Chapter XVII: Front Matter (17)

It would not matter, if these turn-coats were not in such violent extremes. Between the two, they must be strangely perplexed in their own minds, and scarcely know what to make of themselves. They must have singular qualms come over them at times—the apparitions of former acquaintance and opinions. If they were contented to correct, to qualify their youthful extravagancies, and to be taught by experience to steer a middle course, and pay some deference to the conclusions of others, it would be mighty well; but this is not their humour. They must be conspicuous, dogmatical, exclusive, intolerant, on whichever side they are: the mode may be different, the principle is the same. A man’s nature does not change, though he may profess different sentiments. A Socinian may become a Calvinist, or a Whig a Tory: but a bigot is always a bigot; an egotist never becomes humble. Besides, what excuse has a man, after thirty, to change about all of a sudden to the very opposite side? If he is an uneducated man, he may indeed plead ignorance yesterday of what he has learnt to-day: but a man of study and reading can’t pretend that a whole host of arguments has suddenly burst upon him, of which he never heard before, and that they have upset all his earlier notions: he must have known them long before, and if they made no impression on him then to modify his violent zeal (supposing them to be right now) it is a sign either of a disinclination, or of an incapacity, on his part, to give truth a fair hearing—a bad ground to build his present dogmatical and infallible tone upon! It is certain, that the common sense of the world condemns these violent changes of opinion; and if they do not prove that a man prefers his convenience to his virtue, they at least show that he prefers it to his reputation; for he loses his character by them. An apostate is a name that all men abhor, that no man ever willingly acknowledges; and the tergiversation which it denotes is not likely to come into much greater request, till it is no longer observed that a man seldom changes his principles except for his interest! Those who go over from the winning to the losing side, do not incur this appellation; and however we may count them fools, they can’t be called knaves into the bargain.

QUERIES AND ANSWERS; OR THE RULE OF CONTRARY

_The London Weekly Review._] [_November 17, 1827._

1. Why is the word _comfort_ so continually in the mouths of the English?—Because the English are the most uncomfortable of all people: for being so liable to receive pain from outward objects, and being made uneasy by everything that is not as they wish it, they are obliged to remove, if possible, every source of annoyance, and have _all their comforts about them_.

2. Why are the English so fond of clubs, corporate bodies, joint-stock companies, and large associations of all kinds?—Because they are the most unsociable set of people in the world: for being mostly at variance with each other, they are glad to get any one else to join and be on their side; having no spontaneous attraction, they are forced to fasten themselves into the machine of society; and each holds out in his individual shyness and reserve, till he is carried away by the crowd, and borne with a violent, but welcome shock against some other mass of aggregate prejudice or self-interest. The English join together to get rid of their sharp points and sense of uncomfortable peculiarity. Hence, their clubs, their mobs, their sects, their parties, their spirit of co-operation, and previous understanding in every thing. An English mob is a collection of violent and headstrong humours, acting with double force from each man’s natural self-will, and the sense of opposition to others; and the same may be said of the nation at large. The French unite and separate more easily; and therefore do not collect into such formidable masses, and act with such unity and tenacity of purpose. It is the same with their ideas, which easily join together, and easily part company; but do not form large or striking masses: and hence, the French are full of wit and fancy, but without imagination and principle. The French are governed by fashion, the English by cabal.

3. Why are the English a credulous nation, and the eager dupes of all sorts of quacks and impostors?—Because they are a dry, plodding, _matter-of-fact_ people, and having, in general, no idea of the possibility of telling lies, think all they hear or read must be true, and are left at the mercy of every empiric or knavish pretender, who will take the trouble to impose on them. From their very gravity and seriousness, they are the dupes of superficial professions and appearances, which they think, (judging from themselves,) must imply all they pretend. Their folly and love of the marvellous takes a practical and mischievous turn; they despise the fictitious, and require to be amused by something that they think solid and useful. Hence, they swallow Dr. Brodum’s pills, Joanna Southcote’s prophecies, the Literary Gazette, and Blackwood’s Magazine, taking them all for gospel. They constantly have a succession of idols or bugbears. There is always some one to be hunted down at the time for their amusement, like a strange dog in a village; and some name, some work that is cried up for half-a-dozen years, as containing all wisdom, and then you hear no more of it. No people judge so much as the English at second-hand, except in mere matters of pounds, shillings, and pence; and even then they may be gulled by impudence and quackery. Every thing is either in collusion or collision. _Thimble_ was a great man in the O. P. Row, and now regulates the debates in Parliament. If a man has a monstrous good opinion of himself, and nothing will drive him out of it, the English will come into his way of thinking, sooner than be left in a _minority_, or not appear to be in the secret! Lest they should seem stupid, they try to be _knowing_, as they become forward in aiming to be witty, and vulgar in affecting to be genteel.

ON KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD

_The London Weekly Review._] [_December 1, 1827._

‘Who shall go about to cozen fortune, or wear the badge of honour
without the stamp of merit?’

