Chapter XVI: Introduction: To an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses (3)

_Milking_, by John Burnett, is a very brilliant little picture. The red dress of the girl at the milk-pail is as rich as possible. The trees at a little distance are too much in sharp points and touches. The cattle in the landscapes of both the painters of this name are too much in heavy masses, and form too violent a contrast to the lightness of the landscape about them.

_The Watering Place_, P. H. Rogers, deserves considerable praise, both for the colouring and composition.

_Banks of the Thames_, J. Wilson, is a very clever picture. The foreground and the distance are equally well painted; but they do not appear in keeping. The one is quite clear, and the other covered with haze.

_Morning_, and _View from Rydal Woods_, by C. V. Fielding, are both masterly performances. The last, in particular, is a rich, mellow landscape, and presents a fine, woody, and romantic scene, which in some degree calls off our admiration from the merit of the artist to the beauties of nature. This is a sacrifice of self-love which many of our artists do not seem willing to make. They too often chuse their subjects, not to exhibit the charms of nature, but to display their own skill in making something of the most barren subjects.

We think this objection applies to Mr. Hofland’s landscapes in general. The scene he selects is represented with great truth and felicity of pencil, but it is, generally speaking, one we should neither wish to look at, nor to be in. In his _Loch-Lomond_ and _Stirling Castle_, the effect of the atmosphere is finely given; but this is all. We wish to enter our protest against this principle of separating _the imitation_ from _the thing imitated_, particularly as it is countenanced by the authority of the ablest landscape painter of the present day, of whose landscapes some one said, that ‘they were pictures of nothing, and very like!’

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The Champion._] [_February 19, 1815._

_Battle-piece_, B. Barker, is a spirited sketch, harmoniously coloured. In force of drawing and expression, it is inferior to _The Standard_, by Ab. Cooper. There is too violent an opposition of white and black in the horses in this picture; and the eye does not immediately connect the heads of the animals with the rest of their bodies. This picture, however, displays great knowledge of the subject, and considerable strength of composition. _A Study from Nature_, by the same artist, Ab. Cooper, is a masterly little picture. _Birds_, from nature, and _Plovers_, from nature, by M. Chantry, are both excellent in their kind.

_View of Richmond, Yorkshire_, by W. Westall, A.R.A. is deficient in perspective and in other respects. The river below seems to be on a level with the high foreground from which it is seen. The representing declivities by means of aerial perspective is, we believe, one of the difficulties of the art, and we do not remember any successful instances of it, except in some of Wilson’s landscapes.

_A Boy lamenting the Death of his Favourite Rabbit_, W. Davison, is a very pleasing composition in the style of Gainsborough. The landscape has too much the blue greenish hue and slender execution of Gainsborough’s back-grounds. The boy is well painted. There is a picture of this kind by Murillo in the collection at Dulwich, which we would earnestly recommend to every painter of such subjects. Or we might as well, in other words, recommend them to look at nature.

_Forest Scene_, by J. Stark, is painted with great truth of colour and effect.

_Stacking Hay_, P. Dewint, has great merit.

_Jacob taking charge of the Flocks and Herds of Laban_, J. Glover. We have already spoken of this picture. The group of tall green trees in the foreground is excellent, but there is a leaden tone spread over the rest of the picture, which is neither gratifying to the eye, nor true to nature.

_The Emperor Alexander, in his Droschi_, by A. Sauerweide, is like all the other pictures, busts, &c. we have seen of him, and not at all like the descriptions we have heard of his fine person and countenance.

_The Duke of Wellington attacking the Rear of Marshal Soult’s Army on the Pont de Miserali over the Great fall of Salamondi, and pursuing them through the Passes of the Sierra Morone in Portugal, 1809_, from a sketch by Major-general Hawker, by Perry Nursey. This is not a good picture; but it gives one a good idea of the sport which is to be found in this sort of royal game. In looking at it we have something like ocular demonstration of the truth of what Cowper, the poet, says—

‘War is a game, which were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at!’

ON MR. WILKIE’S PICTURES

_The Champion._] [_March 5, 1815._

In one of Archbishop Herring’s letters, written during a tour in Wales, is the following very picturesque description of a scene at an inn. ‘I set out upon this adventurous journey on a Monday morning, accompanied (as bishops usually are) by my chancellor, my chaplain, secretary, two or three friends, and our servants. The first part of our road lay across the foot of a long ridge of rocks, and was over a dreary morass, with here and there a small dark cottage, a few sheep and more goats in view, but not a bird to be seen, save, now and then, a solitary hern, watching for frogs. At the end of four of their miles, we got to a small village, where the view of things mended a little, and the road and the time were beguiled by travelling for three miles along the side of a fine lake, full of fish, and transparent as glass. That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs of stone. I submitted to this, which, they told me, was but a taste of the country, and to prepare me for worse things to come. However, worse things did not come that morning, for we dined soon after out of our own wallets; and though our inn stood in a place of the most frightful solitude, and the best formed for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the world, yet we made a cheerful meal. The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and the air gave me appetite, much keener than the knife I ate with. We had our music too; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group of figures, that Hogarth would give any price for. The harper was in his true place and attitude; a man and a woman stood before him, singing to his instrument wildly, but not disagreeably; a little dirty child was playing with the bottom of the harp; a woman, in a sick night-cap, hanging over the stairs; a boy with crutches, fixed in a staring attention, and a girl carding wool in the chimney, and rocking a cradle with her naked feet, interrupted in her business by the charms of the music; all ragged and dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures gave us a most entertaining picture, and would please you, or any man of observation; and one reflection gave me particular comfort, that the assembly before us demonstrated, that, even here, the influential sun warmed poor mortals, and inspired them with love and music.’

