Winterslow Part 5

ON MEANS AND ENDS

It is impossible to have things done without doing them. This seems a truism; and yet what is more common than to suppose that we shall find things done, merely by wis.h.i.+ng it? To put the will for the deed is as usual in practice as it is contrary to common sense. There is, in fact, no absurdity, no contradiction, of which the will is not capable. This is, I think, more remarkable in the English than in any other people, in whom (to judge by what I discover in myself) the will bears great and disproportioned sway. We will a thing: we contemplate the end intensely, and think it done, neglecting the necessary means to accomplish it. The strong tendency of the mind towards it, the internal effort it makes to give being to the object of its idolatry, seems an adequate cause to produce the effect, and in a manner identified with it. This is more particularly the case in what relates to the _fine arts_, and will account for some phenomena of the national character. The English school is distinguished by what are called _ebauches_, rude, violent attempts at effect, and a total inattention to the details or delicacy of finis.h.i.+ng. Now this, I think, proceeds, not exactly from grossness of perception, but from the wilfulness of our character; our desire to have things our own way, without any trouble or distraction of purpose. An object strikes us: we see and feel the whole effect. We wish to produce a likeness of it; but we want to transfer this impression to the canvas as it is conveyed to us, simultaneously and intuitively, that is, to stamp it there at a blow, or otherwise we turn away with impatience and disgust, as if the means were an obstacle to the end, and every attention to the mechanical part of art were a deviation from our original purpose. We thus degenerate, after repeated failures, into a slovenly style of art; and that which was at first an undisciplined and irregular impulse becomes a habit, and then a theory. It seems strange that the love of the end should produce aversion to the means--but so it is; neither is it altogether unnatural. That which we are struck with, which we are enamoured of, is the general appearance and result; and it would certainly be most desirable to produce the effect in the same manner by a mere word or wish, if it were possible, without entering into any mechanical drudgery or minuteness of detail or dexterity of execution, which though they are essential and component parts of the work do not enter into our thoughts, and form no part of our contemplation. We may find it necessary, on a cool calculation to go through and learn these, but in so doing we only submit to necessity, and they are still a diversion to and a suspension of our purpose for the time, at least, unless practice gives that facility which almost identifies the two together, or makes the process an unconscious one. The end thus devours up the means, or our eagerness for the one, where it is strong and unchecked, is in proportion to our impatience of the other. We view an object at a distance that excites an inclination to visit it, which we do after many tedious steps and intricate ways; but if we could fly, we should never walk. The mind, however, has wings, though the body has not, and it is this that produces the contradiction in question. The first and strongest impulse of the mind is to produce any work at once and by the most energetic means; but as this cannot always be done, we should not neglect other more mechanical ones, but that delusions of pa.s.sion overrule the convictions of the understanding, and what we strongly wish we fancy to be possible and true. We are full of the effect we intend to produce, and imagine we have produced it, in spite of the evidence of our senses, and the suggestions of our friends. In fact, after a number of fruitless efforts and violent throes to produce an effect which we pa.s.sionately long for, it seems all injustice not to have produced it; if we have not commanded success, we have done more, we have deserved it; we have copied nature or t.i.tian in the spirit in which they ought to be copied, and we see them before us in our mind's eye; there is the look, the expression, the something or other which we chiefly aim at, and thus we persist and make fifty excuses to deceive ourselves and confirm our errors; or if the light breaks upon us through all the disguises of sophistry and self-love, it is so painful that we shut our eyes to it; the greater the mortification the more violent the effort to throw it off; and thus we stick to our determination, and end where we began. What makes me think that this is the process of our minds, and not merely rusticity or want of apprehension, is, that you will see an English artist admiring and thrown into raptures by the tucker of t.i.tian's mistress, made up of an infinite number of little folds, but if he attempts to copy it, he proceeds to omit all these details, and dash it off by a single smear of his brush. This is not ignorance, or even laziness, but what is called jumping at a conclusion. It is, in a word, all overweening purpose. He sees the details, the varieties, and their effects, and he admires them; but he sees them with a glance of his eye, and as a wilful man must have his