A knowledge of the world is generally supposed to be the fruit of experience and observation, or of a various, practical acquaintance with men and things. On the contrary, it appears to me to be a kind of instinct, arising out of a peculiar construction and turn of mind. Some persons display this knowledge at their first outset in life: others, with all their opportunities and dear-bought lessons, never acquire it to the end of their career. In fact, a knowledge of the world only means a knowledge of our own interest; it is nothing but a species of selfishness or ramification of the law of self-preservation. There may be said to be two classes of people in the world, which remain for ever distinct: those who consider things in the abstract, or with a reference to the truth, and those who consider them only with a reference to themselves, or to the _main-chance_. The first, whatever may be their acquirements or discoveries, wander through life in a sort of absence of mind, or comparative state of sleep-walking: the last, though their attention is riveted to a single point of view, are always on the alert, know perfectly well what they are about, and calculate with the greatest nicety the effect which their words or actions will have on others. They do not trouble themselves about the arguments on any subject: they know the opinion entertained on it, and that is enough for them to regulate themselves by; the rest they regard as quite Utopian, and foreign to the purpose. ‘Subtle as the fox for prey, like warlike as the wolf for what they eat,’ they leave mere speculative points to those who, from some unaccountable bias or caprice take an interest in what does not personally concern them, and make good the old saying, that ‘the children of the world are wiser in their generation than the children of the light!’

The man of the world is to the man of science very much what the chamelion is to the armadillo: the one takes its hue from every surrounding object, and is undistinguishable from them; the other is shut up in a formal crust of knowledge, and clad in an armour of proof, from which the shaft of ridicule or the edge of disappointment falls equally pointless. It is no uncommon case to see a person come into a room, which he enters awkwardly enough, and has nothing in his dress or appearance to recommend him, but after the first embarrassments are over, sits down, takes his share in the conversation, in which he acquits himself creditably, shews sense, reading, and shrewdness, expresses himself with point, articulates distinctly, when he blunders on some topic which he might see is disagreeable, but persists in it the more as he finds others shrink from it; mentions a book of which you have not heard, and perhaps do not wish to hear, and he therefore thinks himself bound to favour you with the contents; gets into an argument with one, proses on with another on a subject in which his hearer has no interest; and when he goes away, people remark, ‘What a pity that Mr. —— has not more knowledge of the world, and has so little skill in adapting himself to the tone and manners of society!’ But will time and habit cure him of this defect? Never. He wants a certain _tact_, he has not a voluntary power over his ideas, but is like a person reading out of a book, or who can only pour out the budget of knowledge with which his brain is crammed in all places and companies alike. If you attempt to divert his attention from the general subject to the persons he is addressing, you puzzle and stop him quite. He is a mere conversing automaton. He has not the _sense of personality_—the faculty of perceiving the effect (as well as the grounds) of his opinions; and how then should failure or mortification give it him? It must be a painful reflection, and he must be glad to turn from it; or after a few reluctant and unsuccessful efforts to correct his errors, he will try to forget or harden himself in them. Finding that he makes so slow and imperceptible a progress in amending his faults, he will take his swing in the opposite direction, will triumph and revel in his supposed excellences, will launch out into the wide, untrammelled field of abstract speculation, and silence envious sneers and petty cavils by force of argument and dint of importunity. You will find him the same character at sixty that he was at thirty; or should time soften down some of his asperities, and tire him of his absurdities as he has tired others, nothing will transform him into a man of the world, and he will die in a garret, or a paltry second-floor, from not having been able to acquire the art ‘to see ourselves as others see us,’ or to dress his opinions, looks, and actions in the smiles and approbation of the world. On the other hand, take a youth from the same town (perhaps a school-fellow, and the dunce of the neighbourhood); he has ‘no figures, nor no fantasies which busy thought draws in the brains of men,’ no preconceived notions by which he must square his conduct or his conversation, no dogma to maintain in the teeth of opposition, no Shibboleth to which he must force others to subscribe; the progress of science or the good of his fellow-creatures are things about which he has not the remotest conception, or the smallest particle of anxiety—

‘His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;’

all that he sees or attends to is the immediate path before him, or what can encourage or lend him a helping hand through it; his mind is a complete blank, on which the world may write its maxims and customs in what characters it pleases; he has only to study its humours, flatter its prejudices, and take advantage of its foibles; while walking the streets he is not taken up with solving an abstruse problem, but with considering his own and the appearance of others; instead of contradicting a patron, assents to all he hears; and in every proposition that comes before him asks himself only what he can get by it, and whether it will make him friends or enemies: such a one is said to possess great penetration and knowledge of the world, understands his place in society, gets on in it, rises from the counter to the counting-house, from the dependant to be a partner, amasses a fortune, gains in size and respectability as his affairs prosper, has his town and country house, and ends with buying up half the estates in his native county!

