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diff --git a/386-0.txt b/386-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cf93fc8 --- /dev/null +++ b/386-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4624 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Virginibus Puerisque, by Robert Louis +Stevenson + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Virginibus Puerisque + and Other Papers + + +Author: Robert Louis Stevenson + + + +Release Date: November 6, 2012 [eBook #386] +[This book was first posted May 23, 1995] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE*** + + +Transcribed from the 1897 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE AND OTHER PAPERS + + +“VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE” + + +I. + + +WITH the single exception of Falstaff, all Shakespeare’s characters are +what we call marrying men. Mercutio, as he was own cousin to Benedick +and Biron, would have come to the same end in the long run. Even Iago +had a wife, and, what is far stranger, he was jealous. People like +Jacques and the Fool in _Lear_, although we can hardly imagine they would +ever marry, kept single out of a cynical humour or for a broken heart, +and not, as we do nowadays, from a spirit of incredulity and preference +for the single state. For that matter, if you turn to George Sand’s +French version of _As You Like It_ (and I think I can promise you will +like it but little), you will find Jacques marries Celia just as Orlando +marries Rosalind. + +At least there seems to have been much less hesitation over marriage in +Shakespeare’s days; and what hesitation there was was of a laughing sort, +and not much more serious, one way or the other, than that of Panurge. +In modern comedies the heroes are mostly of Benedick’s way of thinking, +but twice as much in earnest, and not one quarter so confident. And I +take this diffidence as a proof of how sincere their terror is. They +know they are only human after all; they know what gins and pitfalls lie +about their feet; and how the shadow of matrimony waits, resolute and +awful, at the cross-roads. They would wish to keep their liberty; but if +that may not be, why, God’s will be done! “What, are you afraid of +marriage?” asks Cécile, in _Maître Guerin_. “Oh, mon Dieu, non!” replies +Arthur; “I should take chloroform.” They look forward to marriage much +in the same way as they prepare themselves for death: each seems +inevitable; each is a great Perhaps, and a leap into the dark, for which, +when a man is in the blue devils, he has specially to harden his heart. +That splendid scoundrel, Maxime de Trailles, took the news of marriages +much as an old man hears the deaths of his contemporaries. “C’est +désespérant,” he cried, throwing himself down in the arm-chair at Madame +Schontz’s; “c’est désespérant, nous nous marions tous!” Every marriage +was like another gray hair on his head; and the jolly church bells seemed +to taunt him with his fifty years and fair round belly. + +The fact is, we are much more afraid of life than our ancestors, and +cannot find it in our hearts either to marry or not to marry. Marriage +is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age. The friendships of +men are vastly agreeable, but they are insecure. You know all the time +that one friend will marry and put you to the door; a second accept a +situation in China, and become no more to you than a name, a +reminiscence, and an occasional crossed letter, very laborious to read; a +third will take up with some religious crotchet and treat you to sour +looks thence-forward. So, in one way or another, life forces men apart +and breaks up the goodly fellowships for ever. The very flexibility and +ease which make men’s friendships so agreeable while they endure, make +them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a few friends, +or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so wealthy on this earth), +cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes; and how by +a stroke or two of fate—a death, a few light words, a piece of stamped +paper, a woman’s bright eyes—he may be left, in a month, destitute of +all. Marriage is certainly a perilous remedy. Instead of on two or +three, you stake your happiness on one life only. But still, as the +bargain is more explicit and complete on your part, it is more so on the +other; and you have not to fear so many contingencies; it is not every +wind that can blow you from your anchorage; and so long as Death +withholds his sickle, you will always have a friend at home. People who +share a cell in the Bastile, or are thrown together on an uninhabited +isle, if they do not immediately fall to fisticuffs, will find some +possible ground of compromise. They will learn each other’s ways and +humours, so as to know where they must go warily, and where they may lean +their whole weight. The discretion of the first years becomes the +settled habit of the last; and so, with wisdom and patience, two lives +may grow indissolubly into one. + +But marriage, if comfortable, is not at all heroic. It certainly narrows +and damps the spirits of generous men. In marriage, a man becomes slack +and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. It +is not only when Lydgate misallies himself with Rosamond Vincy, but when +Ladislaw marries above him with Dorothea, that this may be exemplified. +The air of the fireside withers out all the fine wildings of the +husband’s heart. He is so comfortable and happy that he begins to prefer +comfort and happiness to everything else on earth, his wife included. +Yesterday he would have shared his last shilling; to-day “his first duty +is to his family,” and is fulfilled in large measure by laying down +vintages and husbanding the health of an invaluable parent. Twenty years +ago this man was equally capable of crime or heroism; now he is fit for +neither. His soul is asleep, and you may speak without constraint; you +will not wake him. It is not for nothing that Don Quixote was a bachelor +and Marcus Aurelius married ill. For women, there is less of this +danger. Marriage is of so much use to a woman, opens out to her so much +more of life, and puts her in the way of so much more freedom and +usefulness, that, whether she marry ill or well, she can hardly miss some +benefit. It is true, however, that some of the merriest and most genuine +of women are old maids; and that those old maids, and wives who are +unhappily married, have often most of the true motherly touch. And this +would seem to show, even for women, some narrowing influence in +comfortable married life. But the rule is none the less certain: if you +wish the pick of men and women, take a good bachelor and a good wife. + +I am often filled with wonder that so many marriages are passably +successful, and so few come to open failure, the more so as I fail to +understand the principle on which people regulate their choice. I see +women marrying indiscriminately with staring burgesses and ferret-faced, +white-eyed boys, and men dwell in contentment with noisy scullions, or +taking into their lives acidulous vestals. It is a common answer to say +the good people marry because they fall in love; and of course you may +use and misuse a word as much as you please, if you have the world along +with you. But love is at least a somewhat hyperbolical expression for +such luke-warm preference. It is not here, anyway, that Love employs his +golden shafts; he cannot be said, with any fitness of language, to reign +here and revel. Indeed, if this be love at all, it is plain the poets +have been fooling with mankind since the foundation of the world. And +you have only to look these happy couples in the face, to see they have +never been in love, or in hate, or in any other high passion, all their +days. When you see a dish of fruit at dessert, you sometimes set your +affections upon one particular peach or nectarine, watch it with some +anxiety as it comes round the table, and feel quite a sensible +disappointment when it is taken by some one else. I have used the phrase +“high passion.” Well, I should say this was about as high a passion as +generally leads to marriage. One husband hears after marriage that some +poor fellow is dying of his wife’s love. “What a pity!” he exclaims; +“you know I could so easily have got another!” And yet that is a very +happy union. Or again: A young man was telling me the sweet story of his +loves. “I like it well enough as long as her sisters are there,” said +this amorous swain; “but I don’t know what to do when we’re alone.” Once +more: A married lady was debating the subject with another lady. “You +know, dear,” said the first, “after ten years of marriage, if he is +nothing else, your husband is always an old friend.” “I have many old +friends,” returned the other, “but I prefer them to be nothing more.” +“Oh, perhaps I might _prefer_ that also!” There is a common note in +these three illustrations of the modern idyll; and it must be owned the +god goes among us with a limping gait and blear eyes. You wonder whether +it was so always; whether desire was always equally dull and spiritless, +and possession equally cold. I cannot help fancying most people make, +ere they marry, some such table of recommendations as Hannah Godwin wrote +to her brother William anent her friend, Miss Gay. It is so charmingly +comical, and so pat to the occasion, that I must quote a few phrases. +“The young lady is in every sense formed to make one of your disposition +really happy. She has a pleasing voice, with which she accompanies her +musical instrument with judgment. She has an easy politeness in her +manners, neither free nor reserved. She is a good housekeeper and a good +economist, and yet of a generous disposition. As to her internal +accomplishments, I have reason to speak still more highly of them: good +sense without vanity, a penetrating judgment without a disposition to +satire, with about as much religion as my William likes, struck me with a +wish that she was my William’s wife.” That is about the tune: pleasing +voice, moderate good looks, unimpeachable internal accomplishments after +the style of the copy-book, with about as much religion as my William +likes; and then, with all speed, to church. + +To deal plainly, if they only married when they fell in love, most people +would die unwed; and among the others, there would be not a few +tumultuous households. The Lion is the King of Beasts, but he is +scarcely suitable for a domestic pet. In the same way, I suspect love is +rather too violent a passion to make, in all cases, a good domestic +sentiment. Like other violent excitements, it throws up not only what is +best, but what is worst and smallest, in men’s characters. Just as some +people are malicious in drink, or brawling and virulent under the +influence of religious feeling, some are moody, jealous, and exacting +when they are in love, who are honest, downright, good-hearted fellows +enough in the everyday affairs and humours of the world. + +How then, seeing we are driven to the hypothesis that people choose in +comparatively cold blood, how is it they choose so well? One is almost +tempted to hint that it does not much matter whom you marry; that, in +fact, marriage is a subjective affection, and if you have made up your +mind to it, and once talked yourself fairly over, you could “pull it +through” with anybody. But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even +if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the +police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realised, and +some principle to guide simple folk in their selection. Now what should +this principle be? Are there no more definite rules than are to be found +in the Prayer-book? Law and religion forbid the bans on the ground of +propinquity or consanguinity; society steps in to separate classes; and +in all this most critical matter, has common sense, has wisdom, never a +word to say? In the absence of more magisterial teaching, let us talk it +over between friends: even a few guesses may be of interest to youths and +maidens. + +In all that concerns eating and drinking, company, climate, and ways of +life, community of taste is to be sought for. It would be trying, for +instance, to keep bed and board with an early riser or a vegetarian. In +matters of art and intellect, I believe it is of no consequence. +Certainly it is of none in the companionships of men, who will dine more +readily with one who has a good heart, a good cellar, and a humorous +tongue, than with another who shares all their favourite hobbies and is +melancholy withal. If your wife likes Tupper, that is no reason why you +should hang your head. She thinks with the majority, and has the courage +of her opinions. I have always suspected public taste to be a mongrel +product, out of affectation by dogmatism; and felt sure, if you could +only find an honest man of no special literary bent, he would tell you he +thought much of Shakespeare bombastic and most absurd, and all of him +written in very obscure English and wearisome to read. And not long ago +I was able to lay by my lantern in content, for I found the honest man. +He was a fellow of parts, quick, humorous, a clever painter, and with an +eye for certain poetical effects of sea and ships. I am not much of a +judge of that kind of thing, but a sketch of his comes before me +sometimes at night. How strong, supple, and living the ship seems upon +the billows! With what a dip and rake she shears the flying sea! I +cannot fancy the man who saw this effect, and took it on the wing with so +much force and spirit, was what you call commonplace in the last recesses +of the heart. And yet he thought, and was not ashamed to have it known +of him, that Ouida was better in every way than William Shakespeare. If +there were more people of his honesty, this would be about the staple of +lay criticism. It is not taste that is plentiful, but courage that is +rare. And what have we in place? How many, who think no otherwise than +the young painter, have we not heard disbursing second-hand hyperboles? +Have you never turned sick at heart, O best of critics! when some of your +own sweet adjectives were returned on you before a gaping audience? +Enthusiasm about art is become a function of the average female being, +which she performs with precision and a sort of haunting sprightliness, +like an ingenious and well-regulated machine. Sometimes, alas! the +calmest man is carried away in the torrent, bandies adjectives with the +best, and out-Herods Herod for some shameful moments. When you remember +that, you will be tempted to put things strongly, and say you will marry +no one who is not like George the Second, and cannot state openly a +distaste for poetry and painting. + +The word “facts” is, in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits +and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and +dear old gentlemen in bird’s-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word +“facts” in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no +nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them, +seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to +what was, or what was not, important in the life of man. Turn as we +pleased, we all stood back to back in a big ring, and saw another quarter +of the heavens, with different mountain-tops along the sky-line and +different constellations overhead. We had each of us some whimsy in the +brain, which we believed more than anything else, and which discoloured +all experience to its own shade. How would you have people agree, when +one is deaf and the other blind? Now this is where there should be +community between man and wife. They should be agreed on their catchword +in “_facts of religion_,” or “_facts of science_,” or “_society_, _my +dear_”; for without such an agreement all intercourse is a painful strain +upon the mind. “About as much religion as my William likes,” in short, +that is what is necessary to make a happy couple of any William and his +spouse. For there are differences which no habit nor affection can +reconcile, and the Bohemian must not intermarry with the Pharisee. +Imagine Consuelo as Mrs. Samuel Budget, the wife of the successful +merchant! The best of men and the best of women may sometimes live +together all their lives, and, for want of some consent on fundamental +questions, hold each other lost spirits to the end. + +A certain sort of talent is almost indispensable for people who would +spend years together and not bore themselves to death. But the talent, +like the agreement, must be for and about life. To dwell happily +together, they should be versed in the niceties of the heart, and born +with a faculty for willing compromise. The woman must be talented as a +woman, and it will not much matter although she is talented in nothing +else. She must know her _métier de femme_, and have a fine touch for the +affections. And it is more important that a person should be a good +gossip, and talk pleasantly and smartly of common friends and the +thousand and one nothings of the day and hour, than that she should speak +with the tongues of men and angels; for a while together by the fire, +happens more frequently in marriage than the presence of a distinguished +foreigner to dinner. That people should laugh over the same sort of +jests, and have many a story of “grouse in the gun-room,” many an old +joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale, is a better +preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things higher and +better sounding in the world’s ears. You could read Kant by yourself, if +you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else. You can +forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical +disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your +eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way +towards a dissolution of the marriage. + +I know a woman who, from some distaste or disability, could never so much +as understand the meaning of the word _politics_, and has given up trying +to distinguish Whigs from Tories; but take her on her own politics, ask +her about other men or women and the chicanery of everyday existence—the +rubs, the tricks, the vanities on which life turns—and you will not find +many more shrewd, trenchant, and humorous. Nay, to make plainer what I +have in mind, this same woman has a share of the higher and more poetical +understanding, frank interest in things for their own sake, and enduring +astonishment at the most common. She is not to be deceived by custom, or +made to think a mystery solved when it is repeated. I have heard her say +she could wonder herself crazy over the human eyebrow. Now in a world +where most of us walk very contentedly in the little lit circle of their +own reason, and have to be reminded of what lies without by specious and +clamant exceptions—earthquakes, eruptions of Vesuvius, banjos floating in +mid-air at a _séance_, and the like—a mind so fresh and unsophisticated +is no despicable gift. I will own I think it a better sort of mind than +goes necessarily with the clearest views on public business. It will +wash. It will find something to say at an odd moment. It has in it the +spring of pleasant and quaint fancies. Whereas I can imagine myself +yawning all night long until my jaws ached and the tears came into my +eyes, although my companion on the other side of the hearth held the most +enlightened opinions on the franchise or the ballot. + +The question of professions, in as far as they regard marriage, was only +interesting to women until of late days, but it touches all of us now. +Certainly, if I could help it, I would never marry a wife who wrote. The +practice of letters is miserably harassing to the mind; and after an hour +or two’s work, all the more human portion of the author is extinct; he +will bully, backbite, and speak daggers. Music, I hear, is not much +better. But painting, on the contrary, is often highly sedative; because +so much of the labour, after your picture is once begun, is almost +entirely manual, and of that skilled sort of manual labour which offers a +continual series of successes, and so tickles a man, through his vanity, +into good humour. Alas! in letters there is nothing of this sort. You +may write as beautiful a hand as you will, you have always something else +to think of, and cannot pause to notice your loops and flourishes; they +are beside the mark, and the first law stationer could put you to the +blush. Rousseau, indeed, made some account of penmanship, even made it a +source of livelihood, when he copied out the _Héloïse_ for _dilettante_ +ladies; and therein showed that strange eccentric prudence which guided +him among so many thousand follies and insanities. It would be well for +all of the _genus irritabile_ thus to add something of skilled labour to +intangible brain-work. To find the right word is so doubtful a success +and lies so near to failure, that there is no satisfaction in a year of +it; but we all know when we have formed a letter perfectly; and a stupid +artist, right or wrong, is almost equally certain he has found a right +tone or a right colour, or made a dexterous stroke with his brush. And, +again, painters may work out of doors; and the fresh air, the deliberate +seasons, and the “tranquillising influence” of the green earth, +counterbalance the fever of thought, and keep them cool, placable, and +prosaic. + +A ship captain is a good man to marry if it is a marriage of love, for +absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate; +but he is just the worst man if the feeling is more pedestrian, as habit +is too frequently torn open and the solder has never time to set. Men +who fish, botanise, work with the turning-lathe, or gather sea-weeds, +will make admirable husbands; and a little amateur painting in +water-colour shows the innocent and quiet mind. Those who have a few +intimates are to be avoided; while those who swim loose, who have their +hat in their hand all along the street, who can number an infinity of +acquaintances and are not chargeable with any one friend, promise an easy +disposition and no rival to the wife’s influence. I will not say they +are the best of men, but they are the stuff out of which adroit and +capable women manufacture the best of husbands. It is to be noticed that +those who have loved once or twice already are so much the better +educated to a woman’s hand; the bright boy of fiction is an odd and most +uncomfortable mixture of shyness and coarseness, and needs a deal of +civilising. Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman +should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for +nothing that this “ignoble tabagie,” as Michelet calls it, spreads over +all the world. Michelet rails against it because it renders you happy +apart from thought or work; to provident women this will seem no evil +influence in married life. Whatever keeps a man in the front garden, +whatever checks wandering fancy and all inordinate ambition, whatever +makes for lounging and contentment, makes just so surely for domestic +happiness. + +These notes, if they amuse the reader at all, will probably amuse him +more when he differs than when he agrees with them; at least they will do +no harm, for nobody will follow my advice. But the last word is of more +concern. Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts +light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so +tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for +islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will +risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, they run +their sea-sick, weary bark upon the dashing rocks. It seems as if +marriage were the royal road through life, and realised, on the instant, +what we have all dreamed on summer Sundays when the bells ring, or at +night when we cannot sleep for the desire of living. They think it will +sober and change them. Like those who join a brotherhood, they fancy it +needs but an act to be out of the coil and clamour for ever. But this is +a wile of the devil’s. To the end, spring winds will sow disquietude, +passing faces leave a regret behind them, and the whole world keep +calling and calling in their ears. For marriage is like life in +this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. + + + +II. + + +HOPE, they say, deserts us at no period of our existence. From first to +last, and in the face of smarting disillusions, we continue to expect +good fortune, better health, and better conduct; and that so confidently, +that we judge it needless to deserve them. I think it improbable that I +shall ever write like Shakespeare, conduct an army like Hannibal, or +distinguish myself like Marcus Aurelius in the paths of virtue; and yet I +have my by-days, hope prompting, when I am very ready to believe that I +shall combine all these various excellences in my own person, and go +marching down to posterity with divine honours. There is nothing so +monstrous but we can believe it of ourselves. About ourselves, about our +aspirations and delinquencies, we have dwelt by choice in a delicious +vagueness from our boyhood up. No one will have forgotten Tom Sawyer’s +aspiration: “Ah, if he could only die _temporarily_!” Or, perhaps, +better still, the inward resolution of the two pirates, that “so long as +they remained in that business, their piracies should not again be +sullied with the crime of stealing.” Here we recognise the thoughts of +our boyhood; and our boyhood ceased—well, when?—not, I think, at twenty; +nor, perhaps, altogether at twenty-five; nor yet at thirty; and possibly, +to be quite frank, we are still in the thick of that arcadian period. +For as the race of man, after centuries of civilisation, still keeps some +traits of their barbarian fathers, so man the individual is not +altogether quit of youth, when he is already old and honoured, and Lord +Chancellor of England. We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an +invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the +phrase goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open our +communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. +There is our true base; that is not only the beginning, but the perennial +spring of our faculties; and grandfather William can retire upon occasion +into the green enchanted forest of his boyhood. + +The unfading boyishness of hope and its vigorous irrationality are +nowhere better displayed than in questions of conduct. There is a +character in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, one Mr. _Linger-after-Lust_ with +whom I fancy we are all on speaking terms; one famous among the famous +for ingenuity of hope up to and beyond the moment of defeat; one who, +after eighty years of contrary experience, will believe it possible to +continue in the business of piracy and yet avoid the guilt of theft. +Every sin is our last; every 1st of January a remarkable turning-point in +our career. Any overt act, above all, is felt to be alchemic in its +power to change. A drunkard takes the pledge; it will be strange if that +does not help him. For how many years did Mr. Pepys continue to make and +break his little vows? And yet I have not heard that he was discouraged +in the end. By such steps we think to fix a momentary resolution; as a +timid fellow hies him to the dentist’s while the tooth is stinging. + +But, alas, by planting a stake at the top of flood, you can neither +prevent nor delay the inevitable ebb. There is no hocus-pocus in +morality; and even the “sanctimonious ceremony” of marriage leaves the +man unchanged. This is a hard saying, and has an air of paradox. For +there is something in marriage so natural and inviting, that the step has +an air of great simplicity and ease; it offers to bury for ever many +aching preoccupations; it is to afford us unfailing and familiar company +through life; it opens up a smiling prospect of the blest and passive +kind of love, rather than the blessing and active; it is approached not +only through the delights of courtship, but by a public performance and +repeated legal signatures. A man naturally thinks it will go hard with +him if he cannot be good and fortunate and happy within such august +circumvallations. + +And yet there is probably no other act in a man’s life so hot-headed and +foolhardy as this one of marriage. For years, let us suppose, you have +been making the most indifferent business of your career. Your +experience has not, we may dare to say, been more encouraging than Paul’s +or Horace’s; like them, you have seen and desired the good that you were +not able to accomplish; like them, you have done the evil that you +loathed. You have waked at night in a hot or a cold sweat, according to +your habit of body, remembering with dismal surprise, your own +unpardonable acts and sayings. You have been sometimes tempted to +withdraw entirely from this game of life; as a man who makes nothing but +misses withdraws from that less dangerous one of billiards. You have +fallen back upon the thought that you yourself most sharply smarted for +your misdemeanours, or, in the old, plaintive phrase, that you were +nobody’s enemy but your own. And then you have been made aware of what +was beautiful and amiable, wise and kind, in the other part of your +behaviour; and it seemed as if nothing could reconcile the contradiction, +as indeed nothing can. If you are a man, you have shut your mouth hard +and said nothing; and if you are only a man in the making, you have +recognised that yours was quite a special case, and you yourself not +guilty of your own pestiferous career. + +Granted, and with all my heart. Let us accept these apologies; let us +agree that you are nobody’s enemy but your own; let us agree that you are +a sort of moral cripple, impotent for good; and let us regard you with +the unmingled pity due to such a fate. But there is one thing to which, +on these terms, we can never agree:—we can never agree to have you marry. +What! you have had one life to manage, and have failed so strangely, and +now can see nothing wiser than to conjoin with it the management of some +one else’s? Because you have been unfaithful in a very little, you +propose yourself to be a ruler over ten cities. You strip yourself by +such a step of all remaining consolations and excuses. You are no longer +content to be your own enemy; you must be your wife’s also. You have +been hitherto in a mere subaltern attitude; dealing cruel blows about you +in life, yet only half responsible, since you came there by no choice or +movement of your own. Now, it appears, you must take things on your own +authority: God made you, but you marry yourself; and for all that your +wife suffers, no one is responsible but you. A man must be very certain +of his knowledge ere he undertake to guide a ticket-of-leave man through +a dangerous pass; you have eternally missed your way in life, with +consequences that you still deplore, and yet you masterfully seize your +wife’s hand, and, blindfold, drag her after you to ruin. And it is your +wife, you observe, whom you select. She, whose happiness you most +desire, you choose to be your victim. You would earnestly warn her from +a tottering bridge or bad investment. If she were to marry some one +else, how you would tremble for her fate! If she were only your sister, +and you thought half as much of her, how doubtfully would you entrust her +future to a man no better than yourself! + +Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path +meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and +straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and +even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you +have a wife to support. Suppose, after you are married, one of those +little slips were to befall you. What happened last November might +surely happen February next. They may have annoyed you at the time, +because they were not what you had meant; but how will they annoy you in +the future, and how will they shake the fabric of your wife’s confidence +and peace! A thousand things unpleasing went on in the _chiaroscuro_ of +a life that you shrank from too particularly realising; you did not care, +in those days, to make a fetish of your conscience; you would recognise +your failures with a nod, and so, good day. But the time for these +reserves is over. You have wilfully introduced a witness into your life, +the scene of these defeats, and can no longer close the mind’s eye upon +uncomely passages, but must stand up straight and put a name upon your +actions. And your witness is not only the judge, but the victim of your +sins; not only can she condemn you to the sharpest penalties, but she +must herself share feelingly in their endurance. And observe, once more, +with what temerity you have chosen precisely _her_ to be your spy, whose +esteem you value highest, and whom you have already taught to think you +better than you are. You may think you had a conscience, and believed in +God; but what is a conscience to a wife? Wise men of yore erected +statues of their deities, and consciously performed their part in life +before those marble eyes. A god watched them at the board, and stood by +their bedside in the morning when they woke; and all about their ancient +cities, where they bought and sold, or where they piped and wrestled, +there would stand some symbol of the things that are outside of man. +These were lessons, delivered in the quiet dialect of art, which told +their story faithfully, but gently. It is the same lesson, if you +will—but how harrowingly taught!