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THE ROUND TABLE.
NORTHCOTES CONVERSATIONS
CHARACTERISTICS.
py
WILLIAM HAZLITT
W. CAREW HAZLITT.
LONDON:
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1871.
LONDON :
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
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Annex
^PK
411JL
THE ROUND TABLE:
A COLLECTION OF
ESSAYS ON LITERATURE, MEN, AND
MANNERS.
BY
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE EDITION
OF 1817
THE following work falls somewhat short of its title
and original intention. It was proposed by my friend
Mr. Hunt to publish a series of papers in the ' Examiner,'
in the manner of the early periodical essayists, the
' Spectator ' and ' Tatler.' These papers were to be con-
tributed by various persons on a variety of subjects ;
and Mr. Hunt, as the editor, was to take the character-
istic or dramatic part of the work upon himself. 1
undertook to furnish occasional essays and criticisms ;
one or two other friends promised their assistance ; but
the essence of the work was to be miscellaneous. The
next thing was to fix upon a title for it. After much
doubtful consultation, that of ' THE BOUND TABLE ' was
agreed upon as most descriptive of its nature and design.
But our plan had been no sooner arranged and entered
upon than Bonaparte landed at Frejus, et voila la Table
Eonde dissoute. Our little congress was broken up as
well as the great one ; politics called off the attention
of the editor from the belles lettres, and the task of
continuing the work fell chiefly upon the person who
was least able to give life and spirit to the original
design. A want of variety in the subjects and mode of
treating them is perhaps the least disadvantage resulting
vi Advertisement to the present Edition.
from this circumstance. All the papers in the two
volumes here offered to the public were written by
myself and Mr. Hunt, except a letter communicated by
a friend in the sixteenth number. Out of the fifty-two
numbers twelve are Mr. Hunt's, with the signatures
L. H. or H. T. For all the rest I am answerable.
W. HAZLITT. 1
January 5, 1817.
1 In 'A Letter to William Gifford, Esq., from William Hazlitt,
Esq., 1819,' there is a vindication of this book from Gifford's malig-
nant and absurd aspersions. This letter was reprinted in 1820 :
but as both editions are very rare I reproduced the matter relating
to 'THE ROUND TABLE' in the ' Memoirs of W. H.,' 1867, vol. i.
p. 246-50. ED.
( vii )
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE PRESENT
EDITION.
THE principal portion of the contents of ' THE BOUND
TABLE ' originally appeared in the columns of the ' Ex-
aminer' newspaper; but the work, as printed in 1817,
comprised articles not contributed to that periodical,
and, on the other hand, excluded matter which had formed
part of the series, as published in the ' Examiner.' 1
The two authors principally concerned had doubtless
their reasons for this re-arrangement and substitution,
and it has been decided that in the present case there
shall be no departure from their plan beyond the ap-
parently obvious step of withdrawing from the book
those few Essays which were not written by Mr. Hazlitt,
and which, therefore, could scarcely with much pro-
priety be admitted into a collected edition of his works.
In every other respect the edition of 'THE BOUND TABLE'
now offered to the public is a faithful reproduction of
that in two volumes duodecimo, 1817.
W. C. H.
KensingtoTi, May, 1871.
1 See Mr. Inland's interesting monograph, List of the Writings
of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt,' 1868, p. 50.
THE ROUND TABLE,
No. I.
IT is our intention, in the course of these papers, oc-
casionally to expose certain vulgar errors, which have
crept into our reasonings on men and manners. Perhaps
one of the most interesting of these is that which relates
to the source of our general attachment to life. We are
not going to enter into the question, whether life is, ort-
the whole, to be regarded as a blessing, though we are
by no means inclined to adopt the opinion of that sage-
who thought "that the best thing that could have-
happened to a man was never to have been born, and
the next best to have died the moment after he came
into existence." The common argument, however,
which is made use of to prove the value of life, from the
strong desire which almost every one feels for its con-
tinuance, appears to be altogether inconclusive. The
wise and the foolish, the weak and the strong, the lame
and the blind, the prisoner and the free, the prosperous
and the wretched, the beggar and the king, the rich and
the poor, the young and the old, from the little child
who tries to leap over his own shadow to the old man
who stumbles blindfold on his grave all feel this desire
in common. Our notions with respect to the importance
B
2 On the Love of Life.
of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle
which has very little to do with its happiness or its
misery.
The love of life is, in general, the effect, not of our
enjoyments, but of our passions. We are not attached
to it so much for its own sake, or as it is connected with
happiness, as because it is necessary to action. Without
life there can be no action no objects of pursuit no
restless desires no tormenting passions. Hence it is
that we fondly cling to it that we dread its termination
as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope. The proof
that our attachment to life is not absolutely owing to the
immediate satisfaction we find in it is, that those per-
sons are commonly found most loth to part with it who
have the least enjoyment of it, and who have the greatest
difficulties to struggle with, as losing gamesters are the
most desperate. And further, there are not many per-
sons who, with all their pretended love of life, would
not, if it had been in their power, have melted down the
longest life to a few hours. " The schoolboy," says
Addison, " counts the time till the return of the holi-
days ; the minor longs to be of age ; the lover is im-
patient till he is married." " Hope and fantastic ex-
pectations spend much of our lives ; and while with
passion we look for a coronation, or the death of an
enemy, or a day of joy, passing from fancy to possession
without any intermediate notices, we throw away a
precious year." (Jeremy Taylor.) We would willingly,
and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present
moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that
separates us from any favourite object. We chiefly look
upon life, then, as the means to an end. Its common
enjoyments and its daily evils are alike disregarded for
any idle purpose we have in view. It should seem as if
there were a few green sunny spots in the desert of life,
to which we are always hastening forward; we eye
On the Love of Life. 3
(hem wistfully in the distance, and care not what perils
or suffering we endure, so that we arrive at them at last.
However weary we may be of the same stale round
however sick of the past however hopeless of the
future the mind still revolts at the thought of death,
because the fancied possibility of good, which always
remains with life, gathers strength as it is about to be
torn from us for ever, and the dullest scene looks bright
compared with the darkness of the grave. Our reluc-
tance to part with existence evidently does not depend
on the calm and even current of our lives, but on the
force and impulse of the passions. Hence that indiffer-
ence to death which has been sometimes remarked in
people who lead a solitary and peaceful life in remote
und barren districts. The pulse of life in them, does not
beat strong enough to occasion any violent revulsion ot
the frame when it ceases. He who treads the green
mountain turf, or he who sleeps beneath it, enjoys an
almost equal quiet. The death of those persons has
always been accounted happy who had attained their
utmost wishes, who had nothing left to regret or desire.
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our
consciousness of having lived in vain to the violence
of our efforts, and the keenness of our disappointments
and to our earnest desire to find in the future, if possible,
a rich amends for the past. We may be said to nurse
our existence with the greatest tenderness, according to
the pain it has cost us ; and feel at every step of our
varying progress the truth of that line of the poet
" An ounce of sweet is worth a pound of sour."
The love of life is in fact the sum of all our passions
and of all our enjoyments ; but these are by no means
the same thing, for the vehemence of our passion is
irritated not less by disappointment than by the pro-
spect of success. Kothing seems to be a match for this
4 On the Love of Life.
general tenaciousness of existence, but such an extremity
either of bodily or mental suffering as destroys at once
the power both of habit and imagination. In short, the
question whether life is accompanied with a greater
quantity of pleasure or pain, may be fairly set aside as
frivolous, and of no practical utility; for our attach-
ment to life depends on our interest in it, and it
cannot be denied that we have more interest in this
moving busy scene, agitated with a thousand hopes and
fears, and checkered with every diversity of joy and
sorrow, than in a dreary blank. To be something is
better than to be nothing, because we can feel no inter-
est in nothing. Passion, imagination, selfwill, the sense
of power, the very consciousness of our existence, bind
us to life, and hold us fast in its chains, as by a magic
spell, in spite of every other consideration. Nothing-
can be more philosophical than the reasoning which
Milton puts into the mouth of the fallen angel :
" And that must end us, that must be our cure
To be no more. Sad cure ! For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion ?"
Nearly the same account may be given in answer to
the question which has been asked, Why so few tyrants
kill themselves ? In the first place, they are never satis-
fied with the mischief they have done, and cannot quit
their hold of power after all sense of pleasure is fled.
Besides, they absurdly argue from the means of happi-
ness placed within their reach to the end itself; and,
dazzled by the pomp and pageantry of a throne, cannot
relinquish the persuasion that they ought to be happier
than other men. The prejudice of opinion, which
attaches us to life, is in them stronger than in others,
On the Love of Life. 5
and incorrigible to experience. The great are life's
fools dupes of the splendid shadows that surround
them, and wedded to the very mockeries of opinion.
Whatever is our situation or pursuit in life, the result
will be much the same. The strength of the passion
seldom corresponds to the pleasure we find in its in-
dulgence. The miser " robs himself to increase his
store ;" the ambitious man toils up a slippery precipice
only to be tumbled headlong from its height ; the lover
is infatuated with the charms of his mistress, exactly
in proportion to the mortifications he has received from
her. Even those who succeed in nothing who, as it has
been emphatically expressed,
" Are made desperate by too quick a sense
Of constant infelicity ; cut off
From peace like exiles, on some barren rock,
Their life's sad prison, \vith no more of ease
Than sentinels between two armies set "
are yet as unwilling as others to give over the unprofit-
able strife : their harassed feverish existence refuses
rest, and frets the languor of exhausted hope into the
torture of unavailing regret. The exile, who has been
unexpectedly restored to his country and to liberty,
often finds his courage fail with the accomplishment of
all his wishes, and the struggle of life and hope ceases
at the same instant.
AVe once more repeat, that we do not, in the foregoing
remarks, mean to enter into a comparative estimate of
the value of human life, but merely to show that the
strength of our attachment to it is a very fallacious test
of its happiness.
6 On Classical Education.
No. II.
On Classical Education.
THE study of the Classics is less to be regarded as
an exercise of the intellect that, as " a discipline of
humanity." The peculiar advantage of this mode of
education consists not so much in strengthening the
understanding, as in softening and refining the taste.
It gives men liberal views : it accustoms the mind to
take an interest in things foreign to itself; to love virtue
for its own sake ; to prefer fame to life, and glory to riches ;
and to fix our thoughts on the remote and permanent,
instead of narrow and fleeting objects. It teaches us to
believe that there is something reallj' great and excellent
in the world, surviving all the shocks of accident and
fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that low and
servile fear which bows only to present power and
upstart authority. Borne and Athens filled a place in
the history of mankind which can never be occupied
again. They were two cities set on a hill, which could
not be hid ; all eyes have seen them, and their light
shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time.
" Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ;
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,
Immortal heirs of universal praise !
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow !"
It is this feeling, more than anything else, which
produces a marked difference between the study of the
ancient and modern languages, and which, from the
weight and importance of the consequences attached
to the former, stamps every word with a monumental
On Classical Education. 7
firmness. By conversing with the miglity dead, we im-
bibe sentiment with knowledge ; we become strongly
attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve
us, except through the influence which they exert over
the mind ; we feel the presence of that power which
gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and
catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.
It is hard to find, in minds otherwise formed, either a
real love of excellence, or a belief that any excellence
exists superior to their own. Everything is brought
down to the vulgar level of their own ideas and pursuits.
Persons without education certainly do not want either
acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns them-
selves, or in things immediately within their observa-
tion. But they have no power of abstraction, no general
standard of taste or scale of opinion. The} 7 see their
objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence
arises that egotism which has been remarked as the cha-
racteristic of self-taught men, and which degenerates into
obstinate prejudice or petulant fickleness of opinion,
according to the natural sluggishness or activity of their
minds. For they either become blindly bigoted to the
first opinions they have struck out for themselves, and
inaccessible to conviction ; or else (the dupes of their
own vanity and shrewdness) are everlasting converts to
every crude suggestion that presents itself, and the last
opinion is always the true one. Each successive dis-
covery flashes upon them with equal light and evidence,
and every new fact overturns their whole system. It is
among this class of persons, whose ideas never extend
beyond the feeling of the moment, that we find partisans,
who are very honest men, with a total want of principle,
and who unite the most hardened effrontery and in-
tolerance of opinion to endless inconsistency and self-
contradiction.
A celebrated political writer of the present day, who
8 On Classical Education.
is a great enemy to classical education, is a remarkable
instance both of what can and what cannot be done
without it.
It has been attempted of late to set up a distinction
between the education of words and the education of
things, and to give the preference in all cases to- the latter.
But, in the first place, the knowledge of things, or of the
realities of life, is not easily to be taught except by
things themselves, and, even if it were, is not so
absolutely indispensable as it has been supposed. " The
world is too much with us, early and late ;" and the fine
dream of our youth is best prolonged among the visionary
objects of antiquity. We owe many of our most amiable
delusions, and some of our superiority over the gross-
ness of mere physical existence, to the strength of our
associations with words. Language, if it throws a veil
over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them,
like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
There can be no true elegance without taste in style. In
the next place, we mean absolutely to deny the appli-
cation of the principle of utility to the present question.
By an obvious transposition of ideas, some persons have
confounded a knowledge of useful things with useful
knowledge. Knowledge is only useful in itself, as it
exercises or gives pleasure to the mind : the only know-
ledge that is of use, in a practical sense, is professional
knowledge. But knowledge, considered as a branch of
general education, can be of use only to the mind of the
person acquiring it. If the knowledge of language
produces pedants, the other kind of knowledge (which
is proposed to be substituted for it) can only produce
quacks. There is no question but that the knowledge
of astronomy, of chemistry, and of agriculture, is highly
useful to the world, and absolutely necessary to be
acquired by persons carrying on certain professions ;
but the practical utility of a knowledge of these subjects
On the < Taller: 9
ends there. For example, it is of the utmost importance
to the navigator to know exactly in what degree of
longitude and latitude such a rock lies ; but to us, sitting
here about our Round Table, it is not of the smallest
consequence whatever, whether the map-maker has
placed it an inch to the right or to the left we are in
no danger of running against it. So the art of making
shoes is a highly useful art, and very proper to be known
and practised by somebody : that is, by the shoemaker.
But to pretend that every one else should be thoroughly
acquainted with the whole process of this ingenious
handicraft, as one branch of useful knowledge, would be
preposterous. It is sometimes asked, What is the use of
poetry? and we have heard the argument carried on
almost like a parody onFalstaffs reasoning about honour :
"Can it set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take
away the grief of a wound ? No. Poetry hath no skill
in surgery then ? No." It is likely that the most
enthusiastic lover of poetry would so far agree to the
truth of this statement, that if he had just broken a leg
he would send for a surgeon, instead of a volume of
poems from a library. But " they that are whole need
not a physician." The reasoning would be well-founded
if we lived in an hospital, and not in the world.
No. III.
On the ' Taller:
OF all the periodical Essayists (our ingenious prede-
cessors), the ' Tatler ' has always appeared to us the
most accomplished and agreeable. Montaigne, who was
the father of this kind of personal authorship among the
modems, in which the reader is admitted behind the
curtain, and sits down with the writer in his gown and
10 On the ' Toiler:
slippers, was a most magnanimous and undisguised
egotist ; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., was the more disin-
terested gossip of the two. The French author is con-
tented to describe the peculiarities of his own mind and
person, which he does with a most copious and unsparing
hand. The English journalist, goodnaturedly, lets you
into the secret both of his own affairs and those of his
neighbours. A young lady, on the other side of Temple
Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for half a day together,
but Mr. Bickerstaff takes due notice of it ; and he has the
first intelligence of the symptoms of the belle passion
appearing in any young gentleman at the west end of the
town. The departures and arrivals of widows with hand-
some jointures, either to bury their grief in the country,
or to procure a second husband in town, are regularly re-
corded in his pages. He is well acquainted with the cele-
brated beauties of the last age at the Court of Charles the
Second, and the old gentleman often grows romantic in
recounting the disastrous strokes which his youth suffered
from the glances of their bright eyes and their unaccount-
able caprices. In particular, he dwells with a secret satis-
faction on one of his mistresses who left him for a rival,
and whose constant reproach to her husband, on occasion
of any quarrel between them, was, "I, that might have
married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this
manner !" The club at the Trumpet consists of a set of
persons as entertaining as himself. The cavalcade of
the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the
countiy squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew,
who waited on him at his chambers in such form and
ceremony, seem not to have settled the order of their
precedence to this hour ; and we should hope the uphol-
sterer and his companions in the Green Park stand
as fair a chance for immortality as some modern politi-
cians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself is a gentleman and a
scholar, a humourist and a man of the world, with a great
On the l Toiler: 11
deal of nice easy naivete about him. If he walks out and
is caught in a shower of rain, ho makes us amends for this
unlucky accident by a criticism on the shower in Virgil,
and concludes with a burlesque copy of verses on a city
shower. He entertains us, when he dates from his own
apartment, with, a quotation from Plutarch or a moral
reflection ; from the Grecian coffeehouse with politics,
and from Will's or the Temple with the poets and players,
the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about town. In
reading the pages of the ' Tatler ' we seem as if suddenly
transported to the age of Queen Anne of toupees and full-
bottomed periwigs. The whole appearance of our dress
and manners undergoes a delightful metamorphosis.
AVe are surprised with the rustling of hoops and the
glittering of paste buckles. The beaux and belles are
of a quite different species ; we distinguish the dappers,
the smarts, and the pretty fellows, as they pass ; we are
introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the
scenes are made familiar with the persons of Mr. Pen-
kethman and Mr. Bullock ; we listen to a dispute at a
tavern on the merits of the Duke of Maryborough or
Marshal Turenne ; or are present at the first rehearsal
of a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem
by Mr. Pope. The privilege of thus virtually transport-
ing ourselves to past times is even greater than that of
visiting distant places. London a hundred years ago
would be better worth seeing than Paris at the present
moment. 1
It may be said that all this is to be found, in the same
or a greater degree, in the ' Spectator.' We do not think
so ; or at least, there is in the last work a much greater
proportion of commonplace matter. We have always
preferred the ' Tatler ' to the ' Spectator.' Whether it is
owing to our having been earlier or better acquainted
with the one than the other, our pleasure in reading the
1 This was written in 1815. ED.
12 On the ' Tatter.'
two works is not at all in proportion to their compara-
tive reputation. The 'Tatler' contains only half the
number of volumes, and we will venture to say, at least
an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. " The
first sprightly runnings " are there ; it has more of
the original spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of
nature. The indications of character and strokes of
liumour are more true and frequent ; the reflections that
suggest themselves arise more from the occasion, and are
less spun out into regular dissertations. They are more
like the remarks which occur in sensible conversation,
and less like a lecture. Something is left to the under-
standing of the reader. Steele seems to have gone into
his closet only to set down what he observed out-of-
doors ; Addison seems to have spun out and wire-drawn
the hints which he borrowed from Steele, or took from
nature, to the utmost. We do not mean to depreciate
Addison's talents, but we wish to do justice to Steele,
who was, upon the whole, a less artificial and more
original writer. The descriptions of Steele resemble
loose sketches or fragments of a comedy ; those of Addi-
son are ingenious paraphrases on the genuine text. The
characters of the club, not only in the ' Tatler ' but in the
1 Spectator,' were drawn by Steele. That of Sir Eoger de
Coverley is among them. Addison has gained himself eter-
nal honour by his manner of filling up this last character.
Those of Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb are not a
whit behind it in delicacy and felicity. Many of the most
-exquisite pieces in the ' Tatler ' are also Addison's as
the Court of Honour, and the Personification of Musical
Instruments. We do not know whether the picture of
the family of an old acquaintance, in which the children
run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the door, and the one that
loses the race that way turns back to tell the father that
he is come, with the nice gradation of incredulity in the
little boy, who is got into ' Guy of War wick' and ' The Seven
On Hie ' Tatter.' 13
Champions,' and who shakes his head at the veracity of
' ^Esop's Fables,' is Steele's or Addison's. 1 The account
of the two sisters, one of whom held her head up higher
than ordinary from having on a pair of flowered garters,
and of the married lady who complained to the 'Tatler'
of the neglect of her husband, are unquestionably Steele's.
If the ' Tatler ' is not inferior to the ' Spectator ' in manners
and character, it is very superior to it in the interest of
many of the stories. Several of the incidents related by
Steele have never been surpassed in the heartrending
pathos of private distress. We might refer to those of
the lover and his mistress when the theatre caught fire ;
of the bridegroom who, by accident, kills his bride on
1he day of their marriage ; the story of Mr. Eustace and
his wife, and the fine dream about his own mistress
when a youth. What has given its superior popularity
to the ' Spectator ' is the greater gravity of its pretensions,
its moral dissertations and critical reasonings, by which we
confess we are less edified than by other things. Systems
and opinions change, but nature is always true. It is
the extremely moral and didactic tone of the ' Spectator '
which makes us apt to think of Addison (according to
Mandeville's sarcasm) as " a parson in a tie-wig." Some
of the moral essays are, however, exquisitely beautiful
and happy. Such are the reflections on Westminster
Abbey, on the Eoyal Exchange, and some very affecting
ones on the death of a young lady. These, it must be
allowed, are the perfection of elegant sermonising. His
1 It is Steele's, and the whole paper (No. 95) is in his most
delightful manner. The dream about the mistress, however, is
given to Addison by the Editors, and the general style of that
number is his ; though, from the story being related personally of
Bickerstaft', who is also represented as having been at that time in
the army, we conclude it to have originally come from Steele, per-
haps in the course of conversation. The particular incident is
much more like a story of his than of Addison's. H. T. [Leiyh
Hunt.']
1-1 On Modern Comedy.
critical essays we do not think quite so good. We prefer
Steele's occasional selection of beautiful poetical pas-
sages, without any affectation of analysing their beau-
ties, to Addison's fine-spun theories. The best criticism
in the ' Spectator,' that on the Cartoons of Raphael, is by
Steele. We owed this acknowledgment to a writer
who has so often put us in good humour with our-
selves and everything about us, when few things else
could. 1
No. IV.
On Modern Comedy.
THE question which has often been asked, Why there
are so few good modern comedies ? appears in a great
measure to answer itself. It is because so many ex-
cellent comedies have been written, that there are none
written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out
destroys the very food on which it lives ; and by con-
stantly and successfully exposing the follies and weak-
nesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself
nothing worth laughing at. It holds the mirror up to
nature ; and men, seeing their most striking peculiarities
and defects pass in gay review before them, learn either
to avoid or conceal them. It is not the criticism which
the public taste exercises upon, the stage, but the criti-
cism which the stage exercises upon public manners,
that is fatal to comedy, by rendering the subject-matter
of it tame, correct, and spiritless. We are drilled into
a sort of stupid decorum, and forced to wear the same
1 We had in our hands the other day an original copy of the
' Tatler,' and a list of the subscribers. It is curious to see some
names there which we should hardly think of (that of Sir Isaac
Newton is among them), and also to observe the degree of interest
excited by those of the different persons, which is not adjusted
according to the rules of the Heralds' College.
On, Modern Comedy. 15
dull uniform of outward appearance ; and yet it is asked,
why the comic muse does not point, as she was wont,
at the peculiarities of our gait and gesture, and exhibit
the picturesque contrast of our dress and costume, in
all that graceful variety in which she delights. The
genuine source of comic writing,
" Where it must live, or have no life at all,"
is undoubtedly to be found in the distinguishing pecu-
liarities of men and manners. Now, this distinction can
subsist, so as to be strong, pointed, and general, only
while the manners of different classes are formed im-
mediately by their particular circumstances, and the
characters of individuals by their natural temperament
and situation, without being everlastingly modified and
neutralised by intercourse with the world by know-
ledge and education. In a certain stage of society, men
may be said to vegetate like trees, and to become rooted
to the soil in which they grow. They have no idea of
anything beyond themselves and their immediate sphere
of action ; they are, as it were, circumscribed and de-
fined by their particular circiimstances ; they are what
their situation makes them, and nothing more. Each is
absorbed in his own profession or pursuit, and each in
his turn contracts that habitual peculiarity of manners
and opinions, which makes him the subject of ridicule to
others, and the sport of the comic muse. Thus the
physician is nothing but a physician, the lawyer is a
mere lawyer, the scholar degenerates into a pedant, the
country squire is a different species of being from the
fine gentleman, the citizen and the courtier inhabit a
different world, and even the affectation of certain
characters, in aping the follies or vices of their betters,
only serves to show the immeasurable distance which
custom or fortune has placed between them. Hence the
early comic writers, taking advantage of this mixed and
16 On Modern Comedy.
solid mass of ignorance, folly, pride, arid prejudice,
made those deep and lasting incisions into it have
given those sharp and nice touches, that bold relief to
their characters have opposed them in every variety of
contrast and collision, of conscious self-satisfaction and
mutual antipathy, with a power which can only find
full scope in the same rich and inexhaustible materials.
But in proportion as comic genius succeeds in taking off
the mask from ignorance and conceit, as it teaches us to
" See ourselves as others see us ;"
in proportion as we are brought out on the stage to-
gether, and our prejudices clash one against the other,
our sharp angular points wear off; we are no longer
rigid in absurdity, passionate in folly, and we prevent
the ridicule directed at our habitual foibles by laughing
at them ourselves.
If it be said that there is the same fund of absurdity
and prejudice in the world as ever that there are the
same unaccountable perversities lurking at the bottom
of eveiy breast I should answer, be it so ; but at least
we keep our follies to ourselves as much as possible
we palliate, shuffle, and equivocate with them they
sneak into by-corners, and do not, like Chaucer's
Canterbury Pilgrims, march along the highroad and
form a procession they do not entrench themselves
strongly behind custom and precedent they are not
embodied in professions and ranks in life they are not
organised into a system they do not openly resort to a
standard, but are a sort of straggling nondescripts, that,
like Wart, " present no mark to the foeman." As to the
gross and palpable absurdities of modern manners, they
are too shallow and barefaced, and those who affect are
too little serious in them to make them worth the de-
tection of the comic muse. They proceed from an idle
impudent affectation of folly in general, in the dashing
On Modern Comedy. 17
bravura style, not from an infatuation with any of its
characteristic modes. In short, the proper object of
ridicule is egotism ; and a man cannot be a very great
egotist who every day sees himself represented on the
stage. We are deficient in comedy, because we are
without characters in real life as we have no historical
pictures, because we have no faces proper for them.
It is, indeed, the evident tendency of all literature to
generalise and dissipate character, by giving men the
same artificial education and the same common stock of
ideas ; so that we see all objects from the same point of
view, and through the same reflected medium. We
learn to exist, not in ourselves, but in books; all men
become alike mere readers spectators, not actors in the
scene, and lose all proper personal identity. The tem-
plar, the wit, the man of pleasure, and the man of fashion,
the courtier and the citizen, the knight and the squire,
the lover and the miser Lovelace, Lothario, Will
Honeycomb, and Sir Koger de Coverley, Sparkish
and Lord Foppington, Western and Tom Jones, My
Father and My Uncle Toby, Millamant and Sir Samp-
son Legend, Don Quixote and Sancho, Gil Bias
and Guzman d'Alfarache, Count Fathom and Joseph
Surface have all met, and exchanged commonplaces
on the barren plains of the haute literature toil slowly
on to the Temple of Science, seen a long way oft' upon
a level, and end in one dull compound of politics, criti-
cism, chemistry, and metaphysics !
We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. If,
for example, any of us were to put ourselves into the
stage-coach from Salisbury to London, it is more than
probable we should not meet with the same number
of odd accidents, or ludicrous distresses on the road,
that befei Parson Adams ; but why, if we get into a
common vehicle, and submit to the conveniences of
modern travelling, should we complain of the want of
c
18 On Modern Comedy.
adventures ? Modern manners may be compared to a
modern stage-coach : our limbs may be a little cramped
with the confinement, and we may grow drowsy; but
we arrive safe, without any very amusing or very sad
accident, at our journey's end.
Again, the alterations which have taken place in con-
versation and dress in the same period have been by no
means favourable to comedy. The present prevailing
style of conversation is not personal, but critical and
analytical. It consists almost entirely in the discussion
of general topics, in dissertations on philosophy or taste ;
and Congreve would be able to derive no better hints
from the conversations of our toilettes or drawing-rooms
for the exquisite raillery or poignant repartee of his
dialogues, than from a deliberation of the Eoyal Society.
In the same manner, the extreme simplicity and grace-
ful uniformity of modern dress, however favourable to
the arts, has certainly stript comedy of one of its richest
ornaments and most expressive symbols. The sweeping
pall and buskin and nodding plume were never more
serviceable to tragedy, than the enormous hoops and
stiff stays worn by the belles of former days were to the
intrigues of comedy. They assisted wonderfully in
heightening the mysteries of the passion, and adding to
the intricacy of the plot. Wycherley and Vanbrugh
could not have spared the dresses of Vandyke. These
strange fancy-dresses, perverse disguises, and counter-
feit shapes, gave an agreeable scope to the imagination.
" That sevenfold fence " was a sort of foil to the luscious-
ness of the dialogue, and a barrier against the sly en-
croachments of double entendre. The greedy e} T e and
bold hand of indiscretion were repressed, which gave a
greater licence to the tongue. The senses were not to
be gratified in an instant. Love was entangled in the
folds of the swelling handkerchief, and the desires might
wander for ever round the circumference of a quilted
On Modern Comedy. 19
petticoat, or find a rich lodging in the flowers of a
damask stomacher. There was room for years of patient
contrivance for a thousand thoughts, schemes, con-
jectures, hopes, fears, and wishes. There seemed no end
of difficulties and delays ; to overcome so many obstacles
was the work of ages. A mistress was an angel con-
cealed behind whalebone, flounces, and brocade. What
an undertaking, to penetrate through the disguise !
What an impulse must it give to the blood, what a
keenness to the invention, what a volubility to the
tongue ! " Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man," was then
the most significant commendation. But nowadays
a woman can be but undressed.
The same account might be extended to tragedy.
Aristotle has long since said, that tragedy purifies the
mind by terror and pity that is, substitutes an artificial
and intellectual interest for real passion. Tragedy, like
comedy, must therefore defeat itself; for its patterns
must be drawn from the living models within the breast,
from feeling, or from observation; and the materials of
tragedy cannot be found among a people who are the
habitual spectators of tragedy, whose interests and
passions are not their own, but ideal, remote, senti-
mental, and abstracted. It is for this reason chiefly, we
conceive, that the highest efforts of the tragic muse are
in general the earliest ; where the strong impulses of
nature are not lost in the refinements and glosses of
art ; where the writers themselves, and those whom they
saw about them, had " warm hearts of flesh and blood
beating in their bosoms, and were not embowelled of
their natural entrails, and stuffed with paltry blurred
sheets of paper." Shakspeare, with all his genius, could
not have written as he did, if he had lived in the present
times. Nature would not have presented itself to him
in the same freshness and vigour ; he must have seen it
through all the refractions of successive dullness, and
20 On Mr. Keans lago.
his powers would liave languished in the dense atmo-
sphere of logic and criticism. " Men's minds," he some-
where says, " are parcel of their fortunes ;" and his age
was necessary to him. It was this which enabled him
.,0 grapple at once with Nature, and which stamped his
characters with her image and superscription.
No. V.
On Mr. Keans lago. 1
WE certainly think Mr. Kean's performance of the
part of lago one of the most extraordinary exhibi-
tions on the stage. There is no one within our re-
membrance who has so completely foiled the critics as
this celebrated actor. One sagacious person imagines that
he must perform a part in a certain manner ; another
virtuoso chalks out a different path for him ; and when
the time comes, he does the whole off in a way that
neither of them had the least conception of, and which
both of them are therefore very ready to condemn as
entirely wrong. It was ever the trick of genius to be
thus. We confess that Mr. Kean has thrown us out
more than once. For instance, we are very much in-
clined to adopt the opinion of a contemporary critic, that
his Eichard is not gay enough, and that his lago is not
grave enough. This he may perhaps conceive to be the
mere caprice of idle criticism ; but we will try to give
our reasons, and shall leave them to Mr. Kean's better
judgment. It is to be remembered, then, that Richard
was a princely villain, borne along in a sort of trium-
phal car of royal state, buoyed up with the hopes and
privileges of his birth, reposing even on the sanctity of
1 Compare ' A View of the English Stage,' 1818, edit. 1821, p. 70.
This criticism originally appeared in the Examiner newspaper, July
23, 1814. The text of 1817 presents occasional variations. ED.
On Mr. Keans lago. 21
religion, trampling on his devoted victims without
remorse, and who looked out and laughed from the
high watchtower of his confidence and his expectations
on the desolation and misery he had caused around him.
He held on his way, unquestioned, " hedged in with the
divinity of kings," amenable to no tribunal, and abusing
his power in contempt of mankind. But as for lago, we
conceive differently of him. He had not the same natural
advantages. He was a mere adventurer in mischief a
painstaking plodding knave, without patent or pedigree,
who was obliged to work his uphill way by wit, not by
will, and to be the founder of his own fortune. He was,
if we may be allowed a vulgar allusion, a sort of proto-
type of modern Jacobinism, who thought that talents
ought to decide the place a man of " morbid sensi-
bility" (in the fashionable phrase), full of distrust, of
hatred, of anxious and corroding thoughts, and who,
though he might assume a temporary superiority over
others by superior adroitness, and pride himself in his
skill, could not be supposed to assume it as a matter of
course, as if he had been entitled to it from his birth.
We do not here mean to enter into the characters of the
two men, but something must be allowed to the differ-
ence of their situations. There might be the same
insensibility in both as to the end in view, but there
could not well be the same security as to the success of
the means. lago had to pass through a different ordeal :
he had no appliances and means to boot no royal road
to the completion of his tragedy. His pretensions were
not backed by authority ; they were not baptized at
the font ; they were not holy-water-proof. He had the
whole to answer for in his own person, and. could not
shift the responsibility to the heads of others. Mr.
Kean's Richard was therefore, we think, deficient in
something of that regal jollity and reeling triumph of
success which the part would bear; but this we can
22 On Mr. Kean's lago.
easily account for, because it is the traditional common
place idea of the character, that he is to " play the dog
to bite and snarl." The extreme unconcern and
laboured levity of his lago, on the contrary, is a refine-
ment and original device of the actor's own mind, and
therefore deserves consideration. The character of lago,
in fact, belongs to a class of characters common to Shak-
speare, and at the same time peculiar to him namely,
that of great intellectual activity, accompanied with a
total want of moral principle, and thei'efore displaying
itself at the constant expense of others, making use of
reason as a pander to will, employing its ingenuity and
its resources to palliate its own crimes and aggravate
the faults of others, and seeking to confound the practical
distinctions of right and wrong by referring them to
some overstrained standard of speculative refinement.
Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought the
whole of the character of lago unnatural. Shakspeare,
who was quite as good a philosopher as he was a poet,
thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power,
which is another name for the love of mischief, was
natural to man. He would know this as well or
better than if it had been demonstrated to him by
a logical diagram, merely from seeing children paddle
in the dirt, or kill flies for sport. We might ask those
who think the character of lago not natural, why they
go to see it performed, but from the interest it excites,
the sharper edge which it sets on their curiosity and
imagination? Why do we go to see tragedies in general,
why do we always read the accounts in the newspapers
of dreadful fires and shocking murders, but for the same
reason ? Why do so many persons frequent executions
and trials, or why do the lower classes almost universally
take delight in barbarous sports and cruelty to animals,
but because there is a natural tendency in the mind to-
strong excitement, a desire to have its faculties roused
On Mr. Kean's lago. 23
and stimulated to the utmost ? Whenever this principle
is not under the restraint of humanity or the sense of
moral obligation, there are no excesses to which it will
not of itself give rise, without the assistance of any
other motive, either of passion or self-interest. lago
is only an extreme instance of the kind that is, of
diseased intellectual activity, with an almost perfect
indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a pre-
ference for the latter, because it falls more in with his
favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts,
and scope to his actions. Be it observed, too (for the
sake of those who are for squaring all human actions by
the maxims of Eochefoucault), that he is quite or nearly
as indifferent to his own fate as to that of others ; that
he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage ;
and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion
an incorrigible love of mischief, an insatiable craving
after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind.
Our " ancient " is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie
that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an
antithesis ; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace
of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations
in the heart of a flea in an air-pump ; who plots the
ruin of his friends as an exercise for his understanding,
and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. Now this,
though it be sport, yet it is dreadful sport. There is no
room for trifling and indifference, nor scarcely for the
appearance of it ; the very object of his whole plot is to
keep his faculties stretched on the rack, in a state of
watch and ward, in a sort of breathless suspense, with-
out a moment's interval of repose. He has a desperate
stake to play for, like a man who fences with poisoned
weapons, and has business enough on his hands to call
for the whole stock of his sober circumspection, his dark
duplicity, and insidious gravity. He resembles a man
who sits down to play at chess for the sake of the diffi-
24 On Mr. Keans lago.
culty and complication of the game, and who immediately
becomes absorbed in it. His amusements, if they are
amusements, are severe and saturnine even his wit
blisters. His gaiety arises from the success of bis
treachery ; his ease from the sense of the torture he
has inflicted on others. Even, if other circumstances
permitted it, the part ho has to play with Othello re-
quires that he should assume the most serious concern,
and something of the plausibility of a confessor. " His
cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom
o' Bedlam." He is repeatedly called " honest lago,"
which looks as if there were something suspicious in his
appearance, which admitted a different construction.
The tone which he adopts in the scenes with Eoderigo,
Desdemona, and Cassio, is only a relaxation from the
more arduous business of the play. Yet there is in all
his conversation an inveterate misanthropy, a licentious
keenness of perception, which is always sagacious of
evil, and snuffs up the tainted scent of its quarry with
rancorous delight. An exuberance of spleen is the
essence of the character. The view which we have here
taken of the subject (if at all correct) will not therefore
justify the extreme alteration which Mr. Kean has
introduced into the part. Actors in general have been
struck only with the wickedness of the character, and
have exhibited an assassin going to the place of execu-
tion. Mr. Kean has abstracted the wit of the character,
makes lago appear throughout an excellent good fellow
and lively bottle-companion. But though we do not
wish him to be represented as a monster or fiend, we
see no reason why he should instantly be converted into-
a pattern of comic gaiety and good-humour. The light
which illumines the character should rather resemble
the flashes of lightning in the murky sky, which
make the darkness more terrible. Mr. Kean's lago is,
we suspect, too much in the sun. His manner of acting
On the Love of the Country. 25
the part would have suited better with the character of
Edmund in ' King Lear,' who, though, in other respects
much the same, has a spice of gallantry in his constitu-
tion, and has the favour and countenance of the ladies,
which always gives a man the smug appearance of a
bridegroom.
No. VI.
On the Love of the Country.
TO THE EDITOR OF 'THE BOUND TABLK.'
SIR, I do not know that any one has ever explained
satisfactorily the true source of our attachment to-
natural objects, or of that soothing emotion which the
sight of the country hardly ever fails to infuse into
the mind. Some persons have ascribed this feeling to
the natural beauty of the objects themselves ; others to
the freedom from care, the silence and tranquillity,
which scenes of retirement afford ; others to the healthy
and innocent employments of a country life ; others to
the simplicity of country manners, and others to dif-
ferent causes ; but none to the right one. All these
causes may, I believe, have a share in producing this-
feeling ; but there is another more general principle,
which has been left untouched, and which I shall here
explain, endeavouring to be as little sentimental as the
subject will admit.
Rousseau, in his ' Confessions ' the most valuable of
all his works relates that, when he took possession of
his room at Annecy, at the house of his beloved mistress-
and friend, he found that he could see " a little spot of
green " from his window, which endeared his situation,
the more to him, because, he says, it was the first time
he had had this object constantly before him since he.
left Boissy, the place where he was at school when a
26 On the Love of the Country.
child. 1 Some such feeling as that here described will
be found lurking at the bottom of all our attachments of
this sort. Were it not for the recollections habitually
associated with them, natural objects could not interest
the mind in the manner they do. No doubt the sky is
beautiful ; the clouds sail majestically along its bosom ;
the sun is cheering ; there is something exquisitely
graceful in the manner in which a plant or tree puts
forth its branches ; the motion with which they bend
and tremble in the evening breeze is soft and lovely ;
there is music in the babbling of a brook ; the view
from the top of a mountain is full of grandeur ; nor can
we behold the ocean, with indifference. Or, as the
minstrel sweetly sings
" Oh, how can'st them renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her vot'ry yields ?
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even ;
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven
Oh, how can'st thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven !"
It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone
that we admire in Nature ; the most insignificant and
the rudest objects are often found connected with the
strongest emotions; we become attached to the most
common and familiar images, as to the face of a friend
whom we have long known, and from whom we have re-
ceived many benefits. It is because natural objects have
been associated with the sports of our childhood, with air
and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, when the mind
takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with the
fondest interest to whatever strikes its attention ; with
1 Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old
post which stood in the courtyard before the house where he was
brought up.
On the Love of the Couninj. 27
change of place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts
of distant friends : it is because they have surrounded
us in almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in
pleasure and in pain because they have been one chief
source and nourishment of our feelings, and a part of
our being, that we love them as we do ourselves.
There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for
our love of Nature as for all our habitual attachments,
namely, association of ideas. But this is not all. That
which distinguishes this attachment from others is
the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to
physical objects, the associations connected with any
one object extending to the whole class. My having
been attached to any particular person does not make
me feel the same attachment to the next person I may
chance to meet ; but if I have once associated strong
feelings of delight with the objects of natural scenery,
the tie becomes indissoluble, and I shall ever after feel
the same attachment to other objects of the same sort.
I remember, when I was abroad, the trees and grass
and wet leaves rustling in the walks of the Tuileries-
seemed to be as much English, to be as much the same
trees and grass that I had always been used to, as the
sun shining over my head was the same sun which I
saw in England ; the faces only were foreign to me.
AY hence comes this difference ? It arises from our
always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the indi-
vidual with man, and only the idea of the class with
natural objects. In the one case, the external appear-
ance or physical structure is the least thing to be at-
tended to ; in the other, it is everything. The springs
that move the human form, and make it friendly or
adverse to me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of
motives, passions, and ideas contained in that narrow
compass, of which I know nothing, and in which I
have no share. Each individual is a world to himself,
28 On the Love of the Country.
governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward
impulses. I can, therefore, make no inference from one
individual to another; nor can my habitual sentiments,
with respect to any individual, extend beyond himself
to others. But it is otherwise with respect to Nature.
There is neither hypocrisy, caprice, nor mental reserva-
tion in her favours. Our intercourse with her is not
liable to accident or change, interruption or disappoint-
ment. She smiles on us still the same. Tluis, to give
an obvious instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool
shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by
the sound of a brook running at its feet, I am sure that
wherever I can find a tree and a brook I can enjoy the
pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I
can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly
power that inhabits them, dryad or naiad, offering its
cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin
of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the same kind
being the same, not only in their appearance but in their
practical \ises, we habitually confound them together
under the same general idea ; and whatever fondness we
may have conceived for one is immediately placed to the
common account. The most opposite kinds and remote
trains of feeling gradually go to enrich the same senti-
ment ; and in our love of Nature there is all the force of
individual attachment combined with the most airy
abstraction. It is this circumstance which gives that
refinement, expansion, and wild interest to feelings of
this sort, when strongly excited, which every one must
have experienced who is a true lover of Nature. The
sight of the setting sun does not affect me so much from
the beauty of the object itself, from the glory kindled
through the glowing skies, the rich broken columns of
light, or the dying streaks of day, as that it indistinctly
recalls to me numberless thoughts and feelings with
which, through many a year and season, I have watched
On {lie Love of the Country. 29
his bright descent in the warm summer evenings, or
beheld him struggling to cast a " farewell sweet "
through the thick clouds of winter. I love to see the
trees first covered with leaves in the spring, the prim-
roses peeping out from some sheltered bank, and the
innocent lambs running races on the soft green turf ;
because at that birth-time of Nature I have always felt
sweet hopes and happy wishes which have not been
fulfilled ! The dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream
the woods swept by the loud blast the dark massy
foliage of autumn the gray trunks and naked branches
of the trees in winter the sequestered copse and wide
extended heath the warm sunny showers and De-
cember snows have all charms for me ; there is no
object, however trifling or rude, that has not, in some
mood or other, found the way to my heart ; and I might
say, in the words of the poet :
" To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
Thus Nature is a kind of universal home, and every
object it presents to us an old acquaintance with un-
altered looks :
" Nature did ne'er betray
The heart that lov'd her. but through all the years
Of this our life, it is her privilege
To lead from joy to joy.''
For there is that consent and mutual harmony among
all her works one undivided spirit pervading them
throughout that, if we have once knit ourselves in
hearty fellowship to any of them, they will never after-
wards appear as strangers to us, but, whichever way we
turn, we shall find a secret power to have gone out before
us, moulding them into such shapes as fancy loves, in-
forming them with life and sympathy, bidding them put
on their festive looks and gayest attire at our approach,
and to pour all their nweets and choicest treasures at our
80 On Posthumous Fame.
feet. For him, then, who has well acquainted himself
with Nature's works, she wears always one face, and
speaks the same well-known language, striking on the
heart, amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the
world, like the music of one's native tongue heard in
some far-off country.
We do not connect the same feelings with the works
of Art as with those of Nature, because we refer them to
man, and associate with them the separate interests and
passions which we know belong to those who are the
authors or possessors of them. Nevertheless, there are
some such objects, as a cottage or a village church,
which excite in us the same sensations as the sight of
Nature, and which are, indeed, almost always included
in descriptions of natural scenery.
" Or from the mountain's sides
View wilds and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires,
And hear their simple bell."
Which is in part, no doubt, because they are surrounded
with natural objects, and, in a populous country, in-
separable from them ; and also because the human
interest they excite relates to manners and feelings
which are simple, common, such as all can enter into,
and which, therefore, always produce a pleasing effect
upon the mind.
No. VII.
On Posthumous Fame. Whether Shakspeare was influenced
by a Love of it f
IT has been much disputed whether Shakspeare was
actuated by the love of fame, though the question has
been thought by others not to admit of any doubt, on
the ground that it was impossible for any man of great
genius to be without this feeling It was supposed
On Posthumous Fame. 31
that immortality, which was the natural inheritance of
men of powerful genius, must be ever present to their
minds, as the reward, the object, and the animating
spring of all their efforts. This conclusion does not ap-
pear to be well-founded, and that for the following reasons.
First, the love of fame is the offspring of taste rather
than of genius. The love of fame implies a knowledge
of its existence. The men of the greatest genius, whether
poets or philosophers, who lived in the first ages of
society, only just emerging from the gloom of ignorance
and barbarism, could not be supposed to have much idea
of those long trails of lasting glory which they were to
leave behind them, and of which there were as yet no
examples. But after such men, inspired by the love of
truth and nature, have struck out those lights which
become the gaze and admiration of after-times when
those who succeed in distant generations read with
wondering rapture the works which the bards and sages
of antiquity have bequeathed to them when they con-
template the imperishable power of intellect which sur-
vives the stroke of death and the revolutions of empire
it is then that the passion for fame becomes an
habitual feeling in the mind, and that men naturally
wish to excite the same sentiments of admiration in
others which they themselves have felt, and to transmit
their names with the same honours to posterity. It is
from the fond enthusiastic veneration with which we
recall the names of the celebrated men of past times,
and the idolatrous worship we pay to their memories,
that we learn what a delicious thing fame is, and would
willingly make any efforts or sacrifices to be thought of
in the same way. It is in the true spirit of this feeling
that a modern writer exclaims
"Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
The poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays !
Oh ! might my name be number'd among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days !"
32 Gn Posthumous Fame.
The lovo of fame is a species of emulation ; or, in other
words, the love ot admiration is in proportion to the
admiration with which the works of the highest genius
have inspired us, to the delight we have received from
their habitual contemplation, and to our participation
in the general enthusiasm with which they have been
regarded by mankind. Thus there is little of this feel-
ing discoverable in the Greek writers, whose ideas of
posthumous fame seem to have been confined to the
glory of heroic actions ; whereas the Roman poets and
orators, stimulated by the reputation which their pre-
decessors had acquired, and having those exquisite
models constantly before their eyes, are full of it. So
Milton, whose capacious mind was imbued with the
rich stores of sacred and of classic lore, to whom learning
opened her inmost page, and whose eye seemed to be
ever bent back to the great models of antiquity, was, it
is evident, deeply impressed with a feeling of lofty
emulation, and a strong desire to produce some work of
lasting and equal reputation :
"Nor sometimes forget
Those other two, cquall'd with me in fate,
So were I equall'd witli them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mseonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old." '
Spenser, who was a man of learning, had a high opinion
of the regard due to "famous poets' wit;" and Bacon,
whose vanity is as well known as his excessive adula-
tion of that of others, asks, in a tone of proud exultation,
" Have not the poems of Homer lasted five-and-twenty
hundred years, and not a syllable of them is lost?"
Chaucer seems to have derived his notions of fame more
immediately from the reputation acquired by the Italian
poets, his contemporaries, which had at that time spread
1 See also the passage in his prose works relating to the first
design of ' Paradise Lost.'
On Posthumous Fame. 33
itself over Europe ; while the latter, who were the first
to unlock the springs of ancient learning, and who
slaked their thirst of knowledge at that pure fountain-
head, would naturally imbibe the same feeling from its
highest source. Thus, Dante has conveyed the finest
image that can perhaps be conceived of the power of
this principle over the human mind, when he describes
the heroes and celebrated men of antiquity as " serene
and smiling," though in the shades of death,
" Because on earth their names
In Fame's eternal volume shine for aye.''
But it is not so in Shakspeare. There is scarcely the
slightest trace of any such feeling in his writings, nor
any appearance of anxiety for their fate, or of a desire
to perfect them or make them worthy of that immortality
to which they were destined. And this indifference may
be accounted for from the very circumstance, that he
was almost entirely a man of genius, or that in, him this
faculty bore sway over every other ; he was either not
intimately conversant with the productions of the great
writers who had gone before him, or at least was not
much indebted to them ; he revelled in the world of
observation and of fancy ; and perhaps his mind was of
too prolific and active a kind to dwell with intense and
continued interest on the images of beauty or of grandeur
presented to it by the genius of others. He seemed
scarcely to have an individual existence of his own, but
to borrow that of others at will, and to pass successively
through " every variety of untried being " to be now
Hamlet, now Othello, now Lear, now Falstaff, now Ariel.
In the mingled interests and feelings belonging to this
wide range of imaginary reality, in the tumult and
rapid transitions of this waking dream, the author could
not easily find time to think of himself, nor wish to
embody that personal identity in idle reputation after
death, of which he was so little tenacious while living.
34 On Posthumous Fame.
To feel a strong desire that others should think highly
of us, it is, in general, necessary that we should think
highly of ourselves. There is something of egotism,
and even pedantry, in this sentiment ; and there is no
author who was so little tinctured with these as Shak-
speare. The passion for fame, like other passions,
requires an exclusive and exaggerated admiration of its
object, and attaches more consequence to literary attain-
ments and pursuits than they really possess. Shak-
speare had looked too much abroad into the world, and
his views of things were of too universal and compre-
hensive a cast, not to have taught him to estimate the
importance of posthumous fame according to its true
value and relative proportions. Though he might have
some conception of his future fame, he could not but
feel the contrast between that and his actual situation ;
and, indeed, he complains bitterly of the latter in one of
his sonnets. 1 He would perhaps think, that to be the
idol of posterity when we are no more, was hardly a
full compensation for being the object of the glance and
scorn of fools while we are living ; and that, in truth,
this universal fame so much vaunted was a vague
phantom of blind enthusiasm ; for what is the amount
even of Shakspeare's fame ? That in that very country
which boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps not one
person in ten has ever heard of his name or read a
syllable of his writings !
1 " Oh ! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."
At another time, we find him " desiring this man's art, and that
man's scope :" so little was Shakspeare, as far as we can learn,
enamoured of himself !
On Hogarttis ' Marriage a la mode! 35
"VYe will add another observation in connection with
this subject, which is, that men of the greatest genius
produce their works with too much facility and, as it
were, spontaneouslj- to require the love of fame as
a stimulus to their exertions, or to make them seem de-
serving of the admiration of mankind as their reward.
It is, indeed, one characteristic mark of the highest
class of excellence to appear to come naturally from the
mind of the author, without consciousness or effort. The
work seems like inspiration to be the gift of some god
or of the muse. But it is the sense of difficulty which
enhances the admiration of power, both in ourselves and
in others. Hence it is that there is nothing so remote
from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for
those who are endowed with the highest powers of the
human mind to produce the miracles of art as for other
men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have
produced some of his divinest works almost without
having seen a picture, probably did not know that he
had done anything extraordinary.
No. VII.
On Hogarth's ' Marriage a la mode.' l
THE superiority of the pictures of Hogarth, which we
have seen in the late collection at the British Institu-
tion, to the common prints is confined chiefly to the
' Marriage a. la mode.' We shall attempt to illustrate
a few of their most striking excellences, more particu-
larly with reference to the expression of character.
Their merits are indeed so prominent, and have been so
often discussed, that it may be thought difficult to point
1 This Essay, in two parts, is reprinted at the end of ' A Sketch
of the Principal Picture Galleries,' &c. (1824).- ED.
36 On HogariTis ' Marriage a la mode'
out any new beauties; but they contain so much truth
of nature, they present the objects to the eye under so
many aspects and bearings, admit of so many construc-
tions, and are so pregnant with -meaning, that the
subject is in a manner inexhaustible.
Boccaccio, the most refined and sentimental of all the
novel-writers, has been stigmatised as a mere inventor
of licentious tales, because readers in general have only
seized on those things in his works which were suited
to their own taste, and have reflected their own gross-
ness back upon the writer. So it has happened that the
majority of critics having been most struck with the
strong and decided expression in Hogarth, the extreme
delicacy and subtle gradations of character in his pic-
tures have almost entirely escaped them. In the first
picture of the ' Marriage a la mode ' the three figures of
the young nobleman, his intended bride, and her in-
amorato the lawyer, show how much Hogarth excelled
in the power of giving soft and effeminate expression.
They have, however, been less noticed than the other
figures, which tell a plainer story and convey a more
palpable moral. Nothing can be more finely managed
than the differences of character in these delicate per-
sonages. The beau sits smiling at the looking-glass,
with a reflected simper of self-admiration and a languish-
ing inclination of the head, while the rest of his body
is perked up on his high heels with a certain air of tip-
toe elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign of
George II., whose powdered peruke, ruffles, gold lace,
and patches, divide his self-love unequally with his own
person the true Sir Plume of his day :
" Of amber-lidded snuffbox justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane."
There is the same felicity in the figure and attitude of
the bride courted by the lawyer. There is the utmost
flexibility and yielding softness in her whole person, a
On Hogarth's ' Marriage a la mode.' 37
listless languor and tremulous suspense in the expres-
sion of her face. It is the precise look and air which
Pope has given to his favourite, Belinda, just at the
moment of the ' Eape of the Lock.' The heightened
glow, the forward intelligence, and loosened soul of love
in the same face, in the assignation scene before the
masquerade, form a fine and instructive contrast to the
delicacy, timidity, and coy reluctance expressed in the
first. The lawyer in both pictures is much the same
perhaps too much so; though even this unmoved, un-
altered appearance may be designed as characteristic.
In both cases he has " a person and a smooth dispose,
framed to make woman false." He is full of that easy
good-humour and easy good opinion of himself with
which the sex are delighted. There is not a sharp angle
in his face to obstruct his success or give a hint of doubt
or difficulty. His whole aspect is round and rosy, lively
and unmeaning, happy without the least expense of
thought, careless and inviting, and conveys a perfect
idea of the uninterrupted glide and pleasing murmur of
the soft periods that flow from his tongue.
The expression of the bride in the morning scene is
the most highly seasoned, and at the same time the most
vulgar in the series. The figure, face, and attitude of
the husband are inimitable. Hogarth has with great
skill contrasted the pale countenance of the husband
with the yellow-whitish colour of the marble chimney-
piece behind him in such a manner as to preserve the
fleshy tone of the former. The airy splendour of the
view of the inner room in this picture is probably not
exceeded by any of the productions of the Flemish
School.
The young girl in the third picture, who is repre-
sented as the victim of fashionable profligacy, is un-
questionably one of the artist's chefs-d'oeuvre. The
exquisite delicacy of the painting is only surpassed by
38 On Hogarttis ' Marriage a la mode.'
the felicity and subtlety of the conception. Nothing
can be more striking than the contrast between the
extreme softness of her person and the hardened indif-
ference of her character. The vacant stillness, the
docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful
sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure,
which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense
of pain show the deepest insight into human nature,
and into the effects of those refinements in depravity by
which it has been goodnaturedly asserted that " vice
loses half its evil in losing all its grossness." The story
of this picture is in some parts very obscure and enig-
matical. It is certain that the nobleman is not looking
straight forward to the quack, whom he seems to have
been threatening with his cane, but that his eyes are
turned up with an ironical leer of triumph to the pro-
curess. The commanding attitude and size of this
woman the swelling circumference of her dress, spread
out like a turkey-cock's feathers the fierce, ungovern-
able, inveterate malignity of her countenance, which
hardly needs the comment of the clasp-knife to explain
her purpose are all admirable in themselves, and still
more so as they are opposed to the mute insensibility, the
elegant negligence of the dress, and the childish figure
of the girl who is supposed to be her protegee. As for
the quack, there can be no doubt entertained about him.
His face seems as if it were composed of salve, and his
features exhibit all the chaos and confusion of the most
gross, ignorant, and impudent empiricism.
The gradations of ridiculous affectation in the music
scene are finely imagined and preserved. The prepos-
terous, overstrained admiration of the lady of quality ;
the sentimental, insipid, patient delight of the man with
his hair in papers and sipping his tea ; the pert, smirk-
ing, conceited, half -distorted approbation of the figure
next to him ; the transition to the total insensibility of
On Hogartlis ' Marriage a la mode.'' 39
the round face in profile, and then to the wonder of the
negro boy at the rapture of his mistress, form a perfect
whole. The sanguine complexion and flame-coloured
hair of the female virtuoso throw an additional light on
the character. This is lost in the print. The continu-
ing the red colour of the hair into the back of the chair
has been pointed out as one of those instances of allitei'a-
tion in colouring of which these pictures are every-
where full. The gross bloated appearance of the Italian
singer is well relieved by the hard features of the in-
strumental performer behind him, which might be carved
of wood. The negro boy holding the chocolate, both in
expression, colour, and execution, is a masterpiece. The
gay lively derision of the other negro boy, playing with
the Acteeon, is an ingenious contrast to the profound
amazement of the first. Some account has already been
given of the two lovers in this picture. It is curious to
observe the infinite activity of mind which the artist
displays on every occasion. An instance occurs in the
present picture. He has so contrived the papers in the
hair of the bride as to make them look almost like a
wreath of half-blown flowers, while those which he has
placed on the head of the musical amateur very much
resemble a chetal de frise of horns, which adorn and
fortify the lacklustre expression and mild resignation
of the face beneath.
The night scene is inferior to the rest of the series.
The attitude of the husband, who is just killed, is one
in which it would be impossible for him to stand or
even to fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard figures
they make for children. The characters in the last
picture, in which the wife dies, are all masterly. We
would particularly refer to the captious, petulant self-
sufficiency of the apothecary, whose face and figure are
constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to
the fine example of passive obedience and non-resistance
40 On Hogarth's l Marriage a la mode.'
in the servant, whom he is taking to task, and whose
coat of green -and-yellow livery is as long and melan-
choly as his face. The disconsolate look, the haggard
eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the
broken gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an
answer everything about him denotes the utmost per-
plexity and dismay. The harmony and gradations of
colour in this picture are uniformly preserved with the
greatest nicety, and are well worthy the attention of the
artist.
No. IX.
The Subject continued.
IT has been observed that Hogarth's pictures are ex-
ceedingly unlike any other representations of the same
kind of subjects that they form a class, and have a
character peculiar to themselves. It may be worth
while to consider in what this general distinction con-
sists.
In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense,
historical pictures ; and if what Fielding says be true,
that his novel of ' Tom Jones ' ought to be regarded as
an epic prose poem, because it contained a regular de-
velopment of fable, manners, character, and passion, the
compositions of Hogarth will, in like manner, be found
to have a higher claim to the title of epic pictures than
many which have of late arrogated that denomination to
themselves. When we say that Hogarth treated his
subjects historically, we mean that his works represent
the manners and humours of mankind in action, and
their characters by varied expression. Everything in
his pictures has life and motion in it. Not only does
the business of the scene never stand still, but every
feature and muscle is put into full play ; the exact
feeling of the moment is brought out and carried to its
On Hogarth's ' Marriage a la mode.' 4 1
utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on
the canvas for ever. The expression is always taken
en passant, in a state of progress or change, and, as it
were, at the salient point. Besides the excellence of
each individual face, the reflection of the expression
from face to face, the contrast and struggle of particular
motives and feelings in the different actors in the scene
as of anger, contempt, laughter, compassion are con-
veyed in the happiest and most lively manner. His
figures are not like the background on which they are
painted : even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar
look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety,
and scope of history, Hogarth's heads have all the reality
and correctness of portraits. He gives the extremes of
character and expression, but he gives them with perfect
truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes
his compositions from all others of the same kind, that
they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere
still life. It of course happens in subjects from common
life, that the painter can procure real models, and he
can get them to sit as long as he pleases. Hence, in
general, those attitudes and expressions have been
chosen which could be assumed the longest, and in imi-
tating which the artist, by taking pains and time, might
produce almost as complete fac-similes as he could of
a flower or a flower-pot, of a damask curtain or a china
vase. The copy was as perfect and as uninteresting
in the one case as in the other. On the contrary,
subjects of drollery and ridicule, affording frequent ex-
amples of strange deformity and peculiarity of features,
these have been eagerly seized by another class of
artists, who, without subjecting themselves to the la-
borious drudgery of the Dutch School and their imi-
tators, have produced our popular caricatures, by rudely
copying or exaggerating the casual irregularities of the
human countenance. Hogarth has equally avoided the
42 On Hogarth" s ' Marriage a la mode.'
faults of both these styles the insipid tameness of the
one, and the gross vulgarity of the other so as to give
to the productions of his pencil equal solidity and effect.
For his faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet
never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it :
they take the very widest latitude, and yet we always
see the links which bind them to nature : they bear all
the marks and carry all the conviction of reality with
them, as if we had seen the actual faces for the first time,
from the precision, consistency, and good sense with
which the whole and every part is made out. They
exhibit the most uncommon features with the most un-
common expressions, but which are yet as familiar and
intelligible as possible, because with all the boldness
they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has left be-
hind him as many of these memorable faces, in their
memorable moments, as perhaps most of us remember in
the course of our lives, and has thus doubled the
quantity of our observation.
We have, in a former paper, attempted to point out
the fund of observation, physical and moral, contained
in one set of these pictures, the ' Marriage a la mode.'
The rest would furnish as many topics to descant upon,
were the patience of the reader as inexhaustible as the
painter's invention. But as this is not the case, we
shall content ourselves with barely referring to some of
those figures in the other pictures which appear the
most striking, and which we see not only while we are
looking at them, but which we have before us at all
other times. For instance, who having seen can easily
forget that exquisite frost-piece of religion and morality,
the antiquated prude in the morning scene? or that
striking commentary on the good old times, the little
wretched appendage of a footboy, who crawls half
famished and half frozen behind her ? The French man
and woman in the ' Noon ' are the perfection of flighty
On Hogarttis ' Marriage a la mode.' 43
affectation and studied grimace ; the amiable fraternisation
of the two old women saluting each other is not enough
to be admired ; and in the little master, in the same
national group, we see the early promise and personifica-
tion of that eternal principle of wondrous self-com-
placency, proof against all circumstances, and which
makes the French the only people who are vain even of
.being cuckolded and being conquered. Or shall we
prefer to this the outrageous distress and unmitigated
terrors of the boy, who has dropped his dish of meat,
and who seems red all over with shame and vexation,
and bursting with the noise he makes? Or what can
be better than the good housewifery of the girl under-
neath, who is devouring the lucky fragments ? or than
the plump, ripe, florid, luscious look of the servant-
wench, embraced by a greasy rascal of an Othello, with
her pie-dish tottering like her virtue, and with the most
precious part of its contents running over ? Just no,
not quite as good is the joke of the woman overhead,
who, having quarrelled with her husband, is throwing
their Sunday's dinner out of the window, to complete
this chapter of accidents of baked-dishes. The husband
in the evening scene is certainly as meek as any re-
corded in history ; but we cannot say that we admire
this picture, or the night scene after it. But then, in
the ' Taste in High Life,' there is that inimitable pair,
differing only in sex, congratulating and delighting one
another by " all the mutually reflected charities " of folly
and affectation with the young lady coloured like a
rose, dandling her little, black, pug-faced, white-teethed,
chuckling favourite, and with the portrait of Monsieur Des
Noyers in the background, dancing in a grand ballet,
surrounded by butterflies. And again, in ' The Election
Dinner,' is the immortal cobbler, surrounded by his
peers, who, " frequent and full "
" In loud recess and braiding conclave sit"
44 On Hogarth's ' Marriage a la mode.'
the Jew in the second picture, a very Jew in grain innu-
merable fine sketches of heads in the ' Polling for Votes,'
of which the nobleman overlooking the caricaturist is
the best ; and then the irresistible tumultuous display
of broad humour in the ' Chairing the Member,' which is,
perhaps, of all Hogarth's pictures, the most full of
laughable incidents and situations the yellow, rusty-
faced thresher, with his swinging flail, breaking the
head of one of the chairmen, and his redoubted an-
tagonist, the sailor, with his oak-stick, and stumping
wooden leg, a supplemental cudgel the persevering
ecstasy of the hobbling blind fiddler, who, in the fray,
appears to have been trod upon by the artificial ex-
crescence of the honest tar Monsieur the monkey,
with piteous aspect, speculating the impending disaster
of the triumphant candidate, and his brother, Bruin, ap-
propriating the paunch the precipitous flight of the
pigs, souse over head into the water, the fine lady
fainting, with vermilion lips, and the two chimney-
sweepers, satirical young rogiies ! We had almost for-
got ' The Politician,' who is burning a hole through his
hat with a candle in reading the newspaper ; and the
chickens, in the ' March to Finchley,' wandering in
search of their lost dam, which is found in the pocket of
the sergeant. Of the pictures in the ' Eake's Progress '
in this collection we shall not here say anything, be-
cause we think them, on the whole, inferior to the prints,
and because they have already been criticised by a writer,
to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought
to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English
genius. 1
1 See an ' Essay on the Genius of Hogarth,' by C. Lamb, pub-
lished in a periodical work called the ' Reflector.' [It is strange
that this admirable article should have been omitted in both series
of ' Elia,' 1823 and 1833; it was not republished till 1838. ED.]
On Milton's ' Lycidas.' 45
No. X.
On Milton s ' Lycidas.'
" At las/t he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue :
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
OF all Milton's smaller poems, ' Lycidas ' is the greatest
favourite with us. We cannot agree to the charge
which Dr. Johnson has brought against it, of pedantry
and want of feeling. It is the fine emanation of classical
sentiment in a youthful scholar " most musical, most
melancholy." A certain tender gloom overspreads it, a
wayward abstraction, a forgetfulness of his subject in
the serious reflections that arise out of it. The gusts of
passion come and go like the sounds of music borne on
the wind. The loss of the friend whose death he
laments seems to have recalled, with double force, the
reality of those speculations which they had indulged
together; we are transported to classic ground, and a
mysterious strain steals responsive on the ear while we
listen to the poet :
" With eager thought warbling his Doric lay."
We shall proceed to give a few passages at length in
support of our opinion. The first we shall quote is as
remarkable for the truth and sweetness of the natural
descriptions as for the characteristic elegance of the
allusions :
" Together both, ere the high lawns appear 'd
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield ; and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright
Towards heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute :
Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven he<J
46 On Milton s ' Lycidas!
From the glad sound would not be absent long,
And old Dametas loved to hear our song.
But oh the heavy change, now thou art gone !
Now thou art gone, and never must return !
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn.
The willows and the hazel copses green
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leases to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows ;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear !"
After the fine apostrophe on Fame which Phoebus is
invoked to utter, the poet proceeds :
" Oh fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd witli vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood ;
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the herald of the sea
That came in Neptune's" plea.
He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain ?
And question'd every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory.
They knew not of his story :
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd,
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Pauope with all her sisters play'd."
If this is art, it is perfect art ; nor do we wish for any-
thing better. The measure of the verse, the very sound
of the names, would almost produce the effect here
described. To ask the poet not to make use of such
allusions as these, is to ask the painter not to dip in the
colours of the rainbow, if he could. In fact, it is the
common cant of criticism to consider every allusion to
the classics, and particularly in a mind like Milton's, as
On Milton s ' Lycidas.' 47
pedantry and affectation. Habit is a second nature ; and,
in this sense, the pedantry (if it is to be called so) of the
scholastic enthusiast, who is constantly referring to
images of which his mind is full, is as graceful as it is
natural. It is not affectation in him to recur to ideas and
modes of expression with which he has the strongest
associations, and in which he takes the greatest delight.
Milton was as conversant with the world of genius
before him as with the world of nature about him ; the
fables of the ancient mythology were as familiar to him
as his dreams. To be a pedant is to see neither the
beauties of nature nor of art. Milton saw both ; and he
made use of the one only to adorn and give new interest
to the other. He was a passionate admirer of nature ;
and, in a single couplet of his, describing the moon
" Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way "
there is more intense observation, and intense feeling of
nature (as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at
her), than in twenty volumes of descriptive poetry.
But he added to his own observation of nature the
splendid fictions of ancient genius, enshrined her in the
mysteries of ancient religion, and celebrated her with
the pomp of ancient names :
" Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,-
His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower iiLscrib'd with woe.
Oh ! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge ?
Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake."
There is a wonderful correspondence in the rhythm of
these lines to the idea which they convey. This passage,
which alludes to the clerical character of ' Lycidas,'
has been found fault with, as combining the truths of
the Christian religion with the fictions of the heathen
48 On Milton s ' LycidasJ
mythology. We conceive there is very little foundation
for this objection, either in reason or good taste. We
will not go so far as to defend Camoens, who in his
' Lusiad ' makes Jupiter send Mercury with a dream to
propagate the Catholic religion ; nor do we know that
it is generally proper to introduce the two things in the
some poem, though we see no objection to it here ; but
of this we are quite sure, that there is no inconsistency
or natural repugnance between this poetical and religious
faith in the same mind. To the understanding the
belief of the one is incompatible with that of the other ;
but in the imagination they not only may but do
constantly coexist. We will venture to go further, and
maintain that every classical scholar, however orthodox
a Christian he may be, is an honest heathen at heart.
This requires explanation. Whoever, then, attaches a
reality to any idea beyond the mere name, has, to a
certain extent (though not an abstract), an habitual and
practical belief in it. Now, to any one familiar with
the names of the personages of the heathen mythology,
they convey a positive identity beyond the mere name.
We refer them to something out of ourselves. It is only
by an effort of abstraction that we divest ourselves of
the idea of their reality; all our involuntary prejudices
are on their side. This is enough for the poet. They
impose on the imagination by all the attractions of
beauty and grandeur. They come down to us in sculpture
and in song. We have the same associations with them
as if they had really been ; for the belief of the fiction
in ancient times has produced all the same effects as the
reality could have done. It was a reality to the minds
of the ancient Greeks and Eomans, and through them it
is reflected to us. And, as we shape towers and men
and armed steeds out of the broken clouds that glitter
in the distant horizon, so, throned above the ruins of
the ancient world, Jupiter still nods sublime on the top
On Milton's ' Lycidas! 49
of blue Olympus, Hercules leans upon his club, Apollo
has not laid aside his bow nor Neptune his trident, the
sea-gods ride upon the sounding waves, the long pro-
cession of heroes and demigods passes in endless review
before ns, and still we hear
<: The Muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove's altar sing :
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
If all these mighty fictions had really existed, they could
have done no more for us ! We shall only give one
other passage from ' Lycidas '; but we flatter ourselves
that it will be a treat to our readers, if they are not
already familiar with it. It is the passage which con-
tains that exquisite description of the flowers :
" Return, Alpheus ; the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams. Return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flow'rets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enainell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers ;
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears ;
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ah me ! Whilst thee the shores aud sounding seas
E
50 On Milton's ' Lycidas.'
Waft far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold,
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth,
And, ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth."
Dr. Johnson is very much offended at the introduction
of these dolphins ; and indeed, if he had had to guide
them through the waves, he would have made much the
same figure as his old friend Dr. Burney does, swimming
in the Thames with his wig on, with the water-nymphs,
in the picture by Barry at the Adelphi.
There is a description of flowers in the ' Winter's
Tale,' which we shall give as a parallel to Milton's.
We shall leave it to the reader to decide which is the
finest, for we dare not give the preference. Perdita
says :
" Here's flowers for you,
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram,
The marygold, that goes to bed wi' the sun
And with him rises weeping : these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they're given
, To men of middle age. Ye're very welcome.
" Camilla. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.
" Perdita. Out, alas !
You'd be so lean, that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through. Now, my fair'st friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring, that might
Become your time of day O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that, frighted, you let fall
From Dis's waggon ! Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty ; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses,
On Milton s Versification. 51
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in Lis strength, a malady
Most incMent to maids ; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one. Oh, these I lack
To make you garlands of, and, my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er.'' *
Dr. Johnson's general remark, that Milton's genius
had not room to show itself in his smaller pieces, is not
well-founded. Not to mention ' Lycidas,' the ' Allegro,'
and ' Penseroso,' it proceeds on a false estimate of the
merits of his great work, which is not more distinguished
by strength and sublimity than by tenderness and beauty.
The last were as essential qualities of Milton's mind as
the first. The battle of the angels, which has been
commonly considered as the best part of the ' Paradise
Lost,' is the worst.
No. XL
On Milton's Versification.
MILTON'S works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses
a hymn to Fame. His religious zeal infused its cha-
racter into his imagination ; and he devotes himself with
the same sense of duty to the cultivation of his genius,
as he did to the exercise of virtue or the good of his
country. He does not write from casual impulse, but
after a severe examination of his own strength, and with
a determination to leave nothing undone which it is in
his power to do. He always labours, and he almost
always succeeds. He strives to say the finest things in
the world, and he does say them. He adorns and
dignifies his subject to the utmost. He surrounds it
with all the possible associations of beauty or grandeur,
1 Act iv. sc. 3, Dyce's 2nd edit. 18C8, vol. iii. pp. 469-70.
52 On Milton's Versification.
whether moral, or physical, or intellectual. He refines
on his descriptions of beauty, till the sense almost aches
at them, and raises his images of terror to a gigantic
elevation, that " makes Ossa like a wart." He has a
high standard, with which he is constantly comparing
himself, and nothing short of which can satisfy him :
" Sad task, yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued,
If answerable stile I can obtain.
Unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, clamp my intended wing."
Milton has borrowed more than any other writer ; yet
he is perfectly distinct from every other writer. The
power of his mind is stamped on every line. He is a
writer of centos, and yet in originality only inferior to
Homer. The quantity of art shows the strength of his
genius ; so much art would have overloaded any other
writer. Milton's learning has all the effect of intuition.
He describes objects of which he had only read in books
with the vividness of actual observation. His imagi-
nation has the force of nature. He makes words tell as
pictures :
" Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abana and Pharpar, lucid streams."
And again :
" As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey
To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeaning kids
On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams ;
But in his way lights on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light."
Such passages may be considered as demonstrations of
On Milton's Versification. 53
history. Instances might be multiplied without end.
There is also a decided tone in his descriptions, an
eloquent dogmatism, as if the poet spoke from thorough
conviction, which Milton probably derived from his
spirit of partisanship, or else his spirit of partisanship
from the natural firmness and vehemence of his mind.
In this Milton resembles Dante (the only one of the
moderns with whom he has anything in common) ; and
it is remarkable that Dante, as well as Milton, was a
political partisan. That approximation to the severity
of impassioned prose which has been made an objection
to Milton's poetry, is one of its chief excellences. It
has been suggested, that the vividness with which he
describes visible objects might be owing to their having
acquired a greater strength in his mind after the priva-
tion of sight; but we find the same palpableness and
solidity in the descriptions which occur in his early
poems. There is, indeed, the same depth of impression
in his descriptions of the objects of the other senses.
Milton had as much of what is meant by gusto as any
poet. He forms the most intense conceptions of things,
and then embodies them by a single stroke of his pen.
Force of style is perhaps his first excellence. Hence he
stimulates us most in the reading, and less afterwards.
It has been said that Milton's ideas were musical
rather than picturesque, but this observation is not true,
in the sense in which it was meant. The ear, indeed,
predominates over the eye, because it is more immediately
affected, and because the language of music blends more
immediately with, and forms a more natural accompani-
ment to, the variable and indefinite associations of ideas
conveyed by words. But where the associations of
the imagination are not the principal thing, the in-
dividual object is given by Milton with equal force and
beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a cha-
racteristic power of his mind, is that the persons of
54 On Milton s Versification.
Adam and Eve, of Satan, &c., are always accompanied
in our imagination with the grandeur of the nakei
figure ; they convey to us the ideas of sculpture. As an
instance, take the following :
" He soon
Saw within ken a glorious Augel stand,
The same whom John saw also in the sun :
His back was turned, but not his brightness hid ;
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar
Circled his head, nor less his locks behind
Illustrious on his shoulders fledged with wings
Lay waving round ; on some great charge employ 'd
He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep.
Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope
To find who might direct his wand'ring flight
To Paradise, the happy seat of man,
His journey's end, and our beginning woe.
But first he casts to change his proper shape,
Which else might work him danger or delay :
And now a stripling cherub he appears.
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb
Suitable grace dift'us'd, so well he feign'd :
Under a coronet his flowing hair
In curls on either cheek play'd ; wings he wore
Of many a colour'd plume sprinkled with gold,
His habit fit for speed succinct, and held
Before his decent steps a silver wand."
The figures introduced here have all the elegance and
precision of a Greek statue.
Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the
language (except Shakspeare's) which is readable. Dr.
Johnson, who had modelled his ideas of versification on
the regular sing-song of Pope, condemns the ' Paradise
Lost ' as harsh and unequal. We shall not pretend to
say that this is not sometimes the case ; for where a
degree of excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art
is attempted the poet must sometimes fail. But we
imagine that there are more perfect examples in Milton
On Milton s Versification. 55
of musical expression, or of an adaptation of the sound
and movement of the verse to the meaning of the pas-
sage, than in all our other writers, whether of rhyme or
blank verse, put together (with the exception already
mentioned). Spenser is the most harmonious of our
poets, and Dryden is the most sounding and varied of
our rhymists. But in neither is there anything like the
same ear for music, the same power of approximating
the varieties of poetical to those of musical rhythm, as
there is in our great epic poet. The sound of his lines
is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost
of the very image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry
rapidly on, with exquisite art, but without the least
trick or affectation, as the occasion seems to require.
The following are some of the finest instances :
" His hand was known
In Heaven by many a tower'd structure high ;
Nor was his name unheard or unador'd
In ancient Greece ; and in the Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber : and how he fell
From Heav'n, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements ; from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day ; and with the setting sun
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star
On Lemnos, the JEgean isle : this they relate,
Erring."
" But chief the spacious hall
Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air,
Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees
In springtime, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters ; they among fresh dews and flow'rs
Fly to and fro ; or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd
Swarm'd and were straiten'd ; till, the signal giv'n,
Behold a wonder ! They but now who seem'd
In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons,
56 On Milton s Versification.
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race
Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves,
Whose midnight revels by a forest side
Or fountain some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course : they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."
We can only give another instance ; though we have
some difficulty in leaving off. " What a pity," said an
ingenious person of our acquaintance, " that Milton had
not the pleasure of reading ' Paradise Lost ' !"-
" Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood
So high above the circling canopy
Of night's extended shade), from eastern point
Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas
Beyond th' horizon : then from pole to pole
He views in breadth, and without longer pause
Down right into the world's first region throws
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease
Through the pure marble air his oblique way
Amongst innumerable stars, that shone
Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds ;
Or other worlds they seem'd or happy isles," &c.
The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage,
floats up and down as if it had itself wings. Milton has
himself given us the theory of his versification
" In many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out."
Dr. Johnson and Pope would have converted his
vaulting Pegasus into a rocking-horse. Eead any other
blank verse but Milton's Thomson's, Young's, Cowper's,
Wordsworth's and it will be found, from the want of
On Manner. 57
the same insight into " the hidden soul of harmony," to
be mere lumbering prose. 1
No. XII.
On Manner.
IT was the opinion of Lord Chesterfield, that manner is
of more importance than matter. This opinion seems at
least to be warranted by the practice of the world ; nor
do we think it so entirely without foundation as some
1 The following appears in the edition of 1817 as a sort of annex
to the present article :
To the President of ' The Bound Table.'
SIR, It is somewhat remarkable, that in Pope's ' Essay on Cri-
ticism ' (not a very long poem) there are no less than half a score
couplets rhyming to the word sense :
" But of the two, less dangerous is the offence
To tire our patience than mislead our sense." lines 3, 4.
" In search of wit these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence." Z. 28, 29.
" Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense." I. 209-10.
" Some by old wbrds to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense." I. 324-5.
" 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence ;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense." I. 364-5.
" At every trifle scorn to take offence
That always shows great pride or little sense." I. 386-7.
' Be silent always, when you doubt your sense,
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.'' I. 366-7.
" Be niggards of advice on no pretence,
For the worst avarice is that of sense." I. 578-9.
" Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence." I. 608-9.
" Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense." I. 653-4.
I am, Sir, your humble servant,
A SMALL CRITIO.
58 On Manner.
persons of more solid than snowy pretensions would
make us believe. In the remarks which we are going
to make, we can scarcely hope to have any party very
warmly on our side ; for the most superficial coxcomb
would be thought to owe his success to sterling merit.
What any person says or does is one thing ; the mode
in which he says or does it is another. The last of these
is what we understand by manner. In other words,
manner is the involuntary or incidental expression given
to our thoughts and sentiments by looks, tones, and ges-
tures. Now, we are inclined in many cases to prefer
this latter mode of judging of what passes in the mind
to more positive and formal proof, were it for no other
reason than that it is involuntary. " Look," says Lord
Chesterfield, " in the face of the person to whom you
are speaking, if you wish to know his real sentiments ;
for he can command his words more easily than his
countenance." We may perform certain actions from
design, or repeat certain professions by rote : the man-
ner of doing either will in general be the best test of
our sincerity. The mode of conferring a favour is often
thought of more value than the favour itself. The actual
obligation may spring from a variety of questionable
motives vanity, affectation, or interest ; the cordiality
with which the person from whom you have received it
asks you how you do, or shakes you by the hand, does
not admit of misinterpretation. The manner of doing
anything is that which marks the degree and force of
our internal impressions ; it emanates most directly from
our immediate or habitual feelings ; it is that which
stamps its life and character on any action ; the rest
may be performed by an automaton. What is it that
makes the difference between the best and the worst
actor, but the manner of going through the same part ?
The one has a perfect idea of the degree and force with
which certain feelings operate in nature, and the other
On Manner. 59
has no idea at all of the workings of passion. There
would be no difference between the worst actor in the
world and the best, placed in real circumstances, and
under the influence of real passion. A writer may ex-
press the thoughts he has borrowed from another, but
not with the same force, unless he enters into the true
spirit of them. Otherwise he will resemble a person
reading what he does not understand, whom you imme-
diately detect by his wrong emphasis. His illustrations
will be literally exact, but misplaced and awkward ; he
will not gradually warm with his subject, nor feel the
force of what he says, nor produce the same effect on
his readers. An author's style is not less a criterion of
his understanding than his sentiments. The same story
told by two different persons shall, from the difference
of the manner, either set the table in a roar or not relax
a feature in the whole company. We sometimes com-
plain (perhaps rather unfairly) that particular persons
possess more vivacity than wit. But we ought to take
into the account, that their very vivacity arises from
their enjoying the joke ; and their humouring a story
by drollery of gesture or archness of look shows only
that they are acquainted with the different ways in
which the sense of the ludicrous expresses itself. It is
not the mere dry jest, but the relish which the person
himself has of it, with which we sympathise. For in
all that tends to pleasure and excitement, the capacity
for enjoyment is the principal point. One of the most
pleasant and least tiresome persons of our acquaintance
is a humourist, who has three or four quaint witticisms
and proverbial phrases, which he always repeats over
and over ; but he does this with just the same vivacity
and freshness as ever, so that you feel the same amuse-
ment with less effort than if he had startled his hearers
with a succession of original conceits. Another friend
of ours, who never fails to give vent to one or two real
60 On Manner.
jeux d'esprit every time you meet him, from the pain with
which he is delivered of them, and the uneasiness he
seems to suffer all the rest of the time, makes a much
more interesting than comfortable companion. If you
see a person in pain for himself, it naturally puts you
in pain for him. The art of pleasing consists in being
pleased. To be amiable is to be satisfied with one's self
and others. Good-humour is essential to pleasantry.
It is this circumstance, among others, that renders the
wit of Eabelais so much more delightful than that of
Swift, who, with all his satire, is " as dry as the re-
mainder biscuit after a voyage." In society, good-temper
and animal spirits are nearly everything. They are of
more importance than sallies of wit, or refinements of
understanding. They give a general tone of cheerful-
ness and satisfaction to the company. The French have
the advantage over us in external manners. They
breathe a lighter air, and have a brisker circulation of
the blood. They receive and communicate their im-
pressions more freely. The interchange of ideas costs
them less. Their constitutional gaiety is a kind of na-
tural intoxication, which does not require any other
stimulus. The English are not so well off in this
respect ; and Falstaff's commendation on sack was evi-
dently intended for his countrymen whose " learning
is often a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till wine
commences it, and sets it in act and use." 1 More under-
takings fail for want of spirit than for want of sense.
Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.
In general, a strong passion for any object will ensure
1 " A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It
ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish, dull, and
crudy vapours which environ it ; and makes it apprehensive, quick,
forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, deli-
vered over to the tongue (the voice), which is the birth, become
excellent wit," &c. Second Part of Henry IV., iv. 3 [edit. Dyce,
18(38, vol. iv. p. 375].
On Manner. 61
success, for the desire of the end will point out the
means. We apprehend that people usually complain,
without reason, of not succeeding in various pursuits
according to their deserts. Such persons, we will grant,
may have great merit in all other respects ; but in that
in which they fail, it will almost invariably hold true,
that they do not deserve to succeed. For instance, a
person who has spent his life in thinking will acquire
a habit of reflection ; but he will neither become a
dancer nor a singer, rich nor beautiful. In like manner,
if any one complains of not succeeding in affairs of gal-
lantry, we will venture to say it is because he is not
gallant. He has mistaken his talent that's all. If any
person of exquisite sensibility makes love awkwardly,
it is because he does not feel it as he should. One of
these disappointed sentimentalists may very probably
feel it upon reflection, may brood over it till he has
worked himself up to a pitch of frenzy, and write his
mistress the finest love-letters in the world, in her ab-
sence ; but, be assured, he does not feel an atom of this
passion in her presence. If, in paying her a compli-
ment, he frowns with more than usual severity, or, in
presenting her with a bunch of flowers, seems as if he
was going to turn his back upon her, he can only expect
to be laughed at for his pains ; nor can he plead an ex-
cess of feeling as an excuse for want of common sense.
She may say : " It is not with me you are in love, but
with the ridiculous chimeras of your own brain. You
are thinking of Sophia Western, or some other heroine,
and not of me. Go and make love to your romances."
Lord Chesterfield's character of the Duke of Marl-
borough is a good illustration of his general theory.
He says : "Of all the men I ever knew in my life (and
I knew him extremely well), the late Duke of Marl-
borough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not
to say engrossed them ; for I will venture (contrary to
62 On Manner.
the custom of profound historians, who always assign
deep causes for great events) to ascribe the better half
of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness and riches to
those graces. He was eminently illiterate ; wrote bad
English, and spelt it worse. He had no share of what
is commonly called parts that is, no brightness, nothing
shining, in his genius. He had most undoubtedly an
excellent good plain understanding with sound judg-
ment. But these alone would probably have raised him
but something higher than they found him, which was,
page to King James II.'s Queen. There the Graces pro-
tected and promoted him; for while he was ensign of
the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favourite
mistress of Charles II., struck by these very graces, gave
him 5000, with which he immediately bought an an-
nuity of 500 a year, which was the foundation of his
subsequent fortune. His figure was beautiful, but his
manner was irresistible by either man or woman. It
was by this engaging, graceful manner that he was
enabled, during all his wars, to connect the various and
jarring Powers of the Grand Alliance, and to carry them
on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their
private and separate views, jealousies, and wrongheaded-
nes.s. Whatever court he went to (and he was often
obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory ones),
he has constantly prevailed, and brought them into his
measures." 1
Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We
sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual
voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own
sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that
is more irresistible than any other attractions. There
1 We have an instance in our own times of a man, equally devoid
of understanding and principle, but who manages the House of
Commons by his manner alone. [Meaning Lord Castlereagh. MS.
note in a copy of edit. 1817.]
On Manner. 63
is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their
eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their faces,"
which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret
sympathy towards them. Their minds are a shrine
where pleasure reposes. Their smiles diffuse a sensa-
tion like the breath of spring. Petrarch's description of
Laura answers exactly to this character, which is indeed
the Italian character. Titian's portraits are full of it ;
they seem sustained by sentiment, or as if the persons
whom he painted sat to music. There is one in the
Louvre (or there was) which had the most of this ex-
pression we ever remember. It did not look downward ;
" it looked forward, beyond this world." It was a look
that never passed away, but remained unalterable as the
deep sentiment which gave birth to it. It is the same
constitutional character (together with infinite activity
of mind) which has enabled the greatest man in modern
history to bear his reverses of fortune with gay magna-
nimity, and to submit to the loss of the empire of the
world with as little discomposure as if he had been
playing a game at chess.
Grace has been defined as the outward expression of
the inward harmony of the soul. Foreigners have more of
this than the English particularly the people of the
southern and eastern countries. Their motions appear
(like the expression of their countenances) to have a
more immediate communication with their feelings.
The inhabitants of the northern climates, compared
with these children of the sun, are like hard inanimate
machines, with difficulty set in motion. A strolling
gipsy will offer to tell your fortune with a grace and
an insinuation of address that would be admired in a
court. 1 The Hindoos that we see about the streets are
1 Mr. Wordsworth, who has written a sounet to the King on the
good that he has done in the last fifty years, has made an attack on
H set of gipsies for Laving done nothing in four-and-tweuty houra :
64 On Manner,
another example of this. They are a different race ot
people from ourselves. They wander about in a luxu-
rious dream. They are like part of a glittering proces-
sion like revellers in some gay carnival. Their life is
a dance, a measure ; they hardly seem to tread the earth,
but are borne along in some more genial element, and
bask in the radiance of brighter suns. "We may under-
stand this difference of climate by recollecting the dif-
ference of our own sensations at different times, in the
fine glow of summer or when we are pinched and dried
up by a north-east wind. Even the foolish Chinese,
" The stars had gone their rounds, but they had not stirred from
their place." And why should they, if they were comfortable where
they were ? We did not expect this turn from Mr. Wordsworth,
whom we had considered as the prince of poetical idlers, and patron
of the philosophy of indolence, who formerly insisted on our spend-
ing our time "in a wise passiveness." Mr. W. will excuse us if we
are not converts to his recantation of his original doctrine ; for he
who changes his opinion loses his authority. We did not look for
this Sunday-school philosophy from him. What had he himself
been doing in these four-and-twenty hours ? Had he been ad-
miring a flower, or writing a sonnet? We hate the doctrine of
utility, even in a philosopher, and much more in a poet ; for the
only real utility is that which leads to enjoyment, and the end is,
in all cases, better than the means. A friend of ours from the
North of England proposed to make Stonehenge of some use, by
building houses with it. Mr. W.'s quarrel with the Gipsies is an
improvement on this extravagance, for the Gipsies are the only
living monuments of the first ages of society. They are an ever-
lasting source of thought and reflection on the advantages and dis-
advantages of the progress of civilisation ; they are a better answer
to the cotton manufactories than Mr. W. has given in the ' Excur-
sion.' " They are a grotesque ornament to the civil order." We
should be sorry to part with Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, because it
amuses and interests us : we should be still sorrier to part with the
tents of our old friends, the Bohemian philosophers, because they
amuse and interest us more. If any one goes a journey, the prin-
cipal event in it is his meeting with a party of gipsies. The
pleasantest trait in the character of Sir Koger de Coverley, is his
interview with the gipsy fortune-teller. This is enough.
On Manner. 65
svho go about twirling their fans and their windmills,
show the same delight in them as the children they
collect around them. The people of the East make it
their business to sit and think and do nothing. They
indulge in endless reverie, for the incapacity of enjoy-
ment does not impose on them the necessity of action.
There is a striking example of this passion for castle-
building in the story of the glass-man in the Arabian
Nights.
After all, we would not be understood to say that
manner is everything. Nor would we put Euclid or
Sir Isaac Newton on a level with the first petit-maitre we
might happen to meet. AYe consider _<Esop's Fables
to have been a greater work of genius than Fontaine's
translation of them ; though we doubt whether we should
not prefer Fontaine, for his style only, to Gay, who has
shown a great deal of original invention. The elegant
manners of people of fashion have been objected to us
to show the frivolity of external accomplishments, and
the facility with which they are acquired. As to the
last point, we demur. There is no class of people who
lead so laborious a life, or who take more pains to culti-
vate their minds as well as persons, than people of fashion.
A young lady of quality, who has to devote so many
hours a day to music, so many to dancing, so many to
drawing, so many to French, Italian, &c., certainly does
not pass her time in idleness ; and these accomplish-
ments are afterwards called into action by every kind of
external or mental stimulus, by the excitements of plea-
sure, vanity, and interest. A ministerial or opposition
lord goes through more drudgery than half a dozen lite-
rary hacks ; nor does a reviewer by profession read half
the same number of productions as a modern fine lady is
obliged to labour through. We confess, however, we
are not competent judges of the degree of elegance or
refinement implied in the general tone of fashionable
F
66 On the Tendency of Sects.
manners. The successful experiment made by Peregrine
Pickle, in introducing his strolling mistress into genteel
company, does not redound greatly to their credit. In
point of elegance of external appearance, we see no
difference between women of fashion and women of
a different character who dress in the same style.
No. XIII.
On the Tendency of Sects.
THERE is a natural tendency in sects to narrow the
mind.
The extreme stress laid upon differences of minor im-
portance, to the neglect of more general truths and
broader views of things, gives an inverted bias to the
understanding; and this bias is continually increased
by the eagerness of controversy, and captious hostility
to the prevailing system. A party-feeling of this kind
once formed will insensibly communicate itself to other
topics ; and will be too apt to lead its votaries to a con-
tempt for the opinions of others, a jealousy of every
difference of sentiment, and a disposition to arrogate all
sound principle as well as understanding to themselves
and those who think with them. We can readily conceive
how such persons, from fixing too high a value on the
practical pledge which they have given of the indepen-
dence and sincerity of their opinions, come at last to
entertain a suspicion of every one else as acting under
the shackles of prejudice or the mask of hypocrisy. All
those who have not given in their unqualified protests
against received doctrines and established authority, are
supposed to labour under an acknowledged incapacity
to form a rational determination on any subject what-
ever. Any argument, not having the presumption of
singularity in its favour, is immediately set aside as
On the Tendency of Sects. 67
nugatory. There is, however, no prejudice so strong
as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all
prejudice. For this last implies not only the practical
conviction that it is right, but the theoretical assumption
that it cannot be wrong. From considering all objec-
tions as in this manner " null and void," the mind be-
comes so thoroughly satisfied with its own conclusions
as to render any further examination of them superfluous,
and confounds its exclusive pretensions to reason with
the absolute possession of it. Those who, from their
professing to submit everything to the test of reason,
have acquired the name of Eational Dissenters, have
their weak sides as well as other people; nor do we
know of any class of disputants more disposed to take
their opinions for granted than those who call them-
selves Freethinkers. A long habit of objecting to every-
thing establishes a monopoly in the right of contradic-
tion a prescriptive title to the privilege of starting
doubts and difficulties in the common belief, without
being liable to have our own called in question. There
cannot be a more infallible way to prove that we must be
in the right, than by maintaining roundly that every one
else is in the wrong. Not only the opposition of sects
to one another, but their unanimity among themselves,
strengthens their confidence in their peculiar notions.
They feel themselves invulnerable behind the double
fence of sympathy with themselves and antipathy to the
rest of the world. Backed by the zealous support of
their followers, they become equally intolerant with
respect to the opinions of others and tenacious of their
own. They fortify themselves within the narrow circle
of their newfangled prejudices ; the whole exercise of
their right of private judgment is after a time reduced
to the repetition of a set of watchwords, which have
been adopted as the shibboleth of the party ; and their
extremest points of faith pass as current as the bead-roll
68 On the Tendency of Sects.
-and legends of the Catholics, or St. Athanasius' Creed
and the Thirty-nine Articles. We certainly are not
going to recommend the establishment of articles of
faith, or implicit assent to them, as favourable to the
progress of philosophy ; but neither has the spirit of
opposition to them this tendency, as far as relates to its
immediate effects, however useful it may be in its remote
consequences. The spirit of controversy substitutes
the irritation of personal feeling for the independent
exertion of the understanding ; and when this irritation
ceases, the mind flags for want of a sufficient stimulus
to urge it on. It discharges all its energy with its spleen.
Besides, this perpetual cavilling with the opinions of
others, detecting petty flaws in their arguments, calling
them to a literal account for their absurdities, and
(squaring their doctrines by a pragmatical standard of
our own, is necessarily adverse to any great enlargement
-of mind or original freedom of thought. 1 The constant
attention bestowed on a few contested points, by at once
flattering our pride, our prejudices, and our indolence,
supersedes more general inquiries; and the bigoted con-
troversialist, by dint of repeating a certain formula of
belief, shall not only convince himself that all those who
differ from him are undoubtedly wrong on that point, but
that their knowledge on all others must be compara-
tively slight and superficial. AVe have known some
very worthy and well-informed Biblical critics, who, by
1 The Dissenters in this country (if \ve except the founders of
sects, who fall under a class by themselves) have produced only two
remarkable men, Priestley and Jonathan Edwards. The work of
the latter on the Will is written with as much power of logic, and
more in the true spirit of philosophy, than any other metaphysical
work in the language. His object throughout is not to perplex the
question, but to satisfy his own mind and the reader's. In general,
the principle of Dissent arises more from want of sympathy and ima-
gination, than from strength of reason. The spirit of contradiction
is not the spirit of philosophy.
On the Tendency of Sects. 60
virtue of having discovered that one was not three, or that
the same body could not be in two places at once, would
be disposed to treat the whole Council of Trent, with
Father Paul at their head, with very little deference,
and to consider Leo X., with all his court, as no better
than drivellers. Such persons will hint to you, as an
additional proof of his genius, that Milton was a Non-
conformist, and will excuse the faults of 'Paradise Lost,'
as Dr. Johnson magnified them, because the author was
a Republican. By the all-sufficiency of their merits in
believing certain truths which have been "hid from ages,''
they are elevated, in their own imagination, to a higher
sphere of intellect, and are released from the necessity of
pursuing the more ordinary tracks of inquiry. Their
faculties are imprisoned in a few favourite dogmas, and
they cannot break through the trammels of a sect.
Hence we may remark a hardness and setness in the
ideas of those who have been brought up in this way,
an aversion to those finer and more delicate operations
of the intellect, of taste, and genius, which require
greater flexibility and variety of thought, and do not
afford the same opportunity for dogmatical assertion
and controversial cabaL The distaste of the Puritans,
Quakers, &c. to pictures, music, poetry, and the fine
arts in general, may be traced to this source as much
as to their affected disdain of them, as not sufficiently-
spiritual and remote from the gross impurity of sense. 1
We learn from the interest we take in things, and
according to the number of things in which we take an
interest. Our ignorance of the real value of different
1 The modern Quakers coine as near the mark in these cases as
they can. They do not go to plays, but they are great attenders of
spouting-clubs and lectures. They do not frequent concerts, but
run after pictures. We do not know exactly how they stand with
respect to the circulating libraries. A Quaker poet would be a
literary phenomenon. [A phenomenon witnessed, however, in
Bernard Barton only a few years after the writing of this paper.]
70 On the Tendency of Sects.
objects and pursuits will in general keep pace with our
contempt for them. To set out with denying common
sense to every one else is not the way to be wise our-
selves; nor shall we be likely to learn much if we
suppose that no one can teach us anything worth know-
ing. Again, a contempt for the habits and manners of
the world is as prejudicial as a contempt for its opinions.
A puritanical abhorrence of everything that does not
fall in with our immediate prejudices and customs must
effectually cut us off, not only from a knowledge of the
world and of human nature, but of good and evil, of
vice and virtue at least, if we can credit the assertion
of Plato (which, to some degree, we do), that the know-
ledge of everything implies the knowledge of its op-
posite. " There is some soul of goodness in things evil."
A most respectable sect among ourselves (we mean the
Quakers) have carried this system of negative qualities
nearly to perfection. They labour diligently, and witli
great success, to exclude all ideas from their minds which
they might have in common with others. On the prin-
ciple that " evil communications corrupt good manners,"
they retain a virgin purity of understanding and laud-
able ignorance of all liberal arts and sciences ; they take
every precaution, and keep up a perpetual quarantine
against the infection of other people's vices or virtues ;
they pass through the world like figures cut out of
pasteboard or wood, turning neither to the right nor the
left ; and their minds are no more affected by the example
of the follies, the pursuits, the pleasures, or the passions
of mankind, than the clothes which they wear. Their
ideas want airing; they are the worse for not being
used ; for fear of soiling them they keep them folded up
and laid by in a sort of mental clothes-press through the
whole of their lives. They take their notions on trust
from one generation to another like the scanty cut of
their coats and are so wrapped up in these traditional
On the Tendency of Sects. 71
maxims, and so pin their faith on them, that one of the
most intelligent of this class of people, not long ago,
assured us that " war was a thing that was going quite
out of fashion." This abstract sort of existence may
have its advantages, but it takes away all the ordinary
sources of a moral imagination, as well as strength of
intellect. Interest is the only link that connects them
with the world. We can understand the high enthusiasm
and religious devotion of monks and anchorites, who
gave up the world and its pleasures to dedicate them-
selves to a sublime contemplation of a future state ; but
the sect of the Quakers, who have transplanted the
maxims of the desert into manufacturing towns and
populous cities who have converted the solitary cells
of the religious orders into counting-houses, their beads
into ledgers, and keep a regular ' debtor and creditor '
account between this world and the next puzzle us
mightily. The Dissenter is not vain, but conceited
that is, he makes up by his own good opinion for the
want of the cordial admiration of others ; but this often
stands their self-love in so good stead that they need not
envy their dignified opponents who repose on lawn
sleeves and ermine. The unmerited obloquy and dis-
like to which they are exposed has made them cold and
reserved in their intercourse with society. The same
cause will account for the dryness and general homeli-
ness of their style. They labour under a sense of the
want of public sympathy. They pursue truth, for its
own sake, into its private recesses and obscure corners.
They have to dig their way along a narrow underground
passage. It is not their object to shine ; they have none
of the usual incentives of vanity light, airy, and osten-
tatious. Archiepiscopal sees and mitres do not glitter
in their distant horizon. They are not wafted on the
wings of fancy, fanned by the breath of popular ap-
plause. The voice of the world, the tide of opinion, IB
72 On ' John Bunde.'
not with them. They do not, therefore, aim at eclat at
outward pomp and show. They have a plain ground to
work upon, and the}' do not attempt to embellish it with
idle ornaments. It would be in vain to strew the flowers
of poetry round the borders of the Unitarian con-
troversy.
There is one quality common to all sectaries, and that
is, a principle of strong fidelity. They are the safest
partisans and the steadiest friends. Indeed, they are
almost the only people who have any idea of an abstract
attachment, either to a cause or to individuals, from a
sense of duty, independently of prosperous or adverse
circumstances, and in spite of opposition. 1
No. XIV.
On ' John Bunde.' 2
JOHN BUNGLE is the English Eabelais. This is an
author with whom, perhaps, many of our readers are
not acquainted, and whom we therefore wish to intro-
duce to their notice. As most of our countrymen de-
light in English generals and in English admirals, in
English courtiers and in English kings, so our great
delight is in English authors.
The soul of Francis Eabelais passed into John Amory,
the author of ' The Life and Adventures of John Buncle.'
Both were physicians, and enemies of too much gravity.
1 We have made the above observations, not as theological par-
tisans, but as natural historians. We shall some time or other give
the reverse of the picture; for there are vices inherent in establish-
ments and their thorough-paced adherents, which well deserve to be
distinctly pointed out.
2 An edition of Amory's work appeared in 1825, 3 vols. 12mo., of
which the writer of this paper was accredited with the editorship.
See, however, 'Memoirs of W. H.,' 1867, vol. ii. p. 195. ED.
On ' John Buncle' 73
Their great business was to enjoy life. Eabelais in-
dulges his spirit of sensuality in wine, in dried neats-
tongues, in Bologna sausages, in botargos. John Buncle
shows the same symptoms of inordinate satisfaction in
tea and bread-and-butter. "While Rabelais roared with
Friar John and the monks, John Buncle gossiped with
the ladies, and with equal and uncontrolled gaiety.