The great secret of a knowledge of the world, then, consists in a subserviency to the will of others, and the primary motive to this attention is a mechanical and watchful perception of our own interest. It is not an art that requires a long course of study, the difficulty is in putting one’s self apprentice to it. It does not surely imply any very laborious or profound inquiry into the distinctions of truth or falsehood, to be able to assent to whatever one hears; nor any great refinement of moral feeling, to approve of whatever has custom, power, or interest on its side. The only question is, ‘Who is willing to do so?’—and the answer is, those who have no other faculties or pretensions, either to stand in the way of or to assist their progress through life. Those are slow to wear the livery of the world who have any independent resources of their own. It is not that the philosopher or the man of genius does not see and know all this, that he is not constantly and forcibly reminded of it by his own failure or the success of others, but he cannot stoop to practice it. He has a different scale of excellence and mould of ambition, which has nothing in common with current maxims and time-serving calculations. He is a moral and intellectual egotist, not a mere worldly-minded one. In youth, he has sanguine hopes and brilliant dreams, which he cannot sacrifice for sordid realities—as he advances farther in life, habit and pride forbid his turning back. He cannot bring himself to give up his best-grounded convictions to a blockhead, or his conscientious principles to a knave, though he might make his fortune by so doing. The rule holds good here as well as in another sense—‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ If his convictions and principles had been less strong, they would have yielded long ago to the suggestions of his interest, and he would have relapsed into the man of the world, or rather he would never have had the temptation or capacity to be any thing else. One thing that keeps men honest, as well as that confirms them knaves, is their incapacity to do any better for themselves than nature has done for them. One person can with difficulty speak the truth, as another lies with a very ill grace. After repeated awkward attempts to change characters, they each very properly fall back into their old _jog-trot_ path, as best suited to their genius and habits.

There are individuals who make themselves and every one else uncomfortable by trying to be agreeable, and who are only to be endured in their natural characters of blunt, plain-spoken people. Many a man would have turned rogue if he had known how. _Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius._ The modest man cannot be impudent if he would. The man of sense cannot play the fool to advantage. It is not the mere resolution to act a part that will enable us to do it, without a natural genius and fitness for it. Some men are born to be valets, as others are to be courtiers. There is the climbing _genus_ in man as well as in plants. It is sometimes made a wonder how men of ‘no mark or likelihood’ frequently rise to court-preferment, and make their way against all competition. That is the very reason. They present no tangible point; they offend no feeling of self-importance. They are a perfect unresisting medium of patronage and favour. They aspire through servility; they repose in insignificance. A man of talent or pretension in the same circumstances would be kicked out in a week. A look that implied a doubt, a hint that suggested a difference of opinion, would be fatal. It is of no use, in parleying with absolute power, to dissemble, to suppress: there must be no feelings or opinions to dissemble or suppress. The artifice of the dependant is not a match for the jealousy of the patron: ‘The soul must be subdued to the very quality of its lord.’ Where all is annihilated in the presence of the sovereign, is it astonishing that _nothings_ should succeed? Ciphers are as necessary in courts as eunuchs in seraglios.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The London Weekly Review._] [_December 8, 1827_,

I do not think Mr. Cobbett would succeed in an interview with the Prince. Bub Doddington said, ‘he would not justify before his Sovereign,’ even where his own character was at stake. I am afraid we could hardly reckon upon the same forbearance in Mr. Cobbett where his country’s welfare was at stake, and where he had an opportunity of vindicating it. He might have a great deal of reason on his side; but he might forget, or seem to forget, that as the king is above the law, he is also above reason. Reason is but a suppliant at the foot of thrones, and waits for their approval or rebuke. _Salus populi suprema lex_—may be a truism anywhere else. If reason dares to approach them at all, it must be in the shape of deference and humility, not of headstrong importunity and self-will. Instead of breathless awe, of mild entreaty, of humble remonstrance, it is Mr. Cobbett, who, upon very slight encouragement, would give the law, and the monarch who must kiss the rod. The upstart, the bully, and the dogmatist, would break out, and the King would assert himself. The reformer would be too full of his own opinion to allow an option even to Majesty, and the affair would have the same ending as that of the old ballad—

‘Then the Queen overhearing what Betty did say,
Would send Mr. Roper to take her away.’

As I have brought Mr. Cobbett in here by the neck and shoulders, I may add that I do not think he belongs properly to the class, either of philosophical speculators, or men of the world. He is a political humourist. He is too much taken up with himself either to attend to right reason, or to judge correctly of what passes around him. He mistakes strength of purpose and passion, not only for truth but for success. Because he can give fifty good reasons for a thing, he thinks it not only _ought_ to be, but _must_ be. Because he is swayed so entirely by his wishes and humours, he believes others will be ready to give up their prejudices, interests, and resentments to oblige him. He persuades himself that he is the fittest person to represent Westminster in parliament, and he considers this point (once proved) tantamount to his return. He knows no more of the disposition or sentiments of the people of Westminster than of the inhabitants of the moon (except from what he himself chooses to say or write of them), and it is this want of sympathy which, as much as anything, prevents his being chosen. The exclusive force and bigotry of his opinions deprives them of half their influence and effect, by allowing no toleration to others, and consequently setting them against him.