way, he would reproduce them by a single dash of the pencil. The mixing his colours, the putting in and out, the giving his attention to a minute break, or softening in the particular lights and shades, is a mechanical and everlasting operation, very different from the delight he feels in contemplating the effect of all this when properly and finely done. Such details are foreign to his refined taste, and some doubts arise in his mind in the midst of his grat.i.tude and his raptures, as to how t.i.tian could resolve upon the drudgery of going through them, and whether it was not done by extreme facility of hand, and a sort of trick, abridging the mechanical labour. No one wrote or talked more enthusiastically about t.i.tian's harmony of colouring than the late Mr. Barry, yet his own colouring was dead and dry; and if he had copied a t.i.tian, he would have made it a mere splash, leaving out all that caused his wonder or admiration, after his English, or rather Irish fas.h.i.+on. We not only grudge the labour of beginning, but we give up, for the same reason, when we are near touching the goal of success; and to save a few last touches, leave a work unfinished, and an object unattained. The immediate process, the daily gradual improvement, the completion of parts giving us no pleasure, we strain at the whole result; we wish to have it done, and in our anxiety to have it off our hands, say it will do, and lose the benefit of all our labour by grudging a little pains, and not commanding a little patience. In a day or two, suppose a copy of a fine t.i.tian would be as complete as we could make it: the prospect of this so enchants us that we skip the intermediate days, see no great use in going on with it, fancy that we may spoil it, and in order to have the job done, take it home with us, when we immediately see our error, and spend the rest of our lives in repenting that we did not finish it properly at the time. We see the whole nature of a picture at once; we only do a part: _Hinc illae lachrymae_. A French artist, on the contrary, has none of this uneasy, anxious feeling; of this desire to grasp the whole of his subject, and antic.i.p.ate his good fortune at a blow; of this ma.s.sing and concentrating principle. He takes the thing more easily and rationally. Suppose he undertakes to copy a picture, he looks at it and copies it bit by bit. He does not set off headlong without knowing where he is going, or plunge into all sorts of difficulties and absurdities, from impatience to begin and thinking that 'no sooner said than done'; but takes time to consider, lays his plans, gets in his outline and his distances, and lays a foundation before he attempts a superstructure which he may have to pull to pieces again. He looks before he leaps, which is contrary to the true blindfold English principle; and I should think that we had invented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of the neglect of it. He does not make the picture all black or all white, because one part of it is so, and because he cannot alter an idea he has once got into his head, and must always run into extremes, but varies from green to red, from orange tawney to yellow, from grey to brown, according as they vary in the original: he sees no inconsistency or forfeiture of a principle in this, but a great deal of right reason, and indeed an absolute necessity, if he wishes to succeed in what he is about. This is the last thing an Englishman thinks of: he only wants to have his own way, though it ends in defeat and ruin: he sets about a thing which he had little prospect of accomplis.h.i.+ng, and if he finds he can do it, gives it over and leaves the matter short of success, which is too agreeable an idea for him to indulge in. The French artist proceeds bit by bit. He takes one part, a hand, a piece of drapery, a part of the background, and finishes it carefully; then another, and so on to the end. He does not, from a childish impatience, when he is near the conclusion, destroy the effect of the whole by leaving some one part eminently defective, nor fly from what he is about to something else that catches his eye, neglecting the one and spoiling the other. He is constrained by mastery, by the mastery of common sense and pleasurable feeling. He is in no hurry to finish, for he has a satisfaction in the work, and touches and retouches, perhaps a single head, day after day and week after week, without repining, uneasiness, or apparent progress. The very lightness and indifference of his feelings renders him patient and laborious: an Englishman, whatever he is about or undertakes is as if he was carrying a heavy load that oppresses both his body and mind, and which he is anxious to throw down. A Frenchman's hopes or fears are not excited to that pitch of intolerable agony that compels him, in mere compa.s.sion to himself to bring the question to a speedy issue, even to the loss of his object; he is calm, easy, and indifferent, and can take his time and make the most of his advantages with impunity. Pleased with himself, he is pleased with whatever occupies his attention nearly alike. It is the same to him whether he paints an angel or a joint-stool; it is the same to him whether it is landscape or history; it is he who paints it, that is sufficient.

