for him to love and worship with: alone, he 
 communed with God. As with the hermit in Italy, who 
 lived in a simple cottage on the top of a mountain, a mile 
 from any habitation. Providence was his very next-door 
 neighbor. His happiness was in duty. It is said of Col- 
 lingwood that he never saw a vacant place in his estate 
 but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in. 
 Woolman, also, wherever he found a human soul in which 
 he thought the seed of practical Christianity would grow 
 he planted it there. Not noisily or aggressively. He 
 had nothing of the vice of rectitude. He did not insist 
 authoritatively that you should ever and forever walk in 
 his own remorselessly strait path. He did not dis- 
 charge his moral pistol at you and knock you down with 
 the but-end of it if you failed to pronounce him infalli- 
 ble. He had not a particle of what has been called the 
 wrath of celestial minds. Nor was he a motive-monger, 
 like Walter Shandy, — a very dangerous sort of person 
 for a man to sit by, either laughing or crying. He was 
 most concerned about his own motives, and the good of 
 his acts. He was never ill-humored or rude from an 
 ostentatious love of speaking truth. He knew as well as 
 any man the truth of the inscription upon one of the 
 seals of the Mogul Sultan Achar, that " never a man was 
 lost upon a straight road." He knew at the same time 
 that the ways of men are crooked and will be ; that his 
 own way was not perfectly straight, and could not be. 
 Self he kept out of view as far as possible, but not osten- 
 tatiously. In these days, it has been very truly said, part 
 of the stock in trade of the unscrupulous self-seeker is 
 sometimes a great parade of unselfishness : the man who 
 never in his life really exerted himself for any other end 
 than the advantage of number one, requests you to take 
 notice that his sole end is the glory of God and the good 
 of mankind. And the transparent pretext, which infuri- 
 ates the perspicacious few, is found to succeed with the 
 
l88 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 undisceming many. In John Woolman there was no 
 parade of unselfishness, though unselfish he was as few 
 men in this world have been or will be. His peculiar 
 self-sacrifice and self-denial were too genuine to be mis- 
 taken j they commanded reverence without exciting de- 
 rision. He possessed to a remarkable degree that qual- 
 ity which Dr. Arnold calls moral thoughtfulness, which 
 makes a man love Christ instead of being a fanatic, 
 and love truth without being cold or hard. In Norse 
 mythology, Odin's ravens, memory and reflection, are 
 perched upon the god's shoulders, and whisper into his 
 ear what they see and hear. He sends them out at May- 
 break to fly over the world, and they come back at eve 
 towards meal-time. Hence it is that Odin knows so 
 much, and is called the raven-god. Woolman 's quiet re- 
 flection and boundless charity opened the windows of his 
 mind to all winged suggestions, and his heart abounded 
 in true wisdom. Peaceful and unaggressive, the way was 
 sure to be opened to whatever he conceived to be his 
 duty, and his very peacefulness preserved him in the dis- 
 charge of it. Every good influence stands' round such a 
 man in any extremity. Three cubs, say the Buddhists, 
 the lioness brings forth, five the tigress, but one the cow ; 
 yet many are the meek cattle, few the beasts of prey. 
 The fierce and grasping soon decay ; the universe pre- 
 serves to the peaceful the heritage of the earth. 
 
 The quiet influence of one wise man, who never bullies 
 the world with his own excellence^ may not be calculated. 
 Confucius seldom claimed any superiority above his fel- 
 low-creatures. He offered his advice to those who were 
 willing to listen ; but he never spoke dogmatically ; he 
 never attempted to tyrannize over the minds or hearts of 
 his friends. " If we read his biography," says a distin- 
 guished Orientalist, "we can hardly understand how a 
 man whose life was devoted to such tranquil pursuits, and 
 whose death scarcely produced a ripple on the smooth 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 189 
 
 and silent surface of the Eastern world, could have left 
 the impress of his mind on millions and millions of hu- 
 man beings — an impress, which even now, after more 
 than two thousand three hundred years, is clearly dis- 
 cernible in the national character of the largest empire 
 in the world." The lives and teachings of such men are 
 like the mighty, noiseless influences of nature. In Java 
 the vegetation has forced asunder and thrown down the 
 largest blocks of masonry, and has inflicted no little dam- 
 age upon the Hindoo ruins : literally has " the wild fig-tree 
 split their monstrous idols." The Brighton emeralds, orig- 
 inally bits of the thick bottoms of broken bottles, thrown 
 purposely into the sea by the lapidaries of the place, are by 
 the attrition of the shingle speedily converted into the 
 form of natural pebbles, and sold at high prices. The Chi- 
 nese are in the habit of producing pearls artificially by the 
 introduction of small images of Buddha into the mussels, 
 which in the course of time are covered with the pearly 
 substance. We hardly think of the prodigious work of 
 those quiet subsoilers, the common earth-worms. The 
 ground is almost alive with them. Wherever mould is 
 turned up, there these sappers and miners are turned up 
 with it. They have been called nature's plowmen. They 
 bore the stubborn soil in every direction, and render 
 it pervious to air, rain, and the fibres of plants. With- 
 out these auxiliaries the farmer, says Gilbert White,, 
 would find that his land would become cold, hard-bound, 
 and sterile. The green mantle of vegetation which cov- 
 ers the earth is dependent upon the worms which bur- 
 row in the bowels of it. When the rose bud blossomed 
 in the bower, the Persians have it, a nightingale said to 
 the falcon, " How is it that thou, being silent, bearest the 
 prize from all birds ? Thou hast not spoken a pleasing 
 word to any one ; yet thy abode is the wrist of the king, 
 and thy food the delicate partridge. I who produce a 
 hundred musical gems in a moment have the worm for 
 
190 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 my food and the thorn for my mansion." The falcon re- 
 plied, " For once be all ear. I who perform a hundred 
 acts repeat not one. Thou who performest not one deed 
 displayest a thousand. Since I am all intelligence in the 
 hunt, the king gives me dainty food and his wrist. Since 
 thou art one entire motion of a tongue, eat worms and sit 
 on thorns ; and so peace be with you." The Turks have 
 a tale, that as a king of Bactria was pursuing the chase 
 one day, he felt hungry, and sat down to eat. And while 
 he was eating, a bee came, seized a morsel of bread, and 
 flew slowly away with it. Wondering thereat, the king 
 followed the bee, which led him to where sat on a bough 
 a sparrow blind of both eyes, which opened its beak wide 
 as soon as it heard the bee's humming. And the bee 
 broke the bread into three pieces, fed the bird with them, 
 and then flew away. When the king saw this wondrous 
 work of God he renounced all earthly ties, and gave him- 
 self up to the All-True. 
 
 John Woolman's kindness went hand in hand with his 
 quietness. He saw some good in every body, and was 
 careful not to extinguish it. He never scolded. A saint 
 would be damned by unintermitted scolding. It was 
 Mary Lamb, we believe, who said that a babe is fed with 
 milk and praise. John Woolman did not blame whom 
 he sought to benefit, if he did not praise. No man was 
 so bad as to appear in his eyes wholly blameworthy, and 
 so he easily gained the ears of the most abandoned. In 
 Sir William Jones's Persian grammar may be found the 
 beautiful story from Nizami. It cannot be too often re- 
 peated for the lesson it teaches. One evening Jesus arrived 
 at the gates of a certain city, and sent his disciples for- 
 ward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent on doing 
 good, walked through the streets into the market-place. 
 And he saw at the corner of the market some people 
 gathered together, looking at an object on the ground ; 
 and he drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 191 
 
 dog, with a halter round his neck, by which he appeared 
 to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a 
 more abject, or more unclean thing never met the eyes 
 of man. And those who stood by looked on with abhor- 
 rence. " Faugh ! " said one, stopping his nose, " it pol- 
 lutes the air ! " " How long," said another, " shall this 
 foul beast offend our sight ? " " Look at his torn hide," 
 said a third ; " one could not even cut a shoe out of it." 
 " And his ears," said a fourth, " all draggled and bleed- 
 ing ! " " No doubt," said a fifth, " he has been hanged 
 for thieving." And Jesus heard them, and looking down 
 compassionately on the dead creature, he said, " Pearls 
 are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth ! " Then the 
 people turned towards him with amazement, and said 
 among themselves, " Who is this ? It must be Jesus of 
 Nazareth, for only he could find something to pity and 
 approve in a dead dog." And being ashamed, they 
 bowed their heads before him, and went each on his way. 
 We all know how even brutes are influenced by kind- 
 ness. A market-gardener had a very fine cow that was 
 milked week after week by hired men. He observed that 
 the amount of butter he carried to market weighed about 
 a pound more on each alternate week. He watched the 
 men, and tried the cow after they had finished milking, 
 but always found that there was no milk to be had. He 
 finally asked the Scotch girl who took care of the milk if 
 she could account for the difference. " Why, yes," she 
 said. " When Jim milks he says to the cow, * So, my 
 pretty creature, so ! ' But when Sam milks he hits her on 
 the hips with the edge of the pail, and says, * Hoist, you 
 old brute ! ' " Hawthorne, in his English Note-Books, 
 speaks of a donkey that stubbornly refused to come out 
 of a boat which had brought him across the Mersey ; at 
 last, after many kicks had been applied, and other perse- 
 cutions of that kind, a man stepped forward, addressing 
 him affectionately, " Come along, brother," and the don- 
 key obeyed at once. 
 
192 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 " I once asked a successful peach-grower," said Pro- 
 fessor Venable, " how it was that he always had plenty of 
 excellent fruit, while his neighbors, with apparent equal 
 facilities, failed more than half the time to obtain any 
 crop at all, and always failed to raise first-rate peaches. 
 Said he : ' I know my trees ; they tell me what they 
 need ; I have a special interest in every twig of this or- 
 chard. A peach-tree will not produce unless you love 
 it' " 
 
 Some years ago a pretty French girl sold violets at the 
 steps of one of the New York hotels. She had her reg- 
 ular customers, who could always be counted upon to 
 purchase. One morning very early we happened to be 
 passing just when she was taking her flowers out of her 
 basket* to display them on the table. " Your violets look 
 very beautiful this morning," we said. " Yes," she an- 
 swered, with a glow upon her face ; " when I went out 
 into the garden at day-break, they were all talking to one 
 another ! " Then we knew why her violets were always 
 so beautiful. She loved them, and they grew better for 
 her. 
 
 Moral honesty was a conspicuous trait in the character 
 of John Woolman. A religion without it he could not 
 comprehend ; certainly it was not the religion of Christ. 
 "They that cry down moral honesty," said old John Sel- 
 den, " cry down that which is a great part of religion, my 
 duty towards God, and my duty towards man. What 
 care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and 
 cheats as soon as he comes home ? " The integrity of 
 John Woolman was complete : it was so perfect as to ap- 
 pear " a law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a 
 principle." 
 
 His good influence, everywhere that he went — in his 
 own America and in London streets — amongst slave- 
 drivers and sailors — the worst men and the most aban- 
 doned women — reminds us, in some respects, of the monk 
 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 193 
 
 Basle, of whom it is related that, being excommunicated 
 by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent in charge of an 
 angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell ; but such was 
 the excellence of his manner that, wherever he went, he 
 was received gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most 
 uncivil angels; and, when he came to discourse with 
 them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took 
 his part and adopted his manners : and even good angels 
 came from far to see him, and take up their abode with 
 him. The angel that was sent to find a place of torment 
 for him attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with 
 no better success ; for such was the spirit of the monk, 
 that he found something to praise in every place and 
 company, though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of 
 it. At last the escorting angel returned with his prisoner 
 to them that sent him, saying, that no phlegethon could 
 be found that would burn him ; for that, in whatever con- 
 dition, Basle remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend 
 says, his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to 
 go into heaven, and was canonized as a saint. 
 
 John Woolman was pure, and in every situation re- 
 mained pure. It has been said by naturalists that hun- 
 ters, when in pursuit of the ermine, spread with mire all 
 the passes leading to its haunts, to which they drive it, 
 knowing that it will submit to be taken rather than defile 
 itself. John Woolman was so pure that in any extremity 
 he would have suffered everything rather than be defiled. 
 
 He was a Christian,' and lived very near the Divine 
 pattern. He loved God and his fellow-man. The Golden 
 Rule was his rule of life : he applied it, and lived by it. 
 Christian Faith, such as his, is " a grand cathedral, with 
 divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see 
 no glory, nor can possibly imagine any ; standing within, 
 every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable 
 splendors." 
 
 Two miles out of Cracow, the ancient capital of Po- 
 13 
 
194 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 land, stands the Hill of Kosciuszko. It has received its 
 name from a lofty mound of earth which was heaped up 
 on the top of it in honor of the patriot after his death. 
 Nobles, burghers, ladies, labored with their own hands in 
 piling it up ; bags and baskets filled with earth were 
 brought from every part of the dominions of the ancient 
 Polish kingdom to be added to the heap ; and thus it 
 was raised in a steep grass-covered cone, to a height of 
 more than eighty feet above the top of the hill. Some 
 such everlasting monument should be erected to the 
 memory of Woolman. A vast plateau might be selected, 
 sacred forever to the purpose, and upon it, if possible, 
 might be deposited, by every Christian, every struggling 
 poor man, every man who has been a serf or a slave, his 
 tribute of earth, that so a mighty mountain might be 
 raised, to tell to all the world that such a man as John 
 Woolman had lived. 
 
VIII. 
 JOHN RANDOLPH AND JOHN BROWN. 
 
 Two of the really great men that America has pro- 
 duced were John Randolph and John Brown. We speak 
 of them in the order of chronology. Two more antithetic 
 types could hardly be named. One was a born aristocrat, 
 the other a born democrat, and as such they incarnated 
 the two civilizations that have been in irreconcilable con- 
 flict since the foundation of the Nation, and that finally 
 produced the Civil War. 
 
 John Randolph of Roanoke, to use his own language, 
 " was ushered into this world of woe " on the second day 
 of June, 1773. The mansion-house in which he was bom 
 is described as of ample proportions, -with offices and ex- 
 tended wings, and as not an unworthy representative of 
 the baronial days in which it was built — when Virginia 
 cavaliers, under the title of gentlemen, with their broad 
 domain of virgin soil, and long retinue of servants, lived 
 in a style of elegance and profusion, not inferior to that 
 of the barons of England. The first of his name that 
 emigrated to Virginia was Colonel William Randolph, an 
 English gentleman, who died in 1711. He was the father 
 of seven sons and two daughters, who became the pro- 
 genitors of a widespread and numerous race, embracing 
 the most wealthy families, and many of the most distin- 
 guished names in Virginia history. His descendants were 
 active promoters of the Revolution. John, the father of 
 John of Roanoke, with two other relatives, sold forty 
 slaves, and with the money purchased powder for the use 
 of the colony. He married Jane Boiling, a descendant 
 
196 CHi* RACTERISTICS. 
 
 of Pocahontas, the beautiful Indian princess, daughter of 
 Powhatan, between whom and Randolph there was said 
 to be a striking resemblance. 
 
 The birthplace of Randolph, before referred to, was 
 consumed by fire, also, the home of his childhood, also, 
 the house where he spent the first fifteen years of his 
 manhood. He was asked by a friend, after the latter 
 place was burned, why he did not write something to 
 leave behind him. " Too late, sir, too late," was the re- 
 ply ; " all I ever wrote perished in the flames ; it is too 
 late to restore it now." He felt and owned himself to 
 be a child of destiny ; he had a work given him to do, 
 but some cross fate prevented ; he failed to fulfill his des- 
 tiny, and was wretched. " My whole name and race," he 
 was heard to say, " lie under a curse. I am sure I feel 
 the curse cleaving to me." 
 
 As a child, he is described as delicate, reserved, and 
 beautiful. He said of himself that " but for a spice of 
 the devil in his temper," his delicacy and effeminacy of 
 complexion would have consigned him to the distaff or the 
 needle. Before he was four years old, he was known to 
 swoon away in a fit of passion, and with diflficulty could 
 be restored : " an evidence of the extreme delicacy of his 
 constitution, and the uncontrollable ardor of a temper 
 that required a stronger frame to repress and restrain it." 
 In those fits of passion, his mother only, by her caresses, 
 was able to soothe him. She was the one only human 
 being, he said, who understood him. She was a woman, 
 we are informed, not only of superior personal attrac- 
 tions, but excelled all others of her day in strength of 
 intellect. Her death, when he was fifteen years old, nearly 
 broke his heart. She was a member of the Church of 
 England, a faith from which, we are assured, her son never 
 long departed. She carefully guarded his associations. 
 " He was allowed," it was said, " to come in contact with 
 nothing low, vulgar, or mean." So, by training, as well 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. I97 
 
 as by natural bent, the child became "father of the 
 man." 
 
 Some attention was paid to his education at home by 
 his step-father and by his mother. He was too delicate, 
 however, to be confined to study, and having " a spice of 
 the devil in his temper," not much progress was made. 
 But he was not idle. There was a certain closet, it is 
 known, to which he stole away and secreted himself when- 
 ever he could. It was well stored with good books. Be- 
 fore he was eleven years of age he had read Voltaire's 
 History of Charles XH. of Sweden, Humphry Clinker, 
 Reynard the Fox, Shakespeare, the Arabian Nights, Gold- 
 smith's Roman History, an old History of Braddock's 
 War, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, 
 Pope's Homer, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Tom Jones, 
 Orlando Furioso, and Thomson's Seasons ! Fit resource 
 for the "thin-skinned, sensitive, impulsive, imaginative 
 boy," subject to " fits of passion and swooning." " I have 
 been all my life," he said, " the creature of impulse, the 
 sport of chance, the victim of my own uncontrolled and 
 uncontrollable sensations ; of a poetic temperament. I 
 admire and pity all who possess this temperament." 
 
 In the year 1781 the family were hastened from their 
 home by the invasion of Virginia by Benedict Arnold, — 
 Mr. Tucker, young Randolph's step-father, joining Gen- 
 eral Greene, then manoeuvring before Cornwallis's army 
 on the borders of North Carolina and Virginia, and after- 
 ward joining La Fayette, with whom he continued until 
 the capture of Cornwallis at Yorktown. John was left 
 with his mother during tiiis stirring period. Her precepts, 
 it is easy to believe, were law to his plastic mind. When 
 riding over the vast Roanoke estates one day, she took 
 John up behind her, and waving her hand over the broad 
 acres spread before them, she said, " Johnny, all this land 
 belongs to you and your brother Theodorick ; it is your 
 father's inheritance. When you get to be a man you 
 
198 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 must not sell your land ; it is the first step to ruin for a 
 boy to part with his father's home : be sure to keep it as 
 long as you live. Keep your land and your land will 
 keep you." In relating this anecdote, Mr. Randolph said 
 it made such an impression on his mind that it governed 
 his future life. He was confident it saved him from many 
 errors. " He never did part with his father's home. His 
 attachment to the soil, the old English law of inherit- 
 ance, and a landed aristocracy, constituted the most re- 
 markable trait in his character." After the Virginia law 
 of descents was changed, he said, " The old families of 
 Virginia will form connections with low people, and sink 
 into the mass of overseers' sons and daughters ; and this 
 is the legitimate, nay, inevitable conclusion to which Mr. 
 Jefferson and his leveling system has brought us." 
 
 The next two years, from nine till eleven, he spent at 
 schools in Orange county and the city of Williamsburg. 
 At the latter, it is related, the boys were in the habit of 
 acting plays in the original language from Plautus and 
 Terence. John was always selected to perform the fe- 
 male parts. His feminine appearance, and the " spice of 
 the devil in his temper," rendered him, it was said, pecul- 
 iarly fitted for that purpose, and his performance was ad- 
 mirable. His proud temper and reserved manners pre- 
 vented him from forming any intimate associations with 
 his school-fellows. He, it is stated, "shunned vulgar 
 society, and repelled familiarity." 
 
 At eleven he went with his parents to the island of 
 Bermuda, where he remained eighteen months. While 
 there he read Chatterton and Rowley, Young and Gay. 
 Percy's Reliques and Chaucer became his favorites. A 
 year or two after his return from Bermuda, he went to 
 Princeton, thence to Columbia College, in New York- 
 "At Princeton College," he says, "where I spent a few 
 months, the prize of elocution was borne away by mouth- 
 ers and ranters. I never would speak if I could possi- 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. I99 
 
 biy avoid it, and when I could not, repeated without ges- 
 ture, the shortest piece that I had committed to memory. 
 I was then as conscious of my superiority over my com- 
 petitors in delivery and elocution, as I am now that they 
 are sunk in oblivion ; and I despised the award and the 
 umpires in the bottom of my heart. I believe that there 
 is nowhere such foul play as among professors and 
 schoolmasters ; more especially if they are priests. I 
 have had a contempt for college honors ever since." 
 
 In New York he took much interest in passing events. 
 His letters were considered very extraordinary for a boy 
 of fifteen. One of them was upon " alien duties " exacted 
 by the custom-house there ; another described with par- 
 ticularity the first inauguration of Washington as Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 At sixteen he had abandoned classical study, turning 
 his attention and reflection to other fields. While yet 
 a youth, he was in daily intercourse with statesmen and 
 men of learning. He enjoyed great and rare opportuni- 
 ties for acquiring information on those subjects towards 
 which his mind, he said, had " a precocious proclivity." 
 He was a constant attendant on the sittings of the first 
 Congress, which sat in New York. " I was at Federal 
 Hall," he said long afterwards, in a speech; "I saw 
 Washington, but could not hear him take the oath to sup- 
 port the Federal Constitution. The Constitution was in 
 a chrysalis state. I saw what Washington did not see ; 
 but two other men in Virginia saw it — George Mason 
 and Patrick Henry — the poison under its wings" — 
 meaning too great a consolidation of power in the Gen- 
 eral Government, and too small a recognition of the 
 rights of the States. With Henry, also, he saw the " aw- 
 ful squintings towards monarchy " in the Executive. He 
 was, says his biographer, bred up in the school of Mason 
 and of Henry. His step-father, his uncles, his brother, 
 and all with whom he associated, imbibed the sentiments 
 
200 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 of those statesmen, shared their devotion to the princi- 
 ples and the independence of the Commonwealth of Vir- 
 ginia, and participated in all their objections to the new 
 government. Young Randolph, as we have seen, was a 
 constant attendant on the debates of the first Congress, 
 which had devolved on it the delicate task of organizing 
 the government, and setting its wheels in motion. It was 
 amid these scenes, and by associating with such men, 
 that his political principles were formed and established, 
 and from which he never swerved. His jealousy of the 
 power of the Federal Government, and his zeal for the 
 rights of the States, increased rather than diminished. 
 Upon the removal of the seat of government to Philadel- 
 phia, he went with it, where he remained, with short 
 intervals, till the spring of 1 794, when he returned to Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
 He became extremely fond of the writings of Edmund 
 Burke, and they are said by Garland, in his careful his- 
 tory of his character, proclivities, and career, to have 
 been the key to his political opinions. In after life, we 
 are told, as he grew in experience, those opinions became 
 more and more assimilated to the doctrines of his great 
 master. His position in society, his large hereditary 
 possessions, his pride of ancestry, his veneration for the 
 Commonwealth of Virginia, her ancient laws and institu- 
 tions; his high estimation of the rights of property in 
 the business of legislation, — all conspired to shape his 
 thoughts, and mould them in matters pertaining to do- 
 mestic polity after the fashion of those who have faith in 
 the old, the long-established, and the venerable. 
 
 While in Philadelphia, he attended several courses of 
 lectures on anatomy and physiology. In April, 1794, he 
 returned to Virginia. In June he was twenty-one years 
 old, when he took upon himself the management of his 
 vast patrimonial estates. At twenty-three he had the 
 appearance of a youth of sixteen, and was not growa 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 201 
 
 He grew, it is said, a full head taller after this period. 
 The death of his oldest brother at about this time, was a 
 terrible blow to him. A relative, who slept in the room 
 under his, said she never waked in the night that shd did 
 not hear him moving about, sometimes striding across 
 the floor, and exclaiming, "Macbeth hath murdered 
 sleep ! Macbeth hath murdered sleep ! " She knew him 
 to have his horse saddled in the dead of night, and ride 
 over the plantation with loaded pistols. His natural 
 temper, we are informed, became more repulsive ; he had 
 no confidential friend, nor would any tie, however sa- 
 cred, excuse inquiry. He was never in one place long 
 enough to study much, yet he was known to turn over the 
 leaves of a book carelessly, then lay it down, and tell 
 more about it than those who had studied it. 
 
 In the winter of 1799, in the twenty-sixth year of his 
 age, he was announced as a candidate for Congress. On 
 March court day, the venerable Patrick Henry and the 
 youthful John Randolph met, for the first time, at Char- 
 lotte Court House — the one to make his last speech, the 
 other his first — the one the candidate of George Wash- 
 ington for a seat in the legislature of Virginia, the other 
 a self-announced candidate for Congress — the one the 
 champion of the Federal, the other the champion of the 
 Republican cause. The occasion and event will long be 
 memorable. The young man, says the historian of the 
 contest, who was to answer the venerable orator, if in- 
 deed the multitude suspected that any one would dare 
 venture on a reply, was unknown to fame. A tall, slen- 
 der, effeminate-looking youth was he ; light hair, combed 
 back into a well-adjusted cue — pale countenance, a beard- 
 less chin, bright, quick, hazel eye, blue frock, buff small- 
 clothes, and fair-top boots. He was doubtless known to 
 many on the court green as the little Jack Randolph they 
 had frequently seen dashing by on wild horses, from one 
 of his estates to another. A few knew him more inti- 
 
202 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 mately, but none had ever heard him speak in public, or 
 even suspected that he could make a speech. His 
 friends knew his powers, his fluency in conversation, his 
 ready wit, his polished satire, his extraordinary knowl- 
 edge of men and affairs ; but still he was about to enter 
 on an untried field, and all those brilliant faculties might 
 fail him, as they had so often failed men of genius be- 
 fore. 
 
 Henry, old and feeble, spoke first, in his usual eloquent 
 manner, for two hours. Randolph followed. He spoke, 
 it is said, for three hours ; all that time the people, stand- 
 ing on their feet, hung with breathless silence on his lips. 
 His youthful appearance, boyish tones, clear, distinct, 
 thrilling utterance ; his graceful action, bold expression, 
 fiery energy, and manly thoughts, struck the multitude 
 with astonishment. A bold genius and an orator of the 
 first order had suddenly burst upon them, and dazzled 
 them with his power and brilliancy. The orators, both 
 of whom were elected, dined together after the contest, 
 and Randolph ever after venerated the memory of Henry, 
 who died in a few weeks. 
 
 Randolph's first speech in Congress was on a resolu- 
 tion to repeal an act to augment the army. It was ener- 
 getic and fierce, and in it he applied the epithet " raga- 
 muffins " to the soldiers enlisted in the army ; which 
 caused him to be insulted by two young officers in the 
 theatre, of which insult he complained in plain language 
 to the President, John Adams. The President enclosed 
 Randolph's letter to the House of Representatives, with 
 a not very agreeable intimation as to its " matter and 
 style." The affair created much excitement throughout 
 the country, and was considered by Randolph and his 
 friends " as but one of a series of events that had for 
 their end the subjugation of the people to the will of the 
 federal oligarchy." 
 
 He was too impatient and violent to be trusted as a 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 203 
 
 leader. He suspected corruption in many men connected 
 with the administration, and he denounced them unspar- 
 ingly. What had been called the " colossus of turpitude, 
 the Yazoo speculation," was the especial object of his 
 violent denunciation. 
 
 In the midst of all this fever and distraction, the issue 
 of an unfortunate love affair with one whom he said he 
 loved more than his " own soul, or the God that made 
 it," nearly unhinged his mind. His letters to his friends 
 about this time are full of wretchedness and misery. He 
 purposed flying across the sea, but stayed at home to 
 brood. To a friend who was miserable, he said and 
 wrote, " I, too, am wretched." 
 
 Notwithstanding, he took a leading part in every debate 
 on the floor of Congress. The first fourteen years of 
 his public service covered discussions of an exciting 
 nature relating to our affairs with France, Spain, and 
 England, the Embargo, the Gunboat scheme, and the 
 war with Great Britain. The latter he opposed with all 
 the vehemence and vigor of his mind and passions. For 
 that opposition and for other reasons he was driven into 
 retirement. The election in the spring of 18 13 resulted 
 in his defeat, after a contest of prodigious energy and 
 desperation. 
 
 He said the defeat relieved him " from an odious thrall- 
 dom." He retired to his home at Roanoke, which he de- 
 scribed as " a savage solitude," where he lived in the 
 utmost seclusion. The only companion of his solitude 
 was a young relative he had taken to live with him, whom 
 he educated with much care and at great expense. " It 
 is indeed," he wrote to a friend, " a life of seclusion that 
 I live here, uncheckered by a single ray of enjoyment. I 
 try to forget myself in books ; but that * pliability of man's 
 spirit ' which yields him up to the illusions of the ideal 
 world, is gone from me forever." " For my part," writing 
 again to the same friend, " it requires an effort to take an 
 
204 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 interest in any thing ; and it seems to be strange that 
 there should be found inducements strong enough to 
 carry on the business of the world." He complained of 
 violent palpitations of the heart. " When the fit is on," 
 he said, " it may be seen through my dress across the 
 room." Some months afterward he wrote, " Since the 
 hot weather set in, I have been in a state of collapse, 
 and am as feeble as an infant — with all this I am tor- 
 tured with rheumatism, or gout, a wretched cripple, and 
 my mind is yet more weak and diseased than my body. 
 I hardly know myself, so irresolute and timid have I be- 
 come. In short, I hope that there is not another creature 
 in the world as unhappy as myself. This I can say to 
 you. To the world I endeavor to put on a different coun- 
 tenance, and hold a bolder language j but it is sheer hy- 
 pocrisy, assumed, to guard against the pity of mankind." 
 About the same time he wrote to the same friend, " On 
 the terms by which I hold it, life is a curse, from which 
 I would willingly escape, if I knew where to fly. I have 
 lost my relish for reading ; indeed, I could not devour 
 even the Corsair with the zest that Lord Byron's pen gen- 
 erally inspires." 
 
 Two years after his defeat for Congress he was elected 
 again. His candidacy brought out a swarm of detractors, 
 whom he refused to answer. " It is too late in the day," 
 he said, " to vindicate my public character before a peo- 
 ple whom I represented fourteen years, and whom, if they 
 do not now know me, never will. I therefore abstain 
 from all places of public resort, as well from inclination 
 as principle." After the election, he said, " I do assure 
 you with the utmost sincerity, that, so far as I am per- 
 sonally concerned, I cannot but regret the partiality of 
 my friends, who insisted on holding me up on this occa- 
 sion. I am engrossed by sentiments of a far different 
 character, and I look forward to the future in this world, 
 to say nothing of the next, with anticipations that forbid 
 any idle expression of exultation." 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 205 
 
 Mr. Clay was his great antagonist. Although a Re- 
 publican, he was accused of being a Federalist at heart, 
 and opposed to the doctrine of State rights. For that, 
 above every thing, Randolph was ever the bold champion. 
 He thus refers to a memorable effort, in a letter dated 
 Feb'y 23, 1820, the day after the speech was delivered : 
 " Yesterday I spoke four hours and a half to as attentive 
 an audience as ever listened to a public speaker. Every 
 eye was riveted upon me, save one, (Mr. Clay's,) and that 
 ^was sedulously and affectedly turned away. The ears, 
 however, were drinking up the words as those of the royal 
 Dane imbibed the 'juice of cursed hebenon,' though not, 
 like his, unconscious of the * leperous distilment.' " 
 
 The peculiar state of his health, the excitement inci- 
 dent to the settlement of the Missouri question, and the 
 death of his friend Commodore Decatur — who fell in a 
 duel with Commodore Barron, March 20, 1820 — all con- 
 tributed to produce a state of mind bordering on insanity. 
 He went into the United States Branch Bank at Rich- 
 mond and asked for writing materials to write a check. 
 He dipped his pen in the ink, and finding that it was 
 black, asked for red ink, saying, " I now go for blood." 
 He filled the check up, and asked the cashier to write his 
 name to it. The cashier refused to write his name ; and 
 after importuning him for some time, he called for black 
 ink, and signed John Randolph, of Roanoke, X his mark. 
 At about the same time, as the same person, the cashier, 
 was passing along the street, Mr. Randolph hailed him in 
 a louder voice than usual. The first question he asked 
 the gentleman was, whether he knew of a good ship in 
 the James River in which he could get a passage for 
 England. He said he had been sick of a remittent and 
 intermittent fever for forty days, and his physician said 
 he must go to England. He was told there were no ships 
 there fit for his accommodation, and that he had better 
 go to New York, and sail from that port. " Do you think," 
 
J- 
 
 206 CHriRACTERISTICS. 
 
 said he, " I would give my money to those who are ready 
 to make my negroes cut my throat ? If I cannot go to 
 England from a Southern port I will not go at all." A 
 ship in the river was then recommended to him. He 
 asked the name of it, and was told it was the " Henry 
 Clay." He threw up his arms and exclaimed, " Henry 
 Clay ! No, six J I will never step on the planks of a 
 ship of that name." Soon after, he drew all his funds out 
 of the bank, and put them in English guineas, — saying 
 there was no. danger of them. His "madness," as they 
 called it, lasted but for a few months. In the autumn 
 his understanding was as good as ever. 
 
 The summer he had spent at Roanoke. " The boys," as 
 he called his wards, were off at school, and he found the 
 solitude as usual, nearly intolerable. His letters written 
 at this 'time abound in wise thoughts. " The true care for 
 maladies like yours," he says to one who had written in a 
 desponding tone, " is employment. * Be not solitary ; be 
 not idle ! ' was all that Burton could advise." " One of 
 the best and wisest men I ever knew has often said to 
 me, that a decayed family could never recover its loss 
 of rank in the world, until the members of it left off talk- 
 ing and dwelling upon its former opulence." ^ Nothmg 
 can be more respectable than the independence "that 
 grows out of self denial. The man who, by abridging his 
 wants, can find time to devote to the cultivation of his 
 mind, or the.jaiii of his fellow-creatures, is a being far 
 above the plodding sons of industry and gain. He is a 
 spirit of the noblest order. '"^ " You know my opinion of 
 female society. Without it, we should degenerate into 
 brutes. To a young man, nothing is so important as a 
 spirit of devotion (next to his Creator) to some virtuous 
 and amiable woman, whose image may occupy his heart, 
 and guard it from the pollution which besets it on all 
 sides." - " If matrimony has its cares, celibacy has no 
 pleasures. A Newton, or a mere scholar, may find em- 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 20/ 
 
 ployment in study ; a man of literary taste can receive, 
 in books, a powerful auxiliary ; but a man must have a 
 bosom friend, and children around him, to cherish and 
 support the dreariness of old age." Before leaving home 
 he wrote his will, which emancipated all of his slaves, and 
 provided for their maintenance. 
 
 In the spring of 1822, immediately after a speech of 
 two hours against the Bankrupt Bill, he set out for New 
 York to embark for Liverpool. The sea seemed to stim- 
 ulate him. His social talents were exhibited in a manner 
 highly delightful to the passengers. " He proposed one 
 fine morning," said one of them, " to read (Halleck's) 
 Fanny to me aloud, and on deck, where we were enjoying 
 a fine breeze and noonday sun. It was the most amus- 
 ing ' reading ' I ever listened to. The notes were much 
 longer than the poem ; for, whenever he came to a well- 
 known name, up went his spectacles and down went the 
 book, and he branched off into some anecdote of the per- 
 son or of his family. Thus we ' progressed ' slowly from 
 page to page, and it actually consumed three mornings- 
 before we reached — 
 
 * And music ceases when it rains 
 In Scudder's balcony.' " 
 
 His visit to the House of Lords was characteristic. 
 He refused to be admitted at the lower door. " Do you 
 suppose," he said to the friend who held the tickets,," that 
 I would consent to struggle with and push through the 
 crowd of persons who, for two long hours, must fight their 
 way in at the lower door } Oh, no sir ! I shall do no 
 such thing ; and if I cannot enter as a gentleman com- 
 moner I go not at all." They separated — the friend to 
 struggle in with the crowd, half suffocated by the long 
 and perilous exertion. " Casting a glance toward the 
 throne," said he, " soon after my entrance, to my no small 
 surprise and envy, I beheld * Randolph of Roanoke ' in 
 
208 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 all his glory, walking in most leisurely, and perfectly at 
 home, alongside of Canning, Lord Castlereagh, Sir Robert 
 Peel, and many other distinguished members of the House 
 of Commons." 
 
 While in England he had interviews of the most inter- 
 esting character with Mrs. Fry, Moore, Miss Edgeworth, 
 Wilberforce, and others, besides making a speech at a 
 meeting of the African Institution in London, expressing 
 in his usual vigorous way an abhorrence of the slave- 
 trade. 
 
 The following winter, from his place on the floor of 
 Congress, he spoke a cheering word for the Greeks. The 
 speech was one of his best, and attracted great attention. 
 Other speeches followed on Internal Improvements, the 
 Tariff, and other public questions. The next summer he 
 made another voyage to Europe. In the spring of 1825 
 he was again a candidate for Congress — " that bear gar- 
 den," he called it, "of the House of Representatives." 
 On the 1 8th of April — the day of the election — he 
 made a speech at Prince Edward Court House, which is 
 referred to by Garland — who was then a boy — in his 
 biography of Randolph. The theme of his discourse 
 was the " alarming encroachments of the General Gov- 
 ernment upon the rights of the States." " I shall never 
 forget the manner of the man," says Garland. " The 
 tall, slender figure, swarthy complexion, animated counte- 
 nance ; the solemn glance, that passed leisurely over the 
 audience, hushed into deep silence before him, and bend- 
 ing forward to catch every look, every motion and every 
 word of the inspired orator ; the clear, silver tones of his 
 voice ; the distinct utterance — full, round expression, 
 and emphasis of his words ; the graceful bend and easy 
 motion of the person, as he turned from side to side ; the 
 rapid, lightning-like sweep of the hand when something 
 powerful was uttered ; the earnest, fixed gaze, that fol- 
 lowed, as if searching into the hearts of his auditors, 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 209 
 
 while his words were telling upon them ; then, the omi- 
 nous pause, and the movement of that long, slender fore- 
 finger, that accompanied the keen, cutting sarcasm of his 
 words — all these I can never forget." 
 