Mr. Cobbett seemed disappointed, at one time, at not succeeding in the character of a legacy-hunter. Why, a person to succeed in this character, ought to be a mere skin or bag to hold money, a place to deposit it in, a shadow, a deputy, a trustee who keeps it for the original owner—so that the transfer is barely nominal, and who, if he were to return from the other world, would modestly yield it up—one who has no personal identity of his own, no will to encroach upon or dispose of it otherwise than his patron would wish after his death—not a hair-brained egotist, a dashing adventurer, to squander, hector and flourish away with it in wild schemes and ruinous experiments, every one of them at variance with the opinions of the testator; in new methods of turnip hoeing; in speculations in madder—this would be to tear his soul from his body twice over—

‘His patron’s ghost from Limbo lake the while
Sees this which more damnation doth upon him pile!’

Mr. Cobbett complained, that in his last interview with Baron Mazeres, that gentleman was in his dotage, and that the reverend legatee sat at the bottom of the table, cutting a poor figure, and not contradicting a word the Baron said. No doubt, as he has put this in print in the exuberance of his dissatisfaction, he let both gentlemen see pretty plainly what he thought of them, and fancied that this expression of his contempt, as it gratified him, was the way to ensure the good will of the one to make over his whole estate, or the good word of the other to let him _go snacks_. This is a new way of being _quits_ with one’s benefactors, and an egregious _quid pro quo_. If Baron Mazeres had left Mr. Cobbett 200,000_l._ it must have been not to write his epitaph, or visit him in his last moments!

A gossiping chambermaid who only smiles and assents when her mistress wishes her to talk, or an ignorant country clown who stands with his hat off when he has a favour to ask of the squire, (and if he is wise, at all other times,) knows more of the matter. A knowledge of mankind is little more than the Scotch instinct of _bowing_, or of ‘never standing upright in the presence of a great man,’ or of that great blockhead, the world. It is not a perception of truth, but a sense of power, and an instant determination of the will to submit to it. It is therefore less an intellectual acquirement than a natural disposition. It is on this account that I think both cunning and wisdom are a sort of original endowments, or attain maturity much earlier than is supposed, from their being moral qualities, and having their seat in the heart rather than the head. The difference depends on the _manner_ of seeing things. The one is a selfish, the other is a disinterested view of nature. The one is the clear open look of integrity, the other is a contracted and blear-eyed obliquity of mental vision. If any one has but the courage and honesty to look at an object as it is in itself, or divested of prejudice, fear, and favour, he will be sure to see it pretty right; as he who regards it through the refractions of opinion and fashion, will be sure to see it distorted and falsified, however the error may rebound to his own advantage. Certainly, he who makes the universe tributary to his convenience, and subjects all his impressions of what is right or wrong, true or false, black or white, round or square, to the standard and maxims of the world, who never utters a proposition but he fancies a patron close at his elbow who overhears him, who is even afraid, in private, to suffer an honest conviction to rise in his mind, lest it should mount to his lips, get wind, and ruin his prospects in life, ought to gain something in exchange for the restraint and force put upon his thoughts and faculties: on the contrary, he who is confined by no such petty and debasing trammels, whose comprehension of mind is ‘in large heart enclosed,’ finds his inquiries and his views expand in a degree commensurate with the universe around him; makes truth welcome wherever he meets her, and receives her cordial embrace in return. To see things divested of passion and interest, is to see them with the eye of history and philosophy. It is easy to judge right, or at least to come to a mutual understanding in matters of history and abstract morality. Why then is it so difficult to arrive at the same calm certainty in actual life? Because the passions and interests are concerned, and it requires so much more candour, love of truth, and independence of spirit to encounter ‘the world and its dread laugh,’ to throw aside every sinister consideration, and grapple with the plain merits of the case. To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth. Perhaps the courage may be also owing to the strength; but both go together, and are natural, and not acquired. Do we not see in fables the force of the moral principle in detecting the truth? The only effect of fables is, by making inanimate or irrational things actors in the scene, to remove the case completely from our own sphere, to take our self-love off its guard, to simplify the question; and yet the result of this obvious appeal is allowed to be universal and irresistible. Is not this another example that ‘the heart of man is deceitful above all things;’ or, that it is less our incapacity to distinguish what is right, than our secret determination to adhere to what is wrong, that prevents our discriminating one from the other? It is not that great and useful truths are not manifest and discernible in themselves; but little, dirty objects get between them and us, and from being near and gross, hide the lofty and distant! The first business of the patriot and the philanthropist is to overleap this barrier, to rise out of this material dross. Indignation, contempt of the base and grovelling, makes the philosopher no less than the poet; and it is the power of looking beyond self that enables each to inculcate moral truth and nobleness of sentiment, the one by general precepts, the other by individual example.