The figures in this description form a very striking group, and we should like much to see them transferred to the canvass. Those of the girl with naked feet rocking the cradle, the little child playing with the bottom of the harp, and the man and woman singing wildly before it are the most beautiful. There is one observation made by the writer to which we do not assent, that the figures are such as Hogarth would have given any price for. We doubt whether he would have meddled with them at all, for there was no one who understood his own powers better, or more seldom went out of his way. His _forte_ was satire, he painted the follies or vices of men, and we do not know that there is a single picture of his, containing a representation of merely natural or domestic scenery. The subject described in the passage we have given above would have exactly suited an excellent painter of the present day, we mean Mr. Wilkie; and would indeed form a very delightful companion to his Blind Fiddler. With all our admiration of this last-mentioned composition, we think the story described by the bishop clearly has the poetry on its side.

The highest authority on art in this country, we understand, has pronounced that Mr. Wilkie united the excellences of Hogarth to those of Teniers. We demur to this decision, in both its branches; but in demurring to authority, it is necessary to give our reasons. We conceive that this excellent and deservedly admired artist has certain essential, real, and indisputable excellences of his own; and we think it, therefore, the less important to clothe him with any vicarious merits, which do not belong to him.

Mr. Wilkie’s pictures, generally speaking, derive almost their whole merit from their _reality_, or the truth of the representation. They are works of pure imitative art, and the test of this style of composition is to represent nature, faithfully and happily, in its simplest combinations. It may be said of an artist, like Mr. Wilkie, that _nothing human is indifferent to him_. His mind takes an interest in, and it gives an interest to, the most familiar scenes and transactions of life. He professedly gives character, thought, and passion in their lowest degrees, and every-day forms. He selects the commonest events and appearances of nature for his subjects; and trusts to their very commonness for the interest and amusement he is to excite. Mr. Wilkie is a serious, prosaic, literal narrator of facts, and his pictures may be considered as diaries, or minutes of what is passing constantly about us. Hogarth, on the contrary, is essentially a comic painter; his pictures are not indifferent, unimpassioned descriptions of human nature, but rich, exuberant satires upon it. He is carried away by a passion for the _ridiculous_. His object is ‘to shew vice her own feature, scorn her own image.’ He is so far from contenting himself with still life, that he is always on the verge of caricature, though without ever falling into it. He does not represent folly or vice in its incipient, or dormant, or _grub_ state, but full grown, with wings, pampered into all sorts of affectation, airy, ostentatious, and extravagant. Folly is there seen at the height—the moon is at the full—it is ‘the very error of the time.’ There is a perpetual collision of eccentricities—a tilt and tournament of absurdities—the prejudices and caprices of mankind are let loose, and set together by the ears, as in a bear-garden. Hogarth paints nothing but comedy, or tragicomedy. Wilkie paints neither one nor the other. Hogarth never looks at any object but to find out a moral or a ludicrous effect. Wilkie never looks at any object but to see that it is there. Hogarth’s pictures are a perfect jest-book from one end to the other. We do not remember a single joke in Wilkie’s, except one very bad one of the boy in The Blind Fiddler, scraping the gridiron, or fire-shovel, we forget which.[26] In looking at Hogarth, you are ready to burst your sides with laughing at the unaccountable jumble of odd things, which are brought together: you look at Wilkie’s pictures with a mingled feeling of curiosity and admiration at the accuracy of the representation. For instance, there is a most admirable head of a man coughing in The Rent-Day: the action, the keeping, the choaked sensation are inimitable: but there is nothing to laugh at in a man coughing. What strikes the mind is the difficulty of a man’s being painted coughing, which here certainly is a master-piece of art. But turn to the blackguard cobler in the Election Dinner, who has been smutting his neighbour’s face over, and who is lolling his tongue out at the joke with a most surprising obliquity of vision, and immediately ‘your lungs begin to crow like chanticleer.’ Again, there is the little boy crying in The Cut Finger, who only gives you the idea of a cross, disagreeable, obstinate child in pain: whereas the same face in Hogarth’s Noon, from the ridiculous perplexity it is in, and its extravagant, noisy, unfelt distress at the accident of having let fall the pye-dish, is quite irresistible. Mr. Wilkie in his picture of the Ale-house door, we believe, painted Mr. Liston as one of the figures, without any great effect. Hogarth would have given any price for such a subject, and would have made it worth any money. We have never seen any thing, in the expression of comic humour, equal to Hogarth’s pictures, but Liston’s face!