 The following December he was elected to the Senate. 
 In his speech before that body upon the message of the 
 President, John Quincy Adams, in answer to resolutions 
 relating to the Panama Mission, Mr. Randolph said: 
 * Who made him a judge of our usages ? Who consti- 
 tuted him ? He has been a professor, I understand. I 
 wish he had left off the pedagogue when he got into the 
 Executive chair. Who made him the censor morum of 
 this body ? Will any one answer this question ? Yes or 
 no ? Who ? Name the person. Above all, who made 
 him the searcher of hearts, and gave him the right, by an 
 innuendo black as hell, to blacken our motives } Blacken 
 our motives ! I did not say that then. I was more under 
 self-command ; I did not use such strong language. I 
 said, if he could borrow the eye of Omniscience himself, 
 and look into every bosom here ; if he could look into 
 that most awful, calamitous, and tremendous of all gulfs, 
 the naked unveiled human heart, stripped of all its cover- 
 ing of self-love, exposed naked, as to the eye of God — I 
 said if he could do that, he was not, as President of the 
 United States, entitled to pass upon our motives, although 
 he saw and knew them to be bad. I said, if he had con- 
 verted us to the Catholic religion, and was our father 
 confessor, and every man in this House at the footstool 
 of the confessional had confessed a bad motive to him by 
 the laws of his church, as by this Constitution, above the 
 law and above the church, he, as President of the United 
 States, could not pass on our motives, though we had told 
 him with our own lips our motives, and confessed they 
 were bad. I said this then, and I say it now. Here I 
 plant my foot ; here I fling defiance right into his teeth 
 before the American people ; here I throw the gauntlet to 
 14 
 
210 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 him and the bravest of his compeers, to come forward 
 and defend these miserable lines : ' Involving a departure, 
 hitherto, as far as I am informed, without example, from 
 that usage, and upon the motives for which, not being in- 
 formed of them, I do not feel myself competent to decide.' 
 Amiable modesty ! I wonder we did not, all at once, fall 
 in love with him, and agree, una voce, to publish our pro- 
 ceedings, except myself, for I quitted the Senate ten min- 
 utes before the vote was taken. I saw what was to follow j 
 I knew the thing would not be done at all, or would be 
 done unanimously. Therefore, in spite of the remon- 
 strance of friends, I went away, not fearing that any one 
 would doubt what my vote would have been, if I had 
 stayed. After twenty-six hours' exertion, it was time to 
 give in. I was defeated, horse, foot, and dragoons — cut 
 up, and clean broke down by the coalition of Blifil and 
 Black George — by the combination, unheard of till then, 
 of the puritan with the blackleg." 
 
 The epithet " blackleg," as every body knew, referred 
 to Clay, and resulted in a duel. Randolph did not deny 
 the use of the offensive word. The parties met the suc- 
 ceeding evening at four o'clock on the banks of the Po- 
 tomac. The sun was just setting behind the blue hills. 
 An accident occurred by which Randolph's pistol dis- 
 charged, with the muzzle down, before the word was given. 
 Clay at once exclaimed that it was an accident. On the 
 virord being given. Clay fired, without effect, Randolph 
 discharging his pistol in the air. The moment Clay saw 
 that Randolph had thrown away his fire, "with a gush of 
 sensibility," he instantly approached Randolph, and said 
 with emotion^ " I trust in God, my dear sir, you are un- 
 touched ; I would not have harmed you for a thousand 
 worlds." 
 
 One of his greatest speeches was on Negro Slavery in 
 South America. His views were radical on every thing 
 relating to slavery. He said in a letter to a friend, " From 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 211 
 
 the institution of the Passover to the latest experience of 
 man, it would be found, that no two distinct people could 
 occupy the same territory, under one government, but in 
 the relation of master and vassal." 
 
 Early in May, 1826, before the adjournment of Con- 
 gress, he v/ent to Europe for a third time. He traveled 
 extensively in England, Wales, and on the Continent. 
 The next year he was defeated for the Senate, but was 
 re-elected by his old district to a seat in the House. The 
 summer was spent, as usual, at Roanoke. " I am dying," 
 he said, " as decently as I can." 
 
 In January, 1829, he wrote from Washington, " It won't 
 do for a man, who wishes to indulge in dreams of human 
 dignity and worth, to pass thirty years in public life. Al- 
 though I do believe that we are the meanest people in the 
 world — I speak of this * court ' and its retainers and fol- 
 lowers. I am super-saturated with the world, as it calls 
 itself, and have now but one object, which I shall keep 
 steadily in view, and perhaps some turn of the dice may 
 enable me to obtain it : it is to convert my property into 
 money, which will enable me to live, or rather to die, 
 where I please ; or rather where it may please God." 
 
 The same year he retired from the public service, as he 
 supposed, forever; but a Convention had been called to 
 amend the Constitution of Virginia, and he was elected 
 a member of it without consulting him. He watched the 
 proceedings of that body with unremitting attention, and 
 spoke to it upon important questions with quite his usual 
 power. 
 
 Before Mr. Randolph took his seat in the Convention 
 he had been offered the mission to Russia by President 
 Jackson. He was not, however, called upon to assume 
 the duties of his mission till the May following. In June 
 he set sail. In the autumn of the following year (1832) 
 he returned to the United States, much reduced in health. 
 His friends were shocked at his emaciated appearance. 
 
212 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Some misapprehension as to his conduct in St. Peters- 
 burgh, caused him to make a speech in explanation. But 
 his last energies were to be expended in a conflict more 
 serious than any in which he had been engaged. The 
 authority of the General Government and the rights of 
 the States were fairly in antagonism. Congress had 
 passed a new tariff law, and South Carolina had pro- 
 claimed by ordinance that she would not obey it. Gen- 
 eral Jackson proclaimed that the law should be obeyed. 
 Randolph, the champion of State rights, justified South 
 Carolina in her attitude of nullification. Although he 
 had to be lifted into his carriage like an infant, he went 
 from county to count}'-, speaking to the people in his old 
 tones with his accustomed fire. His only hope of salva- 
 tion for the country was in his old antagonist, Henry 
 Clay. " I know he has the power," he said, " I believe 
 he will be found to have the patriotism and firmness equal 
 to the occasion." 
 
 On his way to Philadelphia, whence he expected to be 
 able to embark for Europe, he visited the Senate Cham- 
 ber, and took his seat in the rear of Mr. Clay, who 
 happened to be on his feet addressing the Senate. " Raise 
 me up!" said Randolph; "I want to hear that voice 
 again." When Mr. Clay had concluded his remarks, 
 which were very few, he turned round, to see from what 
 quarter that singular voice proceeded. Seeing Mr. Ran- 
 dolph, and that he was in a dying condition, he left his 
 place and went to speak to him ; as he approached, Mr. 
 Randolph said to the gentleman with him, "Raise me 
 up ! " As Mr. Clay offered his hand, he said, " Mr. Ran- 
 dolph, I hope you are better, sir." " No, sir," replied 
 Randolph, " I am a dying man, and I came here expressly 
 to have this interview with you." 
 
 He was indeed a dying man. He managed, however, 
 to get to Philadelphia, where he soon died, at the City 
 Hotel. Not long before his death he had been lying per- 
 
JOHN BROWN. 213 
 
 fectly quiet, with his eyes closed. He suddenly roused 
 up and exclaimed — " Remorse ! remorse ! " It was 
 twice repeated — the last time at the top of his voice, 
 with great agitation. He cried out — "Let me see the 
 word. Get a dictionary. Let me see the word." " There 
 is none in the room, sir." "Write it down, then — let 
 me see the word." The doctor picked up one of his 
 cards, "Randolph of Roanoke" — "Shall I write it on 
 this card ? " " Yes, nothing more proper." The word 
 remorse was then written in pencil. He took the card in 
 a hurried manner, and fastened his eyes on it with great 
 intensity. "Write it on the back," he exclaimed — it 
 was so done and handed him again. He was extremely 
 agitated — " Remorse ! you have no idea what it is ; you 
 can form no idea of it whatever ; it has contributed to 
 bring me to my present situation — but I have looked to 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, and hope I have obtained pardon. 
 Now let John take your pencil and draw a line under the 
 word," which was accordingly done. " What am I to do 
 with the card ? " inquired the doctor. " Put it in your 
 pocket — take care of it — when I am dead, look at it." 
 
 In a few minutes — after a few hurried words relating 
 to his will — John Randolph was no more. 
 
 John Brown was born on the 9th day of May, 1800., 
 His parents were poor, but eminently of good repute* 
 The first of his ancestry on the paternal side that we 
 have any account of came over on the Mayflower. His 
 mother was a descendant of Peter Miles, an early emi- 
 grant from Holland, a tailor by trade, who died in 1754, 
 at the advanced age of eighty-eight. His father and 
 grandfather, and his mother's father and grandfather, 
 all served in the war of the Revolution. His grand- 
 father died in a barn near New York, while in the ser- 
 vice. This is the inscription on his grave-stone : " The 
 memory of Captaiix John Brown, who died in the Revolu- 
 
214 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 tionary*army, at New York, September 3, 17 76. He was 
 of the fourth generation, in regular descent, from Peter 
 Brown, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, who landed from the 
 Mayflower at Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 22, 
 1620." He left a widow and eleven children. It is be- 
 lieved that she reared these children with singular taste 
 and judgment, to habits of industry and principles of 
 virtue, as all became leading citizens in the communities 
 in which they resided. One of the sons became a judge 
 in one of the courts of Ohio. One of the daughters gave 
 to one of the most flourishing of New England's colleges 
 a president for twenty years, in the person of her son. 
 She is described as a woman of great energy and econ- 
 omy — the economy being a needful virtue. She cooked 
 " always just what the children needed, and no more, and 
 they always * licked their trenchers,' when they had done 
 with knife and fork." 
 
 John Brown lived at Torrington, Connecticut, his birth- 
 place, until he was five years old, when he emigrated with 
 his father to Hudson, Ohio. The latter soon became 
 one of the principal pioneer settlers of the new town ; 
 was ever respected for his probity and honor ; was com- 
 monly called 'Squire Brown, and was one of the Board 
 of Trustees of Oberlin College ; was endowed with en- 
 ergy and enterprise, and went down to his grave honored 
 and respected, about the year 1852, at the ripe age of 
 eighty-seven. He was an earnestly devout and religious 
 man, of the old Connecticut fashion. He was an invet- 
 erate and most painful stammerer — " the first specimen 
 of that infirmity that I had seen," says an early friend of 
 the Brown family, " and, according to my recollection, the 
 worst that I have ever known to this day ; and I have 
 never seen a man struggling and half strangled with a 
 word stuck in his throat, without remembering good Mr. 
 Owen Brown, who could not speak without stammering — 
 except in prayer." 
 
JOHN BROWN. 215 
 
 When John was four years old, he tells us himself, in 
 the little sketch he made for the amusement of a child, 
 that " he was tempted by three large brass pins belonging 
 to a girl in the family, and stole them. In this he was 
 detected by his mother, and, after having a full day to 
 think of the wrong, received from her a thorough whip- 
 ping." He preferred, he says, remaining at home to work 
 hard, rather than to go to school. In warm weather, he 
 says, he " might generally be seen barefooted and bare- 
 headed, with buckskin breeches, suspended with one 
 leather strap over his shoulder, but sometimes with two." 
 He delighted to be sent great distances through the wil- 
 derness alone. Sometimes he was sent a hundred miles, 
 all alone, in charge of herds of cattle. He says he 
 " would have thought his character much injured had he 
 been obliged to be helped in such a job." This life in 
 the woods gave him the habits and the keen senses of a 
 hunter or an Indian. He told a friend that he became 
 remarkably clear-sighted and quick of ear, and that he 
 had smelled the frying of doughnuts, when he was very 
 hungry, at five miles distance. He knew all the devices 
 of woodcraft ; declared he could make a dinner for forty 
 men out of the hide of one ox, and thought he understood 
 how to provide for an army's subsistence. During the 
 war with England, his father furnished the troops with 
 beef cattle, the collecting and driving of which afforded 
 John opportunity, which he enjoyed, of chasing the wild 
 cattle, when they broke away, panic-stricken, through the 
 unbroken forest. 
 
 At the age of ten years, an old friend induced him to 
 read a little history, and offered him the free use of his 
 library ; in that way he acquired some taste for reading, 
 which formed, he says, the principal part of his early edu- 
 cation. He became very fond of the company and con- 
 versation of old and intelligent persons. " He learned 
 nothing of grammar, nor of composition ; nor did he get 
 
2l6 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 at school so much knowledge of common arithmetic as 
 the four ground rules. This will give the reader some 
 general idea of the first fifteen years of his life; dur- 
 ing which time he became very strong and large of his 
 age, and ambitious to perform the full labor of a man, 
 at almost any kind of hard work. By reading the lives 
 of great, wise, and good men — their sayings and writ- 
 ings — he grew to a dislike of vain and frivolous con- 
 versation and persons ; and was often greatly obliged by 
 the kind manner in which older and more intelligent per- 
 sons treated him at their homes." He joined the Con- 
 gregational Church at the age of sixteen, with which, and 
 the Presbyterian Church, he was connected till the day of 
 his death. 
 
 The years from fifteen to twenty were mostly spent in 
 acquiring the trade of a tanner and currier — a part of 
 the time acting in the capacity of foreman. His atten- 
 tion to business, and success in its management, made 
 him a favorite with older and graver persons. From the 
 age of fifteen he felt a great anxiety to study ; but an in- 
 flammation of the eyes prevented close application. He 
 managed, however, to become pretty well acquainted with 
 arithmetic and surveying, which latter he practiced more 
 or less for the rest of his life. At nineteen or twenty, he 
 left Ohio and went East, to acquire a liberal education. 
 His ultimate design, it is stated, was the ministry. At 
 Plainfield, Massachusetts, he was fitted or nearly fitted 
 for college. A brother of his teacher thus describes John 
 Brown as he appeared at that time : " He was a tall, se- 
 date, dignified young man. He had been a tanner, and 
 relinquished a prosperous business for the purpose of in- 
 tellectual improvement, but with what ultimate end I do 
 not now know. He brought with him a piece of sole- 
 leather, about a foot square, which he himself had tanned 
 for seven years, to resole his boots. He had also a piece 
 of sheep-skin which he had tanned, and of which he cut 
 
JOHN BROWN. 217 
 
 some strips about an eighth of an inch wide for other 
 students to pull upon. My father took one string, and, 
 winding it around his fingers, said, * I shall snap it.' The 
 very marked, yet kind unmovableness of the young man's 
 face on seeing my father's defeat — my father's own look, 
 and the position of the people and things in the old 
 kitchen — somehow gave me a fixed recollection of the 
 little incident." While pursuing his studies, he was again 
 attacked with inflammation of the eyes, and he returned 
 to Ohio. " God," says his admiring biographer, " had 
 higher work for this sedate, dignified young man than to 
 write and deliver sermons to a parish. He was raising 
 him up as a deliverer of captives and a teacher of right- 
 eousness to a nation ; as the conserver of the light of 
 true Christianity, when it was threatened with extinction, 
 under the rubbish of creeds and constitutions, and iniq- 
 uities enacted into laws." 
 
 When he was just entering upon his twenty-first year 
 he was married. He describes his young wife as remark- 
 ably plain j neat, industrious, and economical ; of excel- 
 lent character ; earnest piety ; good practical common 
 sense ; and about one year younger than himself. This 
 woman, he says, by her mild, frank, and, more than all 
 else, very consistent conduct, acquired and maintained 
 while she lived a powerful and good influence over him. 
 Her plain but kindly admonitions generally had the right 
 effect, without arousing his haughty, obstinate temper. 
 Her name was Dianthe Lusk, by whom he had seven 
 children. Some time after her death, he married Mary 
 A. Day, by whom he had thirteen children — twenty in 
 all. 
 
 From his twenty-first to his twenty-sixth year, John 
 Brown was engaged in the tanning business, and as a 
 farmer in Ohio. In 1826 he went to Pennsylvania, where 
 he carried on the tanning business for nine years. One 
 of his apprentices at this period informed his biographer 
 
2l8 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 that he was characterized by singular probity of life, and 
 by his strong and " eccentric " benevolent impulses. He 
 refused to sell leather until the last drop of moisture had 
 been dried from it, "lest he should sell his customer water, 
 and reap the gain." He is said to have caused a man to 
 be arrested, or rearrested, for some small offense, simply 
 because he thought the crime should be punished ; and 
 his benevolence induced him to supply the wants of the 
 offender out of his private means, and to provide for the 
 family until the trial. 
 
 He returned to Ohio in 1835, where he again engaged 
 in tanning, and trading in real estate. The latter turned 
 out to be unfortunate. He then took a drove of cattle to 
 Connecticut, and returned with a flock of sheep, — his 
 first purchases in that business, in which afterward he 
 became pretty largely interested. In 1840 he went to 
 Hudson again, and engaged in the wool business. His 
 partner there says of him : " From boyhood I have 
 known him through manhood ; and through life he has 
 been distinguished for his truthfulness and integrity ; he 
 has ever been esteemed, by those who have known him, 
 as a very conscientious man." 
 
 It was, we are told, in 1839 that he conceived the idea 
 of becoming a liberator of the Southern slaves. He had 
 been an abolitionist since he was twelve years old, but 
 now he determined to devote his life, as far as possible, to 
 the cause of liberty against slavery, and to the rescue of 
 slaves. His devotion to the cause was intensely earnest 
 and heroic. " He had elements of character," said one 
 who knew him well, " which, under circumstances favora- 
 ble to their proper development and right direction, would 
 have made him one of the greatest men of the world. 
 Napoleon himself had no more blind and trusting confi- 
 dence in his own destiny and resources; his iron will and 
 unbending purpose were equal to that of any man, living 
 or dead ; his religious enthusiasm and sense of duty were 
 
JOHN BROWN. 219 
 
 earnest and sincere, and not excelled by that of Oliver 
 Cromwell or any of his followers ; while no danger could 
 for a moment alarm or disturb him. His manner, though 
 conveying the idea of a stern and self-sustaining man, was 
 yet gentle and courteous, and marked by frequent and 
 decided manifestations of kindness ; and it can probably 
 be said of him, with truth, that, amid all his provocations, 
 he never perpetrated an act of wanton or unnecessary 
 cruelty. He was scrupulously honest, moral, and tem- 
 perate, and never gave utterance to a boast." 
 
 He was a very early riser, and a very hard worker. 
 His dress is described as extremely plain ; never in the 
 fashion, and never made of fine cloth. But he was 
 always scrupulously clean and tidy in his personal appear- 
 ance. "When first I saw him," says Redpath, "at his 
 camp in Kansas, although his clothing was patched and 
 old, and he was almost barefooted, he was as tidy, both in 
 person and dress, as any gentleman of Boston." 
 
 He was extremely fond of music. " I once saw him," 
 said a friend, " sit listening with the most rapt attention 
 to Schubert's Serenade, played by a mutual acquaintance, 
 and, when the music ceased, tears were in the old man's 
 eyes. He was indeed most tender-hearted — fond of 
 children and pet creatures, and always enlisted on the 
 weaker side. The last time I saw him in Boston, he had 
 been greatly annoyed by overhearing in the street some 
 rude language addressed to a black girl, who, he said, 
 would never have been insulted if she had been white." 
 
 " John Brown was always very agreeable," said Judge 
 Russell, of Boston, in a recent address. " He used to 
 hold up my little girl, eighteen months old, and say: 
 * Now, when I am hung for treason, you can say that you 
 used to stand on old Captain Brown's hand.' He walked 
 the floor at night with his hands behind him, and occa- 
 sionally brought out an idea. One I remember very dis- 
 tinctly: *It would be better that a whole generation 
 
220 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 should perish from the earth, than that one truth in the 
 Sermon on the Mount or the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence should be forgotten among men.' " 
 
 He went to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1846, and 
 engaged again in the wool business. His book-keeper 
 describes him as a quiet and peaceable citizen, whose in- 
 tegrity was never doubted ; honorable in all his dealings, 
 but peculiar in many of his notions, and adhering to them 
 with great obstinacy. He and his eldest son discussed 
 slavery by the hour in the counting-room ; he said it was 
 right for slaves to kill their masters and escape, and 
 thought slaveholders were guilty of a very great wicked- 
 ness. While at Springfield he went to Europe to look 
 after his wool interests. He interested himself in agri- 
 culture, but particularly in the armies of Great Britain 
 and the Continent. He visited several of the battle fields 
 of Napoleon : he thought him wrong in several points of 
 strategy, particularly in his choice of ground for a strong 
 position ; which Brown maintained should be a ravine 
 rather than a hill-top. He said that a ravine could be 
 held by a few men against a larger force ; that he had 
 acted on this principle in Kansas, and never suffered 
 from it. He ascribed his winning the battle of Black 
 Jack to his choice of ground. 
 
 In 1849, he removed his family to North Elba, in Essex 
 County, New York. It was at about this time, as stated 
 by his biographer, that Gerritt Smith offered to colored 
 settlers his wild lands in that district of the Adirondack 
 wilderness. Many of them accepted the offer, and went 
 there to make the experiment. At this period, it is re- 
 lated, John Brown appeared one day at Peterboro', and 
 said to Mr. Smith, " I see, by the newspapers, that you 
 have offered so many acres of wild land to each of the 
 colored men, on condition that they cultivate them. Now, 
 they are mostly inexperienced in this kind of work, and 
 unused to the climate, while I am familiar with both. I 
 
JOHN BROWN. 221 
 
 propose, therefore, to take a farm there myself, clear it 
 and plant it, showing the negroes how such work should 
 be done. I will also employ some of them on my land, 
 and will look after them in all ways, and will be a kind of 
 father to them." Mr. Smith accepted the humane pro- 
 posal, gave John Brown the land, and allowed him to make 
 the experiment, although he had never before seen him. 
 So far as the negroes were concerned, this proved a fail- 
 ure, but, it is believed, through no fault of Brown's. He 
 did his part faithfully by them. He had, it is known, 
 a higher notion of the capacity of the negro race than 
 most white men. He was often heard to dwell on this 
 subject, and mention instances of their fitness to take care 
 of themselves. He thought that " perhaps a forcible sep- 
 aration of the connection between master and slave was 
 necessary to educate the blacks for self-government;'* 
 but this he threw out as a suggestion merely. 
 
 The John Brown farm is described as a wild place ; 
 cold and bleak. It is too cold to raise corn there ; they 
 can scarcely, in the most favorable seasons, obtain a few 
 ears for roasting. Stock must be wintered for almost 
 six months in the year. I was there, says Higginson, on 
 the first day of November ; the ground was snowy, and 
 winter had apparently begun — and it would last until the 
 middle of May. They never raised any thing to sell off 
 the farm, except sometimes a few fleeces. It was well, 
 the family said, if they raised their own provisions, and 
 could spin their own wool for clothing. *'I was the 
 first person," said Higginson, "who had penetrated their 
 solitude from the outer world since the thunderbolt had 
 fallen. Do not imagine that they asked, Whaft is the world 
 saying of us ? Will justice be done to the memory of our 
 martyrs ? Will men build the tombs of the prophets ? 
 Will the great thinkers of the age affirm that our father 
 'makes the gallows glorious, like the cross'? Not at 
 all ; they asked but one question after I had told them 
 
222 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 how little hope there was of acquittal or rescue. Does it 
 seem as if freedom were to gain or lose by this ? That 
 was all. Their mother spoke the spirit of them all to 
 me, next day, when she said, * I have had thirteen chil- 
 dren, and only four are left ; but if I am to see the ruin 
 of my house, I cannot but hope that Providence may 
 bring out of it some benefit to the poor slaves.' " *' Peo- 
 ple are surprised," said Annie Brown, " at father's daring 
 to invade Virginia with only twenty-three men ; but I 
 think if they knew what sort of men they were, there 
 would be less surprise. I never saw such men." 
 
 In 1854, four sons of John Brown determined to re- 
 move to Kansas. In the summer of 1855, in a county 
 adjoining Essex, in New York, a meeting of abolitionists 
 was held. John Brown appeared in that convention, and 
 made a very fiery speech, in which he said he had four 
 sons in Kansas, and had three others who were desirous 
 of going there, to aid in fighting the battles of freedom. 
 He could not consent to go unless he could go armed, 
 and he would like to arm all his sons ; but his poverty 
 prevented him from doing so. He stated that he had only 
 two objects in going to Kansas : first, to begin the work for 
 which, as he believed, he had been set apart, by so acting 
 as to acquire the confidence of the friends of freedom, 
 who might thereby subsequently aid him ; and, secondly, 
 because, to use his own language, "with the exposure, 
 privations, hardships, and wants of pioneer life, he was 
 familiar, and thought he could benefit his children, and 
 the new beginners from the older parts of the country, 
 and help them to shift and contrive in their new home." 
 
 The first That we hear of him there was in a caucus 
 at Ossawattomie. A resolution had been offered that 
 aroused the old man's anger. It declared that Kansas 
 should be a free white State, thereby favoring the exclu- 
 sion of negroes and mulattoes, whether slave or free. He 
 rose to speak, and, it is stated, soon alarmed and dis- 
 
JOHN BROWN. 223 
 
 gusted the politicians present by asserting the manhood 
 of the negro race, and expressing his earnest, anti-slavery 
 convictions with great force and vehemence. 
 
 In camp, it is further stated, he permitted no manner 
 of profane language ; no man of immoral character was 
 allowed to stay, excepting as a prisoner of war. He made 
 prayers in which all the company united, every morning 
 and evening ; and no food was ever tasted by his men 
 until the divine blessing had been asked on it. It is said 
 also that he would retire into the densest solitudes for 
 secret prayer. One of his company said that after these 
 retirings he would say that the Lord had directed him in 
 visions what to do ; that, for himself, he did not love war- 
 fare, but peace, — only acting in obedience to the will of 
 the Lord, and fighting God's battles for His children's 
 sake. 
 
 At the battles of Black Jack and Ossawattomie his rep- 
 utation as a guerrilla commander was established. At 
 Black Jack, with a squad of only a few men, after a three 
 hours' fight, he succeeded in killing, scattering, and cap- 
 turing a superior force. Only two of the Free State men 
 were wounded — one of them a son-in-law of the com- 
 mander. At Ossawattomie, with a force of not more than 
 thirty men, against a formidable enemy — nearly five hun- 
 dred it is stated — he came out of the conflict with one 
 dead, two wounded, and two missing, while the loss of 
 the other side was " thirty-one or two killed, and from 
 forty to fifty wounded." The old man, we are informed, 
 stood near a sapling during the whole of the engagement, 
 quietly giving directions to his men, and " annoying the 
 enemy " with his own steady rifle, indifferent to the grape 
 shots and balls which whizzed around him, and hewed 
 down the limbs, scattered the foliage, and peeled off the 
 bark from the trees on every side. 
 
 His conduct at the defense of Lawrence was charac- 
 terized by the same courage and ability. Mounting a 
 
224 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 dry-goods box in the main street, he addressed the ex- 
 cited citizens as follows : " Gentlemen, it is said there are 
 twenty-five hundred Missourians down at Franklin, and 
 that they will be here in two hours. You can see for 
 yourselves the smoke they are making by setting fire to 
 the houses in that town. Now this is probably the last 
 opportunity you will have of seeing a fight ; so that you 
 had better do your best. If they should come up and 
 attack us, don't yell and make a noise, but remain per- 
 fectly silent and still. Wait till they get within twenty- 
 five yards of you ; get a good object ; be sure you see 
 the hind sight of your gun : then fire. A great deal of 
 powder and lead, and very precious time, are wasted by 
 shooting too high. You had better aim at their legs than 
 at their heads. In either case, be sure of the hind sights 
 of your guns. It is from this reason that I myself have 
 so many times escaped ; for, if all the bullets which have 
 ever been aimed at me had hit me, I should have been as 
 full of holes as a riddle." 
 
 After the retreat from Franklin, Brown and his four 
 sons left Lawrence for the East. Encountering a fugitive 
 slave at Topeka, they covered him up in their wagon, and 
 carried him along with them. We hear of him in Iowa, 
 in Cleveland, then in Boston — in Januar}^, 1857 — where 
 he made a speech, recounting his experiences and views, 
 to the Massachusetts legislature. As to his appearance 
 at that time, an acquaintance said : " His brown coat of 
 the fashion of ten years before, his waistcoat buttoning 
 nearly to the throat, and his wide trowsers, gave him the 
 look of a well-to-do farmer in his Sunday dress ; while 
 his patent leather stock, gray surtout, and fur cap, added 
 a military air to his figure. At this time he wore no 
 beard." The next we hear of him is at New York, at the 
 Metropolitan Hotel, on his way to Philadelphia and Wash- 
 ington. He objected to the show and extravagance of 
 such an establishment as the Metropolitan, and said he 
 
JOHN BROWN. 225 
 
 preferred a plain tavern, where drovers and farmers 
 lodged in a plain way. Next he is at his home at North 
 Elba. In February, in Collinsville, Connecticut, he con- 
 tracted for the manufacture of his pikes. Every thing he 
 did now bore as directly as possible upon the final result, 
 so rapidly approaching. He visited Kansas again, and 
 Iowa, and Canada, where he conveyed some fugitive 
 slaves. Here the conspiracy against Harper's Ferry was 
 organized, but the attack was not made until the night of 
 the 17th day of October, 1859. The night before the at- 
 tack, he said to his men : " Let me press this one thing 
 on your minds. You all know how dear life is to you, 
 and how dear your lives are to your friends ; and, in re- 
 membering that, consider that the lives of others are as 
 dear to them as yours are to you. Do not, therefore, 
 take the life of any one if you can possibly avoid it ; but 
 if it is necessary to take life, in order to save your own, 
 then make sure work of it." 
 
 The Governor of the State of Virginia visited him in 
 prison, after his capture, and said of him : " They them- 
 selves are mistaken who take him to be a madman. He 
 is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw, cut, and thrust, 
 and bleeding, and in bonds. He is a man of clear head, 
 of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuousness. He is 
 cool, collected, and indomitable. The gamest man I ever 
 saw." 
 
 On the scaffold, at midday, under the shining sun, on 
 the second day of December, in the year of our Lord one 
 thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine, he died, 
 
 * John Brown, when he was twelve years old, on seeing 
 a negro slave of his own age cruelly beaten, began to 
 hate slavery and love the slaves so intensely that he some- 
 times asked himself the question. Is God their Father ? 
 At forty, he conceived the idea of becoming a liberator of 
 the Southern slaves ; at the same time he determined to 
 * Library Notes. 
 IS 
 
226 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 let them know that they had friends, and prepared him- 
 self to lead them to liberty. From the moment that he 
 formed this resolution, he engaged in no business which 
 he could not, without loss to his friends and family, wind 
 up in fourteen days. His favorite texts of Scripture 
 were, "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound 
 with them ; " *' Whoso stoppeth his ear at the cry of the 
 poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard ; " 
 " Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker, and 
 he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished ; " 
 " Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when 
 it is in the power of thine hand to do it." His favorite 
 hymns were, *' Blow ye the trumpet, blow!" and "Why 
 should we start and fear to die ? " A child asked him 
 how he felt when he left the eleven slaves, which he had 
 taken from Missouri to Canada ? His answer was, 
 " Lord, permit now thy servant to die in peace, for mine 
 eyes have seen thy salvation. I could not brook the 
 idea that any ill should befall them, or they be taken back 
 to slavery. The arm of Jehovah protected us." Upon 
 one occasion, when one of the ex-governors of Kansas 
 said to him that he was a marked man, and that the Mis- 
 sourians were determined, sooner or later, to take his 
 scalp, the old man straightened himself up, with a glance 
 of enthusiasm and defiance in his gray eye : " Sir," said 
 he, " the Angel of the Lord will camp round about me." 
 On leaving his family the first time he went to Kansas, he 
 said, " If it is so painful for us to part, with the hope of 
 meeting again, how dreadful must be the separation for 
 life of hundreds of poor slaves." He deliberately deter- 
 mined, we are assured, twenty years before his attack 
 upon Harper's Ferry, that at some future period he would 
 organize an armed party, go into a slave State, and liber- 
 ate a large number of slaves. Soon after, surveying pro- 
 fessionally in the mountains of Virginia, he chose the 
 very ground for the purpose. He said, " God had estab- 
 
JOHN BROWN. 227 
 
 lished the Alleghany Mountains from the foundation of 
 the world that they might one day be a refuge for fugitive 
 slaves." Visiting Europe afterward, he studied military 
 strategy, and made designs for a new style of forest forti- 
 fications, simple and ingenious, to be used by parties of 
 fugitive slaves when brought to bay. He knew the 
 ground, he knew his plans, he knew himself ; but where 
 should he find his men ? Such men as he needed are 
 not to be found ordinarily ; they must be reared. John 
 Brown did not merely look for men, therefore ; he reared 
 them in his sons. Mrs. Brown had been always the 
 sharer of his plans. " Her husband always believed," she 
 said, " that he was to be an instrument in the hands of 
 Providence, and she believed it too. This plan had occu- 
 pied his thoughts and prayers for twenty years. Many a 
 night he had lain awake and prayed concerning it." He 
 believed in human brotherhood, and in the God of battles ; 
 he admired, he said, Nat Turner, the negro patriot, equally 
 with George Washington, the white American deliverer. 
 He secretly despised even the ablest of the anti-slavery 
 orators. He could see " no use in this talking," he said. 
 "Talk is a national institution ; but it does no manner of 
 good to the slaves." The year before his attack upon 
 Harper's Ferry, he uttered these sentences in conversa- 
 tion : " Nat Turner, with fifty men, held Virginia five 
 weeks. The same number, well organized and armed, 
 can shake the system out of the State." " Give a slave a 
 pike, and you make him a man. Deprive him of the 
 means of resistance, and you keep him down." " The 
 land belongs to the bondsman. He has enriched it, and 
 been robbed of its fruits." " Any resistance, however 
 bloody, is better than the system which makes every sev- 
 enth woman a concubine." " A few men in the right, and 
 knowing they are, can overturn a king. Twenty men in 
 the Alleghanies could break slavery to pieces in two 
 years." " When the bondsmen stand like men, the nation 
 
228 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 will respect them. It is necessary to teach them this." 
 About the same time he said, in another conversation, 
 that " it was nothing to die in a good cause, but an eter- 
 nal disgrace to sit still in the presence of the barbarities 
 of American slavery." " Providence," said he, " has 
 made me an actor, and slavery an outlaw." " Duty is the 
 voice of God, and a man is neither worthy of a good 
 home here, or a heaven, that is not willing to be in peril 
 for a good cause." He scouted the idea of rest while he 
 held "a commission direct from God Almighty to act 
 against slavery." After his capture, and while he lay in 
 blood upon the floor of the guard-house, he was asked by 
 a bystander upon what principle he justified his acts? 
 " Upon the Golden Rule," he answered. " I pity the 
 poor in bondage that have none to help them. That is 
 why I am here ; it is not to gratify any personal animos- 
 ity, or feeling of revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my 
 sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are 
 as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God. I 
 want you to understand, gentlemen, that I respect the 
 rights of the poorest and weakest of the colored people, 
 oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do those 
 of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that 
 has moved me, and that alone. We expected no reward 
 except the satisfaction of endeavoring to do for those in 
 distress — the greatly oppressed — as we would be done 
 by. The cry of distress, of the oppressed, is my reason, 
 and the only thing that prompted me to come here. I 
 wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you 
 people of the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement 
 of this question. It must come up for settlement sooner 
 than you are prepared for it, and the sooner you com- 
 mence that preparation, the better for you. You may 
 dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now ; 
 but this question is still to be settled — this negro ques- 
 tion, I mean. The end of that is not yet." In his " last 
 
JOHN BROWN. , 229 
 
 Speech," before sentence of death was passed upon him, 
 he said, " This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the 
 vaUdity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here 
 which I suppose to be the Bible, or, at least, the New 
 Testament. That teaches me that all things * whatsoever 
 I would that men should do unto me I should do even so 
 to them.' It teaches me further to ' remember them that 
 are in bonds, as bound with them.' I endeavored to act 
 up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to un- 
 derstand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe 
 that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always 
 freely admitted I have done, in behalf of his despised 
 poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed 
 necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance 
 of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with 
 the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions 
 in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by 
 wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments — I submit : so let 
 it be done." In a postscript to a letter to a half-brother, 
 written in prison, he said, " Say to my poor bo3^s never 
 to grieve for one moment on my account ; and should any 
 of you live to see the time when you will not blush to own 
 your relation to old John Brown, it will not be more 
 strange than many things that have happened." In a 
 letter to his old schoolmaster, he said, " I have enjoyed 
 much of life, as I was enabled to discover the secret of 
 this somewhat early. It has been in making the pros- 
 perity and happiness of others my own ; so that really I 
 have had a great deal of prosperity." To another he 
 wrote, " I commend my poor family to the kind remem- 
 brance of all friends, but I well understand that they are 
 not the only poor in our world. I ought to begin to leave 
 off saying our world." In his last letter to his family, he 
 said, " I am waiting the hour of my public murder with 
 great composure of mind and cheerfulness, feeling the 
 strong assurance that in no other possible way could I be 
 
230 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 used to so much advantage to the cause of God and of 
 humanity, and that nothing that I or all my family have 
 sacrificed or suffered will be lost. Do not feel ashamed 
 on my account, nor for one moment despair of the cause, 
 or grow weary of well-doing. I bless God I never felt 
 stronger confidence in the certain and near approach of 
 a bright morning and glorious day than I have felt, and 
 do now feel, since my confinement here." In a previous 
 letter to his family, he said, " Never forget the poor, nor 
 think any thing you bestow on them to be lost to you, 
 even though they may be as black as Ebed-melech, the 
 Ethiopian eunuch, who cared for Jeremiah in the pit of 
 the dungeon, or as black as the one to whom Philip 
 preached Christ. * Remember them that are in bonds, as 
 bound with them.' " As he stepped out of the jail-door, 
 on his way to the gallows, " a black woman, with a little 
 child in her arms, stood near his way. The twain were of 
 the despised race for whose emancipation and elevation 
 to the dignity of the children of God he was about to lay 
 down his life. His thoughts at that moment none can 
 know except as his acts interpret them. He stopped for 
 a moment in his course, stooped over, and with the ten- 
 derness of one whose love is as broad as the brotherhood 
 of man, kissed the child affectionately. As he came upon 
 an eminence near the gallows, he cast his eye over the 
 beautiful landscape, and followed the windings of the 
 Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. He looked up 
 earnestly at the sun, and sky, and all about, and then 
 remarked, ' This is a beautiful country. I have not cast 
 my eyes over it before.' " " You are more cheerful than I 
 am. Captain Brown," said the undertaker, who sat with 
 him in the wagon. " Yes," answered the old man, " I 
 ought to be." " 'Gentlemen, good-by,' he said to two ac- 
 quaintances, as he passed from the wagon to the scaffold, 
 which he was first to mount. As he quietly awaited the 
 necessary arrangements, he surveyed the scenery un- 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH AND JOHN BROWN. 23 1 
 
 moved, looking principally in the direction of the people, 
 in the far distance. * There is no faltering in his steps,' 
 wrote one who saw him, * but firmly and erect he stands 
 amid the almost breathless lines of soldiery that surround 
 him. With a graceful motion of his pinioned right arm 
 he takes the slouched hat from his head and carelessly 
 casts it upon the platform by his side. His elbows and 
 ankles are pinioned, the white cap is drawn over his eyes, 
 the hangman's rope is adjusted around his neck. ' Cap- 
 tain Brown,' said the sheriff, ' you are not standing on the 
 drop. Will you come forward .? ' * I can't see you, gen- 
 tlemen,' was the old man's answer, unfalteringly spoken ; 
 ' you must lead me.' The sheriff led his prisoner forward 
 to the centre of the drop. ' Shall I give you a handker- 
 chief,' he then asked, ' and let you drop it as a signal?' 
 ' No ; I am ready at any time ; but do not keep me need- 
 lessly waiting.' " 
 
