Imatges de pàgina
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ing his part. A young couple, every way amiable
and deserving, were to have been married, and a
benefit-play was bespoke by the officers of the
regiment quartered there, to defray the expense
of a licence and of the wedding-ring, but the
profits of the night did not amount to the
necessary sum, and they have, I fear, "virgined
it e'er since!" Oh for the pencil of Hogarth or
Wilkie to give a view of the comic strength of
the company at
drawn up in battle-array
d'œil
in the "Clandestine Marriage," with a coup
of the pit, boxes, and gallery, to cure for ever
the love of the ideal, and the desire to shine and
make holiday in the eyes of others, instead of
retiring within ourselves and keeping our wishes
and our thoughts at home! Even in the common
affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage,
how little security have we when we trust our

someness.

happiness in the hands of others! Most of the
friends I have seen have turned out the bitterest
enemies, or cold, uncomfortable acquaintance.
Old companions are like meats served up too
often, that lose their relish and their whole-
He who looks at beauty to admire,
to adore it, who reads of its wondrous power in
novels, in poems, or in plays, is not unwise:
but let no man fall in love, for from that moment
he is "the baby of a girl." I like very well to
repeat such lines as these in the play of "Mir-
andola :"

"With what a waving air she goes
Along the corridor. How like a fawn!
Yet statelier. Hark! No sound, however soft,
Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads,
But every motion of her shape doth seem
Hallowed by silence;"

But however beautiful the description, defend
me from meeting with the original !

"The fly that sips treacle

Is lost in the sweets;

So he that tastes woman
Ruin meets."

The song is Gay's, not mine, and a bitter-sweet
it is. How few out of the infinite number of
those that marry and are given in marriage wed
with those they would prefer to all the world!
nay, how far the greater proportion are joined
together by mere motives of convenience, acci-
dent, recommendation of friends, or indeed not
unfrequently by the very fear of the event, by
repugnance and a sort of fatal fascination! yet
the tie is for life, not to be shaken off but with
disgrace or death: a man no longer lives to
himself, but is a body (as well as mind) chained
to another, in spite of himself:

"Like life and death in disproportion met."
So Milton (perhaps from his own experience)
makes Adam exclaim in the vehemence of his
despair,

"For either

He never shall find out fit mate, but such

As some misfortune brings him or mistake;
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained
By a far worse; or if she love, withheld
By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate and shame;
Which infinite calamity shall cause

To human life, and household peace confound.”

If love at first sight were mutual, or to be con-
ciliated by kind offices; if the fondest affection
were not so often repaid and chilled by indiffer-
ence and scorn; if so many lovers both before
and since the madman in "Don Quixote" had not
"worshipped a statue, hunted the wind, cried
aloud to the desert;" if friendship were lasting;
if merit were renown, and renown were health,
riches, and long life; or if the homage of the
world were paid to conscious worth and the true
aspirations after excellence, instead of its gaudy
signs and outward trappings; then indeed I
might be of opinion that it is better to live to
others than one's self; but as the case stands I
incline to the negative side of the question.*

"I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee-

Nor coined my cheek to smiles-nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo: in the crowd

They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and
still could,

Had I not filled my mind which thus itself subdued."
"I have not loved the world, nor the world me-
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,

Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things-hopes which will not
deceive,

And virtues which are merciful nor weave
Snares for the failing: I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem-
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."

Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy: but woe betide the ignoble prosewriter who should thus dare to compare notes If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the with the world, or tax it roundly with imposture. public as Ben Jonson did at the audience in the prologues to his plays, I think I should do it in a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, good set terms, nearly as follows: There is not spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the

*Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended to live to himself, and the other really did so. Gray shrunk from the public gaze (he did not even like his portrait to be prefixed to his works) into his own thoughts and indolent musings; Shenstone affected privacy, that he might be sought out by the world;

the one courted retirement in order to enjoy leisure and repose, as the other coquetted with it, merely to be interrupted with the importunity of visitors and the flatteries of absent friends,

Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself. From its unwieldy, overgrown dimensions, it dreads the least opposition to it, and shakes like isinglass at the touch of a finger. It starts at its own shadow, like the man in the Hartz mountains, and trembles at the mention of its own name. It has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It stands "listening its fears." It is so in awe of its own opinion, that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice. The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment, so that in short the public ear is at the mercy of the first impudent pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or false surmises, or secret whispers. What is said by one is heard by all; the supposition that a thing is known to all the world makes all the world believe it, and the hollow repetition of a vague report drowns the "still, small voice" of reason. We may believe or know that what is said is not true: but we know or fancy that others believe it-we dare not contradict or are too indolent to dispute with them, and therefore give up our internal, and as we think, our solitary conviction

to a sound without substance, without proof,

and often without meaning. Nay more, we may believe and know not only that a thing is false, but that others believe and know it to be so, that they are quite as much in the secret of the imposture as we are, that they see the puppets at work, the nature of the machinery, and yet if any one has the art or power to get the management of it, he shall keep possession of the public ear by virtue of a cant phrase or nickname; and by dint of effrontery and perseverance make all the world believe and repeat what all the world know to be false. The ear is quicker than the judgment. We know that certain things are said; by that circumstance alone, we know that they produce a certain effect on the imagination of others, and we conform to their prejudices by mechanical sympathy, and for want of sufficient spirit to differ with them. So far, then, is public opinion from resting on a broad and solid basis, as the aggregate of thought and feeling in a community, that it is slight and shallow and variable to the last degree-the bubble of the moment; so that we may safely say the public is the dupe of public opinion, not its parent. The public is pusilanimous and cowardly, because it is weak. It knows itself to be a great dunce, and that it has no opinions but upon suggestion. Yet it is unwilling to appear in leading-strings, and would have it thought that its decisions are as wise as they are weighty. It is hasty in taking up its favourites, more hasty in laying them aside, lest it should be supposed deficient in sagacity in either case. It is gener

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ally divided into two strong parties, each of which will allow neither common sense or common honesty to the other side. It reads the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and believes them both-or if there is a doubt, malice turns the scale. Taylor and Hessey told me that they had sold nearly two editions of the "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays" in about three months, but that after the Quarterly Review of them came out, they never sold another copy. The public, enlightened as they are, must have known the meaning of that attack as well as those who made it. It was not ignorance, then, but cowardice, that led them to give up their own opinion. A crew of mischievous critics at Edinburgh having affixed the epithet of the Cockney School* to one or two writers born in the metropolis, all the people in London became afraid of looking into their works, lest they too should be convicted of cockneyism. Oh, brave public! This epithet proved too much for one of the writers in question, and stuck like a barbed arrow in his heart. Poor Keats! What was sport to the town was death to him. Young, sensitive, delicate, he was like

"A bud bit by an envious worm,

Ere he could spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun;"

idiot laugh, withdrew to sigh his last breath in foreign climes.

and unable to endure the miscreant cry and

The public is as envious and ungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid, and pigeon

livered:

"A huge-sized monster of ingratitudes.

It reads, it admires, it extols only because it is the fashion, not from any love of the subject or the man. It cries you up or runs you down out of mere caprice and levity. If you have pleased it, it is jealous of its own involuntary acknowledgment of merit, and seizes the first opportunity, the first shabby pretext, to pick a quarrel with you, and be quits once more. Every petty caviller is erected into a judge, every tale-bearer is

implicitly believed. Every little, low, paltry creature that gaped and wondered, only because others did so, is glad to find you (as he thinks) on a level with himself. An author is not then, after all, a being of another order. Public admiration is forced, and goes against the grain. Public obloquy is cordial and sincere: every individual feels his own importance in it. They give you up bound hand and foot into the power of your accusers. To attempt to defend yourself is a high crime and misdemeanour, a con

Hazlitt had good reason to complain, as, says one critic who had perhaps suffered more deservedly in that way himself, "The first twenty-five volumes of Blackwood's Magazine are disgraced by incessant, furious, and scurrilous attacks upon the person, private character, motives, talents, and moral and religious principles of Hazlitt."