—when the woman you respect shall weep +from your unkindness or blush with shame at your misconduct. Poor girls +in Italy turn their painted Madonnas to the wall: you cannot set aside +your wife. To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are +married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be good. + +And goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem than mere single +virtue; for in marriage there are two ideals to be realised. A girl, it +is true, has always lived in a glass house among reproving relatives, +whose word was law; she has been bred up to sacrifice her judgments and +take the key submissively from dear papa; and it is wonderful how swiftly +she can change her tune into the husband’s. Her morality has been, too +often, an affair of precept and conformity. But in the case of a +bachelor who has enjoyed some measure both of privacy and freedom, his +moral judgments have been passed in some accordance with his nature. His +sins were always sins in his own sight; he could then only sin when he +did some act against his clear conviction; the light that he walked by +was obscure, but it was single. Now, when two people of any grit and +spirit put their fortunes into one, there succeeds to this comparative +certainty a huge welter of competing jurisdictions. It no longer matters +so much how life appears to one; one must consult another: one, who may +be strong, must not offend the other, who is weak. The only weak brother +I am willing to consider is (to make a bull for once) my wife. For her, +and for her only, I must waive my righteous judgments, and go crookedly +about my life. How, then, in such an atmosphere of compromise, to keep +honour bright and abstain from base capitulations? How are you to put +aside love’s pleadings? How are you, the apostle of laxity, to turn +suddenly about into the rabbi of precision; and after these years of +ragged practice, pose for a hero to the lackey who has found you out? In +this temptation to mutual indulgence lies the particular peril to +morality in married life. Daily they drop a little lower from the first +ideal, and for a while continue to accept these changelings with a gross +complacency. At last Love wakes and looks about him; finds his hero sunk +into a stout old brute, intent on brandy pawnee; finds his heroine +divested of her angel brightness; and in the flash of that first +disenchantment, flees for ever. + +Again, the husband, in these unions, is usually a man, and the wife +commonly enough a woman; and when this is the case, although it makes the +firmer marriage, a thick additional veil of misconception hangs above the +doubtful business. Women, I believe, are somewhat rarer than men; but +then, if I were a woman myself, I daresay I should hold the reverse; and +at least we all enter more or less wholly into one or other of these +camps. A man who delights women by his feminine perceptions will often +scatter his admirers by a chance explosion of the under side of man; and +the most masculine and direct of women will some day, to your dire +surprise, draw out like a telescope into successive lengths of +personation. Alas! for the man, knowing her to be at heart more candid +than himself, who shall flounder, panting, through these mazes in the +quest for truth. The proper qualities of each sex are, indeed, eternally +surprising to the other. Between the Latin and the Teuton races there +are similar divergences, not to be bridged by the most liberal sympathy. +And in the good, plain, cut-and-dry explanations of this life, which pass +current among us as the wisdom of the elders, this difficulty has been +turned with the aid of pious lies. Thus, when a young lady has angelic +features, eats nothing to speak of, plays all day long on the piano, and +sings ravishingly in church, it requires a rough infidelity, falsely +called cynicism, to believe that she may be a little devil after all. +Yet so it is: she may be a tale-bearer, a liar, and a thief; she may have +a taste for brandy, and no heart. My compliments to George Eliot for her +Rosamond Vincy; the ugly work of satire she has transmuted to the ends of +art, by the companion figure of Lydgate; and the satire was much wanted +for the education of young men. That doctrine of the excellence of +women, however chivalrous, is cowardly as well as false. It is better to +face the fact, and know, when you marry, that you take into your life a +creature of equal, if of unlike, frailties; whose weak human heart beats +no more tunefully than yours. + +But it is the object of a liberal education not only to obscure the +knowledge of one sex by another, but to magnify the natural differences +between the two. Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but +principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is +astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the +girls and another to the boys. To the first, there is shown but a very +small field of experience, and taught a very trenchant principle for +judgment and action; to the other, the world of life is more largely +displayed, and their rule of conduct is proportionally widened. They are +taught to follow different virtues, to hate different vices, to place +their ideal, even for each other, in different achievements. What should +be the result of such a course? When a horse has run away, and the two +flustered people in the gig have each possessed themselves of a rein, we +know the end of that conveyance will be in the ditch. So, when I see a +raw youth and a green girl, fluted and fiddled in a dancing measure into +that most serious contract, and setting out upon life’s journey with +ideas so monstrously divergent, I am not surprised that some make +shipwreck, but that any come to port. What the boy does almost proudly, +as a manly peccadillo, the girl will shudder at as a debasing vice; what +is to her the mere common sense of tactics, he will spit out of his mouth +as shameful. Through such a sea of contrarieties must this green couple +steer their way; and contrive to love each other; and to respect, +forsooth; and be ready, when the time arrives, to educate the little men +and women who shall succeed to their places and perplexities. + +And yet, when all has been said, the man who should hold back from +marriage is in the same case with him who runs away from battle. To +avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to +push forward pluckily and make a fall. It is lawful to pray God that we +be not led into temptation; but not lawful to skulk from those that come +to us. The noblest passage in one of the noblest books of this century, +is where the old pope glories in the trial, nay, in the partial fall and +but imperfect triumph, of the younger hero. {1} Without some such manly +note, it were perhaps better to have no conscience at all. But there is +a vast difference between teaching flight, and showing points of peril +that a man may march the more warily. And the true conclusion of this +paper is to turn our back on apprehensions, and embrace that shining and +courageous virtue, Faith. Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant +fellow, good to chase swallows with the salt; Faith is the grave, +experienced, yet smiling man. Hope lives on ignorance; open-eyed Faith +is built upon a knowledge of our life, of the tyranny of circumstance and +the frailty of human resolution. Hope looks for unqualified success; but +Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honourable defeat to be a +form of victory. Hope is a kind old pagan; but Faith grew up in +Christian days, and early learnt humility. In the one temper, a man is +indignant that he cannot spring up in a clap to heights of elegance and +virtue; in the other, out of a sense of his infirmities, he is filled +with confidence because a year has come and gone, and he has still +preserved some rags of honour. In the first, he expects an angel for a +wife; in the last, he knows that she is like himself—erring, thoughtless, +and untrue; but like himself also, filled with a struggling radiancy of +better things, and adorned with ineffective qualities. You may safely go +to school with hope; but ere you marry, should have learned the mingled +lesson of the world: that dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and yet are +excellent play-things; that hope and love address themselves to a +perfection never realised, and yet, firmly held, become the salt and +staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of infirmities, perfect, +you might say, in imperfection, and yet you have a something in you +lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies +under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some +generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model, and a noble +spouse through life. So thinking, you will constantly support your own +unworthiness, and easily forgive the failings of your friend. Nay, you +will be I wisely glad that you retain the sense of blemishes; for the +faults of married people continually spur up each of them, hour by hour, +to do better and to meet and love upon a higher ground. And ever, +between the failures, there will come glimpses of kind virtues to +encourage and console. + + + +III.—ON FALLING IN LOVE + + + “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” + +THERE is only one event in life which really astonishes a man and +startles him out of his prepared opinions. Everything else befalls him +very much as he expected. Event succeeds to event, with an agreeable +variety indeed, but with little that is either startling or intense; they +form together no more than a sort of background, or running accompaniment +to the man’s own reflections; and he falls naturally into a cool, +curious, and smiling habit of mind, and builds himself up in a conception +of life which expects to-morrow to be after the pattern of to-day and +yesterday. He may be accustomed to the vagaries of his friends and +acquaintances under the influence of love. He may sometimes look forward +to it for himself with an incomprehensible expectation. But it is a +subject in which neither intuition nor the behaviour of others will help +the philosopher to the truth. There is probably nothing rightly thought +or rightly written on this matter of love that is not a piece of the +person’s experience. I remember an anecdote of a well-known French +theorist, who was debating a point eagerly in his _cénacle_. It was +objected against him that he had never experienced love. Whereupon he +arose, left the society, and made it a point not to return to it until he +considered that he had supplied the defect. “Now,” he remarked, on +entering, “now I am in a position to continue the discussion.” Perhaps +he had not penetrated very deeply into the subject after all; but the +story indicates right thinking, and may serve as an apologue to readers +of this essay. + +When at last the scales fall from his eyes, it is not without something +of the nature of dismay that the man finds himself in such changed +conditions. He has to deal with commanding emotions instead of the easy +dislikes and preferences in which he has hitherto passed his days; and he +recognises capabilities for pain and pleasure of which he had not yet +suspected the existence. Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, +the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our +trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of all proportion with the +cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very amiable or very +beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other’s +eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of +either with no great result. But on this occasion all is different. +They fall at once into that state in which another person becomes to us +the very gist and centrepoint of God’s creation, and demolishes our +laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with +the one master-thought that even the trivial cares of our own person +become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is +translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and +desirable a fellow-creature. And all the while their acquaintances look +on in stupor, and ask each other, with almost passionate emphasis, what +so-and-so can see in that woman, or such-an-one in that man? I am sure, +gentlemen, I cannot tell you. For my part, I cannot think what the women +mean. It might be very well, if the Apollo Belvedere should suddenly +glow all over into life, and step forward from the pedestal with that +godlike air of his. But of the misbegotten changelings who call +themselves men, and prate intolerably over dinner-tables, I never saw one +who seemed worthy to inspire love—no, nor read of any, except Leonardo da +Vinci, and perhaps Goethe in his youth. About women I entertain a +somewhat different opinion; but there, I have the misfortune to be a man. + +There are many matters in which you may waylay Destiny, and bid him stand +and deliver. Hard work, high thinking, adventurous excitement, and a +great deal more that forms a part of this or the other person’s spiritual +bill of fare, are within the reach of almost any one who can dare a +little and be patient. But it is by no means in the way of every one to +fall in love. You know the difficulty Shakespeare was put into when +Queen Elizabeth asked him to show Falstaff in love. I do not believe +that Henry Fielding was ever in love. Scott, if it were not for a +passage or two in _Rob Roy_, would give me very much the same effect. +These are great names and (what is more to the purpose) strong, healthy, +high-strung, and generous natures, of whom the reverse might have been +expected. As for the innumerable army of anæmic and tailorish persons +who occupy the face of this planet with so much propriety, it is palpably +absurd to imagine them in any such situation as a love-affair. A wet rag +goes safely by the fire; and if a man is blind, he cannot expect to be +much impressed by romantic scenery. Apart from all this, many lovable +people miss each other in the world, or meet under some unfavourable +star. There is the nice and critical moment of declaration to be got +over. From timidity or lack of opportunity a good half of possible love +cases never get so far, and at least another quarter do there cease and +determine. A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to prepare the way +and out with his declaration in the nick of time. And then there is a +fine solid sort of man, who goes on from snub to snub; and if he has to +declare forty times, will continue imperturbably declaring, amid the +astonished consideration of men and angels, until he has a favourable +answer. I daresay, if one were a woman, one would like to marry a man +who was capable of doing this, but not quite one who had done so. It is +just a little bit abject, and somehow just a little bit gross; and +marriages in which one of the parties has been thus battered into consent +scarcely form agreeable subjects for meditation. Love should run out to +meet love with open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people +who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a +pair of children venturing together into a dark room. From the first +moment when they see each other, with a pang of curiosity, through stage +after stage of growing pleasure and embarrassment, they can read the +expression of their own trouble in each other’s eyes. There is here no +declaration properly so called; the feeling is so plainly shared, that as +soon as the man knows what it is in his own heart, he is sure of what it +is in the woman’s. + +This simple accident of falling in love is as beneficial as it is +astonishing. It arrests the petrifying influence of years, disproves +cold-blooded and cynical conclusions, and awakens dormant sensibilities. +Hitherto the man had found it a good policy to disbelieve the existence +of any enjoyment which was out of his reach; and thus he turned his back +upon the strong sunny parts of nature, and accustomed himself to look +exclusively on what was common and dull. He accepted a prose ideal, let +himself go blind of many sympathies by disuse; and if he were young and +witty, or beautiful, wilfully forewent these advantages. He joined +himself to the following of what, in the old mythology of love, was +prettily called _nonchaloir_; and in an odd mixture of feelings, a fling +of self-respect, a preference for selfish liberty, and a great dash of +that fear with which honest people regard serious interests, kept himself +back from the straightforward course of life among certain selected +activities. And now, all of a sudden, he is unhorsed, like St. Paul, +from his infidel affectation. His heart, which has been ticking accurate +seconds for the last year, gives a bound and begins to beat high and +irregularly in his breast. It seems as if he had never heard or felt or +seen until that moment; and by the report of his memory, he must have +lived his past life between sleep and waking, or with the preoccupied +attention of a brown study. He is practically incommoded by the +generosity of his feelings, smiles much when he is alone, and develops a +habit of looking rather blankly upon the moon and stars. But it is not +at all within the province of a prose essayist to give a picture of this +hyperbolical frame of mind; and the thing has been done already, and that +to admiration. In _Adelaide_, in Tennyson’s _Maud_, and in some of +Heine’s songs, you get the absolute expression of this midsummer spirit. +Romeo and Juliet were very much in love; although they tell me some +German critics are of a different opinion, probably the same who would +have us think Mercutio a dull fellow. Poor Antony was in love, and no +mistake. That lay figure Marius, in _Les Misérables_, is also a genuine +case in his own way, and worth observation. A good many of George Sand’s +people are thoroughly in love; and so are a good many of George +Meredith’s. Altogether, there is plenty to read on the subject. If the +root of the matter be in him, and if he has the requisite chords to set +in vibration, a young man may occasionally enter, with the key of art, +into that land of Beulah which is upon the borders of Heaven and within +sight of the City of Love. There let him sit awhile to hatch delightful +hopes and perilous illusions. + +One thing that accompanies the passion in its first blush is certainly +difficult to explain. It comes (I do not quite see how) that from having +a very supreme sense of pleasure in all parts of life—in lying down to +sleep, in waking, in motion, in breathing, in continuing to be—the lover +begins to regard his happiness as beneficial for the rest of the world +and highly meritorious in himself. Our race has never been able +contentedly to suppose that the noise of its wars, conducted by a few +young gentlemen in a corner of an inconsiderable star, does not re-echo +among the courts of Heaven with quite a formidable effect. In much the +same taste, when people find a great to-do in their own breasts, they +imagine it must have some influence in their neighbourhood. The presence +of the two lovers is so enchanting to each other that it seems as if it +must be the best thing possible for everybody else. They are half +inclined to fancy it is because of them and their love that the sky is +blue and the sun shines. And certainly the weather is usually fine while +people are courting. . . In point of fact, although the happy man feels +very kindly towards others of his own sex, there is apt to be something +too much of the magnifico in his demeanour. If people grow presuming and +self-important over such matters as a dukedom or the Holy See, they will +scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion of +a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be loved in return. +Consequently, accepted lovers are a trifle condescending in their address +to other men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of life +hardly conduces to simplicity of manner. To women, they feel very nobly, +very purely, and very generously, as if they were so many Joan-of-Arc’s; +but this does not come out in their behaviour; and they treat them to +Grandisonian airs marked with a suspicion of fatuity. I am not quite +certain that women do not like this sort of thing; but really, after +having bemused myself over _Daniel Deronda_, I have given up trying to +understand what they like. + +If it did nothing else, this sublime and ridiculous superstition, that +the pleasure of the pair is somehow blessed to others, and everybody is +made happier in their happiness, would serve at least to keep love +generous and great-hearted. Nor is it quite a baseless superstition +after all. Other lovers are hugely interested. They strike the nicest +balance between pity and approval, when they see people aping the +greatness of their own sentiments. It is an understood thing in the +play, that while the young gentlefolk are courting on the terrace, a +rough flirtation is being carried on, and a light, trivial sort of love +is growing up, between the footman and the singing chambermaid. As +people are generally cast for the leading parts in their own +imaginations, the reader can apply the parallel to real life without much +chance of going wrong. In short, they are quite sure this other +love-affair is not so deep seated as their own, but they like dearly to +see it going forward. And love, considered as a spectacle, must have +attractions for many who are not of the confraternity. The sentimental +old maid is a commonplace of the novelists; and he must be rather a poor +sort of human being, to be sure, who can look on at this pretty madness +without indulgence and sympathy. For nature commends itself to people +with a most insinuating art; the busiest is now and again arrested by a +great sunset; and you may be as pacific or as cold-blooded as you will, +but you cannot help some emotion when you read of well-disputed battles, +or meet a pair of lovers in the lane. + +Certainly, whatever it may be with regard to the world at large, this +idea of beneficent pleasure is true as between the sweethearts. To do +good and communicate is the lover’s grand intention. It is the happiness +of the other that makes his own most intense gratification. It is not +possible to disentangle the different emotions, the pride, humility, pity +and passion, which are excited by a look of happy love or an unexpected +caress. To make one’s self beautiful, to dress the hair, to excel in +talk, to do anything and all things that puff out the character and +attributes and make them imposing in the eyes of others, is not only to +magnify one’s self, but to offer the most delicate homage at the same +time. And it is in this latter intention that they are done by lovers; +for the essence of love is kindness; and indeed it may be best defined as +passionate kindness: kindness, so to speak, run mad and become +importunate and violent. Vanity in a merely personal sense exists no +longer. The lover takes a perilous pleasure in privately displaying his +weak points and having them, one after another, accepted and condoned. +He wishes to be assured that he is not loved for this or that good +quality, but for himself, or something as like himself as he can contrive +to set forward. For, although it may have been a very difficult thing to +paint the marriage of Cana, or write the fourth act of Antony and +Cleopatra, there is a more difficult piece of art before every one in +this world who cares to set about explaining his own character to others. +Words and acts are easily wrenched from their true significance; and they +are all the language we have to come and go upon. A pitiful job we make +of it, as a rule. For better or worse, people mistake our meaning and +take our emotions at a wrong valuation. And generally we rest pretty +content with our failures; we are content to be misapprehended by +cackling flirts; but when once a man is moonstruck with this affection of +love, he makes it a point of honour to clear such dubieties away. He +cannot have the Best of her Sex misled upon a point of this importance; +and his pride revolts at being loved in a mistake. + +He discovers a great reluctance to return on former periods of his life. +To all that has not been shared with her, rights and duties, bygone +fortunes and dispositions, he can look back only by a difficult and +repugnant effort of the will. That he should have wasted some years in +ignorance of what alone was really important, that he may have +entertained the thought of other women with any show of complacency, is a +burthen almost too heavy for his self-respect. But it is the thought of +another past that rankles in his spirit like a poisoned wound. That he +himself made a fashion of being alive in the bald, beggarly days before a +certain meeting, is deplorable enough in all good conscience. But that +She should have permitted herself the same liberty seems inconsistent +with a Divine providence. + +A great many people run down jealousy, on the score that it is an +artificial feeling, as well as practically inconvenient. This is +scarcely fair; for the feeling on which it merely attends, like an +ill-humoured courtier, is itself artificial in exactly the same sense and +to the same degree. I suppose what is meant by that objection is that +jealousy has not always been a character of man; formed no part of that +very modest kit of sentiments with which he is supposed to have begun the +world; but waited to make its appearance in better days and among richer +natures. And this is equally true of love, and friendship, and love of +country, and delight in what they call the beauties of nature, and most +other things worth having. Love, in particular, will not endure any +historical scrutiny: to all who have fallen across it, it is one of the +most incontestable facts in the world; but if you begin to ask what it +was in other periods and countries, in Greece for instance, the strangest +doubts begin to spring up, and everything seems so vague and changing +that a dream is logical in comparison. Jealousy, at any rate, is one of +the consequences of love; you may like it or not, at pleasure; but there +it is. + +It is not exactly jealousy, however, that we feel when we reflect on the +past of those we love. A bundle of letters found after years of happy +union creates no sense of insecurity in the present; and yet it will pain +a man sharply. The two people entertain no vulgar doubt of each other: +but this pre-existence of both occurs to the mind as something +indelicate. To be altogether right, they should have had twin birth +together, at the same moment with the feeling that unites them. Then +indeed it would be simple and perfect and without reserve or +afterthought. Then they would understand each other with a fulness +impossible otherwise. There would be no barrier between them of +associations that cannot be imparted. They would be led into none of +those comparisons that send the blood back to the heart. And they would +know that there had been no time lost, and they had been together as much +as was possible. For besides terror for the separation that must follow +some time or other in the future, men feel anger, and something like +remorse, when they think of that other separation which endured until +they met. Some one has written that love makes people believe in +immortality, because there seems not to be room enough in life for so +great a tenderness, and it is inconceivable that the most masterful of +our emotions should have no more than the spare moments of a few years. +Indeed, it seems strange; but if we call to mind analogies, we can hardly +regard it as impossible. + +“The blind bow-boy,” who smiles upon us from the end of terraces in old +Dutch gardens, laughingly hails his bird-bolts among a fleeting +generation. But for as fast as ever he shoots, the game dissolves and +disappears into eternity from under his falling arrows; this one is gone +ere he is struck; the other has but time to make one gesture and give one +passionate cry; and they are all the things of a moment. When the +generation is gone, when the play is over, when the thirty years’ +panorama has been withdrawn in tatters from the stage of the world, we +may ask what has become of these great, weighty, and undying loves, and +the sweet-hearts who despised mortal conditions in a fine credulity; and +they can only show us a few songs in a bygone taste, a few actions worth +remembering, and a few children who have retained some happy stamp from +the disposition of their parents. + + + +IV.—TRUTH OF INTERCOURSE + + +AMONG sayings that have a currency in spite of being wholly false upon +the face of them for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject which +is accidentally combined with the error, one of the grossest and broadest +conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the truth and +hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. But the truth is one; it +has first to be discovered, then justly and exactly uttered. Even with +instruments specially contrived for such a purpose—with a foot rule, a +level, or a theodolite—it is not easy to be exact; it is easier, alas! to +be inexact. From those who mark the divisions on a scale to those who +measure the boundaries of empires or the distance of the heavenly stars, +it is by careful method and minute, unwearying attention that men rise +even to material exactness or to sure knowledge even of external and +constant things. But it is easier to draw the outline of a mountain than +the changing appearance of a face; and truth in human relations is of +this more intangible and dubious order: hard to seize, harder to +communicate. Veracity to facts in a loose, colloquial sense—not to say +that I have been in Malabar when as a matter of fact I was never out of +England, not to say that I have read Cervantes in the original when as a +matter of fact I know not one syllable of Spanish—this, indeed, is easy +and to the same degree unimportant in itself. Lies of this sort, +according to circumstances, may or may not be important; in a certain +sense even they may or may not be false. The habitual liar may be a very +honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends; while another +man who never told a formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one +lie—heart and face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which +poisons intimacy. And, _vice versâ_, veracity to sentiment, truth in a +relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, never to feign or +falsify emotion—that is the truth which makes love possible and mankind +happy. + +_L’art de bien dire_ is but a drawing-room accomplishment unless it be +pressed into the service of the truth. The difficulty of literature is +not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but +to affect him precisely as you wish. This is commonly understood in the +case of books or set orations; even in making your will, or writing an +explicit letter, some difficulty is admitted by the world. But one thing +you can never make Philistine natures understand; one thing, which yet +lies on the surface, remains as unseizable to their wits as a high flight +of metaphysics—namely, that the business of life is mainly carried on by +means of this difficult art of literature, and according to a man’s +proficiency in that art shall be the freedom and the fulness of his +intercourse with other men. Anybody, it is supposed, can say what he +means; and, in spite of their notorious experience to the contrary, +people so continue to suppose. Now, I simply open the last book I have +been reading—Mr. Leland’s captivating _English Gipsies_. “It is said,” I +find on p. 7, “that those who can converse with Irish peasants in their +own native tongue form far higher opinions of their appreciation of the +beautiful, and of _the elements of humour and pathos in their hearts_, +than do those who know their thoughts only through the medium of English. +I know from my own observations that this is quite the case with the +Indians of North America, and it is unquestionably so with the gipsy.” +In short, where a man has not a full possession of the language, the most +important, because the most amiable, qualities of his nature have to lie +buried and fallow; for the pleasure of comradeship, and the intellectual +part of love, rest upon these very “elements of humour and pathos.” Here +is a man opulent in both, and for lack of a medium he can put none of it +out to interest in the market of affection! But what is thus made plain +to our apprehensions in the case of a foreign language is partially true +even with the tongue we learned in childhood. Indeed, we all speak +different dialects; one shall be copious and exact, another loose and +meagre; but the speech of the ideal talker shall correspond and fit upon +the truth of fact—not clumsily, obscuring lineaments, like a mantle, but +cleanly adhering, like an athlete’s skin. And what is the result? That +the one can open himself more clearly to his friends, and can enjoy more +of what makes life truly valuable—intimacy with those he loves. An +orator makes a false step; he employs some trivial, some absurd, some +vulgar phrase; in the turn of a sentence he insults, by a side wind, +those whom he is labouring to charm; in speaking to one sentiment he +unconsciously ruffles another in parenthesis; and you are not surprised, +for you know his task to be delicate and filled with perils. “O +frivolous mind of man, light ignorance!” As if yourself, when you seek +to explain some misunderstanding or excuse some apparent fault, speaking +swiftly and addressing a mind still recently incensed, were not +harnessing for a more perilous adventure; as if yourself required less +tact and eloquence; as if an angry friend or a suspicious lover were not +more easy to offend than a meeting of indifferent politicians! Nay, and +the orator treads in a beaten round; the matters he discusses have been +discussed a thousand times before; language is ready-shaped to his +purpose; he speaks out of a cut and dry vocabulary. But you—may it not +be that your defence reposes on some subtlety of feeling, not so much as +touched upon in Shakespeare, to express which, like a pioneer, you must +venture forth into zones of thought still unsurveyed, and become yourself +a literary innovator? For even in love there are unlovely humours; +ambiguous acts, unpardonable words, may yet have sprung from a kind +sentiment. If the injured one could read your heart, you may be sure +that he would understand and pardon; but, alas! the heart cannot be +shown—it has to be demonstrated in words. Do you think it is a hard +thing to write poetry? Why, that is to write poetry, and of a high, if +not the highest, order. + +I should even more admire “the lifelong and heroic literary labours” of +my fellow-men, patiently clearing up in words their loves and their +contentions, and speaking their autobiography daily to their wives, were +it not for a circumstance which lessens their difficulty and my +admiration by equal parts. For life, though largely, is not entirely +carried on by literature. We are subject to physical passions and +contortions; the voice breaks and changes, and speaks by unconscious and +winning inflections; we have legible countenances, like an open book; +things