 John Randolph and John Brown ! Remarkable men ! 
 and peculiarly interesting, as characters and types, to all 
 Americans. What contrasts ! The first, an aristocrat — 
 born, as we have seen, in a mansion-house, not unworthy 
 of the baronial days in which it was built ; the inheritor 
 of an honored name and of vast estates ; proud of his 
 cavalier descent, and proud of his princely possessions ; 
 surrounded, from his birth, with an atmosphere of refine- 
 ment and intelligence ; with every accessory and auxil- 
 iary, it would appear, to make him supremely happy; 
 with every body to do for him, and every thing to do with ; 
 " thin-skinned, sensitive, impulsive, and imaginative," but 
 with an accomplished and tender mother to soothe him, 
 and a quiet closet to resort to, stored with the wisdom of 
 all ages ; flattered, caressed, and petted ; in his youth at 
 the capital, enjoying daily intercourse with statesmen and 
 men of learning ; in his early manhood elected to Con- 
 gress, and kept there, nearly the remainder of his life, by 
 
232 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 an admiring and generous constituency ; a student of the 
 Constitution with the makers of it; a traveler abroad, 
 with every advantage of society, study, and observation ; 
 commanding, as a man and as a statesman ; distressed, 
 after all, in body and in mind, and going to his grave re- 
 morseful, and despairing of his country. The second, 
 a democrat, the product of poverty and hope ; of a long 
 line of indigence, industry, and honesty ; knowing life at 
 its hardest, from the beginning ; dressing in skins, like a 
 savage ; stealing a pin, and getting a whipping for it ; 
 loving the wilderness, for its immensity and loneliness, 
 and driving wild cattle through it for a hundred miles j 
 growing up illiterate, but intelligent ; a tanner, and learn- 
 ing how to make a dinner for forty men out of the hide 
 of an ox; married at twenty, and the father of twenty 
 children — all Browns — every inch; on his feet, strug- 
 gling abreast with poor men, remembering those that are 
 in bonds, as bound with them ; inspired, twenty years be- 
 fore his death, with the idea of becoming a liberator of 
 slaves ; from that moment bending every effort of his life 
 to that end ; visiting Europe on business, and studying 
 military strategy ; encouraging emigration, and protect- 
 ing the im.migrants ; fighting slavery, and rescuing slaves ; 
 on the border, with a reward offered for his head ; in 
 Boston, with an officer after him with a warrant ; shunned 
 and forsworn by multitudes of sympathizers ; by slavery 
 made an outlaw, and by Providence an actor ; avoided, 
 suspected, and hunted, but vindictive never ; scouting the 
 idea of rest, holding, as he believed, a commission direct 
 from Almighty God ; cheerful and composed in the teeth 
 of need and of vengeance ; never querulous or complain- 
 ing, even when in prison and in chains ; but serenely 
 going to his death, with still a conscience toward God. 
 Both were honest men, to the core. Both were brave, to 
 a fault. Each was the peer of any, and a natural ruler 
 over many. Each was true to what he believed to be his 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH AND JOHN BROWN. 233 
 
 mission. One was a born hater of caste, and a staunch 
 behever in the equality of all men, without distinction j 
 the other a born believer in radical differences of blood 
 and race, — declaring, as we have seen, that " no two 
 distinct people could occupy the same territory, under 
 one government, but in the relation of master and vassal." 
 One gave the efforts of his life to his idea ; the other 
 gave all his efforts, and his life too, to his. One went 
 discouraged to his grave, with remorse lingering on his 
 tongue and preying at his heart ; the other serenely riding 
 to the scaffold, smiling with the sun and the morning, and 
 confidently hoping for a better day. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 
 
 Was ever wit more audacious than Foote ? Perspica- 
 cious and bold — seeing every thing and stopping at 
 nothing, — no wonder the great town shook with terror 
 and laughter at his daring personalities and mimicries. 
 As quick to say as to see, the strokes of his humor were 
 as surprising as they were instantaneous, and his victims 
 fell without staggering. There was no threatening, to 
 forewarn or alarm ; no noisy brewing of elements ; no 
 waste by elaboration ; and when the mischief was done, 
 there was no smell of spent forces. On the stage, at the 
 club, at the coffee-house, he took off every body of prom- 
 inence or eminence. Nobody seemed to escape him. At 
 the Haymarket, for forty nights in succession, he imitated 
 Whitefield. " There is hardly a public man in England," 
 said Davies, "who has not entered Mr. Foote's theatre 
 with an aching heart, under the apprehension of seeing 
 himself laughed at." His rule was, that you ought not 
 to run the chance of losing your friend for your joke 
 unless your joke happens to be better than your friend. 
 Imagine how the sensitive Goldsmith must have shrunk 
 from his aggressive wit, and insolent, impudent, swagger- 
 ing animal spirits. Johnson alone, of all that were about 
 him, seemed able to keep the brilliant, audacious outlaw 
 within bounds. The great moralist was but too conscious 
 of his peculiarities and deformities, and if Foote had 
 dared to mimic them publicly he would have broken his 
 bones. 
 
 "Foote," said Johnson, "is the most incompressible 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 235 
 
 fellow that I ever saw : when you have driven him into a 
 corner, and think you are sure of him, he runs through 
 between your legs, or jumps over your head, and makes 
 his escape. Then he has a great range for wit ; he never 
 lets truth stand between him and a jest, and he is some- 
 times mighty coarse. . . . The first time I was in com- 
 pany with Foote, was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good 
 opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased ; 
 and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. 
 I went jon eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not 
 to mind him. But the dog was so very comical that I 
 was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself 
 back upon my chair, and fairly laugh it out. No, sir, he 
 was irresistible. He upon one' occasion experienced, in 
 an extraordinary degree, the efficacy of his powers of en- 
 tertaining. Amongst the many and various modes which 
 he tried of getting money, he became a partner with a 
 small-beer brewer, and he was to have a share of the 
 profits for procuring customers amongst his numerous ac- 
 quaintance. Fitzherbert was one who took his small- 
 beer j but it was so bad that the servants resolved not to 
 drink it. They were at some loss how to notify their 
 resolution, being afraid of offending their master, who 
 they knew liked Foote much as a companion. At last 
 they fixed upon a little black boy, who was rather a favor- 
 ite, to be their deputy, and deliver their remonstrance j 
 and having invested him with the whole authority of the 
 kitchen, he was to inform Mr. Fitzherbert, In all their 
 names, upon a certain day, that they would drink Foote's 
 small-beer no longer. On that day, Foote happened to 
 dine at Fitzherbert's, and this boy served ^at table ; he 
 was so delighted with Foote's stories, and merriment, and 
 grimace, that when he went down stairs, he told them, 
 * This is the finest man I have ever seen. I will not de- 
 liver your message. I will drink his small-beer.' " 
 
 Foote went to Ireland, and took off a celebrated Dub- 
 
236 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 lin printer. The printer stood the jest for some time, but 
 found at last that Foote's imitations became so popular, 
 and drew such attention to himself, that he could not 
 walk the streets without being pointed at. He bethought 
 himself of a remedy. Collecting a number of boys, he 
 gave them a hearty meal, and a shilling each for a place 
 in the gallery, and promised them another meal on the 
 morrow if they would hiss off the scoundrel who turned 
 him into ridicule. The injured man learned from his 
 friends that Foote was received that night better than 
 ever. Nevertheless, in the morning, the ragged troop of 
 boys appeared to demand their recompense, and when 
 the printer reproached them for their treachery, their 
 spokesman said : " Plase yer honor, we did all we could, 
 for the actor man had heard of us, and did not come at 
 all at all. And so we had nobody to hiss. But when we 
 saw yer honor's own dear self come on, we did clap, in- 
 deed we did, and showed you all the respect and honor 
 in our power. And so yer honor won't forget us because 
 yer honor's enemy was afraid to come, and left yer honor 
 to yer own dear self." For this story we are indebted to 
 Crabb Robinson, to whom Incledon, the singer, related 
 it one day when they were traveling in a stage-coach to- 
 gether — the garrulous fellow all the time rattling away 
 about Garrick and ^Mrs. Siddons and every body — him- 
 self especially. 
 
 On one occasion, some one said to Johnson, " If Bet- 
 terton and Foote were to walk into this room, you would 
 respect Betterton much more than Foote." Johnson re- 
 plied, "If Betterton were to walk into this room with 
 Foote, Foot^ would soon drive him out of it. Foote, sir, 
 has powers superior to them all." 
 
 Successful mimicry is more generally pleasing than any 
 other kind of amusement : it amuses every ore but the 
 victim of it. Mathews, the elder, when a boy, success- 
 fully imitated the cry of a perambulating fishmonger, and 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 2^7 
 
 was severely punished for it. " Next time," said the 
 huge monster, as he felled the youthful comedian to the 
 earth, "next time as you twists your little wry mouth 
 about, and cuts your mugs at a respectable tradesman, 
 I '11 skin you like an e — e — " ; and seizing his whole 
 shop up in his Brobdingnagian arms, he finished the mon- 
 osyllable not much less than a square away. " For 
 weeks — nay months " — says Mathews — " did I suffer 
 from the effects of this punishment." At a later period 
 — soon after he made his appearance on the stage — his 
 imitations of a fellow-actor — Lee Sugg — were punished 
 even more severely. Sugg, it is stated, trusting not too 
 implicitly to his own personal strength, which was very 
 great, called in to his aid an auxiliary in the shape of an 
 iron bar ; and thus doubly armed, he lay in wait one 
 night in a dark corner for the young offender's approach, 
 who, in passing, received a blow across his back, which, 
 had it alighted on his head, would have cured him of all 
 further attempts to take others off. He felt the effects 
 of the ruffianly attack for a long while. Still later — at 
 the very height of his reputation — he writes to his wife 
 from Edinburgh : " I was placed in a most awkward situ- 
 ation in the Courts of Law on Saturday. Erskine, while 
 pleading, glanced his eye toward me, stopped, laughed, 
 and shook his fist at me. This drew the eyes of about 
 two hundred people upon me. I blushed up to the eyes. 
 When he sat down, I observed he wrote a note with a 
 pencil to the judge. Lord Gillies. He craned his neck 
 directly to look at me, and when he came out of court, 
 Erskine said, * What the devil brings you here, mon, — 
 you spoilt my speech, — I canna afford to be taken off. 
 Did you observe Lord Gillies look at you ? I wrote him 
 a caird, and told him to be on his guard, as I was, or we 
 should both be upon the stage before supper to-night." 
 
 Very early in life Foote's peculiar genius began to show 
 itself. There is, it is related, a tradition remaining in the 
 
238 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 school at Oxford that the boys often suffered on a Monday 
 for preferring Sam's laughter to their lessons, for, when- 
 ever he had dined on a Sunday with any of his relatives, 
 his jokes and imitations next day at the expense of the 
 family entertaining him had all the fascination of a stage- 
 play. When brought before the provost, who is repre- 
 sented as a pedant of the most uncompromising school, 
 Foote would present himself to receive his reprimand 
 with great apparent gravity and submission, but with a 
 large dictionary under his arm ; when, on the doctor be- 
 ginning in his usual pompous manner wdth a surprisingly 
 long word, he would immediately interrupt him, and, 
 after begging pardon with great formality, would produce 
 his dictionary, and pretending to find the meaning of the 
 word, would say, " Very well, sir ; now please to go on." 
 His first essay as an author. Murphy tells us, was "a 
 pamphlet, giving an account of one of his uncles who 
 was executed for murdering his other uncle," for which 
 he received ten pounds of an Old Bailey bookseller. 
 Such was the extremity of his need at the time, that on 
 the day he sold his manuscript, he was, we are told by 
 Cooke, actually obliged to wear his boots without stock- 
 ings, and on his receiving his ten pounds he stopped at a 
 hosier's in Fleet Street to remedy the defect ; but hardly 
 had he issued from the shop when two old Oxford asso- 
 ciates, arrived in London on a frolic, recognized him and 
 bore him off to dinner at the Bedford ; where, as the glass 
 began to circulate, the state of his wardrobe came within 
 view, and he was asked what the deuce had become of 
 his stockings? "Why," said Foote, unembarrassed, "I 
 never wear any at this time of the year, till I am going 
 to dress for the evening ; and you see," pulling his pur- 
 chase out of his pocket, and silencing the laugh and the 
 suspicion of his friends, " I am always provided with a 
 pair for the occasion." 
 
 Forster, in his delightful monograph of the English 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 239 
 
 Aristophanes, as Foote was sometimes called, gives some 
 anecdotes to show the remarkable readiness of his humor. 
 He was talking away one evening, at the dinner-table of 
 a man of rank, when, at the point of one of his best 
 stories, one of the party interrupted him suddenly, with 
 an air of most considerate apology, " I beg your pardon, 
 Mr. Foote, but your handkerchief is half out of your 
 pocket." "Thank you, sir," said Mr. Foote, replacing 
 it; "you know the company better than I do," and fin- 
 ished his joke. At one of Macklin's absurd Lectures on 
 the Ancients, the lecturer was solemnly composing him- 
 self to begin, when a buzz of laughter from where Foote 
 stood ran through the room, and Macklin, thinking to 
 throw the laugher off his guard, and effectually for that 
 night disarm his ridicule, turned to him with this ques- 
 tion, in his most severe and pompous manner : " Well, 
 sir, you seem to be very merry there ; but do you know 
 what I am going to say, now ? " " No, sir," at once re- 
 plied Foote; "pray, do you.?" The then Duke of Cum- 
 berland came one night into the green-room of the Hay- 
 market Theatre. " Well, Foote," said he, " here I am, 
 ready, as usual, to swallow all your good things." 
 "Really," replied Foote, "your Royal Highness must 
 have an excellent digestion, for you never bring any up 
 again." " Why are you forever humming that air ? " he 
 asked a man without a sense of tune in him. " Because 
 it haunts me." " No wonder," said Foote ; " you are 
 forever murdering it." One of Mrs. Montagu's blue- 
 stocking ladies fastened upon him at one of the routs in 
 Portman Square with her views of Locke on the Under- 
 standing, which she protested she admired above all 
 things ; only there was one particular word very often 
 repeated which she could not distinctly make out, and 
 that was " the word (pronouncing it very long) ide-a ; 
 but I suppose it comes from a Greek derivation." " You 
 are perfectly right, madam," said Foote; "it comes from 
 
240 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 the word ideaowski." "And pray, sir, what does that 
 mean ? " " The feminine of idiot, madam." Much bored 
 by a pompous physician of Bath, who confided to him as 
 a great secret that he had a mind to publish his own 
 poems, but had so many irons in the fire he really did 
 not know what to do: "Take my advice, doctor," says 
 Foote, " and put your poems where your irons are." Sel- 
 wyn mentioned that Foote, having received much atten- 
 tion from the Eton boys, in showing him about the college, 
 collected them round him in the quadrangle, and said, 
 " Now, young gentlemen, what can I do for you to show 
 you how much I am obliged to you ? " " Tell us, Mr. 
 Foote," says the leader, " the best thing you ever said." 
 " Why," says Foote, "seeing once a little blackguard imp 
 of a chimney-sweeper mounted on a noble steed, prancing 
 and curveting in all the pride and magnificence of na- 
 ture, — * There,' cried I, ' goes Warburton on Shakes- 
 peare.' " " Pray, sir," asked a lady of fashion, referring 
 to his play of the Puppet-show, " are your puppets to be 
 as large as life ? " " Oh dear, madam, no," replied Foote ; 
 " not much above the size of Garrick." A country farmer 
 who had just buried a rich relation, an attorney, com- 
 plained to him of the very great expense of a country 
 funeral, in respect to carriages, scarfs, hat-bands, etc. 
 " Why, do you bury your attorneys here ? " asked Foote. 
 " Yes, to be sure we do : how else ? " " Oh ! we never 
 do that in London." ** No ! " said the other, much sur- 
 prised ; " how do you manage ? " " Why, when the patient 
 happens to die, we lay him out in a room over night by 
 himself, lock the door, throw open the sash, and in the 
 morning he is entirely off." " Indeed ! " said the other, 
 in amazement ; " what becomes of him ? " " Why, that 
 we cannot exactly tell ; all we know is, there 's a strong 
 smell of brimstone in the room the next morning." 
 
 He was notorious as a spendthrift, having spent three 
 handsome fortunes before he became noted as a player. 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 24I 
 
 The success of one of his comedies having recruited his 
 finances, he made alterations both in his town and 
 country house, enlarged his hospitalities, and laid out 
 twelve hundred pounds in a magnificent service of plate. 
 When he was reminded by some friends of these extrava- 
 gances, and particularly the last, he turned it off by say- 
 ing, he acted from a principle of economy; for as he 
 knew he could never keep his gold, he very prudently 
 laid out his money in silver, which would not only last 
 longer, but in the end sell for nearly as much as it orig- 
 inally cost. 
 
 One of his noble friends, a paymaster of the forces, 
 having observed how grossly he was plundered at play, 
 made so bold as to say to him, that from his careless 
 manner of playing and betting, and his habit of telling 
 stories when he should be minding his game, he must in 
 the long run be ruined, let him play with whom he would. 
 Foote resented this advice. He told his friend with sharp- 
 ness, that although he was no politician by profession, 
 he could see as soon as any into any sinister designs laid 
 against him ; that he was too old to be schooled ; and 
 that as to any distinction of rank between them to war- 
 rant this liberty, he saw none ; they were both the king's 
 servants, with this difference in his favor, — that he could 
 always draw upon his talents for independence, when per- 
 haps a courtier could not find the king's treasury always 
 open to him for support. 
 
 In his stage mimicries he was merciless on some of his 
 fellow-actors. Even their infirmities were made the sub- 
 ject of his ridicule. Delane had only one eye. He 
 brought him on as a beggar-man in St. Paul's Churchyard : 
 " Would you bestow your pity on a poor blind man ? " 
 Ryan had met with an injury to the mouth, which gave 
 his utterance a peculiar discordance. This infirmity was 
 also fair game • and he was held up as a razor-grinder, — 
 "Razors to grind, scissors to grind, pen-knives to grind 1" 
 16 
 
242 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Foote's " enmity," as Fitzgerald calls the feeling toward 
 Garrick, had, in the judgment of the fore-mentioned par- 
 tial biographer, the happy effect of showing the man he 
 hated in a superior light. Foote, very short of money, 
 had accepted a Scotch engagement. " But where 's the 
 means ? " he said to Wilkinson. " D — n it, I must so- 
 licit that hound, Garrick." He did so ; and the " hound" 
 Garrick at once lent him one hundred pounds. He was 
 aggrieved because Garrick did not give it him " off-hand," 
 but said instead that he must " see Pritchard, the treas- 
 urer, first," on whom Foote might call in the evening, and 
 leave his note. These were not very hard conditions ; but 
 it was a little homage which Garrick was not disinclined 
 to exact. That very evening the borrower laid out some 
 of his cash on a feast, at which he told the most comic 
 stories of the lender. He never was so fertile as on this 
 theme. He ridiculed his poetry, and added that " David's 
 verses were so bad, that if he (Foote) died first, all he 
 dreaded was that Garrick would undertake his epitaph." 
 
 Tate Wilkinson, who knew both Garrick and Foote very 
 well, viewed them and their relations with each other dif- 
 ferently. His rambling gossip about them and himself is 
 entertaining. In his Memoirs he gives an interesting 
 account of his first introduction to Garrick. He went 
 armed with letters from Lord Mansfield and the sister of 
 Lord Foley. "I marched," he says, "up and down 
 Southampton Street three or four times before I dared 
 rap at this great man's door, as fearing instant dismission 
 might follow ; or what appeared to me almost as dread- 
 ful, if graciously admitted, how I should be able to- walk, 
 move, or speak before him. However, the rap was at last 
 given, and the deed was done past all retreating. * Is 
 Mr. Garrick at home ? ' ' Yes.' Then delivering the let- 
 ters, and after waiting in a parlor for about ten minutes, 
 I was ordered to approach. Mr. Garrick glanced his 
 scrutinizing eye first at me, then at the letters, and so al- 
 
 ,.i^. 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 243 
 
 temately ; at last — * Well, sir — Hey ! —What, now you 
 are a stage candidate ? Well, sir, let me have a taste of 
 your quality.' I distilled almost to jelly with my fear, at- 
 tempted a speech from Richard, and another from Essex; 
 which he encouraged by observing I was so much fright- 
 ened that he could not form any judgment of my abilities ; 
 but assured me it was not a bad omen, as fear was by no 
 means a sign of want of merit, but often the contrary. 
 We then chatted for a few minutes, and I felt myself 
 more easy, and requested leave to repeat a few speeches 
 in imitation of the then principal stage representatives. 
 * Nay — now,' says Garrick ; * sir, you must take care of 
 this, for I used to call myself the first at this business.' I 
 luckily began with an imitation of Foote. It is difficult 
 here to determine whether Garrick hated or feared Foote 
 the most ; sometimes one, sometimes the other was pre- 
 dominant j but from the attention of a few minutes, his 
 looks brightened — the glow of his countenance trans- 
 fused to mine, and he eagerly desired a repetition of the 
 same speech. I was animated — forgot Garrick was pres- 
 ent, and spoke at perfect ease. * Hey, now ! Now — what 
 — all ' — says Garrick ; ' how — really this — this — is — 
 (with his usual hesitation and repetition of words) why — 
 well — well — do call on me again on Monday at eleven, 
 and you may depend upon every assistance in my power. 
 I will see my brother manager, Mr. Lacey, to-day, and let 
 you know the result.' " 
 
 " I would wish," says Wilkinson, " to avoid meanness, 
 abuse, or falsehood, and give an exact and candid trait 
 of Mr. Garrick and Mr. Foote, with their shades ; but by 
 no means to obscure their lights and good qualities, and 
 hope I shall prove my words on the examination of the 
 sum total, and that my accounts are given in like a just 
 steward, and with these gentlemen and myself the reck- 
 oning shall be fairly balanced. 
 
 " If any one person possessed the talent of pleasing 
 
244 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 more than another," continues the garrulous Tate, " Mr. 
 Foote was certainly the man. I can aver in all my obser- 
 vations that I never met with his equal. Mr. Garrick, 
 whom I have dined and supped with, was far inferior to 
 him in wit or repartee, as indeed were persons of rank 
 and degree ; for Nature bestows not all her graces on the 
 great or opulent. Mr. Foote was not confined to any 
 particular topic ; he was equal to all ; religion, law, poli- 
 tics, manners of this or any age, and the stage of course. 
 Indeed a polished stranger would find it rare to meet 
 with so many agreeable qualities for the conviviality of 
 any company so combined as in the society of Mr. Foote. 
 This is not the tribute of flattery to his manner, but a 
 piece of justice my own impartiality demands; for it 
 would be despicable indeed to point out his foibles, and 
 not be ready to attest his good qualities. As a wit he is 
 too well remembered, and far beyond my abilities to de- 
 scribe. As a blemish to his entertaining and improving 
 qualities I must, as a relater of truth remark, that all these 
 shining talents did not dazzle or answer the eager expec- 
 tation, unless he himself was the sole object of every 
 directed eye ; for if a man of genius (I will suppose a 
 Murphy or a Henderson) had slipt in a good story, or 
 had given any entertaining information, and thereby 
 gained the approbation and merit of the flowing souls, 
 Foote not only immediately felt lessened, but could not 
 easily recover his chagrin and jealousy ; and the instant 
 the guest had taken his leave and departed, he could not 
 help expressing himself with great contempt, and asking 
 the person or persons remaining if they had ever heard 
 such nonsense as that man had been uttering. And 
 added expressions of wonder how the persons at table 
 could be entertained with such absurdity. But, indeed, 
 to give the just picture, I must add, as a true historian — 
 had the company left him in the best humor, these very 
 spirits were only reserved for the exposure of each per- 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 245 
 
 son's failure or particular manner, and which most people, 
 more or less, have, as a certain appendage, tagged to 
 human nature ; nor did that happen in a less but even in 
 a stronger degree to himself; for his own peculiarities 
 were more extravagant than any person's whose gait, or 
 gesture, or history he might choose to record " or divert 
 himself with ; and if not given immediate credit for what 
 he asserted against the absentee, he would vigorously fly 
 to his happy reserve of never-failing fiction, which was 
 veiled under such an appearance of truth, aided by wit, 
 humor, and great vivacity, that he generally made con- 
 verts, who, from irresistible impulse, obeyed his laughing 
 mandates. It was policy to defer, as long as possible, 
 quitting the room where he was monarch, as it was cer- 
 tain, the instant of any one's exit, without loss of time, he 
 would be served up, raw or roasted, to the next comer, 
 and that without mercy, although he had at the hour of 
 his adieu conferred on Mr. Foote an obligation of the ut- 
 most necessary service. . . . 
 
 " Mr. Foote possessed, with all his foibles, mingled ex- 
 cellences, generosity and humanity ; but vast ostentation 
 was annexed to them. His table was open — he loved 
 company at that table, and if they pronounced his wine 
 had a superior flavor, they could not drink too much, nor 
 could he himself be gratified till he had produced his 
 claret of the best vintage. 
 
 " Now Garrick was always in a fidget, eager for atten- 
 tion and adulation, and when he thought himself free and 
 adored, would prattle such stuff as would disgrace a child 
 of eight years old in conversation with its admiring and 
 doting grandmamma. His hesitation and never giving 
 a direct answer, arose from two causes — affectation, and 
 a fear of being led into promises which he never meant to 
 perform. ... As to money, he seldom, when walking 
 the streets, had any, therefore could only lament his 
 inability to give to a distressed supplicant ; but if greatly 
 
246 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 touched — ' Why, Holland,' or any other person that was 
 with him, ' cannot you now advance half a crown ? ' whicii 
 if Holland did, was a very good joke, and for fear of 
 spoiling the jest, he never paid Holland again." 
 
 One day in Dublin, as Wilkinson was pursuing his 
 walk, a strong voice issued from a dining-room window, 
 with great vehemence calling out, " Wilkinson ! Wilkin- 
 son ! Wilkinson ! " "I looked round," said Wilkinson, 
 " and soon spied my Master Foote, as he was termed. He 
 insisted on my staying to dinner, which invitation I could 
 not refuse ; after dinner, and while the glass was circulat- 
 ing, he intimated a wish I would make my first appear- 
 ance at Drury Lane as his pupil, in a farce he had newly 
 furbished up, and titled the Diversions of the Morning ; 
 and added, 'You must, Wilkinson, plainly see and be 
 convinced that dirty hound Garrick does not mean to do 
 you any service or wish you success ; but on the contrary 
 he is a secret enemy, and if he can prevent your doing 
 well be assured he will. I know his heart so well, that if 
 you give me permission to ask for your first attempt on his 
 stage, and to be in my piece, the hound will refuse the 
 moment I mention it ; and though his little soul would re- 
 joice to act Richard III. in the dogdays, before the hot- 
 test kitchen fire for a sop in the pan, yet I know his 
 mean soul so perfectly, that if, on his refusal, I with a 
 grave face tell him, I have his figure exactly made and 
 dressed as a puppet in my closet, ready for public admi- 
 ration, the fellow will not only consent to your acting, but 
 what is more extraordinary, his abject fears will lend me 
 money, if I should say I want it.' " 
 
 Foote having been publicly ridiculed, time and again, 
 by Wilkinson, broke friendship with him, and they re- 
 mained apart for five years, at the end of which time 
 Foote made generous overtures, and they became friends 
 again. It hurt Foote to be taken off as much as any of 
 his fellows. Wilkinson, in the farce of High Life Below 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 247 
 
 Stairs, had been particularly severe upon him. " Before 
 my benefit happened," says Wilkinson, " Mr. Foote (who 
 of all men in the world ought not to have been offended) 
 found himself much hurt and wounded, and so little mas- 
 ter of himself, that, notwithstanding the unbounded liber- 
 ties he had taken, not only with the players, but others, 
 to the disturbance of the peace of private families, he 
 actually visited me in great wrath, attended by Mr. Larry 
 Kennedy, and in Pistol-like manner protested, ' If I dare 
 take any more liberties on the stage in future with him, 
 he was determined the next day to call me to account.' 
 But I pursued my plan, and was obliged, amongst other 
 favors to Mr. Foote, that he was not observant, but let 
 me rest in quiet. We often met drawn up at noon in dif- 
 ferent parties in the Trinity College Gardens, as perfect 
 strangers, but never at any house of visiting ; if we had, 
 his talent of wit would have forced me to have felt the 
 severity of his lash." 
 
 A project of Foote's to publicly ridicule Garrick, fell 
 through in a singular manner. The parties met, as if by 
 accident, at the house of a nobleman, the common friend 
 of both j when alighting at the same time from their char- 
 iots at his lordship's door, and exchanging significant 
 looks at each other, Garrick broke silence first by asking, 
 " Is it war or peace ? " " Oh ! peace, by all means," said 
 Foote, with apparent good will ; and the two spent the 
 day together cordially. 
 
 Foote had an especial aversion to attorneys. One of 
 this profession, not remarkable for the integrity of his 
 character, having a dispute with a bailiff, brought an ac- 
 tion against him, which Foote recommended to be com- 
 promised. The parties agreed to do it, but differed as to 
 who should be arbitrator, and at length requested Foote 
 to act in that capacity. " Oh ! no ! " said Foote, " I 
 might be partial to one or other of you, but I tell you 
 what, I '11 do better — I '11 recommend a thief, as a com- 
 mon friend to both." 
 
248 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Dining while in Paris with Lord Stormont, that thrifty 
 Scotch peer, then ambassador, as usual produced his wine 
 in the smallest of decanters, and dispensed it in the 
 smallest of glasses, enlarging all the time on its exquisite 
 growth and enormous age. " It is very little of its age," 
 said Foote, holding up his diminutive glass. 
 
 Quin, it is known, was one of the few men who could 
 stand a fall with Foote, and come off the better man. 
 Foote, who, as we have seen, could not endure a joke 
 made on himself, broke friendship with Quin on account 
 of such offense. Ultimately they were reconciled; but 
 even then Foote referred to the provocation. " Jemmy, 
 you should not have said that I had but one shirt, and 
 that I lay abed while it was washed." " Sammy," re- 
 plied Quin, " I never could have said so, for I never knew 
 that you had a shirt to wash ! " 
 
 When down at Stratford, on the occasion of the Shake- 
 speare Jubilee, Garrick's success embittered Foote's nat- 
 urally bitter spirit. A well-dressed gentleman there civilly 
 spoke to him on the proceedings. " Has Warwickshire, 
 sir," said Foote, " the advantage of having produced you 
 as well as Shakespeare?" " Sir," replied the gentleman, 
 " I come from Essex." " Ah ! " rejoined Foote, remem- 
 bering that county was famous for calves, — " from Essex. 
 Who drove you ? " 
 
 " One may," said Doran, "forgive Foote for his remark 
 to Rich, who had been addressing him curtly as ' Mister.* 
 Perceiving that Foote was vexed, Rich apologized by say- 
 ing, ' I sometimes forget my own name.' ' I am aston- 
 ished you could forget your own name,' said Foote, 
 * though I know very well that you are not able to write 
 it ! ' " 
 
 Amongst the fairest of Foote's sayings was the reply 
 to Mr. Howard's intimation that he was about to publish 
 a second edition of his Thoughts and Maxims. "Ay! 
 second thoughts are best." Fair, too, was his retort on 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 249 
 
 the person who alluded to his "game leg." "Make no 
 allusion to my weakest part. Did I ever attack your 
 head?" 
 
 Cooke, in his Memoirs, has preserved many examples 
 of Foote's wicked wit. In a song sung by Mrs. Gibber, 
 there was this line : 
 
 " The roses will bloom when there 's peace in the breast." 
 Foote parodied it : 
 
 The turtles will coo when there *s pease in their craws ; " 
 
 and actually destroyed the popularity of the song. 
 
 A person talking of an acquaintance of his, who was 
 so avaricious as even to lament the prospect of his funeral 
 expenses, though a short time before he had been cen- 
 suring one of his own relatives for his parsimonious tem- 
 per: "Now is it not strange," said the person, "that this 
 man would not take the beam out of his own eye before 
 he attempted the mote in other people's ? " " Why, so I 
 dare say he would," cried Foote, "if he was sure of sell- 
 ing the timber." 
 
 On his return from Scotland, being asked by a lady 
 whether there was any truth in the report that there were 
 no trees in Scotland : " A very malicious report indeed, 
 my lady," said he ; " for just as I was crossing Portpat- 
 rick to Donaghadee, I saw two blackbirds perched on as 
 fine a thistle as ever I saw in my life." 
 
 Foote, who lived in habits of intimacy with Lord Kellie, 
 took as many liberties with his face (which somewhat re- 
 sembled in appearance a meridian sun) as ever Falstaff 
 did with his friend Bardolph's. One day his Iprdship choos- 
 ing to forget his promise to .dine with him, it piqued Foote 
 so, that he called out, loud enough to be heard by the 
 whole coffee-house where they were sitting, " Well, my 
 lord, since you cannot do me the honor of dining with 
 me to-day, will you be so good, as you ride by, just to 
 look over against my south wall ? for, as we have had 
 
2SO CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 little or no sun for this fortnight past, my peaches will 
 want the assistance of your lordship's countenance." 
 
 His lordship having cracked some jokes upon one of 
 his friends rather too coarsely, an Irish gentleman, who 
 heard of it, said, " if he had treated him so he would 
 pull him by the nose." " Pull him by the nose," said 
 Foote J " you may as well thrust your hand into a furnace." 
 
 The same noble lord coming into the club, on a hot 
 summer night, dressed in a somewhat tarnished suit of 
 laced clothes, the waiter announced " Lord Kellie ! " 
 " Lord Kellie ! " repeated Foote, looking him full in the 
 face at tire same time, " I thought it was all Monmouth 
 street in flames." 
 
 A country squire just come to town, was bragging of 
 the great number of fashionable people he had visited 
 that morning ; " and among the rest," said he, in a pomp- 
 ous deliberate manner, " I called upon my good friend 
 the Earl of Chol-mon-dely, but he was not at home." 
 " That is rather surprising," said Foote : " what ! nor 
 none of his pe-o-ple ? " 
 
 Being on a visit at Crabbe Boulton's (chairman of the 
 East India Company) during a frosty season, where they 
 kept very bad fires, Foote found himself so uncomforta- 
 ble, that he prepared next morning for setting off to town. 
 " Eh ! " said his host, seeing the chaise at the door, " WJiy 
 think of going so soon ? " " Because, if I stay any longer, 
 perhaps I shall not have a leg to stand upon." "Why, 
 we don't drink so hard." " No ; but it freezes so hard, 
 and your servants know the value of a good bit of 
 timber so well, that I 'm in hourly dread of losing my 
 wooden leg." 
 
 Paul Hiffernan, a mendicant author who attended 
 Foote's levees, was fond of laying, or rather offering, 
 wagers. One day, in the heat of argument, he cried out, 
 " I '11 lay my head you are wrong upon that point." 
 " Well," said Foote, " I accept the wager ; any trifle 
 among friends has a value." 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 25 1 
 
 "Pray," said a lady to Foote, "what sort of a man is 
 Sir John D. ? " " Oh ! a very good sort of man." " But 
 what do you call a good sort of man ? " " Why, madam, 
 one who preserves all the exterior decencies of igno- 
 rance."' 
 
 An author left a comedy with Foote for perusal ; and 
 on the next visit asked for his judgment on it, with rather 
 an ignorant degree of assurance. " If you looked a little 
 more to the grammar of it, I think," said Foote, " it would 
 be better." " To the grammar of it, sir ! What ! Would 
 you send one to school again ? " " And pray, sir," replied 
 Foote very gravely, " would that do you any harm ? " 
 
 A clergyman in Essex, not much celebrated as a 
 preacher, used to wear boots generally on duty ; and gave 
 as a reason for it, that " the roads were so deep in some 
 places, that he found them more convenient than shoes." 
 "Yes," said Foote; "and I dare say, equally convenient 
 in the pulpit ; for there the doctor is generally out of his 
 depth too." 
 
 Foote called upon a gentleman of the law who did not 
 live happily with his wife. The servant maid soon after- 
 ward came into the room to look for her mistress. " What 
 do you want your mistress for ? " asked the barrister. 
 " Why, indeed, sir, to tell you the truth, she scolds me so 
 from morning to night, I come to give her warning." 
 " What, then you mean to leave us } " " Certainly, sir," 
 said she, shutting the door after her. " Happy girl ! " 
 exclaimed Foote ; " I most sincerely wish your poor mas- 
 ter could give warning too." 
 
 A conceited young man asking Foote what apology he 
 should make for not being one of the party the day before 
 to which he had a card of invitation ; " Oh, my dear sir ! " 
 replied the wit; "say nothing about it; you were never 
 missed." 
 
 You remember Foote's advice to the Duke of Norfolk. 
 On a masquerade night, his Grace consulted the famous 
 
252 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 actor as to what character he should appear in. " Don't 
 go disguised," said Foote, " but assume a new character 
 — go sober." (It was the successor of the Duke of Nor- 
 folk in question who consulted Abernethy for some ail- 
 ment, and was asked whether he had ever tried the 
 remedy of a clean shirt.) 
 