These two authors possessed all the insolence of health,
so that their works give a fillip to the constitution ; but
they carried off the exuberance of their natural spirits
in different ways. The title of one of Eabelais' chapters
(and the contents answer to the title) is, " How they
chirped over their cups." The title of a corresponding
chapter in ' John Buncle ' would run thus : '' The author
is invited to spend the evening with the divine Miss
Hawkins, and goes accordingly ; with the delightful
conversation that ensued." Natural philosophers are
said to extract sunbeams from ice ; our author has per-
formed the same feat upon the cold quaint subtleties of
theology. His constitutional alacrity overcomes every
obstacle. He converts the thorns and briars of contro-
versial divinity into a bed of roses. He leads the most
refined and virtuous of their sex through the mazes of
inextricable problems with the air of a man walking a
minuet in a drawing-room ; mixes up in the most natural
and careless manner the academy of compliments with
the rudiments of algebra ; or passes with rapturous in-
difference from the First of St. John and a disquisition
on the Logos to the uo less metaphysical doctrines of
the principle of self-preservation or the continuation of
the species. ' John Buncle ' is certainly one of the most
singular productions in the language, and herein lies its
peculiarity. It is a Unitarian romance, and one in which
the soul and body are equally attended to. The hero is
a great philosopher, mathematician, anatomist, chemist,
philologist, and divine, with a good appetite, the best
74 On ' John Bunde!
spirits, and an amorous constitution, who sets out on a
series of strange adventures to propagate his philosophy,
his divinity, and his species, and meets with a constant
succession of accomplished females, adorned with equal
beauty, wit, and virtue, who are always ready to discuss
all kinds of theoretical and practical points with him.
His angels and all his women are angels have all
taken their degrees in more than one science ; love is
natural to them. He is sure to find
" A mistress and a saint in every grove."
Pleasure and business, wisdom and mirth, take their
turns with the most agreeable regularity : A jocis ad
seria, in seriis vicissim ad jocos transire. After a chapter
of calculations in fluxions, or on the descent of tongues,
the lady and gentleman fall from Platonics to hoyden-
ing, in a manner as truly edifying as anything in the
scenes of Vanbrugh or Sir George Etherege. No writer
ever understood so well the art of relief. The effect is
like travelling in Scotland, and coming all of a sudden
to a spot of habitable ground. His mode of making
love is admirable. He takes it quite easily, and never
thinks of a refusal. His success gives him confidence,
and his confidence gives him success. For example :
in the midst of one of his rambles in the mountains of
Cumberland he unexpectedly comes to an elegant country-
seat, where, walking on the lawn with a book in her
hand, he sees a most enchanting creature, the owner of
the mansion. Our hero is on fire, leaps the ha-ha which
separates them, presents himself before the lady with an
easy but respectful air, begs to know the subject of her
meditation ; they enter into conversation, mutual ex-
planations take place, a declaration of love is made, and
the wedding-day is fixed for the following Tuesday.
Our author now leads a life of perfect happiness with
his beautiful Miss Noel, in a charming solitude, for a
On ' John Buncle' 75
few weeks, till, on his return from one of his rambles in
the mountains, he finds her a corpse. He " sits with his
eyes shut for seven days," absorbed in silent grief; he then
bids adieu to melancholy reflections not being one of
that sect of philosophers who think that " man was
made to mourn " takes horse, and sets out for the
nearest watering-place. As he alights at the first inn
on the road, a lady dressed in a rich green riding-habit
steps out of a coach ; John Buncle hands her into the
inn, they drink tea together, they converse, they find an
exact harmony of sentiment, a declaration of love follows
as a matter of course, and that day week they are mar-
ried. Death, however, contrives to keep up the ball for
him ; he marries seven wives in succession, and buries
them all. In short, John Buncle's gravity sat upon him
with the happiest indifference possible. He danced the
Hays with religion and morality with the ease of a man
of fashion and of pleasure. He was determined to see
fair-play between grace and nature between his im-
mortal and his mortal part ; and, in case of any diffi-
culty, upon the principle of " first come first served,"
made sure of the present hour. AVe sometimes suspect
him of a little hypocrisy, but upon a closer inspection it
appears to be only an affectation of hypocrisy. His fine
constitution comes to his relief, and floats him over the
shoals and quicksands that lie in his way, "most dolphin-
like." You see him, from mere happiness of nature,
chuckling with inward satisfaction in the midst of his
periodical penances, his grave grimaces, his death's-
heads and memento moris :
" And there the antic sits
Mocking his state, and grinning at his pomp."
As men make use of olives to give a relish to their
wine, so John Buncle made use of philosophy to give a
relish to life. He stops in a ball-room at Harrogate to
76 On ' John Buncle.'
moralise on the small number of faces that appeared
there out of those he remembered some years before ; all
were gone whom he saw at a still more distant period ;
but this casts no damper on his spirits, and he only dances
the longer and better for it. He suffers nothing un-
pleasant to remain long upon his mind. He gives, in
one place, a miserable description of two emaciated
valetudinarians whom he met at an inn, supping a little
mutton-broth with difficulty ; but he immediately con-
trasts himself with them in fine relief. " While I beheld
things with astonishment, the servant," he says, " brought
in dinner a pound of rump-steaks and a quart of green
peas, two cuts of bread, a tankard of strong beer, and a
pint of poi t-wine ; with a fine appetite I soon despatched
my mess, and over my wine, to help digestion, began to sing
the following lines." The astonishment of the two
strangers was now as great as his own had been.
We wiKh to enable our readers to judge for them-
selves of the style of our whimsical moralist, but are at
a loss what to choose whether his account of his man
O'Fin, or of his friend Tom Fleming, or of his being
chased over the mountains by robbers, " whisking before
them like the wind away," as if it were high sport; or
his address to the sun, which is an admirable piece of
serious eloquence; or his character of six Irish gentle-
men Mr. Gollogher, Mr. Gallaspy, Mr. Dunkley, Mr,
Makins, Mr. Monaghan, and Mr. O'Keefe the last " de-
scended from the Irish kings, and first-cousin to the
great O'Keefe, who was buried not long ago in West-
minster Abbey." He professes to give an account of
these Irish gentlemen, " for the honour of Ireland, and
as they were curiosities of humankind." Curiosities,
indeed, but not so great as their historian !
" Mr. Makins was the only one of the set who was not
tall and handsome. He was a very low thin man, not
four feet high, and had but one eye, with which he
On ' John Bunde.' 77
squinted most shockingly. But as he was matchless on
the fiddle, sang well, and chatted agreeably, he was a
favourite with the ladies. They preferred ugly Makins
(as he was called) to many very handsome men. He
was a Unitarian."
" Mr. Monaghan was an honest and charming fellow.
This gentleman and Mr. Dunkley married ladies they
fell in love with at Harrogate Wells ; Dunkley had
the fair Alcmena, Miss Cox of Northumberland ; and
Monaghan, Antiope with haughty charms, Miss Pearson
of Cumberland. They lived very happy many years,
and their children, I hear, are settled in Ireland I' 1
Gentle reader, here is the character of Mr. Gallaspy :
" Gallaspy was the tallest and strongest man I have
ever seen, well-made, and very handsome : had wit and
abilities, sang well, and talked with great sweetness and
fluency, but was so extremely wicked that it were better
for him if he had been a natural fool. By his vast
strength and activity, his riches and eloquence, few
things could withstand him. He was the most profane
swearer I have known ; fought everything, whored every-
thing, and drank seven-in-hand that is, seven glasses
so placed between the fingers of his right hand that,
in drinking, the liquor fell into the next glasses, and
thereby he drank out of the first glass seven glasses at
once. This was a common thing, I find from a book
in my possession, in the reign of Charles II., in the
madness that followed the restoration of that profligate
and worthless prince. 1 But this gentleman was the
only man I ever saw who could or would attempt to do
it; and he made but one gulp of whatever he drank.
He did not swallow a fluid like other people, but if it
was a quart, poured it in as from pitcher to pitcher.
When he smoked tobacco, he always blew two pipes at
1 Is all this a rhodomontade, or literal matter of fact, not credible
in these degenerate days ?
78 On ' John BuncU:
once, one at each corner of his mouth, and threw the
smoke out at both his nostrils. He had killed two men
in duels before I left Ireland, and would have been
hanged, but that it was his good fortune to be trjgd
before a judge who never let any man suffer for killing
another in this manner. (This was the late Sir John
St. Leger.) He debauched all the women he could,
and many whom he could not corrupt " . . . . The rest of
this passage would, we fear, be too rich for the ' Bound
Table,' as we cannot insert it, in the manner of Mr.
Buncle, in a sandwich of theology. Suffice it to say,
that the candour is greater than the candour of Voltaire's
' Candide,' and the modesty equal to Colley Gibber's.
To his friend Mr. Gollogher he consecrates the fol-
lowing irresistible petit souvenir :
" He might, if he had pleased, have married any one
of the most illustrious and richest women in the king-
dom ; but he had an aversion to matrimony, and could
not bear the thoughts of a wife. Love and a bottle were
his taste. He was, however, the most honourable of men
in his amours, and never abandoned any woman in dis-
tress, as too many men of fortune do when they have
gratified desire. All the distressed were ever sharers
in Mr. Gollogher's fine estate, and especially the girls he
had taken to his breast. He provided happily for them
all, and left nineteen daughters he had by several
women a thousand pounds each. This was acting with
a temper worthy of a man ; and to the memory of the
benevolent Tom Gollogher I devote this memorandum."
Lest our readers should form rather a coarse idea of
our author from the foregoing passages, we will conclude
with another list of friends in a different style :
" The Conniving-house (as the gentlemen of Trinity
called it in my time, and long after) was a little public-
house, kept by Jack Macklean, about a qnaiter of a
mile beyond Eingsend, on the top of the beach, within
On 'John Bunch.' . 79
a few yards of the sea. Here we used to have the
finest fish at all times ; and, in the season, green peas,
and all the most excellent vegetables. The ale here
was always extraordinary, and everything the best;
which, with its delightful situation, rendered it a delight-
ful place of a summer's evening. Many a delightful
evening have I passed in this pretty thatched house
with the famous Larry Grogan, who played on the bag-
pipes extremely well ; dear Jack Lattin, matchless on
the fiddle, and the most agreeable of companions ; that
ever-charming young fellow, Jack Wall, the most
worthy, the most ingenious, the most engaging of men,
the son of Counsellor Maurice Wall ; and many other
delightful fellows, who went in the days of their youth
to the shades of eternity. When I think of them and
their evening songs ' We will go to Johnny MacJclean's,
to try if his ale be good or no,' &c. and that years and
infirmities begin to oppress me what is life ?"
We have another English author, very different from
the last- mentioned one, but equal in naivete, and in the
perfect display of personal character ; we mean Izaak
Walton, who wrote the ' Complete Angler.' That well-
known work has an extreme simplicity, and an extreme
interest, arising out of its very simplicity. In the de-
scription of a fishing-tackle you perceive the piety and
humanity of the author's mind. This is the best pastoral
in the language, not excepting Pope's or Philips's. We
doubt whether Sannazarius' ' Piscatory Eclogues ' are
equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks of
the River Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air.
We walk with him along the dusty roadside, or repose
on the banks of the river under a shady tree, and in
watching for the finny prey imbibe what he beautifully
calls " the patience and simplicity of poor honest fisher-
men." We accompany them to their inn at night, and
partake of their simple but delicious fare, while Maud,
80 . On the Causes of Methodism.
the pretty milkmaid, at her mother's desire, sings the
classical ditties of Sir Walter Ealeigh. Good cheer is
not neglected in this work, any more than in ' John
Buncle,' or any other history which sets a proper value
on the good things of life. The prints in the ' Complete
Angler ' give an additional reality and interest to the
scenes it describes. While Tottenham Cross shall stand,
and longer, thy work, amiable and happy old man, shall
last ! !
No. XV.
On the Causes of Methodism.
THE first Methodist on record was David. lie was
the first eminent person we read of who made a regular
compromise between religion and morality, between
faith and good works. After any trifling peccadillo in
point of conduct as a murder, adultery, perjury, or the
like he ascended with his harp into some high tower of
his palace ; and having chaunted, in a solemn strain of
poetical inspiration, the praises of piety and virtue, made
his peace with heaven and his own conscience. This
extraordinary genius, in the midst of his personal errors,
retained the same lofty abstract enthusiasm for the
favourite objects of his contemplation ; the character of
the poet and the prophet remained unimpaired by the
vices of the man
" Pure in the last recesses of the mind ;"
and the best test of the soundness of his principles and
the elevation of his sentiments is, that they were proof
1 One of the most interesting traits of the amiable simplicity of
Walton is the circumstance of his friendship for Cotton, one of the
" swash-bucklers " of the age. Dr. Johnson said there were only
three works which the reader was sorry to come to the end of ' Don
Quixote,' ' Robinson Crusoe,' and the ' Pilgrim's Progress.' Perhaps
Walton's ' Angler ' might be added to the number.
On the Causes of Methodism. 81
against his practice. The Gnostics afterwards main-
tained that it was no matter what a man's actions were,
so that his understanding was not debauched by them
so that his opinions continued uncontaminated, and Ms
heart, as the phrase is, right towards God. Strictly
speaking, this sect (whatever name it might go by) is as
old as human nature itself; for it has existed ever since
there was a contradiction between the passions and the
understanding between what we are and what we-
desire to be. The principle of Methodism is nearly
allied to hypocrisy, and almost unavoidably slides into
it ; yet it is not the same thing ; for we can hardly call
any one a hypocrite, however much at variance his
professions and his actions, who really wishes to be
what he would be thought.
The Jewish bard, whom we have placed at the head
of this class of devotees, was of a sanguine and robust
temperament. Whether he chose " to sinner it or saint
it," he did both most royally, with a fullness of gusto,
and carried off his penances and \nsfauxpas in a style of
oriental grandeur. This is by no means the character of
his followers among ourselves, who are a most pitiful
set. They may rather be considered as a collection of
religious invalids as the refuse of all that is weak and
unsound in body and mind. To speak of them as they
deserve, they are not well in the flesh, and therefore-
they take refuge in the spirit ; they are not comfortable
here, and they seek for the life to come ; they are
deficient in steadiness of moral principle, and they trust
to grace to make up the deficiency ; they are dull and
gross in apprehension, and therefore they are glad to
substitute faith for reason, and to plunge in the dark,
under the supposed sanction of superior wisdom, into
every species of mystery and jargon. This is the history
of Methodism, which may be defined to be religion with
its slobbering-bib and go-cart. It is a bastard kind of
a
82 On the Causes of Methodism.
Popery, stripped of its painted pomp and outward orna-
ments, and reduced to a state of pauperism. " The whole
need not a physician." Popery owes its success to its
constant appeal to the senses and to the weaknesses of
mankind. The Church of England deprives the Metho-
dists of the pride and pomp of the Romish Church ; but
it has left open to them the appeal to the indolence, the
ignorance, and the vices of the people ; and the secret of
the success of the Catholic faith and Evangelical preach-
ing is the same both are a religion by proxy. What the
one did by auricular confession, absolution, penance,
pictures, and crucifixes, the other does, even more com-
pendiously, by grace, election, faith without works, and
words without meaning.
In the first place, the same reason makes a man a
religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in
any other way an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfort-
able body. Poets, authors, and artists in general, have
been ridiculed for a pining, puritanical, poverty-struck
appearance, which has been attributed to their real
poverty. But it would perhaps be nearer the truth to
say, that their being poets, artists, &c., has been owing
to their original poverty of spirit and weakness of con-
stitution. As a general rule, those who are dissatisfied
with themselves will seek to go out of themselves into
an ideal world. Persons in strong health and spirits,
who take plenty of air and exercise, who are " in favour
with their stars," and have a thorough relish of the good
things of this life, seldom devote themselves in despair .
to religion or the Muses. Sedentary, nervous, hypo-
chondriacal people, on the contrary, are forced, for want
of an appetite for the real and substantial, to look out
for a more airy food and speculative comforts. " Conceit
in weakest bodies strongest works." A journeyman
sign-painter, whose lungs have imbibed too great a
quantity of the effluvia of white-lead, will be seized with
On the Causes of Methodism. 83
a fantastic passion for the stage ; and Mawworm, tired of
standing behind his counter, was eager to mount a tub,
mistaking the suppression of his animal spirits for the
communication of the Holy Ghost ! 1 If you live near a
chapel or tabernacle in London, you may almost always
tell, from physiognomical signs, which of the passengers
will turn the corner to go there. We were once staying
in a remote place in the country, where a chapel of this
sort had been erected by the force of missionary zeal,
and one morning we perceived a long procession of
people coming from the next town to the consecration
of this same chapel. Never was there such a set of scare-
crows ! Melancholy tailors, consumptive hairdressers,
squinting cobblers, women with child or in the ague,
made up the forlorn hope of the pious cavalcade. The
pastor of this half-starved flock, we confess, came riding
after, with a more goodly aspect, as if he had "with
sound of bell been knolled to church, and sat at good
men's feasts." He had in truth lately married a thriving
widow, and been pampered with hot suppers to strengthen
the flesh and the spirit. We have seen several of these
" round fat oily men of God,
" ' That shone all glittering with ungodly dew.' "
They grow sleek and corpulent by getting into better
pasture, but they do not appear healthy. They retain
the original sin of their constitution, an, atrabilious taint
in their complexion, and do not put a right-down, hearty,
honest, good-looking face upon the matter, like the
regular clergy.
Again, Methodism, by its leading doctrines, has a
peculiar charm for all those who have an equal facility
1 Oxberry's manner of acting this character is a very edifying
comment on the text : he flings his arms about, like those of a figure
pulled by strings, and seems actuated by a pure spirit of infatuation,
as if one blast of folly had taken possession of his whole frame,
" And filled up all the mighty void of sense."
8i On the Causes of Methodism.
in sinning and repenting in whom the spirit is willing
but the flesh is weak who have neither fortitude to
withstand temptation, nor to silence the admonitions of
conscience who like the theory of religion better than
the practice, and who are willing to indulge in all the
raptures of speculative devotion without being tied
down to the dull literal performance of its duties.
There is a general propensity in the human mind (even
in the most vicious) to pay virtue a distant homage ;
and this desire is only checked by the fear of condemn-
ing ourselves by our own acknowledgments. What an
admirable expedient, then, in " that burning and shining
light," Whitfield, and his associates, to make this very
disposition to admire and extol the highest patterns of
goodness a substitute for, instead of an obligation to,
the practice of virtue, to allow us to be quit for " the
vice that most easily besets us," by canting lamentations-
over the depravity of human nature, and loud hosannuhs
to the Son of David ! How comfortably this doctrine
must sit on all those who are loth to give up old habits
of vice, or are just tasting the sweets of new ones ! on
the withered hag who looks back on a life of dissipation,
or the young devotee who looks forward to a life of
pleasure ; the knavish tradesman retiring from business
or entering on it ; the battered rake ; the sneaking poli-
tician, who trims between his place and his con-
science, Wriggling between heaven and earth, a miserable
two-legged creature, with sanctified face and fawning
gestures; the maudlin sentimentalist, the religious pro-
stitute, the disinterested poet laureate, the humane war-
contractor, or the Society for the Suppression of Vice !
This scheme happily turns morality into a sinecure, takes
all the practical drudgery and trouble oft' your hands,
" and sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words." Its
proselytes besiege the gates of heaven, like sturdy
beggars about the doors of the great, lie and bask in the
On the Causes of Methodism. 85
sunshine of Divine grace, sigh and groan and bawl out
for mercy, expose their sores and blotches to excite
commiseration, and cover the deformities of their nature
with a garb of borrowed righteousness!
The jargon and nonsense which are so studiously
inculcated in the system are another powerful recom-
mendation of it to the vulgar. It does not impose
any tax upon the understanding. Its essence is, to be
tinintelligible. It is carte blanche for ignorance and folly.
Those, " numbers without number," who are either un-
able or unwilling to think connectedly or rationally on
any subject, are at once released from every obligation of
the kind, by being told that faith and reason are opposed
to one another, and the greater the impossibility the
greater the merit of the faith. A set of phrases which,
without conveying any distinct idea, excite our wonder,
our fear, our curiosity and desires, which let loose the
imagination of the gaping multitude, and confound and
baffle common sense, are the common stock-in-trade of
the conventicle. They never stop for the distinctions
of the understanding, and have thus got the start of
other sects, who are so hemmed in with the necessity of
giving reasons for their opinions that they cannot get
on at all. " Vital Christianity " is no other than an
attempt to lower all religion to the level of the capacities
of the lowest of the people. One of their favourite
places of worship combines the noise and turbulence of
a drunken brawl at an alehouse with the indecencies of
a bagnio. They strive to gain a vertigo by abandoning
their reason, and give themselves up to the intoxications
of a distempered zeal that,
" Dissolves them into ecstasies,
Aud brings all heaven before their eyes."
Eeligion, without superstition, will not answer the
purposes of fanaticism, and we mav safely say that
86 On the ' Midsummer Nights Dream.'
almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its
essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
The Methodists have greased the boots of the Presby-
terians, and they have done well. While the latter are
weighing their doubts and scmples to the division of a
hair, and shivering on the narrow brink that divides
philosophy from religion, the former plunge without
remorse into hell-flames, soar on the wings of Divine
love, are carried away with the motions of the Spirit,
are lost in the abyss of unfathomable mysteries elec-
tion, reprobation, predestination and revel in a sea of
boundless nonsense. It is a gulf that swallows up every-
thing. The cold, the calculating, and the dry, are not
to the taste of the many; religion is an anticipation of
the preternatural world, and it in general requires pre-
ternatural excitements to keep it alive. If it takes
a definite consistent form it loses its interest ; to pro-
duce its effect it must come in the shape of an ap-
parition. Our quacks treat grown people as the nurses
do children terrify them with what they have no idea
of, or take them to a puppet-show.
No. XVI.
On the ( Midsummer Night's Dream,' 1
BOTTOM the weaver is a character that has not had
justice done him. He is the most romantic of mechanics.
And what a list of companions he has Quince the car-
penter, Snug the joiner, Flute the bellows-mender, Snout
the tinker, Starveling the tailor! And then again,
what a group of fairy attendants : Puck, Peas-blossom,
Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed ! It has been observed
1 This Essay appeared likewise in ' Characters of Shakespear's
Plays,' 1817, pp. 126-34 ; but the present text contains matter not
in the other, and vice versa. ED.
On the ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 87
that Shakspeare's characters are constructed upon deep
physiological principles ; and there is something in this
play which looks very like it. Bottom the weaver, who
takes the lead of
" This crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,"
follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly repre-
sented as conceited, serious, and fantastical. He is
ready to undertake anything and everything, as if it
was as much a matter of course as the motion of his
loom and shuttle. He is for playing the tyrant, the
lover, the lady, the lion. " He will roar that it shall do
any man's heart good to hear him ; " and this being
objected to as improper, he still has a resource in his
good opinion of himself, and " will roar you an 'twere
any nightingale." Snug the joiner is the moral man of
the piece, who proceeds by measurement and discretion
in all things. You see him with his rule and compasses
in his hand : " Have you the lion's part written ? Pray
you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study." " You
may do it extempore," says Quince, "for it is nothing
but roaring." Starveling the tailor keeps the peace, and
objects to the lion and the drawn sword : " I believe we
must leave the killing out, when all's done." Starveling,
however, does not start the objections himself, but
seconds them when made by others, as if he had not
spirit to express his fears without encouragement. It is
too much to suppose all this intentional, but it very
luckily falls out so. Nature includes all that is implied
in the most subtle and analytical distinctions, and the
same distinctions will be found in Shakspeare. Bottom,
who is not only chief actor, but stage-manager for the
occasion, has a device to obviate the danger of frighten-
ing the ladies : " Write me a prologue, and let the pro-
logue seem to say, we will do him no harm with our
88 On tJie ' Midsummer Nights Dream.'
swords ; and that Pyramus is not killed indeed ; and, for
better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, ain not
Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them
out of fear." Bottom seems to have understood the sub-
ject of dramatic illusion at least as well as any modern
essayist. If our holiday mechanic rules the rcast among
his fellows, he is no less at home in his new character of
an ass, " with amiable cheeks and fair large ears." He
instinctively acquires a most learned taste, and grows
fastidious in the choice of dried peas and bottled hay.
He is quite familiar with his new attendants, and as-
signs them their parts with all due gravity : " Monsieur
Cobweb, good monsieur, get your weapons in your hand,
and kill me a red-hipped bumblebee on the top of a thistle,
and, good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag." What an
exact knowledge is shown here of natural history !
Puck, or Eobin Goodfellow, is the leader of the fairy
band. Pie is the Ariel of the ' Midsummer Night's
Dream, ' and yet as unlike as can be to the Ariel in the
' Tempest.' No other poet could have made two such
different characters out of the same fanciful materials
and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is
touched with a sense of pity at the woes he inflicts.
Puck is a madcap sprite, full of wantonness and mis-
chief, who laughs at those whom he misleads " Lord,
what fools these mortals be ! " Ariel cleaves the air, and
executes his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger :
Puck is borne along on his fairy errand, like the light
and glittering gossamer before the breeze. He is,
indeed, a most epicurean little gentleman, dealing in
quaint devices and faring in dainty delights. Prospero
and his world of spirits are a set of moralists ; but with
Oberon and his fairies we are launched at once into the
empire of the butterflies. How beautifully is this race
of beings contrasted with the men and women actors in
the scene, by a single epithet which Titania gives to the
. On the ' Midsummer Nights Dream? 89
latter, "the human mortals!" It is astonishing that
Shakspeare should be considered, not only by foreigners,
but by many of our o%vn critics, as a gloomy and heavy
writer, who painted nothing but " Gorgons and Hydras
and Chimeras dire." His subtlety exceeds that of all
other dramatic Avriters, insomuch that a celebrated per-
son of the present day said, that he regarded him rather
as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and
sportive gaiety are infinite. In the ' Midsummer Night's
Dream '" alone, we should imagine, there is more sweet-
ness and beauty of description than in the whole range
of French poetry put together. What we mean is this,
that we will produce out of that single play ten passages,
to which we do not think any ten passages in the works
of the French poets can be opposed, displaying equal
fancy and imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance
of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her
faiiy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian
boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments,
or the Fairy Queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due
attendance upon her favourite Bottom, 1 or Hippolyta's
description of a chase, or Theseus' answer ? The two
last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of
luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is like
1 The following lines are remarkable for a certain cloying sweet-
ness in the repetition of the rhymes :
" Titania. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ;
Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes ;
Feed him with apricccks ;u,d dewberries,
"With purple grapes, green tigs, and mulberries ;
The honey-bags steal from the bumblebees,
And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs,
And light them at the fiery glowworm's eyes,
To have my love to bed, and to arise ;
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes :
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies." [Act iii. sc. 2,
Dyce's edit., 1868, vol. ii. p. 290.]
90 On the ' Midsummer Night's Dream'
wandering in a grove by moonlight ; the descriptions
breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from beds of
flowers.
Shakspeare is almost the only poet of whom it may be
said, that
" Age cannot wither, nor custom stale,
His infinite variety."
His nice touches of individual character, and mark-
ing of its different gradations, have been often admired ;
but the instances have not been exhausted, because they
are inexhaustible. We will mention two which occur
to us. One is where Christopher Sly expresses his ap-
probation of the play, by saying, " 'Tis a good piece of
work, would 'twere done," as if he were thinking of his
Saturday night's job. Again, there cannot well be a
finer gradation of character than that in Henry IV.,
between Falstaff and Shallow, and Shallow and Silence.
It seems difficult to fall lower than the squire ; but this
fool, great as he is, finds an admirer and humble foil in
his cousin Silence. Vain of his acquaintance with Sir
John, who makes a butt of him, he exclaims, " Would,
Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that which this
Knight and I have seen !" " Aye, Master Shallow, we
have heard the chimes at midnight," says Sir John. The
true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of the
stuff we are made of, the practical wisdom with the
seeming fooleries, in the whole of this exquisite scene,
and afterwards in the dialogue on the death of old Double,
have no parallel anywhere else.
It has been suggested to us, that the ' Midsummer
Night's Dream ' would do admirably to get up as a
Christmas after-piece ; and our prompter proposes that
Mr. Kean should play the part of Bottom, as worthy of
his great talents. He might offer to play the lady lik%
any of our actresses that he pleased, the lover or the
tyrant like any of our actors that he pleased, and the
On the ( Beggar's Opera! 91
lion like " the most fearful wild-fowl living." The
carpenter, the tailor, and joiner would hit the galleries ;
the young ladies in love would interest the side-boxes ;
and Eobin Goodfellow and his companions excite a lively
fellow-feeling in the children from school. There would
be two courts : an empire within an empire ; the Athenian
and the Fairy King and Queen, with their attendants,
and with all their finery. What an opportunity for
processions, for the sound of trumpets, and glittering of
spears ! What a fluttering of urchins' painted wings !
What a delightful profusion of gauze clouds, and airy
spirits floating on them ! It would be a complete English
fairy-tale.
No. XVII.
On the Beggar's Opera.
AVi: have begun this Essay on a very coarse sheet of
damaged foolscap, and we find that we are going to
write it, whether for the sake of contrast, or from
having a very fine pen, in a remarkably nice hand.
Something of a similar process seems to have taken place
in Gay's mind when he composed his ' Beggar's Opera.'
He chose a very unpromising ground to work upon, and
he has prided himself in adorning it with all the graces,
the precision and brilliancy of style. It is a vulgar error
to call this a vulgar play. So far from it, that we do not
scruple to declare our opinion that it is one of the most
refined productions in the language. The elegance of
the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness
of the materials; by "happy alchemy of mind," the
author has extracted an essence of refinement from the
dregs of human life, and turns its very dross into gold.
The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in themselves,
of the lowest and most disgusting kind : but, by the
92 On the ' Beggar s Opera'
sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths
of highwaymen, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or
daughters, he has converted this motley group into a set
of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists and philosophers.
He has also effected this transformation without once
violating probability or " o'erstepping the modesty of
nature." In fact Gay has turned the tables on the
critics ; and by the assumed licence of the mock-heroic
style, has enabled himself to do justice to nature that is,
to give all the force, truth, and locality of real feeling to
the thoughts and expressions, without being called to
<he bar of false taste and affected delicacy. The extreme
beauty and feeling of the song, ' Woman is like the fair
flower in its lustre,' is only equalled by its characteristic
propriety and naivete. It may be said that this is taken
from Tibullus ; but there is nothing about Covent Garden
in Tibullns. Polly describes her lover going to the
gallows with the same touching simplicity, and with all
the natural fondness of a young girl in. her circumstances,
who sees in his approaching catastrophe nothing but
the misfortunes and the personal accomplishments of the
object of her affections : " I see him sweeter than the
nosegay in his hand ; the admiring crowd lament that
so lovely a youth should come to an untimely end.
Even butchers weep, and Jack Ketch refuses his fee rather
.than consent to tie the fatal knot." The pi-eservation
-of the character and costume is complete. It has been
said by a great authority, "There is some soul of good-
ness in things evil," and the ' Beggar's Opera ' is a
goodnatured but instructive comment on this text. The
poet has thrown all the gaiety and sunshine of the
imagination, all the intoxication of pleasure and the
vanity of despair, round the shortlived existence of his
heroes ; while Peachum and Lockitt are seen in the
background, parcelling out their months and weeks
between them. The general view exhibited of human
On the 'Beggars Opera.' 93
life is of the most masterly and abstracted kind. The
author has, with great felicity, brought out the good
qualities and interesting emotions almost inseparable
from the lowest conditions ; and with the same penetrat-
ing glance has detected the disguises which rank and
circumstances lend to exalted vice. Every lino in this
sterling comedy sparkles with wit, and is fraught with
the keenest sarcasm. The very wit, however, takes off
from the offensiveness of the satire ; and we have seen
great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoying
the joke, laughing most immoderately at the compliments
paid to them as not much worse than pickpockets
and cut-throats in a different line of life, and pleased,
as it were, to see themselves humanised by some sort
of fellowship with their kind. Indeed, it may be said
that the moral of the piece is to show the vulgarity:
of vice ; and that the same violations of integrity and
decorum, the same habitual sophistry in palliating their
want of principle, are common to the great and powerful
with the lowest and most contemptible of the species.
"What can be more convincing than the arguments
used by the.^e would-be politicians to show that in
hypocrisy, selfishness, and treachery, they do not come
up to many of their betters ? The exclamation of Mrs.
Peachum, when her daughter marries Macheath, " Hussy,
hussy ! you will be as illused and as much neglected as
if you had married a lord," is worth all Miss Hannah
More's laboured invectives on the laxity of the manners
of high life I 1
1 The late ingenious Baron Griinni, of acute critical memory, was
up to the merit of the ' Beggar's Opera/ In his correspondence he
says : "If it be true that the nearer u writer is to Nature the more
certain he is of pleasing, it must be allowed that the English, in
their dramatic pieces, have greatly the advantage over us. There
reigns in them an inestimable tone of nature, which the timidity of
our taste has banished from French pieces. M. Patu lias just pub-
lished, in two volumes, a selection of smaller dramatic pieces, tran-
94 On Patriotism.
No. XVIII.
On Patriotism. A Fragment.
PATRIOTISM, in modern times and in great States, is and
must be the creature of reason and reflection, rather than
the offspring of physical or local attachment. " Our
country " is a complex, abstract existence, recognised only
by the understanding. It is an immense riddle, containing
numberless modifications of reason and prejudice, of
thought and passion. Patriotism is not, iu a strict or
exclusive sense, a natural or personal affection, but a
law of our rational and moral nature, strengthened and
determined by particular circumstances and associations,
lated from the English, which will eminently support what I have
advanced. The principal one among this selection is the celebrated
'Beggar's Opera' of Gay, which lias had such an amazing run in
England. We are here in the very worst company imaginable ;
the dramatis persons are robbers, pickpockets, gaolers, prostitutes,
and the like; yet we are highly amused and in no haste to quit
them. And why ? Because there is nothing in the world more
original or more natural. There is no occasion to compare our most
celebrated comic operas with this, to see how far we are removed
from truth and nature ; and this is the reason that, notwithstanding
our wit, we are almost always flat and insipid. Two faults are
generally committed by our writers, which they seem incapable of
avoiding : they think they have done wonders if they have only
faithfully copied the dictionaries of the personages they bring upon
the stage, forgetting that the great art is to choose the moments of
character and passion in those who are to speak, since it is those
moments alone that render them interesting. For want of this dis-
crimination, the piece necessarily sinks into insipidity and mono-
tony. Why do almost all M. Vade's pieces fatigue the audience to
death? Because all his characters speak the same language
because each is a perfect resemblance of the other. Instead of this,
in the ' Beggar's Opera,' among eight or ten girls of the town, each
has her separate character, her peculiar traits, her peculiar modes
of expression, which give her a marked distinction from her com-
panions." Vol. i. p. 185.
On Patriotism. 95
but not born of them nor wholly nourished by them.
It is not possible that we should have an individual
attachment to sixteen millions of men any more than to
sixty millions. We cannot be habitually attached to
places we never saw and people we never heard of.
Is not the name of Englishman a general term as well
as that of man ? How many varieties does it not com-
bine within it? Are the opposite extremities of the
globe our native place because they are a part of that
geographical and political denomination ' our country' ?
Does natural affection expand in circles of latitude and
longitude ? What personal or instinctive sympathy has
the EngHsh peasant with the African slave-driver or
East Indian nabob ? Some of our wretched bunglers in
metaphysics would fain persuade us to discard all
general humanity and all sense of abstract justice, as a
violation of natural affection, and yet do not see that the
love of our country itself is in the list of our general
affections. The common notions of patriotism are
transmitted down to us from the savage tribes, where the
fate and condition of all was the same, or from the States
of Greece and Rome, where the country of the citizen
was the town in which he was born. "\\ here this is no
longer the case where our country is no longer
contained within the narrow circle of the same walls
where we can no longer behold its glimmering horizon
from the top of our native mountains beyond these
limits it is not a natural but an artificial idea, and our
love of it either a deliberate dictate of reason or a cant
term. It was said by an acute observer and eloquent
writer (Rousseau) that the love of mankind was nothing
but the love of justice ; the same might be said with
considerable truth of the love of our country. It is
little more than another name for the love of liberty, of
independence, of peace, and social happiness. We do
not say that other indirect and collateral circumstances
96 On Beauty.
do not go to the superstructure of this sentiment (as
language, 1 literature, manners, national customs), but
this is the broad and firm basis.
No. XIX.
On Beauty.
IT is about sixty years ago that Sir Joshua Eeynolds, in
three papers which he wrote in the ' Idler,' advanced
the notion which has prevailed very much ever sine 3
that Beauty was entirely dependent on custom, or on
the conformity of objects to a given standard. Now
we could never persuade ourselves that custom, or the
association of ideas, though a very powerful, was the
only principle of the preference which the mind gives
to certain objects over others. Novelty is surely one
source of pleasure ; otherwise we cannot account for the
well-known epigram, beginning
" Two happy things in marriage are allowed," &c.
Nor can we help thinking that, besides custom, or the
conformity of certain objects to others of the same
general class, there is also a certain conformity of
objects to themselves a symmetry of parts, a prin-
ciple of proportion, gradation, harmony call it what
you will which makes certain things naturally pleasing
or beautiful, and the want of it the contrary.
We will not pretend to define -what Beauty is, after so
many learned authors have failed ; but we shall attempt
to give some examples of what constitutes it to show
that it is in some way inherent in the object, and that if
custom is a second nature, there is another nature which
1 He who speaks two languages has no country. The French,
when they made their language the common language of the Courts
of Europe, gained more than by all their subsequent conquests.
On Beauty. 97
ranks before it. Indeed, the idea that all pleasure and
pain depend on the association of ideas is manifestly
absurd ; there must be something in itself pleasurable
or painful before it could become possible for the feel-
ings of pleasure or pain to be transferred by association
from one object to another.
Regular features are generall}' accounted handsome ;
but regular features are those the outlines of which
answer most nearly to each other, or undergo the
fewest abrupt changes. We shall attempt to explain
this idea by a reference to the Greek and African face,
the first of which is beautiful because it is made up
of lines corresponding with or melting into each
other ; the last is not so, because it is made up almost
entirely of contradictory lines and sharp angular pro-
jections.
The general principle of the difference between the
two heads is this : the forehead of the Greek is square
and upright, and, as it were, overhangs the rest of the
face, except the nose, which is a continuation of it
almost in an even line. In the Negro or African the tip
of the nose is the most projecting part of the face ; and
from that point the features retreat back, both upwards
towards the forehead and downwards to the chin.
This last form is an approximation to the shape of the
head of the animal, as the former bears the strongest
stamp of humanity.
The Grecian nose is regular, the African irregular ;
in other words, the Grecian nose seen in profile forms
nearly a straight line with the forehead, and falls into
the upper lip by two cm"ves, which balance one another ;
seen in front, the two sides are nearly parallel to each
other, and the nostrils and lower part form regular
curves answering to one another and to the contours of
the mouth. On the contrary, the African pug-nose is
more " like an ace of clubs." Whichever way you look
H
98 On Beauty.
at it, it presents the appearance of a triangle. It is
narrow and drawn to a point at top, broad and flat at
bottom. The point is peaked, and recedes abruptly to
the level of the forehead or the niouth, and the nostrils
are as if they were drawn up with hooks towards
each other. All the lines cross each other at sharp
angles. The forehead of the Greeks is flat and square
till it is rounded at the temples ; the African forehead,
like the ape's, falls back towards the top and spreads
out at the sides, so as to form an angle with the cheek-
bones. The eyebrows of the Greeks are either straight,
so as to sustain the lower part of the tablet of the fore-
head, or gently arched, so as to form the outer circle
of the curves of the eyelids. The form of the eyes
gives all the appearance of orbs full, swelling, and
involved within each other. The African eyes are flat,
narrow at the corners, in the shape of a tortoise ; and
the eyebrows fly off slantwise to the sides of the fore-
head. The idea of the superiority of the Greek face in
this respect is admirably expressed in Spenser's descrip-
tion of Belphcebe :
" Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,
Like a broad table did itself dispread,
For love therein his triumphs to engrave,
And write the battles of his great godhead.
******
Upon her eyelids many graces sat
Under the shadow of her even brows."
The head of the girl in the ' Transfiguration ' which
Raphael took from the ' Niobe ' has the same corre-
spondence and exquisite involution of the outline of the
forehead, the eyebrows, and the eyes (circle within
circle) which we here speak of. Every part of that
delightful head is blended together, and every sharp
projection moulded and softened down with the feeling
of a sculptor, or as if nothing should be left to offend
On Beauty. 99
the touch as well as eye. Again, the Greek mouth is
small, and little wider than the lower part of the nose ;
the lips form waving lines, nearly answering to each
other. The African month is twice as wide as the nose,
projects in front, and falls back towards the ears ; is
sharp and triangular, and consists of one protruding
and one distended lip. The chin of the Greek face is
round and indented, curled in, forming a fine oval with
the outline of the cheeks, which resemble the two halves
of a plane, parallel with the forehead, and rounded off like
it. The Negro chin falls inwards like a dewlap, is nearly
bisected in the middle, flat at bottom, and joined abruptly
to the rest of the face, the whole contour of which is
made up of jagged cross-grained lines. The African
physiognomy appears, indeed, splitting in pieces start-
ing out in every oblique direction, and marked by the
most sudden and violent changes throughout. The
whole of the Grecian face blends with itself in a state
of the utmost harmony and repose. 1 There is a harmony
of expression as well as a symmetry of form. We some-
times see a face melting into beauty by the force of
sentiment an eye that, in its liquid mazes, for ever
expanding and for ever retiring within itself, draws the
soul after it and tempts the rash beholder to his fate.
This is, perhaps, what Werter meant when he says of
Charlotte, " Her full dark eyes are ever before me, like
a sea like a precipice." The historical in expression
is the consistent and harmonious whatever in thought
or feeling communicates the same movement, whether
1 There is, however, in the African physiognomy a grandeur and
a force arising from this uniform character of violence and abrupt-
ness. It is consistent with itself throughout. Entire deformity
can only be found where the features have not only no symmetry or
softness in themselves, but have no connection with one another,
presenting every variety of wretchedness and a jumble of all sorts
of defects, such as we see in Hogarth or in the streets of London :
for instance, a large bottle-nose, with a small mouth twisted awry.
100 On Beauty.
voluptuous or impassioned, to all the parts of the face,
the mouth, the eyes, the forehead, and shows that they
are all actuated by the same spirit. For this reason it
has been observed that all intellectual and impassioned
faces are historical the heads of philosophers, poets,
lovers, and madmen.
Motion is beautiful as it implies either continuity or
gradual change. The motion of a hawk is beautiful,
either returning in endless circles with suspended
wings, or darting right forward in one level line upon
its prey. We have, when boys, often watched the glit-
tering down of the thistle, at first scarcely rising above
the ground, and then, mingling with the gale, borne
into the upper sky with varying fantastic motion. How
delightful ! how beautiful ! All motion is beautiful that
is not contradictory to itself that is free from sudden
jerks and shocks that is either sustained by the same
impulse, or gradually reconciles different impulses to-
gether. Swans resting on the calm bosom of a lake,
in which their image is reflected, or moved up and
down with the heaving of the waves though by this
the double image is disturbed are equally beautiful.
Homer describes Mercury as flinging himself from th
top of Olympus and skimming the surface of the ocean.
This is lost in Pope's translation, who suspends him on
the incumbent air. The beauty of the original image
consists in the idea which it conveys of smooth unin-
terrupted speed of the evasion of every let or obstacle
to the progress of the god. 1 Awkwardness is occasioned
1 The following version, communicated by a classical friend, is
exact and elegant :
*' He said ; and strait the herajd Argicide
Beneath his feet his winged sandals tied,
Immortal, golden, that his flight could bear
O'er seas and lands, like waftage of the air.
His rod too, that can close the eyes of men
In balmy sleep, and open them again,
On Beauty. 101
by a difficulty in moving, or by disjointed movements
that distract the attention and defeat each other. Grace
is the absence of everything that indicates pain or dif-
ficulty, hesitation or incongruity. The only graceful
dancer we ever saw was Deshayes the Frenchman. He
came on bounding like a stag. It was not necessary to
have seen good dancing before to know that this was
really fine. Whoever has seen the sea in motion, the
branches of a tree waving in the air, would instantly
perceive the resemblance. Flexibility and grace are to
be found in nature as well as at the opera. Mr. Burke,
in his ' Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,' has very
admirably described the bosom of a beautiful woman,
almost entirely with reference to the ideas of motion.
Those outlines are beautiful which describe pleasant
He took, and holding it in hand, went flying,
Till, from Pieria's top the sea descrying,
Down to it sheer he dropp'd, and scour'd away
Like the wild gull, that, fishing o'er the bay,
Flaps on, with pinions dipping in the brine
So went on the far sea the shape divine."
Odyssey, book v.
" That was Arion crown'd :
So went he playing on the wat'ry plain."
Faerie Queen.
There is a striking description in Mr. Burke's ' Reflections ' of the
late Queen of France, whose charms had left their poison in the
heart of this Irish orator and patriot, and set the world in a ferment
sixteen years afterwards: "And surely never lighted on this orb,
which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision." The
idea is in ' Don Quixote,' where the Duenna speaks of the air with
which the Duchess " treads, or rather seems to disdain, the ground
she walks on." We have heard the same account of the graceful-
ness of Marie Antoinette from an artist who saw her at Versailles
much about the same time that Mr. Burke did. He stood in one
corner of a little antechamber, and as the doors were narrow she
was obliged to pass sideways w,ith her hoop. She glided by him
in an instant, as if borne on a cloud.
102 On Imitation.
motions. A fine use is made of this principle by one of
the Apocryphal writers in describing the form of the
rainbow : " He hath set His bow in the heavens, and His
hands have bended it." Harmony in colour has not been
denied to be a natural property of objects, consisting in
the gradations of intermediate colours. The principle
appears to be here the same as in some of the former
instances. The effect of colour in Titian's ' Bath of
Diana,' at the Marquis of Stafford's, 1 is perhaps the
finest in the world, made up of the richest contrasts,
blended together by the most masterly gradations. Har-
mony of sound depends apparently on the same principle
as harmony of colour. Khyme depends on the pleasure-
derived from a recurrence of similar sounds, as sym-
metry of features does on the correspondence of the
different outlines. The prose style of Dr. Johnson
originated in the same principle. Its secret consisted
in rhyming on the sense, and balancing one half of the
sentence uniformly and systematically against the other.
The Hebrew poetry was constructed in the same manner.
No. XX.
On Imitation.
OBJECTS in themselves disagreeable or indifferent often
please in the imitation. A brick floor, a pewter plate,
an ugly cur barking, a Dutch boor smoking or playing
at skittles, the inside of a shambles, a fishmonger's or a
greengrocer's stall, have been made very interesting as
pictures by the fidelity, skill, and spirit with which they
have been copied. One source of the pleasure thus re-
ceived is undoubtedly the surprise or feeling of admira-
1 Now the Bridge-water Gallery, the property of the Earls of
Ellesmere. ED.
On Imitation. 103
tion occasioned by the unexpected coincidence between
the imitation and the object. The deception, however,
not only pleases at first sight, or from mere novelty, but
it continues to please upon further acquaintance, and in
proportion to the insight we acquire into the distinctions
of nature and of art. By far the most numerous class
of connoisseurs are the admirers of pictures of still life,
which have nothing but the elaborateness of the execu-
tion to recommend them. One chief reason, it should
seem, then, why imitation pleases is, because, by ex-
citing curiosity and inviting a comparison between the
object and the representation, it opens a new field of
inquiry, and leads the attention to a variety of details
and distinctions not perceived before. This latter source
of the pleasure derived from imitation has never been
properly insisted on.
The anatomist is delighted with a coloured plate con-
veying the exact appearance of the progress of certain
diseases, or of the internal parts and dissections of the
human body. We have known a Jennerian professor as
much enraptured with a delineation of the different
stages of vaccination as a florist with a bed of tulips or
an auctioneer with a collection of Indian shells. But
in this case we find that not only the imitation pleases;
the objects themselves give as much pleasure to the
professional inquirer as they would pain to the un-
initiated. The learned amateur is struck with the
beauty of the coats of the stomach laid bare, or contem-
plates with eager curiosity the transverse section of the
brain divided on the new Spurzheim principles. It is
here, then, the number of the parts their distinctions,
connections, structure, uses in short, an- entire new set
of ideas, which occupies the mind of the student, and
overcomes the sense of pain and repugnance which is
the only feeling that the sight of a dead and mangled
body presents to ordinary men. It is the same in art as
104 On Imitation.
in science. The painter of still life, as it is called, takes
the same pleasure in the object as the spectator does in
the in-itation, because by habit he is led to perceive all
those distinctions in nature to which other persons never
pay any attention till they are pointed out to them in
the picture. The vulgar only see nature as it is re-
flected to them from art; the painter sees the picture
in nature before he transfers it to the canvas. He
refines, he analyses, he remarks fifty things which
escape common eyes ; and this affords a distinct source
of reflection and amusement to him, independently of
the beauty or grandeur of the objects themselves, or
of their connection with other impressions besides
those of sight. The charm of the fine arts, then,
does not consist in anything peculiar to imitation, even
where only imitation is concerned, since there, where art
exists in the highest perfection namely, in the mind of
the artist the object excites the same or greater pleasure
before the imitation exists. Imitation renders an object,
displeasing in itself, a source of pleasure, not by repe-
tition of the same idea, but by suggesting new ideas
by detecting new properties and endless shades of dif-
ference, just as a close and continued contemplation of
the object itself would do. Art shows us nature di-
vested of the medium of our prejudices. It divides and
decompounds objects into a thousand curious parts, which
may be full of variety, beauty, and delicacy in them-
selves, though the object to which they belong may be
disagreeable in its general appearance or by association
with other ideas. A painted marigold is inferior to a
painted rose only in form and colour ; it loses nothing
in point of smell. Yellow hair is perfectly beautiful in
a picture. To a person lying with his face close to the
ground in a summer's day the blades of speargrass will
appear like tall forest trees shooting up into the sky ;
as an insect seen through a microscope is magnified into
On Imitation. 105
an elephant. Art is the microscope of the mind, which
sharpens the wit as the other does the sight, and con-
verts every object into a little universe in itself. 1 Art
may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To
those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice un-
imbued with the principles of art most objects present
only a confused mass. The pursuit of art is liable to be
carried to a contrary excess, as where it produces a rage
for the picturesque. You cannot go a step with a person
of this class but he stops you to point out some choice
bit of landscape or fancied improvement, and teazes you
almost to death with the frequency and insignificance of
his discoveries.
It is a common opinion (which may be worth noticing
here) that the study of physiognomy has a tendency to
make people satirical, and the knowledge of art to make
them fastidious in their taste. Knowledge may, indeed,
afford a handle to ill-nature, but it takes away the princi-
pal temptation to its exercise by supplying the mind with
better resources against ennui. Idiots are always mis-
chievous ; and the most superficial persons are the most
disposed to find fault, because they understand the fewest
things. The English are more apt than any other nation
to treat foreigners with contempt, because they seldom
see anything but their own dress and manners ; and it
is only in petty provincial towns that you meet with
persons who pride themselves on being satirical. In
every country-place in England there are one or two
1 In a fruit or flower piece by Vanhuysum, the minutest details
acquire a certain grace and beauty from the delicacy with which
they are finished. The eye dwells with a giddy delight on the
liquid drops of dew, on the gauze wings of an insect, on the hair and
feathers of a bird's nest, the streaked and speckled egg-shells, the
fine legs of the little travelling caterpillar. Who will suppose that
the painter had not the same pleasure in detecting these nice
distinctions in nature, that the critic has in tracing them in the
picture ?
106 On Imitation.
persons of this description, who keep the whole neigh-
bourhood in terror. It is not to be denied that the study
of the ideal in art, if separated from the study of nature,
may have the effect above stated of producing dissatis-
faction and contempt for everything but itself, as all
affectation must ; but to the genuine artist, truth, nature,
beauty, are almost different names for the same thing.
Imitation interests, then, by exciting a more intense
perception of truth, and calling out the powers of ob-
servation and comparison ; wherever this effect takes
place the interest follows of course, with or without
the imitation, whether the object is real or artificial.
The gardener delights in the streaks of a tulip, or
" pansy freak'd with jet ;" the mineralogist in the
varieties of certain strata, because he understands them.
Knowledge . is pleasure as well as power. A work of
art has in this respect no advantage over a work of
nature, except inasmuch as it furnishes an additional
stimulus to curiosity. Again, natural objects please in
proportion as they are uncommon, by fixing the atten-
tion more steadily on their beauties or differences. The
same principle of the effect of novelty in exciting the
attention may account, perhaps, for the extraordinary
discoveries and lies told by travellers, who, opening
their eyes for the first time in foreign parts, are startled
at every object they meet.
Why the excitement of intellectual activity pleases, is
not here the question ; but that it does so is a general
and acknowledged law of the human mind. We grow
attached to the mathematics only from finding out their
truth ; and their utility chiefly consists (at present) in
the contemplative pleasure they afford to the student.
Lines, points, angles, squares, and circles are not in-
teresting in themselves ; they become so by the power
of mind exerted in comprehending their properties and
relations. People dispute for ever about Hogarth. The
On Imitation. 107
question has not, in one respect, been fairly stated. The
merit of his pictures does not so much depend on the
nature of the subject as on the knowledge displayed of
it, on the number of ideas they excite, on the fund of
thought and observation contained in them. They are
to be looked on as works of science ; they gratify our
love of truth ; they fill up the void of the mind ; they are
a series of plates of natural history, and also of that most
interesting part of natural history, the history of man.
The superiority of high art over the common or
mechanical consists in combining truth of imitation
with beauty and grandeur of subject. The historical
painter is superior to the flower-painter, because he
combines or ought to combine human interests and
passions with the same power of imitating external
nature ; or, indeed, with greater, for the greatest
difficulty of imitation is the power of imitating ex-
pression. The difficulty of copying increases with
our knowledge of the object, and that again with the
interest we take in it. The same argument might be
applied to show that the poet and painter of imagi-
nation are superior to the mere philosopher or man of
science, because they exercise the powers of reason and
intellect combined with nature and passion. They treat
of the highest categories of the human soul, pleasure and
pain.
From the foregoing train of reasoning, we may easily
account for the too great tendency of art to run into
pedantry and affectation. There is " a pleasure in art
which none but artists feel." They see beauty where
others see nothing of the sort in wrinkles, deformity, and
old age. They see it in Titian's ' Schoolmaster ' as well as
in Eaphael's ' Galatea ' ; in the dark shadows of Rem-
brandt as well as in the splendid colours of Rubens ; in an
angel's or in a butterfly's wings. They see with different
eyes from the multitude. But true genius, though it
108 On Imitation.
has new sources of pleasure opened to it, does not lose
its sympathy with humanity. It combines truth of
imitation with effect, the parts with the whole, the
means with the end. The mechanic artist sees only
that which nobody else sees, arid is conversant only
with the technical language and difficulties of his art.
A painter, if shown a picture, will generally dwell upon
the academic skill displayed in it, and the knowledge of
the received rules of composition. A musician, if asked
to play a tune, will select that which is the most
difficult and the least intelligible. The poet will be
struck with the harmony of versification or the
elaborateness of the arrangement in a composition.
The conceits in Shakspeare were his greatest delight ;
and improving upon this perverse method of judging, the
German writers Goethe and Schiller look upon ' Werter '
and ' The Bobbers ' as the worst of all their works
because they are the most popular. Some artists among
ourselves have cariied the same principle to a singular
excess. 1 If professors themselves are liable to this kind
of pedantry, connoisseurs and dilettanti, who have less
sensibility and more affectation, are almost wholly
swayed by it. They see nothing in a picture but the
execution. They are proud of their knowledge i
proportion as it is a secret. The worst judges of
1 We here allude particularly to Turner, the ahlest landscape
painter now living (1817), whose pictures nre, howerer, too much
abstractions of aerial perspective, and representations, not so properly
of the objects of nature, as of the medium through which they are
seen. They are the triumph of tho knowledge of the artist, and of
the power of the pencil over the barrenness of the subject. They
are pictures of the elements of air, earth, and water. The artist
delights to go back to the first chaos of the world, or to that state
of things when the waters were separated from the dry land, and
light from darkness, but as yet no living thing nor tree bearing
fruit was seen upon the face of the earth. All is " without form
and void." Some one said of his landscapes that they were pictures
of nothing, and very like.
On Gusto. 109
pictures in the United Kingdom are, first, picture-
dealers ; next, perhaps, the Directors of the British
Institution ; and after them, in all probability, the
Members of the Royal Academy.
No. XXL
On Gusto.
GUSTO in art is power or passion defining any object.
It is not so difficult to explain this term in what relates
to expression (of which it may be said to be the highest
degree) as in what relates to things without expression,
to the natural appearances of objects, as mere colour or
form. In one sense, however, there is hardly any object
entirely devoid of expression, without some character
of power belonging to it, some precise association with
pleasure or pain; and it is in giving this truth of
character from the truth of feeling, whether in the
highest or the lowest degree, but always in the highest
degree of which the subject is capable, that gusto
consists.
There is a gusto in the colouring of Titian. Not
only do his heads seem to think ; his bodies seem to
feel. This is what the Italians mean by the morbidezza
of his flesh-colour. It seems sensitive and alive all
over ; not merely to have the look and texture of flesh,
but the feeling in itself. For example, the limbs of his
female figures have a luxurious softness and delicacy,
which appears conscious of the pleasure of the beholder.
As the objects themselves in nature would produce an
impression on the sense, distinct from every other object,
and having something divine in it, which the heart
owns and the imagination consecrates, the objects in the
picture preserve the same impression absolute, un-
110 On Gusto.
impaired, stamped with all the truth of passion, the
pride of the eye, and the charm of beauty. Eubens
makes his flesh-colour like flowers; Albano's is like
ivory ; Titian's is like flesh, and like nothing else. It
is as different from that of other painters as the skin is
from a piece of white or red drapery thrown over it.
The blood circulates here and there, the blue veins just
appear ; the rest is distinguished throughout only by
that sort of tingling sensation to the eye which the body
feels within itself. This is gusto. Vandyke's flesh-
colour, though it has great truth and purity, wants
gusto. It has not the internal character, the living
principle in it. It is a smooth surface, not a warm
moving mass. Is is painted without passion, with
indifference. The hand only has been concerned. The
impression slides off from the eye, and does not, like the
tones of Titian's pencil, leave a sting behind it in the
mind of the spectator. The eye does not acquire a taste
or appetite for what it sees. In a word, gusto in
painting is where the impression made on one sense
excites by affinity those of another.
Michael Angelo's forms are full of gusto. They every-
where obtrude the sense of power upon the eye. His
limbs convey an idea of muscular strength, of moral
grandeur, and even of intellectual dignity ; they are
firm, commanding, broad and massy, capable of executing
with ease the determined purposes of the will. His
faces have no other expression than his figures, conscious
power and capacity. They appear only to think what
they shall do, and to know that they can do it. This is
what is meant by saying that his style is hard and
masculine. It is the reverse of Correggio's, which is
effeminate. That is, the gusto of Michael Angelo
consists in expressing energy of will without proportion-
able sensibility : Correggio's in expressing exquisite
sensibility without energy of will. In Correggio's
On Gusto. 11 j
faces as well as figures we see neither bones nor muscles,
but then what a soul is there, full of sweetness and of
grace pure, playful, soft, angelical ! There is sentiment
enough in a hand painted by Correggio to set up a school
of history painters. Whenever we look at the hands of
Correggio's women, or of Raphael's, we always wish to
touch them.
Again, Titian's landscapes have a prodigious gusto,
both in the colouring and forms. We shall never forget
one that we saw many years ago in the Orleans Gallery
of Actseon hunting. It had a brown, mellow, autumnal
look. The sky was of the colour of stone. The winds
seemed to sing through the rustling branches of the
trees, and already you might hear the twanging of bows
resound through the tangled mazes of the wood. Mr.
West we understand has this landscape. He will know
if this description of it- is just. The landscape back-
ground of the ' St. Peter Martyr ' is another well-known
instance of the power of this great painter to give a
romantic interest and an appropriate character to the
objects of his pencil, where every circumstance adds to
the effect of the scene the bold trunks of the tall forest
trees, the trailing ground-plants, with that tall convent
spire rising in the distance, amidst the blue sapphire
mountains and the golden sky.
Rubens has a great deal of gusto in his fauns and
satyrs, and in all that expresses motion, but in nothing
else. Rembrandt has it in everything; everything in
his pictures has a tangible character. If he puts a
diamond in the ear of a burgomaster's wife it is of the
first water ; and his furs and stuffs are proof against a
Russian winter. Raphael's gusto was only in expression ;
he had no idea of the character of anything but the
human form. The dryness and poverty of his style in
other respects is a phenomenon in the art. His trees
are like sprigs of grass stuck in a book of botanical
112 On Gusto.
specimens. Was it that Raphael never had time to go
beyond the walls of Rome? that he was always in the
streets, at church, or in the bath? He was not one of
the Society of Arcadians. 1
Claude's landscapes, perfect as they are, want gusto.
This is not easy to explain. They are perfect abstrac-
tions of the visible images of things ; they speak the
visible language of nature truly. They resemble a
mirror or a microscope. To the eye only they are more
perfect than any other landscapes that ever were or
will be painted ; they give more of nature as cognisable
by one sense alone ; but they lay an equal stress on all
visible impressions. They do not interpret one sense by
another ; they do not distinguish the character of dif-
ferent objects as we are taught, and can only be taught,
to distinguish them by their effect on the different
senses ; that is, his eye wanted imagination, it did not
strongly sympathise with his other faculties. lie saw
the atmosphere, but he did not feel it. He painted the
trunk of a tree or a rock in the foreground as smooth
with as complete an abstraction of the gross tangible
impression as any other part of the picture. His trees
are perfectly beautiful, but quite immovable ; they have
a look of enchantment. In short, his landscapes are
unequalled imitations of nature, released from its sub-
jection to the elements, as if all objects were become a
delightful fairy vision, and the eye had rarefied and
refined away the other senses.
The gusto in the Greek statues is of a very singular
1 Raphael not only could not paint a landscape ; he could not
paint people in a landscape. He could not have painted the heads
or the figures, or even the dresses, of the ' St. Peter Martyr.' His
figures have always an in-door look, that is, a set, determined,
voluntary, dramatic character, arising from their own passions, or a
watchfulness of those of others, and want that wild uncertainty of
expression which is connected with the accidents of nature and the
changes of the elements. He has nothing romantic ubout hjm.
On Pedantry. 113
kind. The sense of perfect form nearly occupies the
whole mind, and hardly suffers it to dwell on any other
feeling. It seems enough for them to be, without acting
or suffering. Their forms are ideal, spiritual; their
beauty is power. By their beauty they are raised
above the frailties of pain or passion ; by their beauty
they are deified.
The infinite quantity of dramatic invention in Shak-
speare takes from his gusto. The power he delights to
show is not intense, but discursive. He never insists
on anything as much as he might, except a quibble.
Milton has great gusto; he repeats his blows twice
grapples with and exhausts his subject. His imagina-
tion has a double relish of its objects an inveterate
attachment to the things he describes and to the words
describing them :
" Or where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light."
* * * * *
; ' Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss." .
There is a gusto in Pope's compliments, in Dryden's
satires, and Prior's tales ; and among prose writers
Boccaccio and Eabelais had the most of it. We will
only mention one other work which appears to us to be
full of gusto, and that is the ' Beggar's Opera.' If it is
not, we are altogether mistaken in our notions on this
delicate subject.
No. XXII.
On Pedantry. 1
THE power of attaching an interest to the most trifling
or painful pursuits, in which our whole attention and
faculties are engaged, is one of the greatest happinesses
1 See ' Memoirs of W. H.,* 1867, vol. i. p. 249. ED.
I
114 On Pedantry.
of our nature. The common soldier mounts the breach
with joy; the miser deliberately starves himself to
death ; the mathematician sets about extracting the
cube-root with a feeling of enthusiasm ; and the lawyer
sheds tears of admiration over ' Coke upon Littleton.'
It is the same through human life. He who is not in
some measure a pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot
be a very happy man.
The chief charm of reading the old novels is from
the picture they give of the egotism of the characters,
the importance of each individual to himself, and his
fancied superiority over every one else. We like, for
instance, the pedantry of Parson Adams, who thought a
schoolmaster the greatest character in the world, and
that he was the greatest schoolmaster in it. We do not
see any equivalent for the satisfaction which this con-
viction must have afforded him in the most nicely-
graduated scale of talents and accomplishments to which
he was an utter stranger. When the old-fashioned
Scotch pedagogue turns Roderick Kandom round and
round, and surveys him from head to foot with such
infinite surprise and laughter, at the same time break-
ing out himself into gestures and exclamations still
more uncouth and ridiculous, who would wish to have
deprived him of this burst of extravagant self-com-
placency ? When our follies afford equal delight to
ourselves and those about us, what is there to be < esired
more ? We cannot discover the vast advantage of" seeing
ourselves as others see us." It is better to have a con-
tempt for any one than for ourselves.
One of the most constant butts of ridicule, both in the
old comedies and novels, is the professional jargon of
the medical tribe ; yet it cannot be denied that this
jargon, however affected it may seem, is the natural
language of apothecaries and physicians the mother-
tongue of pharmacy. It is that by which their know-
On Pedantry. 115
ledge first comes to them that with which they have
the most obstinate associations that in which they can
express themselves the most readily and with the best
effect upon their hearers ; and though there may be
some assumption of superiority in all this, yet it is
only by an effort of circumlocution that they could
condescend to explain themselves in ordinary langiiage.
Besides, there is a delicacy at bottom, as it is the only
language in which a nauseous medicine can. be de-
corously administered, or a limb taken off with the
proper degree of secresy. If the most blundering cox-
combs affect this language most, what does it signify,
while they retain the same dignified notions of them-
selves and their art, and are equally happy in their
knowledge or their ignorance ? The ignorant and pre-
tending physician is a capital character in Moliere ; and
indeed throughout his whole plays the great source of the
comic interest is in the fantastic exaggeration of blind
self-love, in letting loose the habitual peculiarities of
each individual from all restraint of conscious observa-
tion or self-knowledge, in giving way to that specific
levity of impulse which mounts at once to the height of
absurdity, in spite of the obstacles that surround it, as
a fluid in a barometer rises according to the pressure of
the external air. His characters are almost always
pedantic, and yet the most unconscious of all others.
Take, for example, those two worthy gentlemen, Mon-
sieur Jourdain and Monsieur Pourceaugnac. 1
1 A good-natured man will always have a smack of pedantry
about him. A lawyer, who talks about law, certiorates, noli prose-
quis, and silk gowns, though he may be a blockhead, is by no
means dangerous. It is a very bad sign 'unless where it arises from
singular modesty) when you cannot tell a man's profession from his
conversation. Such persons either feel no interest in what concerns
them most, or do not express what they feel. " Xot to admire any-
thing " is a very unsafe rule. A London apprentice who did not
admire the Lord Mayor's coach would stand a good chance of being
116 On Pedantry.
Learning and pedantry were formerly synonymous ;
and it was well when they were so. Can there be a
higher satisfaction than for a man to understand Greek,
and to believe that there is nothing else worth under-
standing? Learning is the knowledge of that which is
not generally known. What an ease and a dignity in
pretensions founded on the ignorance of others ! What
a pleasure in wondering ! What a pride in being won-
dered at ! In the library of the family where we were
brought up stood the ' Fratres Poloni;' 1 and we can
never forget or describe the feeling with which not only
their appearance, but the names of the aTithors on the
outside, inspired us. Pripscovius, we remember, was
one of the easiest to pronounce. The gravity of the
contents seemed in proportion to the weight of the
volumes ; the importance of the subjects increased with
our ignorance of them. The trivialness of the remarks
if ever we looked into them the repetitions, the
monotony, only gave a greater solemnity to the whole, as
the slowness and minuteness of the evidence adds to the
impressiveness of a judicial proceeding. We knew that
the authors had devoted their whole lives to the pro-
duction of these works, carefully abstaining from the
introduction of anything amusing or lively or interest-
ing. In ten folio volumes there was not one sally of wit,
one striking reflection. What, then, must have been
their sense of the importance of the subject the pro-
found stores of knowledge which they had to communi-
ca<e! "From all this world's encumbrance they did
lianged. We know but one person absurd enough to have formed
his whole character on the above maxim of Horace, and who affects
a superiority over others from an uncommon degree of natural and
artificial stupidity.
1 See the full title of this work in Memoirs of William Hazlitt,'
1 867, vol. i. p. 33, note. The writer here refers to his father's house
at Wem, in Shropshire. ED.
On Pedantry. 117
themselves assoil." Such was the notion we then had
of this learned lumber ; yet we would rather have this
feeling again for one half-hour than be possessed of all
the acuteness of Bayle or the wit of Voltaire.
It may be considered as a sign of the decay of piety
and learning in modern times that our divines no longer
introduce texts of the original Scriptures into their
sermons. The very sound of the original Greek or
Hebrew would impress the hearer with a more lively
faith in the sacred writers than any translation, how-
ever literal or correct. It may be even doubted whether
the translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue
was any advantage to the people. The mystery in
which particular points of faith were left involved gave
an awe and sacredness to religious opinions ; the general
purport of the truths and promises of Eevelation was
made known by other means ; and nothing beyond this
general and implicit conviction can be obtained where
all is undefined and infinite.
Again, it may be questioned whether, in matters of
mere human reasoning, much has been gained by the
disuse of the learned languages. Sir Isaac Newton
wrote in Latin ; and it is perhaps one of Bacon's fop-
peries that he translated his works into English. If
certain follies -have been exposed by being stripped of
their formal disguise, others have had a greater chance
of succeeding by being presented in a more plea-ing
and popular shape. This has been remarkably the ca.-e
in France (the least pedantic country in the world),
where the women mingle with everything, even with
metaphysics, and where all philosophy is reduced to a
set of phrases for the toilet. \\ hen books are written
in the prevailing language of the country every one
becomes a critic who can read. An author is no longer
tried by his peers. A species of universal suffrage is
introduced in letters, which is only applicable to politics.
118 On Pedantry.
The good old Latin style of our forefathers, if it con-
cealed the dullness of the writer, at least was a barrier
against the impertinence, flippancy, and ignorance of
the reader. However, the immediate transition from
the pedantic to the popular style in literature was a
change that must have been very delightful at the time.
Our illustrious predecessors the ' Tatler ' and ' Specta-
tor ' were very happily off in this respect. They wore
the public favour in its newest gloss, before it had
become tarnished and common before familiarity had
bred contempt. It was the honeymoon of authorship.
Their essays were among the first instances in this
country of learning sacrificing to the graces, and of a
mutual understanding and good-humoured equality
between the writer and the reader. This new style
of composition, to use the phraseology of Mr. Burke,
" mitigated authors into companions, and compelled
wisdom to submit to the soft collar of social esteem."
The original papers of the ' Tatler,' printed on a half-
sheet of common foolscap, were regularly served up at
breakfast-time with the silver teakettle and thin slices
of bread-and-butter ; and what the ingenious Mr. Bicker-
staff wrote overnight in his easy-chair, he might flatter
himself would be read the next morning with elegant
applause by the fair, the witty, the learned, and the
great, in all parts of this kingdom in which civilisation
had made any considerable advances. The perfection
of letters is when the highest ambition of the writer is
to please his readers, and the greatest pride of the reader
is to understand his author. The satisfaction on both
sides ceases when the town becomes a club of authors,
when each man stands with his manuscript in his hand
waiting for his turn of applause, and when the claims on
our admiration are so many, that, like those of common
beggars, to prevent imposition they can only be an-
swered with general neglect. Our self-love would be
On Pedantry. 119
quite bankrupt if critics by profession did not come for-
ward as beadles to keep off the crowd, and to relieve us
from the importunity of these innumerable candidates
for fame, by pointing out their faults and passing over
their beauties. In the more auspicious period just
alluded to an author was regarded by the better sort as
a man of genius, and by the vulgar as a kind of pro-
digy ; insomuch that the ' Spectator was obliged to
shorten his residence at his friend Sir Roger de Cover-
ley's, from his being taken for a conjuror. Every state of
society has its advantages and disadvantages. An author
is at present in no danger of being taken for a conjuror !
No. XXIII.
The same Subject continued.
LIFE is the art of being well deceived ; and in order that
the deception may succeed it must be habitual and un-
interrupted. A constant examination of the value of
our opinions and enjoyments compared with those of
others may lessen our prejudices, but will leave nothing
for our affections to rest upon. A multiplicity of objects
Tinsettles the mind, and destroys not only all enthusiasm,
but all sincerity of attachment, all constancy of pursuit ;
as persons accustomed to an itinerant mode of life never
feel themselves at home in any place. It is by means
of habit that our intellectual employments mix like our
food with the circulation of the blood, and go on like
any other part of the animal functions. To take away
the force of habit and prejudice entirely is to strike at
the root of our personal existence. The bookworm,
buried in the depth of his researches, may well say to
the obtrusive shifting realities of the world, " Leave
me to my repose !" We have seen an instance of a
poetical enthusiast, who would have passed his life very
120 On Pedantry.
comfortably in the contemplation of his own idea, if he
had not been disturbed in his reverie by the reviewers ;
and for our own part, we think we could pass our lives
very learnedly and classically in one of the quadrangles
at Oxford, without any idea at all, vegetating merely on
the air of the place. Chaucer has drawn a beautiful
picture of a true scholar in his ' Clerk of Oxenford ' :
" A clerk ther was of Oxenford also
That unto logik hadde longe i-go.
Al so lene was his hors as is a rake,
And he was not right fat, I undertake,
But loked holwe, and therto soburly.
Ful thredbare was his overest courtcpy,
For he hadde nought geten him yit a benefice,
Ne was not worthy to haven an office ;
For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed,
Of Aristotil and of his philosophic,
Then robus riche, or fithul, or sawtrie.
But al though he were a philosophre
Yet hadde he but litul gold in cofre,
But al that he might of his frendes hento,
On bookes and his lernyng he it spente,
And besily gan for the soules pray
Of hem that gaf him wherwith to scolay.
Of studie tooke he moste cure and heede.
Not oo word spak he more than was neede ;
Al that he spak it was of heye prudence,
And schort, and quyk, and ful of gret sentence.
Sownynge in moral manere was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche." *
If letters have profited little by throwing down the
barrier between learned prejudice and ignorant pre-
sumption, the arts have profited still less by the univer-
sal diffusion of accomplishment and pretension. An
artist is no longer looked upon as anything who is not
at the same time " chemist, statesman, fiddler, and
1 Prologue to the ' Canterbury Tales.' Works, edit. Bell, vol. i.
pp. 90, 91.
On Pedantry. 121
buffuon." It is expected of him that he should move
gracefully, and he has never learned to dance ; that he
should converse on all subjects, and he understands but
one ; that he should be read in different languages, and
he only knows his own. Yet there is one language, the
language of Nature, in which it is enough for him to be
able to read, to find everlasting employment and solace
to his thoughts
" Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stoats, and good in everything."
He will find no end of his labours or of his triumphs
there ; yet still feel all his strength not more than equal
to the task he has begun his whole life too short for
art. Eubens complained, that just as he was beginning
to understand hia profession he was forced to quit it.
It was a saying of Michael Angelo that " painting
was jealous and required the whole man to herself."
Is it to be supposed that Rembrandt did not find suffi-
cient resources against the spleen in the little cell,
where mystery and silence hung upon his pencil, or the
noontide ray penetrated the solemn gloom around him,
without the aid of modern newspapers, novels, and
reviews ? Was he not more wisely employed, while
devoted solely to his art married to that immortal
bride ? We do not imagine Sir Joshua Reynolds was
much happier for having written his lectures, nor for
the learned society he kept, friendship apart ; and
learned society is not necessary to friendship. He was
evidently, as far as conversation was concerned, little at
his ease in it ; and he was always glad, as he himself
said, after he had been entertained at the houses of the
great, to get back to his painting-room again. Any one
settled pursuit, together with the ordinary alternations
of leisure, exercise, and amusement, and the natural
feelings and relations of society, is quite enough to take
122 On Pedantry.
up the whole of our thoughts, time, and affections ; and
anything beyond this will, generally speaking, only
tend to dissipate and distract the mind. There is no
end of accomplishments, of the prospect of new acquisi-
tions of taste or skill, or of the uneasiness arising from
the want of them, if we once indulge in this idle habit
of vanity and affectation. The mind is never satisfied
with what it is, but is always looking out for fanciful
perfections which it can neither attain nor practise.
Our failure in any one object is fatal to our enjoyment
of all the rest ; and the chances of disappointment mul-
tiply with the number of our pursuits. In catching at
the shadow we lose the substance. No man can tho-
roughly master more than one art or science. The
world has never seen a perfect painter. What would it
have availed for Eaphael to have aimed at Titian's
colouring, or for Titian to have imitated Eaphael's
drawing, but to have diverted each from the true bent
of his natural genius, and to have made each sensible of
his own deficiencies, without any probability of supply-
ing them ? Pedantry in art, in learning, in everything,
is the setting an extraordinary value on that which we
can do, and that which we understand best, and that
which it is our business to do and understand. Where
is the harm of this ? To possess or even understand all
kinds of excellence equally, is impossible ; and to pre-
tend to admire that to which we are indifferent as
much as that which is of the greatest use and which
gives the greatest pleasure to us, is not liberality, but
affectation. Is an artist, for instance, to be required to
feel the same admiration for the works of Handel as for
those of Eaphael ? If he is sincere, he cannot ; and a
man, to be free from pedantry, must either be a coxcomb
or a hypocrite. Vestris was so far in the right, in say-
ing that Voltaire and he were the two greatest men in
Europe. Voltaire was so in the public opinion, and he
On Pedantry. 123
was so in bis own. Authors and literary people have
been unjustly accused for arrogating an exclusive pre-
ference to letters over arts. They are justified in doing
this, because words are the most natural and universal
language, and because they have the sympathy of the
world with them. Poets, for the same reason, have a
right to be the vainest of authors. The prejudice at-
tached to established reputation is, in like manner, per-
fectly well-founded, because that which has longest
excited our admiration and the admiration of mankind
is most entitled to admiration, on the score of habit, sym-
pathy, and deference to public opinion. There is a senti-
ment attached to classical reputation which cannot belong
to new works of genius till they become old in their turn.
There appears to be a natural division of labour in
the ornamental as well as the mechanical arts of human
life. We do not see why a nobleman should wish to
shine as a poet, any more than to be dubbed a knight
or to be created Lord Mayor of London. If he succeeds
he gains nothing; and then if he is damned what a
ridiculous figure he makes ! The great, instead of rival-
ling them, should keep authors, as they formerly kept
fools a practice in itself highly laudable, and the disuse
of which might be referred to as the first symptom of
the degeneracy of modern times and dissolution of the
principles of social order. But of all the instances of a
profession now unjustly obsolete, commend us to the
alchemist. Wo see him sitting fortified in his prejudices,
with his furnace, his diagrams, and his alembics ; smiling
at disappointments as proofs of the sublimity of his art
and the earnest of his future success ; wondering at his
own knowledge and the incredulity of others ; fed with
hope to the last gasp, and having all the pleasures with-
out the pain of madness. What is there in the dis-
coveries of modern chemistry equal to the very names
of the ELIXIR VIT.E and the AURUH POTABILE !
12-1 On Pedantry.
In Froissart's ' Chronicles ' there is an account of a
reverend monk who had been a robber in the early part
of his life, and who, when he grew old, used feelingly to
lament that he had ever changed his profession. He
said, " it was a goodly sight to sally out from his castle,
and to see a troop of jolly friars coming riding that way,
with their rnules well laden with viands and rich stores,
to advance towards them, to attack and overthrow them,
returning to the castle with a noble booty." He pre-
ferred this mode of life to counting his beads and chaunt-
ing his vespers, and repented that he had ever been
prevailed on to relinquish so laudable a calling. In this
confession of remorse we may be sure that there was no
hypocrisy.
The difference in the character of the gentlemen of
the present age and those of the old school has been
often insisted on. The character of a gentleman is a
relative term, which can hardly subsist where there is no
marked distinction of persons. The diffusion of know-
ledge, of artificial and intellectual equality, tends to
level this distinction, and to confound that nice percep-
tion and high sense of honour which arises from con-
spicuousness of situation and a perpetual attention to
personal propriety and the claims of personal respect.
The age of chivalry is gone with the improvements in
the art of war which superseded the exercise of per-
sonal courage ; and the character of a gentleman must
disappear with those general refinements in manners,
which render the advantages of rank and situation
accessible almost to every one. The bagwig and sword
naturally followed the fate of the helmet and the
spear, when these outward insignia no longer implied
acknowledged superiority, and were a distinction without
a difference.
The spirit of chivalrous and romantic love proceeded
on the same exclusive principle. It was an enthusiastic
On the Character of Rousseau. 125
adoration, an idolatrous worship, paid to sex and beauty.
This, even in its blindest excess, was better than the
cold indifference and prostituted gallantry of this philo-
sophic age. The extreme tendency of civilisation is to
dissipate all intellectual energy and dissolve all moral
principle. We are sometimes inclined to regret the in-
novations on the Catholic religion. It was a noble
charter for ignorance, dullness, and prejudice of all
kinds (perhaps, after all, " the sovereign'st things on
earth"), and put an effectual stop to the vanity and
restlessness of opinion. " It wrapt the human under-
standing all round like a blanket." Since the Beforma-
tion, altars unsprinkled by holy oil are no longer sacred,
and thrones unsupported by divine right have become
uneasy and insecure.
No. XXIV.
On the Character of Rousseau.
MADAME PE STAEL, in her ' Letters on the Writings and
Character of Eousseau,' gives it as her opinion "that the
imagination was the first faculty of his mind, and that
this faculty even absorbed all the others." 1 And she
further adds, " Eousseau had great strength of reason on
abstract questions, or with respect to objects which have
no reality but in the mind." 2 Both these opinions are
radically wrong. Neither imagination nor reason can
properly be said to have been the original predominant
faculty of his mind. The strength both of imagination
and reason which he possessed was borrowed from the
1 " Je crois que Fimagination etoit la premiere de ses facultes, et
qu'elle absorboit meme toutes les autres." P. 80.
2 "II avoit une grande puissance de raison sur les matieres
abstraites, sur les objets qui n'out de realite que dans la pcnsee,'"
fcc. P. 81.
126 On the Character of Housseau.
excess of another faculty ; and the weakness and poverty
of reason and imagination which are to be found in his
works may be traced to the same source namely, that
these faculties in him were artificial, secondary, and
dependent, operating by a power not theirs, but lent to
them. The only quality which he possest-ed in an
eminent degree, which alone raised him above ordinary
men, and which gave to his writings and opinions an
influence greater, perhaps, than has been exerted by any
individual in modern times, was extreme sensibility, or
an acute and even morbid feeling of all that related to
his own impressions, to the objects and events of his life.
He had the most intense consciousness of his own ex-
istence. No object that had once made an impression on
him was ever after effaced. Every feeling in his mind
became a passion. His craving after excitement was an
appetite and a disease. His interest in his own thoughts
and feelings was always wound up to the highest pitch,
and hence the enthusiasm which he excited in others.
He owed the power which he exercised over the opinions
of all Europe, by which he created numberless disciples,
and overturned established systems, to the tyranny
which his feelings in the first instance exercised over
himself. The dazzling blaze of his reputation was
kindled by the same fire that fed upon his vitals. 1
His ideas differed from those of other men only in
their force and intensity. His genius was the effect of
his temperament. He created nothing, he demonstrated
nothing, by a pure effort of the understanding. His
fictitious characters are modifications of his own being,
1 He did more towards the French Revolution than any other
man. Voltaire, by his wit and penetration, had rendered super-
stition contemptible and tyranny odious ; but it was Rousseau who
brought the feeling of irreconcilable enmity to rank and privileges,
above humanity, home to the bosom of every man identified it
with all the pride of intellect and with the deepest yearnings of
the human heart.
On the Character of Rousseau. 127
reflections and shadows of himself. His speculations
are the obvious exaggerations of a mind giving a loose
to its habitual impulses, and moulding all nature to its
own purposes. Hence his enthusiasm and his eloquence,
bearing down all opposition. Hence the warmth and
the luxuriance as well as the sameness of his descrip-
tions. Hence the frequent verboseness of his style ; for
passion lends force and reality to language, and makes
words supply the place of imagination. Hence the tena-
ciousness of his logic, the acuteness of his observations,
the refinement and the inconsistency of his reasoning.
Hence his keen penetration, and his strange want of
comprehension of mind ; for the same intense feeling
which enabled him to discern the first principles of
things, and seize some one view of a subject in all its rami-
fications, prevented him from admitting the operation of
other causes which interfered with his favourite purpose,
and involved him in endless wilful contradictions. Hence
his excessive egotism, which filled all objects with him-
self, and would have occupied the universe with his small-
est interest. Hence his jealousy and suspicion of others;
for no attention, no respect or sympathy, could come up
to the extravagant claims of his self-love. Hence his dis-
satisfaction with himself and with all around him ; for
nothing could satisfy his ardent longings after good, his
restless appetite of being. Hence his feelings, over-
strained and exhausted, recoiled upon themselves, and
produced his love of silence and repose, his feverish
aspirations after the quiet and solitude of nature.
Hence in part also his quarrel with the artificial in-
stitutions and distinctions of society, which opposed so
many barriers to the unrestrained indulgence of his will,
and allured his imagination to scenes of pastoral simpli-
city or of savage life, where the passions were either not
excited or left to follow their own impulse where the
petty vexations and irritating disappointments of com-
mon life had no place and where the tormenting
128 On the Character of Rousseau.
pursuits of arts and sciences were lost in pure animal
enjoyment or indolent repose. Tims he describes the
first savage wandering for ever under the shade of mag-
nificent forests or by the side of mighty rivers, smit
with the unquenchable love of nature !
The best of all his works is the ' Confessions/ though
it is that which has been least read, because it contains
the fewest set paradoxes or general opinions. It relates
entirely to himself; and no one was ever so much at
home on this subject as he was. From the strong hold
which they had taken of his mind, he makes us enter
into his feelings as if they had been our own, and we
seem to remember every incident and circumstance of
his life as if it had happened to ourselves. We are
never tired of this work, for it everywhere presents us
with pictures which we can fancy to be counterparts of
our own existence. The passages of this sort are innu-
merable. There is the interesting account of his child-
hood, the constraints and thoughtless liberty of which
are so well described ; of his sitting up all night
reading romances with his father, till they were forced
to desist by hearing the swallows twittering in their
nests ; his crossing the Alps, described with all the
feelings belonging to it his pleasure in setting out, his
satisfaction in coming to his journey's end, the delight of
" coming and going he knew not where ;" his arriving
at Turin ; the figure of Madame Basile, drawn with such
inimitable precision and elegance ; the delightful adven-
ture of the Chateau de Toune, where he passed the day
with Mademoiselle G**** and Mademoiselle Galley ; the
story of his Zulietta, the proud, the charming Zulietta,
whose last words, " Va Zanetto, e studio, la Matematica"
were never to be forgotten ; his sleeping near Lyons in
a niche of the wall, after a fine summer's day, with a
nightingale perched above his head ; his first meeting
with Madame Warens, the pomp of sound with which he
has celebrated her name, beginning " Louise Eleonore
On the Character of Rousseau. 129
de Warens etoit une demoiselle de la Tour de Pil, noble
et ancienne famille de Vevai, ville du pays de Vaud "
(sounds which we still tremble to repeat) ; his description
of her person, her angelic smile, her mouth of the size of
his own ; his walking out one day while the bells were
chiming to vespers, and anticipating in a sort of waking
dream the life he afterwards led with her, in which
months and years, and life itself, passed away in undis-
turbed felicity ; the sudden disappointment of his hopes ;
his transport thirty years after at seeing the same flower
which they had brought home together from one of their
rambles near Chambery ; his thoughts in that long
interval of time ; his suppers with Grimm and Diderot
after he came to Paris ; the first idea of his prize disserta-
tion on the savage state ; his account of writing the
' New Eloise,' and his attachment to Madame d'Houdetot ;
his literary projects, his fame, his misfortunes, his un-
happy temper ; his last solitary retirement in the lake
and island of Bienne, with his dog and his boat; his
reveries and delicious musings there all these crowd
into our minds with recollections which we do not
choose to express. There are no passages in the ' New
Eloise ' of equal force and beauty with the best descrip-
tions in the ' Confessions,' if we except the excursion
on the water, Julia's last letter to St. Preux, and his
letter to her, recalling the days of their first loves. We
spent two whole years in reading these two works, and
(gentle reader, it was when we were young) in shedding
tears over them,
"As fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gums."
They were the happiest years of our life. We may well
say of them, sweet is the dew of their memory, and
pleasant the balm of their recollection ! There are,
130 On the Character of Rousseau.
indeed, impressions which neither time nor circum-
stances can efface. 1
Rousseau, in all his writings, never once lost sight of
1 We shall here give one passage as an example, which has
always appeared to us the very perfection of this kind of personal
and local description. It is that where he gives an account of his
being one of the choristers at the Cathedral at Chambery : "On
jugera bien que la vie de la maitrise, toujours cliantante et gaie,
avec les musiciens et les enfans de choeur, me plaisoit plus que
celle du seminaire avec les Peres de S. Lazare. Cependaut. cette
vie, pour etre plus libre, n'en e'toit pas moins e'gale et regle'e. J'e'tois
fait pour aimer 1'inde'pendance et pour n'en abuser jamais. Durant
six mois entiers, je ne sortis pas une seule fois que pour aller chez
Maman ou a 1'eglise, et je n'en fus pas meme tente'. Cette inter-
valie est un de ceux oil j'ai vecu dans le plus grand calme, et que je
me suis rappeld avec le plus de plaisir. Dans les situations diverses
oil je me suis trouve, quelques-uu sont e'te marque's par un tel senti-
ment de bien-etre, qu'en les rememorant j'en suis affecte comme si
j'y e'tois encore. Non seulement je me rappelle les terns, les lieux,
les personnes, mais tous les objets environnants, la temperature de
1'air, son odeur, sa couleur, une certaine impression locale qui ne
s'est fait sentir que la, et dont le souvenir vif m'y transporte de
nouveau. Par exemple, tout ce qu'on re'pe'tait a la maitrise, tout ce
qu'on chantoit au choeur, tout ce qu'on y faisoit, le bel et noble
habit des chanoines, les chasubles des pretres, les mitres des
chantres, la figure des musiciens, un vieux charpentier boiteux
qui jouoit de la coutrebasse, un petit abbe' blondin qui jouoit du
violou, le lambeau de soutane qu'apres avoir pose' son e'pee M. le
Maitre endossoit par-dessus son habit lai'que, et le beau snrplis tin
dont il en couvrait les loques pour aller au choeur ; 1'orgueil avec
lequel j'allois, tenant ma petite flute a bee, m'e'tablir dans 1'orchestre,
a la tribune, pour un petit bout de re'cit que M. le Maitre avoit fait
expres pour moi; le bon diner que nous attend oit ensuite, le bon
appe'tit qu'on y portoit : ce concours d'objets vivement retrace' m'a
cent fois charme dans ma me'moire, autant et plus que dans la
re'alite. J'ai garde' toujours une affection tendre pour un certain
air du Conditor alme syderum qui marche par iambes ; parce qu'tm
dimauche de 1'Avent j'entendis de mon lit chanter cette hymne,
avant le jour, sur le perron de la cathedrale, selon un rite de cette
eglise la. Mile. Merceret, femme de chambre de Maman, savoit un
peu de musique; je n'oublierai jamais un petit motet afferte, que
M. le Maitre me fit chanter avec elle, et que sa maitresse e'coutait
On the Character of Rousseau. 131
himself. He was the same individual from first to last.
The springs that moved his passions never went down,
the pulse that agitated his heart never ceased to beat.
It was this strong feeling of interest, accumulating in
his mind, which overpowers and absorbs the feelings of
his readers. He owed all his power to sentiment. The
writer who most nearly resembles him in our own
times is the author of the ' Lyrical Ballads.' We see no
other diiference between them, than that the one wrote
in prose and the other in poetry, and that prose is
perhaps better adapted to express those local and per-
sonal feelings, which are inveterate habits in the mind,
than poetry, which embodies its imaginary creations.
We conceive that Kousseau's exclamation, " Ah, voila de
la pervenche ! " comes more home to the mind than Mr.
Wordsworth's discovery of the linnet's nest " with five
blue eggs," or than his address to the cuckoo, beautiful
as we think it is ; and we will confidently match the
citizen of Geneva's adventures on the Lake of Bienne
against the Cumberland poet's floating dreams on the
Lake of Grasmere. Both create an interest out of
nothing, or rather out of their own feelings ; both weave
numberless recollections into one sentiment ; both wind
their own being round whatever object occurs to them.
But Rousseau, as a prose-writer, gives only the habitual
and personal impression. Mr. Wordsworth, as a poet, is
forced to lend the colours of imagination to impressions
which owe all their force to their identity with them-
selves, and tries to paint what is only to be felt. Eous-
seau, in a word, interests you in certain objects by
interesting you in himself: Mr. Wordsworth would
avec tant de plaisir. Enfin tout, jusqu'a la bonne servante Perrine,
qui etoit si bonne fille, et que les entans de chceur taisoient tant
endever tout dans les souvenirs de ces terns de bonheur et d'iuuo-
cence revientsouvent me raviret m'attrister." Confessions, liv. iiL
p. 283.
132 On Different Sorts of Fame.
persuade you that the most insignificant objects are inte-
resting in themselves, because he is interested in them.
If he had met with Rousseau's favourite periwinkle, he
would have translated it into the most beautiful of
flowers.
This is not imagination, but want of sense. If his
jealousy of the sympathy of others makes him avoid
what is beautiful and grand in nature, why does he
undertake elaborately to describe other objects? His
nature is a mere Dulcinea del Toboso, and he would
make a Vashti of her. Rubens appears to have been as
extravagantly attached to his three wives as Raphael
was to his Fornarina ; but their faces were not so
classical. The three greatest egotists that we know of
that is, the three writers who felt their own being most
powerfully and exclusively are Rousseau, Wordsworth,
and Benvenuto Cellini. As Swift somewhere says, we
defy the world to furnish out a fourth.
No. XXV.
On Different Sorts of Fame.
THERE is a half serious, half ironical argument in
Melmoth's ' Fitz-Osborn's Letters,' to show the futility
of posthumous fame, which runs thus : " The object
of any one who is inspired with this passion is to be
remembered by posterity with admiration and delight,
as having been possessed of certain powers and excellen-
ces which distinguished him above his contemporaries.
But posterity, it is said, can know nothing of the in-
dividual but from the memory of those qualities which
he has left behind him. All that we know of Julius
Caesar, for instance, is that he was the person who per-
formed certain actions, and wrote a book called his
' Commentaries.' When, therefore, we extol Julius
On Different Sorts of Fame. 133
Cajsar for his actions or his writings, what do we say
but that the person who performed certain things did
perform them ; that the author of such a work was the
person who wrote it ; or, in short, that Julius Caesar was
Julius Caesar? Now this is a mere truism, and the
desire to be the subject of such an identical proposition
must therefore be an evident absurdity." The sophism
is a tolerably ingenious one, but it is a sophism, never-
theless. It would go equally to prove the nullity, not
only of posthumous fame, but of living reputation ; for
the good or the bad opinion which my next-door neigh-
bour may entertain of me is nothing more than his con-
viction that such and such a person having certain good
or bad qualities is possessed of them ; nor is the figure
which a lord-mayor elect, a prating demagogue, or a
popular preacher, makes in the eyes of the admiring
multitude himself, but an image of him reflected in the
minds of others, in connection with certain feelings of
respect and wonder. In fact, whether the admiration
we seek is to last for a day or for eternity, whether we
are to have it while living or after we are dead, whether
it is to be expressed by our contemporaries or by future
generations, the principle of it is the same sympathy
with the feelings of others, and the necessary tendency
which the idea or consciousness of the approbation of
others has to strengthen the suggestions of our self-love. 1
We are all inclined to think well of ourselves, of our
sense and capacity in whatever we undertake ; but from
this very desire to think well of ourselves we are (as
Mrs. Peachum says) " bitter bad judges " of our own pre-
tensions ; and when our vanity flatters us most we ought
in general to suspect it most. "We are, therefore, glad
1 Burns, when about to sail for America after the first publication
of his poems (1786), consoled himself with " the delicious thought
of being regarded aa a clever fellow, though on the other side of
the Atlantic."
134 On Different Sorts of Fame.
to get the good opinion of a friend, but that may be
partial ; the good word of a stranger is likely to be more
sincere, but he may be a blockhead ; the multitude will
agree with us, if we agree with them ; accident, the
caprice of fashion, the prejudice of the moment, may
give a fleeting reputation. Our only certain appeal,
therefore, is to posterity ; the voice of fame is alone the
voice of truth. In proportion, however, as this award is
final and secure, it is remote and uncertain. Voltaire
said to some one, who had addressed an Epistle to
Posterity, " I am afraid, my friend, this letter will never
be delivered according to its direction." It can exist
only in imagination ; and we can only presume upon our
claim to it, as we prefer the hope of lasting fame to
everything else. The love of fame is almost another
name for the love of excellence ; or it is the ambition to
attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest
authority, that of time. Vanity and the love of fame
are quite distinct from each other ; for the one is vora-
cious of the most obvious and doubtful applause, whereas
the other rejects or overlooks every kind of applause but
that which is purified from every mixture of flattery,
and identified with truth and nature itself. There is,
therefore, something disinterested in this passion, inas-
much as it is abstracted and ideal, and only appeals to
opinion as a standard of truth ; it is this which " makes
ambition virtue." Milton had as fine an idea as any
one of true fame ; and Dr. Johnson has very beautifully
described his patient and confident anticipations of the
success of his great poem in the account of ' Paradise
Lost.' He has, indeed, done the same thing himself in
' Lycidas ' :
" Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days ;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find.
On Different Sorts of Fame. 135
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise,
Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears."
None but those who have sterling pretensions can
afford to refer them to time; as persons who live upon
their means cannot well go into Chancery. No feeling
can be more at variance with the true love of fame than
that impatience which we have sometimes witnessed to
" pluck its fruits, unripe and crude," before the time, to
make a little echo of popularity mimic the voice of fame,
and to convert a prize-medal or a newspaper-puff into a
passport to immortality.
When we hear any one complaining that he has not
the same fame as some poet or painter who lived two
hundred years ago, he seems to us to complain that he
has not been dead these two hundred years. When his
fame has undergone the same ordeal, that is, has lasted
as long, it will be as good, if he really deserves it. We
think it equally absurd, when we sometimes find people
objecting that such an acquaintance of theirs, who has
not an idea in his head, should be so much better off in
the world than they are. But it is for this very reason ;
they have preferred the indulgence of their ideas to the
pursuit of realities. It is but fair that he who has no
ideas should have something in their stead. If he who
has devoted his time to the study of beauty, to the pur-
suit of truth, whose object has been to govern opinion,
to form the taste of others, to instruct or to amuse the
public, succeeds in this respect, he has no more right to
complain that he has not a title or a fortune, than he
who has not purchased a ticket, that is, who has taken
no means to the end, has a right to complain that he has
not a prize in the lottery.
In proportion as men can command the immediate
and vulgar applause of others they become indifferent
136 On Different Sorts of Fame.
to that which is remote and difficult of attainment. We
take pains only when we are compelled to do it. Little
men are remarked to have courage, little women to
have wit ; and it is seldom that a man of genius is a
coxcomb in his dress. Rich men are contented not to
be thought wise ; and the great often think themselves
well off if they can escape being the jest of their ac-
quaintance. Authors were actuated by the desire of the
applause of posterity only so long as they were debarred
of that of their contemporaries, just as we see the map
of the gold-mines of Peru hanging in the room of
Hogarth's ' Distressed Poet.' In the midst of the igno-
rance and prejudices with which they were surrounded,
they had a sort of forlorn hope in the prospect of immor-
tality. The spirit of universal criticism has superseded
the anticipation of posthumous fame, and instead of
waiting for the award of distant ages, the poet or prose-
writer receives final doom from the next number of the
' Edinburgh ' or ' Quarterly Review.' According as the
nearness of the applause increases our impatience in-
creases with it. A writer in a weekly journal engages
with reluctance in a monthly publication ; and again, a
contributor to a daily paper sets about his task with
greater spirit than either of them. It is like prompt
payment ; the effort and the applause go together.
We, indeed, have known a man of genius and eloquence
to whom, from a habit of excessive talking, the cer-
tainty of seeing what he wrote in print the next day
was too remote a stimulus for his imagination, and who
constantly laid aside his pen in the middle of an article,
if a friend dropped in, to finish the subject more effectu-
ally aloud, so that the approbation of his hearer and the
sound of his own voice might be co-instantaneous. Mem-
bers of Parliament seldom turn authors, except to print
their speeches when they have not been distinctly heard
or understood; and great orators are generally very
On Different Sorts of Fame. 137
indifferent writers, from want of sufficient inducement to
exert themselves, when the immediate effect on others
is not perceived, and the irritation of applause or oppo-
sition ceases.
There have been in the last century two singiilar
examples of literary reputation : the one of an author
without a name, and the other of a name without an
author. We mean the author of ' Junius's Letters,' and
the translator of the mottoes to the ' Eambler,' whose name
was Elphinstone. The ' Rambler ' was published in the
year 1750, and the name of Elphinstone prefixed to each
paper is familiar to every literary reader since that time,
though we know nothing more of him. We saw this
gentleman, since the commencement of the present
century, looking over a clipped hedge in the country,
with a broad-flapped hat, a venerable countenance, and
his dress cut out with the same formality as his ever-
greens. His name had not only survived half a century
in conjunction with that of Johnson, but he had survived
with it, enjoying all the dignity of a classical reputation
and the ease of a literary sinecure on the strength of
his mottoes. The author of ' Junius's Letters ' is, on the
contrary, as remarkable an instance of a writer who has
arrived at all the public honours of literature without
being known by name to a single individual, and who
may be said to have realised all the pleasure of post-
humous fame while living, without the smallest gratifi-
cation of personal vanity. An anonymous writer may
feel an acute interest in what is said of his productions,
and a secret satisfaction in their success, because it is
not the effect of personal considerations, as the over-
hearing any one speak well of us is more agreeable than
a direct compliment. But this very satisfaction will
tempt him to communicate his secret. This temptation,
however, does not extend beyond the circle of his ac-
quaintance. With respect to the public, who know an
138 On Different Sorts of Fame.
author only by his writings, it is of little consequence
whether he has a real or a fictitious name or signature,
so that they have some clue by which to associate the
works with the author. In the case of ' Jnnius,' there-
fore, where other personal considerations of interest or
connections might immediately counteract and set aside
this temptation, the triumph over the mere vanity of
authorship might not have cost him so dear as we are at
first inclined to imagine. Suppose it to have been the
old Marquis of . It is quite out of the question
that he should keep his places and not keep his secret.
If ever the King should die we think it not impossible
that the secret may out. Certainly the accouchement
of any princess in Europe would not excite an equal
interest. " And you then, sir, are the author of
' Junius' ! " What a recognition for the public and the
author ! That between Yorick and the Frenchman was
a trifle to it.
We have said that we think the desire to be known
by name as an author chiefly has a reference to those to
whom we are known personally, and is strongest with
regard to those who know most of our persons and least
of our capacities. We wish to subpoena the public to our
characters. Those who, by great services or great
meannesses, have attained titles always take them fi'om
the place with which they have the earliest associa-
tions, and thus strive to throw a veil of importance
over the insignificance of their original pretensions
or the injustice of fortune. When Lord Nelson was
passing over the quay at Yarmouth, to take possession
of the ship to which he had been appointed, the people
exclaimed, " Why make that little fellow a captain ?"
He thought of this when he fought the battles of the
Nile and Trafalgar. The same sense of personal insig-
nificance which made him great in action made him a
fuol in love. If Bonaparte had been six inches higher
Character of John Bull. 139
he never would have gone on that disastrous Russian
expedition, nor " with that addition " would he ever
have been emperor and king. For our own part, one
object which we have in writing these essays is to
send them in a volume to a person who took some notice
of us when children, and who argued, perhaps, better of
us than we deserved. In fact, the opinion of those who
know us most, who are a kind of second self in our re-
collections, is a sort of second conscience; and the
approbation of one or two friends is all the immortality
we pretend to.
No. XXVI.
Character of John Bull.
IN a late number of a respectable publication there is
the following description of the French character :
" Extremes meet. This is the only way of accounting
for that enigma, the French character. It has often
been remarked that this ingenious nation exhibits more
striking contradictions than any other that ever existed.
They are the gayest of the gay, and the gravest of the
grave. Their very faces pass at once from an expres-
sion of the most lively animation, when they are in
conversation or in action, to a melancholy blank. They
are the lightest and most volatile, and at the same time
the most plodding, mechanical, and laborious people in
Europe. They are one moment the slaves of the most
contemptible prejudices, and the next launch out into
all the extravagance of the most abstract speculations.
In matters of taste they are as inexorable as they are
lax in questions of morality ; they judge of the one by
rules, of the other by their inclinations. It seems at
times as if nothing could shock them, and yet they are
offended at the merest trifles. The smallest things make
140 Character of John Bull
the greatest impression on them. From the facility
with which they can accommodate themselves to circum-
stances, they have no fixed principles or real character.
They are always that which gives them least pain or
costs them least trouble. They easily disentangle their
thoughts from whatever causes the slightest uneasiness,
and direct their sensibility to flow in any channels they
think proper. Their whole existence is more theatrical
than real their sentiments put on or off like the dress
of an actor. Words are with them equivalent to things.
They say what is agreeable, and believe what they say.
Virtue and vice, good and evil, liberty and slavery, are
matters almost of indifference. Their natural self-com-
placency stands them in stead of all other advantages."
The foregoing account is pretty near the truth we
have nothing to say against it ; but we shall here en-
deavour to do a like piece of justice to our countrymen,
who are too apt to mistake the vices of others for so many
virtues in themselves.