tempt of court, an extreme piece of impertinence. Or if you prove every charge unfounded, they never think of retracing their error, or making you amends. It would be a compromise of their dignity; they consider themselves as the party injured, and resent your innocence as an imputation on their judgment. The celebrated Bub Doddington, when out of favour at court, said "he would not justify before his sovereign: it was for majesty to be displeased, and for him to believe himself in the wrong!" The public are not quite so modest. People already begin to talk of the Scottish novels as overrated. How then can common authors be supposed to keep their heads long above water? As a general rule, all those who live by the public starve, and are made a by-word and a standing jest into the bargain. Posterity is no better (not a bit more enlightened or more liberal), except that you are no longer in their power, and that the voice of common fame saves them the trouble of deciding on your claims. The public now are the posterity of Milton and Shakespeare. Our posterity will be the living public of a future generation. When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living? No! I was complaining of this to a Scotsman who had been attending a dinner and a subscription to raise a monument to Burns. He replied he would sooner subscribe twenty pounds to his monument than have given it him while living; so that if the poet were to come to life again, he would treat him just as he was treated in fact. This was an honest Scots

man.

What he said, the rest would do. Enough my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain the obscurity and quiet that I love, "far from the madding strife," in some sequestered corner of my own, or in some far distant land! In the latter case, I might carry with me as a consolation the passage in Bolingbroke's "Reflections on Exile," in which he describes in glowing colours the resources which a man may always find within himself, and of which the world cannot deprive him :

"Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order in the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest; lies out of the reach of human power; can neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work of nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which contemplates and admires the world whereof it makes the noblest part. These inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in one, we shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore intrepidly wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. Wherever they lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers.

We

shall feel the same revolution of seasons, and the same sun and moon will guide the course of our year. The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be everywhere spread over our heads. There is no part of the world from whence we may not admire those planets which roll, like ours, in different orbits round the same central sun; from whence we may not discover an object still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in the immense space of the universe, innumerable suns whose beams enlighten and cherish the unknown world which roll around them: and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst my soul is thus raised up to heaven, it imports me little what ground I tread upon."

ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE; OR,

ADVICE TO A SCHOOLBOY.

MY DEAR LITTLE FELLOW,-You are now going to settle at school, and may consider this as your first entrance into the world. As my health is so indifferent, and I may not be with you long, I wish to leave you some advice (the best I can) for your conduct in life, both that it may be of use to you, and as something to remember me by. I may at least be able to caution you against my own errors, if nothing else.

As we went along to your new place of destination, you often repeated that "you durst say they were a set of stupid disagreeable people," meaning the people at the school. You were to blame in this. It is a good old rule to hope for the best. Always, my dear, believe things to ve right till you find them the contrary; and even then, instead of irritating yourself against them, endeavour to put up with them as well as you can, if you cannot alter them. You said "you were sure you should not like the school where you were going." This was wrong. What you meant was that you did not like to leave home. But you could not tell whether you should like the school or not, till you had given it a trial. Otherwise, your saying that you should not like it was determining that you would not like it. Never anticipate evils; or, because you cannot have things exactly as you wish, make them out worse than they are, through mere spite and wilfulness.

You seemed at first to take no notice of your school-fellows, or rather to set yourself against them, because they were strangers to you. They knew as little of you as you did of them; so that this would have been a reason for their keeping aloof from you as well, which you would have felt as a hardship. Learn never to conceive a prejudice against others, because you know nothing of them. It is bad reasoning, and makes enemies of half the world. Do not think ill of them, till they behave ill to you; and then strive to avoid the faults which you see in them. This

will disarm their hostility sooner than pique or resentment or complaint.

own.

I thought you were disposed to criticise the dress of some of the boys as not so good as your Never despise any one for anything that he cannot help-least of all, for his poverty. I would wish you to keep up appearances yourself as a defence against the idle sneers of the world, but I would not have you value yourself upon them. I hope you will neither be the dupe nor victim of vulgar prejudices. Instead of saying above, "Never despise any one for anything that he cannot help"-I might have said, "Never despise any one at all;" for contempt implies a triumph over and pleasure in the ill of another. It means that you are glad and congratulate yourself on their failings or misfortunes. The sense of inferiority in others, without this indirect appeal to our self-love, is a painful feeling, and not an exulting one.