that cannot be said look eloquently through the eyes; and the +soul, not locked into the body as a dungeon, dwells ever on the threshold +with appealing signals. Groans and tears, looks and gestures, a flush or +a paleness, are often the most clear reporters of the heart, and speak +more directly to the hearts of others. The message flies by these +interpreters in the least space of time, and the misunderstanding is +averted in the moment of its birth. To explain in words takes time and a +just and patient hearing; and in the critical epochs of a close relation, +patience and justice are not qualities on which we can rely. But the +look or the gesture explains things in a breath; they tell their message +without ambiguity; unlike speech, they cannot stumble, by the way, on a +reproach or an allusion that should steel your friend against the truth; +and then they have a higher authority, for they are the direct expression +of the heart, not yet transmitted through the unfaithful and +sophisticating brain. Not long ago I wrote a letter to a friend which +came near involving us in quarrel; but we met, and in personal talk I +repeated the worst of what I had written, and added worse to that; and +with the commentary of the body it seemed not unfriendly either to hear +or say. Indeed, letters are in vain for the purposes of intimacy; an +absence is a dead break in the relation; yet two who know each other +fully and are bent on perpetuity in love, may so preserve the attitude of +their affections that they may meet on the same terms as they had parted. + +Pitiful is the case of the blind, who cannot read the face; pitiful that +of the deaf, who cannot follow the changes of the voice. And there are +others also to be pitied; for there are some of an inert, uneloquent +nature, who have been denied all the symbols of communication, who have +neither a lively play of facial expression, nor speaking gestures, nor a +responsive voice, nor yet the gift of frank, explanatory speech: people +truly made of clay, people tied for life into a bag which no one can +undo. They are poorer than the gipsy, for their heart can speak no +language under heaven. Such people we must learn slowly by the tenor of +their acts, or through yea and nay communications; or we take them on +trust on the strength of a general air, and now and again, when we see +the spirit breaking through in a flash, correct or change our estimate. +But these will be uphill intimacies, without charm or freedom, to the +end; and freedom is the chief ingredient in confidence. Some minds, +romantically dull, despise physical endowments. That is a doctrine for a +misanthrope; to those who like their fellow-creatures it must always be +meaningless; and, for my part, I can see few things more desirable, after +the possession of such radical qualities as honour and humour and pathos, +than to have a lively and not a stolid countenance; to have looks to +correspond with every feeling; to be elegant and delightful in person, so +that we shall please even in the intervals of active pleasing, and may +never discredit speech with uncouth manners or become unconsciously our +own burlesques. But of all unfortunates there is one creature (for I +will not call him man) conspicuous in misfortune. This is he who has +forfeited his birthright of expression, who has cultivated artful +intonations, who has taught his face tricks, like a pet monkey, and on +every side perverted or cut off his means of communication with his +fellow-men. The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, +showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us. But +this fellow has filled his windows with opaque glass, elegantly coloured. +His house may be admired for its design, the crowd may pause before the +stained windows, but meanwhile the poor proprietor must lie languishing +within, uncomforted, unchangeably alone. + +Truth of intercourse is something more difficult than to refrain from +open lies. It is possible to avoid falsehood and yet not tell the truth. +It is not enough to answer formal questions. To reach the truth by yea +and nay communications implies a questioner with a share of inspiration, +such as is often found in mutual love. _Yea_ and _nay_ mean nothing; the +meaning must have been related in the question. Many words are often +necessary to convey a very simple statement; for in this sort of exercise +we never hit the gold; the most that we can hope is by many arrows, more +or less far off on different sides, to indicate, in the course of time, +for what target we are aiming, and after an hour’s talk, back and +forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a single thought. +And yet while the curt, pithy speaker misses the point entirely, a wordy, +prolegomenous babbler will often add three new offences in the process of +excusing one. It is really a most delicate affair. The world was made +before the English language, and seemingly upon a different design. +Suppose we held our converse not in words, but in music; those who have a +bad ear would find themselves cut off from all near commerce, and no +better than foreigners in this big world. But we do not consider how +many have “a bad ear” for words, nor how often the most eloquent find +nothing to reply. I hate questioners and questions; there are so few +that can be spoken to without a lie. “_Do you forgive me_?” Madam and +sweetheart, so far as I have gone in life I have never yet been able to +discover what forgiveness means. “_Is it still the same between us_?” +Why, how can it be? It is eternally different; and yet you are still the +friend of my heart. “_Do you understand me_?” God knows; I should think +it highly improbable. + +The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a +room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a +disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished +because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which +withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical +point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue? And, +again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed through a lie. +Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and part of the truth, +as often happens in answer to a question, may be the foulest calumny. A +fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law, and it is that +which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor of a +conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement; the +beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate conversation. +You never speak to God; you address a fellow-man, full of his own +tempers; and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true +facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to +letter, is the true veracity. To reconcile averted friends a Jesuitical +discretion is often needful, not so much to gain a kind hearing as to +communicate sober truth. Women have an ill name in this connection; yet +they live in as true relations; the lie of a good woman is the true index +of her heart. + +“It takes,” says Thoreau, in the noblest and most useful passage I +remember to have read in any modern author, {2} “two to speak truth—one +to speak and another to hear.” He must be very little experienced, or +have no great zeal for truth, who does not recognise the fact. A grain +of anger or a grain of suspicion produces strange acoustical effects, and +makes the ear greedy to remark offence. Hence we find those who have +once quarrelled carry themselves distantly, and are ever ready to break +the truce. To speak truth there must be moral equality or else no +respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to +degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become +ingrained. And there is another side to this, for the parent begins with +an imperfect notion of the child’s character, formed in early years or +during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only +the facts which suit with his preconception; and wherever a person +fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the +effort to speak truth. With our chosen friends, on the other hand, and +still more between lovers (for mutual understanding is love’s essence), +the truth is easily indicated by the one and aptly comprehended by the +other. A hint taken, a look understood, conveys the gist of long and +delicate explanations; and where the life is known even _yea_ and _nay_ +become luminous. In the closest of all relations—that of a love well +founded and equally shared—speech is half discarded, like a roundabout, +infantile process or a ceremony of formal etiquette; and the two +communicate directly by their presences, and with few looks and fewer +words contrive to share their good and evil and uphold each other’s +hearts in joy. For love rests upon a physical basis; it is a familiarity +of nature’s making and apart from voluntary choice. Understanding has in +some sort outrun knowledge, for the affection perhaps began with the +acquaintance; and as it was not made like other relations, so it is not, +like them, to be perturbed or clouded. Each knows more than can be +uttered; each lives by faith, and believes by a natural compulsion; and +between man and wife the language of the body is largely developed and +grown strangely eloquent. The thought that prompted and was conveyed in +a caress would only lose to be set down in words—ay, although Shakespeare +himself should be the scribe. + +Yet it is in these dear intimacies, beyond all others, that we must +strive and do battle for the truth. Let but a doubt arise, and alas! all +the previous intimacy and confidence is but another charge against the +person doubted. “_What a monstrous dishonesty is this if I have been +deceived so long and so completely_!” Let but that thought gain +entrance, and you plead before a deaf tribunal. Appeal to the past; why, +that is your crime! Make all clear, convince the reason; alas! +speciousness is but a proof against you. “_If you can abuse me now_, +_the more likely that you have abused me from the first_.” + +For a strong affection such moments are worth supporting, and they will +end well; for your advocate is in your lover’s heart and speaks her own +language; it is not you but she herself who can defend and clear you of +the charge. But in slighter intimacies, and for a less stringent union? +Indeed, is it worth while? We are all _incompris_, only more or less +concerned for the mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning +at each other’s feet like dumb, neglected lap-dogs. Sometimes we catch +an eye—this is our opportunity in the ages—and we wag our tail with a +poor smile. “_Is that all_?” All? If you only knew! But how can they +know? They do not love us; the more fools we to squander life on the +indifferent. + +But the morality of the thing, you will be glad to hear, is excellent; +for it is only by trying to understand others that we can get our own +hearts understood; and in matters of human feeling the clement judge is +the most successful pleader. + + + + +CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH + + + “You know my mother now and then argues very notably; always very + warmly at least. I happen often to differ from her; and we both + think so well of our own arguments, that we very seldom are so happy + as to convince one another. A pretty common case, I believe, in all + _vehement_ debatings. She says, I am _too witty_; Anglicè, _too + pert_; I, that she is _too wise_; that is to say, being likewise put + into English, _not so young as she has been_.”—Miss Howe to Miss + Harlowe, _Clarissa_, vol. ii. Letter xiii. + +THERE is a strong feeling in favour of cowardly and prudential proverbs. +The sentiments of a man while he is full of ardour and hope are to be +received, it is supposed, with some qualification. But when the same +person has ignominiously failed and begins to eat up his words, he should +be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived +for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious +attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since +mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very +properly so. But it does not follow that the one sort of proposition is +any less true than the other, or that Icarus is not to be more praised, +and perhaps more envied, than Mr. Samuel Budgett the Successful Merchant. +The one is dead, to be sure, while the other is still in his +counting-house counting out his money; and doubtless this is a +consideration. But we have, on the other hand, some bold and magnanimous +sayings common to high races and natures, which set forth the advantage +of the losing side, and proclaim it better to be a dead lion than a +living dog. It is difficult to fancy how the mediocrities reconcile such +sayings with their proverbs. According to the latter, every lad who goes +to sea is an egregious ass; never to forget your umbrella through a long +life would seem a higher and wiser flight of achievement than to go +smiling to the stake; and so long as you are a bit of a coward and +inflexible in money matters, you fulfil the whole duty of man. + +It is a still more difficult consideration for our average men, that +while all their teachers, from Solomon down to Benjamin Franklin and the +ungodly Binney, have inculcated the same ideal of manners, caution, and +respectability, those characters in history who have most notoriously +flown in the face of such precepts are spoken of in hyperbolical terms of +praise, and honoured with public monuments in the streets of our +commercial centres. This is very bewildering to the moral sense. You +have Joan of Arc, who left a humble but honest and reputable livelihood +under the eyes of her parents, to go a-colonelling, in the company of +rowdy soldiers, against the enemies of France; surely a melancholy +example for one’s daughters! And then you have Columbus, who may have +pioneered America, but, when all is said, was a most imprudent navigator. +His life is not the kind of thing one would like to put into the hands of +young people; rather, one would do one’s utmost to keep it from their +knowledge, as a red flag of adventure and disintegrating influence in +life. The time would fail me if I were to recite all the big names in +history whose exploits are perfectly irrational and even shocking to the +business mind. The incongruity is speaking; and I imagine it must +engender among the mediocrities a very peculiar attitude, towards the +nobler and showier sides of national life. They will read of the Charge +of Balaclava in much the same spirit as they assist at a performance of +the _Lyons Mail_. Persons of substance take in the _Times_ and sit +composedly in pit or boxes according to the degree of their prosperity in +business. As for the generals who go galloping up and down among +bomb-shells in absurd cocked hats—as for the actors who raddle their +faces and demean themselves for hire upon the stage—they must belong, +thank God! to a different order of beings, whom we watch as we watch the +clouds careering in the windy, bottomless inane, or read about like +characters in ancient and rather fabulous annals. Our offspring would no +more think of copying their behaviour, let us hope, than of doffing their +clothes and painting themselves blue in consequence of certain admissions +in the first chapter of their school history of England. + +Discredited as they are in practice, the cowardly proverbs hold their own +in theory; and it is another instance of the same spirit, that the +opinions of old men about life have been accepted as final. All sorts of +allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, +for the disenchantments of age. It is held to be a good taunt, and +somehow or other to clinch the question logically, when an old gentleman +waggles his head and says: “Ah, so I thought when I was your age.” It is +not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: “My venerable +sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours.” And yet the one is +as good as the other: pass for pass, tit for tat, a Roland for an Oliver. + +“Opinion in good men,” says Milton, “is but knowledge in the making.” +All opinions, properly so called, are stages on the road to truth. It +does not follow that a man will travel any further; but if he has really +considered the world and drawn a conclusion, he has travelled as far. +This does not apply to formulæ got by rote, which are stages on the road +to nowhere but second childhood and the grave. To have a catchword in +your mouth is not the same thing as to hold an opinion; still less is it +the same thing as to have made one for yourself. There are too many of +these catchwords in the world for people to rap out upon you like an oath +and by way of an argument. They have a currency as intellectual +counters; and many respectable persons pay their way with nothing else. +They seem to stand for vague bodies of theory in the background. The +imputed virtue of folios full of knockdown arguments is supposed to +reside in them, just as some of the majesty of the British Empire dwells +in the constable’s truncheon. They are used in pure superstition, as old +clodhoppers spoil Latin by way of an exorcism. And yet they are vastly +serviceable for checking unprofitable discussion and stopping the mouths +of babes and sucklings. And when a young man comes to a certain stage of +intellectual growth, the examination of these counters forms a gymnastic +at once amusing and fortifying to the mind. + +Because I have reached Paris, I am not ashamed of having passed through +Newhaven and Dieppe. They were very good places to pass through, and I +am none the less at my destination. All my old opinions were only stages +on the way to the one I now hold, as itself is only a stage on the way to +something else. I am no more abashed at having been a red-hot Socialist +with a panacea of my own than at having been a sucking infant. Doubtless +the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked +about a little to convince you of the fact. And in the meanwhile you +must do something, be something, believe something. It is not possible +to keep the mind in a state of accurate balance and blank; and even if +you could do so, instead of coming ultimately to the right conclusion, +you would be very apt to remain in a state of balance and blank to +perpetuity. Even in quite intermediate stages, a dash of enthusiasm is +not a thing to be ashamed of in the retrospect: if St. Paul had not been +a very zealous Pharisee, he would have been a colder Christian. For my +part, I look back to the time when I was a Socialist with something like +regret. I have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had better +leave these great changes to what we call great blind forces: their +blindness being so much more perspicacious than the little, peering, +partial eyesight of men. I seem to see that my own scheme would not +answer; and all the other schemes I ever heard propounded would depress +some elements of goodness just as much as they encouraged others. Now I +know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the +normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men’s +opinions. I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a +concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not +acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better—I daresay it +is deplorably for the worse. I have no choice in the business, and can +no more resist this tendency of my mind than I could prevent my body from +beginning to totter and decay. If I am spared (as the phrase runs) I +shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry +about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the +immunity. Just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having +outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism. Old people have +faults of their own; they tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and +suspicious. Whether from the growth of experience or the decline of +animal heat, I see that age leads to these and certain other faults; and +it follows, of course, that while in one sense I hope I am journeying +towards the truth, in another I am indubitably posting towards these +forms and sources of error. + +As we go catching and catching at this or that corner of knowledge, now +getting a foresight of generous possibilities, now chilled with a glimpse +of prudence, we may compare the headlong course of our years to a swift +torrent in which a man is carried away; now he is dashed against a +boulder, now he grapples for a moment to a trailing spray; at the end, he +is hurled out and overwhelmed in a dark and bottomless ocean. We have no +more than glimpses and touches; we are torn away from our theories; we +are spun round and round and shown this or the other view of life, until +only fools or knaves can hold to their opinions. We take a sight at a +condition in life, and say we have studied it; our most elaborate view is +no more than an impression. If we had breathing space, we should take +the occasion to modify and adjust; but at this breakneck hurry, we are no +sooner boys than we are adult, no sooner in love than married or jilted, +no sooner one age than we begin to be another, and no sooner in the +fulness of our manhood than we begin to decline towards the grave. It is +in vain to seek for consistency or expect clear and stable views in a +medium so perturbed and fleeting. This is no cabinet science, in which +things are tested to a scruple; we theorise with a pistol to our head; we +are confronted with a new set of conditions on which we have not only to +pass a judgment, but to take action, before the hour is at an end. And +we cannot even regard ourselves as a constant; in this flux of things, +our identity itself seems in a perpetual variation; and not infrequently +we find our own disguise the strangest in the masquerade. In the course +of time, we grow to love things we hated and hate things we loved. +Milton is not so dull as he once was, nor perhaps Ainsworth so amusing. +It is decidedly harder to climb trees, and not nearly so hard to sit +still. There is no use pretending; even the thrice royal game of hide +and seek has somehow lost in zest. All our attributes are modified or +changed; and it will be a poor account of us if our views do not modify +and change in a proportion. To hold the same views at forty as we held +at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, +not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the +wiser. It is as if a ship captain should sail to India from the Port of +London; and having brought a chart of the Thames on deck at his first +setting out, should obstinately use no other for the whole voyage. + +And mark you, it would be no less foolish to begin at Gravesend with a +chart of the Red Sea. _Si Jeunesse savait_, _si Vieillesse pouvait_, is +a very pretty sentiment, but not necessarily right. In five cases out of +ten, it is not so much that the young people do not know, as that they do +not choose. There is something irreverent in the speculation, but +perhaps the want of power has more to do with the wise resolutions of age +than we are always willing to admit. It would be an instructive +experiment to make an old man young again and leave him all his _savoir_. +I scarcely think he would put his money in the Savings Bank after all; I +doubt if he would be such an admirable son as we are led to expect; and +as for his conduct in love, I believe firmly he would out-Herod Herod, +and put the whole of his new compeers to the blush. Prudence is a wooden +juggernaut, before whom Benjamin Franklin walks with the portly air of a +high priest, and after whom dances many a successful merchant in the +character of Atys. But it is not a deity to cultivate in youth. If a +man lives to any considerable age, it cannot be denied that he laments +his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more +bitterly and with a more genuine intonation. + +It is customary to say that age should be considered, because it comes +last. It seems just as much to the point, that youth comes first. And +the scale fairly kicks the beam, if you go on to add that age, in a +majority of cases, never comes at all. Disease and accident make short +work of even the most prosperous persons; death costs nothing, and the +expense of a headstone is an inconsiderable trifle to the happy heir. To +be suddenly snuffed out in the middle of ambitious schemes, is tragical +enough at best; but when a man has been grudging himself his own life in +the meanwhile, and saving up everything for the festival that was never +to be, it becomes that hysterically moving sort of tragedy which lies on +the confines of farce. The victim is dead—and he has cunningly +overreached himself: a combination of calamities none the less absurd for +being grim. To husband a favourite claret until the batch turns sour, is +not at all an artful stroke of policy; and how much more with a whole +cellar—a whole bodily existence! People may lay down their lives with +cheerfulness in the sure expectation of a blessed immortality; but that +is a different affair from giving up youth with all its admirable +pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in a more than +problematical, nay, more than improbable, old age. We should not +compliment a hungry man, who should refuse a whole dinner and reserve all +his appetite for the dessert, before he knew whether there was to be any +dessert or not. If there be such a thing as imprudence in the world, we +surely have it here. We sail in leaky bottoms and on great and perilous +waters; and to take a cue from the dolorous old naval ballad, we have +heard the mer-maidens singing, and know that we shall never see dry land +any more. Old and young, we are all on our last cruise. If there is a +fill of tobacco among the crew, for God’s sake pass it round, and let us +have a pipe before we go! + +Indeed, by the report of our elders, this nervous preparation for old age +is only trouble thrown away. We fall on guard, and after all it is a +friend who comes to meet us. After the sun is down and the west faded, +the heavens begin to fill with shining stars. So, as we grow old, a sort +of equable jog-trot of feeling is substituted for the violent ups and +downs of passion and disgust; the same influence that restrains our +hopes, quiets our apprehensions; if the pleasures are less intense, the +troubles are milder and more tolerable; and in a word, this period for +which we are asked to hoard up everything as for a time of famine, is, in +its own right, the richest, easiest, and happiest of life. Nay, by +managing its own work and following its own happy inspiration, youth is +doing the best it can to endow the leisure of age. A full, busy youth is +your only prelude to a self-contained and independent age; and the muff +inevitably develops into the bore. There are not many Doctor Johnsons, +to set forth upon their first romantic voyage at sixty-four. If we wish +to scale Mont Blanc or visit a thieves’ kitchen in the East End, to go +down in a diving dress or up in a balloon, we must be about it while we +are still young. It will not do to delay until we are clogged with +prudence and limping with rheumatism, and people begin to ask us: “What +does Gravity out of bed?” Youth is the time to go flashing from one end +of the world to the other both in mind and body; to try the manners of +different nations; to hear the chimes at midnight; to see sunrise in town +and country; to be converted at a revival; to circumnavigate the +metaphysics, write halting verses, run a mile to see a fire, and wait all +day long in the theatre to applaud _Hernani_. There is some meaning in +the old theory about wild oats; and a man who has not had his +green-sickness and got done with it for good, is as little to be depended +on as an unvaccinated infant. “It is extraordinary,” says Lord +Beaconsfield, one of the brightest and best preserved of youths up to the +date of his last novel, {3} “it is extraordinary how hourly and how +violently change the feelings of an inexperienced young man.” And this +mobility is a special talent entrusted to his care; a sort of +indestructible virginity; a magic armour, with which he can pass unhurt +through great dangers and come unbedaubed out of the miriest passages. +Let him voyage, speculate, see all that he can, do all that he may; his +soul has as many lives as a cat; he will live in all weathers, and never +be a halfpenny the worse. Those who go to the devil in youth, with +anything like a fair chance, were probably little worth saving from the +first; they must have been feeble fellows—creatures made of putty and +pack-thread, without steel or fire, anger or true joyfulness, in their +composition; we may sympathise with their parents, but there is not much +cause to go into mourning for themselves; for to be quite honest, the +weak brother is the worst of mankind. + +When the old man waggles his head and says, “Ah, so I thought when I was +your age,” he has proved the youth’s case. Doubtless, whether from +growth of experience or decline of animal heat, he thinks so no longer; +but he thought so while he was young; and all men have thought so while +they were young, since there was dew in the morning or hawthorn in May; +and here is another young man adding his vote to those of previous +generations and rivetting another link to the chain of testimony. It is +as natural and as right for a young man to be imprudent and exaggerated, +to live in swoops and circles, and beat about his cage like any other +wild thing newly captured, as it is for old men to turn gray, or mothers +to love their offspring, or heroes to die for something worthier than +their lives. + +By way of an apologue for the aged, when they feel more than usually +tempted to offer their advice, let me recommend the following little +tale. A child who had been remarkably fond of toys (and in particular of +lead soldiers) found himself growing to the level of acknowledged boyhood +without any abatement of this childish taste. He was thirteen; already +he had been taunted for dallying overlong about the playbox; he had to +blush if he was found among his lead soldiers; the shades of the +prison-house were closing about him with a vengeance. There is nothing +more difficult than to put the thoughts of children into the language of +their elders; but this is the effect of his meditations at this juncture: +“Plainly,” he said, “I must give up my playthings, in the meanwhile, +since I am not in a position to secure myself against idle jeers. At the +same time, I am sure that playthings are the very pick of life; all +people give them up out of the same pusillanimous respect for those who +are a little older; and if they do not return to them as soon as they +can, it is only because they grow stupid and forget. I shall be wiser; I +shall conform for a little to the ways of their foolish world; but so +soon as I have made enough money, I shall retire and shut myself up among +my playthings until the day I die.” Nay, as he was passing in the train +along the Esterel mountains between Cannes and Fréjus, he remarked a +pretty house in an orange garden at the angle of a bay, and decided that +this should be his Happy Valley. Astrea Redux; childhood was to come +again! The idea has an air of simple nobility to me, not unworthy of +Cincinnatus. And yet, as the reader has probably anticipated, it is +never likely to be carried into effect. There was a worm i’ the bud, a +fatal error in the premises. Childhood must pass away, and then youth, +as surely as age approaches. The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, +and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances. To love +playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honourable youth, +and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to +be a good artist in life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbour. + +You need repent none of your youthful vagaries. They may have been over +the score on one side, just as those of age are probably over the score +on the other. But they had a point; they not only befitted your age and +expressed its attitude and passions, but they had a relation to what was +outside of you, and implied criticisms on the existing state of things, +which you need not allow to have been undeserved, because you now see +that they were partial. All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of +stating that the current truth is incomplete. The follies of youth have +a basis in sound reason, just as much as the embarrassing questions put +by babes and sucklings. Their most antisocial acts indicate the defects +of our society. When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you +must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is +sometimes a theory. Shelley, chafing at the Church of England, +discovered the cure of all evils in universal atheism. Generous lads +irritated at the injustices of society, see nothing for it but the +abolishment of everything and Kingdom Come of anarchy. Shelley was a +young fool; so are these cocksparrow revolutionaries. But it is better +to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape +of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities +of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some +people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the +world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sake give me +the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for +the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make +fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall +be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and +confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own +esteem, and have not learnt the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. +If we are indeed here to perfect and complete our own natures, and grow +larger, stronger, and more sympathetic against some nobler career in the +future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the utmost while we have the +time. To equip a dull, respectable person with wings would be but to +make a parody of an angel. + +In short, if youth is not quite right in its opinions, there is a strong +probability that age is not much more so. Undying hope is co-ruler of +the human bosom with infallible credulity. A man finds he has been wrong +at every