If a Frenchman is pleased with everything, John
Bull is pleased with nothing ; and that is a fault. He
is, to be sure, fond of having his own way, till you let
him have it. He is a very headstrong animal, who mis-
takes the spirit of contradiction for the love of inde-
pendence, and proves himself to be in the right by the
obstinacy with which he stickles for the wrong. You
cannot put him so much out of his way as by agreeing
with him. He is never in such good-humour as with
what gives him the spleen, and is most satisfied when
he is sulky. If you find fault with him he is in a rage ;
and if you praise him, suspects you have a design upon
him. He recommends himself to another by affronting
him, and if that will not do, knocks him down to con-
vince him of his sincerity. He gives himself such airs
as no mortal ever did, and wonders at the rest of the
world for not thinking him the most amiable person
Character of John Bull. 141
breathing. John means well, too, but he has an odd
way of showing it by a total disregard of other people's
feelings and opinions. He is sincere, for he tells you at
the first word he does not like you ; and never deceives,
for he never offers to serve you. A civil answer is too
much to expect from him, A word costs him more than
a blow. He is silent because he has nothing to say, and
he looks stupid because he is so. He has the strangest
notions of beauty. The expression he values most in
the human countenance is an appearance of roast-beef
and plum-pudding ; and if he has a red face and round
belly thinks himself a great man. He is a little purse-
proud, and has a better opinion of himself for having
made a full meal. But his greatest delight is in a
bugbear ; this he must have, be the consequence what
it may. Whoever will give him that may lead him by
the nose and pick his pocket at the same time. An
idiot in a country town, a Presbyterian parson, a dog
with a canister tied to his tail, a bull-bait, or a fox-hunt,
are irresistible attractions to him. The Pope was for-
merly his great aversion, and latterly a cap of liberty is
a thing he cannot abide. He discarded the Pope and
defied the Inquisition ; called the French a nation of
slaves and beggars, and abused their Grand Monarque for
a tyrant ; cut off one king's head and exiled another ;
set up a Dutch stadtholder, aud elected a Hanoverian
elector to be king over him to show he would have
his own way, and to teach the rest of the world what
they should do. But since other people took to imitating
his example, John has taken it into his head to hinder
them ; will have a monopoly of rebellion and regicide
to himself ; has become sworn brother to the Pope, and
stands by the Inquisition ; restores his old enemies, the
Bourbons, and reads a great moral lesson to their subjects ;
persuades himself that the Dutch stadtholder and the
Hanoverian elector came to reign over him by divine
142 Character of John Bull.
right, and does all he can to prove himself a beast to
make other people slaves. The truth, is, John was
always a surly, meddlesome, obstinate fellow, and of late
years his head has not been quite right. In short, John
is a great blockhead and a great bully, and requires
(what he has been long labouring for) a hundred years
of slavery to bring him to his senses. He will have it
that he is a great patriot, for he hates all other countries ;
that he is wise, for he thinks all other people fools ; that
he is honest, for he calls all other people whores and
rogues. If being in an ill-humour all one's life is the
perfection of human nature, then John is very near it.
He beats his wife, quarrels with his neighbours, damns
his servants, and gets drunk to kill the time and keep
up his spirits ; and firmly believes himself the only
unexceptionable, accomplished, moral, and religious
character in Christendom. He boasts of the excellence
of the laws and the goodness of his own disposition ;
and yet there are more people hanged in England than
in all Europe besides. He boasts of the modesty of his
countrywomen ; and yet there are more prostitutes in
the streets of London than in all the capitals of Europe
put together. He piques himself on his comforts, because
he is the most uncomfortable of mortals ; and because
he has no enjoyment in society seeks it, as he says, at
his fireside, where he may be stupid as a matter of
course, sullen as a matter of right, and as ridiculous as
he chooses without being laughed at. His liberty is the
effect of his self-will, his religion owing to the spleen,
his temper to the climate. He is an industrious animal,
because he has no taste for amusement, and had rather
work six days in the week than be idle one. His awk-
ward attempts at gaiety are the jest of other nations.
" They " (the English), says Froissart, speaking of the
meeting of the Black Prince and the French king,
" amused themselves sadly, according to the custom of
On Good-nature. 143
their country" " se rejouissoient tristement, selon la cou-
toume de leur pays." Their patience of labour is confined
to what is repugnant and disagreeble in itself to the
drudgery of the mechanic arts and does not extend to
the fine arts ; that is, they are indifferent to pain, but
insensible to pleasure. They will stand in a trench or
march up to a breach, but they cannot bear to dwell
long on an agreeable object. They can no more submit
to regularity in art than to decency in behaviour. Their
pictures are as coarse and slovenly as their address.
John boasts of his great men, without much right to do
so ; not that he has not had them, but because he neither
knows nor cares anything about them but to swagger
over other nations. That which chiefly hits John's
fancy in Shakspeare is that he was a deer-stealer in his
youth ; and as for Newton's discoveries, he hardly knows
to this day that the earth is round. John's oaths, which
are quite characteristic, have got him the nickname of
' Monsieur God-damn-me.' They are profane ; a French-
man's indecent. One swears by his vices, the other by
their punishment. After all John's blustering, he is
but a dolt. His habitual jealousy of others makes him
the inevitable dupe of quacks and impostors of all sorts ;
he goes all lengths with one party out of spite to
another; his zeal is as furious as his antipathies are
unfounded ; and there is nothing half so absurd or
ignorant of its own intentions as an English mob.
No. XXVII.
On Good-nature.
LORD SHAFTESBURY somewhere remarks that a great many
people pass for very good-natured persons for no other
reason than because they care about nobody but them-
144 On Good-nature.
selves ; and consequently, as nothing annoys them but
what touches their own interest, they never irritate
themselves unnecessarily about what does not concern
them, and seem to be made of the very milk of human
kindness.
Good-nature or what is often considered as such
is the most selfish of all the virtues ; it is, nine times
out of ten, mere indolence of disposition. A good-
natured man is, generally speaking, one who does not
like to be put out of his way ; and, as long as he can
help it that is, till the provocation comes home to
himself he will not. He does not create fictitious un-
easiness out of the distresses of others ; he does not fret
and fume and make himself uncomfortable about things
he cannot mend, and that no way concern him even if
he could ; but then there is no one who is more apt to be
disconcerted by what puts him to any personal incon-
venience, however trifling ; who is more tenacious of his
selfish indulgences, however unreasonable ; or who re-
sents more violently any interruption of his ease and com-
forts the veiy trouble he is put to in resenting it being
felt as an aggravation of the injury. A person of this
character feels no emotions of anger or detestation if
you tell him of the devastation of a province, or the
massacre of the inhabitants of a town, or the enslaving
of a people ; but if his dinner is spoiled by a lump of
soot falling down the chimney he is thrown into the
utmost confusion, and can hardly recover a decent
command of his temper for the whole day. He thinks
nothing can go amiss so long as he is at his ease, though
a pain in his little finger makes him so peevish and
quarrelsome that nobody can come near him. Knavery
and injustice in the abstract are things that by no means
ruffle his temper or alter the serenity of his coun-
tenance, unless he is to be the sufferer by them ; nor is
he ever betrayed into a passion in answering a sophism,
On Good-nature. 145
if he does not think it immediately directed against his
own interest.
On the contrary, we sometimes meet with persons
who regularly heat themselves in an argument, and get
out of humour on every occasion, and make themselves
obnoxious to a whole company about nothing. This is
not because they are ill-tempered, but because they are
in earnest. Good-nature is a hypocrite ; it tries to pass
off its love of its own ease, and indifference to every-
thing else, for a particular softness and mildness of
disposition. All people get in a passion and lose their
temper if you offer to strike them or cheat them of their
money that is, if you interfere with that which they
are really interested in. Tread on the heel of one of
these good-natured persons who do not care if the
whole world is in flames and see how he will bear it.
If the truth were known, the most disagreeable people
are the most amiable. They are the only persons who
feel an interest in what does not concern them. They
have as much regard for others as they have for them-
selves. They have as many vexations and causes of
complaint as there are in the world. They are general
righters of wrongs and redressers of grievances. They
not only are annoyed by what they can help by an act
of inhumanity done in the next street, or in a neigh-
bouring country by their own countrymen ; they not
only do not claim any share in the glory, and hate it the
more, the more brilliant the success ;. but a piece of in-
justice done three thousand years ago touches them to
the quick. They have an unfortunate attachment to a
set of abstract phrases, such as liberty, truth, justice,
humanity, honour, which are continually abused by
knaves and misunderstood by fools ; and they can
hardly contain themselves for spleen. They have some-
thing to keep them in perpetual hot water. No sooner
is one question set at rest than another rises up to
L
On Good-nature.
perplex them. They wear themselves to the bone in
the affairs of other people, to whom they can do no
manner of service, to the neglect of their own business
and pleasure. They teaze themselves to death about
the morality of the Turks or the politics of the French.
There are certain words that afflict their ears and
things that lacerate their souls, and remain a plague-
spot there for ever after. They have a fellow-feeling
with all that has been done, said, or thought in the
world. They have an interest in all science and in
all art. They hate a lie as much as a wrong, for truth
is the foundation of all justice. Truth is the first thing
in their thoughts, then mankind, then their country, last
themselves. They love excellence and bow to fame,
which is the shadow of it. Above all, they are anxious
to see justice done to the dead, as the best encourage-
ment to the living and the lasting inheritance of future
generations. They do not like to see a great principle
undermined, or the fall of a great man. They would
sooner forgive a blow in the face than a wanton attack
on acknowledged reputation. The contempt in which
the French hold Shakspeare is a serious evil to them ;
nor do they think the matter mended when they hear
an Englishman, who would be thought a profound one,
say that Voltaire was a man without wit. They are
vexed to see genius playing at Tom Fool and honesty
turned bawd. It gives them a cutting sensation to see
a number of things which, as they are unpleasant to see,
we shall not here repeat. In short, they have a passion
for truth ; they feel the same attachment to the idea of
what is right that a knave does to his interest, or that a
good-natured man does to his ease ; and they have as
many sources of uneasiness as there are actual or sup-
posed deviations from this standard in the sum of things,
or as there is a possibility of folly and mischief in the
world.
-
On Good-nature. 147
Principle is a passion for truth an incorrigible at
tachment to a general proposition. Good-nature is
humanity that costs nothing. No good-natured man
was ever a martyr to a cause in religion or politics.
He has no idea of striving against the stream. He may
become a good courtier and a loyal subject; and it is
hard if he does not, for he has nothing to do in that case
but to consult his ease, interest, and outward appear-
ances. The Vicar of Bray was a good-natured man.
What a pity he was but a vicar ! A good-natured man
is utterly unfit for any situation or office in life that
requires integrity, fortitude, or generosity any sacri-
fice, except of opinion, or any exertion, but to please.
A good-natured man will debauch his friend's mistress,
if he has an opportunity, and betray his friend sooner
than share disgrace or danger with him. He will not
forego the smallest gratification to save the whole world.
He makes his own convenience the standard of right
and wrong. He avoids the feeling of pain in himself,
and shuts his eyes to the sufferings of others. He will
put a malefactor or an innocent person (no matter which)
to the rack, and only laugh at the uncouthness of the
gestures, or wonder that he is so unmannerly as to cry-
out. There is no villainy to which he will not lend a
helping hand with great coolness and cordiality, for he
sees only the pleasant and profitable side of things. He
will assent to a falsehood with a leer of complacency,
and applaud any atrocity that comes recommended in the
garb of authority. He will betray his country to please
a minister, and sign the death-warrant of thousands of
wretches, rather than forfeit the congenial smile, the
well-known squeeze of the hand. The shrieks of death,
the torture of mangled limbs, the last groans of despair,
are things that shock his smooth humanity too much
ever to make an impression on it; his good-nature sym-
pathises only with the smile, the bow, the gracious
148 On Good-nature.
salutation, the fawning answer : vice loses its sting,
and corruption its poison, in the oily gentleness of his
disposition. He will not hear of anything wrong in
Church or State. He will defend every abuse by which
anything is to be got, every dirty job, every act of every
minister. In an extreme case, a very good-natured man
indeed may try to hang twelve honester men than him-
self to rise at the bar, and forge the seal of the realm to
continue his colleagues a week longer in office. He is
a slave to the will of others, a coward to their prejudices,
a tool of their vices. A good-natured man is no more
fit to be trusted in public affairs than a coward or a
woman is to lead an army. Spleen is the soul of patriot-
ism and of public good. Lord Castlereagh is a good-
natured men, Lord Eldon is a good-natured man, Charles
Fox was a good-natwed man. The last instance is the
most decisive. The definition of a true patriot is a good
hater.
A king who is a good-natured man is in a fair way
of being a great tyrant. A king ought to feel concern
for all to whom his power extends ; but a good-natured
man. cares only about himself. If he has a good appetite,
eats and sleeps well, nothing in the universe besides can
disturb him. The destruction of the lives or liberties of
his subjects will not stop him in the least of his caprices,
but will concoct well with his bile, and " good digestion
wait on appetite, and health on both/' He will send
out his mandate to kill and destroy with the same in-
difference or satisfaction that he performs any natural
function of his body. The consequences are placed
beyond the reach of his imagination, or would not affect
him if they were not, for he is a fool and good-natured.
A good-natured man hates more than any one else what-
ever thwarts his will or contradicts his prejudices ; and
if he has the power to prevent it, depend upon it, he
will use it without remorse and without control.
On Good-nature. 149
There is a lower species of this character which is
what is usually understood by a well-meaning man. A
well-meaning man is one who often does a great deal of
mischief without any kind of malice. He means no one
any harm, if it is not for his interest. He is not a knave,
nor perfectly honest. He does not easily resign a good
place. Mr. Vansittart is a well-meaning man.
The Irish are a good-natured people ; they have many
virtues, but their virtues are those of the heart, not of
the head. In their passions and affections they are
sincere, but they are hypocrites in understanding. If
they once begin to calculate the consequences, self-
interest prevails. An Irishman who trusts to his prin-
ciples and a Scotchman who yields to his impulses are
equally dangerous. The Irish have wit, genius, elo-
quence, imagination, affections ; but they want coherence
of understanding, and consequently have no standard of
thought or action. Their strength of mind does not
keep pace with the warmth of their feelings or the
quickness of their conceptions. Their animal spirits
run away with them ; their reason is a jade. There is
something crude, indigested, rash, and discordant in
almost all that they do or say. They have no system,
no abstract ideas. They are " everything by starts, and
nothing long." They are a wild people. They hate
whatever imposes a law on their understandings or a
yoke on their wills. To betray the principles they are
most bound by their own professions, and the expecta-
tions of others to maintain, is with them a reclamation
of their original rights, and to fly in the face of their
benefactors and friends, an assertion of their natural
freedom of will. They want consistency and good faith.
They unite fierceness with levity. In the midst of their
headlong impulses they have an undercurrent of self-
ishness and cunning, which in the end- gets the better of
them. Their feelings, when no longer excited by novelty
150 On the Character of Hilton s Eve.
or opposition, grow cold and stagnant. Their blood, if
not heated by passion, turns to poison. The have a ran-
cour in their hatred of any object they have abandoned
proportioned to the attachment they have professed to
it. Their zeal, converted against itself, is furious. The
late Mr. Burke was an instance of an Irish patriot and
philosopher. He abused metaphysics because he could
make nothing out of them, and turned his back upon
liberty when he found he could get nothing more by
her. 1 See to the same purpose the winding-up of the
character of Judy in Miss Edgeworth's ' Castle Eackrent.'
No. XXVIII.
On the Character of Milton's Eve. 2
THE difference between the character of Eve in Milton
and Shakspeare's female characters is very striking, and
1 This man (Burke), who was a half poet and a half philosopher,
has done more mischief than perhaps any other person in the
world. His understanding was not competent to the discovery of
any truth, but it was sufficient to palliate a falsehood ; his reasons,
of little weight in themselves, thrown into the scale of power, were
dreadful. Without genius to adorn the beautiful, he had the art to
throw a dazzling veil over the deformed and disgusting; and to
strew the flowers of imagination over the rotten carcase of cor-
ruption, not to prevent, but to communicate the infection. His
jealousy of Rousseau was one chief cause of his opposition to the
French Revolution. The writings of the one had changed the in-
stitutions of a kingdom ; while the speeches of the other, with the
intrigues of his whole party, had changed nothing but the turnspit
of the king's kitchen. He would have blotted out the broad pure
light of heaven, because it did not first shine in at the little Gothic
windows of St. Stephen's Chapel. The genius of Rousseau had
levelled the towers of the Bastille with the dust ; our zealous re-
formist, who would rather be doing mischief than nothing, tried,
therefore, to patch them up again by calling that loathsome dun-
geon the " king's castle," and by fulsome adulation of the virtues of
a court strumpet. This man but enough of him here.
2 See the Examiner newspaper for 1816, pp. 460, 475. ED.
On the diameter of Milton's Eve. 151
it appears to us to be this : Milton describes Eve not
only as full of love and tenderness for Adam, but as the
constant object of admiration in herself. She is the idol
of the poet's imagination, and he paints her whole person
with a studied profusion of charms. She is the wife,
but she is still as much as ever the mistress of Adam.
She is represented, indeed, as devoted to her husband,
as twining round him for support "as the vine curls
her tendrils," but her own grace and beauty are never
lost sight of in the picture of conjugal felicity. Adam's
attention and regard are as much turned to her as hers
to him ; for " in that first garden of their innocence" he
had no other objects or pursuits to distract his attention
she was both his business and his pleasure. Shakspeare's
females, on the contrary, seem to exist only in their
attachment to others. They are pure abstractions of
the affections. Their features are not painted, nor the
colour of their hair. Their hearts only are laid open.
We are acquainted with Imogen, Miranda, Ophelia, or
Desdemona, by what they thought and felt, but we can-
not tell whether they were black, brown, or fair. But
Milton's Eve is all of ivory and gold. Shakspeare
seldom tantalises the reader with a luxurious display of
the personal charms of his heroines, with a curious in-
ventory of particular beauties, except indirectly and for
some other purpose as where lachimo describes Imogen
asleep, or the old men in the ' Winter's Tale ' vie with
each other in invidious praise of Perdita. Even in
Juliet, the most voluptuous and glowing of the class
of characters here spoken of, we are reminded chiefly of
circumstances connected with the physiognomy of pas-
sion, as in her leaning with her cheek upon her arm, or
which only conveys the general impression of enthusiasm
made on her lover's brain. One thing may be said, that
Shakspeare had not the same opportunities as Milton
for his women were clothed, and it cannot be denied
152 On the Character of Milton's Eve.
that Milton took Eve at a considerable disadvantage in
this respect. He has accordingly described her in all
the loveliness of nature, tempting' to sight as the fruit
of the Hesperides guarded by that dragon old, herself
the fairest among the flowers of Paradise !
The figures both of Adam and Eve a.re very prominent
in this poem. As there is little action in it, the interest
is constantly kept up by the beauty and grandeur of the
images. They are thus introduced :
" Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honour clad,
In naked majesty seemed lords of all.
And worthy seemed ! for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone :
Though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seem'd ;
For contemplation he and valour form'd,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace ;
He for God only, she for God in him.
His fair large front and eye sublime declar'd
Absolute rule ; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clust'ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad ;
She as a veil down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevell'd, but in wanton ringlets wav'd
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd ;
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay." *
Eve is not only represented as beautiful, but with
conscious beauty. Shakspeare's heroines are almost in-
sensible of their charms, and wound without knowing
it. They are not coquets. If the salvation of mankind
had depended upon one of them, we don't know but
the devil might have been baulked. This is but a con-
1 ' Paradise Lost,' book iv.
On the Character of Milton s Eve. 153
jecture ! Eve has a great idea of herself, and there is
some difficulty in prevailing on her to quit her own
image, the first time she discovers its reflection in the
water. She gives the following account of herself to
Adam:
" That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awak'd, and found myself repos'd
Under a shade on flow'rs, much wond'ring where
And what I was, whence thither brought and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmov'd
Pure as the expanse of Heav'n ; I thither went
With unexperienc'd thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seem'd another sky.
As I bent down to look, j ust opposite
A shape within the watery gleam appear'd,
Bending to look on me ; I started back,
It started back ; but pleas'd I soon return'd,
Pleas'd it return'd as soon with answ'ring looks
Of sympathy and love." l . . . .
The poet afterwards adds :
*' So spake our general mother, and with eyes
Of conjugal attraction unreprov'd,
And meek surrender, half-embracing lean'd
On our first father ; half her swelling breast
Naked met his under the flowing gold
Of her loose tresses hid : he, in delight
Both of her beauty and submissive charms,
Smil'd with superior love, as Jupiter
On Juno smiles when he impregns the clouds
That shed May flowers." 2
The same thought is repeated with greater simplicity,
and perhaps even beauty, in the beginning of the Fifth
Book:
" So much the more
His wonder was to find unawaken'd Eve
1 Ut supra. 2 Ibid.
154 On the Character of Milton s Eve.
With tresses diseompos'd and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest. He on his side
Leaning half-rais'd, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld
Beauty, which whether waking or asleep
Shot forth peculiar graces ; then, with voice
Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whisper'd thus : Awake
My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found,
Heav'n's last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake" ....
The general style, indeed, in which Eve is addressed
by Adam or described by the poet is in the highest
strain of compliment :
" When Adam thus to Eve : Fair consort, the hour
Of night approaches." ....
" To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorn'd."
'' To whom our general ancestor replied :
Daughter of God and Man, accomplish'd Eve."
Eve is herself so well convinced that these epithets
are her due that the idea follows her in her sleep, and
she dreams of herself as the paragon of nature, the
wonder of the universe :
" Methought
Close at mine ear one call'd me forth to walk,
With gentle voice, I thought it thine ; it said,
Why sleep'st thou, Eve ? Now is the pleasant time,
The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
To the night-warbling bird that, now awake,
Tunes sweetest his love-labour'd song ; now reigns
Full-orb'd the moon, and with more pleasing light
Shadowy sets off the face of things ; in vain,
If none regard ; Heav'n wakes with all his eyes,
Whom to behold but thee, Nature's desire ?
In whose sight all things joy, with ravishmen t,
Attracted by thy beauty, still to gaze." '
This is the very topic, too, on which the Serpent after-
wards enlarges with so much artful insinuation and fatal
1 Ut supra, book v.
On the Character of Milton s Eve. 155
confidence of success. " So talked the spirited sly snake."
The conclusion of the foregoing scene, in which Eve
relates her dream and Adam comforts her, is such an
exquisite piece of description, that, though not to our
immediate purpose, we cannot refrain from quoting it :
' So cheer'd he his fair spouse, and she was cheer'd ;
But silently a gentle tear let fall
From either eye, and wip'd them with her hair.
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell
Ki-s'd as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that fear d to have offended." *
The formal eulogy on Eve which Adam addresses to
the Angel, in giving an account of his own creation and
hers, is full of elaborate grace :
" Under his forming hands a creature grew,
so lovely fair,
That what seem'd fair in all the world, seem'd now
Mean, or in her summ'd up, in her contained,
And in her looks, which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspir'd
The spirit of love and amorous delight."
That which distinguishes Milton from the other poets,
who have pampered the eye and fed the imagination
with exuberant descriptions of female beauty, is the
moral severity with which he has tempered them. There
is not a line in his works which tends to licentiousness,
or the impression of which, if it has such a tendency, is
not effectually checked by thought and sentiment. The
following are two remarkable instances :
" In shadier bower.
More secret and sequester' d, though but feign'd,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph
Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs,
1 Ut supra, book v.
156 On the Character of Milton's Eve.
Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed,
And heavenly quires the nymenaean sung,
What day the genial Angel to our sire
Brought her, in naked beauty more adorn'd,
More lovely, than Pandora, whom the Gods
Endow 'd with all their gifts, and O too like
In sad event, when to th' unwiser son
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd
Mankind by her fair looks, to be aveng'd
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire."
The other is a passage of extreme beauty and pathos
blended. It is the one in which the Angel is described
as the guest of our first ancestors :
" Meanwhile at table Eve
Minister'd naked, and their flowing cups
With pleasant liquors crown'd : O innocence
Deserving Paradise ! if ever, then,
Then had the sons of God excuse to have been
Enamour'd at that sight ; but in those hearts
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy
Was understood, the injur'd lover's Hell."
The character which a living poet has given of Spenser
would be much more true of Milton :
" Yet not more sweet
Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise ;
High Priest of all the Muses' mysteries."
Spenser, on the contrary, is very apt to pry into
mysteries which do not belong to the Muses. Milton's
voluptuousness is not lascivious or sensual. He describes
beautiful objects for their own sakes. Spenser has an
eye to the consequences, and steeps everything in
pleasure, often not of the purest kind. The want of
passion has been brought as an objection against Milton,
and his Adam and Eve have been considered as rathe i-
insipid personages, wrapped up in. one another, and
who excite but little sympathy in any one else. We do
not feel this objection ourselves ; we are content to be
On the Character of Milton s Eve. 157
spectators in such scenes, without any other excitement.
In general the interest in Milton is essentially epic, and
not dramatic ; and the difference between the epic and
the dramatic is this that in the former the imagination
produces the passion, and in the latter the passion pro-
duces the imagination. The interest of epic poetry arises
from the contemplation of certain objects in themselves
grand and beautiful ; the interest of dramatic poetry
from sympathy with the passions and pursuits of others
that is, from the practical relations of certain persons to
certain objects, as depending on accident or will.
The Pyramids of Egypt are epic objects ; the imagi-
nation of them is necessarily attended with passion ; but
they have no dramatic interest, till circumstances con-
nect them with some human catastrophe. Now, a poem
might be constructed almost entirely of such images, of
the highest intellectual passion, with little dramatic
interest ; and it is in this way that Milton has in a great
measure constructed his poem. That is not its fault, but
its excellence. The fault is in those who have no idea
but of one kind of interest. But this question would
lead to a longer discussion than we have room for at
present. We shall conclude these extracts from Milton
with two passages, which have alwa} - s appeared to us to
be highly affecting and to contain a fine discrimination
of character :
" O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death !
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise ? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades
Fit haunt of Gods, where I had hope to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both ? O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation and my last
At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from th' ambrosial fount ?
158 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.'
Thee, lastly, nupt'al bow'r, by me adorn'd
With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure
And wild ? How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits ?"
This is the lamentation of Eve on being driven out of
Paradise. Adam's reflections are in a different strain,
and still finer. After expressing his submission to the
will of his Maker, he says :
" This most afflicts me, that departing hence
As from his face I shall be hid, depriv'd
His blessed countenance ; here I could frequent
With worship place by place where he vouchsaf 'd
Presence divine, and to my sons relate,
On this mount he appeared, under this tree
Stood visible, among these pines his voice
I heard, here with him at this fountain talk'd.
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory
Or monument to ages, and thereon
Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flow'rs.
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances or footstep trace ?
For though I fled him angry, yet recall'd
To life prolong'd and promis'd race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory, and for off his steps adore."
No. XXIX.
Observations on Mr. Wordsworth's Poem ' The Excursion.' l
THE poem of ' The Excursion ' resembles that part of the
country in which the scene is laid. It has the same
vastness and magnificence, with the same nakedness and
1 See ' Memoirs of W. H.,' 1867, vol. i. p. 208, and my edition of
Lamb's ' Works,' 1868, vol. i. p. 259. ED.
On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.' 159
confusion. It has the same overwhelming, oppressive
power. It excites or recalls the same sensations which
those who have traversed that wonderful scenery must
have felt. We are surrounded with the constant sense
and superstitious awe of the collective power of matter,
of the gigantic and eternal forms of nature, on which,
from the beginning of time, the hand of man has made
no impression. Here are no dotted lines, no hedgerow
beauties, no box-tree borders, no gravel walks, no square
mechanic inclosures ; all is left loose and irregular in the
rude chaos of aboriginal nature. The boundaries of hill
and valley are the poet's only geography, where we wander
with him incessantly over deep beds of moss and waving
fern, amidst the troops of red-deer and wild animals. Such
is the severe simplicity of Mr. Wordsworth's taste, that
we doubt whether he would not reject a druidical temple
or time-hallowed ruin as too modern and artificial for
his purpose. He only familiarises himself or his readers
with a stone, covered with lichens, which has slept in
the same spot of ground from the creation of the world,
or with the rocky fissure between two mountains caused
by thunder, or with a cavern scooped out by the sea.
His mind is, as it were, coeval with the primary
forms of things ; his imagination holds immediately
from nature, and " owes no allegiance " but " to the
elements."
* The Excursion ' may be considered as a philosophical
pastoral poem as a scholastic romance. It is less a
poem on the country, than on the love of the country.
It is not so much a description of natural objects as of
the feelings associated with them ; not an account of the
manners of rural life, but the result of the poet's reflec-
tions on it. He does not present the reader with a lively
succession of images or incidents, but paints the out-
goings of his own heart, the shapings of his own fancy.
He may be said to create his own materials ; his thoughts
160 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion'
are his real subject. His understanding broods over
that which is " without form and void," and " makes it
pregnant." He sees all things in himself. He hardly
ever avails himself of remarkable objects or situations,
but, in general, rejects them as interfering with the
workings of his own mind, as disturbing the smooth,
deep, majestic current of his own feelings. Thus his
descriptions of natural scenery are not brought home
distinctly to the naked eye by forms and circumstances,
but every object is seen through the medium of in-
numerable recollections, is clothed with the haze of
imagination like a glittering vapour, is obscured with
the excess of glory, has the shadowy brightness of a
waking dream. The image is lost in the sentiment, as
sound in the multiplication of echoes :
" And visions, as prophetic eyes avow,
Hang on each, leaf and cling to every bough."
In describing human nature Mr. Wordsworth equally
shuns the common vantage-grounds of popular story, of
striking incident, or fatal catastrophe, as cheap and
vulgar modes of producing an effect. He scans the
human race as the naturalist measures the earth's zone,
without attending to the picturesque points of view, the
abrupt inequalities of surface. He contemplates the
passions and habits of men, not in their extremes, but in
their first elements ; their follies and vices, not at their
height, with all their embossed evils upon their heads,
but as lurking in embryo the seeds of the disorder in-
woven with our very constitution. He only sympathises
with those simple forms of feeling which mingle at once
with his own identity, or with the stream of general
humanity. To him the great and the small are the
same ; the near and the remote ; what appears, and
what only is. The general and the permanent, like the
Platonic ideas, are his only realities. All accidental
On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.' 161
varieties and individual contrasts are lost in an endless
continuity of feeling, like drops of water in the ocean-
stream ! An intense intellectual egotism swallows up
everything. Even the dialogues introduced in the
present volume are soliloquies of the same character,
taking different views of the subject. The recluse, the
pastor, and the pedlar, are three persons in one poet.
We ourselves disapprove of these " interlocutions be-
tween Lucius and Caius " as impertinent babbling,
where there is no dramatic distinction of character.
But the evident scope and tendency of Mr. Wordsworth's
mind is the reverse of dramatic. It resists all change
of character, all variety of scenery, all the bustle,
machinery, and pantomime of the stage or of real life
whatever might relieve, or relax, or change the direc-
tion of its own activity, jealous of all competition. The
power of his mind preys upon itself. It is as if there
were nothing but himself and the universe. He lives in
the busy solitude of his own heart ; in the deep silence
of thought. His imagination lends life and feeling only
to "the bare trees and mountains bare," peoples the
viewless tracts of air, and converses with the silent clouds !
We could have wished that our author had given to
his work the form of a didactic poem altogether, with
only occasional digressions or allusions to particular
instances. But he has chosen to encumber himself with
a load of narrative and description, which sometimes
hinders the progress and effect of the general reasoning,
and which, instead of being inwoven with the text, would
have come in better in plain prose as notes at the end of
the volume. Mr. Wordsworth, indeed, says finely, and
perhaps as truly as finely :
" Exchange the shepherd's frock of native grey
For robes with regal purple tinged ; convert
The crook into a sceptre ; give the pomp
Of circumstance ; and here the tragic Muse
Shall find apt subjects for her highest art.
M
1 62 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion'
Amid the groves, beneath the shadowy hills,
The generations are prepared ; the pangs,
The internal pangs, are ready ; the dread strife
Of poor humanity's afflicted will
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."
But he immediately declines availing himself of these
resources of the rustic moralist : for the priest who
officiates as " the sad historian of the pensive plain " says
in reply :
" Our system is not fashioned to preclude
That sympathy which you for others ask :
And I could tell, not travelling for my themo
Beyond the limits of these humble graves,
Of strange disasters ; but I pass them by,
Loth to disturb what Heaven hath hushed to peace."
There is, in fact, in Mr. Wordsworth's mind an evident
repugnance to admit anything that tells for itself, without
the interpretation of the poet a fastidious antipathy to
immediate effect a systematic unwillingness to share
the palm with his subject. Where, however, he has a
subject presented to him, " such as the meeting soul may
pierce," and to which he does not grudge to lend the aid
of his fine genius, his powers of description and fancy
seem to be little inferior to those of his classical
predecessor, Akenside. Among several others which we
might select we give the following passage, describing
the religion of ancient Greece :
" In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretch'd
On the soft grass through half a summer's day,
With music lulled his indolent repose ;
And in some fit of weariness, if he,
When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy feteh'd,
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun,
A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute,
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
The nightly hunter, lifting up his eyes
Towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart
On Mr. Wordsworth 's ' Excursion.' 163
Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed
That timely light to share his joyous sport :
And hence, a beaming Goddess with her Nymphs
Across the lawn and through the darksome grove
(Nor unaccompanied with tuneful notes
By echo multiplied from rock or cave),
Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars
Glance rapidly along the clouded heavens,
When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked
His thirst from rill, or gushing fount, and thanked
The Naiad. Sunbeams upon distant hills
Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet Oreads, sporting visibly.
The zephyrs fanning as they passed their wings,
Lacked not for love fair objects, whom they wooed
"With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,
Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,
From depth of shaggy covert peeping fortli
In the low vale or on steep mountain side,
And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns
Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard ;
These were the lurking satyrs, a wild brood
Of gamesome deities ! or Pan himself,
The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring God."
The foregoing is one of a succession of splendid
passages equally enriched with philosophy and poetry,
tracing the fictions of Eastern mythology to the im-
mediate intercourse of the imagination with Nature, and
to the habitual propensity of the human mind to endow
the outward forms of being with life and conscious
motion. \\ ith this expansive and animating principle,
Mr. Wordsworth has forcibly, but somewhat severely,
contrasted the cold, narrow, lifeless spirit of modern
philosophy :
" Now shall our great discoverers obtain
From sense and reason less than these obtained,
Though far misled ? Shall men for whom our age
Unbafflcd powers of vision hath prepared,
To explore the world without and world within,
164 On Mr. Wordsworth's ( Excursion.'
Be joyless as the blind ? Ambitious souls
Whom eartli at this late season hath produced
To regulate the moving spheres, and weigh
The planets in the hollow of their hand ;
And they who rather dive than soar, whose pains
Have solved the elements, or analysed
The thinking principle shall they in fact
Prove a degraded race ? And what avails
Kenown, if their presumption make them such ?
Inquire of ancient wisdom ; go, demand
Of mighty Nature, if 'twas ever meant
That we should pry far off, yet be unraised ;
That we should pore, and dwindle as we pore,
Viewing all objects unremittingly
In disconnection dead and spiritless;
And still dividing and dividing still
Break down all grandeur, still unsatisfied
With the perverse attempt, while littleness
May yet become more little ; waging thus
An impious warfare with the very life
Of our own souls ! And if indeed there be
An all-pervading spirit upon whom
Our dark foundations rest, could he design
That this magnificent effect of power,
The earth we tread^ the sky which we behold
By day, and all the pomp which night reveals,
That these and that superior mystery,
Our vital frame, so fearfully devised,
And the dread soul within it should exist
Only to be examined, pondered, searched,
Probed, vexed, and criticised to be prized
No more than as a mirror that reflects
To proud Self-love her own intelligence ?"
From the chemists and metaphysicians our author
turns to the laughing sage of France, Voltaire : " Poor
gentleman, it fares no better with him, for he's a wit."
We cannot, however, agree with Mr. Wordsworth that
' Candide ' is dull. It is, if our author pleases, " the pro-
duction of a scoffer's pen," but it is anything but dull.
It may not be proper in a grave, discreet, orthodox,
promising young divine, who studies his opinions
On Mr. Wordsworth" s l Excursion' 165
in the contraction or distension of his patron's brow,
to allow any merit to a work like ' Candide ' ; but we
conceive that it would have been more manly in Mr.
Wordsworth, nor do we think it would have hurt the
cause he espouses, if he had blotted out the epithet after
it had peevishly escaped him. Whatsoever savours of a
little, narrow, inquisitorial spirit does not sit well on a
poet and a man of genius. The prejudices of a philo-
sopher are not natural. There is a frankness and
sincerity of opinion which is a paramount obligation in
all questions of intellect, though it may not govern the
decisions of the spiritual courts, who may, however, be
safely left to take care of their own interests. There
is a plain directness and simplicity of understand-
ing, which is the only security against the evils of
levity on the one hand or of hypocrisy on the other.
A speculative bigot is a solecism in the intellectual
world. We can assure Mr. Wordsworth that we should
not have bestowed so much serious consideration on a
single voluntary perversion of language, but that our
respect for his character makes us jealous of his smallest
faults.
With regard to his general philippic against the
contractedness and egotism of philosophical pursuits, we
only object to its not being carried further. We shall
not affirm with Eousseau (his authority would perhaps
have little weight with Mr. Wordsworth), " Tout homme
refle'clii est mechant " ; but we conceive that the same
reasoning which Mr. Wordsworth applies so eloquently
and justly to the natural philosopher and metaphy-
sician may be extended to the moralist, the divine,
the politician, the orator, the artist, and even the poet.
And why so? Because wherever an intense activity is
given to any one faculty, it necessarily prevents the due
and natural exercise of others. Hence all those pro-
fessions or pursuits where the mind is exclusively
166 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.'
occupied with the ideas of things as they exist in the
imagination or understanding, as they call for the
exercise of intellectual activity, and not as they are
connected with practical good or evil, must check the
genial expansion of the moral sentiments and social
aifections must lead to a cold and dry abstraction, as
they are found to suspend the animal functions and
relax the bodily frame. Hence the complaint of the
want of natural sensibility and constitutional warmth
of attachment in those persons who have been devoted
to the pursuit of any art or science of their restless
morbidity of temperament and indifference to everything
that does not furnish an occasion for the display of
their mental superiority and the gratification of their
vanity. The philosophical poet himself, perhaps, owes
some of his love of nature to the opportunity it affords
him of analysing his own feelings and contemplating his
own powers of making every object about him a whole-
length mirror to reflect his favourite thoughts, and of
looking down on the frailties of others in undisturbed
leisure and from a more dignified height.
One of the most interesting parts of this work is that
in which the author treats of the French Revolution, and
of the feelings connected with it in ingenuous minds in
its commencement and its progress. The solitary, 1 who,
by domestic calamities and disappointments, had been
cut off from society and almost from himself, gives the
following account of the manner in which he was roused
from his melancholy :
" From that abstraction I was roused and how ?
Even as a thoughtful shepherd by a flash
Of lightning, startled in a gloomy cave
Of these wild hills. For, lo ! the dread Bastille,
With all the chambers in its horrid towers,
Fell to the ground ; by violence o'erthrown
1 This word is not English.
On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.' 167
Of indignation, and with shouts that drowned
The crash it made in falling ! From the wreck
A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise,
The appointed seat of equitable law
And mild paternal sway. The potent shock
I felt ; the transformation I perceived,
As marvellously seized as ia that moment
When, from the blind mist issuing, I beheld
Glory beyond all glory ever seen,
Dazzling the soul ! Meanwhile prophetic harps
In every grove were ringing, ' War shall cease.
Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured?
Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers, to deck
The tree of liberty !' My heart rebounded :
My melancholy voice the chorus joined.
Thus was I reconverted to the world ;
Society became my glittering bride,
And airy hopes my children. From the depths
Of natural passion seemingly escaped,
My soul diffused itself in wide embrace
Of Institutions and the forms of things.
If with noise
And acclamation, crowds in open ait
Expressed the tumult of their minds, my voice
There mingled, heard or not. And in still groves,
Where mild enthusiasts tuned a pensive lay
Of thanks and expectation, in accord
With their belief, I sang Saturnian rule
Returned a progeny of golden years
Permitted to descend, and bless mankind.
*****
Scorn and contempt forbid me to proceed !
But history, time's slavish scribe, will tell
How rapidly the zealots of the cause
Disbanded or in hostile ranks appeared :
Some, tired of honest service ; these outdone,
Disgusted, therefore, or appalled, by aims
Of fiercer zealots. So confusion reigned,
And the more faithful were compelled to exclaim,
As Brutus did to virtue, ' Liberty,
I worshipped thee, and find thee but a shade ! '
SrjCH RECANTATION HAD FOB ME NO CHAKil,
NOB WOULD I BEND TO IT."
168 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion'
The subject is afterwards resumed, with the same
magnanimity and philosophical firmness :
" For that other loss,
The loss of confidence in social man,
By the unexpected transports of our age
Carried so high, that every thought which looked
Beyond the temporal destiny of the kind
To many seemed superfluous ; as no cause
For such exalted confidence could e'er
Exist, so none is now for such despair.
The two extremes are equally remote
From truth and reason ; do not, then, confound
One with the other, but reject them both ;
And choose the middle point, whereon to build
Sound expectations. Tins doth he advise
Who shared at first the illusion. At this day,
When a Tartarian darkness overspreads
The groaning nations ; when the impious rule,
By will or by established ordinance,
Their own dire agents, and constrain the good
To acts which they abhor ; though I bewail
This triumph, yet the pity of my heart
Prevents me not from owning that the law
By which mankind now suffers is most just.
For by superior energies ; more strict
Affiance in each other ; faith more firm
In their unhallowed principles, the bad
Have fairly earned a victory o'er the weak,
The vacillating, inconsistent good."
In the application of these memorable lines we should,
perhaps, differ a little from Mr. Wordsworth ; nor can we
indulge with him in the fond conclusion afterwards
hinted at, that one day our triumph, the triumph of
humanity and liberty, may be complete. For this
purpose we think several things necessary which are
impossible. It is a consummation which cannot happen
till the nature of things is changed, till the many become
as united as the one, till romantic generosity shall be as
common as gross selfishness, till reason shall have
On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.' 169
acquired the obstinate blindness of prejudice, till the
love of power and of change shall no longer goad man on
to restless action till passion and will, hope and fear,
love and hatred, and the objects proper to excite them,
that is, alternate good and evil, shall no longer sway the
bosoms and businesses of men. All things move, not in
progress, but in a ceaseless round ; our strength lies in
our weakness ; our virtues are built on our vices ; our
faculties are as limited as our being ; nor can we lift
man above his nature more than above the earth he
treads. But though we cannot weave over again the
airy unsubstantial dream which reason and experience
have dispelled
" What though the radiance, which was once so bright,
Be now for ever taken from our sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower ?"
yet we will never cease nor be prevented from returning
on the wings of imagination to that bright dream of our
youth, that glad dawn of the daystar of liberty, that
springtime of the world, in which the hopes and
expectations of the human race seemed opening in the
same gay career with our own ; when France called her
children to partake her equal blessings beneath her
laughing skies ; when the stranger was met in all her
villages with dance and festive songs, in celebration of
a new and golden era ; and when, to the retired and
contemplative student, the prospects of human happiness
and glory were seen ascending, like the steps of Jacob's
ladder, in bright and never-ending succession. The
dawn of that day was suddenly overcast ; that season
of hope is past ; it is fled with the other dreams of our
youth, which we cannot recall, but has left behind it
traces, which are not to be effaced by Birthday and
Thanksgiving odes; or the chaunting of Te Deums in all
the churches of Christendom. To those hopes eternal
170 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion'
regrets are due ; to those who maliciously and wilfully
blasted them in the fear that they might be accomplished,
we feel no less what we owe hatred and scorn as
lasting !
No. XXX.
The same Subject continued.
MR. WORDSWORTH'S writings exhibit all the internal
power without the external form of poetry. He has
scarcely any of the pomp and decoration and scenic effect
of poetry ; no gorgeous palaces nor solemn temples awe
the imagination ; no cities rise " with glistering spires
and pinnacles adorned ;" we meet with no knights
pricked forth on airy steeds ; no hairbreadth scapes and
perilous accidents by flood or field. Either from the
predominant habit of his mind not requiring the stimulus
of outward impressions, or from the want of an imagi-
nation teeming with various forms, he takes the common
everyday events and objects of nature, or rather seeks
those that are the most simple and barren of effect;
but he adds to them a weight of interest from the
resources of his own mind which makes the most
insignificant things serious and even formidable. All
other interests are absorbed in the deeper interest oi
his own thoughts, and find the same level. His mind
magnifies the littleness of his subject, and raises its
meanness ; lends it his strength, and clothes it with
borrowed grandeur. With him, a molehill covered
with wild thyme assumes the importance of " the great
vision of the guarded mount ;" a puddle is filled with
preternatural faces, and agitated with the fiercest storms
of passion.
The extreme simplicity which some persons have
objected to in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, is to be found
only in the subject and the style : the sentiments are
On Mr. Wordswortlis ' Excursion.' 171
subtle and profound. In the latter respect, his poetry
is as much above the common standard or capacity, as in
the other it is below it. His poems bear a distant
resemblance to some of Rembrandt's landscapes, who,
more than any other painter, created the medium through
which he saw nature, and out of the stump of an old
tree, a break in the sky, and a bit of water, could
produce an effect almost miraculous.
Mr. Wordsworth's poems in general are the history of
a refined and contemplative mind, conversant only with
itself and nature. An intense feeling of the associations
of this kind is the peculiar and characteristic feature
of all his productions. He has described the love of
nature better than any other poet. This sentiment, inly
felt in all its force, and sometimes carried to an excess,
is the source both of his strength and of his weakness.
However we may sympathise with Mr. Wordsworth in
his attachment to groves and fields, we cannot extend
the same admiration to their inhabitants, or to the
manners of country life in general. We go along with
him while he is the subject of his own narrative, but we
take leave of him when he makes pedlars and ploughmen
his heroes and the interpreters of his sentiments. It
is, we think, getting into low company, and company,
besides, that we do not like. We take Mr. Wordsworth
himself for a great poet, a fine moralist, and a deep
philosopher ; but if he insists on introducing us to a
friend of his, a parish clerk, or the barber of the village,
who is as wise as himself, we must be excused if we
draw back with some little want of cordial faith. We
are satisfied with the friendship which subsisted between
Parson Adams and Joseph Andrews. The author him-
self lets out occasional hints that all is not as it should
be amongst these northern Arcadians. Though, in
general, he professes to soft en the harsher features of
rustic vice, he has given us one picture of depraved and
172 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.'
inveterate selfishness, which, we apprehend could only
be found among the inhabitants of these boasted
mountain districts. The account of one of his heroines
concludes as follows :
" A sudden illness seiz'd her in the strength
Of life's autumnal season. Shall I tell
How on her bed of death the matron lay,
To Providence submissive, so she thought ;
But fretted, vexed, and wrought upon, almost
To anger, by the malady that griped
Her prostrate frame with unrelaxing power,
As the fierce eagle fastens on the lamb ?
She prayed, she moaned her husband's sister watched
Her dreary pillow, waited on her needs ;
And yet the very sound of that kind foot
Was anguish to her ears ! ' And must she rule
Sole mistress of this house when I am gone ?
Sit by my fire possess what I possessed
Tend what I tended calling it her own !'
Enough I fear, too much. Of nobler feeling
Take this example : One autumnal evening,
While she was yet in prime of health and strength.
I well remember, while I passed her door,
Musing with loitering step, and upward eye
Turned tow'rds the planet Jupiter, that hung
Above the centre of the vale, a voice
Roused me, her voice ; it said, ' That glorious star
In its untroubled element will shine
As now it shines, when we are laid in earth
And safe from all our sorrows.' She is safe,
And her uncharitable acts, I trust,
And harsh unkind nesses, are all forgiven ;
Though, in this vale, remembered with deep awe !"
We think it is pushing our love of the admiration of
natural objects a good deal too far, to make it a set-off
against a story like the preceding.
All country people hate each other. They have so
little comfort that they envy their neighbours the
smallest pleasure or advantage, and nearly grudge
themselves the necessaries of life. From not being
On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.' 173
accustomed to enjoyment, they become hardened and
averse to it stupid, for want of thought selfish, for
want of society. There is nothing good to be had in the
country, or, if there is, they will not let you have it.
They had rather injure themselves than oblige any one
else. Their common mode of life is a system of wretched-
ness and self-denial, like what we read of among
barbarous tribes. You live out of the world. You
cannot get your tea and sugar without sending to the
next town for it ; you pay double, and have it of the
worst quality. The small-beer is sure to be sour the
milk skimmed the meat bad, or spoiled in the cooking.
You cannot do a single thing you like ; you cannot walk
out or sit at home, or write or read, or think or look as
if you did, without being subject to impertinent curiosity.
The apothecary annoys you with his complaisance ; the
parson with his superciliousness. If you are poor, you
are despised ; if you are rich, you are feared and hated.
If you do any one a favour, the whole neighbourhood is
up in arms ; the clamour is like that of a rookery ; find
the person himself, it is ten to one, laughs at you for
your pains, and takes the first opportunity of showing
you that he labours under no uneasy sense of obligation.
There is a perpetual round of mischief-making and
backbiting for want of any better amusement. There
are no shops, no taverns, no theatres, no opera, no
concerts, no pictures, no public buildings, no crowded
streets, no noise of coaches or of courts of law neither
courtiers nor courtesans, no literary parties, no fashion-
able routs, no society, no books, or knowledge of books.
Vanity and luxury are the civilisers of the world and
sweeteners of human life. Without objects either of
pleasure or action, it grows harsh and crabbed : the
mind becomes stagnant, the affections callous, and the
eye dull. Man left to himself soon degenerates into a
very disagreeable person. Ignorance is always bad
174 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.'
enough ; but rustic ignorance is intolerable. Aristotle
has observed, that tragedy purifies the affections by
terror and pity. If so, a company of tragedians should
be established at the public expense in every village or
hundred, as a better mode of education than either Bell's
or Lancaster's. The benefits of knowledge are never so
well understood as from seeing the effects of ignorance,
in their naked undisguised state, upon the common
country people. Their selfishness and insensibility are
perhaps less owing to the hardships and privations,
which make them, like people out at sea in a boat, ready
to devour one another, than to their having no idea of
anything beyond themselves and their immediate sphere
of action. They have no knowledge of, and consequently
can take no interest in, anything which is not an object
of their senses and of their daily pursuits. They hate
all strangers, and have generally a nickname for the
inhabitants of the next village. The two young noblemen
in ' Guzman d'Alfarache,' who went to visit their
mistresses only a league out of Madrid, were set upon
by the peasants, who came round them calling out, " A
wolf !" Those who have no enlarged or liberal ideas
can have no disinterested or generous sentiments.
Persons who are in the habit of reading novels and
romances are compelled to take a deep interest in, and
to have their affections strongly excited by, fictitious
characters and imaginary situations ; their thoughts and
feelings are constantly carried out of themselves, to
persons they never saw and things that never existed.
History enlarges the mind, by familiarising us with the
great vicissitudes of human affairs and the catastrophes
of states and kingdoms ; the study of morals accustoms
us to refer our actions to a general standard of right and
wrong ; and abstract reasoning, in general, strengthens
the love of truth, and produces an inflexibility of
piinciple which cannot stoop to low trick and cunning.
On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.' 175
Books, in Bacon's phrase, are " a discipline of humanity."
Country people have none of these advantages, nor
any others to supply the place of them. Having
no circulating libraries to exhaust their love of the
marvellous, they amuse themselves with fancying the
disasters and disgraces of their particular acquaintance.
Having no humpbacked Eichard to excite their wonder
and abhorrence, they make themselves a bugbear of
their own out of the first obnoxious person they can lay
their hands on. Xot having the fictitious distresses and
gigantic crimes of poetry to stimulate their imagination
and their passions, they vent their whole stock of spleen,
malice, and invention on their friends and next-door
neighbours. They get up a little pastoral drama at
home, with fancied events, but real characters. All
their spare time is spent in manufacturing and propagat-
ing the lie for the day, which does its office and expires.
The next day is spent in the same manner. It is thus
that they embellish the simplicity of rural life ! The
common people in civilised countries are a kind of
domesticated sarages. They have not the wild imagi-
nation, the passions, the fierce energies, or dreadful
vicissitudes of the savage tribes, nor have they the
leisure, the indolent enjoyments, and romantic super-
stitions which belonged to the pastoral life in milder
climates and more remote periods of society. They are
taken out of a state of nature, without being put in
possession of the refinements of art. The customs and
institutions of society cramp their imaginations without
giving them knowledge. If the inhabitants of the
mountainous districts described by Mr. Wordsworth are
less gross and sensual than others, they are more selfish.
Their egotism becomes more concentrated as they are
more insulated, and their purposes more inveterate as
they have less competition to struggle with. The
weight of matter which surrounds them crushes the finer
sympathies. Their minds become hard and cold, like
176 On Mr. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.'
the rocks which they cultivate. The immensity of their
mountains makes the human form appear little and
insignificant. Men are seen crawling between heaven
and earth, like insects to their graves. Nor do they
regard one another more than flies on a wall. Their
physiognomy expresses the materialism of their cha-
racter, which has only one principle rigid self-will.
They move on with their eyes and foreheads fixed,
looking neither to the right nor to the left, with a heavy
slouch in their gait, and seeming as if nothing would
divert them from their path. We do not admire this
plodding pertinacity, always directed to the main chance.
There is nothing which excites so little sympathy in our
minds as exclusive selfishness. If our theory is wrong
at least it is taken from pretty close observation, and is
we think confirmed by Mr. Wordsworth's own account.
Of the stories contained in the latter part of the
volume we like that of the Whig and Jacobite friends,
and of the good knight, Sir Alfred Irthing, the best.
The last reminded us of a fine sketch of a similar
character in the beautiful poem of ' Hart Leap Well.'
To conclude : if the skill with which the poet had
chosen his materials had been equal to the power which
he has undeniably exerted over them if the objects
(whether persons or things) which he makes use of as
the vehicle of his sentiments had been such as to convey
them in all their depth and force, then the production
before us might indeed " have proved a monument," as he
himself wishes it, worthy of the author and of his country.
Whether, as it is, this very original and powerful per-
formance may not rather remain like one of those stu-
pendous but half-finished structures which have been
suffered to moulder into decay, because the cost and
labour attending them exceeded their use or beauty, we
feel that it would be presumptuous in us to determine. 1
1 There is a long criticism on the writings of Wordsworth, then
in print, in ' Lectures on the English Poets,' 1818, pp. 309- -324. En.
Character of the late Mr. Pitt. 177
No. XXXI.
Character of the late Mr. Pitt. 1
THE character of Mr. Pitt -was, perhaps, one of the most
singular that ever existed. With few talents and fewer
virtues, he acquired and preserved, in one of the most
trying situations, and in spite of all opposition, the
highest reputation for the possession of every moral
excellence, and as having carried the attainments of
eloquence and wisdom as far as human abilities could go.
This he did (strange as it may appear) by a negation
(together with the common virtues) of the common vices
of human nature, and by the complete negation of every
other talent that might interfere with the only ones
which he possessed in a supreme degree, and which,
indeed, may be made to include the appearance of all
others an artful use of words and a certain dexterity
of logical arrangement. In these alone his power
consisted ; and the defect of all other qualities which
usually constitute greatness contributed to the more
complete success of these. Having no strong feelings,
no distinct perceptions his mind having no link, as it
were, to connect it with the world of external nature
every subject presented to him nothing more than a
tabula rasa, on which he was at liberty to lay whatever
colouring of language he pleased ; having no general
principles, no comprehensive views of things, no moral
habits of thinking, no system of action, there was nothing
to hinder him from pursuing any particular purpose by
any means that offered ; having never any plan, he could
not be convicted of inconsistency, and his own pride and
obstinacy were the only rules of his conduct. Without
1 Written in 1806. [It is to be found at p. 27 of a very rare
pamphlet by the author, published in the year mentioned, under the
title of ' Free Thoughts on Public Affairs,' &c. ED.]
N
178 Character of the Me Mr. Pitt.
insight into human nature, without sympathy with the
passions of men, or apprehension of their real designs, he
seemed perfectly insensible to the consequences of things,
and would believe nothing till it actually happened.
The fog and haze in which he saw everything com-
municated itself to others ; and the total indistinctness
and uncertainty of his own ideas tended to confound the
perceptions of his hearers more etfectually than the most
ingenious misrepresentation could have done. Indeed,
in defending his conduct, he never seemed to consider
himself as at all responsible for the success of his measures,
or to suppose that future events were in our own power ;
but that, as the best-laid schemes might fail, and there
was 110 providing against all possible contingencies, this
was sufficient excuse for our plunging at once into any
dangerous or absurd enterprise without the least regard
to consequences. His reserved logic confined itself
solely to the possible and the impossible, and he appeared
to regard improbable and improbable, the only foundation
of moral prudence or political wisdom, as beneath the
notice of a profound statesman ; as if the pride of the
human intellect were concerned in never entrusting itself
with subjects where it may be compelled to acknowledge
its weakness. Nothing could ever drive him out of his
dull forms and naked generalities ; which, as they are
susceptible neither of degree nor variation, are therefore
equally applicable to every emergency that can happen ;
and in the most critical aspect of affairs he saw nothing
but the same flimsy web of remote possibilities and
metaphysical uncertainty. In his mind, the wholesome
pulp of practical wisdom and salutary advice was
immediately converted into the dry chafl' and husks of a
miserable logic. From his manner of reasoning, he
seemed not to have believed that the truth of his
statements depended on the reality of the facts, but that
the facts themselves depended on the order in which he
arranged them in words ; you would not suppose him to
Character of the late Mr. Pitt. 179
be agitating a serious question, wbich had real grounds
to go upon, but to be declaiming upon an imaginary thesis,
proposed as an exercise in the schools. He never set
himself to examine the force of the objections that were
brought against him, or attempted to defend his measures
upon clear solid grounds of his own ; but constantly
contented himself with first gravely stating the logical
form or dilemma to which the question reduced itself;
and then, after having declared his opinion, proceeded
to amuse his hearers by a series of rhetorical common-
places, connected together in grave, sonorous, and
elaborately-constructed periods, without ever showing
their real application to the subject in dispute. Thus,
if any member of the opposition disapproved of any
measure, and enforced his objections by pointing out the
many evils with which it was fraught, or the difficulties
attending its execution, his only answer was, " that it
was true there might be inconveniences attending the
measure proposed, but we were to remember that every
expedient that could be devised might be said to be
nothing more than a choice of difficulties, and that all
that human prudence could do was to consider on which
side the advantages lay ; that, for his part, he conceived
that the present measure was attended with more
advantages and fewer disadvantages than any other that
could be adopted ; that if we were diverted from our
object by every appearance of difficulty the wheels of
government would be clogged by endless delays and
imaginary grievances ; that most of the objections made
to the measure appeared to him to be trivial, others of
them unfounded and improbable ; or that, if a scheme
free from all these objections could be proposed, it
might, after all, prove inefficient; while, in the mean-
time, a material object remained unprovided for, or the
opportunity of action was lost." This mode of reasoning
is admirably described by Hobbes, in speaking of the
writings of some of the schoolmen, of whom ,he says
180 Character of the late Mr. Pitt.
that "they had learned the trick of imposing what
they list upon their readers, and declining the force of
true reason by verbal forks, that is, distinctions, which
signify nothing, but serve only to astonish the multitude
of ignorant men." That what we have here stated
comprehends the whole force of his mind, which consisted
solely in this evasive dexterity and perplexing formality,
assisted by a copiousness of words and commonplace
topics, will, we think, be evident to any one who
carefully looks over his speeches, undazzled by the
reputation or personal influence of the speaker. It will
be in vain to look in them for any of the common proofs
of human genius or wisdom. He has not left behind him
a single memorable saying not one profound maxim
one solid observation one forcible description one
beautiful thought one humorous picture one affecting
sentiment. He has made no addition whatever to the
stock of human knowledge. He did not possess any one
of those faculties which contribute to the instruction
and delight of mankind depth of understanding, ima-
gination, sensibility, wit, vivacity, clear and solid judg-
ment. But it may be asked, if these qualities are not to
be found in him where are we to look for them ? and
we may be required to point out instances of them. We
shall answer then, that he had none of the abstract
legislative wisdom, refined sagacity, or rich, impetuous,
high- wrought imagination of Burke; the manly eloquence,
exact knowledge, vehemence, and natural simplicity of
Fox ; the ,ease, brilliancy, and acuteness of Sheridan.
It is not merely that he had not all these qualities in the
degree that they were severally possessed by his rivals,
but he had not any of them in any remarkable degree.
His reasoning is a technical arrangement of unmeaning
commonplaces, his eloquence rhetorical, his style mono-
tonous and artificial. If he could pretend to any one
excellence more than another, it was to taste in
composition. There is certainly nothing low, nothing
Character of the late Mr. Pitt. 181
puerile, nothing far-fetched or abrupt in his speeches ;
there is a kind of faultless regularity pervading them
throughout ; but in the confined, formal, passive mode of
eloquence which he adopted it seemed rather more
difficult to commit errors than to avoid them. A man
who is determined never to move out of the beaten road
cannot lose his way. However, habit, joined to the
peculiar mechanical memory which he possessed, carried
this correctness to a degree which, in an extemporaneous
speaker, was almost miraculous; he, perhaps, hardly
ever uttered a sentence that was not perfectly regular
and connected. In this respect he not only had the
advantage over his own contemporaries, but perhaps no
one that ever lived equalled him in this singular faculty.
But for this, he would always have passed for a common
man ; and to this the constant sameness and, if we may
so say, vulgarity of his ideas must have contributed not
a little, as there was nothing to distract his mind from
this one object of his uuintermitted attention, and as,
even in his choice of words, he never aimed at anything
more than, a certain general propriety and stately
uniformity of style. His talents were exactly fitted for
the situation in which he was placed, where it was his
business, not to overcome others, but to avoid being
overcome. He was able to baffle opposition, not from
strength or firmness, but from the evasive ambiguity
and impalpable nature of his resistance, which gave no
hold to the rude grasp of his opponents ; no force could
bind the loose phantom, and his mind (though " not
matchless, and his pride humbled by such rebuke ") soon
rose from defeat unhurt,
" And in its liquid texture, mortal wound
Eeceiv'd no more than can the fluid air." *
1 Here the author, in his own copy of ' Free Thoughts,' now
before me, marked the conclusion of the essay on its republication
in the ' ROUND TABLE;' but in the pamphlet the description of
Pitt's character is continued a little further. ED.
182 On Religious Hypocrisy.
No. XXXII.
On Religious Hypocrisy.
KELIGION either makes men wise and virtuous, or it
makes them set up false pretences to both. In the
latter case, it makes them hypocrites to themselves as
well as others. Religion is, in the grosser minds, an
enemy to self-knowledge. The consciousness of the
presence of an all-powerful Being, who is both the
witness and judge of every thought, word, and action,
where it does not produce its proper effect, forces the
religious man to practise every mode of deceit upon
himself with respect to his real character and motives ;
for it is only by being wilfully blind to his own faults
that he can suppose they will escape the eye of Omni-
science. Consequently, the whole business of a religious
man's life, if it does not conform to the strict line of his
duty, may be said to be to gloss over his errors to him-
self, and to invent a thousand shifts and palliations in
order to hoodwink the Almighty. Where he is sensible
of his own delinquency he knows that it cannot escape
the penetration of his invisible Judge ; and the distant
penalty annexed to every offence, though not sufficient
to make him desist from the commission of it, will not
suffer him to rest easy till he has made some compro-
mise with his own conscience as to his motives for com-
mitting it. As far as relates to this world, a cunning
knave may take a pride in the imposition he practises upon
others ; and instead of striving to conceal his true cha-
racter from himself, may chuckle with inward satisfaction
at the folly of those who are not wise enough to detect it.
" But 'tis not so above." This shallow skin-deep hypo-
crisy will not serve the turn of the religious devotee,
who is " compelled to give in evidence, against himself,"
and who must first become the dupe of his own impos
Un Religious Hypocrisy. 183
ture before he can flatter himself with the hope of con-
cealment, as children hide their eyes with their hands,
and fancy that no one can see them. Religious people
often pray very heartily for the forgiveness of a " nml-
titude of trespasses and sins," as a mark of humility,
but we never knew them admit any one fault in particu-
lar, or acknowledge themselves in the wrong in any
instance whatever. The natural jealousy of self-love is
in them heightened by the fear of damnation, and they
plead Not Guilty to every charge brought against them
with all the conscious terrors of a criminal at the bar.
It is for this reason that the greatest hypocrites in the
world are religious hypocrites.
This quality, as it has been sometimes found united with
the clerical character, is known by the name of " priest-
craft." The ministers of religion are perhaps more liable
to this vice than any other class of people. They are
obliged to assume a greater degree of sanctity, though
they have it not, and to screw themselves up to an un-
natural pitch of severity and self-denial. They must
keep a constant guard over themselves, have an eye
always to their own persons, never relax in their
gravity, nor give the least scope to their inclinations.
A single slip, if discovered, may be fatal to them. Their
influence and superiority depend on their pretensions to
virtue and piety ; and they are tempted to draw liberally
on the funds of credulity and ignorance allotted for their
convenient support. All this cannot be very friendly
to downright simplicity of character. Besides, they are
so accustomed to inveigh against the vices of others
that they naturally forget that they have any of their
own to correct. They see vice as an object always out
of themselves, with which they have no other concern
than to denounce and stigmatise it. They are only
reminded of it in the third person. They as naturally
associate sin and its consequences with their flocks as
184 On Religious Hypocrisy.
a pedagogue associates a false concord and flogging with
his scholars. If we may so express it, they serve as
conductors to the lightning of Divine indignation, and
have only to point the thunders of the law at others.
They identify themselves with that perfect system of
faith and morals of which they are the professed
teachers, and regard any imputation on their conduct
as an indirect attack on the function to which they be-
long, or as compromising the authority under which
they act. It is only the head of the Popish church who
assumes the title of ' God's Vicegerent upon Earth ;' but
the feeling is nearly common to all the oracular inter-
preters of the will of Heaven from the successor of
St. Peter down to the simple unassuming Quaker, who,
disclaiming the imposing authority of title and office,
yet fancies himself the immediate organ of a preterna-
tural impulse, and affects to speak only as the Spirit
moves him.
There is another way in which the formal profession
of religion aids hypocrisy : by erecting a secret tribunal,
to which those who affect a more than ordinary share of
it can (in case of need) appeal from the judgments of
men. The religious impostor reduced to his last shift,
and having no other way left to avoid the most " open
and apparent shame," rejects the fallible decisions of the
world, and thanks God that there is one who knows the
heart. He is amenable to a higher jurisdiction and
while all is well with Heaven he can pity the errors
and smile at the malice of his enemies. Whatever cuts
men off from their dependence on common opinion or
obvious appearances must open a door to evasion and
cunning, by setting up a standard of right and wrong in
every one's own breast, of the truth of which nobody
can judge but the person himself. There are some fine
instances in the old plays and novels (the best commen-
taries on human nature) of the effect of this principle
On Religious Hypocrisy. 185
in giving the last finishing to the character of duplicity.
Mi^s Harris, in Fielding's ' Amelia,' is one of the most
striking. Moliere's Tartuffe is another instance of the
facility with which religion may be perverted to the
purposes of the most flagrant hypocrisy. It is an im-
penetrable fastness, to which this worthy person, like
so many others, retires without the fear of pursuit. It
is an additional disguise, in which he wraps himself tip
like a cloak. It is a stalking-horse, which is ready on
all occasions an invisible conscience, which goes about
with him his good genius, that becomes surety for him
in all difficulties swears to the purity of his motives
extricates him out of the most desperate circumstances
baffles detection, and furnishes a plea to which there is
no answer.
The same sort of reasoning will account for the old
remark, that persons \vho are stigmatised as noncon-
formists to the established religion, Jews, Presbyterians,
&c., are more disposed to this vice than their neigh-
bours. They are inured to the contempt of the world
and steeled against its prejudices ; and the same indif-
ference which fortifies them against the unjust censures
of mankind may be converted, as occasion requires, into
a screen for the most pitiful conduct. They have no
cordial sympathy with others, and therefore no sin-
cerity in their intercourse with them. It is the
necessity of concealment, in the first instance, that
produces, and is in some measure an excuse for, the
habit of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy, as it is connected with cowardice, seems
to imply weakness of body or want of spirit. The im-
pudence and insensibility which belong to it ought to
suppose robustness of constitution. There is certainly
a very successful and formidable class of sturdy, jolly,
ablebodied hypocrites, the Friar Johns of the profes-
sion. Raphael has represented Elymas the sorcerer
186 On the Literary Character.
with a hard iron visage and large uncouth figure, made
up of bones and muscles ; as one not troubled with weak
nerves or idle scruples as one who repelled all sym-
pathy with others who was not to be jostled out of his
course by their censures or suspicions, and who could
break with ease throiagh the cobweb snares which he
had laid for the credulity of others, without being once
entangled in his own delusions. His outward form be-
trays the hard, unimaginative, self-willed understanding
of the sorcerer.
No. XXXIII.
On the Literary Character.
THE following remarks are prefixed to the account of
Baron Grimm's Correspondence in a late number of a
celebrated journal :
" There is nothing more exactly painted in these
graphical volumes than the character of M. Grimm
himself; and the beauty of it is that as there is nothing
either natural or peculiar about it, it may stand for the
character of all the wits and philosophers he frequented.
He had more wit, perhaps, and more sound sense and
information, than the greatest part of the society in
which he lived ; but the leading traits belong to the
whole class, and to all classes, indeed, in similar situations,
in every part of the world. Whenever there is a very
large assemblage of persons who have no other occu-
pation but to amuse themselves, there will infallibly be
generated acuteness of intellect, refinement of manners,
and good taste in conversation ; and with the same
certainty, all profound thought and all serious affection
will be discarded from their society.
" The multitude of persons and things that force them-
selves on the attention in such a scene, and the rapidity
On the Literary Character. 187
with which they succeed each other and pass away,
prevent any one from making a deep or permanent
impression ; and the mind, having never been tasked to
any course of application, and long habituated to this
lively succession and variety of objects, comes at last to
require the excitement of perpetual change, and to find a
multiplicity of friends as indispensable as a multiplicity
of amusements. Thus the characteristics of large and
polished society come\ almost inevitably to be wit and
heartlessness acuteness and perpetual derision. The
same impatience of uniformity and passion for variety
which give so much grace to their conversation, by
excluding all tediousness and pertinacious wrangling,
make them incapable of dwelling for many minutes on
the feelings and concerns of any one individual ; while
the constant pursuit of little gratifications and the weak
dread of all uneasy sensations render them equally
averse from serious sympathy and deep thought.
" The whole style and tone of this publication affords
the most striking illustration of these general remarks.
From one end of it to the other, it is a display of the
most complete heartlessness and the most uninterrupted
levity. It chronicles the deaths of half the author's
acquaintance and makes jests upon them all ; and is
much more serious in discussing the merits of an opera
dancer than in considering the evidence for the being
of a God or the first foundations of morality. Nothing
indeed can be more just or conclusive than the remark
that is forced from M. Grimm himself, upon the utter
carelessness, and instant oblivion, that followed the
death of one of the most distinguished, active, and
amiable members of his coterie : ' Tant il est vrai que
ce que nous appellons la societe est ce qu'il y a de plus
leger, plus ingrat, et de plus frivole au monde !' "
These remarks, though shrewd and sensible in them-
selves, apply rather to the character of M. Grimm and
188 On the Literary Character.
his friends as men of the world, after their initiation
into the refined society of Paris and the great world,
than as mere men of letters. There is, however, a
character which every man of letters has before he
comes into society, and which he carries into the world
with him, which we shall here attempt to describe.
The weaknesses and vices that arise from a constant
intercourse with books are in certain respects the same
with those which arise from daily intercourse with the
world ; yet each has a character and operation of its own,
which may either counteract or aggravate the tendency
of the other. The same dissipation of mind, the same
listlessness, languor, and indifference, may be produced
by both, but they are produced in different ways and
exhibit very different appearances. The defects of the
literary character proceed, not from frivolity and volup-
tuous indolence, but from the overstrained exertion of
the faculties, from abstraction and refinement. A man
without talents or education might mingle in the same
society, might give in to all the gaiety and foppery of the
age, might see the same " multiplicity of persons and
things," but would not become a wit and a philosopher
for all that. As far as the change of actual objects, the
real variety and dissipation goes, there is no difference
between M. Grimm and a courtier of Francis I.
between the consummate philosopher and the giddy
girl between Paris amidst the barbaric refinements of
the middle of the eighteenth century and any other
metropolis at any other period. It is in the ideal change
of objects, in the intellectual dissipation of literature and
of literary society, that we are to seek for the difference.
The very same languor and listlessness which, in fashion-
able life, are owing to the rapid " succession of persons
and things," may be found, and even in a more intense
degree, in the most recluse student, who has no know-
ledge whatever of the great world, who has never been
On the Literary Character. 189
present at the sallies of a petit souper, or complimented
a lady on presenting her with a bouquet. It is the
province of literature to anticipate the dissipation of
real objects, and to increase it. It creates a fictitious
restlessness and craving after variety by creating a
fictitious world around us, and by hurrying us not only
through all the mimic scenes of life, but by plunging
us into the endless labyrinths of imagination. Thus
the common indiiference produced by the distraction
of successive amusements is superseded by a general
indifference to surrounding objects, to real persons and
things, occasioned by the disparity between the world
of our imagination and that without us. The scenes of
real life are not got up in the same style of magnifi-
cence; they want dramatic illusion and effect. The
high-wrought feelings require all the concomitant and
romantic circumstances which fancy can bring together
to satisfy them, and cannot find them in any given
object. M. Grimm was not, by his own account, born a
lover ; but even supposing him to have been, in gallantry
of temper, a very Amadis, would it have been necessary
that the enthusiasm of a philosopher and a man of genius
should have run the gauntlet of all the bonnes fortunes of
Paris to evaporate into insensibility and indifference?
\Yould not a Clarissa, a new Eluise, a Cassandra, or a
Berenice, have produced the samo mortifying effects on
a person of his great critical acumen and vertu ? Where,
oh where, would he find the rocks of Meillerie in the
precincts of the Palais Ro}'al, or on what lips would
Julia's kisses grow ? AN' ho, after wandering with Angelica,
or having seen the heavenly face of Una, might not meet
with impunity a whole circle of literary ladies ? Covvley's
mistresses reigned by turns in the poet's fancy, and the
beauties of King Charles II. perplex the eye in the prefer-
ence of their charms as much now as they ever did. One
trifling coquette only drives out another; but Raphael's
190 On the Literary Character.
Galatea kills the whole race of pertness and "vulgarity at
once. After ranging in dizzy mazes through the regions
of imaginary beauty, the mind sinks down, breathless
and exhausted, on the earth. In common minds, in-
difference is produced by mixing with the world.
Authors and artists bring it into the world with them.
The disappointment of the ideal enthusiast is indeed
greatest at first, and he grows reconciled to his situation
by degrees ; whereas the mere man of the world becomes
more dissatisfied and fastidious and more of a misan-
thrope the longer he lives.
It is much the same in friendships founded on literary
motives. Literary men are not attached to the persons
of their friends, but to their minds. They look upon
them in the same light as on the books in their libraiy,
and read them till they are tired. In casual acquaint-
ances friendship grows out of habit. Mutual kindnesses
beget mutual attachment; and numberless little local
occurrences in the course of a long intimacy furnish
agreeable topics of recollection, and are almost the only
sources of conversation among such persons. They have
an immediate pleasure in each other's company. But
in literature nothing of this kind takes place. Petty
and local circumstances are beneath the dignity of
philosophy. Nothing will go down but wit or wisdom.
The mind is kept in a perpetual state of violent exertion
and expectation, and as there canaot always be a fresh
supply of stimulus to excite it, as the same remarks or
the same bon mots come to be often repeated, or others so
like them that we can easily anticipate the effect and
are no longer surprised into admiration, we begin to
relax in the frequency of our visits and the heartiness
of oiir welcome. When we are tired of a book we can
lay it down, but we cannot so easily put our friends on
the shelf when we grow weary of their society. The
necessity of keeping up appearances, therefore, adds to
On the Literary Character. 191
the dissatisfaction on both sides, and at length irritates
indifference into contempt.
By the help of arts and science, everything finds an
ideal level. Ideas assume the place of realities, and
realities sink into nothing. Actual events and objects
produce little or no effect on the mind, when it has been
long accustomed to draw its strongest interest from
constant contemplation. It is necessary that it should,
as it were, recollect itself that it should call out its
internal resources and refine upon its own feelings
place the object at a distance and embellish it at plea-
sure. By degrees all things are made to serve as hints,
and occasions for the exercise of intellectual activity.
It was on this principle that the sentimental French-
man left his mistress, in order that he might think of
her. Cicero ceased to mourn for the loss of his daughter,
when he recollected how fine an opportunity it would
afford him to write an eulogy to her memory ; and Mr.
Shandy lamented over the death of Master Bobby much
in the same manner. The insensibility of authors, &c.,
to domestic and private calamities has been often car-
ried to a ludicrous excess, but it is less than it appears
to be. The genius of philosophy is net yet quite under-
stood. For instance, the man who might seem at the
moment undisturbed by the death of a wife or mistress,
would perhaps never walk out on a fine evening as long
as he lived without recollecting her ; and a disappoint-
ment in love that " heaves no sigh and sheds no tear,"
may penetrate to the heart and remain fixed there ever
after. Hceret lateri leihalis arundo. The blow is felt
only by reflection, the rebound is fatal. Our feelings
become more ideal ; the impression of the moment is
less violent, but the effect is more general and perma-
nent. Those whom we love best take nearly the same
rank in our estimation as the heroine of a favourite
novel ! Indeed, after all, compared with the genuine
192 On the Literary Character.
feelings of nature, " clad in flesh and blood," with real
passions and affections, conversant about real objects,
the life of a mere man of letters and sentiment appears
to be at best but a living death a dim twilight exist-
ence : a sort of wandering about in an Elysian Fields of
our own making ; a refined, spiritual, disembodied state,
like that of the ghosts of Homer's heroes, who, we are
told, would gladly have exchanged situations with the
meanest peasant upon earth ! 1
The moral character of men of letters depends very
much upon the same principles. All actions are seen
through that general medium which reduces them to
individual insignificance. Nothing fills or engrosses the
mind nothing seems of sufficient importance to inter-
fere with our present inclination. Prejudices, as well
as attachments, lose their hold upon us, and we palter
with our duties as we please. Moral obligations, by
being perpetually refined upon and discussed, lose
their force and efficacy, become mere dry distinctions of
the understanding
" Play round the head, but never reach the heart.
Opposite reasons and consequences balance one another,
while appetite and interest turn the scale. Hence
the severe sarcasm of Rousseau, " Tout homme refleclii
est mechant." In fact, it must be confessed, that as all
things produce their extremes, so excessive refinement
tends to produce equal grossne.ss. The tenuity of our
intellectual desires leaves a void in the mind which
requires to be filled up by coarser gratification, and
that of the senses is always at hand. They alone
1 Plato's cave, in which he supposes a man to be shut up all his
life with his back to the light, and to see nothing of the figures of
men or other objects that pass by but their shadows on the opposite
wall of his cell, so that when he is let out and sees the real figures
he is only dazzled and confounded by them, seems an ingenious
satire on the life of a bookworm.
On Commonplace Critics. 193
always retain their strength. There is not a greater
mistake than the common supposition, that intellectual
pleasures are capable of endless repetition and physical
ones not so. The one, indeed, may be spread out over
a greater surface, they may be dwelt upon and kept in
mind at will, and for that very reason they wear out,
and pall by comparison, and require perpetual variety.
Whereas the physical gratification only occupies us at
the moment, is, as it were, absorbed in itself, and for-
gotten as soon as it is over, and when it returns is as
good as new. No one could ever read the same book for
any length of time without being tired of it, but a man
is never tired of his meals, however little variety his
table may have to boast. This reasoning is equally true
of all persons who have given much of their time to
study and abstracted speculations. Grossness and sen-
suality have been marked with no less triumph in the
religious devotee than in the professed philosopher.
The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of
nature ; and the good canon in ' Gil Bias ' might be op-
posed with effect to some of the portraits in M. Grimm's
' Correspondence.'
No. XXXIV.
On Commonplace Critics.
" Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive."
WE have already given some account of commonplace
people ; we shall in this number attempt a description
of another class of the community, who may be called
(by way of distinction) commonplace critics. The
former are a set of people who have no opinions of their
own, and do not pretend to have any ; the latter are a
set of people who have no opinions of their own, but
o
194 On Commonplace Critics.
who affect to have one upon every subject you can
mention. The former are a very honest good sort of
people, who are contented to pass for what they are ; the
latter are a very pragmatical, troublesome sort of people,
who would pass for what they are not, and try to put
off their commonplace notions in all companies and on
all subjects as something of their own. They are of
both species, the grave and the gay ; and it is hard to
say which is the most tiresome.
A commonplace critic has something to say upon
every occasion, and he always tells you either what is
not true, or what you knew before, or what is not worth
knowing. He is a person who thinks by proxy and
talks by rote. He differs with you, not because he
thinks you are in the wrong, but because he thinks
somebody else will think so. Nay, it would be well if
he stopped here ; but he will undertake to misrepresent
you by anticipation lest others should misunderstand
you, and will set you right, not only in opinions which
you have, but in those which you may be supposed to
have. Thus, if you say that Bottom the weaver is a
character that has not had justice done to it, he shakes
his head, is afraid you will be thought extravagant, and
wonders you should think the ' Midsummer Night's
Dream ' the finest of all Shakspeare's plays. He judges
of matters of taste and reasoning, as he does of dress
and fashion, by the prevailing tone of good company ;
and you would as soon persuade him to give up any
sentiment that is current there as to wear the hind
part of his coat before. By the best company, of which
he is perpetually talking, he means persons who live on
their own estates and other people's ideas. By the
opinion of the world, to which he pays and expects you
to pay great deference, he means that of a little circle
of his own, where he hears and is heard. Again, good
sense is a phrase constantly in his mouth, by which he
On Commonplace Critics. 195
does not mean his own sense or that of anybody else,
but the opinions of a number of persons who have
agreed to take their opinions on trust from others. If
any one observes that there is something better than
common sense, viz. uncommon sense, he thinks this a
bad joke. If you object to the opinions of the majority,
as often arising from ignorance or prejudice, he appeals
from them to the sensible and well-informed ; and if
you say there may be other persons as sensible and well-
informed as himself and his friends, he smiles at your
presumption. If you attempt to prove anything to
him, it is in vain, for he is not thinking of what you
say, but of what will be thought of it. The stronger
your reasons the more incorrigible he thinks you ; and he
looks upon any attempt to expose his gratuitous assump-
tions as the wandering of a disordered imagination.
His notions are, like plaster figures cast in a mould, as
brittle as they are hollow ; but they will break before
you can make them give way. In fact he is the repre-
sentative of a large part of the community the shallow,
the vain, and the indolent of those who have time to
talk and are not bound to think ; and he considers any
deviation from the select forms of commonplace, or the
accredited language of conventional impertinence, as
compromising the authority under which he acts in
his diplomatic capacity. It is wonderful how this class
of people agree with one another; how they herd to-
gether in all their opinions ; what a tact they have for
folly ; what an instinct for absurdity ; what a sympathy
in sentiment ; how they find one another out by infal-
lible signs, like Freemasons ! The secret of this unani-
mity and strict accord is, that not any one of them ever
admits any opinion that can cost the least effort of mind
in arriving at, or of courage in declaring it. Folly is
as consistent with itself as wisdom ; there is a certain
level of thought and sentiment which the weakest minds,
196 On Commonplace Critics.
as well as the strongest, find out as best adapted to
them ; and you as regularly come to the same conclu-
sions by looking no farther than the surface, as if you
dug to the centre of the earth ! You know beforehand
what a critic of this class will say on almost every sub-
ject the first time he sees you, the next time, the time
after that, and so on to the end of the chapter. The
following list of his opinions may be relied on : It is
pretty certain that before you have been in the room
with him ten minutes he will give you to understand
that Shakspeare was a great but irregular genius.
Again, he thinks it a question whether any one of his
plays, if brought out now for the first time, would suc-
ceed. He thinks that 'Macbeth' would be the most
likely, from the music which has been since introduced
into it. He has some doubts as to the superiority of the
French school over us in tragedy, and observes that
Hume and Adam Smith were both of that opinion. He
thinks Milton's pedantry a great blemish in his writings,
and that ' Paradise Lost ' has many prosaic passages in
it. He conceives that genius does not always imply
taste, and that wit and judgment are very different
faculties. He considers Dr. Johnson as a great critic
and moralist, and that his Dictionary was a work of
prodigious erudition and vast industry, but that some
of the anecdotes of him in ' Boswell ' are trifling. He-
conceives that Mr. Locke was a very original and pro-
found thinker. He thinks Gibbon's style vigorous but
florid. He wonders that the author of 'Junius' was
never found out. He thinks Pope's translation of the
' Iliad ' an improvement on the simplicity of the original,
which was necessary to fit it to the taste of modern
readers. He thinks there is a great deal of grossness in
the old comedies ; and that there has been a great im-
provement in the morals of the higher classes since the
reign of Charles II. He thinks the reign of Queen
On Commonplace Critics. 197
Anne the golden period of our literature, but that,
upon the whole, we have no English writer equal to
Voltaire. He speaks of Boccaccio as a very licentious
writer, and thinks the wit in Kabelais quite extravagant,
though he never read either of them. He cannot get
through Spenser's ' Fairy Queen,' and pronounces all
allegorical poetry tedious. He prefers Smollett to
Fielding, and discovers more knowledge of the world
in ' Gil Bias ' than in ' Don Quixote.' Richardson he
thinks very minute and tedious. He thinks the French
Revolution has done a great deal of harm to the cause of
liberty ; and blames Buonaparte for being so ambitious.
He reads the ' Edinburgh ' and ' Quarterly ' Reviews,
and thinks as they do. He is shy of having an opinion
on a new actor or a new singer, for the public do not
always agree with the newspapers. He thinks that the
moderns havo great advantages over the ancients in
many respects. He thinks Jeremy Bentham a greater
man than Aristotle. He can see no reason why artists
of the present day should not paint as well as Raphael
or Titian. For instance, he thinks there is something
very elegant and classical in Mr. Westall's drawings.
He has no doubt that Sir Joshua Reynolds' Lectures
were written by Burke. He considers Home Tooke's
account of the conjunction That very ingenious, and
holds that no writer can be called elegant who uses the
present for the subjunctive mood, who says If it is for
If it be. He thinks Hogarth a great master of low
comic humour, and Cobbett a coarse vulgar writer. He
often talks of men of liberal education, and men without
education, as if that made much difference. He judges
of people by their pretensions ; and pays attention to
their opinions according to their dress and rank in life.
If he meets with a fool he does not find him out ; and if
he meets with any one wiser than himself he does not
know what to make of him. He thinks that manners
198 On Commonplace Critics.
are of great consequence to the common intercourse of
life. He thinks it difficult to prove the existence of
any such thing as original genius, or to fix a general
standard of taste. He does not think it possible to
define what wit is. In religion his opinions are liberal.
He considers all enthusiasm as a degree of madness par-
ticularly to be guarded against by young minds ; and
believes that truth lies in the middle, between the
extremes of right and wrong. He thinks that the
object of poetry is to please ; and that astronomy is a
very pleasing and useful study. He thinks all this and
a great deal more, that amounts to nothing. We wonder
we have remembered one half of it
" For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit."
Though he has an aversion to all new ideas, he likes all
new plans and matters of fact : the new Schools for All,
the Penitentiary, the new Bedlam, the new steamboats,
the gaslights, the new patent blacking everything of
that sort but the Bible Society. The Society for the
Suppression of Vice he thinks a great nuisance, as every
honest man must.
In a word, a commonplace critic is the pedant of
polite conversation. He refers to the opinion of Lord
M. or Lady GL with the same air of significance that the
learned pedant does to the authority of Cicero or Virgil ;
retails the wisdom of the day, as the anecdote-monger
does the wit; and carries about with him the senti-
ments of people of a certain respectability in life, as
the dancing-master does their air or their valets their
clothes.
On the ' Catalogue Raisonne,' &e. 199
No. XXXV.
On the ' Catalogue Baisonne ' of the British Institution.
THE ' Catalogue Raisonne ' of the pictures lately exhibited
at the British Institution is worthy of notice, both as it
is understood to be a declaration of the views of the
Eoyal Academy, and as it contains some erroneous
notions with respect to art prevalent in this country.
It sets out with the following passages :
" The first resolution ever framed by the noblemen
and gentlemen who met to establish the British Insti-
tution, consists of the following sentence, viz. :
" ' The object of the establishment is to facilitate, by a
public exhibition, the sale of the productions of British
artists.'
" Now, if the Directors had not felt quite certain as to
the result of the present exhibition (of the Flemish
School) if they had not perfectly satisfied themselves
that, instead of affording any even the least means of
promoting unfair and invidious comparisons, it would produce
abundant matter for exultation to the living artist, can we
possibly imagine they, the foster-parents of British Art,
would ever have suffered such a display to have taken
place ? Certainly not. If they had not foreseen and
fully provided against all such injurious results, by the
deep and masterly manoeuvre alluded to in our former
remarks, is it conceivable that the Directors woiild have
acted in a way so counter, so diametrically in opposition,
to this their fundamental and leading principle? No,
No ! It is a position which all sense of respect for their
consistency will not suffer us to admit, which all feel-
ings of respect for their views forbid us to allow.
" Is it at all to be wondered at that, in an exhibition
such as this, where nothing like apatriotic desire to uphold
the arts of their country can possibly have place in the
200 On the ' Catalogue Raisonne
minds of the Directors, we should attribute to them
the desire of holding up the old masters to derision, inas-
much as good policy would allow ? Is it to be wondered
at that, when the Directors have the threefold prospect,
by so doing, of estranging the silly and ignorant
collector from his false and senseless infatuation for the
Slack Masters, of turning his unjust preference from
Foreign to British Art, and, by affording the living
painters a just encouragement, teach them to feel that
becoming confidence in their powers which an acknow-
ledgment of their merits entitles them to is it to be
wondered at, we say, that a little duplicity should have
been practised upon this occasion, that some of our ill-
advised collectors and second-rate picture amateurs
should have been singled out as sheep for the sacrifice,
and thus ingeniously made to pay unwilling homage to the
talents of their countrymen, through that very medium by
which they had previously been induced to depreciate
them?' "If, in our wish to please the Directors, we
should, without mercy, damn all that deserves damning,
and effectually hide our admiration for those pieces and
passages which are truly entitled to admiration, it must
be placed entirely to that patriotic sympathy which we
feel in common with the Directors, of holding up to the
public, as the first and great object, THE PATRONAGE OF
MODERN ART."
Once more :
" Who does not perceive (except those whose eyes are
not made for seeing more than they are told by others)
that Vandyke's portraits, by the brilliant colour of the
velvet hangings, are made to look as if they had been
newly fetched home from the clearstarcher with a
double portion of blue in their ruffs? Who does not see
that the angelic females in Rubens' pictures (particularly
in that of ' The Brazen Serpent ') labour under a fit of the
bile twice as severe as they would do if they were not
of the British Institution. 201
suffering on red velvet ? "Who does not see, from the same
cause, that the landscapes by the same master are con-
verted into brown studies, and that Rembrandt's ladies and
gentlemen of fashion look as if they had been on duty
for the whole of last week in the Prince Regent's new
sewer ? And who, that has any penetration, that has any grati-
tude, does not see, in seeing all this, the anxious and benevolent
solicitude of the Directors to keep the old masters under ?"
So, then, this writer would think it a matter of lively
gratitude, and of exultation in the breasts of living
artists, if the Directors, " in their anxious and benevolent
desire to keep the old masters under," had contrived to
make Vandyke's pictures look like starch and blue ; if
they had converted Rubens' pictures into brown studies,
or a fit of the bile ; or had dragged Rembrandt's through
the Prince Regent's new sewer. It would have been a
great gain, a great triumph to the Academy and to the
art, to have nothing left of all the pleasure or admiration
which those painters had hitherto imparted to the world,
to find all the excellences which their works had been
supposed to possess, and all respect for them in the
minds of the public, destroyed, and converted into sudden
loathing and disgust. This is, according to the catalogue
writer and his friends, a consummation devoutly to be
wished, for themselves and for the art. All that is taken
from the old masters is so much added to the moderns ;
the marring of art is the making of the Academy. This
is the kind of patronage and promotion of the fine arts
on which he insists, as necessary to keep up the reputation
of living artists, and to ensure the sale of their works.
There is nothing then in common between the merits of
the old masters and the doubtful claims of the new;
those are not " the scale by which we can ascend to the
love " of these. The excellences of the latter are of
their own making and of their own seeing ; we must take
their own word for them ; and not only so, but we must
202 On the c Catalogue Raisonne '
sacrifice all established principles and all established
reputation to their upstart pretensions, because, if the
old pictures are not totally worthless, their own can be
good for nothing. The only chance, therefore, for the
moderns, if the catalogue writer is to be believed, is to
decry all the chefs-d'oeuvre of the art, and to hold up all
the great names in it to derision. If the public once get
to relish the style of the old masters they will no longer
tolerate theirs. But so long as the old masters can be
kept under, the coloured caricatures of the moderns, like
Mrs. Peachum's coloured handkerchiefs, " will be of sure
sale at their warehouse at Kedriff." The catalogue
writer thinks it necessary, in order to raise the art in
this country, to depreciate all art in all other times and
countries. He thinks that the way to excite an enthu-
siastic admiration of genius in the public is by setting
the example of a vulgar and malignant hatred of it in
himself. He thinks to inspire a lofty spirit of emulation
in the rising generation by shutting his eyes to the
excellences of all the finest models, or, by pouring out
upon them the overflowing of his gall and envy, to
disfigure them in the eyes of others ; so that they may
see nothing in Kaphael, in Titian, in Eubens, in Rem-
brandt, in Vandyke, in Claude Lorraine, in Leonardo da
Vinci, but the low wit and dirty imagination of a paltry
scribbler, and come away from the greatest monuments
of human capacity without one feeling of excellence in
art, or of beauty or grandeur in nature. Nay, he would
persuade us that this is a great public and private
benefit viz., that there is no such thing as excellence, as
genius, as true fame, except what he and his anonymous
associates arrogate to themselves, with all the profit and
credit of this degradation of genius, this ruin of art, this
obloquy and contempt heaped on great and unrivalled
reputation. He thinks it a likely mode of producing
confidence in the existence and value of art, to prove
of the British Institution. 203
that there never was any such thing till the last annual
exhibition of the Royal Academy. He would encourage
a disinterested love of art and a liberal patronage of it
in the great and opulent by showing that the living
artists have no regard, but the most sovereign and
reckless contempt for it, except as it can be made a
temporary stalking-horse to their pride and avarice. The
writer may have a patriotic sympathy with the sale of
modern works of art, but we do not see what sympathy
there can be between the buyers and sellers of these
works, except in the love of the art itself. When we
find that these patriotic persons would destroy the art
itself to promote the sale of their pictures, we know
what to say to them. We are obliged to the zeal of our
critic for having set this matter in so clear a light. The
public will feel little sympathy with a body of artists
who disclaim all sympathy with all other artists. They
will doubt their pretensions to genius who have no
feeling of respect for it in others ; they will consider
them as bastards, not children of the art, who would
destroy their parent. The public will hardly consent,
when the proposition is put to them in this tangible
shape, to give up the cause of liberal art and of every
liberal sentiment connected with it, and enter, with
their eyes open, into a pettifogging cabal to keep the old
masters under, or hold their names up to derision " as
good sport," merely to gratify the selfish importunity of
a gang of sturdy beggars, who demand public encourage-
ment and support with a claim of settlement in one
hand and a forged certificate of merit in the other. They
can only deserve well of the public by deserving well
of the art. Have we taken these men from the plough,
from the counter, from the shop board, from the tap-room
and the stable-door, to raise them to fortune, to rank, and
distinction in life, for the sake of art, to give them a
chance of doing something in art like what had been
204 On the ' Catalogue Eaisonne '
done before them, of promoting and refining the public
taste, of setting before them the great models of art,
and by a pure love of truth and beauty, and by patient
and disinterested aspirations after it, of rising to the
highest excellence, and of making themselves " a name
great above all names ;" and do they now turn round
upon us, and because they have neglected these high
objects of their true calling for pitiful cabals and filling
their pockets, insist that we shall league with them in
crushing the progress of art and the respect attached to
all its great efforts ? There is no other country in the
world in which such a piece of impudent quackery could
be put forward with impunity, and still less in which it
could be put forward in the garb of patriotism. This is
the effect of our gross island manners. The catalogue
writer carries his bear-garden notions of this virtue into
the fine arts, and would set about destroying Dutch or
Italian pictures as he would Dutch shipping or Italian
liberty. He goes up to the Eembrandts with the
same swaggering Jack-tar airs as he would to a battery
of nine -pounders, and snaps his fingers at Raphael as he
would at the French. Yet he talks big about the Elgin
Marbles, because Mr. Payne Knight has made a slip on
that subject ; though, to be consistent, he ought to be
for pounding them in a mortar, should get his friend the
incendiary to set fire to the room building for them at the
British Museum, or should get Mr. Soane to build it.
Patriotism and the fine arts have nothing to do with
one another because patriotism relates to exclusive
advantages, and the advantages of the fine arts are not
exclusive, but communicable. The physical property
of one country cannot be shared without loss by another :
the physical force of one country may destroy that of
another. These, therefore, are objects of national jea-
lousy and fear of encroachment: for the interests or
rights of different countries may be compromised in
of the British Institution. 205
them. But it is not so in the fine arts, which depend
upon taste and knowledge. We do not consume the
works of art as articles of food, of clothing, or fuel ; but
we brood over their idea, which is accessible to all, and
may be multiplied without end, " with riches fineless."
Patriotism is " beastly ; subtle as the fox for prey ; like
warlike as the wolf for what it eats ;" but art is ideal,
and therefore liberal. The knowledge or perfection of
art in one age or country is the cause of its existence
or perfection in another. Art is the cause of art in other
men. Works of genius done by a Dutchman are the
cause of genius in an Englishman are the cause of
taste in an Englishman. The patronage of foreign art
is, not to prevent, but to promote, art in England. It
does not prevent, but promote, taste in England. Art
subsists by communication, not by exclusion. The light
of art, like that of nature, shines on all alike ; and its
benefit, like that of the sun, is in being seen and felt.
The spirit of art is not the spirit of trade ; it is not a
question between the grower or consumer of some perish-
able and personal commodity : but it is a question
between human genius and human taste ; how much the
one can produce for the benefit of mankind, and how
much the other can enjoy. It is " the link of peaceful
commerce 'twixt dividable shores." To take from it this
character is to take from it its best privilege, its
humanity. Would any one, except our catalogue
virtuoso, think of destroying or concealing the monu-
ments of art in past ages, as inconsistent with the
progress of taste and civilisation in the present? Would
any one find fault with the introduction of the works of
Raphael into this country, as if their being done by an
Italian confined the benefit to a foreign country, when
all the benefit, all the great and lasting benefit (except
the purchase-money, the lasting burden of the catalogue
and the great test of the value of art, in the opinion of
206 On the ' Catalogue Eaisonne '
the writer), is instantly communicated to all eyes that
behold and all hearts that can feel them ? It is many
years ago since we first saw the prints of the Cartoons
hung round the parlour of a little inn on the great north
road. We were then very young, and had not been
initiated into the principles of taste and refinement of
the ' Catalogue Raisonne.' We had heard of the fame of the
Cartoons, but this was the first time that we had ever
been admitted face to face into the presence of those
divine works. " How were we then uplifted !" Prophets
and Apostles stood before us, and the Saviour of the
Christian world, with his attributes of faith and power ;
miracles were working on the walls; the hand of
Eaphael was there, and as his pencil traced the lines
we saw godlike spirits and lofty shapes descend and
walk visibly the earth, but as if their thoughts still
lifted them above the earth. There was that figure of
St. Paul, pointing with noble fervour to " temples not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens ;" and that
finer one of Christ in the boat, whose whole figure seems
sustained by meekness and love ; and that of the same
person, surrounded by the disciples, like a flock of sheep
listening to the music of some divine shepherd. We
knew not how to enough to admire them. If from this
transport and delight there arose in our breasts a wish,
a deep aspiration of mingled hope and fear, to be able one
day to do something like them, that hope has long since
vanished ; but not with it the love of art, nor delight in
works of art, nor admiration of the genius which produces
them, nor respect for fame which rewards and crowns
them ! Did we suspect that in this feeling of enthusiasm
for the works of Eaphael we were deficient in patriotic
sympathy, or that, in spreading it as far as we could,
we did an injury to our country or to living art ? The
very feeling showed that there was no such distinction
in art, that her benefits were common, that the power
of the British Institution. 207
of genius, like the spiiit of the world, is everywhere
alike present. And would the harpies of criticism try to
extinguish this common benefit to their countiy from a
pretended exclusive attachment to their countrymen ?
Would they rob their country of Raphael to set up the
credit of their professional little-goes and E. 0. tables
" cutpurses of the art, that from the shelf the precious
diadem stole, and put it in their pockets"? Tired of
exposing such folly, we walked out the other day, and
saw a bright cloud resting on the bosom of the blue
expanse, which reminded us of what we had seen in some
picture in the Louvre. We were suddenly roused from
our reverie by recollecting that till we had answered
this catchpenny publication we had no right, without
being liable to a charge of disaffection to our country or
treachery to the art, to look at nature, or to think of
anything like it in art, not of British growth and
manufacture !
No. XXXVI.
The same Subject continued.
THE catalogue writer nicknames the Flemish painters
" the Black Masters." Either this means that the works
of Eubens and Vandyke were originally black pictures
that is, deeply shadowed, like those of Rembrandt,
which is false, there being no painter who used so little
shadow as Vandyke or so much colour as Rubens; or
it must mean that their pictures have turned darker
with time that is, that the art itself is a black art. Is
this a triumph for the Academy? Is the defect and
decay of art a subject of exultation to the national
genius? Then there is no hope (in this country at
least) " that a great man's memory may outlive him half
a year." Do they calculate that the decomposition and
208 On the ' Catalogue Raisonne '
gradual disappearance of the standard works of art will
quicken the demand and facilitate the sale of modern
pictures? Have they no hope of immortality them-
selves, that they are glad to see the inevitable dissolu-
tion of all that has long flourished in splendour and in
honour ? They are pleased to find, that at the end of
near two hundred years the pictures of Vandyke and
Rubens have suffered half as much from time as those
of their late president have done in thirty or forty, or
their own in the last ten or twelve years. So that the
glory of painting is, that it does not last for ever ; it is
this which puts the ancients and the moderns on a level.
They hail with undisguised satisfaction the approaches
of the slow mouldering hand of time in those works
which have lasted longest, not anticipating the prema-
ture fate of their own. Such is their shortsighted
ambition ! A picture is with them like the frame it is
in, as good as new ; and the best picture, that which was
last painted. They make the weak side of art the test
of its excellence ; and though a modern picture of two
years' standing is hardly fit to be seen, from the general
ignorance of the painter in the mechanical as well as
other parts of the art, yet they are sure at any time to
get the start of Kubens or Vandyke, by painting a pic-
ture against the day of exhibition. We even question
whether they would wish to make their own pictures
last if they could, and whether they would not destroy
their own works as well as those of others (like chalk
figures on the floors) to have new ones bespoke the
next day. The Flemish pictures then, except those of
Rembrandt, were not originally black ; they have not
faded in proportion to the length of time they have
been painted. All that comes then of the nickname in
the catalogue is, that the pictures of the old masters
have lasted longer than those of the present, members of
the Royal Academy, and that the latter, it is to be pre-
of the British Institution. 209
sumed, do not wish their works to last so long, lest they
should be called the " Black Masters." With respect to
Rembrandt, this epitaph may be literally true. But,
we would ask, whether the style of chiaroscuro, in which
Rembrandt painted, is not one fine view of nature and of
art ? whether any other painter carried it to the same
height of perfection as he did? whether any other
painter ever joined the same depth of shadow with the
same clearness ? whether his tones were not as fine as
they were true? whether a more thorough master of
his art ever lived ? whether he deserved for this to be
nicknamed by the writer of the catalogue, or to have
his works " kept under, or himself held up to derision,"
by the patrons and directors of the " British Institution
for the support and encouragement of the Fine Arts " ?
But we have heard it said by a disciple and commen-
tator of the catalogue (one would think it was hardly
possible to descend lower than the writer himself), that
the directors of the British Institution assume a conse-
quence to themselves hostile to the pretensions of mo-
dern professors, out of the reputation of the old masters,
whom they affect to look upon with wonder, to worship
as something preternatural that they consider the
bare possession of an old picture as a title to distinction,
and the respect paid to art as the highest pretension of
the owner. And is this then a subject of complaint
with the Academy, that genius is thus thought of, when
its claims are once fully established? that those high
qualities, which are beyond the estimate of ignorance
and selfishness while living, receive their reward from
distant ages? Do they not "feel the future in the
instant " ? Do they not know that those qualities
which appeal neither to interest nor passion can only
find their level with time, and would they annihilate
the only pretensions they have? Or have they no
conscious affinity with true genius, no claim to the
p
210 On the ' Catalogue Eaisonne '
reversion of true fame, no right of succession to this
lasting inheritance and final reward of great exertions,
which they would therefore destroy to prevent others
from enjoying it ? Does all their ambition begin and
end in their patriotic sympathy with the sale of modern
works of art, and have they no fellow-feeling with the
hopes and final destiny of human genius ? What poet
ever complained of the respect paid to Homer as dero-
gatory to himself? The envy and opposition to esta-
blished fame is peculiar to the race of modern artists ;
and it is to be hoped it will remain so. It is the fault
of their education. It is only by a liberal education
that we learn to feel respect for the past or to take an
interest in the future. The knowledge of artists is too
often confined to their art, and their views to their own
interest. Even in this they are wrong in all respects
they are wrong. As a mere matter of trade, the preju-
dice in favour of old pictures does not prevent, but assists,
the sale of modern works of art. If there was not a
prejudice in favour of old pictures there could be a pre-
judice in favour of none, and none would be sold. The
professors seem to think, that for every old picture not
sold one of their own would be. This is a false calcu-
lation. The contrary is true. For every old picture
not sold one of their own (in proportion) would not be
sold. The practice of buying pictures is a habit, and it
must begin with those pictures which have a character
and name, and not with those which have none. " De-
pend upon it," says Mr. Burke in a letter to Barry,
" whatever attracts public attention to the arts will in
the end be for the benefit of the artists themselves."