You complain since, that the boys laugh at you and do not care about you, and that you are not treated as you were at home. My dear, that is one chief reason for your being sent to school, to inure you betimes to the unavoidable rubs and uncertain reception you may meet with in life. You cannot always be with me, and perhaps it is as well that you cannot. But you must not expect others to show the same concern about you as I should. You have hitherto been a spoiled child, and have been used to have your own way a good deal, both in the house and among your play-fellows, with whom you were too fond of being a leader: but you have good-nature and good sense, and will get the better of this in time. You have now got among other boys who are your equals, or bigger and stronger than yourself, and who have something else to attend to besides humouring your whims and fancies, and you feel this as a repulse or piece of injustice. But the first lesson to learn is that there are other people in the world besides yourself. There are a number of boys in the school where you are, whose amusements and pursuits (whatever they may be) are and ought to be of as much consequence to them as yours can be to you, and to which therefore you must give way in your turn. The more airs of childish self-importance you give yourself, you will only expose yourself to be the more thwart ed and laughed at. True equality is the only true morality or true wisdom. Remember always that you are but one among others, and you can hardly mistake your place in society. In your father's house you might do as you pleased: in the world, you will find competitors at every turn. You are not born a king's son, to destroy or dictate to millions: you can only expect to share their fate, or settle your differences amicably with them. You already find it so at school; and I wish you to be reconciled to your situation as soon and with as little pain as you can.

It was my misfortune, perhaps, to be bred up among Dissenters, who look with too jaundiced an eye at others, and set too high a value on their own peculiar pretensions. From being proscribed themselves, they learn to proscribe others; and come in the end to reduce all integrity of principle and soundness of opinion within the pale of their own little communion. Those who were out of it, and did not belong to the class of Rational Dissenters, I was led erroneously to look upon as hardly deserving the name of rational beings. Being thus satisfied as to the select few who are "the salt of the earth," it is easy to persuade ourselves that we are at the head of them, and to fancy ourselves of more importance in the scale of true desert than all the rest of the world put together, who do not interpret a certain text of Scripture in the manner that we have been taught to do. You will (from the difference of education) he free from this bigotry, and will, I hope, avoid everything akin to the same exclusive and narrow-minded spirit. Think that the minds of men are various as their faces-that the modes and employments of life are numberless as they are necessary-that there is more than one class of merit--that though others may be wrong in some things, they are not so in all-and that countless races of men have been born, have lived and died, without ever hearing of any one of those points in which you take a just pride and pleasure-and you will not err on the side of that spiritual pride or intellectual coxcombry which has been so often the bane of the studious and learned!

I observe you have got a way of speaking of your school-fellows as "that Hoare, that Harris," and so on, as if you meant to mark them out for particular reprobation, or did not think them good enough for you. It is a bad habit to speak disrespectfully of others: for it will lead you to think and feel uncharitably towards them. Ill names beget ill blood. Even where there may be some repeated trifling provocation, it is better to be courteous, mild, and forbearing, than captious, impatient, and fretful. The faults of others too often arise out of our own ill temper; or though they should be real, we shall not mend them by exasperating ourselves agairt them. Treat your playmates as Hamlet advises Polonius to treat the players, "according to your own dignity rather than their deserts." you fly out at everything in them that you disapprove or think done on purpose to annoy you, you lie constantly at the mercy of their caprice, rudeness, or ill-nature. You should be more

your own master.

If

Do not begin to quarrel with the world too soon: for, bad as it may be, it is the best we have to live in-here. If railing would have made it better, it would have been reformed long ago: but as this is not to be hoped for at present, the best way is to slide through it as