preceding stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing +conclusion that he is at last entirely right. Mankind, after centuries +of failure, are still upon the eve of a thoroughly constitutional +millennium. Since we have explored the maze so long without result, it +follows, for poor human reason, that we cannot have to explore much +longer; close by must be the centre, with a champagne luncheon and a +piece of ornamental water. How if there were no centre at all, but just +one alley after another, and the whole world a labyrinth without end or +issue? + +I overheard the other day a scrap of conversation, which I take the +liberty to reproduce. “What I advance is true,” said one. “But not the +whole truth,” answered the other. “Sir,” returned the first (and it +seemed to me there was a smack of Dr. Johnson in the speech), “Sir, there +is no such thing as the whole truth!” Indeed, there is nothing so +evident in life as that there are two sides to a question. History is +one long illustration. The forces of nature are engaged, day by day, in +cudgelling it into our backward intelligences. We never pause for a +moment’s consideration but we admit it as an axiom. An enthusiast sways +humanity exactly by disregarding this great truth, and dinning it into +our ears that this or that question has only one possible solution; and +your enthusiast is a fine florid fellow, dominates things for a while and +shakes the world out of a doze; but when once he is gone, an army of +quiet and uninfluential people set to work to remind us of the other side +and demolish the generous imposture. While Calvin is putting everybody +exactly right in his _Institutes_, and hot-headed Knox is thundering in +the pulpit, Montaigne is already looking at the other side in his library +in Perigord, and predicting that they will find as much to quarrel about +in the Bible as they had found already in the Church. Age may have one +side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain +than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong. Let them +agree to differ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a +form of agreement rather than a form of difference? + +I suppose it is written that any one who sets up for a bit of a +philosopher, must contradict himself to his very face. For here have I +fairly talked myself into thinking that we have the whole thing before us +at last; that there is no answer to the mystery, except that there are as +many as you please; that there is no centre to the maze because, like the +famous sphere, its centre is everywhere; and that agreeing to differ with +every ceremony of politeness, is the only “one undisturbed song of pure +concent” to which we are ever likely to lend our musical voices. + + + + +AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS + + + “BOSWELL: We grow weary when idle.” + + “JOHNSON: That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; + but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all + entertain one another.” + +JUST now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence +convicting them of _lèse_-respectability, to enter on some lucrative +profession, and labour therein with something not far short of +enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when they have +enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little +of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not be. Idleness so +called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great +deal not recognised in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has +as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is admitted +that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap +race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for +those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so many) takes his determination, +votes for the sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, it “goes for” +them. And while such an one is ploughing distressfully up the road, it +is not hard to understand his resentment, when he perceives cool persons +in the meadows by the wayside, lying with a handkerchief over their ears +and a glass at their elbow. Alexander is touched in a very delicate +place by the disregard of Diogenes. Where was the glory of having taken +Rome for these tumultuous barbarians, who poured into the Senate house, +and found the Fathers sitting silent and unmoved by their success? It is +a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and +when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence +physicists condemn the unphysical; financiers have only a superficial +toleration for those who know little of stocks; literary persons despise +the unlettered; and people of all pursuits combine to disparage those who +have none. + +But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it is not the greatest. +You could not be put in prison for speaking against industry, but you can +be sent to Coventry for speaking like a fool. The greatest difficulty +with most subjects is to do them well; therefore, please to remember this +is an apology. It is certain that much may be judiciously argued in +favour of diligence; only there is something to be said against it, and +that is what, on the present occasion, I have to say. To state one +argument is not necessarily to be deaf to all others, and that a man has +written a book of travels in Montenegro, is no reason why he should never +have been to Richmond. + +It is surely beyond a doubt that people should be a good deal idle in +youth. For though here and there a Lord Macaulay may escape from school +honours with all his wits about him, most boys pay so dear for their +medals that they never afterwards have a shot in their locker, and begin +the world bankrupt. And the same holds true during all the time a lad is +educating himself, or suffering others to educate him. It must have been +a very foolish old gentleman who addressed Johnson at Oxford in these +words: “Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of +knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon +books will be but an irksome task.” The old gentleman seems to have been +unaware that many other things besides reading grow irksome, and not a +few become impossible, by the time a man has to use spectacles and cannot +walk without a stick. Books are good enough in their own way, but they +are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like +the Lady of Shalott, peering into a mirror, with your back turned on all +the bustle and glamour of reality. And if a man reads very hard, as the +old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought. + +If you look back on your own education, I am sure it will not be the +full, vivid, instructive hours of truantry that you regret; you would +rather cancel some lack-lustre periods between sleep and waking in the +class. For my own part, I have attended a good many lectures in my time. +I still remember that the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic +Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor +Stillicide a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such +scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain +other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing +truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of +education, which was the favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac, and +turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects of +Life. Suffice it to say this: if a lad does not learn in the streets, it +is because he has no faculty of learning. Nor is the truant always in +the streets, for if he prefers, he may go out by the gardened suburbs +into the country. He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and +smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones. A bird +will sing in the thicket. And there he may fall into a vein of kindly +thought, and see things in a new perspective. Why, if this be not +education, what is? We may conceive Mr. Worldly Wiseman accosting such +an one, and the conversation that should thereupon ensue:— + +“How now, young fellow, what dost thou here?” + +“Truly, sir, I take mine ease.” + +“Is not this the hour of the class? and should’st thou not be plying thy +Book with diligence, to the end thou mayest obtain knowledge?” + +“Nay, but thus also I follow after Learning, by your leave.” + +“Learning, quotha! After what fashion, I pray thee? Is it mathematics?” + +“No, to be sure.” + +“Is it metaphysics?” + +“Nor that.” + +“Is it some language?” + +“Nay, it is no language.” + +“Is it a trade?” + +“Nor a trade neither.” + +“Why, then, what is’t?” + +“Indeed, sir, as a time may soon come for me to go upon Pilgrimage, I am +desirous to note what is commonly done by persons in my case, and where +are the ugliest Sloughs and Thickets on the Road; as also, what manner of +Staff is of the best service. Moreover, I lie here, by this water, to +learn by root-of-heart a lesson which my master teaches me to call Peace, +or Contentment.” + +Hereupon Mr. Worldly Wiseman was much commoved with passion, and shaking +his cane with a very threatful countenance, broke forth upon this wise: +“Learning, quotha!” said he; “I would have all such rogues scourged by +the Hangman!” + +And so he would go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of +starch, like a turkey when it spread its feathers. + +Now this, of Mr. Wiseman’s, is the common opinion. A fact is not called +a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does not fall into one of your +scholastic categories. An inquiry must be in some acknowledged +direction, with a name to go by; or else you are not inquiring at all, +only lounging; and the work-house is too good for you. It is supposed +that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, or the far end of a +telescope. Sainte-Beuve, as he grew older, came to regard all experience +as a single great book, in which to study for a few years ere we go +hence; and it seemed all one to him whether you should read in Chapter +xx., which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter xxxix., which is +hearing the band play in the gardens. As a matter of fact, an +intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, +with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than +many another in a life of heroic vigils. There is certainly some chill +and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious +science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, +that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life. While +others are filling their memory with a lumber of words, one-half of which +they will forget before the week be out, your truant may learn some +really useful art: to play the fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to speak +with ease and opportunity to all varieties of men. Many who have “plied +their book diligently,” and know all about some one branch or another of +accepted lore, come out of the study with an ancient and owl-like +demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and +brighter parts of life. Many make a large fortune, who remain underbred +and pathetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, +who began life along with them—by your leave, a different picture. He +has had time to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a +great deal in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for +both body and mind; and if he has never read the great Book in very +recondite places, he has dipped into it and skimmed it over to excellent +purpose. Might not the student afford some Hebrew roots, and the +business man some of his half-crowns, for a share of the idler’s +knowledge of life at large, and Art of Living? Nay, and the idler has +another and more important quality than these. I mean his wisdom. He +who has much looked on at the childish satisfaction of other people in +their hobbies, will regard his own with only a very ironical indulgence. +He will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will have a great and cool +allowance for all sorts of people and opinions. If he finds no +out-of-the-way truths, he will identify himself with no very burning +falsehood. His way takes him along a by-road, not much frequented, but +very even and pleasant, which is called Commonplace Lane, and leads to +the Belvedere of Commonsense. Thence he shall command an agreeable, if +no very noble prospect; and while others behold the East and West, the +Devil and the Sunrise, he will be contentedly aware of a sort of morning +hour upon all sublunary things, with an army of shadows running speedily +and in many different directions into the great daylight of Eternity. +The shadows and the generations, the shrill doctors and the plangent +wars, go by into ultimate silence and emptiness; but underneath all this, +a man may see, out of the Belvedere windows, much green and peaceful +landscape; many firelit parlours; good people laughing, drinking, and +making love as they did before the Flood or the French Revolution; and +the old shepherd telling his tale under the hawthorn. + +Extreme _busyness_, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a +symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a +catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a +sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of +living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring +these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see +how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity; +they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not take +pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless +Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It +is no good speaking to such folk: they _cannot_ be idle, their nature is +not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which +are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill. When they do not +require to go to the office, when they are not hungry and have no mind to +drink, the whole breathing world is a blank to them. If they have to +wait an hour or so for a train, they fall into a stupid trance with their +eyes open. To see them, you would suppose there was nothing to look at +and no one to speak with; you would imagine they were paralysed or +alienated; and yet very possibly they are hard workers in their own way, +and have good eyesight for a flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. +They have been to school and college, but all the time they had their eye +on the medal; they have gone about in the world and mixed with clever +people, but all the time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if +a man’s soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and +narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at +forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of +amusement, and not one thought to rub against another, while they wait +for the train. Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on the +boxes; when he was twenty, he would have stared at the girls; but now the +pipe is smoked out, the snuff-box empty, and my gentleman sits bolt +upright upon a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me +as being Success in Life. + +But it is not only the person himself who suffers from his busy habits, +but his wife and children, his friends and relations, and down to the +very people he sits with in a railway carriage or an omnibus. Perpetual +devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by +perpetual neglect of many other things. And it is not by any means +certain that a man’s business is the most important thing he has to do. +To an impartial estimate it will seem clear that many of the wisest, most +virtuous, and most beneficent parts that are to be played upon the +Theatre of Life are filled by gratuitous performers, and pass, among the +world at large, as phases of idleness. For in that Theatre, not only the +walking gentlemen, singing chambermaids, and diligent fiddlers in the +orchestra, but those who look on and clap their hands from the benches, +do really play a part and fulfil important offices towards the general +result. You are no doubt very dependent on the care of your lawyer and +stockbroker, of the guards and signalmen who convey you rapidly from +place to place, and the policemen who walk the streets for your +protection; but is there not a thought of gratitude in your heart for +certain other benefactors who set you smiling when they fall in your way, +or season your dinner with good company? Colonel Newcome helped to lose +his friend’s money; Fred Bayham had an ugly trick of borrowing shirts; +and yet they were better people to fall among than Mr. Barnes. And +though Falstaff was neither sober nor very honest, I think I could name +one or two long-faced Barabbases whom the world could better have done +without. Hazlitt mentions that he was more sensible of obligation to +Northcote, who had never done him anything he could call a service, than +to his whole circle of ostentatious friends; for he thought a good +companion emphatically the greatest benefactor. I know there are people +in the world who cannot feel grateful unless the favour has been done +them at the cost of pain and difficulty. But this is a churlish +disposition. A man may send you six sheets of letter-paper covered with +the most entertaining gossip, or you may pass half an hour pleasantly, +perhaps profitably, over an article of his; do you think the service +would be greater, if he had made the manuscript in his heart’s blood, +like a compact with the devil? Do you really fancy you should be more +beholden to your correspondent, if he had been damning you all the while +for your importunity? Pleasures are more beneficial than duties because, +like the quality of mercy, they are not strained, and they are twice +blest. There must always be two to a kiss, and there may be a score in a +jest; but wherever there is an element of sacrifice, the favour is +conferred with pain, and, among generous people, received with confusion. +There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By +being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain +unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so +much as the benefactor. The other day, a ragged, barefoot boy ran down +the street after a marble, with so jolly an air that he set every one he +passed into a good humour; one of these persons, who had been delivered +from more than usually black thoughts, stopped the little fellow and gave +him some money with this remark: “You see what sometimes comes of looking +pleased.” If he had looked pleased before, he had now to look both +pleased and mystified. For my part, I justify this encouragement of +smiling rather than tearful children; I do not wish to pay for tears +anywhere but upon the stage; but I am prepared to deal largely in the +opposite commodity. A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than +a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their +entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We +need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; +they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great +Theorem of the Liveableness of Life. Consequently, if a person cannot be +happy without remaining idle, idle he should remain. It is a +revolutionary precept; but thanks to hunger and the workhouse, one not +easily to be abused; and within practical limits, it is one of the most +incontestable truths in the whole Body of Morality. Look at one of your +industrious fellows for a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps +indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and +receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return. Either he +absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a recluse in a +garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes among +people swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole nervous +system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not +care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in +other people’s lives. They would be happier if he were dead. They could +easier do without his services in the Circumlocution Office, than they +can tolerate his fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. +It is better to be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than +daily hag-ridden by a peevish uncle. + +And what, in God’s name, is all this pother about? For what cause do +they embitter their own and other people’s lives? That a man should +publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not +finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to +the world. The ranks of life are full; and although a thousand fall, +there are always some to go into the breach. When they told Joan of Arc +she should be at home minding women’s work, she answered there were +plenty to spin and wash. And so, even with your own rare gifts! When +nature is “so careless of the single life,” why should we coddle +ourselves into the fancy that our own is of exceptional importance? +Suppose Shakespeare had been knocked on the head some dark night in Sir +Thomas Lucy’s preserves, the world would have wagged on better or worse, +the pitcher gone to the well, the scythe to the corn, and the student to +his book; and no one been any the wiser of the loss. There are not many +works extant, if you look the alternative all over, which are worth the +price of a pound of tobacco to a man of limited means. This is a +sobering reflection for the proudest of our earthly vanities. Even a +tobacconist may, upon consideration, find no great cause for personal +vainglory in the phrase; for although tobacco is an admirable sedative, +the qualities necessary for retailing it are neither rare nor precious in +themselves. Alas and alas! you may take it how you will, but the +services of no single individual are indispensable. Atlas was just a +gentleman with a protracted nightmare! And yet you see merchants who go +and labour themselves into a great fortune and thence into the bankruptcy +court; scribblers who keep scribbling at little articles until their +temper is a cross to all who come about them, as though Pharaoh should +set the Israelites to make a pin instead of a pyramid: and fine young men +who work themselves into a decline, and are driven off in a hearse with +white plumes upon it. Would you not suppose these persons had been +whispered, by the Master of the Ceremonies, the promise of some momentous +destiny? and that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces +was the bull’s-eye and centrepoint of all the universe? And yet it is +not so. The ends for which they give away their priceless youth, for all +they know, may be chimerical or hurtful; the glory and riches they expect +may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they and the world they +inhabit are so inconsiderable that the mind freezes at the thought. + + + + +ORDERED SOUTH + + +BY a curious irony of fate, the places to which we are sent when health +deserts us are often singularly beautiful. Often, too, they are places +we have visited in former years, or seen briefly in passing by, and kept +ever afterwards in pious memory; and we please ourselves with the fancy +that we shall repeat many vivid and pleasurable sensations, and take up +again the thread of our enjoyment in the same spirit as we let it fall. +We shall now have an opportunity of finishing many pleasant excursions, +interrupted of yore before our curiosity was fully satisfied. It may be +that we have kept in mind, during all these years, the recollection of +some valley into which we have just looked down for a moment before we +lost sight of it in the disorder of the hills; it may be that we have +lain awake at night, and agreeably tantalised ourselves with the thought +of corners we had never turned, or summits we had all but climbed: we +shall now be able, as we tell ourselves, to complete all these unfinished +pleasures, and pass beyond the barriers that confined our recollections. + +The promise is so great, and we are all so easily led away when hope and +memory are both in one story, that I daresay the sick man is not very +inconsolable when he receives sentence of banishment, and is inclined to +regard his ill-health as not the least fortunate accident of his life. +Nor is he immediately undeceived. The stir and speed of the journey, and +the restlessness that goes to bed with him as he tries to sleep between +two days of noisy progress, fever him, and stimulate his dull nerves into +something of their old quickness and sensibility. And so he can enjoy +the faint autumnal splendour of the landscape, as he sees hill and plain, +vineyard and forest, clad in one wonderful glory of fairy gold, which the +first great winds of winter will transmute, as in the fable, into +withered leaves. And so too he can enjoy the admirable brevity and +simplicity of such little glimpses of country and country ways as flash +upon him through the windows of the train; little glimpses that have a +character all their own; sights seen as a travelling swallow might see +them from the wing, or Iris as she went abroad over the land on some +Olympian errand. Here and there, indeed, a few children huzzah and wave +their hands to the express; but for the most part it is an interruption +too brief and isolated to attract much notice; the sheep do not cease +from browsing; a girl sits balanced on the projecting tiller of a canal +boat, so precariously that it seems as if a fly or the splash of a +leaping fish would be enough to overthrow the dainty equilibrium, and yet +all these hundreds of tons of coal and wood and iron have been +precipitated roaring past her very ear, and there is not a start, not a +tremor, not a turn of the averted head, to indicate that she has been +even conscious of its passage. Herein, I think, lies the chief +attraction of railway travel. The speed is so easy, and the train +disturbs so little the scenes through which it takes us, that our heart +becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the country; and while the +body is borne forward in the flying chain of carriages, the thoughts +alight, as the humour moves them, at unfrequented stations; they make +haste up the poplar alley that leads towards the town; they are left +behind with the signalman as, shading his eyes with his hand, he watches +the long train sweep away into the golden distance. + +Moreover, there is still before the invalid the shock of wonder and +delight with which he will learn that he has passed the indefinable line +that separates South from North. And this is an uncertain moment; for +sometimes the consciousness is forced upon him early, on the occasion of +some slight association, a colour, a flower, or a scent; and sometimes +not until, one fine morning, he wakes up with the southern sunshine +peeping through the _persiennes_, and the southern patois confusedly +audible below the windows. Whether it come early or late, however, this +pleasure will not end with the anticipation, as do so many others of the +same family. It will leave him wider awake than it found him, and give a +new significance to all he may see for many days to come. There is +something in the mere name of the South that carries enthusiasm along +with it. At the sound of the word, he pricks up his ears; he becomes as +anxious to seek out beauties and to get by heart the permanent lines and +character of the landscape, as if he had been told that it was all his +own—an estate out of which he had been kept unjustly, and which he was +now to receive in free and full possession. Even those who have never +been there before feel as if they had been; and everybody goes comparing, +and seeking for the familiar, and finding it with such ecstasies of +recognition, that one would think they were coming home after a weary +absence, instead of travelling hourly farther abroad. + +It is only after he is fairly arrived and settled down in his chosen +corner, that the invalid begins to understand the change that has +befallen him. Everything about him is as he had remembered, or as he had +anticipated. Here, at his feet, under his eyes, are the olive gardens +and the blue sea. Nothing can change the eternal magnificence of form of +the naked Alps behind Mentone; nothing, not even the crude curves of the +railway, can utterly deform the suavity of contour of one bay after +another along the whole reach of the Riviera. And of all this, he has +only a cold head knowledge that is divorced from enjoyment. He +recognises with his intelligence that this thing and that thing is +beautiful, while in his heart of hearts he has to confess that it is not +beautiful for him. It is in vain that he spurs his discouraged spirit; +in vain that he chooses out points of view, and stands there, looking +with all his eyes, and waiting for some return of the pleasure that he +remembers in other days, as the sick folk may have awaited the coming of +the angel at the pool of Bethesda. He is like an enthusiast leading +about with him a stolid, indifferent tourist. There is some one by who +is out of sympathy with the scene, and is not moved up to the measure of +the occasion; and that some one is himself. The world is disenchanted +for him. He seems to himself to touch things with muffled hands, and to +see them through a veil. His life becomes a palsied fumbling after notes +that are silent when he has found and struck them. He cannot recognise +that this phlegmatic and unimpressionable body with which he now goes +burthened, is the same that he knew heretofore so quick and delicate and +alive. + +He is tempted to lay the blame on the very softness and amenity of the +climate, and to fancy that in the rigours of the winter at home, these +dead emotions would revive and flourish. A longing for the brightness +and silence of fallen snow seizes him at such times. He is homesick for +the hale rough weather; for the tracery of the frost upon his +window-panes at morning, the reluctant descent of the first flakes, and +the white roofs relieved against the sombre sky. And yet the stuff of +which these yearnings are made, is of the flimsiest: if but the +thermometer fall a little below its ordinary Mediterranean level, or a +wind come down from the snow-clad Alps behind, the spirit of his fancies +changes upon the instant, and many a doleful vignette of the grim wintry +streets at home returns to him, and begins to haunt his memory. The +hopeless, huddled attitude of tramps in doorways; the flinching gait of +barefoot children on the icy pavement; the sheen of the rainy streets +towards afternoon; the meagre anatomy of the poor defined by the clinging +of wet garments; the high canorous note of the North-easter on days when +the very houses seem to stiffen with cold: these, and such as these, +crowd back upon him, and mockingly substitute themselves for the fanciful +winter scenes with which he had pleased himself a while before. He +cannot be glad enough that he is where he is. If only the others could +be there also; if only those tramps could lie down for a little in the +sunshine, and those children warm their feet, this once, upon a kindlier +earth; if only there were no cold anywhere, and no nakedness, and no +hunger; if only it were as well with all men as it is with him! + +For it is not altogether ill with the invalid, after all. If it is only +rarely that anything penetrates vividly into his numbed spirit, yet, when +anything does, it brings with it a joy that is all the more poignant for +its very rarity. There is something pathetic in these occasional returns +of a glad activity of heart. In his lowest hours he will be stirred and +awakened by many such; and they will spring perhaps from very trivial +sources; as a friend once said to me, the “spirit of delight” comes often +on small wings. For the pleasure that we take in beautiful nature is +essentially capricious. It comes sometimes when we least look for it; +and sometimes, when we expect it most certainly, it leaves us to gape +joylessly for days together, in the very home-land of the beautiful. We +may have passed a place a thousand times and one; and on the thousand and +second it will be transfigured, and stand forth in a certain splendour of +reality from the dull circle of surroundings; so that we see it “with a +child’s first pleasure,” as Wordsworth saw the daffodils by the lake +side. And if this falls out capriciously with the healthy, how much more +so with the invalid. Some day he will find his first violet, and be lost +in pleasant wonder, by what alchemy the cold earth of the clods, and the +vapid air and rain, can be transmuted into colour so rich and odour so +touchingly sweet. Or perhaps he may see a group of washerwomen relieved, +on a spit of shingle, against the blue sea, or a meeting of +flower-gatherers in the tempered daylight of an olive-garden; and +something significant or monumental in the grouping, something in the +harmony of faint colour that is always characteristic of the dress of +these southern women, will come home to him unexpectedly, and awake in +him that satisfaction with which we tell ourselves that we are the richer +by one more beautiful experience. Or it may be something even slighter: +as when the opulence of the sunshine, which somehow gets lost and fails +to produce its effect on the large scale, is suddenly revealed to him by +the chance isolation—as he changes the position of his sunshade—of a yard +or two of roadway with its stones and weeds. And then, there is no end +to the infinite variety of the olive-yards themselves. Even the colour +is indeterminate and continually shifting: now you would say it was +green, now gray, now blue; now tree stands above tree, like “cloud on +cloud,” massed into filmy indistinctness; and now, at the wind’s will, +the whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken up with little momentary +silverings and shadows. But every one sees the world in his own way. To +some the glad moment may have arrived on other provocations; and their +recollection may be most vivid of the stately gait of women carrying +burthens on their heads; of tropical effects, with canes and naked rock +and sunlight; of the relief of cypresses; of the troubled, busy-looking +groups of sea-pines, that seem always as if they were being wielded and +swept together by a whirlwind; of the air coming, laden with virginal +perfumes, over the