I have no quarrel with men of the world, mere _muck-worms_: every one after his fashion, ‘as the flesh and fortune shall serve;’ but I confess I have a little distaste to those, who, having set out as loud and vaunting enthusiasts, have turned aside to ‘tread the primrose path of dalliance,’ and to revile those who did not choose to follow so edifying an example. The candid brow and elastic spring of youth may be exchanged for the wrinkles and crookedness of age; but at least we should retain something of the erectness and openness of our first unbiassed thoughts. I cannot understand how any degree of egotism can dispense with the consciousness of personal identity. As we advance farther in life, we are naturally inclined to revert in imagination to its commencement; but what can those dwell upon there who find only feelings that they despise, and opinions that they have abjured? ‘If thine eye offend thee, pull it out and cast it from thee:’ but the operation is a painful one, and the body remains after it only a mutilated fragment. Generally, those who are cut off from this resource in former recollections, make up for it (as well as they can) by an exaggerated and uxorious fondness for their late-espoused convictions—a thing unsightly and indecent! Why does he, who, at one time, despises ‘the little chapel-bell,’ afterwards write ‘the Book of the Church?’ The one is not an atonement for the other: each shows only a juvenile or a superannuated precocity of judgment. It is uniting Camille-Desmoulins and Camille-Jourdan, (_Jourdan of the Chimes_) in one character. I should like (not out of malice, but from curiosity) to see Mr. Southey re-write the beautiful poem on ‘his own miniature-picture, when he was two years old,’ and see what he would substitute for the lines—

‘And it was thought,
That thou shouldst tread preferment’s flowery path,
Young Robert!’

There must here, I think, be _hiatus in manuscriptis_: the verse must halt a little! The laureate and his friends say that they are still labouring on the same design as ever, correcting the outlines and filling up the unfinished sketch of their early opinions. They seem rather to have blotted them quite out, and to have taken a fresh canvas to begin another and no less extravagant caricature. Or their new and old theories remind one of those heads in picturedealers’ shops, where one half of the face is thoroughly cleaned and repaired, and the other left covered with stains and dirt, to show the necessity of the picture-scourer’s art: the transition offends the sight. It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, any more than they grow stronger or healthier or honester. They may, in one sense, imbibe a greater portion of worldly wisdom, and have their romantic flights tamed to the level of every day’s practice and experience; but perhaps it would be better if some of the extravagance and enthusiasm of youth could be infused into the latter, instead of being absorbed (perforce) in that sink of pride, envy, selfishness, ignorance, conceit, prejudice, and hypocrisy. One thing is certain, that this is the present course of events, and that if the individual grows wiser as he gains experience, the world does not, and that the tardy penitent who is treading back his steps, may meet the world advancing as he is retreating, and adopting more and more of the genuine impulses and disinterested views of youth into its creed. It is, indeed, only by conforming to some such original and unsophisticated standard, that it can acquire either soundness or consistency. The appeal is a fair one, from the bad habits of society to the unprejudiced aspirations and impressions of human nature.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The London Weekly Review._] [_December 15, 1827._