We have already remarked that we did not think Hogarth a fit person to paint a romantic scene in Wales. In fact, we know no one who had a less pastoral imagination. Mr. Wilkie paints interiors: but still you always connect them with the country. Hogarth, even when he paints people in the open air, represents them either as coming from London, as in the polling for votes at Brentford, or as returning to it, as the dyer and his wife at Bagnigge Wells. In this last picture he has contrived to convert a common rural image into a type and emblem of city cuckoldom. He delights in the thick of St. Giles’s or St. James’s. His pictures breathe a certain close greasy tavern air. The fare he serves up to us consists of high-seasoned dishes, ragouts and olla podridas, like the supper in Gil Blas, which it requires a strong stomach to digest. Mr. Wilkie presents us with a sort of lenten fare, very good and wholesome, but rather insipid than overpowering.[27]

As an artist, Mr. Wilkie is not at all equal to Teniers. Neither in truth and brilliant clearness of colouring, nor in facility of execution, is there any comparison. Teniers was a perfect master in both these respects, and our own countryman is positively defective, notwithstanding the very laudable care with which he finishes every part of his pictures. There is an evident smear and dragging of the paint, which is also of a bad purple, or puttyish tone, and which never appear in the pictures of the Flemish artist, any more than in a looking-glass. Teniers, probably from his facility of execution, succeeded in giving a more local and momentary expression to his figures. They seem each going on with his particular amusement or occupation; while Wilkie’s have in general more a look of sitting for their pictures. Their compositions are very different also: and in this respect, perhaps, Mr. Wilkie has the advantage. Teniers’s boors are usually amusing themselves at skittles, or dancing, or drinking, or smoking, or doing what they like in a careless desultory way; and so the composition is loose and irregular. Wilkie’s figures are all drawn up in a regular order, and engaged in one principal action, with occasional episodes. The story of the Blind Fiddler is the most interesting, and the best told. The two children before the musician are delightful. The Card-players is the best coloured of his pictures, if we are not mistaken. The Politicians, though excellent as to character and composition, is inferior as a picture to those which Mr. Wilkie has since painted. His latest pictures, however, do not appear to us to be his best. There is something of manner and affectation in the grouping of the figures, and a pink and rosy colour spread over them, which is out of place. The hues of Rubens and Sir Joshua do not agree with Mr. Wilkie’s subjects. The picture which he has just finished of Distraining for Rent is very highly spoken of by those who have seen it. We must here conclude this very general account; for to point out the particular beauties of any one of our artist’s pictures, would require a long article by itself.

ON ROCHEFOUCAULT’S MAXIMS.

_The Examiner._] [_October 23, 1814._

The celebrated maxims of Rochefoucault contain a good deal of truth mixed up with more falsehood. They might in general be easily reversed. The whole artifice of the author consists in availing himself of the _mixed_ nature of motives, so as to detect some indirect or sinister bias even in the best, and he then proceeds to argue as if they were _simple_, that is, had but one principle, and that principle the worst. By the same extreme mode of reasoning which he adopts, that is, by taking the exception for the rule, it might be shewn that there is no such thing as selfishness, pride, vanity, revenge, envy, &c. in our nature, with quite as much plausibility as he has attempted to shew that there is no such thing as love, friendship, gratitude, generosity, or true benevolence. If the slightest associated circumstance, or latent impulse connected with our actions, is to be magnified into the whole motive, merely by the microscopic acuteness which discovered it, why not complete the paradox, by resolving our vices into some pretence to virtue, which almost always accompanies and qualifies them? Or is it to be taken for granted that our vices are sincere, and our virtues only hypocrisy and affectation? Shakespeare has given a much simpler and better account of the matter, when he says, ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.’ The most favourable representations of human nature are not certainly the most popular. The character of _Sir Charles Grandison_ is insipid compared with that of _Lovelace_, as _Satan_ is the hero of _Paradise Lost_; and Mandeville’s _Fable of the Bees_ is read with more interest and avidity than the _Practice of Piety_ or Grove’s _Ethics_. Whatever deviates from the plain path of duty, or contradicts received opinions, seems to imply a strength of will, or a strength of understanding, which seizes forcibly on the attention. Whether it is fortitude or cowardice, or both, there is a strong propensity in the human mind, if its suspicions are once raised, _to know the worst_. It is the same in speculation as in practice. When once the fairy dream in which we have lulled our senses or imagination is disturbed, we only feel ourselves secure from the delusions of self-love by distrusting appearances altogether, and revenge ourselves for the cheat which we think has been put upon us, by laughing at the credulity of those who are still its dupes.[28] Even the very love of virtue makes the mind proportionably impatient of every thing like doubt respecting it, and prompts us to escape from tormenting suspense in total indifference, as jealousy cures itself by destroying its object. The _Fable of the Bees_, the _Maxims of Rochefoucault_, the _Treatise on the Falsity of Human Virtues_, and the book _De l’Esprit_ have owed much of their popularity to the consolation they afforded to disappointed hope. However this may be, a collection of amiable paradoxes on the other side of the question, would have but few readers. There would be less point and satire, though there would not be less truth nor, as far as the analytical process is concerned, less ingenuity, in exalting our bad qualities into virtues, than in debasing our good ones into vices. I will give an example or two of what I mean.