Again, do not the Academicians know, that it is a con-
tradiction in terms that a man should enjoy the advan-
tages of posthumous fame in his lifetime ? Most men
cease to be of any consequence at all when they are
dead ; but it is the privilege of the man of genius to
of the British Institution. 211
survive himself, But he cannot in the nature of things
anticipate this privilege ; because in all that appeals to
the general intellect of mankind this appeal is strength-
ened as it spreads wider and is acknowledged ; because
a man cannot unite in himself personally the suffrages
of distant ages and nations ; because popularity, a news-
paper puff, cannot have the certainty of lasting fame ;
because it does not carry the same weight of sympathy
with it ; because it cannot have the same interest, the
same refinement or grandeur. If Mr. West was equal
to Eaphael (which he is not), if Mr. Lawrence was
equal to Vandyke or Titian (which he is not), if Mr.
Turner was equal to Claude Lorraine (which he is not),
if Mr. Wilkie was equal to Teniers (which he is not),
yet they could not nor ought they to be thought of in
the same manner, because there could not be the same
proof of it, nor the same confidence in the opinion of a
man and his friends, or of any one generation, as in that
of successive generations and the voice of posterity. If
it is said that we pass over the faults of the one and
severely scrutinise the excellences of the other, this is
also right and necessary, because the one have passed
their trial and the others are upon it. If we forgive or
overlook the faults of the ancients, it is because they
have dearly earned it at our hands. We ought to have
some objects to indulge our enthusiasm upon, and we
ought to indulge it upon the highest, and those that are
surest of deserving it. Would one of our Academicians
expect us to look at his new house in one of the new
squares with the same veneration as at Michael Angelo's,
which he built with his own hands, as at Tully's villa,
or at the tomb of Virgil? We have no doubt they
would, but we cannot. Besides, if it were possible to
transfer our old prejudices to new candidates, the way
to effect this is not by destroying them. If we have no
confidence in all that has gone before us, in what has
212 On the ' Catalogue Eaisonne '
received the sanction of time and the concurring testi-
mony of disinterested judges, are we to believe all of a
sudden that excellence has started up in our own times,
because it never existed before ? are we to take the
artists' own word for their superiority to their prede-
cessors ? There is one other plea made by the moderns
" that they must live ;" and the answer to it is, that they
do live. An Academician makes his thousand a year by
portrait-painting, and complains that the encouragement
given to foreign art deprives him of the means of subsist-
ence, and prevents him from indulging his genius in
works of high history "playing at will his virgin
fancies wild."
As to the comparative merits of the ancients and the
moderns, it does not admit of a question. The odds are
too much in favour of the former, because it is likely
that more good pictures were painted in the last three
hundred than in the last thirty years. Now, the old
pictures are the best remaining out of all that period,
setting aside those of living artists. If they are bad,
the art itself is good for nothing, for they are the best
that ever were. They are not good because they are
old ; but they have become old because they are good.
The question is not between this and any other genera-
tion, but between the present and all preceding genera-
tions, whom the catalogue writer, in his misguided zeal,
undertakes to vilify and " to keep under, or hold up to
derision." To say that the great names which have come
down to us are not worth anything, is to say that the
mountain-tops which we see in the farthest horizon are
not so high as the intervening objects. If there had
been any greater painters than Vandyke or Rubens, or
Raphael or Rembrandt, or N. Poussin or Claude Lorraine,
we should have heard of them, we should have seen them
in the Gallery, and we should have read a patriotic and
disinterested account of them in the ' Catalogue Raisonne.'
of the British Institution. 213
Waiving the unfair and invidious comparison between
all former excellence and the concentrated essence of it
in the present age, let us ask who, in the last generation
of painters, was equal to the old masters ? Was it
Highmore, or Hayruan, or Hudson, or Kneller ? Who
was the English Eaphael or Eubens or Vandyke of that
day to whom the catalogue critic would have extended
his patriotic sympathy and damning patronage ? Kneller,
we have been told, was thought superior to Vandyke by
the persons of fashion whom he painted. So St. Thomas
Apostle seems higher than St. Paul's while you are close
under it ; but the farther off you go the higher the
mighty dome aspires into the skies. What is become of
all those great men who flourished in our own time
" like flowers in men's caps, dying or ere they sicken "
Hoppner, Opie, Shee, Loutherbourg, Eigaud, Eomney,
Barry, the painters of the Shakspeare Gallery? "Gone
to the vault of all the Capulets," and their pictures with
them, or before them. Shall we put more faith in their
successors ? Shall we take the words of their friends for
their taste and genius? No, we will stick to what we
know will stick to us, the " heirlooms " of the art, the
black masters. The picture, for instance, of Charles I.
on horseback, which our critic criticises with such heavy
drollery, is worth all the pictures that were ever
exhibited at the Royal Academy (from the time of Sir
Joshua to the present time inclusive) put together. It
shows more knowledge and feeling of the art, more skill
and beauty, more sense of what it is in objects that give
pleasure to the eye, with more power to communicate
this pleasure to the world. If either this single picture
or all the lumber that has ever appeared at the Academy
were to be destroyed, there could not be a question
which, with any artist or with any judge or lover of
art. So stands the account between ancient and modern
art! By this we may judge of all the rest. The
214 On the ' Catalogue Eaisonne,' &e.
catalogue writer makes some strictures in the second
part on the Waterloo Exhibition, which he does
not think what it ought to be. We wonder he
had another word to say on modern art after seeing
it. He should instantly have taken the resolution
of lago " From this time forth I never will speak
more."
The writer of the ' Catalogue Baisonne ' has fallen foul
of two things which ought to be sacred to artists and
lovers of art genius and fame. If they are not sacred
to them, we do not know to whom they will be sacred.
A work such as the present shows that the person who
could write it must either have no knowledge or taste
for art, or must be actuated by a feeling of unaccountable
malignity towards it. It shows that any body of men
by whom it could be set on foot or encouraged are not
an academy of art. It shows that a country in which
such a publication could make its appearance is not the
country of the fine arts. Does the writer think to prove
the genius of his countrymen for art by proclaiming
their utter insensibility and flagitious contempt for all
beauty and excellence in the art, except in their own
works ? No ! it is very true that the English are a
shopkeeping nation, and the ' Catalogue Eaisonne ' is the
proof of it.
Finally, the works of the moderns are not, like those
of the old masters, a second nature. Oh art, true like-
ness of nature, " balm of hurt minds, great nature's second
course, chief nourisher in life's feast !" of what would our
catalogue-mongers deprive us in depriving us of thee
and of thy glories, of the lasting works of the great
painters, and of their names no less magnificent, grateful
to our hearts as the sound of celestial harmony from
other spheres, waking around us (whether heard or not)
from youth to age the stay, the guide, and anchor of our
purest thoughts ; whom having once seen, we always
On Poetical Versatility. 215
remember, and who teach us to see all things through
them ; without whom life would be to begin again, and
the earth barren of Kaphael, who lifted the human
form halfway to Heaven ; of Titian, who painted the
mind in the face, and unfolded the soul of things
to the eye ; of Rubens, around whose pencil gorgeous
shapes thronged numberless, startling us by the novel
accidents of form and colour, putting the spirit of motion
into the universe, and weaving a gay fantastic round and
Bacchanalian dance with nature ; of thee too, Rem-
brandt, Avho didst redeem one half of nature from
obloquy, from the nickname in the catalogue, " smoothing
the raven down of darkness till it smiled," and tingeing
it with a light like streaks of burnished ore of these
and more, of whom the world is scarce worthy ! And
what would they give us in return ? Nothing. 1
No. XXXVII.
On Poetical Versatility.
THE spirit of poetry is in itself favourable to humanity
and liberty ; but, we suspect, not when its aid is most
wanted. The spirit of poetry is not the spirit of
1 See 'Memoirs of W. H.,' 1867, vol. i. p. 211. Copies of the
original catalogues of the exhibitions in 1816-17, of the Flemish
and Dutch, and Italian and Spanish, masters in Pall Mall will be
found in the British Museum, in a 4to volume, with the press-mark,
7856, e.
In the British Museum catalogues occur the following satires,
attributed to R. Smirke, on the catalogues themselves :
' A Catalogue Raisonne' of the Pictures now exhibiting at the
British Institution.' No place, printer's name, or date [1815]. 4te,
pp. 74.
' A Catalogue Raisonne' of the Pictures now exhibiting in Pall
Mall.' No place, or printer's name, 1816. 4to, pp. 46 + vi.
'A Catalogue Raisonne,' &c. Part second. 1816. 4to, pp. 48
+ x. ED.
216 On Poetical Versatility.
mortification or of martyrdom. -Poetry dwells in a
perpetual Utopia of its own, and is for that reason very
ill-calculated to make a Paradise upon earth, by encoun-
tering the shocks and disappointments of the world.
Poetry, like law, is a fiction, only a more agreeable
one. It does not create difficulties where they do not
exist, but contrives to get rid of them whether they
exi.st or not. It is not entangled in cobwebs of its own
making, but soars above all obstacles. It cannot be
" constrained by mastery." It has the range of the
universe ; it traverses the empyrean, and looks down
on nature from a higher sphere. When it lights upon
the earth, it loses some of its dignity and its use. Its
strength is in its wings ; its element the air. Standing
on its feet, jostling with the crowd, it is liable to be
overthrown, trampled on, and defaced; for its wings are
of a dazzling brightness, '' heaven's own tinct," and the
least soil upon them shows to disadvantage. Sullied,
degraded as we have seen it, we shall not insult
over it, but leave it to Time to take out the stains,
seeing it is a thing immortal as itself. " Being so
majestical, we should do it wrong to offer it the show
of violence." But the best things, in their abuse, often
become the worst; and so it is with poetry when it is
diverted from its proper end. Poets live in an ideal
world, where they make everything out according to
their wishes and fancies. They either find things
delightful or make them so. They feign the beautiful
and grand out of their own minds, and imagine all
things to be, not what they are, but what they ought to
be. They are naturally inventors, creators of truth, of
love, and beauty ; and while they speak to us from the
sacred shrine of their own hearts, while they pour out
the pure treasures of thought to the world, they cannot
be too much admired and applauded. But when, forget-
ting their high calling, and becoming tools and puppets
On Poetical Versatility. 217
in the hands of power, they would pass off the gewgaws
of corruption and love-tokens of self-interest as the gifts
of the Muse, they cannot be too much despised and
shunned. AVe do not like novels founded on facts, nor
do we like poets turned courtiers. Poets, it has been
said, succeed best in fiction : and they should for the
mo>t part stick to it. Invention, not upon an imaginary
subject, is a lie ; the varnishing over the vices or de-
formities of actual objects is hypocrisy. Players leave
their finery at the stage-door, or they would be hooted ;
poets come out into the world with all their bravery on,
and yet they would pass for bond fide persons. They
lend the colours of fancy to whatever they see : whatever
they touch becomes gold, though it were lead. With
them every Joan is a lady ; and kings and queens are
human. Matters of fact they embellish at their will ;
and reason is the plaything of their passions, their
caprice, or their interest. There is no practice so base of
which they will not become the panders ; no sophistry
of which their understanding may not be made the
voluntary dupe. Their only object is to please their
fancy. Their souls are effeminate, half man and half
woman. They want fortitude and are without principle.
If things do not turn out according to their wishes, they
will make their wishes turn round to things. They can
ea.>-ily overlook whatever they do not like, and make an
idol of anything they please. The object of poetry is
to please ; this art naturally gives pleasure and excites
admiration. Poets, therefore, cannot do well without
sympathy and flattery. It is accordingly very much
against the grain that they remain long on the unpopular
side of the question. They do not like to be shut out
when laurels are to be given away at court or places
under government to be disposed of in romantic
situations in the country. They are happy to be
reconciled on the first opportunity to prince and people,
218 On Actors and Acting.
and to exchange their principles for a pension. They
have not always strength of mind to think for them-
selves, nor courage enough to bear the unjust stigma
of the opinions they have taken upon trust from others.
Truth alone does not satisfy their pampered appetites
without the sauce of praise. To prefer truth to all other
things, it requires that the mind should have been at
some pains in finding it out, and that we should feel a
severe delight in the contemplation of truth, seen by its
own clear light, and not as it is reflected in the admiring
eyes of the world. A philosopher may perhaps make a
shift to be contented with the sober draughts of reason ;
a poet must have the applause of the world to intoxicate
him. Milton was, however, a poet and an honest man ;
he was Cromwell's secretary.
No. XXXVIII.
On Actors and Acting.
PLAYERS are " the abstracts and brief chronicles of the
times," the motley representatives of human nature.
They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a
voluntary dream, a studied madness. The height of
their ambition is to be beside themselves. To-day kings,
to-morrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves
that they are nothing. Made up of mimic laughter and
tears, passing from the extremes of joy or woe at the
prompter's call, they wear the livery of other men's for-
tunes; their very thoughts are not their own. They
are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and
hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see
ourselves at secondhand in them ; they show us all that
we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to
be. The stage is an epitome, a bettered likeness, of the
On Actors and Ading. 219
world, with the dull part left out ; and indeed, with this
omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all the rest.
A\ hat brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as tliey
imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. How many
fine gentlemen do we owe to the stage ! How many
romantic lovers are mere Eomeos in masquerade ! How
many soft bosoms have heaved with Juliet's sighs !
They teach us when to laugh and when to weep, when
to love and when to hate, upon principle and with a
good grace. Wherever there is a playhouse the world
will go on not amiss. The stage not only refines the
manners, but it is the best teacher of morals, for it is
the truest and most intelligible picture of life. It
stamps the image of virtue on the mind by first soften-
ing the rude materials of which it is composed by a
sense of pleasure. It regulates the passions by giving a
loose to the imagination. It points out the selfish and
depraved to our detestation, the amiable and generous
to our admiration ; and if it clothes the more seductive
vices with the borrowed graces of wit and fancy, even
those graces operate as a diversion to the coarser poison
of experience and bad example, and often prevent or
carry off the infection by inoculating the mind with a
certain taste and elegance. To show how little we
agree with the common declamations against the im-
moral tendency of the stage on this score, we will hazard
a conjecture that the acting of the ' Beggar's Opera ' a
certain number of nights every year since it was first
brought out has done more towards putting down the
practice of highway robbery than all the gibbets that
ever were erected. A person after seeing this piece is
too deeply imbued with a sense of humanity, is in too
good humour with, himself and the rest of the world, to
set about cutting throats or rifling pockets. Whatever
makes a jest of vice leaves it too much a matter of in-
difference for any one in his senses to rush desperately
220 On Actors and Acting.
on his ruin for its sake. We suspect that just the con-
trary effect must be produced by the representation of
' George Barnwell,' which is too much in the style of
the ordinary's sermon to meet with any better success.
The mind, in such cases, instead of being deterred by
the alarming consequences held out to it, revolts against
the denunciation of them as an insult offered to its free-
will, and, in a spirit of defiance, returns a practical an-
swer to them by daring the worst that can happen.
The most striking lesson ever read to levity and licen-
tiousness is in the last act of ' The Inconstant,' where
young Mirabel is preserved by the fidelity of his mistress,
Orinda, in the disguise of a page, from the hands of
assassins, into whose power he has been allured by the
temptations of vice and beauty. There never was a rake
who did not become in imagination a reformed man
during the representation of the last trying scenes of this
admirable comedy.
If the stage is useful as a school of instruction, it is no
less so as a source of amusement. It is the source of the
greatest enjoyment at the time, and a never-failing fund
of agreeable reflection afterwards. The merits of a new
play or of a new actor are always among the first topics
of polite conversation. One way in which public exhibi-
tions contribute to refine and humanise mankind is by
supplying them with ideas and subjects of conversation
and interest in common. The progress of civilisation is
in proportion to the number of commonplaces current
in society. For instance, if we meet with a stranger at
an inn or in a stage-coach, who knows nothing but his
own affairs, his shop, his customers, his farm, his pigs,
his poultry, we can carry on no conversation with him
on these local and personal matters ; the only way is to
let him have all the talk to himself. But if he has for-
tunately ever seen Mr. Listen act, this is an immediate
topic of mutual conversation, and we agree together
On Actors and Acting. 221
the rest of the evening in discussing the merits of
that inimitable actor, with the same satisfaction as
in talking over the affairs of the most intimate friend.
If the stage thus introduces us familiarly to our con-
temporaries, it also brings us acquainted with former
times. It is an interesting revival of past ages, man-
ners, opinions, dresses, persons, and actions whether
it carries us back to the wars of York and Lancaster, or
halfway back to the heroic times of Greece and Rome,
in some translation from the French, or quite back to
the age of Charles II. in the scenes of Congreve and of
Etherege (the gay Sir George!) happy age, when
kings and nobles led purely ornamental lives ; when the
utmost stretch of a morning's study went no further than
the choice of a sword-knot or the adjustment of a side-
curl ; when the soul spoke out in all the pleasing elo-
quence of dress ; and beaux and belles, enamoured of
themselves in one another's follies, fluttered like gilded
butterflies in giddy mazes through the walks of St.
James's Park !
A good company of comedians, a theatre royal judi-
ciously managed, is your true Heralds' College the
only Antiquarian Society that is worth a rush. It is for
this reason that there is such an air of romance about
players, and that it is pleasanter to see them, even in
their own persons, than any of the three learned profes-
sions. We feel more respect for John Kemble in a plain
coat than for the Lord Chancellor on the woolsack.
He is surrounded, to our eyes, with a greater number of
imposing recollections ; he is a more reverend piece of
formality a more complicated tissue of costume. We do
not know whether to look upon this accomplished actor
as Pierre, or King John, or Coriolanus, or Cato, or
Leontes, or the Stranger. But we see in him a stately
hieroglyphic of humanity, a living monument of de-
parted greatness, a sombre comment on the rise and
222 On Actors and Acting.
fall of kings. We look after him till lie is out of sight
as \ve listen to a story of one of Ossian's hero.es, to "a
tale of other times !"
One of the most affecting things we know is to see a
favourite actor take leave of the stage. We were pre-
sent not long ago when Mr. Bannister quitted it. We
do not wonder that his feelings were overpowered on
the occasion : ours were nearly so too. We remembered
him, in the first heyday of our youthful spirits, in ' The
Prize,' in which he played so delightfully with that fine
old croaker Suett, and Madame Storace in the farce
of 'My Grandmother,' in the ' Son-in-Law,' in Autolycus,
and in Scrub, in which our satisfaction was at its
height. At that time King, and Parsons, and Dodd,
and Quick, and Edwin, were in the full vigour of their
reputation, who are now all gone. We still feel the
vivid delight with which we used to see their names in
the playbills as we went along to the theatre. Ban-
nister was one of the last of these that remained ; and
we parted with him as we shotild with one of our oldest
and best friends. The most pleasant feature in the pro-
fession of a player, and which indeed is peculiar to it,
is, that we not only admire the talents of those who
adorn it, but we contract a personal intimacy with them.
There is no class of society whom so many persons
regard with affection as actors. We greet them on the
stage ; we like to meet them in the streets ; they almost
always recall to us pleasant associations ; and we feel our
gratitude excited without the uneasiness of a sense of
obligation. The very gaiety and popularity, however,
which surround the life of a favourite performer make
the retiring from it a very serious business. It glances a
mortifying reflection on the shortness of human life and
the vanity of human pleasures. Something reminds us
that "all the world's a stage, and all the men and
women merely players."
On Actors and Acting. 223
No. XXXIX.
On the Same.
IT has been considered as the misfortune of first-rate
talents for the stage that they leave no record behind
them except that of vague rumour, and that the genius
of a great actor perishes with him, " leaving the world
no copy." This is a misfortune, or at least an unpleasant
circumstance, to actors ; but it is, perhaps, an advantage
to the stage. It leaves an opening to originality. The
stage is always beginning anew ; the candidates for
theatrical reputation are always setting out afresh, un-
encumbered by the affectation of the faults or the excel-
lences of their predecessors. In this respect we should
imagine that the average quantity of dramatic talent
remains more nearly the same than that in any other
walk of art. In no other instance do the complaints
of the degeneracy of the moderns seem so unfounded
as in this ; and Colley Gibber's account of the regular
decline of the stage, from the time of Shakspeare to
that of Charles II. and from the time of Charles II.
to the beginning of George II., appears quite ridicu-
lous. The stage is a place where genius is sure to
come upon its legs, in a generation or two at furthest. In
the other arts (as painting and poetry) it has been
contended that what has been well done already, by
giving rise to endless vapid imitations, is an obstacle to
what might be done well hereafter ; that the models or
chefs-d'oeuvre of art, where they are accumulated, choke
up the path to excellence ; and that the works of genius,
where they can be rendered permanent and handed down
from age to age, not only prevent, but render superfluous,
future productions of the same kind. We have not,
neither do we want, two Shakspeares, two Miltons, two
224 On Actors and Acting.
Eaphaels, any more than we require two suns in the
same sphere. Even Miss O'Neill stands a little in the
way of our recollections of Mrs. Siddons. But Mr. Kean
is an excellent substitute for the memory of Garrick,
whom we never saw. When an author dies it is no
matter, for his works remain. When a great actor dies
there is a void produced in society, a gap which requires
to be filled up. Who does not go to see Kean ? Who, if
Garrick were alive, would go to see him ? At least
one or the other must have quitted the stage. We have
seen what a ferment has been excited among our living
artists by the exhibition of the works of the old masters
at the British Gallery. What would the actors say to
it if, by any spell or power of necromancy, all the
celebrated actors for the last hundred years could be
made to appear again on the boards of Covent Garden
and Drury Lane, for the last time, in all their most
brilliant parts ? What a rich treat to the town, what a
feast for the critics, to go and see Betterton, and Booth,
and W T ilks, and Sandford, and Kokes, and Leigh, and
Penkethman, and Bullock, and Estcourt, and Dogget,
and Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Montfort, and Mrs. Oldfield,
and Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mrs. Gibber, and Gibber him-
self, the prince of coxcombs, and Macklin, and Quin, and
Eich, and Mrs. Clive, and Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs.
Abington, and Weston, and Shutter, and Garrick, and
all the rest of those who " gladdened life, and whose
deaths eclipsed the gaiety of nations " ! We should
certainly be there. We should buy a ticket for the
season. We should enjoy our hundred days again. We
should not lose a single night. We would not, for a
great deal, be absent from Betterton's Hamlet or his
Brutus, or from Booth's Cato, as it was first acted to
the contending applause of Whigs and Tories. We
should be in the first row when Mrs. Barry (who was
kept by Lord Eochester, and with whom Otway was in
On Actors and Acting. 225
love) played Monimia or Belvidera ; and we suppose we
should go to see Mrs. Bracegirdle (with whom all the
world was in love) in all her parts. We should then
know exactly whether Penkethman's manner of picking
a chicken and Bullock's mode of devouring asparagus
answered to the ingenious account of them in the ' Tatler ';
and whether Dogget was equal to Dowton whether
Mrs. Montfort 1 or Mrs. Abington was the finest lady
1 The following lively description of this actress is given by Gibber
in his ' Apology ' :
" What found most employment for her whole various excellences
at once, was the part of Melantha, in ' Marriage a la mode.' Me-
lautha is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-
room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female
foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a
fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body,
are in a continual hurry to be something more than is necessary or
commendable. And though I doubt it will be a vain labour to oifer
you a just likeness of Mrs. Montfort's action, yet the fantastic im-
pression is still so strong in my memory, that 1 cannot help saying
something, though fantastically, about it. The first ridiculous airs
that break from her are upon a gallant never seen before, who delivers
her a letter from her father, recommending him to her good graces
as an honourable lover. Here now, one would think, she might
naturally show a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so
slightly covered. No, sir ; not a tittle of it : modesty is the virtue
of a poor-soul'd country gentlewoman ; she is too much a court lady
to be under so vulgar a confusion ; she reads the letter, therefore,
with a careless dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it
hastily over, as if she were impatient to outgo her father's commands
by making a complete conquest of him at once ; and that the letter
might not embarrass her attack, crack ! she crumbles it at once into
her palm, and pours upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and
motion ; down goes her dainty, diving body to the ground, as if she
were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions ; then
launches into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing
her chest forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving
water ; and, to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of
her own wit, that she will not give her lover leave to praise it ;
silent assenting bows and vain endeavours to speak are all the
share of the conversation he is admitted to, which at last he is
Q
226 On Actors and Acting.
whether Wilks or Gibber was the best Sir Harry
Wildair whether Macklin was really "the Jew that
Shakspeare drew," and whether Garrick was, upon the
whole, so great an actor as the world have made him out.
Many people have a strong desire to pry into the secrets
of futurity : for our own part, we should be satisfied if
we had the power to recall the dead, and live the past
over again as often as we pleased. Players, after all,
have little reason to complain of their hard-earned, short-
lived popularity. One thunder of applause from pit,
boxes, and gallery, is equal to a whole immortality of
posthumous fame ; and when we hear an actor, whose
modesty is equal to his merit, declare that he would like
to see a dog wag his tail in approbation, what must he feel
when he sees the whole house in a roar ! Besides, Fame,
as if their reputation had been entrusted to her alone,
has been particularly careful of the renown of her
theatrical favourites ; she forgets one by one, and year
by year, those who have been great lawyers, great
statesmen, and great warriors in their day, but the
name of Garrick still survives with the works of
Keynolds and of Johnson.
Actors have been accused, as a profession, of being
extravagant and dissipated. While they are said to be
so, as a piece of common cant, they are likely to continue
so. But there is a sentence in Shakspeare which should
be stuck as a label in the mouths of our beadles and
whippers-in of morality : " The web of our life is of a
mingled yarn, good and ill together : our virtues would
be proud if our faults whipped them not ; and our vices
would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues."
With respect to the extravagance of actors, as a tra-
ditional character, it is not to be wondered at. They
relieved from by her engagement to half a score visits, which she
swims from him to make, with a promise to return in a twinkling."
The Life of Colley Gibber, p. 138.
On Actors and Acting. 227
live from hand to mouth : they plunge from want into
luxury ; they have no means of making money breed, and
all professions that do not live by turning money into
money, or have not a certainty of accumulating it in the
end by parsimony, spend it. Uncertain of the future, they
make sure of the present moment. This is not unwise.
Chilled with poverty, steeped in contempt, they some-
times pass into the sunshine of fortune, and are lifted to
the very pinnacle of public favour ; yet even there can-
not calculate on the continuance of success, but are,
" like the giddy sailor on the mast, ready with every
blast to topple down into the fatal bowels of the deep."
Besides, if the young enthusiast who is smitten with
the stage, and with the public as a mistress, were
naturally a close hunks, he would become or remain a city
clerk, instead of turning player. Again, with respect to
the habit of convivial indulgence, an actor, to be a good
one, must have a great spirit of enjoyment in himself,
strong impulses, strong passions, and a strong sense of
pleasure ; for it is his business to imitate the passions,
and to communicate pleasure to others. A man of
genius is not a machine. The neglected actor may be
excused if he drinks oblivion of his disappointments;
the successful one, if he quaffs the applause of the
world, and enjoys the friendship of those who are
the friends of the favourites of fortune, in draughts of
nectar. There is no path so steep as that of fame : no
labour so hard as the pursuit of excellence. The
intellectual excitement inseparable from those profes-
sions which call forth all our sensibility to pleasure and
pain requires some corresponding physical excitement
to support our failure, and not a little to allay the
ferment of the spirits attendant on success. If there is
any tendency to dissipation beyond this in the profession
of a player, it is owing to the prejudices entertained
against them to that spirit of bigotry which, in a
228 On Actors and Acting/.
neighbouring country, would deny actors Christian
burial after their death, and to that cant of criticism
which, in our own, slurs over their characters, while
living, with a half-witted jest.
A London engagement is generally considered by
actors as the ne plus ultra of their ambition, as " a con-
summation devoutly to be wished," as the great prize in
the lottery of their professional life. But this appears
to us, who are not in the secret, to be rather the prose
termination of their adventurous career; it is the
provincial commencement thai is the poetical and truly
enviable part of it. After that, they have comparatively
little to hope or fear. " The wine of life is drunk, and
but the lees remain." In London they become gentle-
men, and the King's servants; but it is the romantic
mixture of the hero and the vagabond that constitutes
the essence of the player's life. It is the transition from
their real to their assumed characters, from the contempt
of the world to the applaiise of the multitude, that gives
its zest to. the latter, and raises them as much above
common humanity at night, as in the daytime they are
depressed below it. " Hurried from fierce extremes, by
contrast made more fierce," it is rags and a flock-bed
which give their splendour to a plume of feathers and a
throne. We should suppose, that if the most admired
actor on the London stage were brought to confession on
this point, he would acknowledge that all the applause
he had received from " brilliant and overflowing audi-
ences " was nothing to the light-headed intoxication of
unlooked-for success in a barn. In town, actors are
criticised : in country-places, they are wondered at, or
hooted at ; it is of little consequence which, so that the
interval is not too long between. For ourselves, we own
that the description of the strolling player in ' Gil Bias,'
soaking his dry crusts in the well by the roadside,
presents to us a perfect picture of human felicity.
On the Progress of Art. 229
No. XL.
Why the Arts are not progressive : a Fragment.
IT is often made a subject of complaint and surprise that
the arts in this country and in modern times have not
kept pace with the general progress of society and
civilisation in other respects ; and it has been proposed
to remedy the deficiency by more carefully availing
ourselves of the advantages which time and circum-
stances have placed within our reach, but which we have
hitherto neglected the study of the antique, the for-
mation of academies, and the distribution of prizes.
First, the complaint itself, that the arts do not attain
that progressive degree of perfection which might
reasonably be expected from them, proceeds on a false
notion ; for the analogy appealed to in support of the
regular advances of art to higher degrees of excellence
totally fails ; it applies to science, not to art. Secondly,
the expedients proposed to remedy the evil by adven-
titious means are only calculated to confirm it. The
arts hold immediate communication with nature, and
are only derived from that source. When that original
impulse no longer exists, when the inspiration of genius
is fled, all the attempts to recall it are no better than the
tricks of galvanism to restore the dead to life. The ai'ts
may be said to resemble Antaeus in his struggle with
Hercules, who was strangled when he was raised above
the ground, and only revived and recovered his strength
when he touched his mother earth.
Nothing is more contrary to the fact than the supposi-
tion that in what we understand by the fine arts, as
painting and poetry, relative perfection is only the result
of repeated efforts, and that what has been once well
done constantly leads to something better. What is me-
chanical, reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration,
230 On the Progress of Art.
is progressive, and admits of gradual improvement : what
is not mechanical or definite, but depends on genius,
taste, and feeling, very soon becomes stationary or
retrograde, and loses more than it gains by transfusion.
The contrary opinion is, indeed, a common error, which
has grown up, like many others, from transferring an
analogy of one kind to something quite distinct, without
thinking of the difference in the nature of the things, or
attending to the difference of the results. For most
persons, finding what wonderful advances have been
made in biblical criticism, in chemistry, in mechanics, in
geometry, astronomy, &c. i.e., in things depending on
mere inquiry and experiment, or on absolute demon-
stration have been led hastily to conclude that there
was a general tendency in the efforts of the human
intellect to improve by repetition, and in all other arts
and institutions to grow perfect and mature by time.
We look back upon the theological creed of our ancestors
and their discoveries in natural philosophy with a smile
of pity ; science, and the arts connected with it, have all
had their infancy, their youth, and manhood, and seem
to have in them no principle of limitation or decay ; and,
inquiring no further about the matter, we infer, in the
height of our self-congratulation and in the intoxication
of our pride, that the same progress has been and will
continue to be made in all other things which are the work
of man. The fact, however, stares us so plainly in the face,
that one would think the smallest reflection must suggest
the truth and overturn our sanguine theories. The
greatest poets, the ablest orators, the best painters, and
the finest sculptors that the world ever saw, appeared
soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in a state ot
society which was, in other respects, comparatively
barbarous. Those arts which depend on individual
genius and incommunicable power have always leaped
at once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude
On the Progress of Art. 231
dawn of invention to their meridian height and dazzling
lustre, and have in general declined ever after. This is
the peculiar distinction and privilege of each, of science
and of art : of the one, never to attain its utmost summit
of perfection, and of the other, to arrive at it almost at
once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and
Ariosto (Milton alone was of a later age, and not the
worse for it), Eaphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio,
Cervantes, and Boccaccio all lived near the the begin-
ning of their arts perfected, and all but created them.
These giant sons of genius stand, indeed, upon the earth,
but they tower above their fellows, and the long line of
their successors does not interpose anything to obstruct
their view or lessen their brightness. In strength and
stature they are unrivalled, in grace and beauty they
have never been surpassed. In after-ages and more
refined periods (as they are called), great men have
arisen one by one, as it were by throes and at intervals ;
though in general the best of these cultivated and
artificial minds were of an inferior order, as Tasso and
Pope among poets, Guido and Vandyke among painters.
But in the earliest stages of the arts, when the first
mechanical difficulties had been got over and the
language as it were acquired, they rose by clusters and
in constellations, never to rise again.
The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with
the world of thought within us and with the world of sense
without us with what we know and see and feel inti-
mately. They flow from the sacred shrine of our own
breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of nature.
The pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the
depths and soundings of the human heart were as well
understood, three thousand years ago, as they are at pre-
sent ; the face of nature and " the human face divine "
shone as bright then as they have ever done. It is this
light reflected by true genius on art that marks out its
232 On the Progress of Art.
path before it, and sheds a glory round the Muses' feet,
like that which
" circled Una's angel face,
And made a sunshine in the shady place."
Nature is the soul of art. There is a strength in the ima-
gination that reposes entirely on nature, which nothing
else can supply. There is in the old poets and painters
a vigour and grasp of mind, a full possession of their
subject, a confidence and firm faith, a sublime simplicity,
an elevation of thought, proportioned to their depth of
feeling, an increasing force and impetus, which moves,
penetrates, and kindles all that comes in contact with it,
which seems, not theirs, but given to them. It is this
reliance on the power of nature which has produced
those masterpieces by the prince of painters, in which
expression is all in all where one spirit, that of truth,
pervades every part, brings down heaven to earth,
mingles cardinals and popes with angels and apostles,
and yet blends and harmonises the whole by the true
touches and intense feeling of what is beautiful and
grand, in nature. It was the same trust in nature that
enabled Chaucer to describe the patient sorrow of Gri-
selda; or the delight of that young beauty in the
flower and the leaf, shrouded in her bower, and listen-
ing, in the morning of the year, to the singing of the
nightingale, while her joy rises with the rising song,
and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along
with the full tide of pleasure, and still increases and
repeats and prolongs itself, and knows no ebb. It is
thus that Boccaccio, in the divine story of the Hawk,
has represented Frederigo Alberigi steadily contemplat-
ing his favourite falcon (the wreck and remnant of his
fortune), and glad to see how fat and fair a bird she is,
thinking what a dainty repast she would make for his
mistress, who had deigned to visit him in his lowly cell.
On the Progress of Art. 233
So Isabella mourns over her pot of basile, and never
asks for anything but that. So Lear calls out for his
poor fool, and invokes the heavens, for they are old like
him. So Titian impressed on the countenance of that
young Neapolitan nobleman in the Louvre a look that
never passed away. So Nicolas Poussin describes some
shepherds wandering out in a morning of the spring, and
coming to a tomb with this inscription, " I ALSO WAS AX
ARCADIAN."
In general, it must happen in the first stages of the
arts, that as none but those who had a natural genius
for them would attempt to practise them, so none but
those who have a natural taste for them would pretend
to judge of or criticise them. This must be an incalcu-
lable advantage to the man of true genius, for it is no
other than the privilege of being tried by his peers. In
an age when connoisseurship had not become a fashion,
when religion, war, and intrigue occupied the time and
thoughts of the great, only those minds of superior
refinement would be led to notice the works of art who
had a real sense of their excellence, and in giving way
to the powerful bent of his own genius the painter was
most likely to consult the taste of his judges. He had
not to deal with pretenders to taste, through vanity,
affectation, and idleness. He had to appeal to the higher
faculties of the soul ; to that deep and innate sensibility
to truth and beauty which required only a proper ob-
ject to have its enthusiasm excited; and to that indepen-
dent strength of mind which, in the midst of ignorance
and barbarism, hailed and fostered genius wherever it
met with it. Titian was patronised by Charles V.,
Count Castiglione was the friend of Eaphael. These
were true patrons and true critics ; and as there were no
others (for the world, in general, merely looked on and
wondered), there can bel ittle doubt that such a period
of dearth of fictitious patronage would be the most
234 On the Progress of Art.
favourable to the full development of the greatest talents
and the attainment of the highest excellence.
The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the im-
provement of taste ; but it is only the former of these
objects that is promoted by public institutions and other
artificial means. The number of candidates for fame and
of pretenders to criticism is thus increased beyond all pro-
portion, while the quantity of genius and feeling remains
the same with this difference, that the man of genius
is lost in the crowd of competitors, who would never have
become such but from encouragement and example ; and
that the opinion of those few persons whom nature in-
tended for judges is drowned in the noisy suffrages of
shallow smatterers in taste. The principle of universal
suffrage, however applicable to matters of government
which concern the common feelings and common inter-
ests of society, is by no means applicable to matters of
taste, which can only be decided upon by the most re-
fined understandings. The highest efforts of genius, in
every walk of art, can never be properly understood by
the generality of mankind : there are numberless beau-
ties and truths which lie far beyond their comprehension.
It is only as refinement and sublimity are blended with
other qualities of a more obvious and grosser nature,
that they pass current with the world. Taste is the
highest degree of sensibility, or the impression made on
the most cultivated and sensible of minds, as genius is the
result of the highest powers both of feeling and inven-
tion. It may be objected that the public taste is capable
of gradual improvement, because, in the end, the public
do justice to works of the greatest merit. This is a mis-
take. The reputation ultimately, and often slowly,
affixed to works of genius is stamped upon them by
authority, not by popular consent or the common-sense of
the world. We imagine that the admiration of the
works of celebrated men has become common, because
On the Progress of Art. 235
the admiration of their names has become so. But does
not every ignorant connoisseur pretend the same venera-
tion and talk with the same vivid assurance of Michael
Angelo, though he has never seen even a copy of any of
his pictures, as if he had studied them accurately
merely because Sir Joshua Eeynolds has praised him?
Is Milton more popular now than when the ' Paradise
Lost ' was first published ? Or does he not rather owe
his reputation to the judgment of a few persons in every
successive period, accumulating in his favour, and over-
powering by its weight the public indifference ? Why is
Shakspeare popular ? Not from his refinement of charac-
ter or sentiment so much as from his power of telling a
story, the variety and invention, the tragic catastrophe
and broad farce of his plays. Spenser is not yet under-
stood. Does not Boccaccio pass to this day for a writer
of ribaldry, because his jests and lascivious tales were
all that caught the vulgar ear, while the story of the
Falcon is forgotten !
CONVERSATIONS
JAMES NORTHCOTE, ESQ., R.A.
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
NOTICE.
IN the sixteenth chapter of the ' Memoirs of "William
Hazlitt ' (1867, 2 vols. 8vo.), there is a tolerably copious
account of the circumstances which led to the original
appearance of these ' Conversations ' in the columns of
the ' New Monthly Magazine ' in 1826-7, and to the
unfortunate and unpleasant consequences.
The 'Conversations' were printed in the magazine
periodically under the title of ' Boswell Eedivivus,' with
an Introduction. They were collected into a volume in
1830, the Introduction being omitted. Notices of the work
occur in the ' Examiner ' of the 26th of September, 1830,
and the 4th of May, 1833 ; in Leigh Hunt's ' Tatler ' of
the 28th of September, 1830 ; and in Tait's ' Edinburgh
Magazine,' 1837, New Series, vol. iv. See Mr. Alex-
ander Ireland's monograph, entitled ' List of the Writings
of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt,' 1868, p. 71.
The names of many of the persons mentioned by
initials in the Magazine series and in the edition of
1830 have now been supplied, so far as it was found
practicable to do so, inasmuch as the motive for reserve
or concealment seemed to exist no longer.
The writer in the ' Examiner' of the 4th of May, 1833,
observes : " All the ill-nature in the book is Northcote's,
and all, or almost all, the talent, Hazlitt's."
The author (for such Mr. Hazlitt may safely be pre-
sumed to have been to a large extent) quaintly says, in
240 Notice.
the Introduction already referred to : "I have also intro-
duced little incidental details that never happened, thus
by lying to give a greater air of truth to the scene an
art understood by most historians. In a word, Mr. N.
is only answerable for the wit, sense, and spirit that
may be in these papers : I take all the dullness, imper-
tinence, and malice upon myself. He has furnished the
text : I fear I have often spoiled it by the commentary.
Or, to give it a more favourable term, I have expanded
him into a book, as another friend has continued the
history of the Honeycombs down to the present period. 1
My Dialogues are done much upon the same principle as
the ' Family Journal.' I shall be more than satisfied
if they are thought to possess but half the spirit and
verisimilitude." This is at least modestly and candidly
put.
The quotation of the author's remarks upon his plan
I have taken from the autograph MS. of 'Boswell
Eedivivus,' which I happen to possess I am sorry to
say, in an imperfect state. It is written in a remark-
ably neat and clear hand on small quarto paper.
W. C. H.
1 Leigh Hunt, in his 'Tatler.' But the original Will Honey-
comb was one of the heroes of the ' Spectator.' ED.
CONVERSATIONS.
Conversation the First.
CALLED on Mr. Northcote ; had, as usual, an interesting
conversation. Spoke of some account of Lord Byron in
a newspaper, which he thought must be like. " The
writer says he did not wish to be thought merely a
great poet. My sister asked, ' What then did he wish
to be thought ?' Why, I'll tell you ; he wished to be
something different from everybody else. As to no-
bility, there were many others before him, so that he
could not rely upon that ; and then as to poetry, there
are so many wretched creatures that pretend to the
name, that he looked at it with disgust ; he thought him-
self as distinct from them as the stars in the firmament.
It comes to what Sir Joshua used to say, that a man
who is at the head of his profession is above it. I re-
member being at Cosway's, where they were recom-
mending some charitable institution for the relief of
decayed artists, and I said I would not be of it, for it
was holding out a temptation to idleness, and bringing
those into the profession who were not fit for it. Some
one who wanted to flatter me observed, ' I wonder you
should talk in this manner, who are under such obliga-
tions to the art !' I answered immediately, ' If I am
to take your compliment as I believe it is meant, I
242 Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
might answer, that it is the art that is under obligation
to me, not I to it. Do you suppose that Eubens, Titian,
and others were under obligations to the art they who
raised it from obscurity, and made it all that it is ? What
would the art be without these ?' The world in general,
as Miss Reynolds used to say with reference to her
brother, think no more of a painter than they do of a
fiddler, or a dancing-master, or a pianoforte-maker. And
so of a poet. I have always said of that dispute about
burying Lord Byron in Poets' Corner, that he would
have resisted it violently if he could have known of it.
Not but there were many very eminent names there with
whom he would like to be associated, but then there
were others that he would look down upon. If they
had laid him there, he would have got lip again. No ;
I'll tell you where they should have laid him. If they had
buried him with the Kings in Henry the Seventh's Chapel
he would have had no objection to that. One cannot
alter the names of things, or the prejudices of the world
respecting them, to suit one's convenience. I once
went with Hoppner to the hustings to vote for Home
Tooke ; and when they asked me what I was, I said, ' A
painter.' At this Hoppner was very mad all the way
home, and said I should have called myself a portrait-
painter. I replied, the world had no time to trouble
their heads about such distinctions. I afterwards asked
Kemble, who agreed I was right, that he always called
himself a player," &c.
I then observed I had been to the play with Godwin
and his daughter, from the last of whom I had learnt
something about Lord Byron's conversation. " What I"
he said, " the beauty-daughter ?" I said, " Do you think
her a beauty, then?" " Why no, she rather thinks her-
self one ; and yet there is something about her that
would pass for such. Girls generally find out where
to place themselves. She's clever, too, isn't she?"
Hr. Northcotes Conversations. 243
" Oh, yes." " ^Yhat did she tell yon about Lord Byron ?
Because I am curious to know all about him." " I asked
her if it was true that Lord Byron was so poor a creature
as Hunt represented him. She at first misunderstood
me, and said nothing could be meaner than he was, and
gave some instances of it. I said, that was not what I
meant; that I could believe anything of that kind of
him ; that whatever he took in his head he would carry
to extremes, regardless of everything but the feeling of
the moment ; but that I could not conceive him to be
in conversation, or in any other way, a flat and common-
place person. 1 ' Oh, no,' she said, ' he was not. Hunt
was hardly a fair judge. The other had not behaved
well to him, and whenever they met, Hunt always
began some kind of argument, and as Lord Byron could
not argue they made but a bad piece of business of it,
and it ended unsatisfactorily for all parties.' I said,
Hunt was too apt to put people to their trumps, or to
force them upon doing, not what they could do, but
what he thought he could do. He, however, not only
gave his own opinion, but said Mr. Shelley could only
just endure Lord Byron's company. This seemed to me
odd ; for though he might be neither orator nor philo-
sopher, yet anything he might say, or only stammer
out in broken sentences, must be interesting ; a glance,
a gesture, would be full of meaning ; or he would make
one look about one like the tree in Virgil, that ex-
pressed itself by groans. To this she assented, and
observed : ' At least Shelley and myself found it so ; for
we generally sat with him till morning. He was per-
haps a little moody and reserved at first ; but by touch-
ing on certain strings he began to unbend, and gave
the most extraordinary accounts of his own feelings and
adventures that could be imagined. Besides, he was
1 Mr. Moore has just written a book to prove the truth of the
contrary opinion.
244 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
very handsome, and it was some satisfaction to look at
a head at once so beautiful and expressive !' I repeated
what Hunt told me, that when he and Lord Byron met
in Italy they did not know one another he himself
from having grown so thin, and Byron from having
grown so fat, like a great chubby schoolboy a circum-
stance which shocked his lordship so much that he took
to drinking vinegar at a great rate, that he might re-
cover the figure of the stripling god. I mentioned some
things that Hunt had reported of Lord Byron ; such as
his saying, ' He never cared for anything above a day,'
which might be merely in a fit of spleen, or from the
spirit of contradiction, or to avoid an imputation of sen-
timentality." " Oh !" said Northcote, " that will nerer
do, to take things literally that are uttered in a moment
of irritation. You do not express your own opinion,
but one as opposite as possible to that of the person
that has provoked you. You get as far from a person
you have taken a pique against as you can, just as you
turn off the pavement to get out of the way of a chimney-
sweeper ; but it is not to be supposed you prefer walk-
ing in the mud, for all that. I have often been
ashamed myself of speeches I have made in that way,
which have been repeated to me as good things, when
all I meant was that I would say anything sooner than
agree to the nonsense or affectation I heard. You then
set yourself against what you think a wrong bias in
another, and are not like a wall, but a buttress as far
from the right line as your antagonist; and the more
absurd he is the more so do you become. Before you
attend to what any one says you should ask, Was he
talking to a fool or a wise man ? No ; Hunt would
make Lord Byron tributary to him, or would make him
out to be nothing. I wonder you admire him as you
do ; and compare him to the wits of Charles II. It isn't
writing verses or painting a picture that, as Sir Joshua
Mr. Northeotes Conversations. 245
used to say, is what everybody can do ; but it is the
doing something more than anybody else can do that
entitles the poet or the artist to distinction, or makes
the woik live. But these people shut themselves up in
a little circle of their own, and fancy all the world are
looking at them." I said Hunt had been spoiled by
flattery when he was young. " Oh, no !" he said, " it
was not that. Sir Joshua was not spoiled by flattery,
and yet he had as much of it as anybody need have ;
but he was looking out to see what the world said of
him, or thinking what figure he should make by the
side of Correggio or Vandyke not pluming himself on
being a better painter than some one in the next street,
or being surprised that the people at his own table
spoke in praise of his pictures. It is a little mind that
is taken up with the nearest object, or puffed up with
immediate notice : to do anything great, we must look
out of ourselves and see things upon a broader scale."
I told Northcote I had promised Hunt I would bring
him to see him ; and then, said I, you would think as
favourably of him as I do, and everybody else that
knows him. " But you didn't say anything in my praise
to induce him to come ?" " Oh, yes, I exerted all my
eloquence." " That wasn't the way. You should have
said I was a poor creature, perhaps amusing for an hour
or so, or curious to see, like a little dried mummy in a
museum ; but he would not hear of your having two
idols. Depend upon it he'll not come. Such characters
only want to be surrounded with satellites or echoes ;
and that is one reason they never improve. True genius,
as well as wisdom, is ever docile, humble, vigilant, and
ready to acknowledge the merit it seeks to appropriate
from every quarter. That was Fuseli's mistake. Nothing
was good enough for him that was not a repetition of
himself. So once, when I told him of a very fine Van-
dyke, he made answer, ' And what is it ? A little bit of
246 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
colour. I wouldn't go across the way to see it.' On my
telling this to Sir Joshua, he said, ' Ay, he'll repent it
he'll repent it !' Wordsworth is another of those who
would narrow the universe to their own standard. It is
droll to see how hard you labour to prop him up, too,
and seem to fancy he'll live." " I think he stands a
better chance than Lord Byron. He has added one
original feature to our poetry, which the other has not ;
and this you know, sir, by your own rule, gives him the best
title." " Yes ; but the little bit that he has added is not
enough. None but great objects can be seen at a distance.
If posterity looked at it with your eyes they might think
his poetry curious and pretty. But consider how many
Sir Walter Scotts, how many Lord Byrons, how many
Dr. Johnsons there will be in the next hundred years
how many reputations will rise and sink in that time ;
and do you imagine, amid these conflicting and important
claims, such trifles as descriptions of daisies and idiot-
boys (however well they may be done) will not be swept
away in the tide of time, like straws and weeds by the
torrent ? No ; the world can only keep in view the prin-
cipal and most perfect productions of human ingenuity ;
such works as Dryden's, Pope's, and a few others, that
from their unity, their completeness, their polish, have
the stamp of immortality upon them, and seem inde-
structible, like an element of nature. There are few of
these ; I fear your friend Wordsworth is not one."
I said I thought one circumstance against him was the
want of popularity in his lifetime. JFew people made
much noise after their deaths who did not do so while
they were living. Posterity could not be supposed to
rake into the records of past times for the Illustrious
Obscure, and only ratified or annulled the lists of great
names handed down to them by the voice of common
fame. Few people recovered from, the neglect or obloquy
of their contemporaries. The public would hardly be at
_ Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 247
the pains to try the same cause twice over, or did not
like to reverse its own sentence, at least when on the
unfavourable side. There was Hobbes, for instance ; he
had a bad name while living, and it was of no use to
think, at this time of day, of doing him justice. While
the priests and politicians were tearing him in pieces for
his atheism and arbitrary principles, Mr. Locke stole his
philosophy from him ; and I would fain see anyone
restore it to the right owner. Quote the passages one
by one, show that every principle of the modern meta-
physical system was contained in Hobbes, and that all
that succeeding writers have done was to deduce from
Mr. Locke's imperfect concessions the very consequences,
"armed all in proof," that already existed in an entire
and unmutilated state in his predecessor, and you shall
the next day hear Mr. Locke spoken of as the father of
English philosophy as currently and confidently as if not
the shadow of a doubt had ever been started on the sub-
ject. Mr. Hobbes, by the boldness and comprehensiveness
of his views, had shocked the prejudices and drawn down
upon his head the enmity of his contemporaries ; Mr.
Locke, by going more cautiously to work, and only
admitting as much at a time as the public mind would
bear, prepared the way for the rest of Mr. Hobbes' philo-
sophy, and for a vast reputation for himself which nothing
can impugn. Stat nominis umbra. The world are too far
off to distinguish names from things, and call Mr. Locke
the first of English philosophers, as they call a star by a
particular name because others call it so. They also
dislike to have their confidence in a great name destroyed,
and fear that, by displacing one of their favoured idols
from its niche in the Temple of Fame, they may endanger
the whole building.
NORTHCOTE : " Why, I thought Hobbes stood as high
as anybody. I have always heard him spoken of in that
light. It is not his capacity that people dispute, but
248 Mr. Northeotes Conversations.
they object to his character. The world will not encou-
rage vice for their own sakes, and they give a casting-
vote in favour of virtue. Mr. Locke was a modest, con-
scientious inquirer after truth, and the world had the
sagacity to see this and to be willing to give him a hearing ;
the other, I conceive, was a bully, and a bad man into
the bargain, and they did not want to be bullied into
truth or to sanction licentiousness. This was unavoid-
able, for the desire of knowledge is but one principle of
the mind. It was the same with Tom Paine. Nobody
can deny that he was a very fine writer and a very
sensible man ; but he flew in the face of a whole genera-
tion, and no wonder that they were too much for him,
and that his name is becoming a byword with such
multitudes for no other reason than that he did not care
what offence he gave them by contradicting all their
most inveterate prejudices. If you insult a roomful of
people you will be kicked out of it. So neither will the
world at large be insulted with impunity. If you tell
a whole country that they are fools and knaves, they will
not return the compliment by crying you up as the pink
of wisdom and honesty. Nor will those who come after
be very apt to take up your quarrel. It was not so much
Paine's being aEepublican or an unbeliever, as the manner
in which he brought his opinions forward (which showed
self-conceit and want of feeling), that subjected him to
obloquy. People did not like the temper of the man ;
it falls under the article of moral virtue. There are
some reputations that are great merely because they are
amiable. There is Dr. Watts ; look at the encomiums
passed on him by Dr. Johnson : and yet to what, accord-
ing to his statement, does his merit amount ? Why, only
to this : that he did that best which none can do well,
and employed his talents uniformly for the welfare of
mankind. He was a good man, and the voice of the public
has given him credit for being a great one. The world
Mr. Norilwotes Conversations. 249
may be forced to do homage to great talents, but they
only bow willingly to these when they are joined with
benevolence and modesty ; nor will they put weapons
into the hands of the bold and unprincipled sophist to
be turned against their own interests and wishes."
I said there was a great deal in the manner of bringing
truth forward to influence its reception with the reader,
for not only did we resent unwelcome novelties advanced
with an insolent and dogmatical air, but we were even
ready to give up our favourite notions, when we saw
them advocated in a harsh and intolerant manner by those
of our own party, sooner than submit to the pretensions of
blindfold presumption. If anything could make me a
bigot it would be the arrogance of the freethinker ; if
anything could make me a slave it would be the sordid
sneering fopperies and sweeping clauses of the liberal
party. Eenegadoes are generally made so, not by the
overtures of their adversaries, but by disgust at the want
of candour and moderation in their friends. Northcote
replied : " To be sure there was nothing more painful
than to have one's own opinions disfigured or thrust
down one's throat by impertinence and folly ; and that
once when a pedantic coxcomb was crying up Kaphael
to the skies, he could not help saying, ' If there was
nothing in Eaphael but what you can see in him, we
should not now have been talking of him !' "
Conversation the Second.
WHEN I called, I found Mr. Xorthcote painting a portrait
of himself. Another stood on an easel. He asked me
which I thought most like ? I said the one he was about
was the best, but not good enough. It looks like a
physician or a member of Parliament, but it ought to
look like something more a cardinal or a Spanish
250 Mr. Nbrthcote's Conversations.
inquisitor. I do not think you ought to proceed in
painting your own face as you do with some others
that is, by trying to improve upon it : you have only to
make it like ; for the more like it is, the better it will be
as a picture. " Oh ! he tried to make it like." I found
I had got upon a wrong scent. Mr. Northcote, as an
artist, was not bound to have a fine head, but he was
bound to paint one. I am always a very bad courtier :
and think of what strikes me, and not of the effect upon
others. So I once tried to compliment a very handsome
brunette, by telling her how much I admired dark
beauties. " Oh !" said Northcote, " you should have told
her she was fair. She did not like black, though you
did !" After all, there is a kind of selfishness in this
plain-speaking. In the present case, it sets us wrong
the whole morning, and I had to stay longer than usual
to recover the old track. I was continually in danger ol
oversetting a stand with a small looking-glass, which
Northcote particularly cautioned me not to touch ; and
every now and then he was prying into the glass by
stealth, to see if the portrait was like. He had on a
green velvet cap, and looked very like Titian.
Northcote, then turning round, said : " I wanted to ask
you about a speech you made the other day. You said
you thought you could have made something of portrait,
but that you never could have painted history. What
did you mean by that ?" " Oh ! all I meant was, that
sometimes, when I see a fine Titian or Kembrandt, I feel
as if I could have done something of the same kind with
the proper pains, but I have never the same feeling with
respect to Kaphael. My admiration is there utterly un-
mixed with emulation or regret. In fact, I see what is
before me, but I have no invention."
NORTHCOTE : " You do not know till you try. There is
not so much difference as you imagine. Portrait often
runs into history, and history into portrait, without our
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 251
knowing it. Expression is common to both, and that is
the chief difficulty. The greatest history-painters have
always been able portrait-painters. How should a man
paint a thing in motion if he cannot paint it still ? But
the great point is to catch the prevailing look and
character : if you are master of this, you can make almost
what use of it you please. If a portrait has force, it will
do for history ; and if history is well painted, it will do
for portrait. This is what gave dignity to Sir Joshua :
his portraits had always that determined air and character
that you know what to think of them as if you had seen
them engaged in the most decided action. So Fuseli
said of Titian's picture of Paul III. and his two nephews,
' That is true history !' Many of the groups in the
Vatican, by Eaphael, are only collections of fine portraits.
That is why West, Barry, and others pretended to despise
portrait because they could not do it, and it would only
expose their want of truth and nature. No ! if you can
give the look, you need not fear painting history. Yet
how difficult that is, and on what slight causes it depends !
It is not enough that it is seen, unless it is at the same
time felt. How odd it seems, that often while you are
looking at a face, and though you perceive no difference
in the features, yet you find they have undergone a total
alteration of expression ! What a fine hand then is
required to trace what the eye can scarcely be said to
distinguish ! So I used to contend against Sir Joshua,
that Eaphael had triumphed over this difficulty in ' The
Miracle of Bolsena,' where he has given the internal blush
of the unbelieving priest at seeing the water turned into
blood: the colour to be sure assists, but the look of
stupefaction and shame is also there in the most marked
degree. Sir Joshua said it was my fancy, but I am as
convinced of it as I am of my existence ; and the proof
is, that otherwise he has done nothing. There is no story
without it ; but he has trusted to the expression to tell
252 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
the story, instead of leaving the expression to be made
out from the story. I have often observed the same thing
in myself, when I have blamed any one as mildly as 1
could, not using any violence of language, nor indeed
intending to hurt ; and I have afterwards wondered at
the effect ; my sister has said, ' You should have seen
your look,' but I did not know of it myself." I said, " If
you had, it would have been less felt by others. An
instance of this made me laugh not long ago. I was
offended at a waiter for very ill behaviour at an inn at
Calais ; and while he was out of the room I was putting
on as angry a look as I could ; but I found this sort of
previous rehearsal to no purpose. The instant he
returned into the room, I gave him a look that I felt
made it unnecessary to tell him what I thought." " To
be sure, he would see it immediately." " And don't you
think, sir," I said, " that this explains the difficulty of
fine acting, and the difference between good acting and
bad that is, between face-making or mouthing and
genuine passion ? To give the last, an actor must possess
the highest truth of imagination, and must undergo an
entire revolution of feeling. Is it wonderful that so many
prefer an artificial to a natural actor, the mask to the
man, the pompous pretension to the simple expression ?
Not at all ; the wonder rather is that people in general
judge so right as they do, when they have such doubtful
grounds to go upon ; and they would not, but they trust
less to rules or reasoning than to their feelings."
NORTHCOTE : " You must come to that at last. The
common-sense of mankind (whether a good or a bad one)
is the best criterion you have to appeal to. You neces-
sarily impose upon yourself in judging of your own
works. Whenever I am trying at an expression I hang
up the picture in the room and ask people what it means,
and if they guess right I think I have succeeded. You
yourself see the thing as you wish it, or according to
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 253
what you hare been endeavouring to make it. When I
was doing the figures of Argyll in prison and of his
enemy who comes and finds him asleep, I had a great
difficulty to encounter in conveying the expression of
the last indeed I did it from myself I wanted to give
a look of mingled remorse and admiration ; and when I
found that others saw this look in the sketch I had made,
I left off. By going on, I might lose it again. There is
a point of felicity which, whether you fall short of or
have gone beyond it, can only be determined by the
effect on the unprejudiced observer. You cannot be
always with your picture to explain it to others ; it must
be left to speak for itself. Those who stand before their
pictures and make fine speeches about them, do them-
selves a world of harm ; a painter should cut out his
tongue, if he wishes to succeed. His language addresses
itself, not to the ear, but to the eye. He should stick to
that as much as possible. Sometimes you hit off an
effect without knowing it. Indeed the happiest results
are frequently the most unconscious. Boaden was here
the other day. You' don't remember Henderson, I
suppose ?" " No." " He says his reading was the most
perfect he ever knew. He thought himself a pretty good
reader and a tolerable mimic that he succeeded
tolerably well in imitating Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, and
others ; but that there was something in Henderson's
reading 1 so superior to all the rest that he never could
come anything near it. I told him, ' You don't know that :
if you were to hear him now you might think him even
worse than your own imitation of him.' We deceive our-
selves as much with respect to the excellences of others
as we do with respect to our own, by dwelling on a
favourite idea. In order to judge you should ask some
1 For some account of John Henderson's appearance and abili-
ties see Geneste, ' Some Account of the English Stage,' vol. vi.
pp. 38G-409. ED.
254 Mr. Northcote s Conversations.
one else who remembered him. I spoke to him about
Kemble, whose life he has been lately writing. I said,
when he sat to me for the ' Richard III. meeting the
Children,' he lent me no assistance whatever in the ex-
pression I wished to give, but remained quite immovable,
as if he were sitting for an ordinary portrait. Boaden
said, this was his way : he never put himself to any
exertion except in his professional character. If any one
wanted to know his idea of a part or of a particular passage
his reply always was, ' You must come and see me do it.' "
Northcote then spoke of " the boy," as he always calls
him Master Betty. He asked if I had ever seen him
act, and I said, " Yes, and was one of his admirers." He
answered, " Oh, yes ! it was such a beaiitiful effusion of
natural sensibility ; and then that graceful play of the
limbs in youth gave such an advantage over every one
about him. Humphreys, the artist, said : ' He had never
seen the little Apollo off the pedestal before.' You see
the same thing in the boys at Westminster School. But
no one was equal to him." Mr. Northcote alluded with
pleasure to his unaffected manners when a boy, and
mentioned, as an instance of his simplicity, his saying,
one day : " If they admire me so much, what would
they say to Mr. Harley ?" (a tragedian in the same stroll-
ing company with himself). We then spoke of his acting
since he was grown up. Northcote said, " He went to
see him one night with Fuseli, in ' Alexander the Great,'
and that he observed, coming out, they could get nobody
to do it better." " Nor so well," said Fuseli. A question
being put " Why, then, could he not succeed at pre-
sent ?" " Because," said Northcote, " the world will
never admire twice. The first surprise was excited by
his being a boy, and when that was over nothing could
bring them back again to the same point not though
he had turned out a second Roscius. They had taken a
surfeit of their idol, and wanted something new. No-
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 255
thing he could do could astonish them so much the
second time as the youthful prodigy had done the first
time, and therefore he must always appear as a foil to
himself, and seem comparatively flat and insipid. Garrick
kept up the fever of public admiration as long as any-
body, but when he returned to the stage after a short
absence no one went to see him. It was the same with
Sir Joshua ; latterly Eomney drew all his sitters from
him. So they say the Exhibition is worse every year,
though it is just the same there are the same subjects
and the same painters. Admiration is a forced tribute,
and to extort it from mankind envious and ignorant as
they are they must be taken unawares." I remarked,
" It was the same in books ; if an author was only equal
to himself, he was always said to fall off. The blow, to
make the same impression, must be doubled, because we
are prepared for it. We give him the whole credit of
his first successful production because it was altogether
unexpected ; but if he does not rise as much above
himself in the second instance as the first was above
nothing, we are disappointed, and say he has fallen off,
for our feelings are not equally excited." " Just," said
Northcote, " as in painting a portrait ; people are sur-
prised at the first sitting, and wonder to see how you
have got on ; but I tell them they will never see so much
done again ; for at first there was nothing but a blank
canvas to work upon, but afterwards you have to improve
upon your own design, and this at every step becomes
more and more difficult. It puts me in mind of an ob-
servation of Opie's, that it was wrong to suppose that
people went on improving to the last in any art or pro-
fession ; on the contrary, they put their best ideas into
their first works, which they have been qualifying them-
selves to undertake all their lives before ; and what they
gain afterwards in correctness and refinement they lose
in originality and vigour." I assented to this as a very
256 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
striking and, as I thought, sound remark. He said : " I
wish you had known Opie; he was a very original-
minded man. Mrs. Siddons used to say, ' I like to meet
Mr. Opie, for then I always hear something I did not
know before.' I do not say that he was always right,
but he always put your thoughts into a new track that
was worth following. I was very fond of Opie's con-
versation ; and I remember once, when I was expressing
my surprise at his having so little of the Cornish dialect,
' Why,' he said, * the reason is, I never spoke at all till
I knew you and Wolcott.' He was a true genius. Mr.
is a person of great judgment, but I do not learn
so much from him. I think this is the difference between
sense and genius : a man of genius judges for himself,
and you hear nothing but what is original from him ;
but a man of sense, or with a knowledge of the world,
judges as others do, and he is on this account the safest
guide to follow, though not, perhaps, the most instructive
companion. I recollect Miss Eeynolds making nearly
the same observation. She said, ' I don't know how it
is ; I don't think Miss C a very clever woman, and
yet, whenever I am at a loss about anything, I always
go to consult her, and her advice is almost sure to be
right.' The reason was, that this lady, instead of taking
her own view of the subject, as a person of superior
capacity might have been tempted to do, considered only
what light others wotild view it in, and pronounced her
decision according to the prevailing rules and maxims
of the world. When old Dr. Mudge 1 married his house-
maid, Sterne, on hearing of it, exclaimed : 'Ay, I always
thought him a genius, and now I am sure of it.' The
truth was (and this was what Sterne meant), that Dr.
Mudge saw a thousand virtues in this woman which
1 The friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds. See ' Memoirs of W. H.,'
1867, vol. ii. p. 200 (where the name is, by a printer's error, sps.t
Modge). ED.
Mr. Norihcote's Conversations. 257
nobody else did, and could give a thousand reasons for
his choice that no one about him had the wit to answer ;
but nature took its usual course, and the event turned
out as he had been forewarned, according to the former
experience of the world in such matters. His being in
the wrong did not prove him to be less a genius, though
it might impeach his judgment or prudence. He was,
in fact, wiser, and saw more of the matter, than any one
of his neighbours who might advise him to the contrary ;
but he was not so wise as the collective experience or
common-sense of mankind on the subject, which his
more cautious friends merely echoed. It is only the
man of genius who has any right or temptation to make
a fool of himself by setting up his own unsupported
decision against that of the majority. He feels himself
superior to any individual in the crowd, and therefore
rashly undertakes to act in defiance of the whole mass
of prejudice and opinion opposed to him. It is safe and
easy to travel in a stage-coach from London to Salisbury ;
but it would require great strength, boldness, and
sagacity to go in a straight line across the country."
Conversation the Third.
NORTHCOTE began by saying, " You don't much like
Sir Joshua, I know ; but I think that is one of your pre-
judices. If I was to compare him with Vandyke and
Titian, I should say that Vandyke's portraits are like
pictures (very perfect ones no doubt), Sir Joshua's like
the reflection in a looking-glass, and Titian's like the
real people. There is an atmosphere of light and shade
about Sir Joshua's which neither of the others have in
the same degree, together with a vagueness that gives
them a visionary and romantic character, and makes
s
258 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
them seem like dreams or vivid recollections of persons
we have seen. I never could mistake Vandyke's for
anything but pictures, and I go up to them to examine
them as such ; when I see a fine Sir Joshua, I can neither
suppose it to be a mere picture nor a man, and I almost
involuntarily turn back to ascertain if it is not some
one behind me reflected in the glass ; when I see a Titian
I am riveted to it, and I can no more take my eye off
from it than if it were the very individual in the room.
That," he said, " is, I think, peculiar to Titian, that you
feel on your good behaviour in the presence of his keen-
looking Heads, as if you were before company." I men-
tioned that I thought Sir Joshua more like Kembrandt
than like either Titian or Vandyke : he enveloped objects
in the same brilliant haze of a previous mental concep-
tion. "Yes," he said; "but though Sir Joshua bor-
rowed a great deal, he drew largely from himself ; or
rather, it was a strong and peculiar feeling of nature
working in him and forcing its way out in spite of all
impediments, and that made whatever he touched his
own. In spite of his deficiency in drawing and his
want of academic rules and a proper education, you see
this breaking out like a devil in all his works. It is
this that has stamped him. There is a charm in his
portraits, a mingled softness and force, a grasping at the
end with nothing harsh or unpleasant in the means, that
you will find nowhere else. He may go out of fashion
for a time ; but you must come back to him again, while
a thousand imitators and and academic triflers are for-
gotten. This proves him to have been a real genius.
The same thing, however, made him a very bad master.
He knew nothing of rules, which are alone to be taught,
and he could not communicate his instinctive feeling of
beauty or character to others. I learnt nothing from
him while I was with him, and none of his scholars (if
I may except myself) ever made any figure at all. He
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 259
only gave us his pictures to copy. Sir Joshua undoubt-
edly got his first ideas of the art from Gandy, 1 though
he lost them under Hudson ; but he easily recovered
them afterwards. That is a picture of Gandy 's there
(pointing to a portrait of a little girl). If you look into
it you will find the same broken surface and varying
outline that was so marked a characteristic of Sir Joshua.
There was nothing he hated so much as a distinct out-
line, as you see it in Mengs and the French School. Irf-
deed, he ran into the opposite extreme ; but it is one of
the great beauties of art to show it waving and retiring,
now losing and then recovering itself again, as it always
does in nature, without any of that stiff edgy appearance
which only pedants affect or admire. Gandy was never
out of Devonshire ; but his portraits are common there.
His father was patronised by the Duke of Orinond, and
one reason why the son never came out of his native
county was, that when the Duke of Ormond was impli-
cated in the rebellion to restore the Pretender in 1715,
he affected to be thought too deep in his Grace's confi-
dence and a person of too much consequence to venture up
to London, so that he chose to remain a voluntary exile."
I asked Northcote if he remembered the name of
Stringer at the Academy, when he first came up to
town. He said he did, and that he drew very well, and
once put the figure for him in a better position to catch
the foreshortening. He inquired if I knew anything
about him, and I said I had once vainly tried to copy a
head of a youth by him admirably drawn and coloured,
and in which he had attempted to give the effect of
double vision by a second outline accompanying the
contour of the face and features. Though the design
might not be in good taste, it was executed in a way
that made it next to impossible to imitate. I called on
1 James Gandy died at Exeter in 1689, and is considered to have
been a pupil of Vandyke. See Walpole's ' Anecdotes of Painting,'
edit. 1862, p. 350, note. ED.
260 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
him afterwards at his house at Knutsford, where I saw
some spirited comic sketches in an unfinished state, 1
and a capital female by Cignani. All his skill and love
of art had, I found, been sacrificed to his delight in
Cheshire ale and the company of country squires. Tom
Kershaw of Manchester used to say that he would
rather have been Dan Stringer than Sir Joshua Reynolds
at twenty years of age. Kershaw, like other north-
country critics, thought more of the executive power
than of the cesthetical faculty ; forgetting that it signifies
comparatively little how well you execute a thing if it is
not worth executing. In consequence of something that
was said of the egotism of artists, he observes : " I am
sometimes thought cold and cynical myself; but I hope
it is not from any such overweening opinion of myself.
I remember once going with Wilkie to Angerstein's, and
because I stood looking and said nothing, he seemed
dissatisfied, and said, ' I suppose you are too much
occupied with admiring to give me your opinion ?' And
I answered hastily, 'No, indeed! I was sajang to my-
self, And is this all that the art can do ?' But this was
not, I am sure, an expression of triumph, but of mortifi-
cation at the defects which I could not help observing,
even in the most accomplished works. I knew they
were the best, but I could have wished them to be a
hundred times better than they were."
Northcote mentioned a conceited painter of the name
of Edwards, who went with Romney to Rome, and when
they got into the Sistine Chapel, turning round to him,
said, " 'Egad, George ! we're bit !" He then spoke of his
own journey to Rome, of the beauty of the climate, of the
manners of the people, of the imposing effect of the
Roman Catholic religion, of its favourableness to the fine
arts, of the churches full of pictures, of the manner in
which he passed his time, studying and looking into all
1 One of ' The Blacksmith Swallowing the Tailor's News,' from
Shakspeare.
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 261
the rooms in the Vatican. He had no fault to find with
Italy, and no wish to leave it. " Gracious and sweet
was all he saw in her !" As he talked, he looked as if
he saw the different objects pass before him, and his eye
glittered with familiar recollections. He said Eaphael
did not scorn to look out of himself or to be beholden to
others. He took whole figures from Masaccio to enrich
his designs, because all he wanted was to advance the
art and ennoble human nature. After he saw Michael
Angelo he improved in freedom and breadth ; and if he
had lived to see Titian, he would have done all he could
to avail himself of his colouring. All his works are an
effusion of the sweetness and dignity of his own character.
He did not know how to make a picture ; but for the
conduct of the fable and the development of passion and
feeling (noble but full of tenderness) there is nobody like
him. This is why Hogarth can never come into the lists.
He does not lift us above ourselves. Our curiosity may
be gratified by seeing what men are, but our pride must
be soothed by seeing them made better. Why else is
Milton preferred to ' Hudibras ' but because the one
aggrandises our notions of human nature and the other
degrades it ? Who will make any comparison between
a Madonna of Raphael and a drunken prostitute by
Hogarth ? Do we not feel more respect for an inspired
Apostle than for a blackguard in the streets ? Eaphael
points out the highest perfection of which the human
form and faculties are capable, and Hogarth their lowest
degradation or most wretched perversion. Look at his
attempts to paint the good or beautiful, and you see how
faint the impressions of these were in his mind. Yet
these are what every one must wish to cherish in his
own bosom, and must feel most thankful for to those
who lend him the powerful assistance of their unrivalled
conceptions of true grandeur and beauty. Sir Joshua
strove to do this in his portraits, and this it was that
262 Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
raised him in public estimation ; for we all wibh to get
rid of defects and peculiarities as much as we can. He
then said of Michael Angelo, he did not wonder at the
fame he had acquired. You are to consider the state of
the art before his time, and that he burst through the
mean and little manner even of such men as Leonardo da
Vinci and Pietro Perugino, and through the trammels
that confined them ; and gave all at once a gigantic
breadth and expansion that had never been seen before,
so that the world were struck witli it as with a display
of almost supernatural power, and have never ceased to
admire since. We are not to compare it with the
examples of art that have followed since, and that would
never have existed but for him, but with 'those that
preceded it. He found fault with the figure of the flying
monk in the ' St. Peter Martyr,' 9& fluttering and theatrical,
but agreed with me in admiring this picture, and in my
fondness for Titian in general. He mentioned his going
with Prince, Hoare, and Day to take leave of some fine
} ortraits of Titian's that hung in a dark corner of a
gallery at Naples ; and as Day looked at them for the
last time with tears in his eyes, he said, " Ah ! he was
a fine old mouser /" I said I had repeated this expres-
sion (which I had heard him allude to before) some-
where in writing, and was surprised that people did not
know what to make of it. Northcote said : " Why, that
is exactly what I should have thought. There is the
difference between writing and speaking. In writing,
you address the average quantity of sense or informa-
tion in the world ; in speaking, you pick your audience,
or at least know what they are prepared for, or else
previously explain what you think necessary. Ton
understand the epithet because you have seen a great
number of Titian's pictures, and know that catlike,
watchful, penetrating look he gives to all his faces,
which nothing else expresses, perhaps, so well as the
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 263
phrase Day made use of. Bnt the world in general know
nothing of this ; all they know or believe is, that Titian is
a great painter like Eaphael, or any other famous person.
Suppose any one was to tell you, Eaphael was a fine old
mouser ; would }*ou not laugh at this as absurd ? And
yet the other is equally nonsense or incomprehensible to
them. No, there is a limit, a conversational licence, which
yon cannot carry into writing. There is one difficulty I
have in writing : 1 do not know the point of familiarity
at which I am to stop ; and yet I believe I have ideas,
and you say I know how to express myself in talking."
I inquired if he remembered much of Johnson, Burke,
and that set of persons. He said, "Yes, a good deal,"
as he had often seen them. Burke came into Sir
Joshua's painting-room one day when Northcote, who
was then a young man, was sitting for one of the children
in ' Count Ugolino.' (It is the one in profile, with the
hand to the face.) He was introduced as a pupil of Sir
Joshua's, and on his looking up, Mr. Burke said, " Then
I see that Mr. Northcote is not only an artist, but has a
head that would do for Titian to paint." Goldsmith and
Burke had often violent disputes about politics, the one
being a staunch Tory, and the other at that time a Whig
and outrageous anti -courtier. One day he came into the
room when Goldsmith was there, full of ire and abuse
against the late King, and went on in such a torrent of the-
most unqualified invectire that Goldsmith threatened to
leave the room. The other however persisted, and Gold-
smith went out, unable to bear it any longer. So much
for Mr. Burke's pretended consistency and uniform
loyalty ! When Northcote first came to Sir Joshua he
wished very much to see Goldsmith ; and one day Sir
Joshua, on introducing him, asked why he had been so
anxious to see him. " Because," said Northcote, " he is a
notable l man." This expression, " notable," in its ordinary
1 That is, a remarkable man.
264 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
sense, was so contrary to Goldsmith's character, that
they both burst out a-laughing very heartily. Gold-
smith was two thousand pounds in debt at the time of
his death, which was hastened by his chagrin and dis-
tressed circumstances; and when ' She Stoops to Conquer'
was performed, he was so choked all dinner-time that he
could not swallow a mouthful. A party went from Sir
Joshua's to support it. The present title was not fixed
upon till that morning. Northcote went with Ralph,
Sir Joshua's man, into the gallery to see how it went off;
and after the second act there was no doubt of its success.
Northcote says people had a great notion of the literary
parties at Sir Joshua's. He once asked Lord B to
dine with Dr. Johnson and the rest ; but though a man
of rank and also of good information, he seemed as much
alarmed at the idea as if you had tried to force him into
one of the cages at Exeter 'Change. Northcote remarked
that he thought people of talents had their full share of
admiration. 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 preternatural
being he was sure, more than if it had been the Queen.
He then made some observations on the respect paid to
rank, and said, "However ridiculous it might seem, - 't
was no more than the natural expression of the hig 7 ./st
respect in other cases. For instance, as to that of bowing
out of the King's presence backwards, would you not do
the same if you were introduced to Dr. Johnson for the
first time ? You would contrive not to turn your back
upon him till you were out of the room." He said,
" You violent politicians make more rout about royalty
than, it is worth ; it is only the highest place, and some-
body must fill it, no matter who. Neither do the persons
themselves think so much of it as you imagine ; they are
glad to get into privacy as much as they can. Nor is it
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 265
a sinecure. The late King, I have been told, used often
to have to sign his name to papers, and do nothing else
for three hours together, till his fingers fairly ached, and
then he would take a walk in the garden and come back
to repeat the same drudgery for three hours more. So,
when they told Louis XV. that if he went on with his
extravagance he would bring about a revolution, and be
sent over to England with a pension, he merely asked,
' Do you think the pension would be a pretty good one ? "
He noticed the ' Memoirs of Cardinal de Eetz,' and
praised them for their extreme vivacity and great insight
into human nature. Once when the mob had besieged the
palace, and the cardinal was obliged to go and appease
them, a brickbat was flung at him and knocked him
down; and one of the assailants presenting a bayonet
at his throat, he suddenly called out, " Oh, you wretch !
if your father could have seen you in this barbarous
action what would he have said ?" The man imme-
diately withdrew, though, says the cardinal, " I knew
no more of his father than the babe unborn." Northcote
then adverted to the talent of players for drollery and
sudden shifts and expedients, and said that, by living in
an element of comic invention, they imbibed a portion
of it. He repeated that jest of F. Eeynolds, who filled
up the blank in a militia paper that was sent him with
the description, " Old, lame, and a coward ;" and another
story told of Matthews the comedian, who, being left in
a room with an old gentleman and a little child, and the
firmer putting the question to it, " Well, my dear,
which do you like best, the dog or the cat?" by exercis-
ing his powers of ventriloquism, made the child seem to
answer, " I don't care a d n for either," to the utter
confusion of the old gentleman, who immediately took
the father to task for bringing up his son in such pro-
faneness and total want of common humanity.
He then retiirned to the question of the inconsistent
266 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
and unreasonable expectations of mankind as to their
success in different pursuits, and answered the common
complaint, " What a shame it was that Milton only got
thirteen pounds nine shillings and sixpence for ' Para-
dise Lost ' !" He said, " Not at all ; he did not write it
to get money ; he had gained what he had proposed by
writing it not thirteen pounds nine shillings and six-
pence, but an immortal reputation. When Dr. Johnson
was asked why he was not invited out to dine as Garrick
was, he answered, as if it was a triumph to him, ' Be-
cause great lords and ladies don't like to have their
mouths stopped.' But who does like to have their
mouths stopped ? Did he, more than others ? People
like to be amused, in general ; but they did not give him
the less credit for wisdom and a capacity to instruct
them by his writings. In like manner, it has been said
that the King only sought one interview with Dr. John-
eon ; whereas if he had been a buifoon or a sycophant
he would have asked for more. No, there was nothing
to complain of ; it was a compliment paid by rank to
letters, and once was enough. The King was more
afraid of this interview than Dr. Johnson was, and went
to it as a schoolboy to his task. But he did not want to
have this trial repeated every day, nor was it necessary.
The very jealousy of his self-love marked his respect ;
and if he had thought less of Dr. Johnson he would
have been more willing to risk the encounter. They
had each their place to fill, and would best preserve
their self-respect, and perhaps theit- respect for each
other, by remaining in their proper sphere. So they
make an outcry about the Prince leaving Sheridan to
die in absolute want. He had left him long before ;
was he to send every day to know if he was dying ?
These things cannot be helped without exacting too
much of human nature." I agreed to this view of the
subject, and said I did not see why literary people
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 267
should repine if they met with their deserts in their
own way, without expecting to get rich ; but that they
often got nothing for their pains but unmerited abuse
and party obloquy. " Oh, it is not party spite," said he,
" but the envy of human nature. Do you think to dis-
tinguish yourself with impunity ? Do you imagine that
your superiority will be delightful to others, or that they
will not strive all they can, and to the last moment, to
pull you down ? I remember myself once saying to
Opie, how hard it was upon the poor author or player to
be hunted down for not succeeding in an innocent and
laudable attempt, just as if they had committed some
heinous crime ; and he answered, ' They have committed
the greatest crime in the eyes of mankind that of pre-
tending to a superiority over them.' Do you think that
party abuse and the running-down of particular authors
is anything new ? Look at the manner in which Pope
and Dryden were assailed by a set of reptiles. Do you
believe the modern periodicals had not their prototypes
in the party publications of that day ? Depend upon it,
what you take for political cabal and hostility is, nine
parts in ten, private pique and malice oozing out through
those authorized channels."
We now got into a dispute about nicknames ; and
Hume coming in and sitting down at my elbow, my old
pugnacious habit seemed to return upon me. Northcote
contended that they had always an appropriate meaning ;
and I said their whole force consisted in their having
absolutely none but the most vague and general.
" \Yhy," *aid Northcote, " did my father give me the
name of ' Fat Jack,' but because I was lean ?" He gave
an instance, which I thought made against himself, of a
man at Plymouth, a baker by profession, who had got
the name of Tiddydoll, he could not tell how. " Then,"
said I, " it was a name without any sense or meaning."
" Be that as it may," said Northcote, " it almost drove
268 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
him mad. The boys called after him in the street, be-
sieged his shop-windows ; even the soldiers took it up,
and marched to parade beating time with their feet
and repeating ' Tiddydoll,' ' Tiddydoll,' as they passed
by his door. He flew out upon them at the sound with
inextinguishable fury, and was knocked down and rolled
in the kennel, and got up in an agony of rage and
shame, his white clothes covered all over with mud. A
gentleman, a physician in the neighbourhood, one day
called him in and remonstrated with him on the subject.
He advised him to take no notice of his persecutors.
'What,' he said, 'does it signify? Suppose they were
to call me Tiddydoll ?' ' There,' said the man, ' you
called me so yourself; you only sent for me in to
insult me!' and, after heaping every epithet of abuse
upon him, flew out of the house in a most ungovernable
passion." I told Northcote this was just the thing I
meant. Even if a name had confessedly no meaning, by
applying it constantly and by way of excellence to
another, it seemed as if he must be an abstraction of
insignificance ; whereas if it pointed to any positive
defect or specific charge, it was at least limited to the
one, and you stood a chance of repelling the other. The
virtue of a nickname consisted in its being indefinable,
and baffling all proof or reply. When Hume was gone
Northcote extolled his proficiency in Hebrew, which
astonished me not a little, as I had never heard of it.
I said he was a very excellent man, and a good specimen
of the character of the old Presbyterians, who had more
of the idea of an attachment to principle, and less of an
obedience to fashion or convenience, from their educa-
tion and tenets, than any other class of people. North-
cote assented to this statement, and concluded by saying,
that Hume was certainly a very good man, and had no
fault but that of not being fat.
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 269
Conversation the Fourth.
NORTHCOTE said lie had been reading Kelly's ' Reminis-
cences.' 1 I asked what he thought of them ? He said
they were the work of a well-meaning man, who fancied
all those about him good people, and everything they
uttered clever. I said I recollected his singing formerly
with Mrs. Crouch, and that he used to give great effect
to some things of sentiment, such as, ' Oh ! had I been
by fate decreed,' &c., in ' Love in a Village.' Northcote
said he did not much like him ; there was a jerk, a kind
of brogue, in his singing ; though he had, no doubt, con-
siderable advantages in being brought up with all the
great singers, and having pei formed on all the first
stages in Italy. I said there was no echo of all that now.
"No," said Northcote, " nor in my time, though I was
there just after him. He asked me once, many years
ago, if I had heard of him in Italy, and I said ' No,'
though I excused myself by stating that I had only been
at Rome, where the stage was less an object, the Pope
there performing the chief part himself." I answered,
that I meant there was no echo of the fine singing at
present in Italy, music being there dead as well as
painting, or reduced to mere screaming, noise, and rant.
" It is odd," he said, " how their genius seems to have
left them. Everything of that sort appears to be at
present no better than it is with us in a country town ;
or rather, it wants the simplicity and rustic innocence,
and is more like the draggle-tailed finery of a lady's
waiting-maid. They have nothing of their own ; all is
at secondhand. Did you see Thorwaldsen's things
while you were there ? A young artist brought me all
1 This work was published in 1820, and again in 1826, in a
smaller size. The ' Reminiscences ' extend over nearly half a
century. ED.
270 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
his designs the other day, as miracles that I was to
wonder at and be delighted with. But I could find
nothing in them but repetitions of the Antique, over
and over, till I was surfeited." " He would be pleased
at this." " Why, no ! that is not enough; it is easy to
imitate the Antique : if you want to last you must
invent something. The other is only pouring liquors
from one vessel into another, that become staler and
staler every time. We are tired of the Antique ; yet,
at any rate, it is better than the vapid imitation of it.
The world wants something new, and will have it.
No matter whether it is better or worse, if there is but
an infusion of new life and spirit it will go down to
posterity otherwise you are soon forgotten. Canova
too is nothing, for the same reason ; he is only a feeble
copy of the Antique, or a mixture of two things the
most incompatible, that and opera-dancing. But there
is Bernini ; he is full of faults ; he has too much of that
florid, redundant, fluttering style that was objected to
Eubens; but then he has given an appearance of flesh
that was never given before. The Antique always
looks like marble, you never for a moment can divest
yourself of the idea ; but go up to a statue of Bernini's,
and it seems as if it must yield to your touch. This
excellence he was the first to give, and therefore it must
always remain with him. It is true it is also in the
Elgin Marbles ; but they were not known in his time,
so that he indisputably was a genius. Then there is
Michael Angelo ; how utterly different from the Antique,
and in some things how superior ! For instance, there
is his statue of Cosmo de Medici, leaning on his hand,
in the Chapel of St. Lorenzo at Florence ; I declare it
has that look of reality in it, that it almost terrifies you
to be near it. It has something of the same effect as
the mixture of life and death that is perceivable in wax-
work ; though that is a bad illustration, as this last is
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 271
disagreeable and mechanical, and the other is produced
by a powerful and masterly conception. It was the
same with Handel too; he made music speak a new
language, \vith a pathos and a power that had never been
dreamt of till his time. Is it not the same with Titian,
Correggio, liaphael ? These painters did not imitate
one another, but were as unlike as possible, and yet
were all excellent. If excellence were one thing, they
must have been all wrong. Still, originality is not
caprice or affectation ; it is an excellence that is always
to be found in nature, but has never had a place in art
before. So Romney said of Sir Joshua, that there was
that in his pictures which we had not been used to see in
other painters, but we had seen it often enough in
nature. Give this in your works, and nothing can ever
rob you of the credit of it.
" I was looking into ' Mandeville 51 since I saw you. (I
thought I had lost it, but I found it among a parcel of
old books.) You may judge by that of the hold that
anything like originality takes of the world ; for though
there is a great deal that is questionable and liable to
very strong objection, yet they will not give it up, be-
cause it is the very reverse of commonplace ; and they
must go to that souice to learn what can be said on that
side of the question. Even if you receive a shock, you
feel your faculties roused by it and set on the alert.
Mankind do not choose to go to sleep." I replied, that
I thought this was true, yet at the same time the world
seemed to have a wonderful propensity to admire the
trite and traditional. I could only account for this
from a reflection of our self-love. We could few of us
invent, but most of us could imitate and repeat by rote ;
and as we thought we could get up and ride in the same
jogtrot machine of learning, we affected to look up to
this elevation as the po.vt of honour. Korthcote said,
1 Mandeville's ' Fable of the Bees,' &c. ED.
272 Mr. Nortncotes Conversations.
" You are to consider that learning is of great use to
society ; and though it may not add to the stock, is a
necessary vehicle to transmit it to others. Learned
men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountain-
heads. They are only wrong in often claiming respect
on a false ground, and mistaking their own province.
They are so accustomed to ring the changes on words
and received notions that they lose their perception of
things. I remember being struck with this at the time
of the Ireland controversy. Only to think of a man like
Dr. Parr going down on his knees and kissing the pre-
tended manuscript ! It was not that he knew or cared
anything about Shakspeare (or he would not have been
so imposed upon) ; he merely worshipped a name, as a
Catholic priest worships the shrine that contains some
favourite relic." I said the passages in Ireland's play
that were brought forward to prove the identity were
the very thing that proved the contrary ; for they were
obvious parodies of celebrated passages in Shakspeare,
such as that on death in ' Richard II.,' "And there the
antic sits," &c. Now, Shakspeare never parodied him-
self; but these learned critics were only struck with the
verbal coincidence, and never thought of the general
character or spirit of the writer. "Or without that,"
said Northcote, " who that attended to the common-sense
of the question would not perceive that Shakspeare was
a person who would be glad to dispose of his plays as
soon as he wrote them ? If it had been such a man as
Sir Philip Sidney, indeed, he might have written a play
at his leisure, and locked it up in some private drawer
at Penshurst, where it might have been found two hun-
dred years after; but Shakspeare had no opportunity to
leave such precious hoards behind him, nor place to
deposit them in. Tresham made me very mad one day
at Cosway's, by saying they had found a lock of his
hair and a mcture ; and Caleb Whitefoord, who ought
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 273
to have known better, asked ine if I did not think She-
ridan a judge, and that he believed in the authenticity
of the Ireland papers ! l I said, ' Do you bring him as
a fair witness ? He wants to fill his theatre, and would
write a play himself, and swear it was Shakspeare's.
He knows better than to cry stale fish.'"
I observed this was what made me dislike the conver-
sation of learned or literary men. I got nothing from
them but what I already knew, and hardly that ; they
poured the same ideas and phrases and cant of knowledge
out of books into my ears, as apothecaries' apprentices
made prescriptions out of the same bottles ; but there
were no new drugs or simples in their materia medico.
Go to a Scotch professor, and he bores you to death by an
eternal rhapsody about rent and taxes, gold and pape*
currency, population and capital, and the Teutonic
Races all which you have heard a thousand times
before ; go to a linendraper in the city, without educa-
tion, but with common-sense and shrewdness, and you
pick up something new, because nature is inexhaustible,
and he sees it from his own point of view, when not
cramped and hoodwinked by pedantic prejudices. A
person of this character said to me the other day, in
speaking of the morals of foreign nations : " It's all a
mistake to suppose there can be such a difference, sir ;
the world are and must be moral ; for when people grow
up and get married they teach their children to be
moral. No man wishes to have them turn out profligate."
I said I had never heard this before, and it seemed to me
to be putting society on new rollers. Northcote agreed
it was an excellent observation. I added, this self-
taught shrewdness had its weak sides too. The same
person was arguing that mankind remained much the
same, and always would do so. Cows and horses did not
1 Alluding to the stupid and clumsy forgeries of W. H. Ireland
the younger. ED.
T
274 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
change, and why then should men ? He had forgot that
cows and horses do not learn to read and write. " Ay,
that was very well too," said Northcote ; " I don't know
but I agree with him rather than with you. I was
thinking of the same thing the other day in looking over
an old magazine, in which there was a long debate on an
Act of Parliament to license gin-drinking. The effect
was quite droll. There was one person who made a
most eloquent speech to point out all the dreadful conse-
quences of allowing this practice. It would debauch
the morals, ruin the health, and dissolve all the bonds of
society, and leave a poor, puny, miserable Lilliputian
race, equally unfit for peace or war. You would suppose
that the world was going to be at an end. ' Why, no,' the
answer would have been ; ' the world will go on much the
same as before. You attribute too much power to an
Act of Parliament. Providence has not taken its measures
so ill as to leave it to an Act of Parliament to continue
or discontinue the species. If it depended on our wisdom
and contrivances whether it should last or not, it would
be at an end before twenty years.' People are wrong
about this ; some say the world is getting better, others
complain it is getting worse, when, in fact, it is just the
same, and neither better nor worse." What a lesson, I
said to myself, for our pragmatical legislators and idle
projectors !
I said I had lately been led to think of the little real
progress that was made by the human mind, and how the
same errors and vices revived under a different shape
at different periods, from observing just the same humour
in our ultra-reformers at present and in their prede-
cessors in the time of John Knox. Our modern wise-
acres were for banishing all the fine arts and finer
affections, whatever was pleasurable and ornamental,
from the commonwealth, on the score of utility, exactly
as the others did on the score of religion. The real
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 275
motive in either case was nothing but a sour, envious,
malignant disposition, incapable of enjoyment in itself,
and averse to every appearance or tendency to it in
others. Our peccant humours broke out and formed into
what Milton called " a crust of formality " on the surface ;
and while we fancied we were doing God or man good
service, we were only indulging our spleen, self-opinion,
and self-will according to the fashion of the day. The
existing race of freethinkers and sophists would be
mortified to find themselves the counterpart of the monks
and ascetics of old ; but so it was. The dislike of the
Westminster Reviewers to polite literature was only the
old exploded Puritanic objection to human learning.
Names and modes of opinion changed, but human nature
was much the same. " I know nothing of the persons
you speak of," said Northcote ; " but they must be fools
if they expect to get rid of the showy and superficial,
and let only the solid and useful remain. The surface
is a part of nature, and will always continue so. Be-
sides, how many useful inventions owe their existence to
ornamental contrivances ! If the ingenuity and industry
of man were not tasked to produce luxuries, we should
soon be without necessaries. We must go back to the
savage state. I myself am as little prejudiced in favour
of poetry as almost any one can be ; but surely there
are things in poetry that the world cannot afford to do
without. What is of absolute necessity is only a part ; and
the next question is, how to occupy the remainder of our
time and thoughts (not so employed) agreeably and
innocently. Works of fiction and poetry are of incal-
culable use in this respect. If people did not read the
Scotch novels they would not read Mr. Bentham's phi-
losophy. There is nothing to me more disagreeable than
the abstract idea of a Quaker, which falls under the same
article. They object to colours ; and why do they object
to colours ? Do we not see that Nature delights in
276 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
them ? Do we not see the same purpose of prodigal and
ostentatious display run through all her works ? Do we
not find the most beautiful and dazzling colours bestowed
on plants and flowers, on the plumage of birds, on fishes
and shells, even to the very bottom of the sea? All
this profusion of ornament, we may be sure, is not in
vain. To judge otherwise is to fly in the face of nature
and substitute an exclusive and intolerant spirit in the
place of philosophy, which includes the greatest variety
of man's wants and tastes, and makes all the favourable
allowances it can. The Quaker will not wear coloured
clothes, though he would not have a coat to his back if
men had never studied anything but the mortification of
their appetites and desires. But he takes care of his
personal convenience by wearing a piece of good broad-
cloth, and gratifies his vanity, not by finery, but by
having it of a different cut from everybody else, so
that he may seem better and wiser than they. Yet
this humour, too, is not without its advantages ; it serves
to correct the contrary absurdity. I look upon the
Quaker and the fop as two sentinels placed by nature
at the two extremes of vanity and selfishness, and to
guard, as it were, all the common-sense and virtue that
lie between." I observed that these contemptible nar-
row-minded prejudices made me feel irritable and impa-
tient. " You should not suffer that," said Northoote ;
" for then you will run into the contrary mistake, and
lay yourself open to your antagonist. The monks, for
instance, have been too hardly dealt with not that I
would defend many abuses and instances of oppression
in them ; but is it not as well to have bodies of men
shut up in cells and monasteries, as to let them loose to
make soldiers of them and to cut one another's throats ?
And out of that lazy ignorance and leisure what benefits
have not sprung ? It is to them we owe those beautiful
specimens of Gothic architecture which can never be
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 277
surpassed ; many of the discoveries in medicine and in
mechanics are also theirs; and I believe the restora-
tion of classical learning is owing to them. Not that I
would be understood to say that all or a great deal of
this could not have been done without them ; but their
leisure, their independence, and the want of some em-
ployment to exercise their mjnds, were the actual cause
of many advantages we now enjoy ; and what I mean is,
that Mature is satisfied with imperfect instruments.
Instead of snarling at everything that differs from us,
we had better take Shakspeare's advice, and try to find
' Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.' "
It was at this time that Mr. Xorthcote read to me the
following letter, addressed by him to a very young
lady, who earnestly desired him to write a letter to
her:
" MY DEAR Miss K ,
" What in the world can make you desire a letter from
me ? Indeed, if I was a fine dandy of one-and-twenty,
with a pair of stays properly padded, and also an iron
busk, and whiskers under my nose, with my hair stand-
ing upright on my head, all in the present fashion, then
it might be accounted for, as I might write you a fine
answer in poetry about cupids and burning hearts, and
sighs and angels and darts such a letter as Mr.
the poet might write. But it is long past the time for
me to sing love-songs under your window with a guitar,
and catch my death in some cold night, and so die in
your service.
" But what has a poor grey-headed old man of eighty
got to say to a blooming young lady of eighteen, but to
relate to her his illness and pains, and tell her that past life
is little better than a dream, and that he finds that all
he has been doing is only vanity ? Indeed, I may console
278 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
myself with the pleasure of having gained the flattering
attention of a young lady of such amiable qualities
as yourself, and have the honour to assure you, that
I am your grateful friend and most obliged humble
servant, JAMES NORTHCOTE."
" Argyll Place, 1826."
I said, the hardest lesson seemed to be to look beyond
ourselves. " Yes," said Korthcote ; " I remember, when
we were young and making remarks upon the neigh-
bours, an old maiden aunt of ours used to say, ' I wish
to God you could see yourselves !' And yet perhaps,
after all, this was not very desirable. Many people
pass their whole lives in a very comfortable dream, who,
if they could see themselves in the glass, would start
back with affright. I remember once being at the
Academy when Sir Joshua wished to propose a monu-
ment to Dr. Johnson in St. Paul's, and West got up
and said, that the King, he knew, was averse to anything
of the kind ; for he had been proposing a similar monu-
ment in Westminster Abbey for a man of the greatest
genius and celebrity one whose works were in all the
cabinets of the curious throughout Europe one whose
name they would all hear with the greatest respect ;
and then it came out, after a long preamble, that he
meant Woollett, who had engraved his ' Death of Wolfe.'
I was provoked, and I could not help exclaiming, ' My
God ! What! do you put him upon a footing with such a
man as Dr. Johnson one of the greatest philosophers
and moralists that ever lived ? We have thousands of
engravers at any time !' And there was such a burst of
laughter at this ! Dance, who was a grave gentlemanly
man, laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks; and
Farington used afterwards to say to me, ' Why don't
you speak in the Academy, and begin with My God !
as you do sometimes?' I said, I had seen in a certain
Mr. Northeote's Conversations. 279
painter something of this humour, who once very good-
naturedly showed me a Eubens he had, and observed,
with great noncltalance, ' What a pity that this man
wanted expression !' I imagined Eubens to have looked
round his gallery. Yet," he continued, "it is the
consciousness of defect, too, that often stimulates the
utmost exertions. If Pope had been a fine handsome
man, would he have left those masterpieces that he has ?
But he knew and felt his own deformity, and therefore
was determined to leave nothing undone to extend that
corner of power that he possessed. He said to himself,
They shall have no fault to find there. I have often
thought, when very good-looking young men have come
here intending to draw, ' What ! are you going to bury
yourselves in a garret ?' And it has generally happened
that they have given up the art before long, and married
or otherwise disposed of themselves." I had heard an
anecdote of Nelson, that, when appointed post-captain,
and on going to take possession of his ship at Yarmouth,
the crowd on the quay almost jostled him, and ex-
claimed, " What ! have they made that little insignificant
fellow a captain? He will do much, to be sure!" I
thought this might have urged him to dare as he did, in
order to get the better of their prejudices and his own
sense of mortification. " No doubt," said Northcote,
"personal defects or disgrace operate in this way. I
knew an admiral who had got the nickname of ' Dirty
Dick ' among the sailors, and on his being congratulated
on obtaining some desperate victory, all he said was, ' I
hope they'll call me Dirty Dick no more !' There was
a Sir Eichard Granville formerly, who was appointed
to convoy a fleet of merchant-ships, and had to defend
them against a Spanish man-of-war, and did so with the
utmost bravery and resolution, so that the convoy got
safe off; but after that, he would not yield till he was
struck senseless by a ball, and then the crew delivered
280 Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
tip the vessel to the enemy, who, on coming on board
and entering the cabin where he lay, were astonished to
find a mere puny shrivelled spider of a man, instead of
the Devil they had expected to see. He was taken on
shore in Spain, and died of his wounds there ; and the
Spanish women afterwards used to frighten their chil-
dren, by telling them ' Don John of the Greenfield was
coming
Conversation the Fifth.
NORTHCOTE mentioned the death of poor , who had
been with him a few days before, laughing and in great
spirits ; and the next thing he heard was that he had
put an end to himself. I asked if there was any
particular reason ? He said " No ;" that he had left a
note upon the table, saying that his friends had forsaken
him, that he knew no cause, and that he was tired of
life. His patron, Croker, of the Admiralty, had, it seems
set him to paint a picture of Louis the XVIII. receiving
the Order of the Gaiter. He had probably been teazed
about that. These insipid court-subjects were destined
to be fatal to artists. Poor Bird had been employed to
paint a picture of Louis the XVIII. landing at Calais, and
had died of chagrin and disappointment at his failure.
Who could make anything of such a figure and such a
subject ? There was nothing to be done ; and yet if the
artist added anything of his own he was called to order by
his would-be patrons, as falsifying what appeared to them
an important event in history. It was only a person
like Rubens who could succeed in such subjects, by
taking what licenses he thought proper, and having
authority enough to dictate to his advisers. A gentle-
man came in, who asked if was likely to have
succeeded in his art? Northcote answered, " There were
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 281
several things against it. "He was good-looking, good-
natured, and a wit. He was accordingly asked out to
dine, and caressed by those who knew him ; and a young
man, after receiving these flattering marks of attention,
and enjoying the height of luxury and splendour, was not
inclined to return to his painting-room, to brood over a
design that would cost him infinite trouble, and the
success of which was at least doubtful. Few young men
of agreeable persons or conversation turned out great
artists. It was easier to look in the glass than to make
a dull canvas shine like a lucid mirror ; and as to talking,
Sir Joshua used to say, a painter should sew up his mouth.
It was only the love of distinction that produced emi-
nence ; and if a man was admired for one thing, that
was enough. We only work out our way to excellence
by being imprisoned in defects. It requires a long
apprenticeship, great pains, and prodigious self-denial,
which no man will submit to, except from necessity, or
as the only chance he has of escaping from obscurity. I
remember when Mr. Lock (of Norbury Park) first came
over from Italy ; and old Dr. Moore, who had a high
opinion of him, was crying over his drawings, and asked
me if I did not think he would make a great painter.
I said, ' No, never !' ' Why not ?' ' Because he has six
thousand a year.' No one would throw away all the
advantages and indulgences this insured him, to shut him-
self up in a garret to pore over that which, after all, may
expose him to contempt and ridicule. Artists, to be sure,
have gone on painting after they have got rich, such as
Eubens and Titian, and indeed Sir Joshua ; but then it
had by this time become a habit and a source of pleasure,
instead of a toil to them, and the honours and distinction
they had acquired by it counterbalanced every other
consideration. Their love of the art had become greater
than their love of riches or of idleness. But at first this
is not the case, and the repugnance to labour is only
282 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
mastered by the absolute necessity for it. People apply
to study only when they cannot help it. No one was
ever known to succeed without this stimulus." I
ventured to say that, generally speaking, no one I
believed ever succeeded in a profession without great
application ; but that where there was a strong turn for
anything a man in this sense could not help himself,
and the application followed of course, and was in
fact comparatively easy. Northcote turned short round
upon me, and said : " Then you admit original genius ?