 Foote, being notoriously lavish with his money, was 
 fond of taking off Garrick's reputed niggardliness. Here 
 is an anecdote that Rogers was fond of relating, and 
 which he is said to have told with infinite humor. At the 
 Chapter Coffee-house, Foote and his friends were making 
 a contribution for the relief of a poor fellow, a decayed 
 player, w^o was nicknamed the Captain of the Four 
 Winds, because his hat was worn into four spouts. Each 
 person of the company dropped his mite into the hat, 
 as it was held out to him. " If Garrick hears of this," 
 exclaimed Foote, " he will certainly send us his hat." 
 " There is a witty satirical story of Foote," said Johnson 
 to Boswell. " He had a small bust of Garrick placed 
 upon his bureau. * You may be surprised,' said he, ' that 
 I allow him to be so near my gold ; but you will observe 
 he has no hands ! ' " Foote and Garrick were leaving 
 the Bedford one night when Foote had been the enter- 
 tainer, and on his pulling out his purse to pay the bill, a 
 guinea dropped. Impatient at not immediately finding 
 it, " Where on earth can it be gone to ? " he said. " Gone 
 to the devil, I think," rejoined Garrick, who had sought 
 for it everywhere. " Well said, David," cried Foote ; " let 
 you alone for making a guinea go farther than any body 
 else." " Garrick and Foote," says Forster, " were among 
 the company one day at the dinner-table of Lord Mans- 
 field. Many grave people were there, and the manager 
 of Drury Lane was on his best good company behavior. 
 Every one listened deferentially to him as he enlarged on 
 the necessity of prudence in all the relations of life, and 
 drew his illustration from Churchill's death, which was 
 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 253 
 
 then the talk of the town. No one would have supposed 
 it possible to dislodge him from such vantage-ground as 
 this, surrounded by all the decorums of life, and with a 
 Lord Chief Justice at the head of the table. But Foote 
 suddenly struck in. He said that ever}' question had two 
 sides, and he had long made up his mind on the advan- 
 tages implied in the fact of not paying one's debts. In the 
 first place, it presupposed some time or other the posses- 
 sion of fortune to be able to get credit. Then, living on 
 credit was the art of living without the most troublesome 
 thing in the whole world, which was money. It saved 
 the expense and annoyance of keeping accounts, and 
 made over all the responsibility to other people. It was 
 the panacea for the cares and embarrassments of wealth. 
 It checked and discountenanced avarice ; while, people 
 being always more liberal of others' goods than their own, 
 it extended every sort of encouragement to generosity. 
 And would any one venture to say that payment of one's 
 debts could possibly draw to us such anxious attention 
 from our own part of the world while we live, or such sin- 
 cere regrets when we die, as not paying them. All which, 
 Foote put with such whimsical gravity, and supported 
 with such a surprising abundance of sarcastic illustra- 
 tion, that in the general laughter against Garrick no laugh 
 was heartier than Lord Mansfield's." 
 
 Macklin's topic, we are told, at one of his evening lec- 
 tures, was the employment of memory in connection with 
 the oratorical art, in the course of which, as he enlarged 
 on the importance of exercising memory as a habit, he 
 took occasion to say, that to such perfection he had 
 brought his own he could learn any thing by rote on once 
 hearing it. Foote waited till the conclusion of the lecture, 
 and then handing up the subjoined sentences, desired that 
 Mr. Macklin would be good enough to rea(^and after- 
 ward repeat them from memory. More amazing nonsense 
 never was written. " So she went into the garden to cut 
 
254 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie ; and at the same 
 time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head 
 into the shop. ' What ! no soap ? ' So he died, and she 
 very imprudently married the barber; and there were 
 present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyu- 
 lies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little 
 round button at top ; and they all fell to playing the game 
 of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the 
 heels of their boots." 
 
 One of the many victims of Foote's humor and mimicry 
 was Alderman George Faulkner. He took off the Alder- 
 man, wooden leg and all, under the name of Peter Para- 
 graph. Soon afterward he went on a visit with the Duke 
 of York to Lord Mexborough's, where, in hunting, he 
 rode a too spirited horse, and received so severe a hurt 
 that his left leg had to be amputated. Old Lord Ches- 
 terfield, who had • sympathized with Faulkner in his bit- 
 terness toward Foote, eagerly informed Faulkner of the 
 accident, and expressed his satisfaction that Heaven had 
 avenged his cause by punishing his adversary in the part 
 offending. The same thought had of course occurred 
 to the satirist himself. " Now I shall take off old Faulk- 
 ner indeed to the life ! " was the first remark he made 
 when what he had to suffer was announced to him. 
 Time, for once at least, had his revenge, and mercilessly 
 made things even. 
 
HABIT. 
 
 Nothing is becoming, it is said, which is not habitual. 
 It may be said as well, that life would be intolerable if 
 habit did not relieve it. Think of thinking of every- 
 thing you do ! Life is so made up of infinite little things, 
 that the infinite little things must of necessity be done as 
 they have been done before. Almost mechanicaHy, so 
 habitually most of them are done : they seem even to do 
 themselves. Life itself goes on : breath following breath 
 — almost as unconsciously waking as sleeping. Pretty 
 certainly, if almost any human being were compelled, for 
 a single day, to think, to reason originally of his every 
 act, even for that short period, he would lose the power 
 of reasoning. Habitually, almost every one dresses one 
 foot before the other, without thinking of it. When a 
 hand goes to the face, it touches, almost invariably, one 
 part before another. When you climb the stairs, the left 
 foot or the right begins the process. And so of a hun- 
 dred things you do every day. Think of them : one will 
 suggest another. You will be surprised to see how your 
 life is made up of unconsciously formed habits — small 
 and great — for better or for worse. That you are good 
 or bad from habit mainly, a little self-observation and re- 
 flection will reveal to you. " All is habit in mankind," 
 exclaimed Metastasio, — "even virtue itself." 
 
 " I trust every thing under God," said Lord Brougham, 
 " to habit, upon which in all ages, the lawgiver as well as 
 the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance ; habit, 
 which makes every thing easy, and casts all difficulties 
 
256 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 upon the deviation from a wonted course. Make sobriety 
 a habit, and intemperance will be hateful; make pru- 
 dence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary 
 to the nature of the child, grown or adult, as the most 
 atrocious crimes. Give a child the habit of sacredly re- 
 garding the truth ; of carefully respecting the property of 
 others ; of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of im- 
 providence which can involve him in distress, and he will 
 just as likely think of rushing into an element in which 
 he cannot breathe, as of lying, cheating, or swearing." 
 
 One of the wisest and most suggestive precepts to be 
 found in Plutarch's Morals cannot be too often repeated : 
 " Choose but the best condition you can, and custom will 
 make.it pleasant to you." "You may take my word," 
 says Sterne, in the opening chapter of Tristram Shandy, 
 " that nine parts in ten of a man's sense, or his nonsense, 
 his successes and miscarriages in this world, depend upon 
 the motions and activity of the animal spirits, and the 
 different tracks and trains you put them into ; so that 
 when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 
 'tis not a half-penny matter, — away they go clattering 
 like hey-go mad ; and by treading the same steps over and 
 over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and 
 as smooth as a garden-walk, which when they are once 
 used to, the devil himself shall not be able to drive them 
 off it." So great is the power of habit, that it has been 
 often remarked, says Scott, in one of his romances, that 
 when a man commences by acting a character he fre- 
 quently ends by adopting it in good earnest. So soon 
 as Ravenswood had determined upon giving the Lord 
 Keeper such hospitality as he had to offer, he deemed it 
 incumbent on him to assume the open and courteous 
 brow of a well-pleased host. In the course of an hour 
 or two, Ravenswood, to his own surprise, found himself 
 in the situation of one who frankly does his best to en- 
 tertain welcome and honored guests. 
 
HABIT. 257 
 
 Dr. Johnson was of opinion that the force of our early- 
 habits was so great, that though reason approved, nay, 
 though our senses relished a different course, almost every 
 man returned to them. 
 
 Layard relates an incident of a party of Arabs which 
 for some time had been employed to assist him in exca- 
 vating among the ruins of Nineveh. One evening, after 
 their day's work, he observed them following a flock of 
 sheep belonging to the people of the village, shouting 
 their war-cry, flourishing their swords, and indulging in 
 the most extravagant gesticulations. He asked one of 
 the most active of the party to explain to him the cause 
 of such violent proceedings. " O Bey ! " they exclaimed, 
 almost together, " God be praised, we have eaten butter 
 and wheaten bread under your shadow, and are content ; 
 but an Arab is an Arab. It is not for a man to carry 
 about dirt in baskets, and to use a spade all his life ; he 
 should be with his sword and his mare in the desert. 
 We are sad as we think of the days when we plundered 
 the Anayza, and we must have excitement or our hearts 
 must break. Let us then believe that these are the sheep 
 we have taken from the enemy, and that we are driving 
 them to our tents." And off they ran, raising their wild 
 cry, and flourishing their swords, to the no small alarm 
 of the shepherd, who saw his sheep scampering in all 
 directions. 
 
 " I have," says Montaigne, " picked up boys from beg- 
 ging, to serve me, who soon after have quitted both my 
 kitchen and livery, only that they might return to their 
 former course of life ; and I found one afterward picking 
 up mussels in our neighborhood for his dinner, whom I 
 could neither by entreaties nor threats reclaim from the 
 sweetness he found in indigence." 
 
 Habit sometimes produces curious and amusing phys- 
 ical adaptations. " The police of Naples," says Hillard, 
 in his Six Months in Italy, " are said to practice a singu- 
 17 
 
258 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 lar test, to ascertain whether a lad accused of picking a 
 pocket be guilty or not. The culprit is required to place 
 his hand upon a table with his fingers outstretched, and 
 if the forefinger and middle finger be of the same length, 
 the case goes against him, and judgment is passed ac- 
 cordingly; for, in the exercise of this profession, these 
 two fingers are made use of like a forceps, and the young 
 ragamuffins in the streets are said to encourage the 
 growth of the forefinger by habitually pulling it." 
 
 "On Sundays, at noon," says the same interesting 
 writer, " the pigeons of St. Mark's are fed. As the hour 
 approaches, flock after flock of hungry expectants comes 
 wheeling in, and the air is filled with the rustling of in- 
 numerable wings, from which the sunshine is flung in 
 dazzling beams." The pigeons of Venice know when 
 Sunday at noon comes. 
 
 A clergyman who filled one of the Boston pulpits, 
 drove every morning into the city. His horse, from habit, 
 and without any suggestion from his master, went, week- 
 day mornings, directly to the post-office ; Sundays, he 
 went straight to the church. A friend once told us of a 
 dog belonging to one of his relations — a Quaker. First- 
 days and fifth-days the dog always went to meeting. If 
 the family went, he went with them ; if not, he went 
 alone. And he always occupied the same spot in the 
 meeting-house. 
 
 Lord Thurlow habituated himself to such a majestic 
 air, that it came to be asked whether any one could really 
 be as wise as Lord Thurlow always seemed. Talleyrand's 
 habit of mind was so wary and suspicious, that, when a 
 celebrated diplomatist fell ill, he inquired, " What does 
 he mean by it .-* " 
 
 The power of habit is exemplified in the case of Jon- 
 athan Wild and Count Fathom : Wild could not keep 
 his hands out of the Count's pockets, although he knew 
 they were empty; nor could the Count abstain from 
 
HABIT. 259 
 
 palming a card, although he was well aware Wild had no 
 money to pay him. In his last hours, whilst the ordi- 
 nary was busy in his ejaculations. Wild, in the midst of 
 the shower of stones, etc., which played upon him, ap- 
 plied his hand to the parson's pocket, and emptied it of 
 his corkscrew, which he carried out of the world in his 
 hand. 
 
 The practice of hanging in chains, although discontin- 
 ued before its formal abolition, lasted far into the present 
 century. Within living memory, it is stated, a batch of 
 pirates was hung in chains in the marshes before Wool- 
 wich. A farmer and his son who rented the ground hap- 
 pening to take a close inspection of the victims, saw 
 symptoms of life in one, took him down, carried him 
 home with them, and employed him as a farm servant ; 
 till one night, finding him at his old trade of thieving, 
 they laid hold of him, twisted his neck, and replaced him 
 on the gallows ; not at all imagining that they had been 
 guilty of any description of irregularity. 
 
 After Gulliver had been snatched from Brobdingnag by 
 the eagle, and rescued from the sea, he astonished Cap- 
 tain Wilcocks by the loudness of his voice. He ex- 
 plained it by saying that he had been used to that tone 
 for two years ; that " when he spoke in that country, it 
 was like a man talking in the streets, to another looking 
 out from the top of a steeple." 
 
 " A tallow chandler," says Southey, in The Doctor, 
 " having amassed a fortune, disposed of his business, 
 and took a house in the country, not far from London, 
 that he might enjoy himself ; but, after a few months' 
 trial of a holiday life, requested permission of his suc- 
 cessor to come into town and assist him on melting-days. 
 The keeper of a retail spirit-shop, having in like manner 
 retired from trade, used to employ himself by having one 
 puncheon filled with water, and measuring it off by pints 
 into another. A butcher in a small town, for some little 
 
260 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 time after he had left off business, informed his old cus- 
 tomers that he meant to kill a lamb once a week, just for 
 amusement." 
 
 Sergeant Ballantine commenced practice in Inner Tem- 
 ple Lane. His father furnished his chambers, and one of 
 the principal articles he sent him was a horse-hair arm- 
 chair with only three legs, upon which the future great 
 barrister got so accustomed to balance himself that he 
 scarcely felt safe on one furnished with the proper com- 
 plement. 
 
 Avarice is a vice that is especially the product of habit j 
 and it grows and grows to the end. " Other vices," says 
 St. Ambrose, " decay with our age ; but avarice renews 
 its youth." An epitaph on a rude grave-stone in Cali- 
 fornia puts it more forcibly if not so philosophically and 
 elegantly : 
 
 " Here lies old Thirty-five per cent. ! 
 
 The more he got the more he lent ; 
 
 The more he got the more he craved ; 
 
 The more he made the more h'. shaved — 
 
 Good God ! can such a soul be saved ? " 
 
 Foster, in his famous essay On Decision of Character, 
 mentions a young man "who wasted in two or three 
 years a large patrimony in profligate revels with a num- 
 ber of worthless associates who called themselves his 
 friends, and who, when his last means were exhausted, 
 treated him of course with neglect or contempt. Reduced 
 to absolute want he one day went out of the house with 
 an intention to put an end to his life ; but wandering 
 awhile, almost unconsciously, he came to the brow of an 
 eminence which overlooked what were lately his estates. 
 Here he sat down, and remained fixed in thought a num- 
 ber of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the 
 ground with a vehement, exulting emotion. He had 
 formed his resolution, which was, that all these estates 
 should be his again j he had formed his plan too, which 
 
HABIT. 261 
 
 he instantly began to execute. He walked hastily for- 
 ward, determined to seize the very first opportunity, of 
 however humble a kind, to gain any money, though it 
 were ever so despicable a trifle, and resolved absolutely 
 not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever 
 he might obtain. The first thing that drew his attention 
 was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement 
 before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel 
 them into the place where they were to be laid, and was 
 employed. He received a few pence for the labor ; and 
 then, in pursuance of the saving part of his plan, re- 
 quested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which 
 was given him. He then looked out for the next thing 
 that might chance to offer ; and went, with indefatigable 
 industry, through a succession of servile employments, in 
 different places, of longer and shorter duration, still scru- 
 pulously avoiding, as far as possible, the expense of a 
 penny. He promptly seized every opportunity which 
 could advance his design, without regarding the mean- 
 ness of occupation or appearance. By this method he 
 had gained, after a considerable time, money enough to 
 purchase, in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he 
 had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily 
 but cautiously turned his first gains into second advan- 
 tages; retained without a single deviation his extreme 
 parsimony ; and thus advanced by degrees into larger 
 transactions and incipient wealth." The essayist did not 
 hear, or had forgotten, the continued course of his life ; 
 but the final result was, that he more than recovered his 
 lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth hun- 
 dreds of thousands of dollars. 
 
 The avarice of the great Duke of Marlborough is his- 
 torical. " One day," said Pope to Spence, " as the duke 
 was looking over some papers in his scrutoire with Lord 
 Cadogan, he opened one of his little drawers, took out a 
 green purse, and turned some broad pieces out of it. 
 
262 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 After viewing them for some time, with a satisfaction that 
 appeared very visibly in his face ; ' Cadogan,' said he, 
 * observe these pieces well ! They deserve to be ob- 
 served ; there are just forty of them : 't is the very first sum 
 I ever got in my life, and I have kept it always unbroken 
 from that time to this day.' This shows how early, and 
 how strongly, this passion must have been upon him." 
 
 You recollect that fine passage of Macaulay's in his 
 History : " Avarice is rarely the vice of a young man ; it 
 is rarely the vice of a great man ; but Marlborough was 
 one of the few who have, in the bloom of youth, loved 
 lucre more than wine or women, and who have, at the 
 height of greatness, loved lucre more than power or fame. 
 All the precious gifts which nature had lavished on him 
 he valued chiefly for what they would fetch. At twenty 
 he made- money of his beauty and his vigor. At sixty he 
 made money of his genius and his glory. The applauses 
 which were justly due to his conduct at Walcourt could 
 not altogether drown the voices of those who muttered 
 that, wherever a broad piece was to be saved or got, this 
 hero was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon ; that, though 
 he drew a large allowance under pretense of keeping a 
 public table, he never asked an officer to dinner ; that his 
 muster rolls were fraudulently made up ; that he pocketed 
 pay in the names of men who had long been dead, of 
 men who had been killed in his own sight four years be- 
 fore at Sedgemoor ; that there were twenty such names in 
 one troop ; that there were thirty-six in another." 
 
 A beggar once asked an alms of Lord Peterborough, 
 and called him by mistake " My Lord Marlborough." " I 
 am not Lord Marlborough," replied the earl, " and to 
 prove it to you, here is a guinea." Lord Bolingbroke, 
 writing to one of his friends, said, "I am very sorry my 
 Lord Marlborough gives you so much trouble. It is the 
 only thing he will give you." The duke, some 3^ears be- 
 fore his death, retired occasionally to Bath, and often 
 
HABIT. 263 
 
 amused himself with cards, though he seldom ventured 
 to play high. One night he was engaged at piquet with 
 Dean Jones, from whom he had won sixpence, and ex- 
 acted payment. The dean declared he had no silver, 
 but borrowed the money, as the duke said he wanted it 
 to pay for his sedan chair. The dean, knowing the 
 duke's avarice, watched him, and saw him actually walk- 
 ing home, in order to save the sixpence. Pope speaks 
 of him as one who would " Now save a sixpence, and now 
 save a groat." 
 
 " You don't say that your husband the duke is with- 
 out faults ? " saiS Lady Sunderland to the Duchess of 
 Marlborough. " By no means," was the reply : " I knew 
 them better than he did himself, or even than I do my 
 own. He came back one day from my poor misled mis- 
 tress Queen Anne (I believe when he resigned his com- 
 mission), and said he had told her, that he thanked God, 
 with all his faults, neither avarice nor ambition could be 
 laid to his charge." 
 
 Crabb Robinson, in his Diary, speaks of one of these 
 habitual accumulators for whom his nephew made a will. 
 The man was supposed to be at the point of death, and 
 he produced from under his bed, in gold and silver, up- 
 wards of fifteen hundred dollars. A banker's clerk was 
 sent for, and the money was secured. When the old wife 
 found out what had taken place, she scolded him with 
 such fury that she went into a fit and died. The man 
 in great agitation produced an additional one thousand 
 and forty dollars ; but this he insisted on giving away ab- 
 solutely to some poor people who were near him, and 
 had served him. The money was tied up in old stock- 
 ings and filthy rags. When he was informed of his wife's 
 death, he eagerly demanded her pockets, and took from 
 them a few shillings with great avidity. The accumula- 
 tion was the result of a life of continued abstinence. 
 
 There is an account of a millionaire who was accused 
 
264 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 of wishing to invest the accumulations of more than half 
 a century in one big bank-note, and carry it out of the 
 world with him. When Lord Erskine heard that some- 
 body had died worth two hundred thousand pounds, he 
 observed, " Well, that 's a very pretty sum to begin the 
 next world with." 
 
 Rousseau went to Venice as Secretary to the French 
 ambassador, the Count of Montaign. Avarice was the 
 count's most remarkable trait. Careful observation had 
 persuaded him that three shoes are equivalent to two 
 pairs, because there is always one of a pair which is more 
 worn than the other ; and hence he habitually ordered 
 his shoes in threes. 
 
 La Fontaine was always forgetting himself. Having 
 attended the funeral of a friend, he was so absent-minded 
 as to call upon him a short time afterwards. Being re- 
 minded of the fact, he was at first greatly surprised, but 
 recollecting himself, said : "It is true enough, for I was 
 there." 
 
 Ampbre, the great mathematician, wrote rather by mov- 
 ing his arm than his fingers, and in a hand so immense 
 that a gentleman sent him an invitation to dinner penned 
 within the outline of the first letter of his signature. 
 
 The attendant of the elder Mathews in his last illness 
 intended to give his patient some medicine ; but a few 
 minutes afterward it was discovered that the medicine 
 was nothing but ink, which had been taken from the 
 phial by mistake, and his friend exclaimed, " Good Heav- 
 ens, Mathews, I have given you ink ! " " Never mind, 
 my boy," said Mathews, faintly (joking to the last), " I '11 
 swallow a bit' of blotting paper." 
 
 People objected (in Bleak House) to Professor Dingo 
 (Mrs. Badger's second husband), that he disfigured some 
 of the houses and other buildings by chipping off frag- 
 ments of those edifices with his little geological hammer. 
 But the professor replied that he knew of no building, 
 
HABIT. 265 
 
 save the Temple of Science. In his last illness (his mind 
 wandering), he insisted on keeping his little hammer 
 under the pillow, and chipping at the countenances of the 
 attendants. 
 
 Kant, to aid his thoughts, had a habit of fixing his at, 
 tention closely on some one auditor, and judged by him 
 whether he was understood. Once a button on a stu- 
 dent's coat, which he had made his fixed point of vision, 
 being lost, disconcerted the philosopher and interrupted 
 the lecture. A tower on which he used to gaze, in his 
 reveries at home, having become hidden by the growth of 
 trees, he could not rest until the foliage was cut away. 
 Neander had a habit, when he was lecturing, of playing 
 with a goose-quill which his amanuensis always provided 
 for him, constantly crossing and recrossing his feet, his 
 figure bent forward, and his head down, except when 
 excited, when it suddenly went up, at such times, we are 
 told, fairly threatening to turn the desk over. Madame 
 de Stael, it is stated, had a way, while she discoursed, of 
 taking a scrap of paper and a pair of scissors, and snip- 
 ping it to bits, as an employment for her fingers. Once 
 she was observed to be at a loss for this her usual 
 mechanical resource, when a gentleman quietly placed 
 near her the back of a letter from his pocket : afterward 
 she earnestly thanked him for this timely supply of the 
 means she desired as a needful aid to thought and speech. 
 Gibbon held a pinch of snuff between his finger and 
 thumb while he told an anecdote, invariably dropping the 
 pinch at the point of the story. Lord Bacon had a habit 
 of " wringing his speeches from the strings of his bands," 
 and Ben Jonson of " drawing poetic inspiration from his 
 great toe." " He hath," says Drummond of Hawthorn- 
 den, '* consumed a whole night in lying looking to his 
 great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, 
 Romans and Carthaginians, fight in imagination." Schiller 
 kept a drawer in his work-room always filled with rotten 
 
266 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 apples. " I called on him one day," said Goethe, " and 
 as I did not find him at home, and his wife told me that 
 he would soon return, I seated myself at his work-table to 
 note down various matters. I had not been seated long 
 before I felt a strange indisposition steal over me, which 
 gradually increased, until at last I nearly fainted. At 
 first I did not know to what cause I should ascribe this 
 wretched and, to me, unusual state, until I discovered 
 that a dreadful odor issued from a drawer near me. 
 When I opened it, I found to my astonishment that it 
 was full of rotten apples. I immediately went to the 
 window and inhaled the fresh air, by which I felt myself 
 instantly restored. In the mean time his wife had re- 
 entered, and told me that the drawer was always filled 
 with rotten apples, because the scent was beneficial to 
 Schiller, and he could not live or work without it." 
 
 One day they were waiting dinner at Charles Sheridan's 
 for Dr. Johnson. " Take out your opera-glass," said the 
 host to one of his guests ; " Johnson is coming ; you may 
 know him by his gait." " I passed him," responded the 
 guest, " at a good distance, working along with a peculiar 
 solemnity of deportment, and an awkward sort of meas- 
 ured step. At that time the broad flagging at each side 
 the streets was not universally adopted, and stone posts 
 were in fashion to prevent the annoyance of carriages. 
 Upon every post, as he passed along, I could observe, he 
 deliberately laid his hand : but missing one of them, when 
 he had got at some distance, he seemed suddenly to rec- 
 ollect himself, and immediately returning back, carefully 
 resumed his former course, not omitting one till he 
 gained the crossing." This, Mr. Sheridan stated, however 
 odd it might appear, was his constant practice ; but why 
 or wherefore he could give no information. 
 
 " Dr. Johnson had another particularity," says Bos> 
 well, " of which none of his friends ever ventured to ask 
 an explanation. It appeared to me some superstitious 
 
HABIT. 267 
 
 habit, which he had contracted early, and from which he 
 had never called upon his reason to disentangle him. 
 This was his anxious care to go out or in, at a door or 
 passage, by a certain number of stages from a certain 
 point, or at least so as that either his right or his left 
 foot (I am not certain which) should constantly make 
 the first actual movement when he came close to the 
 door or passage. Thus I conjecture ; for I have, upon 
 innumerable occasions, observed him suddenly stop, and 
 then seem to count his steps with a deep earnestness ; 
 and when he had neglected or gone wrong in this sort of 
 magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put 
 himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and, 
 having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk 
 briskly on, and join his companion." Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds had observed him to go a good way about, rather 
 than cross a particular alley ; but this Sir Joshua imputed 
 to his having had some disagreeable recollection asso- 
 ciated with it. 
 
 Malherbe, the French poet, on account of a delicate 
 ear and refined taste, and a habit of criticising every thing 
 that he saw or heard, was called " the tyrant of words 
 and syllables." When dying, his confessor, in speaking 
 of the happiness of heaven, expressed himself inaccu- 
 rately. " Say no more about it," said Malherbe, " or 
 your style will disgust me with it." 
 
 Readers of Rabelais will remember that on one occa- 
 sion Gargantua could not sleep by any means, on which 
 side soever he turned himself. Whereupon Friar John 
 said to him, I never sleep soundly but when I am at ser- 
 mon or prayers. Let us therefore begin, you and I, the 
 Seven Penitential Psalms, to try whether you shall not 
 quickly fall asleep. The conceit pleased Gargantua very 
 well, and, beginning the first of these psalms, as soon as 
 they came to the words, Beati quorum, they fell asleep 
 both the one and the other. 
 
268 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 The detestable habit of fault-finding — too common in 
 this world, as all good-natured people know — was once, 
 we remember, most effectually rebuked by Crabb Rob- 
 inson. It was during one of his visits to Paris. A great 
 part of a day had been spent sight-seeing with a London 
 acquaintance, who said to him at parting, " I will call for 
 you to-morrow." " I will thank you not to call," replied 
 the kindly and philosophic barrister. " I would rather 
 not see any thing else with you, and I will tell you 
 frankly why. I am come to Paris to enjoy myself, and 
 that enjoyment needs the accompaniment of sympathy 
 with others. Now, you dislike every thing, and find fault 
 with every thing. You see nothing which you do not find 
 inferior to what you have seen before. This may be all 
 very true, but it makes me very uncomfortable. I be- 
 lieve, if I were forced to live with you, I should kill my- 
 self. So I shall be glad to see you in London, but no 
 more in Paris." 
 
 In contrast with this habit of fault-finding is the phil- 
 osophic turn of mind that finds the bright side of things, 
 and turns even misfortunes into blessings. Nathan 
 James, of the Alamo, once owned a large merino ewe 
 which he valued highly. His son informed him one 
 morning that his favorite ewe had twins. Mr. James 
 said he "was glad; she could bring up two as well as 
 one." Soon after, the son reported one of the twins 
 dead. The father said, " the one left would be worth 
 more in the autumn than both." In the afternoon the 
 boy told his father that the other lamb was d$ad. " I am 
 glad," said he ; "I can now fatten the old sheep for mut- 
 ton." In the morning the boy reported the old ewe dead. • 
 " That is just what I wanted," said the old farmer; "now 
 I am rid of the breed." 
 
 The rapid growth of a habit of committing improper 
 or unlawful acts, is shown in an instance given by Dr. 
 Hammond, in a recent interesting article entitled A 
 
HABIT. 269 
 
 Problem for Sociologists. A lady came under his ob- 
 servation who was subject to no delusion, and who had 
 never exhibited any evidence of mental alienation except 
 in showing an impulse, which she declared she could not 
 control, to throw valuable articles into the fire. At first, 
 as she said in her confession to the doctor, the impulse 
 was excited by the satisfaction she derived from seeing 
 an old pair of slippers curl up into fantastic shapes after 
 she had thrown them into a blazing wood-fire. She re- 
 peated the act the following day, but, not having a pair 
 of old shoes to burn, she used instead a felt hat which 
 was no longer fashionable. But this did not undergo con- 
 tortions like the shoes, and therefore she had no pleasur- 
 able sensations like those of the day before, and thus, as 
 far as any satisfaction was concerned, the experiment was 
 a failure. On the ensuing day, however, she felt, to her 
 great surprise, that it would be a pleasant thing to burn 
 something. She was very clear that this pleasure con- 
 sisted solely in the fulfillment of an impulse which, to a 
 great extent, had been habitual. She therefore seized a 
 handsomely bound prayer-book which lay on the table, 
 and throwing it into the fire, turned away her face, and 
 walked to another part of the room. It was very certain, 
 therefore, that she was no longer gratified by the sight of 
 the burning articles. She went on repeating these acts 
 with her own things, and even with those which did not 
 belong to her, until she became a nuisance to herself, and 
 to all those with whom she had any relations. Her de- 
 structive propensities stopped at nothing which was cap- 
 able of being consumed. Books, bonnets, shawls, laces, 
 handkerchiefs, and even table-cloths and bed-linen, helped 
 to swell the list of her sacrifices. As soon as she had 
 thrown the articles into the fire, the impulse was satis- 
 fied. She did not care to see them burn ; on the con- 
 trary, the sight was rather disagreeable to her than other- 
 wise. But the power which affected her the way it did, 
 
270 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 she represented as being imperative, and, if not immedi- 
 ately allowed to act, giving rise to the most irritable and 
 unpleasant sensations, which she could not describe other- 
 wise than by saying that she felt as if she would have to 
 fly, or jump, or run, and that there was a feeling under 
 the skin all over the body as though the flesh were in 
 motion. As soon as she had yielded to the impulse, these 
 sensations departed. 
 
 The habit of scolding, it may not be improper to say, 
 is of like rapid growth, and soon ends in a species of 
 noxious insanity, which few persons in this world are 
 happy enough to avoid seeing frequent exhibitions of, 
 to say nothing of the supreme delectation of being able 
 altogether to escape being its victims. Husbands, wives, 
 schoolmasters, clergj^men, unmarried men and unmarried 
 women of a certain age — all are liable to this distress- 
 ing, detestable, nearly incurable mental and moral mal- 
 ady. God help us ! 
 
 Perhaps no really great man ever existed who had the 
 habit of detraction and vituperation to compare with 
 Thomas Carlyle. To him, the Edinburgh clergy were 
 " narrow, ignorant, and barren without exception." He 
 rode sixty miles to consult an eminent Edinburgh physi- 
 cian. " Found," he says, " after long months, that I 
 might as well have ridden sixty miles in the opposite di- 
 rection, and poured my sorrows into the long hairy ear of 
 the first jackass I came upon, as into the select med- 
 ical man's." " I knew Robert Burns," he says, " and I 
 knew my father. Yet. were you to ask me which had the 
 greater natural faculty, I might actually pause before re- 
 plying." " It was not with aversion that my father re- 
 garded Burns ; at worst, with indifference and neglect." 
 "Intrinsically a poor creature this Bulwer," he wrote; 
 " has a bustling whisking agility and restlessness which 
 may support him in a certain degree of significance with 
 some, but which partakes much of the nature of levity. 
 
HABIT. 271 
 
 Nothing truly notable can come of him or of it." " One 
 of the wretchedest Phantasms I had yet fallen in with." 
 De Quincey was " a pretty little creature, full of wire- 
 drawn ingenuities, bankrupt enthusiasm, bankrupt pride," 
 etc. " Poor, fine-strung weak creature, launched so into 
 the literary career of ambition and mother of dead dogs " 
 (as he called London). " Shaped like a pair of tongs." 
 Leigh Hunt, who was very useful and kind to him in 
 many ways, " had to be associated with on cautious 
 terms." " Good humor and no common sense." " Hug- 
 germugger was the type of his economies, in all respects, 
 financial and other." (This of the ''beautiful old man," 
 as Hawthorne calls him, who, when he told the news of 
 his pension, received the kiss from Mrs. Carlyle which he 
 immortalized in the improvisation : — 
 
 *' Jenny kissed me when we met, 
 
 Jumping from the chair she sat in. 
 Time, you thief ! who love to get .. 
 Sweets into your list, put that in. 
 Say I 'm weary, say I 'm sad ; 
 
 Say that health and wealth have missed me ; 
 Say I 'm growing old, but add — 
 
 Jenny kissed me ! " 
 
 "I wish," said Hawthorne, " that he could have had one 
 full draught of prosperity before he died ; as a matter 
 of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see 
 him inhabiting a beautiful house of his own, in an Italian 
 climate, with all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute 
 elegances about him, and a succession of tender and 
 lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to 
 night.") " Coleridge," grumbles the philosopher, " a puf- 
 fy, anxious, obstructed-looking, fattish old man, hobbled 
 about with us, talking with a kind of solemn emphasis on 
 matters which were of no interest." Milnes, one of the 
 English friends who most appreciated him, he describes 
 as " a pretty, robin-redbreast of a man." Of Wordsworth 
 
2/2 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 he says, " Franker utterances of mere garrulities and 
 even platitudes I never heard from any man." Southey 
 is " shovel-hatted ; the shovel hat is grown to him." 
 Thackeray is " a big, fierce, weeping, hungry man ; not a 
 Strong one." Tennyson, though " a true human soul," is 
 a man " dwelling in an element of gloom — carrying a bit 
 of Chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing 
 into Cosmos." Landor's " intellectual faculty," seemed 
 to him " to be weak in proportion to his violence of tem- 
 per ; the judgment he gives about any thing is more apt 
 to be wrong than right." Of Lamb, he says, " At his own 
 house, I saw him once; once I gradually felt to have 
 been enough for me." " His talk contemptibly small, in- 
 dicating wondrous ignorance and shallowness, even when 
 it was serious and good-mannered, which it seldom was." 
 " A more pitiful, rickety, grasping, staggering, stammer- 
 ing tomfool I do not know." " Poor England, when such 
 a despicable abortion is named genius." Of Basil Mon- 
 tagu, whose hospitality he often enjoyed, he says : " Much 
 a bore to you by degrees, and considerably a humbug if 
 you probed too strictly." "Washington," he writes, "is 
 another of our perfect characters ; to me, a most limited, 
 uninteresting sort." He said to an American in a rough 
 way, speaking of Sparks' Biography of Washington, that 
 " the life of George Washington had yet to be written, 
 and he would have to be taken down several pegs." He 
 expected to meet Washington Irving at a breakfast in 
 Paris. " I never met Washington at all," he records, 
 "but still have a mild esteem of the good man." Acci- 
 dentally, he says, he heard the famous Robert Hall 
 preach. He thought the doctor " proved beyond shadow 
 of doubt, in a really forcible, but most superfluous way, 
 that God never lied." Mazzini he met, and thought " well 
 nigh cracked by an enormous conceit of himself." " I 
 once saw Godwin," he says, " if that was any thing." He 
 speaks of " Macaulay's swaggering articles in the Edin- 
 
HABIT. 273 
 
 burgh Review," and says, " Of Macaulay I hear nothing 
 very good." "It seems to me of small consequence 
 whether we meet at all." " Poor Hazlitt ! " he exclaims. 
 " He was never admirable to me." " Of no sound cul- 
 ture whatever." Heine he calls "blackguard Heine." 
 " I have also seen Thomas Campbell," he says. " Him I 
 like worst of all. He is heartless as a little Edinburgh 
 advocate. There is a smirk on his face which would 
 befit a shopman or an auctioneer. His very eye has the 
 cold vivacity of a conceited worldling. His talk is small, 
 contemptuous, and shallow." 
 
 The other sex, even, he employed his great pen in dis- 
 paraging. Lady William Russell, the most cherished of 
 his wife's titled friends, he speaks of as " a finished piece 
 of social art, but hardly otherwise much." Old Lady 
 Holland he "viewed even with aversion, as a kind of 
 hungry, * ornamented witch.' " Edward Irving's sweet- 
 heart — afterward Irving's wife — he pronounced " never 
 quite satisfactory on the side of genuineness." ** She was 
 very ill-looking withal ; a skin always under blotches and 
 discolorment ; muddy gray eyes, which for their part 
 never laughed with the other features ; pock-marked, ill- 
 shapen, triangular kind of face, with hollow cheeks and 
 long chin; decidedly unbeautiful as a young woman." 
 " Spring-Rice's daughter, — a languishing patroness of 
 mine," he refers to. Cordelia Marshall, a friend of his 
 wife's, he sets down as " a prim, affectionate, but rather 
 puling, weak, and sentimental elderly young lady." Mrs. 
 Buller, who had been considerate of him, and whom he 
 once wrote of as " one of the most fascinating women 
 that I ever knew," becomes, on things going a little 
 wrong, one of those "ancient dames of quality, that 
 flaunting, painting, patching, nervous, vaporish, jiggling, 
 scolding race of mortals." He speaks of " the honest, 
 ever self-sufficient Harriet " Martineau. " Full of nigger 
 fanaticisms." Her letters to his wife he calls " scrubby- 
 18 
 
274 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 ish," "sawdustish," " Socinian didactic little notes." Of 
 Mrs. Sarah Austin, who did so much to introduce the 
 finest t}TDes of the German mind to the knowledge and 
 appreciation of English readers, and who as a translator 
 has been declared " altogether unrivaled in her own age 
 and country," he takes pains to record his disparaging 
 estimate : " ' Mrs. Austin,' of these days, so popular and 
 almost famous, on such exiguous basis (translations from 
 the German, rather poorly some, and of original nothing 
 that rose far above the rank of twaddle)." 
 
 Of Emerson he always spoke well ; and no wonder. 
 There is abundant authority for the statement that for 
 some years Carlyle owed even his bread to the money 
 secured by Emerson for his earlier books, which were 
 published in Boston before they were printed in London. 
 Later, Emerson sent him seven hundred and fifty dollars, 
 the profits of an xAmerican edition of his French Revo- 
 lution, when the profits of the English edition, to use his 
 own language, had been " absolutely nothing." 
 