Thus, it might be argued that there is no such thing as envy: or that what is called by that name, does not (if strictly examined) arise from a hatred of real excellence, but from a suspicion that the excellence is not real, or not so great as it is supposed to be, and consequently that the preference given to others is an act of injustice done to ourselves. For whenever all doubt is removed of the reality of the excellence, either from our own convictions, or from the concurrent opinion of mankind in general, envy ceases. This is the reason why the reputation of the dead never excites this passion, because it has been fully established by the most unequivocal testimony, it has received a sanction which fills the imagination and gains the assent at once, and the fame of the great men of past times is placed beyond the reach of envy, because it is placed beyond the reach of doubt. We feel no misgivings as to the solidity of their pretensions, nor any apprehension that our admiration or praise will be thrown away on what does not deserve it. No one envies Shakespeare or Rubens, because no one entertains the least doubt of their genius. We are as prodigal of our admiration of universally acknowledged excellence, making a sort of religious idolatry of it, as we are niggardly and cautious in fixing the stamp of our approbation on that which may turn out to be only counterfeit. It is not because we are competitors with the living and not with the dead: but because the claims of the one are fully established, and of the other not. Why else indeed are we competitors with the one and not with the other? Accordingly, where living merit is so clear as to bring immediate and entire conviction to the mind, we are no longer disposed to stint or withhold our applause, any more than to dispute the light of the sun. For instance, who ever felt the least difficulty in acknowledging the merits of Wilkie or Turner, merely because these artists are now living? If immediate celebrity has not always been the reward of extraordinary genius, this has been owing to the incapacity of the public to judge of the highest works of art. There is no want of instances where the popular opinion has outstripped the claims of justice, whenever the merits of the artist were on a level with the common understanding, and of an obvious character. Sir Joshua Reynolds had his full share of popularity in his lifetime. Raphael Mengs was cried up by his countrymen and contemporaries as equal to Raphael; and Mr. West at present stands as high in the estimation of the public as he does in his own. On the other hand, and in opposition to what was said above (though the exception still confirms the rule), the French hate Shakespeare and Rubens, for no other reason than because there is nothing in their minds which really enables them to understand or relish either. The admiration which they hear others express of this great painter and greater poet, appears to them a delusion, an instance of false taste, and a bigoted preference of that which is full of faults to that—_which is without beauties_. The disputes and jealousies of different nations respecting each other’s productions, arise chiefly from this source. We despise French painting, French poetry, and French philosophy, not because they are French, but because they appear to us to want the essential requisites of genius, feeling, and common sense. We do not feel any reluctance to admire Titian or Rembrandt, or Phidias or Homer, or Boccace or Cervantes, merely because they were not English. They speak the universal language of truth and nature. Our national and local prejudices for the most part operate only as a barrier against national and local absurdities. To the same purpose, I might mention some modern poets and critics who are actuated by nearly as intolerant feelings towards Pope and Dryden, as if they had been their contemporaries.[29] They are not their cotemporaries, but the explanation is obvious. From the want of congeniality of mind, and a taste for their peculiar excellencies, the space which those writers occupy in the eyes of the world seems comparatively disproportionate to their merits; and hence the irritation and gall which follows. The highest reputation and the highest excellence almost always destroy envy; whereas, on the common supposition, we ought to feel the greatest envy, where there is the greatest superiority, and the greatest admiration of it in others. If we never become entirely free from it in modern works, it is because with respect to them we can never ‘make assurance double sure,’ by having our own feelings confirmed by the united voices of ages and nations. True genius and true fame seize our admiration, and our admiration, when once excited, becomes a passion, and we take a delight in exaggerating the excellences of our idol as if they were our own. On the contrary, we all envy that reputation which is acquired by trick or cunning, or by mere shewy accomplishments, as when with moderate talents, dexterously applied, or an appeal to ignorant credulity, a man ‘gets the start of the majestic world,’ and obtains the highest character for qualities which he does not possess. It becomes an imposture and an insult, which we resent as such.