myrtles and the scented underwood; of the empurpled +hills standing up, solemn and sharp, out of the green-gold air of the +east at evening. + +There go many elements, without doubt, to the making of one such moment +of intense perception; and it is on the happy agreement of these many +elements, on the harmonious vibration of many nerves, that the whole +delight of the moment must depend. Who can forget how, when he has +chanced upon some attitude of complete restfulness, after long uneasy +rolling to and fro on grass or heather, the whole fashion of the +landscape has been changed for him, as though the sun had just broken +forth, or a great artist had only then completed, by some cunning touch, +the composition of the picture? And not only a change of posture—a +snatch of perfume, the sudden singing of a bird, the freshness of some +pulse of air from an invisible sea, the light shadow of a travelling +cloud, the merest nothing that sends a little shiver along the most +infinitesimal nerve of a man’s body—not one of the least of these but has +a hand somehow in the general effect, and brings some refinement of its +own into the character of the pleasure we feel. + +And if the external conditions are thus varied and subtle, even more so +are those within our own bodies. No man can find out the world, says +Solomon, from beginning to end, because the world is in his heart; and so +it is impossible for any of us to understand, from beginning to end, that +agreement of harmonious circumstances that creates in us the highest +pleasure of admiration, precisely because some of these circumstances are +hidden from us for ever in the constitution of our own bodies. After we +have reckoned up all that we can see or hear or feel, there still remains +to be taken into account some sensibility more delicate than usual in the +nerves affected, or some exquisite refinement in the architecture of the +brain, which is indeed to the sense of the beautiful as the eye or the +ear to the sense of hearing or sight. We admire splendid views and great +pictures; and yet what is truly admirable is rather the mind within us, +that gathers together these scattered details for its delight, and makes +out of certain colours, certain distributions of graduated light and +darkness, that intelligible whole which alone we call a picture or a +view. Hazlitt, relating in one of his essays how he went on foot from +one great man’s house to another’s in search of works of art, begins +suddenly to triumph over these noble and wealthy owners, because he was +more capable of enjoying their costly possessions than they were; because +they had paid the money and he had received the pleasure. And the +occasion is a fair one for self-complacency. While the one man was +working to be able to buy the picture, the other was working to be able +to enjoy the picture. An inherited aptitude will have been diligently +improved in either case; only the one man has made for himself a fortune, +and the other has made for himself a living spirit. It is a fair +occasion for self-complacency, I repeat, when the event shows a man to +have chosen the better part, and laid out his life more wisely, in the +long run, than those who have credit for most wisdom. And yet even this +is not a good unmixed; and like all other possessions, although in a less +degree, the possession of a brain that has been thus improved and +cultivated, and made into the prime organ of a man’s enjoyment, brings +with it certain inevitable cares and disappointments. The happiness of +such an one comes to depend greatly upon those fine shades of sensation +that heighten and harmonise the coarser elements of beauty. And thus a +degree of nervous prostration, that to other men would be hardly +disagreeable, is enough to overthrow for him the whole fabric of his +life, to take, except at rare moments, the edge off his pleasures, and to +meet him wherever he goes with failure, and the sense of want, and +disenchantment of the world and life. + +It is not in such numbness of spirit only that the life of the invalid +resembles a premature old age. Those excursions that he had promised +himself to finish, prove too long or too arduous for his feeble body; and +the barrier-hills are as impassable as ever. Many a white town that sits +far out on the promontory, many a comely fold of wood on the mountain +side, beckons and allures his imagination day after day, and is yet as +inaccessible to his feet as the clefts and gorges of the clouds. The +sense of distance grows upon him wonderfully; and after some feverish +efforts and the fretful uneasiness of the first few days, he falls +contentedly in with the restrictions of his weakness. His narrow round +becomes pleasant and familiar to him as the cell to a contented prisoner. +Just as he has fallen already out of the mid race of active life, he now +falls out of the little eddy that circulates in the shallow waters of the +sanatorium. He sees the country people come and go about their everyday +affairs, the foreigners stream out in goodly pleasure parties; the stir +of man’s activity is all about him, as he suns himself inertly in some +sheltered corner; and he looks on with a patriarchal impersonality of +interest, such as a man may feel when he pictures to himself the fortunes +of his remote descendants, or the robust old age of the oak he has +planted over-night. + +In this falling aside, in this quietude and desertion of other men, there +is no inharmonious prelude to the last quietude and desertion of the +grave; in this dulness of the senses there is a gentle preparation for +the final insensibility of death. And to him the idea of mortality comes +in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, less as an abrupt +catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesimal gradation, and the last step +on a long decline of way. As we turn to and fro in bed, and every moment +the movements grow feebler and smaller and the attitude more restful and +easy, until sleep overtakes us at a stride and we move no more, so desire +after desire leaves him; day by day his strength decreases, and the +circle of his activity grows ever narrower; and he feels, if he is to be +thus tenderly weaned from the passion of life, thus gradually inducted +into the slumber of death, that when at last the end comes, it will come +quietly and fitly. If anything is to reconcile poor spirits to the +coming of the last enemy, surely it should be such a mild approach as +this; not to hale us forth with violence, but to persuade us from a place +we have no further pleasure in. It is not so much, indeed, death that +approaches as life that withdraws and withers up from round about him. +He has outlived his own usefulness, and almost his own enjoyment; and if +there is to be no recovery; if never again will he be young and strong +and passionate, if the actual present shall be to him always like a thing +read in a book or remembered out of the far-away past; if, in fact, this +be veritably nightfall, he will not wish greatly for the continuance of a +twilight that only strains and disappoints the eyes, but steadfastly +await the perfect darkness. He will pray for Medea: when she comes, let +her either rejuvenate or slay. + +And yet the ties that still attach him to the world are many and kindly. +The sight of children has a significance for him such as it may have for +the aged also, but not for others. If he has been used to feel humanely, +and to look upon life somewhat more widely than from the narrow loophole +of personal pleasure and advancement, it is strange how small a portion +of his thoughts will be changed or embittered by this proximity of death. +He knows that already, in English counties, the sower follows the +ploughman up the face of the field, and the rooks follow the sower; and +he knows also that he may not live to go home again and see the corn +spring and ripen, and be cut down at last, and brought home with +gladness. And yet the future of this harvest, the continuance of drought +or the coming of rain unseasonably, touch him as sensibly as ever. For +he has long been used to wait with interest the issue of events in which +his own concern was nothing; and to be joyful in a plenty, and sorrowful +for a famine, that did not increase or diminish, by one half loaf, the +equable sufficiency of his own supply. Thus there remain unaltered all +the disinterested hopes for mankind and a better future which have been +the solace and inspiration of his life. These he has set beyond the +reach of any fate that only menaces himself; and it makes small +difference whether he die five thousand years, or five thousand and fifty +years, before the good epoch for which he faithfully labours. He has not +deceived himself; he has known from the beginning that he followed the +pillar of fire and cloud, only to perish himself in the wilderness, and +that it was reserved for others to enter joyfully into possession of the +land. And so, as everything grows grayer and quieter about him, and +slopes towards extinction, these unfaded visions accompany his sad +decline, and follow him, with friendly voices and hopeful words, into the +very vestibule of death. The desire of love or of fame scarcely moved +him, in his days of health, more strongly than these generous aspirations +move him now; and so life is carried forward beyond life, and a vista +kept open for the eyes of hope, even when his hands grope already on the +face of the impassable. + +Lastly, he is bound tenderly to life by the thought of his friends; or +shall we not say rather, that by their thought for him, by their +unchangeable solicitude and love, he remains woven into the very stuff of +life, beyond the power of bodily dissolution to undo? In a thousand ways +will he survive and be perpetuated. Much of Etienne de la Boetie +survived during all the years in which Montaigne continued to converse +with him on the pages of the ever-delightful essays. Much of what was +truly Goethe was dead already when he revisited places that knew him no +more, and found no better consolation than the promise of his own verses, +that soon he too would be at rest. Indeed, when we think of what it is +that we most seek and cherish, and find most pride and pleasure in +calling ours, it will sometimes seem to us as if our friends, at our +decease, would suffer loss more truly than ourselves. As a monarch who +should care more for the outlying colonies he knows on the map or through +the report of his vicegerents, than for the trunk of his empire under his +eyes at home, are we not more concerned about the shadowy life that we +have in the hearts of others, and that portion in their thoughts and +fancies which, in a certain far-away sense, belongs to us, than about the +real knot of our identity—that central metropolis of self, of which alone +we are immediately aware—or the diligent service of arteries and veins +and infinitesimal activity of ganglia, which we know (as we know a +proposition in Euclid) to be the source and substance of the whole? At +the death of every one whom we love, some fair and honourable portion of +our existence falls away, and we are dislodged from one of these dear +provinces; and they are not, perhaps, the most fortunate who survive a +long series of such impoverishments, till their life and influence narrow +gradually into the meagre limit of their own spirits, and death, when he +comes at last, can destroy them at one blow. + + * * * * * + +NOTE.—To this essay I must in honesty append a word or two of +qualification; for this is one of the points on which a slightly greater +age teaches us a slightly different wisdom: + +A youth delights in generalities, and keeps loose from particular +obligations; he jogs on the footpath way, himself pursuing butterflies, +but courteously lending his applause to the advance of the human species +and the coming of the kingdom of justice and love. As he grows older, he +begins to think more narrowly of man’s action in the general, and perhaps +more arrogantly of his own in the particular. He has not that same +unspeakable trust in what he would have done had he been spared, seeing +finally that that would have been little; but he has a far higher notion +of the blank that he will make by dying. A young man feels himself one +too many in the world; his is a painful situation: he has no calling; no +obvious utility; no ties, but to his parents. and these he is sure to +disregard. I do not think that a proper allowance has been made for this +true cause of suffering in youth; but by the mere fact of a prolonged +existence, we outgrow either the fact or else the feeling. Either we +become so callously accustomed to our own useless figure in the world, or +else—and this, thank God, in the majority of cases—we so collect about us +the interest or the love of our fellows, so multiply our effective part +in the affairs of life, that we need to entertain no longer the question +of our right to be. + +And so in the majority of cases, a man who fancies himself dying, will +get cold comfort from the very youthful view expressed in this essay. +He, as a living man, has some to help, some to love, some to correct; it +may be, some to punish. These duties cling, not upon humanity, but upon +the man himself. It is he, not another, who is one woman’s son and a +second woman’s husband and a third woman’s father. That life which began +so small, has now grown, with a myriad filaments, into the lives of +others. It is not indispensable; another will take the place and +shoulder the discharged responsibility; but the better the man and the +nobler his purposes, the more will he be tempted to regret the extinction +of his powers and the deletion of his personality. To have lived a +generation, is not only to have grown at home in that perplexing medium, +but to have assumed innumerable duties. To die at such an age, has, for +all but the entirely base, something of the air of a betrayal. A man +does not only reflect upon what he might have done in a future that is +never to be his; but beholding himself so early a deserter from the +fight, he eats his heart for the good he might have done already. To +have been so useless and now to lose all hope of being useful any +more—there it is that death and memory assail him. And even if mankind +shall go on, founding heroic cities, practising heroic virtues, rising +steadily from strength to strength; even if his work shall be fulfilled, +his friends consoled, his wife remarried by a better than he; how shall +this alter, in one jot, his estimation of a career which was his only +business in this world, which was so fitfully pursued, and which is now +so ineffectively to end? + + + + +ÆS TRIPLEX + + +THE changes wrought by death are in themselves so sharp and final, and so +terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands +alone in man’s experience, and has no parallel upon earth. It outdoes +all other accidents because it is the last of them. Sometimes it leaps +suddenly upon its victims, like a Thug; sometimes it lays a regular siege +and creeps upon their citadel during a score of years. And when the +business is done, there is sore havoc made in other people’s lives, and a +pin knocked out by which many subsidiary friendships hung together. +There are empty chairs, solitary walks, and single beds at night. Again, +in taking away our friends, death does not take them away utterly, but +leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and soon intolerable residue, which +must be hurriedly concealed. Hence a whole chapter of sights and customs +striking to the mind, from the pyramids of Egypt to the gibbets and dule +trees of mediæval Europe. The poorest persons have a bit of pageant +going towards the tomb; memorial stones are set up over the least +memorable; and, in order to preserve some show of respect for what +remains of our old loves and friendships, we must accompany it with much +grimly ludicrous ceremonial, and the hired undertaker parades before the +door. All this, and much more of the same sort, accompanied by the +eloquence of poets, has gone a great way to put humanity in error; nay, +in many philosophies the error has been embodied and laid down with every +circumstance of logic; although in real life the bustle and swiftness, in +leaving people little time to think, have not left them time enough to go +dangerously wrong in practice. + +As a matter of fact, although few things are spoken of with more fearful +whisperings than this prospect of death, few have less influence on +conduct under healthy circumstances. We have all heard of cities in +South America built upon the side of fiery mountains, and how, even in +this tremendous neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more +impressed by the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving +gardens in the greenest corner of England. There are serenades and +suppers and much gallantry among the myrtles overhead; and meanwhile the +foundation shudders underfoot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and at +any moment living ruin may leap sky-high into the moonlight, and tumble +man and his merry-making in the dust. In the eyes of very young people, +and very dull old ones, there is something indescribably reckless and +desperate in such a picture. It seems not credible that respectable +married people, with umbrellas, should find appetite for a bit of supper +within quite a long distance of a fiery mountain; ordinary life begins to +smell of high-handed debauch when it is carried on so close to a +catastrophe; and even cheese and salad, it seems, could hardly be +relished in such circumstances without something like a defiance of the +Creator. It should be a place for nobody but hermits dwelling in prayer +and maceration, or mere born-devils drowning care in a perpetual carouse. + +And yet, when one comes to think upon it calmly, the situation of these +South American citizens forms only a very pale figure for the state of +ordinary mankind. This world itself, travelling blindly and swiftly in +over-crowded space, among a million other worlds travelling blindly and +swiftly in contrary directions, may very well come by a knock that would +set it into explosion like a penny squib. And what, pathologically +looked at, is the human body with all its organs, but a mere bagful of +petards? The least of these is as dangerous to the whole economy as the +ship’s powder-magazine to the ship; and with every breath we breathe, and +every meal we eat, we are putting one or more of them in peril. If we +clung as devotedly as some philosophers pretend we do to the abstract +idea of life, or were half as frightened as they make out we are, for the +subversive accident that ends it all, the trumpets might sound by the +hour and no one would follow them into battle—the blue-peter might fly at +the truck, but who would climb into a sea-going ship? Think (if these +philosophers were right) with what a preparation of spirit we should +affront the daily peril of the dinner-table: a deadlier spot than any +battle-field in history, where the far greater proportion of our +ancestors have miserably left their bones! What woman would ever be +lured into marriage, so much more dangerous than the wildest sea? And +what would it be to grow old? For, after a certain distance, every step +we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all +around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through. By the +time a man gets well into the seventies, his continued existence is a +mere miracle; and when he lays his old bones in bed for the night, there +is an overwhelming probability that he will never see the day. Do the +old men mind it, as a matter of fact? Why, no. They were never merrier; +they have their grog at night, and tell the raciest stories; they hear of +the death of people about their own age, or even younger, not as if it +was a grisly warning, but with a simple childlike pleasure at having +outlived some one else; and when a draught might puff them out like a +guttering candle, or a bit of a stumble shatter them like so much glass, +their old hearts keep sound and unaffrighted, and they go on, bubbling +with laughter, through years of man’s age compared to which the valley at +Balaklava was as safe and peaceful as a village cricket-green on Sunday. +It may fairly be questioned (if we look to the peril only) whether it was +a much more daring feat for Curtius to plunge into the gulf, than for any +old gentleman of ninety to doff his clothes and clamber into bed. + +Indeed, it is a memorable subject for consideration, with what unconcern +and gaiety mankind pricks on along the Valley of the Shadow of Death. +The whole way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of it, for those +who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable ruin. And yet we go spinning +through it all, like a party for the Derby. Perhaps the reader remembers +one of the humorous devices of the deified Caligula: how he encouraged a +vast concourse of holiday-makers on to his bridge over Baiæ bay; and when +they were in the height of their enjoyment, turned loose the Prætorian +guards among the company, and had them tossed into the sea. This is no +bad miniature of the dealings of nature with the transitory race of man. +Only, what a chequered picnic we have of it, even while it lasts! and +into what great waters, not to be crossed by any swimmer, God’s pale +Prætorian throws us over in the end! + +We live the time that a match flickers; we pop the cork of a ginger-beer +bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is +it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, +incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard +so little the devouring earthquake? The love of Life and the fear of +Death are two famous phrases that grow harder to understand the more we +think about them. It is a well-known fact that an immense proportion of +boat accidents would never happen if people held the sheet in their hands +instead of making it fast; and yet, unless it be some martinet of a +professional mariner or some landsman with shattered nerves, every one of +God’s creatures makes it fast. A strange instance of man’s unconcern and +brazen boldness in the face of death! + +We confound ourselves with metaphysical phrases, which we import into +daily talk with noble inappropriateness. We have no idea of what death +is, apart from its circumstances and some of its consequences to others; +and although we have some experience of living, there is not a man on +earth who has flown so high into abstraction as to have any practical +guess at the meaning of the word _life_. All literature, from Job and +Omar Khayam to Thomas Carlyle or Walt Whitman, is but an attempt to look +upon the human state with such largeness of view as shall enable us to +rise from the consideration of living to the Definition of Life. And our +sages give us about the best satisfaction in their power when they say +that it is a vapour, or a show, or made out of the same stuff with +dreams. Philosophy, in its more rigid sense, has been at the same work +for ages; and after a myriad bald heads have wagged over the problem, and +piles of words have been heaped one upon another into dry and cloudy +volumes without end, philosophy has the honour of laying before us, with +modest pride, her contribution towards the subject: that life is a +Permanent Possibility of Sensation. Truly a fine result! A man may very +well love beef, or hunting, or a woman; but surely, surely, not a +Permanent Possibility of Sensation! He may be afraid of a precipice, or +a dentist, or a large enemy with a club, or even an undertaker’s man; but +not certainly of abstract death. We may trick with the word life in its +dozen senses until we are weary of tricking; we may argue in terms of all +the philosophies on earth, but one fact remains true throughout—that we +do not love life, in the sense that we are greatly preoccupied about its +conservation; that we do not, properly speaking, love life at all, but +living. Into the views of the least careful there will enter some degree +of providence; no man’s eyes are fixed entirely on the passing hour; but +although we have some anticipation of good health, good weather, wine, +active employment, love, and self-approval, the sum of these +anticipations does not amount to anything like a general view of life’s +possibilities and issues; nor are those who cherish them most vividly, at +all the most scrupulous of their personal safety. To be deeply +interested in the accidents of our existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed +texture of human experience, rather leads a man to disregard precautions, +and risk his neck against a straw. For surely the love of living is +stronger in an Alpine climber roping over a peril, or a hunter riding +merrily at a stiff fence, than in a creature who lives upon a diet and +walks a measured distance in the interest of his constitution. + +There is a great deal of very vile nonsense talked upon both sides of the +matter: tearing divines reducing life to the dimensions of a mere funeral +procession, so short as to be hardly decent; and melancholy unbelievers +yearning for the tomb as if it were a world too far away. Both sides +must feel a little ashamed of their performances now and again when they +draw in their chairs to dinner. Indeed, a good meal and a bottle of wine +is an answer to most standard works upon the question. When a man’s +heart warms to his viands, he forgets a great deal of sophistry, and +soars into a rosy zone of contemplation. Death may be knocking at the +door, like the Commander’s statue; we have something else in hand, thank +God, and let him knock. Passing bells are ringing all the world over. +All the world over, and every hour, some one is parting company with all +his aches and ecstasies. For us also the trap is laid. But we are so +fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. +It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small +blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to +the appetites, to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the +pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies. + +We all of us appreciate the sensations; but as for caring about the +Permanence of the Possibility, a man’s head is generally very bald, and +his senses very dull, before he comes to that. Whether we regard life as +a lane leading to a dead wall—a mere bag’s end, as the French say—or +whether we think of it as a vestibule or gymnasium, where we wait our +turn and prepare our faculties for some more noble destiny; whether we +thunder in a pulpit, or pule in little atheistic poetry-books, about its +vanity and brevity; whether we look justly for years of health and +vigour, or are about to mount into a bath-chair, as a step towards the +hearse; in each and all of these views and situations there is but one +conclusion possible: that a man should stop his ears against paralysing +terror, and run the race that is set before him with a single mind. No +one surely could have recoiled with more heartache and terror from the +thought of death than our respected lexicographer; and yet we know how +little it affected his conduct, how wisely and boldly he walked, and in +what a fresh and lively vein he spoke of life. Already an old man, he +ventured on his Highland tour; and his heart, bound with triple brass, +did not recoil before twenty-seven individual cups of tea. As courage +and intelligence are the two qualities best worth a good man’s +cultivation, so it is the first part of intelligence to recognise our +precarious estate in life, and the first part of courage to be not at all +abashed before the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong carriage, not +looking too anxiously before, not dallying in maudlin regret over the +past, stamps the man who is well armoured for this world. + +And not only well armoured for himself, but a good friend and a good +citizen to boot. We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is +nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own +carcase, has most time to consider others. That eminent chemist who took +his walks abroad in tin shoes, and subsisted wholly upon tepid milk, had +all his work cut out for him in considerate dealings with his own +digestion. So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a +dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous +acts. The victim begins to shrink spiritually; he develops a fancy for +parlours with a regulated temperature, and takes his morality on the +principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The care of one important body or +soul becomes so engrossing, that all the noises of the outer world begin +to come thin and faint into the parlour with the regulated temperature; +and the tin shoes go equably forward over blood and rain. To be overwise +is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill. Now +the man who has his heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock +of a brain, who reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and +cheerfully hazarded, makes a very different acquaintance of the world, +keeps all his pulses going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he runs, +until, if he be running towards anything better than wildfire, he may +shoot up and become a constellation in the end. Lord look after his +health, Lord have a care of his soul, says he; and he has at the key of +the position, and swashes through incongruity and peril towards his aim. +Death is on all sides of him with pointed batteries, as he is on all +sides of all of us; unfortunate surprises gird him round; mim-mouthed +friends and relations hold up their hands in quite a little elegiacal +synod about his path: and what cares he for all this? Being a true lover +of living, a fellow with something pushing and spontaneous in his inside, +he must, like any other soldier, in any other stirring, deadly warfare, +push on at his best pace until he touch the goal. “A peerage or +Westminster Abbey!” cried Nelson in his bright, boyish, heroic manner. +These are great incentives; not for any of these, but for the plain +satisfaction of living, of being about their business in some sort or +other, do the brave, serviceable men of every nation tread down the +nettle danger, and pass flyingly over all the stumbling-blocks of +prudence. Think of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb +indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and +carried him through triumphantly until the end! Who, if he were wisely +considerate of things at large, would ever embark upon any work much more +considerable than a halfpenny post card? Who would project a serial +novel, after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in mid-course? Who +would find heart enough to begin to live, if he dallied with the +consideration of death? + +And, after all, what sorry and pitiful quibbling all this is! To forego +all the issues of living in a parlour with a regulated temperature—as if +that were not to die a hundred times over, and for ten years at a +stretch! As if it were not to die in one’s own lifetime, and without +even the sad immunities of death! As if it were not to die, and yet be +the patient spectators of our own pitiable change! The Permanent +Possibility is preserved, but the sensations carefully held at arm’s +length, as if one kept a photographic plate in a dark chamber. It is +better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. +It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the +sickroom. By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not +give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push +and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not only in finished +undertakings that we ought to honour useful labour. A spirit goes out of +the man who means execution, which out-lives the most untimely ending. +All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good +work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every +heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse +behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even +if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying +out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, +and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once +tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in +such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, +foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an +end in sandy deltas? When the Greeks made their fine saying that those +whom the gods love die young, I cannot help believing they had this sort +of death also in their eye. For surely, at whatever age it overtake the +man, this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to take so much +as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tip-toe on the +highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. The +noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are +hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this +happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land. + + + + +EL DORADO + + +IT seems as if a great deal were attainable in a world where there are so +many marriages and decisive battles, and where we all, at certain hours +of the day, and with great gusto and despatch, stow a portion of victuals +finally and irretrievably into the bag which contains us. And it would +seem also, on a hasty view, that the attainment of as much as possible +was the one goal of man’s contentious life. And yet, as regards the +spirit, this is but a semblance. We live in an ascending scale when we +live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series. There +is always a new horizon for onward-looking men, and although we dwell on +a small planet, immersed in petty business and not enduring beyond a +brief period of years, we are so constituted that our hopes are +inaccessible, like stars, and the term of hoping is prolonged until the +term of life. To be truly happy is a question of how we begin and not of +how we end, of what we want and not of what we have. An aspiration is a +joy for ever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which +we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of +pleasurable activity. To have many of these is to be spiritually rich. +Life is only a very dull and ill-directed theatre unless we have some +interests in the piece; and to those who have neither art nor science, +the world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a rough footway where they +may very well break their shins. It is in virtue of his own desires and +curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he +is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every +morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure. Desire and +curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the world in the most +enchanted colours: it is they that make women beautiful or fossils +interesting: and the man may squander his estate and come to beggary, but +if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in the possibilities of +pleasure. Suppose he could take one meal so compact and comprehensive +that he should never hunger any more; suppose him, at a glance, to take +in all the features of the world and allay the desire for knowledge; +suppose him to do the like in any province of experience—would not that +man be in a poor way for amusement ever after? + +One who goes touring on foot with a single volume in his knapsack reads +with circumspection, pausing often to reflect, and often laying the book +down to contemplate the landscape or the prints in the inn parlour; for +he fears to come to an end of his entertainment, and be left +companionless on the last stages of his journey. A young fellow recently +finished the works of Thomas Carlyle, winding up, if we remember aright, +with the ten note-books upon Frederick the Great. “What!” cried the +young fellow, in consternation, “is there no more Carlyle? Am I left to +the daily papers?” A more celebrated instance is that of Alexander, who +wept bitterly because he had no more worlds to subdue. And when Gibbon +had finished the _Decline and Fall_, he had only a few moments of joy; +and it was with a “sober melancholy” that he parted from his labours. + +Happily we all shoot at the moon with ineffectual arrows; our hopes are +set on inaccessible El Dorado; we come to an end of nothing here below. +Interests are only plucked up to sow themselves again, like mustard. You +would think, when the child was born, there would be an end to trouble; +and yet it is only the beginning of fresh anxieties; and when you have +seen it through its teething and its education, and at last its marriage, +alas! it is only to have new fears, new quivering sensibilities, with +every day; and the health of your children’s children grows as touching a +concern as that of your own. Again, when you have married your wife, you +would think you were got upon a hilltop, and might begin to go downward +by an easy slope. But you have only ended courting to begin marriage. +Falling in love and winning love are often difficult tasks to overbearing +and rebellious spirits; but to keep in love is also a business of some +importance, to which both man and wife must bring kindness and goodwill. +The true love story commences at the altar, when there lies before the +married pair a most beautiful contest of wisdom and generosity, and a +life-long struggle towards an unattainable ideal. Unattainable? Ay, +surely unattainable, from the very fact that they are two instead of one. + +“Of making books there is no end,” complained the Preacher; and did not +perceive how highly he was praising letters as an occupation. There is +no end, indeed, to making books or experiments, or to travel, or to +gathering wealth. Problem gives rise to problem. We may study for ever, +and we are never as learned as we would. We have never made a statue +worthy of our dreams. And when we have discovered a continent, or +crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another +plain upon the further side. In the infinite universe there is room for +our swiftest diligence and to spare. It is not like the works of +Carlyle, which can be read to an end. Even in a corner of it, in a +private park, or in the neighbourhood of a single hamlet, the weather and +the seasons keep so deftly changing that although we walk there for a +lifetime there will be always something new to startle and delight us. + +There is only one wish realisable on the earth; only one thing that can +be perfectly attained: Death. And from a variety of circumstances we +have no one to tell us whether it be worth attaining. + +A strange picture we make on our way to our chimæras, ceaselessly +marching, grudging ourselves the time for rest; indefatigable, +adventurous pioneers. It is true that we shall never reach the goal; it +is even more than probable that there is no such place; and if we lived +for centuries and were endowed with the powers of a god, we should find +ourselves not much nearer what we wanted at the end. O toiling hands of +mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, +it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but +a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El +Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully +is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. + + + + +THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS + + + “Whether it be wise in men to do such actions or no, I am sure it is + so in States to honour them.”—SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. + +THERE is one story of the wars of Rome which I have always very much +envied for England. Germanicus was going down at the head of the legions +into a dangerous river—on the opposite bank the woods were full of +Germans—when there flew out seven great eagles which seemed to marshal +the Romans on their way; they did not pause or waver, but disappeared +into the forest where the enemy lay concealed. “Forward!” cried +Germanicus, with a fine rhetorical inspiration, “Forward! and follow the +Roman birds.” It would be a very heavy spirit that did not give a leap +at such a signal, and a very timorous one that continued to have any +doubt of success. To appropriate the eagles as fellow-countrymen was to +make imaginary allies of the forces of nature; the Roman Empire and its +military fortunes, and along with these the prospects of those individual +Roman legionaries now fording a river in Germany, looked altogether +greater and more hopeful. It is a kind of illusion easy to produce. A +particular shape of cloud, the appearance of a particular star, the +holiday of some particular saint, anything in short to remind the +combatants of patriotic legends or old successes, may be enough to change +the issue of a pitched battle; for it gives to the one party a feeling +that Right and the larger interests are with them. + +If an Englishman wishes to have such a feeling, it must be about the sea. +The lion is nothing to us; he has not been taken to the hearts of the +people, and naturalised as an English emblem. We know right well that a +lion would fall foul of us as grimly as he would of a Frenchman or a +Moldavian Jew, and we do not carry him before us in the smoke of battle. +But the sea is our approach and bulwark; it has been the scene of our +greatest triumphs and dangers; and we are accustomed in lyrical strains +to claim it as our own. The prostrating experiences of foreigners +between Calais and Dover have always an agreeable side to English +prepossessions. A man from Bedfordshire, who does not know one end of +the ship from the other until she begins to move, swaggers among such +persons with a sense of hereditary nautical experience. To suppose +yourself endowed with natural parts for the sea because you are the +countryman of Blake and mighty Nelson, is perhaps just as unwarrantable +as to imagine Scotch extraction a sufficient guarantee that you will look +well in a kilt. But the feeling is there, and seated beyond the reach of +argument. We should consider ourselves unworthy of our descent if we did +not share the arrogance of our progenitors, and please ourselves with the +pretension that the sea is English. Even where it is looked upon by the +guns and battlements of another nation we regard it as a kind of English +cemetery, where the bones of our seafaring fathers take their rest until +the last trumpet; for I suppose no other nation has lost as many ships, +or sent as many brave fellows to the bottom. + +There is nowhere such a background for heroism as the noble, terrifying, +and picturesque conditions of some of our sea fights. Hawke’s battle in +the tempest, and Aboukir at the moment when the French Admiral blew up, +reach the limit of what is imposing to the imagination. And our naval +annals owe some of their interest to the fantastic and beautiful +appearance of old warships and the romance that invests the sea and +everything sea-going in the eyes of English lads on a half-holiday at the +coast. Nay, and what we know of the misery between decks enhances the +bravery of what was done by giving it something for contrast. We like to +know that these bold and honest fellows contrived to live, and to keep +bold and honest, among absurd and vile surroundings. No reader can +forget the description of the _Thunder_ in _Roderick Random_: the +disorderly tyranny; the cruelty and dirt of officers and men; deck after +deck, each with some new object of offence; the hospital, where the +hammocks were huddled together with but fourteen inches space for each; +the cockpit, far under water, where, “in an intolerable stench,” the +spectacled steward kept the accounts of the different messes; and the +canvas enclosure, six feet square, in which Morgan made flip and +salmagundi, smoked his pipe, sang his Welsh songs, and swore his queer +Welsh imprecations. There are portions of this business on board the +_Thunder_ over which the reader passes lightly and hurriedly, like a +traveller in a malarious country. It is easy enough to understand the +opinion of Dr. Johnson: “Why, sir,” he said, “no man will be a sailor who +has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail.” You would fancy any +one’s spirit would die out under such an accumulation of darkness, +noisomeness, and injustice, above all when he had not come there of his +own free will, but under the cutlasses and bludgeons of the press-gang. +But perhaps a watch on deck in the sharp sea air put a man on his mettle +again; a battle must have been a capital relief; and prize-money, +bloodily earned and grossly squandered, opened the doors of the prison +for a twinkling. Somehow or other, at least, this worst of possible +lives could not overlie the spirit and gaiety of our sailors; they did +their duty as though they had some interest in the fortune of that +country which so cruelly oppressed them, they served their guns merrily +when it came to fighting, and they had the readiest ear for a bold, +honourable sentiment, of any class of men the world ever produced. + +Most men of high destinies have high-sounding names. Pym and Habakkuk +may do pretty well, but they must not think to cope with the Cromwells +and Isaiahs. And you could not find a better case in point than that of +the English Admirals. Drake and Rooke and Hawke are picked names for men +of execution. Frobisher, Rodney, Boscawen, Foul-Weather, Jack Byron, are +all good to catch the eye in a page of a naval history. Cloudesley +Shovel is a mouthful of quaint and sounding syllables. Benbow has a +bulldog quality that suits the man’s character, and it takes us back to +those English archers who were his true comrades for plainness, tenacity, +and pluck. Raleigh is spirited and martial, and signifies an act of bold +conduct in the field. It is impossible to judge of Blake or Nelson, no +names current among men being worthy of such heroes. But still it is odd +enough, and very appropriate in this connection, that the latter was +greatly taken with his Sicilian title. “The signification, perhaps, +pleased him,” says Southey; “Duke of Thunder was what in Dahomey would +have been called a _strong name_; it was to a sailor’s taste, and +certainly to no man could it be more applicable.” Admiral in itself is +one of the most satisfactory of distinctions; it has a noble sound and a +very proud history; and Columbus thought so highly of it, that he +enjoined his heirs to sign themselves by that title as long as the house +should last. + +But it is the spirit of the men, and not their names, that I wish to +speak about in this paper. That spirit is truly English; they, and not +Tennyson’s cotton-spinners or Mr. D’Arcy Thompson’s Abstract Bagman, are +the true and typical Englishmen. There may be more _head_ of bagmen in +the country, but human beings are reckoned by number only in political +constitutions. And the Admirals are typical in the full force of the +word. They are splendid examples of virtue, indeed, but of a virtue in +which most Englishmen can claim a moderate share; and what we admire in +their lives is a sort of apotheosis of ourselves. Almost everybody in +our land, except humanitarians and a few persons whose youth has been +depressed by exceptionally æsthetic surroundings, can understand and +sympathise with an Admiral or a prize-fighter. I do not wish to bracket +Benbow and Tom Cribb; but, depend upon it, they are practically bracketed +for admiration in the minds of many frequenters of ale-houses. If you +told them about Germanicus and the eagles, or Regulus going back to +Carthage, they would very likely fall asleep; but tell them about Harry +Pearce and Jem Belcher, or about Nelson and the Nile, and they put down +their pipes to listen. I have by me a copy of _Boxiana_, on the +fly-leaves of which a youthful member of the fancy kept a chronicle of +remarkable events and an obituary of great men. Here we find piously +chronicled the demise of jockeys, watermen, and pugilists—Johnny Moore, +of the Liverpool Prize Ring; Tom Spring, aged fifty-six; “Pierce Egan, +senior, writer of _Boxiana_ and other sporting works”—and among all +these, the Duke of Wellington! If Benbow had lived in the time of this +annalist, do you suppose his name would not have been added to the +glorious roll? In short, we do not all feel warmly towards Wesley or +Laud, we cannot all take pleasure in _Paradise Lost_; but there are +certain common sentiments and touches of nature by which the whole nation +is made to feel kinship. A little while ago everybody, from Hazlitt and +John Wilson down to the imbecile creature who scribbled his register on +the fly-leaves of _Boxiana_, felt a more or less shamefaced satisfaction +in the exploits of prize-fighters. And the exploits of the Admirals are +popular to the same degree, and tell in all ranks of society. Their +sayings and doings stir English blood like the sound of a trumpet; and if +the Indian Empire, the trade of London, and all the outward and visible +ensigns of our greatness should pass away, we should still leave behind +us a durable monument of what we were in these sayings and doings of the +English Admirals. + +Duncan, lying off the Texel with his own flagship, the _Venerable_, and +only one other vessel, heard that the whole Dutch fleet was putting to +sea. He told Captain Hotham to anchor alongside of him in the narrowest +part of the channel, and fight his vessel till she sank. “I have taken +the depth of the water,” added he, “and when the _Venerable_ goes down, +my flag will still fly.” And you observe this is no naked Viking in a +prehistoric period; but a Scotch member of Parliament, with a smattering +of the classics, a telescope, a cocked hat of great size, and flannel +underclothing. In the same spirit, Nelson went into Aboukir with six +colours flying; so that even if five were shot away, it should not be +imagined he had struck. He too must needs wear his four stars outside +his Admiral’s frock, to be a butt for sharp-shooters. “In honour I +gained them,” he said to objectors, adding with sublime illogicality, “in +honour I will die with them.” Captain Douglas of the _Royal Oak_, when +the Dutch fired his vessel in the Thames, sent his men ashore, but was +burned along with her himself rather than desert his post without orders. +Just then, perhaps the Merry Monarch was chasing a moth round the +supper-table with the ladies of his court. When Raleigh sailed into +Cadiz, and all the forts and ships opened fire on him at once, he scorned +to shoot a gun, and made answer with a flourish of insulting trumpets. I +like this bravado better than the wisest dispositions to insure victory; +it comes from the heart and goes to it. God has made nobler heroes, but +he never made a finer gentleman than Walter Raleigh. And as our Admirals +were full of heroic superstitions, and had a strutting and vainglorious +style of fight, so they discovered a startling eagerness for battle, and +courted war like a mistress. When the news came to Essex before Cadiz +that the attack had been decided, he threw his hat into the sea. It is +in this way that a schoolboy hears of a half-holiday; but this was a +bearded man of great possessions who had just been allowed to risk his +life. Benbow could not lie still in his bunk after he had lost his leg; +he must be on deck in a basket to direct and animate the fight. I said +they loved war like a mistress; yet I think there are not many mistresses +we should continue to woo under similar circumstances. Trowbridge went +ashore with the _Culloden_, and was able to take no part in the battle of +the Nile. “The merits of that ship and her gallant captain,” wrote +Nelson to the Admiralty, “are too well known to benefit by anything I +could say. Her misfortune was great in getting aground, _while her more +fortunate companions were in the full tide of happiness_.” This is a +notable expression, and depicts the whole great-hearted, big-spoken stock +of the English Admirals to a hair. It was to be “in the full tide of +happiness” for Nelson to destroy five thousand five hundred and +twenty-five of his fellow-creatures, and have his own scalp torn open by +a piece of langridge shot. Hear him again at Copenhagen: “A shot through +the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he observed to one of his +officers with a smile, ‘It is warm work, and this may be the last to any +of us at any moment;’ and then, stopping short at the gangway, added, +with emotion, ‘_But_, _mark you—I would not be elsewhere for +thousands_.’” + +I must tell one more story, which has lately been made familiar to us +all, and that in one of the noblest ballads in the English language. I +had written my tame prose abstract, I shall beg the reader to believe, +when I had no notion that the sacred bard designed an immortality for +Greenville. Sir Richard Greenville was Vice-Admiral to Lord Thomas +Howard, and lay off the Azores with the English squadron in 1591. He was +a noted tyrant to his crew: a dark, bullying fellow apparently; and it is +related of him that he would chew and swallow wineglasses, by way of +convivial levity, till the blood ran out of his mouth. When the Spanish +fleet of fifty sail came within sight of the English, his ship, the +_Revenge_, was the last to weigh anchor, and was so far circumvented by +the Spaniards, that there were but two courses open—either to turn her +back upon the enemy or sail through one of his squadrons. The first +alternative Greenville dismissed as dishonourable to himself, his +country, and her Majesty’s ship. Accordingly, he chose the latter, and +steered into the Spanish armament. Several vessels he forced to luff and +fall under his lee; until, about three o’clock of the afternoon, a great +ship of three decks of ordnance took the wind out of his sails, and +immediately boarded. Thence-forward, and all night long, the _Revenge_, +held her own single-handed against the Spaniards. As one ship was beaten +off, another took its place. She endured, according to Raleigh’s +computation, “eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many +assaults and entries.” By morning the powder was spent, the pikes all +broken, not a stick was standing, “nothing left overhead either for +flight or defence;” six feet of water in the hold; almost all the men +hurt; and Greenville himself in a dying condition. To bring them to this +pass, a fleet of fifty sail had been mauling them for fifteen hours, the +_Admiral of the Hulks_ and the _Ascension_ of Seville had both gone down +alongside, and two other vessels had taken refuge on shore in a sinking +state. In Hawke’s words, they had “taken a great deal of drubbing.” The +captain and crew thought they had done about enough; but Greenville was +not of this opinion; he gave orders to the master gunner, whom he knew to +be a fellow after his own stamp, to scuttle the _Revenge_ where she lay. +The others, who were not mortally wounded like the Admiral, interfered +with some decision, locked the master gunner in his cabin, after having +deprived him of his sword, for he manifested an intention to kill himself +if he were not to sink the ship; and sent to the Spaniards to demand +terms. These were granted. The second or third day after, Greenville +died of his wounds aboard the Spanish flagship, leaving his contempt upon +the “traitors and dogs” who had not chosen to do as he did, and engage +fifty vessels, well found and fully manned, with six inferior craft +ravaged by sickness and short of stores. He at least, he said, had done +his duty as he was bound to do, and looked for everlasting fame. + +Some one said to me the other day that they considered this story to be +of a pestilent example. I am not inclined to imagine we shall ever be +put into any practical difficulty from a superfluity of Greenvilles. And +besides, I demur to the opinion. The worth of such actions is not a +thing to be decided in a quaver of sensibility or a flush of righteous +commonsense. The man who wished to make the ballads of his country, +coveted a small matter compared to what Richard Greenville accomplished. +I wonder how many people have been inspired by this mad story, and how +many battles have been actually won for England in the spirit thus +engendered. It is only with a measure of habitual foolhardiness that you +can be sure, in the common run of men, of courage on a reasonable +occasion. An army or a fleet, if it is not led by quixotic fancies, will +not be led far by terror of the Provost Marshal. Even German warfare, in +addition to maps and telegraphs, is not above employing the _Wacht am +Rhein_. Nor is it only in the profession of arms that such stories may +do good to a man. In this desperate and gleeful fighting, whether it is +Greenville or Benbow, Hawke or Nelson, who flies his colours in the ship, +we see men brought to the test and giving proof of what we call heroic +feeling. Prosperous humanitarians tell me, in my club smoking-room, that +they are a prey to prodigious heroic feelings, and that it costs them +more nobility of soul to do nothing in particular, than would carry on +all the wars, by sea or land, of bellicose humanity. It may very well be +so, and yet not touch the point in question. For what I desire is to see +some of this nobility brought face to face with me in an inspiriting +achievement. A man may talk smoothly over a cigar in my club +smoking-room from now to the Day of Judgment, without adding anything to +mankind’s treasury of illustrious and encouraging examples. It is not +over the virtues of a curate-and-tea-party novel, that people are abashed +into high resolutions. It may be because their hearts are crass, but to +stir them properly they must have men entering into glory with some pomp +and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our sea-captains, +printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of bracing moral influence, +are more valuable to England than any material benefit in all the books +of political economy between Westminster and Birmingham. Greenville +chewing wineglasses at table makes no very pleasant figure, any more than +a thousand other artists when they are viewed in the body, or met in +private life; but his work of art, his finished tragedy, is an eloquent +performance; and I contend it ought not only to enliven men of the sword +as they go into battle, but send back merchant clerks with more heart and +spirit to their book-keeping by double entry. + +There is another question which seems bound up in this; and that is +Temple’s problem: whether it was wise of Douglas to burn with the _Royal +Oak_? and by implication, what it was that made him do so? Many will +tell you it was the desire of fame. + +“To what do Cæsar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their +renown, but to fortune? How many men has she extinguished in the +beginning of their progress, of whom we have no knowledge; who brought as +much courage to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them +off in the first sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great +dangers, I do not remember to have anywhere read that Cæsar was ever +wounded; a thousand have fallen in less dangers than the least of these +he went through. A great many brave actions must be expected to be +performed without witness, for one that comes to some notice. A man is +not always at the top of a breach, or at the head of an army in the sight +of his general, as upon a platform. He is often surprised between the +hedge and the ditch; he must run the hazard of his life against a +henroost; he must dislodge four rascally musketeers out of a barn; he +must prick out single from his party, as necessity arises, and meet +adventures alone.” + +Thus far Montaigne, in a characteristic essay on _Glory_. Where death is +certain, as in the cases of Douglas or Greenville, it seems all one from +a personal point of view. The man who lost his life against a henroost, +is in the same pickle with him who lost his life against a fortified +place of the first order. Whether he has missed a peerage or only the +corporal’s stripes, it is all one if he has missed them and is quietly in +the grave. It was by a hazard that we learned the conduct of the four +marines of the _Wager_. There was no room for these brave fellows in the +boat, and they were left behind upon the island to a certain death. They +were soldiers, they said, and knew well enough it was their business to +die; and as their comrades pulled away, they stood upon the beach, gave +three cheers, and cried “God bless the king!” Now, one or two of those +who were in the boat escaped, against all likelihood, to tell the story. +That was a great thing for us; but surely it cannot, by any possible +twisting of human speech, be construed into anything great for the +marines. You may suppose, if you like, that they died hoping their +behaviour would not be forgotten; or you may suppose they thought nothing +on the subject, which is much more likely. What can be the signification +of the word “fame” to a private of marines, who cannot read and knows +nothing of past history beyond the reminiscences of his grandmother? But +whichever supposition you make, the fact is unchanged. They died while +the question still hung in the balance; and I suppose their bones were +already white, before the winds and the waves and the humour of Indian +chiefs and Spanish governors had decided whether they were to be unknown +and useless martyrs or honoured heroes. Indeed, I believe this is the +lesson: if it is for fame that men do brave actions, they are only silly +fellows after all. + +It is at best but a pettifogging, pickthank business to decompose actions +into little personal motives, and explain heroism away. The Abstract +Bagman will grow like an Admiral at heart, not by ungrateful carping, but +in a heat of admiration. But there is another theory of the personal +motive in these fine sayings and doings, which I believe to be true and +wholesome. People usually do things, and suffer martyrdoms, because they +have an inclination that way. The best artist is not the man who fixes +his eye on posterity, but the one who loves the practice of his art. And +instead of having a taste for being successful merchants and retiring at +thirty, some people have a taste for high and what we call heroic forms +of excitement. If the Admirals courted war like a mistress; if, as the +drum beat to quarters, the sailors came gaily out of the forecastle,—it +is because a fight is a period of multiplied and intense experiences, +and, by Nelson’s computation, worth “thousands” to any one who has a +heart under his jacket. If the marines of the _Wager_ gave three cheers +and cried “God bless the king,” it was because they liked to do things +nobly for their own satisfaction. They were giving their lives, there +was no help for that; and they made it a point of self-respect to give +them handsomely. And there were never four happier marines in God’s +world than these four at that moment. If it was worth thousands to be at +the Baltic, I wish a Benthamite arithmetician would calculate how much it +was worth to be one of these four marines; or how much their story is +worth to each of us who read it. And mark you, undemonstrative men would +have spoiled the situation. The finest action is the better for a piece +of purple. If the soldiers of the _Birkenhead_ had not gone down in +line, or these marines of the _Wager_ had walked away simply into the +island, like plenty of other brave fellows in the like circumstances, my +Benthamite arithmetician would assign a far lower value to the two +stories. We have to desire a grand air in our heroes; and such a +knowledge of the human stage as shall make them put the dots on their own +i’s, and leave us in no suspense as to when they mean to be heroic. And +hence, we should congratulate ourselves upon the fact that our Admirals +were not only great-hearted but big-spoken. + +The heroes themselves say, as often as not, that fame is their object; +but I do not think that is much to the purpose. People generally say +what they have been taught to say; that was the catchword they were given +in youth to express the aims of their way of life; and men who are +gaining great battles are not likely to take much trouble in reviewing +their sentiments and the words in which they were told to express them. +Almost every person, if you will believe himself, holds a quite different +theory of life from the one on which he is patently acting. And the fact +is, fame may be a forethought and an afterthought, but it is too abstract +an idea to move people greatly in moments of swift and momentous +decision. It is from something more immediate, some determination of +blood to the head, some trick of the fancy, that the breach is stormed or +the bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting an ugly weir in a +canoe has exactly as much thought about fame as most commanders going +into battle; and yet the action, fall out how it will, is not one of +those the muse delights to celebrate. Indeed it is difficult to see why +the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, +unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why; and I +suspect it is at least ten per cent. of why Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. +Gladstone have debated so much in the House of Commons, and why Burnaby +rode to Khiva the other day, and why the Admirals courted war like a +mistress. + + + + +SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN + + +THROUGH the initiative of a prominent citizen, Edinburgh has been in +possession, for some autumn weeks, of a gallery of paintings of singular +merit and interest. They were exposed in the apartments of the Scotch +Academy; and filled those who are accustomed to visit the annual spring +exhibition, with astonishment and a sense of incongruity. Instead of the +too common purple sunsets, and pea-green fields, and distances executed +in putty and hog’s lard, he beheld, looking down upon him from the walls +of room after room, a whole army of wise, grave, humorous, capable, or +beautiful countenances, painted simply and strongly by a man of genuine +instinct. It was a complete act of the Human Drawing-Room Comedy. Lords +and ladies, soldiers and doctors, hanging judges, and heretical divines, +a whole generation of good society was resuscitated; and the Scotchman of +to-day walked about among the Scotchmen of two generations ago. The +moment was well chosen, neither too late nor too early. The people who +sat for these pictures are not yet ancestors, they are still relations. +They are not yet altogether a part of the dusty past, but occupy a middle +distance within cry of our affections. The little child who looks +wonderingly on his grandfather’s watch in the picture, is now the veteran +Sheriff _emeritus_ of Perth. And I hear a story of a lady who returned +the other day to Edinburgh, after an absence of sixty years: “I could see +none of my old friends,” she said, “until I went into the Raeburn +Gallery, and found them all there.” + +It would be difficult to say whether the collection was more interesting +on the score of unity or diversity. Where the portraits were all of the +same period, almost all of the same race, and all from the same brush, +there could not fail to be many points of similarity. And yet the +similarity of the handling seems to throw into more vigorous relief those +personal distinctions which Raeburn was so quick to seize. He was a born +painter of portraits. He looked people shrewdly between the eyes, +surprised their manners in their face, and had possessed himself of what +was essential in their character before they had been many minutes in his +studio. What he was so swift to perceive, he conveyed to the canvas +almost in the moment of conception. He had never any difficulty, he +said, about either hands or faces. About draperies or light or +composition, he might see room for hesitation or afterthought. But a +face or a hand was something plain and legible. There were no two ways +about it, any more than about the person’s name. And so each of his +portraits are not only (in Doctor Johnson’s phrase, aptly quoted on the +catalogue) “a piece of history,” but a piece of biography into the +bargain. It is devoutly to be wished that all biography were equally +amusing, and carried its own credentials equally upon its face. These +portraits are racier than many anecdotes, and more complete than many a +volume of sententious memoirs. You can see whether you get a stronger +and clearer idea of Robertson the historian from Raeburn’s palette or +Dugald Stewart’s woolly and evasive periods. And then the portraits are +both signed and countersigned. For you have, first, the authority of the +artist, whom you recognise as no mean critic of the looks and manners of +men; and next you have the tacit acquiescence of the subject, who sits +looking