 Arago's popularity as a lecturer on astronomy was a 
 result in part, it is said, of a way he had, before he com- 
 menced one of his lectures, of glancing around his au- 
 dience to look for some dull aspirant for knowledge, with 
 a low forehead, and other indications that he was among 
 the least intelligent among his hearers. He kept his eye 
 fixed upon him, he addressed only him, and by the effect 
 of his eloquence and powers of explanation as exhibited 
 on the countenance of his pupil he judged of their influ- 
 ence over the rest of his audience. When he remained 
 unconvinced, the orator tried new illustrations till the 
 light beamed from the grateful countenance. Arago had 
 nothing to say to the rest of his audience. The orator 
 and his pupil were the Siamese twins united by an intel- 
 lectual ligament. One morning, when Arago was break- 
 fasting with his family, a visitor was announced. A gen- 
 tleman entered — his pupil of the preceding evening, — 
 
HABIT. 275 
 
 who, after expressing his admiration of the lecture, thanked 
 Arago for the very particular attention which he had paid 
 him during its delivery. *'You had the appearance," 
 said he, " of giving the lecture only to me." 
 
 In the midst of heavy professional work, Joseph Gri- 
 maldi, the incomparable clown, found time and energy to 
 pursue a most fatiguing hobby — the collecting of insects. 
 He had formed (says a writer in Temple Bar) a cabinet 
 which contained four thousand specimens. There was a 
 kind which came out in the month of June, called the 
 Dartford blue, for which he was particularly eager. His 
 enthusiasm in this pursuit may be measured by the sacri- 
 fices he made for it. After the performance was over at 
 Sadler's Wells he would return home to supper, then 
 about midnight start to walk to Dartford, a distance of 
 fifteen miles. He would arrive there about five in the 
 morning, rest and breakfast at a friend's house, then go 
 out into the fields ; sometimes a search for hours would 
 be rewarded with only a single specimen. At one o'clock 
 he would begin his return walk to London, reach there 
 in time for tea, and hurry off to the theatre. On the 
 same night, after the performance, he would again walk 
 to Dartford, re-commence his fly-hunt, return in the same 
 manner as on the previous day, and play again, without 
 rest or sleep. On the third night the pantomime was 
 played first, which enabled him to quit the theatre at nine 
 o'clock. Seemingly insensible to fatigue, he once more 
 started on his fifteen miles walk, and this time, arriving 
 at his journey's end by one in the morning, was able to 
 obtain a night's rest before commencing his quest. The 
 next day being Sunday, he had an opportunity of recruit- 
 ing his strength, and he must have sorely needed it. 
 
 About the only companions of the solitude of a grand 
 uncle of Lord Byron was a colony of crickets, which he 
 is said to have amused himself with rearing and feeding. 
 Byron used to say, on the authority of old servants of the 
 
276 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 family, that on the day of their patron's death these 
 crickets all left the house simultaneously, and in such 
 numbers that it was impossible to cross the hall without 
 treading on them. 
 
 Charles Waterton, author of that attractive book, Wan- 
 derings in South America, died at the age of eighty-three. 
 During many years of travel in wild countries, he accus- 
 tomed himself to endure every thing ; and for many years 
 before his death " lived in a room at the top of his 
 house, which had neither bed nor carpet ; he slept on 
 the floor in a blanket, with an oak log for a pillow. He 
 built a wall all round his park of two hundred and fifty 
 acres, ranging from eight to sixteen feet in height, and 
 modified all within to the use of birds, caring much more 
 for their comfort than his own. His trees he watched 
 and loved as much as his birds. It was a favorite habit 
 of his to sit amongst their highest branches, watching 
 birds, and reading Horace or Virgil, even after he was 
 eighty ; and he often astonished visitors at the Hall by 
 inviting them in perfect good faith to accompany him. 
 He had himself, in his early manhood, twice climbed to 
 the top of the cross on St. Peter's — once to leave his 
 glove on the top of the lightning conductor, and again at 
 the pope's desire (no workman in Rome being willing to 
 risk his neck in the operation) to take it off again — so 
 could not understand losing one's head in tree -climb- 
 ing." 
 
 There are some very curious things in Charles Math- 
 ews' Memoirs about old Tate Wilkinson, the famous 
 stage manager. He was, or rather had been, says the 
 comedian, a great lover of good living ; his table, even 
 after he was debarred any participation in its luxuries, 
 was elegantly and liberally supplied, and his house the 
 seat of hospitality. His appetite had long forsaken him, 
 and he was very capricious in his tastes;- liking to be sur- 
 prised into a desire for sometliing uncommon and unex- 
 
HABIT. 277 
 
 pected. It was his custom to sprinkle about his room, 
 between his papers and behind his books, some ratafia 
 cakes, or any other little delicacies of the kind not liable 
 to be spoiled by keeping, in order to detect them when 
 he was not thinking of such a thing. Mr. Mathews more 
 than once saw the effect of this contrivance — the old 
 gentleman, upon the discovery, exclaiming, " Oh, here 's 
 a cake ! " as if its being there was a matter of wonder to 
 him ; he would then nibble it with childish avidity, after 
 having resisted all his wife's attempts to invite his ap- 
 petite, by proposing all sorts of delicacies. 
 
 " There was a boy in my class at school," said Sir 
 Walter Scott, " who stood always at the top, nor could I 
 with all my efforts supplant him. Day came after day, 
 and still he always kept the place, do what I could; till 
 at length I observed that when a question was answered 
 he always fumbled with his fingers at a particular button 
 on the lower part of his waistcoat. To remove it, there- 
 fore, became expedient in my eyes ; and, in an evil hour, 
 it was removed with a knife. When the boy was again 
 questioned, -he felt again for the button, but it was not to 
 be found. In his distress he looked down for it ; it was 
 to be seen no more than to be felt. He stood confounded, 
 and I took possession of his place ; nor did he ever re- 
 cover it, nor ever, I believe, suspect who was the author 
 of his wrong. Often, in after life, has the sight of him 
 smote me as I passed by him, and often have I resolved 
 to make him some reparation, but it ended in good reso- 
 lutions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance with 
 him, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior office 
 in one of the courts of law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow : 
 I believe he is dead-; he took early to drinking." 
 
 " In the beginning of my translating the Iliad," said 
 Pope to Spence, " I wished any body would hang me, a 
 hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first, 
 that I often used to dream of it, and do sometimes still. 
 
278 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 When I fell into the method of translating thirty or forty 
 verses before I got up, and piddled with it the rest of 
 the morning, it went on easy enough ; and when I was 
 thoroughly got into the way of it, I did the rest with 
 pleasure." 
 
 Thoreau, in his Walden, discoursing of habitual and 
 constitutional vices, speaks of some Spanish hides he 
 had seen, with the tails still preserving their twist and 
 the angle of elevation they had when the oxen that wore 
 them were careering over the pampas of the Spanish 
 main, — a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost 
 hopeless and incurable are all such vices. " I confess," 
 he says, " that practically speaking, when I have learned 
 a man's real disposition, I have no hopes of changing it 
 for the better or worse in this state of existence. As the 
 Orientals say, * a cur's tail may be warmed, and pressed, 
 and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years' 
 labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural 
 form.' " 
 
 One cannot bear, said Lamb, to pay for articles he 
 has been in the habit of getting for nothing. "When 
 Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some 
 stall in Mesopotamia, I think it went hard with him, re- 
 flecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so 
 many for nothing." - 
 
 Southey's anecdote of Master Jackson illustrates, and 
 to some extent accounts for, an easy habit that good peo- 
 ple sometimes fall into, that is much complained of by 
 the parsons. "Well, Master Jackson," said his minis- 
 ter, walking homeward after service, with an industrious 
 laborer, who was a constant attendant, — " well. Master 
 Jackson, Sunday must be a blessed day of rest for you, 
 who work hard all the week. And you make good use of 
 the day; for you are always to be seen at church." "Aye, 
 sir," replied Jackson, "it is, indeed, a blessed day; I 
 works hard enough all the week ; and then I comes to 
 
HABIT. 279 
 
 church o* Sundays, and sets me down, and lays my legs 
 up, and thinks o' nothing." 
 
 The effect of habit in self-discipline is shown in an in- 
 teresting chapter from Goethe's Autobiography. " My 
 health," says the poet, " was tolerably good ; but a nerv- 
 ous irritability rendered me unable to endure the noise 
 and sight of infirmities and sufferings. I could not stand 
 on an elevation and look downwards without feeling a 
 vertigo. I accustomed myself to noise by taking my sta- 
 tion, at night, near the trumpets that sounded the retreat, 
 at the risk of having my tympanum cracked by their loud 
 braying. To cure myself of giddiness, I often ascended 
 to the top of the Minster tower alone. I used to remain 
 a quarter of an hour sitting on the stairs before I durst 
 venture out. I then advanced on a small platform, 
 scarcely an ell square, without any rail or support. Be- 
 fore me was an immense extent of country, whilst the 
 objects nearest to the Minster concealed from my sight 
 the church and the monument on which I was perched. 
 I was precisely in the situation of a man launched into 
 mid- air in a balloon. I repeated the experiment of this 
 painful situation, until at length it gave me no sensation 
 at all. Of the utility of these trials I was afterward fully 
 sensible, when the study of geology led me to traverse 
 mountains. When I had to visit great buildings, I could 
 stand with the workmen upon the scaffolds on the roofs. 
 These habits were no less useful to me at Rome, where 
 I wished to , examine the celebrated monuments of that 
 city closely. In studying anatomy, I learned to endure 
 the sight of those objects which at first shocked me most. 
 I attended a course of clinical lectures, with the twofold 
 intention of gaining an increase of knowledge, and of 
 freeing myself of all pusillanimous repugnance. On the 
 whole, I succeeded in fortifying myself against all those 
 impressions of the senses and imagination which disturb 
 the tranquillity of the soul." 
 
280 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Although Haller surpassed his contemporaries in 
 anatomy, and published several important anatomical 
 works, he was troubled at the outset with a horror of dis- 
 section beyond what is usual with the inexperienced, and 
 it was only, it is stated, by firm discipline that he became 
 an anatomist at all. 
 
 " Habit, in the great majority of things," says the grave 
 and reverend John Foster, " is a greater plague than ever 
 afflicted Egypt ; in religious character, it is a grand felic- 
 ity. The devout man exults in the indications of his 
 being fixed and irretrievable. He feels .this confirmed 
 habit as the grasp of the hand of God, which will never 
 let him go. From this advanced state he looks with firm- 
 ness and joy on futurity, and says, I carry the eternal 
 mark upon me that I belong to God ; I am free of the 
 universe ; and I am ready to go to any world to which 
 He shall please to transmit me, certain that everywhere, 
 in height or depth, He will acknowledge me forever." 
 
XL 
 
 THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 
 
 "Yes; but " — These two little words, in this close 
 connection — divided only by a semicolon — represent, in 
 essence, it must be admitted, a very large part of all the 
 conversation of all mankind. We assent, with qualifica- 
 tion j and the qualification, unhappily, too often ends the 
 discussion. The shadows finish the picture. The habit 
 we all deplore, and nearly all possess. Disparagement, 
 detraction, — call it what you may, — that we are quick 
 to condemn in others, we are very slow to correct in our- 
 selves. We see it, we talk about it, we despise it, we 
 blush at it, albeit we persist in it. The mischief goes 
 for nothing, in effect, and we seem to look upon it as a 
 part of life, inevitable and indispensable, to be condemned 
 or indulged, as it disagrees or accords with our feelings 
 or interests. Nature — human nature in this instance — 
 goes her own way, and man is not to be made over in 
 haste ; therefore, as a study, merely, this article is in- 
 tended, without the slightest conception of reforming vio- 
 lently any human being. The Tigris flows through Bag- 
 dad when the caliphs are all dead. 
 
 " God," says Heine, " has given us tongues, that we 
 may say pleasant things to our friends, and bitter truths 
 of our enemies." " I have," he says, " the most peacea- 
 ble disposition. My desires are a modest cottage with 
 thatched roof — but a good bed, good fare, fresh milk 
 and butter, flowers by my window, and a few fine trees 
 before the door. And if the Lord wished to fill my cup 
 of happiness, he would grant me the pleasure of seeing 
 
282 . CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 some six or seven of my enemies hanged on those trees. 
 With a heart moved to pity, I would, before their death, 
 forgive the injury they had done me during their hves. 
 Yes, we ought to forgive our enemies — but not until 
 they are hanged." "As far as I can understand the Mov- 
 ing our enemies,' " said Poe, " it implies the hating our 
 friends." When Marshal Narvaez was on his death-bed, 
 his confessor asked him if he freely forgave all his ene- 
 mies. " I have no enemies," replied the dying marshal, 
 proudly. " Every one must have made enemies in the 
 course of his life," suggested the priest, mildly. " Oh, 
 of course," replied the marshal ; " I have had a gi*eat 
 number of enemies in my time, but I have none now. I 
 have had them all shot !" You recollect the surgeon, to 
 whom Voltaire was once compared, who not only attended 
 a friend carefully during a last illness, but dissected him. 
 You remember also the New Zealander who was asked 
 whether he loved a missionary who had been laboring 
 for his soul and those of his countrymen. " To be sure 
 I loved him. Why, I ate a piece of him for my breakfast 
 this morning ! " 
 
 " If we quarreled," says Thackeray, " with all the peo- 
 ple who abuse us behind our backs, and began to tear 
 their eyes out as soon as we set ours on them, what a 
 life it would be, and when should we have any quiet? 
 Backbiting is all fair in society. Abuse me, and I will 
 abuse you ; but let us be friends when we meet. Have 
 we not all entered a dozen rooms, and been sure, from 
 the countenances of the amiable persons present, that 
 they had been discussing our little peculiarities, perhaps 
 as we were on the stairs ? Was our visit, therefore, the 
 less agreeable .? Did we quarrel and say hard words to 
 one another's faces ? No — .we wait until some of our 
 dear friends take their leave, and then comes our turn. 
 My back is at my neighbor's service ; as soon as that is 
 turned let him make what faces he thinks proper : but 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 283 
 
 when we meet we grin and shake hands like well-bred 
 folk, to whom clean linen is not more necessary than a 
 clean, sweet-looking countenance, and a. nicely gotten up 
 smile for company." 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said of the Duchess of 
 Marlborough, " We continue to see one another like two 
 persons who are resolved to hate with civility." Madame 
 de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan met in public, 
 talked with vivacity, and, to those who judged only by 
 appearances, seemed excellent friends. Once when they 
 had to make a journey in the same carriage, Madame de 
 Montespan said, " Let us talk as if there were no differ- 
 ence between us, but on condition that we resume our 
 hostility when we return." 
 
 The delightful deference which society obliges us to 
 pay to those who hate us, is very much like returning 
 thanks for injuries — a refinement in tyranny frequently 
 practiced by the worst of the Roman emperors. Seneca 
 informs us that Caligula was thanked by those whose 
 children had been put to death, and whose property had 
 been confiscated. A person who had grown old in his 
 attendance on kings, was asked how he had attained a 
 thing so uncommon in courts as old age ? It was, replied 
 he, by receiving injuries and returning thanks. It was 
 on the same principle, we suppose, that Louis Philippe, 
 unlike the great Napoleon, saw all the malicious carica- 
 tures that were made of himself, and laughed at them 
 lustily. The young Prince Imperial, alluding to the visit 
 of Count Bismarck to Napoleon III. at Plombieres, said, 
 " They let me laugh as much as I like ; but what I don't 
 like is to be obliged to smile and look pleasant to men 
 who I know are my father's enemies." 
 
 We are all sore, deficient, and vulnerable ; and by crit- 
 icism, ridicule, and detraction, we supply ourselves with 
 emollients, compensations, and weapons. Man, too, being 
 a laughing animal, soon finds that the most laughable 
 
284 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 object in creation is himself. He is continually blunder' 
 ing and stumbling, and he only learns to keep his feet 
 by falling. Morally as well as physically. If an invis- 
 ible knocking machine tapped each one of us on the 
 head the instant and every time we thought evil or did 
 wrong, what a getting up there would be ! What a scene 
 the street would present ! To the church or to the mar- 
 ket, the same. Verily, the world laughs ; — with us, and 
 then at us. 
 
 Johnson uttered a conspicuously generous thing of his 
 friend Sir Joshua, when he said, " Reynolds, sir, is the 
 most invulnerable man I know; the man with whom, if you 
 should quarrel, you would find the most difficulty how to 
 abuse." " In faults," said Goethe, " men are much alike ; 
 in good qualities they differ." We readily perceive the 
 faults of others by being so familiar with our own. Their 
 virtues are not so visible to us, for the reason that our 
 own are not so distinct to ourselves. The real good that 
 is in us is unconscious, almost occult, and blushes when 
 it is discovered. 
 
 It is only the very few, we hope, who, by what Haw- 
 thorne calls the " alchemy of quiet malice," concoct a 
 subtle poison from the ordinary experiences of life. For 
 the fun of the thing, more than for the mischief of it, the 
 world prattles on. Sometimes it is cruel ; but it is the 
 cruelty of the thoughtless boy. It does not much con- 
 cern itself about justice or injustice. To the sources it 
 does not much care to go if it could. It prefers to see 
 with its eyes rather than with its head, — by its senses 
 rather than by its reason. It sees outwardly, and talks 
 for recreation — irresponsibly, generally, and without re- 
 flection. "As for good sense," said Gil Bias, "if an angel 
 from heaven were to whisper wisdom in one ear, and 
 your cousin her mortal chit-chat in the other, I am afraid 
 the angel might whistle for an audience." 
 
 Boswell was thought by some of his contemporaries 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 285 
 
 to be a little dangerous ; but for his love of personali- 
 ties the world would not have had its best biography. 
 Wiser men than himself hated and feared him. " A 
 snapper up of unconsidered trifles," he might victimize 
 them. They did not know that the wise eye of Johnson 
 revised all that he recorded. It is said that whenever 
 he came into a company where Horace Walpole was, Wal- 
 pole would throw back his head, purse up his mouth very 
 significantly, and not speak a word while Boswell re- 
 mained. 
 
 Thiers' father is described as a queer, bustling, talka- 
 tive little gentleman, and it is suggested that there must 
 have been something mischievous in his talk, or so much 
 pains would not have been taken by his eminent son to 
 keep him from his wedding. To insure the non-appear- 
 ance of his troublesome parent at the wedding, the minis- 
 ter for three weeks previously hired all the places in the 
 stage-coaches running from Carpentras (where he lived) 
 and other towns of the Vaucluse to Lyons. 
 
 Is it true, as they say, that it is the bad-tempered 
 people who are most apt to take to themselves and mis- 
 construe whatever is loosely said by the tongue of the 
 world, as the wasp is said to take up and convert all it 
 can light upon into poison ? The illusory fancies of bad- 
 tempered people have been made the subject of much 
 subtle observation and analysis by mental physiologists. 
 It has been observed that they honestly believe that they 
 are the most ill-used persons on the earth, when they are 
 surrounded only by kindly regard and forbearing indul- 
 gence. They honestly believe that all the world is devot- 
 ing itself exclusively to a discussion of them, when, it 
 may be, the world, if it thinks or speaks of them at all, 
 it is only in a general way, and for the general good. 
 An English judge once sentenced a prisoner : " I sen- 
 tence you," he said, " to die ; not at all because you 
 have robbed this house, but in order that other people 
 
286 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 may not rob other houses in future." The tongue is 
 the universal poHceman. It sometimes makes mistakes, 
 and sometimes it is cruel. Good-nature is expected to 
 forgive and submit. Virtue is its own reward. 
 
 It must be that a good deal of the evil-speaking of the 
 world is for emphasis or for self-relief. Longinus, in his 
 Discourse of the Sublime, commends swearing, for the 
 reason that, now and then, on proper occasions, it adds 
 to the grandeur and effectiveness of oratory. Old Fuseli, 
 the painter, once said to his wife, when he found her in 
 a tempestuous temper, *' Madam, do swear a little ; you 
 do not know how much^ood it would do you." 
 
 Can it be possible that a pretty general abuse of one's 
 acquaintances was ever intended to limit one's friends ? 
 as Lady Chantrey went into the studio with a hammer, 
 and knocked off the noses of many completed busts, so 
 that they might not be too common — a singular atten- 
 tion, it was thought, to her departed husband. 
 
 Intentionally or not, many a one's friends have been 
 wofully reduced by the process of general offense. And 
 the dear five hundred could not be recovered, when lost 
 in that sweeping and unreasonable way. The offender 
 and the offense had made it impossible. " Since I 
 wronged you, I have never liked you," is a proverb. 
 " The offender never pardons," is another. " No prov- 
 erb is absolutely true," says a writer upon this subject ; 
 "but all experience of life shows that it is the one 
 who gives the offense, with whom it is the most difficult 
 to make up. The reason is obvious. The offending man 
 is secretly very angry with himself, and he has to forgive 
 both you and himself — himself for having been unreas- 
 onable, and you for having been in the way when he was 
 unreasonable." 
 
 You remember Wycherley's humorous excuse for de- 
 traction in The Plain Dealer : " Speaking well of all 
 mankind is the worst kind of detraction ; for it takes 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 28/ 
 
 away the reputation of the few good men in the world by 
 making all alike." Suggesting Swift's satirical allusion 
 to lying. He said that universal as was the practice of 
 lying, and easy as it seemed, he did not remember to have 
 heard three good lies in all his life. 
 
 A favorite amusement of boys is in marking out letters 
 on signboards and in handbills — to produce what may 
 be called wit by obliteration. A like effort it would seem 
 is sometimes made to rub away traits of character, and 
 laugh over the result of the prodigious performance. If 
 such puerile wit sometimes resulted as the boys' experi- 
 ence with Professor John Stuart Blackie, there would per- 
 haps be less of it. For thirty-five years he occupied the 
 Greek chair of the University of Edinburgh. Once, we 
 are told, on the first day of the college year he posted on 
 the class-room door a notice that Professor Blackie would 
 meet his classes on the 4th instant at the usual hours. A 
 joker among the students erased the " c " in " classes," 
 thus announcing that the Professor would "meet his 
 lasses," etc. As class time drew near the young men 
 gathered about to " see what Blackie would do." The 
 Professor came, glanced at the card, touched it with a 
 pencil, and passed in to his desk, with a grim smile over- 
 spreading his features. And the students followed him 
 into the room, with mingled emotions of jollity and dis- 
 may, as they saw that his pencil stroke had obliterated 
 the " 1." Recalling an incident they tell of the eminent 
 Dr. Whewell, who was a living cyclopsedia. On one occa- 
 sion some of his companions formed a conspiracy to trap 
 him. A number of them read up on Chinese music from 
 articles in old reviews. Then when they were ready they 
 fired off their recondite knowledge on the state of mu- 
 sic in China. For a while Dr. Whewell remained si- 
 lent, and the conspirators were happy in thinking they 
 had caught the great scholar at last. When, however, 
 they had about emptied themselves of their curious lore, 
 
288 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 he remarked, " I was imperfectly, and to some extent in- 
 correctly, informed regarding Chinese music when I wrote 
 the articles from which you have drawn your informa- 
 tion." 
 
 " I do not wonder," said Macaulay, " at the violence 
 of the hatred which Socrates had provoked. He had, 
 evidently, a thorough love for making men look small. 
 There was a meek maliciousness about him which gave 
 wounds such as must have smarted long, and his com- 
 mand of temper was more provoking than noisy triumph 
 and insolence would have been." 
 
 The man who delights in giving you full credit for 
 every excellence you possess, rather than in belittling you 
 by an exaggeration of your foibles, is a treasure ; and the 
 protection you feel in the neighborhood of such a man, 
 law could not give you. He shuts your gate, he protects 
 your child, he guards your reputation ; he does the fair 
 and generous thing. If men were weighed and not 
 counted, such a man would overbalance many of poorer 
 material. Themistocles, having a farm to sell, bid the 
 crier proclaim also that it had a good neighbor. 
 
 " Every one knows," says Goethe, " that there is no 
 readier way to get rid of the consciousness of our own 
 faults, than to busy ourselves about those of other people. 
 This is a method much in vogue in the best of company. 
 But nothing gives us so strong a sense of our independ- 
 ence, or makes us so important in our own eyes, as the 
 censure of our superiors and of the great in this world." 
 " If we were faultless," says Fenelon, " we should not be 
 so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we 
 associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we 
 have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neigh- 
 bors' weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, 
 and this alarms our vanity. We therefore make our 
 weakness pass for strength, elevate it to a virtue and call 
 it zeal ; an imaginary and often hypocritical zeal. For is 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 289 
 
 it' not surprising to see how tranquil we are about the 
 errors of others wheii they do not trouble us, and how 
 soon this wonderful zeal kindles against those who excite 
 our jealousy, or weary our patience ? " " We reprove our 
 friends' faults," said Wycherley, " more out of pride than 
 love or charity ; not so much to correct them as to make 
 them believe we are ourselves without them." 
 
 " It is a very ordinary and common thing amongst 
 men," says Rabelais, in his quaint way, " to conceive, fore- 
 see, know, and presage the misfortunes, bad luck, or dis- 
 aster of another ; but to have the understanding, provi- 
 dence, knowledge, and prediction of a man's own mishaps, 
 is very scarce, and rare to be found anywhere. This is 
 exceeding judiciously and prudently deciphered by ^Esop 
 in his apologues, who there affirmeth, that every man in 
 the world carrieth about his neck a wallet, in the forebag 
 whereof is contained the faults and mischances of others, 
 always exposed to his view and knowledge ; and in the 
 other scrip thereof, which hangs behind, is kept the bear- 
 er's proper transgressions, and inauspicious adventures, 
 at no time seen by him, nor thought upon, unless he be a 
 person that hath a favorable aspect from the heavens." 
 
 " It is a certain sign of an ill heart," says Steele, in one 
 of his Spectators, " to be inclined to defamation. They 
 who are harmless and innocent can have no gratification 
 that way ; but it ever arises from a neglect of what is 
 laudable in a man's self, and an impatience in seeing it in 
 another. ... A lady the other day at a visit, being at- 
 tacked somewhat rudely by one whose own character had 
 been very rudely treated, answered a great deal of heat 
 and intemperance by very calmly remarking, *Good 
 madam, spare me, who am none of your match ; I speak 
 ill of nobody, and it is a new thing to me to be spoken 
 ill of.' " 
 
 One evening at a convivial gathering in Paris, where all 
 the guests did not happen to be of the same political 
 19 
 
290 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 opinions, as they sat down to dinner, one said to the com- 
 pany : " Gentlemen, I should, before we begin dinner, 
 make a little explanation of one of my peculiarities. It 
 sometimes happens that when I have a little wine on 
 board I take it into my head to gibe people who are not 
 of my way of thinking in politics. I assure you that I 
 mean nothing serious by such an action, and that if I 
 should appear to be rude you will make a little allowance 
 and not lay it to my account." As he seated himself, 
 another guest, a man seven feet high, and with a hand 
 and an arm in proportion, arose and said as courteously : 
 " Gentlemen, I too should make a little explanation of 
 one of my peculiarities. It sometimes happens that when 
 I have a little wine on board and some one begins to gibe 
 me for my way of thinking in politics I take it into my 
 head to wring his neck or pitch him out of a second story 
 window. I assure you that I mean nothing serious by 
 such an action, and that if I should appear to be rude 
 you will make a little allowance, and not lay it to my ac- 
 count." Not a word of politics was spoken at the table 
 that evening, and all went merry as a dinner should. 
 
 A young lady, a member of Dr. Lathrop's church, went 
 on a visit to a neighboring town, and while there attended 
 a party and danced. Tidings of her sin reached home 
 before her. On her return she was visited and called to 
 most severe account for the disgrace she had thus 
 brought upon herself and upon the church, and which had 
 been found out, notwithstanding it had been done among 
 strangers. One staid maiden was especially severe in her 
 rebukes, and made the poor girl feel very bad. " What 
 shall I do ? " she asked. " You had better go and see 
 Dr. Lathrop." She did go, and told him all about it. 
 " And so, my dear, you went to the party, and danced, 
 did you ? " he said. " Yes, sir." " And did you have a 
 good time?" " Yes, sir." " Well, I am glad of it, and I 
 hope you will go again, and enjoy yourself. And now I 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION 29 1 
 
 want you to tell me the name of the woman who has been 
 making you all this trouble." She told him. "Go to 
 that woman, and tell her from me that, if she wants to 
 get to heaven, she had better make more use of her feet, 
 and less of her tongue." 
 
 People, it has been very truly remarked, are ever on 
 the watch to catch their fellows tripping ; it is such com- 
 fort to find, or to fancy, one'sself better than one's neigh- 
 bors j and the more favored by fortune the delinquent is, 
 the sweeter is the pharisaical consolation we extract out 
 of his aberrations. 
 
 Our own defects are apt to make us extremely acute in 
 discovering the defects of others, as an infirmity some- 
 times seems to supply a new sense. Not long since there 
 was living in the county of York, England, a gentleman, 
 who, though totally blind, was an expert archer. His 
 sense of hearing was so keen, that when a boy behind 
 the target rang a bell, the blind archer knew precisely 
 how to aim the shaft. 
 
 Once on a time a woman at confession told the priest 
 that she had been guilty of slandering her neighbor. The 
 priest gave her a thistle, and told her to go and scatter it 
 on the fields, and then come back. On her return, the 
 priest said, "Go now and gather up all those thistle- 
 seeds." When she declared she could not, he said to 
 her, " Neither can you gather up the evil words you have 
 spoken." 
 
 Some one has said that those who utter slander, and 
 those who believe it, ought both to be hanged, one by 
 the tongue, the other by the ear. 
 
 In the land of Satin, Rabelais saw Hearsay, " a dimin- 
 utive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow," who " kept a 
 school of vouching." " His mouth was slit up to his 
 ears, and in it were seven tongues, each of them cleft 
 into seven parts. However, he chattered, tattled, and 
 prated with all the seven at once, of different matters, 
 
292 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 and in divers languages. He had as many ears all over 
 his head, and the rest of his body, as Argus formerly had 
 eyes j and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his 
 legs. About him stood an innumerable number of men 
 and women, gaping, listening, and hearing very intently ; 
 among them he observed some who strutted like crows in 
 a gutter, and principally a very handsome bodied man in 
 the face, who held them a map of the world, and with 
 little aphorisms compendiously explained every thing to 
 them ; so that those men of happy memories grew learned 
 in a trice, and would most fluently talk with you of a world 
 of prodigious things, the hundredth part of which would 
 take up a man's whole life to be fully known." 
 
 It has been noticed in Abyssinia that an irreconcilable 
 feud rages between the donkey and the hyena. " I have 
 met with my moral antipodes," says Lamb, " and can be- 
 lieve the story of two persons meeting (who never saw 
 one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting." 
 Upon one occasion Mr. Webster was on his way to at- 
 tend to his duties in Washington. He was compelled to 
 proceed at night by stage from Baltimore. He had no 
 traveling companions, and the driver had .a sort of felon- 
 look, which produced no inconsiderable alarm. " I en- 
 deavored to tranquilize myself," said Mr. Webster, " and 
 had partially succeeded, when we reached the woods be- 
 tween Bladensburg and Washington (a proper scene for 
 murder or outrage), and here, I confess, my courage 
 again deserted me. Just then the driver, turning to me, 
 w^ith a gruff voice asked my name. I gave it to him. 
 * Where are you going ? ' said he. The reply was, ' To 
 Washington. I am a Senator.' Upon this, the driver 
 seized me fer\^ently by the hand, and exclaimed, ' How 
 glad I am. I have been trembling in my seat for the last 
 hour ; for, when I looked at you, I took you to be a high- 
 wayman.' " 
 
 Shelley somehow antagonized his neighbors ; at least, 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 293 
 
 he was always misunderstood by them and belied. He 
 was said to be keeping a seraglio at Marlow ; and his 
 friends partook of the scandal. This keeper of a serag- 
 lio, who, in fact, was extremely difficult to please in such 
 matters, and who had no idea of love unconnected with 
 sentiment, passed his days like a hermit. We have it 
 upon the authority of his friend Leigh Hunt that he rose 
 early in the morning, walked and read before breakfast, 
 took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater 
 part of the morning, walked and read again, dined on 
 vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), conversed 
 with his friends (to whom his house was ever open), again 
 walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife 
 till ten o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily 
 existence. Yet the word " seraglio " stuck to his home 
 like an epithet ; and you know what an epithet is. " It 
 is by epithets," said Napoleon, " that you govern man- 
 kind." 
 
 A gentleman gave Thackeray a good illustration of the 
 
 philosophy of exaggeration. Mr. was once behind 
 
 the scenes at the opera when the scene-shifters were pre- 
 paring for the ballet. Flora was to sleep under a bush, 
 whereon were growing a number of roses, and amidst 
 which was fluttering a gay covey of butterflies. In size, 
 the roses exceeded the most expansive sunflowers ; and 
 the butterflies were as large as cocked hats. The scene- 
 shifters explained to Mr. , who asked the reason why 
 
 every thing was so magnified, that the galleries could 
 never see the objects unless they were enormously exag- 
 gerated. Thus pitched to their senses and apprehension, 
 they were vehement in their applauses, and the spectacle 
 was triumphant. Healthy criticism and sound judgment 
 were impossible, as they always are to the excited multi- 
 tude. Froude, in his sketch of Julius Caesar, speaks of 
 a yell which rose from tens of thousands of throats so 
 piercing that it was * said a crow flying over the Forum 
 
294 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 dropped dead at the sound of it. The Duke of Welling- 
 ton would not allow the fence around his house, which 
 had been torn down by the excited mob, to be rebuilt, 
 because he wanted kept before him the mutability, uncer- 
 tainty, and unreasonableness of all popular favor. 
 
 It is impossible to overestimate the influence of sur- 
 rounding atmospheres, physical and social. Sir Ruther- 
 ford Alcock, who once represented Great Britain in 
 China, visited the Great Wall, and brought back two 
 bricks from it. " I do not pretend to determine," says 
 Helps, in his chapter on Social Pressure, "how many 
 centuries these bricks had kept their form, and betrayed 
 no signs of decay, in that atmosphere. But those centu- 
 ries must have been many. Sir Rutherford put these two 
 bricks out in the balcony of his house in London. About 
 two years after, one of these bricks had entirely gone to 
 pieces, being entirely disintegrated by the corrosive influ- 
 ence of the London atmosphere." " In Syria, and Pal- 
 estine, and Egypt," says Kinglake, "you might as well 
 dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as of magic. There 
 is no controversy about the matter. The effect of this, 
 the unanimous belief of an ignorant people, upon the 
 mind of a stranger, is extremely curious, and well worth 
 noticing. A man coming freshly from Europe is at first 
 proof against the nonsense with which he is assailed, but 
 often it happens that after a little while the social atmos- 
 phere in which he lives will begin to infect him, and if he 
 has been unaccustomed to the cunning of fence by which 
 Reason prepares the means of guarding herself against 
 fallacy, he will yield himself at last to the faith of those 
 around him, and this he will do by sympathy, it would 
 seem, rather than from conviction." 
 
 Johnson, in his Preface to Shakespeare, says : " The 
 great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the 
 moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an 
 author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst 
 
 Jr 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 295 
 
 performance, and when he is dead, we rate them by the 
 iDest." Lord Brougham conceived the brilliant idea of 
 giving out that he had been killed in a carriage accident, 
 to see what the newspapers would say of him. Several 
 pages are devoted to this curious bit of history by Camp- 
 bell in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors. "Whether 
 Brougham was cognizant of this piece of bad pleasantry 
 or not," says Lord Campbell, " he was much annoyed by 
 the result of it. Not only was he mortified by the great 
 preponderance of abuse which it called forth, but he dis- 
 covered, to his great surprise, that he was generally sus- 
 pected to be the author of it, and he knew the ridicule 
 which he must have incurred by killing himself, and read- 
 ing so many, and such unfavorable characters of himself, 
 written when he was supposed to have gone to a better 
 world." 
 
 Mr. Greeley used to tell a good story of the way Amer- 
 ican fabrics were once disparaged in New York city. Dr. 
 Crosby, of New Haven, had invented an ingenious ma- 
 chine for the manufacture of fish-hooks, by means of 
 which a coil of wire would be converted into a peck of 
 fish-hooks of any size with astonishing rapidity and per- 
 fect success. It bent, pointed, barbed, and flattened the 
 heads at lightning speed, and more beautifully than could 
 be done by hand manipulation. Having finished a quan- 
 tity he sent them down to New York. They were rejected 
 as not of standard excellence. He sent another lot, which 
 was also rejected for the same reason. He then sent 
 down a third lot of hooks put on cards as usual, and said 
 he felt sure that these would answer. The reply came, 
 No, they would- not do ; they were not up to the British 
 make. Dr. Crosby then wrote down indignantly to the 
 New York house : " Why, gentlemen, these ought to suit 
 you, for they are British hooks bought from your own 
 store, and packed in my boxes to test you." That, how- 
 ever, did not signify, and the American hooks were still 
 disparaged and refused. 
 
296 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Stanley, when voyaging down the Congo, had this sig- 
 nificant experience : " I saw before me over a hundred 
 beings of the most degraded, unpresentable type it is 
 possible to conceive; and though I knew quite well 
 that some hundreds of years ago the beginning of this 
 wretched humanity and myself were one and the same, 
 a sneaking disinclination to believe it possessed me 
 strongly, and I would even now willingly subscribe some 
 small amount of silver money for him who could but as- 
 sist me to controvert the discreditable fact. ... If the 
 old chief appeared so unprepossessing, how can I paint 
 without offense my humble brothers and sisters who stood 
 around us? As I looked at the array of faces, I could 
 only comment to myself, — ugly, uglier, ugliest As I 
 looked at their rude and filthy bodies, . . . and the 
 general indecency of their nakedness, I ejaculated * Fear- 
 ful ! ' as the sum total of what I might with propriety say, 
 and what indeed is sufficiently descriptive. . . . And 
 how strangely they smell, all these queer man-like crea- 
 tures who stand regarding me ! Not silently : on the 
 contrary, there is a loud interchange of comments upon 
 the white's appearance, a manifestation of broad interest 
 to know whence I came, whither I am going, and what is 
 my business. The replies were followed by long-drawn 
 ejaculations of * Wa-a-a-antu ! ' (* Men ! ') * Eha-a, and 
 these are men ! ' Now imagine this ! While we whites 
 are loftily disputing among ourselves as to whether the 
 beings before us are human, here were these creatures 
 actually expressing strong doubts as to whether we 
 whites are men ! A dead silence prevailed for a short 
 time, during which all the females dropped their lower 
 jaws far down, and then cried out again, * Wa-a-a-a-a- 
 antu!' ('Men!')" 
 