The jealousy and uneasiness produced in the mind by a pedantic or dazzling display of useless accomplishments may be traced to a similar source. Hence the old objection, _materiam superabat opus_. True warmth and vigour communicate warmth and vigour: and we are no longer inclined to dispute the inspiration of the oracle, when we feel the ‘presens Divus’ in our own bosoms. But when without gaining any new light or heat, we only find our ideas thrown into confusion and perplexity by an art that we cannot comprehend, this is a kind of superiority which must always be painful, and can never be cordially admitted. It is for this reason that the extraordinary talents of the late Mr. Pitt were always viewed, except by those of his own party, with a sort of jealousy, and grudgingly acknowledged: while those of his more popular rivals were admitted by all parties in the most unreserved manner, and carried by acclamation. Mr. Burke was scouted only by the common herd of politicians, who did not understand him. So on the stage, we imagine Mrs. Siddons could hardly have excited envy or jealousy in the breast of any person, not totally devoid of common sensibility: because her talents bore down all opposition, and filled the mind at once with delight and awe. Mr. Kean has a strong and most absurd party against him: but we will venture to say that if his figure, or his voice, or his judgment, were better, that is, if he had fewer defects, he would have fewer detractors from his excellencies. Any peculiar defects excite ridicule and enmity by bringing the whole claim to our applause into question. A perfect actor would not be an object of envy even to some newspaper critics. Perfect beauty excites this feeling less among women than half pretensions to it. In the same manner, upstart wealth or newly acquired honours produce contempt rather than respect, from not being accompanied with any strong or permanent associations of pleasure or power. There is nothing more apt to occasion the feeling of envy than the sudden and unexpected rise of persons we have long known under different circumstances, not from the immediate comparison with ourselves (the extravagant admiration of each other’s talents among friends is an answer to this supposition) so much as from the disbelief of the reality of their pretensions, and our inability to overcome our previous prejudice against them. It is the same where striking mental inequalities exist, or where the moral properties render us averse to acknowledge merit of a different kind, or where the countenance or manner does not denote genius. Every such incongruity increases the difficulty of connecting hearty admiration with ideas so opposite to it. I have known artists whose physiognomy was so much against them, that no one would ever think highly of them, though they were to paint like Raphael; and I once heard a very sensible man say, that if Sir Isaac Newton had lisped, he could not have fancied him to be a great man. I myself have felt a jealousy of pretensions which I thought inferior to my own, but I never knew what envy of great talents was. I do not indeed like to be put down by persons I despise, or to seem to myself less than nothing. In a word, we feel the same jealousy and irritation at seeing others surpassed, whom we have been accustomed to admire; and what is more, grow jealous of our own approximation to an equality with them. Every ingenuous mind shrinks from a comparison of itself, with what it looks up to, and is ashamed of any advantage it may gain over those whom it regards as having higher powers and pretensions. The idea of fame is too pure and sacred to be mingled with our own. Our admiration of others is stronger than our vanity. Poor indeed is that mind which has no other idol but self. It is the want of all real imagination and enthusiasm, or that little glittering halo of personal conceit which surrounds every Frenchman, and does not suffer him to see or feel any thing beyond it, that makes the French perhaps the most contemptible people in the world.

ON THE PREDOMINANT PRINCIPLES AND EXCITEMENTS IN THE HUMAN MIND

‘The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn.’

_The Examiner._] [_February 26, 1815._

‘Anthony Codrus Urceus, a most learned and unfortunate Italian, born 1446, was a striking instance’ (says his biographer) ‘of the miseries men bring upon themselves by setting their affections unreasonably on trifles. This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in the palace. His room was so very dark, that he was forced to use a candle in the day time; and one day, going abroad without putting it out, his library was set on fire, and some papers which he had prepared for the press were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill news, he was affected even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and, stopping at the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, “Christ Jesus! what mighty crime have I committed? whom of your followers have I ever injured, that you thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?” Then turning himself to an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, “Virgin” (says he) “hear what I have to say, for I speak in earnest, and with a composed spirit. If I shall happen to address you in my dying moments, I humbly entreat you not to hear me, nor receive me into heaven, for I am determined to spend all eternity in hell.” Those who heard these blasphemous expressions endeavoured to comfort him, but all to no purpose; for, the society of mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the city, and retired, like a savage, to the deep solitude of a wood. Some say he was murdered there by ruffians; others that he died at Bologna, in 1500, after much contrition and penitence.’

Almost every one may here read the history of his own life. There is scarcely a moment in which we are not in some degree guilty of the same kind of absurdity, which was here carried to such a singular excess. We waste our regrets on what cannot be recalled, or fix our desires on what we know cannot be attained. Every hour is the slave of the last; and we are seldom masters either of our thoughts or of our actions. We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Rousseau, in his Emilius, proposed to educate a perfectly reasonable man, who was to have passions and affections like other men, but with an absolute control over them. He was to love and to be wise. This is a contradiction in terms. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a tea-cup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

‘Friends now fast sworn,
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes,
Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep,
To take the one the other, by some chance
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends,
And interjoin their issues.’

We are little better than humoured children to the last, and play a mischievous game at cross-purposes with our own happiness and that of others.