Nothing puts him out of conceit with his work, for nothing puts him out of conceit with himself. This self-complacency produces admirable patience and docility in certain particulars, besides charity and toleration towards others. I remember a ludicrous instance of this deliberate process, in a young French artist who was copying the _t.i.tian's Mistress_, in the Louvre, some twenty years ago. After getting it in chalk-lines, one would think he would have been attracted to the face, that heaven of beauty which makes a suns.h.i.+ne in the shady place, or to some part of the poetry of the picture; instead of which he began to finish a square he had marked out in the right-hand corner of the picture. He set to work like a cabinetmaker or an engraver, and seemed to have no sympathy with the soul of the picture. Indeed, to a Frenchman there is no distinction between the great and little, the pleasurable and the painful; the utmost he arrives at a conception of is the indifferent and the light. Another young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven weeks (I think it was) daily employed in making a blacklead pencil drawing of a small Leonardo; he sat cross-legged on a rail to do it, kept his hat on, rose up, went to the fire to warm himself, talked constantly of the excellence of the different masters--t.i.tian for colour, Raphael for expression, Poussin for composition--all being alike to him, provided there was a word to express it, for all he thought about was his own harangue; and, having consulted some friend on his progress, he returned to 'perfectionate,' as he called it, his copy. This would drive an Englishman mad or stupid. The perseverance and the indifference, the labour without impulse, the attention to the parts in succession, and disregard of the whole together, are to him absolutely inconceivable. A Frenchman only exists in his present sensations, and provided he is left free to these as they arise, he cares about nothing farther, looking neither backward nor forward.

With all this affectation and artifice, there is on this account a kind of simplicity and nature about them, after all. They lend themselves to the impression before them with good humour and good will, making it neither better nor worse than it is. The English overdo or underdo everything, and are either drunk or in despair. I do not speak of all Frenchmen or of all Englishmen, but of the most characteristic specimens of each cla.s.s. The extreme slowness and methodical regularity of the French has arisen out of this indifference, and even frivolity (their usually-supposed natural character), for owing to it their laborious minuteness costs them nothing; they have no strong impulses or ardent longings that urge them to the violation of rules, or hurry them away with a subject and with the interest belonging to it. Everything is matter of calculation, and measured beforehand, in order to a.s.sist their fluttering and their feebleness. When they get beyond the literal and the formal, and attempt the impressive and the grand, as in David's and Girardot's pictures, defend us from sublimity heaped on insipidity and pet.i.t-maitreism. You see a Frenchman in the Louvre copying the finest pictures, standing on one leg, with his hat on; or after copying a Raphael, thinking David much finer, more truly one of themselves, more a combination of the Greek sculptor and the French posture-master. Even if a French artist fails, he is not disconcerted; there is something else he excels in: if he cannot paint, he can dance! If an Englishman, save the mark! fails in anything, he thinks he can do nothing; enraged at the mention of his ability to do anything else, and at any consolation offered to him, he banishes all other thought but of his disappointment, and discarding hope from his breast, neither eats nor sleeps (it is well if he does not cut his throat), will not attend to any other thing in which he before took an interest and pride, and is in despair till he recovers his good opinion of himself in the point in which he has been disgraced, though, from his very anxiety and disorder of mind, he is incapacitated from applying to the only means of doing so, as much as if he were drunk with liquor, instead of with pride and pa.s.sion. The character I have here drawn of an Englishman I am clear about, for it is the character of myself, and, I am sorry to add, no exaggerated one. As my object is to paint the varieties of human nature, and as I can have it best from myself, I will confess a weakness. I lately tried to copy a t.i.tian (after many years' want of practice), in order to give a friend in England some idea of the picture. I floundered on for several days, but failed, as might be expected. My sky became overcast. Everything seemed of the colour of the paint I used. Nature was one great daub. I had no feeling left but a sense of want of power, and of an abortive struggle to do what I could not do. I was ashamed of being seen to look at the picture with admiration, as if I had no right to do so. I was ashamed even to have written or spoken about the picture or about art at all: it seemed a piece of presumption or affectation in me, whose whole notions and refinements on the subject ended in an inexcusable daub. Why did I think of attempting such a thing heedlessly, of exposing my presumption and incapacity? It was blotting from my memory, covering with a dark veil, all that I remembered of those pictures formerly, my hopes when young, my regrets since; it was wresting from me one of the consolations of my life and of my declining years. I was even afraid to walk out by the barrier of Neuilly, or to recall to memory that I had ever seen the picture; all was turned to bitterness and gall: to feel anything but a sense of my own helplessness and absurdity seemed a want of sincerity, a mockery and a piece of injustice. The only comfort I had was in the excess of pain I felt; this was at least some distinction: I was not insensible on that side. No Frenchman, I thought, would regret the not copying a t.i.tian so much as I did, or so far show the same value for it. Besides, I had copied this identical picture very well formerly. If ever I got out of this sc.r.a.pe, I had received a lesson, at least, not to run the same risk of gratuitous vexation again, or even to attempt what was uncertain and unnecessary.