 A charitable old woman, who afforded Mungo Park a 
 meal and lodging, on the banks of the Niger, could not 
 refrain, even in the midst of her kindness, from exclaim- 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 297 
 
 ing, " God preserve us from the devil," as she looked 
 upon him. 
 
 It has been said that we must have the same enmities 
 to be united in spirit. That in order to love one another, 
 we must have hatreds in common. Literature, at least, 
 furnishes some proofs of this. We know, for instance, 
 how, on account of the satire of Fielding, the moral Rich- 
 ardson and the dissolute Gibber became lasting friends. 
 "If the Athenians were wise (Aristides is reported to 
 have said, in the height and peril of his parliamentary 
 struggle with Themistocles), they would have cast both 
 Themistocles and me into the barathrum." (The bara- 
 thrum was a deep pit, said to have had iron spikes at 
 the bottom, into which criminals condemned to death 
 were sometimes cast.) The rulers, in Heine's time, re- 
 fused a residence in Prussia, and especially in Berlin, to 
 any one who did not profess one of the positive religions 
 recognized by the state. Tacitus, in speaking of the 
 Germans eighteen centuries ago, says it was an indis- 
 pensable duty to adopt the enmities of a father or rela- 
 tion, as well as their friendships. Mary de Medici, mother 
 of Louis XIII., was extremely anxious to obtain the good 
 graces of her son. One day she asked the prince of 
 Piedmont, her son-in-law, " How shall I set about ob- 
 taining them ? " The prince replied, " Love truly and 
 sincerely all that he loves ; these words contain the law 
 and the prophets." 
 
 Still, according to Holmes, "Whenever two natures 
 have a great deal in common, the conditions of a first-rate 
 quarrel are furnished ready-made. Relations are very 
 apt to hate each other just because they are too much 
 alike. It is so frightful to be in an atmosphere of family 
 idiosyncrasies ; to see all the hereditary uncomeliness or 
 infirmity of body, all the defects of speech, all the failings 
 of temper, intensified by concentration, so that every fault 
 of our own finds itself multiplied by reflections, like an 
 
298 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 image in a saloon lined with mirrors ! Nature knows what 
 she is about. The centrifugal principle which grows out 
 of the antipathy of like to like is only the repetition in 
 character of the arrangement we see expressed materially 
 in certain seed-capsules, which burst and throw the seed 
 to all points of the compass. A house is a large pod with 
 a human germ or two in each of its cells or chambers : it 
 opens by dehiscence of the front door by and by, and pro- 
 jects one of its germs to Kansas, another to San Fran- 
 cisco, another to Chicago, and so on ; and this that Smith 
 may not be Smithed to death, and Brown may not be 
 Browned into a mad-house, but mix in with the world 
 again and struggle back to average humanity." 
 
 Charles Young made his debut at the Ha}Tnarket on 
 the 22d of June, 1807, as Hamlet. It was an undoubted 
 success. But from one corner of the theatre, it is said, 
 came a persistent hiss. Young soon succeeded in detect- 
 ing the malevolent person, and recognized in him his own 
 father ! It was not the first time this excellent gentleman 
 had given public proof of animosity against his children. 
 Once he entered a stage-coach in which one of his sons 
 (who afterward attained some eminence as a surgeon) 
 was sitting, and without speaking a word struck him a 
 heavy blow in the face. The young man ordered the 
 coach to stop, and as he alighted turned to the astonished 
 passengers and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is my 
 father ! " 
 
 Douglas Jerrold has said, " Fishermen in order to 
 handle eels securely, first cover them with dirt. In like 
 manner does detraction strive to grasp excellence." Le 
 Sage has said as well : " Evil tongues never want a whet. 
 Virtue herself furnishes weapons for her own mart}^- 
 dom." 
 
 " Observe," says La Bruyere, " those persons who never 
 commend any one, who are always railing, are content 
 with nobody, and you will find them persons with whom 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 299 
 
 nobody is content." And they are not apt to be content 
 with themselves. " How happy one would be," exclaims 
 Madame du Deffand, " if one could throw off one's self as 
 one can throw off others ! but one is perforce with one's 
 self, and very little in accord with one's self." 
 
 " He who will work aright," said Goethe to Eckermann, 
 " must never rail, must not trouble himself at all about 
 what is ill-done, but only to do well himself. For the 
 great point is, not to pull down, but to build up, and in 
 this humanity finds pure joy." " The man most eager to 
 pull another down is the person who wants to get into his 
 place. The democrat is merely ^ despot in disguise." 
 
 It is said that in Norway there is a superstition that if 
 you save a man from drowning, he will serve you an ill 
 turn, one day or another. Bourrienne said of Fouche, 
 Napoleon's minister of police, that he never regarded a 
 benefit in any other light than as a means of injuring his 
 benefactor. That bitterest of all satirists, Talleyrand, 
 being told that a certain public functionary was talking 
 against him, exclaimed, " That surprises me. I have never 
 done him a favor." " I never laughed more," said Voltaire 
 to Casanova, " than when I read that Don Quixote found 
 himself in the greatest perplexity how he should defend 
 himself against the galley-slaves, whom, out of generosity, 
 he had liberated." 
 
 That is good advice given by Hazlitt, " 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 de- 
 fects, familiarity only causes jealousy and distrust. Do 
 not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the sub- 
 stance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. 
 Bury the carcass of friendship : it is not worth embalm- 
 ing." 
 
 False friendship is not to be spoken of. Figured down 
 to good federal money, about twenty-two dollars was the 
 sum Judas received for betraying his Master. 
 
300 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 " If what we see is doubtful, how can we believe what 
 is spoken behind the back ? " is a Chinese proverb. 
 "Why did you say such things behind Mr. Johnson's 
 back ? " " Because," was the reply, " I would not hurt 
 his feelings by saying them to his face." Alas, the cour- 
 age it requires to defend the absent. 
 
 It is so easy to be mistaken. Eugene Sue was a boon 
 companion of the French novelist Fromieu. The two, we 
 are told, had one evening dined at the Cafe de Paris, and 
 by reason of too generous after-dinner potations, their 
 gayety, on issuing from the famous restaurant, was of a 
 highly pronounced type.^ At once Fromieu made a false 
 step, and falling, sprained his ankle. Sue, who in his 
 youth had pursued a long course of medical studies, in- 
 stantly lost his hilarity, hailed a passing cab, and having 
 therein seated his unfortunate friend, proceeded in the 
 most scientific manner to reset and bandage the dislocated 
 bone. The operation, it was then mutually agreed upon, 
 was a magnificent success, and the author of The Mys- 
 teries of Paris laid flattering unction on his soul, and 
 dreamed again of splendid fees and of medals of honor. 
 Next morning Sue came to see how his friend was pro- 
 gressing, when, to his surprise and horror, he discovered 
 that he had treated the wrong ankle ! 
 
 You remepiber the old anecdote of Bliicher's admiration 
 of London after a gorgeous city dinner : " What a splen- 
 did city it would be to sack ! " cried the old Prussian to 
 his beaming host. A fine character is often regarded in 
 the same way by the defamer. "All hew their fagots 
 from the fallen oak." 
 
 It is recorded that in a debate in the House of Com- 
 mons, when Sir Richard Steele rose to speak, several 
 members cried out " Tatler ! Tatler ! " and when he went 
 down the house afterward, several members were heard 
 to say, " It is not so easy a thing to speak in the house ; 
 he fancies, because he can scribble, he is fit to play the 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 30I 
 
 orator." This circumstance, as Lord John Russell very 
 appropriately remarked, shows the natural envy of man- 
 kind towards those who attempt to attain more than one 
 kind of preeminence. For it is, indeed, more often envy 
 than prudence which has warned the cobbler not to go 
 beyond his last, and has declared that one branch of 
 knowledge is enough to exhaust all the energies of the 
 human mind. 
 
 " I am Envy ! " exclaims Marlowe in his play of 
 Faustus ; " I am Envy ! — begotten of a chimney-sweep 
 and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all 
 books burned. I am lean with seeing others eat. Oh that 
 there would come a famine all over the world ! — that all 
 might die, and I live alone. Then thou shouldst see how 
 fat I 'd be ! " You remember the bon-vivant who envied 
 the beggar's staring into the cook-shop windows, and 
 wished he could be hungry. " Alas ! " pathetically ex- 
 claimed Mrs. Siddons, to the poet Rogers, " after I be- 
 came celebrated, none of my sisters loved me as before." 
 "All men," says Plutarch, "will deny envy; and when it 
 is alleged, will feign a thousand excuses, pretending they 
 were angry, or that they feared or hated the person, 
 cloaking envy with the name of any passion they can 
 think of, and concealing it as the most loathsome sick- 
 ness of the soul." 
 
 Miss Sarah Pocket, one of Dickens' characters, was "a 
 blandly vicious person." She would have lingered de- 
 lightedly with Dante, to hear the wrangle of the damned 
 spirits, and wrangled with them, if permitted. Virgil's re- 
 proaches would have gone unheeded. Abu Moslem, who 
 rebelled against Ibraham, successor of Mahomet, was 
 never seen to smile except on a day of battle. 
 
 There is a species of viper in India, which, in vainly 
 attempting to bite, breaks its fangs, so that it is compelled 
 to swallow its own deadly poison, and perish by the very 
 means intended for the destruction of others. Malice, 
 
302 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 in the same way, often swallows the greater part of its 
 venom. 
 
 Lady Blessington said, " We are never so severe in deal- 
 ing with the sins of others as when we are no longer 
 capable of committing them ourselves. Few people re- 
 member that they have been young, and how hard it was 
 then to be chaste and temperate. The first thing men do 
 when they have renounced pleasure, either out of de- 
 cency, surfeit, or conviction, is to condemn it in others." 
 In Montesquieu's Persian Letters is one from the chief 
 eunuch, describing to his absent master his conduct of 
 the seraglio. " I never open my mouth," he says, " but 
 with lectures of duty, chastity, and modesty." 
 
 Few retorts are better than the pavior's to Sydenham, 
 the great seventeenth century physician. The doctor 
 was complaining of the bad manner in which the pave- 
 ment was laid in front of his house, adding, " and now 
 you throw down earth to hide your bad work." " Well, 
 doctor," said the man quietly, " mine is not the only bad 
 work that the earth hides." 
 
 There are many amiable people, it is remarked, who 
 take a keen pleasure in dashing cold water upon any lit- 
 tle manifestation of self-complacency in their neighbors. 
 To find out a man's tenderest corn, and then to bring 
 your heel down upon it with a good rasping scrunch, is 
 somewhat gratifying to corrupt human nature. A kindly 
 wit contrives to convey a compliment in affected satire. 
 But the whole aim of a humorist of this variety is to con- 
 vey the most mortifying truths in the most brutal plain- 
 speaking. 
 
 Macaulay has been accused of yielding to the temp- 
 tation of imputing motives, a habit which the Spectator 
 newspaper pronounced to be his one intellectual vice — 
 the vice of rectitude. Sterne represents Walter Shandy 
 as " a great motive-monger, and consequently a very dan- 
 gerous person for a man to sit by, either laughing or cry- 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 303 
 
 ing, — for he generally knew your motive for doing both, 
 much better than you knew it yourself." 
 
 " Virtue is a beautiful thing in women," said Douglas 
 Jerrold, " when they don't go about like a child with a 
 drum, making all sorts of noises with it. There are some 
 women (he says) who think virtue was given them as 
 claws were given to cats — to do nothing but scratch 
 with." Virtue, in that form, is, we suppose, what some- 
 body has aptly called the " wrath of celestial minds." 
 
 " They who have (says Coleridge) attained to a self- 
 pleasing pitch of civility or formal religion, have usually 
 that point of presumption with it, that they make their 
 own size the model and rule to examine all by. What is 
 below it, they condemn indeed as profane ; but what is 
 beyond it, they account needless and affected precise- 
 ness ; and therefore are as ready as others to let fly invec- 
 tives or bitter taunts against it, which are the keen and 
 poisoned shafts of the tongue, and a persecution that 
 shall be called to a strict account." Mr. Justice Maule, 
 in summing up a case of libel, and speaking of a defend- 
 ant who had exhibited a spiteful piety, observed, " One 
 of the defendants is, it seems, a minister of religion ; of 
 what religion does not appear, but, to judge of his con- 
 duct, it cannot be any form of Christianity." 
 
 " Sandy, what is the state of religion in your town ? " 
 " Bad, sir, very bad. There are no Christians except 
 Davis and myself, and I have my doubts about Davis." 
 Sandy was what Montesquieu might have called " a uni- 
 versal decider." In the Persian Letters, Rica writes to 
 Usbek, " The other day I was at a gathering where I saw 
 a very self-satisfied man. In a quarter of an hour he de- 
 cided three questions in morals, four historical problems, 
 and five points in physics. I have never seen such a uni- 
 versal decider." Such complacency is illustrated in the 
 Turkish story book. One night, seeing the moon re- 
 flected in a well, Nasr-Eddin (the Turkish Joe Miller) 
 
304 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 thought it had tumbled in ; so he lowered a bucket to 
 pull it out. The rope getting entangled, he pulled so 
 hard that he broke it and fell backwards. When he came 
 to after the shock, he saw that the moon was all right in 
 the sky. " God be praised and thanked ! " quoth he ; 
 " I 've hurt myself, but the moon is put back in her 
 place." 
 
 At the grand academy of Lagado, the metropolis of 
 Balnibari, Gulliver " heard a warm debate between two 
 professors, about the most commodious and effectual 
 ways and means of raising money, without grieving the 
 subject. The first affirmed, ' the justest method would 
 be, to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly ; and the sum 
 fixed upon every man to be rated, after the fairest man- 
 ner, by a jury of his neighbors.' The second was of an 
 opinion directly contrary : ' to tax those qualities of body 
 and mind, for which men chiefly value themselves ; the 
 rate to be more or less according to the degrees of ex- 
 celling ; the decision whereof should be left entirely to 
 their own breast.' " 
 
 Mr. Gregory told Caroline Fox that, going by steamer 
 from Liverpool to London, he sat by an old gentleman 
 who would not talk, but only answered his inquiries by 
 nods or shakes of the head. When they went down to 
 dinner, he determined to make him speak if possible, so 
 he proceeded, "You 're going to London, I suppose?'* 
 A nod. " I shall be happy to meet you there ; where are 
 your quarters ? " There was no repelling this, so his 
 friend, with the energy of despair, broke out, " I-I-I-I 'm 
 g-g-g-going to D-D-D-Doctor Br-Br-Br-Brewster to be 
 c-c-c-cured of this sl-sl-sl-slight im-impediment of sp-sp- 
 sp-sp-speech." At this instant a little white face which 
 had not appeared before popped out from one of the 
 berths and struck in, " Th-th-th-that 's the m-m-m-man 
 wh-wh-who c-c-c-c-c-cured me ! " 
 
 " Judge not thy fellow-man," says the Jewish Talmud, 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 305 
 
 " till thou art similarly situated." The wisdom whereof is 
 feelingly expressed in the story of Plutarch. A Roman 
 having repudiated his wife, his friends reproached him, 
 remonstrating that she was fair and good, and had fine 
 children. To which the husband replied by showing his 
 foot, and saying, " This shoe is new, and well made ; but 
 none of you know where it pinches 3 I do." 
 
 Garrick kept a book of all who praised and all who 
 abused him. Franklin, in his autobiography, mentions a 
 gentleman who, having one very handsome and one shriv- 
 eled leg, was wont to test the disposition of a new ac- 
 quaintance by observing whether he or she looked first 
 or most at the best or worst leg. " He who cannot see 
 the beautiful side," says Joubert, ''is a bad painter, a 
 bad friend, a bad lover ; he cannot lift his mind and his 
 heart so high as goodness." " There are heads," says the 
 same wise aphorist, "that have no windows, and that 
 daylight cannot strike from above. Nothing comes into 
 them from the side of heaven." Who has read and not 
 enjoyed the Life of John Buncle, Esq. ? the model hus- 
 band of seven perfect wives. The curious book is a 
 treasure. It is romantic. It is optimistic. It is whole- 
 some. So full of good animal spirits. The geese are all 
 swans. The houses all have libraries and observatories 
 and conservatories and laboratories. The women are all 
 learned and beautiful. The religion inculcated is with- 
 out cant. The style is delicious. Many of the para- 
 graphs end with short sentences, that suggest for all the 
 world the licking of overladen lips, after "the hungry 
 edge of the appetite " is cloyed. The flavor the queer 
 book has ! No wonder it has lived. 
 
 It was the fashion of old, when an ox was led out for 
 sacrifice to Jupiter, to chalk the dark spots and give the 
 offering a show of unblemished whiteness. " There goes 
 Fritz," said one soldier to another, as the king went by. 
 " What a shabby old hat he has on ! " " Yes," said the 
 20 
 
306 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 other, " but you do not see what a fine head it covers." 
 On one occasion Louis XIV. asked Bourdaloue, the fa- 
 mous orator of Notre Dame, his opinion of Ornorato, 
 the great jocular capuchin. "Sire," was the reply, 
 " that preacher tickles indeed the ear, but also pricks the 
 heart. People return at his sermons the purses they 
 steal at mine." 
 
 "Gil Bias (said his master), leave our neighbors to 
 discourse as they please, but let not our repose depend 
 on their judgments. Never mind what they think of us, 
 provided our own consciences do not wince." " There 
 will always be some to hate you," said Publius Syrus, " if 
 you love yourself." " Do well," Rubens would say, "and 
 people will be jealous of you : do better, and you con- 
 found them." 
 
 My grandfather Titbottom " lived much alone, and was 
 what people called eccentric — by which I understand, 
 that he was very much himself, and, refusing the influ- 
 ence of other people, they had their revenges, and called 
 him names." 
 
 It is a very serious thing to do as you like. " The 
 man, and still more the woman," says John Stuart Mill, 
 " who can be accused of either doing * what nobody does,' 
 or of not doing * what every body does,' is the subject of 
 as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had com- 
 mitted some grave moral delinquency. Persons require 
 to possess a title, or some other badge of rank, or the 
 consideration of people of rank, to be able to indulge 
 somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like without det- 
 riment to their estimation. To indulge somewhat, I re- 
 peat : for whoever allow themselves much of that indul- 
 gence incur the risk of something worse than disparaging 
 speeches — they are in peril of a commission de lunatico, 
 and of having their property taken from them and given 
 to their relations." 
 
 " Men of true wisdom and goodness," remarks Field- 
 
THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 307 
 
 ing, " are contented to take persons and things as they 
 are, without complaining of their imperfections or at- 
 tempting to amend them ; they can see a fault in a friend, 
 a relation, or an acquaintance, without ever mentioning 
 it to the parties themselves or to any others ; and this 
 often without lessening their affection : indeed, unless 
 great discernment be tempered with this overlooking dis- 
 position, we ought never to contract friendship but with 
 a degree of folly which we can deceive ; for I hope my 
 friends will pardon me when I declare, I know none of 
 them without a fault ; and I should be sorry if I could 
 imagine I had any friend who could not see mine. For- 
 giveness of this kind we give and demand in turn : it is 
 an exercise of friendship, and perhaps none of the least 
 pleasant, and this forgiveness we must bestow without 
 desire of amendment. There is perhaps no surer mark 
 of folly, than an attempt to correct the natural infirmities 
 of those we love : the finest composition of human na- 
 ture, as well as the finest china, may have a flaw in it j 
 and this, I am afraid, in either case, is equally incurable, 
 though nevertheless the pattern may remain of the high- 
 est value." 
 
 An amiable feature in Edmund Burke's disposition, we 
 are told, was a dislike to any thing like detraction, or 
 that insinuation against private character too often toler- 
 ated even in what is called good society, which, without 
 amounting to slander, produces nearly the same effects. 
 When this occurred in his own house by any one with 
 whom he was familiar, he would directly check it, or drop 
 a hint to that efiect : " Now that you have begun with 
 his defects," he would say, " I presume you mean to. fin- 
 ish with a catalogue of his virtues ; " and sometimes said, 
 though mildly, " Censoriousness is allied to none of the 
 virtues." When remarks of this kind were introduced by 
 others whom it might have been rude to interrupt, he 
 took the part of the accused by apologies, or by urging a 
 
308 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 different construction of their actions, and, as soon as he 
 could, changed the subject ; exempUfying the advice he 
 once familiarly, but wisely gave to a grave and anxious 
 acquaintance, who was giving vent to some querulous 
 lamentations, " Regard not trifles, my dear sir ; live pleas- 
 antly." 
 
 It is best, wisely concluded Thackeray, on the whole, 
 for the sake of the good, that the bad should not all be 
 found out. You don't want your children to know the 
 history of the lady in the next box, who is so handsome, 
 and whom they admire so. Ah me, what would life be 
 if we were all found out, and punished for all our faults ? 
 Jack Ketch would be in permanence; and then who 
 would hang Jack Ketch ? 
 
XII. 
 
 THE ART OF LIVING. 
 
 The eminent Theodore Parker, not long before his 
 death, wrote from Rome, " Oh, that I had known the art 
 of life, or found some book or some man to tell me how 
 to live, to study, to take exercise, etc. But I found noqe, 
 and so here I am." Alas ! The art of life ! We all sigh 
 for it. If only some one knew it, and could impart it, 
 how we should all flock to him to learn ! '^ There is 
 nothing so handsome and lawful," says Montaigne, " as 
 well and truly to play the man ; nor science so hard as 
 well to know how to live this life. . . . We say, * I have 
 done nothing to-day.' What ! have you not lived ? 'T is 
 not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious of your 
 occupations. ... 'T is an absolute, and, as it were, a 
 divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy 
 his being." To enjoy life, to relish it, without the trans- 
 port of some passion, or the gratification of some appe- 
 tite. To live to have the fewest regrets. Some such ad- 
 monitory words as a wise man once caused to be written 
 on his tomb, one would think, would be in every mind's 
 eye, — " Think on living." Yesterday — to-day. " We 
 are all going to the play, or coming home from it." The 
 past is dead, the present is without memory, the future is 
 not assured j we are to be, in a sense, as if we had never 
 been. If only we could live to-day upon the experience 
 of yesterday, something like foresight would be given us, 
 and to-morrow might be easier and more joyful. " Fool- 
 ish man ! " exclaims Goethe, " who passes the day in 
 complaining of headache, and the night in drinking the 
 
3 lO CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 wine that produces it." " Comedy is crying," said little 
 Lucy Triplett to Pegg Woffington. " Father cried all the 
 time he was writing his one." " Nobody," says Haw- 
 thorne, " will use other people's experience, nor has any 
 of his own till it is too late to use it." Experience ! 
 " To most men," said Coleridge, " experience is like the 
 stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it 
 has passed." Strange ! that any thing so common and so 
 useful should be of so little use as heads. Every body 
 has one. It is not strange that we should do foolish 
 things j but that we should do the same foolish things, 
 over and over, is more than strange — it is incomprehen- 
 sible. In homely phrase, we follow our noses, and not 
 our judgments. "When we subtract from life infancy 
 (which is vegetation), — sleep, eating, and swilling — 
 buttoning and unbuttoning — how much," asks Byron, 
 " remains of downright existence ? The summer of a 
 dormouse." " Youth," says Beaconsfield, " is a blunder, 
 manhood a struggle, old age a regret." " To those who 
 think," says Horace Walpole, "life is a comedy — to 
 those who feel, a tragedy." " We must laugh at man," 
 said the great Napoleon, " to avoid crying at him." 
 
 It was a profound thought of Arthur Helps that if the 
 object of the arrangements of the universe was to make 
 man happy, he would have been gifted with at least five 
 minutes' foresight. " Heavens ! " exclaimed De Quincey, 
 ..." if life could throw open its long suites of cham- 
 bers to our eyes from some station beforehand, — if, from 
 some secret stand, we could look by anticipation along 
 its vast corridors, and aside into the recesses opening 
 upon them from either hand, — halls of tragedy or cham- 
 bers of retribution, simply in that small wing, and no 
 more, of the great caravanserai which we ourselves shall 
 haunt, — simply in that narrow tract of time, and no 
 more, where we ourselves shall range, and confining our 
 gaze to those, and no others, for whom personally we 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 3II 
 
 shall be interested, — what a recoil we should suffer of 
 horror in our estimate of life I . . . Death we can face : 
 but knowing, as some of us do, what is human life, which 
 of us is it that without shuddering could (if consciously 
 we were summoned) face the hour of birth ? " 
 
 Dr. Johnson, whose one enthusiasm was " an enthusi- 
 asm of sadness," pronounced the world in its best estate 
 to be nothing more than a larger assembly of being, com- 
 bining to counterfeit happiness, which they do not feel, 
 employing every art and contrivance to embellish life, 
 and to hide their real condition from one another. 
 
 The lives of those who in England were loudest in ex- 
 claiming, All is for the best, did not prove the truth of 
 their doctrine. Shaftesbury, who first brought it into 
 fashion, was a very unfortunate man. " I have," says Vol- 
 taire, " seen Bolingbroke a prey to vexation and rage, and 
 Pope, whom he employed to put his wretched system 
 into verse, was the man most to be pitied of any I have 
 known ; misshapen in body, dissatisfied in mind, always 
 ill, always a burden to himself, and harassed by a hun- 
 dred enemies to his very last moment. Let those at least 
 be fortunate and prosperous who tell us, All is for the 
 best." 
 
 They have a legend in Spain that Adam made a visit 
 to the earth a few years ago, to see how his farm was 
 getting on. He alighted in Germany, and found schools, 
 and colleges, and books, and the people intent on learn- 
 ing. He soon left it for France, where the people dressed 
 in fantastic styles, and were mad upon works of art and 
 improvements unknown to our great ancestor. Disgusted 
 with all he saw, he went down to Spain, and, with delight, 
 exclaimed, " This is just as I left it ! " But the legend 
 stops short of telling us that Spain herself was particularly 
 happy in her condition. 
 
 " People always fancy," said Goethe, laughing, " that 
 we must become old to become wise ; but, in truth, as 
 
312 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we 
 were. Man becomes, indeed, in the different stages of 
 his life, a different being ; but he cannot say that he is a 
 better one, and, in certain matters, he is as likely to be 
 right in his twentieth, as in his sixtieth year. We see the 
 world one way from a plain, another way from the heights 
 of a promontory, another from the glacier fields of the 
 primary mountains. We see, from one of these points, 
 a larger piece of the world than from the other ; but that 
 is all, and we cannot say that we see more truly from any 
 one than from the rest." 
 
 " All places," said old Burton, " are distant from heaven 
 alike ; happily the sun shines as warm in one city as in 
 another ; and to a wise man there is no difference of 
 climes ; friends are everywhere to him that behaves him- 
 self well, and a prophet is not esteemed in his own coun- 
 try." 
 
 " There are to-day at Naples," said Montesquieu, " fifty 
 thousand men who live only upon herbs, and whose only 
 possession is the woolen habit which they wear; yet 
 these people, the most miserable upon the earth, fall 
 down with fear at the least smoking of Vesuvius : they 
 have the foolish apprehension of becoming miserable." 
 
 " I believe," says Thoreau, " that men are still a little 
 afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and 
 Christianity and candles have been introduced." All 
 over England, it is stated, the peasants believe still that 
 the spirits of unbaptized children wander in the wind, 
 and that the wails at their doors and windows are the 
 cries of the little souls condemned to journey till the last 
 day. . It is said that amongst the curiosities in the India- 
 House, is the dream book of Tippoc Sahib, in which he 
 daily wrote his dreams and their interpretation with his 
 own hand, and to which he, like Wallen stein, might 
 mainly have ascribed his fall. Cambyses, for having 
 dreamt that his brother should be one day King of Per- 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 313 
 
 sia, put him to death ; a brother whom he tenderly loved, 
 in whom he had always confided. Cowper communicated 
 his waking dreams to a poor mendicant schoolmaster, 
 and consulted with him about them, as a person whom 
 the Lord was pleased to answer in prayer. Tycho Brahe 
 maintained an idiot, who lay at his feet whenever he sat 
 down to dinner, and whom he fed with his own hand. 
 Persuaded that his mind, when moved, was capable of 
 foretelling future events, the great astronomer carefully 
 marked every thing he said. Cromwell, Napoleon, John- 
 son, Pascal, and many other great personages, were pe- 
 culiarly prone to superstition. The fact is, some one 
 has said, that men who deal with enormous, incalcula- 
 ble forces, as statesmen and generals do, have the same 
 temptations as gamblers to indulge in superstition. Be- 
 yond what we can see and know remains the province 
 in which we can guess, and our unacknowledged guesses 
 are often as irrational as those of the savage who fan- 
 cies that the paddle-wheel of a steamer is licked round 
 by the tongue of a great serpent. 
 
 Many years ago, we are told, before the days of rail- 
 ways, a nobleman and his lady, with their infant child, 
 were traveling in the depth of winter across Salisbuiy 
 Plain. A snow-storm overtook them ; their child became 
 ill from the cold, and they were forced to take refuge in 
 a lone shepherd's hut. The wild shepherd and his wife 
 drew near the child in awe and silence. The nurse be- 
 gan undressing it by the warm cottage fire. Silken frock 
 and head-dress did the baby wear. One rich baby-dress 
 came off to reveal another more beautiful. Still the shep- 
 herd and his wife looked on with awe. At last the proc- 
 ess of undressing was completed, and the now naked 
 baby was being warmed by the fire. Then was it, when 
 all these wrappings and outer husks were peeled off, that 
 the shepherd and his wife, relieved of their superstition, 
 broke silence, exclaiming, '* Why, it 's just like one oi 
 ours!" 
 
314 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Allston, the artist, when he was in England, told Cole- 
 ridge an anecdote of a youth in America who took it into 
 his head to convert a free-thinking companion by appear- 
 ing as a ghost before him. He accordingly dressed him- 
 self up in the usual way, having previously extracted the 
 ball from the pistol which always lay near the head of his 
 friend's bed. Upon first awaking, and seeing the appari- 
 tion, the youth who was to be frightened very coolly 
 looked his companion the ghost in the face, and said, " I 
 know you. This is a good joke ; but you see I am not 
 frightened. Now you may vanish ! " The ghost stood 
 still. " Come," said the other, " that is enough. I shall 
 get angry. Away ! " Still the ghost moved not. " By 
 
 ," ejaculated the man in bed, " if you do not in three 
 
 minutes go away, I '11 shoot you." He waited the time, 
 deliberately leveled the pistol, fired, and with a scream 
 at the immobility of the figure, became convulsed, and 
 afterward died. The very instant he believed it to be a 
 ghost, his human nature fell before it. 
 
 In our purblind and crippled state, our superstitions 
 and prejudices are our most convenient crutches. The 
 more ignorant we are, the more necessary they seem to 
 us. Poor auxiliaries, we may say, but better than noth- 
 ing, in our many extremities. Something we must have 
 to hold to, as we feel our way in the obscurity of our in- 
 telligence and reason ; and these poor aids come down to 
 us as a part of the general inheritance of ignorance from 
 the generations that groped before us. To whatever ex- 
 tent we may conceal them, or deny them, or be ashamed 
 of them, in extremity they show themselves, as in death 
 the family likeness comes out which is obscured by indi- 
 vidual peculiarities during active life. The old lithograph 
 printer at the Riverside Press told us that it not unfre- 
 quently happens that the picture, thought to have been 
 completely ground out of the stone, reappears to contest 
 its successor and confound the printer. 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 315 
 
 Alas ! our ignorance. Our transgressions are quite as 
 often blunders as sins. The Japanese do not swear at 
 one another ; they say " Fool ! " Cave, who was jailer 
 during the two years Leigh Hunt was a prisoner, had be- 
 come a philosopher by the force of his situation. He 
 said to Hunt one day, when a new batch of criminals 
 came in, " Poor ignorant wretches, sir ! " The Chinese 
 have a profound saying which expresses it : " He who 
 finds pleasure in vice and pain in virtue is a novice in 
 both." 
 
 We are told of a traveler who once went all the way 
 from New Zealand to see London. He landed at Poplar, 
 where he stayed till it was time to take ship back again, 
 which he did under the firm belief that he had seen Lon- 
 don in all its grandeur. Linnaeus considered that a small 
 quantity of moss that could be covered by the hand might 
 be the study of a lifetime. It is asserted that in the very 
 advanced and ramified science of chemistry, fourteen years 
 are required by the student to overtake knowledge as it 
 now stands. That is to say, that to learn what is known, 
 before you can proceed to institute new experiments, 
 fourteen years are necessary — twice the time which the 
 old law of England exacted of an apprentice bound to 
 any trade. It is pronounced by De Quincey to be one of 
 the misfortunes of life, that we must read thousands of 
 books only to discover that we need not have read them. 
 "The modern precept of education very often is (says 
 Sydney Smith) * Take the admirable Crichton for your 
 model ; I would have you ignorant of nothing.' Now my 
 advice on the contrary is, to have the courage to be igno- 
 rant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the 
 calamity of being ignorant of every thing." So too, when 
 somebody, in eulogizing a distinguished member of one of 
 the English universities, observed that " science was his 
 forte," Sydney retorted, " and omniscience his foible." 
 
 It is true, as a quaint old writer puts it, that the great- 
 
3l6 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 est part of our felicity is to be well-born — of parents, in 
 other words, with sound bodies, sound minds, and correct 
 principles, and to inherit the same. Especially, if it be 
 true, as Hazlitt asserts, that " no one ever changes his 
 character from the time he is two years old ; nay, 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 or fortune shall serve ; ' 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.' . . . The color of our 
 lives is woven into the fatal thread at our births ; our 
 original sins and our redeeming graces are infused into 
 us j nor is the bond, that confirms our destiny, ever can- 
 celed." 
 
 Nevertheless, against all odds, humanity hopefully ex- 
 erts herself to overcome every neglect and effect. " This 
 afternoon," says a late writer, " I w^ent into the New Eng- 
 land Hospital for Women and Children, and the head 
 physician, a woman, with a rare blending of sweetness 
 and light in her face, took me round through the wards. 
 Presently, we entered that of the children, where were, 
 perhaps, half a dozen little ones of from two to five, with 
 their attendants. How the eyes beamed and the hands 
 began to wave when they saw the welcome face ! In the 
 middle of the floor lay a warm blanket, on which was 
 sprawling a chubby-cheeked, flaxen-haired little fellow of 
 two and a half or three. ' Let me show you how he can 
 help himself on to his feet,' the beaming doctor said. 
 And sure enough, when she had encouragingly reached 
 him her hands, he worked himself up erect in such cred- 
 itable fashion that I did not wonder at the banners of tri- 
 umph hung out from his proud little face. * Two months 
 ago,' she went on to say, * he was brought here diseased 
 and half-starved. No bones, gristle only, through lack 
 of proper food. But I '11 make a brave little man out of 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 31/ 
 
 him yet ! ' And her face glowed a look of such genuine 
 delight over her blessed work that I felt an instinctive 
 thrill." 
 
 " There are more diminutive and ill-shapen men and 
 women in Rome," says Hawthorne, " than I ever saw 
 elsewhere, a phenomenon to be accounted for, perhaps, 
 by their custom of wrapping the new-born infant in 
 swaddling clothes." Speaking of the customs of the Mo- 
 ravians, Southey remarks: "The system of taking chil- 
 dren from their parents, breaking up domestic society, and 
 sorting human beings like cabbage -plants, according to 
 their growth, is not more consonant to nature than the 
 Egyptian method of hatching eggs in ovens : a great pro- 
 portion of the chickens are said to be produced with some 
 deformity, and hens thus hatched bear a less price than 
 those which have been reared in the natural way, because 
 it often happens that they will not sit upon their eggs, — 
 the course of instinct having been disturbed." 
 
 It is stated that when the poet Wordsworth was en- 
 gaged in composing The White Doe of Rylstone, he re- 
 ceived a wound in his foot, and he observed that the 
 continuation of the literary labor increased the irritation 
 of the wound, whereas by suspending his work he could 
 diminish it, and absolute mental rest produced a perfect 
 cure. " Constitution," says Dr. Holmes, in his remark- 
 able Elsie Venner, "has more to do with belief than 
 people think for. I went to the Universalist Church, 
 when I was in the city one day, to hear a famous man 
 whom all the world knows, and I never saw such pews- 
 full of broad shoulders and florid faces, and substantial, 
 wholesome-looking persons, male and female, in all my 
 life. Why, it was astonishing. Either their creed made 
 them healthy, or they chose it because they were healthy." 
 
 If only full-grown men and full-grown women, with 
 sound bodies and sound minds, were suffered to marry ! 
 But conscience, integrity, and reason, have little to do 
 
3l8 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 with the divine relation. " A youth marries in haste," 
 says Emerson ; " afterward, when his mind is opened to 
 the reason of the conduct of life, he is asked what he 
 thinks of the institution of marriage, and of the right re- 
 lation of the sexes ? * I should have much to say,' he 
 might reply, *if the question were open, but I have a 
 wife and children, and all question is closed to me.' " 
 A young man came to say he was about to be married, 
 and to ask what was thought of it. The reply was, " You 
 say you are going to be married ; that settles the matter 
 for you. If you had told me you thought of marriage, I 
 might have had something to say of it." " More mis- 
 ery," says an eminent married woman, "comes from the 
 antagonism between man and woman than from all other 
 causes put together ; for each starts in life worshiping 
 an ideal being who has no existence in this world." 
 "That so few marriages are observed to be happy," says 
 Montaigne, " is a token of its price and value. If well 
 formed, and rightly taken, 't is the best of all human so- 
 cieties. We cannot live without it, and yet we do noth- 
 ing but degrade it. It happens as with cages ; the birds 
 without despair to get in, and those within despair of get- 
 ting out." " Did you ever hear my definition of mar- 
 riage ? " asked Sydney Smith. " It is that it resembles 
 a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated ; 
 often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing 
 any one who comes between them." You remember the 
 conceit of the great French satirist, of the man who had 
 been made deaf by his physician, that he might not hear 
 the scoldings of his wife, whose tongue the utmost skill 
 of the surgeon had previously failed to cure of its vio- 
 lence. " Some time after, the doctor asked for his fee of 
 the husband ; who answered, that truly he was deaf, and 
 so was not able to understand what the tenor of his de- 
 mand might be. Whereupon the leech bedusted him with 
 a sort of powder, which rendered him a fool immedi- 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 319 
 
 ately, so great was the stultifying virtue of that strange 
 kind of pulverized dose. Then did this fool of a hus- 
 band, and his mad wife, join together, and fallitig on the 
 doctor and the surgeon, did so scratch, bethwack, and 
 bang them, that they were left half dead upon the place, 
 so furious were the blows which they received." " I am 
 well aware," wrote Schiller to Korner, " that of ten men 
 who marry, there are nine who choose their wives to 
 please other people — I choose mine to please myself." 
 Madame de Stael's marriage, like most marriages of pol- 
 icy, was far from being a happy one. When she became 
 a mother, she used sorrowfully to say, " I will force my 
 daughter to make a marriage of inclination." 
 