I cannot agree with you .there." I said: "Waiving
that, and not inquiring how the inclination comes, but
early in life a fondness, a passion, for a certain pursuit is
imbibed ; the mind is haunted by this object, it cannot
rest without it (any more than the body without food) ;
it becomes the strongest feeling we have, and then, I
think, the most intense application follows naturally,
just as in the case of a love of money or any other
passion ; the most unremitting application, without this,
is forced and of no use ; and where this original bias
exists no other motive is required." " Oh ! but," said
Northcote, " if you had to labour on by yourself without
competitors or admirers you would soon lay down your
pencil or your pen in disgust. It is the hope of shining,
or the fear of being eclipsed, that urges you on. Do you
think if nobody took any notice of what you did this
would not damp your ardour?" " Yes ; after I had done
anything that I thought worth notice it might, consider-
ably ; but how many minds (almost all the great ones)
were formed in secrecy and solitude, without knowing
whether they should ever make a figure or not ! All
they knew was, that they liked what they were about,
and gave their whole souls to it. There was Hogarth,
there was Correggio : what enabled these artists to
arrive at the perfection in their several ways which
afterwards gained them the attention of the world ? Not
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 283
the premature applause of the bystanders, but the vivid
tingling delight with which the one seized upon a gro-
tesque incident or expression ' the rapt soul sitting in
the eyes ' of the other, as he drew a saint or an angel from
the skies. If they had been brought forward very early,
before they had served this thorough apprenticeship to
their own minds (the opinion of the world apart), it might
have damped or made coxcombs of them. It was the
love and perception of excellence (or the favouring smile
of the Muse) that in my view produced excellence and
formed the man of genius. Some, like Milton, had gone
on with a great work all their lives with little encourage-
ment but the hope of posthumous fame." " It is not
that," said Xorthcote ; " you cannot see so far. It is not
those who have gone before you or those who are to
come after you, but those who are by your side running
the same race, that make you look about you. What
made Titian jealous of Tintoret? Because he stood
immediately in his way, and their works were compared
together. If there had been a hundred Tintorets a
thousand miles off, he would not have cared about them.
That is what takes off the edge and stimulus of exertion
in old age : those who were our competitors in early life,
whom we wished to excel or whose good opinion we
were most anxious about, are gone, and have left us in a
manner by ourselves, in a sort of new world, where we
know and are as little known as on entering a strange
country. Our ambition is cold with the ashes of those
whom we feared or loved. I remember old Alderman
Boydell using an expression which explained this. Once
when I was in the coach with him, in reply to some
compliment of mine on his success in life, he said, ' Ah !
there was one who would have been pleased at it ; but
her I have lost !' The fine coach and all the city
trappings were nothing to him without his wife, who
remembered what he was and the gradations and anxious
284 Mr. Northcote s Conversations.
cares by which he rose to his present affluence, and was
a kind of monitor to remind him of his former self and
of the different vicissitudes of his fortune."
Northcote then spoke of old Alderman Boydell with
great regret, and said : " He was a man of sense and
liberality, and a true patron of the art. His nephew, who
came after him, had not the same capacity, and wanted
to dictate to the artists what they were to do. North-
cote mentioned some instance of his wanting him to
paint a picture on a subject for which he was totally
unfit, and figures of a size which he had never been
accustomed to, and he told him he must get somebody
else to do it." I said : " Booksellers and editors had the
same infirmity, and always wanted you to express their
ideas, not your own. Sir Eichard Phillips had once
gone up to Coleridge, after hearing him talk in a large
party, and offered him ' nine guineas a sheet for his con-
versation.' He calculated that the ' nine guineas a sheet '
would be at least as strong a stimulus to his imagination
as the wasting his words in a room full of company."
Northcote : " Aye, he came to me once, and wished me
to do a work which was to contain a history of art in all
countries, and from the beginning of the world. I said
it would be an invaluable work, if it could be done, but
that there was no one alive who could do it."
Northcote afterwards, by some transition, spoke of the
characters of women, and asked my opinion. I said,
" All my metaphysics leaned to the vulgar side of these
questions ; I thought there was a difference of original
genius, a difference in the character of the sexes, &c.
Women appeared to me to do some things better than
men, and therefore I concluded they must do other things
worse." Northcote mentioned Annibal Caracci, and said :
" How odd it was that, in looking at any work of his,
you could swear it was done by a man ! Ludovico
Caracci had a finer and more intellectual expression,
Ifr. Northcotes Conversations. 285
but not the same bold and workmanlike character. There
was Michael Angelo again ; what woman would ever
have thought of painting the figures in the Sistine Chapel?
There was Dryden, too ; what a thorough manly cha-
racter there was in his style ! And Pope " [I interrupted,
"seemed to me between a man and a woman."] "It
was not," he continued, " that women were not often
very clever (cleverer than many men), but there was a
point of excellence which they never reached. Yet the
greatest pains had been taken with several. Angelica
Kauffman had been brought up from a child to the art,
and had been taken by her father (in boy's clothes)
to the Academy to learn to draw; but there was an
effeminate and feeble look in all her works, though not
without merit. There was not the man's hand, or what
Fuseli used to call ' a fist,' in them ; that is, something,
coar8e and clumsy enough, perhaps, but still with strength
and muscle. Even in common things, you would see a
carpenter drive a nail in a way that a woman never
would ; or if you had a suit of clothes made \)y a woman,
they would hang quite loose about you, and seem ready
to fall off. Yet it is extraordinary, too," said Northcote,
" that in what has sometimes been thought the peculiar
province of men courage and heroism there have been
women fully upon a par with any men, such as Joan of Arc
and many others, who have never been surpassed as
leaders in battle." I observed that of all the women I
had ever seen or known anything of, Mrs. Siddons struck
me as the grandest. He said, " Oh ! it is her outward
form which stamps her so completely for tragedy iio less
than the mental part. Both she and her brother were
cut out by Nature fur a tragedy king and queen. It is
what Mrs. Hannah More has said of her : ' Hers is the
afflicted !' " I replied that she seemed to me equally
great in anger or in contempt, or in any stately part, as
she was in grief; witness her Lady Macbeth. "Yes,"
286 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
he said ; " that, to be sure, was a masterpiece." I asked
what he thought of Mrs. Inchbald ? He said, " Oh ! very
highly ; there was no affectation in her. I once took up
her ' Simple Story ' (which my sister had borrowed from
the circulating library), and looking into it I said, ' My
God ! what have you got here ?' and I never moved from
the chair till I had finished it. Her ' Nature and Art '
is equally fine the very marrow of genius." She seems
to me, I added, like Venus writing books. " Yes, women
have certainly been successful in writing novels, and in
plays, too. I think Mrs. Centlivre's are better than Con-
greve's. Their letters, too, are admirable; it is only
when they put on the breeches, and try to write like
men, that they become pedantic and tiresome. In giving
advice, too, I have often found that they excelled ; and
when I have been irritated by any trifling circumstance,
and have laid more stress upon it than it was worth,
they have seen the thing in a right point of view and
tamed down my asperities." On this I remarked that 1
thought in general it might be said that the faculties of
women were of a passive character. They judged by the
simple effect upon their feelings without inquiring into
causes. Men had to act ; women had the coolness and
the advantages of bystanders, and were neither impli-
cated in the theories nor passions of men. While we
were proving a thing to be wrong, they would feel it to
be ridiculous. I said I thought they had more of
common-sense, though less of acquired capacity, than
men. They were freer from the absurdities of creeds and
dogmas, from the virulence of party in religion and
politics (by which we strove to show our sense and
superiority), nor were their heads so much filled with
the lumber of learned folios. I mentioned as an illustra-
tion, that when old Baxter (the celebrated casuist and
Nonconformist divine) first went to Kidderminster to
preach, he was almost pelted by the women for main-
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 287
taining from the pulpit the then fashionable and orthodox
doctrine that " hell was paved with infants' skulls."
The theory which the learned divine had piled up on
arguments and authorities is now exploded; the common-
sense feeling on the subject, which the women of that
day took up in opposition to it as a dictate of humanity,
would be now thought the philosophical one. " Yes,"
said Northcote, " but this exploded doctrine was knocked
down by some man, as it had been set up by one ; the
women would let things remain as they are without
making any progress in error or wisdom. We do best
together ; our strength and our weakness mutually correct
each other." Northcote then read me from a manu-
script volume lying by him a character drawn of his
deceased wife by a Dissenting minister (a Mr. Fox, of
Plymouth), which is so beautiful that I shall transcribe
it here :
" Written by Mr. John Fox on the death of his wife,
who was the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Isaac Gelling.
" My dear wife died, to my unspeakable grief, Dec.
19th, 1762. With the loss of my dear companion died
all the pleasure of my life. And no wonder ; I had lived
with her forty years, in which time nothing happened to
abate the strictness of our friendship or to create a cool-
ness or indifference, so common and even unregarded by
many in the world. I thank God I enjoyed my full
liberty, my health, such pleasures and diversions as I
liked, perfect peace and competence, during the time ;
which were all seasoned and heightened every day more
or less by constant marks of friendship, most inviolable
affection, and a most cheerful endeavour to make my life
agreeable. Nothing disturbed me but her many and
constant disorders, under all which I could see how her
faithful heart was strongly attached to me. And who
could stand the shock of seeing the attacks of death upon
her, and then her final dissolution ? The consequences to
288 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
me were fatal. Old age rushed upon me like an armed
man : my appetite failed, my strength was gone, every
amusement became flat and dull ; my countenance fell,
and I have nothing to do but to drag on a heavy chain
for the rest of my life, which I hope a good God will
enable me to do without murmuring, and, in conclusion,
to say with all my soul
"TE DEUM LAUDAMUS!"
This was written on a paper blotted by tears, and
stuck with, wafers into the first page of the family
Bible.
Mr. John Fox died 22nd of October, 1763; he waa
born May 10th, 1693.
Conversation the Sixth.
NORTHCOTE alluded to a printed story of his having hung
an early picture of Haydon's out of sight, and of Fuseli's
observing on the occasion, " By G d, you are sending
him to heaven before his time !" He said there was not
the least foundation for this story ; nor could there be,
he not having been hanger that year. He read out of the
same publication a letter from Burke to a young artist
of the name of Barrow, full of excellent sense, advising
him by no means to give up his profession as an engraver
till he was sure he could succeed as a painter, out of idle
ambition and an unfounded contempt for the humbler and
more laborious walks of life. "I could not have thought
it of him," said Northcote ; " I confess he never appeared
to me so great a man." I asked what kind of looking
man he was ? Northcote answered, " You have seen the
picture ? There was something I did not like a thin-
ness in the features and an expression of hauteur, though
mixed with condescension and the manners of a gentle-
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 289
man. I can't help thinking he had a hand in the ' Dis-
courses ' that he gave some of the fine graceful turns;
for Sir Joshua paid a greater deference to him than to
anybody else, and put up with freedoms that he would
only have submitted to from some peculiar obligation.
Indeed Miss Eeynjlds used to complain that, whenever
any of Burke's pour Irish relations came over, they were
all poured in upon them to dinner ; but Sir Joshua never
took any notice, but bore it all with the greatest patience
and tranquillity. To be sure there was another reason :
he expected Burke to write his Life, and for this he
would have paid almost any price. This was what
made him submit to the intrusions of Boswell, to the
insipidity of Malone, and to the magisterial dictation of
Burke ; he made sure that out of these three one would
certainly write his Life, and insure him immortality that
way. He thought no more of the person who actually
did write it afterwards than he would have suspected
his dog of writing it. Indeed, I wish he could have
known ; for it would have been of some advantage to me,
and he might have left me something not to dwell on his
defects though he \vas as free from them as any man ;
but you can make any one ridiculous with whom you live
on terms of intimacy.
" I remember an instance of this that happened with
respect to old Mr. Mudge, whom you must have heard
me speak of, and who was esteemed an idol by Burke,
Dr. Johnson, and many others. Sir Joshua wanted to
reprint his sermons and prefix a life to them, and asked
me to get together any particulars I could learn of him.
So I gave him a manuscript account of Mr. Mudge,
written by an old schoolfellow of his (Mr. Fox, a
Dissenting minister in the West of England) ; after
which I heard no more of the Life. Mr. Mudge was in
fact a man of extraordinary talents and great eloquence ;
and by representing in a manner the High Church
u
290 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
notions both of Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua (for both
were inclined the same way), they came to consider him
as a sort of miracle of virtue and wisdom. There was,
however, something in Mr. Fox's plain account that
would strike Sir Joshua, for he had an eye for nature ;
and he would at once perceive it was nearer the truth
than Dr. Johnson's pompous character of him, which
was proper only for a tombstone ; it was like one of
Kneller's portraits it would do for anybody. That,"
said Northcote, " is old Mr. Mudge's definition of beauty,
which Sir Joshua has adopted in the ' Discourses ' that
it is the medium of form. For what is a handsome nose ?
A long nose is not a handsome nose neither is a short
nose a handsome one : it must then be one that is neither
long nor short, but in the middle between both. Even
Burke bowed to his authority, and Sir Joshua thought
him the wisest man he ever knew. Once when Sir
Joshua was expressing his impatience of some innovation,
and I said, ' At that rate, the Christian religion could
never have been established :' ' Oh !' he said, ' Mr. Mudge
has answered that' which seemed to satisfy him."
I made some remark, that I wondered he did not come
up to London, though the same feeling seemed to belong
to other clever men born in Devonshire (as Gandy),
whose ambition was confined to their native county, so
that there must be some charm in the place. " You are
to consider," he replied, " it is almost a peninsula, so
that there is no thoroughfare, and people are therefore
more stationary in one spot. It is for this reason they
necessarily intermarry among themselves, and you can
trace the genealogies of families for centuries back ;
whereas in other places, and particularly here in London,
where everything of that kind is jumbled together, you
never know who any man's grandfather was. There are
country squires and plain gentry down in that part of
the world who have occupied the same estates long
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 291
before the Conquest (as the Suckbitches in particular
not a very sounding name), and who look down upon the
Courtenays and others as upstarts. Certainly Devonshire,
for its extent, has produced a number of eminent men
Sir Joshua, the Mudges, Dunning, Gay, Lord Chancellor
King, Raleigh, Drake, and Sir Richard Granville in
Queen Elizabeth's time, who made that gallant defence
iu an engagement with the Spanish fleet, and was the
ancestor of Pope's Lord Lansdowne, ' AY hat Muse for
Granville will refuse to sing ?' &c. Foster, the celebrated
preacher, was also, I believe, from the West of England.
He first became popular from the Lord Chancellor
Hardwicke stopping in the porch of his chapel in the
Old Jewry out of a shower of rain ; and thinking ho
might as well hear what was going on he went in, and
was so well pleased that he sent all the great folks to
hear him, and he was run after as much as Irving has
been iu our time. An old fellow-student from th^
country, going to wait on him at his house in London,
found a Shakspeare on the window-seat ; and remarking
the circumstance with some surprise, as out of the usual
course of clerical studies, the other apologised by saying
that he wished to know something of the world, that his
situation and habits precluded him from the common
opportunities, and that he found no way of supplying
the deficiency so agreeable or effectual as looking into
a volume of Shakspeare. Pope has immortalised him in
the well-known lines :
' Let modest Foster, if he will, excel
Ten Metropolitans in preaching well.'
Dr. Mudge, the son of Mr. Zachary Mudge, who was a
physician, was an intimate friend of my father's, and I
remember him perfectly well. He was one of the most
delightful persons I ever knew. Every one was en-
chanted with his society. It was not wit that he
292 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
possessed, but such perfect cheerfulness and good-
humour that it was like health coming into the room.
He was a most agreeable companion, quite natural and
unaffected. His reading was the most beautiful I have
ever heard. I remember his once reading Moore's fable
of the ' Female Seducers ' with such feeling and sweetness
that every one was delighted, and Dr. Mudge himself was
so much affected that he burst into tears in the middle
of it. The family are still respectable, but derive their
chief lustre from the first two founders, like clouds that
reflect the sun's rays after he has sunk below the horizon,
but in time turn grey and are lost in obscurity !"
I asked Northcote if he had ever happened to meet
with a letter of Warburton's in answer to one of Dr.
Doddridge's, complimenting the author of the ' Divine
Legation of Moses ' on the evident zeal and earnestness
with which he wrote ; to which the latter candidly
replied, that he wrote with great haste and unwilling-
ness, that he never sat down to compose till the printer's
boy was waiting at the door for the manuscript, and
that he should never write at all but as a relief to a
morbid lowness of spirits, and to drive away uneasy
thoughts that often assailed him. 1 " That indeed,"
observed Northcote, " gives a different turn to the
.statement ; I thought at first it was only the common
coquetry both of authors and artists, to be supposed to
do what excites the admiration of others with the great-
est ease and indifference, and almost without knowing
what they are about. If what surprises you costs them
nothing, the wonder is so much increased. When
Michael Angelo proposed to fortify his native city,
Florence, and he was desired to keep to his painting and
sculpture, he answered that those were his recreations,
but what he really understood was architecture. That
1 This very interesting letter will be found in the 'Elegant
Epistles.'
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 293
is what Sir Joshua considers as the praise of Eubens
that he seemed to make a plaything of the art. In fact,
the work is never complete unless it has this appear-
ance; and therefore Sir Joshua has laid himself open to
criticism in saying that ' a picture must not only be
done well, it must seem to have been done easily.' It
cannot be said to be done well, unless it has this look.
That is the fault of those laboured and timid productions
of the modern French and Italian schools ; they are the
result of such a tedious, petty, mechanical process, that
it is as difficult fur you to admire as it has been for the
artist to execute them. Whereas, when a work seems
stamped on the canvas by a blow, you are taken by
surprise, and your admiration is as instantaneous and
electrical as the impulse of genius which has caused it.
I have seen a whole-length portrait by Velasquez, that
seemed done while the colours were yet wet; everything
was touched in, as it were, by a wish ; there was such u
power that it thrilled through your whole frame, and you
felt as if you could take up the brush and do anything.
It is this sense of power and freedom which delights and
communicates its own inspiration, just as the opposite,
drudgery and attention to details, is painful and dis-
heartening. There was a little picture of one of the
Infants of Spain on horseback, also by Velasquez, which
Mr. Agar had, 1 and with which Gainsborough was so
transported that he said in a fit of bravado to the servant
who showed it, " Tell your master I will give him a
thousand pounds for that picture." Mr. Agar began to
consider what pictures he could purchase with the money,
if he parted with this ; and at last, having made up his
mind, sent Gainsborough word he might have the pic-
ture who, not at all expecting this result, was a good
deal confused, and declared, however he might admire
it, he could not afford to give so large a sum for it."
1 Now at the Dulwich Gallery.
294 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
Conversation the Seventh.
NORTHCOTE complained of being unwell, though he said
he could hardly expect to be otherwise at his age. He
must think of making up the accounts of his life, such
as it had been, though he added (checking himself) that
he ought not to say that, for he had had his share of good
as well as others. He had been reading in Boccaccio,
where it was frequently observed that " such a one
departed this wretched life at such a time ;" so that in
Boccaccio's time they complained of the wretchedness of
life as much as we do. He alluded to ail expression of
Coleridge's, which he had seen quoted in a newspaper,
and which he thought very fine, " That an old Gothic
cathedral always seemed to him like a petrified reli-
gion !" Some one asked, " Why does he not go and turn
Black Monk ?" " Because," I said, " he never does any-
thing that he should do." " There are some things,"
said Northcote, " with respect to which I am in the same
state that a blind man is as to colours. Homer is one of
these. I am utterly in the dark about it ; I can make no-
thing of his heroes or his gods. Whether this is owing
to my not knowing the language, or to a change of man-
ners, I cannot say." He was here interrupted by the
entrance of the beautiful Mrs. Gunning beautiful even
in years. She said she had brought him a book to look
at. She could not stop, for she had a lady waiting for
her below, but she would call in some morning and have
a long chat. After she was gone I remarked how hand-
some she still was ; and he said, " I don't know why she
is so kind as to come, except that I am the last link in
the chain that connects her with all those she most
esteemed when she was young Johnson, Eeynolds,
Goldsmith and remind her of the most delightful
period of her life." I said, " Not only so, but you
Mr. Northcote s Conversations. 295
remember what she was at twenty ; and you thus bring
back to her the triumphs of her youth that pride of
beauty which must be the more fondly cherished as it
has no external vouchers, and lives chiefly in the bosom
of its once lovely possessor. In her, however, the graces
had triumphed over time; she was one of Ninon de
1'Enclos' people, of the list of the immortals. I could
almost fancy the shade of Goldsmith in the room, look-
ing round with complacency." "Yes," said Northcote,
" that is what Sir Joshua used to mention as the severest
test of beauty it was not then skin deep only. She had
gone through all the stages, and had lent a grace to each.
There are beauties that are old in a year. Take away
the bloom and freshness of youth, and there is no trace
of what they were. Their beauty is not grounded on
first principles. Good temper is one of the great pre-
servers of the features." I observed, it was the same in
the mind as in the body. There were persons of pre-
mature ability who soon ran to seed, and others who
made no figure till they were advanced in life. I had
known several who were very clever at seventeen or
eighteen, but who had turned out nothing afterwards.
" That is what my father used to say that at that time
of life the effervescence and intoxication of youth did a
great deal, but that we must wait till the gaiety and
dance of the animal spirits had subsided to see what
people really were. It is wonderful " (said Northcote,
reverting to the former subject) "what a charm there is
in those early associations, in whatever recalls that first
dawn and outset of life. ' Jack the Giant-killer ' is the
first book I ever read, and I cannot describe the pleasure
it gives me even now. I cannot look into it without
my eyes filling with tears. I do not know what it is
(whether good or bad), but it is to me, from early im-
pression, the most heroic of performances. I remember
once not having money to buy it, and I transcribed it
296 Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
all out with my own hand. This is what I was going to
say about Homer. I cannot help thinking that one cause
of the high admiration in which it is held is its being
the first book that is put into the hands of young people
at school : it is the first spell which opens to them the
enchantments of the unreal world. Bad I been bred a
scholar, I dare say Homer would have been my ' Jack
the Giant-killer !' There is an innocence and simplicity
in that early age which makes everything relating to it
delightful. It seems to me that it is the absence of all
affectation, or even of consciousness, that constitutes the
perfection of nature or art. That is what makes it so
interesting to see girls and boys dancing at school ; there
is such natural gaiety and freedom, such unaffected, un-
pretending, unknown grace. That is the true dancing,
and not what you see at the Opera. And again, in
the most ordinary actions of children, what an ease,
what a playfulness, what flames of beauty do they throw
out, without being in the smallest degree aware of it !
I have sometimes thought it a pity there should be sucli
a precious essence, and that those who possess it should
be quite ignorant of it ; yet if they knew it, that alone
would kill it. The whole depends on the utter absence
of all egotism, of the remotest reflection upon self. It
is the same in works of art the simplest are the best.
That is what makes me hate those stuffed characters that
are so full of themselves that I think they cannot have
much else in them. A man who admires himself pre-
vents me from admiring him, just as by praising himself
he stops my mouth ; though the vulgar take their cue
from a man's opinion of himself, and admire none but
coxcombs and pedants. This is the best excuse for im-
pudenoe and quackery, that the world will not be gained
without it. The true favourites of nature, however,
have their eyes turned towards the goddess, instead of
looking at themselves in the glass. There is no pre-
Mr. Northcote s Conversations. 297
tence or assumption about them. It seems difficult
indeed for any one who is the object of attention to
others not to be thinking of himself ; but the greatest
men have always been the most free from this bias, the
weakest have been the soonest puffed up by self-conceit.
If you had asked Correggio why he painted as he did,
he would have answered, ' Because he could not help it.'
Look at Dryden's verses, which he wrote just like a
schoolboy, who brings up his task, without knowing
whether he shall be rewarded or flogged for it. Do you
suppose he wrote the description of Cymon for any other
reason than because he could not help it, or that he had
any more power to stop himself in his headlong career
than the mountain torrent? Or turn to Shakspearo, who'
evidently does not know the value, the dreadful value
(as I may say), of the expressions he uses. Genius
gathers up its beauties, like the child, without knowing
whether they are weeds or flowers : those productions
that are destined to give forth an everlasting odour
grow up without labour or design."
Mr. Patmore came in, and complimenting Xorthcote on
a large picture he was about, the latter said, " It was his
last great work" he was getting too old for such exten-
sive undertakings. His friend replied that Titian went on
painting till near a hundred. " Aye," said Northcote, " but
he had the devil to help him, and I have never been able
to retain him in my service. It is a dreadful thing to see
an immense black canvas spread out before you to commit
sins upon." Something was said of the Academy, and Pat-
more made answer, " I know your admiration for corporate
bodies." Northcote said, " They were no worse than
others ; all began well and ended ill. When the Academy
first began one would suppose that the members were so
many angels sent from heaven to fill the different situa-
tions, and that was the reason why it began; now the
difficulty was to find anybody fit for them, and the defi-
298 Mr. Northcofes Conversations.
ciency was supplied by interest, intrigue, and cabal.
Not that I object to the individuals neither. As Swift
said, "I like Jack, Tom, and Harry very well by them-
selves; but all together they are not to be endured.
We see the effect of people acting in concert in animals
(for men are only a more vicious sort of animals) : a
single dog will let you kick and cuff him as you please,
and will submit to any treatment ; but if you. meet
a pack of hounds, they will set upon you and tear you to
pieces with the greatest impudence." Patmore : " The
same complaint was made of the Academy in Barry's
time, which is now thirty or forty years ago." 1 North-
cote : " Oh yes, they very soon degenerated. It is the
same in all human institutions. The thing is, there has
been no way found yet to keep the devil out. It will
be a curious thing to see whether that experiment of the
American Government will last. If it does, it will be
the first instance of the kind." Patmore : " I should
think not. There is something very complicated and
mysterious in the mode of their elections, which I am
given to understand are managed in an underhand
manner by the leaders of parties. And besides, in all
governments the great desideratum is to combine activity
with a freedom from selfish passions. But it unfortu-
nately happens that in human life the selfish passions
are the strongest and most active ; and on this rock
society seems to split. There is a certain period in a
man's life when he is at his best (when he combines the
activity of youth with the experience of manhood), after
which he declines ; and perhaps it may be the same with
States. Things are not best at the beginning or at the
end, but in the middle, which is but a point." North-
cote : " Nothing stands still ; it therefore either grows
better or worse. When a thing has reached its utmost
1 Barry's letter to the Dilettanti Society, enumerating his
grievances, was published in 1798.
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 299
perfection, it then borders on excess ; and excess leads to
ruin and decay."
Lord Grosvenor had bought a picture of Northcote's.
An allusion was made to his enormous and increasing
wealth. Northcote said he could be little the better for
it. After a certain point it became a mere nominal
distinction. He only thought of that which passed
through his hands and fell under his immediate notice.
He knew no more of the rest than you or I did ; he was
merely perplexed by it. This was what often made
persons in his situation tenacious of the most trifling
sums, for this was the only positive or tangible wealth
the) r had : the remote contingency was like a thing in
the clouds, or mountains of silver and gold seen in the
distant horizon. It was the same with Nollekens ; he
died worth 200,000 ; but the money he had accumulated
at his bankers was out of his reach and contemplation
out of sight, out of mind ; he was only muddling about
with what he had in his hands, and lived like a beggar,
in actual fear of want. Patmore said he was an odd little
man, but, he believed, clever in his profession. North-
cote assented, and observed : " He was an instance of
what might be done by concentrating the attention on a
single object. If you collect the rays of the sun in a focus,
you could set any object on fire. Great talents were often
dissipated to no purpose, but time and patience conquered
everything. Without them, you could do nothing. So
Giardini, when asked how long it would take to learn to
play on the fiddle, answered, ' Twelve hours a day for
twenty years together.' A few great geniuses may trifle
with the arts, like Kubens ; but in general nothing can
be more fatal than to suppose one's self a great genius."
Fatmore observed, that in common business those who
gave up their whole time and thoughts to any pursuit
generally succeeded in it, though far from bright men ;
and we often found those who had acquired a name for
300 Mr. Northcote s Conversations.
some one excellence people of moderate capacity in other
respects. After Mr. Patmore was gone, Northcote said
he was one of the persons of the soundest judgment he
had ever known, and like Mr. Prince Hoare, the least
liable to be imposed upon by appearances. Northcote
made the remark that he thought it improper in any one
to refuse lending a favourite picture for public exhibition,
as it seemed not exclusively to belong to one person. " A
jewel of this value belongs rather to the public than to
the individual. Consider the multitudes you deprive of
an advantage they cannot receive again the idle of
amusement, the studious of instruction and improve-
ment." I said, this kind of indifference to the wishes
of the public was sending the world to Coventry. We then
spoke of a celebrated courtier, of whom I said I was
willing to believe everything that was amiable, though
I had some difficulty, while thinking of him, to keep the
valet out of my head. Northcote : " He has certainly
endeavoured to behave well ; but there is no altering
character. I myself might have been a courtier if I could
have cringed and held my tongue ; but I could no more
exist in that element than a fish out of water. At one
time I knew Lord R and Lord H. S , x who were
intimate with the Prince, and recommended my pictures
to him. Sir Joshua once asked me, ' What do you know
of the Prince of Wales, that he so often speaks to me
about you?' I remember I made him laugh by my
answer, for I said, ' Oh, he knows nothing of me, nor I
of him it's only his bragging f ' Well,' said he, ' that is
spoken like a king !' ". . . .It was to-day I asked leave
to write down one or two of these Conversations. He
said I might, if I thought it worth while, " but I do
assure you that you overrate them. You have not lived
enough in society to be a judge. What is new to you
you think will seem so to others. To be sure there is
1 Query, Lord Henry Seymour ? ED.
Mr. Northcoies Conversations. 301
one thing : I have had the advantage of having lived in
good society myself. I not only passed a great deal of
my youuger days in the company of Eeynolds, Johnson,
and that circle, but I was brought up among the Aludges,
of whom Sir Joshua (who was certainly used to the
most brilliant society of the metropolis) thought so
highly that he had them at his house for weeks, and
even sometimes gave up his own bedroom to receive
them. Yet they were not thought superior to several
other persons at Plymouth, who were distinguished,
some for their satirical wit, others for their delightful
fancy, others for their information or sound sense, and
with all of whom my father was familiar when I was a
boy. lieally, afier what I recollect of these, some of the
present people appear to me mere wretched pretenders,
muttering out their own emptiness." I said, we had a
specimen of Lord Byron's ' Conversations.' Northcote :
' Yes ; but he was a tyrant, and a person of that
disposition never learns anything, because he will only
associate with inferiors. If, however, you think you can
make anything of it, and can keep clear of personalities, I
have no objection to your trying ; only I think, after the
first attempt, you will give it up, as turning out quite
differently from what you expected."
Conversation the Eighth.
NORTHCOTE spoke again of Sir Josshua, and said he was in
some degree ignorant of what might be called the gram-
matical part of the art, or scholarship of academic skill ;
but he made up for it by an eye for nature, or rather by a
feeling of harmony and beauty. Dance (he that was after-
wards Sir Nathaniel Holland) drew the figure well, gave a
strong likeness and a certain studied air to his portraits ;
yet they were so stiff and forced that they seemed as if
put into a vice. Sir Joshua, with the defect of proportion
302 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
and drawing, threw his figures into such natural and
graceful attitudes that they might be taken for the very
people sitting or standing there. An arm might be too
long or too short, but from the apparent ease of the
position he had chosen it looked like a real arm, and
neither too long nor too short. The mechanical measure-
ments might be wrong, the general conception of nature
and character was right ; and this, which he felt most
strongly himself, he conveyed in a corresponding degree
to the spectator. .Nature is not one thing, but a variety
of things, considered under different points of view ; and
he who seizes forcibly and happily on any one of these
does enough for fame. He will be the most popular
artist who gives that view with which the world in
general sympathise. A merely professional reputation is
not very extensive, nor will it last long. W , who
prided himself on his drawing, had no idea of anything but
a certain rigid outline, never considering the use of the
limbs in moving, the effects of light and shade, &c., so
that his figures, even the best of them, look as if cut out
of wood. Therefore no one now goes to see them ; while
Sir Joshua's are as much sought after as ever, from their
answering to a feeling in the mind, though deficient as
literal representations of external nature. Speaking of
artists, who were said, in the cant of connoisseurship, to
be jealous of their outline, he said, " Rembrandt was not
one of these. He took good care to lose it as fast as he
could." Northcote then spoke of the breadth of Titian,
and observed that though, particularly in his early
pictures, he had finished highly and copied everything
from nature, this never interfered with the general effect ;
there was no confusion or littleness ; he threw such a
broad light on the objects, that everything was seen in
connection with the masses and in its place. He then
mentioned some pictures of his own, some of them
painted forty years ago, that had lately sold very well at
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 303
a sale at Plymouth ; he was much gratified at this, and
said it was almost like looking out of the grave to see
how one's reputation got on.
Xortheote told an anecdote of Sir George Beaumont,
to show the credulity of mankind, ^'hen a young man
he put an advertisement in the papers, to say that a
Mynheer , just come over from Germany, had found
out a method of taking a likeness much superior to any
other by the person's looking into a mirror and having
the glass heated so as to bake the impression. He stated
this wonderful artist to live at a perfumer's shop in Bond
Street, opposite to an hotel where he lodged, and amused
himself the next day to see the numbers of people who
flocked to have their likenesses taken in this surprising
manner. At last he went over himself to ask for
Monsieur , and was driven out of the shop by the
perfumer in a rage, who said there was no Monsieur
nor Monsieur Devil lived there. At another time Sir
George was going in a coach to a tavern with a party
of gay young men. The waiter came to the coach-
door with a light, and as he was holding this up to the
others, those who had already got out went round, and
getting in at the opposite coach-door came out again, so
that there seemed to be no end to the procession, and
the waiter ran into the house, frightened out of his wits.
The same story is told of Swift and four clergymen
dressed in canonicals.
Speaking of titles, Northcote said : "It was strange
what blunders were often made in this way. Eiall,
(the engraver) had stuck ' Lord John Boringdon ' under
his print after Sir Joshua it should be ' John Lord
Boringdon' and he calls the Earl of Carlisle 'Lord
Carlisle ' Lord Carlisle denotes only a baron. I was
once dining at Sir John Leicester's, and a gentleman
who was there was expressing his wonder what con-
nection a Prince of Denmark and a Duke of Gloucester
304 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
could have with Queen Anne, that prints of them should
be inserted in a history that he had just purchased of her
reign. ' No other,' 1 said, ' than that one of them was her
son, and the other her husband.' The boy died when he
was eleven years old, of a fever caught at a ball,
dancing, or he would have succeeded to the throne. He
was a very promising youth, though that indeed is what
is said of all princes. Queen Anne took his death greatly
to heart, and that was the reason why she never would
appoint a successor. She wished her brother to come in,
rather than the present family. That makes me wonder,
after thrones have been overturned and kingdoms torn
asunder to keep the Catholics out, to see the pains that are
now taken to bring them in. It was this that made the
late King say it was inconsistent with his coronation
oath. Not that I object to tolerate any religion (even the
Jewish), but they are the only one that will not tolerate
any other. They are such devils (what with their cun-
ning, their numbers, and their zeal), that if they once get
a footing they will never rest till they get the whole
power into their hands. It was but the other day that
the Jesuits nearly overturned the empire of China ; and if
they were obliged to make laws and take the utmost
precautions against their crafty encroachments, shall we
open a door to them, who have only just escaped out of
their hands ?" I said I had thrown a radical reformer
into a violent passion lately by maintaining that the
Pope and cardinals of Home were a set of as good-looking
men as so many Protestant bishops or Methodist parsons,
and that the Italians were the only people who seemed
to me to have any faith in their religion as an object of
imagination or feeling. My opponent grew almost black
in the face, while inveighing against the enormous
absurdity of transubstantiation ; it was in vain I pleaded
the beauty, innocence, and cheerfulness of the peasant-
girls near Eome, who believed in this dreadful supersti-
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 305
tion, and who thought me damned, and would probably
have been glad to see me burnt at a stake as a heretic.
At length I said, that I thought reason and truth very
excellent, things in themselves, and that when I saw the
rest of the world grow as fond of them as they were of
absurdity and superstition, I should be entirely of his
way of thinking ; but I liked an interest in something
(a wafer or a crucifix) better than an interest in nothing.
What have philosophers gained by unloosing their hold
of the ideal world, but to be hooted at and pelted by the
rabble, and envied and vilified by one another, for want of
a common bond of union and interest between them ? I
just now met the son of an old literary friend in the street,
who seemed disposed to cut me for some hereditary pique,
jealousy, or mistrust. Suppose his father and I had been
Catholic priests (saving the bar sinister), how different
would have been my reception ! He is shortsighted,
indeed ; but had I been a cardinal he would have seen
me fast enough ; the costume alone would have assisted
him. Where there is no framework of respectability
founded on the esprit de corps and on public opinion
cemented into a prejudice, the jarring pretensions of
individuals fall into a chaos of elementary particles,
neutralising each other by mutual antipathy, and soon
become the sport and laughter of the multitude. Where
the whole is referred to intrinsic real merit, this creates
a standard of conceit, egotism, and envy in every one's
own mind, lowering the class, not raising the indi-
vidual. A Catholic priest walking along the street is
looked up to as a link in the chain let down from heaven :
a poet or philosopher is looked down upon as a poor
creature, deprived of certain advantages, and with very
questionable pretensions in other respects. Abstract
intellect requires the weight of the other world to be
thrown into the scale, to make it a match for the
prejudices, vulgarity, ignorance, and selfishness of this.
x
306 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
" You are right," said Northcote. " It was Archimedes
who said be could move the earth if he had a place to
fix his levers on : the priests have always found this
purchase in the skies. After all, we have not much
reason to complain, if they give us so splendid a reversion
to look forward to. That is what I said to Godwin when
he had been trying to unsettle the opinions of a young
artist whom I knew : ' Why should you wish to turn him
out of one house till you have provided another for
him ? Besides, what do you know of the matter more
than he does ? His nonsense is as good as your nonsense,
when both are equally in the dark. As to what your
friend said of the follies of the Catholics, I do not think
that the Protestants can pretend to be quite free from
them.' So when a chaplain of Lord Bath's was teazing a
Popit-h clergyman to know how he could make up his
mind to admit that absurdity of Tra.nsubstantiation, the
other made answer, ' Why, I'll tell you : when I was
young I was taught to swallow Adam's apple, and
since that I have found no difficulty with anything else.'
We may say what we will of the Catholic religion ; but
it is more easy to abuse than to overturn it. I have
for myself no objection to it but its insatiable ambition
and its being such a dreadful engine of power. It is its
very perfection as a system of profound policy and
moral influence that renders it so formidable. Indeed,
I have been sometimes suspected of leaning to it myself ;
and when Godwin wrote his ' Life of Chaucer,' he was
said to have turned Papist from his making use of some-
thing I had said to him about confession. I don't know
but unfair advantage may be taken of it for state
purposes ; but I cannot help thinking it is of signal
benefit in the regulation of private life. If servants have
cheated or lied or done anything wrong, they are obliged
to tell it to the priest, which makes them bear it in mind,
and then a certain penance is assigned which they must
Mr. Norihcote's Conversations. 307
go through, though they do not like it. All this acts as
a timely check, which is better than letting them go on
till their vices get head, and then hanging them. The
great, indeed, may buy themselves off (as where are they
not privileged ?) but this certainly does not apply to the
community at large. I remember our saying to that old
man (a Dominican friar whose picture you see there)
that we wished he could be made a royal confessor ; to
which he replied, that he would not for the world be
confessor to a king, because it would prevent him from
the conscientious discharge of his duty. In former times,
in truth, the traffic in indulgences was carried to great
lengths ; and this it was that broke up the system and
gave a handle to the Protestants. The excellence of the
scheme produced the power, and then the power led to
the abuse of it. Infidel Popes went the farthest in
extending the privileges of the Church ; and being held
back by no scruples of faith or conscience nearly ruined
it. When some pious ecclesiastic was insisting to Leo X.
on the necessity of reforming certain scandalous abuses,
he pointed to a crucifix, and said, ' Behold the fate of a
reformer ! The system as it is is good enough for us !'
They have taken the morality of the Gospel and engrafted
upon it a system of superstition and priestcraft ; but still
perhaps the former prevails over the latter. Even that
duty of humanity to animals is beautifully provided for,
for on St. Anthony's Day, the patron of animals, the
horses, &c. pass under a certain arch, and the priest
sprinkles the holy water over them, so that they are
virtually taken under the protection of the Church. We
think we have a right to treat them anyhow because
they have no souls. The Roman Catholic is not a
barbarous religion, and it is also much milder than it
was. This is a necessary consequence of the state of
things. When three Englishmen were presented to
Benedict XIV. (Lambertini), who was a man of wit and
308 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
letters, he observed to them, smiling, ' I know that you
must look upon our religion as false and spurious, but I
suppose you will have no objection to receive the blessing
of an old man ?' When Fuseli and I were there, an
Englishman of the name of Brown had taken the pains
to convert a Roman artist ; the Englishman was sent
from Eome and the student was taken to the Inquisition,
where he was shown the hooks in the wall and the
instruments of torture used in former times, reprimanded,
and soon after dismissed." I asked Northcote where-
abouts the Inquisition was ? He said, " In a street
behind the Vatican." He and Mr. Prince Hoare once took
shelter in the portico out of a violent shower of rain, and
considered it a great piece of inhumanity to be turned
out into the street. He then noticed a curious mistake
in Mrs. Badcliffe's ' Italian,' where some one is brought
from Naples to the Inquisition, and made to enter Eome
through the Porto di Popolo, and then the other streets
on the English side of Eome are described with great
formality ; which is as if any one was described as coming
by the coach from Exeter, and after entering at White-
chapel, proceeding through Cheapside and the Strand to
Charing Cross. Northcote related a story told him by
Nollekens of a singular instance of the effects of passion
that he saw in the Trastevere, the oldest and most
disorderly part of Eome. 1 Two women were quarrelling,
when, having used the most opprobrious language, one of
them drew a knife from her bosom and tried to plunge
it into her rival's breast ; but missing her blow, and the
other retiring to a short distance and laughing at her, in
a fit of impotent rage she struck it into her own bosom.
Her passion had been worked up to an uncontrollable
pitch, and being disappointed of its first object must find
vent somewhere. I remarked it was what we did every
1 These people are said to be the real descendants of the ancient
Romans.
Mr. Northcote s Conversations. 309
day of our lives in a less degree, according to the vulgar
proverb of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
Northcote then returned to the subject of the sale of
his pictures. He said it was a satisfaction, though a
melancholy one, to think that one's works might fetch
more after one's death than during one's lifetime. He
had once shown Farington a landscape of Wilson's, for
which a gentleman had given three hundred guineas at
the first word ; and Farington said he remembered
Wilson painting it, and how delighted he was when he
got thirty pounds for it. Barrett rode in his coach,
while Wilson nearly starved, and was obliged to borrow
ten pounds to go and die in Wales ; yet he used to say
that his pictures would be admired when the name of
Barrett was forgotten. Northcote said he also thought
it a great hardship upon authors that copyright should
be restricted to a few years instead of being continued
for the benefit of the family, as in the the case of
' Hudibras,' ' Paradise Lost,' and other works, by which
booksellers made fortunes every year, though the descend-
ants of the authors were still living in obscurity and
distress. I said that in France a successful drama
brought something to the author or his heirs every time
it was acted. Northcote seemed to approve of this, and
remarked that he always thought it very hard upon
Eichardson, just at the time he had brought out his
' Pamela ' or ' Clarissa,' to have it pirated by an Irish
bookseller, through a treacherous servant whom he
kept in his shop, and thus to lose all the profits of his
immortal labours.
Conversation the Ninth.
NORTHCOTE remarked to-day that artists were more par-
ticular than authors as to character the latter did not
seem to care whom they associated with. He (Northcote),
310 Mr. Northcote s Conversations,
was disposed to attribute this to greater refinement of
moral perception in his own profession. I said I thought
it was owing to authors being more upon the town than
painters, who were dependent upon particular individuals,
and in a manner accountable to them for the persons
they might be seen in company with or might occasion-
ally bring into contact with them. For instance, I said
I thought Haydon was wrong in asking me to his pri-
vate day where I might meet with Lord M , who
was so loyal a man that he affected not to know that
such a person as Admiral Blake had ever existed. On
the same principle this noble critic was blind to the
merit of Milton, in whom he could see nothing, though
Mr. Pitt had been at the pains to repeat several fine pas-
sages to him. Northcote said : " It's extraordinary how
particular the world sometimes are, and what prejudices
they take up against people, even where there is no
objection to character, merely on the score of opinion.
There is Godwin, who is a very good man ; yet when
Mr. Haydon and myself wished to introduce him at the
house of a lady who lives in a round of society and has a
strong tinge of the bluestocking, she would not hear of it.
The sound of the name seemed to terrify her. It was
his writings she was afraid of. Even Cosway made a
difficulty too."
I replied, " I should not have expected this of him,
who was as great a visionary and as violent a politician
as anybody could be."
Northcote : "It passed off in Cosway as a whim. He
was one of those butterfly characters that nobody minded,
so that his opinion went for nothing ; but it would not
do to bring any one else there, whose opinion might be
more regarded and equally unpalatable. Godwin's case
is particularly hard in this respect : he is a profligate in
theory and a bigot in conduct. He does not seem at
all to practise what he preaches, though this does not
l/>. Xorthcotes Conversations. 311
appear to avail him anything." "Yes," I said, "he
writes against himself. He has written against matri-
mony, and has been twice married. He has scouted all
commonplace duties, and yet is a good husband and a
kind father. He is a strange composition of contrary
qualities. He is a cold formalist and full of ardour and
enthusiasm of mind; dealing in magnificent projects
and petty cavils ; naturally dull, and brilliant by dint
of study ; pedantic and playful ; a dry logician, and a
writer of romances."
"You describe him," said Xorthcote, "as I remember
Baretti once did Sir Joshua Eeynolds at his own table,
saying to him, 'You are extravagant and mean, generous
and selfish, envious and candid, proud and humble, a
genius and a mere ordinary mortal, at the same time.'
I may not remember his exact words, but that was their
effect. The fact was, Sir Joshua was a mixed character,
like the rest of mankind in that respect, but knew his
own failings, and was on his guard to keep them back
as much as possible, though the defects would break out
sometimes." " Godwin, on the contrary," I said, " is
aiming to let his out, and to magnify them into virtues
in a kind of hotbed of speculation. He is shocking on
paper and tame in reality."
" How is that ?" said Northcote.
" Why, I think it is easy enough to be accounted for ;
he is naturally a cold speculative character, and indulges
in certain metaphysical extravagances as an agreeable
exercise for the imagination, which alarm persons of a
grosser temperament, but to which he attaches no prac-
tical consequences whatever. So it has been asked how
some very immoral or irreligious writers, such as Hel-
vetius and others, have been remarked to be men of
good moral character ; and I think the answer is the
same. Persons of a studious phlegmatic disposition can
with impunity give a licence to their thoughts which
312 Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
they are under no temptation to reduce into practice.
The sting is taken out of evil by their constitutional
indifference, and they look on virtue and vice as little
more than words without meaning, or the black and white
pieces of a chess-board, in combining which the same skill
and ingenuity may be shown. More depraved and com-
bustible temperaments are warned of the danger of any
latitude of opinion by their very proneness to mischief, and
are forced by a secret consciousness to impose the utmost
restraint both upon themselves and others. The great-
est prudes are not always supposed to be the greatest
enemies to pleasure. Besides, authors are very much
confined by habit to a life of study and speculation, sow
their wild oats in their books, and, unless where their
passions are very strong indeed, take their swing in
theory, and conform in practice to the ordinary rules and
examples of the world."
Northcote said : " Certainly people are tenacious of
appearances in proportion to the depravity of manners,
as we may see in the simplicity of country places. To
be sure, a rake like Hodge in ' Love in a Village ' gets
amongst them now and then ; but in general they do
many gross things without the least notion of impro-
priety, as if vice were a thing they had no more to do
with than children." He then mentioned an instance of
some young country people who had to sleep on the floor
in the same room, and they parted the men from the
women by some sacks of corn, which served for a line
of demarcation and an inviolable partition between them.
I told Northcote a story of a countrywoman who, coming
to an inn in the West of England, wanted a bed ; and
being told they had none to spare still persisted, till the
landlady said in a joke, " I tell you, good woman, I have
none, unless you can prevail with the ostler to give you
half of his." " Well," she said, " if he is a sober prudent
man, I should not mind."
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 313
Something was then said of the manners of people
abroad, who sometimes managed to unite an absence of
mauvaise honte with what could hardly be construed into
an ignorance of vice. The Princess Borghese (Buona-
parte's sister), who was no saint, sat to Canova for a
model, and being asked, " If she did not feel a little
uncomfortable," answered " No, there was a fire in the
room."
" Custom," said Northcote, " makes a wonderful differ-
ence in taking off the sharpness of the first inflammable
impression. People, for instance, were mightily shocked
when they first heard that the boys at the Academy drew
from a living model. But the effect almost immediately
wear.s off with them. It is exactly like copying from a
statue. The stillness, the artificial light, the attention
to what they are about, the publicity even, draws off any
idle thoughts, and they regard the figure, and point out
its defects or beauties, precisely as if it were of clay or
marble." I said I had perceived this effect myself that
the anxiety to copy the object before one deadened every
other feeling ; but as this drew to a close, the figure
seemed almost like something coming to life again, and
that this was a very critical minute. He said he found
the students sometimes watched the women out, though
they were not of a very attractive appearance, as none
but those who were past their prime would sit in this
way ; they look upon it as an additional disgrace to what
their profession imposed upon them, and as something
unnatural. One in particular (he remembered) always
came in a mask. Several of the young men in his time
had however been lured into a course of dissipation and
ruined by such connections ; one in particular, a young
fellow of great promise, but affected, and who thought
that profligacy was a part of genius. I said it was the
easiest part. This was an advantage foreign art had
over ours. A battered courtesan sat for Sir Joshua's
314 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
Ipliigene ; innocent girls sat for Canova's Graces, as I
had been informed.
Northcote asked if I had sent my son to school?
I said I thought of the Charterhouse, if I could compass
it. I liked those old-established places, where learning
grew for hundreds of years, better than any newfangled
experiments or modern seminaries. He inquired if I
had ever thought of putting him to school on the Conti-
nent ; to which I answered, No, for I wished him to
have an idea of home before I took him abroad ; by
beginning in the contrary method, I thought I deprived
him both of the habitual attachment to the one and of
the romantic pleasure in the other. Northcote observed
there were very fine schools at Borne in his time ; one
was an Italian, and another a Spanish college, at the
last of which they acted plays of Voltaire, such as Zara,
Mahomet, &c., at some of which he had been present.
The hall that served for the theatre was beautifully
decorated; and just as the curtain was aboiit to draw
up, a hatchway was opened and showered down play-
bills on their heads with the names of the actors ; such
a part being by a Spanish grandee of the first class,
another by a Spanish grandee of the second class, and
they were covered with jewels of the highest value.
Several cardinals were also present (who did not attend
the public theatres), and it was easy to gain admittance
from the attention always shown to strangers. North-
cote then spoke of the courtesy and decorum of the
Roman clergy in terms of warm praise, and said he
thought it in a great measure owing to the conclave
being composed of dignitaries of all nations, Spanish,
German, Italian, which merged individual asperities
and national prejudices in a spirit of general philan-
thropy and mutual forbearance. I said I had never met
with a look from a Catholic priest (from the highest to
the lowest) that seemed to reproach me with being a
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 315
tramontane. This absence of all impertinence was to me
the first of virtues. He repeated, I have no fault to
find with Italy. There may be vice in Home, as in all
great capitals (though I did not see it) ; but in Parma
and the remoter towns, they seem all like one great and
exemplary family. Their kindness to strangers was re-
markable. He said he had himself travelled all the way
from Lyons to Genoa, and from Genoa to Eome, without
speaking a word of the language and in the power of a
single person, without meeting with the smallest in-
dignity ; and everywhere, both at the inns and on the
road, every attention was paid to his feelings, and pains
taken to alleviate the xmcomfortableness of his situation.
Set a Frenchman clown in England to go from London
to York in the same circumstances, and see what treat-
ment he will be exposed to. He recollected a person of
the name of Gogain, who had been educated in France
and could not speak English ; on landing, he held out
half-a-guinea to pay the boatman, who had rowed him
only about twenty yards from the vessel, which the
fellow put in his pocket and left him without a single
farthing. Abroad, he would have been had before the
magistrate for such a thing, and probably sent to the
galleys. There is a qualifying property in nature that
makes most things equal. In England they cannot
drag you out of your bed to a scaffold, or take an estate
from you without some reason assigned ; but as the law
prevents any flagrant acts of injustice, so it makes it
more difficult to obtain redress. " We pay," continued
Northcote, " for every advantage we possess by the loss
of some other. Poor Goblet, the other day, after making
himself a drudge to Nollekens all his life, with diffi-
culty recovered eight hundred pounds compensation ; and
though he was clearly entitled, by the will, to the models
which the sculptor left behind him, he was afraid to
risk the law expenses, and gave it up." Some person
316 Mr. Northcote s Conversations.
had been remarking, that every one had a right to leave
his property to whom he pleased. " Not," said North-
cote, " when he had promised it to another." I asked if
Mr. was not the same person I had once seen come
into his painting-room, in a rusty black coat and brown
worsted stockings, very much with the air of a man who
carries a pistol in an inside pocket? He said, " It might
be : he was a dull man, but a great scholar one of those
described in the epigram
" ' Oh ho ! quoth Time to Thomas Hearne,
Whatever I forget, you learn.' "
We then alluded to an attack of Cobbett's on some
spruce legacy-hunter, quoted in the last Sunday's Exami-
ner ; and Northcote spoke in raptures of the power in
Cobbett's writings, and asked me if I had ever seen him.
I said I had, for a short time ; that he called rogue and
scoundrel at every second word in the coolest way
imaginable, and went on just the same in a room as
on paper.
I returned to what Northcote lately said of his travels
in Italy, and asked if there were fine Titians at Genoa or
Naples. " Oh, yes !" he said, " heaps at the latter place.
Titian had painted them for one of the Farnese family ;
and when the second son succeeded the eldest as King of
Spain, the youngest, who was Prince of Parma, went to
Naples, and took them with him. There is that fine
one (which you have heard me speak of) of Paul III.,
and his two natural sons or nephews, as they were
called. My God! what a look it has! The old man is
sitting in his chair and looking up to one of the sons,
with his hands grasping the armchair, and his long
spider fingers, and seems to say (as plain as words can
speak), ' You wretch ! what do you want now ?' while
the young fellow is advancing with a humble hypocri-
tical air. It is true history, as Fuseli said, and indeed
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 317
it turned out so ; for the son (or nephew) was afterwards
thrown out of the palace-windows by the moib and
torn to pieces by them." In speaking of the different
degrees of information abroad, he remarked, " One of the
persons where I lodged at Rome did not even know the
family name of the reigning Pope, and only spoke of him
as the Papa ; another person, who was also my landlady,
knew all their history, and could tell me the names of the
cardinals from my describing their coats-of-arms to her."
Northcote related an anecdote of Mr. Moore (brother
of the General), who was on board an English frigate in
the American war, and coming in sight of another vessel
which did not answer their signals, they expected an
action, when the Captain called his men together, and
addressed them in the following manner : " You dirty
ill-looking blackguards ! do you suppose I can agree to
deliver up such a set of scarecrows as you as prisoners
to that smart frippery Frenchman? I can't think of
such a thing. No, by G d ! you must fight till not a
man of you is left, for I should be ashamed of owning
such a ragamuffin crew !" This was received with loud
shouts and assurances of victory ; but the vessel turned
out to be an English one.
I asked if he had seen the American novels, in one
of which (' The Pilot') there was an excellent description
of an American privateer expecting the approach of an
English man-of-war in a thick fog, when some one saw
what appeared to be a bright cloud rising over the fog ;
but it proved to be the topsail of a seventy-four. North-
cote thought this was striking, but had not seen the
book. " Was it one of Irving's ?" l Oh no ! He is a mere
trifler a filigree man an English litterateur at second-
hand ; but ' The Pilot ' gave a true and unvarnished pic-
ture of American character and manners. The storm,
the fight, the whole account of the ship's crew, and in
1 By the late Fenimore Cooper. Ei>.
318 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
particular of an old boatswain, were done to the life
everything
' Suffered a sea-change
Into something new and strange.'
On land he did not do so well. The fault of American
literature (when not a mere vapid imitation of ours)
was, that it ran too much into dry, minute, literal
description ; or if it made an effort to rise above this
ground of matter-of-fact, it was forced and exaggerated,
" horrors accumulating on horror's head." They had no
natural imagination. This was likely to be the case in a
new country like America, where there were no dim
traces of the past no venerable monuments no romantic
associations ; where all (except the physical) remained
to be created, and where fiction, if they attempted it,
would take as preposterous and extravagant a shape as
their local descriptions were jejune and servile. Cooper's
novels and Brown's romances (something on the model
of Godwin's) were the two extremes.
Some remark was made on the failure of a great book-
seller, 1 and on the supposition that now we should find
out the author of the Scotch novels. " Ay," said North-
cote, " we shall find more than one." I said, I thought
not ; to say nothing of the beauties, the peculiarities of
style and grammar in every page proved them to be
by the same hand. Nobody else could write so well
or so ill, in point of mere negligence. Northcote said,
" It was a pity he should fling away a fortune twice.
There were some people who could not keep money
when they had got it. It was a kind of incontinence
of the purse. Zoffani did the same thing. He made a
fortune in England by his pictures, which he soon got
rid of, and another in India which went the same way."
We somehow got from Sir Walter to the Queen's trial,
and the scenes at Brandenburg House. I said they were
1 Ballantyne. ED.
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 319
a strong illustration of that instinct of servility, that
hankering after rank and power, which appeared to me to
be the base part of human nature. Here were all the
patriots and Jacobins of London and Westminster, who
scorned and hated the King, going to pay their homage
to the Queen, and ready to worship the very nigs of
royalty. The wives and daughters of popular cari-
caturists and of forgotten demagogues were ready to pull
caps in the presence-chamber fur precedence, till they
were parted by Mr. Alderman Wood. Every fool must
go to kiss hands ; " our maid's aunt of Brentford " must
sip loyalty from the Queen's hand ! That was the true
court, to which they were admitted ; the instant there
was the smallest opening, all must in, tag-rag and bobtail.
All the fierceness of independence and all the bristling
prejudices of popular jealousy were smoothed down in a
moment by the velvet touch of the Queen's hand ! No
matter what else she was (whether her cause was right
or wrong) it was the mock equality with sovereign
rank, the acting in a farce of state, that was the secret
charm. That was what drove them mad. The world
must have something to admire ; and the more worthless
and stupid their idol is the better, provided it is fine :
for it equally flatters their appetite for wonder, and hurts
their self-love less. This is the reason why people
formerly were so fond of idols : they fell down and
worshipped them, and made others do the same, for
theatrical effect ; while, all the while, they knew they
were but wood and stone painted over. We in modern
times have got from the dead to the living idol, and bow
to hereditary imbecility. The less of genius and virtue
the greater our self-complacency. We do not care how
high the elevation, so that it is wholly undeserved.
True greatness excites our envy; mere rank, our
unqualified respect. That is the reason of our antipathy
to new-made dynasties, and of our acquiescence in old-
320 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
established despotism. We think we could sit upon a
throne, if we had had the good luck to be born to one ; but
we feel we have neither talent nor courage to raise our-
selves. If any one does, he seems to have got the start of
us, and we are glad to pull him back again. I remember
Mr. Railton of Liverpool 1 (a very excellent man and a
good patriot), saying many years ago, in reference to
Buonaparte and George III., that " the superiority of
rank was quite enough for him, without the intellectual
superiority." That is what has made so many renegadoes
and furious anti-Buonapartists among our poets and
politicians, because he got before them in the race of
power. Northcote : " And the same thing made you stick
to him, because you thought he was your fellow. It is
wonderful how much of our virtues, as well as of our
vices, is referable to self. Did you ever read Kochefou-
cault ?" Yes. " And don't you think he is right ?" In
a great measure; but I like Mandeville better. He
goes more into his subject. " Oh ! he is a devil. There
is a description of a clergyman's liand he has given,
which I have always had in my eye whenever I have
had to paint a fine gentleman's hand. I thought him
too metaphysical, but it is long since I read him. His
book was burnt by the common hangman, was it not ?"
Yes ; but he did not at all like this circumstance, and is
always recurring to it. " No one can like this kind of
condemnation, because every sensible man knows he is
not a judge in his own cause, and besides is conscious,
if the verdict were on the other side, how ready he
would be to catch at it as decisive in his favour." He
said it was amusing to see the way in which he fell
upon Steele, Shaftesbury, and other amiable writers, and
the terror you were in for your favourites, just as when
1 With whose daughter Mr. Hazlitt waa once in love. See her
portrait by John Hazlitt engraved in the 'Memoirs of W. H.'
1867, vol. ii. p. 13. ED.
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 321
a hawk is hovering over and going to pounce upon some
of the more harmless feathered tribe. He added, "It
was surprising how Swift had escaped with so little
censure ; but the ' Gulliver's Travels ' passed off as a
story-book, and you might say in verse what you would
be pelted for in plain prose. The same thing you have
observed in politics may be observed in religion too.
You see the anxiety to divide and bring nearer to our
own level. The Creator of the universe is too high an
object for us to approach ; the Catholics therefore have
introduced the Virgin Mary and a host of saints, with
whom their votaries feel more at their ease and on a par.
The real object of worship is kept almost out of sight.
Dignum the singer (who is a Catholic) was arguing on
this subject with some one who wanted to convert him,
and he replied in his own defence, " If you had a favour
to ask of some great person would you not first apply to
a common friend to intercede for you ?" In some part
of the foregoing conversation , Northcote remarked that
" West used to say, yon could always tell the highest
nobility at court from their profound humility to the
King : the others kept at a distance, and did not seem
to care about it. The more the former raised the highest
person, the more they raised themselves, who were next
in point of rank. They had a greater interest in the
question ; and the King would have a greater jealousy
of them than of others. When B was painting the
Queen, with whom he used to be quite familiar, he was one
day surprised, when the Prince Eegent came into the
room, to see the profound homage and dignified respect
with which he approached her. ' Good God !' said he to
himself, ' here is the second person in the kingdom comes
into the room in this manner, while I have been using
the greatest freedoms !' To be sure that was the very
reason : the second person in the kingdom wished to
invest the firbt with all possible respect, so much of
Y
322 Mr. Norfhcote's Conversations.
wjiich was naturally reflected back upon himself. B
had nothing to lose or gain in this game of royal ceremony,
and was accordingly treated as a cypher."
Conversation the Tenth.
NOBTHCOTE showed me a printed circular from the
Academy, with blanks to be filled up by Academicians,
recommending young students to draw. One of these
related to an assurance as to the moral character of the
candidate ; Northcote said, " What can I know about
that ? This zeal for morality begins with inviting me
to tell a lie. I know whether he can draw or not,
because he brings me specimens of his drawings ; but
what am I to know of the moral character of a person I
have never seen before? Or what business have the
Academy to inquire into it? I suppose they are not
afraid he will steal the Farnese Hercules ; and as to
idleness and debauchery, he will not be cured of these
by cutting him off from the pursuit of a study on which
he has set his mind and in which he has a fair chance
to succeed. I told one of them, with as grave a face as
I could, that as to his moral character he must go to his
godfathers and godmothers for that. He answered, very
simply, that they were a great way off, and that he had
nobody to appeal to but his apothecary. The Academy
is not an institution for the suppression of vice, but for
the encouragement of the fine arts. Why then go out of
their way to meddle with what was provided for by other
means the law and the pulpit? It would not have
happened in Sir Joshua's time," continued Northcote,
" nor even in Fuseli's : but the present men are ' dressed
in a little brief authority,' and they wish to make the
most of it, without perceiving the limits. No good can
possibly come of this busybody spirit. The dragging
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 323
morality into everything, in season and out of season, is
only giving a handle to hypocrisy, and turning virtue
into a byword for impertinence."
Here Northcote stopped suddenly to ask if there was
not such a word as " rivulet " in the language ? I said it
was as much a word in the language as it was a thing in
itself. He replied, it was not to be found in Johnson ;
the word was " riveret " there. I thought this must be in
some of the new editions ; Dr. Johnson would have
knocked anybody down who had used the word " riveret."
It put me in mind of a story of Young the actor, who
being asked how he was, made answer that he had been
indisposed for some days with afeveret. The same person,
speaking of the impossibility of escaping from too great
publicity, related an anecdote of his being once in a
remote part of the Highlands, and seeing an old gentle-
man fishing he went up to inquire some particulars as
to the mode of catching the salmon at what are called
" salmon-leaps." The old gentleman began his reply,
" Why, Mr. Young," at which the actor started back in
great surprise. " Good God !" said Northcote, "did he
consider this as a matter of wonder, that after showing
himself on a stage for a number of years people should
know his face ? If an artist or aa author were recognised
in that manner it might be a proof of celebrity, because
it would show that they had been sought for ; but an
actor is so much seen in public that it is no wonder he
is known by all the world. I once went with Opie in
the stage-coach to Exeter ; and when we parted, he to
go on to Cornwall and I to Tlymouth, there was a young
gentleman in the coach who asked me who it was that
I had been conversing with.' I said it was Mr. Opie
the painter ; at which he expressed the greatest surprise,
and was exceedingly concerned to think he had not
known it before. I did not tell him who I was, to see
if my name would electrify him in the same manner,
324 Mr. Northcote s Conversations.
That brings to my mind the story I perhaps may have
told you before of a Mr. A and Dr. Pennick of the
Museum. They got into some quarrel at the theatre,
and the former, presenting his card, said with great pom-
posity, ' My name is A , sir ;' to which the other
answered, ' I hear it, sir, and am not terrified !' " I
asked if this was the A who fought the duel
with F . He said he could not tell ; but he was our
ambassador to some of the petty German States.
A country gentleman came in, who complimented
Northcote on his pictures of animals and birds, which
I knew he would not like. He muttered something when
he was gone, in allusion to the proverb of giving snuff to
a cat. Afterwards, a miniature painter brought some
copies he had made of a portrait of a young lady by
Northcote. They were really very well, and we learned
he was to have five guineas for the larger size and two
for the smaller ones. I could now account for the
humility and shabby appearance of the artist. He paid
his court better than his rustic predecessor; for being
asked by Noithcote if the portrait of the young lady was
approved, he said the mother had told him, before she
engaged him to copy it, that "it was one of the loveliest
pictures (that was her expression) that had ever been
seen !" This praise was better relished than that of his
dogs and parrots.
I took notice to Northcote that the man had a very
good head, but that he put me in mind of the state and
pretensions of the art, before artists wrote "Esquire"
after their names. He said, " Yes, he was like Andrew
Taffi, or some of those in Vasari." I observed how little
he was paid for what he really did so well ; to which
Northcote merely replied, " In all things that are not
necessary those in the second class must always be
miserably paid. Copying pictures is like plain-work
among women ; it is what anybody can do, and therefore
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 32f>
nothing but a bare living is to be got by it." He added
that the young lady, whose portrait her family was so
anxious to have copied, was dead, and this was a kind
of diversion to their grief. It was a very natural mode
of softening it down ; it was still recurring to the object
of their regret and yet dwelling on it in an agreeable
point of view. " The wife of General H ," he con-
tinued, " many years ago came to me to do a picture of
her son, a lieutenant in the navy, who was killed in
battle, but whom I had never seen. There was no
picture of him to go by, but she insisted on my doing
one under her direction. I attempted a profile, as the
easiest ; and she sat behind me and sang in a soft manner
to herself, and told me what I was to do. It was a
wretched business, as you may suppose, being made out
from description ; but she would have it to be a great
likeness, and brought all the family and even the
servants to see it, who probably did not dare to be of a
different opinion. I said to her, ' What a pity it was
Sir Joshua had not done a portrait of him in his life-
time !' At this she expressed great contempt, and
declared she would not give twopence for all -Sir Joshua's
pictures ; indeed, she had one which I was very welcome
to have if I chose to come for it. I lost no time in going
to her house, and when I came there she led me up into
an old garret which was used as a lumber-room, and
taking it carefully out of a shabby frame not worth a
groat, said, ' There, take it, I am not sorry to get it out
of the house.' I asked what it was that made her so
indifferent about this picture, and she answered, ' It
was a likeness of a young gentleman who had been kind
enough to die, by which means the estate came to the
General.' She spoke in this unfeeling manner though
her own son had just died in the same circumstances ;
and she had had a monument made for him, and strewed
flowers upon it, and made such zfuss about his death,
326 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
that she would hardly have known what to do if he had
come to life again !" I asked what was her reason for
disliking Eeynolds' pictures? "Oh! that was her igno-
rance, she did not know why."
Northcote said : " Godwin called here with his daughter.
I asked her about Lord Byron ; she said his temper was
so bad that nobody could live with him. The only way
to pass the day tolerably well with him was to contradict
him the first thing in the morning. I have known
tempers of that kind myself; you must quarrel with
them in order to be friends. If you did not conquer
them they would conquer you." Something was
observed about Byron and Tom Paine, as to their
attacks upon religion; and I said that sceptics and
philosophical unbelievers appeared to me to have just as
little liberality or enlargement of view as the most
bigoted fanatic. They could not bear to make the least
concession to the opposite side. They denied the
argument that because the Scriptures were fine they
were therefore of Divine origin, and yet they virtually
admitted it ; for, not believing their truth, they thought
themselves bound to maintain that they were good for
nothing. I had once, I said, given great offence to a
knot of persons of this description by contending that
Jacob's dream was finer than anything in Shakspeare,
and that Hamlet would bear no comparison with, at
least one character in the New Testament. A young
poet had said on this occasion he did not like the Bible,
because there was nothing about flowers in it ; and I
asked him if he had forgot that passage, " Behold the
lilies of the field," &c. ? " Yes," said Northcote; " and in
the Psalms and in the Book of Job there are passages
of unrivalled beauty. In the latter there is the descrip-
tion of the war-horse, that has been so often referred to,
and of the days of Job's prosperity ; and in the Psalms,
I think, there is that passage, ' He openeth his hands,
Mr. Norilwote's Conversations. 327
and the earth is filled with plenteousness ; he turneth
away his face, and we are troubled ; he hideth himself,
and we are left in darkness.' Or again, how fine is that
expression, ' All the beasts of the forest are mine, and so
are the cattle upon a thousand hills !' What an expanse,
and what a grasp of the subject ! Everything is done
upon so large a scale, and yet with such ease, as if seen
from the highest point of view. It has mightily a look
of inspiration or of being dictated by a superior intelli-
gence. They say mere English readers cannot understand
Homer, because it is a translation ; but why will it not
bear a translation as well as the Book of Job, if it is as fine?
In Shakspeare, undoubtedly, there is a prodigious variety
and force of human character and passion, but he does
not take us out of ourselves ; he has a wonderful, almost
a miraculous, fellow-feeling with human nature in every
possible way, but that is all. 'Macbeth' is full of
sublimity, but the sublimity is that of the earth, it does
not reach to heaven. It is a still stronger objection
that is made to Hogarth ; he, too, gave the incidents and
characters of human life with infinite truth and ability ;
but then it was in the lowest forms of all, and he could
not rise even to common dignity or beauty. There is a
faculty that enlarges and beautifies objects, even beyond
nature. It is for this reason that we must, reluctantly
perhaps, give the preference to Milton over Shakspeare ;
for his Paradise (to go no further) is certainly a scene of
greater beauty and happiness than was ever found on
earth, though so vividly described that we easily make
the transition, and transport ourselves there. It is the
same difference that there is between Eaphael and
Michael Angelo, though Raphael, too, in many of his
works merited the epithet of divine" I mentioned some
lines from Shakspeare I had seen quoted in a translation
of a French work, and applied to those who adhered to
Buonaparte in his misfortunes :
328 Mr. Northcote s Conversations.
" He that can endure
To follow with allegiance a fallen lord
Does conquer him that did his master conquer,
And earns a place i' the story."
I .said I was struck to see how finely they came in.
" Oh !" replied Northcote, " if they were Shakspeare's,
they were sure to be fine. What a power there always
is in any bit brought in from him or Milton among other
things ! How it shines like a jewel ! I think Milton
reads best in this way ; he is too fine for a continuance.
Don't you think Shaks-peare and the writers of that day
had a prodigious advantage in using phrases and combi-
nations of style which could not be admitted now that
the language is reduced to a more precise and uniform
standard, but which yet have a peculiar force and felicity
when they can be justified by the privilege of age''"
He said he had been struck with this idea lately in
reading an old translation of Boccaccio (about the time of
Queen Elizabeth), in which the language, though quaint,
had often a beauty that could not well be conveyed in
any modern translation.
He spoke of Lord Byron's notions about Shakspeare.
I said I did not care much about his opinions. North-
cote replied, they were evidently capricious, and taken
up in the spirit of contradiction. I said, not only so
(as far as I can judge), but without any better-founded
ones in his own mind. They appear to me conclusions
without premisses or any previous process of thought or
inquiry. I like old opinions with new reasons, not new
opinions without any not mere ipse dixits. He was too
arrogant to assign a reason to others or to need one for
himself. It was quite enough that he subscribed to
any assertion, to make it clear to the world, as well as
binding on his valet !
Northcote said there were people who could not argue.
Fuseli was one of these. He could throw out very brilliant
Mr. Northcote s Conversations. 329
and striking things, but if you at all questioned him, he
could no more give an answer than a child of three years
old. He had no resources, nor any corps de reserve of argu-
ment beyond his first line of battle. That was imposing
and glittering enough. Neither was Lord Byron a philo-
sopher, with all his sententiousness and force of expres-
sion. Probably one ought not to expect the two things
together; for to produce a startling and immediate effect
one must keep pretty much upon the surface, and the
search after truth is a very slow and obscure process.
Conversation the Eleventh.
As soon as I went in to-day, Northcote at;ked me if that
was my character of Shakspeare which had been quoted
in a newspaper the day before ? It was so like what he
had thought a thousand times that he could almost swear
he had written it himself. I said, No ; it was fi oin Ken-
dall's ' Letters on Ireland ;' though I believe I had ex-
pressed nearly the same idea in print. I had seen the
passage myself, and hardly knew at first whether to be
pleased or vexed at it. It was provoking to have one's
words taken out of one's mouth as it were by another ;
and yet it seemed also an encouragement to reflect, that
if one only threw one's bread upon the waters, one was
sure to find it again after many days. The world, if they
do not listen to an observation the first time, will listen
to it at secondhand from those who have a more agree-
able method of insinuating it, or who do not tell them
too many truths at once. Northcote said, he thought
the account undoubtedly just, to whomever it belonged. 1
1 " Shakspeare's verses are not exactly ' wood-notes wild.' He
was indebted to a most extensive rtadin;* at the s-ame time as to a
most transcendent g, nius. He did not pique himself upon origi-
nality, but sat down to write his plays for the simple purpose of the
moment, and without a glimpse or an ambit.on of the immortality
330 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
The greatest genius (such as that of Shakspeare) implied
the greatest power, and this implied the greatest ease
and unconsciousness of effort, or of anything extraordi-
nary effected. As this writer stated, " He would as
soon think of being vain of putting one foot before
another, as of writing ' Macbeth ' or ' Hamlet.' " Or, as
Hudibras has expressed it, poetry was to him
" a thing no more difficile
Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle."
which they were to acquire. He made use of whatever he recollected
and thought desirable, with the contrivance of an ordinary play-
writer, and only grew original and vast and exquisite in spite of
himself. If it be true that ' he wrote, not for an age, but for all
time,' still there was no one who knew less, of that fact than he !
He imagined himself writing only for the day before him ; and it is
to this very circumstance that we owe the ease, the flashes, and the
soarings of his spirit. He was never overpowered by the intended
loftiness of the occasion. He made no efforts that were laborious,
because his mind was always superior to his object, and never
bowed down to it. He possessed, too, that affluence of genius
which rendered him not only prodigal in its use, but almost unac-
quainted with its existence. He never stood upon its dignity ; he
was never fearful of its loss nor of its denial. The Swan of Avon,
like the swans from which poets derive their title, was all strength
and grace and beauty, without a consciousness of either. And this
character of his genius accords with that character of facility, of
gentleness, and of unostentation which his biographer ascribes to
the man. He knew of nothing within himself of which he felt it
worth while to be vain. He would as soon have been vain of his
power to put one foot before another, as of his power to write the
' Tempest ' or ' Macbeth.' It belongs, in the midst of abundance, to
GENIUS as BEAUTY, to be thoughtless of itself. It is only for the
dull and the ugly or at least for those in whom the claims to beauty
or to genius are equivocal to be for ever contemplating either in
themselves, or for ever demanding the acknowledgments of others.
With the plenary possessors the luxury is too common, too much of
everyday wear, to fix their attention. The restlessness of the
remainder is the restlessness of poverty, and contrasts itself with
the carelessness of riches." KendaWs Letters on Ireland {circa
1818).
Mr. Northcote s Conversations. 331
" This (said he) is what I have always said of Cor-
reggio's style, that he could not help it: it was his
nature. Besides, use familiarises us to everything. How
could Shakspeare be expected to be astonished at what
he did every day ? No ; he was thinking either merely
of the subject before him, or of gaining his bread. It
is only upstarts or pretenders who do not know what
to make of their good fortune or undeserved reputation.
It comes to the same thing that I have heard my brother
remark with respect to my father and old Mr. Tolcher,
whose picture you see there. He had a great friendship
for my father and a great opinion of his integrity ; and
whenever he came to see him always began with saying,
' Well, honest Mr. Samuel Northcote, how do you ?'
This he repeated so often, and they were so used to it,
that my brother said they became like words of course,
and conveyed no more impression of anything peculiar
than if he had merely said, ' Well, good Mr. Northcote,
et cetera,' or used any common expression. So Shak-
speare was accustomed to write his fine speeches till he
ceased to wonder at them himself, and would have been
surprised to find that you did."
The conversation now turned on an answer in a news-
paper to Canning's assertion that "Slavery was not
inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity, inasmuch as
it was the beauty of Christianity to accommodate itself
to all conditions and circumstances." Did Canning
mean to say, because Christianity accommodated itself to
or made the best of all situations it did not therefore
give the preference to any? Because it recommended
mildness and fortitude under sufferings, did it not there-
fore condemn the infliction of them? Or did it not
forbid injustice and cruelty in the strongest terms?
This were indeed a daring calumny on its founder : it
were an insolent irony. Don Quixote would not have
said so. It was like the Italian banditti, who when
332 Mr. Norilicotes Conversations.
they have cut off the ears of their victims make them
go down on their knees and return thanks to an image
of the Virgin Mary for the favour they have done them.
It was because such things do exist that Christ came to
set his face against them, and to establish the maxim,
" Do unto others as }"ou would that they should do unto
you." If Mr. Canning will say that the masters would
like to be treated as they treat their slaves, then he may
say that slavery is consistent with the spirit of Christi-
anity. No; the meaning of those maxims of forbearance
and submission, which the Quakers have taken too lito
rally, is, that you are not to drive out one devil by
another ; it aims at discoui aging a resort to violence and
anger, for if the temper it inculcates could become uni-
versal, there would be no injuries to resent. It objects
against the power of the sword, but it is to substitute a
power ten thousand times stronger than the sword that
which subdues and conquers the affections, and strikes at
the very root and thought of evil. All that is meant by
such sayings as that if a person " smites us on one
cheek we are to turn to him the other," is, that we are
to keep as clear as possible of a disposition to retaliate
and exasperate injuries ; or there is a Spanish proverb
which explains this, that says, " It is he who gives the
second blow that begins the quarrel."
On my referring to what had been sometimes asserted
of the inefficiency of pictures in Protestant churches,
Northcote said he might be allowed to observe in favour
of his own art, that though they might not strike at first,
from a difference in our own belief, yet they would gain
upon the spectator by force of habit. The practice of
image-worship was probably an afterthought of the
Papists themselves, from seeing the effects produced on
the minds of the rude and ignorant by visible represen-
tations of saints and martyrs. The rulers of the Church
at first only thought to amuse and attract the people by
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 333
pictures and statues (as they did by music and rich
dresses, from which no inference was to be drawn) ; but
when these representations of sacred subjects were once
placed before the senses of an uninstructed but imagi-
native people, they looked at them with wonder and
eagerness, till they began to think they saw them move ;
and then miracles were worked ; and as this became a
source of wealth and great resort to the several shrines and
churches, every meant; were used to encourage the super-
stition and a belief in the supernatural virtues of the
objects by the clergy and government. So he thought
that if pictures were set up in our churches they would
by degrees inspire the mind with all the feelings of awe
or interest that were necessary or proper. It was less
difficult to excite enthusiasm than to keep it under due
restraint. So in Italy, the higher powers did not much
relish those processions of naked figures, taken from
scriptural stories (such as Adam and Eve), on particular
holidays, for they led to scandal and abuse ; but they
fell in with the humour of the rabble, and were lucrative
to the lower orders of pn'e.sts and friars, and the Pope
could not expressly discountenance them. He said we
were in little danger (either from our religion or tempe-
rament) of running into those disgraceful and fanciful
extremes, but should rather do everything in our power
to avoid the opposite error of a dry and repulsive as-
ceticism. We could not give too much encouragement to
the fine arts.
Our talk of to-day concluded by his saying that he
often blamed himself for uttering what might be thought
harsh things ; and that on mentioning this once to Kem-
ble, and saying it sometimes kept him from sleep after
he had been out in company, Kemble had replied, " Oh !
you need not trouble yourself so much about them:
others never think of them afterwards."
334 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
Conversation tlie Twelfth.
NOBTHCOTB was painting from a little girl when I went
in. B was there. Something was said of a portrait
of Dunning by Sir Joshua (an unfinished head), and
B observed, " Ah ! my good friend, if you and I had
known at that time what those things would fetch, we
might have made our fortunes now. By laying out a
few pounds on the loose sketches and sweepings of the
lumber-room we might have made as many hundreds."
" Yes," said Northcote, " it was thought they would
soon be forgot, and they went for nothing on that
account ; but they are more sought after than ever,
because those imperfect hints and studies seem to bring
one more in contact with the artist, and explain the pro-
cess of his mind in the several stages. A finished work
is in a manner detached from and independent of its
author, like a child that can go alone : in the other case
it seems to be still in progress, and to await his hand to
finish it ; or we supply the absence of well-known excel-
lences out of our own imagination, so that we have a two-
fold property in it."
Northcote read something out of a newspaper about
the Suffolk Street Exhibition, in which his own name
was mentioned, and M -'s, the landscape painter.
B said his pictures were a trick a streak of red
and a streak of blue. But, said Northcote, there is some
merit in finding out a new trick. I ventured to hint
that the receipt for his was, clouds upon mountains, and
mountains upon clouds that there was number and
quantity, but neither form nor colour. He appeared to
me an instance of a total want of imagination ; he mis-
took the character of the feelings associated with every-
thing, and I mentioned as an instance his Adam and
Eve, which had been much admired, but which was a
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 335
panoramic view of the map of Asia, instead of a
representation of our first parents in Paradise.
After B was gone, we spoke of X , l I
regretted his want of delicacy towards the public as
well as towards his private friends. I did not think he
had failed so much from want of capacity as from
attempting to bully the public into a premature or
overstrained admiration of him, instead of gaining
ground upon them by improving on himself; and he
now felt the ill effects of the reaction of this injudicious
proceeding. He had no real love of his art, and therefore
did not apply or give his whole mind sedulously to it ; and
was more bent on bespeaking notoriety beforehand by
puffs and announcements of his works, than on giving
them that degree of perfection which would ensure
lasting reputation. No one would ever attain the highest
excellence who had so little nervous sensibility as to
take credit for it (either with himself or others) without
being at the trouble of producing it. It was securing
the reward in the first instance ; and afterwards, it
would be too much to expect the necessary exertion or
sacrifices. Unlimited credit was as dangerous to success
in art as in business. " And yet he still finds dupes,"
said Northcote ; to which I replied, it was impossible to
resist him, as long as you kept on terms with him : any
difference of opinion or reluctance on your part made no
impression on him, and unless you quarrelled with him
downright you must do as he wished you. " And how
then," said Northcote, " do you think it possible for a
person of this hard unyielding disposition to be a painter,
where everything depends on seizing the nicest inflec-
tions of feeling and the most evanescent shades of
beauty ?
" No ! I'll tell you why he cannot be a painter. He
has not virtue enough. No one can give out to others
1 Probably Haydon is here meant. ED.
336 Mr. Norihcotes Conversations.
what he has not in himself, and there is nothing in his
mind to delight or captivate the world. I will not deny
the mechanical dexterity, but he fails in the mental part.
There was Sir Peter Lely : he is full of defects ; but he
was the fine gentleman of his age, and you see this
character stamped on every one of his works ; even his
errors prove it ; and this is one of those things that the
world receive with gratitude. Sir Joshua again was not
without his faults : he had not grandeur, but he was a
man of a mild, bland, amiable character ; and this
predominant feeling appears so strongly in his works
that you cannot mistake it ; and this is what makes them
so delightful to look at, and constitutes their charm to
others, even without their being conscious of it. There
was such a look of nature too. I remember once going
through a suite of rooms where they were showing me
several fine Vandykes ; and we came to one where there
were some children, by Sir Joshua, seen through a
door it was like looking at the reality, they were so full
of life the branches of the trees waved over their heads,
and the fresh air seemed to play on their cheeks I soon
furgot Vandyke!
" So, in the famous St. Jerome of Correggio, Garrick
used to say that the saint resembled a satyr, and that
the child was like a monkey ; bu,t then there is such a
look of life in the last it dazzles you with spirit and
vivacity ; you can hardly believe but it will move or fly;
indeed Sir Joshua took his Puck from it, only a little
varied in the attitude." I said I had seen it not long
ago, and that it had remarkably the look of a spirit or a
fairy or preternatural being, though neither beautiful
nor dignified. I remarked to Northcote, that I had
never sufficiently reli>hed Correggio ; that I had tried
several times to work n\yself up to the proper degree of
admiration, but that I always fell back again into my
former state of lukewarmness and scepticism ; though I
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 337
could not help allowing that what he did, he appeared
to me to do with more feeling than anybody else ; that
I could conceive Raphael or even Titian to have repre-
sented objects from mere natural capacity (as we see
them in a looking-glass) without being absolutely wound
up in them, but that I could fancy Correggio's pencil to
tlirill with sensibility. He brooded over the idea of
grace or beauty in his mind till the sense grew faint
with it ; and, like a lover or a devotee, he carried his
enthusiasm to the brink of extravagance and affectation,
so enamoured was he of his art. Korthcote assented to
this as a just criticism, and said, " That is why his works
must live ; but X is a hardened egotist, devoted to
nothing but himself." Korthcote then asked about Mrs.
Haydon, and if she was handsome ? I said she might sit
for the portrait of Rebecca in ' Ivanhoe.'
He then tiirned the conversation to ' Brainbletye
House.' ' He thought the writer had failed in Charles II.
and Rochester. Indeed it was a daring attempt to make
Ions mots for two such characters. The wit must be sharp
and fine indeed that would do to put into their mouths :
even Sir Walter might tremble to undertake it. He
had made Hilton speak too : this was almost as danger-
ous an attempt as for Milton to put words into the
mouth of the Deity. The great difficulty was to know
where to stop, and not to trespass on forbidden ground.
Cervantes was one of the boldest and most original
inventors ; yet he had never ventured beyond his depth.
He had in the person of his hero really represented the
maxims of benevolence and generosity inculcated by the
Christian religion ; that was a law to him ; and by his fine
conception of the subject, he had miraculously succeeded.
Shakspeare alone could be said in his grotesque creations
1 A once popular novel so called. Of Brambletye House, in
Sussex, see an account in Mr. Timbs's ' Something for Everybody,'
(1861), p. 170, et eeq.Eo.
Z
338 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
to be above all law. Richardson had succeeded admirably
in ' Clarissa,' because he had a certain rule to go by or
certain things to avoid, for a perfect woman was a
negative character ; but he had failed in ' Sir Charles
Grandison,' and made him a lump of odious affectation,
because a perfect man is not a negative but a posi-
tive character, and in aiming at faultlessness he had
produced only the most vapid effeminacy. After all,
' Brambletye House ' was about as good as the ' Rejected
Addresses.' There was very little difference between a
parody and an imitation. The defects and peculiarities
are equally seized upon in either case.
He did not know how Sir Walter woiild take it. To
have imitators seemed at first a compliment, yet no one
liked it. You could not put Fuseli in a greater passion
than by calling Maria Cosway an imitator of his. Nothing
made Sir Joshua so mad as Miss Reynolds'.s portraits,
which were an exact imitation of all his defects. Indeed,
she was obliged to keep them out of his way. He said,
" They made everybody else laugh, and himself cry." It
is that which makes every one dread a mimic. Your
self-love is alarmed without being so easily reassured.
You know there is a difference, but it is not great enough
to make you feel quite at ease. The line of demarcation
between the true and the spurious is not sufficiently
broad and palpable. The copy you see is vile or indif-
ferent, and the original, you suspect (but for your
partiality to yourself), is not, perhaps, much better.
That is what I have often felt in looking at the draw-
ings of the students at the Academy, or when young-
artists have brought their first crude attempts for my
opinion. The glaring defects, the abortive eiforts, have
almost disgusted me with the profession. " Good G d !"
I have said, " is this what the art is made up of? How
do I know that my own productions may not appear in
the same light to others ?" Whereas the seeing the finest
Mr. Northcote s Conversations. 339
specimens of art, instead of disheartening gives me courage
to proceed; one cannot be wrong in treading in the
same footsteps, and to fall short of them is no disgrace,
while the faintest reflection of their excellence is glorious
It was this that made Correggio cry out, on seeing
Raphael's works, "I also am a painter !" He felt a kindred
spirit in his own breast. I said I recollected, when I
was formerly trying to paint, nothing gave me the
horrors so much as passing the old battered portraits at
the doors of brokers' shops with the morning sun flaring
full upon them. I was generally inclined to prolong my
walk and put off painting for that day ; but the sight of
a fine picture had a contrary effect, and I went back and
set to work with redoubled ardour.
Northcote happened to speak of a gentleman married
to one of the , of whom a friend had said, laughing,
" There's a man that's in love with his own wife !" He
mentioned the beautiful Lady F P , and said her
hair, which was in great quantities and very fine, was
remarkable for having a single lock different from all the
rest, which he supposed she cherished as a beauty. I
told him I had not long ago seen the hair of Lucretia
Borgia, of Milton, Buonaparte, and Dr. Johnson, all
folded up in the same paper. It had belonged to Lord
Byron. Northcote replied, one could not be sure of that ;
it was easy to get a lock of hair and call it by any name
one pleased. In some cases, however, one might rely on
its being the same. Mrs. Gunning had certainly a lock
of Goldsmith's hair, for she and her sister (Miss Horneck)
had wished to have some remembrance of him after his
death ; and though the coffin was nailed up it was opened
again at their request (such was the regard Goldsmith
was known to have for them), and a lock of his hair was
cut off, which Mrs. Gunning still has. Northcote said
Goldsmith's death was the severest blow Sir Joshua ever
received ; he did not paint all that day. It was proposed
340 Mr. Nortlicoies Conversations.
to make a grand funeral for him, but Reynolds objected
to this, as it would be over in a day, and said it would
be better to lay by the money to erect a monument to
him in Westminster Abbey ; and he went himself and
chose the spot. Goldsmith had begun another novel, of
which he read the first chapter to the Misses Horneck a
little before his death. Korthcote asked what I thought
of the 'Vicar of Wakefield ' ? And I answered, what
everybody else did. He said there was that mixture of
the ludicrous and the pathetic running through it which
particularly delighted him ; it gave a stronger resem-
blance to nature. He thought this justified Shakspeare
in mingling up farce and tragedy together ; life itself
was a tragi-comedy. Instead of being pure, everything
was chequered. If you went to an execution you would
perhaps see an apple-woman in the greatest distress
because her stall was overturned, at which you could not
help smiling. We then spoke of ' Retaliation,' and praised
the character of Burke in particular as a masterpiece.
Nothing that he had ever said or done but what was
foretold in it ; nor was he painted as the principal figure
in the foreground with the partiality of a friend or as
the great man of the day, but with a background of
history, showing both what he was and what he might
have been. Northcote repeated some lines from ' The
Traveller,' which were distinguished by a beautiful
transparency, by simplicity and originality. He con-
firmed Boswell's account of Goldsmith as being about
the middle height, rather clumsy, and tawdry in his
dress.
A gentleman came in who had just shown his good
taste in purchasing three pictures of Northcote one a
head of Sir Joshua by himself, and the other two b}' North-
cote, a whole-length portrait of an Italian girl, and a
copy of Omai, the South Sea chief. I could hear the
artist iu the outer room expressing some scruples as to
Mr. Norihcotes Conversations. 3-U
the consistency of his parting with one of them which he
had brought from abroad, according to the strict letter of
his custom-house oath an objection which the purchaser,
a member of Parliament, overruled by assuring him that
" the peculiar case could not be contemplated by the
spirit of the Act." Northcote also expressed some regret
at the separation from pictures that had become old
friends. H e however comforted himself that they would
now find a respectable asylum, which was better than
being knocked about in garrets and auction-rooms, as
they would inevitably be at his death. " You may at
least depend upon it," said Mr. , " that they will not
be sold again for many generations." This view into
futurity brought back to my mind the time when I had
first known these pictures ; since then my life was flown,
and with it the hope of fame as an artist (with which I
had once regarded them), and I felt a momentary pang.
Northcote took me out into the other room, when his
friend was gone, to look at them ; and on my expressing
my admiration of the portrait of the Italian lady, he said
she was the mother of Madame Bellochi and was still
living ; that he had painted it at Home about the year
1780 ; that her family was originally Greek, and that he
had known her, her daughter, her mother, and grand-
mother. She and a sister, who was with her, were at
that time full of the most charming gaiety and innocence.
The old woman used to sit upon the ground without
moving or speaking, with her arm over her head, and
exactly like a bundle of old clothes. Alas ! thought I,
what are we but a heap of clay resting upon the earth,
and ready to crumble again into dust and ashes !
342 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
Conversation the Thirteenth.
NORTHCOTE spoke about the failure of some printsellers.
He said he did not wonder at it ; it was a just punish-
ment of their presumption and ignorance. They went
into an exhibition, looked round them, fixed upon some
contemptible performance, and without knowing any-
thing about the matter, or consulting anybody, ordered
two or three thousand pounds' worth of prints from it,
merely out of purse-proud insolence, and because the
money burnt in their pockets. Such people fancied that
the more money they laid out the more they must get ;
so that extravagance became (by the turn their vanity
gave to it) another name for thrift. Having spoken of
a living artist's pictures as mere portraits that were in-
teresting to no one except the people who sat for them,
he remarked : " There was always something in the
meanest face that a great artist could take advantage of.
That was the merit of Sir Joshua, who contrived to throw
a certain air and character even over ugliness and folly,
that disarmed criticism and made you wonder how he
did it. This at least is the case with his portraits ;
for, though he made his beggars look like heroes, he
sometimes, in attempting history, made his heroes look
like beggars. Grandi, the Italian colour-grinder, sat to
him for King Henry VI., in ' The Death of Cardinal Beau-
fort,' and he looks not much better than a train-bearer, or
one in a low and mean station ; if he had sat to him for
his portrait he would have made him look like a king.
That was what made Fuseli observe in joke, that
' Grandi never held up his head after Sir Joshua painted
him in his Cardinal Beaufort.' But the pictures I speak
of are poor dry facsimiles (in a little timid manner, and
with an attempt at drapery) of imbecile creatures, whose
appearance is a satire on themselves and mankind.
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 343
Neither can I conceive why L should be sent over
to paint Charles X. A French artist said to me on that
occasion, ' We have very fine portrait-painters in Paris,
sir!' . . . The poor engraver would be the greatest
sufferer by these expensive prints. Tradespeople nowa-
days did not look at the thing with an eye to business,
but ruined themselves and others by setting up for would-
be patrons and judges of the art.
" Some demon whisper'd, Visto, have a taste !"
I said I thought L 's pictures might do very well as
mirrors for personal vanity to contemplate itself in (as
you looked in the glass to see how you were dressed),
but that it was a mistake to suppose they would interest
any one else, or were addressed to the world at large.
They were private, not public property. They never
caught the eye in a shop-window, but were (as it ap-
peared to me) a kind of lithographic painting, or thin
meagre outlines, without the depth and richness of the
art. I mentioned to Northcote the pleasure I had
formerly taken in a little print of Gadshill from a sketch
of his own, which I used at one time to pass a certain
shop- window on purpose to look at. He said : " It was
impossible to tell beforehand what would hit the public.
You might as well pretend to say what ticket would
turn up a prize in the lottery. It was not chance neither,
but some unforeseen coincidence between the subject and
the prevailing taste, that you could not possibly be a
judge of. I had once painted two pictures one of a
Fortune-teller (a boy with a monkey), and another called
' The Visit to the Grandmother ;' and Raphael Smith
came to me and wanted to engrave them, being willing
to give a handsome sum for the first, but only to do the
last as an experiment. He sold ten times as many of
the last as of the first, and told me that there were not
less than five different impressions done of it in Paris ;
344: Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
and once, wlien I went to his house to get one to complete
a set of engravings after my designs, they asked rue six
guineas for a proof impression ! This was too much,
but I was delighted that I could not afford to pay for my
own work, from the value that was set upon it." I said,
people were much alarmed at the late failures, and
thought there would he a " blow-up," in the vulgar phrase.
"Surely you can't suppose so? A blow-up! Yes, of
adventurers and upstarts, but not of the country, if they
mean that. This is like the man who thought that gin-
drinking would put an end to the world. Oh no ! The
country will go on just as before, bating the distress to
individuals. You may form an idea on the subject if
you ever go to look at the effects of a fire the day after :
you see nothing but smoke and ruins and bare walls,
and think the damage can never be repaired ; but if
you pass by the same way a week after, you will find
the houses all built up just as they were before, or even
better than ever. No! there is the same wealth, the
same industry and ingenuity, in the country as there
was before : and till you destroy that you cannot destroy
the country. These temporary distresses are only like
disorders in the body, that carry off its bad and
superfluous humours.
" My neighbour Mr. Eowe, the bookseller, informed
me the other day that Signora Cecilia Davies frequently
came to his shop, and always inquired after me. Did
you ever hear of her ?" No, never ! " She must be very
old now. Fifty years ago, in the time of Garrick, she
made a vast sensation. All England rang with her
name. I do assure you that in this respect Madame
Catalani was not more talked of. Afterwards she had
retired to Florence, and was the piirna-donna there,
when Storace first came out. This was at the time when
Mr. Hoare and myself were in Italy ; arid I remember
we went to call upon her. She had then in a great
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 345
measure fallen t/ff, but she was still very much admired.
What a strange thing a reputation of this kind is that
the person herself survives, and sees the meteors of
fashion rise and fall one after another, while she remains
totally disregarded, as if there had been no such person,
yet thinking all the while that she was better than any
of them! I have hardly heard her name mentioned in
the last thirty years, though in her time she was quite
as famous as any one since." I said, an opera reputation
was after all but a kind of private theatricals, and con-
fined to a small circle compared with that of the regular
stage, which all the world were judges of and took an
interest in. It was but the echo of a sound, or like the
blaze of phosphorus, that did not communicate to the
surrounding objects. It belonged to a fashionable coterie
rather than to the public, and might easily die away at
the end of the season. I then observed I was more
affected by the fate of players than by that of any other
class of people. They seemed to me more to be pitied
than anybody the contrast was so great between the
glare, the noise, and intoxication of their first success,
and the mortifications and neglect of their declining
years. They were made drunk with popular applause,
and when this stimulus was withdrawn must feel the
insignificance of ordinary life particularly vapid and
distressing. There were no sots like the sots of vanity.
There were no traces left of what they had been, any
more than of a forgotten dream ; and they had no con-
solation but in their own conceit, which, when it was
without other vouchers, was a very uneasy comforter.
I had seen some actors who had been favourites in
my youth, and " cried up in the top of the compass,"
treated, from having grown old and infirm, with the
utmost indignity and almost hooted from the stage. I
had seen poor come forward under these circum-
stances, to stammer out an apology with the tears in his
346 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
eyes (which almost brought them into mine) to a set of
apprentice-boys and box-lobby loungers, who neither
knew nor cared what a fine performer and a fine gentle-
man he was thought twenty years ago. Players were
so far particularly unfortunate. The theatrical public
have a very short memory. Every four or five years
there is a new audience, who know nothing but of what
they have before their eyes, and who pronounce sum-
marily upon this, without any regard to past obligations
or past services, and with whom the veterans of the
stage stand a bad chance indeed, as their former triumphs
are entirely forgotten while they appear as living
vouchers against themselves. " Do you remember," said
Northcote, " Sheridan's beautiful lines on the subject in
his 'Monody on Garrick'?" I said I did; and that it
was probably the reading them early that had impressed
this feeling so strongly on my mind. Korthcote then
remarked : " I think a great beauty is most to be pitied.
She completely outlives herself. She has been used to
the most bewitching homage, to have the highest court
paid and the most flattering things said to her by all
those who approach her, and to be received with looks
of delight and surprise wherever she comes ; and she
afterwards not only finds herself deprived of all this and
reduced to a cypher, but she sees it all transferred to
another, who has become the reigning toast and beauty
of the day in her stead. It must be a most violent shock.
It is like a king who is dethroned and reduced to serve
as a page in his own palace. I remember once being
struck with seeing the Duchess of Devonshire, the same
that Sir Joshua painted, and who was a miracle of
beauty when she was young, and followed by crowds
wherever she went I was coming out of Mrs. W 's,
and on the landing-place, there was she, standing by
herself, and calling over the bannister for her servant
to come to her. If she had been as she once was, a
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 347
thousand admirers would have flown to her assistance ;
but her face was painted over like a mask, and there
was hardly any appearance of life left but the restless
motion of her eyes. I was really hurt." I answered,
the late Queen had much the same painful look that he
described her face highly rouged, and her eyes rolling
in her head like an automaton, but she had not the
mortification of having ever been a great beauty.
" There was a Miss , too," Northcote added, " who
was a celebrated beauty when she was a girl, and who
also sat to Sir Joshua. I saw her not long ago, and she
was grown as coarse and vulgar as possible ; she was
like an apple-woman, or would do to keep the Three Tuns.
The change must be very mortifying. To be sure, there
is one thing, it comes on by degrees. The ravages of
the smallpox must formerly have been a dreadful
blow!" He said, literary men or men of talent in
general were the best-off in this respect. The reputa-
tion they acquired was not only lasting, but gradually
grew stronger if it was deserved. I agreed they were
seldom spoiled by flattery, and had no reason to com-
plain after they were dead. " Nor while they are living,"
said Northcote, " if it is not their own fault." He men-
tioned an instance of a trial about an engraving where
he, West, and others had to appear, and of the respect
that was shown them. Erskine, after flourishing away,
made an attempt to puzzle Stothard by drawing two
angles on a piece of paper, an acute and an obtuse one,
and asking, " Do you mean to say these two are alike ?"
" Yes, I do," was the answer. " I see," said Erskine,
turning round, " there is nothing to be got by angling
here." West was then called upon to give his evidence,
and there was immediately a lane made for him to come
forward, and a stillness that you could hear a pin drop.
The judge (Lord Kenyon) then addressed him : " Sir
Benjamin, we shall be glad to hear your opinion."
348 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
Mr. West answered, " He had never received the honour
of a title from his Majesty ;" and proceeded to explain
the difference between the two engravings which were
charged with being copies the one of the other, with
such clearness and knowledge of the art, though in
general he was a bad speaker, that Lord Kenyon said,
when he had done, " I suppose, gentlemen, you are per-
fectly satisfied. I perceive there is much more in this
than I had any idea of, and am sorry I did not make it
more my study when I was young." I remarked that
I believed corporations of art or letters might meet with
a certain attention, but it was the stragglers and candi-
dates that were knocked about with very little ceremony.
Talent or merit only wanted a frame of some sort or
other to set it off to advantage. Those of my way of
thinking were " bitter bad judges " on this point. A
Tory scribe who treated mankind as rabble and canaille
was regarded by them in return as a fine gentleman. :
a Eeformer like myself, who stood up for liberty and
equality, was taken at his word by the very journeymen
that set up his paragraphs, and could not get a civil
answer from the meanest shopboy in the employ of those
on his own side of the. question. Northcote laughed, and
said I irritated myself too much about such things.
He said it was one of Sir Joshua's maxims that the art
of life consisted in not being overset by trifles. " We
should look at the bottom of the account, not at each
individual item in it, and see how the balance stands at
the end of the year. We should be satisfied if the path
of life is clear before us, and not fret at the straws or
pebbles that lie in our way. What you have to look to
is, whether you can get what you write printed and
whether the public will read it, and not to busy yourself
with the remarks of shopboys or printers' devils. They
can do you neither harm nor good. The impertinence
of mankind is a thing that no one can guard against."
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 349
Conversation tlie Fourteenth.
NOETHCOTK showed ine a poem with engravings of Dart-
moor, which were too fine by half. 1 1 said I supposed
Dartmoor would look more gay and smiling after having
been thus illustrated, like a dull author who has been
praised by a reviewer. I had once been nearly be-
nighted there, and was delighted to get to the inn at
Ashburton. " That," said Northcote, " is the only good
of such places that you are glad to escape from them,
and look back to them with a pleasing horror ever after.
Commend me to the Valdarno or Vallambrosa, where
you are never weary of new charms, and which you quit
with a sigh of regret. I have, however, told my young
friend who sent me the poem that he has shown his
genius in creating beauties where there were none, and
extracting enthusiasm from rocks and quagmires. After
that, he may write a very interesting poem on Kamt-
schatka." He then spoke of the panorama of the North
Pole which had been lately exhibited of the icebergs,
the seals lying asleep on the shore, and the strange twi-
light as well worth seeing. He said it would be curious
to know the effect, if they could get to the Pole itself,
though it must be impossible : the veins, he should
suppose, would burst, and the vessel itself go to pieces
from the extreme cold. I asked if he had ever read an
account of twelve men who had been left all the winter
in Greenland, and of the dreadful shifts to which they
were reduced ? He said he had not. They were obliged
to build two booths of wood, one within the other ; and
1 I do not know what work is here intended, unless it be Car-
riugton s ' Durtmoor, A Descriptive Poem,' with notes by the late
W. Burt, Esq., and twelve prints. (Lond. 1826, 18mo. ?) There were
two editions the same year, in one of which the preface by Burt
is omitted. See Davidson's 'Bibliotheca Devouiensis,' 1852, p. 131.