We have given the above story as a striking contradiction to the prevailing doctrine of modern systems of morals and metaphysics, that man is purely a sensual and selfish animal, governed solely by a regard either to his immediate gratification or future interest. This doctrine we mean to oppose with all our might, whenever we meet with it. We are, however, less disposed to quarrel with it, as it is opposed to reason and philosophy, than as it interferes with common sense and observation. If the absurdity in question had been confined to the schools, we should not have gone out of our way to meddle with it: but it has got abroad in the world, has crept into ladies’ toilettes, is entered in the common-place of beaux, is in the mouth of the learned and ignorant, and forms a part of popular opinion. It is perpetually applied as a false measure to the characters and conduct of men in the common affairs of the world, and it is therefore our business to rectify it if we can. In fact, whoever sets out on the idea of reducing all our motives and actions to a simple principle, must either take a very narrow and superficial view of human nature, or make a very perverse use of his understanding in reasoning on what he sees. The frame of our minds, like that of our bodies, is exceedingly complicated. Besides mere sensibility to pleasure and pain, there are other original independent principles, necessarily interwoven with the nature of man as an active and intelligent being, and which, blended together in different proportions, give their form and colour to our lives. Without some other essential faculties, such as will, imagination, &c., to give effect and direction to our physical sensibility, this faculty could be of no possible use or influence; and with those other faculties joined to it, this pretended instinct of self-love will be subject to be everlastingly modified and controlled by those faculties, both in what regards our own good and that of others; that is, must itself become in a great measure dependent on the very instruments it uses. The two most predominant principles in the mind, besides sensibility and self-interest, are imagination and self-will, or (in general) the love of strong excitement, both in thought and action. To these sources may be traced the various passions, pursuits, habits, affections, follies and caprices, virtues and vices of mankind. We shall confine ourselves in the present article, to give some account of the influence exercised by the imagination over the feelings. To an intellectual being, it cannot be altogether arbitrary what ideas it shall have, whether pleasurable or painful. Our ideas do not originate in our love of pleasure, and they cannot therefore depend absolutely upon it. They have another principle. If the imagination were ‘the servile slave’ of our self-love, if our ideas were emanations of our sensitive nature, encouraged if agreeable, and excluded the instant they became otherwise, or encroached on the former principle, then there might be a tolerable pretence for the Epicurean philosophy which is here spoken of. But for any such entire and mechanical subserviency of the operations of the one principle to the dictates of the other, there is not the slightest foundation in reality. The attention which the mind gives to its ideas is not always owing to the gratification derived from them, but to the strength and truth of the impressions themselves, _i.e._ to their involuntary power over the mind. This observation will account for a very general principle in the mind, which cannot, we conceive, be satisfactorily explained in any other way, we mean _the power of fascination_. Every one has heard the story of the girl who being left alone by her companions, in order to frighten her, in a room with a dead body, at first attempted to get out, and shrieked violently for assistance, but finding herself shut in, ran and embraced the corpse, and was found senseless in its arms.

It is said that in such cases there is a desperate effort made to get rid of the dread by converting it into the reality. There may be some truth in this account, but we do not think it contains the whole truth. The event produced in the present instance does not bear out the conclusion. The progress of the passion does not seem to have been that of diminishing or removing the terror by coming in contact with the object, but of carrying this terror to its height from an intense and irresistible impulse, overcoming every other feeling.

It is a well-known fact that few persons can stand safely on the edge of a precipice, or walk along the parapet wall of a house, without being in danger of throwing themselves down; not we presume from a principle of self-preservation; but in consequence of a strong idea having taken possession of the mind, from which it cannot well escape, which absorbs every other consideration, and confounds and overrules all self-regards. The impulse cannot in this case be resolved into a desire to remove the uneasiness of fear, for the only danger arises from the fear. We have been told by a person, not at all given to exaggeration, that he once felt a strong propensity to throw himself into a cauldron of boiling lead, into which he was looking. These are what Shakespear calls ‘the toys of desperation.’ People sometimes marry, and even fall in love on this principle—that is, through mere apprehension, or what is called a fatality. In like manner, we find instances of persons who are as it were naturally delighted with whatever is disagreeable,—who catch all sorts of unbecoming tones and gestures,—who always say what they should not, and what they do not mean to say,—in whom intemperance of imagination and incontinence of tongue are a disease, and who are governed by an almost infallible instinct of absurdity.

The love of imitation has the same general source. We dispute for ever about Hogarth, and the question can never be decided according to the common ideas on the subject of taste. His pictures appeal to the love of truth, not to the sense of beauty; but the one is as much an essential principle of our nature as the other. They fill up the void of the mind; they present an everlasting succession and variety of ideas. There is a fine observation somewhere made by Aristotle, that the mind has a natural appetite of curiosity or desire to know; and ‘most of that knowledge which comes in by the eye, for this presents us with the greatest variety of differences.’ Hogarth is relished only by persons of a certain strength of mind and penetration into character; for the subjects in themselves are not pleasing, and this objection is only redeemed by the exercise and activity which they give to the understanding. The great difference between what is meant by a severe and an effeminate taste or style, depends on the distinction here made.