It seems, in truth, a hard case to have all the world against us, and to require uncommon fortitude (not to say presumption) to stand out single against such a host. The bare suggestion must ‘give us pause,’ and has no doubt overturned many an honest conviction. The _opinion of the world_, (as it pompously entitles itself,) if it means anything more than a set of local and party prejudices, with which only our interest, not truth, is concerned, is a shadow, a bugbear, and a contradiction in terms. _Having all the world against us_, is a phrase without a meaning; for in those points in which all the world agree, no one differs from the world. If all the world were of the same way of thinking, and always kept in the same mind, it would certainly be a little staggering to have them against you. But however widely and angrily they may differ from you, they differ as much so from one another, and even from themselves. What is gospel at one moment, is heresy the next:—different countries and climates have different notions of things. When you are put on your trial, therefore, for impugning the public opinion, you may always _subpœna_ this great body against itself. For example, I have been twitted for somewhere calling Tom Paine a great writer, and no doubt his reputation at present ‘does somewhat smack:’ yet in 1792 he was so great, or so popular an author, and so much read and admired by numbers who would not now mention his name, that the Government was obliged to suspend the Constitution, and to go to war to counteract the effects of his popularity. His extreme popularity was then the cause (by a common and vulgar _reaction_) of his extreme obnoxiousness. If the opinion of the world, then, contradicts itself, why may not I contradict it, or choose at what time, and to what extent I will agree with it? I have been accused of abusing dissenters, and saying that sectaries, in general, are dry and suspicious; and I believe that all the world will say the same thing except themselves. I have said that the church people are proud and overbearing, which has given them umbrage, though in this I have all the sectaries on my side. I have laughed at the Methodists, and for this I have been accused of glancing at religion: yet who does not laugh at the Methodists as well as myself? But I also laugh at those who laugh at them. I have pointed out by turns the weak sides and foibles of different sects and parties, and they themselves maintain that they are perfect and infallible: and this is what is called having all the world against me. I have inveighed all my life against the insolence of the Tories, and for this I have the authority both of Whigs and Reformers; but then I have occasionally spoken against the imbecility of the Whigs, and the extravagance of the Reformers, and thus have brought all three on my back, though two out of the three regularly agree with all I say of the third party. Poets do not approve of what I have said of their turning prose-writers; nor do the politicians approve of my tolerating the fooleries of the fanciful tribe at all: so they make common cause to _damn_ me between them. People never excuse the drawbacks from themselves, nor the concessions to an adversary: such is the justice and candour of mankind! Mr. Wordsworth is not satisfied with the praise I have heaped upon himself, and still less, that I have allowed Mr. Moore to be a poet at all. I do not think I have ever set my face against the popular idols of the day; I have been among the foremost in crying up Mrs. Siddons, Kean, Sir Walter Scott, Madame Pasta, and others; and as to the great names of former times, my admiration has been lavish, and sometimes almost mawkish. I have dissented, it is true, in one or two instances; but that only shows that I judge for myself, not that I make a point of contradicting the general taste. I have been more to blame in trying to push certain Illustrious Obscure into notice:—they have not forgiven the obligation, nor the world the tacit reproach. As to my personalities, they might quite as well be termed _impersonalities_. I am so intent on the abstract proposition and its elucidation, that I regard everything else as of very subordinate consequence: my friends, I conceive, will not refuse to contribute to so laudable an undertaking, and my enemies _must_! I have found fault with the French, I have found fault with the English; and pray, do they not find great, mutual, and just fault with one another? It may seem a great piece of arrogance in any one, to set up his individual and private judgment against that of ten millions of people; but cross the channel, and you will have thirty millions on your side. Even should the thirty millions come over to the opinions of the ten, (a thing that may happen to-morrow,) still one need not despair. I remember my old friend Peter Finnerty, laughing very heartily at something I had written about the Scotch, but it was followed up by a sketch of the Irish, on which he closed the book, looked grave, and said he disapproved entirely of all national reflections. Thus you have all the world on your side, except when it is the party concerned. What any set of people think or say of themselves is hardly a rule for others: yet, if you do not attach yourself to some one set of people and principles, and stick to them through thick and thin, instead of giving your opinion fairly and fully all round, you must expect to have all the world against you, for no other reason than because you express sincerely, and _for their good_, not only what they say of others, but what is said of themselves, which they would fain keep a profound secret, and prevent the divulging of it under the severest pains and penalties. When I told J—— that I had composed a work in which I had ‘in some sort handled’ about a score of leading characters, he said, ‘Then you will have one man against you, and the remaining nineteen for you!’ I have not found it so. In fact, these persons would agree pretty nearly to all that I say, and allow that, in nineteen points out of twenty, I am right; but the twentieth, that relates to some imperfection of their own, weighs down all the rest, and produces an unanimous verdict against the author. There is but one thing in which the world agree, a certain bigoted blindness, and conventional hypocrisy, without which, according to Mandeville, (that is, if they really spoke what they thought and knew of one another,) they would fall to cutting each other’s throats immediately.

We find the same contrariety and fluctuation of opinion in different ages, as well as countries and classes. For about a thousand years, during ‘the high and palmy state’ of the Romish hierarchy, it was agreed (_nemine contradicente_) that _two and two made five_: afterwards, for above a century, there was great battling and controversy to prove that they made four and a half; then, for a century more, it was thought a great stride taken to come down to four and a quarter; and, perhaps, in another century or two, it will be discovered for a wonder that _two and two actually make four_! It is said, that this slow advance and perpetual interposition of impediments is a salutary check to the rashness of innovation, and to hazardous experiments. At least, it is a very effectual one, amounting almost to a prohibition. One age is employed in building up an absurdity, and the next exhausts all its wit and learning, zeal and fury, in battering it down, so that at the end of two generations you come to the point where you set out, and have to begin again. These heats and disputes about external points of faith may be things of no consequence, since under all the variations of form or doctrine the essentials of practice remain the same. It does not seem so; at any rate, the non-essentials appear to excite all the interest, and ‘keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads;’ and when the dogma is once stripped of mystery and intolerance, and reduced to common sense, no one appears to take any further notice of it.