It is the same in love and in literature. A man makes love without thinking of the chances of success, his own disabilities, or the character of his mistress; that is, without connecting means with ends, and consulting only his own will and pa.s.sion. The author sets about writing history, with the full intention of rendering all doc.u.ments, dates, and facts secondary to his own opinion and will. In business it is not altogether the same; for interest acts obviously as a counterpoise to caprice and will, and is the moving principle; nor is it so in war, for then the spirit of contradiction does everything, and an Englishman will go to the devil rather than give up to any odds. Courage is pure will without regard to consequences, and this the English have in perfection. Again, poetry is our element, for the essence of poetry is will and pa.s.sion. The French poetry is detail and verbiage. I have thus shown why the English fail, as a people, in the Fine Arts, namely, because with them the end absorbs the means. I have mentioned Barry as an individual instance. No man spoke or wrote with more _gusto_ about painting, and yet no one painted with less. His pictures were dry and coa.r.s.e, and wanted all that his description of those of others contained. For instance, he speaks of the dull, dead, watery look in the Medusa's head of Leonardo, which conveys a perfect idea of it: if he had copied it, you would never have suspected anything of the kind. Again, he has, I believe, somewhere spoken of the uneasy effect of the tucker of the _t.i.tian's Mistress_, bursting with the full treasures it contains. What a daub he would have made of it! He is like a person admiring the grace of a fine rope-dancer; placed on the rope himself his head turns, and he falls: or like a man admiring fine horsemans.h.i.+p; set him upon a horse, and he tumbles over on the other side. Why was this? His mind was essentially ardent and discursive, not sensitive or observing; and though the immediate object acted as a stimulus to his imagination, it was only as it does to a poet's, that is, as a link in the chain of a.s.sociation, as suggesting other strong feelings and ideas, and not for its intrinsic beauty or hidden details. He had not the painter's eye though he had the painter's knowledge. There is as great a difference in this respect as between the telescope and microscope. People in general see objects only to distinguish them in practice and by name; to know that a hat is a hat, that a chair is not a table, that John is not William; and there are painters (particularly of history) in England who look no farther. They cannot finish anything, or go over a head twice; the first view is all they would arrive at; nor can they reduce their impressions to their component parts without losing the spirit. The effect of this is grossness and want of force; for in reality the component parts cannot be separated from the whole. Such people have no pleasure in the exercise of their art as such: it is all to astonish or to get money that they follow it; or if they are thrown out of it, they regret it only as a bankrupt does a business which was a livelihood to him. Barry did not live, like t.i.tian, in the taste of colours; they were not a _pabulum_ to his sense; he did not hold green, blue, red, and yellow as the precious darlings of his eye.

They did not therefore sink into his mind, or nourish and enrich it with the sense of beauty, though he knew enough of them to furnish hints and topics of discourse. If he had had the most beautiful object in nature before him in his painting-room in the Adelphi, he would have neglected it, after a moment's burst of admiration, to talk of his last composition, or to scrawl some new and vast design. Art was nothing to him, or if anything, merely a stalking-horse to his ambition and display of intellectual power in general; and therefore he neglected it to daub huge allegories, or cabal with the Academy, where the violence of his will or the extent of his views found ample scope. As a painter he was valuable merely as a draughtsman, in that part of the art which may be reduced to lines and precepts, or positive measurement. There is neither colour, nor expression, nor delicacy, nor beauty, in his works.