Our teasing ourselves to recollect the names of places or persons we have forgotten, the love of riddles and of abstruse philosophy, are all illustrations of the same general principle of curiosity, or the love of intellectual excitement. Again, our impatience to be delivered of a secret that we know; the necessity which lovers have for confidants, auricular confession, and the declarations so commonly made by criminals of their guilt, are effects of the involuntary power exerted by the imagination over the feelings. Nothing can be more untrue, than that the whole course of our ideas, passions, and pursuits, is regulated by a regard to self-interest. Our attachment to certain objects is much oftener in proportion to the strength of the impression they make on us, to their power of rivetting and fixing the attention, than to the gratification we derive from them. We are perhaps more apt to dwell upon circumstances that excite disgust and shock our feelings, than on those of an agreeable nature. This, at least, is the case where this disposition is particularly strong, as in people of nervous feelings and morbid habits of thinking. Thus the mind is often haunted with painful images and recollections, from the hold they have taken of the imagination. We cannot shake them off, though we strive to do it: nay, we even court their company; we will not part with them out of our presence; we strain our aching sight after them; we anxiously recal every feature, and contemplate them in all their aggravated colours. There are a thousand passions and fancies that thwart our purposes and disturb our repose. Grief and fear are almost as welcome inmates of the breast as hope or joy, and more obstinately cherished. We return to the objects which have excited them, we brood over them, they become almost inseparable from the mind, necessary to it; they assimilate all objects to the gloom of our own thoughts, and make the will a party against itself. This is one chief source of most of the passions that prey like vultures on the heart, and embitter human life. We hear moralists and divines perpetually exclaiming, with mingled indignation and surprise, at the folly of mankind in obstinately persisting in these tormenting and violent passions, such as envy, revenge, sullenness, despair, &c. This is to them a mystery; and it will always remain an inexplicable one, while the love of happiness is considered as the only spring of human conduct and desires.

We shall resume this subject in a future paper.[30]

THE LOVE OF POWER OR ACTION AS MAIN A PRINCIPLE IN THE HUMAN MIND AS
SENSIBILITY TO PLEASURE OR PAIN

_The Examiner._] [_April 9, 1815._

The love of power or action is another independent principle of the human mind, in the different degrees in which it exists, and which are not by any means in exact proportion to its physical sensibility. It seems evidently absurd to suppose that sensibility to pleasure or pain is the only principle of action. It is almost too obvious to remark, that sensibility alone, without an active principle in the mind, could never produce action. The soul might lie dissolved in pleasure, or be agonised with woe; but the impulses of feeling, in order to excite passion, desire, or will, must be first communicated to some other faculty. There must be a principle, a fund of activity somewhere, by and through which our sensibility operates; and that this active principle owes all its force, its precise degree and direction, to the sensitive faculty, is neither self-evident nor true. Strength of will is not always nor generally in proportion to strength of feeling. There are different degrees of activity as of sensibility in the mind; and our passions, characters, and pursuits, often depend no less upon the one than on the other. We continually make a distinction in common discourse between sensibility and irritability, between passion and feeling, between the nerves and muscles; and we find that the most voluptuous people are in general the most indolent. Every one who has looked closely into human nature must have observed persons who are naturally and habitually restless in the extreme, but without any extraordinary susceptibility to pleasure or pain, always making or finding excuses to do something,—whose actions constantly outrun the occasion, and who are eager in the pursuit of the greatest trifles,—whose impatience of the smallest repose keeps them always employed about nothing,—and whose whole lives are a continued work of supererogation. There are others again who seem born to act from a spirit of contradiction only, that is, who are ready to act not only without a reason, but against it,—who are ever at cross-purposes with themselves and others,—who are not satisfied unless they are doing two opposite things at a time,—who contradict what you say, and if you assent to them, contradict what they have said,—who regularly leave the pursuit in which they are successful to engage in some other in which they have no chance of success,—who make a point of encountering difficulties and aiming at impossibilities, that there may be no end of their exhaustless task: while there is a third class whose _vis inertiæ_ scarcely any motives can overcome,—who are devoured by their feelings, and the slaves of their passions, but who can take no pains and use no means to gratify them,—who, if roused to action by any unforeseen accident, require a continued stimulus to urge them on,—who fluctuate between desire and want of resolution,—whose brightest projects burst like a bubble as soon as formed,—who yield to every obstacle,—who almost sink under the weight of the atmosphere,—who cannot brush aside a cobweb in their path, and are stopped by an insect’s wing. Indolence is want of will—the absence or defect of the active principle—a repugnance to motion; and whoever has been much tormented with this passion, must, we are sure, have felt that the inclination to indulge it is something very distinct from the love of pleasure or actual enjoyment. Ambition is the reverse of indolence, and is the love of power or action in great things. Avarice, also, as it relates to the acquisition of riches, is, in a great measure, an active and enterprising feeling; nor does the hoarding of wealth, after it is acquired, seem to have much connection with the love of pleasure. What is called niggardliness, very often, we are convinced from particular instances that we have known, arises less from a selfish principle than from a love of contrivance, from the study of economy as an art, for want of a better, from a pride in making the most of a little, and in not exceeding a certain expense previously determined upon; all which is wilfulness, and is perfectly consistent, as it is frequently found united, with the most lavish expenditure and the utmost disregard for money on other occasions. A miser may in general be looked upon as a particular species of _virtuoso_. The constant desire in the rich to leave wealth in large masses, by aggrandising some branch of their families, or sometimes in such a manner as to accumulate for centuries, shews that the imagination has a considerable share in this passion. Intemperance, debauchery, gluttony, and other vices of that kind, may be attributed to an excess of sensuality or gross sensibility; though even here, we think it evident that habits of intoxication are produced quite as much by the strength as by the agreeableness of the excitement; and with respect to some other vicious habits, curiosity makes many more votaries than inclination. The love of truth, when it predominates, produces inquisitive characters, the whole tribe of gossips, tale-bearers, harmless busy bodies, your blunt honest creatures, who never conceal what they think, and who are the more sure to tell it you the less you want to hear it,—and now and then a philosopher.