ED.
350 Mr. Norihcotes Conversations.
if they had to go into the outer one during the severity
of the weather, unless they used great precaution, their
hands were blistered by whatever they took hold of as if
it had been redhot iron. The most interesting part was
the account of their waiting for the return of light at
the approach of spring, and the delight with which they
first saw the sun shining on the tops of the frozen moun-
tains. Northcote said : " This is the great advantage of
descriptions of extraordinary situations by uninformed
men : Nature, as it were, holds the pen for them ; they
give you what is most striking in the circumstances,
and there is nothing to draw off the attention from the
strong and actual impression, so that it is the next thing
to the reality. Godwin was here the other day, and I
showed him the note from my bookseller about the
4 Fables,' with which you were so much pleased, but he
saw nothing in it." I then said : " Godwin is not one of
those who look attentively at nature or draw much from
that source. Yet the rest is but like building castles in
the air, if it is not founded in observation and experi-
ence. Or it is like the enchanted money in the ' Arabian
Nights,' which turned to dry leaves when you came to
make use of it. It is ingenious and amusing, and so far
it is well to be amused when you can ; but you learn
nothing from the fine hypothesis you have been reading,
which is only a better sort of dream, bright and vague,
and utterly inapplicable to the purposes of common life.
Godwin does not appeal to nature, but to art and execu-
tion. There is another thing which it seems harsh and
presumptuous to say but he appears to me not always
to perceive the difference between right and wrong.
There are many others in the same predicament, though
not such splendid examples of it. He is satisfied to
make out a plausible case, to give the pros and cons like
a lawyer ; but he has no instinctive bias or feeling one
way or other, except as he can give a studied reason for
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 351
it. Cemmon-sense is out of the question ; such people
despise common-sense, and the quarrel between them is
a mutual one. ' Caleb \Yilliams,' notwithstanding, is a
decidedly original work : the rest are the sweepings of
his study. That is but one thing, to be sure ; but no
one does more than one thing." Northcote said that Sir
Joshua used to say that no one produced more than six
original things. I always said it was wrong to fix upon
this number five out of the six would be found upon
examination to be repetitions of the first. A man can
no more produce six original works than he can be six
individuals at once. Whatever is the strong and pre-
vailing bent of his genius, he will stamp upon some
master-work ; and what he does else will be only the
same thing over again, a little better or a little worse ;
or if he goes out of his way in search of variety and to
avoid himself, he will merely become a commonplace
man or an imitator of others. You see this plainly
enough in Cervantes that he has exhausted himself in
the ' Don Quixote.' He has put his whole strength into
it : his other works are no better than what other people
could write. If there is any exception it is Shakspeare :
he seems to have had the faculty of dividing himself
into a number of persons. His writings stand out from
everything else and from one another. Othello, Lear,
Macbeth, Falstaff, are striking and original characters ;
but they die a natural death at the end of the fifth act,
and no more come to life than the people themselves
would. He is not reduced to repeat himself or revive
former inventions under feigned names. This is pecu-
liar to him : still it is to be considered that plays are
short works, and only allow room for the expression of a
part. But in a work of the extent of ' Don Quixote ' the
writer had scope to bring in all he wanted ; and indeed
there is no point of excellence which he has not touched,
from the highest courtly grace and the most romantic
352 Mr. Northcoies Conversations.
enthusiasm down to the lowest ribaldry and rustic igno-
rance, yet carried off with such an air that you wish
nothing away, and do not see what can be added to it.
Every bit is perfect, and the author has evidently given
his whole mind to it. That is why I believe that the
Scotch novels are the production of several hands.
Some parts are careless, others straggling : it is only
where there is an opening for effect that the master-
hand comes in, and in general he leaves his work for
others to get on with it. But in ' Don Quixote ' there is
not a single line that you may not swear belongs to Cer-
vantes." I inquired if he had read ' Woodstock ' ? He
answered, No, he had not been able to get it. I said :
"I had been obliged to pay five shillings for the loan of
it at a regular bookseller's shop (I could not procure it
at the circulating libraries), and that from the under-
stood feeling about Sir Walter no objection was made to
this proposal, which would in ordinary cases have been
construed into an affront. I had wellnigh repented my
bargain, but there were one or two scenes that repaid me
though none equal to his best, and in general it was
very indifferent. The plot turned chiefly on English
ghost scenes, a very mechanical sort of phantoms, who
dealt in practical jokes and personal annoyances, turning
beds upside down and sousing you all over with water,
instead of supernatural and visionary horrors. It was
very bad indeed, but might be intended to contrast the
literal matter-of-fact imagination of the Southron with
the loftier impulses of Highland superstition. Charles II.
was not spared, and was brought in admirably (when in
disguise) as a raw awkward Scotch lad, Master Kerne-
guy. Cromwell was made a fine, bluff, overbearing
blackguard, who exercised a personal superiority wher-
ever he came, but was put in situations which I thought
wholly out of character, and for which I apprehended
there was no warrant in the history of the times. They
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 353
were therefore so far improper. A romance-writer might
take an incident and work it out according to his fancy,
or might build an imaginary superstructure on the
ground of history, but he had no right to transpose the
facts. For instance, he had made Cromwell act as his
own tipstaff, and go to Woodstock to take Charles II. in
person. To be sure, he had made him display consider-
able firmness and courage in the execution of this errand
(as Lavender might in being the first to enter a window
to secure a desperate robber) ; but the plan itself, to say
nothing of the immediate danger, was contrary to Crom-
well's dignity as well as policy. Instead of wishing to
seize Charles with his own hand, he would naturally
keep as far aloof from such a scene as he could, and be
desirous to have it understood that he was anxious to
shed as little more blood as possible. Besides, he had
higher objects in view, and would, I should think, care
not much more about Charles than about Master Kerne-
guy. He would be glad to let him get away. In
another place, he had made Cromwell start back in the
utmost terror at seeing a picture of Charles I., and act all
the frenzy of Macbeth over again at the sight of Banquo's
ghost. This I should also suppose to be quite out of
character, in a person of Cromwell's prosaic determined
habits to fear a painted devil." "No," said Northcote,
" that is not the way he would look at it ; it is seeing
only a part ; but Cromwell was a greater philosopher thai
to act so. The other story is more probable, of his visit-
ing the dead body of Charles in a mask, and exclaiming
in great agitation, as he left the room, ' Cruel necessity S*
Yet even this is not sufficiently authenticated. No ; he
knew that it was come to this, that it was gone too fax
for either party to turn back, and that it must be final
with one of them. The only question was, whether ho
should give himself up as the victim, and so render all
that had been done useless, or exact the penalty from
2 A
354 Mr. Northcote s Conversations.
what lie thought the offending party. It was like a
battle which must end fatally either way, and no one
thought of lamenting because he was not on the losing
side. In a great public quarrel there was no room for
these domestic and personal regards ; all you had to do
was to consider well the justice of the cause, before you
appealed to the sword. Would Charles I., if he had
been victorious, have started at the sight of a picture of
Cromwell ? Yet Cromwell was as much of a man as he,
and as firm as the other was obstinate." Northcote said,
he wished he could remember the subject of a dispute he
had with Godwin to see if I did not think he had the
best of it. I replied, I should be more curious to hear
something in which Godwin was right, for he generally
made it a rule to be in the wrong in speaking of any-
thing. I mentioned having once had a very smart
debate with him about a young lady, of whom I had
been speaking as very much like her aunt, a celebrated
authoress, and as what the latter, I conceived, might
have been at her time of life. Godwin said, when
Miss did anything like ' Evelina ' or ' Cecilia,' he
should then believe she was as clever as Madame
d'Arblay. I asked him whether he did not think Miss
Burney was as clever before she wrote those novels as
she was after ; or whether in general an author wrote a
successful work for being clever, or was clever because
he had written a successful work? Northcote laughed,
and said, " That was so like Godwin." I observed that
it arose out of his bigoted admiration of literature, so
that he could see no merit in anything else, nor trust to
any evidence of talent but what was printed. It was
much the same fallacy that had sometimes struck me in
the divines, who deduced original sin from Adam's eating
the apple, and not his eating the apple from original sin,
or a previous inclination to do something that he should
not. Northcote remarked that speaking of ' Evelina '
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 355
put him in mind of what Opie had once told him, that
when Dr. Johnson sat to him for his picture, on his first
coming to town, he asked him if it was true that he had
sat up all night to read Miss Bumey's new novel, as it
been reported ? And he made answer, " I never read it
through at all, though I don't wish this to be known."
Sir Joshua also pretended to have read it through at a
sitting, though it appeared to him (Northcote) affecta-
tion in them both, who were thorough-paced men of the
world, and hackneyed in literature, to pretend to be so
delighted with the performance of a girl, in which they
could find neither instruction nor any great amuse-
ment, except from the partiality of friendship. So
Johnson cried up Savage, because they had slept on
bulks when they were young ; and lest he should be
degraded into a vagabond by the association, had ele-
vated the other into a genius. Such prevarication or
tampering with his own convictions was not consistent
with the strict and formal tone of morality which he
assumed on other and sometimes very trifling occasions,
such as correcting Mrs. Thrale for saying that a bird
flew in at the door instead of at the window. I said
Savage, in my mind, was one of those writers (like
Chatterton) whose vices and misfortunes the world
made a set-off to their genius, because glad to connect
these ideas together. They were only severe upon
those who attacked their prejudices or their conse-
quence. Northcote replied : " Savage the architect was
here the other day, and asked me why I had abused his
namesake, and called him an impostor. I answered, I
had heard that character of him from a person in an
obscure rank of life, who had known him a little before
his death." Northcote proceeded : " People in that
class are better judges than poets and moralists, who
explain away everything "by fine words and doubtful
theories. The mob are generally right in their summary
356 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
judgments upon offenders. A man is seldom ducked, or
pumped upon, or roughly handled by them unless he
has deserved it. You see that in the galleries at the
playhouse ; they never let anything pass that is im-
moral, and they are even fastidious judges of wit. I
remember there was some gross expression in Gold-
smith's comedj the first night it came out, and there
was a great uproar in the gallery, and it was obliged to
be suppressed. Though rude and vulgar themselves,
they do not like vulgarity on the stage ; they come there
to be taught manners." I said, they paid more atten-
tion than anybody else ; and after the curtain drew up
(though somewhat noisy before) were the best-behaved
part of the audience, unless something went wrong. As
the common people sought for refinement as a treat,
people in high life were fond of grossness and ribaldry
as a relief to their overstrained affectation of gentility.
I could account in no other way for their being amused
with the wretched slang in certain magazines and news-
papers. I asked Northcote if he had seen the third
series of ? He had not. I said they were like the
composition of a footman, and I believed greatly ad-
mired in the upper circles, who were glad to see an
author arrange a sideboard for them over again with
servile alacrity. He said : " They delight in low coarse
buffoonery, because it sets off their own superiority ;
whereas the rabble resent it when obtruded upon them,
because they think it is meant against themselves. They
require the utmost elegance and propriety for their
money : as the showman says in Goldsmith's comedy,
' My bear dances to none but the genteelest of tunes
Water parted from the Sea, or the minuet in
Ariadne !' "
Northcote then alluded to a new novel he had been
reading. He said he never read a book so full of words ;
which seemed ridiculous enough to say, for a book was
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 357
necessarily composed of words, but here there was
nothing else but words, to a degree that was surprising.
Yet he believed it was sought after, and indeed he could
not get it at the common library. " You are to consider,
there must be books for all tastes and all ages. You
may despise it, but the world do not. There are books
for children till the time they are six years of age, such
as 'Jack the Giant-killer,' 'The Seven Champions of
Christendom,' 'Guy of Warwick' and others. 1 From
that to twelve they like to read the ' Pilgrim's Progress '
and ' Eobinson Crusoe,' and then Fielding's novels and
' Don Quixote ;' from twenty to thirty, books of poetry
Milton, Pope, Shakspeare ; and from thirty, history and
philosophy what suits us then will serve us for the
rest of our lives. For boarding-school girls Thomson's
' Seasons ' has an immense attraction, though I never
could read it. Some people cannot get beyond a news-
paper or a geographical dictionary. What I mean to
infer is, that we ought not to condemn too hastily, for a
work may be approved by the public,though it does not
exactly hit our taste ; nay, those may seem beauties to
others which seem faults to us. Why else do we pride
ourselves on the superiority of our judgment if we are
not more advanced in this respect than the majority of
readers ? But our very fastidiousness should teach us
toleration. You have said very well of this novel, that
it is a mixture of genteel and romantic affectation. One
objection to the excessive rhodomontade which abounds
in it is that you can learn nothing from such extravagant
fictions ; they are like nothing in the known world.
I remember once speaking to Richardson 2 (Sheridan's
friend) about Shakspeare's want of morality, and he
1 See a paper on this subject in ' The Tatler.'
2 William Richardson, author of ' Essays on some of Shake-
speare's Dramatic Characters' (1783 , and other works in criticism,
which are still held in some estimation. ED.
358 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
replied, ' What ! Shakspeare not moral ? He is the
most moral of all writers, because he is the most natural.'
And in this he was right : for though Shakspeare did
not intend to be moral, yet he could not be otherwise as
long as he adhered to the path of nature. Morality only
teaches us our duty by showing us the natural conse-
quences of our actions; and the poet does the same
while he continues to give us faithful and affecting
pictures of human life rewarding the good and punish-
ing the bad. So far truth and virtue are one. But that
kind of poetry which has not its foundation in nature,
and is only calculated to shock and surprise, tends to
unhinge our notions of morality and of everything else
in the ordinary course of Providence."
Something being said of an artist who had attempted
to revive the great style in our times, and the question
being put whether Michael Angelo and Raphael, had they
lived now, would not have accommodated themselves
to the modern practice, I said, it appeared to me that
(whether this was the case or not) they could not have
done what they did without the aid of circumstances ;
that for an artist to raise himself above all surrounding
opinions, customs, and institutions by a mere effort of
the will was affectation and folly, like attempting to fly
in the air ; and that, though great genius might exist
without the opportunities favourable to its development,
yet it must draw its nourishment from circumstances
and suck in inspiration from its native air. There was
Hogarth he was surely a genius ; still the manners of
his age were necessary to him ; teeming as his works
were with life, character, and spirit, they would have
been poor and vapid without the night-cellars of St.
Giles's, the drawing-rooms of St. James's. Would he
in any circumstances have been a Raphael or a Phidias ?
I think not. But had he been twenty times a Raphael or
a Phidias, I am quite sure it would never have appeared
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 359
in the circumstances in which he was placed. Two things
are necessary to all great works and great excellence, the
mind of the individual, and the mind of the age or country
co-operating with his own genius. The last brings out the
first, hut the first does not imply or supersede the last.
Pictures for Protestant churches are a contradiction in
terms, where they are not objects of worship but of idle
curiosity. Where there is not the adoration, the enthusi-
asm, in the spectator, how can it exist in the artist? The
spark of genius is only kindled into a flame by sympathy.
Northcote spoke highly of Vanbrugh, and of the calm
superiority with which he bore the attacks of Swift, Pope,
and that set, who made a point of decrying all who did
not belong to their party. He said Burke and Sir Joshua
thought his architecture far from contemptible ; and his
comedies were certainly first-rate. Richards (the scene-
painter) had told him, the players thought ' The Provoked
Husband ' the best acting play on the stage ; and God-
win said the ' City-Wives Confederacy ' (taken from an
indifferent French play) was the best written one. I
ventured to add that ' The Trip to Scarborough ' (altered
but not improved by Sheridan) was not inferior to
either of the others. I should doubt whether the direc-
tion given at Sir Tunbelly's castle on the arrival of
Young Fashion "Let loose the greyhound and lock
up Miss Hoyden !" would be in Sheridan's version,
who, like most of his countrymen, had a prodigious am-
bition of elegance. Northcote observed, that talking of
this put him in mind of a droll speech that was made
when the officers got up a play on board the vessel that
went lately to find out the North-west Passage. One of
the sailors, who was admiring the performance, and
saying how clever it was, was interrupted by the boat-
swain, who exclaimed, "Clever, did you say? I call it
philosophy, by G d !" He asked if he had ever men-
tioned to me that anecdote of Lord Mansfield who, when
360 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
an old woman was brought before him as a witch, and
was charged, among other improbable things, with walk-
ing through the air, attended coolly to the evidence, and
then dismissed the complaint by saying : " My opinion
is that this good woman be suffered to return home, and
'whether she shall do this walking on the ground or
riding through the air must be left entirely to her own
pleasure, for there is nothing contrary to the laws of
England in either." I mentioned a very fine dancer at
the Opera (Mademoiselle Brocard) with whom I was
much delighted ; and Northcote observed that where there
was grace and beauty accompanying the bodily movements
it was very hard to deny the mental refinement or the
merit of this art. He could not see why that which
was so difficult to do, and which gave so much pleasure
to others, was to be despised. He remembered seeing
some young people at Parma (though merely in a country-
dance) exhibit a degree of perfection in their movements
that seemed to be inspired by the very genius of grace
and gaiety. Miss Eeynolds used to say that perfection
was much the same in everything nobody could assign
the limits. I said authors alone were privileged to
suppose that all excellence was confined to words. Till
I was twenty I thought there was nothing in the world
but books ; when I began to paint I found there were
two things both difficult to do and worth doing ; and 1
concluded from that time there might be fifty at least
I was willing to allow every one his own choice. I re-
collect a certain poet saying he " should like to ham-
string those fellows at the Opera " I suppose because
the great would rather see them dance than read ' Ke-
hama.' Whatever can be done in such a manner that
you can fancy a god to do it must have something in its
nature divine. The ancients had assigned gods to
dancing as well as to music and poetry, to the different
attributes and perfections both of body and mind ; and
Mr. Northcote s Cbnversations. 361
perhaps the plurality of the heathen deities was favour-
able to a liberality of taste and opinion.
Northcote : " The most wretched scribbler looks dowii
upon the greatest painter as a mere mechanic ; but who
would compare Lord Byron with Titian ?"
Conversation the Fifteenth.
I WENT to Northcote in the evening to consult about his
' Fables.' He was downstairs in the parlour, and talked
much as usual ; but the difference of the accompaniments,
the sitting down, the preparations for tea, the carpet and
furniture, and a little fat lap-dog, interfered with old
associations, and took something from the charm of his
conversation. He spoke of a Mr. Laird, who had been
employed to see his ' Life of Sir Joshua ' through the
press, and whom he went to call upon in an upper storey
in Peterborough Court, Fleet Street, where he was sur-
rounded by his books, his implements of writing, a hand-
organ, and his coffee-pots ; and he said he envied him
this retreat more than any palace he had ever happened
to enter. Northcote was not very well, arid repeated his
complaints. I said I thought the air (now summer was
coming on) would do him more good than physic. His
apothecary had been describing the dissection of the
elephant which had just been killed at Exeter 'Change.
It appeared that, instead of the oil which usually is
found in the joints of animals, the interstices were in this
case filled up with a substance resembling a kind of
white paint. This Northcote considered as a curious
instance of the wise contrivance of nature in the adapta-
tion of means to ends ; for even in pieces of artificial
mechanism, though they use oil to lubricate the springs
and wheels of clocks and other common-sized instru-
ments, yet in very large and heavy ones, such as steam-
362 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
engines, &c., they are obliged tonse grease, pitch, and other
more solid substances, to prevent the friction. If they
could dissect a flea, what a fine evanescent fluid would
be found to lubricate its slender joints and assist its light
movements ! Xorthcote said the bookseller wished to
keep the original copy of the ' Fables ' to bind up as a
literary curiosity. I objected to this proceeding as unfair.
There were several slips of the pen and slovenlinesses of
style (for which I did not think him at all accountable,
since an artist wrote with his left hand and painted with
his right), and I did not see why these accidental inad-
vertences, arising from diffidence and want of practice,
should be as it were enshrined and brought against him.
He said : " Mr. Prince Hoare tasked me the hardest in
what I wrote in ' The Artist.' He pointed out where I was
wrong, and sent it back to me to correct it. After all,
what I did there was thought the best." I said Mr. Hoare
was too fastidious, and spoiled what he did from a wish
to have it perfect. He dreaded that a shadow of objec-
tion should be brought against anything he advanced, so
that his opinions at last amounted to a kind of genteel
truisms. One must risk something in order to do any-
thing. I observed that this was remarkable in so clever
a man ; but it seemed as if there were some fatality by
which the most lively and whimsical writers, if they
went out of their own eccentric path and attempted to
be serious, became exceedingly grave and even insipid.
His farces were certainly very spirited and original. ' No
Song no Supper' was the first play I had ever seen,
and I felt grateful to him for this. Northcote agreed
that it was very delightful, and said there was a volume
of it when he first read it to them one night at Mrs.
Bundle's, and that the players cut it down a gooa deal
and supplied a number of things. There was a great
piece of work to alter the songs for Madame Storace, who
played in it, and who could not pronounce half the
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 363
English terminations. 'My Grandmother,' too, was a
laughable idea, very ingeniously executed ; and some of
the songs in this had an equal portion of elegance and
droller}-, such as that in particular
" For alas ! long before I was born,
My fair one had died of old age !"
Still some of his warmest admirers were hurt at their
being farces ; if they had been comedies they would have
been satisfied, for nothing could be greater than their
success. They were the next to O'Keefe's, who in that
line was the English Moliere.
Northcote asked if I remembered the bringing-out of
any of O'Keefe's ? I answered, No. He said : " It had
the oddest effect imaginable ; at one moment they seemed
on the point of being damned, and the next moment you
were convulsed with laughter. Edwin 1 was inimitable
in some of them. He was one of those actors, it is true,
who carried a great deal off the stage with him that he
would willingly have left behind, and so far could not
help himself. But his awkward shambling figure in
Bowkitt the dancing-master was enough to make one die
with laughing. He was unrivalled in Lingo, where he
was admirably supported by Mrs. Wells in Cowslip, when
she prefers ' a roast duck ' to all the birds in the heathen
mythology ; and in Peeping Tom, where he merely
puts his head out, the faces that he made threw the
audience into a roar." I said I remembered no further
back than Bannister, 2 who used to delight me excessively
in Lenitive in ' The Prize,' when I was a boy. Xorth-
cote said he was an imitator of Edwin, but at a con-
siderable distance. He was a good-natured agreeable
man, and the audience were delighted with him, because
he was evidently delighted with them. In some respects
he was a caricaturist ; for instance, in Lenitive he stuck
1 John Edwin. See ' Geneste,' vol. vii. p. 2, et teq. ED.
* This was the elder actor of that name. ED.
361 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
his pigtail on end, which he had no right to do, for no
one had ever done it but himself. I said Liston appeared
to me to have more comic humour than any one in my
time, though he was not properly an actor. Northcote
asked if he was not low-spirited, and told the story (I
suspect an old one) of his consulting a physician on the
state of his health, who recommended him to go and see
Liston. I said he was grave and prosing, but I did not
know there was anything the matter with him, though I
had seen him walking along the street the other day
with his face as fixed as if he had a lockjaw, a book in
his hand, looking neither to the right nor the left, and
very much like his own Lord Duberly. I did not see why
he and Matthews should both of them be so hipped, except
from their having " the player's melancholy," arising
from their not seeing six hundred faces on the broad grin
before them at all other times as well as when they were
acting. He was, however, exceedingly unaffected, and
remarkably candid in judging of other actors. He
always spoke in the highest terms of Munden, whom I
considered as overdoing his parts. 1 Northcote said,
" Munden was excellent, but an artificial actor. You
should have seen Weston," he continued. " It was impos-
sible, from looking at him, for any one to say that he was
acting. You would suppose they had gone out and found
the actual character they wanted, and brought him upon
the stage without his knowing it. Even when they in-
terrupted him with peals of laughter and applause, he
looked about him as if he was not at all conscious of
having anything to do with it, and then went on as
before. In Scrub, Dr. Last, and other parts of that kind,
he was perfection itself. Garrick would never attempt
1 The same praise may be extended to Matthews. Those who
have seen this ingenious and lively actor only on the stage do not
know half his merits. [The reference is, of course, to the elder
Matthews.J
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 365
Abel Drugger after him. There was something peculiar
in his face ; for I knew an old schoolfellow of his who
told me he used to produce the same effect when a boy,
and when the master asked what was the matter, his
companions would make answer, ' Weston looked at me,
sir !' Yet he came out in tragedy, as indeed they all
did." Northcote inquired if I had seen Garrick. I
answered, "No; I could not very well, as he died the
same year I was born." I mentioned having lately met
with a striking instance of genealogical taste in a family,
the grandfather of which thought nothing of Garrick, the
father thought nothing of Mrs. Siddons, and the daughter
could make nothing of the Scotch novels, but admired
Mr. Theodore Hook's ' Sayings and Doings.'
Northcote then returned to the subject of his book,
and said : " Sir Eichard Phillips once wished me to do a
very magnificent work indeed on the subject of art.
He was like Curll, who had a number of fine titlepages,
if any one could have written books to answer to them.
He came here once with Godwin to show me a picture
which they had just discovered of Chaucer, and which
was to embellish Godwin's Life of him. I told them it
was certainly no picture of Chaucer, nor was any such
picture painted at that time." I said, Godwin had got
a portrait about a year ago which he wished me to sup-
pose was a likeness of President Bradshaw : I saw no
reason for his thinking so, but that in that case it would
be worth a hundred pounds to him. Northcote ex-
pressed a curiosity to have seen it, as he knew the
descendants of the family at Plymouth. He remem-
bered one of them, an old lady of the name of Wilcox,
who used to walk about in Gibson's Field, near the
town, so prim and starched, holding up her fan spread
out like a peacock's tail, with such an air ! on account
of her supposed relationship to one of the regicides.
They paid, however (in the vulgar opinion), for this dis-
366 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
tinction ; for others of them bled to death at the nose,
or died of the bursting of a bloodvessel, which their
wise neighbours did not fail to consider as a judgment
upon them.
Speaking of Dr. Mudge, he said he had such a feeling
of beauty in his heart, that it made angels of every one
around him. To check a person who was running on
against another he once said, " You should not speak
in that manner, for you lead me to suppose you have
the bad qualities you are so prone to dwell upon in
others." A transition was here made to Lord Byron,
who used to tell a story of a little red-haired girl, who,
when countesses and ladies of fashion were leaving the
room where he was in crowds (to cut him after his
quarrel with his wife), stopped short near a table against
which he was leaning, gave him a familiar nod, and
said, " You should have married me, and then this would
not have happened to you." A question being started
whether Dr. Mudge was handsome, Northcote answered :
" I could see no beauty in him as to his outward person,
but there was an angelic sweetness of disposition that
spread its influence over his whole conversation and
manner. He had not wit, but a fine romantic enthu-
siasm, which deceived himself and enchanted others. I
remember once his describing a picture by Eosa de
Tivoli (at Saltram, of ' Two Bulls fighting '), and he gave
such an account of their rage and manner of tearing up
the ground that I could not rest till we went over to
see it. When we came there it was nothing but a coarse
daub, like what might be expected from the painter ;
but he had made the rest out of a vivid imagination.
So my father told him a story of a bull-bait he had seen,
in which the bull had run so furiously at the dog that
he broke the chain and pitched upon his head and was
killed. Soon after he came and told us the same story
as an incident he himself had witnessed. He did not
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 367
mean to deceive, but the image had made such an im-
pression on his fancy that he believed it to be one that
he had himself been an eyewitness of." I was much
amused with this account, and 1 offered to get him a
copy of a whimsical production, of which a new edition
had been printed. 1 I also recommended to him the
' Spanish Eogue,' as a fine mixture of drollery and grave
moralizing. He spoke of ' Lazarillo de Tonnes,' and of
the ' Cheats of Scapin,' the last of which he rated rather
low. The work was written by Scarron, whose widow,
the famous Madame de Maintenon, afterwards became
mistress to Louis XIV.
Conversation the Sixteenth.
N. THAT is your diffidence, which I can't help think-
ing you carry too far. For any one of real strength
you are the humblest person I ever knew.
H. It is owing to pride.
N. You deny you have invention too. But it is want
of practice. Your ideas run on before your executive
power. It is a common case. There was Ramsay, 2 of
whom Sir Joshua used to say that he was the most sen-
sible among all the painters of his time ; but he has
left little to show it. His manner was dry and timid.
He stopped short in the middle of his work, because he
knew exactly how much it wanted. Now and then we
find hints and sketches which show what he might have
been, if his hand had been equal to his conceptions. I
have seen a picture of his of the Queen, soon after she
was married a profile, and slightly done ; but it was a
paragon of elegance. She had a fan in her hand : Lord I
how she held that fan! It was weak in execution,
1 Most probably, Amory's 'John Buncle,' of which a new
edition was printed in 1825. ED.
3 Allan Ramsay, son of the poet of the same name. ED.
368 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
and ordinary in features all I can say of it is, that
it was the farthest possible removed from everything
like vulgarity. A professor might despise it ; but
in the mental part I have never seen anything of
Vandyke's equal to it. I could have looked at it for
ever. I showed it to J n ; and he, I believe, came
into my opinion of it. I don't know where it is now ;
but I saw in it enough to convince me that Sir Joshua
was right in what he said of Ramsay's great superiority.
His own picture of the King, which is at the Academy,
is a finer composition, and shows greater boldness and
mastery of hand ; but I should find it difficult to pro
duce anything of Sir Joshua's that conveys an idea of
more grace and delicacy than the one I have mentioned.
Eeynolds would have finished it better ; the other was
afraid of spoiling what he had done, and so left it a
mere outline. He was frightened before he was hurt.
H. Taste and even genius is but a misfortune with-
out a correspondent degree of manual dexterity or power
of language to make it manifest.
N. W was here the other day. I believe you
met him going out. He came, he said, to ask me about
the famous people of the last age Johnson, Burke, &c.
(as I was almost the only person left who remembered
them), and was curious to know what figure Sir Walter
Scott would have made among them.
H. That is so like a North Briton " to make assur-
ance doubly sure," and to procure a signature to an
acknowledged reputation, as if it were a receipt for the
delivery of a bale of goods.
N. I told him it was not for me to pronounce upon
such men as Sir Walter Scott : they came before another
tribunal. They were of that height that they were
seen by all the world, and must stand or fall by the
verdict of posterity. It signified little what any in-
dividual thought in such cases, it being eqiially an
impertinence to set one's self against or to add one's
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 369
testimony to the public voice. But, as far as I could
judge, I told him that Sir "Walter would have stood his
ground in any company ; neither Burke nor Johnson
nor any of their admirers would have been disposed or
able to set aside his pretensions. These men were not
looked upon in their day as they are at present : John-
son had his ' Lexiphanes,' and Goldsmith was laughed
at ; their merits were to the full as much called in
question, nay more so, than those of the author of
' Waverley' have ever been, who has been singularly
fortunate in himself, or in lighting upon a barren age ;
but because their names have since become established
and as it were sacred, we think they were always so ;
and W wanted me, as a competent witness, and as
having seen both parties, to affix the same seal to his
countryman's reputation, which it is not in the power of
the whole of the present generation to do, much less of
any single person in it. No, we must wait for this.
Time alone can give the final stamp : no living reputa-
tion can ever be of the same value or quality as post-
humous fame. We must throw lofty objects to a dis-
tance in order to judge of them : if we are standing close
tinder the Monument it looks higher than St. Paul's.
Posterity has this advantage over us not that they are
really wiser, but they see the proportions better from
being placed further off. For instance, I liked Sir
Walter, because he had an easy unaffected manner, and
was ready to converse on all subjects alike. He was
not like your friends the Lake poets, who talk about
nothing but their own poetry. If, on the contrary, he
had been stiff and pedantic, I should, perhaps, have
been inclined to think less highly of the author from
not liking the man ; so that we can never judge fairly
of men's abilities till we are no longer liable to come in
contact with their persons. Friends are as little to be
trusted as enemies : favour or prejudice makes the votes
2B
370 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
in either case more or less suspected, though " the
vital signs that a name shall live "are in some instances
so strong that we can hardly refuse to put faith in
them ; and I think this is one. I was much pleased
with Sir Walter, and I believe he expressed a favour-
able opinion of me. I said to him, " I admire the way
in which you begin your novels. You set out so
abruptly, that you quite surprise me. I can't at all
tell what's coming." " No," says Sir Walter, " nor I
neither." I then told him, that when I first read
' Waverley ' I said it was no novel : nobody could in-
vent like that. Either he had heard the story related
by one of the surviving parties, or he had found the
materials in a manuscript concealed in some old chest.
To which he replied, " You're not so far out of the way
in thinking so." You don't know him, do you ? He'd
be a pattern to you. Oh ! he has a very fine manner.
You would learn to rub off some of your asperities. But
you admire him, I believe ?
H. Yes ; on this side of idolatry and Toryism.
N. That is your prejudice.
H. Nay, it rather shows my liberality, if I am a
devoted enthusiast notwithstanding. There are two
things I admire in Sir Walter, his capacity and his
simplicity, which indeed I am apt to think are much
the same. The more ideas a man has of other things
the less he is taken up with the idea of himself. Every
one gives the same account of the author of ' Waverley '
in this respect. When he was in Paris, and went to
Galignani's, he sat down in an outer room to look at
some book he wanted to see ; none of the clerks had the
least suspicion who it was. When it was found out the
place was in a commotion. Cooper, the American, was
in Paris at the same time : his looks and manner seemed
to announce a much greater man. He strutted through
the streets with a very consequential air, and in com-
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 371
pany held up his head, screwed up his features, and
placed himself on a sort of pedestal to be observed and
admired, as if he never relaxed in the assumption, nor
wished it to be forgotten by others, that he was the
American Sir Walter Scott. The real one never troubled
himself about the matter. Why should he ? He might
safely leave that question to others. Indeed, by what I
am told, he carries his indifference too far : it amounts
to an implied contempt for the public, and misprision of
treason against the commonwealth of letters. He thinks
nothing of his works, although " all Europe rings with
them from side to side." If so, he has been severely
punished for his infirmity.
N. Though you do not know Sir Walter Scott, I
think I have heard you say you have seen him ?
H. Yes ; he put me in mind of Cobbett, with his florid
face and scarlet gown, which were just like the other's red
face and scarlet waiscoat. The one is like an English
fanner, the other like a Scotch laird. Both are large ro-
bust men, with great strength and composure of features ;
but I saw nothing of the ideal character in the romance-
writer, any more than I looked for it in the politician.
N. Indeed ! But you have a vast opinion of Cobbett
too, haven't you? Oh, he's a giant! He has such
prodigious strength ; he tears up a subject by the roots.
Did you ever read his Grammar, or see his attack on
Mrs. ? It was like a hawk pouncing on a wren.
I should be terribly afraid to get into his hands. And
then his homely familiar way of writing it is not from
necessity or vulgarity, but to show his contempt for
aristocratic pride and arrogance. He only has a kitchen-
garden ; he could have a flower-garden too, if he chose.
Peter Pindar said his style was like the Horse Guards,
only one storey above the ground, while Junius's had all
the airy elegance of Whitehall : but he could raise his
style just as high as he pleased, though he does not
372 Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
want to sacrifice strength to elegance. He knows better
what he is about.
H. I don't think he'll set up for a fine gentleman in a
hurry, though he has for a member of Parliament ; and
I fancy he would make no better figure in the one than
in the other. He appeared to me, when I once saw him,
exactly what I expected : in Sir Walter I looked in vain
for a million of fine things ! I could only explain it to
myself in this way : that there was a degree of capacity in
that huge double forehead of his that superseded all effort,
made everything come intuitively and almost mechani-
cally, as if it were merely transcribing what was already
written, and by the very facility with which the highest
beauty and excellence was produced, left few traces- of it
in the expression of the countenance and hardly any
sense of it in the mind of the author. Expression only
comes into the face as we are at a loss for words, or have
a difficulty in bringing forward our ideas ; but we may
repeat the finest things by rote without any change of
look or manner. It is only when the powers are tasked,
when the moulds of thought are full, that the effect or
the wear-and-tear of the mind appears on the surface.
So, in general, writers of the greatest imagination and
range of ideas, and who might be said to have all nature
obedient to their call, seem to have been most careless
of their fame and regardless of their works. They treat
their productions, not as children, but as " bastards of
their art ;" whereas those who are more confined in their
scope of intellect, and wedded to some one theory or
predominant fancy, have been found to feel a proportion-
able fondness for the offspring of their brain, and have
thus excited a deeper interest in it in the minds of
others. We set a value on things as they have cost us
dear : the very limitation of our faculties or exclusiveness
of our feelings compels us to concentrate all our enthu-
siasm on a favourite subject; and, strange as it may
Mr, Northcotes Conversations. 373
sound, in order to inspire a perfect sympathy in others,
or to form a school, men must themselves he egotists.
Milton has had fewer readers and admirers, but I suspect
more devoted and bigoted ones, than ever Shakspeare
had. Sir ^ alter Scott has attracted more universal
attention than any writer of our time, but you may speak
against him with less danger of making personal enemies
than if you attack Lord Byron. Even Wordsworth has
half a dozen followers, who set him up above everybody
else, from a common idiosyncrasy of feeling and the
singleness of the elements of which his excellence is
composed. Before we can take an author entirely to our
bosoms he must be another self; and he cannot be this
if he is, " not one, but all mankind's epitome." It was
this which gave such an effect to Rousseau's writings
that he stamped his own character and the image of his
self-love on the public mind : there it is, and there it will
remain, in spite of everything. Had he possessed more
comprehension of thought or feeling it would only have
diverted him from his object. But it was the excess of
his egotism and his utter blindness to every thing else
that found a sympathy in the conscious feelings of every
human breast, and shattered to pieces the pride of rank
and circumstance by the pride of internal worth or
upstart pretension. When Rousseau stood behind the
chair of the master of the Chateau of , and smiled
to hear the company dispute about the meaning of the
motto of the arms of the family, which he alone knew,
and stumbled as he handed the glass of wine to his
young mistress, and fancied she coloured at being waited
upon by so learned a young footman then was first
kindled that spark which can never be quenched, then
was formed the germ of that strong conviction of the
disparity between the badge on his shoulder and the
aspirations of his soul the determination, in short, that
external situation and advantages are but the mask, and
374 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
that the mind is the man armed with which, impene-
trable, incorrigible, he went forth, conquering and to
conquer, and overthrew the monarchy of France and the
hierarchies of the earth. Till then, birth and wealth
and power were all in all, though but the framework or
moist that envelopes the man; and what there was in
the man himself was never asked, or was scorned and
forgot. And while all was dark and grovelling within,
while knowledge either did not exist or was confined to
a few, while material power and advantages were every-
thing, this was naturally to be expected. But with the
increase and diffusion of knowledge this state of things
must sooner or later cease ; and Kousseau was the first
who held the torch (lighted at the never-dying fire in his
own bosom) to the hidden chambers of the mind of man
like another Prometheus, breathed into his nostrils the
breath of a new and intellectual life, enraging the gods
of the earth, and made him feel what is due to himself
and his fellows. Before, physical force was everything :
henceforward, mind, thought, feeling was a new element
a fourth estate in society. What ! shall a man have
read Dante and Ariosto, and be none the better for
it? Shall he still be judged of only by his coat, the
number of his servants in livery, the house over his
head? While poverty meant ignorance, that was
necessarily the case ; but the world of books overturns
the world of things, and establishes a new balance of
power and scale of estimation. Shall we think only
rank and pedigree divine, when we have music, poetry,
and painting within us ? Tut ! we have read ' Old
Mortality,' and shall it be asked whether we have done
so in a garret or a palace, in a carriage or on foot ? Or,
knowing them, shall we not revere the mighty heirs of
fame, and respect ourselves for knowing and honouring
them ? This is the true march of intellect, and not the
erection of Mechanics' Institutions or the printing of
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 375
twopenny trash, according to my notion of the matter,
though I have nothing to say against them neither.
N. I thought you never would have done ; however,
you have come to the ground at last. After this rhapsody
I must inform you that Rousseau is a character more
detestable to me than I have power of language to
express : an aristocrat, filled with all their worst vices
pride, ambition, conceit, and gross affectation ; and though
endowed with some ability, yet not sufficient ever to
make him know right from wrong. Witness his novel
of ' Eloisa.' His name brings to my mind all the gloomy
hoiTors of a mob-government, which attempted from
their ignorance to banish truth and jiistice from the
world. I see you place Sir Walter above Lord Byron.
The question is, not which keeps longest on the wing, but
which soars highest, and I cannot help thinking there
are essences in Lord Byron that are not to be surpassed.
He is on a par with Dryden. All the other modern poets
appear to me vulgar in the comparison. As a lady who
comes here said, there is such an air of nobility in what
he writes. Then there is such a power in the style
expressions almost like Shakspeare "And looked round
on them with their wolfish eyes."
H. The expression is in Shakspeare, somewhere in
4 Lear.'
N. The line I repeated is in ' Don Juan.' I do not
mean to vindicate the immorality or misanthropy in that
poem perhaps his lameness was to blame for this defect ;
but surely no one can deny the force, the spirit of it ;
and there is such a fund of drollery mixed up with the
serious part. Nobody understood the tragi-comedy of
poetry so well. People find fault with this mixture in
general, because it is not well managed ; there is a comic
story and a tragic story going on at the same time, with-
out their having anything to do with one another. But
in Lord Byron they are brought together, just as they
376 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
are in nature. In like manner, if you go to an execution,
at the very moment when the criminal is going to be
turned off, and all eyes are fixed upon him, an old apple-
woman and her stall are overturned, and all the specta-
tors fall a-laughing. In real life the most ludicrous
incidents border on the most affecting and shocking.
How fine that is of the cask of butter in the storm !
Some critics have objected to it as turning the whole into
burlesque ; on the contrary, it is that which stamps the
character of the scene more than anything else. What
did the people in the boat care about the rainbow which
he 'has described in such vivid colours, or even about
their fellow-passengers who were thrown overboard,
when they only wanted to eat them ? No ! it was the
loss of the firkin of butter that affected them more than
all the rest ; and it is the mention of this circumstance
that adds a hardened levity and a sort of ghastly horror
to the scene. It shows the master-hand ; there is such a
boldness and sagacity and superiority to ordinary rules
in it. I agree, however, in your admiration of the
Waverley Novels ; they are very fine. As I told the
author, he and Cervantes have raised the idea of human
nature, not, as Eichardson has attempted, by affectation
and a false varnish, but by bringing out what there is
really fine in it under a cloud of disadvantages. Have
you seen the last?
H. No.
N. There is a character of a common smith or armourer
in it, which, in spite of a number of weaknesses, and in
the most ludicrous situations, is made quite heroical by
the tenderness and humanity it displays. It is his best,
but I had not read it when I saw him. No ! all that can
be said against Sir Walter is, that he has never made a
whole. There is an infinite number of delightful incidents
and characters, but they are disjointed and scattered.
This is one of Fielding's merits ; his novels are regular
Mr. Noriheotes Conversations. 377
compositions, with what the ancients called a beginning,
a middle, and an end ; every circumstance is foreseen and
provided for, and the conclusion of the story turns round
as it were to meet the beginning. ' Gil Bias ' is very
clever, but it is only a succession of chapters. ' Tom
Jones ' is a masterpiece, as far as regards the conduct of
the fable.
H. Do you know the reason ? Fielding had a hooked
nose, the long chin. It is that introverted physiognomy
that binds and concentrates.
N. But Sir Walter has not a hooked nose, but one that
denotes kindness and ingenuity. Mrs. Abington had
the pug-nose, who was the perfection of comic archness
and vivacity ; a hooked nose is my aversion.
Conversation the Seventeenth.
N. I SOMETIMES get into scrapes that way by contra-
dicting people. before I have well considered the subject,
and I often wonder how I get out of them so well as I
do. I remember once meeting with Sir , who
was talking about Milton, and, as I have a natural aver-
sion to a coxcomb, I differed from what he said, without
being at all prepared with any arguments in support of
my opinion.
H. But you had time enough to think of them after-
wards ?
N. I got through with it somehow or other. It is the
very risk you run in such cases that puts you on the
alert, and gives you spirit to extricate yourself from it.
If you had full leisure to deliberate and to make out
your defence beforehand, you perhaps could not do it so
well as on the spur of the occasion. The surprise and
nutter of the animal spirits gives the alarm to any little
wit we possess, and puts it into a state of immediate
requisition.
378 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
H. Besides, it is always easiest to defend a paradox or
an opinion you don't care seriously about. I would
sooner (as a matter of choice) take the wrong side than
the right in any argument. If you have a thorough
conviction on any point, and good grounds for it, you
have studied it long, and the real reasons have sunk into
the mind ; so that what you can recall of them at a
sudden pinch seems unsatisfactory and disproportionate
to the confidence of your belief and to the magisterial
tone you are disposed to assume. Even truth is a matter
of habit and professorship. Reason and knowledge when
at their height return into a kind of instinct. We under-
stand the grammar of a foreign language best, though
we do not speak it so well. But if you take up an
opinion at a venture, then you lay hold of whatever
excuse comes within your reach, instead of searching
about for and bewildering yourself with the true reasons,
and the odds are that the arguments thus got up are as
good as those opposed to them. In fact the more sophis-
tical and superficial an objection to a received or well-
considered opinion is, the more we are staggered and
teazed by it ; and the next thing is to lose our temper,
when we become an easy prey to a cool and disingenuous
adversary. I would much rather (as the safest side)
insist on Milton's pedantry than on his sublimity, sup-
posing I were not in the company of very good judges.
A single stiff or obscure line would outweigh a whole
book of solemn grandeur in the mere flippant encounter
of the wits, and in general, the truth and justice of the
cause you espouse is rather an incumbrance than an
assistance ; or it is like heavy armour, which few have
strength to wield. Anything short of complete triumph
on the right side is defeat ; any hole picked, or flaw
detected, in an argument which we are holding earnestly
and conscientiously is sufficient to raise the laugh against
us. This is the greatest advantage which folly and
Mr. Northeotes Conversations. 379
knavery liave. We are not satisfied to be right unless
we can prove others to be quite wrong ; and as all the
world would be thought to have some reason on their
side, they are glad of any loophole or pretext to escape
from the dogmatism and tyranny we would set up over
them. Absolute submission requires absolute proofs.
Without some such drawback the world might become
too wise and too good, at least according to every man's
private prescription. In this sense ridicule is the test of
truth ; that is, the levity and indifference on one side
balances the formality and presumption on the other.
X. Home Tooke used to play with his antagonists in
the way you speak of. He constantly threw Fuseli into
a rage and made him a laughingstock, by asking him to
explain the commonest things, and often what Fuseli
understood much better than he did. But, in general, I
think it is less an indifference to truth than the fear of
finding yourself in the wrong that carries you through
when you take up any opinion from caprice or the spirit
of contradiction. Danger almost always produces
courage and presence of mind. The faculties are called
forth with the occasion. You see men of very ordinary
characters, placed in extraordinary circumstances, act
like men of capacity. The late King of France was
thought weak and imbecile, till he was thrown into the
most trying situations ; and then he showed sense, and
even eloquence, which no one had ever suspected.
Events supplied the want of genius and energy ; the
external impressions were so strong that the dullest or
most indolent must have been roused by them. Indeed
the wise man is perhaps more liable to err in such ex-
treme cases, by setting up his own preconceptions and
self-will against circumstances, than the commonplace
character, who yields to necessity and is passive under
existing exigencies. It is this which makes kings and
ministers equal to their situations. They may be very
380 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
poor creatures in themselves; but the importance of the
part they have to act and the magnitude of their respon-
sibility inspire them with a factitious and official eleva-
tion of view. Few people are found totally unfit for
high station, and it is lucky that it is so. Perhaps men
of genius and imagination are the least adapted to get
into the state go-cart ; Buonaparte, we see, with all his
talent, only drove to the devil. When Eichard II. was
quite a youth, and he went to suppress the rebellion of
Wat Tyler in Smithfield, and the latter was killed, his
followers drew their bows and were about to take ven-
geance on the young king, when he stepped forward and
said that " now, as their leader was dead, he would be
their leader." This instantly disarmed their rage, and
they received him with acclamations. He had no other
course left; the peril he was in made him see bis place
of safety. Courage has a wonderful effect : this makes
mad people so terrible that they have no fear. Even
wild beasts, or a mob (which is much the same thing),
will hardly dare to attack you if you show no fear of
them. I have heard Lord Exmouth (Sir Edward
.Pellew) say that once when he was out with his ship at
sea, and there was a mutiny on board and no chance of
escape, he learned (from a spy he had among them) the
moment when the ringleaders were assembled and about
to execute their design of putting the captain and all
the officers to death, when, taking a pistol in each band,
he went down into the cockpit into the midst of them,
and threatening to shoot the first man that stirred, took
them every one prisoners. If he had betrayed the least
fear, or any of them had raised a hand, he must have
been instantly sacrificed. But he was bolder than any
individual in the group, and by this circumstance had
the ascendancy over the whole put together. A similar
act of courage is related of Peter the Great, who singly
entered the haunt of some conspirators, and striking
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 381
down the leader with a blow on the face, spread con-
sternation amongst the assassins, who were terrified by
his fearlessness.
[A book of prints was brought in, containing views of
Edinburgh.]
N. It is curious to what perfection these things are
brought, and how cheap they are. It is that which
makes them sell and ensures the fortune of those who
publish them. Great fortunes are made out of small
profits, which allow all the world to become purchasers.
That is the reason the Colosseum will hardly answer.
There never was an example of an exhibition in Eng-
land answering at a crown apiece. People look twice
at their money before they will part with it, if it be
more than they are accustomed to pay. It becomes a
question, and perhaps a few stragglers go ; whereas
they ought to go in a stream and as a matter of course.
If people have to pay a little more than usual, though a
mere trifle, they consider it in the light of an imposition,
and resent it as such ; if the price be a little under the
mark, they think they have saved so much money, and
snap at it as a bargain. The publishers of the work on
Edinburgh are the same who brought out the ' Views of
London ;' and it is said the success of that undertaking
enabled them to buy up Lackington's business. E ,
the architect, I am told, suggested the plan, but de-
clined a share that was offered him in it, because he
said nothing that he had been engaged in had ever
succeeded. The event would not belie the notion of his
own ill-luck. It is singular on what slight turns good
or ill fortune depends. Lackington (I understood, from
the person who brought the ' Edinburgh Views ' here)
died worth near half-a-million ; nobody could tell how
he had made it. At thirty he was not worth a shilling.
The great difficulty is in the first hundred pounds.
382 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
H. It is sympathy with the mass of mankind, and
finding out from yourself what it is they want and must
have.
N. It seems a good deal owing to the most minute
circumstances. A difference of sixpence in the price
will make all the difference in the sale of a book. Some-
times a work lies on the shelf for a time and then runs
like wildfire. There was ' Drelincourt on Death,' which
is a fortune in itself ; it hung on hand, nobody read it,
till Defoe put a ghost story into it, and it has been a
stock -book ever since. It is the same in prints. A
catching subject or name will make one thing a uni-
versal favourite, while another of ten times the merit is
never noticed. I have known this happen to myself in
more than one instance. This is the provoking part in
Westell and some other painters who, taking advantage
of the externals and accidents of their art, have run
away with nearly all the popularity of their time. Jack
Taylor l was here the other day to say that Westall and
his friends complained bitterly of the things I said about
him. I replied that I had only spoken of him as an
artist, which I was at liberty to do ; and that if he were
offended, I would recommend to him to read the story
of Charles II. and the Duchess of Cleveland, who came
to the King with a complaint that whenever she met
Nell Gwynne in the street the latter put her head out
of the coach and made mouths at her. " Well, then,"
says Charles II., "the next time you meet Nelly and
she repeats the offence, do you make mouths at her
again." So if Mr. Westall is hurt at my saying things
of him, all he has to do is to say things of me in
return.
H. I confess I never liked Westell. It was one of
the errors of my youth that I did not think him equal
to Raphael and Eubens united, as Payne Knight con-
1 The editor of the Sun newspaper. ED.
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 383
tended ; and I have fought many a battle with numbers
(if not odds) against me on that point.
N. Then you must have the satisfaction of seeing a
change of opinion at present.
H. Pardon me, I have not that satisfaction ; I have
only a double annoyance from it. It is no consolation to
me that an individual was overrated by the folly of the
public formerly, and that he suffers from their injustice
and fickleness at present. It is no satisfaction to me
that poor Irving is reduced to his primitive congregation,
and that the stream of coronet coaches no longer rolls
down Holborn or Oxford Street to his chapel. They
ought never to have done so, or they ought to continue
to do so. The world (whatever in their petulance and
profligacy they may think) have no right to intoxicate
poor human nature with the full tide of popular applause
and then to drive it to despair for the want of it. There
are no words to express the cruelty, the weakness, the
shamelessness of such conduct, which rasembles that of
the little girl who dresses up her doll in the most extra-
vagant finery, and then, in mere wantonness, strips it
naked to its wool and bits of wood again with this
difference, that the doll has no feeling, whereas the
world's idols are wholly sensitive.
[Of some one wlw preferred appearances to realities.]
N. I can understand the character, because it is exactly
the reverse of what I should do and feel. It is like
dressing out of one's sphere, or any other species of
affectation and imposture. I cannot bear to be taken for
anything but what I am. It is like what the country-
people call "having a halfpenny head and farthing tail."
That is what makes me mad when people sometimes
come and pay their court to me by saying, " Bless me,
how sagacious you look ! What a penetrating counte-
nance !" "No," I say, " that is but the titlepage ; what
384 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
is there in the book ? Your dwelling so much on the
exterior seems to imply that the inside does not corre-
spond to it." Don't let me look wise and be foolish, but
let me be wise though I am taken for a fool. Anything
else is quackery ; it is as if there was no real excellence
in the world but in opinion. I used to blame Sir Joshua
for this : he sometimes wanted to get 'Collins's earth,' but
did not like to have it known. Then there were certain
oils that he made a great fuss and mystery about. I have
said to myself, Surely there is something deeper and
nobler in the art, that does not depend on all this trick
and handicraft. Give Titian and a common painter the
same materials and tools to work with, and then see the
difference between them. This is all that is worth con-
tending for. If Sir Joshua had had no other advantage
than the using ' Collins's earth ' and some particular sort of
megilp, we should not now have been talking about him.
When W was here the other day, he asked about
Mengs and his school, and when I told him what I
thought he said " Is that your own opinion, or did you
take it from Sir Joshua ?" I answered that if I admired
Sir Joshua it was because there was something congenial
in our tastes, and not because I was his pupil. I saw
his faults, and differed with him often enough. If I
have any bias it is the other way to take fancies into
my head, and run into singularity and cavils. In what
I said to you about Ramsay's picture of the Queen, for
instance, I don't know that any one ever thought so before,
or that any one else would agree with me. It might be
set down as mere whim and caprice, but I can't help it
if it is so. All I know is, that such is my feeling about
it, which I can no more part with than I can part with
my own existence. It is the same in other things, as in
music. There was an awkward composer at the Opera
many years ago of the name of Boccarelli ; what he did
was stupid enough in general, but I remember he sang
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 385
an air one day at Cosway's, which they said Shield had
transferred into ' The Flitch of Bacon.' I cannot describe
the effect it had upon me ; it seemed as if it wound into
my very soul; I would give anything to hear it sung
again. So I could have listened to Dignum's singing
the lines out of Shakspeare " Come unto these yellow
sands, and then take hands" a hundred times over.
But I am not sure that others would be affected in the
same manner by it ; there may be some quaint associa-
tion of ideas in the case. But at least, if I am wrong,
the folly is my own.
H. There is no danger of the sort except from affecta-
tion, which I am sure is not your case. All the real
taste and feeling in the world is made up of what people
take in their heads in this manner. Even if you were
right only once in five times in these hazardous experi-
ments and rude guesses, that would be a fifth part of the
truth ; whereas if you merely repeated after others by
rote, or waited to have all the world on your side, there
could be absolutely nothing gained at all. If any one
had come in and had expressed the same idea of Eamsay's
portrait of the Queen, this would doubtless be a con-
firmation of your opinion, like two persons finding out a
likeness ; but suppose W had gone away with your
opinion in his pocket, and had spread it about everywhere
what a fine painter Eamsay was, I do not see how this
would have strengthened your conclusion ; nay, perhaps
the people whom he got as converts would entirely
mistake the meaning, and come to you with the very
reverse of what you had said, as a prodigious discover}'.
This is the way in which these unanimous verdicts are
commonly obtained. You might say that Eamsay was
not a fine painter, but a man of real genius. The world,
not comprehending the distinction, would merely come
to the gross conclusion that he was both one and the
other. Thus, even truth is vulgarly debased into common-
2 c
386 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
place and nonsense. So that it is not simply, as Mr.
Locke observed, " That there are not so many wrong
opinions in the world as is generally imagined, for most
people have no opinion at all, but take up with those of
others, or with mere hearsay and echoes ;" but these
echoes are often false ones, and no more like the original
idea than the rhyming echoes in 'Hudibras,' or than
Blender's mum and budget.
N. But don't you think the contrary extreme would be
just as bad if every one set up to judge for himself, and
every question was split into an endless variety of
opinions ?
H. I do not see that this would follow. If persons
who are sincere and free to inquire differ widely on any
subject, it is because it is beyond their reach, and there
is no satisfactory evidence one way or the other. Sup-
posing a thing to be doubtful, why should it not be left
so ? But men's passions and interests, when brought
into play, are most tenacious on those points, where their
understandings afford them least light. Those doctrines
are established which need propping up, as men place
beams against falling houses. It does not require an
Act of Parliament to persuade mathematicians to agree
with Euclid, or painters to admire Raphael.
N. And don't you think this the best rule for the rest
of the world to go by ?
H . Yes ; but not if the doctors themselves differed ;
then it would be necessary to clench the nail with a few
smart strokes of bigotry and intolerance. What admits
of proof men agree in, if they have no interest to the
contrary ; what they differ about, in spite of all that can
be said, is matter of taste or conjecture.
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 387
Conversation the Eighteenth.
N. OPIE, I remember, used to argue that there were as
many different sorts of taste as genius. He said, " If I
am engaged on a picture, and endeavour to do it according
to the suggestions of my employers, I do not understand
exactly what they want, nor they what I can do, and I
please no one; but if I do it according to my own
notions I belong to a class, and if I am able to satisfy
myself I please that class." You did not know Opie ?
You would have admired him greatly. I do not speak
of him as an artist, but as a man of sense and observation.
He paid me the compliment of saying, " that we should
have been the best friends in the world if we had not
been rivals." I think he had more of this feeling than I
had, perhaps because I had most vanity. We sometimes
got into foolish altercations. I recollect once in par-
ticular, at a banker's in the City, we took up the whole
of dinner-time with a ridiculous controversy about
Milton and Shakspeare. I am sure we neither of us had
the least notion which was right ; and when I was
heartily ashamed of it, a foolish citizen who was present
added to my confusion by saying, " Lord ! what would
I give to hear two such men as you talk every day !"
This quite humbled me ; I was ready to sink with vexa-
tion; I could have resolved never to open my mouth
again. But I can't help thinking W was wrong in
supposing I borrow everything from others. It is not
my character. I never could learn my lesson at school.
My copy was hardly legible ; but if there was a prize to
be obtained, or my father was to see it, then I could
write a very fine hand, with all the usual flourishes.
What I know of history (and something about heraldry)
has been gathered up, when I had to inquire into the
subject for a picture ; if it had been set me as a task, I
388 Mr, Northcote's Conversations.
should have forgotten it immediately. In the same way
when Boydell came and proposed a subject for a picture
to me, and pointed out the capabilities, I always said I
could make nothing of it ; but as soon as he was gone,
and I was left to myself, the whole then seemed to unfold
itself naturally. I never could study the rules of com-
position, or make sketches and drawings beforehand ; in
this, probably, running into the opposite error to that of
the modern Italian painters, whom Fuseli reproaches
with spending their whole lives in preparation. I must
begin at once or I can do nothing. When I set about
the ' Wat Tyler,' I was frightened at it ; it was the largest
work I had ever undertaken ; there were to be horses
and armour, and buildings, and several groups in it ;
when I looked at it, the canvas seemed ready to fall
upon me. But I had committed myself, and I could not
escape ; disgrace was behind me, and every step I made
in advance was so much positively gained. If I had stayed
to make a number of designs and try different experi-
ments, I never should have had the courage to go on.
Half the things that people do not succeed in are through
fear of making the attempt. Like the recruit in Farqu-
har's comedy, you grow wondrous bold when you have
once taken " list-money." When you must do a thing,
you feel in some measure that you can do it. You have
only to commit yourself beyond retreat. It is like the
soldier going into battle, or a player first appearing on
the stage : the worst is over when they arrive upon the
scene of action.
H. I found nearly the same thing that you describe,
when I first began to write for the newspapers. I had
not till then been in the habit of writing at all, or had
been a long time about it ; but I perceived that with
the necessity the fluency came. Something I did took ;
and I was called upon to do a number of things all at
once. I was in the middle of the stream, and must sink
Mr. Norfhcotes Conversations. 389
or swim. I had, for instance, often a theatrical criticism
to write after midnight, which appeared the next morn-
ing. There was no fault found with it at least it was
as good as if I had had to do it for a weekly paper. I
only did it at once, arid recollected all I had to say on the
spot, because I could not put it off for three days, when
perhaps I should have forgotten the best part of it.
Besides, when one is pressed for time, one saves it. I
might set down nearly all I had to say in my mind
while the play was going on. I know I did not feel at
a loss for matter the difficulty was to compress and
write it out fast enough. When you are tied to time
you can come to time. I conceive in like manner more
wonder is expressed at extempore speaking than it is en-
titled to. Not to mention that the same well-known topics
continually recur, and that the speakers may con their
extempore speeches over beforehand, and merely watch
their opportunity to slide them in dexterously into the
grand procession of the debate, a man when once on
his legs must say something, and this is the utmost that a
public speaker generally says. If he has anything good
to say, he can recollect it just as well at once as in a
week's literary leisure, as well standing up as sitting
down, except from habit. We are not surprised at a
man's telling us his thoughts across a table : why should
we be so at his doing the same thing when mounted on
one ? But he excites more attention : that gives him a
double motive. A man's getting up to make a speech
in public will not give him a command of words or
thoughts if he is without them ; but he may be delivered
of all the brilliancy or wisdom he actually possesses, in
a longer or a shorter space, according to the occasion.
The circumstance of the time is optional ; necessity, if
it be not the mother of invention, supplies us with the
memory of all we know.
N. (After a pause.) There is no end of the bigotry and
390 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
prejudice in the world ; one can only shrug one's shoulders
and submit to it. Have you seen the copies they have
got down at the club-house in Pall Mall of the groups
of horses from the Elgin Marbles ? Lord ! how inferior
they are to Rubens' ! So stiff and poor and dry, com-
pared to his magnificent spirit and bold luxuriance ! I
.should not know them to be horses ; they are as much
like anything else. I was at Somerset House the other
day. They talk of the Dutch painters ; why, there are
pictures there of interiors and other subjects of familiar
life, that throw all the boasted chefs-d'oeuvre of the Dutch
School to an immeasurable distance. I do not speak of
history, which has not been fairly tried ; but in. all for
which there has been encouragement, no nation can go
beyond us. We have resources and a richness of capacity
equal to any undertaking.
H. Do you recollect any in particular that you
admired at the Exhibition ?
N. No, I do not remember the names ; but it was a
general sense of excellence and truth of imitation of
natural objects. As to lofty history, our religion scarcely
allows it. The Italians bad no more genius for painting
nor a greater love of pictures than we ; but the Church
was the foster-mother of the fine arts. Being the most
politic and powerful establishment in the world, they
laid their hands on all that could allure and impress the
minds of the people music, painting, architecture,
ceremonies ; and this produced a succession of great
artists and noble works till the churches were filled, and
then they ceased. The genius of Italian art was nothing
but the genius of Popery. God forbid we should purchase
success at the same price ! Everything at Rome is like
a picture is calculated for show. I remember walking
through one of the bye-streets near the Vatican, where I
met some procession in which the Pope was ; and all at
once I saw a number of the most beautiful Arabian
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 391
horses curveting and throwing out their long tails, like
a vision or a part of a romance. We should here get
one or two at most. All our holiday pageants, even the
coronation, are low Bartlemy Fair exhibitions compared
with what you see at Eome. And then to see the Pope
give the benediction at St. Peter's, raising himself up
and spreading out his hands in the form of a cross, with
an energy and dignity as if he was giving a blessing to
the whole world ! No, it is not enough to see Popery in
order to hate it it must be felt too. A poor man going
through one of the narrow streets where a similar pro-
cession was passing was fiercely attacked by a soldier
of the Swiss Guards, and ordered to stand back. The
man said he could retire no further, for he was close
against the wall. " Get back, you and the wall, too !"
was the answer of haughty servility and mild despotism.
It is this spirit peeping out that makes one dread the
fairest outside appearances ; and with this spirit, and
the power and determination it implies to delude and
lead the multitude blindfold with every lure to their
imagination and their senses, I will answer for the pro-
duction of finer historical and scripture pieces in this
country (let us be as far north as we will) than we have
yet seen.
H. You do not think, then, that we are naturally a
dry sour Protestant set? Is not the air of Ireland
Popish and that of Scotland Presbyterian ?
N. No; though you may have it so if you please.
K has been wanting my two copies of ,
though I do not think he will bid high enough to in-
duce me to part with them. I am in this respect like
Opie, who had an original by Sir Joshua that he much
valued, and he used to say, " I don't know what I should
do in that case, but I hope to G d nobody will offer
me 500 for it !" It is curious, this very picture sold for
500 the other day. So it is that real merit creeps on,
392 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
and is sure to find its level. ' The Holy Family ' sold
among Lord Gwydyr's pictures for 1900.
H. Is that fine?
N. Oh ! yes, it is certainly fine. It wants the air of
history, but it ha* a rich colour and great simplicity and
innocence. It is not equal to ' The Snake in the (.1 ; ass.'
which Mr. Peel gave 1600 guineas for. That was his
forte : nothing is wanting there.
A STRAXGEK. I thought Sir Joshua's colours did not
stand?
N. That is true of some of them ; he tried experi-
ments, and had no knowledge of chemistry, and bought
colours of Jews; but I speak of them as they came from
the easel. As he left them and intended them to be, no
pictures in the world would stand by the side of them.
Colour seemed to exist substantively in his mind. You
see this still in those that have not faded in his latter
works especially, which were also his best; and this,
with character and a certain sweetness, must always
make his works invaluable. You come to this at last :
what yoxi find in any one that you can get nowhere else.
If you have this about yoxi, you need not be afraid of
time. Gainsborough had the saving grace of origi-
nality ; and you cannot put him down for that reason.
With all their faiilts, and the evident want of an early
study and knowledge of the art, his pictures fetch more
every time they are brought to the hammer. I don't
know what it was that his ' View of the Mall in St.
James's Park' sold for not along ago. I remember
Mr. Prince Hoare coming to me, and saying what an
exquisite picture Gainsborough had painted of the Park.
You would suppose it would be stiff and formal, with
straight rows of trees and people sitting on benches : it
is all in motion, and in a flutter like a lady's fan.
Watteau is not half so airy. His picture of young
Lord was a masterpiece there was such a look of
Mr. Noriheote Conversations. 393
natural gentility ! Ton must recollect his ' Girl feeding
Pigs :' the expression and truth of nature were never
surpassed. Sir Joshua was struck with it, though he
said be ought to have made her a beauty.
H. Perhaps it was as well to make sure of one thing
at a time. 1 remember being once driven by a shower
of rain for shelter into a picture-dealer's shop in Oxford
Street, where there stood on the floor a copy of Gains-
borough's 'Shepherd Boy' with the thunderstorm
coming on. What a truth and beauty was there ! He
stands with his hands clasped, looking up with a
mixture of timidity and resignation, eyeing a magpie
chattering over his head, while the wind is rustling
in the branches. It was like a vision breathed on
the canvas. I have been fond of Gainsborough ever
ititoe.
N. Oh f that was an essence : but it was only a
copy you saw ? The picture was finer than his ' Wood-
man,' which has a little false glitter and attempt at
theatrical effect ; but the other is innocence itself.
Gainsborough was a natural gentleman; and with all
his simplicity he had wit too. An eminent counsellor
once attempted to puzzle him on some trial about the
originality of a picture by saying, u I observe you lay
great stress on the phrase, the painter's eye; what
do you mean by that?" "The painter's eye," an-
cwered Gainsborough, "is to him what the lawyer's
tongue is to you." Sir Joshua was not fond of Wikon,
and said at one of the Academy dinners, " Yes, Gains-
borough is certainly the best landscape painter of the
day." "No," replied Wilson, who overheard him, "but
he is the bent portrait painter." This was a sufficient
testimony in Gainsborough's favour.
H. He did not make himself agreeable at Buckingham
House, any more than Sir Joshua, who kept a certain
distance and wished to appear as a gentleman ; they
394 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
wanted a buffoon, whom they might be familiar with at
first and insult the moment he overstepped the mark,
or as soon as they grew tired of him. Their favourites
must be like pet lapdogs or monkeys.
N. C went to court the other day after a long
absence. He was very graciously received, notwith-
standing. The King held out his hand for him to kiss ;
he recollected himself in time to perceive the object.
He was struck with the manner in which the great
people looked towards the King, and the utter insignifi-
cance of everything else; "and then," said C , "as
soon as they are out of the palace, they get into their
carriages, and ride over you with all the fierceness and
insolence imaginable." West used to say you could tell
the highest nobility at court by their being the most
abject. This was policy, for the most powerful would
be most apt to excite jealousy in the sovereign ; and by
showing an extreme respect they thought to prevent
the possibility of encroachment or insult. Garrick com-
plained that when he went to read before the court not
a look or a murmur testified approbation ; there was a
profound stillness every one only watched to see what
the King thought. It was like reading to a set of
waxwork figures : he who had been accustomed to the
applause of thousands could not bear this assembly of
mutes. Marchant went to the late King about a cameo,
who was offended at his saying the face must be done in
full and not as a profile ; " Then," said the patron, " I'll
get somebody else to do it." Coming out at the door, one
of the pages asked the artist, " Why do you contradict
the King? He is not used to be contradicted." This
is intelligible in an absolute despotism, where tl.e will
of the sovereign is law, and where he can cut off your
head if he pleases; but is it not strange in a free
country ?
H. It is placing an ordinary mortal on the top of a
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 395
pyramid, and kneeling at the bottom of it to the
" highest and mightiest." It is a trick of human reason
surpassing the grossness of the brute.
Conversation the Nineteenth.
H. FASHION is gentility running away from vulgarity,
and afraid of being overtaken by it. It is a sign the
two things are not very far asunder.
N. Yes ; Mr. used to say, that just before the
women in his time left off hoops they looked like bats.
Going on from one affectation to another, they at last
wore them close under their arms, so that they resembled
wings growing out from their shoulders ; and having
reached the top of the absurdity, they then threw them
aside all at once. If long waists are the fashion one
season they are exploded the next ; as soon as the court
adopts any particular mode, the city follows the ex-
ample, and as soon as the city takes it up the court lays
it down. The whole is caricature and masquerade.
Nature only is left out; for that is either common, or
what is fine in it would not always be found on the
fashionable side of the question. It may be the fashion
t paint or not to paint ; but if it were the fashion to
have a fine complexion many fashionable people must
go without one, and many unfashionable ones would be
at the height of it. Deformity is as often the fashion as
beauty, yet the world in general see no other beauty than
fashion, and their vanity or interest or complaisance
bribes their understanding to disbelieve even their
senses. If cleanliness is the fashion, then cleanliness is
admired ; if dirt, hair-powder, and pomatum are the
fashion, then dirt, hair-powder, and pomatum are ad-
mired just as much, if not more, from their being
disagreeable.
396 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
H. The secret is, that fashion is imitating, in certain
things that are in our power and that are nearly indif-
ferent in themselves, those who possess certain other
advantages that are not in our power, and which the
possessors are as little disposed to part with as they are
eager to obtrude them upon the notice of others by every
external symbol at their immediate control. We think
the out of a coat fine because it is worn by a man with
ten thousand a-year, with a fine house and a fine car-
riage ; as we cannot get the ten thousand a-year, the
house, or the carriage, we get what we can the cut of
the fine gentleman's coat, and thus are in the fashion.
But as we get it he gets rid of it, which shows that he
cares nothing about it ; but he keeps his ten thousand
a-year, his fine house, and his fine carriage. A rich
man wears gold buckles to show that he is rich ; a cox-
comb gets gilt ones to look like the rich man, and as
soon as the gold ones prove nothing the rich man leaves
them off. So it is with all the real advantages that
fashionable people possess. Say that they have more
grace, good manners, and refinement than the rabble ;
but these do not change every moment at the nod of
fashion. Speaking correctly is not proper to one class
more than another ; if the fashionable, to distinguish
themselves from the vulgar, affect a peculiar tone or set
of phrases, this is mere slang. The difference between
grace and awkwardness is the same one year after
another. This is the meaning of " natural politeness." It
is a perception of and attention to the feelings of others,
which is the same thing, whether it is neglected by the
great or practised by the vulgar. The barrier between
refinement and grossness cannot be arbitrarily effaced.
Nothing changes but what depends on the shallow
affectation and assumption of superiority. Eeal excel-
lence can never become vulgar. So Pope says in his
elegant way :
Mr. Nortkcote's Conversations. 397
" Virtue may choose the high or low degree,
"Tis just the same to virtue and to me ;
Dwell in a monk or light upon a king,
She's still the same belov'd contented thing.
Vice is undone if she forgets her birth,
And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth."
Pope's verse is not admired because it was once the
fashion : it will be admired, let the fashion change how
it will.
N. When Sir Joshua Keynolds wanted to learn what
real grace was he studied it in the attitudes of children,
not in the school of the dancing-master, or in the empty
strut or mawkish languor of fashion. A young painter
asked me the other day whether I thought that Guido
was not chargeable with affectation ? I told him that I
thought not, or in a very trifling degree. I could not
deny that Guido sometimes bordered on and reminded
me of it ; or that there was that which in anybody else
might be really so, but that in him it seemed only an
extreme natural gentility. He puts his figures into
attitudes that are a little too courtly and studied, but he
probably could not help it.
H. It was rather the excess of a quality or feeling in
his mind, than the aiming to supply the defect of one.
N. Yes ; there is no suspicion of what he is doing.
The odious part of affectation is, when there is an evident
design to impose on you with counterfeit pretensions.
So in another point that might be objected to him, the
impropriety of his naked figures, no mortal can steer
clearer of it than he does. They may be strictly said to
be clothed with their own delicacy and beauty. There
is the * Venus Attired by the Graces :' what other painter
durst attempt it? They are to be all beauties, all
naked ; yet he has escaped as if by a miracle none but
the most vicious can find fault with it; the very beauty,
elegance, and grace keep down instead of exciting im
proper ideas. And then, again, the ' Andromeda chained
398 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
to the Rock ' both are, I believe, in the drawing-room
at Windsor : but there is no possible offence to be taken
at them, nothing to shock the most timid or innocent,
because there was no particle of grossness in the painter's
mind. I have seen pictures by others muffled up to the
chin, that had twenty times as much vice in them. It
is wonderful how the cause is seen in the effect. So we
find it in Richardson. ' Clarissa ' is a story in the midst
of temptation ; but he comes clear and triumphant out
of that ordeal, because his own imagination is not con-
taminated by it. If there had been the least hint of an
immoral tendency, the slightest indication of a wish to
inflame the passions, it would have been all over with
him. The intention always will peep out you do not
communicate a disease if you are not infected with it
yourself. Albano's nymphs and goddesses seem waiting
for admirers ; Guide's are protected with a veil of inno-
cence and modesty. Titian would have given them an
air of Venetian courtesans ; Raphael would have made
them look something more than mortal : neither would
have done what Guido has effected, who has conquered
the difficulty by the pure force of feminine softness and
delicacy.
H. I am glad to hear you speak so of Guido. I was
beginning before I went abroad to have a " sneaking
contempt " for him as insipid and monotonous, from
seeing the same everlasting repetitions of Cleopatras and
Madonnas ; but I returned a convert to his merits. I saw
many indifferent pictures attributed to great masters, but
wherever I saw a Guido I found elegance and beauty that
answered to the " silver " sound of his name. The mind
lives on a round of names, and it is a great point gained
not to have one of these snatched from us by a sight of
their works. As to the display of the naked figure in
works of art, the case to me seems clear ; it is only when
there is nothing but the naked figure that it is offensive.
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 399
In proportion as the beauty or perfection of the imita-
tion rises the indecency vanishes. You look at it then
with an eye to art, just as the anatomist examines the
human figure with a view to science. Other ideas are
introduced. Jeffrey, of Edinburgh, had a large sprawling
Danae hanging over the chimneypiece of his office, where
he received Scotch parsons and their wives on law busi-
ness ; he thought it a triumph over Presbyterian prudery
and prejudice, and a sort of chivalrous answer to the im-
puted barbarism of the North. It was certainly a paradox
in taste, a breach of manners. He asked me if I objected
to it because it was naked ? " No," I said, " but because
it is ugly ; you can only have put it there because it is
naked, and that alone shows a felonious intent. Had
there been either beauty or expression, it would have
conducted off the objectionable part. As it is, I don't see
how you can answer it to the kirk sessions."
N. I remember Sir Watkyn Wynn employed Sir Joshua
and Dance, who was a very eminent designer, to orna-
ment a music-room which he had built. Sir Joshua on
this occasion painted his Cecilia, which he made very
fine at first, but afterwards spoiled it ; and Dance chose
the subject of Orpheus. When I asked Miss Eeynolds
what she thought of it, she said she had no doubt of its
being clever and well done, but that it looked " like a
naked man." This answer was conclusive against it, for
if the inspiration of the character had been given you
would have overlooked the want of clothes. The naked-
ness only strikes and offends the eye in the barrenness
of other matter. It is the same in the drama. Mere
grossness or ribaldry is intolerable, but you often find in
the old comedy that the wit and ingenuity (as well as
custom) carry off what otherwise could not be borne.
The laughter prevents the blush. So an expression
seems gross in one person's mouth which in another's
passes off with perfect innocence. The reason is, there
400 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
is something in the manner that gives a quite different
construction to what is said. Have you seen the Alcides
the two foreigners who perform such prodigious feats of
strength at the theatre, but with very little clothing on ?
They say the people hardly know what to make of it.
They should not be too sure that this is any proof of
their taste or virtue.
H. I recollect a remark of Coleridge's on the conclu-
sion of the story of ' Paul and Virginia ' by Bernardin St.
Pierre. Just before the shipwreck, and when nothing
else can save the heroine from perishing, an athletic
figure comes forward stripped, but with perfect respect,
and offers to swim with her to the shore ; but instead of
accepting his proposal she turns away with affected
alarm. This, Coleridge said, was a proof of the prevailing
tone of French depravity, and not of virgin innocence. A
really modest girl in such circumstances would not have
thought of any scruple.
N. It is the want of imagination or of an insight into
nature in ordinary writers ; they do not know how to
place themselves in the situations they describe. What-
ever feeling or passion is uppermost fills the mind and
drives out every other. If you were confined in a vault
and thought you saw a ghost you would rush out, though a
lion was at the entrance. On the other hand, if you were
pursued by a lion you would take refuge in a charnel-
house, though it was full of spirits, and would disregard
the dead bones and putrid relics about you. Both pas-
sions may be equally strong ; the question is, which is
roused first? But it is few who can get to the fountain-
head, the secret springs of Nature. Shakspeare did it
always, and Sir Walter Scott frequently. Godwin says
he always was pleased with my conversation before you
broached that opinion ; but I do not see how that can
be, for he always contradicts and thwarts me. When
two people a^e constantly crossing one another on the
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 401
road, they cannot be very good company. You agree to
what I say, and often explain or add to it, which encou-
rages me to go on.
H. I believe Godwin is sincere in what he says, for
he has frequently expressed the same opinion to me.
N. That might be so, though he took great care not
to let me know it. People would often more willingly
speak well of you behind your back than to your face ;
they are afraid either of shocking your modesty or grati-
fying your vanity. That was the case with . If he
ever was struck with anything I did he made a point
not to let me see it ; he treated it lightly and said it
was very well.
H. I do not think Godwin's differing with you was
any proof of his opinion. Like most authors, he has
something of the schoolmaster about him, and wishes to
keep up an air of authority. What you say may be very
well for a learner, but he is the oracle. You must not
set up for yourself, and to keep you in due subordination
he catechises and contradicts from mere habit.
N. Human nature is always the same. It was so with
Johnson and Goldsmith. They would allow no one tc
have any merit but themselves. The very attempt was a
piece of presumption and a trespass upon their privileged
rights. I remember a poem that came out, and that was
sent to Sir Joshua ; his servant, Ealph, had instructions
to bring it in just after dinner. Goldsmith presently got
hold of it, and seemed thrown into a rage before he had
read a line of it. He then said, " \\ hat wretched stuff
is here? What c rsed nonsense that is!" and kept all
the while marking the passages with his thumb-nail, as
if he would cut them in pieces. At last Sir Joshua, who
was provoked, interfered, and said, "Nay, don't spoil
my book, however." Dr. Johnson looked down on the
rest of the world as pigmies ; he smiled at the rery idea
that any one should set up for a fine writer but himself.
2o
402 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
They never admitted Colman as one of the set; Sir
Joshua did not invite him to dinner. If he had been in
the room Goldsmith would have flown out of it, as if a
dragon had been there. I remember Garrick once saying,
" D n his dishclout face ! His plays would never do, if it
were not for my patching them up and acting in them."
Another time he took a poem of Colman's and read it
backwards to turn it into ridicule. Yet some of his
pieces keep possession of the stage, so that there must be
something in them.
H. Perhaps he was later than they, and they con-
sidered him as an interloper on that account?
N. No ; there was a prejudice against him ; he did
not somehow fall into the train. It was the same with
Vanbrugh in Pope's time. They made a jest of him, and
endeavoured to annoy him in every possible way ; he
was a black sheep for no reason in the world except
that he was cleverer than they that is, could build
houses and write verses at the same time. They laughed
at his architecture, yet it is certain that it is quite
original, and at least a question whether it is not beautiful
as well as new. He was the first who sank the window-
frames within the walls of houses ; they projected before.
He did it as a beauty, but it has been since adopted by
Act of Parliament, to prevent fire. Some gentleman was
asking me about the imposing style of architecture with
which Vanbrugh had decorated the top of Blenheim
House ; he had mistaken the chimneys for an order of
architecture ; so that what is an eyesore in all other
buildings Vanbrugh has had the art to convert into an
ornament. And then his wit! Think what a comedy
is ' The Provoked Husband ' ! What a scope and com-
prehension in the display of manners from the highest
to the lowest! It was easier to write an epigram on
Brother Van than such a play as this. I once asked
Richards the scene-painter, who was perfectly used to
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 403
the stage, and acquainted with all the actors, what he
considered as the best play in the language ? And he
answered, without hesitation, ' The Journey to London.'
H. Lord Foppington is also his, if he wanted sup-
porters. He was in the same situation as Rousseau
with respect to the wits of his time, who traces all his
misfortunes and the jealousy that pursued him through
life to the success of the ' Devin du Village.' He said
Diderot and the rest could have forgiven his popularity
as an author, but they could not bear his writing an
opera.
N. If you belong to a set you must either lead or fol-
low ; you cannot maintain your independence. Beattie
did very well with the great folks in my time, because
he looked up to them, and he excited no uneasy sense of
competition. Indeed he managed so well that Sir
Joshua flattered him and his book in return in the most
effectual manner. In his allegorical portrait of the
doctor he introduced the angel of truth chasing away
the demons of falsehood and impiety, who bore an ob-
vious resemblance to Hume and Voltaire. This brought
out Goldsmith's fine reproof of his friend, who said that
" Sir Joshua might be ashamed of debasing a genius like
Voltaire before a man like Beattie, whose works would
be forgotten in a few years, while Voltaire's fame would
last for ever." Sir Joshua Eeynolds took the design of
this picture from one of a similar subject by Tintoret,
now in the royal collection iu Kensington Palace. He
said he had no intention of the sort : Hume was a broad-
backed clumsy figure, not very like; but I know he
meant Voltaire, for I saw a French medal of him lying
about in the room. Mrs. Beattie also came up with her
husband to London. I recollect her asking for " a little
paurler," in her broad Scotch way. It is like Gibber's
seeing Queen Anne at Nottingham when he was a boy,
and all he could remember about her was her asking
404 Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
him to give her a glass of win e-and- water." She was
an ordinary character, and belonged to the class of good
sort of people. So the Margravine of Baireuth describes
the Duchess of Kendal, who was mistress to George I., to
be a quiet inoffensive character, who would do neither
good nor harm to anybody. Did you ever read her
' Memoirs '? Lord ! what an account she gives of the
state of manners at the old Court of Prussia, and of the
brutal despotism and cruelty of the king ! She was his
daughter, and he used to strike her, and drag her by the
hair of her head, and leave her, with her face bleeding,
and often senseless, on the floor for the smallest trifles ;
and he treated her brother, afterwards Frederic II. (and
to whom she was much attached) no better. That might
in part account for the hardness of his character at a
later period.
H. I suppose Prussia was at that time a mere petty
state, or sort of by-court, so that what they did was
pretty much done in a corner, and they were not afraid
of being talked of by the rest of Europe ?
N. No ; it was quite an absolute monarchy, with all
the pomp and pretensions of sovereignty. Frederic
(the father) was going, on some occasion when he was dis-
pleased with him, to strike our ambassador ; but this con-
duct was resented and put a stop to. The Queen (sister to
George II., and who was imprisoned so long on a suspi-
cion of conjugal infidelity) appears to have been a violent-
spirited woman, and also weak. George I. could never
learn to speak English, and his successor, George II., spoke
it badly, and neither ever felt himself at home in this
country ; and they were always going over to Hanover,
where they found themselves lords and masters, while
here, though they had been raised so much higher, their
dignity never sat easy upon them. They did not know
what to make of their new situation.
[Northcote here read me a letter I had heard him
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 405
speak of relative to a distinguished character 1 mentioned
in a former conversation.]
" A Letter to Mr. Nortlwote in London from Ms Brother at
Plymouth, giving an Account of a Shipwreck.
" Plymouth, Jan. 28, 1796.
" We have had a terrible succession of stormy weather
of late. Tuesday, immediately after dinner, I went to
the Hoe to see the Dutton East Tndiaman, full of troops,
upon the rocks, directly under the flagstaff of the citadel.
She had been out seven weeks on her passage to the
West Indies as a transport, with 400 troops on board,
besides women and the ship's crew ; and had been just
driven back by stress of weather, with a great number
of sick on board. You cannot conceive anything so hor-
rible as the appearance of things altogether which I
beheld when 1 first arrived on the spot. The ship was
stuck on sunken rocks, somewhat inclining to one side,
and without a mast or the bowsprit standing ; and her
decks covered with the soldiers as thick as they could
possibly stand by one another, with the sea breaking in
a most horrible manner all around them. And what still
added to the melancholy grandeur of the scene was the
distress guns, which were fired now and then directly
over our head, from the citadel.
" When I first came to the spot I found that they had
by some means got a rope with one end of it fixed to the
ship, and the other was held by the people on shore, by
which means they could yield as the ship swung. Upon
this rope they had got a ring, which they could by
means of two smaller ropes draw forwards and back-
wards from the ship to the shore ; to this ring they had
fixed a loop, which each man put under his arms ; and
by this means, and holding by the ring with his hands,
he supported himself, hanging to the ring, while he was
1 Sir Edward Pellew (Lord Exmouth). ED.
406 Mr. Northcotvs Conversations.
drawn to the shore by the people there ; and in this
manner I saw a great many drawn on shore. But this
proved a tedious work ; and though I looked at them for
a long time, yet the numbers on the deck were not appa-
rently diminished ; besides, from the motion which the
ship had by rolling on the rocks, it was not possible to
keep the rope equally stretched ; and from this cause, as
well as from the sudden rising of the waves, you would at
one moment see a poor wretch hanging ten. or twenty feet
above the water, and the next you would lose sight of him
in the foam of a wave, though some escaped better.
" But this was not a scheme which the women and
many of the sick could avail themselves of.
"I observed with some admiration the behaviour of a
captain of a man-of-war, who seemed interested in the
highest degree for the safety of these poor wretches.
He exerted himself uncommonly, and directed others
what to do on shore, and endeavoured in vain with a
large speaking-trumpet to make himself heard by those
on board ; but finding that nothing could be heard but
the roaring of the wind and sea, he offered anybody five
guineas instantly who would suffer himself to be drawn
on board with instructions to them what to do. And
when he found that nobody would accept his offer, he
gave an instance of the highest heroism : for he fixed
the rope about himself and gave the signal to be drawn
on board. He had his uniform coat on and his sword
hanging at his side. I have not room to describe the
particulars ; but there was something grand and inter-
esting in the thing, for as soon as the}' had pulled him
into the wreck he was received with three vast shouts
by the people on board ; and these were immediately
echoed by those who lined the shore, the garrison- walls,
and lower batteries. The first thing he did was to rig
out two other ropes like the first, which I saw him
most active in doing with his own hands. This quick-
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 407
ened the matter a good deal, and by this time two large
open row-boats were arrived from the dockyard, and a
sloop had with difficulty worked out from Plymouth Pool.
He then became active iu getting out the women and
the sick, who were with difficulty got into the open
boats and by them carried off to the sloop, which kept
off for fear of being stove against the ship or thrown
upon the rocks. He suffered but one boat to approach
the ship at a time, and stood with his drawn sword to
prevent too many rushing into the boat. After he had
seen all the people out of the ship to about ten or fifteen,
he fixed himself to the rope as before and was drawn
ashore, where he was again received with shouts. Upon
my inquiry who this gallant officer was, I was informed
that it was Sir Edward Pellew, whom I had heard the
highest character of before, both for bravery and mercy.
" The soldiers were falling into disorder when Sir
Edward went on board. Many of them were drunk,
having broken into the cabin and got at the liquor. I
saw him beating one with the flat of his broadsword,
in order to make him give up a bundle he had made up
of plunder. They had but just time to save the men
before the ship was nearly under water. I observed a
poor goat and a dog amongst the crowd, when the people
were somewhat thinned away. I saw the goat marching
about with much unconcern ; but the dog showed evi-
dent anxiety, for I saw him stretching himself out at
one of the portholes, standing partly upon the port and
partly upon a gun, and looking earnestly towards the
shore, where I suppose he knew his master was. All
these perished soon after, as the ship was washed all
over as the sea rose she is now in pieces."
US J/r. NortiKotfs Cwwtnttiion*.
N. HATE you seen the * Life of Sir Joshua,' just
published ?
H. No.
N. It is all, or nearly all, taken from my account. 1
and yet the author misrepresents or contradict* N
thing 1 say, 1 suppose to show that ho is umlor no obli-
gation to mo. 1 cannot understand tho drift of his
work, nor who it is ho moans to please. Ho tiiuls tank
with Sir Joshua, among a number of othor tilings, for
not noticing Hogarth. Why, it was not his business to
notice Hogarth anymore than it was to notice Fielding.
Both of them were great wits and describors of manuors
in common life, but neither of them came under tho
article of painting. What Hogarth had vashis own. ami
nobody will ever have it again in the same degree. l>ut
all that did not depend on his own g< v.ius \\as detest
able, both as to his subjects and his execution. \N as Sir
Joshua to recommend these as models to the student ?
No! we are to imitate only what is best, and that in
which even failure is honourable not that where only
originality and the highest point of sueees> ean at all
excuse the attempt Cunningham (the writer of the
Life) pretends to cry up Hogarth as a painter; but
this is not true. He moulded little figures, and placed
them to see how the lights fell and how the di apery
came in, which gave a certain look of reality and relief;
but this was not enough to give breadth or grace, and
his figures look like puppets after all, or like dolls
dressed up. Who would compare any of these little.
miserable, deformed caricatures of men and women to
the figure of St. Paul preaching at Athens? \\ hat N\>
1 Published in 1S1S-15, 4to. ED.
Mr. Northcote'* Conversation*. 409
justly admire and emulate i t that which raises human
nature, not that which degrades and holds it up to scorn.
We may laugh to see a person rolled in the kennel, but
we are ashamed of ourselves for doing so. We are
amused with ' Tom Jones/ but we rise from the perusal
iariissa ' with higher feelings and better resolutions
than we had before. St. Giles's is not the only school
of art. It i# nature, to be sure; but we must select
nature. A*k the meanest person in the gallery at a
playhouse which he likes best, the tragedy or the farce,
and he will tell you, without hesitation, the tragedy,
and will prefer Mrs. Siddons to the most exquisite buf-
foon. He feels an ambition to be placed in the situ-
ation* and to be associated with the characters described
in tragedy, and none to be connected with those in a
farce, because he feels a greater sense of power and dig-
nity in contemplating the one, and only sees his own
weakness and littleness reflected and ridiculed in the
other. Even the poetry, the blank verse, pleases the
most illiterate, which it would not do if it were not
natural. The world do not receive monsters. This is
what I used to contest with Sir Joshua. He insisted
that the blank verse in tragedy was purely artificial
a thing got up for the occasion. But surely every one
must feel that he delivers an important piece of infor-
mation or asks a common question in a different tone of
voice. If it were not for this, the audience would laugh
at the measured speech or step of a tragic actor as bur-
lesque, just as they are inclined to do at an opera. Old
Mr. Tolcher used to say of the famous Pulteney, " My
Lord Bath always speaks in blank verse ! " The stately
march of his ideas no doubt made it natural to him.
Mr. Cunningham will never persuade the world that
Hogarth is superior to Raphael or Reynolds. Common-
sense w against it I don't know where be picked up
the notion.
410 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
H. Probably from Mr. Lamb, 1 who endeavours to set
up Hogarth as a great tragic as well as comic genius,
not inferior in either respect to Shakspeare.
N. I can't tell where he got such an opinion, but I
know it is great nonsense. Cunningham gives a wrong
account of an anecdote which he has taken from me.
Dr. Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, had said at a meeting
of the Society of Arts that " a pin-maker was a more
important member of society than Eaphael." Sir Joshua
had written some remark on this assertion in an old
copybook which fell into my hands, and which nobody
probably ever saw but myself. Cunningham states that
Sir Joshua was present when Dean Tucker made the
speech at the Society, and that he immediately rose up,
and with great irritation answered him on the spot,
which is contrary both to the fact and to Sir Joshua's
character. He would never have thought of rising to
contradict any one in a public assembly for not agreeing
with him 011 the importance of his own profession. In
one part of the new Life, it is said that Sir Joshua,
seeing the ill effects that Hogarth's honesty and blunt-
ness had had upon his prospects as a portrait-painter,
had learnt the art to make himself agreeable to his sit-
ters, and to mix up the oil of flattery with his discourse
as assiduously as with his colours. This is far from the
truth. Sir Joshua's manners were indeed affable and
obliging, but he flattered nobody ; and instead of gos-
siping, or making it his study to amuse his sitters,
minded only his own business. I remember being in
the next room the first time the Duchess of Cumberland
came to sit, and I can vouch that scarce a word was
spoken for near two hours. Another thing remarkable,
to show how little Sir Joshua crouched to the great, is
that he never even gave them their proper titles. I never
1 In his ' Essay on the Genius and Character of Hogarth,' pub-
lished in the third number of ' The Reflector.' ED.
Mr. Northcctes Conversations. 411
heard the words "your lordship" or "your ladyship"
corue from his mouth; nor did he ever say "Sir" in
speaking to any one but Dr. Johnson ; and when he did
not hear distinctly what the latter said (which often
happened), he would then say " Sir ? " that he might
repeat it. He was in this respect like a Quaker, not
from any scruples or affectation of independence, but
possibly from some awkwardness and confusion in ad-
dressing the variety of characters he met with, or at his
first entrance on his profession. His biographer is also
unjust to Sir Joshua in stating that his table was scan-
tily supplied out of penuriousness. The truth is, Sir
Joshua would ask a certain number and order a din-
ner to be provided ; and then in the course of the morn-
ing two or three other pei-sons would drop in, and he
would say, " I have got So-and-so to dinner, will you
join us ? " which they being always ready to do, there
were sometimes more guests than seats ; but nobody
complained of this, or was unwilling to come again. If
Sir Joshua had really grudged his guests they would
not have repeated -their visits twice, and there would
have been plenty of room and of provisions the next
time. Sir Joshua never gave the smallest attention to
such matters ; all he cared about was his painting in the
morning and the conversation at his table, to which last
he sacrificed his interest ; for his associating with men
like Burke, who was at that time a great opposition-
ist, did him no good at court. Sir Joshua was equally
free from meanness or ostentation and encroachment on
others ; no one knew himself better, or more uniformly
kept his place in society.
H. It is a pity to mar the idea of Sir Joshua's dinner-
parties, which are one of the pleasantest instances on
record of a cordial intercourse between persons of dis-
tinguished pretensions of all sorts. But some people do
not care what they spoil, so that they can tell disagreeable
truths.
412 Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
N. In the present case there is not even that excuse.
The statement answers no good end, while it throws a
very unfounded slur on Sir Joshua's hospitality and love
of good cheer. It is insinuated that he was sparing of
his wine, which is not true. Again, I am blamed for
not approving of Dr. Johnson's speech to Sir Joshua at
the Miss Cottrells', when the Duchess of Argyll came
in, and he thought himself neglected " How much do
you think you and I could earn in a week, if we were to
work as hard as we could ?" This was a rude and un-
merited insult. The Miss Cottrells were the daughters
of an admiral and people of fashion, as well as the
Duchess of Argyll, and they naturally enough fell into
conversation about persons and things that they knew,
though Dr. Johnson had not been used to hear of them.
He therefore thought it affectation and insolence, whereas
the vulgarity and insolence were on his own side. If I
had any fault to find with Sir Joshua, it would be that
he was a very bad master in the art. Of all his pupils,
I am the only one who ever did anything at all. He
was like the boy teaching the other to swim : " How do
you do when you want to turn ?" " How must you do
when you turn ? Why, you must look that way !" Sir
Joshua's instructions amounted to little more. People
talk of the instinct of animals as if a blind reason were an
absurdity ; whereas whatever men can do best, they
understand and can explain least. Your son was look-
ing at that picture of the lapdog the other evening.
There is a curious story about that. The dog was
walking out with me one day and was set upon and bit
by a strange dog, for all dogs know and hate a favourite.
He was a long time in recovering from the wound ; and
one day when Mr. Prince Hoare called he ran up to
him, leaped up quite overjoyed, then lay down, began to
whine, patted the place where he had been hurt with
his paws, and went through the whole history of his
Mr. Norilwotes Conversations. 413
misfortune. It was a perfect pantomime. I will not
tell the story to Godwin, for the philosopher would be
jealous of the sagacity of the cur.
H. There was Jack Spines, the racket-player : he ex
celled in what is called " the half- volley." Some amateurs
of the game were one day disputing what this term of
art meant. Spines was appealed to. " Why, gentle-
men," says he, " I really can't say exactly ; but I should
think, the half-volley is something between the volley
and the half-volley." This definition was not quite the
thing. The celebrated John Davies, the finest player in
the world, could give no account of his proficiency that
way. It is a game which no one thinks of playing with-
out putting on a flannel jacket ; and after you have been
engaged in it for ten minutes you are just as if you had
been dipped in a mill-pond. John Davies never pulled
off his coat ; and merely buttoning it that it might not
be in his way, would go down into the Fives Court and
play two of the best players of the day, and at the end
of the match you could not perceive that a hair of his
head was wet. Powell, the keeper of the court, (why
does not Sir B. Nash, among so many innovations, re-
build it ?) said he never seemed to follow the ball, but
that it came to him he did everything with such
ease.
N. Then every motion of that man was perfect grace.
There was not a muscle in his body that did not con-
tribute its share to the game. So, when they begin to
learn the pianoforte, at first they use only the fingers,
and are soon tired to death ; then the muscles of the
arm come into play, which relieves them a little ; and
at last the whole frame is called into action, so as to
produce the effect with entire ease and gracefulness. It
is the same in everything ; and he is indeed a poor
creature who cannot do more, from habit or natural
genius, than he can give any rational account of.
414 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
[Some remarks having been made on the foregoing
conversation, Mr. Northcote, the next time I saw him,
took up the subject nearly as follows :]
N. The newspaper critic asks with an air of triumph,
as if he had found a mare's-nest, " What ! are Sophia
Western and All worthy St. Giles's ?" Why, they are
the very ones ; they are Tower stamp ! Blifil, and Black
George, and Square are not they have some sense and
spirit in them, and are so far redeemed, for Fielding put
his own cleverness and ingenuity into them ; but as to
his refined characters, they are an essence of vulgarity
and insipidity. Sophia is a poor doll ; and as to All-
worthy, he has not the soul of a goose. And how does he
behave to the young man that he has brought up and
pampered with the expectations of a fortune and of being
a fine gentleman ? Does he not turn him out to starve
or rob on the highway, without the shadow of an excuse,
on a mere maudlin sermonising pretext of morality, and
with as little generosity as principle ? No ! Fielding
did not know what virtue or refinement meant. As
Richardson said, he should have thought his books were
written by an ostler ; or Sir John Hawkins has expressed
it still better, that the virtues of his heroes are the
virtues of dogs and horses ; he does not go beyond that
nor indeed so far, for his Tom Jones is not so good as
Lord Byron's Newfoundland dog. I have known New-
foundland dogs with twenty times his understanding
and goodnature. That is where Richardson has the
advantage over Fielding the virtues of his characters
are not the virtues of animals. Clarissa holds her head
in the skies, a " bright particular star ;" for whatever
may bo said, we have such ideas and thanks to those
who sustain and nourish them, and woe to those critics
who would confound them with the dirt under our feet
and Grub-street jargon ! No, that is what we want to
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 415
have the line made as black and as broad as possible
that separates what we have in common with the animals
from what we pretend (at least) to have above them.
That is where the newspaper critic is wrong, in saying
that the blackguard in the play is equal to Mrs. Siddons.
No, he is not equal to Mrs. Siddons, any more than a
baited bull or an over-drove ox is equal to Mrs. Siddons.
There is the same animal fury in Tyke that there is in
the maddened brute, with the same want of any ideas
beyond himself and his own mechanical and coarse im-
pulses ; it is the lowest stage of human capacity and
feeling violently acted upon by circumstances. Lady
Macbeth, if she is the demon, is not the brute ; she has
the intellectual part, and is hurried away no less by
the violence of her will than by a wide scope of imagi-
nation and a lofty ambition. Take away all dignity
and grandeur from poetry and art, and you make Emery
equal to Mrs. Siddons, and Hogarth to Kaphael, but not
else. Emery's Tyke in his extremity calk for brandy
Mrs. Siddons does not, like Queen Dollalolla, call for a
glass of gin. Why not ? Gin is as natural a drink as
poison ; but if Bianca Capella, instead of swallowing the
poison herself, when she found it was not given to her
enemy, had merely got drank for spite, in the manner
of Hogarth's heroines, she would not have been recorded
in history. There is then a foundation for the distinc-
tion between the heroic and the natural, which I am not
bound to explain any more than 1 am to account why
black is not white.
H. If Emery is equal to Mrs. Siddons, Morton is
equal to Shakspeare; though it would be difficult to
bring such persons to that conclusion.
N. I'll tell you why Emery is not equal to Mrs.
Siddons; there are a thousand Emerys to one Mrs.
Siddons ; the stage is always full of six or seven comic
actors at a time, so that you cannot tell which is best
416 Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations.
Emery, Fawcett, Munden, Lewis ; but in my time I have
seen but Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, who have left a gap
behind them that I shall not live to see filled up. Emery
is the first blackguard or stage-coach driver you see in a.
row in the street ; but if you had not seen Mrs. Siddons
you could have no idea of her, nor can you convey it to
any one who has not. She was like a preternatural being
descended to the earth. I cannot say Sir Joshua has
done her justice. I regret Mrs. Abington too she was
the Grosvener Square of comedy, if you please. I am
glad that Hogarth did not paint her ; it would have
been a thing to spit upon. If the correspondent of the
newspaper wants to know where my Grosvener Square
of art is, he'll find it in ' The Provoked Husband,' in
' Lord and Lady Townly ' not in the ' History of a
Foundling,' or in the pompous swagbellied peer with
his dangling pedigree, or his gawky son-in-law, or his
dawdling malkin of a wife from the city, playing with the
ring like an idiot, in the ' Marriage a la mode !' There
may be vice and folly enough in Vanbrugh's scenes ; but
it is not the vice of St. Giles's, it does not savour of the
kennel. Not that I would have my interrogator suppose
that I think all is vice in St. Giles's. On the contrary,
I could find at this moment instances of more virtue,
refinement, sense, and beauty there than there are in
his Sophy. No, nature is the same everywhere ; there
are as many handsome children born in St. Giles's as in
Grosvenor Square; but the same care is not taken of
them ; and in general they grow up greater beauties in
the one than the other. A child in St. Giles's is left to
run wild it thrusts its finger into its mouth or pulls its
nose about ; but if a child of people of fashion play any
tricks of this kind, it is told immediately, " You must
not do this, unless you would have your mouth reach
from .ear to ear ; you must not say that ; you must not
sit in STich a manner, or you'll grow double." This seems
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 417
like art ; but it is only giving nature fair play. No one
was allowed to touch the Princess Charlotte when a
child. She was taken care of like something precious.
The sister of the Duke of had her nose broke when
a child in a quarrel with her sister, who flung a tea-basin
at her ; but ail the doctors were immediately called in
and every remedy was applied, so that when she grew
up there was no appearance of the accident left. If the
same thing had happened to a poor child she would
have carried the marks of it to her grave. So you see a
number of crooked people and twisted legs among the
lower classes. This was what made Lord Byron so
mad that he had misshapen feet. Don't you think so?