1827.

ESSAY IX

MATTER AND MANNER

Nothing can frequently be more striking than the difference of style or manner, where the _matter_ remains the same, as in paraphrases and translations. The most remarkable example which occurs to us is in the beginning of the _Flower and Leaf_, by Chaucer, and in the modernisation of the same pa.s.sage by Dryden. We shall give an extract from both, that the reader may judge for himself. The original runs thus:

'And I that all this pleasaunt sight _ay_ sie, Thought sodainly I felt_e_ so sweet an aire _Con_ of the eglentere, that certainely There is no heart, I deme, in such dispaire, Ne with _no_ thought_e_s froward and contraire So overlaid, but it should_e_ soone have bote, If it had ones felt this savour sote.

And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, I was of ware the fairest medler tree, That ever yet in all my life I sie, As full of blossomes as it might_e_ be; Therein a goldfinch leaping pretil_e_ Fro bough to bough; and, as him list, _gan_ eete Of bud_de_s here and there and floures sweet_e_.

And to the herber side _ther_ was joyning_e_ This faire tree, of which I have you told; And at the last the brid began to sing_e_, When he had eaten what he eat_e_ wold_e_, So pa.s.sing sweetly, that by manifold_e_, It was more pleasaunt than I coud_e_ devise.

And when his song was ended in this wise,

The nightingale with so mery a note Answered him, that all the wood_e_ rong So sodainly, that, as it were a sote, I stood astonied; so was I with the song Thorow ravished, that till late and longe, Ne wist I in what place I was, ne where; And ay, me thought_e_, she song even by mine ere.

Wherefore about I waited busily, On every side, if _that_ I her might_e_ see; And, at the last, I gan full well aspie Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree, On the further side, even right by me, That gave so pa.s.sing a delicious smell, According to the eglentere full well.

Whereof I had_de_ so inly great pleasure, That, as me thought, I surely ravished was Into Paradice, where _as_ my desire Was for to be, and no ferther to pa.s.se As for that day; and on the sote gra.s.se I sat me downe; for, as for mine entent, The bird_de_s song was more convenient,

And more pleasaunt to me by many fold, Than meat or drinke, or any other thing.

Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold, The wholesome savours eke so comforting That, as I demed_e_, sith the beginning Of th_ilke_ world was never seene or than So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man.

And as I sat, the bird_de_s harkening thus, Me thought_e_ that I heard_e_ voices sodainly, The most sweetest and most delicious That ever any wight, I trow truly, Heard in _here_ life; for _sothe_ the armony And sweet accord was in so good musike, That the voices to angels most was like.'

In this pa.s.sage the poet has let loose the very soul of pleasure.

There is a spirit of enjoyment in it, of which there seems no end. It is the intense delight which accompanies the description of every object, the fund of natural sensibility which it displays, which const.i.tutes its whole essence and beauty. Now this is shown chiefly in the manner in which the different objects are antic.i.p.ated, and the eager welcome which is given to them; in his repeating and varying the circ.u.mstances with a restless delight; in his quitting the subject for a moment, and then returning to it again, as if he could never have his fill of enjoyment. There is little of this in Dryden's paraphrase.

The same ideas are introduced, but not in the same manner, nor with the same spirit. The imagination of the poet is not borne along with the tide of pleasure--the verse is not poured out, like the natural strains it describes, from pure delight, but according to rule and measure. Instead of being absorbed in his subject, he is dissatisfied with it, tries to give an air of dignity to it by fact.i.tious ornaments, to amuse the reader by ingenious allusions, and divert his attention from the progress of the story by the artifices of the style:

'The painted birds, companions of the spring, Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing.

Both eyes and ears receiv'd a like delight, Enchanting music, and a charming sight.

On Philomel I fix'd my whole desire; And listen'd for the queen of all the quire; Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing; And wanted yet an omen to the spring.

Thus as I mus'd I cast aside my eye, And saw a medlar-tree was planted nigh.