Our passions in general are to be traced more immediately to the active part of our nature, to the love of power, or to strength of will. Such are all those which arise out of the difficulty of accomplishment, which become more intense from the efforts made to attain the object, and which derive their strength from opposition. Mr. Hobbes says well on this subject:

‘But for an utmost end, in which the ancient philosophers placed felicity, and disputed much concerning the way thereto, there is no such thing in this world nor way to it, than to Utopia; for while we live, we have desires, and desire presupposeth a further end. Seeing all delight is appetite, and desire of something further, there can be no contentment but in proceeding, and therefore we are not to marvel, when we see that as men attain to more riches, honour, or other power, so their appetite continually groweth more and more; and when they are come to the utmost degree of some kind of power, they pursue some other, as long as in any kind they think themselves behind any other. Of those therefore that have attained the highest degree of honour and riches, some have affected mastery in some art, as Nero in music and poetry, Commodus in the art of a gladiator; and such as affect not some such thing, must find diversion and recreation of their thoughts in the contention either of play or business, and men justly complain as of a great grief that they know not what to do. Felicity, therefore, by which we mean continual delight, consists not in having prospered, but in prospering.’

This account of human nature, true as it is, would be a mere romance, if physical sensibility were the only faculty essential to man, that is, if we were the slaves of voluptuous indolence. But our desires are kindled by their own heat, the will is urged on by a restless impulse, and, without action, enjoyment becomes insipid. The passions of men are not in proportion only to their sensibility, or to the desirableness of the object, but to the violence and irritability of their tempers, and the obstacles to their success. Thus an object, to which we were almost indifferent while we thought it in our power, often excites the most ardent pursuit or the most painful regret, as soon as it is placed out of our reach. How eloquently is the contradiction between our desires and our success described in Don Quixote where it is said of the lover, that ‘he courted a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert!’

The necessity of action to the mind, and the keen edge it gives to our desires, is shewn in the different value we set on past and future objects. It is commonly and we might almost say universally supposed, that there is an essential difference in the two cases. In this instance, however, the strength of our passions has converted an evident absurdity into one of the most inveterate prejudices of the human mind. That the future is really or in itself of more consequence than the past, is what we can neither assent to nor even conceive. It is true, the past has ceased to be and is no longer any thing, except to the mind; but the future is still to come, and has an existence in the mind only. The one is at an end, the other has not even had a beginning; both are purely ideal: so that this argument would prove that the present only is of any real value, and that both past and future objects are equally indifferent, alike nothing. Indeed, the future is, if possible, more imaginary than the past; for the past may in some sense be said to exist in its consequences; it acts still; it is present to us in its effects; the mouldering ruins and broken fragments still remain; but of the future there is no trace. What a blank does the history of the world for the next six thousand years, present to the mind, compared with that of the last! All that strikes the imagination, or excites any interest in the mighty scene, is _what has been_. Neither in reality, then, nor as a subject of general contemplation, has the future any advantage over the past; but with respect to our own passions and pursuits it has. We regret the pleasures we have enjoyed, and eagerly anticipate those which are to come; we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we have escaped, and dread future pain. The good that is past is like money that is spent, which is of no use, and about which we give ourselves no farther concern. The good we expect is like a store yet untouched, in the enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What has happened to us we think of no consequence,—what is to happen to us, of the greatest. Why so? Because the one is in our power, and the other not; because the efforts of the will to bring an object to pass or to avert it strengthen our attachment to or our aversion from that object; because the habitual pursuit of any purpose redoubles the ardour of our pursuit, and converts the speculative and indolent interest we should otherwise take in it into real passion. Our regrets, anxiety, and wishes, are thrown away upon the past, but we encourage our disposition to exaggerate the importance of the future, as of the utmost use in aiding our resolutions and stimulating our exertions.