H. Yes ; Tom Moore told a person I know that that
was the cause of all his misanthropy he wanted to be
an Adonis, and could not.
N. Ay, and of his genius too ; it made him write verses
in revenge. There is no knowing the effect of such sort
of things of defects we wish to balance. Do you suppose
we owe nothing to Pope's deformity ? He said to him-
self, " If my person be crooked my verses shall be straight."
I myself have felt this in passing along the street, when I
have heard rude remarks made on my personal appearance.
I then go home and paint : but I should not do this if I
thought all that there is in art was contained in Hogarth
I should then feel neither pride nor consolation in it.
But if 1 thought, instead of his doll-like figures cut in
two with their insipid dough-baked faces, I should do
something like Sir Joshua's 'Iphigene,' with all that
delights the sense in richness of colour and luxuriance
of form ; or instead of the women spouting the liquor
in one another's faces, in ' The Eake's Progress,' I could
give the purity, and grace, and real elegance (appearing
under all the incumbrance of the fashionable dresses of
the day) of Lady Sarah Bunbury, or of the Miss Hornecks,
sacrificing to the Graces, or of Lady Essex, with her
418 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
long waist and ruffles, but looking a pattern of the female
character in all its relations, and breathing dignity and
virtue then I should think this an object worth living
for, or (as you have expressed it very properly) should
even be proud of having failed. This is the opinion
the world have always entertained of the matter. Sir
Joshua's name is repeated with more respect than
Hogarth's. It is not for his talents, but for his taste
and the direction of them. In meeting Sir Joshua
(merely from a knowledge of his works) you would
expect to meet a gentleman not so of Hogarth. And
yet Sir Joshua's claims and pot-sessions in art were not
of the highest order.
H. But he was decent, and did not profess the arts and
accomplishments of a merryandrew.
N. I assure you it was not for want of ability, either.
When ho was young he did a number of caricatures of
different persons, and could have got any price for
them. But he found it necessary to give up the practice.
Leonardo da Vinci, a mighty man, and who had titles
manifold, had a great turn for drawing laughable and
grotesque likenesses of his acquaintances ; but he threw
them all in the fire. It was to him a kind of profanation
of the art. Sir Joshua would almost as soon have forged
as he would have set his name to a caricature. Gil ray
(whom you speak of) was eminent in this way ; but
he had other talents as well. In ' The Embassy to
China,' he has drawn the Emperor of China a complete
Eastern voluptuary, fat and supine, with all the effects
of climate and situation evident upon his person ; and
Lord Macartney is an elegant youth, a real Apollo ; then,
indeed, come Punch and the puppet-show after him, to
throw the whole into ridicule. In the ' Revolutionists'
Jolly boat,' after the opposition were defeated, he has
placed Fox and Sheridan, and the rest, escaping from
the wreck : Dante could not have described them as
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 419
looking more sullen and gloomy. He was a great man
in his way. \Vhy does not Mr. Lamb write an essay on
the ' Twopenny Whist '? Yet it was against his con-
science, for he had been on the other side, and was
bought over. The minister sent to ask him to do them
half a dozen at a certain price, which he agreed to, and
took them to the Treasury ; but there being some demur
about the payment he took them back with some saucy
reply. He had not been long at home before a mes-
senger was sent after him with the money.
Conversation the Twenty-first.
N. GODWIN and I had a dispute lately about the
capacity of animals. He appeared to consider them as
little better than machines. He made it the dis-
tinguishing mark of superiority in man that he is the
only animal that can transmit his thoughts to future
generations. " Yes," I said, " for future generations to
take no sort of notice of them." I allowed that there
were a few extraordinary geniuses that ever} 7 one must
look up to and I mentioned the names of Shakspeare
and Dryden. But he would not hear of Dryden, and
began to pull him in pieces immediately. " Why
then," I answered, " if you cannot agree among your-
selves even with respect to four or five of the most
eminent, how can there be the vast and overwhelming
superiority you pretend to ?" I observed that instinct
in animals answered very much to what we call genius.
I spoke of the wonderful powers of smell, and the
sagacity of dogs, and the memory shown by horses in
finding a road that they have once travelled ; but I
made no way with Godwin he still went back to Lear
and Othello.
H. I think he was so far right ; for as this is what he
420 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
understands best and has to imitate, it is fit he should
admire and dwell upon it most. He cannot acquire the
smell of the dog or the sagacity of the horse, and there-
fore it is of no use to think about them ; but he may, by
dint of study and emulation, become a better poet or
philosopher. The question is not merely what is best in
itself (of that we are hardly judges), but what sort of ex-
cellence we understand, best and can make our own; for
otherwise, in affecting to admire we know not what,
we may admire a nonentity or a deformity. Abraham
Tucker has remarked very well on this subject that a
swine wallowing in the mire may, for what he can tell, be
as happy as a philosopher in writing an essay ; but that
is no reason why he (the philosopher) should exchange
occupations or tastes with the brute, unless he could
first exchange natures. We may suspend our judgments
in such cases as a matter of speculation or conjecture,
but that is different from the habitual practical feeling.
So I remember Wordsworth being nettled at D (who
affected a fashionable taste) for saying, on coming out of
the Marquis of Stafford's gallery, "A very noble art,
very superior to poetry!" If it were so, Wordsworth
observed, he could know nothing about it, who had never
*een any fine pictures before. It was like an European
adventurer saying to an African chieftain, " A very fine
boy, sir, your black son very superior to my white
one !" This is mere affectation ; we might as well
pretend to be thrown into rapture by a poem written in
a language we are not acquainted with. We may not-
withstanding believe that it is very fine, and have no wish
to hang up the writer because he is not an Englishman.
A spider may be a greater mechanic than Watt or Ark-
wright ; but the effects are not brought home to us in
the same manner, and we cannot help estimating the
cause by the effect. A friend of mine teazes me with
questions, " Which was the greatest man, Sir Isaac
Mr. Northeotes Conversations. 421
Newton or a first-rate chess-player ?" It refers itself to
the head of the Illustrious Obscure. A club of chess-
players might give it in favour of the Great Unknown ; but
all the rest of the world, who have heard of the one and
not of the other, will give it against him. We cannot
set aside those prejudices which are founded on the
limitation of our faculties or the constitution of society,
only that we need not lay them down as abstract or
demonstrable truths. It is there the bigotry and error
begin. The language of taste and moderation is, " I prefer
this, because it is best to me ;" the language of dogmatism
and intolerance is, " Because I prefer it, it is best in itself,
and I will allow no one else to be of a different opinion."
N. I find, in the last conversation I saw, you make me
an admirer of Fielding, and so I am ; but I find great
fault with him too. I grant he is one of those writers
that I remember; he stamps his characters, whether
good or bad, on the reader's mind. This is more than I
can say of every one. For instance, when Godwin
plagues me about my not having sufficient admiration of
Wordsworth's poetry, the answer I give is, that it is not
my fault, for I have utterly forgotten it ; it seemed to
me like the ravelings of poetry. But to say nothing of
Fielding's immorality, and his fancying himself a fine
gentleman in the midst of all his coarseness, he has
oftener described habits than character. For example,
Western is no character ; it is merely the language,
manners, and pursuits of the country squire of that day ;
and the proof of this is, that there is no Squire Western
now. Manners and customs wear out, but characters
last for ever. I remember making this remark to Hoi-
croft, and he asked me, " What was the difference ?"
Are you not surprised at this ?
H. Not in him. If you mentioned the word character,
he stopped you short by saying that it was merely the
difference of circumstances; or if you hinted at the
422 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
difference of natural capacity, he said, " Then, sir, you
must believe in innate ideas." He surrendered his own
feelings and better judgment to a set of cant phrases,
called " the modern philosophy."
N. I need not explain the difference to you. Cha-
racter is the groundwork, the natural stamina, of the
mind, on which circumstances only act. You see it in
St. Giles's : there are characters there that in the midst
of filth, and vice, and ignorance, retain some traces of
their original goodness, and struggle with their situation
to the last : as in St. James's you will find wretches that
would disgrace a halter. ' Gil Bias ' has character.
H. I thought he only gave professions and classes,
players, footmen, sharpers, courtesans, but not the indi-
vidual, as Fielding often does, though we should strip
Western of his scarlet hunting-dress and jockey phrases.
There is Square, Blifil, Black George, Mrs. Fitzpatrick,
Parson Adams ; and a still greater cluster of them in
the one that is least read the noble peer, the lodging-
house-keeper, Mrs. Bennet, and Colonel Bath.
N. You mean 'Amelia ' ? I have not read that, but will
get it. I allow in part what you say ; but in the best
there is something too local and belonging to the time.
But what I chiefly object to in Fielding is his conceit,
his consciousness of what he is doing, his everlasting
recommendation and puffing of his own wit and sagacity.
His introductory chapters make me sick.
H. Why, perhaps Fielding is to be excused as a
disappointed man. All his success was late in life, for
he died in 1754 ; and 'Joseph Andrews ' (the first work of
his that was popular) was published in 1742. All the
rest of his life he had been drudging for the booksellers,
or bringing out unsuccessful comedies. He probably
anticipated the same result in his novels, and wished to
bespeak the favour of the reader by putting himself too
much forward. His prefaces are like Ben Jonson's
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 423
prologues, and from the same cause, mortified vanity
though it seems odd to say so at present, after the run
his writings have had ; but he could not foresee that,
and only lived a short time to witness it.
N. I can bear anything but that conscious look ; it is
to me like the lump of soot in the broth, that spoils the
whole mess. Fielding was one of the swaggerers.
H. But he had much to boast of.
N. He certainly was not idle in his time. Idleness
would have ruined a greater man.
H. Then you do not agree to a maxim I have some-
times thought might be laid down, that no one is idle
who can do anything ?
N. No, certainly.
H. I conceive it may be illustrated from Wilson, who
was charged with idleness, and who, after painting a
little, used to say, as soon as any friend dropped in,
" Now let us go somewhere," meaning to the alehouse.
All that Wilson could do he did, and that finely too,
with a few well-disposed masses and strokes of the
pencil ; but he could not finish, or he would have staid
within all the morning to work up his pictures to the
perfection of Claude's. He thought it better to go to the
alehouse than to spoil what he had already done. I
have in my own mind made this excuse for , l that
he could only make a first sketch, and was obliged to
lose the greatest part of his time in waiting for windfalls
of heads and studies. I have sat to him twice, and each
time I offered to come again, and he said he would let
me know, but I heard no more of it. The sketch went
as it was of course in a very unfinished state.
N. But he might have remedied this by diligence and
practice.
H. I do not know that he could : one might say that
there is the same abruptness and crudity in his character
1 Query, W. Bewick. ED.
424 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
throughout in his conversation, his walk, and look great
force and spirit, but neither softness nor refinement.
N. If he had more humility he might have seen all
that in the works of others, and have strove to imitate it.
H. What I mean is, that it was his not having the
sense of these refinements in himself that prevented his
perceiving them in others, or taking pains to supply a
defect to which he was blind.
N. I do not think that, under any circumstances, he
would have made a Eaphael. But your reasoning goes
too much to what Dr. Johnson ridiculed in poetry fits
of inspiration, and a greater flow of ideas in the autumn
than in the spring Sir Joshua used to work at all
times, whether he was in the humour or not.
H. And so would every one else with his motives and
ability to excel. Lawyers without fees are accused of
idleness, but this goes off when the briefs pour in.
N. Did you see the newspaper accounts of the election
of the new Pope ? It appears that nothing could exceed
his repugnance to be chosen. He begged and even wept
to be let off. You are to consider, he is an old man
labouring under a mortal disease (which is one circum-
stance that led to his elevation) to be taken from the
situation of cardinal (in itself a very enviable one) and
thrust violently into a mass of business, of questions
and cabals which will distract him, and where he can
get no thanks, and may incur every kind of odium. It
is true he has an opportunity of making the fortunes of
his family ; and if he prefers them to himself it is all
very well, but not else. To persons of a restless and
aspiring turn of mind, ambition and grandeur are very
fine things, but to others they are the most intolerable
tax. There is our own King there is no conceiving
the punishment that those processions and public show-
days are to him ; and then as to all the pomp and glitter
that we so much admire, it is, to those who are accus-
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 425
tomed to it and who see behind the curtain, like so
much cast-off rags and tinsel or Monmouth-street finery.
They hold it in inconceivable scorn, and yet they can
hardly do without it, from the slavery of habit. Then
the time of such people is never their own they are
always performing a part (and generally a forced and
irksome one) in what no way interests or concerns them.
The late King, 1 to whom rank was a real drudgery, used
to stand buried in a pile of papers, so that you could
not see those on the other side of the table, which he
had merely to sign. It is no wonder kings are some-
times seen to retire to a monastery, where religion leaves
this asylum open to them, or are glad to return to their
shepherd's crook again. No situation can boast of com-
plete ease or freedom ; and even that would have its
disadvantages. And then, again, look at those labourers
at the top of the house yonder, working from morning till
night, and exposed to all weathers, for a bare pittance,
without hope to sweeten their toil, and driven on by
hunger and necessity ! When we turn to others, whether
those above or below us, we have little reason to be dis-
satisfied with our own situation in life. But in all
cases it is necessary to employ means to ends, be the
object what it may ; and where the first have not been
taken it is both unjust and foolish to repine at the want
of success. The common expression, " Fortune's fools,"
may seem to convey a slur on the order of Providence ;
but it rather shows the equality of its distributions.
Are the men of capacity to have all the good things to
themselves? They are proud of their supposed supe-
riority why are they not contented with it ? If a fool
is not to grow rich, the next thing would be that none
but men of genius should have a coat to their backs or
be thought fit to live. If it were left to them to provide
food or clothes they would have none for themselves.
1 George III.
426 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
It is urged as a striking inequality that enterprising
manufacturers, for instance, should rise to great wealth
and honours, while thousands of their dependents are
labouring hard at one or two shillings a day ; but we
are to recollect that if it had not been for men like these
the working-classes would have been perishing for want ;
they collect the others together, give a direction and
find a vent for their industry, and may be said to exer-
cise a part of sovereign capacity. Everything has its
place and due subordination. If authors had the direc-
tion of the world nothing would be left standing but
printing-presses.
N. What do you think of that portrait ?
H. It is very ladylike, and, I should imagine, a good
likeness.
N. J said I might go on painting yet he saw no
falling off. They are pleased with it. I have painted
almost the whole family, and the girls would let their
mother sit to nobody else. But, Lord ! everything one
can do seems to fall so short of nature whether it is the
want of skill or the imperfection of the art, that cannot
give the successive movements of expression and changes
of countenance I am always ready to beg pardon of my
sitters after I have done, and to say I hope they'll excuse
it. The more one knows of the art, and indeed the
better one can do, the less one is satisfied. This made
Titian write under his pictures "facieba,t," signifying
that they were only in progress. I remember Burke
came in one day when Sir Joshua had been painting
one of the Lennoxes ; he was quite struck with the
beauty of the performance, and said he hoped Sir Joshua
would not touch it again ; to which the latter replied,
that if he had seen the original he would have thought
little of the picture, and that there was a look which it
was hardly in the power of art to give. No i all we can
do is to produce something that makes a distant ap-
Mr. Nortlicotes Conversations. 427
proach to nature, and that, serves as a faint relic of the
individual. A portrait is only a little better memorial
than the parings of the nails or a lock of the hair.
H. Who is it ?
N. It is a Lady W ; you have heard me speak of
her before. She is a person of great sense and spirit,
and combines very opposite qualities from a sort of
natural strength of character. She has shown the
greatest feeling and firmness united ; no one can have
more tenderness in her domestic connections, and yet
she has borne the loss of some of them with exemplary
fortitude. Perhaps the one is a consequence of the
other ; for where the attachment or even the regret is
left, all is not lost. The mind has still a link to connect
it with the beloved object. She has no affectation, and
therefore yields to unavoidable circumstances as they
arise. Inconsolable grief is often mere cant, and a trick
to impose on ourselves and others. People of any real
strength of character are seldom affected : those who
have not the clue of their own feelings to guide them
do not know what to do, and study only how to produce
an effect. I recollect one of the Miss Berrys, Lord
Orford's favourites, whom I met with at a party for-
merly, using the expression : " That seal of mediocrity,
affectation !" Don't you think this striking ?
H. Yes ; but not quite free from the vice it describes.
N. Oh ! they had plenty of that ; they were regular
bluestockings, I assure you, or they would not have
been so entirely to his lordship's taste, who was a
mighty coxcomb. But there is none of that in the
person I have been speaking of she has very delight-
ful, genteel, easy manners.
H. That is the only thing I envy in people in that
class.
N. But you are not to suppose they all have it;
it is only those who are born with it, and who would
428 Mr. NortJicotes Conversations.
have had it in a less degree in every situation of life.
Vulgarity is the growth of courts as well as of the
hovel. We may be deceived by a certain artificial or
conventional manner in persons of rank and fashion ;
but they themselves see plainly enough into the natural
character. I remember Lady W told me, as an
instance to this purpose, that when she was a girl she
and her sister were introduced at court ; and it was
then the fashion to stand in a circle, and the Queen
came round and spoke to the different persons in turn.
There was some high lady who came in after them, and
pushed rudely into the circlo so as to get before them.
But the Queen, who saw the circumstance, went up and
spoke to them first, and then passed on (as a just punish-
ment) without taking any notice whatever of the forward
intruder. I forget how it arose the other day, but she
asked me : " Pray, Mr. Northcote, is discretion reckoned
one of the cardinal virtues ?" " No," I said, " it is not
one of them, for it is all." If we had discretion at all
times, we should never do wrong ; but we are taken off
our guard by being thrown into new and difficult situ-
ations, and have not time to weigh the consequences or
to summon resolution to our aid. That is what Opie
used to say when he had been engaged in an argument
overnight what excellent answers he could give the
next day, and was vexed with himself for not having
thought of them. No; if we had sufficient presence of
mind to foresee the consequences of our actions on the
spot, we should very rarely have occasion to repent of
them afterwards.
H. You put me in mind of Cicero's account of the
cardinal virtues, in his ' Offices,' who makes them out to
be four ; and then says they are all referable to the first,
which is Prudence.
N. Ay ; do you recollect what they are ?
H. Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude.
Mr. Northcotes Conversations. 429
N. They are too much alike. The most distinct is
Fortitude.
H. I never could make much of Cicero, except his
two treatises on Friendship and Old Age, which are
most amiable gossiping. I see that Canning borrowed
his tautology from Cicero, who runs on with such ex-
pressions as, " I will bear I will suffer I will endure
any extremity." This is bad enough iu the original, it
is inexcusable in the copy. Cicero's style, however,
answered to the elegance of his finely-turned features ;
and in his long graceful neck you may trace his winding
and involuted periods.
X. Do you believe in that sort of stuff?
H. Not more than I can help.
Conversation the Twenty-second.
N. I OUGHT to cross myself, like the Catholics, when I
see you. You terrify me by repeating what I say. But
1 see you have regulated yourself. There is nothing
personally offensive, except what relates to Sir Walter.
You make him swear too, which he did not do. He
would never use the expression " Egad." These little
things mark the gentleman. I am afraid, if ho sees it,
he'll say I'm a babbler. That is what they dread so at
court that the least word should transpire.
H. They may have their reasons for caution. At
least, they can gain nothing, and might possibly lose
equally by truth or falsehood, as it must be difficult to
convey an adequate idea of royalty. But authors are
glad to be talked about. If Sir W. Scott has an objection
to having his name mentioned, he is singularly unlucky.
Enough was said in his praise ; and I do not believe he
is captious. I fancy he takes the rough with the smooth. I
did not well know what to do. You seemed to express a
430 Mr. Northeotes Conversations.
wish that the Conversations should proceed, and yet you
are startled at particular phrases, or I would have
brought you what I had done to show you. I thought
it best to take my chance of the general impression.
N. Why, if kept to be published as a diary after my
death, they might do : nobody could then come to ask
me questions about them. But I cannot say they appear
very striking to me. One reason may be, what I observe
myself cannot be very new to me. If others are pleased
they are the best judges. It seems very odd that you, who
are acquainted with some of the greatest authors of the
day, cannot find anything of theirs worth setting down.
H. That by no means pleases them. I understand
Godwin is angry at the liberty I take with you. He is
quite safe in this respect. I might answer him much in
the manner of the fellow in ' The Country Girl' when
his friend introduces his mistress and he salutes her
" Why, I suppose if I were to introduce my grandmother
to you " " Sir," replies the other, " I should treat her
with the utmost respect." So I shall never think of
repeating any of Godwin's conversations. My indiffer-
ence may arise in part, as you say, from their not being
very new to me. Godwin might, I dare say, argue very
well on the doctrine of philosophical necessity or many
other questions ; but then I have read all this before in
Hume or other writers, and I am very little edified,
because I have myself had access to the same sources
that he has drawn from. But you, as an artist, have
been pushed into an intercourse with the world as well
as an observation of nature, and combine a sufficient
knowledge of general subjects with living illustrations
of them. I do not like the conversation of mere men of
the world or anecdote-mongers, for there is nothing to
bind it together, and the other sort is pedantic and
tiresome from repetition so that there is nobody but
you I can come to.
Mr. Northcote's Conversations. 431
N. You do not go enough into society, or you would
be cured of what I cannot help regarding as a whim.
You would there find many people of sense and informa-
tion whose names you never heard of. It is not those
who have made most noise in the world who are persons
of the greatest general capacity. It is the making the
most of a little, or the being determined to get before
others in some one thing (perhaps for want of other
recommendations), that brings men into notice. Indi-
viduals gain a reputation, as they make a fortune, by
application and by having set their minds upon it. But
you have set out (like other people brought up among
books) with such exclusive notions of authors and
literary fame, that if you find the least glimmering of
common-sense out of this pale you think it a prodigy,
and run into the opposite extreme. I do not say that
you have not a perception of character, or have not
thought, as far as you have observed ; but you have not
had the opportunities. You turn your back on the world,
and fancy that they turn their backs on you. This is
a very dangeroiis principle. You become reckless of
consequences. It leads to an abandonment of character.
By setting the opinion of others at defiance you lose
your self-respect. It is of no use that you still say you
will do what is right ; your passions usurp the place of
reason, and whisper you that whatever you are bent upon
doing is right. You cannot put this deception on the
public, however false or prejudiced their standard may
be ; and the opinion of the world, therefore, acts as a
seasonable check upon wilfulness and eccentricity.
H. What you have stated is the best excuse I could
make for my own faults or blunders. When one is found
fault with fur nothing, or for doing one's best, one is apt
to give the world their revenge. All the former part of
my life I was treated as a cipher ; and since I have got
into notice I have been set upon as a wild beast. When
432 Mr. Northcotes Conversations.
this is the case, and you can expect as little justice as
candour, you naturally in self-defence take refuge in a
sort of misanthropy and cynical contempt, for mankind.
One is disposed to humour them, and to furnish them
with 8ome ground for their idle and malevolent censures.
N. But you should not. If you do nothing to confirm
them in their first prejudices, they will coine round in
time. They are slow to admit claims, because they are
not sure of their validity ; and they thwart and cross-
examine you to try what temper you arc made of.
Without some such ordeal or difficulty thrown in the
way, every upstart and pretender must be swallowed
whole. That would never do. But if you have patience
to stand the test, justice is rendered at last, and you are
stamped for as much as you are worth. You certainly
have not spared others : why should you expect nothing
but " the milk of human kindness " ? Look to those men
behind you [a collection of portraits on the same frame]
there is Pope and Dryden did they fare better than
living authors? Had not Dryden his Shad well, and
Pope his Dennis, 1 who fretted him to a shadow and
galled him almost to death ? There was Dr. Johnson,
who in his writings was a pattern of wisdom and morality
he declared that he had been hunted down, as if he
had been the great enemy of mankind. But he had
strength of mind to look down upon it. Not to do this
is either infirmity of temper, or shows a conscious want
of any claims that are worth carrying up to a higher
tribunal than the cabal and clamour of the moment.
Sir Joshua always despised malicious reports ; he knew
they would blow over : at the same time, he as little
regarded exaggerated praise. Nothing you could say
had any effect, if he was not satisfied with himself.
He had a great game to play, and only looked to the
result. He had studied himself thoroughly ; and besides
1 John Dennis, the critic. ED.
Mr. Norihcotes Conversations. 433
had great equanimity of temper, which, to be sure, it is
difficult to acquire, if it is not natural. You have two
faults : one is a feud or quarrel with the world, which
makes you despair, and prevents you taking all the pains
you might ; the other is a carelessness and mismanage-
ment, which makes you throw away the little you actually
do, and brings you into difficulties that way. Sir Joshua
used to say it was as wrong for a man to think too little
as too much of himself: if the one ran him into
extravagance and presumption, the other sank him in
sloth and insignificance. You see the same thing in
horses ; if they cannot stir a load at the first effort they
give it up as a hopeless task ; and nothing can rouse
them from their sluggish obstinacy but blows and ill-
treatment.
H. I confess all this, but I hardly know how to
remedy it ; nor do I feel any strong inducement.
Taking one thing with another, I have no great cause
to complain. If I had been a merchant, a bookseller,
or the proprietor of a newspaper, instead of what I am, I
might have had more money, or possessed a town and
country house, instead of lodging in a first or second
floor, as it may happen. But what then ? I see how
the man of business and fortune passes his time. He is
up and in the City by eight, swallows his breakfast in
haste, attends a meeting of creditors, must read Lloyd's
Lists, consult the price of consols, study the markets, look
into his accounts, pay his workmen, and superintend his
clerks. He has hardly a minute in the day to himself,
and perhaps in the four-and-twenty hours does not do
a single thing that he would do if he could help it.
Surely, this sacrifice of time and inclination requires
some compensation which it meets with. But how am
I entitled to make my fortune (which cannot be done
without all this anxiety and drudgery), who do hardly
anything at all, and never anything but what I like to
2 F
43 i Mr. Northcote's Conversations.
do ? I rise when I please, breakfast at length, write what
comes into my head, and after taking a mutton-chop
and a dish of strong tea, go to the play, and thus my
time passes. Mr. has no time to go to the play.
It was but the other day that I had to get up a little
earlier than usual to go into the City about some money
transaction, which appeared to me a prodigious hardship ;
if so, it was plain that I must lead a tolerably easy life.
Nor should I object to passing mine over again. Till 1
was twenty I -had no idea of anything but books, and
thought everything else was worthless and mechanical.
The having to study painting about this time, and finding
the difficulties and beauties it unfolded, opened a new
field to me, and I began to conclude that there might
be a number of other things between heaven and earth
that were never dreamt of in my philosophy. Ask
Godwin, or any other literary man who has never been
taken out of the leading-strings of learning, and you
will perceive that they hold for a settled truth that the
universe is built of words. Godwin has no interest
but in literary fame, of which he is the worshipper ;
he cannot believe that any one is clever, or has even
common-sense, who has not written a book. If you talk
to him of Italian cities, where great poets and patriots
lived, he heaves a sigh ; and if I were possessed of a
fortune, he should go and visit the house where Galileo
lived, or the tower where Ugolino was imprisoned. He
can see with the eyes of his mind : to all else he is
marble. It is like speaking to him of the objects of a
sixth sense; every other language seems dumb and
inarticulate.
INDEX OF NAMES
MENTIONED IN THE
CONVERSATIONS OF NORTHCOTE.
A , Mr., 324
Abington,Mrs. Frances, 377,416
Agar, Mr., 293
Anne, Queen, 304, 403
Argyll, Duchess of, 412
B , 334-5
Baireuth, Margravine of, 404
Bannister, Jehu (the elder), 363
Baretti, Joseph, 311
Barrett, George, 309
Barrow (artist), 288
Barry, James, 251, 298
Bath, Lord, 306, 409
Baxter, Richard, 286
Beattie, James, 403
, Mrs., 403
Beaumont, Sir George, 303
Bellochi, Madame, 341
Benedict XIV. ' Lambertini), 307
Bentham, Jeremy, 275
Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo, 270
Berry, the Misses, 427
Betty, Master (actor), 254
Bird, Edward, H.A., 280
Blake, Admiral Robert, 310
Boaden, 253
Boccaccio, Gio., 294, 300, 328
Boccarelli (composer), 384
Borghese, the Princess, 313
Boringdon, Lord, 303
Boswell, James, 289, 340
Boydell, Alderman, 283-4
Brocard, Mdlle., 360
Brown, 308, 318
Bunhury, Lady Sarah, 417
Bunyan, John, 320
Buonaparte, Napoleon, 320, 327
339, 380
Burke, Edmund, 263, 288-9, 340
368, 411, 426
Burney, Miss Frances (Madame
D'Arblay), 354-5
Butler, James, 261
Byron,Lord, 241-4, 246, 301, 326.
328-9, 339, 361, 375, 414, 417
C , Miss, 256
Canning, George, 331, 429
Canova, Antonio, 313-4
Caracci, the two, 284
Carlisle, Earl of, 30b
436
Index of Names mentioned in the
Caroline, Queen, 318-19
Catalan!, Madame Angelica, 344
Centlivre, Mrs. Susannah, 28G
Cervantes, 337, 351
Charles I., 353
II., 244, 337, 352, 382
Charlotte, Princess, 417
Chatterton, Thomas, 355
Cibber, Colley, 403
Cleveland, Duchess of, 382
Cobbett, William, 316, 371
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 294,
400
Column, George, 402
Congreve, William, 286
Cooper, James Fennimore, 317,
318, 370
Cosway, Maria, 338
, Richard, R. A., 241, 310,
385
Coltrell, the Misses, 412
Croker, John Wilson, 280
Cromwell, Oliver, 353
Crouch, Mrs. (actress), 269
Cumberland, Duchess of, 410
Cunningham, Allan, 408-9
Curll, Edward, 365
Dance, George, 278, 301, 399
D'Arblay, Madame, 354-5
Davies, Signora Cecilia, 344
- , John (fives-player), 413
Day, Thomas, 262-3
Defoe, Daniel, 357, 382
Denmark, Prince of, 303
Dennis, John, 432
Devonshire, Duchess of, 346
Diderot, Denis, 403
Dignum (singer), 321, 385
Doddridge, Dr. Philip, 292
Drake, Sir Francis, 291
Dryden, John, 246, 2G7, 285,
297, 375, 419, 432
Dunning, John, 291, 33i
Edwards (an artist), 260
Edwin, John, 363
Elizabeth, Queen, 291, 328
Emery, John (actor), 415-;j
Erskine, Lord, 347
Essex, Lady, 417
Exmouth, Lord. Vide Pellew
F , Mr., 324
Faringtou, Joseph, R.A., 278,
309
Farquhar, George, 388
Fawcett (actor), 416
Fielding, Henry, 357, 376-7
408, 414, 421-2-3
Foster, James (preacher), 291
Fox, Charles James, 418
, John (Dissenting minister)
287-8-9-90
Frederic II. (of Prussia), 404
Fuseli, Henry, 245, 251, 254r
285, 287-8, 308, 316, 322, 328
338, 379, 388
Gainsborough, Thomas, 293.
392-3
Gaudy, James, 259, 290
Garrick, David, 255, 266, 33G
344, 346, 364-5, 394, 416
Gay, John, 291
George I., 404
II., 404
III., 320, 425
IV., 319
Giardini, 299
Gilray, James, 418
Gloucester, Duke of, 303
Conversations of Northcote.
437
Goblet, 315
Godwin, William, 242, 306, 310,
311, 318, 326, 350-1, 354, 400,
401, 413, 419, 430, 434
Gogain, 315
Goldsmith, Oliver, 263-4, 294,
339-40, 356, 369, 401
Grandi (colour-grinder), 342
Granville, Sir Richard, 279,
291
Grosvenor, Lord, 299
Guido, 397-8
Gunning, Mrs., 294, 333
Gwydyr, Lord, 392
Gwynne, Nell, 382
H , General, 325
Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor
(Philip Yorke, Earl of), 291
Harley, R. (actor), 254
Hawkins, Sir John, 414
Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 288,
310, 335
, Mrs., 337
Hearne, Thomas, 342
Helvetius, Claude Adrien, 311
Henderson, John (actor), 253
Hoare, Prince, 262, 300, 308, 344.
362, 392, 412
Hobbes, Thomas, 247-8
Hogarth, William, 261, 282, 327,
353, 408, 415-6, 418
Holcroft, Thomas, 421
Holland, Sir Nathaniel, 301
Hook, Theodore, 365
Hoppner, John, R.A., 242
Horneck, the Misses, 339-40, 417
Hudson, Thomns, 277
Hume, David, 403, 430
, Joseph (of Bayswater),
267-8
Humphreys (artist), 254
Hunt, Leigh, 243-5
Inchbald, Mrs., 286
Ireland, W. H., 272-3
Irving, Rev. Edward, 291, 317
371, 383
Jeffrey, Francis (of Edinburgh)
399
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 246, 263
264, '266, 278, 289-90, 294
301, 323, 368, 412, 432
Jonson, Ben, 422
Kauffman, Angelica, 285
Kelly, Michael, 269
Kemble, John Philip, 242, 253
254, 333
Kendal, Duchess of, 404
Kendall, E. A., 329-30
Kenyon, Lord, 347-8
Kershaw, Tom, of Manchester
260
King, Lord Chancellor, 291
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 290
Knight, Payne, 382
Knox, John, 274, 302
L ,343
Lackingtou, 381
Laird, Mr., 361
Lamb, Charles, 410, 419
Lansdowne, Granville, Lord, 291
Leicester, Sir John, 303
Lely, Sir Peter, 336
Lewis (actor), 416
Listen, John, 364
Lock, Mr., of Nor bury Park, 231
Locke, John, 247-8, 386
Louis XIV., 367
XVIII., 280
438 Index of Names mentioned in the
M , 334
Macartney, Earl of, 418
Maintenon, Madame de, 367
Malone, Edmund, 289
Mandeville, B., 271, 320
Mansfield, Lord, 359
Marchant, 394
Matthews, Charles, 265, 364
Mengs, Anthony Raphael, 259
Milton, John, 261, 266, 275, 283,
31X>, 327-8, 337, 339, 377, 387
Moore, Edward, 300
, Sir John, 317
, Thomas, 292, 417
, Dr., 281
More, Hannah, 285
Morton, Thomas, 415
Mudge, Dr., 250, 289, 291-2, 301,
366
, Zachary, 291
Muriden, Joseph Shepherd
(actor), 364, 416
Nash, Sir B., 413
Nelson, Lord, 279
Newton, Sir Isaac, 420-1
Nollekens, Joseph, 299, 308, 315
O'Keefe, John, 363
Omai (South Sea chief), 340
Opie, John, 255-6, 267, 323, 355,
387, 391, 428
Orford, Lord, 427
Ormond, Duke of, 259
P , Lady F , 339
Paine, Tom, 248, 326
Parr, Dr., 272
Patmore, P. G., 297-300
Peel, Sir Eobert, 392
Pellew, Sir Edward (Lord Ex-
mouth), 380, 407
Pennick, Dr., 324
Peter the Great, 380
Phillips, Sir Richard, 365
Pitt, William, 310
Pope, Alexander, 246, 267, 285,
359, 397, 417, 432
Powell, 413
Pulteney (Lord Eath), 409
Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 308
Railton, Mr., of Liverpool, 320
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 291
Ralph (Sir J. Reynolds's ser-
vant), 401
Ramsay, Allan (the painter), 307,
368, 384-5
Retz, Cardinal de, 265
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 242 et seq.,
251, 257, 263 ? 278, 281, 289,
293-4, 300, 322, 336, 342, 348,
367,416, 426
Reynolds, Miss, 242, 256, 289
338, 360, 399
, F., 265
Riall (engraver), 303
Richards (scene-painter;, 359,
402
Richardson, Samuel, 309, 338;
357, 376, 398, 414
, William, 357
Rochefoucault, 320
Romney, George, 255, 260, 271
Rousseau, Jean J., 373, 375, 403
Rowe, Mr. (bookseller), 344
Rundle, Mrs., 362
St.-Pierre, Bernardin, 400
Savage, Richard, 355
, Mr. (architect), 355
Scarron, Paul, 330, 367
Scott, Sir Walter, 246, 318, 337,
338, 352, 368-9-70-1, 400, 429
Conversations of Northcote.
439
Shad well, Thomas, 432
Shaik-bbury. Karl of, 320
Shakspeare, William, 272-3, 297,
327-8-9-30, 337, 341, 351,353
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 243
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 266,
273, 346, 357, 418
Shield, William, 385
Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 253, 256,
264, 285, 365. 409, 415
Sidney, Sir Philip, 272
Smith, Raphael, 343
Spines, Jack (racket-player), 413
Stafford, Marquis of, 420
Steele, Sir Richard, 320.
Sterne, Laurence, 256
Storace, Madame Anna, 344, 362
Stothard, Thomas, 347
Stringer, Dan, 260
Swift, Jonathan, 298, 303, 321,
359
Taffl, Andrew, 324, 392
Taylor, Jack, 382
Thomson, James, 357
Thrale, Mrs., 355
Tintoret, 403
Tivoli, Kosa de, 366
Tolcher, Mr., 331, 409
Tooke, John Home, 242, 379
Tresham, 272
Tucker, Abraham, 412
, Dean, 410
Vanbrugh, Sir John, 359, 402
416
Vandyke, Sir Anthony, 245, 257
336, 368
Velasquez, 293-4
Vinci, Leonardo da, 262, 418
Voltaire, 314, 403
W , Lady, 428
Wales, Prince of, 300, 321
Warburton, William, 292
Watteau, Antoine, 392
Watts, Dr. Isaac, 248
Wells, Mrs. (actress), 363
West, Benj., 251, 278, 321, 347-*
Westall (artist), 302, 382
Weston (actor), 364, 409
Whitefoord, Caleb, 272
Wilcox, Mrs., 365
Wilkie, Sir David, 260
Wilson, Richard, 309, 393, 423
Wolcott, John, 256, 371
Wolfe, General James, 303
Wood, Alderman '^Sir Matthew)
319, 401
Woollett, William, 278
Wordsworth, William, 246, 373-
420-1
Wynn, Sir Watkyn. 399
Young, C. (actor), 323
Zoffani, John, R.A., 318
IN THE MANNER OF ROCHEFOUCAULD'S MAXIMS;
ARE NOW FIRST ADDED
COMMONPLACES,
AND
TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR.
BY
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.
THE following -work was suggested by a perusal oi
Rochefoucauld's ' Maxims and Moral Eeflections.' I
was so struck with the force and beauty of the style
and matter, that I felt an earnest ambition to embody
some occasional thoughts of my own in the same form.
This was much easier than to retain an equal degree
of spirit. Having, however, succeeded indifferently in
a few, the work grew under my hands ; and both the
novelty and agreeableness of the task impelled me
forward. There is a peculiar stimulus, and at the
same time a freedom from all anxiety, in this mode
of writing. A thought must tell at once, or not at all.
There is no opportunity for considering how we shall
make out an opinion by labour and prolixity. An
observation must be self-evident; or a reason or illus-
tration (if we give one) must be pithy and concise.
Each Maxim should contain the essence or ground-
work of a separate Essay, but so developed as of itself
to suggest a whole train of reflections to the reader;
and it is equally necessary to avoid paradox or common-
place. The style also must be sententious and epigram-
matic, with a certain pointedness and involution of
expression, so as to keep the thoughts distinct, and to
prevent them from running endlessly into one another.
Such are the conditions to which it seemed to me
necessary to conform, in order to insure anything like
success to a work of this kind, or to render the pleasure
of the perusal equal to the difficulty of the execution.
144 Preface to the New Edition.
There is only one point in which I dare even allude to
a comparison with Rochefoucauld I have had no theory
to maintain; and have endeavoured to set down eacli
thought as it occurred to me, without bias or prejudice
of any sort.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
OF this little volume there has been only one edition;
but new titlepages, without date, were added to the
unsold copies by the original publisher, and again so
late as 1837, with a new Preface (yet the old one
retained) by Mr. R. H. Horne, author of ' Orion ' and
other works.
I am not prepared to say that it was more than an
accidental coincidence that the title of the present
little work is identical with that of the better-known
one by Lord Shaftesbury, which was a favourite book
with the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt (the author's father), and
which he is represented, in a portrait painted in 1804,
as holding in his hand, or at least in front of him.
'COMMONPLACES,' here annexed, were contributed to
the Literary Examiner in 1823, and ' TRIFLES LIGHT AS
AIR ' to the Atlas newspaper for 1829. Both are now
first reproduced from the sources specified.
It will be perceived that the ' COMMONPLACES ' are
expressions of sentiments and declarations of opinion,
rather than maxims. In some cases the chain of
thought is pursued through successive sentences.
W. C. H.
Kensington, W., July, 1871.
CHARACTERISTICS.
f. OF all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are
a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly
acknowledges it in another.
II. It is often harder to praise a friend than an enemy.
By the last we may acquire a reputation for candour ;
by the first we only seem to discharge a debt, and are
liable to a suspicion of partiality. Besides, though
familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the
edge of admiration ; and the shining points of character
are not those we chiefly wish to dwell upon. Our habi-
tual impression of any one is very different from the
light in which he would choose to appear before the
public. We think of him as a friend : we must forget
that he is one before we can extol him to others.
III. To speak highly of one with whom we are inti-
mate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as
our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.
IV. What makes it so difficult to do justice to others
is, that we are hardly sensible of merit unless it falls in
with our own views and line of pursuit ; and where this
is the case it interferes with our own pretensions. To
be forward to praise others implies either great eminence,
that can afford to part with applause, or great quickness
446 Characteristics.
of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments ;
or great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better
of our self-love.
V. Many persons are so narrow in this respect, that
they cannot bring themselves to allow the most trifling
merit in any one else. This is not altogether ill-nature,
but a meanness of spirit or want of confidence in them-
selves, which is upset and kicks the beam if the smallest
particle of praise is thrown into another's scale. They
are poor feeble insects tottering along the road to fame,
that are crushed by the shadow of opposition or stopped
by a whisper of rivalship.
VI. There are persons, not only whose praise, but
whose very names, we cannot bear to hear.
VII. There are people who cannot praise a friend for
the life of them. With every effort, and all the good-
will in the world, they shrink from the task, through a
want of mental courage ; as some people shudder at
plunging into a cold-bath from weak nerves.
VIII. Others praise you behind your back, who will
not on any account do so to your face. Is it that
they are afraid of being taken for flatterers? or that
they had rather any one else should know they think
well of you than yourself? as a rival is the last person
from whom we should wish to hear the favourable opinion
of a mistress, because it gives him most pleasure.
IX. To deny undoubted merit in others is to deny
its existence altogether, and consequently our own.
The example of illiberality we set, is easily turned against
ourselves.
X. Magnanimity is often concealed under an appear-
ance of shyness and even poverty of spirit. Heroes,
according to KoTissenu, are not known by the loftiness of
Characteristics. 447
their carriage ; as the greatest braggarts are generally
the merest cowards.
XL Men of the greatest genius are not always the
most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when
their range of power is confined, and they have in fact
little perception, except of their own particular kind of
excellence.
XII. Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds.
Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others
who feel that the world has done them justice. When
success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a
sign that it has been ill-deserved.
XIII. Some people tell us all the harm, others as
carefully conceal all the good, they hear of us.
XIV. It signifies little what we say of our acquaint-
ance, so that we do not tell them what others say
against them. Talebearers make all the real mischief.
XV. The silence of a friend commonly amounts to
treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf
implies a tacit censure.
XVI. It is hard to praise those who are dispraised by
others. He is little short of a hero who perseveres in
thinking well of a friend who has become a butt for
slander and a byword.
XVII. However we may flatter ourselves to the con-
trary, our friends think no higher of us than the world
do. They see us with the jaundiced or distrustful eyes
of others. They may know better, but their feelings are
governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more
shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers ; for
we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them
to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and dilutes
in our defence.
148 Characteristics.
XVIII. We find those who are officious and trouble-
some through sheer imbecility of character. They can
neither resolve to do a thing, nor to let it alone ; and, by
getting in the way, hinder, where perhaps they meant to
help. To volunteer a service and shrink from the
performance, is to prevent others from undertaking it.
XIX. Envy, among other ingredients, has a mixture
of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at unde-
served than at deserved good-fortune.
XX. We admit the merit of some much less willingly
than that of others. This is because there is something
about them that is at variance with their boasted pre-
tensions either a heaviness importing stupidity, or a
levity inferring folly, &c.
XXI. The assumption of merit is easier, less embar-
rassing, and more effectual than the positive attainment
of it.
XXII. Envy is the most universal passion. We only
pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we
possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and
those which we have not, and do not even wish for.
We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling ad-
vantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or
affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit ;
nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction
or notoriety, even vice and infamy.
XXIII. Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see
beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the
whole space feels itself excluded.
XXIV. Or, it often arises from weakness of judgment.
We cannot make up our minds to admit the soundness
of certain pretensions ; and therefore hate the appear-
ance, where we are doubtful about the reality. We con-
Characteristics. 449
fiider every such tax on our applause as a kind of impo-
sition or injustice ; so that the withholding our assent
is from a fear of being tricked out of our good opinion
under false pretences. This is the reason why sudden or
upstart advantages are always an object of such extreme
jealousy, and even of contempt, and why we so readily
bow to the claims of posthumous and long-established
reputation. The last is the sterling coin of merit, which
we no longer question or cavil at : the other we think
may be tinsel, and we are unwilling to give our admi-
ration in exchange for a bauble. It is not that the can-
didates for it in the one case are removed out of our way,
and make a diversion to the more immediate claims of
our contemporaries ; but that their own are so clear and
universally acknowledged, that they come home to our
feelings and bosoms with their full weight, without any
drawbacks of doubt in our own minds or objection on
the part of others. If our envy were intrinsically and
merely a hatred of excellence and of tke approbation due
to it, we should hate it the more the more distinguished
and unequivocal it was. On the other hand, our faith
in standard reputation is a kind of religion ; and our ad-
miration of it, instead of a cold servile offering, an enthu-
siastic homage. There are people who would attempt
to persuade us that we read Homer or Milton with
pleasure, only to spite some living poet. With them,
all our best actions are hypocrisy, and our best feelings,
affectation.
XXV. The secret of our self-love is just the same as
that of our liberality and candour. We prefer ourselves
to others, only because we have a more intimate conscious-
ness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits
than of any other person's.
XXVI. It argues a poor opinion of ourselves, when
2 o
450 Characteristics.
we cannot admit any other class of merit besides our
own, or any rival in that class.
XXVII. Those who are the most distrustful of them-
selves are the most envious of others ; as the most weak
ar.d cowardly are the most revengeful.
XXVIII. Some persons of great talents and celebrity
have been remarkable for narrowness of mind, and an
impatience of everything like competition. Garrick and
ether public favourites might be mentioned as instances.
This may perhaps be accounted for, either from an undue
and intoxicating share of applause, so that they became
jealous of popularity as of a mistress ; or from a want
of other resources, so as to be unable to repose on them-
selves without the constant stimulus of incense offered to
their vanity.
XXIX. We are more jealous of frivolous accomplish-
ments with brilliant success, than of the most estimable
qualities without it. Dr. Johnson envied Garrick, whom
he despised, and ridiculed Goldsmith, whom he loved.
XXX. Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread
competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in
the street. Yet vanity often prompts them to hazard
the experiment, as women through foolhardiness rush
into a crowd.
XXXI. We envy others for any trifling addition to
their acknowledged merit more than for the sum-total,
much as we object to pay an addition to a bill, or grudge
an acquaintance an unexpected piece of good-fortune.
This happens either because such an accession of
accomplishment is like stealing a march upon us, and
implies a versatility of talent we had not reckoned upon ;
or it seems an impertinence and affectation for a man to
go out of his way to distinguish himself; or it is because
Characteristics. 451
we cannot account for his proficiency mechanically, and
as a thing of course, by saying " It is his trade." In like
manner, we plume ourselves most on excelling in what
we are not bound to do, and are most flattered by the
admission of our most questionable pretensions. "We
nurse the rickety child, and want to have our faults and
weak sides pampered into virtues. We feel little obliged
to any one for owning the merit we are known to have
it is an old story but we are mightily pleased to be
complimented on some fancy we set up for : it is " a
feather in our cap," a new conquest, an extension of our
sense of power. A man of talent aspires to a reputation
for personal address or advantages. Sir Kobert Walpole
wished to pass for a man of gallantry, for which he was
totally unfit. A woman of sense would be thought a
beauty, a beauty a great wit, and so on.
XXXII. Some there are who can only find out in us
those good qualities which nobody else has discovered :
as there are others who make a point of crying up our
deserts, after all the rest of the world have agreed to do
so. The first are patrons, not friends : the last are not
friends, but sycophants.
XXXIII. A distinction has been made between
acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be
illustrated by saying, that acuteness consists in taking
up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air
of truth.
XXXIV. Hope is the best possession. None are
completely wretched but those who are without hope ;
and few are reduced so low as that.
XXXV. Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off
hope.
XXXVI. While we desire we do not enjoy ; and with
enjoyment desire ceases, which should lend its strongest
452 Characteristics.
zest to it. This, however, does not apply to the gratifi-
cations of sense, but to the passions, in which distance
and difficulty have a principal share.
XXXVII. To deserve any blessing is to Bet a just
value on it. The pains we take in its pursuit are only a
consequence of this.
XXXVIII. The wish is often " father to the thought :"
but we are quite as apt to believe what we dread as what
we hope.
XXXIX. The amiable is the voluptuous in expression
or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that
which excites it in others ; or, the art of pleasing is to
seem pleased.
XL. Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may,
we only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied
in himself. We cannot enjoy the good qualities of a
friend if he seems to be none the better for them.
XLI. We judge of others for the most part by their
good opinion of themselves : yet nothing gives such
offence, or creates so many enemies, as that extreme
self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which
appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.
XLII. Self-sufficiency is more provoking than rude-
ness or the most unqualified or violent opposition,
inasmuch as the latter may be retorted, and implies that
we are worth notice ; whereas the former strikes at the
root of our self-importance, and reminds us that even our
good opinion is not worth having. Nothing precludes
sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it.
XLIII. The confession of our failings is a thankless
office. It savours less of sincerity or modesty than of
Characteristics. 453
ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as
good as other people's virtues.
XLIV. A coxcomb is generally a favorite with women.
To a certain point his self-complacency is agreeable in
itself ; and beyond that, even if it grows fulsome, it only
piques their vanity the more to make a conquest of his.
He becomes a sort of rival to them in his own good
opinion, so that his conceit has all the effect of jealousy
in irritating their desire to withdraw his admiration
from himself.
XLV. Nothing is more successful with women than
that sort of condescending patronage of the sex which
goes by the general name of gallantry. It has the
double advantage of imposing on their weakness and
flattering their pride. By being indiscriminate, it
tantalises and keeps them in suspense ; and by making a
profession of an extreme deference for the sex in general,
it naturally suggests the reflection, what a delight-
ful thing it must be to gain the exclusive regard of a
man who has so high an opinion of what is due to the
female character ! It is possible for a man, by talking
of what is feminine or unfeminine, vulgar or genteel, by
saying how shocking such an article of dress is, or that
no lady ought to touch a particular kind of food, fairly
to starve or strip a whole circle of simpletons half-naked
by mere dint of impertinence and an air of common-
place assurance. How interesting to be acquainted with
a man whose every thought turns upon the sex ! How
charming to make a conquest of one who sets up for a
consummate judge of female perfections !
XL VI. We like characters and actions which we do
not approve. There are amiable vices and obnoxious
virtues, on the mere principle that our sympathy with a
person who yields to obvious temptations and agreeable
454 CJiaracteristics.
impulses (however prejudicial) is itself agreeable, while
to sympathise with exercises of self-denial or fortitude
is a painful effort. Virtue costs the spectator, as well as
the performer, something. We are touched by the
immediate motives of actions we judge of them by the
consequences. We like a convivial character better than
an abstemious one, because the idea of conviviality in
the first instance is pleasanter than that of sobriety.
For the same reason, we prefer generosity to justice,
because the imagination lends itself more easily to an
ebullition of feeling than to the suppression of it on
remote and abstract principles ; and we like a good-
natured fool, or even knave, better than the severe
professors of wisdom and morality. Cato, Brutus, &c.,
are characters to admire and applaud, rather than to love
or imitate.
XL VII. Personal pretensions alone ensure female
regard. It is not the eye, that sees whatever is s'ublime
or beautiful in nature, that the fair delight to see gazing
in silent rapture on themselves, but that which is itself a
pleasing object to the sense. I may look at a Claude
or a Raphael by turns, but this does not alter my own
appearance ; and it is that which women attend to.
XL VIII. There are persons that we like, though they
do not like us. This happens very rarely ; and, indeed,
it argues a strong presumption of merit both in them
and in ourselves. We fancy they only want to know us
better, to be convinced of the prize they would obtain in
our friendship. There are others to whom no civilities
or good offices on their parts can reconcile us, from an
original distaste ; yet even this repugnance would not
perhaps be proof against time and custom.
XLIX. We may observe persons who seem to have a
peculiar delight in the disagreeable. They catch all
Characteristics. 455
sorts of uncouth tones and gestures, the manners and
dialect of clowns and hoydens, and aim at vulgarity as
others ape gentility. (This is what is often understood
by a love of low life.) They say all sorts of disagreeable
things without meaning or feeling what they say. What
startles or shocks other people is to them an amusing
excitement, a filip to their constitutions ; and from the
bluntness of their perceptions, and a certain wilfulness of
spirit, not being able to enter into the refined and
pleasurable, they make a merit of being insensible to
everything of the kind. Masculine women, for instance,
are those who, not being possessed of the charms and
delicacy of the sex, effect a superiority over it by throwing
aside all decorum.
L. We find another class who continually do and say
what they ought not and what they do not intend, and
who are governed almost entirely by an instinct of
absurdity. Owing to a perversity of imagination or
irritability of nerve, the idea that a thing is improper
acts as a mechanical inducement to do it ; the fear of
committing a blunder is so strong, that they bolt out
whatever is uppermost in their minds, before they are
aware of it. The dread of some object haunts and
rivets attention to it ; and a continual, uneasy, morbid
apprehensiveness of temper takes away the self-posses-
sion, and hurries them into the very mistakes they wish
to avoid.
LI. There are few people quite above, or completely
below, par.
LIT. Society is a more level surface than we imagine.
Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as
there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we
can bring against the general texture of society is, that
it is commonplace ; and many of those who are singular
456 Characteristics.
had better be commonplace. Our fancied superiority
to others is in some one thing, which we think most of
because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it;
whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something
else, which they set equal and exclusive store by. This
is fortunate for all parties. I never felt myself superior
to any one, who did not go out of his way to affect
qualities which he had not. In his own individual
character and line of pursuit every one has knowledge,
experience, and skill ; and who shall say which pursuit
requires most, thereby proving his own narrowness and
incompetence to decide? Particular talent or genius
does not imply general capacity. Those who are most
versatile are seldom great in any one department : and
the stupidest people can generally do something. The
highest preeminence in any one study commonly arises
from the concentration of the attention and faculties on
that one study. He who expects from a great name in
politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other
things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength
lies in our weakness. The learned in books is ignorant
of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well
acquainted with other things. For life is of the same
length in the learned and the unlearned ; the mind
cannot be idle ; if it is not taken up with one thing, it
attends to another, through choice or necessity ; and the
degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a
mere lottery.
LIU. Some things, it is true, are more prominent, and
lead to more serious consequences, than others, so as to
excite a greater share of attention and applause. Public
characters authors, warriors, statesmen, &c. nearly
monopolise public consideration in this way, and we are
apt to judge of their merit by the noise they make in the
world. Yet none of these classes would be willing to
CJiaracteristics. 457
make the rule absolute ; for a favoxirite player gains as
much applause as any of them. A poet stands a poor
chance either of popularity with the vulgar, or influence
with the great, against a fashionable opera-dancer or
singer. Imputation or notoriety is not the stamp of
merit. Certain professions, like certain situations, bring
it into greater notice, but have, perhaps, no more to do
with it than birth or fortune. Opportunity sometimes,
indeed, " throws a cruel sunshine on a fool." I have
known several celebrated men, and some of them have
been persons of the weakest capacity ; yet accident had
lifted them into general notice, and probably will hand
their memories down to posterity. There are names
written in her immortal scroll at which FAME blushes !
LIV. The world judge of men by their ability in their
profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test ;
for it is that on which our success in life depends. Yet
how often do our talents and pursuits lie in different
directions ! The best painters are not always the
cleverest men ; and an author who makes an unfavourable
or doubtful impression on the public may in himself be
a person of rare and agreeable qualifications. One cause
of this is affectation. We constantly aim at what we are
least fit for, thwarting or despising our natural bent ; so
that our performances and our characters are unaccount-
ably at variance.
LY. If a man is disliked by one woman he will
succeed with none. The sex (one and all) have the same
secret, or freemasonry, in judging of men.
LYI. Any woman may act the part of a coquette success-
fully who has the reputation without the scruples of
modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety
for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our
heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent
458 Characteristics.
liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts either
of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a
single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition.
LVII. The surest way to make ourselves agreeable
to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear
fully sensible of their good qualities, they will not
complain of the want of them in us.
LVIII. We often choose a friend as we do a mistress
for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely
from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
LIX. Silence is one great art of conversation. He is
not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue ; and a
person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who
merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which others
have of these qualities in themselves.
LX. There are few things in which we deceive our-
selves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain
for our friends. It is little better than a piece of
quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please
that is, as they please or displease us. As long as we
are in good-humour with them, we see nothing but their
good qualities ; but no sooner do they offend us than we
rip up all their bad ones (which we before made a secret
of, even to ourselves) with double malice. He who but
now was little less than an angel of light shall be painted
in the blackest colours for a slip of the tongue, " some
trick not worth an egg," for the slightest suspicion of
offence given or received. We often bestow the most
opprobrious epithets on our best friends, and retract
them twenty times in the course of a day, while the man
himself remains the same. In love, which is all rhapsody
and passion, this is excusable, but in the ordinary
intercourse of life it is preposterous.
Characteristics. 459
LXI. A man who is always defending his friends
from the most trifling charges, will be apt to make other
people their enemies.
LXII. There are those who see everything through a
medium of enthusiasm or prejudice ; and who therefore
think, that to admit any blemish in a friend is to
compromise his character altogether. The instant you
destroy their heated exaggerations they feel that they
have no other ground to stand upon.
LXIII. We are ridiculous enough in setting up
for patterns of perfection ourselves, without becoming
answerable for that of others. It is best to confine our
absurdities at home.
LXIY. We do not like our friends the worse because
they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them
heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.
Indeed, we never have much esteem or regard except for
those that we can afford to speak our minds of freely,
whose follies vex us in proportion to our anxiety for
their welfare, and who have plenty of redeeming points
about them to balance their defects. When we "spy
abuses " of this kind, it is a wiser and more generous
proceeding to give vent to our impatience and ill-
humour, than to brood over it, and let it, by sinking into
our minds, poison the very sources of our goodwill.
LXV. To come to an explanation with a friend is to
do away half the cause of offence ; as to declare the
grounds of our complaints and chagrin to a third party
is tacitly to pass them over. Our not daring to hint
at the infirmities of a friend implies that we are
ashamed to own them, and that we can only hope to
keep on good terms with him by being blind to his
real character.
460 Characteristics.
LXVI. It is well that there is no one without a
fault, for he would not have a friend in the world : he
would seem to belong to a different species.
LXVII. Even among actors, painters, &c., those who
are the most perfect are not always the most admired.
It is those who strike by their inequalities, and whose
faults and excellences keep up a perpetual warfare
between the partisans on both sides, that are the most
talked of and produce the greatest effect. Nothing is
prominent that does not act as a foil to itself. Emery's
ttcting was without a fault. This was all that was ever
said about it. His merit was one of those things that
nobody insisted on because it was taken for granted.
Mr. Kean agitates and almost convulses the public mind
by contrary extremes. It is a question whether Eaphael
would have acquired so great a name, if his colouring
had been equal to his drawing or expression. As it is,
his figures stand out like a rock severed from its base :
while Correggio's are lost in their own beauty and sweet-
ness. Whatever has not a mixture of imperfection in it
soon grows insipid, or seems " stupidly good."
LXVI II. I have known persons without a friend
never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the
former conspired with their vices to make the whole
world their enemies.
LX1X. The study of metaphysics has this advantage,
at least : it promotes a certain integrity and uprightness
of understanding, which is a cure for the spirit of lying.
He who has devoted himself to the discovery of truth
feels neither pride nor pleasure in the invention of
falsehood, and cannot condescend to any such paltry
expedient. If you find a person given to vulgar shifts
and rhodomontade, and who at the same time tells you
he is a metaphysician, do not believe him.
Characteristics. 4G3
LXX. It is the mischief of the regular study of all
art and science that it proportionally unfits a man for
those pursuits or emergencies in life which require mere
courage and promptitude. To any one who has found
how difficult it is to arrive at truth or beauty, with all
the pains and time he can bestow upon them, everything
seems worthless that can be obtained by a mere assump-
tion of the question, or putting a good face upon the matter.
Let a man try to produce a fine picture or to solve an
abstruse problem by giving himself airs of self-impor-
tance, and see what he will make of it. But in the
common intercourse of life too much depends on this
sort of assurance and quackery. This is the reason why
scholars and other eminent men so often fail in what
personally concerns themselves. They cannot take
advantage of the follies of mankind, nor submit to
arrive at the end they have in view by unwoilhy means.
Those who cannot make the progress of a single step in
a favourite study without infinite pains and preparation,
s^orn to carry the world before them, or to win the good
opinion of any individual in it, by vapouring and
impudence. Yet these last qualities often succeed with-
out an atom of true desert, and " fools rush in where
angels fear to tread." In nine cases out of ten, the mere
sanguineness of our pursuit ensures success; but the
having tasked our faculties as much as they will bear
does not tend to enhance our overweening opinion of
ourselves. The labours of the mind, like the drudgery
of the body, impair our animal spirits and alacrity.
Those who have done nothing, fancy themselves capable
of everything : while those who have exerted themselves
to the utmost only feel the limitation of their powers,
and evince neither admiration of themselves nor triumph
over others. Their work is still to do, and they have
no time or disposition for fooling. This is the reason
why the greatest men have the least appearance of it.
462 Characteristics.
LXXI. Persons who pique themselves on their under-
standing are frequently reserved and haughty : persons
who aim at wit are generally courteous and sociable.
Those who depend at every turn on the applause of the
company must endeavour to conciliate the good opinion
of others by every means in their power.
" A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him who hears it."
If a habit of jesting lowers a man, it is to the level of
humanity. Wit nourishes vanity; reason has a much
stronger tincture of pride in it.
LXXII. Satirists gain the applause of others through
fear, not through love.
LXXIII. Some persons can do nothing but ridicule
others.
LXXIV. Parodists, like mimics, seize only on defects,
or turn beauties into blemishes. They make bad writers
and indifferent actors.
LXXV. People of the greatest gaiety of manners are
often the dullest company imaginable. Nothing is so
dreary as the serious conversation or writing of a pro-
fessed wag. So the gravest persons, divines, mathema-
ticians, and so on, make the worst and poorest jokes,
puns, &c.
LXXVI. The expression of a Frenchman's face is
often as melancholy when he is by himself as it is lively
in conversation. The instant he ceases to talk, he becomes
quite chapfallen.
LXXVII. To point out defects, one would think it
necessary to be equally conversant with beauties. But
this is not the case. The best caricaturists cannot draw
a common outline, nor the best comic actors speak a
Cliaracteristics. 463
line of serious poetry, without being laughed at. This
may be perhaps accounted for in some degree by saying,
that the perfection of the ludicrous implies that loose-
ness or disjointedness of mind which receives most
delight and surprise from oddity and contrast, and which
is naturally opposed to the steadiness and unity of feeling
required for the serious, or the sublime and beautiful.
LXXVIII. Different persons have different limits to
their capacity. Thus, some excel in one profession
generally, such as acting ; others in one department of
it, as tragedy ; others in one character only. Garrick
was equally great in tragedy and comedy ; Mrs. Siddons
only shone in tragedy ; Russell could play nothing but
Jerry Sneak. 1
LXXIX. Comic actors have generally attempted tra-
gedy first, and have a hankering after it to the last.
It was the case with Weston, Shuter, Munden, Bannister,
and even Liston. Prodigious ! The mistake may perhaps
be traced to the imposing eclat of tragedy, and the awe
produced by the utter incapacity of such persons to know
what to make of it.
LXXX. If we are not first, we may as well be last in
any pursuit. To be worst is some kind of distinction,
and implies, by the rule of contrary, that we ought to
excel in some opposite quality. Thus, if any one has
scarcely the use of his limbs, we may conceive it is from
his having exercised his mind too much. We suppose
that an awkward boy at school is a good scholar. So, if
a ruan has a strong body, we compliment him with a
weak mind, and vice versa.
1 There is a pleasant instance of this mentioned in ' The Tatler.
There was an actor of that day who could play nothing but the
Apothecary in ' Borneo and Juliet.' He succeeded so well in this,
that he grew fat upon it, when he was set aside ; and having then
nothing to do, pined away till he became qualified for the part
again, and had another run in it.
46-1 Characteristics.
LXXXJ. There is a natural principle of antithesis in
the human mind. We seldom grant one excellence but
we hasten to make up for it by a contrary defect, to keep
the balance of criticism even. Thus we .say, " Titian
was a great colourist, but did not know how to draw."
The first is true ; the last is a mere presumption from
the first, like alternate rhyme and reason ; or a compro-
mise with the weakness of human nature, which soon
tires of praise.
LXXXII. There is some reason for this cautious dis-
tribution of merit ; for it is not necessary for one man
to possess more than one quality in the highest perfec-
tion, since no one possesses all, and we are in the end
forced to collect the idea of perfection in art from a
number of different specimens. It is quite sufficient for
any one person to do any one thing better than every-
body else. Anything beyond this is like an impertinence.
It was not necessary for Hogarth to paint his ' Sigis-
munda,' nor for Mrs. Siddons to abridge ' Paradise Lost.'
LXXXIII. On the stage none but originals can be
counted as anything; the rest are "men of no mark or
likelihood." They give us back the same impression we
had before, and make it worse instead of better.
LXXXIV. It was ridiculous to set up Mr. Kean as a
rival to Mr. Kemble. Whatever merits the first might
have, they were of a totally different class, and could
not possibly interfere with, much less injure, those of his
great predecessor. Mr. Kemble stood on his own ground,
and he stood high on it. Yet there certainly was a re-
action in this case. Many persons saw no defect in
Mr. Kemble till Mr. Kean came, and then, finding them-
selves mistaken in the abstract idea of perfection they
had indulged in, were ready to give up their opinion
altogether. When a man is a great" favourite with the
Characteristics. 465
public, they incline, by a natural spirit of exaggeration
and love of the marvellous, to heap all sorts of perfec-
tions upon him ; and when they find by another's excel-
ling him in some one thing that this is not the case, they
are disposed to strip their former idol, and leave him
" bare to weather." Nothing is more unjust or capricious
than public opinion.
LXXXV. The public have neither shame nor grati-
tude.
LXXXVI. Public opinion is the mixed result of the
intellect of the community acting upon general feeling.
LXXXVII. Our friends are generally ready to do
everything for us except the very thing we wish them
to do. There is one thing in particular they are always
disposed to give us, and which we are as unwilling to
take namely, advice.
LXXXVIII. Good-nature is often combined with ill
temper. Our own uncomfortable feelings teach us to
sympathise with others, and to seek relief from our own
uneasiness in the satisfactions we can afford them. Ill-
nature combined with good temper is an unnatural and
odious character. Our delight in mischief and suffering,
when we have no provocation to it from being ill-at-
ease ourselves, is wholy unpardonable. Yet I have
known one or two instances of this sort of callous levity
and gay laughing malignity. Such people " poison in
jest."
LXXXIX. It is wonderful how soon men acquire
talents for offices of trust and importance. The higher
the situation, the higher the opinion it gives us of our-
selves ; and as is our confidence, so is our capacity. We
assume an equality with circumstances.
XC. The difficulty is for a man to rise to high station,
2 H
406 Characteristics.
not to fill it; as it is easier to stand on an eminence
than to climb up to it. Yet lie alone is truly great who
is so without the aid of circumstances and in spite of
fortune, who is as little lifted up by the tide of opinion
as he is depressed by neglect or obscurity, and who bor
rows dignity only from himself. It is a fine compliment
which Pope has paid to Lord Oxford :
" A soul supreme, in each hard instance tried,
Above all pain, all passion, and all pride :
The rage of power, the blast of public breath,
The lust of lucre, and the dread of death !"
XCI. The most silent people are generally those who
think most highly of themselves. They fancy themselves
superior to every one else ; and, not being sure of making
good their secret pretensions, decline entering the lists
altogether. They thus " lay the flattering unction to
their souls," that they could have said better things than
others, or that the conversation was beneath them.
XCJI. There are writers who never do their best, lest,
if they should fail, they should be left without excuse
in their own opinion. While they trifle with a subject
they feel superior to it. They will not take pains, for
this would be a test of what they are actually able to do,
and set a limit to their pretensions, while their vanity is
unbounded. The more you find fault with them, the
more careless they grow, their affected indifference keep-
ing pace with and acting as a shield against the disap-
probation or contempt of others. They fancy whatever
they condescend to write must be good enough for the
public.
XCIII. Authors who acquire a high celebrity and
conceal themselves seem superior to fame. Producing
great works incognito is like doing good by stealth.
There is an air of magnanimity in it which people
wonder at. Junius and the author of ' Waverley '
Characteristics. 467
are striking examples. Junius, however, is really
unknown ; while the author of Waverley ' enjoys all the
credit of his writings without acknowledging them.
Let any one else come forward and claim them, and we
should then see whether Sir Walter Scott would stand
idle by. It is a curious argument that he cannot be the
author, because the real author could not help making
himself known ; when, if he is not so, the real author
has never even been hinted at, and lets another run away
with all the praise.
XCIV. Some books have a personal character : we
are attached to the work for the sake of the author.
Thus we read Walton's ' Angler ' as we should converse
with an agreeable old man, not for what he says, so much
as for his manner of saying it, and the pleasure he takes
in the subject.
XCV. Some persons are exceedingly shocked at the
cruelty of Walton's ' Angler ' as if the most humane
could be expected to trouble themselves about fixing a
worm on a hook, at a time when they burnt men at a stake
" in conscience and tender heart." We are not to
measure the feelings of one age by those of another.
Had Walton lired in our day, he would have been the
first to cry out against the cruelty of angling. As it was,
his flies and baits were only a part of his tackle. They
had not, at this period, the most distant idea of setting
up as candidates for our sympathy ! Man is naturally
a savage, and emerges from barbarism by slow degrees.
Let us take the streaks of light, and be thankful for them
as they arise and tinge the horizon one by one, and not
complain because the noon is long after the dawn of
refinement.
XCVI. Livery-servants (I confess it) are the only
people I do not like to sit in company with. They
468 Characteristics.
offend, not only by their own meanness, but by the
ostentatious display of the pride of their masters.
XCVU. It has been observed that the proudest
people are not nice in love. In fact, they think they
raise the object of their choice above every one else.
XCV1II. A proud man is satisfied with his own good
opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.
Pride erects a little kingdom of its own, and acts as
sovereign in it. Hence we see why some men are so
proud they cannot be affronted, like kings who have no
peer or equal. .
XCIX. The proudest people are as soon repulsed as
the most humble. The last are discouraged by the
slightest objection or hint of their conscious incapacity ;
while the first disdain to enter into any competition,
and resent whatever implies a doubt of their self-evident
superiority to others.
C. What passes in the world for talent, or dexterity,
or enterprise, is often only a want of moral principle.
We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater
share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice
of expedients.
CL Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects
and discovering other people's weaknesses. Or it is
taking advantages of others which they do not suspect,
because they are contrary to propriety and the settled
practice. We feel no inferiority to a fellow who picks
our pockets ; though we feel mortified at being over-
reached by trick and cunning. Yet there is no more
reason for it in the one case than in the other. Any one
may win at cards by cheating till he is found out : we
have been playing against odds. So any one may deceive
us by lying, or take an unfair advantage of us, who is not
withheld by a sense of shame or honesty from doing so.
Characteristics. 469
CII. The completest hypocrites are so by nature.
That is, they are without sympathy with others to
distract their attention or any of that nervous weakness,
which might revolt or hesitate at the baseness of the
means necessary to carry on their system of deception.
You can no more tell what is passing in the minds of
such people than if they were of a different species.
They, in fact, are so as to all moral intents and purposes ;
and this is the advantage they have over you. You fancy
there is a common link between you, while in reality
there is none.
CIII. The greatest hypocrites are the greatest dupes.
This is either because they think only of deceiving
others and are off their guard, or because they really
know little about the feelings or characters of others,
from their want of sympathy and of consequent sagacity.
Perhaps the resorting to trick and artifice in the first
instance implies not only a callousness of feeling, but an
obtuseness of intellect, which cannot get on by fair
means. Thus a girl, who is ignorant and stupid, may yet
have cunning enough to resort to silence as the only
chance of conveying an opinion of her capacity.
CIV. The greatest talents do not generally attain to
the highest stations ; for, though high, the ascent to
them is narrow, beaten, and crooked. The path of genius
is free, and its own. Whatever requires the concurrence
and co-operation of others, must depend chiefly on
routine and an attention to rules and minutiae. Success
in business is therefore seldom owing to uncommon
talents or original power, which is untractable and
selfwilled, but to the greatest degree of commonplace
capacity.
CV. The error in the reasonings of Mandeville,
Eochefoucauld, and others, is this : they first find out
that there is something mixed in the motives of all our
470 Characteristics.
actions, and they then proceed to argue, that they must
all arise from one motive 'namely, self-love. They make
the exception the rule. It would be easy to reverse the
argument, and prove that our most selfish actions are dis-
interested. There is honour among thieves. Bobbers,
murderers, &c. do not commit those actions from, a
pleasure in pure villainy, or for their own benefit only,
but from a mistaken regard to the welfare or good
opinion of those with whom they are immediately
connected.
CVI. It is ridiculous to say, that compassion, friend-
ship, &c. are at bottom only selfishness in disguise,
because it is we who feel pleasure or pain in the good or
evil of others ; for the meaning of self-love is not that it
is I who love, but that I love myself. The motive is no
more selfish because it is I who feel it, than the action
is selfish because it is I who perform it. To prove a
man selfish, it is not surely enough to say, that it is
he who feels (this is a mere quibble), but to show that
he does not feel for another ; that is, that the idea of
the suffering or welfkre of others does not excite any
feeling whatever of pleasure or pain in his mind, excep
from some reference to or reflection on himself. Self-
love, or the love of self, means that I have an immediate
interest in the contemplation of my own good, and that
this is a motive to action ; and benevolence, or the love
of others, means in like manner that I have an imme-
diate interest in the idea of the good or evil that
may befall them, and a disposition to assist them, in
consequence. Self-love, in a word, is sympathy with
myself that is, it is I who feel it, and I who am the
object of it : in benevolence or compassion, it is I who
still feel sympathy, but another (not myself) is the
object of it. If I feel sympathy with others at all, it
must be disinterested. The pleasure it may give me
Characteristics. 471
is the consequence, not the cause, of my feeling it. To
insist that sympathy is self-love because we cannot feel
for others, without being ourselves affected pleasurably
or painfully, is to make nonsense of the question ; for it
is to insist that in order to feel for others properly and
truly, we must in the first place feel nothing. C'est une
mauvaise plaisanterie. That the feeling exists in the
individual must be granted, and never admitted of a
question : the only question is, how that feeling is caused
and what is its object and it is to express the two
opinions that may be entertained on this subject, that
the terms self-love and benevolence have been appro-
priated. Any other interpretation of them is an evident
abuse of language, and a subterfuge in argument, which,
driven from the fair field of fact and observation, takes
shelter in verbal sophistry.
CVII. Humility and pride are not easily distinguished
from each other. A proud man, who fortifies himself in
his own good opinion, may be supposed not to put for-
ward hio pretensions through shyness or deference to
others ; a modest man, who is really reserved and afraid
of committing himself, is thought distant and haughty;
and the vainest coxcomb, who makes a display of himself
and his most plausible qualifications, often does so to
hide his deficiencies, and to prop up his tottering opinion
of himself by the applause of others. Vanity does not
refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to
that which he wishes others to entertain of him. Pride
is indifferent to the approbation of others ; as modesty
shrinks from it, either through bashfulness, or from an
unwillingness to take any undue advantage of it. I have
known several very forward, loquacious, and even over-
bearing persons, whose confidential communications were
oppressive from the sense they entertained of their own
demerits. In company they talked on in mere bravado,
472 Characteristics.
and for fear of betraying their weak side, as children
make a noise in the dark.
CVIII. True modesty and true pride are much the
same thing : both consist in setting a just value on our-
selvesneither more nor less. It is a want of proper
spirit to fancy ourselves inferior to others in those things
in. which we really excel them. It is conceit and want
of common-sense to arrogate a superiority over others
without the most well-founded pretensions.
CIX. A man may be justly accused of vanity and
presumption, who either thinks he possesses qualifica-
tions which he has not, or greatly overrates those which
he has. An egotist does not think well of himself
because he possesses certain qualities, but fancies he
possesses a number of excellences because he thinks
well of himself through mere idle self-complacency.
True moderation is the bounding of our self-esteem
within the extent f our acquirements.
CX. Conceit is the most contemptible and one of the
most odious qualities in the world. It is vanity driven
from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for
admiration. An author, whose play has been damned
overnight, feels a paroxysm of conceit the next morning.
Conceit may be defined as a restless, overweening, petty
obtrusive, mechanical delight in our own qualifications,
without any reference to their real value, or to the ap-
probation of others merely because they are ours, and
for no other reason whatever. It is the extreme of
selfishness and folly.
CXI. Confidence or courage is conscious ability the
sense of power. No man is ever afraid of attempting
what he knows he can do better than any one else.
Charles Fox felt no diffidence in addressing the House
of Commons ; he was reserved and silent in company,
and had no opinion of his talent for writing that is, he
Characteristics. 473
knew his powers and their limits. The torrent of his
eloquence rushed upon him from his knowledge of the
subject and his interest in it, unchecked and unbidden,
without his once thinking of himself or his hearers. As
a man is strong, so is he bold. The thing is, that wher-
ever we feel at home, there we are at our ease. The late
Sir John Moore once had to review the troops at Plymouth
before the King ; and while he was on the ground, and
had to converse with the different persons of the Court
with the ladies, and with Mr. Pitt (whom he thought a
great man), he found himself a good deal embarrassed :
but the instant he mounted his horse, and the troops
were put in motion, he felt quite relieved, and had leisure
to observe what an awkward figure Mr. Pitt made on
horseback.
CXII. The truly proud man knows neither superiors
nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of the last
he does not concern himself about. People who are
insolent to those beneath them crouch to those above
them. Both show equal meanness of spirit and want of
conscious dignity.
CXIII. No elevation or success raises the humble
man in his own opinion. To the proud the slightest re-
pulse or disappointment is the last indignity. The vain
man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his
disgrace.
CXIV. We reserve our gratitude for the manner of
conferring benefits ; and we revolt against this, except
when it seems to say we owe no obligation at all, and
thus cancels the debt of gratitude as soon as it is
incurred.
. CXV. We do not hate those who injure us, if they do
not at the same time wound our self-love. We can for
give any one sooner than those who lower us in our own
474 Characteristics.
opinion. It is no wonder, therefore, that we as often
dislike others for their virtues as for their vices. We
naturally hate whatever makes us despise ourselves.
CXVI. When you find out a man's ruling passion,
beware of crossing him in it !
CXVIL We sometimes hate those who differ from us
in opinion worse than we should for an attempt to injure
us in the most serious point. A favourite theory is a
possession foi life ; and we resent any attack upon it
proportionably.
CXVIII. Men will die for an opinion as soon as for
anything else. Whatever excites the spirit of contradic-
tion is capable of producing the last effects of heroism,
which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy in a good or
a bad cause, in wisdom or in folly.
CXIX. We are ready to sacrifice life, not only for our
own opinion, but in deference to that of others. Con-
science, or its shadow, honour, prevails over the fear ol
death. The man of fortune and fashion will throw away
his life, like a bauble, to prevent the slightest breath of
dishonour. So little are we governed by self-interest,
and so much by imagination and sympathy !
CXX. The most impertinent people are less so from
design than from inadvertence. I have known a person
who could scarcely open his lips without offending some
one, merely because he harboured no malice in his heart.
A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-
humour will often make more enemies than the most
deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and
strikes with caution and safety,
CXXI. It is great weakness to lay ourselves open to
others, who are reserved towards us. There is not only
no equality in it, but we may be pretty sure they will
Characteristics. 475
turn a confidence, -which they are so little disposed to
imitate, against us.
CXXII. A man has no excuse for betraying the secrets
of his friends, unless he also divulges his own. He
may then seem to be actuated, not by treachery, but
indiscretion.
CXXIII. As we scorn them who scorn us, so the
contempt of the world (not seldom) makes men proud.
CXXIV. Even infamy may be oftentimes a source of
secret self-complacency. We smile at the impotence of
public opinion, when we can survive its worst censures.
CXXV. Simplicity of character is the natural result
of profound thought.
CXXVI. The affected modesty of most women is a
decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting ;
while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or
break through its slender disguises.
CXXVII. We as often repent the good we have done
as the ill.
CXXVIII. The measure of any man's virtue is what
he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public
opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.
CXXJX. We like the expression of Kaphael's faces
without an edict to enforce it. I do not see why there
should not be a taste in morals formed on the same
principle.
CXXX. Where a greater latitude is allowed in morals,
the number of examples of vice may increase, but so do
those of virtue : at least, we are surer of the sincerity of
the latter. It is only the exceptions to vice, that
arise neither from ignorance nor hypocrisy, that are
worth counting.
476 Characteristics.
CXXXI. The fear of punishment may be necessary to
the suppression of vice ; but it also suspends the finer
motives to virtue.
CXXXII. No wise man can have a contempt for the
prejudices of others ; and he should even stand in a
certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and
monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.
CXXXIII. We are only justified in rejecting pre-
judices, when we can explain the grounds of them ; 01
when they are at war with nature, which is the strongesl
prejudice of all.
CXXXIV. Vulgar prejudices are those which arise
out of accident, ignorance, or authority : natural pre-
judices are those which arise out of the constitution of
the human mind itself.
CXXXV. Nature is stronger than reason : for nature
is, after all, the text, reason but the comment. He is
indeed a poor creature who does not feel the truth of
more than he knows or can explain satisfactorily to
others.
CXXXYI. The mind revolts against certain opinions,
as the stomach rejects certain foods.
CXXXVII. The drawing a certain positive line in
morals, beyond which a single false step is irretrievable,
makes virtue formal, and vice desperate.
CXXXVIII. Most codes of morality proceed on a
supposition of original sin ; as if the only object was
to coerce the headstrong propensities to vice, and there
were no natural disposition to good in the mind, which
it was possible to improve, refine, and cultivate.
CXXXIX. This negative system of virtue leads to a
very low style of moral sentiment. It is as if the highest
Characteristics. 477
excellence in a picture was to avoid gross defects in
drawing ; or in writing, instances of bad grammar. It
ought surely to be our aim in virtue, as well as in other
things, " to snatch a grace beyond the reach of art."
CXL. We find many things to which the prohibition
of them constitutes the only temptation.
CXLI. There is neither so much vice nor so much
virtue in the world as it might appear at first sight that
there is. Many people commit actions that they hate,
as they affect virtues that they laugh at, merely because
others do so.
CXL II. "\Yhen the imagination is continually led to
the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations,
people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere
dread of falling.
CXLIII. The maxim " Video meliora proboque, deteriora
sequor " has not been fully explained. In general, it is
taken for granted, that those things that our reason
disapproves, we give way to from passion. Nothing
like it. The course that persons in the situation of
Medea pursue has often as little to do with inclination
as with judgment ; but they are led astray by some
object of a disturbed imagination, 'that shocks their
feelings and staggers their belief, and they grasp the
phantom to put an end to this state of tormenting
suspense, and to see whether it is human or not.
CXLIV, Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.
CXLV. Honesty is one part of eloquence : we per-
suade others by being in earnest ourselves.
CXL VI. A mere sanguine temperament often passes
fur genius and patriotism.
CXLVII. Animal spirits are continually taken for
478 Characteristics.
wit and fancy ; and the want of them, for sense and
judgment.
CXLVIII. In public speaking, we must appeal either
to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and
justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability,
we shall ruin every cause 'we undertake.
CXLIX. Those who cannot miss an opportunity of
saying a good thing, or of bringing in some fantastical
opinion of their own, are not to be trusted with the
management of any great question.
CL. There are some public speakers who commit
themselves and their party by extravagances uttered in
heat and through vanity, which they retract in cold
blood through cowardice and caution. They outrage
propriety, and trim to self-interest.
CLI. An honest man is respected by all parties. We
forgive a hundred rude or offensive things that are
uttered from conviction or in the conscientious dis-
charge of a duty never one that proceeds from
design, or with a view to raise the person who says it
above us.
CLII. Truth from the mouth of an honest man, or
severity from a good-natured one, has a double effect.
CLIII. A person who does not endeavour to seem
more than he is, will generally be thought nothing of.
We habitually make such large deductions for pretence
and imposture, that no real merit will stand against
them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with
a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some
attention to fashion is necessary to decency.
CLIV. If we do not aspire to admiration, we shall
fall into contempt. To expect sheer evenhanded justice
from mankind is folly. They take the gross inventory
Cliaracttristics. 479
of our pretensions ; and not to have them overlooked
entirely, we must place them in a conspicuous point of
view, as men write their trades or fix a sign over the
doors of their houses. Not to conform to the established
practice in either respect, is false delicacy in the com-
merce of the world.
CLV. There has been a considerable change in dress
and manners in the course of a century or two, as well
as in the signs and badges of different professions. The
streets are no longer encumbered with numberless
emblems of mechanical or other occupations, nor crowded
with the pomp and pageantry of dress, nor embroiled by
the insolent airs assumed by the different candidates for
rank and precedence. Our pretensions become less gross
and obtrusive with the progress of society, and as the
means of communication become more refined and general.
The simplicity and even slovenliness of the modern beau
form a striking contrast to the dazzling finery and osten-
tatious formality of the oldfashioned courtier ; yet both
are studied devices and symbols of distinction. It would
be a curious speculation to trace the various modes of
affectation in dress from the age of Elizabeth to the
present time, in connection with the caprices of fashion
and the march of opinion ; and to show in what manner
Sir Isaac Newton's 'Principia' or Eousseau's 'Emilius'
have contributed to influence the gliding movements and
curtail the costume of a modern dandy !
CLVI. Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power
is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the
resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but
from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter : we
can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in
overcoming them. Where our will is our law, we
eagerly set about the first trifle we think of, and lay it
aside for the next trifle that presents itself, or that is
480 Characteristics.
suggested to us. The character of despotism is apathy
or levity or the love of mischief, because the latter is
easy, and suits its pride and wantonness.
CLVII. Affectation is as necessary to the mind as
dress is to the body.
CLVIII. Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore
an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses
centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the
universe ; so that he is torn in pieces between the two,
without a possibility of its ever being otherwise. A
mere physical being, or a pure spirit, can alone be
satisfied with itself.
CLIX. Our approbation of others has a good deal of
selfishness in it. We like those who give us pleasure,
however little they may wish for or deserve our esteem
in return. We prefer a person with vivacity and high
spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid
and pusillanimous : we are fonder of wit joined to malice,
than of dullness without it. We have no great objection
to receive a man who is a villain as our friend, if he has
plausible exterior qualities ; nay, we often take a pride
in our harmless familiarity with him, as we might in
keeping a tame panther ; but we soon grow weary of the
society of a good-natured fool who puts our patience to
the test, or of an awkward clown who puts our pride to
the blush.
CLX. We are fonder of visiting our friends in health
than in sickness. We judge less favourably of their
characters, when any misfortune happens to them ; and
a lucky hit, either in business or reputation, improves
even their personal appearance in our eyes.
CLXI. An heiress with a large fortune and a moderate
share of beauty easily rises into a reigning toast.
Characteristics. 481
CLXII. One shining quality lends a lustre to another,
or hides some glaring defect.
CLXIII. We are never so much disposed to quarrel
with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.
CLXIV. We are never so thoroughly tired of the
company of any one else as we sometimes are of our
own.
CLXV. People outlive the interest which, at different
periods of their lives, they take in themselves. When
we forget old friends, it is a sign we have forgotten our-
selves, or despise our former ways and notions as much
as we do their present ones.
CLXVI. We fancy ourselves superior to others, be-
cause we find that we have improved ; and at no time
did we think ourselves inferior to them.
CLXVII. The notice of others is as necessary to UP
as the air we breathe. If we cannot gain their good
opinion, we change our battery, and strive to provoke
their hatred and contempt.
CLXVIII. Some malefactors, at the point of death,
confess crimes of which they have never been guilty
thus to raise our wonder and indignation in the same
proportion ; or to show their superiority to vulgar pre-
judice, and brave that public opinion of which they are
the victims.
CLXIX. Others make an ostentatious display of their
penitence and remorse, only to invite sympathy, and
create a diversion in their own minds from the subject
of their impending punishment. So that we excite a
strong emotion in the breasts of others, we care little of
what kind it is, or by what means we produce it. We
have equally the feeling of power. The sense of insig-
nificance, or of being an object of perfect indifference to
2 i
482 Characteristics.
others, is the only one that the mind never covets nor
willingly submits to.
CLXX. There are not wanting instances of those
who pass their whole lives in endeavouring to make
themselves ridiculous. They only tire of their absur-
dities when others are tired of talking about and laugh-
ing at them, so that they have become a stale jest.
CLXXI. People in the grasp of death wish all the
evil they have done (as well as all the good) to be known,
not to make atonement by confession, but to excite one
more strong sensation before they die, and to leave their
interests and passions a legacy to posterity, when they
themselves are exempt from the consequences.
CLXXII. We talk little if we do not talk about our-
selves.
CLXXI1I. We may give more offence by our silence
than even by impertinence.
CLXXIV. Obstinate silence implies either a mean
opinion of ourselves, or a contempt of our company : and
it is the more provoking, as others do not know to which
of these causes to attribute it, whether to humility or
pride.
CLXXV. Silence proceeds either from want of some-
thing to say, or from a phlegmatic indifference which
closes up our lips. The sea, or any other striking object,
suddenly bursting on a party of mutes in a stagecoach,
will occasion a general exclamation of surprise ; and the
ice being once broken, they may probably be good
company for the rest of the journey.
CLXXVI. We compliment ourselves on our national
reserve and taciturnity by abusing the loquacity and
frivolity of the French.
Characteristics. 483
CLXXVII. Nations, not being willing or able to cor-
rect their own errors, justify them by the opposite errors
of other nations.
CLXXVIII. We easily convert our own vices into
virtues, the virtues of others into vices.
CLXXIX. A person who talks with equal vivacity
on every subject, excites no interest in any. Kepose is
as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
CLXXX. The best kind of conversation is that which
may be called thinking aloud. I like very well to speak
my mind on any subject (or to hear another do so), and
to go into the question according to the degree of interest
it naturally inspires, but not to have to get up a thesis
upon every topic. There are those, on the other hand,
who seem always to be practising on their audience, as
if they mistook them for a debating-society, or to hold a
general retainer, by which they are bound to explain
every difficulty, and answer every objection that can be
started. This, in private society and among friends, is
not desirable. You thus lose the two great ends of con-
versation, which are to learn the sentiments of others,
and see what they think of yours. One of the best
talkers I ever knew had this defect that he evidently
seemed to be considering less what he felt on any point
than what might be said upon it, and that he listened to
you, not to weigh what you said, but to reply to it, like
counsel on the other side. This habit gave a brilliant
smoothness and polish to his general discourse, but at
the same time took from its solidity and prominence :
it reduced it to a tissue of lively, fluent, ingenious com-
monplaces (for original genuine observations are like
" minute drops from off the eaves," and not an incessant
shower), and, though his talent in this way was carried
to the very extreme of cleverness, yet I think it seldom,
if ever, went beyond it.
484 Characteristics.
CLXXXI. Intellectual excellence can seldom be a
source of much satisfaction to the possessor. In a gross
period, or in vulgar society, it is not understood ; and
among those who are refined enough to appreciate its
value, it ceases to be a distinction.
CLXXXII. There is, I think, an essential difference
of character in mankind, between those who wish to do,
and those who wish to have, certain things. I observe
persons expressing a great desire to possess fine horses,
hounds, dress, equipage, &c., and an envy of those who
have them. I myself have no such feeling, nor the least
ambition to shine, except by doing something better
than others. I have the love of power, but not of pro-
perty. I should like to be able to outstrip a greyhound
in speed ; but I should be ashamed to take any merit to
myself from possessing the fleetest greyhound in the
world. I cannot transfer my personal identity from my-
self to what I merely call mine. The generality of man-
kind are contented to be estimated by what they possess,
instead of what they are.
CLXXXIII. Buonaparte observes, that the diplom-
atists of the new school were no match for those brought
up under the ancient regime. The reason probably is, that
the modern style of intellect inclines to abstract reason-
ing and general propositions, and pays less attention to
individual character, interests, and circumstances. The
moderns have, therefore, less tact in watching the
designs of others, and less closeness in hiding their own.
They perhaps have a greater knowledge of things, but
less of the world. They calculate the force of an
argument, and rely on its success, moving in vacuo,
without sufficiently allowing for the resistance of opinion
and prejudice.
CLXXXIV. The most comprehensive reasoners are
Characteristics 485
not always the deepest or nicest ooservers. They are
apt to take things for granted too much, as parts of a
system. Lord Egmont, in a speech in Parliament, in
the year 1750, has the following remarkable observations
on this subject : " It is not common-sense, but down-
right madness, to follow general principles in this wild
manner without limitation or reserve ; and give me
leave to say one thing, which I hope will be long
remembered and well thought upon by all those who
hear me that those gentlemen wno plume themselves
thus upon their open and extensive understandings are,
in fact, the men of the narrowest principles in the
kingdom. For what is a narrow mind ? It is a mind
that sees any proposition in one single contracted point
of view, unable to complicate any subject with the
circumstances, or considerations, that are or may or
ought to be combined with it. And pray, what is that
understanding which looks upon the question of natura-
lization only in this general view, that naturalization is
an increase of the people, and the increase of the people
is the riches of the nation? never admitting the least
reflection, what the people are whom you let in upon
us ; how, in the present bad regulation of the police,
they are to be employed or maintained; how their
principles, opinions, or practice may influence the
religion or politics of the State, or what operation their
admission may have upon the peace and tranquillity of
the country. Is not such a genius equally contemptible
and narrow with that of the poorest mortal upon earth,
who grovels for his whole life within the verge of the
opposite extreme ?"
CLXXXV. In an Englishman, a diversity of pro-
fession and pursuit (as the having been a soldier, a valet,
a player, &c.) implies a dissipation and dissoluteness of
character, and a fitness for nothing. In a Frenchman,
486 Characteristics.
it only shows a natural vivacity of disposition, and a
fitness for everything.
CLXXXVI. Impudence, like everything else, has its
limits. Let a man be ever so hardened and unblushing,
there is a point at which his courage is sure to fail him ;
and not being able to carry off the matter with his usual
air of confidence, he becomes more completely confused
and awkward than any one else would in the same
circumstances.
CLXXXVII. Half the miseries of human life proceed
from our not perceiving the incompatibility of different
attainments, and consequently aiming at too much.
We make ourselves wretched in vainly aspiring after
advantages we are deprived of; and do not consider that
if we had these advantages, it would be quite impossible
for us to retain those which we actually do possess, and
which after all, if it were put to the question, we would
not consent to part with for the sake of any others.
CLXXXVIII. If we use no ceremony towards others,
we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired
of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them
with coldness, and return them with neglect.
CLXXXIX. .Surly natures have more pleasure in
disobliging others than in serving themselves.
CXO. People in general consult their prevailing
humour or ruling passion (whatever it may be) much
more than their interest.
CXCI. One of the painters (Teniers) has represented
monkeys with a monk's cloak and cowl. This has a
ludicrous effect enough. To a superior race of beings
the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and
virtue must seem equally ridiculous.
CXCII. When we speak ill of people behind their
Characteristics. 487
backs, and are civil to them to tlieir faces, we may be
accused of insincerity. But the contradiction is less
owing to insincerity than to the change of circumstances.
We think well of them while we are with them ; and in
their absence recollect the ill we durst not hint at or
acknowledge to ourselves in their presence.
CXCIII. Our opinions are not our own, but in the
power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable
falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we
dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly
uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
CXCIV. A man's reputation is not in his own keeping,
but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny
requires no proof. The throwing-out malicious impu-
tations against any character leaves a stain, which no
after-reputation can wipe out. To create an unfavourable
impression, it is not necessary that certain things should
be true, but that they have been said. The imagination
is of so delicate a texture, that even words wound it.
CXCV. A nickname is a mode of insinuating a
prejudice against another under some general designa-
tion, which, as it offers no proof, admits of no reply.
CXCVI. It does not render the person less contempti-
ble or ridiculous in vulgar opinion, because it may be
harmless in itself, or even downright nonsense. By
repeating it incessantly, and leaving out every other
characteristic of the individual whom we wish to make
a byword of, it seems as if he were an abstraction of
insignificance.
CXCVII. Want of principle is power. Truth and
honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and
hypocrisy easily overleap.
CXCVIII. There are many who talk on from
488 Characteristics.
ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find
the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.
CXCIX. Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as
the detecting another in an untruth : it strikes at the
root of our confidence ever after.
CC. In estimating the value of an acquaintance or
even friend, we give a preference to intellectual or
convivial over moral qualities. The truth is, that in our
habitual intercourse with others, we much oftener require
to be amused than assisted. We consider less, therefore,
what a person with whom we are intimate is ready to do
for us in critical emergencies, than what he has to say
on ordinary occasions. We dispense with his services,
if he only saves us from ennui. In civilised society
words are of as much importance as things.
CCI. We cultivate the society of those who are above
us in station, and beneath us in capacity. The one we
do from choice, the other from necessity. Our interest
dictates our submission to the first; our vanity is flattered
by the homage of the last.
CCII. A man of talents, who shrinks from a collision
with his equals or superiors, will soon sink below him-
self. We improve by trying our strength with others, not
by showing it off. A person who shuts himself up
in a little circle of dependants and admirers for fear of
losing ground in his own opinion by jostling with the
world at large, may continue to be gaped at by fools,
but will forfeit the respect of sober and sensible men.
CHI. There are others, who, entertaining a high
opinion of themselves, and not being able (for want of
plausible qualities) to gather a circle of butterflies round
them, retire into solitude, and there worship the Echoes
and themselves. They gain this advantage by it the
Echoes do not contradict them. But it is a question
Characteristics. 489
whether by dwelling always on their own virtues arid
merits, unmolested, they increase the stock. They,
indeed, pamper their ruling vices, and pile them
mountain-high ; and, looking down on the world from
the elevation of their retreat, idly fancy that the world
has nothing to do but to look up to them with wonder-
ing eyes.
CCIV. It is a false principle, that because we are
entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy
the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the
fair one.
CCV. It is better to desire than to enjoy to love than
to be loved.
CGVI. Every one would rather be Raphael than
Hogarth. Without entering into the question of the
talent required for their different works, or the pleasure
derived from them, we prefer that which confers dignity
on human nature to that which degrades it. We would
wish to do what we would wish to be. And, moreover,
it is most difficult to do what it is most difficult to be.
CCVIL A selfish feeling requires less moral capacity
than a benevolent one : a selfish expression requires less
intellectual capacity to execute it than a benevolent one ;
for in expression, and all that relates to it, the intel-
lectual is the reflection of the moral. Raphael's figures
are sustained by ideas ; Hogarth's are distorted by
mechanical habits and instincts. It is elevation of
thought that gives grandeur and delicacy of expression
to passion. The expansion and refinement of the soul
are seen in the face as in a mirror. An enlargement of
purpose gives a corresponding enlargement of form.
The mind, as it were, acts over the whole body, and
animates it equally ; while petty and local interests seize
on particular parts, and distract it by contrary and
490 Characteristics.
mean expressions. Now, if mental expression has this
superior grandeur and grace, we can account at once for
the superiority of Eapliael. For there is no doubt, that
it is more difficult to give a whole continuously and
proportionally, than to give the parts separately and
disjointedly, or to define the same subtle but powerful
expression over a large mass than to caricature it in a
single part or feature. The actions in Eaphael are like
a branch of a tree swept by the surging blast ; those in
Hogarth like straws whirled and twitched about in the
gusts and eddies of passion. I do not mean to say that
goodness alone constitutes greatness, but mental power
does. Hogarth's ' Good Apprentice ' is insipid : Eaphael
has clothed ' Elymas the Sorcerer ' with all the dignity
and grandeur of vice. Selfish characters and passions
borrow greatness from the range of imagination and
strength of purpose ; and besides, have an advantage in
natural force and interest.
CCVIII. We find persons who are actuated in all their
tastes and feelings by a spirit of contradiction. They
like nothing that other people do, and have a natural
aversion to whatever is agreeable in itself. They read
books that no one else reads, and are delighted with
passages that no one understands but themselves. They
only arrive at beauties through faults and difficulties,
and all their conceptions are brought to light by a sort
of Caesarean process. This is either an affectation of
singularity, or a morbid taste, that can relish nothing
that is obvious and simple.
CCIX. An unaccountable spirit of contradiction is
sometimes carried into men's behaviour and actions.
They never do anything from a direct motive, or in a
straightforward manner. They get rid of all sorts of
obligations, and rush on destruction without the shadow
of an excuse. They take a perverse delight in acting not
Characteristics. 491
only contrary to reason, but in opposition to their own
inclinations and passions, and are for ever in a state of
cross-purposes with themselves.
OCX. There are some persons who never decide from
deliberate motives at all, but are the mere creatures of
impulse.
CCXI. Insignificant people are a necessary relief in
society. Such characters are extremely agreeable, and
even favourites, if they appear satisfied with the part
they have to perform.
CCXII. Little men seldom seem conscious of their
diminutive size ; or make up for it by the erectness of
their persons, or a peculiarly dapper air and manner.
CCXTII. Any one is to be pitied who has just sense
enough to perceive his deficiencies.
CCXIV. I had rather be deformed than a dwarf and
well-made. The one may be attributed to accident ; the
other looks like a deliberate insult on the part of nature.
CCXV. Personal deformity, in the. well-disposed, pro-
duces a fine placid expression of countenance ; in the
ill-tempered and peevish, a keen sarcastic one.
CCXVI. People say ill-natured things without design,
but not without having a pleasure in them.
CCXVII. A person who blunders upon system has
a secret motive for what he does, unknown to himself.
CCXVIII. If any one by his general conduct contrives
to part friends, he may not be aware that such is the
tendency of his actions, but assuredly it is their motive.
He has more pleasure in seeing others cold and distant
than cordial and intimate.
CCXIX. A person who constantly meddles to no
purpose, means to do harm, and is not sorry to find he
has succeeded.
492 Characteristics.
CCXX. Cunning is natural to mankind. It is the
sense of our weakness, and an attempt to effect by con-
cealment what we cannot do openly and by force.
CCXXI. In love we never think of moral qualities,
and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and
manner alone (with beauty) excite love.
CCXXII. There is no one thoroughly despicable. We
cannot descend much lower than an idiot ; and an idiot
has some advantages over a wise man.
CCXXIIL Comparisons are odious, because they re-
duce every one to a standard he ought not to be tried by ;
or leave us in possession only of those claims which we
can set up, to the entire exclusion of others. By striking
off the common qualities, the remainder of excellence is
brought down to a contemptible fraction. A man may
be six feet high and only an inch taller than another.
In comparisons, this difference of an inch is the only
thing thought of or ever brought into question. The
greatest genius or virtue soon dwindles into nothing
by such a mode of computation.
CCXXIV. It is a fine remark of Eousseau's that the
best of us differ from others in fewer particulars than we
agree with them in. The difference between a tall and
a short man is only a few inches, whereas they are both
several feet high. So a wise or learned man knows
many things of which the vulgar are ignorant ; but
there is a still greater number of things the knowledge
of which they share in common with him.
CCXXV. I am always afraid of a fool : one cannot be
sure that he is not a knave as well.
CCXXVI. Weakness has its hidden resources, as well
as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness
which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are
Characteristics. 493
as much liable to be foiled, as by the greatest ability or
courage.
CCXXVII. We can only be degraded in a contest
with low natures. The advantages that others obtain
over us are fair and honourable to both parties.
CCXXVIII. Reflection makes men cowards. There
is no object that can be put in competition with life,
unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and
we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.
CCXXIX. The youth is better than the old age of
friendship.
CCXXX. In the course of a long acquaintance we have
repeated all our good things, and discussed all oui
favourite topics several times over, so that our conversa
tion becomes a mockery of social intercourse. We might
as well talk to ourselves. The soil of friendship is worn
out with constant use. Habit may still attach us to
each other, but we feel ourselves fettered by it. Old
friends might be compared to old married people without
the tie of children.
CCXXXI. We grow tired of ourselves, much more of
other people. Use may in part reconcile us to our own
tediousness, but we do not adopt that of others on the
same paternal principle. We may be willing to tell a
story twice, never to hear one more than once.
CCXXXII. If we are long absent from our friends,
we forget them ; if we are constantly with them, we
despise them.
CCXXXIII. There are no rules for friendship. It
must be left to itself; we cannot force it any more than
love.
CCXXXIV. The most violent friendships soonest
wear themselves out.
494 Characteristics.
CCXXXV. To be capable of steady friendship or last-
ing love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness
of heart, but of strength of mind.
CCXXXVI. It makes us proud when our love of a
mistress is returned ; it ought to make us prouder that
we can love her for herself alone, without the aid of
any such selfish reflection. This is the religion of love.
CCXXXVII. An English officer who had been en-
gaged in an intrigue in Italy, going home one night,
stumbled over a man fast asleep on the stairs. It was a
bi'avo who had been hired to assassinate him. Such, in
this man, was the force of conscience !
CCXXXVIII. An eminent artist having succeeded
in a picture which drew crowds to admire it, received a
letter from a shuffling old relation in these terms, " Dear
cousin, now you may draw good bills with a vengeance."