The appeal, then, to the authority of the world, chiefly resolves itself into the old proverb, that ‘when you are at Rome you must do as those at Rome do;’ that is, it is a shifting circle of local prejudices and gratuitous assumptions, a successful conformity to which is best insured by a negation of all other qualities that might interfere with it: solid reason and virtue are out of the question. But it may be insisted, that there are qualities of a more practical order that may greatly contribute to and facilitate our advancement in life, such as presence of mind, convivial talents, insight into character, thorough acquaintance with the profounder principles and secret springs of society, and so forth. I do not deny that all this may be of advantage in extraordinary cases, and often abridge difficulties; but I do not think that it is either necessary or generally useful. For instance, habitual caution and reserve is a surer resource than that presence of mind, or quick-witted readiness of expedient, which, though it gets men out of scrapes, as often leads them into them by begetting a false confidence. Persons of agreeable and lively talents often find to their cost that one indiscretion procures them more enemies then ten agreeable sallies do friends. A too great penetration into character is less desirable than a certain power of hoodwinking ourselves to their defects, unless the former is accompanied with a profound hypocrisy, which is also liable to detection and discomfiture: and as to general maxims and principles of worldly knowledge, I conceive that an instinctive sympathy with them is much more profitable than their incautious discovery and formal announcement. Thus, the politic rule, ‘When a great wheel goes up a hill, cling fast to it; when a great wheel runs down a hill, let go your hold of it,’ may be useful as a hint or warning to the shyness or fidelity of an Englishman; a North Briton feels its truth instinctively, and acts upon it unconsciously. When it is observed in the _History of a Foundling_, that ‘Mr. Alworthy had done so many charitable actions that he had made enemies of the whole parish,’ the sarcasm is the dictate of a generous indignation at ingratitude rather than a covert apology for selfish niggardliness. Misanthropic reflections have their source in philanthropic sentiments; the real despiser of the world keeps up appearances with it, and is at pains to varnish over its vices and follies, even to himself, lest his secret should be betrayed, and do him an injury. Those who see completely into the world begin to play tricks with it, and overreach themselves by being too knowing: it is even possible to _out-cant_ it, and get laughed at that way. Fielding knew something of the world, yet he did not make a fortune. Sir Walter Scott has twice made a fortune by descriptions of nature and character, and has twice lost it by the same fondness for speculative gains. Wherever there is a strong faculty for anything, the exercise of that faculty becomes its own end and reward, and produces an indifference or inattention to other things; so that the best security for success in the world is an incapacity for success in any other way. A bookseller to succeed in his business should have no knowledge of books, except as marketable commodities: the instant he has a taste, an opinion of his own on the subject, he may consider himself as a ruined man. In like manner, a picture-dealer should know nothing of pictures but the catalogue price, the cant of the day. The moment he has a feeling for the art, he will be tenacious of it: a Guido, a Salvator ‘will be the fatal Cleopatra for which he will lose all he is worth, and be content to lose it.’ Should a general then know nothing of war, a physician of medicine? No: because this is an art and not a trick, and the one has to contend with nature, and the other with an enemy, and not to pamper or cajole the follies of the world. It requires also great talents to overturn the world; not, to push one’s fortune in it: to rule the state like Cromwell or Buonaparte; not, to rise in it like Castlereagh or Croker. Yet, even in times of crisis and convulsion, he who outrages the feeling of the moment and echoes the wildest extravagance, succeeds; as, in times of peace and tranquillity, he does so who acquiesces most tamely in the ordinary routine of things. This may serve to point out another error, common to men of the world, who sometimes, giving themselves credit for more virtue than they possess, declare very candidly that if they had to begin life over again, they would have been _great rogues_. The answer to this is, that then they would have been _hanged_! No: the way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours, neither to be a ‘reformer nor a house-breaker,’ neither to advance before the age nor lag behind it, but to be as like it as possible, to reflect its image and superscription at every turn, and then you will be its darling and its delight, and it will dandle you and fondle you, and make much of you, as a monkey doats upon its young! The knowledge of vice—that is, of _statutable_ vice—is not the knowledge of the world: otherwise a Bow-street runner and the keeper of a house of ill fame, would be the most knowing characters, and would soon rise above their professions.

ON PUBLIC OPINION

_The London Weekly Review._] [_January 19, 1828._

‘Scared at the sound itself has made.’