The spreading branches made a goodly show, And full of opening blooms was every bough: A goldfinch there I saw with gawdy pride Of painted plumes, that hopp'd from side to side, Still pecking as she pa.s.s'd; and still she drew The sweets from every flower and suck'd the dew: Suffic'd at length, she warbled in her throat, And tun'd her voice to many a merry note, But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear, Yet such as sooth'd my soul, and pleas'd my ear.

Her short performance was no sooner tried, When she I sought, the nightingale, replied: So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung, That the grove echoed, and the valleys rung: And I so ravish'd with her heavenly note, I stood entranced, and had no room for thought.

But all o'erpower'd with ecstasy of bliss, Was in a pleasing dream of paradise; At length I wak'd, and looking round the bower, Search'd every tree, and pry'd on every flower, If any where by chance I might espy The rural poet of the melody: For still methought she sung not far away: At last I found her on a laurel spray.

Close by my side she sat, and fair in sight, Full in a line, against her opposite; Where stood with eglantine the laurel twin'd; And both their native sweets were well conjoin'd.

On the green bank I sat, and listen'd long (Sitting was more convenient for the song); Nor till her lay was ended could I move, But wish'd to dwell for ever in the grove.

Only methought the time too swiftly pa.s.s'd, And every note I fear'd would be the last.

My sight, and smell and hearing were employ'd, And all three senses in full gust enjoy'd.

And what alone did all the rest surpa.s.s The sweet possession of the fairy place; Single, and conscious to myself alone Of pleasures to the excluded world unknown: Pleasures which no where else were to be found, And all Elysium in a spot of ground.

Thus while I sat intent to see and hear, And drew perfumes of more than vital air, All suddenly I heard the approaching sound Of vocal music on the enchanted ground: A host of saints it seem'd, so full the quire; As if the bless'd above did all conspire To join their voices, and neglect the lyre.'

Compared with Chaucer, Dryden and the rest of that school were merely _verbal poets_. They had a great deal of wit, sense, and fancy; they only wanted truth and depth of feeling. But I shall have to say more on this subject, when I come to consider the old question which I have got marked down in my list, whether Pope was a poet.

Lord Chesterfield's character of the Duke of Marlborough is a good ill.u.s.tration 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 Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always a.s.sign 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 s.h.i.+ning in his genius. He had, most undoubtedly, an excellent good plain understanding, with sound judgment. 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 protected and promoted him; for while he was Ensign of the Guards, the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland, then favourite mistress of Charles II., struck by these very graces, gave him five thousand pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity of five hundred pounds 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 wrongheadedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory ones) he as constantly prevailed, and brought them into his measures.'

Grace in women has often 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 attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, 'in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face,' which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them. Their minds are a shrine where pleasure reposes. Their smile diffuses a sensation like the breath of spring. Petrarch's description of Laura answers exactly to this character, which is indeed the Italian character. t.i.tian's pictures 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 expression I ever remember. It did not look downward; 'it looked forward beyond this world.' It was a look that never pa.s.sed away, but remained unalterable as the deep sentiment which gave birth to it. It is the same const.i.tutional character (together with infinite activity of mind) which has enabled the greatest man in modern history to bear his reverses of fortune with gay magnanimity, 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.

After all, I would not be understood to say that manner is everything.[9] Nor would I put Euclid or Sir Isaac Newton on a level with the first _pet.i.t-maitre_ we might happen to meet. I consider _aesop's Fables_ to have been a greater work of genius than Fontaine's translation of them; though I am not sure that I 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 fas.h.i.+on have been objected to me, to show the frivolity of external accomplishments, and the facility with which they are acquired. As to the last point, I demur. There are no cla.s.s of people who lead so laborious a life, or who take more pains to cultivate their minds as well as persons, than people of fas.h.i.+on. 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, etc., certainly does not pa.s.s her time in idleness: and these accomplishments are afterwards called into action by every kind of external or mental stimulus, by the excitements of pleasure, vanity, and interest. A Ministerial or Opposition Lord goes through more drudgery than half-a-dozen literary hacks; nor does a reviewer by profession read half the same number of publications as a modern fine lady is obliged to labour through. I confess, however, I am not a competent judge of the degree of elegance or refinement implied in the general tone of fas.h.i.+onable manners. The successful experiment made by _Peregrine Pickle_, in introducing his strolling mistress into genteel company, does not redound greatly to their credit.