out upon you with inimitable innocence, and apparently under the +impression that he is in a room by himself. For Raeburn could plunge at +once through all the constraint and embarrassment of the sitter, and +present the face, clear, open, and intelligent as at the most disengaged +moments. This is best seen in portraits where the sitter is represented +in some appropriate action: Neil Gow with his fiddle, Doctor Spens +shooting an arrow, or Lord Bannatyne hearing a cause. Above all, from +this point of view, the portrait of Lieutenant-Colonel Lyon is notable. +A strange enough young man, pink, fat about the lower part of the face, +with a lean forehead, a narrow nose and a fine nostril, sits with a +drawing-board upon his knees. He has just paused to render himself +account of some difficulty, to disentangle some complication of line or +compare neighbouring values. And there, without any perceptible +wrinkling, you have rendered for you exactly the fixed look in the eyes, +and the unconscious compression of the mouth, that befit and signify an +effort of the kind. The whole pose, the whole expression, is absolutely +direct and simple. You are ready to take your oath to it that Colonel +Lyon had no idea he was sitting for his picture, and thought of nothing +in the world besides his own occupation of the moment. + +Although the collection did not embrace, I understand, nearly the whole +of Raeburn’s works, it was too large not to contain some that were +indifferent, whether as works of art or as portraits. Certainly the +standard was remarkably high, and was wonderfully maintained, but there +were one or two pictures that might have been almost as well away—one or +two that seemed wanting in salt, and some that you can only hope were not +successful likenesses. Neither of the portraits of Sir Walter Scott, for +instance, were very agreeable to look upon. You do not care to think +that Scott looked quite so rustic and puffy. And where is that peaked +forehead which, according to all written accounts and many portraits, was +the distinguishing characteristic of his face? Again, in spite of his +own satisfaction and in spite of Dr. John Brown, I cannot consider that +Raeburn was very happy in hands. Without doubt, he could paint one if he +had taken the trouble to study it; but it was by no means always that he +gave himself the trouble. Looking round one of these rooms hung about +with his portraits, you were struck with the array of expressive faces, +as compared with what you may have seen in looking round a room full of +living people. But it was not so with the hands. The portraits differed +from each other in face perhaps ten times as much as they differed by the +hand; whereas with living people the two go pretty much together; and +where one is remarkable, the other will almost certainly not be +commonplace. + +One interesting portrait was that of Duncan of Camperdown. He stands in +uniform beside a table, his feet slightly straddled with the balance of +an old sailor, his hand poised upon a chart by the finger tips. The +mouth is pursed, the nostril spread and drawn up, the eyebrows very +highly arched. The cheeks lie along the jaw in folds of iron, and have +the redness that comes from much exposure to salt sea winds. From the +whole figure, attitude and countenance, there breathes something precise +and decisive, something alert, wiry, and strong. You can understand, +from the look of him, that sense, not so much of humour, as of what is +grimmest and driest in pleasantry, which inspired his address before the +fight at Camperdown. He had just overtaken the Dutch fleet under Admiral +de Winter. “Gentlemen,” says he, “you see a severe winter approaching; I +have only to advise you to keep up a good fire.” Somewhat of this same +spirit of adamantine drollery must have supported him in the days of the +mutiny at the Nore, when he lay off the Texel with his own flagship, the +_Venerable_, and only one other vessel, and kept up active signals, as +though he had a powerful fleet in the offing, to intimidate the Dutch. + +Another portrait which irresistibly attracted the eye, was the +half-length of Robert M‘Queen, of Braxfield, Lord Justice-Clerk. If I +know gusto in painting when I see it, this canvas was painted with rare +enjoyment. The tart, rosy, humorous look of the man, his nose like a +cudgel, his face resting squarely on the jowl, has been caught and +perpetuated with something that looks like brotherly love. A peculiarly +subtle expression haunts the lower part, sensual and incredulous, like +that of a man tasting good Bordeaux with half a fancy it has been +somewhat too long uncorked. From under the pendulous eyelids of old age +the eyes look out with a half-youthful, half-frosty twinkle. Hands, with +no pretence to distinction, are folded on the judge’s stomach. So +sympathetically is the character conceived by the portrait painter, that +it is hardly possible to avoid some movement of sympathy on the part of +the spectator. And sympathy is a thing to be encouraged, apart from +humane considerations, because it supplies us with the materials for +wisdom. It is probably more instructive to entertain a sneaking kindness +for any unpopular person, and, among the rest, for Lord Braxfield, than +to give way to perfect raptures of moral indignation against his abstract +vices. He was the last judge on the Scotch bench to employ the pure +Scotch idiom. His opinions, thus given in Doric, and conceived in a +lively, rugged, conversational style, were full of point and authority. +Out of the bar, or off the bench, he was a convivial man, a lover of +wine, and one who “shone peculiarly” at tavern meetings. He has left +behind him an unrivalled reputation for rough and cruel speech; and to +this day his name smacks of the gallows. It was he who presided at the +trials of Muir and Skirving in 1793 and 1794; and his appearance on these +occasions was scarcely cut to the pattern of to-day. His summing up on +Muir began thus—the reader must supply for himself “the growling, +blacksmith’s voice” and the broad Scotch accent: “Now this is the +question for consideration—Is the panel guilty of sedition, or is he not? +Now, before this can be answered, two things must be attended to that +require no proof: _First_, that the British constitution is the best that +ever was since the creation of the world, and it is not possible to make +it better.” It’s a pretty fair start, is it not, for a political trial? +A little later, he has occasion to refer to the relations of Muir with +“those wretches,” the French. “I never liked the French all my days,” +said his lordship, “but now I hate them.” And yet a little further on: +“A government in any country should be like a corporation; and in this +country it is made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right to +be represented. As for the rabble who have nothing but personal +property, what hold has the nation of them? They may pack up their +property on their backs, and leave the country in the twinkling of an +eye.” After having made profession of sentiments so cynically +anti-popular as these, when the trials were at an end, which was +generally about midnight, Braxfield would walk home to his house in +George Square with no better escort than an easy conscience. I think I +see him getting his cloak about his shoulders, and, with perhaps a +lantern in one hand, steering his way along the streets in the mirk +January night. It might have been that very day that Skirving had defied +him in these words: “It is altogether unavailing for your lordship to +menace me; for I have long learned to fear not the face of man;” and I +can fancy, as Braxfield reflected on the number of what he called +_Grumbletonians_ in Edinburgh, and of how many of them must bear special +malice against so upright and inflexible a judge, nay, and might at that +very moment be lurking in the mouth of a dark close with hostile intent—I +can fancy that he indulged in a sour smile, as he reflected that he also +was not especially afraid of men’s faces or men’s fists, and had hitherto +found no occasion to embody this insensibility in heroic words. For if +he was an inhumane old gentleman (and I am afraid it is a fact that he +was inhumane), he was also perfectly intrepid. You may look into the +queer face of that portrait for as long as you will, but you will not see +any hole or corner for timidity to enter in. + +Indeed, there would be no end to this paper if I were even to name half +of the portraits that were remarkable for their execution, or interesting +by association. There was one picture of Mr. Wardrop, of Torbane Hill, +which you might palm off upon most laymen as a Rembrandt; and close by, +you saw the white head of John Clerk, of Eldin, that country gentleman +who, playing with pieces of cork on his own dining-table, invented modern +naval warfare. There was that portrait of Neil Gow, to sit for which the +old fiddler walked daily through the streets of Edinburgh arm in arm with +the Duke of Athole. There was good Harry Erskine, with his satirical +nose and upper lip, and his mouth just open for a witticism to pop out; +Hutton the geologist, in quakerish raiment, and looking altogether trim +and narrow, and as if he cared more about fossils than young ladies; +full-blown John Robieson, in hyperbolical red dressing-gown, and, every +inch of him, a fine old man of the world; Constable the publisher, +upright beside a table, and bearing a corporation with commercial +dignity; Lord Bannatyne hearing a cause, if ever anybody heard a cause +since the world began; Lord Newton just awakened from clandestine slumber +on the bench; and the second President Dundas, with every feature so fat +that he reminds you, in his wig, of some droll old court officer in an +illustrated nursery story-book, and yet all these fat features instinct +with meaning, the fat lips curved and compressed, the nose combining +somehow the dignity of a beak with the good nature of a bottle, and the +very double chin with an air of intelligence and insight. And all these +portraits are so pat and telling, and look at you so spiritedly from the +walls, that, compared with the sort of living people one sees about the +streets, they are as bright new sovereigns to fishy and obliterated +sixpences. Some disparaging thoughts upon our own generation could +hardly fail to present themselves; but it is perhaps only the _sacer +vates_ who is wanting; and we also, painted by such a man as Carolus +Duran, may look in holiday immortality upon our children and +grandchildren. + +Raeburn’s young women, to be frank, are by no means of the same order of +merit. No one, of course, could be insensible to the presence of Miss +Janet Suttie or Mrs. Campbell of Possil. When things are as pretty as +that, criticism is out of season. But, on the whole, it is only with +women of a certain age that he can be said to have succeeded, in at all +the same sense as we say he succeeded with men. The younger women do not +seem to be made of good flesh and blood. They are not painted in rich +and unctuous touches. They are dry and diaphanous. And although young +ladies in Great Britain are all that can be desired of them, I would fain +hope they are not quite so much of that as Raeburn would have us believe. +In all these pretty faces, you miss character, you miss fire, you miss +that spice of the devil which is worth all the prettiness in the world; +and what is worst of all, you miss sex. His young ladies are not womanly +to nearly the same degree as his men are masculine; they are so in a +negative sense; in short, they are the typical young ladies of the male +novelist. + +To say truth, either Raeburn was timid with young and pretty sitters; or +he had stupefied himself with sentimentalities; or else (and here is +about the truth of it) Raeburn and the rest of us labour under an +obstinate blindness in one direction, and know very little more about +women after all these centuries than Adam when he first saw Eve. This is +all the more likely, because we are by no means so unintelligent in the +matter of old women. There are some capital old women, it seems to me, +in books written by men. And Raeburn has some, such as Mrs. Colin +Campbell, of Park, or the anonymous “Old lady with a large cap,” which +are done in the same frank, perspicacious spirit as the very best of his +men. He could look into their eyes without trouble; and he was not +withheld, by any bashful sentimentalism, from recognising what he saw +there and unsparingly putting it down upon the canvas. But where people +cannot meet without some confusion and a good deal of involuntary humbug, +and are occupied, for as long as they are together, with a very different +vein of thought, there cannot be much room for intelligent study nor much +result in the shape of genuine comprehension. Even women, who understand +men so well for practical purposes, do not know them well enough for the +purposes of art. Take even the very best of their male creations, take +Tito Melema, for instance, and you will find he has an equivocal air, and +every now and again remembers he has a comb at the back of his head. Of +course, no woman will believe this, and many men will be so very polite +as to humour their incredulity. + + + + +CHILD’S PLAY + + +THE regret we have for our childhood is not wholly justifiable: so much a +man may lay down without fear of public ribaldry; for although we shake +our heads over the change, we are not unconscious of the manifold +advantages of our new state. What we lose in generous impulse, we more +than gain in the habit of generously watching others; and the capacity to +enjoy Shakespeare may balance a lost aptitude for playing at soldiers. +Terror is gone out of our lives, moreover; we no longer see the devil in +the bed-curtains nor lie awake to listen to the wind. We go to school no +more; and if we have only exchanged one drudgery for another (which is by +no means sure), we are set free for ever from the daily fear of +chastisement. And yet a great change has overtaken us; and although we +do not enjoy ourselves less, at least we take our pleasure differently. +We need pickles nowadays to make Wednesday’s cold mutton please our +Friday’s appetite; and I can remember the time when to call it red +venison, and tell myself a hunter’s story, would have made it more +palatable than the best of sauces. To the grown person, cold mutton is +cold mutton all the world over; not all the mythology ever invented by +man will make it better or worse to him; the broad fact, the clamant +reality, of the mutton carries away before it such seductive figments. +But for the child it is still possible to weave an enchantment over +eatables; and if he has but read of a dish in a story-book, it will be +heavenly manna to him for a week. + +If a grown man does not like eating and drinking and exercise, if he is +not something positive in his tastes, it means he has a feeble body and +should have some medicine; but children may be pure spirits, if they +will, and take their enjoyment in a world of moon-shine. Sensation does +not count for so much in our first years as afterwards; something of the +swaddling numbness of infancy clings about us; we see and touch and hear +through a sort of golden mist. Children, for instance, are able enough +to see, but they have no great faculty for looking; they do not use their +eyes for the pleasure of using them, but for by-ends of their own; and +the things I call to mind seeing most vividly, were not beautiful in +themselves, but merely interesting or enviable to me as I thought they +might be turned to practical account in play. Nor is the sense of touch +so clean and poignant in children as it is in a man. If you will turn +over your old memories, I think the sensations of this sort you remember +will be somewhat vague, and come to not much more than a blunt, general +sense of heat on summer days, or a blunt, general sense of wellbeing in +bed. And here, of course, you will understand pleasurable sensations; +for overmastering pain—the most deadly and tragical element in life, and +the true commander of man’s soul and body—alas! pain has its own way with +all of us; it breaks in, a rude visitant, upon the fairy garden where the +child wanders in a dream, no less surely than it rules upon the field of +battle, or sends the immortal war-god whimpering to his father; and +innocence, no more than philosophy, can protect us from this sting. As +for taste, when we bear in mind the excesses of unmitigated sugar which +delight a youthful palate, “it is surely no very cynical asperity” to +think taste a character of the maturer growth. Smell and hearing are +perhaps more developed; I remember many scents, many voices, and a great +deal of spring singing in the woods. But hearing is capable of vast +improvement as a means of pleasure; and there is all the world between +gaping wonderment at the jargon of birds, and the emotion with which a +man listens to articulate music. + +At the same time, and step by step with this increase in the definition +and intensity of what we feel which accompanies our growing age, another +change takes place in the sphere of intellect, by which all things are +transformed and seen through theories and associations as through +coloured windows. We make to ourselves day by day, out of history, and +gossip, and economical speculations, and God knows what, a medium in +which we walk and through which we look abroad. We study shop windows +with other eyes than in our childhood, never to wonder, not always to +admire, but to make and modify our little incongruous theories about +life. It is no longer the uniform of a soldier that arrests our +attention; but perhaps the flowing carriage of a woman, or perhaps a +countenance that has been vividly stamped with passion and carries an +adventurous story written in its lines. The pleasure of surprise is +passed away; sugar-loaves and water-carts seem mighty tame to encounter; +and we walk the streets to make romances and to sociologise. Nor must we +deny that a good many of us walk them solely for the purposes of transit +or in the interest of a livelier digestion. These, indeed, may look back +with mingled thoughts upon their childhood, but the rest are in a better +case; they know more than when they were children, they understand +better, their desires and sympathies answer more nimbly to the +provocation of the senses, and their minds are brimming with interest as +they go about the world. + +According to my contention, this is a flight to which children cannot +rise. They are wheeled in perambulators or dragged about by nurses in a +pleasing stupor. A vague, faint, abiding, wonderment possesses them. +Here and there some specially remarkable circumstance, such as a +water-cart or a guardsman, fairly penetrates into the seat of thought and +calls them, for half a moment, out of themselves; and you may see them, +still towed forward sideways by the inexorable nurse as by a sort of +destiny, but still staring at the bright object in their wake. It may be +some minutes before another such moving spectacle reawakens them to the +world in which they dwell. For other children, they almost invariably +show some intelligent sympathy. “There is a fine fellow making mud +pies,” they seem to say; “that I can understand, there is some sense in +mud pies.” But the doings of their elders, unless where they are +speakingly picturesque or recommend themselves by the quality of being +easily imitable, they let them go over their heads (as we say) without +the least regard. If it were not for this perpetual imitation, we should +be tempted to fancy they despised us outright, or only considered us in +the light of creatures brutally strong and brutally silly; among whom +they condescended to dwell in obedience like a philosopher at a barbarous +court. At times, indeed, they display an arrogance of disregard that is +truly staggering. Once, when I was groaning aloud with physical pain, a +young gentleman came into the room and nonchalantly inquired if I had +seen his bow and arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he +accepted, as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of the +inexplicable conduct of his elders; and like a wise young gentleman, he +would waste no wonder on the subject. Those elders, who care so little +for rational enjoyment, and are even the enemies of rational enjoyment +for others, he had accepted without understanding and without complaint, +as the rest of us accept the scheme of the universe. + +We grown people can tell ourselves a story, give and take strokes until +the bucklers ring, ride far and fast, marry, fall, and die; all the while +sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone in bed. This is exactly what +a child cannot do, or does not do, at least, when he can find anything +else. He works all with lay figures and stage properties. When his +story comes to the fighting, he must rise, get something by way of a +sword and have a set-to with a piece of furniture, until he is out of +breath. When he comes to ride with the king’s pardon, he must bestride a +chair, which he will so hurry and belabour and on which he will so +furiously demean himself, that the messenger will arrive, if not bloody +with spurring, at least fiery red with haste. If his romance involves an +accident upon a cliff, he must clamber in person about the chest of +drawers and fall bodily upon the carpet, before his imagination is +satisfied. Lead soldiers, dolls, all toys, in short, are in the same +category and answer the same end. Nothing can stagger a child’s faith; +he accepts the clumsiest substitutes and can swallow the most staring +incongruities. The chair he has just been besieging as a castle, or +valiantly cutting to the ground as a dragon, is taken away for the +accommodation of a morning visitor, and he is nothing abashed; he can +skirmish by the hour with a stationary coal-scuttle; in the midst of the +enchanted pleasance, he can see, without sensible shock, the gardener +soberly digging potatoes for the day’s dinner. He can make abstraction +of whatever does not fit into his fable; and he puts his eyes into his +pocket, just as we hold our noses in an unsavoury lane. And so it is, +that although the ways of children cross with those of their elders in a +hundred places daily, they never go in the same direction nor so much as +lie in the same element. So may the telegraph wires intersect the line +of the high-road, or so might a landscape painter and a bagman visit the +same country, and yet move in different worlds. + +People struck with these spectacles cry aloud about the power of +imagination in the young. Indeed there may be two words to that. It is, +in some ways, but a pedestrian fancy that the child exhibits. It is the +grown people who make the nursery stories; all the children do, is +jealously to preserve the text. One out of a dozen reasons why _Robinson +Crusoe_ should be so popular with youth, is that it hits their level in +this matter to a nicety; Crusoe was always at makeshifts and had, in so +many words, to _play_ at a great variety of professions; and then the +book is all about tools, and there is nothing that delights a child so +much. Hammers and saws belong to a province of life that positively +calls for imitation. The juvenile lyrical drama, surely of the most +ancient Thespian model, wherein the trades of mankind are successively +simulated to the running burthen “On a cold and frosty morning,” gives a +good instance of the artistic taste in children. And this need for overt +action and lay figures testifies to a defect in the child’s imagination +which prevents him from carrying out his novels in the privacy of his own +heart. He does not yet know enough of the world and men. His experience +is incomplete. That stage-wardrobe and scene-room that we call the +memory is so ill provided, that he can overtake few combinations and body +out few stories, to his own content, without some external aid. He is at +the experimental stage; he is not sure how one would feel in certain +circumstances; to make sure, he must come as near trying it as his means +permit. And so here is young heroism with a wooden sword, and mothers +practice their kind vocation over a bit of jointed stick. It may be +laughable enough just now; but it is these same people and these same +thoughts, that not long hence, when they are on the theatre of life, will +make you weep and tremble. For children think very much the same +thoughts and dream the same dreams, as bearded men and marriageable +women. No one is more romantic. Fame and honour, the love of young men +and the love of mothers, the business man’s pleasure in method, all these +and others they anticipate and rehearse in their play hours. Upon us, +who are further advanced and fairly dealing with the threads of destiny, +they only glance from time to time to glean a hint for their own mimetic +reproduction. Two children playing at soldiers are far more interesting +to each other than one of the scarlet beings whom both are busy +imitating. This is perhaps the greatest oddity of all. “Art for art” is +their motto; and the doings of grown folk are only interesting as the raw +material for play. Not Théophile Gautier, not Flaubert, can look more +callously upon life, or rate the reproduction more highly over the +reality; and they will parody an execution, a deathbed, or the funeral of +the young man of Nain, with all the cheerfulness in the world. + +The true parallel for play is not to be found, of course, in conscious +art, which, though it be derived from play, is itself an abstract, +impersonal thing, and depends largely upon philosophical interests beyond +the scope of childhood. It is when we make castles in the air and +personate the leading character in our own romances, that we return to +the spirit of our first years. Only, there are several reasons why the +spirit is no longer so agreeable to indulge. Nowadays, when we admit +this personal element into our divagations we are apt to stir up +uncomfortable and sorrowful memories, and remind ourselves sharply of old +wounds. Our day-dreams can no longer lie all in the air like a story in +the _Arabian Nights_; they read to us rather like the history of a period +in which we ourselves had taken part, where we come across many +unfortunate passages and find our own conduct smartly reprimanded. And +then the child, mind you, acts his parts. He does not merely repeat them +to himself; he leaps, he runs, and sets the blood agog over all his body. +And so his play breathes him; and he no sooner assumes a passion than he +gives it vent. Alas! when we betake ourselves to our intellectual form +of play, sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone in bed, we rouse many +hot feelings for which we can find no outlet. Substitutes are not +acceptable to the mature mind, which desires the thing itself; and even +to rehearse a triumphant dialogue with one’s enemy, although it is +perhaps the most satisfactory piece of play still left within our reach, +is not entirely satisfying, and is even apt to lead to a visit and an +interview which may be the reverse of triumphant after all. + +In the child’s world of dim sensation, play is all in all. “Making +believe” is the gist of his whole life, and he cannot so much as take a +walk except in character. I could not learn my alphabet without some +suitable _mise-en-scène_, and had to act a business man in an office +before I could sit down to my book. Will you kindly question your +memory, and find out how much you did, work or pleasure, in good faith +and soberness, and for how much you had to cheat yourself with some +invention? I remember, as though it were yesterday, the expansion of +spirit, the dignity and self-reliance, that came with a pair of +mustachios in burnt cork, even when there was none to see. Children are +even content to forego what we call the realities, and prefer the shadow +to the substance. When they might be speaking intelligibly together, +they chatter senseless gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy because +they are making believe to speak French. I have said already how even +the imperious appetite of hunger suffers itself to be gulled and led by +the nose with the fag end of an old song. And it goes deeper than this: +when children are together even a meal is felt as an interruption in the +business of life; and they must find some imaginative sanction, and tell +themselves some sort of story, to account for, to colour, to render +entertaining, the simple processes of eating and drinking. What +wonderful fancies I have heard evolved out of the pattern upon +tea-cups!—from which there followed a code of rules and a whole world of +excitement, until tea-drinking began to take rank as a game. When my +cousin and I took our porridge of a morning, we had a device to enliven +the course of the meal. He ate his with sugar, and explained it to be a +country continually buried under snow. I took mine with milk, and +explained it to be a country suffering gradual inundation. You can +imagine us exchanging bulletins; how here was an island still +unsubmerged, here a valley not yet covered with snow; what inventions +were made; how his population lived in cabins on perches and travelled on +stilts, and how mine was always in boats; how the interest grew furious, +as the last corner of safe ground was cut off on all sides and grew +smaller every moment; and how in fine, the food was of altogether +secondary importance, and might even have been nauseous, so long as we +seasoned it with these dreams. But perhaps the most exciting moments I +ever had over a meal, were in the case of calves’ feet jelly. It was +hardly possible not to believe—and you may be sure, so far from trying, I +did all I could to favour the illusion—that some part of it was hollow, +and that sooner or later my spoon would lay open the secret tabernacle of +the golden rock. There, might some miniature _Red Beard_ await his hour; +there, might one find the treasures of the _Forty Thieves_, and +bewildered Cassim beating about the walls. And so I quarried on slowly, +with bated breath, savouring the interest. Believe me, I had little +palate left for the jelly; and though I preferred the taste when I took +cream with it, I used often to go without, because the cream dimmed the +transparent fractures. + +Even with games, this spirit is authoritative with right-minded children. +It is thus that hide-and-seek has so pre-eminent a sovereignty, for it is +the wellspring of romance, and the actions and the excitement to which it +gives rise lend themselves to almost any sort of fable. And thus +cricket, which is a mere matter of dexterity, palpably about nothing and +for no end, often fails to satisfy infantile craving. It is a game, if +you like, but not a game of play. You cannot tell yourself a story about +cricket; and the activity it calls forth can be justified on no rational +theory. Even football, although it admirably simulates the tug and the +ebb and flow of battle, has presented difficulties to the mind of young +sticklers after verisimilitude; and I knew at least one little boy who +was mightily exercised about the presence of the ball, and had to spirit +himself up, whenever he came to play, with an elaborate story of +enchantment, and take the missile as a sort of talisman bandied about in +conflict between two Arabian nations. + +To think of such a frame of mind, is to become disquieted about the +bringing up of children. Surely they dwell in a mythological epoch, and +are not the contemporaries of their parents. What can they think of +them? what can they make of these bearded or petticoated giants who look +down upon their games? who move upon a cloudy Olympus, following unknown +designs apart from rational enjoyment? who profess the tenderest +solicitude for children, and yet every now and again reach down out of +their altitude and terribly vindicate the prerogatives of age? Off goes +the child, corporally smarting, but morally rebellious. Were there ever +such unthinkable deities as parents? I would give a great deal to know +what, in nine cases out of ten, is the child’s unvarnished feeling. A +sense of past cajolery; a sense of personal attraction, at best very +feeble; above all, I should imagine, a sense of terror for the untried +residue of mankind go to make up the attraction that he feels. No +wonder, poor little heart, with such a weltering world in front of him, +if he clings to the hand he knows! The dread irrationality of the whole +affair, as it seems to children, is a thing we are all too ready to +forget. “O, why,” I remember passionately wondering, “why can we not all +be happy and devote ourselves to play?” And when children do +philosophise, I believe it is usually to very much the same purpose. + +One thing, at least, comes very clearly out of these considerations; that +whatever we are to expect at the hands of children, it should not be any +peddling exactitude about matters of fact. They walk in a vain show, and +among mists and rainbows; they are passionate after dreams and +unconcerned about realities; speech is a difficult art not wholly +learned; and there is nothing in their own tastes or purposes to teach +them what we mean by abstract truthfulness. When a bad writer is +inexact, even if he can look back on half a century of years, we charge +him with incompetence and not with dishonesty. And why not extend the +same allowance to imperfect speakers? Let a stockbroker be dead stupid +about poetry, or a poet inexact in the details of business, and we excuse +them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human +entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town +and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, and who passes three-fourths +of his time in a dream and the rest in open self-deception, and we expect +him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing +evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less than decent. You do not +consider how little the child sees, or how swift he is to weave what he +has seen into bewildering fiction; and that he cares no more for what you +call truth, than you for a gingerbread dragoon. + +I am reminded, as I write, that the child is very inquiring as to the +precise truth of stories. But indeed this is a very different matter, +and one bound up with the subject of play, and the precise amount of +playfulness, or playability, to be looked for in the world. Many such +burning questions must arise in the course of nursery education. Among +the fauna of this planet, which already embraces the pretty soldier and +the terrifying Irish beggarman, is, or is not, the child to expect a +Bluebeard or a Cormoran? Is he, or is he not, to look out for magicians, +kindly and potent? May he, or may he not, reasonably hope to be cast +away upon a desert island, or turned to such diminutive proportions that +he can live on equal terms with his lead soldiery, and go a cruise in his +own toy schooner? Surely all these are practical questions to a neophyte +entering upon life with a view to play. Precision upon such a point, the +child can understand. But if you merely ask him of his past behaviour, +as to who threw such a stone, for instance, or struck such and such a +match; or whether he had looked into a parcel or gone by a forbidden +path,—why, he can see no moment in the inquiry, and it is ten to one, he +has already half forgotten and half bemused himself with subsequent +imaginings. + +It would be easy to leave them in their native cloudland, where they +figure so prettily—pretty like flowers and innocent like dogs. They will +come out of their gardens soon enough, and have to go into offices and +the witness-box. Spare them yet a while, O conscientious parent! Let +them doze among their playthings yet a little! for who knows what a +rough, warfaring existence lies before them in the future? + + + + +WALKING TOURS + + +IT must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, +is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are many +ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite of +canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But landscape on a +walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of the brotherhood +does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly +humours—of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at morning, +and the peace and spiritual repletion of the evening’s rest. He cannot +tell whether he puts his knapsack on, or takes it off, with more delight. +The excitement of the departure puts him in key for that of the arrival. +Whatever he does is not only a reward in itself, but will be further +rewarded in the sequel; and so pleasure leads on to pleasure in an +endless chain. It is this that so few can understand; they will either +be always lounging or always at five miles an hour; they do not play off +the one against the other, prepare all day for the evening, and all +evening for the next day. And, above all, it is here that your +overwalker fails of comprehension. His heart rises against those who +drink their curaçoa in liqueur glasses, when he himself can swill it in a +brown john. He will not believe that the flavour is more delicate in the +smaller dose. He will not believe that to walk this unconscionable +distance is merely to stupefy and brutalise himself, and come to his inn, +at night, with a sort of frost on his five wits, and a starless night of +darkness in his spirit. Not for him the mild luminous evening of the +temperate walker! He has nothing left of man but a physical need for +bedtime and a double nightcap; and even his pipe, if he be a smoker, will +be savourless and disenchanted. It is the fate of such an one to take +twice as much trouble as is needed to obtain happiness, and miss the +happiness in the end; he is the man of the proverb, in short, who goes +further and fares worse. + +Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone. +If you go in a company, or even in pairs, it is no longer a walking tour +in anything but name; it is something else and more in the nature of a +picnic. A walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is of +the essence; because you should be able to stop and go on, and follow +this way or that, as the freak takes you; and because you must have your +own pace, and neither trot alongside a champion walker, nor mince in time +with a girl. And then you must be open to all impressions and let your +thoughts take colour from what you see. You should be as a pipe for any +wind to play upon. “I cannot see the wit,” says Hazlitt, “of walking and +talking at the same time. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate +like the country,”—which is the gist of all that can be said upon the +matter. There should be no cackle of voices at your elbow, to jar on the +meditative silence of the morning. And so long as a man is reasoning he +cannot surrender himself to that fine intoxication that comes of much +motion in the open air, that begins in a sort of dazzle and sluggishness +of the brain, and ends in a peace that passes comprehension. + +During the first day or so of any tour there are moments of bitterness, +when the traveller feels more than coldly towards his knapsack, when he +is half in a mind to throw it bodily over the hedge and, like Christian +on a similar occasion, “give three leaps and go on singing.” And yet it +soon acquires a property of easiness. It becomes magnetic; the spirit of +the journey enters into it. And no sooner have you passed the straps +over your shoulder than the lees of sleep are cleared from you, you pull +yourself together with a shake, and fall at once into your stride. And +surely, of all possible moods, this, in which a man takes the road, is +the best. Of course, if he _will_ keep thinking of his anxieties, if he +_will_ open the merchant Abudah’s chest and walk arm-in-arm with the +hag—why, wherever he is, and whether he walk fast or slow, the chances +are that he will not be happy. And so much the more shame to himself! +There are perhaps thirty men setting forth at that same hour, and I would +lay a large wager there is not another dull face among the thirty. It +would be a fine thing to follow, in a coat of darkness, one after another +of these wayfarers, some summer morning, for the first few miles upon the +road. This one, who walks fast, with a keen look in his eyes, is all +concentrated in his own mind; he is up at his loom, weaving and weaving, +to set the landscape to words. This one peers about, as he goes, among +the grasses; he waits by the canal to watch the dragon-flies; he leans on +the gate of the pasture, and cannot look enough upon the complacent kine. +And here comes another, talking, laughing, and gesticulating to himself. +His face changes from time to time, as indignation flashes from his eyes +or anger clouds his forehead. He is composing articles, delivering +orations, and conducting the most impassioned interviews, by the way. A +little farther on, and it is as like as not he will begin to sing. And +well for him, supposing him to be no great master in that art, if he +stumble across no stolid peasant at a corner; for on such an occasion, I +scarcely know which is the more troubled, or whether it is worse to +suffer the confusion of your troubadour, or the unfeigned alarm of your +clown. A sedentary population, accustomed, besides, to the strange +mechanical bearing of the common tramp, can in no wise explain to itself +the gaiety of these passers-by. I knew one man who was arrested as a +runaway lunatic, because, although a full-grown person with a red beard, +he skipped as he went like a child. And you would be astonished if I +were to tell you all the grave and learned heads who have confessed to me +that, when on walking tours, they sang—and sang very ill—and had a pair +of red ears when, as described above, the inauspicious peasant plumped +into their arms from round a corner. And here, lest you should think I +am exaggerating, is Hazlitt’s own confession, from his essay _On Going a +Journey_, which is so good that there should be a tax levied on all who +have not read it:— + +“Give me the clear blue sky over my head,” says he, “and the green turf +beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to +dinner—and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on +these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy.” + +Bravo! After that adventure of my friend with the policeman, you would +not have cared, would you, to publish that in the first person? But we +have no bravery nowadays, and, even in books, must all pretend to be as +dull and foolish as our neighbours. It was not so with Hazlitt. And +notice how learned he is (as, indeed, throughout the essay) in the theory +of walking tours. He is none of your athletic men in purple stockings, +who walk their fifty miles a day: three hours’ march is his ideal. And +then he must have a winding road, the epicure! + +Yet there is one thing I object to in these words of his, one thing in +the great master’s practice that seems to me not wholly wise. I do not +approve of that leaping and running. Both of these hurry the +respiration; they both shake up the brain out of its glorious open-air +confusion; and they both break the pace. Uneven walking is not so +agreeable to the body, and it distracts and irritates the mind. Whereas, +when once you have fallen into an equable stride, it requires no +conscious thought from you to keep it up, and yet it prevents you from +thinking earnestly of anything else. Like knitting, like the work of a +copying clerk, it gradually neutralises and sets to sleep the serious +activity of the mind. We can think of this or that, lightly and +laughingly, as a child thinks, or as we think in a morning dose; we can +make puns or puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand ways with +words and rhymes; but when it comes to honest work, when we come to +gather ourselves together for an effort, we may sound the trumpet as loud +and long as we please; the great barons of the mind will not rally to the +standard, but sit, each one, at home, warming his hands over his own fire +and brooding on his own private thought! + +In the course of a day’s walk, you see, there is much variance in the +mood. From the exhilaration of the start, to the happy phlegm of the +arrival, the change is certainly great. As the day goes on, the +traveller moves from the one extreme towards the other. He becomes more +and more incorporated with the material landscape, and the open-air +drunkenness grows upon him with great strides, until he posts along the +road, and sees everything about him, as in a cheerful dream. The first +is certainly brighter, but the second stage is the more peaceful. A man +does not make so many articles towards the end, nor does he laugh aloud; +but the purely animal pleasures, the sense of physical wellbeing, the +delight of every inhalation, of every time the muscles tighten down the +thigh, console him for the absence of the others, and bring him to his +destination still content. + +Nor must I forget to say a word on bivouacs. You come to a milestone on +a hill, or some place where deep ways meet under trees; and off goes the +knapsack, and down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink into +yourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke +dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the sun +lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and turns +aside your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an evil +conscience. You may dally as long as you like by the roadside. It is +almost as if the millennium were arrived, when we shall throw our clocks +and watches over the housetop, and remember time and seasons no more. +Not to keep hours for a lifetime is, I was going to say, to live for +ever. You have no idea, unless you have tried it, how endlessly long is +a summer’s day, that you measure out only by hunger, and bring to an end +only when you are drowsy. I know a village where there are hardly any +clocks, where no one knows more of the days of the week than by a sort of +instinct for the fête on Sundays, and where only one person can tell you +the day of the month, and she is generally wrong; and if people were +aware how slow Time journeyed in that village, and what armfuls of spare +hours he gives, over and above the bargain, to its wise inhabitants, I +believe there would be a stampede out of London, Liverpool, Paris, and a +variety of large towns, where the clocks lose their heads, and shake the +hours out each one faster than the other, as though they were all in a +wager. And all these foolish pilgrims would each bring his own misery +along with him, in a watch-pocket! It is to be noticed, there were no +clocks and watches in the much-vaunted days before the flood. It +follows, of course, there were no appointments, and punctuality was not +yet thought upon. “Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure,” +says Milton, “he has yet one jewel left; ye cannot deprive him of his +covetousness.” And so I would say of a modern man of business, you may +do what you will for him, put him in Eden, give him the elixir of life—he +has still a flaw at heart, he still has his business habits. Now, there +is no time when business habits are more mitigated than on a walking +tour. And so during these halts, as I say, you will feel almost free. + +But it is at night, and after dinner, that the best hour comes. There +are no such pipes to be smoked as those that follow a good day’s march; +the flavour of the tobacco is a thing to be remembered, it is so dry and +aromatic, so full and so fine. If you wind up the evening with grog, you +will own there was never such grog; at every sip a jocund tranquillity +spreads about your limbs, and sits easily in your heart. If you read a +book—and you will never do so save by fits and starts—you find the +language strangely racy and harmonious; words take a new meaning; single +sentences possess the ear for half an hour together; and the writer +endears himself to you, at every page, by the nicest coincidence of +sentiment. It seems as if it were a book you had written yourself in a +dream. To all we have read on such occasions we look back with special +favour. “It was on the 10th of April, 1798,” says Hazlitt, with amorous +precision, “that I sat down to a volume of the new _Héloïse_, at the Inn +at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken.” I should +wish to quote more, for though we are mighty fine fellows nowadays, we +cannot write like Hazlitt. And, talking of that, a volume of Hazlitt’s +essays would be a capital pocket-book on such a journey; so would a +volume of Heine’s songs; and for _Tristram Shandy_ I can pledge a fair +experience. + +If the evening be fine and warm, there is nothing better in life than to +lounge before the inn door in the sunset, or lean over the parapet of the +bridge, to watch the weeds and the quick fishes. It is then, if ever, +that you taste Joviality to the full significance of that audacious word. +Your muscles are so agreeably slack, you feel so clean and so strong and +so idle, that whether you move or sit still, whatever you do is done with +pride and a kingly sort of pleasure. You fall in talk with any one, wise +or foolish, drunk or sober. And it seems as if a hot walk purged you, +more than of anything else, of all narrowness and pride, and left +curiosity to play its part freely, as in a child or a man of science. +You lay aside all your own hobbies, to watch provincial humours develop +themselves before you, now as a laughable farce, and now grave and +beautiful like an old tale. + +Or perhaps you are left to your own company for the night, and surly +weather imprisons you by the fire. You may remember how Burns, numbering +past pleasures, dwells upon the hours when he has been “happy thinking.” +It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern, girt about on every +side by clocks and chimes, and haunted, even at night, by flaming +dial-plates. For we are all so busy, and have so many far-off projects +to realise, and castles in the fire to turn into solid habitable mansions +on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for pleasure trips into the +Land of Thought and among the Hills of Vanity. Changed times, indeed, +when we must sit all night, beside the fire, with folded hands; and a +changed world for most of us, when we find we can pass the hours without +discontent and be happy thinking. We are in such haste to be doing, to +be writing, to be gathering gear, to make our voice audible a moment in +the derisive silence of eternity, that we forget that one thing, of which +these are but the parts—namely, to live. We fall in love, we drink hard, +we run to and fro upon the earth like frightened sheep. And now you are +to ask yourself if, when all is done, you would not have been better to +sit by the fire at home, and be happy thinking. To sit still and +contemplate,—to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased +by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere +in sympathy, and yet content to remain where and what you are—is not this +to know both wisdom and virtue, and to dwell with happiness? After all, +it is not they who carry flags, but they who look upon it from a private +chamber, who have the fun of the procession. And once you are at that, +you are in the very humour of all social heresy. It is no time for +shuffling, or for big, empty words. If you ask yourself what you mean by +fame, riches, or learning, the answer is far to seek; and you go back +into that kingdom of light imaginations, which seem so vain in the eyes +of Philistines perspiring after wealth, and so momentous to those who are +stricken with the disproportions of the world, and, in the face of the +gigantic stars, cannot stop to split differences between two degrees of +the infinitesimally small, such as a tobacco pipe or the Roman Empire, a +million of money or a fiddlestick’s end. + +You lean from the window, your last pipe reeking whitely into the +darkness, your body full of delicious pains, your mind enthroned in the +seventh circle of content; when suddenly the mood changes, the +weather-cock goes about, and you ask yourself one question more: whether, +for the interval, you have been the wisest philosopher or the most +egregious of donkeys? Human experience is not yet able to reply; but at +least you have had a fine moment, and looked down upon all the kingdoms +of the earth. And whether it was wise or foolish, to-morrow’s travel +will carry you, body and mind, into some different parish of the +infinite. + + + + +PAN’S PIPES + + +THE world in which we live has been variously said and sung by the most +ingenious poets and philosophers: these reducing it to formulæ and +chemical ingredients, those striking the lyre in high-sounding measures +for the handiwork of God. What experience supplies is of a mingled +tissue, and the choosing mind has much to reject before it can get +together the materials of a theory. Dew and thunder, destroying Atilla +and the Spring lambkins, belong to an order of contrasts which no +repetition can assimilate. There is an uncouth, outlandish strain +throughout the web of the world, as from a vexatious planet in the house +of life. Things are not congruous and wear strange disguises: the +consummate flower is fostered out of dung, and after nourishing itself +awhile with heaven’s delicate distillations, decays again into +indistinguishable soil; and with Cæsar’s ashes, Hamlet tells us, the +urchins make dirt pies and filthily besmear their countenance. Nay, the +kindly shine of summer, when tracked home with the scientific spyglass, +is found to issue from the most portentous nightmare of the universe—the +great, conflagrant sun: a world of hell’s squibs, tumultuary, roaring +aloud, inimical to life. The sun itself is enough to disgust a human +being of the scene which he inhabits; and you would not fancy there was a +green or habitable spot in a universe thus awfully lighted up. And yet +it is by the blaze of such a conflagration, to which the fire of Rome was +but a spark, that we do all our fiddling, and hold domestic tea-parties +at the arbour door. + +The Greeks figured Pan, the god of Nature, now terribly stamping his +foot, so that armies were dispersed; now by the woodside on a summer noon +trolling on his pipe until he charmed the hearts of upland ploughmen. +And the Greeks, in so figuring, uttered the last word of human +experience. To certain smoke-dried spirits matter and motion and elastic +aethers, and the hypothesis of this or that other spectacled professor, +tell a speaking story; but for youth and all ductile and congenial minds, +Pan is not dead, but of all the classic hierarchy alone survives in +triumph; goat-footed, with a gleeful and an angry look, the type of the +shaggy world: and in every wood, if you go with a spirit properly +prepared, you shall hear the note of his pipe. + +For it is a shaggy world, and yet studded with gardens; where the salt +and tumbling sea receives clear rivers running from among reeds and +lilies; fruitful and austere; a rustic world; sunshiny, lewd, and cruel. +What is it the birds sing among the trees in pairing-time? What means +the sound of the rain falling far and wide upon the leafy forest? To +what tune does the fisherman whistle, as he hauls in his net at morning, +and the bright fish are heaped inside the boat? These are all airs upon +Pan’s pipe; he it was who gave them breath in the exultation of his +heart, and gleefully modulated their outflow with his lips and fingers. +The coarse mirth of herdsmen, shaking the dells with laughter and +striking out high echoes from the rock; the tune of moving feet in the +lamplit city, or on the smooth ballroom floor; the hooves of many horses, +beating the wide pastures in alarm; the song of hurrying rivers; the +colour of clear skies; and smiles and the live touch of hands; and the +voice of things, and their significant look, and the renovating influence +they breathe forth—these are his joyful measures, to which the whole +earth treads in choral harmony. To this music the young lambs bound as +to a tabor, and the London shop-girl skips rudely in the dance. For it +puts a spirit of gladness in all hearts; and to look on the happy side of +nature is common, in their hours, to all created things. Some are vocal +under a good influence, are pleasing whenever they are pleased, and hand +on their happiness to others, as a child who, looking upon lovely things, +looks lovely. Some leap to the strains with unapt foot, and make a +halting figure in the universal dance. And some, like sour spectators at +the play, receive the music into their hearts with an unmoved +countenance, and walk like strangers through the general rejoicing. But +let him feign never so carefully, there is not a man but has his pulses +shaken when Pan trolls out a stave of ecstasy and sets the world +a-singing. + +Alas if that were all! But oftentimes the air is changed; and in the +screech of the night wind, chasing navies, subverting the tall ships and +the rooted cedar of the hills; in the random deadly levin or the fury of +headlong floods, we recognise the “dread foundation” of life and the +anger in Pan’s heart. Earth wages open war against her children, and +under her softest touch hides treacherous claws. The cool waters invite +us in to drown; the domestic hearth burns up in the hour of sleep, and +makes an end of all. Everything is good or bad, helpful or deadly, not +in itself, but by its circumstances. For a few bright days in England +the hurricane must break forth and the North Sea pay a toll of populous +ships. And when the universal music has led lovers into the paths of +dalliance, confident of Nature’s sympathy, suddenly the air shifts into a +minor, and death makes a clutch from his ambuscade below the bed of +marriage. For death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are +fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child +too often makes its entrance from the mother’s corpse. It is no wonder, +with so traitorous a scheme of things, if the wise people who created for +us the idea of Pan thought that of all fears the fear of him was the most +terrible, since it embraces all. And still we preserve the phrase: a +panic terror. To reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too intently +for the threat that runs through all the winning music of the world, to +hold back the hand from the rose because of the thorn, and from life +because of death: this it is to be afraid of Pan. Highly respectable +citizens who flee life’s pleasures and responsibilities and keep, with +upright hat, upon the midway of custom, avoiding the right hand and the +left, the ecstasies and the agonies, how surprised they would be if they +could hear their attitude mythologically expressed, and knew themselves +as tooth-chattering ones, who flee from Nature because they fear the hand +of Nature’s God! Shrilly sound Pan’s pipes; and behold the banker +instantly concealed in the bank parlour! For to distrust one’s impulses +is to be recreant to Pan. + +There are moments when the mind refuses to be satisfied with evolution, +and demands a ruddier presentation of the sum of man’s experience. +Sometimes the mood is brought about by laughter at the humorous side of +life, as when, abstracting ourselves from earth, we imagine people +plodding on foot, or seated in ships and speedy trains, with the planet +all the while whirling in the opposite direction, so that, for all their +hurry, they travel back-foremost through the universe of space. +Sometimes it comes by the spirit of delight, and sometimes by the spirit +of terror. At least, there will always be hours when we refuse to be put +off by the feint of explanation, nicknamed science; and demand instead +some palpitating image of our estate, that shall represent the troubled +and uncertain element in which we dwell, and satisfy reason by the means +of art. Science writes of the world as if with the cold finger of a +starfish; it is all true; but what is it when compared to the reality of +which it discourses? where hearts beat high in April, and death strikes, +and hills totter in the earthquake, and there is a glamour over all the +objects of sight, and a thrill in all noises for the ear, and Romance +herself has made her dwelling among men? So we come back to the old +myth, and hear the goat-footed piper making the music which is itself the +charm and terror of things; and when a glen invites our visiting +footsteps, fancy that Pan leads us thither with a gracious tremolo; or +when our hearts quail at the thunder of the cataract, tell ourselves that +he has stamped his hoof in the nigh thicket. + + + + +A PLEA FOR GAS LAMPS + + +CITIES given, the problem was to light them. How to conduct individual +citizens about the burgess-warren, when once heaven had withdrawn its +leading luminary? or—since we live in a scientific age—when once our +spinning planet has turned its back upon the sun? The moon, from time to +time, was doubtless very helpful; the stars had a cheery look among the +chimney-pots; and a cresset here and there, on church or citadel, +produced a fine pictorial effect, and, in places where the ground lay +unevenly, held out the right hand of conduct to the benighted. But sun, +moon, and stars abstracted or concealed, the night-faring inhabitant had +to fall back—we speak on the authority of old prints—upon stable +lanthorns two stories in height. Many holes, drilled in the conical +turret-roof of this vagabond Pharos, let up spouts of dazzlement into the +bearer’s eyes; and as he paced forth in the ghostly darkness, carrying +his own sun by a ring about his finger, day and night swung to and fro +and up and down about his footsteps. Blackness haunted his path; he was +beleaguered by goblins as he went; and, curfew being struck, he found no +light but that he travelled in throughout the township. + +Closely following on this epoch of migratory lanthorns in a world of +extinction, came the era of oil-lights, hard to kindle, easy to +extinguish, pale and wavering in the hour of their endurance. Rudely +puffed the winds of heaven; roguishly clomb up the all-destructive +urchin; and, lo! in a moment night re-established her void empire, and +the cit groped along the wall, suppered but bedless, occult from +guidance, and sorrily wading in the kennels. As if gamesome winds and +gamesome youths were not sufficient, it was the habit to sling these +feeble luminaries from house to house above the fairway. There, on +invisible cordage, let them swing! And suppose some crane-necked general +to go speeding by on a tall charger, spurring the destiny of nations, +red-hot in expedition, there would indubitably be some effusion of +military blood, and oaths, and a certain crash of glass; and while the +chieftain rode forward with a purple coxcomb, the street would be left to +original darkness, unpiloted, unvoyageable, a province of the desert +night. + +The conservative, looking before and after, draws from each contemplation +the matter for content. Out of the age of gas lamps he glances back +slightingly at the mirk and glimmer in which his ancestors wandered; his +heart waxes jocund at the contrast; nor do his lips refrain from a stave, +in the highest style of poetry, lauding progress and the golden mean. +When gas first spread along a city, mapping it forth about evenfall for +the eye of observant birds, a new age had begun for sociality and +corporate pleasure-seeking, and begun with proper circumstance, becoming +its own birthright. The work of Prometheus had advanced by another +stride. Mankind and its supper parties were no longer at the mercy of a +few miles of sea-fog; sundown no longer emptied the promenade; and the +day was lengthened out to every man’s fancy. The city-folk had stars of +their own; biddable, domesticated stars. + +It is true that these were not so steady, nor yet so clear, as their +originals; nor indeed was their lustre so elegant as that of the best wax +candles. But then the gas stars, being nearer at hand, were more +practically efficacious than Jupiter himself. It is true, again, that +they did not unfold their rays with the appropriate spontaneity of the +planets, coming out along the firmament one after another, as the need +arises. But the lamplighters took to their heels every evening, and ran +with a good heart. It was pretty to see man thus emulating the +punctuality of heaven’s orbs; and though perfection was not absolutely +reached, and now and then an individual may have been knocked on the head +by the ladder of the flying functionary, yet people commended his zeal in +a proverb, and taught their children to say, “God bless the lamplighter!” +And since his passage was a piece of the day’s programme, the children +were well pleased to repeat the benediction, not, of course, in so many +words, which would have been improper, but in some chaste circumlocution, +suitable for infant lips. + +God bless him, indeed! For the term of his twilight diligence is near at +hand; and for not much longer shall we watch him speeding up the street +and, at measured intervals, knocking another luminous hole into the dusk. +The Greeks would have made a noble myth of such an one; how he +distributed starlight, and, as soon as the need was over, re-collected +it; and the little bull’s-eye, which was his instrument, and held enough +fire to kindle a whole parish, would have been fitly commemorated in the +legend. Now, like all heroic tasks, his labours draw towards apotheosis, +and in the light of victory himself shall disappear. For another advance +has been effected. Our tame stars are to come out in future, not one by +one, but all in a body and at once. A sedate electrician somewhere in a +back office touches a spring—and behold! from one end to another of the +city, from east to west, from the Alexandra to the Crystal Palace, there +is light! _Fiat Lux_, says the sedate electrician. What a spectacle, on +some clear, dark nightfall, from the edge of Hampstead Hill, when in a +moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the design of the monstrous city +flashes into vision—a glittering hieroglyph many square miles in extent; +and when, to borrow and debase an image, all the evening street-lamps +burst together into song! Such is the spectacle of the future, preluded +the other day by the experiment in Pall Mall. Star-rise by electricity, +the most romantic flight of civilisation; the compensatory benefit for an +innumerable array of factories and bankers’ clerks. To the artistic +spirit exercised about Thirlmere, here is a crumb of consolation; +consolatory, at least, to such of them as look out upon the world through +seeing eyes, and contentedly accept beauty where it comes. + +But the conservative, while lauding progress, is ever timid of +innovation; his is the hand upheld to counsel pause; his is the signal +advising slow advance. The word _electricity_ now sounds the note of +danger. In Paris, at the mouth of the Passage des Princes, in the place +before the Opera portico, and in the Rue Drouot at the _Figaro_ office, a +new sort of urban star now shines out nightly, horrible, unearthly, +obnoxious to the human eye; a lamp for a nightmare! Such a light as this +should shine only on murders and public crime, or along the corridors of +lunatic asylums, a horror to heighten horror. To look at it only once is +to fall in love with gas, which gives a warm domestic radiance fit to eat +by. Mankind, you would have thought, might have remained content with +what Prometheus stole for them and not gone fishing the profound heaven +with kites to catch and domesticate the wildfire of the storm. Yet here +we have the levin brand at our doors, and it is proposed that we should +henceforward take our walks abroad in the glare of permanent lightning. +A man need not be very superstitious if he scruple to follow his +pleasures by the light of the Terror that Flieth, nor very epicurean if +he prefer to see the face of beauty more becomingly displayed. That ugly +blinding glare may not improperly advertise the home of slanderous +_Figaro_, which is a backshop to the infernal regions; but where soft +joys prevail, where people are convoked to pleasure and the philosopher +looks on smiling and silent, where love and laughter and deifying wine +abound, there, at least, let the old mild lustre shine upon the ways of +man. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{1} Browning’s _Ring and Book_. + +{2} _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_, Wednesday, p. 283. + +{3} _Lothair_. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE*** + + +******* This file should be named 386-0.txt or 386-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/386 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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