Once asking a friend why he did not bring forward an explanation of a circumstance, in which his conduct had been called in question, he said, ‘His friends were satisfied on the subject, and he cared very little about the opinion of the world.’ I made answer that I did not consider this a good ground to rest his defence upon, for that a man’s friends seldom thought better of him than the world did. I see no reason to alter this opinion. Our friends, indeed, are more apt than a mere stranger to join in with, or be silent under any imputation thrown out against us, because they are apprehensive they may be indirectly implicated in it, and they are bound to betray us to save their own credit. To judge of our jealousy, our sensibility, our high notions of responsibility on this score, only consider if a single individual lets fall a solitary remark implying a doubt of the wit, the sense, the courage of a friend,—how it staggers us—how it makes us shake with fear—how it makes us call up all our eloquence and airs of self-consequence in his defence, lest our partiality should be supposed to have blinded our perceptions, and we should be regarded as the dupes of a mistaken admiration. We already begin to meditate an escape from a losing cause, and try to find out some other fault in the character under discussion, to show that we are not behind-hand (if the truth must be spoken) in sagacity, and a sense of the ridiculous. If, then, this is the case with the first flaw, the first doubt, the first speck that dims the sun of friendship, so that we are ready to turn our backs on our sworn attachment and well-known professions the instant we have not all the world with us, what must it be when we have all the world against us; when our friend, instead of a single stain, is covered with mud from head to foot; how shall we expect our feeble voices not to be drowned in the general clamour? how shall we dare to oppose our partial and mis-timed suffrages to the just indignation of the public? Or if it should not amount to this, how shall we answer the silence and contempt with which his name is received? how shall we animate the great mass of indifference or distrust with our private enthusiasm? how defeat the involuntary smile, or the suppressed sneer, with the burst of generous feeling and the glow of honest conviction? It is a thing not to be thought of, unless we would enter into a crusade against prejudice and malignity, devote ourselves as martyrs to friendship, raise a controversy in every company we go into, quarrel with every person we meet, and after making ourselves and everyone else uncomfortable, leave off, not by clearing our friend’s reputation, but by involving our own pretensions to decency and common sense. People will not fail to observe, that a man may have his reasons for his faults or vices; but that for another to volunteer a defence of them, is without excuse. It is, in fact, an attempt to deprive them of the great and only benefit they derive from the supposed errors of their neighbours and contemporaries—the pleasure of backbiting and railing at them, which they call _seeing justice done_. It is not a single breath of rumour or opinion; but the whole atmosphere is infected with a sort of aguish taint of anger and suspicion, that relaxes the nerves of fidelity, and makes our most sanguine resolutions sicken and turn pale; and he who is proof against it, must either be armed with a love of truth, or a contempt for mankind, which place him out of the reach of ordinary rules and calculations. For myself, I do not shrink from defending a cause or a friend _under a cloud_; though in neither case will cheap or common efforts suffice. But, in the first, you merely stand up for your own judgment and principles against fashion and prejudice, and thus assume a sort of manly and heroic attitude of defiance: in the last, (which makes it a matter of greater nicety and nervous sensibility,) you sneak behind another to throw your gauntlet at the whole world, and it requires a double stock of stoical firmness not to be laughed out of your boasted zeal and independence as a romantic and _amiable weakness_.[54]

There is nothing in which all the world agree but in running down some obnoxious individual. It may be supposed, that this is not for nothing, and that they have good reasons for what they do. On the contrary, I will undertake to say, that so far from there being invariably just grounds for such an universal outcry, the universality of the outcry is often the only ground of the opinion; and that it is purposely raised upon this principle, that all other proof or evidence against the person meant to be run down is wanting. Nay, farther, it may happen, while the clamour is at the loudest; while you hear it from all quarters; while it blows a perfect hurricane; while ‘the world rings with the vain stir’—not one of those who are most eager in hearing and echoing it knows what it is about, or is not fully persuaded, that the charge is equally false, malicious, and absurd. It is like the wind, that ‘no man knoweth whence it cometh, or whither it goeth.’ It is _vox et praeterea nihil_. What then is it that gives it its confident circulation and its irresistible force? It is the loudness of the organ with which it is pronounced, the Stentorian lungs of the multitude; the number of voices that take it up and repeat it, because others have done so; the rapid flight and the impalpable nature of common fame, that makes it a desperate undertaking for any individual to inquire into or arrest the mischief that, in the deafening buzz or loosened roar of laughter or of indignation, renders it impossible for the still small voice of reason to be heard, and leaves no other course to honesty or prudence than to fall flat on the face before it as before the pestilential blast of the Desert, and wait till it has passed over. Thus everyone joins in asserting, propagating, and in outwardly approving what everyone, in his private and unbiassed judgment, believes and knows to be scandalous and untrue. For everyone in such circumstances keeps his own opinion to himself, and only attends to or acts upon that which he conceives to be the opinion of everyone but himself. So that public opinion is not seldom a farce, equal to any acted upon the stage. Not only is it spurious and hollow in the way that Mr. Locke points out, by one man’s taking up at second-hand the opinion of another, but worse than this, one man takes up what he believes another _will_ think and which the latter professes only because he believes it held by the first! All therefore that is necessary, to control public opinion, is, to gain possession of some organ loud and lofty enough to make yourself heard, that has power and interest on its side; and then, no sooner do you blow a blast in this trump of _ill-fame_, like the horn hung up by an old castle-wall, than you are answered, echoed, and accredited on all sides: the gates are thrown open to receive you, and you are admitted into the very heart of the fortress of public opinion, and can assail from the ramparts with every engine of abuse, and with privileged impunity, all those who may come forward to vindicate the truth, or to rescue their good name from the unprincipled keeping of authority, servility, sophistry and venal falsehood! The only thing wanted is to give an alarm—to excite a panic in the public mind of being left _in the lurch_, and the rabble (whether in the ranks of literature or war) will throw away their arms, and surrender at discretion to any bully or impostor who, for a _consideration_, shall choose to try the experiment upon them!