 " The most important thing in life," said Pascal, " is 
 the choice of a profession j yet this is a thing purely 
 in the disposal of chance." And we never stop to con- 
 sider the effects of occupation upon mind and character. 
 Rosch and Esquirol affirm from observation that indigo- 
 dyers become melancholy, and those who dye scarlet, 
 choleric. 
 
 " The high prize of life," says Emerson, " the crown- 
 ing fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some 
 pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness." 
 
 Quin was very proud of his vocation. A peer, who, at 
 least, had wit enough to enjoy Quin's society, had the 
 ill-manners to say, " What a pity it is, Mr. Quin, you are 
 an actor." " Why," said ever-ready James, " what would 
 you have me be ? — a lord ? " 
 
 It has been very truly said that the man who would 
 raise himself to be a power must begin by securing a pe- 
 cuniary independence. Michelet describes a French pea- 
 sant on a Sunday morning, walking out in his clean linen 
 and unsoiled blouse. His wife is at church, and this 
 simple farmer paces across his acres and looks fondly at 
 his land. You see him in solitude, but his face is illu- 
 minated when he thinks his farm is his own, from the 
 
320 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 surface of the globe to its centre, and that the climate is 
 his own from the surface of the earth up to the seventh 
 heaven. You find that man, if a stranger approaches 
 him, withdrawing, that he may enjoy his affection in soli- 
 tude; and as he turns away from his Sunday walk through 
 his own pastures, you notice that he looks back over his 
 shoulder with affection, and parts with regret. He is not 
 at work ; he is not out to keep off interlopers ; he is out 
 simply to enjoy the feeling of ownership, and to look 
 upon himself as a member of responsible society. His 
 dear possessions are without encumbrance. He owes no 
 man any thing. That hated thing, mortgage — from two 
 French words, meaning death-pledge (death-grip) — does 
 not affright him. Ah ! if only every land-owner realized 
 its derivation and full meaning. In the time of Solon a 
 pillar was erected on every piece of mortgaged land, in- 
 scribed with the name of the lender and the amount of 
 the loan. Every debtor unable to fulfill his contract was 
 liable to be adjudged as the slave of his creditor, until he 
 could find means either of paying it or working it out ; 
 and not only he himself, but his minor sons and unmar- 
 ried daughters and sisters also, whom the law gave him 
 the power of selling. 
 
 The feeling of ownership, which comes of possessing 
 what is the representative of so much toil and painstak- 
 ing fidelity — of so much self-denial and so much self- 
 sacrifice — amounts to a steady and supporting emotion 
 — it is fruition ; and its good effect upon the character, 
 when freed of any feeling of avarice, is hardly estimable, 
 and is not to be depreciated. That nature, somebody 
 has said, is the nearest complete which has the delicate 
 touch, the sheltered fineness, and the sweet calmness of 
 good circumstances, with the robust habit of exertion, 
 and experiences of the realities of poverty ; and such 
 natures we believe to be found especially in America. 
 
 " I affirm," says Sterne, in one of his sermons, " that 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 32 1 
 
 it is not riches which are the cause of luxury, — but the 
 corrupt calculation of the world, in making riches the 
 balance for honor, for virtue, and for every thing that is 
 great and good ; which goads so many thousands on with 
 an affectation of possessing more than they have, and 
 consequently in engaging in a system of expenses they 
 cannot support. In one word, 't is the necessity of ap- 
 pearing to be some body, in order to be so, which ruins 
 the world." 
 
 " Pay as you go," said John Randolph, " is the philos- 
 opher's stone." "I always say to young people (says 
 Sydney Smith), Beware of carelessness ! no fortune will 
 stand it long ; you are on the high road to ruin the mo- 
 ment you think yourself rich enough to be careless." 
 " Economy," said Voltaire, " is the source of liberality." 
 Thackeray, commending Macaulay's frugality, admon- 
 ishes : " To save be your endeavor, against the night's 
 coming, when no man may work ; when the arm is weary 
 with long day's labor; when the brain perhaps grows 
 dark ; when the old, who can labor no more, want warmth 
 and rest, and the young ones call for supper." Crabb 
 Robinson was industrious and frugal that he might with- 
 draw from his profession in time (as Wordsworth ex- 
 pressed it) " for an autumnal harvest of leisure." An 
 aged husbandman, according to the German allegory, was 
 working in his rich and wide-spread fields, at the decline 
 of day, when he was suddenly confronted by a spectral 
 illusion, in the form of a man. "Who, and what are 
 you ? " said the astonished husbandman. " I am Solo- 
 pion, the wise," was the reply, " and I have come to in- 
 quire what you are laboring for ? " " If you are Solo- 
 mon," said the husbandman, " you ought to know that I 
 am following out the advice you have given. You re- 
 ferred me to the ant for instruction, and hence my toil." 
 " You have," said the apparition, " learnt but half your 
 lesson ; I directed you to labor in the proper season for 
 
322 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 labor, in order that you might repose in the proper sea- 
 son for repose." 
 
 An economist, or a man (says Emerson) who can pro- 
 portion his means and his ambition, or bring the year 
 round with expenditure which expresses his character, 
 without embarrassing one day of his future, is already a 
 master of life, and a freeman. Lord Burleigh writes to 
 his son that one ought never to devote more than two- 
 thirds of his income to the ordinary expenses of life, since 
 the extraordinary will be certain to absorb the other 
 third. 
 
 A good illustration of the ethics of debt is to be found 
 in Haydon's life-long habit, which was, " to scheme a 
 great work, requiring years of labor, without money of 
 his own to carry him on a month ; to borrow, right and 
 left, as he went on, leaving, at the same time, his land- 
 lord and his tradesmen unpaid ; to defy or pacify, as best 
 be could, the clamor of creditors who thus gathered 
 round his painting room ; and then, when the work was 
 finished and sold, to clear off as much of his debt as the 
 price would allow, leave himself penniless, or nearly so, 
 and begin the same process over again. The result was 
 forty years of ceaseless bra^gardism and unrest, and a 
 wreck at last." Cooke, who translated Hesiod, lived 
 twenty years on a translation of Plautus, for which he 
 was always taking subscriptions. Paschal, historiographer 
 of France, was continually announcing titles of works he 
 was preparing for the press, that his pension for writing 
 on the history of France might not be stopped. When 
 he died, his historical labors did not exceed six pages ! 
 
 It was a saying of Aristotle, that some men are as 
 stingy as if they expected to live forever, and some as 
 extravagant as if they expected to die immediately. In 
 the buried city of Pompeii, near the temple of Isis, was 
 found a prostrate skeleton, and in its hand were clutched 
 three hundred and sixty coins of silver, forty-two of 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 323 
 
 bronze, and eight of gold, wrapped securely in a cloth. 
 He had stopped before his flight to load himself with the 
 treasures of the temple, and was overtaken by the shower 
 of cinders and suffocated. 
 
 It has been remarked by an acute writer, that as to the 
 individual it may sometimes be questioned, whether a 
 prudent temperament secures as much of happiness, 
 taking all the years of life together, as a -careless and 
 impulsive one. Of all dreary disillusions, the dreariest 
 must be that of the rich old man, who has denied him- 
 self every pleasure while he had senses and emotions to 
 taste it, and sits down to partake at the eleventh hour of 
 the feast of life, when appetite is dead, and love has fled, 
 and disease lays its grip on him, and reminds him that it 
 is time to go to that bed which all his balance at the 
 banker's can unfortunately make neither more warm nor 
 soft. But however it may be for the man himself, there 
 can be no doubt that the fewer prudent and frugal per- 
 sons there are in any country, so much the less prosper- 
 ous that country will be ; and thus it comes to pass that 
 the land where the principle of wine to-day, water to- 
 morrow, has too many adherents, is (other potent causes 
 aiding to the result) in the condition Ireland has been for 
 centuries back. 
 
 A man is said to be rich in proportion to the number 
 of things which he can afford to let alone. You remem- 
 ber the remark of the old philosopher, when passing 
 through the crowded bazaar where every thing attractive 
 and costly was displayed for sale : " How many things 
 there are in this world that I do not want ! " A certain 
 Chinese mandarin, who delighted in covering his richly 
 dressed person with precious stones, was one day accosted 
 in the streets of Pekin by a priest of the sect of Fohi, 
 who, bowing very low, thanked him for his jewels. 
 " What does the man mean ? " cried the mandarin. " I 
 never gave thee any of my jewels." " No," replied the 
 
324 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 other; "but you let me look at them, and that is all the 
 use you can make of them yourself ; so there is no differ- 
 ence between us, except that you have the trouble of 
 watching them, and that is an employment I do not 
 want." You recollect the odd way the old bookkeeper 
 had of enjoying the vast possessions of the rich old mer- 
 chant. Bourne owned the fences and the dirt, Titbottom 
 the sky and the landscape. " I don't hesitate to say," 
 said Thomas Hughes (adopting an observation of John 
 Sterling), " that the worst education which teaches sim- 
 plicity and self-denial is better than the best which 
 teaches all else but this." 
 
 " Get of gold," says the Koran, " as much as you need, 
 of wisdom all that you can." With all that you can com- 
 mand of either, happiness will not abide. " Who can 
 tell where happiness may come ; or where, though an ex- 
 pected guest, it may never show its face?" A well- 
 known divine, in his wise old age, once said to a newly 
 married pair : " I want to give you this advice, my chil- 
 dren — don't try to be happy. Happiness is a shy nymph, 
 and if you chase her you will never catch her ; but just go 
 quietly on, and do your duty, and she will come to you." 
 
 To enjoy the present, without regret for the past or so- 
 licitude for the future, appeared to Goldsmith to be the 
 only general precept respecting the pursuit of happiness 
 that can be applied with propriety to any condition of life. 
 " The whole art of life," wrote Sir William Hamilton, " is 
 really to live all the days of our life ; and not with anx- 
 ious care disturb the sweetest hour that life affords, — 
 which is the present." 
 
 " Moderation and prudence in conduct," says La Bruy- 
 ^re, " leave man obscure. To be known and admired, 
 't is necessary to have great virtues, or, what is perhaps 
 equal, great vices." Boswell's servant, who went with 
 him and Dr. Johnson to the Hebrides, had traveled over 
 a great part of Europe, and spoke many languages. 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 32$ 
 
 Johnson, who seldom applied the epithet to any one, pro- 
 nounced him a " wise man." It has been said by a man 
 of a genius and a renown so great as to render his saying 
 the more remarkable, that if we could become thoroughly 
 acquainted with the biography of any one who has 
 achieved fame, we should find that he had met with some 
 person to fame unknown, whose intellect had impressed 
 him more than that of any of the celebrated competitors 
 with whom it had been his lot to strive. A startling 
 effect is produced upon us, it has also been truly ob- 
 served, when we suddenly become acquainted with a 
 remarkable person whom we have never seen or heard 
 of, yet who has been long living in the world and long 
 laboring in it ; and who, as we feel at once, must have 
 exercised for all that time a strong intellectual influence 
 in circles of which we did not know the existence. 
 
 Forecast is as good as work, is an English proverb. 
 A man should know his opportunity, and seize it when 
 it comes. " A dwarf may be carried on the crest of a 
 wave to the top of a cliff, which a giant could not climb 
 from the beach." Vigilance and adaptability are nearly 
 all to the ordinary man. The Persians have it that a poor 
 man watched a thousand years before the gate of Para- 
 dise. Then, when he snatched one little nap, — it opened 
 and shut. Sir James Mackintosh returned with broken 
 health to England from India, where he had been judge 
 of the admiralty court, and recorder of Bombay. *' He 
 had been to El Dorado, but had forgotten the gold ; and 
 was obliged to confess to his friends that he was ashamed 
 of his poverty, since it showed a want of common sense." 
 " My opinion is," said Gargantua's instructor, " that we 
 pursue the enemy whilst the luck is on our side ; for 
 Occasion hath all her hair on her forehead ; when she is 
 past you may not recall her, — she hath no tuft whereby 
 you can lay hold on her, for she is bald in the hinder part 
 of the head, and never returneth again." 
 
326 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 *" It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation," says Emer- 
 son, " that a man may have that allowance he takes. 
 Take the place and attitude which belong to you, and all 
 men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every 
 man with profound unconcern, to set his own rate." " So 
 soon as you feel confidence in yourself," said Mephis- 
 tbpheles to Faust, " you know the art of life." Half the 
 failures in life, it is affirmed, arise from pulling in one's 
 horse as he is leaping. We are pusillanimously afraid of 
 ourselves. Alexander perceived that the fury of Buceph- 
 alus proceeded merely from the fear he had of his own 
 shadow, whereupon, getting on his back, he ran him 
 against the sun, so that the shadow fell behind, and by 
 that means he tamed the animal. "Walking along Picca- 
 dilly with Sheridan," says Kelly, " I asked him if he had 
 told the Queen that he was writing a play. He said he 
 had, and he was actually about one. * Not you,' said I to 
 him ; * you will never write again ; you are afraid to write.' 
 * Of whom am I afraid ? ' said he, fixing his penetrating 
 eye on me. I said, ' You are afraid of the author of the 
 School for Scandal.' " But it is recorded of Guido, whose 
 paintings were much sought after, that from mere good- 
 nature and a desire to help unsuccessful artists, he al- 
 lowed imitations to be made of his works, to which he 
 added one or two touches, that they might be sold as his 
 productions. Is there any where to be found such an- 
 other instance of liberality at the risk of a great repu- 
 tation ? 
 
 Character and powers, early and late, do not much 
 vary. The inspiration of purpose, and work, very soon 
 establish personality. Can any man remember when the 
 radically distinguishing things he stands for first took root 
 within him ? Nathaniel Hawthorne, when he was sixteen 
 years old, sent forth, we are told, the first number of The 
 Spectator, a small but neatly printed and well edited 
 paper. A prospectus had been issued only the week be- 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 327 
 
 fore, setting forth that The Spectator would be issued on 
 Wednesdays, " price twelve cents per annum, payment to 
 be made at the end of the year." Among the advertise- 
 ments on the last page was the following : " Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne proposes to publish, by subscription, a neat 
 edition of The Miseries of Authors, to which will be 
 added a sequel containing facts and remarks drawn from 
 his own experience." The Hawthorne of The Scarlet Let- 
 ter already existed. An oration delivered by Daniel Web- 
 ster, July 4, 1802, — then twenty years old, and principal of 
 Fryeburg Academy, — was recently discovered in a mass 
 of the author's private papers which had found their way 
 into a junk shop. The last speech made by Mr. Webster 
 in the Senate, July 17, 1850, concluded with the same 
 peroration with which he closed the Fryeburg oration, 
 forty-eight years before ! 
 
 Do you remember the words that young Carlyle wrote 
 to his brother, nine years after he had left the University 
 of Edinburgh as a student, forty-three years before he 
 returned as its Rector ? "I say. Jack, thou and I must 
 never falter. Work, my boy, work unweariedly. I swear 
 that all the thousand miseries of this hard fight, and ill- 
 health, the most terrific of them all, shall never chain us 
 down. By the river Styx it shall not. Two fellows from 
 a nameless spot in Annandale shall yet show the world 
 the pluck that is in the Carlyles." 
 
 " There are three things, young gentleman," said Nel- 
 son to one of his midshipmen, " which you are constantly 
 to bear in mind. Firstly, you must always implicitly obey 
 orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your 
 own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must con- 
 sider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king. 
 Thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman as you do the 
 devil." 
 
 A young student asked Sir Vicary Gibbs how he should 
 learn his profession. Sir Vicary : " Read Coke upon 
 
328 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Littleton." Student : " I have read Coke upon Little- 
 ton." Sir Vicary : " Read Coke upon Littleton over 
 again." Student : *' I have read it thrice over." Sir 
 Vicary : " Thrice } " Student : " Yes ; three times over 
 very carefully." Sir Vicary: "You may now sit down 
 and make an abstract of it." 
 
 " What a wedge, what a beetle, what a catapult," ex- 
 claims Thoreau, " is an earnest man ! What can resist 
 him ? " In 1849, at the time of general depression in 
 Garibaldi's Italian Revolutionary army, he issued this 
 proclamation: "In recompense for the love you may 
 show your country I offer you hunger, thirst, cold, war, 
 and death ; who accepts these terms, let him follow me." 
 "The Puritans," says Macaulay, "even in the depths of 
 the prisons to which Elizabeth had sent them, prayed, 
 and with no simulated fervor, that she might be kept from 
 the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be put 
 down under her feet, and that her arms might be victori- 
 ous by sea and land. One of the most stubborn of the 
 stubborn sect, immediately after one of his hands had 
 been lopped off by the executioner for an offense into 
 which he had been hurried by his intemperate zeal, 
 waved his hat with the hand which was still left him, and 
 shouted, God save the Queen ! " 
 
 While General Jackson was President, the small-pox 
 broke out among his servants, and nearly every body 
 fled ; but the President remained in the White House, 
 and waited on black and white with unremitting attention. 
 He did not leave them wholly to the protection of Prov- 
 idence and inefficient help — he helped them himself. 
 Just before going into battle. Nelson wrote to his wife : 
 " The lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows 
 best whether to preserve mine or not ; my character and 
 good name are in my own keeping." After a day's weary 
 march, Mahomet was camping with his followers. One 
 said, " I will loose my camel and commit it to God." 
 " Friend, tie thy camel, and commit it to God." 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 329 
 
 " In manners," said Madame de Maintenon, " tranquillity 
 is the supreme power." Goethe, in a note to Eckermann, 
 refers to that " state of tranquil activity, from which views 
 of the world and experiences are evolved in the surest and 
 purest manner." It so often happens, it is observed, that 
 mere activity is a waste of time, that people who have a 
 morbid habit of being busy are often terrible time-wast- 
 ers, whilst, on the contrary, those who are judiciously 
 deliberate, and allow themselves intervals of leisure, see 
 the way before them in those intervals, and save time by 
 the accuracy of their calculations. 
 
 The self-possession which distinguished Romilly is an 
 invariable characteristic of a truly great mind. Lord 
 Chesterfield used to say of a person in a hurry that he 
 plainly showed his business was too much for him. The 
 Duke of Newcastle, commemorated in Humphry Clinker, 
 was always in a hurry. It used to be said of him that 
 he had lost one hour in the morning which he was look- 
 ing for during the rest of the day. When Nelson had 
 finished his famous despatch to the Crown Prince of Den- 
 mark, at the battle of Copenhagen, a wafer was given 
 him to seal it with ; but he ordered a candle to be 
 brought from the cock-pit, and sealed the letter with wax, 
 affixing a larger seal than he ordinarily used. " This," 
 said he, " is no time to appear hurried and informal." " I 
 remember a small Mussulman boy," says an officer, in 
 his published Recollections of Military Service in India, 
 " one of our servants, lying on the veranda, apparently 
 asleep, when, to our horror, we saw a cobra creep out of 
 a lot of boots lying near, which the boy had been clean- 
 ing. The cobra passed over his face, and actually darted 
 his fork in and out of his open mouth. The boy never 
 stirred, and we remarked how providential it was that he 
 was fast asleep. The snake after a time glided off, when 
 the boy jumped up, and seized a stick, and killed it. 
 He had been awake all the time," 
 
330 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Mirabeau is described by Carlyle as a man stout of 
 heart ; whose popularity was not of the populace, whom 
 no clamor of unwashed mobs without doors, or of washed 
 mobs within, could scare from his way. Dumont remem- 
 bers hearing him deliver a Report on Marseilles : " every 
 word was interrupted by abusive epithets ; caluminator, 
 liar, assassin, scoundrel : Mirabeau pauses a moment, 
 and, in a honeyed tone, addressing the most furious, 
 says : * I wait. Messieurs, till these amenities be ex- 
 hausted.' " " Oliver Cromwell, when that agitator Ser- 
 jeant stept forth from the ranks, with plea of grievances, 
 and began gesticulating and demonstrating, as the mouth- 
 piece of thousands, expectant there, — discerned, with 
 those truculent eyes of his, how the matter lay, — plucked 
 a pistol from his holsters; blew agitator and agitation 
 instantly out. Noll was a man fit for these things." " It 
 is false," said Napoleon, " that we fired first with blank 
 charge ; it had been a waste of life to do that. . . . The 
 French Revolution is blown into space by it." It is 
 stated that at one of the judicial sittings in Tunis, a 
 Moor approached the throne silently, holding a large 
 sack in his hand, out of which rolled two human heads, 
 bleeding, one a man's, the other a woman's. The Bey 
 looked first at the heads, then at the Moor, and without 
 saying a word, made the sign which meant acquittal. It 
 was simply a husband who discovered his wife was de- 
 ceiving him. 
 
 " A stream," says Landor, " is never so smooth, equa- 
 ble, and silvery, as at the instant before it becomes a 
 cataract. The children of Niobe fell by the arrows of 
 Diana, under a bright and cloudless sky." Mark the 
 quiet of an animal before the fatal spring, and how se- 
 rene and fair is the complexion of determined rage. 
 
 Genuine repose is unconscious. Leigh Hunt said of 
 Sir William Temple, " I believe he talks too much of his 
 ease, to be considered very easy. It is an ill head that 
 takes so much concern about its pillow." 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 33 1 
 
 Barnes, editor of the Times newspaper, related to 
 Crabb Robinson that at Cambridge, having had lessons 
 from a boxer, he gave himself airs, and meeting with a 
 fellow sitting on a stile in a field, who did not make way 
 for him as he expected, and as he thought due to a 
 gownsman, he asked what he meant, and said he had a 
 great mind to thrash him. "The man smiled," said 
 Barnes, " put his hand on my shoulder, and said, ' Young 
 man, I 'm Cribb.' I confessed myself delighted ; gave 
 him my hand ; took him to my room, where I had a wine- 
 party, and he was the lion. " Cribb was at that time the 
 champion of England! The same writer refers, in his 
 Diary, to another " most interesting party " at Lord Ken- 
 yon's. " The lion of the party," he says (on that occasion, 
 of quite another sort), " was Daniel Webster, the American 
 lawyer and orator. He has a strongly marked expression 
 of countenance. So far from being a Republican in the 
 modern sense, he has an air of Imperial strength, such as 
 Caesar might have had." When Jenny Lind was in Boston, 
 Mr. Webster called upon her. It is said he talked sound 
 sense to her, with dignity and stately courtesy. When he 
 was gone, Jenny jumped up, walked the floor excitedly, 
 clasped her hands, and with indescribable earnestness, 
 exclaimed, " Oh ! that is a man ! that is a man ! I never 
 saw a man before ! I never saw a man before ! " 
 
 How the " godlike Daniel " would have been stirred by 
 the ecstatic praises of the sweet songstress ! We all like 
 to be appreciated. Sterne, in replying to the panegyrics 
 of a person who called himself Ignatius Sancho, says very 
 truly, " 'T is all affectation to say a man is not gratified 
 with being praised. We only want it to be sincere." It 
 is a maxim of Vauvenargues', " If men did not flatter one 
 another there would be little society ; " and it is a mean- 
 ness, we say, to be suspecting the motive. 
 
 " It was a maxim with Foxey, our reverend father," 
 said Brass (in Old Curiosity Shop) to his sister Sarah, — 
 
332 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 " * Always suspect every body.' That 's the maxim to go 
 through Hfe with." Dickens moralizes upon the detesta- 
 ble character he was delineating : " It will always happen 
 that men of the world, who go through it in armor, defend 
 themselves from quite as much good as evil ; to say noth- 
 ing of the inconvenience and absurdity of mounting guard 
 with a microscope at all times, and of wearing a coat of 
 mail on the most innocent occasions." The very bad or 
 desperately vicious, fortunately, is exceptional. Interest, 
 instinct, and reason are united against it. God and na- 
 ture forbid it. It must be rare, and it must generally fail 
 of its purpose, if man and society are to exist and be se- 
 cure. Courage and virtue, therefore, are not diverted by 
 it or alarmed. Some time before the battle of Dunbar, as 
 Cromwell, accompanied by a number of his officers, was 
 visiting the ground, a Scotch soldier, who had hidden be- 
 hind a wall which surrounded the field, fired at him, miss- 
 ing his mark. Without being alarmed, and without in- 
 creasing the gait of his horse, Cromwell went toward the 
 Scotchman, and said, " Bungling rogue ! if one of my sol- 
 diers had failed in an end so important, he would soon 
 be Judged by a council of war." 
 
 Flattery, that is evil, and conspiracy, are illustrated in 
 the manner in which the Arabs capture the hyena. Its 
 subterranean abode is described as so narrow as not to 
 permit of the animal turning about in it ; and hence, to 
 use the Arabian phraseology, it has " two doors," by one 
 of which it enters, and by the other goes out. The Arabs, 
 lying concealed in the vicinity of one of these dens, watch 
 the particular hole by which the hyena enters, and then 
 proceed to place a strong rope net over the opposite hole, 
 — whilst one of their fraternity, skilled in the business, 
 and prepared with a rope, works his way in by " the 
 door " which the animal has entered. As he nears the 
 brute (which cannot turn upon him) he " charms it," say- 
 ing, " Come, my dear little creature, I will lead you to 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 333 
 
 places where many carcasses are prepared for you — 
 plenty of food awaits you. Let me fasten this rope to 
 your beautiful leg, anti stand quiet while I do so." This 
 sentence, or something very similar to it, is repeated un- 
 til the operation is effectually achieved ; when the daring 
 son of the Sahara gores the brute with a dagger till he 
 is forced to rush out, and he is caught in the net, and 
 either killed on the spot or is carried off alive. If any 
 blunder happens, however — as is sometimes the case — 
 through which the hyena is enabled to struggle and re- 
 enter its abode, the " charmer," in spite of his charming, 
 falls a victim to its savage rage, and frequently his com- 
 panions can scarcely contrive to get clear without feeling 
 something of its effects. 
 
 It is pronounced a characteristic of wisdom not to dis- 
 pute things. "There is," says Sherlock, "no dispute 
 managed without passion, and yet there is scarce a dis- 
 pute worth a passion." A modern English writer is said 
 to have been very fond of controversy for its own sake, 
 and once at dinner to have roared out to some one at the 
 end of the table, " I totally disagree with you. What was 
 it you said ? " On one occasion, when they were to- 
 gether, Dr. Campbell said something, and Dr. Johnson be- 
 gan to dispute it. " Come," said Campbell, "we do not 
 want to get the better of one another ; we want to increase 
 each other's ideas." Johnson took it in good part, and 
 the conversation then went on coolly and instructively. 
 When the erudite Casaubon visited the Sorbonne they 
 showed him the hall in which, as they proudly told him, 
 disputations had been held for four hundred years. 
 " And what," said he, " have they decided ? " On first 
 nights, in the time of Voltaire, when partisans were un- 
 usually excited, each spectator was asked, as he entered 
 the parquette, " Do you come to hiss ? " " Yes." " Then 
 sit over there." But if he answered, "I come to ap- 
 plaud," he was directed to the other side. Thus the two 
 belligerent bodies were massed for more effective action. 
 
334 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 The young Smiths, we are told, employed their infor- 
 mation in disputing with one another. " The result," 
 says Sydney, " was to make us the most intolerable and 
 overbearing set of boys that can well be imagined, till 
 later in life we found our level in the world." Franklin 
 relates that he had contracted in youth the same litigious 
 habit by reading the controversial books on religion which 
 formed his father's little library. " Persons," he adds, 
 "of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into 
 it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of 
 all sorts who have been bred in Edinburgh." It would 
 perhaps have been juster to say, that persons of good 
 sense, like himself and Sydney Smith, soon discover that 
 the practice is displeasing, and lay it aside. " We are 
 told," says Sydney further, " * Let not the sun go down on 
 your wrath.' This, of course, is best ; but, as it gener- 
 ally does, I would add. Never act or write till it has done 
 so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. 
 It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same 
 event four and twenty hours after it has happened." 
 
 " I asserted that the world was mad," exclaimed a poor 
 philosopher, " and the world said that I was mad, and, 
 confound them, they outvoted me." In Hawthorne's Amer- 
 ican Note-Books a memorandum is made of a sketch to be 
 given of a modern reformer. " He goes about the streets 
 haranguing most eloquently, and is on the point of mak- 
 ing many converts, when his labors are suddenly inter- 
 rupted by the appearance of the keeper of a mad-house, 
 whence he had escaped." 
 
 ^ A thick-headed squire being worsted by Sydney Smith 
 in an argument, took his revenge by exclaiming : " If I 
 had a son that was an idiot, by Jove, I 'd make him a 
 parson." " Very probable," replied Sydney ; "but I see 
 your father was of a very different mind." 
 
 An anecdote which Robert Hall told of himself is in- 
 structive. He set out to defend the doctrine of the Trin- 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 335 
 
 ity, in a series of sermons. In prosecuting the discus- 
 sion, he attacked the various forms of heretical dissent 
 from the orthodox opinion. At the conclusion of his 
 discourses, much to his surprise, he discovered that there 
 was a small party in the congregation for each of the her- 
 esies which he had combated, but which most of his 
 hearers had probably never heard of before he made his 
 onset upon them. One should be sure, before he raises 
 the devil, that he is able to lay him. 
 
 Many people work themselves up by disputation some- 
 what as Macready worked himself up for his great parts 
 on the stage. " Mr. Macready, you know," said a direc- 
 tor of Her Majesty's Theatre, "when engaging his 
 dresser, whom I knew very well, arranged that when he 
 shook him he should pay him double wages, and when 
 he struck him his pay should be trebled. I think that 
 dresser used to get treble wages all the while Macready 
 was at Drury Lane. I went once to Macready's dressings 
 room during the performance. The tragedian had the 
 dresser in the corner and was nearly choking him. He 
 was rehearsing his part. He afterward rushed upon the 
 stage and startled his audience by his brilliant acting." 
 
 You doubtless recollect Voltaire's definition of a phy- 
 sician — an unfortunate gentleman, expected every day to 
 perform a miracle, — namely, to reconcile health with in- 
 temperance. Emerson speaks of the unhappy condition 
 where brains are paralyzed by stomach. A celebrated 
 French physician, the first time he was called into a 
 house, always began by running into the kitchen, embrac- 
 ing the cook, and thanking him for a new patient. 
 "There was a Lord Russell," said Pope to Spence, 
 "who, by living too luxuriously, had quite spoiled his 
 constitution. He did not love sport, but used to go out 
 with his dogs ever}^ day, only to hunt for an appetite. If 
 he felt any thing of that, he would cry out, ' Oh, I have 
 found it ! ' turn short round and ride home again, though 
 
336 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 they were in the midst of the finest chase. It was this 
 lord, who, when he met a beggar, and was entreated by 
 him to give him something because he was almost fam- 
 ished with hunger, called him a * happy dog ! ' and envied 
 him too much to relieve him." 
 
 Kinglake describes a " savagely happy " party he saw, 
 as he lay one night on the banks of the river Jordan. 
 " A little distance from me," he says, " the Arabs made 
 a fire, round which they sat in a circle. They were made 
 most savagely happy by the tobacco with which I sup- 
 plied them, and they had determined to make the whole 
 night one smoking festival. The poor fellows had only 
 one broken bowl, without any tube at all, but this morsel 
 of a pipe they passed round from one to the other, allow- 
 ing to each a fixed number of whiffs. In this way they 
 passed the whole night." 
 
 In that land of monotony and poverty, a very little 
 thing is a great event. It is said there are artisan fami- 
 lies in India, and also in Damascus, who have worked at 
 the same work day by day for a thousand years ; peasant 
 families who have not only tilled the same fields, but have 
 gone into them and left them at the same hour, according 
 to the season, from a period before the birth of Christ. 
 They have no wish for change, no ambition to do better, 
 no inclination to roam, no sense of failure because they 
 are as their forefathers were, and as their sons will be. 
 With such a people, any extreme is but natural — it is 
 philosophical. " If we throw a silver coin upon a table," 
 says Sir Charles Bell, " and fix the eye upon the centre 
 of it, when we remove the coin there is, for a moment, 
 a white spot in its place, which presently becomes deep 
 black. If we put a red wafer upon a sheet of paper and 
 look upon it, and continue to keep the eye fixed on the 
 same point, upon removing the wafer, the spot where it 
 lay on the white paper will appear green. If we look 
 upon a green wafer in the same manner and remove it, 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 33/ 
 
 the spot will be red ; if upon blue or indigo, the paper 
 will appear yellow. These phenomena are to be ex- 
 plained by considering that the nerve is exhausted by the 
 continuance of the impression, and becomes more apt to 
 receive sensation from an opposite color." 
 
 " The most exquisitely delicate artists in literature and 
 painting," says a writer upon The Intellectual Life, "have 
 frequently had reactions of incredible coarseness. With 
 the Chateaubriand of Atala there existed an obscene 
 Chateaubriand that would burst forth occasionally in talk 
 that no biographer would repeat. I have heard (he says) 
 the same thing of the sentimental Lamartine. We know 
 that Turner, dreamer of enchanted landscapes, took the 
 pleasures of a sailor on the spree. A friend said to me 
 of one of the most exquisite living geniuses : * You can 
 have no conception of the coarseness of his tastes ; he 
 associates with the very lowest women, and enjoys their 
 rough brutality.' " 
 
 It has been remarked, that the chief lesson of the lives 
 of Byron, or Shelley, or Burns, is how much their inspi- 
 ration cost ; but we do not admire the inspiration less be- 
 cause it was visibly at the cost of the life. 
 
 Matthew Bramble, in Humphry Clinker, writing to his 
 old friend, Dr. Lewis, says : " I begin to think I have put 
 myself on the superannuated list too soon, and absurdly 
 sought for health in the retreats of laziness. I am per- 
 suaded that all valetudinarians are too sedentary, too 
 regular, and too cautious. We should sometimes increase 
 the motion of the machine, to unclog the wheels of life ; 
 and now and then take a plunge amidst the waves of ex- 
 cess, in order to case-harden the constitution. I have 
 often found a change of company as necessary as a 
 change of air, to promote a vigorous circulation of the 
 spirits, which is the very essence and criterion of good 
 health." Madame de Sdvigne wrote to her daughter, "Be 
 not uneasy about my health ; the rule I observe at present 
 
 22 
 
338 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 is, to be irregular." Luther advised a young scholar, per- 
 plexed with foreordination and free-will, to get well drunk. 
 
 The night air was thought to be detrimental to the 
 health of Theodore Hook, and his method of avoiding it 
 was peculiar. Planche refers to it in a pleasant manner. 
 " It was day-break," says the dramatist, "broad daylight, 
 in fact, before we separated. I had given an imitation of 
 Edmund Kean and Holland, in Maturin's tragedy of Ber- 
 tram, which had amused Hook ; and, as we were getting 
 our hats, he asked me where I lived. On my answering 
 ' at Brompton,' he said, * Brompton ! — Why that 's in my 
 way home — I live at Fulham. Jump into my cabriolet, 
 and I will set you down.' The sun of a fine summer 
 morning was rising as we passed Hyde Park Corner. * I 
 have been very ill,' said Hook, 'for some time, and my 
 doctors told me never to be out of doors after dark, as 
 the night air was the worst thing for me. I have taken 
 their advice. I driv^e into town at four o'clock every 
 afternoon, dine at Crockford's, or wherever I may be in- 
 vited, and never go home till this time in the morning. I 
 have not breathed the night air for the last two months.' " 
 
 It is reported by Suidas that there was a great book of 
 old, of King Solomon's writing, which contained medi- 
 cines for all manner of diseases, and lay open still as the 
 people came into the temple ; but Hezekiah^ King of 
 Jerusalem, caused it to be taken away, because it made the 
 people secure, to neglect their duty in calling and relying 
 upon God, out of a confidence in those remedies. God's 
 remedies are temperance, exercise, and air. " Oh, tem- 
 perance ! " apostrophizes healthy John Buncle. "Divine 
 temperance ! Thou art the support of the other virtues, 
 the preserver and restorer of health, and the protracter of 
 life ! Thou art the maintainer of the dignity and liberty 
 of rational beings, from the wretched inhuman slavery of 
 sensuality, taste, custom, and example ; and the bright- 
 ener of the understanding and memory ! Thou art the 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 339 
 
 sweetener of life and all its comforts, the companion of 
 reason, and guard of the passions ! Thou art the bounti- 
 ful rewarder of thy admirers and followers, thine enemies 
 praise thee, and thy friends with rapturous pleasure raise 
 up a panegyric in thy praise." Andrew Tiraqueau, to 
 whom Rabelais wrote some of his epistles, is said (by his 
 biographer), " yearly to have given a book, and by one 
 wife, a son to the world, during thirty years, though he 
 never drank any thing but water." 
 
 "For my part," says the venerable William Howitt, 
 "seeing the victims [of society and late hours] daily 
 falling around me, I have preferred the enjoyment of a 
 sound mind in a sound body, the blessings of a quiet, do- 
 mestic life, and a more restricted, but not less enjoyable 
 circle. I am now fast approachmg my seventieth year. 
 I cannot, indeed, say that I have reached this period, 
 active and vigorous as I am, without the assistance of the 
 doctors. I have had the constant attendance of four 
 famous ones — temperance, exercise, good air, and good 
 hours. Often, in earliest years, I labored with my pen 
 sixteen hours a day. I never omit walking three or four 
 miles, or more, in all weathers. I work hard in my gar- 
 den, and could tire down a tolerable man at that kind of 
 thing. During my two years' travel in Australia, when 
 about sixty, I walked, often under a burning sun, of from 
 one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty 
 degrees at noon, my twenty miles a day for days and 
 weeks together ; worked at digging gold in great heat and 
 against young, active men my twelve^ hours a day, some- 
 times standing in a track. I waded through rivers — for 
 neither man nor nature had made many bridges — and 
 let my clothes dry upon my back ; washed my own linen, 
 made and baked my own bread, slept constantly under 
 the forest tree, and, through it all was hearty as a roach. 
 And how did I manage all this, not only with ease, but 
 with enjoyment? Simply because I avoided spirituous 
 liquors, as I would avoid the poison of an asp." 
 
340 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 " A year or so ago," said Chief Justice Parsons, " while 
 conversing with Dr. James Jackson, I happened to remark 
 that, at my age, I felt as if one's days must be few, and 
 the capacity of usefulness well-nigh exhausted. ' You mis- 
 take there,' said he. 'At sixty, a man in fair health may 
 enter upon a series of years equal in usefulness and happi- 
 ness to those of any period, provided proper precautions 
 are taken and proper habits formed.' And upon further 
 inquiry into these essentials or conditions, I found he 
 summed them up in * employment without labor ; exercise 
 without weariness ; temperance without abstinence.' " 
 
 It was the opinion of Grattan that the most healthy 
 exercise for elderly persons was indolent movement in the 
 open air. 
 