1815.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Sheer impudence answers almost the same purpose. 'Those impenetrable whiskers have confronted flames.' Many persons, by looking big and talking loud, make their way through the world without any one good quality. I have here said nothing of mere personal qualifications, which are another set-off against sterling merit.

Fielding was of opinion that 'the more solid pretensions of virtue and understanding vanish before perfect beauty.' 'A certain lady of a manor' (says _Don Quixote_ in defence of his attachment to _Dulcinea_, which, however, was quite of the Platonic kind), 'had cast the eyes of affection on a certain squat, brawny lay brother of a neighbouring monastery, to whom she was lavish of her favours. The head of the order remonstrated with her on this preference shown to one whom he represented as a very low, ignorant fellow, and set forth the superior pretensions of himself, and his more learned brethren. The lady having heard him to an end, made answer: All that you have said may be very true; but know that in those points which I admire, Brother Chrysostom is as great a philosopher, nay greater, than Aristotle himself!' So the _Wife of Bath_:

'To chirche was myn housbond brought on morwe With neighebors that for him made sorwe, And Jankyn oure clerk was oon of tho.

As help me G.o.d, whan that I saugh him go After the beere, methought he had a paire Of legges and of feet so clene and faire, That al myn hert I yaf unto his hold.'

'All which, though we most potently believe, yet we hold it not honesty to have it thus set down.'

ESSAY X

ON CONSISTENCY OF OPINION

'----Servetur ad imum Qualis ab inceptu processerit, et sibi constet.'

Many people boast of being masters in their own house. I pretend to be master of my own mind. I should be sorry to have an ejectment served upon me for any notions I may choose to entertain there. Within that little circle I would fain be an absolute monarch. I do not profess the spirit of martyrdom; I have no ambition to march to the stake, or up to a masked battery, in defence of an hypothesis: I do not court the rack: I do not wish to be flayed alive for affirming that two and two make four, or any other intricate proposition: I am shy of bodily pains and penalties, which some are fond of--imprisonment, fine, banishment, confiscation of goods: but if I do not prefer the independence of my mind to that of my body, I at least prefer it to everything else. I would avoid the arm of power, as I would escape from the fangs of a wild beast: but as to the opinion of the world, I see nothing formidable in it. 'It is the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.' I am not to be browbeat or wheedled out of any of my settled convictions. Opinion to opinion, I will face any man.

Prejudice, fas.h.i.+on, the cant of the moment, go for nothing; and as for the reason of the thing, it can only be supposed to rest with me or another, in proportion to the pains we have taken to ascertain it.

Where the pursuit of truth has been the habitual study of any man's life, the love of truth will be his ruling pa.s.sion. 'Where the treasure is, there the heart is also.' Every one is most tenacious of that to which he owes his distinction from others. Kings love power, misers gold, women flattery, poets reputation--and philosophers truth, when they can find it. They are right in cheris.h.i.+ng the only privilege they inherit. If 'to be wise were to be obstinate,' I might set up for as great a philosopher as the best of them; for some of my conclusions are as fixed and as incorrigible to proof as need be. I am attached to them in consequence of the pains, and anxiety, and the waste of time they have cost me. In fact, I should not well know what to do without them at this time of day; nor how to get others to supply their place.

I would quarrel with the best friend I have sooner than acknowledge the absolute right of the Bourbons. I see Mr. Northcote seldomer than I did, because I cannot agree with him about the _Catalogue Raisonne_.

I remember once saying to this gentleman, a great while ago, that I did not seem to have altered any of my ideas since I was sixteen years old. 'Why then,' said he, 'you are no wiser now than you were then!' I might make the same confession, and the same retort would apply still.