Such is the force of habit ! This man only wished to be
3. Raphael that -he might carry on his old trade of draw-
ing bills.
CCXXXIX. Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools.
It is necessary to join the crowd or get out of their way
in order not to be trampled to death by them.
CCXL. To think the worst of others, and to do the
best we can ourselves, is a safe rule, but a hard one to
practise.
CCXLL To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to
them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
CCXLII. We may hate and love the same person, nay
even at the same moment.
OOXLIII. We never hate those whom we have once
loved, merely because they have injured us. " We may
kill those of whom we are jealous," says Fielding, " but
Characteristics. 495
we do not hate them." We are enraged at their conduct,
and at ourselves as the objects of it, but this does not
alter our passion for them. The reason is, we loved
them without their loving us; we do not hate them
because they hate us. Love may turn to indifference
with possession, but is irritated by disappointment.
CCXLIV. Revenge against the object of our love is
madness. No one would kill the woman he loves, but
that he thinks he can bring her to life afterwards. Her
death, seems to him as momentary as his own rash act.
See ' Othello.' " My wife! I have no wife," &c. He
stabbed not at her life, but at her falsehood ; he thought
to kill the wanton and preserve the wife.
CCXLV. We revenge in haste and passion; we
repent at leisure and from reflection.
CCXLVI. By retaliating our sufferings on the heads
of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness, and
incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our
revenge our fondness returns ; so that we feel the injury
we have done them even more than they do.
CCXLVII. I think men formerly were more jealous
of their rivals in love ; they are now more jealous of
their mistresses, and lay the blame on them. That is,
we formerly thought more of the mere possession of the
person, which the removal of a favoured lover prevented ;
and we now think more of a woman's affections, which
may still follow him to the tomb. To kill a rival is to
kill a fool ; but the goddess of our idolatry may be a
sacrifice worthy of the gods. Hackman did not think of
shooting Lord Sandwich, but Miss Eay.
CCXLVIII. Many people in reasoning on the passions
make a continual appeal to common-sense. But passion
is without common-sense, and we must frequently discard
the one in speaking of the other.
496 Characteristics.
CCXLIX. It is provoking to hear people at their ease
talking reason to others in a state of violent suffering.
If you can remove their suffering by speaking a word,
do so ; and then they will be in a state to hear calm
reason.
CCL. There is nothing that I so hate as I do to hear
a commonplace set up against a feeling of truth and
nature.
CCLI. People try to reconcile you to a disappointment
in love, by asking why you should cherish a passion for
an object that has proved itself worthless. Had you
known this before, you would not have encouraged the
passion; but that having been once formed, knowledge
does not destroy it. If we have drunk poison, finding
it out does not prevent its being in our veins : so passion
leaves its poison in the mind. It is the nature of all
passion and of all habitual affection ; we throw ourselves
upon it at a "venture, but we cannot return by choice.
If it is a wife that has proved unworthy, men com-
passionate the loss, because there is a tie, they say, which
we cannot get rid of. But has the heart no ties ? Or if
it is a child, they understand it. But is not true love a
child ? Or when another has become a part of ourselves,
" where we must live or have no life at all," can we tear
them from us in an instant ? No : these bargains are
for life ; and that for which our souls have sighed for
years, cannot be forgotten with a breath, and without a
pang.
CCLIL Besides, it is uncertainty and suspense that
chiefly irritate jealousy to madness. When we know
our fate, we become gradually reconciled to it, and try
to forget a useless sorrow.
CCLIII. It is wonderful how often we see and hear of
Shakspeare's plays without being annoyed with it. Were
Characteristics. 497
it any other writer, we should be sick to death of the
very name. But his volumes are like that of nature, we
can turn to them again and again :
" Age cannot wither nor custom stale
His infinite variety."
CCLIV. The contempt of a wanton for a man who is
determined to think her virtuous, is perhaps the strongest
of all others. He officiously reminds her of what she
ought to be ; and she avenges the galling sense of lost
character on the fool who still believes in it.
CCLV. To find that a woman whom we loved has
forfeited her character, is the same thing as to learn that
she is dead.
CCLVI. The only vice that cannot be forgiven is
hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself
hypocrisy.
CCLV1I. Once a renegade, and always a renegado.
CCLVIII. By speaking truth to the really beautiful,
we learn to flatter other women.
CCLIX. There is a kind of ugliness which is not
disagreeable to women. It is that which is connected
with the expression of strong but bad passions, and
implies spirit and power.
CCLX. People do not persist in their vices because
they are not weary of them, but because they cannot
leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no
resource but in itself.
CCLXI. Our consciousness of injustice makes us add
to the injury. By aggravating a wrong we seem to
ourselves to justify it. The repetition of the blow
inflames our passion and deadens reflection.
CCLXII. In confessing the greatest offences, a
2 E
498 Characteristics.
criminal gives himself credit for his candour. You and
he seem to have come to an amicable understanding on
his character at last.
CCLXIII. A barefaced profligacy often succeeds to
an overstrained preciseness in morals. People in a less
licentious age carefully conceal the vices they have ; as
they afterwards, with an air of philosophic freedom, set
up for those they have not.
CCLXIV. It is a sign that real religion is in a state of
decay, when passages in compliment to it are applauded
at the theatre. Morals and sentiment fall within the
province of the stage ; but religion, except where it is
considered as a beautiful fiction which ought to be treated
with lenity, does not depend upon our suffrages.
CCLXV. There are persons to whom success gives no
satisfaction, unless it is accompanied with dishonesty.
Such people willingly ruin themselves in order to ruin
others.
CCLXVI. Habitual liars invent falsehoods, not to
gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to
amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly
habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.
CCLXVIT. A knave thinks himself a fool all the time
he is not making a fool of some other person.
CCLXVIII. Fontenelle said, " Tf his hand were full
of truths, he would not open his fingers to let them out."
Was this a satire on truth or on mankind ?
CCLXIX. The best kind of conversation is that which
is made up of observations, reflections, and anecdotes.
A string of stories without application is as tiresome as
a long-winded argument.
CCLXX. The most insignificant people are the most
.apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals, and
Characteristics. 499
have no hope of rising in their own esteem, but by
lowering their neighbours. The severest critics are
always those, who have either never attempted, or who
have failed in, original composition.
CCLXXI. More remarks are made upon any one's
dress, looks, &c. in walking twenty yards along the
streets of Edinburgh, or other provincial towns, than in
passing from one end of London to the other.
CCLXXII. There is less impertinence and more
independence in London than in any other place in the
kingdom.
CCLXXIII. A man who meets thousands of people in
a day who never saw or heard of him before, if he thinks
at all, soon learns to think little of himself. London is
the place where a man of sense is soonest cured of his
coxcombry, or where a fool may indulge his vanity with
impunity, by giving himself what airs he pleases. A
valet and a lord are there nearly on a level. Among a
million of men, we do not count the units, for we have
not time.
CCLXXI V. There is some virtue in almost every
vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a
mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.
CCLXXV. It does not follow that a man is a
hypocrite because his actions give the lie to his words.
If he at one time seems a saint and at other times a
sinner, he possibly is both in reality, as well as in
appearance. A person may be fond of vice and of virtue
too ; and practise one or the other, according to the
temptation of the moment. A priest may be pious, and
a sot or bigot. A woman may be modest, and a rake at
heart. A poet may admire the beauties of nature, and
be envious of those of other writers. A moralist may
act contrary to his own precepts, and yet be sincere in
500 Characteristics.
recommending them to others. These are indeed
contradictions, but they arise out of the contradictory
qualities in our nature. A man is a hypocrite only when
he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not
because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.
CCLXXVI. The greatest offence against virtue is to
speak ill of it. To recommend certain things is worse
than to practise them. There may be an excuse for the
last in the frailty of passion ; but the former can arise
from nothing but an utter depravity of disposition. Any
one may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love
and aspiration after virtue ; but he who maintains vice in
theory, has not even the idea or capacity for virtue in his
mind. Men err : fiends only make a mock at goodness.
CCLXXVII. The passions make antitheses and subtle
distinctions, finer than any pen.
CCLXXVIII. I used to think that men were governed
by their passions more than by their interest or reason,
till I heard the contrary maintained in Scotland, viz.
that the main-chance is the great object in life ; and the
proof given of it was, that every man in the street where
we were talking, however he might have a particular
hobby, minded his business as the principal thing, and
endeavoured to make both ends meet at the end of the
year. This was a shrewd argument, and it was Scotch.
I could only answer it in my own mind by turning to
different persons among my acquaintance who have been
ruined with their eyes open by some whim or fancy.
One, for instance, married a girl of the town : a second
divorced his wife to marry a wench at a lodging-house,
who refused him, and whose cruelty and charms are the
torment of his own life, and that of all his friends : a
third drank himself to death : a fourth is the dupe and
victim of quack advertisements : a fifth is the slave of
Characteristics. 501
his wife's ill-humour : a sixth quarrels with all his
friends without any motive : a seventh lies on to the end
of the chapter, and to his own ruin, &c. It is true none
of these are Scotchmen ; and yet they live in houses,
rather than in the open air, and follow some trade or
vocation to avoid starving outright. If this is what is
meant by a calculation of consequences, the doctrine may
hold true ; but it does not infringe upon the main point.
It affects the husk, the shell, but not the kernel of our dis-
positions. The pleasure or torment of our lives is in the
pursuit of some favourite passion or perverse humour :
" Within our bosoms reigns another lord,
Passion sole judge and umpire of itself."
CCLXXIX. There are few things more contemptible
than the conversation of men of the town. It is made
up of the technicalities and cant of all professions,
without the spirit or knowledge of any. It is flashy
and vapid, and is like the rinsings of different liquors
at a night-cellar, instead of a bottle of fine old port.
It is without clearness or body, and a heap of affectation.
CCLXXX. The conversation of players is either dull
or bad. They are tempted to say gay or fine things^
from the habit of uttering them with applause on the
stage, and unable to do it from the habit of repeating
what is set down for them by rote. A good comic actor,
if he is a sensible man, will generally be silent in com-
pany. It is iiot his profession to invent bon mots, but to
deliver them ; and he will scorn to produce a theatrical
effect by grimace and mere vivacity. A great tragic
actress should ba a mute, except on the stage. She
cannot raise the tone of common conversation to that of
tragedy, and any other must be quite insipid to her.
Repose is necessary to her. She who died the night
before in ' Cleopatra ' ought not to revive till she appears
again as ' Cassandra ' or ' Aspasia.' In the intervals of her
502 Characteristics.
great characters, her own should be a blank, or an un-
forced, unstudied part.
CCLXXXI. To marry an actress for the admiration
she excites on the stage, is to imitate the man who bought
' Punch.',
CCLXXXII. To expect an author to talk as he writes
is ridiculous ; or even if he did, you would find fault
with him as a pedant. We should read authors, and not
conyerse with them.
CCLXXXIII. Extremes meet. Excessive refinement
is often combined with equal grossness. They act as a
relief to each other, and please by contrast.
CCLXXXIV. The seeds of many of our vices are sown
in our blood : others we owe to the bile or a fit of indiges-
tion. A sane mind is generally the effect of a sane body.
CCLXXXV. Health and good temper are the two
greatest blessings in life. In all the rest men are equal,
or find an equivalent.
CCLXXXVI. Poverty, labour, and calamity are not
without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent, and
the fortunate in vain seek for.
CCLXXXVII. Good and ill seem as necessary to
human life as light and shade are to a picture. We
grow weary of uniform success, and pleasure soon sur-
feits. Pain makes ease delightful, hunger relishes the
homeliest food, fatigue turns the hardest bed to down ;
and the difficulty and uncertainty of pursuit in all cases
enhance the value of possession. The wretched are in
this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest
yearnings after happiness ; and to desire is in some sense
to enjoy. If the schemes of Utopians could be realised,
the tone of society would be changed from what it is, into
a sort of insipid high life. There could be no fine tra-
Characteristics. 503
gedies written; nor would there be any pleasure in
seeing them. We tend to this conclusion already with
the progress of civilisation.
CCLXXXVIII. The pleasure derived from tragedy
is to be accounted for in this way : that, by painting the
extremes of human calamity, it by contrast kindles the
affections, and raises the most intense imagination and
desire of the contrary good.
CCLXXXIX. The question respecting dramatic illu-
sion has not been fairly stated. There are different
degrees and kinds of belief. The point is not whether
we do or do not believe what we see to be a positive
reality, but how far and in what manner we believe in
it. We do not say every moment to ourselves, " This is
real ;" but neither do we say every moment, " This is
not real." The involuntary impression steals upon us
till we recollect ourselves. The appearance of reality,
in fact, is the reality, so long and in as far as we are not
conscious of the contradictory circumstances that dis-
prove it. The belief in a well-acted tragedy never
amounts to what the witnessing the actual scene would
prove, and never sinks into a mere phantasmagoria. Its
power of affecting us is not, however, taken away, even
if we abstract the feeling of identity ; for it still suggests
a stronger idea of what the reality would be, just as a
picture reminds us more powerfully of the person for
whom it is intended, though we are conscious it is not
the same.
CCXC. We have more faith in a well-written romance,
while we are reading it, than in common history. The
vividness of the representations in the one case, more
than counterbalances the aiere knowledge of the truth
of the facts in the other.
CCXCI. It is remarkable how virtuous and generously
disposed every one is at a play. We uniformly applaud.
504 Characteristics.
what is right and condemn what is wrong, when it costs
us nothing but the sentiment
CCXCII. Great natural advantages are seldom com-
bined with great acquired ones, because they render the
labour required to attain the last superfluous and
irksome. It is only necessary to be admired ; and if we
are admired for the graces of our persons, we shall not
be at much pains to adorn our minds. If Pope had been
a beautiful youth he would not have written ' The Rape
of the Lock.' 1 A beautiful woman, who has only to
show herself to be admired, and is famous by nature,
will be in no danger of becoming a bluestocking to
attract notice by her learning or to hide her defects.
CCXCIII. Those people who are always improving
never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the
ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man
must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigour,
and not by patient wary steps.
CCXCIV. The late Mr. Opie remarked, that an artist
often put his best thoughts into his first works. His
earliest efforts were the result of the study of all his
former life, whereas his later and more mature perfor-
mances (though perhaps more skilful and finished)
contained only the gleanings of his after-observation and
experience.
CCXCV. The effort necessary to overcome difficulty
urges the student on to excellence. When he can once
do well with ease, he grows comparatively careless and
indifferent, and makes no farther advances to perfection.
CCXCVI. When a man can do better than every one
else in the same walk, he does not make any very painful
exertions to outdo himself. The progress of improve-
ment ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.
1 Milton was a beautiful youth, and yet lie wrote ' Paradise Lost.'
Characteristics. 505
CCXCYIT. We are rarely taught by our own experi-
ence ; and much less do we put faith in that of others.
CCXC V 1 1 1. We do not attend to the advice of the sage
and experienced, because we think the}' are old, forgetting
that they once were j-oung, and placed in the same
situations as ourselves.
CCXC IX. We are egotists in morals as well as in other
things. Every man is determined to judge for himself
as to his conduct in life, and finds out what he ought
to have done, when it is too late to do it. For this
reason, the world has to begin again with each successive
generation.
CCC. We should be inclined to pay more attention to
the wisdom of the old, if they showed greater indulgence
to the follies of the young.
CCCI. The best lesson we can learn from witnessing
the folly of mankind is not to irritate ourselves against it.
CCCII. If the world were good for nothing else, it is
a fine subject for speculation.
CCCIII. In judging of individuals, we always allow
something to character ; for even when this is not
agreeable or praiseworthy, it affords exercise for our
sagacity, and baffles the harshness of our censure.
CCCIV. There are persons to whom we never think
of applying the ordinary rules of judging. They form a
class by themselves, and are curiosities in morals, like
nondescripts in natural history. We forgive whatever
they do or say, for the singularity of the thing, and
because it excites attention. A man who has been
banged is not the worse subject for dissection, and a
man who deserves to be hanged may be a very amusing
Companion or topic of discourse.
506 Characteristics.
CCCV. Every man, in his own opinion, forms an
exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
CCCVI. No man ever owned to the title of a murderer,
a tyrant, &c., because, however notorious the facts might
be, the epithet is accompanied with a reference to
motives, and marks of opprobrium in common language
and in the feelings of others, which he does not acknow-
ledge in his own mind.
CCCVII. There are some things, the idea of which
alone is a clear gain to the human mind. Let people
rail at virtue, at genius, and friendship as long as they
will the very names of these disputed qualities are
better than anything else that could be substituted for
them, and embalm even the most angry abuse of them.
CCCVIII. If goodness were only a theory, it were a
pity it should be lost to the world.
CCCIX. Were good and evil ever so nearly balanced
in reality, yet imagination would add a casting-weight
to the favourable scale by anticipating the bright side
of what is to come, and throwing a pleasing melancholy
on the past.
CCCX. Women, when left to themselves, talk chiefly
about their dress ; they think more about their lovers
than they talk about them.
CCCXL With women, the great business of life is
love, and they generally make a mistake in it. They
consult neither the heart nor the head, but are led away
by mere humour and fancy. If, instead of a companion
for life, they had to choose a partner in a country-dance,
or to trifle away an hour with, their mode of calculation
would be right. They tie their true-lover's knots with
idle thoughtless haste, while the institutions of society
render it indissoluble.
CJiaracteristics. 507
CCCXII. When we hear complaints of the wretched-
ness or vanity of human life, the proper answer to them
would be that there is hardly any one who at some time
or other has not been in love. If we consider the high
abstraction of this feeling, its depth, its purity, its
voluptuous refinement, even in the meanest breast, how
sacred and how sweet it is, this alone may reconcile us
to the lot of humanity. That drop of balm turns the
bitter cup to a delicious nectar
'' And vindicates the ways of God to man "
CCCXIII. It is impossible to love entirely, without
being loved again. Otherwise, the fable of Pygmalion
would have no meaning. Let any one be ever so much
enamoured of a woman who does not requite his passion,
and let him consider what he feels when he finds her
scorn or indifference turning to mutual regard the thrill,,
the glow of rapture, the melting of two hearts into one,
the creation of another self in her and he will own that
he was before only half in love !
CCCXIV. Women never reason, and therefore they are
(comparatively) seldom wrong. They judge instinctively
of what falls under their immediate observation or experi-
ence, and do not trouble themselves about remote or
doubtful consequences. If they make no profound
discoveries, they do not involve themselves in gross
absurdities. It is only by the help of reason and logical
inference, according to Hobbes, that "man becomes
excellently wise, or excellently foolish." 1
CCCXV. Women are less cramped by circumstances
or education than men. They are more the creatures
of nature and impulse, and less cast in the mould of
habit or prejudice. If a young man and woman in
common life are seen walking out together on a holiday,
,' ' Leviathan.'
508 Characteristics.
the girl has the advantage in point of air and dress.
She has a greater aptitude in catching external accom-
plishments and the manners of her superiors, and is less
depressed by a painful consciousness of her situation in
life. A Quaker girl is often as sensible and conversable
as any other woman ; while a Quaker man is a bundle
of quaint opinions and conceit. Women are not spoiled
by education and an affectation of superior wisdom.
They take their chance for wit and shrewdness, and
pick up their advantages according to their opportunities
and turn of mind. Their faculties (such as they are)
shoot out freely and gracefully, like the slender trees in
a forest ; and are not clipped and cut down, as the
understandings of men are, into uncouth shapes and
distorted fancies, like yew-trees in an old-fashioned
garden. Women, in short, resemble self-taught men, with
more pliancy and delicacy of feeling.
CCCXVL Women have as little imagination as they
have reason. They are pure egotists ; they cannot go
out of themselves. There is no instance of a woman
having done anything great in poetry or philosophy.
They can act tragedy, because this depends very
much on the physical expression of the passions ;
they can sing, for they have flexible throats and nice
ears; they can write romances abotit love, and talk
for ever about nothing.
CCCXVII. Women are not philosophers or poets,
patriots, moralists, or politicians they are simply
women.
CCCXVIII. Women have a quicker sense of the
ridiculous than men, because they judge from immediate
impressions, and do not wait for the explanation that
may be given of them.
CCCXIX. Englishwomen have nothing to say on
Characteristics. 509
general subjects : Frenchwomen talk equally well on
them or any other. This may be obviously accounted
for from the circumstance that the two sexes associate
much more together in France than they do with us, so
that the tone of conversation in the women has become
masculine, and that of the men effeminate. The tone
of apathy and indifference in France to the weightier
interests of reason and humanity is ascribable to the
same cause. Women have no speculative faculty or
fortitude of mind, and wherever they exercise a continual
and paramount sway, all must be soon laughed out of
countenance but the immediately intelligible and agree-
able but the showy in religion, the lax in morals, and
the superficial in philosophy.
CCCXX. The texture of women's minds, as well as of
their bodies, is softer than that of men's : but they have
not the same strength of nerve, of understanding, or of
moral purpose.
CCCXXI. In France knowledge circulates quickly,
from the mere communicativeness of the national dis-
position. AVhatever is once discovered, be it good or
bad, is made no secret of, but is spread quickly through
all ranks and classes of society. Thought then runs
along the surface of the mind like an electrical fluid ;
while the English understanding is a non-conductor to it,
and damps it with its torpedo touch.
CCCXXII. The French are fond of reading as well as
of talking. You may constantly see girls tending an apple-
stall in the coldest day in winter, and reading Voltaire
or Eacine. Such a thing was never known in London
as a barrow- woman reading Shakspeare. Yet we talk
of our widespread civilisation, and ample provisions for
the education of the poor !
CCCXXIII. In comparing notes with the French
510 Characteristics.
we cannot boast even of our superior conceit : for in that
too they have the advantage of us.
CCCXXIV. It is curious that the French, with all
their vivacity and love of external splendour, should
tolerate nothing but their prosing didactic style of
tragedy on the stage ; and that, with all their flutter
and levity, they should combine the most laborious
patience and minute finishing in works of art. A French
student will take several weeks to complete a chalk
drawing from a head of Leonardo da Vinci, which a dull
plodding Englishman would strike off in as many hours.
CCCXXV. The Dutch perhaps finished their land-
scapes so carefully, because there was a want of romantic
and striking objects in them, so that they could only be
made interesting by the accuracy of the details.
CCCXXVI. An awkward Englishman has an advan-
tage in going abroad. Instead of having his deficiency
more remarked, it is less so ; for all Englishmen are
thought awkward alike. Any slip in politeness or
abruptness of address is attributed to an ignorance of
foreign manners, and you escape under the cover of the
national character. Your behaviour is no more criticised
than your accent. They consider the barbarism of
either as a compliment to their own superior refinement.
CCCXXVII. The difference between minuteness and
subtlety or refinement seems to be this that the one
relates to the parts, and the other to the whole. Thus,
the accumulation of a number of distinct particulars in
a work, as the threads of a gold-laced buttonhole, or
the hairs on the chair in a portrait of Denner's, is
minute or high finishing; the giving the gradations of
tone in a sky of Claude's from azure to gold, where the
distinction at each step is imperceptible, but the whole
effect is striking and grand, and can only be seized upon
by the eye and taste, is true refinement and delicacy.
Characteristics. 511
CCCXXVIII. The forte of the French is a certain
facility and grace of execution. The Germans, who
are the opposite to them, are full of throes and labour,
and do everything by an overstrained and violent effort.
CCCXXIX. The conversation of a pedantic Scotchman
is like a canal with a great number of locks in it.
CCCXXX. The most learned are often the most
narrowminded men.
CCCXXXI. The insolence of the vulgar is in propor-
tion to their ignorance : they treat everything with
contempt which they do not understand.
CCCXXXII. Our contempt for others proves nothing
but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.
The English laugh at foreigners, because, from their in-
sular situation, they are unacquainted with the manners
and customs of the rest of the world.
CCCXXXIII. The true barbarian is he who thinks
everything barbarous but his own tastes and preju-
dices.
CCCXXXIV. The difference between the vanity of a
Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the
one thinks everything right that is French, the other
thinks everything wrong that is not English. The
Frenchman is satisfied with his own country ; the Eng-
lishman is determined to pick a quarrel with every
other.
CCCXXXV. The national precedence between the
English and Scotch may be settled by this that the
Scotch are always asserting their superiority over the
English, while the English never say a word about their
superiority over the Scotch. The first have got together
a great number of facts and arguments in their own
favour; the last never trouble their heads about the
512 Characteristics.
matter, but have taken the point for granted as self
evident.
CCCXXXVI. The great characteristic of the Scotch
is that of all semi-barbarous people namely, a hard
defiance of other nations.
CCCXXXVII. Those who are tenacious on the score
of their faults show that they have no virtues to bring as
a set-off against them.
CCCXXXVIII. An Englishman in Scotland seems to
be travelling in a conquered country, from the suspicion
and precautions he has to encounter ; and this is really
the history of the case.
CCCXXXIX. We learn a great deal from coming into
contact and collision with individuals of other nations.
The contrast of character and feeling, the different points
of view from which they see things, is an admirable test
of the truth or reasonableness of our opinions. Among
ourselves we take a number of things for granted, which,
as soon as we find ourselves among strangers, we are
called upon to account for. With those who think and
feel differently from our habitual tone, we must have a
reason for the faith that is in us, or we shall not come
off very triumphantly. By this comparing of notes, by
being questioned and cross-examined, we discover how
far we have taken up certain notions on good grounds,
or barely on trust. We also learn how much of our best
knowledge is built on a .soil of acquired instinct, and
how little we can analyse those things that seem to most
of us self-evident. He is no mean philosopher who can
give a reason for one half of what he thinks. It by no
means follows that our tastes or judgments are wrong,
because we may be at fault in an argument. A Scotch-
man and a Frenchman would differ equally from an
Englishman, but would run into contrary extremes.
Characteristics. 513
He might not be able to make good his ground against
the levity of the one or the pertinacity of the other, and
yet he might be right, for they cannot both be so. By
visiting different countries and conversing with their
inhabitants, we strike a balance between opposite preju-
dices, and have an average of truth and nature left.
CCCXL. Strength of character as well as strength of
understanding is one of the guides that point the way to
truth. By seeing the bias and prejudices of others
marked in a strong and decided manner we are led to
detect our own ; from laughing at their absurdities we
begin to suspect the soundness of our own conclusions
which we find to be just the reverse of them. When I
was in Scotland some time ago, I learnt most from the
person whose opinions were, not most right (as I con-
ceive), but most Scotch. In this case, as in playing a
game at bowls, you have only to allow for a certain bias
in order to hit the Jack ; or, as in an algebraic equation,
you deduct so much for national character and prejudice,
which is a known or given quantity, and what remains
is the truth.
CCCXLT. We learn little from mere captious contro-
versy or the collision of opinions, unless where there is
this collision of character to account for the difference,
and remind one, by implication, where one's own weak-
ness lies. In the latter case, it is a shrewd presump-
tion that inasmuch as others are wrong, so are we ;
for the widest breach in argument is made by mutual
prejudice.
CCCXLII. There are certain moulds of national cha-
racter in which all our opinions and feelings must be
cast, or they are spurious and vitiated. A Frenchman
and an Englishman, a Scotchman and an Irishman, sel-
dom reason alike on any two points consecutively. It
2 L
514 Characteristics.
is vain to think of reconciling these antipathies they
are something in the juices and the blood. It is not
possible for a Frenchman to admire Shakspeare, except
out of mere affectation ; nor is it at all necessary that he
should, while he has authors of his own to admire. But
then his not admiring Shakspeare is no reason why we
should not. The harm is not in the natural variety of
tastes and dispositions, but in setting up an artificial
standard of uniformity, which makes us dissatisfied with
our own opinions, unless we can make them universal,
or impose them as a law upon the world at large.
CCCXLIIL I had rather be a lord than a king. A
lord is a private gentleman of the first class, amenable
only to himself. A king is a servant of the public,
dependent on opinion, a subject for history, and liable
to be "baited with the rabble's curse." Such a situation
is no sinecure. Kings indeed were gentlemen when
their subjects were vassals, and the world (instead of a
stage on which they have to perform a difficult and stub-
born part) was a deer-park through which they ranged
at pleasure. But the case is altered of late ; and it is
better, and has more of the sense of personal dignity in
it, to come into possession of a large old family estate
and ancestral groves, than to have a kingdom to govern
or to lose.
CCCXLIV. The affectation of gentility by people
without birth or fortune is a very idle species of vanity,
^or those who are in middle or humble life to aspire to
oe always seen in the company of the great, is like the
ambition of a dwarf who should hire himself as an
attendant to wait upon a giant. But we find great
numbers of this class whose pride or vanity seems to be
sufficiently gratified by the admiration of the finery or
superiority of others, without &ny further object. There
are sycophants who take a pride in being seen in the
Characteristics. 515
train of a great man, as there are fops who delight to
follow in the train of a beautiful woman (from a mere
impulse of admiration and excitement of the imagina-
tion), without the smallest personal pretensions of their
own.
CCCXLV. There is a double aristocracy of rank and
letters which is hardly to be endured monstrum ingens
bi forme. A lord who is a poet as well regards the
House of Peers with contempt, as a set of dull fellows ;
and he considers his brother authors as a Grub-street
crew. A king is hardly good enough for him to touch :
a mere man of genius is no better than a worm. He
alone is all-accomplished. Such people should be sent to
Coventry ; and they generally are so, through their insuf-
ferable pride and self-sufficiency.
CCCXLVL The great are fond of patronising men of
genius when they are remarkable for personal insignifi-
cance, so that they can dandle them like parroquets or
lapdogs ; or when they are distinguished by some awk-
wardness which they can laugh at, or some meanness
which they can despise. They do not wish to encourage
or show their respect for wisdom or virtue, but to wit-
ness the defects or ridiculous circumstances accompany-
ing these, that they may have an excuse for treating
all sterling pretensions with supercilious indifference.
They seek at best to be amused, not to be instructed.
Truth is the greatest impertinence a man can be guilty
of in polite company ; and players and buffoons are the
beau ideal of men of wit and talents.
CCCXLYII. We do not see nature merely from,
looking at it. We fancy that we see the whole of any object
that is before us, because we know no more of it than
what we see. The rest escapes us, as a matter of course ;
and we easily conclude that the idea in our minds and
the image in nature are one and the same. But in fact
518 Characteristics.
we only see a veiy small part of nature, and make au
imperfect abstraction of the infinite number of particu-
lars which are always to be found in it as well as we
can. Some do this with more or less accuracy than
others, according to habit or natural genius. A painter,
for instance, who has been working on a face for several
days, still finds out something new in it which he did
not notice before, and which he endeavours to give in
order to make his copy more perfect which shows how
little an ordinary and unpractised eye can be supposed
to comprehend the whole at a single glance. A young
artist, when he first begins to study from nature, soon
makes an end of his sketch, because he sees only a gene-
ral outline, and certain gross distinctions and masses.
As he proceeds a new field opens to him ; differences
crowd upon differences ; and as his perceptions grow-
more refined, he could employ whole days in working
upon a single part, without satisfying himself at last.
No painter, after a life devoted to the art, and the great-
est care and length of time given to a single study of a
head or other object, ever succeeded in it to his wish, or
did not leave something still to be done. The greatest
artists that have ever appeared are those who have been
able to employ some one view or aspect of nature, and
no more. Thus Titian was famous for colouring,
Eaphael for drawing ; Correggio for the gradations,
Eembrandt for the extremes, of light and shade. The
combined genius and powers of observation of all the
great artists in the world would not be sufficient to con-
vey the whole of what is contained in any one object in
nature ; and yet the most vulgar spectator thinks he
sees the whole of what is before him, at once and without
any trouble at all.
CCCXLVIII. A copy is never so good as an original.
This would not be the case, indeed, if great painters were
Characteristics. 517
in the habit of copying bad pictures ; but as the con-
trary practice holds, it follows that the excellent parts
of a fine picture must lose in the imitation, and the
indifferent part will not be proportionally improved by
anything substituted at a venture for them.
CCCXLIX. The greatest painters are those who have
combined the finest general effect with the highest degree
of delicacy and correctness of detail. It is a mistake that
the introduction of the parts interferes or is incom-
patible with the effect of the whole : both are to be
found in nature. The most finished works of the most
renowned artists are also the best.
CCCL. We are not weaned from a misplaced attach-
ment by (at last) discovering the un worthiness of the
object. The character of a woman is one thing, her
graces and attractions another ; and these last acquire
even an additional charm and piquancy from the disap-
pointment we feel in other respects. The truth is, a
man in love prefers his passion to eveiy other consider-
ation, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue.
Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his
eyes.
CCCLI. An accomplished coquette excites the passions
of others in proportion as she feels none herself. Her
forwardness allures, her indifference irritates desire. She
fans the flame that does not scorch her own bosom, plays
with men's feelings, and studies the effect of her several
arts at leisure and unmoved.
CCCLII. Grace in women is the secret charm thai
draws the soul into its circle, and binds a spell round it
for ever: the reason of which is, that habitual grace
implies a continual sense of delight, of ease and pro-
priety, which nothing can interrupt ever varying, and
adapting itself to all circumstances alike.
518 Characteristics.
CCCLIII. Even among the most abandoned of the
sex, there is generally found to exist one strong and
individual attachment, which remains unshaken through
all circumstances. Virtue steals like a guilty thing into
the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their
devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away.
Nothing can destroy the human heart.
CCCLIV. There is a heroism in crime as well as in
virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their
religion. This makes nothing in their favour, but is a
proud compliment to man's nature. Whatever he is or
Joes, he cannot entirely efface the stamp of the Divinity
jn him. Let him strive ever so, he cannot divest himself
of his natural sublimity of thought and affection, however
he may pervert or deprave it to ill.
CCCLV. We judge of character too much from names
and classes and modes of life. It alters very little with
circumstances. The theological doctrines of Original Sin,
of Grace, and Election, admit of a moral and natural so-
lution. Outward acts or events hardly reach the inward
disposition or fitness for good or evil. Humanity is to
be met with in a den of robbers nay, modesty in a
brothel. Nature prevails, and vindicates its rights to
the last.
CCCLVI. Women do not become abandoned with the
mere loss of character. They only discover the vicious
propensities which they before were bound to conceal.
They do not (all at once) part with their virtue, but
throw aside the veil of affectation and prudery.
I
CCCLVII. It is enough to satisfy ambition to excel
in some one thing. In everything else one would wish
to be a common man. Those who aim at every kind of
distinction turn out mere pretenders and coxcombs.
One of the ancients has said that " the wisest and most
Characteristics. 519
accomplished man is like the statues of the gods placed
against a wall : in front, an Apollo or a Mercury ; behind,
a plain piece of marble."
CCCLVI1I. The want of money, according to the
poet, has the effeect of making men ridiculous. It not
only has this disadvantage with respect to ourselves, but
it often shows us others in a very contemptible point of
view. If we sink in the opinion of the world from
adverse circumstances, the world is apt to sink equally
in ours. Poverty is the test of civility and the touch-
stone of friendship.
CCCL1X. There are those who borrow money in order
to lend it again. This is raising a character for generosity
at an easy rate.
CCCLX. The secret of the difficulties of those people
who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in
want of it, is this : they throw it away as soon as they
get it, on the first whim or extravagance that strikes
them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses
or discharge old debts.
CCCLXI. Those who have the habit of being generous
before they are just, fancy they are getting out of difficul-
ties all their lives, because it is in their power to do so
whenever they will ; and for this reason they go on in the
same way to the last, because the time never comes for
baulking their inclinations or breaking off a bad habit.
CCCLXIL It is a mistake that we court the society
of the rich and the great merely with a view to what we
can obtain from them. We do so because there is
something in external rank and splendour that gratifies
and imposes on the imagination : just as we prefer the
company of those who are in good health and spirits
to that of the sickly and hypochondriacal, or as we
520 Characteristics.
would rather converse with a beautiful woman than
with an ugly one.
CCCLXIII. Shakspearo says, " Men's judgments are
a parcel of their fortunes." A person in depressed
circumstances is not only not listened to : he has not
the spirit to say a good thing.
CCCLXIV. We are very much what others think of
us. The reception our observations meet with gives us
courage to proceed or damps our efforts. A man is a
wit and a philosopher in one place who dares not open
his mouth and is considered as a blockhead in another.
In some companies nothing will go down but coarse
practical jests, while the finest remark or sarcasm would
be disregarded.
CCCLXV. Men of talent rise with their company,
and are brought out by the occasion. Coxcombs and
pedants have no advantage but over the dull and igno-
rant, with whom they talk on by rote.
CCCLXVL In France or abroad one feels one's self
at a loss; but then one has an excuse ready in an
ignorance of the language. In Scotland they speak the
same language, but do not understand a word that you
say. One cannot get on in society without ideas in
common. To attempt to convert strangers to your
notions, or to alter their whole way of thinking in a
short stay among them, is indeed making a toil of a
pleasure, and enemies of those who may be inclined to
be friends.
CCCLXVII. In some situations, if you say nothing
you are called dull ; if you talk, you are thought
impertinent or arrogant. It is hard to know what to do
in this case. The question seems to be whether your
vanity or your prudence predominates.
Character istics. 52 1
CCCLXYIII. One has sometimes no other way of
escaping from a sense of insignificance but by offending
the self-love of others. We should recollect, however,
that good manners are indispensable at all times and
places, whereas no one is bound to make a figure at the
expense of propriety.
CCCLXIX. People sometimes complain that you do
not talk, when they have not given you an opportunity
to utter a word for a whole evening. The real ground
of disappointment has been that you have not shown
a sufficient degree of attention to what they have said.
CCCLXX. I can listen with patience to the dullest
or emptiest companion in the world, if he does not
require me to do anything more than listen.
CCCLXXI. Wit is the rarest quality to be met wiih
among people of education, and the most common among
the uneducated.
CCCLXXII. Are we to infer from this that wit is a
vulgar faculty, or that people of education are propor-
tionably deficient in liveliness and spirit?
CCCLXXIII. We seldom hear and seldomer make a
witty remark : yet we read nothing else in Congreve's
plays.
CCCLXXIV. Those who object to wit are envious of it.
CCCLXXV. The persons who make the greatest
outcry against bad puns are the very same who also find
fault with good ones. A bad pun at least generally
leads to a wise remark that it is a bad one.
CCCLXXVI. A grave blockhead should always go
about with a lively one : they show one another off to
the best advantage.
CCCLXXVII. A lively blockhead in company is a
522 Characteristics.
public benefit. Silence or dullness by the side of folly
looks like wisdom.
CCCLXXVIII. It is not easy to write essays like
Montaigne, nor maxims in the manner of the Due de
la Rochefoucauld.
CCCLXXIX. The most perfect style of writing may
be that which treats strictly and methodically of a given
subject ; the most amusing (if not the most instructive),
is that which mixes up the personal character of the
author with general reflections.
CCCLXXX. The seat of knowledge is in the head ; of
wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong if
we do not feel right.
CCCLXXXI. He who exercises a constant indepen-
dence of spirit, and yet seldom gives offence by the
freedom of his opinions, may be presumed to have a
well-regulated mind.
CCCLXXXIL There are those who never offend by
never speaking their minds; as there are others who
blurt out a thousand exceptionable things without
intending it, and because they are actuated by no feelings
of personal enmity towards any one.
CCCLXXXIII. Cowardice is not synonymous with
prudence. It often happens that the better part of
discretion is valour.
CCCLXXXIV. Mental cowards are afraid of express-
ing a strong opinion, or of striking .hard, lest the blow
should be retaliated. They throw themselves on the
forbearance of their antagonists, and hope for impunity
in their insignificance.
CCCLXXXV. No one ever gained a good word from
friend or foe, from man or woman, by want of spirit.
Characteristics. 523
The public know how to distinguish, between a contempt
for themselves and the fear of an adversary.
CCCLXXXVL Never be afraid of attacking a bully.
CCCLXXXVII. An honest man speaks truth, though
it may give offence ; a vain man, in order that it may.
CCCLXXXVIII. Those only deserve a monumen-
who do not need one that is, who have raised themt
selves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
CCCLXXXIX. Fame is the inheritance, not of the
dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with
lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink
of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings
in it for future flight.
CCCXC. The inhabitant of a metropolis is apt to think
this circumstance alone gives him a decided superiority
over every one else, and does not improve that natural
advantage so much as he ought.
CCCXCI. A true-bred Cockney fancies his having
been born in London is a receipt in full for every other
species of merit : he belongs, in his own opinion, to a
privileged class.
CCCXCII. The number of objects we see from living
in a large city amuses the mind like a perpetual raree-
show, without supplying it with any ideas. The under-
standing thus becomes habitually mechanical and super-
ficial.
CCCXCIII. In proportion to the number of persons
we see, we forget that we know less of mankind.
CCCXCIV. Pertness and conceit are the characteristics
of a true Cockney. He feels little respect for the great-
est things, from the opportunity of seeing them often
and without trouble ; and at the same time he entertains a
52 i Characteristics.
high opinion of himself from his familiarity with them
He who has seen all the great actors, the great public;
characters, the chief public buildings, and the other
wonders of the metropolis, thinks less of them from
this circumstance ; but conceives a prodigious contempt
for all those who have not seen what he has.
CCCXCV. The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful
to the minds and bodies of those who hare never lived
out of it. It is impure, stagnant, without breathing-
space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others ;
and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and
degenerate race of beings.
CCCXCVI. Those who, from a constant change and
dissipation of outward objects, have not a moment's
leisure left for their own thoughts, can feel no res
pect for themselves, and learn little consideration for
humanity.
CCCXCVII. Profound hypocrisy is inconsistent with
vanity, for the last would betray our designs by some
premature triumph. Indeed, vanity implies a sympathy
with others, and consummate hypocrisy is built on a
total want of it.
CCCXCVIII. A hypocrite despises those whom he
deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make
a dupe of himself too, if he could.
CCCXCIX. There is a degree of selfishness so com-
plete that it does not feel the natural emotions of resent-
ment, contempt, &c., against those who have done all
they could to provoke them. Everything but itself is a
matter of perfect indifference to it. It feels towards
others no more than if they were of a different species ;
and inflicts torture or imparts delight, itself unmoved
and immovable.
CCCC. Egotism is an infirmity that perpetually grows
Characteristics. 525
upon a man, till at last he cannot bear to think of any-
thing but himself, or even to suppose that others do.
CCCCI. He will never have true friends who is afraid
of making enemies.
CCCC1I. The way to procure insults is to submit to
them. A man meets with no more respect than he
exacts.
CCCCIII. What puts the baseness of mankind in the
strongest point of view is, that they avoid those who are
in misfortune, instead of countenancing or assisting them.
They anticipate the increased demand on their sym-
pathy or bounty, and escape from it as from a falling
house.
CCCCIV. Death puts an end to rivalship and compe-
tition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor
can we triumph over them.
CCCCV. We judge of an author by the quality, not
the quantity, of his productions. Unless we add as much
to our reputation by a second attempt as we did by our
first, we disappoint expectation, and lose ground with
the public. Those therefore who have done the least
have often the greatest reputation. The author of ' Wa-
verley ' has not risen in public estimation by the extreme
voluminousness of his writings : for it seems as if that
which is done so continually could not be very difficult
to do, and that there is some trick or knack in it. The
miracle ceases with the repetition. The ' Pleasures of
Hope ' and the ' Pleasures of Memory,' on the contrary,
stand alone and increase in value, because they seem un-
rivalled and inimitable, even by the authors themselves.
An economy of expenditure is the way to grow rich in
fame, as well as in other pursuits.
CCCCVI. It is better to drink of deep griefs than to
taste shallow pleasures.
526 Characteristics.
CCCCVII. Those who can command themselves com-
mand others.
CCCCVIIL A surfeit of admiration or friendship often
ends in an indifference worse than hatred or contempt.
It is not a lively perception of faults, but a sickly dis-
taste to the very idea of the persons formerly esteemed,
a palling of the imagination, or a conscious inertness and
inability to revive certain feelings a state from which
the mind shrinks with greater repugnance than from
any other.
CCCCIX. The last pleasure in life is the sense of
discharging our duty.
CCCCX. Those people who are fond of giving trouble
like to take it ; just as those who pay no attention to
the comforts of others are generally indifferent to their
own. We are governed by sympathy ; and the extent
of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility.
CCCCXL No one is idle who can do anything.
CCCCXII. Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity,
or the want of amusement : it seldom implies esteem,
or even mutual regard.
CCCCXIII. Some persons make promises for the
pleasure of breaking them.
CCCCXIV- Praise is no match for blame and obloquy ;
for, were the scales even, the malice of mankind would
throw in the casting-weight.
CCCCXV. The safest kind of praise is to foretell that
another will become great in some particular way. It
lias the greatest show of magnanimity, and the least of it
in reality. We are not jealous of dormant merit, which
nobody recognises but ourselves, and which, in proportion
as it developes itself, demonstrates our sagacity. If our
Characteristics. 527
prediction fails it is forgotten, and if it proves true we
may then set up for prophets.
CCCCXVL Men of genius do not excel in any
profession because they labour in it, but they labour iu
it because they excel.
CCCCXVII. Vice is man's nature : virtue is a habit
or a mask.
CCCCXVIII. The foregoing maxim shows the differ-
ence between truth and sarcasm.
CCCCXIX. Exalted station precludes even the exer-
cise of natural affection, much more of common humanity.
CCCCXX. We for the most part strive to regulate
our actions, not so much by conscience or reason, as by
the opinion of the world. But by " the world " we mean
those who entertain an opinion about us. Now this
circle varies exceedingly, but never expresses more than
a part. In senates, in camps, in town, in country, in
courts, in a prison, a man's vices and virtues are weighed
in a separate scale by those who know him, and who
have similar feelings and pursuits. "We care about no
other opinion. There is a moral horizon which bounds
our view, and beyond which the rest is air. The public
is divided into a number of distinct jurisdictions for
different claims ; and posterity is but a name, even to
those who sometimes dream of it.
GCCCXXI. We can bear to be deprived of everything
but our self-conceit.
CCCCXXII. Those who are fond of setting things to-
rights have no great objection to seeing them wrong.
There is often a good deal of spleen at the bottom of
benevolence.
CCCCXXIII. The reputation of science, which ought
528 Characteristics.
to be the most lasting, as synonymous with truth, is often
the least so. One discovery supersedes another ; and the
progress of light throws the past into obscurity. What
has become of the Blacks, the Lavoisiers, the Priestley s,
in chemistry ? In political economy. Adam Smith is
laid on the shelf, and Davenant and De Witt have given
place to the Says, the Eicardos, the Malthuses, and the
MacCullochs. These persons are happy in one respect :
they have a sovereign contempt for all who have gone
before them, and never dream of those who are to come
after them and usurp their place. When any set of men
think theirs the only science worth studying, and them-
selves the only infallible persons in it, it is a sign how
frail the traces are of past excellence in it, and how
little connection it has with the general affairs of
human life. In proportion to the profundity of any
inquiry is its futility. The most important and lasting
truths are the most obvious ones. Nature cheats us
with her mysteries, one after another, like a juggler
with his tricks, but shows us her plain honest face
without our paying for it. The understanding only
blunders more or less in trying to find out what things
are in themselves : the heart judges at once of its own
feelings and impressions ; and these are true and the
same.
CCCCXXIV. Scholastic divinity was of use in its day,
by affording exercise to the mind of man. Astrology,
and the finding-out the philosopher's stone, answered
the same purpose. If we had not something to doubt, to
dispute and quarrel about, we should be at a loss what
to do with our time.
CCCCXXV. The multitude, who require to be led,
still hate their leaders.
CCCCXXVI. It has been said that any man may have
any woman.
Cfiaracteristics. 5*29
CCCCXXVII. Many people are infatuated with ill-
success, and reduced to despair by a lucky turn in their
favour. While all goes well they are like fish out of
water. They have no confidence or sympathy with their
good-fortune, and look upon it as a momentary delusion.
Let a doubt be thrown on the question, and they begin
to be full of lively apprehensions again ; let all their
hopes vanish, and they feel themselves on firm ground
once more. From want of spirit or of habit, their ima-
ginations cannot rise from the low ground of humility,
cannot reflect the gay flaunting colours of the rainbow,
flag and droop into despondency, and can neither indulge
the expectation nor employ the means of success. Even
when it is within their reach they dare not lay hands
upon it, and shrink from unlooked-for prosperity as
something of which they are ashamed and unworthy.
The class of croakers here spoken of are less delighted
at other people's misfortunes than at their own. Queru-
lous complaints and anticipations of failure are the food
on which they live, and they at last acquire a passion
for that which is the favourite subject of their thoughts
and conversation.
CCCCXXVIII. There are some persons who never
succeed, from being too indolent to undertake anything ;
and others who regularly fail, because the instant they
find success in their power, they grow indifferent and
give over the attempt.
CCCCXXIX. To be remembered after we are dead is
but a poor recompense for being treated with contemp i
while we are living.
CCCCXXX. Mankind are so ready to bestow their
admiration on the dead because the latter do not hear
it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it.
Even fame is the offspring of envy.
530 Characteristics.
CCCCXXXI. Truth is not one, but many ; and an
observation may be true in itself that contradicts another
equally true, according to the point of view from which
we contemplate the subject.
CCCCXXXII. Much intellect is not an advantage in
courtship. General topics interfere with particular at-
tentions. A man, to be successful in love, should think
only of himself and his mistress. Rochefoucauld observes
that lovers are never tired of each other's company, be-
cause they are always talking of themselves.
CCCCXXXIII. The best kind of oratory or argument
is not that which is most likely to succeed with any
particular person. In the latter case we must avail our-
selves of our knowledge of individual circumstances and
character : in the former we must be guided by general
rules and calculations.
CCCCXXXIV. The picture of ' The Misers,' by Quintin
Matsys, seems to proceed upon a wrong idea. It repre-
sents two persons of this description engaged and de-
lighted with the mutual contemplation of their wealth.
But avarice is not a social passion ; and the true miser
should retire into his cell to gloat over his treasures
alone, without sympathy or observation.
COMMONPLACES. 1
I. THE art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to
endure much.
II. Liberty is the only true riches : of all the rest we
are at once the masters and the slaves.
III. Do I not feel this from the least shadow of
restraint, of obligation, of dependence ? Why then do
I complain ? I have had nothing to do all my life but
to think, and have enjoyed the objects of thought, the
sense of truth and beauty, in perfect integrity of soul.
No one has said to me, " Believe this, do that, say what
we would have you;" no one has come between me
and my freewill. I have breathed the very air of truth
and independence. Compared with this unbiassed, un-
controlled possession of the universe of thought and
nature, what I have wanted is light in the balance,
and hardly claims the tribute of a sigh. O Liberty !
what a mistress art thou ! Have I not enjoyed thee as
a bride, and drunk thy spirit as of a wine-cup ? and
will yet do so to my latest breath.
IV. But is not liberty dangerous, and selfwill
excessive ? I do not think so : for those who are not
governed by their own feelings are led away by prejudice
1 Now first republished from the 'Literary Examiner,' 1823,
pp. 156-378. ED.
532 Commonplaces.
and interest ; and reason is a safer guide than opinion
liberty a nobler one than fear.
V. Do I see a Claude ? What is there to prevent me
from fixing my eye, my heart, my understanding, upon
it ? What sophist shall deter me from thinking it fine ?
What is there to make me afraid of expressing what I
think ? I enter into all its truth and beauty. I wonder
over it, I detect each hidden grace, I revel and luxuriate
in it, without any doubts or misgivings. Is not this to
be master of it and of myself? But is the picture mine ?
No oh ! yes, ten times over !
VI. That thing, a lie, has never come near my soul.
I know not what it is, to fear to think, or to say what I
think.
VII. I am choked, pent-up, in any other atmosphere
but this. I cannot imagine how kings and courtiers
contrive to exist. I could no more live without daring
to speak, to look, to feel what I thought, than I could hold
in my breath for any length of time. Nor could I bear
to debar others of this privilege. Were it not that the
great world play the part of slaves themselves, they
would hate to be surrounded with nothing but slaves,
and to see meanness and hypocrisy crawling before them,
as much as we do to see a spider crawling in our path.
VIII. I never knew what it was to feel like a footman.
How many lords-in-waiting can say as much ?
IX. When I consider how little difference there is in
mankind (either in body or mind), I cannot help being-
astonished at the airs some people give themselves.
X. I am proud up to the point of equality : everything
above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence
or abject meanness.
XI. The ignorant and vulgar think that a man wants
Commonplaces. 533
spirit if he does not insult and triumph over them : this
is a great mistake.
XII. For a man to be a coxcomb shows a want of
imagination. No one will ever pride himself on his
beauty who has studied the head of the Antinous, or be
in danger of running into the excess of the fashion who
has any knowledge of the Antique. The ideal is
incompatible with personal vanity.
XIII. A scholar is like a book written in a dead
language : it is not every one that can read in it.
XIV. Just as much as we see in others we have in
ourselves.
XV. A painter gives only his own character in a
portrait whether grave or gay, gross or refined, wise or
foolish. Even in copying a head, there is some difficulty
in making the features unlike our own. A person with
a low forehead or a short chin puts a constraint upon
himself in painting a high forehead or a long chin. So
much has sympathy to do with the operations both of
the eye and the hand, with observation and practice.
XVI. People at a play hiss an unsuccessful author or
actor, as if the latter had committed some heinous crime :
he has committed the greatest crime, that of setting
up a superiority over us which he has failed to make
good.
XVII. The rich, who do nothing themselves, represent
idleness as the greatest crime. They have reason : it is
necessary that some one should do something.
XVIII. What a pity that kings and great men do not
write books instead of mere authors ! What superior
views they must have of things, and how the world
would be benefited by the communication !
534 Commonplaces.
XIX. The greatest proof of superiority is to bear with
impertinence.
XX. No truly great man ever thought himself so.
XXI. Every man, in judging of himself, is his own
contemporary.
XXII. Abuse is an indirect species of homage.
XXIII. From the height from which the great look
down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.
XXIV. It is a bad style that requires frequent breaks
and marks of admiration.
XXV. It happens in conversation as in different
games : one person seems to excel till another does
better, and we then think no more of the first.
XXVI. Those who can keep secrets have no curiosity.
We only wish to gain knowledge, that we may impart it.
XXVII. Genius is a native to the soil where it grows
is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun ; and is not
a hothouse plant or an exotic.
XXVIII. All truly great works of art are national in
their character and origin.
XXIX. People are distinguished less by a genius for
any particular thing than by a peculiar tone and manner
of feeling and thinking, whatever be the subject. The
same qualities of mind or characteristic excellence that
a man shows in one art he would probably have dis-
played in any other. I have heard Mr. Northcote say
that he thought Sir Joshua Eeynolds would have
written excellent genteel comedies. His ' Discourses '
certainly are bland and amiable (rather than striking or
original), like his pictures.
XXX. The same kind of excellence may be observed
Commonplaces. 535
to prevail in different arts at the same period of time, as
characteristic of the spirit of the age. Fielding and
Hogarth were contemporaries.
XXXI. There is an analogy in the style of certain
authors to certain professions. One writes like a lawyer ;
it seems as if another would have made an eminent
physician. Mandeville said of Addison that he was " a
parson in a tie-wig ;" and there is something in ' The
Spectator ' to justify this description of him.
XXXII. Salvator Eosa paints like a soldier ; Nicholas
Poussin like a professor at a university ; Guido like a
finished gentleman ; Parmegiano with something of the
air of a dancing-master. Alas ! Guido was a gamester
and a madman, and Parmegiauo a searcher after the
philosopher's stone ! One of the happiest ideas in
modern criticism was that of designating different living
poets by the cups Apollo gives them to drink out of :
thus Wordsworth is made to drink out of a wooden
bowl, Lord Byron out of a skull chased with silver, &c.
XXXIII. Extreme impatience and irritability are
often combined with a corresponding degree of in-
difference and indolence. When the eagerness of
pxirsuit or the violence of opposition ceases, nothing is
left to interest the mind that has been once accustomed
to a state of morbid excitement.
XXXIV. Artists and other studious professions are
not happy, for this reason : they cannot enjoy mental
repose. A state of lassitude and languor succeeds to
that of overstrained anxious exertion.
XXXV. It is the custom at present to exclude all
but scientific and mechanical subjects from our fashion-
able public institutions, lest any allusions to popular
sentiments or the cause of humanity should by chance
536 Commonplaces.
creep in, to^the great annoyance of the polite and well-
informed part of the audience.
XXXVI. People had much rather be thought to look
ill than old : because it is possible to recover from sick-
ness, but there is no recovering from age.
XXXVII. I never knew but one person who had a
passion for truth, and only one who had the same regard
to the distinction between right and wrong that others
have to their own interest.
XXXVIII. Women are the sport of caprice, the slaves
of custom.
XXXIX. When men are not favourites with women,
it is either from habits of vulgar debauchery, or from
constitutional indifference ; or from an overstrained and
pedantic idea of the sex, taken from books, and answering
to nothing in real life.
XL. The object of books is to teach us ignorance ; that
is, to throw a veil over nature, and persuade us that
things are not what they are, but what the writer fancies
or wishes them to be.
XLI. My little boy said the other day, " He could not
tell what to do without a book to read ; he should wander
about without knowing what to do with himself." So
have I wandered about, till now, and, waking from the
dream of books at last, don't know what to do with
myself. My poor little fellow ! may'st thou dream long
amidst thy darling books, and never wake !
XLII. Political truth is a libel religious truth
blasphemy.
XLIII. The greatest crime in the eyes of the world
is to endeavour to instruct or amend it.
XLIV. Weighing remote consequences in the mind
is like weighing the air in scales.
Commonplaces. 537
XLV. A hypocrite seems to be the only perfect cha-
racter, since it embraces the extremes of what human
nature is, and of what it would be thought.
XLVI. The Scotch understanding differs from the
English as an encyclopaedia does from a circulating
library. An Englishman is contented to pick up a
few odds-and-end.s of knowledge : a Scotchman is master
of every subject alike. Here each individual has a par-
ticular hobby and favourite bypath of his own : in Scot-
land learning is a common hack, which every one figures
away with and uses at his pleasure.
XL VII. A misanthropic writer might be called the
Dents amanuensis.
XL VIII. To be a lord, a papist, and poor, is the most
enviable distinction of humanity. There is all the pride
and sense of independence, irritated and strengthened
by being proscribed by power, and liable to be harassed
by petty daily insults from every the meanest vassal.
What a situation to make the mind recoil from the world
upon itself, and to sit and brood in moody grandeur and
disdain of soul over fallen splendours and present in-
dignities ! It is just the life I should like to have led.
XLIX. The tone of good society is marked by the
absence of personalities. Among well-informed persons
there are plenty of topics to discuss, without giving pain
to any one present without submitting to act the part
of a butt, or of that still poorer creature, the wag that
plays upon him.
L. Londoners complain of the dullness of the country,
and country-people feel equally uncomfortable and at a
loss what to do with themselves in town. The fault is
neither in the town nor in the country : ever)- one is natu-
rally unsettled and dissatisfied without his usual resources
and occupations, let them be tcJiat or where they may.
538 Commonplaces.
LI. Each rank in society despises that which is a step
below it, and the highest looks down upon them all.
To get rid of the impertinence of artificial pretensions
we resort to nature at last. Kings, for this reason, are
fond of low company, and lords marry actresses and
barmaids. The Duke of York (not the present, but the
late King's brother) was at a ball at Plymouth. He
danced with a Miss Byron, a very pretty girl, daughter
of the admiral of that name, and aunt to our poet.
But there was a Mrs. Fanning present, who was a para-
gon of beauty. The Duke asked, "Who is she?" "A
baker's daughter," was the answer. "I don't mean
that ; but what is she now ?" " A broker's wife." The
lady did not perceive that to a prince of the blood
there was little difference between a tradesman's wife
and the daughter of a naval officer, but that the hand-
somest woman at a ball was an object of admiration, in
spite of circumstances.
LIT. It has been asked whether Lord Byron is a writer
likely to live ? Perhaps not : he has intensity of power,
but wants distinctive character. In my opinion, Mr.
Wordsworth is the only poet of the present day that is
likely to live should he ever happen to be born. But who
will be the midwife to bring his works to light ? It is
a question whether Milton would have become popular
without the help of Addison; nay, it is a question
whether he is so, even with it.
LIII. An anecdote is told of General Wolfe, 1 that he
was out with a party of friends in a boat the day before
the Battle of Quebec. It was a beautiful summer
evening, and the conversation turned to Gray's ' Elegy
in a Country Churchyard,' which was just then published.
Wolfe repeated the lines, " For who, to dumb forgetful-
1 See Mackenzie's ' Life of Home,' the author of ' Douglas.'
Commonplaces. 539
ness a prey," &c., with enthusiasm, and said, " I would
rather be the author of those lines than beat the French
to-morrow !" He did beat the French and was himself
killed the next day. Perhaps it was better to be capable
of uttering a sentiment like this than to gain a battle or
write a poem.
LIV. Authors, a short time since, set upon Govern-
ment : Government have of late turned the tables on
them, and set upon authors. In one respect, it must be
confessed, the court tools have greatly the advantage of
us : they can go all lengths in vulgar Billingsgate and
abuse without being charged with vulgarity. They
have the sanction of the Court, they plead the King's pri-
vilege. It is not to be supposed that anything inelegant
or gross can be patronised at Carlton House. Everything
about a place, even the convenience of an Admiralty
secretary, must, one would think, be kept sweet and
wholesome. But, instead of the least refinement and
polish, they treat us with nothing but garbage. A lie
and a nickname are their favourite figures of rhetoric
the alternate substitutes for wit and argument the
twin-supporters of the Bible and the Crown. They use
us (it seems), contrary to the advice of Hamlet, " accord-
ing to our own deserts, and not their own dignity."
The dirt they fling sticks on their opponents, without
soiling their owu fingers. Loyalty is "the true fuller's-
earth, that takes out all stains." At all events, do or
say what they can, it is they who are the gentlemen, and
we who are the blackguards. If we were to call Sir
Walter Scott a " Sawney " writer, or Mr. Croker " Jackey,"
it would be thought shocking, indecent, vulgar, and
no one would look at our publication twice ; yet on the
Tory side the same thing passes for the height of sense and
wit ; and ladies of quality are delighted with the ' John
Bull,' gentlemen read ' Blackwood,' and divines take in
5-iO Commonplaces.
the ' Quarterly.' There is Mr. William Mudford, of the
' Courier ' a vapid commonplace hack, pert and dull
but who would think of calling him by the diminutive
of his Christian name ? No ! these are the extreme re-
sources reserved for the court classics, who in the zeal ot
their loyalty are allowed to forget their manners. There
is, in fact, nothing too mean for the genius of these
writers, or too low for the taste of their employers.
LV. A Tory can rise no higher than the assumption
of. a question. If he relied on anything but custom and
authority, he would cease to be a Tory. He has a preju-
dice in favour of certain things, and against certain persons :
this is all he knows of the matter. He therefore gives
you assertions for argument, and abuse for wit. If you
ask a reason for his opinions, he calls you names ; and
if you ask why he does so, he proves that he is in the
right, by repeating them a thousand times. A nickname
with him is the test of truth. It vents his spleen,
strengthens his own prejudices, and communicates them
mechanically to his hearers.
LVI. "When an elector of Hanover is made into a
king of England, what does he become in the course of
a century ? A George the Fourth !
LYII. If I were to give a toast at a loyal and patriotic
meeting, it should be, " Down with the Stuarts all over
the world!"
LYIII. The taste of the great in pictures is singular,
but not unaccountable. The King is said to prefer the
Dutch to the Italian school of painting ; and if you hint
your surprise at this, you are looked upon as a very
Gothic and outre sort of person. You are told however,
by way of consolation, " To be sure, there is Lord
Carlisle likes an Italian picture Mr. Holwell Carr likes
an Italian picture the Marquis of Stafford is fond of an
Commonplaces. 541
Italian picture Sir George Beaumont likes an Italian
picture." These, notwithstanding, are regarded as
quaint and daring exceptions to the established rule,
and their preference is a species of lese-majeste in the
fine arts as great an eccentricity and want of fashionable
etiquette as if any gentleman or nobleman still preferred
old claret to new, when the King is known to have
changed his mind on this subject ; or was guilty of the
offence of dipping his forefinger and thumb in the
middle of a snuffbox, instead of gradually approximating
the contents to the edge of the box, according to the
most approved models. One would imagine that the
great and exalted in station would like lofty subjects in
works of art, whereas they seem to have an exclusive
predilection for the mean and mechanical. One would
think those whose word is law would be pleased with
the great and striking effects of the pencil : J on the
contrary, they admire nothing but the little and elaborate.
They have a fondness for cabinet or furniture pictures,
and a proportionable antipathy to works of genius.
Even arts with +hem must be servile to be tolerated.
Perhaps the seeming contradiction may be thus explained:
these persons are raised so high above the rest of the
species, that the more violent and agitating pursuits of
mankind appear to them like the turmoil of ants on a
molehill. Nothing interests them but their own pride
and self-importance. Our passions are to them an im-
pertinence an expression of high sentiment they rather
shrink from as a ludicrous and upstart assumption
of equality. They therefore like what glitters to the
1 The Duke of Wellington, it is said, cannot enter into the
merits of Raphael, but he admires " the spirit and fire of Tintoret."
I do not wonder at this bias. A sentiment, probably, never dawned
upon his Grace's mind ; but he may be supposed to relish the
dashing execution and hit or miss manner of the Venetian artist.
O Eaphael ! well is it that it was one who did not understand
thee that blundered upon the destruction of humanity !
542 Commonplaces.
eye, what is smooth to the touch ; but they shun, by an
instinct of sovereign taste, whatever has a soul in it, and
implies a reciprocity of feeling. The gods of the earth
can have no interest in anything human ; they are cut
off from all sympathy with the " bosoms and businesses
of men." Instead of requiring to be wound up beyond
their habitual feeling of stately dignity, they wish to
have the springs of overstrained pretension let down, to
be relaxed with " trifles light as air," to be amused with
the familiar and frivolous, and to have the world appear a
scene of still life, except as they disturb it. The little
in thought and internal sentiment is a necessary reliet
and set-off to the oppressive sense of external magnifi-
cence. Hence kings babble and repeat they know not
what. A childish dotage often accompanies the con-
sciousness of absolute power. Kepose is somewhere
necessary, and the soul sleeps while the senses gloat
around. Besides, the mechanical and high- finished style
of art may be considered as something done to order. It
is a task, to be executed more or less perfectly, according
to the price given and the industry of the artist. We
stand by, as it were, see the work done, insist upon a
greater degree of neatness and accuracy, and exercise a
sort of petty jealous jurisdiction over each particular.
We are judges of the minuteness of the details, and
though ever so nicely executed, as they give us no ideas
beyond what we had before, we do not feel humbled
in the comparison. The artisan scarcely rises into the
artist, and the name of genius is degraded rather than
exalted in his person. The performance is so far ours
that we have paid for it, and the highest price is all that
is necessary to produce the highest finishing. But it is
not so in works of genius and imagination. Their price
is above rubies. The inspiration of the Muse comes not
with the fiat of a monarch, with the donation of a patron ;
and therefore the great turn with disgust or effeminate
Commonplaces. 543
indifference from the mighty masters of the Italian
school because such works baffle and confound their self-
will, and make them feel that there is something in the
mind of man which they can neither give nor take away:
" Quara nihil ad tumn, Papinane, ingenium !"
LLK. The style of conversation in request in courts
proceeds much upon the same principle. It is low, and
it is little. I have known a few persons who have had
access to the presence (and who might be supposed to
catch what they could of the tone of royalty at second-
hand, bating the dignity God knows there was nothing
of that!) and I should say they were the highest finishers
in this respect I ever met with. No circumstance escaped
them ; they worked out all the details (whether to the
purpose or not) like a facsimile ; they mimicked every-
thing, explained everything ; the story was not told, but
acted over again. It is true, there were no grandes
pensees ; there was a complete truce with all thought and
reflection ; but they were everlasting dealers in matters
of fact, and there was no end of their minute prolixity.
One must suppose this mode pleased their betters, or
was copied from them. Dogberry's declaration, " Were
I as tedious as a king I could find in my heart to
bestow it all upon your worship," is not so much a
blunder of the clown's as a sarcasm of the poet's. Are
we to account for the effect (as before) from supposing
that their overstrained attention to great things makes
them seek for a change in little ones? or that their
idea of themselves as raised above every one else is
confirmed by dwelling on the meanest and most insigni-
ficant objects ? or is it that, from their ignorance and
seclusion from the world, everything is alike new and
wonderful to them ? Or that, dreading the insincerity of
those about them, they exact an extraordinary degree of
trifling accuracy, and require every one to tell a story
541 Commonplaces,
as if he was giving evidence on oath before a court of
justice? West said that the late King used to get him
up into a corner, and fairly put his hands before him so
that he could not get away, till he had got every
particular out of him relating to the affairs of the
Royal Academy. This weakness in the mind of kings
has been well insisted on by Peter Pindar : it is of
course like one of the spots in the sun.
LX. I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring
and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in
mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind,
struggling to be free and ending just where it began.
LXI. Happy are they that can say with Timon, " I
am Misanthropos, and hate mankind !" They can never
be at a loss for subjects to exercise their spleen upon ;
their sources of satisfaction must hold out while the world
stands. Those who do not pity others assuredly need
not envy them ; if they take pleasure in the distresses
of their fellow-creatures, they have their wish. Let
them cast an eye on that long disease, human life, on
that villainous compound, human nature, and glut their
malice. There is madness, there is idiotcy, there is
sickness, old age, and death ; there is the cripple, the
blind, and the deaf; there is the deformed in body, the
weak in mind, the prisoner and the gaoler, the beggar
and the dwarf; there is poverty, labour, pain, ignominy;
there is riches, pride, griping avarice, bloated luxury ;
there is the agony of suffering or the lassitude of ennui ;
there is the sickness of the heart from hope delayed, and
the worse and more intolerable sickness from hope
attained ; there is the gout, the stone, the plague cold,
fever, thirst, and nakedness shipwreck, famine, fire, and
the sword : all are instruments of human fate, and pamper
the dignity of human nature. There are ihe racking
pains of jealousy, remorse, and anguish the lingering
Commonplaces. . 5i5-
ones of disappointment, sorrow, and regret ; there is the
consciousness of unmerited hopeless obscurity, and " the
cruel sunshine thrown by fortune on a fool ;" there is
unrequited love, and. marriage ; there is the coquette,
slighting others and slighted in her turn the jilt, the
antiquated prude, the brutal husband, and the common-
place wife ; there are vows of celibacy and lost character ;
there is the cabal, the idle gossiping, the churlishness,
and dullness of the country, the heartlessness and pro-
fligacy of great cities ; there are the listless days, the
sleepless nights, the having too much or too little to do ;
years spent in vain in a pursuit, or, if successful, the
having to leave it at last ; there are the jealousies of
different professions among themselves or of each other
lawyers, divines, physicians, artists ; the contempt of
the more thriving for the less fortunate, and the hatred
and heartburnings with which it is repaid ; there is
hypocrisy, oppression, falsehood, treacheiy, cowardice,
selfishness, meanness : the luck of fools, the respectability
of knaves ; the cant of piety, loyalty, and humanity ; the
lamentations of West India planters over the ingratitude
of their negro slaves, and Louis XVIII. resigning to
God and the Mother of all Saints the credit of the success
of his arms ; there are sects and parties, kings and
their subjects, queens and common-councilmen, speeches
in Parliament ; plays and actors damned, or successful for
a time, and then laid on the shelf and heard of no more ;
quacks at all corners, mountebanks in the pulpit, and
drones in the state ; peace and war, treaties of offence
and defence, conspiracies, revolutions, Holy Alliances ;
the sudden death of Lord Castlereagh, and the oratory
of his successor, Mr. Canning, hid for the present, like
the moon " in its vacant interlunar cave ;" and Ferdinand
and his paper kites, and the Cortes, unconscious of the
rebel maxim, " Catch a king and kill a king ;" and Slop,
ravine at the bloodthirsty victims of courtly assassins,
2 N
546 Commonplaces.
and whetting mild daggers for patriot throats ; and Mr.
Croker's cheat-the-gallows face in the ' Quarterly,' and Lord
Wellington's heart in the cause of Spanish liberty, and a
beloved monarch, retired amid all this to shady solitude
" to play with wisdom." A good hater may here find
wherewithal to feed the largest spleen, and swell it, even
to bursting !
LXII. Happiness, like mocking, is catching. At
least, none but those who are happy in themselves can
make others so. No wit, no understanding, neither riches
nor beauty, can communicate this feeling ; the happy
alone can make happy. Love and joy are twins, or born
of each other.
LXI1I. No one knows when he is safe from ridicule.
LXIV. Is it a misfortune or a happiness that we so
often like the faults of one we love better than the vir-
tues of any other woman? that we like her refusals
better than all other favours ? that we like her love of
others better than any one else's love of us?
LXV. If a man were refused by a woman a thousand
times and he really loved her, he would still think that
at the bottom of her heart she preferred him to every one
else. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider that all
passion is a species of madness, and that the feeling in
the mind towards the beloved object is the most amiable
and delightful thing in the world? Our love to her is
heavenly, and so (the heart whispers us) must hers be
to us ; though it were buried at the bottom of the sea
nay, from the tomb, our self-love would revive it. We
never can persuade ourselves that a mistress cares no-
thing about us till we no longer care about her. No !
It is certain that there is nothing truly deserving of love
but love, and
'' In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,"
we still believe in the justice of the blind god.
Commonplaces. 547
LXVI. It would be easy to forget a misplaced attach-
ment, but that we do not like to acknowledge ourselves
in the wrong.
LXVII. A great mind is one that can forget or look
beyond itself.
LXVITI. The grand scenes of nature are more adapted
for occasional visits than for constant residence. They
are the temples of the goddess, not fit dwellings for her
worshippers. Familiarity breeds contempt or indiffer-
ence ; and it is better to connect this feeling with the
petty and trivial than with the lofty and sublime. Be-
sides, it is unnecessary to run the risk in the latter
case. One chief advantage of the great and magnificent
objects of nature is, that they stamp their image on the
mind for ever ; the blow need not be repeated to have
the desired effect. We take them with us wherever we
go we have but to think of them and they appear;
and at the distance of half a life, or of the circumference
of the globe, we unlock the springs of memory, and the
tall mountain shoots into the sky, the lake expands its
bosom, and the cataract rushes from the pine-clad rock.
The bold majestic outline is all that there is to discover
in such situations, and this we can always remember.
In more cultivated and artificial scenes we may observe
a thousand hedgerow beauties with curious eye, or
pluck the tender flower beneath our feet, while Skiddaw
hovers round our heads and the echoes of Helvellyn
thunder in our hearts.
LXIX. I should always choose to live within reach
of a fine prospect, rather than to see one from my win-
dows. A number of romantic distant objects staring in
upon one (uncalled for) tantalise the imagination, and
tempt the truant feet; whereas, at home, I wish to
feel satisfied where I am, and sheltered from the world.
548 Commonplaces.
LXX. Mr. Martin's picture of ' Adam and Eve in Para-
dise ' has this capital defect, that there is no repose in it..
You see two insignificant naked figures, and a prepos-
terous architectural landscape, like a range of buildings,
overlooking them. They might as well be represented
sleeping on the top of the pinnacle of the Temple, with
the world and all the glories thereof spread out before
them. They ought to have been painted imparadised in.
one another's arms, shut up in measureless content, with.
Eden's choicest bowers closing round them, and Nature
stooping to clothe them with vernal flowers. Nothing
could be too retired, too voluptuous, too sacred from
day's garish eye ; instead of which you have a gaudy
panoramic view, a glittering barren waste, a triple row
of clouds, of rocks and mountains, piled one upon the
other as if the imagination already bent its idle gaze
over that wide world which was so soon to be their place
of exile, and the aching restless spirit of the artist was-
occupied in building a stately prison for our first parents,,
instead of decking their bridal bed and wrapping them
in a shortlived dream of bliss.
LXX I. The mind tires of variety, but becomes recon-
ciled to uniformity. Change produces a restless habit^
a love of further change ; the recurrence of the same
objects conduces to repose and to content. My uncle
Toby's bowling-green bounded his harmless ambition :
Buonaparte, not contented with France and Europe for a
pleasure-ground, wanted to have Russia for an ice-house ;
and Alexander, at the farthest side of India, wept for
new worlds to conquer. If we let our thoughts wander
abroad, there is no end to fantastic projects, to the craving
after novelty, to fickleness, and disappointment : if we
confine them at home, peace may find them there. Mr.
Home Tooke used to contend that all tendency to excess
was voluntary in the mind ; the wants of nature kept
Commonplaces. 549
within a certain limit. Even if a person adhered to a
regular number of cups of tea or glasses of wine, he did
not feel tempted to exceed this number : but if he once
went beyond his usual allowance, the desire to transgress
increased with its indulgence, and the artificial appe-
tite was proportioned to the artificial stimulus. It has
been remarked that in the tropical climates, where there
is no difference of seasons, time passes away on smoother
and swifter pinions, " the earth spins round on its soft
axle," unnoticed, unregretted, and life wears out soonest
and best in sequestered privacy, within the round of a
few simple unenvied enjoyments.
LXXII. The retailing of a set of anecdotes is not con-
versation. A story admits of no answer ; a remark or
an opinion naturally calls forth another, and leads to as
many different views of a subject as there are minds in
company. An officer in a Scotch marching regiment has
always a number of very edifying anecdotes to commu-
nicate ; but unless you are of the same mess or the same'
olan, you are necessarily sent to Coventry. Prosing
mechanical narrations of this kind are tedious, as well
as tinctured with egotism : if they are set off with a
brilliant manner, with mimicry and action, they become
theatrical. The speaker is a kind of Mr. Mathews at
home, and the audience are more or less delighted and
amused with the exhibition ; but there is an end of
society, and you no more think of interrupting a con-
firmed story-teller than you would of interrupting a
favourite actor on the stage.
LXXIII. The Queen's trial gave a deathblow to the
iiopes of all reflecting persons with respect to the springs
and issues of public spirit and opinion. It was the only
question I ever knew that excited a thorough popular
feeling. It struck its roots into the heart of the nation ;
it took possession of every house or cottage in the
650 Commonplaces.
kingdom ; man, woman, and child took part in it, as if it
had been their own concern. Business was laid aside
for it; people forgot their pleasures, even their meals
were neglected ; nothing was thought off but the fate of
the Queen's trial. The arrival of the ' Times ' newspaper
was looked upon as an event in every village ; the mails
hardly travelled fast enough, and he who had the latest
intelligence in his pocket was considered as the happiest
of mortals. It kept the town in a ferment for several
weeks ; it agitated the country to the remotest corner.
It spread like wildfire over the kingdom ; the public
mind was electrical. So it should be on other occasions ;
it was only so on this. An individual may be oppressed,
a nation may be trampled upon, mankind may be
threatened with annihilation of their rights and the
threat enforced ; and not a finger is raised, not a heart
sinks, not a pulse beats quicker in the public or private
quarrel ; a momentary burst of vain indignation is heard,
dies away, and is forgotten. Truth has no echo, but
folly and imposture have a thousand reverberations
in the hollowness of the human heart. At the very
time when all England went mad about the poor Queen,
a man of the name of Bruce was sent to Botany Bay for
having spoken to another who was convicted of sedition,
and no notice was taken of it. We have seen what has
been done in Spain, and earth does not roll its billows
over the heads of tyrants, to bury them in a common
grave. What was it then in the Queen's cause that
stirred this mighty " coil and pudder " in the breast ?
Was it the love of truth, of justice, of liberty ? No such
thing ! Her case was at best doubtful, and she had only
suffered the loss of privileges peculiar to herself. ' But
she was a queen, she was a woman, and a thorn in the
King's side. There was the cant of loyalty, the cant of
gallantry, and the cant of freedom, mixed altogether in
delightful and inextricable confusion. She was a queen
Commonplaces. 551
all the loj'al and well-bred bowed to the name ; she
was a wife all the women took the alarm; she was at
variance with the lawful sovereign all the " free and
independent electors" of Westminster and London were
up in arms. The Queen's name was a tower of strength,
which these persons had hitherto wanted and were glad
to catch at. Though a daughter of the Duke of Bruns-
wick, though a granddaughter of George III., yet, because
she was separated from her husband, she must be hand-
and-glove with the people the wretched, helpless, doat-
ing, credulous, meddlesome people, who are always ready
to lick the hands not just then raised to shed their blood
or rivet on their chains. There was here an idol to pull
down and an idol to set up. There was an imperial
title and meretricious frontispiece to the spurious
volume of Liberty. There was the mock majesty of an
empty throne behind the real one, and the impertinence
of mankind was interested to thrust the unwelcome
claimant into it. City patriots stood a chance of
becoming liege men and true to a queen of their own
choosing. The spirit of faction was half merged in the
spirit of servility. There was a rag-fair of royalty ;
every one carried his own paints and patches into the
presence of the new Lady of Loretto ; there was a
sense of homage due, of services and countenance
bestowed on majesty. This popular farce had all the
charm of private theatricals. The Court of St. James's
was nothing to the makebelieve Court at Kew. The
King was a sort of state-fixture ; but the Queen Consort,
the favourite of the rabble, was herself one of them.
The presence-doors were flung open, and every black-
guard and blockhead rushed in. "What an opportunity
to see, to hear, to touch a queen ! To gratify the itch
of loyalty by coming in contact with the person of the
sovereign was a privilege reserved for a few ; but to
receive this favour at the Queen's hands was a distinction
552 Commonplaces.
common to all. All the trades of London caine to kiss
the Queen's hand; Presbyterian parsons knelt to kiss the
hand of their royal mistress ; the daughters of country
curates and of city knights sipped loyalty from the back
of her Majesty's hand. Eadicals and Eeformers contended
who should be first in paying homage to the Queen ; there
was a race for precedence, quarrelling and pulling of caps,
between the wives of distinguished orators and carica-
turists, at the very footsteps of the throne ; while Mr.
Alderman Wood,
" A gentle husher, Vanity by name,"
strove to keep the peace, and vindicate the character of
civic dames for courtly manners. Mr. Place, Mr. Hone,
Mr. Thelwall, Sir Richard Phillips, kissed her Majesty's
hand ; Mr. Cobbett alone was not invited l it was thought
he might bite. What a pity that it was before Mr. Irving's
time, or he might have thrown in the casting-weight
of his perfect mind and body, and ousted both the King
and Bergami ! In the midst of all this, his Majesty went
to the play, bowed to the boxes, the pit, the gallery, and
to the actors ; and you would suppose, in four days' time,
that a whisper had never been uttered to imply that the
King not only was not the most graceful man in his
dominions, but the best of monarchs and of husbands.
The Queen and her picnic parties were no more thought
of. What a scene for history to laugh at !
LXXIV. A crowd was collected under the Horse
Guards, and on inquiry I found it was to see the
Duke of York come out. " What went they forth for to
see ?" They were some of the lowest and most wretched
of the people, and it was perhaps the sense of contrast
a sense of which the great and mighty have always/'
1 This is lien trouvtf, but not quite correct. ED.
Commonplaces. 553
availed themselves liberally, to cherish the enthusiasm
of their admirers. It was also curiosity to see a name, a
sound, that they had so often heard, reduced to an object
of sight a metaphysical and political abstraction actually
coming out of a door with a ruddy face and a frock-coat.
It was, in the first place, the Comuiander-in-Chief, and
the commander of the troops at Dunkirk, the author of
the love-letters to Mrs. Clark and of army circulars, the
son of the King and presumptive heir to the Crown
there were all these contradictions embodied in the
same person. " Oh, the -wonderful works of nature !" as
the Recruit in the play says on looking at the guinea
which has just enlisted him. So we may say on looking
at a king or a king's brother. I once pointed out the
Duke of York to a Scotchman. " Is that his Grace I
mean his Royal Highness ?" said the native of the North,
out of breath to acknowledge the title, and pay with his
tongue the instinctive adulation which his heart felt.
LXXV. When Erne Deans becomes a fine lady, do we
not look back with regret to the time when she was the
poor faded lily of St. Leonards, the outcast and con-
demned prisoner? So, should the cause of liberty and
mankind ever become triumphant instead of militant,
may we not heave a sigh of regret over the past, and
think that poor suffering human nature, with all its
wrongs and insults, trodden into the earth like a vile
weed, was a more interesting topic for reflection ? We
need not be much alarmed for the event, even if this
should be go ; for the way to Utopia is not "the primrose
path of dalliance," and, at the rate we have hitherto
gone on, it must be many thousand years off.
LXXVI. Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give
them but bugbears and idols, it is all that they ask;
the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and false-
hood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
554 Commonplaces.
LXXVII. The Devil was a great loss in the preter-
natural world. He was always something to fear and
to hate ; he supplied the antagonist powers of the
imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands
firm without him. Mr. Irving may perhaps bring him
into fashion again.
LXXVIII. Perhaps the evils arising from excessive
inequality in a State would be sufficiently obviated if
property were divided equally among the surviving
children. But it is said it would be impossible to make
a law for this purpose under any circumstances or with
any qualifications, because the least interference with the
disposal of property would be striking at its existence,
and at the very root of all property. And yet this
objection is urged in those very countries where the
law of primogeniture (intended to keep it in dispropor-
tionate masses, and setting aside the will of the testator
altogether,) is established as an essential part of the law
of the land. So blind is reason, where passion or
prejudice intervenes I
LXXIX. Kings who set up for gods upon earth should
be treated as madmen, which one half of them, or as
idiots, which the other half, really are.
LXXX. Tyrants are at all times mad with the lust
of power.
LXXXI. Eeformers are naturally speculative people,
and speculative people are effeminate and inactive. They
brood over ideas, till realities become almost indifferent
to them. They talk when they should act, and are
distracted with nice doubts and distinctions, while the
enemy is thundering at the gates and the bombshells are
bursting at their feet. They hold up a paper constitution
as their shield, which the sword pierces through, and
drinks their heart's blood. They are cowards, too, at
bottom, and dare not strike a decisive blow lest it
Commonplaces. 555
should be retaliated. "While they merely prate of
moderation and the public good, they think, if the worst
conies to the worst, there may still be a chance of retreat
for them, hoping to screen themselves behind their
imbecility. They are not like their opponents, whose all
is at stake, and who are urged on by instinctive fury ani
habitual cunning to defend it. The common good is too
remote a speculation to call forth any violent passions or
personal sacrifices, and if it should be lost it is as fine
a topic as ever to harangue and lament about. Patriots
are, by the constitution of their minds, poets ; and an
elegy on the fall of Liberty is as interesting to hear or
to recite as an ode on its most triumphant success.
They who let off Ferdinand the other day, confiding in
the promises of a traitor and in the liberality of a despot,
were greater hypocrites to themselves than he was.
LXXXII. In the late quarrel about liberty, upwards
of five millions of men have been killed, and one -king !
LXXXIII. The people (properly speaking) are not a
herd of slaves just let loose, or eke goaded on, like blind
drudges, to execute the behests of their besotted task-
masters ; but the band of free citizens, taught to know
their rights and prepared to exercise them.
LXXXIV. The people are the slaves of ignorance and
custom ; the friends of the people are the dupes of reason
and humanity. Power stops at nothing but its own
purposes.
LXXXV. The author of 'Waverley' observes : "In
truth the Scottish peasantiy are still infected with that
rage for funeral ceremonial which once distinguished the
grandees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary law
was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose
of restraining it ; and I have known many in the lowest
stations who have denied themselves, not merely the
556 Commonplaces.
comforts but almost the necessaries of life, in order to
save such a sum of money as might enable their sur-
viving friends to bury them like Christians, as they
termed it; nor could their faithful executors be prevailed
upon, though equally necessitous, to turn to the use and
maintenance of the living the money vainly wasted upon
the interment of the dead." (' Antiquary,' vol. iv. p. 48.)
If I were to attempt an explanation of the peculiar
delight and pride which the Scotch are thus supposed to
take in funeral ceremonies, I should say that, as inhabi-
tants of wild and barren districts, they are more familiar
with the face of nature than with the face of man, and
easily turn to it as their place of rest and final home.
There is little difference, in their imaginations, between
treading the green mountain-turf and being laid beneath
it. The world itself is but a living tomb to them. Their
mode of subsistence is cold, hard, comfortless, bare of
luxuries and of enjoyments, torpid, inured to privations
and self-denial ; and death seems to be its consummation
;and triumph, rather than its unwelcome end. Their
life was a sort of struggle for a dreary existence, so that
it relapses into the grave with joy and a feeling of exul-
tation. The grey rock out of which their tomb is cut is a
citadel against all assaults of the flesh and the spirit; the
kindred earth that wraps the weather-beaten worn-out
body is a soft and warm resting-place from the hardships
it. has had to encounter. It is no wonder, therefore, that
the Scotch prepare for the due celebration of this event
with the foresight characteristic of them, and that their
friends consign them to the earth with becoming forti-
tude and costly ceremony. " Man," saya Sir Thomas
Brown, though in quite a different spirit " man is a
noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the
grave ; solemnising nativities and deaths with equal
lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, even in the
infancy of his nature." (See his ' Urn-Burial.')
Commonplaces. 557
LXXXVI. In < The Heart of Mid- Lothian ' (vol. iv.
p. 13)' we meet with the following reflections : " Per-
haps one ought to be actually a Scotchman to conceive
how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situ-
ation, they feel their mutual connection with each
other as natives of the same country. There are, I
believe, more associations common to the inhabitants of
a rude and wild than of a well-cultivated and fertile
country ; their ancestors have more seldom changed their
place of residence ; their mutual recollection of remark-
able objects is more accurate ; the high and the low are
more interested in each other's welfare ; the feelings of
kindred and relationship are more widely extended ; and,
in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always honour-
able, even when a little too exclusively strained, have
more influence on men's feelings and actions." Thus far
our author, but without making much progress in the
question he has started. " Via, Goodman Dull ! thou
hast spoken no word all this while," I might say, but I
do not choose to say so, to the Great Unknown. There
is an enumeration of particulars, slightly and collaterally
connected with the subject, but, as "Douce David Deans"
would say, " they do not touch the root of the matter."
In fact, then, the mind more easily forms a strong and
abstracted attachment to the soil (in which it was bred)
in remote and barren regions, where few artificial objects
or pursuits fritter away attention or divert it from its
devotion to the naked charms of nature (perhaps the
privations, dangers, and loneliness incident to such
situations also enhance the value and deepen the interest
we take in them) ; and again, in a rude and scattered
population, where there is a dearth and craving after
general society, we naturally become more closely and
permanently attached to those few persons with whom
neighbourhood, or kindred, or a common cause, or similar
habits or language, bring us into contact. Two English-
558 Commonplaces.
men meeting in the wilds of Arabia would instantly
become friends, though they had never seen one another
before, from the want of all other society and sympathy.
So it is in the ruder and earlier stages of civilisation.
This is what attaches the Highlander to his hill and to his
clan ; this is what attaches Scotchmen to their country
and to one another. A Londoner, in his fondness for
London, is distracted between the playhouses, the opera,
the shops, the coffeehouses, the crowded streets, &c.
An inhabitant of Edinburgh has none of these diver-
sities to reconcile ; he has but one idea in his head or in
his mouth that of the Calton Hill : an idea which is
easily embraced, and which he never quits his hold of
till something more substantial offers a situation as
porter in a warehouse, or as pimp to a great man.
TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR. 1
I. THERE is no flattery so gross or extravagant but it
will be acceptable. It leaves some sting of pleasure
behind, since its very excess seems to imply that there
must be some foundation for it. Tell the ugliest person
in the world that he is the handsomest, the greatest fool
that he is a wit, and he will believe and thank you.
There is a possibility at least that you may be sincere.
Even the sycophant's ironical laugh turns to a smile ot
self-complacency at our own fancied perfections.
II. There is no abuse so foul or unprovoked but some
part of it will stick. Ill words break the charm of good
deeds. Call a man names all the year round, and at
the end of the year (for no other reason) his best friends
will not care to mention his name. It is no pleasant
reflection that a man has been accused, however unjustly,
of a folly or a crime. We involuntarily associate words
with things ; and the imagination retains an unfavour-
able impression long after the understanding is disabused.
Or, if we repel the charge and resent the injustice, this
is making a toil of a pleasure, and our cowardice and
indolence soon take part with the malice of mankind.
The assailants are always the more courageous party.
It degrades a man even to be subjected to undeserved
reproach, for it seems as if without some flaw or blemish
1 Now first re-published from the ' Atlas ' newspaper, September
the 27th and October the llth, 1829. ED.
560 Trifles Light as Air.
no one would dare to attack him ; so that the viler and
more unprincipled the abuse, the lower it sinks, not him
who offers, but him who is the object of it, in general
estimation. If we see a man covered with mud we
avoid him, without expressing the cause. The favourites
of the public, like Csesar's wife, must not be suspected ;
and it is enough if we admire and bear witness to the
superiority of another under the most favourable circum-
stances. To do this in spite of secret calumny and vulgar
clamour is a pitch of generosity which the world has not
arrived at.
III. A certain manner makes more conquests than
either wit or beauty. Suppose a woman to have a grace-
ful ease of deportment, and a mild self-possession pervad-
ing every look and tone of voice ; this exercises an
immediate influence on a person of an opposite and
irritable temperament it calms and enchants him at
once. It is like soft music entering the room. From
that time he can only breathe in her presence, and to
be torn from her is to be torn from himself for ever.
IV. Fame and popularity are disparate quantities,
having no common measure. A poet or painter now
living may be as great as any poet or painter that ever
did live ; and if he be so, he will be so thought of by
future ages, but he cannot by the present. Persons of over-
weening vanity and shortsighted ambition, who would
forestall the meed of fame, show themselves unworthy of
it, for they reduce it to a level with the reputation they
have already earned. They should surely leave some-
thing to look forward to. It is weighing dross against
gold comparing a meteor with the polar star. Lord
Byron's narrowness or presumption in this respect was
remarkable. What ! did he not hope to live two hundred
years himself, that he should say it was merely a fashion
to admire Milton and Shakspeare, as it was the fashion
Trifles Light as Air. 561
to admire him ? Those who compare Sir Walter Scott
with Shakspeare do not know what they are doing. They
may blunt the feeling with which we regard Shakspeare
as an old and tried friend, though they cannot transfer it
to Sir Walter Scott, who is, after, all but a new and
dazzling acquaintance. To argue that there is no differ-
ence in the circumstances is not to put the author of
' Waveiiey ' into actual possession of the reversion of fame,
but to say that he shall never enjoy it, since it is no
better then a chimera and an illusion. It is striking at
the foundation of true and lasting renown, and overturn,
ing with impatient and thoughtless hands the proud
pre-eminence, the golden seats and blest abodes, which
the predestined heirs of immortality wait for beyond
the tomb. The living are merely candidates (more or
less successful) for popular applause: the dead are a
religion, or they are nothing.
V. Persons who tell an artist that he is equal to
Claude, or a writer that he is as great as Bacon, do
not add to the satisfaction of their hearers, but pay
themselves a left-handed compliment, by supposing that
their judgment is equivalent to the suffrage of posterity.
VI. A French artist advised young beginners against
being too fond of a variety of colours, which might do
very well on a smaller scale, but when they came to
paint a large picture they would find they had soon
lavished all their resources. So superficial writers may
deck out their barren round of commonplaces in the
finest phrases imaginable ; but those who are accustomed
to work out a subject by dint of study must not use up
their whole stock of eloquence at once ; they must bring
forward their most appropriate expressions as they
approach nearer to the truth, and raise their style with
their thoughts. A good general keeps his reserve, the
elite of his troops, to charge at the critical moment.
2o
562 Trifles Light as Air.
VII. " Procrastination is the thief of time." It is
singular that we are so often loth to begin what gives
us great satisfaction in the progress, and what, after we
have once begun it, we are as loth to leave off. The
reason is, that the imagination is not excited till the
first step is taken or the first blow struck. Before we
begin a certain task we have little notion how we
shall set about it, or how we shall proceed ; it is like
attempting something of which we have no knowledge,
and which we feel we are incapable of doing. It
is no wonder, therefore, that a strong repugnance
accompanies this seeming inaptitude : it is having to
make bricks without straw. But after the first effort is
over, and we have turned our minds to the subject, one
thing suggests another, our ideas pour in faster than we
can use them, and we launch into the stream, which
bears us on with ease and pleasure to ourselves. The
painter who did not like to mix his colours or begin on
a new canvas in the morning, sees the light close in
upon him with unwilling eyes ; and the essayist, though
gravelled for a thought or at a loss for words at the
outset of his labours, winds up with alacrity and spirit.
VIII. Conversation is like a game at tennis, or any
other game of skill. A person shines in one company
who makes no figure in another just as a tolerably good
cricketer, who might be an acquisition to a country club,
would have his wicket struck down at the first bowl at
Lord's Ground. The same person is frequently dull at one
time and brilliant at another : sometimes those who are
most silent at the beginning of an entertainment are most
loquacious at the end. There is a run in the luck both in
cards and conversation. Some people are good speakers
but bad hearers : these are put out, unless they have all
the talk to themselves. Some are best in a tete-a-tete,
others in a mixed company. Some persons talk well on
Trifles Light as Air. 563
a set subject, who can hardly answer a common question,
still less pay a compliment or make a repartee. Conver-
sation may be divided into the personal or the didactic :
the one resembles the style of a lecture, the other that
of a comedy. There are as many who fail in conversation
from aiming at too high a standard of excellence, and
wishing only to utter oracles or jeux-d esprit, as there
are who expose themselves from having no standard
at all, and saying whatever comes into their heads.
Pedants and gossips compose the largest class. Numbers
talk on without paying any attention to the effect they
produce upon their audience. Some few take no part in
the discourse but by assenting to everything that is said ;
and these are not the worst companions in the world.
An outcry is sometimes raised against dull people, as if
it were any fault of theirs. The most brilliant per-
formers very soon grow dull, and we like people to begin
as they end. There is then no disappointment or
false excitement, The great ingredient in society is
goodwill. He who is pleased with what he himself has
to say, and listens in his turn with patience and good-
humour, is wise and witty enough for us. We do not
covet those parties where one wit dares not go, because
another is expected. How delectable must the encounter
of such pretenders be to one another ! how edifying
to the bystanders !
IX. It was well said by Mr. Coleridge that people
never improve by contradiction, but by agreeing to differ.
If you discuss a question amicably you may gain a clear
insight into it ; if you dispute about it you only throw-
dust in one another's eyes. In all angry or violent
controversy your object is, not to learn wisdom, but to
prove your adversary a fool ; and in this respect, it must
be admitted, both parties usually succeed.
X. Envy is the ruling passion of mankind. The
564 Trifles Light as Air.
explanation is obvious. As we are of infinitely more
importance in our own eyes than all the world beside,
the chief bent and study of the mind is directed to
impress others with this self-evident but disputed dis-
tinction, and to arm ourselves with the exclusive sig-
natures and credentials of our superiority, and to hate
and stifle all that stands in the way of or obscures our
absurd pretensions. Each individual looks upon him-
self in the light of a dethroned monarch, and the rest of
the world as his rebellious subjects and runaway slaves,
who withhold the homage that is his natural due, and
burst the chains of opinion he would impose upon them.
The madman in Hogarth (sooth to say), with his crown
of straw and wooden sceptre, is but a type and common-
place emblem of everyday life.
XL It has been made a subject of regret that in forty
or fifty years' time (if we go on as we have done) no one
will read Fielding. What a falling-off ! Already, if you
thoughtlessly lend ' Joseph Andrews ' to a respectable
family, you find it returned upon your hands as an
improper book. To be sure people read ' Don Juan,'
but that is in verse. The worst is, that this senseless
fastidiousness is more owing to an affectation of gentility
than to a disgust at vice. It is not the scenes that are
described at an alehouse, but the alehouse at which they
take place, that gives the mortal stab to taste and
refinement. One comfort is, that the manners and
characters which are objected to as low in Fielding have
in a great measure disappeared or taken another shape ;
and this at least is one good effect of all excellent satire
that it destroys " the very food whereon it lives." The
generality of readers, who only seek for the representation
of existing models, must therefore, after a time, seek in
vain for this obvious verisimilitude in the most power-
ful and popular works of the kind, and will be either
Trifles Light as Air. 565
disgusted or at a loss to understand the application.
People of sense and imagination, who look beyond the
surface or the passing folly of the day, will always read
c Tom Jones.'
XII. There is a set of critics and philosophers who have
never read anything but what has appeared within the
last ten years, and to whom every mode of expression or
turn of thought extending beyond that period has a very
odd effect. They cannot comprehend how people used
such out-of-the-way phrases in the time of Shakspeare ; tho
style of Addison would not do now ; even Junius, they
think, would make but a shabby threadbare figure in the
columns of a modem newspaper. All the riches that the
language has acquired in the course of time, all the
idiomatic resources arising from study or accident, are
utterly discarded sink underground ; and all that is
admired by the weak, or sought after by the vain, is a
thin surface of idle affectation and glossy innovations.
Even spelling and pronunciation have undergone such
changes within a short time that Pope and Swift require a
little modernizing to accommodate them to " ears polite ;"
and a bluestocking belle would be puzzled in reciting
Dryden's sounding verse, with its occasional barbarous
oldfashioned accenting, if it were the custom to read
Dryden aloud in those serene morning circles. There is
no class more liable to set up this narrow superficial
standard, than people of fashion, in their horror of what
is vulgar and ignorance of what really is so ; they have
a jargon of their own, but scout whatever does not fall
in with it as Gothic and outre ; the English phrases
handed down from the last age they think come east of
Temple Bar, and they perform a sedulous quarantine
against them. The ' Times,' having found it so written
in some outlandish depeche of the Marquis of VVellesley's,
chose, as a mark of the haute literature, to spell dispatch
566 Trifles Light as Air.
with an e, and for a long time he was held for a novice
or an affected and absolute writer who spelt it otherwise.
The ' Globe,' with its characteristic good sense and
sturdiness of spirit, has restored the old English spelling,
in defiance of scandal. Some persons who were growing
jealous that the author of ' Waverley ' had eclipsed their
favourite luminaries may make themselves easy ; he
himself is on the wane with those whose opinions ebb
and flow with the "inconstant moon" of fashion, and
has given way (if Mr. Colburn's advertisements speak
true, " than which what's truer?") to a set of titled non-
entities. Nothing solid is to go down, or that is likely
to last three months ; instead of the standing dishes of
old English literature, we are to take up with the
nicknacks and whip syllabubs of modern taste are to be
occupied with a stream of titlepages, extracts, and
specimens, like passing figures in a camera obscura and
are to be puzzled in a mob of new books as in the mob
of new faces in what was formerly the narrow part of
the Strand.
XIII. Never pity people because they are illused :
they only wait the opportunity to use others just as
ill. Hate the oppressor, and prevent the evil, if you can ;
but do not fancy there is any virtue in being oppressed,
or any love lost between the parties. The unfortunate
are not a jot more amiable than their neighbours, though
they give themselves out so, and our pity takes part
with those who have disarmed our envy.
XIV. The human mind seems to improve, because it is
continually in progress ; but as it moves forward to new
acquisitions and trophies, it loses its hold on those which
formerly were its chief boast and emplo}*ment. Men are
better chemists than they were, but worse divines ; they
read the newspapers, it is true, but neglect the classics.
Everything has its turn. Neither is error extirpated
Trifles Light as Air. 567
so much as it takes a new form and puts on a more
artful disguise. Folly shifts its ground but finds its
level : absurdity is never left without a subterfuge.
The dupes of dreams and omens in former times, are
now the converts to graver and more solemn pieces of
quackery. The race of the sanguine, the visionary, and
the credulous of those who believe what they wish, or
what excites their wonder, in preference to what they
know or can have rationally explained will never wear
out ; and they only transfer their innate love of the
marvellous from old and exploded chimeras to fashionable
theories and the terra incognita of modern science.
XV. It is a curious speculation to take a modern belle
or some accomplished female acquaintance, and conceive
what her great-great-grandmother was like some cen-
turies ago. \Vho was the Mrs. of the year 200 ?
We have some standard of grace and elegance among
Eastern nations 3000 years ago, because we read accounts
of them in history, but we have no more notion of or
faith in our own ancestors than if we had never had
any. We cut the connection with the Druids and the
Heptarchy, and cannot fancy ourselves (by any transfor-
mation) inmates of caves and woods, or feeders on acorns
and sloes. We seem engrafted on that low stem a
bright, airy, and insolent excrescence.
XVI. There is this advantage in painting, if there
were no other, that it is the truest and most self-evident
kind of history. (Mr. Croker said so in the House of
Commons ; I did not take it from him, but he took it
from me.) You there see, not that there were people
long ago, but you see what they were, not in a book
darkly, but face to face. It is not the half-formed
clay, the oldfashioned dress, as we might conceive ; but
the living lineaments, the breathing expression. You
look at a picture by Vandyke, and there see as in an
568 Trifles Light as Air.
enchanted mirror, an Englishwoman of quality two hun-
dred years ago, sitting in unconscious state, with her
child playing at her feet, and with all the dovelike
innocence of look, the grace and refinement, that it is
possible for virtue and breeding to bestow. It is enough
to make us proud of our nature and our countrywomen,
and dissipates at once the idle upstart prejudice that all
before our time was sordid and scarce civilised. If our
progress does not appear so great as our presumption
had suggested, what does it signify ? With such models
kept in view, our chief object ought to be, not to dege-
nerate ; and though the future prospect is less gaudy
and imposing, the retrospect opens a larger and brighter
vista of excellence.
XVII. I am by education and conviction inclined to
republicanism and puritanism. In America they have
both ; but I confess I feel a little staggered in the prac-
tical efficacy and saving grace of first principles, when I
ask myself, " Can they throughout the United States,
from Boston to Baltimore, produce a single head like one
of Titian's Venetian nobles, nurtured in all the pride of
aristocracy and all the blindness of Popery ?" Of all the
branches of political economy, the human face is perhaps
the best criterion of value.
XVIII. The French Eevolutionists in the " Eeign of
Terror," with Eobespierre at their head, made one grand
mistake. They really thought that by getting rid of the
patrons and abettors of the ancient regime they should
put an end to the breed of tyrants and slaves ; whereas
in order to do this it would be necessary to put an end
to the whole human race.
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