 " Nervousness," said Hunt, " I le'arned to prevent by 
 violent exercise. All fits of nervousness ought to be an- 
 ticipated as much as possible with exercise. Indeed, a 
 proper, healthy mode of life would save most people 
 from these effeminate ills, and most likely cure even their 
 inheritors." 
 
 Carlyle records one of his walks. " At 8 p. m. I got 
 well to Dumfries, the longest walk I ever made, fifty-four 
 miles in one day." Professor Wilson once walked as 
 much as seventy miles in the same time. Dickens was a 
 great pedestrian — walking again and again from his 
 place at Gad's Hill to London and back again in a day. 
 Lord Macaulay's long afternoon walks through every part 
 of London are familiar to all. 
 
 Gibbon took very little exercise. He had been staying 
 for a length of time with Lord Sheffield in the country ; 
 and when he was about to go away, the servants could not 
 find his hat. " Bless me," said Gibbon, " I certainly left it 
 in the hall on my arrival here." He had not stirred out 
 of doors during the whole of the visit. 
 
 Plato thought exercise would almost cure a guilty con- 
 science. Sydney Smith said, "You will never break 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 34I 
 
 down in a speech on the day when you have walked 
 twelve miles." 
 
 There is a story in the Arabian Nights' of a king who 
 had long languished under an ill habit of body, and 
 had taken abundance of remedies to no purpose. At 
 length, says the fable, a physician cured him by the fol- 
 lowing method : he took an hollow ball of wood, and 
 filled it with several drugs ; after which he closed it up 
 so artificially that nothing appeared. He likewise took a 
 mall, and after having hollowed the handle and that part 
 which strikes the ball, he inclosed in them several drugs 
 after the same manner as in the ball itself. He then 
 ordered the sultan, who was his patient, to exercise him- 
 self early in the morning with these rightly prepared in- 
 struments, till such time as he should sweat ; when, as 
 the story goes, the virtue of the medicaments perspiring 
 through the wood, had so good an influence on the sul- 
 tan's constitution, that they cured him of an indisposition 
 which all the compositions he had taken inwardly had not 
 been able to remove. This Eastern allegory is finely con- 
 trived to show us how beneficial bodily labor is to health, 
 and that exercise is the most effectual physic. We ought 
 to be ashamed of an indigestion which brisk movement 
 out of doors would effectually drive out through the two 
 or three million pores in two or three hours. 
 
 Professor Smith, at one time in the m.edical chair at 
 Dartmouth, gave the last ten years of his life to the poor. 
 The Professor, in talking with Mr. Webster about his 
 experience with the diseases of the poor, said that he 
 thought there was more suffering from want of proper 
 ventilation than from disease itself. He added, that it 
 had been very much impressed upon his mind that people 
 did not know the value of good ventilation. He often 
 had been called to cases of fevers and the like among 
 poor people ; and, upon arriving at the house, he would 
 find, perhaps, nobody but a child in attendance, — the 
 
342 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 husband and sons being away at work. He had often, 
 before even feeling the pulse of the patient, gone to the 
 woodshed, taken wood and split it up, carried it in-doors 
 in his own arms, built a fire, and thrown open the win- 
 dows ; and he could see the patient begin to revive be- 
 fore he had thought of medicine. 
 
 Had God Almighty intended we should stint ourselves 
 in air, is it at all likely he would have poured it out all 
 round the world forty miles deep ? 
 
 The Persians express a taste for out-doors very forci- 
 bly. In Bombay the Parsees use the Victoria Gardens 
 chiefly to walk in, — as they express it, " to eat the air." 
 Their enjoyment of it is more than animal — it is super- 
 sensual. 
 
 We take care of our health ; we lay up money ; we make 
 our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient ; but who, asks 
 Emerson, provides that he shall not be wanting in the 
 best property of all, — friends ? The question was once 
 put to Aristotle how we ought to behave to our friends ; 
 and the answer he gave was, " As we should wish our 
 friends to behave to us." " I look (says Emerson again) 
 upon the simple and childish virtues of veracity and hon- 
 esty as the root of all that is sublime in character. Speak 
 as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all 
 kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and 
 my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be 
 skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in 
 the universe." " No man," said Sir Walter Raleigh, " is 
 wise or safe but he that is honest." " There is scarce 
 any character so rare," says Sterne, in one of his ser- 
 mons, " as a man of real, open, and generous integrity ; 
 — who carries his heart in his hand, — who says the 
 thing he thinks, and does the thing he pretends. Though 
 no one can dislike the character, yet discretion generally 
 shakes her head, and the world soon lets him into the 
 reason." When you find a person a little better than his 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 343 
 
 word, a little more liberal than his promise, a little more 
 than borne out in his statement by his facts, a little larger 
 in deed than in speech, you recognize, says Holmes, a 
 kind of eloquence in that person's utterance not laid 
 down in Blair or Campbell. It is said that coming into 
 the presence of the Apollo, the body insensibly assumes 
 a nobler posture. It seems that there are moral and 
 intellectual natures of such purity and elevation and 
 strength, that one insensibly assumes a more upright and 
 noble attitude in the serene presence of their spotless 
 lives. The homage we unconsciously pay to worth is 
 illustrated by the sensitive plant of South America. 
 When a large surface of ground is covered the effect of 
 walking over it is said to be impressive. At each step 
 the plants for some distance round suddenly droop, as 
 if struck with awe, and a broad track of prostrate herb- 
 age, several feet wide, is distinctly marked out by the dif- 
 ferent color of the closed leaflets. 
 
 Washington Allston, called, in Rome, the American 
 Titian, on one occasion, when crippled in. resources in 
 London, having sold a picture for a considerable sum, as 
 he sat alone at evening, the idea occurred to him that the 
 subject, to a perverted taste and prurient im.agination, 
 might have an immoral effect ; he instantly returned the 
 money and regained and destroyed the painting. There 
 is an account of an old merchant, who, on his death-bed, 
 divided the results of long years of labor. " It is little 
 enough, my boys," were almost the last words of the old 
 man ; " but there is n't a dirty shilling in the whole of 
 it." A gentleman that had a trial at the assizes sent 
 Sir Matthew Hale a buck for his table j so, according 
 to Bishop Burnet, his biographer, when he heard the 
 man's name, he asked if he were not the same person 
 that had sent him venison ; and, finding he was the same, 
 he told him he could not suffer the trial to go on till he 
 had paid him for his buck. To which the gentleman an- 
 
344 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 swered, that he never sold his venison j that he had done 
 nothing to him that he did not do to every judge that had 
 gone that circuit, which was confirmed by several gentle- 
 men then present; but all would not do, for the lord 
 chief baron had learned from Solomon, that a gift per- 
 verteth the way of judgment, and therefore he would not 
 suffer the trial to go on till he had paid for the present ; 
 upon which the gentleman withdrew the record. 
 
 Albert Gallatin held the office of Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury through three presidential terms, under Jefferson and 
 Madison, till 1813. Amongst the special missions of 
 importance to which he was appointed was one to Eng- 
 land in 1 8 18. While in this office he rendered some 
 essential service to Alexander Baring in the negotiation 
 of a loan for the French Government. Mr. Baring in 
 return pressed him to take a part of the loan, offering 
 him such advantages in it that without advancing any 
 funds he could have realized a fortune. " I thank you," 
 was Gallatin's reply ; " I will not accept your obliging 
 offer, because a man who has had the direction of the 
 finances of his country as long as I have should not die 
 rich." Which memorable answer is not more memorable 
 than a sentence in a private letter written to the author 
 of this composition by the daughter of Robert W. Tayler, 
 Comptroller of the Treasury for sixteen years, from 1862 
 till the day of his death, and through whose hands passed 
 the vouchers for thousands of millions. "At father's 
 death," says Miss Jennie, " we were left dependent upon 
 ourselves. I speak of this because you were his friend, 
 and because it is something of a matter of pride with me, 
 that he lived and died a poor man." 
 
 " As things are," says Froude, " we have little idea of 
 what a human being ought to be. After the first rudi- 
 mental conditions we pass at once into meaningless 
 generalities ) and with no knowledge to guide our judg- 
 ment, we allow it to be guided by meaner principles j we 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 345 
 
 respect money, we respect rank, we respect ability — 
 character is as if it had no existence. How little respect 
 do we pay to the breach of this or that commandment in 
 comparison to ability ? So wholly impossible is it to ap- 
 ply the received opinions on such matters to practice, to 
 treat men known to be guilty of what theology calls 
 deadly sins, as really guilty of them, that it would almost 
 seem we had fallen into a moral anarchy; that ability 
 alone is what we regard, without any reference at all, ex- 
 cept in glaring and outrageous cases, to moral disquali- 
 fications." 
 
 Joubert had a bad opinion of the lion when he learned 
 that his step is oblique. It is Machiavelian morals, that 
 virtue itself a man should not trouble himself to obtain, 
 but only the appearance of it to the world, because the 
 credit and reputation of virtue is a help, but the use of it 
 is an impediment. 
 
 Thackeray once lost a pocket-book, containing a pass- 
 port and a couple of modest ten-pound notes. The per- 
 son who found the article ingenuously put it into the 
 box of the post-office, and it was faithfully restored to the 
 owner ; but somehow the two ten-pound notes were ab- 
 sent. It was, however, a great comfort to the great nov- 
 elist to get the passport, and the pocket-book, which was 
 worth about nine pence. 
 
 The cunning of Louis XI. admitted to one or two pe- 
 culiar forms of oath the force of a binding obligation, 
 which he denied to all others, strictly preserving the se- 
 cret, which mode of swearing he really accounted obliga- 
 tory, as one of the most valuable of state mysteries. 
 
 " I heard Le Sage say," said Spence, " I thank God, 
 I don't wish for any one thing that I could not pray for 
 aloud." Madame du Deffand objected to praying not to 
 be led into temptation, on the ground that she had found 
 temptation very pleasant. She also disliked praying to 
 be made good, for fear that she should be taken at her 
 
346 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 word. She did not believe with Jerrold, that conscience, 
 be it ever so little a worm while we live, grows suddenly 
 to a serpent on our death-bed. " My lord cardinal," said 
 Anne of Austria to Richelieu, " there is one fact which 
 you seem to have entirely forgotten. God is a sure pay- 
 master. He may not pay at the end of every week or 
 month or year ; but I charge you, remember that he pays 
 in the end." 
 
 There are three sorts of lies, in the judgment of Ma- 
 homet, which will not be taken into account at the last 
 judgment : ist, one told to reconcile two persons at vari- 
 ance ; 2d, that which a husband tells when he promises 
 any thing to his wife ; and, 3d, a chieftain's word in time 
 of war. Joe Gargery made no exceptions. " Lies is lies," 
 he said to Pip, " Howsoever they come, they did n't 
 ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, 
 and work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 
 them, Pip. . . . Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you 
 by a true friend. Which this to you the true friend says. 
 If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, 
 you '11 never get to do it through going crooked. So 
 don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die 
 happy." Lying, in the opinion of Leigh Hunt, is the 
 commonest and most conventional of all the vices. It 
 pervades, more or less, every class of the community, 
 and is fancied to be so necessary to the carrying on of 
 human affairs, that the practice is tacitly agreed upon ; 
 nay, in other terms, openly avowed. In the monarch, it 
 is kingcraft. In the statesman, expediency. In the 
 churchman, mental reservation. In the lauyer, the inter- 
 est of his client. In the merchant, manufacturer, and 
 shopkeeper, secrets of trade. There is no lie, said John 
 Sterling, that many men will not believe ; there is no man 
 who does not believe many lies ; and there is no man who 
 believes only lies. 
 
 It is the conclusion of Professor Venable, that many 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 34/ 
 
 teachers of morality destroy the good effect of judicious 
 counsel by too much talk, as a chemical precipitate is re- 
 dissolved in an excess of the precipitating agent. If you 
 would convince a man that he does wrong, said Thoreau, 
 do rirrht. But do not care to convince him. Men will 
 believe what they see. Let them see. Dr. Telfair, a 
 philosopher and a Christian, used to insist that the doc- 
 trine of the Golden Rule is not to be preached, but only 
 to be announced. It is for self-application — to be re- 
 ceived and acted on by each one, and not to be taught 
 by him to another. A rule, some one has said, which 
 you do not apply, is no rule at all. " My father," said 
 the Attic Philosopher, " feared every thing that had the 
 appearance of a lesson. He used to say that virtue 
 could make herself devoted friends, but she did not take 
 pupils ; therefore he was not anxious to teach goodness ; 
 he contented himself with sowing the seeds of it, cer- 
 tain that experience would make them grow." " Good- 
 ness," said Lamb, "blows no trumpet, nor desires to 
 have it blown." " I hoped for much advantage," said 
 Leslie, "from studying under such a master as Fuseli, 
 but he said little in the Academy. He generally came 
 into the room once in the course of every evening, and 
 rarely without a book in his hand. He would take any 
 vacant place among the students, and sit reading nearly 
 the whole time he stayed with us. I believe he was right. 
 For those students who are born with powers that will 
 make them eminent, it is sufficient to place fine works 
 of art before them. They do not want instruction, and 
 those that do are not worth it. Art may be learnt, but 
 cannot be taught." 
 
 Plutarch says of Julius Caesar that he won all his bat- 
 tles by saying to his soldiers, " come," rather than " go." 
 So it is in morality, thought James Freeman Clarke. 
 Who are those who have done us good ? Who but those 
 whose goodness has inspired us with love of virtue ? Not 
 
348 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 denunciation, but example, touches the heart. That is 
 why the martyrs' blood is the seed of the church. We 
 had been denouncing slavery as sin, with small apparent 
 effect, but when John Brown went down into Virginia, 
 and died on the scaffold out of love for the slave, there 
 came a sudden inspiration to us all. The brave Sir Jacob 
 Astley's prayer, immediately before the advance, at the 
 battle of Edgehill, was short and fervent. " O, Lord, 
 thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget 
 thee, do not thou forget me. Come on, boys ! " At one 
 time Nelson's ship, the Boreas, was full of young midship- 
 men, of whom there were not less than thirty on board ; 
 and happy were they whose lot it was to be placed with 
 such a captain. If he perceived that a boy was afraid at 
 first going aloft, he would say to him in a friendly man- 
 ner, " Well, sir, I am going a race to the mast-head, and 
 beg that I may meet you there." The poor little fellow 
 instantly began to climb, and got up how he could, — 
 Nelson never noticed in what manner ; but when they 
 met at the top, spoke cheerfully to him ; and would say, 
 how much any person was to be pitied who fancied that 
 getting up was either dangerous or difficult. 
 
 Humanity — human nature — within and without — is 
 well illustrated in the baobab-tree of Africa. Dr. Liv- 
 ingstone, in his Missionary Travels, describes it. The 
 description is interesting in itself, and interesting for the 
 purpose we use it. " No external injury, not even fire, 
 can destroy the tree from without ; nor can any injury be 
 done from within, as it is quite common to find it hollow. 
 Nor does cutting down exterminate it, for I saw instances 
 in Angola in which it continued to grow in length after it 
 was lying on the ground. Those trees called exogenous 
 grow by means of successive layers on the outside. The 
 inside may be dead, or even removed altogether, without 
 affecting the life of the tree. The other class is called 
 endogenous, and increases by layers applied to the in- 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 349 
 
 side j and when the hollow there is full, the growth is 
 stopped — the tree must die. Any injury is felt most 
 severely by the first class on the bark — by the second 
 on the inside ; while the inside of the exogenous may be 
 removed and the outside of the endogenous may be cut, 
 without stopping the growth in the least." 
 
 In Dickens's Miss Havisham, " the vanity of sorrow 
 had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, 
 the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and 
 other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this 
 world." Holmes describes the widow Rowans in "the 
 full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very shallow crape 
 bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven 
 hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved 
 upon her bosom with every sigh of memory, or emotion 
 of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone with every move- 
 ment of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black 
 gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold 
 flounces, from beneath which a small foot showed itself 
 from time to time, clad in the same hue of mourning. 
 Every thing about her was dark, except the whites of her 
 eyes and the enamel of her teeth. The effect was com- 
 plete. Gray's Elegy was not a more complete composi- 
 tion." 
 
 " You once observed to me," wrote Dr. Channing to 
 Lucy Aiken, "that every where the Sovereign is wor- 
 shiped ; with us, that sovereign is an idol called Gentil- 
 ity, and costly are the offerings laid upon the altar. 
 Dare to make conversation in the most accomplished so- 
 ciety something of an exercise of the mind, and not a 
 mere dissipation, and you instantly become that thing of 
 horror, a Bore." 
 
 That caustic satirist, Jerrold, says, " There are a good 
 many pious people who are as careful of their religion as 
 of their best service of china, only using it on holiday 
 occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in 
 
350 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 working-day wear." " Eve," says the same wicked wit, 
 "ate the apple, that she might dress." 
 
 Emerson, in one of his Essays, expresses the opinion 
 that " The end of all political struggle is to establish mo- 
 rality as the basis of all legislation. 'T is not free insti- 
 tutions, 't is not a democracy that is the end, — no, but 
 only the means. Morality is the end of government. 
 We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a 
 state of things which allows every man the largest liberty 
 compatible with the libert}' of every other man." Man, 
 it is very truly said, will not be made temperate or virtu- 
 ous by the strong hand of the law, but by the teaching 
 and influence of moral power. A man is no more made 
 sober by act of parliament than a woman is made chaste. 
 
 " They that cry down moral honesty," said old John 
 Selden, " cry down that which is a great part of religion, 
 my dut}^ towards God, and my duty towards man. What 
 care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and 
 cheats as soon as he comes home." " If thou hadst but 
 discretion, Sancho, equal to thy natural abilities, thou 
 mightest take to the pulpit, and go preaching about the 
 world." "A good liver is the best preacher," replied 
 Sancho, " and that is all the divinity I know." " Or need 
 know," responded the Don. 
 
 " There are," said Miss Spence, in John Buncle, " heav- 
 enly-mindedness, and contempt of the world, and choos- 
 ing rather to die than commit a moral evil. Such things, 
 however, are not much esteemed by the generality of 
 Christians : Most people laugh at them, and look upon 
 them as indiscretions; therefore there is but little true 
 Christianity in the world. It has never," she said, " been 
 my luck to meet with many people that had these three 
 necessary qualifications." 
 
 One day, when some one remarked, " Christianity is 
 part and parcel of the law of the land," Rolfe, afterward 
 Lord Chancellor of England, whispered to a barrister 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 35 1 
 
 near by, " Were you ever employed to draw an indictment 
 against a man for not loving his neighbor as himself ? " 
 
 An eminent German saw a poor old woman at a station 
 of a calvary in Bavaria, who was crawling on her knees 
 up the hill. She told her story. A rich lady who had 
 sinned was required by her confessor to go on her knees 
 as many times up the calvary ; but she might do it by 
 deputy. She paid this poor woman 24 kreutzers (17 
 cents) for a day's journey on her knees, " which," said 
 the woman, " is poor wages for a day's hard labor ; and 
 I have three children to maintain. And unless charitable 
 souls give me more, my children must go half fed." 
 
 Every body is familiar with a class of assassins in Brit- 
 ish India (now happily nearly exterminated), organized 
 into a society, with chiefs, a service, a free-masonry, and 
 even a religion, which has its fanaticism, and its devotion, 
 its agents, its emissaries, its assistants, its moving bodies, 
 its passive comrades who contribute by their subscriptions 
 to " the good work." Comte de Warren describes it in 
 his work on British India. " It is a community of Thugs, 
 a religious and working confraternity, who war against 
 the human race by exterminating them, and whose origin 
 is lost in the night of ages. The foundation of the 
 Thuggee confraternity is a religous belief, the worship of 
 Bohwanie, a dark divinity who loves nothing but carnage, 
 and hates especially the human race. Her most accept- 
 able sacrifices are human victims, and the more of these 
 are offered up in this world, the more will you be recom- 
 pensed in the next by joys of the soul and the senses, 
 and by females always young, fresh, and lovely. If the 
 assassin should meet with the scaffold in his career, he 
 dies with enthusiasm, a martyr whom a palm awaits. To 
 obey his divine mistress, he murders, without anger and 
 without remorse, the old man, the woman, and the child. 
 To his colleagues he must be charitable, humane, gener- 
 ous, devoted, sharing all in common, because they, as well 
 as he, are ministers and adopted children of Bohwanie." 
 
352 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 " The fasts of the Greek church," Kinglake tells us, 
 " produce an ill effect upon the character of the people, 
 for they are carried to such an extent, as to bring about 
 a bona fide mortification of the flesh; the febrile irrita- 
 tion of the frame operating in conjunction with the de- 
 pression of spirits occasioned by abstinence, will so far 
 answer the object of the rite, as to engender some relig- 
 ious excitement, but this is of a morbid and gloomy char- 
 acter, and it seems to be certain, that along with the 
 increase of sanctity, there comes a fierce desire for the 
 perpetration of dark crimes. The number of murders 
 committed during Lent is reported greater than at any 
 other time of the year." 
 
 As an instance of the little influence the religion of the 
 Italians had upon their morals, Hiram Powers told Haw- 
 thorne of one of his servants, who desired leave to set 
 up a small shrine of the Virgin in her room — a cheap 
 print, or bas relief, or image, such as are sold every 
 where at the shops — and to burn a lamp before it ; she 
 engaging, of course, to supply the oil at her own expense. 
 By and by her oil-flask appeared to possess a miraculous 
 property of replenishing itself, and Mr. Powers took 
 measures to ascertain where the oil came from. It 
 turned out that the servant had all the time been stealing 
 the oil from him, and keeping up her daily sacrifice and 
 worship to the Virgin by this constant theft. Haw- 
 thorne's wife came in contact with a pickpocket at the 
 entrance of an Italian church ; and, failing in his enter- 
 prise upon her purse, he passed in, dipped his thieving 
 fingers in the holy -water, and paid his devotion at a 
 shrine. Missing the purse, he said his prayers, in the 
 hope, perhaps, that the saint would send him better luck 
 another time. 
 
 " It is easier," says a thoughtful English writer, "to be 
 a learned man than a good man. Why morals should be 
 so difficult, stirs another and a deeper question ; for we 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 353 
 
 must suppose that there is a wisdom in the fact. A ques- 
 tion of creeds is but a petty question at any time. The 
 real question lies deeper." 
 
 In England, Theodore Parker met an Episcopal clergy- 
 man whose liberal sentiments enticed him into conversa- 
 tion. " I asked him," said the American divine, " if it 
 were not possible for all classes of Christians to agree to 
 differ about theological symbols, ceremonies, disciplines, 
 modes, and the like, while they fell back on the great 
 principles of religion and morality ; in a word, on relig- 
 ion and morality themselves ; and I told him that I had 
 aimed in my humble way to bring this about. He said 
 he liked the plan much, and did not see why all should 
 not unite on these principles as they were expressed in 
 the Thirty-Nine Articles." When Oliver Cromwell was 
 contending for the mastery, he besieged a certain Catho- 
 lic town. The place made a stout resistance ; but at 
 length, being about to be taken, the poor Catholics pro- 
 posed terms of capitulation, among which was one stipu- 
 lating for the toleration of their religion. The paper 
 containing the conditions being presented to Cromwell, 
 he put on his spectacles, and, after deliberately examin- 
 ing it, cried out, " Oh, yes ; granted, granted, certainly ; 
 but," he added, with stern determination, " if one of them 
 shall dare be found attending mass, he shall be instantly 
 hanged ! " 
 
 It is not improbable, if the disposition of a great part 
 of the clergy continues, to give less and less attention to 
 what the world esteems as morals, apart from what they 
 esteem religion, that a system of schools will arise, in 
 which radical morals, as an essential part of religion, will 
 be taught to the people. Attempts to divorce them, only 
 tend to weaken and confuse the public conscience, while 
 they diminish the influence of spiritual leaders. 
 
 The time may come also,, we opine, when chairs of 
 common sense will be set up in the universities. The 
 23 
 
354 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 trouble may be to fill them ; but suitable men, when 
 wanted, will be found. The distinction between scholar- 
 ship and usefulness will be better defined. Boys will 
 more and more be educated for the uses of education ; 
 and so much that must be unlearned will give place to 
 what may be applied. 
 
 The sculptor Chan trey pointed out to one of his friends 
 the bad effects of light from two windows falling on a 
 column in the Louvre, and said, " The ancients worked 
 with a knowledge of the place where the statue was to 
 be, and anticipated the light to which it would be ex- 
 posed." In like manner, education should be adapted to 
 the character and wants of each individual, anticipating, 
 as far as practicable, occupation and position in life. 
 
 " What is true by the lamp is not always true by the 
 sun," -says Joubert. The bad effect — perhaps the only 
 bad effect — of education is what has been called " its 
 inflating tendency — to turn the educated into a clique or 
 caste who think of those who have no education as the 
 Pharisees thought of the ' accursed ' people who knew 
 not the law." 
 
 The boy should be taught to have some apprehension 
 of the diffusion and universality of intelligence ; that no 
 man has it all, but every man a little ; that the average is 
 always worthy of respectful consultation ; that the edu- 
 cation of the schools is but as the scaffolding and tools 
 to the builder (bearing in mind all the time that the 
 building that is to endure is not made with hands) ; that 
 the hodman and the farm hand must teach him many 
 things he must know ; that the Commentaries of Caesar 
 — valuable enough for culture — and the maxims of 
 philosophy, must give way again and again, and without 
 humiliation, to the commonest experience of the meanest 
 man, whom he would despise till he has fairly put his 
 mind and fact to his in the conflict of affairs ; in fine, that 
 he must surrender his self-conceit, be put upon his feet 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 355 
 
 with the crowd, and totally unlearn and forget very much 
 that he has learned before he can begin to be truly sen- 
 sible and wise. 
 
 Sensible men, it is truly said, are very rare. A sensi- 
 ble man does not brag, avoids introducing the names of 
 his creditable companions, omits himself as habitually as 
 another man obtrudes himself in the discourse, and is 
 content with putting his fact or theme simply on its 
 ground. Conduct is three-fourths of life, thought Mat- 
 thew Arnold, and a man who works for conduct, therefore, 
 works for more than a man who works for intelligence. 
 " I always feel happy near Meyer," said Eckermann, 
 " probably because he is a self-relying, satisfied person, 
 who takes but little notice of the circumstances around 
 him, but at suitable intervals exhibits his own comfortable 
 soul. At the same time, he is every where well grounded, 
 possesses the greatest treasures of knowledge, and a 
 memory to which the most remote events are as present 
 as if they happened yesterday. He has a preponderance 
 of understanding which might make us dread him, if it 
 did not rest upon the noblest culture ; but, as it is, his 
 quiet presence is always agreeable, always instructive." 
 
 Life should teach us our deficiencies, and our indus- 
 try should supply them. The Moravian missionaries very 
 soon found out and acknowledged that they must teach 
 their converts to count the number three before they 
 taught them the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 Immorality, as before affirmed, is often only ignorance. 
 A set of constituents once waited upon the member of 
 parliament whom they had chosen, to request that he 
 would vote against the Minister. " What ! " he answered, 
 with an oath ; " have I not bought you ? and do you think 
 I will not sell you ? " 
 
 How to live with unfit companions, is an important 
 part of education ; for, with such, said a wise man, life is 
 for the most part spent : and experience teaches little bet- 
 
356 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 ter than our earliest instinct of self-defense, namely, not 
 to engage, not to mix yourself in any manner with them ; 
 but let their madness spend itself unopposed. 
 
 A sensible man considers his situation, and is careful 
 not to over-estimate himself. His ears, his eyes, and his 
 reflection make him circumspect. He is not apt to be 
 in the predicament of the man who was anxious to be 
 introduced to a deaf woman, but when he was presented, 
 and one end of her ear-trumpet was put into his hand, 
 had nothing to say. " Nature, I am persuaded," says 
 Rabelais, " did not without a cause frame our ears open, 
 putting thereto no gates at all, nor shutting them up with 
 any manner of inclosures, as she hath done upon the 
 tongue, the eyes, and other such outjutting parts of the 
 body. The cause, as I imagine, is, to the end that every 
 day and every night, and that continually, we may be 
 ready to hear, and by a perpetual hearing apt to learn." 
 
 Common sense, with common reflection, is not apt to 
 suffer from the confusion, in common matters, of cause 
 and effect, which certain ignorant islanders once dis- 
 played, referred to in Boswell's Johnson. They invented 
 all sorts of superstitions to account for their being seized 
 with colds in their heads whenever a ship arrived, until it 
 occurred to an intelligent reverend gentleman to find the 
 cause in the fact that a vessel could enter the harbor 
 only when a strong north-east wind was blowing. And 
 in a certain part of Scotland the servants on a farm suf- 
 fered every spring from fever and ague, which was re- 
 ceived as a judgment of God upon their sins, until with 
 proper drainage of the land the disorder disappeared. 
 
 Big words, where little ones were better, generally arise 
 from an ignorant misapprehension of means to ends. A 
 good story is told of a senator, staying at a hotel in St. 
 Louis. He saw from his window that, just across the 
 street, a house was on fire. He instantly raised the win- 
 dow, and began to shout to the people, as they passed 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 357 
 
 along, in stentorian tones, " Conflagration ! conflagra- 
 tion ! conflagration ! " But to his utter amazement, the 
 people paid no attention to him whatever. Finally, be- 
 coming exasperated, he threw away the word conflagra- 
 tion, and began to shout at the top of his voice, " Fire ! " 
 The people understood at once, and the fire was put out. 
 
 A great advantage of common sense with education is 
 to enable us to see the direct way to an object or result. 
 There is an incident of a well-known Oxford man, who 
 one day saw a favorite pupil who was within an hour to 
 take his place in the school for final examination. " I 'm 
 in for Butler's Analogy," said the student, " and have not 
 had time to read it through." " All Butler's governing 
 ideas," mildly remarked the tutor, " are reducible to four. 
 You can learn them in a quarter of an hour, and you 
 must manipulate them as well as you can." The pupil 
 passed a capital examination in Butler. Short cuts are 
 good, if you know how to take them. 
 
 Rufus Choate and Daniel Webster were once opposed 
 to each other as lawyers in a suit which turned on the 
 size of certain wheels. Mr. Choate filled the air with the 
 rockets of rhetoric, and dazzled the jury, but Mr. Web- 
 ster caused the wheels to be brought into court and put 
 behind a screen. When he rose to speak the screen was 
 removed, and his only reply to Choate's eloquence was, 
 " Gentlemen ! there are the wheels ! " 
 
 At Palermo, Lord Dundonald met with Lord Nelson, 
 and through life adopted as his own the injunction he re- 
 ceived from the victor of Trafalgar : " Never mind ma- 
 noeuvres ; always go at 'em." 
 
 The prime mischief of modern education, mental and 
 moral, is " cramming." Fuseli did not attempt to make 
 all his pupils alike by teaching. He saw in Wilkie, Mul- 
 ready, Etty, Landseer, and Haydon, peculiar talents, and 
 through his "wise neglect," they became distinguished. 
 ^Coleridge opposed the system of "cramming" children, 
 
358 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 and especially satirized the moral rules for juvenile read- 
 ers, lately introduced. " I infinitely prefer," he said, 
 " The Seven Champions of Christendom, Jack the Giant- 
 Killer, and such like : for at least they make the child for- 
 get himself : but when in your good-child stories, a little 
 boy comes in and says, * Mamma, I met a poor beggar- 
 man, and gave him the sixpence you gave me yesterday. 
 Did I do right ? ' ' Oh, yes, my dear ; to be sure you 
 did.' This is not virtue but vanity. Such lessons do 
 not teach goodness, byt, if I might hazard such a word, 
 goodiness." 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, it is related, as he grew older, came to 
 regard all experience as a single great book, in which to 
 study for a few years ere we go to heaven ; and it seemed 
 all one to him whether you should read in chapter XX., 
 which is the differential calculus, or in chapter XXXIX., 
 which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a 
 matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his 
 eyes, and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face 
 all the time, will get more true education than many an- 
 other in a life of heroic vigils. 
 
 The motto to Leigh Hunt's Indicator is a description of 
 a bird in the interior of Africa, called the bee-cuckoo, or 
 honey-bird, whose habits would rather seem to belong to 
 the interior of Fairyland, but they have been well authen- 
 ticated. It indicates to honey-hunters where the nests of 
 wild bees are to be found. It calls them with a cheerful 
 cry, which they answer ; and on finding itself recognized, 
 flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey. 
 While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to 
 a little distance, where he observes all that passes ; and 
 the hunters, when they have helped themselves, take care 
 to leave him his portion of the food. 
 
 A happy man or woman, some one has said, is a better 
 thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a ra- 
 diating focus of good will ; and their entrance into a room 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 359 
 
 is as though another candle had been lighted. We need 
 not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh prop- 
 osition ; they do a better thing than that, they practically 
 demonstrate the great theorem of the reasonableness of 
 life. 
 
 You remember the immortal fireside saint, St. Jenny, 
 created and canonized by Jerrold. " St. Jenny was wed- 
 ded to a very poor man j they had scarcely bread to keep 
 them ; but Jenny was of so sweet a temper that even 
 want bore a bright face, and Jenny always smiled. In the 
 worst seasons Jenny would spare crumbs for the birds, 
 and sugar for the bees. Now it so happened that one 
 auturxin a storm rent their cot in twenty places apart ; 
 when, behold, between the joints, from the basement to 
 the roof, there was nothing but honeycomb and honey — 
 a little fortune for St. Jenny and her husband, in honey. 
 Now, some said it was the bees, but more declared it was 
 the sweet temper of St. Jenny that had filled the poor 
 man's house with honey." 
 
 As solace alone, books are very much to many ; " but the 
 scholar only knows," says Washington Irving, "how dear 
 these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts 
 and innocent hours become in the seasons of adversity. 
 When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these 
 only retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, 
 and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civil- 
 ity and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered 
 countenance of happier days< and cheer us with that true 
 friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sor- 
 row." 
 
 We are told of an Indian bird, which, enjoying the sun- 
 shine all the day, secures a faint reflection of it in the 
 night, by sticking glow-worms over the walls of its nest. 
 And something of this light is obtained, it is observed, 
 from the books read in youth, to be remembered in age. 
 " Summer's green all girded up in sheaves." 
 
360 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 At the battle of Edgehill, the Prince of Wales and the 
 Duke of York, then ten and twelve years old, were on the 
 hill. "They were placed," says Lord Nugent, "under 
 the care of Dr. William Harvey, after\yard so famous for 
 his discoveries concerning the circulation of the blood, 
 and then Physician in Ordinary to the King. During the 
 action, forgetful both of his position and of his charge, 
 and too sensible of the value of time to a philosophic 
 mind to be cognizant of bodily danger, he took out a 
 book, and sat him down on the grass to read, till, warned 
 by the sound of the bullets that grazed and whistled 
 round him, he rose, and withdrew the princes to a securer 
 distance." 
 
 Scott (one of his biographers tells us) received a let- 
 ter from his old friend. Sir Adam Ferguson, captain in the 
 58th regiment, then serving in the Peninsula. The gal- 
 lant soldier had just received a copy of The Lady of the 
 Lake, and had it with him when his company was posted 
 on a piece of ground exposed to the enemy's shot. The 
 men were ordered to lie prostrate, and, while they kept 
 that attitude, the captain, kneeling at their head, read 
 aloud the description of the battle of BeaF an Dhuine, in 
 the sixth canto, and the listening soldiers only interrupted 
 him by an occasional huzza as the French shot struck the 
 bank above them. 
 
 It has been said, that of all the toils in which man en- 
 gages, none are nobler in their origin or their aim than 
 those by which he endeavors to become more wise. We 
 may say, as well, that no one should be discouraged by 
 this discovery, that " the more there is known, the more 
 it is perceived there is to be known ; " for, it is also true, 
 that " the infinity of knowledge to be acquired runs par- 
 allel with the infinite faculty of knowing, and its develop- 
 ment." The possibilities of infinite culture can be only 
 imperfectly anticipated on this " shoal of time." Heaven 
 orders that our intellects can be employed only in part. 
 
THE ART OF LIVING. 361 
 
 The human brain is wonderfully constructed ; but it has 
 its limitations. The mental physiologist tells us that a 
 fragment of the gray substance of it, not larger than the 
 head of a small pin, contains parts of many thousands of 
 commingled globes and fibres. Of ganglion globules alone, 
 according to the estimate of the physiologist Meynert, 
 there cannot be less than six hundred millions in the con- 
 volutions of a human brain. They are, indeed, in such 
 infinite numbers that possibly only a small portion of the 
 globules provided are ever turned to account in even the 
 most energetic brains. Dr. Maudsley contrasts the fif- 
 teen thousand words which Shakespeare employs for the 
 expression of his ideas with the hundreds of millions of 
 brain globules that must have been concerned in the pro- 
 duction of this intellectual harvest. The little that we 
 can know here, is, at best, only the alphabet of the course 
 progressive and unending. What we cannot see now, 
 will be apparent hereafter to our improved vision, as the 
 high-flying birds, twenty thousand feet above the earth, 
 and countless stars of heaven, are seen clearly by the 
 telescope. The parchment used by the ancients, from 
 which one writing was erased, and on which another was 
 written, was called a palimpsest. " What else than a 
 natural and mighty palimpsest," exclaims De Quincey, 
 " is the human brain ? Everlasting layers of ideas, im- 
 ages, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. 
 Each succession has served to bury all that went before. 
 And yet, in reality, not one has been extinguished." 
 Doubtless it will appear, at the great restoration, that 
 enough has been impressed, in one short earthly exist- 
 ence, to more than compensate for all its ills, and hope- 
 fully to encourage a start in the life that is illimitable. 
 
 Yet, in the here, we long for the fruition of the hereaf- 
 ter. The sigh and the longing are irrepressible. The 
 San Carlos Theatre at Naples was so placed that Vesu- 
 vius might be seen from the royal box. Ah ! if only it 
 
362 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 were possible, in the drama of this life, to be so disposed 
 as to have occasional visions of the Eternal. 
 
 One day a good old man saw a bird fluttering in the 
 road before him. He took it up, and found it was a 
 robin, whose plumage was so filled with the burs of the 
 fields that it could not fly. He picked out the burs ten- 
 derly, and the creature flew away. Alas ! the clogs, en- 
 tanglements, and limitations. But how glorious the 
 emancipation ! 
 
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