Coleridge used to tell me, that this pertinacity was owing to a want of sympathy with others. What he calls _sympathising with others_ is their admiring him; and it must be admitted that he varies his battery pretty often, in order to accommodate himself to this sort of mutual understanding. But I do not agree in what he says of me. On the other hand, I think that it is my sympathising _beforehand_ with the different views and feelings that may be entertained on a subject, that prevents me retracting my judgment, and flinging myself into the contrary extreme _afterwards_. If you proscribe all opinion opposite to your own, and impertinently exclude all the evidence that does not make for you, it stares you in the face with double force when it breaks in unexpectedly upon you, or if at any subsequent period it happens to suit your interest or convenience to listen to objections which vanity or prudence had hitherto overlooked. But if you are aware from the first suggestion of a subject, either by subtlety, or tact, or close attention, of the full force of what others possibly feel and think of it, you are not exposed to the same vacillation of opinion.

The number of grains and scruples, of doubts and difficulties, thrown into the scale while the balance is yet undecided, add to the weight and steadiness of the determination. He who antic.i.p.ates his opponent's arguments, confirms while he corrects his own reasonings. When a question has been carefully examined in all its bearings, and a principle is once established, it is not liable to be overthrown by any new facts which have been arbitrarily and petulantly set aside, nor by every wind of idle doctrine rus.h.i.+ng into the interstices of a hollow speculation, shattering it in pieces, and leaving it a mockery and a bye-word; like those tall, gawky, staring, pyramidal erections which are seen scattered over different parts of the country, and are called the _Follies_ of different gentlemen! A man may be confident in maintaining a side, as he has been cautious in choosing it. If after making up his mind strongly in one way, to the best of his capacity and judgment, he feels himself inclined to a very violent revulsion of sentiment, he may generally rest a.s.sured that the change is in himself and his motives, not in the reason of things.

I cannot say that, from my own experience, I have found that the persons most remarkable for sudden and violent changes of principle have been cast in the softest or most susceptible mould. All their notions have been exclusive, bigoted, and intolerant. Their want of consistency and moderation has been in exact proportion to their want of candour and comprehensiveness of mind. Instead of being the creatures of sympathy, open to conviction, unwilling to give offence by the smallest difference of sentiment, they have (for the most part) been made up of mere antipathies--a very repulsive sort of personages--at odds with themselves, and with everybody else. The slenderness of their pretensions to philosophical inquiry has been accompanied with the most presumptuous dogmatism. They have been persons of that narrowness of view and headstrong self-sufficiency of purpose, that they could see only one side of a question at a time, and whichever they pleased. There is a story somewhere in _Don Quixote_, of two champions coming to a s.h.i.+eld hung up against a tree with an inscription written on each side of it. Each of them maintained, that the words were what was written on the side next him, and never dreamt, till the fray was over, that they might be different on the opposite side of the s.h.i.+eld. It would have been a little more extraordinary if the combatants had changed sides in the heat of the scuffle, and stoutly denied that there were any such words on the opposite side as they had before been bent on sacrificing their lives to prove were the only ones it contained. Yet such is the very situation of some of our modern polemics. They have been of all sides of the question, and yet they cannot conceive how an honest man can be of any but one--that which they hold at present. It seems that they are afraid to look their old opinions in the face, lest they should be fascinated by them once more. They banish all doubts of their own sincerity by inveighing against the motives of their antagonists.

There is no salvation out of the pale of their strange inconsistency.

They reduce common sense and probity to the straitest possible limits--the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of themselves and their patrons. They are like people out at sea on a very narrow plank, who try to push everybody else off. Is it that they have so little faith in the course to which they have become such staunch converts, as to suppose that, should they allow a grain of sense to their old allies and new antagonists, they will have more than they? Is it that they have so little consciousness of their own disinterestedness, that they feel, if they allow a particle of honesty to those who now differ with them, they will have more than they? Those opinions must needs be of a very fragile texture which will not stand the shock of the least acknowledged opposition, and which lay claim to respectability by stigmatising all who do not hold them as 'sots, and knaves, and cowards.' There is a want of well-balanced feeling in every such instance of extravagant versatility; a something crude, unripe, and harsh, that does not hit a judicious palate, but sets the teeth on edge to think of. 'I had rather hear my mother's cat mew, or a wheel grate on the axletree, than one of these same metre-ballad-mongers'