The

contentedly and innocently as we may.
worst fault it has is want of charity: and calling
inave and fool at every turn will not cure this
failing. Consider (as a matter of vanity) that if
there were not so many knaves and fools as we
find, the wise and honest would not be those
rare and shining characters that they are allowed
to be; and (as a matter of philosophy) that if
the world be really incorrigible in this respect,
it is a reflection to make one sad, not angry.
We may laugh or weep at the madness of man-
kind we have no right to vilify them, for our
own sakes or theirs. Misanthropy is not the
disgust of the mind at human nature, but with
itself; or it is laying its own exaggerated vices
and foul blots at the door of others! Do not,
however, mistake what I have here said. I
would not have you, when you grow up, adopt
the low and sordid fashion of palliating existing
abuses or of putting the best face upon the worst
things. I only mean that indiscriminate un-
qualified satire can do little good, and that those
who indulge in the most revolting speculations
on human nature do not themselves always set
the fairest examples, or strive to prevent its
lower degradation. They seem rather willing
to reduce it to their theoretical standard. For
the rest, the very outcry that is made (if sincere)
shows that things cannot be quite so bad as they
are represented. The abstract hatred and scorn
of vice implies the capacity for virtue: the im-
patience expressed at the most striking instances
of deformity proves the innate idea and love of
beauty in the human mind. The best antidote
I can recommend to you hereafter against the
disheartening effect of such writings as those of
Rochefoucault, Mandeville, and others, will be
to look at the pictures of Raphael and Correggio.
You need not be altogether ashamed, my dear
little boy, of belonging to a species which could
produce such faces as those; nor despair of
doing something worthy of a laudable ambition,
when you see what such hands have wrought!
You will, perhaps, one day have reason to thank
me for this advice.

As to your studies and school exercises, I wish you to learn Latin, French, and dancing. I would insist upon the last more particularly, both because it is more likely to be neglected, and because it is of the greatest consequence to your success in life. Everything almost depends upon first impressions; and these depend (besides person, which is not in our power) upon two things, dress and address, which every one may command with proper attention. These are the small coin in the intercourse of life which are continually in request; and perhaps you will find at the year's end, or towards the close of life, that the daily insults, coldness, or contempt, to which you have been exposed by a neglect of such superficial recommendations, are hardly atoned for by the few proofs of esteem or admiration which your integrity or talents

have been able to extort in the course of it. | When we habitually disregard those things which we know will ensure the favourable opinion of others, it shows we set that opinion at defiance, or consider ourselves above it, which no one ever did with impunity. An inattention to our own persons implies a disrespect to others, and may often be traced no less to a want of goodnature than of good sense. The old maxim, "Desire to please, and you will infallibly please," explains the whole matter. If there is a tendency to vanity and affectation on this side of the question, there is an equal alloy of pride and obstinacy on the opposite one. Slovenliness may at any time be cured by an effort of resolu. tion, but a graceful carriage requires an early habit, and in most cases the aid of the dancingmaster. I would not have you, from not knowing how to enter a room properly, stumble at the very threshold in the good graces of those on whom it is possible the fate of your future life may depend. Nothing creates a greater prejudice against any one than awkwardness. A person who is confused in manner and gesture seems to have done something wrong, or as if he was conscious of no one qualification to build a confidence in himself upon. On the other hand, openness, freedom, self-possession, set others at ease with you by showing that you are on good terms with yourself. Grace in women gains the affections sooner, and secures them longer, than anything else-it is an outward and visible sign of an inward harmony of soul-as the want of it in men, as if the mind and body equally hitched in difficulties and were distracted with doubts, is the greatest impediment in the career of gallantry and road to the female heart. Another thing I would caution you against is not to pore over your books till you are bent almost double-a habit you will never be able to get the better of, and which you will find of serious ill consequence. A stoop in the shoulders sinks a man in public and in private estimation. You are at present straight enough, and you walk with boldness and spirit. Do nothing to take away the use of your limbs, or the spring and elasticity of your muscles. As to all worldly advantages, it is to the full of as much importance that your deportment should be erect and manly as your actions.

You will naturally find out all this and fall into it, if your attention is drawn out sufficiently to what is passing around you; and this will be the case, unless you are absorbed too much in books and those sedentary studies, "Which waste the marrow, and consume the brain."

You are, I think, too fond of reading as it is. As one means of avoiding excess in this way, I would wish you to make it a rule, never to read at meal-times, nor in company when there is any (even the most trivial) conversation going on, nor even to let your eagerness to learn en

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